diff --git a/Rust_Enum/Cargo.lock b/Rust_Enum/Cargo.lock new file mode 100644 index 00000000..eab376d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/Cargo.lock @@ -0,0 +1,1536 @@ +# This file is automatically @generated by Cargo. +# It is not intended for manual editing. +version = 4 + +[[package]] +name = "Rust_Enum" +version = "0.1.0" +dependencies = [ + "image", + "serde", + "serde_json", + "ureq", +] + +[[package]] +name = "adler2" +version = "2.0.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "320119579fcad9c21884f5c4861d16174d0e06250625266f50fe6898340abefa" + +[[package]] +name = "aligned" +version = "0.4.3" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "ee4508988c62edf04abd8d92897fca0c2995d907ce1dfeaf369dac3716a40685" +dependencies = [ + "as-slice", +] + +[[package]] +name = "aligned-vec" +version = "0.6.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "dc890384c8602f339876ded803c97ad529f3842aba97f6392b3dba0dd171769b" +dependencies = [ + "equator", +] + +[[package]] +name = "anyhow" +version = "1.0.100" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "a23eb6b1614318a8071c9b2521f36b424b2c83db5eb3a0fead4a6c0809af6e61" + +[[package]] +name = "arbitrary" +version = "1.4.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "c3d036a3c4ab069c7b410a2ce876bd74808d2d0888a82667669f8e783a898bf1" + +[[package]] +name = "arg_enum_proc_macro" +version = "0.3.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "0ae92a5119aa49cdbcf6b9f893fe4e1d98b04ccbf82ee0584ad948a44a734dea" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "arrayvec" +version = "0.7.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "7c02d123df017efcdfbd739ef81735b36c5ba83ec3c59c80a9d7ecc718f92e50" + +[[package]] +name = "as-slice" +version = "0.2.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "516b6b4f0e40d50dcda9365d53964ec74560ad4284da2e7fc97122cd83174516" +dependencies = [ + "stable_deref_trait", +] + +[[package]] +name = "autocfg" +version = "1.5.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "c08606f8c3cbf4ce6ec8e28fb0014a2c086708fe954eaa885384a6165172e7e8" + +[[package]] +name = "av-scenechange" +version = "0.14.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "0f321d77c20e19b92c39e7471cf986812cbb46659d2af674adc4331ef3f18394" +dependencies = [ + "aligned", + "anyhow", + "arg_enum_proc_macro", + "arrayvec", + "log", + "num-rational", + "num-traits", + "pastey", + "rayon", + "thiserror", + "v_frame", + "y4m", +] + +[[package]] +name = "av1-grain" +version = "0.2.5" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "8cfddb07216410377231960af4fcab838eaa12e013417781b78bd95ee22077f8" +dependencies = [ + "anyhow", + "arrayvec", + "log", + "nom", + "num-rational", + "v_frame", +] + +[[package]] +name = "avif-serialize" +version = "0.8.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "47c8fbc0f831f4519fe8b810b6a7a91410ec83031b8233f730a0480029f6a23f" +dependencies = [ + "arrayvec", +] + +[[package]] +name = "base64" +version = "0.22.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "72b3254f16251a8381aa12e40e3c4d2f0199f8c6508fbecb9d91f575e0fbb8c6" + +[[package]] +name = "bit_field" +version = "0.10.3" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "1e4b40c7323adcfc0a41c4b88143ed58346ff65a288fc144329c5c45e05d70c6" + +[[package]] +name = "bitflags" +version = "2.10.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "812e12b5285cc515a9c72a5c1d3b6d46a19dac5acfef5265968c166106e31dd3" + +[[package]] +name = "bitstream-io" +version = "4.9.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "60d4bd9d1db2c6bdf285e223a7fa369d5ce98ec767dec949c6ca62863ce61757" +dependencies = [ + "core2", +] + +[[package]] +name = "built" +version = "0.8.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "f4ad8f11f288f48ca24471bbd51ac257aaeaaa07adae295591266b792902ae64" + +[[package]] +name = "bumpalo" +version = "3.19.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "5dd9dc738b7a8311c7ade152424974d8115f2cdad61e8dab8dac9f2362298510" + +[[package]] +name = "bytemuck" +version = "1.24.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "1fbdf580320f38b612e485521afda1ee26d10cc9884efaaa750d383e13e3c5f4" + +[[package]] +name = "byteorder-lite" +version = "0.1.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "8f1fe948ff07f4bd06c30984e69f5b4899c516a3ef74f34df92a2df2ab535495" + +[[package]] +name = "cc" +version = "1.2.49" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "90583009037521a116abf44494efecd645ba48b6622457080f080b85544e2215" +dependencies = [ + "find-msvc-tools", + "jobserver", + "libc", + "shlex", +] + +[[package]] +name = "cfg-if" +version = "1.0.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "9330f8b2ff13f34540b44e946ef35111825727b38d33286ef986142615121801" + +[[package]] +name = "color_quant" +version = "1.1.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "3d7b894f5411737b7867f4827955924d7c254fc9f4d91a6aad6b097804b1018b" + +[[package]] +name = "core2" +version = "0.4.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "b49ba7ef1ad6107f8824dbe97de947cbaac53c44e7f9756a1fba0d37c1eec505" +dependencies = [ + "memchr", +] + +[[package]] +name = "crc32fast" +version = "1.5.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "9481c1c90cbf2ac953f07c8d4a58aa3945c425b7185c9154d67a65e4230da511" +dependencies = [ + "cfg-if", +] + +[[package]] +name = "crossbeam-deque" +version = "0.8.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "9dd111b7b7f7d55b72c0a6ae361660ee5853c9af73f70c3c2ef6858b950e2e51" +dependencies = [ + "crossbeam-epoch", + "crossbeam-utils", +] + +[[package]] +name = "crossbeam-epoch" +version = "0.9.18" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "5b82ac4a3c2ca9c3460964f020e1402edd5753411d7737aa39c3714ad1b5420e" +dependencies = [ + "crossbeam-utils", +] + +[[package]] +name = "crossbeam-utils" +version = "0.8.21" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "d0a5c400df2834b80a4c3327b3aad3a4c4cd4de0629063962b03235697506a28" + +[[package]] +name = "crunchy" +version = "0.2.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "460fbee9c2c2f33933d720630a6a0bac33ba7053db5344fac858d4b8952d77d5" + +[[package]] +name = "displaydoc" +version = "0.2.5" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "97369cbbc041bc366949bc74d34658d6cda5621039731c6310521892a3a20ae0" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "either" +version = "1.15.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "48c757948c5ede0e46177b7add2e67155f70e33c07fea8284df6576da70b3719" + +[[package]] +name = "equator" +version = "0.4.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "4711b213838dfee0117e3be6ac926007d7f433d7bbe33595975d4190cb07e6fc" +dependencies = [ + "equator-macro", +] + +[[package]] +name = "equator-macro" +version = "0.4.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "44f23cf4b44bfce11a86ace86f8a73ffdec849c9fd00a386a53d278bd9e81fb3" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "exr" +version = "1.74.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "4300e043a56aa2cb633c01af81ca8f699a321879a7854d3896a0ba89056363be" +dependencies = [ + "bit_field", + "half", + "lebe", + "miniz_oxide", + "rayon-core", + "smallvec", + "zune-inflate", +] + +[[package]] +name = "fax" +version = "0.2.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "f05de7d48f37cd6730705cbca900770cab77a89f413d23e100ad7fad7795a0ab" +dependencies = [ + "fax_derive", +] + +[[package]] +name = "fax_derive" +version = "0.2.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "a0aca10fb742cb43f9e7bb8467c91aa9bcb8e3ffbc6a6f7389bb93ffc920577d" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "fdeflate" +version = "0.3.7" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "1e6853b52649d4ac5c0bd02320cddc5ba956bdb407c4b75a2c6b75bf51500f8c" +dependencies = [ + "simd-adler32", +] + +[[package]] +name = "find-msvc-tools" +version = "0.1.5" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "3a3076410a55c90011c298b04d0cfa770b00fa04e1e3c97d3f6c9de105a03844" + +[[package]] +name = "flate2" +version = "1.1.5" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "bfe33edd8e85a12a67454e37f8c75e730830d83e313556ab9ebf9ee7fbeb3bfb" +dependencies = [ + "crc32fast", + "miniz_oxide", +] + +[[package]] +name = "form_urlencoded" +version = "1.2.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "cb4cb245038516f5f85277875cdaa4f7d2c9a0fa0468de06ed190163b1581fcf" +dependencies = [ + "percent-encoding", +] + +[[package]] +name = "getrandom" +version = "0.2.16" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "335ff9f135e4384c8150d6f27c6daed433577f86b4750418338c01a1a2528592" +dependencies = [ + "cfg-if", + "libc", + "wasi", +] + +[[package]] +name = "getrandom" +version = "0.3.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "899def5c37c4fd7b2664648c28120ecec138e4d395b459e5ca34f9cce2dd77fd" +dependencies = [ + "cfg-if", + "libc", + "r-efi", + "wasip2", +] + +[[package]] +name = "gif" +version = "0.14.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "f5df2ba84018d80c213569363bdcd0c64e6933c67fe4c1d60ecf822971a3c35e" +dependencies = [ + "color_quant", + "weezl", +] + +[[package]] +name = "half" +version = "2.7.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "6ea2d84b969582b4b1864a92dc5d27cd2b77b622a8d79306834f1be5ba20d84b" +dependencies = [ + "cfg-if", + "crunchy", + "zerocopy", +] + +[[package]] +name = "icu_collections" +version = "2.1.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "4c6b649701667bbe825c3b7e6388cb521c23d88644678e83c0c4d0a621a34b43" +dependencies = [ + "displaydoc", + "potential_utf", + "yoke", + "zerofrom", + "zerovec", +] + +[[package]] +name = "icu_locale_core" +version = "2.1.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "edba7861004dd3714265b4db54a3c390e880ab658fec5f7db895fae2046b5bb6" +dependencies = [ + "displaydoc", + "litemap", + "tinystr", + "writeable", + "zerovec", +] + +[[package]] +name = "icu_normalizer" +version = "2.1.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "5f6c8828b67bf8908d82127b2054ea1b4427ff0230ee9141c54251934ab1b599" +dependencies = [ + "icu_collections", + "icu_normalizer_data", + "icu_properties", + "icu_provider", + "smallvec", + "zerovec", +] + +[[package]] +name = "icu_normalizer_data" +version = "2.1.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "7aedcccd01fc5fe81e6b489c15b247b8b0690feb23304303a9e560f37efc560a" + +[[package]] +name = "icu_properties" +version = "2.1.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "020bfc02fe870ec3a66d93e677ccca0562506e5872c650f893269e08615d74ec" +dependencies = [ + "icu_collections", + "icu_locale_core", + "icu_properties_data", + "icu_provider", + "zerotrie", + "zerovec", +] + +[[package]] +name = "icu_properties_data" +version = "2.1.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "616c294cf8d725c6afcd8f55abc17c56464ef6211f9ed59cccffe534129c77af" + +[[package]] +name = "icu_provider" +version = "2.1.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "85962cf0ce02e1e0a629cc34e7ca3e373ce20dda4c4d7294bbd0bf1fdb59e614" +dependencies = [ + "displaydoc", + "icu_locale_core", + "writeable", + "yoke", + "zerofrom", + "zerotrie", + "zerovec", +] + +[[package]] +name = "idna" +version = "1.1.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "3b0875f23caa03898994f6ddc501886a45c7d3d62d04d2d90788d47be1b1e4de" +dependencies = [ + "idna_adapter", + "smallvec", + "utf8_iter", +] + +[[package]] +name = "idna_adapter" +version = "1.2.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "3acae9609540aa318d1bc588455225fb2085b9ed0c4f6bd0d9d5bcd86f1a0344" +dependencies = [ + "icu_normalizer", + "icu_properties", +] + +[[package]] +name = "image" +version = "0.25.9" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "e6506c6c10786659413faa717ceebcb8f70731c0a60cbae39795fdf114519c1a" +dependencies = [ + "bytemuck", + "byteorder-lite", + "color_quant", + "exr", + "gif", + "image-webp", + "moxcms", + "num-traits", + "png", + "qoi", + "ravif", + "rayon", + "rgb", + "tiff", + "zune-core 0.5.0", + "zune-jpeg 0.5.7", +] + +[[package]] +name = "image-webp" +version = "0.2.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "525e9ff3e1a4be2fbea1fdf0e98686a6d98b4d8f937e1bf7402245af1909e8c3" +dependencies = [ + "byteorder-lite", + "quick-error", +] + +[[package]] +name = "imgref" +version = "1.12.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "e7c5cedc30da3a610cac6b4ba17597bdf7152cf974e8aab3afb3d54455e371c8" + +[[package]] +name = "interpolate_name" +version = "0.2.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "c34819042dc3d3971c46c2190835914dfbe0c3c13f61449b2997f4e9722dfa60" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "itertools" +version = "0.14.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "2b192c782037fadd9cfa75548310488aabdbf3d2da73885b31bd0abd03351285" +dependencies = [ + "either", +] + +[[package]] +name = "itoa" +version = "1.0.15" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "4a5f13b858c8d314ee3e8f639011f7ccefe71f97f96e50151fb991f267928e2c" + +[[package]] +name = "jobserver" +version = "0.1.34" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "9afb3de4395d6b3e67a780b6de64b51c978ecf11cb9a462c66be7d4ca9039d33" +dependencies = [ + "getrandom 0.3.4", + "libc", +] + +[[package]] +name = "lebe" +version = "0.5.3" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "7a79a3332a6609480d7d0c9eab957bca6b455b91bb84e66d19f5ff66294b85b8" + +[[package]] +name = "libc" +version = "0.2.178" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "37c93d8daa9d8a012fd8ab92f088405fb202ea0b6ab73ee2482ae66af4f42091" + +[[package]] +name = "libfuzzer-sys" +version = "0.4.10" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "5037190e1f70cbeef565bd267599242926f724d3b8a9f510fd7e0b540cfa4404" +dependencies = [ + "arbitrary", + "cc", +] + +[[package]] +name = "litemap" +version = "0.8.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "6373607a59f0be73a39b6fe456b8192fcc3585f602af20751600e974dd455e77" + +[[package]] +name = "log" +version = "0.4.29" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "5e5032e24019045c762d3c0f28f5b6b8bbf38563a65908389bf7978758920897" + +[[package]] +name = "loop9" +version = "0.1.5" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "0fae87c125b03c1d2c0150c90365d7d6bcc53fb73a9acaef207d2d065860f062" +dependencies = [ + "imgref", +] + +[[package]] +name = "maybe-rayon" +version = "0.1.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "8ea1f30cedd69f0a2954655f7188c6a834246d2bcf1e315e2ac40c4b24dc9519" +dependencies = [ + "cfg-if", + "rayon", +] + +[[package]] +name = "memchr" +version = "2.7.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "f52b00d39961fc5b2736ea853c9cc86238e165017a493d1d5c8eac6bdc4cc273" + +[[package]] +name = "miniz_oxide" +version = "0.8.9" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "1fa76a2c86f704bdb222d66965fb3d63269ce38518b83cb0575fca855ebb6316" +dependencies = [ + "adler2", + "simd-adler32", +] + +[[package]] +name = "moxcms" +version = "0.7.11" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "ac9557c559cd6fc9867e122e20d2cbefc9ca29d80d027a8e39310920ed2f0a97" +dependencies = [ + "num-traits", + "pxfm", +] + +[[package]] +name = "new_debug_unreachable" +version = "1.0.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "650eef8c711430f1a879fdd01d4745a7deea475becfb90269c06775983bbf086" + +[[package]] +name = "nom" +version = "8.0.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "df9761775871bdef83bee530e60050f7e54b1105350d6884eb0fb4f46c2f9405" +dependencies = [ + "memchr", +] + +[[package]] +name = "noop_proc_macro" +version = "0.3.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "0676bb32a98c1a483ce53e500a81ad9c3d5b3f7c920c28c24e9cb0980d0b5bc8" + +[[package]] +name = "num-bigint" +version = "0.4.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "a5e44f723f1133c9deac646763579fdb3ac745e418f2a7af9cd0c431da1f20b9" +dependencies = [ + "num-integer", + "num-traits", +] + +[[package]] +name = "num-derive" +version = "0.4.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "ed3955f1a9c7c0c15e092f9c887db08b1fc683305fdf6eb6684f22555355e202" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "num-integer" +version = "0.1.46" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "7969661fd2958a5cb096e56c8e1ad0444ac2bbcd0061bd28660485a44879858f" +dependencies = [ + "num-traits", +] + +[[package]] +name = "num-rational" +version = "0.4.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "f83d14da390562dca69fc84082e73e548e1ad308d24accdedd2720017cb37824" +dependencies = [ + "num-bigint", + "num-integer", + "num-traits", +] + +[[package]] +name = "num-traits" +version = "0.2.19" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "071dfc062690e90b734c0b2273ce72ad0ffa95f0c74596bc250dcfd960262841" +dependencies = [ + "autocfg", +] + +[[package]] +name = "once_cell" +version = "1.21.3" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "42f5e15c9953c5e4ccceeb2e7382a716482c34515315f7b03532b8b4e8393d2d" + +[[package]] +name = "paste" +version = "1.0.15" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "57c0d7b74b563b49d38dae00a0c37d4d6de9b432382b2892f0574ddcae73fd0a" + +[[package]] +name = "pastey" +version = "0.1.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "35fb2e5f958ec131621fdd531e9fc186ed768cbe395337403ae56c17a74c68ec" + +[[package]] +name = "percent-encoding" +version = "2.3.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "9b4f627cb1b25917193a259e49bdad08f671f8d9708acfd5fe0a8c1455d87220" + +[[package]] +name = "png" +version = "0.18.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "97baced388464909d42d89643fe4361939af9b7ce7a31ee32a168f832a70f2a0" +dependencies = [ + "bitflags", + "crc32fast", + "fdeflate", + "flate2", + "miniz_oxide", +] + +[[package]] +name = "potential_utf" +version = "0.1.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "b73949432f5e2a09657003c25bca5e19a0e9c84f8058ca374f49e0ebe605af77" +dependencies = [ + "zerovec", +] + +[[package]] +name = "ppv-lite86" +version = "0.2.21" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "85eae3c4ed2f50dcfe72643da4befc30deadb458a9b590d720cde2f2b1e97da9" +dependencies = [ + "zerocopy", +] + +[[package]] +name = "proc-macro2" +version = "1.0.103" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "5ee95bc4ef87b8d5ba32e8b7714ccc834865276eab0aed5c9958d00ec45f49e8" +dependencies = [ + "unicode-ident", +] + +[[package]] +name = "profiling" +version = "1.0.17" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "3eb8486b569e12e2c32ad3e204dbaba5e4b5b216e9367044f25f1dba42341773" +dependencies = [ + "profiling-procmacros", +] + +[[package]] +name = "profiling-procmacros" +version = "1.0.17" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "52717f9a02b6965224f95ca2a81e2e0c5c43baacd28ca057577988930b6c3d5b" +dependencies = [ + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "pxfm" +version = "0.1.27" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "7186d3822593aa4393561d186d1393b3923e9d6163d3fbfd6e825e3e6cf3e6a8" +dependencies = [ + "num-traits", +] + +[[package]] +name = "qoi" +version = "0.4.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "7f6d64c71eb498fe9eae14ce4ec935c555749aef511cca85b5568910d6e48001" +dependencies = [ + "bytemuck", +] + +[[package]] +name = "quick-error" +version = "2.0.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "a993555f31e5a609f617c12db6250dedcac1b0a85076912c436e6fc9b2c8e6a3" + +[[package]] +name = "quote" +version = "1.0.42" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "a338cc41d27e6cc6dce6cefc13a0729dfbb81c262b1f519331575dd80ef3067f" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", +] + +[[package]] +name = "r-efi" +version = "5.3.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "69cdb34c158ceb288df11e18b4bd39de994f6657d83847bdffdbd7f346754b0f" + +[[package]] +name = "rand" +version = "0.9.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "6db2770f06117d490610c7488547d543617b21bfa07796d7a12f6f1bd53850d1" +dependencies = [ + "rand_chacha", + "rand_core", +] + +[[package]] +name = "rand_chacha" +version = "0.9.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "d3022b5f1df60f26e1ffddd6c66e8aa15de382ae63b3a0c1bfc0e4d3e3f325cb" +dependencies = [ + "ppv-lite86", + "rand_core", +] + +[[package]] +name = "rand_core" +version = "0.9.3" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "99d9a13982dcf210057a8a78572b2217b667c3beacbf3a0d8b454f6f82837d38" +dependencies = [ + "getrandom 0.3.4", +] + +[[package]] +name = "rav1e" +version = "0.8.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "43b6dd56e85d9483277cde964fd1bdb0428de4fec5ebba7540995639a21cb32b" +dependencies = [ + "aligned-vec", + "arbitrary", + "arg_enum_proc_macro", + "arrayvec", + "av-scenechange", + "av1-grain", + "bitstream-io", + "built", + "cfg-if", + "interpolate_name", + "itertools", + "libc", + "libfuzzer-sys", + "log", + "maybe-rayon", + "new_debug_unreachable", + "noop_proc_macro", + "num-derive", + "num-traits", + "paste", + "profiling", + "rand", + "rand_chacha", + "simd_helpers", + "thiserror", + "v_frame", + "wasm-bindgen", +] + +[[package]] +name = "ravif" +version = "0.12.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "ef69c1990ceef18a116855938e74793a5f7496ee907562bd0857b6ac734ab285" +dependencies = [ + "avif-serialize", + "imgref", + "loop9", + "quick-error", + "rav1e", + "rayon", + "rgb", +] + +[[package]] +name = "rayon" +version = "1.11.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "368f01d005bf8fd9b1206fb6fa653e6c4a81ceb1466406b81792d87c5677a58f" +dependencies = [ + "either", + "rayon-core", +] + +[[package]] +name = "rayon-core" +version = "1.13.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "22e18b0f0062d30d4230b2e85ff77fdfe4326feb054b9783a3460d8435c8ab91" +dependencies = [ + "crossbeam-deque", + "crossbeam-utils", +] + +[[package]] +name = "rgb" +version = "0.8.52" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "0c6a884d2998352bb4daf0183589aec883f16a6da1f4dde84d8e2e9a5409a1ce" + +[[package]] +name = "ring" +version = "0.17.14" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "a4689e6c2294d81e88dc6261c768b63bc4fcdb852be6d1352498b114f61383b7" +dependencies = [ + "cc", + "cfg-if", + "getrandom 0.2.16", + "libc", + "untrusted", + "windows-sys", +] + +[[package]] +name = "rustls" +version = "0.23.35" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "533f54bc6a7d4f647e46ad909549eda97bf5afc1585190ef692b4286b198bd8f" +dependencies = [ + "log", + "once_cell", + "ring", + "rustls-pki-types", + "rustls-webpki", + "subtle", + "zeroize", +] + +[[package]] +name = "rustls-pki-types" +version = "1.13.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "21e6f2ab2928ca4291b86736a8bd920a277a399bba1589409d72154ff87c1282" +dependencies = [ + "zeroize", +] + +[[package]] +name = "rustls-webpki" +version = "0.103.8" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "2ffdfa2f5286e2247234e03f680868ac2815974dc39e00ea15adc445d0aafe52" +dependencies = [ + "ring", + "rustls-pki-types", + "untrusted", +] + +[[package]] +name = "rustversion" +version = "1.0.22" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "b39cdef0fa800fc44525c84ccb54a029961a8215f9619753635a9c0d2538d46d" + +[[package]] +name = "ryu" +version = "1.0.20" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "28d3b2b1366ec20994f1fd18c3c594f05c5dd4bc44d8bb0c1c632c8d6829481f" + +[[package]] +name = "serde" +version = "1.0.228" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "9a8e94ea7f378bd32cbbd37198a4a91436180c5bb472411e48b5ec2e2124ae9e" +dependencies = [ + "serde_core", + "serde_derive", +] + +[[package]] +name = "serde_core" +version = "1.0.228" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "41d385c7d4ca58e59fc732af25c3983b67ac852c1a25000afe1175de458b67ad" +dependencies = [ + "serde_derive", +] + +[[package]] +name = "serde_derive" +version = "1.0.228" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "d540f220d3187173da220f885ab66608367b6574e925011a9353e4badda91d79" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "serde_json" +version = "1.0.145" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "402a6f66d8c709116cf22f558eab210f5a50187f702eb4d7e5ef38d9a7f1c79c" +dependencies = [ + "itoa", + "memchr", + "ryu", + "serde", + "serde_core", +] + +[[package]] +name = "shlex" +version = "1.3.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "0fda2ff0d084019ba4d7c6f371c95d8fd75ce3524c3cb8fb653a3023f6323e64" + +[[package]] +name = "simd-adler32" +version = "0.3.8" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "e320a6c5ad31d271ad523dcf3ad13e2767ad8b1cb8f047f75a8aeaf8da139da2" + +[[package]] +name = "simd_helpers" +version = "0.1.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "95890f873bec569a0362c235787f3aca6e1e887302ba4840839bcc6459c42da6" +dependencies = [ + "quote", +] + +[[package]] +name = "smallvec" +version = "1.15.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "67b1b7a3b5fe4f1376887184045fcf45c69e92af734b7aaddc05fb777b6fbd03" + +[[package]] +name = "stable_deref_trait" +version = "1.2.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "6ce2be8dc25455e1f91df71bfa12ad37d7af1092ae736f3a6cd0e37bc7810596" + +[[package]] +name = "subtle" +version = "2.6.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "13c2bddecc57b384dee18652358fb23172facb8a2c51ccc10d74c157bdea3292" + +[[package]] +name = "syn" +version = "2.0.111" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "390cc9a294ab71bdb1aa2e99d13be9c753cd2d7bd6560c77118597410c4d2e87" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "unicode-ident", +] + +[[package]] +name = "synstructure" +version = "0.13.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "728a70f3dbaf5bab7f0c4b1ac8d7ae5ea60a4b5549c8a5914361c99147a709d2" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "thiserror" +version = "2.0.17" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "f63587ca0f12b72a0600bcba1d40081f830876000bb46dd2337a3051618f4fc8" +dependencies = [ + "thiserror-impl", +] + +[[package]] +name = "thiserror-impl" +version = "2.0.17" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "3ff15c8ecd7de3849db632e14d18d2571fa09dfc5ed93479bc4485c7a517c913" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "tiff" +version = "0.10.3" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "af9605de7fee8d9551863fd692cce7637f548dbd9db9180fcc07ccc6d26c336f" +dependencies = [ + "fax", + "flate2", + "half", + "quick-error", + "weezl", + "zune-jpeg 0.4.21", +] + +[[package]] +name = "tinystr" +version = "0.8.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "42d3e9c45c09de15d06dd8acf5f4e0e399e85927b7f00711024eb7ae10fa4869" +dependencies = [ + "displaydoc", + "zerovec", +] + +[[package]] +name = "unicode-ident" +version = "1.0.22" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "9312f7c4f6ff9069b165498234ce8be658059c6728633667c526e27dc2cf1df5" + +[[package]] +name = "untrusted" +version = "0.9.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "8ecb6da28b8a351d773b68d5825ac39017e680750f980f3a1a85cd8dd28a47c1" + +[[package]] +name = "ureq" +version = "2.12.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "02d1a66277ed75f640d608235660df48c8e3c19f3b4edb6a263315626cc3c01d" +dependencies = [ + "base64", + "flate2", + "log", + "once_cell", + "rustls", + "rustls-pki-types", + "url", + "webpki-roots 0.26.11", +] + +[[package]] +name = "url" +version = "2.5.7" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "08bc136a29a3d1758e07a9cca267be308aeebf5cfd5a10f3f67ab2097683ef5b" +dependencies = [ + "form_urlencoded", + "idna", + "percent-encoding", + "serde", +] + +[[package]] +name = "utf8_iter" +version = "1.0.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "b6c140620e7ffbb22c2dee59cafe6084a59b5ffc27a8859a5f0d494b5d52b6be" + +[[package]] +name = "v_frame" +version = "0.3.9" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "666b7727c8875d6ab5db9533418d7c764233ac9c0cff1d469aec8fa127597be2" +dependencies = [ + "aligned-vec", + "num-traits", + "wasm-bindgen", +] + +[[package]] +name = "wasi" +version = "0.11.1+wasi-snapshot-preview1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "ccf3ec651a847eb01de73ccad15eb7d99f80485de043efb2f370cd654f4ea44b" + +[[package]] +name = "wasip2" +version = "1.0.1+wasi-0.2.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "0562428422c63773dad2c345a1882263bbf4d65cf3f42e90921f787ef5ad58e7" +dependencies = [ + "wit-bindgen", +] + +[[package]] +name = "wasm-bindgen" +version = "0.2.106" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "0d759f433fa64a2d763d1340820e46e111a7a5ab75f993d1852d70b03dbb80fd" +dependencies = [ + "cfg-if", + "once_cell", + "rustversion", + "wasm-bindgen-macro", + "wasm-bindgen-shared", +] + +[[package]] +name = "wasm-bindgen-macro" +version = "0.2.106" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "48cb0d2638f8baedbc542ed444afc0644a29166f1595371af4fecf8ce1e7eeb3" +dependencies = [ + "quote", + "wasm-bindgen-macro-support", +] + +[[package]] +name = "wasm-bindgen-macro-support" +version = "0.2.106" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "cefb59d5cd5f92d9dcf80e4683949f15ca4b511f4ac0a6e14d4e1ac60c6ecd40" +dependencies = [ + "bumpalo", + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", + "wasm-bindgen-shared", +] + +[[package]] +name = "wasm-bindgen-shared" +version = "0.2.106" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "cbc538057e648b67f72a982e708d485b2efa771e1ac05fec311f9f63e5800db4" +dependencies = [ + "unicode-ident", +] + +[[package]] +name = "webpki-roots" +version = "0.26.11" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "521bc38abb08001b01866da9f51eb7c5d647a19260e00054a8c7fd5f9e57f7a9" +dependencies = [ + "webpki-roots 1.0.4", +] + +[[package]] +name = "webpki-roots" +version = "1.0.4" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "b2878ef029c47c6e8cf779119f20fcf52bde7ad42a731b2a304bc221df17571e" +dependencies = [ + "rustls-pki-types", +] + +[[package]] +name = "weezl" +version = "0.1.12" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "a28ac98ddc8b9274cb41bb4d9d4d5c425b6020c50c46f25559911905610b4a88" + +[[package]] +name = "windows-sys" +version = "0.52.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "282be5f36a8ce781fad8c8ae18fa3f9beff57ec1b52cb3de0789201425d9a33d" +dependencies = [ + "windows-targets", +] + +[[package]] +name = "windows-targets" +version = "0.52.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "9b724f72796e036ab90c1021d4780d4d3d648aca59e491e6b98e725b84e99973" +dependencies = [ + "windows_aarch64_gnullvm", + "windows_aarch64_msvc", + "windows_i686_gnu", + "windows_i686_gnullvm", + "windows_i686_msvc", + "windows_x86_64_gnu", + "windows_x86_64_gnullvm", + "windows_x86_64_msvc", +] + +[[package]] +name = "windows_aarch64_gnullvm" +version = "0.52.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "32a4622180e7a0ec044bb555404c800bc9fd9ec262ec147edd5989ccd0c02cd3" + +[[package]] +name = "windows_aarch64_msvc" +version = "0.52.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "09ec2a7bb152e2252b53fa7803150007879548bc709c039df7627cabbd05d469" + +[[package]] +name = "windows_i686_gnu" +version = "0.52.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "8e9b5ad5ab802e97eb8e295ac6720e509ee4c243f69d781394014ebfe8bbfa0b" + +[[package]] +name = "windows_i686_gnullvm" +version = "0.52.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "0eee52d38c090b3caa76c563b86c3a4bd71ef1a819287c19d586d7334ae8ed66" + +[[package]] +name = "windows_i686_msvc" +version = "0.52.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "240948bc05c5e7c6dabba28bf89d89ffce3e303022809e73deaefe4f6ec56c66" + +[[package]] +name = "windows_x86_64_gnu" +version = "0.52.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "147a5c80aabfbf0c7d901cb5895d1de30ef2907eb21fbbab29ca94c5b08b1a78" + +[[package]] +name = "windows_x86_64_gnullvm" +version = "0.52.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "24d5b23dc417412679681396f2b49f3de8c1473deb516bd34410872eff51ed0d" + +[[package]] +name = "windows_x86_64_msvc" +version = "0.52.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "589f6da84c646204747d1270a2a5661ea66ed1cced2631d546fdfb155959f9ec" + +[[package]] +name = "wit-bindgen" +version = "0.46.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "f17a85883d4e6d00e8a97c586de764dabcc06133f7f1d55dce5cdc070ad7fe59" + +[[package]] +name = "writeable" +version = "0.6.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "9edde0db4769d2dc68579893f2306b26c6ecfbe0ef499b013d731b7b9247e0b9" + +[[package]] +name = "y4m" +version = "0.8.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "7a5a4b21e1a62b67a2970e6831bc091d7b87e119e7f9791aef9702e3bef04448" + +[[package]] +name = "yoke" +version = "0.8.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "72d6e5c6afb84d73944e5cedb052c4680d5657337201555f9f2a16b7406d4954" +dependencies = [ + "stable_deref_trait", + "yoke-derive", + "zerofrom", +] + +[[package]] +name = "yoke-derive" +version = "0.8.1" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "b659052874eb698efe5b9e8cf382204678a0086ebf46982b79d6ca3182927e5d" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", + "synstructure", +] + +[[package]] +name = "zerocopy" +version = "0.8.31" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "fd74ec98b9250adb3ca554bdde269adf631549f51d8a8f8f0a10b50f1cb298c3" +dependencies = [ + "zerocopy-derive", +] + +[[package]] +name = "zerocopy-derive" +version = "0.8.31" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "d8a8d209fdf45cf5138cbb5a506f6b52522a25afccc534d1475dad8e31105c6a" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "zerofrom" +version = "0.1.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "50cc42e0333e05660c3587f3bf9d0478688e15d870fab3346451ce7f8c9fbea5" +dependencies = [ + "zerofrom-derive", +] + +[[package]] +name = "zerofrom-derive" +version = "0.1.6" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "d71e5d6e06ab090c67b5e44993ec16b72dcbaabc526db883a360057678b48502" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", + "synstructure", +] + +[[package]] +name = "zeroize" +version = "1.8.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "b97154e67e32c85465826e8bcc1c59429aaaf107c1e4a9e53c8d8ccd5eff88d0" + +[[package]] +name = "zerotrie" +version = "0.2.3" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "2a59c17a5562d507e4b54960e8569ebee33bee890c70aa3fe7b97e85a9fd7851" +dependencies = [ + "displaydoc", + "yoke", + "zerofrom", +] + +[[package]] +name = "zerovec" +version = "0.11.5" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "6c28719294829477f525be0186d13efa9a3c602f7ec202ca9e353d310fb9a002" +dependencies = [ + "yoke", + "zerofrom", + "zerovec-derive", +] + +[[package]] +name = "zerovec-derive" +version = "0.11.2" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "eadce39539ca5cb3985590102671f2567e659fca9666581ad3411d59207951f3" +dependencies = [ + "proc-macro2", + "quote", + "syn", +] + +[[package]] +name = "zune-core" +version = "0.4.12" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "3f423a2c17029964870cfaabb1f13dfab7d092a62a29a89264f4d36990ca414a" + +[[package]] +name = "zune-core" +version = "0.5.0" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "111f7d9820f05fd715df3144e254d6fc02ee4088b0644c0ffd0efc9e6d9d2773" + +[[package]] +name = "zune-inflate" +version = "0.2.54" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "73ab332fe2f6680068f3582b16a24f90ad7096d5d39b974d1c0aff0125116f02" +dependencies = [ + "simd-adler32", +] + +[[package]] +name = "zune-jpeg" +version = "0.4.21" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "29ce2c8a9384ad323cf564b67da86e21d3cfdff87908bc1223ed5c99bc792713" +dependencies = [ + "zune-core 0.4.12", +] + +[[package]] +name = "zune-jpeg" +version = "0.5.7" +source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index" +checksum = "51d915729b0e7d5fe35c2f294c5dc10b30207cc637920e5b59077bfa3da63f28" +dependencies = [ + "zune-core 0.5.0", +] diff --git a/Rust_Enum/Cargo.toml b/Rust_Enum/Cargo.toml new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a5329f64 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/Cargo.toml @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +[package] +name = "Rust_Enum" +version = "0.1.0" +edition = "2024" + +[dependencies] +serde = { version = "1.0", features = ["derive"] } +serde_json = "1.0" +ureq = "2.9" +image = "0.25" \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/src/main.rs b/Rust_Enum/src/main.rs new file mode 100644 index 00000000..224e8723 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/src/main.rs @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +use serde::Deserialize; +use std::error::Error; +use std::io::Read; // required for read_to_end() + +#[derive(Debug)] +enum DogError { + Network(String), + Json(String), + ImageBytes(String), +} + +impl std::fmt::Display for DogError { + fn fmt(&self, f: &mut std::fmt::Formatter<'_>) -> std::fmt::Result { + write!(f, "{:?}", self) + } +} + +impl Error for DogError {} + +#[derive(Deserialize)] +struct DogApiResponse { + message: String, + status: String, +} + +fn get_random_dog_url() -> Result { + let url = "https://dog.ceo/api/breeds/image/random"; + + let resp = ureq::get(url).call() + .map_err(|e| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?; + + // Use a reader + let reader = resp.into_reader(); + let json: DogApiResponse = serde_json::from_reader(reader) + .map_err(|e| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))?; + + Ok(json.message) +} + +fn download_image(url: &str) -> Result, DogError> { + let resp = ureq::get(url).call() + .map_err(|e| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?; + + let mut reader = resp.into_reader(); + let mut buf = Vec::new(); + reader.read_to_end(&mut buf) + .map_err(|e| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?; + + Ok(buf) +} + +fn main() -> Result<(), Box> { + println!("Fetching random dog image URL..."); + + let dog_url = get_random_dog_url()?; + println!("Dog image URL: {}", dog_url); + + println!("Downloading image bytes..."); + let bytes = download_image(&dog_url)?; + println!("Downloaded {} bytes", bytes.len()); + + Ok(()) +} diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/.rustc_info.json b/Rust_Enum/target/.rustc_info.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4809e25e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/.rustc_info.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc_fingerprint":3087243518391675650,"outputs":{"17747080675513052775":{"success":true,"status":"","code":0,"stdout":"rustc 1.92.0 (ded5c06cf 2025-12-08)\nbinary: rustc\ncommit-hash: ded5c06cf21d2b93bffd5d884aa6e96934ee4234\ncommit-date: 2025-12-08\nhost: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu\nrelease: 1.92.0\nLLVM version: 21.1.3\n","stderr":""},"7971740275564407648":{"success":true,"status":"","code":0,"stdout":"___\nlib___.rlib\nlib___.so\nlib___.so\nlib___.a\nlib___.so\n/home/codespace/.rustup/toolchains/stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu\noff\npacked\nunpacked\n___\ndebug_assertions\npanic=\"unwind\"\nproc_macro\ntarget_abi=\"\"\ntarget_arch=\"x86_64\"\ntarget_endian=\"little\"\ntarget_env=\"gnu\"\ntarget_family=\"unix\"\ntarget_feature=\"fxsr\"\ntarget_feature=\"sse\"\ntarget_feature=\"sse2\"\ntarget_has_atomic=\"16\"\ntarget_has_atomic=\"32\"\ntarget_has_atomic=\"64\"\ntarget_has_atomic=\"8\"\ntarget_has_atomic=\"ptr\"\ntarget_os=\"linux\"\ntarget_pointer_width=\"64\"\ntarget_vendor=\"unknown\"\nunix\n","stderr":""}},"successes":{}} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/CACHEDIR.TAG b/Rust_Enum/target/CACHEDIR.TAG new file mode 100644 index 00000000..20d7c319 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/CACHEDIR.TAG @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +Signature: 8a477f597d28d172789f06886806bc55 +# This file is a cache directory tag created by cargo. +# For information about cache directory tags see https://bford.info/cachedir/ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.cargo-lock b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.cargo-lock new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591/output-bin-Rust_Enum b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591/output-bin-Rust_Enum new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7bdc8015 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591/output-bin-Rust_Enum @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"no method named `into_json` found for struct `Response` in the current scope","code":{"code":"E0599","explanation":"This error occurs when a method is used on a type which doesn't implement it:\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0599\nstruct Mouth;\n\nlet x = Mouth;\nx.chocolate(); // error: no method named `chocolate` found for type `Mouth`\n // in the current scope\n```\n\nIn this case, you need to implement the `chocolate` method to fix the error:\n\n```\nstruct Mouth;\n\nimpl Mouth {\n fn chocolate(&self) { // We implement the `chocolate` method here.\n println!(\"Hmmm! I love chocolate!\");\n }\n}\n\nlet x = Mouth;\nx.chocolate(); // ok!\n```\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":646,"byte_end":655,"line_start":31,"line_end":31,"column_start":10,"column_end":19,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" resp.into_json::()","highlight_start":10,"highlight_end":19}],"label":"method not found in `Response`","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0599]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: no method named `into_json` found for struct `Response` in the current scope\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:31:10\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m31\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m resp.into_json::()\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^^^^^^^^^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91mmethod not found in `Response`\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"type annotations needed","code":{"code":"E0282","explanation":"The compiler could not infer a type and asked for a type annotation.\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nlet x = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThis error indicates that type inference did not result in one unique possible\ntype, and extra information is required. In most cases this can be provided\nby adding a type annotation. Sometimes you need to specify a generic type\nparameter manually.\n\nIn the example above, type `Vec` has a type parameter `T`. When calling\n`Vec::new`, barring any other later usage of the variable `x` that allows the\ncompiler to infer what type `T` is, the compiler needs to be told what it is.\n\nThe type can be specified on the variable:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThe type can also be specified in the path of the expression:\n\n```\nlet x = Vec::::new();\n```\n\nIn cases with more complex types, it is not necessary to annotate the full\ntype. Once the ambiguity is resolved, the compiler can infer the rest:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec<_> = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect();\n```\n\nAnother way to provide the compiler with enough information, is to specify the\ngeneric type parameter:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nAgain, you need not specify the full type if the compiler can infer it:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nApart from a method or function with a generic type parameter, this error can\noccur when a type parameter of a struct or trait cannot be inferred. In that\ncase it is not always possible to use a type annotation, because all candidates\nhave the same return type. For instance:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nstruct Foo {\n num: T,\n}\n\nimpl Foo {\n fn bar() -> i32 {\n 0\n }\n\n fn baz() {\n let number = Foo::bar();\n }\n}\n```\n\nThis will fail because the compiler does not know which instance of `Foo` to\ncall `bar` on. Change `Foo::bar()` to `Foo::::bar()` to resolve the error.\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":706,"byte_end":707,"line_start":32,"line_end":32,"column_start":37,"column_end":38,"is_primary":false,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))","highlight_start":37,"highlight_end":38}],"label":"type must be known at this point","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null},{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":688,"byte_end":689,"line_start":32,"line_end":32,"column_start":19,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))","highlight_start":19,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":689,"byte_end":689,"line_start":32,"line_end":32,"column_start":20,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))","highlight_start":20,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":": /* Type */","suggestion_applicability":"HasPlaceholders","expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0282]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: type annotations needed\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:32:19\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m32\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m .map_err(|e| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m-\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94mtype must be known at this point\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[96mhelp\u001b[0m: consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m32\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m| \u001b[0m .map_err(|e\u001b[92m: /* Type */\u001b[0m| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[92m++++++++++++\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"no method named `into_bytes` found for struct `Response` in the current scope","code":{"code":"E0599","explanation":"This error occurs when a method is used on a type which doesn't implement it:\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0599\nstruct Mouth;\n\nlet x = Mouth;\nx.chocolate(); // error: no method named `chocolate` found for type `Mouth`\n // in the current scope\n```\n\nIn this case, you need to implement the `chocolate` method to fix the error:\n\n```\nstruct Mouth;\n\nimpl Mouth {\n fn chocolate(&self) { // We implement the `chocolate` method here.\n println!(\"Hmmm! I love chocolate!\");\n }\n}\n\nlet x = Mouth;\nx.chocolate(); // ok!\n```\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":1020,"byte_end":1030,"line_start":43,"line_end":43,"column_start":22,"column_end":32,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" let bytes = resp.into_bytes()","highlight_start":22,"highlight_end":32}],"label":"method not found in `Response`","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0599]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: no method named `into_bytes` found for struct `Response` in the current scope\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:43:22\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m43\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m let bytes = resp.into_bytes()\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^^^^^^^^^^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91mmethod not found in `Response`\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"type annotations needed","code":{"code":"E0282","explanation":"The compiler could not infer a type and asked for a type annotation.\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nlet x = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThis error indicates that type inference did not result in one unique possible\ntype, and extra information is required. In most cases this can be provided\nby adding a type annotation. Sometimes you need to specify a generic type\nparameter manually.\n\nIn the example above, type `Vec` has a type parameter `T`. When calling\n`Vec::new`, barring any other later usage of the variable `x` that allows the\ncompiler to infer what type `T` is, the compiler needs to be told what it is.\n\nThe type can be specified on the variable:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThe type can also be specified in the path of the expression:\n\n```\nlet x = Vec::::new();\n```\n\nIn cases with more complex types, it is not necessary to annotate the full\ntype. Once the ambiguity is resolved, the compiler can infer the rest:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec<_> = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect();\n```\n\nAnother way to provide the compiler with enough information, is to specify the\ngeneric type parameter:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nAgain, you need not specify the full type if the compiler can infer it:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nApart from a method or function with a generic type parameter, this error can\noccur when a type parameter of a struct or trait cannot be inferred. In that\ncase it is not always possible to use a type annotation, because all candidates\nhave the same return type. For instance:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nstruct Foo {\n num: T,\n}\n\nimpl Foo {\n fn bar() -> i32 {\n 0\n }\n\n fn baz() {\n let number = Foo::bar();\n }\n}\n```\n\nThis will fail because the compiler does not know which instance of `Foo` to\ncall `bar` on. Change `Foo::bar()` to `Foo::::bar()` to resolve the error.\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":1075,"byte_end":1076,"line_start":44,"line_end":44,"column_start":43,"column_end":44,"is_primary":false,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":43,"highlight_end":44}],"label":"type must be known at this point","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null},{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":1051,"byte_end":1052,"line_start":44,"line_end":44,"column_start":19,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":19,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":1052,"byte_end":1052,"line_start":44,"line_end":44,"column_start":20,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":20,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":": /* Type */","suggestion_applicability":"HasPlaceholders","expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0282]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: type annotations needed\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:44:19\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m44\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m .map_err(|e| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?;\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m-\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94mtype must be known at this point\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[96mhelp\u001b[0m: consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m44\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m| \u001b[0m .map_err(|e\u001b[92m: /* Type */\u001b[0m| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?;\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[92m++++++++++++\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"aborting due to 4 previous errors","code":null,"level":"error","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: aborting due to 4 previous errors\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"Some errors have detailed explanations: E0282, E0599.","code":null,"level":"failure-note","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":"\u001b[1mSome errors have detailed explanations: E0282, E0599.\u001b[0m\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"For more information about an error, try `rustc --explain E0282`.","code":null,"level":"failure-note","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":"\u001b[1mFor more information about an error, try `rustc --explain E0282`.\u001b[0m\n"} diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/bin-Rust_Enum b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/bin-Rust_Enum new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d389d15d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/bin-Rust_Enum @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +a7d6ed38d601e81f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/bin-Rust_Enum.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/bin-Rust_Enum.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cb34e1b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/bin-Rust_Enum.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":11594121305954317235,"profile":8731458305071235362,"path":4942398508502643691,"deps":[[274201027816063771,"ureq",false,12734319416104825687],[10681258086952200236,"image",false,10679758156299839824],[12832915883349295919,"serde_json",false,473165457653994493],[13548984313718623784,"serde",false,16946670578763066210]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/dep-bin-Rust_Enum","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/dep-bin-Rust_Enum b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/dep-bin-Rust_Enum new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5c54f74a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/dep-bin-Rust_Enum differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/output-bin-Rust_Enum b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/output-bin-Rust_Enum new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bde57079 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc/output-bin-Rust_Enum @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"field `0` is never read","code":{"code":"dead_code","explanation":null},"level":"warning","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":134,"byte_end":141,"line_start":7,"line_end":7,"column_start":5,"column_end":12,"is_primary":false,"text":[{"text":" Network(String),","highlight_start":5,"highlight_end":12}],"label":"field in this variant","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null},{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":142,"byte_end":148,"line_start":7,"line_end":7,"column_start":13,"column_end":19,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" Network(String),","highlight_start":13,"highlight_end":19}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"`DogError` has a derived impl for the trait `Debug`, but this is intentionally ignored during dead code analysis","code":null,"level":"note","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":null},{"message":"`#[warn(dead_code)]` (part of `#[warn(unused)]`) on by default","code":null,"level":"note","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":null},{"message":"consider changing the field to be of unit type to suppress this warning while preserving the field numbering, or remove the field","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":142,"byte_end":148,"line_start":7,"line_end":7,"column_start":13,"column_end":19,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" Network(String),","highlight_start":13,"highlight_end":19}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":"()","suggestion_applicability":"HasPlaceholders","expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[33mwarning\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: field `0` is never read\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:7:13\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m7\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m Network(String),\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m-------\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[33m^^^^^^\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94mfield in this variant\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m= \u001b[0m\u001b[1mnote\u001b[0m: `DogError` has a derived impl for the trait `Debug`, but this is intentionally ignored during dead code analysis\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m= \u001b[0m\u001b[1mnote\u001b[0m: `#[warn(dead_code)]` (part of `#[warn(unused)]`) on by default\n\u001b[1m\u001b[96mhelp\u001b[0m: consider changing the field to be of unit type to suppress this warning while preserving the field numbering, or remove the field\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m7\u001b[0m \u001b[91m- \u001b[0m Network(\u001b[91mString\u001b[0m),\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m7\u001b[0m \u001b[92m+ \u001b[0m Network(\u001b[92m()\u001b[0m),\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"field `0` is never read","code":{"code":"dead_code","explanation":null},"level":"warning","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":155,"byte_end":159,"line_start":8,"line_end":8,"column_start":5,"column_end":9,"is_primary":false,"text":[{"text":" Json(String),","highlight_start":5,"highlight_end":9}],"label":"field in this variant","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null},{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":160,"byte_end":166,"line_start":8,"line_end":8,"column_start":10,"column_end":16,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" Json(String),","highlight_start":10,"highlight_end":16}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"`DogError` has a derived impl for the trait `Debug`, but this is intentionally ignored during dead code analysis","code":null,"level":"note","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":null},{"message":"consider changing the field to be of unit type to suppress this warning while preserving the field numbering, or remove the field","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":160,"byte_end":166,"line_start":8,"line_end":8,"column_start":10,"column_end":16,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" Json(String),","highlight_start":10,"highlight_end":16}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":"()","suggestion_applicability":"HasPlaceholders","expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[33mwarning\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: field `0` is never read\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:8:10\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m8\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m Json(String),\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m----\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[33m^^^^^^\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94mfield in this variant\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m= \u001b[0m\u001b[1mnote\u001b[0m: `DogError` has a derived impl for the trait `Debug`, but this is intentionally ignored during dead code analysis\n\u001b[1m\u001b[96mhelp\u001b[0m: consider changing the field to be of unit type to suppress this warning while preserving the field numbering, or remove the field\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m8\u001b[0m \u001b[91m- \u001b[0m Json(\u001b[91mString\u001b[0m),\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m8\u001b[0m \u001b[92m+ \u001b[0m Json(\u001b[92m()\u001b[0m),\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"field `0` is never read","code":{"code":"dead_code","explanation":null},"level":"warning","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":173,"byte_end":183,"line_start":9,"line_end":9,"column_start":5,"column_end":15,"is_primary":false,"text":[{"text":" ImageBytes(String),","highlight_start":5,"highlight_end":15}],"label":"field in this variant","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null},{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":184,"byte_end":190,"line_start":9,"line_end":9,"column_start":16,"column_end":22,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" ImageBytes(String),","highlight_start":16,"highlight_end":22}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"`DogError` has a derived impl for the trait `Debug`, but this is intentionally ignored during dead code analysis","code":null,"level":"note","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":null},{"message":"consider changing the field to be of unit type to suppress this warning while preserving the field numbering, or remove the field","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":184,"byte_end":190,"line_start":9,"line_end":9,"column_start":16,"column_end":22,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" ImageBytes(String),","highlight_start":16,"highlight_end":22}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":"()","suggestion_applicability":"HasPlaceholders","expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[33mwarning\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: field `0` is never read\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:9:16\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m9\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m ImageBytes(String),\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m----------\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[33m^^^^^^\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94mfield in this variant\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m= \u001b[0m\u001b[1mnote\u001b[0m: `DogError` has a derived impl for the trait `Debug`, but this is intentionally ignored during dead code analysis\n\u001b[1m\u001b[96mhelp\u001b[0m: consider changing the field to be of unit type to suppress this warning while preserving the field numbering, or remove the field\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m9\u001b[0m \u001b[91m- \u001b[0m ImageBytes(\u001b[91mString\u001b[0m),\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m9\u001b[0m \u001b[92m+ \u001b[0m ImageBytes(\u001b[92m()\u001b[0m),\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"field `status` is never read","code":{"code":"dead_code","explanation":null},"level":"warning","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":406,"byte_end":420,"line_start":21,"line_end":21,"column_start":8,"column_end":22,"is_primary":false,"text":[{"text":"struct DogApiResponse {","highlight_start":8,"highlight_end":22}],"label":"field in this struct","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null},{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":448,"byte_end":454,"line_start":23,"line_end":23,"column_start":5,"column_end":11,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" status: String,","highlight_start":5,"highlight_end":11}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[33mwarning\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: field `status` is never read\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:23:5\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m21\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m struct DogApiResponse {\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--------------\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94mfield in this struct\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m22\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m message: String,\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m23\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m status: String,\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[33m^^^^^^\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"4 warnings emitted","code":null,"level":"warning","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[33mwarning\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: 4 warnings emitted\u001b[0m\n\n"} diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9/output-bin-Rust_Enum b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9/output-bin-Rust_Enum new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9d351bd6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9/output-bin-Rust_Enum @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"unresolved import `serde`","code":{"code":"E0432","explanation":"An import was unresolved.\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0432\nuse something::Foo; // error: unresolved import `something::Foo`.\n```\n\nIn Rust 2015, paths in `use` statements are relative to the crate root. To\nimport items relative to the current and parent modules, use the `self::` and\n`super::` prefixes, respectively.\n\nIn Rust 2018 or later, paths in `use` statements are relative to the current\nmodule unless they begin with the name of a crate or a literal `crate::`, in\nwhich case they start from the crate root. As in Rust 2015 code, the `self::`\nand `super::` prefixes refer to the current and parent modules respectively.\n\nAlso verify that you didn't misspell the import name and that the import exists\nin the module from where you tried to import it. Example:\n\n```\nuse self::something::Foo; // Ok.\n\nmod something {\n pub struct Foo;\n}\n# fn main() {}\n```\n\nIf you tried to use a module from an external crate and are using Rust 2015,\nyou may have missed the `extern crate` declaration (which is usually placed in\nthe crate root):\n\n```edition2015\nextern crate core; // Required to use the `core` crate in Rust 2015.\n\nuse core::any;\n# fn main() {}\n```\n\nSince Rust 2018 the `extern crate` declaration is not required and\nyou can instead just `use` it:\n\n```edition2018\nuse core::any; // No extern crate required in Rust 2018.\n# fn main() {}\n```\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":4,"byte_end":9,"line_start":1,"line_end":1,"column_start":5,"column_end":10,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":"use serde::Deserialize;","highlight_start":5,"highlight_end":10}],"label":"use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `serde`","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"if you wanted to use a crate named `serde`, use `cargo add serde` to add it to your `Cargo.toml`","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0432]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: unresolved import `serde`\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:1:5\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m1\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m use serde::Deserialize;\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^^^^^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91muse of unresolved module or unlinked crate `serde`\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m= \u001b[0m\u001b[1mhelp\u001b[0m: if you wanted to use a crate named `serde`, use `cargo add serde` to add it to your `Cargo.toml`\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"failed to resolve: use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `ureq`","code":{"code":"E0433","explanation":"An undeclared crate, module, or type was used.\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0433\nlet map = HashMap::new();\n// error: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `HashMap`\n```\n\nPlease verify you didn't misspell the type/module's name or that you didn't\nforget to import it:\n\n```\nuse std::collections::HashMap; // HashMap has been imported.\nlet map: HashMap = HashMap::new(); // So it can be used!\n```\n\nIf you've expected to use a crate name:\n\n```compile_fail\nuse ferris_wheel::BigO;\n// error: failed to resolve: use of undeclared module or unlinked crate\n```\n\nMake sure the crate has been added as a dependency in `Cargo.toml`.\n\nTo use a module from your current crate, add the `crate::` prefix to the path.\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":449,"byte_end":453,"line_start":24,"line_end":24,"column_start":16,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" let resp = ureq::get(url).call()","highlight_start":16,"highlight_end":20}],"label":"use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `ureq`","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"if you wanted to use a crate named `ureq`, use `cargo add ureq` to add it to your `Cargo.toml`","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0433]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: failed to resolve: use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `ureq`\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:24:16\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m24\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m let resp = ureq::get(url).call()\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^^^^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91muse of unresolved module or unlinked crate `ureq`\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m= \u001b[0m\u001b[1mhelp\u001b[0m: if you wanted to use a crate named `ureq`, use `cargo add ureq` to add it to your `Cargo.toml`\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"type annotations needed","code":{"code":"E0282","explanation":"The compiler could not infer a type and asked for a type annotation.\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nlet x = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThis error indicates that type inference did not result in one unique possible\ntype, and extra information is required. In most cases this can be provided\nby adding a type annotation. Sometimes you need to specify a generic type\nparameter manually.\n\nIn the example above, type `Vec` has a type parameter `T`. When calling\n`Vec::new`, barring any other later usage of the variable `x` that allows the\ncompiler to infer what type `T` is, the compiler needs to be told what it is.\n\nThe type can be specified on the variable:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThe type can also be specified in the path of the expression:\n\n```\nlet x = Vec::::new();\n```\n\nIn cases with more complex types, it is not necessary to annotate the full\ntype. Once the ambiguity is resolved, the compiler can infer the rest:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec<_> = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect();\n```\n\nAnother way to provide the compiler with enough information, is to specify the\ngeneric type parameter:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nAgain, you need not specify the full type if the compiler can infer it:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nApart from a method or function with a generic type parameter, this error can\noccur when a type parameter of a struct or trait cannot be inferred. In that\ncase it is not always possible to use a type annotation, because all candidates\nhave the same return type. For instance:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nstruct Foo {\n num: T,\n}\n\nimpl Foo {\n fn bar() -> i32 {\n 0\n }\n\n fn baz() {\n let number = Foo::bar();\n }\n}\n```\n\nThis will fail because the compiler does not know which instance of `Foo` to\ncall `bar` on. Change `Foo::bar()` to `Foo::::bar()` to resolve the error.\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":510,"byte_end":511,"line_start":25,"line_end":25,"column_start":40,"column_end":41,"is_primary":false,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":40,"highlight_end":41}],"label":"type must be known at this point","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null},{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":489,"byte_end":490,"line_start":25,"line_end":25,"column_start":19,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":19,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":490,"byte_end":490,"line_start":25,"line_end":25,"column_start":20,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":20,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":": /* Type */","suggestion_applicability":"HasPlaceholders","expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0282]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: type annotations needed\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:25:19\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m25\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m .map_err(|e| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?;\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m-\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94mtype must be known at this point\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[96mhelp\u001b[0m: consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m25\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m| \u001b[0m .map_err(|e\u001b[92m: /* Type */\u001b[0m| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?;\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[92m++++++++++++\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"type annotations needed","code":{"code":"E0282","explanation":"The compiler could not infer a type and asked for a type annotation.\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nlet x = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThis error indicates that type inference did not result in one unique possible\ntype, and extra information is required. In most cases this can be provided\nby adding a type annotation. Sometimes you need to specify a generic type\nparameter manually.\n\nIn the example above, type `Vec` has a type parameter `T`. When calling\n`Vec::new`, barring any other later usage of the variable `x` that allows the\ncompiler to infer what type `T` is, the compiler needs to be told what it is.\n\nThe type can be specified on the variable:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThe type can also be specified in the path of the expression:\n\n```\nlet x = Vec::::new();\n```\n\nIn cases with more complex types, it is not necessary to annotate the full\ntype. Once the ambiguity is resolved, the compiler can infer the rest:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec<_> = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect();\n```\n\nAnother way to provide the compiler with enough information, is to specify the\ngeneric type parameter:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nAgain, you need not specify the full type if the compiler can infer it:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nApart from a method or function with a generic type parameter, this error can\noccur when a type parameter of a struct or trait cannot be inferred. In that\ncase it is not always possible to use a type annotation, because all candidates\nhave the same return type. For instance:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nstruct Foo {\n num: T,\n}\n\nimpl Foo {\n fn bar() -> i32 {\n 0\n }\n\n fn baz() {\n let number = Foo::bar();\n }\n}\n```\n\nThis will fail because the compiler does not know which instance of `Foo` to\ncall `bar` on. Change `Foo::bar()` to `Foo::::bar()` to resolve the error.\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":706,"byte_end":707,"line_start":32,"line_end":32,"column_start":37,"column_end":38,"is_primary":false,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))","highlight_start":37,"highlight_end":38}],"label":"type must be known at this point","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null},{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":688,"byte_end":689,"line_start":32,"line_end":32,"column_start":19,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))","highlight_start":19,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":689,"byte_end":689,"line_start":32,"line_end":32,"column_start":20,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))","highlight_start":20,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":": /* Type */","suggestion_applicability":"HasPlaceholders","expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0282]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: type annotations needed\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:32:19\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m32\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m .map_err(|e| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m-\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94mtype must be known at this point\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[96mhelp\u001b[0m: consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m32\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m| \u001b[0m .map_err(|e\u001b[92m: /* Type */\u001b[0m| DogError::Json(e.to_string()))\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[92m++++++++++++\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"failed to resolve: use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `ureq`","code":{"code":"E0433","explanation":"An undeclared crate, module, or type was used.\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0433\nlet map = HashMap::new();\n// error: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `HashMap`\n```\n\nPlease verify you didn't misspell the type/module's name or that you didn't\nforget to import it:\n\n```\nuse std::collections::HashMap; // HashMap has been imported.\nlet map: HashMap = HashMap::new(); // So it can be used!\n```\n\nIf you've expected to use a crate name:\n\n```compile_fail\nuse ferris_wheel::BigO;\n// error: failed to resolve: use of undeclared module or unlinked crate\n```\n\nMake sure the crate has been added as a dependency in `Cargo.toml`.\n\nTo use a module from your current crate, add the `crate::` prefix to the path.\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":811,"byte_end":815,"line_start":36,"line_end":36,"column_start":16,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" let resp = ureq::get(url).call()","highlight_start":16,"highlight_end":20}],"label":"use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `ureq`","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"if you wanted to use a crate named `ureq`, use `cargo add ureq` to add it to your `Cargo.toml`","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0433]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: failed to resolve: use of unresolved module or unlinked crate `ureq`\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:36:16\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m36\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m let resp = ureq::get(url).call()\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^^^^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91muse of unresolved module or unlinked crate `ureq`\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m= \u001b[0m\u001b[1mhelp\u001b[0m: if you wanted to use a crate named `ureq`, use `cargo add ureq` to add it to your `Cargo.toml`\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"type annotations needed","code":{"code":"E0282","explanation":"The compiler could not infer a type and asked for a type annotation.\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nlet x = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThis error indicates that type inference did not result in one unique possible\ntype, and extra information is required. In most cases this can be provided\nby adding a type annotation. Sometimes you need to specify a generic type\nparameter manually.\n\nIn the example above, type `Vec` has a type parameter `T`. When calling\n`Vec::new`, barring any other later usage of the variable `x` that allows the\ncompiler to infer what type `T` is, the compiler needs to be told what it is.\n\nThe type can be specified on the variable:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThe type can also be specified in the path of the expression:\n\n```\nlet x = Vec::::new();\n```\n\nIn cases with more complex types, it is not necessary to annotate the full\ntype. Once the ambiguity is resolved, the compiler can infer the rest:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec<_> = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect();\n```\n\nAnother way to provide the compiler with enough information, is to specify the\ngeneric type parameter:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nAgain, you need not specify the full type if the compiler can infer it:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nApart from a method or function with a generic type parameter, this error can\noccur when a type parameter of a struct or trait cannot be inferred. In that\ncase it is not always possible to use a type annotation, because all candidates\nhave the same return type. For instance:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nstruct Foo {\n num: T,\n}\n\nimpl Foo {\n fn bar() -> i32 {\n 0\n }\n\n fn baz() {\n let number = Foo::bar();\n }\n}\n```\n\nThis will fail because the compiler does not know which instance of `Foo` to\ncall `bar` on. Change `Foo::bar()` to `Foo::::bar()` to resolve the error.\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":872,"byte_end":873,"line_start":37,"line_end":37,"column_start":40,"column_end":41,"is_primary":false,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":40,"highlight_end":41}],"label":"type must be known at this point","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null},{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":851,"byte_end":852,"line_start":37,"line_end":37,"column_start":19,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":19,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":852,"byte_end":852,"line_start":37,"line_end":37,"column_start":20,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":20,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":": /* Type */","suggestion_applicability":"HasPlaceholders","expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0282]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: type annotations needed\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:37:19\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m37\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m .map_err(|e| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?;\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m-\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94mtype must be known at this point\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[96mhelp\u001b[0m: consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m37\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m| \u001b[0m .map_err(|e\u001b[92m: /* Type */\u001b[0m| DogError::Network(e.to_string()))?;\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[92m++++++++++++\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"type annotations needed","code":{"code":"E0282","explanation":"The compiler could not infer a type and asked for a type annotation.\n\nErroneous code example:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nlet x = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThis error indicates that type inference did not result in one unique possible\ntype, and extra information is required. In most cases this can be provided\nby adding a type annotation. Sometimes you need to specify a generic type\nparameter manually.\n\nIn the example above, type `Vec` has a type parameter `T`. When calling\n`Vec::new`, barring any other later usage of the variable `x` that allows the\ncompiler to infer what type `T` is, the compiler needs to be told what it is.\n\nThe type can be specified on the variable:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec = Vec::new();\n```\n\nThe type can also be specified in the path of the expression:\n\n```\nlet x = Vec::::new();\n```\n\nIn cases with more complex types, it is not necessary to annotate the full\ntype. Once the ambiguity is resolved, the compiler can infer the rest:\n\n```\nlet x: Vec<_> = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect();\n```\n\nAnother way to provide the compiler with enough information, is to specify the\ngeneric type parameter:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nAgain, you need not specify the full type if the compiler can infer it:\n\n```\nlet x = \"hello\".chars().rev().collect::>();\n```\n\nApart from a method or function with a generic type parameter, this error can\noccur when a type parameter of a struct or trait cannot be inferred. In that\ncase it is not always possible to use a type annotation, because all candidates\nhave the same return type. For instance:\n\n```compile_fail,E0282\nstruct Foo {\n num: T,\n}\n\nimpl Foo {\n fn bar() -> i32 {\n 0\n }\n\n fn baz() {\n let number = Foo::bar();\n }\n}\n```\n\nThis will fail because the compiler does not know which instance of `Foo` to\ncall `bar` on. Change `Foo::bar()` to `Foo::::bar()` to resolve the error.\n"},"level":"error","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":1075,"byte_end":1076,"line_start":44,"line_end":44,"column_start":43,"column_end":44,"is_primary":false,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":43,"highlight_end":44}],"label":"type must be known at this point","suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null},{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":1051,"byte_end":1052,"line_start":44,"line_end":44,"column_start":19,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":19,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":null,"suggestion_applicability":null,"expansion":null}],"children":[{"message":"consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type","code":null,"level":"help","spans":[{"file_name":"src/main.rs","byte_start":1052,"byte_end":1052,"line_start":44,"line_end":44,"column_start":20,"column_end":20,"is_primary":true,"text":[{"text":" .map_err(|e| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?;","highlight_start":20,"highlight_end":20}],"label":null,"suggested_replacement":": /* Type */","suggestion_applicability":"HasPlaceholders","expansion":null}],"children":[],"rendered":null}],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror[E0282]\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: type annotations needed\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m--> \u001b[0msrc/main.rs:44:19\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m44\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m .map_err(|e| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?;\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[91m^\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m-\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94mtype must be known at this point\u001b[0m\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[96mhelp\u001b[0m: consider giving this closure parameter an explicit type\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m\n\u001b[1m\u001b[94m44\u001b[0m \u001b[1m\u001b[94m| \u001b[0m .map_err(|e\u001b[92m: /* Type */\u001b[0m| DogError::ImageBytes(e.to_string()))?;\n \u001b[1m\u001b[94m|\u001b[0m \u001b[92m++++++++++++\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"aborting due to 7 previous errors","code":null,"level":"error","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":"\u001b[1m\u001b[91merror\u001b[0m\u001b[1m: aborting due to 7 previous errors\u001b[0m\n\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"Some errors have detailed explanations: E0282, E0432, E0433.","code":null,"level":"failure-note","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":"\u001b[1mSome errors have detailed explanations: E0282, E0432, E0433.\u001b[0m\n"} +{"$message_type":"diagnostic","message":"For more information about an error, try `rustc --explain E0282`.","code":null,"level":"failure-note","spans":[],"children":[],"rendered":"\u001b[1mFor more information about an error, try `rustc --explain E0282`.\u001b[0m\n"} diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/dep-lib-adler2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/dep-lib-adler2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/dep-lib-adler2 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/lib-adler2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/lib-adler2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..96fa5da7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/lib-adler2 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +8b0ea9bcef59471a \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/lib-adler2.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/lib-adler2.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c7c98c03 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/lib-adler2.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"core\", \"default\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\", \"std\"]","target":6569825234462323107,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":9646515953169848367,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b/dep-lib-adler2","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/dep-lib-aligned b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/dep-lib-aligned new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/dep-lib-aligned differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/lib-aligned b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/lib-aligned new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6234d286 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/lib-aligned @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +27f97647f20db6ea \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/lib-aligned.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/lib-aligned.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ffab8bf6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/lib-aligned.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":3125153431088264391,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":14623327218260486968,"deps":[[3479621775654468824,"as_slice",false,4320309846505448646]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983/dep-lib-aligned","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/dep-lib-aligned_vec b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/dep-lib-aligned_vec new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/dep-lib-aligned_vec differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/lib-aligned_vec b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/lib-aligned_vec new file mode 100644 index 00000000..34d71f90 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/lib-aligned_vec @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +d564c35f4c85fdfa \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/lib-aligned_vec.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/lib-aligned_vec.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2810949d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/lib-aligned_vec.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"serde\", \"std\"]","target":2676654459276378593,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":13126324314191785423,"deps":[[12331837146972499874,"equator",false,11193710397686488499]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/aligned-vec-6ef6dd1e85876361/dep-lib-aligned_vec","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ac016cee --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +de830a8dc6b49112 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..27f04f5b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[1852463361802237065,"build_script_build",false,16923921302932487945]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/output","paths":["src/nightly.rs"]}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP","val":null}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f7de8de7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +09fff41bc2d8ddea \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..25d78a3e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"backtrace\", \"default\", \"std\"]","target":17883862002600103897,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":17619680247574294377,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/dep-lib-anyhow b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/dep-lib-anyhow new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/dep-lib-anyhow differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/lib-anyhow b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/lib-anyhow new file mode 100644 index 00000000..74993127 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/lib-anyhow @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +a5eaf4135fb26f9e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/lib-anyhow.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/lib-anyhow.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0b97b24c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/lib-anyhow.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"backtrace\", \"default\", \"std\"]","target":16100955855663461252,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":7600784053557789843,"deps":[[1852463361802237065,"build_script_build",false,1338049329168548830]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b/dep-lib-anyhow","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/dep-lib-arg_enum_proc_macro b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/dep-lib-arg_enum_proc_macro new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/dep-lib-arg_enum_proc_macro differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/lib-arg_enum_proc_macro b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/lib-arg_enum_proc_macro new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b2d036e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/lib-arg_enum_proc_macro @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +95eec462c7f2281a \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/lib-arg_enum_proc_macro.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/lib-arg_enum_proc_macro.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e6205cfd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/lib-arg_enum_proc_macro.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":3872014975303061944,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":1011126819478313307,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af/dep-lib-arg_enum_proc_macro","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/dep-lib-arrayvec b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/dep-lib-arrayvec new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/dep-lib-arrayvec differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/lib-arrayvec b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/lib-arrayvec new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cf5126b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/lib-arrayvec @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +dfae9e1247509cca \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/lib-arrayvec.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/lib-arrayvec.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..43be43a2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/lib-arrayvec.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"borsh\", \"default\", \"serde\", \"std\", \"zeroize\"]","target":12564975964323158710,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17544525141970754644,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b/dep-lib-arrayvec","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/dep-lib-as_slice b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/dep-lib-as_slice new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/dep-lib-as_slice differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/lib-as_slice b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/lib-as_slice new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b52ac54c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/lib-as_slice @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +c6649458ead2f43b \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/lib-as_slice.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/lib-as_slice.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c73fbee8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/lib-as_slice.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":12683986391282835273,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":18091535033669806283,"deps":[[12669569555400633618,"stable_deref_trait",false,9022289209761274086]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/as-slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992/dep-lib-as_slice","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/dep-lib-autocfg b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/dep-lib-autocfg new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/dep-lib-autocfg differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/lib-autocfg b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/lib-autocfg new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e0436827 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/lib-autocfg @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +5f679270ce068323 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/lib-autocfg.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/lib-autocfg.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..86515ef3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/lib-autocfg.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":6962977057026645649,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":1721145137516487798,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c/dep-lib-autocfg","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/dep-lib-av_scenechange b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/dep-lib-av_scenechange new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/dep-lib-av_scenechange differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/lib-av_scenechange b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/lib-av_scenechange new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f9e316d0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/lib-av_scenechange @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +52afd1f8fe19e49e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/lib-av_scenechange.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/lib-av_scenechange.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..31b81e6f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/lib-av_scenechange.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"asm\", \"binary\", \"cc\", \"clap\", \"console\", \"default\", \"devel\", \"fern\", \"ffmpeg\", \"ffmpeg-the-third\", \"libc\", \"nasm-rs\", \"serde\", \"serde_json\", \"serialize\", \"tracing\", \"tracing-chrome\", \"tracing-subscriber\", \"vapoursynth\"]","target":16720728918613002724,"profile":8719869739985257707,"path":6074687736528828467,"deps":[[1851808592017493818,"aligned",false,16912720784868702503],[1852463361802237065,"anyhow",false,11416539701833951909],[2819946551904607991,"num_rational",false,1823723290086168080],[4336745513838352383,"thiserror",false,10890731635555406650],[5157631553186200874,"num_traits",false,11075153878090475936],[7621248854474629598,"pastey",false,6588171038521144871],[10630857666389190470,"log",false,17384188297463171901],[13847662864258534762,"arrayvec",false,14599632358213594847],[14302981067244056276,"y4m",false,17892100239519943076],[14807177696891839338,"rayon",false,13593445550952666393],[15325537792103828505,"v_frame",false,405445924591824676],[17706129463675219700,"arg_enum_proc_macro",false,1885023382224039573],[17863271294158916696,"build_script_build",false,6851717852911313518]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-231824e7182399f5/dep-lib-av_scenechange","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b52f306b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1d1e427d46aa26ce \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..68c6fc84 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"asm\", \"binary\", \"cc\", \"clap\", \"console\", \"default\", \"devel\", \"fern\", \"ffmpeg\", \"ffmpeg-the-third\", \"libc\", \"nasm-rs\", \"serde\", \"serde_json\", \"serialize\", \"tracing\", \"tracing-chrome\", \"tracing-subscriber\", \"vapoursynth\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":16297213654948063918,"path":8173660239650655604,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..163473df --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +6e22fbd31531165f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7ce88a4f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[17863271294158916696,"build_script_build",false,14854747640654077469]],"local":[{"Precalculated":"0.14.1"}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/dep-lib-av1_grain b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/dep-lib-av1_grain new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/dep-lib-av1_grain differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/lib-av1_grain b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/lib-av1_grain new file mode 100644 index 00000000..dfb3af64 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/lib-av1_grain @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +d9e4e59918391dc6 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/lib-av1_grain.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/lib-av1_grain.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4ba1a500 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/lib-av1_grain.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"create\", \"default\", \"diff\", \"estimate\", \"nom\", \"num-rational\", \"parse\", \"v_frame\"]","declared_features":"[\"create\", \"default\", \"diff\", \"estimate\", \"nom\", \"num-rational\", \"parse\", \"serde\", \"serialize\", \"unstable\", \"v_frame\"]","target":15561137520825690469,"profile":18250700880594192265,"path":2613387880503448992,"deps":[[1852463361802237065,"anyhow",false,11416539701833951909],[2819946551904607991,"num_rational",false,1823723290086168080],[10630857666389190470,"log",false,17384188297463171901],[13847662864258534762,"arrayvec",false,14599632358213594847],[15325537792103828505,"v_frame",false,405445924591824676],[18419674550203303546,"nom",false,11068856866935757208]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/av1-grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a/dep-lib-av1_grain","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/dep-lib-avif_serialize b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/dep-lib-avif_serialize new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/dep-lib-avif_serialize differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/lib-avif_serialize b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/lib-avif_serialize new file mode 100644 index 00000000..73e9f09e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/lib-avif_serialize @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +ce57cfb19cd88433 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/lib-avif_serialize.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/lib-avif_serialize.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a12c8b10 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/lib-avif_serialize.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":6612083771501871541,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":307127915913235296,"deps":[[13847662864258534762,"arrayvec",false,14599632358213594847]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/avif-serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e/dep-lib-avif_serialize","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/dep-lib-base64 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/dep-lib-base64 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/dep-lib-base64 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/lib-base64 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/lib-base64 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..59456d14 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/lib-base64 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +07b0361bd42839b3 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/lib-base64.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/lib-base64.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..56c0c92b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/lib-base64.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","target":13060062996227388079,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":4567798099131820143,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047/dep-lib-base64","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/dep-lib-bit_field b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/dep-lib-bit_field new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/dep-lib-bit_field differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/lib-bit_field b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/lib-bit_field new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2673dfbe --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/lib-bit_field @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +074e8eddb217417a \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/lib-bit_field.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/lib-bit_field.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..39a8f68e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/lib-bit_field.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":8753832435097325874,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":2657633899649710471,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7/dep-lib-bit_field","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/dep-lib-bitflags b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/dep-lib-bitflags new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/dep-lib-bitflags differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/lib-bitflags b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/lib-bitflags new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ff3617b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/lib-bitflags @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +8b3b2395705ab041 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/lib-bitflags.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/lib-bitflags.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e89dab9b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/lib-bitflags.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"arbitrary\", \"bytemuck\", \"example_generated\", \"serde\", \"serde_core\", \"std\"]","target":7691312148208718491,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":9278063334812065827,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3/dep-lib-bitflags","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/dep-lib-bitstream_io b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/dep-lib-bitstream_io new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/dep-lib-bitstream_io differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/lib-bitstream_io b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/lib-bitstream_io new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3d59c75d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/lib-bitstream_io @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +8d7f936e891fd5a2 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/lib-bitstream_io.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/lib-bitstream_io.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..605e1040 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/lib-bitstream_io.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","target":14228369578882997983,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":16830807177711614681,"deps":[[12414424756982115322,"core2",false,4548649994800965147]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/bitstream-io-aa25b7478d23aba1/dep-lib-bitstream_io","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/dep-lib-built b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/dep-lib-built new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/dep-lib-built differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/lib-built b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/lib-built new file mode 100644 index 00000000..79e18ab7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/lib-built @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +6788b8d418c55d28 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/lib-built.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/lib-built.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a989b7a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/lib-built.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"cargo-lock\", \"chrono\", \"dependency-tree\", \"git2\", \"semver\"]","target":16456894824413183824,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":7611357825610102341,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/built-3504150f55669f03/dep-lib-built","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/dep-lib-bytemuck b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/dep-lib-bytemuck new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/dep-lib-bytemuck differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/lib-bytemuck b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/lib-bytemuck new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e9617606 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/lib-bytemuck @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +0db1b9026210c690 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/lib-bytemuck.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/lib-bytemuck.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ef5fe2b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/lib-bytemuck.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"extern_crate_alloc\"]","declared_features":"[\"aarch64_simd\", \"align_offset\", \"alloc_uninit\", \"avx512_simd\", \"bytemuck_derive\", \"const_zeroed\", \"derive\", \"extern_crate_alloc\", \"extern_crate_std\", \"impl_core_error\", \"latest_stable_rust\", \"min_const_generics\", \"must_cast\", \"must_cast_extra\", \"nightly_docs\", \"nightly_float\", \"nightly_portable_simd\", \"nightly_stdsimd\", \"pod_saturating\", \"track_caller\", \"transparentwrapper_extra\", \"unsound_ptr_pod_impl\", \"wasm_simd\", \"zeroable_atomics\", \"zeroable_maybe_uninit\", \"zeroable_unwind_fn\"]","target":5195934831136530909,"profile":17003946029344894063,"path":10529133814114553070,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a/dep-lib-bytemuck","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/dep-lib-byteorder_lite b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/dep-lib-byteorder_lite new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/dep-lib-byteorder_lite differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/lib-byteorder_lite b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/lib-byteorder_lite new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ca579c41 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/lib-byteorder_lite @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +dd9cb64d36d79aa3 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/lib-byteorder_lite.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/lib-byteorder_lite.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..84c65e9c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/lib-byteorder_lite.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","target":13691508551864173732,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":15745169378219750855,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/byteorder-lite-43c715feb383b55e/dep-lib-byteorder_lite","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/dep-lib-bytes b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/dep-lib-bytes new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/dep-lib-bytes differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/lib-bytes b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/lib-bytes new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e461cb5d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/lib-bytes @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +5de86833914d6427 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/lib-bytes.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/lib-bytes.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cd271fbe --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/lib-bytes.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"extra-platforms\", \"serde\", \"std\"]","target":11402411492164584411,"profile":5585765287293540646,"path":6290361340371474445,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b/dep-lib-bytes","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/dep-lib-cc b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/dep-lib-cc new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/dep-lib-cc differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/lib-cc b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/lib-cc new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9fd1ef37 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/lib-cc @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +70ecd6f67908a4e2 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/lib-cc.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/lib-cc.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..250554e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/lib-cc.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"jobserver\", \"parallel\"]","target":11042037588551934598,"profile":4333757155065362140,"path":15072836788296660229,"deps":[[3099554076084276815,"find_msvc_tools",false,14179235019521692241],[8410525223747752176,"shlex",false,16603037237171584983]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e/dep-lib-cc","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/dep-lib-cfg_if b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/dep-lib-cfg_if new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/dep-lib-cfg_if differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/lib-cfg_if b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/lib-cfg_if new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3aa1c44e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/lib-cfg_if @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +b636a83d8335c55c \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/lib-cfg_if.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/lib-cfg_if.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a9705291 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/lib-cfg_if.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"core\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\"]","target":13840298032947503755,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":7611728086082710389,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/cfg-if-2d20780be38939e6/dep-lib-cfg_if","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/dep-lib-color_quant b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/dep-lib-color_quant new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/dep-lib-color_quant differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/lib-color_quant b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/lib-color_quant new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c6de12ec --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/lib-color_quant @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +6e1cb1030124ed83 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/lib-color_quant.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/lib-color_quant.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..949ae5a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/lib-color_quant.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":16866256909581263957,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":9522721103388234679,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3/dep-lib-color_quant","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/dep-lib-core2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/dep-lib-core2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/dep-lib-core2 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/lib-core2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/lib-core2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0f7d5adb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/lib-core2 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1ba6b10b120d203f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/lib-core2.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/lib-core2.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..25f643d9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/lib-core2.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"nightly\", \"std\"]","target":6782247726062973603,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17262332376182537448,"deps":[[198136567835728122,"memchr",false,10417301787315432332]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/core2-1da2283f0633ed42/dep-lib-core2","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/dep-lib-crc32fast b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/dep-lib-crc32fast new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/dep-lib-crc32fast differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/lib-crc32fast b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/lib-crc32fast new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d13dfecd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/lib-crc32fast @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +67a88cc3e95912ac \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/lib-crc32fast.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/lib-crc32fast.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c86e443f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/lib-crc32fast.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"nightly\", \"std\"]","target":10823605331999153028,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":8441562634098979632,"deps":[[7312356825837975969,"build_script_build",false,10361142673181586956],[7667230146095136825,"cfg_if",false,6684808059692791478]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978/dep-lib-crc32fast","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8b7b0e68 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +4826575760702bdf \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6d5445bd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"nightly\", \"std\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":11049443766857966598,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d53558f7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +0c3621965d2cca8f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a9183518 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[7312356825837975969,"build_script_build",false,16081070453540988488]],"local":[{"Precalculated":"1.5.0"}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/dep-lib-crossbeam_deque b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/dep-lib-crossbeam_deque new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/dep-lib-crossbeam_deque differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/lib-crossbeam_deque b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/lib-crossbeam_deque new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6a308e62 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/lib-crossbeam_deque @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +05c65aab1bf6a2cd \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/lib-crossbeam_deque.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/lib-crossbeam_deque.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f4ccaecf --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/lib-crossbeam_deque.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","target":15353977948366730291,"profile":8636238262651292397,"path":6274544010727892948,"deps":[[3528074118530651198,"crossbeam_epoch",false,14710063713899583928],[4468123440088164316,"crossbeam_utils",false,10341239778769647319]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-deque-6995d016e26db07f/dep-lib-crossbeam_deque","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/dep-lib-crossbeam_epoch b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/dep-lib-crossbeam_epoch new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/dep-lib-crossbeam_epoch differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/lib-crossbeam_epoch b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/lib-crossbeam_epoch new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ea6a2a34 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/lib-crossbeam_epoch @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +b81959b202a524cc \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/lib-crossbeam_epoch.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/lib-crossbeam_epoch.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9799d91f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/lib-crossbeam_epoch.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"loom\", \"loom-crate\", \"nightly\", \"std\"]","target":5830366855417007734,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":12222011340097017679,"deps":[[4468123440088164316,"crossbeam_utils",false,10341239778769647319]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-epoch-3f303a1308604a37/dep-lib-crossbeam_epoch","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7f967b60 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +6931592492081046 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..09386665 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"loom\", \"nightly\", \"std\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":3908425943115333596,"path":16649784391067994960,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..56038cb4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +4ecc7ece79d26779 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6ff35b96 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[4468123440088164316,"build_script_build",false,5048544606050398569]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/output","paths":["no_atomic.rs"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/dep-lib-crossbeam_utils b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/dep-lib-crossbeam_utils new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/dep-lib-crossbeam_utils differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/lib-crossbeam_utils b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/lib-crossbeam_utils new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d39dddcd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/lib-crossbeam_utils @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +d736b4dec976838f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/lib-crossbeam_utils.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/lib-crossbeam_utils.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..74205ac0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/lib-crossbeam_utils.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"loom\", \"nightly\", \"std\"]","target":9626079250877207070,"profile":8636238262651292397,"path":2697160662110525321,"deps":[[4468123440088164316,"build_script_build",false,8748192221787769934]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/crossbeam-utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1/dep-lib-crossbeam_utils","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/dep-lib-displaydoc b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/dep-lib-displaydoc new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/dep-lib-displaydoc differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/lib-displaydoc b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/lib-displaydoc new file mode 100644 index 00000000..09587060 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/lib-displaydoc @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +0d6d3277a9083bb8 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/lib-displaydoc.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/lib-displaydoc.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a650ff13 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/lib-displaydoc.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","target":9331843185013996172,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":17365125523077510445,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06/dep-lib-displaydoc","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/dep-lib-either b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/dep-lib-either new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/dep-lib-either differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/lib-either b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/lib-either new file mode 100644 index 00000000..84236681 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/lib-either @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +b83b0254c04ae5be \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/lib-either.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/lib-either.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..374914cf --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/lib-either.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"std\", \"use_std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"serde\", \"std\", \"use_std\"]","target":17124342308084364240,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":10553522653934623982,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/either-83c551e8647906ea/dep-lib-either","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/dep-lib-equator b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/dep-lib-equator new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/dep-lib-equator differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/lib-equator b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/lib-equator new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ce76e117 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/lib-equator @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +b31db3c44c0c589b \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/lib-equator.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/lib-equator.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8670e695 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/lib-equator.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":11971018335784198346,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17830271170466340094,"deps":[[4026492623741575236,"equator_macro",false,17310617002356982109]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea/dep-lib-equator","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/dep-lib-equator_macro b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/dep-lib-equator_macro new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/dep-lib-equator_macro differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/lib-equator_macro b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/lib-equator_macro new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9bcbc139 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/lib-equator_macro @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +5d4153b472aa3bf0 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/lib-equator_macro.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/lib-equator_macro.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6f1822a2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/lib-equator_macro.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":10319962278782781170,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":7407300962962087768,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/equator-macro-230c6702e3792291/dep-lib-equator_macro","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/dep-lib-exr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/dep-lib-exr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/dep-lib-exr differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/lib-exr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/lib-exr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ebdd6746 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/lib-exr @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +90c31db585cdee68 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/lib-exr.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/lib-exr.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a9b1b2b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/lib-exr.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"rayon\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"rayon\"]","target":5906544163017385670,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":9988740389940418602,"deps":[[2328992793207497738,"bit_field",false,8809348403102109191],[3666196340704888985,"smallvec",false,5587892650973936628],[3746573929696391749,"rayon_core",false,1576381714962031296],[5311759941895549171,"lebe",false,14060501653419704499],[7636735136738807108,"miniz_oxide",false,17168002553445939868],[11952083740819019228,"zune_inflate",false,15050762113538505796],[16598877151661132269,"half",false,13194999466782459885]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c/dep-lib-exr","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/dep-lib-fax b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/dep-lib-fax new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/dep-lib-fax differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/lib-fax b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/lib-fax new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7a95b39e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/lib-fax @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +c769e3db13046e29 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/lib-fax.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/lib-fax.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9262aada --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/lib-fax.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"debug\"]","target":1089503997142669903,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":10442107538682009695,"deps":[[16896555084957406727,"fax_derive",false,14577838149860770454]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344/dep-lib-fax","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/dep-lib-fax_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/dep-lib-fax_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/dep-lib-fax_derive differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/lib-fax_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/lib-fax_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..711dc365 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/lib-fax_derive @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +96c296838fe24eca \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/lib-fax_derive.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/lib-fax_derive.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c02b9b64 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/lib-fax_derive.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":1984637086042045007,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":1821170064315396606,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114/dep-lib-fax_derive","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/dep-lib-fdeflate b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/dep-lib-fdeflate new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/dep-lib-fdeflate differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/lib-fdeflate b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/lib-fdeflate new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7ba6ff97 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/lib-fdeflate @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +61b638bd4a69b5e9 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/lib-fdeflate.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/lib-fdeflate.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d76d8e8e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/lib-fdeflate.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":4671662198888697476,"profile":15737504064110118270,"path":11378410957595896551,"deps":[[5982862185909702272,"simd_adler32",false,5032283142258974339]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a/dep-lib-fdeflate","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/dep-lib-find_msvc_tools b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/dep-lib-find_msvc_tools new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/dep-lib-find_msvc_tools differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/lib-find_msvc_tools b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/lib-find_msvc_tools new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fcb0c544 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/lib-find_msvc_tools @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +51925e1d20c3c6c4 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/lib-find_msvc_tools.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/lib-find_msvc_tools.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1d0a8f82 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/lib-find_msvc_tools.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":10620166500288925791,"profile":4333757155065362140,"path":16769532902480651832,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/find-msvc-tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41/dep-lib-find_msvc_tools","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/dep-lib-flate2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/dep-lib-flate2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/dep-lib-flate2 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/lib-flate2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/lib-flate2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cf9da3e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/lib-flate2 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +ae5ea1d1b42110b8 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/lib-flate2.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/lib-flate2.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6a5b0734 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/lib-flate2.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"any_impl\", \"default\", \"miniz_oxide\", \"rust_backend\"]","declared_features":"[\"any_impl\", \"any_zlib\", \"cloudflare-zlib-sys\", \"cloudflare_zlib\", \"default\", \"libz-ng-sys\", \"libz-rs-sys\", \"libz-sys\", \"miniz-sys\", \"miniz_oxide\", \"rust_backend\", \"zlib\", \"zlib-default\", \"zlib-ng\", \"zlib-ng-compat\", \"zlib-rs\"]","target":6173716359330453699,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":15172952607379000187,"deps":[[7312356825837975969,"crc32fast",false,12399071584647424103],[7636735136738807108,"miniz_oxide",false,17168002553445939868]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3/dep-lib-flate2","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/dep-lib-flate2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/dep-lib-flate2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/dep-lib-flate2 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/lib-flate2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/lib-flate2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6bc7a2cf --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/lib-flate2 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +758ca8f120b5767d \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/lib-flate2.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/lib-flate2.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9f159c7e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/lib-flate2.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"any_impl\", \"default\", \"miniz_oxide\", \"rust_backend\"]","declared_features":"[\"any_impl\", \"any_zlib\", \"cloudflare-zlib-sys\", \"cloudflare_zlib\", \"default\", \"libz-ng-sys\", \"libz-rs-sys\", \"libz-sys\", \"miniz-sys\", \"miniz_oxide\", \"rust_backend\", \"zlib\", \"zlib-default\", \"zlib-ng\", \"zlib-ng-compat\", \"zlib-rs\"]","target":6173716359330453699,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":15172952607379000187,"deps":[[7312356825837975969,"crc32fast",false,12399071584647424103],[7636735136738807108,"miniz_oxide",false,13789142380755016415]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2/dep-lib-flate2","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/dep-lib-form_urlencoded b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/dep-lib-form_urlencoded new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/dep-lib-form_urlencoded differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/lib-form_urlencoded b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/lib-form_urlencoded new file mode 100644 index 00000000..262c2cac --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/lib-form_urlencoded @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +bf06b16a2606b8a6 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/lib-form_urlencoded.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/lib-form_urlencoded.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1bac7469 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/lib-form_urlencoded.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","target":6496257856677244489,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":16189745443292498226,"deps":[[6803352382179706244,"percent_encoding",false,12439765662499074320]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6/dep-lib-form_urlencoded","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/dep-lib-getrandom b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/dep-lib-getrandom new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/dep-lib-getrandom differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/lib-getrandom b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/lib-getrandom new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7d1e8926 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/lib-getrandom @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +2e41b581ee694776 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/lib-getrandom.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/lib-getrandom.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e8241f31 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/lib-getrandom.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"compiler_builtins\", \"core\", \"custom\", \"js\", \"js-sys\", \"linux_disable_fallback\", \"rdrand\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\", \"std\", \"test-in-browser\", \"wasm-bindgen\"]","target":16244099637825074703,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17537207107867384439,"deps":[[7667230146095136825,"cfg_if",false,6684808059692791478],[8730874933663560167,"libc",false,8306405787546503549]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436/dep-lib-getrandom","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/dep-lib-getrandom b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/dep-lib-getrandom new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/dep-lib-getrandom differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/lib-getrandom b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/lib-getrandom new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a30ba802 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/lib-getrandom @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +6dec58c7a92da25f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/lib-getrandom.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/lib-getrandom.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d0d5f98a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/lib-getrandom.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"compiler_builtins\", \"core\", \"custom\", \"js\", \"js-sys\", \"linux_disable_fallback\", \"rdrand\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\", \"std\", \"test-in-browser\", \"wasm-bindgen\"]","target":16244099637825074703,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17537207107867384439,"deps":[[7667230146095136825,"cfg_if",false,6684808059692791478],[8730874933663560167,"libc",false,8712188880856483633]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221/dep-lib-getrandom","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/dep-lib-gif b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/dep-lib-gif new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/dep-lib-gif differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/lib-gif b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/lib-gif new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ae0c279b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/lib-gif @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +88f52168022046ea \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/lib-gif.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/lib-gif.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..31764f5b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/lib-gif.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"color_quant\", \"default\", \"raii_no_panic\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"color_quant\", \"default\", \"raii_no_panic\", \"std\"]","target":1271476277678272128,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":10605157305810955790,"deps":[[12780750701670541126,"weezl",false,13754534930836921089],[18370424882373179248,"color_quant",false,9506293975224491118]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/gif-b646aee935178320/dep-lib-gif","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/dep-lib-half b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/dep-lib-half new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/dep-lib-half differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/lib-half b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/lib-half new file mode 100644 index 00000000..97e691b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/lib-half @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +ed8709dd1a0e1eb7 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/lib-half.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/lib-half.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8d24f198 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/lib-half.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"arbitrary\", \"bytemuck\", \"default\", \"nightly\", \"num-traits\", \"rand_distr\", \"rkyv\", \"serde\", \"std\", \"use-intrinsics\", \"zerocopy\"]","target":5584728948347947946,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":13656292404469195312,"deps":[[7667230146095136825,"cfg_if",false,6684808059692791478],[10670692311156573294,"zerocopy",false,15107647160427233009]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/half-918b72036a5ebe16/dep-lib-half","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/dep-lib-http b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/dep-lib-http new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/dep-lib-http differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/lib-http b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/lib-http new file mode 100644 index 00000000..549b5594 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/lib-http @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +e463ed650cbd94c0 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/lib-http.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/lib-http.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ea6f4c4d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/lib-http.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","target":4766512060560342653,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":3434807765860206312,"deps":[[6355489020061627772,"bytes",false,2838478951178365021],[7695812897323945497,"itoa",false,13407858731621387242]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/http-28fe6c1413efe431/dep-lib-http","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/dep-lib-httparse b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/dep-lib-httparse new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/dep-lib-httparse differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/lib-httparse b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/lib-httparse new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b465d3ed --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/lib-httparse @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +42db2bd7f731816f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/lib-httparse.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/lib-httparse.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..00fdfb66 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/lib-httparse.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","target":2257539891522735522,"profile":1568806740615973024,"path":3151305442712085650,"deps":[[6163892036024256188,"build_script_build",false,5852261163682151345]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50/dep-lib-httparse","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cf07ba23 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +db8014058ae411de \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..58bb2360 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","target":17883862002600103897,"profile":16555127815671124681,"path":13414646549294192277,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f5632012 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +b1bb169285683751 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1b48b8f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[6163892036024256188,"build_script_build",false,16001822232465932507]],"local":[{"Precalculated":"1.10.1"}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/dep-lib-icu_collections b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/dep-lib-icu_collections new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/dep-lib-icu_collections differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/lib-icu_collections b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/lib-icu_collections new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8a081680 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/lib-icu_collections @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +8bda0e396db2cbf4 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/lib-icu_collections.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/lib-icu_collections.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4eb45a52 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/lib-icu_collections.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"databake\", \"serde\"]","target":8741949119514994751,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":16301237955723820105,"deps":[[697207654067905947,"yoke",false,16017887044087875120],[1847693542725807353,"potential_utf",false,9407251805762827749],[5298260564258778412,"displaydoc",false,13275213850546957581],[14563910249377136032,"zerovec",false,3271500511463789512],[17046516144589451410,"zerofrom",false,4864198387430683583]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2/dep-lib-icu_collections","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/dep-lib-icu_locale_core b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/dep-lib-icu_locale_core new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/dep-lib-icu_locale_core differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/lib-icu_locale_core b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/lib-icu_locale_core new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c29bf204 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/lib-icu_locale_core @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +21cd41a50657cf65 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/lib-icu_locale_core.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/lib-icu_locale_core.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c87b4bfe --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/lib-icu_locale_core.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"zerovec\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"databake\", \"serde\", \"zerovec\"]","target":7234736894702847895,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":16338873238338783509,"deps":[[5298260564258778412,"displaydoc",false,13275213850546957581],[11782995109291648529,"tinystr",false,13563301050798076445],[13225456964504773423,"writeable",false,4876141524743646056],[13749468390089984218,"litemap",false,11445298796412555427],[14563910249377136032,"zerovec",false,3271500511463789512]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca/dep-lib-icu_locale_core","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/dep-lib-icu_normalizer b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/dep-lib-icu_normalizer new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/dep-lib-icu_normalizer differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/lib-icu_normalizer b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/lib-icu_normalizer new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ce94e534 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/lib-icu_normalizer @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +718fbdc797db01db \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/lib-icu_normalizer.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/lib-icu_normalizer.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f3ec2487 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/lib-icu_normalizer.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"compiled_data\"]","declared_features":"[\"compiled_data\", \"datagen\", \"default\", \"experimental\", \"icu_properties\", \"serde\", \"utf16_iter\", \"utf8_iter\", \"write16\"]","target":4082895731217690114,"profile":16810742592890727785,"path":9495443573846218915,"deps":[[3666196340704888985,"smallvec",false,5587892650973936628],[5251024081607271245,"icu_provider",false,12561118938712085167],[8584278803131124045,"icu_normalizer_data",false,2798406156216674070],[14324911895384364736,"icu_collections",false,17639388547705133707],[14563910249377136032,"zerovec",false,3271500511463789512]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad/dep-lib-icu_normalizer","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/dep-lib-icu_normalizer_data b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/dep-lib-icu_normalizer_data new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/dep-lib-icu_normalizer_data differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/lib-icu_normalizer_data b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/lib-icu_normalizer_data new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2c4ee06d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/lib-icu_normalizer_data @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +16a78f8e92efd526 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/lib-icu_normalizer_data.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/lib-icu_normalizer_data.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ae44443b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/lib-icu_normalizer_data.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":17980939898269686983,"profile":11659310115634824739,"path":12871619166412042978,"deps":[[8584278803131124045,"build_script_build",false,9309345320123980370]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f/dep-lib-icu_normalizer_data","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0a795f1a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +268faa472dff85b2 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0317bd3b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":13574669494803281578,"path":18295676215714278421,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e85c1b89 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +525a6fe13e703181 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..94e3b524 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[8584278803131124045,"build_script_build",false,12863968480594661158]],"local":[{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"ICU4X_DATA_DIR","val":null}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/dep-lib-icu_properties b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/dep-lib-icu_properties new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/dep-lib-icu_properties differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/lib-icu_properties b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/lib-icu_properties new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cdd42ccd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/lib-icu_properties @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +748769191fbd686a \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/lib-icu_properties.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/lib-icu_properties.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..304fcf6b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/lib-icu_properties.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"compiled_data\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"compiled_data\", \"datagen\", \"default\", \"serde\", \"unicode_bidi\"]","target":12882061015678277883,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":15020872177015141098,"deps":[[3966877249195716185,"icu_locale_core",false,7336178004063800609],[5251024081607271245,"icu_provider",false,12561118938712085167],[5858954507332936698,"icu_properties_data",false,5120399583262897371],[6160379875186348458,"zerotrie",false,18129968606078026818],[14324911895384364736,"icu_collections",false,17639388547705133707],[14563910249377136032,"zerovec",false,3271500511463789512]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f/dep-lib-icu_properties","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..00d1596a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +7c57eaab39e83aa0 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2b386211 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":13574669494803281578,"path":826719082578697637,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1c8fe1b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +0729db594802337e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ae206604 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[5858954507332936698,"build_script_build",false,11545795929112729468]],"local":[{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"ICU4X_DATA_DIR","val":null}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/dep-lib-icu_properties_data b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/dep-lib-icu_properties_data new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/dep-lib-icu_properties_data differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/lib-icu_properties_data b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/lib-icu_properties_data new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5a5ce102 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/lib-icu_properties_data @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +db7471bc4a500f47 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/lib-icu_properties_data.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/lib-icu_properties_data.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9219693d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/lib-icu_properties_data.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":9037757742335137726,"profile":11659310115634824739,"path":3991755594888297739,"deps":[[5858954507332936698,"build_script_build",false,9093614582359599367]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553/dep-lib-icu_properties_data","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/dep-lib-icu_provider b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/dep-lib-icu_provider new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/dep-lib-icu_provider differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/lib-icu_provider b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/lib-icu_provider new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8879cf40 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/lib-icu_provider @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +af925d831f0f52ae \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/lib-icu_provider.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/lib-icu_provider.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0ff88765 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/lib-icu_provider.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"baked\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"baked\", \"deserialize_bincode_1\", \"deserialize_json\", \"deserialize_postcard_1\", \"export\", \"logging\", \"serde\", \"std\", \"sync\", \"zerotrie\"]","target":8134314816311233441,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":2439576825163570435,"deps":[[697207654067905947,"yoke",false,16017887044087875120],[3966877249195716185,"icu_locale_core",false,7336178004063800609],[5298260564258778412,"displaydoc",false,13275213850546957581],[6160379875186348458,"zerotrie",false,18129968606078026818],[13225456964504773423,"writeable",false,4876141524743646056],[14563910249377136032,"zerovec",false,3271500511463789512],[17046516144589451410,"zerofrom",false,4864198387430683583]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6/dep-lib-icu_provider","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/dep-lib-idna b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/dep-lib-idna new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/dep-lib-idna differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/lib-idna b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/lib-idna new file mode 100644 index 00000000..67f8bf30 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/lib-idna @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +e828610e3249c00f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/lib-idna.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/lib-idna.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5b4ddfda --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/lib-idna.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"compiled_data\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"compiled_data\", \"default\", \"std\"]","target":2602963282308965300,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":1974059956645568845,"deps":[[3666196340704888985,"smallvec",false,5587892650973936628],[5078124415930854154,"utf8_iter",false,5657162845369498805],[15512052560677395824,"idna_adapter",false,1015913970430478105]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56/dep-lib-idna","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/dep-lib-idna_adapter b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/dep-lib-idna_adapter new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/dep-lib-idna_adapter differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/lib-idna_adapter b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/lib-idna_adapter new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9d6fbc73 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/lib-idna_adapter @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1987dda15f40190e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/lib-idna_adapter.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/lib-idna_adapter.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..75f902f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/lib-idna_adapter.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"compiled_data\"]","declared_features":"[\"compiled_data\"]","target":9682399050268992880,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":13295588044520881143,"deps":[[13090240085421024152,"icu_normalizer",false,15781136014220562289],[18157230703293167834,"icu_properties",false,7667586306866251636]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327/dep-lib-idna_adapter","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/dep-lib-image b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/dep-lib-image new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/dep-lib-image differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/lib-image b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/lib-image new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0bec2695 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/lib-image @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +50295599751f3694 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/lib-image.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/lib-image.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..708af94e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/lib-image.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"avif\", \"bmp\", \"dds\", \"default\", \"default-formats\", \"exr\", \"ff\", \"gif\", \"hdr\", \"ico\", \"jpeg\", \"png\", \"pnm\", \"qoi\", \"rayon\", \"tga\", \"tiff\", \"webp\"]","declared_features":"[\"avif\", \"avif-native\", \"benchmarks\", \"bmp\", \"color_quant\", \"dds\", \"default\", \"default-formats\", \"exr\", \"ff\", \"gif\", \"hdr\", \"ico\", \"jpeg\", \"nasm\", \"png\", \"pnm\", \"qoi\", \"rayon\", \"serde\", \"tga\", \"tiff\", \"webp\"]","target":3139000442475943257,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":12621838134321033804,"deps":[[1828211726489847390,"byteorder_lite",false,11788971602827713757],[2295383129534798264,"gif",false,16881215447953962376],[3314986460869826901,"zune_core",false,3194864836235153583],[5157631553186200874,"num_traits",false,11075153878090475936],[5333633174709578079,"rgb",false,4646903579923609870],[9024221175843528141,"ravif",false,14906133104873802697],[9606824475733725463,"zune_jpeg",false,9140696460889229775],[11393844141661389994,"tiff",false,14134917497559706639],[14020839807111676977,"exr",false,7561206798554612624],[14567563978122280782,"bytemuck",false,10432043599988896013],[14661648626615450851,"moxcms",false,13198310239232999698],[14697349632922996918,"qoi",false,13783381596917104325],[14807177696891839338,"rayon",false,13593445550952666393],[16661785802515163922,"image_webp",false,66546263485445567],[16778537719652315355,"png",false,11166094820090921556],[18370424882373179248,"color_quant",false,9506293975224491118]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/image-68664e01bd3c265f/dep-lib-image","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/dep-lib-image_webp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/dep-lib-image_webp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/dep-lib-image_webp differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/lib-image_webp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/lib-image_webp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..38a379b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/lib-image_webp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +bff52d5c796bec00 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/lib-image_webp.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/lib-image_webp.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c221c2c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/lib-image_webp.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"_benchmarks\"]","target":17095910917825591542,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":15663017961827294592,"deps":[[817367157515107446,"quick_error",false,1544262894791260553],[1828211726489847390,"byteorder_lite",false,11788971602827713757]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/image-webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847/dep-lib-image_webp","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/dep-lib-imgref b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/dep-lib-imgref new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/dep-lib-imgref differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/lib-imgref b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/lib-imgref new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d80e818a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/lib-imgref @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +167394f219fd4f37 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/lib-imgref.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/lib-imgref.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..75937818 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/lib-imgref.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"deprecated\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"deprecated\"]","target":9288247415608304369,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":5065882342418319276,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8/dep-lib-imgref","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/dep-lib-itertools b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/dep-lib-itertools new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/dep-lib-itertools differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/lib-itertools b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/lib-itertools new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1ea6bc95 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/lib-itertools @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +bc0c1317d8fccb1c \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/lib-itertools.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/lib-itertools.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..403d8d4a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/lib-itertools.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"use_alloc\", \"use_std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"use_alloc\", \"use_std\"]","target":4043370049547609272,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":12037478161618008953,"deps":[[12170264697963848012,"either",false,13755482826776656824]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689/dep-lib-itertools","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/dep-lib-itoa b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/dep-lib-itoa new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/dep-lib-itoa differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/lib-itoa b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/lib-itoa new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cadd4bc9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/lib-itoa @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +ea8be9807a4812ba \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/lib-itoa.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/lib-itoa.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..53b13911 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/lib-itoa.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"no-panic\"]","target":8239509073162986830,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":12655612581523028263,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46/dep-lib-itoa","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/dep-lib-lebe b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/dep-lib-lebe new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/dep-lib-lebe differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/lib-lebe b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/lib-lebe new file mode 100644 index 00000000..11fc7791 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/lib-lebe @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +b3c0df0fc2ef20c3 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/lib-lebe.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/lib-lebe.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6b73aa17 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/lib-lebe.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":4590690216173873293,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":3633289722917381187,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/lebe-606e445bb4071347/dep-lib-lebe","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/dep-lib-libc b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/dep-lib-libc new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/dep-lib-libc differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/lib-libc b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/lib-libc new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1215608f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/lib-libc @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +31078fc3a0e9e778 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/lib-libc.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/lib-libc.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5c5cbd18 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/lib-libc.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"align\", \"const-extern-fn\", \"default\", \"extra_traits\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\", \"rustc-std-workspace-core\", \"std\", \"use_std\"]","target":17682796336736096309,"profile":6200076328592068522,"path":12203126840297148529,"deps":[[8730874933663560167,"build_script_build",false,15762503835653344535]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9/dep-lib-libc","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d83e2bc2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +bd6415cae36bbdef \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fb12a1af --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"align\", \"const-extern-fn\", \"default\", \"extra_traits\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\", \"rustc-std-workspace-core\", \"std\", \"use_std\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":1565149285177326037,"path":16202130140133821735,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-309a881db67eafd2/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-ab18770696fc590a/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-ab18770696fc590a/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e49a7b90 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-ab18770696fc590a/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +178dd9a6b9a9bfda \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-ab18770696fc590a/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-ab18770696fc590a/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..66ac6eef --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-ab18770696fc590a/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[8730874933663560167,"build_script_build",false,18123259403102261222]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/output","paths":["build.rs"]}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_FREEBSD_VERSION","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_MUSL_V1_2_3","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_LINUX_TIME_BITS64","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_GNU_FILE_OFFSET_BITS","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_GNU_TIME_BITS","val":null}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/dep-lib-libc b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/dep-lib-libc new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/dep-lib-libc differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/lib-libc b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/lib-libc new file mode 100644 index 00000000..403885c9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/lib-libc @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +7d49f5f60d484673 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/lib-libc.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/lib-libc.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..767e950a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/lib-libc.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"align\", \"const-extern-fn\", \"default\", \"extra_traits\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\", \"rustc-std-workspace-core\", \"std\", \"use_std\"]","target":17682796336736096309,"profile":6200076328592068522,"path":12203126840297148529,"deps":[[8730874933663560167,"build_script_build",false,7543442404425922250]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9/dep-lib-libc","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0e858410 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +caf66c63e6b0af68 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..17d52d10 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[8730874933663560167,"build_script_build",false,17275082371755238589]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/output","paths":["build.rs"]}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_FREEBSD_VERSION","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_MUSL_V1_2_3","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_LINUX_TIME_BITS64","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_GNU_FILE_OFFSET_BITS","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_GNU_TIME_BITS","val":null}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e444b3be --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +e60f2bee67c082fb \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1cd84b71 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"align\", \"const-extern-fn\", \"default\", \"extra_traits\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\", \"rustc-std-workspace-core\", \"std\", \"use_std\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":1565149285177326037,"path":16202130140133821735,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/libc-dd226a47df37f279/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/dep-lib-litemap b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/dep-lib-litemap new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/dep-lib-litemap differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/lib-litemap b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/lib-litemap new file mode 100644 index 00000000..88a4d3a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/lib-litemap @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +a35060949dded59e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/lib-litemap.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/lib-litemap.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..76fc28eb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/lib-litemap.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"databake\", \"default\", \"serde\", \"testing\", \"yoke\"]","target":6548088149557820361,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":15215157179009565909,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/litemap-045779f63b656c9d/dep-lib-litemap","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/dep-lib-log b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/dep-lib-log new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/dep-lib-log differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/lib-log b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/lib-log new file mode 100644 index 00000000..94d4fd20 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/lib-log @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +3d8bcbb2260b41f1 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/lib-log.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/lib-log.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a75b045b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/lib-log.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"kv\", \"kv_serde\", \"kv_std\", \"kv_sval\", \"kv_unstable\", \"kv_unstable_serde\", \"kv_unstable_std\", \"kv_unstable_sval\", \"max_level_debug\", \"max_level_error\", \"max_level_info\", \"max_level_off\", \"max_level_trace\", \"max_level_warn\", \"release_max_level_debug\", \"release_max_level_error\", \"release_max_level_info\", \"release_max_level_off\", \"release_max_level_trace\", \"release_max_level_warn\", \"serde\", \"serde_core\", \"std\", \"sval\", \"sval_ref\", \"value-bag\"]","target":6550155848337067049,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":4473030901624016027,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/log-901d2d15d17f50d9/dep-lib-log","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/dep-lib-loop9 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/dep-lib-loop9 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/dep-lib-loop9 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/lib-loop9 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/lib-loop9 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7c2d68ca --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/lib-loop9 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +0387698d64d23dc1 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/lib-loop9.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/lib-loop9.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..af7f5c69 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/lib-loop9.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":13016069129999141350,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":10742407331543256763,"deps":[[3961631058774388222,"imgref",false,3985682483132003094]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4/dep-lib-loop9","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/dep-lib-maybe_rayon b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/dep-lib-maybe_rayon new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/dep-lib-maybe_rayon differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/lib-maybe_rayon b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/lib-maybe_rayon new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9b84f108 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/lib-maybe_rayon @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1dfae0b63ec05b11 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/lib-maybe_rayon.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/lib-maybe_rayon.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..583a8ea6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/lib-maybe_rayon.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"rayon\", \"threads\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"rayon\", \"threads\"]","target":15564772949311995899,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":18217215728075387783,"deps":[[7667230146095136825,"cfg_if",false,6684808059692791478],[14807177696891839338,"rayon",false,13593445550952666393]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/maybe-rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a/dep-lib-maybe_rayon","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/dep-lib-memchr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/dep-lib-memchr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/dep-lib-memchr differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/lib-memchr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/lib-memchr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..42d6f6bb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/lib-memchr @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +8c6bfa46c8b09190 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/lib-memchr.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/lib-memchr.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..793e4bce --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/lib-memchr.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"core\", \"default\", \"libc\", \"logging\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\", \"std\", \"use_std\"]","target":11745930252914242013,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":3011091256361881970,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41/dep-lib-memchr","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/dep-lib-miniz_oxide b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/dep-lib-miniz_oxide new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/dep-lib-miniz_oxide differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/lib-miniz_oxide b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/lib-miniz_oxide new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b3493616 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/lib-miniz_oxide @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +9cfa24c55cff40ee \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/lib-miniz_oxide.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/lib-miniz_oxide.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..025f1e8e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/lib-miniz_oxide.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"simd\", \"simd-adler32\", \"with-alloc\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"block-boundary\", \"core\", \"default\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\", \"serde\", \"simd\", \"simd-adler32\", \"std\", \"with-alloc\"]","target":8661567070972402511,"profile":11250625435679592442,"path":7694431100256795651,"deps":[[5982862185909702272,"simd_adler32",false,5032283142258974339],[7911289239703230891,"adler2",false,1893581054529834635]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e/dep-lib-miniz_oxide","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/dep-lib-miniz_oxide b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/dep-lib-miniz_oxide new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/dep-lib-miniz_oxide differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/lib-miniz_oxide b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/lib-miniz_oxide new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2adad631 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/lib-miniz_oxide @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +dfda2ff2efdf5cbf \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/lib-miniz_oxide.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/lib-miniz_oxide.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..105f87e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/lib-miniz_oxide.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"simd\", \"simd-adler32\", \"with-alloc\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"block-boundary\", \"core\", \"default\", \"rustc-dep-of-std\", \"serde\", \"simd\", \"simd-adler32\", \"std\", \"with-alloc\"]","target":8661567070972402511,"profile":11250625435679592442,"path":7694431100256795651,"deps":[[5982862185909702272,"simd_adler32",false,13597421312409770897],[7911289239703230891,"adler2",false,1893581054529834635]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b/dep-lib-miniz_oxide","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/dep-lib-moxcms b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/dep-lib-moxcms new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/dep-lib-moxcms differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/lib-moxcms b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/lib-moxcms new file mode 100644 index 00000000..410e5dcb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/lib-moxcms @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1241e2243cd129b7 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/lib-moxcms.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/lib-moxcms.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b1dc1d76 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/lib-moxcms.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"avx\", \"default\", \"neon\", \"sse\"]","declared_features":"[\"avx\", \"avx512\", \"default\", \"neon\", \"options\", \"sse\"]","target":1899818886110770890,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":3645074859129391593,"deps":[[4689693944998817781,"pxfm",false,12222841846251223006],[5157631553186200874,"num_traits",false,11075153878090475936]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed/dep-lib-moxcms","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/dep-lib-debug_unreachable b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/dep-lib-debug_unreachable new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/dep-lib-debug_unreachable differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/lib-debug_unreachable b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/lib-debug_unreachable new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a012c8f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/lib-debug_unreachable @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +3e63c37e2e3ac5ca \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/lib-debug_unreachable.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/lib-debug_unreachable.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b0e999a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/lib-debug_unreachable.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":7622437403250301378,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":12203433782629557467,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/new_debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248/dep-lib-debug_unreachable","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/dep-lib-nom b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/dep-lib-nom new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/dep-lib-nom differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/lib-nom b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/lib-nom new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6fbb1f67 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/lib-nom @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +985959d7ac7a9c99 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/lib-nom.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/lib-nom.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..beda4d8c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/lib-nom.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"docsrs\", \"std\"]","target":10308080416120704121,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17447741805844232859,"deps":[[198136567835728122,"memchr",false,10417301787315432332]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8/dep-lib-nom","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/dep-lib-noop_proc_macro b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/dep-lib-noop_proc_macro new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/dep-lib-noop_proc_macro differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/lib-noop_proc_macro b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/lib-noop_proc_macro new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f4c28a85 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/lib-noop_proc_macro @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +dfce39d0133d7131 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/lib-noop_proc_macro.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/lib-noop_proc_macro.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1d363451 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/lib-noop_proc_macro.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":3315256389149960134,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":3534524061208558277,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14/dep-lib-noop_proc_macro","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/dep-lib-num_bigint b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/dep-lib-num_bigint new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/dep-lib-num_bigint differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/lib-num_bigint b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/lib-num_bigint new file mode 100644 index 00000000..501c5d59 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/lib-num_bigint @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +88b5c920d1d31059 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/lib-num_bigint.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/lib-num_bigint.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e025d1d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/lib-num_bigint.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"arbitrary\", \"default\", \"quickcheck\", \"rand\", \"serde\", \"std\"]","target":4386859821456661766,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":1569630599012165100,"deps":[[5157631553186200874,"num_traits",false,11075153878090475936],[16795989132585092538,"num_integer",false,8063968159084694116]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/num-bigint-330a323bf903366f/dep-lib-num_bigint","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/dep-lib-num_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/dep-lib-num_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/dep-lib-num_derive differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/lib-num_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/lib-num_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..59006598 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/lib-num_derive @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +217c54d8709f04fd \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/lib-num_derive.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/lib-num_derive.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ae4ee671 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/lib-num_derive.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":4998366701969184951,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":11659987200915015008,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/num-derive-f2ec40105d362086/dep-lib-num_derive","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/dep-lib-num_integer b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/dep-lib-num_integer new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/dep-lib-num_integer differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/lib-num_integer b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/lib-num_integer new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ecdd2237 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/lib-num_integer @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +64ca4de250f8e86f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/lib-num_integer.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/lib-num_integer.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..99d66698 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/lib-num_integer.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"i128\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"i128\", \"std\"]","target":7628309033881264685,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":3518629833901373476,"deps":[[5157631553186200874,"num_traits",false,11075153878090475936]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/num-integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4/dep-lib-num_integer","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/dep-lib-num_rational b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/dep-lib-num_rational new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/dep-lib-num_rational differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/lib-num_rational b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/lib-num_rational new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f946e189 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/lib-num_rational @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1056317aab2a4f19 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/lib-num_rational.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/lib-num_rational.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..418f5199 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/lib-num_rational.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"num-bigint\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"num-bigint\", \"num-bigint-std\", \"serde\", \"std\"]","target":10895754937005166100,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":7341692254999932192,"deps":[[5157631553186200874,"num_traits",false,11075153878090475936],[12528732512569713347,"num_bigint",false,6417862364154672520],[16795989132585092538,"num_integer",false,8063968159084694116]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/num-rational-531c675ef236015e/dep-lib-num_rational","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..86336992 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +00bdfce4ee42e192 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a67ecc19 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[5157631553186200874,"build_script_build",false,16526405959671431978]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/output","paths":["build.rs"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e7394feb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +2a431de0a89659e5 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3af55477 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"i128\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"i128\", \"libm\", \"std\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":15170625590008684234,"deps":[[13927012481677012980,"autocfg",false,2558896496998246239]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/dep-lib-num_traits b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/dep-lib-num_traits new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/dep-lib-num_traits differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/lib-num_traits b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/lib-num_traits new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bc78d67d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/lib-num_traits @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +a0695f00c6d9b299 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/lib-num_traits.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/lib-num_traits.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c317691c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/lib-num_traits.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"i128\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"i128\", \"libm\", \"std\"]","target":4278088450330190724,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":1764725537816804609,"deps":[[5157631553186200874,"build_script_build",false,10583814193108794624]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/num-traits-f39781f090c56316/dep-lib-num_traits","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/dep-lib-once_cell b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/dep-lib-once_cell new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/dep-lib-once_cell differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/lib-once_cell b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/lib-once_cell new file mode 100644 index 00000000..57faacf7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/lib-once_cell @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +16661935d2f47630 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/lib-once_cell.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/lib-once_cell.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6e59bc85 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/lib-once_cell.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"race\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"atomic-polyfill\", \"critical-section\", \"default\", \"parking_lot\", \"portable-atomic\", \"race\", \"std\", \"unstable\"]","target":17524666916136250164,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":8917140365081138814,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e/dep-lib-once_cell","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/dep-lib-once_cell b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/dep-lib-once_cell new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/dep-lib-once_cell differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/lib-once_cell b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/lib-once_cell new file mode 100644 index 00000000..593152c8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/lib-once_cell @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1bf2e39a4ae3db1e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/lib-once_cell.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/lib-once_cell.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..87299cab --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/lib-once_cell.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"race\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"atomic-polyfill\", \"critical-section\", \"default\", \"parking_lot\", \"portable-atomic\", \"race\", \"std\", \"unstable\"]","target":17524666916136250164,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":8917140365081138814,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce/dep-lib-once_cell","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/dep-lib-paste b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/dep-lib-paste new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/dep-lib-paste differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/lib-paste b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/lib-paste new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bcf0fe4b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/lib-paste @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +4cb43f17236f2be7 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/lib-paste.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/lib-paste.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..42c0209d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/lib-paste.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":13051495773103412369,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":1931185978706912251,"deps":[[17605717126308396068,"build_script_build",false,8016697307564722846]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7/dep-lib-paste","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-7a04688c692878f0/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-7a04688c692878f0/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e678a71a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-7a04688c692878f0/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +9eca3919ba07416f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-7a04688c692878f0/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-7a04688c692878f0/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d779265c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-7a04688c692878f0/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[17605717126308396068,"build_script_build",false,6697944712541071932]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/output","paths":["build.rs"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2f2de329 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +3c6a37943ae1f35c \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2bdcecf3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":17883862002600103897,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":13397477572452663792,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/dep-lib-pastey b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/dep-lib-pastey new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/dep-lib-pastey differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/lib-pastey b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/lib-pastey new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0b165871 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/lib-pastey @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +27b69166a7e26d5b \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/lib-pastey.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/lib-pastey.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0c09b828 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/lib-pastey.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":9246297755386574119,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":11562333992694952452,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1/dep-lib-pastey","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/dep-lib-percent_encoding b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/dep-lib-percent_encoding new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/dep-lib-percent_encoding differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/lib-percent_encoding b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/lib-percent_encoding new file mode 100644 index 00000000..96cf2167 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/lib-percent_encoding @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +74fc94a49bc9d748 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/lib-percent_encoding.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/lib-percent_encoding.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f231b8e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/lib-percent_encoding.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","target":6219969305134610909,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":1534666575388880190,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-766280580c7f9c1f/dep-lib-percent_encoding","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/dep-lib-percent_encoding b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/dep-lib-percent_encoding new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/dep-lib-percent_encoding differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/lib-percent_encoding b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/lib-percent_encoding new file mode 100644 index 00000000..42e6806b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/lib-percent_encoding @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +10f15b1af6eca2ac \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/lib-percent_encoding.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/lib-percent_encoding.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d58efe4a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/lib-percent_encoding.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","target":6219969305134610909,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":1534666575388880190,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/percent-encoding-9f7d757de394f14d/dep-lib-percent_encoding","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/dep-lib-png b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/dep-lib-png new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/dep-lib-png differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/lib-png b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/lib-png new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4e29cd21 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/lib-png @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +5442d90f14f0f59a \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/lib-png.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/lib-png.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..79d6306e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/lib-png.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"benchmarks\", \"unstable\", \"zlib-rs\"]","target":12046889002252286887,"profile":11250625435679592442,"path":7138917830456950856,"deps":[[1477123001438903435,"flate2",false,13263137963100954286],[3389776682256874761,"fdeflate",false,16840482151344944737],[7312356825837975969,"crc32fast",false,12399071584647424103],[7636735136738807108,"miniz_oxide",false,17168002553445939868],[9001817693037665195,"bitflags",false,4733382647951342475]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/png-26d1db19a0c1932a/dep-lib-png","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/dep-lib-potential_utf b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/dep-lib-potential_utf new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/dep-lib-potential_utf differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/lib-potential_utf b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/lib-potential_utf new file mode 100644 index 00000000..59a90e88 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/lib-potential_utf @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +e53525f3ac458d82 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/lib-potential_utf.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/lib-potential_utf.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b318eeff --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/lib-potential_utf.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"zerovec\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"databake\", \"default\", \"serde\", \"writeable\", \"zerovec\"]","target":16089386906944150126,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":3569558317140641354,"deps":[[14563910249377136032,"zerovec",false,3271500511463789512]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a/dep-lib-potential_utf","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1cbb23c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +bc105cdab0fdc655 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..687a7968 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[14285738760999836560,"build_script_build",false,4296269290833324724]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/output","paths":["src/probe/proc_macro_span.rs","src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs","src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs"]}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP","val":null}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..34851543 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +b2cd3bc214715d7e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ffe1f188 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"proc-macro\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"nightly\", \"proc-macro\", \"span-locations\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":7858518227888694832,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/dep-lib-proc_macro2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/dep-lib-proc_macro2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/dep-lib-proc_macro2 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/lib-proc_macro2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/lib-proc_macro2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..de5d31f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/lib-proc_macro2 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +926930290f6720d5 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/lib-proc_macro2.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/lib-proc_macro2.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b0dc2162 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/lib-proc_macro2.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"proc-macro\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"nightly\", \"proc-macro\", \"span-locations\"]","target":369203346396300798,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":7437123946396407346,"deps":[[1548027836057496652,"unicode_ident",false,10796289504087592421],[14285738760999836560,"build_script_build",false,6180906474632122556]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-696ff2d61f065b42/dep-lib-proc_macro2","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/dep-lib-proc_macro2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/dep-lib-proc_macro2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/dep-lib-proc_macro2 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/lib-proc_macro2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/lib-proc_macro2 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2398e9d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/lib-proc_macro2 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +a3627ac15e1257d0 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/lib-proc_macro2.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/lib-proc_macro2.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec003c63 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/lib-proc_macro2.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"proc-macro\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"nightly\", \"proc-macro\", \"span-locations\"]","target":369203346396300798,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":7437123946396407346,"deps":[[1548027836057496652,"unicode_ident",false,10796289504087592421],[14285738760999836560,"build_script_build",false,198756974854948011]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-7edbec79ea97369f/dep-lib-proc_macro2","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4126c8c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +ab44dc626a20c202 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..54cfc446 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[14285738760999836560,"build_script_build",false,9105558355584994738]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/output","paths":["src/probe/proc_macro_span.rs","src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs","src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs"]}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP","val":null}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..48b7b65f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +b42a8a4b286a9f3b \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7c7712e3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"proc-macro\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"nightly\", \"proc-macro\", \"span-locations\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":7858518227888694832,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/dep-lib-profiling b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/dep-lib-profiling new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/dep-lib-profiling differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/lib-profiling b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/lib-profiling new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a032f026 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/lib-profiling @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +8cfcce680502e32d \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/lib-profiling.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/lib-profiling.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0eac33df --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/lib-profiling.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"procmacros\", \"profiling-procmacros\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"optick\", \"procmacros\", \"profile-with-optick\", \"profile-with-puffin\", \"profile-with-superluminal\", \"profile-with-tracing\", \"profile-with-tracy\", \"profiling-procmacros\", \"puffin\", \"superluminal-perf\", \"tracing\", \"tracy-client\", \"type-check\"]","target":1764792426699693407,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17433729738363812254,"deps":[[1066480795608666094,"profiling_procmacros",false,17944314388216834940]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f/dep-lib-profiling","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/dep-lib-profiling_procmacros b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/dep-lib-profiling_procmacros new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/dep-lib-profiling_procmacros differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/lib-profiling_procmacros b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/lib-profiling_procmacros new file mode 100644 index 00000000..69f2b5f1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/lib-profiling_procmacros @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +7c6b98efdc0207f9 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/lib-profiling_procmacros.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/lib-profiling_procmacros.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b225f555 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/lib-profiling_procmacros.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"profile-with-optick\", \"profile-with-puffin\", \"profile-with-superluminal\", \"profile-with-tracing\", \"profile-with-tracy\"]","target":13838831537977616575,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":7284001400151663946,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/profiling-procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7/dep-lib-profiling_procmacros","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/dep-lib-pxfm b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/dep-lib-pxfm new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/dep-lib-pxfm differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/lib-pxfm b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/lib-pxfm new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7d5cda82 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/lib-pxfm @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +de779557e641a0a9 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/lib-pxfm.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/lib-pxfm.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..81f346fb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/lib-pxfm.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":3969741579377267933,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17375119218306502762,"deps":[[5157631553186200874,"num_traits",false,11075153878090475936]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87/dep-lib-pxfm","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/dep-lib-qoi b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/dep-lib-qoi new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/dep-lib-qoi differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/lib-qoi b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/lib-qoi new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f40ffa7d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/lib-qoi @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +c57ee6ef886848bf \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/lib-qoi.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/lib-qoi.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..48751acb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/lib-qoi.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"reference\", \"std\"]","target":2560206163939408672,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":3606701877108190185,"deps":[[14567563978122280782,"bytemuck",false,10432043599988896013]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0/dep-lib-qoi","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/dep-lib-quick_error b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/dep-lib-quick_error new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/dep-lib-quick_error differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/lib-quick_error b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/lib-quick_error new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ea239368 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/lib-quick_error @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +8979d9c3eb526e15 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/lib-quick_error.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/lib-quick_error.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5398d6f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/lib-quick_error.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":9418707758664623327,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17563170313568946200,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/quick-error-31ce661899395a7f/dep-lib-quick_error","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a9aa68d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +966bb086e7393129 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..50aaae07 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"proc-macro\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"proc-macro\"]","target":17883862002600103897,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":2090587967984889673,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/dep-lib-quote b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/dep-lib-quote new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/dep-lib-quote differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/lib-quote b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/lib-quote new file mode 100644 index 00000000..08da15ae --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/lib-quote @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +a3ac8429fad19aa2 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/lib-quote.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/lib-quote.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b6e517a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/lib-quote.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"proc-macro\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"proc-macro\"]","target":3570458776599611685,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":10017259632209353727,"deps":[[9869581871423326951,"build_script_build",false,16762580184233481556],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298/dep-lib-quote","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8d4e0102 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +54153d98dda5a0e8 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1c0a55b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[9869581871423326951,"build_script_build",false,2968217295973804950]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/output","paths":["build.rs"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/dep-lib-quote b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/dep-lib-quote new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/dep-lib-quote differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/lib-quote b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/lib-quote new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5dac5eb4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/lib-quote @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +40d2444e17c4fe91 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/lib-quote.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/lib-quote.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2c298690 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/lib-quote.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"proc-macro\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"proc-macro\"]","target":3570458776599611685,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":10017259632209353727,"deps":[[9869581871423326951,"build_script_build",false,11394920673113308230],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15012488081045086883]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d/dep-lib-quote","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..27d52d75 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +467cacb4fae3229e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..66622873 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[9869581871423326951,"build_script_build",false,17066806695031039991]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/output","paths":["build.rs"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..15b3a921 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +f76795eb437ad9ec \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1dfb909e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"proc-macro\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"proc-macro\"]","target":17883862002600103897,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":2090587967984889673,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..688b12bd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +43947ec1faf20ef5 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1c3485d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"threading\"]","declared_features":"[\"aom-sys\", \"asm\", \"av-metrics\", \"backtrace\", \"bench\", \"binaries\", \"byteorder\", \"capi\", \"cc\", \"channel-api\", \"check_asm\", \"clap\", \"clap_complete\", \"console\", \"crossbeam\", \"dav1d-sys\", \"decode_test\", \"decode_test_dav1d\", \"default\", \"desync_finder\", \"dump_ivf\", \"dump_lookahead_data\", \"fern\", \"git_version\", \"image\", \"ivf\", \"nasm-rs\", \"nom\", \"quick_test\", \"scan_fmt\", \"serde\", \"serde-big-array\", \"serialize\", \"signal-hook\", \"signal_support\", \"threading\", \"toml\", \"tracing\", \"tracing-chrome\", \"tracing-subscriber\", \"unstable\", \"wasm\", \"wasm-bindgen\", \"y4m\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":3370408512988715490,"path":6111578347601277231,"deps":[[10222309756751746024,"built",false,2908697644789958759]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..afcf4725 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +cf93e7b1508a933f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c7803d18 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[12227822634393473869,"build_script_build",false,17658318347768337475]],"local":[{"Precalculated":"0.8.1"}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/dep-lib-rav1e b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/dep-lib-rav1e new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e3607b7c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/dep-lib-rav1e differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/lib-rav1e b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/lib-rav1e new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fcf3256d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/lib-rav1e @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +fe51d4bd40e950e3 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/lib-rav1e.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/lib-rav1e.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f76ca073 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/lib-rav1e.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"threading\"]","declared_features":"[\"aom-sys\", \"asm\", \"av-metrics\", \"backtrace\", \"bench\", \"binaries\", \"byteorder\", \"capi\", \"cc\", \"channel-api\", \"check_asm\", \"clap\", \"clap_complete\", \"console\", \"crossbeam\", \"dav1d-sys\", \"decode_test\", \"decode_test_dav1d\", \"default\", \"desync_finder\", \"dump_ivf\", \"dump_lookahead_data\", \"fern\", \"git_version\", \"image\", \"ivf\", \"nasm-rs\", \"nom\", \"quick_test\", \"scan_fmt\", \"serde\", \"serde-big-array\", \"serialize\", \"signal-hook\", \"signal_support\", \"threading\", \"toml\", \"tracing\", \"tracing-chrome\", \"tracing-subscriber\", \"unstable\", \"wasm\", \"wasm-bindgen\", \"y4m\"]","target":15916202623544168808,"profile":11952574710842524155,"path":9699352800558791540,"deps":[[117267622697358125,"bitstream_io",false,11733319079309836173],[2459855797165671456,"aligned_vec",false,18085758241660429525],[2687729594444538932,"debug_unreachable",false,14611148537443083070],[4336745513838352383,"thiserror",false,10890731635555406650],[5157631553186200874,"num_traits",false,11075153878090475936],[5237962722597217121,"simd_helpers",false,15162388408116347037],[6697151524989202978,"profiling",false,3306488773676563596],[7217821304122955205,"av1_grain",false,14275629171658319065],[7667230146095136825,"cfg_if",false,6684808059692791478],[8730874933663560167,"libc",false,8306405787546503549],[10630857666389190470,"log",false,17384188297463171901],[11263754829263059703,"num_derive",false,18231872498517179425],[12227822634393473869,"build_script_build",false,4581157325152687055],[12672448913558545127,"noop_proc_macro",false,3562695935533895391],[13847662864258534762,"arrayvec",false,14599632358213594847],[15325537792103828505,"v_frame",false,405445924591824676],[16326338539882746041,"itertools",false,2075030058364505276],[16507960196461048755,"rayon",false,1250804697114147357],[17605717126308396068,"paste",false,16657529843264500812],[17706129463675219700,"arg_enum_proc_macro",false,1885023382224039573],[17863271294158916696,"av_scenechange",false,11449304735569522514]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39/dep-lib-rav1e","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/dep-lib-ravif b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/dep-lib-ravif new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/dep-lib-ravif differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/lib-ravif b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/lib-ravif new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b73a1072 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/lib-ravif @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +c98bb1321539ddce \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/lib-ravif.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/lib-ravif.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bd85f169 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/lib-ravif.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"threading\"]","declared_features":"[\"asm\", \"default\", \"threading\"]","target":13045519355779115905,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":5072315096260396434,"deps":[[817367157515107446,"quick_error",false,1544262894791260553],[3961631058774388222,"imgref",false,3985682483132003094],[5333633174709578079,"rgb",false,4646903579923609870],[12227822634393473869,"rav1e",false,16379848309018481150],[13156241330523184383,"avif_serialize",false,3712330160369784782],[14807177696891839338,"rayon",false,13593445550952666393],[18442020829458984419,"loop9",false,13924516952210507523]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe/dep-lib-ravif","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/dep-lib-rayon b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/dep-lib-rayon new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/dep-lib-rayon differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/lib-rayon b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/lib-rayon new file mode 100644 index 00000000..08f0ce7e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/lib-rayon @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +19d5251ab59ea5bc \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/lib-rayon.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/lib-rayon.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..82f4f4c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/lib-rayon.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"web_spin_lock\"]","target":4732152328429177609,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":12850455936331619924,"deps":[[3746573929696391749,"rayon_core",false,1576381714962031296],[12170264697963848012,"either",false,13755482826776656824]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6/dep-lib-rayon","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..644a10f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +e69ffe316908f1dd \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2364caed --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"web_spin_lock\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":4978750898131097430,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/dep-lib-rayon_core b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/dep-lib-rayon_core new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/dep-lib-rayon_core differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/lib-rayon_core b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/lib-rayon_core new file mode 100644 index 00000000..333a8a49 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/lib-rayon_core @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +c0a2bb56d16ee015 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/lib-rayon_core.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/lib-rayon_core.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2489e942 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/lib-rayon_core.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"web_spin_lock\"]","target":12465439074827573786,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":11243575062113412596,"deps":[[3746573929696391749,"build_script_build",false,7128982751159932606],[4468123440088164316,"crossbeam_utils",false,10341239778769647319],[17472578983440242455,"crossbeam_deque",false,14817676322701755909]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-af936d5901b0fce8/dep-lib-rayon_core","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..83bc6bb6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +be56c68c0a3cef62 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9b45e5b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[3746573929696391749,"build_script_build",false,15992572999672700902]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/output","paths":["build.rs"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/dep-lib-rgb b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/dep-lib-rgb new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/dep-lib-rgb differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/lib-rgb b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/lib-rgb new file mode 100644 index 00000000..03193730 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/lib-rgb @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +0e79d6822f1e7d40 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/lib-rgb.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/lib-rgb.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6612ed16 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/lib-rgb.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"argb\", \"as-bytes\", \"bytemuck\", \"checked_fns\", \"default\", \"defmt-03\", \"grb\", \"serde\", \"unstable-experimental\"]","target":15506589765627917386,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":6783938731238261129,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1/dep-lib-rgb","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a8a7d14d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +0d79db0e84718fe8 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f28f1e94 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"dev_urandom_fallback\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"dev_urandom_fallback\", \"less-safe-getrandom-custom-or-rdrand\", \"less-safe-getrandom-espidf\", \"slow_tests\", \"std\", \"test_logging\", \"unstable-testing-arm-no-hw\", \"unstable-testing-arm-no-neon\", \"wasm32_unknown_unknown_js\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":4221064861211723839,"deps":[[9431777385763048253,"cc",false,16331187468677606512]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-7b81615306c4d978/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-bab49feff220bce6/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-bab49feff220bce6/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e330f5a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-bab49feff220bce6/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +c5cef642f597f675 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-bab49feff220bce6/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-bab49feff220bce6/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bda42568 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-bab49feff220bce6/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[5491919304041016563,"build_script_build",false,16757737550467791117]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/output","paths":["crypto/poly1305/poly1305_arm_asm.S","crypto/poly1305/poly1305_arm.c","crypto/poly1305/poly1305.c","crypto/cipher/asm/chacha20_poly1305_x86_64.pl","crypto/cipher/asm/chacha20_poly1305_armv8.pl","crypto/limbs/limbs.c","crypto/limbs/limbs.inl","crypto/limbs/limbs.h","crypto/crypto.c","crypto/fipsmodule/bn/internal.h","crypto/fipsmodule/bn/asm/x86_64-mont.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/bn/asm/armv4-mont.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/bn/asm/armv8-mont.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/bn/asm/x86_64-mont5.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/bn/asm/x86-mont.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/bn/montgomery.c","crypto/fipsmodule/bn/montgomery_inv.c","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/aes_nohw.c","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/ghash-armv4.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/ghash-neon-armv8.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/ghash-x86.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aesni-gcm-x86_64.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/ghash-x86_64.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aes-gcm-avx2-x86_64.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/bsaes-armv7.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aesni-x86_64.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/vpaes-armv8.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/vpaes-x86_64.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/vpaes-x86.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aesni-x86.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aesv8-gcm-armv8.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/ghashv8-armx.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aesv8-armx.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/vpaes-armv7.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/sha/asm/sha512-armv8.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/sha/asm/sha512-armv4.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/sha/asm/sha256-armv4.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/sha/asm/sha512-x86_64.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/gfp_p256.c","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/ecp_nistz384.inl","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256_shared.h","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256-nistz.h","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/ecp_nistz384.h","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/util.h","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256-nistz-table.h","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/ecp_nistz.h","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/ecp_nistz.c","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256-nistz.c","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256.c","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/gfp_p384.c","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/asm/p256-x86_64-asm.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/asm/p256-armv8-asm.pl","crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256_table.h","crypto/mem.c","crypto/internal.h","crypto/perlasm/x86_64-xlate.pl","crypto/perlasm/x86asm.pl","crypto/perlasm/arm-xlate.pl","crypto/perlasm/x86nasm.pl","crypto/perlasm/x86gas.pl","crypto/cpu_intel.c","crypto/curve25519/curve25519_tables.h","crypto/curve25519/curve25519_64_adx.c","crypto/curve25519/internal.h","crypto/curve25519/asm/x25519-asm-arm.S","crypto/curve25519/curve25519.c","crypto/constant_time_test.c","crypto/chacha/asm/chacha-x86.pl","crypto/chacha/asm/chacha-armv8.pl","crypto/chacha/asm/chacha-armv4.pl","crypto/chacha/asm/chacha-x86_64.pl","include/ring-core/check.h","include/ring-core/mem.h","include/ring-core/base.h","include/ring-core/target.h","include/ring-core/aes.h","include/ring-core/type_check.h","include/ring-core/asm_base.h","third_party/fiat/p256_64_msvc.h","third_party/fiat/p256_64.h","third_party/fiat/curve25519_64.h","third_party/fiat/curve25519_64_adx.h","third_party/fiat/p256_32.h","third_party/fiat/curve25519_32.h","third_party/fiat/curve25519_64_msvc.h","third_party/fiat/asm/fiat_curve25519_adx_square.S","third_party/fiat/asm/fiat_curve25519_adx_mul.S","third_party/fiat/LICENSE"]}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_MANIFEST_DIR","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_PKG_NAME","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MAJOR","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MINOR","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PATCH","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PRE","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_MANIFEST_LINKS","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RING_PREGENERATE_ASM","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"OUT_DIR","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_CFG_TARGET_ARCH","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_CFG_TARGET_OS","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_CFG_TARGET_ENV","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CARGO_CFG_TARGET_ENDIAN","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CC_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CC_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"HOST_CC","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CC","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CC_ENABLE_DEBUG_OUTPUT","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CRATE_CC_NO_DEFAULTS","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CFLAGS","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"HOST_CFLAGS","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CFLAGS_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CFLAGS_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CC_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CC_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"HOST_CC","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CC","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CC_ENABLE_DEBUG_OUTPUT","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CRATE_CC_NO_DEFAULTS","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CFLAGS","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"HOST_CFLAGS","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CFLAGS_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu","val":null}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"CFLAGS_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu","val":null}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/dep-lib-ring b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/dep-lib-ring new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/dep-lib-ring differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/lib-ring b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/lib-ring new file mode 100644 index 00000000..28882a1e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/lib-ring @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +04465b06f299c3d3 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/lib-ring.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/lib-ring.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7c6fd828 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/lib-ring.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"dev_urandom_fallback\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"dev_urandom_fallback\", \"less-safe-getrandom-custom-or-rdrand\", \"less-safe-getrandom-espidf\", \"slow_tests\", \"std\", \"test_logging\", \"unstable-testing-arm-no-hw\", \"unstable-testing-arm-no-neon\", \"wasm32_unknown_unknown_js\"]","target":13947150742743679355,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":10706688336462964566,"deps":[[5491919304041016563,"build_script_build",false,8500148426354642629],[7667230146095136825,"cfg_if",false,6684808059692791478],[8995469080876806959,"untrusted",false,18446138835316233139],[9920160576179037441,"getrandom",false,6891120587047496813]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b/dep-lib-ring","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/dep-lib-ring b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/dep-lib-ring new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/dep-lib-ring differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/lib-ring b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/lib-ring new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fb809430 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/lib-ring @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +a99151756f84f19f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/lib-ring.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/lib-ring.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e322bb8d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/lib-ring.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"dev_urandom_fallback\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"dev_urandom_fallback\", \"less-safe-getrandom-custom-or-rdrand\", \"less-safe-getrandom-espidf\", \"slow_tests\", \"std\", \"test_logging\", \"unstable-testing-arm-no-hw\", \"unstable-testing-arm-no-neon\", \"wasm32_unknown_unknown_js\"]","target":13947150742743679355,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":10706688336462964566,"deps":[[5491919304041016563,"build_script_build",false,8500148426354642629],[7667230146095136825,"cfg_if",false,6684808059692791478],[8995469080876806959,"untrusted",false,18446138835316233139],[9920160576179037441,"getrandom",false,8522897292921225518]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4/dep-lib-ring","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c9590242 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +d50a6c82aff389e4 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f02afc72 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"log\", \"logging\", \"ring\", \"std\", \"tls12\"]","declared_features":"[\"aws-lc-rs\", \"aws_lc_rs\", \"brotli\", \"custom-provider\", \"default\", \"fips\", \"hashbrown\", \"log\", \"logging\", \"prefer-post-quantum\", \"read_buf\", \"ring\", \"rustversion\", \"std\", \"tls12\", \"zlib\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":5349390596154805579,"path":13795189282761815302,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/dep-lib-rustls b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/dep-lib-rustls new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/dep-lib-rustls differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/lib-rustls b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/lib-rustls new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2ab2ddd9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/lib-rustls @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +dc4432221484e6dc \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/lib-rustls.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/lib-rustls.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7de52301 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/lib-rustls.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"log\", \"logging\", \"ring\", \"std\", \"tls12\"]","declared_features":"[\"aws-lc-rs\", \"aws_lc_rs\", \"brotli\", \"custom-provider\", \"default\", \"fips\", \"hashbrown\", \"log\", \"logging\", \"prefer-post-quantum\", \"read_buf\", \"ring\", \"rustversion\", \"std\", \"tls12\", \"zlib\"]","target":4618819951246003698,"profile":15728773819211726889,"path":12123655885742629698,"deps":[[64645024058175247,"pki_types",false,3460450604301999089],[3722963349756955755,"once_cell",false,3492247744743564822],[5296164962160813001,"build_script_build",false,11269822106309341555],[5491919304041016563,"ring",false,15259209227229152772],[10630857666389190470,"log",false,17384188297463171901],[12865141776541797048,"zeroize",false,8108240740158430537],[15083985723629456778,"webpki",false,3015127829307598425],[17003143334332120809,"subtle",false,15478675541462417891]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rustls-2654d54899de7799/dep-lib-rustls","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/dep-lib-rustls b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/dep-lib-rustls new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/dep-lib-rustls differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/lib-rustls b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/lib-rustls new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c69bdc79 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/lib-rustls @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +05430d3ad2581d0e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/lib-rustls.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/lib-rustls.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ac3c72a0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/lib-rustls.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"log\", \"logging\", \"ring\", \"std\", \"tls12\"]","declared_features":"[\"aws-lc-rs\", \"aws_lc_rs\", \"brotli\", \"custom-provider\", \"default\", \"fips\", \"hashbrown\", \"log\", \"logging\", \"prefer-post-quantum\", \"read_buf\", \"ring\", \"rustversion\", \"std\", \"tls12\", \"zlib\"]","target":4618819951246003698,"profile":15728773819211726889,"path":12123655885742629698,"deps":[[64645024058175247,"pki_types",false,3460450604301999089],[3722963349756955755,"once_cell",false,2223620750603186715],[5296164962160813001,"build_script_build",false,11269822106309341555],[5491919304041016563,"ring",false,11525138535662326185],[10630857666389190470,"log",false,17384188297463171901],[12865141776541797048,"zeroize",false,8108240740158430537],[15083985723629456778,"webpki",false,12792499687767941706],[17003143334332120809,"subtle",false,15478675541462417891]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3/dep-lib-rustls","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..03da8489 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +73b169e07e73669c \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..92d794dd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[5491919304041016563,"build_script_build",false,8500148426354642629],[5296164962160813001,"build_script_build",false,16467961447589874389]],"local":[{"Precalculated":"0.23.35"}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/dep-lib-rustls_pki_types b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/dep-lib-rustls_pki_types new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/dep-lib-rustls_pki_types differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/lib-rustls_pki_types b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/lib-rustls_pki_types new file mode 100644 index 00000000..47ed81e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/lib-rustls_pki_types @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +f1db34887dfd0530 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/lib-rustls_pki_types.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/lib-rustls_pki_types.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a3a6ea5f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/lib-rustls_pki_types.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\", \"web\", \"web-time\"]","target":10881799483833257506,"profile":2075258368899173628,"path":6327194620840284384,"deps":[[12865141776541797048,"zeroize",false,8108240740158430537]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rustls-pki-types-81f7548fbb85d9d5/dep-lib-rustls_pki_types","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/dep-lib-webpki b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/dep-lib-webpki new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/dep-lib-webpki differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/lib-webpki b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/lib-webpki new file mode 100644 index 00000000..205f8570 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/lib-webpki @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +4a22b43eb01688b1 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/lib-webpki.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/lib-webpki.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9acf62c5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/lib-webpki.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"ring\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"aws-lc-rs\", \"aws-lc-rs-fips\", \"aws-lc-rs-unstable\", \"default\", \"ring\", \"std\"]","target":5054897795206437336,"profile":12913535294222086254,"path":6470339821468565191,"deps":[[64645024058175247,"pki_types",false,3460450604301999089],[5491919304041016563,"ring",false,11525138535662326185],[8995469080876806959,"untrusted",false,18446138835316233139]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-08680f955b090308/dep-lib-webpki","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/dep-lib-webpki b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/dep-lib-webpki new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/dep-lib-webpki differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/lib-webpki b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/lib-webpki new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f0215c4e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/lib-webpki @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +59264632c9e2d729 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/lib-webpki.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/lib-webpki.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..500eea3f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/lib-webpki.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"ring\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"aws-lc-rs\", \"aws-lc-rs-fips\", \"aws-lc-rs-unstable\", \"default\", \"ring\", \"std\"]","target":5054897795206437336,"profile":12913535294222086254,"path":6470339821468565191,"deps":[[64645024058175247,"pki_types",false,3460450604301999089],[5491919304041016563,"ring",false,15259209227229152772],[8995469080876806959,"untrusted",false,18446138835316233139]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/rustls-webpki-f32ae3930b055f02/dep-lib-webpki","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/dep-lib-ryu b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/dep-lib-ryu new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/dep-lib-ryu differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/lib-ryu b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/lib-ryu new file mode 100644 index 00000000..164a0124 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/lib-ryu @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +f86de37014df8c96 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/lib-ryu.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/lib-ryu.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b4bb6a8d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/lib-ryu.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"no-panic\", \"small\"]","target":8955674961151483972,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":9404256806783505106,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe/dep-lib-ryu","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fe729323 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +7c07866b458d7e92 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2ab170fc --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[13548984313718623784,"build_script_build",false,3395415085384667036]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/output","paths":["build.rs"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8d35fff2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +9c0f5bcd07f01e2f \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..39cb66b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"derive\", \"serde_derive\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"derive\", \"rc\", \"serde_derive\", \"std\", \"unstable\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":15787530397389560096,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-49a10a9683562367/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/dep-lib-serde b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/dep-lib-serde new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ab288022 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/dep-lib-serde differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/lib-serde b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/lib-serde new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1b2158a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/lib-serde @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +4c3752cb392586ff \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/lib-serde.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/lib-serde.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..be08c1a3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/lib-serde.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"derive\", \"serde_derive\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"derive\", \"rc\", \"serde_derive\", \"std\", \"unstable\"]","target":11327258112168116673,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":11928607703596296048,"deps":[[3051629642231505422,"serde_derive",false,16188832210467128492],[11899261697793765154,"serde_core",false,252928141514832438],[13548984313718623784,"build_script_build",false,10556029905899227004]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6/dep-lib-serde","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/dep-lib-serde b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/dep-lib-serde new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ab288022 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/dep-lib-serde differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/lib-serde b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/lib-serde new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e3f4de8e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/lib-serde @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +626bbca41aab2eeb \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/lib-serde.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/lib-serde.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7927be73 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/lib-serde.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"derive\", \"serde_derive\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"derive\", \"rc\", \"serde_derive\", \"std\", \"unstable\"]","target":11327258112168116673,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":11928607703596296048,"deps":[[3051629642231505422,"serde_derive",false,10524819347219880087],[11899261697793765154,"serde_core",false,252928141514832438],[13548984313718623784,"build_script_build",false,10556029905899227004]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde-c580ca7827c7164e/dep-lib-serde","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/dep-lib-serde_core b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/dep-lib-serde_core new file mode 100644 index 00000000..672b350f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/dep-lib-serde_core differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/lib-serde_core b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/lib-serde_core new file mode 100644 index 00000000..713d5dd5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/lib-serde_core @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +36fab0fccd948203 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/lib-serde_core.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/lib-serde_core.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2839582d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/lib-serde_core.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"result\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"rc\", \"result\", \"std\", \"unstable\"]","target":6810695588070812737,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":15700045421018889030,"deps":[[11899261697793765154,"build_script_build",false,13748355924442829254]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9/dep-lib-serde_core","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f273f69e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +d1ee4c2c2c8798b2 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..45131e72 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"result\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"rc\", \"result\", \"std\", \"unstable\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":14498443268467634709,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fd749de3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +c6510d12dff8cbbe \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..12f604ac --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[11899261697793765154,"build_script_build",false,12869184559002742481]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/output","paths":["build.rs"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/dep-lib-serde_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/dep-lib-serde_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/dep-lib-serde_derive differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/lib-serde_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/lib-serde_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..10d8fd4a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/lib-serde_derive @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +971833f46eab0f92 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/lib-serde_derive.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/lib-serde_derive.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ca360b6b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/lib-serde_derive.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"deserialize_in_place\"]","target":13076129734743110817,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":13875383478284773013,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d/dep-lib-serde_derive","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/dep-lib-serde_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/dep-lib-serde_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/dep-lib-serde_derive differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/lib-serde_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/lib-serde_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7f775f6d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/lib-serde_derive @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +ac844b911f49aae0 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/lib-serde_derive.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/lib-serde_derive.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..94e77595 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/lib-serde_derive.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"deserialize_in_place\"]","target":13076129734743110817,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":13875383478284773013,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,3117128855815057025],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,10520061383960482368],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15012488081045086883]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f/dep-lib-serde_derive","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0f507b1d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +6229a5edb1045379 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0e26be96 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[12832915883349295919,"build_script_build",false,304481938911634489]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/output","paths":["build.rs"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..172bdb6d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1768839abb970e2e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..05252679 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[12832915883349295919,"build_script_build",false,3719858098456258552]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/output","paths":["build.rs"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/dep-lib-serde_json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/dep-lib-serde_json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/dep-lib-serde_json differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/lib-serde_json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/lib-serde_json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4d43e16c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/lib-serde_json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +fd93730f7a059106 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/lib-serde_json.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/lib-serde_json.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6dd78f33 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/lib-serde_json.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"arbitrary_precision\", \"default\", \"float_roundtrip\", \"indexmap\", \"preserve_order\", \"raw_value\", \"std\", \"unbounded_depth\"]","target":9592559880233824070,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":554347711536508587,"deps":[[198136567835728122,"memchr",false,10417301787315432332],[1216309103264968120,"ryu",false,10848290881314975224],[7695812897323945497,"itoa",false,13407858731621387242],[11899261697793765154,"serde_core",false,252928141514832438],[12832915883349295919,"build_script_build",false,8742336463899011426]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490/dep-lib-serde_json","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6e421a24 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +f867585d3b979f33 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cd0eb4c9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"arbitrary_precision\", \"default\", \"float_roundtrip\", \"indexmap\", \"preserve_order\", \"raw_value\", \"std\", \"unbounded_depth\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":11055546402050575070,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/dep-lib-serde_json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/dep-lib-serde_json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/dep-lib-serde_json differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/lib-serde_json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/lib-serde_json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3ffabc9b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/lib-serde_json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +bc8c30913cd260a7 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/lib-serde_json.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/lib-serde_json.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8c58f148 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/lib-serde_json.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"arbitrary_precision\", \"default\", \"float_roundtrip\", \"indexmap\", \"preserve_order\", \"raw_value\", \"std\", \"unbounded_depth\"]","target":9592559880233824070,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":554347711536508587,"deps":[[198136567835728122,"memchr",false,10417301787315432332],[1216309103264968120,"ryu",false,10848290881314975224],[7695812897323945497,"itoa",false,13407858731621387242],[11899261697793765154,"serde_core",false,252928141514832438],[12832915883349295919,"build_script_build",false,3318756807425615895]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb/dep-lib-serde_json","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2f6a1a02 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +39a459d1b5bc3904 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..20ec85fe --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"arbitrary_precision\", \"default\", \"float_roundtrip\", \"indexmap\", \"preserve_order\", \"raw_value\", \"std\", \"unbounded_depth\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":11055546402050575070,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/dep-lib-shlex b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/dep-lib-shlex new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/dep-lib-shlex differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/lib-shlex b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/lib-shlex new file mode 100644 index 00000000..710c1ffc --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/lib-shlex @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +d7ff318a66d669e6 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/lib-shlex.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/lib-shlex.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9ab0ab01 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/lib-shlex.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","target":929485496544747924,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":4236612497208046900,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/shlex-3b90976fe851454e/dep-lib-shlex","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/dep-lib-simd_adler32 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/dep-lib-simd_adler32 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/dep-lib-simd_adler32 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/lib-simd_adler32 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/lib-simd_adler32 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..76d70599 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/lib-simd_adler32 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +835e880fdb42d645 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/lib-simd_adler32.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/lib-simd_adler32.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..dfbf0658 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/lib-simd_adler32.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"const-generics\", \"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"const-generics\", \"default\", \"nightly\", \"std\"]","target":13480744403352105069,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":8093444624348090644,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab/dep-lib-simd_adler32","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/dep-lib-simd_adler32 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/dep-lib-simd_adler32 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/dep-lib-simd_adler32 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/lib-simd_adler32 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/lib-simd_adler32 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5d9a0bd7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/lib-simd_adler32 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +919b8233a4beb3bc \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/lib-simd_adler32.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/lib-simd_adler32.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a1ccb250 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/lib-simd_adler32.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"const-generics\", \"default\", \"nightly\", \"std\"]","target":13480744403352105069,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":8093444624348090644,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/simd-adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc/dep-lib-simd_adler32","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/dep-lib-simd_helpers b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/dep-lib-simd_helpers new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/dep-lib-simd_helpers differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/lib-simd_helpers b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/lib-simd_helpers new file mode 100644 index 00000000..94e08167 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/lib-simd_helpers @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +9d804664ec9f6bd2 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/lib-simd_helpers.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/lib-simd_helpers.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ede081a3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/lib-simd_helpers.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":14086427540894458667,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":5498495330501281902,"deps":[[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90/dep-lib-simd_helpers","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/dep-lib-smallvec b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/dep-lib-smallvec new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/dep-lib-smallvec differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/lib-smallvec b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/lib-smallvec new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1b05106d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/lib-smallvec @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +f43b5198c22e8c4d \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/lib-smallvec.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/lib-smallvec.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fabf06dd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/lib-smallvec.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"const_generics\"]","declared_features":"[\"arbitrary\", \"bincode\", \"const_generics\", \"const_new\", \"debugger_visualizer\", \"drain_filter\", \"drain_keep_rest\", \"impl_bincode\", \"malloc_size_of\", \"may_dangle\", \"serde\", \"specialization\", \"union\", \"unty\", \"write\"]","target":9091769176333489034,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":8872507795590995615,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f/dep-lib-smallvec","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/dep-lib-stable_deref_trait b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/dep-lib-stable_deref_trait new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/dep-lib-stable_deref_trait differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/lib-stable_deref_trait b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/lib-stable_deref_trait new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a3ddd8b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/lib-stable_deref_trait @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +e618a9f03b9c357d \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/lib-stable_deref_trait.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/lib-stable_deref_trait.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3a7361d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/lib-stable_deref_trait.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","target":5616890217583455155,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":3633338398671022373,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f/dep-lib-stable_deref_trait","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/dep-lib-subtle b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/dep-lib-subtle new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/dep-lib-subtle differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/lib-subtle b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/lib-subtle new file mode 100644 index 00000000..81cacbc6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/lib-subtle @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +e301653a654dcfd6 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/lib-subtle.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/lib-subtle.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d396ce97 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/lib-subtle.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"const-generics\", \"core_hint_black_box\", \"default\", \"i128\", \"nightly\", \"std\"]","target":13005322332938347306,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":12277503314465489917,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1/dep-lib-subtle","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/dep-lib-syn b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/dep-lib-syn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/dep-lib-syn differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/lib-syn b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/lib-syn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bdb79793 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/lib-syn @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +81eef9d92d44422b \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/lib-syn.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/lib-syn.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f23218a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/lib-syn.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"clone-impls\", \"derive\", \"parsing\", \"printing\", \"proc-macro\"]","declared_features":"[\"clone-impls\", \"default\", \"derive\", \"extra-traits\", \"fold\", \"full\", \"parsing\", \"printing\", \"proc-macro\", \"test\", \"visit\", \"visit-mut\"]","target":9442126953582868550,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":9817784573311456466,"deps":[[1548027836057496652,"unicode_ident",false,10796289504087592421],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,10520061383960482368],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15012488081045086883]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/syn-322d667bb2c470c4/dep-lib-syn","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/dep-lib-syn b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/dep-lib-syn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/dep-lib-syn differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/lib-syn b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/lib-syn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..30944045 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/lib-syn @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +7da0aec5795de1b6 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/lib-syn.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/lib-syn.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..81f79e8c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/lib-syn.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"clone-impls\", \"default\", \"derive\", \"extra-traits\", \"fold\", \"full\", \"parsing\", \"printing\", \"proc-macro\", \"visit\"]","declared_features":"[\"clone-impls\", \"default\", \"derive\", \"extra-traits\", \"fold\", \"full\", \"parsing\", \"printing\", \"proc-macro\", \"test\", \"visit\", \"visit-mut\"]","target":9442126953582868550,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":9817784573311456466,"deps":[[1548027836057496652,"unicode_ident",false,10796289504087592421],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/syn-8e109e2e73114d38/dep-lib-syn","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/dep-lib-synstructure b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/dep-lib-synstructure new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/dep-lib-synstructure differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/lib-synstructure b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/lib-synstructure new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6251020c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/lib-synstructure @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +ddbee0b5f31356ca \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/lib-synstructure.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/lib-synstructure.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ea903dfb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/lib-synstructure.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"proc-macro\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"proc-macro\"]","target":14291004384071580589,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":7837692837601291757,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab/dep-lib-synstructure","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/dep-lib-thiserror b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/dep-lib-thiserror new file mode 100644 index 00000000..24938900 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/dep-lib-thiserror differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/lib-thiserror b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/lib-thiserror new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b3712525 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/lib-thiserror @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +3a936391b8a62397 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/lib-thiserror.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/lib-thiserror.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1cef577a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/lib-thiserror.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","target":13586076721141200315,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17252550009669800542,"deps":[[4336745513838352383,"build_script_build",false,17576882861809948123],[11901531446245070123,"thiserror_impl",false,8178238950163185510]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52/dep-lib-thiserror","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fb593b92 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +ccc8cac3eb53785e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b583492a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"std\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":14184502696336878283,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..81815198 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +db55d524d6a1edf3 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..309296cf --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[4336745513838352383,"build_script_build",false,6807283108837771468]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/output","paths":["build/probe.rs"]}},{"RerunIfEnvChanged":{"var":"RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP","val":null}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/dep-lib-thiserror_impl b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/dep-lib-thiserror_impl new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/dep-lib-thiserror_impl differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/lib-thiserror_impl b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/lib-thiserror_impl new file mode 100644 index 00000000..10fadd89 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/lib-thiserror_impl @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +667fbdb8fef07e71 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/lib-thiserror_impl.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/lib-thiserror_impl.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..85089936 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/lib-thiserror_impl.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":6216210811039475267,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":10394507993276026620,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/thiserror-impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622/dep-lib-thiserror_impl","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/dep-lib-tiff b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/dep-lib-tiff new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/dep-lib-tiff differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/lib-tiff b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/lib-tiff new file mode 100644 index 00000000..18ad3170 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/lib-tiff @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +0fec7ff3925029c4 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/lib-tiff.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/lib-tiff.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c1c283cd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/lib-tiff.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"deflate\", \"fax\", \"jpeg\", \"lzw\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"deflate\", \"fax\", \"jpeg\", \"lzw\", \"zstd\"]","target":10928575248072372035,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":12613840006387682644,"deps":[[817367157515107446,"quick_error",false,1544262894791260553],[1477123001438903435,"flate2",false,13263137963100954286],[12780750701670541126,"weezl",false,13754534930836921089],[16598877151661132269,"half",false,13194999466782459885],[17659641748958884788,"fax34",false,2985328086333221319],[17878595349520227683,"zune_jpeg",false,7821541534921465627]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/tiff-67677a68c1472700/dep-lib-tiff","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/dep-lib-tinystr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/dep-lib-tinystr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/dep-lib-tinystr differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/lib-tinystr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/lib-tinystr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..69b15ff0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/lib-tinystr @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1d7280ba71863abc \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/lib-tinystr.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/lib-tinystr.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3f22e131 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/lib-tinystr.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"zerovec\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"databake\", \"default\", \"serde\", \"std\", \"zerovec\"]","target":161691779326313357,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":13081111723636438023,"deps":[[5298260564258778412,"displaydoc",false,13275213850546957581],[14563910249377136032,"zerovec",false,3271500511463789512]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c/dep-lib-tinystr","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/dep-lib-unicode_ident b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/dep-lib-unicode_ident new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/dep-lib-unicode_ident differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/lib-unicode_ident b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/lib-unicode_ident new file mode 100644 index 00000000..610b83ea --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/lib-unicode_ident @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +e54d6b4f1a20d495 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/lib-unicode_ident.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/lib-unicode_ident.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..89dea39e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/lib-unicode_ident.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":5438535436255082082,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":1953805389286012499,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/unicode-ident-4fec18d14b15363e/dep-lib-unicode_ident","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/dep-lib-untrusted b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/dep-lib-untrusted new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/dep-lib-untrusted differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/lib-untrusted b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/lib-untrusted new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3af7178a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/lib-untrusted @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +b3d38ff489d9fdff \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/lib-untrusted.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/lib-untrusted.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4589989a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/lib-untrusted.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":13950522111565505587,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":2663350325112538188,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41/dep-lib-untrusted","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/dep-lib-ureq b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/dep-lib-ureq new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/dep-lib-ureq differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/lib-ureq b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/lib-ureq new file mode 100644 index 00000000..447bbb57 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/lib-ureq @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +57b349250a64b9b0 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/lib-ureq.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/lib-ureq.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cfb1a35c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/lib-ureq.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"gzip\", \"tls\"]","declared_features":"[\"brotli\", \"charset\", \"cookies\", \"default\", \"gzip\", \"http-crate\", \"http-interop\", \"json\", \"native-certs\", \"native-tls\", \"proxy-from-env\", \"socks-proxy\", \"testdeps\", \"tls\"]","target":2636997325719059094,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":14752742863857602091,"deps":[[64645024058175247,"rustls_pki_types",false,3460450604301999089],[1477123001438903435,"flate2",false,13263137963100954286],[3722963349756955755,"once_cell",false,2223620750603186715],[5296164962160813001,"rustls",false,1017066750795924229],[5404511084185685755,"url",false,4026250239588590091],[8156804143951879168,"webpki_roots",false,8454635724098691670],[10630857666389190470,"log",false,17384188297463171901],[13077212702700853852,"base64",false,12914398297916354567]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec/dep-lib-ureq","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/dep-lib-ureq b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/dep-lib-ureq new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/dep-lib-ureq differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/lib-ureq b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/lib-ureq new file mode 100644 index 00000000..dc6c93ea --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/lib-ureq @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1067655abffe907d \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/lib-ureq.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/lib-ureq.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1d23ec49 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/lib-ureq.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"_ring\", \"_rustls\", \"_tls\", \"default\", \"gzip\", \"json\", \"rustls\", \"rustls-no-provider\"]","declared_features":"[\"_doc\", \"_ring\", \"_rustls\", \"_test\", \"_tls\", \"_url\", \"brotli\", \"charset\", \"cookies\", \"default\", \"gzip\", \"json\", \"multipart\", \"native-tls\", \"platform-verifier\", \"rustls\", \"rustls-no-provider\", \"socks-proxy\", \"vendored\"]","target":2636997325719059094,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":13901174111958434926,"deps":[[64645024058175247,"rustls_pki_types",false,3460450604301999089],[390686634370472506,"webpki_roots",false,12361869169761339495],[1477123001438903435,"flate2",false,9040612455090785397],[4359956005902820838,"utf8",false,18046315284783385943],[5296164962160813001,"rustls",false,15917555154995528924],[6803352382179706244,"percent_encoding",false,5248885561041943668],[9948939636274895937,"ureq_proto",false,13629171676779341077],[10630857666389190470,"log",false,17384188297463171901],[12832915883349295919,"serde_json",false,12060870959673937084],[13077212702700853852,"base64",false,12914398297916354567],[13548984313718623784,"serde",false,18412445056705378124]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/ureq-98705423a8406a66/dep-lib-ureq","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/dep-lib-ureq_proto b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/dep-lib-ureq_proto new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/dep-lib-ureq_proto differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/lib-ureq_proto b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/lib-ureq_proto new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c69cab69 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/lib-ureq_proto @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +15653ff96d8b24bd \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/lib-ureq_proto.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/lib-ureq_proto.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9c945021 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/lib-ureq_proto.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"client\"]","declared_features":"[\"client\", \"default\", \"server\"]","target":3674679871725493623,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":15211993367220967680,"deps":[[2620434475832828286,"http",false,13876924212782654436],[6163892036024256188,"httparse",false,8034758150742334274],[10630857666389190470,"log",false,17384188297463171901],[13077212702700853852,"base64",false,12914398297916354567]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/ureq-proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a/dep-lib-ureq_proto","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/dep-lib-url b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/dep-lib-url new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/dep-lib-url differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/lib-url b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/lib-url new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4d6f3b9c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/lib-url @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +0b6282cb421de037 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/lib-url.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/lib-url.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6966ed42 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/lib-url.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"serde\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"debugger_visualizer\", \"default\", \"expose_internals\", \"serde\", \"std\"]","target":7686100221094031937,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":1976605299541645349,"deps":[[1074175012458081222,"form_urlencoded",false,12013358768079308479],[6159443412421938570,"idna",false,1134987585435805928],[6803352382179706244,"percent_encoding",false,12439765662499074320],[13548984313718623784,"serde",false,16946670578763066210]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4/dep-lib-url","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/dep-lib-utf8 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/dep-lib-utf8 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/dep-lib-utf8 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/lib-utf8 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/lib-utf8 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..be879f9c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/lib-utf8 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +574d3756236471fa \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/lib-utf8.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/lib-utf8.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4f13fb36 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/lib-utf8.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":10206970129552530490,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":9728403488447617946,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/utf-8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1/dep-lib-utf8","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/dep-lib-utf8_iter b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/dep-lib-utf8_iter new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/dep-lib-utf8_iter differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/lib-utf8_iter b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/lib-utf8_iter new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a971c1e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/lib-utf8_iter @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +b57cc98aa247824e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/lib-utf8_iter.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/lib-utf8_iter.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..25a0b38d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/lib-utf8_iter.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":6216520282702351879,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17701569490657506604,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9/dep-lib-utf8_iter","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/dep-lib-v_frame b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/dep-lib-v_frame new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/dep-lib-v_frame differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/lib-v_frame b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/lib-v_frame new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3e5159e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/lib-v_frame @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +24efec96eb6ea005 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/lib-v_frame.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/lib-v_frame.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..43b1cf1c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/lib-v_frame.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"profiling\", \"serde\", \"serialize\", \"tracing\"]","target":10634705287837667854,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17380065750814882389,"deps":[[2459855797165671456,"aligned_vec",false,18085758241660429525],[5157631553186200874,"num_traits",false,11075153878090475936]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c/dep-lib-v_frame","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/dep-lib-webpki_roots b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/dep-lib-webpki_roots new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/dep-lib-webpki_roots differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/lib-webpki_roots b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/lib-webpki_roots new file mode 100644 index 00000000..357e149d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/lib-webpki_roots @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +67487a8f832e8eab \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/lib-webpki_roots.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/lib-webpki_roots.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8ed00ea5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/lib-webpki_roots.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":16723591926615603170,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":1615322981425310716,"deps":[[64645024058175247,"pki_types",false,3460450604301999089]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-c3701fca19126f67/dep-lib-webpki_roots","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/dep-lib-webpki_roots b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/dep-lib-webpki_roots new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/dep-lib-webpki_roots differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/lib-webpki_roots b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/lib-webpki_roots new file mode 100644 index 00000000..43321aa3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/lib-webpki_roots @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +56e23a8065e65475 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/lib-webpki_roots.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/lib-webpki_roots.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..571cfe3c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/lib-webpki_roots.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":16723591926615603170,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":2818103226201868199,"deps":[[390686634370472506,"parent",false,12361869169761339495]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/webpki-roots-d19ef36f96572185/dep-lib-webpki_roots","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/dep-lib-weezl b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/dep-lib-weezl new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/dep-lib-weezl differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/lib-weezl b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/lib-weezl new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6d76a552 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/lib-weezl @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +019b3c1ba5ece1be \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/lib-weezl.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/lib-weezl.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f91a1789 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/lib-weezl.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"async\", \"default\", \"futures\", \"std\"]","target":8369499057004385739,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":14615462369006610816,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/weezl-916419a209823630/dep-lib-weezl","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/dep-lib-writeable b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/dep-lib-writeable new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/dep-lib-writeable differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/lib-writeable b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/lib-writeable new file mode 100644 index 00000000..951e4ae6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/lib-writeable @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +686be0c0e188ab43 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/lib-writeable.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/lib-writeable.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7df28d16 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/lib-writeable.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"either\"]","target":6209224040855486982,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":11867391671539355891,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968/dep-lib-writeable","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/dep-lib-y4m b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/dep-lib-y4m new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/dep-lib-y4m differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/lib-y4m b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/lib-y4m new file mode 100644 index 00000000..60912473 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/lib-y4m @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +a48944165f824df8 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/lib-y4m.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/lib-y4m.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..89482f58 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/lib-y4m.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":12048623457854363818,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":15196971782936062877,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b/dep-lib-y4m","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/dep-lib-yoke b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/dep-lib-yoke new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/dep-lib-yoke differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/lib-yoke b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/lib-yoke new file mode 100644 index 00000000..237ec419 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/lib-yoke @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +3086307366f74ade \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/lib-yoke.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/lib-yoke.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d613c9f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/lib-yoke.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"derive\", \"zerofrom\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"derive\", \"serde\", \"zerofrom\"]","target":11250006364125496299,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":50742734194364190,"deps":[[4776946450414566059,"yoke_derive",false,18043075431623171082],[12669569555400633618,"stable_deref_trait",false,9022289209761274086],[17046516144589451410,"zerofrom",false,4864198387430683583]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26/dep-lib-yoke","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/dep-lib-yoke_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/dep-lib-yoke_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/dep-lib-yoke_derive differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/lib-yoke_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/lib-yoke_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5033e4ad --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/lib-yoke_derive @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +0a1c7a3d82e165fa \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/lib-yoke_derive.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/lib-yoke_derive.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9191d6f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/lib-yoke_derive.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":1654536213780382264,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":8460326588628248124,"deps":[[4621990586401870511,"synstructure",false,14579862781107945181],[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/yoke-derive-7059e8a816334eea/dep-lib-yoke_derive","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..01d1d0cd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +a2c5a9fc76a8838a \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..46e52fee --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"derive\", \"simd\", \"zerocopy-derive\"]","declared_features":"[\"__internal_use_only_features_that_work_on_stable\", \"alloc\", \"derive\", \"float-nightly\", \"simd\", \"simd-nightly\", \"std\", \"zerocopy-derive\"]","target":5408242616063297496,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":3655387673697184372,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/dep-build-script-build-script-build","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/dep-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/dep-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/dep-build-script-build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/run-build-script-build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/run-build-script-build-script-build new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2e7680f4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/run-build-script-build-script-build @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +75a7dc65737b6dce \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/run-build-script-build-script-build.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/run-build-script-build-script-build.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..df1c544d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/run-build-script-build-script-build.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"","declared_features":"","target":0,"profile":0,"path":0,"deps":[[10670692311156573294,"build_script_build",false,9981006428181743010]],"local":[{"RerunIfChanged":{"output":"debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/output","paths":["build.rs","Cargo.toml"]}}],"rustflags":[],"config":0,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/dep-lib-zerocopy b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/dep-lib-zerocopy new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/dep-lib-zerocopy differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/lib-zerocopy b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/lib-zerocopy new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5105585c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/lib-zerocopy @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +f13e34750c25a9d1 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/lib-zerocopy.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/lib-zerocopy.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..beb13ba9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/lib-zerocopy.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"derive\", \"simd\", \"zerocopy-derive\"]","declared_features":"[\"__internal_use_only_features_that_work_on_stable\", \"alloc\", \"derive\", \"float-nightly\", \"simd\", \"simd-nightly\", \"std\", \"zerocopy-derive\"]","target":3084901215544504908,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":12183231698063975816,"deps":[[7685478053726959807,"zerocopy_derive",false,17911687681742378547],[10670692311156573294,"build_script_build",false,14874680879835031413]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25/dep-lib-zerocopy","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/dep-lib-zerocopy_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/dep-lib-zerocopy_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/dep-lib-zerocopy_derive differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/lib-zerocopy_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/lib-zerocopy_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1f38e28b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/lib-zerocopy_derive @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +3396fedd0b1993f8 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/lib-zerocopy_derive.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/lib-zerocopy_derive.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..982e0ede --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/lib-zerocopy_derive.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":17656254772834663905,"profile":5299775646529391475,"path":4010580427352753811,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zerocopy-derive-df35a593a5ae0520/dep-lib-zerocopy_derive","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/dep-lib-zerofrom b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/dep-lib-zerofrom new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/dep-lib-zerofrom differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/lib-zerofrom b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/lib-zerofrom new file mode 100644 index 00000000..72374c8d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/lib-zerofrom @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +bf73d567a91a8143 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/lib-zerofrom.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/lib-zerofrom.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e8ed6ce2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/lib-zerofrom.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"derive\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\", \"derive\"]","target":723370850876025358,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":17339038490972118652,"deps":[[4022439902832367970,"zerofrom_derive",false,13837858935182763756]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60/dep-lib-zerofrom","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/dep-lib-zerofrom_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/dep-lib-zerofrom_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/dep-lib-zerofrom_derive differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/lib-zerofrom_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/lib-zerofrom_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2e6c26bb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/lib-zerofrom_derive @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +eca688ab62f309c0 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/lib-zerofrom_derive.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/lib-zerofrom_derive.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7dc05ca8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/lib-zerofrom_derive.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":1753304412232254384,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":11428384324025418330,"deps":[[4621990586401870511,"synstructure",false,14579862781107945181],[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zerofrom-derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7/dep-lib-zerofrom_derive","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/dep-lib-zeroize b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/dep-lib-zeroize new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/dep-lib-zeroize differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/lib-zeroize b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/lib-zeroize new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8d26131c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/lib-zeroize @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +495d7e6efe418670 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/lib-zeroize.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/lib-zeroize.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..38227f63 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/lib-zeroize.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"alloc\", \"default\"]","declared_features":"[\"aarch64\", \"alloc\", \"default\", \"derive\", \"serde\", \"simd\", \"std\", \"zeroize_derive\"]","target":12859466896652407160,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":3420857285845239212,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3/dep-lib-zeroize","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/dep-lib-zerotrie b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/dep-lib-zerotrie new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/dep-lib-zerotrie differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/lib-zerotrie b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/lib-zerotrie new file mode 100644 index 00000000..385c757a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/lib-zerotrie @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +42c443fa63969afb \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/lib-zerotrie.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/lib-zerotrie.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..743a0248 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/lib-zerotrie.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"yoke\", \"zerofrom\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"databake\", \"default\", \"litemap\", \"serde\", \"yoke\", \"zerofrom\", \"zerovec\"]","target":12445875338185814621,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":11724071598302543059,"deps":[[697207654067905947,"yoke",false,16017887044087875120],[5298260564258778412,"displaydoc",false,13275213850546957581],[17046516144589451410,"zerofrom",false,4864198387430683583]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb/dep-lib-zerotrie","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/dep-lib-zerovec b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/dep-lib-zerovec new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/dep-lib-zerovec differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/lib-zerovec b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/lib-zerovec new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fa79c9dd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/lib-zerovec @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +c8d34ecc61b4662d \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/lib-zerovec.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/lib-zerovec.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..305d63ae --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/lib-zerovec.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"derive\", \"yoke\"]","declared_features":"[\"alloc\", \"databake\", \"derive\", \"hashmap\", \"serde\", \"std\", \"yoke\"]","target":1825474209729987087,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":3045141274189436399,"deps":[[697207654067905947,"yoke",false,16017887044087875120],[6522303474648583265,"zerovec_derive",false,5404227382972336899],[17046516144589451410,"zerofrom",false,4864198387430683583]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e/dep-lib-zerovec","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/dep-lib-zerovec_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/dep-lib-zerovec_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/dep-lib-zerovec_derive differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/lib-zerovec_derive b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/lib-zerovec_derive new file mode 100644 index 00000000..441d7104 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/lib-zerovec_derive @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +034b81072cacff4a \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/lib-zerovec_derive.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/lib-zerovec_derive.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9bc0f784 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/lib-zerovec_derive.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[]","declared_features":"[]","target":14030368369369144574,"profile":2225463790103693989,"path":9058905829386055657,"deps":[[7988640081342112296,"syn",false,13177916762251763837],[9869581871423326951,"quote",false,11716908252926356643],[14285738760999836560,"proc_macro2",false,15357388044146600338]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zerovec-derive-0e6192861e60330b/dep-lib-zerovec_derive","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/dep-lib-zune_core b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/dep-lib-zune_core new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/dep-lib-zune_core differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/lib-zune_core b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/lib-zune_core new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4278b8e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/lib-zune_core @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +afd02e35a470562c \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/lib-zune_core.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/lib-zune_core.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..44482fc2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/lib-zune_core.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"log\", \"serde\", \"std\"]","target":17007696718089767579,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":14477207561200806685,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-01655cdb782a5643/dep-lib-zune_core","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/dep-lib-zune_core b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/dep-lib-zune_core new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/dep-lib-zune_core differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/lib-zune_core b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/lib-zune_core new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e0ec10da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/lib-zune_core @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +507ce3318777714d \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/lib-zune_core.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/lib-zune_core.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6c072540 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/lib-zune_core.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"std\"]","declared_features":"[\"log\", \"serde\", \"std\"]","target":9207533741097351340,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":12770525439474904322,"deps":[],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zune-core-c0c3f9b510fc977e/dep-lib-zune_core","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/dep-lib-zune_inflate b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/dep-lib-zune_inflate new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/dep-lib-zune_inflate differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/lib-zune_inflate b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/lib-zune_inflate new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0b3962dd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/lib-zune_inflate @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +44bc5e60660cdfd0 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/lib-zune_inflate.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/lib-zune_inflate.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c41a6f1b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/lib-zune_inflate.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"simd-adler32\", \"zlib\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"gzip\", \"simd-adler32\", \"std\", \"zlib\"]","target":12020662131698132232,"profile":15657897354478470176,"path":14580664639991719717,"deps":[[5982862185909702272,"simd_adler32",false,5032283142258974339]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zune-inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf/dep-lib-zune_inflate","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/dep-lib-zune_jpeg b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/dep-lib-zune_jpeg new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/dep-lib-zune_jpeg differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/lib-zune_jpeg b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/lib-zune_jpeg new file mode 100644 index 00000000..017d3def --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/lib-zune_jpeg @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +cf09f96e0047da7e \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/lib-zune_jpeg.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/lib-zune_jpeg.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0094d60b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/lib-zune_jpeg.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"neon\", \"std\", \"x86\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"log\", \"neon\", \"portable_simd\", \"std\", \"x86\"]","target":15181827877683783474,"profile":11250625435679592442,"path":2439925565366448168,"deps":[[3314986460869826901,"zune_core",false,3194864836235153583]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96/dep-lib-zune_jpeg","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/dep-lib-zune_jpeg b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/dep-lib-zune_jpeg new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec3cb8bf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/dep-lib-zune_jpeg differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/lib-zune_jpeg b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/lib-zune_jpeg new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ec6c5497 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/lib-zune_jpeg @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1b1ff5f095b28b6c \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/lib-zune_jpeg.json b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/lib-zune_jpeg.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e55c8abb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/lib-zune_jpeg.json @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +{"rustc":4758242423518056681,"features":"[\"default\", \"neon\", \"std\", \"x86\"]","declared_features":"[\"default\", \"log\", \"neon\", \"std\", \"x86\"]","target":15181827877683783474,"profile":11250625435679592442,"path":7454886659912279944,"deps":[[2108356589440272210,"zune_core",false,5580372835830037584]],"local":[{"CheckDepInfo":{"dep_info":"debug/.fingerprint/zune-jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c/dep-lib-zune_jpeg","checksum":false}}],"rustflags":[],"config":2069994364910194474,"compile_kind":0} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/Rust_Enum b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/Rust_Enum new file mode 100755 index 00000000..18bad791 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/Rust_Enum differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/Rust_Enum.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/Rust_Enum.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..85eb142a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/Rust_Enum.d @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/Rust_Enum: /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/src/main.rs diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..20b723eb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/output @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=src/nightly.rs +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(anyhow_build_probe) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(anyhow_nightly_testing) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(anyhow_no_clippy_format_args) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(anyhow_no_core_error) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(anyhow_no_core_unwind_safe) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(anyhow_no_fmt_arguments_as_str) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(anyhow_no_ptr_addr_of) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(anyhow_no_unsafe_op_in_unsafe_fn_lint) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(error_generic_member_access) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(std_backtrace) +cargo:rustc-cfg=std_backtrace diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9737ebb4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-7dffd08ca73f1c01/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..e9cf99c6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build_script_build-f0f8ac34947eb6de b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build_script_build-f0f8ac34947eb6de new file mode 100755 index 00000000..e9cf99c6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build_script_build-f0f8ac34947eb6de differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build_script_build-f0f8ac34947eb6de.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build_script_build-f0f8ac34947eb6de.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..71b8667a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build_script_build-f0f8ac34947eb6de.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build_script_build-f0f8ac34947eb6de.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/anyhow-f0f8ac34947eb6de/build_script_build-f0f8ac34947eb6de: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..9f4f855f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build_script_build-b0718666adf1fefd b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build_script_build-b0718666adf1fefd new file mode 100755 index 00000000..9f4f855f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build_script_build-b0718666adf1fefd differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build_script_build-b0718666adf1fefd.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build_script_build-b0718666adf1fefd.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7ccc5a28 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build_script_build-b0718666adf1fefd.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build_script_build-b0718666adf1fefd.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-b0718666adf1fefd/build_script_build-b0718666adf1fefd: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..24051dc2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/output @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +cargo:rustc-env=PROFILE=debug +cargo:rustc-env=CARGO_CFG_TARGET_FEATURE=fxsr,sse,sse2 +cargo:rustc-env=CARGO_ENCODED_RUSTFLAGS= diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fab71a9f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/av-scenechange-d80936c8f13e0512/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..6cb20cc8 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build_script_build-a1aeaaf666d10f76 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build_script_build-a1aeaaf666d10f76 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..6cb20cc8 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build_script_build-a1aeaaf666d10f76 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build_script_build-a1aeaaf666d10f76.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build_script_build-a1aeaaf666d10f76.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fc055e4b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build_script_build-a1aeaaf666d10f76.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build_script_build-a1aeaaf666d10f76.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-a1aeaaf666d10f76/build_script_build-a1aeaaf666d10f76: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a21ae73b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/output @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +cargo:rustc-cfg=stable_arm_crc32_intrinsics +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(stable_arm_crc32_intrinsics) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4ffe5220 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crc32fast-b09c59eae4a5ad74/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..6503daab Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build_script_build-3facd263110404aa b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build_script_build-3facd263110404aa new file mode 100755 index 00000000..6503daab Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build_script_build-3facd263110404aa differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build_script_build-3facd263110404aa.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build_script_build-3facd263110404aa.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..45ad44dd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build_script_build-3facd263110404aa.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build_script_build-3facd263110404aa.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/build.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/no_atomic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/build-common.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-3facd263110404aa/build_script_build-3facd263110404aa: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/build.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/no_atomic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/build-common.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/build.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/no_atomic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/build-common.rs: + +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_NAME=crossbeam-utils diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d0bad9fd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/output @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=no_atomic.rs +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(crossbeam_no_atomic,crossbeam_sanitize_thread) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7dc38a81 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/crossbeam-utils-5593ca2e94a79bb0/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..5ed8f725 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build_script_build-78ea327f373ae35b b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build_script_build-78ea327f373ae35b new file mode 100755 index 00000000..5ed8f725 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build_script_build-78ea327f373ae35b differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build_script_build-78ea327f373ae35b.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build_script_build-78ea327f373ae35b.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..082eda1c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build_script_build-78ea327f373ae35b.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build_script_build-78ea327f373ae35b.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-78ea327f373ae35b/build_script_build-78ea327f373ae35b: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1dc45513 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +cargo:warning=building for no_std disables httparse SIMD diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9d74082f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/httparse-ef962b2928193e65/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..29f468b2 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build_script_build-0d2237b9fa766ff5 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build_script_build-0d2237b9fa766ff5 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..29f468b2 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build_script_build-0d2237b9fa766ff5 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build_script_build-0d2237b9fa766ff5.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build_script_build-0d2237b9fa766ff5.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b6b0fa39 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build_script_build-0d2237b9fa766ff5.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build_script_build-0d2237b9fa766ff5.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-0d2237b9fa766ff5/build_script_build-0d2237b9fa766ff5: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..30ced529 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/output @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=ICU4X_DATA_DIR +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(icu4c_enable_renaming) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0934bc38 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_normalizer_data-a92d98b2db83e929/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..9de1522c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build_script_build-67d26df1ecbf6e0e b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build_script_build-67d26df1ecbf6e0e new file mode 100755 index 00000000..9de1522c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build_script_build-67d26df1ecbf6e0e differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build_script_build-67d26df1ecbf6e0e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build_script_build-67d26df1ecbf6e0e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4c900a8f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build_script_build-67d26df1ecbf6e0e.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build_script_build-67d26df1ecbf6e0e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-67d26df1ecbf6e0e/build_script_build-67d26df1ecbf6e0e: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..30ced529 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/output @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=ICU4X_DATA_DIR +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(icu4c_enable_renaming) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..63082c04 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/icu_properties_data-7b4c395cee829008/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..9508b64a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build_script_build-309a881db67eafd2 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build_script_build-309a881db67eafd2 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..9508b64a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build_script_build-309a881db67eafd2 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build_script_build-309a881db67eafd2.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build_script_build-309a881db67eafd2.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0191b2eb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build_script_build-309a881db67eafd2.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build_script_build-309a881db67eafd2.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-309a881db67eafd2/build_script_build-309a881db67eafd2: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b76e2ad7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/output @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_FREEBSD_VERSION +cargo:rustc-cfg=freebsd12 +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_MUSL_V1_2_3 +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_LINUX_TIME_BITS64 +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_GNU_FILE_OFFSET_BITS +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_GNU_TIME_BITS +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(emscripten_old_stat_abi) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(espidf_time32) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd10) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd11) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd12) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd13) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd14) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd15) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(gnu_file_offset_bits64) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(gnu_time_bits64) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(libc_deny_warnings) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(linux_time_bits64) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(musl_v1_2_3) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(vxworks_lt_25_09) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(target_os,values("switch","aix","ohos","hurd","rtems","visionos","nuttx","cygwin")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(target_env,values("illumos","wasi","aix","ohos","nto71_iosock","nto80")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(target_arch,values("loongarch64","mips32r6","mips64r6","csky")) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..db322849 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-ab18770696fc590a/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b76e2ad7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/output @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_FREEBSD_VERSION +cargo:rustc-cfg=freebsd12 +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_MUSL_V1_2_3 +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_LINUX_TIME_BITS64 +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_GNU_FILE_OFFSET_BITS +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUST_LIBC_UNSTABLE_GNU_TIME_BITS +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(emscripten_old_stat_abi) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(espidf_time32) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd10) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd11) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd12) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd13) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd14) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(freebsd15) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(gnu_file_offset_bits64) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(gnu_time_bits64) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(libc_deny_warnings) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(linux_time_bits64) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(musl_v1_2_3) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(vxworks_lt_25_09) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(target_os,values("switch","aix","ohos","hurd","rtems","visionos","nuttx","cygwin")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(target_env,values("illumos","wasi","aix","ohos","nto71_iosock","nto80")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(target_arch,values("loongarch64","mips32r6","mips64r6","csky")) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..533be2e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-d23fee64d07144ce/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..81ef9580 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build_script_build-dd226a47df37f279 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build_script_build-dd226a47df37f279 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..81ef9580 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build_script_build-dd226a47df37f279 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build_script_build-dd226a47df37f279.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build_script_build-dd226a47df37f279.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a4bc7dbd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build_script_build-dd226a47df37f279.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build_script_build-dd226a47df37f279.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/libc-dd226a47df37f279/build_script_build-dd226a47df37f279: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5acddfea --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/output @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(has_total_cmp) +cargo:rustc-cfg=has_total_cmp +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..912f6391 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-a87aa9d62b9c616b/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..f2507f5b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build_script_build-d33e8f76298fe0c5 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build_script_build-d33e8f76298fe0c5 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..f2507f5b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build_script_build-d33e8f76298fe0c5 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build_script_build-d33e8f76298fe0c5.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build_script_build-d33e8f76298fe0c5.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d840e99a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build_script_build-d33e8f76298fe0c5.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build_script_build-d33e8f76298fe0c5.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/num-traits-d33e8f76298fe0c5/build_script_build-d33e8f76298fe0c5: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..738185c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/output @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_literal_fromstr) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(feature, values("protocol_feature_paste")) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b86bae58 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-7a04688c692878f0/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..d391472f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build_script_build-c090709b5b0c5de5 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build_script_build-c090709b5b0c5de5 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..d391472f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build_script_build-c090709b5b0c5de5 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build_script_build-c090709b5b0c5de5.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build_script_build-c090709b5b0c5de5.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e12dd98c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build_script_build-c090709b5b0c5de5.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build_script_build-c090709b5b0c5de5.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/paste-c090709b5b0c5de5/build_script_build-c090709b5b0c5de5: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d3d235a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/output @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(fuzzing) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_is_available) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_literal_byte_character) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_literal_c_string) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_source_text) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(proc_macro_span) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(proc_macro_span_file) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(proc_macro_span_location) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(procmacro2_backtrace) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(procmacro2_build_probe) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(procmacro2_nightly_testing) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(procmacro2_semver_exempt) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(randomize_layout) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(span_locations) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(super_unstable) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(wrap_proc_macro) +cargo:rerun-if-changed=src/probe/proc_macro_span.rs +cargo:rustc-cfg=wrap_proc_macro +cargo:rerun-if-changed=src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs +cargo:rustc-cfg=proc_macro_span_location +cargo:rerun-if-changed=src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs +cargo:rustc-cfg=proc_macro_span_file +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..21bb6d3d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-01b6d2c5fdefd348/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..d63bfa75 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build_script_build-42f146b35605563a b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build_script_build-42f146b35605563a new file mode 100755 index 00000000..d63bfa75 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build_script_build-42f146b35605563a differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build_script_build-42f146b35605563a.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build_script_build-42f146b35605563a.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2e050f1e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build_script_build-42f146b35605563a.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build_script_build-42f146b35605563a.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-42f146b35605563a/build_script_build-42f146b35605563a: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d3d235a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/output @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(fuzzing) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_is_available) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_literal_byte_character) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_literal_c_string) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_source_text) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(proc_macro_span) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(proc_macro_span_file) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(proc_macro_span_location) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(procmacro2_backtrace) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(procmacro2_build_probe) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(procmacro2_nightly_testing) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(procmacro2_semver_exempt) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(randomize_layout) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(span_locations) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(super_unstable) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(wrap_proc_macro) +cargo:rerun-if-changed=src/probe/proc_macro_span.rs +cargo:rustc-cfg=wrap_proc_macro +cargo:rerun-if-changed=src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs +cargo:rustc-cfg=proc_macro_span_location +cargo:rerun-if-changed=src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs +cargo:rustc-cfg=proc_macro_span_file +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6f0190b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-9d31ed45393d2089/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..a5f6a19a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build_script_build-bdf9ed00dad30299 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build_script_build-bdf9ed00dad30299 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..a5f6a19a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build_script_build-bdf9ed00dad30299 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build_script_build-bdf9ed00dad30299.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build_script_build-bdf9ed00dad30299.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cc51538a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build_script_build-bdf9ed00dad30299.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build_script_build-bdf9ed00dad30299.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/proc-macro2-bdf9ed00dad30299/build_script_build-bdf9ed00dad30299: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..3891b836 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build_script_build-03d3df1af8178ab4 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build_script_build-03d3df1af8178ab4 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..3891b836 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build_script_build-03d3df1af8178ab4 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build_script_build-03d3df1af8178ab4.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build_script_build-03d3df1af8178ab4.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2dba0c90 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build_script_build-03d3df1af8178ab4.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build_script_build-03d3df1af8178ab4.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-03d3df1af8178ab4/build_script_build-03d3df1af8178ab4: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6d81eca2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/output @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_diagnostic_namespace) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5c261b0d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-4fccd938ab7a0173/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6d81eca2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/output @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_diagnostic_namespace) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3c57279f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-71587e147ef7ded2/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..8685306b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build_script_build-f1ef21cd396e4727 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build_script_build-f1ef21cd396e4727 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..8685306b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build_script_build-f1ef21cd396e4727 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build_script_build-f1ef21cd396e4727.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build_script_build-f1ef21cd396e4727.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4e978e16 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build_script_build-f1ef21cd396e4727.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build_script_build-f1ef21cd396e4727.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/quote-f1ef21cd396e4727/build_script_build-f1ef21cd396e4727: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..59f11642 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build_script_build-83365e3fb08a807f b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build_script_build-83365e3fb08a807f new file mode 100755 index 00000000..59f11642 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build_script_build-83365e3fb08a807f differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build_script_build-83365e3fb08a807f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build_script_build-83365e3fb08a807f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ce069874 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build_script_build-83365e3fb08a807f.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build_script_build-83365e3fb08a807f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-83365e3fb08a807f/build_script_build-83365e3fb08a807f: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/out/built.rs b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/out/built.rs new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0b352997 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/out/built.rs @@ -0,0 +1,138 @@ +// +// EVERYTHING BELOW THIS POINT WAS AUTO-GENERATED DURING COMPILATION. DO NOT MODIFY. +// +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The Continuous Integration platform detected during compilation."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static CI_PLATFORM: Option<&str> = None; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The full version."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_VERSION: &str = "0.8.1"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The major version."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_VERSION_MAJOR: &str = "0"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The minor version."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_VERSION_MINOR: &str = "8"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The patch version."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_VERSION_PATCH: &str = "1"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The pre-release version."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_VERSION_PRE: &str = ""; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"A colon-separated list of authors."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_AUTHORS: &str = "Thomas Daede "; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The name of the package."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_NAME: &str = "rav1e"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The description."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_DESCRIPTION: &str = "The fastest and safest AV1 encoder"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The homepage."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_HOMEPAGE: &str = ""; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The license."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_LICENSE: &str = "BSD-2-Clause"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The source repository as advertised in Cargo.toml."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PKG_REPOSITORY: &str = "https://github.com/xiph/rav1e/"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The target triple that was being compiled for."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static TARGET: &str = "x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The host triple of the rust compiler."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static HOST: &str = "x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"`release` for release builds, `debug` for other builds."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static PROFILE: &str = "debug"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The compiler that cargo resolved to use."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static RUSTC: &str = "/home/codespace/.rustup/toolchains/stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/rustc"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The documentation generator that cargo resolved to use."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static RUSTDOC: &str = "/home/codespace/.rustup/toolchains/stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/rustdoc"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"Value of OPT_LEVEL for the profile used during compilation."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static OPT_LEVEL: &str = "0"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The parallelism that was specified during compilation."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static NUM_JOBS: u32 = 2; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"Value of DEBUG for the profile used during compilation."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static DEBUG: bool = true; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The features that were enabled during compilation."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static FEATURES: [&str; 1] = ["THREADING"]; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The features as a comma-separated string."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static FEATURES_STR: &str = "THREADING"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The features as above, as lowercase strings."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static FEATURES_LOWERCASE: [&str; 1] = ["threading"]; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The feature-string as above, from lowercase strings."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static FEATURES_LOWERCASE_STR: &str = "threading"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The output of `/home/codespace/.rustup/toolchains/stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/rustc -V`"#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static RUSTC_VERSION: &str = "rustc 1.92.0 (ded5c06cf 2025-12-08)"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The output of `/home/codespace/.rustup/toolchains/stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/rustdoc -V`; empty string if `/home/codespace/.rustup/toolchains/stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/rustdoc -V` failed to execute"#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static RUSTDOC_VERSION: &str = "rustdoc 1.92.0 (ded5c06cf 2025-12-08)"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The target architecture, given by `CARGO_CFG_TARGET_ARCH`."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static CFG_TARGET_ARCH: &str = "x86_64"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The endianness, given by `CARGO_CFG_TARGET_ENDIAN`."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static CFG_ENDIAN: &str = "little"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The toolchain-environment, given by `CARGO_CFG_TARGET_ENV`."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static CFG_ENV: &str = "gnu"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The OS-family, given by `CARGO_CFG_TARGET_FAMILY`."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static CFG_FAMILY: &str = "unix"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The operating system, given by `CARGO_CFG_TARGET_OS`."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static CFG_OS: &str = "linux"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The pointer width, given by `CARGO_CFG_TARGET_POINTER_WIDTH`."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static CFG_POINTER_WIDTH: &str = "64"; +#[allow(clippy::needless_raw_string_hashes)] +#[doc=r#"The override-variables that were used during compilation."#] +#[allow(dead_code)] +pub static OVERRIDE_VARIABLES_USED: [&str; 0] = []; +// +// EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS POINT WAS AUTO-GENERATED DURING COMPILATION. DO NOT MODIFY. +// diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..24051dc2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/output @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +cargo:rustc-env=PROFILE=debug +cargo:rustc-env=CARGO_CFG_TARGET_FEATURE=fxsr,sse,sse2 +cargo:rustc-env=CARGO_ENCODED_RUSTFLAGS= diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a5bf24db --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..ff722c7e Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build_script_build-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build_script_build-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..ff722c7e Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build_script_build-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build_script_build-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build_script_build-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..23c705be --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build_script_build-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build_script_build-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0/build_script_build-1bc1ef21b7aae4c0: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d15ba9ab --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..392d98da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rayon-core-c8581eef8cc27647/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..4b7373e6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build_script_build-7b81615306c4d978 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build_script_build-7b81615306c4d978 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..4b7373e6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build_script_build-7b81615306c4d978 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build_script_build-7b81615306c4d978.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build_script_build-7b81615306c4d978.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a1c6b9ac --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build_script_build-7b81615306c4d978.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build_script_build-7b81615306c4d978.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-7b81615306c4d978/build_script_build-7b81615306c4d978: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/00c879ee3285a50d-montgomery.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/00c879ee3285a50d-montgomery.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7c2a96b6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/00c879ee3285a50d-montgomery.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/00c879ee3285a50d-montgomery_inv.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/00c879ee3285a50d-montgomery_inv.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..adf47f4f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/00c879ee3285a50d-montgomery_inv.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/0bbbd18bda93c05b-aes_nohw.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/0bbbd18bda93c05b-aes_nohw.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c32c2607 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/0bbbd18bda93c05b-aes_nohw.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/25ac62e5b3c53843-curve25519.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/25ac62e5b3c53843-curve25519.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..dd538e01 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/25ac62e5b3c53843-curve25519.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/25ac62e5b3c53843-curve25519_64_adx.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/25ac62e5b3c53843-curve25519_64_adx.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1c5a673b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/25ac62e5b3c53843-curve25519_64_adx.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-ecp_nistz.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-ecp_nistz.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4f9785b8 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-ecp_nistz.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-gfp_p256.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-gfp_p256.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fa36c43f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-gfp_p256.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-gfp_p384.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-gfp_p384.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ef76907f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-gfp_p384.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-p256-nistz.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-p256-nistz.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..93deb2aa Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-p256-nistz.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-p256.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-p256.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bd153de2 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a0330e891e733f4e-p256.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-constant_time_test.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-constant_time_test.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..647f8947 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-constant_time_test.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-cpu_intel.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-cpu_intel.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..af86b277 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-cpu_intel.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-crypto.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-crypto.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..07da7a97 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-crypto.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-mem.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-mem.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9b866096 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/a4019cc0736b0423-mem.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/aaa1ba3e455ee2e1-limbs.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/aaa1ba3e455ee2e1-limbs.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2b20ba43 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/aaa1ba3e455ee2e1-limbs.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-aes-gcm-avx2-x86_64-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-aes-gcm-avx2-x86_64-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6863d669 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-aes-gcm-avx2-x86_64-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-aesni-gcm-x86_64-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-aesni-gcm-x86_64-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f72123fe Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-aesni-gcm-x86_64-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-aesni-x86_64-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-aesni-x86_64-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..65ac52ee Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-aesni-x86_64-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-chacha-x86_64-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-chacha-x86_64-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bb0e1581 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-chacha-x86_64-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-chacha20_poly1305_x86_64-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-chacha20_poly1305_x86_64-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d25a959a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-chacha20_poly1305_x86_64-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-ghash-x86_64-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-ghash-x86_64-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0e03dd07 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-ghash-x86_64-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-p256-x86_64-asm-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-p256-x86_64-asm-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2bb4d246 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-p256-x86_64-asm-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-sha256-x86_64-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-sha256-x86_64-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..42c63091 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-sha256-x86_64-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-sha512-x86_64-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-sha512-x86_64-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..53c235df Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-sha512-x86_64-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-vpaes-x86_64-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-vpaes-x86_64-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..65386b27 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-vpaes-x86_64-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-x86_64-mont-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-x86_64-mont-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..08fedc16 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-x86_64-mont-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-x86_64-mont5-elf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-x86_64-mont5-elf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8aa7de06 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/c322a0bcc369f531-x86_64-mont5-elf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/d5a9841f3dc6e253-poly1305.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/d5a9841f3dc6e253-poly1305.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7647619e Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/d5a9841f3dc6e253-poly1305.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/e165cd818145c705-fiat_curve25519_adx_mul.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/e165cd818145c705-fiat_curve25519_adx_mul.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..163e773d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/e165cd818145c705-fiat_curve25519_adx_mul.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/e165cd818145c705-fiat_curve25519_adx_square.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/e165cd818145c705-fiat_curve25519_adx_square.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..010571e4 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/e165cd818145c705-fiat_curve25519_adx_square.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/libring_core_0_17_14_.a b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/libring_core_0_17_14_.a new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2ceea47c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/libring_core_0_17_14_.a differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/libring_core_0_17_14__test.a b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/libring_core_0_17_14__test.a new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f513fc4f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out/libring_core_0_17_14__test.a differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6852ba6e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/output @@ -0,0 +1,158 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_MANIFEST_DIR +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_PKG_NAME +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MAJOR +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MINOR +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PATCH +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PRE +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_MANIFEST_LINKS +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RING_PREGENERATE_ASM +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=OUT_DIR +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_CFG_TARGET_ARCH +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_CFG_TARGET_OS +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_CFG_TARGET_ENV +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CARGO_CFG_TARGET_ENDIAN +OPT_LEVEL = Some(0) +OUT_DIR = Some(/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out) +TARGET = Some(x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) +CARGO_ENCODED_RUSTFLAGS = Some() +HOST = Some(x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CC_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu +CC_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CC_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu +CC_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=HOST_CC +HOST_CC = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CC +CC = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CC_ENABLE_DEBUG_OUTPUT +RUSTC_WRAPPER = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CRATE_CC_NO_DEFAULTS +CRATE_CC_NO_DEFAULTS = None +DEBUG = Some(true) +CARGO_CFG_TARGET_FEATURE = Some(fxsr,sse,sse2) +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CFLAGS +CFLAGS = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=HOST_CFLAGS +HOST_CFLAGS = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CFLAGS_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu +CFLAGS_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CFLAGS_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu +CFLAGS_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu = None +cargo:rustc-link-lib=static=ring_core_0_17_14_ +OPT_LEVEL = Some(0) +OUT_DIR = Some(/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out) +TARGET = Some(x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) +CARGO_ENCODED_RUSTFLAGS = Some() +HOST = Some(x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CC_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu +CC_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CC_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu +CC_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=HOST_CC +HOST_CC = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CC +CC = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CC_ENABLE_DEBUG_OUTPUT +RUSTC_WRAPPER = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CRATE_CC_NO_DEFAULTS +CRATE_CC_NO_DEFAULTS = None +DEBUG = Some(true) +CARGO_CFG_TARGET_FEATURE = Some(fxsr,sse,sse2) +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CFLAGS +CFLAGS = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=HOST_CFLAGS +HOST_CFLAGS = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CFLAGS_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu +CFLAGS_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu = None +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=CFLAGS_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu +CFLAGS_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu = None +cargo:rustc-link-lib=static=ring_core_0_17_14__test +cargo:rustc-link-search=native=/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/poly1305/poly1305_arm_asm.S +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/poly1305/poly1305_arm.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/poly1305/poly1305.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/cipher/asm/chacha20_poly1305_x86_64.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/cipher/asm/chacha20_poly1305_armv8.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/limbs/limbs.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/limbs/limbs.inl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/limbs/limbs.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/crypto.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/bn/internal.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/bn/asm/x86_64-mont.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/bn/asm/armv4-mont.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/bn/asm/armv8-mont.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/bn/asm/x86_64-mont5.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/bn/asm/x86-mont.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/bn/montgomery.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/bn/montgomery_inv.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/aes_nohw.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/ghash-armv4.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/ghash-neon-armv8.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/ghash-x86.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aesni-gcm-x86_64.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/ghash-x86_64.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aes-gcm-avx2-x86_64.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/bsaes-armv7.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aesni-x86_64.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/vpaes-armv8.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/vpaes-x86_64.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/vpaes-x86.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aesni-x86.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aesv8-gcm-armv8.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/ghashv8-armx.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/aesv8-armx.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/aes/asm/vpaes-armv7.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/sha/asm/sha512-armv8.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/sha/asm/sha512-armv4.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/sha/asm/sha256-armv4.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/sha/asm/sha512-x86_64.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/gfp_p256.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/ecp_nistz384.inl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256_shared.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256-nistz.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/ecp_nistz384.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/util.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256-nistz-table.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/ecp_nistz.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/ecp_nistz.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256-nistz.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/gfp_p384.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/asm/p256-x86_64-asm.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/asm/p256-armv8-asm.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/fipsmodule/ec/p256_table.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/mem.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/internal.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/perlasm/x86_64-xlate.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/perlasm/x86asm.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/perlasm/arm-xlate.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/perlasm/x86nasm.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/perlasm/x86gas.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/cpu_intel.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/curve25519/curve25519_tables.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/curve25519/curve25519_64_adx.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/curve25519/internal.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/curve25519/asm/x25519-asm-arm.S +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/curve25519/curve25519.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/constant_time_test.c +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/chacha/asm/chacha-x86.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/chacha/asm/chacha-armv8.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/chacha/asm/chacha-armv4.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=crypto/chacha/asm/chacha-x86_64.pl +cargo:rerun-if-changed=include/ring-core/check.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=include/ring-core/mem.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=include/ring-core/base.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=include/ring-core/target.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=include/ring-core/aes.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=include/ring-core/type_check.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=include/ring-core/asm_base.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=third_party/fiat/p256_64_msvc.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=third_party/fiat/p256_64.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=third_party/fiat/curve25519_64.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=third_party/fiat/curve25519_64_adx.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=third_party/fiat/p256_32.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=third_party/fiat/curve25519_32.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=third_party/fiat/curve25519_64_msvc.h +cargo:rerun-if-changed=third_party/fiat/asm/fiat_curve25519_adx_square.S +cargo:rerun-if-changed=third_party/fiat/asm/fiat_curve25519_adx_mul.S +cargo:rerun-if-changed=third_party/fiat/LICENSE diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..401e77f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/ring-bab49feff220bce6/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..cf853b75 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build_script_build-0fa826f88cfceea7 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build_script_build-0fa826f88cfceea7 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..cf853b75 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build_script_build-0fa826f88cfceea7 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build_script_build-0fa826f88cfceea7.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build_script_build-0fa826f88cfceea7.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0afb5f9e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build_script_build-0fa826f88cfceea7.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build_script_build-0fa826f88cfceea7.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-0fa826f88cfceea7/build_script_build-0fa826f88cfceea7: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..179b4ed4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rustls-bf2c3574ea7de41a/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ed2927ea --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +#[doc(hidden)] +pub mod __private228 { + #[doc(hidden)] + pub use crate::private::*; +} +use serde_core::__private228 as serde_core_private; diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..854cb538 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/output @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs +cargo:rustc-cfg=if_docsrs_then_no_serde_core +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(feature, values("result")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(if_docsrs_then_no_serde_core) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_core_cstr) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_core_error) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_core_net) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_core_num_saturating) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_diagnostic_namespace) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_serde_derive) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_std_atomic) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_std_atomic64) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_target_has_atomic) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8faac10d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..c79818d6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build_script_build-49a10a9683562367 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build_script_build-49a10a9683562367 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..c79818d6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build_script_build-49a10a9683562367 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build_script_build-49a10a9683562367.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build_script_build-49a10a9683562367.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ce2f2bdb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build_script_build-49a10a9683562367.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build_script_build-49a10a9683562367.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-49a10a9683562367/build_script_build-49a10a9683562367: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..be27db91 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build_script_build-31b971cf163f0f6c b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build_script_build-31b971cf163f0f6c new file mode 100755 index 00000000..be27db91 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build_script_build-31b971cf163f0f6c differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build_script_build-31b971cf163f0f6c.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build_script_build-31b971cf163f0f6c.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4a214271 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build_script_build-31b971cf163f0f6c.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build_script_build-31b971cf163f0f6c.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-31b971cf163f0f6c/build_script_build-31b971cf163f0f6c: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/out/private.rs b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/out/private.rs new file mode 100644 index 00000000..08f232bb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/out/private.rs @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +#[doc(hidden)] +pub mod __private228 { + #[doc(hidden)] + pub use crate::private::*; +} diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..98a6653d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/output @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(if_docsrs_then_no_serde_core) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_core_cstr) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_core_error) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_core_net) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_core_num_saturating) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_diagnostic_namespace) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_serde_derive) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_std_atomic) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_std_atomic64) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_target_has_atomic) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..00db3eaa --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..32010770 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/output @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(fast_arithmetic, values("32", "64")) +cargo:rustc-cfg=fast_arithmetic="64" diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cc1d2479 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-1c1c53476685c2cd/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..32010770 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/output @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(fast_arithmetic, values("32", "64")) +cargo:rustc-cfg=fast_arithmetic="64" diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..439c8cb7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-2c7de84b408ccf49/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..150d4e1f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build_script_build-dc476119f29b400e b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build_script_build-dc476119f29b400e new file mode 100755 index 00000000..150d4e1f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build_script_build-dc476119f29b400e differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build_script_build-dc476119f29b400e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build_script_build-dc476119f29b400e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..21b07a36 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build_script_build-dc476119f29b400e.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build_script_build-dc476119f29b400e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-dc476119f29b400e/build_script_build-dc476119f29b400e: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..6371d16d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build_script_build-e91cbe65ca0a890a b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build_script_build-e91cbe65ca0a890a new file mode 100755 index 00000000..6371d16d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build_script_build-e91cbe65ca0a890a differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build_script_build-e91cbe65ca0a890a.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build_script_build-e91cbe65ca0a890a.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..18106906 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build_script_build-e91cbe65ca0a890a.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build_script_build-e91cbe65ca0a890a.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_json-e91cbe65ca0a890a/build_script_build-e91cbe65ca0a890a: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..e8f2fd54 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build_script_build-31df43c19cb96785 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build_script_build-31df43c19cb96785 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..e8f2fd54 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build_script_build-31df43c19cb96785 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build_script_build-31df43c19cb96785.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build_script_build-31df43c19cb96785.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..849af6c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build_script_build-31df43c19cb96785.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build_script_build-31df43c19cb96785.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-31df43c19cb96785/build_script_build-31df43c19cb96785: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/out/private.rs b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/out/private.rs new file mode 100644 index 00000000..06916b01 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/out/private.rs @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +#[doc(hidden)] +pub mod __private17 { + #[doc(hidden)] + pub use crate::private::*; +} diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f62a8d10 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/output @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build/probe.rs +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(error_generic_member_access) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(thiserror_nightly_testing) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(thiserror_no_backtrace_type) +cargo:rerun-if-env-changed=RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a20bddcf --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build-script-build b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build-script-build new file mode 100755 index 00000000..24deaf89 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build-script-build differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build_script_build-3516f3a23aa15e24 b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build_script_build-3516f3a23aa15e24 new file mode 100755 index 00000000..24deaf89 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build_script_build-3516f3a23aa15e24 differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build_script_build-3516f3a23aa15e24.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build_script_build-3516f3a23aa15e24.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cda55056 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build_script_build-3516f3a23aa15e24.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build_script_build-3516f3a23aa15e24.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/build.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-3516f3a23aa15e24/build_script_build-3516f3a23aa15e24: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/build.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/build.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/invoked.timestamp b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/invoked.timestamp new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e00328da --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/invoked.timestamp @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +This file has an mtime of when this was started. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..08e3b31b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/output @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs +cargo:rerun-if-changed=Cargo.toml +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_zerocopy_simd_x86_avx12_1_89_0) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(rust, values("1.89.0")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_zerocopy_core_error_1_81_0) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(rust, values("1.81.0")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_zerocopy_diagnostic_on_unimplemented_1_78_0) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(rust, values("1.78.0")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_zerocopy_generic_bounds_in_const_fn_1_61_0) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(rust, values("1.61.0")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_zerocopy_target_has_atomics_1_60_0) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(rust, values("1.60.0")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_zerocopy_aarch64_simd_1_59_0) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(rust, values("1.59.0")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(no_zerocopy_panic_in_const_and_vec_try_reserve_1_57_0) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(rust, values("1.57.0")) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(doc_cfg) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(kani) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(__ZEROCOPY_INTERNAL_USE_ONLY_NIGHTLY_FEATURES_IN_TESTS) +cargo:rustc-check-cfg=cfg(coverage_nightly) diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/root-output b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/root-output new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4af4982c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/root-output @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/out \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/stderr b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/zerocopy-811603046cc0329a/stderr new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a558367e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591.d: src/main.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-33103e4b4f1dc591: src/main.rs + +src/main.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc new file mode 100755 index 00000000..18bad791 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..770b9ce2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc.d: src/main.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-dba843948126e3bc: src/main.rs + +src/main.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..46c8a8f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9.d: src/main.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/Rust_Enum-f3e696aed00e6aa9: src/main.rs + +src/main.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1cd60307 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/adler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/adler2-2.0.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/adler2-2.0.1/src/algo.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libadler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/adler2-2.0.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/adler2-2.0.1/src/algo.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libadler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/adler2-2.0.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/adler2-2.0.1/src/algo.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/adler2-2.0.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/adler2-2.0.1/src/algo.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..575c09ba --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/aligned-3c0aacada22e8983.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-0.4.3/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned-3c0aacada22e8983.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-0.4.3/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned-3c0aacada22e8983.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-0.4.3/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-0.4.3/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/aligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/aligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..196e5f86 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/aligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/aligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-vec-0.6.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-vec-0.6.4/src/raw.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-vec-0.6.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-vec-0.6.4/src/raw.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-vec-0.6.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-vec-0.6.4/src/raw.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-vec-0.6.4/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/aligned-vec-0.6.4/src/raw.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e94fea46 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.d @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/anyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/backtrace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/context.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/ensure.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/fmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/kind.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/wrapper.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libanyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/backtrace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/context.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/ensure.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/fmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/kind.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/wrapper.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libanyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/backtrace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/context.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/ensure.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/fmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/kind.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/wrapper.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/backtrace.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/chain.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/context.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/ensure.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/fmt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/kind.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/ptr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/anyhow-1.0.100/src/wrapper.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6f98c67c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/arg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arg_enum_proc_macro-0.3.4/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arg_enum_proc_macro-0.3.4/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arg_enum_proc_macro-0.3.4/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5ab68c93 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.d @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/arrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/arrayvec_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/arrayvec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/array_string.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/char.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/utils.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/arrayvec_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/arrayvec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/array_string.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/char.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/utils.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/arrayvec_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/arrayvec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/array_string.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/char.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/utils.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/arrayvec_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/arrayvec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/array_string.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/char.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/errors.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/arrayvec-0.7.6/src/utils.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/as_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/as_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5cd1a74b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/as_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/as_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/as-slice-0.2.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libas_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/as-slice-0.2.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libas_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/as-slice-0.2.1/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/as-slice-0.2.1/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..02cf13ee --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/autocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/rustc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/version.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libautocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/rustc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/version.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libautocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/rustc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/version.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/rustc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/autocfg-1.5.0/src/version.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/av1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/av1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ac4aeb18 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/av1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.d @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/av1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/create.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff/solver.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff/solver/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/util.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/create.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff/solver.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff/solver/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/util.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/create.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff/solver.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff/solver/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/util.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/create.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff/solver.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/diff/solver/util.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/parse.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av1-grain-0.2.5/src/util.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/av_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/av_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c74d85c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/av_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.d @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/av_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/fast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/importance.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/inter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/intra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/standard.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/cpu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/block.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/frame.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/hadamard.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/mc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/motion.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/plane.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/prediction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/sad.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/satd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/superblock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/tile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/y4m.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/fast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/importance.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/inter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/intra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/standard.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/cpu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/block.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/frame.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/hadamard.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/mc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/motion.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/plane.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/prediction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/sad.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/satd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/superblock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/tile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/y4m.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/fast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/importance.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/inter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/intra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/standard.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/cpu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/block.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/frame.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/hadamard.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/mc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/motion.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/plane.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/prediction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/sad.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/satd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/superblock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/tile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/y4m.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/fast.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/importance.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/inter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/intra.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/analyze/standard.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/cpu.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/block.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/frame.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/hadamard.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/mc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/motion.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/plane.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/prediction.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/sad.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/satd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/superblock.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/data/tile.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/av-scenechange-0.14.1/src/y4m.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/avif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/avif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f6633b40 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/avif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/avif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/boxes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/constants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/writer.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libavif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/boxes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/constants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/writer.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libavif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/boxes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/constants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/writer.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/boxes.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/constants.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/avif-serialize-0.8.6/src/writer.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2432df7c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.d @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/base64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/chunked_encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/display.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/read/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/read/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/encoder_string_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/decode_suffix.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/alphabet.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/prelude.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbase64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/chunked_encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/display.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/read/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/read/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/encoder_string_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/decode_suffix.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/alphabet.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/prelude.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbase64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/chunked_encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/display.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/read/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/read/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/encoder_string_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/decode_suffix.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/alphabet.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/prelude.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/chunked_encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/display.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/read/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/read/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/write/encoder_string_writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/decode.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/engine/general_purpose/decode_suffix.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/alphabet.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/encode.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/decode.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/base64-0.22.1/src/prelude.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c0e7d6b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bit_field-0.10.3/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bit_field-0.10.3/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bit_field-0.10.3/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bit_field-0.10.3/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c4f648fd --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.d @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/parser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/public.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/external.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/parser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/public.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/external.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/parser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/public.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/external.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/parser.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/traits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/public.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/internal.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitflags-2.10.0/src/external.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b0876334 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/write.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/write.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/write.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/huffman.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/read.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bitstream-io-4.9.0/src/write.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/built-3504150f55669f03.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/built-3504150f55669f03.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1d919a99 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/built-3504150f55669f03.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/built-3504150f55669f03.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/environment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/../README.md + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbuilt-3504150f55669f03.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/environment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/../README.md + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbuilt-3504150f55669f03.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/environment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/../README.md + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/environment.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/util.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/built-0.8.0/src/../README.md: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8fcabe43 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.d @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/allocation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/anybitpattern.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/checked.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/zeroable.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/zeroable_in_option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/pod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/pod_in_option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/no_uninit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/contiguous.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/offset_of.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/transparent.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/allocation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/anybitpattern.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/checked.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/zeroable.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/zeroable_in_option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/pod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/pod_in_option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/no_uninit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/contiguous.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/offset_of.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/transparent.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/allocation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/anybitpattern.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/checked.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/zeroable.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/zeroable_in_option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/pod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/pod_in_option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/no_uninit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/contiguous.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/offset_of.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/transparent.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/allocation.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/anybitpattern.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/checked.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/internal.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/zeroable.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/zeroable_in_option.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/pod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/pod_in_option.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/no_uninit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/contiguous.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/offset_of.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytemuck-1.24.0/src/transparent.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/byteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/byteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..189ffac4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/byteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/byteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/byteorder-lite-0.1.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/byteorder-lite-0.1.0/src/io.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbyteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/byteorder-lite-0.1.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/byteorder-lite-0.1.0/src/io.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbyteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/byteorder-lite-0.1.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/byteorder-lite-0.1.0/src/io.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/byteorder-lite-0.1.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/byteorder-lite-0.1.0/src/io.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f2aac422 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b.d @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/bytes-58ca14ebe551896b.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/buf_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/buf_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/limit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/take.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/uninit_slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/vec_deque.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/bytes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/bytes_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/hex.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/loom.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytes-58ca14ebe551896b.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/buf_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/buf_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/limit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/take.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/uninit_slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/vec_deque.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/bytes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/bytes_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/hex.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/loom.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytes-58ca14ebe551896b.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/buf_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/buf_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/limit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/take.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/uninit_slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/vec_deque.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/bytes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/bytes_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/hex.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/loom.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/buf_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/buf_mut.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/chain.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/limit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/reader.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/take.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/uninit_slice.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/vec_deque.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/buf/writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/bytes.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/bytes_mut.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/debug.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/fmt/hex.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bytes-1.11.0/src/loom.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1ff0283e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e.d @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/cc-91b2768f3250ba3e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/apple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/generated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/llvm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/parser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/command_helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/tool.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/tempfile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/utilities.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/flags.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/detect_compiler_family.c + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcc-91b2768f3250ba3e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/apple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/generated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/llvm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/parser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/command_helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/tool.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/tempfile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/utilities.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/flags.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/detect_compiler_family.c + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcc-91b2768f3250ba3e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/apple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/generated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/llvm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/parser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/command_helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/tool.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/tempfile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/utilities.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/flags.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/detect_compiler_family.c + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/apple.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/generated.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/llvm.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/target/parser.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/command_helpers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/tool.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/tempfile.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/utilities.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/flags.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cc-1.2.49/src/detect_compiler_family.c: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/cfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/cfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..58c19b79 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/cfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/cfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cfg-if-1.0.4/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cfg-if-1.0.4/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cfg-if-1.0.4/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/cfg-if-1.0.4/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..eb4546a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/color_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/color_quant-1.1.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/color_quant-1.1.0/src/math.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcolor_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/color_quant-1.1.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/color_quant-1.1.0/src/math.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcolor_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/color_quant-1.1.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/color_quant-1.1.0/src/math.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/color_quant-1.1.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/color_quant-1.1.0/src/math.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/core2-1da2283f0633ed42.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/core2-1da2283f0633ed42.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f1408363 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/core2-1da2283f0633ed42.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/core2-1da2283f0633ed42.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/core2-0.4.0/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcore2-1da2283f0633ed42.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/core2-0.4.0/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcore2-1da2283f0633ed42.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/core2-0.4.0/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/core2-0.4.0/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..686a9d15 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.d @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/baseline.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/combine.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/specialized/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/specialized/pclmulqdq.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/baseline.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/combine.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/specialized/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/specialized/pclmulqdq.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/baseline.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/combine.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/specialized/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/specialized/pclmulqdq.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/baseline.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/combine.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/specialized/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/table.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crc32fast-1.5.0/src/specialized/pclmulqdq.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..97a22434 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-deque-0.8.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-deque-0.8.6/src/deque.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-deque-0.8.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-deque-0.8.6/src/deque.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-deque-0.8.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-deque-0.8.6/src/deque.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-deque-0.8.6/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-deque-0.8.6/src/deque.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c6530738 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.d @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/atomic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/collector.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/deferred.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/epoch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/guard.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/list.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/once_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/queue.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/default.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/atomic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/collector.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/deferred.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/epoch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/guard.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/list.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/once_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/queue.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/default.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/atomic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/collector.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/deferred.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/epoch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/guard.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/list.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/once_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/queue.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/default.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/atomic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/collector.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/deferred.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/epoch.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/guard.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/internal.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/list.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/once_lock.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/sync/queue.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-epoch-0.9.18/src/default.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0aed3f59 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.d @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/crossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/seq_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/atomic_cell.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/consume.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/cache_padded.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/backoff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/once_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/parker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/sharded_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/wait_group.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/thread.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/seq_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/atomic_cell.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/consume.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/cache_padded.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/backoff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/once_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/parker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/sharded_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/wait_group.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/thread.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/seq_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/atomic_cell.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/consume.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/cache_padded.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/backoff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/once_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/parker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/sharded_lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/wait_group.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/thread.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/seq_lock.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/atomic_cell.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/atomic/consume.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/cache_padded.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/backoff.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/once_lock.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/parker.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/sharded_lock.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/sync/wait_group.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/crossbeam-utils-0.8.21/src/thread.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ba377b18 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/debug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/new_debug_unreachable-1.0.6/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdebug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/new_debug_unreachable-1.0.6/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdebug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/new_debug_unreachable-1.0.6/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/new_debug_unreachable-1.0.6/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b667ed89 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/displaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/expand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/fmt.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdisplaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/expand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/fmt.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/attr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/expand.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/displaydoc-0.2.5/src/fmt.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/either-83c551e8647906ea.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/either-83c551e8647906ea.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3701b9e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/either-83c551e8647906ea.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/either-83c551e8647906ea.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/iterator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/into_either.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libeither-83c551e8647906ea.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/iterator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/into_either.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libeither-83c551e8647906ea.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/iterator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/into_either.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/iterator.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/either-1.15.0/src/into_either.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bdc55cc1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.d @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/equator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/decompose.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/by_val.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/sized.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/structures.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/traits.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/decompose.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/by_val.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/sized.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/structures.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/traits.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/decompose.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/by_val.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/sized.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/structures.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/traits.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/decompose.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/by_val.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/debug.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/spec/sized.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/structures.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-0.4.2/src/traits.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/equator_macro-230c6702e3792291.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/equator_macro-230c6702e3792291.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b500799b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/equator_macro-230c6702e3792291.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/equator_macro-230c6702e3792291.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-macro-0.4.2/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator_macro-230c6702e3792291.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-macro-0.4.2/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/equator-macro-0.4.2/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..074ef2aa --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c.d @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/exr-61ecca35b1b9479c.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/zip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/rle.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/wavelet.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/pxr24.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/b44/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/b44/table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/attribute.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/layers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/any_channels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/levels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/samples.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/specific_channels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/layers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/samples.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/channels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/crop.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/pixel_vec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/recursive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/lines.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/samples.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/chunk.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libexr-61ecca35b1b9479c.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/zip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/rle.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/wavelet.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/pxr24.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/b44/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/b44/table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/attribute.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/layers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/any_channels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/levels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/samples.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/specific_channels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/layers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/samples.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/channels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/crop.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/pixel_vec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/recursive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/lines.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/samples.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/chunk.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libexr-61ecca35b1b9479c.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/zip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/rle.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/wavelet.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/pxr24.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/b44/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/b44/table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/attribute.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/layers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/any_channels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/levels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/samples.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/specific_channels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/layers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/samples.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/channels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/crop.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/pixel_vec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/recursive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/lines.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/samples.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/chunk.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/io.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/math.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/zip.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/rle.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/huffman.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/piz/wavelet.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/pxr24.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/b44/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/compression/b44/table.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/attribute.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/meta/header.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/image.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/layers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/any_channels.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/levels.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/samples.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/read/specific_channels.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/layers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/samples.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/write/channels.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/crop.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/pixel_vec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/image/recursive.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/reader.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/lines.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/samples.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/exr-1.74.0/src/block/chunk.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..32fe6523 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344.d @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fax-0ca542ebfb19a344.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/maps.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/tiff.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax-0ca542ebfb19a344.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/maps.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/tiff.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax-0ca542ebfb19a344.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/maps.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/tiff.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/maps.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax-0.2.6/src/tiff.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5190d2ad --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax_derive-0.2.0/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax_derive-0.2.0/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fax_derive-0.2.0/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6842be36 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.d @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/fdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/compress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/decompress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/tables.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/compress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/decompress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/tables.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/compress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/decompress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/tables.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/compress.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/decompress.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/huffman.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/fdeflate-0.3.7/src/tables.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/find_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/find_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c50114ec --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/find_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/find_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/find_tools.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/tool.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfind_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/find_tools.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/tool.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfind_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/find_tools.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/tool.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/find_tools.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/find-msvc-tools-0.1.5/src/tool.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0aabde4a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.d @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/flate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/bufreader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/crc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/rust.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/mem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zio.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/write.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/bufreader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/crc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/rust.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/mem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zio.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/write.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/bufreader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/crc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/rust.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/mem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zio.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/write.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/bufreader.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/crc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/bufread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/read.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/write.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/rust.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/bufread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/read.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/write.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/mem.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zio.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/bufread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/read.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/write.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..43cba33e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.d @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/flate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/bufreader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/crc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/rust.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/mem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zio.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/write.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/bufreader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/crc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/rust.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/mem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zio.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/write.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/bufreader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/crc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/rust.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/write.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/mem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zio.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/bufread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/read.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/write.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/bufreader.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/crc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/bufread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/read.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/deflate/write.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/ffi/rust.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/bufread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/read.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/gz/write.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/mem.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zio.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/bufread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/read.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/flate2-1.1.5/src/zlib/write.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..161f126e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/form_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/form_urlencoded-1.2.2/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libform_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/form_urlencoded-1.2.2/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libform_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/form_urlencoded-1.2.2/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/form_urlencoded-1.2.2/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c48b22c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.d @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/getrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util_libc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/use_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lazy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/linux_android_with_fallback.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util_libc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/use_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lazy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/linux_android_with_fallback.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util_libc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/use_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lazy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/linux_android_with_fallback.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util_libc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/use_file.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lazy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/linux_android_with_fallback.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b8e732e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221.d @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/getrandom-e14f5e390f777221.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util_libc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/use_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lazy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/linux_android_with_fallback.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-e14f5e390f777221.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util_libc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/use_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lazy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/linux_android_with_fallback.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-e14f5e390f777221.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util_libc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/use_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lazy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/linux_android_with_fallback.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/util_libc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/use_file.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/lazy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/getrandom-0.2.16/src/linux_android_with_fallback.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/gif-b646aee935178320.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/gif-b646aee935178320.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cd3f47ca --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/gif-b646aee935178320.d @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/gif-b646aee935178320.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/converter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/../README.md + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgif-b646aee935178320.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/converter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/../README.md + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgif-b646aee935178320.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/converter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/../README.md + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/common.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/converter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/reader/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/traits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/gif-0.14.1/src/../README.md: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/half-918b72036a5ebe16.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/half-918b72036a5ebe16.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..124bfdf5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/half-918b72036a5ebe16.d @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/half-918b72036a5ebe16.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/bfloat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/bfloat/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16/arch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16/arch/x86.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/leading_zeros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/vec.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhalf-918b72036a5ebe16.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/bfloat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/bfloat/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16/arch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16/arch/x86.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/leading_zeros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/vec.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhalf-918b72036a5ebe16.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/bfloat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/bfloat/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16/arch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16/arch/x86.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/leading_zeros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/vec.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/bfloat.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/bfloat/convert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16/arch.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/binary16/arch/x86.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/leading_zeros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/slice.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/half-2.7.1/src/vec.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/http-28fe6c1413efe431.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/http-28fe6c1413efe431.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cc1417d9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/http-28fe6c1413efe431.d @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/http-28fe6c1413efe431.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/method.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/status.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/authority.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/path.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/port.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/scheme.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/version.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/byte_str.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/extensions.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttp-28fe6c1413efe431.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/method.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/status.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/authority.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/path.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/port.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/scheme.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/version.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/byte_str.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/extensions.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttp-28fe6c1413efe431.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/method.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/status.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/authority.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/path.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/port.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/scheme.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/version.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/byte_str.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/extensions.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/convert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/name.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/header/value.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/method.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/request.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/response.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/status.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/authority.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/builder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/path.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/port.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/uri/scheme.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/version.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/byte_str.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/http-1.4.0/src/extensions.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a8a172e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50.d @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/httparse-64ad529c7078bb50.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/simd/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/simd/swar.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttparse-64ad529c7078bb50.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/simd/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/simd/swar.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttparse-64ad529c7078bb50.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/simd/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/simd/swar.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/simd/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/httparse-1.10.1/src/simd/swar.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c909c80b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.d @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/char16trie/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/char16trie/trie.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/cpinvlist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvliststringlist/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/cptrie.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/impl_const.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/planes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/iterator_utils.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/char16trie/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/char16trie/trie.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/cpinvlist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvliststringlist/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/cptrie.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/impl_const.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/planes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/iterator_utils.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/char16trie/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/char16trie/trie.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/cpinvlist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvliststringlist/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/cptrie.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/impl_const.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/planes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/iterator_utils.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/char16trie/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/char16trie/trie.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/cpinvlist.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvlist/utils.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointinvliststringlist/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/cptrie.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/impl_const.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/codepointtrie/planes.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_collections-2.1.1/src/iterator_utils.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a6886d9c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.d @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/langid.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/locale.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/langid.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/locale.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/shortvec/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/shortvec/litemap.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/other/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/private/other.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/fields.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/attribute.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/attributes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/keywords.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/subdivision.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/language.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/region.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/script.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/variant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/variants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/calendar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/collation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/currency.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/currency_format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/emoji.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/first_day.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/hour_cycle.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/line_break.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/line_break_word.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/measurement_system.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/measurement_unit_override.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/numbering_system.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/region_override.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/regional_subdivision.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/sentence_supression.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/timezone.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/variant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/enum_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/struct_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/locale.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/zerovec.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/langid.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/locale.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/langid.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/locale.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/shortvec/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/shortvec/litemap.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/other/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/private/other.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/fields.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/attribute.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/attributes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/keywords.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/subdivision.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/language.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/region.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/script.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/variant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/variants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/calendar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/collation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/currency.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/currency_format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/emoji.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/first_day.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/hour_cycle.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/line_break.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/line_break_word.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/measurement_system.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/measurement_unit_override.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/numbering_system.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/region_override.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/regional_subdivision.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/sentence_supression.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/timezone.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/variant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/enum_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/struct_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/locale.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/zerovec.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/langid.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/locale.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/langid.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/locale.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/shortvec/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/shortvec/litemap.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/other/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/private/other.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/fields.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/attribute.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/attributes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/keywords.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/subdivision.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/language.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/region.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/script.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/variant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/variants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/calendar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/collation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/currency.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/currency_format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/emoji.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/first_day.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/hour_cycle.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/line_break.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/line_break_word.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/measurement_system.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/measurement_unit_override.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/numbering_system.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/region_override.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/regional_subdivision.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/sentence_supression.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/timezone.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/variant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/enum_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/struct_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/locale.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/zerovec.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/helpers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/data.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/langid.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/locale.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/errors.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/langid.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/parser/locale.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/shortvec/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/shortvec/litemap.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/other/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/private/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/private/other.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/fields.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/transform/value.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/attribute.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/attributes.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/keywords.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/subdivision.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/extensions/unicode/value.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/language.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/region.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/script.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/variant.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/subtags/variants.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/errors.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/calendar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/collation.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/currency.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/currency_format.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/emoji.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/first_day.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/hour_cycle.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/line_break.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/line_break_word.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/measurement_system.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/measurement_unit_override.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/numbering_system.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/region_override.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/regional_subdivision.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/sentence_supression.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/timezone.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/keywords/variant.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/enum_keyword.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/extensions/unicode/macros/struct_keyword.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/preferences/locale.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_locale_core-2.1.1/src/zerovec.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8de56eb0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/properties.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/uts46.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/properties.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/uts46.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/properties.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/uts46.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/properties.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/provider.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer-2.1.1/src/uts46.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1c2f69ef --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.d @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_tables_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_supplement_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfkd_data_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfkd_tables_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfc_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_data_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_uts46_data_v1.rs.data + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_tables_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_supplement_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfkd_data_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfkd_tables_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfc_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_data_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_uts46_data_v1.rs.data + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_tables_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_supplement_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfkd_data_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfkd_tables_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfc_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_data_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_uts46_data_v1.rs.data + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_tables_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_supplement_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfkd_data_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfkd_tables_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfc_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_nfd_data_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_normalizer_data-2.1.1/src/../data/normalizer_uts46_data_v1.rs.data: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c4831ad2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.d @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/code_point_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/code_point_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/emoji.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/names.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/runtime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/props.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/provider/names.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/script.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/bidi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/trievalue.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/code_point_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/code_point_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/emoji.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/names.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/runtime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/props.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/provider/names.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/script.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/bidi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/trievalue.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/code_point_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/code_point_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/emoji.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/names.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/runtime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/props.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/provider/names.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/script.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/bidi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/trievalue.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/code_point_set.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/code_point_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/emoji.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/names.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/runtime.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/props.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/provider.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/provider/names.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/script.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/bidi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties-2.1.2/src/trievalue.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..163218e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.d @@ -0,0 +1,137 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_pattern_syntax_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_lowercased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_trinary_operator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_regional_indicator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_uppercased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_casemapped_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_binary_operator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_radical_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_extender_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_component_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_compat_math_continue_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_dash_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_presentation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_case_sensitive_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfd_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_graph_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_bidi_control_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_white_space_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_unified_ideograph_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_noncharacter_code_point_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_script_with_extensions_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_bidi_mirrored_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_link_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_alnum_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_casefolded_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_quotation_mark_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_deprecated_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xid_start_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_segment_starter_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_hyphen_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_variation_selector_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_modifier_combining_mark_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_prepended_concatenation_mark_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_print_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_terminal_punctuation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_cased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfkc_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_continue_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_basic_emoji_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_start_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_uppercase_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xdigit_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_full_composition_exclusion_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_nfkc_casefolded_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_hex_digit_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xid_continue_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_soft_dotted_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ideographic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_titlecased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_sentence_terminal_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ascii_hex_digit_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_logical_order_exception_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_case_ignorable_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_diacritic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_extend_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_bidi_mirroring_glyph_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_general_category_mask_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfc_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_lowercase_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_modifier_base_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_base_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_modifier_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_join_control_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_unary_operator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_math_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_pattern_white_space_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfkd_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_compat_math_start_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_alphabetic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_blank_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_default_ignorable_code_point_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_extended_pictographic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_pattern_syntax_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_lowercased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_trinary_operator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_regional_indicator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_uppercased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_casemapped_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_binary_operator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_radical_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_extender_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_component_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_compat_math_continue_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_dash_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_presentation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_case_sensitive_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfd_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_graph_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_bidi_control_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_white_space_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_unified_ideograph_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_noncharacter_code_point_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_script_with_extensions_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_bidi_mirrored_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_link_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_alnum_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_casefolded_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_quotation_mark_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_deprecated_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xid_start_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_segment_starter_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_hyphen_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_variation_selector_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_modifier_combining_mark_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_prepended_concatenation_mark_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_print_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_terminal_punctuation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_cased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfkc_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_continue_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_basic_emoji_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_start_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_uppercase_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xdigit_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_full_composition_exclusion_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_nfkc_casefolded_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_hex_digit_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xid_continue_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_soft_dotted_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ideographic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_titlecased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_sentence_terminal_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ascii_hex_digit_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_logical_order_exception_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_case_ignorable_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_diacritic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_extend_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_bidi_mirroring_glyph_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_general_category_mask_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfc_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_lowercase_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_modifier_base_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_base_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_modifier_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_join_control_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_unary_operator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_math_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_pattern_white_space_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfkd_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_compat_math_start_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_alphabetic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_blank_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_default_ignorable_code_point_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_extended_pictographic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_pattern_syntax_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_lowercased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_trinary_operator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_regional_indicator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_uppercased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_casemapped_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_binary_operator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_radical_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_extender_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_component_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_compat_math_continue_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_dash_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_presentation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_case_sensitive_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfd_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_graph_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_bidi_control_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_white_space_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_unified_ideograph_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_noncharacter_code_point_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_script_with_extensions_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_bidi_mirrored_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_link_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_alnum_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_casefolded_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_quotation_mark_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_deprecated_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xid_start_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_segment_starter_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_hyphen_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_variation_selector_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_modifier_combining_mark_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_prepended_concatenation_mark_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_print_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_terminal_punctuation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_cased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfkc_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_continue_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_basic_emoji_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_start_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_uppercase_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xdigit_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_full_composition_exclusion_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_nfkc_casefolded_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_hex_digit_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xid_continue_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_soft_dotted_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ideographic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_titlecased_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_bidi_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_sentence_terminal_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ascii_hex_digit_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_general_category_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_logical_order_exception_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_case_ignorable_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_diacritic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_extend_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_bidi_mirroring_glyph_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_general_category_mask_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfc_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_script_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_lowercase_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_modifier_base_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_sentence_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_base_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_modifier_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_join_control_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_joining_type_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_line_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_unary_operator_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_word_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_math_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_pattern_white_space_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfkd_inert_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_compat_math_start_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_alphabetic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_blank_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_default_ignorable_code_point_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_extended_pictographic_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_pattern_syntax_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_lowercased_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_trinary_operator_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_regional_indicator_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_uppercased_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_casemapped_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_script_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_binary_operator_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_radical_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_extender_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_component_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_compat_math_continue_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_dash_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_general_category_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_presentation_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_case_sensitive_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_bidi_class_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfd_inert_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_graph_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_bidi_control_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_word_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_line_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_white_space_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_unified_ideograph_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_noncharacter_code_point_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_indic_syllabic_category_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_script_with_extensions_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_line_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_bidi_class_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_bidi_mirrored_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_link_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_script_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_sentence_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_alnum_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_general_category_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_casefolded_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_sentence_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_quotation_mark_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_deprecated_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xid_start_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_segment_starter_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_hyphen_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_variation_selector_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_word_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_sentence_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_modifier_combining_mark_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_bidi_class_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_prepended_concatenation_mark_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_joining_type_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_print_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_terminal_punctuation_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_cased_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfkc_inert_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_continue_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_basic_emoji_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_start_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_uppercase_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_script_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_hangul_syllable_type_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xdigit_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_full_composition_exclusion_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_nfkc_casefolded_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_hex_digit_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_joining_type_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_xid_continue_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_soft_dotted_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ideographic_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_word_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_changes_when_titlecased_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_bidi_class_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_sentence_terminal_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_general_category_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ascii_hex_digit_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_line_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_east_asian_width_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_general_category_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_logical_order_exception_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_case_ignorable_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_diacritic_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_extend_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_bidi_mirroring_glyph_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_general_category_mask_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfc_inert_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_indic_conjunct_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_script_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_lowercase_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_joining_type_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_modifier_base_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_sentence_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_grapheme_base_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_long_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_emoji_modifier_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_join_control_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_joining_type_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_short_line_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_ids_unary_operator_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_word_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_math_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_pattern_white_space_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_nfkd_inert_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_id_compat_math_start_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_alphabetic_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_enum_grapheme_cluster_break_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_blank_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_default_ignorable_code_point_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_binary_extended_pictographic_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_vertical_orientation_v1.rs.data: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_properties_data-2.1.2/src/../data/property_name_parse_canonical_combining_class_v1.rs.data: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b0216690 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.d @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/icu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/baked.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/baked/zerotrie.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/buf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/constructors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/dynutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/data_provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/varule_traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/fallback.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/baked.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/baked/zerotrie.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/buf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/constructors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/dynutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/data_provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/varule_traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/fallback.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/baked.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/baked/zerotrie.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/buf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/constructors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/dynutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/data_provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/varule_traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/fallback.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/baked.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/baked/zerotrie.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/buf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/constructors.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/dynutil.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/data_provider.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/request.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/response.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/marker.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/varule_traits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/icu_provider-2.1.1/src/fallback.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a1092975 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/idna-b04d8de9291ebd56.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/deprecated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/punycode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/uts46.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna-b04d8de9291ebd56.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/deprecated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/punycode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/uts46.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna-b04d8de9291ebd56.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/deprecated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/punycode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/uts46.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/deprecated.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/punycode.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna-1.1.0/src/uts46.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d12fc9a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/idna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna_adapter-1.2.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna_adapter-1.2.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna_adapter-1.2.1/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/idna_adapter-1.2.1/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/image-68664e01bd3c265f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/image-68664e01bd3c265f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..168594e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/image-68664e01bd3c265f.d @@ -0,0 +1,75 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/image-68664e01bd3c265f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/rect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/affine.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/colorops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/fast_blur.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/filter_1d.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/sample.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/avif/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/avif/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/dds.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/farbfeld.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/gif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/entropy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/openexr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/png.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/autobreak.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/qoi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tiff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/dxt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/animation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/color.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/hooks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/buffer_par.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/dynimage.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/generic_image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/flat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/sub_image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/free_functions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/image_reader_type.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/limits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/metadata.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/metadata/cicp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/utils/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/../README.md + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage-68664e01bd3c265f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/rect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/affine.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/colorops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/fast_blur.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/filter_1d.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/sample.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/avif/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/avif/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/dds.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/farbfeld.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/gif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/entropy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/openexr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/png.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/autobreak.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/qoi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tiff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/dxt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/animation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/color.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/hooks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/buffer_par.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/dynimage.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/generic_image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/flat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/sub_image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/free_functions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/image_reader_type.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/limits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/metadata.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/metadata/cicp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/utils/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/../README.md + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage-68664e01bd3c265f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/rect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/affine.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/colorops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/fast_blur.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/filter_1d.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/sample.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/avif/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/avif/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/dds.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/farbfeld.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/gif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/entropy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/openexr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/png.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/autobreak.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/qoi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tiff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/dxt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/animation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/color.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/hooks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/buffer_par.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/dynimage.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/generic_image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/flat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/sub_image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/free_functions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/image_reader_type.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/limits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/metadata.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/metadata/cicp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/utils/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/../README.md + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/rect.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/math/utils.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/affine.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/colorops.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/fast_blur.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/filter_1d.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/imageops/sample.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/avif/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/avif/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/bmp/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/dds.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/farbfeld.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/gif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/hdr/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/ico/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/entropy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/jpeg/transform.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/openexr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/png.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/autobreak.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/pnm/header.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/qoi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tga/header.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/tiff.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/webp/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/codecs/dxt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/animation.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/color.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/hooks.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/buffer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/buffer_par.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/dynimage.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/generic_image.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/flat.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/images/sub_image.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/format.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/free_functions.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/image_reader_type.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/io/limits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/metadata.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/metadata/cicp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/traits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/utils/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-0.25.9/src/../README.md: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/image_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/image_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5ae4626d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/image_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.d @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/image_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/alpha_blending.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/extended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/loop_filter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lossless.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lossless_transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/vp8_arithmetic_decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/yuv.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/vp8.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/alpha_blending.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/extended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/loop_filter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lossless.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lossless_transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/vp8_arithmetic_decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/yuv.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/vp8.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/alpha_blending.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/extended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/loop_filter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lossless.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lossless_transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/vp8_arithmetic_decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/yuv.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/vp8.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/alpha_blending.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/extended.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/huffman.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/loop_filter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lossless.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/lossless_transform.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/transform.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/vp8_arithmetic_decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/yuv.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/image-webp-0.2.4/src/vp8.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7df606ec --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/imgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/ops.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/ops.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/ops.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/traits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/imgref-1.12.0/src/ops.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..12a53a35 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.d @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/itertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/impl_macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/coalesce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/multi_product.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/either_or_both.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/free.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/combinations.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/combinations_with_replacement.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/concat_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/cons_tuples_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/diff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/duplicates_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/exactly_one_err.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/extrema_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/flatten_ok.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/group_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/groupbylazy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/grouping_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/intersperse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/iter_index.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/k_smallest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/kmerge_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/lazy_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/merge_join.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/minmax.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/multipeek_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/next_array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/pad_tail.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/peek_nth.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/peeking_take_while.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/permutations.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/powerset.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/process_results_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/put_back_n_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/rciter_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/repeatn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/size_hint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/sources.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/take_while_inclusive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/tee.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/tuple_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/unique_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/unziptuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/with_position.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/zip_eq_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/zip_longest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/ziptuple.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/impl_macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/coalesce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/multi_product.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/either_or_both.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/free.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/combinations.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/combinations_with_replacement.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/concat_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/cons_tuples_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/diff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/duplicates_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/exactly_one_err.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/extrema_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/flatten_ok.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/group_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/groupbylazy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/grouping_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/intersperse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/iter_index.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/k_smallest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/kmerge_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/lazy_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/merge_join.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/minmax.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/multipeek_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/next_array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/pad_tail.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/peek_nth.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/peeking_take_while.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/permutations.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/powerset.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/process_results_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/put_back_n_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/rciter_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/repeatn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/size_hint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/sources.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/take_while_inclusive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/tee.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/tuple_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/unique_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/unziptuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/with_position.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/zip_eq_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/zip_longest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/ziptuple.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/impl_macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/coalesce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/multi_product.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/either_or_both.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/free.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/combinations.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/combinations_with_replacement.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/concat_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/cons_tuples_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/diff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/duplicates_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/exactly_one_err.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/extrema_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/flatten_ok.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/group_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/groupbylazy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/grouping_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/intersperse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/iter_index.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/k_smallest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/kmerge_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/lazy_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/merge_join.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/minmax.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/multipeek_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/next_array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/pad_tail.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/peek_nth.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/peeking_take_while.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/permutations.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/powerset.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/process_results_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/put_back_n_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/rciter_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/repeatn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/size_hint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/sources.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/take_while_inclusive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/tee.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/tuple_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/unique_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/unziptuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/with_position.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/zip_eq_impl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/zip_longest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/ziptuple.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/impl_macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/coalesce.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/adaptors/multi_product.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/either_or_both.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/free.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/combinations.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/combinations_with_replacement.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/concat_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/cons_tuples_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/diff.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/duplicates_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/exactly_one_err.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/extrema_set.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/flatten_ok.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/format.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/group_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/groupbylazy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/grouping_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/intersperse.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/iter_index.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/k_smallest.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/kmerge_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/lazy_buffer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/merge_join.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/minmax.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/multipeek_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/next_array.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/pad_tail.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/peek_nth.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/peeking_take_while.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/permutations.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/powerset.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/process_results_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/put_back_n_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/rciter_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/repeatn.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/size_hint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/sources.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/take_while_inclusive.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/tee.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/tuple_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/unique_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/unziptuple.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/with_position.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/zip_eq_impl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/zip_longest.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itertools-0.14.0/src/ziptuple.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..03069d58 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/itoa-af3663f4d905cf46.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itoa-1.0.15/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itoa-1.0.15/src/udiv128.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitoa-af3663f4d905cf46.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itoa-1.0.15/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itoa-1.0.15/src/udiv128.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitoa-af3663f4d905cf46.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itoa-1.0.15/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itoa-1.0.15/src/udiv128.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itoa-1.0.15/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/itoa-1.0.15/src/udiv128.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/lebe-606e445bb4071347.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/lebe-606e445bb4071347.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9b0ae065 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/lebe-606e445bb4071347.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/lebe-606e445bb4071347.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/lebe-0.5.3/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblebe-606e445bb4071347.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/lebe-0.5.3/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblebe-606e445bb4071347.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/lebe-0.5.3/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/lebe-0.5.3/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libadler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libadler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7c0e6b2d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libadler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libadler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libadler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4ebfbb3f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libadler2-2c670cf57fe7493b.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned-3c0aacada22e8983.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned-3c0aacada22e8983.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f3cdee85 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned-3c0aacada22e8983.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned-3c0aacada22e8983.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned-3c0aacada22e8983.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1f339681 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned-3c0aacada22e8983.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..569f0b62 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a9bb2017 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libaligned_vec-6ef6dd1e85876361.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libanyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libanyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b1e51350 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libanyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libanyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libanyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e2e9f0cc Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libanyhow-f83b8d3e8e6fcc5b.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..3939826b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarg_enum_proc_macro-732f459387f686af.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2acabd65 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a6c73635 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libarrayvec-d5880bf2cc01b75b.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libas_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libas_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..aced49b4 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libas_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libas_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libas_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c85bc68d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libas_slice-ea86fd5a96b2e992.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libautocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libautocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..80a3bb1e Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libautocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libautocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libautocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ce4c841b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libautocfg-38d501c17e68b38c.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5d271048 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..665d2617 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav1_grain-fb0b494e549fbb1a.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d9f3a7b6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e1f86f8d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libav_scenechange-231824e7182399f5.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libavif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libavif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b8c82e64 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libavif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libavif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libavif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0af02d05 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libavif_serialize-dae3089ad1a3d01e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbase64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbase64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..46f5227a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbase64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbase64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbase64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c9ccac81 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbase64-a0ae250d5b0f8047.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bd4dad92 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c1795105 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbit_field-f53ceb17b1374ec7.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1aab0ad8 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b28b7c29 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitflags-7f65936c7a821fa3.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f000869c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..319966dd Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbitstream_io-aa25b7478d23aba1.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbuilt-3504150f55669f03.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbuilt-3504150f55669f03.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4898b397 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbuilt-3504150f55669f03.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbuilt-3504150f55669f03.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbuilt-3504150f55669f03.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e126952c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbuilt-3504150f55669f03.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6090e8ad Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cc9d0d08 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytemuck-17df3a6c48848c5a.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbyteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbyteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..dd43e775 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbyteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbyteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbyteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..03a74161 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbyteorder_lite-43c715feb383b55e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytes-58ca14ebe551896b.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytes-58ca14ebe551896b.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b0fc5da1 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytes-58ca14ebe551896b.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytes-58ca14ebe551896b.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytes-58ca14ebe551896b.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..198a2638 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libbytes-58ca14ebe551896b.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bfffcdc6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9.d @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libc-08ba105d06cb27c9.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/bcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/j1939.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/raw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/keyctl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/net/route.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/primitives.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/not_x32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/generic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/types.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-08ba105d06cb27c9.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/bcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/j1939.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/raw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/keyctl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/net/route.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/primitives.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/not_x32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/generic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/types.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-08ba105d06cb27c9.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/bcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/j1939.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/raw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/keyctl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/net/route.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/primitives.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/not_x32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/generic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/types.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/pthread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/pthread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/unistd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/bcm.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/j1939.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/raw.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/keyctl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/posix/unistd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/pthread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/net/route.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/primitives.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/not_x32.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/generic/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/types.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4cbd5b45 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9.d @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libc-acf3df278e7a94f9.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/bcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/j1939.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/raw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/keyctl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/net/route.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/primitives.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/not_x32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/generic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/types.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-acf3df278e7a94f9.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/bcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/j1939.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/raw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/keyctl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/net/route.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/primitives.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/not_x32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/generic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/types.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-acf3df278e7a94f9.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/bcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/j1939.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/raw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/keyctl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/posix/unistd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/pthread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/net/route.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/primitives.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/not_x32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/generic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/types.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/linux_like/pthread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/pthread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/common/posix/unistd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/bcm.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/j1939.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/can/raw.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/linux_uapi/linux/keyctl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/posix/unistd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/nptl/pthread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/new/glibc/sysdeps/unix/linux/net/route.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/primitives.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/gnu/b64/x86_64/not_x32.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/unix/linux_like/linux/arch/generic/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/libc-0.2.178/src/types.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcc-91b2768f3250ba3e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcc-91b2768f3250ba3e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3601d09d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcc-91b2768f3250ba3e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcc-91b2768f3250ba3e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcc-91b2768f3250ba3e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2110dfed Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcc-91b2768f3250ba3e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..eb71f54e Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b6e97296 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcfg_if-2d20780be38939e6.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcolor_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcolor_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8c963425 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcolor_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcolor_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcolor_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3020bae7 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcolor_quant-26f17b3f2e893ab3.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcore2-1da2283f0633ed42.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcore2-1da2283f0633ed42.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..12104486 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcore2-1da2283f0633ed42.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcore2-1da2283f0633ed42.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcore2-1da2283f0633ed42.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3bd69319 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcore2-1da2283f0633ed42.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0420aca5 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..abd486a2 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrc32fast-0db65efe917c4978.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..651eb047 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..dc9f76d8 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_deque-6995d016e26db07f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..54f237f6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..67107b15 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_epoch-3f303a1308604a37.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..27286c80 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2336d79c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libcrossbeam_utils-8775055eb4b1a9f1.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdebug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdebug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1b232494 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdebug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdebug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdebug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cfc4f232 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdebug_unreachable-83e1bd9a7a045248.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdisplaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdisplaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..f25387b6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libdisplaydoc-49ed059c4102aa06.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libeither-83c551e8647906ea.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libeither-83c551e8647906ea.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6fc710e6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libeither-83c551e8647906ea.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libeither-83c551e8647906ea.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libeither-83c551e8647906ea.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8a75a3dc Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libeither-83c551e8647906ea.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..85212655 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0d193d71 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator-9f5d05f93a0bdeea.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator_macro-230c6702e3792291.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator_macro-230c6702e3792291.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..2f60eee9 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libequator_macro-230c6702e3792291.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libexr-61ecca35b1b9479c.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libexr-61ecca35b1b9479c.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..211cb9ff Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libexr-61ecca35b1b9479c.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libexr-61ecca35b1b9479c.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libexr-61ecca35b1b9479c.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a8ce117d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libexr-61ecca35b1b9479c.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax-0ca542ebfb19a344.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax-0ca542ebfb19a344.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8a924dfb Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax-0ca542ebfb19a344.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax-0ca542ebfb19a344.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax-0ca542ebfb19a344.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2a08537f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax-0ca542ebfb19a344.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..fc084e1a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfax_derive-6d91f50c2748d114.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..eec254f0 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cc6a6043 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfdeflate-a1928234199dbe1a.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfind_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfind_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..34dc9215 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfind_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfind_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfind_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2ed00974 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libfind_msvc_tools-67b1b1f3e98c1f41.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1819a7b7 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6ac20f58 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-147c1be9bde0a4c3.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..26bc5541 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..18f19be7 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libflate2-d62a55c54202f9d2.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libform_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libform_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5121d631 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libform_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libform_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libform_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..83325b4f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libform_urlencoded-6de1c969ba37b7d6.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..81d63cbd Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..21b3056f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-3a445361fcc0d436.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-e14f5e390f777221.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-e14f5e390f777221.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ac2ff250 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-e14f5e390f777221.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-e14f5e390f777221.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-e14f5e390f777221.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3cb82ccb Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgetrandom-e14f5e390f777221.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgif-b646aee935178320.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgif-b646aee935178320.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cf6cde26 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgif-b646aee935178320.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgif-b646aee935178320.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgif-b646aee935178320.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ad75642c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libgif-b646aee935178320.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhalf-918b72036a5ebe16.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhalf-918b72036a5ebe16.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c46eb4d5 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhalf-918b72036a5ebe16.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhalf-918b72036a5ebe16.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhalf-918b72036a5ebe16.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..87c6fc19 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhalf-918b72036a5ebe16.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttp-28fe6c1413efe431.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttp-28fe6c1413efe431.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7b9937bb Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttp-28fe6c1413efe431.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttp-28fe6c1413efe431.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttp-28fe6c1413efe431.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c183e80a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttp-28fe6c1413efe431.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttparse-64ad529c7078bb50.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttparse-64ad529c7078bb50.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2c8b982c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttparse-64ad529c7078bb50.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttparse-64ad529c7078bb50.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttparse-64ad529c7078bb50.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ddeda1ea Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libhttparse-64ad529c7078bb50.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..49558ea1 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..40400cee Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_collections-c467069a6aa352c2.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6d2038b3 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3ff0ffb8 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_locale_core-0577ae8b5a7923ca.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5b8adb5c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..441867ee Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer-241dbeb99afdccad.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2eaded3d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fad96842 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_normalizer_data-098c83a429e9cd2f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..37298a0d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6f7c1577 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties-04c93968fdd5902f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bceef60c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5f6ce693 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_properties_data-d0bfedd21cae1553.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cf2b6ffd Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..faaa71af Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libicu_provider-bb4d32df25b2f2c6.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna-b04d8de9291ebd56.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna-b04d8de9291ebd56.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c12d5c41 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna-b04d8de9291ebd56.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna-b04d8de9291ebd56.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna-b04d8de9291ebd56.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..179410fc Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna-b04d8de9291ebd56.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..da5215fb Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..16ee0b52 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libidna_adapter-ad9bea06dfddd327.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage-68664e01bd3c265f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage-68664e01bd3c265f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bfb3f749 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage-68664e01bd3c265f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage-68664e01bd3c265f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage-68664e01bd3c265f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1b980474 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage-68664e01bd3c265f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4b45c510 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..afd2b1d4 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimage_webp-2a62e4f59bbd9847.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cd136f0d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6dab0b76 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libimgref-ce7b8b558a9c64d8.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1ae3439e Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..61d2d855 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitertools-11274a8d9e3a9689.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitoa-af3663f4d905cf46.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitoa-af3663f4d905cf46.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..dc39212c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitoa-af3663f4d905cf46.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitoa-af3663f4d905cf46.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitoa-af3663f4d905cf46.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b9540f4f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libitoa-af3663f4d905cf46.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblebe-606e445bb4071347.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblebe-606e445bb4071347.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c67c6638 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblebe-606e445bb4071347.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblebe-606e445bb4071347.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblebe-606e445bb4071347.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..adad2c87 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblebe-606e445bb4071347.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-08ba105d06cb27c9.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-08ba105d06cb27c9.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e5be1560 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-08ba105d06cb27c9.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-08ba105d06cb27c9.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-08ba105d06cb27c9.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b945c3b9 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-08ba105d06cb27c9.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-acf3df278e7a94f9.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-acf3df278e7a94f9.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..360111ac Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-acf3df278e7a94f9.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-acf3df278e7a94f9.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-acf3df278e7a94f9.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..de7b6435 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblibc-acf3df278e7a94f9.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblitemap-045779f63b656c9d.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblitemap-045779f63b656c9d.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..aa1fa975 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblitemap-045779f63b656c9d.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblitemap-045779f63b656c9d.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblitemap-045779f63b656c9d.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e714ef8f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblitemap-045779f63b656c9d.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblog-901d2d15d17f50d9.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblog-901d2d15d17f50d9.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..82b85c67 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblog-901d2d15d17f50d9.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblog-901d2d15d17f50d9.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblog-901d2d15d17f50d9.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b5b514e3 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblog-901d2d15d17f50d9.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libloop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libloop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f6feb8fa Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libloop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libloop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libloop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9c1875fa Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libloop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmaybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmaybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3f4b940c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmaybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmaybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmaybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2143a752 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmaybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmemchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmemchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6f03047e Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmemchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmemchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmemchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f6bf4281 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmemchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d0b51f69 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f09da18b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d6a720c3 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c37de118 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmoxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmoxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3aca7b14 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmoxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmoxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmoxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..01bf5317 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmoxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnom-7abf1d49d1414df8.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnom-7abf1d49d1414df8.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..001be34a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnom-7abf1d49d1414df8.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnom-7abf1d49d1414df8.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnom-7abf1d49d1414df8.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..79c7e1ff Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnom-7abf1d49d1414df8.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnoop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnoop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..16f0a6d1 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnoop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_bigint-330a323bf903366f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_bigint-330a323bf903366f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..12da5cbd Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_bigint-330a323bf903366f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_bigint-330a323bf903366f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_bigint-330a323bf903366f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..904edc64 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_bigint-330a323bf903366f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_derive-f2ec40105d362086.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_derive-f2ec40105d362086.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..2d059202 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_derive-f2ec40105d362086.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..03937d95 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c454cfa1 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_rational-531c675ef236015e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_rational-531c675ef236015e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..17b5a193 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_rational-531c675ef236015e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_rational-531c675ef236015e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_rational-531c675ef236015e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c4ab9004 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_rational-531c675ef236015e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_traits-f39781f090c56316.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_traits-f39781f090c56316.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c13fbc08 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_traits-f39781f090c56316.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_traits-f39781f090c56316.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_traits-f39781f090c56316.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fc4c6220 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_traits-f39781f090c56316.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..92d61dec Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e118ccba Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c201872d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5b4336a1 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpaste-577a69ce6fdefcf7.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpaste-577a69ce6fdefcf7.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..1b3a7bf9 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpaste-577a69ce6fdefcf7.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..9eba524b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7c2e960d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6314ff49 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..24fca936 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fd11b4da Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpng-26d1db19a0c1932a.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpng-26d1db19a0c1932a.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4fdb0cc9 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpng-26d1db19a0c1932a.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpng-26d1db19a0c1932a.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpng-26d1db19a0c1932a.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5dde9069 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpng-26d1db19a0c1932a.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpotential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpotential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a7819f2f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpotential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpotential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpotential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..93356fd3 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpotential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e33c27fe Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..620deddf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f8726fb4 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d0ecceb9 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9d8700fb Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c610b1a3 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling_procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling_procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..b0e3a898 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling_procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..19fbbdd1 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fc487656 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libqoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libqoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c7366377 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libqoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libqoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libqoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bcc6ee14 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libqoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquick_error-31ce661899395a7f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquick_error-31ce661899395a7f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2266f262 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquick_error-31ce661899395a7f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquick_error-31ce661899395a7f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquick_error-31ce661899395a7f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d4e16947 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquick_error-31ce661899395a7f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-49a93d0cff3d7298.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-49a93d0cff3d7298.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a4f600c2 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-49a93d0cff3d7298.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-49a93d0cff3d7298.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-49a93d0cff3d7298.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8e58d75c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-49a93d0cff3d7298.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-6622cc0dcb91989d.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-6622cc0dcb91989d.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1d0912d5 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-6622cc0dcb91989d.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-6622cc0dcb91989d.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-6622cc0dcb91989d.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3d14d5d7 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-6622cc0dcb91989d.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..049e5736 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..012ddc1d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bfcc70e8 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5161c343 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon-a42489e78b471ba6.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon-a42489e78b471ba6.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..260010d7 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon-a42489e78b471ba6.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon-a42489e78b471ba6.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon-a42489e78b471ba6.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..40c6b505 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon-a42489e78b471ba6.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5a5bff58 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9320436d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cef83a68 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0c9a6668 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3a61c4f0 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6dfebff3 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-f435da8dc7284ef4.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-f435da8dc7284ef4.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ee6f7e09 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-f435da8dc7284ef4.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-f435da8dc7284ef4.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-f435da8dc7284ef4.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..60369663 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-f435da8dc7284ef4.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-2654d54899de7799.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-2654d54899de7799.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ab802250 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-2654d54899de7799.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-2654d54899de7799.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-2654d54899de7799.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..99718ede Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-2654d54899de7799.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..713b4fff Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b3b4780f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c31b20d7 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..78215557 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4f33aeb2 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8e8804bd Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-b20de8b54a6521c6.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-b20de8b54a6521c6.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7464a1d6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-b20de8b54a6521c6.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-b20de8b54a6521c6.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-b20de8b54a6521c6.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..32f3038d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-b20de8b54a6521c6.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-c580ca7827c7164e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-c580ca7827c7164e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..37e407a2 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-c580ca7827c7164e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-c580ca7827c7164e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-c580ca7827c7164e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..49c805d1 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-c580ca7827c7164e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9fa3cce5 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6450611f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..1b97aafd Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..81f45618 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..02e2420b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..14a7b249 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a6c4251b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3c27ffd0 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libshlex-3b90976fe851454e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libshlex-3b90976fe851454e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6686f602 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libshlex-3b90976fe851454e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libshlex-3b90976fe851454e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libshlex-3b90976fe851454e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5682c4b2 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libshlex-3b90976fe851454e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f2ce75fb Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8c52f0a3 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fb211edd Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b163893b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_helpers-816221122a976c90.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_helpers-816221122a976c90.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..dfb5a9ea Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_helpers-816221122a976c90.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsmallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsmallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e24ed06a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsmallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsmallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsmallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8c55a3fd Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsmallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libstable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libstable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7aee7023 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libstable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libstable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libstable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..73359990 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libstable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsubtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsubtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..24a08f3e Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsubtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsubtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsubtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fda101ef Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsubtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-322d667bb2c470c4.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-322d667bb2c470c4.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a46534dd Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-322d667bb2c470c4.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-322d667bb2c470c4.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-322d667bb2c470c4.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..587ce357 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-322d667bb2c470c4.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-8e109e2e73114d38.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-8e109e2e73114d38.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..98add58b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-8e109e2e73114d38.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-8e109e2e73114d38.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-8e109e2e73114d38.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0ae36412 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-8e109e2e73114d38.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsynstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsynstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6e107706 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsynstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsynstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsynstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ccb6eb90 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsynstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f446c623 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2c113e55 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror_impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror_impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..bd0c3860 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror_impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtiff-67677a68c1472700.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtiff-67677a68c1472700.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3623fcc9 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtiff-67677a68c1472700.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtiff-67677a68c1472700.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtiff-67677a68c1472700.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c345df8d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtiff-67677a68c1472700.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..64c08855 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a5b2f17f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libunicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libunicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..aea0cfec Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libunicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libunicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libunicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..86db9ef2 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libunicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libuntrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libuntrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..726eb93d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libuntrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libuntrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libuntrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f760868c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libuntrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bbec94ed Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..05fdec3f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-98705423a8406a66.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-98705423a8406a66.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e6cab059 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-98705423a8406a66.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-98705423a8406a66.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-98705423a8406a66.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..13c7439a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-98705423a8406a66.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b051ac5d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..774a1377 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liburl-1ada33cd601b5dd4.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liburl-1ada33cd601b5dd4.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ca1ef81b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liburl-1ada33cd601b5dd4.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liburl-1ada33cd601b5dd4.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liburl-1ada33cd601b5dd4.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f19b8d26 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liburl-1ada33cd601b5dd4.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8d288030 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..37182ddd Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..258a065a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7fc8dc46 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libv_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libv_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1300b623 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libv_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libv_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libv_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..34ec54c0 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libv_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-08680f955b090308.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-08680f955b090308.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4ffecf45 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-08680f955b090308.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-08680f955b090308.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-08680f955b090308.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cded231e Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-08680f955b090308.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-f32ae3930b055f02.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-f32ae3930b055f02.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fc130b46 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-f32ae3930b055f02.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-f32ae3930b055f02.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-f32ae3930b055f02.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b9e97ef2 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-f32ae3930b055f02.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c999dba4 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ed2738ec Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e9bbdeaf Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9df9f1e4 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libweezl-916419a209823630.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libweezl-916419a209823630.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cccd743d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libweezl-916419a209823630.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libweezl-916419a209823630.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libweezl-916419a209823630.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d140dd32 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libweezl-916419a209823630.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwriteable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwriteable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..75662d51 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwriteable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwriteable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwriteable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2386c944 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwriteable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liby4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liby4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..329eb089 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liby4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liby4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liby4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f14a5eb3 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liby4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..508d03b0 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8a3976b7 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke_derive-7059e8a816334eea.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke_derive-7059e8a816334eea.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..454a19e6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke_derive-7059e8a816334eea.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..144ce38a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fd5e87f6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy_derive-df35a593a5ae0520.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy_derive-df35a593a5ae0520.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..b4d390f5 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy_derive-df35a593a5ae0520.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f4e507b9 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..65447c8d Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom_derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom_derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..9fa1caae Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom_derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6af88818 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f5ea1993 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e5742afc Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..93a17413 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fb97d18f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ac11b3af Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec_derive-0e6192861e60330b.so b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec_derive-0e6192861e60330b.so new file mode 100755 index 00000000..e6e04914 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec_derive-0e6192861e60330b.so differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-01655cdb782a5643.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-01655cdb782a5643.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..709c3b9c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-01655cdb782a5643.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-01655cdb782a5643.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-01655cdb782a5643.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7fa82190 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-01655cdb782a5643.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2e38fd31 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d7fd8786 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1675d16a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fead40a1 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..217e05e3 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f973ed95 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.rlib b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.rlib new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d9fc4339 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.rlib differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.rmeta b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.rmeta new file mode 100644 index 00000000..65c2f3e7 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.rmeta differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/litemap-045779f63b656c9d.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/litemap-045779f63b656c9d.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7cbea0ef --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/litemap-045779f63b656c9d.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/litemap-045779f63b656c9d.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/store/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/store/slice_impl.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblitemap-045779f63b656c9d.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/store/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/store/slice_impl.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblitemap-045779f63b656c9d.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/store/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/store/slice_impl.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/store/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/litemap-0.8.1/src/store/slice_impl.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/log-901d2d15d17f50d9.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/log-901d2d15d17f50d9.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f7f520c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/log-901d2d15d17f50d9.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/log-901d2d15d17f50d9.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/serde.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/__private_api.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblog-901d2d15d17f50d9.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/serde.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/__private_api.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liblog-901d2d15d17f50d9.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/serde.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/__private_api.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/serde.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/log-0.4.29/src/__private_api.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ed64aa4c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/loop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/loop9-0.1.5/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libloop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/loop9-0.1.5/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libloop9-a2d07a67af1801e4.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/loop9-0.1.5/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/loop9-0.1.5/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/maybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/maybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e5d7411d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/maybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/maybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/maybe-rayon-0.1.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmaybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/maybe-rayon-0.1.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmaybe_rayon-5d55a3a15bfe2b6a.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/maybe-rayon-0.1.1/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/maybe-rayon-0.1.1/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..817ae73f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.d @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/memchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/packedpair/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/packedpair/default_rank.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/rabinkarp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/shiftor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/twoway.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/packedpair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/packedpair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/packedpair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/cow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memmem/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memmem/searcher.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/vector.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmemchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/packedpair/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/packedpair/default_rank.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/rabinkarp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/shiftor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/twoway.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/packedpair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/packedpair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/packedpair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/cow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memmem/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memmem/searcher.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/vector.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmemchr-27b11b31b0d37a41.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/packedpair/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/packedpair/default_rank.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/rabinkarp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/shiftor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/twoway.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/packedpair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/packedpair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/packedpair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/cow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memchr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memmem/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memmem/searcher.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/vector.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/memchr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/packedpair/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/packedpair/default_rank.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/rabinkarp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/shiftor.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/all/twoway.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/memchr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/generic/packedpair.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/memchr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/avx2/packedpair.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/memchr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/sse2/packedpair.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/arch/x86_64/memchr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/cow.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/ext.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memchr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memmem/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/memmem/searcher.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/memchr-2.7.6/src/vector.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..892c2162 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.d @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/miniz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stored.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/zlib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/output_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/shared.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stored.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/zlib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/output_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/shared.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-0e9cbf4c683dda7e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stored.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/zlib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/output_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/shared.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/buffer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/core.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stored.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/zlib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/core.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/output_buffer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/stream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/shared.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e3bf504c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.d @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/miniz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stored.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/zlib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/output_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/shared.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stored.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/zlib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/output_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/shared.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libminiz_oxide-2edd198d5b92ff2b.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stored.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/zlib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/core.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/output_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/shared.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/buffer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/core.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stored.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/stream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/deflate/zlib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/core.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/output_buffer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/inflate/stream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/miniz_oxide-0.8.9/src/shared.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d9e8392a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.d @@ -0,0 +1,105 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/moxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/chad.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/cicp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/interpolator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/interpolator_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/lut4_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/lut4_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_q2_13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_q2_13_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/t_lut3_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/t_lut3_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/bpc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/gray2rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/gray2rgb_extended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/interpolator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/finalizers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md3x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md4x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_3xn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_nx3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_pipeline.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/pcs_stages.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/rgb_xyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/stages.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/xyz_lab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/xyz_rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut3x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut3x4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut_transforms.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mab4x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mba3x4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/md_lut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/md_luts_factory.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/prelude_lut_xyz_rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb2gray.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb2gray_extended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb_xyz_factory.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz_fixed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz_float.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/interpolator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/interpolator_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/lut4_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/lut4_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_q2_13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_q2_13_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/t_lut3_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/t_lut3_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut3_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut3_to_4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut4_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/xyz_lab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/dat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/defaults.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/err.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/gamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/gamut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/ictcp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/jzazbz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/jzczhz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/luv.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/math/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matrix.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/mlaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/nd_array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/oklab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/oklch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/profile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/safe_math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/tag.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/trc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/yrg.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/chromaticity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/dt_ucs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lut_hint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/curve_shape.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/degeneration.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/discontinuity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/monotonic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/slope_limit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/srlab2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/xyy.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmoxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/chad.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/cicp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/interpolator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/interpolator_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/lut4_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/lut4_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_q2_13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_q2_13_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/t_lut3_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/t_lut3_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/bpc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/gray2rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/gray2rgb_extended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/interpolator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/finalizers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md3x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md4x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_3xn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_nx3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_pipeline.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/pcs_stages.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/rgb_xyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/stages.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/xyz_lab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/xyz_rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut3x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut3x4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut_transforms.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mab4x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mba3x4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/md_lut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/md_luts_factory.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/prelude_lut_xyz_rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb2gray.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb2gray_extended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb_xyz_factory.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz_fixed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz_float.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/interpolator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/interpolator_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/lut4_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/lut4_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_q2_13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_q2_13_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/t_lut3_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/t_lut3_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut3_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut3_to_4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut4_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/xyz_lab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/dat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/defaults.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/err.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/gamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/gamut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/ictcp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/jzazbz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/jzczhz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/luv.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/math/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matrix.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/mlaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/nd_array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/oklab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/oklch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/profile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/safe_math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/tag.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/trc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/yrg.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/chromaticity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/dt_ucs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lut_hint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/curve_shape.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/degeneration.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/discontinuity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/monotonic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/slope_limit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/srlab2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/xyy.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libmoxcms-db01f575bd93a5ed.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/chad.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/cicp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/interpolator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/interpolator_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/lut4_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/lut4_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_q2_13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_q2_13_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/t_lut3_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/t_lut3_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/bpc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/gray2rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/gray2rgb_extended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/interpolator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/finalizers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md3x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md4x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_3xn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_nx3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_pipeline.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/pcs_stages.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/rgb_xyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/stages.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/xyz_lab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/xyz_rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut3x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut3x4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut_transforms.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mab4x3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mba3x4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/md_lut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/md_luts_factory.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/prelude_lut_xyz_rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb2gray.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb2gray_extended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb_xyz_factory.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz_fixed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz_float.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/interpolator.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/interpolator_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/lut4_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/lut4_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_q2_13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_q2_13_opt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/t_lut3_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/t_lut3_to_3_q0_15.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut3_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut3_to_4.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut4_to_3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/xyz_lab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/dat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/defaults.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/err.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/gamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/gamut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/ictcp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/jzazbz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/jzczhz.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/luv.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/math/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matrix.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/mlaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/nd_array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/oklab.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/oklch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/profile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/safe_math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/tag.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/trc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/yrg.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/chromaticity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/dt_ucs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lut_hint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/curve_shape.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/degeneration.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/discontinuity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/monotonic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/slope_limit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/srlab2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/xyy.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/chad.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/cicp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/interpolator.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/interpolator_q0_15.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/lut4_to_3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/lut4_to_3_q0_15.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_opt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_q2_13.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/rgb_xyz_q2_13_opt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/t_lut3_to_3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/avx/t_lut3_to_3_q0_15.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/bpc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/gray2rgb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/gray2rgb_extended.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/interpolator.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/finalizers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md3x3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md4x3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_3xn.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_nx3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/md_pipeline.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/pcs_stages.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/rgb_xyz.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/stages.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/xyz_lab.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/katana/xyz_rgb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut3x3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut3x4.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut4.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/lut_transforms.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mab.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mab4x3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/mba3x4.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/md_lut.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/md_luts_factory.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/prelude_lut_xyz_rgb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb2gray.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb2gray_extended.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgb_xyz_factory.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz_fixed.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/rgbxyz_float.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/interpolator.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/interpolator_q0_15.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/lut4_to_3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/lut4_to_3_q0_15.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_opt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_q2_13.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/rgb_xyz_q2_13_opt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/t_lut3_to_3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/sse/t_lut3_to_3_q0_15.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut3_to_3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut3_to_4.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/transform_lut4_to_3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/conversions/xyz_lab.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/dat.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/defaults.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/err.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/gamma.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/gamut.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/ictcp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/jzazbz.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/jzczhz.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lab.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/luv.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/math/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matrix.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/mlaf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/nd_array.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/oklab.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/oklch.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/profile.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/reader.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/rgb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/safe_math.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/tag.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/transform.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/trc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/yrg.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/chromaticity.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/dt_ucs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/helpers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/lut_hint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/curve_shape.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/degeneration.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/discontinuity.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/monotonic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/matan/slope_limit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/srlab2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/moxcms-0.7.11/src/xyy.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..634d80cb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8.d @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/nom-7abf1d49d1414df8.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/branch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/combinator/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/multi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/sequence/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/streaming.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/streaming.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/streaming.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/str.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/streaming.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnom-7abf1d49d1414df8.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/branch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/combinator/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/multi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/sequence/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/streaming.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/streaming.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/streaming.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/str.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/streaming.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnom-7abf1d49d1414df8.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/branch/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/combinator/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/multi/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/sequence/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/streaming.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/streaming.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/streaming.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/str.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/complete.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/streaming.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/branch/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/combinator/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/internal.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/multi/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/sequence/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/traits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/complete.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bits/streaming.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/complete.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/bytes/streaming.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/complete.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/character/streaming.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/str.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/complete.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/nom-8.0.0/src/number/streaming.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cec7056a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/noop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/noop_proc_macro-0.3.0/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnoop_proc_macro-ce03a6fe81b5df14.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/noop_proc_macro-0.3.0/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/noop_proc_macro-0.3.0/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_bigint-330a323bf903366f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_bigint-330a323bf903366f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9da1946f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_bigint-330a323bf903366f.d @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_bigint-330a323bf903366f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/addition.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/division.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/multiplication.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/subtraction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/arbitrary.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/power.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/serde.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/shift.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigrand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/addition.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/division.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/multiplication.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/subtraction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/arbitrary.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/monty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/power.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/serde.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/shift.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_bigint-330a323bf903366f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/addition.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/division.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/multiplication.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/subtraction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/arbitrary.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/power.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/serde.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/shift.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigrand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/addition.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/division.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/multiplication.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/subtraction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/arbitrary.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/monty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/power.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/serde.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/shift.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_bigint-330a323bf903366f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/addition.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/division.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/multiplication.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/subtraction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/arbitrary.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/power.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/serde.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/shift.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigrand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/addition.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/division.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/multiplication.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/subtraction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/arbitrary.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/monty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/power.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/serde.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/shift.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/addition.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/division.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/multiplication.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/subtraction.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/arbitrary.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/bits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/convert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/power.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/serde.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigint/shift.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/bigrand.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/addition.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/division.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/multiplication.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/subtraction.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/arbitrary.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/bits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/convert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/monty.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/power.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/serde.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-bigint-0.4.6/src/biguint/shift.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_derive-f2ec40105d362086.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_derive-f2ec40105d362086.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9f7d1ae8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_derive-f2ec40105d362086.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_derive-f2ec40105d362086.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-derive-0.4.2/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_derive-f2ec40105d362086.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-derive-0.4.2/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-derive-0.4.2/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b4e62665 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/roots.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/average.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/roots.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/average.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_integer-7cc150d5c67f77b4.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/roots.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/average.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/roots.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-integer-0.1.46/src/average.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_rational-531c675ef236015e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_rational-531c675ef236015e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..dbb5147d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_rational-531c675ef236015e.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_rational-531c675ef236015e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-rational-0.4.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-rational-0.4.2/src/pow.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_rational-531c675ef236015e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-rational-0.4.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-rational-0.4.2/src/pow.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_rational-531c675ef236015e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-rational-0.4.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-rational-0.4.2/src/pow.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-rational-0.4.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-rational-0.4.2/src/pow.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_traits-f39781f090c56316.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_traits-f39781f090c56316.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..017411c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_traits-f39781f090c56316.d @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/num_traits-f39781f090c56316.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/bounds.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/cast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/float.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/identities.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/int.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/bytes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/checked.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/euclid.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/inv.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/mul_add.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/overflowing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/saturating.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/wrapping.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/pow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/real.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/sign.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_traits-f39781f090c56316.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/bounds.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/cast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/float.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/identities.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/int.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/bytes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/checked.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/euclid.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/inv.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/mul_add.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/overflowing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/saturating.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/wrapping.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/pow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/real.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/sign.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libnum_traits-f39781f090c56316.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/bounds.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/cast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/float.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/identities.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/int.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/bytes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/checked.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/euclid.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/inv.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/mul_add.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/overflowing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/saturating.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/wrapping.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/pow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/real.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/sign.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/bounds.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/cast.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/float.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/identities.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/int.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/bytes.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/checked.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/euclid.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/inv.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/mul_add.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/overflowing.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/saturating.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/ops/wrapping.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/pow.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/real.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/num-traits-0.2.19/src/sign.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f9afb7c9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/once_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/imp_std.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/race.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/imp_std.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/race.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-0064a27db17ad75e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/imp_std.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/race.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/imp_std.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/race.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d103fc78 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/once_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/imp_std.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/race.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/imp_std.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/race.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libonce_cell-b5726b916b3362ce.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/imp_std.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/race.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/imp_std.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/once_cell-1.21.3/src/race.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ecb0a6c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/paste-577a69ce6fdefcf7.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/segment.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpaste-577a69ce6fdefcf7.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/segment.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/attr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/paste-1.0.15/src/segment.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..80aefc38 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/pastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/segment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/../README.md + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpastey-076ae5a4ca7f87b1.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/segment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/../README.md + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/attr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/segment.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pastey-0.1.1/src/../README.md: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/percent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/percent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6fd94533 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/percent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/percent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/ascii_set.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/ascii_set.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-766280580c7f9c1f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/ascii_set.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/ascii_set.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/percent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/percent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c7b105fe --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/percent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/percent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/ascii_set.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/ascii_set.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpercent_encoding-9f7d757de394f14d.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/ascii_set.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/percent-encoding-2.3.2/src/ascii_set.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/png-26d1db19a0c1932a.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/png-26d1db19a0c1932a.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7dbc6c7e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/png-26d1db19a0c1932a.d @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/png-26d1db19a0c1932a.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/adam7.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/chunk.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/interlace_info.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/read_decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/transform/palette.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/unfiltering_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/zlib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/filter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/srgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/text_metadata.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/traits.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpng-26d1db19a0c1932a.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/adam7.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/chunk.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/interlace_info.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/read_decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/transform/palette.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/unfiltering_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/zlib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/filter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/srgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/text_metadata.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/traits.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpng-26d1db19a0c1932a.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/adam7.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/chunk.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/interlace_info.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/read_decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/transform.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/transform/palette.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/unfiltering_buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/zlib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/filter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/srgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/text_metadata.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/traits.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/adam7.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/chunk.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/common.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/interlace_info.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/read_decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/stream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/transform.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/transform/palette.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/unfiltering_buffer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/decoder/zlib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/filter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/srgb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/text_metadata.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/png-0.18.0/src/traits.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3a0646b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/potential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/uchar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/ustr.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpotential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/uchar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/ustr.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpotential_utf-d2b8d6007c6ac01a.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/uchar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/ustr.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/uchar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/potential_utf-0.1.4/src/ustr.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/proc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/proc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ee9fd05f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/proc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.d @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/proc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/rcvec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/detection.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/extra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/wrapper.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/rcvec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/detection.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/extra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/wrapper.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-696ff2d61f065b42.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/rcvec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/detection.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/extra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/wrapper.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/marker.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/parse.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/rcvec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/detection.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/extra.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/wrapper.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/proc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/proc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..91efb244 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/proc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.d @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/proc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/rcvec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/detection.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/extra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/wrapper.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/rcvec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/detection.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/extra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/wrapper.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libproc_macro2-7edbec79ea97369f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/rcvec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/detection.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/extra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/wrapper.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/marker.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/parse.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_file.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/probe/proc_macro_span_location.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/rcvec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/detection.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/extra.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/proc-macro2-1.0.103/src/wrapper.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3f6d0c83 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/profiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-1.0.17/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-1.0.17/src/empty_impl.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-1.0.17/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-1.0.17/src/empty_impl.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling-c4f6a59d89c2a41f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-1.0.17/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-1.0.17/src/empty_impl.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-1.0.17/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-1.0.17/src/empty_impl.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/profiling_procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/profiling_procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..39289191 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/profiling_procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/profiling_procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-procmacros-1.0.17/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libprofiling_procmacros-e8c1e568f43599a7.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-procmacros-1.0.17/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/profiling-procmacros-1.0.17/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3d2e974b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.d @@ -0,0 +1,265 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/pxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acos.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acosf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acospi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acospif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asin.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asin_eval_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/alpha0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/alpha1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/bessel_exp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/beta0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/beta1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0_coeffs_remez.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/jincpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/jincpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/trigo_bessel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_d.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_m1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_m1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compoundf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/powm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/powm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cosm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/csc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/cbrt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/cbrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/rcbrt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/rcbrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/double_double.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/dyadic_float.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erf_poly.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfcx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfcxf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erffc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverfc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverfcf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerf_poly.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/auxiliary.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10m1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10m1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2m1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2m1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp_f128.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/logistic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/logisticf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/beta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betainc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betaincf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digamma_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_p.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_pf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_q.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_qf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma_r.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma_rf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lnbeta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lnbetaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/tgamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/tgammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/trigamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/trigammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/acosh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/acoshf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/asinh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/asinhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/atanh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/atanhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/cosh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/coshf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/sinh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/sinhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/tanh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/tanhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/fast_log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/fast_log_dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10dd_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10td.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10td_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dyadic_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pmx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pmxf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2dd_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1_dyadic_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2td.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2td_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dd_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_range_reduction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_td.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_td_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logitf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/polyeval.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow_exec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/powf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/powf_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/ceil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/floor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/rint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/rintf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/round.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/round_ties_even.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/trunc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/truncf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/shared_eval.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/argument_reduction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/argument_reduction_pi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cosf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cosm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cospif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cscf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/secf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincosf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincosf_eval.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincospif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinmxf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_helper.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sinc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_reduce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_reduce_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincospi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincospi_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sinmx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/rsqrt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/rsqrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrt1pm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrt1pm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2pi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2pif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cot.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/evalf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tan.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpi_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/cathetus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/cathetusf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypot.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypot3f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypotf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triple_double.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acos.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acosf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acospi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acospif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asin.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asin_eval_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/alpha0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/alpha1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/bessel_exp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/beta0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/beta1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0_coeffs_remez.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/jincpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/jincpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/trigo_bessel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_d.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_m1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_m1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compoundf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/powm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/powm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cosm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/csc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/cbrt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/cbrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/rcbrt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/rcbrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/double_double.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/dyadic_float.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erf_poly.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfcx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfcxf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erffc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverfc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverfcf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerf_poly.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/auxiliary.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10m1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10m1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2m1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2m1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp_f128.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/logistic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/logisticf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/beta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betainc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betaincf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digamma_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_p.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_pf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_q.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_qf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma_r.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma_rf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lnbeta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lnbetaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/tgamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/tgammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/trigamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/trigammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/acosh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/acoshf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/asinh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/asinhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/atanh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/atanhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/cosh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/coshf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/sinh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/sinhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/tanh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/tanhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/fast_log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/fast_log_dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10dd_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10td.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10td_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dyadic_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pmx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pmxf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2dd_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1_dyadic_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2td.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2td_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dd_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_range_reduction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_td.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_td_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logitf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/polyeval.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow_exec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/powf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/powf_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/ceil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/floor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/rint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/rintf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/round.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/round_ties_even.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/trunc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/truncf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/shared_eval.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/argument_reduction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/argument_reduction_pi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cosf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cosm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cospif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cscf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/secf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincosf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincosf_eval.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincospif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinmxf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_helper.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sinc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_reduce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_reduce_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincospi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincospi_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sinmx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/rsqrt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/rsqrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrt1pm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrt1pm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2pi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2pif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cot.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/evalf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tan.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpi_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/cathetus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/cathetusf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypot.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypot3f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypotf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triple_double.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libpxfm-cde882dea3b5ba87.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acos.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acosf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acospi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acospif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asin.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asin_eval_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/alpha0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/alpha1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/bessel_exp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/beta0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/beta1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0_coeffs_remez.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/jincpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/jincpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1e.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1ef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/trigo_bessel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1_coeffs_taylor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1f_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_d.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_m1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_m1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compoundf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/powm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/powm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cosm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/csc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/cbrt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/cbrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/rcbrt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/rcbrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/double_double.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/dyadic_float.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erf_poly.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfcx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfcxf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erffc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverfc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverfcf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerf_poly.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerff.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/auxiliary.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10m1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10m1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2m1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2m1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp_f128.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/logistic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/logisticf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/beta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betainc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betaincf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digamma_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_p.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_pf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_q.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_qf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma_r.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma_rf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lnbeta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lnbetaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/tgamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/tgammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/trigamma.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/trigammaf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/acosh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/acoshf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/asinh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/asinhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/atanh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/atanhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/cosh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/coshf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/sinh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/sinhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/tanh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/tanhf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/fast_log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/fast_log_dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10dd_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10td.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10td_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dyadic_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pmx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pmxf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2dd_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1_dyadic_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2td.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2td_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dd_coeffs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_range_reduction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_td.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_td_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logitf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/polyeval.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow_exec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/powf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/powf_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/ceil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/floor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/rint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/rintf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/round.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/round_ties_even.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/trunc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/truncf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/shared_eval.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/argument_reduction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/argument_reduction_pi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cosf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cosm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cospif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cscf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/secf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincosf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincosf_eval.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincospif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinmxf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_helper.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sinc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_dyadic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_reduce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_reduce_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincospi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincospi_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sinmx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/rsqrt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/rsqrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrt1pm1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrt1pm1f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrtf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2pi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2pif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cot.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/evalf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tan.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpi_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpif.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/cathetus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/cathetusf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypot.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypot3f.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypotf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triple_double.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acos.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acosf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acospi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/acospif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asin.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asin_eval_dyadic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinpi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/asinpif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/alpha0.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/alpha1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/bessel_exp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/beta0.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/beta1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0e.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0ef.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i0f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1e.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1ef.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/i2f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0_coeffs_remez.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0_coeffs_taylor.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j0f_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1_coeffs_taylor.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/j1f_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/jincpi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/jincpif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0e.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0ef.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k0f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1e.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1ef.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/k2f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/trigo_bessel.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0_coeffs_taylor.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y0f_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1_coeffs_taylor.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bessel/y1f_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/bits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/common.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_d.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_m1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compound_m1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/compoundf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/powm1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/compound/powm1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cosm1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/csc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/cbrt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/cbrtf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/rcbrt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/cube_roots/rcbrtf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/double_double.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/dyadic_float.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erf_poly.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfcx.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erfcxf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erff.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/erffc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverfc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverfcf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/inverff.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerf_poly.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/err/rerff.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/auxiliary.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10m1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp10m1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2m1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp2m1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/exp_f128.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expm1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/expm1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/logistic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/exponents/logisticf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/beta.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betaf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betainc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/betaincf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digamma.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digamma_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/digammaf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_p.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_pf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_q.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/gamma_qf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma_r.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgamma_rf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lgammaf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lnbeta.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/lnbetaf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/tgamma.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/tgammaf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/trigamma.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/gamma/trigammaf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/acosh.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/acoshf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/asinh.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/asinhf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/atanh.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/atanhf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/cosh.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/coshf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/sinh.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/sinhf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/tanh.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/hyperbolic/tanhf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/fast_log.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/fast_log_dd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10dd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10dd_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1_tables.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10p1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10td.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log10td_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dyadic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1p_dyadic_tables.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pmx.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log1pmxf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2dd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2dd_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1_dyadic_tables.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1_tables.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2p1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2td.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log2td_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dd_coeffs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_dyadic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_range_reduction.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_td.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/log_td_table.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/logs/logitf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/polyeval.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow_exec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/pow_tables.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/powf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/powf_tables.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/ceil.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/floor.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/rint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/rintf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/round.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/round_ties_even.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/trunc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/rounding/truncf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/shared_eval.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/argument_reduction.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/argument_reduction_pi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cosf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cosm1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cospif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/cscf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/secf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincosf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincosf_eval.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincospif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sincpif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinmxf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_cosf/sinpif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_helper.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sin_table.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sinc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_dyadic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_reduce.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincos_reduce_tables.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincospi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincospi_tables.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sincpi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/sinmx.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/rsqrt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/rsqrtf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrt1pm1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrt1pm1f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/square_root/sqrtf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2pi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atan2pif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanpi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/atanpif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cot.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotpi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/cotpif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/evalf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tan.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpi_table.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/tangent/tanpif.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/cathetus.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/cathetusf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypot.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypot3f.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triangle/hypotf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/pxfm-0.1.27/src/triple_double.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0f355a22 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.d @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/qoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/pixel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/types.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/consts.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libqoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/pixel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/types.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/consts.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libqoi-02e3b3579d8465a0.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/pixel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/types.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/consts.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/decode.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/encode.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/header.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/pixel.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/types.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/utils.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/qoi-0.4.1/src/consts.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quick_error-31ce661899395a7f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quick_error-31ce661899395a7f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cccc7b00 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quick_error-31ce661899395a7f.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quick_error-31ce661899395a7f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quick-error-2.0.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquick_error-31ce661899395a7f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quick-error-2.0.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquick_error-31ce661899395a7f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quick-error-2.0.1/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quick-error-2.0.1/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e799a095 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298.d @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quote-49a93d0cff3d7298.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ident_fragment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/to_tokens.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/runtime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/spanned.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-49a93d0cff3d7298.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ident_fragment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/to_tokens.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/runtime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/spanned.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-49a93d0cff3d7298.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ident_fragment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/to_tokens.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/runtime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/spanned.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ext.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/format.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ident_fragment.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/to_tokens.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/runtime.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/spanned.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2a708db0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d.d @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/quote-6622cc0dcb91989d.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ident_fragment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/to_tokens.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/runtime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/spanned.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-6622cc0dcb91989d.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ident_fragment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/to_tokens.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/runtime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/spanned.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libquote-6622cc0dcb91989d.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ident_fragment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/to_tokens.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/runtime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/spanned.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ext.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/format.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/ident_fragment.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/to_tokens.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/runtime.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/quote-1.0.42/src/spanned.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3de2d9d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.d @@ -0,0 +1,78 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/forward_shared.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/forward.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/inverse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cpu_features/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/activity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/asm/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/dist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/ec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/partition.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/predict.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/quantize/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/quantize/tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rdo.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rdo_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/align.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/cdf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/kmeans.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/logexp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/uninit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cdef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/cdf_context.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/partition_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/superblock_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/transform_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/block_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/frame_header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/deblock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/entropymode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/levels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/lrf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/mc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/me.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/recon_intra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/scan_order.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/segmentation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/stats.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/plane_region.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_blocks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_motion_stats.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_restoration_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tiler.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/token_cdfs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/color.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/rate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/speedsettings.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/context.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/lookahead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/frame/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/frame/plane.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/header.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/out/built.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cpu_features/rust.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/forward_shared.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/forward.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/inverse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cpu_features/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/activity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/asm/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/dist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/ec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/partition.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/predict.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/quantize/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/quantize/tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rdo.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rdo_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/align.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/cdf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/kmeans.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/logexp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/uninit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cdef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/cdf_context.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/partition_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/superblock_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/transform_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/block_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/frame_header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/deblock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/entropymode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/levels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/lrf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/mc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/me.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/recon_intra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/scan_order.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/segmentation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/stats.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/plane_region.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_blocks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_motion_stats.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_restoration_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tiler.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/token_cdfs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/color.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/rate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/speedsettings.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/context.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/lookahead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/frame/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/frame/plane.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/header.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/out/built.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cpu_features/rust.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librav1e-ef3f409bfadc7c39.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/forward_shared.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/forward.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/inverse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cpu_features/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/activity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/asm/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/dist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/ec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/partition.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/predict.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/quantize/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/quantize/tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rdo.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rdo_tables.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/align.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/cdf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/kmeans.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/logexp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/uninit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cdef.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/cdf_context.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/partition_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/superblock_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/transform_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/block_unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/frame_header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/deblock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/entropymode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/levels.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/lrf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/mc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/me.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/recon_intra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/scan_order.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/segmentation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/stats.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/plane_region.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_blocks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_motion_stats.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_restoration_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tiler.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/token_cdfs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/color.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/rate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/speedsettings.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/context.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/internal.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/lookahead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/frame/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/frame/plane.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/header.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/out/built.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cpu_features/rust.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/forward_shared.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/forward.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/transform/inverse.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cpu_features/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/activity.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/asm/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/dist.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/ec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/partition.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/predict.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/quantize/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/quantize/tables.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rdo.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rdo_tables.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/align.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/cdf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/kmeans.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/logexp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/util/uninit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cdef.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/cdf_context.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/partition_unit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/superblock_unit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/transform_unit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/block_unit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/context/frame_header.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/deblock.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/entropymode.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/levels.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/lrf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/mc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/me.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/rate.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/recon_intra.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/scan_order.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/segmentation.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/stats.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/plane_region.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_blocks.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_motion_stats.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_restoration_state.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tile_state.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/tiling/tiler.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/token_cdfs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/color.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/rate.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/config/speedsettings.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/context.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/internal.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/lookahead.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/api/util.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/frame/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/frame/plane.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/header.rs: +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/out/built.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rav1e-0.8.1/src/cpu_features/rust.rs: + +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION=0.8.1 +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MAJOR=0 +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MINOR=8 +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PATCH=1 +# env-dep:OUT_DIR=/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/rav1e-dcbc355ff43b645c/out diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..49357a82 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/av1encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/dirtyalpha.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/av1encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/dirtyalpha.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libravif-3406c4fe22d4d9fe.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/av1encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/dirtyalpha.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/av1encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ravif-0.12.0/src/dirtyalpha.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..79699788 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6.d @@ -0,0 +1,103 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rayon-a42489e78b471ba6.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/delegate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/private.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/split_producer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/binary_heap.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/btree_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/btree_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/hash_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/hash_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/linked_list.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/vec_deque.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/plumbing/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/blocks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/cloned.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/consumer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/copied.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/empty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/enumerate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/extend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/filter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/filter_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/find.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/find_first_last/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flat_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flat_map_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flatten.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flatten_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold_chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold_chunks_with.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/for_each.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/from_par_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/inspect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/interleave.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/interleave_shortest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/intersperse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/len.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/map_with.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/multizip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/noop.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/once.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/panic_fuse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/par_bridge.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/positions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/product.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/reduce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/repeat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/rev.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip_any.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip_any_while.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/splitter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/step_by.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/sum.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take_any.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take_any_while.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_fold.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_reduce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_reduce_with.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/unzip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/update.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/walk_tree.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/while_some.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/zip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/zip_eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/prelude.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/range.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/range_inclusive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/result.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/chunk_by.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/rchunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/sort.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/str.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/string.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/vec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/par_either.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cannot_collect_filtermap_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cannot_zip_filtered_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cell_par_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/must_use.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/no_send_par_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/rc_par_iter.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon-a42489e78b471ba6.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/delegate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/private.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/split_producer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/binary_heap.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/btree_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/btree_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/hash_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/hash_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/linked_list.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/vec_deque.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/plumbing/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/blocks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/cloned.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/consumer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/copied.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/empty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/enumerate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/extend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/filter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/filter_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/find.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/find_first_last/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flat_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flat_map_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flatten.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flatten_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold_chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold_chunks_with.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/for_each.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/from_par_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/inspect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/interleave.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/interleave_shortest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/intersperse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/len.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/map_with.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/multizip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/noop.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/once.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/panic_fuse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/par_bridge.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/positions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/product.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/reduce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/repeat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/rev.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip_any.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip_any_while.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/splitter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/step_by.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/sum.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take_any.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take_any_while.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_fold.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_reduce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_reduce_with.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/unzip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/update.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/walk_tree.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/while_some.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/zip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/zip_eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/prelude.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/range.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/range_inclusive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/result.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/chunk_by.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/rchunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/sort.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/str.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/string.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/vec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/par_either.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cannot_collect_filtermap_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cannot_zip_filtered_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cell_par_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/must_use.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/no_send_par_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/rc_par_iter.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon-a42489e78b471ba6.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/delegate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/private.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/split_producer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/binary_heap.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/btree_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/btree_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/hash_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/hash_set.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/linked_list.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/vec_deque.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/plumbing/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/blocks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/cloned.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/consumer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/copied.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/empty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/enumerate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/extend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/filter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/filter_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/find.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/find_first_last/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flat_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flat_map_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flatten.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flatten_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold_chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold_chunks_with.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/for_each.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/from_par_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/inspect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/interleave.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/interleave_shortest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/intersperse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/len.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/map_with.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/multizip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/noop.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/once.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/panic_fuse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/par_bridge.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/positions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/product.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/reduce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/repeat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/rev.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip_any.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip_any_while.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/splitter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/step_by.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/sum.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take_any.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take_any_while.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_fold.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_reduce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_reduce_with.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/unzip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/update.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/walk_tree.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/while_some.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/zip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/zip_eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/prelude.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/range.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/range_inclusive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/result.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/chunk_by.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/rchunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/sort.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/str.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/string.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/vec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/par_either.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cannot_collect_filtermap_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cannot_zip_filtered_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cell_par_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/must_use.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/no_send_par_iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/rc_par_iter.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/delegate.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/private.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/split_producer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/array.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/binary_heap.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/btree_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/btree_set.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/hash_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/hash_set.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/linked_list.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/collections/vec_deque.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/plumbing/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/blocks.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/chain.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/chunks.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/cloned.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/consumer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/collect/test.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/copied.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/empty.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/enumerate.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/extend.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/filter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/filter_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/find.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/find_first_last/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flat_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flat_map_iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flatten.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/flatten_iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold_chunks.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/fold_chunks_with.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/for_each.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/from_par_iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/inspect.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/interleave.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/interleave_shortest.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/intersperse.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/len.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/map_with.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/multizip.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/noop.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/once.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/panic_fuse.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/par_bridge.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/positions.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/product.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/reduce.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/repeat.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/rev.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip_any.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/skip_any_while.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/splitter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/step_by.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/sum.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take_any.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/take_any_while.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_fold.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_reduce.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/try_reduce_with.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/unzip.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/update.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/walk_tree.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/while_some.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/zip.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/iter/zip_eq.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/option.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/prelude.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/range.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/range_inclusive.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/result.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/chunk_by.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/chunks.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/rchunks.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/sort.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/slice/test.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/str.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/string.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/vec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/math.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/par_either.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cannot_collect_filtermap_data.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cannot_zip_filtered_data.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/cell_par_iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/must_use.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/no_send_par_iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-1.11.0/src/compile_fail/rc_par_iter.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2e6241a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.d @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/private.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/broadcast/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/broadcast/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/job.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/join/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/latch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/registry.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/scope/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/sleep/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/sleep/counters.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/spawn/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/thread_pool/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/thread_pool/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/unwind.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/rc_return.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/rc_upvar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/scope_join_bad.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/test.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/private.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/broadcast/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/broadcast/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/job.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/join/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/latch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/registry.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/scope/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/sleep/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/sleep/counters.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/spawn/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/thread_pool/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/thread_pool/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/unwind.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/rc_return.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/rc_upvar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/scope_join_bad.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/test.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librayon_core-af936d5901b0fce8.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/private.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/broadcast/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/broadcast/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/job.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/join/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/latch.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/registry.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/scope/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/sleep/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/sleep/counters.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/spawn/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/thread_pool/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/thread_pool/test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/unwind.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/rc_return.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/rc_upvar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/scope_join_bad.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/test.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/private.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/broadcast/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/broadcast/test.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/job.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/join/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/latch.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/registry.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/scope/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/sleep/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/sleep/counters.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/spawn/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/thread_pool/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/thread_pool/test.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/unwind.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/quicksort_race3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/rc_return.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/rc_upvar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/compile_fail/scope_join_bad.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rayon-core-1.13.0/src/test.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..61b4ca68 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.d @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/abgr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/argb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/bgr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/bgra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray_a.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray_alpha.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/grb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/rgba.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/inherent_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/tuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/pixel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/rgba.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/alt.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/abgr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/argb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/bgr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/bgra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray_a.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray_alpha.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/grb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/rgba.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/inherent_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/tuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/pixel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/rgba.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/alt.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librgb-f3adc0c6352f85d1.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/abgr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/argb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/bgr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/bgra.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray_a.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray_alpha.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/grb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/rgba.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/inherent_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/tuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/pixel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/rgb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/rgba.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/alt.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/abgr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/argb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/bgr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/bgra.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray_a.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/gray_alpha.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/grb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/rgb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/formats/rgba.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/inherent_impls.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/array.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/convert/tuple.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/ops.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/pixel.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/rgb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/internal/rgba.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rgb-0.8.52/src/legacy/alt.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c0243646 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.d @@ -0,0 +1,159 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/prefixed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/testutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bssl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cold_error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_flat_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_split_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cstr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/sliceutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/leading_zeros_skipped.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/once_cell/race.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/notsend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/unwrap_const.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/bs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/hw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/vp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aarch64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aeshwclmulmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/vaesclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/algorithm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305_openssh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmul.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmulavxmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/vclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/less_safe_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/nonce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/opening_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/partial_block.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_arm_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/sealing_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/shift.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/unbound_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/agreement.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/constant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/boxed_limbs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulusvalue.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/private_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/inout.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/aarch64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mont.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/storage.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/montgomery.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/n0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/boolmask.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/leaky.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/word.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/c.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_constant_time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/positive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/dynstate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/x25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/keys.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/curve.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/digest_scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/elem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p256.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p384.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/private_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/input_too_long.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/into_unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/key_rejected.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hkdf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/limb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pbkdf2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pkcs8.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pkcs1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pss.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/signature.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/integrated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu/intel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/ed25519_pkcs8_v2_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p256_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p384_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/../data/alg-rsa-encryption.der + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/prefixed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/testutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bssl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cold_error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_flat_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_split_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cstr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/sliceutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/leading_zeros_skipped.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/once_cell/race.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/notsend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/unwrap_const.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/bs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/hw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/vp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aarch64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aeshwclmulmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/vaesclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/algorithm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305_openssh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmul.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmulavxmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/vclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/less_safe_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/nonce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/opening_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/partial_block.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_arm_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/sealing_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/shift.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/unbound_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/agreement.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/constant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/boxed_limbs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulusvalue.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/private_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/inout.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/aarch64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mont.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/storage.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/montgomery.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/n0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/boolmask.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/leaky.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/word.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/c.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_constant_time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/positive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/dynstate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/x25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/keys.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/curve.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/digest_scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/elem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p256.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p384.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/private_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/input_too_long.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/into_unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/key_rejected.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hkdf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/limb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pbkdf2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pkcs8.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pkcs1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pss.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/signature.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/integrated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu/intel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/ed25519_pkcs8_v2_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p256_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p384_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/../data/alg-rsa-encryption.der + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-c6016e7ac3a55c6b.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/prefixed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/testutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bssl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cold_error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_flat_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_split_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cstr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/sliceutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/leading_zeros_skipped.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/once_cell/race.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/notsend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/unwrap_const.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/bs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/hw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/vp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aarch64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aeshwclmulmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/vaesclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/algorithm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305_openssh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmul.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmulavxmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/vclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/less_safe_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/nonce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/opening_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/partial_block.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_arm_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/sealing_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/shift.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/unbound_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/agreement.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/constant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/boxed_limbs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulusvalue.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/private_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/inout.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/aarch64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mont.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/storage.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/montgomery.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/n0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/boolmask.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/leaky.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/word.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/c.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_constant_time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/positive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/dynstate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/x25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/keys.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/curve.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/digest_scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/elem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p256.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p384.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/private_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/input_too_long.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/into_unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/key_rejected.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hkdf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/limb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pbkdf2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pkcs8.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pkcs1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pss.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/signature.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/integrated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu/intel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/ed25519_pkcs8_v2_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p256_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p384_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/../data/alg-rsa-encryption.der + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/debug.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/prefixed.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/testutil.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bssl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cold_error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_flat_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_split_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cstr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/sliceutil.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/leading_zeros_skipped.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/once_cell/race.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/notsend.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/ptr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks_mut.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/unwrap_const.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/ffi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/bs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/hw.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/vp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aarch64.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aeshwclmulmovbe.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/vaesclmulavx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/algorithm.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305_openssh.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/ffi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmul.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmulavxmovbe.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/neon.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/vclmulavx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/less_safe_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/nonce.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/opening_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/array.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/base.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/partial_block.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_arm_neon.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/quic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/sealing_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/shift.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/unbound_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/agreement.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/ffi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/constant.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/boxed_limbs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulus.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulusvalue.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/private_exponent.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/inout.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/aarch64/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mont.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/storage.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/montgomery.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/n0.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/boolmask.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/leaky.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/word.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/c.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_constant_time.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der_writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/positive.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/dynstate.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/ffi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_32.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_64.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/signing.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/verification.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/x25519.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ops.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/keys.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/curve.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdh.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/digest_scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/signing.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/verification.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/elem.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p256.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p384.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/private_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/public_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/input_too_long.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/into_unspecified.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/key_rejected.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/unspecified.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hkdf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hmac.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/limb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pbkdf2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pkcs8.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rand.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pkcs1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pss.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair_components.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_exponent.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key_components.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_modulus.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/verification.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/signature.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_test.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha/ffi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/integrated.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu/intel.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/ed25519_pkcs8_v2_template.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p256_pkcs8_v1_template.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p384_pkcs8_v1_template.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/../data/alg-rsa-encryption.der: + +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_NAME=ring +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MAJOR=0 +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MINOR=17 +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PATCH=14 +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PRE= diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e624df30 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4.d @@ -0,0 +1,159 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ring-f435da8dc7284ef4.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/prefixed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/testutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bssl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cold_error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_flat_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_split_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cstr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/sliceutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/leading_zeros_skipped.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/once_cell/race.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/notsend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/unwrap_const.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/bs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/hw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/vp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aarch64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aeshwclmulmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/vaesclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/algorithm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305_openssh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmul.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmulavxmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/vclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/less_safe_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/nonce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/opening_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/partial_block.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_arm_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/sealing_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/shift.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/unbound_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/agreement.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/constant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/boxed_limbs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulusvalue.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/private_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/inout.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/aarch64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mont.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/storage.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/montgomery.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/n0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/boolmask.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/leaky.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/word.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/c.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_constant_time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/positive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/dynstate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/x25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/keys.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/curve.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/digest_scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/elem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p256.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p384.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/private_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/input_too_long.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/into_unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/key_rejected.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hkdf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/limb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pbkdf2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pkcs8.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pkcs1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pss.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/signature.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/integrated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu/intel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/ed25519_pkcs8_v2_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p256_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p384_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/../data/alg-rsa-encryption.der + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-f435da8dc7284ef4.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/prefixed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/testutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bssl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cold_error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_flat_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_split_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cstr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/sliceutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/leading_zeros_skipped.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/once_cell/race.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/notsend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/unwrap_const.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/bs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/hw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/vp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aarch64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aeshwclmulmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/vaesclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/algorithm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305_openssh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmul.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmulavxmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/vclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/less_safe_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/nonce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/opening_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/partial_block.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_arm_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/sealing_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/shift.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/unbound_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/agreement.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/constant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/boxed_limbs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulusvalue.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/private_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/inout.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/aarch64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mont.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/storage.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/montgomery.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/n0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/boolmask.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/leaky.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/word.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/c.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_constant_time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/positive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/dynstate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/x25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/keys.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/curve.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/digest_scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/elem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p256.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p384.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/private_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/input_too_long.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/into_unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/key_rejected.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hkdf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/limb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pbkdf2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pkcs8.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pkcs1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pss.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/signature.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/integrated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu/intel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/ed25519_pkcs8_v2_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p256_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p384_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/../data/alg-rsa-encryption.der + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libring-f435da8dc7284ef4.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/prefixed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/testutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bssl.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cold_error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_flat_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_split_map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cstr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/sliceutil.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/leading_zeros_skipped.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/once_cell/race.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/notsend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks_mut.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/unwrap_const.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/bs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/hw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/vp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aarch64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aeshwclmulmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/vaesclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/algorithm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305_openssh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmul.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmulavxmovbe.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/vclmulavx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/less_safe_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/nonce.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/opening_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/array.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/partial_block.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_arm_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/sealing_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/shift.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/unbound_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/agreement.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/constant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/boxed_limbs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulusvalue.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/private_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/inout.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/aarch64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mont.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/storage.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/montgomery.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/n0.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/boolmask.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/leaky.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/word.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/c.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_constant_time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/positive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/dynstate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_32.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/x25519.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/keys.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/curve.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdh.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/digest_scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/signing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/elem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p256.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p384.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/private_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/input_too_long.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/into_unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/key_rejected.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/unspecified.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hkdf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/limb.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pbkdf2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pkcs8.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pkcs1.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pss.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key_components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_modulus.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/verification.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/signature.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_test.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha/ffi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/integrated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu/intel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/ed25519_pkcs8_v2_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p256_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p384_pkcs8_v1_template.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/../data/alg-rsa-encryption.der + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/debug.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/prefixed.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/testutil.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bssl.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cold_error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_flat_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/array_split_map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/cstr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/sliceutil.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/leading_zeros_skipped.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/once_cell/race.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/notsend.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/ptr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/slice/as_chunks_mut.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/polyfill/unwrap_const.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/ffi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/bs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/hw.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes/vp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aarch64.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/aeshwclmulmovbe.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/aes_gcm/vaesclmulavx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/algorithm.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305_openssh.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/ffi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmul.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/clmulavxmovbe.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/neon.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/gcm/vclmulavx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/less_safe_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/nonce.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/opening_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/array.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/base.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/overlapping/partial_block.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_arm_neon.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/poly1305/ffi_fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/quic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/sealing_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/shift.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/unbound_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/agreement.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/ffi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/constant.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/boxed_limbs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulus.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/modulusvalue.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/bigint/private_exponent.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/inout.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/aarch64/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs/x86_64/mont.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/limbs512/storage.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/montgomery.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/arithmetic/n0.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/boolmask.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/leaky.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/bb/word.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/c.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_constant_time.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/der_writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/io/positive.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/dynstate.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/ffi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_32.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/digest/sha2/sha2_64.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/signing.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/verification.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/x25519.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ops.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/keys.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/curve.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdh.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/digest_scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/signing.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/verification.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/elem.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p256.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ops/p384.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/private_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/public_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/input_too_long.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/into_unspecified.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/key_rejected.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/error/unspecified.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hkdf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/hmac.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/limb.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pbkdf2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/pkcs8.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rand.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pkcs1.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/padding/pss.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/keypair_components.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_exponent.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_key_components.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/public_modulus.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/verification.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/signature.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/deprecated_test.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha/ffi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/aead/chacha20_poly1305/integrated.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/cpu/intel.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/curve25519/ed25519/ed25519_pkcs8_v2_template.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p256_pkcs8_v1_template.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/ec/suite_b/ecdsa/ecPublicKey_p384_pkcs8_v1_template.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ring-0.17.14/src/rsa/../data/alg-rsa-encryption.der: + +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_NAME=ring +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MAJOR=0 +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MINOR=17 +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PATCH=14 +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PRE= diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls-2654d54899de7799.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls-2654d54899de7799.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..cb78b959 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls-2654d54899de7799.d @@ -0,0 +1,98 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls-2654d54899de7799.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/alert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ccs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/codec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/buffers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/fragmenter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/inbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/outbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/persist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ffdhe_groups.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/common_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/compress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/kernel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/unbuffered.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/sign.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/kx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/cipher.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hpke.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/signer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/hash_hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/limited_cache.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/record_layer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls12/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/key_schedule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/vecbuf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/check.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/bs_debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/suites.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/versions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/anchors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/client_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/server_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/client_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/ech.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/server_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/implvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/tlsvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/howto.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/features.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/defaults.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/fips.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/time_provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/polyfill.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-2654d54899de7799.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/alert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ccs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/codec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/buffers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/fragmenter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/inbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/outbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/persist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ffdhe_groups.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/common_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/compress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/kernel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/unbuffered.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/sign.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/kx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/cipher.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hpke.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/signer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/hash_hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/limited_cache.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/record_layer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls12/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/key_schedule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/vecbuf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/check.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/bs_debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/suites.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/versions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/anchors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/client_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/server_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/client_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/ech.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/server_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/implvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/tlsvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/howto.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/features.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/defaults.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/fips.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/time_provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/polyfill.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-2654d54899de7799.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/alert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ccs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/codec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/buffers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/fragmenter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/inbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/outbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/persist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ffdhe_groups.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/common_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/compress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/kernel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/unbuffered.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/sign.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/kx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/cipher.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hpke.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/signer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/hash_hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/limited_cache.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/record_layer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls12/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/key_schedule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/vecbuf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/check.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/bs_debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/suites.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/versions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/anchors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/client_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/server_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/client_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/ech.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/server_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/implvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/tlsvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/howto.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/features.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/defaults.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/fips.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/time_provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/polyfill.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/alert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/base.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ccs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/codec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/buffers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/handshake.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/enums.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/fragmenter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/handshake.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/inbound.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/outbound.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/persist.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ffdhe_groups.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/common_state.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/compress.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/kernel.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/unbuffered.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/sign.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hash.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hmac.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/kx.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/quic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/ticketer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls12.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls13.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/cipher.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hash.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hmac.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls12.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls13.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hpke.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/signer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/hash_hs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/limited_cache.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/rand.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/record_layer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/stream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls12/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/key_schedule.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/vecbuf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/verify.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/x509.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/check.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/bs_debug.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/builder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/enums.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log_file.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/suites.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/versions.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/anchors.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/client_verifier.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/server_verifier.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/verify.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/builder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/client_conn.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/common.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/ech.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/handy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/hs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls12.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls13.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/builder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/common.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/handy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/hs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/server_conn.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls12.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls13.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/quic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/ticketer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/implvulns.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/tlsvulns.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/howto.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/features.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/defaults.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/fips.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/time_provider.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lock.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/polyfill.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3eece3fc --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.d @@ -0,0 +1,98 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/alert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ccs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/codec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/buffers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/fragmenter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/inbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/outbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/persist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ffdhe_groups.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/common_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/compress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/kernel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/unbuffered.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/sign.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/kx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/cipher.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hpke.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/signer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/hash_hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/limited_cache.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/record_layer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls12/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/key_schedule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/vecbuf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/check.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/bs_debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/suites.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/versions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/anchors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/client_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/server_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/client_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/ech.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/server_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/implvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/tlsvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/howto.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/features.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/defaults.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/fips.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/time_provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/polyfill.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/alert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ccs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/codec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/buffers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/fragmenter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/inbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/outbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/persist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ffdhe_groups.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/common_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/compress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/kernel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/unbuffered.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/sign.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/kx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/cipher.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hpke.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/signer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/hash_hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/limited_cache.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/record_layer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls12/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/key_schedule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/vecbuf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/check.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/bs_debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/suites.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/versions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/anchors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/client_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/server_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/client_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/ech.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/server_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/implvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/tlsvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/howto.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/features.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/defaults.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/fips.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/time_provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/polyfill.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls-53fed23d9a2f9db3.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/alert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/base.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ccs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/codec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/buffers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/fragmenter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/handshake.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/inbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/outbound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/persist.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ffdhe_groups.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/common_state.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/compress.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/kernel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/unbuffered.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/sign.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/kx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/cipher.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hmac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hpke.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/signer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/hash_hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/limited_cache.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/rand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/record_layer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls12/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/key_schedule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/vecbuf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/check.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/bs_debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/enums.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log_file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/suites.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/versions.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/anchors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/client_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/server_verifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/verify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/client_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/ech.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/handy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/hs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/server_conn.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls12.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls13.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/quic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/ticketer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/implvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/tlsvulns.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/howto.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/features.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/defaults.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/fips.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/time_provider.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lock.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/polyfill.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/alert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/base.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ccs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/codec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/buffers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/deframer/handshake.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/enums.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/fragmenter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/handshake.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/inbound.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/message/outbound.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/persist.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/msgs/ffdhe_groups.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/common_state.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/compress.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/kernel.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/conn/unbuffered.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/sign.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hash.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/hmac.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/kx.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/quic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/ticketer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls12.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/ring/tls13.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/cipher.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hash.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hmac.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls12.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/tls13.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/hpke.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/crypto/signer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/hash_hs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/limited_cache.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/rand.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/record_layer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/stream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls12/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/tls13/key_schedule.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/vecbuf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/verify.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/x509.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/check.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/bs_debug.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/builder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/enums.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/key_log_file.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/suites.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/versions.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/anchors.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/client_verifier.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/server_verifier.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/webpki/verify.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/builder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/client_conn.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/common.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/ech.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/handy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/hs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls12.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/client/tls13.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/builder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/common.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/handy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/hs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/server_conn.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls12.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/server/tls13.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/quic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/ticketer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/implvulns.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/tlsvulns.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/howto.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/features.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/defaults.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/manual/fips.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/time_provider.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/lock.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-0.23.35/src/polyfill.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1d730367 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.d @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/rustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/alg_id.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/base64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/server_name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/pem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-44.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-65.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-87.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p256k1.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p521.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha512.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-encryption.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha512.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ed25519.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ed448.der + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/alg_id.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/base64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/server_name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/pem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-44.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-65.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-87.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p256k1.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p521.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha512.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-encryption.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha512.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ed25519.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ed448.der + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/librustls_pki_types-81f7548fbb85d9d5.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/alg_id.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/base64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/server_name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/pem.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-44.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-65.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-87.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p256k1.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p521.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha512.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-encryption.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha256.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha384.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha512.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ed25519.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ed448.der + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/alg_id.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/base64.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/server_name.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/pem.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-44.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-65.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ml-dsa-87.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p256k1.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p256.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p384.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-p521.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha256.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha384.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ecdsa-sha512.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-encryption.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha256.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha384.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-rsa-pss-sha512.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ed25519.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-pki-types-1.13.2/src/data/alg-ed448.der: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..67252ea7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.d @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/buffer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s_full_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s_intrinsics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/digit_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/f2s.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/f2s_intrinsics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/mantissa.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/buffer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s_full_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s_intrinsics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/digit_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/f2s.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/f2s_intrinsics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/mantissa.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libryu-b472829d65c7f1fe.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/buffer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/common.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s_full_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s_intrinsics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/digit_table.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/f2s.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/f2s_intrinsics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/exponent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/mantissa.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/buffer/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/common.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s_full_table.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/d2s_intrinsics.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/digit_table.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/f2s.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/f2s_intrinsics.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/exponent.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ryu-1.0.20/src/pretty/mantissa.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d73f200c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6.d @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde-b20de8b54a6521c6.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/integer128.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/ser.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-b20de8b54a6521c6.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/integer128.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/ser.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-b20de8b54a6521c6.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/integer128.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/ser.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/integer128.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/de.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/ser.rs: +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs: + +# env-dep:OUT_DIR=/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde-c580ca7827c7164e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde-c580ca7827c7164e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..43b84e59 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde-c580ca7827c7164e.d @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde-c580ca7827c7164e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/integer128.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/ser.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-c580ca7827c7164e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/integer128.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/ser.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde-c580ca7827c7164e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/integer128.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/ser.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/integer128.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/de.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde-1.0.228/src/private/ser.rs: +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out/private.rs: + +# env-dep:OUT_DIR=/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde-0c79bc1bb5bf9eba/out diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c8730a0b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.d @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/crate_root.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/ignored_any.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/fmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/impossible.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/content.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/seed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/doc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/size_hint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/string.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/out/private.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/crate_root.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/ignored_any.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/fmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/impossible.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/content.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/seed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/doc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/size_hint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/string.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/out/private.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_core-1157c6d7086cedd9.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/crate_root.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/ignored_any.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/fmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/impossible.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/format.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/content.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/seed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/doc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/size_hint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/string.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/out/private.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/crate_root.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/value.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/ignored_any.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/de/impls.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/fmt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/impls.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/ser/impossible.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/format.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/content.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/seed.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/doc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/size_hint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_core-1.0.228/src/private/string.rs: +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/out/private.rs: + +# env-dep:OUT_DIR=/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/serde_core-7b7cb0cfdf46fc20/out diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..79a7beab --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d.d @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/case.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/check.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ctxt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/receiver.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/respan.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/symbol.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/bound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/fragment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_adjacently.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_externally.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_internally.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_untagged.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/identifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/struct_.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/tuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/deprecated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/dummy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/pretend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/this.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_derive-a8c8c9e2fb95606d.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/case.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/check.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ctxt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/receiver.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/respan.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/symbol.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/bound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/fragment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_adjacently.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_externally.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_internally.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_untagged.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/identifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/struct_.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/tuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/deprecated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/dummy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/pretend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/this.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ast.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/attr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/name.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/case.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/check.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ctxt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/receiver.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/respan.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/symbol.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/bound.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/fragment.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_adjacently.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_externally.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_internally.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_untagged.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/identifier.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/struct_.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/tuple.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/unit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/deprecated.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/dummy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/pretend.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/ser.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/this.rs: + +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PATCH=228 diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3e90bd66 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f.d @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/case.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/check.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ctxt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/receiver.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/respan.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/symbol.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/bound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/fragment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_adjacently.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_externally.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_internally.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_untagged.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/identifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/struct_.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/tuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/deprecated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/dummy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/pretend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/this.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_derive-adbe85f8fa8fe26f.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/case.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/check.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ctxt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/receiver.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/respan.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/symbol.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/bound.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/fragment.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_adjacently.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_externally.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_internally.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_untagged.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/identifier.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/struct_.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/tuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/deprecated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/dummy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/pretend.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/this.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ast.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/attr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/name.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/case.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/check.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/ctxt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/receiver.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/respan.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/internals/symbol.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/bound.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/fragment.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_adjacently.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_externally.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_internally.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/enum_untagged.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/identifier.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/struct_.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/tuple.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/de/unit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/deprecated.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/dummy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/pretend.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/ser.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_derive-1.0.228/src/this.rs: + +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PATCH=228 diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c7a7376a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.d @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/from.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/index.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/partial_eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/io/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/number.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/read.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/from.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/index.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/partial_eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/io/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/number.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/read.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-712f6d4b50e47490.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/from.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/index.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/partial_eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/io/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/number.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/read.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/de.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/ser.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/de.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/from.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/index.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/partial_eq.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/ser.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/io/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/number.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/read.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..aa906672 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.d @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/serde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/from.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/index.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/partial_eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/io/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/number.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/read.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/from.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/index.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/partial_eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/io/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/number.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/read.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libserde_json-e32907b6ee85faeb.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/map.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/de.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/from.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/index.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/partial_eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/ser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/io/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/iter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/number.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/read.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/de.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/map.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/ser.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/de.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/from.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/index.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/partial_eq.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/value/ser.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/io/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/iter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/number.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/serde_json-1.0.145/src/read.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/shlex-3b90976fe851454e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/shlex-3b90976fe851454e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ca7f343b --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/shlex-3b90976fe851454e.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/shlex-3b90976fe851454e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/shlex-1.3.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/shlex-1.3.0/src/bytes.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libshlex-3b90976fe851454e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/shlex-1.3.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/shlex-1.3.0/src/bytes.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libshlex-3b90976fe851454e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/shlex-1.3.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/shlex-1.3.0/src/bytes.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/shlex-1.3.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/shlex-1.3.0/src/bytes.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6c1dfa57 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.d @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx512.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/sse2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/ssse3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/wasm.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx512.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/sse2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/ssse3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/wasm.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-23ec086ab6d2c7ab.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx512.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/sse2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/ssse3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/wasm.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/hash.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx512.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/sse2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/ssse3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/wasm.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d56b0f89 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.d @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx512.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/sse2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/ssse3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/wasm.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx512.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/sse2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/ssse3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/wasm.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_adler32-44a6b9fa1bedb4cc.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/hash.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx512.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/sse2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/ssse3.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/wasm.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/hash.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/avx512.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/sse2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/ssse3.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd-adler32-0.3.8/src/imp/wasm.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b2dc0346 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90.d @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/simd_helpers-816221122a976c90.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd_helpers-0.1.0/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsimd_helpers-816221122a976c90.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd_helpers-0.1.0/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/simd_helpers-0.1.0/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..83d6af4a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/smallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/smallvec-1.15.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsmallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/smallvec-1.15.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsmallvec-258d56ac25e3753f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/smallvec-1.15.1/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/smallvec-1.15.1/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a4fdd9fe --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/stable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/stable_deref_trait-1.2.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libstable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/stable_deref_trait-1.2.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libstable_deref_trait-47bf1f836332686f.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/stable_deref_trait-1.2.1/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/stable_deref_trait-1.2.1/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8d981ac2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/subtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/subtle-2.6.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsubtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/subtle-2.6.1/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsubtle-a2faeaca93f75ae1.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/subtle-2.6.1/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/subtle-2.6.1/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/syn-322d667bb2c470c4.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/syn-322d667bb2c470c4.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7f1fc204 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/syn-322d667bb2c470c4.d @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/syn-322d667bb2c470c4.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/group.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/token.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/classify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_punctuation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/derive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/drops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/fixup.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/generics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ident.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lifetime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lookahead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/mac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/meta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/op.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/discouraged.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_macro_input.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_quote.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/path.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/precedence.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/print.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/punctuated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/restriction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/sealed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/scan_expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/span.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/spanned.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/thread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/verbatim.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/export.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/clone.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-322d667bb2c470c4.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/group.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/token.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/classify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_punctuation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/derive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/drops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/fixup.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/generics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ident.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lifetime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lookahead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/mac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/meta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/op.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/discouraged.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_macro_input.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_quote.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/path.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/precedence.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/print.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/punctuated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/restriction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/sealed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/scan_expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/span.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/spanned.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/thread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/verbatim.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/export.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/clone.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-322d667bb2c470c4.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/group.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/token.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/classify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_punctuation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/derive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/drops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/fixup.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/generics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ident.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lifetime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lookahead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/mac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/meta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/op.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/discouraged.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_macro_input.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_quote.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/path.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/precedence.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/print.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/punctuated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/restriction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/sealed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/scan_expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/span.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/spanned.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/thread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/verbatim.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/export.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/clone.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/group.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/token.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/attr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/bigint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/buffer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/classify.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_keyword.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_punctuation.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/data.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/derive.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/drops.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/expr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ext.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/fixup.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/generics.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ident.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lifetime.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lookahead.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/mac.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/meta.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/op.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/discouraged.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_macro_input.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_quote.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/path.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/precedence.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/print.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/punctuated.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/restriction.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/sealed.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/scan_expr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/span.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/spanned.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/thread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ty.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/verbatim.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/export.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/clone.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/syn-8e109e2e73114d38.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/syn-8e109e2e73114d38.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c9fb4e5d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/syn-8e109e2e73114d38.d @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/syn-8e109e2e73114d38.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/group.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/token.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/classify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_punctuation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/derive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/drops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/fixup.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/generics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ident.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/item.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lifetime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lookahead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/mac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/meta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/op.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/discouraged.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_macro_input.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_quote.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/pat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/path.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/precedence.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/print.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/punctuated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/restriction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/sealed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/span.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/spanned.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/stmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/thread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/tt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/verbatim.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/whitespace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/export.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/fold.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/visit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/clone.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/hash.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-8e109e2e73114d38.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/group.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/token.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/classify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_punctuation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/derive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/drops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/fixup.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/generics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ident.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/item.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lifetime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lookahead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/mac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/meta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/op.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/discouraged.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_macro_input.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_quote.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/pat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/path.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/precedence.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/print.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/punctuated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/restriction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/sealed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/span.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/spanned.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/stmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/thread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/tt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/verbatim.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/whitespace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/export.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/fold.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/visit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/clone.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/hash.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsyn-8e109e2e73114d38.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/group.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/token.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/bigint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/buffer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/classify.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_keyword.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_punctuation.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/derive.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/drops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/file.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/fixup.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/generics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ident.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/item.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lifetime.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lookahead.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/mac.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/meta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/op.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/discouraged.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_macro_input.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_quote.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/pat.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/path.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/precedence.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/print.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/punctuated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/restriction.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/sealed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/span.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/spanned.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/stmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/thread.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/tt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ty.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/verbatim.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/whitespace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/export.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/fold.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/visit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/clone.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/debug.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/eq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/hash.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/group.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/token.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/attr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/bigint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/buffer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/classify.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_keyword.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/custom_punctuation.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/data.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/derive.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/drops.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/expr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ext.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/file.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/fixup.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/generics.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ident.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/item.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lifetime.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/lookahead.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/mac.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/meta.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/op.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/discouraged.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_macro_input.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/parse_quote.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/pat.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/path.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/precedence.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/print.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/punctuated.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/restriction.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/sealed.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/span.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/spanned.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/stmt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/thread.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/tt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/ty.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/verbatim.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/whitespace.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/export.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/fold.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/visit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/clone.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/debug.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/eq.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/syn-2.0.111/src/gen/hash.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..02b567d9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/synstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/synstructure-0.13.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/synstructure-0.13.2/src/macros.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsynstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/synstructure-0.13.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/synstructure-0.13.2/src/macros.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libsynstructure-41caf0b3f11b98ab.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/synstructure-0.13.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/synstructure-0.13.2/src/macros.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/synstructure-0.13.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/synstructure-0.13.2/src/macros.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..31f0fdc5 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.d @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/thiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/aserror.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/display.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/var.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/private.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/out/private.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/aserror.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/display.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/var.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/private.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/out/private.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror-070e142ef1c38c52.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/aserror.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/display.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/var.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/private.rs /workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/out/private.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/aserror.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/display.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/var.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-2.0.17/src/private.rs: +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/out/private.rs: + +# env-dep:OUT_DIR=/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/build/thiserror-c4be12b08819dbfd/out diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/thiserror_impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/thiserror_impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..521f858a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/thiserror_impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622.d @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/thiserror_impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/ast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/expand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/fmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/generics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/prop.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/scan_expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/unraw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/valid.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libthiserror_impl-9b9bba1adc2d9622.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/ast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/attr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/expand.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/fallback.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/fmt.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/generics.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/prop.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/scan_expr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/unraw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/valid.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/ast.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/attr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/expand.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/fallback.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/fmt.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/generics.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/prop.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/scan_expr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/unraw.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/thiserror-impl-2.0.17/src/valid.rs: + +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION_PATCH=17 diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/tiff-67677a68c1472700.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/tiff-67677a68c1472700.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..48ebea58 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/tiff-67677a68c1472700.d @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/tiff-67677a68c1472700.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/bytecast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/cycles.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/ifd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/tag_reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/directory.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/colortype.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/deflate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/lzw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/packbits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/uncompressed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/tiff_value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/tags.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtiff-67677a68c1472700.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/bytecast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/cycles.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/ifd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/tag_reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/directory.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/colortype.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/deflate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/lzw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/packbits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/uncompressed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/tiff_value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/tags.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtiff-67677a68c1472700.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/bytecast.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/cycles.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/ifd.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/image.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/tag_reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/directory.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/colortype.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/deflate.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/lzw.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/packbits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/uncompressed.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/tiff_value.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/tags.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/bytecast.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/cycles.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/ifd.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/image.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/stream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/decoder/tag_reader.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/directory.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/colortype.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/deflate.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/lzw.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/packbits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/compression/uncompressed.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/tiff_value.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/encoder/writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tiff-0.10.3/src/tags.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4bda75f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.d @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/tinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/ascii.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/asciibyte.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/int_ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/unvalidated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/ule.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/ascii.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/asciibyte.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/int_ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/unvalidated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/ule.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libtinystr-c8bcdd842b75e37c.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/ascii.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/asciibyte.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/int_ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/unvalidated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/ule.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/ascii.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/asciibyte.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/int_ops.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/unvalidated.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/tinystr-0.8.2/src/ule.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/unicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/unicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a55cb079 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/unicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/unicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/unicode-ident-1.0.22/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/unicode-ident-1.0.22/src/tables.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libunicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/unicode-ident-1.0.22/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/unicode-ident-1.0.22/src/tables.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libunicode_ident-4fec18d14b15363e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/unicode-ident-1.0.22/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/unicode-ident-1.0.22/src/tables.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/unicode-ident-1.0.22/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/unicode-ident-1.0.22/src/tables.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..887cab34 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/untrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/input.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/no_panic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/reader.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libuntrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/input.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/no_panic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/reader.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libuntrusted-141dc8a6f579cb41.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/input.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/no_panic.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/reader.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/input.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/no_panic.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/untrusted-0.9.0/src/reader.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..671c4649 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.d @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/agent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/body.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/chunked/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/chunked/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/middleware.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/pool.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/proxy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/resolve.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/rtls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/testserver.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/agent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/body.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/chunked/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/chunked/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/middleware.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/pool.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/proxy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/resolve.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/rtls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/testserver.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-80dc15b5bcbf18ec.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/agent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/body.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/chunked/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/chunked/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/header.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/middleware.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/pool.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/proxy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/resolve.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/stream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/unit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/rtls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/testserver.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/agent.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/body.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/chunked/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/chunked/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/header.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/middleware.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/pool.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/proxy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/request.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/resolve.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/response.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/stream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/unit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/rtls.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-2.12.1/src/testserver.rs: + +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION=2.12.1 diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq-98705423a8406a66.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq-98705423a8406a66.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9a56d66a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq-98705423a8406a66.d @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq-98705423a8406a66.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/agent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/build.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/limit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/lossy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/gzip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/config.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/pool.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/proxy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/query.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/run.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/send_body.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/timings.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/resolver.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/buf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/tcp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/connect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/middleware.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/rustls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/request_ext.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-98705423a8406a66.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/agent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/build.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/limit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/lossy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/gzip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/config.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/pool.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/proxy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/query.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/run.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/send_body.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/timings.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/resolver.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/buf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/tcp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/connect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/middleware.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/rustls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/request_ext.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq-98705423a8406a66.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/agent.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/build.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/limit.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/lossy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/gzip.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/config.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/pool.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/proxy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/query.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/request.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/response.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/run.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/send_body.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/timings.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/resolver.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/buf.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/tcp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/io.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/chain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/connect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/middleware.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/rustls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/request_ext.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/agent.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/build.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/limit.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/lossy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/body/gzip.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/config.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/pool.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/proxy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/query.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/request.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/response.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/run.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/send_body.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/timings.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/util.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/resolver.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/buf.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/tcp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/io.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/chain.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/connect.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/unversioned/transport/time.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/middleware.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/cert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/tls/rustls.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-3.1.4/src/request_ext.rs: + +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_NAME=ureq +# env-dep:CARGO_PKG_VERSION=3.1.4 diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0843762c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.d @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/ureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/chunk.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/body.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/amended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/prepare.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/sendreq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/await100.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/sendbody.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/recvresp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/recvbody.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/redirect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/close_reason.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/parser.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/chunk.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/body.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/amended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/prepare.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/sendreq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/await100.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/sendbody.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/recvresp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/recvbody.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/redirect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/close_reason.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/parser.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libureq_proto-c550ab5ad2c1323a.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/chunk.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/body.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/amended.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/prepare.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/sendreq.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/await100.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/sendbody.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/recvresp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/recvbody.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/redirect.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/close_reason.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/parser.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/chunk.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/ext.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/util.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/body.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/amended.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/prepare.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/sendreq.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/await100.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/sendbody.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/recvresp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/recvbody.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/client/redirect.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/close_reason.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/ureq-proto-0.5.3/src/parser.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..34d3d4e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4.d @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/url-1ada33cd601b5dd4.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/host.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/origin.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/parser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/path_segments.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/slicing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/quirks.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liburl-1ada33cd601b5dd4.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/host.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/origin.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/parser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/path_segments.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/slicing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/quirks.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liburl-1ada33cd601b5dd4.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/host.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/origin.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/parser.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/path_segments.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/slicing.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/quirks.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/host.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/origin.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/parser.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/path_segments.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/slicing.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/url-2.5.7/src/quirks.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/utf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/utf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fe5a37eb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/utf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/utf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/lossy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/read.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/lossy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/read.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8-9c5ea5404b57aeb1.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/lossy.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/read.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/lossy.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf-8-0.7.6/src/read.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2e4438c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/utf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/indices.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/report.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/indices.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/report.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libutf8_iter-8111d482dc54baa9.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/indices.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/report.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/indices.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/utf8_iter-1.0.4/src/report.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f85cbcc9 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.d @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/v_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/frame.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/pixel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/plane.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libv_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/frame.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/pixel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/plane.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libv_frame-d43e8ae76e021d6c.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/frame.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/math.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/pixel.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/plane.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/frame.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/math.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/pixel.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/v_frame-0.3.9/src/plane.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki-08680f955b090308.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki-08680f955b090308.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..48681b06 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki-08680f955b090308.d @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki-08680f955b090308.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/end_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/ring_algs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/rpk_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/signed_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/dns_name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/ip_address.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/trust_anchor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/types.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/verify_cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512-absent-params.der + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-08680f955b090308.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/end_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/ring_algs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/rpk_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/signed_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/dns_name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/ip_address.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/trust_anchor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/types.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/verify_cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512-absent-params.der + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-08680f955b090308.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/end_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/ring_algs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/rpk_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/signed_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/dns_name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/ip_address.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/trust_anchor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/types.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/verify_cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512-absent-params.der + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/der.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/cert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/end_entity.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/ring_algs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/rpk_entity.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/signed_data.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/dns_name.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/ip_address.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/time.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/trust_anchor.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/types.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/verify_cert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/x509.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256-absent-params.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384-absent-params.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512-absent-params.der: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki-f32ae3930b055f02.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki-f32ae3930b055f02.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..00eb7cfe --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki-f32ae3930b055f02.d @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki-f32ae3930b055f02.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/end_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/ring_algs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/rpk_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/signed_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/dns_name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/ip_address.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/trust_anchor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/types.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/verify_cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512-absent-params.der + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-f32ae3930b055f02.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/end_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/ring_algs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/rpk_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/signed_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/dns_name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/ip_address.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/trust_anchor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/types.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/verify_cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512-absent-params.der + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki-f32ae3930b055f02.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/der.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/end_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/ring_algs.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/rpk_entity.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/signed_data.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/dns_name.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/ip_address.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/time.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/trust_anchor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/types.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/verify_cert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/x509.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384-absent-params.der /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512-absent-params.der + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/der.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/cert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/end_entity.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/ring_algs.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/rpk_entity.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/signed_data.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/dns_name.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/subject_name/ip_address.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/time.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/trust_anchor.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/crl/types.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/verify_cert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/x509.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha256-absent-params.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha384-absent-params.der: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/rustls-webpki-0.103.8/src/data/alg-rsa-pkcs1-sha512-absent-params.der: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..098930d0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/webpki-roots-1.0.4/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/webpki-roots-1.0.4/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-c3701fca19126f67.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/webpki-roots-1.0.4/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/webpki-roots-1.0.4/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..741777cb --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/webpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/webpki-roots-0.26.11/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/webpki-roots-0.26.11/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwebpki_roots-d19ef36f96572185.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/webpki-roots-0.26.11/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/webpki-roots-0.26.11/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/weezl-916419a209823630.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/weezl-916419a209823630.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..94d3ea11 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/weezl-916419a209823630.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/weezl-916419a209823630.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/error.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libweezl-916419a209823630.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/error.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libweezl-916419a209823630.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/decode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/error.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/decode.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/encode.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/weezl-0.1.12/src/error.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..20a89ab8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.d @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/writeable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/cmp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/parts_write_adapter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/try_writeable.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwriteable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/cmp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/parts_write_adapter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/try_writeable.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libwriteable-6c8ee6ef7aca1968.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/cmp.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/ops.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/parts_write_adapter.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/try_writeable.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/cmp.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/impls.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/ops.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/parts_write_adapter.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/writeable-0.6.2/src/try_writeable.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a3d84824 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.d @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/y4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/y4m-0.8.0/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liby4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/y4m-0.8.0/src/lib.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/liby4m-a46ebdb9a8e6c05b.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/y4m-0.8.0/src/lib.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/y4m-0.8.0/src/lib.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..552e24e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.d @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/yoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/cartable_ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/either.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/kinda_sorta_dangling.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/macro_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/yoke.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/yokeable.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/zero_from.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/cartable_ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/either.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/kinda_sorta_dangling.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/macro_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/yoke.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/yokeable.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/zero_from.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke-9f0b4c14772e6b26.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/cartable_ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/either.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/kinda_sorta_dangling.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/macro_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/yoke.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/yokeable.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/zero_from.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/cartable_ptr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/either.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/kinda_sorta_dangling.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/macro_impls.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/utils.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/yoke.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/yokeable.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-0.8.1/src/zero_from.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/yoke_derive-7059e8a816334eea.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/yoke_derive-7059e8a816334eea.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..995af91e --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/yoke_derive-7059e8a816334eea.d @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/yoke_derive-7059e8a816334eea.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-derive-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-derive-0.8.1/src/visitor.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libyoke_derive-7059e8a816334eea.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-derive-0.8.1/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-derive-0.8.1/src/visitor.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-derive-0.8.1/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/yoke-derive-0.8.1/src/visitor.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..01bda99a --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.d @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/macro_util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/byte_slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/byteorder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/deprecated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/doctests.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/layout.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/inner.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/invariant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/transmute.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/ref.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/split_at.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/wrappers.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/macro_util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/byte_slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/byteorder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/deprecated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/doctests.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/layout.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/inner.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/invariant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/transmute.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/ref.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/split_at.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/wrappers.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy-84ac2bb3775b3a25.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/macro_util.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/byte_slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/byteorder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/deprecated.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/doctests.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/layout.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/inner.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/invariant.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/ptr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/transmute.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/ref.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/split_at.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/wrappers.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/util/macro_util.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/byte_slice.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/byteorder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/deprecated.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/doctests.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/impls.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/layout.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/inner.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/invariant.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/ptr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/pointer/transmute.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/ref.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/split_at.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-0.8.31/src/wrappers.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerocopy_derive-df35a593a5ae0520.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerocopy_derive-df35a593a5ae0520.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..39b101df --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerocopy_derive-df35a593a5ae0520.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerocopy_derive-df35a593a5ae0520.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/enum.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/repr.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerocopy_derive-df35a593a5ae0520.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/enum.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/ext.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/repr.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/enum.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/ext.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerocopy-derive-0.8.31/src/repr.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1734ed7f --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.d @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/macro_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/zero_from.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/macro_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/zero_from.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom-5ca315ee17514a60.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/macro_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/zero_from.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/macro_impls.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-0.1.6/src/zero_from.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerofrom_derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerofrom_derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..77f23388 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerofrom_derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7.d @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerofrom_derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-derive-0.1.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-derive-0.1.6/src/visitor.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerofrom_derive-7087d0d5aa113ad7.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-derive-0.1.6/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-derive-0.1.6/src/visitor.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-derive-0.1.6/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerofrom-derive-0.1.6/src/visitor.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a2761642 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.d @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zeroize-1.8.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zeroize-1.8.2/src/x86.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zeroize-1.8.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zeroize-1.8.2/src/x86.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzeroize-0d32e1a98973c4e3.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zeroize-1.8.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zeroize-1.8.2/src/x86.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zeroize-1.8.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zeroize-1.8.2/src/x86.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b86c1fe6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.d @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/branch_meta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/bytestr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/store.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/byte_phf/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/cursor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/options.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/varint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/zerotrie.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/branch_meta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/bytestr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/store.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/byte_phf/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/cursor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/options.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/varint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/zerotrie.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerotrie-e9f15a0e34a72beb.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/branch_meta.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/bytestr.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/builder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/store.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/byte_phf/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/cursor.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/helpers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/options.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/varint.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/zerotrie.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/branch_meta.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/bytestr.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/builder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/builder/konst/store.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/byte_phf/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/cursor.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/helpers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/options.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/reader.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/varint.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerotrie-0.2.3/src/zerotrie.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..378ef6d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.d @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/cow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/lengthless.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/vec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerovec/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerovec/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/chars.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/multi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/niche.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/plain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/slices.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/tuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/tuplevar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/vartuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/yoke_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerofrom_impls.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/cow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/lengthless.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/vec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerovec/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerovec/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/chars.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/multi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/niche.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/plain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/slices.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/tuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/tuplevar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/vartuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/yoke_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerofrom_impls.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec-65faaa8308e9f99e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/cow.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/error.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/lengthless.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/vec.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerovec/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerovec/slice.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/mod.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/chars.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/encode.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/macros.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/multi.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/niche.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/option.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/plain.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/slices.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/tuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/tuplevar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/vartuple.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/yoke_impls.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerofrom_impls.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/cow.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/components.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/error.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/lengthless.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/slice.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/varzerovec/vec.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerovec/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerovec/slice.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/mod.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/chars.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/encode.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/macros.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/multi.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/niche.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/option.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/plain.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/slices.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/tuple.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/tuplevar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/ule/vartuple.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/yoke_impls.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-0.11.5/src/zerofrom_impls.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerovec_derive-0e6192861e60330b.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerovec_derive-0e6192861e60330b.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..952d0634 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerovec_derive-0e6192861e60330b.d @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zerovec_derive-0e6192861e60330b.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/make_ule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/make_varule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/ule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/varule.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzerovec_derive-0e6192861e60330b.so: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/make_ule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/make_varule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/ule.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/varule.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/make_ule.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/make_varule.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/ule.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/utils.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zerovec-derive-0.11.2/src/varule.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_core-01655cdb782a5643.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_core-01655cdb782a5643.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..201a2547 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_core-01655cdb782a5643.d @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_core-01655cdb782a5643.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bit_depth.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader/no_std_readers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader/std_readers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer/no_std_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer/std_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/colorspace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/result.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/serde.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-01655cdb782a5643.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bit_depth.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader/no_std_readers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader/std_readers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer/no_std_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer/std_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/colorspace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/result.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/serde.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-01655cdb782a5643.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bit_depth.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader/no_std_readers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader/std_readers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer/no_std_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer/std_writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/colorspace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/result.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/serde.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/log.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bit_depth.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader/no_std_readers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/reader/std_readers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/traits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer/no_std_writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/bytestream/writer/std_writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/colorspace.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/options/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/result.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.5.0/src/serde.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1f4fb379 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.d @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bit_depth.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/colorspace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/result.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/serde.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bit_depth.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/colorspace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/result.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/serde.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_core-c0c3f9b510fc977e.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/log.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bit_depth.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/reader.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/traits.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/writer.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/colorspace.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/result.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/serde.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/log.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bit_depth.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/reader.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/traits.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/bytestream/writer.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/colorspace.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/options/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/result.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-core-0.4.12/src/serde.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e8b4344c --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.d @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/bitstream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/constants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/crc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/encoder/fast_match_finder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/gzip_constants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/utils.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/bitstream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/constants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/crc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/encoder/fast_match_finder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/gzip_constants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/utils.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_inflate-1c8900fabeb30caf.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/bitstream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/constants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/crc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/encoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/encoder/fast_match_finder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/gzip_constants.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/utils.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/bitstream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/constants.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/crc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/encoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/encoder/fast_match_finder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/errors.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/gzip_constants.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-inflate-0.2.54/src/utils.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bb16fc32 --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.d @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/bitstream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/avx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/neon64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/headers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/mcu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/mcu_prog.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/misc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils_avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/worker.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/bitstream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/avx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/neon64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/headers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/mcu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/mcu_prog.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/misc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils_avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/worker.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-26b20670bf77dc96.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/bitstream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/avx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/neon64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/headers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/mcu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/mcu_prog.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/misc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils_avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/worker.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/bitstream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/avx.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/neon64.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/color_convert/scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/components.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/errors.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/headers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/huffman.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/avx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/neon.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/idct/scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/marker.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/mcu.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/mcu_prog.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/misc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils_avx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/unsafe_utils_neon.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler/avx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/upsampler/scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.5.7/src/worker.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.d b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.d new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ccd3599d --- /dev/null +++ b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.d @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/zune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.d: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/bitstream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/avx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/neon64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/headers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/mcu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/mcu_prog.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/misc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils_avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/upsampler.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/upsampler/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/worker.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.rlib: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/bitstream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/avx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/neon64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/headers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/mcu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/mcu_prog.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/misc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils_avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/upsampler.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/upsampler/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/worker.rs + +/workspaces/rustprogramming/Rust_Enum/target/debug/deps/libzune_jpeg-629ee58556cbcb8c.rmeta: /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/lib.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/bitstream.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/avx.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/neon64.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/components.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/decoder.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/errors.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/headers.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/huffman.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/marker.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/mcu.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/mcu_prog.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/misc.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils_avx2.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils_neon.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/upsampler.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/upsampler/scalar.rs /home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/worker.rs + +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/lib.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/bitstream.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/avx.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/neon64.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/color_convert/scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/components.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/decoder.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/errors.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/headers.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/huffman.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/avx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/neon.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/idct/scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/marker.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/mcu.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/mcu_prog.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/misc.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils_avx2.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/unsafe_utils_neon.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/upsampler.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/upsampler/scalar.rs: +/home/codespace/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/zune-jpeg-0.4.21/src/worker.rs: diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yyjds55epeo7/s-he18ohj5t2-1ujapdk-working/dep-graph.part.bin b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yyjds55epeo7/s-he18ohj5t2-1ujapdk-working/dep-graph.part.bin new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9a8e2cda Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yyjds55epeo7/s-he18ohj5t2-1ujapdk-working/dep-graph.part.bin differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yyjds55epeo7/s-he18ohj5t2-1ujapdk.lock b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yyjds55epeo7/s-he18ohj5t2-1ujapdk.lock new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/0axq2x0iujexinac05ibgnvx4.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/0axq2x0iujexinac05ibgnvx4.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1a3496a4 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/0axq2x0iujexinac05ibgnvx4.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/0x27emm6kj19kbcvehdvkc313.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/0x27emm6kj19kbcvehdvkc313.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7d1b0d59 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/0x27emm6kj19kbcvehdvkc313.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/2jplgt8kfjl9hec2gcaj5u14g.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/2jplgt8kfjl9hec2gcaj5u14g.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bd9b0c81 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/2jplgt8kfjl9hec2gcaj5u14g.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/2zt7p04ed35iji76sjsfa1g7m.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/2zt7p04ed35iji76sjsfa1g7m.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3ec11b6b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/2zt7p04ed35iji76sjsfa1g7m.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/3ofcb54j712ncf5y190al1uf9.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/3ofcb54j712ncf5y190al1uf9.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9fd9cd3a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/3ofcb54j712ncf5y190al1uf9.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/3wpnstwmawg03np5te5vv73b4.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/3wpnstwmawg03np5te5vv73b4.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1977f4e0 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/3wpnstwmawg03np5te5vv73b4.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/4l0plvu8whyceet437ff5bocc.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/4l0plvu8whyceet437ff5bocc.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..348a37eb Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/4l0plvu8whyceet437ff5bocc.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/5ym091amrevgs3m35rgowannp.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/5ym091amrevgs3m35rgowannp.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3150c82f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/5ym091amrevgs3m35rgowannp.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/6cple299su3a0aj3amfl6sy37.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/6cple299su3a0aj3amfl6sy37.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..252e6283 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/6cple299su3a0aj3amfl6sy37.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/6hhpvisisql9qkjcrfe0r6lhg.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/6hhpvisisql9qkjcrfe0r6lhg.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e874ffff Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/6hhpvisisql9qkjcrfe0r6lhg.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/6kqb4kkoazph4fm0u1hbahc8b.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/6kqb4kkoazph4fm0u1hbahc8b.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c2639853 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/6kqb4kkoazph4fm0u1hbahc8b.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/750upjtehejlqkpznawk5a3hf.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/750upjtehejlqkpznawk5a3hf.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..55f9038b Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/750upjtehejlqkpznawk5a3hf.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/7kmvhwgplwux2y1rysfafohnp.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/7kmvhwgplwux2y1rysfafohnp.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d0a22e71 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/7kmvhwgplwux2y1rysfafohnp.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/7zcp2x65actbbtjdgqudazvqw.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/7zcp2x65actbbtjdgqudazvqw.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6ee5e17c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/7zcp2x65actbbtjdgqudazvqw.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/89t3z0n35860013zwgqaizbsm.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/89t3z0n35860013zwgqaizbsm.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f2a84a51 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/89t3z0n35860013zwgqaizbsm.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/98151jzdenoyji4jfwog20sar.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/98151jzdenoyji4jfwog20sar.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..de11fbc5 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/98151jzdenoyji4jfwog20sar.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/9d41syat1dczfs5vqm4t3hgv6.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/9d41syat1dczfs5vqm4t3hgv6.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ad60142a Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/9d41syat1dczfs5vqm4t3hgv6.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/9iju2ngjybzp3dkj0pg2cmyda.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/9iju2ngjybzp3dkj0pg2cmyda.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a389c104 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/9iju2ngjybzp3dkj0pg2cmyda.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/a83jx1y5030mtwmz6fqiu4b7m.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/a83jx1y5030mtwmz6fqiu4b7m.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e8e42dcc Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/a83jx1y5030mtwmz6fqiu4b7m.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/an4lmyt03xe3v0bvhk5qgi63g.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/an4lmyt03xe3v0bvhk5qgi63g.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2b6b1570 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/an4lmyt03xe3v0bvhk5qgi63g.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/asdzrjat7cho02wkg7f224tpn.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/asdzrjat7cho02wkg7f224tpn.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..70671926 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/asdzrjat7cho02wkg7f224tpn.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/bf118qqqxkb4yjzygh2o8vx4n.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/bf118qqqxkb4yjzygh2o8vx4n.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f0c09ed3 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/bf118qqqxkb4yjzygh2o8vx4n.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/bhyucn6vznqyw0x3gbbvre1t8.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/bhyucn6vznqyw0x3gbbvre1t8.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..33367edb Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/bhyucn6vznqyw0x3gbbvre1t8.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/bos7ciddj71bktf09yufuy4n8.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/bos7ciddj71bktf09yufuy4n8.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..247f1ff8 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/bos7ciddj71bktf09yufuy4n8.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/cjzboonl7f19vk3a455e7x88z.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/cjzboonl7f19vk3a455e7x88z.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7eccef7f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/cjzboonl7f19vk3a455e7x88z.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ctjo6ch74mziydqjlfas8wkab.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ctjo6ch74mziydqjlfas8wkab.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6adcb416 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ctjo6ch74mziydqjlfas8wkab.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/d5edu8v8p2oyplf1xcsopo4l0.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/d5edu8v8p2oyplf1xcsopo4l0.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c6ba509c Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/d5edu8v8p2oyplf1xcsopo4l0.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/d7w0av1ac66q1voh7y876eoyh.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/d7w0av1ac66q1voh7y876eoyh.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4eabd664 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/d7w0av1ac66q1voh7y876eoyh.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/dep-graph.bin b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/dep-graph.bin new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f9e364c6 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/dep-graph.bin differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/dj3v04xbmsgjzu4al7w8n7ru6.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/dj3v04xbmsgjzu4al7w8n7ru6.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..beb5e6ea Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/dj3v04xbmsgjzu4al7w8n7ru6.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/e1kl2o9vr1cld8wsi6i3vicxd.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/e1kl2o9vr1cld8wsi6i3vicxd.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6cbec26f Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/e1kl2o9vr1cld8wsi6i3vicxd.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/e6l1g700rz92chjh7bw16shct.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/e6l1g700rz92chjh7bw16shct.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f071ced1 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/e6l1g700rz92chjh7bw16shct.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ehq0mapw9e9kr44qm4e1q6rgd.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ehq0mapw9e9kr44qm4e1q6rgd.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b45d7bb0 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ehq0mapw9e9kr44qm4e1q6rgd.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ephi71w5f52ht2rlh8rkrokxj.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ephi71w5f52ht2rlh8rkrokxj.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..eb980296 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ephi71w5f52ht2rlh8rkrokxj.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ersatyoysp7d53a6wdskysg3y.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ersatyoysp7d53a6wdskysg3y.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..da9a5d91 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/ersatyoysp7d53a6wdskysg3y.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/f0pymjm5inprjypqgvinfi63o.o b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/f0pymjm5inprjypqgvinfi63o.o new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6cb48db7 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/f0pymjm5inprjypqgvinfi63o.o differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/query-cache.bin b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/query-cache.bin new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fe5a7e84 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/query-cache.bin differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/work-products.bin b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/work-products.bin new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c5967f73 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8-68ars3ndtuxu8f21cyzglo30w/work-products.bin differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8.lock b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-1yzn5kpxfeiss/s-he19g1bdz6-0qk69d8.lock new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-2dkmmwxna2043/s-he18m2nhnj-0xcu1qf-working/dep-graph.part.bin b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-2dkmmwxna2043/s-he18m2nhnj-0xcu1qf-working/dep-graph.part.bin new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ecc28df5 Binary files /dev/null and b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-2dkmmwxna2043/s-he18m2nhnj-0xcu1qf-working/dep-graph.part.bin differ diff --git a/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-2dkmmwxna2043/s-he18m2nhnj-0xcu1qf.lock b/Rust_Enum/target/debug/incremental/Rust_Enum-2dkmmwxna2043/s-he18m2nhnj-0xcu1qf.lock new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b diff --git a/final_project/Cargo.lock b/final_project/Cargo.lock new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0987a1cf --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/Cargo.lock @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +# This file is automatically @generated by Cargo. +# It is not intended for manual editing. +version = 4 + +[[package]] +name = "final_project" +version = "0.1.0" diff --git a/final_project/Cargo.toml b/final_project/Cargo.toml new file mode 100644 index 00000000..73511abb --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/Cargo.toml @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +[package] +name = "final_project" +version = "0.1.0" +edition = "2024" + +[dependencies] diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1000-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1000-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6a1dd1b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1000-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19875 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1000 *** + +LA DIVINA COMMEDIA + +di Dante Alighieri + + +Contents + + INFERNO + Canto I. + Canto II. + Canto III. + Canto IV. + Canto V. + Canto VI. + Canto VII. + Canto VIII. + Canto IX. + Canto X. + Canto XI. + Canto XII. + Canto XIII. + Canto XIV. + Canto XV. + Canto XVI. + Canto XVII. + Canto XVIII. + Canto XIX. + Canto XX. + Canto XXI. + Canto XXII. + Canto XXIII. + Canto XXIV. + Canto XXV. + Canto XXVI. + Canto XXVII. + Canto XXVIII. + Canto XXIX. + Canto XXX. + Canto XXXI. + Canto XXXII. + Canto XXXIII. + Canto XXXIV. + + PURGATORIO + Canto I. + Canto II. + Canto III. + Canto IV. + Canto V. + Canto VI. + Canto VII. + Canto VIII. + Canto IX. + Canto X. + Canto XI. + Canto XII. + Canto XIII. + Canto XIV. + Canto XV. + Canto XVI. + Canto XVII. + Canto XVIII. + Canto XIX. + Canto XX. + Canto XXI. + Canto XXII. + Canto XXIII. + Canto XXIV. + Canto XXV. + Canto XXVI. + Canto XXVII. + Canto XXVIII. + Canto XXIX. + Canto XXX. + Canto XXXI. + Canto XXXII. + Canto XXXIII. + + PARADISO + Canto I. + Canto II. + Canto III. + Canto IV. + Canto V. + Canto VI. + Canto VII. + Canto VIII. + Canto IX. + Canto X. + Canto XI. + Canto XII. + Canto XIII. + Canto XIV. + Canto XV. + Canto XVI. + Canto XVII. + Canto XVIII. + Canto XIX. + Canto XX. + Canto XXI. + Canto XXII. + Canto XXIII. + Canto XXIV. + Canto XXV. + Canto XXVI. + Canto XXVII. + Canto XXVIII. + Canto XXIX. + Canto XXX. + Canto XXXI. + Canto XXXII. + Canto XXXIII. + + + + +INFERNO + + + + +Inferno +Canto I + + +Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita +mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, +ché la diritta via era smarrita. + +Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura +esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte +che nel pensier rinova la paura! + +Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte; +ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai, +dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte. + +Io non so ben ridir com’ i’ v’intrai, +tant’ era pien di sonno a quel punto +che la verace via abbandonai. + +Ma poi ch’i’ fui al piè d’un colle giunto, +là dove terminava quella valle +che m’avea di paura il cor compunto, + +guardai in alto e vidi le sue spalle +vestite già de’ raggi del pianeta +che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle. + +Allor fu la paura un poco queta, +che nel lago del cor m’era durata +la notte ch’i’ passai con tanta pieta. + +E come quei che con lena affannata, +uscito fuor del pelago a la riva, +si volge a l’acqua perigliosa e guata, + +così l’animo mio, ch’ancor fuggiva, +si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo +che non lasciò già mai persona viva. + +Poi ch’èi posato un poco il corpo lasso, +ripresi via per la piaggia diserta, +sì che ’l piè fermo sempre era ’l più basso. + +Ed ecco, quasi al cominciar de l’erta, +una lonza leggera e presta molto, +che di pel macolato era coverta; + +e non mi si partia dinanzi al volto, +anzi ’mpediva tanto il mio cammino, +ch’i’ fui per ritornar più volte vòlto. + +Temp’ era dal principio del mattino, +e ’l sol montava ’n sù con quelle stelle +ch’eran con lui quando l’amor divino + +mosse di prima quelle cose belle; +sì ch’a bene sperar m’era cagione +di quella fiera a la gaetta pelle + +l’ora del tempo e la dolce stagione; +ma non sì che paura non mi desse +la vista che m’apparve d’un leone. + +Questi parea che contra me venisse +con la test’ alta e con rabbiosa fame, +sì che parea che l’aere ne tremesse. + +Ed una lupa, che di tutte brame +sembiava carca ne la sua magrezza, +e molte genti fé già viver grame, + +questa mi porse tanto di gravezza +con la paura ch’uscia di sua vista, +ch’io perdei la speranza de l’altezza. + +E qual è quei che volontieri acquista, +e giugne ’l tempo che perder lo face, +che ’n tutti suoi pensier piange e s’attrista; + +tal mi fece la bestia sanza pace, +che, venendomi ’ncontro, a poco a poco +mi ripigneva là dove ’l sol tace. + +Mentre ch’i’ rovinava in basso loco, +dinanzi a li occhi mi si fu offerto +chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco. + +Quando vidi costui nel gran diserto, +«Miserere di me», gridai a lui, +«qual che tu sii, od ombra od omo certo!». + +Rispuosemi: «Non omo, omo già fui, +e li parenti miei furon lombardi, +mantoani per patrïa ambedui. + +Nacqui sub Iulio, ancor che fosse tardi, +e vissi a Roma sotto ’l buono Augusto +nel tempo de li dèi falsi e bugiardi. + +Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto +figliuol d’Anchise che venne di Troia, +poi che ’l superbo Ilïón fu combusto. + +Ma tu perché ritorni a tanta noia? +perché non sali il dilettoso monte +ch’è principio e cagion di tutta gioia?». + +«Or se’ tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte +che spandi di parlar sì largo fiume?», +rispuos’ io lui con vergognosa fronte. + +«O de li altri poeti onore e lume, +vagliami ’l lungo studio e ’l grande amore +che m’ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume. + +Tu se’ lo mio maestro e ’l mio autore, +tu se’ solo colui da cu’ io tolsi +lo bello stilo che m’ha fatto onore. + +Vedi la bestia per cu’ io mi volsi; +aiutami da lei, famoso saggio, +ch’ella mi fa tremar le vene e i polsi». + +«A te convien tenere altro vïaggio», +rispuose, poi che lagrimar mi vide, +«se vuo’ campar d’esto loco selvaggio; + +ché questa bestia, per la qual tu gride, +non lascia altrui passar per la sua via, +ma tanto lo ’mpedisce che l’uccide; + +e ha natura sì malvagia e ria, +che mai non empie la bramosa voglia, +e dopo ’l pasto ha più fame che pria. + +Molti son li animali a cui s’ammoglia, +e più saranno ancora, infin che ’l veltro +verrà, che la farà morir con doglia. + +Questi non ciberà terra né peltro, +ma sapïenza, amore e virtute, +e sua nazion sarà tra feltro e feltro. + +Di quella umile Italia fia salute +per cui morì la vergine Cammilla, +Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute. + +Questi la caccerà per ogne villa, +fin che l’avrà rimessa ne lo ’nferno, +là onde ’nvidia prima dipartilla. + +Ond’ io per lo tuo me’ penso e discerno +che tu mi segui, e io sarò tua guida, +e trarrotti di qui per loco etterno; + +ove udirai le disperate strida, +vedrai li antichi spiriti dolenti, +ch’a la seconda morte ciascun grida; + +e vederai color che son contenti +nel foco, perché speran di venire +quando che sia a le beate genti. + +A le quai poi se tu vorrai salire, +anima fia a ciò più di me degna: +con lei ti lascerò nel mio partire; + +ché quello imperador che là sù regna, +perch’ i’ fu’ ribellante a la sua legge, +non vuol che ’n sua città per me si vegna. + +In tutte parti impera e quivi regge; +quivi è la sua città e l’alto seggio: +oh felice colui cu’ ivi elegge!». + +E io a lui: «Poeta, io ti richeggio +per quello Dio che tu non conoscesti, +acciò ch’io fugga questo male e peggio, + +che tu mi meni là dov’ or dicesti, +sì ch’io veggia la porta di san Pietro +e color cui tu fai cotanto mesti». + +Allor si mosse, e io li tenni dietro. + + + + +Inferno +Canto II + + +Lo giorno se n’andava, e l’aere bruno +toglieva li animai che sono in terra +da le fatiche loro; e io sol uno + +m’apparecchiava a sostener la guerra +sì del cammino e sì de la pietate, +che ritrarrà la mente che non erra. + +O muse, o alto ingegno, or m’aiutate; +o mente che scrivesti ciò ch’io vidi, +qui si parrà la tua nobilitate. + +Io cominciai: «Poeta che mi guidi, +guarda la mia virtù s’ell’ è possente, +prima ch’a l’alto passo tu mi fidi. + +Tu dici che di Silvïo il parente, +corruttibile ancora, ad immortale +secolo andò, e fu sensibilmente. + +Però, se l’avversario d’ogne male +cortese i fu, pensando l’alto effetto +ch’uscir dovea di lui, e ’l chi e ’l quale + +non pare indegno ad omo d’intelletto; +ch’e’ fu de l’alma Roma e di suo impero +ne l’empireo ciel per padre eletto: + +la quale e ’l quale, a voler dir lo vero, +fu stabilita per lo loco santo +u’ siede il successor del maggior Piero. + +Per quest’ andata onde li dai tu vanto, +intese cose che furon cagione +di sua vittoria e del papale ammanto. + +Andovvi poi lo Vas d’elezïone, +per recarne conforto a quella fede +ch’è principio a la via di salvazione. + +Ma io, perché venirvi? o chi ’l concede? +Io non Enëa, io non Paulo sono; +me degno a ciò né io né altri ’l crede. + +Per che, se del venire io m’abbandono, +temo che la venuta non sia folle. +Se’ savio; intendi me’ ch’i’ non ragiono». + +E qual è quei che disvuol ciò che volle +e per novi pensier cangia proposta, +sì che dal cominciar tutto si tolle, + +tal mi fec’ ïo ’n quella oscura costa, +perché, pensando, consumai la ’mpresa +che fu nel cominciar cotanto tosta. + +«S’i’ ho ben la parola tua intesa», +rispuose del magnanimo quell’ ombra, +«l’anima tua è da viltade offesa; + +la qual molte fïate l’omo ingombra +sì che d’onrata impresa lo rivolve, +come falso veder bestia quand’ ombra. + +Da questa tema acciò che tu ti solve, +dirotti perch’ io venni e quel ch’io ’ntesi +nel primo punto che di te mi dolve. + +Io era tra color che son sospesi, +e donna mi chiamò beata e bella, +tal che di comandare io la richiesi. + +Lucevan li occhi suoi più che la stella; +e cominciommi a dir soave e piana, +con angelica voce, in sua favella: + +“O anima cortese mantoana, +di cui la fama ancor nel mondo dura, +e durerà quanto ’l mondo lontana, + +l’amico mio, e non de la ventura, +ne la diserta piaggia è impedito +sì nel cammin, che vòlt’ è per paura; + +e temo che non sia già sì smarrito, +ch’io mi sia tardi al soccorso levata, +per quel ch’i’ ho di lui nel cielo udito. + +Or movi, e con la tua parola ornata +e con ciò c’ha mestieri al suo campare, +l’aiuta sì ch’i’ ne sia consolata. + +I’ son Beatrice che ti faccio andare; +vegno del loco ove tornar disio; +amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare. + +Quando sarò dinanzi al segnor mio, +di te mi loderò sovente a lui”. +Tacette allora, e poi comincia’ io: + +“O donna di virtù sola per cui +l’umana spezie eccede ogne contento +di quel ciel c’ha minor li cerchi sui, + +tanto m’aggrada il tuo comandamento, +che l’ubidir, se già fosse, m’è tardi; +più non t’è uo’ ch’aprirmi il tuo talento. + +Ma dimmi la cagion che non ti guardi +de lo scender qua giuso in questo centro +de l’ampio loco ove tornar tu ardi”. + +“Da che tu vuo’ saver cotanto a dentro, +dirotti brievemente”, mi rispuose, +“perch’ i’ non temo di venir qua entro. + +Temer si dee di sole quelle cose +c’hanno potenza di fare altrui male; +de l’altre no, ché non son paurose. + +I’ son fatta da Dio, sua mercé, tale, +che la vostra miseria non mi tange, +né fiamma d’esto ’ncendio non m’assale. + +Donna è gentil nel ciel che si compiange +di questo ’mpedimento ov’ io ti mando, +sì che duro giudicio là sù frange. + +Questa chiese Lucia in suo dimando +e disse:—Or ha bisogno il tuo fedele +di te, e io a te lo raccomando—. + +Lucia, nimica di ciascun crudele, +si mosse, e venne al loco dov’ i’ era, +che mi sedea con l’antica Rachele. + +Disse:—Beatrice, loda di Dio vera, +ché non soccorri quei che t’amò tanto, +ch’uscì per te de la volgare schiera? + +Non odi tu la pieta del suo pianto, +non vedi tu la morte che ’l combatte +su la fiumana ove ’l mar non ha vanto?—. + +Al mondo non fur mai persone ratte +a far lor pro o a fuggir lor danno, +com’ io, dopo cotai parole fatte, + +venni qua giù del mio beato scanno, +fidandomi del tuo parlare onesto, +ch’onora te e quei ch’udito l’hanno”. + +Poscia che m’ebbe ragionato questo, +li occhi lucenti lagrimando volse, +per che mi fece del venir più presto. + +E venni a te così com’ ella volse: +d’inanzi a quella fiera ti levai +che del bel monte il corto andar ti tolse. + +Dunque: che è? perché, perché restai, +perché tanta viltà nel core allette, +perché ardire e franchezza non hai, + +poscia che tai tre donne benedette +curan di te ne la corte del cielo, +e ’l mio parlar tanto ben ti promette?». + +Quali fioretti dal notturno gelo +chinati e chiusi, poi che ’l sol li ’mbianca, +si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo, + +tal mi fec’ io di mia virtude stanca, +e tanto buono ardire al cor mi corse, +ch’i’ cominciai come persona franca: + +«Oh pietosa colei che mi soccorse! +e te cortese ch’ubidisti tosto +a le vere parole che ti porse! + +Tu m’hai con disiderio il cor disposto +sì al venir con le parole tue, +ch’i’ son tornato nel primo proposto. + +Or va, ch’un sol volere è d’ambedue: +tu duca, tu segnore e tu maestro». +Così li dissi; e poi che mosso fue, + +intrai per lo cammino alto e silvestro. + + + + +Inferno +Canto III + + +‘Per me si va ne la città dolente, +per me si va ne l’etterno dolore, +per me si va tra la perduta gente. + +Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; +fecemi la divina podestate, +la somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore. + +Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create +se non etterne, e io etterno duro. +Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate’. + +Queste parole di colore oscuro +vid’ ïo scritte al sommo d’una porta; +per ch’io: «Maestro, il senso lor m’è duro». + +Ed elli a me, come persona accorta: +«Qui si convien lasciare ogne sospetto; +ogne viltà convien che qui sia morta. + +Noi siam venuti al loco ov’ i’ t’ho detto +che tu vedrai le genti dolorose +c’hanno perduto il ben de l’intelletto». + +E poi che la sua mano a la mia puose +con lieto volto, ond’ io mi confortai, +mi mise dentro a le segrete cose. + +Quivi sospiri, pianti e alti guai +risonavan per l’aere sanza stelle, +per ch’io al cominciar ne lagrimai. + +Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, +parole di dolore, accenti d’ira, +voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle + +facevano un tumulto, il qual s’aggira +sempre in quell’ aura sanza tempo tinta, +come la rena quando turbo spira. + +E io ch’avea d’error la testa cinta, +dissi: «Maestro, che è quel ch’i’ odo? +e che gent’ è che par nel duol sì vinta?». + +Ed elli a me: «Questo misero modo +tegnon l’anime triste di coloro +che visser sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo. + +Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro +de li angeli che non furon ribelli +né fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro. + +Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli, +né lo profondo inferno li riceve, +ch’alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d’elli». + +E io: «Maestro, che è tanto greve +a lor che lamentar li fa sì forte?». +Rispuose: «Dicerolti molto breve. + +Questi non hanno speranza di morte, +e la lor cieca vita è tanto bassa, +che ’nvidïosi son d’ogne altra sorte. + +Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa; +misericordia e giustizia li sdegna: +non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa». + +E io, che riguardai, vidi una ’nsegna +che girando correva tanto ratta, +che d’ogne posa mi parea indegna; + +e dietro le venìa sì lunga tratta +di gente, ch’i’ non averei creduto +che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta. + +Poscia ch’io v’ebbi alcun riconosciuto, +vidi e conobbi l’ombra di colui +che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto. + +Incontanente intesi e certo fui +che questa era la setta d’i cattivi, +a Dio spiacenti e a’ nemici sui. + +Questi sciaurati, che mai non fur vivi, +erano ignudi e stimolati molto +da mosconi e da vespe ch’eran ivi. + +Elle rigavan lor di sangue il volto, +che, mischiato di lagrime, a’ lor piedi +da fastidiosi vermi era ricolto. + +E poi ch’a riguardar oltre mi diedi, +vidi genti a la riva d’un gran fiume; +per ch’io dissi: «Maestro, or mi concedi + +ch’i’ sappia quali sono, e qual costume +le fa di trapassar parer sì pronte, +com’ i’ discerno per lo fioco lume». + +Ed elli a me: «Le cose ti fier conte +quando noi fermerem li nostri passi +su la trista riviera d’Acheronte». + +Allor con li occhi vergognosi e bassi, +temendo no ’l mio dir li fosse grave, +infino al fiume del parlar mi trassi. + +Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave +un vecchio, bianco per antico pelo, +gridando: «Guai a voi, anime prave! + +Non isperate mai veder lo cielo: +i’ vegno per menarvi a l’altra riva +ne le tenebre etterne, in caldo e ’n gelo. + +E tu che se’ costì, anima viva, +pàrtiti da cotesti che son morti». +Ma poi che vide ch’io non mi partiva, + +disse: «Per altra via, per altri porti +verrai a piaggia, non qui, per passare: +più lieve legno convien che ti porti». + +E ’l duca lui: «Caron, non ti crucciare: +vuolsi così colà dove si puote +ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare». + +Quinci fuor quete le lanose gote +al nocchier de la livida palude, +che ’ntorno a li occhi avea di fiamme rote. + +Ma quell’ anime, ch’eran lasse e nude, +cangiar colore e dibattero i denti, +ratto che ’nteser le parole crude. + +Bestemmiavano Dio e lor parenti, +l’umana spezie e ’l loco e ’l tempo e ’l seme +di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti. + +Poi si ritrasser tutte quante insieme, +forte piangendo, a la riva malvagia +ch’attende ciascun uom che Dio non teme. + +Caron dimonio, con occhi di bragia +loro accennando, tutte le raccoglie; +batte col remo qualunque s’adagia. + +Come d’autunno si levan le foglie +l’una appresso de l’altra, fin che ’l ramo +vede a la terra tutte le sue spoglie, + +similemente il mal seme d’Adamo +gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una, +per cenni come augel per suo richiamo. + +Così sen vanno su per l’onda bruna, +e avanti che sien di là discese, +anche di qua nuova schiera s’auna. + +«Figliuol mio», disse ’l maestro cortese, +«quelli che muoion ne l’ira di Dio +tutti convegnon qui d’ogne paese; + +e pronti sono a trapassar lo rio, +ché la divina giustizia li sprona, +sì che la tema si volve in disio. + +Quinci non passa mai anima buona; +e però, se Caron di te si lagna, +ben puoi sapere omai che ’l suo dir suona». + +Finito questo, la buia campagna +tremò sì forte, che de lo spavento +la mente di sudore ancor mi bagna. + +La terra lagrimosa diede vento, +che balenò una luce vermiglia +la qual mi vinse ciascun sentimento; + +e caddi come l’uom cui sonno piglia. + + + + +Inferno +Canto IV + + +Ruppemi l’alto sonno ne la testa +un greve truono, sì ch’io mi riscossi +come persona ch’è per forza desta; + +e l’occhio riposato intorno mossi, +dritto levato, e fiso riguardai +per conoscer lo loco dov’ io fossi. + +Vero è che ’n su la proda mi trovai +de la valle d’abisso dolorosa +che ’ntrono accoglie d’infiniti guai. + +Oscura e profonda era e nebulosa +tanto che, per ficcar lo viso a fondo, +io non vi discernea alcuna cosa. + +«Or discendiam qua giù nel cieco mondo», +cominciò il poeta tutto smorto. +«Io sarò primo, e tu sarai secondo». + +E io, che del color mi fui accorto, +dissi: «Come verrò, se tu paventi +che suoli al mio dubbiare esser conforto?». + +Ed elli a me: «L’angoscia de le genti +che son qua giù, nel viso mi dipigne +quella pietà che tu per tema senti. + +Andiam, ché la via lunga ne sospigne». +Così si mise e così mi fé intrare +nel primo cerchio che l’abisso cigne. + +Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, +non avea pianto mai che di sospiri +che l’aura etterna facevan tremare; + +ciò avvenia di duol sanza martìri, +ch’avean le turbe, ch’eran molte e grandi, +d’infanti e di femmine e di viri. + +Lo buon maestro a me: «Tu non dimandi +che spiriti son questi che tu vedi? +Or vo’ che sappi, innanzi che più andi, + +ch’ei non peccaro; e s’elli hanno mercedi, +non basta, perché non ebber battesmo, +ch’è porta de la fede che tu credi; + +e s’e’ furon dinanzi al cristianesmo, +non adorar debitamente a Dio: +e di questi cotai son io medesmo. + +Per tai difetti, non per altro rio, +semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi +che sanza speme vivemo in disio». + +Gran duol mi prese al cor quando lo ’ntesi, +però che gente di molto valore +conobbi che ’n quel limbo eran sospesi. + +«Dimmi, maestro mio, dimmi, segnore», +comincia’ io per voler esser certo +di quella fede che vince ogne errore: + +«uscicci mai alcuno, o per suo merto +o per altrui, che poi fosse beato?». +E quei che ’ntese il mio parlar coverto, + +rispuose: «Io era nuovo in questo stato, +quando ci vidi venire un possente, +con segno di vittoria coronato. + +Trasseci l’ombra del primo parente, +d’Abèl suo figlio e quella di Noè, +di Moïsè legista e ubidente; + +Abraàm patrïarca e Davìd re, +Israèl con lo padre e co’ suoi nati +e con Rachele, per cui tanto fé, + +e altri molti, e feceli beati. +E vo’ che sappi che, dinanzi ad essi, +spiriti umani non eran salvati». + +Non lasciavam l’andar perch’ ei dicessi, +ma passavam la selva tuttavia, +la selva, dico, di spiriti spessi. + +Non era lunga ancor la nostra via +di qua dal sonno, quand’ io vidi un foco +ch’emisperio di tenebre vincia. + +Di lungi n’eravamo ancora un poco, +ma non sì ch’io non discernessi in parte +ch’orrevol gente possedea quel loco. + +«O tu ch’onori scïenzïa e arte, +questi chi son c’hanno cotanta onranza, +che dal modo de li altri li diparte?». + +E quelli a me: «L’onrata nominanza +che di lor suona sù ne la tua vita, +grazïa acquista in ciel che sì li avanza». + +Intanto voce fu per me udita: +«Onorate l’altissimo poeta; +l’ombra sua torna, ch’era dipartita». + +Poi che la voce fu restata e queta, +vidi quattro grand’ ombre a noi venire: +sembianz’ avevan né trista né lieta. + +Lo buon maestro cominciò a dire: +«Mira colui con quella spada in mano, +che vien dinanzi ai tre sì come sire: + +quelli è Omero poeta sovrano; +l’altro è Orazio satiro che vene; +Ovidio è ’l terzo, e l’ultimo Lucano. + +Però che ciascun meco si convene +nel nome che sonò la voce sola, +fannomi onore, e di ciò fanno bene». + +Così vid’ i’ adunar la bella scola +di quel segnor de l’altissimo canto +che sovra li altri com’ aquila vola. + +Da ch’ebber ragionato insieme alquanto, +volsersi a me con salutevol cenno, +e ’l mio maestro sorrise di tanto; + +e più d’onore ancora assai mi fenno, +ch’e’ sì mi fecer de la loro schiera, +sì ch’io fui sesto tra cotanto senno. + +Così andammo infino a la lumera, +parlando cose che ’l tacere è bello, +sì com’ era ’l parlar colà dov’ era. + +Venimmo al piè d’un nobile castello, +sette volte cerchiato d’alte mura, +difeso intorno d’un bel fiumicello. + +Questo passammo come terra dura; +per sette porte intrai con questi savi: +giugnemmo in prato di fresca verdura. + +Genti v’eran con occhi tardi e gravi, +di grande autorità ne’ lor sembianti: +parlavan rado, con voci soavi. + +Traemmoci così da l’un de’ canti, +in loco aperto, luminoso e alto, +sì che veder si potien tutti quanti. + +Colà diritto, sovra ’l verde smalto, +mi fuor mostrati li spiriti magni, +che del vedere in me stesso m’essalto. + +I’ vidi Eletra con molti compagni, +tra ’ quai conobbi Ettòr ed Enea, +Cesare armato con li occhi grifagni. + +Vidi Cammilla e la Pantasilea; +da l’altra parte vidi ’l re Latino +che con Lavina sua figlia sedea. + +Vidi quel Bruto che cacciò Tarquino, +Lucrezia, Iulia, Marzïa e Corniglia; +e solo, in parte, vidi ’l Saladino. + +Poi ch’innalzai un poco più le ciglia, +vidi ’l maestro di color che sanno +seder tra filosofica famiglia. + +Tutti lo miran, tutti onor li fanno: +quivi vid’ ïo Socrate e Platone, +che ’nnanzi a li altri più presso li stanno; + +Democrito che ’l mondo a caso pone, +Dïogenès, Anassagora e Tale, +Empedoclès, Eraclito e Zenone; + +e vidi il buono accoglitor del quale, +Dïascoride dico; e vidi Orfeo, +Tulïo e Lino e Seneca morale; + +Euclide geomètra e Tolomeo, +Ipocràte, Avicenna e Galïeno, +Averoìs, che ’l gran comento feo. + +Io non posso ritrar di tutti a pieno, +però che sì mi caccia il lungo tema, +che molte volte al fatto il dir vien meno. + +La sesta compagnia in due si scema: +per altra via mi mena il savio duca, +fuor de la queta, ne l’aura che trema. + +E vegno in parte ove non è che luca. + + + + +Inferno +Canto V + + +Così discesi del cerchio primaio +giù nel secondo, che men loco cinghia +e tanto più dolor, che punge a guaio. + +Stavvi Minòs orribilmente, e ringhia: +essamina le colpe ne l’intrata; +giudica e manda secondo ch’avvinghia. + +Dico che quando l’anima mal nata +li vien dinanzi, tutta si confessa; +e quel conoscitor de le peccata + +vede qual loco d’inferno è da essa; +cignesi con la coda tante volte +quantunque gradi vuol che giù sia messa. + +Sempre dinanzi a lui ne stanno molte: +vanno a vicenda ciascuna al giudizio, +dicono e odono e poi son giù volte. + +«O tu che vieni al doloroso ospizio», +disse Minòs a me quando mi vide, +lasciando l’atto di cotanto offizio, + +«guarda com’ entri e di cui tu ti fide; +non t’inganni l’ampiezza de l’intrare!». +E ’l duca mio a lui: «Perché pur gride? + +Non impedir lo suo fatale andare: +vuolsi così colà dove si puote +ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare». + +Or incomincian le dolenti note +a farmisi sentire; or son venuto +là dove molto pianto mi percuote. + +Io venni in loco d’ogne luce muto, +che mugghia come fa mar per tempesta, +se da contrari venti è combattuto. + +La bufera infernal, che mai non resta, +mena li spirti con la sua rapina; +voltando e percotendo li molesta. + +Quando giungon davanti a la ruina, +quivi le strida, il compianto, il lamento; +bestemmian quivi la virtù divina. + +Intesi ch’a così fatto tormento +enno dannati i peccator carnali, +che la ragion sommettono al talento. + +E come li stornei ne portan l’ali +nel freddo tempo, a schiera larga e piena, +così quel fiato li spiriti mali + +di qua, di là, di giù, di sù li mena; +nulla speranza li conforta mai, +non che di posa, ma di minor pena. + +E come i gru van cantando lor lai, +faccendo in aere di sé lunga riga, +così vid’ io venir, traendo guai, + +ombre portate da la detta briga; +per ch’i’ dissi: «Maestro, chi son quelle +genti che l’aura nera sì gastiga?». + +«La prima di color di cui novelle +tu vuo’ saper», mi disse quelli allotta, +«fu imperadrice di molte favelle. + +A vizio di lussuria fu sì rotta, +che libito fé licito in sua legge, +per tòrre il biasmo in che era condotta. + +Ell’ è Semiramìs, di cui si legge +che succedette a Nino e fu sua sposa: +tenne la terra che ’l Soldan corregge. + +L’altra è colei che s’ancise amorosa, +e ruppe fede al cener di Sicheo; +poi è Cleopatràs lussurïosa. + +Elena vedi, per cui tanto reo +tempo si volse, e vedi ’l grande Achille, +che con amore al fine combatteo. + +Vedi Parìs, Tristano»; e più di mille +ombre mostrommi e nominommi a dito, +ch’amor di nostra vita dipartille. + +Poscia ch’io ebbi ’l mio dottore udito +nomar le donne antiche e ’ cavalieri, +pietà mi giunse, e fui quasi smarrito. + +I’ cominciai: «Poeta, volontieri +parlerei a quei due che ’nsieme vanno, +e paion sì al vento esser leggeri». + +Ed elli a me: «Vedrai quando saranno +più presso a noi; e tu allor li priega +per quello amor che i mena, ed ei verranno». + +Sì tosto come il vento a noi li piega, +mossi la voce: «O anime affannate, +venite a noi parlar, s’altri nol niega!». + +Quali colombe dal disio chiamate +con l’ali alzate e ferme al dolce nido +vegnon per l’aere, dal voler portate; + +cotali uscir de la schiera ov’ è Dido, +a noi venendo per l’aere maligno, +sì forte fu l’affettüoso grido. + +«O animal grazïoso e benigno +che visitando vai per l’aere perso +noi che tignemmo il mondo di sanguigno, + +se fosse amico il re de l’universo, +noi pregheremmo lui de la tua pace, +poi c’hai pietà del nostro mal perverso. + +Di quel che udire e che parlar vi piace, +noi udiremo e parleremo a voi, +mentre che ’l vento, come fa, ci tace. + +Siede la terra dove nata fui +su la marina dove ’l Po discende +per aver pace co’ seguaci sui. + +Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende, +prese costui de la bella persona +che mi fu tolta; e ’l modo ancor m’offende. + +Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona, +mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, +che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona. + +Amor condusse noi ad una morte. +Caina attende chi a vita ci spense». +Queste parole da lor ci fuor porte. + +Quand’ io intesi quell’ anime offense, +china’ il viso, e tanto il tenni basso, +fin che ’l poeta mi disse: «Che pense?». + +Quando rispuosi, cominciai: «Oh lasso, +quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio +menò costoro al doloroso passo!». + +Poi mi rivolsi a loro e parla’ io, +e cominciai: «Francesca, i tuoi martìri +a lagrimar mi fanno tristo e pio. + +Ma dimmi: al tempo d’i dolci sospiri, +a che e come concedette amore +che conosceste i dubbiosi disiri?». + +E quella a me: «Nessun maggior dolore +che ricordarsi del tempo felice +nella miseria; e ciò sa ’l tuo dottore. + +Ma s’a conoscer la prima radice +del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto, +dirò come colui che piange e dice. + +Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto +di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse; +soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto. + +Per più fïate li occhi ci sospinse +quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso; +ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse. + +Quando leggemmo il disïato riso +esser basciato da cotanto amante, +questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, + +la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante. +Galeotto fu ’l libro e chi lo scrisse: +quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante». + +Mentre che l’uno spirto questo disse, +l’altro piangëa; sì che di pietade +io venni men così com’ io morisse. + +E caddi come corpo morto cade. + + + + +Inferno +Canto VI + + +Al tornar de la mente, che si chiuse +dinanzi a la pietà d’i due cognati, +che di trestizia tutto mi confuse, + +novi tormenti e novi tormentati +mi veggio intorno, come ch’io mi mova +e ch’io mi volga, e come che io guati. + +Io sono al terzo cerchio, de la piova +etterna, maladetta, fredda e greve; +regola e qualità mai non l’è nova. + +Grandine grossa, acqua tinta e neve +per l’aere tenebroso si riversa; +pute la terra che questo riceve. + +Cerbero, fiera crudele e diversa, +con tre gole caninamente latra +sovra la gente che quivi è sommersa. + +Li occhi ha vermigli, la barba unta e atra, +e ’l ventre largo, e unghiate le mani; +graffia li spirti ed iscoia ed isquatra. + +Urlar li fa la pioggia come cani; +de l’un de’ lati fanno a l’altro schermo; +volgonsi spesso i miseri profani. + +Quando ci scorse Cerbero, il gran vermo, +le bocche aperse e mostrocci le sanne; +non avea membro che tenesse fermo. + +E ’l duca mio distese le sue spanne, +prese la terra, e con piene le pugna +la gittò dentro a le bramose canne. + +Qual è quel cane ch’abbaiando agogna, +e si racqueta poi che ’l pasto morde, +ché solo a divorarlo intende e pugna, + +cotai si fecer quelle facce lorde +de lo demonio Cerbero, che ’ntrona +l’anime sì, ch’esser vorrebber sorde. + +Noi passavam su per l’ombre che adona +la greve pioggia, e ponavam le piante +sovra lor vanità che par persona. + +Elle giacean per terra tutte quante, +fuor d’una ch’a seder si levò, ratto +ch’ella ci vide passarsi davante. + +«O tu che se’ per questo ’nferno tratto», +mi disse, «riconoscimi, se sai: +tu fosti, prima ch’io disfatto, fatto». + +E io a lui: «L’angoscia che tu hai +forse ti tira fuor de la mia mente, +sì che non par ch’i’ ti vedessi mai. + +Ma dimmi chi tu se’ che ’n sì dolente +loco se’ messo, e hai sì fatta pena, +che, s’altra è maggio, nulla è sì spiacente». + +Ed elli a me: «La tua città, ch’è piena +d’invidia sì che già trabocca il sacco, +seco mi tenne in la vita serena. + +Voi cittadini mi chiamaste Ciacco: +per la dannosa colpa de la gola, +come tu vedi, a la pioggia mi fiacco. + +E io anima trista non son sola, +ché tutte queste a simil pena stanno +per simil colpa». E più non fé parola. + +Io li rispuosi: «Ciacco, il tuo affanno +mi pesa sì, ch’a lagrimar mi ’nvita; +ma dimmi, se tu sai, a che verranno + +li cittadin de la città partita; +s’alcun v’è giusto; e dimmi la cagione +per che l’ha tanta discordia assalita». + +E quelli a me: «Dopo lunga tencione +verranno al sangue, e la parte selvaggia +caccerà l’altra con molta offensione. + +Poi appresso convien che questa caggia +infra tre soli, e che l’altra sormonti +con la forza di tal che testé piaggia. + +Alte terrà lungo tempo le fronti, +tenendo l’altra sotto gravi pesi, +come che di ciò pianga o che n’aonti. + +Giusti son due, e non vi sono intesi; +superbia, invidia e avarizia sono +le tre faville c’hanno i cuori accesi». + +Qui puose fine al lagrimabil suono. +E io a lui: «Ancor vo’ che mi ’nsegni +e che di più parlar mi facci dono. + +Farinata e ’l Tegghiaio, che fuor sì degni, +Iacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo e ’l Mosca +e li altri ch’a ben far puoser li ’ngegni, + +dimmi ove sono e fa ch’io li conosca; +ché gran disio mi stringe di savere +se ’l ciel li addolcia o lo ’nferno li attosca». + +E quelli: «Ei son tra l’anime più nere; +diverse colpe giù li grava al fondo: +se tanto scendi, là i potrai vedere. + +Ma quando tu sarai nel dolce mondo, +priegoti ch’a la mente altrui mi rechi: +più non ti dico e più non ti rispondo». + +Li diritti occhi torse allora in biechi; +guardommi un poco e poi chinò la testa: +cadde con essa a par de li altri ciechi. + +E ’l duca disse a me: «Più non si desta +di qua dal suon de l’angelica tromba, +quando verrà la nimica podesta: + +ciascun rivederà la trista tomba, +ripiglierà sua carne e sua figura, +udirà quel ch’in etterno rimbomba». + +Sì trapassammo per sozza mistura +de l’ombre e de la pioggia, a passi lenti, +toccando un poco la vita futura; + +per ch’io dissi: «Maestro, esti tormenti +crescerann’ ei dopo la gran sentenza, +o fier minori, o saran sì cocenti?». + +Ed elli a me: «Ritorna a tua scïenza, +che vuol, quanto la cosa è più perfetta, +più senta il bene, e così la doglienza. + +Tutto che questa gente maladetta +in vera perfezion già mai non vada, +di là più che di qua essere aspetta». + +Noi aggirammo a tondo quella strada, +parlando più assai ch’i’ non ridico; +venimmo al punto dove si digrada: + +quivi trovammo Pluto, il gran nemico. + + + + +Inferno +Canto VII + + +«Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe!», +cominciò Pluto con la voce chioccia; +e quel savio gentil, che tutto seppe, + +disse per confortarmi: «Non ti noccia +la tua paura; ché, poder ch’elli abbia, +non ci torrà lo scender questa roccia». + +Poi si rivolse a quella ’nfiata labbia, +e disse: «Taci, maladetto lupo! +consuma dentro te con la tua rabbia. + +Non è sanza cagion l’andare al cupo: +vuolsi ne l’alto, là dove Michele +fé la vendetta del superbo strupo». + +Quali dal vento le gonfiate vele +caggiono avvolte, poi che l’alber fiacca, +tal cadde a terra la fiera crudele. + +Così scendemmo ne la quarta lacca, +pigliando più de la dolente ripa +che ’l mal de l’universo tutto insacca. + +Ahi giustizia di Dio! tante chi stipa +nove travaglie e pene quant’ io viddi? +e perché nostra colpa sì ne scipa? + +Come fa l’onda là sovra Cariddi, +che si frange con quella in cui s’intoppa, +così convien che qui la gente riddi. + +Qui vid’ i’ gente più ch’altrove troppa, +e d’una parte e d’altra, con grand’ urli, +voltando pesi per forza di poppa. + +Percotëansi ’ncontro; e poscia pur lì +si rivolgea ciascun, voltando a retro, +gridando: «Perché tieni?» e «Perché burli?». + +Così tornavan per lo cerchio tetro +da ogne mano a l’opposito punto, +gridandosi anche loro ontoso metro; + +poi si volgea ciascun, quand’ era giunto, +per lo suo mezzo cerchio a l’altra giostra. +E io, ch’avea lo cor quasi compunto, + +dissi: «Maestro mio, or mi dimostra +che gente è questa, e se tutti fuor cherci +questi chercuti a la sinistra nostra». + +Ed elli a me: «Tutti quanti fuor guerci +sì de la mente in la vita primaia, +che con misura nullo spendio ferci. + +Assai la voce lor chiaro l’abbaia, +quando vegnono a’ due punti del cerchio +dove colpa contraria li dispaia. + +Questi fuor cherci, che non han coperchio +piloso al capo, e papi e cardinali, +in cui usa avarizia il suo soperchio». + +E io: «Maestro, tra questi cotali +dovre’ io ben riconoscere alcuni +che furo immondi di cotesti mali». + +Ed elli a me: «Vano pensiero aduni: +la sconoscente vita che i fé sozzi, +ad ogne conoscenza or li fa bruni. + +In etterno verranno a li due cozzi: +questi resurgeranno del sepulcro +col pugno chiuso, e questi coi crin mozzi. + +Mal dare e mal tener lo mondo pulcro +ha tolto loro, e posti a questa zuffa: +qual ella sia, parole non ci appulcro. + +Or puoi, figliuol, veder la corta buffa +d’i ben che son commessi a la fortuna, +per che l’umana gente si rabbuffa; + +ché tutto l’oro ch’è sotto la luna +e che già fu, di quest’ anime stanche +non poterebbe farne posare una». + +«Maestro mio», diss’ io, «or mi dì anche: +questa fortuna di che tu mi tocche, +che è, che i ben del mondo ha sì tra branche?». + +E quelli a me: «Oh creature sciocche, +quanta ignoranza è quella che v’offende! +Or vo’ che tu mia sentenza ne ’mbocche. + +Colui lo cui saver tutto trascende, +fece li cieli e diè lor chi conduce +sì, ch’ogne parte ad ogne parte splende, + +distribuendo igualmente la luce. +Similemente a li splendor mondani +ordinò general ministra e duce + +che permutasse a tempo li ben vani +di gente in gente e d’uno in altro sangue, +oltre la difension d’i senni umani; + +per ch’una gente impera e l’altra langue, +seguendo lo giudicio di costei, +che è occulto come in erba l’angue. + +Vostro saver non ha contasto a lei: +questa provede, giudica, e persegue +suo regno come il loro li altri dèi. + +Le sue permutazion non hanno triegue: +necessità la fa esser veloce; +sì spesso vien chi vicenda consegue. + +Quest’ è colei ch’è tanto posta in croce +pur da color che le dovrien dar lode, +dandole biasmo a torto e mala voce; + +ma ella s’è beata e ciò non ode: +con l’altre prime creature lieta +volve sua spera e beata si gode. + +Or discendiamo omai a maggior pieta; +già ogne stella cade che saliva +quand’ io mi mossi, e ’l troppo star si vieta». + +Noi ricidemmo il cerchio a l’altra riva +sovr’ una fonte che bolle e riversa +per un fossato che da lei deriva. + +L’acqua era buia assai più che persa; +e noi, in compagnia de l’onde bige, +intrammo giù per una via diversa. + +In la palude va c’ha nome Stige +questo tristo ruscel, quand’ è disceso +al piè de le maligne piagge grige. + +E io, che di mirare stava inteso, +vidi genti fangose in quel pantano, +ignude tutte, con sembiante offeso. + +Queste si percotean non pur con mano, +ma con la testa e col petto e coi piedi, +troncandosi co’ denti a brano a brano. + +Lo buon maestro disse: «Figlio, or vedi +l’anime di color cui vinse l’ira; +e anche vo’ che tu per certo credi + +che sotto l’acqua è gente che sospira, +e fanno pullular quest’ acqua al summo, +come l’occhio ti dice, u’ che s’aggira. + +Fitti nel limo dicon: “Tristi fummo +ne l’aere dolce che dal sol s’allegra, +portando dentro accidïoso fummo: + +or ci attristiam ne la belletta negra”. +Quest’ inno si gorgoglian ne la strozza, +ché dir nol posson con parola integra». + +Così girammo de la lorda pozza +grand’ arco tra la ripa secca e ’l mézzo, +con li occhi vòlti a chi del fango ingozza. + +Venimmo al piè d’una torre al da sezzo. + + + + +Inferno +Canto VIII + + +Io dico, seguitando, ch’assai prima +che noi fossimo al piè de l’alta torre, +li occhi nostri n’andar suso a la cima + +per due fiammette che i vedemmo porre, +e un’altra da lungi render cenno, +tanto ch’a pena il potea l’occhio tòrre. + +E io mi volsi al mar di tutto ’l senno; +dissi: «Questo che dice? e che risponde +quell’ altro foco? e chi son quei che ’l fenno?». + +Ed elli a me: «Su per le sucide onde +già scorgere puoi quello che s’aspetta, +se ’l fummo del pantan nol ti nasconde». + +Corda non pinse mai da sé saetta +che sì corresse via per l’aere snella, +com’ io vidi una nave piccioletta + +venir per l’acqua verso noi in quella, +sotto ’l governo d’un sol galeoto, +che gridava: «Or se’ giunta, anima fella!». + +«Flegïàs, Flegïàs, tu gridi a vòto», +disse lo mio segnore, «a questa volta: +più non ci avrai che sol passando il loto». + +Qual è colui che grande inganno ascolta +che li sia fatto, e poi se ne rammarca, +fecesi Flegïàs ne l’ira accolta. + +Lo duca mio discese ne la barca, +e poi mi fece intrare appresso lui; +e sol quand’ io fui dentro parve carca. + +Tosto che ’l duca e io nel legno fui, +segando se ne va l’antica prora +de l’acqua più che non suol con altrui. + +Mentre noi corravam la morta gora, +dinanzi mi si fece un pien di fango, +e disse: «Chi se’ tu che vieni anzi ora?». + +E io a lui: «S’i’ vegno, non rimango; +ma tu chi se’, che sì se’ fatto brutto?». +Rispuose: «Vedi che son un che piango». + +E io a lui: «Con piangere e con lutto, +spirito maladetto, ti rimani; +ch’i’ ti conosco, ancor sie lordo tutto». + +Allor distese al legno ambo le mani; +per che ’l maestro accorto lo sospinse, +dicendo: «Via costà con li altri cani!». + +Lo collo poi con le braccia mi cinse; +basciommi ’l volto e disse: «Alma sdegnosa, +benedetta colei che ’n te s’incinse! + +Quei fu al mondo persona orgogliosa; +bontà non è che sua memoria fregi: +così s’è l’ombra sua qui furïosa. + +Quanti si tegnon or là sù gran regi +che qui staranno come porci in brago, +di sé lasciando orribili dispregi!». + +E io: «Maestro, molto sarei vago +di vederlo attuffare in questa broda +prima che noi uscissimo del lago». + +Ed elli a me: «Avante che la proda +ti si lasci veder, tu sarai sazio: +di tal disïo convien che tu goda». + +Dopo ciò poco vid’ io quello strazio +far di costui a le fangose genti, +che Dio ancor ne lodo e ne ringrazio. + +Tutti gridavano: «A Filippo Argenti!»; +e ’l fiorentino spirito bizzarro +in sé medesmo si volvea co’ denti. + +Quivi il lasciammo, che più non ne narro; +ma ne l’orecchie mi percosse un duolo, +per ch’io avante l’occhio intento sbarro. + +Lo buon maestro disse: «Omai, figliuolo, +s’appressa la città c’ha nome Dite, +coi gravi cittadin, col grande stuolo». + +E io: «Maestro, già le sue meschite +là entro certe ne la valle cerno, +vermiglie come se di foco uscite + +fossero». Ed ei mi disse: «Il foco etterno +ch’entro l’affoca le dimostra rosse, +come tu vedi in questo basso inferno». + +Noi pur giugnemmo dentro a l’alte fosse +che vallan quella terra sconsolata: +le mura mi parean che ferro fosse. + +Non sanza prima far grande aggirata, +venimmo in parte dove il nocchier forte +«Usciteci», gridò: «qui è l’intrata». + +Io vidi più di mille in su le porte +da ciel piovuti, che stizzosamente +dicean: «Chi è costui che sanza morte + +va per lo regno de la morta gente?». +E ’l savio mio maestro fece segno +di voler lor parlar segretamente. + +Allor chiusero un poco il gran disdegno +e disser: «Vien tu solo, e quei sen vada +che sì ardito intrò per questo regno. + +Sol si ritorni per la folle strada: +pruovi, se sa; ché tu qui rimarrai, +che li ha’ iscorta sì buia contrada». + +Pensa, lettor, se io mi sconfortai +nel suon de le parole maladette, +ché non credetti ritornarci mai. + +«O caro duca mio, che più di sette +volte m’hai sicurtà renduta e tratto +d’alto periglio che ’ncontra mi stette, + +non mi lasciar», diss’ io, «così disfatto; +e se ’l passar più oltre ci è negato, +ritroviam l’orme nostre insieme ratto». + +E quel segnor che lì m’avea menato, +mi disse: «Non temer; ché ’l nostro passo +non ci può tòrre alcun: da tal n’è dato. + +Ma qui m’attendi, e lo spirito lasso +conforta e ciba di speranza buona, +ch’i’ non ti lascerò nel mondo basso». + +Così sen va, e quivi m’abbandona +lo dolce padre, e io rimagno in forse, +che sì e no nel capo mi tenciona. + +Udir non potti quello ch’a lor porse; +ma ei non stette là con essi guari, +che ciascun dentro a pruova si ricorse. + +Chiuser le porte que’ nostri avversari +nel petto al mio segnor, che fuor rimase +e rivolsesi a me con passi rari. + +Li occhi a la terra e le ciglia avea rase +d’ogne baldanza, e dicea ne’ sospiri: +«Chi m’ha negate le dolenti case!». + +E a me disse: «Tu, perch’ io m’adiri, +non sbigottir, ch’io vincerò la prova, +qual ch’a la difension dentro s’aggiri. + +Questa lor tracotanza non è nova; +ché già l’usaro a men segreta porta, +la qual sanza serrame ancor si trova. + +Sovr’ essa vedestù la scritta morta: +e già di qua da lei discende l’erta, +passando per li cerchi sanza scorta, + +tal che per lui ne fia la terra aperta». + + + + +Inferno +Canto IX + + +Quel color che viltà di fuor mi pinse +veggendo il duca mio tornare in volta, +più tosto dentro il suo novo ristrinse. + +Attento si fermò com’ uom ch’ascolta; +ché l’occhio nol potea menare a lunga +per l’aere nero e per la nebbia folta. + +«Pur a noi converrà vincer la punga», +cominciò el, «se non . . . Tal ne s’offerse. +Oh quanto tarda a me ch’altri qui giunga!». + +I’ vidi ben sì com’ ei ricoperse +lo cominciar con l’altro che poi venne, +che fur parole a le prime diverse; + +ma nondimen paura il suo dir dienne, +perch’ io traeva la parola tronca +forse a peggior sentenzia che non tenne. + +«In questo fondo de la trista conca +discende mai alcun del primo grado, +che sol per pena ha la speranza cionca?». + +Questa question fec’ io; e quei «Di rado +incontra», mi rispuose, «che di noi +faccia il cammino alcun per qual io vado. + +Ver è ch’altra fïata qua giù fui, +congiurato da quella Eritón cruda +che richiamava l’ombre a’ corpi sui. + +Di poco era di me la carne nuda, +ch’ella mi fece intrar dentr’ a quel muro, +per trarne un spirto del cerchio di Giuda. + +Quell’ è ’l più basso loco e ’l più oscuro, +e ’l più lontan dal ciel che tutto gira: +ben so ’l cammin; però ti fa sicuro. + +Questa palude che ’l gran puzzo spira +cigne dintorno la città dolente, +u’ non potemo intrare omai sanz’ ira». + +E altro disse, ma non l’ho a mente; +però che l’occhio m’avea tutto tratto +ver’ l’alta torre a la cima rovente, + +dove in un punto furon dritte ratto +tre furïe infernal di sangue tinte, +che membra feminine avieno e atto, + +e con idre verdissime eran cinte; +serpentelli e ceraste avien per crine, +onde le fiere tempie erano avvinte. + +E quei, che ben conobbe le meschine +de la regina de l’etterno pianto, +«Guarda», mi disse, «le feroci Erine. + +Quest’ è Megera dal sinistro canto; +quella che piange dal destro è Aletto; +Tesifón è nel mezzo»; e tacque a tanto. + +Con l’unghie si fendea ciascuna il petto; +battiensi a palme e gridavan sì alto, +ch’i’ mi strinsi al poeta per sospetto. + +«Vegna Medusa: sì ’l farem di smalto», +dicevan tutte riguardando in giuso; +«mal non vengiammo in Tesëo l’assalto». + +«Volgiti ’n dietro e tien lo viso chiuso; +ché se ’l Gorgón si mostra e tu ’l vedessi, +nulla sarebbe di tornar mai suso». + +Così disse ’l maestro; ed elli stessi +mi volse, e non si tenne a le mie mani, +che con le sue ancor non mi chiudessi. + +O voi ch’avete li ’ntelletti sani, +mirate la dottrina che s’asconde +sotto ’l velame de li versi strani. + +E già venìa su per le torbide onde +un fracasso d’un suon, pien di spavento, +per cui tremavano amendue le sponde, + +non altrimenti fatto che d’un vento +impetüoso per li avversi ardori, +che fier la selva e sanz’ alcun rattento + +li rami schianta, abbatte e porta fori; +dinanzi polveroso va superbo, +e fa fuggir le fiere e li pastori. + +Li occhi mi sciolse e disse: «Or drizza il nerbo +del viso su per quella schiuma antica +per indi ove quel fummo è più acerbo». + +Come le rane innanzi a la nimica +biscia per l’acqua si dileguan tutte, +fin ch’a la terra ciascuna s’abbica, + +vid’ io più di mille anime distrutte +fuggir così dinanzi ad un ch’al passo +passava Stige con le piante asciutte. + +Dal volto rimovea quell’ aere grasso, +menando la sinistra innanzi spesso; +e sol di quell’ angoscia parea lasso. + +Ben m’accorsi ch’elli era da ciel messo, +e volsimi al maestro; e quei fé segno +ch’i’ stessi queto ed inchinassi ad esso. + +Ahi quanto mi parea pien di disdegno! +Venne a la porta e con una verghetta +l’aperse, che non v’ebbe alcun ritegno. + +«O cacciati del ciel, gente dispetta», +cominciò elli in su l’orribil soglia, +«ond’ esta oltracotanza in voi s’alletta? + +Perché recalcitrate a quella voglia +a cui non puote il fin mai esser mozzo, +e che più volte v’ha cresciuta doglia? + +Che giova ne le fata dar di cozzo? +Cerbero vostro, se ben vi ricorda, +ne porta ancor pelato il mento e ’l gozzo». + +Poi si rivolse per la strada lorda, +e non fé motto a noi, ma fé sembiante +d’omo cui altra cura stringa e morda + +che quella di colui che li è davante; +e noi movemmo i piedi inver’ la terra, +sicuri appresso le parole sante. + +Dentro li ’ntrammo sanz’ alcuna guerra; +e io, ch’avea di riguardar disio +la condizion che tal fortezza serra, + +com’ io fui dentro, l’occhio intorno invio: +e veggio ad ogne man grande campagna, +piena di duolo e di tormento rio. + +Sì come ad Arli, ove Rodano stagna, +sì com’ a Pola, presso del Carnaro +ch’Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna, + +fanno i sepulcri tutt’ il loco varo, +così facevan quivi d’ogne parte, +salvo che ’l modo v’era più amaro; + +ché tra li avelli fiamme erano sparte, +per le quali eran sì del tutto accesi, +che ferro più non chiede verun’ arte. + +Tutti li lor coperchi eran sospesi, +e fuor n’uscivan sì duri lamenti, +che ben parean di miseri e d’offesi. + +E io: «Maestro, quai son quelle genti +che, seppellite dentro da quell’ arche, +si fan sentir coi sospiri dolenti?». + +E quelli a me: «Qui son li eresïarche +con lor seguaci, d’ogne setta, e molto +più che non credi son le tombe carche. + +Simile qui con simile è sepolto, +e i monimenti son più e men caldi». +E poi ch’a la man destra si fu vòlto, + +passammo tra i martìri e li alti spaldi. + + + + +Inferno +Canto X + + +Ora sen va per un secreto calle, +tra ’l muro de la terra e li martìri, +lo mio maestro, e io dopo le spalle. + +«O virtù somma, che per li empi giri +mi volvi», cominciai, «com’ a te piace, +parlami, e sodisfammi a’ miei disiri. + +La gente che per li sepolcri giace +potrebbesi veder? già son levati +tutt’ i coperchi, e nessun guardia face». + +E quelli a me: «Tutti saran serrati +quando di Iosafàt qui torneranno +coi corpi che là sù hanno lasciati. + +Suo cimitero da questa parte hanno +con Epicuro tutti suoi seguaci, +che l’anima col corpo morta fanno. + +Però a la dimanda che mi faci +quinc’ entro satisfatto sarà tosto, +e al disio ancor che tu mi taci». + +E io: «Buon duca, non tegno riposto +a te mio cuor se non per dicer poco, +e tu m’hai non pur mo a ciò disposto». + +«O Tosco che per la città del foco +vivo ten vai così parlando onesto, +piacciati di restare in questo loco. + +La tua loquela ti fa manifesto +di quella nobil patrïa natio, +a la qual forse fui troppo molesto». + +Subitamente questo suono uscìo +d’una de l’arche; però m’accostai, +temendo, un poco più al duca mio. + +Ed el mi disse: «Volgiti! Che fai? +Vedi là Farinata che s’è dritto: +da la cintola in sù tutto ’l vedrai». + +Io avea già il mio viso nel suo fitto; +ed el s’ergea col petto e con la fronte +com’ avesse l’inferno a gran dispitto. + +E l’animose man del duca e pronte +mi pinser tra le sepulture a lui, +dicendo: «Le parole tue sien conte». + +Com’ io al piè de la sua tomba fui, +guardommi un poco, e poi, quasi sdegnoso, +mi dimandò: «Chi fuor li maggior tui?». + +Io ch’era d’ubidir disideroso, +non gliel celai, ma tutto gliel’ apersi; +ond’ ei levò le ciglia un poco in suso; + +poi disse: «Fieramente furo avversi +a me e a miei primi e a mia parte, +sì che per due fïate li dispersi». + +«S’ei fur cacciati, ei tornar d’ogne parte», +rispuos’ io lui, «l’una e l’altra fïata; +ma i vostri non appreser ben quell’ arte». + +Allor surse a la vista scoperchiata +un’ombra, lungo questa, infino al mento: +credo che s’era in ginocchie levata. + +Dintorno mi guardò, come talento +avesse di veder s’altri era meco; +e poi che ’l sospecciar fu tutto spento, + +piangendo disse: «Se per questo cieco +carcere vai per altezza d’ingegno, +mio figlio ov’ è? e perché non è teco?». + +E io a lui: «Da me stesso non vegno: +colui ch’attende là, per qui mi mena +forse cui Guido vostro ebbe a disdegno». + +Le sue parole e ’l modo de la pena +m’avean di costui già letto il nome; +però fu la risposta così piena. + +Di sùbito drizzato gridò: «Come? +dicesti “elli ebbe”? non viv’ elli ancora? +non fiere li occhi suoi lo dolce lume?». + +Quando s’accorse d’alcuna dimora +ch’io facëa dinanzi a la risposta, +supin ricadde e più non parve fora. + +Ma quell’ altro magnanimo, a cui posta +restato m’era, non mutò aspetto, +né mosse collo, né piegò sua costa; + +e sé continüando al primo detto, +«S’elli han quell’ arte», disse, «male appresa, +ciò mi tormenta più che questo letto. + +Ma non cinquanta volte fia raccesa +la faccia de la donna che qui regge, +che tu saprai quanto quell’ arte pesa. + +E se tu mai nel dolce mondo regge, +dimmi: perché quel popolo è sì empio +incontr’ a’ miei in ciascuna sua legge?». + +Ond’ io a lui: «Lo strazio e ’l grande scempio +che fece l’Arbia colorata in rosso, +tal orazion fa far nel nostro tempio». + +Poi ch’ebbe sospirando il capo mosso, +«A ciò non fu’ io sol», disse, «né certo +sanza cagion con li altri sarei mosso. + +Ma fu’ io solo, là dove sofferto +fu per ciascun di tòrre via Fiorenza, +colui che la difesi a viso aperto». + +«Deh, se riposi mai vostra semenza», +prega’ io lui, «solvetemi quel nodo +che qui ha ’nviluppata mia sentenza. + +El par che voi veggiate, se ben odo, +dinanzi quel che ’l tempo seco adduce, +e nel presente tenete altro modo». + +«Noi veggiam, come quei c’ha mala luce, +le cose», disse, «che ne son lontano; +cotanto ancor ne splende il sommo duce. + +Quando s’appressano o son, tutto è vano +nostro intelletto; e s’altri non ci apporta, +nulla sapem di vostro stato umano. + +Però comprender puoi che tutta morta +fia nostra conoscenza da quel punto +che del futuro fia chiusa la porta». + +Allor, come di mia colpa compunto, +dissi: «Or direte dunque a quel caduto +che ’l suo nato è co’ vivi ancor congiunto; + +e s’i’ fui, dianzi, a la risposta muto, +fate i saper che ’l fei perché pensava +già ne l’error che m’avete soluto». + +E già ’l maestro mio mi richiamava; +per ch’i’ pregai lo spirto più avaccio +che mi dicesse chi con lu’ istava. + +Dissemi: «Qui con più di mille giaccio: +qua dentro è ’l secondo Federico +e ’l Cardinale; e de li altri mi taccio». + +Indi s’ascose; e io inver’ l’antico +poeta volsi i passi, ripensando +a quel parlar che mi parea nemico. + +Elli si mosse; e poi, così andando, +mi disse: «Perché se’ tu sì smarrito?». +E io li sodisfeci al suo dimando. + +«La mente tua conservi quel ch’udito +hai contra te», mi comandò quel saggio; +«e ora attendi qui», e drizzò ’l dito: + +«quando sarai dinanzi al dolce raggio +di quella il cui bell’ occhio tutto vede, +da lei saprai di tua vita il vïaggio». + +Appresso mosse a man sinistra il piede: +lasciammo il muro e gimmo inver’ lo mezzo +per un sentier ch’a una valle fiede, + +che ’nfin là sù facea spiacer suo lezzo. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XI + + +In su l’estremità d’un’alta ripa +che facevan gran pietre rotte in cerchio, +venimmo sopra più crudele stipa; + +e quivi, per l’orribile soperchio +del puzzo che ’l profondo abisso gitta, +ci raccostammo, in dietro, ad un coperchio + +d’un grand’ avello, ov’ io vidi una scritta +che dicea: ‘Anastasio papa guardo, +lo qual trasse Fotin de la via dritta’. + +«Lo nostro scender conviene esser tardo, +sì che s’ausi un poco in prima il senso +al tristo fiato; e poi no i fia riguardo». + +Così ’l maestro; e io «Alcun compenso», +dissi lui, «trova che ’l tempo non passi +perduto». Ed elli: «Vedi ch’a ciò penso». + +«Figliuol mio, dentro da cotesti sassi», +cominciò poi a dir, «son tre cerchietti +di grado in grado, come que’ che lassi. + +Tutti son pien di spirti maladetti; +ma perché poi ti basti pur la vista, +intendi come e perché son costretti. + +D’ogne malizia, ch’odio in cielo acquista, +ingiuria è ’l fine, ed ogne fin cotale +o con forza o con frode altrui contrista. + +Ma perché frode è de l’uom proprio male, +più spiace a Dio; e però stan di sotto +li frodolenti, e più dolor li assale. + +Di vïolenti il primo cerchio è tutto; +ma perché si fa forza a tre persone, +in tre gironi è distinto e costrutto. + +A Dio, a sé, al prossimo si pòne +far forza, dico in loro e in lor cose, +come udirai con aperta ragione. + +Morte per forza e ferute dogliose +nel prossimo si danno, e nel suo avere +ruine, incendi e tollette dannose; + +onde omicide e ciascun che mal fiere, +guastatori e predon, tutti tormenta +lo giron primo per diverse schiere. + +Puote omo avere in sé man vïolenta +e ne’ suoi beni; e però nel secondo +giron convien che sanza pro si penta + +qualunque priva sé del vostro mondo, +biscazza e fonde la sua facultade, +e piange là dov’ esser de’ giocondo. + +Puossi far forza ne la deïtade, +col cor negando e bestemmiando quella, +e spregiando natura e sua bontade; + +e però lo minor giron suggella +del segno suo e Soddoma e Caorsa +e chi, spregiando Dio col cor, favella. + +La frode, ond’ ogne coscïenza è morsa, +può l’omo usare in colui che ’n lui fida +e in quel che fidanza non imborsa. + +Questo modo di retro par ch’incida +pur lo vinco d’amor che fa natura; +onde nel cerchio secondo s’annida + +ipocresia, lusinghe e chi affattura, +falsità, ladroneccio e simonia, +ruffian, baratti e simile lordura. + +Per l’altro modo quell’ amor s’oblia +che fa natura, e quel ch’è poi aggiunto, +di che la fede spezïal si cria; + +onde nel cerchio minore, ov’ è ’l punto +de l’universo in su che Dite siede, +qualunque trade in etterno è consunto». + +E io: «Maestro, assai chiara procede +la tua ragione, e assai ben distingue +questo baràtro e ’l popol ch’e’ possiede. + +Ma dimmi: quei de la palude pingue, +che mena il vento, e che batte la pioggia, +e che s’incontran con sì aspre lingue, + +perché non dentro da la città roggia +sono ei puniti, se Dio li ha in ira? +e se non li ha, perché sono a tal foggia?». + +Ed elli a me «Perché tanto delira», +disse, «lo ’ngegno tuo da quel che sòle? +o ver la mente dove altrove mira? + +Non ti rimembra di quelle parole +con le quai la tua Etica pertratta +le tre disposizion che ’l ciel non vole, + +incontenenza, malizia e la matta +bestialitade? e come incontenenza +men Dio offende e men biasimo accatta? + +Se tu riguardi ben questa sentenza, +e rechiti a la mente chi son quelli +che sù di fuor sostegnon penitenza, + +tu vedrai ben perché da questi felli +sien dipartiti, e perché men crucciata +la divina vendetta li martelli». + +«O sol che sani ogne vista turbata, +tu mi contenti sì quando tu solvi, +che, non men che saver, dubbiar m’aggrata. + +Ancora in dietro un poco ti rivolvi», +diss’ io, «là dove di’ ch’usura offende +la divina bontade, e ’l groppo solvi». + +«Filosofia», mi disse, «a chi la ’ntende, +nota, non pure in una sola parte, +come natura lo suo corso prende + +dal divino ’ntelletto e da sua arte; +e se tu ben la tua Fisica note, +tu troverai, non dopo molte carte, + +che l’arte vostra quella, quanto pote, +segue, come ’l maestro fa ’l discente; +sì che vostr’ arte a Dio quasi è nepote. + +Da queste due, se tu ti rechi a mente +lo Genesì dal principio, convene +prender sua vita e avanzar la gente; + +e perché l’usuriere altra via tene, +per sé natura e per la sua seguace +dispregia, poi ch’in altro pon la spene. + +Ma seguimi oramai che ’l gir mi piace; +ché i Pesci guizzan su per l’orizzonta, +e ’l Carro tutto sovra ’l Coro giace, + +e ’l balzo via là oltra si dismonta». + + + + +Inferno +Canto XII + + +Era lo loco ov’ a scender la riva +venimmo, alpestro e, per quel che v’er’ anco, +tal, ch’ogne vista ne sarebbe schiva. + +Qual è quella ruina che nel fianco +di qua da Trento l’Adice percosse, +o per tremoto o per sostegno manco, + +che da cima del monte, onde si mosse, +al piano è sì la roccia discoscesa, +ch’alcuna via darebbe a chi sù fosse: + +cotal di quel burrato era la scesa; +e ’n su la punta de la rotta lacca +l’infamïa di Creti era distesa + +che fu concetta ne la falsa vacca; +e quando vide noi, sé stesso morse, +sì come quei cui l’ira dentro fiacca. + +Lo savio mio inver’ lui gridò: «Forse +tu credi che qui sia ’l duca d’Atene, +che sù nel mondo la morte ti porse? + +Pàrtiti, bestia, ché questi non vene +ammaestrato da la tua sorella, +ma vassi per veder le vostre pene». + +Qual è quel toro che si slaccia in quella +c’ha ricevuto già ’l colpo mortale, +che gir non sa, ma qua e là saltella, + +vid’ io lo Minotauro far cotale; +e quello accorto gridò: «Corri al varco; +mentre ch’e’ ’nfuria, è buon che tu ti cale». + +Così prendemmo via giù per lo scarco +di quelle pietre, che spesso moviensi +sotto i miei piedi per lo novo carco. + +Io gia pensando; e quei disse: «Tu pensi +forse a questa ruina, ch’è guardata +da quell’ ira bestial ch’i’ ora spensi. + +Or vo’ che sappi che l’altra fïata +ch’i’ discesi qua giù nel basso inferno, +questa roccia non era ancor cascata. + +Ma certo poco pria, se ben discerno, +che venisse colui che la gran preda +levò a Dite del cerchio superno, + +da tutte parti l’alta valle feda +tremò sì, ch’i’ pensai che l’universo +sentisse amor, per lo qual è chi creda + +più volte il mondo in caòsso converso; +e in quel punto questa vecchia roccia, +qui e altrove, tal fece riverso. + +Ma ficca li occhi a valle, ché s’approccia +la riviera del sangue in la qual bolle +qual che per vïolenza in altrui noccia». + +Oh cieca cupidigia e ira folle, +che sì ci sproni ne la vita corta, +e ne l’etterna poi sì mal c’immolle! + +Io vidi un’ampia fossa in arco torta, +come quella che tutto ’l piano abbraccia, +secondo ch’avea detto la mia scorta; + +e tra ’l piè de la ripa ed essa, in traccia +corrien centauri, armati di saette, +come solien nel mondo andare a caccia. + +Veggendoci calar, ciascun ristette, +e de la schiera tre si dipartiro +con archi e asticciuole prima elette; + +e l’un gridò da lungi: «A qual martiro +venite voi che scendete la costa? +Ditel costinci; se non, l’arco tiro». + +Lo mio maestro disse: «La risposta +farem noi a Chirón costà di presso: +mal fu la voglia tua sempre sì tosta». + +Poi mi tentò, e disse: «Quelli è Nesso, +che morì per la bella Deianira, +e fé di sé la vendetta elli stesso. + +E quel di mezzo, ch’al petto si mira, +è il gran Chirón, il qual nodrì Achille; +quell’ altro è Folo, che fu sì pien d’ira. + +Dintorno al fosso vanno a mille a mille, +saettando qual anima si svelle +del sangue più che sua colpa sortille». + +Noi ci appressammo a quelle fiere isnelle: +Chirón prese uno strale, e con la cocca +fece la barba in dietro a le mascelle. + +Quando s’ebbe scoperta la gran bocca, +disse a’ compagni: «Siete voi accorti +che quel di retro move ciò ch’el tocca? + +Così non soglion far li piè d’i morti». +E ’l mio buon duca, che già li er’ al petto, +dove le due nature son consorti, + +rispuose: «Ben è vivo, e sì soletto +mostrar li mi convien la valle buia; +necessità ’l ci ’nduce, e non diletto. + +Tal si partì da cantare alleluia +che mi commise quest’ officio novo: +non è ladron, né io anima fuia. + +Ma per quella virtù per cu’ io movo +li passi miei per sì selvaggia strada, +danne un de’ tuoi, a cui noi siamo a provo, + +e che ne mostri là dove si guada, +e che porti costui in su la groppa, +ché non è spirto che per l’aere vada». + +Chirón si volse in su la destra poppa, +e disse a Nesso: «Torna, e sì li guida, +e fa cansar s’altra schiera v’intoppa». + +Or ci movemmo con la scorta fida +lungo la proda del bollor vermiglio, +dove i bolliti facieno alte strida. + +Io vidi gente sotto infino al ciglio; +e ’l gran centauro disse: «E’ son tiranni +che dier nel sangue e ne l’aver di piglio. + +Quivi si piangon li spietati danni; +quivi è Alessandro, e Dïonisio fero +che fé Cicilia aver dolorosi anni. + +E quella fronte c’ha ’l pel così nero, +è Azzolino; e quell’ altro ch’è biondo, +è Opizzo da Esti, il qual per vero + +fu spento dal figliastro sù nel mondo». +Allor mi volsi al poeta, e quei disse: +«Questi ti sia or primo, e io secondo». + +Poco più oltre il centauro s’affisse +sovr’ una gente che ’nfino a la gola +parea che di quel bulicame uscisse. + +Mostrocci un’ombra da l’un canto sola, +dicendo: «Colui fesse in grembo a Dio +lo cor che ’n su Tamisi ancor si cola». + +Poi vidi gente che di fuor del rio +tenean la testa e ancor tutto ’l casso; +e di costoro assai riconobb’ io. + +Così a più a più si facea basso +quel sangue, sì che cocea pur li piedi; +e quindi fu del fosso il nostro passo. + +«Sì come tu da questa parte vedi +lo bulicame che sempre si scema», +disse ’l centauro, «voglio che tu credi + +che da quest’ altra a più a più giù prema +lo fondo suo, infin ch’el si raggiunge +ove la tirannia convien che gema. + +La divina giustizia di qua punge +quell’ Attila che fu flagello in terra, +e Pirro e Sesto; e in etterno munge + +le lagrime, che col bollor diserra, +a Rinier da Corneto, a Rinier Pazzo, +che fecero a le strade tanta guerra». + +Poi si rivolse e ripassossi ’l guazzo. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XIII + + +Non era ancor di là Nesso arrivato, +quando noi ci mettemmo per un bosco +che da neun sentiero era segnato. + +Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco; +non rami schietti, ma nodosi e ’nvolti; +non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tòsco. + +Non han sì aspri sterpi né sì folti +quelle fiere selvagge che ’n odio hanno +tra Cecina e Corneto i luoghi cólti. + +Quivi le brutte Arpie lor nidi fanno, +che cacciar de le Strofade i Troiani +con tristo annunzio di futuro danno. + +Ali hanno late, e colli e visi umani, +piè con artigli, e pennuto ’l gran ventre; +fanno lamenti in su li alberi strani. + +E ’l buon maestro «Prima che più entre, +sappi che se’ nel secondo girone», +mi cominciò a dire, «e sarai mentre + +che tu verrai ne l’orribil sabbione. +Però riguarda ben; sì vederai +cose che torrien fede al mio sermone». + +Io sentia d’ogne parte trarre guai +e non vedea persona che ’l facesse; +per ch’io tutto smarrito m’arrestai. + +Cred’ ïo ch’ei credette ch’io credesse +che tante voci uscisser, tra quei bronchi, +da gente che per noi si nascondesse. + +Però disse ’l maestro: «Se tu tronchi +qualche fraschetta d’una d’este piante, +li pensier c’hai si faran tutti monchi». + +Allor porsi la mano un poco avante +e colsi un ramicel da un gran pruno; +e ’l tronco suo gridò: «Perché mi schiante?». + +Da che fatto fu poi di sangue bruno, +ricominciò a dir: «Perché mi scerpi? +non hai tu spirto di pietade alcuno? + +Uomini fummo, e or siam fatti sterpi: +ben dovrebb’ esser la tua man più pia, +se state fossimo anime di serpi». + +Come d’un stizzo verde ch’arso sia +da l’un de’ capi, che da l’altro geme +e cigola per vento che va via, + +sì de la scheggia rotta usciva insieme +parole e sangue; ond’ io lasciai la cima +cadere, e stetti come l’uom che teme. + +«S’elli avesse potuto creder prima», +rispuose ’l savio mio, «anima lesa, +ciò c’ha veduto pur con la mia rima, + +non averebbe in te la man distesa; +ma la cosa incredibile mi fece +indurlo ad ovra ch’a me stesso pesa. + +Ma dilli chi tu fosti, sì che ’n vece +d’alcun’ ammenda tua fama rinfreschi +nel mondo sù, dove tornar li lece». + +E ’l tronco: «Sì col dolce dir m’adeschi, +ch’i’ non posso tacere; e voi non gravi +perch’ ïo un poco a ragionar m’inveschi. + +Io son colui che tenni ambo le chiavi +del cor di Federigo, e che le volsi, +serrando e diserrando, sì soavi, + +che dal secreto suo quasi ogn’ uom tolsi; +fede portai al glorïoso offizio, +tanto ch’i’ ne perde’ li sonni e ’ polsi. + +La meretrice che mai da l’ospizio +di Cesare non torse li occhi putti, +morte comune e de le corti vizio, + +infiammò contra me li animi tutti; +e li ’nfiammati infiammar sì Augusto, +che ’ lieti onor tornaro in tristi lutti. + +L’animo mio, per disdegnoso gusto, +credendo col morir fuggir disdegno, +ingiusto fece me contra me giusto. + +Per le nove radici d’esto legno +vi giuro che già mai non ruppi fede +al mio segnor, che fu d’onor sì degno. + +E se di voi alcun nel mondo riede, +conforti la memoria mia, che giace +ancor del colpo che ’nvidia le diede». + +Un poco attese, e poi «Da ch’el si tace», +disse ’l poeta a me, «non perder l’ora; +ma parla, e chiedi a lui, se più ti piace». + +Ond’ ïo a lui: «Domandal tu ancora +di quel che credi ch’a me satisfaccia; +ch’i’ non potrei, tanta pietà m’accora». + +Perciò ricominciò: «Se l’om ti faccia +liberamente ciò che ’l tuo dir priega, +spirito incarcerato, ancor ti piaccia + +di dirne come l’anima si lega +in questi nocchi; e dinne, se tu puoi, +s’alcuna mai di tai membra si spiega». + +Allor soffiò il tronco forte, e poi +si convertì quel vento in cotal voce: +«Brievemente sarà risposto a voi. + +Quando si parte l’anima feroce +dal corpo ond’ ella stessa s’è disvelta, +Minòs la manda a la settima foce. + +Cade in la selva, e non l’è parte scelta; +ma là dove fortuna la balestra, +quivi germoglia come gran di spelta. + +Surge in vermena e in pianta silvestra: +l’Arpie, pascendo poi de le sue foglie, +fanno dolore, e al dolor fenestra. + +Come l’altre verrem per nostre spoglie, +ma non però ch’alcuna sen rivesta, +ché non è giusto aver ciò ch’om si toglie. + +Qui le strascineremo, e per la mesta +selva saranno i nostri corpi appesi, +ciascuno al prun de l’ombra sua molesta». + +Noi eravamo ancora al tronco attesi, +credendo ch’altro ne volesse dire, +quando noi fummo d’un romor sorpresi, + +similemente a colui che venire +sente ’l porco e la caccia a la sua posta, +ch’ode le bestie, e le frasche stormire. + +Ed ecco due da la sinistra costa, +nudi e graffiati, fuggendo sì forte, +che de la selva rompieno ogne rosta. + +Quel dinanzi: «Or accorri, accorri, morte!». +E l’altro, cui pareva tardar troppo, +gridava: «Lano, sì non furo accorte + +le gambe tue a le giostre dal Toppo!». +E poi che forse li fallia la lena, +di sé e d’un cespuglio fece un groppo. + +Di rietro a loro era la selva piena +di nere cagne, bramose e correnti +come veltri ch’uscisser di catena. + +In quel che s’appiattò miser li denti, +e quel dilaceraro a brano a brano; +poi sen portar quelle membra dolenti. + +Presemi allor la mia scorta per mano, +e menommi al cespuglio che piangea +per le rotture sanguinenti in vano. + +«O Iacopo», dicea, «da Santo Andrea, +che t’è giovato di me fare schermo? +che colpa ho io de la tua vita rea?». + +Quando ’l maestro fu sovr’ esso fermo, +disse: «Chi fosti, che per tante punte +soffi con sangue doloroso sermo?». + +Ed elli a noi: «O anime che giunte +siete a veder lo strazio disonesto +c’ha le mie fronde sì da me disgiunte, + +raccoglietele al piè del tristo cesto. +I’ fui de la città che nel Batista +mutò ’l primo padrone; ond’ ei per questo + +sempre con l’arte sua la farà trista; +e se non fosse che ’n sul passo d’Arno +rimane ancor di lui alcuna vista, + +que’ cittadin che poi la rifondarno +sovra ’l cener che d’Attila rimase, +avrebber fatto lavorare indarno. + +Io fei gibetto a me de le mie case». + + + + +Inferno +Canto XIV + + +Poi che la carità del natio loco +mi strinse, raunai le fronde sparte +e rende’le a colui, ch’era già fioco. + +Indi venimmo al fine ove si parte +lo secondo giron dal terzo, e dove +si vede di giustizia orribil arte. + +A ben manifestar le cose nove, +dico che arrivammo ad una landa +che dal suo letto ogne pianta rimove. + +La dolorosa selva l’è ghirlanda +intorno, come ’l fosso tristo ad essa; +quivi fermammo i passi a randa a randa. + +Lo spazzo era una rena arida e spessa, +non d’altra foggia fatta che colei +che fu da’ piè di Caton già soppressa. + +O vendetta di Dio, quanto tu dei +esser temuta da ciascun che legge +ciò che fu manifesto a li occhi mei! + +D’anime nude vidi molte gregge +che piangean tutte assai miseramente, +e parea posta lor diversa legge. + +Supin giacea in terra alcuna gente, +alcuna si sedea tutta raccolta, +e altra andava continüamente. + +Quella che giva ’ntorno era più molta, +e quella men che giacëa al tormento, +ma più al duolo avea la lingua sciolta. + +Sovra tutto ’l sabbion, d’un cader lento, +piovean di foco dilatate falde, +come di neve in alpe sanza vento. + +Quali Alessandro in quelle parti calde +d’Indïa vide sopra ’l süo stuolo +fiamme cadere infino a terra salde, + +per ch’ei provide a scalpitar lo suolo +con le sue schiere, acciò che lo vapore +mei si stingueva mentre ch’era solo: + +tale scendeva l’etternale ardore; +onde la rena s’accendea, com’ esca +sotto focile, a doppiar lo dolore. + +Sanza riposo mai era la tresca +de le misere mani, or quindi or quinci +escotendo da sé l’arsura fresca. + +I’ cominciai: «Maestro, tu che vinci +tutte le cose, fuor che ’ demon duri +ch’a l’intrar de la porta incontra uscinci, + +chi è quel grande che non par che curi +lo ’ncendio e giace dispettoso e torto, +sì che la pioggia non par che ’l marturi?». + +E quel medesmo, che si fu accorto +ch’io domandava il mio duca di lui, +gridò: «Qual io fui vivo, tal son morto. + +Se Giove stanchi ’l suo fabbro da cui +crucciato prese la folgore aguta +onde l’ultimo dì percosso fui; + +o s’elli stanchi li altri a muta a muta +in Mongibello a la focina negra, +chiamando “Buon Vulcano, aiuta, aiuta!”, + +sì com’ el fece a la pugna di Flegra, +e me saetti con tutta sua forza: +non ne potrebbe aver vendetta allegra». + +Allora il duca mio parlò di forza +tanto, ch’i’ non l’avea sì forte udito: +«O Capaneo, in ciò che non s’ammorza + +la tua superbia, se’ tu più punito; +nullo martiro, fuor che la tua rabbia, +sarebbe al tuo furor dolor compito». + +Poi si rivolse a me con miglior labbia, +dicendo: «Quei fu l’un d’i sette regi +ch’assiser Tebe; ed ebbe e par ch’elli abbia + +Dio in disdegno, e poco par che ’l pregi; +ma, com’ io dissi lui, li suoi dispetti +sono al suo petto assai debiti fregi. + +Or mi vien dietro, e guarda che non metti, +ancor, li piedi ne la rena arsiccia; +ma sempre al bosco tien li piedi stretti». + +Tacendo divenimmo là ’ve spiccia +fuor de la selva un picciol fiumicello, +lo cui rossore ancor mi raccapriccia. + +Quale del Bulicame esce ruscello +che parton poi tra lor le peccatrici, +tal per la rena giù sen giva quello. + +Lo fondo suo e ambo le pendici +fatt’ era ’n pietra, e ’ margini dallato; +per ch’io m’accorsi che ’l passo era lici. + +«Tra tutto l’altro ch’i’ t’ho dimostrato, +poscia che noi intrammo per la porta +lo cui sogliare a nessuno è negato, + +cosa non fu da li tuoi occhi scorta +notabile com’ è ’l presente rio, +che sovra sé tutte fiammelle ammorta». + +Queste parole fuor del duca mio; +per ch’io ’l pregai che mi largisse ’l pasto +di cui largito m’avëa il disio. + +«In mezzo mar siede un paese guasto», +diss’ elli allora, «che s’appella Creta, +sotto ’l cui rege fu già ’l mondo casto. + +Una montagna v’è che già fu lieta +d’acqua e di fronde, che si chiamò Ida; +or è diserta come cosa vieta. + +Rëa la scelse già per cuna fida +del suo figliuolo, e per celarlo meglio, +quando piangea, vi facea far le grida. + +Dentro dal monte sta dritto un gran veglio, +che tien volte le spalle inver’ Dammiata +e Roma guarda come süo speglio. + +La sua testa è di fin oro formata, +e puro argento son le braccia e ’l petto, +poi è di rame infino a la forcata; + +da indi in giuso è tutto ferro eletto, +salvo che ’l destro piede è terra cotta; +e sta ’n su quel, più che ’n su l’altro, eretto. + +Ciascuna parte, fuor che l’oro, è rotta +d’una fessura che lagrime goccia, +le quali, accolte, fóran quella grotta. + +Lor corso in questa valle si diroccia; +fanno Acheronte, Stige e Flegetonta; +poi sen van giù per questa stretta doccia, + +infin, là ove più non si dismonta, +fanno Cocito; e qual sia quello stagno +tu lo vedrai, però qui non si conta». + +E io a lui: «Se ’l presente rigagno +si diriva così dal nostro mondo, +perché ci appar pur a questo vivagno?». + +Ed elli a me: «Tu sai che ’l loco è tondo; +e tutto che tu sie venuto molto, +pur a sinistra, giù calando al fondo, + +non se’ ancor per tutto ’l cerchio vòlto; +per che, se cosa n’apparisce nova, +non de’ addur maraviglia al tuo volto». + +E io ancor: «Maestro, ove si trova +Flegetonta e Letè? ché de l’un taci, +e l’altro di’ che si fa d’esta piova». + +«In tutte tue question certo mi piaci», +rispuose, «ma ’l bollor de l’acqua rossa +dovea ben solver l’una che tu faci. + +Letè vedrai, ma fuor di questa fossa, +là dove vanno l’anime a lavarsi +quando la colpa pentuta è rimossa». + +Poi disse: «Omai è tempo da scostarsi +dal bosco; fa che di retro a me vegne: +li margini fan via, che non son arsi, + +e sopra loro ogne vapor si spegne». + + + + +Inferno +Canto XV + + +Ora cen porta l’un de’ duri margini; +e ’l fummo del ruscel di sopra aduggia, +sì che dal foco salva l’acqua e li argini. + +Quali Fiamminghi tra Guizzante e Bruggia, +temendo ’l fiotto che ’nver’ lor s’avventa, +fanno lo schermo perché ’l mar si fuggia; + +e quali Padoan lungo la Brenta, +per difender lor ville e lor castelli, +anzi che Carentana il caldo senta: + +a tale imagine eran fatti quelli, +tutto che né sì alti né sì grossi, +qual che si fosse, lo maestro félli. + +Già eravam da la selva rimossi +tanto, ch’i’ non avrei visto dov’ era, +perch’ io in dietro rivolto mi fossi, + +quando incontrammo d’anime una schiera +che venian lungo l’argine, e ciascuna +ci riguardava come suol da sera + +guardare uno altro sotto nuova luna; +e sì ver’ noi aguzzavan le ciglia +come ’l vecchio sartor fa ne la cruna. + +Così adocchiato da cotal famiglia, +fui conosciuto da un, che mi prese +per lo lembo e gridò: «Qual maraviglia!». + +E io, quando ’l suo braccio a me distese, +ficcaï li occhi per lo cotto aspetto, +sì che ’l viso abbrusciato non difese + +la conoscenza süa al mio ’ntelletto; +e chinando la mano a la sua faccia, +rispuosi: «Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?». + +E quelli: «O figliuol mio, non ti dispiaccia +se Brunetto Latino un poco teco +ritorna ’n dietro e lascia andar la traccia». + +I’ dissi lui: «Quanto posso, ven preco; +e se volete che con voi m’asseggia, +faròl, se piace a costui che vo seco». + +«O figliuol», disse, «qual di questa greggia +s’arresta punto, giace poi cent’ anni +sanz’ arrostarsi quando ’l foco il feggia. + +Però va oltre: i’ ti verrò a’ panni; +e poi rigiugnerò la mia masnada, +che va piangendo i suoi etterni danni». + +Io non osava scender de la strada +per andar par di lui; ma ’l capo chino +tenea com’ uom che reverente vada. + +El cominciò: «Qual fortuna o destino +anzi l’ultimo dì qua giù ti mena? +e chi è questi che mostra ’l cammino?». + +«Là sù di sopra, in la vita serena», +rispuos’ io lui, «mi smarri’ in una valle, +avanti che l’età mia fosse piena. + +Pur ier mattina le volsi le spalle: +questi m’apparve, tornand’ ïo in quella, +e reducemi a ca per questo calle». + +Ed elli a me: «Se tu segui tua stella, +non puoi fallire a glorïoso porto, +se ben m’accorsi ne la vita bella; + +e s’io non fossi sì per tempo morto, +veggendo il cielo a te così benigno, +dato t’avrei a l’opera conforto. + +Ma quello ingrato popolo maligno +che discese di Fiesole ab antico, +e tiene ancor del monte e del macigno, + +ti si farà, per tuo ben far, nimico; +ed è ragion, ché tra li lazzi sorbi +si disconvien fruttare al dolce fico. + +Vecchia fama nel mondo li chiama orbi; +gent’ è avara, invidiosa e superba: +dai lor costumi fa che tu ti forbi. + +La tua fortuna tanto onor ti serba, +che l’una parte e l’altra avranno fame +di te; ma lungi fia dal becco l’erba. + +Faccian le bestie fiesolane strame +di lor medesme, e non tocchin la pianta, +s’alcuna surge ancora in lor letame, + +in cui riviva la sementa santa +di que’ Roman che vi rimaser quando +fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta». + +«Se fosse tutto pieno il mio dimando», +rispuos’ io lui, «voi non sareste ancora +de l’umana natura posto in bando; + +ché ’n la mente m’è fitta, e or m’accora, +la cara e buona imagine paterna +di voi quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora + +m’insegnavate come l’uom s’etterna: +e quant’ io l’abbia in grado, mentr’ io vivo +convien che ne la mia lingua si scerna. + +Ciò che narrate di mio corso scrivo, +e serbolo a chiosar con altro testo +a donna che saprà, s’a lei arrivo. + +Tanto vogl’ io che vi sia manifesto, +pur che mia coscïenza non mi garra, +ch’a la Fortuna, come vuol, son presto. + +Non è nuova a li orecchi miei tal arra: +però giri Fortuna la sua rota +come le piace, e ’l villan la sua marra». + +Lo mio maestro allora in su la gota +destra si volse in dietro e riguardommi; +poi disse: «Bene ascolta chi la nota». + +Né per tanto di men parlando vommi +con ser Brunetto, e dimando chi sono +li suoi compagni più noti e più sommi. + +Ed elli a me: «Saper d’alcuno è buono; +de li altri fia laudabile tacerci, +ché ’l tempo saria corto a tanto suono. + +In somma sappi che tutti fur cherci +e litterati grandi e di gran fama, +d’un peccato medesmo al mondo lerci. + +Priscian sen va con quella turba grama, +e Francesco d’Accorso anche; e vedervi, +s’avessi avuto di tal tigna brama, + +colui potei che dal servo de’ servi +fu trasmutato d’Arno in Bacchiglione, +dove lasciò li mal protesi nervi. + +Di più direi; ma ’l venire e ’l sermone +più lungo esser non può, però ch’i’ veggio +là surger nuovo fummo del sabbione. + +Gente vien con la quale esser non deggio. +Sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro, +nel qual io vivo ancora, e più non cheggio». + +Poi si rivolse, e parve di coloro +che corrono a Verona il drappo verde +per la campagna; e parve di costoro + +quelli che vince, non colui che perde. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XVI + + +Già era in loco onde s’udia ’l rimbombo +de l’acqua che cadea ne l’altro giro, +simile a quel che l’arnie fanno rombo, + +quando tre ombre insieme si partiro, +correndo, d’una torma che passava +sotto la pioggia de l’aspro martiro. + +Venian ver’ noi, e ciascuna gridava: +«Sòstati tu ch’a l’abito ne sembri +esser alcun di nostra terra prava». + +Ahimè, che piaghe vidi ne’ lor membri, +ricenti e vecchie, da le fiamme incese! +Ancor men duol pur ch’i’ me ne rimembri. + +A le lor grida il mio dottor s’attese; +volse ’l viso ver’ me, e «Or aspetta», +disse, «a costor si vuole esser cortese. + +E se non fosse il foco che saetta +la natura del loco, i’ dicerei +che meglio stesse a te che a lor la fretta». + +Ricominciar, come noi restammo, ei +l’antico verso; e quando a noi fuor giunti, +fenno una rota di sé tutti e trei. + +Qual sogliono i campion far nudi e unti, +avvisando lor presa e lor vantaggio, +prima che sien tra lor battuti e punti, + +così rotando, ciascuno il visaggio +drizzava a me, sì che ’n contraro il collo +faceva ai piè continüo vïaggio. + +E «Se miseria d’esto loco sollo +rende in dispetto noi e nostri prieghi», +cominciò l’uno, «e ’l tinto aspetto e brollo, + +la fama nostra il tuo animo pieghi +a dirne chi tu se’, che i vivi piedi +così sicuro per lo ’nferno freghi. + +Questi, l’orme di cui pestar mi vedi, +tutto che nudo e dipelato vada, +fu di grado maggior che tu non credi: + +nepote fu de la buona Gualdrada; +Guido Guerra ebbe nome, e in sua vita +fece col senno assai e con la spada. + +L’altro, ch’appresso me la rena trita, +è Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, la cui voce +nel mondo sù dovria esser gradita. + +E io, che posto son con loro in croce, +Iacopo Rusticucci fui, e certo +la fiera moglie più ch’altro mi nuoce». + +S’i’ fossi stato dal foco coperto, +gittato mi sarei tra lor di sotto, +e credo che ’l dottor l’avria sofferto; + +ma perch’ io mi sarei brusciato e cotto, +vinse paura la mia buona voglia +che di loro abbracciar mi facea ghiotto. + +Poi cominciai: «Non dispetto, ma doglia +la vostra condizion dentro mi fisse, +tanta che tardi tutta si dispoglia, + +tosto che questo mio segnor mi disse +parole per le quali i’ mi pensai +che qual voi siete, tal gente venisse. + +Di vostra terra sono, e sempre mai +l’ovra di voi e li onorati nomi +con affezion ritrassi e ascoltai. + +Lascio lo fele e vo per dolci pomi +promessi a me per lo verace duca; +ma ’nfino al centro pria convien ch’i’ tomi». + +«Se lungamente l’anima conduca +le membra tue», rispuose quelli ancora, +«e se la fama tua dopo te luca, + +cortesia e valor dì se dimora +ne la nostra città sì come suole, +o se del tutto se n’è gita fora; + +ché Guiglielmo Borsiere, il qual si duole +con noi per poco e va là coi compagni, +assai ne cruccia con le sue parole». + +«La gente nuova e i sùbiti guadagni +orgoglio e dismisura han generata, +Fiorenza, in te, sì che tu già ten piagni». + +Così gridai con la faccia levata; +e i tre, che ciò inteser per risposta, +guardar l’un l’altro com’ al ver si guata. + +«Se l’altre volte sì poco ti costa», +rispuoser tutti, «il satisfare altrui, +felice te se sì parli a tua posta! + +Però, se campi d’esti luoghi bui +e torni a riveder le belle stelle, +quando ti gioverà dicere “I’ fui”, + +fa che di noi a la gente favelle». +Indi rupper la rota, e a fuggirsi +ali sembiar le gambe loro isnelle. + +Un amen non saria possuto dirsi +tosto così com’ e’ fuoro spariti; +per ch’al maestro parve di partirsi. + +Io lo seguiva, e poco eravam iti, +che ’l suon de l’acqua n’era sì vicino, +che per parlar saremmo a pena uditi. + +Come quel fiume c’ha proprio cammino +prima dal Monte Viso ’nver’ levante, +da la sinistra costa d’Apennino, + +che si chiama Acquacheta suso, avante +che si divalli giù nel basso letto, +e a Forlì di quel nome è vacante, + +rimbomba là sovra San Benedetto +de l’Alpe per cadere ad una scesa +ove dovea per mille esser recetto; + +così, giù d’una ripa discoscesa, +trovammo risonar quell’ acqua tinta, +sì che ’n poc’ ora avria l’orecchia offesa. + +Io avea una corda intorno cinta, +e con essa pensai alcuna volta +prender la lonza a la pelle dipinta. + +Poscia ch’io l’ebbi tutta da me sciolta, +sì come ’l duca m’avea comandato, +porsila a lui aggroppata e ravvolta. + +Ond’ ei si volse inver’ lo destro lato, +e alquanto di lunge da la sponda +la gittò giuso in quell’ alto burrato. + +‘E’ pur convien che novità risponda’, +dicea fra me medesmo, ‘al novo cenno +che ’l maestro con l’occhio sì seconda’. + +Ahi quanto cauti li uomini esser dienno +presso a color che non veggion pur l’ovra, +ma per entro i pensier miran col senno! + +El disse a me: «Tosto verrà di sovra +ciò ch’io attendo e che il tuo pensier sogna; +tosto convien ch’al tuo viso si scovra». + +Sempre a quel ver c’ha faccia di menzogna +de’ l’uom chiuder le labbra fin ch’el puote, +però che sanza colpa fa vergogna; + +ma qui tacer nol posso; e per le note +di questa comedìa, lettor, ti giuro, +s’elle non sien di lunga grazia vòte, + +ch’i’ vidi per quell’ aere grosso e scuro +venir notando una figura in suso, +maravigliosa ad ogne cor sicuro, + +sì come torna colui che va giuso +talora a solver l’àncora ch’aggrappa +o scoglio o altro che nel mare è chiuso, + +che ’n sù si stende e da piè si rattrappa. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XVII + + +«Ecco la fiera con la coda aguzza, +che passa i monti e rompe i muri e l’armi! +Ecco colei che tutto ’l mondo appuzza!». + +Sì cominciò lo mio duca a parlarmi; +e accennolle che venisse a proda, +vicino al fin d’i passeggiati marmi. + +E quella sozza imagine di froda +sen venne, e arrivò la testa e ’l busto, +ma ’n su la riva non trasse la coda. + +La faccia sua era faccia d’uom giusto, +tanto benigna avea di fuor la pelle, +e d’un serpente tutto l’altro fusto; + +due branche avea pilose insin l’ascelle; +lo dosso e ’l petto e ambedue le coste +dipinti avea di nodi e di rotelle. + +Con più color, sommesse e sovraposte +non fer mai drappi Tartari né Turchi, +né fuor tai tele per Aragne imposte. + +Come talvolta stanno a riva i burchi, +che parte sono in acqua e parte in terra, +e come là tra li Tedeschi lurchi + +lo bivero s’assetta a far sua guerra, +così la fiera pessima si stava +su l’orlo ch’è di pietra e ’l sabbion serra. + +Nel vano tutta sua coda guizzava, +torcendo in sù la venenosa forca +ch’a guisa di scorpion la punta armava. + +Lo duca disse: «Or convien che si torca +la nostra via un poco insino a quella +bestia malvagia che colà si corca». + +Però scendemmo a la destra mammella, +e diece passi femmo in su lo stremo, +per ben cessar la rena e la fiammella. + +E quando noi a lei venuti semo, +poco più oltre veggio in su la rena +gente seder propinqua al loco scemo. + +Quivi ’l maestro «Acciò che tutta piena +esperïenza d’esto giron porti», +mi disse, «va, e vedi la lor mena. + +Li tuoi ragionamenti sian là corti; +mentre che torni, parlerò con questa, +che ne conceda i suoi omeri forti». + +Così ancor su per la strema testa +di quel settimo cerchio tutto solo +andai, dove sedea la gente mesta. + +Per li occhi fora scoppiava lor duolo; +di qua, di là soccorrien con le mani +quando a’ vapori, e quando al caldo suolo: + +non altrimenti fan di state i cani +or col ceffo or col piè, quando son morsi +o da pulci o da mosche o da tafani. + +Poi che nel viso a certi li occhi porsi, +ne’ quali ’l doloroso foco casca, +non ne conobbi alcun; ma io m’accorsi + +che dal collo a ciascun pendea una tasca +ch’avea certo colore e certo segno, +e quindi par che ’l loro occhio si pasca. + +E com’ io riguardando tra lor vegno, +in una borsa gialla vidi azzurro +che d’un leone avea faccia e contegno. + +Poi, procedendo di mio sguardo il curro, +vidine un’altra come sangue rossa, +mostrando un’oca bianca più che burro. + +E un che d’una scrofa azzurra e grossa +segnato avea lo suo sacchetto bianco, +mi disse: «Che fai tu in questa fossa? + +Or te ne va; e perché se’ vivo anco, +sappi che ’l mio vicin Vitalïano +sederà qui dal mio sinistro fianco. + +Con questi Fiorentin son padoano: +spesse fïate mi ’ntronan li orecchi +gridando: “Vegna ’l cavalier sovrano, + +che recherà la tasca con tre becchi!”». +Qui distorse la bocca e di fuor trasse +la lingua, come bue che ’l naso lecchi. + +E io, temendo no ’l più star crucciasse +lui che di poco star m’avea ’mmonito, +torna’mi in dietro da l’anime lasse. + +Trova’ il duca mio ch’era salito +già su la groppa del fiero animale, +e disse a me: «Or sie forte e ardito. + +Omai si scende per sì fatte scale; +monta dinanzi, ch’i’ voglio esser mezzo, +sì che la coda non possa far male». + +Qual è colui che sì presso ha ’l riprezzo +de la quartana, c’ha già l’unghie smorte, +e triema tutto pur guardando ’l rezzo, + +tal divenn’ io a le parole porte; +ma vergogna mi fé le sue minacce, +che innanzi a buon segnor fa servo forte. + +I’ m’assettai in su quelle spallacce; +sì volli dir, ma la voce non venne +com’ io credetti: ‘Fa che tu m’abbracce’. + +Ma esso, ch’altra volta mi sovvenne +ad altro forse, tosto ch’i’ montai +con le braccia m’avvinse e mi sostenne; + +e disse: «Gerïon, moviti omai: +le rote larghe, e lo scender sia poco; +pensa la nova soma che tu hai». + +Come la navicella esce di loco +in dietro in dietro, sì quindi si tolse; +e poi ch’al tutto si sentì a gioco, + +là ’v’ era ’l petto, la coda rivolse, +e quella tesa, come anguilla, mosse, +e con le branche l’aere a sé raccolse. + +Maggior paura non credo che fosse +quando Fetonte abbandonò li freni, +per che ’l ciel, come pare ancor, si cosse; + +né quando Icaro misero le reni +sentì spennar per la scaldata cera, +gridando il padre a lui «Mala via tieni!», + +che fu la mia, quando vidi ch’i’ era +ne l’aere d’ogne parte, e vidi spenta +ogne veduta fuor che de la fera. + +Ella sen va notando lenta lenta; +rota e discende, ma non me n’accorgo +se non che al viso e di sotto mi venta. + +Io sentia già da la man destra il gorgo +far sotto noi un orribile scroscio, +per che con li occhi ’n giù la testa sporgo. + +Allor fu’ io più timido a lo stoscio, +però ch’i’ vidi fuochi e senti’ pianti; +ond’ io tremando tutto mi raccoscio. + +E vidi poi, ché nol vedea davanti, +lo scendere e ’l girar per li gran mali +che s’appressavan da diversi canti. + +Come ’l falcon ch’è stato assai su l’ali, +che sanza veder logoro o uccello +fa dire al falconiere «Omè, tu cali!», + +discende lasso onde si move isnello, +per cento rote, e da lunge si pone +dal suo maestro, disdegnoso e fello; + +così ne puose al fondo Gerïone +al piè al piè de la stagliata rocca, +e, discarcate le nostre persone, + +si dileguò come da corda cocca. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XVIII + + +Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge, +tutto di pietra di color ferrigno, +come la cerchia che dintorno il volge. + +Nel dritto mezzo del campo maligno +vaneggia un pozzo assai largo e profondo, +di cui suo loco dicerò l’ordigno. + +Quel cinghio che rimane adunque è tondo +tra ’l pozzo e ’l piè de l’alta ripa dura, +e ha distinto in dieci valli il fondo. + +Quale, dove per guardia de le mura +più e più fossi cingon li castelli, +la parte dove son rende figura, + +tale imagine quivi facean quelli; +e come a tai fortezze da’ lor sogli +a la ripa di fuor son ponticelli, + +così da imo de la roccia scogli +movien che ricidien li argini e ’ fossi +infino al pozzo che i tronca e raccogli. + +In questo luogo, de la schiena scossi +di Gerïon, trovammoci; e ’l poeta +tenne a sinistra, e io dietro mi mossi. + +A la man destra vidi nova pieta, +novo tormento e novi frustatori, +di che la prima bolgia era repleta. + +Nel fondo erano ignudi i peccatori; +dal mezzo in qua ci venien verso ’l volto, +di là con noi, ma con passi maggiori, + +come i Roman per l’essercito molto, +l’anno del giubileo, su per lo ponte +hanno a passar la gente modo colto, + +che da l’un lato tutti hanno la fronte +verso ’l castello e vanno a Santo Pietro, +da l’altra sponda vanno verso ’l monte. + +Di qua, di là, su per lo sasso tetro +vidi demon cornuti con gran ferze, +che li battien crudelmente di retro. + +Ahi come facean lor levar le berze +a le prime percosse! già nessuno +le seconde aspettava né le terze. + +Mentr’ io andava, li occhi miei in uno +furo scontrati; e io sì tosto dissi: +«Già di veder costui non son digiuno». + +Per ch’ïo a figurarlo i piedi affissi; +e ’l dolce duca meco si ristette, +e assentio ch’alquanto in dietro gissi. + +E quel frustato celar si credette +bassando ’l viso; ma poco li valse, +ch’io dissi: «O tu che l’occhio a terra gette, + +se le fazion che porti non son false, +Venedico se’ tu Caccianemico. +Ma che ti mena a sì pungenti salse?». + +Ed elli a me: «Mal volontier lo dico; +ma sforzami la tua chiara favella, +che mi fa sovvenir del mondo antico. + +I’ fui colui che la Ghisolabella +condussi a far la voglia del marchese, +come che suoni la sconcia novella. + +E non pur io qui piango bolognese; +anzi n’è questo loco tanto pieno, +che tante lingue non son ora apprese + +a dicer ‘sipa’ tra Sàvena e Reno; +e se di ciò vuoi fede o testimonio, +rècati a mente il nostro avaro seno». + +Così parlando il percosse un demonio +de la sua scurïada, e disse: «Via, +ruffian! qui non son femmine da conio». + +I’ mi raggiunsi con la scorta mia; +poscia con pochi passi divenimmo +là ’v’ uno scoglio de la ripa uscia. + +Assai leggeramente quel salimmo; +e vòlti a destra su per la sua scheggia, +da quelle cerchie etterne ci partimmo. + +Quando noi fummo là dov’ el vaneggia +di sotto per dar passo a li sferzati, +lo duca disse: «Attienti, e fa che feggia + +lo viso in te di quest’ altri mal nati, +ai quali ancor non vedesti la faccia +però che son con noi insieme andati». + +Del vecchio ponte guardavam la traccia +che venìa verso noi da l’altra banda, +e che la ferza similmente scaccia. + +E ’l buon maestro, sanza mia dimanda, +mi disse: «Guarda quel grande che vene, +e per dolor non par lagrime spanda: + +quanto aspetto reale ancor ritene! +Quelli è Iasón, che per cuore e per senno +li Colchi del monton privati féne. + +Ello passò per l’isola di Lenno +poi che l’ardite femmine spietate +tutti li maschi loro a morte dienno. + +Ivi con segni e con parole ornate +Isifile ingannò, la giovinetta +che prima avea tutte l’altre ingannate. + +Lasciolla quivi, gravida, soletta; +tal colpa a tal martiro lui condanna; +e anche di Medea si fa vendetta. + +Con lui sen va chi da tal parte inganna; +e questo basti de la prima valle +sapere e di color che ’n sé assanna». + +Già eravam là ’ve lo stretto calle +con l’argine secondo s’incrocicchia, +e fa di quello ad un altr’ arco spalle. + +Quindi sentimmo gente che si nicchia +ne l’altra bolgia e che col muso scuffa, +e sé medesma con le palme picchia. + +Le ripe eran grommate d’una muffa, +per l’alito di giù che vi s’appasta, +che con li occhi e col naso facea zuffa. + +Lo fondo è cupo sì, che non ci basta +loco a veder sanza montare al dosso +de l’arco, ove lo scoglio più sovrasta. + +Quivi venimmo; e quindi giù nel fosso +vidi gente attuffata in uno sterco +che da li uman privadi parea mosso. + +E mentre ch’io là giù con l’occhio cerco, +vidi un col capo sì di merda lordo, +che non parëa s’era laico o cherco. + +Quei mi sgridò: «Perché se’ tu sì gordo +di riguardar più me che li altri brutti?». +E io a lui: «Perché, se ben ricordo, + +già t’ho veduto coi capelli asciutti, +e se’ Alessio Interminei da Lucca: +però t’adocchio più che li altri tutti». + +Ed elli allor, battendosi la zucca: +«Qua giù m’hanno sommerso le lusinghe +ond’ io non ebbi mai la lingua stucca». + +Appresso ciò lo duca «Fa che pinghe», +mi disse, «il viso un poco più avante, +sì che la faccia ben con l’occhio attinghe + +di quella sozza e scapigliata fante +che là si graffia con l’unghie merdose, +e or s’accoscia e ora è in piedi stante. + +Taïde è, la puttana che rispuose +al drudo suo quando disse “Ho io grazie +grandi apo te?”: “Anzi maravigliose!”. + +E quinci sian le nostre viste sazie». + + + + +Inferno +Canto XIX + + +O Simon mago, o miseri seguaci +che le cose di Dio, che di bontate +deon essere spose, e voi rapaci + +per oro e per argento avolterate, +or convien che per voi suoni la tromba, +però che ne la terza bolgia state. + +Già eravamo, a la seguente tomba, +montati de lo scoglio in quella parte +ch’a punto sovra mezzo ’l fosso piomba. + +O somma sapïenza, quanta è l’arte +che mostri in cielo, in terra e nel mal mondo, +e quanto giusto tua virtù comparte! + +Io vidi per le coste e per lo fondo +piena la pietra livida di fóri, +d’un largo tutti e ciascun era tondo. + +Non mi parean men ampi né maggiori +che que’ che son nel mio bel San Giovanni, +fatti per loco d’i battezzatori; + +l’un de li quali, ancor non è molt’ anni, +rupp’ io per un che dentro v’annegava: +e questo sia suggel ch’ogn’ omo sganni. + +Fuor de la bocca a ciascun soperchiava +d’un peccator li piedi e de le gambe +infino al grosso, e l’altro dentro stava. + +Le piante erano a tutti accese intrambe; +per che sì forte guizzavan le giunte, +che spezzate averien ritorte e strambe. + +Qual suole il fiammeggiar de le cose unte +muoversi pur su per la strema buccia, +tal era lì dai calcagni a le punte. + +«Chi è colui, maestro, che si cruccia +guizzando più che li altri suoi consorti», +diss’ io, «e cui più roggia fiamma succia?». + +Ed elli a me: «Se tu vuo’ ch’i’ ti porti +là giù per quella ripa che più giace, +da lui saprai di sé e de’ suoi torti». + +E io: «Tanto m’è bel, quanto a te piace: +tu se’ segnore, e sai ch’i’ non mi parto +dal tuo volere, e sai quel che si tace». + +Allor venimmo in su l’argine quarto; +volgemmo e discendemmo a mano stanca +là giù nel fondo foracchiato e arto. + +Lo buon maestro ancor de la sua anca +non mi dipuose, sì mi giunse al rotto +di quel che si piangeva con la zanca. + +«O qual che se’ che ’l di sù tien di sotto, +anima trista come pal commessa», +comincia’ io a dir, «se puoi, fa motto». + +Io stava come ’l frate che confessa +lo perfido assessin, che, poi ch’è fitto, +richiama lui per che la morte cessa. + +Ed el gridò: «Se’ tu già costì ritto, +se’ tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio? +Di parecchi anni mi mentì lo scritto. + +Se’ tu sì tosto di quell’ aver sazio +per lo qual non temesti tòrre a ’nganno +la bella donna, e poi di farne strazio?». + +Tal mi fec’ io, quai son color che stanno, +per non intender ciò ch’è lor risposto, +quasi scornati, e risponder non sanno. + +Allor Virgilio disse: «Dilli tosto: +“Non son colui, non son colui che credi”»; +e io rispuosi come a me fu imposto. + +Per che lo spirto tutti storse i piedi; +poi, sospirando e con voce di pianto, +mi disse: «Dunque che a me richiedi? + +Se di saper ch’i’ sia ti cal cotanto, +che tu abbi però la ripa corsa, +sappi ch’i’ fui vestito del gran manto; + +e veramente fui figliuol de l’orsa, +cupido sì per avanzar li orsatti, +che sù l’avere e qui me misi in borsa. + +Di sotto al capo mio son li altri tratti +che precedetter me simoneggiando, +per le fessure de la pietra piatti. + +Là giù cascherò io altresì quando +verrà colui ch’i’ credea che tu fossi, +allor ch’i’ feci ’l sùbito dimando. + +Ma più è ’l tempo già che i piè mi cossi +e ch’i’ son stato così sottosopra, +ch’el non starà piantato coi piè rossi: + +ché dopo lui verrà di più laida opra, +di ver’ ponente, un pastor sanza legge, +tal che convien che lui e me ricuopra. + +Nuovo Iasón sarà, di cui si legge +ne’ Maccabei; e come a quel fu molle +suo re, così fia lui chi Francia regge». + +Io non so s’i’ mi fui qui troppo folle, +ch’i’ pur rispuosi lui a questo metro: +«Deh, or mi dì: quanto tesoro volle + +Nostro Segnore in prima da san Pietro +ch’ei ponesse le chiavi in sua balìa? +Certo non chiese se non “Viemmi retro”. + +Né Pier né li altri tolsero a Matia +oro od argento, quando fu sortito +al loco che perdé l’anima ria. + +Però ti sta, ché tu se’ ben punito; +e guarda ben la mal tolta moneta +ch’esser ti fece contra Carlo ardito. + +E se non fosse ch’ancor lo mi vieta +la reverenza de le somme chiavi +che tu tenesti ne la vita lieta, + +io userei parole ancor più gravi; +ché la vostra avarizia il mondo attrista, +calcando i buoni e sollevando i pravi. + +Di voi pastor s’accorse il Vangelista, +quando colei che siede sopra l’acque +puttaneggiar coi regi a lui fu vista; + +quella che con le sette teste nacque, +e da le diece corna ebbe argomento, +fin che virtute al suo marito piacque. + +Fatto v’avete dio d’oro e d’argento; +e che altro è da voi a l’idolatre, +se non ch’elli uno, e voi ne orate cento? + +Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre, +non la tua conversion, ma quella dote +che da te prese il primo ricco patre!». + +E mentr’ io li cantava cotai note, +o ira o coscïenza che ’l mordesse, +forte spingava con ambo le piote. + +I’ credo ben ch’al mio duca piacesse, +con sì contenta labbia sempre attese +lo suon de le parole vere espresse. + +Però con ambo le braccia mi prese; +e poi che tutto su mi s’ebbe al petto, +rimontò per la via onde discese. + +Né si stancò d’avermi a sé distretto, +sì men portò sovra ’l colmo de l’arco +che dal quarto al quinto argine è tragetto. + +Quivi soavemente spuose il carco, +soave per lo scoglio sconcio ed erto +che sarebbe a le capre duro varco. + +Indi un altro vallon mi fu scoperto. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XX + + +Di nova pena mi conven far versi +e dar matera al ventesimo canto +de la prima canzon, ch’è d’i sommersi. + +Io era già disposto tutto quanto +a riguardar ne lo scoperto fondo, +che si bagnava d’angoscioso pianto; + +e vidi gente per lo vallon tondo +venir, tacendo e lagrimando, al passo +che fanno le letane in questo mondo. + +Come ’l viso mi scese in lor più basso, +mirabilmente apparve esser travolto +ciascun tra ’l mento e ’l principio del casso, + +ché da le reni era tornato ’l volto, +e in dietro venir li convenia, +perché ’l veder dinanzi era lor tolto. + +Forse per forza già di parlasia +si travolse così alcun del tutto; +ma io nol vidi, né credo che sia. + +Se Dio ti lasci, lettor, prender frutto +di tua lezione, or pensa per te stesso +com’ io potea tener lo viso asciutto, + +quando la nostra imagine di presso +vidi sì torta, che ’l pianto de li occhi +le natiche bagnava per lo fesso. + +Certo io piangea, poggiato a un de’ rocchi +del duro scoglio, sì che la mia scorta +mi disse: «Ancor se’ tu de li altri sciocchi? + +Qui vive la pietà quand’ è ben morta; +chi è più scellerato che colui +che al giudicio divin passion comporta? + +Drizza la testa, drizza, e vedi a cui +s’aperse a li occhi d’i Teban la terra; +per ch’ei gridavan tutti: “Dove rui, + +Anfïarao? perché lasci la guerra?”. +E non restò di ruinare a valle +fino a Minòs che ciascheduno afferra. + +Mira c’ha fatto petto de le spalle; +perché volle veder troppo davante, +di retro guarda e fa retroso calle. + +Vedi Tiresia, che mutò sembiante +quando di maschio femmina divenne, +cangiandosi le membra tutte quante; + +e prima, poi, ribatter li convenne +li duo serpenti avvolti, con la verga, +che rïavesse le maschili penne. + +Aronta è quel ch’al ventre li s’atterga, +che ne’ monti di Luni, dove ronca +lo Carrarese che di sotto alberga, + +ebbe tra ’ bianchi marmi la spelonca +per sua dimora; onde a guardar le stelle +e ’l mar non li era la veduta tronca. + +E quella che ricuopre le mammelle, +che tu non vedi, con le trecce sciolte, +e ha di là ogne pilosa pelle, + +Manto fu, che cercò per terre molte; +poscia si puose là dove nacqu’ io; +onde un poco mi piace che m’ascolte. + +Poscia che ’l padre suo di vita uscìo +e venne serva la città di Baco, +questa gran tempo per lo mondo gio. + +Suso in Italia bella giace un laco, +a piè de l’Alpe che serra Lamagna +sovra Tiralli, c’ha nome Benaco. + +Per mille fonti, credo, e più si bagna +tra Garda e Val Camonica e Pennino +de l’acqua che nel detto laco stagna. + +Loco è nel mezzo là dove ’l trentino +pastore e quel di Brescia e ’l veronese +segnar poria, s’e’ fesse quel cammino. + +Siede Peschiera, bello e forte arnese +da fronteggiar Bresciani e Bergamaschi, +ove la riva ’ntorno più discese. + +Ivi convien che tutto quanto caschi +ciò che ’n grembo a Benaco star non può, +e fassi fiume giù per verdi paschi. + +Tosto che l’acqua a correr mette co, +non più Benaco, ma Mencio si chiama +fino a Governol, dove cade in Po. + +Non molto ha corso, ch’el trova una lama, +ne la qual si distende e la ’mpaluda; +e suol di state talor essere grama. + +Quindi passando la vergine cruda +vide terra, nel mezzo del pantano, +sanza coltura e d’abitanti nuda. + +Lì, per fuggire ogne consorzio umano, +ristette con suoi servi a far sue arti, +e visse, e vi lasciò suo corpo vano. + +Li uomini poi che ’ntorno erano sparti +s’accolsero a quel loco, ch’era forte +per lo pantan ch’avea da tutte parti. + +Fer la città sovra quell’ ossa morte; +e per colei che ’l loco prima elesse, +Mantüa l’appellar sanz’ altra sorte. + +Già fuor le genti sue dentro più spesse, +prima che la mattia da Casalodi +da Pinamonte inganno ricevesse. + +Però t’assenno che, se tu mai odi +originar la mia terra altrimenti, +la verità nulla menzogna frodi». + +E io: «Maestro, i tuoi ragionamenti +mi son sì certi e prendon sì mia fede, +che li altri mi sarien carboni spenti. + +Ma dimmi, de la gente che procede, +se tu ne vedi alcun degno di nota; +ché solo a ciò la mia mente rifiede». + +Allor mi disse: «Quel che da la gota +porge la barba in su le spalle brune, +fu—quando Grecia fu di maschi vòta, + +sì ch’a pena rimaser per le cune— +augure, e diede ’l punto con Calcanta +in Aulide a tagliar la prima fune. + +Euripilo ebbe nome, e così ’l canta +l’alta mia tragedìa in alcun loco: +ben lo sai tu che la sai tutta quanta. + +Quell’ altro che ne’ fianchi è così poco, +Michele Scotto fu, che veramente +de le magiche frode seppe ’l gioco. + +Vedi Guido Bonatti; vedi Asdente, +ch’avere inteso al cuoio e a lo spago +ora vorrebbe, ma tardi si pente. + +Vedi le triste che lasciaron l’ago, +la spuola e ’l fuso, e fecersi ’ndivine; +fecer malie con erbe e con imago. + +Ma vienne omai, ché già tiene ’l confine +d’amendue li emisperi e tocca l’onda +sotto Sobilia Caino e le spine; + +e già iernotte fu la luna tonda: +ben ten de’ ricordar, ché non ti nocque +alcuna volta per la selva fonda». + +Sì mi parlava, e andavamo introcque. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXI + + +Così di ponte in ponte, altro parlando +che la mia comedìa cantar non cura, +venimmo; e tenavamo ’l colmo, quando + +restammo per veder l’altra fessura +di Malebolge e li altri pianti vani; +e vidila mirabilmente oscura. + +Quale ne l’arzanà de’ Viniziani +bolle l’inverno la tenace pece +a rimpalmare i legni lor non sani, + +ché navicar non ponno—in quella vece +chi fa suo legno novo e chi ristoppa +le coste a quel che più vïaggi fece; + +chi ribatte da proda e chi da poppa; +altri fa remi e altri volge sarte; +chi terzeruolo e artimon rintoppa—: + +tal, non per foco ma per divin’ arte, +bollia là giuso una pegola spessa, +che ’nviscava la ripa d’ogne parte. + +I’ vedea lei, ma non vedëa in essa +mai che le bolle che ’l bollor levava, +e gonfiar tutta, e riseder compressa. + +Mentr’ io là giù fisamente mirava, +lo duca mio, dicendo «Guarda, guarda!», +mi trasse a sé del loco dov’ io stava. + +Allor mi volsi come l’uom cui tarda +di veder quel che li convien fuggire +e cui paura sùbita sgagliarda, + +che, per veder, non indugia ’l partire: +e vidi dietro a noi un diavol nero +correndo su per lo scoglio venire. + +Ahi quant’ elli era ne l’aspetto fero! +e quanto mi parea ne l’atto acerbo, +con l’ali aperte e sovra i piè leggero! + +L’omero suo, ch’era aguto e superbo, +carcava un peccator con ambo l’anche, +e quei tenea de’ piè ghermito ’l nerbo. + +Del nostro ponte disse: «O Malebranche, +ecco un de li anzïan di Santa Zita! +Mettetel sotto, ch’i’ torno per anche + +a quella terra, che n’è ben fornita: +ogn’ uom v’è barattier, fuor che Bonturo; +del no, per li denar, vi si fa ita». + +Là giù ’l buttò, e per lo scoglio duro +si volse; e mai non fu mastino sciolto +con tanta fretta a seguitar lo furo. + +Quel s’attuffò, e tornò sù convolto; +ma i demon che del ponte avean coperchio, +gridar: «Qui non ha loco il Santo Volto! + +qui si nuota altrimenti che nel Serchio! +Però, se tu non vuo’ di nostri graffi, +non far sopra la pegola soverchio». + +Poi l’addentar con più di cento raffi, +disser: «Coverto convien che qui balli, +sì che, se puoi, nascosamente accaffi». + +Non altrimenti i cuoci a’ lor vassalli +fanno attuffare in mezzo la caldaia +la carne con li uncin, perché non galli. + +Lo buon maestro «Acciò che non si paia +che tu ci sia», mi disse, «giù t’acquatta +dopo uno scheggio, ch’alcun schermo t’aia; + +e per nulla offension che mi sia fatta, +non temer tu, ch’i’ ho le cose conte, +perch’ altra volta fui a tal baratta». + +Poscia passò di là dal co del ponte; +e com’ el giunse in su la ripa sesta, +mestier li fu d’aver sicura fronte. + +Con quel furore e con quella tempesta +ch’escono i cani a dosso al poverello +che di sùbito chiede ove s’arresta, + +usciron quei di sotto al ponticello, +e volser contra lui tutt’ i runcigli; +ma el gridò: «Nessun di voi sia fello! + +Innanzi che l’uncin vostro mi pigli, +traggasi avante l’un di voi che m’oda, +e poi d’arruncigliarmi si consigli». + +Tutti gridaron: «Vada Malacoda!»; +per ch’un si mosse—e li altri stetter fermi— +e venne a lui dicendo: «Che li approda?». + +«Credi tu, Malacoda, qui vedermi +esser venuto», disse ’l mio maestro, +«sicuro già da tutti vostri schermi, + +sanza voler divino e fato destro? +Lascian’ andar, ché nel cielo è voluto +ch’i’ mostri altrui questo cammin silvestro». + +Allor li fu l’orgoglio sì caduto, +ch’e’ si lasciò cascar l’uncino a’ piedi, +e disse a li altri: «Omai non sia feruto». + +E ’l duca mio a me: «O tu che siedi +tra li scheggion del ponte quatto quatto, +sicuramente omai a me ti riedi». + +Per ch’io mi mossi e a lui venni ratto; +e i diavoli si fecer tutti avanti, +sì ch’io temetti ch’ei tenesser patto; + +così vid’ ïo già temer li fanti +ch’uscivan patteggiati di Caprona, +veggendo sé tra nemici cotanti. + +I’ m’accostai con tutta la persona +lungo ’l mio duca, e non torceva li occhi +da la sembianza lor ch’era non buona. + +Ei chinavan li raffi e «Vuo’ che ’l tocchi», +diceva l’un con l’altro, «in sul groppone?». +E rispondien: «Sì, fa che gliel’ accocchi». + +Ma quel demonio che tenea sermone +col duca mio, si volse tutto presto +e disse: «Posa, posa, Scarmiglione!». + +Poi disse a noi: «Più oltre andar per questo +iscoglio non si può, però che giace +tutto spezzato al fondo l’arco sesto. + +E se l’andare avante pur vi piace, +andatevene su per questa grotta; +presso è un altro scoglio che via face. + +Ier, più oltre cinqu’ ore che quest’ otta, +mille dugento con sessanta sei +anni compié che qui la via fu rotta. + +Io mando verso là di questi miei +a riguardar s’alcun se ne sciorina; +gite con lor, che non saranno rei». + +«Tra’ti avante, Alichino, e Calcabrina», +cominciò elli a dire, «e tu, Cagnazzo; +e Barbariccia guidi la decina. + +Libicocco vegn’ oltre e Draghignazzo, +Cirïatto sannuto e Graffiacane +e Farfarello e Rubicante pazzo. + +Cercate ’ntorno le boglienti pane; +costor sian salvi infino a l’altro scheggio +che tutto intero va sovra le tane». + +«Omè, maestro, che è quel ch’i’ veggio?», +diss’ io, «deh, sanza scorta andianci soli, +se tu sa’ ir; ch’i’ per me non la cheggio. + +Se tu se’ sì accorto come suoli, +non vedi tu ch’e’ digrignan li denti +e con le ciglia ne minaccian duoli?». + +Ed elli a me: «Non vo’ che tu paventi; +lasciali digrignar pur a lor senno, +ch’e’ fanno ciò per li lessi dolenti». + +Per l’argine sinistro volta dienno; +ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta +coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno; + +ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXII + + +Io vidi già cavalier muover campo, +e cominciare stormo e far lor mostra, +e talvolta partir per loro scampo; + +corridor vidi per la terra vostra, +o Aretini, e vidi gir gualdane, +fedir torneamenti e correr giostra; + +quando con trombe, e quando con campane, +con tamburi e con cenni di castella, +e con cose nostrali e con istrane; + +né già con sì diversa cennamella +cavalier vidi muover né pedoni, +né nave a segno di terra o di stella. + +Noi andavam con li diece demoni. +Ahi fiera compagnia! ma ne la chiesa +coi santi, e in taverna coi ghiottoni. + +Pur a la pegola era la mia ’ntesa, +per veder de la bolgia ogne contegno +e de la gente ch’entro v’era incesa. + +Come i dalfini, quando fanno segno +a’ marinar con l’arco de la schiena +che s’argomentin di campar lor legno, + +talor così, ad alleggiar la pena, +mostrav’ alcun de’ peccatori ’l dosso +e nascondea in men che non balena. + +E come a l’orlo de l’acqua d’un fosso +stanno i ranocchi pur col muso fuori, +sì che celano i piedi e l’altro grosso, + +sì stavan d’ogne parte i peccatori; +ma come s’appressava Barbariccia, +così si ritraén sotto i bollori. + +I’ vidi, e anco il cor me n’accapriccia, +uno aspettar così, com’ elli ’ncontra +ch’una rana rimane e l’altra spiccia; + +e Graffiacan, che li era più di contra, +li arruncigliò le ’mpegolate chiome +e trassel sù, che mi parve una lontra. + +I’ sapea già di tutti quanti ’l nome, +sì li notai quando fuorono eletti, +e poi ch’e’ si chiamaro, attesi come. + +«O Rubicante, fa che tu li metti +li unghioni a dosso, sì che tu lo scuoi!», +gridavan tutti insieme i maladetti. + +E io: «Maestro mio, fa, se tu puoi, +che tu sappi chi è lo sciagurato +venuto a man de li avversari suoi». + +Lo duca mio li s’accostò allato; +domandollo ond’ ei fosse, e quei rispuose: +«I’ fui del regno di Navarra nato. + +Mia madre a servo d’un segnor mi puose, +che m’avea generato d’un ribaldo, +distruggitor di sé e di sue cose. + +Poi fui famiglia del buon re Tebaldo; +quivi mi misi a far baratteria, +di ch’io rendo ragione in questo caldo». + +E Cirïatto, a cui di bocca uscia +d’ogne parte una sanna come a porco, +li fé sentir come l’una sdruscia. + +Tra male gatte era venuto ’l sorco; +ma Barbariccia il chiuse con le braccia +e disse: «State in là, mentr’ io lo ’nforco». + +E al maestro mio volse la faccia; +«Domanda», disse, «ancor, se più disii +saper da lui, prima ch’altri ’l disfaccia». + +Lo duca dunque: «Or dì: de li altri rii +conosci tu alcun che sia latino +sotto la pece?». E quelli: «I’ mi partii, + +poco è, da un che fu di là vicino. +Così foss’ io ancor con lui coperto, +ch’i’ non temerei unghia né uncino!». + +E Libicocco «Troppo avem sofferto», +disse; e preseli ’l braccio col runciglio, +sì che, stracciando, ne portò un lacerto. + +Draghignazzo anco i volle dar di piglio +giuso a le gambe; onde ’l decurio loro +si volse intorno intorno con mal piglio. + +Quand’ elli un poco rappaciati fuoro, +a lui, ch’ancor mirava sua ferita, +domandò ’l duca mio sanza dimoro: + +«Chi fu colui da cui mala partita +di’ che facesti per venire a proda?». +Ed ei rispuose: «Fu frate Gomita, + +quel di Gallura, vasel d’ogne froda, +ch’ebbe i nemici di suo donno in mano, +e fé sì lor, che ciascun se ne loda. + +Danar si tolse e lasciolli di piano, +sì com’ e’ dice; e ne li altri offici anche +barattier fu non picciol, ma sovrano. + +Usa con esso donno Michel Zanche +di Logodoro; e a dir di Sardigna +le lingue lor non si sentono stanche. + +Omè, vedete l’altro che digrigna; +i’ direi anche, ma i’ temo ch’ello +non s’apparecchi a grattarmi la tigna». + +E ’l gran proposto, vòlto a Farfarello +che stralunava li occhi per fedire, +disse: «Fatti ’n costà, malvagio uccello!». + +«Se voi volete vedere o udire», +ricominciò lo spaürato appresso, +«Toschi o Lombardi, io ne farò venire; + +ma stieno i Malebranche un poco in cesso, +sì ch’ei non teman de le lor vendette; +e io, seggendo in questo loco stesso, + +per un ch’io son, ne farò venir sette +quand’ io suffolerò, com’ è nostro uso +di fare allor che fori alcun si mette». + +Cagnazzo a cotal motto levò ’l muso, +crollando ’l capo, e disse: «Odi malizia +ch’elli ha pensata per gittarsi giuso!». + +Ond’ ei, ch’avea lacciuoli a gran divizia, +rispuose: «Malizioso son io troppo, +quand’ io procuro a’ mia maggior trestizia». + +Alichin non si tenne e, di rintoppo +a li altri, disse a lui: «Se tu ti cali, +io non ti verrò dietro di gualoppo, + +ma batterò sovra la pece l’ali. +Lascisi ’l collo, e sia la ripa scudo, +a veder se tu sol più di noi vali». + +O tu che leggi, udirai nuovo ludo: +ciascun da l’altra costa li occhi volse, +quel prima, ch’a ciò fare era più crudo. + +Lo Navarrese ben suo tempo colse; +fermò le piante a terra, e in un punto +saltò e dal proposto lor si sciolse. + +Di che ciascun di colpa fu compunto, +ma quei più che cagion fu del difetto; +però si mosse e gridò: «Tu se’ giunto!». + +Ma poco i valse: ché l’ali al sospetto +non potero avanzar; quelli andò sotto, +e quei drizzò volando suso il petto: + +non altrimenti l’anitra di botto, +quando ’l falcon s’appressa, giù s’attuffa, +ed ei ritorna sù crucciato e rotto. + +Irato Calcabrina de la buffa, +volando dietro li tenne, invaghito +che quei campasse per aver la zuffa; + +e come ’l barattier fu disparito, +così volse li artigli al suo compagno, +e fu con lui sopra ’l fosso ghermito. + +Ma l’altro fu bene sparvier grifagno +ad artigliar ben lui, e amendue +cadder nel mezzo del bogliente stagno. + +Lo caldo sghermitor sùbito fue; +ma però di levarsi era neente, +sì avieno inviscate l’ali sue. + +Barbariccia, con li altri suoi dolente, +quattro ne fé volar da l’altra costa +con tutt’ i raffi, e assai prestamente + +di qua, di là discesero a la posta; +porser li uncini verso li ’mpaniati, +ch’eran già cotti dentro da la crosta. + +E noi lasciammo lor così ’mpacciati. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXIII + + +Taciti, soli, sanza compagnia +n’andavam l’un dinanzi e l’altro dopo, +come frati minor vanno per via. + +Vòlt’ era in su la favola d’Isopo +lo mio pensier per la presente rissa, +dov’ el parlò de la rana e del topo; + +ché più non si pareggia ‘mo’ e ‘issa’ +che l’un con l’altro fa, se ben s’accoppia +principio e fine con la mente fissa. + +E come l’un pensier de l’altro scoppia, +così nacque di quello un altro poi, +che la prima paura mi fé doppia. + +Io pensava così: ‘Questi per noi +sono scherniti con danno e con beffa +sì fatta, ch’assai credo che lor nòi. + +Se l’ira sovra ’l mal voler s’aggueffa, +ei ne verranno dietro più crudeli +che ’l cane a quella lievre ch’elli acceffa’. + +Già mi sentia tutti arricciar li peli +de la paura e stava in dietro intento, +quand’ io dissi: «Maestro, se non celi + +te e me tostamente, i’ ho pavento +d’i Malebranche. Noi li avem già dietro; +io li ’magino sì, che già li sento». + +E quei: «S’i’ fossi di piombato vetro, +l’imagine di fuor tua non trarrei +più tosto a me, che quella dentro ’mpetro. + +Pur mo venieno i tuo’ pensier tra ’ miei, +con simile atto e con simile faccia, +sì che d’intrambi un sol consiglio fei. + +S’elli è che sì la destra costa giaccia, +che noi possiam ne l’altra bolgia scendere, +noi fuggirem l’imaginata caccia». + +Già non compié di tal consiglio rendere, +ch’io li vidi venir con l’ali tese +non molto lungi, per volerne prendere. + +Lo duca mio di sùbito mi prese, +come la madre ch’al romore è desta +e vede presso a sé le fiamme accese, + +che prende il figlio e fugge e non s’arresta, +avendo più di lui che di sé cura, +tanto che solo una camiscia vesta; + +e giù dal collo de la ripa dura +supin si diede a la pendente roccia, +che l’un de’ lati a l’altra bolgia tura. + +Non corse mai sì tosto acqua per doccia +a volger ruota di molin terragno, +quand’ ella più verso le pale approccia, + +come ’l maestro mio per quel vivagno, +portandosene me sovra ’l suo petto, +come suo figlio, non come compagno. + +A pena fuoro i piè suoi giunti al letto +del fondo giù, ch’e’ furon in sul colle +sovresso noi; ma non lì era sospetto: + +ché l’alta provedenza che lor volle +porre ministri de la fossa quinta, +poder di partirs’ indi a tutti tolle. + +Là giù trovammo una gente dipinta +che giva intorno assai con lenti passi, +piangendo e nel sembiante stanca e vinta. + +Elli avean cappe con cappucci bassi +dinanzi a li occhi, fatte de la taglia +che in Clugnì per li monaci fassi. + +Di fuor dorate son, sì ch’elli abbaglia; +ma dentro tutte piombo, e gravi tanto, +che Federigo le mettea di paglia. + +Oh in etterno faticoso manto! +Noi ci volgemmo ancor pur a man manca +con loro insieme, intenti al tristo pianto; + +ma per lo peso quella gente stanca +venìa sì pian, che noi eravam nuovi +di compagnia ad ogne mover d’anca. + +Per ch’io al duca mio: «Fa che tu trovi +alcun ch’al fatto o al nome si conosca, +e li occhi, sì andando, intorno movi». + +E un che ’ntese la parola tosca, +di retro a noi gridò: «Tenete i piedi, +voi che correte sì per l’aura fosca! + +Forse ch’avrai da me quel che tu chiedi». +Onde ’l duca si volse e disse: «Aspetta, +e poi secondo il suo passo procedi». + +Ristetti, e vidi due mostrar gran fretta +de l’animo, col viso, d’esser meco; +ma tardavali ’l carco e la via stretta. + +Quando fuor giunti, assai con l’occhio bieco +mi rimiraron sanza far parola; +poi si volsero in sé, e dicean seco: + +«Costui par vivo a l’atto de la gola; +e s’e’ son morti, per qual privilegio +vanno scoperti de la grave stola?». + +Poi disser me: «O Tosco, ch’al collegio +de l’ipocriti tristi se’ venuto, +dir chi tu se’ non avere in dispregio». + +E io a loro: «I’ fui nato e cresciuto +sovra ’l bel fiume d’Arno a la gran villa, +e son col corpo ch’i’ ho sempre avuto. + +Ma voi chi siete, a cui tanto distilla +quant’ i’ veggio dolor giù per le guance? +e che pena è in voi che sì sfavilla?». + +E l’un rispuose a me: «Le cappe rance +son di piombo sì grosse, che li pesi +fan così cigolar le lor bilance. + +Frati godenti fummo, e bolognesi; +io Catalano e questi Loderingo +nomati, e da tua terra insieme presi + +come suole esser tolto un uom solingo, +per conservar sua pace; e fummo tali, +ch’ancor si pare intorno dal Gardingo». + +Io cominciai: «O frati, i vostri mali . . . »; +ma più non dissi, ch’a l’occhio mi corse +un, crucifisso in terra con tre pali. + +Quando mi vide, tutto si distorse, +soffiando ne la barba con sospiri; +e ’l frate Catalan, ch’a ciò s’accorse, + +mi disse: «Quel confitto che tu miri, +consigliò i Farisei che convenia +porre un uom per lo popolo a’ martìri. + +Attraversato è, nudo, ne la via, +come tu vedi, ed è mestier ch’el senta +qualunque passa, come pesa, pria. + +E a tal modo il socero si stenta +in questa fossa, e li altri dal concilio +che fu per li Giudei mala sementa». + +Allor vid’ io maravigliar Virgilio +sovra colui ch’era disteso in croce +tanto vilmente ne l’etterno essilio. + +Poscia drizzò al frate cotal voce: +«Non vi dispiaccia, se vi lece, dirci +s’a la man destra giace alcuna foce + +onde noi amendue possiamo uscirci, +sanza costrigner de li angeli neri +che vegnan d’esto fondo a dipartirci». + +Rispuose adunque: «Più che tu non speri +s’appressa un sasso che da la gran cerchia +si move e varca tutt’ i vallon feri, + +salvo che ’n questo è rotto e nol coperchia; +montar potrete su per la ruina, +che giace in costa e nel fondo soperchia». + +Lo duca stette un poco a testa china; +poi disse: «Mal contava la bisogna +colui che i peccator di qua uncina». + +E ’l frate: «Io udi’ già dire a Bologna +del diavol vizi assai, tra ’ quali udi’ +ch’elli è bugiardo, e padre di menzogna». + +Appresso il duca a gran passi sen gì, +turbato un poco d’ira nel sembiante; +ond’ io da li ’ncarcati mi parti’ + +dietro a le poste de le care piante. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXIV + + +In quella parte del giovanetto anno +che ’l sole i crin sotto l’Aquario tempra +e già le notti al mezzo dì sen vanno, + +quando la brina in su la terra assempra +l’imagine di sua sorella bianca, +ma poco dura a la sua penna tempra, + +lo villanello a cui la roba manca, +si leva, e guarda, e vede la campagna +biancheggiar tutta; ond’ ei si batte l’anca, + +ritorna in casa, e qua e là si lagna, +come ’l tapin che non sa che si faccia; +poi riede, e la speranza ringavagna, + +veggendo ’l mondo aver cangiata faccia +in poco d’ora, e prende suo vincastro +e fuor le pecorelle a pascer caccia. + +Così mi fece sbigottir lo mastro +quand’ io li vidi sì turbar la fronte, +e così tosto al mal giunse lo ’mpiastro; + +ché, come noi venimmo al guasto ponte, +lo duca a me si volse con quel piglio +dolce ch’io vidi prima a piè del monte. + +Le braccia aperse, dopo alcun consiglio +eletto seco riguardando prima +ben la ruina, e diedemi di piglio. + +E come quei ch’adopera ed estima, +che sempre par che ’nnanzi si proveggia, +così, levando me sù ver’ la cima + +d’un ronchione, avvisava un’altra scheggia +dicendo: «Sovra quella poi t’aggrappa; +ma tenta pria s’è tal ch’ella ti reggia». + +Non era via da vestito di cappa, +ché noi a pena, ei lieve e io sospinto, +potavam sù montar di chiappa in chiappa. + +E se non fosse che da quel precinto +più che da l’altro era la costa corta, +non so di lui, ma io sarei ben vinto. + +Ma perché Malebolge inver’ la porta +del bassissimo pozzo tutta pende, +lo sito di ciascuna valle porta + +che l’una costa surge e l’altra scende; +noi pur venimmo al fine in su la punta +onde l’ultima pietra si scoscende. + +La lena m’era del polmon sì munta +quand’ io fui sù, ch’i’ non potea più oltre, +anzi m’assisi ne la prima giunta. + +«Omai convien che tu così ti spoltre», +disse ’l maestro; «ché, seggendo in piuma, +in fama non si vien, né sotto coltre; + +sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma, +cotal vestigio in terra di sé lascia, +qual fummo in aere e in acqua la schiuma. + +E però leva sù; vinci l’ambascia +con l’animo che vince ogne battaglia, +se col suo grave corpo non s’accascia. + +Più lunga scala convien che si saglia; +non basta da costoro esser partito. +Se tu mi ’ntendi, or fa sì che ti vaglia». + +Leva’mi allor, mostrandomi fornito +meglio di lena ch’i’ non mi sentia, +e dissi: «Va, ch’i’ son forte e ardito». + +Su per lo scoglio prendemmo la via, +ch’era ronchioso, stretto e malagevole, +ed erto più assai che quel di pria. + +Parlando andava per non parer fievole; +onde una voce uscì de l’altro fosso, +a parole formar disconvenevole. + +Non so che disse, ancor che sovra ’l dosso +fossi de l’arco già che varca quivi; +ma chi parlava ad ire parea mosso. + +Io era vòlto in giù, ma li occhi vivi +non poteano ire al fondo per lo scuro; +per ch’io: «Maestro, fa che tu arrivi + +da l’altro cinghio e dismontiam lo muro; +ché, com’ i’ odo quinci e non intendo, +così giù veggio e neente affiguro». + +«Altra risposta», disse, «non ti rendo +se non lo far; ché la dimanda onesta +si de’ seguir con l’opera tacendo». + +Noi discendemmo il ponte da la testa +dove s’aggiugne con l’ottava ripa, +e poi mi fu la bolgia manifesta: + +e vidivi entro terribile stipa +di serpenti, e di sì diversa mena +che la memoria il sangue ancor mi scipa. + +Più non si vanti Libia con sua rena; +ché se chelidri, iaculi e faree +produce, e cencri con anfisibena, + +né tante pestilenzie né sì ree +mostrò già mai con tutta l’Etïopia +né con ciò che di sopra al Mar Rosso èe. + +Tra questa cruda e tristissima copia +corrëan genti nude e spaventate, +sanza sperar pertugio o elitropia: + +con serpi le man dietro avean legate; +quelle ficcavan per le ren la coda +e ’l capo, ed eran dinanzi aggroppate. + +Ed ecco a un ch’era da nostra proda, +s’avventò un serpente che ’l trafisse +là dove ’l collo a le spalle s’annoda. + +Né O sì tosto mai né I si scrisse, +com’ el s’accese e arse, e cener tutto +convenne che cascando divenisse; + +e poi che fu a terra sì distrutto, +la polver si raccolse per sé stessa +e ’n quel medesmo ritornò di butto. + +Così per li gran savi si confessa +che la fenice more e poi rinasce, +quando al cinquecentesimo anno appressa; + +erba né biado in sua vita non pasce, +ma sol d’incenso lagrime e d’amomo, +e nardo e mirra son l’ultime fasce. + +E qual è quel che cade, e non sa como, +per forza di demon ch’a terra il tira, +o d’altra oppilazion che lega l’omo, + +quando si leva, che ’ntorno si mira +tutto smarrito de la grande angoscia +ch’elli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira: + +tal era ’l peccator levato poscia. +Oh potenza di Dio, quant’ è severa, +che cotai colpi per vendetta croscia! + +Lo duca il domandò poi chi ello era; +per ch’ei rispuose: «Io piovvi di Toscana, +poco tempo è, in questa gola fiera. + +Vita bestial mi piacque e non umana, +sì come a mul ch’i’ fui; son Vanni Fucci +bestia, e Pistoia mi fu degna tana». + +E ïo al duca: «Dilli che non mucci, +e domanda che colpa qua giù ’l pinse; +ch’io ’l vidi uomo di sangue e di crucci». + +E ’l peccator, che ’ntese, non s’infinse, +ma drizzò verso me l’animo e ’l volto, +e di trista vergogna si dipinse; + +poi disse: «Più mi duol che tu m’hai colto +ne la miseria dove tu mi vedi, +che quando fui de l’altra vita tolto. + +Io non posso negar quel che tu chiedi; +in giù son messo tanto perch’ io fui +ladro a la sagrestia d’i belli arredi, + +e falsamente già fu apposto altrui. +Ma perché di tal vista tu non godi, +se mai sarai di fuor da’ luoghi bui, + +apri li orecchi al mio annunzio, e odi. +Pistoia in pria d’i Neri si dimagra; +poi Fiorenza rinova gente e modi. + +Tragge Marte vapor di Val di Magra +ch’è di torbidi nuvoli involuto; +e con tempesta impetüosa e agra + +sovra Campo Picen fia combattuto; +ond’ ei repente spezzerà la nebbia, +sì ch’ogne Bianco ne sarà feruto. + +E detto l’ho perché doler ti debbia!». + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXV + + +Al fine de le sue parole il ladro +le mani alzò con amendue le fiche, +gridando: «Togli, Dio, ch’a te le squadro!». + +Da indi in qua mi fuor le serpi amiche, +perch’ una li s’avvolse allora al collo, +come dicesse ‘Non vo’ che più diche’; + +e un’altra a le braccia, e rilegollo, +ribadendo sé stessa sì dinanzi, +che non potea con esse dare un crollo. + +Ahi Pistoia, Pistoia, ché non stanzi +d’incenerarti sì che più non duri, +poi che ’n mal fare il seme tuo avanzi? + +Per tutt’ i cerchi de lo ’nferno scuri +non vidi spirto in Dio tanto superbo, +non quel che cadde a Tebe giù da’ muri. + +El si fuggì che non parlò più verbo; +e io vidi un centauro pien di rabbia +venir chiamando: «Ov’ è, ov’ è l’acerbo?». + +Maremma non cred’ io che tante n’abbia, +quante bisce elli avea su per la groppa +infin ove comincia nostra labbia. + +Sovra le spalle, dietro da la coppa, +con l’ali aperte li giacea un draco; +e quello affuoca qualunque s’intoppa. + +Lo mio maestro disse: «Questi è Caco, +che, sotto ’l sasso di monte Aventino, +di sangue fece spesse volte laco. + +Non va co’ suoi fratei per un cammino, +per lo furto che frodolente fece +del grande armento ch’elli ebbe a vicino; + +onde cessar le sue opere biece +sotto la mazza d’Ercule, che forse +gliene diè cento, e non sentì le diece». + +Mentre che sì parlava, ed el trascorse, +e tre spiriti venner sotto noi, +de’ quai né io né ’l duca mio s’accorse, + +se non quando gridar: «Chi siete voi?»; +per che nostra novella si ristette, +e intendemmo pur ad essi poi. + +Io non li conoscea; ma ei seguette, +come suol seguitar per alcun caso, +che l’un nomar un altro convenette, + +dicendo: «Cianfa dove fia rimaso?»; +per ch’io, acciò che ’l duca stesse attento, +mi puosi ’l dito su dal mento al naso. + +Se tu se’ or, lettore, a creder lento +ciò ch’io dirò, non sarà maraviglia, +ché io che ’l vidi, a pena il mi consento. + +Com’ io tenea levate in lor le ciglia, +e un serpente con sei piè si lancia +dinanzi a l’uno, e tutto a lui s’appiglia. + +Co’ piè di mezzo li avvinse la pancia +e con li anterïor le braccia prese; +poi li addentò e l’una e l’altra guancia; + +li diretani a le cosce distese, +e miseli la coda tra ’mbedue +e dietro per le ren sù la ritese. + +Ellera abbarbicata mai non fue +ad alber sì, come l’orribil fiera +per l’altrui membra avviticchiò le sue. + +Poi s’appiccar, come di calda cera +fossero stati, e mischiar lor colore, +né l’un né l’altro già parea quel ch’era: + +come procede innanzi da l’ardore, +per lo papiro suso, un color bruno +che non è nero ancora e ’l bianco more. + +Li altri due ’l riguardavano, e ciascuno +gridava: «Omè, Agnel, come ti muti! +Vedi che già non se’ né due né uno». + +Già eran li due capi un divenuti, +quando n’apparver due figure miste +in una faccia, ov’ eran due perduti. + +Fersi le braccia due di quattro liste; +le cosce con le gambe e ’l ventre e ’l casso +divenner membra che non fuor mai viste. + +Ogne primaio aspetto ivi era casso: +due e nessun l’imagine perversa +parea; e tal sen gio con lento passo. + +Come ’l ramarro sotto la gran fersa +dei dì canicular, cangiando sepe, +folgore par se la via attraversa, + +sì pareva, venendo verso l’epe +de li altri due, un serpentello acceso, +livido e nero come gran di pepe; + +e quella parte onde prima è preso +nostro alimento, a l’un di lor trafisse; +poi cadde giuso innanzi lui disteso. + +Lo trafitto ’l mirò, ma nulla disse; +anzi, co’ piè fermati, sbadigliava +pur come sonno o febbre l’assalisse. + +Elli ’l serpente e quei lui riguardava; +l’un per la piaga e l’altro per la bocca +fummavan forte, e ’l fummo si scontrava. + +Taccia Lucano ormai là dov’ e’ tocca +del misero Sabello e di Nasidio, +e attenda a udir quel ch’or si scocca. + +Taccia di Cadmo e d’Aretusa Ovidio, +ché se quello in serpente e quella in fonte +converte poetando, io non lo ’nvidio; + +ché due nature mai a fronte a fronte +non trasmutò sì ch’amendue le forme +a cambiar lor matera fosser pronte. + +Insieme si rispuosero a tai norme, +che ’l serpente la coda in forca fesse, +e ’l feruto ristrinse insieme l’orme. + +Le gambe con le cosce seco stesse +s’appiccar sì, che ’n poco la giuntura +non facea segno alcun che si paresse. + +Togliea la coda fessa la figura +che si perdeva là, e la sua pelle +si facea molle, e quella di là dura. + +Io vidi intrar le braccia per l’ascelle, +e i due piè de la fiera, ch’eran corti, +tanto allungar quanto accorciavan quelle. + +Poscia li piè di rietro, insieme attorti, +diventaron lo membro che l’uom cela, +e ’l misero del suo n’avea due porti. + +Mentre che ’l fummo l’uno e l’altro vela +di color novo, e genera ’l pel suso +per l’una parte e da l’altra il dipela, + +l’un si levò e l’altro cadde giuso, +non torcendo però le lucerne empie, +sotto le quai ciascun cambiava muso. + +Quel ch’era dritto, il trasse ver’ le tempie, +e di troppa matera ch’in là venne +uscir li orecchi de le gote scempie; + +ciò che non corse in dietro e si ritenne +di quel soverchio, fé naso a la faccia +e le labbra ingrossò quanto convenne. + +Quel che giacëa, il muso innanzi caccia, +e li orecchi ritira per la testa +come face le corna la lumaccia; + +e la lingua, ch’avëa unita e presta +prima a parlar, si fende, e la forcuta +ne l’altro si richiude; e ’l fummo resta. + +L’anima ch’era fiera divenuta, +suffolando si fugge per la valle, +e l’altro dietro a lui parlando sputa. + +Poscia li volse le novelle spalle, +e disse a l’altro: «I’ vo’ che Buoso corra, +com’ ho fatt’ io, carpon per questo calle». + +Così vid’ io la settima zavorra +mutare e trasmutare; e qui mi scusi +la novità se fior la penna abborra. + +E avvegna che li occhi miei confusi +fossero alquanto e l’animo smagato, +non poter quei fuggirsi tanto chiusi, + +ch’i’ non scorgessi ben Puccio Sciancato; +ed era quel che sol, di tre compagni +che venner prima, non era mutato; + +l’altr’ era quel che tu, Gaville, piagni. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXVI + + +Godi, Fiorenza, poi che se’ sì grande +che per mare e per terra batti l’ali, +e per lo ’nferno tuo nome si spande! + +Tra li ladron trovai cinque cotali +tuoi cittadini onde mi ven vergogna, +e tu in grande orranza non ne sali. + +Ma se presso al mattin del ver si sogna, +tu sentirai, di qua da picciol tempo, +di quel che Prato, non ch’altri, t’agogna. + +E se già fosse, non saria per tempo. +Così foss’ ei, da che pur esser dee! +ché più mi graverà, com’ più m’attempo. + +Noi ci partimmo, e su per le scalee +che n’avea fatto iborni a scender pria, +rimontò ’l duca mio e trasse mee; + +e proseguendo la solinga via, +tra le schegge e tra ’ rocchi de lo scoglio +lo piè sanza la man non si spedia. + +Allor mi dolsi, e ora mi ridoglio +quando drizzo la mente a ciò ch’io vidi, +e più lo ’ngegno affreno ch’i’ non soglio, + +perché non corra che virtù nol guidi; +sì che, se stella bona o miglior cosa +m’ha dato ’l ben, ch’io stessi nol m’invidi. + +Quante ’l villan ch’al poggio si riposa, +nel tempo che colui che ’l mondo schiara +la faccia sua a noi tien meno ascosa, + +come la mosca cede a la zanzara, +vede lucciole giù per la vallea, +forse colà dov’ e’ vendemmia e ara: + +di tante fiamme tutta risplendea +l’ottava bolgia, sì com’ io m’accorsi +tosto che fui là ’ve ’l fondo parea. + +E qual colui che si vengiò con li orsi +vide ’l carro d’Elia al dipartire, +quando i cavalli al cielo erti levorsi, + +che nol potea sì con li occhi seguire, +ch’el vedesse altro che la fiamma sola, +sì come nuvoletta, in sù salire: + +tal si move ciascuna per la gola +del fosso, ché nessuna mostra ’l furto, +e ogne fiamma un peccatore invola. + +Io stava sovra ’l ponte a veder surto, +sì che s’io non avessi un ronchion preso, +caduto sarei giù sanz’ esser urto. + +E ’l duca che mi vide tanto atteso, +disse: «Dentro dai fuochi son li spirti; +catun si fascia di quel ch’elli è inceso». + +«Maestro mio», rispuos’ io, «per udirti +son io più certo; ma già m’era avviso +che così fosse, e già voleva dirti: + +chi è ’n quel foco che vien sì diviso +di sopra, che par surger de la pira +dov’ Eteòcle col fratel fu miso?». + +Rispuose a me: «Là dentro si martira +Ulisse e Dïomede, e così insieme +a la vendetta vanno come a l’ira; + +e dentro da la lor fiamma si geme +l’agguato del caval che fé la porta +onde uscì de’ Romani il gentil seme. + +Piangevisi entro l’arte per che, morta, +Deïdamìa ancor si duol d’Achille, +e del Palladio pena vi si porta». + +«S’ei posson dentro da quelle faville +parlar», diss’ io, «maestro, assai ten priego +e ripriego, che ’l priego vaglia mille, + +che non mi facci de l’attender niego +fin che la fiamma cornuta qua vegna; +vedi che del disio ver’ lei mi piego!». + +Ed elli a me: «La tua preghiera è degna +di molta loda, e io però l’accetto; +ma fa che la tua lingua si sostegna. + +Lascia parlare a me, ch’i’ ho concetto +ciò che tu vuoi; ch’ei sarebbero schivi, +perch’ e’ fuor greci, forse del tuo detto». + +Poi che la fiamma fu venuta quivi +dove parve al mio duca tempo e loco, +in questa forma lui parlare audivi: + +«O voi che siete due dentro ad un foco, +s’io meritai di voi mentre ch’io vissi, +s’io meritai di voi assai o poco + +quando nel mondo li alti versi scrissi, +non vi movete; ma l’un di voi dica +dove, per lui, perduto a morir gissi». + +Lo maggior corno de la fiamma antica +cominciò a crollarsi mormorando, +pur come quella cui vento affatica; + +indi la cima qua e là menando, +come fosse la lingua che parlasse, +gittò voce di fuori e disse: «Quando + +mi diparti’ da Circe, che sottrasse +me più d’un anno là presso a Gaeta, +prima che sì Enëa la nomasse, + +né dolcezza di figlio, né la pieta +del vecchio padre, né ’l debito amore +lo qual dovea Penelopè far lieta, + +vincer potero dentro a me l’ardore +ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto +e de li vizi umani e del valore; + +ma misi me per l’alto mare aperto +sol con un legno e con quella compagna +picciola da la qual non fui diserto. + +L’un lito e l’altro vidi infin la Spagna, +fin nel Morrocco, e l’isola d’i Sardi, +e l’altre che quel mare intorno bagna. + +Io e ’ compagni eravam vecchi e tardi +quando venimmo a quella foce stretta +dov’ Ercule segnò li suoi riguardi + +acciò che l’uom più oltre non si metta; +da la man destra mi lasciai Sibilia, +da l’altra già m’avea lasciata Setta. + +“O frati”, dissi “che per cento milia +perigli siete giunti a l’occidente, +a questa tanto picciola vigilia + +d’i nostri sensi ch’è del rimanente +non vogliate negar l’esperïenza, +di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente. + +Considerate la vostra semenza: +fatti non foste a viver come bruti, +ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza”. + +Li miei compagni fec’ io sì aguti, +con questa orazion picciola, al cammino, +che a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti; + +e volta nostra poppa nel mattino, +de’ remi facemmo ali al folle volo, +sempre acquistando dal lato mancino. + +Tutte le stelle già de l’altro polo +vedea la notte, e ’l nostro tanto basso, +che non surgëa fuor del marin suolo. + +Cinque volte racceso e tante casso +lo lume era di sotto da la luna, +poi che ’ntrati eravam ne l’alto passo, + +quando n’apparve una montagna, bruna +per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto +quanto veduta non avëa alcuna. + +Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto; +ché de la nova terra un turbo nacque +e percosse del legno il primo canto. + +Tre volte il fé girar con tutte l’acque; +a la quarta levar la poppa in suso +e la prora ire in giù, com’ altrui piacque, + +infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso». + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXVII + + +Già era dritta in sù la fiamma e queta +per non dir più, e già da noi sen gia +con la licenza del dolce poeta, + +quand’ un’altra, che dietro a lei venìa, +ne fece volger li occhi a la sua cima +per un confuso suon che fuor n’uscia. + +Come ’l bue cicilian che mugghiò prima +col pianto di colui, e ciò fu dritto, +che l’avea temperato con sua lima, + +mugghiava con la voce de l’afflitto, +sì che, con tutto che fosse di rame, +pur el pareva dal dolor trafitto; + +così, per non aver via né forame +dal principio nel foco, in suo linguaggio +si convertïan le parole grame. + +Ma poscia ch’ebber colto lor vïaggio +su per la punta, dandole quel guizzo +che dato avea la lingua in lor passaggio, + +udimmo dire: «O tu a cu’ io drizzo +la voce e che parlavi mo lombardo, +dicendo “Istra ten va, più non t’adizzo”, + +perch’ io sia giunto forse alquanto tardo, +non t’incresca restare a parlar meco; +vedi che non incresce a me, e ardo! + +Se tu pur mo in questo mondo cieco +caduto se’ di quella dolce terra +latina ond’ io mia colpa tutta reco, + +dimmi se Romagnuoli han pace o guerra; +ch’io fui d’i monti là intra Orbino +e ’l giogo di che Tever si diserra». + +Io era in giuso ancora attento e chino, +quando il mio duca mi tentò di costa, +dicendo: «Parla tu; questi è latino». + +E io, ch’avea già pronta la risposta, +sanza indugio a parlare incominciai: +«O anima che se’ là giù nascosta, + +Romagna tua non è, e non fu mai, +sanza guerra ne’ cuor de’ suoi tiranni; +ma ’n palese nessuna or vi lasciai. + +Ravenna sta come stata è molt’ anni: +l’aguglia da Polenta la si cova, +sì che Cervia ricuopre co’ suoi vanni. + +La terra che fé già la lunga prova +e di Franceschi sanguinoso mucchio, +sotto le branche verdi si ritrova. + +E ’l mastin vecchio e ’l nuovo da Verrucchio, +che fecer di Montagna il mal governo, +là dove soglion fan d’i denti succhio. + +Le città di Lamone e di Santerno +conduce il lïoncel dal nido bianco, +che muta parte da la state al verno. + +E quella cu’ il Savio bagna il fianco, +così com’ ella sie’ tra ’l piano e ’l monte, +tra tirannia si vive e stato franco. + +Ora chi se’, ti priego che ne conte; +non esser duro più ch’altri sia stato, +se ’l nome tuo nel mondo tegna fronte». + +Poscia che ’l foco alquanto ebbe rugghiato +al modo suo, l’aguta punta mosse +di qua, di là, e poi diè cotal fiato: + +«S’i’ credesse che mia risposta fosse +a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, +questa fiamma staria sanza più scosse; + +ma però che già mai di questo fondo +non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’ odo il vero, +sanza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. + +Io fui uom d’arme, e poi fui cordigliero, +credendomi, sì cinto, fare ammenda; +e certo il creder mio venìa intero, + +se non fosse il gran prete, a cui mal prenda!, +che mi rimise ne le prime colpe; +e come e quare, voglio che m’intenda. + +Mentre ch’io forma fui d’ossa e di polpe +che la madre mi diè, l’opere mie +non furon leonine, ma di volpe. + +Li accorgimenti e le coperte vie +io seppi tutte, e sì menai lor arte, +ch’al fine de la terra il suono uscie. + +Quando mi vidi giunto in quella parte +di mia etade ove ciascun dovrebbe +calar le vele e raccoglier le sarte, + +ciò che pria mi piacëa, allor m’increbbe, +e pentuto e confesso mi rendei; +ahi miser lasso! e giovato sarebbe. + +Lo principe d’i novi Farisei, +avendo guerra presso a Laterano, +e non con Saracin né con Giudei, + +ché ciascun suo nimico era cristiano, +e nessun era stato a vincer Acri +né mercatante in terra di Soldano, + +né sommo officio né ordini sacri +guardò in sé, né in me quel capestro +che solea fare i suoi cinti più macri. + +Ma come Costantin chiese Silvestro +d’entro Siratti a guerir de la lebbre, +così mi chiese questi per maestro + +a guerir de la sua superba febbre; +domandommi consiglio, e io tacetti +perché le sue parole parver ebbre. + +E’ poi ridisse: “Tuo cuor non sospetti; +finor t’assolvo, e tu m’insegna fare +sì come Penestrino in terra getti. + +Lo ciel poss’ io serrare e diserrare, +come tu sai; però son due le chiavi +che ’l mio antecessor non ebbe care”. + +Allor mi pinser li argomenti gravi +là ’ve ’l tacer mi fu avviso ’l peggio, +e dissi: “Padre, da che tu mi lavi + +di quel peccato ov’ io mo cader deggio, +lunga promessa con l’attender corto +ti farà trïunfar ne l’alto seggio”. + +Francesco venne poi, com’ io fu’ morto, +per me; ma un d’i neri cherubini +li disse: “Non portar: non mi far torto. + +Venir se ne dee giù tra ’ miei meschini +perché diede ’l consiglio frodolente, +dal quale in qua stato li sono a’ crini; + +ch’assolver non si può chi non si pente, +né pentere e volere insieme puossi +per la contradizion che nol consente”. + +Oh me dolente! come mi riscossi +quando mi prese dicendomi: “Forse +tu non pensavi ch’io löico fossi!”. + +A Minòs mi portò; e quelli attorse +otto volte la coda al dosso duro; +e poi che per gran rabbia la si morse, + +disse: “Questi è d’i rei del foco furo”; +per ch’io là dove vedi son perduto, +e sì vestito, andando, mi rancuro». + +Quand’ elli ebbe ’l suo dir così compiuto, +la fiamma dolorando si partio, +torcendo e dibattendo ’l corno aguto. + +Noi passamm’ oltre, e io e ’l duca mio, +su per lo scoglio infino in su l’altr’ arco +che cuopre ’l fosso in che si paga il fio + +a quei che scommettendo acquistan carco. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXVIII + + +Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte +dicer del sangue e de le piaghe a pieno +ch’i’ ora vidi, per narrar più volte? + +Ogne lingua per certo verria meno +per lo nostro sermone e per la mente +c’hanno a tanto comprender poco seno. + +S’el s’aunasse ancor tutta la gente +che già, in su la fortunata terra +di Puglia, fu del suo sangue dolente + +per li Troiani e per la lunga guerra +che de l’anella fé sì alte spoglie, +come Livïo scrive, che non erra, + +con quella che sentio di colpi doglie +per contastare a Ruberto Guiscardo; +e l’altra il cui ossame ancor s’accoglie + +a Ceperan, là dove fu bugiardo +ciascun Pugliese, e là da Tagliacozzo, +dove sanz’ arme vinse il vecchio Alardo; + +e qual forato suo membro e qual mozzo +mostrasse, d’aequar sarebbe nulla +il modo de la nona bolgia sozzo. + +Già veggia, per mezzul perdere o lulla, +com’ io vidi un, così non si pertugia, +rotto dal mento infin dove si trulla. + +Tra le gambe pendevan le minugia; +la corata pareva e ’l tristo sacco +che merda fa di quel che si trangugia. + +Mentre che tutto in lui veder m’attacco, +guardommi e con le man s’aperse il petto, +dicendo: «Or vedi com’ io mi dilacco! + +vedi come storpiato è Mäometto! +Dinanzi a me sen va piangendo Alì, +fesso nel volto dal mento al ciuffetto. + +E tutti li altri che tu vedi qui, +seminator di scandalo e di scisma +fuor vivi, e però son fessi così. + +Un diavolo è qua dietro che n’accisma +sì crudelmente, al taglio de la spada +rimettendo ciascun di questa risma, + +quand’ avem volta la dolente strada; +però che le ferite son richiuse +prima ch’altri dinanzi li rivada. + +Ma tu chi se’ che ’n su lo scoglio muse, +forse per indugiar d’ire a la pena +ch’è giudicata in su le tue accuse?». + +«Né morte ’l giunse ancor, né colpa ’l mena», +rispuose ’l mio maestro, «a tormentarlo; +ma per dar lui esperïenza piena, + +a me, che morto son, convien menarlo +per lo ’nferno qua giù di giro in giro; +e quest’ è ver così com’ io ti parlo». + +Più fuor di cento che, quando l’udiro, +s’arrestaron nel fosso a riguardarmi +per maraviglia, oblïando il martiro. + +«Or dì a fra Dolcin dunque che s’armi, +tu che forse vedra’ il sole in breve, +s’ello non vuol qui tosto seguitarmi, + +sì di vivanda, che stretta di neve +non rechi la vittoria al Noarese, +ch’altrimenti acquistar non saria leve». + +Poi che l’un piè per girsene sospese, +Mäometto mi disse esta parola; +indi a partirsi in terra lo distese. + +Un altro, che forata avea la gola +e tronco ’l naso infin sotto le ciglia, +e non avea mai ch’una orecchia sola, + +ristato a riguardar per maraviglia +con li altri, innanzi a li altri aprì la canna, +ch’era di fuor d’ogne parte vermiglia, + +e disse: «O tu cui colpa non condanna +e cu’ io vidi su in terra latina, +se troppa simiglianza non m’inganna, + +rimembriti di Pier da Medicina, +se mai torni a veder lo dolce piano +che da Vercelli a Marcabò dichina. + +E fa saper a’ due miglior da Fano, +a messer Guido e anco ad Angiolello, +che, se l’antiveder qui non è vano, + +gittati saran fuor di lor vasello +e mazzerati presso a la Cattolica +per tradimento d’un tiranno fello. + +Tra l’isola di Cipri e di Maiolica +non vide mai sì gran fallo Nettuno, +non da pirate, non da gente argolica. + +Quel traditor che vede pur con l’uno, +e tien la terra che tale qui meco +vorrebbe di vedere esser digiuno, + +farà venirli a parlamento seco; +poi farà sì, ch’al vento di Focara +non sarà lor mestier voto né preco». + +E io a lui: «Dimostrami e dichiara, +se vuo’ ch’i’ porti sù di te novella, +chi è colui da la veduta amara». + +Allor puose la mano a la mascella +d’un suo compagno e la bocca li aperse, +gridando: «Questi è desso, e non favella. + +Questi, scacciato, il dubitar sommerse +in Cesare, affermando che ’l fornito +sempre con danno l’attender sofferse». + +Oh quanto mi pareva sbigottito +con la lingua tagliata ne la strozza +Curïo, ch’a dir fu così ardito! + +E un ch’avea l’una e l’altra man mozza, +levando i moncherin per l’aura fosca, +sì che ’l sangue facea la faccia sozza, + +gridò: «Ricordera’ti anche del Mosca, +che disse, lasso!, “Capo ha cosa fatta”, +che fu mal seme per la gente tosca». + +E io li aggiunsi: «E morte di tua schiatta»; +per ch’elli, accumulando duol con duolo, +sen gio come persona trista e matta. + +Ma io rimasi a riguardar lo stuolo, +e vidi cosa ch’io avrei paura, +sanza più prova, di contarla solo; + +se non che coscïenza m’assicura, +la buona compagnia che l’uom francheggia +sotto l’asbergo del sentirsi pura. + +Io vidi certo, e ancor par ch’io ’l veggia, +un busto sanza capo andar sì come +andavan li altri de la trista greggia; + +e ’l capo tronco tenea per le chiome, +pesol con mano a guisa di lanterna: +e quel mirava noi e dicea: «Oh me!». + +Di sé facea a sé stesso lucerna, +ed eran due in uno e uno in due; +com’ esser può, quei sa che sì governa. + +Quando diritto al piè del ponte fue, +levò ’l braccio alto con tutta la testa +per appressarne le parole sue, + +che fuoro: «Or vedi la pena molesta, +tu che, spirando, vai veggendo i morti: +vedi s’alcuna è grande come questa. + +E perché tu di me novella porti, +sappi ch’i’ son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli +che diedi al re giovane i ma’ conforti. + +Io feci il padre e ’l figlio in sé ribelli; +Achitofèl non fé più d’Absalone +e di Davìd coi malvagi punzelli. + +Perch’ io parti’ così giunte persone, +partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!, +dal suo principio ch’è in questo troncone. + +Così s’osserva in me lo contrapasso». + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXIX + + +La molta gente e le diverse piaghe +avean le luci mie sì inebrïate, +che de lo stare a piangere eran vaghe. + +Ma Virgilio mi disse: «Che pur guate? +perché la vista tua pur si soffolge +là giù tra l’ombre triste smozzicate? + +Tu non hai fatto sì a l’altre bolge; +pensa, se tu annoverar le credi, +che miglia ventidue la valle volge. + +E già la luna è sotto i nostri piedi; +lo tempo è poco omai che n’è concesso, +e altro è da veder che tu non vedi». + +«Se tu avessi», rispuos’ io appresso, +«atteso a la cagion per ch’io guardava, +forse m’avresti ancor lo star dimesso». + +Parte sen giva, e io retro li andava, +lo duca, già faccendo la risposta, +e soggiugnendo: «Dentro a quella cava + +dov’ io tenea or li occhi sì a posta, +credo ch’un spirto del mio sangue pianga +la colpa che là giù cotanto costa». + +Allor disse ’l maestro: «Non si franga +lo tuo pensier da qui innanzi sovr’ ello. +Attendi ad altro, ed ei là si rimanga; + +ch’io vidi lui a piè del ponticello +mostrarti e minacciar forte col dito, +e udi’ ’l nominar Geri del Bello. + +Tu eri allor sì del tutto impedito +sovra colui che già tenne Altaforte, +che non guardasti in là, sì fu partito». + +«O duca mio, la vïolenta morte +che non li è vendicata ancor», diss’ io, +«per alcun che de l’onta sia consorte, + +fece lui disdegnoso; ond’ el sen gio +sanza parlarmi, sì com’ ïo estimo: +e in ciò m’ha el fatto a sé più pio». + +Così parlammo infino al loco primo +che de lo scoglio l’altra valle mostra, +se più lume vi fosse, tutto ad imo. + +Quando noi fummo sor l’ultima chiostra +di Malebolge, sì che i suoi conversi +potean parere a la veduta nostra, + +lamenti saettaron me diversi, +che di pietà ferrati avean li strali; +ond’ io li orecchi con le man copersi. + +Qual dolor fora, se de li spedali +di Valdichiana tra ’l luglio e ’l settembre +e di Maremma e di Sardigna i mali + +fossero in una fossa tutti ’nsembre, +tal era quivi, e tal puzzo n’usciva +qual suol venir de le marcite membre. + +Noi discendemmo in su l’ultima riva +del lungo scoglio, pur da man sinistra; +e allor fu la mia vista più viva + +giù ver’ lo fondo, la ’ve la ministra +de l’alto Sire infallibil giustizia +punisce i falsador che qui registra. + +Non credo ch’a veder maggior tristizia +fosse in Egina il popol tutto infermo, +quando fu l’aere sì pien di malizia, + +che li animali, infino al picciol vermo, +cascaron tutti, e poi le genti antiche, +secondo che i poeti hanno per fermo, + +si ristorar di seme di formiche; +ch’era a veder per quella oscura valle +languir li spirti per diverse biche. + +Qual sovra ’l ventre e qual sovra le spalle +l’un de l’altro giacea, e qual carpone +si trasmutava per lo tristo calle. + +Passo passo andavam sanza sermone, +guardando e ascoltando li ammalati, +che non potean levar le lor persone. + +Io vidi due sedere a sé poggiati, +com’ a scaldar si poggia tegghia a tegghia, +dal capo al piè di schianze macolati; + +e non vidi già mai menare stregghia +a ragazzo aspettato dal segnorso, +né a colui che mal volontier vegghia, + +come ciascun menava spesso il morso +de l’unghie sopra sé per la gran rabbia +del pizzicor, che non ha più soccorso; + +e sì traevan giù l’unghie la scabbia, +come coltel di scardova le scaglie +o d’altro pesce che più larghe l’abbia. + +«O tu che con le dita ti dismaglie», +cominciò ’l duca mio a l’un di loro, +«e che fai d’esse talvolta tanaglie, + +dinne s’alcun Latino è tra costoro +che son quinc’ entro, se l’unghia ti basti +etternalmente a cotesto lavoro». + +«Latin siam noi, che tu vedi sì guasti +qui ambedue», rispuose l’un piangendo; +«ma tu chi se’ che di noi dimandasti?». + +E ’l duca disse: «I’ son un che discendo +con questo vivo giù di balzo in balzo, +e di mostrar lo ’nferno a lui intendo». + +Allor si ruppe lo comun rincalzo; +e tremando ciascuno a me si volse +con altri che l’udiron di rimbalzo. + +Lo buon maestro a me tutto s’accolse, +dicendo: «Dì a lor ciò che tu vuoli»; +e io incominciai, poscia ch’ei volse: + +«Se la vostra memoria non s’imboli +nel primo mondo da l’umane menti, +ma s’ella viva sotto molti soli, + +ditemi chi voi siete e di che genti; +la vostra sconcia e fastidiosa pena +di palesarvi a me non vi spaventi». + +«Io fui d’Arezzo, e Albero da Siena», +rispuose l’un, «mi fé mettere al foco; +ma quel per ch’io mori’ qui non mi mena. + +Vero è ch’i’ dissi lui, parlando a gioco: +“I’ mi saprei levar per l’aere a volo”; +e quei, ch’avea vaghezza e senno poco, + +volle ch’i’ li mostrassi l’arte; e solo +perch’ io nol feci Dedalo, mi fece +ardere a tal che l’avea per figliuolo. + +Ma ne l’ultima bolgia de le diece +me per l’alchìmia che nel mondo usai +dannò Minòs, a cui fallar non lece». + +E io dissi al poeta: «Or fu già mai +gente sì vana come la sanese? +Certo non la francesca sì d’assai!». + +Onde l’altro lebbroso, che m’intese, +rispuose al detto mio: «Tra’mene Stricca +che seppe far le temperate spese, + +e Niccolò che la costuma ricca +del garofano prima discoverse +ne l’orto dove tal seme s’appicca; + +e tra’ne la brigata in che disperse +Caccia d’Ascian la vigna e la gran fonda, +e l’Abbagliato suo senno proferse. + +Ma perché sappi chi sì ti seconda +contra i Sanesi, aguzza ver’ me l’occhio, +sì che la faccia mia ben ti risponda: + +sì vedrai ch’io son l’ombra di Capocchio, +che falsai li metalli con l’alchìmia; +e te dee ricordar, se ben t’adocchio, + +com’ io fui di natura buona scimia». + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXX + + +Nel tempo che Iunone era crucciata +per Semelè contra ’l sangue tebano, +come mostrò una e altra fïata, + +Atamante divenne tanto insano, +che veggendo la moglie con due figli +andar carcata da ciascuna mano, + +gridò: «Tendiam le reti, sì ch’io pigli +la leonessa e ’ leoncini al varco»; +e poi distese i dispietati artigli, + +prendendo l’un ch’avea nome Learco, +e rotollo e percosselo ad un sasso; +e quella s’annegò con l’altro carco. + +E quando la fortuna volse in basso +l’altezza de’ Troian che tutto ardiva, +sì che ’nsieme col regno il re fu casso, + +Ecuba trista, misera e cattiva, +poscia che vide Polissena morta, +e del suo Polidoro in su la riva + +del mar si fu la dolorosa accorta, +forsennata latrò sì come cane; +tanto il dolor le fé la mente torta. + +Ma né di Tebe furie né troiane +si vider mäi in alcun tanto crude, +non punger bestie, nonché membra umane, + +quant’ io vidi in due ombre smorte e nude, +che mordendo correvan di quel modo +che ’l porco quando del porcil si schiude. + +L’una giunse a Capocchio, e in sul nodo +del collo l’assannò, sì che, tirando, +grattar li fece il ventre al fondo sodo. + +E l’Aretin che rimase, tremando +mi disse: «Quel folletto è Gianni Schicchi, +e va rabbioso altrui così conciando». + +«Oh», diss’ io lui, «se l’altro non ti ficchi +li denti a dosso, non ti sia fatica +a dir chi è, pria che di qui si spicchi». + +Ed elli a me: «Quell’ è l’anima antica +di Mirra scellerata, che divenne +al padre, fuor del dritto amore, amica. + +Questa a peccar con esso così venne, +falsificando sé in altrui forma, +come l’altro che là sen va, sostenne, + +per guadagnar la donna de la torma, +falsificare in sé Buoso Donati, +testando e dando al testamento norma». + +E poi che i due rabbiosi fuor passati +sovra cu’ io avea l’occhio tenuto, +rivolsilo a guardar li altri mal nati. + +Io vidi un, fatto a guisa di lëuto, +pur ch’elli avesse avuta l’anguinaia +tronca da l’altro che l’uomo ha forcuto. + +La grave idropesì, che sì dispaia +le membra con l’omor che mal converte, +che ’l viso non risponde a la ventraia, + +faceva lui tener le labbra aperte +come l’etico fa, che per la sete +l’un verso ’l mento e l’altro in sù rinverte. + +«O voi che sanz’ alcuna pena siete, +e non so io perché, nel mondo gramo», +diss’ elli a noi, «guardate e attendete + +a la miseria del maestro Adamo; +io ebbi, vivo, assai di quel ch’i’ volli, +e ora, lasso!, un gocciol d’acqua bramo. + +Li ruscelletti che d’i verdi colli +del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno, +faccendo i lor canali freddi e molli, + +sempre mi stanno innanzi, e non indarno, +ché l’imagine lor vie più m’asciuga +che ’l male ond’ io nel volto mi discarno. + +La rigida giustizia che mi fruga +tragge cagion del loco ov’ io peccai +a metter più li miei sospiri in fuga. + +Ivi è Romena, là dov’ io falsai +la lega suggellata del Batista; +per ch’io il corpo sù arso lasciai. + +Ma s’io vedessi qui l’anima trista +di Guido o d’Alessandro o di lor frate, +per Fonte Branda non darei la vista. + +Dentro c’è l’una già, se l’arrabbiate +ombre che vanno intorno dicon vero; +ma che mi val, c’ho le membra legate? + +S’io fossi pur di tanto ancor leggero +ch’i’ potessi in cent’ anni andare un’oncia, +io sarei messo già per lo sentiero, + +cercando lui tra questa gente sconcia, +con tutto ch’ella volge undici miglia, +e men d’un mezzo di traverso non ci ha. + +Io son per lor tra sì fatta famiglia; +e’ m’indussero a batter li fiorini +ch’avevan tre carati di mondiglia». + +E io a lui: «Chi son li due tapini +che fumman come man bagnate ’l verno, +giacendo stretti a’ tuoi destri confini?». + +«Qui li trovai—e poi volta non dierno—», +rispuose, «quando piovvi in questo greppo, +e non credo che dieno in sempiterno. + +L’una è la falsa ch’accusò Gioseppo; +l’altr’ è ’l falso Sinon greco di Troia: +per febbre aguta gittan tanto leppo». + +E l’un di lor, che si recò a noia +forse d’esser nomato sì oscuro, +col pugno li percosse l’epa croia. + +Quella sonò come fosse un tamburo; +e mastro Adamo li percosse il volto +col braccio suo, che non parve men duro, + +dicendo a lui: «Ancor che mi sia tolto +lo muover per le membra che son gravi, +ho io il braccio a tal mestiere sciolto». + +Ond’ ei rispuose: «Quando tu andavi +al fuoco, non l’avei tu così presto; +ma sì e più l’avei quando coniavi». + +E l’idropico: «Tu di’ ver di questo: +ma tu non fosti sì ver testimonio +là ’ve del ver fosti a Troia richesto». + +«S’io dissi falso, e tu falsasti il conio», +disse Sinon; «e son qui per un fallo, +e tu per più ch’alcun altro demonio!». + +«Ricorditi, spergiuro, del cavallo», +rispuose quel ch’avëa infiata l’epa; +«e sieti reo che tutto il mondo sallo!». + +«E te sia rea la sete onde ti crepa», +disse ’l Greco, «la lingua, e l’acqua marcia +che ’l ventre innanzi a li occhi sì t’assiepa!». + +Allora il monetier: «Così si squarcia +la bocca tua per tuo mal come suole; +ché, s’i’ ho sete e omor mi rinfarcia, + +tu hai l’arsura e ’l capo che ti duole, +e per leccar lo specchio di Narcisso, +non vorresti a ’nvitar molte parole». + +Ad ascoltarli er’ io del tutto fisso, +quando ’l maestro mi disse: «Or pur mira, +che per poco che teco non mi risso!». + +Quand’ io ’l senti’ a me parlar con ira, +volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna, +ch’ancor per la memoria mi si gira. + +Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna, +che sognando desidera sognare, +sì che quel ch’è, come non fosse, agogna, + +tal mi fec’ io, non possendo parlare, +che disïava scusarmi, e scusava +me tuttavia, e nol mi credea fare. + +«Maggior difetto men vergogna lava», +disse ’l maestro, «che ’l tuo non è stato; +però d’ogne trestizia ti disgrava. + +E fa ragion ch’io ti sia sempre allato, +se più avvien che fortuna t’accoglia +dove sien genti in simigliante piato: + +ché voler ciò udire è bassa voglia». + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXXI + + +Una medesma lingua pria mi morse, +sì che mi tinse l’una e l’altra guancia, +e poi la medicina mi riporse; + +così od’ io che solea far la lancia +d’Achille e del suo padre esser cagione +prima di trista e poi di buona mancia. + +Noi demmo il dosso al misero vallone +su per la ripa che ’l cinge dintorno, +attraversando sanza alcun sermone. + +Quiv’ era men che notte e men che giorno, +sì che ’l viso m’andava innanzi poco; +ma io senti’ sonare un alto corno, + +tanto ch’avrebbe ogne tuon fatto fioco, +che, contra sé la sua via seguitando, +dirizzò li occhi miei tutti ad un loco. + +Dopo la dolorosa rotta, quando +Carlo Magno perdé la santa gesta, +non sonò sì terribilmente Orlando. + +Poco portäi in là volta la testa, +che me parve veder molte alte torri; +ond’ io: «Maestro, dì, che terra è questa?». + +Ed elli a me: «Però che tu trascorri +per le tenebre troppo da la lungi, +avvien che poi nel maginare abborri. + +Tu vedrai ben, se tu là ti congiungi, +quanto ’l senso s’inganna di lontano; +però alquanto più te stesso pungi». + +Poi caramente mi prese per mano +e disse: «Pria che noi siam più avanti, +acciò che ’l fatto men ti paia strano, + +sappi che non son torri, ma giganti, +e son nel pozzo intorno da la ripa +da l’umbilico in giuso tutti quanti». + +Come quando la nebbia si dissipa, +lo sguardo a poco a poco raffigura +ciò che cela ’l vapor che l’aere stipa, + +così forando l’aura grossa e scura, +più e più appressando ver’ la sponda, +fuggiemi errore e cresciemi paura; + +però che, come su la cerchia tonda +Montereggion di torri si corona, +così la proda che ’l pozzo circonda + +torreggiavan di mezza la persona +li orribili giganti, cui minaccia +Giove del cielo ancora quando tuona. + +E io scorgeva già d’alcun la faccia, +le spalle e ’l petto e del ventre gran parte, +e per le coste giù ambo le braccia. + +Natura certo, quando lasciò l’arte +di sì fatti animali, assai fé bene +per tòrre tali essecutori a Marte. + +E s’ella d’elefanti e di balene +non si pente, chi guarda sottilmente, +più giusta e più discreta la ne tene; + +ché dove l’argomento de la mente +s’aggiugne al mal volere e a la possa, +nessun riparo vi può far la gente. + +La faccia sua mi parea lunga e grossa +come la pina di San Pietro a Roma, +e a sua proporzione eran l’altre ossa; + +sì che la ripa, ch’era perizoma +dal mezzo in giù, ne mostrava ben tanto +di sovra, che di giugnere a la chioma + +tre Frison s’averien dato mal vanto; +però ch’i’ ne vedea trenta gran palmi +dal loco in giù dov’ omo affibbia ’l manto. + +«Raphèl maì amècche zabì almi», +cominciò a gridar la fiera bocca, +cui non si convenia più dolci salmi. + +E ’l duca mio ver’ lui: «Anima sciocca, +tienti col corno, e con quel ti disfoga +quand’ ira o altra passïon ti tocca! + +Cércati al collo, e troverai la soga +che ’l tien legato, o anima confusa, +e vedi lui che ’l gran petto ti doga». + +Poi disse a me: «Elli stessi s’accusa; +questi è Nembrotto per lo cui mal coto +pur un linguaggio nel mondo non s’usa. + +Lasciànlo stare e non parliamo a vòto; +ché così è a lui ciascun linguaggio +come ’l suo ad altrui, ch’a nullo è noto». + +Facemmo adunque più lungo vïaggio, +vòlti a sinistra; e al trar d’un balestro +trovammo l’altro assai più fero e maggio. + +A cigner lui qual che fosse ’l maestro, +non so io dir, ma el tenea soccinto +dinanzi l’altro e dietro il braccio destro + +d’una catena che ’l tenea avvinto +dal collo in giù, sì che ’n su lo scoperto +si ravvolgëa infino al giro quinto. + +«Questo superbo volle esser esperto +di sua potenza contra ’l sommo Giove», +disse ’l mio duca, «ond’ elli ha cotal merto. + +Fïalte ha nome, e fece le gran prove +quando i giganti fer paura a’ dèi; +le braccia ch’el menò, già mai non move». + +E io a lui: «S’esser puote, io vorrei +che de lo smisurato Brïareo +esperïenza avesser li occhi mei». + +Ond’ ei rispuose: «Tu vedrai Anteo +presso di qui che parla ed è disciolto, +che ne porrà nel fondo d’ogne reo. + +Quel che tu vuo’ veder, più là è molto +ed è legato e fatto come questo, +salvo che più feroce par nel volto». + +Non fu tremoto già tanto rubesto, +che scotesse una torre così forte, +come Fïalte a scuotersi fu presto. + +Allor temett’ io più che mai la morte, +e non v’era mestier più che la dotta, +s’io non avessi viste le ritorte. + +Noi procedemmo più avante allotta, +e venimmo ad Anteo, che ben cinque alle, +sanza la testa, uscia fuor de la grotta. + +«O tu che ne la fortunata valle +che fece Scipïon di gloria reda, +quand’ Anibàl co’ suoi diede le spalle, + +recasti già mille leon per preda, +e che, se fossi stato a l’alta guerra +de’ tuoi fratelli, ancor par che si creda + +ch’avrebber vinto i figli de la terra: +mettine giù, e non ten vegna schifo, +dove Cocito la freddura serra. + +Non ci fare ire a Tizio né a Tifo: +questi può dar di quel che qui si brama; +però ti china e non torcer lo grifo. + +Ancor ti può nel mondo render fama, +ch’el vive, e lunga vita ancor aspetta +se ’nnanzi tempo grazia a sé nol chiama». + +Così disse ’l maestro; e quelli in fretta +le man distese, e prese ’l duca mio, +ond’ Ercule sentì già grande stretta. + +Virgilio, quando prender si sentio, +disse a me: «Fatti qua, sì ch’io ti prenda»; +poi fece sì ch’un fascio era elli e io. + +Qual pare a riguardar la Carisenda +sotto ’l chinato, quando un nuvol vada +sovr’ essa sì, ched ella incontro penda: + +tal parve Antëo a me che stava a bada +di vederlo chinare, e fu tal ora +ch’i’ avrei voluto ir per altra strada. + +Ma lievemente al fondo che divora +Lucifero con Giuda, ci sposò; +né, sì chinato, lì fece dimora, + +e come albero in nave si levò. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXXII + + +S’ïo avessi le rime aspre e chiocce, +come si converrebbe al tristo buco +sovra ’l qual pontan tutte l’altre rocce, + +io premerei di mio concetto il suco +più pienamente; ma perch’ io non l’abbo, +non sanza tema a dicer mi conduco; + +ché non è impresa da pigliare a gabbo +discriver fondo a tutto l’universo, +né da lingua che chiami mamma o babbo. + +Ma quelle donne aiutino il mio verso +ch’aiutaro Anfïone a chiuder Tebe, +sì che dal fatto il dir non sia diverso. + +Oh sovra tutte mal creata plebe +che stai nel loco onde parlare è duro, +mei foste state qui pecore o zebe! + +Come noi fummo giù nel pozzo scuro +sotto i piè del gigante assai più bassi, +e io mirava ancora a l’alto muro, + +dicere udi’mi: «Guarda come passi: +va sì, che tu non calchi con le piante +le teste de’ fratei miseri lassi». + +Per ch’io mi volsi, e vidimi davante +e sotto i piedi un lago che per gelo +avea di vetro e non d’acqua sembiante. + +Non fece al corso suo sì grosso velo +di verno la Danoia in Osterlicchi, +né Tanaï là sotto ’l freddo cielo, + +com’ era quivi; che se Tambernicchi +vi fosse sù caduto, o Pietrapana, +non avria pur da l’orlo fatto cricchi. + +E come a gracidar si sta la rana +col muso fuor de l’acqua, quando sogna +di spigolar sovente la villana, + +livide, insin là dove appar vergogna +eran l’ombre dolenti ne la ghiaccia, +mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna. + +Ognuna in giù tenea volta la faccia; +da bocca il freddo, e da li occhi il cor tristo +tra lor testimonianza si procaccia. + +Quand’ io m’ebbi dintorno alquanto visto, +volsimi a’ piedi, e vidi due sì stretti, +che ’l pel del capo avieno insieme misto. + +«Ditemi, voi che sì strignete i petti», +diss’ io, «chi siete?». E quei piegaro i colli; +e poi ch’ebber li visi a me eretti, + +li occhi lor, ch’eran pria pur dentro molli, +gocciar su per le labbra, e ’l gelo strinse +le lagrime tra essi e riserrolli. + +Con legno legno spranga mai non cinse +forte così; ond’ ei come due becchi +cozzaro insieme, tanta ira li vinse. + +E un ch’avea perduti ambo li orecchi +per la freddura, pur col viso in giùe, +disse: «Perché cotanto in noi ti specchi? + +Se vuoi saper chi son cotesti due, +la valle onde Bisenzo si dichina +del padre loro Alberto e di lor fue. + +D’un corpo usciro; e tutta la Caina +potrai cercare, e non troverai ombra +degna più d’esser fitta in gelatina: + +non quelli a cui fu rotto il petto e l’ombra +con esso un colpo per la man d’Artù; +non Focaccia; non questi che m’ingombra + +col capo sì, ch’i’ non veggio oltre più, +e fu nomato Sassol Mascheroni; +se tosco se’, ben sai omai chi fu. + +E perché non mi metti in più sermoni, +sappi ch’i’ fu’ il Camiscion de’ Pazzi; +e aspetto Carlin che mi scagioni». + +Poscia vid’ io mille visi cagnazzi +fatti per freddo; onde mi vien riprezzo, +e verrà sempre, de’ gelati guazzi. + +E mentre ch’andavamo inver’ lo mezzo +al quale ogne gravezza si rauna, +e io tremava ne l’etterno rezzo; + +se voler fu o destino o fortuna, +non so; ma, passeggiando tra le teste, +forte percossi ’l piè nel viso ad una. + +Piangendo mi sgridò: «Perché mi peste? +se tu non vieni a crescer la vendetta +di Montaperti, perché mi moleste?». + +E io: «Maestro mio, or qui m’aspetta, +sì ch’io esca d’un dubbio per costui; +poi mi farai, quantunque vorrai, fretta». + +Lo duca stette, e io dissi a colui +che bestemmiava duramente ancora: +«Qual se’ tu che così rampogni altrui?». + +«Or tu chi se’ che vai per l’Antenora, +percotendo», rispuose, «altrui le gote, +sì che, se fossi vivo, troppo fora?». + +«Vivo son io, e caro esser ti puote», +fu mia risposta, «se dimandi fama, +ch’io metta il nome tuo tra l’altre note». + +Ed elli a me: «Del contrario ho io brama. +Lèvati quinci e non mi dar più lagna, +ché mal sai lusingar per questa lama!». + +Allor lo presi per la cuticagna +e dissi: «El converrà che tu ti nomi, +o che capel qui sù non ti rimagna». + +Ond’ elli a me: «Perché tu mi dischiomi, +né ti dirò ch’io sia, né mosterrolti, +se mille fiate in sul capo mi tomi». + +Io avea già i capelli in mano avvolti, +e tratti glien’ avea più d’una ciocca, +latrando lui con li occhi in giù raccolti, + +quando un altro gridò: «Che hai tu, Bocca? +non ti basta sonar con le mascelle, +se tu non latri? qual diavol ti tocca?». + +«Omai», diss’ io, «non vo’ che più favelle, +malvagio traditor; ch’a la tua onta +io porterò di te vere novelle». + +«Va via», rispuose, «e ciò che tu vuoi conta; +ma non tacer, se tu di qua entro eschi, +di quel ch’ebbe or così la lingua pronta. + +El piange qui l’argento de’ Franceschi: +“Io vidi”, potrai dir, “quel da Duera +là dove i peccatori stanno freschi”. + +Se fossi domandato “Altri chi v’era?”, +tu hai dallato quel di Beccheria +di cui segò Fiorenza la gorgiera. + +Gianni de’ Soldanier credo che sia +più là con Ganellone e Tebaldello, +ch’aprì Faenza quando si dormia». + +Noi eravam partiti già da ello, +ch’io vidi due ghiacciati in una buca, +sì che l’un capo a l’altro era cappello; + +e come ’l pan per fame si manduca, +così ’l sovran li denti a l’altro pose +là ’ve ’l cervel s’aggiugne con la nuca: + +non altrimenti Tidëo si rose +le tempie a Menalippo per disdegno, +che quei faceva il teschio e l’altre cose. + +«O tu che mostri per sì bestial segno +odio sovra colui che tu ti mangi, +dimmi ’l perché», diss’ io, «per tal convegno, + +che se tu a ragion di lui ti piangi, +sappiendo chi voi siete e la sua pecca, +nel mondo suso ancora io te ne cangi, + +se quella con ch’io parlo non si secca». + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXXIII + + +La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto +quel peccator, forbendola a’ capelli +del capo ch’elli avea di retro guasto. + +Poi cominciò: «Tu vuo’ ch’io rinovelli +disperato dolor che ’l cor mi preme +già pur pensando, pria ch’io ne favelli. + +Ma se le mie parole esser dien seme +che frutti infamia al traditor ch’i’ rodo, +parlar e lagrimar vedrai insieme. + +Io non so chi tu se’ né per che modo +venuto se’ qua giù; ma fiorentino +mi sembri veramente quand’ io t’odo. + +Tu dei saper ch’i’ fui conte Ugolino, +e questi è l’arcivescovo Ruggieri: +or ti dirò perché i son tal vicino. + +Che per l’effetto de’ suo’ mai pensieri, +fidandomi di lui, io fossi preso +e poscia morto, dir non è mestieri; + +però quel che non puoi avere inteso, +cioè come la morte mia fu cruda, +udirai, e saprai s’e’ m’ha offeso. + +Breve pertugio dentro da la Muda, +la qual per me ha ’l titol de la fame, +e che conviene ancor ch’altrui si chiuda, + +m’avea mostrato per lo suo forame +più lune già, quand’ io feci ’l mal sonno +che del futuro mi squarciò ’l velame. + +Questi pareva a me maestro e donno, +cacciando il lupo e ’ lupicini al monte +per che i Pisan veder Lucca non ponno. + +Con cagne magre, studïose e conte +Gualandi con Sismondi e con Lanfranchi +s’avea messi dinanzi da la fronte. + +In picciol corso mi parieno stanchi +lo padre e ’ figli, e con l’agute scane +mi parea lor veder fender li fianchi. + +Quando fui desto innanzi la dimane, +pianger senti’ fra ’l sonno i miei figliuoli +ch’eran con meco, e dimandar del pane. + +Ben se’ crudel, se tu già non ti duoli +pensando ciò che ’l mio cor s’annunziava; +e se non piangi, di che pianger suoli? + +Già eran desti, e l’ora s’appressava +che ’l cibo ne solëa essere addotto, +e per suo sogno ciascun dubitava; + +e io senti’ chiavar l’uscio di sotto +a l’orribile torre; ond’ io guardai +nel viso a’ mie’ figliuoi sanza far motto. + +Io non piangëa, sì dentro impetrai: +piangevan elli; e Anselmuccio mio +disse: “Tu guardi sì, padre! che hai?”. + +Perciò non lagrimai né rispuos’ io +tutto quel giorno né la notte appresso, +infin che l’altro sol nel mondo uscìo. + +Come un poco di raggio si fu messo +nel doloroso carcere, e io scorsi +per quattro visi il mio aspetto stesso, + +ambo le man per lo dolor mi morsi; +ed ei, pensando ch’io ’l fessi per voglia +di manicar, di sùbito levorsi + +e disser: “Padre, assai ci fia men doglia +se tu mangi di noi: tu ne vestisti +queste misere carni, e tu le spoglia”. + +Queta’mi allor per non farli più tristi; +lo dì e l’altro stemmo tutti muti; +ahi dura terra, perché non t’apristi? + +Poscia che fummo al quarto dì venuti, +Gaddo mi si gittò disteso a’ piedi, +dicendo: “Padre mio, ché non m’aiuti?”. + +Quivi morì; e come tu mi vedi, +vid’ io cascar li tre ad uno ad uno +tra ’l quinto dì e ’l sesto; ond’ io mi diedi, + +già cieco, a brancolar sovra ciascuno, +e due dì li chiamai, poi che fur morti. +Poscia, più che ’l dolor, poté ’l digiuno». + +Quand’ ebbe detto ciò, con li occhi torti +riprese ’l teschio misero co’ denti, +che furo a l’osso, come d’un can, forti. + +Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti +del bel paese là dove ’l sì suona, +poi che i vicini a te punir son lenti, + +muovasi la Capraia e la Gorgona, +e faccian siepe ad Arno in su la foce, +sì ch’elli annieghi in te ogne persona! + +Che se ’l conte Ugolino aveva voce +d’aver tradita te de le castella, +non dovei tu i figliuoi porre a tal croce. + +Innocenti facea l’età novella, +novella Tebe, Uguiccione e ’l Brigata +e li altri due che ’l canto suso appella. + +Noi passammo oltre, là ’ve la gelata +ruvidamente un’altra gente fascia, +non volta in giù, ma tutta riversata. + +Lo pianto stesso lì pianger non lascia, +e ’l duol che truova in su li occhi rintoppo, +si volge in entro a far crescer l’ambascia; + +ché le lagrime prime fanno groppo, +e sì come visiere di cristallo, +rïempion sotto ’l ciglio tutto il coppo. + +E avvegna che, sì come d’un callo, +per la freddura ciascun sentimento +cessato avesse del mio viso stallo, + +già mi parea sentire alquanto vento; +per ch’io: «Maestro mio, questo chi move? +non è qua giù ogne vapore spento?». + +Ond’ elli a me: «Avaccio sarai dove +di ciò ti farà l’occhio la risposta, +veggendo la cagion che ’l fiato piove». + +E un de’ tristi de la fredda crosta +gridò a noi: «O anime crudeli +tanto che data v’è l’ultima posta, + +levatemi dal viso i duri veli, +sì ch’ïo sfoghi ’l duol che ’l cor m’impregna, +un poco, pria che ’l pianto si raggeli». + +Per ch’io a lui: «Se vuo’ ch’i’ ti sovvegna, +dimmi chi se’, e s’io non ti disbrigo, +al fondo de la ghiaccia ir mi convegna». + +Rispuose adunque: «I’ son frate Alberigo; +i’ son quel da le frutta del mal orto, +che qui riprendo dattero per figo». + +«Oh», diss’ io lui, «or se’ tu ancor morto?». +Ed elli a me: «Come ’l mio corpo stea +nel mondo sù, nulla scïenza porto. + +Cotal vantaggio ha questa Tolomea, +che spesse volte l’anima ci cade +innanzi ch’Atropòs mossa le dea. + +E perché tu più volentier mi rade +le ’nvetrïate lagrime dal volto, +sappie che, tosto che l’anima trade + +come fec’ ïo, il corpo suo l’è tolto +da un demonio, che poscia il governa +mentre che ’l tempo suo tutto sia vòlto. + +Ella ruina in sì fatta cisterna; +e forse pare ancor lo corpo suso +de l’ombra che di qua dietro mi verna. + +Tu ’l dei saper, se tu vien pur mo giuso: +elli è ser Branca Doria, e son più anni +poscia passati ch’el fu sì racchiuso». + +«Io credo», diss’ io lui, «che tu m’inganni; +ché Branca Doria non morì unquanche, +e mangia e bee e dorme e veste panni». + +«Nel fosso sù», diss’ el, «de’ Malebranche, +là dove bolle la tenace pece, +non era ancora giunto Michel Zanche, + +che questi lasciò il diavolo in sua vece +nel corpo suo, ed un suo prossimano +che ’l tradimento insieme con lui fece. + +Ma distendi oggimai in qua la mano; +aprimi li occhi». E io non gliel’ apersi; +e cortesia fu lui esser villano. + +Ahi Genovesi, uomini diversi +d’ogne costume e pien d’ogne magagna, +perché non siete voi del mondo spersi? + +Ché col peggiore spirto di Romagna +trovai di voi un tal, che per sua opra +in anima in Cocito già si bagna, + +e in corpo par vivo ancor di sopra. + + + + +Inferno +Canto XXXIV + + +«Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni +verso di noi; però dinanzi mira», +disse ’l maestro mio, «se tu ’l discerni». + +Come quando una grossa nebbia spira, +o quando l’emisperio nostro annotta, +par di lungi un molin che ’l vento gira, + +veder mi parve un tal dificio allotta; +poi per lo vento mi ristrinsi retro +al duca mio, ché non lì era altra grotta. + +Già era, e con paura il metto in metro, +là dove l’ombre tutte eran coperte, +e trasparien come festuca in vetro. + +Altre sono a giacere; altre stanno erte, +quella col capo e quella con le piante; +altra, com’ arco, il volto a’ piè rinverte. + +Quando noi fummo fatti tanto avante, +ch’al mio maestro piacque di mostrarmi +la creatura ch’ebbe il bel sembiante, + +d’innanzi mi si tolse e fé restarmi, +«Ecco Dite», dicendo, «ed ecco il loco +ove convien che di fortezza t’armi». + +Com’ io divenni allor gelato e fioco, +nol dimandar, lettor, ch’i’ non lo scrivo, +però ch’ogne parlar sarebbe poco. + +Io non mori’ e non rimasi vivo; +pensa oggimai per te, s’hai fior d’ingegno, +qual io divenni, d’uno e d’altro privo. + +Lo ’mperador del doloroso regno +da mezzo ’l petto uscia fuor de la ghiaccia; +e più con un gigante io mi convegno, + +che i giganti non fan con le sue braccia: +vedi oggimai quant’ esser dee quel tutto +ch’a così fatta parte si confaccia. + +S’el fu sì bel com’ elli è ora brutto, +e contra ’l suo fattore alzò le ciglia, +ben dee da lui procedere ogne lutto. + +Oh quanto parve a me gran maraviglia +quand’ io vidi tre facce a la sua testa! +L’una dinanzi, e quella era vermiglia; + +l’altr’ eran due, che s’aggiugnieno a questa +sovresso ’l mezzo di ciascuna spalla, +e sé giugnieno al loco de la cresta: + +e la destra parea tra bianca e gialla; +la sinistra a vedere era tal, quali +vegnon di là onde ’l Nilo s’avvalla. + +Sotto ciascuna uscivan due grand’ ali, +quanto si convenia a tanto uccello: +vele di mar non vid’ io mai cotali. + +Non avean penne, ma di vispistrello +era lor modo; e quelle svolazzava, +sì che tre venti si movean da ello: + +quindi Cocito tutto s’aggelava. +Con sei occhi piangëa, e per tre menti +gocciava ’l pianto e sanguinosa bava. + +Da ogne bocca dirompea co’ denti +un peccatore, a guisa di maciulla, +sì che tre ne facea così dolenti. + +A quel dinanzi il mordere era nulla +verso ’l graffiar, che talvolta la schiena +rimanea de la pelle tutta brulla. + +«Quell’ anima là sù c’ha maggior pena», +disse ’l maestro, «è Giuda Scarïotto, +che ’l capo ha dentro e fuor le gambe mena. + +De li altri due c’hanno il capo di sotto, +quel che pende dal nero ceffo è Bruto: +vedi come si storce, e non fa motto!; + +e l’altro è Cassio, che par sì membruto. +Ma la notte risurge, e oramai +è da partir, ché tutto avem veduto». + +Com’ a lui piacque, il collo li avvinghiai; +ed el prese di tempo e loco poste, +e quando l’ali fuoro aperte assai, + +appigliò sé a le vellute coste; +di vello in vello giù discese poscia +tra ’l folto pelo e le gelate croste. + +Quando noi fummo là dove la coscia +si volge, a punto in sul grosso de l’anche, +lo duca, con fatica e con angoscia, + +volse la testa ov’ elli avea le zanche, +e aggrappossi al pel com’ om che sale, +sì che ’n inferno i’ credea tornar anche. + +«Attienti ben, ché per cotali scale», +disse ’l maestro, ansando com’ uom lasso, +«conviensi dipartir da tanto male». + +Poi uscì fuor per lo fóro d’un sasso +e puose me in su l’orlo a sedere; +appresso porse a me l’accorto passo. + +Io levai li occhi e credetti vedere +Lucifero com’ io l’avea lasciato, +e vidili le gambe in sù tenere; + +e s’io divenni allora travagliato, +la gente grossa il pensi, che non vede +qual è quel punto ch’io avea passato. + +«Lèvati sù», disse ’l maestro, «in piede: +la via è lunga e ’l cammino è malvagio, +e già il sole a mezza terza riede». + +Non era camminata di palagio +là ’v’ eravam, ma natural burella +ch’avea mal suolo e di lume disagio. + +«Prima ch’io de l’abisso mi divella, +maestro mio», diss’ io quando fui dritto, +«a trarmi d’erro un poco mi favella: + +ov’ è la ghiaccia? e questi com’ è fitto +sì sottosopra? e come, in sì poc’ ora, +da sera a mane ha fatto il sol tragitto?». + +Ed elli a me: «Tu imagini ancora +d’esser di là dal centro, ov’ io mi presi +al pel del vermo reo che ’l mondo fóra. + +Di là fosti cotanto quant’ io scesi; +quand’ io mi volsi, tu passasti ’l punto +al qual si traggon d’ogne parte i pesi. + +E se’ or sotto l’emisperio giunto +ch’è contraposto a quel che la gran secca +coverchia, e sotto ’l cui colmo consunto + +fu l’uom che nacque e visse sanza pecca; +tu haï i piedi in su picciola spera +che l’altra faccia fa de la Giudecca. + +Qui è da man, quando di là è sera; +e questi, che ne fé scala col pelo, +fitto è ancora sì come prim’ era. + +Da questa parte cadde giù dal cielo; +e la terra, che pria di qua si sporse, +per paura di lui fé del mar velo, + +e venne a l’emisperio nostro; e forse +per fuggir lui lasciò qui loco vòto +quella ch’appar di qua, e sù ricorse». + +Luogo è là giù da Belzebù remoto +tanto quanto la tomba si distende, +che non per vista, ma per suono è noto + +d’un ruscelletto che quivi discende +per la buca d’un sasso, ch’elli ha roso, +col corso ch’elli avvolge, e poco pende. + +Lo duca e io per quel cammino ascoso +intrammo a ritornar nel chiaro mondo; +e sanza cura aver d’alcun riposo, + +salimmo sù, el primo e io secondo, +tanto ch’i’ vidi de le cose belle +che porta ’l ciel, per un pertugio tondo. + +E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle. + + + + +PURGATORIO + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto I + + +Per correr miglior acque alza le vele +omai la navicella del mio ingegno, +che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele; + +e canterò di quel secondo regno +dove l’umano spirito si purga +e di salire al ciel diventa degno. + +Ma qui la morta poesì resurga, +o sante Muse, poi che vostro sono; +e qui Calïopè alquanto surga, + +seguitando il mio canto con quel suono +di cui le Piche misere sentiro +lo colpo tal, che disperar perdono. + +Dolce color d’orïental zaffiro, +che s’accoglieva nel sereno aspetto +del mezzo, puro infino al primo giro, + +a li occhi miei ricominciò diletto, +tosto ch’io usci’ fuor de l’aura morta +che m’avea contristati li occhi e ’l petto. + +Lo bel pianeto che d’amar conforta +faceva tutto rider l’orïente, +velando i Pesci ch’erano in sua scorta. + +I’ mi volsi a man destra, e puosi mente +a l’altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle +non viste mai fuor ch’a la prima gente. + +Goder pareva ’l ciel di lor fiammelle: +oh settentrïonal vedovo sito, +poi che privato se’ di mirar quelle! + +Com’ io da loro sguardo fui partito, +un poco me volgendo a l ’altro polo, +là onde ’l Carro già era sparito, + +vidi presso di me un veglio solo, +degno di tanta reverenza in vista, +che più non dee a padre alcun figliuolo. + +Lunga la barba e di pel bianco mista +portava, a’ suoi capelli simigliante, +de’ quai cadeva al petto doppia lista. + +Li raggi de le quattro luci sante +fregiavan sì la sua faccia di lume, +ch’i’ ’l vedea come ’l sol fosse davante. + +«Chi siete voi che contro al cieco fiume +fuggita avete la pregione etterna?», +diss’ el, movendo quelle oneste piume. + +«Chi v’ha guidati, o che vi fu lucerna, +uscendo fuor de la profonda notte +che sempre nera fa la valle inferna? + +Son le leggi d’abisso così rotte? +o è mutato in ciel novo consiglio, +che, dannati, venite a le mie grotte?». + +Lo duca mio allor mi diè di piglio, +e con parole e con mani e con cenni +reverenti mi fé le gambe e ’l ciglio. + +Poscia rispuose lui: «Da me non venni: +donna scese del ciel, per li cui prieghi +de la mia compagnia costui sovvenni. + +Ma da ch’è tuo voler che più si spieghi +di nostra condizion com’ ell’ è vera, +esser non puote il mio che a te si nieghi. + +Questi non vide mai l’ultima sera; +ma per la sua follia le fu sì presso, +che molto poco tempo a volger era. + +Sì com’ io dissi, fui mandato ad esso +per lui campare; e non lì era altra via +che questa per la quale i’ mi son messo. + +Mostrata ho lui tutta la gente ria; +e ora intendo mostrar quelli spirti +che purgan sé sotto la tua balìa. + +Com’ io l’ho tratto, saria lungo a dirti; +de l’alto scende virtù che m’aiuta +conducerlo a vederti e a udirti. + +Or ti piaccia gradir la sua venuta: +libertà va cercando, ch’è sì cara, +come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta. + +Tu ’l sai, ché non ti fu per lei amara +in Utica la morte, ove lasciasti +la vesta ch’al gran dì sarà sì chiara. + +Non son li editti etterni per noi guasti, +ché questi vive e Minòs me non lega; +ma son del cerchio ove son li occhi casti + +di Marzia tua, che ’n vista ancor ti priega, +o santo petto, che per tua la tegni: +per lo suo amore adunque a noi ti piega. + +Lasciane andar per li tuoi sette regni; +grazie riporterò di te a lei, +se d’esser mentovato là giù degni». + +«Marzïa piacque tanto a li occhi miei +mentre ch’i’ fu’ di là», diss’ elli allora, +«che quante grazie volse da me, fei. + +Or che di là dal mal fiume dimora, +più muover non mi può, per quella legge +che fatta fu quando me n’usci’ fora. + +Ma se donna del ciel ti move e regge, +come tu di’, non c’è mestier lusinghe: +bastisi ben che per lei mi richegge. + +Va dunque, e fa che tu costui ricinghe +d’un giunco schietto e che li lavi ’l viso, +sì ch’ogne sucidume quindi stinghe; + +ché non si converria, l’occhio sorpriso +d’alcuna nebbia, andar dinanzi al primo +ministro, ch’è di quei di paradiso. + +Questa isoletta intorno ad imo ad imo, +là giù colà dove la batte l’onda, +porta di giunchi sovra ’l molle limo: + +null’ altra pianta che facesse fronda +o indurasse, vi puote aver vita, +però ch’a le percosse non seconda. + +Poscia non sia di qua vostra reddita; +lo sol vi mosterrà, che surge omai, +prendere il monte a più lieve salita». + +Così sparì; e io sù mi levai +sanza parlare, e tutto mi ritrassi +al duca mio, e li occhi a lui drizzai. + +El cominciò: «Figliuol, segui i miei passi: +volgianci in dietro, ché di qua dichina +questa pianura a’ suoi termini bassi». + +L’alba vinceva l’ora mattutina +che fuggia innanzi, sì che di lontano +conobbi il tremolar de la marina. + +Noi andavam per lo solingo piano +com’ om che torna a la perduta strada, +che ’nfino ad essa li pare ire in vano. + +Quando noi fummo là ’ve la rugiada +pugna col sole, per essere in parte +dove, ad orezza, poco si dirada, + +ambo le mani in su l’erbetta sparte +soavemente ’l mio maestro pose: +ond’ io, che fui accorto di sua arte, + +porsi ver’ lui le guance lagrimose; +ivi mi fece tutto discoverto +quel color che l’inferno mi nascose. + +Venimmo poi in sul lito diserto, +che mai non vide navicar sue acque +omo, che di tornar sia poscia esperto. + +Quivi mi cinse sì com’ altrui piacque: +oh maraviglia! ché qual elli scelse +l’umile pianta, cotal si rinacque + +subitamente là onde l’avelse. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto II + + +Già era ’l sole a l’orizzonte giunto +lo cui meridïan cerchio coverchia +Ierusalèm col suo più alto punto; + +e la notte, che opposita a lui cerchia, +uscia di Gange fuor con le Bilance, +che le caggion di man quando soverchia; + +sì che le bianche e le vermiglie guance, +là dov’ i’ era, de la bella Aurora +per troppa etate divenivan rance. + +Noi eravam lunghesso mare ancora, +come gente che pensa a suo cammino, +che va col cuore e col corpo dimora. + +Ed ecco, qual, sorpreso dal mattino, +per li grossi vapor Marte rosseggia +giù nel ponente sovra ’l suol marino, + +cotal m’apparve, s’io ancor lo veggia, +un lume per lo mar venir sì ratto, +che ’l muover suo nessun volar pareggia. + +Dal qual com’ io un poco ebbi ritratto +l’occhio per domandar lo duca mio, +rividil più lucente e maggior fatto. + +Poi d’ogne lato ad esso m’appario +un non sapeva che bianco, e di sotto +a poco a poco un altro a lui uscìo. + +Lo mio maestro ancor non facea motto, +mentre che i primi bianchi apparver ali; +allor che ben conobbe il galeotto, + +gridò: «Fa, fa che le ginocchia cali. +Ecco l’angel di Dio: piega le mani; +omai vedrai di sì fatti officiali. + +Vedi che sdegna li argomenti umani, +sì che remo non vuol, né altro velo +che l’ali sue, tra liti sì lontani. + +Vedi come l’ha dritte verso ’l cielo, +trattando l’aere con l’etterne penne, +che non si mutan come mortal pelo». + +Poi, come più e più verso noi venne +l’uccel divino, più chiaro appariva: +per che l’occhio da presso nol sostenne, + +ma chinail giuso; e quei sen venne a riva +con un vasello snelletto e leggero, +tanto che l’acqua nulla ne ’nghiottiva. + +Da poppa stava il celestial nocchiero, +tal che faria beato pur descripto; +e più di cento spirti entro sediero. + +‘In exitu Isräel de Aegypto’ +cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce +con quanto di quel salmo è poscia scripto. + +Poi fece il segno lor di santa croce; +ond’ ei si gittar tutti in su la piaggia: +ed el sen gì, come venne, veloce. + +La turba che rimase lì, selvaggia +parea del loco, rimirando intorno +come colui che nove cose assaggia. + +Da tutte parti saettava il giorno +lo sol, ch’avea con le saette conte +di mezzo ’l ciel cacciato Capricorno, + +quando la nova gente alzò la fronte +ver’ noi, dicendo a noi: «Se voi sapete, +mostratene la via di gire al monte». + +E Virgilio rispuose: «Voi credete +forse che siamo esperti d’esto loco; +ma noi siam peregrin come voi siete. + +Dianzi venimmo, innanzi a voi un poco, +per altra via, che fu sì aspra e forte, +che lo salire omai ne parrà gioco». + +L’anime, che si fuor di me accorte, +per lo spirare, ch’i’ era ancor vivo, +maravigliando diventaro smorte. + +E come a messagger che porta ulivo +tragge la gente per udir novelle, +e di calcar nessun si mostra schivo, + +così al viso mio s’affisar quelle +anime fortunate tutte quante, +quasi oblïando d’ire a farsi belle. + +Io vidi una di lor trarresi avante +per abbracciarmi con sì grande affetto, +che mosse me a far lo somigliante. + +Ohi ombre vane, fuor che ne l’aspetto! +tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi, +e tante mi tornai con esse al petto. + +Di maraviglia, credo, mi dipinsi; +per che l’ombra sorrise e si ritrasse, +e io, seguendo lei, oltre mi pinsi. + +Soavemente disse ch’io posasse; +allor conobbi chi era, e pregai +che, per parlarmi, un poco s’arrestasse. + +Rispuosemi: «Così com’ io t’amai +nel mortal corpo, così t’amo sciolta: +però m’arresto; ma tu perché vai?». + +«Casella mio, per tornar altra volta +là dov’ io son, fo io questo vïaggio», +diss’ io; «ma a te com’ è tanta ora tolta?». + +Ed elli a me: «Nessun m’è fatto oltraggio, +se quei che leva quando e cui li piace, +più volte m’ha negato esto passaggio; + +ché di giusto voler lo suo si face: +veramente da tre mesi elli ha tolto +chi ha voluto intrar, con tutta pace. + +Ond’ io, ch’era ora a la marina vòlto +dove l’acqua di Tevero s’insala, +benignamente fu’ da lui ricolto. + +A quella foce ha elli or dritta l’ala, +però che sempre quivi si ricoglie +qual verso Acheronte non si cala». + +E io: «Se nuova legge non ti toglie +memoria o uso a l’amoroso canto +che mi solea quetar tutte mie doglie, + +di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto +l’anima mia, che, con la sua persona +venendo qui, è affannata tanto!». + +‘Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona’ +cominciò elli allor sì dolcemente, +che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona. + +Lo mio maestro e io e quella gente +ch’eran con lui parevan sì contenti, +come a nessun toccasse altro la mente. + +Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti +a le sue note; ed ecco il veglio onesto +gridando: «Che è ciò, spiriti lenti? + +qual negligenza, quale stare è questo? +Correte al monte a spogliarvi lo scoglio +ch’esser non lascia a voi Dio manifesto». + +Come quando, cogliendo biado o loglio, +li colombi adunati a la pastura, +queti, sanza mostrar l’usato orgoglio, + +se cosa appare ond’ elli abbian paura, +subitamente lasciano star l’esca, +perch’ assaliti son da maggior cura; + +così vid’ io quella masnada fresca +lasciar lo canto, e fuggir ver’ la costa, +com’ om che va, né sa dove rïesca; + +né la nostra partita fu men tosta. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto III + + +Avvegna che la subitana fuga +dispergesse color per la campagna, +rivolti al monte ove ragion ne fruga, + +i’ mi ristrinsi a la fida compagna: +e come sare’ io sanza lui corso? +chi m’avria tratto su per la montagna? + +El mi parea da sé stesso rimorso: +o dignitosa coscïenza e netta, +come t’è picciol fallo amaro morso! + +Quando li piedi suoi lasciar la fretta, +che l’onestade ad ogn’ atto dismaga, +la mente mia, che prima era ristretta, + +lo ’ntento rallargò, sì come vaga, +e diedi ’l viso mio incontr’ al poggio +che ’nverso ’l ciel più alto si dislaga. + +Lo sol, che dietro fiammeggiava roggio, +rotto m’era dinanzi a la figura, +ch’avëa in me de’ suoi raggi l’appoggio. + +Io mi volsi dallato con paura +d’essere abbandonato, quand’ io vidi +solo dinanzi a me la terra oscura; + +e ’l mio conforto: «Perché pur diffidi?», +a dir mi cominciò tutto rivolto; +«non credi tu me teco e ch’io ti guidi? + +Vespero è già colà dov’ è sepolto +lo corpo dentro al quale io facea ombra; +Napoli l’ha, e da Brandizio è tolto. + +Ora, se innanzi a me nulla s’aombra, +non ti maravigliar più che d’i cieli +che l’uno a l’altro raggio non ingombra. + +A sofferir tormenti, caldi e geli +simili corpi la Virtù dispone +che, come fa, non vuol ch’a noi si sveli. + +Matto è chi spera che nostra ragione +possa trascorrer la infinita via +che tiene una sustanza in tre persone. + +State contenti, umana gente, al quia; +ché, se potuto aveste veder tutto, +mestier non era parturir Maria; + +e disïar vedeste sanza frutto +tai che sarebbe lor disio quetato, +ch’etternalmente è dato lor per lutto: + +io dico d’Aristotile e di Plato +e di molt’ altri»; e qui chinò la fronte, +e più non disse, e rimase turbato. + +Noi divenimmo intanto a piè del monte; +quivi trovammo la roccia sì erta, +che ’ndarno vi sarien le gambe pronte. + +Tra Lerice e Turbìa la più diserta, +la più rotta ruina è una scala, +verso di quella, agevole e aperta. + +«Or chi sa da qual man la costa cala», +disse ’l maestro mio fermando ’l passo, +«sì che possa salir chi va sanz’ ala?». + +E mentre ch’e’ tenendo ’l viso basso +essaminava del cammin la mente, +e io mirava suso intorno al sasso, + +da man sinistra m’apparì una gente +d’anime, che movieno i piè ver’ noi, +e non pareva, sì venïan lente. + +«Leva», diss’ io, «maestro, li occhi tuoi: +ecco di qua chi ne darà consiglio, +se tu da te medesmo aver nol puoi». + +Guardò allora, e con libero piglio +rispuose: «Andiamo in là, ch’ei vegnon piano; +e tu ferma la spene, dolce figlio». + +Ancora era quel popol di lontano, +i’ dico dopo i nostri mille passi, +quanto un buon gittator trarria con mano, + +quando si strinser tutti ai duri massi +de l’alta ripa, e stetter fermi e stretti +com’ a guardar, chi va dubbiando, stassi. + +«O ben finiti, o già spiriti eletti», +Virgilio incominciò, «per quella pace +ch’i’ credo che per voi tutti s’aspetti, + +ditene dove la montagna giace, +sì che possibil sia l’andare in suso; +ché perder tempo a chi più sa più spiace». + +Come le pecorelle escon del chiuso +a una, a due, a tre, e l’altre stanno +timidette atterrando l’occhio e ’l muso; + +e ciò che fa la prima, e l’altre fanno, +addossandosi a lei, s’ella s’arresta, +semplici e quete, e lo ’mperché non sanno; + +sì vid’ io muovere a venir la testa +di quella mandra fortunata allotta, +pudica in faccia e ne l’andare onesta. + +Come color dinanzi vider rotta +la luce in terra dal mio destro canto, +sì che l’ombra era da me a la grotta, + +restaro, e trasser sé in dietro alquanto, +e tutti li altri che venieno appresso, +non sappiendo ’l perché, fenno altrettanto. + +«Sanza vostra domanda io vi confesso +che questo è corpo uman che voi vedete; +per che ’l lume del sole in terra è fesso. + +Non vi maravigliate, ma credete +che non sanza virtù che da ciel vegna +cerchi di soverchiar questa parete». + +Così ’l maestro; e quella gente degna +«Tornate», disse, «intrate innanzi dunque», +coi dossi de le man faccendo insegna. + +E un di loro incominciò: «Chiunque +tu se’, così andando, volgi ’l viso: +pon mente se di là mi vedesti unque». + +Io mi volsi ver’ lui e guardail fiso: +biondo era e bello e di gentile aspetto, +ma l’un de’ cigli un colpo avea diviso. + +Quand’ io mi fui umilmente disdetto +d’averlo visto mai, el disse: «Or vedi»; +e mostrommi una piaga a sommo ’l petto. + +Poi sorridendo disse: «Io son Manfredi, +nepote di Costanza imperadrice; +ond’ io ti priego che, quando tu riedi, + +vadi a mia bella figlia, genitrice +de l’onor di Cicilia e d’Aragona, +e dichi ’l vero a lei, s’altro si dice. + +Poscia ch’io ebbi rotta la persona +di due punte mortali, io mi rendei, +piangendo, a quei che volontier perdona. + +Orribil furon li peccati miei; +ma la bontà infinita ha sì gran braccia, +che prende ciò che si rivolge a lei. + +Se ’l pastor di Cosenza, che a la caccia +di me fu messo per Clemente allora, +avesse in Dio ben letta questa faccia, + +l’ossa del corpo mio sarieno ancora +in co del ponte presso a Benevento, +sotto la guardia de la grave mora. + +Or le bagna la pioggia e move il vento +di fuor dal regno, quasi lungo ’l Verde, +dov’ e’ le trasmutò a lume spento. + +Per lor maladizion sì non si perde, +che non possa tornar, l’etterno amore, +mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde. + +Vero è che quale in contumacia more +di Santa Chiesa, ancor ch’al fin si penta, +star li convien da questa ripa in fore, + +per ognun tempo ch’elli è stato, trenta, +in sua presunzïon, se tal decreto +più corto per buon prieghi non diventa. + +Vedi oggimai se tu mi puoi far lieto, +revelando a la mia buona Costanza +come m’hai visto, e anco esto divieto; + +ché qui per quei di là molto s’avanza». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto IV + + +Quando per dilettanze o ver per doglie, +che alcuna virtù nostra comprenda, +l’anima bene ad essa si raccoglie, + +par ch’a nulla potenza più intenda; +e questo è contra quello error che crede +ch’un’anima sovr’ altra in noi s’accenda. + +E però, quando s’ode cosa o vede +che tegna forte a sé l’anima volta, +vassene ’l tempo e l’uom non se n’avvede; + +ch’altra potenza è quella che l’ascolta, +e altra è quella c’ha l’anima intera: +questa è quasi legata e quella è sciolta. + +Di ciò ebb’ io esperïenza vera, +udendo quello spirto e ammirando; +ché ben cinquanta gradi salito era + +lo sole, e io non m’era accorto, quando +venimmo ove quell’ anime ad una +gridaro a noi: «Qui è vostro dimando». + +Maggiore aperta molte volte impruna +con una forcatella di sue spine +l’uom de la villa quando l’uva imbruna, + +che non era la calla onde salìne +lo duca mio, e io appresso, soli, +come da noi la schiera si partìne. + +Vassi in Sanleo e discendesi in Noli, +montasi su in Bismantova e ’n Cacume +con esso i piè; ma qui convien ch’om voli; + +dico con l’ale snelle e con le piume +del gran disio, di retro a quel condotto +che speranza mi dava e facea lume. + +Noi salavam per entro ’l sasso rotto, +e d’ogne lato ne stringea lo stremo, +e piedi e man volea il suol di sotto. + +Poi che noi fummo in su l’orlo suppremo +de l’alta ripa, a la scoperta piaggia, +«Maestro mio», diss’ io, «che via faremo?». + +Ed elli a me: «Nessun tuo passo caggia; +pur su al monte dietro a me acquista, +fin che n’appaia alcuna scorta saggia». + +Lo sommo er’ alto che vincea la vista, +e la costa superba più assai +che da mezzo quadrante a centro lista. + +Io era lasso, quando cominciai: +«O dolce padre, volgiti, e rimira +com’ io rimango sol, se non restai». + +«Figliuol mio», disse, «infin quivi ti tira», +additandomi un balzo poco in sùe +che da quel lato il poggio tutto gira. + +Sì mi spronaron le parole sue, +ch’i’ mi sforzai carpando appresso lui, +tanto che ’l cinghio sotto i piè mi fue. + +A seder ci ponemmo ivi ambedui +vòlti a levante ond’ eravam saliti, +che suole a riguardar giovare altrui. + +Li occhi prima drizzai ai bassi liti; +poscia li alzai al sole, e ammirava +che da sinistra n’eravam feriti. + +Ben s’avvide il poeta ch’ïo stava +stupido tutto al carro de la luce, +ove tra noi e Aquilone intrava. + +Ond’ elli a me: «Se Castore e Poluce +fossero in compagnia di quello specchio +che sù e giù del suo lume conduce, + +tu vedresti il Zodïaco rubecchio +ancora a l’Orse più stretto rotare, +se non uscisse fuor del cammin vecchio. + +Come ciò sia, se ’l vuoi poter pensare, +dentro raccolto, imagina Sïòn +con questo monte in su la terra stare + +sì, ch’amendue hanno un solo orizzòn +e diversi emisperi; onde la strada +che mal non seppe carreggiar Fetòn, + +vedrai come a costui convien che vada +da l’un, quando a colui da l’altro fianco, +se lo ’ntelletto tuo ben chiaro bada». + +«Certo, maestro mio,» diss’ io, «unquanco +non vid’ io chiaro sì com’ io discerno +là dove mio ingegno parea manco, + +che ’l mezzo cerchio del moto superno, +che si chiama Equatore in alcun’ arte, +e che sempre riman tra ’l sole e ’l verno, + +per la ragion che di’, quinci si parte +verso settentrïon, quanto li Ebrei +vedevan lui verso la calda parte. + +Ma se a te piace, volontier saprei +quanto avemo ad andar; ché ’l poggio sale +più che salir non posson li occhi miei». + +Ed elli a me: «Questa montagna è tale, +che sempre al cominciar di sotto è grave; +e quant’ om più va sù, e men fa male. + +Però, quand’ ella ti parrà soave +tanto, che sù andar ti fia leggero +com’ a seconda giù andar per nave, + +allor sarai al fin d’esto sentiero; +quivi di riposar l’affanno aspetta. +Più non rispondo, e questo so per vero». + +E com’ elli ebbe sua parola detta, +una voce di presso sonò: «Forse +che di sedere in pria avrai distretta!». + +Al suon di lei ciascun di noi si torse, +e vedemmo a mancina un gran petrone, +del qual né io né ei prima s’accorse. + +Là ci traemmo; e ivi eran persone +che si stavano a l’ombra dietro al sasso +come l’uom per negghienza a star si pone. + +E un di lor, che mi sembiava lasso, +sedeva e abbracciava le ginocchia, +tenendo ’l viso giù tra esse basso. + +«O dolce segnor mio», diss’ io, «adocchia +colui che mostra sé più negligente +che se pigrizia fosse sua serocchia». + +Allor si volse a noi e puose mente, +movendo ’l viso pur su per la coscia, +e disse: «Or va tu sù, che se’ valente!». + +Conobbi allor chi era, e quella angoscia +che m’avacciava un poco ancor la lena, +non m’impedì l’andare a lui; e poscia + +ch’a lui fu’ giunto, alzò la testa a pena, +dicendo: «Hai ben veduto come ’l sole +da l’omero sinistro il carro mena?». + +Li atti suoi pigri e le corte parole +mosser le labbra mie un poco a riso; +poi cominciai: «Belacqua, a me non dole + +di te omai; ma dimmi: perché assiso +quiritto se’? attendi tu iscorta, +o pur lo modo usato t’ha’ ripriso?». + +Ed elli: «O frate, andar in sù che porta? +ché non mi lascerebbe ire a’ martìri +l’angel di Dio che siede in su la porta. + +Prima convien che tanto il ciel m’aggiri +di fuor da essa, quanto fece in vita, +per ch’io ’ndugiai al fine i buon sospiri, + +se orazïone in prima non m’aita +che surga sù di cuor che in grazia viva; +l’altra che val, che ’n ciel non è udita?». + +E già il poeta innanzi mi saliva, +e dicea: «Vienne omai; vedi ch’è tocco +meridïan dal sole e a la riva + +cuopre la notte già col piè Morrocco». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto V + + +Io era già da quell’ ombre partito, +e seguitava l’orme del mio duca, +quando di retro a me, drizzando ’l dito, + +una gridò: «Ve’ che non par che luca +lo raggio da sinistra a quel di sotto, +e come vivo par che si conduca!». + +Li occhi rivolsi al suon di questo motto, +e vidile guardar per maraviglia +pur me, pur me, e ’l lume ch’era rotto. + +«Perché l’animo tuo tanto s’impiglia», +disse ’l maestro, «che l’andare allenti? +che ti fa ciò che quivi si pispiglia? + +Vien dietro a me, e lascia dir le genti: +sta come torre ferma, che non crolla +già mai la cima per soffiar di venti; + +ché sempre l’omo in cui pensier rampolla +sovra pensier, da sé dilunga il segno, +perché la foga l’un de l’altro insolla». + +Che potea io ridir, se non «Io vegno»? +Dissilo, alquanto del color consperso +che fa l’uom di perdon talvolta degno. + +E ’ntanto per la costa di traverso +venivan genti innanzi a noi un poco, +cantando ‘Miserere’ a verso a verso. + +Quando s’accorser ch’i’ non dava loco +per lo mio corpo al trapassar d’i raggi, +mutar lor canto in un «oh!» lungo e roco; + +e due di loro, in forma di messaggi, +corsero incontr’ a noi e dimandarne: +«Di vostra condizion fatene saggi». + +E ’l mio maestro: «Voi potete andarne +e ritrarre a color che vi mandaro +che ’l corpo di costui è vera carne. + +Se per veder la sua ombra restaro, +com’ io avviso, assai è lor risposto: +fàccianli onore, ed esser può lor caro». + +Vapori accesi non vid’ io sì tosto +di prima notte mai fender sereno, +né, sol calando, nuvole d’agosto, + +che color non tornasser suso in meno; +e, giunti là, con li altri a noi dier volta, +come schiera che scorre sanza freno. + +«Questa gente che preme a noi è molta, +e vegnonti a pregar», disse ’l poeta: +«però pur va, e in andando ascolta». + +«O anima che vai per esser lieta +con quelle membra con le quai nascesti», +venian gridando, «un poco il passo queta. + +Guarda s’alcun di noi unqua vedesti, +sì che di lui di là novella porti: +deh, perché vai? deh, perché non t’arresti? + +Noi fummo tutti già per forza morti, +e peccatori infino a l’ultima ora; +quivi lume del ciel ne fece accorti, + +sì che, pentendo e perdonando, fora +di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati, +che del disio di sé veder n’accora». + +E io: «Perché ne’ vostri visi guati, +non riconosco alcun; ma s’a voi piace +cosa ch’io possa, spiriti ben nati, + +voi dite, e io farò per quella pace +che, dietro a’ piedi di sì fatta guida, +di mondo in mondo cercar mi si face». + +E uno incominciò: «Ciascun si fida +del beneficio tuo sanza giurarlo, +pur che ’l voler nonpossa non ricida. + +Ond’ io, che solo innanzi a li altri parlo, +ti priego, se mai vedi quel paese +che siede tra Romagna e quel di Carlo, + +che tu mi sie di tuoi prieghi cortese +in Fano, sì che ben per me s’adori +pur ch’i’ possa purgar le gravi offese. + +Quindi fu’ io; ma li profondi fóri +ond’ uscì ’l sangue in sul quale io sedea, +fatti mi fuoro in grembo a li Antenori, + +là dov’ io più sicuro esser credea: +quel da Esti il fé far, che m’avea in ira +assai più là che dritto non volea. + +Ma s’io fosse fuggito inver’ la Mira, +quando fu’ sovragiunto ad Orïaco, +ancor sarei di là dove si spira. + +Corsi al palude, e le cannucce e ’l braco +m’impigliar sì ch’i’ caddi; e lì vid’ io +de le mie vene farsi in terra laco». + +Poi disse un altro: «Deh, se quel disio +si compia che ti tragge a l’alto monte, +con buona pïetate aiuta il mio! + +Io fui di Montefeltro, io son Bonconte; +Giovanna o altri non ha di me cura; +per ch’io vo tra costor con bassa fronte». + +E io a lui: «Qual forza o qual ventura +ti travïò sì fuor di Campaldino, +che non si seppe mai tua sepultura?». + +«Oh!», rispuos’ elli, «a piè del Casentino +traversa un’acqua c’ha nome l’Archiano, +che sovra l’Ermo nasce in Apennino. + +Là ’ve ’l vocabol suo diventa vano, +arriva’ io forato ne la gola, +fuggendo a piede e sanguinando il piano. + +Quivi perdei la vista e la parola; +nel nome di Maria fini’, e quivi +caddi, e rimase la mia carne sola. + +Io dirò vero, e tu ’l ridì tra ’ vivi: +l’angel di Dio mi prese, e quel d’inferno +gridava: “O tu del ciel, perché mi privi? + +Tu te ne porti di costui l’etterno +per una lagrimetta che ’l mi toglie; +ma io farò de l’altro altro governo!”. + +Ben sai come ne l’aere si raccoglie +quell’ umido vapor che in acqua riede, +tosto che sale dove ’l freddo il coglie. + +Giunse quel mal voler che pur mal chiede +con lo ’ntelletto, e mosse il fummo e ’l vento +per la virtù che sua natura diede. + +Indi la valle, come ’l dì fu spento, +da Pratomagno al gran giogo coperse +di nebbia; e ’l ciel di sopra fece intento, + +sì che ’l pregno aere in acqua si converse; +la pioggia cadde, e a’ fossati venne +di lei ciò che la terra non sofferse; + +e come ai rivi grandi si convenne, +ver’ lo fiume real tanto veloce +si ruinò, che nulla la ritenne. + +Lo corpo mio gelato in su la foce +trovò l’Archian rubesto; e quel sospinse +ne l’Arno, e sciolse al mio petto la croce + +ch’i’ fe’ di me quando ’l dolor mi vinse; +voltòmmi per le ripe e per lo fondo, +poi di sua preda mi coperse e cinse». + +«Deh, quando tu sarai tornato al mondo +e riposato de la lunga via», +seguitò ’l terzo spirito al secondo, + +«ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; +Siena mi fé, disfecemi Maremma: +salsi colui che ’nnanellata pria + +disposando m’avea con la sua gemma». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto VI + + +Quando si parte il gioco de la zara, +colui che perde si riman dolente, +repetendo le volte, e tristo impara; + +con l’altro se ne va tutta la gente; +qual va dinanzi, e qual di dietro il prende, +e qual dallato li si reca a mente; + +el non s’arresta, e questo e quello intende; +a cui porge la man, più non fa pressa; +e così da la calca si difende. + +Tal era io in quella turba spessa, +volgendo a loro, e qua e là, la faccia, +e promettendo mi sciogliea da essa. + +Quiv’ era l’Aretin che da le braccia +fiere di Ghin di Tacco ebbe la morte, +e l’altro ch’annegò correndo in caccia. + +Quivi pregava con le mani sporte +Federigo Novello, e quel da Pisa +che fé parer lo buon Marzucco forte. + +Vidi conte Orso e l’anima divisa +dal corpo suo per astio e per inveggia, +com’ e’ dicea, non per colpa commisa; + +Pier da la Broccia dico; e qui proveggia, +mentr’ è di qua, la donna di Brabante, +sì che però non sia di peggior greggia. + +Come libero fui da tutte quante +quell’ ombre che pregar pur ch’altri prieghi, +sì che s’avacci lor divenir sante, + +io cominciai: «El par che tu mi nieghi, +o luce mia, espresso in alcun testo +che decreto del cielo orazion pieghi; + +e questa gente prega pur di questo: +sarebbe dunque loro speme vana, +o non m’è ’l detto tuo ben manifesto?». + +Ed elli a me: «La mia scrittura è piana; +e la speranza di costor non falla, +se ben si guarda con la mente sana; + +ché cima di giudicio non s’avvalla +perché foco d’amor compia in un punto +ciò che de’ sodisfar chi qui s’astalla; + +e là dov’ io fermai cotesto punto, +non s’ammendava, per pregar, difetto, +perché ’l priego da Dio era disgiunto. + +Veramente a così alto sospetto +non ti fermar, se quella nol ti dice +che lume fia tra ’l vero e lo ’ntelletto. + +Non so se ’ntendi: io dico di Beatrice; +tu la vedrai di sopra, in su la vetta +di questo monte, ridere e felice». + +E io: «Segnore, andiamo a maggior fretta, +ché già non m’affatico come dianzi, +e vedi omai che ’l poggio l’ombra getta». + +«Noi anderem con questo giorno innanzi», +rispuose, «quanto più potremo omai; +ma ’l fatto è d’altra forma che non stanzi. + +Prima che sie là sù, tornar vedrai +colui che già si cuopre de la costa, +sì che ’ suoi raggi tu romper non fai. + +Ma vedi là un’anima che, posta +sola soletta, inverso noi riguarda: +quella ne ’nsegnerà la via più tosta». + +Venimmo a lei: o anima lombarda, +come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa +e nel mover de li occhi onesta e tarda! + +Ella non ci dicëa alcuna cosa, +ma lasciavane gir, solo sguardando +a guisa di leon quando si posa. + +Pur Virgilio si trasse a lei, pregando +che ne mostrasse la miglior salita; +e quella non rispuose al suo dimando, + +ma di nostro paese e de la vita +ci ’nchiese; e ’l dolce duca incominciava +«Mantüa . . . », e l’ombra, tutta in sé romita, + +surse ver’ lui del loco ove pria stava, +dicendo: «O Mantoano, io son Sordello +de la tua terra!»; e l’un l’altro abbracciava. + +Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, +nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta, +non donna di province, ma bordello! + +Quell’ anima gentil fu così presta, +sol per lo dolce suon de la sua terra, +di fare al cittadin suo quivi festa; + +e ora in te non stanno sanza guerra +li vivi tuoi, e l’un l’altro si rode +di quei ch’un muro e una fossa serra. + +Cerca, misera, intorno da le prode +le tue marine, e poi ti guarda in seno, +s’alcuna parte in te di pace gode. + +Che val perché ti racconciasse il freno +Iustinïano, se la sella è vòta? +Sanz’ esso fora la vergogna meno. + +Ahi gente che dovresti esser devota, +e lasciar seder Cesare in la sella, +se bene intendi ciò che Dio ti nota, + +guarda come esta fiera è fatta fella +per non esser corretta da li sproni, +poi che ponesti mano a la predella. + +O Alberto tedesco ch’abbandoni +costei ch’è fatta indomita e selvaggia, +e dovresti inforcar li suoi arcioni, + +giusto giudicio da le stelle caggia +sovra ’l tuo sangue, e sia novo e aperto, +tal che ’l tuo successor temenza n’aggia! + +Ch’avete tu e ’l tuo padre sofferto, +per cupidigia di costà distretti, +che ’l giardin de lo ’mperio sia diserto. + +Vieni a veder Montecchi e Cappelletti, +Monaldi e Filippeschi, uom sanza cura: +color già tristi, e questi con sospetti! + +Vien, crudel, vieni, e vedi la pressura +d’i tuoi gentili, e cura lor magagne; +e vedrai Santafior com’ è oscura! + +Vieni a veder la tua Roma che piagne +vedova e sola, e dì e notte chiama: +«Cesare mio, perché non m’accompagne?». + +Vieni a veder la gente quanto s’ama! +e se nulla di noi pietà ti move, +a vergognar ti vien de la tua fama. + +E se licito m’è, o sommo Giove +che fosti in terra per noi crucifisso, +son li giusti occhi tuoi rivolti altrove? + +O è preparazion che ne l’abisso +del tuo consiglio fai per alcun bene +in tutto de l’accorger nostro scisso? + +Ché le città d’Italia tutte piene +son di tiranni, e un Marcel diventa +ogne villan che parteggiando viene. + +Fiorenza mia, ben puoi esser contenta +di questa digression che non ti tocca, +mercé del popol tuo che si argomenta. + +Molti han giustizia in cuore, e tardi scocca +per non venir sanza consiglio a l’arco; +ma il popol tuo l’ha in sommo de la bocca. + +Molti rifiutan lo comune incarco; +ma il popol tuo solicito risponde +sanza chiamare, e grida: «I’ mi sobbarco!». + +Or ti fa lieta, ché tu hai ben onde: +tu ricca, tu con pace e tu con senno! +S’io dico ’l ver, l’effetto nol nasconde. + +Atene e Lacedemona, che fenno +l’antiche leggi e furon sì civili, +fecero al viver bene un picciol cenno + +verso di te, che fai tanto sottili +provedimenti, ch’a mezzo novembre +non giugne quel che tu d’ottobre fili. + +Quante volte, del tempo che rimembre, +legge, moneta, officio e costume +hai tu mutato, e rinovate membre! + +E se ben ti ricordi e vedi lume, +vedrai te somigliante a quella inferma +che non può trovar posa in su le piume, + +ma con dar volta suo dolore scherma. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto VII + + +Poscia che l’accoglienze oneste e liete +furo iterate tre e quattro volte, +Sordel si trasse, e disse: «Voi, chi siete?». + +«Anzi che a questo monte fosser volte +l’anime degne di salire a Dio, +fur l’ossa mie per Ottavian sepolte. + +Io son Virgilio; e per null’ altro rio +lo ciel perdei che per non aver fé». +Così rispuose allora il duca mio. + +Qual è colui che cosa innanzi sé +sùbita vede ond’ e’ si maraviglia, +che crede e non, dicendo «Ella è . . . non è . . . », + +tal parve quelli; e poi chinò le ciglia, +e umilmente ritornò ver’ lui, +e abbracciòl là ’ve ’l minor s’appiglia. + +«O gloria di Latin», disse, «per cui +mostrò ciò che potea la lingua nostra, +o pregio etterno del loco ond’ io fui, + +qual merito o qual grazia mi ti mostra? +S’io son d’udir le tue parole degno, +dimmi se vien d’inferno, e di qual chiostra». + +«Per tutt’ i cerchi del dolente regno», +rispuose lui, «son io di qua venuto; +virtù del ciel mi mosse, e con lei vegno. + +Non per far, ma per non fare ho perduto +a veder l’alto Sol che tu disiri +e che fu tardi per me conosciuto. + +Luogo è là giù non tristo di martìri, +ma di tenebre solo, ove i lamenti +non suonan come guai, ma son sospiri. + +Quivi sto io coi pargoli innocenti +dai denti morsi de la morte avante +che fosser da l’umana colpa essenti; + +quivi sto io con quei che le tre sante +virtù non si vestiro, e sanza vizio +conobber l’altre e seguir tutte quante. + +Ma se tu sai e puoi, alcuno indizio +dà noi per che venir possiam più tosto +là dove purgatorio ha dritto inizio». + +Rispuose: «Loco certo non c’è posto; +licito m’è andar suso e intorno; +per quanto ir posso, a guida mi t’accosto. + +Ma vedi già come dichina il giorno, +e andar sù di notte non si puote; +però è buon pensar di bel soggiorno. + +Anime sono a destra qua remote; +se mi consenti, io ti merrò ad esse, +e non sanza diletto ti fier note». + +«Com’ è ciò?», fu risposto. «Chi volesse +salir di notte, fora elli impedito +d’altrui, o non sarria ché non potesse?». + +E ’l buon Sordello in terra fregò ’l dito, +dicendo: «Vedi? sola questa riga +non varcheresti dopo ’l sol partito: + +non però ch’altra cosa desse briga, +che la notturna tenebra, ad ir suso; +quella col nonpoder la voglia intriga. + +Ben si poria con lei tornare in giuso +e passeggiar la costa intorno errando, +mentre che l’orizzonte il dì tien chiuso». + +Allora il mio segnor, quasi ammirando, +«Menane», disse, «dunque là ’ve dici +ch’aver si può diletto dimorando». + +Poco allungati c’eravam di lici, +quand’ io m’accorsi che ’l monte era scemo, +a guisa che i vallon li sceman quici. + +«Colà», disse quell’ ombra, «n’anderemo +dove la costa face di sé grembo; +e là il novo giorno attenderemo». + +Tra erto e piano era un sentiero schembo, +che ne condusse in fianco de la lacca, +là dove più ch’a mezzo muore il lembo. + +Oro e argento fine, cocco e biacca, +indaco, legno lucido e sereno, +fresco smeraldo in l’ora che si fiacca, + +da l’erba e da li fior, dentr’ a quel seno +posti, ciascun saria di color vinto, +come dal suo maggiore è vinto il meno. + +Non avea pur natura ivi dipinto, +ma di soavità di mille odori +vi facea uno incognito e indistinto. + +‘Salve, Regina’ in sul verde e ’n su’ fiori +quindi seder cantando anime vidi, +che per la valle non parean di fuori. + +«Prima che ’l poco sole omai s’annidi», +cominciò ’l Mantoan che ci avea vòlti, +«tra color non vogliate ch’io vi guidi. + +Di questo balzo meglio li atti e ’ volti +conoscerete voi di tutti quanti, +che ne la lama giù tra essi accolti. + +Colui che più siede alto e fa sembianti +d’aver negletto ciò che far dovea, +e che non move bocca a li altrui canti, + +Rodolfo imperador fu, che potea +sanar le piaghe c’hanno Italia morta, +sì che tardi per altri si ricrea. + +L’altro che ne la vista lui conforta, +resse la terra dove l’acqua nasce +che Molta in Albia, e Albia in mar ne porta: + +Ottacchero ebbe nome, e ne le fasce +fu meglio assai che Vincislao suo figlio +barbuto, cui lussuria e ozio pasce. + +E quel nasetto che stretto a consiglio +par con colui c’ha sì benigno aspetto, +morì fuggendo e disfiorando il giglio: + +guardate là come si batte il petto! +L’altro vedete c’ha fatto a la guancia +de la sua palma, sospirando, letto. + +Padre e suocero son del mal di Francia: +sanno la vita sua viziata e lorda, +e quindi viene il duol che sì li lancia. + +Quel che par sì membruto e che s’accorda, +cantando, con colui dal maschio naso, +d’ogne valor portò cinta la corda; + +e se re dopo lui fosse rimaso +lo giovanetto che retro a lui siede, +ben andava il valor di vaso in vaso, + +che non si puote dir de l’altre rede; +Iacomo e Federigo hanno i reami; +del retaggio miglior nessun possiede. + +Rade volte risurge per li rami +l’umana probitate; e questo vole +quei che la dà, perché da lui si chiami. + +Anche al nasuto vanno mie parole +non men ch’a l’altro, Pier, che con lui canta, +onde Puglia e Proenza già si dole. + +Tant’ è del seme suo minor la pianta, +quanto, più che Beatrice e Margherita, +Costanza di marito ancor si vanta. + +Vedete il re de la semplice vita +seder là solo, Arrigo d’Inghilterra: +questi ha ne’ rami suoi migliore uscita. + +Quel che più basso tra costor s’atterra, +guardando in suso, è Guiglielmo marchese, +per cui e Alessandria e la sua guerra + +fa pianger Monferrato e Canavese». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto VIII + + +Era già l’ora che volge il disio +ai navicanti e ’ntenerisce il core +lo dì c’han detto ai dolci amici addio; + +e che lo novo peregrin d’amore +punge, se ode squilla di lontano +che paia il giorno pianger che si more; + +quand’ io incominciai a render vano +l’udire e a mirare una de l’alme +surta, che l’ascoltar chiedea con mano. + +Ella giunse e levò ambo le palme, +ficcando li occhi verso l’orïente, +come dicesse a Dio: ‘D’altro non calme’. + +‘Te lucis ante’ sì devotamente +le uscìo di bocca e con sì dolci note, +che fece me a me uscir di mente; + +e l’altre poi dolcemente e devote +seguitar lei per tutto l’inno intero, +avendo li occhi a le superne rote. + +Aguzza qui, lettor, ben li occhi al vero, +ché ’l velo è ora ben tanto sottile, +certo che ’l trapassar dentro è leggero. + +Io vidi quello essercito gentile +tacito poscia riguardare in sùe, +quasi aspettando, palido e umìle; + +e vidi uscir de l’alto e scender giùe +due angeli con due spade affocate, +tronche e private de le punte sue. + +Verdi come fogliette pur mo nate +erano in veste, che da verdi penne +percosse traean dietro e ventilate. + +L’un poco sovra noi a star si venne, +e l’altro scese in l’opposita sponda, +sì che la gente in mezzo si contenne. + +Ben discernëa in lor la testa bionda; +ma ne la faccia l’occhio si smarria, +come virtù ch’a troppo si confonda. + +«Ambo vegnon del grembo di Maria», +disse Sordello, «a guardia de la valle, +per lo serpente che verrà vie via». + +Ond’ io, che non sapeva per qual calle, +mi volsi intorno, e stretto m’accostai, +tutto gelato, a le fidate spalle. + +E Sordello anco: «Or avvalliamo omai +tra le grandi ombre, e parleremo ad esse; +grazïoso fia lor vedervi assai». + +Solo tre passi credo ch’i’ scendesse, +e fui di sotto, e vidi un che mirava +pur me, come conoscer mi volesse. + +Temp’ era già che l’aere s’annerava, +ma non sì che tra li occhi suoi e ’ miei +non dichiarisse ciò che pria serrava. + +Ver’ me si fece, e io ver’ lui mi fei: +giudice Nin gentil, quanto mi piacque +quando ti vidi non esser tra ’ rei! + +Nullo bel salutar tra noi si tacque; +poi dimandò: «Quant’ è che tu venisti +a piè del monte per le lontane acque?». + +«Oh!», diss’ io lui, «per entro i luoghi tristi +venni stamane, e sono in prima vita, +ancor che l’altra, sì andando, acquisti». + +E come fu la mia risposta udita, +Sordello ed elli in dietro si raccolse +come gente di sùbito smarrita. + +L’uno a Virgilio e l’altro a un si volse +che sedea lì, gridando: «Sù, Currado! +vieni a veder che Dio per grazia volse». + +Poi, vòlto a me: «Per quel singular grado +che tu dei a colui che sì nasconde +lo suo primo perché, che non lì è guado, + +quando sarai di là da le larghe onde, +dì a Giovanna mia che per me chiami +là dove a li ’nnocenti si risponde. + +Non credo che la sua madre più m’ami, +poscia che trasmutò le bianche bende, +le quai convien che, misera!, ancor brami. + +Per lei assai di lieve si comprende +quanto in femmina foco d’amor dura, +se l’occhio o ’l tatto spesso non l’accende. + +Non le farà sì bella sepultura +la vipera che Melanesi accampa, +com’ avria fatto il gallo di Gallura». + +Così dicea, segnato de la stampa, +nel suo aspetto, di quel dritto zelo +che misuratamente in core avvampa. + +Li occhi miei ghiotti andavan pur al cielo, +pur là dove le stelle son più tarde, +sì come rota più presso a lo stelo. + +E ’l duca mio: «Figliuol, che là sù guarde?». +E io a lui: «A quelle tre facelle +di che ’l polo di qua tutto quanto arde». + +Ond’ elli a me: «Le quattro chiare stelle +che vedevi staman, son di là basse, +e queste son salite ov’ eran quelle». + +Com’ ei parlava, e Sordello a sé il trasse +dicendo: «Vedi là ’l nostro avversaro»; +e drizzò il dito perché ’n là guardasse. + +Da quella parte onde non ha riparo +la picciola vallea, era una biscia, +forse qual diede ad Eva il cibo amaro. + +Tra l’erba e ’ fior venìa la mala striscia, +volgendo ad ora ad or la testa, e ’l dosso +leccando come bestia che si liscia. + +Io non vidi, e però dicer non posso, +come mosser li astor celestïali; +ma vidi bene e l’uno e l’altro mosso. + +Sentendo fender l’aere a le verdi ali, +fuggì ’l serpente, e li angeli dier volta, +suso a le poste rivolando iguali. + +L’ombra che s’era al giudice raccolta +quando chiamò, per tutto quello assalto +punto non fu da me guardare sciolta. + +«Se la lucerna che ti mena in alto +truovi nel tuo arbitrio tanta cera +quant’ è mestiere infino al sommo smalto», + +cominciò ella, «se novella vera +di Val di Magra o di parte vicina +sai, dillo a me, che già grande là era. + +Fui chiamato Currado Malaspina; +non son l’antico, ma di lui discesi; +a’ miei portai l’amor che qui raffina». + +«Oh!», diss’ io lui, «per li vostri paesi +già mai non fui; ma dove si dimora +per tutta Europa ch’ei non sien palesi? + +La fama che la vostra casa onora, +grida i segnori e grida la contrada, +sì che ne sa chi non vi fu ancora; + +e io vi giuro, s’io di sopra vada, +che vostra gente onrata non si sfregia +del pregio de la borsa e de la spada. + +Uso e natura sì la privilegia, +che, perché il capo reo il mondo torca, +sola va dritta e ’l mal cammin dispregia». + +Ed elli: «Or va; che ’l sol non si ricorca +sette volte nel letto che ’l Montone +con tutti e quattro i piè cuopre e inforca, + +che cotesta cortese oppinïone +ti fia chiavata in mezzo de la testa +con maggior chiovi che d’altrui sermone, + +se corso di giudicio non s’arresta». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto IX + + +La concubina di Titone antico +già s’imbiancava al balco d’orïente, +fuor de le braccia del suo dolce amico; + +di gemme la sua fronte era lucente, +poste in figura del freddo animale +che con la coda percuote la gente; + +e la notte, de’ passi con che sale, +fatti avea due nel loco ov’ eravamo, +e ’l terzo già chinava in giuso l’ale; + +quand’ io, che meco avea di quel d’Adamo, +vinto dal sonno, in su l’erba inchinai +là ’ve già tutti e cinque sedavamo. + +Ne l’ora che comincia i tristi lai +la rondinella presso a la mattina, +forse a memoria de’ suo’ primi guai, + +e che la mente nostra, peregrina +più da la carne e men da’ pensier presa, +a le sue visïon quasi è divina, + +in sogno mi parea veder sospesa +un’aguglia nel ciel con penne d’oro, +con l’ali aperte e a calare intesa; + +ed esser mi parea là dove fuoro +abbandonati i suoi da Ganimede, +quando fu ratto al sommo consistoro. + +Fra me pensava: ‘Forse questa fiede +pur qui per uso, e forse d’altro loco +disdegna di portarne suso in piede’. + +Poi mi parea che, poi rotata un poco, +terribil come folgor discendesse, +e me rapisse suso infino al foco. + +Ivi parea che ella e io ardesse; +e sì lo ’ncendio imaginato cosse, +che convenne che ’l sonno si rompesse. + +Non altrimenti Achille si riscosse, +li occhi svegliati rivolgendo in giro +e non sappiendo là dove si fosse, + +quando la madre da Chirón a Schiro +trafuggò lui dormendo in le sue braccia, +là onde poi li Greci il dipartiro; + +che mi scoss’ io, sì come da la faccia +mi fuggì ’l sonno, e diventa’ ismorto, +come fa l’uom che, spaventato, agghiaccia. + +Dallato m’era solo il mio conforto, +e ’l sole er’ alto già più che due ore, +e ’l viso m’era a la marina torto. + +«Non aver tema», disse il mio segnore; +«fatti sicur, ché noi semo a buon punto; +non stringer, ma rallarga ogne vigore. + +Tu se’ omai al purgatorio giunto: +vedi là il balzo che ’l chiude dintorno; +vedi l’entrata là ’ve par digiunto. + +Dianzi, ne l’alba che procede al giorno, +quando l’anima tua dentro dormia, +sovra li fiori ond’ è là giù addorno + +venne una donna, e disse: “I’ son Lucia; +lasciatemi pigliar costui che dorme; +sì l’agevolerò per la sua via”. + +Sordel rimase e l’altre genti forme; +ella ti tolse, e come ’l dì fu chiaro, +sen venne suso; e io per le sue orme. + +Qui ti posò, ma pria mi dimostraro +li occhi suoi belli quella intrata aperta; +poi ella e ’l sonno ad una se n’andaro». + +A guisa d’uom che ’n dubbio si raccerta +e che muta in conforto sua paura, +poi che la verità li è discoperta, + +mi cambia’ io; e come sanza cura +vide me ’l duca mio, su per lo balzo +si mosse, e io di rietro inver’ l’altura. + +Lettor, tu vedi ben com’ io innalzo +la mia matera, e però con più arte +non ti maravigliar s’io la rincalzo. + +Noi ci appressammo, ed eravamo in parte +che là dove pareami prima rotto, +pur come un fesso che muro diparte, + +vidi una porta, e tre gradi di sotto +per gire ad essa, di color diversi, +e un portier ch’ancor non facea motto. + +E come l’occhio più e più v’apersi, +vidil seder sovra ’l grado sovrano, +tal ne la faccia ch’io non lo soffersi; + +e una spada nuda avëa in mano, +che reflettëa i raggi sì ver’ noi, +ch’io drizzava spesso il viso in vano. + +«Dite costinci: che volete voi?», +cominciò elli a dire, «ov’ è la scorta? +Guardate che ’l venir sù non vi nòi». + +«Donna del ciel, di queste cose accorta», +rispuose ’l mio maestro a lui, «pur dianzi +ne disse: “Andate là: quivi è la porta”». + +«Ed ella i passi vostri in bene avanzi», +ricominciò il cortese portinaio: +«Venite dunque a’ nostri gradi innanzi». + +Là ne venimmo; e lo scaglion primaio +bianco marmo era sì pulito e terso, +ch’io mi specchiai in esso qual io paio. + +Era il secondo tinto più che perso, +d’una petrina ruvida e arsiccia, +crepata per lo lungo e per traverso. + +Lo terzo, che di sopra s’ammassiccia, +porfido mi parea, sì fiammeggiante +come sangue che fuor di vena spiccia. + +Sovra questo tenëa ambo le piante +l’angel di Dio sedendo in su la soglia +che mi sembiava pietra di diamante. + +Per li tre gradi sù di buona voglia +mi trasse il duca mio, dicendo: «Chiedi +umilemente che ’l serrame scioglia». + +Divoto mi gittai a’ santi piedi; +misericordia chiesi e ch’el m’aprisse, +ma tre volte nel petto pria mi diedi. + +Sette P ne la fronte mi descrisse +col punton de la spada, e «Fa che lavi, +quando se’ dentro, queste piaghe» disse. + +Cenere, o terra che secca si cavi, +d’un color fora col suo vestimento; +e di sotto da quel trasse due chiavi. + +L’una era d’oro e l’altra era d’argento; +pria con la bianca e poscia con la gialla +fece a la porta sì, ch’i’ fu’ contento. + +«Quandunque l’una d’este chiavi falla, +che non si volga dritta per la toppa», +diss’ elli a noi, «non s’apre questa calla. + +Più cara è l’una; ma l’altra vuol troppa +d’arte e d’ingegno avanti che diserri, +perch’ ella è quella che ’l nodo digroppa. + +Da Pier le tegno; e dissemi ch’i’ erri +anzi ad aprir ch’a tenerla serrata, +pur che la gente a’ piedi mi s’atterri». + +Poi pinse l’uscio a la porta sacrata, +dicendo: «Intrate; ma facciovi accorti +che di fuor torna chi ’n dietro si guata». + +E quando fuor ne’ cardini distorti +li spigoli di quella regge sacra, +che di metallo son sonanti e forti, + +non rugghiò sì né si mostrò sì acra +Tarpëa, come tolto le fu il buono +Metello, per che poi rimase macra. + +Io mi rivolsi attento al primo tuono, +e ‘Te Deum laudamus’ mi parea +udire in voce mista al dolce suono. + +Tale imagine a punto mi rendea +ciò ch’io udiva, qual prender si suole +quando a cantar con organi si stea; + +ch’or sì or no s’intendon le parole. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto X + + +Poi fummo dentro al soglio de la porta +che ’l mal amor de l’anime disusa, +perché fa parer dritta la via torta, + +sonando la senti’ esser richiusa; +e s’io avesse li occhi vòlti ad essa, +qual fora stata al fallo degna scusa? + +Noi salavam per una pietra fessa, +che si moveva e d’una e d’altra parte, +sì come l’onda che fugge e s’appressa. + +«Qui si conviene usare un poco d’arte», +cominciò ’l duca mio, «in accostarsi +or quinci, or quindi al lato che si parte». + +E questo fece i nostri passi scarsi, +tanto che pria lo scemo de la luna +rigiunse al letto suo per ricorcarsi, + +che noi fossimo fuor di quella cruna; +ma quando fummo liberi e aperti +sù dove il monte in dietro si rauna, + +ïo stancato e amendue incerti +di nostra via, restammo in su un piano +solingo più che strade per diserti. + +Da la sua sponda, ove confina il vano, +al piè de l’alta ripa che pur sale, +misurrebbe in tre volte un corpo umano; + +e quanto l’occhio mio potea trar d’ale, +or dal sinistro e or dal destro fianco, +questa cornice mi parea cotale. + +Là sù non eran mossi i piè nostri anco, +quand’ io conobbi quella ripa intorno +che dritto di salita aveva manco, + +esser di marmo candido e addorno +d’intagli sì, che non pur Policleto, +ma la natura lì avrebbe scorno. + +L’angel che venne in terra col decreto +de la molt’ anni lagrimata pace, +ch’aperse il ciel del suo lungo divieto, + +dinanzi a noi pareva sì verace +quivi intagliato in un atto soave, +che non sembiava imagine che tace. + +Giurato si saria ch’el dicesse ‘Ave!’; +perché iv’ era imaginata quella +ch’ad aprir l’alto amor volse la chiave; + +e avea in atto impressa esta favella +‘Ecce ancilla Deï’, propriamente +come figura in cera si suggella. + +«Non tener pur ad un loco la mente», +disse ’l dolce maestro, che m’avea +da quella parte onde ’l cuore ha la gente. + +Per ch’i’ mi mossi col viso, e vedea +di retro da Maria, da quella costa +onde m’era colui che mi movea, + +un’altra storia ne la roccia imposta; +per ch’io varcai Virgilio, e fe’mi presso, +acciò che fosse a li occhi miei disposta. + +Era intagliato lì nel marmo stesso +lo carro e ’ buoi, traendo l’arca santa, +per che si teme officio non commesso. + +Dinanzi parea gente; e tutta quanta, +partita in sette cori, a’ due mie’ sensi +faceva dir l’un ‘No’, l’altro ‘Sì, canta’. + +Similemente al fummo de li ’ncensi +che v’era imaginato, li occhi e ’l naso +e al sì e al no discordi fensi. + +Lì precedeva al benedetto vaso, +trescando alzato, l’umile salmista, +e più e men che re era in quel caso. + +Di contra, effigïata ad una vista +d’un gran palazzo, Micòl ammirava +sì come donna dispettosa e trista. + +I’ mossi i piè del loco dov’ io stava, +per avvisar da presso un’altra istoria, +che di dietro a Micòl mi biancheggiava. + +Quiv’ era storïata l’alta gloria +del roman principato, il cui valore +mosse Gregorio a la sua gran vittoria; + +i’ dico di Traiano imperadore; +e una vedovella li era al freno, +di lagrime atteggiata e di dolore. + +Intorno a lui parea calcato e pieno +di cavalieri, e l’aguglie ne l’oro +sovr’ essi in vista al vento si movieno. + +La miserella intra tutti costoro +pareva dir: «Segnor, fammi vendetta +di mio figliuol ch’è morto, ond’ io m’accoro»; + +ed elli a lei rispondere: «Or aspetta +tanto ch’i’ torni»; e quella: «Segnor mio», +come persona in cui dolor s’affretta, + +«se tu non torni?»; ed ei: «Chi fia dov’ io, +la ti farà»; ed ella: «L’altrui bene +a te che fia, se ’l tuo metti in oblio?»; + +ond’ elli: «Or ti conforta; ch’ei convene +ch’i’ solva il mio dovere anzi ch’i’ mova: +giustizia vuole e pietà mi ritene». + +Colui che mai non vide cosa nova +produsse esto visibile parlare, +novello a noi perché qui non si trova. + +Mentr’ io mi dilettava di guardare +l’imagini di tante umilitadi, +e per lo fabbro loro a veder care, + +«Ecco di qua, ma fanno i passi radi», +mormorava il poeta, «molte genti: +questi ne ’nvïeranno a li alti gradi». + +Li occhi miei, ch’a mirare eran contenti +per veder novitadi ond’ e’ son vaghi, +volgendosi ver’ lui non furon lenti. + +Non vo’ però, lettor, che tu ti smaghi +di buon proponimento per udire +come Dio vuol che ’l debito si paghi. + +Non attender la forma del martìre: +pensa la succession; pensa ch’al peggio +oltre la gran sentenza non può ire. + +Io cominciai: «Maestro, quel ch’io veggio +muovere a noi, non mi sembian persone, +e non so che, sì nel veder vaneggio». + +Ed elli a me: «La grave condizione +di lor tormento a terra li rannicchia, +sì che ’ miei occhi pria n’ebber tencione. + +Ma guarda fiso là, e disviticchia +col viso quel che vien sotto a quei sassi: +già scorger puoi come ciascun si picchia». + +O superbi cristian, miseri lassi, +che, de la vista de la mente infermi, +fidanza avete ne’ retrosi passi, + +non v’accorgete voi che noi siam vermi +nati a formar l’angelica farfalla, +che vola a la giustizia sanza schermi? + +Di che l’animo vostro in alto galla, +poi siete quasi antomata in difetto, +sì come vermo in cui formazion falla? + +Come per sostentar solaio o tetto, +per mensola talvolta una figura +si vede giugner le ginocchia al petto, + +la qual fa del non ver vera rancura +nascere ’n chi la vede; così fatti +vid’ io color, quando puosi ben cura. + +Vero è che più e meno eran contratti +secondo ch’avien più e meno a dosso; +e qual più pazïenza avea ne li atti, + +piangendo parea dicer: ‘Più non posso’. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XI + + +«O Padre nostro, che ne’ cieli stai, +non circunscritto, ma per più amore +ch’ai primi effetti di là sù tu hai, + +laudato sia ’l tuo nome e ’l tuo valore +da ogne creatura, com’ è degno +di render grazie al tuo dolce vapore. + +Vegna ver’ noi la pace del tuo regno, +ché noi ad essa non potem da noi, +s’ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno. + +Come del suo voler li angeli tuoi +fan sacrificio a te, cantando osanna, +così facciano li uomini de’ suoi. + +Dà oggi a noi la cotidiana manna, +sanza la qual per questo aspro diserto +a retro va chi più di gir s’affanna. + +E come noi lo mal ch’avem sofferto +perdoniamo a ciascuno, e tu perdona +benigno, e non guardar lo nostro merto. + +Nostra virtù che di legger s’adona, +non spermentar con l’antico avversaro, +ma libera da lui che sì la sprona. + +Quest’ ultima preghiera, segnor caro, +già non si fa per noi, ché non bisogna, +ma per color che dietro a noi restaro». + +Così a sé e noi buona ramogna +quell’ ombre orando, andavan sotto ’l pondo, +simile a quel che talvolta si sogna, + +disparmente angosciate tutte a tondo +e lasse su per la prima cornice, +purgando la caligine del mondo. + +Se di là sempre ben per noi si dice, +di qua che dire e far per lor si puote +da quei c’hanno al voler buona radice? + +Ben si de’ loro atar lavar le note +che portar quinci, sì che, mondi e lievi, +possano uscire a le stellate ruote. + +«Deh, se giustizia e pietà vi disgrievi +tosto, sì che possiate muover l’ala, +che secondo il disio vostro vi lievi, + +mostrate da qual mano inver’ la scala +si va più corto; e se c’è più d’un varco, +quel ne ’nsegnate che men erto cala; + +ché questi che vien meco, per lo ’ncarco +de la carne d’Adamo onde si veste, +al montar sù, contra sua voglia, è parco». + +Le lor parole, che rendero a queste +che dette avea colui cu’ io seguiva, +non fur da cui venisser manifeste; + +ma fu detto: «A man destra per la riva +con noi venite, e troverete il passo +possibile a salir persona viva. + +E s’io non fossi impedito dal sasso +che la cervice mia superba doma, +onde portar convienmi il viso basso, + +cotesti, ch’ancor vive e non si noma, +guardere’ io, per veder s’i’ ’l conosco, +e per farlo pietoso a questa soma. + +Io fui latino e nato d’un gran Tosco: +Guiglielmo Aldobrandesco fu mio padre; +non so se ’l nome suo già mai fu vosco. + +L’antico sangue e l’opere leggiadre +d’i miei maggior mi fer sì arrogante, +che, non pensando a la comune madre, + +ogn’ uomo ebbi in despetto tanto avante, +ch’io ne mori’, come i Sanesi sanno, +e sallo in Campagnatico ogne fante. + +Io sono Omberto; e non pur a me danno +superbia fa, ché tutti miei consorti +ha ella tratti seco nel malanno. + +E qui convien ch’io questo peso porti +per lei, tanto che a Dio si sodisfaccia, +poi ch’io nol fe’ tra ’ vivi, qui tra ’ morti». + +Ascoltando chinai in giù la faccia; +e un di lor, non questi che parlava, +si torse sotto il peso che li ’mpaccia, + +e videmi e conobbemi e chiamava, +tenendo li occhi con fatica fisi +a me che tutto chin con loro andava. + +«Oh!», diss’ io lui, «non se’ tu Oderisi, +l’onor d’Agobbio e l’onor di quell’ arte +ch’alluminar chiamata è in Parisi?». + +«Frate», diss’ elli, «più ridon le carte +che pennelleggia Franco Bolognese; +l’onore è tutto or suo, e mio in parte. + +Ben non sare’ io stato sì cortese +mentre ch’io vissi, per lo gran disio +de l’eccellenza ove mio core intese. + +Di tal superbia qui si paga il fio; +e ancor non sarei qui, se non fosse +che, possendo peccar, mi volsi a Dio. + +Oh vana gloria de l’umane posse! +com’ poco verde in su la cima dura, +se non è giunta da l’etati grosse! + +Credette Cimabue ne la pittura +tener lo campo, e ora ha Giotto il grido, +sì che la fama di colui è scura. + +Così ha tolto l’uno a l’altro Guido +la gloria de la lingua; e forse è nato +chi l’uno e l’altro caccerà del nido. + +Non è il mondan romore altro ch’un fiato +di vento, ch’or vien quinci e or vien quindi, +e muta nome perché muta lato. + +Che voce avrai tu più, se vecchia scindi +da te la carne, che se fossi morto +anzi che tu lasciassi il ‘pappo’ e ’l ‘dindi’, + +pria che passin mill’ anni? ch’è più corto +spazio a l’etterno, ch’un muover di ciglia +al cerchio che più tardi in cielo è torto. + +Colui che del cammin sì poco piglia +dinanzi a me, Toscana sonò tutta; +e ora a pena in Siena sen pispiglia, + +ond’ era sire quando fu distrutta +la rabbia fiorentina, che superba +fu a quel tempo sì com’ ora è putta. + +La vostra nominanza è color d’erba, +che viene e va, e quei la discolora +per cui ella esce de la terra acerba». + +E io a lui: «Tuo vero dir m’incora +bona umiltà, e gran tumor m’appiani; +ma chi è quei di cui tu parlavi ora?». + +«Quelli è», rispuose, «Provenzan Salvani; +ed è qui perché fu presuntüoso +a recar Siena tutta a le sue mani. + +Ito è così e va, sanza riposo, +poi che morì; cotal moneta rende +a sodisfar chi è di là troppo oso». + +E io: «Se quello spirito ch’attende, +pria che si penta, l’orlo de la vita, +qua giù dimora e qua sù non ascende, + +se buona orazïon lui non aita, +prima che passi tempo quanto visse, +come fu la venuta lui largita?». + +«Quando vivea più glorïoso», disse, +«liberamente nel Campo di Siena, +ogne vergogna diposta, s’affisse; + +e lì, per trar l’amico suo di pena, +ch’e’ sostenea ne la prigion di Carlo, +si condusse a tremar per ogne vena. + +Più non dirò, e scuro so che parlo; +ma poco tempo andrà, che ’ tuoi vicini +faranno sì che tu potrai chiosarlo. + +Quest’ opera li tolse quei confini». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XII + + +Di pari, come buoi che vanno a giogo, +m’andava io con quell’ anima carca, +fin che ’l sofferse il dolce pedagogo. + +Ma quando disse: «Lascia lui e varca; +ché qui è buono con l’ali e coi remi, +quantunque può, ciascun pinger sua barca»; + +dritto sì come andar vuolsi rife’mi +con la persona, avvegna che i pensieri +mi rimanessero e chinati e scemi. + +Io m’era mosso, e seguia volontieri +del mio maestro i passi, e amendue +già mostravam com’ eravam leggeri; + +ed el mi disse: «Volgi li occhi in giùe: +buon ti sarà, per tranquillar la via, +veder lo letto de le piante tue». + +Come, perché di lor memoria sia, +sovra i sepolti le tombe terragne +portan segnato quel ch’elli eran pria, + +onde lì molte volte si ripiagne +per la puntura de la rimembranza, +che solo a’ pïi dà de le calcagne; + +sì vid’ io lì, ma di miglior sembianza +secondo l’artificio, figurato +quanto per via di fuor del monte avanza. + +Vedea colui che fu nobil creato +più ch’altra creatura, giù dal cielo +folgoreggiando scender, da l’un lato. + +Vedëa Brïareo fitto dal telo +celestïal giacer, da l’altra parte, +grave a la terra per lo mortal gelo. + +Vedea Timbreo, vedea Pallade e Marte, +armati ancora, intorno al padre loro, +mirar le membra d’i Giganti sparte. + +Vedea Nembròt a piè del gran lavoro +quasi smarrito, e riguardar le genti +che ’n Sennaàr con lui superbi fuoro. + +O Nïobè, con che occhi dolenti +vedea io te segnata in su la strada, +tra sette e sette tuoi figliuoli spenti! + +O Saùl, come in su la propria spada +quivi parevi morto in Gelboè, +che poi non sentì pioggia né rugiada! + +O folle Aragne, sì vedea io te +già mezza ragna, trista in su li stracci +de l’opera che mal per te si fé. + +O Roboàm, già non par che minacci +quivi ’l tuo segno; ma pien di spavento +nel porta un carro, sanza ch’altri il cacci. + +Mostrava ancor lo duro pavimento +come Almeon a sua madre fé caro +parer lo sventurato addornamento. + +Mostrava come i figli si gittaro +sovra Sennacherìb dentro dal tempio, +e come, morto lui, quivi il lasciaro. + +Mostrava la ruina e ’l crudo scempio +che fé Tamiri, quando disse a Ciro: +«Sangue sitisti, e io di sangue t’empio». + +Mostrava come in rotta si fuggiro +li Assiri, poi che fu morto Oloferne, +e anche le reliquie del martiro. + +Vedeva Troia in cenere e in caverne; +o Ilïón, come te basso e vile +mostrava il segno che lì si discerne! + +Qual di pennel fu maestro o di stile +che ritraesse l’ombre e ’ tratti ch’ivi +mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile? + +Morti li morti e i vivi parean vivi: +non vide mei di me chi vide il vero, +quant’ io calcai, fin che chinato givi. + +Or superbite, e via col viso altero, +figliuoli d’Eva, e non chinate il volto +sì che veggiate il vostro mal sentero! + +Più era già per noi del monte vòlto +e del cammin del sole assai più speso +che non stimava l’animo non sciolto, + +quando colui che sempre innanzi atteso +andava, cominciò: «Drizza la testa; +non è più tempo di gir sì sospeso. + +Vedi colà un angel che s’appresta +per venir verso noi; vedi che torna +dal servigio del dì l’ancella sesta. + +Di reverenza il viso e li atti addorna, +sì che i diletti lo ’nvïarci in suso; +pensa che questo dì mai non raggiorna!». + +Io era ben del suo ammonir uso +pur di non perder tempo, sì che ’n quella +materia non potea parlarmi chiuso. + +A noi venìa la creatura bella, +biancovestito e ne la faccia quale +par tremolando mattutina stella. + +Le braccia aperse, e indi aperse l’ale; +disse: «Venite: qui son presso i gradi, +e agevolemente omai si sale. + +A questo invito vegnon molto radi: +o gente umana, per volar sù nata, +perché a poco vento così cadi?». + +Menocci ove la roccia era tagliata; +quivi mi batté l’ali per la fronte; +poi mi promise sicura l’andata. + +Come a man destra, per salire al monte +dove siede la chiesa che soggioga +la ben guidata sopra Rubaconte, + +si rompe del montar l’ardita foga +per le scalee che si fero ad etade +ch’era sicuro il quaderno e la doga; + +così s’allenta la ripa che cade +quivi ben ratta da l’altro girone; +ma quinci e quindi l’alta pietra rade. + +Noi volgendo ivi le nostre persone, +‘Beati pauperes spiritu!’ voci +cantaron sì, che nol diria sermone. + +Ahi quanto son diverse quelle foci +da l’infernali! ché quivi per canti +s’entra, e là giù per lamenti feroci. + +Già montavam su per li scaglion santi, +ed esser mi parea troppo più lieve +che per lo pian non mi parea davanti. + +Ond’ io: «Maestro, dì, qual cosa greve +levata s’è da me, che nulla quasi +per me fatica, andando, si riceve?». + +Rispuose: «Quando i P che son rimasi +ancor nel volto tuo presso che stinti, +saranno, com’ è l’un, del tutto rasi, + +fier li tuoi piè dal buon voler sì vinti, +che non pur non fatica sentiranno, +ma fia diletto loro esser sù pinti». + +Allor fec’ io come color che vanno +con cosa in capo non da lor saputa, +se non che ’ cenni altrui sospecciar fanno; + +per che la mano ad accertar s’aiuta, +e cerca e truova e quello officio adempie +che non si può fornir per la veduta; + +e con le dita de la destra scempie +trovai pur sei le lettere che ’ncise +quel da le chiavi a me sovra le tempie: + +a che guardando, il mio duca sorrise. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XIII + + +Noi eravamo al sommo de la scala, +dove secondamente si risega +lo monte che salendo altrui dismala. + +Ivi così una cornice lega +dintorno il poggio, come la primaia; +se non che l’arco suo più tosto piega. + +Ombra non lì è né segno che si paia: +parsi la ripa e parsi la via schietta +col livido color de la petraia. + +«Se qui per dimandar gente s’aspetta», +ragionava il poeta, «io temo forse +che troppo avrà d’indugio nostra eletta». + +Poi fisamente al sole li occhi porse; +fece del destro lato a muover centro, +e la sinistra parte di sé torse. + +«O dolce lume a cui fidanza i’ entro +per lo novo cammin, tu ne conduci», +dicea, «come condur si vuol quinc’ entro. + +Tu scaldi il mondo, tu sovr’ esso luci; +s’altra ragione in contrario non ponta, +esser dien sempre li tuoi raggi duci». + +Quanto di qua per un migliaio si conta, +tanto di là eravam noi già iti, +con poco tempo, per la voglia pronta; + +e verso noi volar furon sentiti, +non però visti, spiriti parlando +a la mensa d’amor cortesi inviti. + +La prima voce che passò volando +‘Vinum non habent’ altamente disse, +e dietro a noi l’andò reïterando. + +E prima che del tutto non si udisse +per allungarsi, un’altra ‘I’ sono Oreste’ +passò gridando, e anco non s’affisse. + +«Oh!», diss’ io, «padre, che voci son queste?». +E com’ io domandai, ecco la terza +dicendo: ‘Amate da cui male aveste’. + +E ’l buon maestro: «Questo cinghio sferza +la colpa de la invidia, e però sono +tratte d’amor le corde de la ferza. + +Lo fren vuol esser del contrario suono; +credo che l’udirai, per mio avviso, +prima che giunghi al passo del perdono. + +Ma ficca li occhi per l’aere ben fiso, +e vedrai gente innanzi a noi sedersi, +e ciascun è lungo la grotta assiso». + +Allora più che prima li occhi apersi; +guarda’mi innanzi, e vidi ombre con manti +al color de la pietra non diversi. + +E poi che fummo un poco più avanti, +udia gridar: ‘Maria, òra per noi’: +gridar ‘Michele’ e ‘Pietro’ e ‘Tutti santi’. + +Non credo che per terra vada ancoi +omo sì duro, che non fosse punto +per compassion di quel ch’i’ vidi poi; + +ché, quando fui sì presso di lor giunto, +che li atti loro a me venivan certi, +per li occhi fui di grave dolor munto. + +Di vil ciliccio mi parean coperti, +e l’un sofferia l’altro con la spalla, +e tutti da la ripa eran sofferti. + +Così li ciechi a cui la roba falla, +stanno a’ perdoni a chieder lor bisogna, +e l’uno il capo sopra l’altro avvalla, + +perché ’n altrui pietà tosto si pogna, +non pur per lo sonar de le parole, +ma per la vista che non meno agogna. + +E come a li orbi non approda il sole, +così a l’ombre quivi, ond’ io parlo ora, +luce del ciel di sé largir non vole; + +ché a tutti un fil di ferro i cigli fóra +e cusce sì, come a sparvier selvaggio +si fa però che queto non dimora. + +A me pareva, andando, fare oltraggio, +veggendo altrui, non essendo veduto: +per ch’io mi volsi al mio consiglio saggio. + +Ben sapev’ ei che volea dir lo muto; +e però non attese mia dimanda, +ma disse: «Parla, e sie breve e arguto». + +Virgilio mi venìa da quella banda +de la cornice onde cader si puote, +perché da nulla sponda s’inghirlanda; + +da l’altra parte m’eran le divote +ombre, che per l’orribile costura +premevan sì, che bagnavan le gote. + +Volsimi a loro e: «O gente sicura», +incominciai, «di veder l’alto lume +che ’l disio vostro solo ha in sua cura, + +se tosto grazia resolva le schiume +di vostra coscïenza sì che chiaro +per essa scenda de la mente il fiume, + +ditemi, ché mi fia grazioso e caro, +s’anima è qui tra voi che sia latina; +e forse lei sarà buon s’i’ l’apparo». + +«O frate mio, ciascuna è cittadina +d’una vera città; ma tu vuo’ dire +che vivesse in Italia peregrina». + +Questo mi parve per risposta udire +più innanzi alquanto che là dov’ io stava, +ond’ io mi feci ancor più là sentire. + +Tra l’altre vidi un’ombra ch’aspettava +in vista; e se volesse alcun dir ‘Come?’, +lo mento a guisa d’orbo in sù levava. + +«Spirto», diss’ io, «che per salir ti dome, +se tu se’ quelli che mi rispondesti, +fammiti conto o per luogo o per nome». + +«Io fui sanese», rispuose, «e con questi +altri rimendo qui la vita ria, +lagrimando a colui che sé ne presti. + +Savia non fui, avvegna che Sapìa +fossi chiamata, e fui de li altrui danni +più lieta assai che di ventura mia. + +E perché tu non creda ch’io t’inganni, +odi s’i’ fui, com’ io ti dico, folle, +già discendendo l’arco d’i miei anni. + +Eran li cittadin miei presso a Colle +in campo giunti co’ loro avversari, +e io pregava Iddio di quel ch’e’ volle. + +Rotti fuor quivi e vòlti ne li amari +passi di fuga; e veggendo la caccia, +letizia presi a tutte altre dispari, + +tanto ch’io volsi in sù l’ardita faccia, +gridando a Dio: “Omai più non ti temo!”, +come fé ’l merlo per poca bonaccia. + +Pace volli con Dio in su lo stremo +de la mia vita; e ancor non sarebbe +lo mio dover per penitenza scemo, + +se ciò non fosse, ch’a memoria m’ebbe +Pier Pettinaio in sue sante orazioni, +a cui di me per caritate increbbe. + +Ma tu chi se’, che nostre condizioni +vai dimandando, e porti li occhi sciolti, +sì com’ io credo, e spirando ragioni?». + +«Li occhi», diss’ io, «mi fieno ancor qui tolti, +ma picciol tempo, ché poca è l’offesa +fatta per esser con invidia vòlti. + +Troppa è più la paura ond’ è sospesa +l’anima mia del tormento di sotto, +che già lo ’ncarco di là giù mi pesa». + +Ed ella a me: «Chi t’ha dunque condotto +qua sù tra noi, se giù ritornar credi?». +E io: «Costui ch’è meco e non fa motto. + +E vivo sono; e però mi richiedi, +spirito eletto, se tu vuo’ ch’i’ mova +di là per te ancor li mortai piedi». + +«Oh, questa è a udir sì cosa nuova», +rispuose, «che gran segno è che Dio t’ami; +però col priego tuo talor mi giova. + +E cheggioti, per quel che tu più brami, +se mai calchi la terra di Toscana, +che a’ miei propinqui tu ben mi rinfami. + +Tu li vedrai tra quella gente vana +che spera in Talamone, e perderagli +più di speranza ch’a trovar la Diana; + +ma più vi perderanno li ammiragli». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XIV + + +«Chi è costui che ’l nostro monte cerchia +prima che morte li abbia dato il volo, +e apre li occhi a sua voglia e coverchia?». + +«Non so chi sia, ma so ch’e’ non è solo; +domandal tu che più li t’avvicini, +e dolcemente, sì che parli, acco’lo». + +Così due spirti, l’uno a l’altro chini, +ragionavan di me ivi a man dritta; +poi fer li visi, per dirmi, supini; + +e disse l’uno: «O anima che fitta +nel corpo ancora inver’ lo ciel ten vai, +per carità ne consola e ne ditta + +onde vieni e chi se’; ché tu ne fai +tanto maravigliar de la tua grazia, +quanto vuol cosa che non fu più mai». + +E io: «Per mezza Toscana si spazia +un fiumicel che nasce in Falterona, +e cento miglia di corso nol sazia. + +Di sovr’ esso rech’ io questa persona: +dirvi ch’i’ sia, saria parlare indarno, +ché ’l nome mio ancor molto non suona». + +«Se ben lo ’ntendimento tuo accarno +con lo ’ntelletto», allora mi rispuose +quei che diceva pria, «tu parli d’Arno». + +E l’altro disse lui: «Perché nascose +questi il vocabol di quella riviera, +pur com’ om fa de l’orribili cose?». + +E l’ombra che di ciò domandata era, +si sdebitò così: «Non so; ma degno +ben è che ’l nome di tal valle pèra; + +ché dal principio suo, ov’ è sì pregno +l’alpestro monte ond’ è tronco Peloro, +che ’n pochi luoghi passa oltra quel segno, + +infin là ’ve si rende per ristoro +di quel che ’l ciel de la marina asciuga, +ond’ hanno i fiumi ciò che va con loro, + +vertù così per nimica si fuga +da tutti come biscia, o per sventura +del luogo, o per mal uso che li fruga: + +ond’ hanno sì mutata lor natura +li abitator de la misera valle, +che par che Circe li avesse in pastura. + +Tra brutti porci, più degni di galle +che d’altro cibo fatto in uman uso, +dirizza prima il suo povero calle. + +Botoli trova poi, venendo giuso, +ringhiosi più che non chiede lor possa, +e da lor disdegnosa torce il muso. + +Vassi caggendo; e quant’ ella più ’ngrossa, +tanto più trova di can farsi lupi +la maladetta e sventurata fossa. + +Discesa poi per più pelaghi cupi, +trova le volpi sì piene di froda, +che non temono ingegno che le occùpi. + +Né lascerò di dir perch’ altri m’oda; +e buon sarà costui, s’ancor s’ammenta +di ciò che vero spirto mi disnoda. + +Io veggio tuo nepote che diventa +cacciator di quei lupi in su la riva +del fiero fiume, e tutti li sgomenta. + +Vende la carne loro essendo viva; +poscia li ancide come antica belva; +molti di vita e sé di pregio priva. + +Sanguinoso esce de la trista selva; +lasciala tal, che di qui a mille anni +ne lo stato primaio non si rinselva». + +Com’ a l’annunzio di dogliosi danni +si turba il viso di colui ch’ascolta, +da qual che parte il periglio l’assanni, + +così vid’ io l’altr’ anima, che volta +stava a udir, turbarsi e farsi trista, +poi ch’ebbe la parola a sé raccolta. + +Lo dir de l’una e de l’altra la vista +mi fer voglioso di saper lor nomi, +e dimanda ne fei con prieghi mista; + +per che lo spirto che di pria parlòmi +ricominciò: «Tu vuo’ ch’io mi deduca +nel fare a te ciò che tu far non vuo’mi. + +Ma da che Dio in te vuol che traluca +tanto sua grazia, non ti sarò scarso; +però sappi ch’io fui Guido del Duca. + +Fu il sangue mio d’invidia sì rïarso, +che se veduto avesse uom farsi lieto, +visto m’avresti di livore sparso. + +Di mia semente cotal paglia mieto; +o gente umana, perché poni ’l core +là ’v’ è mestier di consorte divieto? + +Questi è Rinier; questi è ’l pregio e l’onore +de la casa da Calboli, ove nullo +fatto s’è reda poi del suo valore. + +E non pur lo suo sangue è fatto brullo, +tra ’l Po e ’l monte e la marina e ’l Reno, +del ben richesto al vero e al trastullo; + +ché dentro a questi termini è ripieno +di venenosi sterpi, sì che tardi +per coltivare omai verrebber meno. + +Ov’ è ’l buon Lizio e Arrigo Mainardi? +Pier Traversaro e Guido di Carpigna? +Oh Romagnuoli tornati in bastardi! + +Quando in Bologna un Fabbro si ralligna? +quando in Faenza un Bernardin di Fosco, +verga gentil di picciola gramigna? + +Non ti maravigliar s’io piango, Tosco, +quando rimembro, con Guido da Prata, +Ugolin d’Azzo che vivette nosco, + +Federigo Tignoso e sua brigata, +la casa Traversara e li Anastagi +(e l’una gente e l’altra è diretata), + +le donne e ’ cavalier, li affanni e li agi +che ne ’nvogliava amore e cortesia +là dove i cuor son fatti sì malvagi. + +O Bretinoro, ché non fuggi via, +poi che gita se n’è la tua famiglia +e molta gente per non esser ria? + +Ben fa Bagnacaval, che non rifiglia; +e mal fa Castrocaro, e peggio Conio, +che di figliar tai conti più s’impiglia. + +Ben faranno i Pagan, da che ’l demonio +lor sen girà; ma non però che puro +già mai rimagna d’essi testimonio. + +O Ugolin de’ Fantolin, sicuro +è ’l nome tuo, da che più non s’aspetta +chi far lo possa, tralignando, scuro. + +Ma va via, Tosco, omai; ch’or mi diletta +troppo di pianger più che di parlare, +sì m’ha nostra ragion la mente stretta». + +Noi sapavam che quell’ anime care +ci sentivano andar; però, tacendo, +facëan noi del cammin confidare. + +Poi fummo fatti soli procedendo, +folgore parve quando l’aere fende, +voce che giunse di contra dicendo: + +‘Anciderammi qualunque m’apprende’; +e fuggì come tuon che si dilegua, +se sùbito la nuvola scoscende. + +Come da lei l’udir nostro ebbe triegua, +ed ecco l’altra con sì gran fracasso, +che somigliò tonar che tosto segua: + +«Io sono Aglauro che divenni sasso»; +e allor, per ristrignermi al poeta, +in destro feci, e non innanzi, il passo. + +Già era l’aura d’ogne parte queta; +ed el mi disse: «Quel fu ’l duro camo +che dovria l’uom tener dentro a sua meta. + +Ma voi prendete l’esca, sì che l’amo +de l’antico avversaro a sé vi tira; +e però poco val freno o richiamo. + +Chiamavi ’l cielo e ’ntorno vi si gira, +mostrandovi le sue bellezze etterne, +e l’occhio vostro pur a terra mira; + +onde vi batte chi tutto discerne». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XV + + +Quanto tra l’ultimar de l’ora terza +e ’l principio del dì par de la spera +che sempre a guisa di fanciullo scherza, + +tanto pareva già inver’ la sera +essere al sol del suo corso rimaso; +vespero là, e qui mezza notte era. + +E i raggi ne ferien per mezzo ’l naso, +perché per noi girato era sì ’l monte, +che già dritti andavamo inver’ l’occaso, + +quand’ io senti’ a me gravar la fronte +a lo splendore assai più che di prima, +e stupor m’eran le cose non conte; + +ond’ io levai le mani inver’ la cima +de le mie ciglia, e fecimi ’l solecchio, +che del soverchio visibile lima. + +Come quando da l’acqua o da lo specchio +salta lo raggio a l’opposita parte, +salendo su per lo modo parecchio + +a quel che scende, e tanto si diparte +dal cader de la pietra in igual tratta, +sì come mostra esperïenza e arte; + +così mi parve da luce rifratta +quivi dinanzi a me esser percosso; +per che a fuggir la mia vista fu ratta. + +«Che è quel, dolce padre, a che non posso +schermar lo viso tanto che mi vaglia», +diss’ io, «e pare inver’ noi esser mosso?». + +«Non ti maravigliar s’ancor t’abbaglia +la famiglia del cielo», a me rispuose: +«messo è che viene ad invitar ch’om saglia. + +Tosto sarà ch’a veder queste cose +non ti fia grave, ma fieti diletto +quanto natura a sentir ti dispuose». + +Poi giunti fummo a l’angel benedetto, +con lieta voce disse: «Intrate quinci +ad un scaleo vie men che li altri eretto». + +Noi montavam, già partiti di linci, +e ‘Beati misericordes!’ fue +cantato retro, e ‘Godi tu che vinci!’. + +Lo mio maestro e io soli amendue +suso andavamo; e io pensai, andando, +prode acquistar ne le parole sue; + +e dirizza’mi a lui sì dimandando: +«Che volse dir lo spirto di Romagna, +e ‘divieto’ e ‘consorte’ menzionando?». + +Per ch’elli a me: «Di sua maggior magagna +conosce il danno; e però non s’ammiri +se ne riprende perché men si piagna. + +Perché s’appuntano i vostri disiri +dove per compagnia parte si scema, +invidia move il mantaco a’ sospiri. + +Ma se l’amor de la spera supprema +torcesse in suso il disiderio vostro, +non vi sarebbe al petto quella tema; + +ché, per quanti si dice più lì ‘nostro’, +tanto possiede più di ben ciascuno, +e più di caritate arde in quel chiostro». + +«Io son d’esser contento più digiuno», +diss’ io, «che se mi fosse pria taciuto, +e più di dubbio ne la mente aduno. + +Com’ esser puote ch’un ben, distributo +in più posseditor, faccia più ricchi +di sé che se da pochi è posseduto?». + +Ed elli a me: «Però che tu rificchi +la mente pur a le cose terrene, +di vera luce tenebre dispicchi. + +Quello infinito e ineffabil bene +che là sù è, così corre ad amore +com’ a lucido corpo raggio vene. + +Tanto si dà quanto trova d’ardore; +sì che, quantunque carità si stende, +cresce sovr’ essa l’etterno valore. + +E quanta gente più là sù s’intende, +più v’è da bene amare, e più vi s’ama, +e come specchio l’uno a l’altro rende. + +E se la mia ragion non ti disfama, +vedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamente +ti torrà questa e ciascun’ altra brama. + +Procaccia pur che tosto sieno spente, +come son già le due, le cinque piaghe, +che si richiudon per esser dolente». + +Com’ io voleva dicer ‘Tu m’appaghe’, +vidimi giunto in su l’altro girone, +sì che tacer mi fer le luci vaghe. + +Ivi mi parve in una visïone +estatica di sùbito esser tratto, +e vedere in un tempio più persone; + +e una donna, in su l’entrar, con atto +dolce di madre dicer: «Figliuol mio, +perché hai tu così verso noi fatto? + +Ecco, dolenti, lo tuo padre e io +ti cercavamo». E come qui si tacque, +ciò che pareva prima, dispario. + +Indi m’apparve un’altra con quell’ acque +giù per le gote che ’l dolor distilla +quando di gran dispetto in altrui nacque, + +e dir: «Se tu se’ sire de la villa +del cui nome ne’ dèi fu tanta lite, +e onde ogne scïenza disfavilla, + +vendica te di quelle braccia ardite +ch’abbracciar nostra figlia, o Pisistràto». +E ’l segnor mi parea, benigno e mite, + +risponder lei con viso temperato: +«Che farem noi a chi mal ne disira, +se quei che ci ama è per noi condannato?», + +Poi vidi genti accese in foco d’ira +con pietre un giovinetto ancider, forte +gridando a sé pur: «Martira, martira!». + +E lui vedea chinarsi, per la morte +che l’aggravava già, inver’ la terra, +ma de li occhi facea sempre al ciel porte, + +orando a l’alto Sire, in tanta guerra, +che perdonasse a’ suoi persecutori, +con quello aspetto che pietà diserra. + +Quando l’anima mia tornò di fori +a le cose che son fuor di lei vere, +io riconobbi i miei non falsi errori. + +Lo duca mio, che mi potea vedere +far sì com’ om che dal sonno si slega, +disse: «Che hai che non ti puoi tenere, + +ma se’ venuto più che mezza lega +velando li occhi e con le gambe avvolte, +a guisa di cui vino o sonno piega?». + +«O dolce padre mio, se tu m’ascolte, +io ti dirò», diss’ io, «ciò che m’apparve +quando le gambe mi furon sì tolte». + +Ed ei: «Se tu avessi cento larve +sovra la faccia, non mi sarian chiuse +le tue cogitazion, quantunque parve. + +Ciò che vedesti fu perché non scuse +d’aprir lo core a l’acque de la pace +che da l’etterno fonte son diffuse. + +Non dimandai “Che hai?” per quel che face +chi guarda pur con l’occhio che non vede, +quando disanimato il corpo giace; + +ma dimandai per darti forza al piede: +così frugar conviensi i pigri, lenti +ad usar lor vigilia quando riede». + +Noi andavam per lo vespero, attenti +oltre quanto potean li occhi allungarsi +contra i raggi serotini e lucenti. + +Ed ecco a poco a poco un fummo farsi +verso di noi come la notte oscuro; +né da quello era loco da cansarsi. + +Questo ne tolse li occhi e l’aere puro. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XVI + + +Buio d’inferno e di notte privata +d’ogne pianeto, sotto pover cielo, +quant’ esser può di nuvol tenebrata, + +non fece al viso mio sì grosso velo +come quel fummo ch’ivi ci coperse, +né a sentir di così aspro pelo, + +che l’occhio stare aperto non sofferse; +onde la scorta mia saputa e fida +mi s’accostò e l’omero m’offerse. + +Sì come cieco va dietro a sua guida +per non smarrirsi e per non dar di cozzo +in cosa che ’l molesti, o forse ancida, + +m’andava io per l’aere amaro e sozzo, +ascoltando il mio duca che diceva +pur: «Guarda che da me tu non sia mozzo». + +Io sentia voci, e ciascuna pareva +pregar per pace e per misericordia +l’Agnel di Dio che le peccata leva. + +Pur ‘Agnus Dei’ eran le loro essordia; +una parola in tutte era e un modo, +sì che parea tra esse ogne concordia. + +«Quei sono spirti, maestro, ch’i’ odo?», +diss’ io. Ed elli a me: «Tu vero apprendi, +e d’iracundia van solvendo il nodo». + +«Or tu chi se’ che ’l nostro fummo fendi, +e di noi parli pur come se tue +partissi ancor lo tempo per calendi?». + +Così per una voce detto fue; +onde ’l maestro mio disse: «Rispondi, +e domanda se quinci si va sùe». + +E io: «O creatura che ti mondi +per tornar bella a colui che ti fece, +maraviglia udirai, se mi secondi». + +«Io ti seguiterò quanto mi lece», +rispuose; «e se veder fummo non lascia, +l’udir ci terrà giunti in quella vece». + +Allora incominciai: «Con quella fascia +che la morte dissolve men vo suso, +e venni qui per l’infernale ambascia. + +E se Dio m’ha in sua grazia rinchiuso, +tanto che vuol ch’i’ veggia la sua corte +per modo tutto fuor del moderno uso, + +non mi celar chi fosti anzi la morte, +ma dilmi, e dimmi s’i’ vo bene al varco; +e tue parole fier le nostre scorte». + +«Lombardo fui, e fu’ chiamato Marco; +del mondo seppi, e quel valore amai +al quale ha or ciascun disteso l’arco. + +Per montar sù dirittamente vai». +Così rispuose, e soggiunse: «I’ ti prego +che per me prieghi quando sù sarai». + +E io a lui: «Per fede mi ti lego +di far ciò che mi chiedi; ma io scoppio +dentro ad un dubbio, s’io non me ne spiego. + +Prima era scempio, e ora è fatto doppio +ne la sentenza tua, che mi fa certo +qui, e altrove, quello ov’ io l’accoppio. + +Lo mondo è ben così tutto diserto +d’ogne virtute, come tu mi sone, +e di malizia gravido e coverto; + +ma priego che m’addite la cagione, +sì ch’i’ la veggia e ch’i’ la mostri altrui; +ché nel cielo uno, e un qua giù la pone». + +Alto sospir, che duolo strinse in «uhi!», +mise fuor prima; e poi cominciò: «Frate, +lo mondo è cieco, e tu vien ben da lui. + +Voi che vivete ogne cagion recate +pur suso al cielo, pur come se tutto +movesse seco di necessitate. + +Se così fosse, in voi fora distrutto +libero arbitrio, e non fora giustizia +per ben letizia, e per male aver lutto. + +Lo cielo i vostri movimenti inizia; +non dico tutti, ma, posto ch’i’ ’l dica, +lume v’è dato a bene e a malizia, + +e libero voler; che, se fatica +ne le prime battaglie col ciel dura, +poi vince tutto, se ben si notrica. + +A maggior forza e a miglior natura +liberi soggiacete; e quella cria +la mente in voi, che ’l ciel non ha in sua cura. + +Però, se ’l mondo presente disvia, +in voi è la cagione, in voi si cheggia; +e io te ne sarò or vera spia. + +Esce di mano a lui che la vagheggia +prima che sia, a guisa di fanciulla +che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia, + +l’anima semplicetta che sa nulla, +salvo che, mossa da lieto fattore, +volontier torna a ciò che la trastulla. + +Di picciol bene in pria sente sapore; +quivi s’inganna, e dietro ad esso corre, +se guida o fren non torce suo amore. + +Onde convenne legge per fren porre; +convenne rege aver, che discernesse +de la vera cittade almen la torre. + +Le leggi son, ma chi pon mano ad esse? +Nullo, però che ’l pastor che procede, +rugumar può, ma non ha l’unghie fesse; + +per che la gente, che sua guida vede +pur a quel ben fedire ond’ ella è ghiotta, +di quel si pasce, e più oltre non chiede. + +Ben puoi veder che la mala condotta +è la cagion che ’l mondo ha fatto reo, +e non natura che ’n voi sia corrotta. + +Soleva Roma, che ’l buon mondo feo, +due soli aver, che l’una e l’altra strada +facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo. + +L’un l’altro ha spento; ed è giunta la spada +col pasturale, e l’un con l’altro insieme +per viva forza mal convien che vada; + +però che, giunti, l’un l’altro non teme: +se non mi credi, pon mente a la spiga, +ch’ogn’ erba si conosce per lo seme. + +In sul paese ch’Adice e Po riga, +solea valore e cortesia trovarsi, +prima che Federigo avesse briga; + +or può sicuramente indi passarsi +per qualunque lasciasse, per vergogna +di ragionar coi buoni o d’appressarsi. + +Ben v’èn tre vecchi ancora in cui rampogna +l’antica età la nova, e par lor tardo +che Dio a miglior vita li ripogna: + +Currado da Palazzo e ’l buon Gherardo +e Guido da Castel, che mei si noma, +francescamente, il semplice Lombardo. + +Dì oggimai che la Chiesa di Roma, +per confondere in sé due reggimenti, +cade nel fango, e sé brutta e la soma». + +«O Marco mio», diss’ io, «bene argomenti; +e or discerno perché dal retaggio +li figli di Levì furono essenti. + +Ma qual Gherardo è quel che tu per saggio +di’ ch’è rimaso de la gente spenta, +in rimprovèro del secol selvaggio?». + +«O tuo parlar m’inganna, o el mi tenta», +rispuose a me; «ché, parlandomi tosco, +par che del buon Gherardo nulla senta. + +Per altro sopranome io nol conosco, +s’io nol togliessi da sua figlia Gaia. +Dio sia con voi, ché più non vegno vosco. + +Vedi l’albor che per lo fummo raia +già biancheggiare, e me convien partirmi +(l’angelo è ivi) prima ch’io li paia». + +Così tornò, e più non volle udirmi. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XVII + + +Ricorditi, lettor, se mai ne l’alpe +ti colse nebbia per la qual vedessi +non altrimenti che per pelle talpe, + +come, quando i vapori umidi e spessi +a diradar cominciansi, la spera +del sol debilemente entra per essi; + +e fia la tua imagine leggera +in giugnere a veder com’ io rividi +lo sole in pria, che già nel corcar era. + +Sì, pareggiando i miei co’ passi fidi +del mio maestro, usci’ fuor di tal nube +ai raggi morti già ne’ bassi lidi. + +O imaginativa che ne rube +talvolta sì di fuor, ch’om non s’accorge +perché dintorno suonin mille tube, + +chi move te, se ’l senso non ti porge? +Moveti lume che nel ciel s’informa, +per sé o per voler che giù lo scorge. + +De l’empiezza di lei che mutò forma +ne l’uccel ch’a cantar più si diletta, +ne l’imagine mia apparve l’orma; + +e qui fu la mia mente sì ristretta +dentro da sé, che di fuor non venìa +cosa che fosse allor da lei ricetta. + +Poi piovve dentro a l’alta fantasia +un crucifisso, dispettoso e fero +ne la sua vista, e cotal si moria; + +intorno ad esso era il grande Assüero, +Estèr sua sposa e ’l giusto Mardoceo, +che fu al dire e al far così intero. + +E come questa imagine rompeo +sé per sé stessa, a guisa d’una bulla +cui manca l’acqua sotto qual si feo, + +surse in mia visïone una fanciulla +piangendo forte, e dicea: «O regina, +perché per ira hai voluto esser nulla? + +Ancisa t’hai per non perder Lavina; +or m’hai perduta! Io son essa che lutto, +madre, a la tua pria ch’a l’altrui ruina». + +Come si frange il sonno ove di butto +nova luce percuote il viso chiuso, +che fratto guizza pria che muoia tutto; + +così l’imaginar mio cadde giuso +tosto che lume il volto mi percosse, +maggior assai che quel ch’è in nostro uso. + +I’ mi volgea per veder ov’ io fosse, +quando una voce disse «Qui si monta», +che da ogne altro intento mi rimosse; + +e fece la mia voglia tanto pronta +di riguardar chi era che parlava, +che mai non posa, se non si raffronta. + +Ma come al sol che nostra vista grava +e per soverchio sua figura vela, +così la mia virtù quivi mancava. + +«Questo è divino spirito, che ne la +via da ir sù ne drizza sanza prego, +e col suo lume sé medesmo cela. + +Sì fa con noi, come l’uom si fa sego; +ché quale aspetta prego e l’uopo vede, +malignamente già si mette al nego. + +Or accordiamo a tanto invito il piede; +procacciam di salir pria che s’abbui, +ché poi non si poria, se ’l dì non riede». + +Così disse il mio duca, e io con lui +volgemmo i nostri passi ad una scala; +e tosto ch’io al primo grado fui, + +senti’mi presso quasi un muover d’ala +e ventarmi nel viso e dir: ‘Beati +pacifici, che son sanz’ ira mala!’. + +Già eran sovra noi tanto levati +li ultimi raggi che la notte segue, +che le stelle apparivan da più lati. + +‘O virtù mia, perché sì ti dilegue?’, +fra me stesso dicea, ché mi sentiva +la possa de le gambe posta in triegue. + +Noi eravam dove più non saliva +la scala sù, ed eravamo affissi, +pur come nave ch’a la piaggia arriva. + +E io attesi un poco, s’io udissi +alcuna cosa nel novo girone; +poi mi volsi al maestro mio, e dissi: + +«Dolce mio padre, dì, quale offensione +si purga qui nel giro dove semo? +Se i piè si stanno, non stea tuo sermone». + +Ed elli a me: «L’amor del bene, scemo +del suo dover, quiritta si ristora; +qui si ribatte il mal tardato remo. + +Ma perché più aperto intendi ancora, +volgi la mente a me, e prenderai +alcun buon frutto di nostra dimora». + +«Né creator né creatura mai», +cominciò el, «figliuol, fu sanza amore, +o naturale o d’animo; e tu ’l sai. + +Lo naturale è sempre sanza errore, +ma l’altro puote errar per malo obietto +o per troppo o per poco di vigore. + +Mentre ch’elli è nel primo ben diretto, +e ne’ secondi sé stesso misura, +esser non può cagion di mal diletto; + +ma quando al mal si torce, o con più cura +o con men che non dee corre nel bene, +contra ’l fattore adovra sua fattura. + +Quinci comprender puoi ch’esser convene +amor sementa in voi d’ogne virtute +e d’ogne operazion che merta pene. + +Or, perché mai non può da la salute +amor del suo subietto volger viso, +da l’odio proprio son le cose tute; + +e perché intender non si può diviso, +e per sé stante, alcuno esser dal primo, +da quello odiare ogne effetto è deciso. + +Resta, se dividendo bene stimo, +che ’l mal che s’ama è del prossimo; ed esso +amor nasce in tre modi in vostro limo. + +È chi, per esser suo vicin soppresso, +spera eccellenza, e sol per questo brama +ch’el sia di sua grandezza in basso messo; + +è chi podere, grazia, onore e fama +teme di perder perch’ altri sormonti, +onde s’attrista sì che ’l contrario ama; + +ed è chi per ingiuria par ch’aonti, +sì che si fa de la vendetta ghiotto, +e tal convien che ’l male altrui impronti. + +Questo triforme amor qua giù di sotto +si piange: or vo’ che tu de l’altro intende, +che corre al ben con ordine corrotto. + +Ciascun confusamente un bene apprende +nel qual si queti l’animo, e disira; +per che di giugner lui ciascun contende. + +Se lento amore a lui veder vi tira +o a lui acquistar, questa cornice, +dopo giusto penter, ve ne martira. + +Altro ben è che non fa l’uom felice; +non è felicità, non è la buona +essenza, d’ogne ben frutto e radice. + +L’amor ch’ad esso troppo s’abbandona, +di sovr’ a noi si piange per tre cerchi; +ma come tripartito si ragiona, + +tacciolo, acciò che tu per te ne cerchi». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XVIII + + +Posto avea fine al suo ragionamento +l’alto dottore, e attento guardava +ne la mia vista s’io parea contento; + +e io, cui nova sete ancor frugava, +di fuor tacea, e dentro dicea: ‘Forse +lo troppo dimandar ch’io fo li grava’. + +Ma quel padre verace, che s’accorse +del timido voler che non s’apriva, +parlando, di parlare ardir mi porse. + +Ond’ io: «Maestro, il mio veder s’avviva +sì nel tuo lume, ch’io discerno chiaro +quanto la tua ragion parta o descriva. + +Però ti prego, dolce padre caro, +che mi dimostri amore, a cui reduci +ogne buono operare e ’l suo contraro». + +«Drizza», disse, «ver’ me l’agute luci +de lo ’ntelletto, e fieti manifesto +l’error de’ ciechi che si fanno duci. + +L’animo, ch’è creato ad amar presto, +ad ogne cosa è mobile che piace, +tosto che dal piacere in atto è desto. + +Vostra apprensiva da esser verace +tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega, +sì che l’animo ad essa volger face; + +e se, rivolto, inver’ di lei si piega, +quel piegare è amor, quell’ è natura +che per piacer di novo in voi si lega. + +Poi, come ’l foco movesi in altura +per la sua forma ch’è nata a salire +là dove più in sua matera dura, + +così l’animo preso entra in disire, +ch’è moto spiritale, e mai non posa +fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire. + +Or ti puote apparer quant’ è nascosa +la veritate a la gente ch’avvera +ciascun amore in sé laudabil cosa; + +però che forse appar la sua matera +sempre esser buona, ma non ciascun segno +è buono, ancor che buona sia la cera». + +«Le tue parole e ’l mio seguace ingegno», +rispuos’ io lui, «m’hanno amor discoverto, +ma ciò m’ha fatto di dubbiar più pregno; + +ché, s’amore è di fuori a noi offerto +e l’anima non va con altro piede, +se dritta o torta va, non è suo merto». + +Ed elli a me: «Quanto ragion qui vede, +dir ti poss’ io; da indi in là t’aspetta +pur a Beatrice, ch’è opra di fede. + +Ogne forma sustanzïal, che setta +è da matera ed è con lei unita, +specifica vertute ha in sé colletta, + +la qual sanza operar non è sentita, +né si dimostra mai che per effetto, +come per verdi fronde in pianta vita. + +Però, là onde vegna lo ’ntelletto +de le prime notizie, omo non sape, +e de’ primi appetibili l’affetto, + +che sono in voi sì come studio in ape +di far lo mele; e questa prima voglia +merto di lode o di biasmo non cape. + +Or perché a questa ogn’ altra si raccoglia, +innata v’è la virtù che consiglia, +e de l’assenso de’ tener la soglia. + +Quest’ è ’l principio là onde si piglia +ragion di meritare in voi, secondo +che buoni e rei amori accoglie e viglia. + +Color che ragionando andaro al fondo, +s’accorser d’esta innata libertate; +però moralità lasciaro al mondo. + +Onde, poniam che di necessitate +surga ogne amor che dentro a voi s’accende, +di ritenerlo è in voi la podestate. + +La nobile virtù Beatrice intende +per lo libero arbitrio, e però guarda +che l’abbi a mente, s’a parlar ten prende». + +La luna, quasi a mezza notte tarda, +facea le stelle a noi parer più rade, +fatta com’ un secchion che tuttor arda; + +e correa contro ’l ciel per quelle strade +che ’l sole infiamma allor che quel da Roma +tra ’ Sardi e ’ Corsi il vede quando cade. + +E quell’ ombra gentil per cui si noma +Pietola più che villa mantoana, +del mio carcar diposta avea la soma; + +per ch’io, che la ragione aperta e piana +sovra le mie quistioni avea ricolta, +stava com’ om che sonnolento vana. + +Ma questa sonnolenza mi fu tolta +subitamente da gente che dopo +le nostre spalle a noi era già volta. + +E quale Ismeno già vide e Asopo +lungo di sè di notte furia e calca, +pur che i Teban di Bacco avesser uopo, + +cotal per quel giron suo passo falca, +per quel ch’io vidi di color, venendo, +cui buon volere e giusto amor cavalca. + +Tosto fur sovr’ a noi, perché correndo +si movea tutta quella turba magna; +e due dinanzi gridavan piangendo: + +«Maria corse con fretta a la montagna; +e Cesare, per soggiogare Ilerda, +punse Marsilia e poi corse in Ispagna». + +«Ratto, ratto, che ’l tempo non si perda +per poco amor», gridavan li altri appresso, +«che studio di ben far grazia rinverda». + +«O gente in cui fervore aguto adesso +ricompie forse negligenza e indugio +da voi per tepidezza in ben far messo, + +questi che vive, e certo i’ non vi bugio, +vuole andar sù, pur che ’l sol ne riluca; +però ne dite ond’ è presso il pertugio». + +Parole furon queste del mio duca; +e un di quelli spirti disse: «Vieni +di retro a noi, e troverai la buca. + +Noi siam di voglia a muoverci sì pieni, +che restar non potem; però perdona, +se villania nostra giustizia tieni. + +Io fui abate in San Zeno a Verona +sotto lo ’mperio del buon Barbarossa, +di cui dolente ancor Milan ragiona. + +E tale ha già l’un piè dentro la fossa, +che tosto piangerà quel monastero, +e tristo fia d’avere avuta possa; + +perché suo figlio, mal del corpo intero, +e de la mente peggio, e che mal nacque, +ha posto in loco di suo pastor vero». + +Io non so se più disse o s’ei si tacque, +tant’ era già di là da noi trascorso; +ma questo intesi, e ritener mi piacque. + +E quei che m’era ad ogne uopo soccorso +disse: «Volgiti qua: vedine due +venir dando a l’accidïa di morso». + +Di retro a tutti dicean: «Prima fue +morta la gente a cui il mar s’aperse, +che vedesse Iordan le rede sue. + +E quella che l’affanno non sofferse +fino a la fine col figlio d’Anchise, +sé stessa a vita sanza gloria offerse». + +Poi quando fuor da noi tanto divise +quell’ ombre, che veder più non potiersi, +novo pensiero dentro a me si mise, + +del qual più altri nacquero e diversi; +e tanto d’uno in altro vaneggiai, +che li occhi per vaghezza ricopersi, + +e ’l pensamento in sogno trasmutai. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XIX + + +Ne l’ora che non può ’l calor dïurno +intepidar più ’l freddo de la luna, +vinto da terra, e talor da Saturno + +—quando i geomanti lor Maggior Fortuna +veggiono in orïente, innanzi a l’alba, +surger per via che poco le sta bruna—, + +mi venne in sogno una femmina balba, +ne li occhi guercia, e sovra i piè distorta, +con le man monche, e di colore scialba. + +Io la mirava; e come ’l sol conforta +le fredde membra che la notte aggrava, +così lo sguardo mio le facea scorta + +la lingua, e poscia tutta la drizzava +in poco d’ora, e lo smarrito volto, +com’ amor vuol, così le colorava. + +Poi ch’ell’ avea ’l parlar così disciolto, +cominciava a cantar sì, che con pena +da lei avrei mio intento rivolto. + +«Io son», cantava, «io son dolce serena, +che ’ marinari in mezzo mar dismago; +tanto son di piacere a sentir piena! + +Io volsi Ulisse del suo cammin vago +al canto mio; e qual meco s’ausa, +rado sen parte; sì tutto l’appago!». + +Ancor non era sua bocca richiusa, +quand’ una donna apparve santa e presta +lunghesso me per far colei confusa. + +«O Virgilio, Virgilio, chi è questa?», +fieramente dicea; ed el venìa +con li occhi fitti pur in quella onesta. + +L’altra prendea, e dinanzi l’apria +fendendo i drappi, e mostravami ’l ventre; +quel mi svegliò col puzzo che n’uscia. + +Io mossi li occhi, e ’l buon maestro: «Almen tre +voci t’ho messe!», dicea, «Surgi e vieni; +troviam l’aperta per la qual tu entre». + +Sù mi levai, e tutti eran già pieni +de l’alto dì i giron del sacro monte, +e andavam col sol novo a le reni. + +Seguendo lui, portava la mia fronte +come colui che l’ha di pensier carca, +che fa di sé un mezzo arco di ponte; + +quand’ io udi’ «Venite; qui si varca» +parlare in modo soave e benigno, +qual non si sente in questa mortal marca. + +Con l’ali aperte, che parean di cigno, +volseci in sù colui che sì parlonne +tra due pareti del duro macigno. + +Mosse le penne poi e ventilonne, +‘Qui lugent’ affermando esser beati, +ch’avran di consolar l’anime donne. + +«Che hai che pur inver’ la terra guati?», +la guida mia incominciò a dirmi, +poco amendue da l’angel sormontati. + +E io: «Con tanta sospeccion fa irmi +novella visïon ch’a sé mi piega, +sì ch’io non posso dal pensar partirmi». + +«Vedesti», disse, «quell’antica strega +che sola sovr’ a noi omai si piagne; +vedesti come l’uom da lei si slega. + +Bastiti, e batti a terra le calcagne; +li occhi rivolgi al logoro che gira +lo rege etterno con le rote magne». + +Quale ’l falcon, che prima a’ pié si mira, +indi si volge al grido e si protende +per lo disio del pasto che là il tira, + +tal mi fec’ io; e tal, quanto si fende +la roccia per dar via a chi va suso, +n’andai infin dove ’l cerchiar si prende. + +Com’ io nel quinto giro fui dischiuso, +vidi gente per esso che piangea, +giacendo a terra tutta volta in giuso. + +‘Adhaesit pavimento anima mea’ +sentia dir lor con sì alti sospiri, +che la parola a pena s’intendea. + +«O eletti di Dio, li cui soffriri +e giustizia e speranza fa men duri, +drizzate noi verso li alti saliri». + +«Se voi venite dal giacer sicuri, +e volete trovar la via più tosto, +le vostre destre sien sempre di fori». + +Così pregò ’l poeta, e sì risposto +poco dinanzi a noi ne fu; per ch’io +nel parlare avvisai l’altro nascosto, + +e volsi li occhi a li occhi al segnor mio: +ond’ elli m’assentì con lieto cenno +ciò che chiedea la vista del disio. + +Poi ch’io potei di me fare a mio senno, +trassimi sovra quella creatura +le cui parole pria notar mi fenno, + +dicendo: «Spirto in cui pianger matura +quel sanza ’l quale a Dio tornar non pòssi, +sosta un poco per me tua maggior cura. + +Chi fosti e perché vòlti avete i dossi +al sù, mi dì, e se vuo’ ch’io t’impetri +cosa di là ond’ io vivendo mossi». + +Ed elli a me: «Perché i nostri diretri +rivolga il cielo a sé, saprai; ma prima +scias quod ego fui successor Petri. + +Intra Sïestri e Chiaveri s’adima +una fiumana bella, e del suo nome +lo titol del mio sangue fa sua cima. + +Un mese e poco più prova’ io come +pesa il gran manto a chi dal fango il guarda, +che piuma sembran tutte l’altre some. + +La mia conversïone, omè!, fu tarda; +ma, come fatto fui roman pastore, +così scopersi la vita bugiarda. + +Vidi che lì non s’acquetava il core, +né più salir potiesi in quella vita; +per che di questa in me s’accese amore. + +Fino a quel punto misera e partita +da Dio anima fui, del tutto avara; +or, come vedi, qui ne son punita. + +Quel ch’avarizia fa, qui si dichiara +in purgazion de l’anime converse; +e nulla pena il monte ha più amara. + +Sì come l’occhio nostro non s’aderse +in alto, fisso a le cose terrene, +così giustizia qui a terra il merse. + +Come avarizia spense a ciascun bene +lo nostro amore, onde operar perdési, +così giustizia qui stretti ne tene, + +ne’ piedi e ne le man legati e presi; +e quanto fia piacer del giusto Sire, +tanto staremo immobili e distesi». + +Io m’era inginocchiato e volea dire; +ma com’ io cominciai ed el s’accorse, +solo ascoltando, del mio reverire, + +«Qual cagion», disse, «in giù così ti torse?». +E io a lui: «Per vostra dignitate +mia coscïenza dritto mi rimorse». + +«Drizza le gambe, lèvati sù, frate!», +rispuose; «non errar: conservo sono +teco e con li altri ad una podestate. + +Se mai quel santo evangelico suono +che dice ‘Neque nubent’ intendesti, +ben puoi veder perch’ io così ragiono. + +Vattene omai: non vo’ che più t’arresti; +ché la tua stanza mio pianger disagia, +col qual maturo ciò che tu dicesti. + +Nepote ho io di là c’ha nome Alagia, +buona da sé, pur che la nostra casa +non faccia lei per essempro malvagia; + +e questa sola di là m’è rimasa». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XX + + +Contra miglior voler voler mal pugna; +onde contra ’l piacer mio, per piacerli, +trassi de l’acqua non sazia la spugna. + +Mossimi; e ’l duca mio si mosse per li +luoghi spediti pur lungo la roccia, +come si va per muro stretto a’ merli; + +ché la gente che fonde a goccia a goccia +per li occhi il mal che tutto ’l mondo occupa, +da l’altra parte in fuor troppo s’approccia. + +Maladetta sie tu, antica lupa, +che più che tutte l’altre bestie hai preda +per la tua fame sanza fine cupa! + +O ciel, nel cui girar par che si creda +le condizion di qua giù trasmutarsi, +quando verrà per cui questa disceda? + +Noi andavam con passi lenti e scarsi, +e io attento a l’ombre, ch’i’ sentia +pietosamente piangere e lagnarsi; + +e per ventura udi’ «Dolce Maria!» +dinanzi a noi chiamar così nel pianto +come fa donna che in parturir sia; + +e seguitar: «Povera fosti tanto, +quanto veder si può per quello ospizio +dove sponesti il tuo portato santo». + +Seguentemente intesi: «O buon Fabrizio, +con povertà volesti anzi virtute +che gran ricchezza posseder con vizio». + +Queste parole m’eran sì piaciute, +ch’io mi trassi oltre per aver contezza +di quello spirto onde parean venute. + +Esso parlava ancor de la larghezza +che fece Niccolò a le pulcelle, +per condurre ad onor lor giovinezza. + +«O anima che tanto ben favelle, +dimmi chi fosti», dissi, «e perché sola +tu queste degne lode rinovelle. + +Non fia sanza mercé la tua parola, +s’io ritorno a compiér lo cammin corto +di quella vita ch’al termine vola». + +Ed elli: «Io ti dirò, non per conforto +ch’io attenda di là, ma perché tanta +grazia in te luce prima che sie morto. + +Io fui radice de la mala pianta +che la terra cristiana tutta aduggia, +sì che buon frutto rado se ne schianta. + +Ma se Doagio, Lilla, Guanto e Bruggia +potesser, tosto ne saria vendetta; +e io la cheggio a lui che tutto giuggia. + +Chiamato fui di là Ugo Ciappetta; +di me son nati i Filippi e i Luigi +per cui novellamente è Francia retta. + +Figliuol fu’ io d’un beccaio di Parigi: +quando li regi antichi venner meno +tutti, fuor ch’un renduto in panni bigi, + +trova’mi stretto ne le mani il freno +del governo del regno, e tanta possa +di nuovo acquisto, e sì d’amici pieno, + +ch’a la corona vedova promossa +la testa di mio figlio fu, dal quale +cominciar di costor le sacrate ossa. + +Mentre che la gran dota provenzale +al sangue mio non tolse la vergogna, +poco valea, ma pur non facea male. + +Lì cominciò con forza e con menzogna +la sua rapina; e poscia, per ammenda, +Pontì e Normandia prese e Guascogna. + +Carlo venne in Italia e, per ammenda, +vittima fé di Curradino; e poi +ripinse al ciel Tommaso, per ammenda. + +Tempo vegg’ io, non molto dopo ancoi, +che tragge un altro Carlo fuor di Francia, +per far conoscer meglio e sé e ’ suoi. + +Sanz’ arme n’esce e solo con la lancia +con la qual giostrò Giuda, e quella ponta +sì, ch’a Fiorenza fa scoppiar la pancia. + +Quindi non terra, ma peccato e onta +guadagnerà, per sé tanto più grave, +quanto più lieve simil danno conta. + +L’altro, che già uscì preso di nave, +veggio vender sua figlia e patteggiarne +come fanno i corsar de l’altre schiave. + +O avarizia, che puoi tu più farne, +poscia c’ha’ il mio sangue a te sì tratto, +che non si cura de la propria carne? + +Perché men paia il mal futuro e ’l fatto, +veggio in Alagna intrar lo fiordaliso, +e nel vicario suo Cristo esser catto. + +Veggiolo un’altra volta esser deriso; +veggio rinovellar l’aceto e ’l fiele, +e tra vivi ladroni esser anciso. + +Veggio il novo Pilato sì crudele, +che ciò nol sazia, ma sanza decreto +portar nel Tempio le cupide vele. + +O Segnor mio, quando sarò io lieto +a veder la vendetta che, nascosa, +fa dolce l’ira tua nel tuo secreto? + +Ciò ch’io dicea di quell’ unica sposa +de lo Spirito Santo e che ti fece +verso me volger per alcuna chiosa, + +tanto è risposto a tutte nostre prece +quanto ’l dì dura; ma com’ el s’annotta, +contrario suon prendemo in quella vece. + +Noi repetiam Pigmalïon allotta, +cui traditore e ladro e paricida +fece la voglia sua de l’oro ghiotta; + +e la miseria de l’avaro Mida, +che seguì a la sua dimanda gorda, +per la qual sempre convien che si rida. + +Del folle Acàn ciascun poi si ricorda, +come furò le spoglie, sì che l’ira +di Iosüè qui par ch’ancor lo morda. + +Indi accusiam col marito Saffira; +lodiam i calci ch’ebbe Elïodoro; +e in infamia tutto ’l monte gira + +Polinestòr ch’ancise Polidoro; +ultimamente ci si grida: “Crasso, +dilci, che ’l sai: di che sapore è l’oro?”. + +Talor parla l’uno alto e l’altro basso, +secondo l’affezion ch’ad ir ci sprona +ora a maggiore e ora a minor passo: + +però al ben che ’l dì ci si ragiona, +dianzi non era io sol; ma qui da presso +non alzava la voce altra persona». + +Noi eravam partiti già da esso, +e brigavam di soverchiar la strada +tanto quanto al poder n’era permesso, + +quand’ io senti’, come cosa che cada, +tremar lo monte; onde mi prese un gelo +qual prender suol colui ch’a morte vada. + +Certo non si scoteo sì forte Delo, +pria che Latona in lei facesse ’l nido +a parturir li due occhi del cielo. + +Poi cominciò da tutte parti un grido +tal, che ’l maestro inverso me si feo, +dicendo: «Non dubbiar, mentr’ io ti guido». + +‘Glorïa in excelsis’ tutti ‘Deo’ +dicean, per quel ch’io da’ vicin compresi, +onde intender lo grido si poteo. + +No’ istavamo immobili e sospesi +come i pastor che prima udir quel canto, +fin che ’l tremar cessò ed el compiési. + +Poi ripigliammo nostro cammin santo, +guardando l’ombre che giacean per terra, +tornate già in su l’usato pianto. + +Nulla ignoranza mai con tanta guerra +mi fé desideroso di sapere, +se la memoria mia in ciò non erra, + +quanta pareami allor, pensando, avere; +né per la fretta dimandare er’ oso, +né per me lì potea cosa vedere: + +così m’andava timido e pensoso. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXI + + +La sete natural che mai non sazia +se non con l’acqua onde la femminetta +samaritana domandò la grazia, + +mi travagliava, e pungeami la fretta +per la ’mpacciata via dietro al mio duca, +e condoleami a la giusta vendetta. + +Ed ecco, sì come ne scrive Luca +che Cristo apparve a’ due ch’erano in via, +già surto fuor de la sepulcral buca, + +ci apparve un’ombra, e dietro a noi venìa, +dal piè guardando la turba che giace; +né ci addemmo di lei, sì parlò pria, + +dicendo: «O frati miei, Dio vi dea pace». +Noi ci volgemmo sùbiti, e Virgilio +rendéli ’l cenno ch’a ciò si conface. + +Poi cominciò: «Nel beato concilio +ti ponga in pace la verace corte +che me rilega ne l’etterno essilio». + +«Come!», diss’ elli, e parte andavam forte: +«se voi siete ombre che Dio sù non degni, +chi v’ha per la sua scala tanto scorte?». + +E ’l dottor mio: «Se tu riguardi a’ segni +che questi porta e che l’angel profila, +ben vedrai che coi buon convien ch’e’ regni. + +Ma perché lei che dì e notte fila +non li avea tratta ancora la conocchia +che Cloto impone a ciascuno e compila, + +l’anima sua, ch’è tua e mia serocchia, +venendo sù, non potea venir sola, +però ch’al nostro modo non adocchia. + +Ond’ io fui tratto fuor de l’ampia gola +d’inferno per mostrarli, e mosterrolli +oltre, quanto ’l potrà menar mia scola. + +Ma dimmi, se tu sai, perché tai crolli +diè dianzi ’l monte, e perché tutto ad una +parve gridare infino a’ suoi piè molli». + +Sì mi diè, dimandando, per la cruna +del mio disio, che pur con la speranza +si fece la mia sete men digiuna. + +Quei cominciò: «Cosa non è che sanza +ordine senta la religïone +de la montagna, o che sia fuor d’usanza. + +Libero è qui da ogne alterazione: +di quel che ’l ciel da sé in sé riceve +esser ci puote, e non d’altro, cagione. + +Per che non pioggia, non grando, non neve, +non rugiada, non brina più sù cade +che la scaletta di tre gradi breve; + +nuvole spesse non paion né rade, +né coruscar, né figlia di Taumante, +che di là cangia sovente contrade; + +secco vapor non surge più avante +ch’al sommo d’i tre gradi ch’io parlai, +dov’ ha ’l vicario di Pietro le piante. + +Trema forse più giù poco o assai; +ma per vento che ’n terra si nasconda, +non so come, qua sù non tremò mai. + +Tremaci quando alcuna anima monda +sentesi, sì che surga o che si mova +per salir sù; e tal grido seconda. + +De la mondizia sol voler fa prova, +che, tutto libero a mutar convento, +l’alma sorprende, e di voler le giova. + +Prima vuol ben, ma non lascia il talento +che divina giustizia, contra voglia, +come fu al peccar, pone al tormento. + +E io, che son giaciuto a questa doglia +cinquecent’ anni e più, pur mo sentii +libera volontà di miglior soglia: + +però sentisti il tremoto e li pii +spiriti per lo monte render lode +a quel Segnor, che tosto sù li ’nvii». + +Così ne disse; e però ch’el si gode +tanto del ber quant’ è grande la sete, +non saprei dir quant’ el mi fece prode. + +E ’l savio duca: «Omai veggio la rete +che qui vi ’mpiglia e come si scalappia, +perché ci trema e di che congaudete. + +Ora chi fosti, piacciati ch’io sappia, +e perché tanti secoli giaciuto +qui se’, ne le parole tue mi cappia». + +«Nel tempo che ’l buon Tito, con l’aiuto +del sommo rege, vendicò le fóra +ond’ uscì ’l sangue per Giuda venduto, + +col nome che più dura e più onora +era io di là», rispuose quello spirto, +«famoso assai, ma non con fede ancora. + +Tanto fu dolce mio vocale spirto, +che, tolosano, a sé mi trasse Roma, +dove mertai le tempie ornar di mirto. + +Stazio la gente ancor di là mi noma: +cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille; +ma caddi in via con la seconda soma. + +Al mio ardor fuor seme le faville, +che mi scaldar, de la divina fiamma +onde sono allumati più di mille; + +de l’Eneïda dico, la qual mamma +fummi, e fummi nutrice, poetando: +sanz’ essa non fermai peso di dramma. + +E per esser vivuto di là quando +visse Virgilio, assentirei un sole +più che non deggio al mio uscir di bando». + +Volser Virgilio a me queste parole +con viso che, tacendo, disse ‘Taci’; +ma non può tutto la virtù che vuole; + +ché riso e pianto son tanto seguaci +a la passion di che ciascun si spicca, +che men seguon voler ne’ più veraci. + +Io pur sorrisi come l’uom ch’ammicca; +per che l’ombra si tacque, e riguardommi +ne li occhi ove ’l sembiante più si ficca; + +e «Se tanto labore in bene assommi», +disse, «perché la tua faccia testeso +un lampeggiar di riso dimostrommi?». + +Or son io d’una parte e d’altra preso: +l’una mi fa tacer, l’altra scongiura +ch’io dica; ond’ io sospiro, e sono inteso + +dal mio maestro, e «Non aver paura», +mi dice, «di parlar; ma parla e digli +quel ch’e’ dimanda con cotanta cura». + +Ond’ io: «Forse che tu ti maravigli, +antico spirto, del rider ch’io fei; +ma più d’ammirazion vo’ che ti pigli. + +Questi che guida in alto li occhi miei, +è quel Virgilio dal qual tu togliesti +forte a cantar de li uomini e d’i dèi. + +Se cagion altra al mio rider credesti, +lasciala per non vera, ed esser credi +quelle parole che di lui dicesti». + +Già s’inchinava ad abbracciar li piedi +al mio dottor, ma el li disse: «Frate, +non far, ché tu se’ ombra e ombra vedi». + +Ed ei surgendo: «Or puoi la quantitate +comprender de l’amor ch’a te mi scalda, +quand’ io dismento nostra vanitate, + +trattando l’ombre come cosa salda». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXII + + +Già era l’angel dietro a noi rimaso, +l’angel che n’avea vòlti al sesto giro, +avendomi dal viso un colpo raso; + +e quei c’hanno a giustizia lor disiro +detto n’avea beati, e le sue voci +con ‘sitiunt’, sanz’ altro, ciò forniro. + +E io più lieve che per l’altre foci +m’andava, sì che sanz’ alcun labore +seguiva in sù li spiriti veloci; + +quando Virgilio incominciò: «Amore, +acceso di virtù, sempre altro accese, +pur che la fiamma sua paresse fore; + +onde da l’ora che tra noi discese +nel limbo de lo ’nferno Giovenale, +che la tua affezion mi fé palese, + +mia benvoglienza inverso te fu quale +più strinse mai di non vista persona, +sì ch’or mi parran corte queste scale. + +Ma dimmi, e come amico mi perdona +se troppa sicurtà m’allarga il freno, +e come amico omai meco ragiona: + +come poté trovar dentro al tuo seno +loco avarizia, tra cotanto senno +di quanto per tua cura fosti pieno?». + +Queste parole Stazio mover fenno +un poco a riso pria; poscia rispuose: +«Ogne tuo dir d’amor m’è caro cenno. + +Veramente più volte appaion cose +che danno a dubitar falsa matera +per le vere ragion che son nascose. + +La tua dimanda tuo creder m’avvera +esser ch’i’ fossi avaro in l’altra vita, +forse per quella cerchia dov’ io era. + +Or sappi ch’avarizia fu partita +troppo da me, e questa dismisura +migliaia di lunari hanno punita. + +E se non fosse ch’io drizzai mia cura, +quand’ io intesi là dove tu chiame, +crucciato quasi a l’umana natura: + +‘Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fame +de l’oro, l’appetito de’ mortali?’, +voltando sentirei le giostre grame. + +Allor m’accorsi che troppo aprir l’ali +potean le mani a spendere, e pente’mi +così di quel come de li altri mali. + +Quanti risurgeran coi crini scemi +per ignoranza, che di questa pecca +toglie ’l penter vivendo e ne li stremi! + +E sappie che la colpa che rimbecca +per dritta opposizione alcun peccato, +con esso insieme qui suo verde secca; + +però, s’io son tra quella gente stato +che piange l’avarizia, per purgarmi, +per lo contrario suo m’è incontrato». + +«Or quando tu cantasti le crude armi +de la doppia trestizia di Giocasta», +disse ’l cantor de’ buccolici carmi, + +«per quello che Clïò teco lì tasta, +non par che ti facesse ancor fedele +la fede, sanza qual ben far non basta. + +Se così è, qual sole o quai candele +ti stenebraron sì, che tu drizzasti +poscia di retro al pescator le vele?». + +Ed elli a lui: «Tu prima m’invïasti +verso Parnaso a ber ne le sue grotte, +e prima appresso Dio m’alluminasti. + +Facesti come quei che va di notte, +che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova, +ma dopo sé fa le persone dotte, + +quando dicesti: ‘Secol si rinova; +torna giustizia e primo tempo umano, +e progenïe scende da ciel nova’. + +Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano: +ma perché veggi mei ciò ch’io disegno, +a colorare stenderò la mano. + +Già era ’l mondo tutto quanto pregno +de la vera credenza, seminata +per li messaggi de l’etterno regno; + +e la parola tua sopra toccata +si consonava a’ nuovi predicanti; +ond’ io a visitarli presi usata. + +Vennermi poi parendo tanto santi, +che, quando Domizian li perseguette, +sanza mio lagrimar non fur lor pianti; + +e mentre che di là per me si stette, +io li sovvenni, e i lor dritti costumi +fer dispregiare a me tutte altre sette. + +E pria ch’io conducessi i Greci a’ fiumi +di Tebe poetando, ebb’ io battesmo; +ma per paura chiuso cristian fu’mi, + +lungamente mostrando paganesmo; +e questa tepidezza il quarto cerchio +cerchiar mi fé più che ’l quarto centesmo. + +Tu dunque, che levato hai il coperchio +che m’ascondeva quanto bene io dico, +mentre che del salire avem soverchio, + +dimmi dov’ è Terrenzio nostro antico, +Cecilio e Plauto e Varro, se lo sai: +dimmi se son dannati, e in qual vico». + +«Costoro e Persio e io e altri assai», +rispuose il duca mio, «siam con quel Greco +che le Muse lattar più ch’altri mai, + +nel primo cinghio del carcere cieco; +spesse fïate ragioniam del monte +che sempre ha le nutrice nostre seco. + +Euripide v’è nosco e Antifonte, +Simonide, Agatone e altri piùe +Greci che già di lauro ornar la fronte. + +Quivi si veggion de le genti tue +Antigone, Deïfile e Argia, +e Ismene sì trista come fue. + +Védeisi quella che mostrò Langia; +èvvi la figlia di Tiresia, e Teti, +e con le suore sue Deïdamia». + +Tacevansi ambedue già li poeti, +di novo attenti a riguardar dintorno, +liberi da saliri e da pareti; + +e già le quattro ancelle eran del giorno +rimase a dietro, e la quinta era al temo, +drizzando pur in sù l’ardente corno, + +quando il mio duca: «Io credo ch’a lo stremo +le destre spalle volger ne convegna, +girando il monte come far solemo». + +Così l’usanza fu lì nostra insegna, +e prendemmo la via con men sospetto +per l’assentir di quell’ anima degna. + +Elli givan dinanzi, e io soletto +di retro, e ascoltava i lor sermoni, +ch’a poetar mi davano intelletto. + +Ma tosto ruppe le dolci ragioni +un alber che trovammo in mezza strada, +con pomi a odorar soavi e buoni; + +e come abete in alto si digrada +di ramo in ramo, così quello in giuso, +cred’ io, perché persona sù non vada. + +Dal lato onde ’l cammin nostro era chiuso, +cadea de l’alta roccia un liquor chiaro +e si spandeva per le foglie suso. + +Li due poeti a l’alber s’appressaro; +e una voce per entro le fronde +gridò: «Di questo cibo avrete caro». + +Poi disse: «Più pensava Maria onde +fosser le nozze orrevoli e intere, +ch’a la sua bocca, ch’or per voi risponde. + +E le Romane antiche, per lor bere, +contente furon d’acqua; e Danïello +dispregiò cibo e acquistò savere. + +Lo secol primo, quant’ oro fu bello, +fé savorose con fame le ghiande, +e nettare con sete ogne ruscello. + +Mele e locuste furon le vivande +che nodriro il Batista nel diserto; +per ch’elli è glorïoso e tanto grande + +quanto per lo Vangelio v’è aperto». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXIII + + +Mentre che li occhi per la fronda verde +ficcava ïo sì come far suole +chi dietro a li uccellin sua vita perde, + +lo più che padre mi dicea: «Figliuole, +vienne oramai, ché ’l tempo che n’è imposto +più utilmente compartir si vuole». + +Io volsi ’l viso, e ’l passo non men tosto, +appresso i savi, che parlavan sìe, +che l’andar mi facean di nullo costo. + +Ed ecco piangere e cantar s’udìe +‘Labïa mëa, Domine’ per modo +tal, che diletto e doglia parturìe. + +«O dolce padre, che è quel ch’i’ odo?», +comincia’ io; ed elli: «Ombre che vanno +forse di lor dover solvendo il nodo». + +Sì come i peregrin pensosi fanno, +giugnendo per cammin gente non nota, +che si volgono ad essa e non restanno, + +così di retro a noi, più tosto mota, +venendo e trapassando ci ammirava +d’anime turba tacita e devota. + +Ne li occhi era ciascuna oscura e cava, +palida ne la faccia, e tanto scema +che da l’ossa la pelle s’informava. + +Non credo che così a buccia strema +Erisittone fosse fatto secco, +per digiunar, quando più n’ebbe tema. + +Io dicea fra me stesso pensando: ‘Ecco +la gente che perdé Ierusalemme, +quando Maria nel figlio diè di becco!’ + +Parean l’occhiaie anella sanza gemme: +chi nel viso de li uomini legge ‘omo’ +ben avria quivi conosciuta l’emme. + +Chi crederebbe che l’odor d’un pomo +sì governasse, generando brama, +e quel d’un’acqua, non sappiendo como? + +Già era in ammirar che sì li affama, +per la cagione ancor non manifesta +di lor magrezza e di lor trista squama, + +ed ecco del profondo de la testa +volse a me li occhi un’ombra e guardò fiso; +poi gridò forte: «Qual grazia m’è questa?». + +Mai non l’avrei riconosciuto al viso; +ma ne la voce sua mi fu palese +ciò che l’aspetto in sé avea conquiso. + +Questa favilla tutta mi raccese +mia conoscenza a la cangiata labbia, +e ravvisai la faccia di Forese. + +«Deh, non contendere a l’asciutta scabbia +che mi scolora», pregava, «la pelle, +né a difetto di carne ch’io abbia; + +ma dimmi il ver di te, dì chi son quelle +due anime che là ti fanno scorta; +non rimaner che tu non mi favelle!». + +«La faccia tua, ch’io lagrimai già morta, +mi dà di pianger mo non minor doglia», +rispuos’ io lui, «veggendola sì torta. + +Però mi dì, per Dio, che sì vi sfoglia; +non mi far dir mentr’ io mi maraviglio, +ché mal può dir chi è pien d’altra voglia». + +Ed elli a me: «De l’etterno consiglio +cade vertù ne l’acqua e ne la pianta +rimasa dietro ond’ io sì m’assottiglio. + +Tutta esta gente che piangendo canta +per seguitar la gola oltra misura, +in fame e ’n sete qui si rifà santa. + +Di bere e di mangiar n’accende cura +l’odor ch’esce del pomo e de lo sprazzo +che si distende su per sua verdura. + +E non pur una volta, questo spazzo +girando, si rinfresca nostra pena: +io dico pena, e dovria dir sollazzo, + +ché quella voglia a li alberi ci mena +che menò Cristo lieto a dire ‘Elì’, +quando ne liberò con la sua vena». + +E io a lui: «Forese, da quel dì +nel qual mutasti mondo a miglior vita, +cinqu’ anni non son vòlti infino a qui. + +Se prima fu la possa in te finita +di peccar più, che sovvenisse l’ora +del buon dolor ch’a Dio ne rimarita, + +come se’ tu qua sù venuto ancora? +Io ti credea trovar là giù di sotto, +dove tempo per tempo si ristora». + +Ond’ elli a me: «Sì tosto m’ha condotto +a ber lo dolce assenzo d’i martìri +la Nella mia con suo pianger dirotto. + +Con suoi prieghi devoti e con sospiri +tratto m’ha de la costa ove s’aspetta, +e liberato m’ha de li altri giri. + +Tanto è a Dio più cara e più diletta +la vedovella mia, che molto amai, +quanto in bene operare è più soletta; + +ché la Barbagia di Sardigna assai +ne le femmine sue più è pudica +che la Barbagia dov’ io la lasciai. + +O dolce frate, che vuo’ tu ch’io dica? +Tempo futuro m’è già nel cospetto, +cui non sarà quest’ ora molto antica, + +nel qual sarà in pergamo interdetto +a le sfacciate donne fiorentine +l’andar mostrando con le poppe il petto. + +Quai barbare fuor mai, quai saracine, +cui bisognasse, per farle ir coperte, +o spiritali o altre discipline? + +Ma se le svergognate fosser certe +di quel che ’l ciel veloce loro ammanna, +già per urlare avrian le bocche aperte; + +ché, se l’antiveder qui non m’inganna, +prima fien triste che le guance impeli +colui che mo si consola con nanna. + +Deh, frate, or fa che più non mi ti celi! +vedi che non pur io, ma questa gente +tutta rimira là dove ’l sol veli». + +Per ch’io a lui: «Se tu riduci a mente +qual fosti meco, e qual io teco fui, +ancor fia grave il memorar presente. + +Di quella vita mi volse costui +che mi va innanzi, l’altr’ ier, quando tonda +vi si mostrò la suora di colui», + +e ’l sol mostrai; «costui per la profonda +notte menato m’ha d’i veri morti +con questa vera carne che ’l seconda. + +Indi m’han tratto sù li suoi conforti, +salendo e rigirando la montagna +che drizza voi che ’l mondo fece torti. + +Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna +che io sarò là dove fia Beatrice; +quivi convien che sanza lui rimagna. + +Virgilio è questi che così mi dice», +e addita’lo; «e quest’ altro è quell’ ombra +per cuï scosse dianzi ogne pendice + +lo vostro regno, che da sé lo sgombra». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXIV + + +Né ’l dir l’andar, né l’andar lui più lento +facea, ma ragionando andavam forte, +sì come nave pinta da buon vento; + +e l’ombre, che parean cose rimorte, +per le fosse de li occhi ammirazione +traean di me, di mio vivere accorte. + +E io, continüando al mio sermone, +dissi: «Ella sen va sù forse più tarda +che non farebbe, per altrui cagione. + +Ma dimmi, se tu sai, dov’ è Piccarda; +dimmi s’io veggio da notar persona +tra questa gente che sì mi riguarda». + +«La mia sorella, che tra bella e buona +non so qual fosse più, trïunfa lieta +ne l’alto Olimpo già di sua corona». + +Sì disse prima; e poi: «Qui non si vieta +di nominar ciascun, da ch’è sì munta +nostra sembianza via per la dïeta. + +Questi», e mostrò col dito, «è Bonagiunta, +Bonagiunta da Lucca; e quella faccia +di là da lui più che l’altre trapunta + +ebbe la Santa Chiesa in le sue braccia: +dal Torso fu, e purga per digiuno +l’anguille di Bolsena e la vernaccia». + +Molti altri mi nomò ad uno ad uno; +e del nomar parean tutti contenti, +sì ch’io però non vidi un atto bruno. + +Vidi per fame a vòto usar li denti +Ubaldin da la Pila e Bonifazio +che pasturò col rocco molte genti. + +Vidi messer Marchese, ch’ebbe spazio +già di bere a Forlì con men secchezza, +e sì fu tal, che non si sentì sazio. + +Ma come fa chi guarda e poi s’apprezza +più d’un che d’altro, fei a quel da Lucca, +che più parea di me aver contezza. + +El mormorava; e non so che «Gentucca» +sentiv’ io là, ov’ el sentia la piaga +de la giustizia che sì li pilucca. + +«O anima», diss’ io, «che par sì vaga +di parlar meco, fa sì ch’io t’intenda, +e te e me col tuo parlare appaga». + +«Femmina è nata, e non porta ancor benda», +cominciò el, «che ti farà piacere +la mia città, come ch’om la riprenda. + +Tu te n’andrai con questo antivedere: +se nel mio mormorar prendesti errore, +dichiareranti ancor le cose vere. + +Ma dì s’i’ veggio qui colui che fore +trasse le nove rime, cominciando +‘Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore’». + +E io a lui: «I’ mi son un che, quando +Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo +ch’e’ ditta dentro vo significando». + +«O frate, issa vegg’ io», diss’ elli, «il nodo +che ’l Notaro e Guittone e me ritenne +di qua dal dolce stil novo ch’i’ odo! + +Io veggio ben come le vostre penne +di retro al dittator sen vanno strette, +che de le nostre certo non avvenne; + +e qual più a gradire oltre si mette, +non vede più da l’uno a l’altro stilo»; +e, quasi contentato, si tacette. + +Come li augei che vernan lungo ’l Nilo, +alcuna volta in aere fanno schiera, +poi volan più a fretta e vanno in filo, + +così tutta la gente che lì era, +volgendo ’l viso, raffrettò suo passo, +e per magrezza e per voler leggera. + +E come l’uom che di trottare è lasso, +lascia andar li compagni, e sì passeggia +fin che si sfoghi l’affollar del casso, + +sì lasciò trapassar la santa greggia +Forese, e dietro meco sen veniva, +dicendo: «Quando fia ch’io ti riveggia?». + +«Non so», rispuos’ io lui, «quant’ io mi viva; +ma già non fïa il tornar mio tantosto, +ch’io non sia col voler prima a la riva; + +però che ’l loco u’ fui a viver posto, +di giorno in giorno più di ben si spolpa, +e a trista ruina par disposto». + +«Or va», diss’ el; «che quei che più n’ha colpa, +vegg’ ïo a coda d’una bestia tratto +inver’ la valle ove mai non si scolpa. + +La bestia ad ogne passo va più ratto, +crescendo sempre, fin ch’ella il percuote, +e lascia il corpo vilmente disfatto. + +Non hanno molto a volger quelle ruote», +e drizzò li occhi al ciel, «che ti fia chiaro +ciò che ’l mio dir più dichiarar non puote. + +Tu ti rimani omai; ché ’l tempo è caro +in questo regno, sì ch’io perdo troppo +venendo teco sì a paro a paro». + +Qual esce alcuna volta di gualoppo +lo cavalier di schiera che cavalchi, +e va per farsi onor del primo intoppo, + +tal si partì da noi con maggior valchi; +e io rimasi in via con esso i due +che fuor del mondo sì gran marescalchi. + +E quando innanzi a noi intrato fue, +che li occhi miei si fero a lui seguaci, +come la mente a le parole sue, + +parvermi i rami gravidi e vivaci +d’un altro pomo, e non molto lontani +per esser pur allora vòlto in laci. + +Vidi gente sott’ esso alzar le mani +e gridar non so che verso le fronde, +quasi bramosi fantolini e vani + +che pregano, e ’l pregato non risponde, +ma, per fare esser ben la voglia acuta, +tien alto lor disio e nol nasconde. + +Poi si partì sì come ricreduta; +e noi venimmo al grande arbore adesso, +che tanti prieghi e lagrime rifiuta. + +«Trapassate oltre sanza farvi presso: +legno è più sù che fu morso da Eva, +e questa pianta si levò da esso». + +Sì tra le frasche non so chi diceva; +per che Virgilio e Stazio e io, ristretti, +oltre andavam dal lato che si leva. + +«Ricordivi», dicea, «d’i maladetti +nei nuvoli formati, che, satolli, +Tesëo combatter co’ doppi petti; + +e de li Ebrei ch’al ber si mostrar molli, +per che no i volle Gedeon compagni, +quando inver’ Madïan discese i colli». + +Sì accostati a l’un d’i due vivagni +passammo, udendo colpe de la gola +seguite già da miseri guadagni. + +Poi, rallargati per la strada sola, +ben mille passi e più ci portar oltre, +contemplando ciascun sanza parola. + +«Che andate pensando sì voi sol tre?». +sùbita voce disse; ond’ io mi scossi +come fan bestie spaventate e poltre. + +Drizzai la testa per veder chi fossi; +e già mai non si videro in fornace +vetri o metalli sì lucenti e rossi, + +com’ io vidi un che dicea: «S’a voi piace +montare in sù, qui si convien dar volta; +quinci si va chi vuole andar per pace». + +L’aspetto suo m’avea la vista tolta; +per ch’io mi volsi dietro a’ miei dottori, +com’ om che va secondo ch’elli ascolta. + +E quale, annunziatrice de li albori, +l’aura di maggio movesi e olezza, +tutta impregnata da l’erba e da’ fiori; + +tal mi senti’ un vento dar per mezza +la fronte, e ben senti’ mover la piuma, +che fé sentir d’ambrosïa l’orezza. + +E senti’ dir: «Beati cui alluma +tanto di grazia, che l’amor del gusto +nel petto lor troppo disir non fuma, + +esurïendo sempre quanto è giusto!». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXV + + +Ora era onde ’l salir non volea storpio; +ché ’l sole avëa il cerchio di merigge +lasciato al Tauro e la notte a lo Scorpio: + +per che, come fa l’uom che non s’affigge +ma vassi a la via sua, che che li appaia, +se di bisogno stimolo il trafigge, + +così intrammo noi per la callaia, +uno innanzi altro prendendo la scala +che per artezza i salitor dispaia. + +E quale il cicognin che leva l’ala +per voglia di volare, e non s’attenta +d’abbandonar lo nido, e giù la cala; + +tal era io con voglia accesa e spenta +di dimandar, venendo infino a l’atto +che fa colui ch’a dicer s’argomenta. + +Non lasciò, per l’andar che fosse ratto, +lo dolce padre mio, ma disse: «Scocca +l’arco del dir, che ’nfino al ferro hai tratto». + +Allor sicuramente apri’ la bocca +e cominciai: «Come si può far magro +là dove l’uopo di nodrir non tocca?». + +«Se t’ammentassi come Meleagro +si consumò al consumar d’un stizzo, +non fora», disse, «a te questo sì agro; + +e se pensassi come, al vostro guizzo, +guizza dentro a lo specchio vostra image, +ciò che par duro ti parrebbe vizzo. + +Ma perché dentro a tuo voler t’adage, +ecco qui Stazio; e io lui chiamo e prego +che sia or sanator de le tue piage». + +«Se la veduta etterna li dislego», +rispuose Stazio, «là dove tu sie, +discolpi me non potert’ io far nego». + +Poi cominciò: «Se le parole mie, +figlio, la mente tua guarda e riceve, +lume ti fiero al come che tu die. + +Sangue perfetto, che poi non si beve +da l’assetate vene, e si rimane +quasi alimento che di mensa leve, + +prende nel core a tutte membra umane +virtute informativa, come quello +ch’a farsi quelle per le vene vane. + +Ancor digesto, scende ov’ è più bello +tacer che dire; e quindi poscia geme +sovr’ altrui sangue in natural vasello. + +Ivi s’accoglie l’uno e l’altro insieme, +l’un disposto a patire, e l’altro a fare +per lo perfetto loco onde si preme; + +e, giunto lui, comincia ad operare +coagulando prima, e poi avviva +ciò che per sua matera fé constare. + +Anima fatta la virtute attiva +qual d’una pianta, in tanto differente, +che questa è in via e quella è già a riva, + +tanto ovra poi, che già si move e sente, +come spungo marino; e indi imprende +ad organar le posse ond’ è semente. + +Or si spiega, figliuolo, or si distende +la virtù ch’è dal cor del generante, +dove natura a tutte membra intende. + +Ma come d’animal divegna fante, +non vedi tu ancor: quest’ è tal punto, +che più savio di te fé già errante, + +sì che per sua dottrina fé disgiunto +da l’anima il possibile intelletto, +perché da lui non vide organo assunto. + +Apri a la verità che viene il petto; +e sappi che, sì tosto come al feto +l’articular del cerebro è perfetto, + +lo motor primo a lui si volge lieto +sovra tant’ arte di natura, e spira +spirito novo, di vertù repleto, + +che ciò che trova attivo quivi, tira +in sua sustanzia, e fassi un’alma sola, +che vive e sente e sé in sé rigira. + +E perché meno ammiri la parola, +guarda il calor del sole che si fa vino, +giunto a l’omor che de la vite cola. + +Quando Làchesis non ha più del lino, +solvesi da la carne, e in virtute +ne porta seco e l’umano e ’l divino: + +l’altre potenze tutte quante mute; +memoria, intelligenza e volontade +in atto molto più che prima agute. + +Sanza restarsi, per sé stessa cade +mirabilmente a l’una de le rive; +quivi conosce prima le sue strade. + +Tosto che loco lì la circunscrive, +la virtù formativa raggia intorno +così e quanto ne le membra vive. + +E come l’aere, quand’ è ben pïorno, +per l’altrui raggio che ’n sé si reflette, +di diversi color diventa addorno; + +così l’aere vicin quivi si mette +e in quella forma ch’è in lui suggella +virtüalmente l’alma che ristette; + +e simigliante poi a la fiammella +che segue il foco là ’vunque si muta, +segue lo spirto sua forma novella. + +Però che quindi ha poscia sua paruta, +è chiamata ombra; e quindi organa poi +ciascun sentire infino a la veduta. + +Quindi parliamo e quindi ridiam noi; +quindi facciam le lagrime e ’ sospiri +che per lo monte aver sentiti puoi. + +Secondo che ci affliggono i disiri +e li altri affetti, l’ombra si figura; +e quest’ è la cagion di che tu miri». + +E già venuto a l’ultima tortura +s’era per noi, e vòlto a la man destra, +ed eravamo attenti ad altra cura. + +Quivi la ripa fiamma in fuor balestra, +e la cornice spira fiato in suso +che la reflette e via da lei sequestra; + +ond’ ir ne convenia dal lato schiuso +ad uno ad uno; e io temëa ’l foco +quinci, e quindi temeva cader giuso. + +Lo duca mio dicea: «Per questo loco +si vuol tenere a li occhi stretto il freno, +però ch’errar potrebbesi per poco». + +‘Summae Deus clementïae’ nel seno +al grande ardore allora udi’ cantando, +che di volger mi fé caler non meno; + +e vidi spirti per la fiamma andando; +per ch’io guardava a loro e a’ miei passi +compartendo la vista a quando a quando. + +Appresso il fine ch’a quell’ inno fassi, +gridavano alto: ‘Virum non cognosco’; +indi ricominciavan l’inno bassi. + +Finitolo, anco gridavano: «Al bosco +si tenne Diana, ed Elice caccionne +che di Venere avea sentito il tòsco». + +Indi al cantar tornavano; indi donne +gridavano e mariti che fuor casti +come virtute e matrimonio imponne. + +E questo modo credo che lor basti +per tutto il tempo che ’l foco li abbruscia: +con tal cura conviene e con tai pasti + +che la piaga da sezzo si ricuscia. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXVI + + +Mentre che sì per l’orlo, uno innanzi altro, +ce n’andavamo, e spesso il buon maestro +diceami: «Guarda: giovi ch’io ti scaltro»; + +feriami il sole in su l’omero destro, +che già, raggiando, tutto l’occidente +mutava in bianco aspetto di cilestro; + +e io facea con l’ombra più rovente +parer la fiamma; e pur a tanto indizio +vidi molt’ ombre, andando, poner mente. + +Questa fu la cagion che diede inizio +loro a parlar di me; e cominciarsi +a dir: «Colui non par corpo fittizio»; + +poi verso me, quanto potëan farsi, +certi si fero, sempre con riguardo +di non uscir dove non fosser arsi. + +«O tu che vai, non per esser più tardo, +ma forse reverente, a li altri dopo, +rispondi a me che ’n sete e ’n foco ardo. + +Né solo a me la tua risposta è uopo; +ché tutti questi n’hanno maggior sete +che d’acqua fredda Indo o Etïopo. + +Dinne com’ è che fai di te parete +al sol, pur come tu non fossi ancora +di morte intrato dentro da la rete». + +Sì mi parlava un d’essi; e io mi fora +già manifesto, s’io non fossi atteso +ad altra novità ch’apparve allora; + +ché per lo mezzo del cammino acceso +venne gente col viso incontro a questa, +la qual mi fece a rimirar sospeso. + +Lì veggio d’ogne parte farsi presta +ciascun’ ombra e basciarsi una con una +sanza restar, contente a brieve festa; + +così per entro loro schiera bruna +s’ammusa l’una con l’altra formica, +forse a spïar lor via e lor fortuna. + +Tosto che parton l’accoglienza amica, +prima che ’l primo passo lì trascorra, +sopragridar ciascuna s’affatica: + +la nova gente: «Soddoma e Gomorra»; +e l’altra: «Ne la vacca entra Pasife, +perché ’l torello a sua lussuria corra». + +Poi, come grue ch’a le montagne Rife +volasser parte, e parte inver’ l’arene, +queste del gel, quelle del sole schife, + +l’una gente sen va, l’altra sen vene; +e tornan, lagrimando, a’ primi canti +e al gridar che più lor si convene; + +e raccostansi a me, come davanti, +essi medesmi che m’avean pregato, +attenti ad ascoltar ne’ lor sembianti. + +Io, che due volte avea visto lor grato, +incominciai: «O anime sicure +d’aver, quando che sia, di pace stato, + +non son rimase acerbe né mature +le membra mie di là, ma son qui meco +col sangue suo e con le sue giunture. + +Quinci sù vo per non esser più cieco; +donna è di sopra che m’acquista grazia, +per che ’l mortal per vostro mondo reco. + +Ma se la vostra maggior voglia sazia +tosto divegna, sì che ’l ciel v’alberghi +ch’è pien d’amore e più ampio si spazia, + +ditemi, acciò ch’ancor carte ne verghi, +chi siete voi, e chi è quella turba +che se ne va di retro a’ vostri terghi». + +Non altrimenti stupido si turba +lo montanaro, e rimirando ammuta, +quando rozzo e salvatico s’inurba, + +che ciascun’ ombra fece in sua paruta; +ma poi che furon di stupore scarche, +lo qual ne li alti cuor tosto s’attuta, + +«Beato te, che de le nostre marche», +ricominciò colei che pria m’inchiese, +«per morir meglio, esperïenza imbarche! + +La gente che non vien con noi, offese +di ciò per che già Cesar, trïunfando, +“Regina” contra sé chiamar s’intese: + +però si parton “Soddoma” gridando, +rimproverando a sé com’ hai udito, +e aiutan l’arsura vergognando. + +Nostro peccato fu ermafrodito; +ma perché non servammo umana legge, +seguendo come bestie l’appetito, + +in obbrobrio di noi, per noi si legge, +quando partinci, il nome di colei +che s’imbestiò ne le ’mbestiate schegge. + +Or sai nostri atti e di che fummo rei: +se forse a nome vuo’ saper chi semo, +tempo non è di dire, e non saprei. + +Farotti ben di me volere scemo: +son Guido Guinizzelli, e già mi purgo +per ben dolermi prima ch’a lo stremo». + +Quali ne la tristizia di Ligurgo +si fer due figli a riveder la madre, +tal mi fec’ io, ma non a tanto insurgo, + +quand’ io odo nomar sé stesso il padre +mio e de li altri miei miglior che mai +rime d’amore usar dolci e leggiadre; + +e sanza udire e dir pensoso andai +lunga fïata rimirando lui, +né, per lo foco, in là più m’appressai. + +Poi che di riguardar pasciuto fui, +tutto m’offersi pronto al suo servigio +con l’affermar che fa credere altrui. + +Ed elli a me: «Tu lasci tal vestigio, +per quel ch’i’ odo, in me, e tanto chiaro, +che Letè nol può tòrre né far bigio. + +Ma se le tue parole or ver giuraro, +dimmi che è cagion per che dimostri +nel dire e nel guardar d’avermi caro». + +E io a lui: «Li dolci detti vostri, +che, quanto durerà l’uso moderno, +faranno cari ancora i loro incostri». + +«O frate», disse, «questi ch’io ti cerno +col dito», e additò un spirto innanzi, +«fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno. + +Versi d’amore e prose di romanzi +soverchiò tutti; e lascia dir li stolti +che quel di Lemosì credon ch’avanzi. + +A voce più ch’al ver drizzan li volti, +e così ferman sua oppinïone +prima ch’arte o ragion per lor s’ascolti. + +Così fer molti antichi di Guittone, +di grido in grido pur lui dando pregio, +fin che l’ha vinto il ver con più persone. + +Or se tu hai sì ampio privilegio, +che licito ti sia l’andare al chiostro +nel quale è Cristo abate del collegio, + +falli per me un dir d’un paternostro, +quanto bisogna a noi di questo mondo, +dove poter peccar non è più nostro». + +Poi, forse per dar luogo altrui secondo +che presso avea, disparve per lo foco, +come per l’acqua il pesce andando al fondo. + +Io mi fei al mostrato innanzi un poco, +e dissi ch’al suo nome il mio disire +apparecchiava grazïoso loco. + +El cominciò liberamente a dire: +«Tan m’abellis vostre cortes deman, +qu’ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire. + +Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan; +consiros vei la passada folor, +e vei jausen lo joi qu’esper, denan. + +Ara vos prec, per aquella valor +que vos guida al som de l’escalina, +sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor!». + +Poi s’ascose nel foco che li affina. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXVII + + +Sì come quando i primi raggi vibra +là dove il suo fattor lo sangue sparse, +cadendo Ibero sotto l’alta Libra, + +e l’onde in Gange da nona rïarse, +sì stava il sole; onde ’l giorno sen giva, +come l’angel di Dio lieto ci apparse. + +Fuor de la fiamma stava in su la riva, +e cantava ‘Beati mundo corde!’ +in voce assai più che la nostra viva. + +Poscia «Più non si va, se pria non morde, +anime sante, il foco: intrate in esso, +e al cantar di là non siate sorde», + +ci disse come noi li fummo presso; +per ch’io divenni tal, quando lo ’ntesi, +qual è colui che ne la fossa è messo. + +In su le man commesse mi protesi, +guardando il foco e imaginando forte +umani corpi già veduti accesi. + +Volsersi verso me le buone scorte; +e Virgilio mi disse: «Figliuol mio, +qui può esser tormento, ma non morte. + +Ricorditi, ricorditi! E se io +sovresso Gerïon ti guidai salvo, +che farò ora presso più a Dio? + +Credi per certo che se dentro a l’alvo +di questa fiamma stessi ben mille anni, +non ti potrebbe far d’un capel calvo. + +E se tu forse credi ch’io t’inganni, +fatti ver’ lei, e fatti far credenza +con le tue mani al lembo d’i tuoi panni. + +Pon giù omai, pon giù ogne temenza; +volgiti in qua e vieni: entra sicuro!». +E io pur fermo e contra coscïenza. + +Quando mi vide star pur fermo e duro, +turbato un poco disse: «Or vedi, figlio: +tra Bëatrice e te è questo muro». + +Come al nome di Tisbe aperse il ciglio +Piramo in su la morte, e riguardolla, +allor che ’l gelso diventò vermiglio; + +così, la mia durezza fatta solla, +mi volsi al savio duca, udendo il nome +che ne la mente sempre mi rampolla. + +Ond’ ei crollò la fronte e disse: «Come! +volenci star di qua?»; indi sorrise +come al fanciul si fa ch’è vinto al pome. + +Poi dentro al foco innanzi mi si mise, +pregando Stazio che venisse retro, +che pria per lunga strada ci divise. + +Sì com’ fui dentro, in un bogliente vetro +gittato mi sarei per rinfrescarmi, +tant’ era ivi lo ’ncendio sanza metro. + +Lo dolce padre mio, per confortarmi, +pur di Beatrice ragionando andava, +dicendo: «Li occhi suoi già veder parmi». + +Guidavaci una voce che cantava +di là; e noi, attenti pur a lei, +venimmo fuor là ove si montava. + +‘Venite, benedicti Patris mei’, +sonò dentro a un lume che lì era, +tal che mi vinse e guardar nol potei. + +«Lo sol sen va», soggiunse, «e vien la sera; +non v’arrestate, ma studiate il passo, +mentre che l’occidente non si annera». + +Dritta salia la via per entro ’l sasso +verso tal parte ch’io toglieva i raggi +dinanzi a me del sol ch’era già basso. + +E di pochi scaglion levammo i saggi, +che ’l sol corcar, per l’ombra che si spense, +sentimmo dietro e io e li miei saggi. + +E pria che ’n tutte le sue parti immense +fosse orizzonte fatto d’uno aspetto, +e notte avesse tutte sue dispense, + +ciascun di noi d’un grado fece letto; +ché la natura del monte ci affranse +la possa del salir più e ’l diletto. + +Quali si stanno ruminando manse +le capre, state rapide e proterve +sovra le cime avante che sien pranse, + +tacite a l’ombra, mentre che ’l sol ferve, +guardate dal pastor, che ’n su la verga +poggiato s’è e lor di posa serve; + +e quale il mandrïan che fori alberga, +lungo il pecuglio suo queto pernotta, +guardando perché fiera non lo sperga; + +tali eravamo tutti e tre allotta, +io come capra, ed ei come pastori, +fasciati quinci e quindi d’alta grotta. + +Poco parer potea lì del di fori; +ma, per quel poco, vedea io le stelle +di lor solere e più chiare e maggiori. + +Sì ruminando e sì mirando in quelle, +mi prese il sonno; il sonno che sovente, +anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle. + +Ne l’ora, credo, che de l’orïente +prima raggiò nel monte Citerea, +che di foco d’amor par sempre ardente, + +giovane e bella in sogno mi parea +donna vedere andar per una landa +cogliendo fiori; e cantando dicea: + +«Sappia qualunque il mio nome dimanda +ch’i’ mi son Lia, e vo movendo intorno +le belle mani a farmi una ghirlanda. + +Per piacermi a lo specchio, qui m’addorno; +ma mia suora Rachel mai non si smaga +dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto giorno. + +Ell’ è d’i suoi belli occhi veder vaga +com’ io de l’addornarmi con le mani; +lei lo vedere, e me l’ovrare appaga». + +E già per li splendori antelucani, +che tanto a’ pellegrin surgon più grati, +quanto, tornando, albergan men lontani, + +le tenebre fuggian da tutti lati, +e ’l sonno mio con esse; ond’ io leva’mi, +veggendo i gran maestri già levati. + +«Quel dolce pome che per tanti rami +cercando va la cura de’ mortali, +oggi porrà in pace le tue fami». + +Virgilio inverso me queste cotali +parole usò; e mai non furo strenne +che fosser di piacere a queste iguali. + +Tanto voler sopra voler mi venne +de l’esser sù, ch’ad ogne passo poi +al volo mi sentia crescer le penne. + +Come la scala tutta sotto noi +fu corsa e fummo in su ’l grado superno, +in me ficcò Virgilio li occhi suoi, + +e disse: «Il temporal foco e l’etterno +veduto hai, figlio; e se’ venuto in parte +dov’ io per me più oltre non discerno. + +Tratto t’ho qui con ingegno e con arte; +lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce; +fuor se’ de l’erte vie, fuor se’ de l’arte. + +Vedi lo sol che ’n fronte ti riluce; +vedi l’erbette, i fiori e li arbuscelli +che qui la terra sol da sé produce. + +Mentre che vegnan lieti li occhi belli +che, lagrimando, a te venir mi fenno, +seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli. + +Non aspettar mio dir più né mio cenno; +libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio, +e fallo fora non fare a suo senno: + +per ch’io te sovra te corono e mitrio». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXVIII + + +Vago già di cercar dentro e dintorno +la divina foresta spessa e viva, +ch’a li occhi temperava il novo giorno, + +sanza più aspettar, lasciai la riva, +prendendo la campagna lento lento +su per lo suol che d’ogne parte auliva. + +Un’aura dolce, sanza mutamento +avere in sé, mi feria per la fronte +non di più colpo che soave vento; + +per cui le fronde, tremolando, pronte +tutte quante piegavano a la parte +u’ la prim’ ombra gitta il santo monte; + +non però dal loro esser dritto sparte +tanto, che li augelletti per le cime +lasciasser d’operare ogne lor arte; + +ma con piena letizia l’ore prime, +cantando, ricevieno intra le foglie, +che tenevan bordone a le sue rime, + +tal qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie +per la pineta in su ’l lito di Chiassi, +quand’ Ëolo scilocco fuor discioglie. + +Già m’avean trasportato i lenti passi +dentro a la selva antica tanto, ch’io +non potea rivedere ond’ io mi ’ntrassi; + +ed ecco più andar mi tolse un rio, +che ’nver’ sinistra con sue picciole onde +piegava l’erba che ’n sua ripa uscìo. + +Tutte l’acque che son di qua più monde, +parrieno avere in sé mistura alcuna +verso di quella, che nulla nasconde, + +avvegna che si mova bruna bruna +sotto l’ombra perpetüa, che mai +raggiar non lascia sole ivi né luna. + +Coi piè ristetti e con li occhi passai +di là dal fiumicello, per mirare +la gran varïazion d’i freschi mai; + +e là m’apparve, sì com’ elli appare +subitamente cosa che disvia +per maraviglia tutto altro pensare, + +una donna soletta che si gia +e cantando e scegliendo fior da fiore +ond’ era pinta tutta la sua via. + +«Deh, bella donna, che a’ raggi d’amore +ti scaldi, s’i’ vo’ credere a’ sembianti +che soglion esser testimon del core, + +vegnati in voglia di trarreti avanti», +diss’ io a lei, «verso questa rivera, +tanto ch’io possa intender che tu canti. + +Tu mi fai rimembrar dove e qual era +Proserpina nel tempo che perdette +la madre lei, ed ella primavera». + +Come si volge, con le piante strette +a terra e intra sé, donna che balli, +e piede innanzi piede a pena mette, + +volsesi in su i vermigli e in su i gialli +fioretti verso me, non altrimenti +che vergine che li occhi onesti avvalli; + +e fece i prieghi miei esser contenti, +sì appressando sé, che ’l dolce suono +veniva a me co’ suoi intendimenti. + +Tosto che fu là dove l’erbe sono +bagnate già da l’onde del bel fiume, +di levar li occhi suoi mi fece dono. + +Non credo che splendesse tanto lume +sotto le ciglia a Venere, trafitta +dal figlio fuor di tutto suo costume. + +Ella ridea da l’altra riva dritta, +trattando più color con le sue mani, +che l’alta terra sanza seme gitta. + +Tre passi ci facea il fiume lontani; +ma Elesponto, là ’ve passò Serse, +ancora freno a tutti orgogli umani, + +più odio da Leandro non sofferse +per mareggiare intra Sesto e Abido, +che quel da me perch’ allor non s’aperse. + +«Voi siete nuovi, e forse perch’ io rido», +cominciò ella, «in questo luogo eletto +a l’umana natura per suo nido, + +maravigliando tienvi alcun sospetto; +ma luce rende il salmo Delectasti, +che puote disnebbiar vostro intelletto. + +E tu che se’ dinanzi e mi pregasti, +dì s’altro vuoli udir; ch’i’ venni presta +ad ogne tua question tanto che basti». + +«L’acqua», diss’ io, «e ’l suon de la foresta +impugnan dentro a me novella fede +di cosa ch’io udi’ contraria a questa». + +Ond’ ella: «Io dicerò come procede +per sua cagion ciò ch’ammirar ti face, +e purgherò la nebbia che ti fiede. + +Lo sommo Ben, che solo esso a sé piace, +fé l’uom buono e a bene, e questo loco +diede per arr’ a lui d’etterna pace. + +Per sua difalta qui dimorò poco; +per sua difalta in pianto e in affanno +cambiò onesto riso e dolce gioco. + +Perché ’l turbar che sotto da sé fanno +l’essalazion de l’acqua e de la terra, +che quanto posson dietro al calor vanno, + +a l’uomo non facesse alcuna guerra, +questo monte salìo verso ’l ciel tanto, +e libero n’è d’indi ove si serra. + +Or perché in circuito tutto quanto +l’aere si volge con la prima volta, +se non li è rotto il cerchio d’alcun canto, + +in questa altezza ch’è tutta disciolta +ne l’aere vivo, tal moto percuote, +e fa sonar la selva perch’ è folta; + +e la percossa pianta tanto puote, +che de la sua virtute l’aura impregna +e quella poi, girando, intorno scuote; + +e l’altra terra, secondo ch’è degna +per sé e per suo ciel, concepe e figlia +di diverse virtù diverse legna. + +Non parrebbe di là poi maraviglia, +udito questo, quando alcuna pianta +sanza seme palese vi s’appiglia. + +E saper dei che la campagna santa +dove tu se’, d’ogne semenza è piena, +e frutto ha in sé che di là non si schianta. + +L’acqua che vedi non surge di vena +che ristori vapor che gel converta, +come fiume ch’acquista e perde lena; + +ma esce di fontana salda e certa, +che tanto dal voler di Dio riprende, +quant’ ella versa da due parti aperta. + +Da questa parte con virtù discende +che toglie altrui memoria del peccato; +da l’altra d’ogne ben fatto la rende. + +Quinci Letè; così da l’altro lato +Eünoè si chiama, e non adopra +se quinci e quindi pria non è gustato: + +a tutti altri sapori esto è di sopra. +E avvegna ch’assai possa esser sazia +la sete tua perch’ io più non ti scuopra, + +darotti un corollario ancor per grazia; +né credo che ’l mio dir ti sia men caro, +se oltre promession teco si spazia. + +Quelli ch’anticamente poetaro +l’età de l’oro e suo stato felice, +forse in Parnaso esto loco sognaro. + +Qui fu innocente l’umana radice; +qui primavera sempre e ogne frutto; +nettare è questo di che ciascun dice». + +Io mi rivolsi ’n dietro allora tutto +a’ miei poeti, e vidi che con riso +udito avëan l’ultimo costrutto; + +poi a la bella donna torna’ il viso. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXIX + + +Cantando come donna innamorata, +continüò col fin di sue parole: +‘Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata!’. + +E come ninfe che si givan sole +per le salvatiche ombre, disïando +qual di veder, qual di fuggir lo sole, + +allor si mosse contra ’l fiume, andando +su per la riva; e io pari di lei, +picciol passo con picciol seguitando. + +Non eran cento tra ’ suoi passi e ’ miei, +quando le ripe igualmente dier volta, +per modo ch’a levante mi rendei. + +Né ancor fu così nostra via molta, +quando la donna tutta a me si torse, +dicendo: «Frate mio, guarda e ascolta». + +Ed ecco un lustro sùbito trascorse +da tutte parti per la gran foresta, +tal che di balenar mi mise in forse. + +Ma perché ’l balenar, come vien, resta, +e quel, durando, più e più splendeva, +nel mio pensier dicea: ‘Che cosa è questa?’. + +E una melodia dolce correva +per l’aere luminoso; onde buon zelo +mi fé riprender l’ardimento d’Eva, + +che là dove ubidia la terra e ’l cielo, +femmina, sola e pur testé formata, +non sofferse di star sotto alcun velo; + +sotto ’l qual se divota fosse stata, +avrei quelle ineffabili delizie +sentite prima e più lunga fïata. + +Mentr’ io m’andava tra tante primizie +de l’etterno piacer tutto sospeso, +e disïoso ancora a più letizie, + +dinanzi a noi, tal quale un foco acceso, +ci si fé l’aere sotto i verdi rami; +e ’l dolce suon per canti era già inteso. + +O sacrosante Vergini, se fami, +freddi o vigilie mai per voi soffersi, +cagion mi sprona ch’io mercé vi chiami. + +Or convien che Elicona per me versi, +e Uranìe m’aiuti col suo coro +forti cose a pensar mettere in versi. + +Poco più oltre, sette alberi d’oro +falsava nel parere il lungo tratto +del mezzo ch’era ancor tra noi e loro; + +ma quand’ i’ fui sì presso di lor fatto, +che l’obietto comun, che ’l senso inganna, +non perdea per distanza alcun suo atto, + +la virtù ch’a ragion discorso ammanna, +sì com’ elli eran candelabri apprese, +e ne le voci del cantare ‘Osanna’. + +Di sopra fiammeggiava il bello arnese +più chiaro assai che luna per sereno +di mezza notte nel suo mezzo mese. + +Io mi rivolsi d’ammirazion pieno +al buon Virgilio, ed esso mi rispuose +con vista carca di stupor non meno. + +Indi rendei l’aspetto a l’alte cose +che si movieno incontr’ a noi sì tardi, +che foran vinte da novelle spose. + +La donna mi sgridò: «Perché pur ardi +sì ne l’affetto de le vive luci, +e ciò che vien di retro a lor non guardi?». + +Genti vid’ io allor, come a lor duci, +venire appresso, vestite di bianco; +e tal candor di qua già mai non fuci. + +L’acqua imprendëa dal sinistro fianco, +e rendea me la mia sinistra costa, +s’io riguardava in lei, come specchio anco. + +Quand’ io da la mia riva ebbi tal posta, +che solo il fiume mi facea distante, +per veder meglio ai passi diedi sosta, + +e vidi le fiammelle andar davante, +lasciando dietro a sé l’aere dipinto, +e di tratti pennelli avean sembiante; + +sì che lì sopra rimanea distinto +di sette liste, tutte in quei colori +onde fa l’arco il Sole e Delia il cinto. + +Questi ostendali in dietro eran maggiori +che la mia vista; e, quanto a mio avviso, +diece passi distavan quei di fori. + +Sotto così bel ciel com’ io diviso, +ventiquattro seniori, a due a due, +coronati venien di fiordaliso. + +Tutti cantavan: «Benedicta tue +ne le figlie d’Adamo, e benedette +sieno in etterno le bellezze tue!». + +Poscia che i fiori e l’altre fresche erbette +a rimpetto di me da l’altra sponda +libere fuor da quelle genti elette, + +sì come luce luce in ciel seconda, +vennero appresso lor quattro animali, +coronati ciascun di verde fronda. + +Ognuno era pennuto di sei ali; +le penne piene d’occhi; e li occhi d’Argo, +se fosser vivi, sarebber cotali. + +A descriver lor forme più non spargo +rime, lettor; ch’altra spesa mi strigne, +tanto ch’a questa non posso esser largo; + +ma leggi Ezechïel, che li dipigne +come li vide da la fredda parte +venir con vento e con nube e con igne; + +e quali i troverai ne le sue carte, +tali eran quivi, salvo ch’a le penne +Giovanni è meco e da lui si diparte. + +Lo spazio dentro a lor quattro contenne +un carro, in su due rote, trïunfale, +ch’al collo d’un grifon tirato venne. + +Esso tendeva in sù l’una e l’altra ale +tra la mezzana e le tre e tre liste, +sì ch’a nulla, fendendo, facea male. + +Tanto salivan che non eran viste; +le membra d’oro avea quant’ era uccello, +e bianche l’altre, di vermiglio miste. + +Non che Roma di carro così bello +rallegrasse Affricano, o vero Augusto, +ma quel del Sol saria pover con ello; + +quel del Sol che, svïando, fu combusto +per l’orazion de la Terra devota, +quando fu Giove arcanamente giusto. + +Tre donne in giro da la destra rota +venian danzando; l’una tanto rossa +ch’a pena fora dentro al foco nota; + +l’altr’ era come se le carni e l’ossa +fossero state di smeraldo fatte; +la terza parea neve testé mossa; + +e or parëan da la bianca tratte, +or da la rossa; e dal canto di questa +l’altre toglien l’andare e tarde e ratte. + +Da la sinistra quattro facean festa, +in porpore vestite, dietro al modo +d’una di lor ch’avea tre occhi in testa. + +Appresso tutto il pertrattato nodo +vidi due vecchi in abito dispari, +ma pari in atto e onesto e sodo. + +L’un si mostrava alcun de’ famigliari +di quel sommo Ipocràte che natura +a li animali fé ch’ell’ ha più cari; + +mostrava l’altro la contraria cura +con una spada lucida e aguta, +tal che di qua dal rio mi fé paura. + +Poi vidi quattro in umile paruta; +e di retro da tutti un vecchio solo +venir, dormendo, con la faccia arguta. + +E questi sette col primaio stuolo +erano abitüati, ma di gigli +dintorno al capo non facëan brolo, + +anzi di rose e d’altri fior vermigli; +giurato avria poco lontano aspetto +che tutti ardesser di sopra da’ cigli. + +E quando il carro a me fu a rimpetto, +un tuon s’udì, e quelle genti degne +parvero aver l’andar più interdetto, + +fermandosi ivi con le prime insegne. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXX + + +Quando il settentrïon del primo cielo, +che né occaso mai seppe né orto +né d’altra nebbia che di colpa velo, + +e che faceva lì ciascun accorto +di suo dover, come ’l più basso face +qual temon gira per venire a porto, + +fermo s’affisse: la gente verace, +venuta prima tra ’l grifone ed esso, +al carro volse sé come a sua pace; + +e un di loro, quasi da ciel messo, +‘Veni, sponsa, de Libano’ cantando +gridò tre volte, e tutti li altri appresso. + +Quali i beati al novissimo bando +surgeran presti ognun di sua caverna, +la revestita voce alleluiando, + +cotali in su la divina basterna +si levar cento, ad vocem tanti senis, +ministri e messaggier di vita etterna. + +Tutti dicean: ‘Benedictus qui venis!’, +e fior gittando e di sopra e dintorno, +‘Manibus, oh, date lilïa plenis!’. + +Io vidi già nel cominciar del giorno +la parte orïental tutta rosata, +e l’altro ciel di bel sereno addorno; + +e la faccia del sol nascere ombrata, +sì che per temperanza di vapori +l’occhio la sostenea lunga fïata: + +così dentro una nuvola di fiori +che da le mani angeliche saliva +e ricadeva in giù dentro e di fori, + +sovra candido vel cinta d’uliva +donna m’apparve, sotto verde manto +vestita di color di fiamma viva. + +E lo spirito mio, che già cotanto +tempo era stato ch’a la sua presenza +non era di stupor, tremando, affranto, + +sanza de li occhi aver più conoscenza, +per occulta virtù che da lei mosse, +d’antico amor sentì la gran potenza. + +Tosto che ne la vista mi percosse +l’alta virtù che già m’avea trafitto +prima ch’io fuor di püerizia fosse, + +volsimi a la sinistra col respitto +col quale il fantolin corre a la mamma +quando ha paura o quando elli è afflitto, + +per dicere a Virgilio: ‘Men che dramma +di sangue m’è rimaso che non tremi: +conosco i segni de l’antica fiamma’. + +Ma Virgilio n’avea lasciati scemi +di sé, Virgilio dolcissimo patre, +Virgilio a cui per mia salute die’mi; + +né quantunque perdeo l’antica matre, +valse a le guance nette di rugiada, +che, lagrimando, non tornasser atre. + +«Dante, perché Virgilio se ne vada, +non pianger anco, non piangere ancora; +ché pianger ti conven per altra spada». + +Quasi ammiraglio che in poppa e in prora +viene a veder la gente che ministra +per li altri legni, e a ben far l’incora; + +in su la sponda del carro sinistra, +quando mi volsi al suon del nome mio, +che di necessità qui si registra, + +vidi la donna che pria m’appario +velata sotto l’angelica festa, +drizzar li occhi ver’ me di qua dal rio. + +Tutto che ’l vel che le scendea di testa, +cerchiato de le fronde di Minerva, +non la lasciasse parer manifesta, + +regalmente ne l’atto ancor proterva +continüò come colui che dice +e ’l più caldo parlar dietro reserva: + +«Guardaci ben! Ben son, ben son Beatrice. +Come degnasti d’accedere al monte? +non sapei tu che qui è l’uom felice?». + +Li occhi mi cadder giù nel chiaro fonte; +ma veggendomi in esso, i trassi a l’erba, +tanta vergogna mi gravò la fronte. + +Così la madre al figlio par superba, +com’ ella parve a me; perché d’amaro +sente il sapor de la pietade acerba. + +Ella si tacque; e li angeli cantaro +di sùbito ‘In te, Domine, speravi’; +ma oltre ‘pedes meos’ non passaro. + +Sì come neve tra le vive travi +per lo dosso d’Italia si congela, +soffiata e stretta da li venti schiavi, + +poi, liquefatta, in sé stessa trapela, +pur che la terra che perde ombra spiri, +sì che par foco fonder la candela; + +così fui sanza lagrime e sospiri +anzi ’l cantar di quei che notan sempre +dietro a le note de li etterni giri; + +ma poi che ’ntesi ne le dolci tempre +lor compatire a me, par che se detto +avesser: ‘Donna, perché sì lo stempre?’, + +lo gel che m’era intorno al cor ristretto, +spirito e acqua fessi, e con angoscia +de la bocca e de li occhi uscì del petto. + +Ella, pur ferma in su la detta coscia +del carro stando, a le sustanze pie +volse le sue parole così poscia: + +«Voi vigilate ne l’etterno die, +sì che notte né sonno a voi non fura +passo che faccia il secol per sue vie; + +onde la mia risposta è con più cura +che m’intenda colui che di là piagne, +perché sia colpa e duol d’una misura. + +Non pur per ovra de le rote magne, +che drizzan ciascun seme ad alcun fine +secondo che le stelle son compagne, + +ma per larghezza di grazie divine, +che sì alti vapori hanno a lor piova, +che nostre viste là non van vicine, + +questi fu tal ne la sua vita nova +virtüalmente, ch’ogne abito destro +fatto averebbe in lui mirabil prova. + +Ma tanto più maligno e più silvestro +si fa ’l terren col mal seme e non cólto, +quant’ elli ha più di buon vigor terrestro. + +Alcun tempo il sostenni col mio volto: +mostrando li occhi giovanetti a lui, +meco il menava in dritta parte vòlto. + +Sì tosto come in su la soglia fui +di mia seconda etade e mutai vita, +questi si tolse a me, e diessi altrui. + +Quando di carne a spirto era salita, +e bellezza e virtù cresciuta m’era, +fu’ io a lui men cara e men gradita; + +e volse i passi suoi per via non vera, +imagini di ben seguendo false, +che nulla promession rendono intera. + +Né l’impetrare ispirazion mi valse, +con le quali e in sogno e altrimenti +lo rivocai: sì poco a lui ne calse! + +Tanto giù cadde, che tutti argomenti +a la salute sua eran già corti, +fuor che mostrarli le perdute genti. + +Per questo visitai l’uscio d’i morti, +e a colui che l’ha qua sù condotto, +li prieghi miei, piangendo, furon porti. + +Alto fato di Dio sarebbe rotto, +se Letè si passasse e tal vivanda +fosse gustata sanza alcuno scotto + +di pentimento che lagrime spanda». + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXXI + + +«O tu che se’ di là dal fiume sacro», +volgendo suo parlare a me per punta, +che pur per taglio m’era paruto acro, + +ricominciò, seguendo sanza cunta, +«dì, dì se questo è vero: a tanta accusa +tua confession conviene esser congiunta». + +Era la mia virtù tanto confusa, +che la voce si mosse, e pria si spense +che da li organi suoi fosse dischiusa. + +Poco sofferse; poi disse: «Che pense? +Rispondi a me; ché le memorie triste +in te non sono ancor da l’acqua offense». + +Confusione e paura insieme miste +mi pinsero un tal «sì» fuor de la bocca, +al quale intender fuor mestier le viste. + +Come balestro frange, quando scocca +da troppa tesa, la sua corda e l’arco, +e con men foga l’asta il segno tocca, + +sì scoppia’ io sottesso grave carco, +fuori sgorgando lagrime e sospiri, +e la voce allentò per lo suo varco. + +Ond’ ella a me: «Per entro i mie’ disiri, +che ti menavano ad amar lo bene +di là dal qual non è a che s’aspiri, + +quai fossi attraversati o quai catene +trovasti, per che del passare innanzi +dovessiti così spogliar la spene? + +E quali agevolezze o quali avanzi +ne la fronte de li altri si mostraro, +per che dovessi lor passeggiare anzi?». + +Dopo la tratta d’un sospiro amaro, +a pena ebbi la voce che rispuose, +e le labbra a fatica la formaro. + +Piangendo dissi: «Le presenti cose +col falso lor piacer volser miei passi, +tosto che ’l vostro viso si nascose». + +Ed ella: «Se tacessi o se negassi +ciò che confessi, non fora men nota +la colpa tua: da tal giudice sassi! + +Ma quando scoppia de la propria gota +l’accusa del peccato, in nostra corte +rivolge sé contra ’l taglio la rota. + +Tuttavia, perché mo vergogna porte +del tuo errore, e perché altra volta, +udendo le serene, sie più forte, + +pon giù il seme del piangere e ascolta: +sì udirai come in contraria parte +mover dovieti mia carne sepolta. + +Mai non t’appresentò natura o arte +piacer, quanto le belle membra in ch’io +rinchiusa fui, e che so’ ’n terra sparte; + +e se ’l sommo piacer sì ti fallio +per la mia morte, qual cosa mortale +dovea poi trarre te nel suo disio? + +Ben ti dovevi, per lo primo strale +de le cose fallaci, levar suso +di retro a me che non era più tale. + +Non ti dovea gravar le penne in giuso, +ad aspettar più colpo, o pargoletta +o altra novità con sì breve uso. + +Novo augelletto due o tre aspetta; +ma dinanzi da li occhi d’i pennuti +rete si spiega indarno o si saetta». + +Quali fanciulli, vergognando, muti +con li occhi a terra stannosi, ascoltando +e sé riconoscendo e ripentuti, + +tal mi stav’ io; ed ella disse: «Quando +per udir se’ dolente, alza la barba, +e prenderai più doglia riguardando». + +Con men di resistenza si dibarba +robusto cerro, o vero al nostral vento +o vero a quel de la terra di Iarba, + +ch’io non levai al suo comando il mento; +e quando per la barba il viso chiese, +ben conobbi il velen de l’argomento. + +E come la mia faccia si distese, +posarsi quelle prime creature +da loro aspersïon l’occhio comprese; + +e le mie luci, ancor poco sicure, +vider Beatrice volta in su la fiera +ch’è sola una persona in due nature. + +Sotto ’l suo velo e oltre la rivera +vincer pariemi più sé stessa antica, +vincer che l’altre qui, quand’ ella c’era. + +Di penter sì mi punse ivi l’ortica, +che di tutte altre cose qual mi torse +più nel suo amor, più mi si fé nemica. + +Tanta riconoscenza il cor mi morse, +ch’io caddi vinto; e quale allora femmi, +salsi colei che la cagion mi porse. + +Poi, quando il cor virtù di fuor rendemmi, +la donna ch’io avea trovata sola +sopra me vidi, e dicea: «Tiemmi, tiemmi!». + +Tratto m’avea nel fiume infin la gola, +e tirandosi me dietro sen giva +sovresso l’acqua lieve come scola. + +Quando fui presso a la beata riva, +‘Asperges me’ sì dolcemente udissi, +che nol so rimembrar, non ch’io lo scriva. + +La bella donna ne le braccia aprissi; +abbracciommi la testa e mi sommerse +ove convenne ch’io l’acqua inghiottissi. + +Indi mi tolse, e bagnato m’offerse +dentro a la danza de le quattro belle; +e ciascuna del braccio mi coperse. + +«Noi siam qui ninfe e nel ciel siamo stelle; +pria che Beatrice discendesse al mondo, +fummo ordinate a lei per sue ancelle. + +Merrenti a li occhi suoi; ma nel giocondo +lume ch’è dentro aguzzeranno i tuoi +le tre di là, che miran più profondo». + +Così cantando cominciaro; e poi +al petto del grifon seco menarmi, +ove Beatrice stava volta a noi. + +Disser: «Fa che le viste non risparmi; +posto t’avem dinanzi a li smeraldi +ond’ Amor già ti trasse le sue armi». + +Mille disiri più che fiamma caldi +strinsermi li occhi a li occhi rilucenti, +che pur sopra ’l grifone stavan saldi. + +Come in lo specchio il sol, non altrimenti +la doppia fiera dentro vi raggiava, +or con altri, or con altri reggimenti. + +Pensa, lettor, s’io mi maravigliava, +quando vedea la cosa in sé star queta, +e ne l’idolo suo si trasmutava. + +Mentre che piena di stupore e lieta +l’anima mia gustava di quel cibo +che, saziando di sé, di sé asseta, + +sé dimostrando di più alto tribo +ne li atti, l’altre tre si fero avanti, +danzando al loro angelico caribo. + +«Volgi, Beatrice, volgi li occhi santi», +era la sua canzone, «al tuo fedele +che, per vederti, ha mossi passi tanti! + +Per grazia fa noi grazia che disvele +a lui la bocca tua, sì che discerna +la seconda bellezza che tu cele». + +O isplendor di viva luce etterna, +chi palido si fece sotto l’ombra +sì di Parnaso, o bevve in sua cisterna, + +che non paresse aver la mente ingombra, +tentando a render te qual tu paresti +là dove armonizzando il ciel t’adombra, + +quando ne l’aere aperto ti solvesti? + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXXII + + +Tant’ eran li occhi miei fissi e attenti +a disbramarsi la decenne sete, +che li altri sensi m’eran tutti spenti. + +Ed essi quinci e quindi avien parete +di non caler—così lo santo riso +a sé traéli con l’antica rete!—; + +quando per forza mi fu vòlto il viso +ver’ la sinistra mia da quelle dee, +perch’ io udi’ da loro un «Troppo fiso!»; + +e la disposizion ch’a veder èe +ne li occhi pur testé dal sol percossi, +sanza la vista alquanto esser mi fée. + +Ma poi ch’al poco il viso riformossi +(e dico ‘al poco’ per rispetto al molto +sensibile onde a forza mi rimossi), + +vidi ’n sul braccio destro esser rivolto +lo glorïoso essercito, e tornarsi +col sole e con le sette fiamme al volto. + +Come sotto li scudi per salvarsi +volgesi schiera, e sé gira col segno, +prima che possa tutta in sé mutarsi; + +quella milizia del celeste regno +che procedeva, tutta trapassonne +pria che piegasse il carro il primo legno. + +Indi a le rote si tornar le donne, +e ’l grifon mosse il benedetto carco +sì, che però nulla penna crollonne. + +La bella donna che mi trasse al varco +e Stazio e io seguitavam la rota +che fé l’orbita sua con minore arco. + +Sì passeggiando l’alta selva vòta, +colpa di quella ch’al serpente crese, +temprava i passi un’angelica nota. + +Forse in tre voli tanto spazio prese +disfrenata saetta, quanto eramo +rimossi, quando Bëatrice scese. + +Io senti’ mormorare a tutti «Adamo»; +poi cerchiaro una pianta dispogliata +di foglie e d’altra fronda in ciascun ramo. + +La coma sua, che tanto si dilata +più quanto più è sù, fora da l’Indi +ne’ boschi lor per altezza ammirata. + +«Beato se’, grifon, che non discindi +col becco d’esto legno dolce al gusto, +poscia che mal si torce il ventre quindi». + +Così dintorno a l’albero robusto +gridaron li altri; e l’animal binato: +«Sì si conserva il seme d’ogne giusto». + +E vòlto al temo ch’elli avea tirato, +trasselo al piè de la vedova frasca, +e quel di lei a lei lasciò legato. + +Come le nostre piante, quando casca +giù la gran luce mischiata con quella +che raggia dietro a la celeste lasca, + +turgide fansi, e poi si rinovella +di suo color ciascuna, pria che ’l sole +giunga li suoi corsier sotto altra stella; + +men che di rose e più che di vïole +colore aprendo, s’innovò la pianta, +che prima avea le ramora sì sole. + +Io non lo ’ntesi, né qui non si canta +l’inno che quella gente allor cantaro, +né la nota soffersi tutta quanta. + +S’io potessi ritrar come assonnaro +li occhi spietati udendo di Siringa, +li occhi a cui pur vegghiar costò sì caro; + +come pintor che con essempro pinga, +disegnerei com’ io m’addormentai; +ma qual vuol sia che l’assonnar ben finga. + +Però trascorro a quando mi svegliai, +e dico ch’un splendor mi squarciò ’l velo +del sonno, e un chiamar: «Surgi: che fai?». + +Quali a veder de’ fioretti del melo +che del suo pome li angeli fa ghiotti +e perpetüe nozze fa nel cielo, + +Pietro e Giovanni e Iacopo condotti +e vinti, ritornaro a la parola +da la qual furon maggior sonni rotti, + +e videro scemata loro scuola +così di Moïsè come d’Elia, +e al maestro suo cangiata stola; + +tal torna’ io, e vidi quella pia +sovra me starsi che conducitrice +fu de’ miei passi lungo ’l fiume pria. + +E tutto in dubbio dissi: «Ov’ è Beatrice?». +Ond’ ella: «Vedi lei sotto la fronda +nova sedere in su la sua radice. + +Vedi la compagnia che la circonda: +li altri dopo ’l grifon sen vanno suso +con più dolce canzone e più profonda». + +E se più fu lo suo parlar diffuso, +non so, però che già ne li occhi m’era +quella ch’ad altro intender m’avea chiuso. + +Sola sedeasi in su la terra vera, +come guardia lasciata lì del plaustro +che legar vidi a la biforme fera. + +In cerchio le facevan di sé claustro +le sette ninfe, con quei lumi in mano +che son sicuri d’Aquilone e d’Austro. + +«Qui sarai tu poco tempo silvano; +e sarai meco sanza fine cive +di quella Roma onde Cristo è romano. + +Però, in pro del mondo che mal vive, +al carro tieni or li occhi, e quel che vedi, +ritornato di là, fa che tu scrive». + +Così Beatrice; e io, che tutto ai piedi +d’i suoi comandamenti era divoto, +la mente e li occhi ov’ ella volle diedi. + +Non scese mai con sì veloce moto +foco di spessa nube, quando piove +da quel confine che più va remoto, + +com’ io vidi calar l’uccel di Giove +per l’alber giù, rompendo de la scorza, +non che d’i fiori e de le foglie nove; + +e ferì ’l carro di tutta sua forza; +ond’ el piegò come nave in fortuna, +vinta da l’onda, or da poggia, or da orza. + +Poscia vidi avventarsi ne la cuna +del trïunfal veiculo una volpe +che d’ogne pasto buon parea digiuna; + +ma, riprendendo lei di laide colpe, +la donna mia la volse in tanta futa +quanto sofferser l’ossa sanza polpe. + +Poscia per indi ond’ era pria venuta, +l’aguglia vidi scender giù ne l’arca +del carro e lasciar lei di sé pennuta; + +e qual esce di cuor che si rammarca, +tal voce uscì del cielo e cotal disse: +«O navicella mia, com’ mal se’ carca!». + +Poi parve a me che la terra s’aprisse +tr’ambo le ruote, e vidi uscirne un drago +che per lo carro sù la coda fisse; + +e come vespa che ritragge l’ago, +a sé traendo la coda maligna, +trasse del fondo, e gissen vago vago. + +Quel che rimase, come da gramigna +vivace terra, da la piuma, offerta +forse con intenzion sana e benigna, + +si ricoperse, e funne ricoperta +e l’una e l’altra rota e ’l temo, in tanto +che più tiene un sospir la bocca aperta. + +Trasformato così ’l dificio santo +mise fuor teste per le parti sue, +tre sovra ’l temo e una in ciascun canto. + +Le prime eran cornute come bue, +ma le quattro un sol corno avean per fronte: +simile mostro visto ancor non fue. + +Sicura, quasi rocca in alto monte, +seder sovresso una puttana sciolta +m’apparve con le ciglia intorno pronte; + +e come perché non li fosse tolta, +vidi di costa a lei dritto un gigante; +e basciavansi insieme alcuna volta. + +Ma perché l’occhio cupido e vagante +a me rivolse, quel feroce drudo +la flagellò dal capo infin le piante; + +poi, di sospetto pieno e d’ira crudo, +disciolse il mostro, e trassel per la selva, +tanto che sol di lei mi fece scudo + +a la puttana e a la nova belva. + + + + +Purgatorio +Canto XXXIII + + +‘Deus, venerunt gentes’, alternando +or tre or quattro dolce salmodia, +le donne incominciaro, e lagrimando; + +e Bëatrice, sospirosa e pia, +quelle ascoltava sì fatta, che poco +più a la croce si cambiò Maria. + +Ma poi che l’altre vergini dier loco +a lei di dir, levata dritta in pè, +rispuose, colorata come foco: + +‘Modicum, et non videbitis me; +et iterum, sorelle mie dilette, +modicum, et vos videbitis me’. + +Poi le si mise innanzi tutte e sette, +e dopo sé, solo accennando, mosse +me e la donna e ’l savio che ristette. + +Così sen giva; e non credo che fosse +lo decimo suo passo in terra posto, +quando con li occhi li occhi mi percosse; + +e con tranquillo aspetto «Vien più tosto», +mi disse, «tanto che, s’io parlo teco, +ad ascoltarmi tu sie ben disposto». + +Sì com’ io fui, com’ io dovëa, seco, +dissemi: «Frate, perché non t’attenti +a domandarmi omai venendo meco?». + +Come a color che troppo reverenti +dinanzi a suo maggior parlando sono, +che non traggon la voce viva ai denti, + +avvenne a me, che sanza intero suono +incominciai: «Madonna, mia bisogna +voi conoscete, e ciò ch’ad essa è buono». + +Ed ella a me: «Da tema e da vergogna +voglio che tu omai ti disviluppe, +sì che non parli più com’ om che sogna. + +Sappi che ’l vaso che ’l serpente ruppe, +fu e non è; ma chi n’ha colpa, creda +che vendetta di Dio non teme suppe. + +Non sarà tutto tempo sanza reda +l’aguglia che lasciò le penne al carro, +per che divenne mostro e poscia preda; + +ch’io veggio certamente, e però il narro, +a darne tempo già stelle propinque, +secure d’ogn’ intoppo e d’ogne sbarro, + +nel quale un cinquecento diece e cinque, +messo di Dio, anciderà la fuia +con quel gigante che con lei delinque. + +E forse che la mia narrazion buia, +qual Temi e Sfinge, men ti persuade, +perch’ a lor modo lo ’ntelletto attuia; + +ma tosto fier li fatti le Naiade, +che solveranno questo enigma forte +sanza danno di pecore o di biade. + +Tu nota; e sì come da me son porte, +così queste parole segna a’ vivi +del viver ch’è un correre a la morte. + +E aggi a mente, quando tu le scrivi, +di non celar qual hai vista la pianta +ch’è or due volte dirubata quivi. + +Qualunque ruba quella o quella schianta, +con bestemmia di fatto offende a Dio, +che solo a l’uso suo la creò santa. + +Per morder quella, in pena e in disio +cinquemilia anni e più l’anima prima +bramò colui che ’l morso in sé punio. + +Dorme lo ’ngegno tuo, se non estima +per singular cagione esser eccelsa +lei tanto e sì travolta ne la cima. + +E se stati non fossero acqua d’Elsa +li pensier vani intorno a la tua mente, +e ’l piacer loro un Piramo a la gelsa, + +per tante circostanze solamente +la giustizia di Dio, ne l’interdetto, +conosceresti a l’arbor moralmente. + +Ma perch’ io veggio te ne lo ’ntelletto +fatto di pietra e, impetrato, tinto, +sì che t’abbaglia il lume del mio detto, + +voglio anco, e se non scritto, almen dipinto, +che ’l te ne porti dentro a te per quello +che si reca il bordon di palma cinto». + +E io: «Sì come cera da suggello, +che la figura impressa non trasmuta, +segnato è or da voi lo mio cervello. + +Ma perché tanto sovra mia veduta +vostra parola disïata vola, +che più la perde quanto più s’aiuta?». + +«Perché conoschi», disse, «quella scuola +c’hai seguitata, e veggi sua dottrina +come può seguitar la mia parola; + +e veggi vostra via da la divina +distar cotanto, quanto si discorda +da terra il ciel che più alto festina». + +Ond’ io rispuosi lei: «Non mi ricorda +ch’i’ stranïasse me già mai da voi, +né honne coscïenza che rimorda». + +«E se tu ricordar non te ne puoi», +sorridendo rispuose, «or ti rammenta +come bevesti di Letè ancoi; + +e se dal fummo foco s’argomenta, +cotesta oblivïon chiaro conchiude +colpa ne la tua voglia altrove attenta. + +Veramente oramai saranno nude +le mie parole, quanto converrassi +quelle scovrire a la tua vista rude». + +E più corusco e con più lenti passi +teneva il sole il cerchio di merigge, +che qua e là, come li aspetti, fassi, + +quando s’affisser, sì come s’affigge +chi va dinanzi a gente per iscorta +se trova novitate o sue vestigge, + +le sette donne al fin d’un’ombra smorta, +qual sotto foglie verdi e rami nigri +sovra suoi freddi rivi l’alpe porta. + +Dinanzi ad esse Ëufratès e Tigri +veder mi parve uscir d’una fontana, +e, quasi amici, dipartirsi pigri. + +«O luce, o gloria de la gente umana, +che acqua è questa che qui si dispiega +da un principio e sé da sé lontana?». + +Per cotal priego detto mi fu: «Priega +Matelda che ’l ti dica». E qui rispuose, +come fa chi da colpa si dislega, + +la bella donna: «Questo e altre cose +dette li son per me; e son sicura +che l’acqua di Letè non gliel nascose». + +E Bëatrice: «Forse maggior cura, +che spesse volte la memoria priva, +fatt’ ha la mente sua ne li occhi oscura. + +Ma vedi Eünoè che là diriva: +menalo ad esso, e come tu se’ usa, +la tramortita sua virtù ravviva». + +Come anima gentil, che non fa scusa, +ma fa sua voglia de la voglia altrui +tosto che è per segno fuor dischiusa; + +così, poi che da essa preso fui, +la bella donna mossesi, e a Stazio +donnescamente disse: «Vien con lui». + +S’io avessi, lettor, più lungo spazio +da scrivere, i’ pur cantere’ in parte +lo dolce ber che mai non m’avria sazio; + +ma perché piene son tutte le carte +ordite a questa cantica seconda, +non mi lascia più ir lo fren de l’arte. + +Io ritornai da la santissima onda +rifatto sì come piante novelle +rinovellate di novella fronda, + +puro e disposto a salire a le stelle. + + + + +PARADISO + + + + +Paradiso +Canto I + + +La gloria di colui che tutto move +per l’universo penetra, e risplende +in una parte più e meno altrove. + +Nel ciel che più de la sua luce prende +fu’ io, e vidi cose che ridire +né sa né può chi di là sù discende; + +perché appressando sé al suo disire, +nostro intelletto si profonda tanto, +che dietro la memoria non può ire. + +Veramente quant’ io del regno santo +ne la mia mente potei far tesoro, +sarà ora materia del mio canto. + +O buono Appollo, a l’ultimo lavoro +fammi del tuo valor sì fatto vaso, +come dimandi a dar l’amato alloro. + +Infino a qui l’un giogo di Parnaso +assai mi fu; ma or con amendue +m’è uopo intrar ne l’aringo rimaso. + +Entra nel petto mio, e spira tue +sì come quando Marsïa traesti +de la vagina de le membra sue. + +O divina virtù, se mi ti presti +tanto che l’ombra del beato regno +segnata nel mio capo io manifesti, + +vedra’mi al piè del tuo diletto legno +venire, e coronarmi de le foglie +che la materia e tu mi farai degno. + +Sì rade volte, padre, se ne coglie +per trïunfare o cesare o poeta, +colpa e vergogna de l’umane voglie, + +che parturir letizia in su la lieta +delfica deïtà dovria la fronda +peneia, quando alcun di sé asseta. + +Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda: +forse di retro a me con miglior voci +si pregherà perché Cirra risponda. + +Surge ai mortali per diverse foci +la lucerna del mondo; ma da quella +che quattro cerchi giugne con tre croci, + +con miglior corso e con migliore stella +esce congiunta, e la mondana cera +più a suo modo tempera e suggella. + +Fatto avea di là mane e di qua sera +tal foce, e quasi tutto era là bianco +quello emisperio, e l’altra parte nera, + +quando Beatrice in sul sinistro fianco +vidi rivolta e riguardar nel sole: +aguglia sì non li s’affisse unquanco. + +E sì come secondo raggio suole +uscir del primo e risalire in suso, +pur come pelegrin che tornar vuole, + +così de l’atto suo, per li occhi infuso +ne l’imagine mia, il mio si fece, +e fissi li occhi al sole oltre nostr’ uso. + +Molto è licito là, che qui non lece +a le nostre virtù, mercé del loco +fatto per proprio de l’umana spece. + +Io nol soffersi molto, né sì poco, +ch’io nol vedessi sfavillar dintorno, +com’ ferro che bogliente esce del foco; + +e di sùbito parve giorno a giorno +essere aggiunto, come quei che puote +avesse il ciel d’un altro sole addorno. + +Beatrice tutta ne l’etterne rote +fissa con li occhi stava; e io in lei +le luci fissi, di là sù rimote. + +Nel suo aspetto tal dentro mi fei, +qual si fé Glauco nel gustar de l’erba +che ’l fé consorto in mar de li altri dèi. + +Trasumanar significar per verba +non si poria; però l’essemplo basti +a cui esperïenza grazia serba. + +S’i’ era sol di me quel che creasti +novellamente, amor che ’l ciel governi, +tu ’l sai, che col tuo lume mi levasti. + +Quando la rota che tu sempiterni +desiderato, a sé mi fece atteso +con l’armonia che temperi e discerni, + +parvemi tanto allor del cielo acceso +de la fiamma del sol, che pioggia o fiume +lago non fece alcun tanto disteso. + +La novità del suono e ’l grande lume +di lor cagion m’accesero un disio +mai non sentito di cotanto acume. + +Ond’ ella, che vedea me sì com’ io, +a quïetarmi l’animo commosso, +pria ch’io a dimandar, la bocca aprio + +e cominciò: «Tu stesso ti fai grosso +col falso imaginar, sì che non vedi +ciò che vedresti se l’avessi scosso. + +Tu non se’ in terra, sì come tu credi; +ma folgore, fuggendo il proprio sito, +non corse come tu ch’ad esso riedi». + +S’io fui del primo dubbio disvestito +per le sorrise parolette brevi, +dentro ad un nuovo più fu’ inretito + +e dissi: «Già contento requïevi +di grande ammirazion; ma ora ammiro +com’ io trascenda questi corpi levi». + +Ond’ ella, appresso d’un pïo sospiro, +li occhi drizzò ver’ me con quel sembiante +che madre fa sovra figlio deliro, + +e cominciò: «Le cose tutte quante +hanno ordine tra loro, e questo è forma +che l’universo a Dio fa simigliante. + +Qui veggion l’alte creature l’orma +de l’etterno valore, il qual è fine +al quale è fatta la toccata norma. + +Ne l’ordine ch’io dico sono accline +tutte nature, per diverse sorti, +più al principio loro e men vicine; + +onde si muovono a diversi porti +per lo gran mar de l’essere, e ciascuna +con istinto a lei dato che la porti. + +Questi ne porta il foco inver’ la luna; +questi ne’ cor mortali è permotore; +questi la terra in sé stringe e aduna; + +né pur le creature che son fore +d’intelligenza quest’ arco saetta, +ma quelle c’hanno intelletto e amore. + +La provedenza, che cotanto assetta, +del suo lume fa ’l ciel sempre quïeto +nel qual si volge quel c’ha maggior fretta; + +e ora lì, come a sito decreto, +cen porta la virtù di quella corda +che ciò che scocca drizza in segno lieto. + +Vero è che, come forma non s’accorda +molte fïate a l’intenzion de l’arte, +perch’ a risponder la materia è sorda, + +così da questo corso si diparte +talor la creatura, c’ha podere +di piegar, così pinta, in altra parte; + +e sì come veder si può cadere +foco di nube, sì l’impeto primo +l’atterra torto da falso piacere. + +Non dei più ammirar, se bene stimo, +lo tuo salir, se non come d’un rivo +se d’alto monte scende giuso ad imo. + +Maraviglia sarebbe in te se, privo +d’impedimento, giù ti fossi assiso, +com’ a terra quïete in foco vivo». + +Quinci rivolse inver’ lo cielo il viso. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto II + + +O voi che siete in piccioletta barca, +desiderosi d’ascoltar, seguiti +dietro al mio legno che cantando varca, + +tornate a riveder li vostri liti: +non vi mettete in pelago, ché forse, +perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti. + +L’acqua ch’io prendo già mai non si corse; +Minerva spira, e conducemi Appollo, +e nove Muse mi dimostran l’Orse. + +Voialtri pochi che drizzaste il collo +per tempo al pan de li angeli, del quale +vivesi qui ma non sen vien satollo, + +metter potete ben per l’alto sale +vostro navigio, servando mio solco +dinanzi a l’acqua che ritorna equale. + +Que’ glorïosi che passaro al Colco +non s’ammiraron come voi farete, +quando Iasón vider fatto bifolco. + +La concreata e perpetüa sete +del deïforme regno cen portava +veloci quasi come ’l ciel vedete. + +Beatrice in suso, e io in lei guardava; +e forse in tanto in quanto un quadrel posa +e vola e da la noce si dischiava, + +giunto mi vidi ove mirabil cosa +mi torse il viso a sé; e però quella +cui non potea mia cura essere ascosa, + +volta ver’ me, sì lieta come bella, +«Drizza la mente in Dio grata», mi disse, +«che n’ha congiunti con la prima stella». + +Parev’ a me che nube ne coprisse +lucida, spessa, solida e pulita, +quasi adamante che lo sol ferisse. + +Per entro sé l’etterna margarita +ne ricevette, com’ acqua recepe +raggio di luce permanendo unita. + +S’io era corpo, e qui non si concepe +com’ una dimensione altra patio, +ch’esser convien se corpo in corpo repe, + +accender ne dovria più il disio +di veder quella essenza in che si vede +come nostra natura e Dio s’unio. + +Lì si vedrà ciò che tenem per fede, +non dimostrato, ma fia per sé noto +a guisa del ver primo che l’uom crede. + +Io rispuosi: «Madonna, sì devoto +com’ esser posso più, ringrazio lui +lo qual dal mortal mondo m’ha remoto. + +Ma ditemi: che son li segni bui +di questo corpo, che là giuso in terra +fan di Cain favoleggiare altrui?». + +Ella sorrise alquanto, e poi «S’elli erra +l’oppinïon», mi disse, «d’i mortali +dove chiave di senso non diserra, + +certo non ti dovrien punger li strali +d’ammirazione omai, poi dietro ai sensi +vedi che la ragione ha corte l’ali. + +Ma dimmi quel che tu da te ne pensi». +E io: «Ciò che n’appar qua sù diverso +credo che fanno i corpi rari e densi». + +Ed ella: «Certo assai vedrai sommerso +nel falso il creder tuo, se bene ascolti +l’argomentar ch’io li farò avverso. + +La spera ottava vi dimostra molti +lumi, li quali e nel quale e nel quanto +notar si posson di diversi volti. + +Se raro e denso ciò facesser tanto, +una sola virtù sarebbe in tutti, +più e men distributa e altrettanto. + +Virtù diverse esser convegnon frutti +di princìpi formali, e quei, for ch’uno, +seguiterieno a tua ragion distrutti. + +Ancor, se raro fosse di quel bruno +cagion che tu dimandi, o d’oltre in parte +fora di sua materia sì digiuno + +esto pianeto, o, sì come comparte +lo grasso e ’l magro un corpo, così questo +nel suo volume cangerebbe carte. + +Se ’l primo fosse, fora manifesto +ne l’eclissi del sol, per trasparere +lo lume come in altro raro ingesto. + +Questo non è: però è da vedere +de l’altro; e s’elli avvien ch’io l’altro cassi, +falsificato fia lo tuo parere. + +S’elli è che questo raro non trapassi, +esser conviene un termine da onde +lo suo contrario più passar non lassi; + +e indi l’altrui raggio si rifonde +così come color torna per vetro +lo qual di retro a sé piombo nasconde. + +Or dirai tu ch’el si dimostra tetro +ivi lo raggio più che in altre parti, +per esser lì refratto più a retro. + +Da questa instanza può deliberarti +esperïenza, se già mai la provi, +ch’esser suol fonte ai rivi di vostr’ arti. + +Tre specchi prenderai; e i due rimovi +da te d’un modo, e l’altro, più rimosso, +tr’ambo li primi li occhi tuoi ritrovi. + +Rivolto ad essi, fa che dopo il dosso +ti stea un lume che i tre specchi accenda +e torni a te da tutti ripercosso. + +Ben che nel quanto tanto non si stenda +la vista più lontana, lì vedrai +come convien ch’igualmente risplenda. + +Or, come ai colpi de li caldi rai +de la neve riman nudo il suggetto +e dal colore e dal freddo primai, + +così rimaso te ne l’intelletto +voglio informar di luce sì vivace, +che ti tremolerà nel suo aspetto. + +Dentro dal ciel de la divina pace +si gira un corpo ne la cui virtute +l’esser di tutto suo contento giace. + +Lo ciel seguente, c’ha tante vedute, +quell’ esser parte per diverse essenze, +da lui distratte e da lui contenute. + +Li altri giron per varie differenze +le distinzion che dentro da sé hanno +dispongono a lor fini e lor semenze. + +Questi organi del mondo così vanno, +come tu vedi omai, di grado in grado, +che di sù prendono e di sotto fanno. + +Riguarda bene omai sì com’ io vado +per questo loco al vero che disiri, +sì che poi sappi sol tener lo guado. + +Lo moto e la virtù d’i santi giri, +come dal fabbro l’arte del martello, +da’ beati motor convien che spiri; + +e ’l ciel cui tanti lumi fanno bello, +de la mente profonda che lui volve +prende l’image e fassene suggello. + +E come l’alma dentro a vostra polve +per differenti membra e conformate +a diverse potenze si risolve, + +così l’intelligenza sua bontate +multiplicata per le stelle spiega, +girando sé sovra sua unitate. + +Virtù diversa fa diversa lega +col prezïoso corpo ch’ella avviva, +nel qual, sì come vita in voi, si lega. + +Per la natura lieta onde deriva, +la virtù mista per lo corpo luce +come letizia per pupilla viva. + +Da essa vien ciò che da luce a luce +par differente, non da denso e raro; +essa è formal principio che produce, + +conforme a sua bontà, lo turbo e ’l chiaro». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto III + + +Quel sol che pria d’amor mi scaldò ’l petto, +di bella verità m’avea scoverto, +provando e riprovando, il dolce aspetto; + +e io, per confessar corretto e certo +me stesso, tanto quanto si convenne +leva’ il capo a proferer più erto; + +ma visïone apparve che ritenne +a sé me tanto stretto, per vedersi, +che di mia confession non mi sovvenne. + +Quali per vetri trasparenti e tersi, +o ver per acque nitide e tranquille, +non sì profonde che i fondi sien persi, + +tornan d’i nostri visi le postille +debili sì, che perla in bianca fronte +non vien men forte a le nostre pupille; + +tali vid’ io più facce a parlar pronte; +per ch’io dentro a l’error contrario corsi +a quel ch’accese amor tra l’omo e ’l fonte. + +Sùbito sì com’ io di lor m’accorsi, +quelle stimando specchiati sembianti, +per veder di cui fosser, li occhi torsi; + +e nulla vidi, e ritorsili avanti +dritti nel lume de la dolce guida, +che, sorridendo, ardea ne li occhi santi. + +«Non ti maravigliar perch’ io sorrida», +mi disse, «appresso il tuo püeril coto, +poi sopra ’l vero ancor lo piè non fida, + +ma te rivolve, come suole, a vòto: +vere sustanze son ciò che tu vedi, +qui rilegate per manco di voto. + +Però parla con esse e odi e credi; +ché la verace luce che le appaga +da sé non lascia lor torcer li piedi». + +E io a l’ombra che parea più vaga +di ragionar, drizza’mi, e cominciai, +quasi com’ uom cui troppa voglia smaga: + +«O ben creato spirito, che a’ rai +di vita etterna la dolcezza senti +che, non gustata, non s’intende mai, + +grazïoso mi fia se mi contenti +del nome tuo e de la vostra sorte». +Ond’ ella, pronta e con occhi ridenti: + +«La nostra carità non serra porte +a giusta voglia, se non come quella +che vuol simile a sé tutta sua corte. + +I’ fui nel mondo vergine sorella; +e se la mente tua ben sé riguarda, +non mi ti celerà l’esser più bella, + +ma riconoscerai ch’i’ son Piccarda, +che, posta qui con questi altri beati, +beata sono in la spera più tarda. + +Li nostri affetti, che solo infiammati +son nel piacer de lo Spirito Santo, +letizian del suo ordine formati. + +E questa sorte che par giù cotanto, +però n’è data, perché fuor negletti +li nostri voti, e vòti in alcun canto». + +Ond’ io a lei: «Ne’ mirabili aspetti +vostri risplende non so che divino +che vi trasmuta da’ primi concetti: + +però non fui a rimembrar festino; +ma or m’aiuta ciò che tu mi dici, +sì che raffigurar m’è più latino. + +Ma dimmi: voi che siete qui felici, +disiderate voi più alto loco +per più vedere e per più farvi amici?». + +Con quelle altr’ ombre pria sorrise un poco; +da indi mi rispuose tanto lieta, +ch’arder parea d’amor nel primo foco: + +«Frate, la nostra volontà quïeta +virtù di carità, che fa volerne +sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta. + +Se disïassimo esser più superne, +foran discordi li nostri disiri +dal voler di colui che qui ne cerne; + +che vedrai non capere in questi giri, +s’essere in carità è qui necesse, +e se la sua natura ben rimiri. + +Anzi è formale ad esto beato esse +tenersi dentro a la divina voglia, +per ch’una fansi nostre voglie stesse; + +sì che, come noi sem di soglia in soglia +per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace +com’ a lo re che ’n suo voler ne ’nvoglia. + +E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace: +ell’ è quel mare al qual tutto si move +ciò ch’ella crïa o che natura face». + +Chiaro mi fu allor come ogne dove +in cielo è paradiso, etsi la grazia +del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove. + +Ma sì com’ elli avvien, s’un cibo sazia +e d’un altro rimane ancor la gola, +che quel si chere e di quel si ringrazia, + +così fec’ io con atto e con parola, +per apprender da lei qual fu la tela +onde non trasse infino a co la spuola. + +«Perfetta vita e alto merto inciela +donna più sù», mi disse, «a la cui norma +nel vostro mondo giù si veste e vela, + +perché fino al morir si vegghi e dorma +con quello sposo ch’ogne voto accetta +che caritate a suo piacer conforma. + +Dal mondo, per seguirla, giovinetta +fuggi’mi, e nel suo abito mi chiusi +e promisi la via de la sua setta. + +Uomini poi, a mal più ch’a bene usi, +fuor mi rapiron de la dolce chiostra: +Iddio si sa qual poi mia vita fusi. + +E quest’ altro splendor che ti si mostra +da la mia destra parte e che s’accende +di tutto il lume de la spera nostra, + +ciò ch’io dico di me, di sé intende; +sorella fu, e così le fu tolta +di capo l’ombra de le sacre bende. + +Ma poi che pur al mondo fu rivolta +contra suo grado e contra buona usanza, +non fu dal vel del cor già mai disciolta. + +Quest’ è la luce de la gran Costanza +che del secondo vento di Soave +generò ’l terzo e l’ultima possanza». + +Così parlommi, e poi cominciò ‘Ave, +Maria’ cantando, e cantando vanio +come per acqua cupa cosa grave. + +La vista mia, che tanto lei seguio +quanto possibil fu, poi che la perse, +volsesi al segno di maggior disio, + +e a Beatrice tutta si converse; +ma quella folgorò nel mïo sguardo +sì che da prima il viso non sofferse; + +e ciò mi fece a dimandar più tardo. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto IV + + +Intra due cibi, distanti e moventi +d’un modo, prima si morria di fame, +che liber’ omo l’un recasse ai denti; + +sì si starebbe un agno intra due brame +di fieri lupi, igualmente temendo; +sì si starebbe un cane intra due dame: + +per che, s’i’ mi tacea, me non riprendo, +da li miei dubbi d’un modo sospinto, +poi ch’era necessario, né commendo. + +Io mi tacea, ma ’l mio disir dipinto +m’era nel viso, e ’l dimandar con ello, +più caldo assai che per parlar distinto. + +Fé sì Beatrice qual fé Danïello, +Nabuccodonosor levando d’ira, +che l’avea fatto ingiustamente fello; + +e disse: «Io veggio ben come ti tira +uno e altro disio, sì che tua cura +sé stessa lega sì che fuor non spira. + +Tu argomenti: “Se ’l buon voler dura, +la vïolenza altrui per qual ragione +di meritar mi scema la misura?”. + +Ancor di dubitar ti dà cagione +parer tornarsi l’anime a le stelle, +secondo la sentenza di Platone. + +Queste son le question che nel tuo velle +pontano igualmente; e però pria +tratterò quella che più ha di felle. + +D’i Serafin colui che più s’india, +Moïsè, Samuel, e quel Giovanni +che prender vuoli, io dico, non Maria, + +non hanno in altro cielo i loro scanni +che questi spirti che mo t’appariro, +né hanno a l’esser lor più o meno anni; + +ma tutti fanno bello il primo giro, +e differentemente han dolce vita +per sentir più e men l’etterno spiro. + +Qui si mostraro, non perché sortita +sia questa spera lor, ma per far segno +de la celestïal c’ha men salita. + +Così parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno, +però che solo da sensato apprende +ciò che fa poscia d’intelletto degno. + +Per questo la Scrittura condescende +a vostra facultate, e piedi e mano +attribuisce a Dio e altro intende; + +e Santa Chiesa con aspetto umano +Gabrïel e Michel vi rappresenta, +e l’altro che Tobia rifece sano. + +Quel che Timeo de l’anime argomenta +non è simile a ciò che qui si vede, +però che, come dice, par che senta. + +Dice che l’alma a la sua stella riede, +credendo quella quindi esser decisa +quando natura per forma la diede; + +e forse sua sentenza è d’altra guisa +che la voce non suona, ed esser puote +con intenzion da non esser derisa. + +S’elli intende tornare a queste ruote +l’onor de la influenza e ’l biasmo, forse +in alcun vero suo arco percuote. + +Questo principio, male inteso, torse +già tutto il mondo quasi, sì che Giove, +Mercurio e Marte a nominar trascorse. + +L’altra dubitazion che ti commove +ha men velen, però che sua malizia +non ti poria menar da me altrove. + +Parere ingiusta la nostra giustizia +ne li occhi d’i mortali, è argomento +di fede e non d’eretica nequizia. + +Ma perché puote vostro accorgimento +ben penetrare a questa veritate, +come disiri, ti farò contento. + +Se vïolenza è quando quel che pate +nïente conferisce a quel che sforza, +non fuor quest’ alme per essa scusate: + +ché volontà, se non vuol, non s’ammorza, +ma fa come natura face in foco, +se mille volte vïolenza il torza. + +Per che, s’ella si piega assai o poco, +segue la forza; e così queste fero +possendo rifuggir nel santo loco. + +Se fosse stato lor volere intero, +come tenne Lorenzo in su la grada, +e fece Muzio a la sua man severo, + +così l’avria ripinte per la strada +ond’ eran tratte, come fuoro sciolte; +ma così salda voglia è troppo rada. + +E per queste parole, se ricolte +l’hai come dei, è l’argomento casso +che t’avria fatto noia ancor più volte. + +Ma or ti s’attraversa un altro passo +dinanzi a li occhi, tal che per te stesso +non usciresti: pria saresti lasso. + +Io t’ho per certo ne la mente messo +ch’alma beata non poria mentire, +però ch’è sempre al primo vero appresso; + +e poi potesti da Piccarda udire +che l’affezion del vel Costanza tenne; +sì ch’ella par qui meco contradire. + +Molte fïate già, frate, addivenne +che, per fuggir periglio, contra grato +si fé di quel che far non si convenne; + +come Almeone, che, di ciò pregato +dal padre suo, la propria madre spense, +per non perder pietà si fé spietato. + +A questo punto voglio che tu pense +che la forza al voler si mischia, e fanno +sì che scusar non si posson l’offense. + +Voglia assoluta non consente al danno; +ma consentevi in tanto in quanto teme, +se si ritrae, cadere in più affanno. + +Però, quando Piccarda quello spreme, +de la voglia assoluta intende, e io +de l’altra; sì che ver diciamo insieme». + +Cotal fu l’ondeggiar del santo rio +ch’uscì del fonte ond’ ogne ver deriva; +tal puose in pace uno e altro disio. + +«O amanza del primo amante, o diva», +diss’ io appresso, «il cui parlar m’inonda +e scalda sì, che più e più m’avviva, + +non è l’affezion mia tanto profonda, +che basti a render voi grazia per grazia; +ma quei che vede e puote a ciò risponda. + +Io veggio ben che già mai non si sazia +nostro intelletto, se ’l ver non lo illustra +di fuor dal qual nessun vero si spazia. + +Posasi in esso, come fera in lustra, +tosto che giunto l’ha; e giugner puollo: +se non, ciascun disio sarebbe frustra. + +Nasce per quello, a guisa di rampollo, +a piè del vero il dubbio; ed è natura +ch’al sommo pinge noi di collo in collo. + +Questo m’invita, questo m’assicura +con reverenza, donna, a dimandarvi +d’un’altra verità che m’è oscura. + +Io vo’ saper se l’uom può sodisfarvi +ai voti manchi sì con altri beni, +ch’a la vostra statera non sien parvi». + +Beatrice mi guardò con li occhi pieni +di faville d’amor così divini, +che, vinta, mia virtute diè le reni, + +e quasi mi perdei con li occhi chini. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto V + + +«S’io ti fiammeggio nel caldo d’amore +di là dal modo che ’n terra si vede, +sì che del viso tuo vinco il valore, + +non ti maravigliar, ché ciò procede +da perfetto veder, che, come apprende, +così nel bene appreso move il piede. + +Io veggio ben sì come già resplende +ne l’intelletto tuo l’etterna luce, +che, vista, sola e sempre amore accende; + +e s’altra cosa vostro amor seduce, +non è se non di quella alcun vestigio, +mal conosciuto, che quivi traluce. + +Tu vuo’ saper se con altro servigio, +per manco voto, si può render tanto +che l’anima sicuri di letigio». + +Sì cominciò Beatrice questo canto; +e sì com’ uom che suo parlar non spezza, +continüò così ’l processo santo: + +«Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza +fesse creando, e a la sua bontate +più conformato, e quel ch’e’ più apprezza, + +fu de la volontà la libertate; +di che le creature intelligenti, +e tutte e sole, fuoro e son dotate. + +Or ti parrà, se tu quinci argomenti, +l’alto valor del voto, s’è sì fatto +che Dio consenta quando tu consenti; + +ché, nel fermar tra Dio e l’omo il patto, +vittima fassi di questo tesoro, +tal quale io dico; e fassi col suo atto. + +Dunque che render puossi per ristoro? +Se credi bene usar quel c’hai offerto, +di maltolletto vuo’ far buon lavoro. + +Tu se’ omai del maggior punto certo; +ma perché Santa Chiesa in ciò dispensa, +che par contra lo ver ch’i’ t’ho scoverto, + +convienti ancor sedere un poco a mensa, +però che ’l cibo rigido c’hai preso, +richiede ancora aiuto a tua dispensa. + +Apri la mente a quel ch’io ti paleso +e fermalvi entro; ché non fa scïenza, +sanza lo ritenere, avere inteso. + +Due cose si convegnono a l’essenza +di questo sacrificio: l’una è quella +di che si fa; l’altr’ è la convenenza. + +Quest’ ultima già mai non si cancella +se non servata; e intorno di lei +sì preciso di sopra si favella: + +però necessitato fu a li Ebrei +pur l’offerere, ancor ch’alcuna offerta +sì permutasse, come saver dei. + +L’altra, che per materia t’è aperta, +puote ben esser tal, che non si falla +se con altra materia si converta. + +Ma non trasmuti carco a la sua spalla +per suo arbitrio alcun, sanza la volta +e de la chiave bianca e de la gialla; + +e ogne permutanza credi stolta, +se la cosa dimessa in la sorpresa +come ’l quattro nel sei non è raccolta. + +Però qualunque cosa tanto pesa +per suo valor che tragga ogne bilancia, +sodisfar non si può con altra spesa. + +Non prendan li mortali il voto a ciancia; +siate fedeli, e a ciò far non bieci, +come Ieptè a la sua prima mancia; + +cui più si convenia dicer ‘Mal feci’, +che, servando, far peggio; e così stolto +ritrovar puoi il gran duca de’ Greci, + +onde pianse Efigènia il suo bel volto, +e fé pianger di sé i folli e i savi +ch’udir parlar di così fatto cólto. + +Siate, Cristiani, a muovervi più gravi: +non siate come penna ad ogne vento, +e non crediate ch’ogne acqua vi lavi. + +Avete il novo e ’l vecchio Testamento, +e ’l pastor de la Chiesa che vi guida; +questo vi basti a vostro salvamento. + +Se mala cupidigia altro vi grida, +uomini siate, e non pecore matte, +sì che ’l Giudeo di voi tra voi non rida! + +Non fate com’ agnel che lascia il latte +de la sua madre, e semplice e lascivo +seco medesmo a suo piacer combatte!». + +Così Beatrice a me com’ ïo scrivo; +poi si rivolse tutta disïante +a quella parte ove ’l mondo è più vivo. + +Lo suo tacere e ’l trasmutar sembiante +puoser silenzio al mio cupido ingegno, +che già nuove questioni avea davante; + +e sì come saetta che nel segno +percuote pria che sia la corda queta, +così corremmo nel secondo regno. + +Quivi la donna mia vid’ io sì lieta, +come nel lume di quel ciel si mise, +che più lucente se ne fé ’l pianeta. + +E se la stella si cambiò e rise, +qual mi fec’ io che pur da mia natura +trasmutabile son per tutte guise! + +Come ’n peschiera ch’è tranquilla e pura +traggonsi i pesci a ciò che vien di fori +per modo che lo stimin lor pastura, + +sì vid’ io ben più di mille splendori +trarsi ver’ noi, e in ciascun s’udia: +«Ecco chi crescerà li nostri amori». + +E sì come ciascuno a noi venìa, +vedeasi l’ombra piena di letizia +nel folgór chiaro che di lei uscia. + +Pensa, lettor, se quel che qui s’inizia +non procedesse, come tu avresti +di più savere angosciosa carizia; + +e per te vederai come da questi +m’era in disio d’udir lor condizioni, +sì come a li occhi mi fur manifesti. + +«O bene nato a cui veder li troni +del trïunfo etternal concede grazia +prima che la milizia s’abbandoni, + +del lume che per tutto il ciel si spazia +noi semo accesi; e però, se disii +di noi chiarirti, a tuo piacer ti sazia». + +Così da un di quelli spirti pii +detto mi fu; e da Beatrice: «Dì, dì +sicuramente, e credi come a dii». + +«Io veggio ben sì come tu t’annidi +nel proprio lume, e che de li occhi il traggi, +perch’ e’ corusca sì come tu ridi; + +ma non so chi tu se’, né perché aggi, +anima degna, il grado de la spera +che si vela a’ mortai con altrui raggi». + +Questo diss’ io diritto a la lumera +che pria m’avea parlato; ond’ ella fessi +lucente più assai di quel ch’ell’ era. + +Sì come il sol che si cela elli stessi +per troppa luce, come ’l caldo ha róse +le temperanze d’i vapori spessi, + +per più letizia sì mi si nascose +dentro al suo raggio la figura santa; +e così chiusa chiusa mi rispuose + +nel modo che ’l seguente canto canta. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto VI + + +«Poscia che Costantin l’aquila volse +contr’ al corso del ciel, ch’ella seguio +dietro a l’antico che Lavina tolse, + +cento e cent’ anni e più l’uccel di Dio +ne lo stremo d’Europa si ritenne, +vicino a’ monti de’ quai prima uscìo; + +e sotto l’ombra de le sacre penne +governò ’l mondo lì di mano in mano, +e, sì cangiando, in su la mia pervenne. + +Cesare fui e son Iustinïano, +che, per voler del primo amor ch’i’ sento, +d’entro le leggi trassi il troppo e ’l vano. + +E prima ch’io a l’ovra fossi attento, +una natura in Cristo esser, non piùe, +credea, e di tal fede era contento; + +ma ’l benedetto Agapito, che fue +sommo pastore, a la fede sincera +mi dirizzò con le parole sue. + +Io li credetti; e ciò che ’n sua fede era, +vegg’ io or chiaro sì, come tu vedi +ogni contradizione e falsa e vera. + +Tosto che con la Chiesa mossi i piedi, +a Dio per grazia piacque di spirarmi +l’alto lavoro, e tutto ’n lui mi diedi; + +e al mio Belisar commendai l’armi, +cui la destra del ciel fu sì congiunta, +che segno fu ch’i’ dovessi posarmi. + +Or qui a la question prima s’appunta +la mia risposta; ma sua condizione +mi stringe a seguitare alcuna giunta, + +perché tu veggi con quanta ragione +si move contr’ al sacrosanto segno +e chi ’l s’appropria e chi a lui s’oppone. + +Vedi quanta virtù l’ha fatto degno +di reverenza; e cominciò da l’ora +che Pallante morì per darli regno. + +Tu sai ch’el fece in Alba sua dimora +per trecento anni e oltre, infino al fine +che i tre a’ tre pugnar per lui ancora. + +E sai ch’el fé dal mal de le Sabine +al dolor di Lucrezia in sette regi, +vincendo intorno le genti vicine. + +Sai quel ch’el fé portato da li egregi +Romani incontro a Brenno, incontro a Pirro, +incontro a li altri principi e collegi; + +onde Torquato e Quinzio, che dal cirro +negletto fu nomato, i Deci e ’ Fabi +ebber la fama che volontier mirro. + +Esso atterrò l’orgoglio de li Aràbi +che di retro ad Anibale passaro +l’alpestre rocce, Po, di che tu labi. + +Sott’ esso giovanetti trïunfaro +Scipïone e Pompeo; e a quel colle +sotto ’l qual tu nascesti parve amaro. + +Poi, presso al tempo che tutto ’l ciel volle +redur lo mondo a suo modo sereno, +Cesare per voler di Roma il tolle. + +E quel che fé da Varo infino a Reno, +Isara vide ed Era e vide Senna +e ogne valle onde Rodano è pieno. + +Quel che fé poi ch’elli uscì di Ravenna +e saltò Rubicon, fu di tal volo, +che nol seguiteria lingua né penna. + +Inver’ la Spagna rivolse lo stuolo, +poi ver’ Durazzo, e Farsalia percosse +sì ch’al Nil caldo si sentì del duolo. + +Antandro e Simeonta, onde si mosse, +rivide e là dov’ Ettore si cuba; +e mal per Tolomeo poscia si scosse. + +Da indi scese folgorando a Iuba; +onde si volse nel vostro occidente, +ove sentia la pompeana tuba. + +Di quel che fé col baiulo seguente, +Bruto con Cassio ne l’inferno latra, +e Modena e Perugia fu dolente. + +Piangene ancor la trista Cleopatra, +che, fuggendoli innanzi, dal colubro +la morte prese subitana e atra. + +Con costui corse infino al lito rubro; +con costui puose il mondo in tanta pace, +che fu serrato a Giano il suo delubro. + +Ma ciò che ’l segno che parlar mi face +fatto avea prima e poi era fatturo +per lo regno mortal ch’a lui soggiace, + +diventa in apparenza poco e scuro, +se in mano al terzo Cesare si mira +con occhio chiaro e con affetto puro; + +ché la viva giustizia che mi spira, +li concedette, in mano a quel ch’i’ dico, +gloria di far vendetta a la sua ira. + +Or qui t’ammira in ciò ch’io ti replìco: +poscia con Tito a far vendetta corse +de la vendetta del peccato antico. + +E quando il dente longobardo morse +la Santa Chiesa, sotto le sue ali +Carlo Magno, vincendo, la soccorse. + +Omai puoi giudicar di quei cotali +ch’io accusai di sopra e di lor falli, +che son cagion di tutti vostri mali. + +L’uno al pubblico segno i gigli gialli +oppone, e l’altro appropria quello a parte, +sì ch’è forte a veder chi più si falli. + +Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor arte +sott’ altro segno, ché mal segue quello +sempre chi la giustizia e lui diparte; + +e non l’abbatta esto Carlo novello +coi Guelfi suoi, ma tema de li artigli +ch’a più alto leon trasser lo vello. + +Molte fïate già pianser li figli +per la colpa del padre, e non si creda +che Dio trasmuti l’armi per suoi gigli! + +Questa picciola stella si correda +d’i buoni spirti che son stati attivi +perché onore e fama li succeda: + +e quando li disiri poggian quivi, +sì disvïando, pur convien che i raggi +del vero amore in sù poggin men vivi. + +Ma nel commensurar d’i nostri gaggi +col merto è parte di nostra letizia, +perché non li vedem minor né maggi. + +Quindi addolcisce la viva giustizia +in noi l’affetto sì, che non si puote +torcer già mai ad alcuna nequizia. + +Diverse voci fanno dolci note; +così diversi scanni in nostra vita +rendon dolce armonia tra queste rote. + +E dentro a la presente margarita +luce la luce di Romeo, di cui +fu l’ovra grande e bella mal gradita. + +Ma i Provenzai che fecer contra lui +non hanno riso; e però mal cammina +qual si fa danno del ben fare altrui. + +Quattro figlie ebbe, e ciascuna reina, +Ramondo Beringhiere, e ciò li fece +Romeo, persona umìle e peregrina. + +E poi il mosser le parole biece +a dimandar ragione a questo giusto, +che li assegnò sette e cinque per diece, + +indi partissi povero e vetusto; +e se ’l mondo sapesse il cor ch’elli ebbe +mendicando sua vita a frusto a frusto, + +assai lo loda, e più lo loderebbe». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto VII + + +«Osanna, sanctus Deus sabaòth, +superillustrans claritate tua +felices ignes horum malacòth!». + +Così, volgendosi a la nota sua, +fu viso a me cantare essa sustanza, +sopra la qual doppio lume s’addua; + +ed essa e l’altre mossero a sua danza, +e quasi velocissime faville +mi si velar di sùbita distanza. + +Io dubitava e dicea ‘Dille, dille!’ +fra me, ‘dille’ dicea, ‘a la mia donna +che mi diseta con le dolci stille’. + +Ma quella reverenza che s’indonna +di tutto me, pur per Be e per ice, +mi richinava come l’uom ch’assonna. + +Poco sofferse me cotal Beatrice +e cominciò, raggiandomi d’un riso +tal, che nel foco faria l’uom felice: + +«Secondo mio infallibile avviso, +come giusta vendetta giustamente +punita fosse, t’ha in pensier miso; + +ma io ti solverò tosto la mente; +e tu ascolta, ché le mie parole +di gran sentenza ti faran presente. + +Per non soffrire a la virtù che vole +freno a suo prode, quell’ uom che non nacque, +dannando sé, dannò tutta sua prole; + +onde l’umana specie inferma giacque +giù per secoli molti in grande errore, +fin ch’al Verbo di Dio discender piacque + +u’ la natura, che dal suo fattore +s’era allungata, unì a sé in persona +con l’atto sol del suo etterno amore. + +Or drizza il viso a quel ch’or si ragiona: +questa natura al suo fattore unita, +qual fu creata, fu sincera e buona; + +ma per sé stessa pur fu ella sbandita +di paradiso, però che si torse +da via di verità e da sua vita. + +La pena dunque che la croce porse +s’a la natura assunta si misura, +nulla già mai sì giustamente morse; + +e così nulla fu di tanta ingiura, +guardando a la persona che sofferse, +in che era contratta tal natura. + +Però d’un atto uscir cose diverse: +ch’a Dio e a’ Giudei piacque una morte; +per lei tremò la terra e ’l ciel s’aperse. + +Non ti dee oramai parer più forte, +quando si dice che giusta vendetta +poscia vengiata fu da giusta corte. + +Ma io veggi’ or la tua mente ristretta +di pensiero in pensier dentro ad un nodo, +del qual con gran disio solver s’aspetta. + +Tu dici: “Ben discerno ciò ch’i’ odo; +ma perché Dio volesse, m’è occulto, +a nostra redenzion pur questo modo”. + +Questo decreto, frate, sta sepulto +a li occhi di ciascuno il cui ingegno +ne la fiamma d’amor non è adulto. + +Veramente, però ch’a questo segno +molto si mira e poco si discerne, +dirò perché tal modo fu più degno. + +La divina bontà, che da sé sperne +ogne livore, ardendo in sé, sfavilla +sì che dispiega le bellezze etterne. + +Ciò che da lei sanza mezzo distilla +non ha poi fine, perché non si move +la sua imprenta quand’ ella sigilla. + +Ciò che da essa sanza mezzo piove +libero è tutto, perché non soggiace +a la virtute de le cose nove. + +Più l’è conforme, e però più le piace; +ché l’ardor santo ch’ogne cosa raggia, +ne la più somigliante è più vivace. + +Di tutte queste dote s’avvantaggia +l’umana creatura, e s’una manca, +di sua nobilità convien che caggia. + +Solo il peccato è quel che la disfranca +e falla dissimìle al sommo bene, +per che del lume suo poco s’imbianca; + +e in sua dignità mai non rivene, +se non rïempie, dove colpa vòta, +contra mal dilettar con giuste pene. + +Vostra natura, quando peccò tota +nel seme suo, da queste dignitadi, +come di paradiso, fu remota; + +né ricovrar potiensi, se tu badi +ben sottilmente, per alcuna via, +sanza passar per un di questi guadi: + +o che Dio solo per sua cortesia +dimesso avesse, o che l’uom per sé isso +avesse sodisfatto a sua follia. + +Ficca mo l’occhio per entro l’abisso +de l’etterno consiglio, quanto puoi +al mio parlar distrettamente fisso. + +Non potea l’uomo ne’ termini suoi +mai sodisfar, per non potere ir giuso +con umiltate obedïendo poi, + +quanto disobediendo intese ir suso; +e questa è la cagion per che l’uom fue +da poter sodisfar per sé dischiuso. + +Dunque a Dio convenia con le vie sue +riparar l’omo a sua intera vita, +dico con l’una, o ver con amendue. + +Ma perché l’ovra tanto è più gradita +da l’operante, quanto più appresenta +de la bontà del core ond’ ell’ è uscita, + +la divina bontà che ’l mondo imprenta, +di proceder per tutte le sue vie, +a rilevarvi suso, fu contenta. + +Né tra l’ultima notte e ’l primo die +sì alto o sì magnifico processo, +o per l’una o per l’altra, fu o fie: + +ché più largo fu Dio a dar sé stesso +per far l’uom sufficiente a rilevarsi, +che s’elli avesse sol da sé dimesso; + +e tutti li altri modi erano scarsi +a la giustizia, se ’l Figliuol di Dio +non fosse umilïato ad incarnarsi. + +Or per empierti bene ogne disio, +ritorno a dichiararti in alcun loco, +perché tu veggi lì così com’ io. + +Tu dici: “Io veggio l’acqua, io veggio il foco, +l’aere e la terra e tutte lor misture +venire a corruzione, e durar poco; + +e queste cose pur furon creature; +per che, se ciò ch’è detto è stato vero, +esser dovrien da corruzion sicure”. + +Li angeli, frate, e ’l paese sincero +nel qual tu se’, dir si posson creati, +sì come sono, in loro essere intero; + +ma li alimenti che tu hai nomati +e quelle cose che di lor si fanno +da creata virtù sono informati. + +Creata fu la materia ch’elli hanno; +creata fu la virtù informante +in queste stelle che ’ntorno a lor vanno. + +L’anima d’ogne bruto e de le piante +di complession potenzïata tira +lo raggio e ’l moto de le luci sante; + +ma vostra vita sanza mezzo spira +la somma beninanza, e la innamora +di sé sì che poi sempre la disira. + +E quinci puoi argomentare ancora +vostra resurrezion, se tu ripensi +come l’umana carne fessi allora + +che li primi parenti intrambo fensi». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto VIII + + +Solea creder lo mondo in suo periclo +che la bella Ciprigna il folle amore +raggiasse, volta nel terzo epiciclo; + +per che non pur a lei faceano onore +di sacrificio e di votivo grido +le genti antiche ne l’antico errore; + +ma Dïone onoravano e Cupido, +quella per madre sua, questo per figlio, +e dicean ch’el sedette in grembo a Dido; + +e da costei ond’ io principio piglio +pigliavano il vocabol de la stella +che ’l sol vagheggia or da coppa or da ciglio. + +Io non m’accorsi del salire in ella; +ma d’esservi entro mi fé assai fede +la donna mia ch’i’ vidi far più bella. + +E come in fiamma favilla si vede, +e come in voce voce si discerne, +quand’ una è ferma e altra va e riede, + +vid’ io in essa luce altre lucerne +muoversi in giro più e men correnti, +al modo, credo, di lor viste interne. + +Di fredda nube non disceser venti, +o visibili o no, tanto festini, +che non paressero impediti e lenti + +a chi avesse quei lumi divini +veduti a noi venir, lasciando il giro +pria cominciato in li alti Serafini; + +e dentro a quei che più innanzi appariro +sonava ‘Osanna’ sì, che unque poi +di rïudir non fui sanza disiro. + +Indi si fece l’un più presso a noi +e solo incominciò: «Tutti sem presti +al tuo piacer, perché di noi ti gioi. + +Noi ci volgiam coi principi celesti +d’un giro e d’un girare e d’una sete, +ai quali tu del mondo già dicesti: + +‘Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete’; +e sem sì pien d’amor, che, per piacerti, +non fia men dolce un poco di quïete». + +Poscia che li occhi miei si fuoro offerti +a la mia donna reverenti, ed essa +fatti li avea di sé contenti e certi, + +rivolsersi a la luce che promessa +tanto s’avea, e «Deh, chi siete?» fue +la voce mia di grande affetto impressa. + +E quanta e quale vid’ io lei far piùe +per allegrezza nova che s’accrebbe, +quando parlai, a l’allegrezze sue! + +Così fatta, mi disse: «Il mondo m’ebbe +giù poco tempo; e se più fosse stato, +molto sarà di mal, che non sarebbe. + +La mia letizia mi ti tien celato +che mi raggia dintorno e mi nasconde +quasi animal di sua seta fasciato. + +Assai m’amasti, e avesti ben onde; +che s’io fossi giù stato, io ti mostrava +di mio amor più oltre che le fronde. + +Quella sinistra riva che si lava +di Rodano poi ch’è misto con Sorga, +per suo segnore a tempo m’aspettava, + +e quel corno d’Ausonia che s’imborga +di Bari e di Gaeta e di Catona, +da ove Tronto e Verde in mare sgorga. + +Fulgeami già in fronte la corona +di quella terra che ’l Danubio riga +poi che le ripe tedesche abbandona. + +E la bella Trinacria, che caliga +tra Pachino e Peloro, sopra ’l golfo +che riceve da Euro maggior briga, + +non per Tifeo ma per nascente solfo, +attesi avrebbe li suoi regi ancora, +nati per me di Carlo e di Ridolfo, + +se mala segnoria, che sempre accora +li popoli suggetti, non avesse +mosso Palermo a gridar: “Mora, mora!”. + +E se mio frate questo antivedesse, +l’avara povertà di Catalogna +già fuggeria, perché non li offendesse; + +ché veramente proveder bisogna +per lui, o per altrui, sì ch’a sua barca +carcata più d’incarco non si pogna. + +La sua natura, che di larga parca +discese, avria mestier di tal milizia +che non curasse di mettere in arca». + +«Però ch’i’ credo che l’alta letizia +che ’l tuo parlar m’infonde, segnor mio, +là ’ve ogne ben si termina e s’inizia, + +per te si veggia come la vegg’ io, +grata m’è più; e anco quest’ ho caro +perché ’l discerni rimirando in Dio. + +Fatto m’hai lieto, e così mi fa chiaro, +poi che, parlando, a dubitar m’hai mosso +com’ esser può, di dolce seme, amaro». + +Questo io a lui; ed elli a me: «S’io posso +mostrarti un vero, a quel che tu dimandi +terrai lo viso come tien lo dosso. + +Lo ben che tutto il regno che tu scandi +volge e contenta, fa esser virtute +sua provedenza in questi corpi grandi. + +E non pur le nature provedute +sono in la mente ch’è da sé perfetta, +ma esse insieme con la lor salute: + +per che quantunque quest’ arco saetta +disposto cade a proveduto fine, +sì come cosa in suo segno diretta. + +Se ciò non fosse, il ciel che tu cammine +producerebbe sì li suoi effetti, +che non sarebbero arti, ma ruine; + +e ciò esser non può, se li ’ntelletti +che muovon queste stelle non son manchi, +e manco il primo, che non li ha perfetti. + +Vuo’ tu che questo ver più ti s’imbianchi?». +E io: «Non già; ché impossibil veggio +che la natura, in quel ch’è uopo, stanchi». + +Ond’ elli ancora: «Or dì: sarebbe il peggio +per l’omo in terra, se non fosse cive?». +«Sì», rispuos’ io; «e qui ragion non cheggio». + +«E puot’ elli esser, se giù non si vive +diversamente per diversi offici? +Non, se ’l maestro vostro ben vi scrive». + +Sì venne deducendo infino a quici; +poscia conchiuse: «Dunque esser diverse +convien di vostri effetti le radici: + +per ch’un nasce Solone e altro Serse, +altro Melchisedèch e altro quello +che, volando per l’aere, il figlio perse. + +La circular natura, ch’è suggello +a la cera mortal, fa ben sua arte, +ma non distingue l’un da l’altro ostello. + +Quinci addivien ch’Esaù si diparte +per seme da Iacòb; e vien Quirino +da sì vil padre, che si rende a Marte. + +Natura generata il suo cammino +simil farebbe sempre a’ generanti, +se non vincesse il proveder divino. + +Or quel che t’era dietro t’è davanti: +ma perché sappi che di te mi giova, +un corollario voglio che t’ammanti. + +Sempre natura, se fortuna trova +discorde a sé, com’ ogne altra semente +fuor di sua regïon, fa mala prova. + +E se ’l mondo là giù ponesse mente +al fondamento che natura pone, +seguendo lui, avria buona la gente. + +Ma voi torcete a la religïone +tal che fia nato a cignersi la spada, +e fate re di tal ch’è da sermone; + +onde la traccia vostra è fuor di strada». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto IX + + +Da poi che Carlo tuo, bella Clemenza, +m’ebbe chiarito, mi narrò li ’nganni +che ricever dovea la sua semenza; + +ma disse: «Taci e lascia muover li anni»; +sì ch’io non posso dir se non che pianto +giusto verrà di retro ai vostri danni. + +E già la vita di quel lume santo +rivolta s’era al Sol che la rïempie +come quel ben ch’a ogne cosa è tanto. + +Ahi anime ingannate e fatture empie, +che da sì fatto ben torcete i cuori, +drizzando in vanità le vostre tempie! + +Ed ecco un altro di quelli splendori +ver’ me si fece, e ’l suo voler piacermi +significava nel chiarir di fori. + +Li occhi di Bëatrice, ch’eran fermi +sovra me, come pria, di caro assenso +al mio disio certificato fermi. + +«Deh, metti al mio voler tosto compenso, +beato spirto», dissi, «e fammi prova +ch’i’ possa in te refletter quel ch’io penso!». + +Onde la luce che m’era ancor nova, +del suo profondo, ond’ ella pria cantava, +seguette come a cui di ben far giova: + +«In quella parte de la terra prava +italica che siede tra Rïalto +e le fontane di Brenta e di Piava, + +si leva un colle, e non surge molt’ alto, +là onde scese già una facella +che fece a la contrada un grande assalto. + +D’una radice nacqui e io ed ella: +Cunizza fui chiamata, e qui refulgo +perché mi vinse il lume d’esta stella; + +ma lietamente a me medesma indulgo +la cagion di mia sorte, e non mi noia; +che parria forse forte al vostro vulgo. + +Di questa luculenta e cara gioia +del nostro cielo che più m’è propinqua, +grande fama rimase; e pria che moia, + +questo centesimo anno ancor s’incinqua: +vedi se far si dee l’omo eccellente, +sì ch’altra vita la prima relinqua. + +E ciò non pensa la turba presente +che Tagliamento e Adice richiude, +né per esser battuta ancor si pente; + +ma tosto fia che Padova al palude +cangerà l’acqua che Vincenza bagna, +per essere al dover le genti crude; + +e dove Sile e Cagnan s’accompagna, +tal signoreggia e va con la testa alta, +che già per lui carpir si fa la ragna. + +Piangerà Feltro ancora la difalta +de l’empio suo pastor, che sarà sconcia +sì, che per simil non s’entrò in malta. + +Troppo sarebbe larga la bigoncia +che ricevesse il sangue ferrarese, +e stanco chi ’l pesasse a oncia a oncia, + +che donerà questo prete cortese +per mostrarsi di parte; e cotai doni +conformi fieno al viver del paese. + +Sù sono specchi, voi dicete Troni, +onde refulge a noi Dio giudicante; +sì che questi parlar ne paion buoni». + +Qui si tacette; e fecemi sembiante +che fosse ad altro volta, per la rota +in che si mise com’ era davante. + +L’altra letizia, che m’era già nota +per cara cosa, mi si fece in vista +qual fin balasso in che lo sol percuota. + +Per letiziar là sù fulgor s’acquista, +sì come riso qui; ma giù s’abbuia +l’ombra di fuor, come la mente è trista. + +«Dio vede tutto, e tuo veder s’inluia», +diss’ io, «beato spirto, sì che nulla +voglia di sé a te puot’ esser fuia. + +Dunque la voce tua, che ’l ciel trastulla +sempre col canto di quei fuochi pii +che di sei ali facen la coculla, + +perché non satisface a’ miei disii? +Già non attendere’ io tua dimanda, +s’io m’intuassi, come tu t’inmii». + +«La maggior valle in che l’acqua si spanda», +incominciaro allor le sue parole, +«fuor di quel mar che la terra inghirlanda, + +tra ’ discordanti liti contra ’l sole +tanto sen va, che fa meridïano +là dove l’orizzonte pria far suole. + +Di quella valle fu’ io litorano +tra Ebro e Macra, che per cammin corto +parte lo Genovese dal Toscano. + +Ad un occaso quasi e ad un orto +Buggea siede e la terra ond’ io fui, +che fé del sangue suo già caldo il porto. + +Folco mi disse quella gente a cui +fu noto il nome mio; e questo cielo +di me s’imprenta, com’ io fe’ di lui; + +ché più non arse la figlia di Belo, +noiando e a Sicheo e a Creusa, +di me, infin che si convenne al pelo; + +né quella Rodopëa che delusa +fu da Demofoonte, né Alcide +quando Iole nel core ebbe rinchiusa. + +Non però qui si pente, ma si ride, +non de la colpa, ch’a mente non torna, +ma del valor ch’ordinò e provide. + +Qui si rimira ne l’arte ch’addorna +cotanto affetto, e discernesi ’l bene +per che ’l mondo di sù quel di giù torna. + +Ma perché tutte le tue voglie piene +ten porti che son nate in questa spera, +proceder ancor oltre mi convene. + +Tu vuo’ saper chi è in questa lumera +che qui appresso me così scintilla +come raggio di sole in acqua mera. + +Or sappi che là entro si tranquilla +Raab; e a nostr’ ordine congiunta, +di lei nel sommo grado si sigilla. + +Da questo cielo, in cui l’ombra s’appunta +che ’l vostro mondo face, pria ch’altr’ alma +del trïunfo di Cristo fu assunta. + +Ben si convenne lei lasciar per palma +in alcun cielo de l’alta vittoria +che s’acquistò con l’una e l’altra palma, + +perch’ ella favorò la prima gloria +di Iosüè in su la Terra Santa, +che poco tocca al papa la memoria. + +La tua città, che di colui è pianta +che pria volse le spalle al suo fattore +e di cui è la ’nvidia tanto pianta, + +produce e spande il maladetto fiore +c’ha disvïate le pecore e li agni, +però che fatto ha lupo del pastore. + +Per questo l’Evangelio e i dottor magni +son derelitti, e solo ai Decretali +si studia, sì che pare a’ lor vivagni. + +A questo intende il papa e ’ cardinali; +non vanno i lor pensieri a Nazarette, +là dove Gabrïello aperse l’ali. + +Ma Vaticano e l’altre parti elette +di Roma che son state cimitero +a la milizia che Pietro seguette, + +tosto libere fien de l’avoltero». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto X + + +Guardando nel suo Figlio con l’Amore +che l’uno e l’altro etternalmente spira, +lo primo e ineffabile Valore + +quanto per mente e per loco si gira +con tant’ ordine fé, ch’esser non puote +sanza gustar di lui chi ciò rimira. + +Leva dunque, lettore, a l’alte rote +meco la vista, dritto a quella parte +dove l’un moto e l’altro si percuote; + +e lì comincia a vagheggiar ne l’arte +di quel maestro che dentro a sé l’ama, +tanto che mai da lei l’occhio non parte. + +Vedi come da indi si dirama +l’oblico cerchio che i pianeti porta, +per sodisfare al mondo che li chiama. + +Che se la strada lor non fosse torta, +molta virtù nel ciel sarebbe in vano, +e quasi ogne potenza qua giù morta; + +e se dal dritto più o men lontano +fosse ’l partire, assai sarebbe manco +e giù e sù de l’ordine mondano. + +Or ti riman, lettor, sovra ’l tuo banco, +dietro pensando a ciò che si preliba, +s’esser vuoi lieto assai prima che stanco. + +Messo t’ho innanzi: omai per te ti ciba; +ché a sé torce tutta la mia cura +quella materia ond’ io son fatto scriba. + +Lo ministro maggior de la natura, +che del valor del ciel lo mondo imprenta +e col suo lume il tempo ne misura, + +con quella parte che sù si rammenta +congiunto, si girava per le spire +in che più tosto ognora s’appresenta; + +e io era con lui; ma del salire +non m’accors’ io, se non com’ uom s’accorge, +anzi ’l primo pensier, del suo venire. + +È Bëatrice quella che sì scorge +di bene in meglio, sì subitamente +che l’atto suo per tempo non si sporge. + +Quant’ esser convenia da sé lucente +quel ch’era dentro al sol dov’ io entra’mi, +non per color, ma per lume parvente! + +Perch’ io lo ’ngegno e l’arte e l’uso chiami, +sì nol direi che mai s’imaginasse; +ma creder puossi e di veder si brami. + +E se le fantasie nostre son basse +a tanta altezza, non è maraviglia; +ché sopra ’l sol non fu occhio ch’andasse. + +Tal era quivi la quarta famiglia +de l’alto Padre, che sempre la sazia, +mostrando come spira e come figlia. + +E Bëatrice cominciò: «Ringrazia, +ringrazia il Sol de li angeli, ch’a questo +sensibil t’ha levato per sua grazia». + +Cor di mortal non fu mai sì digesto +a divozione e a rendersi a Dio +con tutto ’l suo gradir cotanto presto, + +come a quelle parole mi fec’ io; +e sì tutto ’l mio amore in lui si mise, +che Bëatrice eclissò ne l’oblio. + +Non le dispiacque; ma sì se ne rise, +che lo splendor de li occhi suoi ridenti +mia mente unita in più cose divise. + +Io vidi più folgór vivi e vincenti +far di noi centro e di sé far corona, +più dolci in voce che in vista lucenti: + +così cinger la figlia di Latona +vedem talvolta, quando l’aere è pregno, +sì che ritenga il fil che fa la zona. + +Ne la corte del cielo, ond’ io rivegno, +si trovan molte gioie care e belle +tanto che non si posson trar del regno; + +e ’l canto di quei lumi era di quelle; +chi non s’impenna sì che là sù voli, +dal muto aspetti quindi le novelle. + +Poi, sì cantando, quelli ardenti soli +si fuor girati intorno a noi tre volte, +come stelle vicine a’ fermi poli, + +donne mi parver, non da ballo sciolte, +ma che s’arrestin tacite, ascoltando +fin che le nove note hanno ricolte. + +E dentro a l’un senti’ cominciar: «Quando +lo raggio de la grazia, onde s’accende +verace amore e che poi cresce amando, + +multiplicato in te tanto resplende, +che ti conduce su per quella scala +u’ sanza risalir nessun discende; + +qual ti negasse il vin de la sua fiala +per la tua sete, in libertà non fora +se non com’ acqua ch’al mar non si cala. + +Tu vuo’ saper di quai piante s’infiora +questa ghirlanda che ’ntorno vagheggia +la bella donna ch’al ciel t’avvalora. + +Io fui de li agni de la santa greggia +che Domenico mena per cammino +u’ ben s’impingua se non si vaneggia. + +Questi che m’è a destra più vicino, +frate e maestro fummi, ed esso Alberto +è di Cologna, e io Thomas d’Aquino. + +Se sì di tutti li altri esser vuo’ certo, +di retro al mio parlar ten vien col viso +girando su per lo beato serto. + +Quell’ altro fiammeggiare esce del riso +di Grazïan, che l’uno e l’altro foro +aiutò sì che piace in paradiso. + +L’altro ch’appresso addorna il nostro coro, +quel Pietro fu che con la poverella +offerse a Santa Chiesa suo tesoro. + +La quinta luce, ch’è tra noi più bella, +spira di tale amor, che tutto ’l mondo +là giù ne gola di saper novella: + +entro v’è l’alta mente u’ sì profondo +saver fu messo, che, se ’l vero è vero, +a veder tanto non surse il secondo. + +Appresso vedi il lume di quel cero +che giù in carne più a dentro vide +l’angelica natura e ’l ministero. + +Ne l’altra piccioletta luce ride +quello avvocato de’ tempi cristiani +del cui latino Augustin si provide. + +Or se tu l’occhio de la mente trani +di luce in luce dietro a le mie lode, +già de l’ottava con sete rimani. + +Per vedere ogne ben dentro vi gode +l’anima santa che ’l mondo fallace +fa manifesto a chi di lei ben ode. + +Lo corpo ond’ ella fu cacciata giace +giuso in Cieldauro; ed essa da martiro +e da essilio venne a questa pace. + +Vedi oltre fiammeggiar l’ardente spiro +d’Isidoro, di Beda e di Riccardo, +che a considerar fu più che viro. + +Questi onde a me ritorna il tuo riguardo, +è ’l lume d’uno spirto che ’n pensieri +gravi a morir li parve venir tardo: + +essa è la luce etterna di Sigieri, +che, leggendo nel Vico de li Strami, +silogizzò invidïosi veri». + +Indi, come orologio che ne chiami +ne l’ora che la sposa di Dio surge +a mattinar lo sposo perché l’ami, + +che l’una parte e l’altra tira e urge, +tin tin sonando con sì dolce nota, +che ’l ben disposto spirto d’amor turge; + +così vid’ ïo la gloriosa rota +muoversi e render voce a voce in tempra +e in dolcezza ch’esser non pò nota + +se non colà dove gioir s’insempra. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XI + + +O insensata cura de’ mortali, +quanto son difettivi silogismi +quei che ti fanno in basso batter l’ali! + +Chi dietro a iura e chi ad amforismi +sen giva, e chi seguendo sacerdozio, +e chi regnar per forza o per sofismi, + +e chi rubare e chi civil negozio, +chi nel diletto de la carne involto +s’affaticava e chi si dava a l’ozio, + +quando, da tutte queste cose sciolto, +con Bëatrice m’era suso in cielo +cotanto glorïosamente accolto. + +Poi che ciascuno fu tornato ne lo +punto del cerchio in che avanti s’era, +fermossi, come a candellier candelo. + +E io senti’ dentro a quella lumera +che pria m’avea parlato, sorridendo +incominciar, faccendosi più mera: + +«Così com’ io del suo raggio resplendo, +sì, riguardando ne la luce etterna, +li tuoi pensieri onde cagioni apprendo. + +Tu dubbi, e hai voler che si ricerna +in sì aperta e ’n sì distesa lingua +lo dicer mio, ch’al tuo sentir si sterna, + +ove dinanzi dissi: “U’ ben s’impingua”, +e là u’ dissi: “Non nacque il secondo”; +e qui è uopo che ben si distingua. + +La provedenza, che governa il mondo +con quel consiglio nel quale ogne aspetto +creato è vinto pria che vada al fondo, + +però che andasse ver’ lo suo diletto +la sposa di colui ch’ad alte grida +disposò lei col sangue benedetto, + +in sé sicura e anche a lui più fida, +due principi ordinò in suo favore, +che quinci e quindi le fosser per guida. + +L’un fu tutto serafico in ardore; +l’altro per sapïenza in terra fue +di cherubica luce uno splendore. + +De l’un dirò, però che d’amendue +si dice l’un pregiando, qual ch’om prende, +perch’ ad un fine fur l’opere sue. + +Intra Tupino e l’acqua che discende +del colle eletto dal beato Ubaldo, +fertile costa d’alto monte pende, + +onde Perugia sente freddo e caldo +da Porta Sole; e di rietro le piange +per grave giogo Nocera con Gualdo. + +Di questa costa, là dov’ ella frange +più sua rattezza, nacque al mondo un sole, +come fa questo talvolta di Gange. + +Però chi d’esso loco fa parole, +non dica Ascesi, ché direbbe corto, +ma Orïente, se proprio dir vuole. + +Non era ancor molto lontan da l’orto, +ch’el cominciò a far sentir la terra +de la sua gran virtute alcun conforto; + +ché per tal donna, giovinetto, in guerra +del padre corse, a cui, come a la morte, +la porta del piacer nessun diserra; + +e dinanzi a la sua spirital corte +et coram patre le si fece unito; +poscia di dì in dì l’amò più forte. + +Questa, privata del primo marito, +millecent’ anni e più dispetta e scura +fino a costui si stette sanza invito; + +né valse udir che la trovò sicura +con Amiclate, al suon de la sua voce, +colui ch’a tutto ’l mondo fé paura; + +né valse esser costante né feroce, +sì che, dove Maria rimase giuso, +ella con Cristo pianse in su la croce. + +Ma perch’ io non proceda troppo chiuso, +Francesco e Povertà per questi amanti +prendi oramai nel mio parlar diffuso. + +La lor concordia e i lor lieti sembianti, +amore e maraviglia e dolce sguardo +facieno esser cagion di pensier santi; + +tanto che ’l venerabile Bernardo +si scalzò prima, e dietro a tanta pace +corse e, correndo, li parve esser tardo. + +Oh ignota ricchezza! oh ben ferace! +Scalzasi Egidio, scalzasi Silvestro +dietro a lo sposo, sì la sposa piace. + +Indi sen va quel padre e quel maestro +con la sua donna e con quella famiglia +che già legava l’umile capestro. + +Né li gravò viltà di cuor le ciglia +per esser fi’ di Pietro Bernardone, +né per parer dispetto a maraviglia; + +ma regalmente sua dura intenzione +ad Innocenzio aperse, e da lui ebbe +primo sigillo a sua religïone. + +Poi che la gente poverella crebbe +dietro a costui, la cui mirabil vita +meglio in gloria del ciel si canterebbe, + +di seconda corona redimita +fu per Onorio da l’Etterno Spiro +la santa voglia d’esto archimandrita. + +E poi che, per la sete del martiro, +ne la presenza del Soldan superba +predicò Cristo e li altri che ’l seguiro, + +e per trovare a conversione acerba +troppo la gente e per non stare indarno, +redissi al frutto de l’italica erba, + +nel crudo sasso intra Tevero e Arno +da Cristo prese l’ultimo sigillo, +che le sue membra due anni portarno. + +Quando a colui ch’a tanto ben sortillo +piacque di trarlo suso a la mercede +ch’el meritò nel suo farsi pusillo, + +a’ frati suoi, sì com’ a giuste rede, +raccomandò la donna sua più cara, +e comandò che l’amassero a fede; + +e del suo grembo l’anima preclara +mover si volle, tornando al suo regno, +e al suo corpo non volle altra bara. + +Pensa oramai qual fu colui che degno +collega fu a mantener la barca +di Pietro in alto mar per dritto segno; + +e questo fu il nostro patrïarca; +per che qual segue lui, com’ el comanda, +discerner puoi che buone merce carca. + +Ma ’l suo pecuglio di nova vivanda +è fatto ghiotto, sì ch’esser non puote +che per diversi salti non si spanda; + +e quanto le sue pecore remote +e vagabunde più da esso vanno, +più tornano a l’ovil di latte vòte. + +Ben son di quelle che temono ’l danno +e stringonsi al pastor; ma son sì poche, +che le cappe fornisce poco panno. + +Or, se le mie parole non son fioche, +se la tua audïenza è stata attenta, +se ciò ch’è detto a la mente revoche, + +in parte fia la tua voglia contenta, +perché vedrai la pianta onde si scheggia, +e vedra’ il corrègger che argomenta + +“U’ ben s’impingua, se non si vaneggia”». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XII + + +Sì tosto come l’ultima parola +la benedetta fiamma per dir tolse, +a rotar cominciò la santa mola; + +e nel suo giro tutta non si volse +prima ch’un’altra di cerchio la chiuse, +e moto a moto e canto a canto colse; + +canto che tanto vince nostre muse, +nostre serene in quelle dolci tube, +quanto primo splendor quel ch’e’ refuse. + +Come si volgon per tenera nube +due archi paralelli e concolori, +quando Iunone a sua ancella iube, + +nascendo di quel d’entro quel di fori, +a guisa del parlar di quella vaga +ch’amor consunse come sol vapori, + +e fanno qui la gente esser presaga, +per lo patto che Dio con Noè puose, +del mondo che già mai più non s’allaga: + +così di quelle sempiterne rose +volgiensi circa noi le due ghirlande, +e sì l’estrema a l’intima rispuose. + +Poi che ’l tripudio e l’altra festa grande, +sì del cantare e sì del fiammeggiarsi +luce con luce gaudïose e blande, + +insieme a punto e a voler quetarsi, +pur come li occhi ch’al piacer che i move +conviene insieme chiudere e levarsi; + +del cor de l’una de le luci nove +si mosse voce, che l’ago a la stella +parer mi fece in volgermi al suo dove; + +e cominciò: «L’amor che mi fa bella +mi tragge a ragionar de l’altro duca +per cui del mio sì ben ci si favella. + +Degno è che, dov’ è l’un, l’altro s’induca: +sì che, com’ elli ad una militaro, +così la gloria loro insieme luca. + +L’essercito di Cristo, che sì caro +costò a rïarmar, dietro a la ’nsegna +si movea tardo, sospeccioso e raro, + +quando lo ’mperador che sempre regna +provide a la milizia, ch’era in forse, +per sola grazia, non per esser degna; + +e, come è detto, a sua sposa soccorse +con due campioni, al cui fare, al cui dire +lo popol disvïato si raccorse. + +In quella parte ove surge ad aprire +Zefiro dolce le novelle fronde +di che si vede Europa rivestire, + +non molto lungi al percuoter de l’onde +dietro a le quali, per la lunga foga, +lo sol talvolta ad ogne uom si nasconde, + +siede la fortunata Calaroga +sotto la protezion del grande scudo +in che soggiace il leone e soggioga: + +dentro vi nacque l’amoroso drudo +de la fede cristiana, il santo atleta +benigno a’ suoi e a’ nemici crudo; + +e come fu creata, fu repleta +sì la sua mente di viva vertute +che, ne la madre, lei fece profeta. + +Poi che le sponsalizie fuor compiute +al sacro fonte intra lui e la Fede, +u’ si dotar di mutüa salute, + +la donna che per lui l’assenso diede, +vide nel sonno il mirabile frutto +ch’uscir dovea di lui e de le rede; + +e perché fosse qual era in costrutto, +quinci si mosse spirito a nomarlo +del possessivo di cui era tutto. + +Domenico fu detto; e io ne parlo +sì come de l’agricola che Cristo +elesse a l’orto suo per aiutarlo. + +Ben parve messo e famigliar di Cristo: +che ’l primo amor che ’n lui fu manifesto, +fu al primo consiglio che diè Cristo. + +Spesse fïate fu tacito e desto +trovato in terra da la sua nutrice, +come dicesse: ‘Io son venuto a questo’. + +Oh padre suo veramente Felice! +oh madre sua veramente Giovanna, +se, interpretata, val come si dice! + +Non per lo mondo, per cui mo s’affanna +di retro ad Ostïense e a Taddeo, +ma per amor de la verace manna + +in picciol tempo gran dottor si feo; +tal che si mise a circüir la vigna +che tosto imbianca, se ’l vignaio è reo. + +E a la sedia che fu già benigna +più a’ poveri giusti, non per lei, +ma per colui che siede, che traligna, + +non dispensare o due o tre per sei, +non la fortuna di prima vacante, +non decimas, quae sunt pauperum Dei, + +addimandò, ma contro al mondo errante +licenza di combatter per lo seme +del qual ti fascian ventiquattro piante. + +Poi, con dottrina e con volere insieme, +con l’officio appostolico si mosse +quasi torrente ch’alta vena preme; + +e ne li sterpi eretici percosse +l’impeto suo, più vivamente quivi +dove le resistenze eran più grosse. + +Di lui si fecer poi diversi rivi +onde l’orto catolico si riga, +sì che i suoi arbuscelli stan più vivi. + +Se tal fu l’una rota de la biga +in che la Santa Chiesa si difese +e vinse in campo la sua civil briga, + +ben ti dovrebbe assai esser palese +l’eccellenza de l’altra, di cui Tomma +dinanzi al mio venir fu sì cortese. + +Ma l’orbita che fé la parte somma +di sua circunferenza, è derelitta, +sì ch’è la muffa dov’ era la gromma. + +La sua famiglia, che si mosse dritta +coi piedi a le sue orme, è tanto volta, +che quel dinanzi a quel di retro gitta; + +e tosto si vedrà de la ricolta +de la mala coltura, quando il loglio +si lagnerà che l’arca li sia tolta. + +Ben dico, chi cercasse a foglio a foglio +nostro volume, ancor troveria carta +u’ leggerebbe “I’ mi son quel ch’i’ soglio”; + +ma non fia da Casal né d’Acquasparta, +là onde vegnon tali a la scrittura, +ch’uno la fugge e altro la coarta. + +Io son la vita di Bonaventura +da Bagnoregio, che ne’ grandi offici +sempre pospuosi la sinistra cura. + +Illuminato e Augustin son quici, +che fuor de’ primi scalzi poverelli +che nel capestro a Dio si fero amici. + +Ugo da San Vittore è qui con elli, +e Pietro Mangiadore e Pietro Spano, +lo qual giù luce in dodici libelli; + +Natàn profeta e ’l metropolitano +Crisostomo e Anselmo e quel Donato +ch’a la prim’ arte degnò porre mano. + +Rabano è qui, e lucemi dallato +il calavrese abate Giovacchino +di spirito profetico dotato. + +Ad inveggiar cotanto paladino +mi mosse l’infiammata cortesia +di fra Tommaso e ’l discreto latino; + +e mosse meco questa compagnia». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XIII + + +Imagini, chi bene intender cupe +quel ch’i’ or vidi—e ritegna l’image, +mentre ch’io dico, come ferma rupe—, + +quindici stelle che ’n diverse plage +lo ciel avvivan di tanto sereno +che soperchia de l’aere ogne compage; + +imagini quel carro a cu’ il seno +basta del nostro cielo e notte e giorno, +sì ch’al volger del temo non vien meno; + +imagini la bocca di quel corno +che si comincia in punta de lo stelo +a cui la prima rota va dintorno, + +aver fatto di sé due segni in cielo, +qual fece la figliuola di Minoi +allora che sentì di morte il gelo; + +e l’un ne l’altro aver li raggi suoi, +e amendue girarsi per maniera +che l’uno andasse al primo e l’altro al poi; + +e avrà quasi l’ombra de la vera +costellazione e de la doppia danza +che circulava il punto dov’ io era: + +poi ch’è tanto di là da nostra usanza, +quanto di là dal mover de la Chiana +si move il ciel che tutti li altri avanza. + +Lì si cantò non Bacco, non Peana, +ma tre persone in divina natura, +e in una persona essa e l’umana. + +Compié ’l cantare e ’l volger sua misura; +e attesersi a noi quei santi lumi, +felicitando sé di cura in cura. + +Ruppe il silenzio ne’ concordi numi +poscia la luce in che mirabil vita +del poverel di Dio narrata fumi, + +e disse: «Quando l’una paglia è trita, +quando la sua semenza è già riposta, +a batter l’altra dolce amor m’invita. + +Tu credi che nel petto onde la costa +si trasse per formar la bella guancia +il cui palato a tutto ’l mondo costa, + +e in quel che, forato da la lancia, +e prima e poscia tanto sodisfece, +che d’ogne colpa vince la bilancia, + +quantunque a la natura umana lece +aver di lume, tutto fosse infuso +da quel valor che l’uno e l’altro fece; + +e però miri a ciò ch’io dissi suso, +quando narrai che non ebbe ’l secondo +lo ben che ne la quinta luce è chiuso. + +Or apri li occhi a quel ch’io ti rispondo, +e vedräi il tuo credere e ’l mio dire +nel vero farsi come centro in tondo. + +Ciò che non more e ciò che può morire +non è se non splendor di quella idea +che partorisce, amando, il nostro Sire; + +ché quella viva luce che sì mea +dal suo lucente, che non si disuna +da lui né da l’amor ch’a lor s’intrea, + +per sua bontate il suo raggiare aduna, +quasi specchiato, in nove sussistenze, +etternalmente rimanendosi una. + +Quindi discende a l’ultime potenze +giù d’atto in atto, tanto divenendo, +che più non fa che brevi contingenze; + +e queste contingenze essere intendo +le cose generate, che produce +con seme e sanza seme il ciel movendo. + +La cera di costoro e chi la duce +non sta d’un modo; e però sotto ’l segno +idëale poi più e men traluce. + +Ond’ elli avvien ch’un medesimo legno, +secondo specie, meglio e peggio frutta; +e voi nascete con diverso ingegno. + +Se fosse a punto la cera dedutta +e fosse il cielo in sua virtù supprema, +la luce del suggel parrebbe tutta; + +ma la natura la dà sempre scema, +similemente operando a l’artista +ch’a l’abito de l’arte ha man che trema. + +Però se ’l caldo amor la chiara vista +de la prima virtù dispone e segna, +tutta la perfezion quivi s’acquista. + +Così fu fatta già la terra degna +di tutta l’animal perfezïone; +così fu fatta la Vergine pregna; + +sì ch’io commendo tua oppinïone, +che l’umana natura mai non fue +né fia qual fu in quelle due persone. + +Or s’i’ non procedesse avanti piùe, +‘Dunque, come costui fu sanza pare?’ +comincerebber le parole tue. + +Ma perché paia ben ciò che non pare, +pensa chi era, e la cagion che ’l mosse, +quando fu detto “Chiedi”, a dimandare. + +Non ho parlato sì, che tu non posse +ben veder ch’el fu re, che chiese senno +acciò che re sufficïente fosse; + +non per sapere il numero in che enno +li motor di qua sù, o se necesse +con contingente mai necesse fenno; + +non si est dare primum motum esse, +o se del mezzo cerchio far si puote +trïangol sì ch’un retto non avesse. + +Onde, se ciò ch’io dissi e questo note, +regal prudenza è quel vedere impari +in che lo stral di mia intenzion percuote; + +e se al “surse” drizzi li occhi chiari, +vedrai aver solamente respetto +ai regi, che son molti, e ’ buon son rari. + +Con questa distinzion prendi ’l mio detto; +e così puote star con quel che credi +del primo padre e del nostro Diletto. + +E questo ti sia sempre piombo a’ piedi, +per farti mover lento com’ uom lasso +e al sì e al no che tu non vedi: + +ché quelli è tra li stolti bene a basso, +che sanza distinzione afferma e nega +ne l’un così come ne l’altro passo; + +perch’ elli ’ncontra che più volte piega +l’oppinïon corrente in falsa parte, +e poi l’affetto l’intelletto lega. + +Vie più che ’ndarno da riva si parte, +perché non torna tal qual e’ si move, +chi pesca per lo vero e non ha l’arte. + +E di ciò sono al mondo aperte prove +Parmenide, Melisso e Brisso e molti, +li quali andaro e non sapëan dove; + +sì fé Sabellio e Arrio e quelli stolti +che furon come spade a le Scritture +in render torti li diritti volti. + +Non sien le genti, ancor, troppo sicure +a giudicar, sì come quei che stima +le biade in campo pria che sien mature; + +ch’i’ ho veduto tutto ’l verno prima +lo prun mostrarsi rigido e feroce, +poscia portar la rosa in su la cima; + +e legno vidi già dritto e veloce +correr lo mar per tutto suo cammino, +perire al fine a l’intrar de la foce. + +Non creda donna Berta e ser Martino, +per vedere un furare, altro offerere, +vederli dentro al consiglio divino; + +ché quel può surgere, e quel può cadere». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XIV + + +Dal centro al cerchio, e sì dal cerchio al centro +movesi l’acqua in un ritondo vaso, +secondo ch’è percosso fuori o dentro: + +ne la mia mente fé sùbito caso +questo ch’io dico, sì come si tacque +la glorïosa vita di Tommaso, + +per la similitudine che nacque +del suo parlare e di quel di Beatrice, +a cui sì cominciar, dopo lui, piacque: + +«A costui fa mestieri, e nol vi dice +né con la voce né pensando ancora, +d’un altro vero andare a la radice. + +Diteli se la luce onde s’infiora +vostra sustanza, rimarrà con voi +etternalmente sì com’ ell’ è ora; + +e se rimane, dite come, poi +che sarete visibili rifatti, +esser porà ch’al veder non vi nòi». + +Come, da più letizia pinti e tratti, +a la fïata quei che vanno a rota +levan la voce e rallegrano li atti, + +così, a l’orazion pronta e divota, +li santi cerchi mostrar nova gioia +nel torneare e ne la mira nota. + +Qual si lamenta perché qui si moia +per viver colà sù, non vide quive +lo refrigerio de l’etterna ploia. + +Quell’ uno e due e tre che sempre vive +e regna sempre in tre e ’n due e ’n uno, +non circunscritto, e tutto circunscrive, + +tre volte era cantato da ciascuno +di quelli spirti con tal melodia, +ch’ad ogne merto saria giusto muno. + +E io udi’ ne la luce più dia +del minor cerchio una voce modesta, +forse qual fu da l’angelo a Maria, + +risponder: «Quanto fia lunga la festa +di paradiso, tanto il nostro amore +si raggerà dintorno cotal vesta. + +La sua chiarezza séguita l’ardore; +l’ardor la visïone, e quella è tanta, +quant’ ha di grazia sovra suo valore. + +Come la carne glorïosa e santa +fia rivestita, la nostra persona +più grata fia per esser tutta quanta; + +per che s’accrescerà ciò che ne dona +di gratüito lume il sommo bene, +lume ch’a lui veder ne condiziona; + +onde la visïon crescer convene, +crescer l’ardor che di quella s’accende, +crescer lo raggio che da esso vene. + +Ma sì come carbon che fiamma rende, +e per vivo candor quella soverchia, +sì che la sua parvenza si difende; + +così questo folgór che già ne cerchia +fia vinto in apparenza da la carne +che tutto dì la terra ricoperchia; + +né potrà tanta luce affaticarne: +ché li organi del corpo saran forti +a tutto ciò che potrà dilettarne». + +Tanto mi parver sùbiti e accorti +e l’uno e l’altro coro a dicer «Amme!», +che ben mostrar disio d’i corpi morti: + +forse non pur per lor, ma per le mamme, +per li padri e per li altri che fuor cari +anzi che fosser sempiterne fiamme. + +Ed ecco intorno, di chiarezza pari, +nascere un lustro sopra quel che v’era, +per guisa d’orizzonte che rischiari. + +E sì come al salir di prima sera +comincian per lo ciel nove parvenze, +sì che la vista pare e non par vera, + +parvemi lì novelle sussistenze +cominciare a vedere, e fare un giro +di fuor da l’altre due circunferenze. + +Oh vero sfavillar del Santo Spiro! +come si fece sùbito e candente +a li occhi miei che, vinti, nol soffriro! + +Ma Bëatrice sì bella e ridente +mi si mostrò, che tra quelle vedute +si vuol lasciar che non seguir la mente. + +Quindi ripreser li occhi miei virtute +a rilevarsi; e vidimi translato +sol con mia donna in più alta salute. + +Ben m’accors’ io ch’io era più levato, +per l’affocato riso de la stella, +che mi parea più roggio che l’usato. + +Con tutto ’l core e con quella favella +ch’è una in tutti, a Dio feci olocausto, +qual conveniesi a la grazia novella. + +E non er’ anco del mio petto essausto +l’ardor del sacrificio, ch’io conobbi +esso litare stato accetto e fausto; + +ché con tanto lucore e tanto robbi +m’apparvero splendor dentro a due raggi, +ch’io dissi: «O Elïòs che sì li addobbi!». + +Come distinta da minori e maggi +lumi biancheggia tra ’ poli del mondo +Galassia sì, che fa dubbiar ben saggi; + +sì costellati facean nel profondo +Marte quei raggi il venerabil segno +che fan giunture di quadranti in tondo. + +Qui vince la memoria mia lo ’ngegno; +ché quella croce lampeggiava Cristo, +sì ch’io non so trovare essempro degno; + +ma chi prende sua croce e segue Cristo, +ancor mi scuserà di quel ch’io lasso, +vedendo in quell’ albor balenar Cristo. + +Di corno in corno e tra la cima e ’l basso +si movien lumi, scintillando forte +nel congiugnersi insieme e nel trapasso: + +così si veggion qui diritte e torte, +veloci e tarde, rinovando vista, +le minuzie d’i corpi, lunghe e corte, + +moversi per lo raggio onde si lista +talvolta l’ombra che, per sua difesa, +la gente con ingegno e arte acquista. + +E come giga e arpa, in tempra tesa +di molte corde, fa dolce tintinno +a tal da cui la nota non è intesa, + +così da’ lumi che lì m’apparinno +s’accogliea per la croce una melode +che mi rapiva, sanza intender l’inno. + +Ben m’accors’ io ch’elli era d’alte lode, +però ch’a me venìa «Resurgi» e «Vinci» +come a colui che non intende e ode. + +Ïo m’innamorava tanto quinci, +che ’nfino a lì non fu alcuna cosa +che mi legasse con sì dolci vinci. + +Forse la mia parola par troppo osa, +posponendo il piacer de li occhi belli, +ne’ quai mirando mio disio ha posa; + +ma chi s’avvede che i vivi suggelli +d’ogne bellezza più fanno più suso, +e ch’io non m’era lì rivolto a quelli, + +escusar puommi di quel ch’io m’accuso +per escusarmi, e vedermi dir vero: +ché ’l piacer santo non è qui dischiuso, + +perché si fa, montando, più sincero. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XV + + +Benigna volontade in che si liqua +sempre l’amor che drittamente spira, +come cupidità fa ne la iniqua, + +silenzio puose a quella dolce lira, +e fece quïetar le sante corde +che la destra del cielo allenta e tira. + +Come saranno a’ giusti preghi sorde +quelle sustanze che, per darmi voglia +ch’io le pregassi, a tacer fur concorde? + +Bene è che sanza termine si doglia +chi, per amor di cosa che non duri +etternalmente, quello amor si spoglia. + +Quale per li seren tranquilli e puri +discorre ad ora ad or sùbito foco, +movendo li occhi che stavan sicuri, + +e pare stella che tramuti loco, +se non che da la parte ond’ e’ s’accende +nulla sen perde, ed esso dura poco: + +tale dal corno che ’n destro si stende +a piè di quella croce corse un astro +de la costellazion che lì resplende; + +né si partì la gemma dal suo nastro, +ma per la lista radïal trascorse, +che parve foco dietro ad alabastro. + +Sì pïa l’ombra d’Anchise si porse, +se fede merta nostra maggior musa, +quando in Eliso del figlio s’accorse. + +«O sanguis meus, o superinfusa +gratïa Deï, sicut tibi cui +bis unquam celi ianüa reclusa?». + +Così quel lume: ond’ io m’attesi a lui; +poscia rivolsi a la mia donna il viso, +e quinci e quindi stupefatto fui; + +ché dentro a li occhi suoi ardeva un riso +tal, ch’io pensai co’ miei toccar lo fondo +de la mia gloria e del mio paradiso. + +Indi, a udire e a veder giocondo, +giunse lo spirto al suo principio cose, +ch’io non lo ’ntesi, sì parlò profondo; + +né per elezïon mi si nascose, +ma per necessità, ché ’l suo concetto +al segno d’i mortal si soprapuose. + +E quando l’arco de l’ardente affetto +fu sì sfogato, che ’l parlar discese +inver’ lo segno del nostro intelletto, + +la prima cosa che per me s’intese, +«Benedetto sia tu», fu, «trino e uno, +che nel mio seme se’ tanto cortese!». + +E seguì: «Grato e lontano digiuno, +tratto leggendo del magno volume +du’ non si muta mai bianco né bruno, + +solvuto hai, figlio, dentro a questo lume +in ch’io ti parlo, mercè di colei +ch’a l’alto volo ti vestì le piume. + +Tu credi che a me tuo pensier mei +da quel ch’è primo, così come raia +da l’un, se si conosce, il cinque e ’l sei; + +e però ch’io mi sia e perch’ io paia +più gaudïoso a te, non mi domandi, +che alcun altro in questa turba gaia. + +Tu credi ’l vero; ché i minori e ’ grandi +di questa vita miran ne lo speglio +in che, prima che pensi, il pensier pandi; + +ma perché ’l sacro amore in che io veglio +con perpetüa vista e che m’asseta +di dolce disïar, s’adempia meglio, + +la voce tua sicura, balda e lieta +suoni la volontà, suoni ’l disio, +a che la mia risposta è già decreta!». + +Io mi volsi a Beatrice, e quella udio +pria ch’io parlassi, e arrisemi un cenno +che fece crescer l’ali al voler mio. + +Poi cominciai così: «L’affetto e ’l senno, +come la prima equalità v’apparse, +d’un peso per ciascun di voi si fenno, + +però che ’l sol che v’allumò e arse, +col caldo e con la luce è sì iguali, +che tutte simiglianze sono scarse. + +Ma voglia e argomento ne’ mortali, +per la cagion ch’a voi è manifesta, +diversamente son pennuti in ali; + +ond’ io, che son mortal, mi sento in questa +disagguaglianza, e però non ringrazio +se non col core a la paterna festa. + +Ben supplico io a te, vivo topazio +che questa gioia prezïosa ingemmi, +perché mi facci del tuo nome sazio». + +«O fronda mia in che io compiacemmi +pur aspettando, io fui la tua radice»: +cotal principio, rispondendo, femmi. + +Poscia mi disse: «Quel da cui si dice +tua cognazione e che cent’ anni e piùe +girato ha ’l monte in la prima cornice, + +mio figlio fu e tuo bisavol fue: +ben si convien che la lunga fatica +tu li raccorci con l’opere tue. + +Fiorenza dentro da la cerchia antica, +ond’ ella toglie ancora e terza e nona, +si stava in pace, sobria e pudica. + +Non avea catenella, non corona, +non gonne contigiate, non cintura +che fosse a veder più che la persona. + +Non faceva, nascendo, ancor paura +la figlia al padre, che ’l tempo e la dote +non fuggien quinci e quindi la misura. + +Non avea case di famiglia vòte; +non v’era giunto ancor Sardanapalo +a mostrar ciò che ’n camera si puote. + +Non era vinto ancora Montemalo +dal vostro Uccellatoio, che, com’ è vinto +nel montar sù, così sarà nel calo. + +Bellincion Berti vid’ io andar cinto +di cuoio e d’osso, e venir da lo specchio +la donna sua sanza ’l viso dipinto; + +e vidi quel d’i Nerli e quel del Vecchio +esser contenti a la pelle scoperta, +e le sue donne al fuso e al pennecchio. + +Oh fortunate! ciascuna era certa +de la sua sepultura, e ancor nulla +era per Francia nel letto diserta. + +L’una vegghiava a studio de la culla, +e, consolando, usava l’idïoma +che prima i padri e le madri trastulla; + +l’altra, traendo a la rocca la chioma, +favoleggiava con la sua famiglia +d’i Troiani, di Fiesole e di Roma. + +Saria tenuta allor tal maraviglia +una Cianghella, un Lapo Salterello, +qual or saria Cincinnato e Corniglia. + +A così riposato, a così bello +viver di cittadini, a così fida +cittadinanza, a così dolce ostello, + +Maria mi diè, chiamata in alte grida; +e ne l’antico vostro Batisteo +insieme fui cristiano e Cacciaguida. + +Moronto fu mio frate ed Eliseo; +mia donna venne a me di val di Pado, +e quindi il sopranome tuo si feo. + +Poi seguitai lo ’mperador Currado; +ed el mi cinse de la sua milizia, +tanto per bene ovrar li venni in grado. + +Dietro li andai incontro a la nequizia +di quella legge il cui popolo usurpa, +per colpa d’i pastor, vostra giustizia. + +Quivi fu’ io da quella gente turpa +disviluppato dal mondo fallace, +lo cui amor molt’ anime deturpa; + +e venni dal martiro a questa pace». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XVI + + +O poca nostra nobiltà di sangue, +se glorïar di te la gente fai +qua giù dove l’affetto nostro langue, + +mirabil cosa non mi sarà mai: +ché là dove appetito non si torce, +dico nel cielo, io me ne gloriai. + +Ben se’ tu manto che tosto raccorce: +sì che, se non s’appon di dì in die, +lo tempo va dintorno con le force. + +Dal ‘voi’ che prima a Roma s’offerie, +in che la sua famiglia men persevra, +ricominciaron le parole mie; + +onde Beatrice, ch’era un poco scevra, +ridendo, parve quella che tossio +al primo fallo scritto di Ginevra. + +Io cominciai: «Voi siete il padre mio; +voi mi date a parlar tutta baldezza; +voi mi levate sì, ch’i’ son più ch’io. + +Per tanti rivi s’empie d’allegrezza +la mente mia, che di sé fa letizia +perché può sostener che non si spezza. + +Ditemi dunque, cara mia primizia, +quai fuor li vostri antichi e quai fuor li anni +che si segnaro in vostra püerizia; + +ditemi de l’ovil di San Giovanni +quanto era allora, e chi eran le genti +tra esso degne di più alti scanni». + +Come s’avviva a lo spirar d’i venti +carbone in fiamma, così vid’ io quella +luce risplendere a’ miei blandimenti; + +e come a li occhi miei si fé più bella, +così con voce più dolce e soave, +ma non con questa moderna favella, + +dissemi: «Da quel dì che fu detto ‘Ave’ +al parto in che mia madre, ch’è or santa, +s’allevïò di me ond’ era grave, + +al suo Leon cinquecento cinquanta +e trenta fiate venne questo foco +a rinfiammarsi sotto la sua pianta. + +Li antichi miei e io nacqui nel loco +dove si truova pria l’ultimo sesto +da quei che corre il vostro annüal gioco. + +Basti d’i miei maggiori udirne questo: +chi ei si fosser e onde venner quivi, +più è tacer che ragionare onesto. + +Tutti color ch’a quel tempo eran ivi +da poter arme tra Marte e ’l Batista, +eran il quinto di quei ch’or son vivi. + +Ma la cittadinanza, ch’è or mista +di Campi, di Certaldo e di Fegghine, +pura vediesi ne l’ultimo artista. + +Oh quanto fora meglio esser vicine +quelle genti ch’io dico, e al Galluzzo +e a Trespiano aver vostro confine, + +che averle dentro e sostener lo puzzo +del villan d’Aguglion, di quel da Signa, +che già per barattare ha l’occhio aguzzo! + +Se la gente ch’al mondo più traligna +non fosse stata a Cesare noverca, +ma come madre a suo figlio benigna, + +tal fatto è fiorentino e cambia e merca, +che si sarebbe vòlto a Simifonti, +là dove andava l’avolo a la cerca; + +sariesi Montemurlo ancor de’ Conti; +sarieno i Cerchi nel piovier d’Acone, +e forse in Valdigrieve i Buondelmonti. + +Sempre la confusion de le persone +principio fu del mal de la cittade, +come del vostro il cibo che s’appone; + +e cieco toro più avaccio cade +che cieco agnello; e molte volte taglia +più e meglio una che le cinque spade. + +Se tu riguardi Luni e Orbisaglia +come sono ite, e come se ne vanno +di retro ad esse Chiusi e Sinigaglia, + +udir come le schiatte si disfanno +non ti parrà nova cosa né forte, +poscia che le cittadi termine hanno. + +Le vostre cose tutte hanno lor morte, +sì come voi; ma celasi in alcuna +che dura molto, e le vite son corte. + +E come ’l volger del ciel de la luna +cuopre e discuopre i liti sanza posa, +così fa di Fiorenza la Fortuna: + +per che non dee parer mirabil cosa +ciò ch’io dirò de li alti Fiorentini +onde è la fama nel tempo nascosa. + +Io vidi li Ughi e vidi i Catellini, +Filippi, Greci, Ormanni e Alberichi, +già nel calare, illustri cittadini; + +e vidi così grandi come antichi, +con quel de la Sannella, quel de l’Arca, +e Soldanieri e Ardinghi e Bostichi. + +Sovra la porta ch’al presente è carca +di nova fellonia di tanto peso +che tosto fia iattura de la barca, + +erano i Ravignani, ond’ è disceso +il conte Guido e qualunque del nome +de l’alto Bellincione ha poscia preso. + +Quel de la Pressa sapeva già come +regger si vuole, e avea Galigaio +dorata in casa sua già l’elsa e ’l pome. + +Grand’ era già la colonna del Vaio, +Sacchetti, Giuochi, Fifanti e Barucci +e Galli e quei ch’arrossan per lo staio. + +Lo ceppo di che nacquero i Calfucci +era già grande, e già eran tratti +a le curule Sizii e Arrigucci. + +Oh quali io vidi quei che son disfatti +per lor superbia! e le palle de l’oro +fiorian Fiorenza in tutt’ i suoi gran fatti. + +Così facieno i padri di coloro +che, sempre che la vostra chiesa vaca, +si fanno grassi stando a consistoro. + +L’oltracotata schiatta che s’indraca +dietro a chi fugge, e a chi mostra ’l dente +o ver la borsa, com’ agnel si placa, + +già venìa sù, ma di picciola gente; +sì che non piacque ad Ubertin Donato +che poï il suocero il fé lor parente. + +Già era ’l Caponsacco nel mercato +disceso giù da Fiesole, e già era +buon cittadino Giuda e Infangato. + +Io dirò cosa incredibile e vera: +nel picciol cerchio s’entrava per porta +che si nomava da quei de la Pera. + +Ciascun che de la bella insegna porta +del gran barone il cui nome e ’l cui pregio +la festa di Tommaso riconforta, + +da esso ebbe milizia e privilegio; +avvegna che con popol si rauni +oggi colui che la fascia col fregio. + +Già eran Gualterotti e Importuni; +e ancor saria Borgo più quïeto, +se di novi vicin fosser digiuni. + +La casa di che nacque il vostro fleto, +per lo giusto disdegno che v’ha morti +e puose fine al vostro viver lieto, + +era onorata, essa e suoi consorti: +o Buondelmonte, quanto mal fuggisti +le nozze süe per li altrui conforti! + +Molti sarebber lieti, che son tristi, +se Dio t’avesse conceduto ad Ema +la prima volta ch’a città venisti. + +Ma conveniesi a quella pietra scema +che guarda ’l ponte, che Fiorenza fesse +vittima ne la sua pace postrema. + +Con queste genti, e con altre con esse, +vid’ io Fiorenza in sì fatto riposo, +che non avea cagione onde piangesse. + +Con queste genti vid’io glorïoso +e giusto il popol suo, tanto che ’l giglio +non era ad asta mai posto a ritroso, + +né per divisïon fatto vermiglio». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XVII + + +Qual venne a Climenè, per accertarsi +di ciò ch’avëa incontro a sé udito, +quei ch’ancor fa li padri ai figli scarsi; + +tal era io, e tal era sentito +e da Beatrice e da la santa lampa +che pria per me avea mutato sito. + +Per che mia donna «Manda fuor la vampa +del tuo disio», mi disse, «sì ch’ella esca +segnata bene de la interna stampa: + +non perché nostra conoscenza cresca +per tuo parlare, ma perché t’ausi +a dir la sete, sì che l’uom ti mesca». + +«O cara piota mia che sì t’insusi, +che, come veggion le terrene menti +non capere in trïangol due ottusi, + +così vedi le cose contingenti +anzi che sieno in sé, mirando il punto +a cui tutti li tempi son presenti; + +mentre ch’io era a Virgilio congiunto +su per lo monte che l’anime cura +e discendendo nel mondo defunto, + +dette mi fuor di mia vita futura +parole gravi, avvegna ch’io mi senta +ben tetragono ai colpi di ventura; + +per che la voglia mia saria contenta +d’intender qual fortuna mi s’appressa: +ché saetta previsa vien più lenta». + +Così diss’ io a quella luce stessa +che pria m’avea parlato; e come volle +Beatrice, fu la mia voglia confessa. + +Né per ambage, in che la gente folle +già s’inviscava pria che fosse anciso +l’Agnel di Dio che le peccata tolle, + +ma per chiare parole e con preciso +latin rispuose quello amor paterno, +chiuso e parvente del suo proprio riso: + +«La contingenza, che fuor del quaderno +de la vostra matera non si stende, +tutta è dipinta nel cospetto etterno; + +necessità però quindi non prende +se non come dal viso in che si specchia +nave che per torrente giù discende. + +Da indi, sì come viene ad orecchia +dolce armonia da organo, mi viene +a vista il tempo che ti s’apparecchia. + +Qual si partio Ipolito d’Atene +per la spietata e perfida noverca, +tal di Fiorenza partir ti convene. + +Questo si vuole e questo già si cerca, +e tosto verrà fatto a chi ciò pensa +là dove Cristo tutto dì si merca. + +La colpa seguirà la parte offensa +in grido, come suol; ma la vendetta +fia testimonio al ver che la dispensa. + +Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta +più caramente; e questo è quello strale +che l’arco de lo essilio pria saetta. + +Tu proverai sì come sa di sale +lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle +lo scendere e ’l salir per l’altrui scale. + +E quel che più ti graverà le spalle, +sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia +con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle; + +che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia +si farà contr’ a te; ma, poco appresso, +ella, non tu, n’avrà rossa la tempia. + +Di sua bestialitate il suo processo +farà la prova; sì ch’a te fia bello +averti fatta parte per te stesso. + +Lo primo tuo refugio e ’l primo ostello +sarà la cortesia del gran Lombardo +che ’n su la scala porta il santo uccello; + +ch’in te avrà sì benigno riguardo, +che del fare e del chieder, tra voi due, +fia primo quel che tra li altri è più tardo. + +Con lui vedrai colui che ’mpresso fue, +nascendo, sì da questa stella forte, +che notabili fier l’opere sue. + +Non se ne son le genti ancora accorte +per la novella età, ché pur nove anni +son queste rote intorno di lui torte; + +ma pria che ’l Guasco l’alto Arrigo inganni, +parran faville de la sua virtute +in non curar d’argento né d’affanni. + +Le sue magnificenze conosciute +saranno ancora, sì che ’ suoi nemici +non ne potran tener le lingue mute. + +A lui t’aspetta e a’ suoi benefici; +per lui fia trasmutata molta gente, +cambiando condizion ricchi e mendici; + +e portera’ne scritto ne la mente +di lui, e nol dirai»; e disse cose +incredibili a quei che fier presente. + +Poi giunse: «Figlio, queste son le chiose +di quel che ti fu detto; ecco le ’nsidie +che dietro a pochi giri son nascose. + +Non vo’ però ch’a’ tuoi vicini invidie, +poscia che s’infutura la tua vita +vie più là che ’l punir di lor perfidie». + +Poi che, tacendo, si mostrò spedita +l’anima santa di metter la trama +in quella tela ch’io le porsi ordita, + +io cominciai, come colui che brama, +dubitando, consiglio da persona +che vede e vuol dirittamente e ama: + +«Ben veggio, padre mio, sì come sprona +lo tempo verso me, per colpo darmi +tal, ch’è più grave a chi più s’abbandona; + +per che di provedenza è buon ch’io m’armi, +sì che, se loco m’è tolto più caro, +io non perdessi li altri per miei carmi. + +Giù per lo mondo sanza fine amaro, +e per lo monte del cui bel cacume +li occhi de la mia donna mi levaro, + +e poscia per lo ciel, di lume in lume, +ho io appreso quel che s’io ridico, +a molti fia sapor di forte agrume; + +e s’io al vero son timido amico, +temo di perder viver tra coloro +che questo tempo chiameranno antico». + +La luce in che rideva il mio tesoro +ch’io trovai lì, si fé prima corusca, +quale a raggio di sole specchio d’oro; + +indi rispuose: «Coscïenza fusca +o de la propria o de l’altrui vergogna +pur sentirà la tua parola brusca. + +Ma nondimen, rimossa ogne menzogna, +tutta tua visïon fa manifesta; +e lascia pur grattar dov’ è la rogna. + +Ché se la voce tua sarà molesta +nel primo gusto, vital nodrimento +lascerà poi, quando sarà digesta. + +Questo tuo grido farà come vento, +che le più alte cime più percuote; +e ciò non fa d’onor poco argomento. + +Però ti son mostrate in queste rote, +nel monte e ne la valle dolorosa +pur l’anime che son di fama note, + +che l’animo di quel ch’ode, non posa +né ferma fede per essempro ch’aia +la sua radice incognita e ascosa, + +né per altro argomento che non paia». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XVIII + + +Già si godeva solo del suo verbo +quello specchio beato, e io gustava +lo mio, temprando col dolce l’acerbo; + +e quella donna ch’a Dio mi menava +disse: «Muta pensier; pensa ch’i’ sono +presso a colui ch’ogne torto disgrava». + +Io mi rivolsi a l’amoroso suono +del mio conforto; e qual io allor vidi +ne li occhi santi amor, qui l’abbandono: + +non perch’ io pur del mio parlar diffidi, +ma per la mente che non può redire +sovra sé tanto, s’altri non la guidi. + +Tanto poss’ io di quel punto ridire, +che, rimirando lei, lo mio affetto +libero fu da ogne altro disire, + +fin che ’l piacere etterno, che diretto +raggiava in Bëatrice, dal bel viso +mi contentava col secondo aspetto. + +Vincendo me col lume d’un sorriso, +ella mi disse: «Volgiti e ascolta; +ché non pur ne’ miei occhi è paradiso». + +Come si vede qui alcuna volta +l’affetto ne la vista, s’elli è tanto, +che da lui sia tutta l’anima tolta, + +così nel fiammeggiar del folgór santo, +a ch’io mi volsi, conobbi la voglia +in lui di ragionarmi ancora alquanto. + +El cominciò: «In questa quinta soglia +de l’albero che vive de la cima +e frutta sempre e mai non perde foglia, + +spiriti son beati, che giù, prima +che venissero al ciel, fuor di gran voce, +sì ch’ogne musa ne sarebbe opima. + +Però mira ne’ corni de la croce: +quello ch’io nomerò, lì farà l’atto +che fa in nube il suo foco veloce». + +Io vidi per la croce un lume tratto +dal nomar Iosuè, com’ el si feo; +né mi fu noto il dir prima che ’l fatto. + +E al nome de l’alto Macabeo +vidi moversi un altro roteando, +e letizia era ferza del paleo. + +Così per Carlo Magno e per Orlando +due ne seguì lo mio attento sguardo, +com’ occhio segue suo falcon volando. + +Poscia trasse Guiglielmo e Rinoardo +e ’l duca Gottifredi la mia vista +per quella croce, e Ruberto Guiscardo. + +Indi, tra l’altre luci mota e mista, +mostrommi l’alma che m’avea parlato +qual era tra i cantor del cielo artista. + +Io mi rivolsi dal mio destro lato +per vedere in Beatrice il mio dovere, +o per parlare o per atto, segnato; + +e vidi le sue luci tanto mere, +tanto gioconde, che la sua sembianza +vinceva li altri e l’ultimo solere. + +E come, per sentir più dilettanza +bene operando, l’uom di giorno in giorno +s’accorge che la sua virtute avanza, + +sì m’accors’ io che ’l mio girare intorno +col cielo insieme avea cresciuto l’arco, +veggendo quel miracol più addorno. + +E qual è ’l trasmutare in picciol varco +di tempo in bianca donna, quando ’l volto +suo si discarchi di vergogna il carco, + +tal fu ne li occhi miei, quando fui vòlto, +per lo candor de la temprata stella +sesta, che dentro a sé m’avea ricolto. + +Io vidi in quella giovïal facella +lo sfavillar de l’amor che lì era +segnare a li occhi miei nostra favella. + +E come augelli surti di rivera, +quasi congratulando a lor pasture, +fanno di sé or tonda or altra schiera, + +sì dentro ai lumi sante creature +volitando cantavano, e faciensi +or D, or I, or L in sue figure. + +Prima, cantando, a sua nota moviensi; +poi, diventando l’un di questi segni, +un poco s’arrestavano e taciensi. + +O diva Pegasëa che li ’ngegni +fai glorïosi e rendili longevi, +ed essi teco le cittadi e ’ regni, + +illustrami di te, sì ch’io rilevi +le lor figure com’ io l’ho concette: +paia tua possa in questi versi brevi! + +Mostrarsi dunque in cinque volte sette +vocali e consonanti; e io notai +le parti sì, come mi parver dette. + +‘DILIGITE IUSTITIAM’, primai +fur verbo e nome di tutto ’l dipinto; +‘QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM’, fur sezzai. + +Poscia ne l’emme del vocabol quinto +rimasero ordinate; sì che Giove +pareva argento lì d’oro distinto. + +E vidi scendere altre luci dove +era il colmo de l’emme, e lì quetarsi +cantando, credo, il ben ch’a sé le move. + +Poi, come nel percuoter d’i ciocchi arsi +surgono innumerabili faville, +onde li stolti sogliono agurarsi, + +resurger parver quindi più di mille +luci e salir, qual assai e qual poco, +sì come ’l sol che l’accende sortille; + +e quïetata ciascuna in suo loco, +la testa e ’l collo d’un’aguglia vidi +rappresentare a quel distinto foco. + +Quei che dipinge lì, non ha chi ’l guidi; +ma esso guida, e da lui si rammenta +quella virtù ch’è forma per li nidi. + +L’altra bëatitudo, che contenta +pareva prima d’ingigliarsi a l’emme, +con poco moto seguitò la ’mprenta. + +O dolce stella, quali e quante gemme +mi dimostraro che nostra giustizia +effetto sia del ciel che tu ingemme! + +Per ch’io prego la mente in che s’inizia +tuo moto e tua virtute, che rimiri +ond’ esce il fummo che ’l tuo raggio vizia; + +sì ch’un’altra fïata omai s’adiri +del comperare e vender dentro al templo +che si murò di segni e di martìri. + +O milizia del ciel cu’ io contemplo, +adora per color che sono in terra +tutti svïati dietro al malo essemplo! + +Già si solea con le spade far guerra; +ma or si fa togliendo or qui or quivi +lo pan che ’l pïo Padre a nessun serra. + +Ma tu che sol per cancellare scrivi, +pensa che Pietro e Paulo, che moriro +per la vigna che guasti, ancor son vivi. + +Ben puoi tu dire: «I’ ho fermo ’l disiro +sì a colui che volle viver solo +e che per salti fu tratto al martiro, + +ch’io non conosco il pescator né Polo». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XIX + + +Parea dinanzi a me con l’ali aperte +la bella image che nel dolce frui +liete facevan l’anime conserte; + +parea ciascuna rubinetto in cui +raggio di sole ardesse sì acceso, +che ne’ miei occhi rifrangesse lui. + +E quel che mi convien ritrar testeso, +non portò voce mai, né scrisse incostro, +né fu per fantasia già mai compreso; + +ch’io vidi e anche udi’ parlar lo rostro, +e sonar ne la voce e «io» e «mio», +quand’ era nel concetto e ‘noi’ e ‘nostro’. + +E cominciò: «Per esser giusto e pio +son io qui essaltato a quella gloria +che non si lascia vincere a disio; + +e in terra lasciai la mia memoria +sì fatta, che le genti lì malvage +commendan lei, ma non seguon la storia». + +Così un sol calor di molte brage +si fa sentir, come di molti amori +usciva solo un suon di quella image. + +Ond’ io appresso: «O perpetüi fiori +de l’etterna letizia, che pur uno +parer mi fate tutti vostri odori, + +solvetemi, spirando, il gran digiuno +che lungamente m’ha tenuto in fame, +non trovandoli in terra cibo alcuno. + +Ben so io che, se ’n cielo altro reame +la divina giustizia fa suo specchio, +che ’l vostro non l’apprende con velame. + +Sapete come attento io m’apparecchio +ad ascoltar; sapete qual è quello +dubbio che m’è digiun cotanto vecchio». + +Quasi falcone ch’esce del cappello, +move la testa e con l’ali si plaude, +voglia mostrando e faccendosi bello, + +vid’ io farsi quel segno, che di laude +de la divina grazia era contesto, +con canti quai si sa chi là sù gaude. + +Poi cominciò: «Colui che volse il sesto +a lo stremo del mondo, e dentro ad esso +distinse tanto occulto e manifesto, + +non poté suo valor sì fare impresso +in tutto l’universo, che ’l suo verbo +non rimanesse in infinito eccesso. + +E ciò fa certo che ’l primo superbo, +che fu la somma d’ogne creatura, +per non aspettar lume, cadde acerbo; + +e quinci appar ch’ogne minor natura +è corto recettacolo a quel bene +che non ha fine e sé con sé misura. + +Dunque vostra veduta, che convene +esser alcun de’ raggi de la mente +di che tutte le cose son ripiene, + +non pò da sua natura esser possente +tanto, che suo principio discerna +molto di là da quel che l’è parvente. + +Però ne la giustizia sempiterna +la vista che riceve il vostro mondo, +com’ occhio per lo mare, entro s’interna; + +che, ben che da la proda veggia il fondo, +in pelago nol vede; e nondimeno +èli, ma cela lui l’esser profondo. + +Lume non è, se non vien dal sereno +che non si turba mai; anzi è tenèbra +od ombra de la carne o suo veleno. + +Assai t’è mo aperta la latebra +che t’ascondeva la giustizia viva, +di che facei question cotanto crebra; + +ché tu dicevi: “Un uom nasce a la riva +de l’Indo, e quivi non è chi ragioni +di Cristo né chi legga né chi scriva; + +e tutti suoi voleri e atti buoni +sono, quanto ragione umana vede, +sanza peccato in vita o in sermoni. + +Muore non battezzato e sanza fede: +ov’ è questa giustizia che ’l condanna? +ov’ è la colpa sua, se ei non crede?”. + +Or tu chi se’, che vuo’ sedere a scranna, +per giudicar di lungi mille miglia +con la veduta corta d’una spanna? + +Certo a colui che meco s’assottiglia, +se la Scrittura sovra voi non fosse, +da dubitar sarebbe a maraviglia. + +Oh terreni animali! oh menti grosse! +La prima volontà, ch’è da sé buona, +da sé, ch’è sommo ben, mai non si mosse. + +Cotanto è giusto quanto a lei consuona: +nullo creato bene a sé la tira, +ma essa, radïando, lui cagiona». + +Quale sovresso il nido si rigira +poi c’ha pasciuti la cicogna i figli, +e come quel ch’è pasto la rimira; + +cotal si fece, e sì leväi i cigli, +la benedetta imagine, che l’ali +movea sospinte da tanti consigli. + +Roteando cantava, e dicea: «Quali +son le mie note a te, che non le ’ntendi, +tal è il giudicio etterno a voi mortali». + +Poi si quetaro quei lucenti incendi +de lo Spirito Santo ancor nel segno +che fé i Romani al mondo reverendi, + +esso ricominciò: «A questo regno +non salì mai chi non credette ’n Cristo, +né pria né poi ch’el si chiavasse al legno. + +Ma vedi: molti gridan “Cristo, Cristo!”, +che saranno in giudicio assai men prope +a lui, che tal che non conosce Cristo; + +e tai Cristian dannerà l’Etïòpe, +quando si partiranno i due collegi, +l’uno in etterno ricco e l’altro inòpe. + +Che poran dir li Perse a’ vostri regi, +come vedranno quel volume aperto +nel qual si scrivon tutti suoi dispregi? + +Lì si vedrà, tra l’opere d’Alberto, +quella che tosto moverà la penna, +per che ’l regno di Praga fia diserto. + +Lì si vedrà il duol che sovra Senna +induce, falseggiando la moneta, +quel che morrà di colpo di cotenna. + +Lì si vedrà la superbia ch’asseta, +che fa lo Scotto e l’Inghilese folle, +sì che non può soffrir dentro a sua meta. + +Vedrassi la lussuria e ’l viver molle +di quel di Spagna e di quel di Boemme, +che mai valor non conobbe né volle. + +Vedrassi al Ciotto di Ierusalemme +segnata con un i la sua bontate, +quando ’l contrario segnerà un emme. + +Vedrassi l’avarizia e la viltate +di quei che guarda l’isola del foco, +ove Anchise finì la lunga etate; + +e a dare ad intender quanto è poco, +la sua scrittura fian lettere mozze, +che noteranno molto in parvo loco. + +E parranno a ciascun l’opere sozze +del barba e del fratel, che tanto egregia +nazione e due corone han fatte bozze. + +E quel di Portogallo e di Norvegia +lì si conosceranno, e quel di Rascia +che male ha visto il conio di Vinegia. + +Oh beata Ungheria, se non si lascia +più malmenare! e beata Navarra, +se s’armasse del monte che la fascia! + +E creder de’ ciascun che già, per arra +di questo, Niccosïa e Famagosta +per la lor bestia si lamenti e garra, + +che dal fianco de l’altre non si scosta». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XX + + +Quando colui che tutto ’l mondo alluma +de l’emisperio nostro sì discende, +che ’l giorno d’ogne parte si consuma, + +lo ciel, che sol di lui prima s’accende, +subitamente si rifà parvente +per molte luci, in che una risplende; + +e questo atto del ciel mi venne a mente, +come ’l segno del mondo e de’ suoi duci +nel benedetto rostro fu tacente; + +però che tutte quelle vive luci, +vie più lucendo, cominciaron canti +da mia memoria labili e caduci. + +O dolce amor che di riso t’ammanti, +quanto parevi ardente in que’ flailli, +ch’avieno spirto sol di pensier santi! + +Poscia che i cari e lucidi lapilli +ond’ io vidi ingemmato il sesto lume +puoser silenzio a li angelici squilli, + +udir mi parve un mormorar di fiume +che scende chiaro giù di pietra in pietra, +mostrando l’ubertà del suo cacume. + +E come suono al collo de la cetra +prende sua forma, e sì com’ al pertugio +de la sampogna vento che penètra, + +così, rimosso d’aspettare indugio, +quel mormorar de l’aguglia salissi +su per lo collo, come fosse bugio. + +Fecesi voce quivi, e quindi uscissi +per lo suo becco in forma di parole, +quali aspettava il core ov’ io le scrissi. + +«La parte in me che vede e pate il sole +ne l’aguglie mortali», incominciommi, +«or fisamente riguardar si vole, + +perché d’i fuochi ond’ io figura fommi, +quelli onde l’occhio in testa mi scintilla, +e’ di tutti lor gradi son li sommi. + +Colui che luce in mezzo per pupilla, +fu il cantor de lo Spirito Santo, +che l’arca traslatò di villa in villa: + +ora conosce il merto del suo canto, +in quanto effetto fu del suo consiglio, +per lo remunerar ch’è altrettanto. + +Dei cinque che mi fan cerchio per ciglio, +colui che più al becco mi s’accosta, +la vedovella consolò del figlio: + +ora conosce quanto caro costa +non seguir Cristo, per l’esperïenza +di questa dolce vita e de l’opposta. + +E quel che segue in la circunferenza +di che ragiono, per l’arco superno, +morte indugiò per vera penitenza: + +ora conosce che ’l giudicio etterno +non si trasmuta, quando degno preco +fa crastino là giù de l’odïerno. + +L’altro che segue, con le leggi e meco, +sotto buona intenzion che fé mal frutto, +per cedere al pastor si fece greco: + +ora conosce come il mal dedutto +dal suo bene operar non li è nocivo, +avvegna che sia ’l mondo indi distrutto. + +E quel che vedi ne l’arco declivo, +Guiglielmo fu, cui quella terra plora +che piagne Carlo e Federigo vivo: + +ora conosce come s’innamora +lo ciel del giusto rege, e al sembiante +del suo fulgore il fa vedere ancora. + +Chi crederebbe giù nel mondo errante +che Rifëo Troiano in questo tondo +fosse la quinta de le luci sante? + +Ora conosce assai di quel che ’l mondo +veder non può de la divina grazia, +ben che sua vista non discerna il fondo». + +Quale allodetta che ’n aere si spazia +prima cantando, e poi tace contenta +de l’ultima dolcezza che la sazia, + +tal mi sembiò l’imago de la ’mprenta +de l’etterno piacere, al cui disio +ciascuna cosa qual ell’ è diventa. + +E avvegna ch’io fossi al dubbiar mio +lì quasi vetro a lo color ch’el veste, +tempo aspettar tacendo non patio, + +ma de la bocca, «Che cose son queste?», +mi pinse con la forza del suo peso: +per ch’io di coruscar vidi gran feste. + +Poi appresso, con l’occhio più acceso, +lo benedetto segno mi rispuose +per non tenermi in ammirar sospeso: + +«Io veggio che tu credi queste cose +perch’ io le dico, ma non vedi come; +sì che, se son credute, sono ascose. + +Fai come quei che la cosa per nome +apprende ben, ma la sua quiditate +veder non può se altri non la prome. + +Regnum celorum vïolenza pate +da caldo amore e da viva speranza, +che vince la divina volontate: + +non a guisa che l’omo a l’om sobranza, +ma vince lei perché vuole esser vinta, +e, vinta, vince con sua beninanza. + +La prima vita del ciglio e la quinta +ti fa maravigliar, perché ne vedi +la regïon de li angeli dipinta. + +D’i corpi suoi non uscir, come credi, +Gentili, ma Cristiani, in ferma fede +quel d’i passuri e quel d’i passi piedi. + +Ché l’una de lo ’nferno, u’ non si riede +già mai a buon voler, tornò a l’ossa; +e ciò di viva spene fu mercede: + +di viva spene, che mise la possa +ne’ prieghi fatti a Dio per suscitarla, +sì che potesse sua voglia esser mossa. + +L’anima glorïosa onde si parla, +tornata ne la carne, in che fu poco, +credette in lui che potëa aiutarla; + +e credendo s’accese in tanto foco +di vero amor, ch’a la morte seconda +fu degna di venire a questo gioco. + +L’altra, per grazia che da sì profonda +fontana stilla, che mai creatura +non pinse l’occhio infino a la prima onda, + +tutto suo amor là giù pose a drittura: +per che, di grazia in grazia, Dio li aperse +l’occhio a la nostra redenzion futura; + +ond’ ei credette in quella, e non sofferse +da indi il puzzo più del paganesmo; +e riprendiene le genti perverse. + +Quelle tre donne li fur per battesmo +che tu vedesti da la destra rota, +dinanzi al battezzar più d’un millesmo. + +O predestinazion, quanto remota +è la radice tua da quelli aspetti +che la prima cagion non veggion tota! + +E voi, mortali, tenetevi stretti +a giudicar: ché noi, che Dio vedemo, +non conosciamo ancor tutti li eletti; + +ed ènne dolce così fatto scemo, +perché il ben nostro in questo ben s’affina, +che quel che vole Iddio, e noi volemo». + +Così da quella imagine divina, +per farmi chiara la mia corta vista, +data mi fu soave medicina. + +E come a buon cantor buon citarista +fa seguitar lo guizzo de la corda, +in che più di piacer lo canto acquista, + +sì, mentre ch’e’ parlò, sì mi ricorda +ch’io vidi le due luci benedette, +pur come batter d’occhi si concorda, + +con le parole mover le fiammette. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXI + + +Già eran li occhi miei rifissi al volto +de la mia donna, e l’animo con essi, +e da ogne altro intento s’era tolto. + +E quella non ridea; ma «S’io ridessi», +mi cominciò, «tu ti faresti quale +fu Semelè quando di cener fessi: + +ché la bellezza mia, che per le scale +de l’etterno palazzo più s’accende, +com’ hai veduto, quanto più si sale, + +se non si temperasse, tanto splende, +che ’l tuo mortal podere, al suo fulgore, +sarebbe fronda che trono scoscende. + +Noi sem levati al settimo splendore, +che sotto ’l petto del Leone ardente +raggia mo misto giù del suo valore. + +Ficca di retro a li occhi tuoi la mente, +e fa di quelli specchi a la figura +che ’n questo specchio ti sarà parvente». + +Qual savesse qual era la pastura +del viso mio ne l’aspetto beato +quand’ io mi trasmutai ad altra cura, + +conoscerebbe quanto m’era a grato +ubidire a la mia celeste scorta, +contrapesando l’un con l’altro lato. + +Dentro al cristallo che ’l vocabol porta, +cerchiando il mondo, del suo caro duce +sotto cui giacque ogne malizia morta, + +di color d’oro in che raggio traluce +vid’ io uno scaleo eretto in suso +tanto, che nol seguiva la mia luce. + +Vidi anche per li gradi scender giuso +tanti splendor, ch’io pensai ch’ogne lume +che par nel ciel, quindi fosse diffuso. + +E come, per lo natural costume, +le pole insieme, al cominciar del giorno, +si movono a scaldar le fredde piume; + +poi altre vanno via sanza ritorno, +altre rivolgon sé onde son mosse, +e altre roteando fan soggiorno; + +tal modo parve me che quivi fosse +in quello sfavillar che ’nsieme venne, +sì come in certo grado si percosse. + +E quel che presso più ci si ritenne, +si fé sì chiaro, ch’io dicea pensando: +‘Io veggio ben l’amor che tu m’accenne. + +Ma quella ond’ io aspetto il come e ’l quando +del dire e del tacer, si sta; ond’ io, +contra ’l disio, fo ben ch’io non dimando’. + +Per ch’ella, che vedëa il tacer mio +nel veder di colui che tutto vede, +mi disse: «Solvi il tuo caldo disio». + +E io incominciai: «La mia mercede +non mi fa degno de la tua risposta; +ma per colei che ’l chieder mi concede, + +vita beata che ti stai nascosta +dentro a la tua letizia, fammi nota +la cagion che sì presso mi t’ha posta; + +e dì perché si tace in questa rota +la dolce sinfonia di paradiso, +che giù per l’altre suona sì divota». + +«Tu hai l’udir mortal sì come il viso», +rispuose a me; «onde qui non si canta +per quel che Bëatrice non ha riso. + +Giù per li gradi de la scala santa +discesi tanto sol per farti festa +col dire e con la luce che mi ammanta; + +né più amor mi fece esser più presta, +ché più e tanto amor quinci sù ferve, +sì come il fiammeggiar ti manifesta. + +Ma l’alta carità, che ci fa serve +pronte al consiglio che ’l mondo governa, +sorteggia qui sì come tu osserve». + +«Io veggio ben», diss’ io, «sacra lucerna, +come libero amore in questa corte +basta a seguir la provedenza etterna; + +ma questo è quel ch’a cerner mi par forte, +perché predestinata fosti sola +a questo officio tra le tue consorte». + +Né venni prima a l’ultima parola, +che del suo mezzo fece il lume centro, +girando sé come veloce mola; + +poi rispuose l’amor che v’era dentro: +«Luce divina sopra me s’appunta, +penetrando per questa in ch’io m’inventro, + +la cui virtù, col mio veder congiunta, +mi leva sopra me tanto, ch’i’ veggio +la somma essenza de la quale è munta. + +Quinci vien l’allegrezza ond’ io fiammeggio; +per ch’a la vista mia, quant’ ella è chiara, +la chiarità de la fiamma pareggio. + +Ma quell’ alma nel ciel che più si schiara, +quel serafin che ’n Dio più l’occhio ha fisso, +a la dimanda tua non satisfara, + +però che sì s’innoltra ne lo abisso +de l’etterno statuto quel che chiedi, +che da ogne creata vista è scisso. + +E al mondo mortal, quando tu riedi, +questo rapporta, sì che non presumma +a tanto segno più mover li piedi. + +La mente, che qui luce, in terra fumma; +onde riguarda come può là giùe +quel che non pote perché ’l ciel l’assumma». + +Sì mi prescrisser le parole sue, +ch’io lasciai la quistione e mi ritrassi +a dimandarla umilmente chi fue. + +«Tra ’ due liti d’Italia surgon sassi, +e non molto distanti a la tua patria, +tanto che ’ troni assai suonan più bassi, + +e fanno un gibbo che si chiama Catria, +di sotto al quale è consecrato un ermo, +che suole esser disposto a sola latria». + +Così ricominciommi il terzo sermo; +e poi, continüando, disse: «Quivi +al servigio di Dio mi fe’ sì fermo, + +che pur con cibi di liquor d’ulivi +lievemente passava caldi e geli, +contento ne’ pensier contemplativi. + +Render solea quel chiostro a questi cieli +fertilemente; e ora è fatto vano, +sì che tosto convien che si riveli. + +In quel loco fu’ io Pietro Damiano, +e Pietro Peccator fu’ ne la casa +di Nostra Donna in sul lito adriano. + +Poca vita mortal m’era rimasa, +quando fui chiesto e tratto a quel cappello, +che pur di male in peggio si travasa. + +Venne Cefàs e venne il gran vasello +de lo Spirito Santo, magri e scalzi, +prendendo il cibo da qualunque ostello. + +Or voglion quinci e quindi chi rincalzi +li moderni pastori e chi li meni, +tanto son gravi, e chi di rietro li alzi. + +Cuopron d’i manti loro i palafreni, +sì che due bestie van sott’ una pelle: +oh pazïenza che tanto sostieni!». + +A questa voce vid’ io più fiammelle +di grado in grado scendere e girarsi, +e ogne giro le facea più belle. + +Dintorno a questa vennero e fermarsi, +e fero un grido di sì alto suono, +che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi; + +né io lo ’ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXII + + +Oppresso di stupore, a la mia guida +mi volsi, come parvol che ricorre +sempre colà dove più si confida; + +e quella, come madre che soccorre +sùbito al figlio palido e anelo +con la sua voce, che ’l suol ben disporre, + +mi disse: «Non sai tu che tu se’ in cielo? +e non sai tu che ’l cielo è tutto santo, +e ciò che ci si fa vien da buon zelo? + +Come t’avrebbe trasmutato il canto, +e io ridendo, mo pensar lo puoi, +poscia che ’l grido t’ha mosso cotanto; + +nel qual, se ’nteso avessi i prieghi suoi, +già ti sarebbe nota la vendetta +che tu vedrai innanzi che tu muoi. + +La spada di qua sù non taglia in fretta +né tardo, ma’ ch’al parer di colui +che disïando o temendo l’aspetta. + +Ma rivolgiti omai inverso altrui; +ch’assai illustri spiriti vedrai, +se com’ io dico l’aspetto redui». + +Come a lei piacque, li occhi ritornai, +e vidi cento sperule che ’nsieme +più s’abbellivan con mutüi rai. + +Io stava come quei che ’n sé repreme +la punta del disio, e non s’attenta +di domandar, sì del troppo si teme; + +e la maggiore e la più luculenta +di quelle margherite innanzi fessi, +per far di sé la mia voglia contenta. + +Poi dentro a lei udi’: «Se tu vedessi +com’ io la carità che tra noi arde, +li tuoi concetti sarebbero espressi. + +Ma perché tu, aspettando, non tarde +a l’alto fine, io ti farò risposta +pur al pensier, da che sì ti riguarde. + +Quel monte a cui Cassino è ne la costa +fu frequentato già in su la cima +da la gente ingannata e mal disposta; + +e quel son io che sù vi portai prima +lo nome di colui che ’n terra addusse +la verità che tanto ci soblima; + +e tanta grazia sopra me relusse, +ch’io ritrassi le ville circunstanti +da l’empio cólto che ’l mondo sedusse. + +Questi altri fuochi tutti contemplanti +uomini fuoro, accesi di quel caldo +che fa nascere i fiori e ’ frutti santi. + +Qui è Maccario, qui è Romoaldo, +qui son li frati miei che dentro ai chiostri +fermar li piedi e tennero il cor saldo». + +E io a lui: «L’affetto che dimostri +meco parlando, e la buona sembianza +ch’io veggio e noto in tutti li ardor vostri, + +così m’ha dilatata mia fidanza, +come ’l sol fa la rosa quando aperta +tanto divien quant’ ell’ ha di possanza. + +Però ti priego, e tu, padre, m’accerta +s’io posso prender tanta grazia, ch’io +ti veggia con imagine scoverta». + +Ond’ elli: «Frate, il tuo alto disio +s’adempierà in su l’ultima spera, +ove s’adempion tutti li altri e ’l mio. + +Ivi è perfetta, matura e intera +ciascuna disïanza; in quella sola +è ogne parte là ove sempr’ era, + +perché non è in loco e non s’impola; +e nostra scala infino ad essa varca, +onde così dal viso ti s’invola. + +Infin là sù la vide il patriarca +Iacobbe porger la superna parte, +quando li apparve d’angeli sì carca. + +Ma, per salirla, mo nessun diparte +da terra i piedi, e la regola mia +rimasa è per danno de le carte. + +Le mura che solieno esser badia +fatte sono spelonche, e le cocolle +sacca son piene di farina ria. + +Ma grave usura tanto non si tolle +contra ’l piacer di Dio, quanto quel frutto +che fa il cor de’ monaci sì folle; + +ché quantunque la Chiesa guarda, tutto +è de la gente che per Dio dimanda; +non di parenti né d’altro più brutto. + +La carne d’i mortali è tanto blanda, +che giù non basta buon cominciamento +dal nascer de la quercia al far la ghianda. + +Pier cominciò sanz’ oro e sanz’ argento, +e io con orazione e con digiuno, +e Francesco umilmente il suo convento; + +e se guardi ’l principio di ciascuno, +poscia riguardi là dov’ è trascorso, +tu vederai del bianco fatto bruno. + +Veramente Iordan vòlto retrorso +più fu, e ’l mar fuggir, quando Dio volse, +mirabile a veder che qui ’l soccorso». + +Così mi disse, e indi si raccolse +al suo collegio, e ’l collegio si strinse; +poi, come turbo, in sù tutto s’avvolse. + +La dolce donna dietro a lor mi pinse +con un sol cenno su per quella scala, +sì sua virtù la mia natura vinse; + +né mai qua giù dove si monta e cala +naturalmente, fu sì ratto moto +ch’agguagliar si potesse a la mia ala. + +S’io torni mai, lettore, a quel divoto +trïunfo per lo quale io piango spesso +le mie peccata e ’l petto mi percuoto, + +tu non avresti in tanto tratto e messo +nel foco il dito, in quant’ io vidi ’l segno +che segue il Tauro e fui dentro da esso. + +O glorïose stelle, o lume pregno +di gran virtù, dal quale io riconosco +tutto, qual che si sia, il mio ingegno, + +con voi nasceva e s’ascondeva vosco +quelli ch’è padre d’ogne mortal vita, +quand’ io senti’ di prima l’aere tosco; + +e poi, quando mi fu grazia largita +d’entrar ne l’alta rota che vi gira, +la vostra regïon mi fu sortita. + +A voi divotamente ora sospira +l’anima mia, per acquistar virtute +al passo forte che a sé la tira. + +«Tu se’ sì presso a l’ultima salute», +cominciò Bëatrice, «che tu dei +aver le luci tue chiare e acute; + +e però, prima che tu più t’inlei, +rimira in giù, e vedi quanto mondo +sotto li piedi già esser ti fei; + +sì che ’l tuo cor, quantunque può, giocondo +s’appresenti a la turba trïunfante +che lieta vien per questo etera tondo». + +Col viso ritornai per tutte quante +le sette spere, e vidi questo globo +tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante; + +e quel consiglio per migliore approbo +che l’ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa +chiamar si puote veramente probo. + +Vidi la figlia di Latona incensa +sanza quell’ ombra che mi fu cagione +per che già la credetti rara e densa. + +L’aspetto del tuo nato, Iperïone, +quivi sostenni, e vidi com’ si move +circa e vicino a lui Maia e Dïone. + +Quindi m’apparve il temperar di Giove +tra ’l padre e ’l figlio; e quindi mi fu chiaro +il varïar che fanno di lor dove; + +e tutti e sette mi si dimostraro +quanto son grandi e quanto son veloci +e come sono in distante riparo. + +L’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci, +volgendom’ io con li etterni Gemelli, +tutta m’apparve da’ colli a le foci; + +poscia rivolsi li occhi a li occhi belli. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXIII + + +Come l’augello, intra l’amate fronde, +posato al nido de’ suoi dolci nati +la notte che le cose ci nasconde, + +che, per veder li aspetti disïati +e per trovar lo cibo onde li pasca, +in che gravi labor li sono aggrati, + +previene il tempo in su aperta frasca, +e con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, +fiso guardando pur che l’alba nasca; + +così la donna mïa stava eretta +e attenta, rivolta inver’ la plaga +sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta: + +sì che, veggendola io sospesa e vaga, +fecimi qual è quei che disïando +altro vorria, e sperando s’appaga. + +Ma poco fu tra uno e altro quando, +del mio attender, dico, e del vedere +lo ciel venir più e più rischiarando; + +e Bëatrice disse: «Ecco le schiere +del trïunfo di Cristo e tutto ’l frutto +ricolto del girar di queste spere!». + +Pariemi che ’l suo viso ardesse tutto, +e li occhi avea di letizia sì pieni, +che passarmen convien sanza costrutto. + +Quale ne’ plenilunïi sereni +Trivïa ride tra le ninfe etterne +che dipingon lo ciel per tutti i seni, + +vid’ i’ sopra migliaia di lucerne +un sol che tutte quante l’accendea, +come fa ’l nostro le viste superne; + +e per la viva luce trasparea +la lucente sustanza tanto chiara +nel viso mio, che non la sostenea. + +Oh Bëatrice, dolce guida e cara! +Ella mi disse: «Quel che ti sobranza +è virtù da cui nulla si ripara. + +Quivi è la sapïenza e la possanza +ch’aprì le strade tra ’l cielo e la terra, +onde fu già sì lunga disïanza». + +Come foco di nube si diserra +per dilatarsi sì che non vi cape, +e fuor di sua natura in giù s’atterra, + +la mente mia così, tra quelle dape +fatta più grande, di sé stessa uscìo, +e che si fesse rimembrar non sape. + +«Apri li occhi e riguarda qual son io; +tu hai vedute cose, che possente +se’ fatto a sostener lo riso mio». + +Io era come quei che si risente +di visïone oblita e che s’ingegna +indarno di ridurlasi a la mente, + +quand’ io udi’ questa proferta, degna +di tanto grato, che mai non si stingue +del libro che ’l preterito rassegna. + +Se mo sonasser tutte quelle lingue +che Polimnïa con le suore fero +del latte lor dolcissimo più pingue, + +per aiutarmi, al millesmo del vero +non si verria, cantando il santo riso +e quanto il santo aspetto facea mero; + +e così, figurando il paradiso, +convien saltar lo sacrato poema, +come chi trova suo cammin riciso. + +Ma chi pensasse il ponderoso tema +e l’omero mortal che se ne carca, +nol biasmerebbe se sott’ esso trema: + +non è pareggio da picciola barca +quel che fendendo va l’ardita prora, +né da nocchier ch’a sé medesmo parca. + +«Perché la faccia mia sì t’innamora, +che tu non ti rivolgi al bel giardino +che sotto i raggi di Cristo s’infiora? + +Quivi è la rosa in che ’l verbo divino +carne si fece; quivi son li gigli +al cui odor si prese il buon cammino». + +Così Beatrice; e io, che a’ suoi consigli +tutto era pronto, ancora mi rendei +a la battaglia de’ debili cigli. + +Come a raggio di sol, che puro mei +per fratta nube, già prato di fiori +vider, coverti d’ombra, li occhi miei; + +vid’ io così più turbe di splendori, +folgorate di sù da raggi ardenti, +sanza veder principio di folgóri. + +O benigna vertù che sì li ’mprenti, +sù t’essaltasti, per largirmi loco +a li occhi lì che non t’eran possenti. + +Il nome del bel fior ch’io sempre invoco +e mane e sera, tutto mi ristrinse +l’animo ad avvisar lo maggior foco; + +e come ambo le luci mi dipinse +il quale e il quanto de la viva stella +che là sù vince come qua giù vinse, + +per entro il cielo scese una facella, +formata in cerchio a guisa di corona, +e cinsela e girossi intorno ad ella. + +Qualunque melodia più dolce suona +qua giù e più a sé l’anima tira, +parrebbe nube che squarciata tona, + +comparata al sonar di quella lira +onde si coronava il bel zaffiro +del quale il ciel più chiaro s’inzaffira. + +«Io sono amore angelico, che giro +l’alta letizia che spira del ventre +che fu albergo del nostro disiro; + +e girerommi, donna del ciel, mentre +che seguirai tuo figlio, e farai dia +più la spera suprema perché lì entre». + +Così la circulata melodia +si sigillava, e tutti li altri lumi +facean sonare il nome di Maria. + +Lo real manto di tutti i volumi +del mondo, che più ferve e più s’avviva +ne l’alito di Dio e nei costumi, + +avea sopra di noi l’interna riva +tanto distante, che la sua parvenza, +là dov’ io era, ancor non appariva: + +però non ebber li occhi miei potenza +di seguitar la coronata fiamma +che si levò appresso sua semenza. + +E come fantolin che ’nver’ la mamma +tende le braccia, poi che ’l latte prese, +per l’animo che ’nfin di fuor s’infiamma; + +ciascun di quei candori in sù si stese +con la sua cima, sì che l’alto affetto +ch’elli avieno a Maria mi fu palese. + +Indi rimaser lì nel mio cospetto, +‘Regina celi’ cantando sì dolce, +che mai da me non si partì ’l diletto. + +Oh quanta è l’ubertà che si soffolce +in quelle arche ricchissime che fuoro +a seminar qua giù buone bobolce! + +Quivi si vive e gode del tesoro +che s’acquistò piangendo ne lo essilio +di Babillòn, ove si lasciò l’oro. + +Quivi trïunfa, sotto l’alto Filio +di Dio e di Maria, di sua vittoria, +e con l’antico e col novo concilio, + +colui che tien le chiavi di tal gloria. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXIV + + +«O sodalizio eletto a la gran cena +del benedetto Agnello, il qual vi ciba +sì, che la vostra voglia è sempre piena, + +se per grazia di Dio questi preliba +di quel che cade de la vostra mensa, +prima che morte tempo li prescriba, + +ponete mente a l’affezione immensa +e roratelo alquanto: voi bevete +sempre del fonte onde vien quel ch’ei pensa». + +Così Beatrice; e quelle anime liete +si fero spere sopra fissi poli, +fiammando, a volte, a guisa di comete. + +E come cerchi in tempra d’orïuoli +si giran sì, che ’l primo a chi pon mente +quïeto pare, e l’ultimo che voli; + +così quelle carole, differente- +mente danzando, de la sua ricchezza +mi facieno stimar, veloci e lente. + +Di quella ch’io notai di più carezza +vid’ ïo uscire un foco sì felice, +che nullo vi lasciò di più chiarezza; + +e tre fïate intorno di Beatrice +si volse con un canto tanto divo, +che la mia fantasia nol mi ridice. + +Però salta la penna e non lo scrivo: +ché l’imagine nostra a cotai pieghe, +non che ’l parlare, è troppo color vivo. + +«O santa suora mia che sì ne prieghe +divota, per lo tuo ardente affetto +da quella bella spera mi disleghe». + +Poscia fermato, il foco benedetto +a la mia donna dirizzò lo spiro, +che favellò così com’ i’ ho detto. + +Ed ella: «O luce etterna del gran viro +a cui Nostro Segnor lasciò le chiavi, +ch’ei portò giù, di questo gaudio miro, + +tenta costui di punti lievi e gravi, +come ti piace, intorno de la fede, +per la qual tu su per lo mare andavi. + +S’elli ama bene e bene spera e crede, +non t’è occulto, perché ’l viso hai quivi +dov’ ogne cosa dipinta si vede; + +ma perché questo regno ha fatto civi +per la verace fede, a glorïarla, +di lei parlare è ben ch’a lui arrivi». + +Sì come il baccialier s’arma e non parla +fin che ’l maestro la question propone, +per approvarla, non per terminarla, + +così m’armava io d’ogne ragione +mentre ch’ella dicea, per esser presto +a tal querente e a tal professione. + +«Dì, buon Cristiano, fatti manifesto: +fede che è?». Ond’ io levai la fronte +in quella luce onde spirava questo; + +poi mi volsi a Beatrice, ed essa pronte +sembianze femmi perch’ ïo spandessi +l’acqua di fuor del mio interno fonte. + +«La Grazia che mi dà ch’io mi confessi», +comincia’ io, «da l’alto primipilo, +faccia li miei concetti bene espressi». + +E seguitai: «Come ’l verace stilo +ne scrisse, padre, del tuo caro frate +che mise teco Roma nel buon filo, + +fede è sustanza di cose sperate +e argomento de le non parventi; +e questa pare a me sua quiditate». + +Allora udi’: «Dirittamente senti, +se bene intendi perché la ripuose +tra le sustanze, e poi tra li argomenti». + +E io appresso: «Le profonde cose +che mi largiscon qui la lor parvenza, +a li occhi di là giù son sì ascose, + +che l’esser loro v’è in sola credenza, +sopra la qual si fonda l’alta spene; +e però di sustanza prende intenza. + +E da questa credenza ci convene +silogizzar, sanz’ avere altra vista: +però intenza d’argomento tene». + +Allora udi’: «Se quantunque s’acquista +giù per dottrina, fosse così ’nteso, +non lì avria loco ingegno di sofista». + +Così spirò di quello amore acceso; +indi soggiunse: «Assai bene è trascorsa +d’esta moneta già la lega e ’l peso; + +ma dimmi se tu l’hai ne la tua borsa». +Ond’ io: «Sì ho, sì lucida e sì tonda, +che nel suo conio nulla mi s’inforsa». + +Appresso uscì de la luce profonda +che lì splendeva: «Questa cara gioia +sopra la quale ogne virtù si fonda, + +onde ti venne?». E io: «La larga ploia +de lo Spirito Santo, ch’è diffusa +in su le vecchie e ’n su le nuove cuoia, + +è silogismo che la m’ha conchiusa +acutamente sì, che ’nverso d’ella +ogne dimostrazion mi pare ottusa». + +Io udi’ poi: «L’antica e la novella +proposizion che così ti conchiude, +perché l’hai tu per divina favella?». + +E io: «La prova che ’l ver mi dischiude, +son l’opere seguite, a che natura +non scalda ferro mai né batte incude». + +Risposto fummi: «Dì, chi t’assicura +che quell’ opere fosser? Quel medesmo +che vuol provarsi, non altri, il ti giura». + +«Se ’l mondo si rivolse al cristianesmo», +diss’ io, «sanza miracoli, quest’ uno +è tal, che li altri non sono il centesmo: + +ché tu intrasti povero e digiuno +in campo, a seminar la buona pianta +che fu già vite e ora è fatta pruno». + +Finito questo, l’alta corte santa +risonò per le spere un ‘Dio laudamo’ +ne la melode che là sù si canta. + +E quel baron che sì di ramo in ramo, +essaminando, già tratto m’avea, +che a l’ultime fronde appressavamo, + +ricominciò: «La Grazia, che donnea +con la tua mente, la bocca t’aperse +infino a qui come aprir si dovea, + +sì ch’io approvo ciò che fuori emerse; +ma or convien espremer quel che credi, +e onde a la credenza tua s’offerse». + +«O santo padre, e spirito che vedi +ciò che credesti sì, che tu vincesti +ver’ lo sepulcro più giovani piedi», + +comincia’ io, «tu vuo’ ch’io manifesti +la forma qui del pronto creder mio, +e anche la cagion di lui chiedesti. + +E io rispondo: Io credo in uno Dio +solo ed etterno, che tutto ’l ciel move, +non moto, con amore e con disio; + +e a tal creder non ho io pur prove +fisice e metafisice, ma dalmi +anche la verità che quinci piove + +per Moïsè, per profeti e per salmi, +per l’Evangelio e per voi che scriveste +poi che l’ardente Spirto vi fé almi; + +e credo in tre persone etterne, e queste +credo una essenza sì una e sì trina, +che soffera congiunto ‘sono’ ed ‘este’. + +De la profonda condizion divina +ch’io tocco mo, la mente mi sigilla +più volte l’evangelica dottrina. + +Quest’ è ’l principio, quest’ è la favilla +che si dilata in fiamma poi vivace, +e come stella in cielo in me scintilla». + +Come ’l segnor ch’ascolta quel che i piace, +da indi abbraccia il servo, gratulando +per la novella, tosto ch’el si tace; + +così, benedicendomi cantando, +tre volte cinse me, sì com’ io tacqui, +l’appostolico lume al cui comando + +io avea detto: sì nel dir li piacqui! + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXV + + +Se mai continga che ’l poema sacro +al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, +sì che m’ha fatto per molti anni macro, + +vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra +del bello ovile ov’ io dormi’ agnello, +nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra; + +con altra voce omai, con altro vello +ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte +del mio battesmo prenderò ’l cappello; + +però che ne la fede, che fa conte +l’anime a Dio, quivi intra’ io, e poi +Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte. + +Indi si mosse un lume verso noi +di quella spera ond’ uscì la primizia +che lasciò Cristo d’i vicari suoi; + +e la mia donna, piena di letizia, +mi disse: «Mira, mira: ecco il barone +per cui là giù si vicita Galizia». + +Sì come quando il colombo si pone +presso al compagno, l’uno a l’altro pande, +girando e mormorando, l’affezione; + +così vid’ ïo l’un da l’altro grande +principe glorïoso essere accolto, +laudando il cibo che là sù li prande. + +Ma poi che ’l gratular si fu assolto, +tacito coram me ciascun s’affisse, +ignito sì che vincëa ’l mio volto. + +Ridendo allora Bëatrice disse: +«Inclita vita per cui la larghezza +de la nostra basilica si scrisse, + +fa risonar la spene in questa altezza: +tu sai, che tante fiate la figuri, +quante Iesù ai tre fé più carezza». + +«Leva la testa e fa che t’assicuri: +che ciò che vien qua sù del mortal mondo, +convien ch’ai nostri raggi si maturi». + +Questo conforto del foco secondo +mi venne; ond’ io leväi li occhi a’ monti +che li ’ncurvaron pria col troppo pondo. + +«Poi che per grazia vuol che tu t’affronti +lo nostro Imperadore, anzi la morte, +ne l’aula più secreta co’ suoi conti, + +sì che, veduto il ver di questa corte, +la spene, che là giù bene innamora, +in te e in altrui di ciò conforte, + +di’ quel ch’ell’ è, di’ come se ne ’nfiora +la mente tua, e dì onde a te venne». +Così seguì ’l secondo lume ancora. + +E quella pïa che guidò le penne +de le mie ali a così alto volo, +a la risposta così mi prevenne: + +«La Chiesa militante alcun figliuolo +non ha con più speranza, com’ è scritto +nel Sol che raggia tutto nostro stuolo: + +però li è conceduto che d’Egitto +vegna in Ierusalemme per vedere, +anzi che ’l militar li sia prescritto. + +Li altri due punti, che non per sapere +son dimandati, ma perch’ ei rapporti +quanto questa virtù t’è in piacere, + +a lui lasc’ io, ché non li saran forti +né di iattanza; ed elli a ciò risponda, +e la grazia di Dio ciò li comporti». + +Come discente ch’a dottor seconda +pronto e libente in quel ch’elli è esperto, +perché la sua bontà si disasconda, + +«Spene», diss’ io, «è uno attender certo +de la gloria futura, il qual produce +grazia divina e precedente merto. + +Da molte stelle mi vien questa luce; +ma quei la distillò nel mio cor pria +che fu sommo cantor del sommo duce. + +‘Sperino in te’, ne la sua tëodia +dice, ‘color che sanno il nome tuo’: +e chi nol sa, s’elli ha la fede mia? + +Tu mi stillasti, con lo stillar suo, +ne la pistola poi; sì ch’io son pieno, +e in altrui vostra pioggia repluo». + +Mentr’ io diceva, dentro al vivo seno +di quello incendio tremolava un lampo +sùbito e spesso a guisa di baleno. + +Indi spirò: «L’amore ond’ ïo avvampo +ancor ver’ la virtù che mi seguette +infin la palma e a l’uscir del campo, + +vuol ch’io respiri a te che ti dilette +di lei; ed emmi a grato che tu diche +quello che la speranza ti ’mpromette». + +E io: «Le nove e le scritture antiche +pongon lo segno, ed esso lo mi addita, +de l’anime che Dio s’ha fatte amiche. + +Dice Isaia che ciascuna vestita +ne la sua terra fia di doppia vesta: +e la sua terra è questa dolce vita; + +e ’l tuo fratello assai vie più digesta, +là dove tratta de le bianche stole, +questa revelazion ci manifesta». + +E prima, appresso al fin d’este parole, +‘Sperent in te’ di sopr’ a noi s’udì; +a che rispuoser tutte le carole. + +Poscia tra esse un lume si schiarì +sì che, se ’l Cancro avesse un tal cristallo, +l’inverno avrebbe un mese d’un sol dì. + +E come surge e va ed entra in ballo +vergine lieta, sol per fare onore +a la novizia, non per alcun fallo, + +così vid’ io lo schiarato splendore +venire a’ due che si volgieno a nota +qual conveniesi al loro ardente amore. + +Misesi lì nel canto e ne la rota; +e la mia donna in lor tenea l’aspetto, +pur come sposa tacita e immota. + +«Questi è colui che giacque sopra ’l petto +del nostro pellicano, e questi fue +di su la croce al grande officio eletto». + +La donna mia così; né però piùe +mosser la vista sua di stare attenta +poscia che prima le parole sue. + +Qual è colui ch’adocchia e s’argomenta +di vedere eclissar lo sole un poco, +che, per veder, non vedente diventa; + +tal mi fec’ ïo a quell’ ultimo foco +mentre che detto fu: «Perché t’abbagli +per veder cosa che qui non ha loco? + +In terra è terra il mio corpo, e saragli +tanto con li altri, che ’l numero nostro +con l’etterno proposito s’agguagli. + +Con le due stole nel beato chiostro +son le due luci sole che saliro; +e questo apporterai nel mondo vostro». + +A questa voce l’infiammato giro +si quïetò con esso il dolce mischio +che si facea nel suon del trino spiro, + +sì come, per cessar fatica o rischio, +li remi, pria ne l’acqua ripercossi, +tutti si posano al sonar d’un fischio. + +Ahi quanto ne la mente mi commossi, +quando mi volsi per veder Beatrice, +per non poter veder, benché io fossi + +presso di lei, e nel mondo felice! + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXVI + + +Mentr’ io dubbiava per lo viso spento, +de la fulgida fiamma che lo spense +uscì un spiro che mi fece attento, + +dicendo: «Intanto che tu ti risense +de la vista che haï in me consunta, +ben è che ragionando la compense. + +Comincia dunque; e dì ove s’appunta +l’anima tua, e fa ragion che sia +la vista in te smarrita e non defunta: + +perché la donna che per questa dia +regïon ti conduce, ha ne lo sguardo +la virtù ch’ebbe la man d’Anania». + +Io dissi: «Al suo piacere e tosto e tardo +vegna remedio a li occhi, che fuor porte +quand’ ella entrò col foco ond’ io sempr’ ardo. + +Lo ben che fa contenta questa corte, +Alfa e O è di quanta scrittura +mi legge Amore o lievemente o forte». + +Quella medesma voce che paura +tolta m’avea del sùbito abbarbaglio, +di ragionare ancor mi mise in cura; + +e disse: «Certo a più angusto vaglio +ti conviene schiarar: dicer convienti +chi drizzò l’arco tuo a tal berzaglio». + +E io: «Per filosofici argomenti +e per autorità che quinci scende +cotale amor convien che in me si ’mprenti: + +ché ’l bene, in quanto ben, come s’intende, +così accende amore, e tanto maggio +quanto più di bontate in sé comprende. + +Dunque a l’essenza ov’ è tanto avvantaggio, +che ciascun ben che fuor di lei si trova +altro non è ch’un lume di suo raggio, + +più che in altra convien che si mova +la mente, amando, di ciascun che cerne +il vero in che si fonda questa prova. + +Tal vero a l’intelletto mïo sterne +colui che mi dimostra il primo amore +di tutte le sustanze sempiterne. + +Sternel la voce del verace autore, +che dice a Moïsè, di sé parlando: +‘Io ti farò vedere ogne valore’. + +Sternilmi tu ancora, incominciando +l’alto preconio che grida l’arcano +di qui là giù sovra ogne altro bando». + +E io udi’: «Per intelletto umano +e per autoritadi a lui concorde +d’i tuoi amori a Dio guarda il sovrano. + +Ma dì ancor se tu senti altre corde +tirarti verso lui, sì che tu suone +con quanti denti questo amor ti morde». + +Non fu latente la santa intenzione +de l’aguglia di Cristo, anzi m’accorsi +dove volea menar mia professione. + +Però ricominciai: «Tutti quei morsi +che posson far lo cor volgere a Dio, +a la mia caritate son concorsi: + +ché l’essere del mondo e l’esser mio, +la morte ch’el sostenne perch’ io viva, +e quel che spera ogne fedel com’ io, + +con la predetta conoscenza viva, +tratto m’hanno del mar de l’amor torto, +e del diritto m’han posto a la riva. + +Le fronde onde s’infronda tutto l’orto +de l’ortolano etterno, am’ io cotanto +quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto». + +Sì com’ io tacqui, un dolcissimo canto +risonò per lo cielo, e la mia donna +dicea con li altri: «Santo, santo, santo!». + +E come a lume acuto si disonna +per lo spirto visivo che ricorre +a lo splendor che va di gonna in gonna, + +e lo svegliato ciò che vede aborre, +sì nescïa è la sùbita vigilia +fin che la stimativa non soccorre; + +così de li occhi miei ogne quisquilia +fugò Beatrice col raggio d’i suoi, +che rifulgea da più di mille milia: + +onde mei che dinanzi vidi poi; +e quasi stupefatto domandai +d’un quarto lume ch’io vidi tra noi. + +E la mia donna: «Dentro da quei rai +vagheggia il suo fattor l’anima prima +che la prima virtù creasse mai». + +Come la fronda che flette la cima +nel transito del vento, e poi si leva +per la propria virtù che la soblima, + +fec’ io in tanto in quant’ ella diceva, +stupendo, e poi mi rifece sicuro +un disio di parlare ond’ ïo ardeva. + +E cominciai: «O pomo che maturo +solo prodotto fosti, o padre antico +a cui ciascuna sposa è figlia e nuro, + +divoto quanto posso a te supplìco +perché mi parli: tu vedi mia voglia, +e per udirti tosto non la dico». + +Talvolta un animal coverto broglia, +sì che l’affetto convien che si paia +per lo seguir che face a lui la ’nvoglia; + +e similmente l’anima primaia +mi facea trasparer per la coverta +quant’ ella a compiacermi venìa gaia. + +Indi spirò: «Sanz’ essermi proferta +da te, la voglia tua discerno meglio +che tu qualunque cosa t’è più certa; + +perch’ io la veggio nel verace speglio +che fa di sé pareglio a l’altre cose, +e nulla face lui di sé pareglio. + +Tu vuogli udir quant’ è che Dio mi puose +ne l’eccelso giardino, ove costei +a così lunga scala ti dispuose, + +e quanto fu diletto a li occhi miei, +e la propria cagion del gran disdegno, +e l’idïoma ch’usai e che fei. + +Or, figluol mio, non il gustar del legno +fu per sé la cagion di tanto essilio, +ma solamente il trapassar del segno. + +Quindi onde mosse tua donna Virgilio, +quattromilia trecento e due volumi +di sol desiderai questo concilio; + +e vidi lui tornare a tutt’ i lumi +de la sua strada novecento trenta +fïate, mentre ch’ïo in terra fu’mi. + +La lingua ch’io parlai fu tutta spenta +innanzi che a l’ovra inconsummabile +fosse la gente di Nembròt attenta: + +ché nullo effetto mai razïonabile, +per lo piacere uman che rinovella +seguendo il cielo, sempre fu durabile. + +Opera naturale è ch’uom favella; +ma così o così, natura lascia +poi fare a voi secondo che v’abbella. + +Pria ch’i’ scendessi a l’infernale ambascia, +I s’appellava in terra il sommo bene +onde vien la letizia che mi fascia; + +e El si chiamò poi: e ciò convene, +ché l’uso d’i mortali è come fronda +in ramo, che sen va e altra vene. + +Nel monte che si leva più da l’onda, +fu’ io, con vita pura e disonesta, +da la prim’ ora a quella che seconda, + +come ’l sol muta quadra, l’ora sesta». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXVII + + +‘Al Padre, al Figlio, a lo Spirito Santo’, +cominciò, ‘gloria!’, tutto ’l paradiso, +sì che m’inebrïava il dolce canto. + +Ciò ch’io vedeva mi sembiava un riso +de l’universo; per che mia ebbrezza +intrava per l’udire e per lo viso. + +Oh gioia! oh ineffabile allegrezza! +oh vita intègra d’amore e di pace! +oh sanza brama sicura ricchezza! + +Dinanzi a li occhi miei le quattro face +stavano accese, e quella che pria venne +incominciò a farsi più vivace, + +e tal ne la sembianza sua divenne, +qual diverrebbe Iove, s’elli e Marte +fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne. + +La provedenza, che quivi comparte +vice e officio, nel beato coro +silenzio posto avea da ogne parte, + +quand’ ïo udi’: «Se io mi trascoloro, +non ti maravigliar, ché, dicend’ io, +vedrai trascolorar tutti costoro. + +Quelli ch’usurpa in terra il luogo mio, +il luogo mio, il luogo mio, che vaca +ne la presenza del Figliuol di Dio, + +fatt’ ha del cimitero mio cloaca +del sangue e de la puzza; onde ’l perverso +che cadde di qua sù, là giù si placa». + +Di quel color che per lo sole avverso +nube dipigne da sera e da mane, +vid’ ïo allora tutto ’l ciel cosperso. + +E come donna onesta che permane +di sé sicura, e per l’altrui fallanza, +pur ascoltando, timida si fane, + +così Beatrice trasmutò sembianza; +e tale eclissi credo che ’n ciel fue +quando patì la supprema possanza. + +Poi procedetter le parole sue +con voce tanto da sé trasmutata, +che la sembianza non si mutò piùe: + +«Non fu la sposa di Cristo allevata +del sangue mio, di Lin, di quel di Cleto, +per essere ad acquisto d’oro usata; + +ma per acquisto d’esto viver lieto +e Sisto e Pïo e Calisto e Urbano +sparser lo sangue dopo molto fleto. + +Non fu nostra intenzion ch’a destra mano +d’i nostri successor parte sedesse, +parte da l’altra del popol cristiano; + +né che le chiavi che mi fuor concesse, +divenisser signaculo in vessillo +che contra battezzati combattesse; + +né ch’io fossi figura di sigillo +a privilegi venduti e mendaci, +ond’ io sovente arrosso e disfavillo. + +In vesta di pastor lupi rapaci +si veggion di qua sù per tutti i paschi: +o difesa di Dio, perché pur giaci? + +Del sangue nostro Caorsini e Guaschi +s’apparecchian di bere: o buon principio, +a che vil fine convien che tu caschi! + +Ma l’alta provedenza, che con Scipio +difese a Roma la gloria del mondo, +soccorrà tosto, sì com’ io concipio; + +e tu, figliuol, che per lo mortal pondo +ancor giù tornerai, apri la bocca, +e non asconder quel ch’io non ascondo». + +Sì come di vapor gelati fiocca +in giuso l’aere nostro, quando ’l corno +de la capra del ciel col sol si tocca, + +in sù vid’ io così l’etera addorno +farsi e fioccar di vapor trïunfanti +che fatto avien con noi quivi soggiorno. + +Lo viso mio seguiva i suoi sembianti, +e seguì fin che ’l mezzo, per lo molto, +li tolse il trapassar del più avanti. + +Onde la donna, che mi vide assolto +de l’attendere in sù, mi disse: «Adima +il viso e guarda come tu se’ vòlto». + +Da l’ora ch’ïo avea guardato prima +i’ vidi mosso me per tutto l’arco +che fa dal mezzo al fine il primo clima; + +sì ch’io vedea di là da Gade il varco +folle d’Ulisse, e di qua presso il lito +nel qual si fece Europa dolce carco. + +E più mi fora discoverto il sito +di questa aiuola; ma ’l sol procedea +sotto i mie’ piedi un segno e più partito. + +La mente innamorata, che donnea +con la mia donna sempre, di ridure +ad essa li occhi più che mai ardea; + +e se natura o arte fé pasture +da pigliare occhi, per aver la mente, +in carne umana o ne le sue pitture, + +tutte adunate, parrebber nïente +ver’ lo piacer divin che mi refulse, +quando mi volsi al suo viso ridente. + +E la virtù che lo sguardo m’indulse, +del bel nido di Leda mi divelse, +e nel ciel velocissimo m’impulse. + +Le parti sue vivissime ed eccelse +sì uniforme son, ch’i’ non so dire +qual Bëatrice per loco mi scelse. + +Ma ella, che vedëa ’l mio disire, +incominciò, ridendo tanto lieta, +che Dio parea nel suo volto gioire: + +«La natura del mondo, che quïeta +il mezzo e tutto l’altro intorno move, +quinci comincia come da sua meta; + +e questo cielo non ha altro dove +che la mente divina, in che s’accende +l’amor che ’l volge e la virtù ch’ei piove. + +Luce e amor d’un cerchio lui comprende, +sì come questo li altri; e quel precinto +colui che ’l cinge solamente intende. + +Non è suo moto per altro distinto, +ma li altri son mensurati da questo, +sì come diece da mezzo e da quinto; + +e come il tempo tegna in cotal testo +le sue radici e ne li altri le fronde, +omai a te può esser manifesto. + +Oh cupidigia che i mortali affonde +sì sotto te, che nessuno ha podere +di trarre li occhi fuor de le tue onde! + +Ben fiorisce ne li uomini il volere; +ma la pioggia continüa converte +in bozzacchioni le sosine vere. + +Fede e innocenza son reperte +solo ne’ parvoletti; poi ciascuna +pria fugge che le guance sian coperte. + +Tale, balbuzïendo ancor, digiuna, +che poi divora, con la lingua sciolta, +qualunque cibo per qualunque luna; + +e tal, balbuzïendo, ama e ascolta +la madre sua, che, con loquela intera, +disïa poi di vederla sepolta. + +Così si fa la pelle bianca nera +nel primo aspetto de la bella figlia +di quel ch’apporta mane e lascia sera. + +Tu, perché non ti facci maraviglia, +pensa che ’n terra non è chi governi; +onde sì svïa l’umana famiglia. + +Ma prima che gennaio tutto si sverni +per la centesma ch’è là giù negletta, +raggeran sì questi cerchi superni, + +che la fortuna che tanto s’aspetta, +le poppe volgerà u’ son le prore, +sì che la classe correrà diretta; + +e vero frutto verrà dopo ’l fiore». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXVIII + + +Poscia che ’ncontro a la vita presente +d’i miseri mortali aperse ’l vero +quella che ’mparadisa la mia mente, + +come in lo specchio fiamma di doppiero +vede colui che se n’alluma retro, +prima che l’abbia in vista o in pensiero, + +e sé rivolge per veder se ’l vetro +li dice il vero, e vede ch’el s’accorda +con esso come nota con suo metro; + +così la mia memoria si ricorda +ch’io feci riguardando ne’ belli occhi +onde a pigliarmi fece Amor la corda. + +E com’ io mi rivolsi e furon tocchi +li miei da ciò che pare in quel volume, +quandunque nel suo giro ben s’adocchi, + +un punto vidi che raggiava lume +acuto sì, che ’l viso ch’elli affoca +chiuder conviensi per lo forte acume; + +e quale stella par quinci più poca, +parrebbe luna, locata con esso +come stella con stella si collòca. + +Forse cotanto quanto pare appresso +alo cigner la luce che ’l dipigne +quando ’l vapor che ’l porta più è spesso, + +distante intorno al punto un cerchio d’igne +si girava sì ratto, ch’avria vinto +quel moto che più tosto il mondo cigne; + +e questo era d’un altro circumcinto, +e quel dal terzo, e ’l terzo poi dal quarto, +dal quinto il quarto, e poi dal sesto il quinto. + +Sopra seguiva il settimo sì sparto +già di larghezza, che ’l messo di Iuno +intero a contenerlo sarebbe arto. + +Così l’ottavo e ’l nono; e chiascheduno +più tardo si movea, secondo ch’era +in numero distante più da l’uno; + +e quello avea la fiamma più sincera +cui men distava la favilla pura, +credo, però che più di lei s’invera. + +La donna mia, che mi vedëa in cura +forte sospeso, disse: «Da quel punto +depende il cielo e tutta la natura. + +Mira quel cerchio che più li è congiunto; +e sappi che ’l suo muovere è sì tosto +per l’affocato amore ond’ elli è punto». + +E io a lei: «Se ’l mondo fosse posto +con l’ordine ch’io veggio in quelle rote, +sazio m’avrebbe ciò che m’è proposto; + +ma nel mondo sensibile si puote +veder le volte tanto più divine, +quant’ elle son dal centro più remote. + +Onde, se ’l mio disir dee aver fine +in questo miro e angelico templo +che solo amore e luce ha per confine, + +udir convienmi ancor come l’essemplo +e l’essemplare non vanno d’un modo, +ché io per me indarno a ciò contemplo». + +«Se li tuoi diti non sono a tal nodo +sufficïenti, non è maraviglia: +tanto, per non tentare, è fatto sodo!». + +Così la donna mia; poi disse: «Piglia +quel ch’io ti dicerò, se vuo’ saziarti; +e intorno da esso t’assottiglia. + +Li cerchi corporai sono ampi e arti +secondo il più e ’l men de la virtute +che si distende per tutte lor parti. + +Maggior bontà vuol far maggior salute; +maggior salute maggior corpo cape, +s’elli ha le parti igualmente compiute. + +Dunque costui che tutto quanto rape +l’altro universo seco, corrisponde +al cerchio che più ama e che più sape: + +per che, se tu a la virtù circonde +la tua misura, non a la parvenza +de le sustanze che t’appaion tonde, + +tu vederai mirabil consequenza +di maggio a più e di minore a meno, +in ciascun cielo, a süa intelligenza». + +Come rimane splendido e sereno +l’emisperio de l’aere, quando soffia +Borea da quella guancia ond’ è più leno, + +per che si purga e risolve la roffia +che pria turbava, sì che ’l ciel ne ride +con le bellezze d’ogne sua paroffia; + +così fec’ïo, poi che mi provide +la donna mia del suo risponder chiaro, +e come stella in cielo il ver si vide. + +E poi che le parole sue restaro, +non altrimenti ferro disfavilla +che bolle, come i cerchi sfavillaro. + +L’incendio suo seguiva ogne scintilla; +ed eran tante, che ’l numero loro +più che ’l doppiar de li scacchi s’inmilla. + +Io sentiva osannar di coro in coro +al punto fisso che li tiene a li ubi, +e terrà sempre, ne’ quai sempre fuoro. + +E quella che vedëa i pensier dubi +ne la mia mente, disse: «I cerchi primi +t’hanno mostrato Serafi e Cherubi. + +Così veloci seguono i suoi vimi, +per somigliarsi al punto quanto ponno; +e posson quanto a veder son soblimi. + +Quelli altri amori che ’ntorno li vonno, +si chiaman Troni del divino aspetto, +per che ’l primo ternaro terminonno; + +e dei saper che tutti hanno diletto +quanto la sua veduta si profonda +nel vero in che si queta ogne intelletto. + +Quinci si può veder come si fonda +l’esser beato ne l’atto che vede, +non in quel ch’ama, che poscia seconda; + +e del vedere è misura mercede, +che grazia partorisce e buona voglia: +così di grado in grado si procede. + +L’altro ternaro, che così germoglia +in questa primavera sempiterna +che notturno Arïete non dispoglia, + +perpetüalemente ‘Osanna’ sberna +con tre melode, che suonano in tree +ordini di letizia onde s’interna. + +In essa gerarcia son l’altre dee: +prima Dominazioni, e poi Virtudi; +l’ordine terzo di Podestadi èe. + +Poscia ne’ due penultimi tripudi +Principati e Arcangeli si girano; +l’ultimo è tutto d’Angelici ludi. + +Questi ordini di sù tutti s’ammirano, +e di giù vincon sì, che verso Dio +tutti tirati sono e tutti tirano. + +E Dïonisio con tanto disio +a contemplar questi ordini si mise, +che li nomò e distinse com’ io. + +Ma Gregorio da lui poi si divise; +onde, sì tosto come li occhi aperse +in questo ciel, di sé medesmo rise. + +E se tanto secreto ver proferse +mortale in terra, non voglio ch’ammiri: +ché chi ’l vide qua sù gliel discoperse + +con altro assai del ver di questi giri». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXIX + + +Quando ambedue li figli di Latona, +coperti del Montone e de la Libra, +fanno de l’orizzonte insieme zona, + +quant’ è dal punto che ’l cenìt inlibra +infin che l’uno e l’altro da quel cinto, +cambiando l’emisperio, si dilibra, + +tanto, col volto di riso dipinto, +si tacque Bëatrice, riguardando +fiso nel punto che m’avëa vinto. + +Poi cominciò: «Io dico, e non dimando, +quel che tu vuoli udir, perch’ io l’ho visto +là ’ve s’appunta ogne ubi e ogne quando. + +Non per aver a sé di bene acquisto, +ch’esser non può, ma perché suo splendore +potesse, risplendendo, dir “Subsisto”, + +in sua etternità di tempo fore, +fuor d’ogne altro comprender, come i piacque, +s’aperse in nuovi amor l’etterno amore. + +Né prima quasi torpente si giacque; +ché né prima né poscia procedette +lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’ acque. + +Forma e materia, congiunte e purette, +usciro ad esser che non avia fallo, +come d’arco tricordo tre saette. + +E come in vetro, in ambra o in cristallo +raggio resplende sì, che dal venire +a l’esser tutto non è intervallo, + +così ’l triforme effetto del suo sire +ne l’esser suo raggiò insieme tutto +sanza distinzïone in essordire. + +Concreato fu ordine e costrutto +a le sustanze; e quelle furon cima +nel mondo in che puro atto fu produtto; + +pura potenza tenne la parte ima; +nel mezzo strinse potenza con atto +tal vime, che già mai non si divima. + +Ieronimo vi scrisse lungo tratto +di secoli de li angeli creati +anzi che l’altro mondo fosse fatto; + +ma questo vero è scritto in molti lati +da li scrittor de lo Spirito Santo, +e tu te n’avvedrai se bene agguati; + +e anche la ragione il vede alquanto, +che non concederebbe che ’ motori +sanza sua perfezion fosser cotanto. + +Or sai tu dove e quando questi amori +furon creati e come: sì che spenti +nel tuo disïo già son tre ardori. + +Né giugneriesi, numerando, al venti +sì tosto, come de li angeli parte +turbò il suggetto d’i vostri alimenti. + +L’altra rimase, e cominciò quest’ arte +che tu discerni, con tanto diletto, +che mai da circüir non si diparte. + +Principio del cader fu il maladetto +superbir di colui che tu vedesti +da tutti i pesi del mondo costretto. + +Quelli che vedi qui furon modesti +a riconoscer sé da la bontate +che li avea fatti a tanto intender presti: + +per che le viste lor furo essaltate +con grazia illuminante e con lor merto, +si c’hanno ferma e piena volontate; + +e non voglio che dubbi, ma sia certo, +che ricever la grazia è meritorio +secondo che l’affetto l’è aperto. + +Omai dintorno a questo consistorio +puoi contemplare assai, se le parole +mie son ricolte, sanz’ altro aiutorio. + +Ma perché ’n terra per le vostre scole +si legge che l’angelica natura +è tal, che ’ntende e si ricorda e vole, + +ancor dirò, perché tu veggi pura +la verità che là giù si confonde, +equivocando in sì fatta lettura. + +Queste sustanze, poi che fur gioconde +de la faccia di Dio, non volser viso +da essa, da cui nulla si nasconde: + +però non hanno vedere interciso +da novo obietto, e però non bisogna +rememorar per concetto diviso; + +sì che là giù, non dormendo, si sogna, +credendo e non credendo dicer vero; +ma ne l’uno è più colpa e più vergogna. + +Voi non andate giù per un sentiero +filosofando: tanto vi trasporta +l’amor de l’apparenza e ’l suo pensiero! + +E ancor questo qua sù si comporta +con men disdegno che quando è posposta +la divina Scrittura o quando è torta. + +Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa +seminarla nel mondo e quanto piace +chi umilmente con essa s’accosta. + +Per apparer ciascun s’ingegna e face +sue invenzioni; e quelle son trascorse +da’ predicanti e ’l Vangelio si tace. + +Un dice che la luna si ritorse +ne la passion di Cristo e s’interpuose, +per che ’l lume del sol giù non si porse; + +e mente, ché la luce si nascose +da sé: però a li Spani e a l’Indi +come a’ Giudei tale eclissi rispuose. + +Non ha Fiorenza tanti Lapi e Bindi +quante sì fatte favole per anno +in pergamo si gridan quinci e quindi: + +sì che le pecorelle, che non sanno, +tornan del pasco pasciute di vento, +e non le scusa non veder lo danno. + +Non disse Cristo al suo primo convento: +‘Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance’; +ma diede lor verace fondamento; + +e quel tanto sonò ne le sue guance, +sì ch’a pugnar per accender la fede +de l’Evangelio fero scudo e lance. + +Ora si va con motti e con iscede +a predicare, e pur che ben si rida, +gonfia il cappuccio e più non si richiede. + +Ma tale uccel nel becchetto s’annida, +che se ’l vulgo il vedesse, vederebbe +la perdonanza di ch’el si confida: + +per cui tanta stoltezza in terra crebbe, +che, sanza prova d’alcun testimonio, +ad ogne promession si correrebbe. + +Di questo ingrassa il porco sant’ Antonio, +e altri assai che sono ancor più porci, +pagando di moneta sanza conio. + +Ma perché siam digressi assai, ritorci +li occhi oramai verso la dritta strada, +sì che la via col tempo si raccorci. + +Questa natura sì oltre s’ingrada +in numero, che mai non fu loquela +né concetto mortal che tanto vada; + +e se tu guardi quel che si revela +per Danïel, vedrai che ’n sue migliaia +determinato numero si cela. + +La prima luce, che tutta la raia, +per tanti modi in essa si recepe, +quanti son li splendori a chi s’appaia. + +Onde, però che a l’atto che concepe +segue l’affetto, d’amar la dolcezza +diversamente in essa ferve e tepe. + +Vedi l’eccelso omai e la larghezza +de l’etterno valor, poscia che tanti +speculi fatti s’ha in che si spezza, + +uno manendo in sé come davanti». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXX + + +Forse semilia miglia di lontano +ci ferve l’ora sesta, e questo mondo +china già l’ombra quasi al letto piano, + +quando ’l mezzo del cielo, a noi profondo, +comincia a farsi tal, ch’alcuna stella +perde il parere infino a questo fondo; + +e come vien la chiarissima ancella +del sol più oltre, così ’l ciel si chiude +di vista in vista infino a la più bella. + +Non altrimenti il trïunfo che lude +sempre dintorno al punto che mi vinse, +parendo inchiuso da quel ch’elli ’nchiude, + +a poco a poco al mio veder si stinse: +per che tornar con li occhi a Bëatrice +nulla vedere e amor mi costrinse. + +Se quanto infino a qui di lei si dice +fosse conchiuso tutto in una loda, +poca sarebbe a fornir questa vice. + +La bellezza ch’io vidi si trasmoda +non pur di là da noi, ma certo io credo +che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda. + +Da questo passo vinto mi concedo +più che già mai da punto di suo tema +soprato fosse comico o tragedo: + +ché, come sole in viso che più trema, +così lo rimembrar del dolce riso +la mente mia da me medesmo scema. + +Dal primo giorno ch’i’ vidi il suo viso +in questa vita, infino a questa vista, +non m’è il seguire al mio cantar preciso; + +ma or convien che mio seguir desista +più dietro a sua bellezza, poetando, +come a l’ultimo suo ciascuno artista. + +Cotal qual io lascio a maggior bando +che quel de la mia tuba, che deduce +l’ardüa sua matera terminando, + +con atto e voce di spedito duce +ricominciò: «Noi siamo usciti fore +del maggior corpo al ciel ch’è pura luce: + +luce intellettüal, piena d’amore; +amor di vero ben, pien di letizia; +letizia che trascende ogne dolzore. + +Qui vederai l’una e l’altra milizia +di paradiso, e l’una in quelli aspetti +che tu vedrai a l’ultima giustizia». + +Come sùbito lampo che discetti +li spiriti visivi, sì che priva +da l’atto l’occhio di più forti obietti, + +così mi circunfulse luce viva, +e lasciommi fasciato di tal velo +del suo fulgor, che nulla m’appariva. + +«Sempre l’amor che queta questo cielo +accoglie in sé con sì fatta salute, +per far disposto a sua fiamma il candelo». + +Non fur più tosto dentro a me venute +queste parole brievi, ch’io compresi +me sormontar di sopr’ a mia virtute; + +e di novella vista mi raccesi +tale, che nulla luce è tanto mera, +che li occhi miei non si fosser difesi; + +e vidi lume in forma di rivera +fulvido di fulgore, intra due rive +dipinte di mirabil primavera. + +Di tal fiumana uscian faville vive, +e d’ogne parte si mettien ne’ fiori, +quasi rubin che oro circunscrive; + +poi, come inebrïate da li odori, +riprofondavan sé nel miro gurge, +e s’una intrava, un’altra n’uscia fori. + +«L’alto disio che mo t’infiamma e urge, +d’aver notizia di ciò che tu vei, +tanto mi piace più quanto più turge; + +ma di quest’ acqua convien che tu bei +prima che tanta sete in te si sazi»: +così mi disse il sol de li occhi miei. + +Anche soggiunse: «Il fiume e li topazi +ch’entrano ed escono e ’l rider de l’erbe +son di lor vero umbriferi prefazi. + +Non che da sé sian queste cose acerbe; +ma è difetto da la parte tua, +che non hai viste ancor tanto superbe». + +Non è fantin che sì sùbito rua +col volto verso il latte, se si svegli +molto tardato da l’usanza sua, + +come fec’ io, per far migliori spegli +ancor de li occhi, chinandomi a l’onda +che si deriva perché vi s’immegli; + +e sì come di lei bevve la gronda +de le palpebre mie, così mi parve +di sua lunghezza divenuta tonda. + +Poi, come gente stata sotto larve, +che pare altro che prima, se si sveste +la sembianza non süa in che disparve, + +così mi si cambiaro in maggior feste +li fiori e le faville, sì ch’io vidi +ambo le corti del ciel manifeste. + +O isplendor di Dio, per cu’ io vidi +l’alto trïunfo del regno verace, +dammi virtù a dir com’ ïo il vidi! + +Lume è là sù che visibile face +lo creatore a quella creatura +che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace. + +E’ si distende in circular figura, +in tanto che la sua circunferenza +sarebbe al sol troppo larga cintura. + +Fassi di raggio tutta sua parvenza +reflesso al sommo del mobile primo, +che prende quindi vivere e potenza. + +E come clivo in acqua di suo imo +si specchia, quasi per vedersi addorno, +quando è nel verde e ne’ fioretti opimo, + +sì, soprastando al lume intorno intorno, +vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie +quanto di noi là sù fatto ha ritorno. + +E se l’infimo grado in sé raccoglie +sì grande lume, quanta è la larghezza +di questa rosa ne l’estreme foglie! + +La vista mia ne l’ampio e ne l’altezza +non si smarriva, ma tutto prendeva +il quanto e ’l quale di quella allegrezza. + +Presso e lontano, lì, né pon né leva: +ché dove Dio sanza mezzo governa, +la legge natural nulla rileva. + +Nel giallo de la rosa sempiterna, +che si digrada e dilata e redole +odor di lode al sol che sempre verna, + +qual è colui che tace e dicer vole, +mi trasse Bëatrice, e disse: «Mira +quanto è ’l convento de le bianche stole! + +Vedi nostra città quant’ ella gira; +vedi li nostri scanni sì ripieni, +che poca gente più ci si disira. + +E ’n quel gran seggio a che tu li occhi tieni +per la corona che già v’è sù posta, +prima che tu a queste nozze ceni, + +sederà l’alma, che fia giù agosta, +de l’alto Arrigo, ch’a drizzare Italia +verrà in prima ch’ella sia disposta. + +La cieca cupidigia che v’ammalia +simili fatti v’ha al fantolino +che muor per fame e caccia via la balia. + +E fia prefetto nel foro divino +allora tal, che palese e coverto +non anderà con lui per un cammino. + +Ma poco poi sarà da Dio sofferto +nel santo officio; ch’el sarà detruso +là dove Simon mago è per suo merto, + +e farà quel d’Alagna intrar più giuso». + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXXI + + +In forma dunque di candida rosa +mi si mostrava la milizia santa +che nel suo sangue Cristo fece sposa; + +ma l’altra, che volando vede e canta +la gloria di colui che la ’nnamora +e la bontà che la fece cotanta, + +sì come schiera d’ape che s’infiora +una fïata e una si ritorna +là dove suo laboro s’insapora, + +nel gran fior discendeva che s’addorna +di tante foglie, e quindi risaliva +là dove ’l süo amor sempre soggiorna. + +Le facce tutte avean di fiamma viva +e l’ali d’oro, e l’altro tanto bianco, +che nulla neve a quel termine arriva. + +Quando scendean nel fior, di banco in banco +porgevan de la pace e de l’ardore +ch’elli acquistavan ventilando il fianco. + +Né l’interporsi tra ’l disopra e ’l fiore +di tanta moltitudine volante +impediva la vista e lo splendore: + +ché la luce divina è penetrante +per l’universo secondo ch’è degno, +sì che nulla le puote essere ostante. + +Questo sicuro e gaudïoso regno, +frequente in gente antica e in novella, +viso e amore avea tutto ad un segno. + +O trina luce che ’n unica stella +scintillando a lor vista, sì li appaga! +guarda qua giuso a la nostra procella! + +Se i barbari, venendo da tal plaga +che ciascun giorno d’Elice si cuopra, +rotante col suo figlio ond’ ella è vaga, + +veggendo Roma e l’ardüa sua opra, +stupefaciensi, quando Laterano +a le cose mortali andò di sopra; + +ïo, che al divino da l’umano, +a l’etterno dal tempo era venuto, +e di Fiorenza in popol giusto e sano, + +di che stupor dovea esser compiuto! +Certo tra esso e ’l gaudio mi facea +libito non udire e starmi muto. + +E quasi peregrin che si ricrea +nel tempio del suo voto riguardando, +e spera già ridir com’ ello stea, + +su per la viva luce passeggiando, +menava ïo li occhi per li gradi, +mo sù, mo giù e mo recirculando. + +Vedëa visi a carità süadi, +d’altrui lume fregiati e di suo riso, +e atti ornati di tutte onestadi. + +La forma general di paradiso +già tutta mïo sguardo avea compresa, +in nulla parte ancor fermato fiso; + +e volgeami con voglia rïaccesa +per domandar la mia donna di cose +di che la mente mia era sospesa. + +Uno intendëa, e altro mi rispuose: +credea veder Beatrice e vidi un sene +vestito con le genti glorïose. + +Diffuso era per li occhi e per le gene +di benigna letizia, in atto pio +quale a tenero padre si convene. + +E «Ov’ è ella?», sùbito diss’ io. +Ond’ elli: «A terminar lo tuo disiro +mosse Beatrice me del loco mio; + +e se riguardi sù nel terzo giro +dal sommo grado, tu la rivedrai +nel trono che suoi merti le sortiro». + +Sanza risponder, li occhi sù levai, +e vidi lei che si facea corona +reflettendo da sé li etterni rai. + +Da quella regïon che più sù tona +occhio mortale alcun tanto non dista, +qualunque in mare più giù s’abbandona, + +quanto lì da Beatrice la mia vista; +ma nulla mi facea, ché süa effige +non discendëa a me per mezzo mista. + +«O donna in cui la mia speranza vige, +e che soffristi per la mia salute +in inferno lasciar le tue vestige, + +di tante cose quant’ i’ ho vedute, +dal tuo podere e da la tua bontate +riconosco la grazia e la virtute. + +Tu m’hai di servo tratto a libertate +per tutte quelle vie, per tutt’ i modi +che di ciò fare avei la potestate. + +La tua magnificenza in me custodi, +sì che l’anima mia, che fatt’ hai sana, +piacente a te dal corpo si disnodi». + +Così orai; e quella, sì lontana +come parea, sorrise e riguardommi; +poi si tornò a l’etterna fontana. + +E ’l santo sene: «Acciò che tu assommi +perfettamente», disse, «il tuo cammino, +a che priego e amor santo mandommi, + +vola con li occhi per questo giardino; +ché veder lui t’acconcerà lo sguardo +più al montar per lo raggio divino. + +E la regina del cielo, ond’ ïo ardo +tutto d’amor, ne farà ogne grazia, +però ch’i’ sono il suo fedel Bernardo». + +Qual è colui che forse di Croazia +viene a veder la Veronica nostra, +che per l’antica fame non sen sazia, + +ma dice nel pensier, fin che si mostra: +‘Segnor mio Iesù Cristo, Dio verace, +or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?’; + +tal era io mirando la vivace +carità di colui che ’n questo mondo, +contemplando, gustò di quella pace. + +«Figliuol di grazia, quest’ esser giocondo», +cominciò elli, «non ti sarà noto, +tenendo li occhi pur qua giù al fondo; + +ma guarda i cerchi infino al più remoto, +tanto che veggi seder la regina +cui questo regno è suddito e devoto». + +Io levai li occhi; e come da mattina +la parte orïental de l’orizzonte +soverchia quella dove ’l sol declina, + +così, quasi di valle andando a monte +con li occhi, vidi parte ne lo stremo +vincer di lume tutta l’altra fronte. + +E come quivi ove s’aspetta il temo +che mal guidò Fetonte, più s’infiamma, +e quinci e quindi il lume si fa scemo, + +così quella pacifica oriafiamma +nel mezzo s’avvivava, e d’ogne parte +per igual modo allentava la fiamma; + +e a quel mezzo, con le penne sparte, +vid’ io più di mille angeli festanti, +ciascun distinto di fulgore e d’arte. + +Vidi a lor giochi quivi e a lor canti +ridere una bellezza, che letizia +era ne li occhi a tutti li altri santi; + +e s’io avessi in dir tanta divizia +quanta ad imaginar, non ardirei +lo minimo tentar di sua delizia. + +Bernardo, come vide li occhi miei +nel caldo suo caler fissi e attenti, +li suoi con tanto affetto volse a lei, + +che ’ miei di rimirar fé più ardenti. + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXXII + + +Affetto al suo piacer, quel contemplante +libero officio di dottore assunse, +e cominciò queste parole sante: + +«La piaga che Maria richiuse e unse, +quella ch’è tanto bella da’ suoi piedi +è colei che l’aperse e che la punse. + +Ne l’ordine che fanno i terzi sedi, +siede Rachel di sotto da costei +con Bëatrice, sì come tu vedi. + +Sarra e Rebecca, Iudìt e colei +che fu bisava al cantor che per doglia +del fallo disse ‘Miserere mei’, + +puoi tu veder così di soglia in soglia +giù digradar, com’ io ch’a proprio nome +vo per la rosa giù di foglia in foglia. + +E dal settimo grado in giù, sì come +infino ad esso, succedono Ebree, +dirimendo del fior tutte le chiome; + +perché, secondo lo sguardo che fée +la fede in Cristo, queste sono il muro +a che si parton le sacre scalee. + +Da questa parte onde ’l fiore è maturo +di tutte le sue foglie, sono assisi +quei che credettero in Cristo venturo; + +da l’altra parte onde sono intercisi +di vòti i semicirculi, si stanno +quei ch’a Cristo venuto ebber li visi. + +E come quinci il glorïoso scanno +de la donna del cielo e li altri scanni +di sotto lui cotanta cerna fanno, + +così di contra quel del gran Giovanni, +che sempre santo ’l diserto e ’l martiro +sofferse, e poi l’inferno da due anni; + +e sotto lui così cerner sortiro +Francesco, Benedetto e Augustino +e altri fin qua giù di giro in giro. + +Or mira l’alto proveder divino: +ché l’uno e l’altro aspetto de la fede +igualmente empierà questo giardino. + +E sappi che dal grado in giù che fiede +a mezzo il tratto le due discrezioni, +per nullo proprio merito si siede, + +ma per l’altrui, con certe condizioni: +ché tutti questi son spiriti ascolti +prima ch’avesser vere elezïoni. + +Ben te ne puoi accorger per li volti +e anche per le voci püerili, +se tu li guardi bene e se li ascolti. + +Or dubbi tu e dubitando sili; +ma io discioglierò ’l forte legame +in che ti stringon li pensier sottili. + +Dentro a l’ampiezza di questo reame +casüal punto non puote aver sito, +se non come tristizia o sete o fame: + +ché per etterna legge è stabilito +quantunque vedi, sì che giustamente +ci si risponde da l’anello al dito; + +e però questa festinata gente +a vera vita non è sine causa +intra sé qui più e meno eccellente. + +Lo rege per cui questo regno pausa +in tanto amore e in tanto diletto, +che nulla volontà è di più ausa, + +le menti tutte nel suo lieto aspetto +creando, a suo piacer di grazia dota +diversamente; e qui basti l’effetto. + +E ciò espresso e chiaro vi si nota +ne la Scrittura santa in quei gemelli +che ne la madre ebber l’ira commota. + +Però, secondo il color d’i capelli, +di cotal grazia l’altissimo lume +degnamente convien che s’incappelli. + +Dunque, sanza mercé di lor costume, +locati son per gradi differenti, +sol differendo nel primiero acume. + +Bastavasi ne’ secoli recenti +con l’innocenza, per aver salute, +solamente la fede d’i parenti; + +poi che le prime etadi fuor compiute, +convenne ai maschi a l’innocenti penne +per circuncidere acquistar virtute; + +ma poi che ’l tempo de la grazia venne, +sanza battesmo perfetto di Cristo +tale innocenza là giù si ritenne. + +Riguarda omai ne la faccia che a Cristo +più si somiglia, ché la sua chiarezza +sola ti può disporre a veder Cristo». + +Io vidi sopra lei tanta allegrezza +piover, portata ne le menti sante +create a trasvolar per quella altezza, + +che quantunque io avea visto davante, +di tanta ammirazion non mi sospese, +né mi mostrò di Dio tanto sembiante; + +e quello amor che primo lì discese, +cantando ‘Ave, Maria, gratïa plena’, +dinanzi a lei le sue ali distese. + +Rispuose a la divina cantilena +da tutte parti la beata corte, +sì ch’ogne vista sen fé più serena. + +«O santo padre, che per me comporte +l’esser qua giù, lasciando il dolce loco +nel qual tu siedi per etterna sorte, + +qual è quell’ angel che con tanto gioco +guarda ne li occhi la nostra regina, +innamorato sì che par di foco?». + +Così ricorsi ancora a la dottrina +di colui ch’abbelliva di Maria, +come del sole stella mattutina. + +Ed elli a me: «Baldezza e leggiadria +quant’ esser puote in angelo e in alma, +tutta è in lui; e sì volem che sia, + +perch’ elli è quelli che portò la palma +giuso a Maria, quando ’l Figliuol di Dio +carcar si volse de la nostra salma. + +Ma vieni omai con li occhi sì com’ io +andrò parlando, e nota i gran patrici +di questo imperio giustissimo e pio. + +Quei due che seggon là sù più felici +per esser propinquissimi ad Agusta, +son d’esta rosa quasi due radici: + +colui che da sinistra le s’aggiusta +è il padre per lo cui ardito gusto +l’umana specie tanto amaro gusta; + +dal destro vedi quel padre vetusto +di Santa Chiesa a cui Cristo le chiavi +raccomandò di questo fior venusto. + +E quei che vide tutti i tempi gravi, +pria che morisse, de la bella sposa +che s’acquistò con la lancia e coi clavi, + +siede lungh’ esso, e lungo l’altro posa +quel duca sotto cui visse di manna +la gente ingrata, mobile e retrosa. + +Di contr’ a Pietro vedi sedere Anna, +tanto contenta di mirar sua figlia, +che non move occhio per cantare osanna; + +e contro al maggior padre di famiglia +siede Lucia, che mosse la tua donna +quando chinavi, a rovinar, le ciglia. + +Ma perché ’l tempo fugge che t’assonna, +qui farem punto, come buon sartore +che com’ elli ha del panno fa la gonna; + +e drizzeremo li occhi al primo amore, +sì che, guardando verso lui, penètri +quant’ è possibil per lo suo fulgore. + +Veramente, ne forse tu t’arretri +movendo l’ali tue, credendo oltrarti, +orando grazia conven che s’impetri + +grazia da quella che puote aiutarti; +e tu mi seguirai con l’affezione, +sì che dal dicer mio lo cor non parti». + +E cominciò questa santa orazione: + + + + +Paradiso +Canto XXXIII + + +«Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio, +umile e alta più che creatura, +termine fisso d’etterno consiglio, + +tu se’ colei che l’umana natura +nobilitasti sì, che ’l suo fattore +non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura. + +Nel ventre tuo si raccese l’amore, +per lo cui caldo ne l’etterna pace +così è germinato questo fiore. + +Qui se’ a noi meridïana face +di caritate, e giuso, intra ’ mortali, +se’ di speranza fontana vivace. + +Donna, se’ tanto grande e tanto vali, +che qual vuol grazia e a te non ricorre, +sua disïanza vuol volar sanz’ ali. + +La tua benignità non pur soccorre +a chi domanda, ma molte fïate +liberamente al dimandar precorre. + +In te misericordia, in te pietate, +in te magnificenza, in te s’aduna +quantunque in creatura è di bontate. + +Or questi, che da l’infima lacuna +de l’universo infin qui ha vedute +le vite spiritali ad una ad una, + +supplica a te, per grazia, di virtute +tanto, che possa con li occhi levarsi +più alto verso l’ultima salute. + +E io, che mai per mio veder non arsi +più ch’i’ fo per lo suo, tutti miei prieghi +ti porgo, e priego che non sieno scarsi, + +perché tu ogne nube li disleghi +di sua mortalità co’ prieghi tuoi, +sì che ’l sommo piacer li si dispieghi. + +Ancor ti priego, regina, che puoi +ciò che tu vuoli, che conservi sani, +dopo tanto veder, li affetti suoi. + +Vinca tua guardia i movimenti umani: +vedi Beatrice con quanti beati +per li miei prieghi ti chiudon le mani!». + +Li occhi da Dio diletti e venerati, +fissi ne l’orator, ne dimostraro +quanto i devoti prieghi le son grati; + +indi a l’etterno lume s’addrizzaro, +nel qual non si dee creder che s’invii +per creatura l’occhio tanto chiaro. + +E io ch’al fine di tutt’ i disii +appropinquava, sì com’ io dovea, +l’ardor del desiderio in me finii. + +Bernardo m’accennava, e sorridea, +perch’ io guardassi suso; ma io era +già per me stesso tal qual ei volea: + +ché la mia vista, venendo sincera, +e più e più intrava per lo raggio +de l’alta luce che da sé è vera. + +Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggio +che ’l parlar mostra, ch’a tal vista cede, +e cede la memoria a tanto oltraggio. + +Qual è colüi che sognando vede, +che dopo ’l sogno la passione impressa +rimane, e l’altro a la mente non riede, + +cotal son io, ché quasi tutta cessa +mia visïone, e ancor mi distilla +nel core il dolce che nacque da essa. + +Così la neve al sol si disigilla; +così al vento ne le foglie levi +si perdea la sentenza di Sibilla. + +O somma luce che tanto ti levi +da’ concetti mortali, a la mia mente +ripresta un poco di quel che parevi, + +e fa la lingua mia tanto possente, +ch’una favilla sol de la tua gloria +possa lasciare a la futura gente; + +ché, per tornare alquanto a mia memoria +e per sonare un poco in questi versi, +più si conceperà di tua vittoria. + +Io credo, per l’acume ch’io soffersi +del vivo raggio, ch’i’ sarei smarrito, +se li occhi miei da lui fossero aversi. + +E’ mi ricorda ch’io fui più ardito +per questo a sostener, tanto ch’i’ giunsi +l’aspetto mio col valore infinito. + +Oh abbondante grazia ond’ io presunsi +ficcar lo viso per la luce etterna, +tanto che la veduta vi consunsi! + +Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna, +legato con amore in un volume, +ciò che per l’universo si squaderna: + +sustanze e accidenti e lor costume +quasi conflati insieme, per tal modo +che ciò ch’i’ dico è un semplice lume. + +La forma universal di questo nodo +credo ch’i’ vidi, perché più di largo, +dicendo questo, mi sento ch’i’ godo. + +Un punto solo m’è maggior letargo +che venticinque secoli a la ’mpresa +che fé Nettuno ammirar l’ombra d’Argo. + +Così la mente mia, tutta sospesa, +mirava fissa, immobile e attenta, +e sempre di mirar faceasi accesa. + +A quella luce cotal si diventa, +che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto +è impossibil che mai si consenta; + +però che ’l ben, ch’è del volere obietto, +tutto s’accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella +è defettivo ciò ch’è lì perfetto. + +Omai sarà più corta mia favella, +pur a quel ch’io ricordo, che d’un fante +che bagni ancor la lingua a la mammella. + +Non perché più ch’un semplice sembiante +fosse nel vivo lume ch’io mirava, +che tal è sempre qual s’era davante; + +ma per la vista che s’avvalorava +in me guardando, una sola parvenza, +mutandom’ io, a me si travagliava. + +Ne la profonda e chiara sussistenza +de l’alto lume parvermi tre giri +di tre colori e d’una contenenza; + +e l’un da l’altro come iri da iri +parea reflesso, e ’l terzo parea foco +che quinci e quindi igualmente si spiri. + +Oh quanto è corto il dire e come fioco +al mio concetto! e questo, a quel ch’i’ vidi, +è tanto, che non basta a dicer ‘poco’. + +O luce etterna che sola in te sidi, +sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta +e intendente te ami e arridi! + +Quella circulazion che sì concetta +pareva in te come lume reflesso, +da li occhi miei alquanto circunspetta, + +dentro da sé, del suo colore stesso, +mi parve pinta de la nostra effige: +per che ’l mio viso in lei tutto era messo. + +Qual è ’l geomètra che tutto s’affige +per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova, +pensando, quel principio ond’ elli indige, + +tal era io a quella vista nova: +veder voleva come si convenne +l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova; + +ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne: +se non che la mia mente fu percossa +da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne. + +A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa; +ma già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle, +sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa, + +l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1000 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1001-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1001-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0c14f2f2 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1001-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6569 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1001 *** + +The Divine Comedy + +of Dante Alighieri + +Translated by +HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW +INFERNO + + +Contents + +Canto I. The Dark Forest. The Hill of Difficulty. The Panther, the Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil. +Canto II. The Descent. Dante’s Protest and Virgil’s Appeal. The Intercession of the Three Ladies Benedight. +Canto III. The Gate of Hell. The Inefficient or Indifferent. Pope Celestine V. The Shores of Acheron. Charon. The Earthquake and the Swoon. +Canto IV. The First Circle, Limbo: Virtuous Pagans and the Unbaptized. The Four Poets, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. The Noble Castle of Philosophy. +Canto V. The Second Circle: The Wanton. Minos. The Infernal Hurricane. Francesca da Rimini. +Canto VI. The Third Circle: The Gluttonous. Cerberus. The Eternal Rain. Ciacco. Florence. +Canto VII. The Fourth Circle: The Avaricious and the Prodigal. Plutus. Fortune and her Wheel. The Fifth Circle: The Irascible and the Sullen. Styx. +Canto VIII. Phlegyas. Philippo Argenti. The Gate of the City of Dis. +Canto IX. The Furies and Medusa. The Angel. The City of Dis. The Sixth Circle: Heresiarchs. +Canto X. Farinata and Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti. Discourse on the Knowledge of the Damned. +Canto XI. The Broken Rocks. Pope Anastasius. General Description of the Inferno and its Divisions. +Canto XII. The Minotaur. The Seventh Circle: The Violent. The River Phlegethon. The Violent against their Neighbours. The Centaurs. Tyrants. +Canto XIII. The Wood of Thorns. The Harpies. The Violent against themselves. Suicides. Pier della Vigna. Lano and Jacopo da Sant’ Andrea. +Canto XIV. The Sand Waste and the Rain of Fire. The Violent against God. Capaneus. The Statue of Time, and the Four Infernal Rivers. +Canto XV. The Violent against Nature. Brunetto Latini. +Canto XVI. Guidoguerra, Aldobrandi, and Rusticucci. Cataract of the River of Blood. +Canto XVII. Geryon. The Violent against Art. Usurers. Descent into the Abyss of Malebolge. +Canto XVIII. The Eighth Circle, Malebolge: The Fraudulent and the Malicious. The First Bolgia: Seducers and Panders. Venedico Caccianimico. Jason. The Second Bolgia: Flatterers. Allessio Interminelli. Thais. +Canto XIX. The Third Bolgia: Simoniacs. Pope Nicholas III. Dante’s Reproof of corrupt Prelates. +Canto XX. The Fourth Bolgia: Soothsayers. Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, Manto, Eryphylus, Michael Scott, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente. Virgil reproaches Dante’s Pity. Mantua’s Foundation. +Canto XXI. The Fifth Bolgia: Peculators. The Elder of Santa Zita. Malacoda and other Devils. +Canto XXII. Ciampolo, Friar Gomita, and Michael Zanche. The Malabranche quarrel. +Canto XXIII. Escape from the Malabranche. The Sixth Bolgia: Hypocrites. Catalano and Loderingo. Caiaphas. +Canto XXIV. The Seventh Bolgia: Thieves. Vanni Fucci. Serpents. +Canto XXV. Vanni Fucci’s Punishment. Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, Cianfa de’ Donati, and Guercio Cavalcanti. +Canto XXVI. The Eighth Bolgia: Evil Counsellors. Ulysses and Diomed. Ulysses’ Last Voyage. +Canto XXVII. Guido da Montefeltro. His deception by Pope Boniface VIII. +Canto XXVIII. The Ninth Bolgia: Schismatics. Mahomet and Ali. Pier da Medicina, Curio, Mosca, and Bertrand de Born. +Canto XXIX. Geri del Bello. The Tenth Bolgia: Alchemists. Griffolino d’ Arezzo and Capocchino. +Canto XXX. Other Falsifiers or Forgers. Gianni Schicchi, Myrrha, Adam of Brescia, Potiphar’s Wife, and Sinon of Troy. +Canto XXXI. The Giants, Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antaeus. Descent to Cocytus. +Canto XXXII. The Ninth Circle: Traitors. The Frozen Lake of Cocytus. First Division, Caina: Traitors to their Kindred. Camicion de’ Pazzi. Second Division, Antenora: Traitors to their Country. Dante questions Bocca degli Abati. Buoso da Duera. +Canto XXXIII. Count Ugolino and the Archbishop Ruggieri. The Death of Count Ugolino’s Sons. Third Division of the Ninth Circle, Ptolomaea: Traitors to their Friends. Friar Alberigo, Branco d’ Oria. +Canto XXXIV. Fourth Division of the Ninth Circle, the Judecca: Traitors to their Lords and Benefactors. Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. The Chasm of Lethe. The Ascent. + + + + +Inferno: Canto I + + +Midway upon the journey of our life + I found myself within a forest dark, + For the straightforward pathway had been lost. + +Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say + What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, + Which in the very thought renews the fear. + +So bitter is it, death is little more; + But of the good to treat, which there I found, + Speak will I of the other things I saw there. + +I cannot well repeat how there I entered, + So full was I of slumber at the moment + In which I had abandoned the true way. + +But after I had reached a mountain’s foot, + At that point where the valley terminated, + Which had with consternation pierced my heart, + +Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders, + Vested already with that planet’s rays + Which leadeth others right by every road. + +Then was the fear a little quieted + That in my heart’s lake had endured throughout + The night, which I had passed so piteously. + +And even as he, who, with distressful breath, + Forth issued from the sea upon the shore, + Turns to the water perilous and gazes; + +So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward, + Turn itself back to re-behold the pass + Which never yet a living person left. + +After my weary body I had rested, + The way resumed I on the desert slope, + So that the firm foot ever was the lower. + +And lo! almost where the ascent began, + A panther light and swift exceedingly, + Which with a spotted skin was covered o’er! + +And never moved she from before my face, + Nay, rather did impede so much my way, + That many times I to return had turned. + +The time was the beginning of the morning, + And up the sun was mounting with those stars + That with him were, what time the Love Divine + +At first in motion set those beauteous things; + So were to me occasion of good hope, + The variegated skin of that wild beast, + +The hour of time, and the delicious season; + But not so much, that did not give me fear + A lion’s aspect which appeared to me. + +He seemed as if against me he were coming + With head uplifted, and with ravenous hunger, + So that it seemed the air was afraid of him; + +And a she-wolf, that with all hungerings + Seemed to be laden in her meagreness, + And many folk has caused to live forlorn! + +She brought upon me so much heaviness, + With the affright that from her aspect came, + That I the hope relinquished of the height. + +And as he is who willingly acquires, + And the time comes that causes him to lose, + Who weeps in all his thoughts and is despondent, + +E’en such made me that beast withouten peace, + Which, coming on against me by degrees + Thrust me back thither where the sun is silent. + +While I was rushing downward to the lowland, + Before mine eyes did one present himself, + Who seemed from long-continued silence hoarse. + +When I beheld him in the desert vast, + “Have pity on me,” unto him I cried, + “Whiche’er thou art, or shade or real man!” + +He answered me: “Not man; man once I was, + And both my parents were of Lombardy, + And Mantuans by country both of them. + +‘Sub Julio’ was I born, though it was late, + And lived at Rome under the good Augustus, + During the time of false and lying gods. + +A poet was I, and I sang that just + Son of Anchises, who came forth from Troy, + After that Ilion the superb was burned. + +But thou, why goest thou back to such annoyance? + Why climb’st thou not the Mount Delectable, + Which is the source and cause of every joy?” + +“Now, art thou that Virgilius and that fountain + Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech?” + I made response to him with bashful forehead. + +“O, of the other poets honour and light, + Avail me the long study and great love + That have impelled me to explore thy volume! + +Thou art my master, and my author thou, + Thou art alone the one from whom I took + The beautiful style that has done honour to me. + +Behold the beast, for which I have turned back; + Do thou protect me from her, famous Sage, + For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.” + +“Thee it behoves to take another road,” + Responded he, when he beheld me weeping, + “If from this savage place thou wouldst escape; + +Because this beast, at which thou criest out, + Suffers not any one to pass her way, + But so doth harass him, that she destroys him; + +And has a nature so malign and ruthless, + That never doth she glut her greedy will, + And after food is hungrier than before. + +Many the animals with whom she weds, + And more they shall be still, until the Greyhound + Comes, who shall make her perish in her pain. + +He shall not feed on either earth or pelf, + But upon wisdom, and on love and virtue; + ’Twixt Feltro and Feltro shall his nation be; + +Of that low Italy shall he be the saviour, + On whose account the maid Camilla died, + Euryalus, Turnus, Nisus, of their wounds; + +Through every city shall he hunt her down, + Until he shall have driven her back to Hell, + There from whence envy first did let her loose. + +Therefore I think and judge it for thy best + Thou follow me, and I will be thy guide, + And lead thee hence through the eternal place, + +Where thou shalt hear the desperate lamentations, + Shalt see the ancient spirits disconsolate, + Who cry out each one for the second death; + +And thou shalt see those who contented are + Within the fire, because they hope to come, + Whene’er it may be, to the blessed people; + +To whom, then, if thou wishest to ascend, + A soul shall be for that than I more worthy; + With her at my departure I will leave thee; + +Because that Emperor, who reigns above, + In that I was rebellious to his law, + Wills that through me none come into his city. + +He governs everywhere, and there he reigns; + There is his city and his lofty throne; + O happy he whom thereto he elects!” + +And I to him: “Poet, I thee entreat, + By that same God whom thou didst never know, + So that I may escape this woe and worse, + +Thou wouldst conduct me there where thou hast said, + That I may see the portal of Saint Peter, + And those thou makest so disconsolate.” + +Then he moved on, and I behind him followed. + + + + +Inferno: Canto II + + +Day was departing, and the embrowned air + Released the animals that are on earth + From their fatigues; and I the only one + +Made myself ready to sustain the war, + Both of the way and likewise of the woe, + Which memory that errs not shall retrace. + +O Muses, O high genius, now assist me! + O memory, that didst write down what I saw, + Here thy nobility shall be manifest! + +And I began: “Poet, who guidest me, + Regard my manhood, if it be sufficient, + Ere to the arduous pass thou dost confide me. + +Thou sayest, that of Silvius the parent, + While yet corruptible, unto the world + Immortal went, and was there bodily. + +But if the adversary of all evil + Was courteous, thinking of the high effect + That issue would from him, and who, and what, + +To men of intellect unmeet it seems not; + For he was of great Rome, and of her empire + In the empyreal heaven as father chosen; + +The which and what, wishing to speak the truth, + Were stablished as the holy place, wherein + Sits the successor of the greatest Peter. + +Upon this journey, whence thou givest him vaunt, + Things did he hear, which the occasion were + Both of his victory and the papal mantle. + +Thither went afterwards the Chosen Vessel, + To bring back comfort thence unto that Faith, + Which of salvation’s way is the beginning. + +But I, why thither come, or who concedes it? + I not Aeneas am, I am not Paul, + Nor I, nor others, think me worthy of it. + +Therefore, if I resign myself to come, + I fear the coming may be ill-advised; + Thou’rt wise, and knowest better than I speak.” + +And as he is, who unwills what he willed, + And by new thoughts doth his intention change, + So that from his design he quite withdraws, + +Such I became, upon that dark hillside, + Because, in thinking, I consumed the emprise, + Which was so very prompt in the beginning. + +“If I have well thy language understood,” + Replied that shade of the Magnanimous, + “Thy soul attainted is with cowardice, + +Which many times a man encumbers so, + It turns him back from honoured enterprise, + As false sight doth a beast, when he is shy. + +That thou mayst free thee from this apprehension, + I’ll tell thee why I came, and what I heard + At the first moment when I grieved for thee. + +Among those was I who are in suspense, + And a fair, saintly Lady called to me + In such wise, I besought her to command me. + +Her eyes where shining brighter than the Star; + And she began to say, gentle and low, + With voice angelical, in her own language: + +‘O spirit courteous of Mantua, + Of whom the fame still in the world endures, + And shall endure, long-lasting as the world; + +A friend of mine, and not the friend of fortune, + Upon the desert slope is so impeded + Upon his way, that he has turned through terror, + +And may, I fear, already be so lost, + That I too late have risen to his succour, + From that which I have heard of him in Heaven. + +Bestir thee now, and with thy speech ornate, + And with what needful is for his release, + Assist him so, that I may be consoled. + +Beatrice am I, who do bid thee go; + I come from there, where I would fain return; + Love moved me, which compelleth me to speak. + +When I shall be in presence of my Lord, + Full often will I praise thee unto him.’ + Then paused she, and thereafter I began: + +‘O Lady of virtue, thou alone through whom + The human race exceedeth all contained + Within the heaven that has the lesser circles, + +So grateful unto me is thy commandment, + To obey, if ’twere already done, were late; + No farther need’st thou ope to me thy wish. + +But the cause tell me why thou dost not shun + The here descending down into this centre, + From the vast place thou burnest to return to.’ + +‘Since thou wouldst fain so inwardly discern, + Briefly will I relate,’ she answered me, + ‘Why I am not afraid to enter here. + +Of those things only should one be afraid + Which have the power of doing others harm; + Of the rest, no; because they are not fearful. + +God in his mercy such created me + That misery of yours attains me not, + Nor any flame assails me of this burning. + +A gentle Lady is in Heaven, who grieves + At this impediment, to which I send thee, + So that stern judgment there above is broken. + +In her entreaty she besought Lucia, + And said, “Thy faithful one now stands in need + Of thee, and unto thee I recommend him.” + +Lucia, foe of all that cruel is, + Hastened away, and came unto the place + Where I was sitting with the ancient Rachel. + +“Beatrice” said she, “the true praise of God, + Why succourest thou not him, who loved thee so, + For thee he issued from the vulgar herd? + +Dost thou not hear the pity of his plaint? + Dost thou not see the death that combats him + Beside that flood, where ocean has no vaunt?” + +Never were persons in the world so swift + To work their weal and to escape their woe, + As I, after such words as these were uttered, + +Came hither downward from my blessed seat, + Confiding in thy dignified discourse, + Which honours thee, and those who’ve listened to it.’ + +After she thus had spoken unto me, + Weeping, her shining eyes she turned away; + Whereby she made me swifter in my coming; + +And unto thee I came, as she desired; + I have delivered thee from that wild beast, + Which barred the beautiful mountain’s short ascent. + +What is it, then? Why, why dost thou delay? + Why is such baseness bedded in thy heart? + Daring and hardihood why hast thou not, + +Seeing that three such Ladies benedight + Are caring for thee in the court of Heaven, + And so much good my speech doth promise thee?” + +Even as the flowerets, by nocturnal chill, + Bowed down and closed, when the sun whitens them, + Uplift themselves all open on their stems; + +Such I became with my exhausted strength, + And such good courage to my heart there coursed, + That I began, like an intrepid person: + +“O she compassionate, who succoured me, + And courteous thou, who hast obeyed so soon + The words of truth which she addressed to thee! + +Thou hast my heart so with desire disposed + To the adventure, with these words of thine, + That to my first intent I have returned. + +Now go, for one sole will is in us both, + Thou Leader, and thou Lord, and Master thou.” + Thus said I to him; and when he had moved, + +I entered on the deep and savage way. + + + + +Inferno: Canto III + + +“Through me the way is to the city dolent; + Through me the way is to eternal dole; + Through me the way among the people lost. + +Justice incited my sublime Creator; + Created me divine Omnipotence, + The highest Wisdom and the primal Love. + +Before me there were no created things, + Only eterne, and I eternal last. + All hope abandon, ye who enter in!” + +These words in sombre colour I beheld + Written upon the summit of a gate; + Whence I: “Their sense is, Master, hard to me!” + +And he to me, as one experienced: + “Here all suspicion needs must be abandoned, + All cowardice must needs be here extinct. + +We to the place have come, where I have told thee + Thou shalt behold the people dolorous + Who have foregone the good of intellect.” + +And after he had laid his hand on mine + With joyful mien, whence I was comforted, + He led me in among the secret things. + +There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud + Resounded through the air without a star, + Whence I, at the beginning, wept thereat. + +Languages diverse, horrible dialects, + Accents of anger, words of agony, + And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands, + +Made up a tumult that goes whirling on + For ever in that air for ever black, + Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes. + +And I, who had my head with horror bound, + Said: “Master, what is this which now I hear? + What folk is this, which seems by pain so vanquished?” + +And he to me: “This miserable mode + Maintain the melancholy souls of those + Who lived withouten infamy or praise. + +Commingled are they with that caitiff choir + Of Angels, who have not rebellious been, + Nor faithful were to God, but were for self. + +The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair; + Nor them the nethermore abyss receives, + For glory none the damned would have from them.” + +And I: “O Master, what so grievous is + To these, that maketh them lament so sore?” + He answered: “I will tell thee very briefly. + +These have no longer any hope of death; + And this blind life of theirs is so debased, + They envious are of every other fate. + +No fame of them the world permits to be; + Misericord and Justice both disdain them. + Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass.” + +And I, who looked again, beheld a banner, + Which, whirling round, ran on so rapidly, + That of all pause it seemed to me indignant; + +And after it there came so long a train + Of people, that I ne’er would have believed + That ever Death so many had undone. + +When some among them I had recognised, + I looked, and I beheld the shade of him + Who made through cowardice the great refusal. + +Forthwith I comprehended, and was certain, + That this the sect was of the caitiff wretches + Hateful to God and to his enemies. + +These miscreants, who never were alive, + Were naked, and were stung exceedingly + By gadflies and by hornets that were there. + +These did their faces irrigate with blood, + Which, with their tears commingled, at their feet + By the disgusting worms was gathered up. + +And when to gazing farther I betook me. + People I saw on a great river’s bank; + Whence said I: “Master, now vouchsafe to me, + +That I may know who these are, and what law + Makes them appear so ready to pass over, + As I discern athwart the dusky light.” + +And he to me: “These things shall all be known + To thee, as soon as we our footsteps stay + Upon the dismal shore of Acheron.” + +Then with mine eyes ashamed and downward cast, + Fearing my words might irksome be to him, + From speech refrained I till we reached the river. + +And lo! towards us coming in a boat + An old man, hoary with the hair of eld, + Crying: “Woe unto you, ye souls depraved! + +Hope nevermore to look upon the heavens; + I come to lead you to the other shore, + To the eternal shades in heat and frost. + +And thou, that yonder standest, living soul, + Withdraw thee from these people, who are dead!” + But when he saw that I did not withdraw, + +He said: “By other ways, by other ports + Thou to the shore shalt come, not here, for passage; + A lighter vessel needs must carry thee.” + +And unto him the Guide: “Vex thee not, Charon; + It is so willed there where is power to do + That which is willed; and farther question not.” + +Thereat were quieted the fleecy cheeks + Of him the ferryman of the livid fen, + Who round about his eyes had wheels of flame. + +But all those souls who weary were and naked + Their colour changed and gnashed their teeth together, + As soon as they had heard those cruel words. + +God they blasphemed and their progenitors, + The human race, the place, the time, the seed + Of their engendering and of their birth! + +Thereafter all together they drew back, + Bitterly weeping, to the accursed shore, + Which waiteth every man who fears not God. + +Charon the demon, with the eyes of glede, + Beckoning to them, collects them all together, + Beats with his oar whoever lags behind. + +As in the autumn-time the leaves fall off, + First one and then another, till the branch + Unto the earth surrenders all its spoils; + +In similar wise the evil seed of Adam + Throw themselves from that margin one by one, + At signals, as a bird unto its lure. + +So they depart across the dusky wave, + And ere upon the other side they land, + Again on this side a new troop assembles. + +“My son,” the courteous Master said to me, + “All those who perish in the wrath of God + Here meet together out of every land; + +And ready are they to pass o’er the river, + Because celestial Justice spurs them on, + So that their fear is turned into desire. + +This way there never passes a good soul; + And hence if Charon doth complain of thee, + Well mayst thou know now what his speech imports.” + +This being finished, all the dusk champaign + Trembled so violently, that of that terror + The recollection bathes me still with sweat. + +The land of tears gave forth a blast of wind, + And fulminated a vermilion light, + Which overmastered in me every sense, + +And as a man whom sleep hath seized I fell. + + + + +Inferno: Canto IV + + +Broke the deep lethargy within my head + A heavy thunder, so that I upstarted, + Like to a person who by force is wakened; + +And round about I moved my rested eyes, + Uprisen erect, and steadfastly I gazed, + To recognise the place wherein I was. + +True is it, that upon the verge I found me + Of the abysmal valley dolorous, + That gathers thunder of infinite ululations. + +Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous, + So that by fixing on its depths my sight + Nothing whatever I discerned therein. + +“Let us descend now into the blind world,” + Began the Poet, pallid utterly; + “I will be first, and thou shalt second be.” + +And I, who of his colour was aware, + Said: “How shall I come, if thou art afraid, + Who’rt wont to be a comfort to my fears?” + +And he to me: “The anguish of the people + Who are below here in my face depicts + That pity which for terror thou hast taken. + +Let us go on, for the long way impels us.” + Thus he went in, and thus he made me enter + The foremost circle that surrounds the abyss. + +There, as it seemed to me from listening, + Were lamentations none, but only sighs, + That tremble made the everlasting air. + +And this arose from sorrow without torment, + Which the crowds had, that many were and great, + Of infants and of women and of men. + +To me the Master good: “Thou dost not ask + What spirits these, which thou beholdest, are? + Now will I have thee know, ere thou go farther, + +That they sinned not; and if they merit had, + ’Tis not enough, because they had not baptism + Which is the portal of the Faith thou holdest; + +And if they were before Christianity, + In the right manner they adored not God; + And among such as these am I myself. + +For such defects, and not for other guilt, + Lost are we and are only so far punished, + That without hope we live on in desire.” + +Great grief seized on my heart when this I heard, + Because some people of much worthiness + I knew, who in that Limbo were suspended. + +“Tell me, my Master, tell me, thou my Lord,” + Began I, with desire of being certain + Of that Faith which o’ercometh every error, + +“Came any one by his own merit hence, + Or by another’s, who was blessed thereafter?” + And he, who understood my covert speech, + +Replied: “I was a novice in this state, + When I saw hither come a Mighty One, + With sign of victory incoronate. + +Hence he drew forth the shade of the First Parent, + And that of his son Abel, and of Noah, + Of Moses the lawgiver, and the obedient + +Abraham, patriarch, and David, king, + Israel with his father and his children, + And Rachel, for whose sake he did so much, + +And others many, and he made them blessed; + And thou must know, that earlier than these + Never were any human spirits saved.” + +We ceased not to advance because he spake, + But still were passing onward through the forest, + The forest, say I, of thick-crowded ghosts. + +Not very far as yet our way had gone + This side the summit, when I saw a fire + That overcame a hemisphere of darkness. + +We were a little distant from it still, + But not so far that I in part discerned not + That honourable people held that place. + +“O thou who honourest every art and science, + Who may these be, which such great honour have, + That from the fashion of the rest it parts them?” + +And he to me: “The honourable name, + That sounds of them above there in thy life, + Wins grace in Heaven, that so advances them.” + +In the mean time a voice was heard by me: + “All honour be to the pre-eminent Poet; + His shade returns again, that was departed.” + +After the voice had ceased and quiet was, + Four mighty shades I saw approaching us; + Semblance had they nor sorrowful nor glad. + +To say to me began my gracious Master: + “Him with that falchion in his hand behold, + Who comes before the three, even as their lord. + +That one is Homer, Poet sovereign; + He who comes next is Horace, the satirist; + The third is Ovid, and the last is Lucan. + +Because to each of these with me applies + The name that solitary voice proclaimed, + They do me honour, and in that do well.” + +Thus I beheld assemble the fair school + Of that lord of the song pre-eminent, + Who o’er the others like an eagle soars. + +When they together had discoursed somewhat, + They turned to me with signs of salutation, + And on beholding this, my Master smiled; + +And more of honour still, much more, they did me, + In that they made me one of their own band; + So that the sixth was I, ’mid so much wit. + +Thus we went on as far as to the light, + Things saying ’tis becoming to keep silent, + As was the saying of them where I was. + +We came unto a noble castle’s foot, + Seven times encompassed with lofty walls, + Defended round by a fair rivulet; + +This we passed over even as firm ground; + Through portals seven I entered with these Sages; + We came into a meadow of fresh verdure. + +People were there with solemn eyes and slow, + Of great authority in their countenance; + They spake but seldom, and with gentle voices. + +Thus we withdrew ourselves upon one side + Into an opening luminous and lofty, + So that they all of them were visible. + +There opposite, upon the green enamel, + Were pointed out to me the mighty spirits, + Whom to have seen I feel myself exalted. + +I saw Electra with companions many, + ’Mongst whom I knew both Hector and Aeneas, + Caesar in armour with gerfalcon eyes; + +I saw Camilla and Penthesilea + On the other side, and saw the King Latinus, + Who with Lavinia his daughter sat; + +I saw that Brutus who drove Tarquin forth, + Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia, + And saw alone, apart, the Saladin. + +When I had lifted up my brows a little, + The Master I beheld of those who know, + Sit with his philosophic family. + +All gaze upon him, and all do him honour. + There I beheld both Socrates and Plato, + Who nearer him before the others stand; + +Democritus, who puts the world on chance, + Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales, + Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus; + +Of qualities I saw the good collector, + Hight Dioscorides; and Orpheus saw I, + Tully and Livy, and moral Seneca, + +Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy, + Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna, + Averroes, who the great Comment made. + +I cannot all of them pourtray in full, + Because so drives me onward the long theme, + That many times the word comes short of fact. + +The sixfold company in two divides; + Another way my sapient Guide conducts me + Forth from the quiet to the air that trembles; + +And to a place I come where nothing shines. + + + + +Inferno: Canto V + + +Thus I descended out of the first circle + Down to the second, that less space begirds, + And so much greater dole, that goads to wailing. + +There standeth Minos horribly, and snarls; + Examines the transgressions at the entrance; + Judges, and sends according as he girds him. + +I say, that when the spirit evil-born + Cometh before him, wholly it confesses; + And this discriminator of transgressions + +Seeth what place in Hell is meet for it; + Girds himself with his tail as many times + As grades he wishes it should be thrust down. + +Always before him many of them stand; + They go by turns each one unto the judgment; + They speak, and hear, and then are downward hurled. + +“O thou, that to this dolorous hostelry + Comest,” said Minos to me, when he saw me, + Leaving the practice of so great an office, + +“Look how thou enterest, and in whom thou trustest; + Let not the portal’s amplitude deceive thee.” + And unto him my Guide: “Why criest thou too? + +Do not impede his journey fate-ordained; + It is so willed there where is power to do + That which is willed; and ask no further question.” + +And now begin the dolesome notes to grow + Audible unto me; now am I come + There where much lamentation strikes upon me. + +I came into a place mute of all light, + Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest, + If by opposing winds ’t is combated. + +The infernal hurricane that never rests + Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine; + Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. + +When they arrive before the precipice, + There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments, + There they blaspheme the puissance divine. + +I understood that unto such a torment + The carnal malefactors were condemned, + Who reason subjugate to appetite. + +And as the wings of starlings bear them on + In the cold season in large band and full, + So doth that blast the spirits maledict; + +It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them; + No hope doth comfort them for evermore, + Not of repose, but even of lesser pain. + +And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays, + Making in air a long line of themselves, + So saw I coming, uttering lamentations, + +Shadows borne onward by the aforesaid stress. + Whereupon said I: “Master, who are those + People, whom the black air so castigates?” + +“The first of those, of whom intelligence + Thou fain wouldst have,” then said he unto me, + “The empress was of many languages. + +To sensual vices she was so abandoned, + That lustful she made licit in her law, + To remove the blame to which she had been led. + +She is Semiramis, of whom we read + That she succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse; + She held the land which now the Sultan rules. + +The next is she who killed herself for love, + And broke faith with the ashes of Sichaeus; + Then Cleopatra the voluptuous.” + +Helen I saw, for whom so many ruthless + Seasons revolved; and saw the great Achilles, + Who at the last hour combated with Love. + +Paris I saw, Tristan; and more than a thousand + Shades did he name and point out with his finger, + Whom Love had separated from our life. + +After that I had listened to my Teacher, + Naming the dames of eld and cavaliers, + Pity prevailed, and I was nigh bewildered. + +And I began: “O Poet, willingly + Speak would I to those two, who go together, + And seem upon the wind to be so light.” + +And, he to me: “Thou’lt mark, when they shall be + Nearer to us; and then do thou implore them + By love which leadeth them, and they will come.” + +Soon as the wind in our direction sways them, + My voice uplift I: “O ye weary souls! + Come speak to us, if no one interdicts it.” + +As turtle-doves, called onward by desire, + With open and steady wings to the sweet nest + Fly through the air by their volition borne, + +So came they from the band where Dido is, + Approaching us athwart the air malign, + So strong was the affectionate appeal. + +“O living creature gracious and benignant, + Who visiting goest through the purple air + Us, who have stained the world incarnadine, + +If were the King of the Universe our friend, + We would pray unto him to give thee peace, + Since thou hast pity on our woe perverse. + +Of what it pleases thee to hear and speak, + That will we hear, and we will speak to you, + While silent is the wind, as it is now. + +Sitteth the city, wherein I was born, + Upon the sea-shore where the Po descends + To rest in peace with all his retinue. + +Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize, + Seized this man for the person beautiful + That was ta’en from me, and still the mode offends me. + +Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, + Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, + That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me; + +Love has conducted us unto one death; + Caina waiteth him who quenched our life!” + These words were borne along from them to us. + +As soon as I had heard those souls tormented, + I bowed my face, and so long held it down + Until the Poet said to me: “What thinkest?” + +When I made answer, I began: “Alas! + How many pleasant thoughts, how much desire, + Conducted these unto the dolorous pass!” + +Then unto them I turned me, and I spake, + And I began: “Thine agonies, Francesca, + Sad and compassionate to weeping make me. + +But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs, + By what and in what manner Love conceded, + That you should know your dubious desires?” + +And she to me: “There is no greater sorrow + Than to be mindful of the happy time + In misery, and that thy Teacher knows. + +But, if to recognise the earliest root + Of love in us thou hast so great desire, + I will do even as he who weeps and speaks. + +One day we reading were for our delight + Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthral. + Alone we were and without any fear. + +Full many a time our eyes together drew + That reading, and drove the colour from our faces; + But one point only was it that o’ercame us. + +When as we read of the much-longed-for smile + Being by such a noble lover kissed, + This one, who ne’er from me shall be divided, + +Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. + Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. + That day no farther did we read therein.” + +And all the while one spirit uttered this, + The other one did weep so, that, for pity, + I swooned away as if I had been dying, + +And fell, even as a dead body falls. + + + + +Inferno: Canto VI + + +At the return of consciousness, that closed + Before the pity of those two relations, + Which utterly with sadness had confused me, + +New torments I behold, and new tormented + Around me, whichsoever way I move, + And whichsoever way I turn, and gaze. + +In the third circle am I of the rain + Eternal, maledict, and cold, and heavy; + Its law and quality are never new. + +Huge hail, and water sombre-hued, and snow, + Athwart the tenebrous air pour down amain; + Noisome the earth is, that receiveth this. + +Cerberus, monster cruel and uncouth, + With his three gullets like a dog is barking + Over the people that are there submerged. + +Red eyes he has, and unctuous beard and black, + And belly large, and armed with claws his hands; + He rends the spirits, flays, and quarters them. + +Howl the rain maketh them like unto dogs; + One side they make a shelter for the other; + Oft turn themselves the wretched reprobates. + +When Cerberus perceived us, the great worm! + His mouths he opened, and displayed his tusks; + Not a limb had he that was motionless. + +And my Conductor, with his spans extended, + Took of the earth, and with his fists well filled, + He threw it into those rapacious gullets. + +Such as that dog is, who by barking craves, + And quiet grows soon as his food he gnaws, + For to devour it he but thinks and struggles, + +The like became those muzzles filth-begrimed + Of Cerberus the demon, who so thunders + Over the souls that they would fain be deaf. + +We passed across the shadows, which subdues + The heavy rain-storm, and we placed our feet + Upon their vanity that person seems. + +They all were lying prone upon the earth, + Excepting one, who sat upright as soon + As he beheld us passing on before him. + +“O thou that art conducted through this Hell,” + He said to me, “recall me, if thou canst; + Thyself wast made before I was unmade.” + +And I to him: “The anguish which thou hast + Perhaps doth draw thee out of my remembrance, + So that it seems not I have ever seen thee. + +But tell me who thou art, that in so doleful + A place art put, and in such punishment, + If some are greater, none is so displeasing.” + +And he to me: “Thy city, which is full + Of envy so that now the sack runs over, + Held me within it in the life serene. + +You citizens were wont to call me Ciacco; + For the pernicious sin of gluttony + I, as thou seest, am battered by this rain. + +And I, sad soul, am not the only one, + For all these suffer the like penalty + For the like sin;” and word no more spake he. + +I answered him: “Ciacco, thy wretchedness + Weighs on me so that it to weep invites me; + But tell me, if thou knowest, to what shall come + +The citizens of the divided city; + If any there be just; and the occasion + Tell me why so much discord has assailed it.” + +And he to me: “They, after long contention, + Will come to bloodshed; and the rustic party + Will drive the other out with much offence. + +Then afterwards behoves it this one fall + Within three suns, and rise again the other + By force of him who now is on the coast. + +High will it hold its forehead a long while, + Keeping the other under heavy burdens, + Howe’er it weeps thereat and is indignant. + +The just are two, and are not understood there; + Envy and Arrogance and Avarice + Are the three sparks that have all hearts enkindled.” + +Here ended he his tearful utterance; + And I to him: “I wish thee still to teach me, + And make a gift to me of further speech. + +Farinata and Tegghiaio, once so worthy, + Jacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo, and Mosca, + And others who on good deeds set their thoughts, + +Say where they are, and cause that I may know them; + For great desire constraineth me to learn + If Heaven doth sweeten them, or Hell envenom.” + +And he: “They are among the blacker souls; + A different sin downweighs them to the bottom; + If thou so far descendest, thou canst see them. + +But when thou art again in the sweet world, + I pray thee to the mind of others bring me; + No more I tell thee and no more I answer.” + +Then his straightforward eyes he turned askance, + Eyed me a little, and then bowed his head; + He fell therewith prone like the other blind. + +And the Guide said to me: “He wakes no more + This side the sound of the angelic trumpet; + When shall approach the hostile Potentate, + +Each one shall find again his dismal tomb, + Shall reassume his flesh and his own figure, + Shall hear what through eternity re-echoes.” + +So we passed onward o’er the filthy mixture + Of shadows and of rain with footsteps slow, + Touching a little on the future life. + +Wherefore I said: “Master, these torments here, + Will they increase after the mighty sentence, + Or lesser be, or will they be as burning?” + +And he to me: “Return unto thy science, + Which wills, that as the thing more perfect is, + The more it feels of pleasure and of pain. + +Albeit that this people maledict + To true perfection never can attain, + Hereafter more than now they look to be.” + +Round in a circle by that road we went, + Speaking much more, which I do not repeat; + We came unto the point where the descent is; + +There we found Plutus the great enemy. + + + + +Inferno: Canto VII + + +“Pape Satan, Pape Satan, Aleppe!” + Thus Plutus with his clucking voice began; + And that benignant Sage, who all things knew, + +Said, to encourage me: “Let not thy fear + Harm thee; for any power that he may have + Shall not prevent thy going down this crag.” + +Then he turned round unto that bloated lip, + And said: “Be silent, thou accursed wolf; + Consume within thyself with thine own rage. + +Not causeless is this journey to the abyss; + Thus is it willed on high, where Michael wrought + Vengeance upon the proud adultery.” + +Even as the sails inflated by the wind + Involved together fall when snaps the mast, + So fell the cruel monster to the earth. + +Thus we descended into the fourth chasm, + Gaining still farther on the dolesome shore + Which all the woe of the universe insacks. + +Justice of God, ah! who heaps up so many + New toils and sufferings as I beheld? + And why doth our transgression waste us so? + +As doth the billow there upon Charybdis, + That breaks itself on that which it encounters, + So here the folk must dance their roundelay. + +Here saw I people, more than elsewhere, many, + On one side and the other, with great howls, + Rolling weights forward by main force of chest. + +They clashed together, and then at that point + Each one turned backward, rolling retrograde, + Crying, “Why keepest?” and, “Why squanderest thou?” + +Thus they returned along the lurid circle + On either hand unto the opposite point, + Shouting their shameful metre evermore. + +Then each, when he arrived there, wheeled about + Through his half-circle to another joust; + And I, who had my heart pierced as it were, + +Exclaimed: “My Master, now declare to me + What people these are, and if all were clerks, + These shaven crowns upon the left of us.” + +And he to me: “All of them were asquint + In intellect in the first life, so much + That there with measure they no spending made. + +Clearly enough their voices bark it forth, + Whene’er they reach the two points of the circle, + Where sunders them the opposite defect. + +Clerks those were who no hairy covering + Have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals, + In whom doth Avarice practise its excess.” + +And I: “My Master, among such as these + I ought forsooth to recognise some few, + Who were infected with these maladies.” + +And he to me: “Vain thought thou entertainest; + The undiscerning life which made them sordid + Now makes them unto all discernment dim. + +Forever shall they come to these two buttings; + These from the sepulchre shall rise again + With the fist closed, and these with tresses shorn. + +Ill giving and ill keeping the fair world + Have ta’en from them, and placed them in this scuffle; + Whate’er it be, no words adorn I for it. + +Now canst thou, Son, behold the transient farce + Of goods that are committed unto Fortune, + For which the human race each other buffet; + +For all the gold that is beneath the moon, + Or ever has been, of these weary souls + Could never make a single one repose.” + +“Master,” I said to him, “now tell me also + What is this Fortune which thou speakest of, + That has the world’s goods so within its clutches?” + +And he to me: “O creatures imbecile, + What ignorance is this which doth beset you? + Now will I have thee learn my judgment of her. + +He whose omniscience everything transcends + The heavens created, and gave who should guide them, + That every part to every part may shine, + +Distributing the light in equal measure; + He in like manner to the mundane splendours + Ordained a general ministress and guide, + +That she might change at times the empty treasures + From race to race, from one blood to another, + Beyond resistance of all human wisdom. + +Therefore one people triumphs, and another + Languishes, in pursuance of her judgment, + Which hidden is, as in the grass a serpent. + +Your knowledge has no counterstand against her; + She makes provision, judges, and pursues + Her governance, as theirs the other gods. + +Her permutations have not any truce; + Necessity makes her precipitate, + So often cometh who his turn obtains. + +And this is she who is so crucified + Even by those who ought to give her praise, + Giving her blame amiss, and bad repute. + +But she is blissful, and she hears it not; + Among the other primal creatures gladsome + She turns her sphere, and blissful she rejoices. + +Let us descend now unto greater woe; + Already sinks each star that was ascending + When I set out, and loitering is forbidden.” + +We crossed the circle to the other bank, + Near to a fount that boils, and pours itself + Along a gully that runs out of it. + +The water was more sombre far than perse; + And we, in company with the dusky waves, + Made entrance downward by a path uncouth. + +A marsh it makes, which has the name of Styx, + This tristful brooklet, when it has descended + Down to the foot of the malign gray shores. + +And I, who stood intent upon beholding, + Saw people mud-besprent in that lagoon, + All of them naked and with angry look. + +They smote each other not alone with hands, + But with the head and with the breast and feet, + Tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth. + +Said the good Master: “Son, thou now beholdest + The souls of those whom anger overcame; + And likewise I would have thee know for certain + +Beneath the water people are who sigh + And make this water bubble at the surface, + As the eye tells thee wheresoe’er it turns. + +Fixed in the mire they say, ‘We sullen were + In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened, + Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek; + +Now we are sullen in this sable mire.’ + This hymn do they keep gurgling in their throats, + For with unbroken words they cannot say it.” + +Thus we went circling round the filthy fen + A great arc ’twixt the dry bank and the swamp, + With eyes turned unto those who gorge the mire; + +Unto the foot of a tower we came at last. + + + + +Inferno: Canto VIII + + +I say, continuing, that long before + We to the foot of that high tower had come, + Our eyes went upward to the summit of it, + +By reason of two flamelets we saw placed there, + And from afar another answer them, + So far, that hardly could the eye attain it. + +And, to the sea of all discernment turned, + I said: “What sayeth this, and what respondeth + That other fire? and who are they that made it?” + +And he to me: “Across the turbid waves + What is expected thou canst now discern, + If reek of the morass conceal it not.” + +Cord never shot an arrow from itself + That sped away athwart the air so swift, + As I beheld a very little boat + +Come o’er the water tow’rds us at that moment, + Under the guidance of a single pilot, + Who shouted, “Now art thou arrived, fell soul?” + +“Phlegyas, Phlegyas, thou criest out in vain + For this once,” said my Lord; “thou shalt not have us + Longer than in the passing of the slough.” + +As he who listens to some great deceit + That has been done to him, and then resents it, + Such became Phlegyas, in his gathered wrath. + +My Guide descended down into the boat, + And then he made me enter after him, + And only when I entered seemed it laden. + +Soon as the Guide and I were in the boat, + The antique prow goes on its way, dividing + More of the water than ’tis wont with others. + +While we were running through the dead canal, + Uprose in front of me one full of mire, + And said, “Who ’rt thou that comest ere the hour?” + +And I to him: “Although I come, I stay not; + But who art thou that hast become so squalid?” + “Thou seest that I am one who weeps,” he answered. + +And I to him: “With weeping and with wailing, + Thou spirit maledict, do thou remain; + For thee I know, though thou art all defiled.” + +Then stretched he both his hands unto the boat; + Whereat my wary Master thrust him back, + Saying, “Away there with the other dogs!” + +Thereafter with his arms he clasped my neck; + He kissed my face, and said: “Disdainful soul, + Blessed be she who bore thee in her bosom. + +That was an arrogant person in the world; + Goodness is none, that decks his memory; + So likewise here his shade is furious. + +How many are esteemed great kings up there, + Who here shall be like unto swine in mire, + Leaving behind them horrible dispraises!” + +And I: “My Master, much should I be pleased, + If I could see him soused into this broth, + Before we issue forth out of the lake.” + +And he to me: “Ere unto thee the shore + Reveal itself, thou shalt be satisfied; + Such a desire ’tis meet thou shouldst enjoy.” + +A little after that, I saw such havoc + Made of him by the people of the mire, + That still I praise and thank my God for it. + +They all were shouting, “At Philippo Argenti!” + And that exasperate spirit Florentine + Turned round upon himself with his own teeth. + +We left him there, and more of him I tell not; + But on mine ears there smote a lamentation, + Whence forward I intent unbar mine eyes. + +And the good Master said: “Even now, my Son, + The city draweth near whose name is Dis, + With the grave citizens, with the great throng.” + +And I: “Its mosques already, Master, clearly + Within there in the valley I discern + Vermilion, as if issuing from the fire + +They were.” And he to me: “The fire eternal + That kindles them within makes them look red, + As thou beholdest in this nether Hell.” + +Then we arrived within the moats profound, + That circumvallate that disconsolate city; + The walls appeared to me to be of iron. + +Not without making first a circuit wide, + We came unto a place where loud the pilot + Cried out to us, “Debark, here is the entrance.” + +More than a thousand at the gates I saw + Out of the Heavens rained down, who angrily + Were saying, “Who is this that without death + +Goes through the kingdom of the people dead?” + And my sagacious Master made a sign + Of wishing secretly to speak with them. + +A little then they quelled their great disdain, + And said: “Come thou alone, and he begone + Who has so boldly entered these dominions. + +Let him return alone by his mad road; + Try, if he can; for thou shalt here remain, + Who hast escorted him through such dark regions.” + +Think, Reader, if I was discomforted + At utterance of the accursed words; + For never to return here I believed. + +“O my dear Guide, who more than seven times + Hast rendered me security, and drawn me + From imminent peril that before me stood, + +Do not desert me,” said I, “thus undone; + And if the going farther be denied us, + Let us retrace our steps together swiftly.” + +And that Lord, who had led me thitherward, + Said unto me: “Fear not; because our passage + None can take from us, it by Such is given. + +But here await me, and thy weary spirit + Comfort and nourish with a better hope; + For in this nether world I will not leave thee.” + +So onward goes and there abandons me + My Father sweet, and I remain in doubt, + For No and Yes within my head contend. + +I could not hear what he proposed to them; + But with them there he did not linger long, + Ere each within in rivalry ran back. + +They closed the portals, those our adversaries, + On my Lord’s breast, who had remained without + And turned to me with footsteps far between. + +His eyes cast down, his forehead shorn had he + Of all its boldness, and he said, with sighs, + “Who has denied to me the dolesome houses?” + +And unto me: “Thou, because I am angry, + Fear not, for I will conquer in the trial, + Whatever for defence within be planned. + +This arrogance of theirs is nothing new; + For once they used it at less secret gate, + Which finds itself without a fastening still. + +O’er it didst thou behold the dead inscription; + And now this side of it descends the steep, + Passing across the circles without escort, + +One by whose means the city shall be opened.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto IX + + +That hue which cowardice brought out on me, + Beholding my Conductor backward turn, + Sooner repressed within him his new colour. + +He stopped attentive, like a man who listens, + Because the eye could not conduct him far + Through the black air, and through the heavy fog. + +“Still it behoveth us to win the fight,” + Began he; “Else. . .Such offered us herself. . . + O how I long that some one here arrive!” + +Well I perceived, as soon as the beginning + He covered up with what came afterward, + That they were words quite different from the first; + +But none the less his saying gave me fear, + Because I carried out the broken phrase, + Perhaps to a worse meaning than he had. + +“Into this bottom of the doleful conch + Doth any e’er descend from the first grade, + Which for its pain has only hope cut off?” + +This question put I; and he answered me: + “Seldom it comes to pass that one of us + Maketh the journey upon which I go. + +True is it, once before I here below + Was conjured by that pitiless Erictho, + Who summoned back the shades unto their bodies. + +Naked of me short while the flesh had been, + Before within that wall she made me enter, + To bring a spirit from the circle of Judas; + +That is the lowest region and the darkest, + And farthest from the heaven which circles all. + Well know I the way; therefore be reassured. + +This fen, which a prodigious stench exhales, + Encompasses about the city dolent, + Where now we cannot enter without anger.” + +And more he said, but not in mind I have it; + Because mine eye had altogether drawn me + Tow’rds the high tower with the red-flaming summit, + +Where in a moment saw I swift uprisen + The three infernal Furies stained with blood, + Who had the limbs of women and their mien, + +And with the greenest hydras were begirt; + Small serpents and cerastes were their tresses, + Wherewith their horrid temples were entwined. + +And he who well the handmaids of the Queen + Of everlasting lamentation knew, + Said unto me: “Behold the fierce Erinnys. + +This is Megaera, on the left-hand side; + She who is weeping on the right, Alecto; + Tisiphone is between;” and then was silent. + +Each one her breast was rending with her nails; + They beat them with their palms, and cried so loud, + That I for dread pressed close unto the Poet. + +“Medusa come, so we to stone will change him!” + All shouted looking down; “in evil hour + Avenged we not on Theseus his assault!” + +“Turn thyself round, and keep thine eyes close shut, + For if the Gorgon appear, and thou shouldst see it, + No more returning upward would there be.” + +Thus said the Master; and he turned me round + Himself, and trusted not unto my hands + So far as not to blind me with his own. + +O ye who have undistempered intellects, + Observe the doctrine that conceals itself + Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses! + +And now there came across the turbid waves + The clangour of a sound with terror fraught, + Because of which both of the margins trembled; + +Not otherwise it was than of a wind + Impetuous on account of adverse heats, + That smites the forest, and, without restraint, + +The branches rends, beats down, and bears away; + Right onward, laden with dust, it goes superb, + And puts to flight the wild beasts and the shepherds. + +Mine eyes he loosed, and said: “Direct the nerve + Of vision now along that ancient foam, + There yonder where that smoke is most intense.” + +Even as the frogs before the hostile serpent + Across the water scatter all abroad, + Until each one is huddled in the earth. + +More than a thousand ruined souls I saw, + Thus fleeing from before one who on foot + Was passing o’er the Styx with soles unwet. + +From off his face he fanned that unctuous air, + Waving his left hand oft in front of him, + And only with that anguish seemed he weary. + +Well I perceived one sent from Heaven was he, + And to the Master turned; and he made sign + That I should quiet stand, and bow before him. + +Ah! how disdainful he appeared to me! + He reached the gate, and with a little rod + He opened it, for there was no resistance. + +“O banished out of Heaven, people despised!” + Thus he began upon the horrid threshold; + “Whence is this arrogance within you couched? + +Wherefore recalcitrate against that will, + From which the end can never be cut off, + And which has many times increased your pain? + +What helpeth it to butt against the fates? + Your Cerberus, if you remember well, + For that still bears his chin and gullet peeled.” + +Then he returned along the miry road, + And spake no word to us, but had the look + Of one whom other care constrains and goads + +Than that of him who in his presence is; + And we our feet directed tow’rds the city, + After those holy words all confident. + +Within we entered without any contest; + And I, who inclination had to see + What the condition such a fortress holds, + +Soon as I was within, cast round mine eye, + And see on every hand an ample plain, + Full of distress and torment terrible. + +Even as at Arles, where stagnant grows the Rhone, + Even as at Pola near to the Quarnaro, + That shuts in Italy and bathes its borders, + +The sepulchres make all the place uneven; + So likewise did they there on every side, + Saving that there the manner was more bitter; + +For flames between the sepulchres were scattered, + By which they so intensely heated were, + That iron more so asks not any art. + +All of their coverings uplifted were, + And from them issued forth such dire laments, + Sooth seemed they of the wretched and tormented. + +And I: “My Master, what are all those people + Who, having sepulture within those tombs, + Make themselves audible by doleful sighs?” + +And he to me: “Here are the Heresiarchs, + With their disciples of all sects, and much + More than thou thinkest laden are the tombs. + +Here like together with its like is buried; + And more and less the monuments are heated.” + And when he to the right had turned, we passed + +Between the torments and high parapets. + + + + +Inferno: Canto X + + +Now onward goes, along a narrow path + Between the torments and the city wall, + My Master, and I follow at his back. + +“O power supreme, that through these impious circles + Turnest me,” I began, “as pleases thee, + Speak to me, and my longings satisfy; + +The people who are lying in these tombs, + Might they be seen? already are uplifted + The covers all, and no one keepeth guard.” + +And he to me: “They all will be closed up + When from Jehoshaphat they shall return + Here with the bodies they have left above. + +Their cemetery have upon this side + With Epicurus all his followers, + Who with the body mortal make the soul; + +But in the question thou dost put to me, + Within here shalt thou soon be satisfied, + And likewise in the wish thou keepest silent.” + +And I: “Good Leader, I but keep concealed + From thee my heart, that I may speak the less, + Nor only now hast thou thereto disposed me.” + +“O Tuscan, thou who through the city of fire + Goest alive, thus speaking modestly, + Be pleased to stay thy footsteps in this place. + +Thy mode of speaking makes thee manifest + A native of that noble fatherland, + To which perhaps I too molestful was.” + +Upon a sudden issued forth this sound + From out one of the tombs; wherefore I pressed, + Fearing, a little nearer to my Leader. + +And unto me he said: “Turn thee; what dost thou? + Behold there Farinata who has risen; + From the waist upwards wholly shalt thou see him.” + +I had already fixed mine eyes on his, + And he uprose erect with breast and front + E’en as if Hell he had in great despite. + +And with courageous hands and prompt my Leader + Thrust me between the sepulchres towards him, + Exclaiming, “Let thy words explicit be.” + +As soon as I was at the foot of his tomb + Somewhat he eyed me, and, as if disdainful, + Then asked of me, “Who were thine ancestors?” + +I, who desirous of obeying was, + Concealed it not, but all revealed to him; + Whereat he raised his brows a little upward. + +Then said he: “Fiercely adverse have they been + To me, and to my fathers, and my party; + So that two several times I scattered them.” + +“If they were banished, they returned on all sides,” + I answered him, “the first time and the second; + But yours have not acquired that art aright.” + +Then there uprose upon the sight, uncovered + Down to the chin, a shadow at his side; + I think that he had risen on his knees. + +Round me he gazed, as if solicitude + He had to see if some one else were with me, + But after his suspicion was all spent, + +Weeping, he said to me: “If through this blind + Prison thou goest by loftiness of genius, + Where is my son? and why is he not with thee?” + +And I to him: “I come not of myself; + He who is waiting yonder leads me here, + Whom in disdain perhaps your Guido had.” + +His language and the mode of punishment + Already unto me had read his name; + On that account my answer was so full. + +Up starting suddenly, he cried out: “How + Saidst thou,—he had? Is he not still alive? + Does not the sweet light strike upon his eyes?” + +When he became aware of some delay, + Which I before my answer made, supine + He fell again, and forth appeared no more. + +But the other, magnanimous, at whose desire + I had remained, did not his aspect change, + Neither his neck he moved, nor bent his side. + +“And if,” continuing his first discourse, + “They have that art,” he said, “not learned aright, + That more tormenteth me, than doth this bed. + +But fifty times shall not rekindled be + The countenance of the Lady who reigns here, + Ere thou shalt know how heavy is that art; + +And as thou wouldst to the sweet world return, + Say why that people is so pitiless + Against my race in each one of its laws?” + +Whence I to him: “The slaughter and great carnage + Which have with crimson stained the Arbia, cause + Such orisons in our temple to be made.” + +After his head he with a sigh had shaken, + “There I was not alone,” he said, “nor surely + Without a cause had with the others moved. + +But there I was alone, where every one + Consented to the laying waste of Florence, + He who defended her with open face.” + +“Ah! so hereafter may your seed repose,” + I him entreated, “solve for me that knot, + Which has entangled my conceptions here. + +It seems that you can see, if I hear rightly, + Beforehand whatsoe’er time brings with it, + And in the present have another mode.” + +“We see, like those who have imperfect sight, + The things,” he said, “that distant are from us; + So much still shines on us the Sovereign Ruler. + +When they draw near, or are, is wholly vain + Our intellect, and if none brings it to us, + Not anything know we of your human state. + +Hence thou canst understand, that wholly dead + Will be our knowledge from the moment when + The portal of the future shall be closed.” + +Then I, as if compunctious for my fault, + Said: “Now, then, you will tell that fallen one, + That still his son is with the living joined. + +And if just now, in answering, I was dumb, + Tell him I did it because I was thinking + Already of the error you have solved me.” + +And now my Master was recalling me, + Wherefore more eagerly I prayed the spirit + That he would tell me who was with him there. + +He said: “With more than a thousand here I lie; + Within here is the second Frederick, + And the Cardinal, and of the rest I speak not.” + +Thereon he hid himself; and I towards + The ancient poet turned my steps, reflecting + Upon that saying, which seemed hostile to me. + +He moved along; and afterward thus going, + He said to me, “Why art thou so bewildered?” + And I in his inquiry satisfied him. + +“Let memory preserve what thou hast heard + Against thyself,” that Sage commanded me, + “And now attend here;” and he raised his finger. + +“When thou shalt be before the radiance sweet + Of her whose beauteous eyes all things behold, + From her thou’lt know the journey of thy life.” + +Unto the left hand then he turned his feet; + We left the wall, and went towards the middle, + Along a path that strikes into a valley, + +Which even up there unpleasant made its stench. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XI + + +Upon the margin of a lofty bank + Which great rocks broken in a circle made, + We came upon a still more cruel throng; + +And there, by reason of the horrible + Excess of stench the deep abyss throws out, + We drew ourselves aside behind the cover + +Of a great tomb, whereon I saw a writing, + Which said: “Pope Anastasius I hold, + Whom out of the right way Photinus drew.” + +“Slow it behoveth our descent to be, + So that the sense be first a little used + To the sad blast, and then we shall not heed it.” + +The Master thus; and unto him I said, + “Some compensation find, that the time pass not + Idly;” and he: “Thou seest I think of that. + +My son, upon the inside of these rocks,” + Began he then to say, “are three small circles, + From grade to grade, like those which thou art leaving. + +They all are full of spirits maledict; + But that hereafter sight alone suffice thee, + Hear how and wherefore they are in constraint. + +Of every malice that wins hate in Heaven, + Injury is the end; and all such end + Either by force or fraud afflicteth others. + +But because fraud is man’s peculiar vice, + More it displeases God; and so stand lowest + The fraudulent, and greater dole assails them. + +All the first circle of the Violent is; + But since force may be used against three persons, + In three rounds ’tis divided and constructed. + +To God, to ourselves, and to our neighbour can we + Use force; I say on them and on their things, + As thou shalt hear with reason manifest. + +A death by violence, and painful wounds, + Are to our neighbour given; and in his substance + Ruin, and arson, and injurious levies; + +Whence homicides, and he who smites unjustly, + Marauders, and freebooters, the first round + Tormenteth all in companies diverse. + +Man may lay violent hands upon himself + And his own goods; and therefore in the second + Round must perforce without avail repent + +Whoever of your world deprives himself, + Who games, and dissipates his property, + And weepeth there, where he should jocund be. + +Violence can be done the Deity, + In heart denying and blaspheming Him, + And by disdaining Nature and her bounty. + +And for this reason doth the smallest round + Seal with its signet Sodom and Cahors, + And who, disdaining God, speaks from the heart. + +Fraud, wherewithal is every conscience stung, + A man may practise upon him who trusts, + And him who doth no confidence imburse. + +This latter mode, it would appear, dissevers + Only the bond of love which Nature makes; + Wherefore within the second circle nestle + +Hypocrisy, flattery, and who deals in magic, + Falsification, theft, and simony, + Panders, and barrators, and the like filth. + +By the other mode, forgotten is that love + Which Nature makes, and what is after added, + From which there is a special faith engendered. + +Hence in the smallest circle, where the point is + Of the Universe, upon which Dis is seated, + Whoe’er betrays for ever is consumed.” + +And I: “My Master, clear enough proceeds + Thy reasoning, and full well distinguishes + This cavern and the people who possess it. + +But tell me, those within the fat lagoon, + Whom the wind drives, and whom the rain doth beat, + And who encounter with such bitter tongues, + +Wherefore are they inside of the red city + Not punished, if God has them in his wrath, + And if he has not, wherefore in such fashion?” + +And unto me he said: “Why wanders so + Thine intellect from that which it is wont? + Or, sooth, thy mind where is it elsewhere looking? + +Hast thou no recollection of those words + With which thine Ethics thoroughly discusses + The dispositions three, that Heaven abides not,— + +Incontinence, and Malice, and insane + Bestiality? and how Incontinence + Less God offendeth, and less blame attracts? + +If thou regardest this conclusion well, + And to thy mind recallest who they are + That up outside are undergoing penance, + +Clearly wilt thou perceive why from these felons + They separated are, and why less wroth + Justice divine doth smite them with its hammer.” + +“O Sun, that healest all distempered vision, + Thou dost content me so, when thou resolvest, + That doubting pleases me no less than knowing! + +Once more a little backward turn thee,” said I, + “There where thou sayest that usury offends + Goodness divine, and disengage the knot.” + +“Philosophy,” he said, “to him who heeds it, + Noteth, not only in one place alone, + After what manner Nature takes her course + +From Intellect Divine, and from its art; + And if thy Physics carefully thou notest, + After not many pages shalt thou find, + +That this your art as far as possible + Follows, as the disciple doth the master; + So that your art is, as it were, God’s grandchild. + +From these two, if thou bringest to thy mind + Genesis at the beginning, it behoves + Mankind to gain their life and to advance; + +And since the usurer takes another way, + Nature herself and in her follower + Disdains he, for elsewhere he puts his hope. + +But follow, now, as I would fain go on, + For quivering are the Fishes on the horizon, + And the Wain wholly over Caurus lies, + +And far beyond there we descend the crag.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XII + + +The place where to descend the bank we came + Was alpine, and from what was there, moreover, + Of such a kind that every eye would shun it. + +Such as that ruin is which in the flank + Smote, on this side of Trent, the Adige, + Either by earthquake or by failing stay, + +For from the mountain’s top, from which it moved, + Unto the plain the cliff is shattered so, + Some path ’twould give to him who was above; + +Even such was the descent of that ravine, + And on the border of the broken chasm + The infamy of Crete was stretched along, + +Who was conceived in the fictitious cow; + And when he us beheld, he bit himself, + Even as one whom anger racks within. + +My Sage towards him shouted: “Peradventure + Thou think’st that here may be the Duke of Athens, + Who in the world above brought death to thee? + +Get thee gone, beast, for this one cometh not + Instructed by thy sister, but he comes + In order to behold your punishments.” + +As is that bull who breaks loose at the moment + In which he has received the mortal blow, + Who cannot walk, but staggers here and there, + +The Minotaur beheld I do the like; + And he, the wary, cried: “Run to the passage; + While he wroth, ’tis well thou shouldst descend.” + +Thus down we took our way o’er that discharge + Of stones, which oftentimes did move themselves + Beneath my feet, from the unwonted burden. + +Thoughtful I went; and he said: “Thou art thinking + Perhaps upon this ruin, which is guarded + By that brute anger which just now I quenched. + +Now will I have thee know, the other time + I here descended to the nether Hell, + This precipice had not yet fallen down. + +But truly, if I well discern, a little + Before His coming who the mighty spoil + Bore off from Dis, in the supernal circle, + +Upon all sides the deep and loathsome valley + Trembled so, that I thought the Universe + Was thrilled with love, by which there are who think + +The world ofttimes converted into chaos; + And at that moment this primeval crag + Both here and elsewhere made such overthrow. + +But fix thine eyes below; for draweth near + The river of blood, within which boiling is + Whoe’er by violence doth injure others.” + +O blind cupidity, O wrath insane, + That spurs us onward so in our short life, + And in the eternal then so badly steeps us! + +I saw an ample moat bent like a bow, + As one which all the plain encompasses, + Conformable to what my Guide had said. + +And between this and the embankment’s foot + Centaurs in file were running, armed with arrows, + As in the world they used the chase to follow. + +Beholding us descend, each one stood still, + And from the squadron three detached themselves, + With bows and arrows in advance selected; + +And from afar one cried: “Unto what torment + Come ye, who down the hillside are descending? + Tell us from there; if not, I draw the bow.” + +My Master said: “Our answer will we make + To Chiron, near you there; in evil hour, + That will of thine was evermore so hasty.” + +Then touched he me, and said: “This one is Nessus, + Who perished for the lovely Dejanira, + And for himself, himself did vengeance take. + +And he in the midst, who at his breast is gazing, + Is the great Chiron, who brought up Achilles; + That other Pholus is, who was so wrathful. + +Thousands and thousands go about the moat + Shooting with shafts whatever soul emerges + Out of the blood, more than his crime allots.” + +Near we approached unto those monsters fleet; + Chiron an arrow took, and with the notch + Backward upon his jaws he put his beard. + +After he had uncovered his great mouth, + He said to his companions: “Are you ware + That he behind moveth whate’er he touches? + +Thus are not wont to do the feet of dead men.” + And my good Guide, who now was at his breast, + Where the two natures are together joined, + +Replied: “Indeed he lives, and thus alone + Me it behoves to show him the dark valley; + Necessity, and not delight, impels us. + +Some one withdrew from singing Halleluja, + Who unto me committed this new office; + No thief is he, nor I a thievish spirit. + +But by that virtue through which I am moving + My steps along this savage thoroughfare, + Give us some one of thine, to be with us, + +And who may show us where to pass the ford, + And who may carry this one on his back; + For ’tis no spirit that can walk the air.” + +Upon his right breast Chiron wheeled about, + And said to Nessus: “Turn and do thou guide them, + And warn aside, if other band may meet you.” + +We with our faithful escort onward moved + Along the brink of the vermilion boiling, + Wherein the boiled were uttering loud laments. + +People I saw within up to the eyebrows, + And the great Centaur said: “Tyrants are these, + Who dealt in bloodshed and in pillaging. + +Here they lament their pitiless mischiefs; here + Is Alexander, and fierce Dionysius + Who upon Sicily brought dolorous years. + +That forehead there which has the hair so black + Is Azzolin; and the other who is blond, + Obizzo is of Esti, who, in truth, + +Up in the world was by his stepson slain.” + Then turned I to the Poet; and he said, + “Now he be first to thee, and second I.” + +A little farther on the Centaur stopped + Above a folk, who far down as the throat + Seemed from that boiling stream to issue forth. + +A shade he showed us on one side alone, + Saying: “He cleft asunder in God’s bosom + The heart that still upon the Thames is honoured.” + +Then people saw I, who from out the river + Lifted their heads and also all the chest; + And many among these I recognised. + +Thus ever more and more grew shallower + That blood, so that the feet alone it covered; + And there across the moat our passage was. + +“Even as thou here upon this side beholdest + The boiling stream, that aye diminishes,” + The Centaur said, “I wish thee to believe + +That on this other more and more declines + Its bed, until it reunites itself + Where it behoveth tyranny to groan. + +Justice divine, upon this side, is goading + That Attila, who was a scourge on earth, + And Pyrrhus, and Sextus; and for ever milks + +The tears which with the boiling it unseals + In Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzo, + Who made upon the highways so much war.” + +Then back he turned, and passed again the ford. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XIII + + +Not yet had Nessus reached the other side, + When we had put ourselves within a wood, + That was not marked by any path whatever. + +Not foliage green, but of a dusky colour, + Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled, + Not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison. + +Such tangled thickets have not, nor so dense, + Those savage wild beasts, that in hatred hold + ’Twixt Cecina and Corneto the tilled places. + +There do the hideous Harpies make their nests, + Who chased the Trojans from the Strophades, + With sad announcement of impending doom; + +Broad wings have they, and necks and faces human, + And feet with claws, and their great bellies fledged; + They make laments upon the wondrous trees. + +And the good Master: “Ere thou enter farther, + Know that thou art within the second round,” + Thus he began to say, “and shalt be, till + +Thou comest out upon the horrible sand; + Therefore look well around, and thou shalt see + Things that will credence give unto my speech.” + +I heard on all sides lamentations uttered, + And person none beheld I who might make them, + Whence, utterly bewildered, I stood still. + +I think he thought that I perhaps might think + So many voices issued through those trunks + From people who concealed themselves from us; + +Therefore the Master said: “If thou break off + Some little spray from any of these trees, + The thoughts thou hast will wholly be made vain.” + +Then stretched I forth my hand a little forward, + And plucked a branchlet off from a great thorn; + And the trunk cried, “Why dost thou mangle me?” + +After it had become embrowned with blood, + It recommenced its cry: “Why dost thou rend me? + Hast thou no spirit of pity whatsoever? + +Men once we were, and now are changed to trees; + Indeed, thy hand should be more pitiful, + Even if the souls of serpents we had been.” + +As out of a green brand, that is on fire + At one of the ends, and from the other drips + And hisses with the wind that is escaping; + +So from that splinter issued forth together + Both words and blood; whereat I let the tip + Fall, and stood like a man who is afraid. + +“Had he been able sooner to believe,” + My Sage made answer, “O thou wounded soul, + What only in my verses he has seen, + +Not upon thee had he stretched forth his hand; + Whereas the thing incredible has caused me + To put him to an act which grieveth me. + +But tell him who thou wast, so that by way + Of some amends thy fame he may refresh + Up in the world, to which he can return.” + +And the trunk said: “So thy sweet words allure me, + I cannot silent be; and you be vexed not, + That I a little to discourse am tempted. + +I am the one who both keys had in keeping + Of Frederick’s heart, and turned them to and fro + So softly in unlocking and in locking, + +That from his secrets most men I withheld; + Fidelity I bore the glorious office + So great, I lost thereby my sleep and pulses. + +The courtesan who never from the dwelling + Of Caesar turned aside her strumpet eyes, + Death universal and the vice of courts, + +Inflamed against me all the other minds, + And they, inflamed, did so inflame Augustus, + That my glad honours turned to dismal mournings. + +My spirit, in disdainful exultation, + Thinking by dying to escape disdain, + Made me unjust against myself, the just. + +I, by the roots unwonted of this wood, + Do swear to you that never broke I faith + Unto my lord, who was so worthy of honour; + +And to the world if one of you return, + Let him my memory comfort, which is lying + Still prostrate from the blow that envy dealt it.” + +Waited awhile, and then: “Since he is silent,” + The Poet said to me, “lose not the time, + But speak, and question him, if more may please thee.” + +Whence I to him: “Do thou again inquire + Concerning what thou thinks’t will satisfy me; + For I cannot, such pity is in my heart.” + +Therefore he recommenced: “So may the man + Do for thee freely what thy speech implores, + Spirit incarcerate, again be pleased + +To tell us in what way the soul is bound + Within these knots; and tell us, if thou canst, + If any from such members e’er is freed.” + +Then blew the trunk amain, and afterward + The wind was into such a voice converted: + “With brevity shall be replied to you. + +When the exasperated soul abandons + The body whence it rent itself away, + Minos consigns it to the seventh abyss. + +It falls into the forest, and no part + Is chosen for it; but where Fortune hurls it, + There like a grain of spelt it germinates. + +It springs a sapling, and a forest tree; + The Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves, + Do pain create, and for the pain an outlet. + +Like others for our spoils shall we return; + But not that any one may them revest, + For ’tis not just to have what one casts off. + +Here we shall drag them, and along the dismal + Forest our bodies shall suspended be, + Each to the thorn of his molested shade.” + +We were attentive still unto the trunk, + Thinking that more it yet might wish to tell us, + When by a tumult we were overtaken, + +In the same way as he is who perceives + The boar and chase approaching to his stand, + Who hears the crashing of the beasts and branches; + +And two behold! upon our left-hand side, + Naked and scratched, fleeing so furiously, + That of the forest, every fan they broke. + +He who was in advance: “Now help, Death, help!” + And the other one, who seemed to lag too much, + Was shouting: “Lano, were not so alert + +Those legs of thine at joustings of the Toppo!” + And then, perchance because his breath was failing, + He grouped himself together with a bush. + +Behind them was the forest full of black + She-mastiffs, ravenous, and swift of foot + As greyhounds, who are issuing from the chain. + +On him who had crouched down they set their teeth, + And him they lacerated piece by piece, + Thereafter bore away those aching members. + +Thereat my Escort took me by the hand, + And led me to the bush, that all in vain + Was weeping from its bloody lacerations. + +“O Jacopo,” it said, “of Sant’ Andrea, + What helped it thee of me to make a screen? + What blame have I in thy nefarious life?” + +When near him had the Master stayed his steps, + He said: “Who wast thou, that through wounds so many + Art blowing out with blood thy dolorous speech?” + +And he to us: “O souls, that hither come + To look upon the shameful massacre + That has so rent away from me my leaves, + +Gather them up beneath the dismal bush; + I of that city was which to the Baptist + Changed its first patron, wherefore he for this + +Forever with his art will make it sad. + And were it not that on the pass of Arno + Some glimpses of him are remaining still, + +Those citizens, who afterwards rebuilt it + Upon the ashes left by Attila, + In vain had caused their labour to be done. + +Of my own house I made myself a gibbet.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XIV + + +Because the charity of my native place + Constrained me, gathered I the scattered leaves, + And gave them back to him, who now was hoarse. + +Then came we to the confine, where disparted + The second round is from the third, and where + A horrible form of Justice is beheld. + +Clearly to manifest these novel things, + I say that we arrived upon a plain, + Which from its bed rejecteth every plant; + +The dolorous forest is a garland to it + All round about, as the sad moat to that; + There close upon the edge we stayed our feet. + +The soil was of an arid and thick sand, + Not of another fashion made than that + Which by the feet of Cato once was pressed. + +Vengeance of God, O how much oughtest thou + By each one to be dreaded, who doth read + That which was manifest unto mine eyes! + +Of naked souls beheld I many herds, + Who all were weeping very miserably, + And over them seemed set a law diverse. + +Supine upon the ground some folk were lying; + And some were sitting all drawn up together, + And others went about continually. + +Those who were going round were far the more, + And those were less who lay down to their torment, + But had their tongues more loosed to lamentation. + +O’er all the sand-waste, with a gradual fall, + Were raining down dilated flakes of fire, + As of the snow on Alp without a wind. + +As Alexander, in those torrid parts + Of India, beheld upon his host + Flames fall unbroken till they reached the ground. + +Whence he provided with his phalanxes + To trample down the soil, because the vapour + Better extinguished was while it was single; + +Thus was descending the eternal heat, + Whereby the sand was set on fire, like tinder + Beneath the steel, for doubling of the dole. + +Without repose forever was the dance + Of miserable hands, now there, now here, + Shaking away from off them the fresh gleeds. + +“Master,” began I, “thou who overcomest + All things except the demons dire, that issued + Against us at the entrance of the gate, + +Who is that mighty one who seems to heed not + The fire, and lieth lowering and disdainful, + So that the rain seems not to ripen him?” + +And he himself, who had become aware + That I was questioning my Guide about him, + Cried: “Such as I was living, am I, dead. + +If Jove should weary out his smith, from whom + He seized in anger the sharp thunderbolt, + Wherewith upon the last day I was smitten, + +And if he wearied out by turns the others + In Mongibello at the swarthy forge, + Vociferating, ‘Help, good Vulcan, help!’ + +Even as he did there at the fight of Phlegra, + And shot his bolts at me with all his might, + He would not have thereby a joyous vengeance.” + +Then did my Leader speak with such great force, + That I had never heard him speak so loud: + “O Capaneus, in that is not extinguished + +Thine arrogance, thou punished art the more; + Not any torment, saving thine own rage, + Would be unto thy fury pain complete.” + +Then he turned round to me with better lip, + Saying: “One of the Seven Kings was he + Who Thebes besieged, and held, and seems to hold + +God in disdain, and little seems to prize him; + But, as I said to him, his own despites + Are for his breast the fittest ornaments. + +Now follow me, and mind thou do not place + As yet thy feet upon the burning sand, + But always keep them close unto the wood.” + +Speaking no word, we came to where there gushes + Forth from the wood a little rivulet, + Whose redness makes my hair still stand on end. + +As from the Bulicame springs the brooklet, + The sinful women later share among them, + So downward through the sand it went its way. + +The bottom of it, and both sloping banks, + Were made of stone, and the margins at the side; + Whence I perceived that there the passage was. + +“In all the rest which I have shown to thee + Since we have entered in within the gate + Whose threshold unto no one is denied, + +Nothing has been discovered by thine eyes + So notable as is the present river, + Which all the little flames above it quenches.” + +These words were of my Leader; whence I prayed him + That he would give me largess of the food, + For which he had given me largess of desire. + +“In the mid-sea there sits a wasted land,” + Said he thereafterward, “whose name is Crete, + Under whose king the world of old was chaste. + +There is a mountain there, that once was glad + With waters and with leaves, which was called Ida; + Now ’tis deserted, as a thing worn out. + +Rhea once chose it for the faithful cradle + Of her own son; and to conceal him better, + Whene’er he cried, she there had clamours made. + +A grand old man stands in the mount erect, + Who holds his shoulders turned tow’rds Damietta, + And looks at Rome as if it were his mirror. + +His head is fashioned of refined gold, + And of pure silver are the arms and breast; + Then he is brass as far down as the fork. + +From that point downward all is chosen iron, + Save that the right foot is of kiln-baked clay, + And more he stands on that than on the other. + +Each part, except the gold, is by a fissure + Asunder cleft, that dripping is with tears, + Which gathered together perforate that cavern. + +From rock to rock they fall into this valley; + Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon they form; + Then downward go along this narrow sluice + +Unto that point where is no more descending. + They form Cocytus; what that pool may be + Thou shalt behold, so here ’tis not narrated.” + +And I to him: “If so the present runnel + Doth take its rise in this way from our world, + Why only on this verge appears it to us?” + +And he to me: “Thou knowest the place is round, + And notwithstanding thou hast journeyed far, + Still to the left descending to the bottom, + +Thou hast not yet through all the circle turned. + Therefore if something new appear to us, + It should not bring amazement to thy face.” + +And I again: “Master, where shall be found + Lethe and Phlegethon, for of one thou’rt silent, + And sayest the other of this rain is made?” + +“In all thy questions truly thou dost please me,” + Replied he; “but the boiling of the red + Water might well solve one of them thou makest. + +Thou shalt see Lethe, but outside this moat, + There where the souls repair to lave themselves, + When sin repented of has been removed.” + +Then said he: “It is time now to abandon + The wood; take heed that thou come after me; + A way the margins make that are not burning, + +And over them all vapours are extinguished.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XV + + +Now bears us onward one of the hard margins, + And so the brooklet’s mist o’ershadows it, + From fire it saves the water and the dikes. + +Even as the Flemings, ’twixt Cadsand and Bruges, + Fearing the flood that tow’rds them hurls itself, + Their bulwarks build to put the sea to flight; + +And as the Paduans along the Brenta, + To guard their villas and their villages, + Or ever Chiarentana feel the heat; + +In such similitude had those been made, + Albeit not so lofty nor so thick, + Whoever he might be, the master made them. + +Now were we from the forest so remote, + I could not have discovered where it was, + Even if backward I had turned myself, + +When we a company of souls encountered, + Who came beside the dike, and every one + Gazed at us, as at evening we are wont + +To eye each other under a new moon, + And so towards us sharpened they their brows + As an old tailor at the needle’s eye. + +Thus scrutinised by such a family, + By some one I was recognised, who seized + My garment’s hem, and cried out, “What a marvel!” + +And I, when he stretched forth his arm to me, + On his baked aspect fastened so mine eyes, + That the scorched countenance prevented not + +His recognition by my intellect; + And bowing down my face unto his own, + I made reply, “Are you here, Ser Brunetto?” + +And he: “May’t not displease thee, O my son, + If a brief space with thee Brunetto Latini + Backward return and let the trail go on.” + +I said to him: “With all my power I ask it; + And if you wish me to sit down with you, + I will, if he please, for I go with him.” + +“O son,” he said, “whoever of this herd + A moment stops, lies then a hundred years, + Nor fans himself when smiteth him the fire. + +Therefore go on; I at thy skirts will come, + And afterward will I rejoin my band, + Which goes lamenting its eternal doom.” + +I did not dare to go down from the road + Level to walk with him; but my head bowed + I held as one who goeth reverently. + +And he began: “What fortune or what fate + Before the last day leadeth thee down here? + And who is this that showeth thee the way?” + +“Up there above us in the life serene,” + I answered him, “I lost me in a valley, + Or ever yet my age had been completed. + +But yestermorn I turned my back upon it; + This one appeared to me, returning thither, + And homeward leadeth me along this road.” + +And he to me: “If thou thy star do follow, + Thou canst not fail thee of a glorious port, + If well I judged in the life beautiful. + +And if I had not died so prematurely, + Seeing Heaven thus benignant unto thee, + I would have given thee comfort in the work. + +But that ungrateful and malignant people, + Which of old time from Fesole descended, + And smacks still of the mountain and the granite, + +Will make itself, for thy good deeds, thy foe; + And it is right; for among crabbed sorbs + It ill befits the sweet fig to bear fruit. + +Old rumour in the world proclaims them blind; + A people avaricious, envious, proud; + Take heed that of their customs thou do cleanse thee. + +Thy fortune so much honour doth reserve thee, + One party and the other shall be hungry + For thee; but far from goat shall be the grass. + +Their litter let the beasts of Fesole + Make of themselves, nor let them touch the plant, + If any still upon their dunghill rise, + +In which may yet revive the consecrated + Seed of those Romans, who remained there when + The nest of such great malice it became.” + +“If my entreaty wholly were fulfilled,” + Replied I to him, “not yet would you be + In banishment from human nature placed; + +For in my mind is fixed, and touches now + My heart the dear and good paternal image + Of you, when in the world from hour to hour + +You taught me how a man becomes eternal; + And how much I am grateful, while I live + Behoves that in my language be discerned. + +What you narrate of my career I write, + And keep it to be glossed with other text + By a Lady who can do it, if I reach her. + +This much will I have manifest to you; + Provided that my conscience do not chide me, + For whatsoever Fortune I am ready. + +Such handsel is not new unto mine ears; + Therefore let Fortune turn her wheel around + As it may please her, and the churl his mattock.” + +My Master thereupon on his right cheek + Did backward turn himself, and looked at me; + Then said: “He listeneth well who noteth it.” + +Nor speaking less on that account, I go + With Ser Brunetto, and I ask who are + His most known and most eminent companions. + +And he to me: “To know of some is well; + Of others it were laudable to be silent, + For short would be the time for so much speech. + +Know them in sum, that all of them were clerks, + And men of letters great and of great fame, + In the world tainted with the selfsame sin. + +Priscian goes yonder with that wretched crowd, + And Francis of Accorso; and thou hadst seen there + If thou hadst had a hankering for such scurf, + +That one, who by the Servant of the Servants + From Arno was transferred to Bacchiglione, + Where he has left his sin-excited nerves. + +More would I say, but coming and discoursing + Can be no longer; for that I behold + New smoke uprising yonder from the sand. + +A people comes with whom I may not be; + Commended unto thee be my Tesoro, + In which I still live, and no more I ask.” + +Then he turned round, and seemed to be of those + Who at Verona run for the Green Mantle + Across the plain; and seemed to be among them + +The one who wins, and not the one who loses. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XVI + + +Now was I where was heard the reverberation + Of water falling into the next round, + Like to that humming which the beehives make, + +When shadows three together started forth, + Running, from out a company that passed + Beneath the rain of the sharp martyrdom. + +Towards us came they, and each one cried out: + “Stop, thou; for by thy garb to us thou seemest + To be some one of our depraved city.” + +Ah me! what wounds I saw upon their limbs, + Recent and ancient by the flames burnt in! + It pains me still but to remember it. + +Unto their cries my Teacher paused attentive; + He turned his face towards me, and “Now wait,” + He said; “to these we should be courteous. + +And if it were not for the fire that darts + The nature of this region, I should say + That haste were more becoming thee than them.” + +As soon as we stood still, they recommenced + The old refrain, and when they overtook us, + Formed of themselves a wheel, all three of them. + +As champions stripped and oiled are wont to do, + Watching for their advantage and their hold, + Before they come to blows and thrusts between them, + +Thus, wheeling round, did every one his visage + Direct to me, so that in opposite wise + His neck and feet continual journey made. + +And, “If the misery of this soft place + Bring in disdain ourselves and our entreaties,” + Began one, “and our aspect black and blistered, + +Let the renown of us thy mind incline + To tell us who thou art, who thus securely + Thy living feet dost move along through Hell. + +He in whose footprints thou dost see me treading, + Naked and skinless though he now may go, + Was of a greater rank than thou dost think; + +He was the grandson of the good Gualdrada; + His name was Guidoguerra, and in life + Much did he with his wisdom and his sword. + +The other, who close by me treads the sand, + Tegghiaio Aldobrandi is, whose fame + Above there in the world should welcome be. + +And I, who with them on the cross am placed, + Jacopo Rusticucci was; and truly + My savage wife, more than aught else, doth harm me.” + +Could I have been protected from the fire, + Below I should have thrown myself among them, + And think the Teacher would have suffered it; + +But as I should have burned and baked myself, + My terror overmastered my good will, + Which made me greedy of embracing them. + +Then I began: “Sorrow and not disdain + Did your condition fix within me so, + That tardily it wholly is stripped off, + +As soon as this my Lord said unto me + Words, on account of which I thought within me + That people such as you are were approaching. + +I of your city am; and evermore + Your labours and your honourable names + I with affection have retraced and heard. + +I leave the gall, and go for the sweet fruits + Promised to me by the veracious Leader; + But to the centre first I needs must plunge.” + +“So may the soul for a long while conduct + Those limbs of thine,” did he make answer then, + “And so may thy renown shine after thee, + +Valour and courtesy, say if they dwell + Within our city, as they used to do, + Or if they wholly have gone out of it; + +For Guglielmo Borsier, who is in torment + With us of late, and goes there with his comrades, + Doth greatly mortify us with his words.” + +“The new inhabitants and the sudden gains, + Pride and extravagance have in thee engendered, + Florence, so that thou weep’st thereat already!” + +In this wise I exclaimed with face uplifted; + And the three, taking that for my reply, + Looked at each other, as one looks at truth. + +“If other times so little it doth cost thee,” + Replied they all, “to satisfy another, + Happy art thou, thus speaking at thy will! + +Therefore, if thou escape from these dark places, + And come to rebehold the beauteous stars, + When it shall pleasure thee to say, ‘I was,’ + +See that thou speak of us unto the people.” + Then they broke up the wheel, and in their flight + It seemed as if their agile legs were wings. + +Not an Amen could possibly be said + So rapidly as they had disappeared; + Wherefore the Master deemed best to depart. + +I followed him, and little had we gone, + Before the sound of water was so near us, + That speaking we should hardly have been heard. + +Even as that stream which holdeth its own course + The first from Monte Veso tow’rds the East, + Upon the left-hand slope of Apennine, + +Which is above called Acquacheta, ere + It down descendeth into its low bed, + And at Forli is vacant of that name, + +Reverberates there above San Benedetto + From Alps, by falling at a single leap, + Where for a thousand there were room enough; + +Thus downward from a bank precipitate, + We found resounding that dark-tinted water, + So that it soon the ear would have offended. + +I had a cord around about me girt, + And therewithal I whilom had designed + To take the panther with the painted skin. + +After I this had all from me unloosed, + As my Conductor had commanded me, + I reached it to him, gathered up and coiled, + +Whereat he turned himself to the right side, + And at a little distance from the verge, + He cast it down into that deep abyss. + +“It must needs be some novelty respond,” + I said within myself, “to the new signal + The Master with his eye is following so.” + +Ah me! how very cautious men should be + With those who not alone behold the act, + But with their wisdom look into the thoughts! + +He said to me: “Soon there will upward come + What I await; and what thy thought is dreaming + Must soon reveal itself unto thy sight.” + +Aye to that truth which has the face of falsehood, + A man should close his lips as far as may be, + Because without his fault it causes shame; + +But here I cannot; and, Reader, by the notes + Of this my Comedy to thee I swear, + So may they not be void of lasting favour, + +Athwart that dense and darksome atmosphere + I saw a figure swimming upward come, + Marvellous unto every steadfast heart, + +Even as he returns who goeth down + Sometimes to clear an anchor, which has grappled + Reef, or aught else that in the sea is hidden, + +Who upward stretches, and draws in his feet. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XVII + + +“Behold the monster with the pointed tail, + Who cleaves the hills, and breaketh walls and weapons, + Behold him who infecteth all the world.” + +Thus unto me my Guide began to say, + And beckoned him that he should come to shore, + Near to the confine of the trodden marble; + +And that uncleanly image of deceit + Came up and thrust ashore its head and bust, + But on the border did not drag its tail. + +The face was as the face of a just man, + Its semblance outwardly was so benign, + And of a serpent all the trunk beside. + +Two paws it had, hairy unto the armpits; + The back, and breast, and both the sides it had + Depicted o’er with nooses and with shields. + +With colours more, groundwork or broidery + Never in cloth did Tartars make nor Turks, + Nor were such tissues by Arachne laid. + +As sometimes wherries lie upon the shore, + That part are in the water, part on land; + And as among the guzzling Germans there, + +The beaver plants himself to wage his war; + So that vile monster lay upon the border, + Which is of stone, and shutteth in the sand. + +His tail was wholly quivering in the void, + Contorting upwards the envenomed fork, + That in the guise of scorpion armed its point. + +The Guide said: “Now perforce must turn aside + Our way a little, even to that beast + Malevolent, that yonder coucheth him.” + +We therefore on the right side descended, + And made ten steps upon the outer verge, + Completely to avoid the sand and flame; + +And after we are come to him, I see + A little farther off upon the sand + A people sitting near the hollow place. + +Then said to me the Master: “So that full + Experience of this round thou bear away, + Now go and see what their condition is. + +There let thy conversation be concise; + Till thou returnest I will speak with him, + That he concede to us his stalwart shoulders.” + +Thus farther still upon the outermost + Head of that seventh circle all alone + I went, where sat the melancholy folk. + +Out of their eyes was gushing forth their woe; + This way, that way, they helped them with their hands + Now from the flames and now from the hot soil. + +Not otherwise in summer do the dogs, + Now with the foot, now with the muzzle, when + By fleas, or flies, or gadflies, they are bitten. + +When I had turned mine eyes upon the faces + Of some, on whom the dolorous fire is falling, + Not one of them I knew; but I perceived + +That from the neck of each there hung a pouch, + Which certain colour had, and certain blazon; + And thereupon it seems their eyes are feeding. + +And as I gazing round me come among them, + Upon a yellow pouch I azure saw + That had the face and posture of a lion. + +Proceeding then the current of my sight, + Another of them saw I, red as blood, + Display a goose more white than butter is. + +And one, who with an azure sow and gravid + Emblazoned had his little pouch of white, + Said unto me: “What dost thou in this moat? + +Now get thee gone; and since thou’rt still alive, + Know that a neighbour of mine, Vitaliano, + Will have his seat here on my left-hand side. + +A Paduan am I with these Florentines; + Full many a time they thunder in mine ears, + Exclaiming, ‘Come the sovereign cavalier, + +He who shall bring the satchel with three goats;’” + Then twisted he his mouth, and forth he thrust + His tongue, like to an ox that licks its nose. + +And fearing lest my longer stay might vex + Him who had warned me not to tarry long, + Backward I turned me from those weary souls. + +I found my Guide, who had already mounted + Upon the back of that wild animal, + And said to me: “Now be both strong and bold. + +Now we descend by stairways such as these; + Mount thou in front, for I will be midway, + So that the tail may have no power to harm thee.” + +Such as he is who has so near the ague + Of quartan that his nails are blue already, + And trembles all, but looking at the shade; + +Even such became I at those proffered words; + But shame in me his menaces produced, + Which maketh servant strong before good master. + +I seated me upon those monstrous shoulders; + I wished to say, and yet the voice came not + As I believed, “Take heed that thou embrace me.” + +But he, who other times had rescued me + In other peril, soon as I had mounted, + Within his arms encircled and sustained me, + +And said: “Now, Geryon, bestir thyself; + The circles large, and the descent be little; + Think of the novel burden which thou hast.” + +Even as the little vessel shoves from shore, + Backward, still backward, so he thence withdrew; + And when he wholly felt himself afloat, + +There where his breast had been he turned his tail, + And that extended like an eel he moved, + And with his paws drew to himself the air. + +A greater fear I do not think there was + What time abandoned Phaeton the reins, + Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched; + +Nor when the wretched Icarus his flanks + Felt stripped of feathers by the melting wax, + His father crying, “An ill way thou takest!” + +Than was my own, when I perceived myself + On all sides in the air, and saw extinguished + The sight of everything but of the monster. + +Onward he goeth, swimming slowly, slowly; + Wheels and descends, but I perceive it only + By wind upon my face and from below. + +I heard already on the right the whirlpool + Making a horrible crashing under us; + Whence I thrust out my head with eyes cast downward. + +Then was I still more fearful of the abyss; + Because I fires beheld, and heard laments, + Whereat I, trembling, all the closer cling. + +I saw then, for before I had not seen it, + The turning and descending, by great horrors + That were approaching upon divers sides. + +As falcon who has long been on the wing, + Who, without seeing either lure or bird, + Maketh the falconer say, “Ah me, thou stoopest,” + +Descendeth weary, whence he started swiftly, + Thorough a hundred circles, and alights + Far from his master, sullen and disdainful; + +Even thus did Geryon place us on the bottom, + Close to the bases of the rough-hewn rock, + And being disencumbered of our persons, + +He sped away as arrow from the string. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XVIII + + +There is a place in Hell called Malebolge, + Wholly of stone and of an iron colour, + As is the circle that around it turns. + +Right in the middle of the field malign + There yawns a well exceeding wide and deep, + Of which its place the structure will recount. + +Round, then, is that enclosure which remains + Between the well and foot of the high, hard bank, + And has distinct in valleys ten its bottom. + +As where for the protection of the walls + Many and many moats surround the castles, + The part in which they are a figure forms, + +Just such an image those presented there; + And as about such strongholds from their gates + Unto the outer bank are little bridges, + +So from the precipice’s base did crags + Project, which intersected dikes and moats, + Unto the well that truncates and collects them. + +Within this place, down shaken from the back + Of Geryon, we found us; and the Poet + Held to the left, and I moved on behind. + +Upon my right hand I beheld new anguish, + New torments, and new wielders of the lash, + Wherewith the foremost Bolgia was replete. + +Down at the bottom were the sinners naked; + This side the middle came they facing us, + Beyond it, with us, but with greater steps; + +Even as the Romans, for the mighty host, + The year of Jubilee, upon the bridge, + Have chosen a mode to pass the people over; + +For all upon one side towards the Castle + Their faces have, and go unto St. Peter’s; + On the other side they go towards the Mountain. + +This side and that, along the livid stone + Beheld I horned demons with great scourges, + Who cruelly were beating them behind. + +Ah me! how they did make them lift their legs + At the first blows! and sooth not any one + The second waited for, nor for the third. + +While I was going on, mine eyes by one + Encountered were; and straight I said: “Already + With sight of this one I am not unfed.” + +Therefore I stayed my feet to make him out, + And with me the sweet Guide came to a stand, + And to my going somewhat back assented; + +And he, the scourged one, thought to hide himself, + Lowering his face, but little it availed him; + For said I: “Thou that castest down thine eyes, + +If false are not the features which thou bearest, + Thou art Venedico Caccianimico; + But what doth bring thee to such pungent sauces?” + +And he to me: “Unwillingly I tell it; + But forces me thine utterance distinct, + Which makes me recollect the ancient world. + +I was the one who the fair Ghisola + Induced to grant the wishes of the Marquis, + Howe’er the shameless story may be told. + +Not the sole Bolognese am I who weeps here; + Nay, rather is this place so full of them, + That not so many tongues to-day are taught + +’Twixt Reno and Savena to say ‘sipa;’ + And if thereof thou wishest pledge or proof, + Bring to thy mind our avaricious heart.” + +While speaking in this manner, with his scourge + A demon smote him, and said: “Get thee gone + Pander, there are no women here for coin.” + +I joined myself again unto mine Escort; + Thereafterward with footsteps few we came + To where a crag projected from the bank. + +This very easily did we ascend, + And turning to the right along its ridge, + From those eternal circles we departed. + +When we were there, where it is hollowed out + Beneath, to give a passage to the scourged, + The Guide said: “Wait, and see that on thee strike + +The vision of those others evil-born, + Of whom thou hast not yet beheld the faces, + Because together with us they have gone.” + +From the old bridge we looked upon the train + Which tow’rds us came upon the other border, + And which the scourges in like manner smite. + +And the good Master, without my inquiring, + Said to me: “See that tall one who is coming, + And for his pain seems not to shed a tear; + +Still what a royal aspect he retains! + That Jason is, who by his heart and cunning + The Colchians of the Ram made destitute. + +He by the isle of Lemnos passed along + After the daring women pitiless + Had unto death devoted all their males. + +There with his tokens and with ornate words + Did he deceive Hypsipyle, the maiden + Who first, herself, had all the rest deceived. + +There did he leave her pregnant and forlorn; + Such sin unto such punishment condemns him, + And also for Medea is vengeance done. + +With him go those who in such wise deceive; + And this sufficient be of the first valley + To know, and those that in its jaws it holds.” + +We were already where the narrow path + Crosses athwart the second dike, and forms + Of that a buttress for another arch. + +Thence we heard people, who are making moan + In the next Bolgia, snorting with their muzzles, + And with their palms beating upon themselves + +The margins were incrusted with a mould + By exhalation from below, that sticks there, + And with the eyes and nostrils wages war. + +The bottom is so deep, no place suffices + To give us sight of it, without ascending + The arch’s back, where most the crag impends. + +Thither we came, and thence down in the moat + I saw a people smothered in a filth + That out of human privies seemed to flow; + +And whilst below there with mine eye I search, + I saw one with his head so foul with ordure, + It was not clear if he were clerk or layman. + +He screamed to me: “Wherefore art thou so eager + To look at me more than the other foul ones?” + And I to him: “Because, if I remember, + +I have already seen thee with dry hair, + And thou’rt Alessio Interminei of Lucca; + Therefore I eye thee more than all the others.” + +And he thereon, belabouring his pumpkin: + “The flatteries have submerged me here below, + Wherewith my tongue was never surfeited.” + +Then said to me the Guide: “See that thou thrust + Thy visage somewhat farther in advance, + That with thine eyes thou well the face attain + +Of that uncleanly and dishevelled drab, + Who there doth scratch herself with filthy nails, + And crouches now, and now on foot is standing. + +Thais the harlot is it, who replied + Unto her paramour, when he said, ‘Have I + Great gratitude from thee?’—‘Nay, marvellous;’ + +And herewith let our sight be satisfied.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XIX + + +O Simon Magus, O forlorn disciples, + Ye who the things of God, which ought to be + The brides of holiness, rapaciously + +For silver and for gold do prostitute, + Now it behoves for you the trumpet sound, + Because in this third Bolgia ye abide. + +We had already on the following tomb + Ascended to that portion of the crag + Which o’er the middle of the moat hangs plumb. + +Wisdom supreme, O how great art thou showest + In heaven, in earth, and in the evil world, + And with what justice doth thy power distribute! + +I saw upon the sides and on the bottom + The livid stone with perforations filled, + All of one size, and every one was round. + +To me less ample seemed they not, nor greater + Than those that in my beautiful Saint John + Are fashioned for the place of the baptisers, + +And one of which, not many years ago, + I broke for some one, who was drowning in it; + Be this a seal all men to undeceive. + +Out of the mouth of each one there protruded + The feet of a transgressor, and the legs + Up to the calf, the rest within remained. + +In all of them the soles were both on fire; + Wherefore the joints so violently quivered, + They would have snapped asunder withes and bands. + +Even as the flame of unctuous things is wont + To move upon the outer surface only, + So likewise was it there from heel to point. + +“Master, who is that one who writhes himself, + More than his other comrades quivering,” + I said, “and whom a redder flame is sucking?” + +And he to me: “If thou wilt have me bear thee + Down there along that bank which lowest lies, + From him thou’lt know his errors and himself.” + +And I: “What pleases thee, to me is pleasing; + Thou art my Lord, and knowest that I depart not + From thy desire, and knowest what is not spoken.” + +Straightway upon the fourth dike we arrived; + We turned, and on the left-hand side descended + Down to the bottom full of holes and narrow. + +And the good Master yet from off his haunch + Deposed me not, till to the hole he brought me + Of him who so lamented with his shanks. + +“Whoe’er thou art, that standest upside down, + O doleful soul, implanted like a stake,” + To say began I, “if thou canst, speak out.” + +I stood even as the friar who is confessing + The false assassin, who, when he is fixed, + Recalls him, so that death may be delayed. + +And he cried out: “Dost thou stand there already, + Dost thou stand there already, Boniface? + By many years the record lied to me. + +Art thou so early satiate with that wealth, + For which thou didst not fear to take by fraud + The beautiful Lady, and then work her woe?” + +Such I became, as people are who stand, + Not comprehending what is answered them, + As if bemocked, and know not how to answer. + +Then said Virgilius: “Say to him straightway, + ‘I am not he, I am not he thou thinkest.’” + And I replied as was imposed on me. + +Whereat the spirit writhed with both his feet, + Then, sighing, with a voice of lamentation + Said to me: “Then what wantest thou of me? + +If who I am thou carest so much to know, + That thou on that account hast crossed the bank, + Know that I vested was with the great mantle; + +And truly was I son of the She-bear, + So eager to advance the cubs, that wealth + Above, and here myself, I pocketed. + +Beneath my head the others are dragged down + Who have preceded me in simony, + Flattened along the fissure of the rock. + +Below there I shall likewise fall, whenever + That one shall come who I believed thou wast, + What time the sudden question I proposed. + +But longer I my feet already toast, + And here have been in this way upside down, + Than he will planted stay with reddened feet; + +For after him shall come of fouler deed + From tow’rds the west a Pastor without law, + Such as befits to cover him and me. + +New Jason will he be, of whom we read + In Maccabees; and as his king was pliant, + So he who governs France shall be to this one.” + +I do not know if I were here too bold, + That him I answered only in this metre: + “I pray thee tell me now how great a treasure + +Our Lord demanded of Saint Peter first, + Before he put the keys into his keeping? + Truly he nothing asked but ‘Follow me.’ + +Nor Peter nor the rest asked of Matthias + Silver or gold, when he by lot was chosen + Unto the place the guilty soul had lost. + +Therefore stay here, for thou art justly punished, + And keep safe guard o’er the ill-gotten money, + Which caused thee to be valiant against Charles. + +And were it not that still forbids it me + The reverence for the keys superlative + Thou hadst in keeping in the gladsome life, + +I would make use of words more grievous still; + Because your avarice afflicts the world, + Trampling the good and lifting the depraved. + +The Evangelist you Pastors had in mind, + When she who sitteth upon many waters + To fornicate with kings by him was seen; + +The same who with the seven heads was born, + And power and strength from the ten horns received, + So long as virtue to her spouse was pleasing. + +Ye have made yourselves a god of gold and silver; + And from the idolater how differ ye, + Save that he one, and ye a hundred worship? + +Ah, Constantine! of how much ill was mother, + Not thy conversion, but that marriage dower + Which the first wealthy Father took from thee!” + +And while I sang to him such notes as these, + Either that anger or that conscience stung him, + He struggled violently with both his feet. + +I think in sooth that it my Leader pleased, + With such contented lip he listened ever + Unto the sound of the true words expressed. + +Therefore with both his arms he took me up, + And when he had me all upon his breast, + Remounted by the way where he descended. + +Nor did he tire to have me clasped to him; + But bore me to the summit of the arch + Which from the fourth dike to the fifth is passage. + +There tenderly he laid his burden down, + Tenderly on the crag uneven and steep, + That would have been hard passage for the goats: + +Thence was unveiled to me another valley. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XX + + +Of a new pain behoves me to make verses + And give material to the twentieth canto + Of the first song, which is of the submerged. + +I was already thoroughly disposed + To peer down into the uncovered depth, + Which bathed itself with tears of agony; + +And people saw I through the circular valley, + Silent and weeping, coming at the pace + Which in this world the Litanies assume. + +As lower down my sight descended on them, + Wondrously each one seemed to be distorted + From chin to the beginning of the chest; + +For tow’rds the reins the countenance was turned, + And backward it behoved them to advance, + As to look forward had been taken from them. + +Perchance indeed by violence of palsy + Some one has been thus wholly turned awry; + But I ne’er saw it, nor believe it can be. + +As God may let thee, Reader, gather fruit + From this thy reading, think now for thyself + How I could ever keep my face unmoistened, + +When our own image near me I beheld + Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes + Along the fissure bathed the hinder parts. + +Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak + Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said + To me: “Art thou, too, of the other fools? + +Here pity lives when it is wholly dead; + Who is a greater reprobate than he + Who feels compassion at the doom divine? + +Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom + Opened the earth before the Thebans’ eyes; + Wherefore they all cried: ‘Whither rushest thou, + +Amphiaraus? Why dost leave the war?’ + And downward ceased he not to fall amain + As far as Minos, who lays hold on all. + +See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders! + Because he wished to see too far before him + Behind he looks, and backward goes his way: + +Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed, + When from a male a female he became, + His members being all of them transformed; + +And afterwards was forced to strike once more + The two entangled serpents with his rod, + Ere he could have again his manly plumes. + +That Aruns is, who backs the other’s belly, + Who in the hills of Luni, there where grubs + The Carrarese who houses underneath, + +Among the marbles white a cavern had + For his abode; whence to behold the stars + And sea, the view was not cut off from him. + +And she there, who is covering up her breasts, + Which thou beholdest not, with loosened tresses, + And on that side has all the hairy skin, + +Was Manto, who made quest through many lands, + Afterwards tarried there where I was born; + Whereof I would thou list to me a little. + +After her father had from life departed, + And the city of Bacchus had become enslaved, + She a long season wandered through the world. + +Above in beauteous Italy lies a lake + At the Alp’s foot that shuts in Germany + Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco. + +By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed, + ’Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino, + With water that grows stagnant in that lake. + +Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor, + And he of Brescia, and the Veronese + Might give his blessing, if he passed that way. + +Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong, + To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks, + Where round about the bank descendeth lowest. + +There of necessity must fall whatever + In bosom of Benaco cannot stay, + And grows a river down through verdant pastures. + +Soon as the water doth begin to run, + No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio, + Far as Governo, where it falls in Po. + +Not far it runs before it finds a plain + In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy, + And oft ’tis wont in summer to be sickly. + +Passing that way the virgin pitiless + Land in the middle of the fen descried, + Untilled and naked of inhabitants; + +There to escape all human intercourse, + She with her servants stayed, her arts to practise + And lived, and left her empty body there. + +The men, thereafter, who were scattered round, + Collected in that place, which was made strong + By the lagoon it had on every side; + +They built their city over those dead bones, + And, after her who first the place selected, + Mantua named it, without other omen. + +Its people once within more crowded were, + Ere the stupidity of Casalodi + From Pinamonte had received deceit. + +Therefore I caution thee, if e’er thou hearest + Originate my city otherwise, + No falsehood may the verity defraud.” + +And I: “My Master, thy discourses are + To me so certain, and so take my faith, + That unto me the rest would be spent coals. + +But tell me of the people who are passing, + If any one note-worthy thou beholdest, + For only unto that my mind reverts.” + +Then said he to me: “He who from the cheek + Thrusts out his beard upon his swarthy shoulders + Was, at the time when Greece was void of males, + +So that there scarce remained one in the cradle, + An augur, and with Calchas gave the moment, + In Aulis, when to sever the first cable. + +Eryphylus his name was, and so sings + My lofty Tragedy in some part or other; + That knowest thou well, who knowest the whole of it. + +The next, who is so slender in the flanks, + Was Michael Scott, who of a verity + Of magical illusions knew the game. + +Behold Guido Bonatti, behold Asdente, + Who now unto his leather and his thread + Would fain have stuck, but he too late repents. + +Behold the wretched ones, who left the needle, + The spool and rock, and made them fortune-tellers; + They wrought their magic spells with herb and image. + +But come now, for already holds the confines + Of both the hemispheres, and under Seville + Touches the ocean-wave, Cain and the thorns, + +And yesternight the moon was round already; + Thou shouldst remember well it did not harm thee + From time to time within the forest deep.” + +Thus spake he to me, and we walked the while. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXI + + +From bridge to bridge thus, speaking other things + Of which my Comedy cares not to sing, + We came along, and held the summit, when + +We halted to behold another fissure + Of Malebolge and other vain laments; + And I beheld it marvellously dark. + +As in the Arsenal of the Venetians + Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch + To smear their unsound vessels o’er again, + +For sail they cannot; and instead thereof + One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks + The ribs of that which many a voyage has made; + +One hammers at the prow, one at the stern, + This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists, + Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen; + +Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine, + Was boiling down below there a dense pitch + Which upon every side the bank belimed. + +I saw it, but I did not see within it + Aught but the bubbles that the boiling raised, + And all swell up and resubside compressed. + +The while below there fixedly I gazed, + My Leader, crying out: “Beware, beware!” + Drew me unto himself from where I stood. + +Then I turned round, as one who is impatient + To see what it behoves him to escape, + And whom a sudden terror doth unman, + +Who, while he looks, delays not his departure; + And I beheld behind us a black devil, + Running along upon the crag, approach. + +Ah, how ferocious was he in his aspect! + And how he seemed to me in action ruthless, + With open wings and light upon his feet! + +His shoulders, which sharp-pointed were and high, + A sinner did encumber with both haunches, + And he held clutched the sinews of the feet. + +From off our bridge, he said: “O Malebranche, + Behold one of the elders of Saint Zita; + Plunge him beneath, for I return for others + +Unto that town, which is well furnished with them. + All there are barrators, except Bonturo; + No into Yes for money there is changed.” + +He hurled him down, and over the hard crag + Turned round, and never was a mastiff loosened + In so much hurry to pursue a thief. + +The other sank, and rose again face downward; + But the demons, under cover of the bridge, + Cried: “Here the Santo Volto has no place! + +Here swims one otherwise than in the Serchio; + Therefore, if for our gaffs thou wishest not, + Do not uplift thyself above the pitch.” + +They seized him then with more than a hundred rakes; + They said: “It here behoves thee to dance covered, + That, if thou canst, thou secretly mayest pilfer.” + +Not otherwise the cooks their scullions make + Immerse into the middle of the caldron + The meat with hooks, so that it may not float. + +Said the good Master to me: “That it be not + Apparent thou art here, crouch thyself down + Behind a jag, that thou mayest have some screen; + +And for no outrage that is done to me + Be thou afraid, because these things I know, + For once before was I in such a scuffle.” + +Then he passed on beyond the bridge’s head, + And as upon the sixth bank he arrived, + Need was for him to have a steadfast front. + +With the same fury, and the same uproar, + As dogs leap out upon a mendicant, + Who on a sudden begs, where’er he stops, + +They issued from beneath the little bridge, + And turned against him all their grappling-irons; + But he cried out: “Be none of you malignant! + +Before those hooks of yours lay hold of me, + Let one of you step forward, who may hear me, + And then take counsel as to grappling me.” + +They all cried out: “Let Malacoda go;” + Whereat one started, and the rest stood still, + And he came to him, saying: “What avails it?” + +“Thinkest thou, Malacoda, to behold me + Advanced into this place,” my Master said, + “Safe hitherto from all your skill of fence, + +Without the will divine, and fate auspicious? + Let me go on, for it in Heaven is willed + That I another show this savage road.” + +Then was his arrogance so humbled in him, + That he let fall his grapnel at his feet, + And to the others said: “Now strike him not.” + +And unto me my Guide: “O thou, who sittest + Among the splinters of the bridge crouched down, + Securely now return to me again.” + +Wherefore I started and came swiftly to him; + And all the devils forward thrust themselves, + So that I feared they would not keep their compact. + +And thus beheld I once afraid the soldiers + Who issued under safeguard from Caprona, + Seeing themselves among so many foes. + +Close did I press myself with all my person + Beside my Leader, and turned not mine eyes + From off their countenance, which was not good. + +They lowered their rakes, and “Wilt thou have me hit him,” + They said to one another, “on the rump?” + And answered: “Yes; see that thou nick him with it.” + +But the same demon who was holding parley + With my Conductor turned him very quickly, + And said: “Be quiet, be quiet, Scarmiglione;” + +Then said to us: “You can no farther go + Forward upon this crag, because is lying + All shattered, at the bottom, the sixth arch. + +And if it still doth please you to go onward, + Pursue your way along upon this rock; + Near is another crag that yields a path. + +Yesterday, five hours later than this hour, + One thousand and two hundred sixty-six + Years were complete, that here the way was broken. + +I send in that direction some of mine + To see if any one doth air himself; + Go ye with them; for they will not be vicious. + +Step forward, Alichino and Calcabrina,” + Began he to cry out, “and thou, Cagnazzo; + And Barbariccia, do thou guide the ten. + +Come forward, Libicocco and Draghignazzo, + And tusked Ciriatto and Graffiacane, + And Farfarello and mad Rubicante; + +Search ye all round about the boiling pitch; + Let these be safe as far as the next crag, + That all unbroken passes o’er the dens.” + +“O me! what is it, Master, that I see? + Pray let us go,” I said, “without an escort, + If thou knowest how, since for myself I ask none. + +If thou art as observant as thy wont is, + Dost thou not see that they do gnash their teeth, + And with their brows are threatening woe to us?” + +And he to me: “I will not have thee fear; + Let them gnash on, according to their fancy, + Because they do it for those boiling wretches.” + +Along the left-hand dike they wheeled about; + But first had each one thrust his tongue between + His teeth towards their leader for a signal; + +And he had made a trumpet of his rump. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXII + + +I have erewhile seen horsemen moving camp, + Begin the storming, and their muster make, + And sometimes starting off for their escape; + +Vaunt-couriers have I seen upon your land, + O Aretines, and foragers go forth, + Tournaments stricken, and the joustings run, + +Sometimes with trumpets and sometimes with bells, + With kettle-drums, and signals of the castles, + And with our own, and with outlandish things, + +But never yet with bagpipe so uncouth + Did I see horsemen move, nor infantry, + Nor ship by any sign of land or star. + +We went upon our way with the ten demons; + Ah, savage company! but in the church + With saints, and in the tavern with the gluttons! + +Ever upon the pitch was my intent, + To see the whole condition of that Bolgia, + And of the people who therein were burned. + +Even as the dolphins, when they make a sign + To mariners by arching of the back, + That they should counsel take to save their vessel, + +Thus sometimes, to alleviate his pain, + One of the sinners would display his back, + And in less time conceal it than it lightens. + +As on the brink of water in a ditch + The frogs stand only with their muzzles out, + So that they hide their feet and other bulk, + +So upon every side the sinners stood; + But ever as Barbariccia near them came, + Thus underneath the boiling they withdrew. + +I saw, and still my heart doth shudder at it, + One waiting thus, even as it comes to pass + One frog remains, and down another dives; + +And Graffiacan, who most confronted him, + Grappled him by his tresses smeared with pitch, + And drew him up, so that he seemed an otter. + +I knew, before, the names of all of them, + So had I noted them when they were chosen, + And when they called each other, listened how. + +“O Rubicante, see that thou do lay + Thy claws upon him, so that thou mayst flay him,” + Cried all together the accursed ones. + +And I: “My Master, see to it, if thou canst, + That thou mayst know who is the luckless wight, + Thus come into his adversaries’ hands.” + +Near to the side of him my Leader drew, + Asked of him whence he was; and he replied: + “I in the kingdom of Navarre was born; + +My mother placed me servant to a lord, + For she had borne me to a ribald knave, + Destroyer of himself and of his things. + +Then I domestic was of good King Thibault; + I set me there to practise barratry, + For which I pay the reckoning in this heat.” + +And Ciriatto, from whose mouth projected, + On either side, a tusk, as in a boar, + Caused him to feel how one of them could rip. + +Among malicious cats the mouse had come; + But Barbariccia clasped him in his arms, + And said: “Stand ye aside, while I enfork him.” + +And to my Master he turned round his head; + “Ask him again,” he said, “if more thou wish + To know from him, before some one destroy him.” + +The Guide: “Now tell then of the other culprits; + Knowest thou any one who is a Latian, + Under the pitch?” And he: “I separated + +Lately from one who was a neighbour to it; + Would that I still were covered up with him, + For I should fear not either claw nor hook!” + +And Libicocco: “We have borne too much;” + And with his grapnel seized him by the arm, + So that, by rending, he tore off a tendon. + +Eke Draghignazzo wished to pounce upon him + Down at the legs; whence their Decurion + Turned round and round about with evil look. + +When they again somewhat were pacified, + Of him, who still was looking at his wound, + Demanded my Conductor without stay: + +“Who was that one, from whom a luckless parting + Thou sayest thou hast made, to come ashore?” + And he replied: “It was the Friar Gomita, + +He of Gallura, vessel of all fraud, + Who had the enemies of his Lord in hand, + And dealt so with them each exults thereat; + +Money he took, and let them smoothly off, + As he says; and in other offices + A barrator was he, not mean but sovereign. + +Foregathers with him one Don Michael Zanche + Of Logodoro; and of Sardinia + To gossip never do their tongues feel tired. + +O me! see that one, how he grinds his teeth; + Still farther would I speak, but am afraid + Lest he to scratch my itch be making ready.” + +And the grand Provost, turned to Farfarello, + Who rolled his eyes about as if to strike, + Said: “Stand aside there, thou malicious bird.” + +“If you desire either to see or hear,” + The terror-stricken recommenced thereon, + “Tuscans or Lombards, I will make them come. + +But let the Malebranche cease a little, + So that these may not their revenges fear, + And I, down sitting in this very place, + +For one that I am will make seven come, + When I shall whistle, as our custom is + To do whenever one of us comes out.” + +Cagnazzo at these words his muzzle lifted, + Shaking his head, and said: “Just hear the trick + Which he has thought of, down to throw himself!” + +Whence he, who snares in great abundance had, + Responded: “I by far too cunning am, + When I procure for mine a greater sadness.” + +Alichin held not in, but running counter + Unto the rest, said to him: “If thou dive, + I will not follow thee upon the gallop, + +But I will beat my wings above the pitch; + The height be left, and be the bank a shield + To see if thou alone dost countervail us.” + +O thou who readest, thou shalt hear new sport! + Each to the other side his eyes averted; + He first, who most reluctant was to do it. + +The Navarrese selected well his time; + Planted his feet on land, and in a moment + Leaped, and released himself from their design. + +Whereat each one was suddenly stung with shame, + But he most who was cause of the defeat; + Therefore he moved, and cried: “Thou art o’ertakern.” + +But little it availed, for wings could not + Outstrip the fear; the other one went under, + And, flying, upward he his breast directed; + +Not otherwise the duck upon a sudden + Dives under, when the falcon is approaching, + And upward he returneth cross and weary. + +Infuriate at the mockery, Calcabrina + Flying behind him followed close, desirous + The other should escape, to have a quarrel. + +And when the barrator had disappeared, + He turned his talons upon his companion, + And grappled with him right above the moat. + +But sooth the other was a doughty sparhawk + To clapperclaw him well; and both of them + Fell in the middle of the boiling pond. + +A sudden intercessor was the heat; + But ne’ertheless of rising there was naught, + To such degree they had their wings belimed. + +Lamenting with the others, Barbariccia + Made four of them fly to the other side + With all their gaffs, and very speedily + +This side and that they to their posts descended; + They stretched their hooks towards the pitch-ensnared, + Who were already baked within the crust, + +And in this manner busied did we leave them. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXIII + + +Silent, alone, and without company + We went, the one in front, the other after, + As go the Minor Friars along their way. + +Upon the fable of Aesop was directed + My thought, by reason of the present quarrel, + Where he has spoken of the frog and mouse; + +For ‘mo’ and ‘issa’ are not more alike + Than this one is to that, if well we couple + End and beginning with a steadfast mind. + +And even as one thought from another springs, + So afterward from that was born another, + Which the first fear within me double made. + +Thus did I ponder: “These on our account + Are laughed to scorn, with injury and scoff + So great, that much I think it must annoy them. + +If anger be engrafted on ill-will, + They will come after us more merciless + Than dog upon the leveret which he seizes,” + +I felt my hair stand all on end already + With terror, and stood backwardly intent, + When said I: “Master, if thou hidest not + +Thyself and me forthwith, of Malebranche + I am in dread; we have them now behind us; + I so imagine them, I already feel them.” + +And he: “If I were made of leaded glass, + Thine outward image I should not attract + Sooner to me than I imprint the inner. + +Just now thy thoughts came in among my own, + With similar attitude and similar face, + So that of both one counsel sole I made. + +If peradventure the right bank so slope + That we to the next Bolgia can descend, + We shall escape from the imagined chase.” + +Not yet he finished rendering such opinion, + When I beheld them come with outstretched wings, + Not far remote, with will to seize upon us. + +My Leader on a sudden seized me up, + Even as a mother who by noise is wakened, + And close beside her sees the enkindled flames, + +Who takes her son, and flies, and does not stop, + Having more care of him than of herself, + So that she clothes her only with a shift; + +And downward from the top of the hard bank + Supine he gave him to the pendent rock, + That one side of the other Bolgia walls. + +Ne’er ran so swiftly water through a sluice + To turn the wheel of any land-built mill, + When nearest to the paddles it approaches, + +As did my Master down along that border, + Bearing me with him on his breast away, + As his own son, and not as a companion. + +Hardly the bed of the ravine below + His feet had reached, ere they had reached the hill + Right over us; but he was not afraid; + +For the high Providence, which had ordained + To place them ministers of the fifth moat, + The power of thence departing took from all. + +A painted people there below we found, + Who went about with footsteps very slow, + Weeping and in their semblance tired and vanquished. + +They had on mantles with the hoods low down + Before their eyes, and fashioned of the cut + That in Cologne they for the monks are made. + +Without, they gilded are so that it dazzles; + But inwardly all leaden and so heavy + That Frederick used to put them on of straw. + +O everlastingly fatiguing mantle! + Again we turned us, still to the left hand + Along with them, intent on their sad plaint; + +But owing to the weight, that weary folk + Came on so tardily, that we were new + In company at each motion of the haunch. + +Whence I unto my Leader: “See thou find + Some one who may by deed or name be known, + And thus in going move thine eye about.” + +And one, who understood the Tuscan speech, + Cried to us from behind: “Stay ye your feet, + Ye, who so run athwart the dusky air! + +Perhaps thou’lt have from me what thou demandest.” + Whereat the Leader turned him, and said: “Wait, + And then according to his pace proceed.” + +I stopped, and two beheld I show great haste + Of spirit, in their faces, to be with me; + But the burden and the narrow way delayed them. + +When they came up, long with an eye askance + They scanned me without uttering a word. + Then to each other turned, and said together: + +“He by the action of his throat seems living; + And if they dead are, by what privilege + Go they uncovered by the heavy stole?” + +Then said to me: “Tuscan, who to the college + Of miserable hypocrites art come, + Do not disdain to tell us who thou art.” + +And I to them: “Born was I, and grew up + In the great town on the fair river of Arno, + And with the body am I’ve always had. + +But who are ye, in whom there trickles down + Along your cheeks such grief as I behold? + And what pain is upon you, that so sparkles?” + +And one replied to me: “These orange cloaks + Are made of lead so heavy, that the weights + Cause in this way their balances to creak. + +Frati Gaudenti were we, and Bolognese; + I Catalano, and he Loderingo + Named, and together taken by thy city, + +As the wont is to take one man alone, + For maintenance of its peace; and we were such + That still it is apparent round Gardingo.” + +“O Friars,” began I, “your iniquitous. . .” + But said no more; for to mine eyes there rushed + One crucified with three stakes on the ground. + +When me he saw, he writhed himself all over, + Blowing into his beard with suspirations; + And the Friar Catalan, who noticed this, + +Said to me: “This transfixed one, whom thou seest, + Counselled the Pharisees that it was meet + To put one man to torture for the people. + +Crosswise and naked is he on the path, + As thou perceivest; and he needs must feel, + Whoever passes, first how much he weighs; + +And in like mode his father-in-law is punished + Within this moat, and the others of the council, + Which for the Jews was a malignant seed.” + +And thereupon I saw Virgilius marvel + O’er him who was extended on the cross + So vilely in eternal banishment. + +Then he directed to the Friar this voice: + “Be not displeased, if granted thee, to tell us + If to the right hand any pass slope down + +By which we two may issue forth from here, + Without constraining some of the black angels + To come and extricate us from this deep.” + +Then he made answer: “Nearer than thou hopest + There is a rock, that forth from the great circle + Proceeds, and crosses all the cruel valleys, + +Save that at this ’tis broken, and does not bridge it; + You will be able to mount up the ruin, + That sidelong slopes and at the bottom rises.” + +The Leader stood awhile with head bowed down; + Then said: “The business badly he recounted + Who grapples with his hook the sinners yonder.” + +And the Friar: “Many of the Devil’s vices + Once heard I at Bologna, and among them, + That he’s a liar and the father of lies.” + +Thereat my Leader with great strides went on, + Somewhat disturbed with anger in his looks; + Whence from the heavy-laden I departed + +After the prints of his beloved feet. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXIV + + +In that part of the youthful year wherein + The Sun his locks beneath Aquarius tempers, + And now the nights draw near to half the day, + +What time the hoar-frost copies on the ground + The outward semblance of her sister white, + But little lasts the temper of her pen, + +The husbandman, whose forage faileth him, + Rises, and looks, and seeth the champaign + All gleaming white, whereat he beats his flank, + +Returns in doors, and up and down laments, + Like a poor wretch, who knows not what to do; + Then he returns and hope revives again, + +Seeing the world has changed its countenance + In little time, and takes his shepherd’s crook, + And forth the little lambs to pasture drives. + +Thus did the Master fill me with alarm, + When I beheld his forehead so disturbed, + And to the ailment came as soon the plaster. + +For as we came unto the ruined bridge, + The Leader turned to me with that sweet look + Which at the mountain’s foot I first beheld. + +His arms he opened, after some advisement + Within himself elected, looking first + Well at the ruin, and laid hold of me. + +And even as he who acts and meditates, + For aye it seems that he provides beforehand, + So upward lifting me towards the summit + +Of a huge rock, he scanned another crag, + Saying: “To that one grapple afterwards, + But try first if ’tis such that it will hold thee.” + +This was no way for one clothed with a cloak; + For hardly we, he light, and I pushed upward, + Were able to ascend from jag to jag. + +And had it not been, that upon that precinct + Shorter was the ascent than on the other, + He I know not, but I had been dead beat. + +But because Malebolge tow’rds the mouth + Of the profoundest well is all inclining, + The structure of each valley doth import + +That one bank rises and the other sinks. + Still we arrived at length upon the point + Wherefrom the last stone breaks itself asunder. + +The breath was from my lungs so milked away, + When I was up, that I could go no farther, + Nay, I sat down upon my first arrival. + +“Now it behoves thee thus to put off sloth,” + My Master said; “for sitting upon down, + Or under quilt, one cometh not to fame, + +Withouten which whoso his life consumes + Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth, + As smoke in air or in the water foam. + +And therefore raise thee up, o’ercome the anguish + With spirit that o’ercometh every battle, + If with its heavy body it sink not. + +A longer stairway it behoves thee mount; + ’Tis not enough from these to have departed; + Let it avail thee, if thou understand me.” + +Then I uprose, showing myself provided + Better with breath than I did feel myself, + And said: “Go on, for I am strong and bold.” + +Upward we took our way along the crag, + Which jagged was, and narrow, and difficult, + And more precipitous far than that before. + +Speaking I went, not to appear exhausted; + Whereat a voice from the next moat came forth, + Not well adapted to articulate words. + +I know not what it said, though o’er the back + I now was of the arch that passes there; + But he seemed moved to anger who was speaking. + +I was bent downward, but my living eyes + Could not attain the bottom, for the dark; + Wherefore I: “Master, see that thou arrive + +At the next round, and let us descend the wall; + For as from hence I hear and understand not, + So I look down and nothing I distinguish.” + +“Other response,” he said, “I make thee not, + Except the doing; for the modest asking + Ought to be followed by the deed in silence.” + +We from the bridge descended at its head, + Where it connects itself with the eighth bank, + And then was manifest to me the Bolgia; + +And I beheld therein a terrible throng + Of serpents, and of such a monstrous kind, + That the remembrance still congeals my blood + +Let Libya boast no longer with her sand; + For if Chelydri, Jaculi, and Phareae + She breeds, with Cenchri and with Amphisbaena, + +Neither so many plagues nor so malignant + E’er showed she with all Ethiopia, + Nor with whatever on the Red Sea is! + +Among this cruel and most dismal throng + People were running naked and affrighted. + Without the hope of hole or heliotrope. + +They had their hands with serpents bound behind them; + These riveted upon their reins the tail + And head, and were in front of them entwined. + +And lo! at one who was upon our side + There darted forth a serpent, which transfixed him + There where the neck is knotted to the shoulders. + +Nor ‘O’ so quickly e’er, nor ‘I’ was written, + As he took fire, and burned; and ashes wholly + Behoved it that in falling he became. + +And when he on the ground was thus destroyed, + The ashes drew together, and of themselves + Into himself they instantly returned. + +Even thus by the great sages ’tis confessed + The phoenix dies, and then is born again, + When it approaches its five-hundredth year; + +On herb or grain it feeds not in its life, + But only on tears of incense and amomum, + And nard and myrrh are its last winding-sheet. + +And as he is who falls, and knows not how, + By force of demons who to earth down drag him, + Or other oppilation that binds man, + +When he arises and around him looks, + Wholly bewildered by the mighty anguish + Which he has suffered, and in looking sighs; + +Such was that sinner after he had risen. + Justice of God! O how severe it is, + That blows like these in vengeance poureth down! + +The Guide thereafter asked him who he was; + Whence he replied: “I rained from Tuscany + A short time since into this cruel gorge. + +A bestial life, and not a human, pleased me, + Even as the mule I was; I’m Vanni Fucci, + Beast, and Pistoia was my worthy den.” + +And I unto the Guide: “Tell him to stir not, + And ask what crime has thrust him here below, + For once a man of blood and wrath I saw him.” + +And the sinner, who had heard, dissembled not, + But unto me directed mind and face, + And with a melancholy shame was painted. + +Then said: “It pains me more that thou hast caught me + Amid this misery where thou seest me, + Than when I from the other life was taken. + +What thou demandest I cannot deny; + So low am I put down because I robbed + The sacristy of the fair ornaments, + +And falsely once ’twas laid upon another; + But that thou mayst not such a sight enjoy, + If thou shalt e’er be out of the dark places, + +Thine ears to my announcement ope and hear: + Pistoia first of Neri groweth meagre; + Then Florence doth renew her men and manners; + +Mars draws a vapour up from Val di Magra, + Which is with turbid clouds enveloped round, + And with impetuous and bitter tempest + +Over Campo Picen shall be the battle; + When it shall suddenly rend the mist asunder, + So that each Bianco shall thereby be smitten. + +And this I’ve said that it may give thee pain.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXV + + +At the conclusion of his words, the thief + Lifted his hands aloft with both the figs, + Crying: “Take that, God, for at thee I aim them.” + +From that time forth the serpents were my friends; + For one entwined itself about his neck + As if it said: “I will not thou speak more;” + +And round his arms another, and rebound him, + Clinching itself together so in front, + That with them he could not a motion make. + +Pistoia, ah, Pistoia! why resolve not + To burn thyself to ashes and so perish, + Since in ill-doing thou thy seed excellest? + +Through all the sombre circles of this Hell, + Spirit I saw not against God so proud, + Not he who fell at Thebes down from the walls! + +He fled away, and spake no further word; + And I beheld a Centaur full of rage + Come crying out: “Where is, where is the scoffer?” + +I do not think Maremma has so many + Serpents as he had all along his back, + As far as where our countenance begins. + +Upon the shoulders, just behind the nape, + With wings wide open was a dragon lying, + And he sets fire to all that he encounters. + +My Master said: “That one is Cacus, who + Beneath the rock upon Mount Aventine + Created oftentimes a lake of blood. + +He goes not on the same road with his brothers, + By reason of the fraudulent theft he made + Of the great herd, which he had near to him; + +Whereat his tortuous actions ceased beneath + The mace of Hercules, who peradventure + Gave him a hundred, and he felt not ten.” + +While he was speaking thus, he had passed by, + And spirits three had underneath us come, + Of which nor I aware was, nor my Leader, + +Until what time they shouted: “Who are you?” + On which account our story made a halt, + And then we were intent on them alone. + +I did not know them; but it came to pass, + As it is wont to happen by some chance, + That one to name the other was compelled, + +Exclaiming: “Where can Cianfa have remained?” + Whence I, so that the Leader might attend, + Upward from chin to nose my finger laid. + +If thou art, Reader, slow now to believe + What I shall say, it will no marvel be, + For I who saw it hardly can admit it. + +As I was holding raised on them my brows, + Behold! a serpent with six feet darts forth + In front of one, and fastens wholly on him. + +With middle feet it bound him round the paunch, + And with the forward ones his arms it seized; + Then thrust its teeth through one cheek and the other; + +The hindermost it stretched upon his thighs, + And put its tail through in between the two, + And up behind along the reins outspread it. + +Ivy was never fastened by its barbs + Unto a tree so, as this horrible reptile + Upon the other’s limbs entwined its own. + +Then they stuck close, as if of heated wax + They had been made, and intermixed their colour; + Nor one nor other seemed now what he was; + +E’en as proceedeth on before the flame + Upward along the paper a brown colour, + Which is not black as yet, and the white dies. + +The other two looked on, and each of them + Cried out: “O me, Agnello, how thou changest! + Behold, thou now art neither two nor one.” + +Already the two heads had one become, + When there appeared to us two figures mingled + Into one face, wherein the two were lost. + +Of the four lists were fashioned the two arms, + The thighs and legs, the belly and the chest + Members became that never yet were seen. + +Every original aspect there was cancelled; + Two and yet none did the perverted image + Appear, and such departed with slow pace. + +Even as a lizard, under the great scourge + Of days canicular, exchanging hedge, + Lightning appeareth if the road it cross; + +Thus did appear, coming towards the bellies + Of the two others, a small fiery serpent, + Livid and black as is a peppercorn. + +And in that part whereat is first received + Our aliment, it one of them transfixed; + Then downward fell in front of him extended. + +The one transfixed looked at it, but said naught; + Nay, rather with feet motionless he yawned, + Just as if sleep or fever had assailed him. + +He at the serpent gazed, and it at him; + One through the wound, the other through the mouth + Smoked violently, and the smoke commingled. + +Henceforth be silent Lucan, where he mentions + Wretched Sabellus and Nassidius, + And wait to hear what now shall be shot forth. + +Be silent Ovid, of Cadmus and Arethusa; + For if him to a snake, her to fountain, + Converts he fabling, that I grudge him not; + +Because two natures never front to front + Has he transmuted, so that both the forms + To interchange their matter ready were. + +Together they responded in such wise, + That to a fork the serpent cleft his tail, + And eke the wounded drew his feet together. + +The legs together with the thighs themselves + Adhered so, that in little time the juncture + No sign whatever made that was apparent. + +He with the cloven tail assumed the figure + The other one was losing, and his skin + Became elastic, and the other’s hard. + +I saw the arms draw inward at the armpits, + And both feet of the reptile, that were short, + Lengthen as much as those contracted were. + +Thereafter the hind feet, together twisted, + Became the member that a man conceals, + And of his own the wretch had two created. + +While both of them the exhalation veils + With a new colour, and engenders hair + On one of them and depilates the other, + +The one uprose and down the other fell, + Though turning not away their impious lamps, + Underneath which each one his muzzle changed. + +He who was standing drew it tow’rds the temples, + And from excess of matter, which came thither, + Issued the ears from out the hollow cheeks; + +What did not backward run and was retained + Of that excess made to the face a nose, + And the lips thickened far as was befitting. + +He who lay prostrate thrusts his muzzle forward, + And backward draws the ears into his head, + In the same manner as the snail its horns; + +And so the tongue, which was entire and apt + For speech before, is cleft, and the bi-forked + In the other closes up, and the smoke ceases. + +The soul, which to a reptile had been changed, + Along the valley hissing takes to flight, + And after him the other speaking sputters. + +Then did he turn upon him his new shoulders, + And said to the other: “I’ll have Buoso run, + Crawling as I have done, along this road.” + +In this way I beheld the seventh ballast + Shift and reshift, and here be my excuse + The novelty, if aught my pen transgress. + +And notwithstanding that mine eyes might be + Somewhat bewildered, and my mind dismayed, + They could not flee away so secretly + +But that I plainly saw Puccio Sciancato; + And he it was who sole of three companions, + Which came in the beginning, was not changed; + +The other was he whom thou, Gaville, weepest. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXVI + + +Rejoice, O Florence, since thou art so great, + That over sea and land thou beatest thy wings, + And throughout Hell thy name is spread abroad! + +Among the thieves five citizens of thine + Like these I found, whence shame comes unto me, + And thou thereby to no great honour risest. + +But if when morn is near our dreams are true, + Feel shalt thou in a little time from now + What Prato, if none other, craves for thee. + +And if it now were, it were not too soon; + Would that it were, seeing it needs must be, + For ’twill aggrieve me more the more I age. + +We went our way, and up along the stairs + The bourns had made us to descend before, + Remounted my Conductor and drew me. + +And following the solitary path + Among the rocks and ridges of the crag, + The foot without the hand sped not at all. + +Then sorrowed I, and sorrow now again, + When I direct my mind to what I saw, + And more my genius curb than I am wont, + +That it may run not unless virtue guide it; + So that if some good star, or better thing, + Have given me good, I may myself not grudge it. + +As many as the hind (who on the hill + Rests at the time when he who lights the world + His countenance keeps least concealed from us, + +While as the fly gives place unto the gnat) + Seeth the glow-worms down along the valley, + Perchance there where he ploughs and makes his vintage; + +With flames as manifold resplendent all + Was the eighth Bolgia, as I grew aware + As soon as I was where the depth appeared. + +And such as he who with the bears avenged him + Beheld Elijah’s chariot at departing, + What time the steeds to heaven erect uprose, + +For with his eye he could not follow it + So as to see aught else than flame alone, + Even as a little cloud ascending upward, + +Thus each along the gorge of the intrenchment + Was moving; for not one reveals the theft, + And every flame a sinner steals away. + +I stood upon the bridge uprisen to see, + So that, if I had seized not on a rock, + Down had I fallen without being pushed. + +And the Leader, who beheld me so attent, + Exclaimed: “Within the fires the spirits are; + Each swathes himself with that wherewith he burns.” + +“My Master,” I replied, “by hearing thee + I am more sure; but I surmised already + It might be so, and already wished to ask thee + +Who is within that fire, which comes so cleft + At top, it seems uprising from the pyre + Where was Eteocles with his brother placed.” + +He answered me: “Within there are tormented + Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together + They unto vengeance run as unto wrath. + +And there within their flame do they lament + The ambush of the horse, which made the door + Whence issued forth the Romans’ gentle seed; + +Therein is wept the craft, for which being dead + Deidamia still deplores Achilles, + And pain for the Palladium there is borne.” + +“If they within those sparks possess the power + To speak,” I said, “thee, Master, much I pray, + And re-pray, that the prayer be worth a thousand, + +That thou make no denial of awaiting + Until the horned flame shall hither come; + Thou seest that with desire I lean towards it.” + +And he to me: “Worthy is thy entreaty + Of much applause, and therefore I accept it; + But take heed that thy tongue restrain itself. + +Leave me to speak, because I have conceived + That which thou wishest; for they might disdain + Perchance, since they were Greeks, discourse of thine.” + +When now the flame had come unto that point, + Where to my Leader it seemed time and place, + After this fashion did I hear him speak: + +“O ye, who are twofold within one fire, + If I deserved of you, while I was living, + If I deserved of you or much or little + +When in the world I wrote the lofty verses, + Do not move on, but one of you declare + Whither, being lost, he went away to die.” + +Then of the antique flame the greater horn, + Murmuring, began to wave itself about + Even as a flame doth which the wind fatigues. + +Thereafterward, the summit to and fro + Moving as if it were the tongue that spake, + It uttered forth a voice, and said: “When I + +From Circe had departed, who concealed me + More than a year there near unto Gaeta, + Or ever yet Aeneas named it so, + +Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence + For my old father, nor the due affection + Which joyous should have made Penelope, + +Could overcome within me the desire + I had to be experienced of the world, + And of the vice and virtue of mankind; + +But I put forth on the high open sea + With one sole ship, and that small company + By which I never had deserted been. + +Both of the shores I saw as far as Spain, + Far as Morocco, and the isle of Sardes, + And the others which that sea bathes round about. + +I and my company were old and slow + When at that narrow passage we arrived + Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals, + +That man no farther onward should adventure. + On the right hand behind me left I Seville, + And on the other already had left Ceuta. + +‘O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand + Perils,’ I said, ‘have come unto the West, + To this so inconsiderable vigil + +Which is remaining of your senses still + Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge, + Following the sun, of the unpeopled world. + +Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang; + Ye were not made to live like unto brutes, + But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.’ + +So eager did I render my companions, + With this brief exhortation, for the voyage, + That then I hardly could have held them back. + +And having turned our stern unto the morning, + We of the oars made wings for our mad flight, + Evermore gaining on the larboard side. + +Already all the stars of the other pole + The night beheld, and ours so very low + It did not rise above the ocean floor. + +Five times rekindled and as many quenched + Had been the splendour underneath the moon, + Since we had entered into the deep pass, + +When there appeared to us a mountain, dim + From distance, and it seemed to me so high + As I had never any one beheld. + +Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping; + For out of the new land a whirlwind rose, + And smote upon the fore part of the ship. + +Three times it made her whirl with all the waters, + At the fourth time it made the stern uplift, + And the prow downward go, as pleased Another, + +Until the sea above us closed again.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXVII + + +Already was the flame erect and quiet, + To speak no more, and now departed from us + With the permission of the gentle Poet; + +When yet another, which behind it came, + Caused us to turn our eyes upon its top + By a confused sound that issued from it. + +As the Sicilian bull (that bellowed first + With the lament of him, and that was right, + Who with his file had modulated it) + +Bellowed so with the voice of the afflicted, + That, notwithstanding it was made of brass, + Still it appeared with agony transfixed; + +Thus, by not having any way or issue + At first from out the fire, to its own language + Converted were the melancholy words. + +But afterwards, when they had gathered way + Up through the point, giving it that vibration + The tongue had given them in their passage out, + +We heard it said: “O thou, at whom I aim + My voice, and who but now wast speaking Lombard, + Saying, ‘Now go thy way, no more I urge thee,’ + +Because I come perchance a little late, + To stay and speak with me let it not irk thee; + Thou seest it irks not me, and I am burning. + +If thou but lately into this blind world + Hast fallen down from that sweet Latian land, + Wherefrom I bring the whole of my transgression, + +Say, if the Romagnuols have peace or war, + For I was from the mountains there between + Urbino and the yoke whence Tiber bursts.” + +I still was downward bent and listening, + When my Conductor touched me on the side, + Saying: “Speak thou: this one a Latian is.” + +And I, who had beforehand my reply + In readiness, forthwith began to speak: + “O soul, that down below there art concealed, + +Romagna thine is not and never has been + Without war in the bosom of its tyrants; + But open war I none have left there now. + +Ravenna stands as it long years has stood; + The Eagle of Polenta there is brooding, + So that she covers Cervia with her vans. + +The city which once made the long resistance, + And of the French a sanguinary heap, + Beneath the Green Paws finds itself again; + +Verrucchio’s ancient Mastiff and the new, + Who made such bad disposal of Montagna, + Where they are wont make wimbles of their teeth. + +The cities of Lamone and Santerno + Governs the Lioncel of the white lair, + Who changes sides ’twixt summer-time and winter; + +And that of which the Savio bathes the flank, + Even as it lies between the plain and mountain, + Lives between tyranny and a free state. + +Now I entreat thee tell us who thou art; + Be not more stubborn than the rest have been, + So may thy name hold front there in the world.” + +After the fire a little more had roared + In its own fashion, the sharp point it moved + This way and that, and then gave forth such breath: + +“If I believed that my reply were made + To one who to the world would e’er return, + This flame without more flickering would stand still; + +But inasmuch as never from this depth + Did any one return, if I hear true, + Without the fear of infamy I answer, + +I was a man of arms, then Cordelier, + Believing thus begirt to make amends; + And truly my belief had been fulfilled + +But for the High Priest, whom may ill betide, + Who put me back into my former sins; + And how and wherefore I will have thee hear. + +While I was still the form of bone and pulp + My mother gave to me, the deeds I did + Were not those of a lion, but a fox. + +The machinations and the covert ways + I knew them all, and practised so their craft, + That to the ends of earth the sound went forth. + +When now unto that portion of mine age + I saw myself arrived, when each one ought + To lower the sails, and coil away the ropes, + +That which before had pleased me then displeased me; + And penitent and confessing I surrendered, + Ah woe is me! and it would have bestead me; + +The Leader of the modern Pharisees + Having a war near unto Lateran, + And not with Saracens nor with the Jews, + +For each one of his enemies was Christian, + And none of them had been to conquer Acre, + Nor merchandising in the Sultan’s land, + +Nor the high office, nor the sacred orders, + In him regarded, nor in me that cord + Which used to make those girt with it more meagre; + +But even as Constantine sought out Sylvester + To cure his leprosy, within Soracte, + So this one sought me out as an adept + +To cure him of the fever of his pride. + Counsel he asked of me, and I was silent, + Because his words appeared inebriate. + +And then he said: ‘Be not thy heart afraid; + Henceforth I thee absolve; and thou instruct me + How to raze Palestrina to the ground. + +Heaven have I power to lock and to unlock, + As thou dost know; therefore the keys are two, + The which my predecessor held not dear.’ + +Then urged me on his weighty arguments + There, where my silence was the worst advice; + And said I: ‘Father, since thou washest me + +Of that sin into which I now must fall, + The promise long with the fulfilment short + Will make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.’ + +Francis came afterward, when I was dead, + For me; but one of the black Cherubim + Said to him: ‘Take him not; do me no wrong; + +He must come down among my servitors, + Because he gave the fraudulent advice + From which time forth I have been at his hair; + +For who repents not cannot be absolved, + Nor can one both repent and will at once, + Because of the contradiction which consents not.’ + +O miserable me! how I did shudder + When he seized on me, saying: ‘Peradventure + Thou didst not think that I was a logician!’ + +He bore me unto Minos, who entwined + Eight times his tail about his stubborn back, + And after he had bitten it in great rage, + +Said: ‘Of the thievish fire a culprit this;’ + Wherefore, here where thou seest, am I lost, + And vested thus in going I bemoan me.” + +When it had thus completed its recital, + The flame departed uttering lamentations, + Writhing and flapping its sharp-pointed horn. + +Onward we passed, both I and my Conductor, + Up o’er the crag above another arch, + Which the moat covers, where is paid the fee + +By those who, sowing discord, win their burden. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXVIII + + +Who ever could, e’en with untrammelled words, + Tell of the blood and of the wounds in full + Which now I saw, by many times narrating? + +Each tongue would for a certainty fall short + By reason of our speech and memory, + That have small room to comprehend so much. + +If were again assembled all the people + Which formerly upon the fateful land + Of Puglia were lamenting for their blood + +Shed by the Romans and the lingering war + That of the rings made such illustrious spoils, + As Livy has recorded, who errs not, + +With those who felt the agony of blows + By making counterstand to Robert Guiscard, + And all the rest, whose bones are gathered still + +At Ceperano, where a renegade + Was each Apulian, and at Tagliacozzo, + Where without arms the old Alardo conquered, + +And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off, + Should show, it would be nothing to compare + With the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia. + +A cask by losing centre-piece or cant + Was never shattered so, as I saw one + Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind. + +Between his legs were hanging down his entrails; + His heart was visible, and the dismal sack + That maketh excrement of what is eaten. + +While I was all absorbed in seeing him, + He looked at me, and opened with his hands + His bosom, saying: “See now how I rend me; + +How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; + In front of me doth Ali weeping go, + Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin; + +And all the others whom thou here beholdest, + Disseminators of scandal and of schism + While living were, and therefore are cleft thus. + +A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us + Thus cruelly, unto the falchion’s edge + Putting again each one of all this ream, + +When we have gone around the doleful road; + By reason that our wounds are closed again + Ere any one in front of him repass. + +But who art thou, that musest on the crag, + Perchance to postpone going to the pain + That is adjudged upon thine accusations?” + +“Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him,” + My Master made reply, “to be tormented; + But to procure him full experience, + +Me, who am dead, behoves it to conduct him + Down here through Hell, from circle unto circle; + And this is true as that I speak to thee.” + +More than a hundred were there when they heard him, + Who in the moat stood still to look at me, + Through wonderment oblivious of their torture. + +“Now say to Fra Dolcino, then, to arm him, + Thou, who perhaps wilt shortly see the sun, + If soon he wish not here to follow me, + +So with provisions, that no stress of snow + May give the victory to the Novarese, + Which otherwise to gain would not be easy.” + +After one foot to go away he lifted, + This word did Mahomet say unto me, + Then to depart upon the ground he stretched it. + +Another one, who had his throat pierced through, + And nose cut off close underneath the brows, + And had no longer but a single ear, + +Staying to look in wonder with the others, + Before the others did his gullet open, + Which outwardly was red in every part, + +And said: “O thou, whom guilt doth not condemn, + And whom I once saw up in Latian land, + Unless too great similitude deceive me, + +Call to remembrance Pier da Medicina, + If e’er thou see again the lovely plain + That from Vercelli slopes to Marcabo, + +And make it known to the best two of Fano, + To Messer Guido and Angiolello likewise, + That if foreseeing here be not in vain, + +Cast over from their vessel shall they be, + And drowned near unto the Cattolica, + By the betrayal of a tyrant fell. + +Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca + Neptune ne’er yet beheld so great a crime, + Neither of pirates nor Argolic people. + +That traitor, who sees only with one eye, + And holds the land, which some one here with me + Would fain be fasting from the vision of, + +Will make them come unto a parley with him; + Then will do so, that to Focara’s wind + They will not stand in need of vow or prayer.” + +And I to him: “Show to me and declare, + If thou wouldst have me bear up news of thee, + Who is this person of the bitter vision.” + +Then did he lay his hand upon the jaw + Of one of his companions, and his mouth + Oped, crying: “This is he, and he speaks not. + +This one, being banished, every doubt submerged + In Caesar by affirming the forearmed + Always with detriment allowed delay.” + +O how bewildered unto me appeared, + With tongue asunder in his windpipe slit, + Curio, who in speaking was so bold! + +And one, who both his hands dissevered had, + The stumps uplifting through the murky air, + So that the blood made horrible his face, + +Cried out: “Thou shalt remember Mosca also, + Who said, alas! ‘A thing done has an end!’ + Which was an ill seed for the Tuscan people.” + +“And death unto thy race,” thereto I added; + Whence he, accumulating woe on woe, + Departed, like a person sad and crazed. + +But I remained to look upon the crowd; + And saw a thing which I should be afraid, + Without some further proof, even to recount, + +If it were not that conscience reassures me, + That good companion which emboldens man + Beneath the hauberk of its feeling pure. + +I truly saw, and still I seem to see it, + A trunk without a head walk in like manner + As walked the others of the mournful herd. + +And by the hair it held the head dissevered, + Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern, + And that upon us gazed and said: “O me!” + +It of itself made to itself a lamp, + And they were two in one, and one in two; + How that can be, He knows who so ordains it. + +When it was come close to the bridge’s foot, + It lifted high its arm with all the head, + To bring more closely unto us its words, + +Which were: “Behold now the sore penalty, + Thou, who dost breathing go the dead beholding; + Behold if any be as great as this. + +And so that thou may carry news of me, + Know that Bertram de Born am I, the same + Who gave to the Young King the evil comfort. + +I made the father and the son rebellious; + Achitophel not more with Absalom + And David did with his accursed goadings. + +Because I parted persons so united, + Parted do I now bear my brain, alas! + From its beginning, which is in this trunk. + +Thus is observed in me the counterpoise.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXIX + + +The many people and the divers wounds + These eyes of mine had so inebriated, + That they were wishful to stand still and weep; + +But said Virgilius: “What dost thou still gaze at? + Why is thy sight still riveted down there + Among the mournful, mutilated shades? + +Thou hast not done so at the other Bolge; + Consider, if to count them thou believest, + That two-and-twenty miles the valley winds, + +And now the moon is underneath our feet; + Henceforth the time allotted us is brief, + And more is to be seen than what thou seest.” + +“If thou hadst,” I made answer thereupon, + “Attended to the cause for which I looked, + Perhaps a longer stay thou wouldst have pardoned.” + +Meanwhile my Guide departed, and behind him + I went, already making my reply, + And superadding: “In that cavern where + +I held mine eyes with such attention fixed, + I think a spirit of my blood laments + The sin which down below there costs so much.” + +Then said the Master: “Be no longer broken + Thy thought from this time forward upon him; + Attend elsewhere, and there let him remain; + +For him I saw below the little bridge, + Pointing at thee, and threatening with his finger + Fiercely, and heard him called Geri del Bello. + +So wholly at that time wast thou impeded + By him who formerly held Altaforte, + Thou didst not look that way; so he departed.” + +“O my Conductor, his own violent death, + Which is not yet avenged for him,” I said, + “By any who is sharer in the shame, + +Made him disdainful; whence he went away, + As I imagine, without speaking to me, + And thereby made me pity him the more.” + +Thus did we speak as far as the first place + Upon the crag, which the next valley shows + Down to the bottom, if there were more light. + +When we were now right over the last cloister + Of Malebolge, so that its lay-brothers + Could manifest themselves unto our sight, + +Divers lamentings pierced me through and through, + Which with compassion had their arrows barbed, + Whereat mine ears I covered with my hands. + +What pain would be, if from the hospitals + Of Valdichiana, ’twixt July and September, + And of Maremma and Sardinia + +All the diseases in one moat were gathered, + Such was it here, and such a stench came from it + As from putrescent limbs is wont to issue. + +We had descended on the furthest bank + From the long crag, upon the left hand still, + And then more vivid was my power of sight + +Down tow’rds the bottom, where the ministress + Of the high Lord, Justice infallible, + Punishes forgers, which she here records. + +I do not think a sadder sight to see + Was in Aegina the whole people sick, + (When was the air so full of pestilence, + +The animals, down to the little worm, + All fell, and afterwards the ancient people, + According as the poets have affirmed, + +Were from the seed of ants restored again,) + Than was it to behold through that dark valley + The spirits languishing in divers heaps. + +This on the belly, that upon the back + One of the other lay, and others crawling + Shifted themselves along the dismal road. + +We step by step went onward without speech, + Gazing upon and listening to the sick + Who had not strength enough to lift their bodies. + +I saw two sitting leaned against each other, + As leans in heating platter against platter, + From head to foot bespotted o’er with scabs; + +And never saw I plied a currycomb + By stable-boy for whom his master waits, + Or him who keeps awake unwillingly, + +As every one was plying fast the bite + Of nails upon himself, for the great rage + Of itching which no other succour had. + +And the nails downward with them dragged the scab, + In fashion as a knife the scales of bream, + Or any other fish that has them largest. + +“O thou, that with thy fingers dost dismail thee,” + Began my Leader unto one of them, + “And makest of them pincers now and then, + +Tell me if any Latian is with those + Who are herein; so may thy nails suffice thee + To all eternity unto this work.” + +“Latians are we, whom thou so wasted seest, + Both of us here,” one weeping made reply; + “But who art thou, that questionest about us?” + +And said the Guide: “One am I who descends + Down with this living man from cliff to cliff, + And I intend to show Hell unto him.” + +Then broken was their mutual support, + And trembling each one turned himself to me, + With others who had heard him by rebound. + +Wholly to me did the good Master gather, + Saying: “Say unto them whate’er thou wishest.” + And I began, since he would have it so: + +“So may your memory not steal away + In the first world from out the minds of men, + But so may it survive ’neath many suns, + +Say to me who ye are, and of what people; + Let not your foul and loathsome punishment + Make you afraid to show yourselves to me.” + +“I of Arezzo was,” one made reply, + “And Albert of Siena had me burned; + But what I died for does not bring me here. + +’Tis true I said to him, speaking in jest, + That I could rise by flight into the air, + And he who had conceit, but little wit, + +Would have me show to him the art; and only + Because no Daedalus I made him, made me + Be burned by one who held him as his son. + +But unto the last Bolgia of the ten, + For alchemy, which in the world I practised, + Minos, who cannot err, has me condemned.” + +And to the Poet said I: “Now was ever + So vain a people as the Sienese? + Not for a certainty the French by far.” + +Whereat the other leper, who had heard me, + Replied unto my speech: “Taking out Stricca, + Who knew the art of moderate expenses, + +And Niccolo, who the luxurious use + Of cloves discovered earliest of all + Within that garden where such seed takes root; + +And taking out the band, among whom squandered + Caccia d’Ascian his vineyards and vast woods, + And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered! + +But, that thou know who thus doth second thee + Against the Sienese, make sharp thine eye + Tow’rds me, so that my face well answer thee, + +And thou shalt see I am Capocchio’s shade, + Who metals falsified by alchemy; + Thou must remember, if I well descry thee, + +How I a skilful ape of nature was.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXX + + +’Twas at the time when Juno was enraged, + For Semele, against the Theban blood, + As she already more than once had shown, + +So reft of reason Athamas became, + That, seeing his own wife with children twain + Walking encumbered upon either hand, + +He cried: “Spread out the nets, that I may take + The lioness and her whelps upon the passage;” + And then extended his unpitying claws, + +Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus, + And whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock; + And she, with the other burthen, drowned herself;— + +And at the time when fortune downward hurled + The Trojan’s arrogance, that all things dared, + So that the king was with his kingdom crushed, + +Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive, + When lifeless she beheld Polyxena, + And of her Polydorus on the shore + +Of ocean was the dolorous one aware, + Out of her senses like a dog she barked, + So much the anguish had her mind distorted; + +But not of Thebes the furies nor the Trojan + Were ever seen in any one so cruel + In goading beasts, and much more human members, + +As I beheld two shadows pale and naked, + Who, biting, in the manner ran along + That a boar does, when from the sty turned loose. + +One to Capocchio came, and by the nape + Seized with its teeth his neck, so that in dragging + It made his belly grate the solid bottom. + +And the Aretine, who trembling had remained, + Said to me: “That mad sprite is Gianni Schicchi, + And raving goes thus harrying other people.” + +“O,” said I to him, “so may not the other + Set teeth on thee, let it not weary thee + To tell us who it is, ere it dart hence.” + +And he to me: “That is the ancient ghost + Of the nefarious Myrrha, who became + Beyond all rightful love her father’s lover. + +She came to sin with him after this manner, + By counterfeiting of another’s form; + As he who goeth yonder undertook, + +That he might gain the lady of the herd, + To counterfeit in himself Buoso Donati, + Making a will and giving it due form.” + +And after the two maniacs had passed + On whom I held mine eye, I turned it back + To look upon the other evil-born. + +I saw one made in fashion of a lute, + If he had only had the groin cut off + Just at the point at which a man is forked. + +The heavy dropsy, that so disproportions + The limbs with humours, which it ill concocts, + That the face corresponds not to the belly, + +Compelled him so to hold his lips apart + As does the hectic, who because of thirst + One tow’rds the chin, the other upward turns. + +“O ye, who without any torment are, + And why I know not, in the world of woe,” + He said to us, “behold, and be attentive + +Unto the misery of Master Adam; + I had while living much of what I wished, + And now, alas! a drop of water crave. + +The rivulets, that from the verdant hills + Of Cassentin descend down into Arno, + Making their channels to be cold and moist, + +Ever before me stand, and not in vain; + For far more doth their image dry me up + Than the disease which strips my face of flesh. + +The rigid justice that chastises me + Draweth occasion from the place in which + I sinned, to put the more my sighs in flight. + +There is Romena, where I counterfeited + The currency imprinted with the Baptist, + For which I left my body burned above. + +But if I here could see the tristful soul + Of Guido, or Alessandro, or their brother, + For Branda’s fount I would not give the sight. + +One is within already, if the raving + Shades that are going round about speak truth; + But what avails it me, whose limbs are tied? + +If I were only still so light, that in + A hundred years I could advance one inch, + I had already started on the way, + +Seeking him out among this squalid folk, + Although the circuit be eleven miles, + And be not less than half a mile across. + +For them am I in such a family; + They did induce me into coining florins, + Which had three carats of impurity.” + +And I to him: “Who are the two poor wretches + That smoke like unto a wet hand in winter, + Lying there close upon thy right-hand confines?” + +“I found them here,” replied he, “when I rained + Into this chasm, and since they have not turned, + Nor do I think they will for evermore. + +One the false woman is who accused Joseph, + The other the false Sinon, Greek of Troy; + From acute fever they send forth such reek.” + +And one of them, who felt himself annoyed + At being, peradventure, named so darkly, + Smote with the fist upon his hardened paunch. + +It gave a sound, as if it were a drum; + And Master Adam smote him in the face, + With arm that did not seem to be less hard, + +Saying to him: “Although be taken from me + All motion, for my limbs that heavy are, + I have an arm unfettered for such need.” + +Whereat he answer made: “When thou didst go + Unto the fire, thou hadst it not so ready: + But hadst it so and more when thou wast coining.” + +The dropsical: “Thou sayest true in that; + But thou wast not so true a witness there, + Where thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy.” + +“If I spake false, thou falsifiedst the coin,” + Said Sinon; “and for one fault I am here, + And thou for more than any other demon.” + +“Remember, perjurer, about the horse,” + He made reply who had the swollen belly, + “And rueful be it thee the whole world knows it.” + +“Rueful to thee the thirst be wherewith cracks + Thy tongue,” the Greek said, “and the putrid water + That hedges so thy paunch before thine eyes.” + +Then the false-coiner: “So is gaping wide + Thy mouth for speaking evil, as ’tis wont; + Because if I have thirst, and humour stuff me + +Thou hast the burning and the head that aches, + And to lick up the mirror of Narcissus + Thou wouldst not want words many to invite thee.” + +In listening to them was I wholly fixed, + When said the Master to me: “Now just look, + For little wants it that I quarrel with thee.” + +When him I heard in anger speak to me, + I turned me round towards him with such shame + That still it eddies through my memory. + +And as he is who dreams of his own harm, + Who dreaming wishes it may be a dream, + So that he craves what is, as if it were not; + +Such I became, not having power to speak, + For to excuse myself I wished, and still + Excused myself, and did not think I did it. + +“Less shame doth wash away a greater fault,” + The Master said, “than this of thine has been; + Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness, + +And make account that I am aye beside thee, + If e’er it come to pass that fortune bring thee + Where there are people in a like dispute; + +For a base wish it is to wish to hear it.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXXI + + +One and the selfsame tongue first wounded me, + So that it tinged the one cheek and the other, + And then held out to me the medicine; + +Thus do I hear that once Achilles’ spear, + His and his father’s, used to be the cause + First of a sad and then a gracious boon. + +We turned our backs upon the wretched valley, + Upon the bank that girds it round about, + Going across it without any speech. + +There it was less than night, and less than day, + So that my sight went little in advance; + But I could hear the blare of a loud horn, + +So loud it would have made each thunder faint, + Which, counter to it following its way, + Mine eyes directed wholly to one place. + +After the dolorous discomfiture + When Charlemagne the holy emprise lost, + So terribly Orlando sounded not. + +Short while my head turned thitherward I held + When many lofty towers I seemed to see, + Whereat I: “Master, say, what town is this?” + +And he to me: “Because thou peerest forth + Athwart the darkness at too great a distance, + It happens that thou errest in thy fancy. + +Well shalt thou see, if thou arrivest there, + How much the sense deceives itself by distance; + Therefore a little faster spur thee on.” + +Then tenderly he took me by the hand, + And said: “Before we farther have advanced, + That the reality may seem to thee + +Less strange, know that these are not towers, but giants, + And they are in the well, around the bank, + From navel downward, one and all of them.” + +As, when the fog is vanishing away, + Little by little doth the sight refigure + Whate’er the mist that crowds the air conceals, + +So, piercing through the dense and darksome air, + More and more near approaching tow’rd the verge, + My error fled, and fear came over me; + +Because as on its circular parapets + Montereggione crowns itself with towers, + E’en thus the margin which surrounds the well + +With one half of their bodies turreted + The horrible giants, whom Jove menaces + E’en now from out the heavens when he thunders. + +And I of one already saw the face, + Shoulders, and breast, and great part of the belly, + And down along his sides both of the arms. + +Certainly Nature, when she left the making + Of animals like these, did well indeed, + By taking such executors from Mars; + +And if of elephants and whales she doth not + Repent her, whosoever looketh subtly + More just and more discreet will hold her for it; + +For where the argument of intellect + Is added unto evil will and power, + No rampart can the people make against it. + +His face appeared to me as long and large + As is at Rome the pine-cone of Saint Peter’s, + And in proportion were the other bones; + +So that the margin, which an apron was + Down from the middle, showed so much of him + Above it, that to reach up to his hair + +Three Frieslanders in vain had vaunted them; + For I beheld thirty great palms of him + Down from the place where man his mantle buckles. + +“Raphael mai amech izabi almi,” + Began to clamour the ferocious mouth, + To which were not befitting sweeter psalms. + +And unto him my Guide: “Soul idiotic, + Keep to thy horn, and vent thyself with that, + When wrath or other passion touches thee. + +Search round thy neck, and thou wilt find the belt + Which keeps it fastened, O bewildered soul, + And see it, where it bars thy mighty breast.” + +Then said to me: “He doth himself accuse; + This one is Nimrod, by whose evil thought + One language in the world is not still used. + +Here let us leave him and not speak in vain; + For even such to him is every language + As his to others, which to none is known.” + +Therefore a longer journey did we make, + Turned to the left, and a crossbow-shot oft + We found another far more fierce and large. + +In binding him, who might the master be + I cannot say; but he had pinioned close + Behind the right arm, and in front the other, + +With chains, that held him so begirt about + From the neck down, that on the part uncovered + It wound itself as far as the fifth gyre. + +“This proud one wished to make experiment + Of his own power against the Supreme Jove,” + My Leader said, “whence he has such a guerdon. + +Ephialtes is his name; he showed great prowess. + What time the giants terrified the gods; + The arms he wielded never more he moves.” + +And I to him: “If possible, I should wish + That of the measureless Briareus + These eyes of mine might have experience.” + +Whence he replied: “Thou shalt behold Antaeus + Close by here, who can speak and is unbound, + Who at the bottom of all crime shall place us. + +Much farther yon is he whom thou wouldst see, + And he is bound, and fashioned like to this one, + Save that he seems in aspect more ferocious.” + +There never was an earthquake of such might + That it could shake a tower so violently, + As Ephialtes suddenly shook himself. + +Then was I more afraid of death than ever, + For nothing more was needful than the fear, + If I had not beheld the manacles. + +Then we proceeded farther in advance, + And to Antaeus came, who, full five ells + Without the head, forth issued from the cavern. + +“O thou, who in the valley fortunate, + Which Scipio the heir of glory made, + When Hannibal turned back with all his hosts, + +Once brought’st a thousand lions for thy prey, + And who, hadst thou been at the mighty war + Among thy brothers, some it seems still think + +The sons of Earth the victory would have gained: + Place us below, nor be disdainful of it, + There where the cold doth lock Cocytus up. + +Make us not go to Tityus nor Typhoeus; + This one can give of that which here is longed for; + Therefore stoop down, and do not curl thy lip. + +Still in the world can he restore thy fame; + Because he lives, and still expects long life, + If to itself Grace call him not untimely.” + +So said the Master; and in haste the other + His hands extended and took up my Guide,— + Hands whose great pressure Hercules once felt. + +Virgilius, when he felt himself embraced, + Said unto me: “Draw nigh, that I may take thee;” + Then of himself and me one bundle made. + +As seems the Carisenda, to behold + Beneath the leaning side, when goes a cloud + Above it so that opposite it hangs; + +Such did Antaeus seem to me, who stood + Watching to see him stoop, and then it was + I could have wished to go some other way. + +But lightly in the abyss, which swallows up + Judas with Lucifer, he put us down; + Nor thus bowed downward made he there delay, + +But, as a mast does in a ship, uprose. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXXII + + +If I had rhymes both rough and stridulous, + As were appropriate to the dismal hole + Down upon which thrust all the other rocks, + +I would press out the juice of my conception + More fully; but because I have them not, + Not without fear I bring myself to speak; + +For ’tis no enterprise to take in jest, + To sketch the bottom of all the universe, + Nor for a tongue that cries Mamma and Babbo. + +But may those Ladies help this verse of mine, + Who helped Amphion in enclosing Thebes, + That from the fact the word be not diverse. + +O rabble ill-begotten above all, + Who’re in the place to speak of which is hard, + ’Twere better ye had here been sheep or goats! + +When we were down within the darksome well, + Beneath the giant’s feet, but lower far, + And I was scanning still the lofty wall, + +I heard it said to me: “Look how thou steppest! + Take heed thou do not trample with thy feet + The heads of the tired, miserable brothers!” + +Whereat I turned me round, and saw before me + And underfoot a lake, that from the frost + The semblance had of glass, and not of water. + +So thick a veil ne’er made upon its current + In winter-time Danube in Austria, + Nor there beneath the frigid sky the Don, + +As there was here; so that if Tambernich + Had fallen upon it, or Pietrapana, + E’en at the edge ’twould not have given a creak. + +And as to croak the frog doth place himself + With muzzle out of water,—when is dreaming + Of gleaning oftentimes the peasant-girl,— + +Livid, as far down as where shame appears, + Were the disconsolate shades within the ice, + Setting their teeth unto the note of storks. + +Each one his countenance held downward bent; + From mouth the cold, from eyes the doleful heart + Among them witness of itself procures. + +When round about me somewhat I had looked, + I downward turned me, and saw two so close, + The hair upon their heads together mingled. + +“Ye who so strain your breasts together, tell me,” + I said, “who are you;” and they bent their necks, + And when to me their faces they had lifted, + +Their eyes, which first were only moist within, + Gushed o’er the eyelids, and the frost congealed + The tears between, and locked them up again. + +Clamp never bound together wood with wood + So strongly; whereat they, like two he-goats, + Butted together, so much wrath o’ercame them. + +And one, who had by reason of the cold + Lost both his ears, still with his visage downward, + Said: “Why dost thou so mirror thyself in us? + +If thou desire to know who these two are, + The valley whence Bisenzio descends + Belonged to them and to their father Albert. + +They from one body came, and all Caina + Thou shalt search through, and shalt not find a shade + More worthy to be fixed in gelatine; + +Not he in whom were broken breast and shadow + At one and the same blow by Arthur’s hand; + Focaccia not; not he who me encumbers + +So with his head I see no farther forward, + And bore the name of Sassol Mascheroni; + Well knowest thou who he was, if thou art Tuscan. + +And that thou put me not to further speech, + Know that I Camicion de’ Pazzi was, + And wait Carlino to exonerate me.” + +Then I beheld a thousand faces, made + Purple with cold; whence o’er me comes a shudder, + And evermore will come, at frozen ponds. + +And while we were advancing tow’rds the middle, + Where everything of weight unites together, + And I was shivering in the eternal shade, + +Whether ’twere will, or destiny, or chance, + I know not; but in walking ’mong the heads + I struck my foot hard in the face of one. + +Weeping he growled: “Why dost thou trample me? + Unless thou comest to increase the vengeance + of Montaperti, why dost thou molest me?” + +And I: “My Master, now wait here for me, + That I through him may issue from a doubt; + Then thou mayst hurry me, as thou shalt wish.” + +The Leader stopped; and to that one I said + Who was blaspheming vehemently still: + “Who art thou, that thus reprehendest others?” + +“Now who art thou, that goest through Antenora + Smiting,” replied he, “other people’s cheeks, + So that, if thou wert living, ’twere too much?” + +“Living I am, and dear to thee it may be,” + Was my response, “if thou demandest fame, + That ’mid the other notes thy name I place.” + +And he to me: “For the reverse I long; + Take thyself hence, and give me no more trouble; + For ill thou knowest to flatter in this hollow.” + +Then by the scalp behind I seized upon him, + And said: “It must needs be thou name thyself, + Or not a hair remain upon thee here.” + +Whence he to me: “Though thou strip off my hair, + I will not tell thee who I am, nor show thee, + If on my head a thousand times thou fall.” + +I had his hair in hand already twisted, + And more than one shock of it had pulled out, + He barking, with his eyes held firmly down, + +When cried another: “What doth ail thee, Bocca? + Is’t not enough to clatter with thy jaws, + But thou must bark? what devil touches thee?” + +“Now,” said I, “I care not to have thee speak, + Accursed traitor; for unto thy shame + I will report of thee veracious news.” + +“Begone,” replied he, “and tell what thou wilt, + But be not silent, if thou issue hence, + Of him who had just now his tongue so prompt; + +He weepeth here the silver of the French; + ‘I saw,’ thus canst thou phrase it, ‘him of Duera + There where the sinners stand out in the cold.’ + +If thou shouldst questioned be who else was there, + Thou hast beside thee him of Beccaria, + Of whom the gorget Florence slit asunder; + +Gianni del Soldanier, I think, may be + Yonder with Ganellon, and Tebaldello + Who oped Faenza when the people slep.” + +Already we had gone away from him, + When I beheld two frozen in one hole, + So that one head a hood was to the other; + +And even as bread through hunger is devoured, + The uppermost on the other set his teeth, + There where the brain is to the nape united. + +Not in another fashion Tydeus gnawed + The temples of Menalippus in disdain, + Than that one did the skull and the other things. + +“O thou, who showest by such bestial sign + Thy hatred against him whom thou art eating, + Tell me the wherefore,” said I, “with this compact, + +That if thou rightfully of him complain, + In knowing who ye are, and his transgression, + I in the world above repay thee for it, + +If that wherewith I speak be not dried up.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXXIII + + +His mouth uplifted from his grim repast, + That sinner, wiping it upon the hair + Of the same head that he behind had wasted. + +Then he began: “Thou wilt that I renew + The desperate grief, which wrings my heart already + To think of only, ere I speak of it; + +But if my words be seed that may bear fruit + Of infamy to the traitor whom I gnaw, + Speaking and weeping shalt thou see together. + +I know not who thou art, nor by what mode + Thou hast come down here; but a Florentine + Thou seemest to me truly, when I hear thee. + +Thou hast to know I was Count Ugolino, + And this one was Ruggieri the Archbishop; + Now I will tell thee why I am such a neighbour. + +That, by effect of his malicious thoughts, + Trusting in him I was made prisoner, + And after put to death, I need not say; + + But ne’ertheless what thou canst not have heard, + That is to say, how cruel was my death, + Hear shalt thou, and shalt know if he has wronged me. + +A narrow perforation in the mew, + Which bears because of me the title of Famine, + And in which others still must be locked up, + +Had shown me through its opening many moons + Already, when I dreamed the evil dream + Which of the future rent for me the veil. + +This one appeared to me as lord and master, + Hunting the wolf and whelps upon the mountain + For which the Pisans cannot Lucca see. + +With sleuth-hounds gaunt, and eager, and well trained, + Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfianchi + He had sent out before him to the front. + +After brief course seemed unto me forespent + The father and the sons, and with sharp tushes + It seemed to me I saw their flanks ripped open. + +When I before the morrow was awake, + Moaning amid their sleep I heard my sons + Who with me were, and asking after bread. + +Cruel indeed art thou, if yet thou grieve not, + Thinking of what my heart foreboded me, + And weep’st thou not, what art thou wont to weep at? + +They were awake now, and the hour drew nigh + At which our food used to be brought to us, + And through his dream was each one apprehensive; + +And I heard locking up the under door + Of the horrible tower; whereat without a word + I gazed into the faces of my sons. + +I wept not, I within so turned to stone; + They wept; and darling little Anselm mine + Said: ‘Thou dost gaze so, father, what doth ail thee?’ + +Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made + All of that day, nor yet the night thereafter, + Until another sun rose on the world. + +As now a little glimmer made its way + Into the dolorous prison, and I saw + Upon four faces my own very aspect, + +Both of my hands in agony I bit; + And, thinking that I did it from desire + Of eating, on a sudden they uprose, + +And said they: ‘Father, much less pain ’twill give us + If thou do eat of us; thyself didst clothe us + With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off.’ + +I calmed me then, not to make them more sad. + That day we all were silent, and the next. + Ah! obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open? + +When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo + Threw himself down outstretched before my feet, + Saying, ‘My father, why dost thou not help me?’ + +And there he died; and, as thou seest me, + I saw the three fall, one by one, between + The fifth day and the sixth; whence I betook me, + +Already blind, to groping over each, + And three days called them after they were dead; + Then hunger did what sorrow could not do.” + +When he had said this, with his eyes distorted, + The wretched skull resumed he with his teeth, + Which, as a dog’s, upon the bone were strong. + +Ah! Pisa, thou opprobrium of the people + Of the fair land there where the ‘Si’ doth sound, + Since slow to punish thee thy neighbours are, + +Let the Capraia and Gorgona move, + And make a hedge across the mouth of Arno + That every person in thee it may drown! + +For if Count Ugolino had the fame + Of having in thy castles thee betrayed, + Thou shouldst not on such cross have put his sons. + +Guiltless of any crime, thou modern Thebes! + Their youth made Uguccione and Brigata, + And the other two my song doth name above! + +We passed still farther onward, where the ice + Another people ruggedly enswathes, + Not downward turned, but all of them reversed. + +Weeping itself there does not let them weep, + And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes + Turns itself inward to increase the anguish; + +Because the earliest tears a cluster form, + And, in the manner of a crystal visor, + Fill all the cup beneath the eyebrow full. + +And notwithstanding that, as in a callus, + Because of cold all sensibility + Its station had abandoned in my face, + +Still it appeared to me I felt some wind; + Whence I: “My Master, who sets this in motion? + Is not below here every vapour quenched?” + +Whence he to me: “Full soon shalt thou be where + Thine eye shall answer make to thee of this, + Seeing the cause which raineth down the blast.” + +And one of the wretches of the frozen crust + Cried out to us: “O souls so merciless + That the last post is given unto you, + +Lift from mine eyes the rigid veils, that I + May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart + A little, e’er the weeping recongeal.” + +Whence I to him: “If thou wouldst have me help thee + Say who thou wast; and if I free thee not, + May I go to the bottom of the ice.” + +Then he replied: “I am Friar Alberigo; + He am I of the fruit of the bad garden, + Who here a date am getting for my fig.” + +“O,” said I to him, “now art thou, too, dead?” + And he to me: “How may my body fare + Up in the world, no knowledge I possess. + +Such an advantage has this Ptolomaea, + That oftentimes the soul descendeth here + Sooner than Atropos in motion sets it. + +And, that thou mayest more willingly remove + From off my countenance these glassy tears, + Know that as soon as any soul betrays + +As I have done, his body by a demon + Is taken from him, who thereafter rules it, + Until his time has wholly been revolved. + +Itself down rushes into such a cistern; + And still perchance above appears the body + Of yonder shade, that winters here behind me. + +This thou shouldst know, if thou hast just come down; + It is Ser Branca d’ Oria, and many years + Have passed away since he was thus locked up.” + +“I think,” said I to him, “thou dost deceive me; + For Branca d’ Oria is not dead as yet, + And eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes.” + +“In moat above,” said he, “of Malebranche, + There where is boiling the tenacious pitch, + As yet had Michel Zanche not arrived, + +When this one left a devil in his stead + In his own body and one near of kin, + Who made together with him the betrayal. + +But hitherward stretch out thy hand forthwith, + Open mine eyes;”—and open them I did not, + And to be rude to him was courtesy. + +Ah, Genoese! ye men at variance + With every virtue, full of every vice + Wherefore are ye not scattered from the world? + +For with the vilest spirit of Romagna + I found of you one such, who for his deeds + In soul already in Cocytus bathes, + +And still above in body seems alive! + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXXIV + + +“‘Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni’ + Towards us; therefore look in front of thee,” + My Master said, “if thou discernest him.” + +As, when there breathes a heavy fog, or when + Our hemisphere is darkening into night, + Appears far off a mill the wind is turning, + +Methought that such a building then I saw; + And, for the wind, I drew myself behind + My Guide, because there was no other shelter. + +Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it, + There where the shades were wholly covered up, + And glimmered through like unto straws in glass. + +Some prone are lying, others stand erect, + This with the head, and that one with the soles; + Another, bow-like, face to feet inverts. + +When in advance so far we had proceeded, + That it my Master pleased to show to me + The creature who once had the beauteous semblance, + +He from before me moved and made me stop, + Saying: “Behold Dis, and behold the place + Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself.” + +How frozen I became and powerless then, + Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not, + Because all language would be insufficient. + +I did not die, and I alive remained not; + Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit, + What I became, being of both deprived. + +The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous + From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice; + And better with a giant I compare + +Than do the giants with those arms of his; + Consider now how great must be that whole, + Which unto such a part conforms itself. + +Were he as fair once, as he now is foul, + And lifted up his brow against his Maker, + Well may proceed from him all tribulation. + +O, what a marvel it appeared to me, + When I beheld three faces on his head! + The one in front, and that vermilion was; + +Two were the others, that were joined with this + Above the middle part of either shoulder, + And they were joined together at the crest; + +And the right-hand one seemed ’twixt white and yellow; + The left was such to look upon as those + Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward. + +Underneath each came forth two mighty wings, + Such as befitting were so great a bird; + Sails of the sea I never saw so large. + + No feathers had they, but as of a bat + Their fashion was; and he was waving them, + So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom. + +Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed. + With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins + Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel. + +At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching + A sinner, in the manner of a brake, + So that he three of them tormented thus. + +To him in front the biting was as naught + Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine + Utterly stripped of all the skin remained. + +“That soul up there which has the greatest pain,” + The Master said, “is Judas Iscariot; + With head inside, he plies his legs without. + +Of the two others, who head downward are, + The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus; + See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word. + +And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius. + But night is reascending, and ’tis time + That we depart, for we have seen the whole.” + +As seemed him good, I clasped him round the neck, + And he the vantage seized of time and place, + And when the wings were opened wide apart, + +He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides; + From fell to fell descended downward then + Between the thick hair and the frozen crust. + +When we were come to where the thigh revolves + Exactly on the thickness of the haunch, + The Guide, with labour and with hard-drawn breath, + +Turned round his head where he had had his legs, + And grappled to the hair, as one who mounts, + So that to Hell I thought we were returning. + +“Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these,” + The Master said, panting as one fatigued, + “Must we perforce depart from so much evil.” + +Then through the opening of a rock he issued, + And down upon the margin seated me; + Then tow’rds me he outstretched his wary step. + +I lifted up mine eyes and thought to see + Lucifer in the same way I had left him; + And I beheld him upward hold his legs. + +And if I then became disquieted, + Let stolid people think who do not see + What the point is beyond which I had passed. + +“Rise up,” the Master said, “upon thy feet; + The way is long, and difficult the road, + And now the sun to middle-tierce returns.” + +It was not any palace corridor + There where we were, but dungeon natural, + With floor uneven and unease of light. + +“Ere from the abyss I tear myself away, + My Master,” said I when I had arisen, + “To draw me from an error speak a little; + +Where is the ice? and how is this one fixed + Thus upside down? and how in such short time + From eve to morn has the sun made his transit?” + +And he to me: “Thou still imaginest + Thou art beyond the centre, where I grasped + The hair of the fell worm, who mines the world. + +That side thou wast, so long as I descended; + When round I turned me, thou didst pass the point + To which things heavy draw from every side, + +And now beneath the hemisphere art come + Opposite that which overhangs the vast + Dry-land, and ’neath whose cope was put to death + +The Man who without sin was born and lived. + Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere + Which makes the other face of the Judecca. + +Here it is morn when it is evening there; + And he who with his hair a stairway made us + Still fixed remaineth as he was before. + +Upon this side he fell down out of heaven; + And all the land, that whilom here emerged, + For fear of him made of the sea a veil, + +And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure + To flee from him, what on this side appears + Left the place vacant here, and back recoiled.” + +A place there is below, from Beelzebub + As far receding as the tomb extends, + Which not by sight is known, but by the sound + +Of a small rivulet, that there descendeth + Through chasm within the stone, which it has gnawed + With course that winds about and slightly falls. + +The Guide and I into that hidden road + Now entered, to return to the bright world; + And without care of having any rest + +We mounted up, he first and I the second, + Till I beheld through a round aperture + Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear; + +Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1001 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1002-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1002-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fe9f485f --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1002-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6618 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1002 *** + +The Divine Comedy + +of Dante Alighieri + +Translated by +HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW + +PURGATORIO + + +Contents + +I. The Shores of Purgatory. The Four Stars. Cato of Utica. The Rush. +II. The Celestial Pilot. Casella. The Departure. +III. Discourse on the Limits of Reason. The Foot of the Mountain. Those who died in Contumacy of Holy Church. Manfredi. +IV. Farther Ascent. Nature of the Mountain. The Negligent, who postponed Repentance till the last Hour. Belacqua. +V. Those who died by Violence, but repentant. Buonconte di Monfeltro. La Pia. +VI. Dante’s Inquiry on Prayers for the Dead. Sordello. Italy. +VII. The Valley of Flowers. Negligent Princes. +VIII. The Guardian Angels and the Serpent. Nino di Gallura. The Three Stars. Currado Malaspina. +IX. Dante’s Dream of the Eagle. The Gate of Purgatory and the Angel. Seven P’s. The Keys. +X. The Needle’s Eye. The First Circle: The Proud. The Sculptures on the Wall. +XI. The Humble Prayer. Omberto di Santafiore. Oderisi d’ Agobbio. Provenzan Salvani. +XII. The Sculptures on the Pavement. Ascent to the Second Circle. +XIII. The Second Circle: The Envious. Sapia of Siena. +XIV. Guido del Duca and Renier da Calboli. Cities of the Arno Valley. Denunciation of Stubbornness. +XV. The Third Circle: The Irascible. Dante’s Visions. The Smoke. +XVI. Marco Lombardo. Lament over the State of the World. +XVII. Dante’s Dream of Anger. The Fourth Circle: The Slothful. Virgil’s Discourse of Love. +XVIII. Virgil further discourses of Love and Free Will. The Abbot of San Zeno. +XIX. Dante’s Dream of the Siren. The Fifth Circle: The Avaricious and Prodigal. Pope Adrian V. +XX. Hugh Capet. Corruption of the French Crown. Prophecy of the Abduction of Pope Boniface VIII and the Sacrilege of Philip the Fair. The Earthquake. +XXI. The Poet Statius. Praise of Virgil. +XXII. Statius’ Denunciation of Avarice. The Sixth Circle: The Gluttonous. The Mystic Tree. +XXIII. Forese. Reproof of immodest Florentine Women. +XXIV. Buonagiunta da Lucca. Pope Martin IV, and others. Inquiry into the State of Poetry. +XXV. Discourse of Statius on Generation. The Seventh Circle: The Wanton. +XXVI. Sodomites. Guido Guinicelli and Arnaldo Daniello. +XXVII. The Wall of Fire and the Angel of God. Dante’s Sleep upon the Stairway, and his Dream of Leah and Rachel. Arrival at the Terrestrial Paradise. +XXVIII. The River Lethe. Matilda. The Nature of the Terrestrial Paradise. +XXIX. The Triumph of the Church. +XXX. Virgil’s Departure. Beatrice. Dante’s Shame. +XXXI. Reproaches of Beatrice and Confession of Dante. The Passage of Lethe. The Seven Virtues. The Griffon. +XXXII. The Tree of Knowledge. Allegory of the Chariot. +XXXIII. Lament over the State of the Church. Final Reproaches of Beatrice. The River Eunoe. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto I + + +To run o’er better waters hoists its sail + The little vessel of my genius now, + That leaves behind itself a sea so cruel; + +And of that second kingdom will I sing + Wherein the human spirit doth purge itself, + And to ascend to heaven becometh worthy. + +But let dead Poesy here rise again, + O holy Muses, since that I am yours, + And here Calliope somewhat ascend, + +My song accompanying with that sound, + Of which the miserable magpies felt + The blow so great, that they despaired of pardon. + +Sweet colour of the oriental sapphire, + That was upgathered in the cloudless aspect + Of the pure air, as far as the first circle, + +Unto mine eyes did recommence delight + Soon as I issued forth from the dead air, + Which had with sadness filled mine eyes and breast. + +The beauteous planet, that to love incites, + Was making all the orient to laugh, + Veiling the Fishes that were in her escort. + +To the right hand I turned, and fixed my mind + Upon the other pole, and saw four stars + Ne’er seen before save by the primal people. + +Rejoicing in their flamelets seemed the heaven. + O thou septentrional and widowed site, + Because thou art deprived of seeing these! + +When from regarding them I had withdrawn, + Turning a little to the other pole, + There where the Wain had disappeared already, + +I saw beside me an old man alone, + Worthy of so much reverence in his look, + That more owes not to father any son. + +A long beard and with white hair intermingled + He wore, in semblance like unto the tresses, + Of which a double list fell on his breast. + +The rays of the four consecrated stars + Did so adorn his countenance with light, + That him I saw as were the sun before him. + +“Who are you? ye who, counter the blind river, + Have fled away from the eternal prison?” + Moving those venerable plumes, he said: + +“Who guided you? or who has been your lamp + In issuing forth out of the night profound, + That ever black makes the infernal valley? + +The laws of the abyss, are they thus broken? + Or is there changed in heaven some council new, + That being damned ye come unto my crags?” + +Then did my Leader lay his grasp upon me, + And with his words, and with his hands and signs, + Reverent he made in me my knees and brow; + +Then answered him: “I came not of myself; + A Lady from Heaven descended, at whose prayers + I aided this one with my company. + +But since it is thy will more be unfolded + Of our condition, how it truly is, + Mine cannot be that this should be denied thee. + +This one has never his last evening seen, + But by his folly was so near to it + That very little time was there to turn. + +As I have said, I unto him was sent + To rescue him, and other way was none + Than this to which I have myself betaken. + +I’ve shown him all the people of perdition, + And now those spirits I intend to show + Who purge themselves beneath thy guardianship. + +How I have brought him would be long to tell thee. + Virtue descendeth from on high that aids me + To lead him to behold thee and to hear thee. + +Now may it please thee to vouchsafe his coming; + He seeketh Liberty, which is so dear, + As knoweth he who life for her refuses. + +Thou know’st it; since, for her, to thee not bitter + Was death in Utica, where thou didst leave + The vesture, that will shine so, the great day. + +By us the eternal edicts are not broken; + Since this one lives, and Minos binds not me; + But of that circle I, where are the chaste + +Eyes of thy Marcia, who in looks still prays thee, + O holy breast, to hold her as thine own; + For her love, then, incline thyself to us. + +Permit us through thy sevenfold realm to go; + I will take back this grace from thee to her, + If to be mentioned there below thou deignest.” + +“Marcia so pleasing was unto mine eyes + While I was on the other side,” then said he, + “That every grace she wished of me I granted; + +Now that she dwells beyond the evil river, + She can no longer move me, by that law + Which, when I issued forth from there, was made. + +But if a Lady of Heaven do move and rule thee, + As thou dost say, no flattery is needful; + Let it suffice thee that for her thou ask me. + +Go, then, and see thou gird this one about + With a smooth rush, and that thou wash his face, + So that thou cleanse away all stain therefrom, + +For ’twere not fitting that the eye o’ercast + By any mist should go before the first + Angel, who is of those of Paradise. + +This little island round about its base + Below there, yonder, where the billow beats it, + Doth rushes bear upon its washy ooze; + +No other plant that putteth forth the leaf, + Or that doth indurate, can there have life, + Because it yieldeth not unto the shocks. + +Thereafter be not this way your return; + The sun, which now is rising, will direct you + To take the mount by easier ascent.” + +With this he vanished; and I raised me up + Without a word, and wholly drew myself + Unto my Guide, and turned mine eyes to him. + +And he began: “Son, follow thou my steps; + Let us turn back, for on this side declines + The plain unto its lower boundaries.” + +The dawn was vanquishing the matin hour + Which fled before it, so that from afar + I recognised the trembling of the sea. + +Along the solitary plain we went + As one who unto the lost road returns, + And till he finds it seems to go in vain. + +As soon as we were come to where the dew + Fights with the sun, and, being in a part + Where shadow falls, little evaporates, + +Both of his hands upon the grass outspread + In gentle manner did my Master place; + Whence I, who of his action was aware, + +Extended unto him my tearful cheeks; + There did he make in me uncovered wholly + That hue which Hell had covered up in me. + +Then came we down upon the desert shore + Which never yet saw navigate its waters + Any that afterward had known return. + +There he begirt me as the other pleased; + O marvellous! for even as he culled + The humble plant, such it sprang up again + +Suddenly there where he uprooted it. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto II + + +Already had the sun the horizon reached + Whose circle of meridian covers o’er + Jerusalem with its most lofty point, + +And night that opposite to him revolves + Was issuing forth from Ganges with the Scales + That fall from out her hand when she exceedeth; + +So that the white and the vermilion cheeks + Of beautiful Aurora, where I was, + By too great age were changing into orange. + +We still were on the border of the sea, + Like people who are thinking of their road, + Who go in heart and with the body stay; + +And lo! as when, upon the approach of morning, + Through the gross vapours Mars grows fiery red + Down in the West upon the ocean floor, + +Appeared to me—may I again behold it!— + A light along the sea so swiftly coming, + Its motion by no flight of wing is equalled; + +From which when I a little had withdrawn + Mine eyes, that I might question my Conductor, + Again I saw it brighter grown and larger. + +Then on each side of it appeared to me + I knew not what of white, and underneath it + Little by little there came forth another. + +My Master yet had uttered not a word + While the first whiteness into wings unfolded; + But when he clearly recognised the pilot, + +He cried: “Make haste, make haste to bow the knee! + Behold the Angel of God! fold thou thy hands! + Henceforward shalt thou see such officers! + +See how he scorneth human arguments, + So that nor oar he wants, nor other sail + Than his own wings, between so distant shores. + +See how he holds them pointed up to heaven, + Fanning the air with the eternal pinions, + That do not moult themselves like mortal hair!” + +Then as still nearer and more near us came + The Bird Divine, more radiant he appeared, + So that near by the eye could not endure him, + +But down I cast it; and he came to shore + With a small vessel, very swift and light, + So that the water swallowed naught thereof. + +Upon the stern stood the Celestial Pilot; + Beatitude seemed written in his face, + And more than a hundred spirits sat within. + +“In exitu Israel de Aegypto!” + They chanted all together in one voice, + With whatso in that psalm is after written. + +Then made he sign of holy rood upon them, + Whereat all cast themselves upon the shore, + And he departed swiftly as he came. + +The throng which still remained there unfamiliar + Seemed with the place, all round about them gazing, + As one who in new matters makes essay. + +On every side was darting forth the day. + The sun, who had with his resplendent shafts + From the mid-heaven chased forth the Capricorn, + +When the new people lifted up their faces + Towards us, saying to us: “If ye know, + Show us the way to go unto the mountain.” + +And answer made Virgilius: “Ye believe + Perchance that we have knowledge of this place, + But we are strangers even as yourselves. + +Just now we came, a little while before you, + Another way, which was so rough and steep, + That mounting will henceforth seem sport to us.” + +The souls who had, from seeing me draw breath, + Become aware that I was still alive, + Pallid in their astonishment became; + +And as to messenger who bears the olive + The people throng to listen to the news, + And no one shows himself afraid of crowding, + +So at the sight of me stood motionless + Those fortunate spirits, all of them, as if + Oblivious to go and make them fair. + +One from among them saw I coming forward, + As to embrace me, with such great affection, + That it incited me to do the like. + +O empty shadows, save in aspect only! + Three times behind it did I clasp my hands, + As oft returned with them to my own breast! + +I think with wonder I depicted me; + Whereat the shadow smiled and backward drew; + And I, pursuing it, pressed farther forward. + +Gently it said that I should stay my steps; + Then knew I who it was, and I entreated + That it would stop awhile to speak with me. + +It made reply to me: “Even as I loved thee + In mortal body, so I love thee free; + Therefore I stop; but wherefore goest thou?” + +“My own Casella! to return once more + There where I am, I make this journey,” said I; + “But how from thee has so much time be taken?” + +And he to me: “No outrage has been done me, + If he who takes both when and whom he pleases + Has many times denied to me this passage, + +For of a righteous will his own is made. + He, sooth to say, for three months past has taken + Whoever wished to enter with all peace; + +Whence I, who now had turned unto that shore + Where salt the waters of the Tiber grow, + Benignantly by him have been received. + +Unto that outlet now his wing is pointed, + Because for evermore assemble there + Those who tow’rds Acheron do not descend.” + +And I: “If some new law take not from thee + Memory or practice of the song of love, + Which used to quiet in me all my longings, + +Thee may it please to comfort therewithal + Somewhat this soul of mine, that with its body + Hitherward coming is so much distressed.” + +“Love, that within my mind discourses with me,” + Forthwith began he so melodiously, + The melody within me still is sounding. + +My Master, and myself, and all that people + Which with him were, appeared as satisfied + As if naught else might touch the mind of any. + +We all of us were moveless and attentive + Unto his notes; and lo! the grave old man, + Exclaiming: “What is this, ye laggard spirits? + +What negligence, what standing still is this? + Run to the mountain to strip off the slough, + That lets not God be manifest to you.” + +Even as when, collecting grain or tares, + The doves, together at their pasture met, + Quiet, nor showing their accustomed pride, + +If aught appear of which they are afraid, + Upon a sudden leave their food alone, + Because they are assailed by greater care; + +So that fresh company did I behold + The song relinquish, and go tow’rds the hill, + As one who goes, and knows not whitherward; + +Nor was our own departure less in haste. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto III + + +Inasmuch as the instantaneous flight + Had scattered them asunder o’er the plain, + Turned to the mountain whither reason spurs us, + +I pressed me close unto my faithful comrade, + And how without him had I kept my course? + Who would have led me up along the mountain? + +He seemed to me within himself remorseful; + O noble conscience, and without a stain, + How sharp a sting is trivial fault to thee! + +After his feet had laid aside the haste + Which mars the dignity of every act, + My mind, that hitherto had been restrained, + +Let loose its faculties as if delighted, + And I my sight directed to the hill + That highest tow’rds the heaven uplifts itself. + +The sun, that in our rear was flaming red, + Was broken in front of me into the figure + Which had in me the stoppage of its rays; + +Unto one side I turned me, with the fear + Of being left alone, when I beheld + Only in front of me the ground obscured. + +“Why dost thou still mistrust?” my Comforter + Began to say to me turned wholly round; + “Dost thou not think me with thee, and that I guide thee? + +’Tis evening there already where is buried + The body within which I cast a shadow; + ’Tis from Brundusium ta’en, and Naples has it. + +Now if in front of me no shadow fall, + Marvel not at it more than at the heavens, + Because one ray impedeth not another + +To suffer torments, both of cold and heat, + Bodies like this that Power provides, which wills + That how it works be not unveiled to us. + +Insane is he who hopeth that our reason + Can traverse the illimitable way, + Which the one Substance in three Persons follows! + +Mortals, remain contented at the ‘Quia;’ + For if ye had been able to see all, + No need there were for Mary to give birth; + +And ye have seen desiring without fruit, + Those whose desire would have been quieted, + Which evermore is given them for a grief. + +I speak of Aristotle and of Plato, + And many others;”—and here bowed his head, + And more he said not, and remained disturbed. + +We came meanwhile unto the mountain’s foot; + There so precipitate we found the rock, + That nimble legs would there have been in vain. + +’Twixt Lerici and Turbia, the most desert, + The most secluded pathway is a stair + Easy and open, if compared with that. + +“Who knoweth now upon which hand the hill + Slopes down,” my Master said, his footsteps staying, + “So that who goeth without wings may mount?” + +And while he held his eyes upon the ground + Examining the nature of the path, + And I was looking up around the rock, + +On the left hand appeared to me a throng + Of souls, that moved their feet in our direction, + And did not seem to move, they came so slowly. + +“Lift up thine eyes,” I to the Master said; + “Behold, on this side, who will give us counsel, + If thou of thine own self can have it not.” + +Then he looked at me, and with frank expression + Replied: “Let us go there, for they come slowly, + And thou be steadfast in thy hope, sweet son.” + +Still was that people as far off from us, + After a thousand steps of ours I say, + As a good thrower with his hand would reach, + +When they all crowded unto the hard masses + Of the high bank, and motionless stood and close, + As he stands still to look who goes in doubt. + +“O happy dead! O spirits elect already!” + Virgilius made beginning, “by that peace + Which I believe is waiting for you all, + +Tell us upon what side the mountain slopes, + So that the going up be possible, + For to lose time irks him most who most knows.” + +As sheep come issuing forth from out the fold + By ones and twos and threes, and the others stand + Timidly, holding down their eyes and nostrils, + +And what the foremost does the others do, + Huddling themselves against her, if she stop, + Simple and quiet and the wherefore know not; + +So moving to approach us thereupon + I saw the leader of that fortunate flock, + Modest in face and dignified in gait. + +As soon as those in the advance saw broken + The light upon the ground at my right side, + So that from me the shadow reached the rock, + +They stopped, and backward drew themselves somewhat; + And all the others, who came after them, + Not knowing why nor wherefore, did the same. + +“Without your asking, I confess to you + This is a human body which you see, + Whereby the sunshine on the ground is cleft. + +Marvel ye not thereat, but be persuaded + That not without a power which comes from Heaven + Doth he endeavour to surmount this wall.” + +The Master thus; and said those worthy people: + “Return ye then, and enter in before us,” + Making a signal with the back o’ the hand + +And one of them began: “Whoe’er thou art, + Thus going turn thine eyes, consider well + If e’er thou saw me in the other world.” + +I turned me tow’rds him, and looked at him closely; + Blond was he, beautiful, and of noble aspect, + But one of his eyebrows had a blow divided. + +When with humility I had disclaimed + E’er having seen him, “Now behold!” he said, + And showed me high upon his breast a wound. + +Then said he with a smile: “I am Manfredi, + The grandson of the Empress Costanza; + Therefore, when thou returnest, I beseech thee + +Go to my daughter beautiful, the mother + Of Sicily’s honour and of Aragon’s, + And the truth tell her, if aught else be told. + +After I had my body lacerated + By these two mortal stabs, I gave myself + Weeping to Him, who willingly doth pardon. + +Horrible my iniquities had been; + But Infinite Goodness hath such ample arms, + That it receives whatever turns to it. + +Had but Cosenza’s pastor, who in chase + Of me was sent by Clement at that time, + In God read understandingly this page, + +The bones of my dead body still would be + At the bridge-head, near unto Benevento, + Under the safeguard of the heavy cairn. + +Now the rain bathes and moveth them the wind, + Beyond the realm, almost beside the Verde, + Where he transported them with tapers quenched. + +By malison of theirs is not so lost + Eternal Love, that it cannot return, + So long as hope has anything of green. + +True is it, who in contumacy dies + Of Holy Church, though penitent at last, + Must wait upon the outside this bank + +Thirty times told the time that he has been + In his presumption, unless such decree + Shorter by means of righteous prayers become. + +See now if thou hast power to make me happy, + By making known unto my good Costanza + How thou hast seen me, and this ban beside, + +For those on earth can much advance us here.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto IV + + +Whenever by delight or else by pain, + That seizes any faculty of ours, + Wholly to that the soul collects itself, + +It seemeth that no other power it heeds; + And this against that error is which thinks + One soul above another kindles in us. + +And hence, whenever aught is heard or seen + Which keeps the soul intently bent upon it, + Time passes on, and we perceive it not, + +Because one faculty is that which listens, + And other that which the soul keeps entire; + This is as if in bonds, and that is free. + +Of this I had experience positive + In hearing and in gazing at that spirit; + For fifty full degrees uprisen was + +The sun, and I had not perceived it, when + We came to where those souls with one accord + Cried out unto us: “Here is what you ask.” + +A greater opening ofttimes hedges up + With but a little forkful of his thorns + The villager, what time the grape imbrowns, + +Than was the passage-way through which ascended + Only my Leader and myself behind him, + After that company departed from us. + +One climbs Sanleo and descends in Noli, + And mounts the summit of Bismantova, + With feet alone; but here one needs must fly; + +With the swift pinions and the plumes I say + Of great desire, conducted after him + Who gave me hope, and made a light for me. + +We mounted upward through the rifted rock, + And on each side the border pressed upon us, + And feet and hands the ground beneath required. + +When we were come upon the upper rim + Of the high bank, out on the open slope, + “My Master,” said I, “what way shall we take?” + +And he to me: “No step of thine descend; + Still up the mount behind me win thy way, + Till some sage escort shall appear to us.” + +The summit was so high it vanquished sight, + And the hillside precipitous far more + Than line from middle quadrant to the centre. + +Spent with fatigue was I, when I began: + “O my sweet Father! turn thee and behold + How I remain alone, unless thou stay!” + +“O son,” he said, “up yonder drag thyself,” + Pointing me to a terrace somewhat higher, + Which on that side encircles all the hill. + +These words of his so spurred me on, that I + Strained every nerve, behind him scrambling up, + Until the circle was beneath my feet. + +Thereon ourselves we seated both of us + Turned to the East, from which we had ascended, + For all men are delighted to look back. + +To the low shores mine eyes I first directed, + Then to the sun uplifted them, and wondered + That on the left hand we were smitten by it. + +The Poet well perceived that I was wholly + Bewildered at the chariot of the light, + Where ’twixt us and the Aquilon it entered. + +Whereon he said to me: “If Castor and Pollux + Were in the company of yonder mirror, + That up and down conducteth with its light, + +Thou wouldst behold the zodiac’s jagged wheel + Revolving still more near unto the Bears, + Unless it swerved aside from its old track. + +How that may be wouldst thou have power to think, + Collected in thyself, imagine Zion + Together with this mount on earth to stand, + +So that they both one sole horizon have, + And hemispheres diverse; whereby the road + Which Phaeton, alas! knew not to drive, + +Thou’lt see how of necessity must pass + This on one side, when that upon the other, + If thine intelligence right clearly heed.” + +“Truly, my Master,” said I, “never yet + Saw I so clearly as I now discern, + There where my wit appeared incompetent, + +That the mid-circle of supernal motion, + Which in some art is the Equator called, + And aye remains between the Sun and Winter, + +For reason which thou sayest, departeth hence + Tow’rds the Septentrion, what time the Hebrews + Beheld it tow’rds the region of the heat. + +But, if it pleaseth thee, I fain would learn + How far we have to go; for the hill rises + Higher than eyes of mine have power to rise.” + +And he to me: “This mount is such, that ever + At the beginning down below ’tis tiresome, + And aye the more one climbs, the less it hurts. + +Therefore, when it shall seem so pleasant to thee, + That going up shall be to thee as easy + As going down the current in a boat, + +Then at this pathway’s ending thou wilt be; + There to repose thy panting breath expect; + No more I answer; and this I know for true.” + +And as he finished uttering these words, + A voice close by us sounded: “Peradventure + Thou wilt have need of sitting down ere that.” + +At sound thereof each one of us turned round, + And saw upon the left hand a great rock, + Which neither I nor he before had noticed. + +Thither we drew; and there were persons there + Who in the shadow stood behind the rock, + As one through indolence is wont to stand. + +And one of them, who seemed to me fatigued, + Was sitting down, and both his knees embraced, + Holding his face low down between them bowed. + +“O my sweet Lord,” I said, “do turn thine eye + On him who shows himself more negligent + Then even Sloth herself his sister were.” + +Then he turned round to us, and he gave heed, + Just lifting up his eyes above his thigh, + And said: “Now go thou up, for thou art valiant.” + +Then knew I who he was; and the distress, + That still a little did my breathing quicken, + My going to him hindered not; and after + +I came to him he hardly raised his head, + Saying: “Hast thou seen clearly how the sun + O’er thy left shoulder drives his chariot?” + +His sluggish attitude and his curt words + A little unto laughter moved my lips; + Then I began: “Belacqua, I grieve not + +For thee henceforth; but tell me, wherefore seated + In this place art thou? Waitest thou an escort? + Or has thy usual habit seized upon thee?” + +And he: “O brother, what’s the use of climbing? + Since to my torment would not let me go + The Angel of God, who sitteth at the gate. + +First heaven must needs so long revolve me round + Outside thereof, as in my life it did, + Since the good sighs I to the end postponed, + +Unless, e’er that, some prayer may bring me aid + Which rises from a heart that lives in grace; + What profit others that in heaven are heard not?” + +Meanwhile the Poet was before me mounting, + And saying: “Come now; see the sun has touched + Meridian, and from the shore the night + +Covers already with her foot Morocco.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto V + + +I had already from those shades departed, + And followed in the footsteps of my Guide, + When from behind, pointing his finger at me, + +One shouted: “See, it seems as if shone not + The sunshine on the left of him below, + And like one living seems he to conduct him.” + +Mine eyes I turned at utterance of these words, + And saw them watching with astonishment + But me, but me, and the light which was broken! + +“Why doth thy mind so occupy itself,” + The Master said, “that thou thy pace dost slacken? + What matters it to thee what here is whispered? + +Come after me, and let the people talk; + Stand like a steadfast tower, that never wags + Its top for all the blowing of the winds; + +For evermore the man in whom is springing + Thought upon thought, removes from him the mark, + Because the force of one the other weakens.” + +What could I say in answer but “I come”? + I said it somewhat with that colour tinged + Which makes a man of pardon sometimes worthy. + +Meanwhile along the mountain-side across + Came people in advance of us a little, + Singing the Miserere verse by verse. + +When they became aware I gave no place + For passage of the sunshine through my body, + They changed their song into a long, hoarse “Oh!” + +And two of them, in form of messengers, + Ran forth to meet us, and demanded of us, + “Of your condition make us cognisant.” + +And said my Master: “Ye can go your way + And carry back again to those who sent you, + That this one’s body is of very flesh. + +If they stood still because they saw his shadow, + As I suppose, enough is answered them; + Him let them honour, it may profit them.” + +Vapours enkindled saw I ne’er so swiftly + At early nightfall cleave the air serene, + Nor, at the set of sun, the clouds of August, + +But upward they returned in briefer time, + And, on arriving, with the others wheeled + Tow’rds us, like troops that run without a rein. + +“This folk that presses unto us is great, + And cometh to implore thee,” said the Poet; + “So still go onward, and in going listen.” + +“O soul that goest to beatitude + With the same members wherewith thou wast born,” + Shouting they came, “a little stay thy steps, + +Look, if thou e’er hast any of us seen, + So that o’er yonder thou bear news of him; + Ah, why dost thou go on? Ah, why not stay? + +Long since we all were slain by violence, + And sinners even to the latest hour; + Then did a light from heaven admonish us, + +So that, both penitent and pardoning, forth + From life we issued reconciled to God, + Who with desire to see Him stirs our hearts.” + +And I: “Although I gaze into your faces, + No one I recognize; but if may please you + Aught I have power to do, ye well-born spirits, + +Speak ye, and I will do it, by that peace + Which, following the feet of such a Guide, + From world to world makes itself sought by me.” + +And one began: “Each one has confidence + In thy good offices without an oath, + Unless the I cannot cut off the I will; + +Whence I, who speak alone before the others, + Pray thee, if ever thou dost see the land + That ’twixt Romagna lies and that of Charles, + +Thou be so courteous to me of thy prayers + In Fano, that they pray for me devoutly, + That I may purge away my grave offences. + +From thence was I; but the deep wounds, through which + Issued the blood wherein I had my seat, + Were dealt me in bosom of the Antenori, + +There where I thought to be the most secure; + ’Twas he of Este had it done, who held me + In hatred far beyond what justice willed. + +But if towards the Mira I had fled, + When I was overtaken at Oriaco, + I still should be o’er yonder where men breathe. + +I ran to the lagoon, and reeds and mire + Did so entangle me I fell, and saw there + A lake made from my veins upon the ground.” + +Then said another: “Ah, be that desire + Fulfilled that draws thee to the lofty mountain, + As thou with pious pity aidest mine. + +I was of Montefeltro, and am Buonconte; + Giovanna, nor none other cares for me; + Hence among these I go with downcast front.” + +And I to him: “What violence or what chance + Led thee astray so far from Campaldino, + That never has thy sepulture been known?” + +“Oh,” he replied, “at Casentino’s foot + A river crosses named Archiano, born + Above the Hermitage in Apennine. + +There where the name thereof becometh void + Did I arrive, pierced through and through the throat, + Fleeing on foot, and bloodying the plain; + +There my sight lost I, and my utterance + Ceased in the name of Mary, and thereat + I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained. + +Truth will I speak, repeat it to the living; + God’s Angel took me up, and he of hell + Shouted: ‘O thou from heaven, why dost thou rob me? + +Thou bearest away the eternal part of him, + For one poor little tear, that takes him from me; + But with the rest I’ll deal in other fashion!’ + +Well knowest thou how in the air is gathered + That humid vapour which to water turns, + Soon as it rises where the cold doth grasp it. + +He joined that evil will, which aye seeks evil, + To intellect, and moved the mist and wind + By means of power, which his own nature gave; + +Thereafter, when the day was spent, the valley + From Pratomagno to the great yoke covered + With fog, and made the heaven above intent, + +So that the pregnant air to water changed; + Down fell the rain, and to the gullies came + Whate’er of it earth tolerated not; + +And as it mingled with the mighty torrents, + Towards the royal river with such speed + It headlong rushed, that nothing held it back. + +My frozen body near unto its outlet + The robust Archian found, and into Arno + Thrust it, and loosened from my breast the cross + +I made of me, when agony o’ercame me; + It rolled me on the banks and on the bottom, + Then with its booty covered and begirt me.” + +“Ah, when thou hast returned unto the world, + And rested thee from thy long journeying,” + After the second followed the third spirit, + +“Do thou remember me who am the Pia; + Siena made me, unmade me Maremma; + He knoweth it, who had encircled first, + +Espousing me, my finger with his gem.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto VI + + +Whene’er is broken up the game of Zara, + He who has lost remains behind despondent, + The throws repeating, and in sadness learns; + +The people with the other all depart; + One goes in front, and one behind doth pluck him, + And at his side one brings himself to mind; + +He pauses not, and this and that one hears; + They crowd no more to whom his hand he stretches, + And from the throng he thus defends himself. + +Even such was I in that dense multitude, + Turning to them this way and that my face, + And, promising, I freed myself therefrom. + +There was the Aretine, who from the arms + Untamed of Ghin di Tacco had his death, + And he who fleeing from pursuit was drowned. + +There was imploring with his hands outstretched + Frederick Novello, and that one of Pisa + Who made the good Marzucco seem so strong. + +I saw Count Orso; and the soul divided + By hatred and by envy from its body, + As it declared, and not for crime committed, + +Pierre de la Brosse I say; and here provide + While still on earth the Lady of Brabant, + So that for this she be of no worse flock! + +As soon as I was free from all those shades + Who only prayed that some one else may pray, + So as to hasten their becoming holy, + +Began I: “It appears that thou deniest, + O light of mine, expressly in some text, + That orison can bend decree of Heaven; + +And ne’ertheless these people pray for this. + Might then their expectation bootless be? + Or is to me thy saying not quite clear?” + +And he to me: “My writing is explicit, + And not fallacious is the hope of these, + If with sane intellect ’tis well regarded; + +For top of judgment doth not vail itself, + Because the fire of love fulfils at once + What he must satisfy who here installs him. + +And there, where I affirmed that proposition, + Defect was not amended by a prayer, + Because the prayer from God was separate. + +Verily, in so deep a questioning + Do not decide, unless she tell it thee, + Who light ’twixt truth and intellect shall be. + +I know not if thou understand; I speak + Of Beatrice; her shalt thou see above, + Smiling and happy, on this mountain’s top.” + +And I: “Good Leader, let us make more haste, + For I no longer tire me as before; + And see, e’en now the hill a shadow casts.” + +“We will go forward with this day” he answered, + “As far as now is possible for us; + But otherwise the fact is than thou thinkest. + +Ere thou art up there, thou shalt see return + Him, who now hides himself behind the hill, + So that thou dost not interrupt his rays. + +But yonder there behold! a soul that stationed + All, all alone is looking hitherward; + It will point out to us the quickest way.” + +We came up unto it; O Lombard soul, + How lofty and disdainful thou didst bear thee, + And grand and slow in moving of thine eyes! + +Nothing whatever did it say to us, + But let us go our way, eying us only + After the manner of a couchant lion; + +Still near to it Virgilius drew, entreating + That it would point us out the best ascent; + And it replied not unto his demand, + +But of our native land and of our life + It questioned us; and the sweet Guide began: + “Mantua,”—and the shade, all in itself recluse, + +Rose tow’rds him from the place where first it was, + Saying: “O Mantuan, I am Sordello + Of thine own land!” and one embraced the other. + +Ah! servile Italy, grief’s hostelry! + A ship without a pilot in great tempest! + No Lady thou of Provinces, but brothel! + +That noble soul was so impatient, only + At the sweet sound of his own native land, + To make its citizen glad welcome there; + +And now within thee are not without war + Thy living ones, and one doth gnaw the other + Of those whom one wall and one fosse shut in! + +Search, wretched one, all round about the shores + Thy seaboard, and then look within thy bosom, + If any part of thee enjoyeth peace! + +What boots it, that for thee Justinian + The bridle mend, if empty be the saddle? + Withouten this the shame would be the less. + +Ah! people, thou that oughtest to be devout, + And to let Caesar sit upon the saddle, + If well thou hearest what God teacheth thee, + +Behold how fell this wild beast has become, + Being no longer by the spur corrected, + Since thou hast laid thy hand upon the bridle. + +O German Albert! who abandonest + Her that has grown recalcitrant and savage, + And oughtest to bestride her saddle-bow, + +May a just judgment from the stars down fall + Upon thy blood, and be it new and open, + That thy successor may have fear thereof; + +Because thy father and thyself have suffered, + By greed of those transalpine lands distrained, + The garden of the empire to be waste. + +Come and behold Montecchi and Cappelletti, + Monaldi and Fillippeschi, careless man! + Those sad already, and these doubt-depressed! + +Come, cruel one! come and behold the oppression + Of thy nobility, and cure their wounds, + And thou shalt see how safe is Santafiore! + +Come and behold thy Rome, that is lamenting, + Widowed, alone, and day and night exclaims, + “My Caesar, why hast thou forsaken me?” + +Come and behold how loving are the people; + And if for us no pity moveth thee, + Come and be made ashamed of thy renown! + +And if it lawful be, O Jove Supreme! + Who upon earth for us wast crucified, + Are thy just eyes averted otherwhere? + +Or preparation is ’t, that, in the abyss + Of thine own counsel, for some good thou makest + From our perception utterly cut off? + +For all the towns of Italy are full + Of tyrants, and becometh a Marcellus + Each peasant churl who plays the partisan! + +My Florence! well mayst thou contented be + With this digression, which concerns thee not, + Thanks to thy people who such forethought take! + +Many at heart have justice, but shoot slowly, + That unadvised they come not to the bow, + But on their very lips thy people have it! + +Many refuse to bear the common burden; + But thy solicitous people answereth + Without being asked, and crieth: “I submit.” + +Now be thou joyful, for thou hast good reason; + Thou affluent, thou in peace, thou full of wisdom! + If I speak true, the event conceals it not. + +Athens and Lacedaemon, they who made + The ancient laws, and were so civilized, + Made towards living well a little sign + +Compared with thee, who makest such fine-spun + Provisions, that to middle of November + Reaches not what thou in October spinnest. + +How oft, within the time of thy remembrance, + Laws, money, offices, and usages + Hast thou remodelled, and renewed thy members? + +And if thou mind thee well, and see the light, + Thou shalt behold thyself like a sick woman, + Who cannot find repose upon her down, + +But by her tossing wardeth off her pain. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto VII + + +After the gracious and glad salutations + Had three and four times been reiterated, + Sordello backward drew and said, “Who are you?” + +“Or ever to this mountain were directed + The souls deserving to ascend to God, + My bones were buried by Octavian. + +I am Virgilius; and for no crime else + Did I lose heaven, than for not having faith;” + In this wise then my Leader made reply. + +As one who suddenly before him sees + Something whereat he marvels, who believes + And yet does not, saying, “It is! it is not!” + +So he appeared; and then bowed down his brow, + And with humility returned towards him, + And, where inferiors embrace, embraced him. + +“O glory of the Latians, thou,” he said, + “Through whom our language showed what it could do + O pride eternal of the place I came from, + +What merit or what grace to me reveals thee? + If I to hear thy words be worthy, tell me + If thou dost come from Hell, and from what cloister.” + +“Through all the circles of the doleful realm,” + Responded he, “have I come hitherward; + Heaven’s power impelled me, and with that I come. + +I by not doing, not by doing, lost + The sight of that high sun which thou desirest, + And which too late by me was recognized. + +A place there is below not sad with torments, + But darkness only, where the lamentations + Have not the sound of wailing, but are sighs. + +There dwell I with the little innocents + Snatched by the teeth of Death, or ever they + Were from our human sinfulness exempt. + +There dwell I among those who the three saintly + Virtues did not put on, and without vice + The others knew and followed all of them. + +But if thou know and can, some indication + Give us by which we may the sooner come + Where Purgatory has its right beginning.” + +He answered: “No fixed place has been assigned us; + ’Tis lawful for me to go up and round; + So far as I can go, as guide I join thee. + +But see already how the day declines, + And to go up by night we are not able; + Therefore ’tis well to think of some fair sojourn. + +Souls are there on the right hand here withdrawn; + If thou permit me I will lead thee to them, + And thou shalt know them not without delight.” + +“How is this?” was the answer; “should one wish + To mount by night would he prevented be + By others? or mayhap would not have power?” + +And on the ground the good Sordello drew + His finger, saying, “See, this line alone + Thou couldst not pass after the sun is gone; + +Not that aught else would hindrance give, however, + To going up, save the nocturnal darkness; + This with the want of power the will perplexes. + +We might indeed therewith return below, + And, wandering, walk the hill-side round about, + While the horizon holds the day imprisoned.” + +Thereon my Lord, as if in wonder, said: + “Do thou conduct us thither, where thou sayest + That we can take delight in tarrying.” + +Little had we withdrawn us from that place, + When I perceived the mount was hollowed out + In fashion as the valleys here are hollowed. + +“Thitherward,” said that shade, “will we repair, + Where of itself the hill-side makes a lap, + And there for the new day will we await.” + +’Twixt hill and plain there was a winding path + Which led us to the margin of that dell, + Where dies the border more than half away. + +Gold and fine silver, and scarlet and pearl-white, + The Indian wood resplendent and serene, + Fresh emerald the moment it is broken, + +By herbage and by flowers within that hollow + Planted, each one in colour would be vanquished, + As by its greater vanquished is the less. + +Nor in that place had nature painted only, + But of the sweetness of a thousand odours + Made there a mingled fragrance and unknown. + +“Salve Regina,” on the green and flowers + There seated, singing, spirits I beheld, + Which were not visible outside the valley. + +“Before the scanty sun now seeks his nest,” + Began the Mantuan who had led us thither, + “Among them do not wish me to conduct you. + +Better from off this ledge the acts and faces + Of all of them will you discriminate, + Than in the plain below received among them. + +He who sits highest, and the semblance bears + Of having what he should have done neglected, + And to the others’ song moves not his lips, + +Rudolph the Emperor was, who had the power + To heal the wounds that Italy have slain, + So that through others slowly she revives. + +The other, who in look doth comfort him, + Governed the region where the water springs, + The Moldau bears the Elbe, and Elbe the sea. + +His name was Ottocar; and in swaddling-clothes + Far better he than bearded Winceslaus + His son, who feeds in luxury and ease. + +And the small-nosed, who close in council seems + With him that has an aspect so benign, + Died fleeing and disflowering the lily; + +Look there, how he is beating at his breast! + Behold the other one, who for his cheek + Sighing has made of his own palm a bed; + +Father and father-in-law of France’s Pest + Are they, and know his vicious life and lewd, + And hence proceeds the grief that so doth pierce them. + +He who appears so stalwart, and chimes in, + Singing, with that one of the manly nose, + The cord of every valour wore begirt; + +And if as King had after him remained + The stripling who in rear of him is sitting, + Well had the valour passed from vase to vase, + +Which cannot of the other heirs be said. + Frederick and Jacomo possess the realms, + But none the better heritage possesses. + +Not oftentimes upriseth through the branches + The probity of man; and this He wills + Who gives it, so that we may ask of Him. + +Eke to the large-nosed reach my words, no less + Than to the other, Pier, who with him sings; + Whence Provence and Apulia grieve already + +The plant is as inferior to its seed, + As more than Beatrice and Margaret + Costanza boasteth of her husband still. + +Behold the monarch of the simple life, + Harry of England, sitting there alone; + He in his branches has a better issue. + +He who the lowest on the ground among them + Sits looking upward, is the Marquis William, + For whose sake Alessandria and her war + +Make Monferrat and Canavese weep.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto VIII + + +’Twas now the hour that turneth back desire + In those who sail the sea, and melts the heart, + The day they’ve said to their sweet friends farewell, + +And the new pilgrim penetrates with love, + If he doth hear from far away a bell + That seemeth to deplore the dying day, + +When I began to make of no avail + My hearing, and to watch one of the souls + Uprisen, that begged attention with its hand. + +It joined and lifted upward both its palms, + Fixing its eyes upon the orient, + As if it said to God, “Naught else I care for.” + +“Te lucis ante” so devoutly issued + Forth from its mouth, and with such dulcet notes, + It made me issue forth from my own mind. + +And then the others, sweetly and devoutly, + Accompanied it through all the hymn entire, + Having their eyes on the supernal wheels. + +Here, Reader, fix thine eyes well on the truth, + For now indeed so subtile is the veil, + Surely to penetrate within is easy. + +I saw that army of the gentle-born + Thereafterward in silence upward gaze, + As if in expectation, pale and humble; + +And from on high come forth and down descend, + I saw two Angels with two flaming swords, + Truncated and deprived of their points. + +Green as the little leaflets just now born + Their garments were, which, by their verdant pinions + Beaten and blown abroad, they trailed behind. + +One just above us came to take his station, + And one descended to the opposite bank, + So that the people were contained between them. + +Clearly in them discerned I the blond head; + But in their faces was the eye bewildered, + As faculty confounded by excess. + +“From Mary’s bosom both of them have come,” + Sordello said, “as guardians of the valley + Against the serpent, that will come anon.” + +Whereupon I, who knew not by what road, + Turned round about, and closely drew myself, + Utterly frozen, to the faithful shoulders. + +And once again Sordello: “Now descend we + ’Mid the grand shades, and we will speak to them; + Right pleasant will it be for them to see you.” + +Only three steps I think that I descended, + And was below, and saw one who was looking + Only at me, as if he fain would know me. + +Already now the air was growing dark, + But not so that between his eyes and mine + It did not show what it before locked up. + +Tow’rds me he moved, and I tow’rds him did move; + Noble Judge Nino! how it me delighted, + When I beheld thee not among the damned! + +No greeting fair was left unsaid between us; + Then asked he: “How long is it since thou camest + O’er the far waters to the mountain’s foot?” + +“Oh!” said I to him, “through the dismal places + I came this morn; and am in the first life, + Albeit the other, going thus, I gain.” + +And on the instant my reply was heard, + He and Sordello both shrank back from me, + Like people who are suddenly bewildered. + +One to Virgilius, and the other turned + To one who sat there, crying, “Up, Currado! + Come and behold what God in grace has willed!” + +Then, turned to me: “By that especial grace + Thou owest unto Him, who so conceals + His own first wherefore, that it has no ford, + +When thou shalt be beyond the waters wide, + Tell my Giovanna that she pray for me, + Where answer to the innocent is made. + +I do not think her mother loves me more, + Since she has laid aside her wimple white, + Which she, unhappy, needs must wish again. + +Through her full easily is comprehended + How long in woman lasts the fire of love, + If eye or touch do not relight it often. + +So fair a hatchment will not make for her + The Viper marshalling the Milanese + A-field, as would have made Gallura’s Cock.” + +In this wise spake he, with the stamp impressed + Upon his aspect of that righteous zeal + Which measurably burneth in the heart. + +My greedy eyes still wandered up to heaven, + Still to that point where slowest are the stars, + Even as a wheel the nearest to its axle. + +And my Conductor: “Son, what dost thou gaze at + Up there?” And I to him: “At those three torches + With which this hither pole is all on fire.” + +And he to me: “The four resplendent stars + Thou sawest this morning are down yonder low, + And these have mounted up to where those were.” + +As he was speaking, to himself Sordello + Drew him, and said, “Lo there our Adversary!” + And pointed with his finger to look thither. + +Upon the side on which the little valley + No barrier hath, a serpent was; perchance + The same which gave to Eve the bitter food. + +’Twixt grass and flowers came on the evil streak, + Turning at times its head about, and licking + Its back like to a beast that smoothes itself. + +I did not see, and therefore cannot say + How the celestial falcons ’gan to move, + But well I saw that they were both in motion. + +Hearing the air cleft by their verdant wings, + The serpent fled, and round the Angels wheeled, + Up to their stations flying back alike. + +The shade that to the Judge had near approached + When he had called, throughout that whole assault + Had not a moment loosed its gaze on me. + +“So may the light that leadeth thee on high + Find in thine own free-will as much of wax + As needful is up to the highest azure,” + +Began it, “if some true intelligence + Of Valdimagra or its neighbourhood + Thou knowest, tell it me, who once was great there. + +Currado Malaspina was I called; + I’m not the elder, but from him descended; + To mine I bore the love which here refineth.” + +“O,” said I unto him, “through your domains + I never passed, but where is there a dwelling + Throughout all Europe, where they are not known? + +That fame, which doeth honour to your house, + Proclaims its Signors and proclaims its land, + So that he knows of them who ne’er was there. + +And, as I hope for heaven, I swear to you + Your honoured family in naught abates + The glory of the purse and of the sword. + +It is so privileged by use and nature, + That though a guilty head misguide the world, + Sole it goes right, and scorns the evil way.” + +And he: “Now go; for the sun shall not lie + Seven times upon the pillow which the Ram + With all his four feet covers and bestrides, + +Before that such a courteous opinion + Shall in the middle of thy head be nailed + With greater nails than of another’s speech, + +Unless the course of justice standeth still.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto IX + + +The concubine of old Tithonus now + Gleamed white upon the eastern balcony, + Forth from the arms of her sweet paramour; + +With gems her forehead all relucent was, + Set in the shape of that cold animal + Which with its tail doth smite amain the nations, + +And of the steps, with which she mounts, the Night + Had taken two in that place where we were, + And now the third was bending down its wings; + +When I, who something had of Adam in me, + Vanquished by sleep, upon the grass reclined, + There were all five of us already sat. + +Just at the hour when her sad lay begins + The little swallow, near unto the morning, + Perchance in memory of her former woes, + +And when the mind of man, a wanderer + More from the flesh, and less by thought imprisoned, + Almost prophetic in its visions is, + +In dreams it seemed to me I saw suspended + An eagle in the sky, with plumes of gold, + With wings wide open, and intent to stoop, + +And this, it seemed to me, was where had been + By Ganymede his kith and kin abandoned, + When to the high consistory he was rapt. + +I thought within myself, perchance he strikes + From habit only here, and from elsewhere + Disdains to bear up any in his feet. + +Then wheeling somewhat more, it seemed to me, + Terrible as the lightning he descended, + And snatched me upward even to the fire. + +Therein it seemed that he and I were burning, + And the imagined fire did scorch me so, + That of necessity my sleep was broken. + +Not otherwise Achilles started up, + Around him turning his awakened eyes, + And knowing not the place in which he was, + +What time from Chiron stealthily his mother + Carried him sleeping in her arms to Scyros, + Wherefrom the Greeks withdrew him afterwards, + +Than I upstarted, when from off my face + Sleep fled away; and pallid I became, + As doth the man who freezes with affright. + +Only my Comforter was at my side, + And now the sun was more than two hours high, + And turned towards the sea-shore was my face. + +“Be not intimidated,” said my Lord, + “Be reassured, for all is well with us; + Do not restrain, but put forth all thy strength. + +Thou hast at length arrived at Purgatory; + See there the cliff that closes it around; + See there the entrance, where it seems disjoined. + +Whilom at dawn, which doth precede the day, + When inwardly thy spirit was asleep + Upon the flowers that deck the land below, + +There came a Lady and said: ‘I am Lucia; + Let me take this one up, who is asleep; + So will I make his journey easier for him.’ + +Sordello and the other noble shapes + Remained; she took thee, and, as day grew bright, + Upward she came, and I upon her footsteps. + +She laid thee here; and first her beauteous eyes + That open entrance pointed out to me; + Then she and sleep together went away.” + +In guise of one whose doubts are reassured, + And who to confidence his fear doth change, + After the truth has been discovered to him, + +So did I change; and when without disquiet + My Leader saw me, up along the cliff + He moved, and I behind him, tow’rd the height. + +Reader, thou seest well how I exalt + My theme, and therefore if with greater art + I fortify it, marvel not thereat. + +Nearer approached we, and were in such place, + That there, where first appeared to me a rift + Like to a crevice that disparts a wall, + +I saw a portal, and three stairs beneath, + Diverse in colour, to go up to it, + And a gate-keeper, who yet spake no word. + +And as I opened more and more mine eyes, + I saw him seated on the highest stair, + Such in the face that I endured it not. + +And in his hand he had a naked sword, + Which so reflected back the sunbeams tow’rds us, + That oft in vain I lifted up mine eyes. + +“Tell it from where you are, what is’t you wish?” + Began he to exclaim; “where is the escort? + Take heed your coming hither harm you not!” + +“A Lady of Heaven, with these things conversant,” + My Master answered him, “but even now + Said to us, ‘Thither go; there is the portal.’” + +“And may she speed your footsteps in all good,” + Again began the courteous janitor; + “Come forward then unto these stairs of ours.” + +Thither did we approach; and the first stair + Was marble white, so polished and so smooth, + I mirrored myself therein as I appear. + +The second, tinct of deeper hue than perse, + Was of a calcined and uneven stone, + Cracked all asunder lengthwise and across. + +The third, that uppermost rests massively, + Porphyry seemed to me, as flaming red + As blood that from a vein is spirting forth. + +Both of his feet was holding upon this + The Angel of God, upon the threshold seated, + Which seemed to me a stone of diamond. + +Along the three stairs upward with good will + Did my Conductor draw me, saying: “Ask + Humbly that he the fastening may undo.” + +Devoutly at the holy feet I cast me, + For mercy’s sake besought that he would open, + But first upon my breast three times I smote. + +Seven P’s upon my forehead he described + With the sword’s point, and, “Take heed that thou wash + These wounds, when thou shalt be within,” he said. + +Ashes, or earth that dry is excavated, + Of the same colour were with his attire, + And from beneath it he drew forth two keys. + +One was of gold, and the other was of silver; + First with the white, and after with the yellow, + Plied he the door, so that I was content. + +“Whenever faileth either of these keys + So that it turn not rightly in the lock,” + He said to us, “this entrance doth not open. + +More precious one is, but the other needs + More art and intellect ere it unlock, + For it is that which doth the knot unloose. + +From Peter I have them; and he bade me err + Rather in opening than in keeping shut, + If people but fall down before my feet.” + +Then pushed the portals of the sacred door, + Exclaiming: “Enter; but I give you warning + That forth returns whoever looks behind.” + +And when upon their hinges were turned round + The swivels of that consecrated gate, + Which are of metal, massive and sonorous, + +Roared not so loud, nor so discordant seemed + Tarpeia, when was ta’en from it the good + Metellus, wherefore meagre it remained. + +At the first thunder-peal I turned attentive, + And “Te Deum laudamus” seemed to hear + In voices mingled with sweet melody. + +Exactly such an image rendered me + That which I heard, as we are wont to catch, + When people singing with the organ stand; + +For now we hear, and now hear not, the words. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto X + + +When we had crossed the threshold of the door + Which the perverted love of souls disuses, + Because it makes the crooked way seem straight, + +Re-echoing I heard it closed again; + And if I had turned back mine eyes upon it, + What for my failing had been fit excuse? + +We mounted upward through a rifted rock, + Which undulated to this side and that, + Even as a wave receding and advancing. + +“Here it behoves us use a little art,” + Began my Leader, “to adapt ourselves + Now here, now there, to the receding side.” + +And this our footsteps so infrequent made, + That sooner had the moon’s decreasing disk + Regained its bed to sink again to rest, + +Than we were forth from out that needle’s eye; + But when we free and in the open were, + There where the mountain backward piles itself, + +I wearied out, and both of us uncertain + About our way, we stopped upon a plain + More desolate than roads across the deserts. + +From where its margin borders on the void, + To foot of the high bank that ever rises, + A human body three times told would measure; + +And far as eye of mine could wing its flight, + Now on the left, and on the right flank now, + The same this cornice did appear to me. + +Thereon our feet had not been moved as yet, + When I perceived the embankment round about, + Which all right of ascent had interdicted, + +To be of marble white, and so adorned + With sculptures, that not only Polycletus, + But Nature’s self, had there been put to shame. + +The Angel, who came down to earth with tidings + Of peace, that had been wept for many a year, + And opened Heaven from its long interdict, + +In front of us appeared so truthfully + There sculptured in a gracious attitude, + He did not seem an image that is silent. + +One would have sworn that he was saying, “Ave;” + For she was there in effigy portrayed + Who turned the key to ope the exalted love, + +And in her mien this language had impressed, + “Ecce ancilla Dei,” as distinctly + As any figure stamps itself in wax. + +“Keep not thy mind upon one place alone,” + The gentle Master said, who had me standing + Upon that side where people have their hearts; + +Whereat I moved mine eyes, and I beheld + In rear of Mary, and upon that side + Where he was standing who conducted me, + +Another story on the rock imposed; + Wherefore I passed Virgilius and drew near, + So that before mine eyes it might be set. + +There sculptured in the self-same marble were + The cart and oxen, drawing the holy ark, + Wherefore one dreads an office not appointed. + +People appeared in front, and all of them + In seven choirs divided, of two senses + Made one say “No,” the other, “Yes, they sing.” + +Likewise unto the smoke of the frankincense, + Which there was imaged forth, the eyes and nose + Were in the yes and no discordant made. + +Preceded there the vessel benedight, + Dancing with girded loins, the humble Psalmist, + And more and less than King was he in this. + +Opposite, represented at the window + Of a great palace, Michal looked upon him, + Even as a woman scornful and afflicted. + +I moved my feet from where I had been standing, + To examine near at hand another story, + Which after Michal glimmered white upon me. + +There the high glory of the Roman Prince + Was chronicled, whose great beneficence + Moved Gregory to his great victory; + +’Tis of the Emperor Trajan I am speaking; + And a poor widow at his bridle stood, + In attitude of weeping and of grief. + +Around about him seemed it thronged and full + Of cavaliers, and the eagles in the gold + Above them visibly in the wind were moving. + +The wretched woman in the midst of these + Seemed to be saying: “Give me vengeance, Lord, + For my dead son, for whom my heart is breaking.” + +And he to answer her: “Now wait until + I shall return.” And she: “My Lord,” like one + In whom grief is impatient, “shouldst thou not + +Return?” And he: “Who shall be where I am + Will give it thee.” And she: “Good deed of others + What boots it thee, if thou neglect thine own?” + +Whence he: “Now comfort thee, for it behoves me + That I discharge my duty ere I move; + Justice so wills, and pity doth retain me.” + +He who on no new thing has ever looked + Was the creator of this visible language, + Novel to us, for here it is not found. + +While I delighted me in contemplating + The images of such humility, + And dear to look on for their Maker’s sake, + +“Behold, upon this side, but rare they make + Their steps,” the Poet murmured, “many people; + These will direct us to the lofty stairs.” + +Mine eyes, that in beholding were intent + To see new things, of which they curious are, + In turning round towards him were not slow. + +But still I wish not, Reader, thou shouldst swerve + From thy good purposes, because thou hearest + How God ordaineth that the debt be paid; + +Attend not to the fashion of the torment, + Think of what follows; think that at the worst + It cannot reach beyond the mighty sentence. + +“Master,” began I, “that which I behold + Moving towards us seems to me not persons, + And what I know not, so in sight I waver.” + +And he to me: “The grievous quality + Of this their torment bows them so to earth, + That my own eyes at first contended with it; + +But look there fixedly, and disentangle + By sight what cometh underneath those stones; + Already canst thou see how each is stricken.” + +O ye proud Christians! wretched, weary ones! + Who, in the vision of the mind infirm + Confidence have in your backsliding steps, + +Do ye not comprehend that we are worms, + Born to bring forth the angelic butterfly + That flieth unto judgment without screen? + +Why floats aloft your spirit high in air? + Like are ye unto insects undeveloped, + Even as the worm in whom formation fails! + +As to sustain a ceiling or a roof, + In place of corbel, oftentimes a figure + Is seen to join its knees unto its breast, + +Which makes of the unreal real anguish + Arise in him who sees it, fashioned thus + Beheld I those, when I had ta’en good heed. + +True is it, they were more or less bent down, + According as they more or less were laden; + And he who had most patience in his looks + +Weeping did seem to say, “I can no more!” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XI + + +“Our Father, thou who dwellest in the heavens, + Not circumscribed, but from the greater love + Thou bearest to the first effects on high, + +Praised be thy name and thine omnipotence + By every creature, as befitting is + To render thanks to thy sweet effluence. + +Come unto us the peace of thy dominion, + For unto it we cannot of ourselves, + If it come not, with all our intellect. + +Even as thine own Angels of their will + Make sacrifice to thee, Hosanna singing, + So may all men make sacrifice of theirs. + +Give unto us this day our daily manna, + Withouten which in this rough wilderness + Backward goes he who toils most to advance. + +And even as we the trespass we have suffered + Pardon in one another, pardon thou + Benignly, and regard not our desert. + +Our virtue, which is easily o’ercome, + Put not to proof with the old Adversary, + But thou from him who spurs it so, deliver. + +This last petition verily, dear Lord, + Not for ourselves is made, who need it not, + But for their sake who have remained behind us.” + +Thus for themselves and us good furtherance + Those shades imploring, went beneath a weight + Like unto that of which we sometimes dream, + +Unequally in anguish round and round + And weary all, upon that foremost cornice, + Purging away the smoke-stains of the world. + +If there good words are always said for us, + What may not here be said and done for them, + By those who have a good root to their will? + +Well may we help them wash away the marks + That hence they carried, so that clean and light + They may ascend unto the starry wheels! + +“Ah! so may pity and justice you disburden + Soon, that ye may have power to move the wing, + That shall uplift you after your desire, + +Show us on which hand tow’rd the stairs the way + Is shortest, and if more than one the passes, + Point us out that which least abruptly falls; + +For he who cometh with me, through the burden + Of Adam’s flesh wherewith he is invested, + Against his will is chary of his climbing.” + +The words of theirs which they returned to those + That he whom I was following had spoken, + It was not manifest from whom they came, + +But it was said: “To the right hand come with us + Along the bank, and ye shall find a pass + Possible for living person to ascend. + +And were I not impeded by the stone, + Which this proud neck of mine doth subjugate, + Whence I am forced to hold my visage down, + +Him, who still lives and does not name himself, + Would I regard, to see if I may know him + And make him piteous unto this burden. + +A Latian was I, and born of a great Tuscan; + Guglielmo Aldobrandeschi was my father; + I know not if his name were ever with you. + +The ancient blood and deeds of gallantry + Of my progenitors so arrogant made me + That, thinking not upon the common mother, + +All men I held in scorn to such extent + I died therefor, as know the Sienese, + And every child in Campagnatico. + +I am Omberto; and not to me alone + Has pride done harm, but all my kith and kin + Has with it dragged into adversity. + +And here must I this burden bear for it + Till God be satisfied, since I did not + Among the living, here among the dead.” + +Listening I downward bent my countenance; + And one of them, not this one who was speaking, + Twisted himself beneath the weight that cramps him, + +And looked at me, and knew me, and called out, + Keeping his eyes laboriously fixed + On me, who all bowed down was going with them. + +“O,” asked I him, “art thou not Oderisi, + Agobbio’s honour, and honour of that art + Which is in Paris called illuminating?” + +“Brother,” said he, “more laughing are the leaves + Touched by the brush of Franco Bolognese; + All his the honour now, and mine in part. + +In sooth I had not been so courteous + While I was living, for the great desire + Of excellence, on which my heart was bent. + +Here of such pride is paid the forfeiture; + And yet I should not be here, were it not + That, having power to sin, I turned to God. + +O thou vain glory of the human powers, + How little green upon thy summit lingers, + If’t be not followed by an age of grossness! + +In painting Cimabue thought that he + Should hold the field, now Giotto has the cry, + So that the other’s fame is growing dim. + +So has one Guido from the other taken + The glory of our tongue, and he perchance + Is born, who from the nest shall chase them both. + +Naught is this mundane rumour but a breath + Of wind, that comes now this way and now that, + And changes name, because it changes side. + +What fame shalt thou have more, if old peel off + From thee thy flesh, than if thou hadst been dead + Before thou left the ‘pappo’ and the ‘dindi,’ + +Ere pass a thousand years? which is a shorter + Space to the eterne, than twinkling of an eye + Unto the circle that in heaven wheels slowest. + +With him, who takes so little of the road + In front of me, all Tuscany resounded; + And now he scarce is lisped of in Siena, + +Where he was lord, what time was overthrown + The Florentine delirium, that superb + Was at that day as now ’tis prostitute. + +Your reputation is the colour of grass + Which comes and goes, and that discolours it + By which it issues green from out the earth.” + +And I: “Thy true speech fills my heart with good + Humility, and great tumour thou assuagest; + But who is he, of whom just now thou spakest?” + +“That,” he replied, “is Provenzan Salvani, + And he is here because he had presumed + To bring Siena all into his hands. + +He has gone thus, and goeth without rest + E’er since he died; such money renders back + In payment he who is on earth too daring.” + +And I: “If every spirit who awaits + The verge of life before that he repent, + Remains below there and ascends not hither, + +(Unless good orison shall him bestead,) + Until as much time as he lived be passed, + How was the coming granted him in largess?” + +“When he in greatest splendour lived,” said he, + “Freely upon the Campo of Siena, + All shame being laid aside, he placed himself; + +And there to draw his friend from the duress + Which in the prison-house of Charles he suffered, + He brought himself to tremble in each vein. + +I say no more, and know that I speak darkly; + Yet little time shall pass before thy neighbours + Will so demean themselves that thou canst gloss it. + +This action has released him from those confines.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XII + + +Abreast, like oxen going in a yoke, + I with that heavy-laden soul went on, + As long as the sweet pedagogue permitted; + +But when he said, “Leave him, and onward pass, + For here ’tis good that with the sail and oars, + As much as may be, each push on his barque;” + +Upright, as walking wills it, I redressed + My person, notwithstanding that my thoughts + Remained within me downcast and abashed. + +I had moved on, and followed willingly + The footsteps of my Master, and we both + Already showed how light of foot we were, + +When unto me he said: “Cast down thine eyes; + ’Twere well for thee, to alleviate the way, + To look upon the bed beneath thy feet.” + +As, that some memory may exist of them, + Above the buried dead their tombs in earth + Bear sculptured on them what they were before; + +Whence often there we weep for them afresh, + From pricking of remembrance, which alone + To the compassionate doth set its spur; + +So saw I there, but of a better semblance + In point of artifice, with figures covered + Whate’er as pathway from the mount projects. + +I saw that one who was created noble + More than all other creatures, down from heaven + Flaming with lightnings fall upon one side. + +I saw Briareus smitten by the dart + Celestial, lying on the other side, + Heavy upon the earth by mortal frost. + +I saw Thymbraeus, Pallas saw, and Mars, + Still clad in armour round about their father, + Gaze at the scattered members of the giants. + +I saw, at foot of his great labour, Nimrod, + As if bewildered, looking at the people + Who had been proud with him in Sennaar. + +O Niobe! with what afflicted eyes + Thee I beheld upon the pathway traced, + Between thy seven and seven children slain! + +O Saul! how fallen upon thy proper sword + Didst thou appear there lifeless in Gilboa, + That felt thereafter neither rain nor dew! + +O mad Arachne! so I thee beheld + E’en then half spider, sad upon the shreds + Of fabric wrought in evil hour for thee! + +O Rehoboam! no more seems to threaten + Thine image there; but full of consternation + A chariot bears it off, when none pursues! + +Displayed moreo’er the adamantine pavement + How unto his own mother made Alcmaeon + Costly appear the luckless ornament; + +Displayed how his own sons did throw themselves + Upon Sennacherib within the temple, + And how, he being dead, they left him there; + +Displayed the ruin and the cruel carnage + That Tomyris wrought, when she to Cyrus said, + “Blood didst thou thirst for, and with blood I glut thee!” + +Displayed how routed fled the Assyrians + After that Holofernes had been slain, + And likewise the remainder of that slaughter. + +I saw there Troy in ashes and in caverns; + O Ilion! thee, how abject and debased, + Displayed the image that is there discerned! + +Whoe’er of pencil master was or stile, + That could portray the shades and traits which there + Would cause each subtile genius to admire? + +Dead seemed the dead, the living seemed alive; + Better than I saw not who saw the truth, + All that I trod upon while bowed I went. + +Now wax ye proud, and on with looks uplifted, + Ye sons of Eve, and bow not down your faces + So that ye may behold your evil ways! + +More of the mount by us was now encompassed, + And far more spent the circuit of the sun, + Than had the mind preoccupied imagined, + +When he, who ever watchful in advance + Was going on, began: “Lift up thy head, + ’Tis no more time to go thus meditating. + +Lo there an Angel who is making haste + To come towards us; lo, returning is + From service of the day the sixth handmaiden. + +With reverence thine acts and looks adorn, + So that he may delight to speed us upward; + Think that this day will never dawn again.” + +I was familiar with his admonition + Ever to lose no time; so on this theme + He could not unto me speak covertly. + +Towards us came the being beautiful + Vested in white, and in his countenance + Such as appears the tremulous morning star. + +His arms he opened, and opened then his wings; + “Come,” said he, “near at hand here are the steps, + And easy from henceforth is the ascent.” + +At this announcement few are they who come! + O human creatures, born to soar aloft, + Why fall ye thus before a little wind? + +He led us on to where the rock was cleft; + There smote upon my forehead with his wings, + Then a safe passage promised unto me. + +As on the right hand, to ascend the mount + Where seated is the church that lordeth it + O’er the well-guided, above Rubaconte, + +The bold abruptness of the ascent is broken + By stairways that were made there in the age + When still were safe the ledger and the stave, + +E’en thus attempered is the bank which falls + Sheer downward from the second circle there; + But on this, side and that the high rock graze. + +As we were turning thitherward our persons, + “Beati pauperes spiritu,” voices + Sang in such wise that speech could tell it not. + +Ah me! how different are these entrances + From the Infernal! for with anthems here + One enters, and below with wild laments. + +We now were hunting up the sacred stairs, + And it appeared to me by far more easy + Than on the plain it had appeared before. + +Whence I: “My Master, say, what heavy thing + Has been uplifted from me, so that hardly + Aught of fatigue is felt by me in walking?” + +He answered: “When the P’s which have remained + Still on thy face almost obliterate + Shall wholly, as the first is, be erased, + +Thy feet will be so vanquished by good will, + That not alone they shall not feel fatigue, + But urging up will be to them delight.” + +Then did I even as they do who are going + With something on the head to them unknown, + Unless the signs of others make them doubt, + +Wherefore the hand to ascertain is helpful, + And seeks and finds, and doth fulfill the office + Which cannot be accomplished by the sight; + +And with the fingers of the right hand spread + I found but six the letters, that had carved + Upon my temples he who bore the keys; + +Upon beholding which my Leader smiled. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XIII + + +We were upon the summit of the stairs, + Where for the second time is cut away + The mountain, which ascending shriveth all. + +There in like manner doth a cornice bind + The hill all round about, as does the first, + Save that its arc more suddenly is curved. + +Shade is there none, nor sculpture that appears; + So seems the bank, and so the road seems smooth, + With but the livid colour of the stone. + +“If to inquire we wait for people here,” + The Poet said, “I fear that peradventure + Too much delay will our election have.” + +Then steadfast on the sun his eyes he fixed, + Made his right side the centre of his motion, + And turned the left part of himself about. + +“O thou sweet light! with trust in whom I enter + Upon this novel journey, do thou lead us,” + Said he, “as one within here should be led. + +Thou warmest the world, thou shinest over it; + If other reason prompt not otherwise, + Thy rays should evermore our leaders be!” + +As much as here is counted for a mile, + So much already there had we advanced + In little time, by dint of ready will; + +And tow’rds us there were heard to fly, albeit + They were not visible, spirits uttering + Unto Love’s table courteous invitations, + +The first voice that passed onward in its flight, + “Vinum non habent,” said in accents loud, + And went reiterating it behind us. + +And ere it wholly grew inaudible + Because of distance, passed another, crying, + “I am Orestes!” and it also stayed not. + +“O,” said I, “Father, these, what voices are they?” + And even as I asked, behold the third, + Saying: “Love those from whom ye have had evil!” + +And the good Master said: “This circle scourges + The sin of envy, and on that account + Are drawn from love the lashes of the scourge. + +The bridle of another sound shall be; + I think that thou wilt hear it, as I judge, + Before thou comest to the Pass of Pardon. + +But fix thine eyes athwart the air right steadfast, + And people thou wilt see before us sitting, + And each one close against the cliff is seated.” + +Then wider than at first mine eyes I opened; + I looked before me, and saw shades with mantles + Not from the colour of the stone diverse. + +And when we were a little farther onward, + I heard a cry of, “Mary, pray for us!” + A cry of, “Michael, Peter, and all Saints!” + +I do not think there walketh still on earth + A man so hard, that he would not be pierced + With pity at what afterward I saw. + +For when I had approached so near to them + That manifest to me their acts became, + Drained was I at the eyes by heavy grief. + +Covered with sackcloth vile they seemed to me, + And one sustained the other with his shoulder, + And all of them were by the bank sustained. + +Thus do the blind, in want of livelihood, + Stand at the doors of churches asking alms, + And one upon another leans his head, + +So that in others pity soon may rise, + Not only at the accent of their words, + But at their aspect, which no less implores. + +And as unto the blind the sun comes not, + So to the shades, of whom just now I spake, + Heaven’s light will not be bounteous of itself; + +For all their lids an iron wire transpierces, + And sews them up, as to a sparhawk wild + Is done, because it will not quiet stay. + +To me it seemed, in passing, to do outrage, + Seeing the others without being seen; + Wherefore I turned me to my counsel sage. + +Well knew he what the mute one wished to say, + And therefore waited not for my demand, + But said: “Speak, and be brief, and to the point.” + +I had Virgilius upon that side + Of the embankment from which one may fall, + Since by no border ’tis engarlanded; + +Upon the other side of me I had + The shades devout, who through the horrible seam + Pressed out the tears so that they bathed their cheeks. + +To them I turned me, and, “O people, certain,” + Began I, “of beholding the high light, + Which your desire has solely in its care, + +So may grace speedily dissolve the scum + Upon your consciences, that limpidly + Through them descend the river of the mind, + +Tell me, for dear ’twill be to me and gracious, + If any soul among you here is Latian, + And ’twill perchance be good for him I learn it.” + +“O brother mine, each one is citizen + Of one true city; but thy meaning is, + Who may have lived in Italy a pilgrim.” + +By way of answer this I seemed to hear + A little farther on than where I stood, + Whereat I made myself still nearer heard. + +Among the rest I saw a shade that waited + In aspect, and should any one ask how, + Its chin it lifted upward like a blind man. + +“Spirit,” I said, “who stoopest to ascend, + If thou art he who did reply to me, + Make thyself known to me by place or name.” + +“Sienese was I,” it replied, “and with + The others here recleanse my guilty life, + Weeping to Him to lend himself to us. + +Sapient I was not, although I Sapia + Was called, and I was at another’s harm + More happy far than at my own good fortune. + +And that thou mayst not think that I deceive thee, + Hear if I was as foolish as I tell thee. + The arc already of my years descending, + +My fellow-citizens near unto Colle + Were joined in battle with their adversaries, + And I was praying God for what he willed. + +Routed were they, and turned into the bitter + Passes of flight; and I, the chase beholding, + A joy received unequalled by all others; + +So that I lifted upward my bold face + Crying to God, ‘Henceforth I fear thee not,’ + As did the blackbird at the little sunshine. + +Peace I desired with God at the extreme + Of my existence, and as yet would not + My debt have been by penitence discharged, + +Had it not been that in remembrance held me + Pier Pettignano in his holy prayers, + Who out of charity was grieved for me. + +But who art thou, that into our conditions + Questioning goest, and hast thine eyes unbound + As I believe, and breathing dost discourse?” + +“Mine eyes,” I said, “will yet be here ta’en from me, + But for short space; for small is the offence + Committed by their being turned with envy. + +Far greater is the fear, wherein suspended + My soul is, of the torment underneath, + For even now the load down there weighs on me.” + +And she to me: “Who led thee, then, among us + Up here, if to return below thou thinkest?” + And I: “He who is with me, and speaks not; + +And living am I; therefore ask of me, + Spirit elect, if thou wouldst have me move + O’er yonder yet my mortal feet for thee.” + +“O, this is such a novel thing to hear,” + She answered, “that great sign it is God loves thee; + Therefore with prayer of thine sometimes assist me. + +And I implore, by what thou most desirest, + If e’er thou treadest the soil of Tuscany, + Well with my kindred reinstate my fame. + +Them wilt thou see among that people vain + Who hope in Talamone, and will lose there + More hope than in discovering the Diana; + +But there still more the admirals will lose.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XIV + + +“Who is this one that goes about our mountain, + Or ever Death has given him power of flight, + And opes his eyes and shuts them at his will?” + +“I know not who, but know he’s not alone; + Ask him thyself, for thou art nearer to him, + And gently, so that he may speak, accost him.” + +Thus did two spirits, leaning tow’rds each other, + Discourse about me there on the right hand; + Then held supine their faces to address me. + +And said the one: “O soul, that, fastened still + Within the body, tow’rds the heaven art going, + For charity console us, and declare + +Whence comest and who art thou; for thou mak’st us + As much to marvel at this grace of thine + As must a thing that never yet has been.” + +And I: “Through midst of Tuscany there wanders + A streamlet that is born in Falterona, + And not a hundred miles of course suffice it; + +From thereupon do I this body bring. + To tell you who I am were speech in vain, + Because my name as yet makes no great noise.” + +“If well thy meaning I can penetrate + With intellect of mine,” then answered me + He who first spake, “thou speakest of the Arno.” + +And said the other to him: “Why concealed + This one the appellation of that river, + Even as a man doth of things horrible?” + +And thus the shade that questioned was of this + Himself acquitted: “I know not; but truly + ’Tis fit the name of such a valley perish; + +For from its fountain-head (where is so pregnant + The Alpine mountain whence is cleft Peloro + That in few places it that mark surpasses) + +To where it yields itself in restoration + Of what the heaven doth of the sea dry up, + Whence have the rivers that which goes with them, + +Virtue is like an enemy avoided + By all, as is a serpent, through misfortune + Of place, or through bad habit that impels them; + +On which account have so transformed their nature + The dwellers in that miserable valley, + It seems that Circe had them in her pasture. + +’Mid ugly swine, of acorns worthier + Than other food for human use created, + It first directeth its impoverished way. + +Curs findeth it thereafter, coming downward, + More snarling than their puissance demands, + And turns from them disdainfully its muzzle. + +It goes on falling, and the more it grows, + The more it finds the dogs becoming wolves, + This maledict and misadventurous ditch. + +Descended then through many a hollow gulf, + It finds the foxes so replete with fraud, + They fear no cunning that may master them. + +Nor will I cease because another hears me; + And well ’twill be for him, if still he mind him + Of what a truthful spirit to me unravels. + +Thy grandson I behold, who doth become + A hunter of those wolves upon the bank + Of the wild stream, and terrifies them all. + +He sells their flesh, it being yet alive; + Thereafter slaughters them like ancient beeves; + Many of life, himself of praise, deprives. + +Blood-stained he issues from the dismal forest; + He leaves it such, a thousand years from now + In its primeval state ’tis not re-wooded.” + +As at the announcement of impending ills + The face of him who listens is disturbed, + From whate’er side the peril seize upon him; + +So I beheld that other soul, which stood + Turned round to listen, grow disturbed and sad, + When it had gathered to itself the word. + +The speech of one and aspect of the other + Had me desirous made to know their names, + And question mixed with prayers I made thereof, + +Whereat the spirit which first spake to me + Began again: “Thou wishest I should bring me + To do for thee what thou’lt not do for me; + +But since God willeth that in thee shine forth + Such grace of his, I’ll not be chary with thee; + Know, then, that I Guido del Duca am. + +My blood was so with envy set on fire, + That if I had beheld a man make merry, + Thou wouldst have seen me sprinkled o’er with pallor. + +From my own sowing such the straw I reap! + O human race! why dost thou set thy heart + Where interdict of partnership must be? + +This is Renier; this is the boast and honour + Of the house of Calboli, where no one since + Has made himself the heir of his desert. + +And not alone his blood is made devoid, + ’Twixt Po and mount, and sea-shore and the Reno, + Of good required for truth and for diversion; + +For all within these boundaries is full + Of venomous roots, so that too tardily + By cultivation now would they diminish. + +Where is good Lizio, and Arrigo Manardi, + Pier Traversaro, and Guido di Carpigna, + O Romagnuoli into bastards turned? + +When in Bologna will a Fabbro rise? + When in Faenza a Bernardin di Fosco, + The noble scion of ignoble seed? + +Be not astonished, Tuscan, if I weep, + When I remember, with Guido da Prata, + Ugolin d’ Azzo, who was living with us, + +Frederick Tignoso and his company, + The house of Traversara, and th’ Anastagi, + And one race and the other is extinct; + +The dames and cavaliers, the toils and ease + That filled our souls with love and courtesy, + There where the hearts have so malicious grown! + +O Brettinoro! why dost thou not flee, + Seeing that all thy family is gone, + And many people, not to be corrupted? + +Bagnacaval does well in not begetting + And ill does Castrocaro, and Conio worse, + In taking trouble to beget such Counts. + +Will do well the Pagani, when their Devil + Shall have departed; but not therefore pure + Will testimony of them e’er remain. + +O Ugolin de’ Fantoli, secure + Thy name is, since no longer is awaited + One who, degenerating, can obscure it! + +But go now, Tuscan, for it now delights me + To weep far better than it does to speak, + So much has our discourse my mind distressed.” + +We were aware that those beloved souls + Heard us depart; therefore, by keeping silent, + They made us of our pathway confident. + +When we became alone by going onward, + Thunder, when it doth cleave the air, appeared + A voice, that counter to us came, exclaiming: + +“Shall slay me whosoever findeth me!” + And fled as the reverberation dies + If suddenly the cloud asunder bursts. + +As soon as hearing had a truce from this, + Behold another, with so great a crash, + That it resembled thunderings following fast: + +“I am Aglaurus, who became a stone!” + And then, to press myself close to the Poet, + I backward, and not forward, took a step. + +Already on all sides the air was quiet; + And said he to me: “That was the hard curb + That ought to hold a man within his bounds; + +But you take in the bait so that the hook + Of the old Adversary draws you to him, + And hence availeth little curb or call. + +The heavens are calling you, and wheel around you, + Displaying to you their eternal beauties, + And still your eye is looking on the ground; + +Whence He, who all discerns, chastises you.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XV + + +As much as ’twixt the close of the third hour + And dawn of day appeareth of that sphere + Which aye in fashion of a child is playing, + +So much it now appeared, towards the night, + Was of his course remaining to the sun; + There it was evening, and ’twas midnight here; + +And the rays smote the middle of our faces, + Because by us the mount was so encircled, + That straight towards the west we now were going + +When I perceived my forehead overpowered + Beneath the splendour far more than at first, + And stupor were to me the things unknown, + +Whereat towards the summit of my brow + I raised my hands, and made myself the visor + Which the excessive glare diminishes. + +As when from off the water, or a mirror, + The sunbeam leaps unto the opposite side, + Ascending upward in the selfsame measure + +That it descends, and deviates as far + From falling of a stone in line direct, + (As demonstrate experiment and art,) + +So it appeared to me that by a light + Refracted there before me I was smitten; + On which account my sight was swift to flee. + +“What is that, Father sweet, from which I cannot + So fully screen my sight that it avail me,” + Said I, “and seems towards us to be moving?” + +“Marvel thou not, if dazzle thee as yet + The family of heaven,” he answered me; + “An angel ’tis, who comes to invite us upward. + +Soon will it be, that to behold these things + Shall not be grievous, but delightful to thee + As much as nature fashioned thee to feel.” + +When we had reached the Angel benedight, + With joyful voice he said: “Here enter in + To stairway far less steep than are the others.” + +We mounting were, already thence departed, + And “Beati misericordes” was + Behind us sung, “Rejoice, thou that o’ercomest!” + +My Master and myself, we two alone + Were going upward, and I thought, in going, + Some profit to acquire from words of his; + +And I to him directed me, thus asking: + “What did the spirit of Romagna mean, + Mentioning interdict and partnership?” + +Whence he to me: “Of his own greatest failing + He knows the harm; and therefore wonder not + If he reprove us, that we less may rue it. + +Because are thither pointed your desires + Where by companionship each share is lessened, + Envy doth ply the bellows to your sighs. + +But if the love of the supernal sphere + Should upwardly direct your aspiration, + There would not be that fear within your breast; + +For there, as much the more as one says ‘Our,’ + So much the more of good each one possesses, + And more of charity in that cloister burns.” + +“I am more hungering to be satisfied,” + I said, “than if I had before been silent, + And more of doubt within my mind I gather. + +How can it be, that boon distributed + The more possessors can more wealthy make + Therein, than if by few it be possessed?” + +And he to me: “Because thou fixest still + Thy mind entirely upon earthly things, + Thou pluckest darkness from the very light. + +That goodness infinite and ineffable + Which is above there, runneth unto love, + As to a lucid body comes the sunbeam. + +So much it gives itself as it finds ardour, + So that as far as charity extends, + O’er it increases the eternal valour. + +And the more people thitherward aspire, + More are there to love well, and more they love there, + And, as a mirror, one reflects the other. + +And if my reasoning appease thee not, + Thou shalt see Beatrice; and she will fully + Take from thee this and every other longing. + +Endeavour, then, that soon may be extinct, + As are the two already, the five wounds + That close themselves again by being painful.” + +Even as I wished to say, “Thou dost appease me,” + I saw that I had reached another circle, + So that my eager eyes made me keep silence. + +There it appeared to me that in a vision + Ecstatic on a sudden I was rapt, + And in a temple many persons saw; + +And at the door a woman, with the sweet + Behaviour of a mother, saying: “Son, + Why in this manner hast thou dealt with us? + +Lo, sorrowing, thy father and myself + Were seeking for thee;”—and as here she ceased, + That which appeared at first had disappeared. + +Then I beheld another with those waters + Adown her cheeks which grief distils whenever + From great disdain of others it is born, + +And saying: “If of that city thou art lord, + For whose name was such strife among the gods, + And whence doth every science scintillate, + +Avenge thyself on those audacious arms + That clasped our daughter, O Pisistratus;” + And the lord seemed to me benign and mild + +To answer her with aspect temperate: + “What shall we do to those who wish us ill, + If he who loves us be by us condemned?” + +Then saw I people hot in fire of wrath, + With stones a young man slaying, clamorously + Still crying to each other, “Kill him! kill him!” + +And him I saw bow down, because of death + That weighed already on him, to the earth, + But of his eyes made ever gates to heaven, + +Imploring the high Lord, in so great strife, + That he would pardon those his persecutors, + With such an aspect as unlocks compassion. + +Soon as my soul had outwardly returned + To things external to it which are true, + Did I my not false errors recognize. + +My Leader, who could see me bear myself + Like to a man that rouses him from sleep, + Exclaimed: “What ails thee, that thou canst not stand? + +But hast been coming more than half a league + Veiling thine eyes, and with thy legs entangled, + In guise of one whom wine or sleep subdues?” + +“O my sweet Father, if thou listen to me, + I’ll tell thee,” said I, “what appeared to me, + When thus from me my legs were ta’en away.” + +And he: “If thou shouldst have a hundred masks + Upon thy face, from me would not be shut + Thy cogitations, howsoever small. + +What thou hast seen was that thou mayst not fail + To ope thy heart unto the waters of peace, + Which from the eternal fountain are diffused. + +I did not ask, ‘What ails thee?’ as he does + Who only looketh with the eyes that see not + When of the soul bereft the body lies, + +But asked it to give vigour to thy feet; + Thus must we needs urge on the sluggards, slow + To use their wakefulness when it returns.” + +We passed along, athwart the twilight peering + Forward as far as ever eye could stretch + Against the sunbeams serotine and lucent; + +And lo! by slow degrees a smoke approached + In our direction, sombre as the night, + Nor was there place to hide one’s self therefrom. + +This of our eyes and the pure air bereft us. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XVI + + +Darkness of hell, and of a night deprived + Of every planet under a poor sky, + As much as may be tenebrous with cloud, + +Ne’er made unto my sight so thick a veil, + As did that smoke which there enveloped us, + Nor to the feeling of so rough a texture; + +For not an eye it suffered to stay open; + Whereat mine escort, faithful and sagacious, + Drew near to me and offered me his shoulder. + +E’en as a blind man goes behind his guide, + Lest he should wander, or should strike against + Aught that may harm or peradventure kill him, + +So went I through the bitter and foul air, + Listening unto my Leader, who said only, + “Look that from me thou be not separated.” + +Voices I heard, and every one appeared + To supplicate for peace and misericord + The Lamb of God who takes away our sins. + +Still “Agnus Dei” their exordium was; + One word there was in all, and metre one, + So that all harmony appeared among them. + +“Master,” I said, “are spirits those I hear?” + And he to me: “Thou apprehendest truly, + And they the knot of anger go unloosing.” + +“Now who art thou, that cleavest through our smoke + And art discoursing of us even as though + Thou didst by calends still divide the time?” + +After this manner by a voice was spoken; + Whereon my Master said: “Do thou reply, + And ask if on this side the way go upward.” + +And I: “O creature that dost cleanse thyself + To return beautiful to Him who made thee, + Thou shalt hear marvels if thou follow me.” + +“Thee will I follow far as is allowed me,” + He answered; “and if smoke prevent our seeing, + Hearing shall keep us joined instead thereof.” + +Thereon began I: “With that swathing band + Which death unwindeth am I going upward, + And hither came I through the infernal anguish. + +And if God in his grace has me infolded, + So that he wills that I behold his court + By method wholly out of modern usage, + +Conceal not from me who ere death thou wast, + But tell it me, and tell me if I go + Right for the pass, and be thy words our escort.” + +“Lombard was I, and I was Marco called; + The world I knew, and loved that excellence, + At which has each one now unbent his bow. + +For mounting upward, thou art going right.” + Thus he made answer, and subjoined: “I pray thee + To pray for me when thou shalt be above.” + +And I to him: “My faith I pledge to thee + To do what thou dost ask me; but am bursting + Inly with doubt, unless I rid me of it. + +First it was simple, and is now made double + By thy opinion, which makes certain to me, + Here and elsewhere, that which I couple with it. + +The world forsooth is utterly deserted + By every virtue, as thou tellest me, + And with iniquity is big and covered; + +But I beseech thee point me out the cause, + That I may see it, and to others show it; + For one in the heavens, and here below one puts it.” + +A sigh profound, that grief forced into Ai! + He first sent forth, and then began he: “Brother, + The world is blind, and sooth thou comest from it! + +Ye who are living every cause refer + Still upward to the heavens, as if all things + They of necessity moved with themselves. + +If this were so, in you would be destroyed + Free will, nor any justice would there be + In having joy for good, or grief for evil. + +The heavens your movements do initiate, + I say not all; but granting that I say it, + Light has been given you for good and evil, + +And free volition; which, if some fatigue + In the first battles with the heavens it suffers, + Afterwards conquers all, if well ’tis nurtured. + +To greater force and to a better nature, + Though free, ye subject are, and that creates + The mind in you the heavens have not in charge. + +Hence, if the present world doth go astray, + In you the cause is, be it sought in you; + And I therein will now be thy true spy. + +Forth from the hand of Him, who fondles it + Before it is, like to a little girl + Weeping and laughing in her childish sport, + +Issues the simple soul, that nothing knows, + Save that, proceeding from a joyous Maker, + Gladly it turns to that which gives it pleasure. + +Of trivial good at first it tastes the savour; + Is cheated by it, and runs after it, + If guide or rein turn not aside its love. + +Hence it behoved laws for a rein to place, + Behoved a king to have, who at the least + Of the true city should discern the tower. + +The laws exist, but who sets hand to them? + No one; because the shepherd who precedes + Can ruminate, but cleaveth not the hoof; + +Wherefore the people that perceives its guide + Strike only at the good for which it hankers, + Feeds upon that, and farther seeketh not. + +Clearly canst thou perceive that evil guidance + The cause is that has made the world depraved, + And not that nature is corrupt in you. + +Rome, that reformed the world, accustomed was + Two suns to have, which one road and the other, + Of God and of the world, made manifest. + +One has the other quenched, and to the crosier + The sword is joined, and ill beseemeth it + That by main force one with the other go, + +Because, being joined, one feareth not the other; + If thou believe not, think upon the grain, + For by its seed each herb is recognized. + +In the land laved by Po and Adige, + Valour and courtesy used to be found, + Before that Frederick had his controversy; + +Now in security can pass that way + Whoever will abstain, through sense of shame, + From speaking with the good, or drawing near them. + +True, three old men are left, in whom upbraids + The ancient age the new, and late they deem it + That God restore them to the better life: + +Currado da Palazzo, and good Gherardo, + And Guido da Castel, who better named is, + In fashion of the French, the simple Lombard: + +Say thou henceforward that the Church of Rome, + Confounding in itself two governments, + Falls in the mire, and soils itself and burden.” + +“O Marco mine,” I said, “thou reasonest well; + And now discern I why the sons of Levi + Have been excluded from the heritage. + +But what Gherardo is it, who, as sample + Of a lost race, thou sayest has remained + In reprobation of the barbarous age?” + +“Either thy speech deceives me, or it tempts me,” + He answered me; “for speaking Tuscan to me, + It seems of good Gherardo naught thou knowest. + +By other surname do I know him not, + Unless I take it from his daughter Gaia. + May God be with you, for I come no farther. + +Behold the dawn, that through the smoke rays out, + Already whitening; and I must depart— + Yonder the Angel is—ere he appear.” + +Thus did he speak, and would no farther hear me. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XVII + + +Remember, Reader, if e’er in the Alps + A mist o’ertook thee, through which thou couldst see + Not otherwise than through its membrane mole, + +How, when the vapours humid and condensed + Begin to dissipate themselves, the sphere + Of the sun feebly enters in among them, + +And thy imagination will be swift + In coming to perceive how I re-saw + The sun at first, that was already setting. + +Thus, to the faithful footsteps of my Master + Mating mine own, I issued from that cloud + To rays already dead on the low shores. + +O thou, Imagination, that dost steal us + So from without sometimes, that man perceives not, + Although around may sound a thousand trumpets, + +Who moveth thee, if sense impel thee not? + Moves thee a light, which in the heaven takes form, + By self, or by a will that downward guides it. + +Of her impiety, who changed her form + Into the bird that most delights in singing, + In my imagining appeared the trace; + +And hereupon my mind was so withdrawn + Within itself, that from without there came + Nothing that then might be received by it. + +Then reigned within my lofty fantasy + One crucified, disdainful and ferocious + In countenance, and even thus was dying. + +Around him were the great Ahasuerus, + Esther his wife, and the just Mordecai, + Who was in word and action so entire. + +And even as this image burst asunder + Of its own self, in fashion of a bubble + In which the water it was made of fails, + +There rose up in my vision a young maiden + Bitterly weeping, and she said: “O queen, + Why hast thou wished in anger to be naught? + +Thou’st slain thyself, Lavinia not to lose; + Now hast thou lost me; I am she who mourns, + Mother, at thine ere at another’s ruin.” + +As sleep is broken, when upon a sudden + New light strikes in upon the eyelids closed, + And broken quivers ere it dieth wholly, + +So this imagining of mine fell down + As soon as the effulgence smote my face, + Greater by far than what is in our wont. + +I turned me round to see where I might be, + When said a voice, “Here is the passage up;” + Which from all other purposes removed me, + +And made my wish so full of eagerness + To look and see who was it that was speaking, + It never rests till meeting face to face; + +But as before the sun, which quells the sight, + And in its own excess its figure veils, + Even so my power was insufficient here. + +“This is a spirit divine, who in the way + Of going up directs us without asking, + And who with his own light himself conceals. + +He does with us as man doth with himself; + For he who sees the need, and waits the asking, + Malignly leans already tow’rds denial. + +Accord we now our feet to such inviting, + Let us make haste to mount ere it grow dark; + For then we could not till the day return.” + +Thus my Conductor said; and I and he + Together turned our footsteps to a stairway; + And I, as soon as the first step I reached, + +Near me perceived a motion as of wings, + And fanning in the face, and saying, “‘Beati + Pacifici,’ who are without ill anger.” + +Already over us were so uplifted + The latest sunbeams, which the night pursues, + That upon many sides the stars appeared. + +“O manhood mine, why dost thou vanish so?” + I said within myself; for I perceived + The vigour of my legs was put in truce. + +We at the point were where no more ascends + The stairway upward, and were motionless, + Even as a ship, which at the shore arrives; + +And I gave heed a little, if I might hear + Aught whatsoever in the circle new; + Then to my Master turned me round and said: + +“Say, my sweet Father, what delinquency + Is purged here in the circle where we are? + Although our feet may pause, pause not thy speech.” + +And he to me: “The love of good, remiss + In what it should have done, is here restored; + Here plied again the ill-belated oar; + +But still more openly to understand, + Turn unto me thy mind, and thou shalt gather + Some profitable fruit from our delay. + +Neither Creator nor a creature ever, + Son,” he began, “was destitute of love + Natural or spiritual; and thou knowest it. + +The natural was ever without error; + But err the other may by evil object, + Or by too much, or by too little vigour. + +While in the first it well directed is, + And in the second moderates itself, + It cannot be the cause of sinful pleasure; + +But when to ill it turns, and, with more care + Or lesser than it ought, runs after good, + ’Gainst the Creator works his own creation. + +Hence thou mayst comprehend that love must be + The seed within yourselves of every virtue, + And every act that merits punishment. + +Now inasmuch as never from the welfare + Of its own subject can love turn its sight, + From their own hatred all things are secure; + +And since we cannot think of any being + Standing alone, nor from the First divided, + Of hating Him is all desire cut off. + +Hence if, discriminating, I judge well, + The evil that one loves is of one’s neighbour, + And this is born in three modes in your clay. + +There are, who, by abasement of their neighbour, + Hope to excel, and therefore only long + That from his greatness he may be cast down; + +There are, who power, grace, honour, and renown + Fear they may lose because another rises, + Thence are so sad that the reverse they love; + +And there are those whom injury seems to chafe, + So that it makes them greedy for revenge, + And such must needs shape out another’s harm. + +This threefold love is wept for down below; + Now of the other will I have thee hear, + That runneth after good with measure faulty. + +Each one confusedly a good conceives + Wherein the mind may rest, and longeth for it; + Therefore to overtake it each one strives. + +If languid love to look on this attract you, + Or in attaining unto it, this cornice, + After just penitence, torments you for it. + +There’s other good that does not make man happy; + ’Tis not felicity, ’tis not the good + Essence, of every good the fruit and root. + +The love that yields itself too much to this + Above us is lamented in three circles; + But how tripartite it may be described, + +I say not, that thou seek it for thyself.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XVIII + + +An end had put unto his reasoning + The lofty Teacher, and attent was looking + Into my face, if I appeared content; + +And I, whom a new thirst still goaded on, + Without was mute, and said within: “Perchance + The too much questioning I make annoys him.” + +But that true Father, who had comprehended + The timid wish, that opened not itself, + By speaking gave me hardihood to speak. + +Whence I: “My sight is, Master, vivified + So in thy light, that clearly I discern + Whate’er thy speech importeth or describes. + +Therefore I thee entreat, sweet Father dear, + To teach me love, to which thou dost refer + Every good action and its contrary.” + +“Direct,” he said, “towards me the keen eyes + Of intellect, and clear will be to thee + The error of the blind, who would be leaders. + +The soul, which is created apt to love, + Is mobile unto everything that pleases, + Soon as by pleasure she is waked to action. + +Your apprehension from some real thing + An image draws, and in yourselves displays it + So that it makes the soul turn unto it. + +And if, when turned, towards it she incline, + Love is that inclination; it is nature, + Which is by pleasure bound in you anew + +Then even as the fire doth upward move + By its own form, which to ascend is born, + Where longest in its matter it endures, + +So comes the captive soul into desire, + Which is a motion spiritual, and ne’er rests + Until she doth enjoy the thing beloved. + +Now may apparent be to thee how hidden + The truth is from those people, who aver + All love is in itself a laudable thing; + +Because its matter may perchance appear + Aye to be good; but yet not each impression + Is good, albeit good may be the wax.” + +“Thy words, and my sequacious intellect,” + I answered him, “have love revealed to me; + But that has made me more impregned with doubt; + +For if love from without be offered us, + And with another foot the soul go not, + If right or wrong she go, ’tis not her merit.” + +And he to me: “What reason seeth here, + Myself can tell thee; beyond that await + For Beatrice, since ’tis a work of faith. + +Every substantial form, that segregate + From matter is, and with it is united, + Specific power has in itself collected, + +Which without act is not perceptible, + Nor shows itself except by its effect, + As life does in a plant by the green leaves. + +But still, whence cometh the intelligence + Of the first notions, man is ignorant, + And the affection for the first allurements, + +Which are in you as instinct in the bee + To make its honey; and this first desire + Merit of praise or blame containeth not. + +Now, that to this all others may be gathered, + Innate within you is the power that counsels, + And it should keep the threshold of assent. + +This is the principle, from which is taken + Occasion of desert in you, according + As good and guilty loves it takes and winnows. + +Those who, in reasoning, to the bottom went, + Were of this innate liberty aware, + Therefore bequeathed they Ethics to the world. + +Supposing, then, that from necessity + Springs every love that is within you kindled, + Within yourselves the power is to restrain it. + +The noble virtue Beatrice understands + By the free will; and therefore see that thou + Bear it in mind, if she should speak of it.” + +The moon, belated almost unto midnight, + Now made the stars appear to us more rare, + Formed like a bucket, that is all ablaze, + +And counter to the heavens ran through those paths + Which the sun sets aflame, when he of Rome + Sees it ’twixt Sardes and Corsicans go down; + +And that patrician shade, for whom is named + Pietola more than any Mantuan town, + Had laid aside the burden of my lading; + +Whence I, who reason manifest and plain + In answer to my questions had received, + Stood like a man in drowsy reverie. + +But taken from me was this drowsiness + Suddenly by a people, that behind + Our backs already had come round to us. + +And as, of old, Ismenus and Asopus + Beside them saw at night the rush and throng, + If but the Thebans were in need of Bacchus, + +So they along that circle curve their step, + From what I saw of those approaching us, + Who by good-will and righteous love are ridden. + +Full soon they were upon us, because running + Moved onward all that mighty multitude, + And two in the advance cried out, lamenting, + +“Mary in haste unto the mountain ran, + And Caesar, that he might subdue Ilerda, + Thrust at Marseilles, and then ran into Spain.” + +“Quick! quick! so that the time may not be lost + By little love!” forthwith the others cried, + “For ardour in well-doing freshens grace!” + +“O folk, in whom an eager fervour now + Supplies perhaps delay and negligence, + Put by you in well-doing, through lukewarmness, + +This one who lives, and truly I lie not, + Would fain go up, if but the sun relight us; + So tell us where the passage nearest is.” + +These were the words of him who was my Guide; + And some one of those spirits said: “Come on + Behind us, and the opening shalt thou find; + +So full of longing are we to move onward, + That stay we cannot; therefore pardon us, + If thou for churlishness our justice take. + +I was San Zeno’s Abbot at Verona, + Under the empire of good Barbarossa, + Of whom still sorrowing Milan holds discourse; + +And he has one foot in the grave already, + Who shall erelong lament that monastery, + And sorry be of having there had power, + +Because his son, in his whole body sick, + And worse in mind, and who was evil-born, + He put into the place of its true pastor.” + +If more he said, or silent was, I know not, + He had already passed so far beyond us; + But this I heard, and to retain it pleased me. + +And he who was in every need my succour + Said: “Turn thee hitherward; see two of them + Come fastening upon slothfulness their teeth.” + +In rear of all they shouted: “Sooner were + The people dead to whom the sea was opened, + Than their inheritors the Jordan saw; + +And those who the fatigue did not endure + Unto the issue, with Anchises’ son, + Themselves to life withouten glory offered.” + +Then when from us so separated were + Those shades, that they no longer could be seen, + Within me a new thought did entrance find, + +Whence others many and diverse were born; + And so I lapsed from one into another, + That in a reverie mine eyes I closed, + +And meditation into dream transmuted. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XIX + + +It was the hour when the diurnal heat + No more can warm the coldness of the moon, + Vanquished by earth, or peradventure Saturn, + +When geomancers their Fortuna Major + See in the orient before the dawn + Rise by a path that long remains not dim, + +There came to me in dreams a stammering woman, + Squint in her eyes, and in her feet distorted, + With hands dissevered and of sallow hue. + +I looked at her; and as the sun restores + The frigid members which the night benumbs, + Even thus my gaze did render voluble + +Her tongue, and made her all erect thereafter + In little while, and the lost countenance + As love desires it so in her did colour. + +When in this wise she had her speech unloosed, + She ’gan to sing so, that with difficulty + Could I have turned my thoughts away from her. + +“I am,” she sang, “I am the Siren sweet + Who mariners amid the main unman, + So full am I of pleasantness to hear. + +I drew Ulysses from his wandering way + Unto my song, and he who dwells with me + Seldom departs so wholly I content him.” + +Her mouth was not yet closed again, before + Appeared a Lady saintly and alert + Close at my side to put her to confusion. + +“Virgilius, O Virgilius! who is this?” + Sternly she said; and he was drawing near + With eyes still fixed upon that modest one. + +She seized the other and in front laid open, + Rending her garments, and her belly showed me; + This waked me with the stench that issued from it. + +I turned mine eyes, and good Virgilius said: + “At least thrice have I called thee; rise and come; + Find we the opening by which thou mayst enter.” + +I rose; and full already of high day + Were all the circles of the Sacred Mountain, + And with the new sun at our back we went. + +Following behind him, I my forehead bore + Like unto one who has it laden with thought, + Who makes himself the half arch of a bridge, + +When I heard say, “Come, here the passage is,” + Spoken in a manner gentle and benign, + Such as we hear not in this mortal region. + +With open wings, which of a swan appeared, + Upward he turned us who thus spake to us, + Between the two walls of the solid granite. + +He moved his pinions afterwards and fanned us, + Affirming those ‘qui lugent’ to be blessed, + For they shall have their souls with comfort filled. + +“What aileth thee, that aye to earth thou gazest?” + To me my Guide began to say, we both + Somewhat beyond the Angel having mounted. + +And I: “With such misgiving makes me go + A vision new, which bends me to itself, + So that I cannot from the thought withdraw me.” + +“Didst thou behold,” he said, “that old enchantress, + Who sole above us henceforth is lamented? + Didst thou behold how man is freed from her? + +Suffice it thee, and smite earth with thy heels, + Thine eyes lift upward to the lure, that whirls + The Eternal King with revolutions vast.” + +Even as the hawk, that first his feet surveys, + Then turns him to the call and stretches forward, + Through the desire of food that draws him thither, + +Such I became, and such, as far as cleaves + The rock to give a way to him who mounts, + Went on to where the circling doth begin. + +On the fifth circle when I had come forth, + People I saw upon it who were weeping, + Stretched prone upon the ground, all downward turned. + +“Adhaesit pavimento anima mea,” + I heard them say with sighings so profound, + That hardly could the words be understood. + +“O ye elect of God, whose sufferings + Justice and Hope both render less severe, + Direct ye us towards the high ascents.” + +“If ye are come secure from this prostration, + And wish to find the way most speedily, + Let your right hands be evermore outside.” + +Thus did the Poet ask, and thus was answered + By them somewhat in front of us; whence I + In what was spoken divined the rest concealed, + +And unto my Lord’s eyes mine eyes I turned; + Whence he assented with a cheerful sign + To what the sight of my desire implored. + +When of myself I could dispose at will, + Above that creature did I draw myself, + Whose words before had caused me to take note, + +Saying: “O Spirit, in whom weeping ripens + That without which to God we cannot turn, + Suspend awhile for me thy greater care. + +Who wast thou, and why are your backs turned upwards, + Tell me, and if thou wouldst that I procure thee + Anything there whence living I departed.” + +And he to me: “Wherefore our backs the heaven + Turns to itself, know shalt thou; but beforehand + ‘Scias quod ego fui successor Petri.’ + +Between Siestri and Chiaveri descends + A river beautiful, and of its name + The title of my blood its summit makes. + +A month and little more essayed I how + Weighs the great cloak on him from mire who keeps it, + For all the other burdens seem a feather. + +Tardy, ah woe is me! was my conversion; + But when the Roman Shepherd I was made, + Then I discovered life to be a lie. + +I saw that there the heart was not at rest, + Nor farther in that life could one ascend; + Whereby the love of this was kindled in me. + +Until that time a wretched soul and parted + From God was I, and wholly avaricious; + Now, as thou seest, I here am punished for it. + +What avarice does is here made manifest + In the purgation of these souls converted, + And no more bitter pain the Mountain has. + +Even as our eye did not uplift itself + Aloft, being fastened upon earthly things, + So justice here has merged it in the earth. + +As avarice had extinguished our affection + For every good, whereby was action lost, + So justice here doth hold us in restraint, + +Bound and imprisoned by the feet and hands; + And so long as it pleases the just Lord + Shall we remain immovable and prostrate.” + +I on my knees had fallen, and wished to speak; + But even as I began, and he was ’ware, + Only by listening, of my reverence, + +“What cause,” he said, “has downward bent thee thus?” + And I to him: “For your own dignity, + Standing, my conscience stung me with remorse.” + +“Straighten thy legs, and upward raise thee, brother,” + He answered: “Err not, fellow-servant am I + With thee and with the others to one power. + +If e’er that holy, evangelic sound, + Which sayeth ‘neque nubent,’ thou hast heard, + Well canst thou see why in this wise I speak. + +Now go; no longer will I have thee linger, + Because thy stay doth incommode my weeping, + With which I ripen that which thou hast said. + +On earth I have a grandchild named Alagia, + Good in herself, unless indeed our house + Malevolent may make her by example, + +And she alone remains to me on earth.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XX + + +Ill strives the will against a better will; + Therefore, to pleasure him, against my pleasure + I drew the sponge not saturate from the water. + +Onward I moved, and onward moved my Leader, + Through vacant places, skirting still the rock, + As on a wall close to the battlements; + +For they that through their eyes pour drop by drop + The malady which all the world pervades, + On the other side too near the verge approach. + +Accursed mayst thou be, thou old she-wolf, + That more than all the other beasts hast prey, + Because of hunger infinitely hollow! + +O heaven, in whose gyrations some appear + To think conditions here below are changed, + When will he come through whom she shall depart? + +Onward we went with footsteps slow and scarce, + And I attentive to the shades I heard + Piteously weeping and bemoaning them; + +And I by peradventure heard “Sweet Mary!” + Uttered in front of us amid the weeping + Even as a woman does who is in child-birth; + +And in continuance: “How poor thou wast + Is manifested by that hostelry + Where thou didst lay thy sacred burden down.” + +Thereafterward I heard: “O good Fabricius, + Virtue with poverty didst thou prefer + To the possession of great wealth with vice.” + +So pleasurable were these words to me + That I drew farther onward to have knowledge + Touching that spirit whence they seemed to come. + +He furthermore was speaking of the largess + Which Nicholas unto the maidens gave, + In order to conduct their youth to honour. + +“O soul that dost so excellently speak, + Tell me who wast thou,” said I, “and why only + Thou dost renew these praises well deserved? + +Not without recompense shall be thy word, + If I return to finish the short journey + Of that life which is flying to its end.” + +And he: “I’ll tell thee, not for any comfort + I may expect from earth, but that so much + Grace shines in thee or ever thou art dead. + +I was the root of that malignant plant + Which overshadows all the Christian world, + So that good fruit is seldom gathered from it; + +But if Douay and Ghent, and Lille and Bruges + Had Power, soon vengeance would be taken on it; + And this I pray of Him who judges all. + +Hugh Capet was I called upon the earth; + From me were born the Louises and Philips, + By whom in later days has France been governed. + +I was the son of a Parisian butcher, + What time the ancient kings had perished all, + Excepting one, contrite in cloth of gray. + +I found me grasping in my hands the rein + Of the realm’s government, and so great power + Of new acquest, and so with friends abounding, + +That to the widowed diadem promoted + The head of mine own offspring was, from whom + The consecrated bones of these began. + +So long as the great dowry of Provence + Out of my blood took not the sense of shame, + ’Twas little worth, but still it did no harm. + +Then it began with falsehood and with force + Its rapine; and thereafter, for amends, + Took Ponthieu, Normandy, and Gascony. + +Charles came to Italy, and for amends + A victim made of Conradin, and then + Thrust Thomas back to heaven, for amends. + +A time I see, not very distant now, + Which draweth forth another Charles from France, + The better to make known both him and his. + +Unarmed he goes, and only with the lance + That Judas jousted with; and that he thrusts + So that he makes the paunch of Florence burst. + +He thence not land, but sin and infamy, + Shall gain, so much more grievous to himself + As the more light such damage he accounts. + +The other, now gone forth, ta’en in his ship, + See I his daughter sell, and chaffer for her + As corsairs do with other female slaves. + +What more, O Avarice, canst thou do to us, + Since thou my blood so to thyself hast drawn, + It careth not for its own proper flesh? + +That less may seem the future ill and past, + I see the flower-de-luce Alagna enter, + And Christ in his own Vicar captive made. + +I see him yet another time derided; + I see renewed the vinegar and gall, + And between living thieves I see him slain. + +I see the modern Pilate so relentless, + This does not sate him, but without decretal + He to the temple bears his sordid sails! + +When, O my Lord! shall I be joyful made + By looking on the vengeance which, concealed, + Makes sweet thine anger in thy secrecy? + +What I was saying of that only bride + Of the Holy Ghost, and which occasioned thee + To turn towards me for some commentary, + +So long has been ordained to all our prayers + As the day lasts; but when the night comes on, + Contrary sound we take instead thereof. + +At that time we repeat Pygmalion, + Of whom a traitor, thief, and parricide + Made his insatiable desire of gold; + +And the misery of avaricious Midas, + That followed his inordinate demand, + At which forevermore one needs but laugh. + +The foolish Achan each one then records, + And how he stole the spoils; so that the wrath + Of Joshua still appears to sting him here. + +Then we accuse Sapphira with her husband, + We laud the hoof-beats Heliodorus had, + And the whole mount in infamy encircles + +Polymnestor who murdered Polydorus. + Here finally is cried: ‘O Crassus, tell us, + For thou dost know, what is the taste of gold?’ + +Sometimes we speak, one loud, another low, + According to desire of speech, that spurs us + To greater now and now to lesser pace. + +But in the good that here by day is talked of, + Erewhile alone I was not; yet near by + No other person lifted up his voice.” + +From him already we departed were, + And made endeavour to o’ercome the road + As much as was permitted to our power, + +When I perceived, like something that is falling, + The mountain tremble, whence a chill seized on me, + As seizes him who to his death is going. + +Certes so violently shook not Delos, + Before Latona made her nest therein + To give birth to the two eyes of the heaven. + +Then upon all sides there began a cry, + Such that the Master drew himself towards me, + Saying, “Fear not, while I am guiding thee.” + +“Gloria in excelsis Deo,” all + Were saying, from what near I comprehended, + Where it was possible to hear the cry. + +We paused immovable and in suspense, + Even as the shepherds who first heard that song, + Until the trembling ceased, and it was finished. + +Then we resumed again our holy path, + Watching the shades that lay upon the ground, + Already turned to their accustomed plaint. + +No ignorance ever with so great a strife + Had rendered me importunate to know, + If erreth not in this my memory, + +As meditating then I seemed to have; + Nor out of haste to question did I dare, + Nor of myself I there could aught perceive; + +So I went onward timorous and thoughtful. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXI + + +The natural thirst, that ne’er is satisfied + Excepting with the water for whose grace + The woman of Samaria besought, + +Put me in travail, and haste goaded me + Along the encumbered path behind my Leader + And I was pitying that righteous vengeance; + +And lo! in the same manner as Luke writeth + That Christ appeared to two upon the way + From the sepulchral cave already risen, + +A shade appeared to us, and came behind us, + Down gazing on the prostrate multitude, + Nor were we ware of it, until it spake, + +Saying, “My brothers, may God give you peace!” + We turned us suddenly, and Virgilius rendered + To him the countersign thereto conforming. + +Thereon began he: “In the blessed council, + Thee may the court veracious place in peace, + That me doth banish in eternal exile!” + +“How,” said he, and the while we went with speed, + “If ye are shades whom God deigns not on high, + Who up his stairs so far has guided you?” + +And said my Teacher: “If thou note the marks + Which this one bears, and which the Angel traces + Well shalt thou see he with the good must reign. + +But because she who spinneth day and night + For him had not yet drawn the distaff off, + Which Clotho lays for each one and compacts, + +His soul, which is thy sister and my own, + In coming upwards could not come alone, + By reason that it sees not in our fashion. + +Whence I was drawn from out the ample throat + Of Hell to be his guide, and I shall guide him + As far on as my school has power to lead. + +But tell us, if thou knowest, why such a shudder + Erewhile the mountain gave, and why together + All seemed to cry, as far as its moist feet?” + +In asking he so hit the very eye + Of my desire, that merely with the hope + My thirst became the less unsatisfied. + +“Naught is there,” he began, “that without order + May the religion of the mountain feel, + Nor aught that may be foreign to its custom. + +Free is it here from every permutation; + What from itself heaven in itself receiveth + Can be of this the cause, and naught beside; + +Because that neither rain, nor hail, nor snow, + Nor dew, nor hoar-frost any higher falls + Than the short, little stairway of three steps. + +Dense clouds do not appear, nor rarefied, + Nor coruscation, nor the daughter of Thaumas, + That often upon earth her region shifts; + +No arid vapour any farther rises + Than to the top of the three steps I spake of, + Whereon the Vicar of Peter has his feet. + +Lower down perchance it trembles less or more, + But, for the wind that in the earth is hidden + I know not how, up here it never trembled. + +It trembles here, whenever any soul + Feels itself pure, so that it soars, or moves + To mount aloft, and such a cry attends it. + +Of purity the will alone gives proof, + Which, being wholly free to change its convent, + Takes by surprise the soul, and helps it fly. + +First it wills well; but the desire permits not, + Which divine justice with the self-same will + There was to sin, upon the torment sets. + +And I, who have been lying in this pain + Five hundred years and more, but just now felt + A free volition for a better seat. + +Therefore thou heardst the earthquake, and the pious + Spirits along the mountain rendering praise + Unto the Lord, that soon he speed them upwards.” + +So said he to him; and since we enjoy + As much in drinking as the thirst is great, + I could not say how much it did me good. + +And the wise Leader: “Now I see the net + That snares you here, and how ye are set free, + Why the earth quakes, and wherefore ye rejoice. + +Now who thou wast be pleased that I may know; + And why so many centuries thou hast here + Been lying, let me gather from thy words.” + +“In days when the good Titus, with the aid + Of the supremest King, avenged the wounds + Whence issued forth the blood by Judas sold, + +Under the name that most endures and honours, + Was I on earth,” that spirit made reply, + “Greatly renowned, but not with faith as yet. + +My vocal spirit was so sweet, that Rome + Me, a Thoulousian, drew unto herself, + Where I deserved to deck my brows with myrtle. + +Statius the people name me still on earth; + I sang of Thebes, and then of great Achilles; + But on the way fell with my second burden. + +The seeds unto my ardour were the sparks + Of that celestial flame which heated me, + Whereby more than a thousand have been fired; + +Of the Aeneid speak I, which to me + A mother was, and was my nurse in song; + Without this weighed I not a drachma’s weight. + +And to have lived upon the earth what time + Virgilius lived, I would accept one sun + More than I must ere issuing from my ban.” + +These words towards me made Virgilius turn + With looks that in their silence said, “Be silent!” + But yet the power that wills cannot do all things; + +For tears and laughter are such pursuivants + Unto the passion from which each springs forth, + In the most truthful least the will they follow. + +I only smiled, as one who gives the wink; + Whereat the shade was silent, and it gazed + Into mine eyes, where most expression dwells; + +And, “As thou well mayst consummate a labour + So great,” it said, “why did thy face just now + Display to me the lightning of a smile?” + +Now am I caught on this side and on that; + One keeps me silent, one to speak conjures me, + Wherefore I sigh, and I am understood. + +“Speak,” said my Master, “and be not afraid + Of speaking, but speak out, and say to him + What he demands with such solicitude.” + +Whence I: “Thou peradventure marvellest, + O antique spirit, at the smile I gave; + But I will have more wonder seize upon thee. + +This one, who guides on high these eyes of mine, + Is that Virgilius, from whom thou didst learn + To sing aloud of men and of the Gods. + +If other cause thou to my smile imputedst, + Abandon it as false, and trust it was + Those words which thou hast spoken concerning him.” + +Already he was stooping to embrace + My Teacher’s feet; but he said to him: “Brother, + Do not; for shade thou art, and shade beholdest.” + +And he uprising: “Now canst thou the sum + Of love which warms me to thee comprehend, + When this our vanity I disremember, + +Treating a shadow as substantial thing.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXII + + +Already was the Angel left behind us, + The Angel who to the sixth round had turned us, + Having erased one mark from off my face; + +And those who have in justice their desire + Had said to us, “Beati,” in their voices, + With “sitio,” and without more ended it. + +And I, more light than through the other passes, + Went onward so, that without any labour + I followed upward the swift-footed spirits; + +When thus Virgilius began: “The love + Kindled by virtue aye another kindles, + Provided outwardly its flame appear. + +Hence from the hour that Juvenal descended + Among us into the infernal Limbo, + Who made apparent to me thy affection, + +My kindliness towards thee was as great + As ever bound one to an unseen person, + So that these stairs will now seem short to me. + +But tell me, and forgive me as a friend, + If too great confidence let loose the rein, + And as a friend now hold discourse with me; + +How was it possible within thy breast + For avarice to find place, ’mid so much wisdom + As thou wast filled with by thy diligence?” + +These words excited Statius at first + Somewhat to laughter; afterward he answered: + “Each word of thine is love’s dear sign to me. + +Verily oftentimes do things appear + Which give fallacious matter to our doubts, + Instead of the true causes which are hidden! + +Thy question shows me thy belief to be + That I was niggard in the other life, + It may be from the circle where I was; + +Therefore know thou, that avarice was removed + Too far from me; and this extravagance + Thousands of lunar periods have punished. + +And were it not that I my thoughts uplifted, + When I the passage heard where thou exclaimest, + As if indignant, unto human nature, + +‘To what impellest thou not, O cursed hunger + Of gold, the appetite of mortal men?’ + Revolving I should feel the dismal joustings. + +Then I perceived the hands could spread too wide + Their wings in spending, and repented me + As well of that as of my other sins; + +How many with shorn hair shall rise again + Because of ignorance, which from this sin + Cuts off repentance living and in death! + +And know that the transgression which rebuts + By direct opposition any sin + Together with it here its verdure dries. + +Therefore if I have been among that folk + Which mourns its avarice, to purify me, + For its opposite has this befallen me.” + +“Now when thou sangest the relentless weapons + Of the twofold affliction of Jocasta,” + The singer of the Songs Bucolic said, + +“From that which Clio there with thee preludes, + It does not seem that yet had made thee faithful + That faith without which no good works suffice. + +If this be so, what candles or what sun + Scattered thy darkness so that thou didst trim + Thy sails behind the Fisherman thereafter?” + +And he to him: “Thou first directedst me + Towards Parnassus, in its grots to drink, + And first concerning God didst me enlighten. + +Thou didst as he who walketh in the night, + Who bears his light behind, which helps him not, + But wary makes the persons after him, + +When thou didst say: ‘The age renews itself, + Justice returns, and man’s primeval time, + And a new progeny descends from heaven.’ + +Through thee I Poet was, through thee a Christian; + But that thou better see what I design, + To colour it will I extend my hand. + +Already was the world in every part + Pregnant with the true creed, disseminated + By messengers of the eternal kingdom; + +And thy assertion, spoken of above, + With the new preachers was in unison; + Whence I to visit them the custom took. + +Then they became so holy in my sight, + That, when Domitian persecuted them, + Not without tears of mine were their laments; + +And all the while that I on earth remained, + Them I befriended, and their upright customs + Made me disparage all the other sects. + +And ere I led the Greeks unto the rivers + Of Thebes, in poetry, I was baptized, + But out of fear was covertly a Christian, + +For a long time professing paganism; + And this lukewarmness caused me the fourth circle + To circuit round more than four centuries. + +Thou, therefore, who hast raised the covering + That hid from me whatever good I speak of, + While in ascending we have time to spare, + +Tell me, in what place is our friend Terentius, + Caecilius, Plautus, Varro, if thou knowest; + Tell me if they are damned, and in what alley.” + +“These, Persius and myself, and others many,” + Replied my Leader, “with that Grecian are + Whom more than all the rest the Muses suckled, + +In the first circle of the prison blind; + Ofttimes we of the mountain hold discourse + Which has our nurses ever with itself. + +Euripides is with us, Antiphon, + Simonides, Agatho, and many other + Greeks who of old their brows with laurel decked. + +There some of thine own people may be seen, + Antigone, Deiphile and Argia, + And there Ismene mournful as of old. + +There she is seen who pointed out Langia; + There is Tiresias’ daughter, and there Thetis, + And there Deidamia with her sisters.” + +Silent already were the poets both, + Attent once more in looking round about, + From the ascent and from the walls released; + +And four handmaidens of the day already + Were left behind, and at the pole the fifth + Was pointing upward still its burning horn, + +What time my Guide: “I think that tow’rds the edge + Our dexter shoulders it behoves us turn, + Circling the mount as we are wont to do.” + +Thus in that region custom was our ensign; + And we resumed our way with less suspicion + For the assenting of that worthy soul + +They in advance went on, and I alone + Behind them, and I listened to their speech, + Which gave me lessons in the art of song. + +But soon their sweet discourses interrupted + A tree which midway in the road we found, + With apples sweet and grateful to the smell. + +And even as a fir-tree tapers upward + From bough to bough, so downwardly did that; + I think in order that no one might climb it. + +On that side where our pathway was enclosed + Fell from the lofty rock a limpid water, + And spread itself abroad upon the leaves. + +The Poets twain unto the tree drew near, + And from among the foliage a voice + Cried: “Of this food ye shall have scarcity.” + +Then said: “More thoughtful Mary was of making + The marriage feast complete and honourable, + Than of her mouth which now for you responds; + +And for their drink the ancient Roman women + With water were content; and Daniel + Disparaged food, and understanding won. + +The primal age was beautiful as gold; + Acorns it made with hunger savorous, + And nectar every rivulet with thirst. + +Honey and locusts were the aliments + That fed the Baptist in the wilderness; + Whence he is glorious, and so magnified + +As by the Evangel is revealed to you.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXIII + + +The while among the verdant leaves mine eyes + I riveted, as he is wont to do + Who wastes his life pursuing little birds, + +My more than Father said unto me: “Son, + Come now; because the time that is ordained us + More usefully should be apportioned out.” + +I turned my face and no less soon my steps + Unto the Sages, who were speaking so + They made the going of no cost to me; + +And lo! were heard a song and a lament, + “Labia mea, Domine,” in fashion + Such that delight and dolence it brought forth. + +“O my sweet Father, what is this I hear?” + Began I; and he answered: “Shades that go + Perhaps the knot unloosing of their debt.” + +In the same way that thoughtful pilgrims do, + Who, unknown people on the road o’ertaking, + Turn themselves round to them, and do not stop, + +Even thus, behind us with a swifter motion + Coming and passing onward, gazed upon us + A crowd of spirits silent and devout. + +Each in his eyes was dark and cavernous, + Pallid in face, and so emaciate + That from the bones the skin did shape itself. + +I do not think that so to merest rind + Could Erisichthon have been withered up + By famine, when most fear he had of it. + +Thinking within myself I said: “Behold, + This is the folk who lost Jerusalem, + When Mary made a prey of her own son.” + +Their sockets were like rings without the gems; + Whoever in the face of men reads ‘omo’ + Might well in these have recognised the ‘m.’ + +Who would believe the odour of an apple, + Begetting longing, could consume them so, + And that of water, without knowing how? + +I still was wondering what so famished them, + For the occasion not yet manifest + Of their emaciation and sad squalor; + +And lo! from out the hollow of his head + His eyes a shade turned on me, and looked keenly; + Then cried aloud: “What grace to me is this?” + +Never should I have known him by his look; + But in his voice was evident to me + That which his aspect had suppressed within it. + +This spark within me wholly re-enkindled + My recognition of his altered face, + And I recalled the features of Forese. + +“Ah, do not look at this dry leprosy,” + Entreated he, “which doth my skin discolour, + Nor at default of flesh that I may have; + +But tell me truth of thee, and who are those + Two souls, that yonder make for thee an escort; + Do not delay in speaking unto me.” + +“That face of thine, which dead I once bewept, + Gives me for weeping now no lesser grief,” + I answered him, “beholding it so changed! + +But tell me, for God’s sake, what thus denudes you? + Make me not speak while I am marvelling, + For ill speaks he who’s full of other longings.” + +And he to me: “From the eternal council + Falls power into the water and the tree + Behind us left, whereby I grow so thin. + +All of this people who lamenting sing, + For following beyond measure appetite + In hunger and thirst are here re-sanctified. + +Desire to eat and drink enkindles in us + The scent that issues from the apple-tree, + And from the spray that sprinkles o’er the verdure; + +And not a single time alone, this ground + Encompassing, is refreshed our pain,— + I say our pain, and ought to say our solace,— + +For the same wish doth lead us to the tree + Which led the Christ rejoicing to say ‘Eli,’ + When with his veins he liberated us.” + +And I to him: “Forese, from that day + When for a better life thou changedst worlds, + Up to this time five years have not rolled round. + +If sooner were the power exhausted in thee + Of sinning more, than thee the hour surprised + Of that good sorrow which to God reweds us, + +How hast thou come up hitherward already? + I thought to find thee down there underneath, + Where time for time doth restitution make.” + +And he to me: “Thus speedily has led me + To drink of the sweet wormwood of these torments, + My Nella with her overflowing tears; + +She with her prayers devout and with her sighs + Has drawn me from the coast where one where one awaits, + And from the other circles set me free. + +So much more dear and pleasing is to God + My little widow, whom so much I loved, + As in good works she is the more alone; + +For the Barbagia of Sardinia + By far more modest in its women is + Than the Barbagia I have left her in. + +O brother sweet, what wilt thou have me say? + A future time is in my sight already, + To which this hour will not be very old, + +When from the pulpit shall be interdicted + To the unblushing womankind of Florence + To go about displaying breast and paps. + +What savages were e’er, what Saracens, + Who stood in need, to make them covered go, + Of spiritual or other discipline? + +But if the shameless women were assured + Of what swift Heaven prepares for them, already + Wide open would they have their mouths to howl; + +For if my foresight here deceive me not, + They shall be sad ere he has bearded cheeks + Who now is hushed to sleep with lullaby. + +O brother, now no longer hide thee from me; + See that not only I, but all these people + Are gazing there, where thou dost veil the sun.” + +Whence I to him: “If thou bring back to mind + What thou with me hast been and I with thee, + The present memory will be grievous still. + +Out of that life he turned me back who goes + In front of me, two days agone when round + The sister of him yonder showed herself,” + +And to the sun I pointed. “Through the deep + Night of the truly dead has this one led me, + With this true flesh, that follows after him. + +Thence his encouragements have led me up, + Ascending and still circling round the mount + That you doth straighten, whom the world made crooked. + +He says that he will bear me company, + Till I shall be where Beatrice will be; + There it behoves me to remain without him. + +This is Virgilius, who thus says to me,” + And him I pointed at; “the other is + That shade for whom just now shook every slope + +Your realm, that from itself discharges him.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXIV + + +Nor speech the going, nor the going that + Slackened; but talking we went bravely on, + Even as a vessel urged by a good wind. + +And shadows, that appeared things doubly dead, + From out the sepulchres of their eyes betrayed + Wonder at me, aware that I was living. + +And I, continuing my colloquy, + Said: “Peradventure he goes up more slowly + Than he would do, for other people’s sake. + +But tell me, if thou knowest, where is Piccarda; + Tell me if any one of note I see + Among this folk that gazes at me so.” + +“My sister, who, ’twixt beautiful and good, + I know not which was more, triumphs rejoicing + Already in her crown on high Olympus.” + +So said he first, and then: “’Tis not forbidden + To name each other here, so milked away + Is our resemblance by our dieting. + +This,” pointing with his finger, “is Buonagiunta, + Buonagiunta, of Lucca; and that face + Beyond him there, more peaked than the others, + +Has held the holy Church within his arms; + From Tours was he, and purges by his fasting + Bolsena’s eels and the Vernaccia wine.” + +He named me many others one by one; + And all contented seemed at being named, + So that for this I saw not one dark look. + +I saw for hunger bite the empty air + Ubaldin dalla Pila, and Boniface, + Who with his crook had pastured many people. + +I saw Messer Marchese, who had leisure + Once at Forli for drinking with less dryness, + And he was one who ne’er felt satisfied. + +But as he does who scans, and then doth prize + One more than others, did I him of Lucca, + Who seemed to take most cognizance of me. + +He murmured, and I know not what Gentucca + From that place heard I, where he felt the wound + Of justice, that doth macerate them so. + +“O soul,” I said, “that seemest so desirous + To speak with me, do so that I may hear thee, + And with thy speech appease thyself and me.” + +“A maid is born, and wears not yet the veil,” + Began he, “who to thee shall pleasant make + My city, howsoever men may blame it. + +Thou shalt go on thy way with this prevision; + If by my murmuring thou hast been deceived, + True things hereafter will declare it to thee. + +But say if him I here behold, who forth + Evoked the new-invented rhymes, beginning, + ‘Ladies, that have intelligence of love?’” + +And I to him: “One am I, who, whenever + Love doth inspire me, note, and in that measure + Which he within me dictates, singing go.” + +“O brother, now I see,” he said, “the knot + Which me, the Notary, and Guittone held + Short of the sweet new style that now I hear. + +I do perceive full clearly how your pens + Go closely following after him who dictates, + Which with our own forsooth came not to pass; + +And he who sets himself to go beyond, + No difference sees from one style to another;” + And as if satisfied, he held his peace. + +Even as the birds, that winter tow’rds the Nile, + Sometimes into a phalanx form themselves, + Then fly in greater haste, and go in file; + +In such wise all the people who were there, + Turning their faces, hurried on their steps, + Both by their leanness and their wishes light. + +And as a man, who weary is with trotting, + Lets his companions onward go, and walks, + Until he vents the panting of his chest; + +So did Forese let the holy flock + Pass by, and came with me behind it, saying, + “When will it be that I again shall see thee?” + +“How long,” I answered, “I may live, I know not; + Yet my return will not so speedy be, + But I shall sooner in desire arrive; + +Because the place where I was set to live + From day to day of good is more depleted, + And unto dismal ruin seems ordained.” + +“Now go,” he said, “for him most guilty of it + At a beast’s tail behold I dragged along + Towards the valley where is no repentance. + +Faster at every step the beast is going, + Increasing evermore until it smites him, + And leaves the body vilely mutilated. + +Not long those wheels shall turn,” and he uplifted + His eyes to heaven, “ere shall be clear to thee + That which my speech no farther can declare. + +Now stay behind; because the time so precious + Is in this kingdom, that I lose too much + By coming onward thus abreast with thee.” + +As sometimes issues forth upon a gallop + A cavalier from out a troop that ride, + And seeks the honour of the first encounter, + +So he with greater strides departed from us; + And on the road remained I with those two, + Who were such mighty marshals of the world. + +And when before us he had gone so far + Mine eyes became to him such pursuivants + As was my understanding to his words, + +Appeared to me with laden and living boughs + Another apple-tree, and not far distant, + From having but just then turned thitherward. + +People I saw beneath it lift their hands, + And cry I know not what towards the leaves, + Like little children eager and deluded, + +Who pray, and he they pray to doth not answer, + But, to make very keen their appetite, + Holds their desire aloft, and hides it not. + +Then they departed as if undeceived; + And now we came unto the mighty tree + Which prayers and tears so manifold refuses. + +“Pass farther onward without drawing near; + The tree of which Eve ate is higher up, + And out of that one has this tree been raised.” + +Thus said I know not who among the branches; + Whereat Virgilius, Statius, and myself + Went crowding forward on the side that rises. + +“Be mindful,” said he, “of the accursed ones + Formed of the cloud-rack, who inebriate + Combated Theseus with their double breasts; + +And of the Jews who showed them soft in drinking, + Whence Gideon would not have them for companions + When he tow’rds Midian the hills descended.” + +Thus, closely pressed to one of the two borders, + On passed we, hearing sins of gluttony, + Followed forsooth by miserable gains; + +Then set at large upon the lonely road, + A thousand steps and more we onward went, + In contemplation, each without a word. + +“What go ye thinking thus, ye three alone?” + Said suddenly a voice, whereat I started + As terrified and timid beasts are wont. + +I raised my head to see who this might be, + And never in a furnace was there seen + Metals or glass so lucent and so red + +As one I saw who said: “If it may please you + To mount aloft, here it behoves you turn; + This way goes he who goeth after peace.” + +His aspect had bereft me of my sight, + So that I turned me back unto my Teachers, + Like one who goeth as his hearing guides him. + +And as, the harbinger of early dawn, + The air of May doth move and breathe out fragrance, + Impregnate all with herbage and with flowers, + +So did I feel a breeze strike in the midst + My front, and felt the moving of the plumes + That breathed around an odour of ambrosia; + +And heard it said: “Blessed are they whom grace + So much illumines, that the love of taste + Excites not in their breasts too great desire, + +Hungering at all times so far as is just.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXV + + +Now was it the ascent no hindrance brooked, + Because the sun had his meridian circle + To Taurus left, and night to Scorpio; + +Wherefore as doth a man who tarries not, + But goes his way, whate’er to him appear, + If of necessity the sting transfix him, + +In this wise did we enter through the gap, + Taking the stairway, one before the other, + Which by its narrowness divides the climbers. + +And as the little stork that lifts its wing + With a desire to fly, and does not venture + To leave the nest, and lets it downward droop, + +Even such was I, with the desire of asking + Kindled and quenched, unto the motion coming + He makes who doth address himself to speak. + +Not for our pace, though rapid it might be, + My father sweet forbore, but said: “Let fly + The bow of speech thou to the barb hast drawn.” + +With confidence I opened then my mouth, + And I began: “How can one meagre grow + There where the need of nutriment applies not?” + +“If thou wouldst call to mind how Meleager + Was wasted by the wasting of a brand, + This would not,” said he, “be to thee so sour; + +And wouldst thou think how at each tremulous motion + Trembles within a mirror your own image; + That which seems hard would mellow seem to thee. + +But that thou mayst content thee in thy wish + Lo Statius here; and him I call and pray + He now will be the healer of thy wounds.” + +“If I unfold to him the eternal vengeance,” + Responded Statius, “where thou present art, + Be my excuse that I can naught deny thee.” + +Then he began: “Son, if these words of mine + Thy mind doth contemplate and doth receive, + They’ll be thy light unto the How thou sayest. + +The perfect blood, which never is drunk up + Into the thirsty veins, and which remaineth + Like food that from the table thou removest, + +Takes in the heart for all the human members + Virtue informative, as being that + Which to be changed to them goes through the veins + +Again digest, descends it where ’tis better + Silent to be than say; and then drops thence + Upon another’s blood in natural vase. + +There one together with the other mingles, + One to be passive meant, the other active + By reason of the perfect place it springs from; + +And being conjoined, begins to operate, + Coagulating first, then vivifying + What for its matter it had made consistent. + +The active virtue, being made a soul + As of a plant, (in so far different, + This on the way is, that arrived already,) + +Then works so much, that now it moves and feels + Like a sea-fungus, and then undertakes + To organize the powers whose seed it is. + +Now, Son, dilates and now distends itself + The virtue from the generator’s heart, + Where nature is intent on all the members. + +But how from animal it man becomes + Thou dost not see as yet; this is a point + Which made a wiser man than thou once err + +So far, that in his doctrine separate + He made the soul from possible intellect, + For he no organ saw by this assumed. + +Open thy breast unto the truth that’s coming, + And know that, just as soon as in the foetus + The articulation of the brain is perfect, + +The primal Motor turns to it well pleased + At so great art of nature, and inspires + A spirit new with virtue all replete, + +Which what it finds there active doth attract + Into its substance, and becomes one soul, + Which lives, and feels, and on itself revolves. + +And that thou less may wonder at my word, + Behold the sun’s heat, which becometh wine, + Joined to the juice that from the vine distils. + +Whenever Lachesis has no more thread, + It separates from the flesh, and virtually + Bears with itself the human and divine; + +The other faculties are voiceless all; + The memory, the intelligence, and the will + In action far more vigorous than before. + +Without a pause it falleth of itself + In marvellous way on one shore or the other; + There of its roads it first is cognizant. + +Soon as the place there circumscribeth it, + The virtue informative rays round about, + As, and as much as, in the living members. + +And even as the air, when full of rain, + By alien rays that are therein reflected, + With divers colours shows itself adorned, + +So there the neighbouring air doth shape itself + Into that form which doth impress upon it + Virtually the soul that has stood still. + +And then in manner of the little flame, + Which followeth the fire where’er it shifts, + After the spirit followeth its new form. + +Since afterwards it takes from this its semblance, + It is called shade; and thence it organizes + Thereafter every sense, even to the sight. + +Thence is it that we speak, and thence we laugh; + Thence is it that we form the tears and sighs, + That on the mountain thou mayhap hast heard. + +According as impress us our desires + And other affections, so the shade is shaped, + And this is cause of what thou wonderest at.” + +And now unto the last of all the circles + Had we arrived, and to the right hand turned, + And were attentive to another care. + +There the embankment shoots forth flames of fire, + And upward doth the cornice breathe a blast + That drives them back, and from itself sequesters. + +Hence we must needs go on the open side, + And one by one; and I did fear the fire + On this side, and on that the falling down. + +My Leader said: “Along this place one ought + To keep upon the eyes a tightened rein, + Seeing that one so easily might err.” + +“Summae Deus clementiae,” in the bosom + Of the great burning chanted then I heard, + Which made me no less eager to turn round; + +And spirits saw I walking through the flame; + Wherefore I looked, to my own steps and theirs + Apportioning my sight from time to time. + +After the close which to that hymn is made, + Aloud they shouted, “Virum non cognosco;” + Then recommenced the hymn with voices low. + +This also ended, cried they: “To the wood + Diana ran, and drove forth Helice + Therefrom, who had of Venus felt the poison.” + +Then to their song returned they; then the wives + They shouted, and the husbands who were chaste. + As virtue and the marriage vow imposes. + +And I believe that them this mode suffices, + For all the time the fire is burning them; + With such care is it needful, and such food, + +That the last wound of all should be closed up. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXVI + + +While on the brink thus one before the other + We went upon our way, oft the good Master + Said: “Take thou heed! suffice it that I warn thee.” + +On the right shoulder smote me now the sun, + That, raying out, already the whole west + Changed from its azure aspect into white. + +And with my shadow did I make the flame + Appear more red; and even to such a sign + Shades saw I many, as they went, give heed. + +This was the cause that gave them a beginning + To speak of me; and to themselves began they + To say: “That seems not a factitious body!” + +Then towards me, as far as they could come, + Came certain of them, always with regard + Not to step forth where they would not be burned. + +“O thou who goest, not from being slower + But reverent perhaps, behind the others, + Answer me, who in thirst and fire am burning. + +Nor to me only is thine answer needful; + For all of these have greater thirst for it + Than for cold water Ethiop or Indian. + +Tell us how is it that thou makest thyself + A wall unto the sun, as if thou hadst not + Entered as yet into the net of death.” + +Thus one of them addressed me, and I straight + Should have revealed myself, were I not bent + On other novelty that then appeared. + +For through the middle of the burning road + There came a people face to face with these, + Which held me in suspense with gazing at them. + +There see I hastening upon either side + Each of the shades, and kissing one another + Without a pause, content with brief salute. + +Thus in the middle of their brown battalions + Muzzle to muzzle one ant meets another + Perchance to spy their journey or their fortune. + +No sooner is the friendly greeting ended, + Or ever the first footstep passes onward, + Each one endeavours to outcry the other; + +The new-come people: “Sodom and Gomorrah!” + The rest: “Into the cow Pasiphae enters, + So that the bull unto her lust may run!” + +Then as the cranes, that to Riphaean mountains + Might fly in part, and part towards the sands, + These of the frost, those of the sun avoidant, + +One folk is going, and the other coming, + And weeping they return to their first songs, + And to the cry that most befitteth them; + +And close to me approached, even as before, + The very same who had entreated me, + Attent to listen in their countenance. + +I, who their inclination twice had seen, + Began: “O souls secure in the possession, + Whene’er it may be, of a state of peace, + +Neither unripe nor ripened have remained + My members upon earth, but here are with me + With their own blood and their articulations. + +I go up here to be no longer blind; + A Lady is above, who wins this grace, + Whereby the mortal through your world I bring. + +But as your greatest longing satisfied + May soon become, so that the Heaven may house you + Which full of love is, and most amply spreads, + +Tell me, that I again in books may write it, + Who are you, and what is that multitude + Which goes upon its way behind your backs?” + +Not otherwise with wonder is bewildered + The mountaineer, and staring round is dumb, + When rough and rustic to the town he goes, + +Than every shade became in its appearance; + But when they of their stupor were disburdened, + Which in high hearts is quickly quieted, + +“Blessed be thou, who of our border-lands,” + He recommenced who first had questioned us, + “Experience freightest for a better life. + +The folk that comes not with us have offended + In that for which once Caesar, triumphing, + Heard himself called in contumely, ‘Queen.’ + +Therefore they separate, exclaiming, ‘Sodom!’ + Themselves reproving, even as thou hast heard, + And add unto their burning by their shame. + +Our own transgression was hermaphrodite; + But because we observed not human law, + Following like unto beasts our appetite, + +In our opprobrium by us is read, + When we part company, the name of her + Who bestialized herself in bestial wood. + +Now knowest thou our acts, and what our crime was; + Wouldst thou perchance by name know who we are, + There is not time to tell, nor could I do it. + +Thy wish to know me shall in sooth be granted; + I’m Guido Guinicelli, and now purge me, + Having repented ere the hour extreme.” + +The same that in the sadness of Lycurgus + Two sons became, their mother re-beholding, + Such I became, but rise not to such height, + +The moment I heard name himself the father + Of me and of my betters, who had ever + Practised the sweet and gracious rhymes of love; + +And without speech and hearing thoughtfully + For a long time I went, beholding him, + Nor for the fire did I approach him nearer. + +When I was fed with looking, utterly + Myself I offered ready for his service, + With affirmation that compels belief. + +And he to me: “Thou leavest footprints such + In me, from what I hear, and so distinct, + Lethe cannot efface them, nor make dim. + +But if thy words just now the truth have sworn, + Tell me what is the cause why thou displayest + In word and look that dear thou holdest me?” + +And I to him: “Those dulcet lays of yours + Which, long as shall endure our modern fashion, + Shall make for ever dear their very ink!” + +“O brother,” said he, “he whom I point out,” + And here he pointed at a spirit in front, + “Was of the mother tongue a better smith. + +Verses of love and proses of romance, + He mastered all; and let the idiots talk, + Who think the Lemosin surpasses him. + +To clamour more than truth they turn their faces, + And in this way establish their opinion, + Ere art or reason has by them been heard. + +Thus many ancients with Guittone did, + From cry to cry still giving him applause, + Until the truth has conquered with most persons. + +Now, if thou hast such ample privilege + ’Tis granted thee to go unto the cloister + Wherein is Christ the abbot of the college, + +To him repeat for me a Paternoster, + So far as needful to us of this world, + Where power of sinning is no longer ours.” + +Then, to give place perchance to one behind, + Whom he had near, he vanished in the fire + As fish in water going to the bottom. + +I moved a little tow’rds him pointed out, + And said that to his name my own desire + An honourable place was making ready. + +He of his own free will began to say: + ‘Tan m’ abellis vostre cortes deman, + Que jeu nom’ puesc ni vueill a vos cobrire; + +Jeu sui Arnaut, que plor e vai chantan; + Consiros vei la passada folor, + E vei jauzen lo jorn qu’ esper denan. + +Ara vus prec per aquella valor, + Que vus condus al som de la scalina, + Sovenga vus a temprar ma dolor.’* + +Then hid him in the fire that purifies them. + +* So pleases me your courteous demand, + I cannot and I will not hide me from you. +I am Arnaut, who weep and singing go; + Contrite I see the folly of the past, + And joyous see the hoped-for day before me. +Therefore do I implore you, by that power + Which guides you to the summit of the stairs, + Be mindful to assuage my suffering! + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXVII + + +As when he vibrates forth his earliest rays, + In regions where his Maker shed his blood, + (The Ebro falling under lofty Libra, + +And waters in the Ganges burnt with noon,) + So stood the Sun; hence was the day departing, + When the glad Angel of God appeared to us. + +Outside the flame he stood upon the verge, + And chanted forth, “Beati mundo corde,” + In voice by far more living than our own. + +Then: “No one farther goes, souls sanctified, + If first the fire bite not; within it enter, + And be not deaf unto the song beyond.” + +When we were close beside him thus he said; + Wherefore e’en such became I, when I heard him, + As he is who is put into the grave. + +Upon my clasped hands I straightened me, + Scanning the fire, and vividly recalling + The human bodies I had once seen burned. + +Towards me turned themselves my good Conductors, + And unto me Virgilius said: “My son, + Here may indeed be torment, but not death. + +Remember thee, remember! and if I + On Geryon have safely guided thee, + What shall I do now I am nearer God? + +Believe for certain, shouldst thou stand a full + Millennium in the bosom of this flame, + It could not make thee bald a single hair. + +And if perchance thou think that I deceive thee, + Draw near to it, and put it to the proof + With thine own hands upon thy garment’s hem. + +Now lay aside, now lay aside all fear, + Turn hitherward, and onward come securely;” + And I still motionless, and ’gainst my conscience! + +Seeing me stand still motionless and stubborn, + Somewhat disturbed he said: “Now look thou, Son, + ’Twixt Beatrice and thee there is this wall.” + +As at the name of Thisbe oped his lids + The dying Pyramus, and gazed upon her, + What time the mulberry became vermilion, + +Even thus, my obduracy being softened, + I turned to my wise Guide, hearing the name + That in my memory evermore is welling. + +Whereat he wagged his head, and said: “How now? + Shall we stay on this side?” then smiled as one + Does at a child who’s vanquished by an apple. + +Then into the fire in front of me he entered, + Beseeching Statius to come after me, + Who a long way before divided us. + +When I was in it, into molten glass + I would have cast me to refresh myself, + So without measure was the burning there! + +And my sweet Father, to encourage me, + Discoursing still of Beatrice went on, + Saying: “Her eyes I seem to see already!” + +A voice, that on the other side was singing, + Directed us, and we, attent alone + On that, came forth where the ascent began. + +“Venite, benedicti Patris mei,” + Sounded within a splendour, which was there + Such it o’ercame me, and I could not look. + +“The sun departs,” it added, “and night cometh; + Tarry ye not, but onward urge your steps, + So long as yet the west becomes not dark.” + +Straight forward through the rock the path ascended + In such a way that I cut off the rays + Before me of the sun, that now was low. + +And of few stairs we yet had made assay, + Ere by the vanished shadow the sun’s setting + Behind us we perceived, I and my Sages. + +And ere in all its parts immeasurable + The horizon of one aspect had become, + And Night her boundless dispensation held, + +Each of us of a stair had made his bed; + Because the nature of the mount took from us + The power of climbing, more than the delight. + +Even as in ruminating passive grow + The goats, who have been swift and venturesome + Upon the mountain-tops ere they were fed, + +Hushed in the shadow, while the sun is hot, + Watched by the herdsman, who upon his staff + Is leaning, and in leaning tendeth them; + +And as the shepherd, lodging out of doors, + Passes the night beside his quiet flock, + Watching that no wild beast may scatter it, + +Such at that hour were we, all three of us, + I like the goat, and like the herdsmen they, + Begirt on this side and on that by rocks. + +Little could there be seen of things without; + But through that little I beheld the stars + More luminous and larger than their wont. + +Thus ruminating, and beholding these, + Sleep seized upon me,—sleep, that oftentimes + Before a deed is done has tidings of it. + +It was the hour, I think, when from the East + First on the mountain Citherea beamed, + Who with the fire of love seems always burning; + +Youthful and beautiful in dreams methought + I saw a lady walking in a meadow, + Gathering flowers; and singing she was saying: + +“Know whosoever may my name demand + That I am Leah, and go moving round + My beauteous hands to make myself a garland. + +To please me at the mirror, here I deck me, + But never does my sister Rachel leave + Her looking-glass, and sitteth all day long. + +To see her beauteous eyes as eager is she, + As I am to adorn me with my hands; + Her, seeing, and me, doing satisfies.” + +And now before the antelucan splendours + That unto pilgrims the more grateful rise, + As, home-returning, less remote they lodge, + +The darkness fled away on every side, + And slumber with it; whereupon I rose, + Seeing already the great Masters risen. + +“That apple sweet, which through so many branches + The care of mortals goeth in pursuit of, + To-day shall put in peace thy hungerings.” + +Speaking to me, Virgilius of such words + As these made use; and never were there guerdons + That could in pleasantness compare with these. + +Such longing upon longing came upon me + To be above, that at each step thereafter + For flight I felt in me the pinions growing. + +When underneath us was the stairway all + Run o’er, and we were on the highest step, + Virgilius fastened upon me his eyes, + +And said: “The temporal fire and the eternal, + Son, thou hast seen, and to a place art come + Where of myself no farther I discern. + +By intellect and art I here have brought thee; + Take thine own pleasure for thy guide henceforth; + Beyond the steep ways and the narrow art thou. + +Behold the sun, that shines upon thy forehead; + Behold the grass, the flowerets, and the shrubs + Which of itself alone this land produces. + +Until rejoicing come the beauteous eyes + Which weeping caused me to come unto thee, + Thou canst sit down, and thou canst walk among them. + +Expect no more or word or sign from me; + Free and upright and sound is thy free-will, + And error were it not to do its bidding; + +Thee o’er thyself I therefore crown and mitre!” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXVIII + + +Eager already to search in and round + The heavenly forest, dense and living-green, + Which tempered to the eyes the new-born day, + +Withouten more delay I left the bank, + Taking the level country slowly, slowly + Over the soil that everywhere breathes fragrance. + +A softly-breathing air, that no mutation + Had in itself, upon the forehead smote me + No heavier blow than of a gentle wind, + +Whereat the branches, lightly tremulous, + Did all of them bow downward toward that side + Where its first shadow casts the Holy Mountain; + +Yet not from their upright direction swayed, + So that the little birds upon their tops + Should leave the practice of each art of theirs; + +But with full ravishment the hours of prime, + Singing, received they in the midst of leaves, + That ever bore a burden to their rhymes, + +Such as from branch to branch goes gathering on + Through the pine forest on the shore of Chiassi, + When Eolus unlooses the Sirocco. + +Already my slow steps had carried me + Into the ancient wood so far, that I + Could not perceive where I had entered it. + +And lo! my further course a stream cut off, + Which tow’rd the left hand with its little waves + Bent down the grass that on its margin sprang. + +All waters that on earth most limpid are + Would seem to have within themselves some mixture + Compared with that which nothing doth conceal, + +Although it moves on with a brown, brown current + Under the shade perpetual, that never + Ray of the sun lets in, nor of the moon. + +With feet I stayed, and with mine eyes I passed + Beyond the rivulet, to look upon + The great variety of the fresh may. + +And there appeared to me (even as appears + Suddenly something that doth turn aside + Through very wonder every other thought) + +A lady all alone, who went along + Singing and culling floweret after floweret, + With which her pathway was all painted over. + +“Ah, beauteous lady, who in rays of love + Dost warm thyself, if I may trust to looks, + Which the heart’s witnesses are wont to be, + +May the desire come unto thee to draw + Near to this river’s bank,” I said to her, + “So much that I might hear what thou art singing. + +Thou makest me remember where and what + Proserpina that moment was when lost + Her mother her, and she herself the Spring.” + +As turns herself, with feet together pressed + And to the ground, a lady who is dancing, + And hardly puts one foot before the other, + +On the vermilion and the yellow flowerets + She turned towards me, not in other wise + Than maiden who her modest eyes casts down; + +And my entreaties made to be content, + So near approaching, that the dulcet sound + Came unto me together with its meaning + +As soon as she was where the grasses are. + Bathed by the waters of the beauteous river, + To lift her eyes she granted me the boon. + +I do not think there shone so great a light + Under the lids of Venus, when transfixed + By her own son, beyond his usual custom! + +Erect upon the other bank she smiled, + Bearing full many colours in her hands, + Which that high land produces without seed. + +Apart three paces did the river make us; + But Hellespont, where Xerxes passed across, + (A curb still to all human arrogance,) + +More hatred from Leander did not suffer + For rolling between Sestos and Abydos, + Than that from me, because it oped not then. + +“Ye are new-comers; and because I smile,” + Began she, “peradventure, in this place + Elect to human nature for its nest, + +Some apprehension keeps you marvelling; + But the psalm ‘Delectasti’ giveth light + Which has the power to uncloud your intellect. + +And thou who foremost art, and didst entreat me, + Speak, if thou wouldst hear more; for I came ready + To all thy questionings, as far as needful.” + +“The water,” said I, “and the forest’s sound, + Are combating within me my new faith + In something which I heard opposed to this.” + +Whence she: “I will relate how from its cause + Proceedeth that which maketh thee to wonder, + And purge away the cloud that smites upon thee. + +The Good Supreme, sole in itself delighting, + Created man good, and this goodly place + Gave him as hansel of eternal peace. + +By his default short while he sojourned here; + By his default to weeping and to toil + He changed his innocent laughter and sweet play. + +That the disturbance which below is made + By exhalations of the land and water, + (Which far as may be follow after heat,) + +Might not upon mankind wage any war, + This mount ascended tow’rds the heaven so high, + And is exempt, from there where it is locked. + +Now since the universal atmosphere + Turns in a circuit with the primal motion + Unless the circle is broken on some side, + +Upon this height, that all is disengaged + In living ether, doth this motion strike + And make the forest sound, for it is dense; + +And so much power the stricken plant possesses + That with its virtue it impregns the air, + And this, revolving, scatters it around; + +And yonder earth, according as ’tis worthy + In self or in its clime, conceives and bears + Of divers qualities the divers trees; + +It should not seem a marvel then on earth, + This being heard, whenever any plant + Without seed manifest there taketh root. + +And thou must know, this holy table-land + In which thou art is full of every seed, + And fruit has in it never gathered there. + +The water which thou seest springs not from vein + Restored by vapour that the cold condenses, + Like to a stream that gains or loses breath; + +But issues from a fountain safe and certain, + Which by the will of God as much regains + As it discharges, open on two sides. + +Upon this side with virtue it descends, + Which takes away all memory of sin; + On that, of every good deed done restores it. + +Here Lethe, as upon the other side + Eunoe, it is called; and worketh not + If first on either side it be not tasted. + +This every other savour doth transcend; + And notwithstanding slaked so far may be + Thy thirst, that I reveal to thee no more, + +I’ll give thee a corollary still in grace, + Nor think my speech will be to thee less dear + If it spread out beyond my promise to thee. + +Those who in ancient times have feigned in song + The Age of Gold and its felicity, + Dreamed of this place perhaps upon Parnassus. + +Here was the human race in innocence; + Here evermore was Spring, and every fruit; + This is the nectar of which each one speaks.” + +Then backward did I turn me wholly round + Unto my Poets, and saw that with a smile + They had been listening to these closing words; + +Then to the beautiful lady turned mine eyes. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXIX + + +Singing like unto an enamoured lady + She, with the ending of her words, continued: + “Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata.” + +And even as Nymphs, that wandered all alone + Among the sylvan shadows, sedulous + One to avoid and one to see the sun, + +She then against the stream moved onward, going + Along the bank, and I abreast of her, + Her little steps with little steps attending. + +Between her steps and mine were not a hundred, + When equally the margins gave a turn, + In such a way, that to the East I faced. + +Nor even thus our way continued far + Before the lady wholly turned herself + Unto me, saying, “Brother, look and listen!” + +And lo! a sudden lustre ran across + On every side athwart the spacious forest, + Such that it made me doubt if it were lightning. + +But since the lightning ceases as it comes, + And that continuing brightened more and more, + Within my thought I said, “What thing is this?” + +And a delicious melody there ran + Along the luminous air, whence holy zeal + Made me rebuke the hardihood of Eve; + +For there where earth and heaven obedient were, + The woman only, and but just created, + Could not endure to stay ’neath any veil; + +Underneath which had she devoutly stayed, + I sooner should have tasted those delights + Ineffable, and for a longer time. + +While ’mid such manifold first-fruits I walked + Of the eternal pleasure all enrapt, + And still solicitous of more delights, + +In front of us like an enkindled fire + Became the air beneath the verdant boughs, + And the sweet sound as singing now was heard. + +O Virgins sacrosanct! if ever hunger, + Vigils, or cold for you I have endured, + The occasion spurs me their reward to claim! + +Now Helicon must needs pour forth for me, + And with her choir Urania must assist me, + To put in verse things difficult to think. + +A little farther on, seven trees of gold + In semblance the long space still intervening + Between ourselves and them did counterfeit; + +But when I had approached so near to them + The common object, which the sense deceives, + Lost not by distance any of its marks, + +The faculty that lends discourse to reason + Did apprehend that they were candlesticks, + And in the voices of the song “Hosanna!” + +Above them flamed the harness beautiful, + Far brighter than the moon in the serene + Of midnight, at the middle of her month. + +I turned me round, with admiration filled, + To good Virgilius, and he answered me + With visage no less full of wonderment. + +Then back I turned my face to those high things, + Which moved themselves towards us so sedately, + They had been distanced by new-wedded brides. + +The lady chid me: “Why dost thou burn only + So with affection for the living lights, + And dost not look at what comes after them?” + +Then saw I people, as behind their leaders, + Coming behind them, garmented in white, + And such a whiteness never was on earth. + +The water on my left flank was resplendent, + And back to me reflected my left side, + E’en as a mirror, if I looked therein. + +When I upon my margin had such post + That nothing but the stream divided us, + Better to see I gave my steps repose; + +And I beheld the flamelets onward go, + Leaving behind themselves the air depicted, + And they of trailing pennons had the semblance, + +So that it overhead remained distinct + With sevenfold lists, all of them of the colours + Whence the sun’s bow is made, and Delia’s girdle. + +These standards to the rearward longer were + Than was my sight; and, as it seemed to me, + Ten paces were the outermost apart. + +Under so fair a heaven as I describe + The four and twenty Elders, two by two, + Came on incoronate with flower-de-luce. + +They all of them were singing: “Blessed thou + Among the daughters of Adam art, and blessed + For evermore shall be thy loveliness.” + +After the flowers and other tender grasses + In front of me upon the other margin + Were disencumbered of that race elect, + +Even as in heaven star followeth after star, + There came close after them four animals, + Incoronate each one with verdant leaf. + +Plumed with six wings was every one of them, + The plumage full of eyes; the eyes of Argus + If they were living would be such as these. + +Reader! to trace their forms no more I waste + My rhymes; for other spendings press me so, + That I in this cannot be prodigal. + +But read Ezekiel, who depicteth them + As he beheld them from the region cold + Coming with cloud, with whirlwind, and with fire; + +And such as thou shalt find them in his pages, + Such were they here; saving that in their plumage + John is with me, and differeth from him. + +The interval between these four contained + A chariot triumphal on two wheels, + Which by a Griffin’s neck came drawn along; + +And upward he extended both his wings + Between the middle list and three and three, + So that he injured none by cleaving it. + +So high they rose that they were lost to sight; + His limbs were gold, so far as he was bird, + And white the others with vermilion mingled. + +Not only Rome with no such splendid car + E’er gladdened Africanus, or Augustus, + But poor to it that of the Sun would be,— + +That of the Sun, which swerving was burnt up + At the importunate orison of Earth, + When Jove was so mysteriously just. + +Three maidens at the right wheel in a circle + Came onward dancing; one so very red + That in the fire she hardly had been noted. + +The second was as if her flesh and bones + Had all been fashioned out of emerald; + The third appeared as snow but newly fallen. + +And now they seemed conducted by the white, + Now by the red, and from the song of her + The others took their step, or slow or swift. + +Upon the left hand four made holiday + Vested in purple, following the measure + Of one of them with three eyes m her head. + +In rear of all the group here treated of + Two old men I beheld, unlike in habit, + But like in gait, each dignified and grave. + +One showed himself as one of the disciples + Of that supreme Hippocrates, whom nature + Made for the animals she holds most dear; + +Contrary care the other manifested, + With sword so shining and so sharp, it caused + Terror to me on this side of the river. + +Thereafter four I saw of humble aspect, + And behind all an aged man alone + Walking in sleep with countenance acute. + +And like the foremost company these seven + Were habited; yet of the flower-de-luce + No garland round about the head they wore, + +But of the rose, and other flowers vermilion; + At little distance would the sight have sworn + That all were in a flame above their brows. + +And when the car was opposite to me + Thunder was heard; and all that folk august + Seemed to have further progress interdicted, + +There with the vanward ensigns standing still. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXX + + +When the Septentrion of the highest heaven + (Which never either setting knew or rising, + Nor veil of other cloud than that of sin, + +And which made every one therein aware + Of his own duty, as the lower makes + Whoever turns the helm to come to port) + +Motionless halted, the veracious people, + That came at first between it and the Griffin, + Turned themselves to the car, as to their peace. + +And one of them, as if by Heaven commissioned, + Singing, “Veni, sponsa, de Libano” + Shouted three times, and all the others after. + +Even as the Blessed at the final summons + Shall rise up quickened each one from his cavern, + Uplifting light the reinvested flesh, + +So upon that celestial chariot + A hundred rose ‘ad vocem tanti senis,’ + Ministers and messengers of life eternal. + +They all were saying, “Benedictus qui venis,” + And, scattering flowers above and round about, + “Manibus o date lilia plenis.” + +Ere now have I beheld, as day began, + The eastern hemisphere all tinged with rose, + And the other heaven with fair serene adorned; + +And the sun’s face, uprising, overshadowed + So that by tempering influence of vapours + For a long interval the eye sustained it; + +Thus in the bosom of a cloud of flowers + Which from those hands angelical ascended, + And downward fell again inside and out, + +Over her snow-white veil with olive cinct + Appeared a lady under a green mantle, + Vested in colour of the living flame. + +And my own spirit, that already now + So long a time had been, that in her presence + Trembling with awe it had not stood abashed, + +Without more knowledge having by mine eyes, + Through occult virtue that from her proceeded + Of ancient love the mighty influence felt. + +As soon as on my vision smote the power + Sublime, that had already pierced me through + Ere from my boyhood I had yet come forth, + +To the left hand I turned with that reliance + With which the little child runs to his mother, + When he has fear, or when he is afflicted, + +To say unto Virgilius: “Not a drachm + Of blood remains in me, that does not tremble; + I know the traces of the ancient flame.” + +But us Virgilius of himself deprived + Had left, Virgilius, sweetest of all fathers, + Virgilius, to whom I for safety gave me: + +Nor whatsoever lost the ancient mother + Availed my cheeks now purified from dew, + That weeping they should not again be darkened. + +“Dante, because Virgilius has departed + Do not weep yet, do not weep yet awhile; + For by another sword thou need’st must weep.” + +E’en as an admiral, who on poop and prow + Comes to behold the people that are working + In other ships, and cheers them to well-doing, + +Upon the left hand border of the car, + When at the sound I turned of my own name, + Which of necessity is here recorded, + +I saw the Lady, who erewhile appeared + Veiled underneath the angelic festival, + Direct her eyes to me across the river. + +Although the veil, that from her head descended, + Encircled with the foliage of Minerva, + Did not permit her to appear distinctly, + +In attitude still royally majestic + Continued she, like unto one who speaks, + And keeps his warmest utterance in reserve: + +“Look at me well; in sooth I’m Beatrice! + How didst thou deign to come unto the Mountain? + Didst thou not know that man is happy here?” + +Mine eyes fell downward into the clear fountain, + But, seeing myself therein, I sought the grass, + So great a shame did weigh my forehead down. + +As to the son the mother seems superb, + So she appeared to me; for somewhat bitter + Tasteth the savour of severe compassion. + +Silent became she, and the Angels sang + Suddenly, “In te, Domine, speravi:” + But beyond ‘pedes meos’ did not pass. + +Even as the snow among the living rafters + Upon the back of Italy congeals, + Blown on and drifted by Sclavonian winds, + +And then, dissolving, trickles through itself + Whene’er the land that loses shadow breathes, + So that it seems a fire that melts a taper; + +E’en thus was I without a tear or sigh, + Before the song of those who sing for ever + After the music of the eternal spheres. + +But when I heard in their sweet melodies + Compassion for me, more than had they said, + “O wherefore, lady, dost thou thus upbraid him?” + +The ice, that was about my heart congealed, + To air and water changed, and in my anguish + Through mouth and eyes came gushing from my breast. + +She, on the right-hand border of the car + Still firmly standing, to those holy beings + Thus her discourse directed afterwards: + +“Ye keep your watch in the eternal day, + So that nor night nor sleep can steal from you + One step the ages make upon their path; + +Therefore my answer is with greater care, + That he may hear me who is weeping yonder, + So that the sin and dole be of one measure. + +Not only by the work of those great wheels, + That destine every seed unto some end, + According as the stars are in conjunction, + +But by the largess of celestial graces, + Which have such lofty vapours for their rain + That near to them our sight approaches not, + +Such had this man become in his new life + Potentially, that every righteous habit + Would have made admirable proof in him; + +But so much more malignant and more savage + Becomes the land untilled and with bad seed, + The more good earthly vigour it possesses. + +Some time did I sustain him with my look; + Revealing unto him my youthful eyes, + I led him with me turned in the right way. + +As soon as ever of my second age + I was upon the threshold and changed life, + Himself from me he took and gave to others. + +When from the flesh to spirit I ascended, + And beauty and virtue were in me increased, + I was to him less dear and less delightful; + +And into ways untrue he turned his steps, + Pursuing the false images of good, + That never any promises fulfil; + +Nor prayer for inspiration me availed, + By means of which in dreams and otherwise + I called him back, so little did he heed them. + +So low he fell, that all appliances + For his salvation were already short, + Save showing him the people of perdition. + +For this I visited the gates of death, + And unto him, who so far up has led him, + My intercessions were with weeping borne. + +God’s lofty fiat would be violated, + If Lethe should be passed, and if such viands + Should tasted be, withouten any scot + +Of penitence, that gushes forth in tears.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXXI + + +“O thou who art beyond the sacred river,” + Turning to me the point of her discourse, + That edgewise even had seemed to me so keen, + +She recommenced, continuing without pause, + “Say, say if this be true; to such a charge, + Thy own confession needs must be conjoined.” + +My faculties were in so great confusion, + That the voice moved, but sooner was extinct + Than by its organs it was set at large. + +Awhile she waited; then she said: “What thinkest? + Answer me; for the mournful memories + In thee not yet are by the waters injured.” + +Confusion and dismay together mingled + Forced such a Yes! from out my mouth, that sight + Was needful to the understanding of it. + +Even as a cross-bow breaks, when ’tis discharged + Too tensely drawn the bowstring and the bow, + And with less force the arrow hits the mark, + +So I gave way beneath that heavy burden, + Outpouring in a torrent tears and sighs, + And the voice flagged upon its passage forth. + +Whence she to me: “In those desires of mine + Which led thee to the loving of that good, + Beyond which there is nothing to aspire to, + +What trenches lying traverse or what chains + Didst thou discover, that of passing onward + Thou shouldst have thus despoiled thee of the hope? + +And what allurements or what vantages + Upon the forehead of the others showed, + That thou shouldst turn thy footsteps unto them?” + +After the heaving of a bitter sigh, + Hardly had I the voice to make response, + And with fatigue my lips did fashion it. + +Weeping I said: “The things that present were + With their false pleasure turned aside my steps, + Soon as your countenance concealed itself.” + +And she: “Shouldst thou be silent, or deny + What thou confessest, not less manifest + Would be thy fault, by such a Judge ’tis known. + +But when from one’s own cheeks comes bursting forth + The accusal of the sin, in our tribunal + Against the edge the wheel doth turn itself. + +But still, that thou mayst feel a greater shame + For thy transgression, and another time + Hearing the Sirens thou mayst be more strong, + +Cast down the seed of weeping and attend; + So shalt thou hear, how in an opposite way + My buried flesh should have directed thee. + +Never to thee presented art or nature + Pleasure so great as the fair limbs wherein + I was enclosed, which scattered are in earth. + +And if the highest pleasure thus did fail thee + By reason of my death, what mortal thing + Should then have drawn thee into its desire? + +Thou oughtest verily at the first shaft + Of things fallacious to have risen up + To follow me, who was no longer such. + +Thou oughtest not to have stooped thy pinions downward + To wait for further blows, or little girl, + Or other vanity of such brief use. + +The callow birdlet waits for two or three, + But to the eyes of those already fledged, + In vain the net is spread or shaft is shot.” + +Even as children silent in their shame + Stand listening with their eyes upon the ground, + And conscious of their fault, and penitent; + +So was I standing; and she said: “If thou + In hearing sufferest pain, lift up thy beard + And thou shalt feel a greater pain in seeing.” + +With less resistance is a robust holm + Uprooted, either by a native wind + Or else by that from regions of Iarbas, + +Than I upraised at her command my chin; + And when she by the beard the face demanded, + Well I perceived the venom of her meaning. + +And as my countenance was lifted up, + Mine eye perceived those creatures beautiful + Had rested from the strewing of the flowers; + +And, still but little reassured, mine eyes + Saw Beatrice turned round towards the monster, + That is one person only in two natures. + +Beneath her veil, beyond the margent green, + She seemed to me far more her ancient self + To excel, than others here, when she was here. + +So pricked me then the thorn of penitence, + That of all other things the one which turned me + Most to its love became the most my foe. + +Such self-conviction stung me at the heart + O’erpowered I fell, and what I then became + She knoweth who had furnished me the cause. + +Then, when the heart restored my outward sense, + The lady I had found alone, above me + I saw, and she was saying, “Hold me, hold me.” + +Up to my throat she in the stream had drawn me, + And, dragging me behind her, she was moving + Upon the water lightly as a shuttle. + +When I was near unto the blessed shore, + “Asperges me,” I heard so sweetly sung, + Remember it I cannot, much less write it. + +The beautiful lady opened wide her arms, + Embraced my head, and plunged me underneath, + Where I was forced to swallow of the water. + +Then forth she drew me, and all dripping brought + Into the dance of the four beautiful, + And each one with her arm did cover me. + +‘We here are Nymphs, and in the Heaven are stars; + Ere Beatrice descended to the world, + We as her handmaids were appointed her. + +We’ll lead thee to her eyes; but for the pleasant + Light that within them is, shall sharpen thine + The three beyond, who more profoundly look.’ + +Thus singing they began; and afterwards + Unto the Griffin’s breast they led me with them, + Where Beatrice was standing, turned towards us. + +“See that thou dost not spare thine eyes,” they said; + “Before the emeralds have we stationed thee, + Whence Love aforetime drew for thee his weapons.” + +A thousand longings, hotter than the flame, + Fastened mine eyes upon those eyes relucent, + That still upon the Griffin steadfast stayed. + +As in a glass the sun, not otherwise + Within them was the twofold monster shining, + Now with the one, now with the other nature. + +Think, Reader, if within myself I marvelled, + When I beheld the thing itself stand still, + And in its image it transformed itself. + +While with amazement filled and jubilant, + My soul was tasting of the food, that while + It satisfies us makes us hunger for it, + +Themselves revealing of the highest rank + In bearing, did the other three advance, + Singing to their angelic saraband. + +“Turn, Beatrice, O turn thy holy eyes,” + Such was their song, “unto thy faithful one, + Who has to see thee ta’en so many steps. + +In grace do us the grace that thou unveil + Thy face to him, so that he may discern + The second beauty which thou dost conceal.” + +O splendour of the living light eternal! + Who underneath the shadow of Parnassus + Has grown so pale, or drunk so at its cistern, + +He would not seem to have his mind encumbered + Striving to paint thee as thou didst appear, + Where the harmonious heaven o’ershadowed thee, + +When in the open air thou didst unveil? + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXXII + + +So steadfast and attentive were mine eyes + In satisfying their decennial thirst, + That all my other senses were extinct, + +And upon this side and on that they had + Walls of indifference, so the holy smile + Drew them unto itself with the old net + +When forcibly my sight was turned away + Towards my left hand by those goddesses, + Because I heard from them a “Too intently!” + +And that condition of the sight which is + In eyes but lately smitten by the sun + Bereft me of my vision some short while; + +But to the less when sight re-shaped itself, + I say the less in reference to the greater + Splendour from which perforce I had withdrawn, + +I saw upon its right wing wheeled about + The glorious host returning with the sun + And with the sevenfold flames upon their faces. + +As underneath its shields, to save itself, + A squadron turns, and with its banner wheels, + Before the whole thereof can change its front, + +That soldiery of the celestial kingdom + Which marched in the advance had wholly passed us + Before the chariot had turned its pole. + +Then to the wheels the maidens turned themselves, + And the Griffin moved his burden benedight, + But so that not a feather of him fluttered. + +The lady fair who drew me through the ford + Followed with Statius and myself the wheel + Which made its orbit with the lesser arc. + +So passing through the lofty forest, vacant + By fault of her who in the serpent trusted, + Angelic music made our steps keep time. + +Perchance as great a space had in three flights + An arrow loosened from the string o’erpassed, + As we had moved when Beatrice descended. + +I heard them murmur altogether, “Adam!” + Then circled they about a tree despoiled + Of blooms and other leafage on each bough. + +Its tresses, which so much the more dilate + As higher they ascend, had been by Indians + Among their forests marvelled at for height. + +“Blessed art thou, O Griffin, who dost not + Pluck with thy beak these branches sweet to taste, + Since appetite by this was turned to evil.” + +After this fashion round the tree robust + The others shouted; and the twofold creature: + “Thus is preserved the seed of all the just.” + +And turning to the pole which he had dragged, + He drew it close beneath the widowed bough, + And what was of it unto it left bound. + +In the same manner as our trees (when downward + Falls the great light, with that together mingled + Which after the celestial Lasca shines) + +Begin to swell, and then renew themselves, + Each one with its own colour, ere the Sun + Harness his steeds beneath another star: + +Less than of rose and more than violet + A hue disclosing, was renewed the tree + That had erewhile its boughs so desolate. + +I never heard, nor here below is sung, + The hymn which afterward that people sang, + Nor did I bear the melody throughout. + +Had I the power to paint how fell asleep + Those eyes compassionless, of Syrinx hearing, + Those eyes to which more watching cost so dear, + +Even as a painter who from model paints + I would portray how I was lulled asleep; + He may, who well can picture drowsihood. + +Therefore I pass to what time I awoke, + And say a splendour rent from me the veil + Of slumber, and a calling: “Rise, what dost thou?” + +As to behold the apple-tree in blossom + Which makes the Angels greedy for its fruit, + And keeps perpetual bridals in the Heaven, + +Peter and John and James conducted were, + And, overcome, recovered at the word + By which still greater slumbers have been broken, + +And saw their school diminished by the loss + Not only of Elias, but of Moses, + And the apparel of their Master changed; + +So I revived, and saw that piteous one + Above me standing, who had been conductress + Aforetime of my steps beside the river, + +And all in doubt I said, “Where’s Beatrice?” + And she: “Behold her seated underneath + The leafage new, upon the root of it. + +Behold the company that circles her; + The rest behind the Griffin are ascending + With more melodious song, and more profound.” + +And if her speech were more diffuse I know not, + Because already in my sight was she + Who from the hearing of aught else had shut me. + +Alone she sat upon the very earth, + Left there as guardian of the chariot + Which I had seen the biform monster fasten. + +Encircling her, a cloister made themselves + The seven Nymphs, with those lights in their hands + Which are secure from Aquilon and Auster. + +“Short while shalt thou be here a forester, + And thou shalt be with me for evermore + A citizen of that Rome where Christ is Roman. + +Therefore, for that world’s good which liveth ill, + Fix on the car thine eyes, and what thou seest, + Having returned to earth, take heed thou write.” + +Thus Beatrice; and I, who at the feet + Of her commandments all devoted was, + My mind and eyes directed where she willed. + +Never descended with so swift a motion + Fire from a heavy cloud, when it is raining + From out the region which is most remote, + +As I beheld the bird of Jove descend + Down through the tree, rending away the bark, + As well as blossoms and the foliage new, + +And he with all his might the chariot smote, + Whereat it reeled, like vessel in a tempest + Tossed by the waves, now starboard and now larboard. + +Thereafter saw I leap into the body + Of the triumphal vehicle a Fox, + That seemed unfed with any wholesome food. + +But for his hideous sins upbraiding him, + My Lady put him to as swift a flight + As such a fleshless skeleton could bear. + +Then by the way that it before had come, + Into the chariot’s chest I saw the Eagle + Descend, and leave it feathered with his plumes. + +And such as issues from a heart that mourns, + A voice from Heaven there issued, and it said: + “My little bark, how badly art thou freighted!” + +Methought, then, that the earth did yawn between + Both wheels, and I saw rise from it a Dragon, + Who through the chariot upward fixed his tail, + +And as a wasp that draweth back its sting, + Drawing unto himself his tail malign, + Drew out the floor, and went his way rejoicing. + +That which remained behind, even as with grass + A fertile region, with the feathers, offered + Perhaps with pure intention and benign, + +Reclothed itself, and with them were reclothed + The pole and both the wheels so speedily, + A sigh doth longer keep the lips apart. + +Transfigured thus the holy edifice + Thrust forward heads upon the parts of it, + Three on the pole and one at either corner. + +The first were horned like oxen; but the four + Had but a single horn upon the forehead; + A monster such had never yet been seen! + +Firm as a rock upon a mountain high, + Seated upon it, there appeared to me + A shameless whore, with eyes swift glancing round, + +And, as if not to have her taken from him, + Upright beside her I beheld a giant; + And ever and anon they kissed each other. + +But because she her wanton, roving eye + Turned upon me, her angry paramour + Did scourge her from her head unto her feet. + +Then full of jealousy, and fierce with wrath, + He loosed the monster, and across the forest + Dragged it so far, he made of that alone + +A shield unto the whore and the strange beast. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXXIII + + +“Deus venerunt gentes,” alternating + Now three, now four, melodious psalmody + The maidens in the midst of tears began; + +And Beatrice, compassionate and sighing, + Listened to them with such a countenance, + That scarce more changed was Mary at the cross. + +But when the other virgins place had given + For her to speak, uprisen to her feet + With colour as of fire, she made response: + +“‘Modicum, et non videbitis me; + Et iterum,’ my sisters predilect, + ‘Modicum, et vos videbitis me.’” + +Then all the seven in front of her she placed; + And after her, by beckoning only, moved + Me and the lady and the sage who stayed. + +So she moved onward; and I do not think + That her tenth step was placed upon the ground, + When with her eyes upon mine eyes she smote, + +And with a tranquil aspect, “Come more quickly,” + To me she said, “that, if I speak with thee, + To listen to me thou mayst be well placed.” + +As soon as I was with her as I should be, + She said to me: “Why, brother, dost thou not + Venture to question now, in coming with me?” + +As unto those who are too reverential, + Speaking in presence of superiors, + Who drag no living utterance to their teeth, + +It me befell, that without perfect sound + Began I: “My necessity, Madonna, + You know, and that which thereunto is good.” + +And she to me: “Of fear and bashfulness + Henceforward I will have thee strip thyself, + So that thou speak no more as one who dreams. + +Know that the vessel which the serpent broke + Was, and is not; but let him who is guilty + Think that God’s vengeance does not fear a sop. + +Without an heir shall not for ever be + The Eagle that left his plumes upon the car, + Whence it became a monster, then a prey; + +For verily I see, and hence narrate it, + The stars already near to bring the time, + From every hindrance safe, and every bar, + +Within which a Five-hundred, Ten, and Five, + One sent from God, shall slay the thievish woman + And that same giant who is sinning with her. + +And peradventure my dark utterance, + Like Themis and the Sphinx, may less persuade thee, + Since, in their mode, it clouds the intellect; + +But soon the facts shall be the Naiades + Who shall this difficult enigma solve, + Without destruction of the flocks and harvests. + +Note thou; and even as by me are uttered + These words, so teach them unto those who live + That life which is a running unto death; + +And bear in mind, whene’er thou writest them, + Not to conceal what thou hast seen the plant, + That twice already has been pillaged here. + +Whoever pillages or shatters it, + With blasphemy of deed offendeth God, + Who made it holy for his use alone. + +For biting that, in pain and in desire + Five thousand years and more the first-born soul + Craved Him, who punished in himself the bite. + +Thy genius slumbers, if it deem it not + For special reason so pre-eminent + In height, and so inverted in its summit. + +And if thy vain imaginings had not been + Water of Elsa round about thy mind, + And Pyramus to the mulberry, their pleasure, + +Thou by so many circumstances only + The justice of the interdict of God + Morally in the tree wouldst recognize. + +But since I see thee in thine intellect + Converted into stone and stained with sin, + So that the light of my discourse doth daze thee, + +I will too, if not written, at least painted, + Thou bear it back within thee, for the reason + That cinct with palm the pilgrim’s staff is borne.” + +And I: “As by a signet is the wax + Which does not change the figure stamped upon it, + My brain is now imprinted by yourself. + +But wherefore so beyond my power of sight + Soars your desirable discourse, that aye + The more I strive, so much the more I lose it?” + +“That thou mayst recognize,” she said, “the school + Which thou hast followed, and mayst see how far + Its doctrine follows after my discourse, + +And mayst behold your path from the divine + Distant as far as separated is + From earth the heaven that highest hastens on.” + +Whence her I answered: “I do not remember + That ever I estranged myself from you, + Nor have I conscience of it that reproves me.” + +“And if thou art not able to remember,” + Smiling she answered, “recollect thee now + That thou this very day hast drunk of Lethe; + +And if from smoke a fire may be inferred, + Such an oblivion clearly demonstrates + Some error in thy will elsewhere intent. + +Truly from this time forward shall my words + Be naked, so far as it is befitting + To lay them open unto thy rude gaze.” + +And more coruscant and with slower steps + The sun was holding the meridian circle, + Which, with the point of view, shifts here and there + +When halted (as he cometh to a halt, + Who goes before a squadron as its escort, + If something new he find upon his way) + +The ladies seven at a dark shadow’s edge, + Such as, beneath green leaves and branches black, + The Alp upon its frigid border wears. + +In front of them the Tigris and Euphrates + Methought I saw forth issue from one fountain, + And slowly part, like friends, from one another. + +“O light, O glory of the human race! + What stream is this which here unfolds itself + From out one source, and from itself withdraws?” + +For such a prayer, ’twas said unto me, “Pray + Matilda that she tell thee;” and here answered, + As one does who doth free himself from blame, + +The beautiful lady: “This and other things + Were told to him by me; and sure I am + The water of Lethe has not hid them from him.” + +And Beatrice: “Perhaps a greater care, + Which oftentimes our memory takes away, + Has made the vision of his mind obscure. + +But Eunoe behold, that yonder rises; + Lead him to it, and, as thou art accustomed, + Revive again the half-dead virtue in him.” + +Like gentle soul, that maketh no excuse, + But makes its own will of another’s will + As soon as by a sign it is disclosed, + +Even so, when she had taken hold of me, + The beautiful lady moved, and unto Statius + Said, in her womanly manner, “Come with him.” + +If, Reader, I possessed a longer space + For writing it, I yet would sing in part + Of the sweet draught that ne’er would satiate me; + +But inasmuch as full are all the leaves + Made ready for this second canticle, + The curb of art no farther lets me go. + +From the most holy water I returned + Regenerate, in the manner of new trees + That are renewed with a new foliage, + +Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1002 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1003-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1003-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..45197f2d --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1003-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6731 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1003 *** + +The Divine Comedy + +of Dante Alighieri + +Translated by +HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW + +PARADISO + + +Contents + +I. The Ascent to the First Heaven. The Sphere of Fire. +II. The First Heaven, the Moon: Spirits who, having taken Sacred Vows, were forced to violate them. The Lunar Spots. +III. Piccarda Donati and the Empress Constance. +IV. Questionings of the Soul and of Broken Vows. +V. Discourse of Beatrice on Vows and Compensations. Ascent to the Second Heaven, Mercury: Spirits who for the Love of Fame achieved great Deeds. +VI. Justinian. The Roman Eagle. The Empire. Romeo. +VII. Beatrice’s Discourse of the Crucifixion, the Incarnation, the Immortality of the Soul, and the Resurrection of the Body. +VIII. Ascent to the Third Heaven, Venus: Lovers. Charles Martel. Discourse on diverse Natures. +IX. Cunizza da Romano, Folco of Marseilles, and Rahab. Neglect of the Holy Land. +X. The Fourth Heaven, the Sun: Theologians and Fathers of the Church. The First Circle. St. Thomas of Aquinas. +XI. St. Thomas recounts the Life of St. Francis. Lament over the State of the Dominican Order. +XII. St. Buonaventura recounts the Life of St. Dominic. Lament over the State of the Franciscan Order. The Second Circle. +XIII. Of the Wisdom of Solomon. St. Thomas reproaches Dante’s Judgement. +XIV. The Third Circle. Discourse on the Resurrection of the Flesh. The Fifth Heaven, Mars: Martyrs and Crusaders who died fighting for the true Faith. The Celestial Cross. +XV. Cacciaguida. Florence in the Olden Time. +XVI. Dante’s Noble Ancestry. Cacciaguida’s Discourse of the Great Florentines. +XVII. Cacciaguida’s Prophecy of Dante’s Banishment. +XVIII. The Sixth Heaven, Jupiter: Righteous Kings and Rulers. The Celestial Eagle. Dante’s Invectives against ecclesiastical Avarice. +XIX. The Eagle discourses of Salvation, Faith, and Virtue. Condemnation of the vile Kings of A.D. 1300. +XX. The Eagle praises the Righteous Kings of old. Benevolence of the Divine Will. +XXI. The Seventh Heaven, Saturn: The Contemplative. The Celestial Stairway. St. Peter Damiano. His Invectives against the Luxury of the Prelates. +XXII. St. Benedict. His Lamentation over the Corruption of Monks. The Eighth Heaven, the Fixed Stars. +XXIII. The Triumph of Christ. The Virgin Mary. The Apostles. Gabriel. +XXIV. The Radiant Wheel. St. Peter examines Dante on Faith. +XXV. The Laurel Crown. St. James examines Dante on Hope. Dante’s Blindness. +XXVI. St. John examines Dante on Charity. Dante’s Sight. Adam. +XXVII. St. Peter’s reproof of bad Popes. The Ascent to the Ninth Heaven, the ‘Primum Mobile.’ +XXVIII. God and the Angelic Hierarchies. +XXIX. Beatrice’s Discourse of the Creation of the Angels, and of the Fall of Lucifer. Her Reproof of Foolish and Avaricious Preachers. +XXX. The Tenth Heaven, or Empyrean. The River of Light. The Two Courts of Heaven. The White Rose of Paradise. The great Throne. +XXXI. The Glory of Paradise. Departure of Beatrice. St. Bernard. +XXXII. St. Bernard points out the Saints in the White Rose. +XXXIII. Prayer to the Virgin. The Threefold Circle of the Trinity. Mystery of the Divine and Human Nature. +APPENDIX + + + + +Paradiso: Canto I + + +The glory of Him who moveth everything + Doth penetrate the universe, and shine + In one part more and in another less. + +Within that heaven which most his light receives + Was I, and things beheld which to repeat + Nor knows, nor can, who from above descends; + +Because in drawing near to its desire + Our intellect ingulphs itself so far, + That after it the memory cannot go. + +Truly whatever of the holy realm + I had the power to treasure in my mind + Shall now become the subject of my song. + +O good Apollo, for this last emprise + Make of me such a vessel of thy power + As giving the beloved laurel asks! + +One summit of Parnassus hitherto + Has been enough for me, but now with both + I needs must enter the arena left. + +Enter into my bosom, thou, and breathe + As at the time when Marsyas thou didst draw + Out of the scabbard of those limbs of his. + +O power divine, lend’st thou thyself to me + So that the shadow of the blessed realm + Stamped in my brain I can make manifest, + +Thou’lt see me come unto thy darling tree, + And crown myself thereafter with those leaves + Of which the theme and thou shall make me worthy. + +So seldom, Father, do we gather them + For triumph or of Caesar or of Poet, + (The fault and shame of human inclinations,) + +That the Peneian foliage should bring forth + Joy to the joyous Delphic deity, + When any one it makes to thirst for it. + +A little spark is followed by great flame; + Perchance with better voices after me + Shall prayer be made that Cyrrha may respond! + +To mortal men by passages diverse + Uprises the world’s lamp; but by that one + Which circles four uniteth with three crosses, + +With better course and with a better star + Conjoined it issues, and the mundane wax + Tempers and stamps more after its own fashion. + +Almost that passage had made morning there + And evening here, and there was wholly white + That hemisphere, and black the other part, + +When Beatrice towards the left-hand side + I saw turned round, and gazing at the sun; + Never did eagle fasten so upon it! + +And even as a second ray is wont + To issue from the first and reascend, + Like to a pilgrim who would fain return, + +Thus of her action, through the eyes infused + In my imagination, mine I made, + And sunward fixed mine eyes beyond our wont. + +There much is lawful which is here unlawful + Unto our powers, by virtue of the place + Made for the human species as its own. + +Not long I bore it, nor so little while + But I beheld it sparkle round about + Like iron that comes molten from the fire; + +And suddenly it seemed that day to day + Was added, as if He who has the power + Had with another sun the heaven adorned. + +With eyes upon the everlasting wheels + Stood Beatrice all intent, and I, on her + Fixing my vision from above removed, + +Such at her aspect inwardly became + As Glaucus, tasting of the herb that made him + Peer of the other gods beneath the sea. + +To represent transhumanise in words + Impossible were; the example, then, suffice + Him for whom Grace the experience reserves. + +If I was merely what of me thou newly + Createdst, Love who governest the heaven, + Thou knowest, who didst lift me with thy light! + +When now the wheel, which thou dost make eternal + Desiring thee, made me attentive to it + By harmony thou dost modulate and measure, + +Then seemed to me so much of heaven enkindled + By the sun’s flame, that neither rain nor river + E’er made a lake so widely spread abroad. + +The newness of the sound and the great light + Kindled in me a longing for their cause, + Never before with such acuteness felt; + +Whence she, who saw me as I saw myself, + To quiet in me my perturbed mind, + Opened her mouth, ere I did mine to ask, + +And she began: “Thou makest thyself so dull + With false imagining, that thou seest not + What thou wouldst see if thou hadst shaken it off. + +Thou art not upon earth, as thou believest; + But lightning, fleeing its appropriate site, + Ne’er ran as thou, who thitherward returnest.” + +If of my former doubt I was divested + By these brief little words more smiled than spoken, + I in a new one was the more ensnared; + +And said: “Already did I rest content + From great amazement; but am now amazed + In what way I transcend these bodies light.” + +Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh, + Her eyes directed tow’rds me with that look + A mother casts on a delirious child; + +And she began: “All things whate’er they be + Have order among themselves, and this is form, + That makes the universe resemble God. + +Here do the higher creatures see the footprints + Of the Eternal Power, which is the end + Whereto is made the law already mentioned. + +In the order that I speak of are inclined + All natures, by their destinies diverse, + More or less near unto their origin; + +Hence they move onward unto ports diverse + O’er the great sea of being; and each one + With instinct given it which bears it on. + +This bears away the fire towards the moon; + This is in mortal hearts the motive power + This binds together and unites the earth. + +Nor only the created things that are + Without intelligence this bow shoots forth, + But those that have both intellect and love. + +The Providence that regulates all this + Makes with its light the heaven forever quiet, + Wherein that turns which has the greatest haste. + +And thither now, as to a site decreed, + Bears us away the virtue of that cord + Which aims its arrows at a joyous mark. + +True is it, that as oftentimes the form + Accords not with the intention of the art, + Because in answering is matter deaf, + +So likewise from this course doth deviate + Sometimes the creature, who the power possesses, + Though thus impelled, to swerve some other way, + +(In the same wise as one may see the fire + Fall from a cloud,) if the first impetus + Earthward is wrested by some false delight. + +Thou shouldst not wonder more, if well I judge, + At thine ascent, than at a rivulet + From some high mount descending to the lowland. + +Marvel it would be in thee, if deprived + Of hindrance, thou wert seated down below, + As if on earth the living fire were quiet.” + +Thereat she heavenward turned again her face. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto II + + +O Ye, who in some pretty little boat, + Eager to listen, have been following + Behind my ship, that singing sails along, + +Turn back to look again upon your shores; + Do not put out to sea, lest peradventure, + In losing me, you might yourselves be lost. + +The sea I sail has never yet been passed; + Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo, + And Muses nine point out to me the Bears. + +Ye other few who have the neck uplifted + Betimes to th’ bread of Angels upon which + One liveth here and grows not sated by it, + +Well may you launch upon the deep salt-sea + Your vessel, keeping still my wake before you + Upon the water that grows smooth again. + +Those glorious ones who unto Colchos passed + Were not so wonder-struck as you shall be, + When Jason they beheld a ploughman made! + +The con-created and perpetual thirst + For the realm deiform did bear us on, + As swift almost as ye the heavens behold. + +Upward gazed Beatrice, and I at her; + And in such space perchance as strikes a bolt + And flies, and from the notch unlocks itself, + +Arrived I saw me where a wondrous thing + Drew to itself my sight; and therefore she + From whom no care of mine could be concealed, + +Towards me turning, blithe as beautiful, + Said unto me: “Fix gratefully thy mind + On God, who unto the first star has brought us.” + +It seemed to me a cloud encompassed us, + Luminous, dense, consolidate and bright + As adamant on which the sun is striking. + +Into itself did the eternal pearl + Receive us, even as water doth receive + A ray of light, remaining still unbroken. + +If I was body, (and we here conceive not + How one dimension tolerates another, + Which needs must be if body enter body,) + +More the desire should be enkindled in us + That essence to behold, wherein is seen + How God and our own nature were united. + +There will be seen what we receive by faith, + Not demonstrated, but self-evident + In guise of the first truth that man believes. + +I made reply: “Madonna, as devoutly + As most I can do I give thanks to Him + Who has removed me from the mortal world. + +But tell me what the dusky spots may be + Upon this body, which below on earth + Make people tell that fabulous tale of Cain?” + +Somewhat she smiled; and then, “If the opinion + Of mortals be erroneous,” she said, + “Where’er the key of sense doth not unlock, + +Certes, the shafts of wonder should not pierce thee + Now, forasmuch as, following the senses, + Thou seest that the reason has short wings. + +But tell me what thou think’st of it thyself.” + And I: “What seems to us up here diverse, + Is caused, I think, by bodies rare and dense.” + +And she: “Right truly shalt thou see immersed + In error thy belief, if well thou hearest + The argument that I shall make against it. + +Lights many the eighth sphere displays to you + Which in their quality and quantity + May noted be of aspects different. + +If this were caused by rare and dense alone, + One only virtue would there be in all + Or more or less diffused, or equally. + +Virtues diverse must be perforce the fruits + Of formal principles; and these, save one, + Of course would by thy reasoning be destroyed. + +Besides, if rarity were of this dimness + The cause thou askest, either through and through + This planet thus attenuate were of matter, + +Or else, as in a body is apportioned + The fat and lean, so in like manner this + Would in its volume interchange the leaves. + +Were it the former, in the sun’s eclipse + It would be manifest by the shining through + Of light, as through aught tenuous interfused. + +This is not so; hence we must scan the other, + And if it chance the other I demolish, + Then falsified will thy opinion be. + +But if this rarity go not through and through, + There needs must be a limit, beyond which + Its contrary prevents the further passing, + +And thence the foreign radiance is reflected, + Even as a colour cometh back from glass, + The which behind itself concealeth lead. + +Now thou wilt say the sunbeam shows itself + More dimly there than in the other parts, + By being there reflected farther back. + +From this reply experiment will free thee + If e’er thou try it, which is wont to be + The fountain to the rivers of your arts. + +Three mirrors shalt thou take, and two remove + Alike from thee, the other more remote + Between the former two shall meet thine eyes. + +Turned towards these, cause that behind thy back + Be placed a light, illuming the three mirrors + And coming back to thee by all reflected. + +Though in its quantity be not so ample + The image most remote, there shalt thou see + How it perforce is equally resplendent. + +Now, as beneath the touches of warm rays + Naked the subject of the snow remains + Both of its former colour and its cold, + +Thee thus remaining in thy intellect, + Will I inform with such a living light, + That it shall tremble in its aspect to thee. + +Within the heaven of the divine repose + Revolves a body, in whose virtue lies + The being of whatever it contains. + +The following heaven, that has so many eyes, + Divides this being by essences diverse, + Distinguished from it, and by it contained. + +The other spheres, by various differences, + All the distinctions which they have within them + Dispose unto their ends and their effects. + +Thus do these organs of the world proceed, + As thou perceivest now, from grade to grade; + Since from above they take, and act beneath. + +Observe me well, how through this place I come + Unto the truth thou wishest, that hereafter + Thou mayst alone know how to keep the ford + +The power and motion of the holy spheres, + As from the artisan the hammer’s craft, + Forth from the blessed motors must proceed. + +The heaven, which lights so manifold make fair, + From the Intelligence profound, which turns it, + The image takes, and makes of it a seal. + +And even as the soul within your dust + Through members different and accommodated + To faculties diverse expands itself, + +So likewise this Intelligence diffuses + Its virtue multiplied among the stars. + Itself revolving on its unity. + +Virtue diverse doth a diverse alloyage + Make with the precious body that it quickens, + In which, as life in you, it is combined. + +From the glad nature whence it is derived, + The mingled virtue through the body shines, + Even as gladness through the living pupil. + +From this proceeds whate’er from light to light + Appeareth different, not from dense and rare: + This is the formal principle that produces, + +According to its goodness, dark and bright.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto III + + +That Sun, which erst with love my bosom warmed, + Of beauteous truth had unto me discovered, + By proving and reproving, the sweet aspect. + +And, that I might confess myself convinced + And confident, so far as was befitting, + I lifted more erect my head to speak. + +But there appeared a vision, which withdrew me + So close to it, in order to be seen, + That my confession I remembered not. + +Such as through polished and transparent glass, + Or waters crystalline and undisturbed, + But not so deep as that their bed be lost, + +Come back again the outlines of our faces + So feeble, that a pearl on forehead white + Comes not less speedily unto our eyes; + +Such saw I many faces prompt to speak, + So that I ran in error opposite + To that which kindled love ’twixt man and fountain. + +As soon as I became aware of them, + Esteeming them as mirrored semblances, + To see of whom they were, mine eyes I turned, + +And nothing saw, and once more turned them forward + Direct into the light of my sweet Guide, + Who smiling kindled in her holy eyes. + +“Marvel thou not,” she said to me, “because + I smile at this thy puerile conceit, + Since on the truth it trusts not yet its foot, + +But turns thee, as ’tis wont, on emptiness. + True substances are these which thou beholdest, + Here relegate for breaking of some vow. + +Therefore speak with them, listen and believe; + For the true light, which giveth peace to them, + Permits them not to turn from it their feet.” + +And I unto the shade that seemed most wishful + To speak directed me, and I began, + As one whom too great eagerness bewilders: + +“O well-created spirit, who in the rays + Of life eternal dost the sweetness taste + Which being untasted ne’er is comprehended, + +Grateful ’twill be to me, if thou content me + Both with thy name and with your destiny.” + Whereat she promptly and with laughing eyes: + +“Our charity doth never shut the doors + Against a just desire, except as one + Who wills that all her court be like herself. + +I was a virgin sister in the world; + And if thy mind doth contemplate me well, + The being more fair will not conceal me from thee, + +But thou shalt recognise I am Piccarda, + Who, stationed here among these other blessed, + Myself am blessed in the slowest sphere. + +All our affections, that alone inflamed + Are in the pleasure of the Holy Ghost, + Rejoice at being of his order formed; + +And this allotment, which appears so low, + Therefore is given us, because our vows + Have been neglected and in some part void.” + +Whence I to her: “In your miraculous aspects + There shines I know not what of the divine, + Which doth transform you from our first conceptions. + +Therefore I was not swift in my remembrance; + But what thou tellest me now aids me so, + That the refiguring is easier to me. + +But tell me, ye who in this place are happy, + Are you desirous of a higher place, + To see more or to make yourselves more friends?” + +First with those other shades she smiled a little; + Thereafter answered me so full of gladness, + She seemed to burn in the first fire of love: + +“Brother, our will is quieted by virtue + Of charity, that makes us wish alone + For what we have, nor gives us thirst for more. + +If to be more exalted we aspired, + Discordant would our aspirations be + Unto the will of Him who here secludes us; + +Which thou shalt see finds no place in these circles, + If being in charity is needful here, + And if thou lookest well into its nature; + +Nay, ’tis essential to this blest existence + To keep itself within the will divine, + Whereby our very wishes are made one; + +So that, as we are station above station + Throughout this realm, to all the realm ’tis pleasing, + As to the King, who makes his will our will. + +And his will is our peace; this is the sea + To which is moving onward whatsoever + It doth create, and all that nature makes.” + +Then it was clear to me how everywhere + In heaven is Paradise, although the grace + Of good supreme there rain not in one measure. + +But as it comes to pass, if one food sates, + And for another still remains the longing, + We ask for this, and that decline with thanks, + +E’en thus did I; with gesture and with word, + To learn from her what was the web wherein + She did not ply the shuttle to the end. + +“A perfect life and merit high in-heaven + A lady o’er us,” said she, “by whose rule + Down in your world they vest and veil themselves, + +That until death they may both watch and sleep + Beside that Spouse who every vow accepts + Which charity conformeth to his pleasure. + +To follow her, in girlhood from the world + I fled, and in her habit shut myself, + And pledged me to the pathway of her sect. + +Then men accustomed unto evil more + Than unto good, from the sweet cloister tore me; + God knows what afterward my life became. + +This other splendour, which to thee reveals + Itself on my right side, and is enkindled + With all the illumination of our sphere, + +What of myself I say applies to her; + A nun was she, and likewise from her head + Was ta’en the shadow of the sacred wimple. + +But when she too was to the world returned + Against her wishes and against good usage, + Of the heart’s veil she never was divested. + +Of great Costanza this is the effulgence, + Who from the second wind of Suabia + Brought forth the third and latest puissance.” + +Thus unto me she spake, and then began + “Ave Maria” singing, and in singing + Vanished, as through deep water something heavy. + +My sight, that followed her as long a time + As it was possible, when it had lost her + Turned round unto the mark of more desire, + +And wholly unto Beatrice reverted; + But she such lightnings flashed into mine eyes, + That at the first my sight endured it not; + +And this in questioning more backward made me. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto IV + + +Between two viands, equally removed + And tempting, a free man would die of hunger + Ere either he could bring unto his teeth. + +So would a lamb between the ravenings + Of two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike; + And so would stand a dog between two does. + +Hence, if I held my peace, myself I blame not, + Impelled in equal measure by my doubts, + Since it must be so, nor do I commend. + +I held my peace; but my desire was painted + Upon my face, and questioning with that + More fervent far than by articulate speech. + +Beatrice did as Daniel had done + Relieving Nebuchadnezzar from the wrath + Which rendered him unjustly merciless, + +And said: “Well see I how attracteth thee + One and the other wish, so that thy care + Binds itself so that forth it does not breathe. + +Thou arguest, if good will be permanent, + The violence of others, for what reason + Doth it decrease the measure of my merit? + +Again for doubting furnish thee occasion + Souls seeming to return unto the stars, + According to the sentiment of Plato. + +These are the questions which upon thy wish + Are thrusting equally; and therefore first + Will I treat that which hath the most of gall. + +He of the Seraphim most absorbed in God, + Moses, and Samuel, and whichever John + Thou mayst select, I say, and even Mary, + +Have not in any other heaven their seats, + Than have those spirits that just appeared to thee, + Nor of existence more or fewer years; + +But all make beautiful the primal circle, + And have sweet life in different degrees, + By feeling more or less the eternal breath. + +They showed themselves here, not because allotted + This sphere has been to them, but to give sign + Of the celestial which is least exalted. + +To speak thus is adapted to your mind, + Since only through the sense it apprehendeth + What then it worthy makes of intellect. + +On this account the Scripture condescends + Unto your faculties, and feet and hands + To God attributes, and means something else; + +And Holy Church under an aspect human + Gabriel and Michael represent to you, + And him who made Tobias whole again. + +That which Timaeus argues of the soul + Doth not resemble that which here is seen, + Because it seems that as he speaks he thinks. + +He says the soul unto its star returns, + Believing it to have been severed thence + Whenever nature gave it as a form. + +Perhaps his doctrine is of other guise + Than the words sound, and possibly may be + With meaning that is not to be derided. + +If he doth mean that to these wheels return + The honour of their influence and the blame, + Perhaps his bow doth hit upon some truth. + +This principle ill understood once warped + The whole world nearly, till it went astray + Invoking Jove and Mercury and Mars. + +The other doubt which doth disquiet thee + Less venom has, for its malevolence + Could never lead thee otherwhere from me. + +That as unjust our justice should appear + In eyes of mortals, is an argument + Of faith, and not of sin heretical. + +But still, that your perception may be able + To thoroughly penetrate this verity, + As thou desirest, I will satisfy thee. + +If it be violence when he who suffers + Co-operates not with him who uses force, + These souls were not on that account excused; + +For will is never quenched unless it will, + But operates as nature doth in fire + If violence a thousand times distort it. + +Hence, if it yieldeth more or less, it seconds + The force; and these have done so, having power + Of turning back unto the holy place. + +If their will had been perfect, like to that + Which Lawrence fast upon his gridiron held, + And Mutius made severe to his own hand, + +It would have urged them back along the road + Whence they were dragged, as soon as they were free; + But such a solid will is all too rare. + +And by these words, if thou hast gathered them + As thou shouldst do, the argument is refuted + That would have still annoyed thee many times. + +But now another passage runs across + Before thine eyes, and such that by thyself + Thou couldst not thread it ere thou wouldst be weary. + +I have for certain put into thy mind + That soul beatified could never lie, + For it is near the primal Truth, + +And then thou from Piccarda might’st have heard + Costanza kept affection for the veil, + So that she seemeth here to contradict me. + +Many times, brother, has it come to pass, + That, to escape from peril, with reluctance + That has been done it was not right to do, + +E’en as Alcmaeon (who, being by his father + Thereto entreated, his own mother slew) + Not to lose pity pitiless became. + +At this point I desire thee to remember + That force with will commingles, and they cause + That the offences cannot be excused. + +Will absolute consenteth not to evil; + But in so far consenteth as it fears, + If it refrain, to fall into more harm. + +Hence when Piccarda uses this expression, + She meaneth the will absolute, and I + The other, so that both of us speak truth.” + +Such was the flowing of the holy river + That issued from the fount whence springs all truth; + This put to rest my wishes one and all. + +“O love of the first lover, O divine,” + Said I forthwith, “whose speech inundates me + And warms me so, it more and more revives me, + +My own affection is not so profound + As to suffice in rendering grace for grace; + Let Him, who sees and can, thereto respond. + +Well I perceive that never sated is + Our intellect unless the Truth illume it, + Beyond which nothing true expands itself. + +It rests therein, as wild beast in his lair, + When it attains it; and it can attain it; + If not, then each desire would frustrate be. + +Therefore springs up, in fashion of a shoot, + Doubt at the foot of truth; and this is nature, + Which to the top from height to height impels us. + +This doth invite me, this assurance give me + With reverence, Lady, to inquire of you + Another truth, which is obscure to me. + +I wish to know if man can satisfy you + For broken vows with other good deeds, so + That in your balance they will not be light.” + +Beatrice gazed upon me with her eyes + Full of the sparks of love, and so divine, + That, overcome my power, I turned my back + +And almost lost myself with eyes downcast. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto V + + +“If in the heat of love I flame upon thee + Beyond the measure that on earth is seen, + So that the valour of thine eyes I vanquish, + +Marvel thou not thereat; for this proceeds + From perfect sight, which as it apprehends + To the good apprehended moves its feet. + +Well I perceive how is already shining + Into thine intellect the eternal light, + That only seen enkindles always love; + +And if some other thing your love seduce, + ’Tis nothing but a vestige of the same, + Ill understood, which there is shining through. + +Thou fain wouldst know if with another service + For broken vow can such return be made + As to secure the soul from further claim.” + +This Canto thus did Beatrice begin; + And, as a man who breaks not off his speech, + Continued thus her holy argument: + +“The greatest gift that in his largess God + Creating made, and unto his own goodness + Nearest conformed, and that which he doth prize + +Most highly, is the freedom of the will, + Wherewith the creatures of intelligence + Both all and only were and are endowed. + +Now wilt thou see, if thence thou reasonest, + The high worth of a vow, if it he made + So that when thou consentest God consents: + +For, closing between God and man the compact, + A sacrifice is of this treasure made, + Such as I say, and made by its own act. + +What can be rendered then as compensation? + Think’st thou to make good use of what thou’st offered, + With gains ill gotten thou wouldst do good deed. + +Now art thou certain of the greater point; + But because Holy Church in this dispenses, + Which seems against the truth which I have shown thee, + +Behoves thee still to sit awhile at table, + Because the solid food which thou hast taken + Requireth further aid for thy digestion. + +Open thy mind to that which I reveal, + And fix it there within; for ’tis not knowledge, + The having heard without retaining it. + +In the essence of this sacrifice two things + Convene together; and the one is that + Of which ’tis made, the other is the agreement. + +This last for evermore is cancelled not + Unless complied with, and concerning this + With such precision has above been spoken. + +Therefore it was enjoined upon the Hebrews + To offer still, though sometimes what was offered + Might be commuted, as thou ought’st to know. + +The other, which is known to thee as matter, + May well indeed be such that one errs not + If it for other matter be exchanged. + +But let none shift the burden on his shoulder + At his arbitrament, without the turning + Both of the white and of the yellow key; + +And every permutation deem as foolish, + If in the substitute the thing relinquished, + As the four is in six, be not contained. + +Therefore whatever thing has so great weight + In value that it drags down every balance, + Cannot be satisfied with other spending. + +Let mortals never take a vow in jest; + Be faithful and not blind in doing that, + As Jephthah was in his first offering, + +Whom more beseemed to say, ‘I have done wrong, + Than to do worse by keeping; and as foolish + Thou the great leader of the Greeks wilt find, + +Whence wept Iphigenia her fair face, + And made for her both wise and simple weep, + Who heard such kind of worship spoken of.’ + +Christians, be ye more serious in your movements; + Be ye not like a feather at each wind, + And think not every water washes you. + +Ye have the Old and the New Testament, + And the Pastor of the Church who guideth you + Let this suffice you unto your salvation. + +If evil appetite cry aught else to you, + Be ye as men, and not as silly sheep, + So that the Jew among you may not mock you. + +Be ye not as the lamb that doth abandon + Its mother’s milk, and frolicsome and simple + Combats at its own pleasure with itself.” + +Thus Beatrice to me even as I write it; + Then all desireful turned herself again + To that part where the world is most alive. + +Her silence and her change of countenance + Silence imposed upon my eager mind, + That had already in advance new questions; + +And as an arrow that upon the mark + Strikes ere the bowstring quiet hath become, + So did we speed into the second realm. + +My Lady there so joyful I beheld, + As into the brightness of that heaven she entered, + More luminous thereat the planet grew; + +And if the star itself was changed and smiled, + What became I, who by my nature am + Exceeding mutable in every guise! + +As, in a fish-pond which is pure and tranquil, + The fishes draw to that which from without + Comes in such fashion that their food they deem it; + +So I beheld more than a thousand splendours + Drawing towards us, and in each was heard: + “Lo, this is she who shall increase our love.” + +And as each one was coming unto us, + Full of beatitude the shade was seen, + By the effulgence clear that issued from it. + +Think, Reader, if what here is just beginning + No farther should proceed, how thou wouldst have + An agonizing need of knowing more; + +And of thyself thou’lt see how I from these + Was in desire of hearing their conditions, + As they unto mine eyes were manifest. + +“O thou well-born, unto whom Grace concedes + To see the thrones of the eternal triumph, + Or ever yet the warfare be abandoned + +With light that through the whole of heaven is spread + Kindled are we, and hence if thou desirest + To know of us, at thine own pleasure sate thee.” + +Thus by some one among those holy spirits + Was spoken, and by Beatrice: “Speak, speak + Securely, and believe them even as Gods.” + +“Well I perceive how thou dost nest thyself + In thine own light, and drawest it from thine eyes, + Because they coruscate when thou dost smile, + +But know not who thou art, nor why thou hast, + Spirit august, thy station in the sphere + That veils itself to men in alien rays.” + +This said I in direction of the light + Which first had spoken to me; whence it became + By far more lucent than it was before. + +Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself + By too much light, when heat has worn away + The tempering influence of the vapours dense, + +By greater rapture thus concealed itself + In its own radiance the figure saintly, + And thus close, close enfolded answered me + +In fashion as the following Canto sings. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto VI + + +“After that Constantine the eagle turned + Against the course of heaven, which it had followed + Behind the ancient who Lavinia took, + +Two hundred years and more the bird of God + In the extreme of Europe held itself, + Near to the mountains whence it issued first; + +And under shadow of the sacred plumes + It governed there the world from hand to hand, + And, changing thus, upon mine own alighted. + +Caesar I was, and am Justinian, + Who, by the will of primal Love I feel, + Took from the laws the useless and redundant; + +And ere unto the work I was attent, + One nature to exist in Christ, not more, + Believed, and with such faith was I contented. + +But blessed Agapetus, he who was + The supreme pastor, to the faith sincere + Pointed me out the way by words of his. + +Him I believed, and what was his assertion + I now see clearly, even as thou seest + Each contradiction to be false and true. + +As soon as with the Church I moved my feet, + God in his grace it pleased with this high task + To inspire me, and I gave me wholly to it, + +And to my Belisarius I commended + The arms, to which was heaven’s right hand so joined + It was a signal that I should repose. + +Now here to the first question terminates + My answer; but the character thereof + Constrains me to continue with a sequel, + +In order that thou see with how great reason + Men move against the standard sacrosanct, + Both who appropriate and who oppose it. + +Behold how great a power has made it worthy + Of reverence, beginning from the hour + When Pallas died to give it sovereignty. + +Thou knowest it made in Alba its abode + Three hundred years and upward, till at last + The three to three fought for it yet again. + +Thou knowest what it achieved from Sabine wrong + Down to Lucretia’s sorrow, in seven kings + O’ercoming round about the neighboring nations; + +Thou knowest what it achieved, borne by the Romans + Illustrious against Brennus, against Pyrrhus, + Against the other princes and confederates. + +Torquatus thence and Quinctius, who from locks + Unkempt was named, Decii and Fabii, + Received the fame I willingly embalm; + +It struck to earth the pride of the Arabians, + Who, following Hannibal, had passed across + The Alpine ridges, Po, from which thou glidest; + +Beneath it triumphed while they yet were young + Pompey and Scipio, and to the hill + Beneath which thou wast born it bitter seemed; + +Then, near unto the time when heaven had willed + To bring the whole world to its mood serene, + Did Caesar by the will of Rome assume it. + +What it achieved from Var unto the Rhine, + Isere beheld and Saone, beheld the Seine, + And every valley whence the Rhone is filled; + +What it achieved when it had left Ravenna, + And leaped the Rubicon, was such a flight + That neither tongue nor pen could follow it. + +Round towards Spain it wheeled its legions; then + Towards Durazzo, and Pharsalia smote + That to the calid Nile was felt the pain. + +Antandros and the Simois, whence it started, + It saw again, and there where Hector lies, + And ill for Ptolemy then roused itself. + +From thence it came like lightning upon Juba; + Then wheeled itself again into your West, + Where the Pompeian clarion it heard. + +From what it wrought with the next standard-bearer + Brutus and Cassius howl in Hell together, + And Modena and Perugia dolent were; + +Still doth the mournful Cleopatra weep + Because thereof, who, fleeing from before it, + Took from the adder sudden and black death. + +With him it ran even to the Red Sea shore; + With him it placed the world in so great peace, + That unto Janus was his temple closed. + +But what the standard that has made me speak + Achieved before, and after should achieve + Throughout the mortal realm that lies beneath it, + +Becometh in appearance mean and dim, + If in the hand of the third Caesar seen + With eye unclouded and affection pure, + +Because the living Justice that inspires me + Granted it, in the hand of him I speak of, + The glory of doing vengeance for its wrath. + +Now here attend to what I answer thee; + Later it ran with Titus to do vengeance + Upon the vengeance of the ancient sin. + +And when the tooth of Lombardy had bitten + The Holy Church, then underneath its wings + Did Charlemagne victorious succor her. + +Now hast thou power to judge of such as those + Whom I accused above, and of their crimes, + Which are the cause of all your miseries. + +To the public standard one the yellow lilies + Opposes, the other claims it for a party, + So that ’tis hard to see which sins the most. + +Let, let the Ghibellines ply their handicraft + Beneath some other standard; for this ever + Ill follows he who it and justice parts. + +And let not this new Charles e’er strike it down, + He and his Guelfs, but let him fear the talons + That from a nobler lion stripped the fell. + +Already oftentimes the sons have wept + The father’s crime; and let him not believe + That God will change His scutcheon for the lilies. + +This little planet doth adorn itself + With the good spirits that have active been, + That fame and honour might come after them; + +And whensoever the desires mount thither, + Thus deviating, must perforce the rays + Of the true love less vividly mount upward. + +But in commensuration of our wages + With our desert is portion of our joy, + Because we see them neither less nor greater. + +Herein doth living Justice sweeten so + Affection in us, that for evermore + It cannot warp to any iniquity. + +Voices diverse make up sweet melodies; + So in this life of ours the seats diverse + Render sweet harmony among these spheres; + +And in the compass of this present pearl + Shineth the sheen of Romeo, of whom + The grand and beauteous work was ill rewarded. + +But the Provencals who against him wrought, + They have not laughed, and therefore ill goes he + Who makes his hurt of the good deeds of others. + +Four daughters, and each one of them a queen, + Had Raymond Berenger, and this for him + Did Romeo, a poor man and a pilgrim; + +And then malicious words incited him + To summon to a reckoning this just man, + Who rendered to him seven and five for ten. + +Then he departed poor and stricken in years, + And if the world could know the heart he had, + In begging bit by bit his livelihood, + +Though much it laud him, it would laud him more.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto VII + + +“Osanna sanctus Deus Sabaoth, + Superillustrans claritate tua + Felices ignes horum malahoth!” + +In this wise, to his melody returning, + This substance, upon which a double light + Doubles itself, was seen by me to sing, + +And to their dance this and the others moved, + And in the manner of swift-hurrying sparks + Veiled themselves from me with a sudden distance. + +Doubting was I, and saying, “Tell her, tell her,” + Within me, “tell her,” saying, “tell my Lady,” + Who slakes my thirst with her sweet effluences; + +And yet that reverence which doth lord it over + The whole of me only by B and ICE, + Bowed me again like unto one who drowses. + +Short while did Beatrice endure me thus; + And she began, lighting me with a smile + Such as would make one happy in the fire: + +“According to infallible advisement, + After what manner a just vengeance justly + Could be avenged has put thee upon thinking, + +But I will speedily thy mind unloose; + And do thou listen, for these words of mine + Of a great doctrine will a present make thee. + +By not enduring on the power that wills + Curb for his good, that man who ne’er was born, + Damning himself damned all his progeny; + +Whereby the human species down below + Lay sick for many centuries in great error, + Till to descend it pleased the Word of God + +To where the nature, which from its own Maker + Estranged itself, he joined to him in person + By the sole act of his eternal love. + +Now unto what is said direct thy sight; + This nature when united to its Maker, + Such as created, was sincere and good; + +But by itself alone was banished forth + From Paradise, because it turned aside + Out of the way of truth and of its life. + +Therefore the penalty the cross held out, + If measured by the nature thus assumed, + None ever yet with so great justice stung, + +And none was ever of so great injustice, + Considering who the Person was that suffered, + Within whom such a nature was contracted. + +From one act therefore issued things diverse; + To God and to the Jews one death was pleasing; + Earth trembled at it and the Heaven was opened. + +It should no longer now seem difficult + To thee, when it is said that a just vengeance + By a just court was afterward avenged. + +But now do I behold thy mind entangled + From thought to thought within a knot, from which + With great desire it waits to free itself. + +Thou sayest, ‘Well discern I what I hear; + But it is hidden from me why God willed + For our redemption only this one mode.’ + +Buried remaineth, brother, this decree + Unto the eyes of every one whose nature + Is in the flame of love not yet adult. + +Verily, inasmuch as at this mark + One gazes long and little is discerned, + Wherefore this mode was worthiest will I say. + +Goodness Divine, which from itself doth spurn + All envy, burning in itself so sparkles + That the eternal beauties it unfolds. + +Whate’er from this immediately distils + Has afterwards no end, for ne’er removed + Is its impression when it sets its seal. + +Whate’er from this immediately rains down + Is wholly free, because it is not subject + Unto the influences of novel things. + +The more conformed thereto, the more it pleases; + For the blest ardour that irradiates all things + In that most like itself is most vivacious. + +With all of these things has advantaged been + The human creature; and if one be wanting, + From his nobility he needs must fall. + +’Tis sin alone which doth disfranchise him, + And render him unlike the Good Supreme, + So that he little with its light is blanched, + +And to his dignity no more returns, + Unless he fill up where transgression empties + With righteous pains for criminal delights. + +Your nature when it sinned so utterly + In its own seed, out of these dignities + Even as out of Paradise was driven, + +Nor could itself recover, if thou notest + With nicest subtilty, by any way, + Except by passing one of these two fords: + +Either that God through clemency alone + Had pardon granted, or that man himself + Had satisfaction for his folly made. + +Fix now thine eye deep into the abyss + Of the eternal counsel, to my speech + As far as may be fastened steadfastly! + +Man in his limitations had not power + To satisfy, not having power to sink + In his humility obeying then, + +Far as he disobeying thought to rise; + And for this reason man has been from power + Of satisfying by himself excluded. + +Therefore it God behoved in his own ways + Man to restore unto his perfect life, + I say in one, or else in both of them. + +But since the action of the doer is + So much more grateful, as it more presents + The goodness of the heart from which it issues, + +Goodness Divine, that doth imprint the world, + Has been contented to proceed by each + And all its ways to lift you up again; + +Nor ’twixt the first day and the final night + Such high and such magnificent proceeding + By one or by the other was or shall be; + +For God more bounteous was himself to give + To make man able to uplift himself, + Than if he only of himself had pardoned; + +And all the other modes were insufficient + For justice, were it not the Son of God + Himself had humbled to become incarnate. + +Now, to fill fully each desire of thine, + Return I to elucidate one place, + In order that thou there mayst see as I do. + +Thou sayst: ‘I see the air, I see the fire, + The water, and the earth, and all their mixtures + Come to corruption, and short while endure; + +And these things notwithstanding were created;’ + Therefore if that which I have said were true, + They should have been secure against corruption. + +The Angels, brother, and the land sincere + In which thou art, created may be called + Just as they are in their entire existence; + +But all the elements which thou hast named, + And all those things which out of them are made, + By a created virtue are informed. + +Created was the matter which they have; + Created was the informing influence + Within these stars that round about them go. + +The soul of every brute and of the plants + By its potential temperament attracts + The ray and motion of the holy lights; + +But your own life immediately inspires + Supreme Beneficence, and enamours it + So with herself, it evermore desires her. + +And thou from this mayst argue furthermore + Your resurrection, if thou think again + How human flesh was fashioned at that time + +When the first parents both of them were made.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto VIII + + +The world used in its peril to believe + That the fair Cypria delirious love + Rayed out, in the third epicycle turning; + +Wherefore not only unto her paid honour + Of sacrifices and of votive cry + The ancient nations in the ancient error, + +But both Dione honoured they and Cupid, + That as her mother, this one as her son, + And said that he had sat in Dido’s lap; + +And they from her, whence I beginning take, + Took the denomination of the star + That woos the sun, now following, now in front. + +I was not ware of our ascending to it; + But of our being in it gave full faith + My Lady whom I saw more beauteous grow. + +And as within a flame a spark is seen, + And as within a voice a voice discerned, + When one is steadfast, and one comes and goes, + +Within that light beheld I other lamps + Move in a circle, speeding more and less, + Methinks in measure of their inward vision. + +From a cold cloud descended never winds, + Or visible or not, so rapidly + They would not laggard and impeded seem + +To any one who had those lights divine + Seen come towards us, leaving the gyration + Begun at first in the high Seraphim. + +And behind those that most in front appeared + Sounded “Osanna!” so that never since + To hear again was I without desire. + +Then unto us more nearly one approached, + And it alone began: “We all are ready + Unto thy pleasure, that thou joy in us. + +We turn around with the celestial Princes, + One gyre and one gyration and one thirst, + To whom thou in the world of old didst say, + +‘Ye who, intelligent, the third heaven are moving;’ + And are so full of love, to pleasure thee + A little quiet will not be less sweet.” + +After these eyes of mine themselves had offered + Unto my Lady reverently, and she + Content and certain of herself had made them, + +Back to the light they turned, which so great promise + Made of itself, and “Say, who art thou?” was + My voice, imprinted with a great affection. + +O how and how much I beheld it grow + With the new joy that superadded was + Unto its joys, as soon as I had spoken! + +Thus changed, it said to me: “The world possessed me + Short time below; and, if it had been more, + Much evil will be which would not have been. + +My gladness keepeth me concealed from thee, + Which rayeth round about me, and doth hide me + Like as a creature swathed in its own silk. + +Much didst thou love me, and thou hadst good reason; + For had I been below, I should have shown thee + Somewhat beyond the foliage of my love. + +That left-hand margin, which doth bathe itself + In Rhone, when it is mingled with the Sorgue, + Me for its lord awaited in due time, + +And that horn of Ausonia, which is towned + With Bari, with Gaeta and Catona, + Whence Tronto and Verde in the sea disgorge. + +Already flashed upon my brow the crown + Of that dominion which the Danube waters + After the German borders it abandons; + +And beautiful Trinacria, that is murky + ’Twixt Pachino and Peloro, (on the gulf + Which greatest scath from Eurus doth receive,) + +Not through Typhoeus, but through nascent sulphur, + Would have awaited her own monarchs still, + Through me from Charles descended and from Rudolph, + +If evil lordship, that exasperates ever + The subject populations, had not moved + Palermo to the outcry of ‘Death! death!’ + +And if my brother could but this foresee, + The greedy poverty of Catalonia + Straight would he flee, that it might not molest him; + +For verily ’tis needful to provide, + Through him or other, so that on his bark + Already freighted no more freight be placed. + +His nature, which from liberal covetous + Descended, such a soldiery would need + As should not care for hoarding in a chest.” + +“Because I do believe the lofty joy + Thy speech infuses into me, my Lord, + Where every good thing doth begin and end + +Thou seest as I see it, the more grateful + Is it to me; and this too hold I dear, + That gazing upon God thou dost discern it. + +Glad hast thou made me; so make clear to me, + Since speaking thou hast stirred me up to doubt, + How from sweet seed can bitter issue forth.” + +This I to him; and he to me: “If I + Can show to thee a truth, to what thou askest + Thy face thou’lt hold as thou dost hold thy back. + +The Good which all the realm thou art ascending + Turns and contents, maketh its providence + To be a power within these bodies vast; + +And not alone the natures are foreseen + Within the mind that in itself is perfect, + But they together with their preservation. + +For whatsoever thing this bow shoots forth + Falls foreordained unto an end foreseen, + Even as a shaft directed to its mark. + +If that were not, the heaven which thou dost walk + Would in such manner its effects produce, + That they no longer would be arts, but ruins. + +This cannot be, if the Intelligences + That keep these stars in motion are not maimed, + And maimed the First that has not made them perfect. + +Wilt thou this truth have clearer made to thee?” + And I: “Not so; for ’tis impossible + That nature tire, I see, in what is needful.” + +Whence he again: “Now say, would it be worse + For men on earth were they not citizens?” + “Yes,” I replied; “and here I ask no reason.” + +“And can they be so, if below they live not + Diversely unto offices diverse? + No, if your master writeth well for you.” + +So came he with deductions to this point; + Then he concluded: “Therefore it behoves + The roots of your effects to be diverse. + +Hence one is Solon born, another Xerxes, + Another Melchisedec, and another he + Who, flying through the air, his son did lose. + +Revolving Nature, which a signet is + To mortal wax, doth practise well her art, + But not one inn distinguish from another; + +Thence happens it that Esau differeth + In seed from Jacob; and Quirinus comes + From sire so vile that he is given to Mars. + +A generated nature its own way + Would always make like its progenitors, + If Providence divine were not triumphant. + +Now that which was behind thee is before thee; + But that thou know that I with thee am pleased, + With a corollary will I mantle thee. + +Evermore nature, if it fortune find + Discordant to it, like each other seed + Out of its region, maketh evil thrift; + +And if the world below would fix its mind + On the foundation which is laid by nature, + Pursuing that, ’twould have the people good. + +But you unto religion wrench aside + Him who was born to gird him with the sword, + And make a king of him who is for sermons; + +Therefore your footsteps wander from the road.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto IX + + +Beautiful Clemence, after that thy Charles + Had me enlightened, he narrated to me + The treacheries his seed should undergo; + +But said: “Be still and let the years roll round;” + So I can only say, that lamentation + Legitimate shall follow on your wrongs. + +And of that holy light the life already + Had to the Sun which fills it turned again, + As to that good which for each thing sufficeth. + +Ah, souls deceived, and creatures impious, + Who from such good do turn away your hearts, + Directing upon vanity your foreheads! + +And now, behold, another of those splendours + Approached me, and its will to pleasure me + It signified by brightening outwardly. + +The eyes of Beatrice, that fastened were + Upon me, as before, of dear assent + To my desire assurance gave to me. + +“Ah, bring swift compensation to my wish, + Thou blessed spirit,” I said, “and give me proof + That what I think in thee I can reflect!” + +Whereat the light, that still was new to me, + Out of its depths, whence it before was singing, + As one delighted to do good, continued: + +“Within that region of the land depraved + Of Italy, that lies between Rialto + And fountain-heads of Brenta and of Piava, + +Rises a hill, and mounts not very high, + Wherefrom descended formerly a torch + That made upon that region great assault. + +Out of one root were born both I and it; + Cunizza was I called, and here I shine + Because the splendour of this star o’ercame me. + +But gladly to myself the cause I pardon + Of my allotment, and it does not grieve me; + Which would perhaps seem strong unto your vulgar. + +Of this so luculent and precious jewel, + Which of our heaven is nearest unto me, + Great fame remained; and ere it die away + +This hundredth year shall yet quintupled be. + See if man ought to make him excellent, + So that another life the first may leave! + +And thus thinks not the present multitude + Shut in by Adige and Tagliamento, + Nor yet for being scourged is penitent. + +But soon ’twill be that Padua in the marsh + Will change the water that Vicenza bathes, + Because the folk are stubborn against duty; + +And where the Sile and Cagnano join + One lordeth it, and goes with lofty head, + For catching whom e’en now the net is making. + +Feltro moreover of her impious pastor + Shall weep the crime, which shall so monstrous be + That for the like none ever entered Malta. + +Ample exceedingly would be the vat + That of the Ferrarese could hold the blood, + And weary who should weigh it ounce by ounce, + +Of which this courteous priest shall make a gift + To show himself a partisan; and such gifts + Will to the living of the land conform. + +Above us there are mirrors, Thrones you call them, + From which shines out on us God Judicant, + So that this utterance seems good to us.” + +Here it was silent, and it had the semblance + Of being turned elsewhither, by the wheel + On which it entered as it was before. + +The other joy, already known to me, + Became a thing transplendent in my sight, + As a fine ruby smitten by the sun. + +Through joy effulgence is acquired above, + As here a smile; but down below, the shade + Outwardly darkens, as the mind is sad. + +“God seeth all things, and in Him, blest spirit, + Thy sight is,” said I, “so that never will + Of his can possibly from thee be hidden; + +Thy voice, then, that for ever makes the heavens + Glad, with the singing of those holy fires + Which of their six wings make themselves a cowl, + +Wherefore does it not satisfy my longings? + Indeed, I would not wait thy questioning + If I in thee were as thou art in me.” + +“The greatest of the valleys where the water + Expands itself,” forthwith its words began, + “That sea excepted which the earth engarlands, + +Between discordant shores against the sun + Extends so far, that it meridian makes + Where it was wont before to make the horizon. + +I was a dweller on that valley’s shore + ’Twixt Ebro and Magra that with journey short + Doth from the Tuscan part the Genoese. + +With the same sunset and same sunrise nearly + Sit Buggia and the city whence I was, + That with its blood once made the harbour hot. + +Folco that people called me unto whom + My name was known; and now with me this heaven + Imprints itself, as I did once with it; + +For more the daughter of Belus never burned, + Offending both Sichaeus and Creusa, + Than I, so long as it became my locks, + +Nor yet that Rodophean, who deluded + was by Demophoon, nor yet Alcides, + When Iole he in his heart had locked. + +Yet here is no repenting, but we smile, + Not at the fault, which comes not back to mind, + But at the power which ordered and foresaw. + +Here we behold the art that doth adorn + With such affection, and the good discover + Whereby the world above turns that below. + +But that thou wholly satisfied mayst bear + Thy wishes hence which in this sphere are born, + Still farther to proceed behoveth me. + +Thou fain wouldst know who is within this light + That here beside me thus is scintillating, + Even as a sunbeam in the limpid water. + +Then know thou, that within there is at rest + Rahab, and being to our order joined, + With her in its supremest grade ’tis sealed. + +Into this heaven, where ends the shadowy cone + Cast by your world, before all other souls + First of Christ’s triumph was she taken up. + +Full meet it was to leave her in some heaven, + Even as a palm of the high victory + Which he acquired with one palm and the other, + +Because she favoured the first glorious deed + Of Joshua upon the Holy Land, + That little stirs the memory of the Pope. + +Thy city, which an offshoot is of him + Who first upon his Maker turned his back, + And whose ambition is so sorely wept, + +Brings forth and scatters the accursed flower + Which both the sheep and lambs hath led astray + Since it has turned the shepherd to a wolf. + +For this the Evangel and the mighty Doctors + Are derelict, and only the Decretals + So studied that it shows upon their margins. + +On this are Pope and Cardinals intent; + Their meditations reach not Nazareth, + There where his pinions Gabriel unfolded; + +But Vatican and the other parts elect + Of Rome, which have a cemetery been + Unto the soldiery that followed Peter + +Shall soon be free from this adultery.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto X + + +Looking into his Son with all the Love + Which each of them eternally breathes forth, + The Primal and unutterable Power + +Whate’er before the mind or eye revolves + With so much order made, there can be none + Who this beholds without enjoying Him. + +Lift up then, Reader, to the lofty wheels + With me thy vision straight unto that part + Where the one motion on the other strikes, + +And there begin to contemplate with joy + That Master’s art, who in himself so loves it + That never doth his eye depart therefrom. + +Behold how from that point goes branching off + The oblique circle, which conveys the planets, + To satisfy the world that calls upon them; + +And if their pathway were not thus inflected, + Much virtue in the heavens would be in vain, + And almost every power below here dead. + +If from the straight line distant more or less + Were the departure, much would wanting be + Above and underneath of mundane order. + +Remain now, Reader, still upon thy bench, + In thought pursuing that which is foretasted, + If thou wouldst jocund be instead of weary. + +I’ve set before thee; henceforth feed thyself, + For to itself diverteth all my care + That theme whereof I have been made the scribe. + +The greatest of the ministers of nature, + Who with the power of heaven the world imprints + And measures with his light the time for us, + +With that part which above is called to mind + Conjoined, along the spirals was revolving, + Where each time earlier he presents himself; + +And I was with him; but of the ascending + I was not conscious, saving as a man + Of a first thought is conscious ere it come; + +And Beatrice, she who is seen to pass + From good to better, and so suddenly + That not by time her action is expressed, + +How lucent in herself must she have been! + And what was in the sun, wherein I entered, + Apparent not by colour but by light, + +I, though I call on genius, art, and practice, + Cannot so tell that it could be imagined; + Believe one can, and let him long to see it. + +And if our fantasies too lowly are + For altitude so great, it is no marvel, + Since o’er the sun was never eye could go. + +Such in this place was the fourth family + Of the high Father, who forever sates it, + Showing how he breathes forth and how begets. + +And Beatrice began: “Give thanks, give thanks + Unto the Sun of Angels, who to this + Sensible one has raised thee by his grace!” + +Never was heart of mortal so disposed + To worship, nor to give itself to God + With all its gratitude was it so ready, + +As at those words did I myself become; + And all my love was so absorbed in Him, + That in oblivion Beatrice was eclipsed. + +Nor this displeased her; but she smiled at it + So that the splendour of her laughing eyes + My single mind on many things divided. + +Lights many saw I, vivid and triumphant, + Make us a centre and themselves a circle, + More sweet in voice than luminous in aspect. + +Thus girt about the daughter of Latona + We sometimes see, when pregnant is the air, + So that it holds the thread which makes her zone. + +Within the court of Heaven, whence I return, + Are many jewels found, so fair and precious + They cannot be transported from the realm; + +And of them was the singing of those lights. + Who takes not wings that he may fly up thither, + The tidings thence may from the dumb await! + +As soon as singing thus those burning suns + Had round about us whirled themselves three times, + Like unto stars neighbouring the steadfast poles, + +Ladies they seemed, not from the dance released, + But who stop short, in silence listening + Till they have gathered the new melody. + +And within one I heard beginning: “When + The radiance of grace, by which is kindled + True love, and which thereafter grows by loving, + +Within thee multiplied is so resplendent + That it conducts thee upward by that stair, + Where without reascending none descends, + +Who should deny the wine out of his vial + Unto thy thirst, in liberty were not + Except as water which descends not seaward. + +Fain wouldst thou know with what plants is enflowered + This garland that encircles with delight + The Lady fair who makes thee strong for heaven. + +Of the lambs was I of the holy flock + Which Dominic conducteth by a road + Where well one fattens if he strayeth not. + +He who is nearest to me on the right + My brother and master was; and he Albertus + Is of Cologne, I Thomas of Aquinum. + +If thou of all the others wouldst be certain, + Follow behind my speaking with thy sight + Upward along the blessed garland turning. + +That next effulgence issues from the smile + Of Gratian, who assisted both the courts + In such wise that it pleased in Paradise. + +The other which near by adorns our choir + That Peter was who, e’en as the poor widow, + Offered his treasure unto Holy Church. + +The fifth light, that among us is the fairest, + Breathes forth from such a love, that all the world + Below is greedy to learn tidings of it. + +Within it is the lofty mind, where knowledge + So deep was put, that, if the true be true, + To see so much there never rose a second. + +Thou seest next the lustre of that taper, + Which in the flesh below looked most within + The angelic nature and its ministry. + +Within that other little light is smiling + The advocate of the Christian centuries, + Out of whose rhetoric Augustine was furnished. + +Now if thou trainest thy mind’s eye along + From light to light pursuant of my praise, + With thirst already of the eighth thou waitest. + +By seeing every good therein exults + The sainted soul, which the fallacious world + Makes manifest to him who listeneth well; + +The body whence ’twas hunted forth is lying + Down in Cieldauro, and from martyrdom + And banishment it came unto this peace. + +See farther onward flame the burning breath + Of Isidore, of Beda, and of Richard + Who was in contemplation more than man. + +This, whence to me returneth thy regard, + The light is of a spirit unto whom + In his grave meditations death seemed slow. + +It is the light eternal of Sigier, + Who, reading lectures in the Street of Straw, + Did syllogize invidious verities.” + +Then, as a horologe that calleth us + What time the Bride of God is rising up + With matins to her Spouse that he may love her, + +Wherein one part the other draws and urges, + Ting! ting! resounding with so sweet a note, + That swells with love the spirit well disposed, + +Thus I beheld the glorious wheel move round, + And render voice to voice, in modulation + And sweetness that can not be comprehended, + +Excepting there where joy is made eternal. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XI + + +O Thou insensate care of mortal men, + How inconclusive are the syllogisms + That make thee beat thy wings in downward flight! + +One after laws and one to aphorisms + Was going, and one following the priesthood, + And one to reign by force or sophistry, + +And one in theft, and one in state affairs, + One in the pleasures of the flesh involved + Wearied himself, one gave himself to ease; + +When I, from all these things emancipate, + With Beatrice above there in the Heavens + With such exceeding glory was received! + +When each one had returned unto that point + Within the circle where it was before, + It stood as in a candlestick a candle; + +And from within the effulgence which at first + Had spoken unto me, I heard begin + Smiling while it more luminous became: + +“Even as I am kindled in its ray, + So, looking into the Eternal Light, + The occasion of thy thoughts I apprehend. + +Thou doubtest, and wouldst have me to resift + In language so extended and so open + My speech, that to thy sense it may be plain, + +Where just before I said, ‘where well one fattens,’ + And where I said, ‘there never rose a second;’ + And here ’tis needful we distinguish well. + +The Providence, which governeth the world + With counsel, wherein all created vision + Is vanquished ere it reach unto the bottom, + +(So that towards her own Beloved might go + The bride of Him who, uttering a loud cry, + Espoused her with his consecrated blood, + +Self-confident and unto Him more faithful,) + Two Princes did ordain in her behoof, + Which on this side and that might be her guide. + +The one was all seraphical in ardour; + The other by his wisdom upon earth + A splendour was of light cherubical. + +One will I speak of, for of both is spoken + In praising one, whichever may be taken, + Because unto one end their labours were. + +Between Tupino and the stream that falls + Down from the hill elect of blessed Ubald, + A fertile slope of lofty mountain hangs, + +From which Perugia feels the cold and heat + Through Porta Sole, and behind it weep + Gualdo and Nocera their grievous yoke. + +From out that slope, there where it breaketh most + Its steepness, rose upon the world a sun + As this one does sometimes from out the Ganges; + +Therefore let him who speaketh of that place, + Say not Ascesi, for he would say little, + But Orient, if he properly would speak. + +He was not yet far distant from his rising + Before he had begun to make the earth + Some comfort from his mighty virtue feel. + +For he in youth his father’s wrath incurred + For certain Dame, to whom, as unto death, + The gate of pleasure no one doth unlock; + +And was before his spiritual court + ‘Et coram patre’ unto her united; + Then day by day more fervently he loved her. + +She, reft of her first husband, scorned, obscure, + One thousand and one hundred years and more, + Waited without a suitor till he came. + +Naught it availed to hear, that with Amyclas + Found her unmoved at sounding of his voice + He who struck terror into all the world; + +Naught it availed being constant and undaunted, + So that, when Mary still remained below, + She mounted up with Christ upon the cross. + +But that too darkly I may not proceed, + Francis and Poverty for these two lovers + Take thou henceforward in my speech diffuse. + +Their concord and their joyous semblances, + The love, the wonder, and the sweet regard, + They made to be the cause of holy thoughts; + +So much so that the venerable Bernard + First bared his feet, and after so great peace + Ran, and, in running, thought himself too slow. + +O wealth unknown! O veritable good! + Giles bares his feet, and bares his feet Sylvester + Behind the bridegroom, so doth please the bride! + +Then goes his way that father and that master, + He and his Lady and that family + Which now was girding on the humble cord; + +Nor cowardice of heart weighed down his brow + At being son of Peter Bernardone, + Nor for appearing marvellously scorned; + +But regally his hard determination + To Innocent he opened, and from him + Received the primal seal upon his Order. + +After the people mendicant increased + Behind this man, whose admirable life + Better in glory of the heavens were sung, + +Incoronated with a second crown + Was through Honorius by the Eternal Spirit + The holy purpose of this Archimandrite. + +And when he had, through thirst of martyrdom, + In the proud presence of the Sultan preached + Christ and the others who came after him, + +And, finding for conversion too unripe + The folk, and not to tarry there in vain, + Returned to fruit of the Italic grass, + +On the rude rock ’twixt Tiber and the Arno + From Christ did he receive the final seal, + Which during two whole years his members bore. + +When He, who chose him unto so much good, + Was pleased to draw him up to the reward + That he had merited by being lowly, + +Unto his friars, as to the rightful heirs, + His most dear Lady did he recommend, + And bade that they should love her faithfully; + +And from her bosom the illustrious soul + Wished to depart, returning to its realm, + And for its body wished no other bier. + +Think now what man was he, who was a fit + Companion over the high seas to keep + The bark of Peter to its proper bearings. + +And this man was our Patriarch; hence whoever + Doth follow him as he commands can see + That he is laden with good merchandise. + +But for new pasturage his flock has grown + So greedy, that it is impossible + They be not scattered over fields diverse; + +And in proportion as his sheep remote + And vagabond go farther off from him, + More void of milk return they to the fold. + +Verily some there are that fear a hurt, + And keep close to the shepherd; but so few, + That little cloth doth furnish forth their hoods. + +Now if my utterance be not indistinct, + If thine own hearing hath attentive been, + If thou recall to mind what I have said, + +In part contented shall thy wishes be; + For thou shalt see the plant that’s chipped away, + And the rebuke that lieth in the words, + +‘Where well one fattens, if he strayeth not.’” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XII + + +Soon as the blessed flame had taken up + The final word to give it utterance, + Began the holy millstone to revolve, + +And in its gyre had not turned wholly round, + Before another in a ring enclosed it, + And motion joined to motion, song to song; + +Song that as greatly doth transcend our Muses, + Our Sirens, in those dulcet clarions, + As primal splendour that which is reflected. + +And as are spanned athwart a tender cloud + Two rainbows parallel and like in colour, + When Juno to her handmaid gives command, + +(The one without born of the one within, + Like to the speaking of that vagrant one + Whom love consumed as doth the sun the vapours,) + +And make the people here, through covenant + God set with Noah, presageful of the world + That shall no more be covered with a flood, + +In such wise of those sempiternal roses + The garlands twain encompassed us about, + And thus the outer to the inner answered. + +After the dance, and other grand rejoicings, + Both of the singing, and the flaming forth + Effulgence with effulgence blithe and tender, + +Together, at once, with one accord had stopped, + (Even as the eyes, that, as volition moves them, + Must needs together shut and lift themselves,) + +Out of the heart of one of the new lights + There came a voice, that needle to the star + Made me appear in turning thitherward. + +And it began: “The love that makes me fair + Draws me to speak about the other leader, + By whom so well is spoken here of mine. + +’Tis right, where one is, to bring in the other, + That, as they were united in their warfare, + Together likewise may their glory shine. + +The soldiery of Christ, which it had cost + So dear to arm again, behind the standard + Moved slow and doubtful and in numbers few, + +When the Emperor who reigneth evermore + Provided for the host that was in peril, + Through grace alone and not that it was worthy; + +And, as was said, he to his Bride brought succour + With champions twain, at whose deed, at whose word + The straggling people were together drawn. + +Within that region where the sweet west wind + Rises to open the new leaves, wherewith + Europe is seen to clothe herself afresh, + +Not far off from the beating of the waves, + Behind which in his long career the sun + Sometimes conceals himself from every man, + +Is situate the fortunate Calahorra, + Under protection of the mighty shield + In which the Lion subject is and sovereign. + +Therein was born the amorous paramour + Of Christian Faith, the athlete consecrate, + Kind to his own and cruel to his foes; + +And when it was created was his mind + Replete with such a living energy, + That in his mother her it made prophetic. + +As soon as the espousals were complete + Between him and the Faith at holy font, + Where they with mutual safety dowered each other, + +The woman, who for him had given assent, + Saw in a dream the admirable fruit + That issue would from him and from his heirs; + +And that he might be construed as he was, + A spirit from this place went forth to name him + With His possessive whose he wholly was. + +Dominic was he called; and him I speak of + Even as of the husbandman whom Christ + Elected to his garden to assist him. + +Envoy and servant sooth he seemed of Christ, + For the first love made manifest in him + Was the first counsel that was given by Christ. + +Silent and wakeful many a time was he + Discovered by his nurse upon the ground, + As if he would have said, ‘For this I came.’ + +O thou his father, Felix verily! + O thou his mother, verily Joanna, + If this, interpreted, means as is said! + +Not for the world which people toil for now + In following Ostiense and Taddeo, + But through his longing after the true manna, + +He in short time became so great a teacher, + That he began to go about the vineyard, + Which fadeth soon, if faithless be the dresser; + +And of the See, (that once was more benignant + Unto the righteous poor, not through itself, + But him who sits there and degenerates,) + +Not to dispense or two or three for six, + Not any fortune of first vacancy, + ‘Non decimas quae sunt pauperum Dei,’ + +He asked for, but against the errant world + Permission to do battle for the seed, + Of which these four and twenty plants surround thee. + +Then with the doctrine and the will together, + With office apostolical he moved, + Like torrent which some lofty vein out-presses; + +And in among the shoots heretical + His impetus with greater fury smote, + Wherever the resistance was the greatest. + +Of him were made thereafter divers runnels, + Whereby the garden catholic is watered, + So that more living its plantations stand. + +If such the one wheel of the Biga was, + In which the Holy Church itself defended + And in the field its civic battle won, + +Truly full manifest should be to thee + The excellence of the other, unto whom + Thomas so courteous was before my coming. + +But still the orbit, which the highest part + Of its circumference made, is derelict, + So that the mould is where was once the crust. + +His family, that had straight forward moved + With feet upon his footprints, are turned round + So that they set the point upon the heel. + +And soon aware they will be of the harvest + Of this bad husbandry, when shall the tares + Complain the granary is taken from them. + +Yet say I, he who searcheth leaf by leaf + Our volume through, would still some page discover + Where he could read, ‘I am as I am wont.’ + +’Twill not be from Casal nor Acquasparta, + From whence come such unto the written word + That one avoids it, and the other narrows. + +Bonaventura of Bagnoregio’s life + Am I, who always in great offices + Postponed considerations sinister. + +Here are Illuminato and Agostino, + Who of the first barefooted beggars were + That with the cord the friends of God became. + +Hugh of Saint Victor is among them here, + And Peter Mangiador, and Peter of Spain, + Who down below in volumes twelve is shining; + +Nathan the seer, and metropolitan + Chrysostom, and Anselmus, and Donatus + Who deigned to lay his hand to the first art; + +Here is Rabanus, and beside me here + Shines the Calabrian Abbot Joachim, + He with the spirit of prophecy endowed. + +To celebrate so great a paladin + Have moved me the impassioned courtesy + And the discreet discourses of Friar Thomas, + +And with me they have moved this company.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XIII + + +Let him imagine, who would well conceive + What now I saw, and let him while I speak + Retain the image as a steadfast rock, + +The fifteen stars, that in their divers regions + The sky enliven with a light so great + That it transcends all clusters of the air; + +Let him the Wain imagine unto which + Our vault of heaven sufficeth night and day, + So that in turning of its pole it fails not; + +Let him the mouth imagine of the horn + That in the point beginneth of the axis + Round about which the primal wheel revolves,— + +To have fashioned of themselves two signs in heaven, + Like unto that which Minos’ daughter made, + The moment when she felt the frost of death; + +And one to have its rays within the other, + And both to whirl themselves in such a manner + That one should forward go, the other backward; + +And he will have some shadowing forth of that + True constellation and the double dance + That circled round the point at which I was; + +Because it is as much beyond our wont, + As swifter than the motion of the Chiana + Moveth the heaven that all the rest outspeeds. + +There sang they neither Bacchus, nor Apollo, + But in the divine nature Persons three, + And in one person the divine and human. + +The singing and the dance fulfilled their measure, + And unto us those holy lights gave need, + Growing in happiness from care to care. + +Then broke the silence of those saints concordant + The light in which the admirable life + Of God’s own mendicant was told to me, + +And said: “Now that one straw is trodden out + Now that its seed is garnered up already, + Sweet love invites me to thresh out the other. + +Into that bosom, thou believest, whence + Was drawn the rib to form the beauteous cheek + Whose taste to all the world is costing dear, + +And into that which, by the lance transfixed, + Before and since, such satisfaction made + That it weighs down the balance of all sin, + +Whate’er of light it has to human nature + Been lawful to possess was all infused + By the same power that both of them created; + +And hence at what I said above dost wonder, + When I narrated that no second had + The good which in the fifth light is enclosed. + +Now ope thine eyes to what I answer thee, + And thou shalt see thy creed and my discourse + Fit in the truth as centre in a circle. + +That which can die, and that which dieth not, + Are nothing but the splendour of the idea + Which by his love our Lord brings into being; + +Because that living Light, which from its fount + Effulgent flows, so that it disunites not + From Him nor from the Love in them intrined, + +Through its own goodness reunites its rays + In nine subsistences, as in a mirror, + Itself eternally remaining One. + +Thence it descends to the last potencies, + Downward from act to act becoming such + That only brief contingencies it makes; + +And these contingencies I hold to be + Things generated, which the heaven produces + By its own motion, with seed and without. + +Neither their wax, nor that which tempers it, + Remains immutable, and hence beneath + The ideal signet more and less shines through; + +Therefore it happens, that the selfsame tree + After its kind bears worse and better fruit, + And ye are born with characters diverse. + +If in perfection tempered were the wax, + And were the heaven in its supremest virtue, + The brilliance of the seal would all appear; + +But nature gives it evermore deficient, + In the like manner working as the artist, + Who has the skill of art and hand that trembles. + +If then the fervent Love, the Vision clear, + Of primal Virtue do dispose and seal, + Perfection absolute is there acquired. + +Thus was of old the earth created worthy + Of all and every animal perfection; + And thus the Virgin was impregnate made; + +So that thine own opinion I commend, + That human nature never yet has been, + Nor will be, what it was in those two persons. + +Now if no farther forth I should proceed, + ‘Then in what way was he without a peer?’ + Would be the first beginning of thy words. + +But, that may well appear what now appears not, + Think who he was, and what occasion moved him + To make request, when it was told him, ‘Ask.’ + +I’ve not so spoken that thou canst not see + Clearly he was a king who asked for wisdom, + That he might be sufficiently a king; + +’Twas not to know the number in which are + The motors here above, or if ‘necesse’ + With a contingent e’er ‘necesse’ make, + +‘Non si est dare primum motum esse,’ + Or if in semicircle can be made + Triangle so that it have no right angle. + +Whence, if thou notest this and what I said, + A regal prudence is that peerless seeing + In which the shaft of my intention strikes. + +And if on ‘rose’ thou turnest thy clear eyes, + Thou’lt see that it has reference alone + To kings who’re many, and the good are rare. + +With this distinction take thou what I said, + And thus it can consist with thy belief + Of the first father and of our Delight. + +And lead shall this be always to thy feet, + To make thee, like a weary man, move slowly + Both to the Yes and No thou seest not; + +For very low among the fools is he + Who affirms without distinction, or denies, + As well in one as in the other case; + +Because it happens that full often bends + Current opinion in the false direction, + And then the feelings bind the intellect. + +Far more than uselessly he leaves the shore, + (Since he returneth not the same he went,) + Who fishes for the truth, and has no skill; + +And in the world proofs manifest thereof + Parmenides, Melissus, Brissus are, + And many who went on and knew not whither; + +Thus did Sabellius, Arius, and those fools + Who have been even as swords unto the Scriptures + In rendering distorted their straight faces. + +Nor yet shall people be too confident + In judging, even as he is who doth count + The corn in field or ever it be ripe. + +For I have seen all winter long the thorn + First show itself intractable and fierce, + And after bear the rose upon its top; + +And I have seen a ship direct and swift + Run o’er the sea throughout its course entire, + To perish at the harbour’s mouth at last. + +Let not Dame Bertha nor Ser Martin think, + Seeing one steal, another offering make, + To see them in the arbitrament divine; + +For one may rise, and fall the other may.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XIV + + +From centre unto rim, from rim to centre, + In a round vase the water moves itself, + As from without ’tis struck or from within. + +Into my mind upon a sudden dropped + What I am saying, at the moment when + Silent became the glorious life of Thomas, + +Because of the resemblance that was born + Of his discourse and that of Beatrice, + Whom, after him, it pleased thus to begin: + +“This man has need (and does not tell you so, + Nor with the voice, nor even in his thought) + Of going to the root of one truth more. + +Declare unto him if the light wherewith + Blossoms your substance shall remain with you + Eternally the same that it is now; + +And if it do remain, say in what manner, + After ye are again made visible, + It can be that it injure not your sight.” + +As by a greater gladness urged and drawn + They who are dancing in a ring sometimes + Uplift their voices and their motions quicken; + +So, at that orison devout and prompt, + The holy circles a new joy displayed + In their revolving and their wondrous song. + +Whoso lamenteth him that here we die + That we may live above, has never there + Seen the refreshment of the eternal rain. + +The One and Two and Three who ever liveth, + And reigneth ever in Three and Two and One, + Not circumscribed and all things circumscribing, + +Three several times was chanted by each one + Among those spirits, with such melody + That for all merit it were just reward; + +And, in the lustre most divine of all + The lesser ring, I heard a modest voice, + Such as perhaps the Angel’s was to Mary, + +Answer: “As long as the festivity + Of Paradise shall be, so long our love + Shall radiate round about us such a vesture. + +Its brightness is proportioned to the ardour, + The ardour to the vision; and the vision + Equals what grace it has above its worth. + +When, glorious and sanctified, our flesh + Is reassumed, then shall our persons be + More pleasing by their being all complete; + +For will increase whate’er bestows on us + Of light gratuitous the Good Supreme, + Light which enables us to look on Him; + +Therefore the vision must perforce increase, + Increase the ardour which from that is kindled, + Increase the radiance which from this proceeds. + +But even as a coal that sends forth flame, + And by its vivid whiteness overpowers it + So that its own appearance it maintains, + +Thus the effulgence that surrounds us now + Shall be o’erpowered in aspect by the flesh, + Which still to-day the earth doth cover up; + +Nor can so great a splendour weary us, + For strong will be the organs of the body + To everything which hath the power to please us.” + +So sudden and alert appeared to me + Both one and the other choir to say Amen, + That well they showed desire for their dead bodies; + +Nor sole for them perhaps, but for the mothers, + The fathers, and the rest who had been dear + Or ever they became eternal flames. + +And lo! all round about of equal brightness + Arose a lustre over what was there, + Like an horizon that is clearing up. + +And as at rise of early eve begin + Along the welkin new appearances, + So that the sight seems real and unreal, + +It seemed to me that new subsistences + Began there to be seen, and make a circle + Outside the other two circumferences. + +O very sparkling of the Holy Spirit, + How sudden and incandescent it became + Unto mine eyes, that vanquished bore it not! + +But Beatrice so beautiful and smiling + Appeared to me, that with the other sights + That followed not my memory I must leave her. + +Then to uplift themselves mine eyes resumed + The power, and I beheld myself translated + To higher salvation with my Lady only. + +Well was I ware that I was more uplifted + By the enkindled smiling of the star, + That seemed to me more ruddy than its wont. + +With all my heart, and in that dialect + Which is the same in all, such holocaust + To God I made as the new grace beseemed; + +And not yet from my bosom was exhausted + The ardour of sacrifice, before I knew + This offering was accepted and auspicious; + +For with so great a lustre and so red + Splendours appeared to me in twofold rays, + I said: “O Helios who dost so adorn them!” + +Even as distinct with less and greater lights + Glimmers between the two poles of the world + The Galaxy that maketh wise men doubt, + +Thus constellated in the depths of Mars, + Those rays described the venerable sign + That quadrants joining in a circle make. + +Here doth my memory overcome my genius; + For on that cross as levin gleamed forth Christ, + So that I cannot find ensample worthy; + +But he who takes his cross and follows Christ + Again will pardon me what I omit, + Seeing in that aurora lighten Christ. + +From horn to horn, and ’twixt the top and base, + Lights were in motion, brightly scintillating + As they together met and passed each other; + +Thus level and aslant and swift and slow + We here behold, renewing still the sight, + The particles of bodies long and short, + +Across the sunbeam move, wherewith is listed + Sometimes the shade, which for their own defence + People with cunning and with art contrive. + +And as a lute and harp, accordant strung + With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make + To him by whom the notes are not distinguished, + +So from the lights that there to me appeared + Upgathered through the cross a melody, + Which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn. + +Well was I ware it was of lofty laud, + Because there came to me, “Arise and conquer!” + As unto him who hears and comprehends not. + +So much enamoured I became therewith, + That until then there was not anything + That e’er had fettered me with such sweet bonds. + +Perhaps my word appears somewhat too bold, + Postponing the delight of those fair eyes, + Into which gazing my desire has rest; + +But who bethinks him that the living seals + Of every beauty grow in power ascending, + And that I there had not turned round to those, + +Can me excuse, if I myself accuse + To excuse myself, and see that I speak truly: + For here the holy joy is not disclosed, + +Because ascending it becomes more pure. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XV + + +A will benign, in which reveals itself + Ever the love that righteously inspires, + As in the iniquitous, cupidity, + +Silence imposed upon that dulcet lyre, + And quieted the consecrated chords, + That Heaven’s right hand doth tighten and relax. + +How unto just entreaties shall be deaf + Those substances, which, to give me desire + Of praying them, with one accord grew silent? + +’Tis well that without end he should lament, + Who for the love of thing that doth not last + Eternally despoils him of that love! + +As through the pure and tranquil evening air + There shoots from time to time a sudden fire, + Moving the eyes that steadfast were before, + +And seems to be a star that changeth place, + Except that in the part where it is kindled + Nothing is missed, and this endureth little; + +So from the horn that to the right extends + Unto that cross’s foot there ran a star + Out of the constellation shining there; + +Nor was the gem dissevered from its ribbon, + But down the radiant fillet ran along, + So that fire seemed it behind alabaster. + +Thus piteous did Anchises’ shade reach forward, + If any faith our greatest Muse deserve, + When in Elysium he his son perceived. + +“O sanguis meus, O superinfusa + Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui + Bis unquam Coeli janua reclusa?” + +Thus that effulgence; whence I gave it heed; + Then round unto my Lady turned my sight, + And on this side and that was stupefied; + +For in her eyes was burning such a smile + That with mine own methought I touched the bottom + Both of my grace and of my Paradise! + +Then, pleasant to the hearing and the sight, + The spirit joined to its beginning things + I understood not, so profound it spake; + +Nor did it hide itself from me by choice, + But by necessity; for its conception + Above the mark of mortals set itself. + +And when the bow of burning sympathy + Was so far slackened, that its speech descended + Towards the mark of our intelligence, + +The first thing that was understood by me + Was “Benedight be Thou, O Trine and One, + Who hast unto my seed so courteous been!” + +And it continued: “Hunger long and grateful, + Drawn from the reading of the mighty volume + Wherein is never changed the white nor dark, + +Thou hast appeased, my son, within this light + In which I speak to thee, by grace of her + Who to this lofty flight with plumage clothed thee. + +Thou thinkest that to me thy thought doth pass + From Him who is the first, as from the unit, + If that be known, ray out the five and six; + +And therefore who I am thou askest not, + And why I seem more joyous unto thee + Than any other of this gladsome crowd. + +Thou think’st the truth; because the small and great + Of this existence look into the mirror + Wherein, before thou think’st, thy thought thou showest. + +But that the sacred love, in which I watch + With sight perpetual, and which makes me thirst + With sweet desire, may better be fulfilled, + +Now let thy voice secure and frank and glad + Proclaim the wishes, the desire proclaim, + To which my answer is decreed already.” + +To Beatrice I turned me, and she heard + Before I spake, and smiled to me a sign, + That made the wings of my desire increase; + +Then in this wise began I: “Love and knowledge, + When on you dawned the first Equality, + Of the same weight for each of you became; + +For in the Sun, which lighted you and burned + With heat and radiance, they so equal are, + That all similitudes are insufficient. + +But among mortals will and argument, + For reason that to you is manifest, + Diversely feathered in their pinions are. + +Whence I, who mortal am, feel in myself + This inequality; so give not thanks, + Save in my heart, for this paternal welcome. + +Truly do I entreat thee, living topaz! + Set in this precious jewel as a gem, + That thou wilt satisfy me with thy name.” + +“O leaf of mine, in whom I pleasure took + E’en while awaiting, I was thine own root!” + Such a beginning he in answer made me. + +Then said to me: “That one from whom is named + Thy race, and who a hundred years and more + Has circled round the mount on the first cornice, + +A son of mine and thy great-grandsire was; + Well it behoves thee that the long fatigue + Thou shouldst for him make shorter with thy works. + +Florence, within the ancient boundary + From which she taketh still her tierce and nones, + Abode in quiet, temperate and chaste. + +No golden chain she had, nor coronal, + Nor ladies shod with sandal shoon, nor girdle + That caught the eye more than the person did. + +Not yet the daughter at her birth struck fear + Into the father, for the time and dower + Did not o’errun this side or that the measure. + +No houses had she void of families, + Not yet had thither come Sardanapalus + To show what in a chamber can be done; + +Not yet surpassed had Montemalo been + By your Uccellatojo, which surpassed + Shall in its downfall be as in its rise. + +Bellincion Berti saw I go begirt + With leather and with bone, and from the mirror + His dame depart without a painted face; + +And him of Nerli saw, and him of Vecchio, + Contented with their simple suits of buff + And with the spindle and the flax their dames. + +O fortunate women! and each one was certain + Of her own burial-place, and none as yet + For sake of France was in her bed deserted. + +One o’er the cradle kept her studious watch, + And in her lullaby the language used + That first delights the fathers and the mothers; + +Another, drawing tresses from her distaff, + Told o’er among her family the tales + Of Trojans and of Fesole and Rome. + +As great a marvel then would have been held + A Lapo Salterello, a Cianghella, + As Cincinnatus or Cornelia now. + +To such a quiet, such a beautiful + Life of the citizen, to such a safe + Community, and to so sweet an inn, + +Did Mary give me, with loud cries invoked, + And in your ancient Baptistery at once + Christian and Cacciaguida I became. + +Moronto was my brother, and Eliseo; + From Val di Pado came to me my wife, + And from that place thy surname was derived. + +I followed afterward the Emperor Conrad, + And he begirt me of his chivalry, + So much I pleased him with my noble deeds. + +I followed in his train against that law’s + Iniquity, whose people doth usurp + Your just possession, through your Pastor’s fault. + +There by that execrable race was I + Released from bonds of the fallacious world, + The love of which defileth many souls, + +And came from martyrdom unto this peace.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XVI + + +O thou our poor nobility of blood, + If thou dost make the people glory in thee + Down here where our affection languishes, + +A marvellous thing it ne’er will be to me; + For there where appetite is not perverted, + I say in Heaven, of thee I made a boast! + +Truly thou art a cloak that quickly shortens, + So that unless we piece thee day by day + Time goeth round about thee with his shears! + +With ‘You,’ which Rome was first to tolerate, + (Wherein her family less perseveres,) + Yet once again my words beginning made; + +Whence Beatrice, who stood somewhat apart, + Smiling, appeared like unto her who coughed + At the first failing writ of Guenever. + +And I began: “You are my ancestor, + You give to me all hardihood to speak, + You lift me so that I am more than I. + +So many rivulets with gladness fill + My mind, that of itself it makes a joy + Because it can endure this and not burst. + +Then tell me, my beloved root ancestral, + Who were your ancestors, and what the years + That in your boyhood chronicled themselves? + +Tell me about the sheepfold of Saint John, + How large it was, and who the people were + Within it worthy of the highest seats.” + +As at the blowing of the winds a coal + Quickens to flame, so I beheld that light + Become resplendent at my blandishments. + +And as unto mine eyes it grew more fair, + With voice more sweet and tender, but not in + This modern dialect, it said to me: + +“From uttering of the ‘Ave,’ till the birth + In which my mother, who is now a saint, + Of me was lightened who had been her burden, + +Unto its Lion had this fire returned + Five hundred fifty times and thirty more, + To reinflame itself beneath his paw. + +My ancestors and I our birthplace had + Where first is found the last ward of the city + By him who runneth in your annual game. + +Suffice it of my elders to hear this; + But who they were, and whence they thither came, + Silence is more considerate than speech. + +All those who at that time were there between + Mars and the Baptist, fit for bearing arms, + Were a fifth part of those who now are living; + +But the community, that now is mixed + With Campi and Certaldo and Figghine, + Pure in the lowest artisan was seen. + +O how much better ’twere to have as neighbours + The folk of whom I speak, and at Galluzzo + And at Trespiano have your boundary, + +Than have them in the town, and bear the stench + Of Aguglione’s churl, and him of Signa + Who has sharp eyes for trickery already. + +Had not the folk, which most of all the world + Degenerates, been a step-dame unto Caesar, + But as a mother to her son benignant, + +Some who turn Florentines, and trade and discount, + Would have gone back again to Simifonte + There where their grandsires went about as beggars. + +At Montemurlo still would be the Counts, + The Cerchi in the parish of Acone, + Perhaps in Valdigrieve the Buondelmonti. + +Ever the intermingling of the people + Has been the source of malady in cities, + As in the body food it surfeits on; + +And a blind bull more headlong plunges down + Than a blind lamb; and very often cuts + Better and more a single sword than five. + +If Luni thou regard, and Urbisaglia, + How they have passed away, and how are passing + Chiusi and Sinigaglia after them, + +To hear how races waste themselves away, + Will seem to thee no novel thing nor hard, + Seeing that even cities have an end. + +All things of yours have their mortality, + Even as yourselves; but it is hidden in some + That a long while endure, and lives are short; + +And as the turning of the lunar heaven + Covers and bares the shores without a pause, + In the like manner fortune does with Florence. + +Therefore should not appear a marvellous thing + What I shall say of the great Florentines + Of whom the fame is hidden in the Past. + +I saw the Ughi, saw the Catellini, + Filippi, Greci, Ormanni, and Alberichi, + Even in their fall illustrious citizens; + +And saw, as mighty as they ancient were, + With him of La Sannella him of Arca, + And Soldanier, Ardinghi, and Bostichi. + +Near to the gate that is at present laden + With a new felony of so much weight + That soon it shall be jetsam from the bark, + +The Ravignani were, from whom descended + The County Guido, and whoe’er the name + Of the great Bellincione since hath taken. + +He of La Pressa knew the art of ruling + Already, and already Galigajo + Had hilt and pommel gilded in his house. + +Mighty already was the Column Vair, + Sacchetti, Giuochi, Fifant, and Barucci, + And Galli, and they who for the bushel blush. + +The stock from which were the Calfucci born + Was great already, and already chosen + To curule chairs the Sizii and Arrigucci. + +O how beheld I those who are undone + By their own pride! and how the Balls of Gold + Florence enflowered in all their mighty deeds! + +So likewise did the ancestors of those + Who evermore, when vacant is your church, + Fatten by staying in consistory. + +The insolent race, that like a dragon follows + Whoever flees, and unto him that shows + His teeth or purse is gentle as a lamb, + +Already rising was, but from low people; + So that it pleased not Ubertin Donato + That his wife’s father should make him their kin. + +Already had Caponsacco to the Market + From Fesole descended, and already + Giuda and Infangato were good burghers. + +I’ll tell a thing incredible, but true; + One entered the small circuit by a gate + Which from the Della Pera took its name! + +Each one that bears the beautiful escutcheon + Of the great baron whose renown and name + The festival of Thomas keepeth fresh, + +Knighthood and privilege from him received; + Though with the populace unites himself + To-day the man who binds it with a border. + +Already were Gualterotti and Importuni; + And still more quiet would the Borgo be + If with new neighbours it remained unfed. + +The house from which is born your lamentation, + Through just disdain that death among you brought + And put an end unto your joyous life, + +Was honoured in itself and its companions. + O Buondelmonte, how in evil hour + Thou fled’st the bridal at another’s promptings! + +Many would be rejoicing who are sad, + If God had thee surrendered to the Ema + The first time that thou camest to the city. + +But it behoved the mutilated stone + Which guards the bridge, that Florence should provide + A victim in her latest hour of peace. + +With all these families, and others with them, + Florence beheld I in so great repose, + That no occasion had she whence to weep; + +With all these families beheld so just + And glorious her people, that the lily + Never upon the spear was placed reversed, + +Nor by division was vermilion made.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XVII + + +As came to Clymene, to be made certain + Of that which he had heard against himself, + He who makes fathers chary still to children, + +Even such was I, and such was I perceived + By Beatrice and by the holy light + That first on my account had changed its place. + +Therefore my Lady said to me: “Send forth + The flame of thy desire, so that it issue + Imprinted well with the internal stamp; + +Not that our knowledge may be greater made + By speech of thine, but to accustom thee + To tell thy thirst, that we may give thee drink.” + +“O my beloved tree, (that so dost lift thee, + That even as minds terrestrial perceive + No triangle containeth two obtuse, + +So thou beholdest the contingent things + Ere in themselves they are, fixing thine eyes + Upon the point in which all times are present,) + +While I was with Virgilius conjoined + Upon the mountain that the souls doth heal, + And when descending into the dead world, + +Were spoken to me of my future life + Some grievous words; although I feel myself + In sooth foursquare against the blows of chance. + +On this account my wish would be content + To hear what fortune is approaching me, + Because foreseen an arrow comes more slowly.” + +Thus did I say unto that selfsame light + That unto me had spoken before; and even + As Beatrice willed was my own will confessed. + +Not in vague phrase, in which the foolish folk + Ensnared themselves of old, ere yet was slain + The Lamb of God who taketh sins away, + +But with clear words and unambiguous + Language responded that paternal love, + Hid and revealed by its own proper smile: + +“Contingency, that outside of the volume + Of your materiality extends not, + Is all depicted in the eternal aspect. + +Necessity however thence it takes not, + Except as from the eye, in which ’tis mirrored, + A ship that with the current down descends. + +From thence, e’en as there cometh to the ear + Sweet harmony from an organ, comes in sight + To me the time that is preparing for thee. + +As forth from Athens went Hippolytus, + By reason of his step-dame false and cruel, + So thou from Florence must perforce depart. + +Already this is willed, and this is sought for; + And soon it shall be done by him who thinks it, + Where every day the Christ is bought and sold. + +The blame shall follow the offended party + In outcry as is usual; but the vengeance + Shall witness to the truth that doth dispense it. + +Thou shalt abandon everything beloved + Most tenderly, and this the arrow is + Which first the bow of banishment shoots forth. + +Thou shalt have proof how savoureth of salt + The bread of others, and how hard a road + The going down and up another’s stairs. + +And that which most shall weigh upon thy shoulders + Will be the bad and foolish company + With which into this valley thou shalt fall; + +For all ingrate, all mad and impious + Will they become against thee; but soon after + They, and not thou, shall have the forehead scarlet. + +Of their bestiality their own proceedings + Shall furnish proof; so ’twill be well for thee + A party to have made thee by thyself. + +Thine earliest refuge and thine earliest inn + Shall be the mighty Lombard’s courtesy, + Who on the Ladder bears the holy bird, + +Who such benign regard shall have for thee + That ’twixt you twain, in doing and in asking, + That shall be first which is with others last. + +With him shalt thou see one who at his birth + Has by this star of strength been so impressed, + That notable shall his achievements be. + +Not yet the people are aware of him + Through his young age, since only nine years yet + Around about him have these wheels revolved. + +But ere the Gascon cheat the noble Henry, + Some sparkles of his virtue shall appear + In caring not for silver nor for toil. + +So recognized shall his magnificence + Become hereafter, that his enemies + Will not have power to keep mute tongues about it. + +On him rely, and on his benefits; + By him shall many people be transformed, + Changing condition rich and mendicant; + +And written in thy mind thou hence shalt bear + Of him, but shalt not say it”—and things said he + Incredible to those who shall be present. + +Then added: “Son, these are the commentaries + On what was said to thee; behold the snares + That are concealed behind few revolutions; + +Yet would I not thy neighbours thou shouldst envy, + Because thy life into the future reaches + Beyond the punishment of their perfidies.” + +When by its silence showed that sainted soul + That it had finished putting in the woof + Into that web which I had given it warped, + +Began I, even as he who yearneth after, + Being in doubt, some counsel from a person + Who seeth, and uprightly wills, and loves: + +“Well see I, father mine, how spurreth on + The time towards me such a blow to deal me + As heaviest is to him who most gives way. + +Therefore with foresight it is well I arm me, + That, if the dearest place be taken from me, + I may not lose the others by my songs. + +Down through the world of infinite bitterness, + And o’er the mountain, from whose beauteous summit + The eyes of my own Lady lifted me, + +And afterward through heaven from light to light, + I have learned that which, if I tell again, + Will be a savour of strong herbs to many. + +And if I am a timid friend to truth, + I fear lest I may lose my life with those + Who will hereafter call this time the olden.” + +The light in which was smiling my own treasure + Which there I had discovered, flashed at first + As in the sunshine doth a golden mirror; + +Then made reply: “A conscience overcast + Or with its own or with another’s shame, + Will taste forsooth the tartness of thy word; + +But ne’ertheless, all falsehood laid aside, + Make manifest thy vision utterly, + And let them scratch wherever is the itch; + +For if thine utterance shall offensive be + At the first taste, a vital nutriment + ’Twill leave thereafter, when it is digested. + +This cry of thine shall do as doth the wind, + Which smiteth most the most exalted summits, + And that is no slight argument of honour. + +Therefore are shown to thee within these wheels, + Upon the mount and in the dolorous valley, + Only the souls that unto fame are known; + +Because the spirit of the hearer rests not, + Nor doth confirm its faith by an example + Which has the root of it unknown and hidden, + +Or other reason that is not apparent.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XVIII + + +Now was alone rejoicing in its word + That soul beatified, and I was tasting + My own, the bitter tempering with the sweet, + +And the Lady who to God was leading me + Said: “Change thy thought; consider that I am + Near unto Him who every wrong disburdens.” + +Unto the loving accents of my comfort + I turned me round, and then what love I saw + Within those holy eyes I here relinquish; + +Not only that my language I distrust, + But that my mind cannot return so far + Above itself, unless another guide it. + +Thus much upon that point can I repeat, + That, her again beholding, my affection + From every other longing was released. + +While the eternal pleasure, which direct + Rayed upon Beatrice, from her fair face + Contented me with its reflected aspect, + +Conquering me with the radiance of a smile, + She said to me, “Turn thee about and listen; + Not in mine eyes alone is Paradise.” + +Even as sometimes here do we behold + The affection in the look, if it be such + That all the soul is wrapt away by it, + +So, by the flaming of the effulgence holy + To which I turned, I recognized therein + The wish of speaking to me somewhat farther. + +And it began: “In this fifth resting-place + Upon the tree that liveth by its summit, + And aye bears fruit, and never loses leaf, + +Are blessed spirits that below, ere yet + They came to Heaven, were of such great renown + That every Muse therewith would affluent be. + +Therefore look thou upon the cross’s horns; + He whom I now shall name will there enact + What doth within a cloud its own swift fire.” + +I saw athwart the Cross a splendour drawn + By naming Joshua, (even as he did it,) + Nor noted I the word before the deed; + +And at the name of the great Maccabee + I saw another move itself revolving, + And gladness was the whip unto that top. + +Likewise for Charlemagne and for Orlando, + Two of them my regard attentive followed + As followeth the eye its falcon flying. + +William thereafterward, and Renouard, + And the Duke Godfrey, did attract my sight + Along upon that Cross, and Robert Guiscard. + +Then, moved and mingled with the other lights, + The soul that had addressed me showed how great + An artist ’twas among the heavenly singers. + +To my right side I turned myself around, + My duty to behold in Beatrice + Either by words or gesture signified; + +And so translucent I beheld her eyes, + So full of pleasure, that her countenance + Surpassed its other and its latest wont. + +And as, by feeling greater delectation, + A man in doing good from day to day + Becomes aware his virtue is increasing, + +So I became aware that my gyration + With heaven together had increased its arc, + That miracle beholding more adorned. + +And such as is the change, in little lapse + Of time, in a pale woman, when her face + Is from the load of bashfulness unladen, + +Such was it in mine eyes, when I had turned, + Caused by the whiteness of the temperate star, + The sixth, which to itself had gathered me. + +Within that Jovial torch did I behold + The sparkling of the love which was therein + Delineate our language to mine eyes. + +And even as birds uprisen from the shore, + As in congratulation o’er their food, + Make squadrons of themselves, now round, now long, + +So from within those lights the holy creatures + Sang flying to and fro, and in their figures + Made of themselves now D, now I, now L. + +First singing they to their own music moved; + Then one becoming of these characters, + A little while they rested and were silent. + +O divine Pegasea, thou who genius + Dost glorious make, and render it long-lived, + And this through thee the cities and the kingdoms, + +Illume me with thyself, that I may bring + Their figures out as I have them conceived! + Apparent be thy power in these brief verses! + +Themselves then they displayed in five times seven + Vowels and consonants; and I observed + The parts as they seemed spoken unto me. + +‘Diligite justitiam,’ these were + First verb and noun of all that was depicted; + ‘Qui judicatis terram’ were the last. + +Thereafter in the M of the fifth word + Remained they so arranged, that Jupiter + Seemed to be silver there with gold inlaid. + +And other lights I saw descend where was + The summit of the M, and pause there singing + The good, I think, that draws them to itself. + +Then, as in striking upon burning logs + Upward there fly innumerable sparks, + Whence fools are wont to look for auguries, + +More than a thousand lights seemed thence to rise, + And to ascend, some more, and others less, + Even as the Sun that lights them had allotted; + +And, each one being quiet in its place, + The head and neck beheld I of an eagle + Delineated by that inlaid fire. + +He who there paints has none to be his guide; + But Himself guides; and is from Him remembered + That virtue which is form unto the nest. + +The other beatitude, that contented seemed + At first to bloom a lily on the M, + By a slight motion followed out the imprint. + +O gentle star! what and how many gems + Did demonstrate to me, that all our justice + Effect is of that heaven which thou ingemmest! + +Wherefore I pray the Mind, in which begin + Thy motion and thy virtue, to regard + Whence comes the smoke that vitiates thy rays; + +So that a second time it now be wroth + With buying and with selling in the temple + Whose walls were built with signs and martyrdoms! + +O soldiery of heaven, whom I contemplate, + Implore for those who are upon the earth + All gone astray after the bad example! + +Once ’twas the custom to make war with swords; + But now ’tis made by taking here and there + The bread the pitying Father shuts from none. + +Yet thou, who writest but to cancel, think + That Peter and that Paul, who for this vineyard + Which thou art spoiling died, are still alive! + +Well canst thou say: “So steadfast my desire + Is unto him who willed to live alone, + And for a dance was led to martyrdom, + +That I know not the Fisherman nor Paul.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XIX + + +Appeared before me with its wings outspread + The beautiful image that in sweet fruition + Made jubilant the interwoven souls; + +Appeared a little ruby each, wherein + Ray of the sun was burning so enkindled + That each into mine eyes refracted it. + +And what it now behoves me to retrace + Nor voice has e’er reported, nor ink written, + Nor was by fantasy e’er comprehended; + +For speak I saw, and likewise heard, the beak, + And utter with its voice both ‘I’ and ‘My,’ + When in conception it was ‘We’ and ‘Our.’ + +And it began: “Being just and merciful + Am I exalted here unto that glory + Which cannot be exceeded by desire; + +And upon earth I left my memory + Such, that the evil-minded people there + Commend it, but continue not the story.” + +So doth a single heat from many embers + Make itself felt, even as from many loves + Issued a single sound from out that image. + +Whence I thereafter: “O perpetual flowers + Of the eternal joy, that only one + Make me perceive your odours manifold, + +Exhaling, break within me the great fast + Which a long season has in hunger held me, + Not finding for it any food on earth. + +Well do I know, that if in heaven its mirror + Justice Divine another realm doth make, + Yours apprehends it not through any veil. + +You know how I attentively address me + To listen; and you know what is the doubt + That is in me so very old a fast.” + +Even as a falcon, issuing from his hood, + Doth move his head, and with his wings applaud him, + Showing desire, and making himself fine, + +Saw I become that standard, which of lauds + Was interwoven of the grace divine, + With such songs as he knows who there rejoices. + +Then it began: “He who a compass turned + On the world’s outer verge, and who within it + Devised so much occult and manifest, + +Could not the impress of his power so make + On all the universe, as that his Word + Should not remain in infinite excess. + +And this makes certain that the first proud being, + Who was the paragon of every creature, + By not awaiting light fell immature. + +And hence appears it, that each minor nature + Is scant receptacle unto that good + Which has no end, and by itself is measured. + +In consequence our vision, which perforce + Must be some ray of that intelligence + With which all things whatever are replete, + +Cannot in its own nature be so potent, + That it shall not its origin discern + Far beyond that which is apparent to it. + +Therefore into the justice sempiternal + The power of vision that your world receives, + As eye into the ocean, penetrates; + +Which, though it see the bottom near the shore, + Upon the deep perceives it not, and yet + ’Tis there, but it is hidden by the depth. + +There is no light but comes from the serene + That never is o’ercast, nay, it is darkness + Or shadow of the flesh, or else its poison. + +Amply to thee is opened now the cavern + Which has concealed from thee the living justice + Of which thou mad’st such frequent questioning. + +For saidst thou: ‘Born a man is on the shore + Of Indus, and is none who there can speak + Of Christ, nor who can read, nor who can write; + +And all his inclinations and his actions + Are good, so far as human reason sees, + Without a sin in life or in discourse: + +He dieth unbaptised and without faith; + Where is this justice that condemneth him? + Where is his fault, if he do not believe?’ + +Now who art thou, that on the bench wouldst sit + In judgment at a thousand miles away, + With the short vision of a single span? + +Truly to him who with me subtilizes, + If so the Scripture were not over you, + For doubting there were marvellous occasion. + +O animals terrene, O stolid minds, + The primal will, that in itself is good, + Ne’er from itself, the Good Supreme, has moved. + +So much is just as is accordant with it; + No good created draws it to itself, + But it, by raying forth, occasions that.” + +Even as above her nest goes circling round + The stork when she has fed her little ones, + And he who has been fed looks up at her, + +So lifted I my brows, and even such + Became the blessed image, which its wings + Was moving, by so many counsels urged. + +Circling around it sang, and said: “As are + My notes to thee, who dost not comprehend them, + Such is the eternal judgment to you mortals.” + +Those lucent splendours of the Holy Spirit + Grew quiet then, but still within the standard + That made the Romans reverend to the world. + +It recommenced: “Unto this kingdom never + Ascended one who had not faith in Christ, + Before or since he to the tree was nailed. + +But look thou, many crying are, ‘Christ, Christ!’ + Who at the judgment shall be far less near + To him than some shall be who knew not Christ. + +Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn, + When the two companies shall be divided, + The one for ever rich, the other poor. + +What to your kings may not the Persians say, + When they that volume opened shall behold + In which are written down all their dispraises? + +There shall be seen, among the deeds of Albert, + That which ere long shall set the pen in motion, + For which the realm of Prague shall be deserted. + +There shall be seen the woe that on the Seine + He brings by falsifying of the coin, + Who by the blow of a wild boar shall die. + +There shall be seen the pride that causes thirst, + Which makes the Scot and Englishman so mad + That they within their boundaries cannot rest; + +Be seen the luxury and effeminate life + Of him of Spain, and the Bohemian, + Who valour never knew and never wished; + +Be seen the Cripple of Jerusalem, + His goodness represented by an I, + While the reverse an M shall represent; + +Be seen the avarice and poltroonery + Of him who guards the Island of the Fire, + Wherein Anchises finished his long life; + +And to declare how pitiful he is + Shall be his record in contracted letters + Which shall make note of much in little space. + +And shall appear to each one the foul deeds + Of uncle and of brother who a nation + So famous have dishonoured, and two crowns. + +And he of Portugal and he of Norway + Shall there be known, and he of Rascia too, + Who saw in evil hour the coin of Venice. + +O happy Hungary, if she let herself + Be wronged no farther! and Navarre the happy, + If with the hills that gird her she be armed! + +And each one may believe that now, as hansel + Thereof, do Nicosia and Famagosta + Lament and rage because of their own beast, + +Who from the others’ flank departeth not.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XX + + +When he who all the world illuminates + Out of our hemisphere so far descends + That on all sides the daylight is consumed, + +The heaven, that erst by him alone was kindled, + Doth suddenly reveal itself again + By many lights, wherein is one resplendent. + +And came into my mind this act of heaven, + When the ensign of the world and of its leaders + Had silent in the blessed beak become; + +Because those living luminaries all, + By far more luminous, did songs begin + Lapsing and falling from my memory. + +O gentle Love, that with a smile dost cloak thee, + How ardent in those sparks didst thou appear, + That had the breath alone of holy thoughts! + +After the precious and pellucid crystals, + With which begemmed the sixth light I beheld, + Silence imposed on the angelic bells, + +I seemed to hear the murmuring of a river + That clear descendeth down from rock to rock, + Showing the affluence of its mountain-top. + +And as the sound upon the cithern’s neck + Taketh its form, and as upon the vent + Of rustic pipe the wind that enters it, + +Even thus, relieved from the delay of waiting, + That murmuring of the eagle mounted up + Along its neck, as if it had been hollow. + +There it became a voice, and issued thence + From out its beak, in such a form of words + As the heart waited for wherein I wrote them. + +“The part in me which sees and bears the sun + In mortal eagles,” it began to me, + “Now fixedly must needs be looked upon; + +For of the fires of which I make my figure, + Those whence the eye doth sparkle in my head + Of all their orders the supremest are. + +He who is shining in the midst as pupil + Was once the singer of the Holy Spirit, + Who bore the ark from city unto city; + +Now knoweth he the merit of his song, + In so far as effect of his own counsel, + By the reward which is commensurate. + +Of five, that make a circle for my brow, + He that approacheth nearest to my beak + Did the poor widow for her son console; + +Now knoweth he how dearly it doth cost + Not following Christ, by the experience + Of this sweet life and of its opposite. + +He who comes next in the circumference + Of which I speak, upon its highest arc, + Did death postpone by penitence sincere; + +Now knoweth he that the eternal judgment + Suffers no change, albeit worthy prayer + Maketh below to-morrow of to-day. + +The next who follows, with the laws and me, + Under the good intent that bore bad fruit + Became a Greek by ceding to the pastor; + +Now knoweth he how all the ill deduced + From his good action is not harmful to him, + Although the world thereby may be destroyed. + +And he, whom in the downward arc thou seest, + Guglielmo was, whom the same land deplores + That weepeth Charles and Frederick yet alive; + +Now knoweth he how heaven enamoured is + With a just king; and in the outward show + Of his effulgence he reveals it still. + +Who would believe, down in the errant world, + That e’er the Trojan Ripheus in this round + Could be the fifth one of the holy lights? + +Now knoweth he enough of what the world + Has not the power to see of grace divine, + Although his sight may not discern the bottom.” + +Like as a lark that in the air expatiates, + First singing and then silent with content + Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her, + +Such seemed to me the image of the imprint + Of the eternal pleasure, by whose will + Doth everything become the thing it is. + +And notwithstanding to my doubt I was + As glass is to the colour that invests it, + To wait the time in silence it endured not, + +But forth from out my mouth, “What things are these?” + Extorted with the force of its own weight; + Whereat I saw great joy of coruscation. + +Thereafterward with eye still more enkindled + The blessed standard made to me reply, + To keep me not in wonderment suspended: + +“I see that thou believest in these things + Because I say them, but thou seest not how; + So that, although believed in, they are hidden. + +Thou doest as he doth who a thing by name + Well apprehendeth, but its quiddity + Cannot perceive, unless another show it. + +‘Regnum coelorum’ suffereth violence + From fervent love, and from that living hope + That overcometh the Divine volition; + +Not in the guise that man o’ercometh man, + But conquers it because it will be conquered, + And conquered conquers by benignity. + +The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth + Cause thee astonishment, because with them + Thou seest the region of the angels painted. + +They passed not from their bodies, as thou thinkest, + Gentiles, but Christians in the steadfast faith + Of feet that were to suffer and had suffered. + +For one from Hell, where no one e’er turns back + Unto good will, returned unto his bones, + And that of living hope was the reward,— + +Of living hope, that placed its efficacy + In prayers to God made to resuscitate him, + So that ’twere possible to move his will. + +The glorious soul concerning which I speak, + Returning to the flesh, where brief its stay, + Believed in Him who had the power to aid it; + +And, in believing, kindled to such fire + Of genuine love, that at the second death + Worthy it was to come unto this joy. + +The other one, through grace, that from so deep + A fountain wells that never hath the eye + Of any creature reached its primal wave, + +Set all his love below on righteousness; + Wherefore from grace to grace did God unclose + His eye to our redemption yet to be, + +Whence he believed therein, and suffered not + From that day forth the stench of paganism, + And he reproved therefor the folk perverse. + +Those Maidens three, whom at the right-hand wheel + Thou didst behold, were unto him for baptism + More than a thousand years before baptizing. + +O thou predestination, how remote + Thy root is from the aspect of all those + Who the First Cause do not behold entire! + +And you, O mortals! hold yourselves restrained + In judging; for ourselves, who look on God, + We do not know as yet all the elect; + +And sweet to us is such a deprivation, + Because our good in this good is made perfect, + That whatsoe’er God wills, we also will.” + +After this manner by that shape divine, + To make clear in me my short-sightedness, + Was given to me a pleasant medicine; + +And as good singer a good lutanist + Accompanies with vibrations of the chords, + Whereby more pleasantness the song acquires, + +So, while it spake, do I remember me + That I beheld both of those blessed lights, + Even as the winking of the eyes concords, + +Moving unto the words their little flames. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXI + + +Already on my Lady’s face mine eyes + Again were fastened, and with these my mind, + And from all other purpose was withdrawn; + +And she smiled not; but “If I were to smile,” + She unto me began, “thou wouldst become + Like Semele, when she was turned to ashes. + +Because my beauty, that along the stairs + Of the eternal palace more enkindles, + As thou hast seen, the farther we ascend, + +If it were tempered not, is so resplendent + That all thy mortal power in its effulgence + Would seem a leaflet that the thunder crushes. + +We are uplifted to the seventh splendour, + That underneath the burning Lion’s breast + Now radiates downward mingled with his power. + +Fix in direction of thine eyes the mind, + And make of them a mirror for the figure + That in this mirror shall appear to thee.” + +He who could know what was the pasturage + My sight had in that blessed countenance, + When I transferred me to another care, + +Would recognize how grateful was to me + Obedience unto my celestial escort, + By counterpoising one side with the other. + +Within the crystal which, around the world + Revolving, bears the name of its dear leader, + Under whom every wickedness lay dead, + +Coloured like gold, on which the sunshine gleams, + A stairway I beheld to such a height + Uplifted, that mine eye pursued it not. + +Likewise beheld I down the steps descending + So many splendours, that I thought each light + That in the heaven appears was there diffused. + +And as accordant with their natural custom + The rooks together at the break of day + Bestir themselves to warm their feathers cold; + +Then some of them fly off without return, + Others come back to where they started from, + And others, wheeling round, still keep at home; + +Such fashion it appeared to me was there + Within the sparkling that together came, + As soon as on a certain step it struck, + +And that which nearest unto us remained + Became so clear, that in my thought I said, + “Well I perceive the love thou showest me; + +But she, from whom I wait the how and when + Of speech and silence, standeth still; whence I + Against desire do well if I ask not.” + +She thereupon, who saw my silentness + In the sight of Him who seeth everything, + Said unto me, “Let loose thy warm desire.” + +And I began: “No merit of my own + Renders me worthy of response from thee; + But for her sake who granteth me the asking, + +Thou blessed life that dost remain concealed + In thy beatitude, make known to me + The cause which draweth thee so near my side; + +And tell me why is silent in this wheel + The dulcet symphony of Paradise, + That through the rest below sounds so devoutly.” + +“Thou hast thy hearing mortal as thy sight,” + It answer made to me; “they sing not here, + For the same cause that Beatrice has not smiled. + +Thus far adown the holy stairway’s steps + Have I descended but to give thee welcome + With words, and with the light that mantles me; + +Nor did more love cause me to be more ready, + For love as much and more up there is burning, + As doth the flaming manifest to thee. + +But the high charity, that makes us servants + Prompt to the counsel which controls the world, + Allotteth here, even as thou dost observe.” + +“I see full well,” said I, “O sacred lamp! + How love unfettered in this court sufficeth + To follow the eternal Providence; + +But this is what seems hard for me to see, + Wherefore predestinate wast thou alone + Unto this office from among thy consorts.” + +No sooner had I come to the last word, + Than of its middle made the light a centre, + Whirling itself about like a swift millstone. + +When answer made the love that was therein: + “On me directed is a light divine, + Piercing through this in which I am embosomed, + +Of which the virtue with my sight conjoined + Lifts me above myself so far, I see + The supreme essence from which this is drawn. + +Hence comes the joyfulness with which I flame, + For to my sight, as far as it is clear, + The clearness of the flame I equal make. + +But that soul in the heaven which is most pure, + That seraph which his eye on God most fixes, + Could this demand of thine not satisfy; + +Because so deeply sinks in the abyss + Of the eternal statute what thou askest, + From all created sight it is cut off. + +And to the mortal world, when thou returnest, + This carry back, that it may not presume + Longer tow’rd such a goal to move its feet. + +The mind, that shineth here, on earth doth smoke; + From this observe how can it do below + That which it cannot though the heaven assume it?” + +Such limit did its words prescribe to me, + The question I relinquished, and restricted + Myself to ask it humbly who it was. + +“Between two shores of Italy rise cliffs, + And not far distant from thy native place, + So high, the thunders far below them sound, + +And form a ridge that Catria is called, + ’Neath which is consecrate a hermitage + Wont to be dedicate to worship only.” + +Thus unto me the third speech recommenced, + And then, continuing, it said: “Therein + Unto God’s service I became so steadfast, + +That feeding only on the juice of olives + Lightly I passed away the heats and frosts, + Contented in my thoughts contemplative. + +That cloister used to render to these heavens + Abundantly, and now is empty grown, + So that perforce it soon must be revealed. + +I in that place was Peter Damiano; + And Peter the Sinner was I in the house + Of Our Lady on the Adriatic shore. + +Little of mortal life remained to me, + When I was called and dragged forth to the hat + Which shifteth evermore from bad to worse. + +Came Cephas, and the mighty Vessel came + Of the Holy Spirit, meagre and barefooted, + Taking the food of any hostelry. + +Now some one to support them on each side + The modern shepherds need, and some to lead them, + So heavy are they, and to hold their trains. + +They cover up their palfreys with their cloaks, + So that two beasts go underneath one skin; + O Patience, that dost tolerate so much!” + +At this voice saw I many little flames + From step to step descending and revolving, + And every revolution made them fairer. + +Round about this one came they and stood still, + And a cry uttered of so loud a sound, + It here could find no parallel, nor I + +Distinguished it, the thunder so o’ercame me. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXII + + +Oppressed with stupor, I unto my guide + Turned like a little child who always runs + For refuge there where he confideth most; + +And she, even as a mother who straightway + Gives comfort to her pale and breathless boy + With voice whose wont it is to reassure him, + +Said to me: “Knowest thou not thou art in heaven, + And knowest thou not that heaven is holy all + And what is done here cometh from good zeal? + +After what wise the singing would have changed thee + And I by smiling, thou canst now imagine, + Since that the cry has startled thee so much, + +In which if thou hadst understood its prayers + Already would be known to thee the vengeance + Which thou shalt look upon before thou diest. + +The sword above here smiteth not in haste + Nor tardily, howe’er it seem to him + Who fearing or desiring waits for it. + +But turn thee round towards the others now, + For very illustrious spirits shalt thou see, + If thou thy sight directest as I say.” + +As it seemed good to her mine eyes I turned, + And saw a hundred spherules that together + With mutual rays each other more embellished. + +I stood as one who in himself represses + The point of his desire, and ventures not + To question, he so feareth the too much. + +And now the largest and most luculent + Among those pearls came forward, that it might + Make my desire concerning it content. + +Within it then I heard: “If thou couldst see + Even as myself the charity that burns + Among us, thy conceits would be expressed; + +But, that by waiting thou mayst not come late + To the high end, I will make answer even + Unto the thought of which thou art so chary. + +That mountain on whose slope Cassino stands + Was frequented of old upon its summit + By a deluded folk and ill-disposed; + +And I am he who first up thither bore + The name of Him who brought upon the earth + The truth that so much sublimateth us. + +And such abundant grace upon me shone + That all the neighbouring towns I drew away + From the impious worship that seduced the world. + +These other fires, each one of them, were men + Contemplative, enkindled by that heat + Which maketh holy flowers and fruits spring up. + +Here is Macarius, here is Romualdus, + Here are my brethren, who within the cloisters + Their footsteps stayed and kept a steadfast heart.” + +And I to him: “The affection which thou showest + Speaking with me, and the good countenance + Which I behold and note in all your ardours, + +In me have so my confidence dilated + As the sun doth the rose, when it becomes + As far unfolded as it hath the power. + +Therefore I pray, and thou assure me, father, + If I may so much grace receive, that I + May thee behold with countenance unveiled.” + +He thereupon: “Brother, thy high desire + In the remotest sphere shall be fulfilled, + Where are fulfilled all others and my own. + +There perfect is, and ripened, and complete, + Every desire; within that one alone + Is every part where it has always been; + +For it is not in space, nor turns on poles, + And unto it our stairway reaches up, + Whence thus from out thy sight it steals away. + +Up to that height the Patriarch Jacob saw it + Extending its supernal part, what time + So thronged with angels it appeared to him. + +But to ascend it now no one uplifts + His feet from off the earth, and now my Rule + Below remaineth for mere waste of paper. + +The walls that used of old to be an Abbey + Are changed to dens of robbers, and the cowls + Are sacks filled full of miserable flour. + +But heavy usury is not taken up + So much against God’s pleasure as that fruit + Which maketh so insane the heart of monks; + +For whatsoever hath the Church in keeping + Is for the folk that ask it in God’s name, + Not for one’s kindred or for something worse. + +The flesh of mortals is so very soft, + That good beginnings down below suffice not + From springing of the oak to bearing acorns. + +Peter began with neither gold nor silver, + And I with orison and abstinence, + And Francis with humility his convent. + +And if thou lookest at each one’s beginning, + And then regardest whither he has run, + Thou shalt behold the white changed into brown. + +In verity the Jordan backward turned, + And the sea’s fleeing, when God willed were more + A wonder to behold, than succour here.” + +Thus unto me he said; and then withdrew + To his own band, and the band closed together; + Then like a whirlwind all was upward rapt. + +The gentle Lady urged me on behind them + Up o’er that stairway by a single sign, + So did her virtue overcome my nature; + +Nor here below, where one goes up and down + By natural law, was motion e’er so swift + That it could be compared unto my wing. + +Reader, as I may unto that devout + Triumph return, on whose account I often + For my transgressions weep and beat my breast,— + +Thou hadst not thrust thy finger in the fire + And drawn it out again, before I saw + The sign that follows Taurus, and was in it. + +O glorious stars, O light impregnated + With mighty virtue, from which I acknowledge + All of my genius, whatsoe’er it be, + +With you was born, and hid himself with you, + He who is father of all mortal life, + When first I tasted of the Tuscan air; + +And then when grace was freely given to me + To enter the high wheel which turns you round, + Your region was allotted unto me. + +To you devoutly at this hour my soul + Is sighing, that it virtue may acquire + For the stern pass that draws it to itself. + +“Thou art so near unto the last salvation,” + Thus Beatrice began, “thou oughtest now + To have thine eves unclouded and acute; + +And therefore, ere thou enter farther in, + Look down once more, and see how vast a world + Thou hast already put beneath thy feet; + +So that thy heart, as jocund as it may, + Present itself to the triumphant throng + That comes rejoicing through this rounded ether.” + +I with my sight returned through one and all + The sevenfold spheres, and I beheld this globe + Such that I smiled at its ignoble semblance; + +And that opinion I approve as best + Which doth account it least; and he who thinks + Of something else may truly be called just. + +I saw the daughter of Latona shining + Without that shadow, which to me was cause + That once I had believed her rare and dense. + +The aspect of thy son, Hyperion, + Here I sustained, and saw how move themselves + Around and near him Maia and Dione. + +Thence there appeared the temperateness of Jove + ’Twixt son and father, and to me was clear + The change that of their whereabout they make; + +And all the seven made manifest to me + How great they are, and eke how swift they are, + And how they are in distant habitations. + +The threshing-floor that maketh us so proud, + To me revolving with the eternal Twins, + Was all apparent made from hill to harbour! + +Then to the beauteous eyes mine eyes I turned. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXIII + + +Even as a bird, ’mid the beloved leaves, + Quiet upon the nest of her sweet brood + Throughout the night, that hideth all things from us, + +Who, that she may behold their longed-for looks + And find the food wherewith to nourish them, + In which, to her, grave labours grateful are, + +Anticipates the time on open spray + And with an ardent longing waits the sun, + Gazing intent as soon as breaks the dawn: + +Even thus my Lady standing was, erect + And vigilant, turned round towards the zone + Underneath which the sun displays less haste; + +So that beholding her distraught and wistful, + Such I became as he is who desiring + For something yearns, and hoping is appeased. + +But brief the space from one When to the other; + Of my awaiting, say I, and the seeing + The welkin grow resplendent more and more. + +And Beatrice exclaimed: “Behold the hosts + Of Christ’s triumphal march, and all the fruit + Harvested by the rolling of these spheres!” + +It seemed to me her face was all aflame; + And eyes she had so full of ecstasy + That I must needs pass on without describing. + +As when in nights serene of the full moon + Smiles Trivia among the nymphs eternal + Who paint the firmament through all its gulfs, + +Saw I, above the myriads of lamps, + A Sun that one and all of them enkindled, + E’en as our own doth the supernal sights, + +And through the living light transparent shone + The lucent substance so intensely clear + Into my sight, that I sustained it not. + +O Beatrice, thou gentle guide and dear! + To me she said: “What overmasters thee + A virtue is from which naught shields itself. + +There are the wisdom and the omnipotence + That oped the thoroughfares ’twixt heaven and earth, + For which there erst had been so long a yearning.” + +As fire from out a cloud unlocks itself, + Dilating so it finds not room therein, + And down, against its nature, falls to earth, + +So did my mind, among those aliments + Becoming larger, issue from itself, + And that which it became cannot remember. + +“Open thine eyes, and look at what I am: + Thou hast beheld such things, that strong enough + Hast thou become to tolerate my smile.” + +I was as one who still retains the feeling + Of a forgotten vision, and endeavours + In vain to bring it back into his mind, + +When I this invitation heard, deserving + Of so much gratitude, it never fades + Out of the book that chronicles the past. + +If at this moment sounded all the tongues + That Polyhymnia and her sisters made + Most lubrical with their delicious milk, + +To aid me, to a thousandth of the truth + It would not reach, singing the holy smile + And how the holy aspect it illumed. + +And therefore, representing Paradise, + The sacred poem must perforce leap over, + Even as a man who finds his way cut off; + +But whoso thinketh of the ponderous theme, + And of the mortal shoulder laden with it, + Should blame it not, if under this it tremble. + +It is no passage for a little boat + This which goes cleaving the audacious prow, + Nor for a pilot who would spare himself. + +“Why doth my face so much enamour thee, + That to the garden fair thou turnest not, + Which under the rays of Christ is blossoming? + +There is the Rose in which the Word Divine + Became incarnate; there the lilies are + By whose perfume the good way was discovered.” + +Thus Beatrice; and I, who to her counsels + Was wholly ready, once again betook me + Unto the battle of the feeble brows. + +As in the sunshine, that unsullied streams + Through fractured cloud, ere now a meadow of flowers + Mine eyes with shadow covered o’er have seen, + +So troops of splendours manifold I saw + Illumined from above with burning rays, + Beholding not the source of the effulgence. + +O power benignant that dost so imprint them! + Thou didst exalt thyself to give more scope + There to mine eyes, that were not strong enough. + +The name of that fair flower I e’er invoke + Morning and evening utterly enthralled + My soul to gaze upon the greater fire. + +And when in both mine eyes depicted were + The glory and greatness of the living star + Which there excelleth, as it here excelled, + +Athwart the heavens a little torch descended + Formed in a circle like a coronal, + And cinctured it, and whirled itself about it. + +Whatever melody most sweetly soundeth + On earth, and to itself most draws the soul, + Would seem a cloud that, rent asunder, thunders, + +Compared unto the sounding of that lyre + Wherewith was crowned the sapphire beautiful, + Which gives the clearest heaven its sapphire hue. + +“I am Angelic Love, that circle round + The joy sublime which breathes from out the womb + That was the hostelry of our Desire; + +And I shall circle, Lady of Heaven, while + Thou followest thy Son, and mak’st diviner + The sphere supreme, because thou enterest there.” + +Thus did the circulated melody + Seal itself up; and all the other lights + Were making to resound the name of Mary. + +The regal mantle of the volumes all + Of that world, which most fervid is and living + With breath of God and with his works and ways, + +Extended over us its inner border, + So very distant, that the semblance of it + There where I was not yet appeared to me. + +Therefore mine eyes did not possess the power + Of following the incoronated flame, + Which mounted upward near to its own seed. + +And as a little child, that towards its mother + Stretches its arms, when it the milk has taken, + Through impulse kindled into outward flame, + +Each of those gleams of whiteness upward reached + So with its summit, that the deep affection + They had for Mary was revealed to me. + +Thereafter they remained there in my sight, + ‘Regina coeli’ singing with such sweetness, + That ne’er from me has the delight departed. + +O, what exuberance is garnered up + Within those richest coffers, which had been + Good husbandmen for sowing here below! + +There they enjoy and live upon the treasure + Which was acquired while weeping in the exile + Of Babylon, wherein the gold was left. + +There triumpheth, beneath the exalted Son + Of God and Mary, in his victory, + Both with the ancient council and the new, + +He who doth keep the keys of such a glory. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXIV + + +“O company elect to the great supper + Of the Lamb benedight, who feedeth you + So that for ever full is your desire, + +If by the grace of God this man foretaste + Something of that which falleth from your table, + Or ever death prescribe to him the time, + +Direct your mind to his immense desire, + And him somewhat bedew; ye drinking are + For ever at the fount whence comes his thought.” + +Thus Beatrice; and those souls beatified + Transformed themselves to spheres on steadfast poles, + Flaming intensely in the guise of comets. + +And as the wheels in works of horologes + Revolve so that the first to the beholder + Motionless seems, and the last one to fly, + +So in like manner did those carols, dancing + In different measure, of their affluence + Give me the gauge, as they were swift or slow. + +From that one which I noted of most beauty + Beheld I issue forth a fire so happy + That none it left there of a greater brightness; + +And around Beatrice three several times + It whirled itself with so divine a song, + My fantasy repeats it not to me; + +Therefore the pen skips, and I write it not, + Since our imagination for such folds, + Much more our speech, is of a tint too glaring. + +“O holy sister mine, who us implorest + With such devotion, by thine ardent love + Thou dost unbind me from that beautiful sphere!” + +Thereafter, having stopped, the blessed fire + Unto my Lady did direct its breath, + Which spake in fashion as I here have said. + +And she: “O light eterne of the great man + To whom our Lord delivered up the keys + He carried down of this miraculous joy, + +This one examine on points light and grave, + As good beseemeth thee, about the Faith + By means of which thou on the sea didst walk. + +If he love well, and hope well, and believe, + From thee ’tis hid not; for thou hast thy sight + There where depicted everything is seen. + +But since this kingdom has made citizens + By means of the true Faith, to glorify it + ’Tis well he have the chance to speak thereof.” + +As baccalaureate arms himself, and speaks not + Until the master doth propose the question, + To argue it, and not to terminate it, + +So did I arm myself with every reason, + While she was speaking, that I might be ready + For such a questioner and such profession. + +“Say, thou good Christian; manifest thyself; + What is the Faith?” Whereat I raised my brow + Unto that light wherefrom was this breathed forth. + +Then turned I round to Beatrice, and she + Prompt signals made to me that I should pour + The water forth from my internal fountain. + +“May grace, that suffers me to make confession,” + Began I, “to the great centurion, + Cause my conceptions all to be explicit!” + +And I continued: “As the truthful pen, + Father, of thy dear brother wrote of it, + Who put with thee Rome into the good way, + +Faith is the substance of the things we hope for, + And evidence of those that are not seen; + And this appears to me its quiddity.” + +Then heard I: “Very rightly thou perceivest, + If well thou understandest why he placed it + With substances and then with evidences.” + +And I thereafterward: “The things profound, + That here vouchsafe to me their apparition, + Unto all eyes below are so concealed, + +That they exist there only in belief, + Upon the which is founded the high hope, + And hence it takes the nature of a substance. + +And it behoveth us from this belief + To reason without having other sight, + And hence it has the nature of evidence.” + +Then heard I: “If whatever is acquired + Below by doctrine were thus understood, + No sophist’s subtlety would there find place.” + +Thus was breathed forth from that enkindled love; + Then added: “Very well has been gone over + Already of this coin the alloy and weight; + +But tell me if thou hast it in thy purse?” + And I: “Yes, both so shining and so round + That in its stamp there is no peradventure.” + +Thereafter issued from the light profound + That there resplendent was: “This precious jewel, + Upon the which is every virtue founded, + +Whence hadst thou it?” And I: “The large outpouring + Of Holy Spirit, which has been diffused + Upon the ancient parchments and the new, + +A syllogism is, which proved it to me + With such acuteness, that, compared therewith, + All demonstration seems to me obtuse.” + +And then I heard: “The ancient and the new + Postulates, that to thee are so conclusive, + Why dost thou take them for the word divine?” + +And I: “The proofs, which show the truth to me, + Are the works subsequent, whereunto Nature + Ne’er heated iron yet, nor anvil beat.” + +’Twas answered me: “Say, who assureth thee + That those works ever were? the thing itself + That must be proved, nought else to thee affirms it.” + +“Were the world to Christianity converted,” + I said, “withouten miracles, this one + Is such, the rest are not its hundredth part; + +Because that poor and fasting thou didst enter + Into the field to sow there the good plant, + Which was a vine and has become a thorn!” + +This being finished, the high, holy Court + Resounded through the spheres, “One God we praise!” + In melody that there above is chanted. + +And then that Baron, who from branch to branch, + Examining, had thus conducted me, + Till the extremest leaves we were approaching, + +Again began: “The Grace that dallying + Plays with thine intellect thy mouth has opened, + Up to this point, as it should opened be, + +So that I do approve what forth emerged; + But now thou must express what thou believest, + And whence to thy belief it was presented.” + +“O holy father, spirit who beholdest + What thou believedst so that thou o’ercamest, + Towards the sepulchre, more youthful feet,” + +Began I, “thou dost wish me in this place + The form to manifest of my prompt belief, + And likewise thou the cause thereof demandest. + +And I respond: In one God I believe, + Sole and eterne, who moveth all the heavens + With love and with desire, himself unmoved; + +And of such faith not only have I proofs + Physical and metaphysical, but gives them + Likewise the truth that from this place rains down + +Through Moses, through the Prophets and the Psalms, + Through the Evangel, and through you, who wrote + After the fiery Spirit sanctified you; + +In Persons three eterne believe, and these + One essence I believe, so one and trine + They bear conjunction both with ‘sunt’ and ‘est.’ + +With the profound condition and divine + Which now I touch upon, doth stamp my mind + Ofttimes the doctrine evangelical. + +This the beginning is, this is the spark + Which afterwards dilates to vivid flame, + And, like a star in heaven, is sparkling in me.” + +Even as a lord who hears what pleaseth him + His servant straight embraces, gratulating + For the good news as soon as he is silent; + +So, giving me its benediction, singing, + Three times encircled me, when I was silent, + The apostolic light, at whose command + +I spoken had, in speaking I so pleased him. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXV + + +If e’er it happen that the Poem Sacred, + To which both heaven and earth have set their hand, + So that it many a year hath made me lean, + +O’ercome the cruelty that bars me out + From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered, + An enemy to the wolves that war upon it, + +With other voice forthwith, with other fleece + Poet will I return, and at my font + Baptismal will I take the laurel crown; + +Because into the Faith that maketh known + All souls to God there entered I, and then + Peter for her sake thus my brow encircled. + +Thereafterward towards us moved a light + Out of that band whence issued the first-fruits + Which of his vicars Christ behind him left, + +And then my Lady, full of ecstasy, + Said unto me: “Look, look! behold the Baron + For whom below Galicia is frequented.” + +In the same way as, when a dove alights + Near his companion, both of them pour forth, + Circling about and murmuring, their affection, + +So one beheld I by the other grand + Prince glorified to be with welcome greeted, + Lauding the food that there above is eaten. + +But when their gratulations were complete, + Silently ‘coram me’ each one stood still, + So incandescent it o’ercame my sight. + +Smiling thereafterwards, said Beatrice: + “Illustrious life, by whom the benefactions + Of our Basilica have been described, + +Make Hope resound within this altitude; + Thou knowest as oft thou dost personify it + As Jesus to the three gave greater clearness.”— + +“Lift up thy head, and make thyself assured; + For what comes hither from the mortal world + Must needs be ripened in our radiance.” + +This comfort came to me from the second fire; + Wherefore mine eyes I lifted to the hills, + Which bent them down before with too great weight. + +“Since, through his grace, our Emperor wills that thou + Shouldst find thee face to face, before thy death, + In the most secret chamber, with his Counts, + +So that, the truth beholden of this court, + Hope, which below there rightfully enamours, + Thereby thou strengthen in thyself and others, + +Say what it is, and how is flowering with it + Thy mind, and say from whence it came to thee.” + Thus did the second light again continue. + +And the Compassionate, who piloted + The plumage of my wings in such high flight, + Did in reply anticipate me thus: + +“No child whatever the Church Militant + Of greater hope possesses, as is written + In that Sun which irradiates all our band; + +Therefore it is conceded him from Egypt + To come into Jerusalem to see, + Or ever yet his warfare be completed. + +The two remaining points, that not for knowledge + Have been demanded, but that he report + How much this virtue unto thee is pleasing, + +To him I leave; for hard he will not find them, + Nor of self-praise; and let him answer them; + And may the grace of God in this assist him!” + +As a disciple, who his teacher follows, + Ready and willing, where he is expert, + That his proficiency may be displayed, + +“Hope,” said I, “is the certain expectation + Of future glory, which is the effect + Of grace divine and merit precedent. + +From many stars this light comes unto me; + But he instilled it first into my heart + Who was chief singer unto the chief captain. + +‘Sperent in te,’ in the high Theody + He sayeth, ‘those who know thy name;’ and who + Knoweth it not, if he my faith possess? + +Thou didst instil me, then, with his instilling + In the Epistle, so that I am full, + And upon others rain again your rain.” + +While I was speaking, in the living bosom + Of that combustion quivered an effulgence, + Sudden and frequent, in the guise of lightning; + +Then breathed: “The love wherewith I am inflamed + Towards the virtue still which followed me + Unto the palm and issue of the field, + +Wills that I breathe to thee that thou delight + In her; and grateful to me is thy telling + Whatever things Hope promises to thee.” + +And I: “The ancient Scriptures and the new + The mark establish, and this shows it me, + Of all the souls whom God hath made his friends. + +Isaiah saith, that each one garmented + In his own land shall be with twofold garments, + And his own land is this delightful life. + +Thy brother, too, far more explicitly, + There where he treateth of the robes of white, + This revelation manifests to us.” + +And first, and near the ending of these words, + “Sperent in te” from over us was heard, + To which responsive answered all the carols. + +Thereafterward a light among them brightened, + So that, if Cancer one such crystal had, + Winter would have a month of one sole day. + +And as uprises, goes, and enters the dance + A winsome maiden, only to do honour + To the new bride, and not from any failing, + +Even thus did I behold the brightened splendour + Approach the two, who in a wheel revolved + As was beseeming to their ardent love. + +Into the song and music there it entered; + And fixed on them my Lady kept her look, + Even as a bride silent and motionless. + +“This is the one who lay upon the breast + Of him our Pelican; and this is he + To the great office from the cross elected.” + +My Lady thus; but therefore none the more + Did move her sight from its attentive gaze + Before or afterward these words of hers. + +Even as a man who gazes, and endeavours + To see the eclipsing of the sun a little, + And who, by seeing, sightless doth become, + +So I became before that latest fire, + While it was said, “Why dost thou daze thyself + To see a thing which here hath no existence? + +Earth in the earth my body is, and shall be + With all the others there, until our number + With the eternal proposition tallies. + +With the two garments in the blessed cloister + Are the two lights alone that have ascended: + And this shalt thou take back into your world.” + +And at this utterance the flaming circle + Grew quiet, with the dulcet intermingling + Of sound that by the trinal breath was made, + +As to escape from danger or fatigue + The oars that erst were in the water beaten + Are all suspended at a whistle’s sound. + +Ah, how much in my mind was I disturbed, + When I turned round to look on Beatrice, + That her I could not see, although I was + +Close at her side and in the Happy World! + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXVI + + +While I was doubting for my vision quenched, + Out of the flame refulgent that had quenched it + Issued a breathing, that attentive made me, + +Saying: “While thou recoverest the sense + Of seeing which in me thou hast consumed, + ’Tis well that speaking thou shouldst compensate it. + +Begin then, and declare to what thy soul + Is aimed, and count it for a certainty, + Sight is in thee bewildered and not dead; + +Because the Lady, who through this divine + Region conducteth thee, has in her look + The power the hand of Ananias had.” + +I said: “As pleaseth her, or soon or late + Let the cure come to eyes that portals were + When she with fire I ever burn with entered. + +The Good, that gives contentment to this Court, + The Alpha and Omega is of all + The writing that love reads me low or loud.” + +The selfsame voice, that taken had from me + The terror of the sudden dazzlement, + To speak still farther put it in my thought; + +And said: “In verity with finer sieve + Behoveth thee to sift; thee it behoveth + To say who aimed thy bow at such a target.” + +And I: “By philosophic arguments, + And by authority that hence descends, + Such love must needs imprint itself in me; + +For Good, so far as good, when comprehended + Doth straight enkindle love, and so much greater + As more of goodness in itself it holds; + +Then to that Essence (whose is such advantage + That every good which out of it is found + Is nothing but a ray of its own light) + +More than elsewhither must the mind be moved + Of every one, in loving, who discerns + The truth in which this evidence is founded. + +Such truth he to my intellect reveals + Who demonstrates to me the primal love + Of all the sempiternal substances. + +The voice reveals it of the truthful Author, + Who says to Moses, speaking of Himself, + ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee.’ + +Thou too revealest it to me, beginning + The loud Evangel, that proclaims the secret + Of heaven to earth above all other edict.” + +And I heard say: “By human intellect + And by authority concordant with it, + Of all thy loves reserve for God the highest. + +But say again if other cords thou feelest, + Draw thee towards Him, that thou mayst proclaim + With how many teeth this love is biting thee.” + +The holy purpose of the Eagle of Christ + Not latent was, nay, rather I perceived + Whither he fain would my profession lead. + +Therefore I recommenced: “All of those bites + Which have the power to turn the heart to God + Unto my charity have been concurrent. + +The being of the world, and my own being, + The death which He endured that I may live, + And that which all the faithful hope, as I do, + +With the forementioned vivid consciousness + Have drawn me from the sea of love perverse, + And of the right have placed me on the shore. + +The leaves, wherewith embowered is all the garden + Of the Eternal Gardener, do I love + As much as he has granted them of good.” + +As soon as I had ceased, a song most sweet + Throughout the heaven resounded, and my Lady + Said with the others, “Holy, holy, holy!” + +And as at some keen light one wakes from sleep + By reason of the visual spirit that runs + Unto the splendour passed from coat to coat, + +And he who wakes abhorreth what he sees, + So all unconscious is his sudden waking, + Until the judgment cometh to his aid, + +So from before mine eyes did Beatrice + Chase every mote with radiance of her own, + That cast its light a thousand miles and more. + +Whence better after than before I saw, + And in a kind of wonderment I asked + About a fourth light that I saw with us. + +And said my Lady: “There within those rays + Gazes upon its Maker the first soul + That ever the first virtue did create.” + +Even as the bough that downward bends its top + At transit of the wind, and then is lifted + By its own virtue, which inclines it upward, + +Likewise did I, the while that she was speaking, + Being amazed, and then I was made bold + By a desire to speak wherewith I burned. + +And I began: “O apple, that mature + Alone hast been produced, O ancient father, + To whom each wife is daughter and daughter-in-law, + +Devoutly as I can I supplicate thee + That thou wouldst speak to me; thou seest my wish; + And I, to hear thee quickly, speak it not.” + +Sometimes an animal, when covered, struggles + So that his impulse needs must be apparent, + By reason of the wrappage following it; + +And in like manner the primeval soul + Made clear to me athwart its covering + How jubilant it was to give me pleasure. + +Then breathed: “Without thy uttering it to me, + Thine inclination better I discern + Than thou whatever thing is surest to thee; + +For I behold it in the truthful mirror, + That of Himself all things parhelion makes, + And none makes Him parhelion of itself. + +Thou fain wouldst hear how long ago God placed me + Within the lofty garden, where this Lady + Unto so long a stairway thee disposed. + +And how long to mine eyes it was a pleasure, + And of the great disdain the proper cause, + And the language that I used and that I made. + +Now, son of mine, the tasting of the tree + Not in itself was cause of so great exile, + But solely the o’erstepping of the bounds. + +There, whence thy Lady moved Virgilius, + Four thousand and three hundred and two circuits + Made by the sun, this Council I desired; + +And him I saw return to all the lights + Of his highway nine hundred times and thirty, + Whilst I upon the earth was tarrying. + +The language that I spake was quite extinct + Before that in the work interminable + The people under Nimrod were employed; + +For nevermore result of reasoning + (Because of human pleasure that doth change, + Obedient to the heavens) was durable. + +A natural action is it that man speaks; + But whether thus or thus, doth nature leave + To your own art, as seemeth best to you. + +Ere I descended to the infernal anguish, + ‘El’ was on earth the name of the Chief Good, + From whom comes all the joy that wraps me round + +‘Eli’ he then was called, and that is proper, + Because the use of men is like a leaf + On bough, which goeth and another cometh. + +Upon the mount that highest o’er the wave + Rises was I, in life or pure or sinful, + From the first hour to that which is the second, + +As the sun changes quadrant, to the sixth.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXVII + + +“Glory be to the Father, to the Son, + And Holy Ghost!” all Paradise began, + So that the melody inebriate made me. + +What I beheld seemed unto me a smile + Of the universe; for my inebriation + Found entrance through the hearing and the sight. + +O joy! O gladness inexpressible! + O perfect life of love and peacefulness! + O riches without hankering secure! + +Before mine eyes were standing the four torches + Enkindled, and the one that first had come + Began to make itself more luminous; + +And even such in semblance it became + As Jupiter would become, if he and Mars + Were birds, and they should interchange their feathers. + +That Providence, which here distributeth + Season and service, in the blessed choir + Had silence upon every side imposed. + +When I heard say: “If I my colour change, + Marvel not at it; for while I am speaking + Thou shalt behold all these their colour change. + +He who usurps upon the earth my place, + My place, my place, which vacant has become + Before the presence of the Son of God, + +Has of my cemetery made a sewer + Of blood and stench, whereby the Perverse One, + Who fell from here, below there is appeased!” + +With the same colour which, through sun adverse, + Painteth the clouds at evening or at morn, + Beheld I then the whole of heaven suffused. + +And as a modest woman, who abides + Sure of herself, and at another’s failing, + From listening only, timorous becomes, + +Even thus did Beatrice change countenance; + And I believe in heaven was such eclipse, + When suffered the supreme Omnipotence; + +Thereafterward proceeded forth his words + With voice so much transmuted from itself, + The very countenance was not more changed. + +“The spouse of Christ has never nurtured been + On blood of mine, of Linus and of Cletus, + To be made use of in acquest of gold; + +But in acquest of this delightful life + Sixtus and Pius, Urban and Calixtus, + After much lamentation, shed their blood. + +Our purpose was not, that on the right hand + Of our successors should in part be seated + The Christian folk, in part upon the other; + +Nor that the keys which were to me confided + Should e’er become the escutcheon on a banner, + That should wage war on those who are baptized; + +Nor I be made the figure of a seal + To privileges venal and mendacious, + Whereat I often redden and flash with fire. + +In garb of shepherds the rapacious wolves + Are seen from here above o’er all the pastures! + O wrath of God, why dost thou slumber still? + +To drink our blood the Caorsines and Gascons + Are making ready. O thou good beginning, + Unto how vile an end must thou needs fall! + +But the high Providence, that with Scipio + At Rome the glory of the world defended, + Will speedily bring aid, as I conceive; + +And thou, my son, who by thy mortal weight + Shalt down return again, open thy mouth; + What I conceal not, do not thou conceal.” + +As with its frozen vapours downward falls + In flakes our atmosphere, what time the horn + Of the celestial Goat doth touch the sun, + +Upward in such array saw I the ether + Become, and flaked with the triumphant vapours, + Which there together with us had remained. + +My sight was following up their semblances, + And followed till the medium, by excess, + The passing farther onward took from it; + +Whereat the Lady, who beheld me freed + From gazing upward, said to me: “Cast down + Thy sight, and see how far thou art turned round.” + +Since the first time that I had downward looked, + I saw that I had moved through the whole arc + Which the first climate makes from midst to end; + +So that I saw the mad track of Ulysses + Past Gades, and this side, well nigh the shore + Whereon became Europa a sweet burden. + +And of this threshing-floor the site to me + Were more unveiled, but the sun was proceeding + Under my feet, a sign and more removed. + +My mind enamoured, which is dallying + At all times with my Lady, to bring back + To her mine eyes was more than ever ardent. + +And if or Art or Nature has made bait + To catch the eyes and so possess the mind, + In human flesh or in its portraiture, + +All joined together would appear as nought + To the divine delight which shone upon me + When to her smiling face I turned me round. + +The virtue that her look endowed me with + From the fair nest of Leda tore me forth, + And up into the swiftest heaven impelled me. + +Its parts exceeding full of life and lofty + Are all so uniform, I cannot say + Which Beatrice selected for my place. + +But she, who was aware of my desire, + Began, the while she smiled so joyously + That God seemed in her countenance to rejoice: + +“The nature of that motion, which keeps quiet + The centre and all the rest about it moves, + From hence begins as from its starting point. + +And in this heaven there is no other Where + Than in the Mind Divine, wherein is kindled + The love that turns it, and the power it rains. + +Within a circle light and love embrace it, + Even as this doth the others, and that precinct + He who encircles it alone controls. + +Its motion is not by another meted, + But all the others measured are by this, + As ten is by the half and by the fifth. + +And in what manner time in such a pot + May have its roots, and in the rest its leaves, + Now unto thee can manifest be made. + +O Covetousness, that mortals dost ingulf + Beneath thee so, that no one hath the power + Of drawing back his eyes from out thy waves! + +Full fairly blossoms in mankind the will; + But the uninterrupted rain converts + Into abortive wildings the true plums. + +Fidelity and innocence are found + Only in children; afterwards they both + Take flight or e’er the cheeks with down are covered. + +One, while he prattles still, observes the fasts, + Who, when his tongue is loosed, forthwith devours + Whatever food under whatever moon; + +Another, while he prattles, loves and listens + Unto his mother, who when speech is perfect + Forthwith desires to see her in her grave. + +Even thus is swarthy made the skin so white + In its first aspect of the daughter fair + Of him who brings the morn, and leaves the night. + +Thou, that it may not be a marvel to thee, + Think that on earth there is no one who governs; + Whence goes astray the human family. + +Ere January be unwintered wholly + By the centesimal on earth neglected, + Shall these supernal circles roar so loud + +The tempest that has been so long awaited + Shall whirl the poops about where are the prows; + So that the fleet shall run its course direct, + +And the true fruit shall follow on the flower.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXVIII + + +After the truth against the present life + Of miserable mortals was unfolded + By her who doth imparadise my mind, + +As in a looking-glass a taper’s flame + He sees who from behind is lighted by it, + Before he has it in his sight or thought, + +And turns him round to see if so the glass + Tell him the truth, and sees that it accords + Therewith as doth a music with its metre, + +In similar wise my memory recollecteth + That I did, looking into those fair eyes, + Of which Love made the springes to ensnare me. + +And as I turned me round, and mine were touched + By that which is apparent in that volume, + Whenever on its gyre we gaze intent, + +A point beheld I, that was raying out + Light so acute, the sight which it enkindles + Must close perforce before such great acuteness. + +And whatsoever star seems smallest here + Would seem to be a moon, if placed beside it. + As one star with another star is placed. + +Perhaps at such a distance as appears + A halo cincturing the light that paints it, + When densest is the vapour that sustains it, + +Thus distant round the point a circle of fire + So swiftly whirled, that it would have surpassed + Whatever motion soonest girds the world; + +And this was by another circumcinct, + That by a third, the third then by a fourth, + By a fifth the fourth, and then by a sixth the fifth; + +The seventh followed thereupon in width + So ample now, that Juno’s messenger + Entire would be too narrow to contain it. + +Even so the eighth and ninth; and every one + More slowly moved, according as it was + In number distant farther from the first. + +And that one had its flame most crystalline + From which less distant was the stainless spark, + I think because more with its truth imbued. + +My Lady, who in my anxiety + Beheld me much perplexed, said: “From that point + Dependent is the heaven and nature all. + +Behold that circle most conjoined to it, + And know thou, that its motion is so swift + Through burning love whereby it is spurred on.” + +And I to her: “If the world were arranged + In the order which I see in yonder wheels, + What’s set before me would have satisfied me; + +But in the world of sense we can perceive + That evermore the circles are diviner + As they are from the centre more remote + +Wherefore if my desire is to be ended + In this miraculous and angelic temple, + That has for confines only love and light, + +To hear behoves me still how the example + And the exemplar go not in one fashion, + Since for myself in vain I contemplate it.” + +“If thine own fingers unto such a knot + Be insufficient, it is no great wonder, + So hard hath it become for want of trying.” + +My Lady thus; then said she: “Do thou take + What I shall tell thee, if thou wouldst be sated, + And exercise on that thy subtlety. + +The circles corporal are wide and narrow + According to the more or less of virtue + Which is distributed through all their parts. + +The greater goodness works the greater weal, + The greater weal the greater body holds, + If perfect equally are all its parts. + +Therefore this one which sweeps along with it + The universe sublime, doth correspond + Unto the circle which most loves and knows. + +On which account, if thou unto the virtue + Apply thy measure, not to the appearance + Of substances that unto thee seem round, + +Thou wilt behold a marvellous agreement, + Of more to greater, and of less to smaller, + In every heaven, with its Intelligence.” + +Even as remaineth splendid and serene + The hemisphere of air, when Boreas + Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest, + +Because is purified and resolved the rack + That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs + With all the beauties of its pageantry; + +Thus did I likewise, after that my Lady + Had me provided with her clear response, + And like a star in heaven the truth was seen. + +And soon as to a stop her words had come, + Not otherwise does iron scintillate + When molten, than those circles scintillated. + +Their coruscation all the sparks repeated, + And they so many were, their number makes + More millions than the doubling of the chess. + +I heard them sing hosanna choir by choir + To the fixed point which holds them at the ‘Ubi,’ + And ever will, where they have ever been. + +And she, who saw the dubious meditations + Within my mind, “The primal circles,” said, + “Have shown thee Seraphim and Cherubim. + +Thus rapidly they follow their own bonds, + To be as like the point as most they can, + And can as far as they are high in vision. + +Those other Loves, that round about them go, + Thrones of the countenance divine are called, + Because they terminate the primal Triad. + +And thou shouldst know that they all have delight + As much as their own vision penetrates + The Truth, in which all intellect finds rest. + +From this it may be seen how blessedness + Is founded in the faculty which sees, + And not in that which loves, and follows next; + +And of this seeing merit is the measure, + Which is brought forth by grace, and by good will; + Thus on from grade to grade doth it proceed. + +The second Triad, which is germinating + In such wise in this sempiternal spring, + That no nocturnal Aries despoils, + +Perpetually hosanna warbles forth + With threefold melody, that sounds in three + Orders of joy, with which it is intrined. + +The three Divine are in this hierarchy, + First the Dominions, and the Virtues next; + And the third order is that of the Powers. + +Then in the dances twain penultimate + The Principalities and Archangels wheel; + The last is wholly of angelic sports. + +These orders upward all of them are gazing, + And downward so prevail, that unto God + They all attracted are and all attract. + +And Dionysius with so great desire + To contemplate these Orders set himself, + He named them and distinguished them as I do. + +But Gregory afterwards dissented from him; + Wherefore, as soon as he unclosed his eyes + Within this heaven, he at himself did smile. + +And if so much of secret truth a mortal + Proffered on earth, I would not have thee marvel, + For he who saw it here revealed it to him, + +With much more of the truth about these circles.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXIX + + +At what time both the children of Latona, + Surmounted by the Ram and by the Scales, + Together make a zone of the horizon, + +As long as from the time the zenith holds them + In equipoise, till from that girdle both + Changing their hemisphere disturb the balance, + +So long, her face depicted with a smile, + Did Beatrice keep silence while she gazed + Fixedly at the point which had o’ercome me. + +Then she began: “I say, and I ask not + What thou dost wish to hear, for I have seen it + Where centres every When and every ‘Ubi.’ + +Not to acquire some good unto himself, + Which is impossible, but that his splendour + In its resplendency may say, ‘Subsisto,’ + +In his eternity outside of time, + Outside all other limits, as it pleased him, + Into new Loves the Eternal Love unfolded. + +Nor as if torpid did he lie before; + For neither after nor before proceeded + The going forth of God upon these waters. + +Matter and Form unmingled and conjoined + Came into being that had no defect, + E’en as three arrows from a three-stringed bow. + +And as in glass, in amber, or in crystal + A sunbeam flashes so, that from its coming + To its full being is no interval, + +So from its Lord did the triform effect + Ray forth into its being all together, + Without discrimination of beginning. + +Order was con-created and constructed + In substances, and summit of the world + Were those wherein the pure act was produced. + +Pure potentiality held the lowest part; + Midway bound potentiality with act + Such bond that it shall never be unbound. + +Jerome has written unto you of angels + Created a long lapse of centuries + Or ever yet the other world was made; + +But written is this truth in many places + By writers of the Holy Ghost, and thou + Shalt see it, if thou lookest well thereat. + +And even reason seeth it somewhat, + For it would not concede that for so long + Could be the motors without their perfection. + +Now dost thou know both where and when these Loves + Created were, and how; so that extinct + In thy desire already are three fires. + +Nor could one reach, in counting, unto twenty + So swiftly, as a portion of these angels + Disturbed the subject of your elements. + +The rest remained, and they began this art + Which thou discernest, with so great delight + That never from their circling do they cease. + +The occasion of the fall was the accursed + Presumption of that One, whom thou hast seen + By all the burden of the world constrained. + +Those whom thou here beholdest modest were + To recognise themselves as of that goodness + Which made them apt for so much understanding; + +On which account their vision was exalted + By the enlightening grace and their own merit, + So that they have a full and steadfast will. + +I would not have thee doubt, but certain be, + ’Tis meritorious to receive this grace, + According as the affection opens to it. + +Now round about in this consistory + Much mayst thou contemplate, if these my words + Be gathered up, without all further aid. + +But since upon the earth, throughout your schools, + They teach that such is the angelic nature + That it doth hear, and recollect, and will, + +More will I say, that thou mayst see unmixed + The truth that is confounded there below, + Equivocating in such like prelections. + +These substances, since in God’s countenance + They jocund were, turned not away their sight + From that wherefrom not anything is hidden; + +Hence they have not their vision intercepted + By object new, and hence they do not need + To recollect, through interrupted thought. + +So that below, not sleeping, people dream, + Believing they speak truth, and not believing; + And in the last is greater sin and shame. + +Below you do not journey by one path + Philosophising; so transporteth you + Love of appearance and the thought thereof. + +And even this above here is endured + With less disdain, than when is set aside + The Holy Writ, or when it is distorted. + +They think not there how much of blood it costs + To sow it in the world, and how he pleases + Who in humility keeps close to it. + +Each striveth for appearance, and doth make + His own inventions; and these treated are + By preachers, and the Evangel holds its peace. + +One sayeth that the moon did backward turn, + In the Passion of Christ, and interpose herself + So that the sunlight reached not down below; + +And lies; for of its own accord the light + Hid itself; whence to Spaniards and to Indians, + As to the Jews, did such eclipse respond. + +Florence has not so many Lapi and Bindi + As fables such as these, that every year + Are shouted from the pulpit back and forth, + +In such wise that the lambs, who do not know, + Come back from pasture fed upon the wind, + And not to see the harm doth not excuse them. + +Christ did not to his first disciples say, + ‘Go forth, and to the world preach idle tales,’ + But unto them a true foundation gave; + +And this so loudly sounded from their lips, + That, in the warfare to enkindle Faith, + They made of the Evangel shields and lances. + +Now men go forth with jests and drolleries + To preach, and if but well the people laugh, + The hood puffs out, and nothing more is asked. + +But in the cowl there nestles such a bird, + That, if the common people were to see it, + They would perceive what pardons they confide in, + +For which so great on earth has grown the folly, + That, without proof of any testimony, + To each indulgence they would flock together. + +By this Saint Anthony his pig doth fatten, + And many others, who are worse than pigs, + Paying in money without mark of coinage. + +But since we have digressed abundantly, + Turn back thine eyes forthwith to the right path, + So that the way be shortened with the time. + +This nature doth so multiply itself + In numbers, that there never yet was speech + Nor mortal fancy that can go so far. + +And if thou notest that which is revealed + By Daniel, thou wilt see that in his thousands + Number determinate is kept concealed. + +The primal light, that all irradiates it, + By modes as many is received therein, + As are the splendours wherewith it is mated. + +Hence, inasmuch as on the act conceptive + The affection followeth, of love the sweetness + Therein diversely fervid is or tepid. + +The height behold now and the amplitude + Of the eternal power, since it hath made + Itself so many mirrors, where ’tis broken, + +One in itself remaining as before.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXX + + +Perchance six thousand miles remote from us + Is glowing the sixth hour, and now this world + Inclines its shadow almost to a level, + +When the mid-heaven begins to make itself + So deep to us, that here and there a star + Ceases to shine so far down as this depth, + +And as advances bright exceedingly + The handmaid of the sun, the heaven is closed + Light after light to the most beautiful; + +Not otherwise the Triumph, which for ever + Plays round about the point that vanquished me, + Seeming enclosed by what itself encloses, + +Little by little from my vision faded; + Whereat to turn mine eyes on Beatrice + My seeing nothing and my love constrained me. + +If what has hitherto been said of her + Were all concluded in a single praise, + Scant would it be to serve the present turn. + +Not only does the beauty I beheld + Transcend ourselves, but truly I believe + Its Maker only may enjoy it all. + +Vanquished do I confess me by this passage + More than by problem of his theme was ever + O’ercome the comic or the tragic poet; + +For as the sun the sight that trembles most, + Even so the memory of that sweet smile + My mind depriveth of its very self. + +From the first day that I beheld her face + In this life, to the moment of this look, + The sequence of my song has ne’er been severed; + +But now perforce this sequence must desist + From following her beauty with my verse, + As every artist at his uttermost. + +Such as I leave her to a greater fame + Than any of my trumpet, which is bringing + Its arduous matter to a final close, + +With voice and gesture of a perfect leader + She recommenced: “We from the greatest body + Have issued to the heaven that is pure light; + +Light intellectual replete with love, + Love of true good replete with ecstasy, + Ecstasy that transcendeth every sweetness. + +Here shalt thou see the one host and the other + Of Paradise, and one in the same aspects + Which at the final judgment thou shalt see.” + +Even as a sudden lightning that disperses + The visual spirits, so that it deprives + The eye of impress from the strongest objects, + +Thus round about me flashed a living light, + And left me swathed around with such a veil + Of its effulgence, that I nothing saw. + +“Ever the Love which quieteth this heaven + Welcomes into itself with such salute, + To make the candle ready for its flame.” + +No sooner had within me these brief words + An entrance found, than I perceived myself + To be uplifted over my own power, + +And I with vision new rekindled me, + Such that no light whatever is so pure + But that mine eyes were fortified against it. + +And light I saw in fashion of a river + Fulvid with its effulgence, ’twixt two banks + Depicted with an admirable Spring. + +Out of this river issued living sparks, + And on all sides sank down into the flowers, + Like unto rubies that are set in gold; + +And then, as if inebriate with the odours, + They plunged again into the wondrous torrent, + And as one entered issued forth another. + +“The high desire, that now inflames and moves thee + To have intelligence of what thou seest, + Pleaseth me all the more, the more it swells. + +But of this water it behoves thee drink + Before so great a thirst in thee be slaked.” + Thus said to me the sunshine of mine eyes; + +And added: “The river and the topazes + Going in and out, and the laughing of the herbage, + Are of their truth foreshadowing prefaces; + +Not that these things are difficult in themselves, + But the deficiency is on thy side, + For yet thou hast not vision so exalted.” + +There is no babe that leaps so suddenly + With face towards the milk, if he awake + Much later than his usual custom is, + +As I did, that I might make better mirrors + Still of mine eyes, down stooping to the wave + Which flows that we therein be better made. + +And even as the penthouse of mine eyelids + Drank of it, it forthwith appeared to me + Out of its length to be transformed to round. + +Then as a folk who have been under masks + Seem other than before, if they divest + The semblance not their own they disappeared in, + +Thus into greater pomp were changed for me + The flowerets and the sparks, so that I saw + Both of the Courts of Heaven made manifest. + +O splendour of God! by means of which I saw + The lofty triumph of the realm veracious, + Give me the power to say how it I saw! + +There is a light above, which visible + Makes the Creator unto every creature, + Who only in beholding Him has peace, + +And it expands itself in circular form + To such extent, that its circumference + Would be too large a girdle for the sun. + +The semblance of it is all made of rays + Reflected from the top of Primal Motion, + Which takes therefrom vitality and power. + +And as a hill in water at its base + Mirrors itself, as if to see its beauty + When affluent most in verdure and in flowers, + +So, ranged aloft all round about the light, + Mirrored I saw in more ranks than a thousand + All who above there have from us returned. + +And if the lowest row collect within it + So great a light, how vast the amplitude + Is of this Rose in its extremest leaves! + +My vision in the vastness and the height + Lost not itself, but comprehended all + The quantity and quality of that gladness. + +There near and far nor add nor take away; + For there where God immediately doth govern, + The natural law in naught is relevant. + +Into the yellow of the Rose Eternal + That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odour + Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun, + +As one who silent is and fain would speak, + Me Beatrice drew on, and said: “Behold + Of the white stoles how vast the convent is! + +Behold how vast the circuit of our city! + Behold our seats so filled to overflowing, + That here henceforward are few people wanting! + +On that great throne whereon thine eyes are fixed + For the crown’s sake already placed upon it, + Before thou suppest at this wedding feast + +Shall sit the soul (that is to be Augustus + On earth) of noble Henry, who shall come + To redress Italy ere she be ready. + +Blind covetousness, that casts its spell upon you, + Has made you like unto the little child, + Who dies of hunger and drives off the nurse. + +And in the sacred forum then shall be + A Prefect such, that openly or covert + On the same road he will not walk with him. + +But long of God he will not be endured + In holy office; he shall be thrust down + Where Simon Magus is for his deserts, + +And make him of Alagna lower go!” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXXI + + +In fashion then as of a snow-white rose + Displayed itself to me the saintly host, + Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride, + +But the other host, that flying sees and sings + The glory of Him who doth enamour it, + And the goodness that created it so noble, + +Even as a swarm of bees, that sinks in flowers + One moment, and the next returns again + To where its labour is to sweetness turned, + +Sank into the great flower, that is adorned + With leaves so many, and thence reascended + To where its love abideth evermore. + +Their faces had they all of living flame, + And wings of gold, and all the rest so white + No snow unto that limit doth attain. + +From bench to bench, into the flower descending, + They carried something of the peace and ardour + Which by the fanning of their flanks they won. + +Nor did the interposing ’twixt the flower + And what was o’er it of such plenitude + Of flying shapes impede the sight and splendour; + +Because the light divine so penetrates + The universe, according to its merit, + That naught can be an obstacle against it. + +This realm secure and full of gladsomeness, + Crowded with ancient people and with modern, + Unto one mark had all its look and love. + +O Trinal Light, that in a single star + Sparkling upon their sight so satisfies them, + Look down upon our tempest here below! + +If the barbarians, coming from some region + That every day by Helice is covered, + Revolving with her son whom she delights in, + +Beholding Rome and all her noble works, + Were wonder-struck, what time the Lateran + Above all mortal things was eminent,— + +I who to the divine had from the human, + From time unto eternity, had come, + From Florence to a people just and sane, + +With what amazement must I have been filled! + Truly between this and the joy, it was + My pleasure not to hear, and to be mute. + +And as a pilgrim who delighteth him + In gazing round the temple of his vow, + And hopes some day to retell how it was, + +So through the living light my way pursuing + Directed I mine eyes o’er all the ranks, + Now up, now down, and now all round about. + +Faces I saw of charity persuasive, + Embellished by His light and their own smile, + And attitudes adorned with every grace. + +The general form of Paradise already + My glance had comprehended as a whole, + In no part hitherto remaining fixed, + +And round I turned me with rekindled wish + My Lady to interrogate of things + Concerning which my mind was in suspense. + +One thing I meant, another answered me; + I thought I should see Beatrice, and saw + An Old Man habited like the glorious people. + +O’erflowing was he in his eyes and cheeks + With joy benign, in attitude of pity + As to a tender father is becoming. + +And “She, where is she?” instantly I said; + Whence he: “To put an end to thy desire, + Me Beatrice hath sent from mine own place. + +And if thou lookest up to the third round + Of the first rank, again shalt thou behold her + Upon the throne her merits have assigned her.” + +Without reply I lifted up mine eyes, + And saw her, as she made herself a crown + Reflecting from herself the eternal rays. + +Not from that region which the highest thunders + Is any mortal eye so far removed, + In whatsoever sea it deepest sinks, + +As there from Beatrice my sight; but this + Was nothing unto me; because her image + Descended not to me by medium blurred. + +“O Lady, thou in whom my hope is strong, + And who for my salvation didst endure + In Hell to leave the imprint of thy feet, + +Of whatsoever things I have beheld, + As coming from thy power and from thy goodness + I recognise the virtue and the grace. + +Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom, + By all those ways, by all the expedients, + Whereby thou hadst the power of doing it. + +Preserve towards me thy magnificence, + So that this soul of mine, which thou hast healed, + Pleasing to thee be loosened from the body.” + +Thus I implored; and she, so far away, + Smiled, as it seemed, and looked once more at me; + Then unto the eternal fountain turned. + +And said the Old Man holy: “That thou mayst + Accomplish perfectly thy journeying, + Whereunto prayer and holy love have sent me, + +Fly with thine eyes all round about this garden; + For seeing it will discipline thy sight + Farther to mount along the ray divine. + +And she, the Queen of Heaven, for whom I burn + Wholly with love, will grant us every grace, + Because that I her faithful Bernard am.” + +As he who peradventure from Croatia + Cometh to gaze at our Veronica, + Who through its ancient fame is never sated, + +But says in thought, the while it is displayed, + “My Lord, Christ Jesus, God of very God, + Now was your semblance made like unto this?” + +Even such was I while gazing at the living + Charity of the man, who in this world + By contemplation tasted of that peace. + +“Thou son of grace, this jocund life,” began he, + “Will not be known to thee by keeping ever + Thine eyes below here on the lowest place; + +But mark the circles to the most remote, + Until thou shalt behold enthroned the Queen + To whom this realm is subject and devoted.” + +I lifted up mine eyes, and as at morn + The oriental part of the horizon + Surpasses that wherein the sun goes down, + +Thus, as if going with mine eyes from vale + To mount, I saw a part in the remoteness + Surpass in splendour all the other front. + +And even as there where we await the pole + That Phaeton drove badly, blazes more + The light, and is on either side diminished, + +So likewise that pacific oriflamme + Gleamed brightest in the centre, and each side + In equal measure did the flame abate. + +And at that centre, with their wings expanded, + More than a thousand jubilant Angels saw I, + Each differing in effulgence and in kind. + +I saw there at their sports and at their songs + A beauty smiling, which the gladness was + Within the eyes of all the other saints; + +And if I had in speaking as much wealth + As in imagining, I should not dare + To attempt the smallest part of its delight. + +Bernard, as soon as he beheld mine eyes + Fixed and intent upon its fervid fervour, + His own with such affection turned to her + +That it made mine more ardent to behold. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXXII + + +Absorbed in his delight, that contemplator + Assumed the willing office of a teacher, + And gave beginning to these holy words: + +“The wound that Mary closed up and anointed, + She at her feet who is so beautiful, + She is the one who opened it and pierced it. + +Within that order which the third seats make + Is seated Rachel, lower than the other, + With Beatrice, in manner as thou seest. + +Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and her who was + Ancestress of the Singer, who for dole + Of the misdeed said, ‘Miserere mei,’ + +Canst thou behold from seat to seat descending + Down in gradation, as with each one’s name + I through the Rose go down from leaf to leaf. + +And downward from the seventh row, even as + Above the same, succeed the Hebrew women, + Dividing all the tresses of the flower; + +Because, according to the view which Faith + In Christ had taken, these are the partition + By which the sacred stairways are divided. + +Upon this side, where perfect is the flower + With each one of its petals, seated are + Those who believed in Christ who was to come. + +Upon the other side, where intersected + With vacant spaces are the semicircles, + Are those who looked to Christ already come. + +And as, upon this side, the glorious seat + Of the Lady of Heaven, and the other seats + Below it, such a great division make, + +So opposite doth that of the great John, + Who, ever holy, desert and martyrdom + Endured, and afterwards two years in Hell. + +And under him thus to divide were chosen + Francis, and Benedict, and Augustine, + And down to us the rest from round to round. + +Behold now the high providence divine; + For one and other aspect of the Faith + In equal measure shall this garden fill. + +And know that downward from that rank which cleaves + Midway the sequence of the two divisions, + Not by their proper merit are they seated; + +But by another’s under fixed conditions; + For these are spirits one and all assoiled + Before they any true election had. + +Well canst thou recognise it in their faces, + And also in their voices puerile, + If thou regard them well and hearken to them. + +Now doubtest thou, and doubting thou art silent; + But I will loosen for thee the strong bond + In which thy subtile fancies hold thee fast. + +Within the amplitude of this domain + No casual point can possibly find place, + No more than sadness can, or thirst, or hunger; + +For by eternal law has been established + Whatever thou beholdest, so that closely + The ring is fitted to the finger here. + +And therefore are these people, festinate + Unto true life, not ‘sine causa’ here + More and less excellent among themselves. + +The King, by means of whom this realm reposes + In so great love and in so great delight + That no will ventureth to ask for more, + +In his own joyous aspect every mind + Creating, at his pleasure dowers with grace + Diversely; and let here the effect suffice. + +And this is clearly and expressly noted + For you in Holy Scripture, in those twins + Who in their mother had their anger roused. + +According to the colour of the hair, + Therefore, with such a grace the light supreme + Consenteth that they worthily be crowned. + +Without, then, any merit of their deeds, + Stationed are they in different gradations, + Differing only in their first acuteness. + +’Tis true that in the early centuries, + With innocence, to work out their salvation + Sufficient was the faith of parents only. + +After the earlier ages were completed, + Behoved it that the males by circumcision + Unto their innocent wings should virtue add; + +But after that the time of grace had come + Without the baptism absolute of Christ, + Such innocence below there was retained. + +Look now into the face that unto Christ + Hath most resemblance; for its brightness only + Is able to prepare thee to see Christ.” + +On her did I behold so great a gladness + Rain down, borne onward in the holy minds + Created through that altitude to fly, + +That whatsoever I had seen before + Did not suspend me in such admiration, + Nor show me such similitude of God. + +And the same Love that first descended there, + “Ave Maria, gratia plena,” singing, + In front of her his wings expanded wide. + +Unto the canticle divine responded + From every part the court beatified, + So that each sight became serener for it. + +“O holy father, who for me endurest + To be below here, leaving the sweet place + In which thou sittest by eternal lot, + +Who is the Angel that with so much joy + Into the eyes is looking of our Queen, + Enamoured so that he seems made of fire?” + +Thus I again recourse had to the teaching + Of that one who delighted him in Mary + As doth the star of morning in the sun. + +And he to me: “Such gallantry and grace + As there can be in Angel and in soul, + All is in him; and thus we fain would have it; + +Because he is the one who bore the palm + Down unto Mary, when the Son of God + To take our burden on himself decreed. + +But now come onward with thine eyes, as I + Speaking shall go, and note the great patricians + Of this most just and merciful of empires. + +Those two that sit above there most enrapture + As being very near unto Augusta, + Are as it were the two roots of this Rose. + +He who upon the left is near her placed + The father is, by whose audacious taste + The human species so much bitter tastes. + +Upon the right thou seest that ancient father + Of Holy Church, into whose keeping Christ + The keys committed of this lovely flower. + +And he who all the evil days beheld, + Before his death, of her the beauteous bride + Who with the spear and with the nails was won, + +Beside him sits, and by the other rests + That leader under whom on manna lived + The people ingrate, fickle, and stiff-necked. + +Opposite Peter seest thou Anna seated, + So well content to look upon her daughter, + Her eyes she moves not while she sings Hosanna. + +And opposite the eldest household father + Lucia sits, she who thy Lady moved + When to rush downward thou didst bend thy brows. + +But since the moments of thy vision fly, + Here will we make full stop, as a good tailor + Who makes the gown according to his cloth, + +And unto the first Love will turn our eyes, + That looking upon Him thou penetrate + As far as possible through his effulgence. + +Truly, lest peradventure thou recede, + Moving thy wings believing to advance, + By prayer behoves it that grace be obtained; + +Grace from that one who has the power to aid thee; + And thou shalt follow me with thy affection + That from my words thy heart turn not aside.” + +And he began this holy orison. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXXIII + + +“Thou Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son, + Humble and high beyond all other creature, + The limit fixed of the eternal counsel, + +Thou art the one who such nobility + To human nature gave, that its Creator + Did not disdain to make himself its creature. + +Within thy womb rekindled was the love, + By heat of which in the eternal peace + After such wise this flower has germinated. + +Here unto us thou art a noonday torch + Of charity, and below there among mortals + Thou art the living fountain-head of hope. + +Lady, thou art so great, and so prevailing, + That he who wishes grace, nor runs to thee, + His aspirations without wings would fly. + +Not only thy benignity gives succour + To him who asketh it, but oftentimes + Forerunneth of its own accord the asking. + +In thee compassion is, in thee is pity, + In thee magnificence; in thee unites + Whate’er of goodness is in any creature. + +Now doth this man, who from the lowest depth + Of the universe as far as here has seen + One after one the spiritual lives, + +Supplicate thee through grace for so much power + That with his eyes he may uplift himself + Higher towards the uttermost salvation. + +And I, who never burned for my own seeing + More than I do for his, all of my prayers + Proffer to thee, and pray they come not short, + +That thou wouldst scatter from him every cloud + Of his mortality so with thy prayers, + That the Chief Pleasure be to him displayed. + +Still farther do I pray thee, Queen, who canst + Whate’er thou wilt, that sound thou mayst preserve + After so great a vision his affections. + +Let thy protection conquer human movements; + See Beatrice and all the blessed ones + My prayers to second clasp their hands to thee!” + +The eyes beloved and revered of God, + Fastened upon the speaker, showed to us + How grateful unto her are prayers devout; + +Then unto the Eternal Light they turned, + On which it is not credible could be + By any creature bent an eye so clear. + +And I, who to the end of all desires + Was now approaching, even as I ought + The ardour of desire within me ended. + +Bernard was beckoning unto me, and smiling, + That I should upward look; but I already + Was of my own accord such as he wished; + +Because my sight, becoming purified, + Was entering more and more into the ray + Of the High Light which of itself is true. + +From that time forward what I saw was greater + Than our discourse, that to such vision yields, + And yields the memory unto such excess. + +Even as he is who seeth in a dream, + And after dreaming the imprinted passion + Remains, and to his mind the rest returns not, + +Even such am I, for almost utterly + Ceases my vision, and distilleth yet + Within my heart the sweetness born of it; + +Even thus the snow is in the sun unsealed, + Even thus upon the wind in the light leaves + Were the soothsayings of the Sibyl lost. + +O Light Supreme, that dost so far uplift thee + From the conceits of mortals, to my mind + Of what thou didst appear re-lend a little, + +And make my tongue of so great puissance, + That but a single sparkle of thy glory + It may bequeath unto the future people; + +For by returning to my memory somewhat, + And by a little sounding in these verses, + More of thy victory shall be conceived! + +I think the keenness of the living ray + Which I endured would have bewildered me, + If but mine eyes had been averted from it; + +And I remember that I was more bold + On this account to bear, so that I joined + My aspect with the Glory Infinite. + +O grace abundant, by which I presumed + To fix my sight upon the Light Eternal, + So that the seeing I consumed therein! + +I saw that in its depth far down is lying + Bound up with love together in one volume, + What through the universe in leaves is scattered; + +Substance, and accident, and their operations, + All interfused together in such wise + That what I speak of is one simple light. + +The universal fashion of this knot + Methinks I saw, since more abundantly + In saying this I feel that I rejoice. + +One moment is more lethargy to me, + Than five and twenty centuries to the emprise + That startled Neptune with the shade of Argo! + +My mind in this wise wholly in suspense, + Steadfast, immovable, attentive gazed, + And evermore with gazing grew enkindled. + +In presence of that light one such becomes, + That to withdraw therefrom for other prospect + It is impossible he e’er consent; + +Because the good, which object is of will, + Is gathered all in this, and out of it + That is defective which is perfect there. + +Shorter henceforward will my language fall + Of what I yet remember, than an infant’s + Who still his tongue doth moisten at the breast. + +Not because more than one unmingled semblance + Was in the living light on which I looked, + For it is always what it was before; + +But through the sight, that fortified itself + In me by looking, one appearance only + To me was ever changing as I changed. + +Within the deep and luminous subsistence + Of the High Light appeared to me three circles, + Of threefold colour and of one dimension, + +And by the second seemed the first reflected + As Iris is by Iris, and the third + Seemed fire that equally from both is breathed. + +O how all speech is feeble and falls short + Of my conceit, and this to what I saw + Is such, ’tis not enough to call it little! + +O Light Eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest, + Sole knowest thyself, and, known unto thyself + And knowing, lovest and smilest on thyself! + +That circulation, which being thus conceived + Appeared in thee as a reflected light, + When somewhat contemplated by mine eyes, + +Within itself, of its own very colour + Seemed to me painted with our effigy, + Wherefore my sight was all absorbed therein. + +As the geometrician, who endeavours + To square the circle, and discovers not, + By taking thought, the principle he wants, + +Even such was I at that new apparition; + I wished to see how the image to the circle + Conformed itself, and how it there finds place; + +But my own wings were not enough for this, + Had it not been that then my mind there smote + A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish. + +Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy: + But now was turning my desire and will, + Even as a wheel that equally is moved, + +The Love which moves the sun and the other stars. + + + + +APPENDIX + + +SIX SONNETS ON DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW +(1807-1882) + + +I + +Oft have I seen at some cathedral door + A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, + Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet + Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor +Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er; + Far off the noises of the world retreat; + The loud vociferations of the street + Become an undistinguishable roar. +So, as I enter here from day to day, + And leave my burden at this minster gate, + Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, +The tumult of the time disconsolate + To inarticulate murmurs dies away, + While the eternal ages watch and wait. + + +II + +How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! + This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves + Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves + Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers, +And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! + But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves + Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves, + And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers! +Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, + What exultations trampling on despair, + What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, +What passionate outcry of a soul in pain, + Uprose this poem of the earth and air, + This mediaeval miracle of song! + + +III + +I enter, and I see thee in the gloom + Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine! + And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine. + The air is filled with some unknown perfume; +The congregation of the dead make room + For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine; + Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of pine, + The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb. +From the confessionals I hear arise + Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies, + And lamentations from the crypts below +And then a voice celestial that begins + With the pathetic words, “Although your sins + As scarlet be,” and ends with “as the snow.” + + +IV + +With snow-white veil, and garments as of flame, + She stands before thee, who so long ago + Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe + From which thy song in all its splendors came; +And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name, + The ice about thy heart melts as the snow + On mountain heights, and in swift overflow + Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame. +Thou makest full confession; and a gleam + As of the dawn on some dark forest cast, + Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase; +Lethe and Eunoe—the remembered dream + And the forgotten sorrow—bring at last + That perfect pardon which is perfect peace. + + +V + +I Lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze + With forms of saints and holy men who died, + Here martyred and hereafter glorified; + And the great Rose upon its leaves displays +Christ’s Triumph, and the angelic roundelays, + With splendor upon splendor multiplied; + And Beatrice again at Dante’s side + No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise. +And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs + Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love + And benedictions of the Holy Ghost; +And the melodious bells among the spires + O’er all the house-tops and through heaven above + Proclaim the elevation of the Host! + + +VI + +O star of morning and of liberty! + O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines + Above the darkness of the Apennines, + Forerunner of the day that is to be! +The voices of the city and the sea, + The voices of the mountains and the pines, + Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines + Are footpaths for the thought of Italy! +Thy fame is blown abroad from all the heights, + Through all the nations; and a sound is heard, + As of a mighty wind, and men devout, +Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes, + In their own language hear thy wondrous word, + And many are amazed and many doubt. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1003 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1004-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1004-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b2ff714c --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1004-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19999 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1004 *** + + The Divine Comedy + + of Dante Alighieri + + Translated by + HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW + + + Contents + + INFERNO + Canto I. The Dark Forest. The Hill of Difficulty. The Panther, the + Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil. + Canto II. The Descent. Dante’s Protest and Virgil’s Appeal. The + Intercession of the Three Ladies Benedight. + Canto III. The Gate of Hell. The Inefficient or Indifferent. Pope + Celestine V. The Shores of Acheron. Charon. The Earthquake and the + Swoon. + Canto IV. The First Circle, Limbo: Virtuous Pagans and the + Unbaptized. The Four Poets, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. The + Noble Castle of Philosophy. + Canto V. The Second Circle: The Wanton. Minos. The Infernal + Hurricane. Francesca da Rimini. + Canto VI. The Third Circle: The Gluttonous. Cerberus. The Eternal + Rain. Ciacco. Florence. + Canto VII. The Fourth Circle: The Avaricious and the Prodigal. + Plutus. Fortune and her Wheel. The Fifth Circle: The Irascible and + the Sullen. Styx. + Canto VIII. Phlegyas. Philippo Argenti. The Gate of the City of + Dis. + Canto IX. The Furies and Medusa. The Angel. The City of Dis. The + Sixth Circle: Heresiarchs. + Canto X. Farinata and Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti. Discourse on the + Knowledge of the Damned. + Canto XI. The Broken Rocks. Pope Anastasius. General Description of + the Inferno and its Divisions. + Canto XII. The Minotaur. The Seventh Circle: The Violent. The River + Phlegethon. The Violent against their Neighbours. The Centaurs. + Tyrants. + Canto XIII. The Wood of Thorns. The Harpies. The Violent against + themselves. Suicides. Pier della Vigna. Lano and Jacopo da Sant’ + Andrea. + Canto XIV. The Sand Waste and the Rain of Fire. The Violent against + God. Capaneus. The Statue of Time, and the Four Infernal Rivers. + Canto XV. The Violent against Nature. Brunetto Latini. + Canto XVI. Guidoguerra, Aldobrandi, and Rusticucci. Cataract of + the River of Blood. + Canto XVII. Geryon. The Violent against Art. Usurers. Descent into + the Abyss of Malebolge. + Canto XVIII. The Eighth Circle, Malebolge: The Fraudulent and the + Malicious. The First Bolgia: Seducers and Panders. Venedico + Caccianimico. Jason. The Second Bolgia: Flatterers. Allessio + Interminelli. Thais. + Canto XIX. The Third Bolgia: Simoniacs. Pope Nicholas III. Dante’s + Reproof of corrupt Prelates. + Canto XX. The Fourth Bolgia: Soothsayers. Amphiaraus, Tiresias, + Aruns, Manto, Eryphylus, Michael Scott, Guido Bonatti, and + Asdente. Virgil reproaches Dante’s Pity. Mantua’s Foundation. + Canto XXI. The Fifth Bolgia: Peculators. The Elder of Santa Zita. + Malacoda and other Devils. + Canto XXII. Ciampolo, Friar Gomita, and Michael Zanche. The + Malabranche quarrel. + Canto XXIII. Escape from the Malabranche. The Sixth Bolgia: + Hypocrites. Catalano and Loderingo. Caiaphas. + Canto XXIV. The Seventh Bolgia: Thieves. Vanni Fucci. Serpents. + Canto XXV. Vanni Fucci’s Punishment. Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso + degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, Cianfa de’ Donati, and Guercio + Cavalcanti. + Canto XXVI. The Eighth Bolgia: Evil Counsellors. Ulysses and + Diomed. Ulysses’ Last Voyage. + Canto XXVII. Guido da Montefeltro. His deception by Pope + Boniface VIII. + Canto XXVIII. The Ninth Bolgia: Schismatics. Mahomet and Ali. Pier + da Medicina, Curio, Mosca, and Bertrand de Born. + Canto XXIX. Geri del Bello. The Tenth Bolgia: Alchemists. + Griffolino d’ Arezzo and Capocchino. + Canto XXX. Other Falsifiers or Forgers. Gianni Schicchi, Myrrha, + Adam of Brescia, Potiphar’s Wife, and Sinon of Troy. + Canto XXXI. The Giants, Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antaeus. Descent + to Cocytus. + Canto XXXII. The Ninth Circle: Traitors. The Frozen Lake of + Cocytus. First Division, Caina: Traitors to their Kindred. + Camicion de’ Pazzi. Second Division, Antenora: Traitors to their + Country. Dante questions Bocca degli Abati. Buoso da Duera. + Canto XXXIII. Count Ugolino and the Archbishop Ruggieri. The Death + of Count Ugolino’s Sons. Third Division of the Ninth Circle, + Ptolomaea: Traitors to their Friends. Friar Alberigo, Branco d’ + Oria. + Canto XXXIV. Fourth Division of the Ninth Circle, the Judecca: + Traitors to their Lords and Benefactors. Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, + Brutus, and Cassius. The Chasm of Lethe. The Ascent. + + PURGATORIO + I. The Shores of Purgatory. The Four Stars. Cato of Utica. The + Rush. + II. The Celestial Pilot. Casella. The Departure. + III. Discourse on the Limits of Reason. The Foot of the Mountain. + Those who died in Contumacy of Holy Church. Manfredi. + IV. Farther Ascent. Nature of the Mountain. The Negligent, who + postponed Repentance till the last Hour. Belacqua. + V. Those who died by Violence, but repentant. Buonconte di + Monfeltro. La Pia. + VI. Dante’s Inquiry on Prayers for the Dead. Sordello. Italy. + VII. The Valley of Flowers. Negligent Princes. + VIII. The Guardian Angels and the Serpent. Nino di Gallura. The + Three Stars. Currado Malaspina. + IX. Dante’s Dream of the Eagle. The Gate of Purgatory and the + Angel. Seven P’s. The Keys. + X. The Needle’s Eye. The First Circle: The Proud. The Sculptures + on the Wall. + XI. The Humble Prayer. Omberto di Santafiore. Oderisi d’ Agobbio. + Provenzan Salvani. + XII. The Sculptures on the Pavement. Ascent to the Second Circle. + XIII. The Second Circle: The Envious. Sapia of Siena. + XIV. Guido del Duca and Renier da Calboli. Cities of the Arno + Valley. Denunciation of Stubbornness. + XV. The Third Circle: The Irascible. Dante’s Visions. The Smoke. + XVI. Marco Lombardo. Lament over the State of the World. + XVII. Dante’s Dream of Anger. The Fourth Circle: The Slothful. + Virgil’s Discourse of Love. + XVIII. Virgil further discourses of Love and Free Will. The Abbot + of San Zeno. + XIX. Dante’s Dream of the Siren. The Fifth Circle: The Avaricious + and Prodigal. Pope Adrian V. + XX. Hugh Capet. Corruption of the French Crown. Prophecy of the + Abduction of Pope Boniface VIII and the Sacrilege of Philip the + Fair. The Earthquake. + XXI. The Poet Statius. Praise of Virgil. + XXII. Statius’ Denunciation of Avarice. The Sixth Circle: The + Gluttonous. The Mystic Tree. + XXIII. Forese. Reproof of immodest Florentine Women. + XXIV. Buonagiunta da Lucca. Pope Martin IV, and others. Inquiry + into the State of Poetry. + XXV. Discourse of Statius on Generation. The Seventh Circle: The + Wanton. + XXVI. Sodomites. Guido Guinicelli and Arnaldo Daniello. + XXVII. The Wall of Fire and the Angel of God. Dante’s Sleep upon + the Stairway, and his Dream of Leah and Rachel. Arrival at the + Terrestrial Paradise. + XXVIII. The River Lethe. Matilda. The Nature of the Terrestrial + Paradise. + XXIX. The Triumph of the Church. + XXX. Virgil’s Departure. Beatrice. Dante’s Shame. + XXXI. Reproaches of Beatrice and Confession of Dante. The Passage + of Lethe. The Seven Virtues. The Griffon. + XXXII. The Tree of Knowledge. Allegory of the Chariot. + XXXIII. Lament over the State of the Church. Final Reproaches of + Beatrice. The River Eunoe. + + PARADISO + I. The Ascent to the First Heaven. The Sphere of Fire. + II. The First Heaven, the Moon: Spirits who, having taken Sacred + Vows, were forced to violate them. The Lunar Spots. + III. Piccarda Donati and the Empress Constance. + IV. Questionings of the Soul and of Broken Vows. + V. Discourse of Beatrice on Vows and Compensations. Ascent to the + Second Heaven, Mercury: Spirits who for the Love of Fame achieved + great Deeds. + VI. Justinian. The Roman Eagle. The Empire. Romeo. + VII. Beatrice’s Discourse of the Crucifixion, the Incarnation, the + Immortality of the Soul, and the Resurrection of the Body. + VIII. Ascent to the Third Heaven, Venus: Lovers. Charles Martel. + Discourse on diverse Natures. + IX. Cunizza da Romano, Folco of Marseilles, and Rahab. Neglect of + the Holy Land. + X. The Fourth Heaven, the Sun: Theologians and Fathers of the + Church. The First Circle. St. Thomas of Aquinas. + XI. St. Thomas recounts the Life of St. Francis. Lament over the + State of the Dominican Order. + XII. St. Buonaventura recounts the Life of St. Dominic. Lament over + the State of the Franciscan Order. The Second Circle. + XIII. Of the Wisdom of Solomon. St. Thomas reproaches Dante’s + Judgement. + XIV. The Third Circle. Discourse on the Resurrection of the Flesh. + The Fifth Heaven, Mars: Martyrs and Crusaders who died fighting + for the true Faith. The Celestial Cross. + XV. Cacciaguida. Florence in the Olden Time. + XVI. Dante’s Noble Ancestry. Cacciaguida’s Discourse of the Great + Florentines. + XVII. Cacciaguida’s Prophecy of Dante’s Banishment. + XVIII. The Sixth Heaven, Jupiter: Righteous Kings and Rulers. The + Celestial Eagle. Dante’s Invectives against ecclesiastical + Avarice. + XIX. The Eagle discourses of Salvation, Faith, and Virtue. + Condemnation of the vile Kings of A.D. 1300. + XX. The Eagle praises the Righteous Kings of old. Benevolence of + the Divine Will. + XXI. The Seventh Heaven, Saturn: The Contemplative. The Celestial + Stairway. St. Peter Damiano. His Invectives against the Luxury of + the Prelates. + XXII. St. Benedict. His Lamentation over the Corruption of Monks. + The Eighth Heaven, the Fixed Stars. + XXIII. The Triumph of Christ. The Virgin Mary. The Apostles. + Gabriel. + XXIV. The Radiant Wheel. St. Peter examines Dante on Faith. + XXV. The Laurel Crown. St. James examines Dante on Hope. Dante’s + Blindness. + XXVI. St. John examines Dante on Charity. Dante’s Sight. Adam. + XXVII. St. Peter’s reproof of bad Popes. The Ascent to the Ninth + Heaven, the ‘Primum Mobile.’ + XXVIII. God and the Angelic Hierarchies. + XXIX. Beatrice’s Discourse of the Creation of the Angels, and of + the Fall of Lucifer. Her Reproof of Foolish and Avaricious + Preachers. + XXX. The Tenth Heaven, or Empyrean. The River of Light. The Two + Courts of Heaven. The White Rose of Paradise. The great Throne. + XXXI. The Glory of Paradise. Departure of Beatrice. St. Bernard. + XXXII. St. Bernard points out the Saints in the White Rose. + XXXIII. Prayer to the Virgin. The Threefold Circle of the Trinity. + Mystery of the Divine and Human Nature. + APPENDIX + + + + +INFERNO + + + + +Inferno: Canto I + + +Midway upon the journey of our life + I found myself within a forest dark, + For the straightforward pathway had been lost. + +Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say + What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, + Which in the very thought renews the fear. + +So bitter is it, death is little more; + But of the good to treat, which there I found, + Speak will I of the other things I saw there. + +I cannot well repeat how there I entered, + So full was I of slumber at the moment + In which I had abandoned the true way. + +But after I had reached a mountain’s foot, + At that point where the valley terminated, + Which had with consternation pierced my heart, + +Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders, + Vested already with that planet’s rays + Which leadeth others right by every road. + +Then was the fear a little quieted + That in my heart’s lake had endured throughout + The night, which I had passed so piteously. + +And even as he, who, with distressful breath, + Forth issued from the sea upon the shore, + Turns to the water perilous and gazes; + +So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward, + Turn itself back to re-behold the pass + Which never yet a living person left. + +After my weary body I had rested, + The way resumed I on the desert slope, + So that the firm foot ever was the lower. + +And lo! almost where the ascent began, + A panther light and swift exceedingly, + Which with a spotted skin was covered o’er! + +And never moved she from before my face, + Nay, rather did impede so much my way, + That many times I to return had turned. + +The time was the beginning of the morning, + And up the sun was mounting with those stars + That with him were, what time the Love Divine + +At first in motion set those beauteous things; + So were to me occasion of good hope, + The variegated skin of that wild beast, + +The hour of time, and the delicious season; + But not so much, that did not give me fear + A lion’s aspect which appeared to me. + +He seemed as if against me he were coming + With head uplifted, and with ravenous hunger, + So that it seemed the air was afraid of him; + +And a she-wolf, that with all hungerings + Seemed to be laden in her meagreness, + And many folk has caused to live forlorn! + +She brought upon me so much heaviness, + With the affright that from her aspect came, + That I the hope relinquished of the height. + +And as he is who willingly acquires, + And the time comes that causes him to lose, + Who weeps in all his thoughts and is despondent, + +E’en such made me that beast withouten peace, + Which, coming on against me by degrees + Thrust me back thither where the sun is silent. + +While I was rushing downward to the lowland, + Before mine eyes did one present himself, + Who seemed from long-continued silence hoarse. + +When I beheld him in the desert vast, + “Have pity on me,” unto him I cried, + “Whiche’er thou art, or shade or real man!” + +He answered me: “Not man; man once I was, + And both my parents were of Lombardy, + And Mantuans by country both of them. + +‘Sub Julio’ was I born, though it was late, + And lived at Rome under the good Augustus, + During the time of false and lying gods. + +A poet was I, and I sang that just + Son of Anchises, who came forth from Troy, + After that Ilion the superb was burned. + +But thou, why goest thou back to such annoyance? + Why climb’st thou not the Mount Delectable, + Which is the source and cause of every joy?” + +“Now, art thou that Virgilius and that fountain + Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech?” + I made response to him with bashful forehead. + +“O, of the other poets honour and light, + Avail me the long study and great love + That have impelled me to explore thy volume! + +Thou art my master, and my author thou, + Thou art alone the one from whom I took + The beautiful style that has done honour to me. + +Behold the beast, for which I have turned back; + Do thou protect me from her, famous Sage, + For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.” + +“Thee it behoves to take another road,” + Responded he, when he beheld me weeping, + “If from this savage place thou wouldst escape; + +Because this beast, at which thou criest out, + Suffers not any one to pass her way, + But so doth harass him, that she destroys him; + +And has a nature so malign and ruthless, + That never doth she glut her greedy will, + And after food is hungrier than before. + +Many the animals with whom she weds, + And more they shall be still, until the Greyhound + Comes, who shall make her perish in her pain. + +He shall not feed on either earth or pelf, + But upon wisdom, and on love and virtue; + ’Twixt Feltro and Feltro shall his nation be; + +Of that low Italy shall he be the saviour, + On whose account the maid Camilla died, + Euryalus, Turnus, Nisus, of their wounds; + +Through every city shall he hunt her down, + Until he shall have driven her back to Hell, + There from whence envy first did let her loose. + +Therefore I think and judge it for thy best + Thou follow me, and I will be thy guide, + And lead thee hence through the eternal place, + +Where thou shalt hear the desperate lamentations, + Shalt see the ancient spirits disconsolate, + Who cry out each one for the second death; + +And thou shalt see those who contented are + Within the fire, because they hope to come, + Whene’er it may be, to the blessed people; + +To whom, then, if thou wishest to ascend, + A soul shall be for that than I more worthy; + With her at my departure I will leave thee; + +Because that Emperor, who reigns above, + In that I was rebellious to his law, + Wills that through me none come into his city. + +He governs everywhere, and there he reigns; + There is his city and his lofty throne; + O happy he whom thereto he elects!” + +And I to him: “Poet, I thee entreat, + By that same God whom thou didst never know, + So that I may escape this woe and worse, + +Thou wouldst conduct me there where thou hast said, + That I may see the portal of Saint Peter, + And those thou makest so disconsolate.” + +Then he moved on, and I behind him followed. + + + + +Inferno: Canto II + + +Day was departing, and the embrowned air + Released the animals that are on earth + From their fatigues; and I the only one + +Made myself ready to sustain the war, + Both of the way and likewise of the woe, + Which memory that errs not shall retrace. + +O Muses, O high genius, now assist me! + O memory, that didst write down what I saw, + Here thy nobility shall be manifest! + +And I began: “Poet, who guidest me, + Regard my manhood, if it be sufficient, + Ere to the arduous pass thou dost confide me. + +Thou sayest, that of Silvius the parent, + While yet corruptible, unto the world + Immortal went, and was there bodily. + +But if the adversary of all evil + Was courteous, thinking of the high effect + That issue would from him, and who, and what, + +To men of intellect unmeet it seems not; + For he was of great Rome, and of her empire + In the empyreal heaven as father chosen; + +The which and what, wishing to speak the truth, + Were stablished as the holy place, wherein + Sits the successor of the greatest Peter. + +Upon this journey, whence thou givest him vaunt, + Things did he hear, which the occasion were + Both of his victory and the papal mantle. + +Thither went afterwards the Chosen Vessel, + To bring back comfort thence unto that Faith, + Which of salvation’s way is the beginning. + +But I, why thither come, or who concedes it? + I not Aeneas am, I am not Paul, + Nor I, nor others, think me worthy of it. + +Therefore, if I resign myself to come, + I fear the coming may be ill-advised; + Thou’rt wise, and knowest better than I speak.” + +And as he is, who unwills what he willed, + And by new thoughts doth his intention change, + So that from his design he quite withdraws, + +Such I became, upon that dark hillside, + Because, in thinking, I consumed the emprise, + Which was so very prompt in the beginning. + +“If I have well thy language understood,” + Replied that shade of the Magnanimous, + “Thy soul attainted is with cowardice, + +Which many times a man encumbers so, + It turns him back from honoured enterprise, + As false sight doth a beast, when he is shy. + +That thou mayst free thee from this apprehension, + I’ll tell thee why I came, and what I heard + At the first moment when I grieved for thee. + +Among those was I who are in suspense, + And a fair, saintly Lady called to me + In such wise, I besought her to command me. + +Her eyes where shining brighter than the Star; + And she began to say, gentle and low, + With voice angelical, in her own language: + +‘O spirit courteous of Mantua, + Of whom the fame still in the world endures, + And shall endure, long-lasting as the world; + +A friend of mine, and not the friend of fortune, + Upon the desert slope is so impeded + Upon his way, that he has turned through terror, + +And may, I fear, already be so lost, + That I too late have risen to his succour, + From that which I have heard of him in Heaven. + +Bestir thee now, and with thy speech ornate, + And with what needful is for his release, + Assist him so, that I may be consoled. + +Beatrice am I, who do bid thee go; + I come from there, where I would fain return; + Love moved me, which compelleth me to speak. + +When I shall be in presence of my Lord, + Full often will I praise thee unto him.’ + Then paused she, and thereafter I began: + +‘O Lady of virtue, thou alone through whom + The human race exceedeth all contained + Within the heaven that has the lesser circles, + +So grateful unto me is thy commandment, + To obey, if ’twere already done, were late; + No farther need’st thou ope to me thy wish. + +But the cause tell me why thou dost not shun + The here descending down into this centre, + From the vast place thou burnest to return to.’ + +‘Since thou wouldst fain so inwardly discern, + Briefly will I relate,’ she answered me, + ‘Why I am not afraid to enter here. + +Of those things only should one be afraid + Which have the power of doing others harm; + Of the rest, no; because they are not fearful. + +God in his mercy such created me + That misery of yours attains me not, + Nor any flame assails me of this burning. + +A gentle Lady is in Heaven, who grieves + At this impediment, to which I send thee, + So that stern judgment there above is broken. + +In her entreaty she besought Lucia, + And said, “Thy faithful one now stands in need + Of thee, and unto thee I recommend him.” + +Lucia, foe of all that cruel is, + Hastened away, and came unto the place + Where I was sitting with the ancient Rachel. + +“Beatrice” said she, “the true praise of God, + Why succourest thou not him, who loved thee so, + For thee he issued from the vulgar herd? + +Dost thou not hear the pity of his plaint? + Dost thou not see the death that combats him + Beside that flood, where ocean has no vaunt?” + +Never were persons in the world so swift + To work their weal and to escape their woe, + As I, after such words as these were uttered, + +Came hither downward from my blessed seat, + Confiding in thy dignified discourse, + Which honours thee, and those who’ve listened to it.’ + +After she thus had spoken unto me, + Weeping, her shining eyes she turned away; + Whereby she made me swifter in my coming; + +And unto thee I came, as she desired; + I have delivered thee from that wild beast, + Which barred the beautiful mountain’s short ascent. + +What is it, then? Why, why dost thou delay? + Why is such baseness bedded in thy heart? + Daring and hardihood why hast thou not, + +Seeing that three such Ladies benedight + Are caring for thee in the court of Heaven, + And so much good my speech doth promise thee?” + +Even as the flowerets, by nocturnal chill, + Bowed down and closed, when the sun whitens them, + Uplift themselves all open on their stems; + +Such I became with my exhausted strength, + And such good courage to my heart there coursed, + That I began, like an intrepid person: + +“O she compassionate, who succoured me, + And courteous thou, who hast obeyed so soon + The words of truth which she addressed to thee! + +Thou hast my heart so with desire disposed + To the adventure, with these words of thine, + That to my first intent I have returned. + +Now go, for one sole will is in us both, + Thou Leader, and thou Lord, and Master thou.” + Thus said I to him; and when he had moved, + +I entered on the deep and savage way. + + + + +Inferno: Canto III + + +“Through me the way is to the city dolent; + Through me the way is to eternal dole; + Through me the way among the people lost. + +Justice incited my sublime Creator; + Created me divine Omnipotence, + The highest Wisdom and the primal Love. + +Before me there were no created things, + Only eterne, and I eternal last. + All hope abandon, ye who enter in!” + +These words in sombre colour I beheld + Written upon the summit of a gate; + Whence I: “Their sense is, Master, hard to me!” + +And he to me, as one experienced: + “Here all suspicion needs must be abandoned, + All cowardice must needs be here extinct. + +We to the place have come, where I have told thee + Thou shalt behold the people dolorous + Who have foregone the good of intellect.” + +And after he had laid his hand on mine + With joyful mien, whence I was comforted, + He led me in among the secret things. + +There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud + Resounded through the air without a star, + Whence I, at the beginning, wept thereat. + +Languages diverse, horrible dialects, + Accents of anger, words of agony, + And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands, + +Made up a tumult that goes whirling on + For ever in that air for ever black, + Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes. + +And I, who had my head with horror bound, + Said: “Master, what is this which now I hear? + What folk is this, which seems by pain so vanquished?” + +And he to me: “This miserable mode + Maintain the melancholy souls of those + Who lived withouten infamy or praise. + +Commingled are they with that caitiff choir + Of Angels, who have not rebellious been, + Nor faithful were to God, but were for self. + +The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair; + Nor them the nethermore abyss receives, + For glory none the damned would have from them.” + +And I: “O Master, what so grievous is + To these, that maketh them lament so sore?” + He answered: “I will tell thee very briefly. + +These have no longer any hope of death; + And this blind life of theirs is so debased, + They envious are of every other fate. + +No fame of them the world permits to be; + Misericord and Justice both disdain them. + Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass.” + +And I, who looked again, beheld a banner, + Which, whirling round, ran on so rapidly, + That of all pause it seemed to me indignant; + +And after it there came so long a train + Of people, that I ne’er would have believed + That ever Death so many had undone. + +When some among them I had recognised, + I looked, and I beheld the shade of him + Who made through cowardice the great refusal. + +Forthwith I comprehended, and was certain, + That this the sect was of the caitiff wretches + Hateful to God and to his enemies. + +These miscreants, who never were alive, + Were naked, and were stung exceedingly + By gadflies and by hornets that were there. + +These did their faces irrigate with blood, + Which, with their tears commingled, at their feet + By the disgusting worms was gathered up. + +And when to gazing farther I betook me. + People I saw on a great river’s bank; + Whence said I: “Master, now vouchsafe to me, + +That I may know who these are, and what law + Makes them appear so ready to pass over, + As I discern athwart the dusky light.” + +And he to me: “These things shall all be known + To thee, as soon as we our footsteps stay + Upon the dismal shore of Acheron.” + +Then with mine eyes ashamed and downward cast, + Fearing my words might irksome be to him, + From speech refrained I till we reached the river. + +And lo! towards us coming in a boat + An old man, hoary with the hair of eld, + Crying: “Woe unto you, ye souls depraved! + +Hope nevermore to look upon the heavens; + I come to lead you to the other shore, + To the eternal shades in heat and frost. + +And thou, that yonder standest, living soul, + Withdraw thee from these people, who are dead!” + But when he saw that I did not withdraw, + +He said: “By other ways, by other ports + Thou to the shore shalt come, not here, for passage; + A lighter vessel needs must carry thee.” + +And unto him the Guide: “Vex thee not, Charon; + It is so willed there where is power to do + That which is willed; and farther question not.” + +Thereat were quieted the fleecy cheeks + Of him the ferryman of the livid fen, + Who round about his eyes had wheels of flame. + +But all those souls who weary were and naked + Their colour changed and gnashed their teeth together, + As soon as they had heard those cruel words. + +God they blasphemed and their progenitors, + The human race, the place, the time, the seed + Of their engendering and of their birth! + +Thereafter all together they drew back, + Bitterly weeping, to the accursed shore, + Which waiteth every man who fears not God. + +Charon the demon, with the eyes of glede, + Beckoning to them, collects them all together, + Beats with his oar whoever lags behind. + +As in the autumn-time the leaves fall off, + First one and then another, till the branch + Unto the earth surrenders all its spoils; + +In similar wise the evil seed of Adam + Throw themselves from that margin one by one, + At signals, as a bird unto its lure. + +So they depart across the dusky wave, + And ere upon the other side they land, + Again on this side a new troop assembles. + +“My son,” the courteous Master said to me, + “All those who perish in the wrath of God + Here meet together out of every land; + +And ready are they to pass o’er the river, + Because celestial Justice spurs them on, + So that their fear is turned into desire. + +This way there never passes a good soul; + And hence if Charon doth complain of thee, + Well mayst thou know now what his speech imports.” + +This being finished, all the dusk champaign + Trembled so violently, that of that terror + The recollection bathes me still with sweat. + +The land of tears gave forth a blast of wind, + And fulminated a vermilion light, + Which overmastered in me every sense, + +And as a man whom sleep hath seized I fell. + + + + +Inferno: Canto IV + + +Broke the deep lethargy within my head + A heavy thunder, so that I upstarted, + Like to a person who by force is wakened; + +And round about I moved my rested eyes, + Uprisen erect, and steadfastly I gazed, + To recognise the place wherein I was. + +True is it, that upon the verge I found me + Of the abysmal valley dolorous, + That gathers thunder of infinite ululations. + +Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous, + So that by fixing on its depths my sight + Nothing whatever I discerned therein. + +“Let us descend now into the blind world,” + Began the Poet, pallid utterly; + “I will be first, and thou shalt second be.” + +And I, who of his colour was aware, + Said: “How shall I come, if thou art afraid, + Who’rt wont to be a comfort to my fears?” + +And he to me: “The anguish of the people + Who are below here in my face depicts + That pity which for terror thou hast taken. + +Let us go on, for the long way impels us.” + Thus he went in, and thus he made me enter + The foremost circle that surrounds the abyss. + +There, as it seemed to me from listening, + Were lamentations none, but only sighs, + That tremble made the everlasting air. + +And this arose from sorrow without torment, + Which the crowds had, that many were and great, + Of infants and of women and of men. + +To me the Master good: “Thou dost not ask + What spirits these, which thou beholdest, are? + Now will I have thee know, ere thou go farther, + +That they sinned not; and if they merit had, + ’Tis not enough, because they had not baptism + Which is the portal of the Faith thou holdest; + +And if they were before Christianity, + In the right manner they adored not God; + And among such as these am I myself. + +For such defects, and not for other guilt, + Lost are we and are only so far punished, + That without hope we live on in desire.” + +Great grief seized on my heart when this I heard, + Because some people of much worthiness + I knew, who in that Limbo were suspended. + +“Tell me, my Master, tell me, thou my Lord,” + Began I, with desire of being certain + Of that Faith which o’ercometh every error, + +“Came any one by his own merit hence, + Or by another’s, who was blessed thereafter?” + And he, who understood my covert speech, + +Replied: “I was a novice in this state, + When I saw hither come a Mighty One, + With sign of victory incoronate. + +Hence he drew forth the shade of the First Parent, + And that of his son Abel, and of Noah, + Of Moses the lawgiver, and the obedient + +Abraham, patriarch, and David, king, + Israel with his father and his children, + And Rachel, for whose sake he did so much, + +And others many, and he made them blessed; + And thou must know, that earlier than these + Never were any human spirits saved.” + +We ceased not to advance because he spake, + But still were passing onward through the forest, + The forest, say I, of thick-crowded ghosts. + +Not very far as yet our way had gone + This side the summit, when I saw a fire + That overcame a hemisphere of darkness. + +We were a little distant from it still, + But not so far that I in part discerned not + That honourable people held that place. + +“O thou who honourest every art and science, + Who may these be, which such great honour have, + That from the fashion of the rest it parts them?” + +And he to me: “The honourable name, + That sounds of them above there in thy life, + Wins grace in Heaven, that so advances them.” + +In the mean time a voice was heard by me: + “All honour be to the pre-eminent Poet; + His shade returns again, that was departed.” + +After the voice had ceased and quiet was, + Four mighty shades I saw approaching us; + Semblance had they nor sorrowful nor glad. + +To say to me began my gracious Master: + “Him with that falchion in his hand behold, + Who comes before the three, even as their lord. + +That one is Homer, Poet sovereign; + He who comes next is Horace, the satirist; + The third is Ovid, and the last is Lucan. + +Because to each of these with me applies + The name that solitary voice proclaimed, + They do me honour, and in that do well.” + +Thus I beheld assemble the fair school + Of that lord of the song pre-eminent, + Who o’er the others like an eagle soars. + +When they together had discoursed somewhat, + They turned to me with signs of salutation, + And on beholding this, my Master smiled; + +And more of honour still, much more, they did me, + In that they made me one of their own band; + So that the sixth was I, ’mid so much wit. + +Thus we went on as far as to the light, + Things saying ’tis becoming to keep silent, + As was the saying of them where I was. + +We came unto a noble castle’s foot, + Seven times encompassed with lofty walls, + Defended round by a fair rivulet; + +This we passed over even as firm ground; + Through portals seven I entered with these Sages; + We came into a meadow of fresh verdure. + +People were there with solemn eyes and slow, + Of great authority in their countenance; + They spake but seldom, and with gentle voices. + +Thus we withdrew ourselves upon one side + Into an opening luminous and lofty, + So that they all of them were visible. + +There opposite, upon the green enamel, + Were pointed out to me the mighty spirits, + Whom to have seen I feel myself exalted. + +I saw Electra with companions many, + ’Mongst whom I knew both Hector and Aeneas, + Caesar in armour with gerfalcon eyes; + +I saw Camilla and Penthesilea + On the other side, and saw the King Latinus, + Who with Lavinia his daughter sat; + +I saw that Brutus who drove Tarquin forth, + Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia, + And saw alone, apart, the Saladin. + +When I had lifted up my brows a little, + The Master I beheld of those who know, + Sit with his philosophic family. + +All gaze upon him, and all do him honour. + There I beheld both Socrates and Plato, + Who nearer him before the others stand; + +Democritus, who puts the world on chance, + Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales, + Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus; + +Of qualities I saw the good collector, + Hight Dioscorides; and Orpheus saw I, + Tully and Livy, and moral Seneca, + +Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy, + Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna, + Averroes, who the great Comment made. + +I cannot all of them pourtray in full, + Because so drives me onward the long theme, + That many times the word comes short of fact. + +The sixfold company in two divides; + Another way my sapient Guide conducts me + Forth from the quiet to the air that trembles; + +And to a place I come where nothing shines. + + + + +Inferno: Canto V + + +Thus I descended out of the first circle + Down to the second, that less space begirds, + And so much greater dole, that goads to wailing. + +There standeth Minos horribly, and snarls; + Examines the transgressions at the entrance; + Judges, and sends according as he girds him. + +I say, that when the spirit evil-born + Cometh before him, wholly it confesses; + And this discriminator of transgressions + +Seeth what place in Hell is meet for it; + Girds himself with his tail as many times + As grades he wishes it should be thrust down. + +Always before him many of them stand; + They go by turns each one unto the judgment; + They speak, and hear, and then are downward hurled. + +“O thou, that to this dolorous hostelry + Comest,” said Minos to me, when he saw me, + Leaving the practice of so great an office, + +“Look how thou enterest, and in whom thou trustest; + Let not the portal’s amplitude deceive thee.” + And unto him my Guide: “Why criest thou too? + +Do not impede his journey fate-ordained; + It is so willed there where is power to do + That which is willed; and ask no further question.” + +And now begin the dolesome notes to grow + Audible unto me; now am I come + There where much lamentation strikes upon me. + +I came into a place mute of all light, + Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest, + If by opposing winds ’t is combated. + +The infernal hurricane that never rests + Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine; + Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. + +When they arrive before the precipice, + There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments, + There they blaspheme the puissance divine. + +I understood that unto such a torment + The carnal malefactors were condemned, + Who reason subjugate to appetite. + +And as the wings of starlings bear them on + In the cold season in large band and full, + So doth that blast the spirits maledict; + +It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them; + No hope doth comfort them for evermore, + Not of repose, but even of lesser pain. + +And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays, + Making in air a long line of themselves, + So saw I coming, uttering lamentations, + +Shadows borne onward by the aforesaid stress. + Whereupon said I: “Master, who are those + People, whom the black air so castigates?” + +“The first of those, of whom intelligence + Thou fain wouldst have,” then said he unto me, + “The empress was of many languages. + +To sensual vices she was so abandoned, + That lustful she made licit in her law, + To remove the blame to which she had been led. + +She is Semiramis, of whom we read + That she succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse; + She held the land which now the Sultan rules. + +The next is she who killed herself for love, + And broke faith with the ashes of Sichaeus; + Then Cleopatra the voluptuous.” + +Helen I saw, for whom so many ruthless + Seasons revolved; and saw the great Achilles, + Who at the last hour combated with Love. + +Paris I saw, Tristan; and more than a thousand + Shades did he name and point out with his finger, + Whom Love had separated from our life. + +After that I had listened to my Teacher, + Naming the dames of eld and cavaliers, + Pity prevailed, and I was nigh bewildered. + +And I began: “O Poet, willingly + Speak would I to those two, who go together, + And seem upon the wind to be so light.” + +And, he to me: “Thou’lt mark, when they shall be + Nearer to us; and then do thou implore them + By love which leadeth them, and they will come.” + +Soon as the wind in our direction sways them, + My voice uplift I: “O ye weary souls! + Come speak to us, if no one interdicts it.” + +As turtle-doves, called onward by desire, + With open and steady wings to the sweet nest + Fly through the air by their volition borne, + +So came they from the band where Dido is, + Approaching us athwart the air malign, + So strong was the affectionate appeal. + +“O living creature gracious and benignant, + Who visiting goest through the purple air + Us, who have stained the world incarnadine, + +If were the King of the Universe our friend, + We would pray unto him to give thee peace, + Since thou hast pity on our woe perverse. + +Of what it pleases thee to hear and speak, + That will we hear, and we will speak to you, + While silent is the wind, as it is now. + +Sitteth the city, wherein I was born, + Upon the sea-shore where the Po descends + To rest in peace with all his retinue. + +Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize, + Seized this man for the person beautiful + That was ta’en from me, and still the mode offends me. + +Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, + Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, + That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me; + +Love has conducted us unto one death; + Caina waiteth him who quenched our life!” + These words were borne along from them to us. + +As soon as I had heard those souls tormented, + I bowed my face, and so long held it down + Until the Poet said to me: “What thinkest?” + +When I made answer, I began: “Alas! + How many pleasant thoughts, how much desire, + Conducted these unto the dolorous pass!” + +Then unto them I turned me, and I spake, + And I began: “Thine agonies, Francesca, + Sad and compassionate to weeping make me. + +But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs, + By what and in what manner Love conceded, + That you should know your dubious desires?” + +And she to me: “There is no greater sorrow + Than to be mindful of the happy time + In misery, and that thy Teacher knows. + +But, if to recognise the earliest root + Of love in us thou hast so great desire, + I will do even as he who weeps and speaks. + +One day we reading were for our delight + Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthral. + Alone we were and without any fear. + +Full many a time our eyes together drew + That reading, and drove the colour from our faces; + But one point only was it that o’ercame us. + +When as we read of the much-longed-for smile + Being by such a noble lover kissed, + This one, who ne’er from me shall be divided, + +Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. + Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. + That day no farther did we read therein.” + +And all the while one spirit uttered this, + The other one did weep so, that, for pity, + I swooned away as if I had been dying, + +And fell, even as a dead body falls. + + + + +Inferno: Canto VI + + +At the return of consciousness, that closed + Before the pity of those two relations, + Which utterly with sadness had confused me, + +New torments I behold, and new tormented + Around me, whichsoever way I move, + And whichsoever way I turn, and gaze. + +In the third circle am I of the rain + Eternal, maledict, and cold, and heavy; + Its law and quality are never new. + +Huge hail, and water sombre-hued, and snow, + Athwart the tenebrous air pour down amain; + Noisome the earth is, that receiveth this. + +Cerberus, monster cruel and uncouth, + With his three gullets like a dog is barking + Over the people that are there submerged. + +Red eyes he has, and unctuous beard and black, + And belly large, and armed with claws his hands; + He rends the spirits, flays, and quarters them. + +Howl the rain maketh them like unto dogs; + One side they make a shelter for the other; + Oft turn themselves the wretched reprobates. + +When Cerberus perceived us, the great worm! + His mouths he opened, and displayed his tusks; + Not a limb had he that was motionless. + +And my Conductor, with his spans extended, + Took of the earth, and with his fists well filled, + He threw it into those rapacious gullets. + +Such as that dog is, who by barking craves, + And quiet grows soon as his food he gnaws, + For to devour it he but thinks and struggles, + +The like became those muzzles filth-begrimed + Of Cerberus the demon, who so thunders + Over the souls that they would fain be deaf. + +We passed across the shadows, which subdues + The heavy rain-storm, and we placed our feet + Upon their vanity that person seems. + +They all were lying prone upon the earth, + Excepting one, who sat upright as soon + As he beheld us passing on before him. + +“O thou that art conducted through this Hell,” + He said to me, “recall me, if thou canst; + Thyself wast made before I was unmade.” + +And I to him: “The anguish which thou hast + Perhaps doth draw thee out of my remembrance, + So that it seems not I have ever seen thee. + +But tell me who thou art, that in so doleful + A place art put, and in such punishment, + If some are greater, none is so displeasing.” + +And he to me: “Thy city, which is full + Of envy so that now the sack runs over, + Held me within it in the life serene. + +You citizens were wont to call me Ciacco; + For the pernicious sin of gluttony + I, as thou seest, am battered by this rain. + +And I, sad soul, am not the only one, + For all these suffer the like penalty + For the like sin;” and word no more spake he. + +I answered him: “Ciacco, thy wretchedness + Weighs on me so that it to weep invites me; + But tell me, if thou knowest, to what shall come + +The citizens of the divided city; + If any there be just; and the occasion + Tell me why so much discord has assailed it.” + +And he to me: “They, after long contention, + Will come to bloodshed; and the rustic party + Will drive the other out with much offence. + +Then afterwards behoves it this one fall + Within three suns, and rise again the other + By force of him who now is on the coast. + +High will it hold its forehead a long while, + Keeping the other under heavy burdens, + Howe’er it weeps thereat and is indignant. + +The just are two, and are not understood there; + Envy and Arrogance and Avarice + Are the three sparks that have all hearts enkindled.” + +Here ended he his tearful utterance; + And I to him: “I wish thee still to teach me, + And make a gift to me of further speech. + +Farinata and Tegghiaio, once so worthy, + Jacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo, and Mosca, + And others who on good deeds set their thoughts, + +Say where they are, and cause that I may know them; + For great desire constraineth me to learn + If Heaven doth sweeten them, or Hell envenom.” + +And he: “They are among the blacker souls; + A different sin downweighs them to the bottom; + If thou so far descendest, thou canst see them. + +But when thou art again in the sweet world, + I pray thee to the mind of others bring me; + No more I tell thee and no more I answer.” + +Then his straightforward eyes he turned askance, + Eyed me a little, and then bowed his head; + He fell therewith prone like the other blind. + +And the Guide said to me: “He wakes no more + This side the sound of the angelic trumpet; + When shall approach the hostile Potentate, + +Each one shall find again his dismal tomb, + Shall reassume his flesh and his own figure, + Shall hear what through eternity re-echoes.” + +So we passed onward o’er the filthy mixture + Of shadows and of rain with footsteps slow, + Touching a little on the future life. + +Wherefore I said: “Master, these torments here, + Will they increase after the mighty sentence, + Or lesser be, or will they be as burning?” + +And he to me: “Return unto thy science, + Which wills, that as the thing more perfect is, + The more it feels of pleasure and of pain. + +Albeit that this people maledict + To true perfection never can attain, + Hereafter more than now they look to be.” + +Round in a circle by that road we went, + Speaking much more, which I do not repeat; + We came unto the point where the descent is; + +There we found Plutus the great enemy. + + + + +Inferno: Canto VII + + +“Pape Satan, Pape Satan, Aleppe!” + Thus Plutus with his clucking voice began; + And that benignant Sage, who all things knew, + +Said, to encourage me: “Let not thy fear + Harm thee; for any power that he may have + Shall not prevent thy going down this crag.” + +Then he turned round unto that bloated lip, + And said: “Be silent, thou accursed wolf; + Consume within thyself with thine own rage. + +Not causeless is this journey to the abyss; + Thus is it willed on high, where Michael wrought + Vengeance upon the proud adultery.” + +Even as the sails inflated by the wind + Involved together fall when snaps the mast, + So fell the cruel monster to the earth. + +Thus we descended into the fourth chasm, + Gaining still farther on the dolesome shore + Which all the woe of the universe insacks. + +Justice of God, ah! who heaps up so many + New toils and sufferings as I beheld? + And why doth our transgression waste us so? + +As doth the billow there upon Charybdis, + That breaks itself on that which it encounters, + So here the folk must dance their roundelay. + +Here saw I people, more than elsewhere, many, + On one side and the other, with great howls, + Rolling weights forward by main force of chest. + +They clashed together, and then at that point + Each one turned backward, rolling retrograde, + Crying, “Why keepest?” and, “Why squanderest thou?” + +Thus they returned along the lurid circle + On either hand unto the opposite point, + Shouting their shameful metre evermore. + +Then each, when he arrived there, wheeled about + Through his half-circle to another joust; + And I, who had my heart pierced as it were, + +Exclaimed: “My Master, now declare to me + What people these are, and if all were clerks, + These shaven crowns upon the left of us.” + +And he to me: “All of them were asquint + In intellect in the first life, so much + That there with measure they no spending made. + +Clearly enough their voices bark it forth, + Whene’er they reach the two points of the circle, + Where sunders them the opposite defect. + +Clerks those were who no hairy covering + Have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals, + In whom doth Avarice practise its excess.” + +And I: “My Master, among such as these + I ought forsooth to recognise some few, + Who were infected with these maladies.” + +And he to me: “Vain thought thou entertainest; + The undiscerning life which made them sordid + Now makes them unto all discernment dim. + +Forever shall they come to these two buttings; + These from the sepulchre shall rise again + With the fist closed, and these with tresses shorn. + +Ill giving and ill keeping the fair world + Have ta’en from them, and placed them in this scuffle; + Whate’er it be, no words adorn I for it. + +Now canst thou, Son, behold the transient farce + Of goods that are committed unto Fortune, + For which the human race each other buffet; + +For all the gold that is beneath the moon, + Or ever has been, of these weary souls + Could never make a single one repose.” + +“Master,” I said to him, “now tell me also + What is this Fortune which thou speakest of, + That has the world’s goods so within its clutches?” + +And he to me: “O creatures imbecile, + What ignorance is this which doth beset you? + Now will I have thee learn my judgment of her. + +He whose omniscience everything transcends + The heavens created, and gave who should guide them, + That every part to every part may shine, + +Distributing the light in equal measure; + He in like manner to the mundane splendours + Ordained a general ministress and guide, + +That she might change at times the empty treasures + From race to race, from one blood to another, + Beyond resistance of all human wisdom. + +Therefore one people triumphs, and another + Languishes, in pursuance of her judgment, + Which hidden is, as in the grass a serpent. + +Your knowledge has no counterstand against her; + She makes provision, judges, and pursues + Her governance, as theirs the other gods. + +Her permutations have not any truce; + Necessity makes her precipitate, + So often cometh who his turn obtains. + +And this is she who is so crucified + Even by those who ought to give her praise, + Giving her blame amiss, and bad repute. + +But she is blissful, and she hears it not; + Among the other primal creatures gladsome + She turns her sphere, and blissful she rejoices. + +Let us descend now unto greater woe; + Already sinks each star that was ascending + When I set out, and loitering is forbidden.” + +We crossed the circle to the other bank, + Near to a fount that boils, and pours itself + Along a gully that runs out of it. + +The water was more sombre far than perse; + And we, in company with the dusky waves, + Made entrance downward by a path uncouth. + +A marsh it makes, which has the name of Styx, + This tristful brooklet, when it has descended + Down to the foot of the malign gray shores. + +And I, who stood intent upon beholding, + Saw people mud-besprent in that lagoon, + All of them naked and with angry look. + +They smote each other not alone with hands, + But with the head and with the breast and feet, + Tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth. + +Said the good Master: “Son, thou now beholdest + The souls of those whom anger overcame; + And likewise I would have thee know for certain + +Beneath the water people are who sigh + And make this water bubble at the surface, + As the eye tells thee wheresoe’er it turns. + +Fixed in the mire they say, ‘We sullen were + In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened, + Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek; + +Now we are sullen in this sable mire.’ + This hymn do they keep gurgling in their throats, + For with unbroken words they cannot say it.” + +Thus we went circling round the filthy fen + A great arc ’twixt the dry bank and the swamp, + With eyes turned unto those who gorge the mire; + +Unto the foot of a tower we came at last. + + + + +Inferno: Canto VIII + + +I say, continuing, that long before + We to the foot of that high tower had come, + Our eyes went upward to the summit of it, + +By reason of two flamelets we saw placed there, + And from afar another answer them, + So far, that hardly could the eye attain it. + +And, to the sea of all discernment turned, + I said: “What sayeth this, and what respondeth + That other fire? and who are they that made it?” + +And he to me: “Across the turbid waves + What is expected thou canst now discern, + If reek of the morass conceal it not.” + +Cord never shot an arrow from itself + That sped away athwart the air so swift, + As I beheld a very little boat + +Come o’er the water tow’rds us at that moment, + Under the guidance of a single pilot, + Who shouted, “Now art thou arrived, fell soul?” + +“Phlegyas, Phlegyas, thou criest out in vain + For this once,” said my Lord; “thou shalt not have us + Longer than in the passing of the slough.” + +As he who listens to some great deceit + That has been done to him, and then resents it, + Such became Phlegyas, in his gathered wrath. + +My Guide descended down into the boat, + And then he made me enter after him, + And only when I entered seemed it laden. + +Soon as the Guide and I were in the boat, + The antique prow goes on its way, dividing + More of the water than ’tis wont with others. + +While we were running through the dead canal, + Uprose in front of me one full of mire, + And said, “Who ’rt thou that comest ere the hour?” + +And I to him: “Although I come, I stay not; + But who art thou that hast become so squalid?” + “Thou seest that I am one who weeps,” he answered. + +And I to him: “With weeping and with wailing, + Thou spirit maledict, do thou remain; + For thee I know, though thou art all defiled.” + +Then stretched he both his hands unto the boat; + Whereat my wary Master thrust him back, + Saying, “Away there with the other dogs!” + +Thereafter with his arms he clasped my neck; + He kissed my face, and said: “Disdainful soul, + Blessed be she who bore thee in her bosom. + +That was an arrogant person in the world; + Goodness is none, that decks his memory; + So likewise here his shade is furious. + +How many are esteemed great kings up there, + Who here shall be like unto swine in mire, + Leaving behind them horrible dispraises!” + +And I: “My Master, much should I be pleased, + If I could see him soused into this broth, + Before we issue forth out of the lake.” + +And he to me: “Ere unto thee the shore + Reveal itself, thou shalt be satisfied; + Such a desire ’tis meet thou shouldst enjoy.” + +A little after that, I saw such havoc + Made of him by the people of the mire, + That still I praise and thank my God for it. + +They all were shouting, “At Philippo Argenti!” + And that exasperate spirit Florentine + Turned round upon himself with his own teeth. + +We left him there, and more of him I tell not; + But on mine ears there smote a lamentation, + Whence forward I intent unbar mine eyes. + +And the good Master said: “Even now, my Son, + The city draweth near whose name is Dis, + With the grave citizens, with the great throng.” + +And I: “Its mosques already, Master, clearly + Within there in the valley I discern + Vermilion, as if issuing from the fire + +They were.” And he to me: “The fire eternal + That kindles them within makes them look red, + As thou beholdest in this nether Hell.” + +Then we arrived within the moats profound, + That circumvallate that disconsolate city; + The walls appeared to me to be of iron. + +Not without making first a circuit wide, + We came unto a place where loud the pilot + Cried out to us, “Debark, here is the entrance.” + +More than a thousand at the gates I saw + Out of the Heavens rained down, who angrily + Were saying, “Who is this that without death + +Goes through the kingdom of the people dead?” + And my sagacious Master made a sign + Of wishing secretly to speak with them. + +A little then they quelled their great disdain, + And said: “Come thou alone, and he begone + Who has so boldly entered these dominions. + +Let him return alone by his mad road; + Try, if he can; for thou shalt here remain, + Who hast escorted him through such dark regions.” + +Think, Reader, if I was discomforted + At utterance of the accursed words; + For never to return here I believed. + +“O my dear Guide, who more than seven times + Hast rendered me security, and drawn me + From imminent peril that before me stood, + +Do not desert me,” said I, “thus undone; + And if the going farther be denied us, + Let us retrace our steps together swiftly.” + +And that Lord, who had led me thitherward, + Said unto me: “Fear not; because our passage + None can take from us, it by Such is given. + +But here await me, and thy weary spirit + Comfort and nourish with a better hope; + For in this nether world I will not leave thee.” + +So onward goes and there abandons me + My Father sweet, and I remain in doubt, + For No and Yes within my head contend. + +I could not hear what he proposed to them; + But with them there he did not linger long, + Ere each within in rivalry ran back. + +They closed the portals, those our adversaries, + On my Lord’s breast, who had remained without + And turned to me with footsteps far between. + +His eyes cast down, his forehead shorn had he + Of all its boldness, and he said, with sighs, + “Who has denied to me the dolesome houses?” + +And unto me: “Thou, because I am angry, + Fear not, for I will conquer in the trial, + Whatever for defence within be planned. + +This arrogance of theirs is nothing new; + For once they used it at less secret gate, + Which finds itself without a fastening still. + +O’er it didst thou behold the dead inscription; + And now this side of it descends the steep, + Passing across the circles without escort, + +One by whose means the city shall be opened.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto IX + + +That hue which cowardice brought out on me, + Beholding my Conductor backward turn, + Sooner repressed within him his new colour. + +He stopped attentive, like a man who listens, + Because the eye could not conduct him far + Through the black air, and through the heavy fog. + +“Still it behoveth us to win the fight,” + Began he; “Else. . .Such offered us herself. . . + O how I long that some one here arrive!” + +Well I perceived, as soon as the beginning + He covered up with what came afterward, + That they were words quite different from the first; + +But none the less his saying gave me fear, + Because I carried out the broken phrase, + Perhaps to a worse meaning than he had. + +“Into this bottom of the doleful conch + Doth any e’er descend from the first grade, + Which for its pain has only hope cut off?” + +This question put I; and he answered me: + “Seldom it comes to pass that one of us + Maketh the journey upon which I go. + +True is it, once before I here below + Was conjured by that pitiless Erictho, + Who summoned back the shades unto their bodies. + +Naked of me short while the flesh had been, + Before within that wall she made me enter, + To bring a spirit from the circle of Judas; + +That is the lowest region and the darkest, + And farthest from the heaven which circles all. + Well know I the way; therefore be reassured. + +This fen, which a prodigious stench exhales, + Encompasses about the city dolent, + Where now we cannot enter without anger.” + +And more he said, but not in mind I have it; + Because mine eye had altogether drawn me + Tow’rds the high tower with the red-flaming summit, + +Where in a moment saw I swift uprisen + The three infernal Furies stained with blood, + Who had the limbs of women and their mien, + +And with the greenest hydras were begirt; + Small serpents and cerastes were their tresses, + Wherewith their horrid temples were entwined. + +And he who well the handmaids of the Queen + Of everlasting lamentation knew, + Said unto me: “Behold the fierce Erinnys. + +This is Megaera, on the left-hand side; + She who is weeping on the right, Alecto; + Tisiphone is between;” and then was silent. + +Each one her breast was rending with her nails; + They beat them with their palms, and cried so loud, + That I for dread pressed close unto the Poet. + +“Medusa come, so we to stone will change him!” + All shouted looking down; “in evil hour + Avenged we not on Theseus his assault!” + +“Turn thyself round, and keep thine eyes close shut, + For if the Gorgon appear, and thou shouldst see it, + No more returning upward would there be.” + +Thus said the Master; and he turned me round + Himself, and trusted not unto my hands + So far as not to blind me with his own. + +O ye who have undistempered intellects, + Observe the doctrine that conceals itself + Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses! + +And now there came across the turbid waves + The clangour of a sound with terror fraught, + Because of which both of the margins trembled; + +Not otherwise it was than of a wind + Impetuous on account of adverse heats, + That smites the forest, and, without restraint, + +The branches rends, beats down, and bears away; + Right onward, laden with dust, it goes superb, + And puts to flight the wild beasts and the shepherds. + +Mine eyes he loosed, and said: “Direct the nerve + Of vision now along that ancient foam, + There yonder where that smoke is most intense.” + +Even as the frogs before the hostile serpent + Across the water scatter all abroad, + Until each one is huddled in the earth. + +More than a thousand ruined souls I saw, + Thus fleeing from before one who on foot + Was passing o’er the Styx with soles unwet. + +From off his face he fanned that unctuous air, + Waving his left hand oft in front of him, + And only with that anguish seemed he weary. + +Well I perceived one sent from Heaven was he, + And to the Master turned; and he made sign + That I should quiet stand, and bow before him. + +Ah! how disdainful he appeared to me! + He reached the gate, and with a little rod + He opened it, for there was no resistance. + +“O banished out of Heaven, people despised!” + Thus he began upon the horrid threshold; + “Whence is this arrogance within you couched? + +Wherefore recalcitrate against that will, + From which the end can never be cut off, + And which has many times increased your pain? + +What helpeth it to butt against the fates? + Your Cerberus, if you remember well, + For that still bears his chin and gullet peeled.” + +Then he returned along the miry road, + And spake no word to us, but had the look + Of one whom other care constrains and goads + +Than that of him who in his presence is; + And we our feet directed tow’rds the city, + After those holy words all confident. + +Within we entered without any contest; + And I, who inclination had to see + What the condition such a fortress holds, + +Soon as I was within, cast round mine eye, + And see on every hand an ample plain, + Full of distress and torment terrible. + +Even as at Arles, where stagnant grows the Rhone, + Even as at Pola near to the Quarnaro, + That shuts in Italy and bathes its borders, + +The sepulchres make all the place uneven; + So likewise did they there on every side, + Saving that there the manner was more bitter; + +For flames between the sepulchres were scattered, + By which they so intensely heated were, + That iron more so asks not any art. + +All of their coverings uplifted were, + And from them issued forth such dire laments, + Sooth seemed they of the wretched and tormented. + +And I: “My Master, what are all those people + Who, having sepulture within those tombs, + Make themselves audible by doleful sighs?” + +And he to me: “Here are the Heresiarchs, + With their disciples of all sects, and much + More than thou thinkest laden are the tombs. + +Here like together with its like is buried; + And more and less the monuments are heated.” + And when he to the right had turned, we passed + +Between the torments and high parapets. + + + + +Inferno: Canto X + + +Now onward goes, along a narrow path + Between the torments and the city wall, + My Master, and I follow at his back. + +“O power supreme, that through these impious circles + Turnest me,” I began, “as pleases thee, + Speak to me, and my longings satisfy; + +The people who are lying in these tombs, + Might they be seen? already are uplifted + The covers all, and no one keepeth guard.” + +And he to me: “They all will be closed up + When from Jehoshaphat they shall return + Here with the bodies they have left above. + +Their cemetery have upon this side + With Epicurus all his followers, + Who with the body mortal make the soul; + +But in the question thou dost put to me, + Within here shalt thou soon be satisfied, + And likewise in the wish thou keepest silent.” + +And I: “Good Leader, I but keep concealed + From thee my heart, that I may speak the less, + Nor only now hast thou thereto disposed me.” + +“O Tuscan, thou who through the city of fire + Goest alive, thus speaking modestly, + Be pleased to stay thy footsteps in this place. + +Thy mode of speaking makes thee manifest + A native of that noble fatherland, + To which perhaps I too molestful was.” + +Upon a sudden issued forth this sound + From out one of the tombs; wherefore I pressed, + Fearing, a little nearer to my Leader. + +And unto me he said: “Turn thee; what dost thou? + Behold there Farinata who has risen; + From the waist upwards wholly shalt thou see him.” + +I had already fixed mine eyes on his, + And he uprose erect with breast and front + E’en as if Hell he had in great despite. + +And with courageous hands and prompt my Leader + Thrust me between the sepulchres towards him, + Exclaiming, “Let thy words explicit be.” + +As soon as I was at the foot of his tomb + Somewhat he eyed me, and, as if disdainful, + Then asked of me, “Who were thine ancestors?” + +I, who desirous of obeying was, + Concealed it not, but all revealed to him; + Whereat he raised his brows a little upward. + +Then said he: “Fiercely adverse have they been + To me, and to my fathers, and my party; + So that two several times I scattered them.” + +“If they were banished, they returned on all sides,” + I answered him, “the first time and the second; + But yours have not acquired that art aright.” + +Then there uprose upon the sight, uncovered + Down to the chin, a shadow at his side; + I think that he had risen on his knees. + +Round me he gazed, as if solicitude + He had to see if some one else were with me, + But after his suspicion was all spent, + +Weeping, he said to me: “If through this blind + Prison thou goest by loftiness of genius, + Where is my son? and why is he not with thee?” + +And I to him: “I come not of myself; + He who is waiting yonder leads me here, + Whom in disdain perhaps your Guido had.” + +His language and the mode of punishment + Already unto me had read his name; + On that account my answer was so full. + +Up starting suddenly, he cried out: “How + Saidst thou,—he had? Is he not still alive? + Does not the sweet light strike upon his eyes?” + +When he became aware of some delay, + Which I before my answer made, supine + He fell again, and forth appeared no more. + +But the other, magnanimous, at whose desire + I had remained, did not his aspect change, + Neither his neck he moved, nor bent his side. + +“And if,” continuing his first discourse, + “They have that art,” he said, “not learned aright, + That more tormenteth me, than doth this bed. + +But fifty times shall not rekindled be + The countenance of the Lady who reigns here, + Ere thou shalt know how heavy is that art; + +And as thou wouldst to the sweet world return, + Say why that people is so pitiless + Against my race in each one of its laws?” + +Whence I to him: “The slaughter and great carnage + Which have with crimson stained the Arbia, cause + Such orisons in our temple to be made.” + +After his head he with a sigh had shaken, + “There I was not alone,” he said, “nor surely + Without a cause had with the others moved. + +But there I was alone, where every one + Consented to the laying waste of Florence, + He who defended her with open face.” + +“Ah! so hereafter may your seed repose,” + I him entreated, “solve for me that knot, + Which has entangled my conceptions here. + +It seems that you can see, if I hear rightly, + Beforehand whatsoe’er time brings with it, + And in the present have another mode.” + +“We see, like those who have imperfect sight, + The things,” he said, “that distant are from us; + So much still shines on us the Sovereign Ruler. + +When they draw near, or are, is wholly vain + Our intellect, and if none brings it to us, + Not anything know we of your human state. + +Hence thou canst understand, that wholly dead + Will be our knowledge from the moment when + The portal of the future shall be closed.” + +Then I, as if compunctious for my fault, + Said: “Now, then, you will tell that fallen one, + That still his son is with the living joined. + +And if just now, in answering, I was dumb, + Tell him I did it because I was thinking + Already of the error you have solved me.” + +And now my Master was recalling me, + Wherefore more eagerly I prayed the spirit + That he would tell me who was with him there. + +He said: “With more than a thousand here I lie; + Within here is the second Frederick, + And the Cardinal, and of the rest I speak not.” + +Thereon he hid himself; and I towards + The ancient poet turned my steps, reflecting + Upon that saying, which seemed hostile to me. + +He moved along; and afterward thus going, + He said to me, “Why art thou so bewildered?” + And I in his inquiry satisfied him. + +“Let memory preserve what thou hast heard + Against thyself,” that Sage commanded me, + “And now attend here;” and he raised his finger. + +“When thou shalt be before the radiance sweet + Of her whose beauteous eyes all things behold, + From her thou’lt know the journey of thy life.” + +Unto the left hand then he turned his feet; + We left the wall, and went towards the middle, + Along a path that strikes into a valley, + +Which even up there unpleasant made its stench. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XI + + +Upon the margin of a lofty bank + Which great rocks broken in a circle made, + We came upon a still more cruel throng; + +And there, by reason of the horrible + Excess of stench the deep abyss throws out, + We drew ourselves aside behind the cover + +Of a great tomb, whereon I saw a writing, + Which said: “Pope Anastasius I hold, + Whom out of the right way Photinus drew.” + +“Slow it behoveth our descent to be, + So that the sense be first a little used + To the sad blast, and then we shall not heed it.” + +The Master thus; and unto him I said, + “Some compensation find, that the time pass not + Idly;” and he: “Thou seest I think of that. + +My son, upon the inside of these rocks,” + Began he then to say, “are three small circles, + From grade to grade, like those which thou art leaving. + +They all are full of spirits maledict; + But that hereafter sight alone suffice thee, + Hear how and wherefore they are in constraint. + +Of every malice that wins hate in Heaven, + Injury is the end; and all such end + Either by force or fraud afflicteth others. + +But because fraud is man’s peculiar vice, + More it displeases God; and so stand lowest + The fraudulent, and greater dole assails them. + +All the first circle of the Violent is; + But since force may be used against three persons, + In three rounds ’tis divided and constructed. + +To God, to ourselves, and to our neighbour can we + Use force; I say on them and on their things, + As thou shalt hear with reason manifest. + +A death by violence, and painful wounds, + Are to our neighbour given; and in his substance + Ruin, and arson, and injurious levies; + +Whence homicides, and he who smites unjustly, + Marauders, and freebooters, the first round + Tormenteth all in companies diverse. + +Man may lay violent hands upon himself + And his own goods; and therefore in the second + Round must perforce without avail repent + +Whoever of your world deprives himself, + Who games, and dissipates his property, + And weepeth there, where he should jocund be. + +Violence can be done the Deity, + In heart denying and blaspheming Him, + And by disdaining Nature and her bounty. + +And for this reason doth the smallest round + Seal with its signet Sodom and Cahors, + And who, disdaining God, speaks from the heart. + +Fraud, wherewithal is every conscience stung, + A man may practise upon him who trusts, + And him who doth no confidence imburse. + +This latter mode, it would appear, dissevers + Only the bond of love which Nature makes; + Wherefore within the second circle nestle + +Hypocrisy, flattery, and who deals in magic, + Falsification, theft, and simony, + Panders, and barrators, and the like filth. + +By the other mode, forgotten is that love + Which Nature makes, and what is after added, + From which there is a special faith engendered. + +Hence in the smallest circle, where the point is + Of the Universe, upon which Dis is seated, + Whoe’er betrays for ever is consumed.” + +And I: “My Master, clear enough proceeds + Thy reasoning, and full well distinguishes + This cavern and the people who possess it. + +But tell me, those within the fat lagoon, + Whom the wind drives, and whom the rain doth beat, + And who encounter with such bitter tongues, + +Wherefore are they inside of the red city + Not punished, if God has them in his wrath, + And if he has not, wherefore in such fashion?” + +And unto me he said: “Why wanders so + Thine intellect from that which it is wont? + Or, sooth, thy mind where is it elsewhere looking? + +Hast thou no recollection of those words + With which thine Ethics thoroughly discusses + The dispositions three, that Heaven abides not,— + +Incontinence, and Malice, and insane + Bestiality? and how Incontinence + Less God offendeth, and less blame attracts? + +If thou regardest this conclusion well, + And to thy mind recallest who they are + That up outside are undergoing penance, + +Clearly wilt thou perceive why from these felons + They separated are, and why less wroth + Justice divine doth smite them with its hammer.” + +“O Sun, that healest all distempered vision, + Thou dost content me so, when thou resolvest, + That doubting pleases me no less than knowing! + +Once more a little backward turn thee,” said I, + “There where thou sayest that usury offends + Goodness divine, and disengage the knot.” + +“Philosophy,” he said, “to him who heeds it, + Noteth, not only in one place alone, + After what manner Nature takes her course + +From Intellect Divine, and from its art; + And if thy Physics carefully thou notest, + After not many pages shalt thou find, + +That this your art as far as possible + Follows, as the disciple doth the master; + So that your art is, as it were, God’s grandchild. + +From these two, if thou bringest to thy mind + Genesis at the beginning, it behoves + Mankind to gain their life and to advance; + +And since the usurer takes another way, + Nature herself and in her follower + Disdains he, for elsewhere he puts his hope. + +But follow, now, as I would fain go on, + For quivering are the Fishes on the horizon, + And the Wain wholly over Caurus lies, + +And far beyond there we descend the crag.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XII + + +The place where to descend the bank we came + Was alpine, and from what was there, moreover, + Of such a kind that every eye would shun it. + +Such as that ruin is which in the flank + Smote, on this side of Trent, the Adige, + Either by earthquake or by failing stay, + +For from the mountain’s top, from which it moved, + Unto the plain the cliff is shattered so, + Some path ’twould give to him who was above; + +Even such was the descent of that ravine, + And on the border of the broken chasm + The infamy of Crete was stretched along, + +Who was conceived in the fictitious cow; + And when he us beheld, he bit himself, + Even as one whom anger racks within. + +My Sage towards him shouted: “Peradventure + Thou think’st that here may be the Duke of Athens, + Who in the world above brought death to thee? + +Get thee gone, beast, for this one cometh not + Instructed by thy sister, but he comes + In order to behold your punishments.” + +As is that bull who breaks loose at the moment + In which he has received the mortal blow, + Who cannot walk, but staggers here and there, + +The Minotaur beheld I do the like; + And he, the wary, cried: “Run to the passage; + While he wroth, ’tis well thou shouldst descend.” + +Thus down we took our way o’er that discharge + Of stones, which oftentimes did move themselves + Beneath my feet, from the unwonted burden. + +Thoughtful I went; and he said: “Thou art thinking + Perhaps upon this ruin, which is guarded + By that brute anger which just now I quenched. + +Now will I have thee know, the other time + I here descended to the nether Hell, + This precipice had not yet fallen down. + +But truly, if I well discern, a little + Before His coming who the mighty spoil + Bore off from Dis, in the supernal circle, + +Upon all sides the deep and loathsome valley + Trembled so, that I thought the Universe + Was thrilled with love, by which there are who think + +The world ofttimes converted into chaos; + And at that moment this primeval crag + Both here and elsewhere made such overthrow. + +But fix thine eyes below; for draweth near + The river of blood, within which boiling is + Whoe’er by violence doth injure others.” + +O blind cupidity, O wrath insane, + That spurs us onward so in our short life, + And in the eternal then so badly steeps us! + +I saw an ample moat bent like a bow, + As one which all the plain encompasses, + Conformable to what my Guide had said. + +And between this and the embankment’s foot + Centaurs in file were running, armed with arrows, + As in the world they used the chase to follow. + +Beholding us descend, each one stood still, + And from the squadron three detached themselves, + With bows and arrows in advance selected; + +And from afar one cried: “Unto what torment + Come ye, who down the hillside are descending? + Tell us from there; if not, I draw the bow.” + +My Master said: “Our answer will we make + To Chiron, near you there; in evil hour, + That will of thine was evermore so hasty.” + +Then touched he me, and said: “This one is Nessus, + Who perished for the lovely Dejanira, + And for himself, himself did vengeance take. + +And he in the midst, who at his breast is gazing, + Is the great Chiron, who brought up Achilles; + That other Pholus is, who was so wrathful. + +Thousands and thousands go about the moat + Shooting with shafts whatever soul emerges + Out of the blood, more than his crime allots.” + +Near we approached unto those monsters fleet; + Chiron an arrow took, and with the notch + Backward upon his jaws he put his beard. + +After he had uncovered his great mouth, + He said to his companions: “Are you ware + That he behind moveth whate’er he touches? + +Thus are not wont to do the feet of dead men.” + And my good Guide, who now was at his breast, + Where the two natures are together joined, + +Replied: “Indeed he lives, and thus alone + Me it behoves to show him the dark valley; + Necessity, and not delight, impels us. + +Some one withdrew from singing Halleluja, + Who unto me committed this new office; + No thief is he, nor I a thievish spirit. + +But by that virtue through which I am moving + My steps along this savage thoroughfare, + Give us some one of thine, to be with us, + +And who may show us where to pass the ford, + And who may carry this one on his back; + For ’tis no spirit that can walk the air.” + +Upon his right breast Chiron wheeled about, + And said to Nessus: “Turn and do thou guide them, + And warn aside, if other band may meet you.” + +We with our faithful escort onward moved + Along the brink of the vermilion boiling, + Wherein the boiled were uttering loud laments. + +People I saw within up to the eyebrows, + And the great Centaur said: “Tyrants are these, + Who dealt in bloodshed and in pillaging. + +Here they lament their pitiless mischiefs; here + Is Alexander, and fierce Dionysius + Who upon Sicily brought dolorous years. + +That forehead there which has the hair so black + Is Azzolin; and the other who is blond, + Obizzo is of Esti, who, in truth, + +Up in the world was by his stepson slain.” + Then turned I to the Poet; and he said, + “Now he be first to thee, and second I.” + +A little farther on the Centaur stopped + Above a folk, who far down as the throat + Seemed from that boiling stream to issue forth. + +A shade he showed us on one side alone, + Saying: “He cleft asunder in God’s bosom + The heart that still upon the Thames is honoured.” + +Then people saw I, who from out the river + Lifted their heads and also all the chest; + And many among these I recognised. + +Thus ever more and more grew shallower + That blood, so that the feet alone it covered; + And there across the moat our passage was. + +“Even as thou here upon this side beholdest + The boiling stream, that aye diminishes,” + The Centaur said, “I wish thee to believe + +That on this other more and more declines + Its bed, until it reunites itself + Where it behoveth tyranny to groan. + +Justice divine, upon this side, is goading + That Attila, who was a scourge on earth, + And Pyrrhus, and Sextus; and for ever milks + +The tears which with the boiling it unseals + In Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzo, + Who made upon the highways so much war.” + +Then back he turned, and passed again the ford. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XIII + + +Not yet had Nessus reached the other side, + When we had put ourselves within a wood, + That was not marked by any path whatever. + +Not foliage green, but of a dusky colour, + Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled, + Not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison. + +Such tangled thickets have not, nor so dense, + Those savage wild beasts, that in hatred hold + ’Twixt Cecina and Corneto the tilled places. + +There do the hideous Harpies make their nests, + Who chased the Trojans from the Strophades, + With sad announcement of impending doom; + +Broad wings have they, and necks and faces human, + And feet with claws, and their great bellies fledged; + They make laments upon the wondrous trees. + +And the good Master: “Ere thou enter farther, + Know that thou art within the second round,” + Thus he began to say, “and shalt be, till + +Thou comest out upon the horrible sand; + Therefore look well around, and thou shalt see + Things that will credence give unto my speech.” + +I heard on all sides lamentations uttered, + And person none beheld I who might make them, + Whence, utterly bewildered, I stood still. + +I think he thought that I perhaps might think + So many voices issued through those trunks + From people who concealed themselves from us; + +Therefore the Master said: “If thou break off + Some little spray from any of these trees, + The thoughts thou hast will wholly be made vain.” + +Then stretched I forth my hand a little forward, + And plucked a branchlet off from a great thorn; + And the trunk cried, “Why dost thou mangle me?” + +After it had become embrowned with blood, + It recommenced its cry: “Why dost thou rend me? + Hast thou no spirit of pity whatsoever? + +Men once we were, and now are changed to trees; + Indeed, thy hand should be more pitiful, + Even if the souls of serpents we had been.” + +As out of a green brand, that is on fire + At one of the ends, and from the other drips + And hisses with the wind that is escaping; + +So from that splinter issued forth together + Both words and blood; whereat I let the tip + Fall, and stood like a man who is afraid. + +“Had he been able sooner to believe,” + My Sage made answer, “O thou wounded soul, + What only in my verses he has seen, + +Not upon thee had he stretched forth his hand; + Whereas the thing incredible has caused me + To put him to an act which grieveth me. + +But tell him who thou wast, so that by way + Of some amends thy fame he may refresh + Up in the world, to which he can return.” + +And the trunk said: “So thy sweet words allure me, + I cannot silent be; and you be vexed not, + That I a little to discourse am tempted. + +I am the one who both keys had in keeping + Of Frederick’s heart, and turned them to and fro + So softly in unlocking and in locking, + +That from his secrets most men I withheld; + Fidelity I bore the glorious office + So great, I lost thereby my sleep and pulses. + +The courtesan who never from the dwelling + Of Caesar turned aside her strumpet eyes, + Death universal and the vice of courts, + +Inflamed against me all the other minds, + And they, inflamed, did so inflame Augustus, + That my glad honours turned to dismal mournings. + +My spirit, in disdainful exultation, + Thinking by dying to escape disdain, + Made me unjust against myself, the just. + +I, by the roots unwonted of this wood, + Do swear to you that never broke I faith + Unto my lord, who was so worthy of honour; + +And to the world if one of you return, + Let him my memory comfort, which is lying + Still prostrate from the blow that envy dealt it.” + +Waited awhile, and then: “Since he is silent,” + The Poet said to me, “lose not the time, + But speak, and question him, if more may please thee.” + +Whence I to him: “Do thou again inquire + Concerning what thou thinks’t will satisfy me; + For I cannot, such pity is in my heart.” + +Therefore he recommenced: “So may the man + Do for thee freely what thy speech implores, + Spirit incarcerate, again be pleased + +To tell us in what way the soul is bound + Within these knots; and tell us, if thou canst, + If any from such members e’er is freed.” + +Then blew the trunk amain, and afterward + The wind was into such a voice converted: + “With brevity shall be replied to you. + +When the exasperated soul abandons + The body whence it rent itself away, + Minos consigns it to the seventh abyss. + +It falls into the forest, and no part + Is chosen for it; but where Fortune hurls it, + There like a grain of spelt it germinates. + +It springs a sapling, and a forest tree; + The Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves, + Do pain create, and for the pain an outlet. + +Like others for our spoils shall we return; + But not that any one may them revest, + For ’tis not just to have what one casts off. + +Here we shall drag them, and along the dismal + Forest our bodies shall suspended be, + Each to the thorn of his molested shade.” + +We were attentive still unto the trunk, + Thinking that more it yet might wish to tell us, + When by a tumult we were overtaken, + +In the same way as he is who perceives + The boar and chase approaching to his stand, + Who hears the crashing of the beasts and branches; + +And two behold! upon our left-hand side, + Naked and scratched, fleeing so furiously, + That of the forest, every fan they broke. + +He who was in advance: “Now help, Death, help!” + And the other one, who seemed to lag too much, + Was shouting: “Lano, were not so alert + +Those legs of thine at joustings of the Toppo!” + And then, perchance because his breath was failing, + He grouped himself together with a bush. + +Behind them was the forest full of black + She-mastiffs, ravenous, and swift of foot + As greyhounds, who are issuing from the chain. + +On him who had crouched down they set their teeth, + And him they lacerated piece by piece, + Thereafter bore away those aching members. + +Thereat my Escort took me by the hand, + And led me to the bush, that all in vain + Was weeping from its bloody lacerations. + +“O Jacopo,” it said, “of Sant’ Andrea, + What helped it thee of me to make a screen? + What blame have I in thy nefarious life?” + +When near him had the Master stayed his steps, + He said: “Who wast thou, that through wounds so many + Art blowing out with blood thy dolorous speech?” + +And he to us: “O souls, that hither come + To look upon the shameful massacre + That has so rent away from me my leaves, + +Gather them up beneath the dismal bush; + I of that city was which to the Baptist + Changed its first patron, wherefore he for this + +Forever with his art will make it sad. + And were it not that on the pass of Arno + Some glimpses of him are remaining still, + +Those citizens, who afterwards rebuilt it + Upon the ashes left by Attila, + In vain had caused their labour to be done. + +Of my own house I made myself a gibbet.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XIV + + +Because the charity of my native place + Constrained me, gathered I the scattered leaves, + And gave them back to him, who now was hoarse. + +Then came we to the confine, where disparted + The second round is from the third, and where + A horrible form of Justice is beheld. + +Clearly to manifest these novel things, + I say that we arrived upon a plain, + Which from its bed rejecteth every plant; + +The dolorous forest is a garland to it + All round about, as the sad moat to that; + There close upon the edge we stayed our feet. + +The soil was of an arid and thick sand, + Not of another fashion made than that + Which by the feet of Cato once was pressed. + +Vengeance of God, O how much oughtest thou + By each one to be dreaded, who doth read + That which was manifest unto mine eyes! + +Of naked souls beheld I many herds, + Who all were weeping very miserably, + And over them seemed set a law diverse. + +Supine upon the ground some folk were lying; + And some were sitting all drawn up together, + And others went about continually. + +Those who were going round were far the more, + And those were less who lay down to their torment, + But had their tongues more loosed to lamentation. + +O’er all the sand-waste, with a gradual fall, + Were raining down dilated flakes of fire, + As of the snow on Alp without a wind. + +As Alexander, in those torrid parts + Of India, beheld upon his host + Flames fall unbroken till they reached the ground. + +Whence he provided with his phalanxes + To trample down the soil, because the vapour + Better extinguished was while it was single; + +Thus was descending the eternal heat, + Whereby the sand was set on fire, like tinder + Beneath the steel, for doubling of the dole. + +Without repose forever was the dance + Of miserable hands, now there, now here, + Shaking away from off them the fresh gleeds. + +“Master,” began I, “thou who overcomest + All things except the demons dire, that issued + Against us at the entrance of the gate, + +Who is that mighty one who seems to heed not + The fire, and lieth lowering and disdainful, + So that the rain seems not to ripen him?” + +And he himself, who had become aware + That I was questioning my Guide about him, + Cried: “Such as I was living, am I, dead. + +If Jove should weary out his smith, from whom + He seized in anger the sharp thunderbolt, + Wherewith upon the last day I was smitten, + +And if he wearied out by turns the others + In Mongibello at the swarthy forge, + Vociferating, ‘Help, good Vulcan, help!’ + +Even as he did there at the fight of Phlegra, + And shot his bolts at me with all his might, + He would not have thereby a joyous vengeance.” + +Then did my Leader speak with such great force, + That I had never heard him speak so loud: + “O Capaneus, in that is not extinguished + +Thine arrogance, thou punished art the more; + Not any torment, saving thine own rage, + Would be unto thy fury pain complete.” + +Then he turned round to me with better lip, + Saying: “One of the Seven Kings was he + Who Thebes besieged, and held, and seems to hold + +God in disdain, and little seems to prize him; + But, as I said to him, his own despites + Are for his breast the fittest ornaments. + +Now follow me, and mind thou do not place + As yet thy feet upon the burning sand, + But always keep them close unto the wood.” + +Speaking no word, we came to where there gushes + Forth from the wood a little rivulet, + Whose redness makes my hair still stand on end. + +As from the Bulicame springs the brooklet, + The sinful women later share among them, + So downward through the sand it went its way. + +The bottom of it, and both sloping banks, + Were made of stone, and the margins at the side; + Whence I perceived that there the passage was. + +“In all the rest which I have shown to thee + Since we have entered in within the gate + Whose threshold unto no one is denied, + +Nothing has been discovered by thine eyes + So notable as is the present river, + Which all the little flames above it quenches.” + +These words were of my Leader; whence I prayed him + That he would give me largess of the food, + For which he had given me largess of desire. + +“In the mid-sea there sits a wasted land,” + Said he thereafterward, “whose name is Crete, + Under whose king the world of old was chaste. + +There is a mountain there, that once was glad + With waters and with leaves, which was called Ida; + Now ’tis deserted, as a thing worn out. + +Rhea once chose it for the faithful cradle + Of her own son; and to conceal him better, + Whene’er he cried, she there had clamours made. + +A grand old man stands in the mount erect, + Who holds his shoulders turned tow’rds Damietta, + And looks at Rome as if it were his mirror. + +His head is fashioned of refined gold, + And of pure silver are the arms and breast; + Then he is brass as far down as the fork. + +From that point downward all is chosen iron, + Save that the right foot is of kiln-baked clay, + And more he stands on that than on the other. + +Each part, except the gold, is by a fissure + Asunder cleft, that dripping is with tears, + Which gathered together perforate that cavern. + +From rock to rock they fall into this valley; + Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon they form; + Then downward go along this narrow sluice + +Unto that point where is no more descending. + They form Cocytus; what that pool may be + Thou shalt behold, so here ’tis not narrated.” + +And I to him: “If so the present runnel + Doth take its rise in this way from our world, + Why only on this verge appears it to us?” + +And he to me: “Thou knowest the place is round, + And notwithstanding thou hast journeyed far, + Still to the left descending to the bottom, + +Thou hast not yet through all the circle turned. + Therefore if something new appear to us, + It should not bring amazement to thy face.” + +And I again: “Master, where shall be found + Lethe and Phlegethon, for of one thou’rt silent, + And sayest the other of this rain is made?” + +“In all thy questions truly thou dost please me,” + Replied he; “but the boiling of the red + Water might well solve one of them thou makest. + +Thou shalt see Lethe, but outside this moat, + There where the souls repair to lave themselves, + When sin repented of has been removed.” + +Then said he: “It is time now to abandon + The wood; take heed that thou come after me; + A way the margins make that are not burning, + +And over them all vapours are extinguished.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XV + + +Now bears us onward one of the hard margins, + And so the brooklet’s mist o’ershadows it, + From fire it saves the water and the dikes. + +Even as the Flemings, ’twixt Cadsand and Bruges, + Fearing the flood that tow’rds them hurls itself, + Their bulwarks build to put the sea to flight; + +And as the Paduans along the Brenta, + To guard their villas and their villages, + Or ever Chiarentana feel the heat; + +In such similitude had those been made, + Albeit not so lofty nor so thick, + Whoever he might be, the master made them. + +Now were we from the forest so remote, + I could not have discovered where it was, + Even if backward I had turned myself, + +When we a company of souls encountered, + Who came beside the dike, and every one + Gazed at us, as at evening we are wont + +To eye each other under a new moon, + And so towards us sharpened they their brows + As an old tailor at the needle’s eye. + +Thus scrutinised by such a family, + By some one I was recognised, who seized + My garment’s hem, and cried out, “What a marvel!” + +And I, when he stretched forth his arm to me, + On his baked aspect fastened so mine eyes, + That the scorched countenance prevented not + +His recognition by my intellect; + And bowing down my face unto his own, + I made reply, “Are you here, Ser Brunetto?” + +And he: “May’t not displease thee, O my son, + If a brief space with thee Brunetto Latini + Backward return and let the trail go on.” + +I said to him: “With all my power I ask it; + And if you wish me to sit down with you, + I will, if he please, for I go with him.” + +“O son,” he said, “whoever of this herd + A moment stops, lies then a hundred years, + Nor fans himself when smiteth him the fire. + +Therefore go on; I at thy skirts will come, + And afterward will I rejoin my band, + Which goes lamenting its eternal doom.” + +I did not dare to go down from the road + Level to walk with him; but my head bowed + I held as one who goeth reverently. + +And he began: “What fortune or what fate + Before the last day leadeth thee down here? + And who is this that showeth thee the way?” + +“Up there above us in the life serene,” + I answered him, “I lost me in a valley, + Or ever yet my age had been completed. + +But yestermorn I turned my back upon it; + This one appeared to me, returning thither, + And homeward leadeth me along this road.” + +And he to me: “If thou thy star do follow, + Thou canst not fail thee of a glorious port, + If well I judged in the life beautiful. + +And if I had not died so prematurely, + Seeing Heaven thus benignant unto thee, + I would have given thee comfort in the work. + +But that ungrateful and malignant people, + Which of old time from Fesole descended, + And smacks still of the mountain and the granite, + +Will make itself, for thy good deeds, thy foe; + And it is right; for among crabbed sorbs + It ill befits the sweet fig to bear fruit. + +Old rumour in the world proclaims them blind; + A people avaricious, envious, proud; + Take heed that of their customs thou do cleanse thee. + +Thy fortune so much honour doth reserve thee, + One party and the other shall be hungry + For thee; but far from goat shall be the grass. + +Their litter let the beasts of Fesole + Make of themselves, nor let them touch the plant, + If any still upon their dunghill rise, + +In which may yet revive the consecrated + Seed of those Romans, who remained there when + The nest of such great malice it became.” + +“If my entreaty wholly were fulfilled,” + Replied I to him, “not yet would you be + In banishment from human nature placed; + +For in my mind is fixed, and touches now + My heart the dear and good paternal image + Of you, when in the world from hour to hour + +You taught me how a man becomes eternal; + And how much I am grateful, while I live + Behoves that in my language be discerned. + +What you narrate of my career I write, + And keep it to be glossed with other text + By a Lady who can do it, if I reach her. + +This much will I have manifest to you; + Provided that my conscience do not chide me, + For whatsoever Fortune I am ready. + +Such handsel is not new unto mine ears; + Therefore let Fortune turn her wheel around + As it may please her, and the churl his mattock.” + +My Master thereupon on his right cheek + Did backward turn himself, and looked at me; + Then said: “He listeneth well who noteth it.” + +Nor speaking less on that account, I go + With Ser Brunetto, and I ask who are + His most known and most eminent companions. + +And he to me: “To know of some is well; + Of others it were laudable to be silent, + For short would be the time for so much speech. + +Know them in sum, that all of them were clerks, + And men of letters great and of great fame, + In the world tainted with the selfsame sin. + +Priscian goes yonder with that wretched crowd, + And Francis of Accorso; and thou hadst seen there + If thou hadst had a hankering for such scurf, + +That one, who by the Servant of the Servants + From Arno was transferred to Bacchiglione, + Where he has left his sin-excited nerves. + +More would I say, but coming and discoursing + Can be no longer; for that I behold + New smoke uprising yonder from the sand. + +A people comes with whom I may not be; + Commended unto thee be my Tesoro, + In which I still live, and no more I ask.” + +Then he turned round, and seemed to be of those + Who at Verona run for the Green Mantle + Across the plain; and seemed to be among them + +The one who wins, and not the one who loses. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XVI + + +Now was I where was heard the reverberation + Of water falling into the next round, + Like to that humming which the beehives make, + +When shadows three together started forth, + Running, from out a company that passed + Beneath the rain of the sharp martyrdom. + +Towards us came they, and each one cried out: + “Stop, thou; for by thy garb to us thou seemest + To be some one of our depraved city.” + +Ah me! what wounds I saw upon their limbs, + Recent and ancient by the flames burnt in! + It pains me still but to remember it. + +Unto their cries my Teacher paused attentive; + He turned his face towards me, and “Now wait,” + He said; “to these we should be courteous. + +And if it were not for the fire that darts + The nature of this region, I should say + That haste were more becoming thee than them.” + +As soon as we stood still, they recommenced + The old refrain, and when they overtook us, + Formed of themselves a wheel, all three of them. + +As champions stripped and oiled are wont to do, + Watching for their advantage and their hold, + Before they come to blows and thrusts between them, + +Thus, wheeling round, did every one his visage + Direct to me, so that in opposite wise + His neck and feet continual journey made. + +And, “If the misery of this soft place + Bring in disdain ourselves and our entreaties,” + Began one, “and our aspect black and blistered, + +Let the renown of us thy mind incline + To tell us who thou art, who thus securely + Thy living feet dost move along through Hell. + +He in whose footprints thou dost see me treading, + Naked and skinless though he now may go, + Was of a greater rank than thou dost think; + +He was the grandson of the good Gualdrada; + His name was Guidoguerra, and in life + Much did he with his wisdom and his sword. + +The other, who close by me treads the sand, + Tegghiaio Aldobrandi is, whose fame + Above there in the world should welcome be. + +And I, who with them on the cross am placed, + Jacopo Rusticucci was; and truly + My savage wife, more than aught else, doth harm me.” + +Could I have been protected from the fire, + Below I should have thrown myself among them, + And think the Teacher would have suffered it; + +But as I should have burned and baked myself, + My terror overmastered my good will, + Which made me greedy of embracing them. + +Then I began: “Sorrow and not disdain + Did your condition fix within me so, + That tardily it wholly is stripped off, + +As soon as this my Lord said unto me + Words, on account of which I thought within me + That people such as you are were approaching. + +I of your city am; and evermore + Your labours and your honourable names + I with affection have retraced and heard. + +I leave the gall, and go for the sweet fruits + Promised to me by the veracious Leader; + But to the centre first I needs must plunge.” + +“So may the soul for a long while conduct + Those limbs of thine,” did he make answer then, + “And so may thy renown shine after thee, + +Valour and courtesy, say if they dwell + Within our city, as they used to do, + Or if they wholly have gone out of it; + +For Guglielmo Borsier, who is in torment + With us of late, and goes there with his comrades, + Doth greatly mortify us with his words.” + +“The new inhabitants and the sudden gains, + Pride and extravagance have in thee engendered, + Florence, so that thou weep’st thereat already!” + +In this wise I exclaimed with face uplifted; + And the three, taking that for my reply, + Looked at each other, as one looks at truth. + +“If other times so little it doth cost thee,” + Replied they all, “to satisfy another, + Happy art thou, thus speaking at thy will! + +Therefore, if thou escape from these dark places, + And come to rebehold the beauteous stars, + When it shall pleasure thee to say, ‘I was,’ + +See that thou speak of us unto the people.” + Then they broke up the wheel, and in their flight + It seemed as if their agile legs were wings. + +Not an Amen could possibly be said + So rapidly as they had disappeared; + Wherefore the Master deemed best to depart. + +I followed him, and little had we gone, + Before the sound of water was so near us, + That speaking we should hardly have been heard. + +Even as that stream which holdeth its own course + The first from Monte Veso tow’rds the East, + Upon the left-hand slope of Apennine, + +Which is above called Acquacheta, ere + It down descendeth into its low bed, + And at Forli is vacant of that name, + +Reverberates there above San Benedetto + From Alps, by falling at a single leap, + Where for a thousand there were room enough; + +Thus downward from a bank precipitate, + We found resounding that dark-tinted water, + So that it soon the ear would have offended. + +I had a cord around about me girt, + And therewithal I whilom had designed + To take the panther with the painted skin. + +After I this had all from me unloosed, + As my Conductor had commanded me, + I reached it to him, gathered up and coiled, + +Whereat he turned himself to the right side, + And at a little distance from the verge, + He cast it down into that deep abyss. + +“It must needs be some novelty respond,” + I said within myself, “to the new signal + The Master with his eye is following so.” + +Ah me! how very cautious men should be + With those who not alone behold the act, + But with their wisdom look into the thoughts! + +He said to me: “Soon there will upward come + What I await; and what thy thought is dreaming + Must soon reveal itself unto thy sight.” + +Aye to that truth which has the face of falsehood, + A man should close his lips as far as may be, + Because without his fault it causes shame; + +But here I cannot; and, Reader, by the notes + Of this my Comedy to thee I swear, + So may they not be void of lasting favour, + +Athwart that dense and darksome atmosphere + I saw a figure swimming upward come, + Marvellous unto every steadfast heart, + +Even as he returns who goeth down + Sometimes to clear an anchor, which has grappled + Reef, or aught else that in the sea is hidden, + +Who upward stretches, and draws in his feet. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XVII + + +“Behold the monster with the pointed tail, + Who cleaves the hills, and breaketh walls and weapons, + Behold him who infecteth all the world.” + +Thus unto me my Guide began to say, + And beckoned him that he should come to shore, + Near to the confine of the trodden marble; + +And that uncleanly image of deceit + Came up and thrust ashore its head and bust, + But on the border did not drag its tail. + +The face was as the face of a just man, + Its semblance outwardly was so benign, + And of a serpent all the trunk beside. + +Two paws it had, hairy unto the armpits; + The back, and breast, and both the sides it had + Depicted o’er with nooses and with shields. + +With colours more, groundwork or broidery + Never in cloth did Tartars make nor Turks, + Nor were such tissues by Arachne laid. + +As sometimes wherries lie upon the shore, + That part are in the water, part on land; + And as among the guzzling Germans there, + +The beaver plants himself to wage his war; + So that vile monster lay upon the border, + Which is of stone, and shutteth in the sand. + +His tail was wholly quivering in the void, + Contorting upwards the envenomed fork, + That in the guise of scorpion armed its point. + +The Guide said: “Now perforce must turn aside + Our way a little, even to that beast + Malevolent, that yonder coucheth him.” + +We therefore on the right side descended, + And made ten steps upon the outer verge, + Completely to avoid the sand and flame; + +And after we are come to him, I see + A little farther off upon the sand + A people sitting near the hollow place. + +Then said to me the Master: “So that full + Experience of this round thou bear away, + Now go and see what their condition is. + +There let thy conversation be concise; + Till thou returnest I will speak with him, + That he concede to us his stalwart shoulders.” + +Thus farther still upon the outermost + Head of that seventh circle all alone + I went, where sat the melancholy folk. + +Out of their eyes was gushing forth their woe; + This way, that way, they helped them with their hands + Now from the flames and now from the hot soil. + +Not otherwise in summer do the dogs, + Now with the foot, now with the muzzle, when + By fleas, or flies, or gadflies, they are bitten. + +When I had turned mine eyes upon the faces + Of some, on whom the dolorous fire is falling, + Not one of them I knew; but I perceived + +That from the neck of each there hung a pouch, + Which certain colour had, and certain blazon; + And thereupon it seems their eyes are feeding. + +And as I gazing round me come among them, + Upon a yellow pouch I azure saw + That had the face and posture of a lion. + +Proceeding then the current of my sight, + Another of them saw I, red as blood, + Display a goose more white than butter is. + +And one, who with an azure sow and gravid + Emblazoned had his little pouch of white, + Said unto me: “What dost thou in this moat? + +Now get thee gone; and since thou’rt still alive, + Know that a neighbour of mine, Vitaliano, + Will have his seat here on my left-hand side. + +A Paduan am I with these Florentines; + Full many a time they thunder in mine ears, + Exclaiming, ‘Come the sovereign cavalier, + +He who shall bring the satchel with three goats;’” + Then twisted he his mouth, and forth he thrust + His tongue, like to an ox that licks its nose. + +And fearing lest my longer stay might vex + Him who had warned me not to tarry long, + Backward I turned me from those weary souls. + +I found my Guide, who had already mounted + Upon the back of that wild animal, + And said to me: “Now be both strong and bold. + +Now we descend by stairways such as these; + Mount thou in front, for I will be midway, + So that the tail may have no power to harm thee.” + +Such as he is who has so near the ague + Of quartan that his nails are blue already, + And trembles all, but looking at the shade; + +Even such became I at those proffered words; + But shame in me his menaces produced, + Which maketh servant strong before good master. + +I seated me upon those monstrous shoulders; + I wished to say, and yet the voice came not + As I believed, “Take heed that thou embrace me.” + +But he, who other times had rescued me + In other peril, soon as I had mounted, + Within his arms encircled and sustained me, + +And said: “Now, Geryon, bestir thyself; + The circles large, and the descent be little; + Think of the novel burden which thou hast.” + +Even as the little vessel shoves from shore, + Backward, still backward, so he thence withdrew; + And when he wholly felt himself afloat, + +There where his breast had been he turned his tail, + And that extended like an eel he moved, + And with his paws drew to himself the air. + +A greater fear I do not think there was + What time abandoned Phaeton the reins, + Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched; + +Nor when the wretched Icarus his flanks + Felt stripped of feathers by the melting wax, + His father crying, “An ill way thou takest!” + +Than was my own, when I perceived myself + On all sides in the air, and saw extinguished + The sight of everything but of the monster. + +Onward he goeth, swimming slowly, slowly; + Wheels and descends, but I perceive it only + By wind upon my face and from below. + +I heard already on the right the whirlpool + Making a horrible crashing under us; + Whence I thrust out my head with eyes cast downward. + +Then was I still more fearful of the abyss; + Because I fires beheld, and heard laments, + Whereat I, trembling, all the closer cling. + +I saw then, for before I had not seen it, + The turning and descending, by great horrors + That were approaching upon divers sides. + +As falcon who has long been on the wing, + Who, without seeing either lure or bird, + Maketh the falconer say, “Ah me, thou stoopest,” + +Descendeth weary, whence he started swiftly, + Thorough a hundred circles, and alights + Far from his master, sullen and disdainful; + +Even thus did Geryon place us on the bottom, + Close to the bases of the rough-hewn rock, + And being disencumbered of our persons, + +He sped away as arrow from the string. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XVIII + + +There is a place in Hell called Malebolge, + Wholly of stone and of an iron colour, + As is the circle that around it turns. + +Right in the middle of the field malign + There yawns a well exceeding wide and deep, + Of which its place the structure will recount. + +Round, then, is that enclosure which remains + Between the well and foot of the high, hard bank, + And has distinct in valleys ten its bottom. + +As where for the protection of the walls + Many and many moats surround the castles, + The part in which they are a figure forms, + +Just such an image those presented there; + And as about such strongholds from their gates + Unto the outer bank are little bridges, + +So from the precipice’s base did crags + Project, which intersected dikes and moats, + Unto the well that truncates and collects them. + +Within this place, down shaken from the back + Of Geryon, we found us; and the Poet + Held to the left, and I moved on behind. + +Upon my right hand I beheld new anguish, + New torments, and new wielders of the lash, + Wherewith the foremost Bolgia was replete. + +Down at the bottom were the sinners naked; + This side the middle came they facing us, + Beyond it, with us, but with greater steps; + +Even as the Romans, for the mighty host, + The year of Jubilee, upon the bridge, + Have chosen a mode to pass the people over; + +For all upon one side towards the Castle + Their faces have, and go unto St. Peter’s; + On the other side they go towards the Mountain. + +This side and that, along the livid stone + Beheld I horned demons with great scourges, + Who cruelly were beating them behind. + +Ah me! how they did make them lift their legs + At the first blows! and sooth not any one + The second waited for, nor for the third. + +While I was going on, mine eyes by one + Encountered were; and straight I said: “Already + With sight of this one I am not unfed.” + +Therefore I stayed my feet to make him out, + And with me the sweet Guide came to a stand, + And to my going somewhat back assented; + +And he, the scourged one, thought to hide himself, + Lowering his face, but little it availed him; + For said I: “Thou that castest down thine eyes, + +If false are not the features which thou bearest, + Thou art Venedico Caccianimico; + But what doth bring thee to such pungent sauces?” + +And he to me: “Unwillingly I tell it; + But forces me thine utterance distinct, + Which makes me recollect the ancient world. + +I was the one who the fair Ghisola + Induced to grant the wishes of the Marquis, + Howe’er the shameless story may be told. + +Not the sole Bolognese am I who weeps here; + Nay, rather is this place so full of them, + That not so many tongues to-day are taught + +’Twixt Reno and Savena to say ‘sipa;’ + And if thereof thou wishest pledge or proof, + Bring to thy mind our avaricious heart.” + +While speaking in this manner, with his scourge + A demon smote him, and said: “Get thee gone + Pander, there are no women here for coin.” + +I joined myself again unto mine Escort; + Thereafterward with footsteps few we came + To where a crag projected from the bank. + +This very easily did we ascend, + And turning to the right along its ridge, + From those eternal circles we departed. + +When we were there, where it is hollowed out + Beneath, to give a passage to the scourged, + The Guide said: “Wait, and see that on thee strike + +The vision of those others evil-born, + Of whom thou hast not yet beheld the faces, + Because together with us they have gone.” + +From the old bridge we looked upon the train + Which tow’rds us came upon the other border, + And which the scourges in like manner smite. + +And the good Master, without my inquiring, + Said to me: “See that tall one who is coming, + And for his pain seems not to shed a tear; + +Still what a royal aspect he retains! + That Jason is, who by his heart and cunning + The Colchians of the Ram made destitute. + +He by the isle of Lemnos passed along + After the daring women pitiless + Had unto death devoted all their males. + +There with his tokens and with ornate words + Did he deceive Hypsipyle, the maiden + Who first, herself, had all the rest deceived. + +There did he leave her pregnant and forlorn; + Such sin unto such punishment condemns him, + And also for Medea is vengeance done. + +With him go those who in such wise deceive; + And this sufficient be of the first valley + To know, and those that in its jaws it holds.” + +We were already where the narrow path + Crosses athwart the second dike, and forms + Of that a buttress for another arch. + +Thence we heard people, who are making moan + In the next Bolgia, snorting with their muzzles, + And with their palms beating upon themselves + +The margins were incrusted with a mould + By exhalation from below, that sticks there, + And with the eyes and nostrils wages war. + +The bottom is so deep, no place suffices + To give us sight of it, without ascending + The arch’s back, where most the crag impends. + +Thither we came, and thence down in the moat + I saw a people smothered in a filth + That out of human privies seemed to flow; + +And whilst below there with mine eye I search, + I saw one with his head so foul with ordure, + It was not clear if he were clerk or layman. + +He screamed to me: “Wherefore art thou so eager + To look at me more than the other foul ones?” + And I to him: “Because, if I remember, + +I have already seen thee with dry hair, + And thou’rt Alessio Interminei of Lucca; + Therefore I eye thee more than all the others.” + +And he thereon, belabouring his pumpkin: + “The flatteries have submerged me here below, + Wherewith my tongue was never surfeited.” + +Then said to me the Guide: “See that thou thrust + Thy visage somewhat farther in advance, + That with thine eyes thou well the face attain + +Of that uncleanly and dishevelled drab, + Who there doth scratch herself with filthy nails, + And crouches now, and now on foot is standing. + +Thais the harlot is it, who replied + Unto her paramour, when he said, ‘Have I + Great gratitude from thee?’—‘Nay, marvellous;’ + +And herewith let our sight be satisfied.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XIX + + +O Simon Magus, O forlorn disciples, + Ye who the things of God, which ought to be + The brides of holiness, rapaciously + +For silver and for gold do prostitute, + Now it behoves for you the trumpet sound, + Because in this third Bolgia ye abide. + +We had already on the following tomb + Ascended to that portion of the crag + Which o’er the middle of the moat hangs plumb. + +Wisdom supreme, O how great art thou showest + In heaven, in earth, and in the evil world, + And with what justice doth thy power distribute! + +I saw upon the sides and on the bottom + The livid stone with perforations filled, + All of one size, and every one was round. + +To me less ample seemed they not, nor greater + Than those that in my beautiful Saint John + Are fashioned for the place of the baptisers, + +And one of which, not many years ago, + I broke for some one, who was drowning in it; + Be this a seal all men to undeceive. + +Out of the mouth of each one there protruded + The feet of a transgressor, and the legs + Up to the calf, the rest within remained. + +In all of them the soles were both on fire; + Wherefore the joints so violently quivered, + They would have snapped asunder withes and bands. + +Even as the flame of unctuous things is wont + To move upon the outer surface only, + So likewise was it there from heel to point. + +“Master, who is that one who writhes himself, + More than his other comrades quivering,” + I said, “and whom a redder flame is sucking?” + +And he to me: “If thou wilt have me bear thee + Down there along that bank which lowest lies, + From him thou’lt know his errors and himself.” + +And I: “What pleases thee, to me is pleasing; + Thou art my Lord, and knowest that I depart not + From thy desire, and knowest what is not spoken.” + +Straightway upon the fourth dike we arrived; + We turned, and on the left-hand side descended + Down to the bottom full of holes and narrow. + +And the good Master yet from off his haunch + Deposed me not, till to the hole he brought me + Of him who so lamented with his shanks. + +“Whoe’er thou art, that standest upside down, + O doleful soul, implanted like a stake,” + To say began I, “if thou canst, speak out.” + +I stood even as the friar who is confessing + The false assassin, who, when he is fixed, + Recalls him, so that death may be delayed. + +And he cried out: “Dost thou stand there already, + Dost thou stand there already, Boniface? + By many years the record lied to me. + +Art thou so early satiate with that wealth, + For which thou didst not fear to take by fraud + The beautiful Lady, and then work her woe?” + +Such I became, as people are who stand, + Not comprehending what is answered them, + As if bemocked, and know not how to answer. + +Then said Virgilius: “Say to him straightway, + ‘I am not he, I am not he thou thinkest.’” + And I replied as was imposed on me. + +Whereat the spirit writhed with both his feet, + Then, sighing, with a voice of lamentation + Said to me: “Then what wantest thou of me? + +If who I am thou carest so much to know, + That thou on that account hast crossed the bank, + Know that I vested was with the great mantle; + +And truly was I son of the She-bear, + So eager to advance the cubs, that wealth + Above, and here myself, I pocketed. + +Beneath my head the others are dragged down + Who have preceded me in simony, + Flattened along the fissure of the rock. + +Below there I shall likewise fall, whenever + That one shall come who I believed thou wast, + What time the sudden question I proposed. + +But longer I my feet already toast, + And here have been in this way upside down, + Than he will planted stay with reddened feet; + +For after him shall come of fouler deed + From tow’rds the west a Pastor without law, + Such as befits to cover him and me. + +New Jason will he be, of whom we read + In Maccabees; and as his king was pliant, + So he who governs France shall be to this one.” + +I do not know if I were here too bold, + That him I answered only in this metre: + “I pray thee tell me now how great a treasure + +Our Lord demanded of Saint Peter first, + Before he put the keys into his keeping? + Truly he nothing asked but ‘Follow me.’ + +Nor Peter nor the rest asked of Matthias + Silver or gold, when he by lot was chosen + Unto the place the guilty soul had lost. + +Therefore stay here, for thou art justly punished, + And keep safe guard o’er the ill-gotten money, + Which caused thee to be valiant against Charles. + +And were it not that still forbids it me + The reverence for the keys superlative + Thou hadst in keeping in the gladsome life, + +I would make use of words more grievous still; + Because your avarice afflicts the world, + Trampling the good and lifting the depraved. + +The Evangelist you Pastors had in mind, + When she who sitteth upon many waters + To fornicate with kings by him was seen; + +The same who with the seven heads was born, + And power and strength from the ten horns received, + So long as virtue to her spouse was pleasing. + +Ye have made yourselves a god of gold and silver; + And from the idolater how differ ye, + Save that he one, and ye a hundred worship? + +Ah, Constantine! of how much ill was mother, + Not thy conversion, but that marriage dower + Which the first wealthy Father took from thee!” + +And while I sang to him such notes as these, + Either that anger or that conscience stung him, + He struggled violently with both his feet. + +I think in sooth that it my Leader pleased, + With such contented lip he listened ever + Unto the sound of the true words expressed. + +Therefore with both his arms he took me up, + And when he had me all upon his breast, + Remounted by the way where he descended. + +Nor did he tire to have me clasped to him; + But bore me to the summit of the arch + Which from the fourth dike to the fifth is passage. + +There tenderly he laid his burden down, + Tenderly on the crag uneven and steep, + That would have been hard passage for the goats: + +Thence was unveiled to me another valley. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XX + + +Of a new pain behoves me to make verses + And give material to the twentieth canto + Of the first song, which is of the submerged. + +I was already thoroughly disposed + To peer down into the uncovered depth, + Which bathed itself with tears of agony; + +And people saw I through the circular valley, + Silent and weeping, coming at the pace + Which in this world the Litanies assume. + +As lower down my sight descended on them, + Wondrously each one seemed to be distorted + From chin to the beginning of the chest; + +For tow’rds the reins the countenance was turned, + And backward it behoved them to advance, + As to look forward had been taken from them. + +Perchance indeed by violence of palsy + Some one has been thus wholly turned awry; + But I ne’er saw it, nor believe it can be. + +As God may let thee, Reader, gather fruit + From this thy reading, think now for thyself + How I could ever keep my face unmoistened, + +When our own image near me I beheld + Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes + Along the fissure bathed the hinder parts. + +Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak + Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said + To me: “Art thou, too, of the other fools? + +Here pity lives when it is wholly dead; + Who is a greater reprobate than he + Who feels compassion at the doom divine? + +Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom + Opened the earth before the Thebans’ eyes; + Wherefore they all cried: ‘Whither rushest thou, + +Amphiaraus? Why dost leave the war?’ + And downward ceased he not to fall amain + As far as Minos, who lays hold on all. + +See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders! + Because he wished to see too far before him + Behind he looks, and backward goes his way: + +Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed, + When from a male a female he became, + His members being all of them transformed; + +And afterwards was forced to strike once more + The two entangled serpents with his rod, + Ere he could have again his manly plumes. + +That Aruns is, who backs the other’s belly, + Who in the hills of Luni, there where grubs + The Carrarese who houses underneath, + +Among the marbles white a cavern had + For his abode; whence to behold the stars + And sea, the view was not cut off from him. + +And she there, who is covering up her breasts, + Which thou beholdest not, with loosened tresses, + And on that side has all the hairy skin, + +Was Manto, who made quest through many lands, + Afterwards tarried there where I was born; + Whereof I would thou list to me a little. + +After her father had from life departed, + And the city of Bacchus had become enslaved, + She a long season wandered through the world. + +Above in beauteous Italy lies a lake + At the Alp’s foot that shuts in Germany + Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco. + +By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed, + ’Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino, + With water that grows stagnant in that lake. + +Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor, + And he of Brescia, and the Veronese + Might give his blessing, if he passed that way. + +Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong, + To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks, + Where round about the bank descendeth lowest. + +There of necessity must fall whatever + In bosom of Benaco cannot stay, + And grows a river down through verdant pastures. + +Soon as the water doth begin to run, + No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio, + Far as Governo, where it falls in Po. + +Not far it runs before it finds a plain + In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy, + And oft ’tis wont in summer to be sickly. + +Passing that way the virgin pitiless + Land in the middle of the fen descried, + Untilled and naked of inhabitants; + +There to escape all human intercourse, + She with her servants stayed, her arts to practise + And lived, and left her empty body there. + +The men, thereafter, who were scattered round, + Collected in that place, which was made strong + By the lagoon it had on every side; + +They built their city over those dead bones, + And, after her who first the place selected, + Mantua named it, without other omen. + +Its people once within more crowded were, + Ere the stupidity of Casalodi + From Pinamonte had received deceit. + +Therefore I caution thee, if e’er thou hearest + Originate my city otherwise, + No falsehood may the verity defraud.” + +And I: “My Master, thy discourses are + To me so certain, and so take my faith, + That unto me the rest would be spent coals. + +But tell me of the people who are passing, + If any one note-worthy thou beholdest, + For only unto that my mind reverts.” + +Then said he to me: “He who from the cheek + Thrusts out his beard upon his swarthy shoulders + Was, at the time when Greece was void of males, + +So that there scarce remained one in the cradle, + An augur, and with Calchas gave the moment, + In Aulis, when to sever the first cable. + +Eryphylus his name was, and so sings + My lofty Tragedy in some part or other; + That knowest thou well, who knowest the whole of it. + +The next, who is so slender in the flanks, + Was Michael Scott, who of a verity + Of magical illusions knew the game. + +Behold Guido Bonatti, behold Asdente, + Who now unto his leather and his thread + Would fain have stuck, but he too late repents. + +Behold the wretched ones, who left the needle, + The spool and rock, and made them fortune-tellers; + They wrought their magic spells with herb and image. + +But come now, for already holds the confines + Of both the hemispheres, and under Seville + Touches the ocean-wave, Cain and the thorns, + +And yesternight the moon was round already; + Thou shouldst remember well it did not harm thee + From time to time within the forest deep.” + +Thus spake he to me, and we walked the while. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXI + + +From bridge to bridge thus, speaking other things + Of which my Comedy cares not to sing, + We came along, and held the summit, when + +We halted to behold another fissure + Of Malebolge and other vain laments; + And I beheld it marvellously dark. + +As in the Arsenal of the Venetians + Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch + To smear their unsound vessels o’er again, + +For sail they cannot; and instead thereof + One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks + The ribs of that which many a voyage has made; + +One hammers at the prow, one at the stern, + This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists, + Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen; + +Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine, + Was boiling down below there a dense pitch + Which upon every side the bank belimed. + +I saw it, but I did not see within it + Aught but the bubbles that the boiling raised, + And all swell up and resubside compressed. + +The while below there fixedly I gazed, + My Leader, crying out: “Beware, beware!” + Drew me unto himself from where I stood. + +Then I turned round, as one who is impatient + To see what it behoves him to escape, + And whom a sudden terror doth unman, + +Who, while he looks, delays not his departure; + And I beheld behind us a black devil, + Running along upon the crag, approach. + +Ah, how ferocious was he in his aspect! + And how he seemed to me in action ruthless, + With open wings and light upon his feet! + +His shoulders, which sharp-pointed were and high, + A sinner did encumber with both haunches, + And he held clutched the sinews of the feet. + +From off our bridge, he said: “O Malebranche, + Behold one of the elders of Saint Zita; + Plunge him beneath, for I return for others + +Unto that town, which is well furnished with them. + All there are barrators, except Bonturo; + No into Yes for money there is changed.” + +He hurled him down, and over the hard crag + Turned round, and never was a mastiff loosened + In so much hurry to pursue a thief. + +The other sank, and rose again face downward; + But the demons, under cover of the bridge, + Cried: “Here the Santo Volto has no place! + +Here swims one otherwise than in the Serchio; + Therefore, if for our gaffs thou wishest not, + Do not uplift thyself above the pitch.” + +They seized him then with more than a hundred rakes; + They said: “It here behoves thee to dance covered, + That, if thou canst, thou secretly mayest pilfer.” + +Not otherwise the cooks their scullions make + Immerse into the middle of the caldron + The meat with hooks, so that it may not float. + +Said the good Master to me: “That it be not + Apparent thou art here, crouch thyself down + Behind a jag, that thou mayest have some screen; + +And for no outrage that is done to me + Be thou afraid, because these things I know, + For once before was I in such a scuffle.” + +Then he passed on beyond the bridge’s head, + And as upon the sixth bank he arrived, + Need was for him to have a steadfast front. + +With the same fury, and the same uproar, + As dogs leap out upon a mendicant, + Who on a sudden begs, where’er he stops, + +They issued from beneath the little bridge, + And turned against him all their grappling-irons; + But he cried out: “Be none of you malignant! + +Before those hooks of yours lay hold of me, + Let one of you step forward, who may hear me, + And then take counsel as to grappling me.” + +They all cried out: “Let Malacoda go;” + Whereat one started, and the rest stood still, + And he came to him, saying: “What avails it?” + +“Thinkest thou, Malacoda, to behold me + Advanced into this place,” my Master said, + “Safe hitherto from all your skill of fence, + +Without the will divine, and fate auspicious? + Let me go on, for it in Heaven is willed + That I another show this savage road.” + +Then was his arrogance so humbled in him, + That he let fall his grapnel at his feet, + And to the others said: “Now strike him not.” + +And unto me my Guide: “O thou, who sittest + Among the splinters of the bridge crouched down, + Securely now return to me again.” + +Wherefore I started and came swiftly to him; + And all the devils forward thrust themselves, + So that I feared they would not keep their compact. + +And thus beheld I once afraid the soldiers + Who issued under safeguard from Caprona, + Seeing themselves among so many foes. + +Close did I press myself with all my person + Beside my Leader, and turned not mine eyes + From off their countenance, which was not good. + +They lowered their rakes, and “Wilt thou have me hit him,” + They said to one another, “on the rump?” + And answered: “Yes; see that thou nick him with it.” + +But the same demon who was holding parley + With my Conductor turned him very quickly, + And said: “Be quiet, be quiet, Scarmiglione;” + +Then said to us: “You can no farther go + Forward upon this crag, because is lying + All shattered, at the bottom, the sixth arch. + +And if it still doth please you to go onward, + Pursue your way along upon this rock; + Near is another crag that yields a path. + +Yesterday, five hours later than this hour, + One thousand and two hundred sixty-six + Years were complete, that here the way was broken. + +I send in that direction some of mine + To see if any one doth air himself; + Go ye with them; for they will not be vicious. + +Step forward, Alichino and Calcabrina,” + Began he to cry out, “and thou, Cagnazzo; + And Barbariccia, do thou guide the ten. + +Come forward, Libicocco and Draghignazzo, + And tusked Ciriatto and Graffiacane, + And Farfarello and mad Rubicante; + +Search ye all round about the boiling pitch; + Let these be safe as far as the next crag, + That all unbroken passes o’er the dens.” + +“O me! what is it, Master, that I see? + Pray let us go,” I said, “without an escort, + If thou knowest how, since for myself I ask none. + +If thou art as observant as thy wont is, + Dost thou not see that they do gnash their teeth, + And with their brows are threatening woe to us?” + +And he to me: “I will not have thee fear; + Let them gnash on, according to their fancy, + Because they do it for those boiling wretches.” + +Along the left-hand dike they wheeled about; + But first had each one thrust his tongue between + His teeth towards their leader for a signal; + +And he had made a trumpet of his rump. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXII + + +I have erewhile seen horsemen moving camp, + Begin the storming, and their muster make, + And sometimes starting off for their escape; + +Vaunt-couriers have I seen upon your land, + O Aretines, and foragers go forth, + Tournaments stricken, and the joustings run, + +Sometimes with trumpets and sometimes with bells, + With kettle-drums, and signals of the castles, + And with our own, and with outlandish things, + +But never yet with bagpipe so uncouth + Did I see horsemen move, nor infantry, + Nor ship by any sign of land or star. + +We went upon our way with the ten demons; + Ah, savage company! but in the church + With saints, and in the tavern with the gluttons! + +Ever upon the pitch was my intent, + To see the whole condition of that Bolgia, + And of the people who therein were burned. + +Even as the dolphins, when they make a sign + To mariners by arching of the back, + That they should counsel take to save their vessel, + +Thus sometimes, to alleviate his pain, + One of the sinners would display his back, + And in less time conceal it than it lightens. + +As on the brink of water in a ditch + The frogs stand only with their muzzles out, + So that they hide their feet and other bulk, + +So upon every side the sinners stood; + But ever as Barbariccia near them came, + Thus underneath the boiling they withdrew. + +I saw, and still my heart doth shudder at it, + One waiting thus, even as it comes to pass + One frog remains, and down another dives; + +And Graffiacan, who most confronted him, + Grappled him by his tresses smeared with pitch, + And drew him up, so that he seemed an otter. + +I knew, before, the names of all of them, + So had I noted them when they were chosen, + And when they called each other, listened how. + +“O Rubicante, see that thou do lay + Thy claws upon him, so that thou mayst flay him,” + Cried all together the accursed ones. + +And I: “My Master, see to it, if thou canst, + That thou mayst know who is the luckless wight, + Thus come into his adversaries’ hands.” + +Near to the side of him my Leader drew, + Asked of him whence he was; and he replied: + “I in the kingdom of Navarre was born; + +My mother placed me servant to a lord, + For she had borne me to a ribald knave, + Destroyer of himself and of his things. + +Then I domestic was of good King Thibault; + I set me there to practise barratry, + For which I pay the reckoning in this heat.” + +And Ciriatto, from whose mouth projected, + On either side, a tusk, as in a boar, + Caused him to feel how one of them could rip. + +Among malicious cats the mouse had come; + But Barbariccia clasped him in his arms, + And said: “Stand ye aside, while I enfork him.” + +And to my Master he turned round his head; + “Ask him again,” he said, “if more thou wish + To know from him, before some one destroy him.” + +The Guide: “Now tell then of the other culprits; + Knowest thou any one who is a Latian, + Under the pitch?” And he: “I separated + +Lately from one who was a neighbour to it; + Would that I still were covered up with him, + For I should fear not either claw nor hook!” + +And Libicocco: “We have borne too much;” + And with his grapnel seized him by the arm, + So that, by rending, he tore off a tendon. + +Eke Draghignazzo wished to pounce upon him + Down at the legs; whence their Decurion + Turned round and round about with evil look. + +When they again somewhat were pacified, + Of him, who still was looking at his wound, + Demanded my Conductor without stay: + +“Who was that one, from whom a luckless parting + Thou sayest thou hast made, to come ashore?” + And he replied: “It was the Friar Gomita, + +He of Gallura, vessel of all fraud, + Who had the enemies of his Lord in hand, + And dealt so with them each exults thereat; + +Money he took, and let them smoothly off, + As he says; and in other offices + A barrator was he, not mean but sovereign. + +Foregathers with him one Don Michael Zanche + Of Logodoro; and of Sardinia + To gossip never do their tongues feel tired. + +O me! see that one, how he grinds his teeth; + Still farther would I speak, but am afraid + Lest he to scratch my itch be making ready.” + +And the grand Provost, turned to Farfarello, + Who rolled his eyes about as if to strike, + Said: “Stand aside there, thou malicious bird.” + +“If you desire either to see or hear,” + The terror-stricken recommenced thereon, + “Tuscans or Lombards, I will make them come. + +But let the Malebranche cease a little, + So that these may not their revenges fear, + And I, down sitting in this very place, + +For one that I am will make seven come, + When I shall whistle, as our custom is + To do whenever one of us comes out.” + +Cagnazzo at these words his muzzle lifted, + Shaking his head, and said: “Just hear the trick + Which he has thought of, down to throw himself!” + +Whence he, who snares in great abundance had, + Responded: “I by far too cunning am, + When I procure for mine a greater sadness.” + +Alichin held not in, but running counter + Unto the rest, said to him: “If thou dive, + I will not follow thee upon the gallop, + +But I will beat my wings above the pitch; + The height be left, and be the bank a shield + To see if thou alone dost countervail us.” + +O thou who readest, thou shalt hear new sport! + Each to the other side his eyes averted; + He first, who most reluctant was to do it. + +The Navarrese selected well his time; + Planted his feet on land, and in a moment + Leaped, and released himself from their design. + +Whereat each one was suddenly stung with shame, + But he most who was cause of the defeat; + Therefore he moved, and cried: “Thou art o’ertakern.” + +But little it availed, for wings could not + Outstrip the fear; the other one went under, + And, flying, upward he his breast directed; + +Not otherwise the duck upon a sudden + Dives under, when the falcon is approaching, + And upward he returneth cross and weary. + +Infuriate at the mockery, Calcabrina + Flying behind him followed close, desirous + The other should escape, to have a quarrel. + +And when the barrator had disappeared, + He turned his talons upon his companion, + And grappled with him right above the moat. + +But sooth the other was a doughty sparhawk + To clapperclaw him well; and both of them + Fell in the middle of the boiling pond. + +A sudden intercessor was the heat; + But ne’ertheless of rising there was naught, + To such degree they had their wings belimed. + +Lamenting with the others, Barbariccia + Made four of them fly to the other side + With all their gaffs, and very speedily + +This side and that they to their posts descended; + They stretched their hooks towards the pitch-ensnared, + Who were already baked within the crust, + +And in this manner busied did we leave them. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXIII + + +Silent, alone, and without company + We went, the one in front, the other after, + As go the Minor Friars along their way. + +Upon the fable of Aesop was directed + My thought, by reason of the present quarrel, + Where he has spoken of the frog and mouse; + +For ‘mo’ and ‘issa’ are not more alike + Than this one is to that, if well we couple + End and beginning with a steadfast mind. + +And even as one thought from another springs, + So afterward from that was born another, + Which the first fear within me double made. + +Thus did I ponder: “These on our account + Are laughed to scorn, with injury and scoff + So great, that much I think it must annoy them. + +If anger be engrafted on ill-will, + They will come after us more merciless + Than dog upon the leveret which he seizes,” + +I felt my hair stand all on end already + With terror, and stood backwardly intent, + When said I: “Master, if thou hidest not + +Thyself and me forthwith, of Malebranche + I am in dread; we have them now behind us; + I so imagine them, I already feel them.” + +And he: “If I were made of leaded glass, + Thine outward image I should not attract + Sooner to me than I imprint the inner. + +Just now thy thoughts came in among my own, + With similar attitude and similar face, + So that of both one counsel sole I made. + +If peradventure the right bank so slope + That we to the next Bolgia can descend, + We shall escape from the imagined chase.” + +Not yet he finished rendering such opinion, + When I beheld them come with outstretched wings, + Not far remote, with will to seize upon us. + +My Leader on a sudden seized me up, + Even as a mother who by noise is wakened, + And close beside her sees the enkindled flames, + +Who takes her son, and flies, and does not stop, + Having more care of him than of herself, + So that she clothes her only with a shift; + +And downward from the top of the hard bank + Supine he gave him to the pendent rock, + That one side of the other Bolgia walls. + +Ne’er ran so swiftly water through a sluice + To turn the wheel of any land-built mill, + When nearest to the paddles it approaches, + +As did my Master down along that border, + Bearing me with him on his breast away, + As his own son, and not as a companion. + +Hardly the bed of the ravine below + His feet had reached, ere they had reached the hill + Right over us; but he was not afraid; + +For the high Providence, which had ordained + To place them ministers of the fifth moat, + The power of thence departing took from all. + +A painted people there below we found, + Who went about with footsteps very slow, + Weeping and in their semblance tired and vanquished. + +They had on mantles with the hoods low down + Before their eyes, and fashioned of the cut + That in Cologne they for the monks are made. + +Without, they gilded are so that it dazzles; + But inwardly all leaden and so heavy + That Frederick used to put them on of straw. + +O everlastingly fatiguing mantle! + Again we turned us, still to the left hand + Along with them, intent on their sad plaint; + +But owing to the weight, that weary folk + Came on so tardily, that we were new + In company at each motion of the haunch. + +Whence I unto my Leader: “See thou find + Some one who may by deed or name be known, + And thus in going move thine eye about.” + +And one, who understood the Tuscan speech, + Cried to us from behind: “Stay ye your feet, + Ye, who so run athwart the dusky air! + +Perhaps thou’lt have from me what thou demandest.” + Whereat the Leader turned him, and said: “Wait, + And then according to his pace proceed.” + +I stopped, and two beheld I show great haste + Of spirit, in their faces, to be with me; + But the burden and the narrow way delayed them. + +When they came up, long with an eye askance + They scanned me without uttering a word. + Then to each other turned, and said together: + +“He by the action of his throat seems living; + And if they dead are, by what privilege + Go they uncovered by the heavy stole?” + +Then said to me: “Tuscan, who to the college + Of miserable hypocrites art come, + Do not disdain to tell us who thou art.” + +And I to them: “Born was I, and grew up + In the great town on the fair river of Arno, + And with the body am I’ve always had. + +But who are ye, in whom there trickles down + Along your cheeks such grief as I behold? + And what pain is upon you, that so sparkles?” + +And one replied to me: “These orange cloaks + Are made of lead so heavy, that the weights + Cause in this way their balances to creak. + +Frati Gaudenti were we, and Bolognese; + I Catalano, and he Loderingo + Named, and together taken by thy city, + +As the wont is to take one man alone, + For maintenance of its peace; and we were such + That still it is apparent round Gardingo.” + +“O Friars,” began I, “your iniquitous. . .” + But said no more; for to mine eyes there rushed + One crucified with three stakes on the ground. + +When me he saw, he writhed himself all over, + Blowing into his beard with suspirations; + And the Friar Catalan, who noticed this, + +Said to me: “This transfixed one, whom thou seest, + Counselled the Pharisees that it was meet + To put one man to torture for the people. + +Crosswise and naked is he on the path, + As thou perceivest; and he needs must feel, + Whoever passes, first how much he weighs; + +And in like mode his father-in-law is punished + Within this moat, and the others of the council, + Which for the Jews was a malignant seed.” + +And thereupon I saw Virgilius marvel + O’er him who was extended on the cross + So vilely in eternal banishment. + +Then he directed to the Friar this voice: + “Be not displeased, if granted thee, to tell us + If to the right hand any pass slope down + +By which we two may issue forth from here, + Without constraining some of the black angels + To come and extricate us from this deep.” + +Then he made answer: “Nearer than thou hopest + There is a rock, that forth from the great circle + Proceeds, and crosses all the cruel valleys, + +Save that at this ’tis broken, and does not bridge it; + You will be able to mount up the ruin, + That sidelong slopes and at the bottom rises.” + +The Leader stood awhile with head bowed down; + Then said: “The business badly he recounted + Who grapples with his hook the sinners yonder.” + +And the Friar: “Many of the Devil’s vices + Once heard I at Bologna, and among them, + That he’s a liar and the father of lies.” + +Thereat my Leader with great strides went on, + Somewhat disturbed with anger in his looks; + Whence from the heavy-laden I departed + +After the prints of his beloved feet. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXIV + + +In that part of the youthful year wherein + The Sun his locks beneath Aquarius tempers, + And now the nights draw near to half the day, + +What time the hoar-frost copies on the ground + The outward semblance of her sister white, + But little lasts the temper of her pen, + +The husbandman, whose forage faileth him, + Rises, and looks, and seeth the champaign + All gleaming white, whereat he beats his flank, + +Returns in doors, and up and down laments, + Like a poor wretch, who knows not what to do; + Then he returns and hope revives again, + +Seeing the world has changed its countenance + In little time, and takes his shepherd’s crook, + And forth the little lambs to pasture drives. + +Thus did the Master fill me with alarm, + When I beheld his forehead so disturbed, + And to the ailment came as soon the plaster. + +For as we came unto the ruined bridge, + The Leader turned to me with that sweet look + Which at the mountain’s foot I first beheld. + +His arms he opened, after some advisement + Within himself elected, looking first + Well at the ruin, and laid hold of me. + +And even as he who acts and meditates, + For aye it seems that he provides beforehand, + So upward lifting me towards the summit + +Of a huge rock, he scanned another crag, + Saying: “To that one grapple afterwards, + But try first if ’tis such that it will hold thee.” + +This was no way for one clothed with a cloak; + For hardly we, he light, and I pushed upward, + Were able to ascend from jag to jag. + +And had it not been, that upon that precinct + Shorter was the ascent than on the other, + He I know not, but I had been dead beat. + +But because Malebolge tow’rds the mouth + Of the profoundest well is all inclining, + The structure of each valley doth import + +That one bank rises and the other sinks. + Still we arrived at length upon the point + Wherefrom the last stone breaks itself asunder. + +The breath was from my lungs so milked away, + When I was up, that I could go no farther, + Nay, I sat down upon my first arrival. + +“Now it behoves thee thus to put off sloth,” + My Master said; “for sitting upon down, + Or under quilt, one cometh not to fame, + +Withouten which whoso his life consumes + Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth, + As smoke in air or in the water foam. + +And therefore raise thee up, o’ercome the anguish + With spirit that o’ercometh every battle, + If with its heavy body it sink not. + +A longer stairway it behoves thee mount; + ’Tis not enough from these to have departed; + Let it avail thee, if thou understand me.” + +Then I uprose, showing myself provided + Better with breath than I did feel myself, + And said: “Go on, for I am strong and bold.” + +Upward we took our way along the crag, + Which jagged was, and narrow, and difficult, + And more precipitous far than that before. + +Speaking I went, not to appear exhausted; + Whereat a voice from the next moat came forth, + Not well adapted to articulate words. + +I know not what it said, though o’er the back + I now was of the arch that passes there; + But he seemed moved to anger who was speaking. + +I was bent downward, but my living eyes + Could not attain the bottom, for the dark; + Wherefore I: “Master, see that thou arrive + +At the next round, and let us descend the wall; + For as from hence I hear and understand not, + So I look down and nothing I distinguish.” + +“Other response,” he said, “I make thee not, + Except the doing; for the modest asking + Ought to be followed by the deed in silence.” + +We from the bridge descended at its head, + Where it connects itself with the eighth bank, + And then was manifest to me the Bolgia; + +And I beheld therein a terrible throng + Of serpents, and of such a monstrous kind, + That the remembrance still congeals my blood + +Let Libya boast no longer with her sand; + For if Chelydri, Jaculi, and Phareae + She breeds, with Cenchri and with Amphisbaena, + +Neither so many plagues nor so malignant + E’er showed she with all Ethiopia, + Nor with whatever on the Red Sea is! + +Among this cruel and most dismal throng + People were running naked and affrighted. + Without the hope of hole or heliotrope. + +They had their hands with serpents bound behind them; + These riveted upon their reins the tail + And head, and were in front of them entwined. + +And lo! at one who was upon our side + There darted forth a serpent, which transfixed him + There where the neck is knotted to the shoulders. + +Nor ‘O’ so quickly e’er, nor ‘I’ was written, + As he took fire, and burned; and ashes wholly + Behoved it that in falling he became. + +And when he on the ground was thus destroyed, + The ashes drew together, and of themselves + Into himself they instantly returned. + +Even thus by the great sages ’tis confessed + The phoenix dies, and then is born again, + When it approaches its five-hundredth year; + +On herb or grain it feeds not in its life, + But only on tears of incense and amomum, + And nard and myrrh are its last winding-sheet. + +And as he is who falls, and knows not how, + By force of demons who to earth down drag him, + Or other oppilation that binds man, + +When he arises and around him looks, + Wholly bewildered by the mighty anguish + Which he has suffered, and in looking sighs; + +Such was that sinner after he had risen. + Justice of God! O how severe it is, + That blows like these in vengeance poureth down! + +The Guide thereafter asked him who he was; + Whence he replied: “I rained from Tuscany + A short time since into this cruel gorge. + +A bestial life, and not a human, pleased me, + Even as the mule I was; I’m Vanni Fucci, + Beast, and Pistoia was my worthy den.” + +And I unto the Guide: “Tell him to stir not, + And ask what crime has thrust him here below, + For once a man of blood and wrath I saw him.” + +And the sinner, who had heard, dissembled not, + But unto me directed mind and face, + And with a melancholy shame was painted. + +Then said: “It pains me more that thou hast caught me + Amid this misery where thou seest me, + Than when I from the other life was taken. + +What thou demandest I cannot deny; + So low am I put down because I robbed + The sacristy of the fair ornaments, + +And falsely once ’twas laid upon another; + But that thou mayst not such a sight enjoy, + If thou shalt e’er be out of the dark places, + +Thine ears to my announcement ope and hear: + Pistoia first of Neri groweth meagre; + Then Florence doth renew her men and manners; + +Mars draws a vapour up from Val di Magra, + Which is with turbid clouds enveloped round, + And with impetuous and bitter tempest + +Over Campo Picen shall be the battle; + When it shall suddenly rend the mist asunder, + So that each Bianco shall thereby be smitten. + +And this I’ve said that it may give thee pain.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXV + + +At the conclusion of his words, the thief + Lifted his hands aloft with both the figs, + Crying: “Take that, God, for at thee I aim them.” + +From that time forth the serpents were my friends; + For one entwined itself about his neck + As if it said: “I will not thou speak more;” + +And round his arms another, and rebound him, + Clinching itself together so in front, + That with them he could not a motion make. + +Pistoia, ah, Pistoia! why resolve not + To burn thyself to ashes and so perish, + Since in ill-doing thou thy seed excellest? + +Through all the sombre circles of this Hell, + Spirit I saw not against God so proud, + Not he who fell at Thebes down from the walls! + +He fled away, and spake no further word; + And I beheld a Centaur full of rage + Come crying out: “Where is, where is the scoffer?” + +I do not think Maremma has so many + Serpents as he had all along his back, + As far as where our countenance begins. + +Upon the shoulders, just behind the nape, + With wings wide open was a dragon lying, + And he sets fire to all that he encounters. + +My Master said: “That one is Cacus, who + Beneath the rock upon Mount Aventine + Created oftentimes a lake of blood. + +He goes not on the same road with his brothers, + By reason of the fraudulent theft he made + Of the great herd, which he had near to him; + +Whereat his tortuous actions ceased beneath + The mace of Hercules, who peradventure + Gave him a hundred, and he felt not ten.” + +While he was speaking thus, he had passed by, + And spirits three had underneath us come, + Of which nor I aware was, nor my Leader, + +Until what time they shouted: “Who are you?” + On which account our story made a halt, + And then we were intent on them alone. + +I did not know them; but it came to pass, + As it is wont to happen by some chance, + That one to name the other was compelled, + +Exclaiming: “Where can Cianfa have remained?” + Whence I, so that the Leader might attend, + Upward from chin to nose my finger laid. + +If thou art, Reader, slow now to believe + What I shall say, it will no marvel be, + For I who saw it hardly can admit it. + +As I was holding raised on them my brows, + Behold! a serpent with six feet darts forth + In front of one, and fastens wholly on him. + +With middle feet it bound him round the paunch, + And with the forward ones his arms it seized; + Then thrust its teeth through one cheek and the other; + +The hindermost it stretched upon his thighs, + And put its tail through in between the two, + And up behind along the reins outspread it. + +Ivy was never fastened by its barbs + Unto a tree so, as this horrible reptile + Upon the other’s limbs entwined its own. + +Then they stuck close, as if of heated wax + They had been made, and intermixed their colour; + Nor one nor other seemed now what he was; + +E’en as proceedeth on before the flame + Upward along the paper a brown colour, + Which is not black as yet, and the white dies. + +The other two looked on, and each of them + Cried out: “O me, Agnello, how thou changest! + Behold, thou now art neither two nor one.” + +Already the two heads had one become, + When there appeared to us two figures mingled + Into one face, wherein the two were lost. + +Of the four lists were fashioned the two arms, + The thighs and legs, the belly and the chest + Members became that never yet were seen. + +Every original aspect there was cancelled; + Two and yet none did the perverted image + Appear, and such departed with slow pace. + +Even as a lizard, under the great scourge + Of days canicular, exchanging hedge, + Lightning appeareth if the road it cross; + +Thus did appear, coming towards the bellies + Of the two others, a small fiery serpent, + Livid and black as is a peppercorn. + +And in that part whereat is first received + Our aliment, it one of them transfixed; + Then downward fell in front of him extended. + +The one transfixed looked at it, but said naught; + Nay, rather with feet motionless he yawned, + Just as if sleep or fever had assailed him. + +He at the serpent gazed, and it at him; + One through the wound, the other through the mouth + Smoked violently, and the smoke commingled. + +Henceforth be silent Lucan, where he mentions + Wretched Sabellus and Nassidius, + And wait to hear what now shall be shot forth. + +Be silent Ovid, of Cadmus and Arethusa; + For if him to a snake, her to fountain, + Converts he fabling, that I grudge him not; + +Because two natures never front to front + Has he transmuted, so that both the forms + To interchange their matter ready were. + +Together they responded in such wise, + That to a fork the serpent cleft his tail, + And eke the wounded drew his feet together. + +The legs together with the thighs themselves + Adhered so, that in little time the juncture + No sign whatever made that was apparent. + +He with the cloven tail assumed the figure + The other one was losing, and his skin + Became elastic, and the other’s hard. + +I saw the arms draw inward at the armpits, + And both feet of the reptile, that were short, + Lengthen as much as those contracted were. + +Thereafter the hind feet, together twisted, + Became the member that a man conceals, + And of his own the wretch had two created. + +While both of them the exhalation veils + With a new colour, and engenders hair + On one of them and depilates the other, + +The one uprose and down the other fell, + Though turning not away their impious lamps, + Underneath which each one his muzzle changed. + +He who was standing drew it tow’rds the temples, + And from excess of matter, which came thither, + Issued the ears from out the hollow cheeks; + +What did not backward run and was retained + Of that excess made to the face a nose, + And the lips thickened far as was befitting. + +He who lay prostrate thrusts his muzzle forward, + And backward draws the ears into his head, + In the same manner as the snail its horns; + +And so the tongue, which was entire and apt + For speech before, is cleft, and the bi-forked + In the other closes up, and the smoke ceases. + +The soul, which to a reptile had been changed, + Along the valley hissing takes to flight, + And after him the other speaking sputters. + +Then did he turn upon him his new shoulders, + And said to the other: “I’ll have Buoso run, + Crawling as I have done, along this road.” + +In this way I beheld the seventh ballast + Shift and reshift, and here be my excuse + The novelty, if aught my pen transgress. + +And notwithstanding that mine eyes might be + Somewhat bewildered, and my mind dismayed, + They could not flee away so secretly + +But that I plainly saw Puccio Sciancato; + And he it was who sole of three companions, + Which came in the beginning, was not changed; + +The other was he whom thou, Gaville, weepest. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXVI + + +Rejoice, O Florence, since thou art so great, + That over sea and land thou beatest thy wings, + And throughout Hell thy name is spread abroad! + +Among the thieves five citizens of thine + Like these I found, whence shame comes unto me, + And thou thereby to no great honour risest. + +But if when morn is near our dreams are true, + Feel shalt thou in a little time from now + What Prato, if none other, craves for thee. + +And if it now were, it were not too soon; + Would that it were, seeing it needs must be, + For ’twill aggrieve me more the more I age. + +We went our way, and up along the stairs + The bourns had made us to descend before, + Remounted my Conductor and drew me. + +And following the solitary path + Among the rocks and ridges of the crag, + The foot without the hand sped not at all. + +Then sorrowed I, and sorrow now again, + When I direct my mind to what I saw, + And more my genius curb than I am wont, + +That it may run not unless virtue guide it; + So that if some good star, or better thing, + Have given me good, I may myself not grudge it. + +As many as the hind (who on the hill + Rests at the time when he who lights the world + His countenance keeps least concealed from us, + +While as the fly gives place unto the gnat) + Seeth the glow-worms down along the valley, + Perchance there where he ploughs and makes his vintage; + +With flames as manifold resplendent all + Was the eighth Bolgia, as I grew aware + As soon as I was where the depth appeared. + +And such as he who with the bears avenged him + Beheld Elijah’s chariot at departing, + What time the steeds to heaven erect uprose, + +For with his eye he could not follow it + So as to see aught else than flame alone, + Even as a little cloud ascending upward, + +Thus each along the gorge of the intrenchment + Was moving; for not one reveals the theft, + And every flame a sinner steals away. + +I stood upon the bridge uprisen to see, + So that, if I had seized not on a rock, + Down had I fallen without being pushed. + +And the Leader, who beheld me so attent, + Exclaimed: “Within the fires the spirits are; + Each swathes himself with that wherewith he burns.” + +“My Master,” I replied, “by hearing thee + I am more sure; but I surmised already + It might be so, and already wished to ask thee + +Who is within that fire, which comes so cleft + At top, it seems uprising from the pyre + Where was Eteocles with his brother placed.” + +He answered me: “Within there are tormented + Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together + They unto vengeance run as unto wrath. + +And there within their flame do they lament + The ambush of the horse, which made the door + Whence issued forth the Romans’ gentle seed; + +Therein is wept the craft, for which being dead + Deidamia still deplores Achilles, + And pain for the Palladium there is borne.” + +“If they within those sparks possess the power + To speak,” I said, “thee, Master, much I pray, + And re-pray, that the prayer be worth a thousand, + +That thou make no denial of awaiting + Until the horned flame shall hither come; + Thou seest that with desire I lean towards it.” + +And he to me: “Worthy is thy entreaty + Of much applause, and therefore I accept it; + But take heed that thy tongue restrain itself. + +Leave me to speak, because I have conceived + That which thou wishest; for they might disdain + Perchance, since they were Greeks, discourse of thine.” + +When now the flame had come unto that point, + Where to my Leader it seemed time and place, + After this fashion did I hear him speak: + +“O ye, who are twofold within one fire, + If I deserved of you, while I was living, + If I deserved of you or much or little + +When in the world I wrote the lofty verses, + Do not move on, but one of you declare + Whither, being lost, he went away to die.” + +Then of the antique flame the greater horn, + Murmuring, began to wave itself about + Even as a flame doth which the wind fatigues. + +Thereafterward, the summit to and fro + Moving as if it were the tongue that spake, + It uttered forth a voice, and said: “When I + +From Circe had departed, who concealed me + More than a year there near unto Gaeta, + Or ever yet Aeneas named it so, + +Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence + For my old father, nor the due affection + Which joyous should have made Penelope, + +Could overcome within me the desire + I had to be experienced of the world, + And of the vice and virtue of mankind; + +But I put forth on the high open sea + With one sole ship, and that small company + By which I never had deserted been. + +Both of the shores I saw as far as Spain, + Far as Morocco, and the isle of Sardes, + And the others which that sea bathes round about. + +I and my company were old and slow + When at that narrow passage we arrived + Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals, + +That man no farther onward should adventure. + On the right hand behind me left I Seville, + And on the other already had left Ceuta. + +‘O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand + Perils,’ I said, ‘have come unto the West, + To this so inconsiderable vigil + +Which is remaining of your senses still + Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge, + Following the sun, of the unpeopled world. + +Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang; + Ye were not made to live like unto brutes, + But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.’ + +So eager did I render my companions, + With this brief exhortation, for the voyage, + That then I hardly could have held them back. + +And having turned our stern unto the morning, + We of the oars made wings for our mad flight, + Evermore gaining on the larboard side. + +Already all the stars of the other pole + The night beheld, and ours so very low + It did not rise above the ocean floor. + +Five times rekindled and as many quenched + Had been the splendour underneath the moon, + Since we had entered into the deep pass, + +When there appeared to us a mountain, dim + From distance, and it seemed to me so high + As I had never any one beheld. + +Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping; + For out of the new land a whirlwind rose, + And smote upon the fore part of the ship. + +Three times it made her whirl with all the waters, + At the fourth time it made the stern uplift, + And the prow downward go, as pleased Another, + +Until the sea above us closed again.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXVII + + +Already was the flame erect and quiet, + To speak no more, and now departed from us + With the permission of the gentle Poet; + +When yet another, which behind it came, + Caused us to turn our eyes upon its top + By a confused sound that issued from it. + +As the Sicilian bull (that bellowed first + With the lament of him, and that was right, + Who with his file had modulated it) + +Bellowed so with the voice of the afflicted, + That, notwithstanding it was made of brass, + Still it appeared with agony transfixed; + +Thus, by not having any way or issue + At first from out the fire, to its own language + Converted were the melancholy words. + +But afterwards, when they had gathered way + Up through the point, giving it that vibration + The tongue had given them in their passage out, + +We heard it said: “O thou, at whom I aim + My voice, and who but now wast speaking Lombard, + Saying, ‘Now go thy way, no more I urge thee,’ + +Because I come perchance a little late, + To stay and speak with me let it not irk thee; + Thou seest it irks not me, and I am burning. + +If thou but lately into this blind world + Hast fallen down from that sweet Latian land, + Wherefrom I bring the whole of my transgression, + +Say, if the Romagnuols have peace or war, + For I was from the mountains there between + Urbino and the yoke whence Tiber bursts.” + +I still was downward bent and listening, + When my Conductor touched me on the side, + Saying: “Speak thou: this one a Latian is.” + +And I, who had beforehand my reply + In readiness, forthwith began to speak: + “O soul, that down below there art concealed, + +Romagna thine is not and never has been + Without war in the bosom of its tyrants; + But open war I none have left there now. + +Ravenna stands as it long years has stood; + The Eagle of Polenta there is brooding, + So that she covers Cervia with her vans. + +The city which once made the long resistance, + And of the French a sanguinary heap, + Beneath the Green Paws finds itself again; + +Verrucchio’s ancient Mastiff and the new, + Who made such bad disposal of Montagna, + Where they are wont make wimbles of their teeth. + +The cities of Lamone and Santerno + Governs the Lioncel of the white lair, + Who changes sides ’twixt summer-time and winter; + +And that of which the Savio bathes the flank, + Even as it lies between the plain and mountain, + Lives between tyranny and a free state. + +Now I entreat thee tell us who thou art; + Be not more stubborn than the rest have been, + So may thy name hold front there in the world.” + +After the fire a little more had roared + In its own fashion, the sharp point it moved + This way and that, and then gave forth such breath: + +“If I believed that my reply were made + To one who to the world would e’er return, + This flame without more flickering would stand still; + +But inasmuch as never from this depth + Did any one return, if I hear true, + Without the fear of infamy I answer, + +I was a man of arms, then Cordelier, + Believing thus begirt to make amends; + And truly my belief had been fulfilled + +But for the High Priest, whom may ill betide, + Who put me back into my former sins; + And how and wherefore I will have thee hear. + +While I was still the form of bone and pulp + My mother gave to me, the deeds I did + Were not those of a lion, but a fox. + +The machinations and the covert ways + I knew them all, and practised so their craft, + That to the ends of earth the sound went forth. + +When now unto that portion of mine age + I saw myself arrived, when each one ought + To lower the sails, and coil away the ropes, + +That which before had pleased me then displeased me; + And penitent and confessing I surrendered, + Ah woe is me! and it would have bestead me; + +The Leader of the modern Pharisees + Having a war near unto Lateran, + And not with Saracens nor with the Jews, + +For each one of his enemies was Christian, + And none of them had been to conquer Acre, + Nor merchandising in the Sultan’s land, + +Nor the high office, nor the sacred orders, + In him regarded, nor in me that cord + Which used to make those girt with it more meagre; + +But even as Constantine sought out Sylvester + To cure his leprosy, within Soracte, + So this one sought me out as an adept + +To cure him of the fever of his pride. + Counsel he asked of me, and I was silent, + Because his words appeared inebriate. + +And then he said: ‘Be not thy heart afraid; + Henceforth I thee absolve; and thou instruct me + How to raze Palestrina to the ground. + +Heaven have I power to lock and to unlock, + As thou dost know; therefore the keys are two, + The which my predecessor held not dear.’ + +Then urged me on his weighty arguments + There, where my silence was the worst advice; + And said I: ‘Father, since thou washest me + +Of that sin into which I now must fall, + The promise long with the fulfilment short + Will make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.’ + +Francis came afterward, when I was dead, + For me; but one of the black Cherubim + Said to him: ‘Take him not; do me no wrong; + +He must come down among my servitors, + Because he gave the fraudulent advice + From which time forth I have been at his hair; + +For who repents not cannot be absolved, + Nor can one both repent and will at once, + Because of the contradiction which consents not.’ + +O miserable me! how I did shudder + When he seized on me, saying: ‘Peradventure + Thou didst not think that I was a logician!’ + +He bore me unto Minos, who entwined + Eight times his tail about his stubborn back, + And after he had bitten it in great rage, + +Said: ‘Of the thievish fire a culprit this;’ + Wherefore, here where thou seest, am I lost, + And vested thus in going I bemoan me.” + +When it had thus completed its recital, + The flame departed uttering lamentations, + Writhing and flapping its sharp-pointed horn. + +Onward we passed, both I and my Conductor, + Up o’er the crag above another arch, + Which the moat covers, where is paid the fee + +By those who, sowing discord, win their burden. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXVIII + + +Who ever could, e’en with untrammelled words, + Tell of the blood and of the wounds in full + Which now I saw, by many times narrating? + +Each tongue would for a certainty fall short + By reason of our speech and memory, + That have small room to comprehend so much. + +If were again assembled all the people + Which formerly upon the fateful land + Of Puglia were lamenting for their blood + +Shed by the Romans and the lingering war + That of the rings made such illustrious spoils, + As Livy has recorded, who errs not, + +With those who felt the agony of blows + By making counterstand to Robert Guiscard, + And all the rest, whose bones are gathered still + +At Ceperano, where a renegade + Was each Apulian, and at Tagliacozzo, + Where without arms the old Alardo conquered, + +And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off, + Should show, it would be nothing to compare + With the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia. + +A cask by losing centre-piece or cant + Was never shattered so, as I saw one + Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind. + +Between his legs were hanging down his entrails; + His heart was visible, and the dismal sack + That maketh excrement of what is eaten. + +While I was all absorbed in seeing him, + He looked at me, and opened with his hands + His bosom, saying: “See now how I rend me; + +How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; + In front of me doth Ali weeping go, + Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin; + +And all the others whom thou here beholdest, + Disseminators of scandal and of schism + While living were, and therefore are cleft thus. + +A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us + Thus cruelly, unto the falchion’s edge + Putting again each one of all this ream, + +When we have gone around the doleful road; + By reason that our wounds are closed again + Ere any one in front of him repass. + +But who art thou, that musest on the crag, + Perchance to postpone going to the pain + That is adjudged upon thine accusations?” + +“Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him,” + My Master made reply, “to be tormented; + But to procure him full experience, + +Me, who am dead, behoves it to conduct him + Down here through Hell, from circle unto circle; + And this is true as that I speak to thee.” + +More than a hundred were there when they heard him, + Who in the moat stood still to look at me, + Through wonderment oblivious of their torture. + +“Now say to Fra Dolcino, then, to arm him, + Thou, who perhaps wilt shortly see the sun, + If soon he wish not here to follow me, + +So with provisions, that no stress of snow + May give the victory to the Novarese, + Which otherwise to gain would not be easy.” + +After one foot to go away he lifted, + This word did Mahomet say unto me, + Then to depart upon the ground he stretched it. + +Another one, who had his throat pierced through, + And nose cut off close underneath the brows, + And had no longer but a single ear, + +Staying to look in wonder with the others, + Before the others did his gullet open, + Which outwardly was red in every part, + +And said: “O thou, whom guilt doth not condemn, + And whom I once saw up in Latian land, + Unless too great similitude deceive me, + +Call to remembrance Pier da Medicina, + If e’er thou see again the lovely plain + That from Vercelli slopes to Marcabo, + +And make it known to the best two of Fano, + To Messer Guido and Angiolello likewise, + That if foreseeing here be not in vain, + +Cast over from their vessel shall they be, + And drowned near unto the Cattolica, + By the betrayal of a tyrant fell. + +Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca + Neptune ne’er yet beheld so great a crime, + Neither of pirates nor Argolic people. + +That traitor, who sees only with one eye, + And holds the land, which some one here with me + Would fain be fasting from the vision of, + +Will make them come unto a parley with him; + Then will do so, that to Focara’s wind + They will not stand in need of vow or prayer.” + +And I to him: “Show to me and declare, + If thou wouldst have me bear up news of thee, + Who is this person of the bitter vision.” + +Then did he lay his hand upon the jaw + Of one of his companions, and his mouth + Oped, crying: “This is he, and he speaks not. + +This one, being banished, every doubt submerged + In Caesar by affirming the forearmed + Always with detriment allowed delay.” + +O how bewildered unto me appeared, + With tongue asunder in his windpipe slit, + Curio, who in speaking was so bold! + +And one, who both his hands dissevered had, + The stumps uplifting through the murky air, + So that the blood made horrible his face, + +Cried out: “Thou shalt remember Mosca also, + Who said, alas! ‘A thing done has an end!’ + Which was an ill seed for the Tuscan people.” + +“And death unto thy race,” thereto I added; + Whence he, accumulating woe on woe, + Departed, like a person sad and crazed. + +But I remained to look upon the crowd; + And saw a thing which I should be afraid, + Without some further proof, even to recount, + +If it were not that conscience reassures me, + That good companion which emboldens man + Beneath the hauberk of its feeling pure. + +I truly saw, and still I seem to see it, + A trunk without a head walk in like manner + As walked the others of the mournful herd. + +And by the hair it held the head dissevered, + Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern, + And that upon us gazed and said: “O me!” + +It of itself made to itself a lamp, + And they were two in one, and one in two; + How that can be, He knows who so ordains it. + +When it was come close to the bridge’s foot, + It lifted high its arm with all the head, + To bring more closely unto us its words, + +Which were: “Behold now the sore penalty, + Thou, who dost breathing go the dead beholding; + Behold if any be as great as this. + +And so that thou may carry news of me, + Know that Bertram de Born am I, the same + Who gave to the Young King the evil comfort. + +I made the father and the son rebellious; + Achitophel not more with Absalom + And David did with his accursed goadings. + +Because I parted persons so united, + Parted do I now bear my brain, alas! + From its beginning, which is in this trunk. + +Thus is observed in me the counterpoise.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXIX + + +The many people and the divers wounds + These eyes of mine had so inebriated, + That they were wishful to stand still and weep; + +But said Virgilius: “What dost thou still gaze at? + Why is thy sight still riveted down there + Among the mournful, mutilated shades? + +Thou hast not done so at the other Bolge; + Consider, if to count them thou believest, + That two-and-twenty miles the valley winds, + +And now the moon is underneath our feet; + Henceforth the time allotted us is brief, + And more is to be seen than what thou seest.” + +“If thou hadst,” I made answer thereupon, + “Attended to the cause for which I looked, + Perhaps a longer stay thou wouldst have pardoned.” + +Meanwhile my Guide departed, and behind him + I went, already making my reply, + And superadding: “In that cavern where + +I held mine eyes with such attention fixed, + I think a spirit of my blood laments + The sin which down below there costs so much.” + +Then said the Master: “Be no longer broken + Thy thought from this time forward upon him; + Attend elsewhere, and there let him remain; + +For him I saw below the little bridge, + Pointing at thee, and threatening with his finger + Fiercely, and heard him called Geri del Bello. + +So wholly at that time wast thou impeded + By him who formerly held Altaforte, + Thou didst not look that way; so he departed.” + +“O my Conductor, his own violent death, + Which is not yet avenged for him,” I said, + “By any who is sharer in the shame, + +Made him disdainful; whence he went away, + As I imagine, without speaking to me, + And thereby made me pity him the more.” + +Thus did we speak as far as the first place + Upon the crag, which the next valley shows + Down to the bottom, if there were more light. + +When we were now right over the last cloister + Of Malebolge, so that its lay-brothers + Could manifest themselves unto our sight, + +Divers lamentings pierced me through and through, + Which with compassion had their arrows barbed, + Whereat mine ears I covered with my hands. + +What pain would be, if from the hospitals + Of Valdichiana, ’twixt July and September, + And of Maremma and Sardinia + +All the diseases in one moat were gathered, + Such was it here, and such a stench came from it + As from putrescent limbs is wont to issue. + +We had descended on the furthest bank + From the long crag, upon the left hand still, + And then more vivid was my power of sight + +Down tow’rds the bottom, where the ministress + Of the high Lord, Justice infallible, + Punishes forgers, which she here records. + +I do not think a sadder sight to see + Was in Aegina the whole people sick, + (When was the air so full of pestilence, + +The animals, down to the little worm, + All fell, and afterwards the ancient people, + According as the poets have affirmed, + +Were from the seed of ants restored again,) + Than was it to behold through that dark valley + The spirits languishing in divers heaps. + +This on the belly, that upon the back + One of the other lay, and others crawling + Shifted themselves along the dismal road. + +We step by step went onward without speech, + Gazing upon and listening to the sick + Who had not strength enough to lift their bodies. + +I saw two sitting leaned against each other, + As leans in heating platter against platter, + From head to foot bespotted o’er with scabs; + +And never saw I plied a currycomb + By stable-boy for whom his master waits, + Or him who keeps awake unwillingly, + +As every one was plying fast the bite + Of nails upon himself, for the great rage + Of itching which no other succour had. + +And the nails downward with them dragged the scab, + In fashion as a knife the scales of bream, + Or any other fish that has them largest. + +“O thou, that with thy fingers dost dismail thee,” + Began my Leader unto one of them, + “And makest of them pincers now and then, + +Tell me if any Latian is with those + Who are herein; so may thy nails suffice thee + To all eternity unto this work.” + +“Latians are we, whom thou so wasted seest, + Both of us here,” one weeping made reply; + “But who art thou, that questionest about us?” + +And said the Guide: “One am I who descends + Down with this living man from cliff to cliff, + And I intend to show Hell unto him.” + +Then broken was their mutual support, + And trembling each one turned himself to me, + With others who had heard him by rebound. + +Wholly to me did the good Master gather, + Saying: “Say unto them whate’er thou wishest.” + And I began, since he would have it so: + +“So may your memory not steal away + In the first world from out the minds of men, + But so may it survive ’neath many suns, + +Say to me who ye are, and of what people; + Let not your foul and loathsome punishment + Make you afraid to show yourselves to me.” + +“I of Arezzo was,” one made reply, + “And Albert of Siena had me burned; + But what I died for does not bring me here. + +’Tis true I said to him, speaking in jest, + That I could rise by flight into the air, + And he who had conceit, but little wit, + +Would have me show to him the art; and only + Because no Daedalus I made him, made me + Be burned by one who held him as his son. + +But unto the last Bolgia of the ten, + For alchemy, which in the world I practised, + Minos, who cannot err, has me condemned.” + +And to the Poet said I: “Now was ever + So vain a people as the Sienese? + Not for a certainty the French by far.” + +Whereat the other leper, who had heard me, + Replied unto my speech: “Taking out Stricca, + Who knew the art of moderate expenses, + +And Niccolo, who the luxurious use + Of cloves discovered earliest of all + Within that garden where such seed takes root; + +And taking out the band, among whom squandered + Caccia d’Ascian his vineyards and vast woods, + And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered! + +But, that thou know who thus doth second thee + Against the Sienese, make sharp thine eye + Tow’rds me, so that my face well answer thee, + +And thou shalt see I am Capocchio’s shade, + Who metals falsified by alchemy; + Thou must remember, if I well descry thee, + +How I a skilful ape of nature was.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXX + + +’Twas at the time when Juno was enraged, + For Semele, against the Theban blood, + As she already more than once had shown, + +So reft of reason Athamas became, + That, seeing his own wife with children twain + Walking encumbered upon either hand, + +He cried: “Spread out the nets, that I may take + The lioness and her whelps upon the passage;” + And then extended his unpitying claws, + +Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus, + And whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock; + And she, with the other burthen, drowned herself;— + +And at the time when fortune downward hurled + The Trojan’s arrogance, that all things dared, + So that the king was with his kingdom crushed, + +Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive, + When lifeless she beheld Polyxena, + And of her Polydorus on the shore + +Of ocean was the dolorous one aware, + Out of her senses like a dog she barked, + So much the anguish had her mind distorted; + +But not of Thebes the furies nor the Trojan + Were ever seen in any one so cruel + In goading beasts, and much more human members, + +As I beheld two shadows pale and naked, + Who, biting, in the manner ran along + That a boar does, when from the sty turned loose. + +One to Capocchio came, and by the nape + Seized with its teeth his neck, so that in dragging + It made his belly grate the solid bottom. + +And the Aretine, who trembling had remained, + Said to me: “That mad sprite is Gianni Schicchi, + And raving goes thus harrying other people.” + +“O,” said I to him, “so may not the other + Set teeth on thee, let it not weary thee + To tell us who it is, ere it dart hence.” + +And he to me: “That is the ancient ghost + Of the nefarious Myrrha, who became + Beyond all rightful love her father’s lover. + +She came to sin with him after this manner, + By counterfeiting of another’s form; + As he who goeth yonder undertook, + +That he might gain the lady of the herd, + To counterfeit in himself Buoso Donati, + Making a will and giving it due form.” + +And after the two maniacs had passed + On whom I held mine eye, I turned it back + To look upon the other evil-born. + +I saw one made in fashion of a lute, + If he had only had the groin cut off + Just at the point at which a man is forked. + +The heavy dropsy, that so disproportions + The limbs with humours, which it ill concocts, + That the face corresponds not to the belly, + +Compelled him so to hold his lips apart + As does the hectic, who because of thirst + One tow’rds the chin, the other upward turns. + +“O ye, who without any torment are, + And why I know not, in the world of woe,” + He said to us, “behold, and be attentive + +Unto the misery of Master Adam; + I had while living much of what I wished, + And now, alas! a drop of water crave. + +The rivulets, that from the verdant hills + Of Cassentin descend down into Arno, + Making their channels to be cold and moist, + +Ever before me stand, and not in vain; + For far more doth their image dry me up + Than the disease which strips my face of flesh. + +The rigid justice that chastises me + Draweth occasion from the place in which + I sinned, to put the more my sighs in flight. + +There is Romena, where I counterfeited + The currency imprinted with the Baptist, + For which I left my body burned above. + +But if I here could see the tristful soul + Of Guido, or Alessandro, or their brother, + For Branda’s fount I would not give the sight. + +One is within already, if the raving + Shades that are going round about speak truth; + But what avails it me, whose limbs are tied? + +If I were only still so light, that in + A hundred years I could advance one inch, + I had already started on the way, + +Seeking him out among this squalid folk, + Although the circuit be eleven miles, + And be not less than half a mile across. + +For them am I in such a family; + They did induce me into coining florins, + Which had three carats of impurity.” + +And I to him: “Who are the two poor wretches + That smoke like unto a wet hand in winter, + Lying there close upon thy right-hand confines?” + +“I found them here,” replied he, “when I rained + Into this chasm, and since they have not turned, + Nor do I think they will for evermore. + +One the false woman is who accused Joseph, + The other the false Sinon, Greek of Troy; + From acute fever they send forth such reek.” + +And one of them, who felt himself annoyed + At being, peradventure, named so darkly, + Smote with the fist upon his hardened paunch. + +It gave a sound, as if it were a drum; + And Master Adam smote him in the face, + With arm that did not seem to be less hard, + +Saying to him: “Although be taken from me + All motion, for my limbs that heavy are, + I have an arm unfettered for such need.” + +Whereat he answer made: “When thou didst go + Unto the fire, thou hadst it not so ready: + But hadst it so and more when thou wast coining.” + +The dropsical: “Thou sayest true in that; + But thou wast not so true a witness there, + Where thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy.” + +“If I spake false, thou falsifiedst the coin,” + Said Sinon; “and for one fault I am here, + And thou for more than any other demon.” + +“Remember, perjurer, about the horse,” + He made reply who had the swollen belly, + “And rueful be it thee the whole world knows it.” + +“Rueful to thee the thirst be wherewith cracks + Thy tongue,” the Greek said, “and the putrid water + That hedges so thy paunch before thine eyes.” + +Then the false-coiner: “So is gaping wide + Thy mouth for speaking evil, as ’tis wont; + Because if I have thirst, and humour stuff me + +Thou hast the burning and the head that aches, + And to lick up the mirror of Narcissus + Thou wouldst not want words many to invite thee.” + +In listening to them was I wholly fixed, + When said the Master to me: “Now just look, + For little wants it that I quarrel with thee.” + +When him I heard in anger speak to me, + I turned me round towards him with such shame + That still it eddies through my memory. + +And as he is who dreams of his own harm, + Who dreaming wishes it may be a dream, + So that he craves what is, as if it were not; + +Such I became, not having power to speak, + For to excuse myself I wished, and still + Excused myself, and did not think I did it. + +“Less shame doth wash away a greater fault,” + The Master said, “than this of thine has been; + Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness, + +And make account that I am aye beside thee, + If e’er it come to pass that fortune bring thee + Where there are people in a like dispute; + +For a base wish it is to wish to hear it.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXXI + + +One and the selfsame tongue first wounded me, + So that it tinged the one cheek and the other, + And then held out to me the medicine; + +Thus do I hear that once Achilles’ spear, + His and his father’s, used to be the cause + First of a sad and then a gracious boon. + +We turned our backs upon the wretched valley, + Upon the bank that girds it round about, + Going across it without any speech. + +There it was less than night, and less than day, + So that my sight went little in advance; + But I could hear the blare of a loud horn, + +So loud it would have made each thunder faint, + Which, counter to it following its way, + Mine eyes directed wholly to one place. + +After the dolorous discomfiture + When Charlemagne the holy emprise lost, + So terribly Orlando sounded not. + +Short while my head turned thitherward I held + When many lofty towers I seemed to see, + Whereat I: “Master, say, what town is this?” + +And he to me: “Because thou peerest forth + Athwart the darkness at too great a distance, + It happens that thou errest in thy fancy. + +Well shalt thou see, if thou arrivest there, + How much the sense deceives itself by distance; + Therefore a little faster spur thee on.” + +Then tenderly he took me by the hand, + And said: “Before we farther have advanced, + That the reality may seem to thee + +Less strange, know that these are not towers, but giants, + And they are in the well, around the bank, + From navel downward, one and all of them.” + +As, when the fog is vanishing away, + Little by little doth the sight refigure + Whate’er the mist that crowds the air conceals, + +So, piercing through the dense and darksome air, + More and more near approaching tow’rd the verge, + My error fled, and fear came over me; + +Because as on its circular parapets + Montereggione crowns itself with towers, + E’en thus the margin which surrounds the well + +With one half of their bodies turreted + The horrible giants, whom Jove menaces + E’en now from out the heavens when he thunders. + +And I of one already saw the face, + Shoulders, and breast, and great part of the belly, + And down along his sides both of the arms. + +Certainly Nature, when she left the making + Of animals like these, did well indeed, + By taking such executors from Mars; + +And if of elephants and whales she doth not + Repent her, whosoever looketh subtly + More just and more discreet will hold her for it; + +For where the argument of intellect + Is added unto evil will and power, + No rampart can the people make against it. + +His face appeared to me as long and large + As is at Rome the pine-cone of Saint Peter’s, + And in proportion were the other bones; + +So that the margin, which an apron was + Down from the middle, showed so much of him + Above it, that to reach up to his hair + +Three Frieslanders in vain had vaunted them; + For I beheld thirty great palms of him + Down from the place where man his mantle buckles. + +“Raphael mai amech izabi almi,” + Began to clamour the ferocious mouth, + To which were not befitting sweeter psalms. + +And unto him my Guide: “Soul idiotic, + Keep to thy horn, and vent thyself with that, + When wrath or other passion touches thee. + +Search round thy neck, and thou wilt find the belt + Which keeps it fastened, O bewildered soul, + And see it, where it bars thy mighty breast.” + +Then said to me: “He doth himself accuse; + This one is Nimrod, by whose evil thought + One language in the world is not still used. + +Here let us leave him and not speak in vain; + For even such to him is every language + As his to others, which to none is known.” + +Therefore a longer journey did we make, + Turned to the left, and a crossbow-shot oft + We found another far more fierce and large. + +In binding him, who might the master be + I cannot say; but he had pinioned close + Behind the right arm, and in front the other, + +With chains, that held him so begirt about + From the neck down, that on the part uncovered + It wound itself as far as the fifth gyre. + +“This proud one wished to make experiment + Of his own power against the Supreme Jove,” + My Leader said, “whence he has such a guerdon. + +Ephialtes is his name; he showed great prowess. + What time the giants terrified the gods; + The arms he wielded never more he moves.” + +And I to him: “If possible, I should wish + That of the measureless Briareus + These eyes of mine might have experience.” + +Whence he replied: “Thou shalt behold Antaeus + Close by here, who can speak and is unbound, + Who at the bottom of all crime shall place us. + +Much farther yon is he whom thou wouldst see, + And he is bound, and fashioned like to this one, + Save that he seems in aspect more ferocious.” + +There never was an earthquake of such might + That it could shake a tower so violently, + As Ephialtes suddenly shook himself. + +Then was I more afraid of death than ever, + For nothing more was needful than the fear, + If I had not beheld the manacles. + +Then we proceeded farther in advance, + And to Antaeus came, who, full five ells + Without the head, forth issued from the cavern. + +“O thou, who in the valley fortunate, + Which Scipio the heir of glory made, + When Hannibal turned back with all his hosts, + +Once brought’st a thousand lions for thy prey, + And who, hadst thou been at the mighty war + Among thy brothers, some it seems still think + +The sons of Earth the victory would have gained: + Place us below, nor be disdainful of it, + There where the cold doth lock Cocytus up. + +Make us not go to Tityus nor Typhoeus; + This one can give of that which here is longed for; + Therefore stoop down, and do not curl thy lip. + +Still in the world can he restore thy fame; + Because he lives, and still expects long life, + If to itself Grace call him not untimely.” + +So said the Master; and in haste the other + His hands extended and took up my Guide,— + Hands whose great pressure Hercules once felt. + +Virgilius, when he felt himself embraced, + Said unto me: “Draw nigh, that I may take thee;” + Then of himself and me one bundle made. + +As seems the Carisenda, to behold + Beneath the leaning side, when goes a cloud + Above it so that opposite it hangs; + +Such did Antaeus seem to me, who stood + Watching to see him stoop, and then it was + I could have wished to go some other way. + +But lightly in the abyss, which swallows up + Judas with Lucifer, he put us down; + Nor thus bowed downward made he there delay, + +But, as a mast does in a ship, uprose. + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXXII + + +If I had rhymes both rough and stridulous, + As were appropriate to the dismal hole + Down upon which thrust all the other rocks, + +I would press out the juice of my conception + More fully; but because I have them not, + Not without fear I bring myself to speak; + +For ’tis no enterprise to take in jest, + To sketch the bottom of all the universe, + Nor for a tongue that cries Mamma and Babbo. + +But may those Ladies help this verse of mine, + Who helped Amphion in enclosing Thebes, + That from the fact the word be not diverse. + +O rabble ill-begotten above all, + Who’re in the place to speak of which is hard, + ’Twere better ye had here been sheep or goats! + +When we were down within the darksome well, + Beneath the giant’s feet, but lower far, + And I was scanning still the lofty wall, + +I heard it said to me: “Look how thou steppest! + Take heed thou do not trample with thy feet + The heads of the tired, miserable brothers!” + +Whereat I turned me round, and saw before me + And underfoot a lake, that from the frost + The semblance had of glass, and not of water. + +So thick a veil ne’er made upon its current + In winter-time Danube in Austria, + Nor there beneath the frigid sky the Don, + +As there was here; so that if Tambernich + Had fallen upon it, or Pietrapana, + E’en at the edge ’twould not have given a creak. + +And as to croak the frog doth place himself + With muzzle out of water,—when is dreaming + Of gleaning oftentimes the peasant-girl,— + +Livid, as far down as where shame appears, + Were the disconsolate shades within the ice, + Setting their teeth unto the note of storks. + +Each one his countenance held downward bent; + From mouth the cold, from eyes the doleful heart + Among them witness of itself procures. + +When round about me somewhat I had looked, + I downward turned me, and saw two so close, + The hair upon their heads together mingled. + +“Ye who so strain your breasts together, tell me,” + I said, “who are you;” and they bent their necks, + And when to me their faces they had lifted, + +Their eyes, which first were only moist within, + Gushed o’er the eyelids, and the frost congealed + The tears between, and locked them up again. + +Clamp never bound together wood with wood + So strongly; whereat they, like two he-goats, + Butted together, so much wrath o’ercame them. + +And one, who had by reason of the cold + Lost both his ears, still with his visage downward, + Said: “Why dost thou so mirror thyself in us? + +If thou desire to know who these two are, + The valley whence Bisenzio descends + Belonged to them and to their father Albert. + +They from one body came, and all Caina + Thou shalt search through, and shalt not find a shade + More worthy to be fixed in gelatine; + +Not he in whom were broken breast and shadow + At one and the same blow by Arthur’s hand; + Focaccia not; not he who me encumbers + +So with his head I see no farther forward, + And bore the name of Sassol Mascheroni; + Well knowest thou who he was, if thou art Tuscan. + +And that thou put me not to further speech, + Know that I Camicion de’ Pazzi was, + And wait Carlino to exonerate me.” + +Then I beheld a thousand faces, made + Purple with cold; whence o’er me comes a shudder, + And evermore will come, at frozen ponds. + +And while we were advancing tow’rds the middle, + Where everything of weight unites together, + And I was shivering in the eternal shade, + +Whether ’twere will, or destiny, or chance, + I know not; but in walking ’mong the heads + I struck my foot hard in the face of one. + +Weeping he growled: “Why dost thou trample me? + Unless thou comest to increase the vengeance + of Montaperti, why dost thou molest me?” + +And I: “My Master, now wait here for me, + That I through him may issue from a doubt; + Then thou mayst hurry me, as thou shalt wish.” + +The Leader stopped; and to that one I said + Who was blaspheming vehemently still: + “Who art thou, that thus reprehendest others?” + +“Now who art thou, that goest through Antenora + Smiting,” replied he, “other people’s cheeks, + So that, if thou wert living, ’twere too much?” + +“Living I am, and dear to thee it may be,” + Was my response, “if thou demandest fame, + That ’mid the other notes thy name I place.” + +And he to me: “For the reverse I long; + Take thyself hence, and give me no more trouble; + For ill thou knowest to flatter in this hollow.” + +Then by the scalp behind I seized upon him, + And said: “It must needs be thou name thyself, + Or not a hair remain upon thee here.” + +Whence he to me: “Though thou strip off my hair, + I will not tell thee who I am, nor show thee, + If on my head a thousand times thou fall.” + +I had his hair in hand already twisted, + And more than one shock of it had pulled out, + He barking, with his eyes held firmly down, + +When cried another: “What doth ail thee, Bocca? + Is’t not enough to clatter with thy jaws, + But thou must bark? what devil touches thee?” + +“Now,” said I, “I care not to have thee speak, + Accursed traitor; for unto thy shame + I will report of thee veracious news.” + +“Begone,” replied he, “and tell what thou wilt, + But be not silent, if thou issue hence, + Of him who had just now his tongue so prompt; + +He weepeth here the silver of the French; + ‘I saw,’ thus canst thou phrase it, ‘him of Duera + There where the sinners stand out in the cold.’ + +If thou shouldst questioned be who else was there, + Thou hast beside thee him of Beccaria, + Of whom the gorget Florence slit asunder; + +Gianni del Soldanier, I think, may be + Yonder with Ganellon, and Tebaldello + Who oped Faenza when the people slep.” + +Already we had gone away from him, + When I beheld two frozen in one hole, + So that one head a hood was to the other; + +And even as bread through hunger is devoured, + The uppermost on the other set his teeth, + There where the brain is to the nape united. + +Not in another fashion Tydeus gnawed + The temples of Menalippus in disdain, + Than that one did the skull and the other things. + +“O thou, who showest by such bestial sign + Thy hatred against him whom thou art eating, + Tell me the wherefore,” said I, “with this compact, + +That if thou rightfully of him complain, + In knowing who ye are, and his transgression, + I in the world above repay thee for it, + +If that wherewith I speak be not dried up.” + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXXIII + + +His mouth uplifted from his grim repast, + That sinner, wiping it upon the hair + Of the same head that he behind had wasted. + +Then he began: “Thou wilt that I renew + The desperate grief, which wrings my heart already + To think of only, ere I speak of it; + +But if my words be seed that may bear fruit + Of infamy to the traitor whom I gnaw, + Speaking and weeping shalt thou see together. + +I know not who thou art, nor by what mode + Thou hast come down here; but a Florentine + Thou seemest to me truly, when I hear thee. + +Thou hast to know I was Count Ugolino, + And this one was Ruggieri the Archbishop; + Now I will tell thee why I am such a neighbour. + +That, by effect of his malicious thoughts, + Trusting in him I was made prisoner, + And after put to death, I need not say; + + But ne’ertheless what thou canst not have heard, + That is to say, how cruel was my death, + Hear shalt thou, and shalt know if he has wronged me. + +A narrow perforation in the mew, + Which bears because of me the title of Famine, + And in which others still must be locked up, + +Had shown me through its opening many moons + Already, when I dreamed the evil dream + Which of the future rent for me the veil. + +This one appeared to me as lord and master, + Hunting the wolf and whelps upon the mountain + For which the Pisans cannot Lucca see. + +With sleuth-hounds gaunt, and eager, and well trained, + Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfianchi + He had sent out before him to the front. + +After brief course seemed unto me forespent + The father and the sons, and with sharp tushes + It seemed to me I saw their flanks ripped open. + +When I before the morrow was awake, + Moaning amid their sleep I heard my sons + Who with me were, and asking after bread. + +Cruel indeed art thou, if yet thou grieve not, + Thinking of what my heart foreboded me, + And weep’st thou not, what art thou wont to weep at? + +They were awake now, and the hour drew nigh + At which our food used to be brought to us, + And through his dream was each one apprehensive; + +And I heard locking up the under door + Of the horrible tower; whereat without a word + I gazed into the faces of my sons. + +I wept not, I within so turned to stone; + They wept; and darling little Anselm mine + Said: ‘Thou dost gaze so, father, what doth ail thee?’ + +Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made + All of that day, nor yet the night thereafter, + Until another sun rose on the world. + +As now a little glimmer made its way + Into the dolorous prison, and I saw + Upon four faces my own very aspect, + +Both of my hands in agony I bit; + And, thinking that I did it from desire + Of eating, on a sudden they uprose, + +And said they: ‘Father, much less pain ’twill give us + If thou do eat of us; thyself didst clothe us + With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off.’ + +I calmed me then, not to make them more sad. + That day we all were silent, and the next. + Ah! obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open? + +When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo + Threw himself down outstretched before my feet, + Saying, ‘My father, why dost thou not help me?’ + +And there he died; and, as thou seest me, + I saw the three fall, one by one, between + The fifth day and the sixth; whence I betook me, + +Already blind, to groping over each, + And three days called them after they were dead; + Then hunger did what sorrow could not do.” + +When he had said this, with his eyes distorted, + The wretched skull resumed he with his teeth, + Which, as a dog’s, upon the bone were strong. + +Ah! Pisa, thou opprobrium of the people + Of the fair land there where the ‘Si’ doth sound, + Since slow to punish thee thy neighbours are, + +Let the Capraia and Gorgona move, + And make a hedge across the mouth of Arno + That every person in thee it may drown! + +For if Count Ugolino had the fame + Of having in thy castles thee betrayed, + Thou shouldst not on such cross have put his sons. + +Guiltless of any crime, thou modern Thebes! + Their youth made Uguccione and Brigata, + And the other two my song doth name above! + +We passed still farther onward, where the ice + Another people ruggedly enswathes, + Not downward turned, but all of them reversed. + +Weeping itself there does not let them weep, + And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes + Turns itself inward to increase the anguish; + +Because the earliest tears a cluster form, + And, in the manner of a crystal visor, + Fill all the cup beneath the eyebrow full. + +And notwithstanding that, as in a callus, + Because of cold all sensibility + Its station had abandoned in my face, + +Still it appeared to me I felt some wind; + Whence I: “My Master, who sets this in motion? + Is not below here every vapour quenched?” + +Whence he to me: “Full soon shalt thou be where + Thine eye shall answer make to thee of this, + Seeing the cause which raineth down the blast.” + +And one of the wretches of the frozen crust + Cried out to us: “O souls so merciless + That the last post is given unto you, + +Lift from mine eyes the rigid veils, that I + May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart + A little, e’er the weeping recongeal.” + +Whence I to him: “If thou wouldst have me help thee + Say who thou wast; and if I free thee not, + May I go to the bottom of the ice.” + +Then he replied: “I am Friar Alberigo; + He am I of the fruit of the bad garden, + Who here a date am getting for my fig.” + +“O,” said I to him, “now art thou, too, dead?” + And he to me: “How may my body fare + Up in the world, no knowledge I possess. + +Such an advantage has this Ptolomaea, + That oftentimes the soul descendeth here + Sooner than Atropos in motion sets it. + +And, that thou mayest more willingly remove + From off my countenance these glassy tears, + Know that as soon as any soul betrays + +As I have done, his body by a demon + Is taken from him, who thereafter rules it, + Until his time has wholly been revolved. + +Itself down rushes into such a cistern; + And still perchance above appears the body + Of yonder shade, that winters here behind me. + +This thou shouldst know, if thou hast just come down; + It is Ser Branca d’ Oria, and many years + Have passed away since he was thus locked up.” + +“I think,” said I to him, “thou dost deceive me; + For Branca d’ Oria is not dead as yet, + And eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes.” + +“In moat above,” said he, “of Malebranche, + There where is boiling the tenacious pitch, + As yet had Michel Zanche not arrived, + +When this one left a devil in his stead + In his own body and one near of kin, + Who made together with him the betrayal. + +But hitherward stretch out thy hand forthwith, + Open mine eyes;”—and open them I did not, + And to be rude to him was courtesy. + +Ah, Genoese! ye men at variance + With every virtue, full of every vice + Wherefore are ye not scattered from the world? + +For with the vilest spirit of Romagna + I found of you one such, who for his deeds + In soul already in Cocytus bathes, + +And still above in body seems alive! + + + + +Inferno: Canto XXXIV + + +“‘Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni’ + Towards us; therefore look in front of thee,” + My Master said, “if thou discernest him.” + +As, when there breathes a heavy fog, or when + Our hemisphere is darkening into night, + Appears far off a mill the wind is turning, + +Methought that such a building then I saw; + And, for the wind, I drew myself behind + My Guide, because there was no other shelter. + +Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it, + There where the shades were wholly covered up, + And glimmered through like unto straws in glass. + +Some prone are lying, others stand erect, + This with the head, and that one with the soles; + Another, bow-like, face to feet inverts. + +When in advance so far we had proceeded, + That it my Master pleased to show to me + The creature who once had the beauteous semblance, + +He from before me moved and made me stop, + Saying: “Behold Dis, and behold the place + Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself.” + +How frozen I became and powerless then, + Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not, + Because all language would be insufficient. + +I did not die, and I alive remained not; + Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit, + What I became, being of both deprived. + +The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous + From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice; + And better with a giant I compare + +Than do the giants with those arms of his; + Consider now how great must be that whole, + Which unto such a part conforms itself. + +Were he as fair once, as he now is foul, + And lifted up his brow against his Maker, + Well may proceed from him all tribulation. + +O, what a marvel it appeared to me, + When I beheld three faces on his head! + The one in front, and that vermilion was; + +Two were the others, that were joined with this + Above the middle part of either shoulder, + And they were joined together at the crest; + +And the right-hand one seemed ’twixt white and yellow; + The left was such to look upon as those + Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward. + +Underneath each came forth two mighty wings, + Such as befitting were so great a bird; + Sails of the sea I never saw so large. + + No feathers had they, but as of a bat + Their fashion was; and he was waving them, + So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom. + +Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed. + With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins + Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel. + +At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching + A sinner, in the manner of a brake, + So that he three of them tormented thus. + +To him in front the biting was as naught + Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine + Utterly stripped of all the skin remained. + +“That soul up there which has the greatest pain,” + The Master said, “is Judas Iscariot; + With head inside, he plies his legs without. + +Of the two others, who head downward are, + The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus; + See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word. + +And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius. + But night is reascending, and ’tis time + That we depart, for we have seen the whole.” + +As seemed him good, I clasped him round the neck, + And he the vantage seized of time and place, + And when the wings were opened wide apart, + +He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides; + From fell to fell descended downward then + Between the thick hair and the frozen crust. + +When we were come to where the thigh revolves + Exactly on the thickness of the haunch, + The Guide, with labour and with hard-drawn breath, + +Turned round his head where he had had his legs, + And grappled to the hair, as one who mounts, + So that to Hell I thought we were returning. + +“Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these,” + The Master said, panting as one fatigued, + “Must we perforce depart from so much evil.” + +Then through the opening of a rock he issued, + And down upon the margin seated me; + Then tow’rds me he outstretched his wary step. + +I lifted up mine eyes and thought to see + Lucifer in the same way I had left him; + And I beheld him upward hold his legs. + +And if I then became disquieted, + Let stolid people think who do not see + What the point is beyond which I had passed. + +“Rise up,” the Master said, “upon thy feet; + The way is long, and difficult the road, + And now the sun to middle-tierce returns.” + +It was not any palace corridor + There where we were, but dungeon natural, + With floor uneven and unease of light. + +“Ere from the abyss I tear myself away, + My Master,” said I when I had arisen, + “To draw me from an error speak a little; + +Where is the ice? and how is this one fixed + Thus upside down? and how in such short time + From eve to morn has the sun made his transit?” + +And he to me: “Thou still imaginest + Thou art beyond the centre, where I grasped + The hair of the fell worm, who mines the world. + +That side thou wast, so long as I descended; + When round I turned me, thou didst pass the point + To which things heavy draw from every side, + +And now beneath the hemisphere art come + Opposite that which overhangs the vast + Dry-land, and ’neath whose cope was put to death + +The Man who without sin was born and lived. + Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere + Which makes the other face of the Judecca. + +Here it is morn when it is evening there; + And he who with his hair a stairway made us + Still fixed remaineth as he was before. + +Upon this side he fell down out of heaven; + And all the land, that whilom here emerged, + For fear of him made of the sea a veil, + +And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure + To flee from him, what on this side appears + Left the place vacant here, and back recoiled.” + +A place there is below, from Beelzebub + As far receding as the tomb extends, + Which not by sight is known, but by the sound + +Of a small rivulet, that there descendeth + Through chasm within the stone, which it has gnawed + With course that winds about and slightly falls. + +The Guide and I into that hidden road + Now entered, to return to the bright world; + And without care of having any rest + +We mounted up, he first and I the second, + Till I beheld through a round aperture + Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear; + +Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars. + + + + +PURGATORIO + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto I + + +To run o’er better waters hoists its sail + The little vessel of my genius now, + That leaves behind itself a sea so cruel; + +And of that second kingdom will I sing + Wherein the human spirit doth purge itself, + And to ascend to heaven becometh worthy. + +But let dead Poesy here rise again, + O holy Muses, since that I am yours, + And here Calliope somewhat ascend, + +My song accompanying with that sound, + Of which the miserable magpies felt + The blow so great, that they despaired of pardon. + +Sweet colour of the oriental sapphire, + That was upgathered in the cloudless aspect + Of the pure air, as far as the first circle, + +Unto mine eyes did recommence delight + Soon as I issued forth from the dead air, + Which had with sadness filled mine eyes and breast. + +The beauteous planet, that to love incites, + Was making all the orient to laugh, + Veiling the Fishes that were in her escort. + +To the right hand I turned, and fixed my mind + Upon the other pole, and saw four stars + Ne’er seen before save by the primal people. + +Rejoicing in their flamelets seemed the heaven. + O thou septentrional and widowed site, + Because thou art deprived of seeing these! + +When from regarding them I had withdrawn, + Turning a little to the other pole, + There where the Wain had disappeared already, + +I saw beside me an old man alone, + Worthy of so much reverence in his look, + That more owes not to father any son. + +A long beard and with white hair intermingled + He wore, in semblance like unto the tresses, + Of which a double list fell on his breast. + +The rays of the four consecrated stars + Did so adorn his countenance with light, + That him I saw as were the sun before him. + +“Who are you? ye who, counter the blind river, + Have fled away from the eternal prison?” + Moving those venerable plumes, he said: + +“Who guided you? or who has been your lamp + In issuing forth out of the night profound, + That ever black makes the infernal valley? + +The laws of the abyss, are they thus broken? + Or is there changed in heaven some council new, + That being damned ye come unto my crags?” + +Then did my Leader lay his grasp upon me, + And with his words, and with his hands and signs, + Reverent he made in me my knees and brow; + +Then answered him: “I came not of myself; + A Lady from Heaven descended, at whose prayers + I aided this one with my company. + +But since it is thy will more be unfolded + Of our condition, how it truly is, + Mine cannot be that this should be denied thee. + +This one has never his last evening seen, + But by his folly was so near to it + That very little time was there to turn. + +As I have said, I unto him was sent + To rescue him, and other way was none + Than this to which I have myself betaken. + +I’ve shown him all the people of perdition, + And now those spirits I intend to show + Who purge themselves beneath thy guardianship. + +How I have brought him would be long to tell thee. + Virtue descendeth from on high that aids me + To lead him to behold thee and to hear thee. + +Now may it please thee to vouchsafe his coming; + He seeketh Liberty, which is so dear, + As knoweth he who life for her refuses. + +Thou know’st it; since, for her, to thee not bitter + Was death in Utica, where thou didst leave + The vesture, that will shine so, the great day. + +By us the eternal edicts are not broken; + Since this one lives, and Minos binds not me; + But of that circle I, where are the chaste + +Eyes of thy Marcia, who in looks still prays thee, + O holy breast, to hold her as thine own; + For her love, then, incline thyself to us. + +Permit us through thy sevenfold realm to go; + I will take back this grace from thee to her, + If to be mentioned there below thou deignest.” + +“Marcia so pleasing was unto mine eyes + While I was on the other side,” then said he, + “That every grace she wished of me I granted; + +Now that she dwells beyond the evil river, + She can no longer move me, by that law + Which, when I issued forth from there, was made. + +But if a Lady of Heaven do move and rule thee, + As thou dost say, no flattery is needful; + Let it suffice thee that for her thou ask me. + +Go, then, and see thou gird this one about + With a smooth rush, and that thou wash his face, + So that thou cleanse away all stain therefrom, + +For ’twere not fitting that the eye o’ercast + By any mist should go before the first + Angel, who is of those of Paradise. + +This little island round about its base + Below there, yonder, where the billow beats it, + Doth rushes bear upon its washy ooze; + +No other plant that putteth forth the leaf, + Or that doth indurate, can there have life, + Because it yieldeth not unto the shocks. + +Thereafter be not this way your return; + The sun, which now is rising, will direct you + To take the mount by easier ascent.” + +With this he vanished; and I raised me up + Without a word, and wholly drew myself + Unto my Guide, and turned mine eyes to him. + +And he began: “Son, follow thou my steps; + Let us turn back, for on this side declines + The plain unto its lower boundaries.” + +The dawn was vanquishing the matin hour + Which fled before it, so that from afar + I recognised the trembling of the sea. + +Along the solitary plain we went + As one who unto the lost road returns, + And till he finds it seems to go in vain. + +As soon as we were come to where the dew + Fights with the sun, and, being in a part + Where shadow falls, little evaporates, + +Both of his hands upon the grass outspread + In gentle manner did my Master place; + Whence I, who of his action was aware, + +Extended unto him my tearful cheeks; + There did he make in me uncovered wholly + That hue which Hell had covered up in me. + +Then came we down upon the desert shore + Which never yet saw navigate its waters + Any that afterward had known return. + +There he begirt me as the other pleased; + O marvellous! for even as he culled + The humble plant, such it sprang up again + +Suddenly there where he uprooted it. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto II + + +Already had the sun the horizon reached + Whose circle of meridian covers o’er + Jerusalem with its most lofty point, + +And night that opposite to him revolves + Was issuing forth from Ganges with the Scales + That fall from out her hand when she exceedeth; + +So that the white and the vermilion cheeks + Of beautiful Aurora, where I was, + By too great age were changing into orange. + +We still were on the border of the sea, + Like people who are thinking of their road, + Who go in heart and with the body stay; + +And lo! as when, upon the approach of morning, + Through the gross vapours Mars grows fiery red + Down in the West upon the ocean floor, + +Appeared to me—may I again behold it!— + A light along the sea so swiftly coming, + Its motion by no flight of wing is equalled; + +From which when I a little had withdrawn + Mine eyes, that I might question my Conductor, + Again I saw it brighter grown and larger. + +Then on each side of it appeared to me + I knew not what of white, and underneath it + Little by little there came forth another. + +My Master yet had uttered not a word + While the first whiteness into wings unfolded; + But when he clearly recognised the pilot, + +He cried: “Make haste, make haste to bow the knee! + Behold the Angel of God! fold thou thy hands! + Henceforward shalt thou see such officers! + +See how he scorneth human arguments, + So that nor oar he wants, nor other sail + Than his own wings, between so distant shores. + +See how he holds them pointed up to heaven, + Fanning the air with the eternal pinions, + That do not moult themselves like mortal hair!” + +Then as still nearer and more near us came + The Bird Divine, more radiant he appeared, + So that near by the eye could not endure him, + +But down I cast it; and he came to shore + With a small vessel, very swift and light, + So that the water swallowed naught thereof. + +Upon the stern stood the Celestial Pilot; + Beatitude seemed written in his face, + And more than a hundred spirits sat within. + +“In exitu Israel de Aegypto!” + They chanted all together in one voice, + With whatso in that psalm is after written. + +Then made he sign of holy rood upon them, + Whereat all cast themselves upon the shore, + And he departed swiftly as he came. + +The throng which still remained there unfamiliar + Seemed with the place, all round about them gazing, + As one who in new matters makes essay. + +On every side was darting forth the day. + The sun, who had with his resplendent shafts + From the mid-heaven chased forth the Capricorn, + +When the new people lifted up their faces + Towards us, saying to us: “If ye know, + Show us the way to go unto the mountain.” + +And answer made Virgilius: “Ye believe + Perchance that we have knowledge of this place, + But we are strangers even as yourselves. + +Just now we came, a little while before you, + Another way, which was so rough and steep, + That mounting will henceforth seem sport to us.” + +The souls who had, from seeing me draw breath, + Become aware that I was still alive, + Pallid in their astonishment became; + +And as to messenger who bears the olive + The people throng to listen to the news, + And no one shows himself afraid of crowding, + +So at the sight of me stood motionless + Those fortunate spirits, all of them, as if + Oblivious to go and make them fair. + +One from among them saw I coming forward, + As to embrace me, with such great affection, + That it incited me to do the like. + +O empty shadows, save in aspect only! + Three times behind it did I clasp my hands, + As oft returned with them to my own breast! + +I think with wonder I depicted me; + Whereat the shadow smiled and backward drew; + And I, pursuing it, pressed farther forward. + +Gently it said that I should stay my steps; + Then knew I who it was, and I entreated + That it would stop awhile to speak with me. + +It made reply to me: “Even as I loved thee + In mortal body, so I love thee free; + Therefore I stop; but wherefore goest thou?” + +“My own Casella! to return once more + There where I am, I make this journey,” said I; + “But how from thee has so much time be taken?” + +And he to me: “No outrage has been done me, + If he who takes both when and whom he pleases + Has many times denied to me this passage, + +For of a righteous will his own is made. + He, sooth to say, for three months past has taken + Whoever wished to enter with all peace; + +Whence I, who now had turned unto that shore + Where salt the waters of the Tiber grow, + Benignantly by him have been received. + +Unto that outlet now his wing is pointed, + Because for evermore assemble there + Those who tow’rds Acheron do not descend.” + +And I: “If some new law take not from thee + Memory or practice of the song of love, + Which used to quiet in me all my longings, + +Thee may it please to comfort therewithal + Somewhat this soul of mine, that with its body + Hitherward coming is so much distressed.” + +“Love, that within my mind discourses with me,” + Forthwith began he so melodiously, + The melody within me still is sounding. + +My Master, and myself, and all that people + Which with him were, appeared as satisfied + As if naught else might touch the mind of any. + +We all of us were moveless and attentive + Unto his notes; and lo! the grave old man, + Exclaiming: “What is this, ye laggard spirits? + +What negligence, what standing still is this? + Run to the mountain to strip off the slough, + That lets not God be manifest to you.” + +Even as when, collecting grain or tares, + The doves, together at their pasture met, + Quiet, nor showing their accustomed pride, + +If aught appear of which they are afraid, + Upon a sudden leave their food alone, + Because they are assailed by greater care; + +So that fresh company did I behold + The song relinquish, and go tow’rds the hill, + As one who goes, and knows not whitherward; + +Nor was our own departure less in haste. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto III + + +Inasmuch as the instantaneous flight + Had scattered them asunder o’er the plain, + Turned to the mountain whither reason spurs us, + +I pressed me close unto my faithful comrade, + And how without him had I kept my course? + Who would have led me up along the mountain? + +He seemed to me within himself remorseful; + O noble conscience, and without a stain, + How sharp a sting is trivial fault to thee! + +After his feet had laid aside the haste + Which mars the dignity of every act, + My mind, that hitherto had been restrained, + +Let loose its faculties as if delighted, + And I my sight directed to the hill + That highest tow’rds the heaven uplifts itself. + +The sun, that in our rear was flaming red, + Was broken in front of me into the figure + Which had in me the stoppage of its rays; + +Unto one side I turned me, with the fear + Of being left alone, when I beheld + Only in front of me the ground obscured. + +“Why dost thou still mistrust?” my Comforter + Began to say to me turned wholly round; + “Dost thou not think me with thee, and that I guide thee? + +’Tis evening there already where is buried + The body within which I cast a shadow; + ’Tis from Brundusium ta’en, and Naples has it. + +Now if in front of me no shadow fall, + Marvel not at it more than at the heavens, + Because one ray impedeth not another + +To suffer torments, both of cold and heat, + Bodies like this that Power provides, which wills + That how it works be not unveiled to us. + +Insane is he who hopeth that our reason + Can traverse the illimitable way, + Which the one Substance in three Persons follows! + +Mortals, remain contented at the ‘Quia;’ + For if ye had been able to see all, + No need there were for Mary to give birth; + +And ye have seen desiring without fruit, + Those whose desire would have been quieted, + Which evermore is given them for a grief. + +I speak of Aristotle and of Plato, + And many others;”—and here bowed his head, + And more he said not, and remained disturbed. + +We came meanwhile unto the mountain’s foot; + There so precipitate we found the rock, + That nimble legs would there have been in vain. + +’Twixt Lerici and Turbia, the most desert, + The most secluded pathway is a stair + Easy and open, if compared with that. + +“Who knoweth now upon which hand the hill + Slopes down,” my Master said, his footsteps staying, + “So that who goeth without wings may mount?” + +And while he held his eyes upon the ground + Examining the nature of the path, + And I was looking up around the rock, + +On the left hand appeared to me a throng + Of souls, that moved their feet in our direction, + And did not seem to move, they came so slowly. + +“Lift up thine eyes,” I to the Master said; + “Behold, on this side, who will give us counsel, + If thou of thine own self can have it not.” + +Then he looked at me, and with frank expression + Replied: “Let us go there, for they come slowly, + And thou be steadfast in thy hope, sweet son.” + +Still was that people as far off from us, + After a thousand steps of ours I say, + As a good thrower with his hand would reach, + +When they all crowded unto the hard masses + Of the high bank, and motionless stood and close, + As he stands still to look who goes in doubt. + +“O happy dead! O spirits elect already!” + Virgilius made beginning, “by that peace + Which I believe is waiting for you all, + +Tell us upon what side the mountain slopes, + So that the going up be possible, + For to lose time irks him most who most knows.” + +As sheep come issuing forth from out the fold + By ones and twos and threes, and the others stand + Timidly, holding down their eyes and nostrils, + +And what the foremost does the others do, + Huddling themselves against her, if she stop, + Simple and quiet and the wherefore know not; + +So moving to approach us thereupon + I saw the leader of that fortunate flock, + Modest in face and dignified in gait. + +As soon as those in the advance saw broken + The light upon the ground at my right side, + So that from me the shadow reached the rock, + +They stopped, and backward drew themselves somewhat; + And all the others, who came after them, + Not knowing why nor wherefore, did the same. + +“Without your asking, I confess to you + This is a human body which you see, + Whereby the sunshine on the ground is cleft. + +Marvel ye not thereat, but be persuaded + That not without a power which comes from Heaven + Doth he endeavour to surmount this wall.” + +The Master thus; and said those worthy people: + “Return ye then, and enter in before us,” + Making a signal with the back o’ the hand + +And one of them began: “Whoe’er thou art, + Thus going turn thine eyes, consider well + If e’er thou saw me in the other world.” + +I turned me tow’rds him, and looked at him closely; + Blond was he, beautiful, and of noble aspect, + But one of his eyebrows had a blow divided. + +When with humility I had disclaimed + E’er having seen him, “Now behold!” he said, + And showed me high upon his breast a wound. + +Then said he with a smile: “I am Manfredi, + The grandson of the Empress Costanza; + Therefore, when thou returnest, I beseech thee + +Go to my daughter beautiful, the mother + Of Sicily’s honour and of Aragon’s, + And the truth tell her, if aught else be told. + +After I had my body lacerated + By these two mortal stabs, I gave myself + Weeping to Him, who willingly doth pardon. + +Horrible my iniquities had been; + But Infinite Goodness hath such ample arms, + That it receives whatever turns to it. + +Had but Cosenza’s pastor, who in chase + Of me was sent by Clement at that time, + In God read understandingly this page, + +The bones of my dead body still would be + At the bridge-head, near unto Benevento, + Under the safeguard of the heavy cairn. + +Now the rain bathes and moveth them the wind, + Beyond the realm, almost beside the Verde, + Where he transported them with tapers quenched. + +By malison of theirs is not so lost + Eternal Love, that it cannot return, + So long as hope has anything of green. + +True is it, who in contumacy dies + Of Holy Church, though penitent at last, + Must wait upon the outside this bank + +Thirty times told the time that he has been + In his presumption, unless such decree + Shorter by means of righteous prayers become. + +See now if thou hast power to make me happy, + By making known unto my good Costanza + How thou hast seen me, and this ban beside, + +For those on earth can much advance us here.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto IV + + +Whenever by delight or else by pain, + That seizes any faculty of ours, + Wholly to that the soul collects itself, + +It seemeth that no other power it heeds; + And this against that error is which thinks + One soul above another kindles in us. + +And hence, whenever aught is heard or seen + Which keeps the soul intently bent upon it, + Time passes on, and we perceive it not, + +Because one faculty is that which listens, + And other that which the soul keeps entire; + This is as if in bonds, and that is free. + +Of this I had experience positive + In hearing and in gazing at that spirit; + For fifty full degrees uprisen was + +The sun, and I had not perceived it, when + We came to where those souls with one accord + Cried out unto us: “Here is what you ask.” + +A greater opening ofttimes hedges up + With but a little forkful of his thorns + The villager, what time the grape imbrowns, + +Than was the passage-way through which ascended + Only my Leader and myself behind him, + After that company departed from us. + +One climbs Sanleo and descends in Noli, + And mounts the summit of Bismantova, + With feet alone; but here one needs must fly; + +With the swift pinions and the plumes I say + Of great desire, conducted after him + Who gave me hope, and made a light for me. + +We mounted upward through the rifted rock, + And on each side the border pressed upon us, + And feet and hands the ground beneath required. + +When we were come upon the upper rim + Of the high bank, out on the open slope, + “My Master,” said I, “what way shall we take?” + +And he to me: “No step of thine descend; + Still up the mount behind me win thy way, + Till some sage escort shall appear to us.” + +The summit was so high it vanquished sight, + And the hillside precipitous far more + Than line from middle quadrant to the centre. + +Spent with fatigue was I, when I began: + “O my sweet Father! turn thee and behold + How I remain alone, unless thou stay!” + +“O son,” he said, “up yonder drag thyself,” + Pointing me to a terrace somewhat higher, + Which on that side encircles all the hill. + +These words of his so spurred me on, that I + Strained every nerve, behind him scrambling up, + Until the circle was beneath my feet. + +Thereon ourselves we seated both of us + Turned to the East, from which we had ascended, + For all men are delighted to look back. + +To the low shores mine eyes I first directed, + Then to the sun uplifted them, and wondered + That on the left hand we were smitten by it. + +The Poet well perceived that I was wholly + Bewildered at the chariot of the light, + Where ’twixt us and the Aquilon it entered. + +Whereon he said to me: “If Castor and Pollux + Were in the company of yonder mirror, + That up and down conducteth with its light, + +Thou wouldst behold the zodiac’s jagged wheel + Revolving still more near unto the Bears, + Unless it swerved aside from its old track. + +How that may be wouldst thou have power to think, + Collected in thyself, imagine Zion + Together with this mount on earth to stand, + +So that they both one sole horizon have, + And hemispheres diverse; whereby the road + Which Phaeton, alas! knew not to drive, + +Thou’lt see how of necessity must pass + This on one side, when that upon the other, + If thine intelligence right clearly heed.” + +“Truly, my Master,” said I, “never yet + Saw I so clearly as I now discern, + There where my wit appeared incompetent, + +That the mid-circle of supernal motion, + Which in some art is the Equator called, + And aye remains between the Sun and Winter, + +For reason which thou sayest, departeth hence + Tow’rds the Septentrion, what time the Hebrews + Beheld it tow’rds the region of the heat. + +But, if it pleaseth thee, I fain would learn + How far we have to go; for the hill rises + Higher than eyes of mine have power to rise.” + +And he to me: “This mount is such, that ever + At the beginning down below ’tis tiresome, + And aye the more one climbs, the less it hurts. + +Therefore, when it shall seem so pleasant to thee, + That going up shall be to thee as easy + As going down the current in a boat, + +Then at this pathway’s ending thou wilt be; + There to repose thy panting breath expect; + No more I answer; and this I know for true.” + +And as he finished uttering these words, + A voice close by us sounded: “Peradventure + Thou wilt have need of sitting down ere that.” + +At sound thereof each one of us turned round, + And saw upon the left hand a great rock, + Which neither I nor he before had noticed. + +Thither we drew; and there were persons there + Who in the shadow stood behind the rock, + As one through indolence is wont to stand. + +And one of them, who seemed to me fatigued, + Was sitting down, and both his knees embraced, + Holding his face low down between them bowed. + +“O my sweet Lord,” I said, “do turn thine eye + On him who shows himself more negligent + Then even Sloth herself his sister were.” + +Then he turned round to us, and he gave heed, + Just lifting up his eyes above his thigh, + And said: “Now go thou up, for thou art valiant.” + +Then knew I who he was; and the distress, + That still a little did my breathing quicken, + My going to him hindered not; and after + +I came to him he hardly raised his head, + Saying: “Hast thou seen clearly how the sun + O’er thy left shoulder drives his chariot?” + +His sluggish attitude and his curt words + A little unto laughter moved my lips; + Then I began: “Belacqua, I grieve not + +For thee henceforth; but tell me, wherefore seated + In this place art thou? Waitest thou an escort? + Or has thy usual habit seized upon thee?” + +And he: “O brother, what’s the use of climbing? + Since to my torment would not let me go + The Angel of God, who sitteth at the gate. + +First heaven must needs so long revolve me round + Outside thereof, as in my life it did, + Since the good sighs I to the end postponed, + +Unless, e’er that, some prayer may bring me aid + Which rises from a heart that lives in grace; + What profit others that in heaven are heard not?” + +Meanwhile the Poet was before me mounting, + And saying: “Come now; see the sun has touched + Meridian, and from the shore the night + +Covers already with her foot Morocco.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto V + + +I had already from those shades departed, + And followed in the footsteps of my Guide, + When from behind, pointing his finger at me, + +One shouted: “See, it seems as if shone not + The sunshine on the left of him below, + And like one living seems he to conduct him.” + +Mine eyes I turned at utterance of these words, + And saw them watching with astonishment + But me, but me, and the light which was broken! + +“Why doth thy mind so occupy itself,” + The Master said, “that thou thy pace dost slacken? + What matters it to thee what here is whispered? + +Come after me, and let the people talk; + Stand like a steadfast tower, that never wags + Its top for all the blowing of the winds; + +For evermore the man in whom is springing + Thought upon thought, removes from him the mark, + Because the force of one the other weakens.” + +What could I say in answer but “I come”? + I said it somewhat with that colour tinged + Which makes a man of pardon sometimes worthy. + +Meanwhile along the mountain-side across + Came people in advance of us a little, + Singing the Miserere verse by verse. + +When they became aware I gave no place + For passage of the sunshine through my body, + They changed their song into a long, hoarse “Oh!” + +And two of them, in form of messengers, + Ran forth to meet us, and demanded of us, + “Of your condition make us cognisant.” + +And said my Master: “Ye can go your way + And carry back again to those who sent you, + That this one’s body is of very flesh. + +If they stood still because they saw his shadow, + As I suppose, enough is answered them; + Him let them honour, it may profit them.” + +Vapours enkindled saw I ne’er so swiftly + At early nightfall cleave the air serene, + Nor, at the set of sun, the clouds of August, + +But upward they returned in briefer time, + And, on arriving, with the others wheeled + Tow’rds us, like troops that run without a rein. + +“This folk that presses unto us is great, + And cometh to implore thee,” said the Poet; + “So still go onward, and in going listen.” + +“O soul that goest to beatitude + With the same members wherewith thou wast born,” + Shouting they came, “a little stay thy steps, + +Look, if thou e’er hast any of us seen, + So that o’er yonder thou bear news of him; + Ah, why dost thou go on? Ah, why not stay? + +Long since we all were slain by violence, + And sinners even to the latest hour; + Then did a light from heaven admonish us, + +So that, both penitent and pardoning, forth + From life we issued reconciled to God, + Who with desire to see Him stirs our hearts.” + +And I: “Although I gaze into your faces, + No one I recognize; but if may please you + Aught I have power to do, ye well-born spirits, + +Speak ye, and I will do it, by that peace + Which, following the feet of such a Guide, + From world to world makes itself sought by me.” + +And one began: “Each one has confidence + In thy good offices without an oath, + Unless the I cannot cut off the I will; + +Whence I, who speak alone before the others, + Pray thee, if ever thou dost see the land + That ’twixt Romagna lies and that of Charles, + +Thou be so courteous to me of thy prayers + In Fano, that they pray for me devoutly, + That I may purge away my grave offences. + +From thence was I; but the deep wounds, through which + Issued the blood wherein I had my seat, + Were dealt me in bosom of the Antenori, + +There where I thought to be the most secure; + ’Twas he of Este had it done, who held me + In hatred far beyond what justice willed. + +But if towards the Mira I had fled, + When I was overtaken at Oriaco, + I still should be o’er yonder where men breathe. + +I ran to the lagoon, and reeds and mire + Did so entangle me I fell, and saw there + A lake made from my veins upon the ground.” + +Then said another: “Ah, be that desire + Fulfilled that draws thee to the lofty mountain, + As thou with pious pity aidest mine. + +I was of Montefeltro, and am Buonconte; + Giovanna, nor none other cares for me; + Hence among these I go with downcast front.” + +And I to him: “What violence or what chance + Led thee astray so far from Campaldino, + That never has thy sepulture been known?” + +“Oh,” he replied, “at Casentino’s foot + A river crosses named Archiano, born + Above the Hermitage in Apennine. + +There where the name thereof becometh void + Did I arrive, pierced through and through the throat, + Fleeing on foot, and bloodying the plain; + +There my sight lost I, and my utterance + Ceased in the name of Mary, and thereat + I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained. + +Truth will I speak, repeat it to the living; + God’s Angel took me up, and he of hell + Shouted: ‘O thou from heaven, why dost thou rob me? + +Thou bearest away the eternal part of him, + For one poor little tear, that takes him from me; + But with the rest I’ll deal in other fashion!’ + +Well knowest thou how in the air is gathered + That humid vapour which to water turns, + Soon as it rises where the cold doth grasp it. + +He joined that evil will, which aye seeks evil, + To intellect, and moved the mist and wind + By means of power, which his own nature gave; + +Thereafter, when the day was spent, the valley + From Pratomagno to the great yoke covered + With fog, and made the heaven above intent, + +So that the pregnant air to water changed; + Down fell the rain, and to the gullies came + Whate’er of it earth tolerated not; + +And as it mingled with the mighty torrents, + Towards the royal river with such speed + It headlong rushed, that nothing held it back. + +My frozen body near unto its outlet + The robust Archian found, and into Arno + Thrust it, and loosened from my breast the cross + +I made of me, when agony o’ercame me; + It rolled me on the banks and on the bottom, + Then with its booty covered and begirt me.” + +“Ah, when thou hast returned unto the world, + And rested thee from thy long journeying,” + After the second followed the third spirit, + +“Do thou remember me who am the Pia; + Siena made me, unmade me Maremma; + He knoweth it, who had encircled first, + +Espousing me, my finger with his gem.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto VI + + +Whene’er is broken up the game of Zara, + He who has lost remains behind despondent, + The throws repeating, and in sadness learns; + +The people with the other all depart; + One goes in front, and one behind doth pluck him, + And at his side one brings himself to mind; + +He pauses not, and this and that one hears; + They crowd no more to whom his hand he stretches, + And from the throng he thus defends himself. + +Even such was I in that dense multitude, + Turning to them this way and that my face, + And, promising, I freed myself therefrom. + +There was the Aretine, who from the arms + Untamed of Ghin di Tacco had his death, + And he who fleeing from pursuit was drowned. + +There was imploring with his hands outstretched + Frederick Novello, and that one of Pisa + Who made the good Marzucco seem so strong. + +I saw Count Orso; and the soul divided + By hatred and by envy from its body, + As it declared, and not for crime committed, + +Pierre de la Brosse I say; and here provide + While still on earth the Lady of Brabant, + So that for this she be of no worse flock! + +As soon as I was free from all those shades + Who only prayed that some one else may pray, + So as to hasten their becoming holy, + +Began I: “It appears that thou deniest, + O light of mine, expressly in some text, + That orison can bend decree of Heaven; + +And ne’ertheless these people pray for this. + Might then their expectation bootless be? + Or is to me thy saying not quite clear?” + +And he to me: “My writing is explicit, + And not fallacious is the hope of these, + If with sane intellect ’tis well regarded; + +For top of judgment doth not vail itself, + Because the fire of love fulfils at once + What he must satisfy who here installs him. + +And there, where I affirmed that proposition, + Defect was not amended by a prayer, + Because the prayer from God was separate. + +Verily, in so deep a questioning + Do not decide, unless she tell it thee, + Who light ’twixt truth and intellect shall be. + +I know not if thou understand; I speak + Of Beatrice; her shalt thou see above, + Smiling and happy, on this mountain’s top.” + +And I: “Good Leader, let us make more haste, + For I no longer tire me as before; + And see, e’en now the hill a shadow casts.” + +“We will go forward with this day” he answered, + “As far as now is possible for us; + But otherwise the fact is than thou thinkest. + +Ere thou art up there, thou shalt see return + Him, who now hides himself behind the hill, + So that thou dost not interrupt his rays. + +But yonder there behold! a soul that stationed + All, all alone is looking hitherward; + It will point out to us the quickest way.” + +We came up unto it; O Lombard soul, + How lofty and disdainful thou didst bear thee, + And grand and slow in moving of thine eyes! + +Nothing whatever did it say to us, + But let us go our way, eying us only + After the manner of a couchant lion; + +Still near to it Virgilius drew, entreating + That it would point us out the best ascent; + And it replied not unto his demand, + +But of our native land and of our life + It questioned us; and the sweet Guide began: + “Mantua,”—and the shade, all in itself recluse, + +Rose tow’rds him from the place where first it was, + Saying: “O Mantuan, I am Sordello + Of thine own land!” and one embraced the other. + +Ah! servile Italy, grief’s hostelry! + A ship without a pilot in great tempest! + No Lady thou of Provinces, but brothel! + +That noble soul was so impatient, only + At the sweet sound of his own native land, + To make its citizen glad welcome there; + +And now within thee are not without war + Thy living ones, and one doth gnaw the other + Of those whom one wall and one fosse shut in! + +Search, wretched one, all round about the shores + Thy seaboard, and then look within thy bosom, + If any part of thee enjoyeth peace! + +What boots it, that for thee Justinian + The bridle mend, if empty be the saddle? + Withouten this the shame would be the less. + +Ah! people, thou that oughtest to be devout, + And to let Caesar sit upon the saddle, + If well thou hearest what God teacheth thee, + +Behold how fell this wild beast has become, + Being no longer by the spur corrected, + Since thou hast laid thy hand upon the bridle. + +O German Albert! who abandonest + Her that has grown recalcitrant and savage, + And oughtest to bestride her saddle-bow, + +May a just judgment from the stars down fall + Upon thy blood, and be it new and open, + That thy successor may have fear thereof; + +Because thy father and thyself have suffered, + By greed of those transalpine lands distrained, + The garden of the empire to be waste. + +Come and behold Montecchi and Cappelletti, + Monaldi and Fillippeschi, careless man! + Those sad already, and these doubt-depressed! + +Come, cruel one! come and behold the oppression + Of thy nobility, and cure their wounds, + And thou shalt see how safe is Santafiore! + +Come and behold thy Rome, that is lamenting, + Widowed, alone, and day and night exclaims, + “My Caesar, why hast thou forsaken me?” + +Come and behold how loving are the people; + And if for us no pity moveth thee, + Come and be made ashamed of thy renown! + +And if it lawful be, O Jove Supreme! + Who upon earth for us wast crucified, + Are thy just eyes averted otherwhere? + +Or preparation is ’t, that, in the abyss + Of thine own counsel, for some good thou makest + From our perception utterly cut off? + +For all the towns of Italy are full + Of tyrants, and becometh a Marcellus + Each peasant churl who plays the partisan! + +My Florence! well mayst thou contented be + With this digression, which concerns thee not, + Thanks to thy people who such forethought take! + +Many at heart have justice, but shoot slowly, + That unadvised they come not to the bow, + But on their very lips thy people have it! + +Many refuse to bear the common burden; + But thy solicitous people answereth + Without being asked, and crieth: “I submit.” + +Now be thou joyful, for thou hast good reason; + Thou affluent, thou in peace, thou full of wisdom! + If I speak true, the event conceals it not. + +Athens and Lacedaemon, they who made + The ancient laws, and were so civilized, + Made towards living well a little sign + +Compared with thee, who makest such fine-spun + Provisions, that to middle of November + Reaches not what thou in October spinnest. + +How oft, within the time of thy remembrance, + Laws, money, offices, and usages + Hast thou remodelled, and renewed thy members? + +And if thou mind thee well, and see the light, + Thou shalt behold thyself like a sick woman, + Who cannot find repose upon her down, + +But by her tossing wardeth off her pain. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto VII + + +After the gracious and glad salutations + Had three and four times been reiterated, + Sordello backward drew and said, “Who are you?” + +“Or ever to this mountain were directed + The souls deserving to ascend to God, + My bones were buried by Octavian. + +I am Virgilius; and for no crime else + Did I lose heaven, than for not having faith;” + In this wise then my Leader made reply. + +As one who suddenly before him sees + Something whereat he marvels, who believes + And yet does not, saying, “It is! it is not!” + +So he appeared; and then bowed down his brow, + And with humility returned towards him, + And, where inferiors embrace, embraced him. + +“O glory of the Latians, thou,” he said, + “Through whom our language showed what it could do + O pride eternal of the place I came from, + +What merit or what grace to me reveals thee? + If I to hear thy words be worthy, tell me + If thou dost come from Hell, and from what cloister.” + +“Through all the circles of the doleful realm,” + Responded he, “have I come hitherward; + Heaven’s power impelled me, and with that I come. + +I by not doing, not by doing, lost + The sight of that high sun which thou desirest, + And which too late by me was recognized. + +A place there is below not sad with torments, + But darkness only, where the lamentations + Have not the sound of wailing, but are sighs. + +There dwell I with the little innocents + Snatched by the teeth of Death, or ever they + Were from our human sinfulness exempt. + +There dwell I among those who the three saintly + Virtues did not put on, and without vice + The others knew and followed all of them. + +But if thou know and can, some indication + Give us by which we may the sooner come + Where Purgatory has its right beginning.” + +He answered: “No fixed place has been assigned us; + ’Tis lawful for me to go up and round; + So far as I can go, as guide I join thee. + +But see already how the day declines, + And to go up by night we are not able; + Therefore ’tis well to think of some fair sojourn. + +Souls are there on the right hand here withdrawn; + If thou permit me I will lead thee to them, + And thou shalt know them not without delight.” + +“How is this?” was the answer; “should one wish + To mount by night would he prevented be + By others? or mayhap would not have power?” + +And on the ground the good Sordello drew + His finger, saying, “See, this line alone + Thou couldst not pass after the sun is gone; + +Not that aught else would hindrance give, however, + To going up, save the nocturnal darkness; + This with the want of power the will perplexes. + +We might indeed therewith return below, + And, wandering, walk the hill-side round about, + While the horizon holds the day imprisoned.” + +Thereon my Lord, as if in wonder, said: + “Do thou conduct us thither, where thou sayest + That we can take delight in tarrying.” + +Little had we withdrawn us from that place, + When I perceived the mount was hollowed out + In fashion as the valleys here are hollowed. + +“Thitherward,” said that shade, “will we repair, + Where of itself the hill-side makes a lap, + And there for the new day will we await.” + +’Twixt hill and plain there was a winding path + Which led us to the margin of that dell, + Where dies the border more than half away. + +Gold and fine silver, and scarlet and pearl-white, + The Indian wood resplendent and serene, + Fresh emerald the moment it is broken, + +By herbage and by flowers within that hollow + Planted, each one in colour would be vanquished, + As by its greater vanquished is the less. + +Nor in that place had nature painted only, + But of the sweetness of a thousand odours + Made there a mingled fragrance and unknown. + +“Salve Regina,” on the green and flowers + There seated, singing, spirits I beheld, + Which were not visible outside the valley. + +“Before the scanty sun now seeks his nest,” + Began the Mantuan who had led us thither, + “Among them do not wish me to conduct you. + +Better from off this ledge the acts and faces + Of all of them will you discriminate, + Than in the plain below received among them. + +He who sits highest, and the semblance bears + Of having what he should have done neglected, + And to the others’ song moves not his lips, + +Rudolph the Emperor was, who had the power + To heal the wounds that Italy have slain, + So that through others slowly she revives. + +The other, who in look doth comfort him, + Governed the region where the water springs, + The Moldau bears the Elbe, and Elbe the sea. + +His name was Ottocar; and in swaddling-clothes + Far better he than bearded Winceslaus + His son, who feeds in luxury and ease. + +And the small-nosed, who close in council seems + With him that has an aspect so benign, + Died fleeing and disflowering the lily; + +Look there, how he is beating at his breast! + Behold the other one, who for his cheek + Sighing has made of his own palm a bed; + +Father and father-in-law of France’s Pest + Are they, and know his vicious life and lewd, + And hence proceeds the grief that so doth pierce them. + +He who appears so stalwart, and chimes in, + Singing, with that one of the manly nose, + The cord of every valour wore begirt; + +And if as King had after him remained + The stripling who in rear of him is sitting, + Well had the valour passed from vase to vase, + +Which cannot of the other heirs be said. + Frederick and Jacomo possess the realms, + But none the better heritage possesses. + +Not oftentimes upriseth through the branches + The probity of man; and this He wills + Who gives it, so that we may ask of Him. + +Eke to the large-nosed reach my words, no less + Than to the other, Pier, who with him sings; + Whence Provence and Apulia grieve already + +The plant is as inferior to its seed, + As more than Beatrice and Margaret + Costanza boasteth of her husband still. + +Behold the monarch of the simple life, + Harry of England, sitting there alone; + He in his branches has a better issue. + +He who the lowest on the ground among them + Sits looking upward, is the Marquis William, + For whose sake Alessandria and her war + +Make Monferrat and Canavese weep.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto VIII + + +’Twas now the hour that turneth back desire + In those who sail the sea, and melts the heart, + The day they’ve said to their sweet friends farewell, + +And the new pilgrim penetrates with love, + If he doth hear from far away a bell + That seemeth to deplore the dying day, + +When I began to make of no avail + My hearing, and to watch one of the souls + Uprisen, that begged attention with its hand. + +It joined and lifted upward both its palms, + Fixing its eyes upon the orient, + As if it said to God, “Naught else I care for.” + +“Te lucis ante” so devoutly issued + Forth from its mouth, and with such dulcet notes, + It made me issue forth from my own mind. + +And then the others, sweetly and devoutly, + Accompanied it through all the hymn entire, + Having their eyes on the supernal wheels. + +Here, Reader, fix thine eyes well on the truth, + For now indeed so subtile is the veil, + Surely to penetrate within is easy. + +I saw that army of the gentle-born + Thereafterward in silence upward gaze, + As if in expectation, pale and humble; + +And from on high come forth and down descend, + I saw two Angels with two flaming swords, + Truncated and deprived of their points. + +Green as the little leaflets just now born + Their garments were, which, by their verdant pinions + Beaten and blown abroad, they trailed behind. + +One just above us came to take his station, + And one descended to the opposite bank, + So that the people were contained between them. + +Clearly in them discerned I the blond head; + But in their faces was the eye bewildered, + As faculty confounded by excess. + +“From Mary’s bosom both of them have come,” + Sordello said, “as guardians of the valley + Against the serpent, that will come anon.” + +Whereupon I, who knew not by what road, + Turned round about, and closely drew myself, + Utterly frozen, to the faithful shoulders. + +And once again Sordello: “Now descend we + ’Mid the grand shades, and we will speak to them; + Right pleasant will it be for them to see you.” + +Only three steps I think that I descended, + And was below, and saw one who was looking + Only at me, as if he fain would know me. + +Already now the air was growing dark, + But not so that between his eyes and mine + It did not show what it before locked up. + +Tow’rds me he moved, and I tow’rds him did move; + Noble Judge Nino! how it me delighted, + When I beheld thee not among the damned! + +No greeting fair was left unsaid between us; + Then asked he: “How long is it since thou camest + O’er the far waters to the mountain’s foot?” + +“Oh!” said I to him, “through the dismal places + I came this morn; and am in the first life, + Albeit the other, going thus, I gain.” + +And on the instant my reply was heard, + He and Sordello both shrank back from me, + Like people who are suddenly bewildered. + +One to Virgilius, and the other turned + To one who sat there, crying, “Up, Currado! + Come and behold what God in grace has willed!” + +Then, turned to me: “By that especial grace + Thou owest unto Him, who so conceals + His own first wherefore, that it has no ford, + +When thou shalt be beyond the waters wide, + Tell my Giovanna that she pray for me, + Where answer to the innocent is made. + +I do not think her mother loves me more, + Since she has laid aside her wimple white, + Which she, unhappy, needs must wish again. + +Through her full easily is comprehended + How long in woman lasts the fire of love, + If eye or touch do not relight it often. + +So fair a hatchment will not make for her + The Viper marshalling the Milanese + A-field, as would have made Gallura’s Cock.” + +In this wise spake he, with the stamp impressed + Upon his aspect of that righteous zeal + Which measurably burneth in the heart. + +My greedy eyes still wandered up to heaven, + Still to that point where slowest are the stars, + Even as a wheel the nearest to its axle. + +And my Conductor: “Son, what dost thou gaze at + Up there?” And I to him: “At those three torches + With which this hither pole is all on fire.” + +And he to me: “The four resplendent stars + Thou sawest this morning are down yonder low, + And these have mounted up to where those were.” + +As he was speaking, to himself Sordello + Drew him, and said, “Lo there our Adversary!” + And pointed with his finger to look thither. + +Upon the side on which the little valley + No barrier hath, a serpent was; perchance + The same which gave to Eve the bitter food. + +’Twixt grass and flowers came on the evil streak, + Turning at times its head about, and licking + Its back like to a beast that smoothes itself. + +I did not see, and therefore cannot say + How the celestial falcons ’gan to move, + But well I saw that they were both in motion. + +Hearing the air cleft by their verdant wings, + The serpent fled, and round the Angels wheeled, + Up to their stations flying back alike. + +The shade that to the Judge had near approached + When he had called, throughout that whole assault + Had not a moment loosed its gaze on me. + +“So may the light that leadeth thee on high + Find in thine own free-will as much of wax + As needful is up to the highest azure,” + +Began it, “if some true intelligence + Of Valdimagra or its neighbourhood + Thou knowest, tell it me, who once was great there. + +Currado Malaspina was I called; + I’m not the elder, but from him descended; + To mine I bore the love which here refineth.” + +“O,” said I unto him, “through your domains + I never passed, but where is there a dwelling + Throughout all Europe, where they are not known? + +That fame, which doeth honour to your house, + Proclaims its Signors and proclaims its land, + So that he knows of them who ne’er was there. + +And, as I hope for heaven, I swear to you + Your honoured family in naught abates + The glory of the purse and of the sword. + +It is so privileged by use and nature, + That though a guilty head misguide the world, + Sole it goes right, and scorns the evil way.” + +And he: “Now go; for the sun shall not lie + Seven times upon the pillow which the Ram + With all his four feet covers and bestrides, + +Before that such a courteous opinion + Shall in the middle of thy head be nailed + With greater nails than of another’s speech, + +Unless the course of justice standeth still.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto IX + + +The concubine of old Tithonus now + Gleamed white upon the eastern balcony, + Forth from the arms of her sweet paramour; + +With gems her forehead all relucent was, + Set in the shape of that cold animal + Which with its tail doth smite amain the nations, + +And of the steps, with which she mounts, the Night + Had taken two in that place where we were, + And now the third was bending down its wings; + +When I, who something had of Adam in me, + Vanquished by sleep, upon the grass reclined, + There were all five of us already sat. + +Just at the hour when her sad lay begins + The little swallow, near unto the morning, + Perchance in memory of her former woes, + +And when the mind of man, a wanderer + More from the flesh, and less by thought imprisoned, + Almost prophetic in its visions is, + +In dreams it seemed to me I saw suspended + An eagle in the sky, with plumes of gold, + With wings wide open, and intent to stoop, + +And this, it seemed to me, was where had been + By Ganymede his kith and kin abandoned, + When to the high consistory he was rapt. + +I thought within myself, perchance he strikes + From habit only here, and from elsewhere + Disdains to bear up any in his feet. + +Then wheeling somewhat more, it seemed to me, + Terrible as the lightning he descended, + And snatched me upward even to the fire. + +Therein it seemed that he and I were burning, + And the imagined fire did scorch me so, + That of necessity my sleep was broken. + +Not otherwise Achilles started up, + Around him turning his awakened eyes, + And knowing not the place in which he was, + +What time from Chiron stealthily his mother + Carried him sleeping in her arms to Scyros, + Wherefrom the Greeks withdrew him afterwards, + +Than I upstarted, when from off my face + Sleep fled away; and pallid I became, + As doth the man who freezes with affright. + +Only my Comforter was at my side, + And now the sun was more than two hours high, + And turned towards the sea-shore was my face. + +“Be not intimidated,” said my Lord, + “Be reassured, for all is well with us; + Do not restrain, but put forth all thy strength. + +Thou hast at length arrived at Purgatory; + See there the cliff that closes it around; + See there the entrance, where it seems disjoined. + +Whilom at dawn, which doth precede the day, + When inwardly thy spirit was asleep + Upon the flowers that deck the land below, + +There came a Lady and said: ‘I am Lucia; + Let me take this one up, who is asleep; + So will I make his journey easier for him.’ + +Sordello and the other noble shapes + Remained; she took thee, and, as day grew bright, + Upward she came, and I upon her footsteps. + +She laid thee here; and first her beauteous eyes + That open entrance pointed out to me; + Then she and sleep together went away.” + +In guise of one whose doubts are reassured, + And who to confidence his fear doth change, + After the truth has been discovered to him, + +So did I change; and when without disquiet + My Leader saw me, up along the cliff + He moved, and I behind him, tow’rd the height. + +Reader, thou seest well how I exalt + My theme, and therefore if with greater art + I fortify it, marvel not thereat. + +Nearer approached we, and were in such place, + That there, where first appeared to me a rift + Like to a crevice that disparts a wall, + +I saw a portal, and three stairs beneath, + Diverse in colour, to go up to it, + And a gate-keeper, who yet spake no word. + +And as I opened more and more mine eyes, + I saw him seated on the highest stair, + Such in the face that I endured it not. + +And in his hand he had a naked sword, + Which so reflected back the sunbeams tow’rds us, + That oft in vain I lifted up mine eyes. + +“Tell it from where you are, what is’t you wish?” + Began he to exclaim; “where is the escort? + Take heed your coming hither harm you not!” + +“A Lady of Heaven, with these things conversant,” + My Master answered him, “but even now + Said to us, ‘Thither go; there is the portal.’” + +“And may she speed your footsteps in all good,” + Again began the courteous janitor; + “Come forward then unto these stairs of ours.” + +Thither did we approach; and the first stair + Was marble white, so polished and so smooth, + I mirrored myself therein as I appear. + +The second, tinct of deeper hue than perse, + Was of a calcined and uneven stone, + Cracked all asunder lengthwise and across. + +The third, that uppermost rests massively, + Porphyry seemed to me, as flaming red + As blood that from a vein is spirting forth. + +Both of his feet was holding upon this + The Angel of God, upon the threshold seated, + Which seemed to me a stone of diamond. + +Along the three stairs upward with good will + Did my Conductor draw me, saying: “Ask + Humbly that he the fastening may undo.” + +Devoutly at the holy feet I cast me, + For mercy’s sake besought that he would open, + But first upon my breast three times I smote. + +Seven P’s upon my forehead he described + With the sword’s point, and, “Take heed that thou wash + These wounds, when thou shalt be within,” he said. + +Ashes, or earth that dry is excavated, + Of the same colour were with his attire, + And from beneath it he drew forth two keys. + +One was of gold, and the other was of silver; + First with the white, and after with the yellow, + Plied he the door, so that I was content. + +“Whenever faileth either of these keys + So that it turn not rightly in the lock,” + He said to us, “this entrance doth not open. + +More precious one is, but the other needs + More art and intellect ere it unlock, + For it is that which doth the knot unloose. + +From Peter I have them; and he bade me err + Rather in opening than in keeping shut, + If people but fall down before my feet.” + +Then pushed the portals of the sacred door, + Exclaiming: “Enter; but I give you warning + That forth returns whoever looks behind.” + +And when upon their hinges were turned round + The swivels of that consecrated gate, + Which are of metal, massive and sonorous, + +Roared not so loud, nor so discordant seemed + Tarpeia, when was ta’en from it the good + Metellus, wherefore meagre it remained. + +At the first thunder-peal I turned attentive, + And “Te Deum laudamus” seemed to hear + In voices mingled with sweet melody. + +Exactly such an image rendered me + That which I heard, as we are wont to catch, + When people singing with the organ stand; + +For now we hear, and now hear not, the words. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto X + + +When we had crossed the threshold of the door + Which the perverted love of souls disuses, + Because it makes the crooked way seem straight, + +Re-echoing I heard it closed again; + And if I had turned back mine eyes upon it, + What for my failing had been fit excuse? + +We mounted upward through a rifted rock, + Which undulated to this side and that, + Even as a wave receding and advancing. + +“Here it behoves us use a little art,” + Began my Leader, “to adapt ourselves + Now here, now there, to the receding side.” + +And this our footsteps so infrequent made, + That sooner had the moon’s decreasing disk + Regained its bed to sink again to rest, + +Than we were forth from out that needle’s eye; + But when we free and in the open were, + There where the mountain backward piles itself, + +I wearied out, and both of us uncertain + About our way, we stopped upon a plain + More desolate than roads across the deserts. + +From where its margin borders on the void, + To foot of the high bank that ever rises, + A human body three times told would measure; + +And far as eye of mine could wing its flight, + Now on the left, and on the right flank now, + The same this cornice did appear to me. + +Thereon our feet had not been moved as yet, + When I perceived the embankment round about, + Which all right of ascent had interdicted, + +To be of marble white, and so adorned + With sculptures, that not only Polycletus, + But Nature’s self, had there been put to shame. + +The Angel, who came down to earth with tidings + Of peace, that had been wept for many a year, + And opened Heaven from its long interdict, + +In front of us appeared so truthfully + There sculptured in a gracious attitude, + He did not seem an image that is silent. + +One would have sworn that he was saying, “Ave;” + For she was there in effigy portrayed + Who turned the key to ope the exalted love, + +And in her mien this language had impressed, + “Ecce ancilla Dei,” as distinctly + As any figure stamps itself in wax. + +“Keep not thy mind upon one place alone,” + The gentle Master said, who had me standing + Upon that side where people have their hearts; + +Whereat I moved mine eyes, and I beheld + In rear of Mary, and upon that side + Where he was standing who conducted me, + +Another story on the rock imposed; + Wherefore I passed Virgilius and drew near, + So that before mine eyes it might be set. + +There sculptured in the self-same marble were + The cart and oxen, drawing the holy ark, + Wherefore one dreads an office not appointed. + +People appeared in front, and all of them + In seven choirs divided, of two senses + Made one say “No,” the other, “Yes, they sing.” + +Likewise unto the smoke of the frankincense, + Which there was imaged forth, the eyes and nose + Were in the yes and no discordant made. + +Preceded there the vessel benedight, + Dancing with girded loins, the humble Psalmist, + And more and less than King was he in this. + +Opposite, represented at the window + Of a great palace, Michal looked upon him, + Even as a woman scornful and afflicted. + +I moved my feet from where I had been standing, + To examine near at hand another story, + Which after Michal glimmered white upon me. + +There the high glory of the Roman Prince + Was chronicled, whose great beneficence + Moved Gregory to his great victory; + +’Tis of the Emperor Trajan I am speaking; + And a poor widow at his bridle stood, + In attitude of weeping and of grief. + +Around about him seemed it thronged and full + Of cavaliers, and the eagles in the gold + Above them visibly in the wind were moving. + +The wretched woman in the midst of these + Seemed to be saying: “Give me vengeance, Lord, + For my dead son, for whom my heart is breaking.” + +And he to answer her: “Now wait until + I shall return.” And she: “My Lord,” like one + In whom grief is impatient, “shouldst thou not + +Return?” And he: “Who shall be where I am + Will give it thee.” And she: “Good deed of others + What boots it thee, if thou neglect thine own?” + +Whence he: “Now comfort thee, for it behoves me + That I discharge my duty ere I move; + Justice so wills, and pity doth retain me.” + +He who on no new thing has ever looked + Was the creator of this visible language, + Novel to us, for here it is not found. + +While I delighted me in contemplating + The images of such humility, + And dear to look on for their Maker’s sake, + +“Behold, upon this side, but rare they make + Their steps,” the Poet murmured, “many people; + These will direct us to the lofty stairs.” + +Mine eyes, that in beholding were intent + To see new things, of which they curious are, + In turning round towards him were not slow. + +But still I wish not, Reader, thou shouldst swerve + From thy good purposes, because thou hearest + How God ordaineth that the debt be paid; + +Attend not to the fashion of the torment, + Think of what follows; think that at the worst + It cannot reach beyond the mighty sentence. + +“Master,” began I, “that which I behold + Moving towards us seems to me not persons, + And what I know not, so in sight I waver.” + +And he to me: “The grievous quality + Of this their torment bows them so to earth, + That my own eyes at first contended with it; + +But look there fixedly, and disentangle + By sight what cometh underneath those stones; + Already canst thou see how each is stricken.” + +O ye proud Christians! wretched, weary ones! + Who, in the vision of the mind infirm + Confidence have in your backsliding steps, + +Do ye not comprehend that we are worms, + Born to bring forth the angelic butterfly + That flieth unto judgment without screen? + +Why floats aloft your spirit high in air? + Like are ye unto insects undeveloped, + Even as the worm in whom formation fails! + +As to sustain a ceiling or a roof, + In place of corbel, oftentimes a figure + Is seen to join its knees unto its breast, + +Which makes of the unreal real anguish + Arise in him who sees it, fashioned thus + Beheld I those, when I had ta’en good heed. + +True is it, they were more or less bent down, + According as they more or less were laden; + And he who had most patience in his looks + +Weeping did seem to say, “I can no more!” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XI + + +“Our Father, thou who dwellest in the heavens, + Not circumscribed, but from the greater love + Thou bearest to the first effects on high, + +Praised be thy name and thine omnipotence + By every creature, as befitting is + To render thanks to thy sweet effluence. + +Come unto us the peace of thy dominion, + For unto it we cannot of ourselves, + If it come not, with all our intellect. + +Even as thine own Angels of their will + Make sacrifice to thee, Hosanna singing, + So may all men make sacrifice of theirs. + +Give unto us this day our daily manna, + Withouten which in this rough wilderness + Backward goes he who toils most to advance. + +And even as we the trespass we have suffered + Pardon in one another, pardon thou + Benignly, and regard not our desert. + +Our virtue, which is easily o’ercome, + Put not to proof with the old Adversary, + But thou from him who spurs it so, deliver. + +This last petition verily, dear Lord, + Not for ourselves is made, who need it not, + But for their sake who have remained behind us.” + +Thus for themselves and us good furtherance + Those shades imploring, went beneath a weight + Like unto that of which we sometimes dream, + +Unequally in anguish round and round + And weary all, upon that foremost cornice, + Purging away the smoke-stains of the world. + +If there good words are always said for us, + What may not here be said and done for them, + By those who have a good root to their will? + +Well may we help them wash away the marks + That hence they carried, so that clean and light + They may ascend unto the starry wheels! + +“Ah! so may pity and justice you disburden + Soon, that ye may have power to move the wing, + That shall uplift you after your desire, + +Show us on which hand tow’rd the stairs the way + Is shortest, and if more than one the passes, + Point us out that which least abruptly falls; + +For he who cometh with me, through the burden + Of Adam’s flesh wherewith he is invested, + Against his will is chary of his climbing.” + +The words of theirs which they returned to those + That he whom I was following had spoken, + It was not manifest from whom they came, + +But it was said: “To the right hand come with us + Along the bank, and ye shall find a pass + Possible for living person to ascend. + +And were I not impeded by the stone, + Which this proud neck of mine doth subjugate, + Whence I am forced to hold my visage down, + +Him, who still lives and does not name himself, + Would I regard, to see if I may know him + And make him piteous unto this burden. + +A Latian was I, and born of a great Tuscan; + Guglielmo Aldobrandeschi was my father; + I know not if his name were ever with you. + +The ancient blood and deeds of gallantry + Of my progenitors so arrogant made me + That, thinking not upon the common mother, + +All men I held in scorn to such extent + I died therefor, as know the Sienese, + And every child in Campagnatico. + +I am Omberto; and not to me alone + Has pride done harm, but all my kith and kin + Has with it dragged into adversity. + +And here must I this burden bear for it + Till God be satisfied, since I did not + Among the living, here among the dead.” + +Listening I downward bent my countenance; + And one of them, not this one who was speaking, + Twisted himself beneath the weight that cramps him, + +And looked at me, and knew me, and called out, + Keeping his eyes laboriously fixed + On me, who all bowed down was going with them. + +“O,” asked I him, “art thou not Oderisi, + Agobbio’s honour, and honour of that art + Which is in Paris called illuminating?” + +“Brother,” said he, “more laughing are the leaves + Touched by the brush of Franco Bolognese; + All his the honour now, and mine in part. + +In sooth I had not been so courteous + While I was living, for the great desire + Of excellence, on which my heart was bent. + +Here of such pride is paid the forfeiture; + And yet I should not be here, were it not + That, having power to sin, I turned to God. + +O thou vain glory of the human powers, + How little green upon thy summit lingers, + If’t be not followed by an age of grossness! + +In painting Cimabue thought that he + Should hold the field, now Giotto has the cry, + So that the other’s fame is growing dim. + +So has one Guido from the other taken + The glory of our tongue, and he perchance + Is born, who from the nest shall chase them both. + +Naught is this mundane rumour but a breath + Of wind, that comes now this way and now that, + And changes name, because it changes side. + +What fame shalt thou have more, if old peel off + From thee thy flesh, than if thou hadst been dead + Before thou left the ‘pappo’ and the ‘dindi,’ + +Ere pass a thousand years? which is a shorter + Space to the eterne, than twinkling of an eye + Unto the circle that in heaven wheels slowest. + +With him, who takes so little of the road + In front of me, all Tuscany resounded; + And now he scarce is lisped of in Siena, + +Where he was lord, what time was overthrown + The Florentine delirium, that superb + Was at that day as now ’tis prostitute. + +Your reputation is the colour of grass + Which comes and goes, and that discolours it + By which it issues green from out the earth.” + +And I: “Thy true speech fills my heart with good + Humility, and great tumour thou assuagest; + But who is he, of whom just now thou spakest?” + +“That,” he replied, “is Provenzan Salvani, + And he is here because he had presumed + To bring Siena all into his hands. + +He has gone thus, and goeth without rest + E’er since he died; such money renders back + In payment he who is on earth too daring.” + +And I: “If every spirit who awaits + The verge of life before that he repent, + Remains below there and ascends not hither, + +(Unless good orison shall him bestead,) + Until as much time as he lived be passed, + How was the coming granted him in largess?” + +“When he in greatest splendour lived,” said he, + “Freely upon the Campo of Siena, + All shame being laid aside, he placed himself; + +And there to draw his friend from the duress + Which in the prison-house of Charles he suffered, + He brought himself to tremble in each vein. + +I say no more, and know that I speak darkly; + Yet little time shall pass before thy neighbours + Will so demean themselves that thou canst gloss it. + +This action has released him from those confines.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XII + + +Abreast, like oxen going in a yoke, + I with that heavy-laden soul went on, + As long as the sweet pedagogue permitted; + +But when he said, “Leave him, and onward pass, + For here ’tis good that with the sail and oars, + As much as may be, each push on his barque;” + +Upright, as walking wills it, I redressed + My person, notwithstanding that my thoughts + Remained within me downcast and abashed. + +I had moved on, and followed willingly + The footsteps of my Master, and we both + Already showed how light of foot we were, + +When unto me he said: “Cast down thine eyes; + ’Twere well for thee, to alleviate the way, + To look upon the bed beneath thy feet.” + +As, that some memory may exist of them, + Above the buried dead their tombs in earth + Bear sculptured on them what they were before; + +Whence often there we weep for them afresh, + From pricking of remembrance, which alone + To the compassionate doth set its spur; + +So saw I there, but of a better semblance + In point of artifice, with figures covered + Whate’er as pathway from the mount projects. + +I saw that one who was created noble + More than all other creatures, down from heaven + Flaming with lightnings fall upon one side. + +I saw Briareus smitten by the dart + Celestial, lying on the other side, + Heavy upon the earth by mortal frost. + +I saw Thymbraeus, Pallas saw, and Mars, + Still clad in armour round about their father, + Gaze at the scattered members of the giants. + +I saw, at foot of his great labour, Nimrod, + As if bewildered, looking at the people + Who had been proud with him in Sennaar. + +O Niobe! with what afflicted eyes + Thee I beheld upon the pathway traced, + Between thy seven and seven children slain! + +O Saul! how fallen upon thy proper sword + Didst thou appear there lifeless in Gilboa, + That felt thereafter neither rain nor dew! + +O mad Arachne! so I thee beheld + E’en then half spider, sad upon the shreds + Of fabric wrought in evil hour for thee! + +O Rehoboam! no more seems to threaten + Thine image there; but full of consternation + A chariot bears it off, when none pursues! + +Displayed moreo’er the adamantine pavement + How unto his own mother made Alcmaeon + Costly appear the luckless ornament; + +Displayed how his own sons did throw themselves + Upon Sennacherib within the temple, + And how, he being dead, they left him there; + +Displayed the ruin and the cruel carnage + That Tomyris wrought, when she to Cyrus said, + “Blood didst thou thirst for, and with blood I glut thee!” + +Displayed how routed fled the Assyrians + After that Holofernes had been slain, + And likewise the remainder of that slaughter. + +I saw there Troy in ashes and in caverns; + O Ilion! thee, how abject and debased, + Displayed the image that is there discerned! + +Whoe’er of pencil master was or stile, + That could portray the shades and traits which there + Would cause each subtile genius to admire? + +Dead seemed the dead, the living seemed alive; + Better than I saw not who saw the truth, + All that I trod upon while bowed I went. + +Now wax ye proud, and on with looks uplifted, + Ye sons of Eve, and bow not down your faces + So that ye may behold your evil ways! + +More of the mount by us was now encompassed, + And far more spent the circuit of the sun, + Than had the mind preoccupied imagined, + +When he, who ever watchful in advance + Was going on, began: “Lift up thy head, + ’Tis no more time to go thus meditating. + +Lo there an Angel who is making haste + To come towards us; lo, returning is + From service of the day the sixth handmaiden. + +With reverence thine acts and looks adorn, + So that he may delight to speed us upward; + Think that this day will never dawn again.” + +I was familiar with his admonition + Ever to lose no time; so on this theme + He could not unto me speak covertly. + +Towards us came the being beautiful + Vested in white, and in his countenance + Such as appears the tremulous morning star. + +His arms he opened, and opened then his wings; + “Come,” said he, “near at hand here are the steps, + And easy from henceforth is the ascent.” + +At this announcement few are they who come! + O human creatures, born to soar aloft, + Why fall ye thus before a little wind? + +He led us on to where the rock was cleft; + There smote upon my forehead with his wings, + Then a safe passage promised unto me. + +As on the right hand, to ascend the mount + Where seated is the church that lordeth it + O’er the well-guided, above Rubaconte, + +The bold abruptness of the ascent is broken + By stairways that were made there in the age + When still were safe the ledger and the stave, + +E’en thus attempered is the bank which falls + Sheer downward from the second circle there; + But on this, side and that the high rock graze. + +As we were turning thitherward our persons, + “Beati pauperes spiritu,” voices + Sang in such wise that speech could tell it not. + +Ah me! how different are these entrances + From the Infernal! for with anthems here + One enters, and below with wild laments. + +We now were hunting up the sacred stairs, + And it appeared to me by far more easy + Than on the plain it had appeared before. + +Whence I: “My Master, say, what heavy thing + Has been uplifted from me, so that hardly + Aught of fatigue is felt by me in walking?” + +He answered: “When the P’s which have remained + Still on thy face almost obliterate + Shall wholly, as the first is, be erased, + +Thy feet will be so vanquished by good will, + That not alone they shall not feel fatigue, + But urging up will be to them delight.” + +Then did I even as they do who are going + With something on the head to them unknown, + Unless the signs of others make them doubt, + +Wherefore the hand to ascertain is helpful, + And seeks and finds, and doth fulfill the office + Which cannot be accomplished by the sight; + +And with the fingers of the right hand spread + I found but six the letters, that had carved + Upon my temples he who bore the keys; + +Upon beholding which my Leader smiled. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XIII + + +We were upon the summit of the stairs, + Where for the second time is cut away + The mountain, which ascending shriveth all. + +There in like manner doth a cornice bind + The hill all round about, as does the first, + Save that its arc more suddenly is curved. + +Shade is there none, nor sculpture that appears; + So seems the bank, and so the road seems smooth, + With but the livid colour of the stone. + +“If to inquire we wait for people here,” + The Poet said, “I fear that peradventure + Too much delay will our election have.” + +Then steadfast on the sun his eyes he fixed, + Made his right side the centre of his motion, + And turned the left part of himself about. + +“O thou sweet light! with trust in whom I enter + Upon this novel journey, do thou lead us,” + Said he, “as one within here should be led. + +Thou warmest the world, thou shinest over it; + If other reason prompt not otherwise, + Thy rays should evermore our leaders be!” + +As much as here is counted for a mile, + So much already there had we advanced + In little time, by dint of ready will; + +And tow’rds us there were heard to fly, albeit + They were not visible, spirits uttering + Unto Love’s table courteous invitations, + +The first voice that passed onward in its flight, + “Vinum non habent,” said in accents loud, + And went reiterating it behind us. + +And ere it wholly grew inaudible + Because of distance, passed another, crying, + “I am Orestes!” and it also stayed not. + +“O,” said I, “Father, these, what voices are they?” + And even as I asked, behold the third, + Saying: “Love those from whom ye have had evil!” + +And the good Master said: “This circle scourges + The sin of envy, and on that account + Are drawn from love the lashes of the scourge. + +The bridle of another sound shall be; + I think that thou wilt hear it, as I judge, + Before thou comest to the Pass of Pardon. + +But fix thine eyes athwart the air right steadfast, + And people thou wilt see before us sitting, + And each one close against the cliff is seated.” + +Then wider than at first mine eyes I opened; + I looked before me, and saw shades with mantles + Not from the colour of the stone diverse. + +And when we were a little farther onward, + I heard a cry of, “Mary, pray for us!” + A cry of, “Michael, Peter, and all Saints!” + +I do not think there walketh still on earth + A man so hard, that he would not be pierced + With pity at what afterward I saw. + +For when I had approached so near to them + That manifest to me their acts became, + Drained was I at the eyes by heavy grief. + +Covered with sackcloth vile they seemed to me, + And one sustained the other with his shoulder, + And all of them were by the bank sustained. + +Thus do the blind, in want of livelihood, + Stand at the doors of churches asking alms, + And one upon another leans his head, + +So that in others pity soon may rise, + Not only at the accent of their words, + But at their aspect, which no less implores. + +And as unto the blind the sun comes not, + So to the shades, of whom just now I spake, + Heaven’s light will not be bounteous of itself; + +For all their lids an iron wire transpierces, + And sews them up, as to a sparhawk wild + Is done, because it will not quiet stay. + +To me it seemed, in passing, to do outrage, + Seeing the others without being seen; + Wherefore I turned me to my counsel sage. + +Well knew he what the mute one wished to say, + And therefore waited not for my demand, + But said: “Speak, and be brief, and to the point.” + +I had Virgilius upon that side + Of the embankment from which one may fall, + Since by no border ’tis engarlanded; + +Upon the other side of me I had + The shades devout, who through the horrible seam + Pressed out the tears so that they bathed their cheeks. + +To them I turned me, and, “O people, certain,” + Began I, “of beholding the high light, + Which your desire has solely in its care, + +So may grace speedily dissolve the scum + Upon your consciences, that limpidly + Through them descend the river of the mind, + +Tell me, for dear ’twill be to me and gracious, + If any soul among you here is Latian, + And ’twill perchance be good for him I learn it.” + +“O brother mine, each one is citizen + Of one true city; but thy meaning is, + Who may have lived in Italy a pilgrim.” + +By way of answer this I seemed to hear + A little farther on than where I stood, + Whereat I made myself still nearer heard. + +Among the rest I saw a shade that waited + In aspect, and should any one ask how, + Its chin it lifted upward like a blind man. + +“Spirit,” I said, “who stoopest to ascend, + If thou art he who did reply to me, + Make thyself known to me by place or name.” + +“Sienese was I,” it replied, “and with + The others here recleanse my guilty life, + Weeping to Him to lend himself to us. + +Sapient I was not, although I Sapia + Was called, and I was at another’s harm + More happy far than at my own good fortune. + +And that thou mayst not think that I deceive thee, + Hear if I was as foolish as I tell thee. + The arc already of my years descending, + +My fellow-citizens near unto Colle + Were joined in battle with their adversaries, + And I was praying God for what he willed. + +Routed were they, and turned into the bitter + Passes of flight; and I, the chase beholding, + A joy received unequalled by all others; + +So that I lifted upward my bold face + Crying to God, ‘Henceforth I fear thee not,’ + As did the blackbird at the little sunshine. + +Peace I desired with God at the extreme + Of my existence, and as yet would not + My debt have been by penitence discharged, + +Had it not been that in remembrance held me + Pier Pettignano in his holy prayers, + Who out of charity was grieved for me. + +But who art thou, that into our conditions + Questioning goest, and hast thine eyes unbound + As I believe, and breathing dost discourse?” + +“Mine eyes,” I said, “will yet be here ta’en from me, + But for short space; for small is the offence + Committed by their being turned with envy. + +Far greater is the fear, wherein suspended + My soul is, of the torment underneath, + For even now the load down there weighs on me.” + +And she to me: “Who led thee, then, among us + Up here, if to return below thou thinkest?” + And I: “He who is with me, and speaks not; + +And living am I; therefore ask of me, + Spirit elect, if thou wouldst have me move + O’er yonder yet my mortal feet for thee.” + +“O, this is such a novel thing to hear,” + She answered, “that great sign it is God loves thee; + Therefore with prayer of thine sometimes assist me. + +And I implore, by what thou most desirest, + If e’er thou treadest the soil of Tuscany, + Well with my kindred reinstate my fame. + +Them wilt thou see among that people vain + Who hope in Talamone, and will lose there + More hope than in discovering the Diana; + +But there still more the admirals will lose.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XIV + + +“Who is this one that goes about our mountain, + Or ever Death has given him power of flight, + And opes his eyes and shuts them at his will?” + +“I know not who, but know he’s not alone; + Ask him thyself, for thou art nearer to him, + And gently, so that he may speak, accost him.” + +Thus did two spirits, leaning tow’rds each other, + Discourse about me there on the right hand; + Then held supine their faces to address me. + +And said the one: “O soul, that, fastened still + Within the body, tow’rds the heaven art going, + For charity console us, and declare + +Whence comest and who art thou; for thou mak’st us + As much to marvel at this grace of thine + As must a thing that never yet has been.” + +And I: “Through midst of Tuscany there wanders + A streamlet that is born in Falterona, + And not a hundred miles of course suffice it; + +From thereupon do I this body bring. + To tell you who I am were speech in vain, + Because my name as yet makes no great noise.” + +“If well thy meaning I can penetrate + With intellect of mine,” then answered me + He who first spake, “thou speakest of the Arno.” + +And said the other to him: “Why concealed + This one the appellation of that river, + Even as a man doth of things horrible?” + +And thus the shade that questioned was of this + Himself acquitted: “I know not; but truly + ’Tis fit the name of such a valley perish; + +For from its fountain-head (where is so pregnant + The Alpine mountain whence is cleft Peloro + That in few places it that mark surpasses) + +To where it yields itself in restoration + Of what the heaven doth of the sea dry up, + Whence have the rivers that which goes with them, + +Virtue is like an enemy avoided + By all, as is a serpent, through misfortune + Of place, or through bad habit that impels them; + +On which account have so transformed their nature + The dwellers in that miserable valley, + It seems that Circe had them in her pasture. + +’Mid ugly swine, of acorns worthier + Than other food for human use created, + It first directeth its impoverished way. + +Curs findeth it thereafter, coming downward, + More snarling than their puissance demands, + And turns from them disdainfully its muzzle. + +It goes on falling, and the more it grows, + The more it finds the dogs becoming wolves, + This maledict and misadventurous ditch. + +Descended then through many a hollow gulf, + It finds the foxes so replete with fraud, + They fear no cunning that may master them. + +Nor will I cease because another hears me; + And well ’twill be for him, if still he mind him + Of what a truthful spirit to me unravels. + +Thy grandson I behold, who doth become + A hunter of those wolves upon the bank + Of the wild stream, and terrifies them all. + +He sells their flesh, it being yet alive; + Thereafter slaughters them like ancient beeves; + Many of life, himself of praise, deprives. + +Blood-stained he issues from the dismal forest; + He leaves it such, a thousand years from now + In its primeval state ’tis not re-wooded.” + +As at the announcement of impending ills + The face of him who listens is disturbed, + From whate’er side the peril seize upon him; + +So I beheld that other soul, which stood + Turned round to listen, grow disturbed and sad, + When it had gathered to itself the word. + +The speech of one and aspect of the other + Had me desirous made to know their names, + And question mixed with prayers I made thereof, + +Whereat the spirit which first spake to me + Began again: “Thou wishest I should bring me + To do for thee what thou’lt not do for me; + +But since God willeth that in thee shine forth + Such grace of his, I’ll not be chary with thee; + Know, then, that I Guido del Duca am. + +My blood was so with envy set on fire, + That if I had beheld a man make merry, + Thou wouldst have seen me sprinkled o’er with pallor. + +From my own sowing such the straw I reap! + O human race! why dost thou set thy heart + Where interdict of partnership must be? + +This is Renier; this is the boast and honour + Of the house of Calboli, where no one since + Has made himself the heir of his desert. + +And not alone his blood is made devoid, + ’Twixt Po and mount, and sea-shore and the Reno, + Of good required for truth and for diversion; + +For all within these boundaries is full + Of venomous roots, so that too tardily + By cultivation now would they diminish. + +Where is good Lizio, and Arrigo Manardi, + Pier Traversaro, and Guido di Carpigna, + O Romagnuoli into bastards turned? + +When in Bologna will a Fabbro rise? + When in Faenza a Bernardin di Fosco, + The noble scion of ignoble seed? + +Be not astonished, Tuscan, if I weep, + When I remember, with Guido da Prata, + Ugolin d’ Azzo, who was living with us, + +Frederick Tignoso and his company, + The house of Traversara, and th’ Anastagi, + And one race and the other is extinct; + +The dames and cavaliers, the toils and ease + That filled our souls with love and courtesy, + There where the hearts have so malicious grown! + +O Brettinoro! why dost thou not flee, + Seeing that all thy family is gone, + And many people, not to be corrupted? + +Bagnacaval does well in not begetting + And ill does Castrocaro, and Conio worse, + In taking trouble to beget such Counts. + +Will do well the Pagani, when their Devil + Shall have departed; but not therefore pure + Will testimony of them e’er remain. + +O Ugolin de’ Fantoli, secure + Thy name is, since no longer is awaited + One who, degenerating, can obscure it! + +But go now, Tuscan, for it now delights me + To weep far better than it does to speak, + So much has our discourse my mind distressed.” + +We were aware that those beloved souls + Heard us depart; therefore, by keeping silent, + They made us of our pathway confident. + +When we became alone by going onward, + Thunder, when it doth cleave the air, appeared + A voice, that counter to us came, exclaiming: + +“Shall slay me whosoever findeth me!” + And fled as the reverberation dies + If suddenly the cloud asunder bursts. + +As soon as hearing had a truce from this, + Behold another, with so great a crash, + That it resembled thunderings following fast: + +“I am Aglaurus, who became a stone!” + And then, to press myself close to the Poet, + I backward, and not forward, took a step. + +Already on all sides the air was quiet; + And said he to me: “That was the hard curb + That ought to hold a man within his bounds; + +But you take in the bait so that the hook + Of the old Adversary draws you to him, + And hence availeth little curb or call. + +The heavens are calling you, and wheel around you, + Displaying to you their eternal beauties, + And still your eye is looking on the ground; + +Whence He, who all discerns, chastises you.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XV + + +As much as ’twixt the close of the third hour + And dawn of day appeareth of that sphere + Which aye in fashion of a child is playing, + +So much it now appeared, towards the night, + Was of his course remaining to the sun; + There it was evening, and ’twas midnight here; + +And the rays smote the middle of our faces, + Because by us the mount was so encircled, + That straight towards the west we now were going + +When I perceived my forehead overpowered + Beneath the splendour far more than at first, + And stupor were to me the things unknown, + +Whereat towards the summit of my brow + I raised my hands, and made myself the visor + Which the excessive glare diminishes. + +As when from off the water, or a mirror, + The sunbeam leaps unto the opposite side, + Ascending upward in the selfsame measure + +That it descends, and deviates as far + From falling of a stone in line direct, + (As demonstrate experiment and art,) + +So it appeared to me that by a light + Refracted there before me I was smitten; + On which account my sight was swift to flee. + +“What is that, Father sweet, from which I cannot + So fully screen my sight that it avail me,” + Said I, “and seems towards us to be moving?” + +“Marvel thou not, if dazzle thee as yet + The family of heaven,” he answered me; + “An angel ’tis, who comes to invite us upward. + +Soon will it be, that to behold these things + Shall not be grievous, but delightful to thee + As much as nature fashioned thee to feel.” + +When we had reached the Angel benedight, + With joyful voice he said: “Here enter in + To stairway far less steep than are the others.” + +We mounting were, already thence departed, + And “Beati misericordes” was + Behind us sung, “Rejoice, thou that o’ercomest!” + +My Master and myself, we two alone + Were going upward, and I thought, in going, + Some profit to acquire from words of his; + +And I to him directed me, thus asking: + “What did the spirit of Romagna mean, + Mentioning interdict and partnership?” + +Whence he to me: “Of his own greatest failing + He knows the harm; and therefore wonder not + If he reprove us, that we less may rue it. + +Because are thither pointed your desires + Where by companionship each share is lessened, + Envy doth ply the bellows to your sighs. + +But if the love of the supernal sphere + Should upwardly direct your aspiration, + There would not be that fear within your breast; + +For there, as much the more as one says ‘Our,’ + So much the more of good each one possesses, + And more of charity in that cloister burns.” + +“I am more hungering to be satisfied,” + I said, “than if I had before been silent, + And more of doubt within my mind I gather. + +How can it be, that boon distributed + The more possessors can more wealthy make + Therein, than if by few it be possessed?” + +And he to me: “Because thou fixest still + Thy mind entirely upon earthly things, + Thou pluckest darkness from the very light. + +That goodness infinite and ineffable + Which is above there, runneth unto love, + As to a lucid body comes the sunbeam. + +So much it gives itself as it finds ardour, + So that as far as charity extends, + O’er it increases the eternal valour. + +And the more people thitherward aspire, + More are there to love well, and more they love there, + And, as a mirror, one reflects the other. + +And if my reasoning appease thee not, + Thou shalt see Beatrice; and she will fully + Take from thee this and every other longing. + +Endeavour, then, that soon may be extinct, + As are the two already, the five wounds + That close themselves again by being painful.” + +Even as I wished to say, “Thou dost appease me,” + I saw that I had reached another circle, + So that my eager eyes made me keep silence. + +There it appeared to me that in a vision + Ecstatic on a sudden I was rapt, + And in a temple many persons saw; + +And at the door a woman, with the sweet + Behaviour of a mother, saying: “Son, + Why in this manner hast thou dealt with us? + +Lo, sorrowing, thy father and myself + Were seeking for thee;”—and as here she ceased, + That which appeared at first had disappeared. + +Then I beheld another with those waters + Adown her cheeks which grief distils whenever + From great disdain of others it is born, + +And saying: “If of that city thou art lord, + For whose name was such strife among the gods, + And whence doth every science scintillate, + +Avenge thyself on those audacious arms + That clasped our daughter, O Pisistratus;” + And the lord seemed to me benign and mild + +To answer her with aspect temperate: + “What shall we do to those who wish us ill, + If he who loves us be by us condemned?” + +Then saw I people hot in fire of wrath, + With stones a young man slaying, clamorously + Still crying to each other, “Kill him! kill him!” + +And him I saw bow down, because of death + That weighed already on him, to the earth, + But of his eyes made ever gates to heaven, + +Imploring the high Lord, in so great strife, + That he would pardon those his persecutors, + With such an aspect as unlocks compassion. + +Soon as my soul had outwardly returned + To things external to it which are true, + Did I my not false errors recognize. + +My Leader, who could see me bear myself + Like to a man that rouses him from sleep, + Exclaimed: “What ails thee, that thou canst not stand? + +But hast been coming more than half a league + Veiling thine eyes, and with thy legs entangled, + In guise of one whom wine or sleep subdues?” + +“O my sweet Father, if thou listen to me, + I’ll tell thee,” said I, “what appeared to me, + When thus from me my legs were ta’en away.” + +And he: “If thou shouldst have a hundred masks + Upon thy face, from me would not be shut + Thy cogitations, howsoever small. + +What thou hast seen was that thou mayst not fail + To ope thy heart unto the waters of peace, + Which from the eternal fountain are diffused. + +I did not ask, ‘What ails thee?’ as he does + Who only looketh with the eyes that see not + When of the soul bereft the body lies, + +But asked it to give vigour to thy feet; + Thus must we needs urge on the sluggards, slow + To use their wakefulness when it returns.” + +We passed along, athwart the twilight peering + Forward as far as ever eye could stretch + Against the sunbeams serotine and lucent; + +And lo! by slow degrees a smoke approached + In our direction, sombre as the night, + Nor was there place to hide one’s self therefrom. + +This of our eyes and the pure air bereft us. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XVI + + +Darkness of hell, and of a night deprived + Of every planet under a poor sky, + As much as may be tenebrous with cloud, + +Ne’er made unto my sight so thick a veil, + As did that smoke which there enveloped us, + Nor to the feeling of so rough a texture; + +For not an eye it suffered to stay open; + Whereat mine escort, faithful and sagacious, + Drew near to me and offered me his shoulder. + +E’en as a blind man goes behind his guide, + Lest he should wander, or should strike against + Aught that may harm or peradventure kill him, + +So went I through the bitter and foul air, + Listening unto my Leader, who said only, + “Look that from me thou be not separated.” + +Voices I heard, and every one appeared + To supplicate for peace and misericord + The Lamb of God who takes away our sins. + +Still “Agnus Dei” their exordium was; + One word there was in all, and metre one, + So that all harmony appeared among them. + +“Master,” I said, “are spirits those I hear?” + And he to me: “Thou apprehendest truly, + And they the knot of anger go unloosing.” + +“Now who art thou, that cleavest through our smoke + And art discoursing of us even as though + Thou didst by calends still divide the time?” + +After this manner by a voice was spoken; + Whereon my Master said: “Do thou reply, + And ask if on this side the way go upward.” + +And I: “O creature that dost cleanse thyself + To return beautiful to Him who made thee, + Thou shalt hear marvels if thou follow me.” + +“Thee will I follow far as is allowed me,” + He answered; “and if smoke prevent our seeing, + Hearing shall keep us joined instead thereof.” + +Thereon began I: “With that swathing band + Which death unwindeth am I going upward, + And hither came I through the infernal anguish. + +And if God in his grace has me infolded, + So that he wills that I behold his court + By method wholly out of modern usage, + +Conceal not from me who ere death thou wast, + But tell it me, and tell me if I go + Right for the pass, and be thy words our escort.” + +“Lombard was I, and I was Marco called; + The world I knew, and loved that excellence, + At which has each one now unbent his bow. + +For mounting upward, thou art going right.” + Thus he made answer, and subjoined: “I pray thee + To pray for me when thou shalt be above.” + +And I to him: “My faith I pledge to thee + To do what thou dost ask me; but am bursting + Inly with doubt, unless I rid me of it. + +First it was simple, and is now made double + By thy opinion, which makes certain to me, + Here and elsewhere, that which I couple with it. + +The world forsooth is utterly deserted + By every virtue, as thou tellest me, + And with iniquity is big and covered; + +But I beseech thee point me out the cause, + That I may see it, and to others show it; + For one in the heavens, and here below one puts it.” + +A sigh profound, that grief forced into Ai! + He first sent forth, and then began he: “Brother, + The world is blind, and sooth thou comest from it! + +Ye who are living every cause refer + Still upward to the heavens, as if all things + They of necessity moved with themselves. + +If this were so, in you would be destroyed + Free will, nor any justice would there be + In having joy for good, or grief for evil. + +The heavens your movements do initiate, + I say not all; but granting that I say it, + Light has been given you for good and evil, + +And free volition; which, if some fatigue + In the first battles with the heavens it suffers, + Afterwards conquers all, if well ’tis nurtured. + +To greater force and to a better nature, + Though free, ye subject are, and that creates + The mind in you the heavens have not in charge. + +Hence, if the present world doth go astray, + In you the cause is, be it sought in you; + And I therein will now be thy true spy. + +Forth from the hand of Him, who fondles it + Before it is, like to a little girl + Weeping and laughing in her childish sport, + +Issues the simple soul, that nothing knows, + Save that, proceeding from a joyous Maker, + Gladly it turns to that which gives it pleasure. + +Of trivial good at first it tastes the savour; + Is cheated by it, and runs after it, + If guide or rein turn not aside its love. + +Hence it behoved laws for a rein to place, + Behoved a king to have, who at the least + Of the true city should discern the tower. + +The laws exist, but who sets hand to them? + No one; because the shepherd who precedes + Can ruminate, but cleaveth not the hoof; + +Wherefore the people that perceives its guide + Strike only at the good for which it hankers, + Feeds upon that, and farther seeketh not. + +Clearly canst thou perceive that evil guidance + The cause is that has made the world depraved, + And not that nature is corrupt in you. + +Rome, that reformed the world, accustomed was + Two suns to have, which one road and the other, + Of God and of the world, made manifest. + +One has the other quenched, and to the crosier + The sword is joined, and ill beseemeth it + That by main force one with the other go, + +Because, being joined, one feareth not the other; + If thou believe not, think upon the grain, + For by its seed each herb is recognized. + +In the land laved by Po and Adige, + Valour and courtesy used to be found, + Before that Frederick had his controversy; + +Now in security can pass that way + Whoever will abstain, through sense of shame, + From speaking with the good, or drawing near them. + +True, three old men are left, in whom upbraids + The ancient age the new, and late they deem it + That God restore them to the better life: + +Currado da Palazzo, and good Gherardo, + And Guido da Castel, who better named is, + In fashion of the French, the simple Lombard: + +Say thou henceforward that the Church of Rome, + Confounding in itself two governments, + Falls in the mire, and soils itself and burden.” + +“O Marco mine,” I said, “thou reasonest well; + And now discern I why the sons of Levi + Have been excluded from the heritage. + +But what Gherardo is it, who, as sample + Of a lost race, thou sayest has remained + In reprobation of the barbarous age?” + +“Either thy speech deceives me, or it tempts me,” + He answered me; “for speaking Tuscan to me, + It seems of good Gherardo naught thou knowest. + +By other surname do I know him not, + Unless I take it from his daughter Gaia. + May God be with you, for I come no farther. + +Behold the dawn, that through the smoke rays out, + Already whitening; and I must depart— + Yonder the Angel is—ere he appear.” + +Thus did he speak, and would no farther hear me. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XVII + + +Remember, Reader, if e’er in the Alps + A mist o’ertook thee, through which thou couldst see + Not otherwise than through its membrane mole, + +How, when the vapours humid and condensed + Begin to dissipate themselves, the sphere + Of the sun feebly enters in among them, + +And thy imagination will be swift + In coming to perceive how I re-saw + The sun at first, that was already setting. + +Thus, to the faithful footsteps of my Master + Mating mine own, I issued from that cloud + To rays already dead on the low shores. + +O thou, Imagination, that dost steal us + So from without sometimes, that man perceives not, + Although around may sound a thousand trumpets, + +Who moveth thee, if sense impel thee not? + Moves thee a light, which in the heaven takes form, + By self, or by a will that downward guides it. + +Of her impiety, who changed her form + Into the bird that most delights in singing, + In my imagining appeared the trace; + +And hereupon my mind was so withdrawn + Within itself, that from without there came + Nothing that then might be received by it. + +Then reigned within my lofty fantasy + One crucified, disdainful and ferocious + In countenance, and even thus was dying. + +Around him were the great Ahasuerus, + Esther his wife, and the just Mordecai, + Who was in word and action so entire. + +And even as this image burst asunder + Of its own self, in fashion of a bubble + In which the water it was made of fails, + +There rose up in my vision a young maiden + Bitterly weeping, and she said: “O queen, + Why hast thou wished in anger to be naught? + +Thou’st slain thyself, Lavinia not to lose; + Now hast thou lost me; I am she who mourns, + Mother, at thine ere at another’s ruin.” + +As sleep is broken, when upon a sudden + New light strikes in upon the eyelids closed, + And broken quivers ere it dieth wholly, + +So this imagining of mine fell down + As soon as the effulgence smote my face, + Greater by far than what is in our wont. + +I turned me round to see where I might be, + When said a voice, “Here is the passage up;” + Which from all other purposes removed me, + +And made my wish so full of eagerness + To look and see who was it that was speaking, + It never rests till meeting face to face; + +But as before the sun, which quells the sight, + And in its own excess its figure veils, + Even so my power was insufficient here. + +“This is a spirit divine, who in the way + Of going up directs us without asking, + And who with his own light himself conceals. + +He does with us as man doth with himself; + For he who sees the need, and waits the asking, + Malignly leans already tow’rds denial. + +Accord we now our feet to such inviting, + Let us make haste to mount ere it grow dark; + For then we could not till the day return.” + +Thus my Conductor said; and I and he + Together turned our footsteps to a stairway; + And I, as soon as the first step I reached, + +Near me perceived a motion as of wings, + And fanning in the face, and saying, “‘Beati + Pacifici,’ who are without ill anger.” + +Already over us were so uplifted + The latest sunbeams, which the night pursues, + That upon many sides the stars appeared. + +“O manhood mine, why dost thou vanish so?” + I said within myself; for I perceived + The vigour of my legs was put in truce. + +We at the point were where no more ascends + The stairway upward, and were motionless, + Even as a ship, which at the shore arrives; + +And I gave heed a little, if I might hear + Aught whatsoever in the circle new; + Then to my Master turned me round and said: + +“Say, my sweet Father, what delinquency + Is purged here in the circle where we are? + Although our feet may pause, pause not thy speech.” + +And he to me: “The love of good, remiss + In what it should have done, is here restored; + Here plied again the ill-belated oar; + +But still more openly to understand, + Turn unto me thy mind, and thou shalt gather + Some profitable fruit from our delay. + +Neither Creator nor a creature ever, + Son,” he began, “was destitute of love + Natural or spiritual; and thou knowest it. + +The natural was ever without error; + But err the other may by evil object, + Or by too much, or by too little vigour. + +While in the first it well directed is, + And in the second moderates itself, + It cannot be the cause of sinful pleasure; + +But when to ill it turns, and, with more care + Or lesser than it ought, runs after good, + ’Gainst the Creator works his own creation. + +Hence thou mayst comprehend that love must be + The seed within yourselves of every virtue, + And every act that merits punishment. + +Now inasmuch as never from the welfare + Of its own subject can love turn its sight, + From their own hatred all things are secure; + +And since we cannot think of any being + Standing alone, nor from the First divided, + Of hating Him is all desire cut off. + +Hence if, discriminating, I judge well, + The evil that one loves is of one’s neighbour, + And this is born in three modes in your clay. + +There are, who, by abasement of their neighbour, + Hope to excel, and therefore only long + That from his greatness he may be cast down; + +There are, who power, grace, honour, and renown + Fear they may lose because another rises, + Thence are so sad that the reverse they love; + +And there are those whom injury seems to chafe, + So that it makes them greedy for revenge, + And such must needs shape out another’s harm. + +This threefold love is wept for down below; + Now of the other will I have thee hear, + That runneth after good with measure faulty. + +Each one confusedly a good conceives + Wherein the mind may rest, and longeth for it; + Therefore to overtake it each one strives. + +If languid love to look on this attract you, + Or in attaining unto it, this cornice, + After just penitence, torments you for it. + +There’s other good that does not make man happy; + ’Tis not felicity, ’tis not the good + Essence, of every good the fruit and root. + +The love that yields itself too much to this + Above us is lamented in three circles; + But how tripartite it may be described, + +I say not, that thou seek it for thyself.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XVIII + + +An end had put unto his reasoning + The lofty Teacher, and attent was looking + Into my face, if I appeared content; + +And I, whom a new thirst still goaded on, + Without was mute, and said within: “Perchance + The too much questioning I make annoys him.” + +But that true Father, who had comprehended + The timid wish, that opened not itself, + By speaking gave me hardihood to speak. + +Whence I: “My sight is, Master, vivified + So in thy light, that clearly I discern + Whate’er thy speech importeth or describes. + +Therefore I thee entreat, sweet Father dear, + To teach me love, to which thou dost refer + Every good action and its contrary.” + +“Direct,” he said, “towards me the keen eyes + Of intellect, and clear will be to thee + The error of the blind, who would be leaders. + +The soul, which is created apt to love, + Is mobile unto everything that pleases, + Soon as by pleasure she is waked to action. + +Your apprehension from some real thing + An image draws, and in yourselves displays it + So that it makes the soul turn unto it. + +And if, when turned, towards it she incline, + Love is that inclination; it is nature, + Which is by pleasure bound in you anew + +Then even as the fire doth upward move + By its own form, which to ascend is born, + Where longest in its matter it endures, + +So comes the captive soul into desire, + Which is a motion spiritual, and ne’er rests + Until she doth enjoy the thing beloved. + +Now may apparent be to thee how hidden + The truth is from those people, who aver + All love is in itself a laudable thing; + +Because its matter may perchance appear + Aye to be good; but yet not each impression + Is good, albeit good may be the wax.” + +“Thy words, and my sequacious intellect,” + I answered him, “have love revealed to me; + But that has made me more impregned with doubt; + +For if love from without be offered us, + And with another foot the soul go not, + If right or wrong she go, ’tis not her merit.” + +And he to me: “What reason seeth here, + Myself can tell thee; beyond that await + For Beatrice, since ’tis a work of faith. + +Every substantial form, that segregate + From matter is, and with it is united, + Specific power has in itself collected, + +Which without act is not perceptible, + Nor shows itself except by its effect, + As life does in a plant by the green leaves. + +But still, whence cometh the intelligence + Of the first notions, man is ignorant, + And the affection for the first allurements, + +Which are in you as instinct in the bee + To make its honey; and this first desire + Merit of praise or blame containeth not. + +Now, that to this all others may be gathered, + Innate within you is the power that counsels, + And it should keep the threshold of assent. + +This is the principle, from which is taken + Occasion of desert in you, according + As good and guilty loves it takes and winnows. + +Those who, in reasoning, to the bottom went, + Were of this innate liberty aware, + Therefore bequeathed they Ethics to the world. + +Supposing, then, that from necessity + Springs every love that is within you kindled, + Within yourselves the power is to restrain it. + +The noble virtue Beatrice understands + By the free will; and therefore see that thou + Bear it in mind, if she should speak of it.” + +The moon, belated almost unto midnight, + Now made the stars appear to us more rare, + Formed like a bucket, that is all ablaze, + +And counter to the heavens ran through those paths + Which the sun sets aflame, when he of Rome + Sees it ’twixt Sardes and Corsicans go down; + +And that patrician shade, for whom is named + Pietola more than any Mantuan town, + Had laid aside the burden of my lading; + +Whence I, who reason manifest and plain + In answer to my questions had received, + Stood like a man in drowsy reverie. + +But taken from me was this drowsiness + Suddenly by a people, that behind + Our backs already had come round to us. + +And as, of old, Ismenus and Asopus + Beside them saw at night the rush and throng, + If but the Thebans were in need of Bacchus, + +So they along that circle curve their step, + From what I saw of those approaching us, + Who by good-will and righteous love are ridden. + +Full soon they were upon us, because running + Moved onward all that mighty multitude, + And two in the advance cried out, lamenting, + +“Mary in haste unto the mountain ran, + And Caesar, that he might subdue Ilerda, + Thrust at Marseilles, and then ran into Spain.” + +“Quick! quick! so that the time may not be lost + By little love!” forthwith the others cried, + “For ardour in well-doing freshens grace!” + +“O folk, in whom an eager fervour now + Supplies perhaps delay and negligence, + Put by you in well-doing, through lukewarmness, + +This one who lives, and truly I lie not, + Would fain go up, if but the sun relight us; + So tell us where the passage nearest is.” + +These were the words of him who was my Guide; + And some one of those spirits said: “Come on + Behind us, and the opening shalt thou find; + +So full of longing are we to move onward, + That stay we cannot; therefore pardon us, + If thou for churlishness our justice take. + +I was San Zeno’s Abbot at Verona, + Under the empire of good Barbarossa, + Of whom still sorrowing Milan holds discourse; + +And he has one foot in the grave already, + Who shall erelong lament that monastery, + And sorry be of having there had power, + +Because his son, in his whole body sick, + And worse in mind, and who was evil-born, + He put into the place of its true pastor.” + +If more he said, or silent was, I know not, + He had already passed so far beyond us; + But this I heard, and to retain it pleased me. + +And he who was in every need my succour + Said: “Turn thee hitherward; see two of them + Come fastening upon slothfulness their teeth.” + +In rear of all they shouted: “Sooner were + The people dead to whom the sea was opened, + Than their inheritors the Jordan saw; + +And those who the fatigue did not endure + Unto the issue, with Anchises’ son, + Themselves to life withouten glory offered.” + +Then when from us so separated were + Those shades, that they no longer could be seen, + Within me a new thought did entrance find, + +Whence others many and diverse were born; + And so I lapsed from one into another, + That in a reverie mine eyes I closed, + +And meditation into dream transmuted. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XIX + + +It was the hour when the diurnal heat + No more can warm the coldness of the moon, + Vanquished by earth, or peradventure Saturn, + +When geomancers their Fortuna Major + See in the orient before the dawn + Rise by a path that long remains not dim, + +There came to me in dreams a stammering woman, + Squint in her eyes, and in her feet distorted, + With hands dissevered and of sallow hue. + +I looked at her; and as the sun restores + The frigid members which the night benumbs, + Even thus my gaze did render voluble + +Her tongue, and made her all erect thereafter + In little while, and the lost countenance + As love desires it so in her did colour. + +When in this wise she had her speech unloosed, + She ’gan to sing so, that with difficulty + Could I have turned my thoughts away from her. + +“I am,” she sang, “I am the Siren sweet + Who mariners amid the main unman, + So full am I of pleasantness to hear. + +I drew Ulysses from his wandering way + Unto my song, and he who dwells with me + Seldom departs so wholly I content him.” + +Her mouth was not yet closed again, before + Appeared a Lady saintly and alert + Close at my side to put her to confusion. + +“Virgilius, O Virgilius! who is this?” + Sternly she said; and he was drawing near + With eyes still fixed upon that modest one. + +She seized the other and in front laid open, + Rending her garments, and her belly showed me; + This waked me with the stench that issued from it. + +I turned mine eyes, and good Virgilius said: + “At least thrice have I called thee; rise and come; + Find we the opening by which thou mayst enter.” + +I rose; and full already of high day + Were all the circles of the Sacred Mountain, + And with the new sun at our back we went. + +Following behind him, I my forehead bore + Like unto one who has it laden with thought, + Who makes himself the half arch of a bridge, + +When I heard say, “Come, here the passage is,” + Spoken in a manner gentle and benign, + Such as we hear not in this mortal region. + +With open wings, which of a swan appeared, + Upward he turned us who thus spake to us, + Between the two walls of the solid granite. + +He moved his pinions afterwards and fanned us, + Affirming those ‘qui lugent’ to be blessed, + For they shall have their souls with comfort filled. + +“What aileth thee, that aye to earth thou gazest?” + To me my Guide began to say, we both + Somewhat beyond the Angel having mounted. + +And I: “With such misgiving makes me go + A vision new, which bends me to itself, + So that I cannot from the thought withdraw me.” + +“Didst thou behold,” he said, “that old enchantress, + Who sole above us henceforth is lamented? + Didst thou behold how man is freed from her? + +Suffice it thee, and smite earth with thy heels, + Thine eyes lift upward to the lure, that whirls + The Eternal King with revolutions vast.” + +Even as the hawk, that first his feet surveys, + Then turns him to the call and stretches forward, + Through the desire of food that draws him thither, + +Such I became, and such, as far as cleaves + The rock to give a way to him who mounts, + Went on to where the circling doth begin. + +On the fifth circle when I had come forth, + People I saw upon it who were weeping, + Stretched prone upon the ground, all downward turned. + +“Adhaesit pavimento anima mea,” + I heard them say with sighings so profound, + That hardly could the words be understood. + +“O ye elect of God, whose sufferings + Justice and Hope both render less severe, + Direct ye us towards the high ascents.” + +“If ye are come secure from this prostration, + And wish to find the way most speedily, + Let your right hands be evermore outside.” + +Thus did the Poet ask, and thus was answered + By them somewhat in front of us; whence I + In what was spoken divined the rest concealed, + +And unto my Lord’s eyes mine eyes I turned; + Whence he assented with a cheerful sign + To what the sight of my desire implored. + +When of myself I could dispose at will, + Above that creature did I draw myself, + Whose words before had caused me to take note, + +Saying: “O Spirit, in whom weeping ripens + That without which to God we cannot turn, + Suspend awhile for me thy greater care. + +Who wast thou, and why are your backs turned upwards, + Tell me, and if thou wouldst that I procure thee + Anything there whence living I departed.” + +And he to me: “Wherefore our backs the heaven + Turns to itself, know shalt thou; but beforehand + ‘Scias quod ego fui successor Petri.’ + +Between Siestri and Chiaveri descends + A river beautiful, and of its name + The title of my blood its summit makes. + +A month and little more essayed I how + Weighs the great cloak on him from mire who keeps it, + For all the other burdens seem a feather. + +Tardy, ah woe is me! was my conversion; + But when the Roman Shepherd I was made, + Then I discovered life to be a lie. + +I saw that there the heart was not at rest, + Nor farther in that life could one ascend; + Whereby the love of this was kindled in me. + +Until that time a wretched soul and parted + From God was I, and wholly avaricious; + Now, as thou seest, I here am punished for it. + +What avarice does is here made manifest + In the purgation of these souls converted, + And no more bitter pain the Mountain has. + +Even as our eye did not uplift itself + Aloft, being fastened upon earthly things, + So justice here has merged it in the earth. + +As avarice had extinguished our affection + For every good, whereby was action lost, + So justice here doth hold us in restraint, + +Bound and imprisoned by the feet and hands; + And so long as it pleases the just Lord + Shall we remain immovable and prostrate.” + +I on my knees had fallen, and wished to speak; + But even as I began, and he was ’ware, + Only by listening, of my reverence, + +“What cause,” he said, “has downward bent thee thus?” + And I to him: “For your own dignity, + Standing, my conscience stung me with remorse.” + +“Straighten thy legs, and upward raise thee, brother,” + He answered: “Err not, fellow-servant am I + With thee and with the others to one power. + +If e’er that holy, evangelic sound, + Which sayeth ‘neque nubent,’ thou hast heard, + Well canst thou see why in this wise I speak. + +Now go; no longer will I have thee linger, + Because thy stay doth incommode my weeping, + With which I ripen that which thou hast said. + +On earth I have a grandchild named Alagia, + Good in herself, unless indeed our house + Malevolent may make her by example, + +And she alone remains to me on earth.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XX + + +Ill strives the will against a better will; + Therefore, to pleasure him, against my pleasure + I drew the sponge not saturate from the water. + +Onward I moved, and onward moved my Leader, + Through vacant places, skirting still the rock, + As on a wall close to the battlements; + +For they that through their eyes pour drop by drop + The malady which all the world pervades, + On the other side too near the verge approach. + +Accursed mayst thou be, thou old she-wolf, + That more than all the other beasts hast prey, + Because of hunger infinitely hollow! + +O heaven, in whose gyrations some appear + To think conditions here below are changed, + When will he come through whom she shall depart? + +Onward we went with footsteps slow and scarce, + And I attentive to the shades I heard + Piteously weeping and bemoaning them; + +And I by peradventure heard “Sweet Mary!” + Uttered in front of us amid the weeping + Even as a woman does who is in child-birth; + +And in continuance: “How poor thou wast + Is manifested by that hostelry + Where thou didst lay thy sacred burden down.” + +Thereafterward I heard: “O good Fabricius, + Virtue with poverty didst thou prefer + To the possession of great wealth with vice.” + +So pleasurable were these words to me + That I drew farther onward to have knowledge + Touching that spirit whence they seemed to come. + +He furthermore was speaking of the largess + Which Nicholas unto the maidens gave, + In order to conduct their youth to honour. + +“O soul that dost so excellently speak, + Tell me who wast thou,” said I, “and why only + Thou dost renew these praises well deserved? + +Not without recompense shall be thy word, + If I return to finish the short journey + Of that life which is flying to its end.” + +And he: “I’ll tell thee, not for any comfort + I may expect from earth, but that so much + Grace shines in thee or ever thou art dead. + +I was the root of that malignant plant + Which overshadows all the Christian world, + So that good fruit is seldom gathered from it; + +But if Douay and Ghent, and Lille and Bruges + Had Power, soon vengeance would be taken on it; + And this I pray of Him who judges all. + +Hugh Capet was I called upon the earth; + From me were born the Louises and Philips, + By whom in later days has France been governed. + +I was the son of a Parisian butcher, + What time the ancient kings had perished all, + Excepting one, contrite in cloth of gray. + +I found me grasping in my hands the rein + Of the realm’s government, and so great power + Of new acquest, and so with friends abounding, + +That to the widowed diadem promoted + The head of mine own offspring was, from whom + The consecrated bones of these began. + +So long as the great dowry of Provence + Out of my blood took not the sense of shame, + ’Twas little worth, but still it did no harm. + +Then it began with falsehood and with force + Its rapine; and thereafter, for amends, + Took Ponthieu, Normandy, and Gascony. + +Charles came to Italy, and for amends + A victim made of Conradin, and then + Thrust Thomas back to heaven, for amends. + +A time I see, not very distant now, + Which draweth forth another Charles from France, + The better to make known both him and his. + +Unarmed he goes, and only with the lance + That Judas jousted with; and that he thrusts + So that he makes the paunch of Florence burst. + +He thence not land, but sin and infamy, + Shall gain, so much more grievous to himself + As the more light such damage he accounts. + +The other, now gone forth, ta’en in his ship, + See I his daughter sell, and chaffer for her + As corsairs do with other female slaves. + +What more, O Avarice, canst thou do to us, + Since thou my blood so to thyself hast drawn, + It careth not for its own proper flesh? + +That less may seem the future ill and past, + I see the flower-de-luce Alagna enter, + And Christ in his own Vicar captive made. + +I see him yet another time derided; + I see renewed the vinegar and gall, + And between living thieves I see him slain. + +I see the modern Pilate so relentless, + This does not sate him, but without decretal + He to the temple bears his sordid sails! + +When, O my Lord! shall I be joyful made + By looking on the vengeance which, concealed, + Makes sweet thine anger in thy secrecy? + +What I was saying of that only bride + Of the Holy Ghost, and which occasioned thee + To turn towards me for some commentary, + +So long has been ordained to all our prayers + As the day lasts; but when the night comes on, + Contrary sound we take instead thereof. + +At that time we repeat Pygmalion, + Of whom a traitor, thief, and parricide + Made his insatiable desire of gold; + +And the misery of avaricious Midas, + That followed his inordinate demand, + At which forevermore one needs but laugh. + +The foolish Achan each one then records, + And how he stole the spoils; so that the wrath + Of Joshua still appears to sting him here. + +Then we accuse Sapphira with her husband, + We laud the hoof-beats Heliodorus had, + And the whole mount in infamy encircles + +Polymnestor who murdered Polydorus. + Here finally is cried: ‘O Crassus, tell us, + For thou dost know, what is the taste of gold?’ + +Sometimes we speak, one loud, another low, + According to desire of speech, that spurs us + To greater now and now to lesser pace. + +But in the good that here by day is talked of, + Erewhile alone I was not; yet near by + No other person lifted up his voice.” + +From him already we departed were, + And made endeavour to o’ercome the road + As much as was permitted to our power, + +When I perceived, like something that is falling, + The mountain tremble, whence a chill seized on me, + As seizes him who to his death is going. + +Certes so violently shook not Delos, + Before Latona made her nest therein + To give birth to the two eyes of the heaven. + +Then upon all sides there began a cry, + Such that the Master drew himself towards me, + Saying, “Fear not, while I am guiding thee.” + +“Gloria in excelsis Deo,” all + Were saying, from what near I comprehended, + Where it was possible to hear the cry. + +We paused immovable and in suspense, + Even as the shepherds who first heard that song, + Until the trembling ceased, and it was finished. + +Then we resumed again our holy path, + Watching the shades that lay upon the ground, + Already turned to their accustomed plaint. + +No ignorance ever with so great a strife + Had rendered me importunate to know, + If erreth not in this my memory, + +As meditating then I seemed to have; + Nor out of haste to question did I dare, + Nor of myself I there could aught perceive; + +So I went onward timorous and thoughtful. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXI + + +The natural thirst, that ne’er is satisfied + Excepting with the water for whose grace + The woman of Samaria besought, + +Put me in travail, and haste goaded me + Along the encumbered path behind my Leader + And I was pitying that righteous vengeance; + +And lo! in the same manner as Luke writeth + That Christ appeared to two upon the way + From the sepulchral cave already risen, + +A shade appeared to us, and came behind us, + Down gazing on the prostrate multitude, + Nor were we ware of it, until it spake, + +Saying, “My brothers, may God give you peace!” + We turned us suddenly, and Virgilius rendered + To him the countersign thereto conforming. + +Thereon began he: “In the blessed council, + Thee may the court veracious place in peace, + That me doth banish in eternal exile!” + +“How,” said he, and the while we went with speed, + “If ye are shades whom God deigns not on high, + Who up his stairs so far has guided you?” + +And said my Teacher: “If thou note the marks + Which this one bears, and which the Angel traces + Well shalt thou see he with the good must reign. + +But because she who spinneth day and night + For him had not yet drawn the distaff off, + Which Clotho lays for each one and compacts, + +His soul, which is thy sister and my own, + In coming upwards could not come alone, + By reason that it sees not in our fashion. + +Whence I was drawn from out the ample throat + Of Hell to be his guide, and I shall guide him + As far on as my school has power to lead. + +But tell us, if thou knowest, why such a shudder + Erewhile the mountain gave, and why together + All seemed to cry, as far as its moist feet?” + +In asking he so hit the very eye + Of my desire, that merely with the hope + My thirst became the less unsatisfied. + +“Naught is there,” he began, “that without order + May the religion of the mountain feel, + Nor aught that may be foreign to its custom. + +Free is it here from every permutation; + What from itself heaven in itself receiveth + Can be of this the cause, and naught beside; + +Because that neither rain, nor hail, nor snow, + Nor dew, nor hoar-frost any higher falls + Than the short, little stairway of three steps. + +Dense clouds do not appear, nor rarefied, + Nor coruscation, nor the daughter of Thaumas, + That often upon earth her region shifts; + +No arid vapour any farther rises + Than to the top of the three steps I spake of, + Whereon the Vicar of Peter has his feet. + +Lower down perchance it trembles less or more, + But, for the wind that in the earth is hidden + I know not how, up here it never trembled. + +It trembles here, whenever any soul + Feels itself pure, so that it soars, or moves + To mount aloft, and such a cry attends it. + +Of purity the will alone gives proof, + Which, being wholly free to change its convent, + Takes by surprise the soul, and helps it fly. + +First it wills well; but the desire permits not, + Which divine justice with the self-same will + There was to sin, upon the torment sets. + +And I, who have been lying in this pain + Five hundred years and more, but just now felt + A free volition for a better seat. + +Therefore thou heardst the earthquake, and the pious + Spirits along the mountain rendering praise + Unto the Lord, that soon he speed them upwards.” + +So said he to him; and since we enjoy + As much in drinking as the thirst is great, + I could not say how much it did me good. + +And the wise Leader: “Now I see the net + That snares you here, and how ye are set free, + Why the earth quakes, and wherefore ye rejoice. + +Now who thou wast be pleased that I may know; + And why so many centuries thou hast here + Been lying, let me gather from thy words.” + +“In days when the good Titus, with the aid + Of the supremest King, avenged the wounds + Whence issued forth the blood by Judas sold, + +Under the name that most endures and honours, + Was I on earth,” that spirit made reply, + “Greatly renowned, but not with faith as yet. + +My vocal spirit was so sweet, that Rome + Me, a Thoulousian, drew unto herself, + Where I deserved to deck my brows with myrtle. + +Statius the people name me still on earth; + I sang of Thebes, and then of great Achilles; + But on the way fell with my second burden. + +The seeds unto my ardour were the sparks + Of that celestial flame which heated me, + Whereby more than a thousand have been fired; + +Of the Aeneid speak I, which to me + A mother was, and was my nurse in song; + Without this weighed I not a drachma’s weight. + +And to have lived upon the earth what time + Virgilius lived, I would accept one sun + More than I must ere issuing from my ban.” + +These words towards me made Virgilius turn + With looks that in their silence said, “Be silent!” + But yet the power that wills cannot do all things; + +For tears and laughter are such pursuivants + Unto the passion from which each springs forth, + In the most truthful least the will they follow. + +I only smiled, as one who gives the wink; + Whereat the shade was silent, and it gazed + Into mine eyes, where most expression dwells; + +And, “As thou well mayst consummate a labour + So great,” it said, “why did thy face just now + Display to me the lightning of a smile?” + +Now am I caught on this side and on that; + One keeps me silent, one to speak conjures me, + Wherefore I sigh, and I am understood. + +“Speak,” said my Master, “and be not afraid + Of speaking, but speak out, and say to him + What he demands with such solicitude.” + +Whence I: “Thou peradventure marvellest, + O antique spirit, at the smile I gave; + But I will have more wonder seize upon thee. + +This one, who guides on high these eyes of mine, + Is that Virgilius, from whom thou didst learn + To sing aloud of men and of the Gods. + +If other cause thou to my smile imputedst, + Abandon it as false, and trust it was + Those words which thou hast spoken concerning him.” + +Already he was stooping to embrace + My Teacher’s feet; but he said to him: “Brother, + Do not; for shade thou art, and shade beholdest.” + +And he uprising: “Now canst thou the sum + Of love which warms me to thee comprehend, + When this our vanity I disremember, + +Treating a shadow as substantial thing.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXII + + +Already was the Angel left behind us, + The Angel who to the sixth round had turned us, + Having erased one mark from off my face; + +And those who have in justice their desire + Had said to us, “Beati,” in their voices, + With “sitio,” and without more ended it. + +And I, more light than through the other passes, + Went onward so, that without any labour + I followed upward the swift-footed spirits; + +When thus Virgilius began: “The love + Kindled by virtue aye another kindles, + Provided outwardly its flame appear. + +Hence from the hour that Juvenal descended + Among us into the infernal Limbo, + Who made apparent to me thy affection, + +My kindliness towards thee was as great + As ever bound one to an unseen person, + So that these stairs will now seem short to me. + +But tell me, and forgive me as a friend, + If too great confidence let loose the rein, + And as a friend now hold discourse with me; + +How was it possible within thy breast + For avarice to find place, ’mid so much wisdom + As thou wast filled with by thy diligence?” + +These words excited Statius at first + Somewhat to laughter; afterward he answered: + “Each word of thine is love’s dear sign to me. + +Verily oftentimes do things appear + Which give fallacious matter to our doubts, + Instead of the true causes which are hidden! + +Thy question shows me thy belief to be + That I was niggard in the other life, + It may be from the circle where I was; + +Therefore know thou, that avarice was removed + Too far from me; and this extravagance + Thousands of lunar periods have punished. + +And were it not that I my thoughts uplifted, + When I the passage heard where thou exclaimest, + As if indignant, unto human nature, + +‘To what impellest thou not, O cursed hunger + Of gold, the appetite of mortal men?’ + Revolving I should feel the dismal joustings. + +Then I perceived the hands could spread too wide + Their wings in spending, and repented me + As well of that as of my other sins; + +How many with shorn hair shall rise again + Because of ignorance, which from this sin + Cuts off repentance living and in death! + +And know that the transgression which rebuts + By direct opposition any sin + Together with it here its verdure dries. + +Therefore if I have been among that folk + Which mourns its avarice, to purify me, + For its opposite has this befallen me.” + +“Now when thou sangest the relentless weapons + Of the twofold affliction of Jocasta,” + The singer of the Songs Bucolic said, + +“From that which Clio there with thee preludes, + It does not seem that yet had made thee faithful + That faith without which no good works suffice. + +If this be so, what candles or what sun + Scattered thy darkness so that thou didst trim + Thy sails behind the Fisherman thereafter?” + +And he to him: “Thou first directedst me + Towards Parnassus, in its grots to drink, + And first concerning God didst me enlighten. + +Thou didst as he who walketh in the night, + Who bears his light behind, which helps him not, + But wary makes the persons after him, + +When thou didst say: ‘The age renews itself, + Justice returns, and man’s primeval time, + And a new progeny descends from heaven.’ + +Through thee I Poet was, through thee a Christian; + But that thou better see what I design, + To colour it will I extend my hand. + +Already was the world in every part + Pregnant with the true creed, disseminated + By messengers of the eternal kingdom; + +And thy assertion, spoken of above, + With the new preachers was in unison; + Whence I to visit them the custom took. + +Then they became so holy in my sight, + That, when Domitian persecuted them, + Not without tears of mine were their laments; + +And all the while that I on earth remained, + Them I befriended, and their upright customs + Made me disparage all the other sects. + +And ere I led the Greeks unto the rivers + Of Thebes, in poetry, I was baptized, + But out of fear was covertly a Christian, + +For a long time professing paganism; + And this lukewarmness caused me the fourth circle + To circuit round more than four centuries. + +Thou, therefore, who hast raised the covering + That hid from me whatever good I speak of, + While in ascending we have time to spare, + +Tell me, in what place is our friend Terentius, + Caecilius, Plautus, Varro, if thou knowest; + Tell me if they are damned, and in what alley.” + +“These, Persius and myself, and others many,” + Replied my Leader, “with that Grecian are + Whom more than all the rest the Muses suckled, + +In the first circle of the prison blind; + Ofttimes we of the mountain hold discourse + Which has our nurses ever with itself. + +Euripides is with us, Antiphon, + Simonides, Agatho, and many other + Greeks who of old their brows with laurel decked. + +There some of thine own people may be seen, + Antigone, Deiphile and Argia, + And there Ismene mournful as of old. + +There she is seen who pointed out Langia; + There is Tiresias’ daughter, and there Thetis, + And there Deidamia with her sisters.” + +Silent already were the poets both, + Attent once more in looking round about, + From the ascent and from the walls released; + +And four handmaidens of the day already + Were left behind, and at the pole the fifth + Was pointing upward still its burning horn, + +What time my Guide: “I think that tow’rds the edge + Our dexter shoulders it behoves us turn, + Circling the mount as we are wont to do.” + +Thus in that region custom was our ensign; + And we resumed our way with less suspicion + For the assenting of that worthy soul + +They in advance went on, and I alone + Behind them, and I listened to their speech, + Which gave me lessons in the art of song. + +But soon their sweet discourses interrupted + A tree which midway in the road we found, + With apples sweet and grateful to the smell. + +And even as a fir-tree tapers upward + From bough to bough, so downwardly did that; + I think in order that no one might climb it. + +On that side where our pathway was enclosed + Fell from the lofty rock a limpid water, + And spread itself abroad upon the leaves. + +The Poets twain unto the tree drew near, + And from among the foliage a voice + Cried: “Of this food ye shall have scarcity.” + +Then said: “More thoughtful Mary was of making + The marriage feast complete and honourable, + Than of her mouth which now for you responds; + +And for their drink the ancient Roman women + With water were content; and Daniel + Disparaged food, and understanding won. + +The primal age was beautiful as gold; + Acorns it made with hunger savorous, + And nectar every rivulet with thirst. + +Honey and locusts were the aliments + That fed the Baptist in the wilderness; + Whence he is glorious, and so magnified + +As by the Evangel is revealed to you.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXIII + + +The while among the verdant leaves mine eyes + I riveted, as he is wont to do + Who wastes his life pursuing little birds, + +My more than Father said unto me: “Son, + Come now; because the time that is ordained us + More usefully should be apportioned out.” + +I turned my face and no less soon my steps + Unto the Sages, who were speaking so + They made the going of no cost to me; + +And lo! were heard a song and a lament, + “Labia mea, Domine,” in fashion + Such that delight and dolence it brought forth. + +“O my sweet Father, what is this I hear?” + Began I; and he answered: “Shades that go + Perhaps the knot unloosing of their debt.” + +In the same way that thoughtful pilgrims do, + Who, unknown people on the road o’ertaking, + Turn themselves round to them, and do not stop, + +Even thus, behind us with a swifter motion + Coming and passing onward, gazed upon us + A crowd of spirits silent and devout. + +Each in his eyes was dark and cavernous, + Pallid in face, and so emaciate + That from the bones the skin did shape itself. + +I do not think that so to merest rind + Could Erisichthon have been withered up + By famine, when most fear he had of it. + +Thinking within myself I said: “Behold, + This is the folk who lost Jerusalem, + When Mary made a prey of her own son.” + +Their sockets were like rings without the gems; + Whoever in the face of men reads ‘omo’ + Might well in these have recognised the ‘m.’ + +Who would believe the odour of an apple, + Begetting longing, could consume them so, + And that of water, without knowing how? + +I still was wondering what so famished them, + For the occasion not yet manifest + Of their emaciation and sad squalor; + +And lo! from out the hollow of his head + His eyes a shade turned on me, and looked keenly; + Then cried aloud: “What grace to me is this?” + +Never should I have known him by his look; + But in his voice was evident to me + That which his aspect had suppressed within it. + +This spark within me wholly re-enkindled + My recognition of his altered face, + And I recalled the features of Forese. + +“Ah, do not look at this dry leprosy,” + Entreated he, “which doth my skin discolour, + Nor at default of flesh that I may have; + +But tell me truth of thee, and who are those + Two souls, that yonder make for thee an escort; + Do not delay in speaking unto me.” + +“That face of thine, which dead I once bewept, + Gives me for weeping now no lesser grief,” + I answered him, “beholding it so changed! + +But tell me, for God’s sake, what thus denudes you? + Make me not speak while I am marvelling, + For ill speaks he who’s full of other longings.” + +And he to me: “From the eternal council + Falls power into the water and the tree + Behind us left, whereby I grow so thin. + +All of this people who lamenting sing, + For following beyond measure appetite + In hunger and thirst are here re-sanctified. + +Desire to eat and drink enkindles in us + The scent that issues from the apple-tree, + And from the spray that sprinkles o’er the verdure; + +And not a single time alone, this ground + Encompassing, is refreshed our pain,— + I say our pain, and ought to say our solace,— + +For the same wish doth lead us to the tree + Which led the Christ rejoicing to say ‘Eli,’ + When with his veins he liberated us.” + +And I to him: “Forese, from that day + When for a better life thou changedst worlds, + Up to this time five years have not rolled round. + +If sooner were the power exhausted in thee + Of sinning more, than thee the hour surprised + Of that good sorrow which to God reweds us, + +How hast thou come up hitherward already? + I thought to find thee down there underneath, + Where time for time doth restitution make.” + +And he to me: “Thus speedily has led me + To drink of the sweet wormwood of these torments, + My Nella with her overflowing tears; + +She with her prayers devout and with her sighs + Has drawn me from the coast where one where one awaits, + And from the other circles set me free. + +So much more dear and pleasing is to God + My little widow, whom so much I loved, + As in good works she is the more alone; + +For the Barbagia of Sardinia + By far more modest in its women is + Than the Barbagia I have left her in. + +O brother sweet, what wilt thou have me say? + A future time is in my sight already, + To which this hour will not be very old, + +When from the pulpit shall be interdicted + To the unblushing womankind of Florence + To go about displaying breast and paps. + +What savages were e’er, what Saracens, + Who stood in need, to make them covered go, + Of spiritual or other discipline? + +But if the shameless women were assured + Of what swift Heaven prepares for them, already + Wide open would they have their mouths to howl; + +For if my foresight here deceive me not, + They shall be sad ere he has bearded cheeks + Who now is hushed to sleep with lullaby. + +O brother, now no longer hide thee from me; + See that not only I, but all these people + Are gazing there, where thou dost veil the sun.” + +Whence I to him: “If thou bring back to mind + What thou with me hast been and I with thee, + The present memory will be grievous still. + +Out of that life he turned me back who goes + In front of me, two days agone when round + The sister of him yonder showed herself,” + +And to the sun I pointed. “Through the deep + Night of the truly dead has this one led me, + With this true flesh, that follows after him. + +Thence his encouragements have led me up, + Ascending and still circling round the mount + That you doth straighten, whom the world made crooked. + +He says that he will bear me company, + Till I shall be where Beatrice will be; + There it behoves me to remain without him. + +This is Virgilius, who thus says to me,” + And him I pointed at; “the other is + That shade for whom just now shook every slope + +Your realm, that from itself discharges him.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXIV + + +Nor speech the going, nor the going that + Slackened; but talking we went bravely on, + Even as a vessel urged by a good wind. + +And shadows, that appeared things doubly dead, + From out the sepulchres of their eyes betrayed + Wonder at me, aware that I was living. + +And I, continuing my colloquy, + Said: “Peradventure he goes up more slowly + Than he would do, for other people’s sake. + +But tell me, if thou knowest, where is Piccarda; + Tell me if any one of note I see + Among this folk that gazes at me so.” + +“My sister, who, ’twixt beautiful and good, + I know not which was more, triumphs rejoicing + Already in her crown on high Olympus.” + +So said he first, and then: “’Tis not forbidden + To name each other here, so milked away + Is our resemblance by our dieting. + +This,” pointing with his finger, “is Buonagiunta, + Buonagiunta, of Lucca; and that face + Beyond him there, more peaked than the others, + +Has held the holy Church within his arms; + From Tours was he, and purges by his fasting + Bolsena’s eels and the Vernaccia wine.” + +He named me many others one by one; + And all contented seemed at being named, + So that for this I saw not one dark look. + +I saw for hunger bite the empty air + Ubaldin dalla Pila, and Boniface, + Who with his crook had pastured many people. + +I saw Messer Marchese, who had leisure + Once at Forli for drinking with less dryness, + And he was one who ne’er felt satisfied. + +But as he does who scans, and then doth prize + One more than others, did I him of Lucca, + Who seemed to take most cognizance of me. + +He murmured, and I know not what Gentucca + From that place heard I, where he felt the wound + Of justice, that doth macerate them so. + +“O soul,” I said, “that seemest so desirous + To speak with me, do so that I may hear thee, + And with thy speech appease thyself and me.” + +“A maid is born, and wears not yet the veil,” + Began he, “who to thee shall pleasant make + My city, howsoever men may blame it. + +Thou shalt go on thy way with this prevision; + If by my murmuring thou hast been deceived, + True things hereafter will declare it to thee. + +But say if him I here behold, who forth + Evoked the new-invented rhymes, beginning, + ‘Ladies, that have intelligence of love?’” + +And I to him: “One am I, who, whenever + Love doth inspire me, note, and in that measure + Which he within me dictates, singing go.” + +“O brother, now I see,” he said, “the knot + Which me, the Notary, and Guittone held + Short of the sweet new style that now I hear. + +I do perceive full clearly how your pens + Go closely following after him who dictates, + Which with our own forsooth came not to pass; + +And he who sets himself to go beyond, + No difference sees from one style to another;” + And as if satisfied, he held his peace. + +Even as the birds, that winter tow’rds the Nile, + Sometimes into a phalanx form themselves, + Then fly in greater haste, and go in file; + +In such wise all the people who were there, + Turning their faces, hurried on their steps, + Both by their leanness and their wishes light. + +And as a man, who weary is with trotting, + Lets his companions onward go, and walks, + Until he vents the panting of his chest; + +So did Forese let the holy flock + Pass by, and came with me behind it, saying, + “When will it be that I again shall see thee?” + +“How long,” I answered, “I may live, I know not; + Yet my return will not so speedy be, + But I shall sooner in desire arrive; + +Because the place where I was set to live + From day to day of good is more depleted, + And unto dismal ruin seems ordained.” + +“Now go,” he said, “for him most guilty of it + At a beast’s tail behold I dragged along + Towards the valley where is no repentance. + +Faster at every step the beast is going, + Increasing evermore until it smites him, + And leaves the body vilely mutilated. + +Not long those wheels shall turn,” and he uplifted + His eyes to heaven, “ere shall be clear to thee + That which my speech no farther can declare. + +Now stay behind; because the time so precious + Is in this kingdom, that I lose too much + By coming onward thus abreast with thee.” + +As sometimes issues forth upon a gallop + A cavalier from out a troop that ride, + And seeks the honour of the first encounter, + +So he with greater strides departed from us; + And on the road remained I with those two, + Who were such mighty marshals of the world. + +And when before us he had gone so far + Mine eyes became to him such pursuivants + As was my understanding to his words, + +Appeared to me with laden and living boughs + Another apple-tree, and not far distant, + From having but just then turned thitherward. + +People I saw beneath it lift their hands, + And cry I know not what towards the leaves, + Like little children eager and deluded, + +Who pray, and he they pray to doth not answer, + But, to make very keen their appetite, + Holds their desire aloft, and hides it not. + +Then they departed as if undeceived; + And now we came unto the mighty tree + Which prayers and tears so manifold refuses. + +“Pass farther onward without drawing near; + The tree of which Eve ate is higher up, + And out of that one has this tree been raised.” + +Thus said I know not who among the branches; + Whereat Virgilius, Statius, and myself + Went crowding forward on the side that rises. + +“Be mindful,” said he, “of the accursed ones + Formed of the cloud-rack, who inebriate + Combated Theseus with their double breasts; + +And of the Jews who showed them soft in drinking, + Whence Gideon would not have them for companions + When he tow’rds Midian the hills descended.” + +Thus, closely pressed to one of the two borders, + On passed we, hearing sins of gluttony, + Followed forsooth by miserable gains; + +Then set at large upon the lonely road, + A thousand steps and more we onward went, + In contemplation, each without a word. + +“What go ye thinking thus, ye three alone?” + Said suddenly a voice, whereat I started + As terrified and timid beasts are wont. + +I raised my head to see who this might be, + And never in a furnace was there seen + Metals or glass so lucent and so red + +As one I saw who said: “If it may please you + To mount aloft, here it behoves you turn; + This way goes he who goeth after peace.” + +His aspect had bereft me of my sight, + So that I turned me back unto my Teachers, + Like one who goeth as his hearing guides him. + +And as, the harbinger of early dawn, + The air of May doth move and breathe out fragrance, + Impregnate all with herbage and with flowers, + +So did I feel a breeze strike in the midst + My front, and felt the moving of the plumes + That breathed around an odour of ambrosia; + +And heard it said: “Blessed are they whom grace + So much illumines, that the love of taste + Excites not in their breasts too great desire, + +Hungering at all times so far as is just.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXV + + +Now was it the ascent no hindrance brooked, + Because the sun had his meridian circle + To Taurus left, and night to Scorpio; + +Wherefore as doth a man who tarries not, + But goes his way, whate’er to him appear, + If of necessity the sting transfix him, + +In this wise did we enter through the gap, + Taking the stairway, one before the other, + Which by its narrowness divides the climbers. + +And as the little stork that lifts its wing + With a desire to fly, and does not venture + To leave the nest, and lets it downward droop, + +Even such was I, with the desire of asking + Kindled and quenched, unto the motion coming + He makes who doth address himself to speak. + +Not for our pace, though rapid it might be, + My father sweet forbore, but said: “Let fly + The bow of speech thou to the barb hast drawn.” + +With confidence I opened then my mouth, + And I began: “How can one meagre grow + There where the need of nutriment applies not?” + +“If thou wouldst call to mind how Meleager + Was wasted by the wasting of a brand, + This would not,” said he, “be to thee so sour; + +And wouldst thou think how at each tremulous motion + Trembles within a mirror your own image; + That which seems hard would mellow seem to thee. + +But that thou mayst content thee in thy wish + Lo Statius here; and him I call and pray + He now will be the healer of thy wounds.” + +“If I unfold to him the eternal vengeance,” + Responded Statius, “where thou present art, + Be my excuse that I can naught deny thee.” + +Then he began: “Son, if these words of mine + Thy mind doth contemplate and doth receive, + They’ll be thy light unto the How thou sayest. + +The perfect blood, which never is drunk up + Into the thirsty veins, and which remaineth + Like food that from the table thou removest, + +Takes in the heart for all the human members + Virtue informative, as being that + Which to be changed to them goes through the veins + +Again digest, descends it where ’tis better + Silent to be than say; and then drops thence + Upon another’s blood in natural vase. + +There one together with the other mingles, + One to be passive meant, the other active + By reason of the perfect place it springs from; + +And being conjoined, begins to operate, + Coagulating first, then vivifying + What for its matter it had made consistent. + +The active virtue, being made a soul + As of a plant, (in so far different, + This on the way is, that arrived already,) + +Then works so much, that now it moves and feels + Like a sea-fungus, and then undertakes + To organize the powers whose seed it is. + +Now, Son, dilates and now distends itself + The virtue from the generator’s heart, + Where nature is intent on all the members. + +But how from animal it man becomes + Thou dost not see as yet; this is a point + Which made a wiser man than thou once err + +So far, that in his doctrine separate + He made the soul from possible intellect, + For he no organ saw by this assumed. + +Open thy breast unto the truth that’s coming, + And know that, just as soon as in the foetus + The articulation of the brain is perfect, + +The primal Motor turns to it well pleased + At so great art of nature, and inspires + A spirit new with virtue all replete, + +Which what it finds there active doth attract + Into its substance, and becomes one soul, + Which lives, and feels, and on itself revolves. + +And that thou less may wonder at my word, + Behold the sun’s heat, which becometh wine, + Joined to the juice that from the vine distils. + +Whenever Lachesis has no more thread, + It separates from the flesh, and virtually + Bears with itself the human and divine; + +The other faculties are voiceless all; + The memory, the intelligence, and the will + In action far more vigorous than before. + +Without a pause it falleth of itself + In marvellous way on one shore or the other; + There of its roads it first is cognizant. + +Soon as the place there circumscribeth it, + The virtue informative rays round about, + As, and as much as, in the living members. + +And even as the air, when full of rain, + By alien rays that are therein reflected, + With divers colours shows itself adorned, + +So there the neighbouring air doth shape itself + Into that form which doth impress upon it + Virtually the soul that has stood still. + +And then in manner of the little flame, + Which followeth the fire where’er it shifts, + After the spirit followeth its new form. + +Since afterwards it takes from this its semblance, + It is called shade; and thence it organizes + Thereafter every sense, even to the sight. + +Thence is it that we speak, and thence we laugh; + Thence is it that we form the tears and sighs, + That on the mountain thou mayhap hast heard. + +According as impress us our desires + And other affections, so the shade is shaped, + And this is cause of what thou wonderest at.” + +And now unto the last of all the circles + Had we arrived, and to the right hand turned, + And were attentive to another care. + +There the embankment shoots forth flames of fire, + And upward doth the cornice breathe a blast + That drives them back, and from itself sequesters. + +Hence we must needs go on the open side, + And one by one; and I did fear the fire + On this side, and on that the falling down. + +My Leader said: “Along this place one ought + To keep upon the eyes a tightened rein, + Seeing that one so easily might err.” + +“Summae Deus clementiae,” in the bosom + Of the great burning chanted then I heard, + Which made me no less eager to turn round; + +And spirits saw I walking through the flame; + Wherefore I looked, to my own steps and theirs + Apportioning my sight from time to time. + +After the close which to that hymn is made, + Aloud they shouted, “Virum non cognosco;” + Then recommenced the hymn with voices low. + +This also ended, cried they: “To the wood + Diana ran, and drove forth Helice + Therefrom, who had of Venus felt the poison.” + +Then to their song returned they; then the wives + They shouted, and the husbands who were chaste. + As virtue and the marriage vow imposes. + +And I believe that them this mode suffices, + For all the time the fire is burning them; + With such care is it needful, and such food, + +That the last wound of all should be closed up. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXVI + + +While on the brink thus one before the other + We went upon our way, oft the good Master + Said: “Take thou heed! suffice it that I warn thee.” + +On the right shoulder smote me now the sun, + That, raying out, already the whole west + Changed from its azure aspect into white. + +And with my shadow did I make the flame + Appear more red; and even to such a sign + Shades saw I many, as they went, give heed. + +This was the cause that gave them a beginning + To speak of me; and to themselves began they + To say: “That seems not a factitious body!” + +Then towards me, as far as they could come, + Came certain of them, always with regard + Not to step forth where they would not be burned. + +“O thou who goest, not from being slower + But reverent perhaps, behind the others, + Answer me, who in thirst and fire am burning. + +Nor to me only is thine answer needful; + For all of these have greater thirst for it + Than for cold water Ethiop or Indian. + +Tell us how is it that thou makest thyself + A wall unto the sun, as if thou hadst not + Entered as yet into the net of death.” + +Thus one of them addressed me, and I straight + Should have revealed myself, were I not bent + On other novelty that then appeared. + +For through the middle of the burning road + There came a people face to face with these, + Which held me in suspense with gazing at them. + +There see I hastening upon either side + Each of the shades, and kissing one another + Without a pause, content with brief salute. + +Thus in the middle of their brown battalions + Muzzle to muzzle one ant meets another + Perchance to spy their journey or their fortune. + +No sooner is the friendly greeting ended, + Or ever the first footstep passes onward, + Each one endeavours to outcry the other; + +The new-come people: “Sodom and Gomorrah!” + The rest: “Into the cow Pasiphae enters, + So that the bull unto her lust may run!” + +Then as the cranes, that to Riphaean mountains + Might fly in part, and part towards the sands, + These of the frost, those of the sun avoidant, + +One folk is going, and the other coming, + And weeping they return to their first songs, + And to the cry that most befitteth them; + +And close to me approached, even as before, + The very same who had entreated me, + Attent to listen in their countenance. + +I, who their inclination twice had seen, + Began: “O souls secure in the possession, + Whene’er it may be, of a state of peace, + +Neither unripe nor ripened have remained + My members upon earth, but here are with me + With their own blood and their articulations. + +I go up here to be no longer blind; + A Lady is above, who wins this grace, + Whereby the mortal through your world I bring. + +But as your greatest longing satisfied + May soon become, so that the Heaven may house you + Which full of love is, and most amply spreads, + +Tell me, that I again in books may write it, + Who are you, and what is that multitude + Which goes upon its way behind your backs?” + +Not otherwise with wonder is bewildered + The mountaineer, and staring round is dumb, + When rough and rustic to the town he goes, + +Than every shade became in its appearance; + But when they of their stupor were disburdened, + Which in high hearts is quickly quieted, + +“Blessed be thou, who of our border-lands,” + He recommenced who first had questioned us, + “Experience freightest for a better life. + +The folk that comes not with us have offended + In that for which once Caesar, triumphing, + Heard himself called in contumely, ‘Queen.’ + +Therefore they separate, exclaiming, ‘Sodom!’ + Themselves reproving, even as thou hast heard, + And add unto their burning by their shame. + +Our own transgression was hermaphrodite; + But because we observed not human law, + Following like unto beasts our appetite, + +In our opprobrium by us is read, + When we part company, the name of her + Who bestialized herself in bestial wood. + +Now knowest thou our acts, and what our crime was; + Wouldst thou perchance by name know who we are, + There is not time to tell, nor could I do it. + +Thy wish to know me shall in sooth be granted; + I’m Guido Guinicelli, and now purge me, + Having repented ere the hour extreme.” + +The same that in the sadness of Lycurgus + Two sons became, their mother re-beholding, + Such I became, but rise not to such height, + +The moment I heard name himself the father + Of me and of my betters, who had ever + Practised the sweet and gracious rhymes of love; + +And without speech and hearing thoughtfully + For a long time I went, beholding him, + Nor for the fire did I approach him nearer. + +When I was fed with looking, utterly + Myself I offered ready for his service, + With affirmation that compels belief. + +And he to me: “Thou leavest footprints such + In me, from what I hear, and so distinct, + Lethe cannot efface them, nor make dim. + +But if thy words just now the truth have sworn, + Tell me what is the cause why thou displayest + In word and look that dear thou holdest me?” + +And I to him: “Those dulcet lays of yours + Which, long as shall endure our modern fashion, + Shall make for ever dear their very ink!” + +“O brother,” said he, “he whom I point out,” + And here he pointed at a spirit in front, + “Was of the mother tongue a better smith. + +Verses of love and proses of romance, + He mastered all; and let the idiots talk, + Who think the Lemosin surpasses him. + +To clamour more than truth they turn their faces, + And in this way establish their opinion, + Ere art or reason has by them been heard. + +Thus many ancients with Guittone did, + From cry to cry still giving him applause, + Until the truth has conquered with most persons. + +Now, if thou hast such ample privilege + ’Tis granted thee to go unto the cloister + Wherein is Christ the abbot of the college, + +To him repeat for me a Paternoster, + So far as needful to us of this world, + Where power of sinning is no longer ours.” + +Then, to give place perchance to one behind, + Whom he had near, he vanished in the fire + As fish in water going to the bottom. + +I moved a little tow’rds him pointed out, + And said that to his name my own desire + An honourable place was making ready. + +He of his own free will began to say: + ‘Tan m’ abellis vostre cortes deman, + Que jeu nom’ puesc ni vueill a vos cobrire; + +Jeu sui Arnaut, que plor e vai chantan; + Consiros vei la passada folor, + E vei jauzen lo jorn qu’ esper denan. + +Ara vus prec per aquella valor, + Que vus condus al som de la scalina, + Sovenga vus a temprar ma dolor.’* + +Then hid him in the fire that purifies them. + +* So pleases me your courteous demand, + I cannot and I will not hide me from you. +I am Arnaut, who weep and singing go; + Contrite I see the folly of the past, + And joyous see the hoped-for day before me. +Therefore do I implore you, by that power + Which guides you to the summit of the stairs, + Be mindful to assuage my suffering! + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXVII + + +As when he vibrates forth his earliest rays, + In regions where his Maker shed his blood, + (The Ebro falling under lofty Libra, + +And waters in the Ganges burnt with noon,) + So stood the Sun; hence was the day departing, + When the glad Angel of God appeared to us. + +Outside the flame he stood upon the verge, + And chanted forth, “Beati mundo corde,” + In voice by far more living than our own. + +Then: “No one farther goes, souls sanctified, + If first the fire bite not; within it enter, + And be not deaf unto the song beyond.” + +When we were close beside him thus he said; + Wherefore e’en such became I, when I heard him, + As he is who is put into the grave. + +Upon my clasped hands I straightened me, + Scanning the fire, and vividly recalling + The human bodies I had once seen burned. + +Towards me turned themselves my good Conductors, + And unto me Virgilius said: “My son, + Here may indeed be torment, but not death. + +Remember thee, remember! and if I + On Geryon have safely guided thee, + What shall I do now I am nearer God? + +Believe for certain, shouldst thou stand a full + Millennium in the bosom of this flame, + It could not make thee bald a single hair. + +And if perchance thou think that I deceive thee, + Draw near to it, and put it to the proof + With thine own hands upon thy garment’s hem. + +Now lay aside, now lay aside all fear, + Turn hitherward, and onward come securely;” + And I still motionless, and ’gainst my conscience! + +Seeing me stand still motionless and stubborn, + Somewhat disturbed he said: “Now look thou, Son, + ’Twixt Beatrice and thee there is this wall.” + +As at the name of Thisbe oped his lids + The dying Pyramus, and gazed upon her, + What time the mulberry became vermilion, + +Even thus, my obduracy being softened, + I turned to my wise Guide, hearing the name + That in my memory evermore is welling. + +Whereat he wagged his head, and said: “How now? + Shall we stay on this side?” then smiled as one + Does at a child who’s vanquished by an apple. + +Then into the fire in front of me he entered, + Beseeching Statius to come after me, + Who a long way before divided us. + +When I was in it, into molten glass + I would have cast me to refresh myself, + So without measure was the burning there! + +And my sweet Father, to encourage me, + Discoursing still of Beatrice went on, + Saying: “Her eyes I seem to see already!” + +A voice, that on the other side was singing, + Directed us, and we, attent alone + On that, came forth where the ascent began. + +“Venite, benedicti Patris mei,” + Sounded within a splendour, which was there + Such it o’ercame me, and I could not look. + +“The sun departs,” it added, “and night cometh; + Tarry ye not, but onward urge your steps, + So long as yet the west becomes not dark.” + +Straight forward through the rock the path ascended + In such a way that I cut off the rays + Before me of the sun, that now was low. + +And of few stairs we yet had made assay, + Ere by the vanished shadow the sun’s setting + Behind us we perceived, I and my Sages. + +And ere in all its parts immeasurable + The horizon of one aspect had become, + And Night her boundless dispensation held, + +Each of us of a stair had made his bed; + Because the nature of the mount took from us + The power of climbing, more than the delight. + +Even as in ruminating passive grow + The goats, who have been swift and venturesome + Upon the mountain-tops ere they were fed, + +Hushed in the shadow, while the sun is hot, + Watched by the herdsman, who upon his staff + Is leaning, and in leaning tendeth them; + +And as the shepherd, lodging out of doors, + Passes the night beside his quiet flock, + Watching that no wild beast may scatter it, + +Such at that hour were we, all three of us, + I like the goat, and like the herdsmen they, + Begirt on this side and on that by rocks. + +Little could there be seen of things without; + But through that little I beheld the stars + More luminous and larger than their wont. + +Thus ruminating, and beholding these, + Sleep seized upon me,—sleep, that oftentimes + Before a deed is done has tidings of it. + +It was the hour, I think, when from the East + First on the mountain Citherea beamed, + Who with the fire of love seems always burning; + +Youthful and beautiful in dreams methought + I saw a lady walking in a meadow, + Gathering flowers; and singing she was saying: + +“Know whosoever may my name demand + That I am Leah, and go moving round + My beauteous hands to make myself a garland. + +To please me at the mirror, here I deck me, + But never does my sister Rachel leave + Her looking-glass, and sitteth all day long. + +To see her beauteous eyes as eager is she, + As I am to adorn me with my hands; + Her, seeing, and me, doing satisfies.” + +And now before the antelucan splendours + That unto pilgrims the more grateful rise, + As, home-returning, less remote they lodge, + +The darkness fled away on every side, + And slumber with it; whereupon I rose, + Seeing already the great Masters risen. + +“That apple sweet, which through so many branches + The care of mortals goeth in pursuit of, + To-day shall put in peace thy hungerings.” + +Speaking to me, Virgilius of such words + As these made use; and never were there guerdons + That could in pleasantness compare with these. + +Such longing upon longing came upon me + To be above, that at each step thereafter + For flight I felt in me the pinions growing. + +When underneath us was the stairway all + Run o’er, and we were on the highest step, + Virgilius fastened upon me his eyes, + +And said: “The temporal fire and the eternal, + Son, thou hast seen, and to a place art come + Where of myself no farther I discern. + +By intellect and art I here have brought thee; + Take thine own pleasure for thy guide henceforth; + Beyond the steep ways and the narrow art thou. + +Behold the sun, that shines upon thy forehead; + Behold the grass, the flowerets, and the shrubs + Which of itself alone this land produces. + +Until rejoicing come the beauteous eyes + Which weeping caused me to come unto thee, + Thou canst sit down, and thou canst walk among them. + +Expect no more or word or sign from me; + Free and upright and sound is thy free-will, + And error were it not to do its bidding; + +Thee o’er thyself I therefore crown and mitre!” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXVIII + + +Eager already to search in and round + The heavenly forest, dense and living-green, + Which tempered to the eyes the new-born day, + +Withouten more delay I left the bank, + Taking the level country slowly, slowly + Over the soil that everywhere breathes fragrance. + +A softly-breathing air, that no mutation + Had in itself, upon the forehead smote me + No heavier blow than of a gentle wind, + +Whereat the branches, lightly tremulous, + Did all of them bow downward toward that side + Where its first shadow casts the Holy Mountain; + +Yet not from their upright direction swayed, + So that the little birds upon their tops + Should leave the practice of each art of theirs; + +But with full ravishment the hours of prime, + Singing, received they in the midst of leaves, + That ever bore a burden to their rhymes, + +Such as from branch to branch goes gathering on + Through the pine forest on the shore of Chiassi, + When Eolus unlooses the Sirocco. + +Already my slow steps had carried me + Into the ancient wood so far, that I + Could not perceive where I had entered it. + +And lo! my further course a stream cut off, + Which tow’rd the left hand with its little waves + Bent down the grass that on its margin sprang. + +All waters that on earth most limpid are + Would seem to have within themselves some mixture + Compared with that which nothing doth conceal, + +Although it moves on with a brown, brown current + Under the shade perpetual, that never + Ray of the sun lets in, nor of the moon. + +With feet I stayed, and with mine eyes I passed + Beyond the rivulet, to look upon + The great variety of the fresh may. + +And there appeared to me (even as appears + Suddenly something that doth turn aside + Through very wonder every other thought) + +A lady all alone, who went along + Singing and culling floweret after floweret, + With which her pathway was all painted over. + +“Ah, beauteous lady, who in rays of love + Dost warm thyself, if I may trust to looks, + Which the heart’s witnesses are wont to be, + +May the desire come unto thee to draw + Near to this river’s bank,” I said to her, + “So much that I might hear what thou art singing. + +Thou makest me remember where and what + Proserpina that moment was when lost + Her mother her, and she herself the Spring.” + +As turns herself, with feet together pressed + And to the ground, a lady who is dancing, + And hardly puts one foot before the other, + +On the vermilion and the yellow flowerets + She turned towards me, not in other wise + Than maiden who her modest eyes casts down; + +And my entreaties made to be content, + So near approaching, that the dulcet sound + Came unto me together with its meaning + +As soon as she was where the grasses are. + Bathed by the waters of the beauteous river, + To lift her eyes she granted me the boon. + +I do not think there shone so great a light + Under the lids of Venus, when transfixed + By her own son, beyond his usual custom! + +Erect upon the other bank she smiled, + Bearing full many colours in her hands, + Which that high land produces without seed. + +Apart three paces did the river make us; + But Hellespont, where Xerxes passed across, + (A curb still to all human arrogance,) + +More hatred from Leander did not suffer + For rolling between Sestos and Abydos, + Than that from me, because it oped not then. + +“Ye are new-comers; and because I smile,” + Began she, “peradventure, in this place + Elect to human nature for its nest, + +Some apprehension keeps you marvelling; + But the psalm ‘Delectasti’ giveth light + Which has the power to uncloud your intellect. + +And thou who foremost art, and didst entreat me, + Speak, if thou wouldst hear more; for I came ready + To all thy questionings, as far as needful.” + +“The water,” said I, “and the forest’s sound, + Are combating within me my new faith + In something which I heard opposed to this.” + +Whence she: “I will relate how from its cause + Proceedeth that which maketh thee to wonder, + And purge away the cloud that smites upon thee. + +The Good Supreme, sole in itself delighting, + Created man good, and this goodly place + Gave him as hansel of eternal peace. + +By his default short while he sojourned here; + By his default to weeping and to toil + He changed his innocent laughter and sweet play. + +That the disturbance which below is made + By exhalations of the land and water, + (Which far as may be follow after heat,) + +Might not upon mankind wage any war, + This mount ascended tow’rds the heaven so high, + And is exempt, from there where it is locked. + +Now since the universal atmosphere + Turns in a circuit with the primal motion + Unless the circle is broken on some side, + +Upon this height, that all is disengaged + In living ether, doth this motion strike + And make the forest sound, for it is dense; + +And so much power the stricken plant possesses + That with its virtue it impregns the air, + And this, revolving, scatters it around; + +And yonder earth, according as ’tis worthy + In self or in its clime, conceives and bears + Of divers qualities the divers trees; + +It should not seem a marvel then on earth, + This being heard, whenever any plant + Without seed manifest there taketh root. + +And thou must know, this holy table-land + In which thou art is full of every seed, + And fruit has in it never gathered there. + +The water which thou seest springs not from vein + Restored by vapour that the cold condenses, + Like to a stream that gains or loses breath; + +But issues from a fountain safe and certain, + Which by the will of God as much regains + As it discharges, open on two sides. + +Upon this side with virtue it descends, + Which takes away all memory of sin; + On that, of every good deed done restores it. + +Here Lethe, as upon the other side + Eunoe, it is called; and worketh not + If first on either side it be not tasted. + +This every other savour doth transcend; + And notwithstanding slaked so far may be + Thy thirst, that I reveal to thee no more, + +I’ll give thee a corollary still in grace, + Nor think my speech will be to thee less dear + If it spread out beyond my promise to thee. + +Those who in ancient times have feigned in song + The Age of Gold and its felicity, + Dreamed of this place perhaps upon Parnassus. + +Here was the human race in innocence; + Here evermore was Spring, and every fruit; + This is the nectar of which each one speaks.” + +Then backward did I turn me wholly round + Unto my Poets, and saw that with a smile + They had been listening to these closing words; + +Then to the beautiful lady turned mine eyes. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXIX + + +Singing like unto an enamoured lady + She, with the ending of her words, continued: + “Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata.” + +And even as Nymphs, that wandered all alone + Among the sylvan shadows, sedulous + One to avoid and one to see the sun, + +She then against the stream moved onward, going + Along the bank, and I abreast of her, + Her little steps with little steps attending. + +Between her steps and mine were not a hundred, + When equally the margins gave a turn, + In such a way, that to the East I faced. + +Nor even thus our way continued far + Before the lady wholly turned herself + Unto me, saying, “Brother, look and listen!” + +And lo! a sudden lustre ran across + On every side athwart the spacious forest, + Such that it made me doubt if it were lightning. + +But since the lightning ceases as it comes, + And that continuing brightened more and more, + Within my thought I said, “What thing is this?” + +And a delicious melody there ran + Along the luminous air, whence holy zeal + Made me rebuke the hardihood of Eve; + +For there where earth and heaven obedient were, + The woman only, and but just created, + Could not endure to stay ’neath any veil; + +Underneath which had she devoutly stayed, + I sooner should have tasted those delights + Ineffable, and for a longer time. + +While ’mid such manifold first-fruits I walked + Of the eternal pleasure all enrapt, + And still solicitous of more delights, + +In front of us like an enkindled fire + Became the air beneath the verdant boughs, + And the sweet sound as singing now was heard. + +O Virgins sacrosanct! if ever hunger, + Vigils, or cold for you I have endured, + The occasion spurs me their reward to claim! + +Now Helicon must needs pour forth for me, + And with her choir Urania must assist me, + To put in verse things difficult to think. + +A little farther on, seven trees of gold + In semblance the long space still intervening + Between ourselves and them did counterfeit; + +But when I had approached so near to them + The common object, which the sense deceives, + Lost not by distance any of its marks, + +The faculty that lends discourse to reason + Did apprehend that they were candlesticks, + And in the voices of the song “Hosanna!” + +Above them flamed the harness beautiful, + Far brighter than the moon in the serene + Of midnight, at the middle of her month. + +I turned me round, with admiration filled, + To good Virgilius, and he answered me + With visage no less full of wonderment. + +Then back I turned my face to those high things, + Which moved themselves towards us so sedately, + They had been distanced by new-wedded brides. + +The lady chid me: “Why dost thou burn only + So with affection for the living lights, + And dost not look at what comes after them?” + +Then saw I people, as behind their leaders, + Coming behind them, garmented in white, + And such a whiteness never was on earth. + +The water on my left flank was resplendent, + And back to me reflected my left side, + E’en as a mirror, if I looked therein. + +When I upon my margin had such post + That nothing but the stream divided us, + Better to see I gave my steps repose; + +And I beheld the flamelets onward go, + Leaving behind themselves the air depicted, + And they of trailing pennons had the semblance, + +So that it overhead remained distinct + With sevenfold lists, all of them of the colours + Whence the sun’s bow is made, and Delia’s girdle. + +These standards to the rearward longer were + Than was my sight; and, as it seemed to me, + Ten paces were the outermost apart. + +Under so fair a heaven as I describe + The four and twenty Elders, two by two, + Came on incoronate with flower-de-luce. + +They all of them were singing: “Blessed thou + Among the daughters of Adam art, and blessed + For evermore shall be thy loveliness.” + +After the flowers and other tender grasses + In front of me upon the other margin + Were disencumbered of that race elect, + +Even as in heaven star followeth after star, + There came close after them four animals, + Incoronate each one with verdant leaf. + +Plumed with six wings was every one of them, + The plumage full of eyes; the eyes of Argus + If they were living would be such as these. + +Reader! to trace their forms no more I waste + My rhymes; for other spendings press me so, + That I in this cannot be prodigal. + +But read Ezekiel, who depicteth them + As he beheld them from the region cold + Coming with cloud, with whirlwind, and with fire; + +And such as thou shalt find them in his pages, + Such were they here; saving that in their plumage + John is with me, and differeth from him. + +The interval between these four contained + A chariot triumphal on two wheels, + Which by a Griffin’s neck came drawn along; + +And upward he extended both his wings + Between the middle list and three and three, + So that he injured none by cleaving it. + +So high they rose that they were lost to sight; + His limbs were gold, so far as he was bird, + And white the others with vermilion mingled. + +Not only Rome with no such splendid car + E’er gladdened Africanus, or Augustus, + But poor to it that of the Sun would be,— + +That of the Sun, which swerving was burnt up + At the importunate orison of Earth, + When Jove was so mysteriously just. + +Three maidens at the right wheel in a circle + Came onward dancing; one so very red + That in the fire she hardly had been noted. + +The second was as if her flesh and bones + Had all been fashioned out of emerald; + The third appeared as snow but newly fallen. + +And now they seemed conducted by the white, + Now by the red, and from the song of her + The others took their step, or slow or swift. + +Upon the left hand four made holiday + Vested in purple, following the measure + Of one of them with three eyes in her head. + +In rear of all the group here treated of + Two old men I beheld, unlike in habit, + But like in gait, each dignified and grave. + +One showed himself as one of the disciples + Of that supreme Hippocrates, whom nature + Made for the animals she holds most dear; + +Contrary care the other manifested, + With sword so shining and so sharp, it caused + Terror to me on this side of the river. + +Thereafter four I saw of humble aspect, + And behind all an aged man alone + Walking in sleep with countenance acute. + +And like the foremost company these seven + Were habited; yet of the flower-de-luce + No garland round about the head they wore, + +But of the rose, and other flowers vermilion; + At little distance would the sight have sworn + That all were in a flame above their brows. + +And when the car was opposite to me + Thunder was heard; and all that folk august + Seemed to have further progress interdicted, + +There with the vanward ensigns standing still. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXX + + +When the Septentrion of the highest heaven + (Which never either setting knew or rising, + Nor veil of other cloud than that of sin, + +And which made every one therein aware + Of his own duty, as the lower makes + Whoever turns the helm to come to port) + +Motionless halted, the veracious people, + That came at first between it and the Griffin, + Turned themselves to the car, as to their peace. + +And one of them, as if by Heaven commissioned, + Singing, “Veni, sponsa, de Libano” + Shouted three times, and all the others after. + +Even as the Blessed at the final summons + Shall rise up quickened each one from his cavern, + Uplifting light the reinvested flesh, + +So upon that celestial chariot + A hundred rose ‘ad vocem tanti senis,’ + Ministers and messengers of life eternal. + +They all were saying, “Benedictus qui venis,” + And, scattering flowers above and round about, + “Manibus o date lilia plenis.” + +Ere now have I beheld, as day began, + The eastern hemisphere all tinged with rose, + And the other heaven with fair serene adorned; + +And the sun’s face, uprising, overshadowed + So that by tempering influence of vapours + For a long interval the eye sustained it; + +Thus in the bosom of a cloud of flowers + Which from those hands angelical ascended, + And downward fell again inside and out, + +Over her snow-white veil with olive cinct + Appeared a lady under a green mantle, + Vested in colour of the living flame. + +And my own spirit, that already now + So long a time had been, that in her presence + Trembling with awe it had not stood abashed, + +Without more knowledge having by mine eyes, + Through occult virtue that from her proceeded + Of ancient love the mighty influence felt. + +As soon as on my vision smote the power + Sublime, that had already pierced me through + Ere from my boyhood I had yet come forth, + +To the left hand I turned with that reliance + With which the little child runs to his mother, + When he has fear, or when he is afflicted, + +To say unto Virgilius: “Not a drachm + Of blood remains in me, that does not tremble; + I know the traces of the ancient flame.” + +But us Virgilius of himself deprived + Had left, Virgilius, sweetest of all fathers, + Virgilius, to whom I for safety gave me: + +Nor whatsoever lost the ancient mother + Availed my cheeks now purified from dew, + That weeping they should not again be darkened. + +“Dante, because Virgilius has departed + Do not weep yet, do not weep yet awhile; + For by another sword thou need’st must weep.” + +E’en as an admiral, who on poop and prow + Comes to behold the people that are working + In other ships, and cheers them to well-doing, + +Upon the left hand border of the car, + When at the sound I turned of my own name, + Which of necessity is here recorded, + +I saw the Lady, who erewhile appeared + Veiled underneath the angelic festival, + Direct her eyes to me across the river. + +Although the veil, that from her head descended, + Encircled with the foliage of Minerva, + Did not permit her to appear distinctly, + +In attitude still royally majestic + Continued she, like unto one who speaks, + And keeps his warmest utterance in reserve: + +“Look at me well; in sooth I’m Beatrice! + How didst thou deign to come unto the Mountain? + Didst thou not know that man is happy here?” + +Mine eyes fell downward into the clear fountain, + But, seeing myself therein, I sought the grass, + So great a shame did weigh my forehead down. + +As to the son the mother seems superb, + So she appeared to me; for somewhat bitter + Tasteth the savour of severe compassion. + +Silent became she, and the Angels sang + Suddenly, “In te, Domine, speravi:” + But beyond ‘pedes meos’ did not pass. + +Even as the snow among the living rafters + Upon the back of Italy congeals, + Blown on and drifted by Sclavonian winds, + +And then, dissolving, trickles through itself + Whene’er the land that loses shadow breathes, + So that it seems a fire that melts a taper; + +E’en thus was I without a tear or sigh, + Before the song of those who sing for ever + After the music of the eternal spheres. + +But when I heard in their sweet melodies + Compassion for me, more than had they said, + “O wherefore, lady, dost thou thus upbraid him?” + +The ice, that was about my heart congealed, + To air and water changed, and in my anguish + Through mouth and eyes came gushing from my breast. + +She, on the right-hand border of the car + Still firmly standing, to those holy beings + Thus her discourse directed afterwards: + +“Ye keep your watch in the eternal day, + So that nor night nor sleep can steal from you + One step the ages make upon their path; + +Therefore my answer is with greater care, + That he may hear me who is weeping yonder, + So that the sin and dole be of one measure. + +Not only by the work of those great wheels, + That destine every seed unto some end, + According as the stars are in conjunction, + +But by the largess of celestial graces, + Which have such lofty vapours for their rain + That near to them our sight approaches not, + +Such had this man become in his new life + Potentially, that every righteous habit + Would have made admirable proof in him; + +But so much more malignant and more savage + Becomes the land untilled and with bad seed, + The more good earthly vigour it possesses. + +Some time did I sustain him with my look; + Revealing unto him my youthful eyes, + I led him with me turned in the right way. + +As soon as ever of my second age + I was upon the threshold and changed life, + Himself from me he took and gave to others. + +When from the flesh to spirit I ascended, + And beauty and virtue were in me increased, + I was to him less dear and less delightful; + +And into ways untrue he turned his steps, + Pursuing the false images of good, + That never any promises fulfil; + +Nor prayer for inspiration me availed, + By means of which in dreams and otherwise + I called him back, so little did he heed them. + +So low he fell, that all appliances + For his salvation were already short, + Save showing him the people of perdition. + +For this I visited the gates of death, + And unto him, who so far up has led him, + My intercessions were with weeping borne. + +God’s lofty fiat would be violated, + If Lethe should be passed, and if such viands + Should tasted be, withouten any scot + +Of penitence, that gushes forth in tears.” + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXXI + + +“O thou who art beyond the sacred river,” + Turning to me the point of her discourse, + That edgewise even had seemed to me so keen, + +She recommenced, continuing without pause, + “Say, say if this be true; to such a charge, + Thy own confession needs must be conjoined.” + +My faculties were in so great confusion, + That the voice moved, but sooner was extinct + Than by its organs it was set at large. + +Awhile she waited; then she said: “What thinkest? + Answer me; for the mournful memories + In thee not yet are by the waters injured.” + +Confusion and dismay together mingled + Forced such a Yes! from out my mouth, that sight + Was needful to the understanding of it. + +Even as a cross-bow breaks, when ’tis discharged + Too tensely drawn the bowstring and the bow, + And with less force the arrow hits the mark, + +So I gave way beneath that heavy burden, + Outpouring in a torrent tears and sighs, + And the voice flagged upon its passage forth. + +Whence she to me: “In those desires of mine + Which led thee to the loving of that good, + Beyond which there is nothing to aspire to, + +What trenches lying traverse or what chains + Didst thou discover, that of passing onward + Thou shouldst have thus despoiled thee of the hope? + +And what allurements or what vantages + Upon the forehead of the others showed, + That thou shouldst turn thy footsteps unto them?” + +After the heaving of a bitter sigh, + Hardly had I the voice to make response, + And with fatigue my lips did fashion it. + +Weeping I said: “The things that present were + With their false pleasure turned aside my steps, + Soon as your countenance concealed itself.” + +And she: “Shouldst thou be silent, or deny + What thou confessest, not less manifest + Would be thy fault, by such a Judge ’tis known. + +But when from one’s own cheeks comes bursting forth + The accusal of the sin, in our tribunal + Against the edge the wheel doth turn itself. + +But still, that thou mayst feel a greater shame + For thy transgression, and another time + Hearing the Sirens thou mayst be more strong, + +Cast down the seed of weeping and attend; + So shalt thou hear, how in an opposite way + My buried flesh should have directed thee. + +Never to thee presented art or nature + Pleasure so great as the fair limbs wherein + I was enclosed, which scattered are in earth. + +And if the highest pleasure thus did fail thee + By reason of my death, what mortal thing + Should then have drawn thee into its desire? + +Thou oughtest verily at the first shaft + Of things fallacious to have risen up + To follow me, who was no longer such. + +Thou oughtest not to have stooped thy pinions downward + To wait for further blows, or little girl, + Or other vanity of such brief use. + +The callow birdlet waits for two or three, + But to the eyes of those already fledged, + In vain the net is spread or shaft is shot.” + +Even as children silent in their shame + Stand listening with their eyes upon the ground, + And conscious of their fault, and penitent; + +So was I standing; and she said: “If thou + In hearing sufferest pain, lift up thy beard + And thou shalt feel a greater pain in seeing.” + +With less resistance is a robust holm + Uprooted, either by a native wind + Or else by that from regions of Iarbas, + +Than I upraised at her command my chin; + And when she by the beard the face demanded, + Well I perceived the venom of her meaning. + +And as my countenance was lifted up, + Mine eye perceived those creatures beautiful + Had rested from the strewing of the flowers; + +And, still but little reassured, mine eyes + Saw Beatrice turned round towards the monster, + That is one person only in two natures. + +Beneath her veil, beyond the margent green, + She seemed to me far more her ancient self + To excel, than others here, when she was here. + +So pricked me then the thorn of penitence, + That of all other things the one which turned me + Most to its love became the most my foe. + +Such self-conviction stung me at the heart + O’erpowered I fell, and what I then became + She knoweth who had furnished me the cause. + +Then, when the heart restored my outward sense, + The lady I had found alone, above me + I saw, and she was saying, “Hold me, hold me.” + +Up to my throat she in the stream had drawn me, + And, dragging me behind her, she was moving + Upon the water lightly as a shuttle. + +When I was near unto the blessed shore, + “Asperges me,” I heard so sweetly sung, + Remember it I cannot, much less write it. + +The beautiful lady opened wide her arms, + Embraced my head, and plunged me underneath, + Where I was forced to swallow of the water. + +Then forth she drew me, and all dripping brought + Into the dance of the four beautiful, + And each one with her arm did cover me. + +‘We here are Nymphs, and in the Heaven are stars; + Ere Beatrice descended to the world, + We as her handmaids were appointed her. + +We’ll lead thee to her eyes; but for the pleasant + Light that within them is, shall sharpen thine + The three beyond, who more profoundly look.’ + +Thus singing they began; and afterwards + Unto the Griffin’s breast they led me with them, + Where Beatrice was standing, turned towards us. + +“See that thou dost not spare thine eyes,” they said; + “Before the emeralds have we stationed thee, + Whence Love aforetime drew for thee his weapons.” + +A thousand longings, hotter than the flame, + Fastened mine eyes upon those eyes relucent, + That still upon the Griffin steadfast stayed. + +As in a glass the sun, not otherwise + Within them was the twofold monster shining, + Now with the one, now with the other nature. + +Think, Reader, if within myself I marvelled, + When I beheld the thing itself stand still, + And in its image it transformed itself. + +While with amazement filled and jubilant, + My soul was tasting of the food, that while + It satisfies us makes us hunger for it, + +Themselves revealing of the highest rank + In bearing, did the other three advance, + Singing to their angelic saraband. + +“Turn, Beatrice, O turn thy holy eyes,” + Such was their song, “unto thy faithful one, + Who has to see thee ta’en so many steps. + +In grace do us the grace that thou unveil + Thy face to him, so that he may discern + The second beauty which thou dost conceal.” + +O splendour of the living light eternal! + Who underneath the shadow of Parnassus + Has grown so pale, or drunk so at its cistern, + +He would not seem to have his mind encumbered + Striving to paint thee as thou didst appear, + Where the harmonious heaven o’ershadowed thee, + +When in the open air thou didst unveil? + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXXII + + +So steadfast and attentive were mine eyes + In satisfying their decennial thirst, + That all my other senses were extinct, + +And upon this side and on that they had + Walls of indifference, so the holy smile + Drew them unto itself with the old net + +When forcibly my sight was turned away + Towards my left hand by those goddesses, + Because I heard from them a “Too intently!” + +And that condition of the sight which is + In eyes but lately smitten by the sun + Bereft me of my vision some short while; + +But to the less when sight re-shaped itself, + I say the less in reference to the greater + Splendour from which perforce I had withdrawn, + +I saw upon its right wing wheeled about + The glorious host returning with the sun + And with the sevenfold flames upon their faces. + +As underneath its shields, to save itself, + A squadron turns, and with its banner wheels, + Before the whole thereof can change its front, + +That soldiery of the celestial kingdom + Which marched in the advance had wholly passed us + Before the chariot had turned its pole. + +Then to the wheels the maidens turned themselves, + And the Griffin moved his burden benedight, + But so that not a feather of him fluttered. + +The lady fair who drew me through the ford + Followed with Statius and myself the wheel + Which made its orbit with the lesser arc. + +So passing through the lofty forest, vacant + By fault of her who in the serpent trusted, + Angelic music made our steps keep time. + +Perchance as great a space had in three flights + An arrow loosened from the string o’erpassed, + As we had moved when Beatrice descended. + +I heard them murmur altogether, “Adam!” + Then circled they about a tree despoiled + Of blooms and other leafage on each bough. + +Its tresses, which so much the more dilate + As higher they ascend, had been by Indians + Among their forests marvelled at for height. + +“Blessed art thou, O Griffin, who dost not + Pluck with thy beak these branches sweet to taste, + Since appetite by this was turned to evil.” + +After this fashion round the tree robust + The others shouted; and the twofold creature: + “Thus is preserved the seed of all the just.” + +And turning to the pole which he had dragged, + He drew it close beneath the widowed bough, + And what was of it unto it left bound. + +In the same manner as our trees (when downward + Falls the great light, with that together mingled + Which after the celestial Lasca shines) + +Begin to swell, and then renew themselves, + Each one with its own colour, ere the Sun + Harness his steeds beneath another star: + +Less than of rose and more than violet + A hue disclosing, was renewed the tree + That had erewhile its boughs so desolate. + +I never heard, nor here below is sung, + The hymn which afterward that people sang, + Nor did I bear the melody throughout. + +Had I the power to paint how fell asleep + Those eyes compassionless, of Syrinx hearing, + Those eyes to which more watching cost so dear, + +Even as a painter who from model paints + I would portray how I was lulled asleep; + He may, who well can picture drowsihood. + +Therefore I pass to what time I awoke, + And say a splendour rent from me the veil + Of slumber, and a calling: “Rise, what dost thou?” + +As to behold the apple-tree in blossom + Which makes the Angels greedy for its fruit, + And keeps perpetual bridals in the Heaven, + +Peter and John and James conducted were, + And, overcome, recovered at the word + By which still greater slumbers have been broken, + +And saw their school diminished by the loss + Not only of Elias, but of Moses, + And the apparel of their Master changed; + +So I revived, and saw that piteous one + Above me standing, who had been conductress + Aforetime of my steps beside the river, + +And all in doubt I said, “Where’s Beatrice?” + And she: “Behold her seated underneath + The leafage new, upon the root of it. + +Behold the company that circles her; + The rest behind the Griffin are ascending + With more melodious song, and more profound.” + +And if her speech were more diffuse I know not, + Because already in my sight was she + Who from the hearing of aught else had shut me. + +Alone she sat upon the very earth, + Left there as guardian of the chariot + Which I had seen the biform monster fasten. + +Encircling her, a cloister made themselves + The seven Nymphs, with those lights in their hands + Which are secure from Aquilon and Auster. + +“Short while shalt thou be here a forester, + And thou shalt be with me for evermore + A citizen of that Rome where Christ is Roman. + +Therefore, for that world’s good which liveth ill, + Fix on the car thine eyes, and what thou seest, + Having returned to earth, take heed thou write.” + +Thus Beatrice; and I, who at the feet + Of her commandments all devoted was, + My mind and eyes directed where she willed. + +Never descended with so swift a motion + Fire from a heavy cloud, when it is raining + From out the region which is most remote, + +As I beheld the bird of Jove descend + Down through the tree, rending away the bark, + As well as blossoms and the foliage new, + +And he with all his might the chariot smote, + Whereat it reeled, like vessel in a tempest + Tossed by the waves, now starboard and now larboard. + +Thereafter saw I leap into the body + Of the triumphal vehicle a Fox, + That seemed unfed with any wholesome food. + +But for his hideous sins upbraiding him, + My Lady put him to as swift a flight + As such a fleshless skeleton could bear. + +Then by the way that it before had come, + Into the chariot’s chest I saw the Eagle + Descend, and leave it feathered with his plumes. + +And such as issues from a heart that mourns, + A voice from Heaven there issued, and it said: + “My little bark, how badly art thou freighted!” + +Methought, then, that the earth did yawn between + Both wheels, and I saw rise from it a Dragon, + Who through the chariot upward fixed his tail, + +And as a wasp that draweth back its sting, + Drawing unto himself his tail malign, + Drew out the floor, and went his way rejoicing. + +That which remained behind, even as with grass + A fertile region, with the feathers, offered + Perhaps with pure intention and benign, + +Reclothed itself, and with them were reclothed + The pole and both the wheels so speedily, + A sigh doth longer keep the lips apart. + +Transfigured thus the holy edifice + Thrust forward heads upon the parts of it, + Three on the pole and one at either corner. + +The first were horned like oxen; but the four + Had but a single horn upon the forehead; + A monster such had never yet been seen! + +Firm as a rock upon a mountain high, + Seated upon it, there appeared to me + A shameless whore, with eyes swift glancing round, + +And, as if not to have her taken from him, + Upright beside her I beheld a giant; + And ever and anon they kissed each other. + +But because she her wanton, roving eye + Turned upon me, her angry paramour + Did scourge her from her head unto her feet. + +Then full of jealousy, and fierce with wrath, + He loosed the monster, and across the forest + Dragged it so far, he made of that alone + +A shield unto the whore and the strange beast. + + + + +Purgatorio: Canto XXXIII + + +“Deus venerunt gentes,” alternating + Now three, now four, melodious psalmody + The maidens in the midst of tears began; + +And Beatrice, compassionate and sighing, + Listened to them with such a countenance, + That scarce more changed was Mary at the cross. + +But when the other virgins place had given + For her to speak, uprisen to her feet + With colour as of fire, she made response: + +“‘Modicum, et non videbitis me; + Et iterum,’ my sisters predilect, + ‘Modicum, et vos videbitis me.’” + +Then all the seven in front of her she placed; + And after her, by beckoning only, moved + Me and the lady and the sage who stayed. + +So she moved onward; and I do not think + That her tenth step was placed upon the ground, + When with her eyes upon mine eyes she smote, + +And with a tranquil aspect, “Come more quickly,” + To me she said, “that, if I speak with thee, + To listen to me thou mayst be well placed.” + +As soon as I was with her as I should be, + She said to me: “Why, brother, dost thou not + Venture to question now, in coming with me?” + +As unto those who are too reverential, + Speaking in presence of superiors, + Who drag no living utterance to their teeth, + +It me befell, that without perfect sound + Began I: “My necessity, Madonna, + You know, and that which thereunto is good.” + +And she to me: “Of fear and bashfulness + Henceforward I will have thee strip thyself, + So that thou speak no more as one who dreams. + +Know that the vessel which the serpent broke + Was, and is not; but let him who is guilty + Think that God’s vengeance does not fear a sop. + +Without an heir shall not for ever be + The Eagle that left his plumes upon the car, + Whence it became a monster, then a prey; + +For verily I see, and hence narrate it, + The stars already near to bring the time, + From every hindrance safe, and every bar, + +Within which a Five-hundred, Ten, and Five, + One sent from God, shall slay the thievish woman + And that same giant who is sinning with her. + +And peradventure my dark utterance, + Like Themis and the Sphinx, may less persuade thee, + Since, in their mode, it clouds the intellect; + +But soon the facts shall be the Naiades + Who shall this difficult enigma solve, + Without destruction of the flocks and harvests. + +Note thou; and even as by me are uttered + These words, so teach them unto those who live + That life which is a running unto death; + +And bear in mind, whene’er thou writest them, + Not to conceal what thou hast seen the plant, + That twice already has been pillaged here. + +Whoever pillages or shatters it, + With blasphemy of deed offendeth God, + Who made it holy for his use alone. + +For biting that, in pain and in desire + Five thousand years and more the first-born soul + Craved Him, who punished in himself the bite. + +Thy genius slumbers, if it deem it not + For special reason so pre-eminent + In height, and so inverted in its summit. + +And if thy vain imaginings had not been + Water of Elsa round about thy mind, + And Pyramus to the mulberry, their pleasure, + +Thou by so many circumstances only + The justice of the interdict of God + Morally in the tree wouldst recognize. + +But since I see thee in thine intellect + Converted into stone and stained with sin, + So that the light of my discourse doth daze thee, + +I will too, if not written, at least painted, + Thou bear it back within thee, for the reason + That cinct with palm the pilgrim’s staff is borne.” + +And I: “As by a signet is the wax + Which does not change the figure stamped upon it, + My brain is now imprinted by yourself. + +But wherefore so beyond my power of sight + Soars your desirable discourse, that aye + The more I strive, so much the more I lose it?” + +“That thou mayst recognize,” she said, “the school + Which thou hast followed, and mayst see how far + Its doctrine follows after my discourse, + +And mayst behold your path from the divine + Distant as far as separated is + From earth the heaven that highest hastens on.” + +Whence her I answered: “I do not remember + That ever I estranged myself from you, + Nor have I conscience of it that reproves me.” + +“And if thou art not able to remember,” + Smiling she answered, “recollect thee now + That thou this very day hast drunk of Lethe; + +And if from smoke a fire may be inferred, + Such an oblivion clearly demonstrates + Some error in thy will elsewhere intent. + +Truly from this time forward shall my words + Be naked, so far as it is befitting + To lay them open unto thy rude gaze.” + +And more coruscant and with slower steps + The sun was holding the meridian circle, + Which, with the point of view, shifts here and there + +When halted (as he cometh to a halt, + Who goes before a squadron as its escort, + If something new he find upon his way) + +The ladies seven at a dark shadow’s edge, + Such as, beneath green leaves and branches black, + The Alp upon its frigid border wears. + +In front of them the Tigris and Euphrates + Methought I saw forth issue from one fountain, + And slowly part, like friends, from one another. + +“O light, O glory of the human race! + What stream is this which here unfolds itself + From out one source, and from itself withdraws?” + +For such a prayer, ’twas said unto me, “Pray + Matilda that she tell thee;” and here answered, + As one does who doth free himself from blame, + +The beautiful lady: “This and other things + Were told to him by me; and sure I am + The water of Lethe has not hid them from him.” + +And Beatrice: “Perhaps a greater care, + Which oftentimes our memory takes away, + Has made the vision of his mind obscure. + +But Eunoe behold, that yonder rises; + Lead him to it, and, as thou art accustomed, + Revive again the half-dead virtue in him.” + +Like gentle soul, that maketh no excuse, + But makes its own will of another’s will + As soon as by a sign it is disclosed, + +Even so, when she had taken hold of me, + The beautiful lady moved, and unto Statius + Said, in her womanly manner, “Come with him.” + +If, Reader, I possessed a longer space + For writing it, I yet would sing in part + Of the sweet draught that ne’er would satiate me; + +But inasmuch as full are all the leaves + Made ready for this second canticle, + The curb of art no farther lets me go. + +From the most holy water I returned + Regenerate, in the manner of new trees + That are renewed with a new foliage, + +Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars. + + + + +PARADISO + + + + +Paradiso: Canto I + + +The glory of Him who moveth everything + Doth penetrate the universe, and shine + In one part more and in another less. + +Within that heaven which most his light receives + Was I, and things beheld which to repeat + Nor knows, nor can, who from above descends; + +Because in drawing near to its desire + Our intellect ingulphs itself so far, + That after it the memory cannot go. + +Truly whatever of the holy realm + I had the power to treasure in my mind + Shall now become the subject of my song. + +O good Apollo, for this last emprise + Make of me such a vessel of thy power + As giving the beloved laurel asks! + +One summit of Parnassus hitherto + Has been enough for me, but now with both + I needs must enter the arena left. + +Enter into my bosom, thou, and breathe + As at the time when Marsyas thou didst draw + Out of the scabbard of those limbs of his. + +O power divine, lend’st thou thyself to me + So that the shadow of the blessed realm + Stamped in my brain I can make manifest, + +Thou’lt see me come unto thy darling tree, + And crown myself thereafter with those leaves + Of which the theme and thou shall make me worthy. + +So seldom, Father, do we gather them + For triumph or of Caesar or of Poet, + (The fault and shame of human inclinations,) + +That the Peneian foliage should bring forth + Joy to the joyous Delphic deity, + When any one it makes to thirst for it. + +A little spark is followed by great flame; + Perchance with better voices after me + Shall prayer be made that Cyrrha may respond! + +To mortal men by passages diverse + Uprises the world’s lamp; but by that one + Which circles four uniteth with three crosses, + +With better course and with a better star + Conjoined it issues, and the mundane wax + Tempers and stamps more after its own fashion. + +Almost that passage had made morning there + And evening here, and there was wholly white + That hemisphere, and black the other part, + +When Beatrice towards the left-hand side + I saw turned round, and gazing at the sun; + Never did eagle fasten so upon it! + +And even as a second ray is wont + To issue from the first and reascend, + Like to a pilgrim who would fain return, + +Thus of her action, through the eyes infused + In my imagination, mine I made, + And sunward fixed mine eyes beyond our wont. + +There much is lawful which is here unlawful + Unto our powers, by virtue of the place + Made for the human species as its own. + +Not long I bore it, nor so little while + But I beheld it sparkle round about + Like iron that comes molten from the fire; + +And suddenly it seemed that day to day + Was added, as if He who has the power + Had with another sun the heaven adorned. + +With eyes upon the everlasting wheels + Stood Beatrice all intent, and I, on her + Fixing my vision from above removed, + +Such at her aspect inwardly became + As Glaucus, tasting of the herb that made him + Peer of the other gods beneath the sea. + +To represent transhumanise in words + Impossible were; the example, then, suffice + Him for whom Grace the experience reserves. + +If I was merely what of me thou newly + Createdst, Love who governest the heaven, + Thou knowest, who didst lift me with thy light! + +When now the wheel, which thou dost make eternal + Desiring thee, made me attentive to it + By harmony thou dost modulate and measure, + +Then seemed to me so much of heaven enkindled + By the sun’s flame, that neither rain nor river + E’er made a lake so widely spread abroad. + +The newness of the sound and the great light + Kindled in me a longing for their cause, + Never before with such acuteness felt; + +Whence she, who saw me as I saw myself, + To quiet in me my perturbed mind, + Opened her mouth, ere I did mine to ask, + +And she began: “Thou makest thyself so dull + With false imagining, that thou seest not + What thou wouldst see if thou hadst shaken it off. + +Thou art not upon earth, as thou believest; + But lightning, fleeing its appropriate site, + Ne’er ran as thou, who thitherward returnest.” + +If of my former doubt I was divested + By these brief little words more smiled than spoken, + I in a new one was the more ensnared; + +And said: “Already did I rest content + From great amazement; but am now amazed + In what way I transcend these bodies light.” + +Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh, + Her eyes directed tow’rds me with that look + A mother casts on a delirious child; + +And she began: “All things whate’er they be + Have order among themselves, and this is form, + That makes the universe resemble God. + +Here do the higher creatures see the footprints + Of the Eternal Power, which is the end + Whereto is made the law already mentioned. + +In the order that I speak of are inclined + All natures, by their destinies diverse, + More or less near unto their origin; + +Hence they move onward unto ports diverse + O’er the great sea of being; and each one + With instinct given it which bears it on. + +This bears away the fire towards the moon; + This is in mortal hearts the motive power + This binds together and unites the earth. + +Nor only the created things that are + Without intelligence this bow shoots forth, + But those that have both intellect and love. + +The Providence that regulates all this + Makes with its light the heaven forever quiet, + Wherein that turns which has the greatest haste. + +And thither now, as to a site decreed, + Bears us away the virtue of that cord + Which aims its arrows at a joyous mark. + +True is it, that as oftentimes the form + Accords not with the intention of the art, + Because in answering is matter deaf, + +So likewise from this course doth deviate + Sometimes the creature, who the power possesses, + Though thus impelled, to swerve some other way, + +(In the same wise as one may see the fire + Fall from a cloud,) if the first impetus + Earthward is wrested by some false delight. + +Thou shouldst not wonder more, if well I judge, + At thine ascent, than at a rivulet + From some high mount descending to the lowland. + +Marvel it would be in thee, if deprived + Of hindrance, thou wert seated down below, + As if on earth the living fire were quiet.” + +Thereat she heavenward turned again her face. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto II + + +O Ye, who in some pretty little boat, + Eager to listen, have been following + Behind my ship, that singing sails along, + +Turn back to look again upon your shores; + Do not put out to sea, lest peradventure, + In losing me, you might yourselves be lost. + +The sea I sail has never yet been passed; + Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo, + And Muses nine point out to me the Bears. + +Ye other few who have the neck uplifted + Betimes to th’ bread of Angels upon which + One liveth here and grows not sated by it, + +Well may you launch upon the deep salt-sea + Your vessel, keeping still my wake before you + Upon the water that grows smooth again. + +Those glorious ones who unto Colchos passed + Were not so wonder-struck as you shall be, + When Jason they beheld a ploughman made! + +The con-created and perpetual thirst + For the realm deiform did bear us on, + As swift almost as ye the heavens behold. + +Upward gazed Beatrice, and I at her; + And in such space perchance as strikes a bolt + And flies, and from the notch unlocks itself, + +Arrived I saw me where a wondrous thing + Drew to itself my sight; and therefore she + From whom no care of mine could be concealed, + +Towards me turning, blithe as beautiful, + Said unto me: “Fix gratefully thy mind + On God, who unto the first star has brought us.” + +It seemed to me a cloud encompassed us, + Luminous, dense, consolidate and bright + As adamant on which the sun is striking. + +Into itself did the eternal pearl + Receive us, even as water doth receive + A ray of light, remaining still unbroken. + +If I was body, (and we here conceive not + How one dimension tolerates another, + Which needs must be if body enter body,) + +More the desire should be enkindled in us + That essence to behold, wherein is seen + How God and our own nature were united. + +There will be seen what we receive by faith, + Not demonstrated, but self-evident + In guise of the first truth that man believes. + +I made reply: “Madonna, as devoutly + As most I can do I give thanks to Him + Who has removed me from the mortal world. + +But tell me what the dusky spots may be + Upon this body, which below on earth + Make people tell that fabulous tale of Cain?” + +Somewhat she smiled; and then, “If the opinion + Of mortals be erroneous,” she said, + “Where’er the key of sense doth not unlock, + +Certes, the shafts of wonder should not pierce thee + Now, forasmuch as, following the senses, + Thou seest that the reason has short wings. + +But tell me what thou think’st of it thyself.” + And I: “What seems to us up here diverse, + Is caused, I think, by bodies rare and dense.” + +And she: “Right truly shalt thou see immersed + In error thy belief, if well thou hearest + The argument that I shall make against it. + +Lights many the eighth sphere displays to you + Which in their quality and quantity + May noted be of aspects different. + +If this were caused by rare and dense alone, + One only virtue would there be in all + Or more or less diffused, or equally. + +Virtues diverse must be perforce the fruits + Of formal principles; and these, save one, + Of course would by thy reasoning be destroyed. + +Besides, if rarity were of this dimness + The cause thou askest, either through and through + This planet thus attenuate were of matter, + +Or else, as in a body is apportioned + The fat and lean, so in like manner this + Would in its volume interchange the leaves. + +Were it the former, in the sun’s eclipse + It would be manifest by the shining through + Of light, as through aught tenuous interfused. + +This is not so; hence we must scan the other, + And if it chance the other I demolish, + Then falsified will thy opinion be. + +But if this rarity go not through and through, + There needs must be a limit, beyond which + Its contrary prevents the further passing, + +And thence the foreign radiance is reflected, + Even as a colour cometh back from glass, + The which behind itself concealeth lead. + +Now thou wilt say the sunbeam shows itself + More dimly there than in the other parts, + By being there reflected farther back. + +From this reply experiment will free thee + If e’er thou try it, which is wont to be + The fountain to the rivers of your arts. + +Three mirrors shalt thou take, and two remove + Alike from thee, the other more remote + Between the former two shall meet thine eyes. + +Turned towards these, cause that behind thy back + Be placed a light, illuming the three mirrors + And coming back to thee by all reflected. + +Though in its quantity be not so ample + The image most remote, there shalt thou see + How it perforce is equally resplendent. + +Now, as beneath the touches of warm rays + Naked the subject of the snow remains + Both of its former colour and its cold, + +Thee thus remaining in thy intellect, + Will I inform with such a living light, + That it shall tremble in its aspect to thee. + +Within the heaven of the divine repose + Revolves a body, in whose virtue lies + The being of whatever it contains. + +The following heaven, that has so many eyes, + Divides this being by essences diverse, + Distinguished from it, and by it contained. + +The other spheres, by various differences, + All the distinctions which they have within them + Dispose unto their ends and their effects. + +Thus do these organs of the world proceed, + As thou perceivest now, from grade to grade; + Since from above they take, and act beneath. + +Observe me well, how through this place I come + Unto the truth thou wishest, that hereafter + Thou mayst alone know how to keep the ford + +The power and motion of the holy spheres, + As from the artisan the hammer’s craft, + Forth from the blessed motors must proceed. + +The heaven, which lights so manifold make fair, + From the Intelligence profound, which turns it, + The image takes, and makes of it a seal. + +And even as the soul within your dust + Through members different and accommodated + To faculties diverse expands itself, + +So likewise this Intelligence diffuses + Its virtue multiplied among the stars. + Itself revolving on its unity. + +Virtue diverse doth a diverse alloyage + Make with the precious body that it quickens, + In which, as life in you, it is combined. + +From the glad nature whence it is derived, + The mingled virtue through the body shines, + Even as gladness through the living pupil. + +From this proceeds whate’er from light to light + Appeareth different, not from dense and rare: + This is the formal principle that produces, + +According to its goodness, dark and bright.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto III + + +That Sun, which erst with love my bosom warmed, + Of beauteous truth had unto me discovered, + By proving and reproving, the sweet aspect. + +And, that I might confess myself convinced + And confident, so far as was befitting, + I lifted more erect my head to speak. + +But there appeared a vision, which withdrew me + So close to it, in order to be seen, + That my confession I remembered not. + +Such as through polished and transparent glass, + Or waters crystalline and undisturbed, + But not so deep as that their bed be lost, + +Come back again the outlines of our faces + So feeble, that a pearl on forehead white + Comes not less speedily unto our eyes; + +Such saw I many faces prompt to speak, + So that I ran in error opposite + To that which kindled love ’twixt man and fountain. + +As soon as I became aware of them, + Esteeming them as mirrored semblances, + To see of whom they were, mine eyes I turned, + +And nothing saw, and once more turned them forward + Direct into the light of my sweet Guide, + Who smiling kindled in her holy eyes. + +“Marvel thou not,” she said to me, “because + I smile at this thy puerile conceit, + Since on the truth it trusts not yet its foot, + +But turns thee, as ’tis wont, on emptiness. + True substances are these which thou beholdest, + Here relegate for breaking of some vow. + +Therefore speak with them, listen and believe; + For the true light, which giveth peace to them, + Permits them not to turn from it their feet.” + +And I unto the shade that seemed most wishful + To speak directed me, and I began, + As one whom too great eagerness bewilders: + +“O well-created spirit, who in the rays + Of life eternal dost the sweetness taste + Which being untasted ne’er is comprehended, + +Grateful ’twill be to me, if thou content me + Both with thy name and with your destiny.” + Whereat she promptly and with laughing eyes: + +“Our charity doth never shut the doors + Against a just desire, except as one + Who wills that all her court be like herself. + +I was a virgin sister in the world; + And if thy mind doth contemplate me well, + The being more fair will not conceal me from thee, + +But thou shalt recognise I am Piccarda, + Who, stationed here among these other blessed, + Myself am blessed in the slowest sphere. + +All our affections, that alone inflamed + Are in the pleasure of the Holy Ghost, + Rejoice at being of his order formed; + +And this allotment, which appears so low, + Therefore is given us, because our vows + Have been neglected and in some part void.” + +Whence I to her: “In your miraculous aspects + There shines I know not what of the divine, + Which doth transform you from our first conceptions. + +Therefore I was not swift in my remembrance; + But what thou tellest me now aids me so, + That the refiguring is easier to me. + +But tell me, ye who in this place are happy, + Are you desirous of a higher place, + To see more or to make yourselves more friends?” + +First with those other shades she smiled a little; + Thereafter answered me so full of gladness, + She seemed to burn in the first fire of love: + +“Brother, our will is quieted by virtue + Of charity, that makes us wish alone + For what we have, nor gives us thirst for more. + +If to be more exalted we aspired, + Discordant would our aspirations be + Unto the will of Him who here secludes us; + +Which thou shalt see finds no place in these circles, + If being in charity is needful here, + And if thou lookest well into its nature; + +Nay, ’tis essential to this blest existence + To keep itself within the will divine, + Whereby our very wishes are made one; + +So that, as we are station above station + Throughout this realm, to all the realm ’tis pleasing, + As to the King, who makes his will our will. + +And his will is our peace; this is the sea + To which is moving onward whatsoever + It doth create, and all that nature makes.” + +Then it was clear to me how everywhere + In heaven is Paradise, although the grace + Of good supreme there rain not in one measure. + +But as it comes to pass, if one food sates, + And for another still remains the longing, + We ask for this, and that decline with thanks, + +E’en thus did I; with gesture and with word, + To learn from her what was the web wherein + She did not ply the shuttle to the end. + +“A perfect life and merit high in-heaven + A lady o’er us,” said she, “by whose rule + Down in your world they vest and veil themselves, + +That until death they may both watch and sleep + Beside that Spouse who every vow accepts + Which charity conformeth to his pleasure. + +To follow her, in girlhood from the world + I fled, and in her habit shut myself, + And pledged me to the pathway of her sect. + +Then men accustomed unto evil more + Than unto good, from the sweet cloister tore me; + God knows what afterward my life became. + +This other splendour, which to thee reveals + Itself on my right side, and is enkindled + With all the illumination of our sphere, + +What of myself I say applies to her; + A nun was she, and likewise from her head + Was ta’en the shadow of the sacred wimple. + +But when she too was to the world returned + Against her wishes and against good usage, + Of the heart’s veil she never was divested. + +Of great Costanza this is the effulgence, + Who from the second wind of Suabia + Brought forth the third and latest puissance.” + +Thus unto me she spake, and then began + “Ave Maria” singing, and in singing + Vanished, as through deep water something heavy. + +My sight, that followed her as long a time + As it was possible, when it had lost her + Turned round unto the mark of more desire, + +And wholly unto Beatrice reverted; + But she such lightnings flashed into mine eyes, + That at the first my sight endured it not; + +And this in questioning more backward made me. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto IV + + +Between two viands, equally removed + And tempting, a free man would die of hunger + Ere either he could bring unto his teeth. + +So would a lamb between the ravenings + Of two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike; + And so would stand a dog between two does. + +Hence, if I held my peace, myself I blame not, + Impelled in equal measure by my doubts, + Since it must be so, nor do I commend. + +I held my peace; but my desire was painted + Upon my face, and questioning with that + More fervent far than by articulate speech. + +Beatrice did as Daniel had done + Relieving Nebuchadnezzar from the wrath + Which rendered him unjustly merciless, + +And said: “Well see I how attracteth thee + One and the other wish, so that thy care + Binds itself so that forth it does not breathe. + +Thou arguest, if good will be permanent, + The violence of others, for what reason + Doth it decrease the measure of my merit? + +Again for doubting furnish thee occasion + Souls seeming to return unto the stars, + According to the sentiment of Plato. + +These are the questions which upon thy wish + Are thrusting equally; and therefore first + Will I treat that which hath the most of gall. + +He of the Seraphim most absorbed in God, + Moses, and Samuel, and whichever John + Thou mayst select, I say, and even Mary, + +Have not in any other heaven their seats, + Than have those spirits that just appeared to thee, + Nor of existence more or fewer years; + +But all make beautiful the primal circle, + And have sweet life in different degrees, + By feeling more or less the eternal breath. + +They showed themselves here, not because allotted + This sphere has been to them, but to give sign + Of the celestial which is least exalted. + +To speak thus is adapted to your mind, + Since only through the sense it apprehendeth + What then it worthy makes of intellect. + +On this account the Scripture condescends + Unto your faculties, and feet and hands + To God attributes, and means something else; + +And Holy Church under an aspect human + Gabriel and Michael represent to you, + And him who made Tobias whole again. + +That which Timaeus argues of the soul + Doth not resemble that which here is seen, + Because it seems that as he speaks he thinks. + +He says the soul unto its star returns, + Believing it to have been severed thence + Whenever nature gave it as a form. + +Perhaps his doctrine is of other guise + Than the words sound, and possibly may be + With meaning that is not to be derided. + +If he doth mean that to these wheels return + The honour of their influence and the blame, + Perhaps his bow doth hit upon some truth. + +This principle ill understood once warped + The whole world nearly, till it went astray + Invoking Jove and Mercury and Mars. + +The other doubt which doth disquiet thee + Less venom has, for its malevolence + Could never lead thee otherwhere from me. + +That as unjust our justice should appear + In eyes of mortals, is an argument + Of faith, and not of sin heretical. + +But still, that your perception may be able + To thoroughly penetrate this verity, + As thou desirest, I will satisfy thee. + +If it be violence when he who suffers + Co-operates not with him who uses force, + These souls were not on that account excused; + +For will is never quenched unless it will, + But operates as nature doth in fire + If violence a thousand times distort it. + +Hence, if it yieldeth more or less, it seconds + The force; and these have done so, having power + Of turning back unto the holy place. + +If their will had been perfect, like to that + Which Lawrence fast upon his gridiron held, + And Mutius made severe to his own hand, + +It would have urged them back along the road + Whence they were dragged, as soon as they were free; + But such a solid will is all too rare. + +And by these words, if thou hast gathered them + As thou shouldst do, the argument is refuted + That would have still annoyed thee many times. + +But now another passage runs across + Before thine eyes, and such that by thyself + Thou couldst not thread it ere thou wouldst be weary. + +I have for certain put into thy mind + That soul beatified could never lie, + For it is near the primal Truth, + +And then thou from Piccarda might’st have heard + Costanza kept affection for the veil, + So that she seemeth here to contradict me. + +Many times, brother, has it come to pass, + That, to escape from peril, with reluctance + That has been done it was not right to do, + +E’en as Alcmaeon (who, being by his father + Thereto entreated, his own mother slew) + Not to lose pity pitiless became. + +At this point I desire thee to remember + That force with will commingles, and they cause + That the offences cannot be excused. + +Will absolute consenteth not to evil; + But in so far consenteth as it fears, + If it refrain, to fall into more harm. + +Hence when Piccarda uses this expression, + She meaneth the will absolute, and I + The other, so that both of us speak truth.” + +Such was the flowing of the holy river + That issued from the fount whence springs all truth; + This put to rest my wishes one and all. + +“O love of the first lover, O divine,” + Said I forthwith, “whose speech inundates me + And warms me so, it more and more revives me, + +My own affection is not so profound + As to suffice in rendering grace for grace; + Let Him, who sees and can, thereto respond. + +Well I perceive that never sated is + Our intellect unless the Truth illume it, + Beyond which nothing true expands itself. + +It rests therein, as wild beast in his lair, + When it attains it; and it can attain it; + If not, then each desire would frustrate be. + +Therefore springs up, in fashion of a shoot, + Doubt at the foot of truth; and this is nature, + Which to the top from height to height impels us. + +This doth invite me, this assurance give me + With reverence, Lady, to inquire of you + Another truth, which is obscure to me. + +I wish to know if man can satisfy you + For broken vows with other good deeds, so + That in your balance they will not be light.” + +Beatrice gazed upon me with her eyes + Full of the sparks of love, and so divine, + That, overcome my power, I turned my back + +And almost lost myself with eyes downcast. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto V + + +“If in the heat of love I flame upon thee + Beyond the measure that on earth is seen, + So that the valour of thine eyes I vanquish, + +Marvel thou not thereat; for this proceeds + From perfect sight, which as it apprehends + To the good apprehended moves its feet. + +Well I perceive how is already shining + Into thine intellect the eternal light, + That only seen enkindles always love; + +And if some other thing your love seduce, + ’Tis nothing but a vestige of the same, + Ill understood, which there is shining through. + +Thou fain wouldst know if with another service + For broken vow can such return be made + As to secure the soul from further claim.” + +This Canto thus did Beatrice begin; + And, as a man who breaks not off his speech, + Continued thus her holy argument: + +“The greatest gift that in his largess God + Creating made, and unto his own goodness + Nearest conformed, and that which he doth prize + +Most highly, is the freedom of the will, + Wherewith the creatures of intelligence + Both all and only were and are endowed. + +Now wilt thou see, if thence thou reasonest, + The high worth of a vow, if it he made + So that when thou consentest God consents: + +For, closing between God and man the compact, + A sacrifice is of this treasure made, + Such as I say, and made by its own act. + +What can be rendered then as compensation? + Think’st thou to make good use of what thou’st offered, + With gains ill gotten thou wouldst do good deed. + +Now art thou certain of the greater point; + But because Holy Church in this dispenses, + Which seems against the truth which I have shown thee, + +Behoves thee still to sit awhile at table, + Because the solid food which thou hast taken + Requireth further aid for thy digestion. + +Open thy mind to that which I reveal, + And fix it there within; for ’tis not knowledge, + The having heard without retaining it. + +In the essence of this sacrifice two things + Convene together; and the one is that + Of which ’tis made, the other is the agreement. + +This last for evermore is cancelled not + Unless complied with, and concerning this + With such precision has above been spoken. + +Therefore it was enjoined upon the Hebrews + To offer still, though sometimes what was offered + Might be commuted, as thou ought’st to know. + +The other, which is known to thee as matter, + May well indeed be such that one errs not + If it for other matter be exchanged. + +But let none shift the burden on his shoulder + At his arbitrament, without the turning + Both of the white and of the yellow key; + +And every permutation deem as foolish, + If in the substitute the thing relinquished, + As the four is in six, be not contained. + +Therefore whatever thing has so great weight + In value that it drags down every balance, + Cannot be satisfied with other spending. + +Let mortals never take a vow in jest; + Be faithful and not blind in doing that, + As Jephthah was in his first offering, + +Whom more beseemed to say, ‘I have done wrong, + Than to do worse by keeping; and as foolish + Thou the great leader of the Greeks wilt find, + +Whence wept Iphigenia her fair face, + And made for her both wise and simple weep, + Who heard such kind of worship spoken of.’ + +Christians, be ye more serious in your movements; + Be ye not like a feather at each wind, + And think not every water washes you. + +Ye have the Old and the New Testament, + And the Pastor of the Church who guideth you + Let this suffice you unto your salvation. + +If evil appetite cry aught else to you, + Be ye as men, and not as silly sheep, + So that the Jew among you may not mock you. + +Be ye not as the lamb that doth abandon + Its mother’s milk, and frolicsome and simple + Combats at its own pleasure with itself.” + +Thus Beatrice to me even as I write it; + Then all desireful turned herself again + To that part where the world is most alive. + +Her silence and her change of countenance + Silence imposed upon my eager mind, + That had already in advance new questions; + +And as an arrow that upon the mark + Strikes ere the bowstring quiet hath become, + So did we speed into the second realm. + +My Lady there so joyful I beheld, + As into the brightness of that heaven she entered, + More luminous thereat the planet grew; + +And if the star itself was changed and smiled, + What became I, who by my nature am + Exceeding mutable in every guise! + +As, in a fish-pond which is pure and tranquil, + The fishes draw to that which from without + Comes in such fashion that their food they deem it; + +So I beheld more than a thousand splendours + Drawing towards us, and in each was heard: + “Lo, this is she who shall increase our love.” + +And as each one was coming unto us, + Full of beatitude the shade was seen, + By the effulgence clear that issued from it. + +Think, Reader, if what here is just beginning + No farther should proceed, how thou wouldst have + An agonizing need of knowing more; + +And of thyself thou’lt see how I from these + Was in desire of hearing their conditions, + As they unto mine eyes were manifest. + +“O thou well-born, unto whom Grace concedes + To see the thrones of the eternal triumph, + Or ever yet the warfare be abandoned + +With light that through the whole of heaven is spread + Kindled are we, and hence if thou desirest + To know of us, at thine own pleasure sate thee.” + +Thus by some one among those holy spirits + Was spoken, and by Beatrice: “Speak, speak + Securely, and believe them even as Gods.” + +“Well I perceive how thou dost nest thyself + In thine own light, and drawest it from thine eyes, + Because they coruscate when thou dost smile, + +But know not who thou art, nor why thou hast, + Spirit august, thy station in the sphere + That veils itself to men in alien rays.” + +This said I in direction of the light + Which first had spoken to me; whence it became + By far more lucent than it was before. + +Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself + By too much light, when heat has worn away + The tempering influence of the vapours dense, + +By greater rapture thus concealed itself + In its own radiance the figure saintly, + And thus close, close enfolded answered me + +In fashion as the following Canto sings. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto VI + + +“After that Constantine the eagle turned + Against the course of heaven, which it had followed + Behind the ancient who Lavinia took, + +Two hundred years and more the bird of God + In the extreme of Europe held itself, + Near to the mountains whence it issued first; + +And under shadow of the sacred plumes + It governed there the world from hand to hand, + And, changing thus, upon mine own alighted. + +Caesar I was, and am Justinian, + Who, by the will of primal Love I feel, + Took from the laws the useless and redundant; + +And ere unto the work I was attent, + One nature to exist in Christ, not more, + Believed, and with such faith was I contented. + +But blessed Agapetus, he who was + The supreme pastor, to the faith sincere + Pointed me out the way by words of his. + +Him I believed, and what was his assertion + I now see clearly, even as thou seest + Each contradiction to be false and true. + +As soon as with the Church I moved my feet, + God in his grace it pleased with this high task + To inspire me, and I gave me wholly to it, + +And to my Belisarius I commended + The arms, to which was heaven’s right hand so joined + It was a signal that I should repose. + +Now here to the first question terminates + My answer; but the character thereof + Constrains me to continue with a sequel, + +In order that thou see with how great reason + Men move against the standard sacrosanct, + Both who appropriate and who oppose it. + +Behold how great a power has made it worthy + Of reverence, beginning from the hour + When Pallas died to give it sovereignty. + +Thou knowest it made in Alba its abode + Three hundred years and upward, till at last + The three to three fought for it yet again. + +Thou knowest what it achieved from Sabine wrong + Down to Lucretia’s sorrow, in seven kings + O’ercoming round about the neighboring nations; + +Thou knowest what it achieved, borne by the Romans + Illustrious against Brennus, against Pyrrhus, + Against the other princes and confederates. + +Torquatus thence and Quinctius, who from locks + Unkempt was named, Decii and Fabii, + Received the fame I willingly embalm; + +It struck to earth the pride of the Arabians, + Who, following Hannibal, had passed across + The Alpine ridges, Po, from which thou glidest; + +Beneath it triumphed while they yet were young + Pompey and Scipio, and to the hill + Beneath which thou wast born it bitter seemed; + +Then, near unto the time when heaven had willed + To bring the whole world to its mood serene, + Did Caesar by the will of Rome assume it. + +What it achieved from Var unto the Rhine, + Isere beheld and Saone, beheld the Seine, + And every valley whence the Rhone is filled; + +What it achieved when it had left Ravenna, + And leaped the Rubicon, was such a flight + That neither tongue nor pen could follow it. + +Round towards Spain it wheeled its legions; then + Towards Durazzo, and Pharsalia smote + That to the calid Nile was felt the pain. + +Antandros and the Simois, whence it started, + It saw again, and there where Hector lies, + And ill for Ptolemy then roused itself. + +From thence it came like lightning upon Juba; + Then wheeled itself again into your West, + Where the Pompeian clarion it heard. + +From what it wrought with the next standard-bearer + Brutus and Cassius howl in Hell together, + And Modena and Perugia dolent were; + +Still doth the mournful Cleopatra weep + Because thereof, who, fleeing from before it, + Took from the adder sudden and black death. + +With him it ran even to the Red Sea shore; + With him it placed the world in so great peace, + That unto Janus was his temple closed. + +But what the standard that has made me speak + Achieved before, and after should achieve + Throughout the mortal realm that lies beneath it, + +Becometh in appearance mean and dim, + If in the hand of the third Caesar seen + With eye unclouded and affection pure, + +Because the living Justice that inspires me + Granted it, in the hand of him I speak of, + The glory of doing vengeance for its wrath. + +Now here attend to what I answer thee; + Later it ran with Titus to do vengeance + Upon the vengeance of the ancient sin. + +And when the tooth of Lombardy had bitten + The Holy Church, then underneath its wings + Did Charlemagne victorious succor her. + +Now hast thou power to judge of such as those + Whom I accused above, and of their crimes, + Which are the cause of all your miseries. + +To the public standard one the yellow lilies + Opposes, the other claims it for a party, + So that ’tis hard to see which sins the most. + +Let, let the Ghibellines ply their handicraft + Beneath some other standard; for this ever + Ill follows he who it and justice parts. + +And let not this new Charles e’er strike it down, + He and his Guelfs, but let him fear the talons + That from a nobler lion stripped the fell. + +Already oftentimes the sons have wept + The father’s crime; and let him not believe + That God will change His scutcheon for the lilies. + +This little planet doth adorn itself + With the good spirits that have active been, + That fame and honour might come after them; + +And whensoever the desires mount thither, + Thus deviating, must perforce the rays + Of the true love less vividly mount upward. + +But in commensuration of our wages + With our desert is portion of our joy, + Because we see them neither less nor greater. + +Herein doth living Justice sweeten so + Affection in us, that for evermore + It cannot warp to any iniquity. + +Voices diverse make up sweet melodies; + So in this life of ours the seats diverse + Render sweet harmony among these spheres; + +And in the compass of this present pearl + Shineth the sheen of Romeo, of whom + The grand and beauteous work was ill rewarded. + +But the Provencals who against him wrought, + They have not laughed, and therefore ill goes he + Who makes his hurt of the good deeds of others. + +Four daughters, and each one of them a queen, + Had Raymond Berenger, and this for him + Did Romeo, a poor man and a pilgrim; + +And then malicious words incited him + To summon to a reckoning this just man, + Who rendered to him seven and five for ten. + +Then he departed poor and stricken in years, + And if the world could know the heart he had, + In begging bit by bit his livelihood, + +Though much it laud him, it would laud him more.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto VII + + +“Osanna sanctus Deus Sabaoth, + Superillustrans claritate tua + Felices ignes horum malahoth!” + +In this wise, to his melody returning, + This substance, upon which a double light + Doubles itself, was seen by me to sing, + +And to their dance this and the others moved, + And in the manner of swift-hurrying sparks + Veiled themselves from me with a sudden distance. + +Doubting was I, and saying, “Tell her, tell her,” + Within me, “tell her,” saying, “tell my Lady,” + Who slakes my thirst with her sweet effluences; + +And yet that reverence which doth lord it over + The whole of me only by B and ICE, + Bowed me again like unto one who drowses. + +Short while did Beatrice endure me thus; + And she began, lighting me with a smile + Such as would make one happy in the fire: + +“According to infallible advisement, + After what manner a just vengeance justly + Could be avenged has put thee upon thinking, + +But I will speedily thy mind unloose; + And do thou listen, for these words of mine + Of a great doctrine will a present make thee. + +By not enduring on the power that wills + Curb for his good, that man who ne’er was born, + Damning himself damned all his progeny; + +Whereby the human species down below + Lay sick for many centuries in great error, + Till to descend it pleased the Word of God + +To where the nature, which from its own Maker + Estranged itself, he joined to him in person + By the sole act of his eternal love. + +Now unto what is said direct thy sight; + This nature when united to its Maker, + Such as created, was sincere and good; + +But by itself alone was banished forth + From Paradise, because it turned aside + Out of the way of truth and of its life. + +Therefore the penalty the cross held out, + If measured by the nature thus assumed, + None ever yet with so great justice stung, + +And none was ever of so great injustice, + Considering who the Person was that suffered, + Within whom such a nature was contracted. + +From one act therefore issued things diverse; + To God and to the Jews one death was pleasing; + Earth trembled at it and the Heaven was opened. + +It should no longer now seem difficult + To thee, when it is said that a just vengeance + By a just court was afterward avenged. + +But now do I behold thy mind entangled + From thought to thought within a knot, from which + With great desire it waits to free itself. + +Thou sayest, ‘Well discern I what I hear; + But it is hidden from me why God willed + For our redemption only this one mode.’ + +Buried remaineth, brother, this decree + Unto the eyes of every one whose nature + Is in the flame of love not yet adult. + +Verily, inasmuch as at this mark + One gazes long and little is discerned, + Wherefore this mode was worthiest will I say. + +Goodness Divine, which from itself doth spurn + All envy, burning in itself so sparkles + That the eternal beauties it unfolds. + +Whate’er from this immediately distils + Has afterwards no end, for ne’er removed + Is its impression when it sets its seal. + +Whate’er from this immediately rains down + Is wholly free, because it is not subject + Unto the influences of novel things. + +The more conformed thereto, the more it pleases; + For the blest ardour that irradiates all things + In that most like itself is most vivacious. + +With all of these things has advantaged been + The human creature; and if one be wanting, + From his nobility he needs must fall. + +’Tis sin alone which doth disfranchise him, + And render him unlike the Good Supreme, + So that he little with its light is blanched, + +And to his dignity no more returns, + Unless he fill up where transgression empties + With righteous pains for criminal delights. + +Your nature when it sinned so utterly + In its own seed, out of these dignities + Even as out of Paradise was driven, + +Nor could itself recover, if thou notest + With nicest subtilty, by any way, + Except by passing one of these two fords: + +Either that God through clemency alone + Had pardon granted, or that man himself + Had satisfaction for his folly made. + +Fix now thine eye deep into the abyss + Of the eternal counsel, to my speech + As far as may be fastened steadfastly! + +Man in his limitations had not power + To satisfy, not having power to sink + In his humility obeying then, + +Far as he disobeying thought to rise; + And for this reason man has been from power + Of satisfying by himself excluded. + +Therefore it God behoved in his own ways + Man to restore unto his perfect life, + I say in one, or else in both of them. + +But since the action of the doer is + So much more grateful, as it more presents + The goodness of the heart from which it issues, + +Goodness Divine, that doth imprint the world, + Has been contented to proceed by each + And all its ways to lift you up again; + +Nor ’twixt the first day and the final night + Such high and such magnificent proceeding + By one or by the other was or shall be; + +For God more bounteous was himself to give + To make man able to uplift himself, + Than if he only of himself had pardoned; + +And all the other modes were insufficient + For justice, were it not the Son of God + Himself had humbled to become incarnate. + +Now, to fill fully each desire of thine, + Return I to elucidate one place, + In order that thou there mayst see as I do. + +Thou sayst: ‘I see the air, I see the fire, + The water, and the earth, and all their mixtures + Come to corruption, and short while endure; + +And these things notwithstanding were created;’ + Therefore if that which I have said were true, + They should have been secure against corruption. + +The Angels, brother, and the land sincere + In which thou art, created may be called + Just as they are in their entire existence; + +But all the elements which thou hast named, + And all those things which out of them are made, + By a created virtue are informed. + +Created was the matter which they have; + Created was the informing influence + Within these stars that round about them go. + +The soul of every brute and of the plants + By its potential temperament attracts + The ray and motion of the holy lights; + +But your own life immediately inspires + Supreme Beneficence, and enamours it + So with herself, it evermore desires her. + +And thou from this mayst argue furthermore + Your resurrection, if thou think again + How human flesh was fashioned at that time + +When the first parents both of them were made.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto VIII + + +The world used in its peril to believe + That the fair Cypria delirious love + Rayed out, in the third epicycle turning; + +Wherefore not only unto her paid honour + Of sacrifices and of votive cry + The ancient nations in the ancient error, + +But both Dione honoured they and Cupid, + That as her mother, this one as her son, + And said that he had sat in Dido’s lap; + +And they from her, whence I beginning take, + Took the denomination of the star + That woos the sun, now following, now in front. + +I was not ware of our ascending to it; + But of our being in it gave full faith + My Lady whom I saw more beauteous grow. + +And as within a flame a spark is seen, + And as within a voice a voice discerned, + When one is steadfast, and one comes and goes, + +Within that light beheld I other lamps + Move in a circle, speeding more and less, + Methinks in measure of their inward vision. + +From a cold cloud descended never winds, + Or visible or not, so rapidly + They would not laggard and impeded seem + +To any one who had those lights divine + Seen come towards us, leaving the gyration + Begun at first in the high Seraphim. + +And behind those that most in front appeared + Sounded “Osanna!” so that never since + To hear again was I without desire. + +Then unto us more nearly one approached, + And it alone began: “We all are ready + Unto thy pleasure, that thou joy in us. + +We turn around with the celestial Princes, + One gyre and one gyration and one thirst, + To whom thou in the world of old didst say, + +‘Ye who, intelligent, the third heaven are moving;’ + And are so full of love, to pleasure thee + A little quiet will not be less sweet.” + +After these eyes of mine themselves had offered + Unto my Lady reverently, and she + Content and certain of herself had made them, + +Back to the light they turned, which so great promise + Made of itself, and “Say, who art thou?” was + My voice, imprinted with a great affection. + +O how and how much I beheld it grow + With the new joy that superadded was + Unto its joys, as soon as I had spoken! + +Thus changed, it said to me: “The world possessed me + Short time below; and, if it had been more, + Much evil will be which would not have been. + +My gladness keepeth me concealed from thee, + Which rayeth round about me, and doth hide me + Like as a creature swathed in its own silk. + +Much didst thou love me, and thou hadst good reason; + For had I been below, I should have shown thee + Somewhat beyond the foliage of my love. + +That left-hand margin, which doth bathe itself + In Rhone, when it is mingled with the Sorgue, + Me for its lord awaited in due time, + +And that horn of Ausonia, which is towned + With Bari, with Gaeta and Catona, + Whence Tronto and Verde in the sea disgorge. + +Already flashed upon my brow the crown + Of that dominion which the Danube waters + After the German borders it abandons; + +And beautiful Trinacria, that is murky + ’Twixt Pachino and Peloro, (on the gulf + Which greatest scath from Eurus doth receive,) + +Not through Typhoeus, but through nascent sulphur, + Would have awaited her own monarchs still, + Through me from Charles descended and from Rudolph, + +If evil lordship, that exasperates ever + The subject populations, had not moved + Palermo to the outcry of ‘Death! death!’ + +And if my brother could but this foresee, + The greedy poverty of Catalonia + Straight would he flee, that it might not molest him; + +For verily ’tis needful to provide, + Through him or other, so that on his bark + Already freighted no more freight be placed. + +His nature, which from liberal covetous + Descended, such a soldiery would need + As should not care for hoarding in a chest.” + +“Because I do believe the lofty joy + Thy speech infuses into me, my Lord, + Where every good thing doth begin and end + +Thou seest as I see it, the more grateful + Is it to me; and this too hold I dear, + That gazing upon God thou dost discern it. + +Glad hast thou made me; so make clear to me, + Since speaking thou hast stirred me up to doubt, + How from sweet seed can bitter issue forth.” + +This I to him; and he to me: “If I + Can show to thee a truth, to what thou askest + Thy face thou’lt hold as thou dost hold thy back. + +The Good which all the realm thou art ascending + Turns and contents, maketh its providence + To be a power within these bodies vast; + +And not alone the natures are foreseen + Within the mind that in itself is perfect, + But they together with their preservation. + +For whatsoever thing this bow shoots forth + Falls foreordained unto an end foreseen, + Even as a shaft directed to its mark. + +If that were not, the heaven which thou dost walk + Would in such manner its effects produce, + That they no longer would be arts, but ruins. + +This cannot be, if the Intelligences + That keep these stars in motion are not maimed, + And maimed the First that has not made them perfect. + +Wilt thou this truth have clearer made to thee?” + And I: “Not so; for ’tis impossible + That nature tire, I see, in what is needful.” + +Whence he again: “Now say, would it be worse + For men on earth were they not citizens?” + “Yes,” I replied; “and here I ask no reason.” + +“And can they be so, if below they live not + Diversely unto offices diverse? + No, if your master writeth well for you.” + +So came he with deductions to this point; + Then he concluded: “Therefore it behoves + The roots of your effects to be diverse. + +Hence one is Solon born, another Xerxes, + Another Melchisedec, and another he + Who, flying through the air, his son did lose. + +Revolving Nature, which a signet is + To mortal wax, doth practise well her art, + But not one inn distinguish from another; + +Thence happens it that Esau differeth + In seed from Jacob; and Quirinus comes + From sire so vile that he is given to Mars. + +A generated nature its own way + Would always make like its progenitors, + If Providence divine were not triumphant. + +Now that which was behind thee is before thee; + But that thou know that I with thee am pleased, + With a corollary will I mantle thee. + +Evermore nature, if it fortune find + Discordant to it, like each other seed + Out of its region, maketh evil thrift; + +And if the world below would fix its mind + On the foundation which is laid by nature, + Pursuing that, ’twould have the people good. + +But you unto religion wrench aside + Him who was born to gird him with the sword, + And make a king of him who is for sermons; + +Therefore your footsteps wander from the road.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto IX + + +Beautiful Clemence, after that thy Charles + Had me enlightened, he narrated to me + The treacheries his seed should undergo; + +But said: “Be still and let the years roll round;” + So I can only say, that lamentation + Legitimate shall follow on your wrongs. + +And of that holy light the life already + Had to the Sun which fills it turned again, + As to that good which for each thing sufficeth. + +Ah, souls deceived, and creatures impious, + Who from such good do turn away your hearts, + Directing upon vanity your foreheads! + +And now, behold, another of those splendours + Approached me, and its will to pleasure me + It signified by brightening outwardly. + +The eyes of Beatrice, that fastened were + Upon me, as before, of dear assent + To my desire assurance gave to me. + +“Ah, bring swift compensation to my wish, + Thou blessed spirit,” I said, “and give me proof + That what I think in thee I can reflect!” + +Whereat the light, that still was new to me, + Out of its depths, whence it before was singing, + As one delighted to do good, continued: + +“Within that region of the land depraved + Of Italy, that lies between Rialto + And fountain-heads of Brenta and of Piava, + +Rises a hill, and mounts not very high, + Wherefrom descended formerly a torch + That made upon that region great assault. + +Out of one root were born both I and it; + Cunizza was I called, and here I shine + Because the splendour of this star o’ercame me. + +But gladly to myself the cause I pardon + Of my allotment, and it does not grieve me; + Which would perhaps seem strong unto your vulgar. + +Of this so luculent and precious jewel, + Which of our heaven is nearest unto me, + Great fame remained; and ere it die away + +This hundredth year shall yet quintupled be. + See if man ought to make him excellent, + So that another life the first may leave! + +And thus thinks not the present multitude + Shut in by Adige and Tagliamento, + Nor yet for being scourged is penitent. + +But soon ’twill be that Padua in the marsh + Will change the water that Vicenza bathes, + Because the folk are stubborn against duty; + +And where the Sile and Cagnano join + One lordeth it, and goes with lofty head, + For catching whom e’en now the net is making. + +Feltro moreover of her impious pastor + Shall weep the crime, which shall so monstrous be + That for the like none ever entered Malta. + +Ample exceedingly would be the vat + That of the Ferrarese could hold the blood, + And weary who should weigh it ounce by ounce, + +Of which this courteous priest shall make a gift + To show himself a partisan; and such gifts + Will to the living of the land conform. + +Above us there are mirrors, Thrones you call them, + From which shines out on us God Judicant, + So that this utterance seems good to us.” + +Here it was silent, and it had the semblance + Of being turned elsewhither, by the wheel + On which it entered as it was before. + +The other joy, already known to me, + Became a thing transplendent in my sight, + As a fine ruby smitten by the sun. + +Through joy effulgence is acquired above, + As here a smile; but down below, the shade + Outwardly darkens, as the mind is sad. + +“God seeth all things, and in Him, blest spirit, + Thy sight is,” said I, “so that never will + Of his can possibly from thee be hidden; + +Thy voice, then, that for ever makes the heavens + Glad, with the singing of those holy fires + Which of their six wings make themselves a cowl, + +Wherefore does it not satisfy my longings? + Indeed, I would not wait thy questioning + If I in thee were as thou art in me.” + +“The greatest of the valleys where the water + Expands itself,” forthwith its words began, + “That sea excepted which the earth engarlands, + +Between discordant shores against the sun + Extends so far, that it meridian makes + Where it was wont before to make the horizon. + +I was a dweller on that valley’s shore + ’Twixt Ebro and Magra that with journey short + Doth from the Tuscan part the Genoese. + +With the same sunset and same sunrise nearly + Sit Buggia and the city whence I was, + That with its blood once made the harbour hot. + +Folco that people called me unto whom + My name was known; and now with me this heaven + Imprints itself, as I did once with it; + +For more the daughter of Belus never burned, + Offending both Sichaeus and Creusa, + Than I, so long as it became my locks, + +Nor yet that Rodophean, who deluded + was by Demophoon, nor yet Alcides, + When Iole he in his heart had locked. + +Yet here is no repenting, but we smile, + Not at the fault, which comes not back to mind, + But at the power which ordered and foresaw. + +Here we behold the art that doth adorn + With such affection, and the good discover + Whereby the world above turns that below. + +But that thou wholly satisfied mayst bear + Thy wishes hence which in this sphere are born, + Still farther to proceed behoveth me. + +Thou fain wouldst know who is within this light + That here beside me thus is scintillating, + Even as a sunbeam in the limpid water. + +Then know thou, that within there is at rest + Rahab, and being to our order joined, + With her in its supremest grade ’tis sealed. + +Into this heaven, where ends the shadowy cone + Cast by your world, before all other souls + First of Christ’s triumph was she taken up. + +Full meet it was to leave her in some heaven, + Even as a palm of the high victory + Which he acquired with one palm and the other, + +Because she favoured the first glorious deed + Of Joshua upon the Holy Land, + That little stirs the memory of the Pope. + +Thy city, which an offshoot is of him + Who first upon his Maker turned his back, + And whose ambition is so sorely wept, + +Brings forth and scatters the accursed flower + Which both the sheep and lambs hath led astray + Since it has turned the shepherd to a wolf. + +For this the Evangel and the mighty Doctors + Are derelict, and only the Decretals + So studied that it shows upon their margins. + +On this are Pope and Cardinals intent; + Their meditations reach not Nazareth, + There where his pinions Gabriel unfolded; + +But Vatican and the other parts elect + Of Rome, which have a cemetery been + Unto the soldiery that followed Peter + +Shall soon be free from this adultery.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto X + + +Looking into his Son with all the Love + Which each of them eternally breathes forth, + The Primal and unutterable Power + +Whate’er before the mind or eye revolves + With so much order made, there can be none + Who this beholds without enjoying Him. + +Lift up then, Reader, to the lofty wheels + With me thy vision straight unto that part + Where the one motion on the other strikes, + +And there begin to contemplate with joy + That Master’s art, who in himself so loves it + That never doth his eye depart therefrom. + +Behold how from that point goes branching off + The oblique circle, which conveys the planets, + To satisfy the world that calls upon them; + +And if their pathway were not thus inflected, + Much virtue in the heavens would be in vain, + And almost every power below here dead. + +If from the straight line distant more or less + Were the departure, much would wanting be + Above and underneath of mundane order. + +Remain now, Reader, still upon thy bench, + In thought pursuing that which is foretasted, + If thou wouldst jocund be instead of weary. + +I’ve set before thee; henceforth feed thyself, + For to itself diverteth all my care + That theme whereof I have been made the scribe. + +The greatest of the ministers of nature, + Who with the power of heaven the world imprints + And measures with his light the time for us, + +With that part which above is called to mind + Conjoined, along the spirals was revolving, + Where each time earlier he presents himself; + +And I was with him; but of the ascending + I was not conscious, saving as a man + Of a first thought is conscious ere it come; + +And Beatrice, she who is seen to pass + From good to better, and so suddenly + That not by time her action is expressed, + +How lucent in herself must she have been! + And what was in the sun, wherein I entered, + Apparent not by colour but by light, + +I, though I call on genius, art, and practice, + Cannot so tell that it could be imagined; + Believe one can, and let him long to see it. + +And if our fantasies too lowly are + For altitude so great, it is no marvel, + Since o’er the sun was never eye could go. + +Such in this place was the fourth family + Of the high Father, who forever sates it, + Showing how he breathes forth and how begets. + +And Beatrice began: “Give thanks, give thanks + Unto the Sun of Angels, who to this + Sensible one has raised thee by his grace!” + +Never was heart of mortal so disposed + To worship, nor to give itself to God + With all its gratitude was it so ready, + +As at those words did I myself become; + And all my love was so absorbed in Him, + That in oblivion Beatrice was eclipsed. + +Nor this displeased her; but she smiled at it + So that the splendour of her laughing eyes + My single mind on many things divided. + +Lights many saw I, vivid and triumphant, + Make us a centre and themselves a circle, + More sweet in voice than luminous in aspect. + +Thus girt about the daughter of Latona + We sometimes see, when pregnant is the air, + So that it holds the thread which makes her zone. + +Within the court of Heaven, whence I return, + Are many jewels found, so fair and precious + They cannot be transported from the realm; + +And of them was the singing of those lights. + Who takes not wings that he may fly up thither, + The tidings thence may from the dumb await! + +As soon as singing thus those burning suns + Had round about us whirled themselves three times, + Like unto stars neighbouring the steadfast poles, + +Ladies they seemed, not from the dance released, + But who stop short, in silence listening + Till they have gathered the new melody. + +And within one I heard beginning: “When + The radiance of grace, by which is kindled + True love, and which thereafter grows by loving, + +Within thee multiplied is so resplendent + That it conducts thee upward by that stair, + Where without reascending none descends, + +Who should deny the wine out of his vial + Unto thy thirst, in liberty were not + Except as water which descends not seaward. + +Fain wouldst thou know with what plants is enflowered + This garland that encircles with delight + The Lady fair who makes thee strong for heaven. + +Of the lambs was I of the holy flock + Which Dominic conducteth by a road + Where well one fattens if he strayeth not. + +He who is nearest to me on the right + My brother and master was; and he Albertus + Is of Cologne, I Thomas of Aquinum. + +If thou of all the others wouldst be certain, + Follow behind my speaking with thy sight + Upward along the blessed garland turning. + +That next effulgence issues from the smile + Of Gratian, who assisted both the courts + In such wise that it pleased in Paradise. + +The other which near by adorns our choir + That Peter was who, e’en as the poor widow, + Offered his treasure unto Holy Church. + +The fifth light, that among us is the fairest, + Breathes forth from such a love, that all the world + Below is greedy to learn tidings of it. + +Within it is the lofty mind, where knowledge + So deep was put, that, if the true be true, + To see so much there never rose a second. + +Thou seest next the lustre of that taper, + Which in the flesh below looked most within + The angelic nature and its ministry. + +Within that other little light is smiling + The advocate of the Christian centuries, + Out of whose rhetoric Augustine was furnished. + +Now if thou trainest thy mind’s eye along + From light to light pursuant of my praise, + With thirst already of the eighth thou waitest. + +By seeing every good therein exults + The sainted soul, which the fallacious world + Makes manifest to him who listeneth well; + +The body whence ’twas hunted forth is lying + Down in Cieldauro, and from martyrdom + And banishment it came unto this peace. + +See farther onward flame the burning breath + Of Isidore, of Beda, and of Richard + Who was in contemplation more than man. + +This, whence to me returneth thy regard, + The light is of a spirit unto whom + In his grave meditations death seemed slow. + +It is the light eternal of Sigier, + Who, reading lectures in the Street of Straw, + Did syllogize invidious verities.” + +Then, as a horologe that calleth us + What time the Bride of God is rising up + With matins to her Spouse that he may love her, + +Wherein one part the other draws and urges, + Ting! ting! resounding with so sweet a note, + That swells with love the spirit well disposed, + +Thus I beheld the glorious wheel move round, + And render voice to voice, in modulation + And sweetness that can not be comprehended, + +Excepting there where joy is made eternal. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XI + + +O Thou insensate care of mortal men, + How inconclusive are the syllogisms + That make thee beat thy wings in downward flight! + +One after laws and one to aphorisms + Was going, and one following the priesthood, + And one to reign by force or sophistry, + +And one in theft, and one in state affairs, + One in the pleasures of the flesh involved + Wearied himself, one gave himself to ease; + +When I, from all these things emancipate, + With Beatrice above there in the Heavens + With such exceeding glory was received! + +When each one had returned unto that point + Within the circle where it was before, + It stood as in a candlestick a candle; + +And from within the effulgence which at first + Had spoken unto me, I heard begin + Smiling while it more luminous became: + +“Even as I am kindled in its ray, + So, looking into the Eternal Light, + The occasion of thy thoughts I apprehend. + +Thou doubtest, and wouldst have me to resift + In language so extended and so open + My speech, that to thy sense it may be plain, + +Where just before I said, ‘where well one fattens,’ + And where I said, ‘there never rose a second;’ + And here ’tis needful we distinguish well. + +The Providence, which governeth the world + With counsel, wherein all created vision + Is vanquished ere it reach unto the bottom, + +(So that towards her own Beloved might go + The bride of Him who, uttering a loud cry, + Espoused her with his consecrated blood, + +Self-confident and unto Him more faithful,) + Two Princes did ordain in her behoof, + Which on this side and that might be her guide. + +The one was all seraphical in ardour; + The other by his wisdom upon earth + A splendour was of light cherubical. + +One will I speak of, for of both is spoken + In praising one, whichever may be taken, + Because unto one end their labours were. + +Between Tupino and the stream that falls + Down from the hill elect of blessed Ubald, + A fertile slope of lofty mountain hangs, + +From which Perugia feels the cold and heat + Through Porta Sole, and behind it weep + Gualdo and Nocera their grievous yoke. + +From out that slope, there where it breaketh most + Its steepness, rose upon the world a sun + As this one does sometimes from out the Ganges; + +Therefore let him who speaketh of that place, + Say not Ascesi, for he would say little, + But Orient, if he properly would speak. + +He was not yet far distant from his rising + Before he had begun to make the earth + Some comfort from his mighty virtue feel. + +For he in youth his father’s wrath incurred + For certain Dame, to whom, as unto death, + The gate of pleasure no one doth unlock; + +And was before his spiritual court + ‘Et coram patre’ unto her united; + Then day by day more fervently he loved her. + +She, reft of her first husband, scorned, obscure, + One thousand and one hundred years and more, + Waited without a suitor till he came. + +Naught it availed to hear, that with Amyclas + Found her unmoved at sounding of his voice + He who struck terror into all the world; + +Naught it availed being constant and undaunted, + So that, when Mary still remained below, + She mounted up with Christ upon the cross. + +But that too darkly I may not proceed, + Francis and Poverty for these two lovers + Take thou henceforward in my speech diffuse. + +Their concord and their joyous semblances, + The love, the wonder, and the sweet regard, + They made to be the cause of holy thoughts; + +So much so that the venerable Bernard + First bared his feet, and after so great peace + Ran, and, in running, thought himself too slow. + +O wealth unknown! O veritable good! + Giles bares his feet, and bares his feet Sylvester + Behind the bridegroom, so doth please the bride! + +Then goes his way that father and that master, + He and his Lady and that family + Which now was girding on the humble cord; + +Nor cowardice of heart weighed down his brow + At being son of Peter Bernardone, + Nor for appearing marvellously scorned; + +But regally his hard determination + To Innocent he opened, and from him + Received the primal seal upon his Order. + +After the people mendicant increased + Behind this man, whose admirable life + Better in glory of the heavens were sung, + +Incoronated with a second crown + Was through Honorius by the Eternal Spirit + The holy purpose of this Archimandrite. + +And when he had, through thirst of martyrdom, + In the proud presence of the Sultan preached + Christ and the others who came after him, + +And, finding for conversion too unripe + The folk, and not to tarry there in vain, + Returned to fruit of the Italic grass, + +On the rude rock ’twixt Tiber and the Arno + From Christ did he receive the final seal, + Which during two whole years his members bore. + +When He, who chose him unto so much good, + Was pleased to draw him up to the reward + That he had merited by being lowly, + +Unto his friars, as to the rightful heirs, + His most dear Lady did he recommend, + And bade that they should love her faithfully; + +And from her bosom the illustrious soul + Wished to depart, returning to its realm, + And for its body wished no other bier. + +Think now what man was he, who was a fit + Companion over the high seas to keep + The bark of Peter to its proper bearings. + +And this man was our Patriarch; hence whoever + Doth follow him as he commands can see + That he is laden with good merchandise. + +But for new pasturage his flock has grown + So greedy, that it is impossible + They be not scattered over fields diverse; + +And in proportion as his sheep remote + And vagabond go farther off from him, + More void of milk return they to the fold. + +Verily some there are that fear a hurt, + And keep close to the shepherd; but so few, + That little cloth doth furnish forth their hoods. + +Now if my utterance be not indistinct, + If thine own hearing hath attentive been, + If thou recall to mind what I have said, + +In part contented shall thy wishes be; + For thou shalt see the plant that’s chipped away, + And the rebuke that lieth in the words, + +‘Where well one fattens, if he strayeth not.’” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XII + + +Soon as the blessed flame had taken up + The final word to give it utterance, + Began the holy millstone to revolve, + +And in its gyre had not turned wholly round, + Before another in a ring enclosed it, + And motion joined to motion, song to song; + +Song that as greatly doth transcend our Muses, + Our Sirens, in those dulcet clarions, + As primal splendour that which is reflected. + +And as are spanned athwart a tender cloud + Two rainbows parallel and like in colour, + When Juno to her handmaid gives command, + +(The one without born of the one within, + Like to the speaking of that vagrant one + Whom love consumed as doth the sun the vapours,) + +And make the people here, through covenant + God set with Noah, presageful of the world + That shall no more be covered with a flood, + +In such wise of those sempiternal roses + The garlands twain encompassed us about, + And thus the outer to the inner answered. + +After the dance, and other grand rejoicings, + Both of the singing, and the flaming forth + Effulgence with effulgence blithe and tender, + +Together, at once, with one accord had stopped, + (Even as the eyes, that, as volition moves them, + Must needs together shut and lift themselves,) + +Out of the heart of one of the new lights + There came a voice, that needle to the star + Made me appear in turning thitherward. + +And it began: “The love that makes me fair + Draws me to speak about the other leader, + By whom so well is spoken here of mine. + +’Tis right, where one is, to bring in the other, + That, as they were united in their warfare, + Together likewise may their glory shine. + +The soldiery of Christ, which it had cost + So dear to arm again, behind the standard + Moved slow and doubtful and in numbers few, + +When the Emperor who reigneth evermore + Provided for the host that was in peril, + Through grace alone and not that it was worthy; + +And, as was said, he to his Bride brought succour + With champions twain, at whose deed, at whose word + The straggling people were together drawn. + +Within that region where the sweet west wind + Rises to open the new leaves, wherewith + Europe is seen to clothe herself afresh, + +Not far off from the beating of the waves, + Behind which in his long career the sun + Sometimes conceals himself from every man, + +Is situate the fortunate Calahorra, + Under protection of the mighty shield + In which the Lion subject is and sovereign. + +Therein was born the amorous paramour + Of Christian Faith, the athlete consecrate, + Kind to his own and cruel to his foes; + +And when it was created was his mind + Replete with such a living energy, + That in his mother her it made prophetic. + +As soon as the espousals were complete + Between him and the Faith at holy font, + Where they with mutual safety dowered each other, + +The woman, who for him had given assent, + Saw in a dream the admirable fruit + That issue would from him and from his heirs; + +And that he might be construed as he was, + A spirit from this place went forth to name him + With His possessive whose he wholly was. + +Dominic was he called; and him I speak of + Even as of the husbandman whom Christ + Elected to his garden to assist him. + +Envoy and servant sooth he seemed of Christ, + For the first love made manifest in him + Was the first counsel that was given by Christ. + +Silent and wakeful many a time was he + Discovered by his nurse upon the ground, + As if he would have said, ‘For this I came.’ + +O thou his father, Felix verily! + O thou his mother, verily Joanna, + If this, interpreted, means as is said! + +Not for the world which people toil for now + In following Ostiense and Taddeo, + But through his longing after the true manna, + +He in short time became so great a teacher, + That he began to go about the vineyard, + Which fadeth soon, if faithless be the dresser; + +And of the See, (that once was more benignant + Unto the righteous poor, not through itself, + But him who sits there and degenerates,) + +Not to dispense or two or three for six, + Not any fortune of first vacancy, + ‘Non decimas quae sunt pauperum Dei,’ + +He asked for, but against the errant world + Permission to do battle for the seed, + Of which these four and twenty plants surround thee. + +Then with the doctrine and the will together, + With office apostolical he moved, + Like torrent which some lofty vein out-presses; + +And in among the shoots heretical + His impetus with greater fury smote, + Wherever the resistance was the greatest. + +Of him were made thereafter divers runnels, + Whereby the garden catholic is watered, + So that more living its plantations stand. + +If such the one wheel of the Biga was, + In which the Holy Church itself defended + And in the field its civic battle won, + +Truly full manifest should be to thee + The excellence of the other, unto whom + Thomas so courteous was before my coming. + +But still the orbit, which the highest part + Of its circumference made, is derelict, + So that the mould is where was once the crust. + +His family, that had straight forward moved + With feet upon his footprints, are turned round + So that they set the point upon the heel. + +And soon aware they will be of the harvest + Of this bad husbandry, when shall the tares + Complain the granary is taken from them. + +Yet say I, he who searcheth leaf by leaf + Our volume through, would still some page discover + Where he could read, ‘I am as I am wont.’ + +’Twill not be from Casal nor Acquasparta, + From whence come such unto the written word + That one avoids it, and the other narrows. + +Bonaventura of Bagnoregio’s life + Am I, who always in great offices + Postponed considerations sinister. + +Here are Illuminato and Agostino, + Who of the first barefooted beggars were + That with the cord the friends of God became. + +Hugh of Saint Victor is among them here, + And Peter Mangiador, and Peter of Spain, + Who down below in volumes twelve is shining; + +Nathan the seer, and metropolitan + Chrysostom, and Anselmus, and Donatus + Who deigned to lay his hand to the first art; + +Here is Rabanus, and beside me here + Shines the Calabrian Abbot Joachim, + He with the spirit of prophecy endowed. + +To celebrate so great a paladin + Have moved me the impassioned courtesy + And the discreet discourses of Friar Thomas, + +And with me they have moved this company.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XIII + + +Let him imagine, who would well conceive + What now I saw, and let him while I speak + Retain the image as a steadfast rock, + +The fifteen stars, that in their divers regions + The sky enliven with a light so great + That it transcends all clusters of the air; + +Let him the Wain imagine unto which + Our vault of heaven sufficeth night and day, + So that in turning of its pole it fails not; + +Let him the mouth imagine of the horn + That in the point beginneth of the axis + Round about which the primal wheel revolves,— + +To have fashioned of themselves two signs in heaven, + Like unto that which Minos’ daughter made, + The moment when she felt the frost of death; + +And one to have its rays within the other, + And both to whirl themselves in such a manner + That one should forward go, the other backward; + +And he will have some shadowing forth of that + True constellation and the double dance + That circled round the point at which I was; + +Because it is as much beyond our wont, + As swifter than the motion of the Chiana + Moveth the heaven that all the rest outspeeds. + +There sang they neither Bacchus, nor Apollo, + But in the divine nature Persons three, + And in one person the divine and human. + +The singing and the dance fulfilled their measure, + And unto us those holy lights gave need, + Growing in happiness from care to care. + +Then broke the silence of those saints concordant + The light in which the admirable life + Of God’s own mendicant was told to me, + +And said: “Now that one straw is trodden out + Now that its seed is garnered up already, + Sweet love invites me to thresh out the other. + +Into that bosom, thou believest, whence + Was drawn the rib to form the beauteous cheek + Whose taste to all the world is costing dear, + +And into that which, by the lance transfixed, + Before and since, such satisfaction made + That it weighs down the balance of all sin, + +Whate’er of light it has to human nature + Been lawful to possess was all infused + By the same power that both of them created; + +And hence at what I said above dost wonder, + When I narrated that no second had + The good which in the fifth light is enclosed. + +Now ope thine eyes to what I answer thee, + And thou shalt see thy creed and my discourse + Fit in the truth as centre in a circle. + +That which can die, and that which dieth not, + Are nothing but the splendour of the idea + Which by his love our Lord brings into being; + +Because that living Light, which from its fount + Effulgent flows, so that it disunites not + From Him nor from the Love in them intrined, + +Through its own goodness reunites its rays + In nine subsistences, as in a mirror, + Itself eternally remaining One. + +Thence it descends to the last potencies, + Downward from act to act becoming such + That only brief contingencies it makes; + +And these contingencies I hold to be + Things generated, which the heaven produces + By its own motion, with seed and without. + +Neither their wax, nor that which tempers it, + Remains immutable, and hence beneath + The ideal signet more and less shines through; + +Therefore it happens, that the selfsame tree + After its kind bears worse and better fruit, + And ye are born with characters diverse. + +If in perfection tempered were the wax, + And were the heaven in its supremest virtue, + The brilliance of the seal would all appear; + +But nature gives it evermore deficient, + In the like manner working as the artist, + Who has the skill of art and hand that trembles. + +If then the fervent Love, the Vision clear, + Of primal Virtue do dispose and seal, + Perfection absolute is there acquired. + +Thus was of old the earth created worthy + Of all and every animal perfection; + And thus the Virgin was impregnate made; + +So that thine own opinion I commend, + That human nature never yet has been, + Nor will be, what it was in those two persons. + +Now if no farther forth I should proceed, + ‘Then in what way was he without a peer?’ + Would be the first beginning of thy words. + +But, that may well appear what now appears not, + Think who he was, and what occasion moved him + To make request, when it was told him, ‘Ask.’ + +I’ve not so spoken that thou canst not see + Clearly he was a king who asked for wisdom, + That he might be sufficiently a king; + +’Twas not to know the number in which are + The motors here above, or if ‘necesse’ + With a contingent e’er ‘necesse’ make, + +‘Non si est dare primum motum esse,’ + Or if in semicircle can be made + Triangle so that it have no right angle. + +Whence, if thou notest this and what I said, + A regal prudence is that peerless seeing + In which the shaft of my intention strikes. + +And if on ‘rose’ thou turnest thy clear eyes, + Thou’lt see that it has reference alone + To kings who’re many, and the good are rare. + +With this distinction take thou what I said, + And thus it can consist with thy belief + Of the first father and of our Delight. + +And lead shall this be always to thy feet, + To make thee, like a weary man, move slowly + Both to the Yes and No thou seest not; + +For very low among the fools is he + Who affirms without distinction, or denies, + As well in one as in the other case; + +Because it happens that full often bends + Current opinion in the false direction, + And then the feelings bind the intellect. + +Far more than uselessly he leaves the shore, + (Since he returneth not the same he went,) + Who fishes for the truth, and has no skill; + +And in the world proofs manifest thereof + Parmenides, Melissus, Brissus are, + And many who went on and knew not whither; + +Thus did Sabellius, Arius, and those fools + Who have been even as swords unto the Scriptures + In rendering distorted their straight faces. + +Nor yet shall people be too confident + In judging, even as he is who doth count + The corn in field or ever it be ripe. + +For I have seen all winter long the thorn + First show itself intractable and fierce, + And after bear the rose upon its top; + +And I have seen a ship direct and swift + Run o’er the sea throughout its course entire, + To perish at the harbour’s mouth at last. + +Let not Dame Bertha nor Ser Martin think, + Seeing one steal, another offering make, + To see them in the arbitrament divine; + +For one may rise, and fall the other may.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XIV + + +From centre unto rim, from rim to centre, + In a round vase the water moves itself, + As from without ’tis struck or from within. + +Into my mind upon a sudden dropped + What I am saying, at the moment when + Silent became the glorious life of Thomas, + +Because of the resemblance that was born + Of his discourse and that of Beatrice, + Whom, after him, it pleased thus to begin: + +“This man has need (and does not tell you so, + Nor with the voice, nor even in his thought) + Of going to the root of one truth more. + +Declare unto him if the light wherewith + Blossoms your substance shall remain with you + Eternally the same that it is now; + +And if it do remain, say in what manner, + After ye are again made visible, + It can be that it injure not your sight.” + +As by a greater gladness urged and drawn + They who are dancing in a ring sometimes + Uplift their voices and their motions quicken; + +So, at that orison devout and prompt, + The holy circles a new joy displayed + In their revolving and their wondrous song. + +Whoso lamenteth him that here we die + That we may live above, has never there + Seen the refreshment of the eternal rain. + +The One and Two and Three who ever liveth, + And reigneth ever in Three and Two and One, + Not circumscribed and all things circumscribing, + +Three several times was chanted by each one + Among those spirits, with such melody + That for all merit it were just reward; + +And, in the lustre most divine of all + The lesser ring, I heard a modest voice, + Such as perhaps the Angel’s was to Mary, + +Answer: “As long as the festivity + Of Paradise shall be, so long our love + Shall radiate round about us such a vesture. + +Its brightness is proportioned to the ardour, + The ardour to the vision; and the vision + Equals what grace it has above its worth. + +When, glorious and sanctified, our flesh + Is reassumed, then shall our persons be + More pleasing by their being all complete; + +For will increase whate’er bestows on us + Of light gratuitous the Good Supreme, + Light which enables us to look on Him; + +Therefore the vision must perforce increase, + Increase the ardour which from that is kindled, + Increase the radiance which from this proceeds. + +But even as a coal that sends forth flame, + And by its vivid whiteness overpowers it + So that its own appearance it maintains, + +Thus the effulgence that surrounds us now + Shall be o’erpowered in aspect by the flesh, + Which still to-day the earth doth cover up; + +Nor can so great a splendour weary us, + For strong will be the organs of the body + To everything which hath the power to please us.” + +So sudden and alert appeared to me + Both one and the other choir to say Amen, + That well they showed desire for their dead bodies; + +Nor sole for them perhaps, but for the mothers, + The fathers, and the rest who had been dear + Or ever they became eternal flames. + +And lo! all round about of equal brightness + Arose a lustre over what was there, + Like an horizon that is clearing up. + +And as at rise of early eve begin + Along the welkin new appearances, + So that the sight seems real and unreal, + +It seemed to me that new subsistences + Began there to be seen, and make a circle + Outside the other two circumferences. + +O very sparkling of the Holy Spirit, + How sudden and incandescent it became + Unto mine eyes, that vanquished bore it not! + +But Beatrice so beautiful and smiling + Appeared to me, that with the other sights + That followed not my memory I must leave her. + +Then to uplift themselves mine eyes resumed + The power, and I beheld myself translated + To higher salvation with my Lady only. + +Well was I ware that I was more uplifted + By the enkindled smiling of the star, + That seemed to me more ruddy than its wont. + +With all my heart, and in that dialect + Which is the same in all, such holocaust + To God I made as the new grace beseemed; + +And not yet from my bosom was exhausted + The ardour of sacrifice, before I knew + This offering was accepted and auspicious; + +For with so great a lustre and so red + Splendours appeared to me in twofold rays, + I said: “O Helios who dost so adorn them!” + +Even as distinct with less and greater lights + Glimmers between the two poles of the world + The Galaxy that maketh wise men doubt, + +Thus constellated in the depths of Mars, + Those rays described the venerable sign + That quadrants joining in a circle make. + +Here doth my memory overcome my genius; + For on that cross as levin gleamed forth Christ, + So that I cannot find ensample worthy; + +But he who takes his cross and follows Christ + Again will pardon me what I omit, + Seeing in that aurora lighten Christ. + +From horn to horn, and ’twixt the top and base, + Lights were in motion, brightly scintillating + As they together met and passed each other; + +Thus level and aslant and swift and slow + We here behold, renewing still the sight, + The particles of bodies long and short, + +Across the sunbeam move, wherewith is listed + Sometimes the shade, which for their own defence + People with cunning and with art contrive. + +And as a lute and harp, accordant strung + With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make + To him by whom the notes are not distinguished, + +So from the lights that there to me appeared + Upgathered through the cross a melody, + Which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn. + +Well was I ware it was of lofty laud, + Because there came to me, “Arise and conquer!” + As unto him who hears and comprehends not. + +So much enamoured I became therewith, + That until then there was not anything + That e’er had fettered me with such sweet bonds. + +Perhaps my word appears somewhat too bold, + Postponing the delight of those fair eyes, + Into which gazing my desire has rest; + +But who bethinks him that the living seals + Of every beauty grow in power ascending, + And that I there had not turned round to those, + +Can me excuse, if I myself accuse + To excuse myself, and see that I speak truly: + For here the holy joy is not disclosed, + +Because ascending it becomes more pure. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XV + + +A will benign, in which reveals itself + Ever the love that righteously inspires, + As in the iniquitous, cupidity, + +Silence imposed upon that dulcet lyre, + And quieted the consecrated chords, + That Heaven’s right hand doth tighten and relax. + +How unto just entreaties shall be deaf + Those substances, which, to give me desire + Of praying them, with one accord grew silent? + +’Tis well that without end he should lament, + Who for the love of thing that doth not last + Eternally despoils him of that love! + +As through the pure and tranquil evening air + There shoots from time to time a sudden fire, + Moving the eyes that steadfast were before, + +And seems to be a star that changeth place, + Except that in the part where it is kindled + Nothing is missed, and this endureth little; + +So from the horn that to the right extends + Unto that cross’s foot there ran a star + Out of the constellation shining there; + +Nor was the gem dissevered from its ribbon, + But down the radiant fillet ran along, + So that fire seemed it behind alabaster. + +Thus piteous did Anchises’ shade reach forward, + If any faith our greatest Muse deserve, + When in Elysium he his son perceived. + +“O sanguis meus, O superinfusa + Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui + Bis unquam Coeli janua reclusa?” + +Thus that effulgence; whence I gave it heed; + Then round unto my Lady turned my sight, + And on this side and that was stupefied; + +For in her eyes was burning such a smile + That with mine own methought I touched the bottom + Both of my grace and of my Paradise! + +Then, pleasant to the hearing and the sight, + The spirit joined to its beginning things + I understood not, so profound it spake; + +Nor did it hide itself from me by choice, + But by necessity; for its conception + Above the mark of mortals set itself. + +And when the bow of burning sympathy + Was so far slackened, that its speech descended + Towards the mark of our intelligence, + +The first thing that was understood by me + Was “Benedight be Thou, O Trine and One, + Who hast unto my seed so courteous been!” + +And it continued: “Hunger long and grateful, + Drawn from the reading of the mighty volume + Wherein is never changed the white nor dark, + +Thou hast appeased, my son, within this light + In which I speak to thee, by grace of her + Who to this lofty flight with plumage clothed thee. + +Thou thinkest that to me thy thought doth pass + From Him who is the first, as from the unit, + If that be known, ray out the five and six; + +And therefore who I am thou askest not, + And why I seem more joyous unto thee + Than any other of this gladsome crowd. + +Thou think’st the truth; because the small and great + Of this existence look into the mirror + Wherein, before thou think’st, thy thought thou showest. + +But that the sacred love, in which I watch + With sight perpetual, and which makes me thirst + With sweet desire, may better be fulfilled, + +Now let thy voice secure and frank and glad + Proclaim the wishes, the desire proclaim, + To which my answer is decreed already.” + +To Beatrice I turned me, and she heard + Before I spake, and smiled to me a sign, + That made the wings of my desire increase; + +Then in this wise began I: “Love and knowledge, + When on you dawned the first Equality, + Of the same weight for each of you became; + +For in the Sun, which lighted you and burned + With heat and radiance, they so equal are, + That all similitudes are insufficient. + +But among mortals will and argument, + For reason that to you is manifest, + Diversely feathered in their pinions are. + +Whence I, who mortal am, feel in myself + This inequality; so give not thanks, + Save in my heart, for this paternal welcome. + +Truly do I entreat thee, living topaz! + Set in this precious jewel as a gem, + That thou wilt satisfy me with thy name.” + +“O leaf of mine, in whom I pleasure took + E’en while awaiting, I was thine own root!” + Such a beginning he in answer made me. + +Then said to me: “That one from whom is named + Thy race, and who a hundred years and more + Has circled round the mount on the first cornice, + +A son of mine and thy great-grandsire was; + Well it behoves thee that the long fatigue + Thou shouldst for him make shorter with thy works. + +Florence, within the ancient boundary + From which she taketh still her tierce and nones, + Abode in quiet, temperate and chaste. + +No golden chain she had, nor coronal, + Nor ladies shod with sandal shoon, nor girdle + That caught the eye more than the person did. + +Not yet the daughter at her birth struck fear + Into the father, for the time and dower + Did not o’errun this side or that the measure. + +No houses had she void of families, + Not yet had thither come Sardanapalus + To show what in a chamber can be done; + +Not yet surpassed had Montemalo been + By your Uccellatojo, which surpassed + Shall in its downfall be as in its rise. + +Bellincion Berti saw I go begirt + With leather and with bone, and from the mirror + His dame depart without a painted face; + +And him of Nerli saw, and him of Vecchio, + Contented with their simple suits of buff + And with the spindle and the flax their dames. + +O fortunate women! and each one was certain + Of her own burial-place, and none as yet + For sake of France was in her bed deserted. + +One o’er the cradle kept her studious watch, + And in her lullaby the language used + That first delights the fathers and the mothers; + +Another, drawing tresses from her distaff, + Told o’er among her family the tales + Of Trojans and of Fesole and Rome. + +As great a marvel then would have been held + A Lapo Salterello, a Cianghella, + As Cincinnatus or Cornelia now. + +To such a quiet, such a beautiful + Life of the citizen, to such a safe + Community, and to so sweet an inn, + +Did Mary give me, with loud cries invoked, + And in your ancient Baptistery at once + Christian and Cacciaguida I became. + +Moronto was my brother, and Eliseo; + From Val di Pado came to me my wife, + And from that place thy surname was derived. + +I followed afterward the Emperor Conrad, + And he begirt me of his chivalry, + So much I pleased him with my noble deeds. + +I followed in his train against that law’s + Iniquity, whose people doth usurp + Your just possession, through your Pastor’s fault. + +There by that execrable race was I + Released from bonds of the fallacious world, + The love of which defileth many souls, + +And came from martyrdom unto this peace.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XVI + + +O thou our poor nobility of blood, + If thou dost make the people glory in thee + Down here where our affection languishes, + +A marvellous thing it ne’er will be to me; + For there where appetite is not perverted, + I say in Heaven, of thee I made a boast! + +Truly thou art a cloak that quickly shortens, + So that unless we piece thee day by day + Time goeth round about thee with his shears! + +With ‘You,’ which Rome was first to tolerate, + (Wherein her family less perseveres,) + Yet once again my words beginning made; + +Whence Beatrice, who stood somewhat apart, + Smiling, appeared like unto her who coughed + At the first failing writ of Guenever. + +And I began: “You are my ancestor, + You give to me all hardihood to speak, + You lift me so that I am more than I. + +So many rivulets with gladness fill + My mind, that of itself it makes a joy + Because it can endure this and not burst. + +Then tell me, my beloved root ancestral, + Who were your ancestors, and what the years + That in your boyhood chronicled themselves? + +Tell me about the sheepfold of Saint John, + How large it was, and who the people were + Within it worthy of the highest seats.” + +As at the blowing of the winds a coal + Quickens to flame, so I beheld that light + Become resplendent at my blandishments. + +And as unto mine eyes it grew more fair, + With voice more sweet and tender, but not in + This modern dialect, it said to me: + +“From uttering of the ‘Ave,’ till the birth + In which my mother, who is now a saint, + Of me was lightened who had been her burden, + +Unto its Lion had this fire returned + Five hundred fifty times and thirty more, + To reinflame itself beneath his paw. + +My ancestors and I our birthplace had + Where first is found the last ward of the city + By him who runneth in your annual game. + +Suffice it of my elders to hear this; + But who they were, and whence they thither came, + Silence is more considerate than speech. + +All those who at that time were there between + Mars and the Baptist, fit for bearing arms, + Were a fifth part of those who now are living; + +But the community, that now is mixed + With Campi and Certaldo and Figghine, + Pure in the lowest artisan was seen. + +O how much better ’twere to have as neighbours + The folk of whom I speak, and at Galluzzo + And at Trespiano have your boundary, + +Than have them in the town, and bear the stench + Of Aguglione’s churl, and him of Signa + Who has sharp eyes for trickery already. + +Had not the folk, which most of all the world + Degenerates, been a step-dame unto Caesar, + But as a mother to her son benignant, + +Some who turn Florentines, and trade and discount, + Would have gone back again to Simifonte + There where their grandsires went about as beggars. + +At Montemurlo still would be the Counts, + The Cerchi in the parish of Acone, + Perhaps in Valdigrieve the Buondelmonti. + +Ever the intermingling of the people + Has been the source of malady in cities, + As in the body food it surfeits on; + +And a blind bull more headlong plunges down + Than a blind lamb; and very often cuts + Better and more a single sword than five. + +If Luni thou regard, and Urbisaglia, + How they have passed away, and how are passing + Chiusi and Sinigaglia after them, + +To hear how races waste themselves away, + Will seem to thee no novel thing nor hard, + Seeing that even cities have an end. + +All things of yours have their mortality, + Even as yourselves; but it is hidden in some + That a long while endure, and lives are short; + +And as the turning of the lunar heaven + Covers and bares the shores without a pause, + In the like manner fortune does with Florence. + +Therefore should not appear a marvellous thing + What I shall say of the great Florentines + Of whom the fame is hidden in the Past. + +I saw the Ughi, saw the Catellini, + Filippi, Greci, Ormanni, and Alberichi, + Even in their fall illustrious citizens; + +And saw, as mighty as they ancient were, + With him of La Sannella him of Arca, + And Soldanier, Ardinghi, and Bostichi. + +Near to the gate that is at present laden + With a new felony of so much weight + That soon it shall be jetsam from the bark, + +The Ravignani were, from whom descended + The County Guido, and whoe’er the name + Of the great Bellincione since hath taken. + +He of La Pressa knew the art of ruling + Already, and already Galigajo + Had hilt and pommel gilded in his house. + +Mighty already was the Column Vair, + Sacchetti, Giuochi, Fifant, and Barucci, + And Galli, and they who for the bushel blush. + +The stock from which were the Calfucci born + Was great already, and already chosen + To curule chairs the Sizii and Arrigucci. + +O how beheld I those who are undone + By their own pride! and how the Balls of Gold + Florence enflowered in all their mighty deeds! + +So likewise did the ancestors of those + Who evermore, when vacant is your church, + Fatten by staying in consistory. + +The insolent race, that like a dragon follows + Whoever flees, and unto him that shows + His teeth or purse is gentle as a lamb, + +Already rising was, but from low people; + So that it pleased not Ubertin Donato + That his wife’s father should make him their kin. + +Already had Caponsacco to the Market + From Fesole descended, and already + Giuda and Infangato were good burghers. + +I’ll tell a thing incredible, but true; + One entered the small circuit by a gate + Which from the Della Pera took its name! + +Each one that bears the beautiful escutcheon + Of the great baron whose renown and name + The festival of Thomas keepeth fresh, + +Knighthood and privilege from him received; + Though with the populace unites himself + To-day the man who binds it with a border. + +Already were Gualterotti and Importuni; + And still more quiet would the Borgo be + If with new neighbours it remained unfed. + +The house from which is born your lamentation, + Through just disdain that death among you brought + And put an end unto your joyous life, + +Was honoured in itself and its companions. + O Buondelmonte, how in evil hour + Thou fled’st the bridal at another’s promptings! + +Many would be rejoicing who are sad, + If God had thee surrendered to the Ema + The first time that thou camest to the city. + +But it behoved the mutilated stone + Which guards the bridge, that Florence should provide + A victim in her latest hour of peace. + +With all these families, and others with them, + Florence beheld I in so great repose, + That no occasion had she whence to weep; + +With all these families beheld so just + And glorious her people, that the lily + Never upon the spear was placed reversed, + +Nor by division was vermilion made.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XVII + + +As came to Clymene, to be made certain + Of that which he had heard against himself, + He who makes fathers chary still to children, + +Even such was I, and such was I perceived + By Beatrice and by the holy light + That first on my account had changed its place. + +Therefore my Lady said to me: “Send forth + The flame of thy desire, so that it issue + Imprinted well with the internal stamp; + +Not that our knowledge may be greater made + By speech of thine, but to accustom thee + To tell thy thirst, that we may give thee drink.” + +“O my beloved tree, (that so dost lift thee, + That even as minds terrestrial perceive + No triangle containeth two obtuse, + +So thou beholdest the contingent things + Ere in themselves they are, fixing thine eyes + Upon the point in which all times are present,) + +While I was with Virgilius conjoined + Upon the mountain that the souls doth heal, + And when descending into the dead world, + +Were spoken to me of my future life + Some grievous words; although I feel myself + In sooth foursquare against the blows of chance. + +On this account my wish would be content + To hear what fortune is approaching me, + Because foreseen an arrow comes more slowly.” + +Thus did I say unto that selfsame light + That unto me had spoken before; and even + As Beatrice willed was my own will confessed. + +Not in vague phrase, in which the foolish folk + Ensnared themselves of old, ere yet was slain + The Lamb of God who taketh sins away, + +But with clear words and unambiguous + Language responded that paternal love, + Hid and revealed by its own proper smile: + +“Contingency, that outside of the volume + Of your materiality extends not, + Is all depicted in the eternal aspect. + +Necessity however thence it takes not, + Except as from the eye, in which ’tis mirrored, + A ship that with the current down descends. + +From thence, e’en as there cometh to the ear + Sweet harmony from an organ, comes in sight + To me the time that is preparing for thee. + +As forth from Athens went Hippolytus, + By reason of his step-dame false and cruel, + So thou from Florence must perforce depart. + +Already this is willed, and this is sought for; + And soon it shall be done by him who thinks it, + Where every day the Christ is bought and sold. + +The blame shall follow the offended party + In outcry as is usual; but the vengeance + Shall witness to the truth that doth dispense it. + +Thou shalt abandon everything beloved + Most tenderly, and this the arrow is + Which first the bow of banishment shoots forth. + +Thou shalt have proof how savoureth of salt + The bread of others, and how hard a road + The going down and up another’s stairs. + +And that which most shall weigh upon thy shoulders + Will be the bad and foolish company + With which into this valley thou shalt fall; + +For all ingrate, all mad and impious + Will they become against thee; but soon after + They, and not thou, shall have the forehead scarlet. + +Of their bestiality their own proceedings + Shall furnish proof; so ’twill be well for thee + A party to have made thee by thyself. + +Thine earliest refuge and thine earliest inn + Shall be the mighty Lombard’s courtesy, + Who on the Ladder bears the holy bird, + +Who such benign regard shall have for thee + That ’twixt you twain, in doing and in asking, + That shall be first which is with others last. + +With him shalt thou see one who at his birth + Has by this star of strength been so impressed, + That notable shall his achievements be. + +Not yet the people are aware of him + Through his young age, since only nine years yet + Around about him have these wheels revolved. + +But ere the Gascon cheat the noble Henry, + Some sparkles of his virtue shall appear + In caring not for silver nor for toil. + +So recognized shall his magnificence + Become hereafter, that his enemies + Will not have power to keep mute tongues about it. + +On him rely, and on his benefits; + By him shall many people be transformed, + Changing condition rich and mendicant; + +And written in thy mind thou hence shalt bear + Of him, but shalt not say it”—and things said he + Incredible to those who shall be present. + +Then added: “Son, these are the commentaries + On what was said to thee; behold the snares + That are concealed behind few revolutions; + +Yet would I not thy neighbours thou shouldst envy, + Because thy life into the future reaches + Beyond the punishment of their perfidies.” + +When by its silence showed that sainted soul + That it had finished putting in the woof + Into that web which I had given it warped, + +Began I, even as he who yearneth after, + Being in doubt, some counsel from a person + Who seeth, and uprightly wills, and loves: + +“Well see I, father mine, how spurreth on + The time towards me such a blow to deal me + As heaviest is to him who most gives way. + +Therefore with foresight it is well I arm me, + That, if the dearest place be taken from me, + I may not lose the others by my songs. + +Down through the world of infinite bitterness, + And o’er the mountain, from whose beauteous summit + The eyes of my own Lady lifted me, + +And afterward through heaven from light to light, + I have learned that which, if I tell again, + Will be a savour of strong herbs to many. + +And if I am a timid friend to truth, + I fear lest I may lose my life with those + Who will hereafter call this time the olden.” + +The light in which was smiling my own treasure + Which there I had discovered, flashed at first + As in the sunshine doth a golden mirror; + +Then made reply: “A conscience overcast + Or with its own or with another’s shame, + Will taste forsooth the tartness of thy word; + +But ne’ertheless, all falsehood laid aside, + Make manifest thy vision utterly, + And let them scratch wherever is the itch; + +For if thine utterance shall offensive be + At the first taste, a vital nutriment + ’Twill leave thereafter, when it is digested. + +This cry of thine shall do as doth the wind, + Which smiteth most the most exalted summits, + And that is no slight argument of honour. + +Therefore are shown to thee within these wheels, + Upon the mount and in the dolorous valley, + Only the souls that unto fame are known; + +Because the spirit of the hearer rests not, + Nor doth confirm its faith by an example + Which has the root of it unknown and hidden, + +Or other reason that is not apparent.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XVIII + + +Now was alone rejoicing in its word + That soul beatified, and I was tasting + My own, the bitter tempering with the sweet, + +And the Lady who to God was leading me + Said: “Change thy thought; consider that I am + Near unto Him who every wrong disburdens.” + +Unto the loving accents of my comfort + I turned me round, and then what love I saw + Within those holy eyes I here relinquish; + +Not only that my language I distrust, + But that my mind cannot return so far + Above itself, unless another guide it. + +Thus much upon that point can I repeat, + That, her again beholding, my affection + From every other longing was released. + +While the eternal pleasure, which direct + Rayed upon Beatrice, from her fair face + Contented me with its reflected aspect, + +Conquering me with the radiance of a smile, + She said to me, “Turn thee about and listen; + Not in mine eyes alone is Paradise.” + +Even as sometimes here do we behold + The affection in the look, if it be such + That all the soul is wrapt away by it, + +So, by the flaming of the effulgence holy + To which I turned, I recognized therein + The wish of speaking to me somewhat farther. + +And it began: “In this fifth resting-place + Upon the tree that liveth by its summit, + And aye bears fruit, and never loses leaf, + +Are blessed spirits that below, ere yet + They came to Heaven, were of such great renown + That every Muse therewith would affluent be. + +Therefore look thou upon the cross’s horns; + He whom I now shall name will there enact + What doth within a cloud its own swift fire.” + +I saw athwart the Cross a splendour drawn + By naming Joshua, (even as he did it,) + Nor noted I the word before the deed; + +And at the name of the great Maccabee + I saw another move itself revolving, + And gladness was the whip unto that top. + +Likewise for Charlemagne and for Orlando, + Two of them my regard attentive followed + As followeth the eye its falcon flying. + +William thereafterward, and Renouard, + And the Duke Godfrey, did attract my sight + Along upon that Cross, and Robert Guiscard. + +Then, moved and mingled with the other lights, + The soul that had addressed me showed how great + An artist ’twas among the heavenly singers. + +To my right side I turned myself around, + My duty to behold in Beatrice + Either by words or gesture signified; + +And so translucent I beheld her eyes, + So full of pleasure, that her countenance + Surpassed its other and its latest wont. + +And as, by feeling greater delectation, + A man in doing good from day to day + Becomes aware his virtue is increasing, + +So I became aware that my gyration + With heaven together had increased its arc, + That miracle beholding more adorned. + +And such as is the change, in little lapse + Of time, in a pale woman, when her face + Is from the load of bashfulness unladen, + +Such was it in mine eyes, when I had turned, + Caused by the whiteness of the temperate star, + The sixth, which to itself had gathered me. + +Within that Jovial torch did I behold + The sparkling of the love which was therein + Delineate our language to mine eyes. + +And even as birds uprisen from the shore, + As in congratulation o’er their food, + Make squadrons of themselves, now round, now long, + +So from within those lights the holy creatures + Sang flying to and fro, and in their figures + Made of themselves now D, now I, now L. + +First singing they to their own music moved; + Then one becoming of these characters, + A little while they rested and were silent. + +O divine Pegasea, thou who genius + Dost glorious make, and render it long-lived, + And this through thee the cities and the kingdoms, + +Illume me with thyself, that I may bring + Their figures out as I have them conceived! + Apparent be thy power in these brief verses! + +Themselves then they displayed in five times seven + Vowels and consonants; and I observed + The parts as they seemed spoken unto me. + +‘Diligite justitiam,’ these were + First verb and noun of all that was depicted; + ‘Qui judicatis terram’ were the last. + +Thereafter in the M of the fifth word + Remained they so arranged, that Jupiter + Seemed to be silver there with gold inlaid. + +And other lights I saw descend where was + The summit of the M, and pause there singing + The good, I think, that draws them to itself. + +Then, as in striking upon burning logs + Upward there fly innumerable sparks, + Whence fools are wont to look for auguries, + +More than a thousand lights seemed thence to rise, + And to ascend, some more, and others less, + Even as the Sun that lights them had allotted; + +And, each one being quiet in its place, + The head and neck beheld I of an eagle + Delineated by that inlaid fire. + +He who there paints has none to be his guide; + But Himself guides; and is from Him remembered + That virtue which is form unto the nest. + +The other beatitude, that contented seemed + At first to bloom a lily on the M, + By a slight motion followed out the imprint. + +O gentle star! what and how many gems + Did demonstrate to me, that all our justice + Effect is of that heaven which thou ingemmest! + +Wherefore I pray the Mind, in which begin + Thy motion and thy virtue, to regard + Whence comes the smoke that vitiates thy rays; + +So that a second time it now be wroth + With buying and with selling in the temple + Whose walls were built with signs and martyrdoms! + +O soldiery of heaven, whom I contemplate, + Implore for those who are upon the earth + All gone astray after the bad example! + +Once ’twas the custom to make war with swords; + But now ’tis made by taking here and there + The bread the pitying Father shuts from none. + +Yet thou, who writest but to cancel, think + That Peter and that Paul, who for this vineyard + Which thou art spoiling died, are still alive! + +Well canst thou say: “So steadfast my desire + Is unto him who willed to live alone, + And for a dance was led to martyrdom, + +That I know not the Fisherman nor Paul.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XIX + + +Appeared before me with its wings outspread + The beautiful image that in sweet fruition + Made jubilant the interwoven souls; + +Appeared a little ruby each, wherein + Ray of the sun was burning so enkindled + That each into mine eyes refracted it. + +And what it now behoves me to retrace + Nor voice has e’er reported, nor ink written, + Nor was by fantasy e’er comprehended; + +For speak I saw, and likewise heard, the beak, + And utter with its voice both ‘I’ and ‘My,’ + When in conception it was ‘We’ and ‘Our.’ + +And it began: “Being just and merciful + Am I exalted here unto that glory + Which cannot be exceeded by desire; + +And upon earth I left my memory + Such, that the evil-minded people there + Commend it, but continue not the story.” + +So doth a single heat from many embers + Make itself felt, even as from many loves + Issued a single sound from out that image. + +Whence I thereafter: “O perpetual flowers + Of the eternal joy, that only one + Make me perceive your odours manifold, + +Exhaling, break within me the great fast + Which a long season has in hunger held me, + Not finding for it any food on earth. + +Well do I know, that if in heaven its mirror + Justice Divine another realm doth make, + Yours apprehends it not through any veil. + +You know how I attentively address me + To listen; and you know what is the doubt + That is in me so very old a fast.” + +Even as a falcon, issuing from his hood, + Doth move his head, and with his wings applaud him, + Showing desire, and making himself fine, + +Saw I become that standard, which of lauds + Was interwoven of the grace divine, + With such songs as he knows who there rejoices. + +Then it began: “He who a compass turned + On the world’s outer verge, and who within it + Devised so much occult and manifest, + +Could not the impress of his power so make + On all the universe, as that his Word + Should not remain in infinite excess. + +And this makes certain that the first proud being, + Who was the paragon of every creature, + By not awaiting light fell immature. + +And hence appears it, that each minor nature + Is scant receptacle unto that good + Which has no end, and by itself is measured. + +In consequence our vision, which perforce + Must be some ray of that intelligence + With which all things whatever are replete, + +Cannot in its own nature be so potent, + That it shall not its origin discern + Far beyond that which is apparent to it. + +Therefore into the justice sempiternal + The power of vision that your world receives, + As eye into the ocean, penetrates; + +Which, though it see the bottom near the shore, + Upon the deep perceives it not, and yet + ’Tis there, but it is hidden by the depth. + +There is no light but comes from the serene + That never is o’ercast, nay, it is darkness + Or shadow of the flesh, or else its poison. + +Amply to thee is opened now the cavern + Which has concealed from thee the living justice + Of which thou mad’st such frequent questioning. + +For saidst thou: ‘Born a man is on the shore + Of Indus, and is none who there can speak + Of Christ, nor who can read, nor who can write; + +And all his inclinations and his actions + Are good, so far as human reason sees, + Without a sin in life or in discourse: + +He dieth unbaptised and without faith; + Where is this justice that condemneth him? + Where is his fault, if he do not believe?’ + +Now who art thou, that on the bench wouldst sit + In judgment at a thousand miles away, + With the short vision of a single span? + +Truly to him who with me subtilizes, + If so the Scripture were not over you, + For doubting there were marvellous occasion. + +O animals terrene, O stolid minds, + The primal will, that in itself is good, + Ne’er from itself, the Good Supreme, has moved. + +So much is just as is accordant with it; + No good created draws it to itself, + But it, by raying forth, occasions that.” + +Even as above her nest goes circling round + The stork when she has fed her little ones, + And he who has been fed looks up at her, + +So lifted I my brows, and even such + Became the blessed image, which its wings + Was moving, by so many counsels urged. + +Circling around it sang, and said: “As are + My notes to thee, who dost not comprehend them, + Such is the eternal judgment to you mortals.” + +Those lucent splendours of the Holy Spirit + Grew quiet then, but still within the standard + That made the Romans reverend to the world. + +It recommenced: “Unto this kingdom never + Ascended one who had not faith in Christ, + Before or since he to the tree was nailed. + +But look thou, many crying are, ‘Christ, Christ!’ + Who at the judgment shall be far less near + To him than some shall be who knew not Christ. + +Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn, + When the two companies shall be divided, + The one for ever rich, the other poor. + +What to your kings may not the Persians say, + When they that volume opened shall behold + In which are written down all their dispraises? + +There shall be seen, among the deeds of Albert, + That which ere long shall set the pen in motion, + For which the realm of Prague shall be deserted. + +There shall be seen the woe that on the Seine + He brings by falsifying of the coin, + Who by the blow of a wild boar shall die. + +There shall be seen the pride that causes thirst, + Which makes the Scot and Englishman so mad + That they within their boundaries cannot rest; + +Be seen the luxury and effeminate life + Of him of Spain, and the Bohemian, + Who valour never knew and never wished; + +Be seen the Cripple of Jerusalem, + His goodness represented by an I, + While the reverse an M shall represent; + +Be seen the avarice and poltroonery + Of him who guards the Island of the Fire, + Wherein Anchises finished his long life; + +And to declare how pitiful he is + Shall be his record in contracted letters + Which shall make note of much in little space. + +And shall appear to each one the foul deeds + Of uncle and of brother who a nation + So famous have dishonoured, and two crowns. + +And he of Portugal and he of Norway + Shall there be known, and he of Rascia too, + Who saw in evil hour the coin of Venice. + +O happy Hungary, if she let herself + Be wronged no farther! and Navarre the happy, + If with the hills that gird her she be armed! + +And each one may believe that now, as hansel + Thereof, do Nicosia and Famagosta + Lament and rage because of their own beast, + +Who from the others’ flank departeth not.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XX + + +When he who all the world illuminates + Out of our hemisphere so far descends + That on all sides the daylight is consumed, + +The heaven, that erst by him alone was kindled, + Doth suddenly reveal itself again + By many lights, wherein is one resplendent. + +And came into my mind this act of heaven, + When the ensign of the world and of its leaders + Had silent in the blessed beak become; + +Because those living luminaries all, + By far more luminous, did songs begin + Lapsing and falling from my memory. + +O gentle Love, that with a smile dost cloak thee, + How ardent in those sparks didst thou appear, + That had the breath alone of holy thoughts! + +After the precious and pellucid crystals, + With which begemmed the sixth light I beheld, + Silence imposed on the angelic bells, + +I seemed to hear the murmuring of a river + That clear descendeth down from rock to rock, + Showing the affluence of its mountain-top. + +And as the sound upon the cithern’s neck + Taketh its form, and as upon the vent + Of rustic pipe the wind that enters it, + +Even thus, relieved from the delay of waiting, + That murmuring of the eagle mounted up + Along its neck, as if it had been hollow. + +There it became a voice, and issued thence + From out its beak, in such a form of words + As the heart waited for wherein I wrote them. + +“The part in me which sees and bears the sun + In mortal eagles,” it began to me, + “Now fixedly must needs be looked upon; + +For of the fires of which I make my figure, + Those whence the eye doth sparkle in my head + Of all their orders the supremest are. + +He who is shining in the midst as pupil + Was once the singer of the Holy Spirit, + Who bore the ark from city unto city; + +Now knoweth he the merit of his song, + In so far as effect of his own counsel, + By the reward which is commensurate. + +Of five, that make a circle for my brow, + He that approacheth nearest to my beak + Did the poor widow for her son console; + +Now knoweth he how dearly it doth cost + Not following Christ, by the experience + Of this sweet life and of its opposite. + +He who comes next in the circumference + Of which I speak, upon its highest arc, + Did death postpone by penitence sincere; + +Now knoweth he that the eternal judgment + Suffers no change, albeit worthy prayer + Maketh below to-morrow of to-day. + +The next who follows, with the laws and me, + Under the good intent that bore bad fruit + Became a Greek by ceding to the pastor; + +Now knoweth he how all the ill deduced + From his good action is not harmful to him, + Although the world thereby may be destroyed. + +And he, whom in the downward arc thou seest, + Guglielmo was, whom the same land deplores + That weepeth Charles and Frederick yet alive; + +Now knoweth he how heaven enamoured is + With a just king; and in the outward show + Of his effulgence he reveals it still. + +Who would believe, down in the errant world, + That e’er the Trojan Ripheus in this round + Could be the fifth one of the holy lights? + +Now knoweth he enough of what the world + Has not the power to see of grace divine, + Although his sight may not discern the bottom.” + +Like as a lark that in the air expatiates, + First singing and then silent with content + Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her, + +Such seemed to me the image of the imprint + Of the eternal pleasure, by whose will + Doth everything become the thing it is. + +And notwithstanding to my doubt I was + As glass is to the colour that invests it, + To wait the time in silence it endured not, + +But forth from out my mouth, “What things are these?” + Extorted with the force of its own weight; + Whereat I saw great joy of coruscation. + +Thereafterward with eye still more enkindled + The blessed standard made to me reply, + To keep me not in wonderment suspended: + +“I see that thou believest in these things + Because I say them, but thou seest not how; + So that, although believed in, they are hidden. + +Thou doest as he doth who a thing by name + Well apprehendeth, but its quiddity + Cannot perceive, unless another show it. + +‘Regnum coelorum’ suffereth violence + From fervent love, and from that living hope + That overcometh the Divine volition; + +Not in the guise that man o’ercometh man, + But conquers it because it will be conquered, + And conquered conquers by benignity. + +The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth + Cause thee astonishment, because with them + Thou seest the region of the angels painted. + +They passed not from their bodies, as thou thinkest, + Gentiles, but Christians in the steadfast faith + Of feet that were to suffer and had suffered. + +For one from Hell, where no one e’er turns back + Unto good will, returned unto his bones, + And that of living hope was the reward,— + +Of living hope, that placed its efficacy + In prayers to God made to resuscitate him, + So that ’twere possible to move his will. + +The glorious soul concerning which I speak, + Returning to the flesh, where brief its stay, + Believed in Him who had the power to aid it; + +And, in believing, kindled to such fire + Of genuine love, that at the second death + Worthy it was to come unto this joy. + +The other one, through grace, that from so deep + A fountain wells that never hath the eye + Of any creature reached its primal wave, + +Set all his love below on righteousness; + Wherefore from grace to grace did God unclose + His eye to our redemption yet to be, + +Whence he believed therein, and suffered not + From that day forth the stench of paganism, + And he reproved therefor the folk perverse. + +Those Maidens three, whom at the right-hand wheel + Thou didst behold, were unto him for baptism + More than a thousand years before baptizing. + +O thou predestination, how remote + Thy root is from the aspect of all those + Who the First Cause do not behold entire! + +And you, O mortals! hold yourselves restrained + In judging; for ourselves, who look on God, + We do not know as yet all the elect; + +And sweet to us is such a deprivation, + Because our good in this good is made perfect, + That whatsoe’er God wills, we also will.” + +After this manner by that shape divine, + To make clear in me my short-sightedness, + Was given to me a pleasant medicine; + +And as good singer a good lutanist + Accompanies with vibrations of the chords, + Whereby more pleasantness the song acquires, + +So, while it spake, do I remember me + That I beheld both of those blessed lights, + Even as the winking of the eyes concords, + +Moving unto the words their little flames. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXI + + +Already on my Lady’s face mine eyes + Again were fastened, and with these my mind, + And from all other purpose was withdrawn; + +And she smiled not; but “If I were to smile,” + She unto me began, “thou wouldst become + Like Semele, when she was turned to ashes. + +Because my beauty, that along the stairs + Of the eternal palace more enkindles, + As thou hast seen, the farther we ascend, + +If it were tempered not, is so resplendent + That all thy mortal power in its effulgence + Would seem a leaflet that the thunder crushes. + +We are uplifted to the seventh splendour, + That underneath the burning Lion’s breast + Now radiates downward mingled with his power. + +Fix in direction of thine eyes the mind, + And make of them a mirror for the figure + That in this mirror shall appear to thee.” + +He who could know what was the pasturage + My sight had in that blessed countenance, + When I transferred me to another care, + +Would recognize how grateful was to me + Obedience unto my celestial escort, + By counterpoising one side with the other. + +Within the crystal which, around the world + Revolving, bears the name of its dear leader, + Under whom every wickedness lay dead, + +Coloured like gold, on which the sunshine gleams, + A stairway I beheld to such a height + Uplifted, that mine eye pursued it not. + +Likewise beheld I down the steps descending + So many splendours, that I thought each light + That in the heaven appears was there diffused. + +And as accordant with their natural custom + The rooks together at the break of day + Bestir themselves to warm their feathers cold; + +Then some of them fly off without return, + Others come back to where they started from, + And others, wheeling round, still keep at home; + +Such fashion it appeared to me was there + Within the sparkling that together came, + As soon as on a certain step it struck, + +And that which nearest unto us remained + Became so clear, that in my thought I said, + “Well I perceive the love thou showest me; + +But she, from whom I wait the how and when + Of speech and silence, standeth still; whence I + Against desire do well if I ask not.” + +She thereupon, who saw my silentness + In the sight of Him who seeth everything, + Said unto me, “Let loose thy warm desire.” + +And I began: “No merit of my own + Renders me worthy of response from thee; + But for her sake who granteth me the asking, + +Thou blessed life that dost remain concealed + In thy beatitude, make known to me + The cause which draweth thee so near my side; + +And tell me why is silent in this wheel + The dulcet symphony of Paradise, + That through the rest below sounds so devoutly.” + +“Thou hast thy hearing mortal as thy sight,” + It answer made to me; “they sing not here, + For the same cause that Beatrice has not smiled. + +Thus far adown the holy stairway’s steps + Have I descended but to give thee welcome + With words, and with the light that mantles me; + +Nor did more love cause me to be more ready, + For love as much and more up there is burning, + As doth the flaming manifest to thee. + +But the high charity, that makes us servants + Prompt to the counsel which controls the world, + Allotteth here, even as thou dost observe.” + +“I see full well,” said I, “O sacred lamp! + How love unfettered in this court sufficeth + To follow the eternal Providence; + +But this is what seems hard for me to see, + Wherefore predestinate wast thou alone + Unto this office from among thy consorts.” + +No sooner had I come to the last word, + Than of its middle made the light a centre, + Whirling itself about like a swift millstone. + +When answer made the love that was therein: + “On me directed is a light divine, + Piercing through this in which I am embosomed, + +Of which the virtue with my sight conjoined + Lifts me above myself so far, I see + The supreme essence from which this is drawn. + +Hence comes the joyfulness with which I flame, + For to my sight, as far as it is clear, + The clearness of the flame I equal make. + +But that soul in the heaven which is most pure, + That seraph which his eye on God most fixes, + Could this demand of thine not satisfy; + +Because so deeply sinks in the abyss + Of the eternal statute what thou askest, + From all created sight it is cut off. + +And to the mortal world, when thou returnest, + This carry back, that it may not presume + Longer tow’rd such a goal to move its feet. + +The mind, that shineth here, on earth doth smoke; + From this observe how can it do below + That which it cannot though the heaven assume it?” + +Such limit did its words prescribe to me, + The question I relinquished, and restricted + Myself to ask it humbly who it was. + +“Between two shores of Italy rise cliffs, + And not far distant from thy native place, + So high, the thunders far below them sound, + +And form a ridge that Catria is called, + ’Neath which is consecrate a hermitage + Wont to be dedicate to worship only.” + +Thus unto me the third speech recommenced, + And then, continuing, it said: “Therein + Unto God’s service I became so steadfast, + +That feeding only on the juice of olives + Lightly I passed away the heats and frosts, + Contented in my thoughts contemplative. + +That cloister used to render to these heavens + Abundantly, and now is empty grown, + So that perforce it soon must be revealed. + +I in that place was Peter Damiano; + And Peter the Sinner was I in the house + Of Our Lady on the Adriatic shore. + +Little of mortal life remained to me, + When I was called and dragged forth to the hat + Which shifteth evermore from bad to worse. + +Came Cephas, and the mighty Vessel came + Of the Holy Spirit, meagre and barefooted, + Taking the food of any hostelry. + +Now some one to support them on each side + The modern shepherds need, and some to lead them, + So heavy are they, and to hold their trains. + +They cover up their palfreys with their cloaks, + So that two beasts go underneath one skin; + O Patience, that dost tolerate so much!” + +At this voice saw I many little flames + From step to step descending and revolving, + And every revolution made them fairer. + +Round about this one came they and stood still, + And a cry uttered of so loud a sound, + It here could find no parallel, nor I + +Distinguished it, the thunder so o’ercame me. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXII + + +Oppressed with stupor, I unto my guide + Turned like a little child who always runs + For refuge there where he confideth most; + +And she, even as a mother who straightway + Gives comfort to her pale and breathless boy + With voice whose wont it is to reassure him, + +Said to me: “Knowest thou not thou art in heaven, + And knowest thou not that heaven is holy all + And what is done here cometh from good zeal? + +After what wise the singing would have changed thee + And I by smiling, thou canst now imagine, + Since that the cry has startled thee so much, + +In which if thou hadst understood its prayers + Already would be known to thee the vengeance + Which thou shalt look upon before thou diest. + +The sword above here smiteth not in haste + Nor tardily, howe’er it seem to him + Who fearing or desiring waits for it. + +But turn thee round towards the others now, + For very illustrious spirits shalt thou see, + If thou thy sight directest as I say.” + +As it seemed good to her mine eyes I turned, + And saw a hundred spherules that together + With mutual rays each other more embellished. + +I stood as one who in himself represses + The point of his desire, and ventures not + To question, he so feareth the too much. + +And now the largest and most luculent + Among those pearls came forward, that it might + Make my desire concerning it content. + +Within it then I heard: “If thou couldst see + Even as myself the charity that burns + Among us, thy conceits would be expressed; + +But, that by waiting thou mayst not come late + To the high end, I will make answer even + Unto the thought of which thou art so chary. + +That mountain on whose slope Cassino stands + Was frequented of old upon its summit + By a deluded folk and ill-disposed; + +And I am he who first up thither bore + The name of Him who brought upon the earth + The truth that so much sublimateth us. + +And such abundant grace upon me shone + That all the neighbouring towns I drew away + From the impious worship that seduced the world. + +These other fires, each one of them, were men + Contemplative, enkindled by that heat + Which maketh holy flowers and fruits spring up. + +Here is Macarius, here is Romualdus, + Here are my brethren, who within the cloisters + Their footsteps stayed and kept a steadfast heart.” + +And I to him: “The affection which thou showest + Speaking with me, and the good countenance + Which I behold and note in all your ardours, + +In me have so my confidence dilated + As the sun doth the rose, when it becomes + As far unfolded as it hath the power. + +Therefore I pray, and thou assure me, father, + If I may so much grace receive, that I + May thee behold with countenance unveiled.” + +He thereupon: “Brother, thy high desire + In the remotest sphere shall be fulfilled, + Where are fulfilled all others and my own. + +There perfect is, and ripened, and complete, + Every desire; within that one alone + Is every part where it has always been; + +For it is not in space, nor turns on poles, + And unto it our stairway reaches up, + Whence thus from out thy sight it steals away. + +Up to that height the Patriarch Jacob saw it + Extending its supernal part, what time + So thronged with angels it appeared to him. + +But to ascend it now no one uplifts + His feet from off the earth, and now my Rule + Below remaineth for mere waste of paper. + +The walls that used of old to be an Abbey + Are changed to dens of robbers, and the cowls + Are sacks filled full of miserable flour. + +But heavy usury is not taken up + So much against God’s pleasure as that fruit + Which maketh so insane the heart of monks; + +For whatsoever hath the Church in keeping + Is for the folk that ask it in God’s name, + Not for one’s kindred or for something worse. + +The flesh of mortals is so very soft, + That good beginnings down below suffice not + From springing of the oak to bearing acorns. + +Peter began with neither gold nor silver, + And I with orison and abstinence, + And Francis with humility his convent. + +And if thou lookest at each one’s beginning, + And then regardest whither he has run, + Thou shalt behold the white changed into brown. + +In verity the Jordan backward turned, + And the sea’s fleeing, when God willed were more + A wonder to behold, than succour here.” + +Thus unto me he said; and then withdrew + To his own band, and the band closed together; + Then like a whirlwind all was upward rapt. + +The gentle Lady urged me on behind them + Up o’er that stairway by a single sign, + So did her virtue overcome my nature; + +Nor here below, where one goes up and down + By natural law, was motion e’er so swift + That it could be compared unto my wing. + +Reader, as I may unto that devout + Triumph return, on whose account I often + For my transgressions weep and beat my breast,— + +Thou hadst not thrust thy finger in the fire + And drawn it out again, before I saw + The sign that follows Taurus, and was in it. + +O glorious stars, O light impregnated + With mighty virtue, from which I acknowledge + All of my genius, whatsoe’er it be, + +With you was born, and hid himself with you, + He who is father of all mortal life, + When first I tasted of the Tuscan air; + +And then when grace was freely given to me + To enter the high wheel which turns you round, + Your region was allotted unto me. + +To you devoutly at this hour my soul + Is sighing, that it virtue may acquire + For the stern pass that draws it to itself. + +“Thou art so near unto the last salvation,” + Thus Beatrice began, “thou oughtest now + To have thine eves unclouded and acute; + +And therefore, ere thou enter farther in, + Look down once more, and see how vast a world + Thou hast already put beneath thy feet; + +So that thy heart, as jocund as it may, + Present itself to the triumphant throng + That comes rejoicing through this rounded ether.” + +I with my sight returned through one and all + The sevenfold spheres, and I beheld this globe + Such that I smiled at its ignoble semblance; + +And that opinion I approve as best + Which doth account it least; and he who thinks + Of something else may truly be called just. + +I saw the daughter of Latona shining + Without that shadow, which to me was cause + That once I had believed her rare and dense. + +The aspect of thy son, Hyperion, + Here I sustained, and saw how move themselves + Around and near him Maia and Dione. + +Thence there appeared the temperateness of Jove + ’Twixt son and father, and to me was clear + The change that of their whereabout they make; + +And all the seven made manifest to me + How great they are, and eke how swift they are, + And how they are in distant habitations. + +The threshing-floor that maketh us so proud, + To me revolving with the eternal Twins, + Was all apparent made from hill to harbour! + +Then to the beauteous eyes mine eyes I turned. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXIII + + +Even as a bird, ’mid the beloved leaves, + Quiet upon the nest of her sweet brood + Throughout the night, that hideth all things from us, + +Who, that she may behold their longed-for looks + And find the food wherewith to nourish them, + In which, to her, grave labours grateful are, + +Anticipates the time on open spray + And with an ardent longing waits the sun, + Gazing intent as soon as breaks the dawn: + +Even thus my Lady standing was, erect + And vigilant, turned round towards the zone + Underneath which the sun displays less haste; + +So that beholding her distraught and wistful, + Such I became as he is who desiring + For something yearns, and hoping is appeased. + +But brief the space from one When to the other; + Of my awaiting, say I, and the seeing + The welkin grow resplendent more and more. + +And Beatrice exclaimed: “Behold the hosts + Of Christ’s triumphal march, and all the fruit + Harvested by the rolling of these spheres!” + +It seemed to me her face was all aflame; + And eyes she had so full of ecstasy + That I must needs pass on without describing. + +As when in nights serene of the full moon + Smiles Trivia among the nymphs eternal + Who paint the firmament through all its gulfs, + +Saw I, above the myriads of lamps, + A Sun that one and all of them enkindled, + E’en as our own doth the supernal sights, + +And through the living light transparent shone + The lucent substance so intensely clear + Into my sight, that I sustained it not. + +O Beatrice, thou gentle guide and dear! + To me she said: “What overmasters thee + A virtue is from which naught shields itself. + +There are the wisdom and the omnipotence + That oped the thoroughfares ’twixt heaven and earth, + For which there erst had been so long a yearning.” + +As fire from out a cloud unlocks itself, + Dilating so it finds not room therein, + And down, against its nature, falls to earth, + +So did my mind, among those aliments + Becoming larger, issue from itself, + And that which it became cannot remember. + +“Open thine eyes, and look at what I am: + Thou hast beheld such things, that strong enough + Hast thou become to tolerate my smile.” + +I was as one who still retains the feeling + Of a forgotten vision, and endeavours + In vain to bring it back into his mind, + +When I this invitation heard, deserving + Of so much gratitude, it never fades + Out of the book that chronicles the past. + +If at this moment sounded all the tongues + That Polyhymnia and her sisters made + Most lubrical with their delicious milk, + +To aid me, to a thousandth of the truth + It would not reach, singing the holy smile + And how the holy aspect it illumed. + +And therefore, representing Paradise, + The sacred poem must perforce leap over, + Even as a man who finds his way cut off; + +But whoso thinketh of the ponderous theme, + And of the mortal shoulder laden with it, + Should blame it not, if under this it tremble. + +It is no passage for a little boat + This which goes cleaving the audacious prow, + Nor for a pilot who would spare himself. + +“Why doth my face so much enamour thee, + That to the garden fair thou turnest not, + Which under the rays of Christ is blossoming? + +There is the Rose in which the Word Divine + Became incarnate; there the lilies are + By whose perfume the good way was discovered.” + +Thus Beatrice; and I, who to her counsels + Was wholly ready, once again betook me + Unto the battle of the feeble brows. + +As in the sunshine, that unsullied streams + Through fractured cloud, ere now a meadow of flowers + Mine eyes with shadow covered o’er have seen, + +So troops of splendours manifold I saw + Illumined from above with burning rays, + Beholding not the source of the effulgence. + +O power benignant that dost so imprint them! + Thou didst exalt thyself to give more scope + There to mine eyes, that were not strong enough. + +The name of that fair flower I e’er invoke + Morning and evening utterly enthralled + My soul to gaze upon the greater fire. + +And when in both mine eyes depicted were + The glory and greatness of the living star + Which there excelleth, as it here excelled, + +Athwart the heavens a little torch descended + Formed in a circle like a coronal, + And cinctured it, and whirled itself about it. + +Whatever melody most sweetly soundeth + On earth, and to itself most draws the soul, + Would seem a cloud that, rent asunder, thunders, + +Compared unto the sounding of that lyre + Wherewith was crowned the sapphire beautiful, + Which gives the clearest heaven its sapphire hue. + +“I am Angelic Love, that circle round + The joy sublime which breathes from out the womb + That was the hostelry of our Desire; + +And I shall circle, Lady of Heaven, while + Thou followest thy Son, and mak’st diviner + The sphere supreme, because thou enterest there.” + +Thus did the circulated melody + Seal itself up; and all the other lights + Were making to resound the name of Mary. + +The regal mantle of the volumes all + Of that world, which most fervid is and living + With breath of God and with his works and ways, + +Extended over us its inner border, + So very distant, that the semblance of it + There where I was not yet appeared to me. + +Therefore mine eyes did not possess the power + Of following the incoronated flame, + Which mounted upward near to its own seed. + +And as a little child, that towards its mother + Stretches its arms, when it the milk has taken, + Through impulse kindled into outward flame, + +Each of those gleams of whiteness upward reached + So with its summit, that the deep affection + They had for Mary was revealed to me. + +Thereafter they remained there in my sight, + ‘Regina coeli’ singing with such sweetness, + That ne’er from me has the delight departed. + +O, what exuberance is garnered up + Within those richest coffers, which had been + Good husbandmen for sowing here below! + +There they enjoy and live upon the treasure + Which was acquired while weeping in the exile + Of Babylon, wherein the gold was left. + +There triumpheth, beneath the exalted Son + Of God and Mary, in his victory, + Both with the ancient council and the new, + +He who doth keep the keys of such a glory. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXIV + + +“O company elect to the great supper + Of the Lamb benedight, who feedeth you + So that for ever full is your desire, + +If by the grace of God this man foretaste + Something of that which falleth from your table, + Or ever death prescribe to him the time, + +Direct your mind to his immense desire, + And him somewhat bedew; ye drinking are + For ever at the fount whence comes his thought.” + +Thus Beatrice; and those souls beatified + Transformed themselves to spheres on steadfast poles, + Flaming intensely in the guise of comets. + +And as the wheels in works of horologes + Revolve so that the first to the beholder + Motionless seems, and the last one to fly, + +So in like manner did those carols, dancing + In different measure, of their affluence + Give me the gauge, as they were swift or slow. + +From that one which I noted of most beauty + Beheld I issue forth a fire so happy + That none it left there of a greater brightness; + +And around Beatrice three several times + It whirled itself with so divine a song, + My fantasy repeats it not to me; + +Therefore the pen skips, and I write it not, + Since our imagination for such folds, + Much more our speech, is of a tint too glaring. + +“O holy sister mine, who us implorest + With such devotion, by thine ardent love + Thou dost unbind me from that beautiful sphere!” + +Thereafter, having stopped, the blessed fire + Unto my Lady did direct its breath, + Which spake in fashion as I here have said. + +And she: “O light eterne of the great man + To whom our Lord delivered up the keys + He carried down of this miraculous joy, + +This one examine on points light and grave, + As good beseemeth thee, about the Faith + By means of which thou on the sea didst walk. + +If he love well, and hope well, and believe, + From thee ’tis hid not; for thou hast thy sight + There where depicted everything is seen. + +But since this kingdom has made citizens + By means of the true Faith, to glorify it + ’Tis well he have the chance to speak thereof.” + +As baccalaureate arms himself, and speaks not + Until the master doth propose the question, + To argue it, and not to terminate it, + +So did I arm myself with every reason, + While she was speaking, that I might be ready + For such a questioner and such profession. + +“Say, thou good Christian; manifest thyself; + What is the Faith?” Whereat I raised my brow + Unto that light wherefrom was this breathed forth. + +Then turned I round to Beatrice, and she + Prompt signals made to me that I should pour + The water forth from my internal fountain. + +“May grace, that suffers me to make confession,” + Began I, “to the great centurion, + Cause my conceptions all to be explicit!” + +And I continued: “As the truthful pen, + Father, of thy dear brother wrote of it, + Who put with thee Rome into the good way, + +Faith is the substance of the things we hope for, + And evidence of those that are not seen; + And this appears to me its quiddity.” + +Then heard I: “Very rightly thou perceivest, + If well thou understandest why he placed it + With substances and then with evidences.” + +And I thereafterward: “The things profound, + That here vouchsafe to me their apparition, + Unto all eyes below are so concealed, + +That they exist there only in belief, + Upon the which is founded the high hope, + And hence it takes the nature of a substance. + +And it behoveth us from this belief + To reason without having other sight, + And hence it has the nature of evidence.” + +Then heard I: “If whatever is acquired + Below by doctrine were thus understood, + No sophist’s subtlety would there find place.” + +Thus was breathed forth from that enkindled love; + Then added: “Very well has been gone over + Already of this coin the alloy and weight; + +But tell me if thou hast it in thy purse?” + And I: “Yes, both so shining and so round + That in its stamp there is no peradventure.” + +Thereafter issued from the light profound + That there resplendent was: “This precious jewel, + Upon the which is every virtue founded, + +Whence hadst thou it?” And I: “The large outpouring + Of Holy Spirit, which has been diffused + Upon the ancient parchments and the new, + +A syllogism is, which proved it to me + With such acuteness, that, compared therewith, + All demonstration seems to me obtuse.” + +And then I heard: “The ancient and the new + Postulates, that to thee are so conclusive, + Why dost thou take them for the word divine?” + +And I: “The proofs, which show the truth to me, + Are the works subsequent, whereunto Nature + Ne’er heated iron yet, nor anvil beat.” + +’Twas answered me: “Say, who assureth thee + That those works ever were? the thing itself + That must be proved, nought else to thee affirms it.” + +“Were the world to Christianity converted,” + I said, “withouten miracles, this one + Is such, the rest are not its hundredth part; + +Because that poor and fasting thou didst enter + Into the field to sow there the good plant, + Which was a vine and has become a thorn!” + +This being finished, the high, holy Court + Resounded through the spheres, “One God we praise!” + In melody that there above is chanted. + +And then that Baron, who from branch to branch, + Examining, had thus conducted me, + Till the extremest leaves we were approaching, + +Again began: “The Grace that dallying + Plays with thine intellect thy mouth has opened, + Up to this point, as it should opened be, + +So that I do approve what forth emerged; + But now thou must express what thou believest, + And whence to thy belief it was presented.” + +“O holy father, spirit who beholdest + What thou believedst so that thou o’ercamest, + Towards the sepulchre, more youthful feet,” + +Began I, “thou dost wish me in this place + The form to manifest of my prompt belief, + And likewise thou the cause thereof demandest. + +And I respond: In one God I believe, + Sole and eterne, who moveth all the heavens + With love and with desire, himself unmoved; + +And of such faith not only have I proofs + Physical and metaphysical, but gives them + Likewise the truth that from this place rains down + +Through Moses, through the Prophets and the Psalms, + Through the Evangel, and through you, who wrote + After the fiery Spirit sanctified you; + +In Persons three eterne believe, and these + One essence I believe, so one and trine + They bear conjunction both with ‘sunt’ and ‘est.’ + +With the profound condition and divine + Which now I touch upon, doth stamp my mind + Ofttimes the doctrine evangelical. + +This the beginning is, this is the spark + Which afterwards dilates to vivid flame, + And, like a star in heaven, is sparkling in me.” + +Even as a lord who hears what pleaseth him + His servant straight embraces, gratulating + For the good news as soon as he is silent; + +So, giving me its benediction, singing, + Three times encircled me, when I was silent, + The apostolic light, at whose command + +I spoken had, in speaking I so pleased him. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXV + + +If e’er it happen that the Poem Sacred, + To which both heaven and earth have set their hand, + So that it many a year hath made me lean, + +O’ercome the cruelty that bars me out + From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered, + An enemy to the wolves that war upon it, + +With other voice forthwith, with other fleece + Poet will I return, and at my font + Baptismal will I take the laurel crown; + +Because into the Faith that maketh known + All souls to God there entered I, and then + Peter for her sake thus my brow encircled. + +Thereafterward towards us moved a light + Out of that band whence issued the first-fruits + Which of his vicars Christ behind him left, + +And then my Lady, full of ecstasy, + Said unto me: “Look, look! behold the Baron + For whom below Galicia is frequented.” + +In the same way as, when a dove alights + Near his companion, both of them pour forth, + Circling about and murmuring, their affection, + +So one beheld I by the other grand + Prince glorified to be with welcome greeted, + Lauding the food that there above is eaten. + +But when their gratulations were complete, + Silently ‘coram me’ each one stood still, + So incandescent it o’ercame my sight. + +Smiling thereafterwards, said Beatrice: + “Illustrious life, by whom the benefactions + Of our Basilica have been described, + +Make Hope resound within this altitude; + Thou knowest as oft thou dost personify it + As Jesus to the three gave greater clearness.”— + +“Lift up thy head, and make thyself assured; + For what comes hither from the mortal world + Must needs be ripened in our radiance.” + +This comfort came to me from the second fire; + Wherefore mine eyes I lifted to the hills, + Which bent them down before with too great weight. + +“Since, through his grace, our Emperor wills that thou + Shouldst find thee face to face, before thy death, + In the most secret chamber, with his Counts, + +So that, the truth beholden of this court, + Hope, which below there rightfully enamours, + Thereby thou strengthen in thyself and others, + +Say what it is, and how is flowering with it + Thy mind, and say from whence it came to thee.” + Thus did the second light again continue. + +And the Compassionate, who piloted + The plumage of my wings in such high flight, + Did in reply anticipate me thus: + +“No child whatever the Church Militant + Of greater hope possesses, as is written + In that Sun which irradiates all our band; + +Therefore it is conceded him from Egypt + To come into Jerusalem to see, + Or ever yet his warfare be completed. + +The two remaining points, that not for knowledge + Have been demanded, but that he report + How much this virtue unto thee is pleasing, + +To him I leave; for hard he will not find them, + Nor of self-praise; and let him answer them; + And may the grace of God in this assist him!” + +As a disciple, who his teacher follows, + Ready and willing, where he is expert, + That his proficiency may be displayed, + +“Hope,” said I, “is the certain expectation + Of future glory, which is the effect + Of grace divine and merit precedent. + +From many stars this light comes unto me; + But he instilled it first into my heart + Who was chief singer unto the chief captain. + +‘Sperent in te,’ in the high Theody + He sayeth, ‘those who know thy name;’ and who + Knoweth it not, if he my faith possess? + +Thou didst instil me, then, with his instilling + In the Epistle, so that I am full, + And upon others rain again your rain.” + +While I was speaking, in the living bosom + Of that combustion quivered an effulgence, + Sudden and frequent, in the guise of lightning; + +Then breathed: “The love wherewith I am inflamed + Towards the virtue still which followed me + Unto the palm and issue of the field, + +Wills that I breathe to thee that thou delight + In her; and grateful to me is thy telling + Whatever things Hope promises to thee.” + +And I: “The ancient Scriptures and the new + The mark establish, and this shows it me, + Of all the souls whom God hath made his friends. + +Isaiah saith, that each one garmented + In his own land shall be with twofold garments, + And his own land is this delightful life. + +Thy brother, too, far more explicitly, + There where he treateth of the robes of white, + This revelation manifests to us.” + +And first, and near the ending of these words, + “Sperent in te” from over us was heard, + To which responsive answered all the carols. + +Thereafterward a light among them brightened, + So that, if Cancer one such crystal had, + Winter would have a month of one sole day. + +And as uprises, goes, and enters the dance + A winsome maiden, only to do honour + To the new bride, and not from any failing, + +Even thus did I behold the brightened splendour + Approach the two, who in a wheel revolved + As was beseeming to their ardent love. + +Into the song and music there it entered; + And fixed on them my Lady kept her look, + Even as a bride silent and motionless. + +“This is the one who lay upon the breast + Of him our Pelican; and this is he + To the great office from the cross elected.” + +My Lady thus; but therefore none the more + Did move her sight from its attentive gaze + Before or afterward these words of hers. + +Even as a man who gazes, and endeavours + To see the eclipsing of the sun a little, + And who, by seeing, sightless doth become, + +So I became before that latest fire, + While it was said, “Why dost thou daze thyself + To see a thing which here hath no existence? + +Earth in the earth my body is, and shall be + With all the others there, until our number + With the eternal proposition tallies. + +With the two garments in the blessed cloister + Are the two lights alone that have ascended: + And this shalt thou take back into your world.” + +And at this utterance the flaming circle + Grew quiet, with the dulcet intermingling + Of sound that by the trinal breath was made, + +As to escape from danger or fatigue + The oars that erst were in the water beaten + Are all suspended at a whistle’s sound. + +Ah, how much in my mind was I disturbed, + When I turned round to look on Beatrice, + That her I could not see, although I was + +Close at her side and in the Happy World! + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXVI + + +While I was doubting for my vision quenched, + Out of the flame refulgent that had quenched it + Issued a breathing, that attentive made me, + +Saying: “While thou recoverest the sense + Of seeing which in me thou hast consumed, + ’Tis well that speaking thou shouldst compensate it. + +Begin then, and declare to what thy soul + Is aimed, and count it for a certainty, + Sight is in thee bewildered and not dead; + +Because the Lady, who through this divine + Region conducteth thee, has in her look + The power the hand of Ananias had.” + +I said: “As pleaseth her, or soon or late + Let the cure come to eyes that portals were + When she with fire I ever burn with entered. + +The Good, that gives contentment to this Court, + The Alpha and Omega is of all + The writing that love reads me low or loud.” + +The selfsame voice, that taken had from me + The terror of the sudden dazzlement, + To speak still farther put it in my thought; + +And said: “In verity with finer sieve + Behoveth thee to sift; thee it behoveth + To say who aimed thy bow at such a target.” + +And I: “By philosophic arguments, + And by authority that hence descends, + Such love must needs imprint itself in me; + +For Good, so far as good, when comprehended + Doth straight enkindle love, and so much greater + As more of goodness in itself it holds; + +Then to that Essence (whose is such advantage + That every good which out of it is found + Is nothing but a ray of its own light) + +More than elsewhither must the mind be moved + Of every one, in loving, who discerns + The truth in which this evidence is founded. + +Such truth he to my intellect reveals + Who demonstrates to me the primal love + Of all the sempiternal substances. + +The voice reveals it of the truthful Author, + Who says to Moses, speaking of Himself, + ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee.’ + +Thou too revealest it to me, beginning + The loud Evangel, that proclaims the secret + Of heaven to earth above all other edict.” + +And I heard say: “By human intellect + And by authority concordant with it, + Of all thy loves reserve for God the highest. + +But say again if other cords thou feelest, + Draw thee towards Him, that thou mayst proclaim + With how many teeth this love is biting thee.” + +The holy purpose of the Eagle of Christ + Not latent was, nay, rather I perceived + Whither he fain would my profession lead. + +Therefore I recommenced: “All of those bites + Which have the power to turn the heart to God + Unto my charity have been concurrent. + +The being of the world, and my own being, + The death which He endured that I may live, + And that which all the faithful hope, as I do, + +With the forementioned vivid consciousness + Have drawn me from the sea of love perverse, + And of the right have placed me on the shore. + +The leaves, wherewith embowered is all the garden + Of the Eternal Gardener, do I love + As much as he has granted them of good.” + +As soon as I had ceased, a song most sweet + Throughout the heaven resounded, and my Lady + Said with the others, “Holy, holy, holy!” + +And as at some keen light one wakes from sleep + By reason of the visual spirit that runs + Unto the splendour passed from coat to coat, + +And he who wakes abhorreth what he sees, + So all unconscious is his sudden waking, + Until the judgment cometh to his aid, + +So from before mine eyes did Beatrice + Chase every mote with radiance of her own, + That cast its light a thousand miles and more. + +Whence better after than before I saw, + And in a kind of wonderment I asked + About a fourth light that I saw with us. + +And said my Lady: “There within those rays + Gazes upon its Maker the first soul + That ever the first virtue did create.” + +Even as the bough that downward bends its top + At transit of the wind, and then is lifted + By its own virtue, which inclines it upward, + +Likewise did I, the while that she was speaking, + Being amazed, and then I was made bold + By a desire to speak wherewith I burned. + +And I began: “O apple, that mature + Alone hast been produced, O ancient father, + To whom each wife is daughter and daughter-in-law, + +Devoutly as I can I supplicate thee + That thou wouldst speak to me; thou seest my wish; + And I, to hear thee quickly, speak it not.” + +Sometimes an animal, when covered, struggles + So that his impulse needs must be apparent, + By reason of the wrappage following it; + +And in like manner the primeval soul + Made clear to me athwart its covering + How jubilant it was to give me pleasure. + +Then breathed: “Without thy uttering it to me, + Thine inclination better I discern + Than thou whatever thing is surest to thee; + +For I behold it in the truthful mirror, + That of Himself all things parhelion makes, + And none makes Him parhelion of itself. + +Thou fain wouldst hear how long ago God placed me + Within the lofty garden, where this Lady + Unto so long a stairway thee disposed. + +And how long to mine eyes it was a pleasure, + And of the great disdain the proper cause, + And the language that I used and that I made. + +Now, son of mine, the tasting of the tree + Not in itself was cause of so great exile, + But solely the o’erstepping of the bounds. + +There, whence thy Lady moved Virgilius, + Four thousand and three hundred and two circuits + Made by the sun, this Council I desired; + +And him I saw return to all the lights + Of his highway nine hundred times and thirty, + Whilst I upon the earth was tarrying. + +The language that I spake was quite extinct + Before that in the work interminable + The people under Nimrod were employed; + +For nevermore result of reasoning + (Because of human pleasure that doth change, + Obedient to the heavens) was durable. + +A natural action is it that man speaks; + But whether thus or thus, doth nature leave + To your own art, as seemeth best to you. + +Ere I descended to the infernal anguish, + ‘El’ was on earth the name of the Chief Good, + From whom comes all the joy that wraps me round + +‘Eli’ he then was called, and that is proper, + Because the use of men is like a leaf + On bough, which goeth and another cometh. + +Upon the mount that highest o’er the wave + Rises was I, in life or pure or sinful, + From the first hour to that which is the second, + +As the sun changes quadrant, to the sixth.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXVII + + +“Glory be to the Father, to the Son, + And Holy Ghost!” all Paradise began, + So that the melody inebriate made me. + +What I beheld seemed unto me a smile + Of the universe; for my inebriation + Found entrance through the hearing and the sight. + +O joy! O gladness inexpressible! + O perfect life of love and peacefulness! + O riches without hankering secure! + +Before mine eyes were standing the four torches + Enkindled, and the one that first had come + Began to make itself more luminous; + +And even such in semblance it became + As Jupiter would become, if he and Mars + Were birds, and they should interchange their feathers. + +That Providence, which here distributeth + Season and service, in the blessed choir + Had silence upon every side imposed. + +When I heard say: “If I my colour change, + Marvel not at it; for while I am speaking + Thou shalt behold all these their colour change. + +He who usurps upon the earth my place, + My place, my place, which vacant has become + Before the presence of the Son of God, + +Has of my cemetery made a sewer + Of blood and stench, whereby the Perverse One, + Who fell from here, below there is appeased!” + +With the same colour which, through sun adverse, + Painteth the clouds at evening or at morn, + Beheld I then the whole of heaven suffused. + +And as a modest woman, who abides + Sure of herself, and at another’s failing, + From listening only, timorous becomes, + +Even thus did Beatrice change countenance; + And I believe in heaven was such eclipse, + When suffered the supreme Omnipotence; + +Thereafterward proceeded forth his words + With voice so much transmuted from itself, + The very countenance was not more changed. + +“The spouse of Christ has never nurtured been + On blood of mine, of Linus and of Cletus, + To be made use of in acquest of gold; + +But in acquest of this delightful life + Sixtus and Pius, Urban and Calixtus, + After much lamentation, shed their blood. + +Our purpose was not, that on the right hand + Of our successors should in part be seated + The Christian folk, in part upon the other; + +Nor that the keys which were to me confided + Should e’er become the escutcheon on a banner, + That should wage war on those who are baptized; + +Nor I be made the figure of a seal + To privileges venal and mendacious, + Whereat I often redden and flash with fire. + +In garb of shepherds the rapacious wolves + Are seen from here above o’er all the pastures! + O wrath of God, why dost thou slumber still? + +To drink our blood the Caorsines and Gascons + Are making ready. O thou good beginning, + Unto how vile an end must thou needs fall! + +But the high Providence, that with Scipio + At Rome the glory of the world defended, + Will speedily bring aid, as I conceive; + +And thou, my son, who by thy mortal weight + Shalt down return again, open thy mouth; + What I conceal not, do not thou conceal.” + +As with its frozen vapours downward falls + In flakes our atmosphere, what time the horn + Of the celestial Goat doth touch the sun, + +Upward in such array saw I the ether + Become, and flaked with the triumphant vapours, + Which there together with us had remained. + +My sight was following up their semblances, + And followed till the medium, by excess, + The passing farther onward took from it; + +Whereat the Lady, who beheld me freed + From gazing upward, said to me: “Cast down + Thy sight, and see how far thou art turned round.” + +Since the first time that I had downward looked, + I saw that I had moved through the whole arc + Which the first climate makes from midst to end; + +So that I saw the mad track of Ulysses + Past Gades, and this side, well nigh the shore + Whereon became Europa a sweet burden. + +And of this threshing-floor the site to me + Were more unveiled, but the sun was proceeding + Under my feet, a sign and more removed. + +My mind enamoured, which is dallying + At all times with my Lady, to bring back + To her mine eyes was more than ever ardent. + +And if or Art or Nature has made bait + To catch the eyes and so possess the mind, + In human flesh or in its portraiture, + +All joined together would appear as nought + To the divine delight which shone upon me + When to her smiling face I turned me round. + +The virtue that her look endowed me with + From the fair nest of Leda tore me forth, + And up into the swiftest heaven impelled me. + +Its parts exceeding full of life and lofty + Are all so uniform, I cannot say + Which Beatrice selected for my place. + +But she, who was aware of my desire, + Began, the while she smiled so joyously + That God seemed in her countenance to rejoice: + +“The nature of that motion, which keeps quiet + The centre and all the rest about it moves, + From hence begins as from its starting point. + +And in this heaven there is no other Where + Than in the Mind Divine, wherein is kindled + The love that turns it, and the power it rains. + +Within a circle light and love embrace it, + Even as this doth the others, and that precinct + He who encircles it alone controls. + +Its motion is not by another meted, + But all the others measured are by this, + As ten is by the half and by the fifth. + +And in what manner time in such a pot + May have its roots, and in the rest its leaves, + Now unto thee can manifest be made. + +O Covetousness, that mortals dost ingulf + Beneath thee so, that no one hath the power + Of drawing back his eyes from out thy waves! + +Full fairly blossoms in mankind the will; + But the uninterrupted rain converts + Into abortive wildings the true plums. + +Fidelity and innocence are found + Only in children; afterwards they both + Take flight or e’er the cheeks with down are covered. + +One, while he prattles still, observes the fasts, + Who, when his tongue is loosed, forthwith devours + Whatever food under whatever moon; + +Another, while he prattles, loves and listens + Unto his mother, who when speech is perfect + Forthwith desires to see her in her grave. + +Even thus is swarthy made the skin so white + In its first aspect of the daughter fair + Of him who brings the morn, and leaves the night. + +Thou, that it may not be a marvel to thee, + Think that on earth there is no one who governs; + Whence goes astray the human family. + +Ere January be unwintered wholly + By the centesimal on earth neglected, + Shall these supernal circles roar so loud + +The tempest that has been so long awaited + Shall whirl the poops about where are the prows; + So that the fleet shall run its course direct, + +And the true fruit shall follow on the flower.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXVIII + + +After the truth against the present life + Of miserable mortals was unfolded + By her who doth imparadise my mind, + +As in a looking-glass a taper’s flame + He sees who from behind is lighted by it, + Before he has it in his sight or thought, + +And turns him round to see if so the glass + Tell him the truth, and sees that it accords + Therewith as doth a music with its metre, + +In similar wise my memory recollecteth + That I did, looking into those fair eyes, + Of which Love made the springes to ensnare me. + +And as I turned me round, and mine were touched + By that which is apparent in that volume, + Whenever on its gyre we gaze intent, + +A point beheld I, that was raying out + Light so acute, the sight which it enkindles + Must close perforce before such great acuteness. + +And whatsoever star seems smallest here + Would seem to be a moon, if placed beside it. + As one star with another star is placed. + +Perhaps at such a distance as appears + A halo cincturing the light that paints it, + When densest is the vapour that sustains it, + +Thus distant round the point a circle of fire + So swiftly whirled, that it would have surpassed + Whatever motion soonest girds the world; + +And this was by another circumcinct, + That by a third, the third then by a fourth, + By a fifth the fourth, and then by a sixth the fifth; + +The seventh followed thereupon in width + So ample now, that Juno’s messenger + Entire would be too narrow to contain it. + +Even so the eighth and ninth; and every one + More slowly moved, according as it was + In number distant farther from the first. + +And that one had its flame most crystalline + From which less distant was the stainless spark, + I think because more with its truth imbued. + +My Lady, who in my anxiety + Beheld me much perplexed, said: “From that point + Dependent is the heaven and nature all. + +Behold that circle most conjoined to it, + And know thou, that its motion is so swift + Through burning love whereby it is spurred on.” + +And I to her: “If the world were arranged + In the order which I see in yonder wheels, + What’s set before me would have satisfied me; + +But in the world of sense we can perceive + That evermore the circles are diviner + As they are from the centre more remote + +Wherefore if my desire is to be ended + In this miraculous and angelic temple, + That has for confines only love and light, + +To hear behoves me still how the example + And the exemplar go not in one fashion, + Since for myself in vain I contemplate it.” + +“If thine own fingers unto such a knot + Be insufficient, it is no great wonder, + So hard hath it become for want of trying.” + +My Lady thus; then said she: “Do thou take + What I shall tell thee, if thou wouldst be sated, + And exercise on that thy subtlety. + +The circles corporal are wide and narrow + According to the more or less of virtue + Which is distributed through all their parts. + +The greater goodness works the greater weal, + The greater weal the greater body holds, + If perfect equally are all its parts. + +Therefore this one which sweeps along with it + The universe sublime, doth correspond + Unto the circle which most loves and knows. + +On which account, if thou unto the virtue + Apply thy measure, not to the appearance + Of substances that unto thee seem round, + +Thou wilt behold a marvellous agreement, + Of more to greater, and of less to smaller, + In every heaven, with its Intelligence.” + +Even as remaineth splendid and serene + The hemisphere of air, when Boreas + Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest, + +Because is purified and resolved the rack + That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs + With all the beauties of its pageantry; + +Thus did I likewise, after that my Lady + Had me provided with her clear response, + And like a star in heaven the truth was seen. + +And soon as to a stop her words had come, + Not otherwise does iron scintillate + When molten, than those circles scintillated. + +Their coruscation all the sparks repeated, + And they so many were, their number makes + More millions than the doubling of the chess. + +I heard them sing hosanna choir by choir + To the fixed point which holds them at the ‘Ubi,’ + And ever will, where they have ever been. + +And she, who saw the dubious meditations + Within my mind, “The primal circles,” said, + “Have shown thee Seraphim and Cherubim. + +Thus rapidly they follow their own bonds, + To be as like the point as most they can, + And can as far as they are high in vision. + +Those other Loves, that round about them go, + Thrones of the countenance divine are called, + Because they terminate the primal Triad. + +And thou shouldst know that they all have delight + As much as their own vision penetrates + The Truth, in which all intellect finds rest. + +From this it may be seen how blessedness + Is founded in the faculty which sees, + And not in that which loves, and follows next; + +And of this seeing merit is the measure, + Which is brought forth by grace, and by good will; + Thus on from grade to grade doth it proceed. + +The second Triad, which is germinating + In such wise in this sempiternal spring, + That no nocturnal Aries despoils, + +Perpetually hosanna warbles forth + With threefold melody, that sounds in three + Orders of joy, with which it is intrined. + +The three Divine are in this hierarchy, + First the Dominions, and the Virtues next; + And the third order is that of the Powers. + +Then in the dances twain penultimate + The Principalities and Archangels wheel; + The last is wholly of angelic sports. + +These orders upward all of them are gazing, + And downward so prevail, that unto God + They all attracted are and all attract. + +And Dionysius with so great desire + To contemplate these Orders set himself, + He named them and distinguished them as I do. + +But Gregory afterwards dissented from him; + Wherefore, as soon as he unclosed his eyes + Within this heaven, he at himself did smile. + +And if so much of secret truth a mortal + Proffered on earth, I would not have thee marvel, + For he who saw it here revealed it to him, + +With much more of the truth about these circles.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXIX + + +At what time both the children of Latona, + Surmounted by the Ram and by the Scales, + Together make a zone of the horizon, + +As long as from the time the zenith holds them + In equipoise, till from that girdle both + Changing their hemisphere disturb the balance, + +So long, her face depicted with a smile, + Did Beatrice keep silence while she gazed + Fixedly at the point which had o’ercome me. + +Then she began: “I say, and I ask not + What thou dost wish to hear, for I have seen it + Where centres every When and every ‘Ubi.’ + +Not to acquire some good unto himself, + Which is impossible, but that his splendour + In its resplendency may say, ‘Subsisto,’ + +In his eternity outside of time, + Outside all other limits, as it pleased him, + Into new Loves the Eternal Love unfolded. + +Nor as if torpid did he lie before; + For neither after nor before proceeded + The going forth of God upon these waters. + +Matter and Form unmingled and conjoined + Came into being that had no defect, + E’en as three arrows from a three-stringed bow. + +And as in glass, in amber, or in crystal + A sunbeam flashes so, that from its coming + To its full being is no interval, + +So from its Lord did the triform effect + Ray forth into its being all together, + Without discrimination of beginning. + +Order was con-created and constructed + In substances, and summit of the world + Were those wherein the pure act was produced. + +Pure potentiality held the lowest part; + Midway bound potentiality with act + Such bond that it shall never be unbound. + +Jerome has written unto you of angels + Created a long lapse of centuries + Or ever yet the other world was made; + +But written is this truth in many places + By writers of the Holy Ghost, and thou + Shalt see it, if thou lookest well thereat. + +And even reason seeth it somewhat, + For it would not concede that for so long + Could be the motors without their perfection. + +Now dost thou know both where and when these Loves + Created were, and how; so that extinct + In thy desire already are three fires. + +Nor could one reach, in counting, unto twenty + So swiftly, as a portion of these angels + Disturbed the subject of your elements. + +The rest remained, and they began this art + Which thou discernest, with so great delight + That never from their circling do they cease. + +The occasion of the fall was the accursed + Presumption of that One, whom thou hast seen + By all the burden of the world constrained. + +Those whom thou here beholdest modest were + To recognise themselves as of that goodness + Which made them apt for so much understanding; + +On which account their vision was exalted + By the enlightening grace and their own merit, + So that they have a full and steadfast will. + +I would not have thee doubt, but certain be, + ’Tis meritorious to receive this grace, + According as the affection opens to it. + +Now round about in this consistory + Much mayst thou contemplate, if these my words + Be gathered up, without all further aid. + +But since upon the earth, throughout your schools, + They teach that such is the angelic nature + That it doth hear, and recollect, and will, + +More will I say, that thou mayst see unmixed + The truth that is confounded there below, + Equivocating in such like prelections. + +These substances, since in God’s countenance + They jocund were, turned not away their sight + From that wherefrom not anything is hidden; + +Hence they have not their vision intercepted + By object new, and hence they do not need + To recollect, through interrupted thought. + +So that below, not sleeping, people dream, + Believing they speak truth, and not believing; + And in the last is greater sin and shame. + +Below you do not journey by one path + Philosophising; so transporteth you + Love of appearance and the thought thereof. + +And even this above here is endured + With less disdain, than when is set aside + The Holy Writ, or when it is distorted. + +They think not there how much of blood it costs + To sow it in the world, and how he pleases + Who in humility keeps close to it. + +Each striveth for appearance, and doth make + His own inventions; and these treated are + By preachers, and the Evangel holds its peace. + +One sayeth that the moon did backward turn, + In the Passion of Christ, and interpose herself + So that the sunlight reached not down below; + +And lies; for of its own accord the light + Hid itself; whence to Spaniards and to Indians, + As to the Jews, did such eclipse respond. + +Florence has not so many Lapi and Bindi + As fables such as these, that every year + Are shouted from the pulpit back and forth, + +In such wise that the lambs, who do not know, + Come back from pasture fed upon the wind, + And not to see the harm doth not excuse them. + +Christ did not to his first disciples say, + ‘Go forth, and to the world preach idle tales,’ + But unto them a true foundation gave; + +And this so loudly sounded from their lips, + That, in the warfare to enkindle Faith, + They made of the Evangel shields and lances. + +Now men go forth with jests and drolleries + To preach, and if but well the people laugh, + The hood puffs out, and nothing more is asked. + +But in the cowl there nestles such a bird, + That, if the common people were to see it, + They would perceive what pardons they confide in, + +For which so great on earth has grown the folly, + That, without proof of any testimony, + To each indulgence they would flock together. + +By this Saint Anthony his pig doth fatten, + And many others, who are worse than pigs, + Paying in money without mark of coinage. + +But since we have digressed abundantly, + Turn back thine eyes forthwith to the right path, + So that the way be shortened with the time. + +This nature doth so multiply itself + In numbers, that there never yet was speech + Nor mortal fancy that can go so far. + +And if thou notest that which is revealed + By Daniel, thou wilt see that in his thousands + Number determinate is kept concealed. + +The primal light, that all irradiates it, + By modes as many is received therein, + As are the splendours wherewith it is mated. + +Hence, inasmuch as on the act conceptive + The affection followeth, of love the sweetness + Therein diversely fervid is or tepid. + +The height behold now and the amplitude + Of the eternal power, since it hath made + Itself so many mirrors, where ’tis broken, + +One in itself remaining as before.” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXX + + +Perchance six thousand miles remote from us + Is glowing the sixth hour, and now this world + Inclines its shadow almost to a level, + +When the mid-heaven begins to make itself + So deep to us, that here and there a star + Ceases to shine so far down as this depth, + +And as advances bright exceedingly + The handmaid of the sun, the heaven is closed + Light after light to the most beautiful; + +Not otherwise the Triumph, which for ever + Plays round about the point that vanquished me, + Seeming enclosed by what itself encloses, + +Little by little from my vision faded; + Whereat to turn mine eyes on Beatrice + My seeing nothing and my love constrained me. + +If what has hitherto been said of her + Were all concluded in a single praise, + Scant would it be to serve the present turn. + +Not only does the beauty I beheld + Transcend ourselves, but truly I believe + Its Maker only may enjoy it all. + +Vanquished do I confess me by this passage + More than by problem of his theme was ever + O’ercome the comic or the tragic poet; + +For as the sun the sight that trembles most, + Even so the memory of that sweet smile + My mind depriveth of its very self. + +From the first day that I beheld her face + In this life, to the moment of this look, + The sequence of my song has ne’er been severed; + +But now perforce this sequence must desist + From following her beauty with my verse, + As every artist at his uttermost. + +Such as I leave her to a greater fame + Than any of my trumpet, which is bringing + Its arduous matter to a final close, + +With voice and gesture of a perfect leader + She recommenced: “We from the greatest body + Have issued to the heaven that is pure light; + +Light intellectual replete with love, + Love of true good replete with ecstasy, + Ecstasy that transcendeth every sweetness. + +Here shalt thou see the one host and the other + Of Paradise, and one in the same aspects + Which at the final judgment thou shalt see.” + +Even as a sudden lightning that disperses + The visual spirits, so that it deprives + The eye of impress from the strongest objects, + +Thus round about me flashed a living light, + And left me swathed around with such a veil + Of its effulgence, that I nothing saw. + +“Ever the Love which quieteth this heaven + Welcomes into itself with such salute, + To make the candle ready for its flame.” + +No sooner had within me these brief words + An entrance found, than I perceived myself + To be uplifted over my own power, + +And I with vision new rekindled me, + Such that no light whatever is so pure + But that mine eyes were fortified against it. + +And light I saw in fashion of a river + Fulvid with its effulgence, ’twixt two banks + Depicted with an admirable Spring. + +Out of this river issued living sparks, + And on all sides sank down into the flowers, + Like unto rubies that are set in gold; + +And then, as if inebriate with the odours, + They plunged again into the wondrous torrent, + And as one entered issued forth another. + +“The high desire, that now inflames and moves thee + To have intelligence of what thou seest, + Pleaseth me all the more, the more it swells. + +But of this water it behoves thee drink + Before so great a thirst in thee be slaked.” + Thus said to me the sunshine of mine eyes; + +And added: “The river and the topazes + Going in and out, and the laughing of the herbage, + Are of their truth foreshadowing prefaces; + +Not that these things are difficult in themselves, + But the deficiency is on thy side, + For yet thou hast not vision so exalted.” + +There is no babe that leaps so suddenly + With face towards the milk, if he awake + Much later than his usual custom is, + +As I did, that I might make better mirrors + Still of mine eyes, down stooping to the wave + Which flows that we therein be better made. + +And even as the penthouse of mine eyelids + Drank of it, it forthwith appeared to me + Out of its length to be transformed to round. + +Then as a folk who have been under masks + Seem other than before, if they divest + The semblance not their own they disappeared in, + +Thus into greater pomp were changed for me + The flowerets and the sparks, so that I saw + Both of the Courts of Heaven made manifest. + +O splendour of God! by means of which I saw + The lofty triumph of the realm veracious, + Give me the power to say how it I saw! + +There is a light above, which visible + Makes the Creator unto every creature, + Who only in beholding Him has peace, + +And it expands itself in circular form + To such extent, that its circumference + Would be too large a girdle for the sun. + +The semblance of it is all made of rays + Reflected from the top of Primal Motion, + Which takes therefrom vitality and power. + +And as a hill in water at its base + Mirrors itself, as if to see its beauty + When affluent most in verdure and in flowers, + +So, ranged aloft all round about the light, + Mirrored I saw in more ranks than a thousand + All who above there have from us returned. + +And if the lowest row collect within it + So great a light, how vast the amplitude + Is of this Rose in its extremest leaves! + +My vision in the vastness and the height + Lost not itself, but comprehended all + The quantity and quality of that gladness. + +There near and far nor add nor take away; + For there where God immediately doth govern, + The natural law in naught is relevant. + +Into the yellow of the Rose Eternal + That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odour + Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun, + +As one who silent is and fain would speak, + Me Beatrice drew on, and said: “Behold + Of the white stoles how vast the convent is! + +Behold how vast the circuit of our city! + Behold our seats so filled to overflowing, + That here henceforward are few people wanting! + +On that great throne whereon thine eyes are fixed + For the crown’s sake already placed upon it, + Before thou suppest at this wedding feast + +Shall sit the soul (that is to be Augustus + On earth) of noble Henry, who shall come + To redress Italy ere she be ready. + +Blind covetousness, that casts its spell upon you, + Has made you like unto the little child, + Who dies of hunger and drives off the nurse. + +And in the sacred forum then shall be + A Prefect such, that openly or covert + On the same road he will not walk with him. + +But long of God he will not be endured + In holy office; he shall be thrust down + Where Simon Magus is for his deserts, + +And make him of Alagna lower go!” + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXXI + + +In fashion then as of a snow-white rose + Displayed itself to me the saintly host, + Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride, + +But the other host, that flying sees and sings + The glory of Him who doth enamour it, + And the goodness that created it so noble, + +Even as a swarm of bees, that sinks in flowers + One moment, and the next returns again + To where its labour is to sweetness turned, + +Sank into the great flower, that is adorned + With leaves so many, and thence reascended + To where its love abideth evermore. + +Their faces had they all of living flame, + And wings of gold, and all the rest so white + No snow unto that limit doth attain. + +From bench to bench, into the flower descending, + They carried something of the peace and ardour + Which by the fanning of their flanks they won. + +Nor did the interposing ’twixt the flower + And what was o’er it of such plenitude + Of flying shapes impede the sight and splendour; + +Because the light divine so penetrates + The universe, according to its merit, + That naught can be an obstacle against it. + +This realm secure and full of gladsomeness, + Crowded with ancient people and with modern, + Unto one mark had all its look and love. + +O Trinal Light, that in a single star + Sparkling upon their sight so satisfies them, + Look down upon our tempest here below! + +If the barbarians, coming from some region + That every day by Helice is covered, + Revolving with her son whom she delights in, + +Beholding Rome and all her noble works, + Were wonder-struck, what time the Lateran + Above all mortal things was eminent,— + +I who to the divine had from the human, + From time unto eternity, had come, + From Florence to a people just and sane, + +With what amazement must I have been filled! + Truly between this and the joy, it was + My pleasure not to hear, and to be mute. + +And as a pilgrim who delighteth him + In gazing round the temple of his vow, + And hopes some day to retell how it was, + +So through the living light my way pursuing + Directed I mine eyes o’er all the ranks, + Now up, now down, and now all round about. + +Faces I saw of charity persuasive, + Embellished by His light and their own smile, + And attitudes adorned with every grace. + +The general form of Paradise already + My glance had comprehended as a whole, + In no part hitherto remaining fixed, + +And round I turned me with rekindled wish + My Lady to interrogate of things + Concerning which my mind was in suspense. + +One thing I meant, another answered me; + I thought I should see Beatrice, and saw + An Old Man habited like the glorious people. + +O’erflowing was he in his eyes and cheeks + With joy benign, in attitude of pity + As to a tender father is becoming. + +And “She, where is she?” instantly I said; + Whence he: “To put an end to thy desire, + Me Beatrice hath sent from mine own place. + +And if thou lookest up to the third round + Of the first rank, again shalt thou behold her + Upon the throne her merits have assigned her.” + +Without reply I lifted up mine eyes, + And saw her, as she made herself a crown + Reflecting from herself the eternal rays. + +Not from that region which the highest thunders + Is any mortal eye so far removed, + In whatsoever sea it deepest sinks, + +As there from Beatrice my sight; but this + Was nothing unto me; because her image + Descended not to me by medium blurred. + +“O Lady, thou in whom my hope is strong, + And who for my salvation didst endure + In Hell to leave the imprint of thy feet, + +Of whatsoever things I have beheld, + As coming from thy power and from thy goodness + I recognise the virtue and the grace. + +Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom, + By all those ways, by all the expedients, + Whereby thou hadst the power of doing it. + +Preserve towards me thy magnificence, + So that this soul of mine, which thou hast healed, + Pleasing to thee be loosened from the body.” + +Thus I implored; and she, so far away, + Smiled, as it seemed, and looked once more at me; + Then unto the eternal fountain turned. + +And said the Old Man holy: “That thou mayst + Accomplish perfectly thy journeying, + Whereunto prayer and holy love have sent me, + +Fly with thine eyes all round about this garden; + For seeing it will discipline thy sight + Farther to mount along the ray divine. + +And she, the Queen of Heaven, for whom I burn + Wholly with love, will grant us every grace, + Because that I her faithful Bernard am.” + +As he who peradventure from Croatia + Cometh to gaze at our Veronica, + Who through its ancient fame is never sated, + +But says in thought, the while it is displayed, + “My Lord, Christ Jesus, God of very God, + Now was your semblance made like unto this?” + +Even such was I while gazing at the living + Charity of the man, who in this world + By contemplation tasted of that peace. + +“Thou son of grace, this jocund life,” began he, + “Will not be known to thee by keeping ever + Thine eyes below here on the lowest place; + +But mark the circles to the most remote, + Until thou shalt behold enthroned the Queen + To whom this realm is subject and devoted.” + +I lifted up mine eyes, and as at morn + The oriental part of the horizon + Surpasses that wherein the sun goes down, + +Thus, as if going with mine eyes from vale + To mount, I saw a part in the remoteness + Surpass in splendour all the other front. + +And even as there where we await the pole + That Phaeton drove badly, blazes more + The light, and is on either side diminished, + +So likewise that pacific oriflamme + Gleamed brightest in the centre, and each side + In equal measure did the flame abate. + +And at that centre, with their wings expanded, + More than a thousand jubilant Angels saw I, + Each differing in effulgence and in kind. + +I saw there at their sports and at their songs + A beauty smiling, which the gladness was + Within the eyes of all the other saints; + +And if I had in speaking as much wealth + As in imagining, I should not dare + To attempt the smallest part of its delight. + +Bernard, as soon as he beheld mine eyes + Fixed and intent upon its fervid fervour, + His own with such affection turned to her + +That it made mine more ardent to behold. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXXII + + +Absorbed in his delight, that contemplator + Assumed the willing office of a teacher, + And gave beginning to these holy words: + +“The wound that Mary closed up and anointed, + She at her feet who is so beautiful, + She is the one who opened it and pierced it. + +Within that order which the third seats make + Is seated Rachel, lower than the other, + With Beatrice, in manner as thou seest. + +Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and her who was + Ancestress of the Singer, who for dole + Of the misdeed said, ‘Miserere mei,’ + +Canst thou behold from seat to seat descending + Down in gradation, as with each one’s name + I through the Rose go down from leaf to leaf. + +And downward from the seventh row, even as + Above the same, succeed the Hebrew women, + Dividing all the tresses of the flower; + +Because, according to the view which Faith + In Christ had taken, these are the partition + By which the sacred stairways are divided. + +Upon this side, where perfect is the flower + With each one of its petals, seated are + Those who believed in Christ who was to come. + +Upon the other side, where intersected + With vacant spaces are the semicircles, + Are those who looked to Christ already come. + +And as, upon this side, the glorious seat + Of the Lady of Heaven, and the other seats + Below it, such a great division make, + +So opposite doth that of the great John, + Who, ever holy, desert and martyrdom + Endured, and afterwards two years in Hell. + +And under him thus to divide were chosen + Francis, and Benedict, and Augustine, + And down to us the rest from round to round. + +Behold now the high providence divine; + For one and other aspect of the Faith + In equal measure shall this garden fill. + +And know that downward from that rank which cleaves + Midway the sequence of the two divisions, + Not by their proper merit are they seated; + +But by another’s under fixed conditions; + For these are spirits one and all assoiled + Before they any true election had. + +Well canst thou recognise it in their faces, + And also in their voices puerile, + If thou regard them well and hearken to them. + +Now doubtest thou, and doubting thou art silent; + But I will loosen for thee the strong bond + In which thy subtile fancies hold thee fast. + +Within the amplitude of this domain + No casual point can possibly find place, + No more than sadness can, or thirst, or hunger; + +For by eternal law has been established + Whatever thou beholdest, so that closely + The ring is fitted to the finger here. + +And therefore are these people, festinate + Unto true life, not ‘sine causa’ here + More and less excellent among themselves. + +The King, by means of whom this realm reposes + In so great love and in so great delight + That no will ventureth to ask for more, + +In his own joyous aspect every mind + Creating, at his pleasure dowers with grace + Diversely; and let here the effect suffice. + +And this is clearly and expressly noted + For you in Holy Scripture, in those twins + Who in their mother had their anger roused. + +According to the colour of the hair, + Therefore, with such a grace the light supreme + Consenteth that they worthily be crowned. + +Without, then, any merit of their deeds, + Stationed are they in different gradations, + Differing only in their first acuteness. + +’Tis true that in the early centuries, + With innocence, to work out their salvation + Sufficient was the faith of parents only. + +After the earlier ages were completed, + Behoved it that the males by circumcision + Unto their innocent wings should virtue add; + +But after that the time of grace had come + Without the baptism absolute of Christ, + Such innocence below there was retained. + +Look now into the face that unto Christ + Hath most resemblance; for its brightness only + Is able to prepare thee to see Christ.” + +On her did I behold so great a gladness + Rain down, borne onward in the holy minds + Created through that altitude to fly, + +That whatsoever I had seen before + Did not suspend me in such admiration, + Nor show me such similitude of God. + +And the same Love that first descended there, + “Ave Maria, gratia plena,” singing, + In front of her his wings expanded wide. + +Unto the canticle divine responded + From every part the court beatified, + So that each sight became serener for it. + +“O holy father, who for me endurest + To be below here, leaving the sweet place + In which thou sittest by eternal lot, + +Who is the Angel that with so much joy + Into the eyes is looking of our Queen, + Enamoured so that he seems made of fire?” + +Thus I again recourse had to the teaching + Of that one who delighted him in Mary + As doth the star of morning in the sun. + +And he to me: “Such gallantry and grace + As there can be in Angel and in soul, + All is in him; and thus we fain would have it; + +Because he is the one who bore the palm + Down unto Mary, when the Son of God + To take our burden on himself decreed. + +But now come onward with thine eyes, as I + Speaking shall go, and note the great patricians + Of this most just and merciful of empires. + +Those two that sit above there most enrapture + As being very near unto Augusta, + Are as it were the two roots of this Rose. + +He who upon the left is near her placed + The father is, by whose audacious taste + The human species so much bitter tastes. + +Upon the right thou seest that ancient father + Of Holy Church, into whose keeping Christ + The keys committed of this lovely flower. + +And he who all the evil days beheld, + Before his death, of her the beauteous bride + Who with the spear and with the nails was won, + +Beside him sits, and by the other rests + That leader under whom on manna lived + The people ingrate, fickle, and stiff-necked. + +Opposite Peter seest thou Anna seated, + So well content to look upon her daughter, + Her eyes she moves not while she sings Hosanna. + +And opposite the eldest household father + Lucia sits, she who thy Lady moved + When to rush downward thou didst bend thy brows. + +But since the moments of thy vision fly, + Here will we make full stop, as a good tailor + Who makes the gown according to his cloth, + +And unto the first Love will turn our eyes, + That looking upon Him thou penetrate + As far as possible through his effulgence. + +Truly, lest peradventure thou recede, + Moving thy wings believing to advance, + By prayer behoves it that grace be obtained; + +Grace from that one who has the power to aid thee; + And thou shalt follow me with thy affection + That from my words thy heart turn not aside.” + +And he began this holy orison. + + + + +Paradiso: Canto XXXIII + + +“Thou Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son, + Humble and high beyond all other creature, + The limit fixed of the eternal counsel, + +Thou art the one who such nobility + To human nature gave, that its Creator + Did not disdain to make himself its creature. + +Within thy womb rekindled was the love, + By heat of which in the eternal peace + After such wise this flower has germinated. + +Here unto us thou art a noonday torch + Of charity, and below there among mortals + Thou art the living fountain-head of hope. + +Lady, thou art so great, and so prevailing, + That he who wishes grace, nor runs to thee, + His aspirations without wings would fly. + +Not only thy benignity gives succour + To him who asketh it, but oftentimes + Forerunneth of its own accord the asking. + +In thee compassion is, in thee is pity, + In thee magnificence; in thee unites + Whate’er of goodness is in any creature. + +Now doth this man, who from the lowest depth + Of the universe as far as here has seen + One after one the spiritual lives, + +Supplicate thee through grace for so much power + That with his eyes he may uplift himself + Higher towards the uttermost salvation. + +And I, who never burned for my own seeing + More than I do for his, all of my prayers + Proffer to thee, and pray they come not short, + +That thou wouldst scatter from him every cloud + Of his mortality so with thy prayers, + That the Chief Pleasure be to him displayed. + +Still farther do I pray thee, Queen, who canst + Whate’er thou wilt, that sound thou mayst preserve + After so great a vision his affections. + +Let thy protection conquer human movements; + See Beatrice and all the blessed ones + My prayers to second clasp their hands to thee!” + +The eyes beloved and revered of God, + Fastened upon the speaker, showed to us + How grateful unto her are prayers devout; + +Then unto the Eternal Light they turned, + On which it is not credible could be + By any creature bent an eye so clear. + +And I, who to the end of all desires + Was now approaching, even as I ought + The ardour of desire within me ended. + +Bernard was beckoning unto me, and smiling, + That I should upward look; but I already + Was of my own accord such as he wished; + +Because my sight, becoming purified, + Was entering more and more into the ray + Of the High Light which of itself is true. + +From that time forward what I saw was greater + Than our discourse, that to such vision yields, + And yields the memory unto such excess. + +Even as he is who seeth in a dream, + And after dreaming the imprinted passion + Remains, and to his mind the rest returns not, + +Even such am I, for almost utterly + Ceases my vision, and distilleth yet + Within my heart the sweetness born of it; + +Even thus the snow is in the sun unsealed, + Even thus upon the wind in the light leaves + Were the soothsayings of the Sibyl lost. + +O Light Supreme, that dost so far uplift thee + From the conceits of mortals, to my mind + Of what thou didst appear re-lend a little, + +And make my tongue of so great puissance, + That but a single sparkle of thy glory + It may bequeath unto the future people; + +For by returning to my memory somewhat, + And by a little sounding in these verses, + More of thy victory shall be conceived! + +I think the keenness of the living ray + Which I endured would have bewildered me, + If but mine eyes had been averted from it; + +And I remember that I was more bold + On this account to bear, so that I joined + My aspect with the Glory Infinite. + +O grace abundant, by which I presumed + To fix my sight upon the Light Eternal, + So that the seeing I consumed therein! + +I saw that in its depth far down is lying + Bound up with love together in one volume, + What through the universe in leaves is scattered; + +Substance, and accident, and their operations, + All interfused together in such wise + That what I speak of is one simple light. + +The universal fashion of this knot + Methinks I saw, since more abundantly + In saying this I feel that I rejoice. + +One moment is more lethargy to me, + Than five and twenty centuries to the emprise + That startled Neptune with the shade of Argo! + +My mind in this wise wholly in suspense, + Steadfast, immovable, attentive gazed, + And evermore with gazing grew enkindled. + +In presence of that light one such becomes, + That to withdraw therefrom for other prospect + It is impossible he e’er consent; + +Because the good, which object is of will, + Is gathered all in this, and out of it + That is defective which is perfect there. + +Shorter henceforward will my language fall + Of what I yet remember, than an infant’s + Who still his tongue doth moisten at the breast. + +Not because more than one unmingled semblance + Was in the living light on which I looked, + For it is always what it was before; + +But through the sight, that fortified itself + In me by looking, one appearance only + To me was ever changing as I changed. + +Within the deep and luminous subsistence + Of the High Light appeared to me three circles, + Of threefold colour and of one dimension, + +And by the second seemed the first reflected + As Iris is by Iris, and the third + Seemed fire that equally from both is breathed. + +O how all speech is feeble and falls short + Of my conceit, and this to what I saw + Is such, ’tis not enough to call it little! + +O Light Eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest, + Sole knowest thyself, and, known unto thyself + And knowing, lovest and smilest on thyself! + +That circulation, which being thus conceived + Appeared in thee as a reflected light, + When somewhat contemplated by mine eyes, + +Within itself, of its own very colour + Seemed to me painted with our effigy, + Wherefore my sight was all absorbed therein. + +As the geometrician, who endeavours + To square the circle, and discovers not, + By taking thought, the principle he wants, + +Even such was I at that new apparition; + I wished to see how the image to the circle + Conformed itself, and how it there finds place; + +But my own wings were not enough for this, + Had it not been that then my mind there smote + A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish. + +Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy: + But now was turning my desire and will, + Even as a wheel that equally is moved, + +The Love which moves the sun and the other stars. + + + + +APPENDIX + +SIX SONNETS ON DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW +(1807-1882) + + +I + +Oft have I seen at some cathedral door + A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, + Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet + Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor +Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er; + Far off the noises of the world retreat; + The loud vociferations of the street + Become an undistinguishable roar. +So, as I enter here from day to day, + And leave my burden at this minster gate, + Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, +The tumult of the time disconsolate + To inarticulate murmurs dies away, + While the eternal ages watch and wait. + + +II + +How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! + This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves + Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves + Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers, +And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! + But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves + Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves, + And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers! +Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, + What exultations trampling on despair, + What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, +What passionate outcry of a soul in pain, + Uprose this poem of the earth and air, + This mediaeval miracle of song! + + +III + +I enter, and I see thee in the gloom + Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine! + And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine. + The air is filled with some unknown perfume; +The congregation of the dead make room + For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine; + Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of pine, + The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb. +From the confessionals I hear arise + Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies, + And lamentations from the crypts below +And then a voice celestial that begins + With the pathetic words, “Although your sins + As scarlet be,” and ends with “as the snow.” + + +IV + +With snow-white veil, and garments as of flame, + She stands before thee, who so long ago + Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe + From which thy song in all its splendors came; +And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name, + The ice about thy heart melts as the snow + On mountain heights, and in swift overflow + Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame. +Thou makest full confession; and a gleam + As of the dawn on some dark forest cast, + Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase; +Lethe and Eunoe—the remembered dream + And the forgotten sorrow—bring at last + That perfect pardon which is perfect peace. + + +V + +I Lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze + With forms of saints and holy men who died, + Here martyred and hereafter glorified; + And the great Rose upon its leaves displays +Christ’s Triumph, and the angelic roundelays, + With splendor upon splendor multiplied; + And Beatrice again at Dante’s side + No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise. +And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs + Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love + And benedictions of the Holy Ghost; +And the melodious bells among the spires + O’er all the house-tops and through heaven above + Proclaim the elevation of the Host! + + +VI + +O star of morning and of liberty! + O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines + Above the darkness of the Apennines, + Forerunner of the day that is to be! +The voices of the city and the sea, + The voices of the mountains and the pines, + Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines + Are footpaths for the thought of Italy! +Thy fame is blown abroad from all the heights, + Through all the nations; and a sound is heard, + As of a mighty wind, and men devout, +Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes, + In their own language hear thy wondrous word, + And many are amazed and many doubt. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1004 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1005-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1005-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e8bdee0d --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1005-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5344 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1005 *** + +HELL + +OR THE INFERNO FROM THE DIVINE COMEDY + +BY +Dante Alighieri + +Translated by +THE REV. H. F. CARY, M.A. + + +Contents + + CANTO I. + CANTO II. + CANTO III. + CANTO IV. + CANTO V. + CANTO VI. + CANTO VII. + CANTO VIII. + CANTO IX. + CANTO X. + CANTO XI. + CANTO XII. + CANTO XIII. + CANTO XIV. + CANTO XV. + CANTO XVI. + CANTO XVII. + CANTO XVIII. + CANTO XIX. + CANTO XX. + CANTO XXI. + CANTO XXII. + CANTO XXIII. + CANTO XXIV. + CANTO XXV. + CANTO XXVI. + CANTO XXVII. + CANTO XXVIII. + CANTO XXIX. + CANTO XXX. + CANTO XXXI. + CANTO XXXII. + CANTO XXXIII. + CANTO XXXIV. + + + + +HELL + + + + +CANTO I + + +In the midway of this our mortal life, +I found me in a gloomy wood, astray +Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell +It were no easy task, how savage wild +That forest, how robust and rough its growth, +Which to remember only, my dismay +Renews, in bitterness not far from death. +Yet to discourse of what there good befell, +All else will I relate discover’d there. +How first I enter’d it I scarce can say, +Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh’d +My senses down, when the true path I left, +But when a mountain’s foot I reach’d, where clos’d +The valley, that had pierc’d my heart with dread, +I look’d aloft, and saw his shoulders broad +Already vested with that planet’s beam, +Who leads all wanderers safe through every way. + +Then was a little respite to the fear, +That in my heart’s recesses deep had lain, +All of that night, so pitifully pass’d: +And as a man, with difficult short breath, +Forespent with toiling, ’scap’d from sea to shore, +Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands +At gaze; e’en so my spirit, that yet fail’d +Struggling with terror, turn’d to view the straits, +That none hath pass’d and liv’d. My weary frame +After short pause recomforted, again +I journey’d on over that lonely steep, + +The hinder foot still firmer. Scarce the ascent +Began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light, +And cover’d with a speckled skin, appear’d, +Nor, when it saw me, vanish’d, rather strove +To check my onward going; that ofttimes +With purpose to retrace my steps I turn’d. + +The hour was morning’s prime, and on his way +Aloft the sun ascended with those stars, +That with him rose, when Love divine first mov’d +Those its fair works: so that with joyous hope +All things conspir’d to fill me, the gay skin +Of that swift animal, the matin dawn +And the sweet season. Soon that joy was chas’d, +And by new dread succeeded, when in view +A lion came, ’gainst me, as it appear’d, + +With his head held aloft and hunger-mad, +That e’en the air was fear-struck. A she-wolf +Was at his heels, who in her leanness seem’d +Full of all wants, and many a land hath made +Disconsolate ere now. She with such fear +O’erwhelmed me, at the sight of her appall’d, +That of the height all hope I lost. As one, +Who with his gain elated, sees the time +When all unwares is gone, he inwardly +Mourns with heart-griping anguish; such was I, +Haunted by that fell beast, never at peace, +Who coming o’er against me, by degrees +Impell’d me where the sun in silence rests. + +While to the lower space with backward step +I fell, my ken discern’d the form one of one, +Whose voice seem’d faint through long disuse of speech. +When him in that great desert I espied, +“Have mercy on me!” cried I out aloud, +“Spirit! or living man! what e’er thou be!” + +He answer’d: “Now not man, man once I was, +And born of Lombard parents, Mantuana both +By country, when the power of Julius yet +Was scarcely firm. At Rome my life was past +Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time +Of fabled deities and false. A bard +Was I, and made Anchises’ upright son +The subject of my song, who came from Troy, +When the flames prey’d on Ilium’s haughty towers. +But thou, say wherefore to such perils past +Return’st thou? wherefore not this pleasant mount +Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?” +“And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring, +From which such copious floods of eloquence +Have issued?” I with front abash’d replied. +“Glory and light of all the tuneful train! +May it avail me that I long with zeal +Have sought thy volume, and with love immense +Have conn’d it o’er. My master thou and guide! +Thou he from whom alone I have deriv’d +That style, which for its beauty into fame +Exalts me. See the beast, from whom I fled. +O save me from her, thou illustrious sage!” + +“For every vein and pulse throughout my frame +She hath made tremble.” He, soon as he saw +That I was weeping, answer’d, “Thou must needs +Another way pursue, if thou wouldst ’scape +From out that savage wilderness. This beast, +At whom thou criest, her way will suffer none +To pass, and no less hindrance makes than death: +So bad and so accursed in her kind, +That never sated is her ravenous will, +Still after food more craving than before. +To many an animal in wedlock vile +She fastens, and shall yet to many more, +Until that greyhound come, who shall destroy +Her with sharp pain. He will not life support +By earth nor its base metals, but by love, +Wisdom, and virtue, and his land shall be +The land ’twixt either Feltro. In his might +Shall safety to Italia’s plains arise, +For whose fair realm, Camilla, virgin pure, +Nisus, Euryalus, and Turnus fell. +He with incessant chase through every town +Shall worry, until he to hell at length +Restore her, thence by envy first let loose. +I for thy profit pond’ring now devise, +That thou mayst follow me, and I thy guide +Will lead thee hence through an eternal space, +Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see +Spirits of old tormented, who invoke +A second death; and those next view, who dwell +Content in fire, for that they hope to come, +Whene’er the time may be, among the blest, +Into whose regions if thou then desire +T’ ascend, a spirit worthier then I +Must lead thee, in whose charge, when I depart, +Thou shalt be left: for that Almighty King, +Who reigns above, a rebel to his law, +Adjudges me, and therefore hath decreed, +That to his city none through me should come. +He in all parts hath sway; there rules, there holds +His citadel and throne. O happy those, +Whom there he chooses!” I to him in few: +“Bard! by that God, whom thou didst not adore, +I do beseech thee (that this ill and worse +I may escape) to lead me, where thou saidst, +That I Saint Peter’s gate may view, and those +Who as thou tell’st, are in such dismal plight.” + +Onward he mov’d, I close his steps pursu’d. + + + + +CANTO II + + +Now was the day departing, and the air, +Imbrown’d with shadows, from their toils releas’d +All animals on earth; and I alone +Prepar’d myself the conflict to sustain, +Both of sad pity, and that perilous road, +Which my unerring memory shall retrace. + +O Muses! O high genius! now vouchsafe +Your aid! O mind! that all I saw hast kept +Safe in a written record, here thy worth +And eminent endowments come to proof. + +I thus began: “Bard! thou who art my guide, +Consider well, if virtue be in me +Sufficient, ere to this high enterprise +Thou trust me. Thou hast told that Silvius’ sire, +Yet cloth’d in corruptible flesh, among +Th’ immortal tribes had entrance, and was there +Sensible present. Yet if heaven’s great Lord, +Almighty foe to ill, such favour shew’d, +In contemplation of the high effect, +Both what and who from him should issue forth, +It seems in reason’s judgment well deserv’d: +Sith he of Rome, and of Rome’s empire wide, +In heaven’s empyreal height was chosen sire: +Both which, if truth be spoken, were ordain’d +And ’stablish’d for the holy place, where sits +Who to great Peter’s sacred chair succeeds. +He from this journey, in thy song renown’d, +Learn’d things, that to his victory gave rise +And to the papal robe. In after-times +The chosen vessel also travel’d there, +To bring us back assurance in that faith, +Which is the entrance to salvation’s way. +But I, why should I there presume? or who +Permits it? not, Aeneas I nor Paul. +Myself I deem not worthy, and none else +Will deem me. I, if on this voyage then +I venture, fear it will in folly end. +Thou, who art wise, better my meaning know’st, +Than I can speak.” As one, who unresolves +What he hath late resolv’d, and with new thoughts +Changes his purpose, from his first intent +Remov’d; e’en such was I on that dun coast, +Wasting in thought my enterprise, at first +So eagerly embrac’d. “If right thy words +I scan,” replied that shade magnanimous, +“Thy soul is by vile fear assail’d, which oft +So overcasts a man, that he recoils +From noblest resolution, like a beast +At some false semblance in the twilight gloom. +That from this terror thou mayst free thyself, +I will instruct thee why I came, and what +I heard in that same instant, when for thee +Grief touch’d me first. I was among the tribe, +Who rest suspended, when a dame, so blest +And lovely, I besought her to command, +Call’d me; her eyes were brighter than the star +Of day; and she with gentle voice and soft +Angelically tun’d her speech address’d: +“O courteous shade of Mantua! thou whose fame +Yet lives, and shall live long as nature lasts! +A friend, not of my fortune but myself, +On the wide desert in his road has met +Hindrance so great, that he through fear has turn’d. +Now much I dread lest he past help have stray’d, +And I be ris’n too late for his relief, +From what in heaven of him I heard. Speed now, +And by thy eloquent persuasive tongue, +And by all means for his deliverance meet, +Assist him. So to me will comfort spring. +I who now bid thee on this errand forth +Am Beatrice; from a place I come +Revisited with joy. Love brought me thence, +Who prompts my speech. When in my Master’s sight +I stand, thy praise to him I oft will tell.” + +(Note: Beatrice. I use this word, as it is +pronounced in the Italian, as consisting of four +syllables, of which the third is a long one.) + + +She then was silent, and I thus began: +“O Lady! by whose influence alone, +Mankind excels whatever is contain’d +Within that heaven which hath the smallest orb, +So thy command delights me, that to obey, +If it were done already, would seem late. +No need hast thou farther to speak thy will; +Yet tell the reason, why thou art not loth +To leave that ample space, where to return +Thou burnest, for this centre here beneath.” + +She then: “Since thou so deeply wouldst inquire, +I will instruct thee briefly, why no dread +Hinders my entrance here. Those things alone +Are to be fear’d, whence evil may proceed, +None else, for none are terrible beside. +I am so fram’d by God, thanks to his grace! +That any suff’rance of your misery +Touches me not, nor flame of that fierce fire +Assails me. In high heaven a blessed dame +Besides, who mourns with such effectual grief +That hindrance, which I send thee to remove, +That God’s stern judgment to her will inclines.” +To Lucia calling, her she thus bespake: +“Now doth thy faithful servant need thy aid +And I commend him to thee.” At her word +Sped Lucia, of all cruelty the foe, +And coming to the place, where I abode +Seated with Rachel, her of ancient days, +She thus address’d me: “Thou true praise of God! +Beatrice! why is not thy succour lent +To him, who so much lov’d thee, as to leave +For thy sake all the multitude admires? +Dost thou not hear how pitiful his wail, +Nor mark the death, which in the torrent flood, +Swoln mightier than a sea, him struggling holds?” +“Ne’er among men did any with such speed +Haste to their profit, flee from their annoy, +As when these words were spoken, I came here, +Down from my blessed seat, trusting the force +Of thy pure eloquence, which thee, and all +Who well have mark’d it, into honour brings.” + +“When she had ended, her bright beaming eyes +Tearful she turn’d aside; whereat I felt +Redoubled zeal to serve thee. As she will’d, +Thus am I come: I sav’d thee from the beast, +Who thy near way across the goodly mount +Prevented. What is this comes o’er thee then? +Why, why dost thou hang back? why in thy breast +Harbour vile fear? why hast not courage there +And noble daring? Since three maids so blest +Thy safety plan, e’en in the court of heaven; +And so much certain good my words forebode.” + +As florets, by the frosty air of night +Bent down and clos’d, when day has blanch’d their leaves, +Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems; +So was my fainting vigour new restor’d, +And to my heart such kindly courage ran, +That I as one undaunted soon replied: +“O full of pity she, who undertook +My succour! and thou kind who didst perform +So soon her true behest! With such desire +Thou hast dispos’d me to renew my voyage, +That my first purpose fully is resum’d. +Lead on: one only will is in us both. +Thou art my guide, my master thou, and lord.” + +So spake I; and when he had onward mov’d, +I enter’d on the deep and woody way. + + + + +CANTO III + + +“Through me you pass into the city of woe: +Through me you pass into eternal pain: +Through me among the people lost for aye. +Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d: +To rear me was the task of power divine, +Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. +Before me things create were none, save things +Eternal, and eternal I endure. + +“All hope abandon ye who enter here.” + +Such characters in colour dim I mark’d +Over a portal’s lofty arch inscrib’d: +Whereat I thus: “Master, these words import +Hard meaning.” He as one prepar’d replied: +“Here thou must all distrust behind thee leave; +Here be vile fear extinguish’d. We are come +Where I have told thee we shall see the souls +To misery doom’d, who intellectual good +Have lost.” And when his hand he had stretch’d forth +To mine, with pleasant looks, whence I was cheer’d, +Into that secret place he led me on. + +Here sighs with lamentations and loud moans +Resounded through the air pierc’d by no star, +That e’en I wept at entering. Various tongues, +Horrible languages, outcries of woe, +Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse, +With hands together smote that swell’d the sounds, +Made up a tumult, that for ever whirls +Round through that air with solid darkness stain’d, +Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies. + +I then, with error yet encompass’d, cried: +“O master! What is this I hear? What race +Are these, who seem so overcome with woe?” + +He thus to me: “This miserable fate +Suffer the wretched souls of those, who liv’d +Without or praise or blame, with that ill band +Of angels mix’d, who nor rebellious prov’d +Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves +Were only. From his bounds Heaven drove them forth, +Not to impair his lustre, nor the depth +Of Hell receives them, lest th’ accursed tribe +Should glory thence with exultation vain.” + +I then: “Master! what doth aggrieve them thus, +That they lament so loud?” He straight replied: +“That will I tell thee briefly. These of death +No hope may entertain: and their blind life +So meanly passes, that all other lots +They envy. Fame of them the world hath none, +Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both. +Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.” + +And I, who straightway look’d, beheld a flag, +Which whirling ran around so rapidly, +That it no pause obtain’d: and following came +Such a long train of spirits, I should ne’er +Have thought, that death so many had despoil’d. + +When some of these I recogniz’d, I saw +And knew the shade of him, who to base fear +Yielding, abjur’d his high estate. Forthwith +I understood for certain this the tribe +Of those ill spirits both to God displeasing +And to his foes. These wretches, who ne’er lived, +Went on in nakedness, and sorely stung +By wasps and hornets, which bedew’d their cheeks +With blood, that mix’d with tears dropp’d to their feet, +And by disgustful worms was gather’d there. + +Then looking farther onwards I beheld +A throng upon the shore of a great stream: +Whereat I thus: “Sir! grant me now to know +Whom here we view, and whence impell’d they seem +So eager to pass o’er, as I discern +Through the blear light?” He thus to me in few: +“This shalt thou know, soon as our steps arrive +Beside the woeful tide of Acheron.” + +Then with eyes downward cast and fill’d with shame, +Fearing my words offensive to his ear, +Till we had reach’d the river, I from speech +Abstain’d. And lo! toward us in a bark +Comes on an old man hoary white with eld, + +Crying, “Woe to you wicked spirits! hope not +Ever to see the sky again. I come +To take you to the other shore across, +Into eternal darkness, there to dwell +In fierce heat and in ice. And thou, who there +Standest, live spirit! get thee hence, and leave +These who are dead.” But soon as he beheld +I left them not, “By other way,” said he, +“By other haven shalt thou come to shore, +Not by this passage; thee a nimbler boat +Must carry.” Then to him thus spake my guide: +“Charon! thyself torment not: so ’t is will’d, +Where will and power are one: ask thou no more.” + +Straightway in silence fell the shaggy cheeks +Of him the boatman o’er the livid lake, +Around whose eyes glar’d wheeling flames. Meanwhile +Those spirits, faint and naked, color chang’d, +And gnash’d their teeth, soon as the cruel words +They heard. God and their parents they blasphem’d, +The human kind, the place, the time, and seed +That did engender them and give them birth. + +Then all together sorely wailing drew +To the curs’d strand, that every man must pass +Who fears not God. Charon, demoniac form, +With eyes of burning coal, collects them all, +Beck’ning, and each, that lingers, with his oar +Strikes. As fall off the light autumnal leaves, +One still another following, till the bough +Strews all its honours on the earth beneath; + +E’en in like manner Adam’s evil brood +Cast themselves one by one down from the shore, +Each at a beck, as falcon at his call. + +Thus go they over through the umber’d wave, +And ever they on the opposing bank +Be landed, on this side another throng +Still gathers. “Son,” thus spake the courteous guide, +“Those, who die subject to the wrath of God, +All here together come from every clime, +And to o’erpass the river are not loth: +For so heaven’s justice goads them on, that fear +Is turn’d into desire. Hence ne’er hath past +Good spirit. If of thee Charon complain, +Now mayst thou know the import of his words.” + +This said, the gloomy region trembling shook +So terribly, that yet with clammy dews +Fear chills my brow. The sad earth gave a blast, +That, lightening, shot forth a vermilion flame, +Which all my senses conquer’d quite, and I +Down dropp’d, as one with sudden slumber seiz’d. + + + + +CANTO IV + + +Broke the deep slumber in my brain a crash +Of heavy thunder, that I shook myself, +As one by main force rous’d. Risen upright, +My rested eyes I mov’d around, and search’d +With fixed ken to know what place it was, +Wherein I stood. For certain on the brink +I found me of the lamentable vale, +The dread abyss, that joins a thund’rous sound +Of plaints innumerable. Dark and deep, +And thick with clouds o’erspread, mine eye in vain +Explor’d its bottom, nor could aught discern. + +“Now let us to the blind world there beneath +Descend;” the bard began all pale of look: +“I go the first, and thou shalt follow next.” + +Then I his alter’d hue perceiving, thus: +“How may I speed, if thou yieldest to dread, +Who still art wont to comfort me in doubt?” + +He then: “The anguish of that race below +With pity stains my cheek, which thou for fear +Mistakest. Let us on. Our length of way +Urges to haste.” Onward, this said, he mov’d; +And ent’ring led me with him on the bounds +Of the first circle, that surrounds th’ abyss. +Here, as mine ear could note, no plaint was heard +Except of sighs, that made th’ eternal air +Tremble, not caus’d by tortures, but from grief +Felt by those multitudes, many and vast, +Of men, women, and infants. Then to me +The gentle guide: “Inquir’st thou not what spirits +Are these, which thou beholdest? Ere thou pass +Farther, I would thou know, that these of sin +Were blameless; and if aught they merited, +It profits not, since baptism was not theirs, +The portal to thy faith. If they before +The Gospel liv’d, they serv’d not God aright; +And among such am I. For these defects, +And for no other evil, we are lost;” + +“Only so far afflicted, that we live +Desiring without hope.” So grief assail’d +My heart at hearing this, for well I knew +Suspended in that Limbo many a soul +Of mighty worth. “O tell me, sire rever’d! +Tell me, my master!” I began through wish +Of full assurance in that holy faith, +Which vanquishes all error; “say, did e’er +Any, or through his own or other’s merit, +Come forth from thence, whom afterward was blest?” + +Piercing the secret purport of my speech, +He answer’d: “I was new to that estate, +When I beheld a puissant one arrive +Amongst us, with victorious trophy crown’d. +He forth the shade of our first parent drew, +Abel his child, and Noah righteous man, +Of Moses lawgiver for faith approv’d, +Of patriarch Abraham, and David king, +Israel with his sire and with his sons, +Nor without Rachel whom so hard he won, +And others many more, whom he to bliss +Exalted. Before these, be thou assur’d, +No spirit of human kind was ever sav’d.” + +We, while he spake, ceas’d not our onward road, +Still passing through the wood; for so I name +Those spirits thick beset. We were not far +On this side from the summit, when I kenn’d +A flame, that o’er the darken’d hemisphere +Prevailing shin’d. Yet we a little space +Were distant, not so far but I in part +Discover’d, that a tribe in honour high +That place possess’d. “O thou, who every art +And science valu’st! who are these, that boast +Such honour, separate from all the rest?” + +He answer’d: “The renown of their great names +That echoes through your world above, acquires +Favour in heaven, which holds them thus advanc’d.” +Meantime a voice I heard: “Honour the bard +Sublime! his shade returns that left us late!” +No sooner ceas’d the sound, than I beheld +Four mighty spirits toward us bend their steps, +Of semblance neither sorrowful nor glad. + +When thus my master kind began: “Mark him, +Who in his right hand bears that falchion keen, +The other three preceding, as their lord. +This is that Homer, of all bards supreme: +Flaccus the next in satire’s vein excelling; +The third is Naso; Lucan is the last. +Because they all that appellation own, +With which the voice singly accosted me, +Honouring they greet me thus, and well they judge.” + +So I beheld united the bright school +Of him the monarch of sublimest song, +That o’er the others like an eagle soars. +When they together short discourse had held, +They turn’d to me, with salutation kind +Beck’ning me; at the which my master smil’d: +Nor was this all; but greater honour still +They gave me, for they made me of their tribe; +And I was sixth amid so learn’d a band. + +Far as the luminous beacon on we pass’d +Speaking of matters, then befitting well +To speak, now fitter left untold. At foot +Of a magnificent castle we arriv’d, +Seven times with lofty walls begirt, and round +Defended by a pleasant stream. O’er this +As o’er dry land we pass’d. Next through seven gates +I with those sages enter’d, and we came +Into a mead with lively verdure fresh. + +There dwelt a race, who slow their eyes around +Majestically mov’d, and in their port +Bore eminent authority; they spake +Seldom, but all their words were tuneful sweet. + +We to one side retir’d, into a place +Open and bright and lofty, whence each one +Stood manifest to view. Incontinent +There on the green enamel of the plain +Were shown me the great spirits, by whose sight +I am exalted in my own esteem. + +Electra there I saw accompanied +By many, among whom Hector I knew, +Anchises’ pious son, and with hawk’s eye +Caesar all arm’d, and by Camilla there +Penthesilea. On the other side +Old King Latinus, seated by his child +Lavinia, and that Brutus I beheld, +Who Tarquin chas’d, Lucretia, Cato’s wife +Marcia, with Julia and Cornelia there; +And sole apart retir’d, the Soldan fierce. + +Then when a little more I rais’d my brow, +I spied the master of the sapient throng, +Seated amid the philosophic train. +Him all admire, all pay him rev’rence due. +There Socrates and Plato both I mark’d, +Nearest to him in rank; Democritus, +Who sets the world at chance, Diogenes, +With Heraclitus, and Empedocles, +And Anaxagoras, and Thales sage, +Zeno, and Dioscorides well read +In nature’s secret lore. Orpheus I mark’d +And Linus, Tully and moral Seneca, +Euclid and Ptolemy, Hippocrates, +Galenus, Avicen, and him who made +That commentary vast, Averroes. + +Of all to speak at full were vain attempt; +For my wide theme so urges, that ofttimes +My words fall short of what bechanc’d. In two +The six associates part. Another way +My sage guide leads me, from that air serene, +Into a climate ever vex’d with storms: +And to a part I come where no light shines. + + + + +CANTO V + + +From the first circle I descended thus +Down to the second, which, a lesser space +Embracing, so much more of grief contains +Provoking bitter moans. There, Minos stands +Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all +Who enter, strict examining the crimes, + +Gives sentence, and dismisses them beneath, +According as he foldeth him around: +For when before him comes th’ ill fated soul, +It all confesses; and that judge severe +Of sins, considering what place in hell +Suits the transgression, with his tail so oft +Himself encircles, as degrees beneath +He dooms it to descend. Before him stand +Always a num’rous throng; and in his turn +Each one to judgment passing, speaks, and hears +His fate, thence downward to his dwelling hurl’d. + +“O thou! who to this residence of woe +Approachest?” when he saw me coming, cried +Minos, relinquishing his dread employ, +“Look how thou enter here; beware in whom +Thou place thy trust; let not the entrance broad +Deceive thee to thy harm.” To him my guide: +“Wherefore exclaimest? Hinder not his way +By destiny appointed; so ’tis will’d +Where will and power are one. Ask thou no more.” + +Now ’gin the rueful wailings to be heard. +Now am I come where many a plaining voice +Smites on mine ear. Into a place I came +Where light was silent all. Bellowing there groan’d +A noise as of a sea in tempest torn +By warring winds. The stormy blast of hell +With restless fury drives the spirits on +Whirl’d round and dash’d amain with sore annoy. + +When they arrive before the ruinous sweep, +There shrieks are heard, there lamentations, moans, +And blasphemies ’gainst the good Power in heaven. + +I understood that to this torment sad +The carnal sinners are condemn’d, in whom +Reason by lust is sway’d. As in large troops +And multitudinous, when winter reigns, +The starlings on their wings are borne abroad; +So bears the tyrannous gust those evil souls. +On this side and on that, above, below, +It drives them: hope of rest to solace them +Is none, nor e’en of milder pang. As cranes, +Chanting their dol’rous notes, traverse the sky, +Stretch’d out in long array: so I beheld +Spirits, who came loud wailing, hurried on +By their dire doom. Then I: “Instructor! who +Are these, by the black air so scourg’d?”—“The first +’Mong those, of whom thou question’st,” he replied, +“O’er many tongues was empress. She in vice +Of luxury was so shameless, that she made +Liking be lawful by promulg’d decree, +To clear the blame she had herself incurr’d. +This is Semiramis, of whom ’tis writ, +That she succeeded Ninus her espous’d; +And held the land, which now the Soldan rules. +The next in amorous fury slew herself, +And to Sicheus’ ashes broke her faith: +Then follows Cleopatra, lustful queen.” + +There mark’d I Helen, for whose sake so long +The time was fraught with evil; there the great +Achilles, who with love fought to the end. +Paris I saw, and Tristan; and beside +A thousand more he show’d me, and by name +Pointed them out, whom love bereav’d of life. + +When I had heard my sage instructor name +Those dames and knights of antique days, o’erpower’d +By pity, well-nigh in amaze my mind +Was lost; and I began: “Bard! willingly +I would address those two together coming, +Which seem so light before the wind.” He thus: +“Note thou, when nearer they to us approach.” + +“Then by that love which carries them along, +Entreat; and they will come.” Soon as the wind +Sway’d them toward us, I thus fram’d my speech: +“O wearied spirits! come, and hold discourse +With us, if by none else restrain’d.” As doves +By fond desire invited, on wide wings +And firm, to their sweet nest returning home, +Cleave the air, wafted by their will along; +Thus issu’d from that troop, where Dido ranks, +They through the ill air speeding; with such force +My cry prevail’d by strong affection urg’d. + +“O gracious creature and benign! who go’st +Visiting, through this element obscure, +Us, who the world with bloody stain imbru’d; +If for a friend the King of all we own’d, +Our pray’r to him should for thy peace arise, +Since thou hast pity on our evil plight. +()f whatsoe’er to hear or to discourse +It pleases thee, that will we hear, of that +Freely with thee discourse, while e’er the wind, +As now, is mute. The land, that gave me birth, +Is situate on the coast, where Po descends +To rest in ocean with his sequent streams. + +“Love, that in gentle heart is quickly learnt, +Entangled him by that fair form, from me +Ta’en in such cruel sort, as grieves me still: +Love, that denial takes from none belov’d, +Caught me with pleasing him so passing well, +That, as thou see’st, he yet deserts me not. + +“Love brought us to one death: Caina waits +The soul, who spilt our life.” Such were their words; +At hearing which downward I bent my looks, +And held them there so long, that the bard cried: +“What art thou pond’ring?” I in answer thus: +“Alas! by what sweet thoughts, what fond desire +Must they at length to that ill pass have reach’d!” + +Then turning, I to them my speech address’d. +And thus began: “Francesca! your sad fate +Even to tears my grief and pity moves. +But tell me; in the time of your sweet sighs, +By what, and how love granted, that ye knew +Your yet uncertain wishes?” She replied: +“No greater grief than to remember days +Of joy, when mis’ry is at hand! That kens +Thy learn’d instructor. Yet so eagerly +If thou art bent to know the primal root, +From whence our love gat being, I will do, +As one, who weeps and tells his tale. One day +For our delight we read of Lancelot, +How him love thrall’d. Alone we were, and no +Suspicion near us. Ofttimes by that reading +Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue +Fled from our alter’d cheek. But at one point +Alone we fell. When of that smile we read, +The wished smile, rapturously kiss’d +By one so deep in love, then he, who ne’er +From me shall separate, at once my lips +All trembling kiss’d. The book and writer both +Were love’s purveyors. In its leaves that day +We read no more.” While thus one spirit spake, +The other wail’d so sorely, that heartstruck +I through compassion fainting, seem’d not far +From death, and like a corpse fell to the ground. + + + + +CANTO VI + + +My sense reviving, that erewhile had droop’d +With pity for the kindred shades, whence grief +O’ercame me wholly, straight around I see +New torments, new tormented souls, which way +Soe’er I move, or turn, or bend my sight. +In the third circle I arrive, of show’rs +Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang’d +For ever, both in kind and in degree. +Large hail, discolour’d water, sleety flaw +Through the dun midnight air stream’d down amain: +Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell. + +Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange, +Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog +Over the multitude immers’d beneath. +His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard, +His belly large, and claw’d the hands, with which +He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs +Piecemeal disparts. Howling there spread, as curs, +Under the rainy deluge, with one side +The other screening, oft they roll them round, +A wretched, godless crew. When that great worm +Descried us, savage Cerberus, he op’d +His jaws, and the fangs show’d us; not a limb +Of him but trembled. Then my guide, his palms +Expanding on the ground, thence filled with earth +Rais’d them, and cast it in his ravenous maw. + +E’en as a dog, that yelling bays for food +His keeper, when the morsel comes, lets fall +His fury, bent alone with eager haste +To swallow it; so dropp’d the loathsome cheeks +Of demon Cerberus, who thund’ring stuns +The spirits, that they for deafness wish in vain. + +We, o’er the shades thrown prostrate by the brunt +Of the heavy tempest passing, set our feet +Upon their emptiness, that substance seem’d. + +They all along the earth extended lay +Save one, that sudden rais’d himself to sit, +Soon as that way he saw us pass. “O thou!” +He cried, “who through the infernal shades art led, +Own, if again thou know’st me. Thou wast fram’d +Or ere my frame was broken.” I replied: +“The anguish thou endur’st perchance so takes +Thy form from my remembrance, that it seems +As if I saw thee never. But inform +Me who thou art, that in a place so sad +Art set, and in such torment, that although +Other be greater, more disgustful none +Can be imagin’d.” He in answer thus: + +“Thy city heap’d with envy to the brim, +Ay that the measure overflows its bounds, +Held me in brighter days. Ye citizens +Were wont to name me Ciacco. For the sin +Of glutt’ny, damned vice, beneath this rain, +E’en as thou see’st, I with fatigue am worn; +Nor I sole spirit in this woe: all these +Have by like crime incurr’d like punishment.” + +No more he said, and I my speech resum’d: +“Ciacco! thy dire affliction grieves me much, +Even to tears. But tell me, if thou know’st, +What shall at length befall the citizens +Of the divided city; whether any just one +Inhabit there: and tell me of the cause, +Whence jarring discord hath assail’d it thus?” + +He then: “After long striving they will come +To blood; and the wild party from the woods +Will chase the other with much injury forth. +Then it behoves, that this must fall, within +Three solar circles; and the other rise +By borrow’d force of one, who under shore +Now rests. It shall a long space hold aloof +Its forehead, keeping under heavy weight +The other oppress’d, indignant at the load, +And grieving sore. The just are two in number, +But they neglected. Av’rice, envy, pride, +Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all +On fire.” Here ceas’d the lamentable sound; +And I continu’d thus: “Still would I learn +More from thee, farther parley still entreat. +Of Farinata and Tegghiaio say, +They who so well deserv’d, of Giacopo, +Arrigo, Mosca, and the rest, who bent +Their minds on working good. Oh! tell me where +They bide, and to their knowledge let me come. +For I am press’d with keen desire to hear, +If heaven’s sweet cup or poisonous drug of hell +Be to their lip assign’d.” He answer’d straight: +“These are yet blacker spirits. Various crimes +Have sunk them deeper in the dark abyss. +If thou so far descendest, thou mayst see them. +But to the pleasant world when thou return’st, +Of me make mention, I entreat thee, there. +No more I tell thee, answer thee no more.” + +This said, his fixed eyes he turn’d askance, +A little ey’d me, then bent down his head, +And ’midst his blind companions with it fell. + +When thus my guide: “No more his bed he leaves, +Ere the last angel-trumpet blow. The Power +Adverse to these shall then in glory come, +Each one forthwith to his sad tomb repair, +Resume his fleshly vesture and his form, +And hear the eternal doom re-echoing rend +The vault.” So pass’d we through that mixture foul +Of spirits and rain, with tardy steps; meanwhile +Touching, though slightly, on the life to come. +For thus I question’d: “Shall these tortures, Sir! +When the great sentence passes, be increas’d, +Or mitigated, or as now severe?” + +He then: “Consult thy knowledge; that decides +That as each thing to more perfection grows, +It feels more sensibly both good and pain. +Though ne’er to true perfection may arrive +This race accurs’d, yet nearer then than now +They shall approach it.” Compassing that path +Circuitous we journeyed, and discourse +Much more than I relate between us pass’d: +Till at the point, where the steps led below, +Arriv’d, there Plutus, the great foe, we found. + + + + +CANTO VII + + +“Ah me! O Satan! Satan!” loud exclaim’d +Plutus, in accent hoarse of wild alarm: +And the kind sage, whom no event surpris’d, +To comfort me thus spake: “Let not thy fear +Harm thee, for power in him, be sure, is none +To hinder down this rock thy safe descent.” +Then to that sworn lip turning, “Peace!” he cried, + +“Curs’d wolf! thy fury inward on thyself +Prey, and consume thee! Through the dark profound +Not without cause he passes. So ’t is will’d +On high, there where the great Archangel pour’d +Heav’n’s vengeance on the first adulterer proud.” + +As sails full spread and bellying with the wind +Drop suddenly collaps’d, if the mast split; +So to the ground down dropp’d the cruel fiend. + +Thus we, descending to the fourth steep ledge, +Gain’d on the dismal shore, that all the woe +Hems in of all the universe. Ah me! +Almighty Justice! in what store thou heap’st +New pains, new troubles, as I here beheld! +Wherefore doth fault of ours bring us to this? + +E’en as a billow, on Charybdis rising, +Against encounter’d billow dashing breaks; +Such is the dance this wretched race must lead, +Whom more than elsewhere numerous here I found, +From one side and the other, with loud voice, +Both roll’d on weights by main forge of their breasts, +Then smote together, and each one forthwith +Roll’d them back voluble, turning again, +Exclaiming these, “Why holdest thou so fast?” +Those answering, “And why castest thou away?” +So still repeating their despiteful song, +They to the opposite point on either hand +Travers’d the horrid circle: then arriv’d, +Both turn’d them round, and through the middle space +Conflicting met again. At sight whereof +I, stung with grief, thus spake: “O say, my guide! +What race is this? Were these, whose heads are shorn, +On our left hand, all sep’rate to the church?” + +He straight replied: “In their first life these all +In mind were so distorted, that they made, +According to due measure, of their wealth, +No use. This clearly from their words collect, +Which they howl forth, at each extremity +Arriving of the circle, where their crime +Contrary’ in kind disparts them. To the church +Were separate those, that with no hairy cowls +Are crown’d, both Popes and Cardinals, o’er whom +Av’rice dominion absolute maintains.” + +I then: “Mid such as these some needs must be, +Whom I shall recognize, that with the blot +Of these foul sins were stain’d.” He answering thus: +“Vain thought conceiv’st thou. That ignoble life, +Which made them vile before, now makes them dark, +And to all knowledge indiscernible. +Forever they shall meet in this rude shock: +These from the tomb with clenched grasp shall rise, +Those with close-shaven locks. That ill they gave, +And ill they kept, hath of the beauteous world +Depriv’d, and set them at this strife, which needs +No labour’d phrase of mine to set if off. +Now may’st thou see, my son! how brief, how vain, +The goods committed into fortune’s hands, +For which the human race keep such a coil! +Not all the gold, that is beneath the moon, +Or ever hath been, of these toil-worn souls +Might purchase rest for one.” I thus rejoin’d: + +“My guide! of thee this also would I learn; +This fortune, that thou speak’st of, what it is, +Whose talons grasp the blessings of the world?” + +He thus: “O beings blind! what ignorance +Besets you? Now my judgment hear and mark. +He, whose transcendent wisdom passes all, +The heavens creating, gave them ruling powers +To guide them, so that each part shines to each, +Their light in equal distribution pour’d. +By similar appointment he ordain’d +Over the world’s bright images to rule. +Superintendence of a guiding hand +And general minister, which at due time +May change the empty vantages of life +From race to race, from one to other’s blood, +Beyond prevention of man’s wisest care: +Wherefore one nation rises into sway, +Another languishes, e’en as her will +Decrees, from us conceal’d, as in the grass +The serpent train. Against her nought avails +Your utmost wisdom. She with foresight plans, +Judges, and carries on her reign, as theirs +The other powers divine. Her changes know +Nore intermission: by necessity +She is made swift, so frequent come who claim +Succession in her favours. This is she, +So execrated e’en by those, whose debt +To her is rather praise; they wrongfully +With blame requite her, and with evil word; +But she is blessed, and for that recks not: +Amidst the other primal beings glad +Rolls on her sphere, and in her bliss exults. +Now on our way pass we, to heavier woe +Descending: for each star is falling now, +That mounted at our entrance, and forbids +Too long our tarrying.” We the circle cross’d +To the next steep, arriving at a well, +That boiling pours itself down to a foss +Sluic’d from its source. Far murkier was the wave +Than sablest grain: and we in company +Of the’ inky waters, journeying by their side, +Enter’d, though by a different track, beneath. +Into a lake, the Stygian nam’d, expands +The dismal stream, when it hath reach’d the foot +Of the grey wither’d cliffs. Intent I stood +To gaze, and in the marish sunk descried +A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks +Betok’ning rage. They with their hands alone +Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet, +Cutting each other piecemeal with their fangs. + +The good instructor spake; “Now seest thou, son! +The souls of those, whom anger overcame. +This too for certain know, that underneath +The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs +Into these bubbles make the surface heave, +As thine eye tells thee wheresoe’er it turn.” +Fix’d in the slime they say: “Sad once were we +In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun, +Carrying a foul and lazy mist within: +Now in these murky settlings are we sad.” +Such dolorous strain they gurgle in their throats. +But word distinct can utter none.” Our route +Thus compass’d we, a segment widely stretch’d +Between the dry embankment, and the core +Of the loath’d pool, turning meanwhile our eyes +Downward on those who gulp’d its muddy lees; +Nor stopp’d, till to a tower’s low base we came. + + + + +CANTO VIII + + +My theme pursuing, I relate that ere +We reach’d the lofty turret’s base, our eyes +Its height ascended, where two cressets hung +We mark’d, and from afar another light +Return the signal, so remote, that scarce +The eye could catch its beam. I turning round +To the deep source of knowledge, thus inquir’d: +“Say what this means? and what that other light +In answer set? what agency doth this?” + +“There on the filthy waters,” he replied, +“E’en now what next awaits us mayst thou see, +If the marsh-gender’d fog conceal it not.” + +Never was arrow from the cord dismiss’d, +That ran its way so nimbly through the air, +As a small bark, that through the waves I spied +Toward us coming, under the sole sway +Of one that ferried it, who cried aloud: +“Art thou arriv’d, fell spirit?”—“Phlegyas, Phlegyas, +This time thou criest in vain,” my lord replied; +“No longer shalt thou have us, but while o’er +The slimy pool we pass.” As one who hears +Of some great wrong he hath sustain’d, whereat +Inly he pines; so Phlegyas inly pin’d +In his fierce ire. My guide descending stepp’d +Into the skiff, and bade me enter next +Close at his side; nor till my entrance seem’d +The vessel freighted. Soon as both embark’d, +Cutting the waves, goes on the ancient prow, +More deeply than with others it is wont. + +While we our course o’er the dead channel held. +One drench’d in mire before me came, and said; +“Who art thou, that thou comest ere thine hour?” + +I answer’d: “Though I come, I tarry not; +But who art thou, that art become so foul?” + +“One, as thou seest, who mourn:” he straight replied. + +To which I thus: “In mourning and in woe, +Curs’d spirit! tarry thou.g I know thee well, +E’en thus in filth disguis’d.” Then stretch’d he forth +Hands to the bark; whereof my teacher sage +Aware, thrusting him back: “Away! down there; + +“To the’ other dogs!” then, with his arms my neck +Encircling, kiss’d my cheek, and spake: “O soul +Justly disdainful! blest was she in whom +Thou was conceiv’d! He in the world was one +For arrogance noted; to his memory +No virtue lends its lustre; even so +Here is his shadow furious. There above +How many now hold themselves mighty kings +Who here like swine shall wallow in the mire, +Leaving behind them horrible dispraise!” + +I then: “Master! him fain would I behold +Whelm’d in these dregs, before we quit the lake.” + +He thus: “Or ever to thy view the shore +Be offer’d, satisfied shall be that wish, +Which well deserves completion.” Scarce his words +Were ended, when I saw the miry tribes +Set on him with such violence, that yet +For that render I thanks to God and praise +“To Filippo Argenti:” cried they all: +And on himself the moody Florentine +Turn’d his avenging fangs. Him here we left, +Nor speak I of him more. But on mine ear +Sudden a sound of lamentation smote, +Whereat mine eye unbarr’d I sent abroad. + +And thus the good instructor: “Now, my son! +Draws near the city, that of Dis is nam’d, +With its grave denizens, a mighty throng.” + +I thus: “The minarets already, Sir! +There certes in the valley I descry, +Gleaming vermilion, as if they from fire +Had issu’d.” He replied: “Eternal fire, +That inward burns, shows them with ruddy flame +Illum’d; as in this nether hell thou seest.” + +We came within the fosses deep, that moat +This region comfortless. The walls appear’d +As they were fram’d of iron. We had made +Wide circuit, ere a place we reach’d, where loud +The mariner cried vehement: “Go forth! +The’ entrance is here!” Upon the gates I spied +More than a thousand, who of old from heaven +Were hurl’d. With ireful gestures, “Who is this,” +They cried, “that without death first felt, goes through +The regions of the dead?” My sapient guide +Made sign that he for secret parley wish’d; +Whereat their angry scorn abating, thus +They spake: “Come thou alone; and let him go +Who hath so hardily enter’d this realm. +Alone return he by his witless way; +If well he know it, let him prove. For thee, +Here shalt thou tarry, who through clime so dark +Hast been his escort.” Now bethink thee, reader! +What cheer was mine at sound of those curs’d words. +I did believe I never should return. + +“O my lov’d guide! who more than seven times +Security hast render’d me, and drawn +From peril deep, whereto I stood expos’d, +Desert me not,” I cried, “in this extreme. +And if our onward going be denied, +Together trace we back our steps with speed.” + +My liege, who thither had conducted me, +Replied: “Fear not: for of our passage none +Hath power to disappoint us, by such high +Authority permitted. But do thou +Expect me here; meanwhile thy wearied spirit +Comfort, and feed with kindly hope, assur’d +I will not leave thee in this lower world.” + +This said, departs the sire benevolent, +And quits me. Hesitating I remain +At war ’twixt will and will not in my thoughts. + +I could not hear what terms he offer’d them, +But they conferr’d not long, for all at once +To trial fled within. Clos’d were the gates +By those our adversaries on the breast +Of my liege lord: excluded he return’d +To me with tardy steps. Upon the ground +His eyes were bent, and from his brow eras’d +All confidence, while thus with sighs he spake: +“Who hath denied me these abodes of woe?” +Then thus to me: “That I am anger’d, think +No ground of terror: in this trial I +Shall vanquish, use what arts they may within +For hindrance. This their insolence, not new, +Erewhile at gate less secret they display’d, +Which still is without bolt; upon its arch +Thou saw’st the deadly scroll: and even now +On this side of its entrance, down the steep, +Passing the circles, unescorted, comes +One whose strong might can open us this land.” + + + + +CANTO IX + + +The hue, which coward dread on my pale cheeks +Imprinted, when I saw my guide turn back, +Chas’d that from his which newly they had worn, +And inwardly restrain’d it. He, as one +Who listens, stood attentive: for his eye +Not far could lead him through the sable air, +And the thick-gath’ring cloud. “It yet behooves +We win this fight”—thus he began—“if not— +Such aid to us is offer’d.—Oh, how long +Me seems it, ere the promis’d help arrive!” + +I noted, how the sequel of his words +Clok’d their beginning; for the last he spake +Agreed not with the first. But not the less +My fear was at his saying; sith I drew +To import worse perchance, than that he held, +His mutilated speech. “Doth ever any +Into this rueful concave’s extreme depth +Descend, out of the first degree, whose pain +Is deprivation merely of sweet hope?” + +Thus I inquiring. “Rarely,” he replied, +“It chances, that among us any makes +This journey, which I wend. Erewhile ’tis true +Once came I here beneath, conjur’d by fell +Erictho, sorceress, who compell’d the shades +Back to their bodies. No long space my flesh +Was naked of me, when within these walls +She made me enter, to draw forth a spirit +From out of Judas’ circle. Lowest place +Is that of all, obscurest, and remov’d +Farthest from heav’n’s all-circling orb. The road +Full well I know: thou therefore rest secure. +That lake, the noisome stench exhaling, round +The city’ of grief encompasses, which now +We may not enter without rage.” Yet more +He added: but I hold it not in mind, +For that mine eye toward the lofty tower +Had drawn me wholly, to its burning top. +Where in an instant I beheld uprisen +At once three hellish furies stain’d with blood: +In limb and motion feminine they seem’d; +Around them greenest hydras twisting roll’d +Their volumes; adders and cerastes crept +Instead of hair, and their fierce temples bound. + +He knowing well the miserable hags +Who tend the queen of endless woe, thus spake: + +“Mark thou each dire Erinnys. To the left +This is Megaera; on the right hand she, +Who wails, Alecto; and Tisiphone +I’ th’ midst.” This said, in silence he remain’d +Their breast they each one clawing tore; themselves +Smote with their palms, and such shrill clamour rais’d, +That to the bard I clung, suspicion-bound. +“Hasten Medusa: so to adamant +Him shall we change;” all looking down exclaim’d. +“E’en when by Theseus’ might assail’d, we took +No ill revenge.” “Turn thyself round, and keep +Thy count’nance hid; for if the Gorgon dire +Be shown, and thou shouldst view it, thy return +Upwards would be for ever lost.” This said, +Himself my gentle master turn’d me round, +Nor trusted he my hands, but with his own +He also hid me. Ye of intellect +Sound and entire, mark well the lore conceal’d +Under close texture of the mystic strain! + +And now there came o’er the perturbed waves +Loud-crashing, terrible, a sound that made +Either shore tremble, as if of a wind +Impetuous, from conflicting vapours sprung, +That ’gainst some forest driving all its might, +Plucks off the branches, beats them down and hurls +Afar; then onward passing proudly sweeps +Its whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly. + +Mine eyes he loos’d, and spake: “And now direct +Thy visual nerve along that ancient foam, +There, thickest where the smoke ascends.” As frogs +Before their foe the serpent, through the wave +Ply swiftly all, till at the ground each one +Lies on a heap; more than a thousand spirits +Destroy’d, so saw I fleeing before one +Who pass’d with unwet feet the Stygian sound. +He, from his face removing the gross air, +Oft his left hand forth stretch’d, and seem’d alone +By that annoyance wearied. I perceiv’d +That he was sent from heav’n, and to my guide +Turn’d me, who signal made that I should stand +Quiet, and bend to him. Ah me! how full +Of noble anger seem’d he! To the gate +He came, and with his wand touch’d it, whereat +Open without impediment it flew. + +“Outcasts of heav’n! O abject race and scorn’d!” +Began he on the horrid grunsel standing, +“Whence doth this wild excess of insolence +Lodge in you? wherefore kick you ’gainst that will +Ne’er frustrate of its end, and which so oft +Hath laid on you enforcement of your pangs? +What profits at the fays to but the horn? +Your Cerberus, if ye remember, hence +Bears still, peel’d of their hair, his throat and maw.” + +This said, he turn’d back o’er the filthy way, +And syllable to us spake none, but wore +The semblance of a man by other care +Beset, and keenly press’d, than thought of him +Who in his presence stands. Then we our steps +Toward that territory mov’d, secure +After the hallow’d words. We unoppos’d +There enter’d; and my mind eager to learn +What state a fortress like to that might hold, +I soon as enter’d throw mine eye around, +And see on every part wide-stretching space +Replete with bitter pain and torment ill. + +As where Rhone stagnates on the plains of Arles, +Or as at Pola, near Quarnaro’s gulf, +That closes Italy and laves her bounds, +The place is all thick spread with sepulchres; +So was it here, save what in horror here +Excell’d: for ’midst the graves were scattered flames, +Wherewith intensely all throughout they burn’d, +That iron for no craft there hotter needs. + +Their lids all hung suspended, and beneath +From them forth issu’d lamentable moans, +Such as the sad and tortur’d well might raise. + +I thus: “Master! say who are these, interr’d +Within these vaults, of whom distinct we hear +The dolorous sighs?” He answer thus return’d: + +“The arch-heretics are here, accompanied +By every sect their followers; and much more, +Than thou believest, tombs are freighted: like +With like is buried; and the monuments +Are different in degrees of heat.” This said, +He to the right hand turning, on we pass’d +Betwixt the afflicted and the ramparts high. + + + + +CANTO X + + +Now by a secret pathway we proceed, +Between the walls, that hem the region round, +And the tormented souls: my master first, +I close behind his steps. “Virtue supreme!” +I thus began; “who through these ample orbs +In circuit lead’st me, even as thou will’st, +Speak thou, and satisfy my wish. May those, +Who lie within these sepulchres, be seen? +Already all the lids are rais’d, and none +O’er them keeps watch.” He thus in answer spake +“They shall be closed all, what-time they here +From Josaphat return’d shall come, and bring +Their bodies, which above they now have left. +The cemetery on this part obtain +With Epicurus all his followers, +Who with the body make the spirit die. +Here therefore satisfaction shall be soon +Both to the question ask’d, and to the wish, +Which thou conceal’st in silence.” I replied: +“I keep not, guide belov’d! from thee my heart +Secreted, but to shun vain length of words, +A lesson erewhile taught me by thyself.” + +“O Tuscan! thou who through the city of fire +Alive art passing, so discreet of speech! +Here please thee stay awhile. Thy utterance +Declares the place of thy nativity +To be that noble land, with which perchance +I too severely dealt.” Sudden that sound +Forth issu’d from a vault, whereat in fear +I somewhat closer to my leader’s side +Approaching, he thus spake: “What dost thou? Turn. +Lo, Farinata, there! who hath himself +Uplifted: from his girdle upwards all +Expos’d behold him.” On his face was mine +Already fix’d; his breast and forehead there +Erecting, seem’d as in high scorn he held +E’en hell. Between the sepulchres to him +My guide thrust me with fearless hands and prompt, +This warning added: “See thy words be clear!” + +He, soon as there I stood at the tomb’s foot, +Ey’d me a space, then in disdainful mood +Address’d me: “Say, what ancestors were thine?” + +I, willing to obey him, straight reveal’d +The whole, nor kept back aught: whence he, his brow +Somewhat uplifting, cried: “Fiercely were they +Adverse to me, my party, and the blood +From whence I sprang: twice therefore I abroad +Scatter’d them.” “Though driv’n out, yet they each time +From all parts,” answer’d I, “return’d; an art +Which yours have shown, they are not skill’d to learn.” + +Then, peering forth from the unclosed jaw, +Rose from his side a shade, high as the chin, +Leaning, methought, upon its knees uprais’d. +It look’d around, as eager to explore +If there were other with me; but perceiving +That fond imagination quench’d, with tears +Thus spake: “If thou through this blind prison go’st. +Led by thy lofty genius and profound, +Where is my son? and wherefore not with thee?” + +I straight replied: “Not of myself I come, +By him, who there expects me, through this clime +Conducted, whom perchance Guido thy son +Had in contempt.” Already had his words +And mode of punishment read me his name, +Whence I so fully answer’d. He at once +Exclaim’d, up starting, “How! said’st thou he HAD? +No longer lives he? Strikes not on his eye +The blessed daylight?” Then of some delay +I made ere my reply aware, down fell +Supine, not after forth appear’d he more. + +Meanwhile the other, great of soul, near whom +I yet was station’d, chang’d not count’nance stern, +Nor mov’d the neck, nor bent his ribbed side. +“And if,” continuing the first discourse, +“They in this art,” he cried, “small skill have shown, +That doth torment me more e’en than this bed. +But not yet fifty times shall be relum’d +Her aspect, who reigns here Queen of this realm, +Ere thou shalt know the full weight of that art. +So to the pleasant world mayst thou return, +As thou shalt tell me, why in all their laws, +Against my kin this people is so fell?” + +“The slaughter and great havoc,” I replied, +“That colour’d Arbia’s flood with crimson stain— +To these impute, that in our hallow’d dome +Such orisons ascend.” Sighing he shook +The head, then thus resum’d: “In that affray +I stood not singly, nor without just cause +Assuredly should with the rest have stirr’d; +But singly there I stood, when by consent +Of all, Florence had to the ground been raz’d, +The one who openly forbad the deed.” + +“So may thy lineage find at last repose,” +I thus adjur’d him, “as thou solve this knot, +Which now involves my mind. If right I hear, +Ye seem to view beforehand, that which time +Leads with him, of the present uninform’d.” + +“We view, as one who hath an evil sight,” +He answer’d, “plainly, objects far remote: +So much of his large spendour yet imparts +The’ Almighty Ruler; but when they approach +Or actually exist, our intellect +Then wholly fails, nor of your human state +Except what others bring us know we aught. +Hence therefore mayst thou understand, that all +Our knowledge in that instant shall expire, +When on futurity the portals close.” + +Then conscious of my fault, and by remorse +Smitten, I added thus: “Now shalt thou say +To him there fallen, that his offspring still +Is to the living join’d; and bid him know, +That if from answer silent I abstain’d, +’Twas that my thought was occupied intent +Upon that error, which thy help hath solv’d.” + +But now my master summoning me back +I heard, and with more eager haste besought +The spirit to inform me, who with him +Partook his lot. He answer thus return’d: + +“More than a thousand with me here are laid +Within is Frederick, second of that name, +And the Lord Cardinal, and of the rest +I speak not.” He, this said, from sight withdrew. +But I my steps towards the ancient bard +Reverting, ruminated on the words +Betokening me such ill. Onward he mov’d, +And thus in going question’d: “Whence the’ amaze +That holds thy senses wrapt?” I satisfied +The’ inquiry, and the sage enjoin’d me straight: +“Let thy safe memory store what thou hast heard +To thee importing harm; and note thou this,” +With his rais’d finger bidding me take heed, + +“When thou shalt stand before her gracious beam, +Whose bright eye all surveys, she of thy life +The future tenour will to thee unfold.” + +Forthwith he to the left hand turn’d his feet: +We left the wall, and tow’rds the middle space +Went by a path, that to a valley strikes; +Which e’en thus high exhal’d its noisome steam. + + + + +CANTO XI + + +Upon the utmost verge of a high bank, +By craggy rocks environ’d round, we came, +Where woes beneath more cruel yet were stow’d: +And here to shun the horrible excess +Of fetid exhalation, upward cast +From the profound abyss, behind the lid +Of a great monument we stood retir’d, + +Whereon this scroll I mark’d: “I have in charge +Pope Anastasius, whom Photinus drew +From the right path.—Ere our descent behooves +We make delay, that somewhat first the sense, +To the dire breath accustom’d, afterward +Regard it not.” My master thus; to whom +Answering I spake: “Some compensation find +That the time past not wholly lost.” He then: +“Lo! how my thoughts e’en to thy wishes tend! +My son! within these rocks,” he thus began, +“Are three close circles in gradation plac’d, +As these which now thou leav’st. Each one is full +Of spirits accurs’d; but that the sight alone +Hereafter may suffice thee, listen how +And for what cause in durance they abide. + +“Of all malicious act abhorr’d in heaven, +The end is injury; and all such end +Either by force or fraud works other’s woe +But fraud, because of man peculiar evil, +To God is more displeasing; and beneath +The fraudulent are therefore doom’d to’ endure +Severer pang. The violent occupy +All the first circle; and because to force +Three persons are obnoxious, in three rounds +Hach within other sep’rate is it fram’d. +To God, his neighbour, and himself, by man +Force may be offer’d; to himself I say +And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear +At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds +Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes +By devastation, pillage, and the flames, +His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites +In malice, plund’rers, and all robbers, hence +The torment undergo of the first round +In different herds. Man can do violence +To himself and his own blessings: and for this +He in the second round must aye deplore +With unavailing penitence his crime, +Whoe’er deprives himself of life and light, +In reckless lavishment his talent wastes, +And sorrows there where he should dwell in joy. +To God may force be offer’d, in the heart +Denying and blaspheming his high power, +And nature with her kindly law contemning. +And thence the inmost round marks with its seal +Sodom and Cahors, and all such as speak +Contemptuously’ of the Godhead in their hearts. + +“Fraud, that in every conscience leaves a sting, +May be by man employ’d on one, whose trust +He wins, or on another who withholds +Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way +Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes. +Whence in the second circle have their nest +Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, +Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce +To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, +With such vile scum as these. The other way +Forgets both Nature’s general love, and that +Which thereto added afterwards gives birth +To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle, +Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis, +The traitor is eternally consum’d.” + +I thus: “Instructor, clearly thy discourse +Proceeds, distinguishing the hideous chasm +And its inhabitants with skill exact. +But tell me this: they of the dull, fat pool, +Whom the rain beats, or whom the tempest drives, +Or who with tongues so fierce conflicting meet, +Wherefore within the city fire-illum’d +Are not these punish’d, if God’s wrath be on them? +And if it be not, wherefore in such guise +Are they condemned?” He answer thus return’d: +“Wherefore in dotage wanders thus thy mind, +Not so accustom’d? or what other thoughts +Possess it? Dwell not in thy memory +The words, wherein thy ethic page describes +Three dispositions adverse to Heav’n’s will, +Incont’nence, malice, and mad brutishness, +And how incontinence the least offends +God, and least guilt incurs? If well thou note +This judgment, and remember who they are, +Without these walls to vain repentance doom’d, +Thou shalt discern why they apart are plac’d +From these fell spirits, and less wreakful pours +Justice divine on them its vengeance down.” + +“O Sun! who healest all imperfect sight, +Thou so content’st me, when thou solv’st my doubt, +That ignorance not less than knowledge charms. +Yet somewhat turn thee back,” I in these words +Continu’d, “where thou saidst, that usury +Offends celestial Goodness; and this knot +Perplex’d unravel.” He thus made reply: +“Philosophy, to an attentive ear, +Clearly points out, not in one part alone, +How imitative nature takes her course +From the celestial mind and from its art: +And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds, +Not many leaves scann’d o’er, observing well +Thou shalt discover, that your art on her +Obsequious follows, as the learner treads +In his instructor’s step, so that your art +Deserves the name of second in descent +From God. These two, if thou recall to mind +Creation’s holy book, from the beginning +Were the right source of life and excellence +To human kind. But in another path +The usurer walks; and Nature in herself +And in her follower thus he sets at nought, +Placing elsewhere his hope. But follow now +My steps on forward journey bent; for now +The Pisces play with undulating glance +Along the’ horizon, and the Wain lies all +O’er the north-west; and onward there a space +Is our steep passage down the rocky height.” + + + + +CANTO XII + + +The place where to descend the precipice +We came, was rough as Alp, and on its verge +Such object lay, as every eye would shun. + +As is that ruin, which Adice’s stream +On this side Trento struck, should’ring the wave, +Or loos’d by earthquake or for lack of prop; +For from the mountain’s summit, whence it mov’d +To the low level, so the headlong rock +Is shiver’d, that some passage it might give +To him who from above would pass; e’en such +Into the chasm was that descent: and there +At point of the disparted ridge lay stretch’d +The infamy of Crete, detested brood +Of the feign’d heifer: and at sight of us +It gnaw’d itself, as one with rage distract. + +To him my guide exclaim’d: “Perchance thou deem’st +The King of Athens here, who, in the world +Above, thy death contriv’d. Monster! avaunt! +He comes not tutor’d by thy sister’s art, +But to behold your torments is he come.” + +Like to a bull, that with impetuous spring +Darts, at the moment when the fatal blow +Hath struck him, but unable to proceed +Plunges on either side; so saw I plunge +The Minotaur; whereat the sage exclaim’d: +“Run to the passage! while he storms, ’t is well +That thou descend.” Thus down our road we took +Through those dilapidated crags, that oft +Mov’d underneath my feet, to weight like theirs +Unus’d. I pond’ring went, and thus he spake: + +“Perhaps thy thoughts are of this ruin’d steep, +Guarded by the brute violence, which I +Have vanquish’d now. Know then, that when I erst +Hither descended to the nether hell, +This rock was not yet fallen. But past doubt +(If well I mark) not long ere He arrived, +Who carried off from Dis the mighty spoil +Of the highest circle, then through all its bounds +Such trembling seiz’d the deep concave and foul, +I thought the universe was thrill’d with love, +Whereby, there are who deem, the world hath oft +Been into chaos turn’d: and in that point, +Here, and elsewhere, that old rock toppled down. +But fix thine eyes beneath: the river of blood +Approaches, in the which all those are steep’d, +Who have by violence injur’d.” O blind lust! +O foolish wrath! who so dost goad us on +In the brief life, and in the eternal then +Thus miserably o’erwhelm us. I beheld +An ample foss, that in a bow was bent, +As circling all the plain; for so my guide +Had told. Between it and the rampart’s base +On trail ran Centaurs, with keen arrows arm’d, +As to the chase they on the earth were wont. + +At seeing us descend they each one stood; +And issuing from the troop, three sped with bows +And missile weapons chosen first; of whom +One cried from far: “Say to what pain ye come +Condemn’d, who down this steep have journied? Speak +From whence ye stand, or else the bow I draw.” + +To whom my guide: “Our answer shall be made +To Chiron, there, when nearer him we come. +Ill was thy mind, thus ever quick and rash.” + +Then me he touch’d, and spake: “Nessus is this, +Who for the fair Deianira died, +And wrought himself revenge for his own fate. +He in the midst, that on his breast looks down, +Is the great Chiron who Achilles nurs’d; +That other Pholus, prone to wrath.” Around +The foss these go by thousands, aiming shafts +At whatsoever spirit dares emerge +From out the blood, more than his guilt allows. + +We to those beasts, that rapid strode along, +Drew near, when Chiron took an arrow forth, +And with the notch push’d back his shaggy beard +To the cheek-bone, then his great mouth to view +Exposing, to his fellows thus exclaim’d: +“Are ye aware, that he who comes behind +Moves what he touches? The feet of the dead +Are not so wont.” My trusty guide, who now +Stood near his breast, where the two natures join, +Thus made reply: “He is indeed alive, +And solitary so must needs by me +Be shown the gloomy vale, thereto induc’d +By strict necessity, not by delight. +She left her joyful harpings in the sky, +Who this new office to my care consign’d. +He is no robber, no dark spirit I. +But by that virtue, which empowers my step +To treat so wild a path, grant us, I pray, +One of thy band, whom we may trust secure, +Who to the ford may lead us, and convey +Across, him mounted on his back; for he +Is not a spirit that may walk the air.” + +Then on his right breast turning, Chiron thus +To Nessus spake: “Return, and be their guide. +And if ye chance to cross another troop, +Command them keep aloof.” Onward we mov’d, +The faithful escort by our side, along +The border of the crimson-seething flood, +Whence from those steep’d within loud shrieks arose. + +Some there I mark’d, as high as to their brow +Immers’d, of whom the mighty Centaur thus: +“These are the souls of tyrants, who were given +To blood and rapine. Here they wail aloud +Their merciless wrongs. Here Alexander dwells, +And Dionysius fell, who many a year +Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. That brow +Whereon the hair so jetty clust’ring hangs, +Is Azzolino; that with flaxen locks +Obizzo’ of Este, in the world destroy’d +By his foul step-son.” To the bard rever’d +I turned me round, and thus he spake; “Let him +Be to thee now first leader, me but next +To him in rank.” Then farther on a space +The Centaur paus’d, near some, who at the throat +Were extant from the wave; and showing us +A spirit by itself apart retir’d, +Exclaim’d: “He in God’s bosom smote the heart, +Which yet is honour’d on the bank of Thames.” + +A race I next espied, who held the head, +And even all the bust above the stream. +’Midst these I many a face remember’d well. +Thus shallow more and more the blood became, +So that at last it but imbru’d the feet; +And there our passage lay athwart the foss. + +“As ever on this side the boiling wave +Thou seest diminishing,” the Centaur said, +“So on the other, be thou well assur’d, +It lower still and lower sinks its bed, +Till in that part it reuniting join, +Where ’t is the lot of tyranny to mourn. +There Heav’n’s stern justice lays chastising hand +On Attila, who was the scourge of earth, +On Sextus, and on Pyrrhus, and extracts +Tears ever by the seething flood unlock’d +From the Rinieri, of Corneto this, +Pazzo the other nam’d, who fill’d the ways +With violence and war.” This said, he turn’d, +And quitting us, alone repass’d the ford. + + + + +CANTO XIII + + +Ere Nessus yet had reach’d the other bank, +We enter’d on a forest, where no track +Of steps had worn a way. Not verdant there +The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light +The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform’d +And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns +Instead, with venom fill’d. Less sharp than these, +Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide +Those animals, that hate the cultur’d fields, +Betwixt Corneto and Cecina’s stream. + +Here the brute Harpies make their nest, the same +Who from the Strophades the Trojan band +Drove with dire boding of their future woe. +Broad are their pennons, of the human form +Their neck and count’nance, arm’d with talons keen +The feet, and the huge belly fledge with wings +These sit and wail on the drear mystic wood. + +The kind instructor in these words began: +“Ere farther thou proceed, know thou art now +I’ th’ second round, and shalt be, till thou come +Upon the horrid sand: look therefore well +Around thee, and such things thou shalt behold, +As would my speech discredit.” On all sides +I heard sad plainings breathe, and none could see +From whom they might have issu’d. In amaze +Fast bound I stood. He, as it seem’d, believ’d, +That I had thought so many voices came +From some amid those thickets close conceal’d, +And thus his speech resum’d: “If thou lop off +A single twig from one of those ill plants, +The thought thou hast conceiv’d shall vanish quite.” + +Thereat a little stretching forth my hand, +From a great wilding gather’d I a branch, +And straight the trunk exclaim’d: “Why pluck’st thou me?” + +Then as the dark blood trickled down its side, +These words it added: “Wherefore tear’st me thus? +Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast? +Men once were we, that now are rooted here. +Thy hand might well have spar’d us, had we been +The souls of serpents.” As a brand yet green, +That burning at one end from the’ other sends +A groaning sound, and hisses with the wind +That forces out its way, so burst at once, +Forth from the broken splinter words and blood. + +I, letting fall the bough, remain’d as one +Assail’d by terror, and the sage replied: +“If he, O injur’d spirit! could have believ’d +What he hath seen but in my verse describ’d, +He never against thee had stretch’d his hand. +But I, because the thing surpass’d belief, +Prompted him to this deed, which even now +Myself I rue. But tell me, who thou wast; +That, for this wrong to do thee some amends, +In the upper world (for thither to return +Is granted him) thy fame he may revive.” + +“That pleasant word of thine,” the trunk replied +“Hath so inveigled me, that I from speech +Cannot refrain, wherein if I indulge +A little longer, in the snare detain’d, +Count it not grievous. I it was, who held +Both keys to Frederick’s heart, and turn’d the wards, +Opening and shutting, with a skill so sweet, +That besides me, into his inmost breast +Scarce any other could admittance find. +The faith I bore to my high charge was such, +It cost me the life-blood that warm’d my veins. +The harlot, who ne’er turn’d her gloating eyes +From Caesar’s household, common vice and pest +Of courts, ’gainst me inflam’d the minds of all; +And to Augustus they so spread the flame, +That my glad honours chang’d to bitter woes. +My soul, disdainful and disgusted, sought +Refuge in death from scorn, and I became, +Just as I was, unjust toward myself. +By the new roots, which fix this stem, I swear, +That never faith I broke to my liege lord, +Who merited such honour; and of you, +If any to the world indeed return, +Clear he from wrong my memory, that lies +Yet prostrate under envy’s cruel blow.” + +First somewhat pausing, till the mournful words +Were ended, then to me the bard began: +“Lose not the time; but speak and of him ask, +If more thou wish to learn.” Whence I replied: +“Question thou him again of whatsoe’er +Will, as thou think’st, content me; for no power +Have I to ask, such pity’ is at my heart.” + +He thus resum’d; “So may he do for thee +Freely what thou entreatest, as thou yet +Be pleas’d, imprison’d Spirit! to declare, +How in these gnarled joints the soul is tied; +And whether any ever from such frame +Be loosen’d, if thou canst, that also tell.” + +Thereat the trunk breath’d hard, and the wind soon +Chang’d into sounds articulate like these; + +“Briefly ye shall be answer’d. When departs +The fierce soul from the body, by itself +Thence torn asunder, to the seventh gulf +By Minos doom’d, into the wood it falls, +No place assign’d, but wheresoever chance +Hurls it, there sprouting, as a grain of spelt, +It rises to a sapling, growing thence +A savage plant. The Harpies, on its leaves +Then feeding, cause both pain and for the pain +A vent to grief. We, as the rest, shall come +For our own spoils, yet not so that with them +We may again be clad; for what a man +Takes from himself it is not just he have. +Here we perforce shall drag them; and throughout +The dismal glade our bodies shall be hung, +Each on the wild thorn of his wretched shade.” + +Attentive yet to listen to the trunk +We stood, expecting farther speech, when us +A noise surpris’d, as when a man perceives +The wild boar and the hunt approach his place +Of station’d watch, who of the beasts and boughs +Loud rustling round him hears. And lo! there came +Two naked, torn with briers, in headlong flight, +That they before them broke each fan o’ th’ wood. +“Haste now,” the foremost cried, “now haste thee death!” + +The’ other, as seem’d, impatient of delay +Exclaiming, “Lano! not so bent for speed +Thy sinews, in the lists of Toppo’s field.” +And then, for that perchance no longer breath +Suffic’d him, of himself and of a bush +One group he made. Behind them was the wood +Full of black female mastiffs, gaunt and fleet, +As greyhounds that have newly slipp’d the leash. +On him, who squatted down, they stuck their fangs, +And having rent him piecemeal bore away +The tortur’d limbs. My guide then seiz’d my hand, +And led me to the thicket, which in vain +Mourn’d through its bleeding wounds: “O Giacomo +Of Sant’ Andrea! what avails it thee,” +It cried, “that of me thou hast made thy screen? +For thy ill life what blame on me recoils?” + +When o’er it he had paus’d, my master spake: +“Say who wast thou, that at so many points +Breath’st out with blood thy lamentable speech?” + +He answer’d: “Oh, ye spirits: arriv’d in time +To spy the shameful havoc, that from me +My leaves hath sever’d thus, gather them up, +And at the foot of their sad parent-tree +Carefully lay them. In that city’ I dwelt, +Who for the Baptist her first patron chang’d, +Whence he for this shall cease not with his art +To work her woe: and if there still remain’d not +On Arno’s passage some faint glimpse of him, +Those citizens, who rear’d once more her walls +Upon the ashes left by Attila, +Had labour’d without profit of their toil. +I slung the fatal noose from my own roof.” + + + + +CANTO XIV + + +Soon as the charity of native land +Wrought in my bosom, I the scatter’d leaves +Collected, and to him restor’d, who now +Was hoarse with utt’rance. To the limit thence +We came, which from the third the second round +Divides, and where of justice is display’d +Contrivance horrible. Things then first seen +Clearlier to manifest, I tell how next +A plain we reach’d, that from its sterile bed +Each plant repell’d. The mournful wood waves round +Its garland on all sides, as round the wood +Spreads the sad foss. There, on the very edge, +Our steps we stay’d. It was an area wide +Of arid sand and thick, resembling most +The soil that erst by Cato’s foot was trod. + +Vengeance of Heav’n! Oh! how shouldst thou be fear’d +By all, who read what here my eyes beheld! + +Of naked spirits many a flock I saw, +All weeping piteously, to different laws +Subjected: for on the’ earth some lay supine, +Some crouching close were seated, others pac’d +Incessantly around; the latter tribe, +More numerous, those fewer who beneath +The torment lay, but louder in their grief. + +O’er all the sand fell slowly wafting down +Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow +On Alpine summit, when the wind is hush’d. +As in the torrid Indian clime, the son +Of Ammon saw upon his warrior band +Descending, solid flames, that to the ground +Came down: whence he bethought him with his troop +To trample on the soil; for easier thus +The vapour was extinguish’d, while alone; +So fell the eternal fiery flood, wherewith +The marble glow’d underneath, as under stove +The viands, doubly to augment the pain. + +Unceasing was the play of wretched hands, +Now this, now that way glancing, to shake off +The heat, still falling fresh. I thus began: +“Instructor! thou who all things overcom’st, +Except the hardy demons, that rush’d forth +To stop our entrance at the gate, say who +Is yon huge spirit, that, as seems, heeds not +The burning, but lies writhen in proud scorn, +As by the sultry tempest immatur’d?” + +Straight he himself, who was aware I ask’d +My guide of him, exclaim’d: “Such as I was +When living, dead such now I am. If Jove +Weary his workman out, from whom in ire +He snatch’d the lightnings, that at my last day +Transfix’d me, if the rest be weary out +At their black smithy labouring by turns +In Mongibello, while he cries aloud; +“Help, help, good Mulciber!” as erst he cried +In the Phlegraean warfare, and the bolts +Launch he full aim’d at me with all his might, +He never should enjoy a sweet revenge.” + +Then thus my guide, in accent higher rais’d +Than I before had heard him: “Capaneus! +Thou art more punish’d, in that this thy pride +Lives yet unquench’d: no torrent, save thy rage, +Were to thy fury pain proportion’d full.” + +Next turning round to me with milder lip +He spake: “This of the seven kings was one, +Who girt the Theban walls with siege, and held, +As still he seems to hold, God in disdain, +And sets his high omnipotence at nought. +But, as I told him, his despiteful mood +Is ornament well suits the breast that wears it. +Follow me now; and look thou set not yet +Thy foot in the hot sand, but to the wood +Keep ever close.” Silently on we pass’d +To where there gushes from the forest’s bound +A little brook, whose crimson’d wave yet lifts +My hair with horror. As the rill, that runs +From Bulicame, to be portion’d out +Among the sinful women; so ran this +Down through the sand, its bottom and each bank +Stone-built, and either margin at its side, +Whereon I straight perceiv’d our passage lay. + +“Of all that I have shown thee, since that gate +We enter’d first, whose threshold is to none +Denied, nought else so worthy of regard, +As is this river, has thine eye discern’d, +O’er which the flaming volley all is quench’d.” + +So spake my guide; and I him thence besought, +That having giv’n me appetite to know, +The food he too would give, that hunger crav’d. + +“In midst of ocean,” forthwith he began, +“A desolate country lies, which Crete is nam’d, +Under whose monarch in old times the world +Liv’d pure and chaste. A mountain rises there, +Call’d Ida, joyous once with leaves and streams, +Deserted now like a forbidden thing. +It was the spot which Rhea, Saturn’s spouse, +Chose for the secret cradle of her son; +And better to conceal him, drown’d in shouts +His infant cries. Within the mount, upright +An ancient form there stands and huge, that turns +His shoulders towards Damiata, and at Rome +As in his mirror looks. Of finest gold +His head is shap’d, pure silver are the breast +And arms; thence to the middle is of brass. +And downward all beneath well-temper’d steel, +Save the right foot of potter’s clay, on which +Than on the other more erect he stands, +Each part except the gold, is rent throughout; +And from the fissure tears distil, which join’d +Penetrate to that cave. They in their course +Thus far precipitated down the rock +Form Acheron, and Styx, and Phlegethon; +Then by this straiten’d channel passing hence +Beneath, e’en to the lowest depth of all, +Form there Cocytus, of whose lake (thyself +Shall see it) I here give thee no account.” + +Then I to him: “If from our world this sluice +Be thus deriv’d; wherefore to us but now +Appears it at this edge?” He straight replied: +“The place, thou know’st, is round; and though great part +Thou have already pass’d, still to the left +Descending to the nethermost, not yet +Hast thou the circuit made of the whole orb. +Wherefore if aught of new to us appear, +It needs not bring up wonder in thy looks.” + +Then I again inquir’d: “Where flow the streams +Of Phlegethon and Lethe? for of one +Thou tell’st not, and the other of that shower, +Thou say’st, is form’d.” He answer thus return’d: +“Doubtless thy questions all well pleas’d I hear. +Yet the red seething wave might have resolv’d +One thou proposest. Lethe thou shalt see, +But not within this hollow, in the place, +Whither to lave themselves the spirits go, +Whose blame hath been by penitence remov’d.” +He added: “Time is now we quit the wood. +Look thou my steps pursue: the margins give +Safe passage, unimpeded by the flames; +For over them all vapour is extinct.” + + + + +CANTO XV + + +One of the solid margins bears us now +Envelop’d in the mist, that from the stream +Arising, hovers o’er, and saves from fire +Both piers and water. As the Flemings rear +Their mound, ’twixt Ghent and Bruges, to chase back +The ocean, fearing his tumultuous tide +That drives toward them, or the Paduans theirs +Along the Brenta, to defend their towns +And castles, ere the genial warmth be felt +On Chiarentana’s top; such were the mounds, +So fram’d, though not in height or bulk to these +Made equal, by the master, whosoe’er +He was, that rais’d them here. We from the wood +Were not so far remov’d, that turning round +I might not have discern’d it, when we met +A troop of spirits, who came beside the pier. + +They each one ey’d us, as at eventide +One eyes another under a new moon, +And toward us sharpen’d their sight as keen, +As an old tailor at his needle’s eye. + +Thus narrowly explor’d by all the tribe, +I was agniz’d of one, who by the skirt +Caught me, and cried, “What wonder have we here!” + +And I, when he to me outstretch’d his arm, +Intently fix’d my ken on his parch’d looks, +That although smirch’d with fire, they hinder’d not +But I remember’d him; and towards his face +My hand inclining, answer’d: “Sir! Brunetto! + +“And art thou here?” He thus to me: “My son! +Oh let it not displease thee, if Brunetto +Latini but a little space with thee +Turn back, and leave his fellows to proceed.” + +I thus to him replied: “Much as I can, +I thereto pray thee; and if thou be willing, +That I here seat me with thee, I consent; +His leave, with whom I journey, first obtain’d.” + +“O son!” said he, “whoever of this throng +One instant stops, lies then a hundred years, +No fan to ventilate him, when the fire +Smites sorest. Pass thou therefore on. I close +Will at thy garments walk, and then rejoin +My troop, who go mourning their endless doom.” + +I dar’d not from the path descend to tread +On equal ground with him, but held my head +Bent down, as one who walks in reverent guise. + +“What chance or destiny,” thus he began, +“Ere the last day conducts thee here below? +And who is this, that shows to thee the way?” + +“There up aloft,” I answer’d, “in the life +Serene, I wander’d in a valley lost, +Before mine age had to its fullness reach’d. +But yester-morn I left it: then once more +Into that vale returning, him I met; +And by this path homeward he leads me back.” + +“If thou,” he answer’d, “follow but thy star, +Thou canst not miss at last a glorious haven: +Unless in fairer days my judgment err’d. +And if my fate so early had not chanc’d, +Seeing the heav’ns thus bounteous to thee, I +Had gladly giv’n thee comfort in thy work. +But that ungrateful and malignant race, +Who in old times came down from Fesole, +Ay and still smack of their rough mountain-flint, +Will for thy good deeds shew thee enmity. +Nor wonder; for amongst ill-savour’d crabs +It suits not the sweet fig-tree lay her fruit. +Old fame reports them in the world for blind, +Covetous, envious, proud. Look to it well: +Take heed thou cleanse thee of their ways. For thee +Thy fortune hath such honour in reserve, +That thou by either party shalt be crav’d +With hunger keen: but be the fresh herb far +From the goat’s tooth. The herd of Fesole +May of themselves make litter, not touch the plant, +If any such yet spring on their rank bed, +In which the holy seed revives, transmitted +From those true Romans, who still there remain’d, +When it was made the nest of so much ill.” + +“Were all my wish fulfill’d,” I straight replied, +“Thou from the confines of man’s nature yet +Hadst not been driven forth; for in my mind +Is fix’d, and now strikes full upon my heart +The dear, benign, paternal image, such +As thine was, when so lately thou didst teach me +The way for man to win eternity; +And how I priz’d the lesson, it behooves, +That, long as life endures, my tongue should speak, +What of my fate thou tell’st, that write I down: +And with another text to comment on +For her I keep it, the celestial dame, +Who will know all, if I to her arrive. +This only would I have thee clearly note: +That so my conscience have no plea against me; +Do fortune as she list, I stand prepar’d. +Not new or strange such earnest to mine ear. +Speed fortune then her wheel, as likes her best, +The clown his mattock; all things have their course.” + +Thereat my sapient guide upon his right +Turn’d himself back, then look’d at me and spake: +“He listens to good purpose who takes note.” + +I not the less still on my way proceed, +Discoursing with Brunetto, and inquire +Who are most known and chief among his tribe. + +“To know of some is well;” thus he replied, +“But of the rest silence may best beseem. +Time would not serve us for report so long. +In brief I tell thee, that all these were clerks, +Men of great learning and no less renown, +By one same sin polluted in the world. +With them is Priscian, and Accorso’s son +Francesco herds among that wretched throng: +And, if the wish of so impure a blotch +Possess’d thee, him thou also might’st have seen, +Who by the servants’ servant was transferr’d +From Arno’s seat to Bacchiglione, where +His ill-strain’d nerves he left. I more would add, +But must from farther speech and onward way +Alike desist, for yonder I behold +A mist new-risen on the sandy plain. +A company, with whom I may not sort, +Approaches. I commend my TREASURE to thee, +Wherein I yet survive; my sole request.” + +This said he turn’d, and seem’d as one of those, +Who o’er Verona’s champain try their speed +For the green mantle, and of them he seem’d, +Not he who loses but who gains the prize. + + + + +CANTO XVI + + +Now came I where the water’s din was heard, +As down it fell into the other round, +Resounding like the hum of swarming bees: +When forth together issu’d from a troop, +That pass’d beneath the fierce tormenting storm, +Three spirits, running swift. They towards us came, +And each one cried aloud, “Oh do thou stay! +Whom by the fashion of thy garb we deem +To be some inmate of our evil land.” + +Ah me! what wounds I mark’d upon their limbs, +Recent and old, inflicted by the flames! +E’en the remembrance of them grieves me yet. + +Attentive to their cry my teacher paus’d, +And turn’d to me his visage, and then spake; +“Wait now! our courtesy these merit well: +And were ’t not for the nature of the place, +Whence glide the fiery darts, I should have said, +That haste had better suited thee than them.” + +They, when we stopp’d, resum’d their ancient wail, +And soon as they had reach’d us, all the three +Whirl’d round together in one restless wheel. +As naked champions, smear’d with slippery oil, +Are wont intent to watch their place of hold +And vantage, ere in closer strife they meet; +Thus each one, as he wheel’d, his countenance +At me directed, so that opposite +The neck mov’d ever to the twinkling feet. + +“If misery of this drear wilderness,” +Thus one began, “added to our sad cheer +And destitute, do call forth scorn on us +And our entreaties, let our great renown +Incline thee to inform us who thou art, +That dost imprint with living feet unharm’d +The soil of Hell. He, in whose track thou see’st +My steps pursuing, naked though he be +And reft of all, was of more high estate +Than thou believest; grandchild of the chaste +Gualdrada, him they Guidoguerra call’d, +Who in his lifetime many a noble act +Achiev’d, both by his wisdom and his sword. +The other, next to me that beats the sand, +Is Aldobrandi, name deserving well, +In the’ upper world, of honour; and myself +Who in this torment do partake with them, +Am Rusticucci, whom, past doubt, my wife +Of savage temper, more than aught beside +Hath to this evil brought.” If from the fire +I had been shelter’d, down amidst them straight +I then had cast me, nor my guide, I deem, +Would have restrain’d my going; but that fear +Of the dire burning vanquish’d the desire, +Which made me eager of their wish’d embrace. + +I then began: “Not scorn, but grief much more, +Such as long time alone can cure, your doom +Fix’d deep within me, soon as this my lord +Spake words, whose tenour taught me to expect +That such a race, as ye are, was at hand. +I am a countryman of yours, who still +Affectionate have utter’d, and have heard +Your deeds and names renown’d. Leaving the gall +For the sweet fruit I go, that a sure guide +Hath promis’d to me. But behooves, that far +As to the centre first I downward tend.” + +“So may long space thy spirit guide thy limbs,” +He answer straight return’d; “and so thy fame +Shine bright, when thou art gone; as thou shalt tell, +If courtesy and valour, as they wont, +Dwell in our city, or have vanish’d clean? +For one amidst us late condemn’d to wail, +Borsiere, yonder walking with his peers, +Grieves us no little by the news he brings.” + +“An upstart multitude and sudden gains, +Pride and excess, O Florence! have in thee +Engender’d, so that now in tears thou mourn’st!” +Thus cried I with my face uprais’d, and they +All three, who for an answer took my words, +Look’d at each other, as men look when truth +Comes to their ear. “If thou at other times,” +They all at once rejoin’d, “so easily +Satisfy those, who question, happy thou, +Gifted with words, so apt to speak thy thought! +Wherefore if thou escape this darksome clime, +Returning to behold the radiant stars, +When thou with pleasure shalt retrace the past, +See that of us thou speak among mankind.” + +This said, they broke the circle, and so swift +Fled, that as pinions seem’d their nimble feet. + +Not in so short a time might one have said +“Amen,” as they had vanish’d. Straight my guide +Pursu’d his track. I follow’d; and small space +Had we pass’d onward, when the water’s sound +Was now so near at hand, that we had scarce +Heard one another’s speech for the loud din. + +E’en as the river, that holds on its course +Unmingled, from the mount of Vesulo, +On the left side of Apennine, toward +The east, which Acquacheta higher up +They call, ere it descend into the vale, +At Forli by that name no longer known, +Rebellows o’er Saint Benedict, roll’d on +From the’ Alpine summit down a precipice, +Where space enough to lodge a thousand spreads; +Thus downward from a craggy steep we found, +That this dark wave resounded, roaring loud, +So that the ear its clamour soon had stunn’d. + +I had a cord that brac’d my girdle round, +Wherewith I erst had thought fast bound to take +The painted leopard. This when I had all +Unloosen’d from me (so my master bade) +I gather’d up, and stretch’d it forth to him. +Then to the right he turn’d, and from the brink +Standing few paces distant, cast it down +Into the deep abyss. “And somewhat strange,” +Thus to myself I spake, “signal so strange +Betokens, which my guide with earnest eye +Thus follows.” Ah! what caution must men use +With those who look not at the deed alone, +But spy into the thoughts with subtle skill! + +“Quickly shall come,” he said, “what I expect, +Thine eye discover quickly, that whereof +Thy thought is dreaming.” Ever to that truth, +Which but the semblance of a falsehood wears, +A man, if possible, should bar his lip; +Since, although blameless, he incurs reproach. +But silence here were vain; and by these notes +Which now I sing, reader! I swear to thee, +So may they favour find to latest times! +That through the gross and murky air I spied +A shape come swimming up, that might have quell’d +The stoutest heart with wonder, in such guise +As one returns, who hath been down to loose +An anchor grappled fast against some rock, +Or to aught else that in the salt wave lies, +Who upward springing close draws in his feet. + + + + +CANTO XVII + + +“Lo! the fell monster with the deadly sting! +Who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls +And firm embattled spears, and with his filth +Taints all the world!” Thus me my guide address’d, +And beckon’d him, that he should come to shore, +Near to the stony causeway’s utmost edge. + +Forthwith that image vile of fraud appear’d, +His head and upper part expos’d on land, +But laid not on the shore his bestial train. +His face the semblance of a just man’s wore, +So kind and gracious was its outward cheer; +The rest was serpent all: two shaggy claws +Reach’d to the armpits, and the back and breast, +And either side, were painted o’er with nodes +And orbits. Colours variegated more +Nor Turks nor Tartars e’er on cloth of state +With interchangeable embroidery wove, +Nor spread Arachne o’er her curious loom. +As ofttimes a light skiff, moor’d to the shore, +Stands part in water, part upon the land; +Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor, +The beaver settles watching for his prey; +So on the rim, that fenc’d the sand with rock, +Sat perch’d the fiend of evil. In the void +Glancing, his tail upturn’d its venomous fork, +With sting like scorpion’s arm’d. Then thus my guide: +“Now need our way must turn few steps apart, +Far as to that ill beast, who couches there.” + +Thereat toward the right our downward course +We shap’d, and, better to escape the flame +And burning marle, ten paces on the verge +Proceeded. Soon as we to him arrive, +A little further on mine eye beholds +A tribe of spirits, seated on the sand +Near the wide chasm. Forthwith my master spake: +“That to the full thy knowledge may extend +Of all this round contains, go now, and mark +The mien these wear: but hold not long discourse. +Till thou returnest, I with him meantime +Will parley, that to us he may vouchsafe +The aid of his strong shoulders.” Thus alone +Yet forward on the’ extremity I pac’d +Of that seventh circle, where the mournful tribe +Were seated. At the eyes forth gush’d their pangs. +Against the vapours and the torrid soil +Alternately their shifting hands they plied. +Thus use the dogs in summer still to ply +Their jaws and feet by turns, when bitten sore +By gnats, or flies, or gadflies swarming round. + +Noting the visages of some, who lay +Beneath the pelting of that dolorous fire, +One of them all I knew not; but perceiv’d, +That pendent from his neck each bore a pouch +With colours and with emblems various mark’d, +On which it seem’d as if their eye did feed. + +And when amongst them looking round I came, +A yellow purse I saw with azure wrought, +That wore a lion’s countenance and port. +Then still my sight pursuing its career, +Another I beheld, than blood more red. +A goose display of whiter wing than curd. +And one, who bore a fat and azure swine +Pictur’d on his white scrip, addressed me thus: +“What dost thou in this deep? Go now and know, +Since yet thou livest, that my neighbour here +Vitaliano on my left shall sit. +A Paduan with these Florentines am I. +Ofttimes they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming +‘O haste that noble knight! he who the pouch +With the three beaks will bring!’” This said, he writh’d +The mouth, and loll’d the tongue out, like an ox +That licks his nostrils. I, lest longer stay +He ill might brook, who bade me stay not long, +Backward my steps from those sad spirits turn’d. + +My guide already seated on the haunch +Of the fierce animal I found; and thus +He me encourag’d. “Be thou stout; be bold. +Down such a steep flight must we now descend! +Mount thou before: for that no power the tail +May have to harm thee, I will be i’ th’ midst.” + +As one, who hath an ague fit so near, +His nails already are turn’d blue, and he +Quivers all o’er, if he but eye the shade; +Such was my cheer at hearing of his words. +But shame soon interpos’d her threat, who makes +The servant bold in presence of his lord. + +I settled me upon those shoulders huge, +And would have said, but that the words to aid +My purpose came not, “Look thou clasp me firm!” + +But he whose succour then not first I prov’d, +Soon as I mounted, in his arms aloft, +Embracing, held me up, and thus he spake: +“Geryon! now move thee! be thy wheeling gyres +Of ample circuit, easy thy descent. +Think on th’ unusual burden thou sustain’st.” + +As a small vessel, back’ning out from land, +Her station quits; so thence the monster loos’d, +And when he felt himself at large, turn’d round +There where the breast had been, his forked tail. +Thus, like an eel, outstretch’d at length he steer’d, +Gath’ring the air up with retractile claws. + +Not greater was the dread when Phaeton +The reins let drop at random, whence high heaven, +Whereof signs yet appear, was wrapt in flames; +Nor when ill-fated Icarus perceiv’d, +By liquefaction of the scalded wax, +The trusted pennons loosen’d from his loins, +His sire exclaiming loud, “Ill way thou keep’st!” +Than was my dread, when round me on each part +The air I view’d, and other object none +Save the fell beast. He slowly sailing, wheels +His downward motion, unobserv’d of me, +But that the wind, arising to my face, +Breathes on me from below. Now on our right +I heard the cataract beneath us leap +With hideous crash; whence bending down to’ explore, +New terror I conceiv’d at the steep plunge: + +For flames I saw, and wailings smote mine ear: +So that all trembling close I crouch’d my limbs, +And then distinguish’d, unperceiv’d before, +By the dread torments that on every side +Drew nearer, how our downward course we wound. + +As falcon, that hath long been on the wing, +But lure nor bird hath seen, while in despair +The falconer cries, “Ah me! thou stoop’st to earth!” +Wearied descends, and swiftly down the sky +In many an orbit wheels, then lighting sits +At distance from his lord in angry mood; +So Geryon lighting places us on foot +Low down at base of the deep-furrow’d rock, +And, of his burden there discharg’d, forthwith +Sprang forward, like an arrow from the string. + + + + +CANTO XVIII + + +There is a place within the depths of hell +Call’d Malebolge, all of rock dark-stain’d +With hue ferruginous, e’en as the steep +That round it circling winds. Right in the midst +Of that abominable region, yawns +A spacious gulf profound, whereof the frame +Due time shall tell. The circle, that remains, +Throughout its round, between the gulf and base +Of the high craggy banks, successive forms +Ten trenches, in its hollow bottom sunk. + +As where to guard the walls, full many a foss +Begirds some stately castle, sure defence +Affording to the space within, so here +Were model’d these; and as like fortresses +E’en from their threshold to the brink without, +Are flank’d with bridges; from the rock’s low base +Thus flinty paths advanc’d, that ’cross the moles +And dikes, struck onward far as to the gulf, +That in one bound collected cuts them off. +Such was the place, wherein we found ourselves +From Geryon’s back dislodg’d. The bard to left +Held on his way, and I behind him mov’d. + +On our right hand new misery I saw, +New pains, new executioners of wrath, +That swarming peopled the first chasm. Below +Were naked sinners. Hitherward they came, +Meeting our faces from the middle point, +With us beyond but with a larger stride. +E’en thus the Romans, when the year returns +Of Jubilee, with better speed to rid +The thronging multitudes, their means devise +For such as pass the bridge; that on one side +All front toward the castle, and approach +Saint Peter’s fane, on th’ other towards the mount. + +Each divers way along the grisly rock, +Horn’d demons I beheld, with lashes huge, +That on their back unmercifully smote. +Ah! how they made them bound at the first stripe! + +None for the second waited nor the third. + +Meantime as on I pass’d, one met my sight +Whom soon as view’d; “Of him,” cried I, “not yet +Mine eye hath had his fill.” With fixed gaze +I therefore scann’d him. Straight the teacher kind +Paus’d with me, and consented I should walk +Backward a space, and the tormented spirit, +Who thought to hide him, bent his visage down. +But it avail’d him nought; for I exclaim’d: +“Thou who dost cast thy eye upon the ground, +Unless thy features do belie thee much, +Venedico art thou. But what brings thee +Into this bitter seas’ning?” He replied: +“Unwillingly I answer to thy words. +But thy clear speech, that to my mind recalls +The world I once inhabited, constrains me. +Know then ’twas I who led fair Ghisola +To do the Marquis’ will, however fame +The shameful tale have bruited. Nor alone +Bologna hither sendeth me to mourn +Rather with us the place is so o’erthrong’d +That not so many tongues this day are taught, +Betwixt the Reno and Savena’s stream, +To answer SIPA in their country’s phrase. +And if of that securer proof thou need, +Remember but our craving thirst for gold.” + +Him speaking thus, a demon with his thong +Struck, and exclaim’d, “Away! corrupter! here +Women are none for sale.” Forthwith I join’d +My escort, and few paces thence we came +To where a rock forth issued from the bank. +That easily ascended, to the right +Upon its splinter turning, we depart +From those eternal barriers. When arriv’d, +Where underneath the gaping arch lets pass +The scourged souls: “Pause here,” the teacher said, +“And let these others miserable, now +Strike on thy ken, faces not yet beheld, +For that together they with us have walk’d.” + +From the old bridge we ey’d the pack, who came +From th’ other side towards us, like the rest, +Excoriate from the lash. My gentle guide, +By me unquestion’d, thus his speech resum’d: +“Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends, +And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear. +How yet the regal aspect he retains! +Jason is he, whose skill and prowess won +The ram from Colchos. To the Lemnian isle +His passage thither led him, when those bold +And pitiless women had slain all their males. +There he with tokens and fair witching words +Hypsipyle beguil’d, a virgin young, +Who first had all the rest herself beguil’d. +Impregnated he left her there forlorn. +Such is the guilt condemns him to this pain. +Here too Medea’s inj’ries are avenged. +All bear him company, who like deceit +To his have practis’d. And thus much to know +Of the first vale suffice thee, and of those +Whom its keen torments urge.” Now had we come +Where, crossing the next pier, the straighten’d path +Bestrides its shoulders to another arch. + +Hence in the second chasm we heard the ghosts, +Who jibber in low melancholy sounds, +With wide-stretch’d nostrils snort, and on themselves +Smite with their palms. Upon the banks a scurf +From the foul steam condens’d, encrusting hung, +That held sharp combat with the sight and smell. + +So hollow is the depth, that from no part, +Save on the summit of the rocky span, +Could I distinguish aught. Thus far we came; +And thence I saw, within the foss below, +A crowd immers’d in ordure, that appear’d +Draff of the human body. There beneath +Searching with eye inquisitive, I mark’d +One with his head so grim’d, ’t were hard to deem, +If he were clerk or layman. Loud he cried: +“Why greedily thus bendest more on me, +Than on these other filthy ones, thy ken?” + +“Because if true my mem’ry,” I replied, +“I heretofore have seen thee with dry locks, +And thou Alessio art of Lucca sprung. +Therefore than all the rest I scan thee more.” + +Then beating on his brain these words he spake: +“Me thus low down my flatteries have sunk, +Wherewith I ne’er enough could glut my tongue.” + +My leader thus: “A little further stretch +Thy face, that thou the visage well mayst note +Of that besotted, sluttish courtezan, +Who there doth rend her with defiled nails, +Now crouching down, now risen on her feet. + +“Thais is this, the harlot, whose false lip +Answer’d her doting paramour that ask’d, +‘Thankest me much!’—‘Say rather wondrously,’ +And seeing this here satiate be our view.” + + + + +CANTO XIX + + +Woe to thee, Simon Magus! woe to you, +His wretched followers! who the things of God, +Which should be wedded unto goodness, them, +Rapacious as ye are, do prostitute +For gold and silver in adultery! +Now must the trumpet sound for you, since yours +Is the third chasm. Upon the following vault +We now had mounted, where the rock impends +Directly o’er the centre of the foss. + +Wisdom Supreme! how wonderful the art, +Which thou dost manifest in heaven, in earth, +And in the evil world, how just a meed +Allotting by thy virtue unto all! + +I saw the livid stone, throughout the sides +And in its bottom full of apertures, +All equal in their width, and circular each, +Nor ample less nor larger they appear’d +Than in Saint John’s fair dome of me belov’d +Those fram’d to hold the pure baptismal streams, +One of the which I brake, some few years past, +To save a whelming infant; and be this +A seal to undeceive whoever doubts +The motive of my deed. From out the mouth +Of every one, emerg’d a sinner’s feet +And of the legs high upward as the calf +The rest beneath was hid. On either foot +The soles were burning, whence the flexile joints +Glanc’d with such violent motion, as had snapt +Asunder cords or twisted withs. As flame, +Feeding on unctuous matter, glides along +The surface, scarcely touching where it moves; +So here, from heel to point, glided the flames. + +“Master! say who is he, than all the rest +Glancing in fiercer agony, on whom +A ruddier flame doth prey?” I thus inquir’d. + +“If thou be willing,” he replied, “that I +Carry thee down, where least the slope bank falls, +He of himself shall tell thee and his wrongs.” + +I then: “As pleases thee to me is best. +Thou art my lord; and know’st that ne’er I quit +Thy will: what silence hides that knowest thou.” +Thereat on the fourth pier we came, we turn’d, +And on our left descended to the depth, +A narrow strait and perforated close. +Nor from his side my leader set me down, +Till to his orifice he brought, whose limb +Quiv’ring express’d his pang. “Whoe’er thou art, +Sad spirit! thus revers’d, and as a stake +Driv’n in the soil!” I in these words began, +“If thou be able, utter forth thy voice.” + +There stood I like the friar, that doth shrive +A wretch for murder doom’d, who e’en when fix’d, +Calleth him back, whence death awhile delays. + +He shouted: “Ha! already standest there? +Already standest there, O Boniface! +By many a year the writing play’d me false. +So early dost thou surfeit with the wealth, +For which thou fearedst not in guile to take +The lovely lady, and then mangle her?” + +I felt as those who, piercing not the drift +Of answer made them, stand as if expos’d +In mockery, nor know what to reply, +When Virgil thus admonish’d: “Tell him quick, +I am not he, not he, whom thou believ’st.” + +And I, as was enjoin’d me, straight replied. + +That heard, the spirit all did wrench his feet, +And sighing next in woeful accent spake: +“What then of me requirest? If to know +So much imports thee, who I am, that thou +Hast therefore down the bank descended, learn +That in the mighty mantle I was rob’d, +And of a she-bear was indeed the son, +So eager to advance my whelps, that there +My having in my purse above I stow’d, +And here myself. Under my head are dragg’d +The rest, my predecessors in the guilt +Of simony. Stretch’d at their length they lie +Along an opening in the rock. ’Midst them +I also low shall fall, soon as he comes, +For whom I took thee, when so hastily +I question’d. But already longer time +Hath pass’d, since my souls kindled, and I thus +Upturn’d have stood, than is his doom to stand +Planted with fiery feet. For after him, +One yet of deeds more ugly shall arrive, +From forth the west, a shepherd without law, +Fated to cover both his form and mine. +He a new Jason shall be call’d, of whom +In Maccabees we read; and favour such +As to that priest his king indulgent show’d, +Shall be of France’s monarch shown to him.” + +I know not if I here too far presum’d, +But in this strain I answer’d: “Tell me now, +What treasures from St. Peter at the first +Our Lord demanded, when he put the keys +Into his charge? Surely he ask’d no more +But, Follow me! Nor Peter nor the rest +Or gold or silver of Matthias took, +When lots were cast upon the forfeit place +Of the condemned soul. Abide thou then; +Thy punishment of right is merited: +And look thou well to that ill-gotten coin, +Which against Charles thy hardihood inspir’d. +If reverence of the keys restrain’d me not, +Which thou in happier time didst hold, I yet +Severer speech might use. Your avarice +O’ercasts the world with mourning, under foot +Treading the good, and raising bad men up. +Of shepherds, like to you, th’ Evangelist +Was ware, when her, who sits upon the waves, +With kings in filthy whoredom he beheld, +She who with seven heads tower’d at her birth, +And from ten horns her proof of glory drew, +Long as her spouse in virtue took delight. +Of gold and silver ye have made your god, +Diff’ring wherein from the idolater, +But he that worships one, a hundred ye? +Ah, Constantine! to how much ill gave birth, +Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dower, +Which the first wealthy Father gain’d from thee!” + +Meanwhile, as thus I sung, he, whether wrath +Or conscience smote him, violent upsprang +Spinning on either sole. I do believe +My teacher well was pleas’d, with so compos’d +A lip, he listen’d ever to the sound +Of the true words I utter’d. In both arms +He caught, and to his bosom lifting me +Upward retrac’d the way of his descent. + +Nor weary of his weight he press’d me close, +Till to the summit of the rock we came, +Our passage from the fourth to the fifth pier. +His cherish’d burden there gently he plac’d +Upon the rugged rock and steep, a path +Not easy for the clamb’ring goat to mount. + +Thence to my view another vale appear’d + + + + +CANTO XX + + +And now the verse proceeds to torments new, +Fit argument of this the twentieth strain +Of the first song, whose awful theme records +The spirits whelm’d in woe. Earnest I look’d +Into the depth, that open’d to my view, +Moisten’d with tears of anguish, and beheld +A tribe, that came along the hollow vale, +In silence weeping: such their step as walk +Quires chanting solemn litanies on earth. + +As on them more direct mine eye descends, +Each wondrously seem’d to be revers’d +At the neck-bone, so that the countenance +Was from the reins averted: and because +None might before him look, they were compell’d +To’ advance with backward gait. Thus one perhaps +Hath been by force of palsy clean transpos’d, +But I ne’er saw it nor believe it so. + +Now, reader! think within thyself, so God +Fruit of thy reading give thee! how I long +Could keep my visage dry, when I beheld +Near me our form distorted in such guise, +That on the hinder parts fall’n from the face +The tears down-streaming roll’d. Against a rock +I leant and wept, so that my guide exclaim’d: +“What, and art thou too witless as the rest? +Here pity most doth show herself alive, +When she is dead. What guilt exceedeth his, +Who with Heaven’s judgment in his passion strives? +Raise up thy head, raise up, and see the man, +Before whose eyes earth gap’d in Thebes, when all +Cried out, ‘Amphiaraus, whither rushest? +‘Why leavest thou the war?’ He not the less +Fell ruining far as to Minos down, +Whose grapple none eludes. Lo! how he makes +The breast his shoulders, and who once too far +Before him wish’d to see, now backward looks, +And treads reverse his path. Tiresias note, +Who semblance chang’d, when woman he became +Of male, through every limb transform’d, and then +Once more behov’d him with his rod to strike +The two entwining serpents, ere the plumes, +That mark’d the better sex, might shoot again. + +“Aruns, with more his belly facing, comes. +On Luni’s mountains ’midst the marbles white, +Where delves Carrara’s hind, who wons beneath, +A cavern was his dwelling, whence the stars +And main-sea wide in boundless view he held. + +“The next, whose loosen’d tresses overspread +Her bosom, which thou seest not (for each hair +On that side grows) was Manto, she who search’d +Through many regions, and at length her seat +Fix’d in my native land, whence a short space +My words detain thy audience. When her sire +From life departed, and in servitude +The city dedicate to Bacchus mourn’d, +Long time she went a wand’rer through the world. +Aloft in Italy’s delightful land +A lake there lies, at foot of that proud Alp, +That o’er the Tyrol locks Germania in, +Its name Benacus, which a thousand rills, +Methinks, and more, water between the vale +Camonica and Garda and the height +Of Apennine remote. There is a spot +At midway of that lake, where he who bears +Of Trento’s flock the past’ral staff, with him +Of Brescia, and the Veronese, might each +Passing that way his benediction give. +A garrison of goodly site and strong +Peschiera stands, to awe with front oppos’d +The Bergamese and Brescian, whence the shore +More slope each way descends. There, whatsoev’er +Benacus’ bosom holds not, tumbling o’er +Down falls, and winds a river flood beneath +Through the green pastures. Soon as in his course +The steam makes head, Benacus then no more +They call the name, but Mincius, till at last +Reaching Governo into Po he falls. +Not far his course hath run, when a wide flat +It finds, which overstretchmg as a marsh +It covers, pestilent in summer oft. +Hence journeying, the savage maiden saw +’Midst of the fen a territory waste +And naked of inhabitants. To shun +All human converse, here she with her slaves +Plying her arts remain’d, and liv’d, and left +Her body tenantless. Thenceforth the tribes, +Who round were scatter’d, gath’ring to that place +Assembled; for its strength was great, enclos’d +On all parts by the fen. On those dead bones +They rear’d themselves a city, for her sake, +Calling it Mantua, who first chose the spot, +Nor ask’d another omen for the name, +Wherein more numerous the people dwelt, +Ere Casalodi’s madness by deceit +Was wrong’d of Pinamonte. If thou hear +Henceforth another origin assign’d +Of that my country, I forewarn thee now, +That falsehood none beguile thee of the truth.” + +I answer’d: “Teacher, I conclude thy words +So certain, that all else shall be to me +As embers lacking life. But now of these, +Who here proceed, instruct me, if thou see +Any that merit more especial note. +For thereon is my mind alone intent.” + +He straight replied: “That spirit, from whose cheek +The beard sweeps o’er his shoulders brown, what time +Graecia was emptied of her males, that scarce +The cradles were supplied, the seer was he +In Aulis, who with Calchas gave the sign +When first to cut the cable. Him they nam’d +Eurypilus: so sings my tragic strain, +In which majestic measure well thou know’st, +Who know’st it all. That other, round the loins +So slender of his shape, was Michael Scot, +Practis’d in ev’ry slight of magic wile. + +“Guido Bonatti see: Asdente mark, +Who now were willing, he had tended still +The thread and cordwain; and too late repents. + +“See next the wretches, who the needle left, +The shuttle and the spindle, and became +Diviners: baneful witcheries they wrought +With images and herbs. But onward now: +For now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine +On either hemisphere, touching the wave +Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight +The moon was round. Thou mayst remember well: +For she good service did thee in the gloom +Of the deep wood.” This said, both onward mov’d. + + + + +CANTO XXI + + +Thus we from bridge to bridge, with other talk, +The which my drama cares not to rehearse, +Pass’d on; and to the summit reaching, stood +To view another gap, within the round +Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs. + +Marvelous darkness shadow’d o’er the place. + +In the Venetians’ arsenal as boils +Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear +Their unsound vessels; for th’ inclement time +Sea-faring men restrains, and in that while +His bark one builds anew, another stops +The ribs of his, that hath made many a voyage; +One hammers at the prow, one at the poop; +This shapeth oars, that other cables twirls, +The mizen one repairs and main-sail rent +So not by force of fire but art divine +Boil’d here a glutinous thick mass, that round +Lim’d all the shore beneath. I that beheld, +But therein nought distinguish’d, save the surge, +Rais’d by the boiling, in one mighty swell +Heave, and by turns subsiding and fall. While there +I fix’d my ken below, “Mark! mark!” my guide +Exclaiming, drew me towards him from the place, +Wherein I stood. I turn’d myself as one, +Impatient to behold that which beheld +He needs must shun, whom sudden fear unmans, +That he his flight delays not for the view. +Behind me I discern’d a devil black, +That running, up advanc’d along the rock. +Ah! what fierce cruelty his look bespake! +In act how bitter did he seem, with wings +Buoyant outstretch’d and feet of nimblest tread! +His shoulder proudly eminent and sharp +Was with a sinner charg’d; by either haunch +He held him, the foot’s sinew griping fast. + +“Ye of our bridge!” he cried, “keen-talon’d fiends! +Lo! one of Santa Zita’s elders! Him +Whelm ye beneath, while I return for more. +That land hath store of such. All men are there, +Except Bonturo, barterers: of ‘no’ +For lucre there an ‘aye’ is quickly made.” + +Him dashing down, o’er the rough rock he turn’d, +Nor ever after thief a mastiff loos’d +Sped with like eager haste. That other sank +And forthwith writing to the surface rose. +But those dark demons, shrouded by the bridge, +Cried “Here the hallow’d visage saves not: here +Is other swimming than in Serchio’s wave. +Wherefore if thou desire we rend thee not, +Take heed thou mount not o’er the pitch.” This said, +They grappled him with more than hundred hooks, +And shouted: “Cover’d thou must sport thee here; +So, if thou canst, in secret mayst thou filch.” + +E’en thus the cook bestirs him, with his grooms, +To thrust the flesh into the caldron down +With flesh-hooks, that it float not on the top. + +Me then my guide bespake: “Lest they descry, +That thou art here, behind a craggy rock +Bend low and screen thee; and whate’er of force +Be offer’d me, or insult, fear thou not: +For I am well advis’d, who have been erst +In the like fray.” Beyond the bridge’s head +Therewith he pass’d, and reaching the sixth pier, +Behov’d him then a forehead terror-proof. + +With storm and fury, as when dogs rush forth +Upon the poor man’s back, who suddenly +From whence he standeth makes his suit; so rush’d +Those from beneath the arch, and against him +Their weapons all they pointed. He aloud: +“Be none of you outrageous: ere your time +Dare seize me, come forth from amongst you one, + +“Who having heard my words, decide he then +If he shall tear these limbs.” They shouted loud, +“Go, Malacoda!” Whereat one advanc’d, +The others standing firm, and as he came, +“What may this turn avail him?” he exclaim’d. + +“Believ’st thou, Malacoda! I had come +Thus far from all your skirmishing secure,” +My teacher answered, “without will divine +And destiny propitious? Pass we then +For so Heaven’s pleasure is, that I should lead +Another through this savage wilderness.” + +Forthwith so fell his pride, that he let drop +The instrument of torture at his feet, +And to the rest exclaim’d: “We have no power +To strike him.” Then to me my guide: “O thou! +Who on the bridge among the crags dost sit +Low crouching, safely now to me return.” + +I rose, and towards him moved with speed: the fiends +Meantime all forward drew: me terror seiz’d +Lest they should break the compact they had made. +Thus issuing from Caprona, once I saw +Th’ infantry dreading, lest his covenant +The foe should break; so close he hemm’d them round. + +I to my leader’s side adher’d, mine eyes +With fixt and motionless observance bent +On their unkindly visage. They their hooks +Protruding, one the other thus bespake: +“Wilt thou I touch him on the hip?” To whom +Was answer’d: “Even so; nor miss thy aim.” + +But he, who was in conf’rence with my guide, +Turn’d rapid round, and thus the demon spake: +“Stay, stay thee, Scarmiglione!” Then to us +He added: “Further footing to your step +This rock affords not, shiver’d to the base +Of the sixth arch. But would you still proceed, +Up by this cavern go: not distant far, +Another rock will yield you passage safe. +Yesterday, later by five hours than now, +Twelve hundred threescore years and six had fill’d +The circuit of their course, since here the way +Was broken. Thitherward I straight dispatch +Certain of these my scouts, who shall espy +If any on the surface bask. With them +Go ye: for ye shall find them nothing fell. +Come Alichino forth,” with that he cried, +“And Calcabrina, and Cagnazzo thou! +The troop of ten let Barbariccia lead. +With Libicocco Draghinazzo haste, +Fang’d Ciriatto, Grafflacane fierce, +And Farfarello, and mad Rubicant. +Search ye around the bubbling tar. For these, +In safety lead them, where the other crag +Uninterrupted traverses the dens.” + +I then: “O master! what a sight is there! +Ah! without escort, journey we alone, +Which, if thou know the way, I covet not. +Unless thy prudence fail thee, dost not mark +How they do gnarl upon us, and their scowl +Threatens us present tortures?” He replied: +“I charge thee fear not: let them, as they will, +Gnarl on: ’t is but in token of their spite +Against the souls, who mourn in torment steep’d.” + +To leftward o’er the pier they turn’d; but each +Had first between his teeth prest close the tongue, +Toward their leader for a signal looking, +Which he with sound obscene triumphant gave. + + + + +CANTO XXII + + +It hath been heretofore my chance to see +Horsemen with martial order shifting camp, +To onset sallying, or in muster rang’d, +Or in retreat sometimes outstretch’d for flight; +Light-armed squadrons and fleet foragers +Scouring thy plains, Arezzo! have I seen, +And clashing tournaments, and tilting jousts, +Now with the sound of trumpets, now of bells, +Tabors, or signals made from castled heights, +And with inventions multiform, our own, +Or introduc’d from foreign land; but ne’er +To such a strange recorder I beheld, +In evolution moving, horse nor foot, +Nor ship, that tack’d by sign from land or star. + +With the ten demons on our way we went; +Ah fearful company! but in the church +With saints, with gluttons at the tavern’s mess. + +Still earnest on the pitch I gaz’d, to mark +All things whate’er the chasm contain’d, and those +Who burn’d within. As dolphins, that, in sign +To mariners, heave high their arched backs, +That thence forewarn’d they may advise to save +Their threaten’d vessels; so, at intervals, +To ease the pain his back some sinner show’d, +Then hid more nimbly than the lightning glance. + +E’en as the frogs, that of a wat’ry moat +Stand at the brink, with the jaws only out, +Their feet and of the trunk all else concealed, +Thus on each part the sinners stood, but soon +As Barbariccia was at hand, so they +Drew back under the wave. I saw, and yet +My heart doth stagger, one, that waited thus, +As it befalls that oft one frog remains, +While the next springs away: and Graffiacan, +Who of the fiends was nearest, grappling seiz’d +His clotted locks, and dragg’d him sprawling up, +That he appear’d to me an otter. Each +Already by their names I knew, so well +When they were chosen, I observ’d, and mark’d +How one the other call’d. “O Rubicant! +See that his hide thou with thy talons flay,” +Shouted together all the cursed crew. + +Then I: “Inform thee, master! if thou may, +What wretched soul is this, on whom their hand +His foes have laid.” My leader to his side +Approach’d, and whence he came inquir’d, to whom +Was answer’d thus: “Born in Navarre’s domain +My mother plac’d me in a lord’s retinue, +For she had borne me to a losel vile, +A spendthrift of his substance and himself. +The good king Thibault after that I serv’d, +To peculating here my thoughts were turn’d, +Whereof I give account in this dire heat.” + +Straight Ciriatto, from whose mouth a tusk +Issued on either side, as from a boar, +Ript him with one of these. ’Twixt evil claws +The mouse had fall’n: but Barbariccia cried, +Seizing him with both arms: “Stand thou apart, +While I do fix him on my prong transpierc’d.” +Then added, turning to my guide his face, +“Inquire of him, if more thou wish to learn, +Ere he again be rent.” My leader thus: +“Then tell us of the partners in thy guilt; +Knowest thou any sprung of Latian land +Under the tar?”—“I parted,” he replied, +“But now from one, who sojourn’d not far thence; +So were I under shelter now with him! +Nor hook nor talon then should scare me more.”—. + +“Too long we suffer,” Libicocco cried, +Then, darting forth a prong, seiz’d on his arm, +And mangled bore away the sinewy part. +Him Draghinazzo by his thighs beneath +Would next have caught, whence angrily their chief, +Turning on all sides round, with threat’ning brow +Restrain’d them. When their strife a little ceas’d, +Of him, who yet was gazing on his wound, +My teacher thus without delay inquir’d: +“Who was the spirit, from whom by evil hap +Parting, as thou has told, thou cam’st to shore?”— + +“It was the friar Gomita,” he rejoin’d, +“He of Gallura, vessel of all guile, +Who had his master’s enemies in hand, +And us’d them so that they commend him well. +Money he took, and them at large dismiss’d. +So he reports: and in each other charge +Committed to his keeping, play’d the part +Of barterer to the height: with him doth herd +The chief of Logodoro, Michel Zanche. +Sardinia is a theme, whereof their tongue +Is never weary. Out! alas! behold +That other, how he grins! More would I say, +But tremble lest he mean to maul me sore.” + +Their captain then to Farfarello turning, +Who roll’d his moony eyes in act to strike, +Rebuk’d him thus: “Off! cursed bird! Avaunt!”— + +“If ye desire to see or hear,” he thus +Quaking with dread resum’d, “or Tuscan spirits +Or Lombard, I will cause them to appear. +Meantime let these ill talons bate their fury, +So that no vengeance they may fear from them, +And I, remaining in this self-same place, +Will for myself but one, make sev’n appear, +When my shrill whistle shall be heard; for so +Our custom is to call each other up.” + +Cagnazzo at that word deriding grinn’d, +Then wagg’d the head and spake: “Hear his device, +Mischievous as he is, to plunge him down.” + +Whereto he thus, who fail’d not in rich store +Of nice-wove toils; “Mischief forsooth extreme, +Meant only to procure myself more woe!” + +No longer Alichino then refrain’d, +But thus, the rest gainsaying, him bespake: +“If thou do cast thee down, I not on foot +Will chase thee, but above the pitch will beat +My plumes. Quit we the vantage ground, and let +The bank be as a shield, that we may see +If singly thou prevail against us all.” + +Now, reader, of new sport expect to hear! + +They each one turn’d his eyes to the’ other shore, +He first, who was the hardest to persuade. +The spirit of Navarre chose well his time, +Planted his feet on land, and at one leap +Escaping disappointed their resolve. + +Them quick resentment stung, but him the most, +Who was the cause of failure; in pursuit +He therefore sped, exclaiming; “Thou art caught.” + +But little it avail’d: terror outstripp’d +His following flight: the other plung’d beneath, +And he with upward pinion rais’d his breast: +E’en thus the water-fowl, when she perceives +The falcon near, dives instant down, while he +Enrag’d and spent retires. That mockery +In Calcabrina fury stirr’d, who flew +After him, with desire of strife inflam’d; +And, for the barterer had ’scap’d, so turn’d +His talons on his comrade. O’er the dyke +In grapple close they join’d; but the’ other prov’d +A goshawk able to rend well his foe; + +And in the boiling lake both fell. The heat +Was umpire soon between them, but in vain +To lift themselves they strove, so fast were glued +Their pennons. Barbariccia, as the rest, +That chance lamenting, four in flight dispatch’d +From the’ other coast, with all their weapons arm’d. +They, to their post on each side speedily +Descending, stretch’d their hooks toward the fiends, +Who flounder’d, inly burning from their scars: +And we departing left them to that broil. + + + + +CANTO XXIII + + +In silence and in solitude we went, +One first, the other following his steps, +As minor friars journeying on their road. + +The present fray had turn’d my thoughts to muse +Upon old Aesop’s fable, where he told +What fate unto the mouse and frog befell. +For language hath not sounds more like in sense, +Than are these chances, if the origin +And end of each be heedfully compar’d. +And as one thought bursts from another forth, +So afterward from that another sprang, +Which added doubly to my former fear. +For thus I reason’d: “These through us have been +So foil’d, with loss and mock’ry so complete, +As needs must sting them sore. If anger then +Be to their evil will conjoin’d, more fell +They shall pursue us, than the savage hound +Snatches the leveret, panting ’twixt his jaws.” + +Already I perceiv’d my hair stand all +On end with terror, and look’d eager back. + +“Teacher,” I thus began, “if speedily +Thyself and me thou hide not, much I dread +Those evil talons. Even now behind +They urge us: quick imagination works +So forcibly, that I already feel them.” + +He answer’d: “Were I form’d of leaded glass, +I should not sooner draw unto myself +Thy outward image, than I now imprint +That from within. This moment came thy thoughts +Presented before mine, with similar act +And count’nance similar, so that from both +I one design have fram’d. If the right coast +Incline so much, that we may thence descend +Into the other chasm, we shall escape +Secure from this imagined pursuit.” + +He had not spoke his purpose to the end, +When I from far beheld them with spread wings +Approach to take us. Suddenly my guide +Caught me, ev’n as a mother that from sleep +Is by the noise arous’d, and near her sees +The climbing fires, who snatches up her babe +And flies ne’er pausing, careful more of him +Than of herself, that but a single vest +Clings round her limbs. Down from the jutting beach +Supine he cast him, to that pendent rock, +Which closes on one part the other chasm. + +Never ran water with such hurrying pace +Adown the tube to turn a landmill’s wheel, +When nearest it approaches to the spokes, +As then along that edge my master ran, +Carrying me in his bosom, as a child, +Not a companion. Scarcely had his feet +Reach’d to the lowest of the bed beneath, + +When over us the steep they reach’d; but fear +In him was none; for that high Providence, +Which plac’d them ministers of the fifth foss, +Power of departing thence took from them all. + +There in the depth we saw a painted tribe, +Who pac’d with tardy steps around, and wept, +Faint in appearance and o’ercome with toil. +Caps had they on, with hoods, that fell low down +Before their eyes, in fashion like to those +Worn by the monks in Cologne. Their outside +Was overlaid with gold, dazzling to view, +But leaden all within, and of such weight, +That Frederick’s compar’d to these were straw. +Oh, everlasting wearisome attire! + +We yet once more with them together turn’d +To leftward, on their dismal moan intent. +But by the weight oppress’d, so slowly came +The fainting people, that our company +Was chang’d at every movement of the step. + +Whence I my guide address’d: “See that thou find +Some spirit, whose name may by his deeds be known, +And to that end look round thee as thou go’st.” + +Then one, who understood the Tuscan voice, +Cried after us aloud: “Hold in your feet, +Ye who so swiftly speed through the dusk air. +Perchance from me thou shalt obtain thy wish.” + +Whereat my leader, turning, me bespake: +“Pause, and then onward at their pace proceed.” + +I staid, and saw two Spirits in whose look +Impatient eagerness of mind was mark’d +To overtake me; but the load they bare +And narrow path retarded their approach. + +Soon as arriv’d, they with an eye askance +Perus’d me, but spake not: then turning each +To other thus conferring said: “This one +Seems, by the action of his throat, alive. +And, be they dead, what privilege allows +They walk unmantled by the cumbrous stole?” + +Then thus to me: “Tuscan, who visitest +The college of the mourning hypocrites, +Disdain not to instruct us who thou art.” + +“By Arno’s pleasant stream,” I thus replied, +“In the great city I was bred and grew, +And wear the body I have ever worn. +but who are ye, from whom such mighty grief, +As now I witness, courseth down your cheeks? +What torment breaks forth in this bitter woe?” +“Our bonnets gleaming bright with orange hue,” +One of them answer’d, “are so leaden gross, +That with their weight they make the balances +To crack beneath them. Joyous friars we were, +Bologna’s natives, Catalano I, +He Loderingo nam’d, and by thy land +Together taken, as men used to take +A single and indifferent arbiter, +To reconcile their strifes. How there we sped, +Gardingo’s vicinage can best declare.” + +“O friars!” I began, “your miseries—” +But there brake off, for one had caught my eye, +Fix’d to a cross with three stakes on the ground: +He, when he saw me, writh’d himself, throughout +Distorted, ruffling with deep sighs his beard. +And Catalano, who thereof was ’ware, + +Thus spake: “That pierced spirit, whom intent +Thou view’st, was he who gave the Pharisees +Counsel, that it were fitting for one man +To suffer for the people. He doth lie +Transverse; nor any passes, but him first +Behoves make feeling trial how each weighs. +In straits like this along the foss are plac’d +The father of his consort, and the rest +Partakers in that council, seed of ill +And sorrow to the Jews.” I noted then, +How Virgil gaz’d with wonder upon him, +Thus abjectly extended on the cross +In banishment eternal. To the friar +He next his words address’d: “We pray ye tell, +If so be lawful, whether on our right +Lies any opening in the rock, whereby +We both may issue hence, without constraint +On the dark angels, that compell’d they come +To lead us from this depth.” He thus replied: +“Nearer than thou dost hope, there is a rock +From the next circle moving, which o’ersteps +Each vale of horror, save that here his cope +Is shatter’d. By the ruin ye may mount: +For on the side it slants, and most the height +Rises below.” With head bent down awhile +My leader stood, then spake: “He warn’d us ill, +Who yonder hangs the sinners on his hook.” + +To whom the friar: At Bologna erst +“I many vices of the devil heard, +Among the rest was said, ‘He is a liar, +And the father of lies!’” When he had spoke, +My leader with large strides proceeded on, +Somewhat disturb’d with anger in his look. + +I therefore left the spirits heavy laden, +And following, his beloved footsteps mark’d. + + + + +CANTO XXIV + + +In the year’s early nonage, when the sun +Tempers his tresses in Aquarius’ urn, +And now towards equal day the nights recede, +When as the rime upon the earth puts on +Her dazzling sister’s image, but not long +Her milder sway endures, then riseth up +The village hind, whom fails his wintry store, +And looking out beholds the plain around +All whiten’d, whence impatiently he smites +His thighs, and to his hut returning in, +There paces to and fro, wailing his lot, +As a discomfited and helpless man; +Then comes he forth again, and feels new hope +Spring in his bosom, finding e’en thus soon +The world hath chang’d its count’nance, grasps his crook, +And forth to pasture drives his little flock: +So me my guide dishearten’d when I saw +His troubled forehead, and so speedily +That ill was cur’d; for at the fallen bridge +Arriving, towards me with a look as sweet, +He turn’d him back, as that I first beheld +At the steep mountain’s foot. Regarding well +The ruin, and some counsel first maintain’d +With his own thought, he open’d wide his arm +And took me up. As one, who, while he works, +Computes his labour’s issue, that he seems +Still to foresee the’ effect, so lifting me +Up to the summit of one peak, he fix’d +His eye upon another. “Grapple that,” +Said he, “but first make proof, if it be such +As will sustain thee.” For one capp’d with lead +This were no journey. Scarcely he, though light, +And I, though onward push’d from crag to crag, +Could mount. And if the precinct of this coast +Were not less ample than the last, for him +I know not, but my strength had surely fail’d. +But Malebolge all toward the mouth +Inclining of the nethermost abyss, +The site of every valley hence requires, +That one side upward slope, the other fall. + +At length the point of our descent we reach’d +From the last flag: soon as to that arriv’d, +So was the breath exhausted from my lungs, +I could no further, but did seat me there. + +“Now needs thy best of man;” so spake my guide: +“For not on downy plumes, nor under shade +Of canopy reposing, fame is won, +Without which whosoe’er consumes his days +Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth, +As smoke in air or foam upon the wave. +Thou therefore rise: vanish thy weariness +By the mind’s effort, in each struggle form’d +To vanquish, if she suffer not the weight +Of her corporeal frame to crush her down. +A longer ladder yet remains to scale. +From these to have escap’d sufficeth not. +If well thou note me, profit by my words.” + +I straightway rose, and show’d myself less spent +Than I in truth did feel me. “On,” I cried, +“For I am stout and fearless.” Up the rock +Our way we held, more rugged than before, +Narrower and steeper far to climb. From talk +I ceas’d not, as we journey’d, so to seem +Least faint; whereat a voice from the other foss +Did issue forth, for utt’rance suited ill. +Though on the arch that crosses there I stood, +What were the words I knew not, but who spake +Seem’d mov’d in anger. Down I stoop’d to look, +But my quick eye might reach not to the depth +For shrouding darkness; wherefore thus I spake: +“To the next circle, Teacher, bend thy steps, +And from the wall dismount we; for as hence +I hear and understand not, so I see +Beneath, and naught discern.”—“I answer not,” +Said he, “but by the deed. To fair request +Silent performance maketh best return.” + +We from the bridge’s head descended, where +To the eighth mound it joins, and then the chasm +Opening to view, I saw a crowd within +Of serpents terrible, so strange of shape +And hideous, that remembrance in my veins +Yet shrinks the vital current. Of her sands +Let Lybia vaunt no more: if Jaculus, +Pareas and Chelyder be her brood, +Cenchris and Amphisboena, plagues so dire +Or in such numbers swarming ne’er she shew’d, +Not with all Ethiopia, and whate’er +Above the Erythraean sea is spawn’d. + +Amid this dread exuberance of woe +Ran naked spirits wing’d with horrid fear, +Nor hope had they of crevice where to hide, +Or heliotrope to charm them out of view. +With serpents were their hands behind them bound, +Which through their reins infix’d the tail and head +Twisted in folds before. And lo! on one +Near to our side, darted an adder up, +And, where the neck is on the shoulders tied, +Transpierc’d him. Far more quickly than e’er pen +Wrote O or I, he kindled, burn’d, and chang’d +To ashes, all pour’d out upon the earth. +When there dissolv’d he lay, the dust again +Uproll’d spontaneous, and the self-same form +Instant resumed. So mighty sages tell, +The’ Arabian Phoenix, when five hundred years +Have well nigh circled, dies, and springs forthwith +Renascent. Blade nor herb throughout his life +He tastes, but tears of frankincense alone +And odorous amomum: swaths of nard +And myrrh his funeral shroud. As one that falls, +He knows not how, by force demoniac dragg’d +To earth, or through obstruction fettering up +In chains invisible the powers of man, +Who, risen from his trance, gazeth around, +Bewilder’d with the monstrous agony +He hath endur’d, and wildly staring sighs; +So stood aghast the sinner when he rose. + +Oh! how severe God’s judgment, that deals out +Such blows in stormy vengeance! Who he was +My teacher next inquir’d, and thus in few +He answer’d: “Vanni Fucci am I call’d, +Not long since rained down from Tuscany +To this dire gullet. Me the beastial life +And not the human pleas’d, mule that I was, +Who in Pistoia found my worthy den.” + +I then to Virgil: “Bid him stir not hence, +And ask what crime did thrust him hither: once +A man I knew him choleric and bloody.” + +The sinner heard and feign’d not, but towards me +His mind directing and his face, wherein +Was dismal shame depictur’d, thus he spake: +“It grieves me more to have been caught by thee +In this sad plight, which thou beholdest, than +When I was taken from the other life. +I have no power permitted to deny +What thou inquirest. I am doom’d thus low +To dwell, for that the sacristy by me +Was rifled of its goodly ornaments, +And with the guilt another falsely charged. +But that thou mayst not joy to see me thus, +So as thou e’er shalt ’scape this darksome realm +Open thine ears and hear what I forebode. +Reft of the Neri first Pistoia pines, +Then Florence changeth citizens and laws. +From Valdimagra, drawn by wrathful Mars, +A vapour rises, wrapt in turbid mists, +And sharp and eager driveth on the storm +With arrowy hurtling o’er Piceno’s field, +Whence suddenly the cloud shall burst, and strike +Each helpless Bianco prostrate to the ground. +This have I told, that grief may rend thy heart.” + + + + +CANTO XXV + + +When he had spoke, the sinner rais’d his hands +Pointed in mockery, and cried: “Take them, God! +I level them at thee!” From that day forth +The serpents were my friends; for round his neck +One of then rolling twisted, as it said, +“Be silent, tongue!” Another to his arms +Upgliding, tied them, riveting itself +So close, it took from them the power to move. + +Pistoia! Ah Pistoia! why dost doubt +To turn thee into ashes, cumb’ring earth +No longer, since in evil act so far +Thou hast outdone thy seed? I did not mark, +Through all the gloomy circles of the’ abyss, +Spirit, that swell’d so proudly ’gainst his God, +Not him, who headlong fell from Thebes. He fled, +Nor utter’d more; and after him there came +A centaur full of fury, shouting, “Where +Where is the caitiff?” On Maremma’s marsh +Swarm not the serpent tribe, as on his haunch +They swarm’d, to where the human face begins. +Behind his head upon the shoulders lay, +With open wings, a dragon breathing fire +On whomsoe’er he met. To me my guide: +“Cacus is this, who underneath the rock +Of Aventine spread oft a lake of blood. +He, from his brethren parted, here must tread +A different journey, for his fraudful theft +Of the great herd, that near him stall’d; whence found +His felon deeds their end, beneath the mace +Of stout Alcides, that perchance laid on +A hundred blows, and not the tenth was felt.” + +While yet he spake, the centaur sped away: +And under us three spirits came, of whom +Nor I nor he was ware, till they exclaim’d; +“Say who are ye?” We then brake off discourse, +Intent on these alone. I knew them not; +But, as it chanceth oft, befell, that one +Had need to name another. “Where,” said he, +“Doth Cianfa lurk?” I, for a sign my guide +Should stand attentive, plac’d against my lips +The finger lifted. If, O reader! now +Thou be not apt to credit what I tell, +No marvel; for myself do scarce allow +The witness of mine eyes. But as I looked +Toward them, lo! a serpent with six feet +Springs forth on one, and fastens full upon him: +His midmost grasp’d the belly, a forefoot +Seiz’d on each arm (while deep in either cheek +He flesh’d his fangs); the hinder on the thighs +Were spread, ’twixt which the tail inserted curl’d +Upon the reins behind. Ivy ne’er clasp’d +A dodder’d oak, as round the other’s limbs +The hideous monster intertwin’d his own. +Then, as they both had been of burning wax, +Each melted into other, mingling hues, +That which was either now was seen no more. +Thus up the shrinking paper, ere it burns, +A brown tint glides, not turning yet to black, +And the clean white expires. The other two +Look’d on exclaiming: “Ah, how dost thou change, +Agnello! See! Thou art nor double now, + +“Nor only one.” The two heads now became +One, and two figures blended in one form +Appear’d, where both were lost. Of the four lengths +Two arms were made: the belly and the chest +The thighs and legs into such members chang’d, +As never eye hath seen. Of former shape +All trace was vanish’d. Two yet neither seem’d +That image miscreate, and so pass’d on +With tardy steps. As underneath the scourge +Of the fierce dog-star, that lays bare the fields, +Shifting from brake to brake, the lizard seems +A flash of lightning, if he thwart the road, +So toward th’ entrails of the other two +Approaching seem’d, an adder all on fire, +As the dark pepper-grain, livid and swart. +In that part, whence our life is nourish’d first, +One he transpierc’d; then down before him fell +Stretch’d out. The pierced spirit look’d on him +But spake not; yea stood motionless and yawn’d, +As if by sleep or fev’rous fit assail’d. +He ey’d the serpent, and the serpent him. +One from the wound, the other from the mouth +Breath’d a thick smoke, whose vap’ry columns join’d. + +Lucan in mute attention now may hear, +Nor thy disastrous fate, Sabellus! tell, +Nor shine, Nasidius! Ovid now be mute. +What if in warbling fiction he record +Cadmus and Arethusa, to a snake +Him chang’d, and her into a fountain clear, +I envy not; for never face to face +Two natures thus transmuted did he sing, +Wherein both shapes were ready to assume +The other’s substance. They in mutual guise +So answer’d, that the serpent split his train +Divided to a fork, and the pierc’d spirit +Drew close his steps together, legs and thighs +Compacted, that no sign of juncture soon +Was visible: the tail disparted took +The figure which the spirit lost, its skin +Soft’ning, his indurated to a rind. +The shoulders next I mark’d, that ent’ring join’d +The monster’s arm-pits, whose two shorter feet +So lengthen’d, as the other’s dwindling shrunk. +The feet behind then twisting up became +That part that man conceals, which in the wretch +Was cleft in twain. While both the shadowy smoke +With a new colour veils, and generates +Th’ excrescent pile on one, peeling it off +From th’ other body, lo! upon his feet +One upright rose, and prone the other fell. +Not yet their glaring and malignant lamps +Were shifted, though each feature chang’d beneath. +Of him who stood erect, the mounting face +Retreated towards the temples, and what there +Superfluous matter came, shot out in ears +From the smooth cheeks, the rest, not backward dragg’d, +Of its excess did shape the nose; and swell’d +Into due size protuberant the lips. +He, on the earth who lay, meanwhile extends +His sharpen’d visage, and draws down the ears +Into the head, as doth the slug his horns. +His tongue continuous before and apt +For utt’rance, severs; and the other’s fork +Closing unites. That done the smoke was laid. +The soul, transform’d into the brute, glides off, +Hissing along the vale, and after him +The other talking sputters; but soon turn’d +His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few +Thus to another spake: “Along this path +Crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now!” + +So saw I fluctuate in successive change +Th’ unsteady ballast of the seventh hold: +And here if aught my tongue have swerv’d, events +So strange may be its warrant. O’er mine eyes +Confusion hung, and on my thoughts amaze. + +Yet ’scap’d they not so covertly, but well +I mark’d Sciancato: he alone it was +Of the three first that came, who chang’d not: thou, +The other’s fate, Gaville, still dost rue. + + + + +CANTO XXVI + + +Florence exult! for thou so mightily +Hast thriven, that o’er land and sea thy wings +Thou beatest, and thy name spreads over hell! +Among the plund’rers such the three I found +Thy citizens, whence shame to me thy son, +And no proud honour to thyself redounds. + +But if our minds, when dreaming near the dawn, +Are of the truth presageful, thou ere long +Shalt feel what Prato, (not to say the rest) +Would fain might come upon thee; and that chance +Were in good time, if it befell thee now. +Would so it were, since it must needs befall! +For as time wears me, I shall grieve the more. + +We from the depth departed; and my guide +Remounting scal’d the flinty steps, which late +We downward trac’d, and drew me up the steep. +Pursuing thus our solitary way +Among the crags and splinters of the rock, +Sped not our feet without the help of hands. + +Then sorrow seiz’d me, which e’en now revives, +As my thought turns again to what I saw, +And, more than I am wont, I rein and curb +The powers of nature in me, lest they run +Where Virtue guides not; that if aught of good +My gentle star, or something better gave me, +I envy not myself the precious boon. + +As in that season, when the sun least veils +His face that lightens all, what time the fly +Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then +Upon some cliff reclin’d, beneath him sees +Fire-flies innumerous spangling o’er the vale, +Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies: +With flames so numberless throughout its space +Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth +Was to my view expos’d. As he, whose wrongs +The bears aveng’d, at its departure saw +Elijah’s chariot, when the steeds erect +Rais’d their steep flight for heav’n; his eyes meanwhile, +Straining pursu’d them, till the flame alone +Upsoaring like a misty speck he kenn’d; +E’en thus along the gulf moves every flame, +A sinner so enfolded close in each, +That none exhibits token of the theft. + +Upon the bridge I forward bent to look, +And grasp’d a flinty mass, or else had fall’n, +Though push’d not from the height. The guide, who mark’d +How I did gaze attentive, thus began: + +“Within these ardours are the spirits, each +Swath’d in confining fire.”—“Master, thy word,” +I answer’d, “hath assur’d me; yet I deem’d +Already of the truth, already wish’d +To ask thee, who is in yon fire, that comes +So parted at the summit, as it seem’d +Ascending from that funeral pile, where lay +The Theban brothers?” He replied: “Within +Ulysses there and Diomede endure +Their penal tortures, thus to vengeance now +Together hasting, as erewhile to wrath. +These in the flame with ceaseless groans deplore +The ambush of the horse, that open’d wide +A portal for that goodly seed to pass, +Which sow’d imperial Rome; nor less the guile +Lament they, whence of her Achilles ’reft +Deidamia yet in death complains. +And there is rued the stratagem, that Troy +Of her Palladium spoil’d.”—“If they have power +Of utt’rance from within these sparks,” said I, +“O master! think my prayer a thousand fold +In repetition urg’d, that thou vouchsafe +To pause, till here the horned flame arrive. +See, how toward it with desire I bend.” + +He thus: “Thy prayer is worthy of much praise, +And I accept it therefore: but do thou +Thy tongue refrain: to question them be mine, +For I divine thy wish: and they perchance, +For they were Greeks, might shun discourse with thee.” + +When there the flame had come, where time and place +Seem’d fitting to my guide, he thus began: +“O ye, who dwell two spirits in one fire! +If living I of you did merit aught, +Whate’er the measure were of that desert, +When in the world my lofty strain I pour’d, +Move ye not on, till one of you unfold +In what clime death o’ertook him self-destroy’d.” + +Of the old flame forthwith the greater horn +Began to roll, murmuring, as a fire +That labours with the wind, then to and fro +Wagging the top, as a tongue uttering sounds, +Threw out its voice, and spake: “When I escap’d +From Circe, who beyond a circling year +Had held me near Caieta, by her charms, +Ere thus Aeneas yet had nam’d the shore, +Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence +Of my old father, nor return of love, +That should have crown’d Penelope with joy, +Could overcome in me the zeal I had +T’ explore the world, and search the ways of life, +Man’s evil and his virtue. Forth I sail’d +Into the deep illimitable main, +With but one bark, and the small faithful band +That yet cleav’d to me. As Iberia far, +Far as Morocco either shore I saw, +And the Sardinian and each isle beside +Which round that ocean bathes. Tardy with age +Were I and my companions, when we came +To the strait pass, where Hercules ordain’d +The bound’ries not to be o’erstepp’d by man. +The walls of Seville to my right I left, +On the’ other hand already Ceuta past. + +“O brothers!” I began, “who to the west +Through perils without number now have reach’d, +To this the short remaining watch, that yet +Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof +Of the unpeopled world, following the track +Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence we sprang: +Ye were not form’d to live the life of brutes +But virtue to pursue and knowledge high. +With these few words I sharpen’d for the voyage +The mind of my associates, that I then +Could scarcely have withheld them. To the dawn +Our poop we turn’d, and for the witless flight +Made our oars wings, still gaining on the left. +Each star of the’ other pole night now beheld, +And ours so low, that from the ocean-floor +It rose not. Five times re-illum’d, as oft +Vanish’d the light from underneath the moon +Since the deep way we enter’d, when from far +Appear’d a mountain dim, loftiest methought +Of all I e’er beheld. Joy seiz’d us straight, +But soon to mourning changed. From the new land +A whirlwind sprung, and at her foremost side +Did strike the vessel. Thrice it whirl’d her round +With all the waves, the fourth time lifted up +The poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed: +And over us the booming billow clos’d.” + + + + +CANTO XVII + + +Now upward rose the flame, and still’d its light +To speak no more, and now pass’d on with leave +From the mild poet gain’d, when following came +Another, from whose top a sound confus’d, +Forth issuing, drew our eyes that way to look. + +As the Sicilian bull, that rightfully +His cries first echoed, who had shap’d its mould, +Did so rebellow, with the voice of him +Tormented, that the brazen monster seem’d +Pierc’d through with pain; thus while no way they found +Nor avenue immediate through the flame, +Into its language turn’d the dismal words: +But soon as they had won their passage forth, +Up from the point, which vibrating obey’d +Their motion at the tongue, these sounds we heard: +“O thou! to whom I now direct my voice! +That lately didst exclaim in Lombard phrase, + +“Depart thou, I solicit thee no more, +Though somewhat tardy I perchance arrive +Let it not irk thee here to pause awhile, +And with me parley: lo! it irks not me +And yet I burn. If but e’en now thou fall +into this blind world, from that pleasant land +Of Latium, whence I draw my sum of guilt, +Tell me if those, who in Romagna dwell, +Have peace or war. For of the mountains there +Was I, betwixt Urbino and the height, +Whence Tyber first unlocks his mighty flood.” + +Leaning I listen’d yet with heedful ear, +When, as he touch’d my side, the leader thus: +“Speak thou: he is a Latian.” My reply +Was ready, and I spake without delay: + +“O spirit! who art hidden here below! +Never was thy Romagna without war +In her proud tyrants’ bosoms, nor is now: +But open war there left I none. The state, +Ravenna hath maintain’d this many a year, +Is steadfast. There Polenta’s eagle broods, +And in his broad circumference of plume +O’ershadows Cervia. The green talons grasp +The land, that stood erewhile the proof so long, +And pil’d in bloody heap the host of France. + +“The’ old mastiff of Verruchio and the young, +That tore Montagna in their wrath, still make, +Where they are wont, an augre of their fangs. + +“Lamone’s city and Santerno’s range +Under the lion of the snowy lair. +Inconstant partisan! that changeth sides, +Or ever summer yields to winter’s frost. +And she, whose flank is wash’d of Savio’s wave, +As ’twixt the level and the steep she lies, +Lives so ’twixt tyrant power and liberty. + +“Now tell us, I entreat thee, who art thou? +Be not more hard than others. In the world, +So may thy name still rear its forehead high.” + +Then roar’d awhile the fire, its sharpen’d point +On either side wav’d, and thus breath’d at last: +“If I did think, my answer were to one, +Who ever could return unto the world, +This flame should rest unshaken. But since ne’er, +If true be told me, any from this depth +Has found his upward way, I answer thee, +Nor fear lest infamy record the words. + +“A man of arms at first, I cloth’d me then +In good Saint Francis’ girdle, hoping so +T’ have made amends. And certainly my hope +Had fail’d not, but that he, whom curses light on, +The’ high priest again seduc’d me into sin. +And how and wherefore listen while I tell. +Long as this spirit mov’d the bones and pulp +My mother gave me, less my deeds bespake +The nature of the lion than the fox. +All ways of winding subtlety I knew, +And with such art conducted, that the sound +Reach’d the world’s limit. Soon as to that part +Of life I found me come, when each behoves +To lower sails and gather in the lines; +That which before had pleased me then I rued, +And to repentance and confession turn’d; +Wretch that I was! and well it had bested me! +The chief of the new Pharisees meantime, +Waging his warfare near the Lateran, +Not with the Saracens or Jews (his foes +All Christians were, nor against Acre one +Had fought, nor traffic’d in the Soldan’s land), +He his great charge nor sacred ministry +In himself, rev’renc’d, nor in me that cord, +Which us’d to mark with leanness whom it girded. +As in Socrate, Constantine besought +To cure his leprosy Sylvester’s aid, +So me to cure the fever of his pride +This man besought: my counsel to that end +He ask’d: and I was silent: for his words +Seem’d drunken: but forthwith he thus resum’d: +‘From thy heart banish fear: of all offence +I hitherto absolve thee. In return, +Teach me my purpose so to execute, +That Penestrino cumber earth no more. +Heav’n, as thou knowest, I have power to shut +And open: and the keys are therefore twain, +The which my predecessor meanly priz’d.’” + +Then, yielding to the forceful arguments, +Of silence as more perilous I deem’d, +And answer’d: “Father! since thou washest me +Clear of that guilt wherein I now must fall, +Large promise with performance scant, be sure, +Shall make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.” + +“When I was number’d with the dead, then came +Saint Francis for me; but a cherub dark +He met, who cried: ‘Wrong me not; he is mine, +And must below to join the wretched crew, +For the deceitful counsel which he gave. +E’er since I watch’d him, hov’ring at his hair, +No power can the impenitent absolve; +Nor to repent and will at once consist, +By contradiction absolute forbid.’” +Oh mis’ry! how I shook myself, when he +Seiz’d me, and cried, “Thou haply thought’st me not +A disputant in logic so exact.” +To Minos down he bore me, and the judge +Twin’d eight times round his callous back the tail, +Which biting with excess of rage, he spake: +“This is a guilty soul, that in the fire +Must vanish. Hence perdition-doom’d I rove +A prey to rankling sorrow in this garb.” + +When he had thus fulfill’d his words, the flame +In dolour parted, beating to and fro, +And writhing its sharp horn. We onward went, +I and my leader, up along the rock, +Far as another arch, that overhangs +The foss, wherein the penalty is paid +Of those, who load them with committed sin. + + + + +CANTO XXVIII + + +Who, e’en in words unfetter’d, might at full +Tell of the wounds and blood that now I saw, +Though he repeated oft the tale? No tongue +So vast a theme could equal, speech and thought +Both impotent alike. If in one band +Collected, stood the people all, who e’er +Pour’d on Apulia’s happy soil their blood, +Slain by the Trojans, and in that long war +When of the rings the measur’d booty made +A pile so high, as Rome’s historian writes +Who errs not, with the multitude, that felt +The grinding force of Guiscard’s Norman steel, +And those the rest, whose bones are gather’d yet +At Ceperano, there where treachery +Branded th’ Apulian name, or where beyond +Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo, without arms +The old Alardo conquer’d; and his limbs +One were to show transpierc’d, another his +Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this +Were but a thing of nought, to the’ hideous sight +Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost +Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide, +As one I mark’d, torn from the chin throughout +Down to the hinder passage: ’twixt the legs +Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay +Open to view, and wretched ventricle, +That turns th’ englutted aliment to dross. + +Whilst eagerly I fix on him my gaze, +He ey’d me, with his hands laid his breast bare, +And cried; “Now mark how I do rip me! lo! + +“How is Mohammed mangled! before me +Walks Ali weeping, from the chin his face +Cleft to the forelock; and the others all +Whom here thou seest, while they liv’d, did sow +Scandal and schism, and therefore thus are rent. +A fiend is here behind, who with his sword +Hacks us thus cruelly, slivering again +Each of this ream, when we have compast round +The dismal way, for first our gashes close +Ere we repass before him. But say who +Art thou, that standest musing on the rock, +Haply so lingering to delay the pain +Sentenc’d upon thy crimes?”—“Him death not yet,” +My guide rejoin’d, “hath overta’en, nor sin +Conducts to torment; but, that he may make +Full trial of your state, I who am dead +Must through the depths of hell, from orb to orb, +Conduct him. Trust my words, for they are true.” + +More than a hundred spirits, when that they heard, +Stood in the foss to mark me, through amazed, +Forgetful of their pangs. “Thou, who perchance +Shalt shortly view the sun, this warning thou +Bear to Dolcino: bid him, if he wish not +Here soon to follow me, that with good store +Of food he arm him, lest impris’ning snows +Yield him a victim to Novara’s power, +No easy conquest else.” With foot uprais’d +For stepping, spake Mohammed, on the ground +Then fix’d it to depart. Another shade, +Pierc’d in the throat, his nostrils mutilate +E’en from beneath the eyebrows, and one ear +Lopt off, who with the rest through wonder stood +Gazing, before the rest advanc’d, and bar’d +His wind-pipe, that without was all o’ersmear’d +With crimson stain. “O thou!” said he, “whom sin +Condemns not, and whom erst (unless too near +Resemblance do deceive me) I aloft +Have seen on Latian ground, call thou to mind +Piero of Medicina, if again +Returning, thou behold’st the pleasant land +That from Vercelli slopes to Mercabo; + +“And there instruct the twain, whom Fano boasts +Her worthiest sons, Guido and Angelo, +That if ’t is giv’n us here to scan aright +The future, they out of life’s tenement +Shall be cast forth, and whelm’d under the waves +Near to Cattolica, through perfidy +Of a fell tyrant. ’Twixt the Cyprian isle +And Balearic, ne’er hath Neptune seen +An injury so foul, by pirates done +Or Argive crew of old. That one-ey’d traitor +(Whose realm there is a spirit here were fain +His eye had still lack’d sight of) them shall bring +To conf’rence with him, then so shape his end, +That they shall need not ’gainst Focara’s wind +Offer up vow nor pray’r.” I answering thus: + +“Declare, as thou dost wish that I above +May carry tidings of thee, who is he, +In whom that sight doth wake such sad remembrance?” + +Forthwith he laid his hand on the cheek-bone +Of one, his fellow-spirit, and his jaws +Expanding, cried: “Lo! this is he I wot of; +He speaks not for himself: the outcast this +Who overwhelm’d the doubt in Caesar’s mind, +Affirming that delay to men prepar’d +Was ever harmful.” Oh how terrified +Methought was Curio, from whose throat was cut +The tongue, which spake that hardy word. Then one +Maim’d of each hand, uplifted in the gloom +The bleeding stumps, that they with gory spots +Sullied his face, and cried: “‘Remember thee +Of Mosca, too, I who, alas! exclaim’d, +‘The deed once done there is an end,’ that prov’d +A seed of sorrow to the Tuscan race.” + +I added: “Ay, and death to thine own tribe.” + +Whence heaping woe on woe he hurried off, +As one grief stung to madness. But I there +Still linger’d to behold the troop, and saw +Things, such as I may fear without more proof +To tell of, but that conscience makes me firm, +The boon companion, who her strong breast-plate +Buckles on him, that feels no guilt within +And bids him on and fear not. Without doubt +I saw, and yet it seems to pass before me, +A headless trunk, that even as the rest +Of the sad flock pac’d onward. By the hair +It bore the sever’d member, lantern-wise +Pendent in hand, which look’d at us and said, + +“Woe’s me!” The spirit lighted thus himself, +And two there were in one, and one in two. +How that may be he knows who ordereth so. + +When at the bridge’s foot direct he stood, +His arm aloft he rear’d, thrusting the head +Full in our view, that nearer we might hear +The words, which thus it utter’d: “Now behold +This grievous torment, thou, who breathing go’st +To spy the dead; behold if any else +Be terrible as this. And that on earth +Thou mayst bear tidings of me, know that I +Am Bertrand, he of Born, who gave King John +The counsel mischievous. Father and son +I set at mutual war. For Absalom +And David more did not Ahitophel, +Spurring them on maliciously to strife. +For parting those so closely knit, my brain +Parted, alas! I carry from its source, +That in this trunk inhabits. Thus the law +Of retribution fiercely works in me.” + + + + +CANTO XXIX + + +So were mine eyes inebriate with view +Of the vast multitude, whom various wounds +Disfigur’d, that they long’d to stay and weep. + +But Virgil rous’d me: “What yet gazest on? +Wherefore doth fasten yet thy sight below +Among the maim’d and miserable shades? +Thou hast not shewn in any chasm beside +This weakness. Know, if thou wouldst number them +That two and twenty miles the valley winds +Its circuit, and already is the moon +Beneath our feet: the time permitted now +Is short, and more not seen remains to see.” + +“If thou,” I straight replied, “hadst weigh’d the cause +For which I look’d, thou hadst perchance excus’d +The tarrying still.” My leader part pursu’d +His way, the while I follow’d, answering him, +And adding thus: “Within that cave I deem, +Whereon so fixedly I held my ken, +There is a spirit dwells, one of my blood, +Wailing the crime that costs him now so dear.” + +Then spake my master: “Let thy soul no more +Afflict itself for him. Direct elsewhere +Its thought, and leave him. At the bridge’s foot +I mark’d how he did point with menacing look +At thee, and heard him by the others nam’d +Geri of Bello. Thou so wholly then +Wert busied with his spirit, who once rul’d +The towers of Hautefort, that thou lookedst not +That way, ere he was gone.”—“O guide belov’d! +His violent death yet unaveng’d,” said I, +“By any, who are partners in his shame, +Made him contemptuous: therefore, as I think, +He pass’d me speechless by; and doing so +Hath made me more compassionate his fate.” + +So we discours’d to where the rock first show’d +The other valley, had more light been there, +E’en to the lowest depth. Soon as we came +O’er the last cloister in the dismal rounds +Of Malebolge, and the brotherhood +Were to our view expos’d, then many a dart +Of sore lament assail’d me, headed all +With points of thrilling pity, that I clos’d +Both ears against the volley with mine hands. + +As were the torment, if each lazar-house +Of Valdichiana, in the sultry time +’Twixt July and September, with the isle +Sardinia and Maremma’s pestilent fen, +Had heap’d their maladies all in one foss +Together; such was here the torment: dire +The stench, as issuing steams from fester’d limbs. + +We on the utmost shore of the long rock +Descended still to leftward. Then my sight +Was livelier to explore the depth, wherein +The minister of the most mighty Lord, +All-searching Justice, dooms to punishment +The forgers noted on her dread record. + +More rueful was it not methinks to see +The nation in Aegina droop, what time +Each living thing, e’en to the little worm, +All fell, so full of malice was the air +(And afterward, as bards of yore have told, +The ancient people were restor’d anew +From seed of emmets) than was here to see +The spirits, that languish’d through the murky vale +Up-pil’d on many a stack. Confus’d they lay, +One o’er the belly, o’er the shoulders one +Roll’d of another; sideling crawl’d a third +Along the dismal pathway. Step by step +We journey’d on, in silence looking round +And list’ning those diseas’d, who strove in vain +To lift their forms. Then two I mark’d, that sat +Propp’d ’gainst each other, as two brazen pans +Set to retain the heat. From head to foot, +A tetter bark’d them round. Nor saw I e’er +Groom currying so fast, for whom his lord +Impatient waited, or himself perchance +Tir’d with long watching, as of these each one +Plied quickly his keen nails, through furiousness +Of ne’er abated pruriency. The crust +Came drawn from underneath in flakes, like scales +Scrap’d from the bream or fish of broader mail. + +“O thou, who with thy fingers rendest off +Thy coat of proof,” thus spake my guide to one, +“And sometimes makest tearing pincers of them, +Tell me if any born of Latian land +Be among these within: so may thy nails +Serve thee for everlasting to this toil.” + +“Both are of Latium,” weeping he replied, +“Whom tortur’d thus thou seest: but who art thou +That hast inquir’d of us?” To whom my guide: +“One that descend with this man, who yet lives, +From rock to rock, and show him hell’s abyss.” + +Then started they asunder, and each turn’d +Trembling toward us, with the rest, whose ear +Those words redounding struck. To me my liege +Address’d him: “Speak to them whate’er thou list.” + +And I therewith began: “So may no time +Filch your remembrance from the thoughts of men +In th’ upper world, but after many suns +Survive it, as ye tell me, who ye are, +And of what race ye come. Your punishment, +Unseemly and disgustful in its kind, +Deter you not from opening thus much to me.” + +“Arezzo was my dwelling,” answer’d one, +“And me Albero of Sienna brought +To die by fire; but that, for which I died, +Leads me not here. True is in sport I told him, +That I had learn’d to wing my flight in air. +And he admiring much, as he was void +Of wisdom, will’d me to declare to him +The secret of mine art: and only hence, +Because I made him not a Daedalus, +Prevail’d on one suppos’d his sire to burn me. +But Minos to this chasm last of the ten, +For that I practis’d alchemy on earth, +Has doom’d me. Him no subterfuge eludes.” + +Then to the bard I spake: “Was ever race +Light as Sienna’s? Sure not France herself +Can show a tribe so frivolous and vain.” + +The other leprous spirit heard my words, +And thus return’d: “Be Stricca from this charge +Exempted, he who knew so temp’rately +To lay out fortune’s gifts; and Niccolo +Who first the spice’s costly luxury +Discover’d in that garden, where such seed +Roots deepest in the soil: and be that troop +Exempted, with whom Caccia of Asciano +Lavish’d his vineyards and wide-spreading woods, +And his rare wisdom Abbagliato show’d +A spectacle for all. That thou mayst know +Who seconds thee against the Siennese +Thus gladly, bend this way thy sharpen’d sight, +That well my face may answer to thy ken; +So shalt thou see I am Capocchio’s ghost, +Who forg’d transmuted metals by the power +Of alchemy; and if I scan thee right, +Thus needs must well remember how I aped +Creative nature by my subtle art.” + + + + +CANTO XXX + + +What time resentment burn’d in Juno’s breast +For Semele against the Theban blood, +As more than once in dire mischance was rued, +Such fatal frenzy seiz’d on Athamas, +That he his spouse beholding with a babe +Laden on either arm, “Spread out,” he cried, +“The meshes, that I take the lioness +And the young lions at the pass:” then forth +Stretch’d he his merciless talons, grasping one, +One helpless innocent, Learchus nam’d, +Whom swinging down he dash’d upon a rock, +And with her other burden self-destroy’d +The hapless mother plung’d: and when the pride +Of all-presuming Troy fell from its height, +By fortune overwhelm’d, and the old king +With his realm perish’d, then did Hecuba, +A wretch forlorn and captive, when she saw +Polyxena first slaughter’d, and her son, +Her Polydorus, on the wild sea-beach +Next met the mourner’s view, then reft of sense +Did she run barking even as a dog; +Such mighty power had grief to wrench her soul. +Bet ne’er the Furies or of Thebes or Troy +With such fell cruelty were seen, their goads +Infixing in the limbs of man or beast, +As now two pale and naked ghost I saw +That gnarling wildly scamper’d, like the swine +Excluded from his stye. One reach’d Capocchio, +And in the neck-joint sticking deep his fangs, +Dragg’d him, that o’er the solid pavement rubb’d +His belly stretch’d out prone. The other shape, +He of Arezzo, there left trembling, spake; +“That sprite of air is Schicchi; in like mood +Of random mischief vent he still his spite.” + +To whom I answ’ring: “Oh! as thou dost hope, +The other may not flesh its jaws on thee, +Be patient to inform us, who it is, +Ere it speed hence.”—“That is the ancient soul +Of wretched Myrrha,” he replied, “who burn’d +With most unholy flame for her own sire, + +“And a false shape assuming, so perform’d +The deed of sin; e’en as the other there, +That onward passes, dar’d to counterfeit +Donati’s features, to feign’d testament +The seal affixing, that himself might gain, +For his own share, the lady of the herd.” + +When vanish’d the two furious shades, on whom +Mine eye was held, I turn’d it back to view +The other cursed spirits. One I saw +In fashion like a lute, had but the groin +Been sever’d, where it meets the forked part. +Swoln dropsy, disproportioning the limbs +With ill-converted moisture, that the paunch +Suits not the visage, open’d wide his lips +Gasping as in the hectic man for drought, +One towards the chin, the other upward curl’d. + +“O ye, who in this world of misery, +Wherefore I know not, are exempt from pain,” +Thus he began, “attentively regard +Adamo’s woe. When living, full supply +Ne’er lack’d me of what most I coveted; +One drop of water now, alas! I crave. +The rills, that glitter down the grassy slopes +Of Casentino, making fresh and soft +The banks whereby they glide to Arno’s stream, +Stand ever in my view; and not in vain; +For more the pictur’d semblance dries me up, +Much more than the disease, which makes the flesh +Desert these shrivel’d cheeks. So from the place, +Where I transgress’d, stern justice urging me, +Takes means to quicken more my lab’ring sighs. +There is Romena, where I falsified +The metal with the Baptist’s form imprest, +For which on earth I left my body burnt. +But if I here might see the sorrowing soul +Of Guido, Alessandro, or their brother, +For Branda’s limpid spring I would not change +The welcome sight. One is e’en now within, +If truly the mad spirits tell, that round +Are wand’ring. But wherein besteads me that? +My limbs are fetter’d. Were I but so light, +That I each hundred years might move one inch, +I had set forth already on this path, +Seeking him out amidst the shapeless crew, +Although eleven miles it wind, not more +Than half of one across. They brought me down +Among this tribe; induc’d by them I stamp’d +The florens with three carats of alloy.” + +“Who are that abject pair,” I next inquir’d, +“That closely bounding thee upon thy right +Lie smoking, like a band in winter steep’d +In the chill stream?”—“When to this gulf I dropt,” +He answer’d, “here I found them; since that hour +They have not turn’d, nor ever shall, I ween, +Till time hath run his course. One is that dame +The false accuser of the Hebrew youth; +Sinon the other, that false Greek from Troy. +Sharp fever drains the reeky moistness out, +In such a cloud upsteam’d.” When that he heard, +One, gall’d perchance to be so darkly nam’d, +With clench’d hand smote him on the braced paunch, +That like a drum resounded: but forthwith +Adamo smote him on the face, the blow +Returning with his arm, that seem’d as hard. + +“Though my o’erweighty limbs have ta’en from me +The power to move,” said he, “I have an arm +At liberty for such employ.” To whom +Was answer’d: “When thou wentest to the fire, +Thou hadst it not so ready at command, +Then readier when it coin’d th’ impostor gold.” + +And thus the dropsied: “Ay, now speak’st thou true. +But there thou gav’st not such true testimony, +When thou wast question’d of the truth, at Troy.” + +“If I spake false, thou falsely stamp’dst the coin,” +Said Sinon; “I am here but for one fault, +And thou for more than any imp beside.” + +“Remember,” he replied, “O perjur’d one, +The horse remember, that did teem with death, +And all the world be witness to thy guilt.” + +“To thine,” return’d the Greek, “witness the thirst +Whence thy tongue cracks, witness the fluid mound, +Rear’d by thy belly up before thine eyes, +A mass corrupt.” To whom the coiner thus: +“Thy mouth gapes wide as ever to let pass +Its evil saying. Me if thirst assails, +Yet I am stuff’d with moisture. Thou art parch’d, +Pains rack thy head, no urging would’st thou need +To make thee lap Narcissus’ mirror up.” + +I was all fix’d to listen, when my guide +Admonish’d: “Now beware: a little more. +And I do quarrel with thee.” I perceiv’d +How angrily he spake, and towards him turn’d +With shame so poignant, as remember’d yet +Confounds me. As a man that dreams of harm +Befall’n him, dreaming wishes it a dream, +And that which is, desires as if it were not, +Such then was I, who wanting power to speak +Wish’d to excuse myself, and all the while +Excus’d me, though unweeting that I did. + +“More grievous fault than thine has been, less shame,” +My master cried, “might expiate. Therefore cast +All sorrow from thy soul; and if again +Chance bring thee, where like conference is held, +Think I am ever at thy side. To hear +Such wrangling is a joy for vulgar minds.” + + + + +CANTO XXXI + + +The very tongue, whose keen reproof before +Had wounded me, that either cheek was stain’d, +Now minister’d my cure. So have I heard, +Achilles and his father’s javelin caus’d +Pain first, and then the boon of health restor’d. + +Turning our back upon the vale of woe, +W cross’d th’ encircled mound in silence. There +Was twilight dim, that far long the gloom +Mine eye advanc’d not: but I heard a horn +Sounded aloud. The peal it blew had made +The thunder feeble. Following its course +The adverse way, my strained eyes were bent +On that one spot. So terrible a blast +Orlando blew not, when that dismal rout +O’erthrew the host of Charlemagne, and quench’d +His saintly warfare. Thitherward not long +My head was rais’d, when many lofty towers +Methought I spied. “Master,” said I, “what land +Is this?” He answer’d straight: “Too long a space +Of intervening darkness has thine eye +To traverse: thou hast therefore widely err’d +In thy imagining. Thither arriv’d +Thou well shalt see, how distance can delude +The sense. A little therefore urge thee on.” + +Then tenderly he caught me by the hand; +“Yet know,” said he, “ere farther we advance, +That it less strange may seem, these are not towers, +But giants. In the pit they stand immers’d, +Each from his navel downward, round the bank.” + +As when a fog disperseth gradually, +Our vision traces what the mist involves +Condens’d in air; so piercing through the gross +And gloomy atmosphere, as more and more +We near’d toward the brink, mine error fled, +And fear came o’er me. As with circling round +Of turrets, Montereggion crowns his walls, +E’en thus the shore, encompassing th’ abyss, +Was turreted with giants, half their length +Uprearing, horrible, whom Jove from heav’n +Yet threatens, when his mutt’ring thunder rolls. + +Of one already I descried the face, +Shoulders, and breast, and of the belly huge +Great part, and both arms down along his ribs. + +All-teeming nature, when her plastic hand +Left framing of these monsters, did display +Past doubt her wisdom, taking from mad War +Such slaves to do his bidding; and if she +Repent her not of th’ elephant and whale, +Who ponders well confesses her therein +Wiser and more discreet; for when brute force +And evil will are back’d with subtlety, +Resistance none avails. His visage seem’d +In length and bulk, as doth the pine, that tops +Saint Peter’s Roman fane; and th’ other bones +Of like proportion, so that from above +The bank, which girdled him below, such height +Arose his stature, that three Friezelanders +Had striv’n in vain to reach but to his hair. +Full thirty ample palms was he expos’d +Downward from whence a man his garments loops. +“Raphel bai ameth sabi almi,” +So shouted his fierce lips, which sweeter hymns +Became not; and my guide address’d him thus: + +“O senseless spirit! let thy horn for thee +Interpret: therewith vent thy rage, if rage +Or other passion wring thee. Search thy neck, +There shalt thou find the belt that binds it on. +Wild spirit! lo, upon thy mighty breast +Where hangs the baldrick!” Then to me he spake: +“He doth accuse himself. Nimrod is this, +Through whose ill counsel in the world no more +One tongue prevails. But pass we on, nor waste +Our words; for so each language is to him, +As his to others, understood by none.” + +Then to the leftward turning sped we forth, +And at a sling’s throw found another shade +Far fiercer and more huge. I cannot say +What master hand had girt him; but he held +Behind the right arm fetter’d, and before +The other with a chain, that fasten’d him +From the neck down, and five times round his form +Apparent met the wreathed links. “This proud one +Would of his strength against almighty Jove +Make trial,” said my guide; “whence he is thus +Requited: Ephialtes him they call. + +“Great was his prowess, when the giants brought +Fear on the gods: those arms, which then he piled, +Now moves he never.” Forthwith I return’d: +“Fain would I, if ’t were possible, mine eyes +Of Briareus immeasurable gain’d +Experience next.” He answer’d: “Thou shalt see +Not far from hence Antaeus, who both speaks +And is unfetter’d, who shall place us there +Where guilt is at its depth. Far onward stands +Whom thou wouldst fain behold, in chains, and made +Like to this spirit, save that in his looks +More fell he seems.” By violent earthquake rock’d +Ne’er shook a tow’r, so reeling to its base, +As Ephialtes. More than ever then +I dreaded death, nor than the terror more +Had needed, if I had not seen the cords +That held him fast. We, straightway journeying on, +Came to Antaeus, who five ells complete +Without the head, forth issued from the cave. + +“O thou, who in the fortunate vale, that made +Great Scipio heir of glory, when his sword +Drove back the troop of Hannibal in flight, +Who thence of old didst carry for thy spoil +An hundred lions; and if thou hadst fought +In the high conflict on thy brethren’s side, +Seems as men yet believ’d, that through thine arm +The sons of earth had conquer’d, now vouchsafe +To place us down beneath, where numbing cold +Locks up Cocytus. Force not that we crave +Or Tityus’ help or Typhon’s. Here is one +Can give what in this realm ye covet. Stoop +Therefore, nor scornfully distort thy lip. +He in the upper world can yet bestow +Renown on thee, for he doth live, and looks +For life yet longer, if before the time +Grace call him not unto herself.” Thus spake +The teacher. He in haste forth stretch’d his hands, +And caught my guide. Alcides whilom felt +That grapple straighten’d score. Soon as my guide +Had felt it, he bespake me thus: “This way +That I may clasp thee;” then so caught me up, +That we were both one burden. As appears +The tower of Carisenda, from beneath +Where it doth lean, if chance a passing cloud +So sail across, that opposite it hangs, +Such then Antaeus seem’d, as at mine ease +I mark’d him stooping. I were fain at times +T’ have pass’d another way. Yet in th’ abyss, +That Lucifer with Judas low ingulfs, +Lightly he plac’d us; nor there leaning stay’d, +But rose as in a bark the stately mast. + + + + +CANTO XXXII + + +Could I command rough rhimes and hoarse, to suit +That hole of sorrow, o’er which ev’ry rock +His firm abutment rears, then might the vein +Of fancy rise full springing: but not mine +Such measures, and with falt’ring awe I touch +The mighty theme; for to describe the depth +Of all the universe, is no emprize +To jest with, and demands a tongue not us’d +To infant babbling. But let them assist +My song, the tuneful maidens, by whose aid +Amphion wall’d in Thebes, so with the truth +My speech shall best accord. Oh ill-starr’d folk, +Beyond all others wretched! who abide +In such a mansion, as scarce thought finds words +To speak of, better had ye here on earth +Been flocks or mountain goats. As down we stood +In the dark pit beneath the giants’ feet, +But lower far than they, and I did gaze +Still on the lofty battlement, a voice +Bespoke me thus: “Look how thou walkest. Take +Good heed, thy soles do tread not on the heads +Of thy poor brethren.” Thereupon I turn’d, +And saw before and underneath my feet +A lake, whose frozen surface liker seem’d +To glass than water. Not so thick a veil +In winter e’er hath Austrian Danube spread +O’er his still course, nor Tanais far remote +Under the chilling sky. Roll’d o’er that mass +Had Tabernich or Pietrapana fall’n, + +Not e’en its rim had creak’d. As peeps the frog +Croaking above the wave, what time in dreams +The village gleaner oft pursues her toil, +So, to where modest shame appears, thus low +Blue pinch’d and shrin’d in ice the spirits stood, +Moving their teeth in shrill note like the stork. +His face each downward held; their mouth the cold, +Their eyes express’d the dolour of their heart. + +A space I look’d around, then at my feet +Saw two so strictly join’d, that of their head +The very hairs were mingled. “Tell me ye, +Whose bosoms thus together press,” said I, +“Who are ye?” At that sound their necks they bent, +And when their looks were lifted up to me, +Straightway their eyes, before all moist within, +Distill’d upon their lips, and the frost bound +The tears betwixt those orbs and held them there. +Plank unto plank hath never cramp clos’d up +So stoutly. Whence like two enraged goats +They clash’d together; them such fury seiz’d. + +And one, from whom the cold both ears had reft, +Exclaim’d, still looking downward: “Why on us +Dost speculate so long? If thou wouldst know +Who are these two, the valley, whence his wave +Bisenzio slopes, did for its master own +Their sire Alberto, and next him themselves. +They from one body issued; and throughout +Caina thou mayst search, nor find a shade +More worthy in congealment to be fix’d, +Not him, whose breast and shadow Arthur’s land +At that one blow dissever’d, not Focaccia, +No not this spirit, whose o’erjutting head +Obstructs my onward view: he bore the name +Of Mascheroni: Tuscan if thou be, +Well knowest who he was: and to cut short +All further question, in my form behold +What once was Camiccione. I await +Carlino here my kinsman, whose deep guilt +Shall wash out mine.” A thousand visages +Then mark’d I, which the keen and eager cold +Had shap’d into a doggish grin; whence creeps +A shiv’ring horror o’er me, at the thought +Of those frore shallows. While we journey’d on +Toward the middle, at whose point unites +All heavy substance, and I trembling went +Through that eternal chillness, I know not +If will it were or destiny, or chance, +But, passing ’midst the heads, my foot did strike +With violent blow against the face of one. + +“Wherefore dost bruise me?” weeping, he exclaim’d, +“Unless thy errand be some fresh revenge +For Montaperto, wherefore troublest me?” + +I thus: “Instructor, now await me here, +That I through him may rid me of my doubt. +Thenceforth what haste thou wilt.” The teacher paus’d, +And to that shade I spake, who bitterly +Still curs’d me in his wrath. “What art thou, speak, +That railest thus on others?” He replied: +“Now who art thou, that smiting others’ cheeks +Through Antenora roamest, with such force +As were past suff’rance, wert thou living still?” + +“And I am living, to thy joy perchance,” +Was my reply, “if fame be dear to thee, +That with the rest I may thy name enrol.” + +“The contrary of what I covet most,” +Said he, “thou tender’st: hence; nor vex me more. +Ill knowest thou to flatter in this vale.” + +Then seizing on his hinder scalp, I cried: +“Name thee, or not a hair shall tarry here.” + +“Rend all away,” he answer’d, “yet for that +I will not tell nor show thee who I am, +Though at my head thou pluck a thousand times.” + +Now I had grasp’d his tresses, and stript off +More than one tuft, he barking, with his eyes +Drawn in and downward, when another cried, +“What ails thee, Bocca? Sound not loud enough +Thy chatt’ring teeth, but thou must bark outright? +What devil wrings thee?”—“Now,” said I, “be dumb, +Accursed traitor! to thy shame of thee +True tidings will I bear.”—“Off,” he replied, +“Tell what thou list; but as thou escape from hence +To speak of him whose tongue hath been so glib, +Forget not: here he wails the Frenchman’s gold. +‘Him of Duera,’ thou canst say, ‘I mark’d, +Where the starv’d sinners pine.’ If thou be ask’d +What other shade was with them, at thy side +Is Beccaria, whose red gorge distain’d +The biting axe of Florence. Farther on, +If I misdeem not, Soldanieri bides, +With Ganellon, and Tribaldello, him +Who op’d Faenza when the people slept.” + +We now had left him, passing on our way, +When I beheld two spirits by the ice +Pent in one hollow, that the head of one +Was cowl unto the other; and as bread +Is raven’d up through hunger, th’ uppermost +Did so apply his fangs to th’ other’s brain, +Where the spine joins it. Not more furiously +On Menalippus’ temples Tydeus gnaw’d, +Than on that skull and on its garbage he. + +“O thou who show’st so beastly sign of hate +’Gainst him thou prey’st on, let me hear,” said I +“The cause, on such condition, that if right +Warrant thy grievance, knowing who ye are, +And what the colour of his sinning was, +I may repay thee in the world above, +If that, wherewith I speak be moist so long.” + + + + +CANTO XXXIII + + +His jaws uplifting from their fell repast, +That sinner wip’d them on the hairs o’ th’ head, +Which he behind had mangled, then began: +“Thy will obeying, I call up afresh +Sorrow past cure, which but to think of wrings +My heart, or ere I tell on’t. But if words, +That I may utter, shall prove seed to bear +Fruit of eternal infamy to him, +The traitor whom I gnaw at, thou at once +Shalt see me speak and weep. Who thou mayst be +I know not, nor how here below art come: +But Florentine thou seemest of a truth, +When I do hear thee. Know I was on earth +Count Ugolino, and th’ Archbishop he +Ruggieri. Why I neighbour him so close, +Now list. That through effect of his ill thoughts +In him my trust reposing, I was ta’en +And after murder’d, need is not I tell. +What therefore thou canst not have heard, that is, +How cruel was the murder, shalt thou hear, +And know if he have wrong’d me. A small grate +Within that mew, which for my sake the name +Of famine bears, where others yet must pine, +Already through its opening sev’ral moons +Had shown me, when I slept the evil sleep, +That from the future tore the curtain off. +This one, methought, as master of the sport, +Rode forth to chase the gaunt wolf and his whelps +Unto the mountain, which forbids the sight +Of Lucca to the Pisan. With lean brachs +Inquisitive and keen, before him rang’d +Lanfranchi with Sismondi and Gualandi. +After short course the father and the sons +Seem’d tir’d and lagging, and methought I saw +The sharp tusks gore their sides. When I awoke +Before the dawn, amid their sleep I heard +My sons (for they were with me) weep and ask +For bread. Right cruel art thou, if no pang +Thou feel at thinking what my heart foretold; +And if not now, why use thy tears to flow? +Now had they waken’d; and the hour drew near +When they were wont to bring us food; the mind +Of each misgave him through his dream, and I +Heard, at its outlet underneath lock’d up +The’ horrible tower: whence uttering not a word +I look’d upon the visage of my sons. +I wept not: so all stone I felt within. +They wept: and one, my little Anslem, cried: +“Thou lookest so! Father what ails thee?” Yet +I shed no tear, nor answer’d all that day +Nor the next night, until another sun +Came out upon the world. When a faint beam +Had to our doleful prison made its way, +And in four countenances I descry’d +The image of my own, on either hand +Through agony I bit, and they who thought +I did it through desire of feeding, rose +O’ th’ sudden, and cried, ‘Father, we should grieve +Far less, if thou wouldst eat of us: thou gav’st +These weeds of miserable flesh we wear, + +‘And do thou strip them off from us again.’ +Then, not to make them sadder, I kept down +My spirit in stillness. That day and the next +We all were silent. Ah, obdurate earth! +Why open’dst not upon us? When we came +To the fourth day, then Geddo at my feet +Outstretch’d did fling him, crying, ‘Hast no help +For me, my father!’ There he died, and e’en +Plainly as thou seest me, saw I the three +Fall one by one ’twixt the fifth day and sixth: + +“Whence I betook me now grown blind to grope +Over them all, and for three days aloud +Call’d on them who were dead. Then fasting got +The mastery of grief.” Thus having spoke, + +Once more upon the wretched skull his teeth +He fasten’d, like a mastiff’s ’gainst the bone +Firm and unyielding. Oh thou Pisa! shame +Of all the people, who their dwelling make +In that fair region, where th’ Italian voice +Is heard, since that thy neighbours are so slack +To punish, from their deep foundations rise +Capraia and Gorgona, and dam up +The mouth of Arno, that each soul in thee +May perish in the waters! What if fame +Reported that thy castles were betray’d +By Ugolino, yet no right hadst thou +To stretch his children on the rack. For them, +Brigata, Ugaccione, and the pair +Of gentle ones, of whom my song hath told, +Their tender years, thou modern Thebes! did make +Uncapable of guilt. Onward we pass’d, +Where others skarf’d in rugged folds of ice +Not on their feet were turn’d, but each revers’d. + +There very weeping suffers not to weep; +For at their eyes grief seeking passage finds +Impediment, and rolling inward turns +For increase of sharp anguish: the first tears +Hang cluster’d, and like crystal vizors show, +Under the socket brimming all the cup. + +Now though the cold had from my face dislodg’d +Each feeling, as ’t were callous, yet me seem’d +Some breath of wind I felt. “Whence cometh this,” +Said I, “my master? Is not here below +All vapour quench’d?”—“‘Thou shalt be speedily,” +He answer’d, “where thine eye shall tell thee whence +The cause descrying of this airy shower.” + +Then cried out one in the chill crust who mourn’d: +“O souls so cruel! that the farthest post +Hath been assign’d you, from this face remove +The harden’d veil, that I may vent the grief +Impregnate at my heart, some little space +Ere it congeal again!” I thus replied: +“Say who thou wast, if thou wouldst have mine aid; +And if I extricate thee not, far down +As to the lowest ice may I descend!” + +“The friar Alberigo,” answered he, +“Am I, who from the evil garden pluck’d +Its fruitage, and am here repaid, the date +More luscious for my fig.”—“Hah!” I exclaim’d, +“Art thou too dead!”—“How in the world aloft +It fareth with my body,” answer’d he, +“I am right ignorant. Such privilege +Hath Ptolomea, that ofttimes the soul +Drops hither, ere by Atropos divorc’d. +And that thou mayst wipe out more willingly +The glazed tear-drops that o’erlay mine eyes, +Know that the soul, that moment she betrays, +As I did, yields her body to a fiend +Who after moves and governs it at will, +Till all its time be rounded; headlong she +Falls to this cistern. And perchance above +Doth yet appear the body of a ghost, +Who here behind me winters. Him thou know’st, +If thou but newly art arriv’d below. +The years are many that have pass’d away, +Since to this fastness Branca Doria came.” + +“Now,” answer’d I, “methinks thou mockest me, +For Branca Doria never yet hath died, +But doth all natural functions of a man, +Eats, drinks, and sleeps, and putteth raiment on.” + +He thus: “Not yet unto that upper foss +By th’ evil talons guarded, where the pitch +Tenacious boils, had Michael Zanche reach’d, +When this one left a demon in his stead +In his own body, and of one his kin, +Who with him treachery wrought. But now put forth +Thy hand, and ope mine eyes.” I op’d them not. +Ill manners were best courtesy to him. + +Ah Genoese! men perverse in every way, +With every foulness stain’d, why from the earth +Are ye not cancel’d? Such an one of yours +I with Romagna’s darkest spirit found, +As for his doings even now in soul +Is in Cocytus plung’d, and yet doth seem +In body still alive upon the earth. + + + + +CANTO XXXIV + + +“The banners of Hell’s Monarch do come forth +Towards us; therefore look,” so spake my guide, +“If thou discern him.” As, when breathes a cloud +Heavy and dense, or when the shades of night +Fall on our hemisphere, seems view’d from far +A windmill, which the blast stirs briskly round, +Such was the fabric then methought I saw, + +To shield me from the wind, forthwith I drew +Behind my guide: no covert else was there. + +Now came I (and with fear I bid my strain +Record the marvel) where the souls were all +Whelm’d underneath, transparent, as through glass +Pellucid the frail stem. Some prone were laid, +Others stood upright, this upon the soles, +That on his head, a third with face to feet +Arch’d like a bow. When to the point we came, +Whereat my guide was pleas’d that I should see +The creature eminent in beauty once, +He from before me stepp’d and made me pause. + +“Lo!” he exclaim’d, “lo Dis! and lo the place, +Where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength.” + +How frozen and how faint I then became, +Ask me not, reader! for I write it not, +Since words would fail to tell thee of my state. +I was not dead nor living. Think thyself +If quick conception work in thee at all, +How I did feel. That emperor, who sways +The realm of sorrow, at mid breast from th’ ice +Stood forth; and I in stature am more like +A giant, than the giants are in his arms. +Mark now how great that whole must be, which suits +With such a part. If he were beautiful +As he is hideous now, and yet did dare +To scowl upon his Maker, well from him +May all our mis’ry flow. Oh what a sight! +How passing strange it seem’d, when I did spy +Upon his head three faces: one in front +Of hue vermilion, th’ other two with this +Midway each shoulder join’d and at the crest; +The right ’twixt wan and yellow seem’d: the left +To look on, such as come from whence old Nile +Stoops to the lowlands. Under each shot forth +Two mighty wings, enormous as became +A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw +Outstretch’d on the wide sea. No plumes had they, +But were in texture like a bat, and these +He flapp’d i’ th’ air, that from him issued still +Three winds, wherewith Cocytus to its depth +Was frozen. At six eyes he wept: the tears +Adown three chins distill’d with bloody foam. +At every mouth his teeth a sinner champ’d +Bruis’d as with pond’rous engine, so that three +Were in this guise tormented. But far more +Than from that gnawing, was the foremost pang’d +By the fierce rending, whence ofttimes the back +Was stript of all its skin. “That upper spirit, +Who hath worse punishment,” so spake my guide, +“Is Judas, he that hath his head within +And plies the feet without. Of th’ other two, +Whose heads are under, from the murky jaw +Who hangs, is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe +And speaks not! Th’ other Cassius, that appears +So large of limb. But night now re-ascends, +And it is time for parting. All is seen.” + +I clipp’d him round the neck, for so he bade; +And noting time and place, he, when the wings +Enough were op’d, caught fast the shaggy sides, +And down from pile to pile descending stepp’d +Between the thick fell and the jagged ice. + +Soon as he reach’d the point, whereat the thigh +Upon the swelling of the haunches turns, +My leader there with pain and struggling hard +Turn’d round his head, where his feet stood before, +And grappled at the fell, as one who mounts, +That into hell methought we turn’d again. + +“Expect that by such stairs as these,” thus spake +The teacher, panting like a man forespent, +“We must depart from evil so extreme.” +Then at a rocky opening issued forth, +And plac’d me on a brink to sit, next join’d +With wary step my side. I rais’d mine eyes, +Believing that I Lucifer should see +Where he was lately left, but saw him now +With legs held upward. Let the grosser sort, +Who see not what the point was I had pass’d, +Bethink them if sore toil oppress’d me then. + +“Arise,” my master cried, “upon thy feet. +The way is long, and much uncouth the road; +And now within one hour and half of noon +The sun returns.” It was no palace-hall +Lofty and luminous wherein we stood, +But natural dungeon where ill footing was +And scant supply of light. “Ere from th’ abyss +I sep’rate,” thus when risen I began, +“My guide! vouchsafe few words to set me free +From error’s thralldom. Where is now the ice? +How standeth he in posture thus revers’d? +And how from eve to morn in space so brief +Hath the sun made his transit?” He in few +Thus answering spake: “Thou deemest thou art still +On th’ other side the centre, where I grasp’d +Th’ abhorred worm, that boreth through the world. +Thou wast on th’ other side, so long as I +Descended; when I turn’d, thou didst o’erpass +That point, to which from ev’ry part is dragg’d +All heavy substance. Thou art now arriv’d +Under the hemisphere opposed to that, +Which the great continent doth overspread, +And underneath whose canopy expir’d +The Man, that was born sinless, and so liv’d. +Thy feet are planted on the smallest sphere, +Whose other aspect is Judecca. Morn +Here rises, when there evening sets: and he, +Whose shaggy pile was scal’d, yet standeth fix’d, +As at the first. On this part he fell down +From heav’n; and th’ earth, here prominent before, +Through fear of him did veil her with the sea, +And to our hemisphere retir’d. Perchance +To shun him was the vacant space left here +By what of firm land on this side appears, +That sprang aloof.” There is a place beneath, +From Belzebub as distant, as extends +The vaulted tomb, discover’d not by sight, +But by the sound of brooklet, that descends +This way along the hollow of a rock, +Which, as it winds with no precipitous course, +The wave hath eaten. By that hidden way +My guide and I did enter, to return +To the fair world: and heedless of repose +We climbed, he first, I following his steps, +Till on our view the beautiful lights of heav’n +Dawn’d through a circular opening in the cave: +Thus issuing we again beheld the stars. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1005 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1006-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1006-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..585acedf --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1006-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5272 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1006 *** + +PURGATORY + +FROM THE DIVINE COMEDY + +BY +Dante Alighieri + +Translated by +THE REV. H. F. CARY, M.A. + + + + +Contents + + CANTO I. + CANTO II. + CANTO III. + CANTO IV. + CANTO V. + CANTO VI. + CANTO VII. + CANTO VIII. + CANTO IX. + CANTO X. + CANTO XI. + CANTO XII. + CANTO XIII. + CANTO XIV. + CANTO XV. + CANTO XVI. + CANTO XVII. + CANTO XVIII. + CANTO XIX. + CANTO XX. + CANTO XXI. + CANTO XXII. + CANTO XXIII. + CANTO XXIV. + CANTO XXV. + CANTO XXVI. + CANTO XXVII. + CANTO XXVIII. + CANTO XXIX. + CANTO XXX. + CANTO XXXI. + CANTO XXXII. + CANTO XXXIII. + + + + +PURGATORY + + + + +CANTO I + + +O’er better waves to speed her rapid course +The light bark of my genius lifts the sail, +Well pleas’d to leave so cruel sea behind; +And of that second region will I sing, +In which the human spirit from sinful blot +Is purg’d, and for ascent to Heaven prepares. + +Here, O ye hallow’d Nine! for in your train +I follow, here the deadened strain revive; +Nor let Calliope refuse to sound +A somewhat higher song, of that loud tone, +Which when the wretched birds of chattering note +Had heard, they of forgiveness lost all hope. + +Sweet hue of eastern sapphire, that was spread +O’er the serene aspect of the pure air, +High up as the first circle, to mine eyes +Unwonted joy renew’d, soon as I ’scap’d +Forth from the atmosphere of deadly gloom, +That had mine eyes and bosom fill’d with grief. +The radiant planet, that to love invites, +Made all the orient laugh, and veil’d beneath +The Pisces’ light, that in his escort came. + +To the right hand I turn’d, and fix’d my mind +On the other pole attentive, where I saw +Four stars ne’er seen before save by the ken +Of our first parents. Heaven of their rays +Seem’d joyous. O thou northern site, bereft +Indeed, and widow’d, since of these depriv’d! + +As from this view I had desisted, straight +Turning a little tow’rds the other pole, +There from whence now the wain had disappear’d, +I saw an old man standing by my side +Alone, so worthy of rev’rence in his look, +That ne’er from son to father more was ow’d. +Low down his beard and mix’d with hoary white +Descended, like his locks, which parting fell +Upon his breast in double fold. The beams +Of those four luminaries on his face +So brightly shone, and with such radiance clear +Deck’d it, that I beheld him as the sun. + +“Say who are ye, that stemming the blind stream, +Forth from th’ eternal prison-house have fled?” +He spoke and moved those venerable plumes. +“Who hath conducted, or with lantern sure +Lights you emerging from the depth of night, +That makes the infernal valley ever black? +Are the firm statutes of the dread abyss +Broken, or in high heaven new laws ordain’d, +That thus, condemn’d, ye to my caves approach?” + +My guide, then laying hold on me, by words +And intimations given with hand and head, +Made my bent knees and eye submissive pay +Due reverence; then thus to him replied. + +“Not of myself I come; a Dame from heaven +Descending, had besought me in my charge +To bring. But since thy will implies, that more +Our true condition I unfold at large, +Mine is not to deny thee thy request. +This mortal ne’er hath seen the farthest gloom. +But erring by his folly had approach’d +So near, that little space was left to turn. +Then, as before I told, I was dispatch’d +To work his rescue, and no way remain’d +Save this which I have ta’en. I have display’d +Before him all the regions of the bad; +And purpose now those spirits to display, +That under thy command are purg’d from sin. +How I have brought him would be long to say. +From high descends the virtue, by whose aid +I to thy sight and hearing him have led. +Now may our coming please thee. In the search +Of liberty he journeys: that how dear +They know, who for her sake have life refus’d. +Thou knowest, to whom death for her was sweet +In Utica, where thou didst leave those weeds, +That in the last great day will shine so bright. +For us the’ eternal edicts are unmov’d: +He breathes, and I am free of Minos’ power, +Abiding in that circle where the eyes +Of thy chaste Marcia beam, who still in look +Prays thee, O hallow’d spirit! to own her shine. +Then by her love we’ implore thee, let us pass +Through thy sev’n regions; for which best thanks +I for thy favour will to her return, +If mention there below thou not disdain.” + +“Marcia so pleasing in my sight was found,” +He then to him rejoin’d, “while I was there, +That all she ask’d me I was fain to grant. +Now that beyond the’ accursed stream she dwells, +She may no longer move me, by that law, +Which was ordain’d me, when I issued thence. +Not so, if Dame from heaven, as thou sayst, +Moves and directs thee; then no flattery needs. +Enough for me that in her name thou ask. +Go therefore now: and with a slender reed +See that thou duly gird him, and his face +Lave, till all sordid stain thou wipe from thence. +For not with eye, by any cloud obscur’d, +Would it be seemly before him to come, +Who stands the foremost minister in heaven. +This islet all around, there far beneath, +Where the wave beats it, on the oozy bed +Produces store of reeds. No other plant, +Cover’d with leaves, or harden’d in its stalk, +There lives, not bending to the water’s sway. +After, this way return not; but the sun +Will show you, that now rises, where to take +The mountain in its easiest ascent.” + +He disappear’d; and I myself uprais’d +Speechless, and to my guide retiring close, +Toward him turn’d mine eyes. He thus began; +“My son! observant thou my steps pursue. +We must retreat to rearward, for that way +The champain to its low extreme declines.” + +The dawn had chas’d the matin hour of prime, +Which deaf before it, so that from afar +I spy’d the trembling of the ocean stream. + +We travers’d the deserted plain, as one +Who, wander’d from his track, thinks every step +Trodden in vain till he regain the path. + +When we had come, where yet the tender dew +Strove with the sun, and in a place, where fresh +The wind breath’d o’er it, while it slowly dried; +Both hands extended on the watery grass +My master plac’d, in graceful act and kind. +Whence I of his intent before appriz’d, +Stretch’d out to him my cheeks suffus’d with tears. +There to my visage he anew restor’d +That hue, which the dun shades of hell conceal’d. + +Then on the solitary shore arriv’d, +That never sailing on its waters saw +Man, that could after measure back his course, +He girt me in such manner as had pleas’d +Him who instructed, and O, strange to tell! +As he selected every humble plant, +Wherever one was pluck’d, another there +Resembling, straightway in its place arose. + + + + +CANTO II + + +Now had the sun to that horizon reach’d, +That covers, with the most exalted point +Of its meridian circle, Salem’s walls, +And night, that opposite to him her orb +Sounds, from the stream of Ganges issued forth, +Holding the scales, that from her hands are dropp’d +When she reigns highest: so that where I was, +Aurora’s white and vermeil-tinctur’d cheek +To orange turn’d as she in age increas’d. + +Meanwhile we linger’d by the water’s brink, +Like men, who, musing on their road, in thought +Journey, while motionless the body rests. +When lo! as near upon the hour of dawn, +Through the thick vapours Mars with fiery beam +Glares down in west, over the ocean floor; +So seem’d, what once again I hope to view, +A light so swiftly coming through the sea, +No winged course might equal its career. +From which when for a space I had withdrawn +Thine eyes, to make inquiry of my guide, +Again I look’d and saw it grown in size +And brightness: thou on either side appear’d +Something, but what I knew not of bright hue, +And by degrees from underneath it came +Another. My preceptor silent yet +Stood, while the brightness, that we first discern’d, +Open’d the form of wings: then when he knew +The pilot, cried aloud, “Down, down; bend low +Thy knees; behold God’s angel: fold thy hands: +Now shalt thou see true Ministers indeed. + +“Lo how all human means he sets at naught! +So that nor oar he needs, nor other sail +Except his wings, between such distant shores. +Lo how straight up to heaven he holds them rear’d, +Winnowing the air with those eternal plumes, +That not like mortal hairs fall off or change!” + +As more and more toward us came, more bright +Appear’d the bird of God, nor could the eye +Endure his splendor near: I mine bent down. +He drove ashore in a small bark so swift +And light, that in its course no wave it drank. +The heav’nly steersman at the prow was seen, +Visibly written blessed in his looks. + +Within a hundred spirits and more there sat. +“In Exitu Israel de Aegypto;” +All with one voice together sang, with what +In the remainder of that hymn is writ. +Then soon as with the sign of holy cross +He bless’d them, they at once leap’d out on land, +The swiftly as he came return’d. The crew, +There left, appear’d astounded with the place, +Gazing around as one who sees new sights. + +From every side the sun darted his beams, +And with his arrowy radiance from mid heav’n +Had chas’d the Capricorn, when that strange tribe +Lifting their eyes towards us: “If ye know, +Declare what path will Lead us to the mount.” + +Them Virgil answer’d. “Ye suppose perchance +Us well acquainted with this place: but here, +We, as yourselves, are strangers. Not long erst +We came, before you but a little space, +By other road so rough and hard, that now +The’ ascent will seem to us as play.” The spirits, +Who from my breathing had perceiv’d I liv’d, +Grew pale with wonder. As the multitude +Flock round a herald, sent with olive branch, +To hear what news he brings, and in their haste +Tread one another down, e’en so at sight +Of me those happy spirits were fix’d, each one +Forgetful of its errand, to depart, +Where cleans’d from sin, it might be made all fair. + +Then one I saw darting before the rest +With such fond ardour to embrace me, I +To do the like was mov’d. O shadows vain +Except in outward semblance! thrice my hands +I clasp’d behind it, they as oft return’d +Empty into my breast again. Surprise +I needs must think was painted in my looks, +For that the shadow smil’d and backward drew. +To follow it I hasten’d, but with voice +Of sweetness it enjoin’d me to desist. +Then who it was I knew, and pray’d of it, +To talk with me, it would a little pause. +It answered: “Thee as in my mortal frame +I lov’d, so loos’d forth it I love thee still, +And therefore pause; but why walkest thou here?” + +“Not without purpose once more to return, +Thou find’st me, my Casella, where I am +Journeying this way;” I said, “but how of thee +Hath so much time been lost?” He answer’d straight: +“No outrage hath been done to me, if he +Who when and whom he chooses takes, me oft +This passage hath denied, since of just will +His will he makes. These three months past indeed, +He, whose chose to enter, with free leave +Hath taken; whence I wand’ring by the shore +Where Tyber’s wave grows salt, of him gain’d kind +Admittance, at that river’s mouth, tow’rd which +His wings are pointed, for there always throng +All such as not to Archeron descend.” + +Then I: “If new laws have not quite destroy’d +Memory and use of that sweet song of love, +That while all my cares had power to ’swage; +Please thee with it a little to console +My spirit, that incumber’d with its frame, +Travelling so far, of pain is overcome.” + +“Love that discourses in my thoughts.” He then +Began in such soft accents, that within +The sweetness thrills me yet. My gentle guide +And all who came with him, so well were pleas’d, +That seem’d naught else might in their thoughts have room. + +Fast fix’d in mute attention to his notes +We stood, when lo! that old man venerable +Exclaiming, “How is this, ye tardy spirits? +What negligence detains you loit’ring here? +Run to the mountain to cast off those scales, +That from your eyes the sight of God conceal.” + +As a wild flock of pigeons, to their food +Collected, blade or tares, without their pride +Accustom’d, and in still and quiet sort, +If aught alarm them, suddenly desert +Their meal, assail’d by more important care; +So I that new-come troop beheld, the song +Deserting, hasten to the mountain’s side, +As one who goes yet where he tends knows not. + +Nor with less hurried step did we depart. + + + + +CANTO III + + +Them sudden flight had scatter’d over the plain, +Turn’d tow’rds the mountain, whither reason’s voice +Drives us; I to my faithful company +Adhering, left it not. For how of him +Depriv’d, might I have sped, or who beside +Would o’er the mountainous tract have led my steps +He with the bitter pang of self-remorse +Seem’d smitten. O clear conscience and upright +How doth a little fling wound thee sore! + +Soon as his feet desisted (slack’ning pace), +From haste, that mars all decency of act, +My mind, that in itself before was wrapt, +Its thoughts expanded, as with joy restor’d: +And full against the steep ascent I set +My face, where highest to heav’n its top o’erflows. + +The sun, that flar’d behind, with ruddy beam +Before my form was broken; for in me +His rays resistance met. I turn’d aside +With fear of being left, when I beheld +Only before myself the ground obscur’d. +When thus my solace, turning him around, +Bespake me kindly: “Why distrustest thou? +Believ’st not I am with thee, thy sure guide? +It now is evening there, where buried lies +The body, in which I cast a shade, remov’d +To Naples from Brundusium’s wall. Nor thou +Marvel, if before me no shadow fall, +More than that in the sky element +One ray obstructs not other. To endure +Torments of heat and cold extreme, like frames +That virtue hath dispos’d, which how it works +Wills not to us should be reveal’d. Insane +Who hopes, our reason may that space explore, +Which holds three persons in one substance knit. +Seek not the wherefore, race of human kind; +Could ye have seen the whole, no need had been +For Mary to bring forth. Moreover ye +Have seen such men desiring fruitlessly; +To whose desires repose would have been giv’n, +That now but serve them for eternal grief. +I speak of Plato, and the Stagyrite, +And others many more.” And then he bent +Downwards his forehead, and in troubled mood +Broke off his speech. Meanwhile we had arriv’d +Far as the mountain’s foot, and there the rock +Found of so steep ascent, that nimblest steps +To climb it had been vain. The most remote +Most wild untrodden path, in all the tract +’Twixt Lerice and Turbia were to this +A ladder easy’ and open of access. + +“Who knows on which hand now the steep declines?” +My master said and paus’d, “so that he may +Ascend, who journeys without aid of wine?” +And while with looks directed to the ground +The meaning of the pathway he explor’d, +And I gaz’d upward round the stony height, +Of spirits, that toward us mov’d their steps, +Yet moving seem’d not, they so slow approach’d. + +I thus my guide address’d: “Upraise thine eyes, +Lo that way some, of whom thou may’st obtain +Counsel, if of thyself thou find’st it not!” + +Straightway he look’d, and with free speech replied: +“Let us tend thither: they but softly come. +And thou be firm in hope, my son belov’d.” + +Now was that people distant far in space +A thousand paces behind ours, as much +As at a throw the nervous arm could fling, +When all drew backward on the messy crags +Of the steep bank, and firmly stood unmov’d +As one who walks in doubt might stand to look. + +“O spirits perfect! O already chosen!” +Virgil to them began, “by that blest peace, +Which, as I deem, is for you all prepar’d, +Instruct us where the mountain low declines, +So that attempt to mount it be not vain. +For who knows most, him loss of time most grieves.” + +As sheep, that step from forth their fold, by one, +Or pairs, or three at once; meanwhile the rest +Stand fearfully, bending the eye and nose +To ground, and what the foremost does, that do +The others, gath’ring round her, if she stops, +Simple and quiet, nor the cause discern; +So saw I moving to advance the first, +Who of that fortunate crew were at the head, +Of modest mien and graceful in their gait. +When they before me had beheld the light +From my right side fall broken on the ground, +So that the shadow reach’d the cave, they stopp’d +And somewhat back retir’d: the same did all, +Who follow’d, though unweeting of the cause. + +“Unask’d of you, yet freely I confess, +This is a human body which ye see. +That the sun’s light is broken on the ground, +Marvel not: but believe, that not without +Virtue deriv’d from Heaven, we to climb +Over this wall aspire.” So them bespake +My master; and that virtuous tribe rejoin’d; +“Turn, and before you there the entrance lies,” +Making a signal to us with bent hands. + +Then of them one began. “Whoe’er thou art, +Who journey’st thus this way, thy visage turn, +Think if me elsewhere thou hast ever seen.” + +I tow’rds him turn’d, and with fix’d eye beheld. +Comely, and fair, and gentle of aspect, +He seem’d, but on one brow a gash was mark’d. + +When humbly I disclaim’d to have beheld +Him ever: “Now behold!” he said, and show’d +High on his breast a wound: then smiling spake. + +“I am Manfredi, grandson to the Queen +Costanza: whence I pray thee, when return’d, +To my fair daughter go, the parent glad +Of Aragonia and Sicilia’s pride; +And of the truth inform her, if of me +Aught else be told. When by two mortal blows +My frame was shatter’d, I betook myself +Weeping to him, who of free will forgives. +My sins were horrible; but so wide arms +Hath goodness infinite, that it receives +All who turn to it. Had this text divine +Been of Cosenza’s shepherd better scann’d, +Who then by Clement on my hunt was set, +Yet at the bridge’s head my bones had lain, +Near Benevento, by the heavy mole +Protected; but the rain now drenches them, +And the wind drives, out of the kingdom’s bounds, +Far as the stream of Verde, where, with lights +Extinguish’d, he remov’d them from their bed. +Yet by their curse we are not so destroy’d, +But that the eternal love may turn, while hope +Retains her verdant blossoms. True it is, +That such one as in contumacy dies +Against the holy church, though he repent, +Must wander thirty-fold for all the time +In his presumption past; if such decree +Be not by prayers of good men shorter made +Look therefore if thou canst advance my bliss; +Revealing to my good Costanza, how +Thou hast beheld me, and beside the terms +Laid on me of that interdict; for here +By means of those below much profit comes.” + + + + +CANTO IV + + +When by sensations of delight or pain, +That any of our faculties hath seiz’d, +Entire the soul collects herself, it seems +She is intent upon that power alone, +And thus the error is disprov’d which holds +The soul not singly lighted in the breast. +And therefore when as aught is heard or seen, +That firmly keeps the soul toward it turn’d, +Time passes, and a man perceives it not. +For that, whereby he hearken, is one power, +Another that, which the whole spirit hash; +This is as it were bound, while that is free. + +This found I true by proof, hearing that spirit +And wond’ring; for full fifty steps aloft +The sun had measur’d unobserv’d of me, +When we arriv’d where all with one accord +The spirits shouted, “Here is what ye ask.” + +A larger aperture ofttimes is stopp’d +With forked stake of thorn by villager, +When the ripe grape imbrowns, than was the path, +By which my guide, and I behind him close, +Ascended solitary, when that troop +Departing left us. On Sanleo’s road +Who journeys, or to Noli low descends, +Or mounts Bismantua’s height, must use his feet; +But here a man had need to fly, I mean +With the swift wing and plumes of high desire, +Conducted by his aid, who gave me hope, +And with light furnish’d to direct my way. + +We through the broken rock ascended, close +Pent on each side, while underneath the ground +Ask’d help of hands and feet. When we arriv’d +Near on the highest ridge of the steep bank, +Where the plain level open’d I exclaim’d, +“O master! say which way can we proceed?” + +He answer’d, “Let no step of thine recede. +Behind me gain the mountain, till to us +Some practis’d guide appear.” That eminence +Was lofty that no eye might reach its point, +And the side proudly rising, more than line +From the mid quadrant to the centre drawn. +I wearied thus began: “Parent belov’d! +Turn, and behold how I remain alone, +If thou stay not.”—“My son!” He straight reply’d, +“Thus far put forth thy strength;” and to a track +Pointed, that, on this side projecting, round +Circles the hill. His words so spurr’d me on, +That I behind him clamb’ring, forc’d myself, +Till my feet press’d the circuit plain beneath. +There both together seated, turn’d we round +To eastward, whence was our ascent: and oft +Many beside have with delight look’d back. + +First on the nether shores I turn’d my eyes, +Then rais’d them to the sun, and wond’ring mark’d +That from the left it smote us. Soon perceiv’d +That Poet sage now at the car of light +Amaz’d I stood, where ’twixt us and the north +Its course it enter’d. Whence he thus to me: +“Were Leda’s offspring now in company +Of that broad mirror, that high up and low +Imparts his light beneath, thou might’st behold +The ruddy zodiac nearer to the bears +Wheel, if its ancient course it not forsook. +How that may be if thou would’st think; within +Pond’ring, imagine Sion with this mount +Plac’d on the earth, so that to both be one +Horizon, and two hemispheres apart, +Where lies the path that Phaeton ill knew +To guide his erring chariot: thou wilt see +How of necessity by this on one +He passes, while by that on the’ other side, +If with clear view shine intellect attend.” + +“Of truth, kind teacher!” I exclaim’d, “so clear +Aught saw I never, as I now discern +Where seem’d my ken to fail, that the mid orb +Of the supernal motion (which in terms +Of art is called the Equator, and remains +Ever between the sun and winter) for the cause +Thou hast assign’d, from hence toward the north +Departs, when those who in the Hebrew land +Inhabit, see it tow’rds the warmer part. +But if it please thee, I would gladly know, +How far we have to journey: for the hill +Mounts higher, than this sight of mine can mount.” + +He thus to me: “Such is this steep ascent, +That it is ever difficult at first, +But, more a man proceeds, less evil grows. +When pleasant it shall seem to thee, so much +That upward going shall be easy to thee. +As in a vessel to go down the tide, +Then of this path thou wilt have reach’d the end. +There hope to rest thee from thy toil. No more +I answer, and thus far for certain know.” +As he his words had spoken, near to us +A voice there sounded: “Yet ye first perchance +May to repose you by constraint be led.” +At sound thereof each turn’d, and on the left +A huge stone we beheld, of which nor I +Nor he before was ware. Thither we drew, +find there were some, who in the shady place +Behind the rock were standing, as a man +Thru’ idleness might stand. Among them one, +Who seem’d to me much wearied, sat him down, +And with his arms did fold his knees about, +Holding his face between them downward bent. + +“Sweet Sir!” I cry’d, “behold that man, who shows +Himself more idle, than if laziness +Were sister to him.” Straight he turn’d to us, +And, o’er the thigh lifting his face, observ’d, +Then in these accents spake: “Up then, proceed +Thou valiant one.” Straight who it was I knew; +Nor could the pain I felt (for want of breath +Still somewhat urg’d me) hinder my approach. +And when I came to him, he scarce his head +Uplifted, saying “Well hast thou discern’d, +How from the left the sun his chariot leads.” + +His lazy acts and broken words my lips +To laughter somewhat mov’d; when I began: +“Belacqua, now for thee I grieve no more. +But tell, why thou art seated upright there? +Waitest thou escort to conduct thee hence? +Or blame I only shine accustom’d ways?” +Then he: “My brother, of what use to mount, +When to my suffering would not let me pass +The bird of God, who at the portal sits? +Behooves so long that heav’n first bear me round +Without its limits, as in life it bore, +Because I to the end repentant Sighs +Delay’d, if prayer do not aid me first, +That riseth up from heart which lives in grace. +What other kind avails, not heard in heaven?” + +Before me now the Poet up the mount +Ascending, cried: “Haste thee, for see the sun +Has touch’d the point meridian, and the night +Now covers with her foot Marocco’s shore.” + + + + +CANTO V + + +Now had I left those spirits, and pursued +The steps of my Conductor, when beheld +Pointing the finger at me one exclaim’d: +“See how it seems as if the light not shone +From the left hand of him beneath, and he, +As living, seems to be led on.” Mine eyes +I at that sound reverting, saw them gaze +Through wonder first at me, and then at me +And the light broken underneath, by turns. +“Why are thy thoughts thus riveted?” my guide +Exclaim’d, “that thou hast slack’d thy pace? or how +Imports it thee, what thing is whisper’d here? +Come after me, and to their babblings leave +The crowd. Be as a tower, that, firmly set, +Shakes not its top for any blast that blows! +He, in whose bosom thought on thought shoots out, +Still of his aim is wide, in that the one +Sicklies and wastes to nought the other’s strength.” + +What other could I answer save “I come?” +I said it, somewhat with that colour ting’d +Which ofttimes pardon meriteth for man. + +Meanwhile traverse along the hill there came, +A little way before us, some who sang +The “Miserere” in responsive Strains. +When they perceiv’d that through my body I +Gave way not for the rays to pass, their song +Straight to a long and hoarse exclaim they chang’d; +And two of them, in guise of messengers, +Ran on to meet us, and inquiring ask’d: +“Of your condition we would gladly learn.” + +To them my guide. “Ye may return, and bear +Tidings to them who sent you, that his frame +Is real flesh. If, as I deem, to view +His shade they paus’d, enough is answer’d them. +Him let them honour, they may prize him well.” + +Ne’er saw I fiery vapours with such speed +Cut through the serene air at fall of night, +Nor August’s clouds athwart the setting sun, +That upward these did not in shorter space +Return; and, there arriving, with the rest +Wheel back on us, as with loose rein a troop. + +“Many,” exclaim’d the bard, “are these, who throng +Around us: to petition thee they come. +Go therefore on, and listen as thou go’st.” + +“O spirit! who go’st on to blessedness +With the same limbs, that clad thee at thy birth.” +Shouting they came, “a little rest thy step. +Look if thou any one amongst our tribe +Hast e’er beheld, that tidings of him there +Thou mayst report. Ah, wherefore go’st thou on? +Ah wherefore tarriest thou not? We all +By violence died, and to our latest hour +Were sinners, but then warn’d by light from heav’n, +So that, repenting and forgiving, we +Did issue out of life at peace with God, +Who with desire to see him fills our heart.” + +Then I: “The visages of all I scan +Yet none of ye remember. But if aught, +That I can do, may please you, gentle spirits! +Speak; and I will perform it, by that peace, +Which on the steps of guide so excellent +Following from world to world intent I seek.” + +In answer he began: “None here distrusts +Thy kindness, though not promis’d with an oath; +So as the will fail not for want of power. +Whence I, who sole before the others speak, +Entreat thee, if thou ever see that land, +Which lies between Romagna and the realm +Of Charles, that of thy courtesy thou pray +Those who inhabit Fano, that for me +Their adorations duly be put up, +By which I may purge off my grievous sins. +From thence I came. But the deep passages, +Whence issued out the blood wherein I dwelt, +Upon my bosom in Antenor’s land +Were made, where to be more secure I thought. +The author of the deed was Este’s prince, +Who, more than right could warrant, with his wrath +Pursued me. Had I towards Mira fled, +When overta’en at Oriaco, still +Might I have breath’d. But to the marsh I sped, +And in the mire and rushes tangled there +Fell, and beheld my life-blood float the plain.” + +Then said another: “Ah! so may the wish, +That takes thee o’er the mountain, be fulfill’d, +As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine. +Of Montefeltro I; Buonconte I: +Giovanna nor none else have care for me, +Sorrowing with these I therefore go.” I thus: +“From Campaldino’s field what force or chance +Drew thee, that ne’er thy sepulture was known?” + +“Oh!” answer’d he, “at Casentino’s foot +A stream there courseth, nam’d Archiano, sprung +In Apennine above the Hermit’s seat. +E’en where its name is cancel’d, there came I, +Pierc’d in the heart, fleeing away on foot, +And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speech +Fail’d me, and finishing with Mary’s name +I fell, and tenantless my flesh remain’d. +I will report the truth; which thou again +Tell to the living. Me God’s angel took, +Whilst he of hell exclaim’d: “O thou from heav’n! +Say wherefore hast thou robb’d me? Thou of him +Th’ eternal portion bear’st with thee away +For one poor tear that he deprives me of. +But of the other, other rule I make.” + +“Thou knowest how in the atmosphere collects +That vapour dank, returning into water, +Soon as it mounts where cold condenses it. +That evil will, which in his intellect +Still follows evil, came, and rais’d the wind +And smoky mist, by virtue of the power +Given by his nature. Thence the valley, soon +As day was spent, he cover’d o’er with cloud +From Pratomagno to the mountain range, +And stretch’d the sky above, so that the air +Impregnate chang’d to water. Fell the rain, +And to the fosses came all that the land +Contain’d not; and, as mightiest streams are wont, +To the great river with such headlong sweep +Rush’d, that nought stay’d its course. My stiffen’d frame +Laid at his mouth the fell Archiano found, +And dash’d it into Arno, from my breast +Loos’ning the cross, that of myself I made +When overcome with pain. He hurl’d me on, +Along the banks and bottom of his course; +Then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.” + +“Ah! when thou to the world shalt be return’d, +And rested after thy long road,” so spake +Next the third spirit; “then remember me. +I once was Pia. Sienna gave me life, +Maremma took it from me. That he knows, +Who me with jewell’d ring had first espous’d.” + + + + +CANTO VI + + +When from their game of dice men separate, +He, who hath lost, remains in sadness fix’d, +Revolving in his mind, what luckless throws +He cast: but meanwhile all the company +Go with the other; one before him runs, +And one behind his mantle twitches, one +Fast by his side bids him remember him. +He stops not; and each one, to whom his hand +Is stretch’d, well knows he bids him stand aside; +And thus he from the press defends himself. +E’en such was I in that close-crowding throng; +And turning so my face around to all, +And promising, I ’scap’d from it with pains. + +Here of Arezzo him I saw, who fell +By Ghino’s cruel arm; and him beside, +Who in his chase was swallow’d by the stream. +Here Frederic Novello, with his hand +Stretch’d forth, entreated; and of Pisa he, +Who put the good Marzuco to such proof +Of constancy. Count Orso I beheld; +And from its frame a soul dismiss’d for spite +And envy, as it said, but for no crime: +I speak of Peter de la Brosse; and here, +While she yet lives, that Lady of Brabant +Let her beware; lest for so false a deed +She herd with worse than these. When I was freed +From all those spirits, who pray’d for others’ prayers +To hasten on their state of blessedness; +Straight I began: “O thou, my luminary! +It seems expressly in thy text denied, +That heaven’s supreme decree can never bend +To supplication; yet with this design +Do these entreat. Can then their hope be vain, +Or is thy saying not to me reveal’d?” + +He thus to me: “Both what I write is plain, +And these deceiv’d not in their hope, if well +Thy mind consider, that the sacred height +Of judgment doth not stoop, because love’s flame +In a short moment all fulfils, which he +Who sojourns here, in right should satisfy. +Besides, when I this point concluded thus, +By praying no defect could be supplied; +Because the pray’r had none access to God. +Yet in this deep suspicion rest thou not +Contented unless she assure thee so, +Who betwixt truth and mind infuses light. +I know not if thou take me right; I mean +Beatrice. Her thou shalt behold above, +Upon this mountain’s crown, fair seat of joy.” + +Then I: “Sir! let us mend our speed; for now +I tire not as before; and lo! the hill +Stretches its shadow far.” He answer’d thus: +“Our progress with this day shall be as much +As we may now dispatch; but otherwise +Than thou supposest is the truth. For there +Thou canst not be, ere thou once more behold +Him back returning, who behind the steep +Is now so hidden, that as erst his beam +Thou dost not break. But lo! a spirit there +Stands solitary, and toward us looks: +It will instruct us in the speediest way.” + +We soon approach’d it. O thou Lombard spirit! +How didst thou stand, in high abstracted mood, +Scarce moving with slow dignity thine eyes! +It spoke not aught, but let us onward pass, +Eyeing us as a lion on his watch. +But Virgil with entreaty mild advanc’d, +Requesting it to show the best ascent. +It answer to his question none return’d, +But of our country and our kind of life +Demanded. When my courteous guide began, +“Mantua,” the solitary shadow quick +Rose towards us from the place in which it stood, +And cry’d, “Mantuan! I am thy countryman +Sordello.” Each the other then embrac’d. + +Ah slavish Italy! thou inn of grief, +Vessel without a pilot in loud storm, +Lady no longer of fair provinces, +But brothel-house impure! this gentle spirit, +Ev’n from the Pleasant sound of his dear land +Was prompt to greet a fellow citizen +With such glad cheer; while now thy living ones +In thee abide not without war; and one +Malicious gnaws another, ay of those +Whom the same wall and the same moat contains, +Seek, wretched one! around thy sea-coasts wide; +Then homeward to thy bosom turn, and mark +If any part of the sweet peace enjoy. +What boots it, that thy reins Justinian’s hand +Befitted, if thy saddle be unpress’d? +Nought doth he now but aggravate thy shame. +Ah people! thou obedient still shouldst live, +And in the saddle let thy Caesar sit, +If well thou marked’st that which God commands. + +Look how that beast to felness hath relaps’d +From having lost correction of the spur, +Since to the bridle thou hast set thine hand, +O German Albert! who abandon’st her, +That is grown savage and unmanageable, +When thou should’st clasp her flanks with forked heels. +Just judgment from the stars fall on thy blood! +And be it strange and manifest to all! +Such as may strike thy successor with dread! +For that thy sire and thou have suffer’d thus, +Through greediness of yonder realms detain’d, +The garden of the empire to run waste. +Come see the Capulets and Montagues, +The Philippeschi and Monaldi! man +Who car’st for nought! those sunk in grief, and these +With dire suspicion rack’d. Come, cruel one! +Come and behold the’ oppression of the nobles, +And mark their injuries: and thou mayst see. +What safety Santafiore can supply. +Come and behold thy Rome, who calls on thee, +Desolate widow! day and night with moans: +“My Caesar, why dost thou desert my side?” +Come and behold what love among thy people: +And if no pity touches thee for us, +Come and blush for thine own report. For me, +If it be lawful, O Almighty Power, +Who wast in earth for our sakes crucified! +Are thy just eyes turn’d elsewhere? or is this +A preparation in the wond’rous depth +Of thy sage counsel made, for some good end, +Entirely from our reach of thought cut off? +So are the’ Italian cities all o’erthrong’d +With tyrants, and a great Marcellus made +Of every petty factious villager. + +My Florence! thou mayst well remain unmov’d +At this digression, which affects not thee: +Thanks to thy people, who so wisely speed. +Many have justice in their heart, that long +Waiteth for counsel to direct the bow, +Or ere it dart unto its aim: but shine +Have it on their lip’s edge. Many refuse +To bear the common burdens: readier thine +Answer uneall’d, and cry, “Behold I stoop!” + +Make thyself glad, for thou hast reason now, +Thou wealthy! thou at peace! thou wisdom-fraught! +Facts best witness if I speak the truth. +Athens and Lacedaemon, who of old +Enacted laws, for civil arts renown’d, +Made little progress in improving life +Tow’rds thee, who usest such nice subtlety, +That to the middle of November scarce +Reaches the thread thou in October weav’st. +How many times, within thy memory, +Customs, and laws, and coins, and offices +Have been by thee renew’d, and people chang’d! + +If thou remember’st well and can’st see clear, +Thou wilt perceive thyself like a sick wretch, +Who finds no rest upon her down, but oft +Shifting her side, short respite seeks from pain. + + + + +CANTO VII + + +After their courteous greetings joyfully +Sev’n times exchang’d, Sordello backward drew +Exclaiming, “Who are ye?” “Before this mount +By spirits worthy of ascent to God +Was sought, my bones had by Octavius’ care +Been buried. I am Virgil, for no sin +Depriv’d of heav’n, except for lack of faith.” + +So answer’d him in few my gentle guide. + +As one, who aught before him suddenly +Beholding, whence his wonder riseth, cries +“It is yet is not,” wav’ring in belief; +Such he appear’d; then downward bent his eyes, +And drawing near with reverential step, +Caught him, where of mean estate might clasp +His lord. “Glory of Latium!” he exclaim’d, +“In whom our tongue its utmost power display’d! +Boast of my honor’d birth-place! what desert +Of mine, what favour rather undeserv’d, +Shows thee to me? If I to hear that voice +Am worthy, say if from below thou com’st +And from what cloister’s pale?”—“Through every orb +Of that sad region,” he reply’d, “thus far +Am I arriv’d, by heav’nly influence led +And with such aid I come. There is a place +There underneath, not made by torments sad, +But by dun shades alone; where mourning’s voice +Sounds not of anguish sharp, but breathes in sighs. + +“There I with little innocents abide, +Who by death’s fangs were bitten, ere exempt +From human taint. There I with those abide, +Who the three holy virtues put not on, +But understood the rest, and without blame +Follow’d them all. But if thou know’st and canst, +Direct us, how we soonest may arrive, +Where Purgatory its true beginning takes.” + +He answer’d thus: “We have no certain place +Assign’d us: upwards I may go or round, +Far as I can, I join thee for thy guide. +But thou beholdest now how day declines: +And upwards to proceed by night, our power +Excels: therefore it may be well to choose +A place of pleasant sojourn. To the right +Some spirits sit apart retir’d. If thou +Consentest, I to these will lead thy steps: +And thou wilt know them, not without delight.” + +“How chances this?” was answer’d; “who so wish’d +To ascend by night, would he be thence debarr’d +By other, or through his own weakness fail?” + +The good Sordello then, along the ground +Trailing his finger, spoke: “Only this line +Thou shalt not overpass, soon as the sun +Hath disappear’d; not that aught else impedes +Thy going upwards, save the shades of night. +These with the wont of power perplex the will. +With them thou haply mightst return beneath, +Or to and fro around the mountain’s side +Wander, while day is in the horizon shut.” + +My master straight, as wond’ring at his speech, +Exclaim’d: “Then lead us quickly, where thou sayst, +That, while we stay, we may enjoy delight.” + +A little space we were remov’d from thence, +When I perceiv’d the mountain hollow’d out. +Ev’n as large valleys hollow’d out on earth, + +“That way,” the’ escorting spirit cried, “we go, +Where in a bosom the high bank recedes: +And thou await renewal of the day.” + +Betwixt the steep and plain a crooked path +Led us traverse into the ridge’s side, +Where more than half the sloping edge expires. +Refulgent gold, and silver thrice refin’d, +And scarlet grain and ceruse, Indian wood +Of lucid dye serene, fresh emeralds +But newly broken, by the herbs and flowers +Plac’d in that fair recess, in color all +Had been surpass’d, as great surpasses less. +Nor nature only there lavish’d her hues, +But of the sweetness of a thousand smells +A rare and undistinguish’d fragrance made. + +“Salve Regina,” on the grass and flowers +Here chanting I beheld those spirits sit +Who not beyond the valley could be seen. + +“Before the west’ring sun sink to his bed,” +Began the Mantuan, who our steps had turn’d, + +“’Mid those desires not that I lead ye on. +For from this eminence ye shall discern +Better the acts and visages of all, +Than in the nether vale among them mix’d. +He, who sits high above the rest, and seems +To have neglected that he should have done, +And to the others’ song moves not his lip, +The Emperor Rodolph call, who might have heal’d +The wounds whereof fair Italy hath died, +So that by others she revives but slowly, +He, who with kindly visage comforts him, +Sway’d in that country, where the water springs, +That Moldaw’s river to the Elbe, and Elbe +Rolls to the ocean: Ottocar his name: +Who in his swaddling clothes was of more worth +Than Winceslaus his son, a bearded man, +Pamper’d with rank luxuriousness and ease. +And that one with the nose depress, who close +In counsel seems with him of gentle look, +Flying expir’d, with’ring the lily’s flower. +Look there how he doth knock against his breast! +The other ye behold, who for his cheek +Makes of one hand a couch, with frequent sighs. +They are the father and the father-in-law +Of Gallia’s bane: his vicious life they know +And foul; thence comes the grief that rends them thus. + +“He, so robust of limb, who measure keeps +In song, with him of feature prominent, +With ev’ry virtue bore his girdle brac’d. +And if that stripling who behinds him sits, +King after him had liv’d, his virtue then +From vessel to like vessel had been pour’d; +Which may not of the other heirs be said. +By James and Frederick his realms are held; +Neither the better heritage obtains. +Rarely into the branches of the tree +Doth human worth mount up; and so ordains +He who bestows it, that as his free gift +It may be call’d. To Charles my words apply +No less than to his brother in the song; +Which Pouille and Provence now with grief confess. +So much that plant degenerates from its seed, +As more than Beatrice and Margaret +Costanza still boasts of her valorous spouse. + +“Behold the king of simple life and plain, +Harry of England, sitting there alone: +He through his branches better issue spreads. + +“That one, who on the ground beneath the rest +Sits lowest, yet his gaze directs aloft, +Us William, that brave Marquis, for whose cause +The deed of Alexandria and his war +Makes Conferrat and Canavese weep.” + + + + +CANTO VIII + + +Now was the hour that wakens fond desire +In men at sea, and melts their thoughtful heart, +Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell, +And pilgrim newly on his road with love +Thrills, if he hear the vesper bell from far, +That seems to mourn for the expiring day: +When I, no longer taking heed to hear +Began, with wonder, from those spirits to mark +One risen from its seat, which with its hand +Audience implor’d. Both palms it join’d and rais’d, +Fixing its steadfast gaze towards the east, +As telling God, “I care for naught beside.” + +“Te Lucis Ante,” so devoutly then +Came from its lip, and in so soft a strain, +That all my sense in ravishment was lost. +And the rest after, softly and devout, +Follow’d through all the hymn, with upward gaze +Directed to the bright supernal wheels. + +Here, reader! for the truth makes thine eyes keen: +For of so subtle texture is this veil, +That thou with ease mayst pass it through unmark’d. + +I saw that gentle band silently next +Look up, as if in expectation held, +Pale and in lowly guise; and from on high +I saw forth issuing descend beneath +Two angels with two flame-illumin’d swords, +Broken and mutilated at their points. +Green as the tender leaves but newly born, +Their vesture was, the which by wings as green +Beaten, they drew behind them, fann’d in air. +A little over us one took his stand, +The other lighted on the’ Opposing hill, +So that the troop were in the midst contain’d. + +Well I descried the whiteness on their heads; +But in their visages the dazzled eye +Was lost, as faculty that by too much +Is overpower’d. “From Mary’s bosom both +Are come,” exclaim’d Sordello, “as a guard +Over the vale, ganst him, who hither tends, +The serpent.” Whence, not knowing by which path +He came, I turn’d me round, and closely press’d, +All frozen, to my leader’s trusted side. + +Sordello paus’d not: “To the valley now +(For it is time) let us descend; and hold +Converse with those great shadows: haply much +Their sight may please ye.” Only three steps down +Methinks I measur’d, ere I was beneath, +And noted one who look’d as with desire +To know me. Time was now that air arrow dim; +Yet not so dim, that ’twixt his eyes and mine +It clear’d not up what was conceal’d before. +Mutually tow’rds each other we advanc’d. +Nino, thou courteous judge! what joy I felt, +When I perceiv’d thou wert not with the bad! + +No salutation kind on either part +Was left unsaid. He then inquir’d: “How long +Since thou arrived’st at the mountain’s foot, +Over the distant waves?”—“O!” answer’d I, +“Through the sad seats of woe this morn I came, +And still in my first life, thus journeying on, +The other strive to gain.” Soon as they heard +My words, he and Sordello backward drew, +As suddenly amaz’d. To Virgil one, +The other to a spirit turn’d, who near +Was seated, crying: “Conrad! up with speed: +Come, see what of his grace high God hath will’d.” +Then turning round to me: “By that rare mark +Of honour which thou ow’st to him, who hides +So deeply his first cause, it hath no ford, +When thou shalt be beyond the vast of waves. +Tell my Giovanna, that for me she call +There, where reply to innocence is made. +Her mother, I believe, loves me no more; +Since she has chang’d the white and wimpled folds, +Which she is doom’d once more with grief to wish. +By her it easily may be perceiv’d, +How long in women lasts the flame of love, +If sight and touch do not relume it oft. +For her so fair a burial will not make +The viper which calls Milan to the field, +As had been made by shrill Gallura’s bird.” + +He spoke, and in his visage took the stamp +Of that right seal, which with due temperature +Glows in the bosom. My insatiate eyes +Meanwhile to heav’n had travel’d, even there +Where the bright stars are slowest, as a wheel +Nearest the axle; when my guide inquir’d: +“What there aloft, my son, has caught thy gaze?” + +I answer’d: “The three torches, with which here +The pole is all on fire.” He then to me: +“The four resplendent stars, thou saw’st this morn +Are there beneath, and these ris’n in their stead.” + +While yet he spoke. Sordello to himself +Drew him, and cry’d: “Lo there our enemy!” +And with his hand pointed that way to look. + +Along the side, where barrier none arose +Around the little vale, a serpent lay, +Such haply as gave Eve the bitter food. +Between the grass and flowers, the evil snake +Came on, reverting oft his lifted head; +And, as a beast that smoothes its polish’d coat, +Licking his hack. I saw not, nor can tell, +How those celestial falcons from their seat +Mov’d, but in motion each one well descried, +Hearing the air cut by their verdant plumes. +The serpent fled; and to their stations back +The angels up return’d with equal flight. + +The Spirit (who to Nino, when he call’d, +Had come), from viewing me with fixed ken, +Through all that conflict, loosen’d not his sight. + +“So may the lamp, which leads thee up on high, +Find, in thy destin’d lot, of wax so much, +As may suffice thee to the enamel’s height.” +It thus began: “If any certain news +Of Valdimagra and the neighbour part +Thou know’st, tell me, who once was mighty there +They call’d me Conrad Malaspina, not +That old one, but from him I sprang. The love +I bore my people is now here refin’d.” + +“In your dominions,” I answer’d, “ne’er was I. +But through all Europe where do those men dwell, +To whom their glory is not manifest? +The fame, that honours your illustrious house, +Proclaims the nobles and proclaims the land; +So that he knows it who was never there. +I swear to you, so may my upward route +Prosper! your honour’d nation not impairs +The value of her coffer and her sword. +Nature and use give her such privilege, +That while the world is twisted from his course +By a bad head, she only walks aright, +And has the evil way in scorn.” He then: +“Now pass thee on: sev’n times the tired sun +Revisits not the couch, which with four feet +The forked Aries covers, ere that kind +Opinion shall be nail’d into thy brain +With stronger nails than other’s speech can drive, +If the sure course of judgment be not stay’d.” + + + + +CANTO IX + + +Now the fair consort of Tithonus old, +Arisen from her mate’s beloved arms, +Look’d palely o’er the eastern cliff: her brow, +Lucent with jewels, glitter’d, set in sign +Of that chill animal, who with his train +Smites fearful nations: and where then we were, +Two steps of her ascent the night had past, +And now the third was closing up its wing, +When I, who had so much of Adam with me, +Sank down upon the grass, o’ercome with sleep, +There where all five were seated. In that hour, +When near the dawn the swallow her sad lay, +Rememb’ring haply ancient grief, renews, +And with our minds more wand’rers from the flesh, +And less by thought restrain’d are, as ’twere, full +Of holy divination in their dreams, +Then in a vision did I seem to view +A golden-feather’d eagle in the sky, +With open wings, and hov’ring for descent, +And I was in that place, methought, from whence +Young Ganymede, from his associates ’reft, +Was snatch’d aloft to the high consistory. +“Perhaps,” thought I within me, “here alone +He strikes his quarry, and elsewhere disdains +To pounce upon the prey.” Therewith, it seem’d, +A little wheeling in his airy tour +Terrible as the lightning rush’d he down, +And snatch’d me upward even to the fire. + +There both, I thought, the eagle and myself +Did burn; and so intense th’ imagin’d flames, +That needs my sleep was broken off. As erst +Achilles shook himself, and round him roll’d +His waken’d eyeballs wond’ring where he was, +Whenas his mother had from Chiron fled +To Scyros, with him sleeping in her arms; +E’en thus I shook me, soon as from my face +The slumber parted, turning deadly pale, +Like one ice-struck with dread. Solo at my side +My comfort stood: and the bright sun was now +More than two hours aloft: and to the sea +My looks were turn’d. “Fear not,” my master cried, +“Assur’d we are at happy point. Thy strength +Shrink not, but rise dilated. Thou art come +To Purgatory now. Lo! there the cliff +That circling bounds it! Lo! the entrance there, +Where it doth seem disparted! re the dawn +Usher’d the daylight, when thy wearied soul +Slept in thee, o’er the flowery vale beneath +A lady came, and thus bespake me: “I +Am Lucia. Suffer me to take this man, +Who slumbers. Easier so his way shall speed.” +Sordello and the other gentle shapes +Tarrying, she bare thee up: and, as day shone, +This summit reach’d: and I pursued her steps. +Here did she place thee. First her lovely eyes +That open entrance show’d me; then at once +She vanish’d with thy sleep. Like one, whose doubts +Are chas’d by certainty, and terror turn’d +To comfort on discovery of the truth, +Such was the change in me: and as my guide +Beheld me fearless, up along the cliff +He mov’d, and I behind him, towards the height. + +Reader! thou markest how my theme doth rise, +Nor wonder therefore, if more artfully +I prop the structure! nearer now we drew, +Arriv’d’ whence in that part, where first a breach +As of a wall appear’d, I could descry +A portal, and three steps beneath, that led +For inlet there, of different colour each, +And one who watch’d, but spake not yet a word. +As more and more mine eye did stretch its view, +I mark’d him seated on the highest step, +In visage such, as past my power to bear. + +Grasp’d in his hand a naked sword, glanc’d back +The rays so toward me, that I oft in vain +My sight directed. “Speak from whence ye stand:” +He cried: “What would ye? Where is your escort? +Take heed your coming upward harm ye not.” + +“A heavenly dame, not skilless of these things,” +Replied the’ instructor, “told us, even now, +“Pass that way: here the gate is.”—“And may she +Befriending prosper your ascent,” resum’d +The courteous keeper of the gate: “Come then +Before our steps.” We straightway thither came. + +The lowest stair was marble white so smooth +And polish’d, that therein my mirror’d form +Distinct I saw. The next of hue more dark +Than sablest grain, a rough and singed block, +Crack’d lengthwise and across. The third, that lay +Massy above, seem’d porphyry, that flam’d +Red as the life-blood spouting from a vein. +On this God’s angel either foot sustain’d, +Upon the threshold seated, which appear’d +A rock of diamond. Up the trinal steps +My leader cheerily drew me. “Ask,” said he, + +“With humble heart, that he unbar the bolt.” + +Piously at his holy feet devolv’d +I cast me, praying him for pity’s sake +That he would open to me: but first fell +Thrice on my bosom prostrate. Seven times +The letter, that denotes the inward stain, +He on my forehead with the blunted point +Of his drawn sword inscrib’d. And “Look,” he cried, +“When enter’d, that thou wash these scars away.” + +Ashes, or earth ta’en dry out of the ground, +Were of one colour with the robe he wore. +From underneath that vestment forth he drew +Two keys of metal twain: the one was gold, +Its fellow silver. With the pallid first, +And next the burnish’d, he so ply’d the gate, +As to content me well. “Whenever one +Faileth of these, that in the keyhole straight +It turn not, to this alley then expect +Access in vain.” Such were the words he spake. +“One is more precious: but the other needs +Skill and sagacity, large share of each, +Ere its good task to disengage the knot +Be worthily perform’d. From Peter these +I hold, of him instructed, that I err +Rather in opening than in keeping fast; +So but the suppliant at my feet implore.” + +Then of that hallow’d gate he thrust the door, +Exclaiming, “Enter, but this warning hear: +He forth again departs who looks behind.” + +As in the hinges of that sacred ward +The swivels turn’d, sonorous metal strong, +Harsh was the grating; nor so surlily +Roar’d the Tarpeian, when by force bereft +Of good Metellus, thenceforth from his loss +To leanness doom’d. Attentively I turn’d, +List’ning the thunder, that first issued forth; +And “We praise thee, O God,” methought I heard +In accents blended with sweet melody. +The strains came o’er mine ear, e’en as the sound +Of choral voices, that in solemn chant +With organ mingle, and, now high and clear, +Come swelling, now float indistinct away. + + + + +CANTO X + + +When we had passed the threshold of the gate +(Which the soul’s ill affection doth disuse, +Making the crooked seem the straighter path), +I heard its closing sound. Had mine eyes turn’d, +For that offence what plea might have avail’d? + +We mounted up the riven rock, that wound +On either side alternate, as the wave +Flies and advances. “Here some little art +Behooves us,” said my leader, “that our steps +Observe the varying flexure of the path.” + +Thus we so slowly sped, that with cleft orb +The moon once more o’erhangs her wat’ry couch, +Ere we that strait have threaded. But when free +We came and open, where the mount above +One solid mass retires, I spent, with toil, +And both, uncertain of the way, we stood, +Upon a plain more lonesome, than the roads +That traverse desert wilds. From whence the brink +Borders upon vacuity, to foot +Of the steep bank, that rises still, the space +Had measur’d thrice the stature of a man: +And, distant as mine eye could wing its flight, +To leftward now and now to right dispatch’d, +That cornice equal in extent appear’d. + +Not yet our feet had on that summit mov’d, +When I discover’d that the bank around, +Whose proud uprising all ascent denied, +Was marble white, and so exactly wrought +With quaintest sculpture, that not there alone +Had Polycletus, but e’en nature’s self +Been sham’d. The angel who came down to earth +With tidings of the peace so many years +Wept for in vain, that op’d the heavenly gates +From their long interdict, before us seem’d, +In a sweet act, so sculptur’d to the life, +He look’d no silent image. One had sworn +He had said, “Hail!” for she was imag’d there, +By whom the key did open to God’s love, +And in her act as sensibly impress +That word, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” +As figure seal’d on wax. “Fix not thy mind +On one place only,” said the guide belov’d, +Who had me near him on that part where lies +The heart of man. My sight forthwith I turn’d +And mark’d, behind the virgin mother’s form, +Upon that side, where he, that mov’d me, stood, +Another story graven on the rock. + +I passed athwart the bard, and drew me near, +That it might stand more aptly for my view. +There in the self-same marble were engrav’d +The cart and kine, drawing the sacred ark, +That from unbidden office awes mankind. +Before it came much people; and the whole +Parted in seven quires. One sense cried, “Nay,” +Another, “Yes, they sing.” Like doubt arose +Betwixt the eye and smell, from the curl’d fume +Of incense breathing up the well-wrought toil. +Preceding the blest vessel, onward came +With light dance leaping, girt in humble guise, +Sweet Israel’s harper: in that hap he seem’d +Less and yet more than kingly. Opposite, +At a great palace, from the lattice forth +Look’d Michol, like a lady full of scorn +And sorrow. To behold the tablet next, +Which at the hack of Michol whitely shone, +I mov’d me. There was storied on the rock +The’ exalted glory of the Roman prince, +Whose mighty worth mov’d Gregory to earn +His mighty conquest, Trajan th’ Emperor. +A widow at his bridle stood, attir’d +In tears and mourning. Round about them troop’d +Full throng of knights, and overhead in gold +The eagles floated, struggling with the wind. + +The wretch appear’d amid all these to say: +“Grant vengeance, sire! for, woe beshrew this heart +My son is murder’d.” He replying seem’d; + +“Wait now till I return.” And she, as one +Made hasty by her grief; “O sire, if thou +Dost not return?”—“Where I am, who then is, +May right thee.”—“What to thee is other’s good, +If thou neglect thy own?”—“Now comfort thee,” +At length he answers. “It beseemeth well +My duty be perform’d, ere I move hence: +So justice wills; and pity bids me stay.” + +He, whose ken nothing new surveys, produc’d +That visible speaking, new to us and strange +The like not found on earth. Fondly I gaz’d +Upon those patterns of meek humbleness, +Shapes yet more precious for their artist’s sake, +When “Lo,” the poet whisper’d, “where this way +(But slack their pace), a multitude advance. +These to the lofty steps shall guide us on.” + +Mine eyes, though bent on view of novel sights +Their lov’d allurement, were not slow to turn. + +Reader! would not that amaz’d thou miss +Of thy good purpose, hearing how just God +Decrees our debts be cancel’d. Ponder not +The form of suff’ring. Think on what succeeds, +Think that at worst beyond the mighty doom +It cannot pass. “Instructor,” I began, +“What I see hither tending, bears no trace +Of human semblance, nor of aught beside +That my foil’d sight can guess.” He answering thus: +“So courb’d to earth, beneath their heavy teems +Of torment stoop they, that mine eye at first +Struggled as thine. But look intently thither, +An disentangle with thy lab’ring view, +What underneath those stones approacheth: now, +E’en now, mayst thou discern the pangs of each.” + +Christians and proud! poor and wretched ones! +That feeble in the mind’s eye, lean your trust +Upon unstaid perverseness! now ye not +That we are worms, yet made at last to form +The winged insect, imp’d with angel plumes +That to heaven’s justice unobstructed soars? +Why buoy ye up aloft your unfleg’d souls? +Abortive then and shapeless ye remain, +Like the untimely embryon of a worm! + +As, to support incumbent floor or roof, +For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, +That crumples up its knees unto its breast, +With the feign’d posture stirring ruth unfeign’d +In the beholder’s fancy; so I saw +These fashion’d, when I noted well their guise. + +Each, as his back was laden, came indeed +Or more or less contract; but it appear’d +As he, who show’d most patience in his look, +Wailing exclaim’d: “I can endure no more.” + + + + +CANTO XI + + +“O thou Almighty Father, who dost make +The heavens thy dwelling, not in bounds confin’d, +But that with love intenser there thou view’st +Thy primal effluence, hallow’d be thy name: +Join each created being to extol +Thy might, for worthy humblest thanks and praise +Is thy blest Spirit. May thy kingdom’s peace +Come unto us; for we, unless it come, +With all our striving thither tend in vain. +As of their will the angels unto thee +Tender meet sacrifice, circling thy throne +With loud hosannas, so of theirs be done +By saintly men on earth. Grant us this day +Our daily manna, without which he roams +Through this rough desert retrograde, who most +Toils to advance his steps. As we to each +Pardon the evil done us, pardon thou +Benign, and of our merit take no count. +’Gainst the old adversary prove thou not +Our virtue easily subdu’d; but free +From his incitements and defeat his wiles. +This last petition, dearest Lord! is made +Not for ourselves, since that were needless now, +But for their sakes who after us remain.” + +Thus for themselves and us good speed imploring, +Those spirits went beneath a weight like that +We sometimes feel in dreams, all, sore beset, +But with unequal anguish, wearied all, +Round the first circuit, purging as they go, +The world’s gross darkness off: In our behalf +If there vows still be offer’d, what can here +For them be vow’d and done by such, whose wills +Have root of goodness in them? Well beseems +That we should help them wash away the stains +They carried hence, that so made pure and light, +They may spring upward to the starry spheres. + +“Ah! so may mercy-temper’d justice rid +Your burdens speedily, that ye have power +To stretch your wing, which e’en to your desire +Shall lift you, as ye show us on which hand +Toward the ladder leads the shortest way. +And if there be more passages than one, +Instruct us of that easiest to ascend; +For this man who comes with me, and bears yet +The charge of fleshly raiment Adam left him, +Despite his better will but slowly mounts.” +From whom the answer came unto these words, +Which my guide spake, appear’d not; but ’twas said: + +“Along the bank to rightward come with us, +And ye shall find a pass that mocks not toil +Of living man to climb: and were it not +That I am hinder’d by the rock, wherewith +This arrogant neck is tam’d, whence needs I stoop +My visage to the ground, him, who yet lives, +Whose name thou speak’st not him I fain would view. +To mark if e’er I knew himnd to crave +His pity for the fardel that I bear. +I was of Latiun, of a Tuscan horn +A mighty one: Aldobranlesco’s name +My sire’s, I know not if ye e’er have heard. +My old blood and forefathers’ gallant deeds +Made me so haughty, that I clean forgot +The common mother, and to such excess, +Wax’d in my scorn of all men, that I fell, +Fell therefore; by what fate Sienna’s sons, +Each child in Campagnatico, can tell. +I am Omberto; not me only pride +Hath injur’d, but my kindred all involv’d +In mischief with her. Here my lot ordains +Under this weight to groan, till I appease +God’s angry justice, since I did it not +Amongst the living, here amongst the dead.” + +List’ning I bent my visage down: and one +(Not he who spake) twisted beneath the weight +That urg’d him, saw me, knew me straight, and call’d, +Holding his eyes With difficulty fix’d +Intent upon me, stooping as I went +Companion of their way. “O!” I exclaim’d, + +“Art thou not Oderigi, art not thou +Agobbio’s glory, glory of that art +Which they of Paris call the limmer’s skill?” + +“Brother!” said he, “with tints that gayer smile, +Bolognian Franco’s pencil lines the leaves. +His all the honour now; mine borrow’d light. +In truth I had not been thus courteous to him, +The whilst I liv’d, through eagerness of zeal +For that pre-eminence my heart was bent on. +Here of such pride the forfeiture is paid. +Nor were I even here; if, able still +To sin, I had not turn’d me unto God. +O powers of man! how vain your glory, nipp’d +E’en in its height of verdure, if an age +Less bright succeed not! imbue thought +To lord it over painting’s field; and now +The cry is Giotto’s, and his name eclips’d. +Thus hath one Guido from the other snatch’d +The letter’d prize: and he perhaps is born, +Who shall drive either from their nest. The noise +Of worldly fame is but a blast of wind, +That blows from divers points, and shifts its name +Shifting the point it blows from. Shalt thou more +Live in the mouths of mankind, if thy flesh +Part shrivel’d from thee, than if thou hadst died, +Before the coral and the pap were left, +Or ere some thousand years have passed? and that +Is, to eternity compar’d, a space, +Briefer than is the twinkling of an eye +To the heaven’s slowest orb. He there who treads +So leisurely before me, far and wide +Through Tuscany resounded once; and now +Is in Sienna scarce with whispers nam’d: +There was he sov’reign, when destruction caught +The madd’ning rage of Florence, in that day +Proud as she now is loathsome. Your renown +Is as the herb, whose hue doth come and go, +And his might withers it, by whom it sprang +Crude from the lap of earth.” I thus to him: +“True are thy sayings: to my heart they breathe +The kindly spirit of meekness, and allay +What tumours rankle there. But who is he +Of whom thou spak’st but now?”—“This,” he replied, +“Is Provenzano. He is here, because +He reach’d, with grasp presumptuous, at the sway +Of all Sienna. Thus he still hath gone, +Thus goeth never-resting, since he died. +Such is th’ acquittance render’d back of him, +Who, beyond measure, dar’d on earth.” I then: +“If soul that to the verge of life delays +Repentance, linger in that lower space, +Nor hither mount, unless good prayers befriend, +How chanc’d admittance was vouchsaf’d to him?” + +“When at his glory’s topmost height,” said he, +“Respect of dignity all cast aside, +Freely He fix’d him on Sienna’s plain, +A suitor to redeem his suff’ring friend, +Who languish’d in the prison-house of Charles, +Nor for his sake refus’d through every vein +To tremble. More I will not say; and dark, +I know, my words are, but thy neighbours soon +Shall help thee to a comment on the text. +This is the work, that from these limits freed him.” + + + + +CANTO XII + + +With equal pace as oxen in the yoke, +I with that laden spirit journey’d on +Long as the mild instructor suffer’d me; +But when he bade me quit him, and proceed +(For “here,” said he, “behooves with sail and oars +Each man, as best he may, push on his bark”), +Upright, as one dispos’d for speed, I rais’d +My body, still in thought submissive bow’d. + +I now my leader’s track not loth pursued; +And each had shown how light we far’d along +When thus he warn’d me: “Bend thine eyesight down: +For thou to ease the way shall find it good +To ruminate the bed beneath thy feet.” + +As in memorial of the buried, drawn +Upon earth-level tombs, the sculptur’d form +Of what was once, appears (at sight whereof +Tears often stream forth by remembrance wak’d, +Whose sacred stings the piteous only feel), +So saw I there, but with more curious skill +Of portraiture o’erwrought, whate’er of space +From forth the mountain stretches. On one part +Him I beheld, above all creatures erst +Created noblest, light’ning fall from heaven: +On th’ other side with bolt celestial pierc’d +Briareus: cumb’ring earth he lay through dint +Of mortal ice-stroke. The Thymbraean god +With Mars, I saw, and Pallas, round their sire, +Arm’d still, and gazing on the giant’s limbs +Strewn o’er th’ ethereal field. Nimrod I saw: +At foot of the stupendous work he stood, +As if bewilder’d, looking on the crowd +Leagued in his proud attempt on Sennaar’s plain. + +O Niobe! in what a trance of woe +Thee I beheld, upon that highway drawn, +Sev’n sons on either side thee slain! Saul! +How ghastly didst thou look! on thine own sword +Expiring in Gilboa, from that hour +Ne’er visited with rain from heav’n or dew! + +O fond Arachne! thee I also saw +Half spider now in anguish crawling up +Th’ unfinish’d web thou weaved’st to thy bane! + +O Rehoboam! here thy shape doth seem +Louring no more defiance! but fear-smote +With none to chase him in his chariot whirl’d. + +Was shown beside upon the solid floor +How dear Alcmaeon forc’d his mother rate +That ornament in evil hour receiv’d: +How in the temple on Sennacherib fell +His sons, and how a corpse they left him there. +Was shown the scath and cruel mangling made +By Tomyris on Cyrus, when she cried: +“Blood thou didst thirst for, take thy fill of blood!” +Was shown how routed in the battle fled +Th’ Assyrians, Holofernes slain, and e’en +The relics of the carnage. Troy I mark’d +In ashes and in caverns. Oh! how fall’n, +How abject, Ilion, was thy semblance there! + +What master of the pencil or the style +Had trac’d the shades and lines, that might have made +The subtlest workman wonder? Dead the dead, +The living seem’d alive; with clearer view +His eye beheld not who beheld the truth, +Than mine what I did tread on, while I went +Low bending. Now swell out; and with stiff necks +Pass on, ye sons of Eve! veil not your looks, +Lest they descry the evil of your path! + +I noted not (so busied was my thought) +How much we now had circled of the mount, +And of his course yet more the sun had spent, +When he, who with still wakeful caution went, +Admonish’d: “Raise thou up thy head: for know +Time is not now for slow suspense. Behold +That way an angel hasting towards us! Lo! +Where duly the sixth handmaid doth return +From service on the day. Wear thou in look +And gesture seemly grace of reverent awe, +That gladly he may forward us aloft. +Consider that this day ne’er dawns again.” + +Time’s loss he had so often warn’d me ’gainst, +I could not miss the scope at which he aim’d. + +The goodly shape approach’d us, snowy white +In vesture, and with visage casting streams +Of tremulous lustre like the matin star. +His arms he open’d, then his wings; and spake: +“Onward: the steps, behold! are near; and now +Th’ ascent is without difficulty gain’d.” + +A scanty few are they, who when they hear +Such tidings, hasten. O ye race of men +Though born to soar, why suffer ye a wind +So slight to baffle ye? He led us on +Where the rock parted; here against my front +Did beat his wings, then promis’d I should fare +In safety on my way. As to ascend +That steep, upon whose brow the chapel stands +(O’er Rubaconte, looking lordly down +On the well-guided city,) up the right +Th’ impetuous rise is broken by the steps +Carv’d in that old and simple age, when still +The registry and label rested safe; +Thus is th’ acclivity reliev’d, which here +Precipitous from the other circuit falls: +But on each hand the tall cliff presses close. + +As ent’ring there we turn’d, voices, in strain +Ineffable, sang: “Blessed are the poor +In spirit.” Ah how far unlike to these +The straits of hell; here songs to usher us, +There shrieks of woe! We climb the holy stairs: +And lighter to myself by far I seem’d +Than on the plain before, whence thus I spake: +“Say, master, of what heavy thing have I +Been lighten’d, that scarce aught the sense of toil +Affects me journeying?” He in few replied: +“When sin’s broad characters, that yet remain +Upon thy temples, though well nigh effac’d, +Shall be, as one is, all clean razed out, +Then shall thy feet by heartiness of will +Be so o’ercome, they not alone shall feel +No sense of labour, but delight much more +Shall wait them urg’d along their upward way.” + +Then like to one, upon whose head is plac’d +Somewhat he deems not of but from the becks +Of others as they pass him by; his hand +Lends therefore help to’ assure him, searches, finds, +And well performs such office as the eye +Wants power to execute: so stretching forth +The fingers of my right hand, did I find +Six only of the letters, which his sword +Who bare the keys had trac’d upon my brow. +The leader, as he mark’d mine action, smil’d. + + + + +CANTO XIII + + +We reach’d the summit of the scale, and stood +Upon the second buttress of that mount +Which healeth him who climbs. A cornice there, +Like to the former, girdles round the hill; +Save that its arch with sweep less ample bends. + +Shadow nor image there is seen; all smooth +The rampart and the path, reflecting nought +But the rock’s sullen hue. “If here we wait +For some to question,” said the bard, “I fear +Our choice may haply meet too long delay.” + +Then fixedly upon the sun his eyes +He fastn’d, made his right the central point +From whence to move, and turn’d the left aside. +“O pleasant light, my confidence and hope, +Conduct us thou,” he cried, “on this new way, +Where now I venture, leading to the bourn +We seek. The universal world to thee +Owes warmth and lustre. If no other cause +Forbid, thy beams should ever be our guide.” + +Far, as is measur’d for a mile on earth, +In brief space had we journey’d; such prompt will +Impell’d; and towards us flying, now were heard +Spirits invisible, who courteously +Unto love’s table bade the welcome guest. +The voice, that firstlew by, call’d forth aloud, +“They have no wine;” so on behind us past, +Those sounds reiterating, nor yet lost +In the faint distance, when another came +Crying, “I am Orestes,” and alike +Wing’d its fleet way. “Oh father!” I exclaim’d, +“What tongues are these?” and as I question’d, lo! +A third exclaiming, “Love ye those have wrong’d you.” + +“This circuit,” said my teacher, “knots the scourge +For envy, and the cords are therefore drawn +By charity’s correcting hand. The curb +Is of a harsher sound, as thou shalt hear +(If I deem rightly), ere thou reach the pass, +Where pardon sets them free. But fix thine eyes +Intently through the air, and thou shalt see +A multitude before thee seated, each +Along the shelving grot.” Then more than erst +I op’d my eyes, before me view’d, and saw +Shadows with garments dark as was the rock; +And when we pass’d a little forth, I heard +A crying, “Blessed Mary! pray for us, +Michael and Peter! all ye saintly host!” + +I do not think there walks on earth this day +Man so remorseless, that he hath not yearn’d +With pity at the sight that next I saw. +Mine eyes a load of sorrow teemed, when now +I stood so near them, that their semblances +Came clearly to my view. Of sackcloth vile +Their cov’ring seem’d; and on his shoulder one +Did stay another, leaning, and all lean’d +Against the cliff. E’en thus the blind and poor, +Near the confessionals, to crave an alms, +Stand, each his head upon his fellow’s sunk, + +So most to stir compassion, not by sound +Of words alone, but that, which moves not less, +The sight of mis’ry. And as never beam +Of noonday visiteth the eyeless man, +E’en so was heav’n a niggard unto these +Of his fair light; for, through the orbs of all, +A thread of wire, impiercing, knits them up, +As for the taming of a haggard hawk. + +It were a wrong, methought, to pass and look +On others, yet myself the while unseen. +To my sage counsel therefore did I turn. +He knew the meaning of the mute appeal, +Nor waited for my questioning, but said: +“Speak; and be brief, be subtle in thy words.” + +On that part of the cornice, whence no rim +Engarlands its steep fall, did Virgil come; +On the’ other side me were the spirits, their cheeks +Bathing devout with penitential tears, +That through the dread impalement forc’d a way. + +I turn’d me to them, and “O shades!” said I, + +“Assur’d that to your eyes unveil’d shall shine +The lofty light, sole object of your wish, +So may heaven’s grace clear whatsoe’er of foam +Floats turbid on the conscience, that thenceforth +The stream of mind roll limpid from its source, +As ye declare (for so shall ye impart +A boon I dearly prize) if any soul +Of Latium dwell among ye; and perchance +That soul may profit, if I learn so much.” + +“My brother, we are each one citizens +Of one true city. Any thou wouldst say, +Who lived a stranger in Italia’s land.” + +So heard I answering, as appeal’d, a voice +That onward came some space from whence I stood. + +A spirit I noted, in whose look was mark’d +Expectance. Ask ye how? The chin was rais’d +As in one reft of sight. “Spirit,” said I, +“Who for thy rise are tutoring (if thou be +That which didst answer to me,) or by place +Or name, disclose thyself, that I may know thee.” + +“I was,” it answer’d, “of Sienna: here +I cleanse away with these the evil life, +Soliciting with tears that He, who is, +Vouchsafe him to us. Though Sapia nam’d +In sapience I excell’d not, gladder far +Of others’ hurt, than of the good befell me. +That thou mayst own I now deceive thee not, +Hear, if my folly were not as I speak it. +When now my years slop’d waning down the arch, +It so bechanc’d, my fellow citizens +Near Colle met their enemies in the field, +And I pray’d God to grant what He had will’d. +There were they vanquish’d, and betook themselves +Unto the bitter passages of flight. +I mark’d the hunt, and waxing out of bounds +In gladness, lifted up my shameless brow, +And like the merlin cheated by a gleam, +Cried, “It is over. Heav’n! fear thee not.” +Upon my verge of life I wish’d for peace +With God; nor repentance had supplied +What I did lack of duty, were it not +The hermit Piero, touch’d with charity, +In his devout orisons thought on me. +“But who art thou that question’st of our state, +Who go’st to my belief, with lids unclos’d, +And breathest in thy talk?”—“Mine eyes,” said I, +“May yet be here ta’en from me; but not long; +For they have not offended grievously +With envious glances. But the woe beneath +Urges my soul with more exceeding dread. +That nether load already weighs me down.” + +She thus: “Who then amongst us here aloft +Hath brought thee, if thou weenest to return?” + +“He,” answer’d I, “who standeth mute beside me. +I live: of me ask therefore, chosen spirit, +If thou desire I yonder yet should move +For thee my mortal feet.”—“Oh!” she replied, +“This is so strange a thing, it is great sign +That God doth love thee. Therefore with thy prayer +Sometime assist me: and by that I crave, +Which most thou covetest, that if thy feet +E’er tread on Tuscan soil, thou save my fame +Amongst my kindred. Them shalt thou behold +With that vain multitude, who set their hope +On Telamone’s haven, there to fail +Confounded, more shall when the fancied stream +They sought of Dian call’d: but they who lead +Their navies, more than ruin’d hopes shall mourn.” + + + + +CANTO XIV + + +“Say who is he around our mountain winds, +Or ever death has prun’d his wing for flight, +That opes his eyes and covers them at will?” + +“I know not who he is, but know thus much +He comes not singly. Do thou ask of him, +For thou art nearer to him, and take heed +Accost him gently, so that he may speak.” + +Thus on the right two Spirits bending each +Toward the other, talk’d of me, then both +Addressing me, their faces backward lean’d, +And thus the one began: “O soul, who yet +Pent in the body, tendest towards the sky! +For charity, we pray thee’ comfort us, +Recounting whence thou com’st, and who thou art: +For thou dost make us at the favour shown thee +Marvel, as at a thing that ne’er hath been.” + +“There stretches through the midst of Tuscany,” +I straight began: “a brooklet, whose well-head +Springs up in Falterona, with his race +Not satisfied, when he some hundred miles +Hath measur’d. From his banks bring, I this frame. +To tell you who I am were words misspent: +For yet my name scarce sounds on rumour’s lip.” + +“If well I do incorp’rate with my thought +The meaning of thy speech,” said he, who first +Addrest me, “thou dost speak of Arno’s wave.” + +To whom the other: “Why hath he conceal’d +The title of that river, as a man +Doth of some horrible thing?” The spirit, who +Thereof was question’d, did acquit him thus: +“I know not: but ’tis fitting well the name +Should perish of that vale; for from the source +Where teems so plenteously the Alpine steep +Maim’d of Pelorus, (that doth scarcely pass +Beyond that limit,) even to the point +Whereunto ocean is restor’d, what heaven +Drains from th’ exhaustless store for all earth’s streams, +Throughout the space is virtue worried down, +As ’twere a snake, by all, for mortal foe, +Or through disastrous influence on the place, +Or else distortion of misguided wills, +That custom goads to evil: whence in those, +The dwellers in that miserable vale, +Nature is so transform’d, it seems as they +Had shar’d of Circe’s feeding. ’Midst brute swine, +Worthier of acorns than of other food +Created for man’s use, he shapeth first +His obscure way; then, sloping onward, finds +Curs, snarlers more in spite than power, from whom +He turns with scorn aside: still journeying down, +By how much more the curst and luckless foss +Swells out to largeness, e’en so much it finds +Dogs turning into wolves. Descending still +Through yet more hollow eddies, next he meets +A race of foxes, so replete with craft, +They do not fear that skill can master it. +Nor will I cease because my words are heard +By other ears than thine. It shall be well +For this man, if he keep in memory +What from no erring Spirit I reveal. +Lo! behold thy grandson, that becomes +A hunter of those wolves, upon the shore +Of the fierce stream, and cows them all with dread: +Their flesh yet living sets he up to sale, +Then like an aged beast to slaughter dooms. +Many of life he reaves, himself of worth +And goodly estimation. Smear’d with gore +Mark how he issues from the rueful wood, +Leaving such havoc, that in thousand years +It spreads not to prime lustihood again.” + +As one, who tidings hears of woe to come, +Changes his looks perturb’d, from whate’er part +The peril grasp him, so beheld I change +That spirit, who had turn’d to listen, struck +With sadness, soon as he had caught the word. + +His visage and the other’s speech did raise Desire in me to know the +names of both, whereof with meek entreaty I inquir’d. + +The shade, who late addrest me, thus resum’d: +“Thy wish imports that I vouchsafe to do +For thy sake what thou wilt not do for mine. +But since God’s will is that so largely shine +His grace in thee, I will be liberal too. +Guido of Duca know then that I am. +Envy so parch’d my blood, that had I seen +A fellow man made joyous, thou hadst mark’d +A livid paleness overspread my cheek. +Such harvest reap I of the seed I sow’d. +O man, why place thy heart where there doth need +Exclusion of participants in good? +This is Rinieri’s spirit, this the boast +And honour of the house of Calboli, +Where of his worth no heritage remains. +Nor his the only blood, that hath been stript +(’twixt Po, the mount, the Reno, and the shore,) +Of all that truth or fancy asks for bliss; +But in those limits such a growth has sprung +Of rank and venom’d roots, as long would mock +Slow culture’s toil. Where is good Liziohere +Manardi, Traversalo, and Carpigna? +O bastard slips of old Romagna’s line! +When in Bologna the low artisan, +And in Faenza yon Bernardin sprouts, +A gentle cyon from ignoble stem. +Wonder not, Tuscan, if thou see me weep, +When I recall to mind those once lov’d names, +Guido of Prata, and of Azzo him +That dwelt with you; Tignoso and his troop, +With Traversaro’s house and Anastagio’s, +(Each race disherited) and beside these, +The ladies and the knights, the toils and ease, +That witch’d us into love and courtesy; +Where now such malice reigns in recreant hearts. +O Brettinoro! wherefore tarriest still, +Since forth of thee thy family hath gone, +And many, hating evil, join’d their steps? +Well doeth he, that bids his lineage cease, +Bagnacavallo; Castracaro ill, +And Conio worse, who care to propagate +A race of Counties from such blood as theirs. +Well shall ye also do, Pagani, then +When from amongst you tries your demon child. +Not so, howe’er, that henceforth there remain +True proof of what ye were. O Hugolin! +Thou sprung of Fantolini’s line! thy name +Is safe, since none is look’d for after thee +To cloud its lustre, warping from thy stock. +But, Tuscan, go thy ways; for now I take +Far more delight in weeping than in words. +Such pity for your sakes hath wrung my heart.” + +We knew those gentle spirits at parting heard +Our steps. Their silence therefore of our way +Assur’d us. Soon as we had quitted them, +Advancing onward, lo! a voice that seem’d +Like vollied light’ning, when it rives the air, +Met us, and shouted, “Whosoever finds +Will slay me,” then fled from us, as the bolt +Lanc’d sudden from a downward-rushing cloud. +When it had giv’n short truce unto our hearing, +Behold the other with a crash as loud +As the quick-following thunder: “Mark in me +Aglauros turn’d to rock.” I at the sound +Retreating drew more closely to my guide. + +Now in mute stillness rested all the air: +And thus he spake: “There was the galling bit. +But your old enemy so baits his hook, +He drags you eager to him. Hence nor curb +Avails you, nor reclaiming call. Heav’n calls +And round about you wheeling courts your gaze +With everlasting beauties. Yet your eye +Turns with fond doting still upon the earth. +Therefore He smites you who discerneth all.” + + + + +CANTO XV + + +As much as ’twixt the third hour’s close and dawn, +Appeareth of heav’n’s sphere, that ever whirls +As restless as an infant in his play, +So much appear’d remaining to the sun +Of his slope journey towards the western goal. + +Evening was there, and here the noon of night; +and full upon our forehead smote the beams. +For round the mountain, circling, so our path +Had led us, that toward the sun-set now +Direct we journey’d: when I felt a weight +Of more exceeding splendour, than before, +Press on my front. The cause unknown, amaze +Possess’d me, and both hands against my brow +Lifting, I interpos’d them, as a screen, +That of its gorgeous superflux of light +Clipp’d the diminish’d orb. As when the ray, +Striking On water or the surface clear +Of mirror, leaps unto the opposite part, +Ascending at a glance, e’en as it fell, +(And so much differs from the stone, that falls +Through equal space, as practice skill hath shown); +Thus with refracted light before me seemed +The ground there smitten; whence in sudden haste +My sight recoil’d. “What is this, sire belov’d! +’Gainst which I strive to shield the sight in vain?” +Cried I, “and which towards us moving seems?” + +“Marvel not, if the family of heav’n,” +He answer’d, “yet with dazzling radiance dim +Thy sense it is a messenger who comes, +Inviting man’s ascent. Such sights ere long, +Not grievous, shall impart to thee delight, +As thy perception is by nature wrought +Up to their pitch.” The blessed angel, soon +As we had reach’d him, hail’d us with glad voice: +“Here enter on a ladder far less steep +Than ye have yet encounter’d.” We forthwith +Ascending, heard behind us chanted sweet, +“Blessed the merciful,” and “happy thou! +That conquer’st.” Lonely each, my guide and I +Pursued our upward way; and as we went, +Some profit from his words I hop’d to win, +And thus of him inquiring, fram’d my speech: + +“What meant Romagna’s spirit, when he spake +Of bliss exclusive with no partner shar’d?” + +He straight replied: “No wonder, since he knows, +What sorrow waits on his own worst defect, +If he chide others, that they less may mourn. +Because ye point your wishes at a mark, +Where, by communion of possessors, part +Is lessen’d, envy bloweth up the sighs of men. +No fear of that might touch ye, if the love +Of higher sphere exalted your desire. +For there, by how much more they call it ours, +So much propriety of each in good +Increases more, and heighten’d charity +Wraps that fair cloister in a brighter flame.” + +“Now lack I satisfaction more,” said I, +“Than if thou hadst been silent at the first, +And doubt more gathers on my lab’ring thought. +How can it chance, that good distributed, +The many, that possess it, makes more rich, +Than if ’twere shar’d by few?” He answering thus: +“Thy mind, reverting still to things of earth, +Strikes darkness from true light. The highest good +Unlimited, ineffable, doth so speed +To love, as beam to lucid body darts, +Giving as much of ardour as it finds. +The sempiternal effluence streams abroad +Spreading, wherever charity extends. +So that the more aspirants to that bliss +Are multiplied, more good is there to love, +And more is lov’d; as mirrors, that reflect, +Each unto other, propagated light. +If these my words avail not to allay +Thy thirsting, Beatrice thou shalt see, +Who of this want, and of all else thou hast, +Shall rid thee to the full. Provide but thou +That from thy temples may be soon eras’d, +E’en as the two already, those five scars, +That when they pain thee worst, then kindliest heal,” + +“Thou,” I had said, “content’st me,” when I saw +The other round was gain’d, and wond’ring eyes +Did keep me mute. There suddenly I seem’d +By an ecstatic vision wrapt away; +And in a temple saw, methought, a crowd +Of many persons; and at th’ entrance stood +A dame, whose sweet demeanour did express +A mother’s love, who said, “Child! why hast thou +Dealt with us thus? Behold thy sire and I +Sorrowing have sought thee;” and so held her peace, +And straight the vision fled. A female next +Appear’d before me, down whose visage cours’d +Those waters, that grief forces out from one +By deep resentment stung, who seem’d to say: +“If thou, Pisistratus, be lord indeed +Over this city, nam’d with such debate +Of adverse gods, and whence each science sparkles, +Avenge thee of those arms, whose bold embrace +Hath clasp’d our daughter; “and to fuel, meseem’d, +Benign and meek, with visage undisturb’d, +Her sovran spake: “How shall we those requite, +Who wish us evil, if we thus condemn +The man that loves us?” After that I saw +A multitude, in fury burning, slay +With stones a stripling youth, and shout amain +“Destroy, destroy:” and him I saw, who bow’d +Heavy with death unto the ground, yet made +His eyes, unfolded upward, gates to heav’n, + +Praying forgiveness of th’ Almighty Sire, +Amidst that cruel conflict, on his foes, +With looks, that With compassion to their aim. + +Soon as my spirit, from her airy flight +Returning, sought again the things, whose truth +Depends not on her shaping, I observ’d +How she had rov’d to no unreal scenes + +Meanwhile the leader, who might see I mov’d, +As one, who struggles to shake off his sleep, +Exclaim’d: “What ails thee, that thou canst not hold +Thy footing firm, but more than half a league +Hast travel’d with clos’d eyes and tott’ring gait, +Like to a man by wine or sleep o’ercharg’d?” + +“Beloved father! so thou deign,” said I, +“To listen, I will tell thee what appear’d +Before me, when so fail’d my sinking steps.” + +He thus: “Not if thy Countenance were mask’d +With hundred vizards, could a thought of thine +How small soe’er, elude me. What thou saw’st +Was shown, that freely thou mightst ope thy heart +To the waters of peace, that flow diffus’d +From their eternal fountain. I not ask’d, +What ails theeor such cause as he doth, who +Looks only with that eye which sees no more, +When spiritless the body lies; but ask’d, +To give fresh vigour to thy foot. Such goads +The slow and loit’ring need; that they be found +Not wanting, when their hour of watch returns.” + +So on we journey’d through the evening sky +Gazing intent, far onward, as our eyes +With level view could stretch against the bright +Vespertine ray: and lo! by slow degrees +Gath’ring, a fog made tow’rds us, dark as night. +There was no room for ’scaping; and that mist +Bereft us, both of sight and the pure air. + + + + +CANTO XVI + + +Hell’s dunnest gloom, or night unlustrous, dark, +Of every planes ’reft, and pall’d in clouds, +Did never spread before the sight a veil +In thickness like that fog, nor to the sense +So palpable and gross. Ent’ring its shade, +Mine eye endured not with unclosed lids; +Which marking, near me drew the faithful guide, +Offering me his shoulder for a stay. + +As the blind man behind his leader walks, +Lest he should err, or stumble unawares +On what might harm him, or perhaps destroy, +I journey’d through that bitter air and foul, +Still list’ning to my escort’s warning voice, +“Look that from me thou part not.” Straight I heard +Voices, and each one seem’d to pray for peace, +And for compassion, to the Lamb of God +That taketh sins away. Their prelude still +Was “Agnus Dei,” and through all the choir, +One voice, one measure ran, that perfect seem’d +The concord of their song. “Are these I hear +Spirits, O master?” I exclaim’d; and he: +“Thou aim’st aright: these loose the bonds of wrath.” + +“Now who art thou, that through our smoke dost cleave? +And speak’st of us, as thou thyself e’en yet +Dividest time by calends?” So one voice +Bespake me; whence my master said: “Reply; +And ask, if upward hence the passage lead.” + +“O being! who dost make thee pure, to stand +Beautiful once more in thy Maker’s sight! +Along with me: and thou shalt hear and wonder.” +Thus I, whereto the spirit answering spake: + +“Long as ’tis lawful for me, shall my steps +Follow on thine; and since the cloudy smoke +Forbids the seeing, hearing in its stead +Shall keep us join’d.” I then forthwith began +“Yet in my mortal swathing, I ascend +To higher regions, and am hither come +Through the fearful agony of hell. +And, if so largely God hath doled his grace, +That, clean beside all modern precedent, +He wills me to behold his kingly state, +From me conceal not who thou wast, ere death +Had loos’d thee; but instruct me: and instruct +If rightly to the pass I tend; thy words +The way directing as a safe escort.” + +“I was of Lombardy, and Marco call’d: +Not inexperienc’d of the world, that worth +I still affected, from which all have turn’d +The nerveless bow aside. Thy course tends right +Unto the summit:” and, replying thus, +He added, “I beseech thee pray for me, +When thou shalt come aloft.” And I to him: +“Accept my faith for pledge I will perform +What thou requirest. Yet one doubt remains, +That wrings me sorely, if I solve it not, +Singly before it urg’d me, doubled now +By thine opinion, when I couple that +With one elsewhere declar’d, each strength’ning other. +The world indeed is even so forlorn +Of all good as thou speak’st it and so swarms +With every evil. Yet, beseech thee, point +The cause out to me, that myself may see, +And unto others show it: for in heaven +One places it, and one on earth below.” + +Then heaving forth a deep and audible sigh, +“Brother!” he thus began, “the world is blind; +And thou in truth com’st from it. Ye, who live, +Do so each cause refer to heav’n above, +E’en as its motion of necessity +Drew with it all that moves. If this were so, +Free choice in you were none; nor justice would +There should be joy for virtue, woe for ill. +Your movements have their primal bent from heaven; +Not all; yet said I all; what then ensues? +Light have ye still to follow evil or good, +And of the will free power, which, if it stand +Firm and unwearied in Heav’n’s first assay, +Conquers at last, so it be cherish’d well, +Triumphant over all. To mightier force, +To better nature subject, ye abide +Free, not constrain’d by that, which forms in you +The reasoning mind uninfluenc’d of the stars. +If then the present race of mankind err, +Seek in yourselves the cause, and find it there. +Herein thou shalt confess me no false spy. + +“Forth from his plastic hand, who charm’d beholds +Her image ere she yet exist, the soul +Comes like a babe, that wantons sportively +Weeping and laughing in its wayward moods, +As artless and as ignorant of aught, +Save that her Maker being one who dwells +With gladness ever, willingly she turns +To whate’er yields her joy. Of some slight good +The flavour soon she tastes; and, snar’d by that, +With fondness she pursues it, if no guide +Recall, no rein direct her wand’ring course. +Hence it behov’d, the law should be a curb; +A sovereign hence behov’d, whose piercing view +Might mark at least the fortress and main tower +Of the true city. Laws indeed there are: +But who is he observes them? None; not he, +Who goes before, the shepherd of the flock, +Who chews the cud but doth not cleave the hoof. +Therefore the multitude, who see their guide +Strike at the very good they covet most, +Feed there and look no further. Thus the cause +Is not corrupted nature in yourselves, +But ill-conducting, that hath turn’d the world +To evil. Rome, that turn’d it unto good, +Was wont to boast two suns, whose several beams +Cast light on either way, the world’s and God’s. +One since hath quench’d the other; and the sword +Is grafted on the crook; and so conjoin’d +Each must perforce decline to worse, unaw’d +By fear of other. If thou doubt me, mark +The blade: each herb is judg’d of by its seed. +That land, through which Adice and the Po +Their waters roll, was once the residence +Of courtesy and velour, ere the day, +That frown’d on Frederick; now secure may pass +Those limits, whosoe’er hath left, for shame, +To talk with good men, or come near their haunts. +Three aged ones are still found there, in whom +The old time chides the new: these deem it long +Ere God restore them to a better world: +The good Gherardo, of Palazzo he +Conrad, and Guido of Castello, nam’d +In Gallic phrase more fitly the plain Lombard. +On this at last conclude. The church of Rome, +Mixing two governments that ill assort, +Hath miss’d her footing, fall’n into the mire, +And there herself and burden much defil’d.” + +“O Marco!” I replied, shine arguments +Convince me: and the cause I now discern +Why of the heritage no portion came +To Levi’s offspring. But resolve me this +Who that Gherardo is, that as thou sayst +Is left a sample of the perish’d race, +And for rebuke to this untoward age?” + +“Either thy words,” said he, “deceive; or else +Are meant to try me; that thou, speaking Tuscan, +Appear’st not to have heard of good Gherado; +The sole addition that, by which I know him; +Unless I borrow’d from his daughter Gaia +Another name to grace him. God be with you. +I bear you company no more. Behold +The dawn with white ray glimm’ring through the mist. +I must away—the angel comes—ere he +Appear.” He said, and would not hear me more. + + + + +CANTO XVII + + +Call to remembrance, reader, if thou e’er +Hast, on a mountain top, been ta’en by cloud, +Through which thou saw’st no better, than the mole +Doth through opacous membrane; then, whene’er +The wat’ry vapours dense began to melt +Into thin air, how faintly the sun’s sphere +Seem’d wading through them; so thy nimble thought +May image, how at first I re-beheld +The sun, that bedward now his couch o’erhung. + +Thus with my leader’s feet still equaling pace +From forth that cloud I came, when now expir’d +The parting beams from off the nether shores. + +O quick and forgetive power! that sometimes dost +So rob us of ourselves, we take no mark +Though round about us thousand trumpets clang! +What moves thee, if the senses stir not? Light +Kindled in heav’n, spontaneous, self-inform’d, +Or likelier gliding down with swift illapse +By will divine. Portray’d before me came +The traces of her dire impiety, +Whose form was chang’d into the bird, that most +Delights itself in song: and here my mind +Was inwardly so wrapt, it gave no place +To aught that ask’d admittance from without. + +Next shower’d into my fantasy a shape +As of one crucified, whose visage spake +Fell rancour, malice deep, wherein he died; +And round him Ahasuerus the great king, +Esther his bride, and Mordecai the just, +Blameless in word and deed. As of itself +That unsubstantial coinage of the brain +Burst, like a bubble, Which the water fails +That fed it; in my vision straight uprose +A damsel weeping loud, and cried, “O queen! +O mother! wherefore has intemperate ire +Driv’n thee to loath thy being? Not to lose +Lavinia, desp’rate thou hast slain thyself. +Now hast thou lost me. I am she, whose tears +Mourn, ere I fall, a mother’s timeless end.” + +E’en as a sleep breaks off, if suddenly +New radiance strike upon the closed lids, +The broken slumber quivering ere it dies; +Thus from before me sunk that imagery +Vanishing, soon as on my face there struck +The light, outshining far our earthly beam. +As round I turn’d me to survey what place +I had arriv’d at, “Here ye mount,” exclaim’d +A voice, that other purpose left me none, +Save will so eager to behold who spake, +I could not choose but gaze. As ’fore the sun, +That weighs our vision down, and veils his form +In light transcendent, thus my virtue fail’d +Unequal. “This is Spirit from above, +Who marshals us our upward way, unsought; +And in his own light shrouds him. As a man +Doth for himself, so now is done for us. +For whoso waits imploring, yet sees need +Of his prompt aidance, sets himself prepar’d +For blunt denial, ere the suit be made. +Refuse we not to lend a ready foot +At such inviting: haste we to ascend, +Before it darken: for we may not then, +Till morn again return.” So spake my guide; +And to one ladder both address’d our steps; +And the first stair approaching, I perceiv’d +Near me as ’twere the waving of a wing, +That fann’d my face and whisper’d: “Blessed they +The peacemakers: they know not evil wrath.” + +Now to such height above our heads were rais’d +The last beams, follow’d close by hooded night, +That many a star on all sides through the gloom +Shone out. “Why partest from me, O my strength?” +So with myself I commun’d; for I felt +My o’ertoil’d sinews slacken. We had reach’d +The summit, and were fix’d like to a bark +Arriv’d at land. And waiting a short space, +If aught should meet mine ear in that new round, +Then to my guide I turn’d, and said: “Lov’d sire! +Declare what guilt is on this circle purg’d. +If our feet rest, no need thy speech should pause.” + +He thus to me: “The love of good, whate’er +Wanted of just proportion, here fulfils. +Here plies afresh the oar, that loiter’d ill. +But that thou mayst yet clearlier understand, +Give ear unto my words, and thou shalt cull +Some fruit may please thee well, from this delay. + +“Creator, nor created being, ne’er, +My son,” he thus began, “was without love, +Or natural, or the free spirit’s growth. +Thou hast not that to learn. The natural still +Is without error; but the other swerves, +If on ill object bent, or through excess +Of vigour, or defect. While e’er it seeks +The primal blessings, or with measure due +Th’ inferior, no delight, that flows from it, +Partakes of ill. But let it warp to evil, +Or with more ardour than behooves, or less. +Pursue the good, the thing created then +Works ’gainst its Maker. Hence thou must infer +That love is germin of each virtue in ye, +And of each act no less, that merits pain. +Now since it may not be, but love intend +The welfare mainly of the thing it loves, +All from self-hatred are secure; and since +No being can be thought t’ exist apart +And independent of the first, a bar +Of equal force restrains from hating that. + +“Grant the distinction just; and it remains +The’ evil must be another’s, which is lov’d. +Three ways such love is gender’d in your clay. +There is who hopes (his neighbour’s worth deprest,) +Preeminence himself, and coverts hence +For his own greatness that another fall. +There is who so much fears the loss of power, +Fame, favour, glory (should his fellow mount +Above him), and so sickens at the thought, +He loves their opposite: and there is he, +Whom wrong or insult seems to gall and shame +That he doth thirst for vengeance, and such needs +Must doat on other’s evil. Here beneath +This threefold love is mourn’d. Of th’ other sort +Be now instructed, that which follows good +But with disorder’d and irregular course. + +“All indistinctly apprehend a bliss +On which the soul may rest, the hearts of all +Yearn after it, and to that wished bourn +All therefore strive to tend. If ye behold +Or seek it with a love remiss and lax, +This cornice after just repenting lays +Its penal torment on ye. Other good +There is, where man finds not his happiness: +It is not true fruition, not that blest +Essence, of every good the branch and root. +The love too lavishly bestow’d on this, +Along three circles over us, is mourn’d. +Account of that division tripartite +Expect not, fitter for thine own research.” + + + + +CANTO XVIII + + +The teacher ended, and his high discourse +Concluding, earnest in my looks inquir’d +If I appear’d content; and I, whom still +Unsated thirst to hear him urg’d, was mute, +Mute outwardly, yet inwardly I said: +“Perchance my too much questioning offends” +But he, true father, mark’d the secret wish +By diffidence restrain’d, and speaking, gave +Me boldness thus to speak: ‘Master, my Sight +Gathers so lively virtue from thy beams, +That all, thy words convey, distinct is seen. +Wherefore I pray thee, father, whom this heart +Holds dearest! thou wouldst deign by proof t’ unfold +That love, from which as from their source thou bring’st +All good deeds and their opposite.’” He then: +“To what I now disclose be thy clear ken +Directed, and thou plainly shalt behold +How much those blind have err’d, who make themselves +The guides of men. The soul, created apt +To love, moves versatile which way soe’er +Aught pleasing prompts her, soon as she is wak’d +By pleasure into act. Of substance true +Your apprehension forms its counterfeit, +And in you the ideal shape presenting +Attracts the soul’s regard. If she, thus drawn, +incline toward it, love is that inclining, +And a new nature knit by pleasure in ye. +Then as the fire points up, and mounting seeks +His birth-place and his lasting seat, e’en thus +Enters the captive soul into desire, +Which is a spiritual motion, that ne’er rests +Before enjoyment of the thing it loves. +Enough to show thee, how the truth from those +Is hidden, who aver all love a thing +Praise-worthy in itself: although perhaps +Its substance seem still good. Yet if the wax +Be good, it follows not th’ impression must.” +“What love is,” I return’d, “thy words, O guide! +And my own docile mind, reveal. Yet thence +New doubts have sprung. For from without if love +Be offer’d to us, and the spirit knows +No other footing, tend she right or wrong, +Is no desert of hers.” He answering thus: +“What reason here discovers I have power +To show thee: that which lies beyond, expect +From Beatrice, faith not reason’s task. +Spirit, substantial form, with matter join’d +Not in confusion mix’d, hath in itself +Specific virtue of that union born, +Which is not felt except it work, nor prov’d +But through effect, as vegetable life +By the green leaf. From whence his intellect +Deduced its primal notices of things, +Man therefore knows not, or his appetites +Their first affections; such in you, as zeal +In bees to gather honey; at the first, +Volition, meriting nor blame nor praise. +But o’er each lower faculty supreme, +That as she list are summon’d to her bar, +Ye have that virtue in you, whose just voice +Uttereth counsel, and whose word should keep +The threshold of assent. Here is the source, +Whence cause of merit in you is deriv’d, +E’en as the affections good or ill she takes, +Or severs, winnow’d as the chaff. Those men +Who reas’ning went to depth profoundest, mark’d +That innate freedom, and were thence induc’d +To leave their moral teaching to the world. +Grant then, that from necessity arise +All love that glows within you; to dismiss +Or harbour it, the pow’r is in yourselves. +Remember, Beatrice, in her style, +Denominates free choice by eminence +The noble virtue, if in talk with thee +She touch upon that theme.” The moon, well nigh +To midnight hour belated, made the stars +Appear to wink and fade; and her broad disk +Seem’d like a crag on fire, as up the vault +That course she journey’d, which the sun then warms, +When they of Rome behold him at his set. +Betwixt Sardinia and the Corsic isle. +And now the weight, that hung upon my thought, +Was lighten’d by the aid of that clear spirit, +Who raiseth Andes above Mantua’s name. +I therefore, when my questions had obtain’d +Solution plain and ample, stood as one +Musing in dreary slumber; but not long +Slumber’d; for suddenly a multitude, + +The steep already turning, from behind, +Rush’d on. With fury and like random rout, +As echoing on their shores at midnight heard +Ismenus and Asopus, for his Thebes +If Bacchus’ help were needed; so came these +Tumultuous, curving each his rapid step, +By eagerness impell’d of holy love. + +Soon they o’ertook us; with such swiftness mov’d +The mighty crowd. Two spirits at their head +Cried weeping; “Blessed Mary sought with haste +The hilly region. Caesar to subdue +Ilerda, darted in Marseilles his sting, +And flew to Spain.”—“Oh tarry not: away;” +The others shouted; “let not time be lost +Through slackness of affection. Hearty zeal +To serve reanimates celestial grace.” + +“O ye, in whom intenser fervency +Haply supplies, where lukewarm erst ye fail’d, +Slow or neglectful, to absolve your part +Of good and virtuous, this man, who yet lives, +(Credit my tale, though strange) desires t’ ascend, +So morning rise to light us. Therefore say +Which hand leads nearest to the rifted rock?” + +So spake my guide, to whom a shade return’d: +“Come after us, and thou shalt find the cleft. +We may not linger: such resistless will +Speeds our unwearied course. Vouchsafe us then +Thy pardon, if our duty seem to thee +Discourteous rudeness. In Verona I +Was abbot of San Zeno, when the hand +Of Barbarossa grasp’d Imperial sway, +That name, ne’er utter’d without tears in Milan. +And there is he, hath one foot in his grave, +Who for that monastery ere long shall weep, +Ruing his power misus’d: for that his son, +Of body ill compact, and worse in mind, +And born in evil, he hath set in place +Of its true pastor.” Whether more he spake, +Or here was mute, I know not: he had sped +E’en now so far beyond us. Yet thus much +I heard, and in rememb’rance treasur’d it. + +He then, who never fail’d me at my need, +Cried, “Hither turn. Lo! two with sharp remorse +Chiding their sin!” In rear of all the troop +These shouted: “First they died, to whom the sea +Open’d, or ever Jordan saw his heirs: +And they, who with Aeneas to the end +Endur’d not suffering, for their portion chose +Life without glory.” Soon as they had fled +Past reach of sight, new thought within me rose +By others follow’d fast, and each unlike +Its fellow: till led on from thought to thought, +And pleasur’d with the fleeting train, mine eye +Was clos’d, and meditation chang’d to dream. + + + + +CANTO XIX + + +It was the hour, when of diurnal heat +No reliques chafe the cold beams of the moon, +O’erpower’d by earth, or planetary sway +Of Saturn; and the geomancer sees +His Greater Fortune up the east ascend, +Where gray dawn checkers first the shadowy cone; +When ’fore me in my dream a woman’s shape +There came, with lips that stammer’d, eyes aslant, +Distorted feet, hands maim’d, and colour pale. + +I look’d upon her; and as sunshine cheers +Limbs numb’d by nightly cold, e’en thus my look +Unloos’d her tongue, next in brief space her form +Decrepit rais’d erect, and faded face +With love’s own hue illum’d. Recov’ring speech +She forthwith warbling such a strain began, +That I, how loth soe’er, could scarce have held +Attention from the song. “I,” thus she sang, +“I am the Siren, she, whom mariners +On the wide sea are wilder’d when they hear: +Such fulness of delight the list’ner feels. +I from his course Ulysses by my lay +Enchanted drew. Whoe’er frequents me once +Parts seldom; so I charm him, and his heart +Contented knows no void.” Or ere her mouth +Was clos’d, to shame her at her side appear’d +A dame of semblance holy. With stern voice +She utter’d; “Say, O Virgil, who is this?” +Which hearing, he approach’d, with eyes still bent +Toward that goodly presence: th’ other seiz’d her, +And, her robes tearing, open’d her before, +And show’d the belly to me, whence a smell, +Exhaling loathsome, wak’d me. Round I turn’d +Mine eyes, and thus the teacher: “At the least +Three times my voice hath call’d thee. Rise, begone. +Let us the opening find where thou mayst pass.” + +I straightway rose. Now day, pour’d down from high, +Fill’d all the circuits of the sacred mount; +And, as we journey’d, on our shoulder smote +The early ray. I follow’d, stooping low +My forehead, as a man, o’ercharg’d with thought, +Who bends him to the likeness of an arch, +That midway spans the flood; when thus I heard, +“Come, enter here,” in tone so soft and mild, +As never met the ear on mortal strand. + +With swan-like wings dispread and pointing up, +Who thus had spoken marshal’d us along, +Where each side of the solid masonry +The sloping, walls retir’d; then mov’d his plumes, +And fanning us, affirm’d that those, who mourn, +Are blessed, for that comfort shall be theirs. + +“What aileth thee, that still thou look’st to earth?” +Began my leader; while th’ angelic shape +A little over us his station took. + +“New vision,” I replied, “hath rais’d in me +Surmisings strange and anxious doubts, whereon +My soul intent allows no other thought +Or room or entrance.”—“Hast thou seen,” said he, +“That old enchantress, her, whose wiles alone +The spirits o’er us weep for? Hast thou seen +How man may free him of her bonds? Enough. +Let thy heels spurn the earth, and thy rais’d ken +Fix on the lure, which heav’n’s eternal King +Whirls in the rolling spheres.” As on his feet +The falcon first looks down, then to the sky +Turns, and forth stretches eager for the food, +That woos him thither; so the call I heard, +So onward, far as the dividing rock +Gave way, I journey’d, till the plain was reach’d. + +On the fifth circle when I stood at large, +A race appear’d before me, on the ground +All downward lying prone and weeping sore. +“My soul hath cleaved to the dust,” I heard +With sighs so deep, they well nigh choak’d the words. +“O ye elect of God, whose penal woes +Both hope and justice mitigate, direct +Tow’rds the steep rising our uncertain way.” + +“If ye approach secure from this our doom, +Prostration—and would urge your course with speed, +See that ye still to rightward keep the brink.” + +So them the bard besought; and such the words, +Beyond us some short space, in answer came. + +I noted what remain’d yet hidden from them: +Thence to my liege’s eyes mine eyes I bent, +And he, forthwith interpreting their suit, +Beckon’d his glad assent. Free then to act, +As pleas’d me, I drew near, and took my stand +O`er that shade, whose words I late had mark’d. +And, “Spirit!” I said, “in whom repentant tears +Mature that blessed hour, when thou with God +Shalt find acceptance, for a while suspend +For me that mightier care. Say who thou wast, +Why thus ye grovel on your bellies prone, +And if in aught ye wish my service there, +Whence living I am come.” He answering spake +“The cause why Heav’n our back toward his cope +Reverses, shalt thou know: but me know first +The successor of Peter, and the name +And title of my lineage from that stream, +That’ twixt Chiaveri and Siestri draws +His limpid waters through the lowly glen. +A month and little more by proof I learnt, +With what a weight that robe of sov’reignty +Upon his shoulder rests, who from the mire +Would guard it: that each other fardel seems +But feathers in the balance. Late, alas! +Was my conversion: but when I became +Rome’s pastor, I discern’d at once the dream +And cozenage of life, saw that the heart +Rested not there, and yet no prouder height +Lur’d on the climber: wherefore, of that life +No more enamour’d, in my bosom love +Of purer being kindled. For till then +I was a soul in misery, alienate +From God, and covetous of all earthly things; +Now, as thou seest, here punish’d for my doting. +Such cleansing from the taint of avarice +Do spirits converted need. This mount inflicts +No direr penalty. E’en as our eyes +Fasten’d below, nor e’er to loftier clime +Were lifted, thus hath justice level’d us +Here on the earth. As avarice quench’d our love +Of good, without which is no working, thus +Here justice holds us prison’d, hand and foot +Chain’d down and bound, while heaven’s just Lord shall please. +So long to tarry motionless outstretch’d.” + +My knees I stoop’d, and would have spoke; but he, +Ere my beginning, by his ear perceiv’d +I did him reverence; and “What cause,” said he, +“Hath bow’d thee thus!”—“Compunction,” I rejoin’d. +“And inward awe of your high dignity.” + +“Up,” he exclaim’d, “brother! upon thy feet +Arise: err not: thy fellow servant I, +(Thine and all others’) of one Sovran Power. +If thou hast ever mark’d those holy sounds +Of gospel truth, ‘nor shall be given ill marriage,’ +Thou mayst discern the reasons of my speech. +Go thy ways now; and linger here no more. +Thy tarrying is a let unto the tears, +With which I hasten that whereof thou spak’st. +I have on earth a kinswoman; her name +Alagia, worthy in herself, so ill +Example of our house corrupt her not: +And she is all remaineth of me there.” + + + + +CANTO XX + + +Ill strives the will, ’gainst will more wise that strives +His pleasure therefore to mine own preferr’d, +I drew the sponge yet thirsty from the wave. + +Onward I mov’d: he also onward mov’d, +Who led me, coasting still, wherever place +Along the rock was vacant, as a man +Walks near the battlements on narrow wall. +For those on th’ other part, who drop by drop +Wring out their all-infecting malady, +Too closely press the verge. Accurst be thou! +Inveterate wolf! whose gorge ingluts more prey, +Than every beast beside, yet is not fill’d! +So bottomless thy maw!—Ye spheres of heaven! +To whom there are, as seems, who attribute +All change in mortal state, when is the day +Of his appearing, for whom fate reserves +To chase her hence?—With wary steps and slow +We pass’d; and I attentive to the shades, +Whom piteously I heard lament and wail; + +And, ’midst the wailing, one before us heard +Cry out “O blessed Virgin!” as a dame +In the sharp pangs of childbed; and “How poor +Thou wast,” it added, “witness that low roof +Where thou didst lay thy sacred burden down. +O good Fabricius! thou didst virtue choose +With poverty, before great wealth with vice.” + +The words so pleas’d me, that desire to know +The spirit, from whose lip they seem’d to come, +Did draw me onward. Yet it spake the gift +Of Nicholas, which on the maidens he +Bounteous bestow’d, to save their youthful prime +Unblemish’d. “Spirit! who dost speak of deeds +So worthy, tell me who thou was,” I said, +“And why thou dost with single voice renew +Memorial of such praise. That boon vouchsaf’d +Haply shall meet reward; if I return +To finish the Short pilgrimage of life, +Still speeding to its close on restless wing.” + +“I,” answer’d he, “will tell thee, not for hell, +Which thence I look for; but that in thyself +Grace so exceeding shines, before thy time +Of mortal dissolution. I was root +Of that ill plant, whose shade such poison sheds +O’er all the Christian land, that seldom thence +Good fruit is gather’d. Vengeance soon should come, +Had Ghent and Douay, Lille and Bruges power; +And vengeance I of heav’n’s great Judge implore. +Hugh Capet was I high: from me descend +The Philips and the Louis, of whom France +Newly is govern’d; born of one, who ply’d +The slaughterer’s trade at Paris. When the race +Of ancient kings had vanish’d (all save one +Wrapt up in sable weeds) within my gripe +I found the reins of empire, and such powers +Of new acquirement, with full store of friends, +That soon the widow’d circlet of the crown +Was girt upon the temples of my son, +He, from whose bones th’ anointed race begins. +Till the great dower of Provence had remov’d +The stains, that yet obscur’d our lowly blood, +Its sway indeed was narrow, but howe’er +It wrought no evil: there, with force and lies, +Began its rapine; after, for amends, +Poitou it seiz’d, Navarre and Gascony. +To Italy came Charles, and for amends +Young Conradine an innocent victim slew, +And sent th’ angelic teacher back to heav’n, +Still for amends. I see the time at hand, +That forth from France invites another Charles +To make himself and kindred better known. +Unarm’d he issues, saving with that lance, +Which the arch-traitor tilted with; and that +He carries with so home a thrust, as rives +The bowels of poor Florence. No increase +Of territory hence, but sin and shame +Shall be his guerdon, and so much the more +As he more lightly deems of such foul wrong. +I see the other, who a prisoner late +Had steps on shore, exposing to the mart +His daughter, whom he bargains for, as do +The Corsairs for their slaves. O avarice! +What canst thou more, who hast subdued our blood +So wholly to thyself, they feel no care +Of their own flesh? To hide with direr guilt +Past ill and future, lo! the flower-de-luce +Enters Alagna! in his Vicar Christ +Himself a captive, and his mockery +Acted again! Lo! to his holy lip +The vinegar and gall once more applied! +And he ’twixt living robbers doom’d to bleed! +Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty +Such violence cannot fill the measure up, +With no degree to sanction, pushes on +Into the temple his yet eager sails! + +“O sovran Master! when shall I rejoice +To see the vengeance, which thy wrath well-pleas’d +In secret silence broods?—While daylight lasts, +So long what thou didst hear of her, sole spouse +Of the Great Spirit, and on which thou turn’dst +To me for comment, is the general theme +Of all our prayers: but when it darkens, then +A different strain we utter, then record +Pygmalion, whom his gluttonous thirst of gold +Made traitor, robber, parricide: the woes +Of Midas, which his greedy wish ensued, +Mark’d for derision to all future times: +And the fond Achan, how he stole the prey, +That yet he seems by Joshua’s ire pursued. +Sapphira with her husband next, we blame; +And praise the forefeet, that with furious ramp +Spurn’d Heliodorus. All the mountain round +Rings with the infamy of Thracia’s king, +Who slew his Phrygian charge: and last a shout +Ascends: “Declare, O Crassus! for thou know’st, +The flavour of thy gold.” The voice of each +Now high now low, as each his impulse prompts, +Is led through many a pitch, acute or grave. +Therefore, not singly, I erewhile rehears’d +That blessedness we tell of in the day: +But near me none beside his accent rais’d.” + +From him we now had parted, and essay’d +With utmost efforts to surmount the way, +When I did feel, as nodding to its fall, +The mountain tremble; whence an icy chill +Seiz’d on me, as on one to death convey’d. +So shook not Delos, when Latona there +Couch’d to bring forth the twin-born eyes of heaven. + +Forthwith from every side a shout arose +So vehement, that suddenly my guide +Drew near, and cried: “Doubt not, while I conduct thee.” +“Glory!” all shouted (such the sounds mine ear +Gather’d from those, who near me swell’d the sounds) +“Glory in the highest be to God.” We stood +Immovably suspended, like to those, +The shepherds, who first heard in Bethlehem’s field +That song: till ceas’d the trembling, and the song +Was ended: then our hallow’d path resum’d, +Eying the prostrate shadows, who renew’d +Their custom’d mourning. Never in my breast +Did ignorance so struggle with desire +Of knowledge, if my memory do not err, +As in that moment; nor through haste dar’d I +To question, nor myself could aught discern, +So on I far’d in thoughtfulness and dread. + + + + +CANTO XXI + + +The natural thirst, ne’er quench’d but from the well, +Whereof the woman of Samaria crav’d, +Excited: haste along the cumber’d path, +After my guide, impell’d; and pity mov’d +My bosom for the ’vengeful deed, though just. +When lo! even as Luke relates, that Christ +Appear’d unto the two upon their way, +New-risen from his vaulted grave; to us +A shade appear’d, and after us approach’d, +Contemplating the crowd beneath its feet. +We were not ware of it; so first it spake, +Saying, “God give you peace, my brethren!” then +Sudden we turn’d: and Virgil such salute, +As fitted that kind greeting, gave, and cried: +“Peace in the blessed council be thy lot +Awarded by that righteous court, which me +To everlasting banishment exiles!” + +“How!” he exclaim’d, nor from his speed meanwhile +Desisting, “If that ye be spirits, whom God +Vouchsafes not room above, who up the height +Has been thus far your guide?” To whom the bard: +“If thou observe the tokens, which this man +Trac’d by the finger of the angel bears, +’Tis plain that in the kingdom of the just +He needs must share. But sithence she, whose wheel +Spins day and night, for him not yet had drawn +That yarn, which, on the fatal distaff pil’d, +Clotho apportions to each wight that breathes, +His soul, that sister is to mine and thine, +Not of herself could mount, for not like ours +Her ken: whence I, from forth the ample gulf +Of hell was ta’en, to lead him, and will lead +Far as my lore avails. But, if thou know, +Instruct us for what cause, the mount erewhile +Thus shook and trembled: wherefore all at once +Seem’d shouting, even from his wave-wash’d foot.” + +That questioning so tallied with my wish, +The thirst did feel abatement of its edge +E’en from expectance. He forthwith replied, +“In its devotion nought irregular +This mount can witness, or by punctual rule +Unsanction’d; here from every change exempt. +Other than that, which heaven in itself +Doth of itself receive, no influence +Can reach us. Tempest none, shower, hail or snow, +Hoar frost or dewy moistness, higher falls +Than that brief scale of threefold steps: thick clouds +Nor scudding rack are ever seen: swift glance +Ne’er lightens, nor Thaumantian Iris gleams, +That yonder often shift on each side heav’n. +Vapour adust doth never mount above +The highest of the trinal stairs, whereon +Peter’s vicegerent stands. Lower perchance, +With various motion rock’d, trembles the soil: +But here, through wind in earth’s deep hollow pent, +I know not how, yet never trembled: then +Trembles, when any spirit feels itself +So purified, that it may rise, or move +For rising, and such loud acclaim ensues. +Purification by the will alone +Is prov’d, that free to change society +Seizes the soul rejoicing in her will. +Desire of bliss is present from the first; +But strong propension hinders, to that wish +By the just ordinance of heav’n oppos’d; +Propension now as eager to fulfil +Th’ allotted torment, as erewhile to sin. +And I who in this punishment had lain +Five hundred years and more, but now have felt +Free wish for happier clime. Therefore thou felt’st +The mountain tremble, and the spirits devout +Heard’st, over all his limits, utter praise +To that liege Lord, whom I entreat their joy +To hasten.” Thus he spake: and since the draught +Is grateful ever as the thirst is keen, +No words may speak my fullness of content. + +“Now,” said the instructor sage, “I see the net +That takes ye here, and how the toils are loos’d, +Why rocks the mountain and why ye rejoice. +Vouchsafe, that from thy lips I next may learn, +Who on the earth thou wast, and wherefore here +So many an age wert prostrate.”—“In that time, +When the good Titus, with Heav’n’s King to help, +Aveng’d those piteous gashes, whence the blood +By Judas sold did issue, with the name +Most lasting and most honour’d there was I +Abundantly renown’d,” the shade reply’d, +“Not yet with faith endued. So passing sweet +My vocal Spirit, from Tolosa, Rome +To herself drew me, where I merited +A myrtle garland to inwreathe my brow. +Statius they name me still. Of Thebes I sang, +And next of great Achilles: but i’ th’ way +Fell with the second burthen. Of my flame +Those sparkles were the seeds, which I deriv’d +From the bright fountain of celestial fire +That feeds unnumber’d lamps, the song I mean +Which sounds Aeneas’ wand’rings: that the breast +I hung at, that the nurse, from whom my veins +Drank inspiration: whose authority +Was ever sacred with me. To have liv’d +Coeval with the Mantuan, I would bide +The revolution of another sun +Beyond my stated years in banishment.” + +The Mantuan, when he heard him, turn’d to me, +And holding silence: by his countenance +Enjoin’d me silence but the power which wills, +Bears not supreme control: laughter and tears +Follow so closely on the passion prompts them, +They wait not for the motions of the will +In natures most sincere. I did but smile, +As one who winks; and thereupon the shade +Broke off, and peer’d into mine eyes, where best +Our looks interpret. “So to good event +Mayst thou conduct such great emprize,” he cried, +“Say, why across thy visage beam’d, but now, +The lightning of a smile!” On either part +Now am I straiten’d; one conjures me speak, +Th’ other to silence binds me: whence a sigh +I utter, and the sigh is heard. “Speak on;” +The teacher cried; “and do not fear to speak, +But tell him what so earnestly he asks.” +Whereon I thus: “Perchance, O ancient spirit! +Thou marvel’st at my smiling. There is room +For yet more wonder. He who guides my ken +On high, he is that Mantuan, led by whom +Thou didst presume of men and gods to sing. +If other cause thou deem’dst for which I smil’d, +Leave it as not the true one; and believe +Those words, thou spak’st of him, indeed the cause.” + +Now down he bent t’ embrace my teacher’s feet; +But he forbade him: “Brother! do it not: +Thou art a shadow, and behold’st a shade.” +He rising answer’d thus: “Now hast thou prov’d +The force and ardour of the love I bear thee, +When I forget we are but things of air, +And as a substance treat an empty shade.” + + + + +CANTO XXII + + +Now we had left the angel, who had turn’d +To the sixth circle our ascending step, +One gash from off my forehead raz’d: while they, +Whose wishes tend to justice, shouted forth: +“Blessed!” and ended with, “I thirst:” and I, +More nimble than along the other straits, +So journey’d, that, without the sense of toil, +I follow’d upward the swift-footed shades; +When Virgil thus began: “Let its pure flame +From virtue flow, and love can never fail +To warm another’s bosom’ so the light +Shine manifestly forth. Hence from that hour, +When ’mongst us in the purlieus of the deep, +Came down the spirit of Aquinum’s hard, +Who told of thine affection, my good will +Hath been for thee of quality as strong +As ever link’d itself to one not seen. +Therefore these stairs will now seem short to me. +But tell me: and if too secure I loose +The rein with a friend’s license, as a friend +Forgive me, and speak now as with a friend: +How chanc’d it covetous desire could find +Place in that bosom, ’midst such ample store +Of wisdom, as thy zeal had treasur’d there?” + +First somewhat mov’d to laughter by his words, +Statius replied: “Each syllable of thine +Is a dear pledge of love. Things oft appear +That minister false matters to our doubts, +When their true causes are remov’d from sight. +Thy question doth assure me, thou believ’st +I was on earth a covetous man, perhaps +Because thou found’st me in that circle plac’d. +Know then I was too wide of avarice: +And e’en for that excess, thousands of moons +Have wax’d and wan’d upon my sufferings. +And were it not that I with heedful care +Noted where thou exclaim’st as if in ire +With human nature, ‘Why, thou cursed thirst +Of gold! dost not with juster measure guide +The appetite of mortals?’ I had met +The fierce encounter of the voluble rock. +Then was I ware that with too ample wing +The hands may haste to lavishment, and turn’d, +As from my other evil, so from this +In penitence. How many from their grave +Shall with shorn locks arise, who living, aye +And at life’s last extreme, of this offence, +Through ignorance, did not repent. And know, +The fault which lies direct from any sin +In level opposition, here With that +Wastes its green rankness on one common heap. +Therefore if I have been with those, who wail +Their avarice, to cleanse me, through reverse +Of their transgression, such hath been my lot.” + +To whom the sovran of the pastoral song: +“While thou didst sing that cruel warfare wag’d +By the twin sorrow of Jocasta’s womb, +From thy discourse with Clio there, it seems +As faith had not been shine: without the which +Good deeds suffice not. And if so, what sun +Rose on thee, or what candle pierc’d the dark +That thou didst after see to hoist the sail, +And follow, where the fisherman had led?” + +He answering thus: “By thee conducted first, +I enter’d the Parnassian grots, and quaff’d +Of the clear spring; illumin’d first by thee +Open’d mine eyes to God. Thou didst, as one, +Who, journeying through the darkness, hears a light +Behind, that profits not himself, but makes +His followers wise, when thou exclaimedst, ‘Lo! +A renovated world! Justice return’d! +Times of primeval innocence restor’d! +And a new race descended from above!’ +Poet and Christian both to thee I owed. +That thou mayst mark more clearly what I trace, +My hand shall stretch forth to inform the lines +With livelier colouring. Soon o’er all the world, +By messengers from heav’n, the true belief +Teem’d now prolific, and that word of thine +Accordant, to the new instructors chim’d. +Induc’d by which agreement, I was wont +Resort to them; and soon their sanctity +So won upon me, that, Domitian’s rage +Pursuing them, I mix’d my tears with theirs, +And, while on earth I stay’d, still succour’d them; +And their most righteous customs made me scorn +All sects besides. Before I led the Greeks +In tuneful fiction, to the streams of Thebes, +I was baptiz’d; but secretly, through fear, +Remain’d a Christian, and conform’d long time +To Pagan rites. Five centuries and more, +T for that lukewarmness was fain to pace +Round the fourth circle. Thou then, who hast rais’d +The covering, which did hide such blessing from me, +Whilst much of this ascent is yet to climb, +Say, if thou know, where our old Terence bides, +Caecilius, Plautus, Varro: if condemn’d +They dwell, and in what province of the deep.” +“These,” said my guide, “with Persius and myself, +And others many more, are with that Greek, +Of mortals, the most cherish’d by the Nine, +In the first ward of darkness. There ofttimes +We of that mount hold converse, on whose top +For aye our nurses live. We have the bard +Of Pella, and the Teian, Agatho, +Simonides, and many a Grecian else +Ingarlanded with laurel. Of thy train +Antigone is there, Deiphile, +Argia, and as sorrowful as erst +Ismene, and who show’d Langia’s wave: +Deidamia with her sisters there, +And blind Tiresias’ daughter, and the bride +Sea-born of Peleus.” Either poet now +Was silent, and no longer by th’ ascent +Or the steep walls obstructed, round them cast +Inquiring eyes. Four handmaids of the day +Had finish’d now their office, and the fifth +Was at the chariot-beam, directing still +Its balmy point aloof, when thus my guide: +“Methinks, it well behooves us to the brink +Bend the right shoulder’ circuiting the mount, +As we have ever us’d.” So custom there +Was usher to the road, the which we chose +Less doubtful, as that worthy shade complied. + +They on before me went; I sole pursued, +List’ning their speech, that to my thoughts convey’d +Mysterious lessons of sweet poesy. +But soon they ceas’d; for midway of the road +A tree we found, with goodly fruitage hung, +And pleasant to the smell: and as a fir +Upward from bough to bough less ample spreads, +So downward this less ample spread, that none. +Methinks, aloft may climb. Upon the side, +That clos’d our path, a liquid crystal fell +From the steep rock, and through the sprays above +Stream’d showering. With associate step the bards +Drew near the plant; and from amidst the leaves +A voice was heard: “Ye shall be chary of me;” +And after added: “Mary took more thought +For joy and honour of the nuptial feast, +Than for herself who answers now for you. +The women of old Rome were satisfied +With water for their beverage. Daniel fed +On pulse, and wisdom gain’d. The primal age +Was beautiful as gold; and hunger then +Made acorns tasteful, thirst each rivulet +Run nectar. Honey and locusts were the food, +Whereon the Baptist in the wilderness +Fed, and that eminence of glory reach’d +And greatness, which the’ Evangelist records.” + + + + +CANTO XXIII + + +On the green leaf mine eyes were fix’d, like his +Who throws away his days in idle chase +Of the diminutive, when thus I heard +The more than father warn me: “Son! our time +Asks thriftier using. Linger not: away.” + +Thereat my face and steps at once I turn’d +Toward the sages, by whose converse cheer’d +I journey’d on, and felt no toil: and lo! +A sound of weeping and a song: “My lips, +O Lord!” and these so mingled, it gave birth +To pleasure and to pain. “O Sire, belov’d! +Say what is this I hear?” Thus I inquir’d. + +“Spirits,” said he, “who as they go, perchance, +Their debt of duty pay.” As on their road +The thoughtful pilgrims, overtaking some +Not known unto them, turn to them, and look, +But stay not; thus, approaching from behind +With speedier motion, eyed us, as they pass’d, +A crowd of spirits, silent and devout. +The eyes of each were dark and hollow: pale +Their visage, and so lean withal, the bones +Stood staring thro’ the skin. I do not think +Thus dry and meagre Erisicthon show’d, +When pinc’ed by sharp-set famine to the quick. + +“Lo!” to myself I mus’d, “the race, who lost +Jerusalem, when Mary with dire beak +Prey’d on her child.” The sockets seem’d as rings, +From which the gems were drops. Who reads the name +Of man upon his forehead, there the M +Had trac’d most plainly. Who would deem, that scent +Of water and an apple, could have prov’d +Powerful to generate such pining want, +Not knowing how it wrought? While now I stood +Wond’ring what thus could waste them (for the cause +Of their gaunt hollowness and scaly rind +Appear’d not) lo! a spirit turn’d his eyes +In their deep-sunken cell, and fasten’d then +On me, then cried with vehemence aloud: +“What grace is this vouchsaf’d me?” By his looks +I ne’er had recogniz’d him: but the voice +Brought to my knowledge what his cheer conceal’d. +Remembrance of his alter’d lineaments +Was kindled from that spark; and I agniz’d +The visage of Forese. “Ah! respect +This wan and leprous wither’d skin,” thus he +Suppliant implor’d, “this macerated flesh. +Speak to me truly of thyself. And who +Are those twain spirits, that escort thee there? +Be it not said thou Scorn’st to talk with me.” + +“That face of thine,” I answer’d him, “which dead +I once bewail’d, disposes me not less +For weeping, when I see It thus transform’d. +Say then, by Heav’n, what blasts ye thus? The whilst +I wonder, ask not Speech from me: unapt +Is he to speak, whom other will employs.” + +He thus: “The water and tee plant we pass’d, +Virtue possesses, by th’ eternal will +Infus’d, the which so pines me. Every spirit, +Whose song bewails his gluttony indulg’d +Too grossly, here in hunger and in thirst +Is purified. The odour, which the fruit, +And spray, that showers upon the verdure, breathe, +Inflames us with desire to feed and drink. +Nor once alone encompassing our route +We come to add fresh fuel to the pain: +Pain, said Iolace rather: for that will +To the tree leads us, by which Christ was led +To call Elias, joyful when he paid +Our ransom from his vein.” I answering thus: +“Forese! from that day, in which the world +For better life thou changedst, not five years +Have circled. If the power of sinning more +Were first concluded in thee, ere thou knew’st +That kindly grief, which re-espouses us +To God, how hither art thou come so soon? +I thought to find thee lower, there, where time +Is recompense for time.” He straight replied: +“To drink up the sweet wormwood of affliction +I have been brought thus early by the tears +Stream’d down my Nella’s cheeks. Her prayers devout, +Her sighs have drawn me from the coast, where oft +Expectance lingers, and have set me free +From th’ other circles. In the sight of God +So much the dearer is my widow priz’d, +She whom I lov’d so fondly, as she ranks +More singly eminent for virtuous deeds. +The tract most barb’rous of Sardinia’s isle, +Hath dames more chaste and modester by far +Than that wherein I left her. O sweet brother! +What wouldst thou have me say? A time to come +Stands full within my view, to which this hour +Shall not be counted of an ancient date, +When from the pulpit shall be loudly warn’d +Th’ unblushing dames of Florence, lest they bare +Unkerchief’d bosoms to the common gaze. +What savage women hath the world e’er seen, +What Saracens, for whom there needed scourge +Of spiritual or other discipline, +To force them walk with cov’ring on their limbs! +But did they see, the shameless ones, that Heav’n +Wafts on swift wing toward them, while I speak, +Their mouths were op’d for howling: they shall taste +Of Borrow (unless foresight cheat me here) +Or ere the cheek of him be cloth’d with down +Who is now rock’d with lullaby asleep. +Ah! now, my brother, hide thyself no more, +Thou seest how not I alone but all +Gaze, where thou veil’st the intercepted sun.” + +Whence I replied: “If thou recall to mind +What we were once together, even yet +Remembrance of those days may grieve thee sore. +That I forsook that life, was due to him +Who there precedes me, some few evenings past, +When she was round, who shines with sister lamp +To his, that glisters yonder,” and I show’d +The sun. “Tis he, who through profoundest night +Of he true dead has brought me, with this flesh +As true, that follows. From that gloom the aid +Of his sure comfort drew me on to climb, +And climbing wind along this mountain-steep, +Which rectifies in you whate’er the world +Made crooked and deprav’d I have his word, +That he will bear me company as far +As till I come where Beatrice dwells: +But there must leave me. Virgil is that spirit, +Who thus hath promis’d,” and I pointed to him; +“The other is that shade, for whom so late +Your realm, as he arose, exulting shook +Through every pendent cliff and rocky bound.” + + + + +CANTO XXIV + + +Our journey was not slacken’d by our talk, +Nor yet our talk by journeying. Still we spake, +And urg’d our travel stoutly, like a ship +When the wind sits astern. The shadowy forms, + +That seem’d things dead and dead again, drew in +At their deep-delved orbs rare wonder of me, +Perceiving I had life; and I my words +Continued, and thus spake; “He journeys up +Perhaps more tardily then else he would, +For others’ sake. But tell me, if thou know’st, +Where is Piccarda? Tell me, if I see +Any of mark, among this multitude, +Who eye me thus.”—“My sister (she for whom, +’Twixt beautiful and good I cannot say +Which name was fitter ) wears e’en now her crown, +And triumphs in Olympus.” Saying this, +He added: “Since spare diet hath so worn +Our semblance out, ’tis lawful here to name +Each one. This,” and his finger then he rais’d, +“Is Buonaggiuna,—Buonaggiuna, he +Of Lucca: and that face beyond him, pierc’d +Unto a leaner fineness than the rest, +Had keeping of the church: he was of Tours, +And purges by wan abstinence away +Bolsena’s eels and cups of muscadel.” + +He show’d me many others, one by one, +And all, as they were nam’d, seem’d well content; +For no dark gesture I discern’d in any. +I saw through hunger Ubaldino grind +His teeth on emptiness; and Boniface, +That wav’d the crozier o’er a num’rous flock. +I saw the Marquis, who tad time erewhile +To swill at Forli with less drought, yet so +Was one ne’er sated. I howe’er, like him, +That gazing ’midst a crowd, singles out one, +So singled him of Lucca; for methought +Was none amongst them took such note of me. +Somewhat I heard him whisper of Gentucca: +The sound was indistinct, and murmur’d there, +Where justice, that so strips them, fix’d her sting. + +“Spirit!” said I, “it seems as thou wouldst fain +Speak with me. Let me hear thee. Mutual wish +To converse prompts, which let us both indulge.” + +He, answ’ring, straight began: “Woman is born, +Whose brow no wimple shades yet, that shall make +My city please thee, blame it as they may. +Go then with this forewarning. If aught false +My whisper too implied, th’ event shall tell +But say, if of a truth I see the man +Of that new lay th’ inventor, which begins +With ‘Ladies, ye that con the lore of love’.” + +To whom I thus: “Count of me but as one +Who am the scribe of love; that, when he breathes, +Take up my pen, and, as he dictates, write.” + +“Brother!” said he, “the hind’rance which once held +The notary with Guittone and myself, +Short of that new and sweeter style I hear, +Is now disclos’d. I see how ye your plumes +Stretch, as th’ inditer guides them; which, no question, +Ours did not. He that seeks a grace beyond, +Sees not the distance parts one style from other.” +And, as contented, here he held his peace. + +Like as the bird, that winter near the Nile, +In squared regiment direct their course, +Then stretch themselves in file for speedier flight; +Thus all the tribe of spirits, as they turn’d +Their visage, faster deaf, nimble alike +Through leanness and desire. And as a man, +Tir’d With the motion of a trotting steed, +Slacks pace, and stays behind his company, +Till his o’erbreathed lungs keep temperate time; +E’en so Forese let that holy crew +Proceed, behind them lingering at my side, +And saying: “When shall I again behold thee?” + +“How long my life may last,” said I, “I know not; +This know, how soon soever I return, +My wishes will before me have arriv’d. +Sithence the place, where I am set to live, +Is, day by day, more scoop’d of all its good, +And dismal ruin seems to threaten it.” + +“Go now,” he cried: “lo! he, whose guilt is most, +Passes before my vision, dragg’d at heels +Of an infuriate beast. Toward the vale, +Where guilt hath no redemption, on it speeds, +Each step increasing swiftness on the last; +Until a blow it strikes, that leaveth him +A corse most vilely shatter’d. No long space +Those wheels have yet to roll” (therewith his eyes +Look’d up to heav’n) “ere thou shalt plainly see +That which my words may not more plainly tell. +I quit thee: time is precious here: I lose +Too much, thus measuring my pace with shine.” + +As from a troop of well-rank’d chivalry +One knight, more enterprising than the rest, +Pricks forth at gallop, eager to display +His prowess in the first encounter prov’d +So parted he from us with lengthen’d strides, +And left me on the way with those twain spirits, +Who were such mighty marshals of the world. + +When he beyond us had so fled mine eyes +No nearer reach’d him, than my thought his words, +The branches of another fruit, thick hung, +And blooming fresh, appear’d. E’en as our steps +Turn’d thither, not far off it rose to view. +Beneath it were a multitude, that rais’d +Their hands, and shouted forth I know not What +Unto the boughs; like greedy and fond brats, +That beg, and answer none obtain from him, +Of whom they beg; but more to draw them on, +He at arm’s length the object of their wish +Above them holds aloft, and hides it not. + +At length, as undeceiv’d they went their way: +And we approach the tree, who vows and tears +Sue to in vain, the mighty tree. “Pass on, +And come not near. Stands higher up the wood, +Whereof Eve tasted, and from it was ta’en +this plant.” Such sounds from midst the thickets came. +Whence I, with either bard, close to the side +That rose, pass’d forth beyond. “Remember,” next +We heard, “those noblest creatures of the clouds, +How they their twofold bosoms overgorg’d +Oppos’d in fight to Theseus: call to mind +The Hebrews, how effeminate they stoop’d +To ease their thirst; whence Gideon’s ranks were thinn’d, +As he to Midian march’d adown the hills.” + +Thus near one border coasting, still we heard +The sins of gluttony, with woe erewhile +Reguerdon’d. Then along the lonely path, +Once more at large, full thousand paces on +We travel’d, each contemplative and mute. + +“Why pensive journey thus ye three alone?” +Thus suddenly a voice exclaim’d: whereat +I shook, as doth a scar’d and paltry beast; +Then rais’d my head to look from whence it came. + +Was ne’er, in furnace, glass, or metal seen +So bright and glowing red, as was the shape +I now beheld. “If ye desire to mount,” +He cried, “here must ye turn. This way he goes, +Who goes in quest of peace.” His countenance +Had dazzled me; and to my guides I fac’d +Backward, like one who walks, as sound directs. + +As when, to harbinger the dawn, springs up +On freshen’d wing the air of May, and breathes +Of fragrance, all impregn’d with herb and flowers, +E’en such a wind I felt upon my front +Blow gently, and the moving of a wing +Perceiv’d, that moving shed ambrosial smell; +And then a voice: “Blessed are they, whom grace +Doth so illume, that appetite in them +Exhaleth no inordinate desire, +Still hung’ring as the rule of temperance wills.” + + + + +CANTO XXV + + +It was an hour, when he who climbs, had need +To walk uncrippled: for the sun had now +To Taurus the meridian circle left, +And to the Scorpion left the night. As one +That makes no pause, but presses on his road, +Whate’er betide him, if some urgent need +Impel: so enter’d we upon our way, +One before other; for, but singly, none +That steep and narrow scale admits to climb. + +E’en as the young stork lifteth up his wing +Through wish to fly, yet ventures not to quit +The nest, and drops it; so in me desire +Of questioning my guide arose, and fell, +Arriving even to the act, that marks +A man prepar’d for speech. Him all our haste +Restrain’d not, but thus spake the sire belov’d: +Fear not to speed the shaft, that on thy lip +Stands trembling for its flight. Encourag’d thus +I straight began: “How there can leanness come, +Where is no want of nourishment to feed?” + +“If thou,” he answer’d, “hadst remember’d thee, +How Meleager with the wasting brand +Wasted alike, by equal fires consum’d, +This would not trouble thee: and hadst thou thought, +How in the mirror your reflected form +With mimic motion vibrates, what now seems +Hard, had appear’d no harder than the pulp +Of summer fruit mature. But that thy will +In certainty may find its full repose, +Lo Statius here! on him I call, and pray +That he would now be healer of thy wound.” + +“If in thy presence I unfold to him +The secrets of heaven’s vengeance, let me plead +Thine own injunction, to exculpate me.” +So Statius answer’d, and forthwith began: +“Attend my words, O son, and in thy mind +Receive them: so shall they be light to clear +The doubt thou offer’st. Blood, concocted well, +Which by the thirsty veins is ne’er imbib’d, +And rests as food superfluous, to be ta’en +From the replenish’d table, in the heart +Derives effectual virtue, that informs +The several human limbs, as being that, +Which passes through the veins itself to make them. +Yet more concocted it descends, where shame +Forbids to mention: and from thence distils +In natural vessel on another’s blood. +Then each unite together, one dispos’d +T’ endure, to act the other, through meet frame +Of its recipient mould: that being reach’d, +It ’gins to work, coagulating first; +Then vivifies what its own substance caus’d +To bear. With animation now indued, +The active virtue (differing from a plant +No further, than that this is on the way +And at its limit that) continues yet +To operate, that now it moves, and feels, +As sea sponge clinging to the rock: and there +Assumes th’ organic powers its seed convey’d. +This is the period, son! at which the virtue, +That from the generating heart proceeds, +Is pliant and expansive; for each limb +Is in the heart by forgeful nature plann’d. +How babe of animal becomes, remains +For thy consid’ring. At this point, more wise, +Than thou hast err’d, making the soul disjoin’d +From passive intellect, because he saw +No organ for the latter’s use assign’d. + +“Open thy bosom to the truth that comes. +Know soon as in the embryo, to the brain, +Articulation is complete, then turns +The primal Mover with a smile of joy +On such great work of nature, and imbreathes +New spirit replete with virtue, that what here +Active it finds, to its own substance draws, +And forms an individual soul, that lives, +And feels, and bends reflective on itself. +And that thou less mayst marvel at the word, +Mark the sun’s heat, how that to wine doth change, +Mix’d with the moisture filter’d through the vine. + +“When Lachesis hath spun the thread, the soul +Takes with her both the human and divine, +Memory, intelligence, and will, in act +Far keener than before, the other powers +Inactive all and mute. No pause allow’d, +In wond’rous sort self-moving, to one strand +Of those, where the departed roam, she falls, +Here learns her destin’d path. Soon as the place +Receives her, round the plastic virtue beams, +Distinct as in the living limbs before: +And as the air, when saturate with showers, +The casual beam refracting, decks itself +With many a hue; so here the ambient air +Weareth that form, which influence of the soul +Imprints on it; and like the flame, that where +The fire moves, thither follows, so henceforth +The new form on the spirit follows still: +Hence hath it semblance, and is shadow call’d, +With each sense even to the sight endued: +Hence speech is ours, hence laughter, tears, and sighs +Which thou mayst oft have witness’d on the mount +Th’ obedient shadow fails not to present +Whatever varying passion moves within us. +And this the cause of what thou marvel’st at.” + +Now the last flexure of our way we reach’d, +And to the right hand turning, other care +Awaits us. Here the rocky precipice +Hurls forth redundant flames, and from the rim +A blast upblown, with forcible rebuff +Driveth them back, sequester’d from its bound. + +Behoov’d us, one by one, along the side, +That border’d on the void, to pass; and I +Fear’d on one hand the fire, on th’ other fear’d +Headlong to fall: when thus th’ instructor warn’d: +“Strict rein must in this place direct the eyes. +A little swerving and the way is lost.” + +Then from the bosom of the burning mass, +“O God of mercy!” heard I sung; and felt +No less desire to turn. And when I saw +Spirits along the flame proceeding, I +Between their footsteps and mine own was fain +To share by turns my view. At the hymn’s close +They shouted loud, “I do not know a man;” +Then in low voice again took up the strain, +Which once more ended, “To the wood,” they cried, +“Ran Dian, and drave forth Callisto, stung +With Cytherea’s poison:” then return’d +Unto their song; then marry a pair extoll’d, +Who liv’d in virtue chastely, and the bands +Of wedded love. Nor from that task, I ween, +Surcease they; whilesoe’er the scorching fire +Enclasps them. Of such skill appliance needs +To medicine the wound, that healeth last. + + + + +CANTO XXVI + + +While singly thus along the rim we walk’d, +Oft the good master warn’d me: “Look thou well. +Avail it that I caution thee.” The sun +Now all the western clime irradiate chang’d +From azure tinct to white; and, as I pass’d, +My passing shadow made the umber’d flame +Burn ruddier. At so strange a sight I mark’d +That many a spirit marvel’d on his way. + +This bred occasion first to speak of me, +“He seems,” said they, “no insubstantial frame:” +Then to obtain what certainty they might, +Stretch’d towards me, careful not to overpass +The burning pale. “O thou, who followest +The others, haply not more slow than they, +But mov’d by rev’rence, answer me, who burn +In thirst and fire: nor I alone, but these +All for thine answer do more thirst, than doth +Indian or Aethiop for the cooling stream. +Tell us, how is it that thou mak’st thyself +A wall against the sun, as thou not yet +Into th’ inextricable toils of death +Hadst enter’d?” Thus spake one, and I had straight +Declar’d me, if attention had not turn’d +To new appearance. Meeting these, there came, +Midway the burning path, a crowd, on whom +Earnestly gazing, from each part I view +The shadows all press forward, sev’rally +Each snatch a hasty kiss, and then away. +E’en so the emmets, ’mid their dusky troops, +Peer closely one at other, to spy out +Their mutual road perchance, and how they thrive. + +That friendly greeting parted, ere dispatch +Of the first onward step, from either tribe +Loud clamour rises: those, who newly come, +Shout “Sodom and Gomorrah!” these, “The cow +Pasiphae enter’d, that the beast she woo’d +Might rush unto her luxury.” Then as cranes, +That part towards the Riphaean mountains fly, +Part towards the Lybic sands, these to avoid +The ice, and those the sun; so hasteth off +One crowd, advances th’ other; and resume +Their first song weeping, and their several shout. + +Again drew near my side the very same, +Who had erewhile besought me, and their looks +Mark’d eagerness to listen. I, who twice +Their will had noted, spake: “O spirits secure, +Whene’er the time may be, of peaceful end! +My limbs, nor crude, nor in mature old age, +Have I left yonder: here they bear me, fed +With blood, and sinew-strung. That I no more +May live in blindness, hence I tend aloft. +There is a dame on high, who wind for us +This grace, by which my mortal through your realm +I bear. But may your utmost wish soon meet +Such full fruition, that the orb of heaven, +Fullest of love, and of most ample space, +Receive you, as ye tell (upon my page +Henceforth to stand recorded) who ye are, +And what this multitude, that at your backs +Have past behind us.” As one, mountain-bred, +Rugged and clownish, if some city’s walls +He chance to enter, round him stares agape, +Confounded and struck dumb; e’en such appear’d +Each spirit. But when rid of that amaze, +(Not long the inmate of a noble heart) +He, who before had question’d, thus resum’d: +“O blessed, who, for death preparing, tak’st +Experience of our limits, in thy bark! +Their crime, who not with us proceed, was that, +For which, as he did triumph, Caesar heard +The snout of ‘queen,’ to taunt him. Hence their cry +Of ‘Sodom,’ as they parted, to rebuke +Themselves, and aid the burning by their shame. +Our sinning was Hermaphrodite: but we, +Because the law of human kind we broke, +Following like beasts our vile concupiscence, +Hence parting from them, to our own disgrace +Record the name of her, by whom the beast +In bestial tire was acted. Now our deeds +Thou know’st, and how we sinn’d. If thou by name +Wouldst haply know us, time permits not now +To tell so much, nor can I. Of myself +Learn what thou wishest. Guinicelli I, +Who having truly sorrow’d ere my last, +Already cleanse me.” With such pious joy, +As the two sons upon their mother gaz’d +From sad Lycurgus rescu’d, such my joy +(Save that I more represt it) when I heard +From his own lips the name of him pronounc’d, +Who was a father to me, and to those +My betters, who have ever us’d the sweet +And pleasant rhymes of love. So nought I heard +Nor spake, but long time thoughtfully I went, +Gazing on him; and, only for the fire, +Approach’d not nearer. When my eyes were fed +By looking on him, with such solemn pledge, +As forces credence, I devoted me +Unto his service wholly. In reply +He thus bespake me: “What from thee I hear +Is grav’d so deeply on my mind, the waves +Of Lethe shall not wash it off, nor make +A whit less lively. But as now thy oath +Has seal’d the truth, declare what cause impels +That love, which both thy looks and speech bewray.” + +“Those dulcet lays,” I answer’d, “which, as long +As of our tongue the beauty does not fade, +Shall make us love the very ink that trac’d them.” + +“Brother!” he cried, and pointed at a shade +Before him, “there is one, whose mother speech +Doth owe to him a fairer ornament. +He in love ditties and the tales of prose +Without a rival stands, and lets the fools +Talk on, who think the songster of Limoges +O’ertops him. Rumour and the popular voice +They look to more than truth, and so confirm +Opinion, ere by art or reason taught. +Thus many of the elder time cried up +Guittone, giving him the prize, till truth +By strength of numbers vanquish’d. If thou own +So ample privilege, as to have gain’d +Free entrance to the cloister, whereof Christ +Is Abbot of the college, say to him +One paternoster for me, far as needs +For dwellers in this world, where power to sin +No longer tempts us.” Haply to make way +For one, that follow’d next, when that was said, +He vanish’d through the fire, as through the wave +A fish, that glances diving to the deep. + +I, to the spirit he had shown me, drew +A little onward, and besought his name, +For which my heart, I said, kept gracious room. +He frankly thus began: “Thy courtesy +So wins on me, I have nor power nor will +To hide me. I am Arnault; and with songs, +Sorely lamenting for my folly past, +Thorough this ford of fire I wade, and see +The day, I hope for, smiling in my view. +I pray ye by the worth that guides ye up +Unto the summit of the scale, in time +Remember ye my suff’rings.” With such words +He disappear’d in the refining flame. + + + + +CANTO XXVII + + +Now was the sun so station’d, as when first +His early radiance quivers on the heights, +Where stream’d his Maker’s blood, while Libra hangs +Above Hesperian Ebro, and new fires +Meridian flash on Ganges’ yellow tide. + +So day was sinking, when the’ angel of God +Appear’d before us. Joy was in his mien. +Forth of the flame he stood upon the brink, +And with a voice, whose lively clearness far +Surpass’d our human, “Blessed are the pure +In heart,” he Sang: then near him as we came, +“Go ye not further, holy spirits!” he cried, +“Ere the fire pierce you: enter in; and list +Attentive to the song ye hear from thence.” + +I, when I heard his saying, was as one +Laid in the grave. My hands together clasp’d, +And upward stretching, on the fire I look’d, +And busy fancy conjur’d up the forms +Erewhile beheld alive consum’d in flames. + +Th’ escorting spirits turn’d with gentle looks +Toward me, and the Mantuan spake: “My son, +Here torment thou mayst feel, but canst not death. +Remember thee, remember thee, if I +Safe e’en on Geryon brought thee: now I come +More near to God, wilt thou not trust me now? +Of this be sure: though in its womb that flame +A thousand years contain’d thee, from thy head +No hair should perish. If thou doubt my truth, +Approach, and with thy hands thy vesture’s hem +Stretch forth, and for thyself confirm belief. +Lay now all fear, O lay all fear aside. +Turn hither, and come onward undismay’d.” +I still, though conscience urg’d’ no step advanc’d. + +When still he saw me fix’d and obstinate, +Somewhat disturb’d he cried: “Mark now, my son, +From Beatrice thou art by this wall +Divided.” As at Thisbe’s name the eye +Of Pyramus was open’d (when life ebb’d +Fast from his veins), and took one parting glance, +While vermeil dyed the mulberry; thus I turn’d +To my sage guide, relenting, when I heard +The name, that springs forever in my breast. + +He shook his forehead; and, “How long,” he said, +“Linger we now?” then smil’d, as one would smile +Upon a child, that eyes the fruit and yields. +Into the fire before me then he walk’d; +And Statius, who erewhile no little space +Had parted us, he pray’d to come behind. + +I would have cast me into molten glass +To cool me, when I enter’d; so intense +Rag’d the conflagrant mass. The sire belov’d, +To comfort me, as he proceeded, still +Of Beatrice talk’d. “Her eyes,” saith he, +“E’en now I seem to view.” From the other side +A voice, that sang, did guide us, and the voice +Following, with heedful ear, we issued forth, +There where the path led upward. “Come,” we heard, +“Come, blessed of my Father.” Such the sounds, +That hail’d us from within a light, which shone +So radiant, I could not endure the view. +“The sun,” it added, “hastes: and evening comes. +Delay not: ere the western sky is hung +With blackness, strive ye for the pass.” Our way +Upright within the rock arose, and fac’d +Such part of heav’n, that from before my steps +The beams were shrouded of the sinking sun. + +Nor many stairs were overpass, when now +By fading of the shadow we perceiv’d +The sun behind us couch’d: and ere one face +Of darkness o’er its measureless expanse +Involv’d th’ horizon, and the night her lot +Held individual, each of us had made +A stair his pallet: not that will, but power, +Had fail’d us, by the nature of that mount +Forbidden further travel. As the goats, +That late have skipp’d and wanton’d rapidly +Upon the craggy cliffs, ere they had ta’en +Their supper on the herb, now silent lie +And ruminate beneath the umbrage brown, +While noonday rages; and the goatherd leans +Upon his staff, and leaning watches them: +And as the swain, that lodges out all night +In quiet by his flock, lest beast of prey +Disperse them; even so all three abode, +I as a goat and as the shepherds they, +Close pent on either side by shelving rock. + +A little glimpse of sky was seen above; +Yet by that little I beheld the stars +In magnitude and rustle shining forth +With more than wonted glory. As I lay, +Gazing on them, and in that fit of musing, +Sleep overcame me, sleep, that bringeth oft +Tidings of future hap. About the hour, +As I believe, when Venus from the east +First lighten’d on the mountain, she whose orb +Seems always glowing with the fire of love, +A lady young and beautiful, I dream’d, +Was passing o’er a lea; and, as she came, +Methought I saw her ever and anon +Bending to cull the flowers; and thus she sang: +“Know ye, whoever of my name would ask, +That I am Leah: for my brow to weave +A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply. +To please me at the crystal mirror, here +I deck me. But my sister Rachel, she +Before her glass abides the livelong day, +Her radiant eyes beholding, charm’d no less, +Than I with this delightful task. Her joy +In contemplation, as in labour mine.” + +And now as glimm’ring dawn appear’d, that breaks +More welcome to the pilgrim still, as he +Sojourns less distant on his homeward way, +Darkness from all sides fled, and with it fled +My slumber; whence I rose and saw my guide +Already risen. “That delicious fruit, +Which through so many a branch the zealous care +Of mortals roams in quest of, shall this day +Appease thy hunger.” Such the words I heard +From Virgil’s lip; and never greeting heard +So pleasant as the sounds. Within me straight +Desire so grew upon desire to mount, +Thenceforward at each step I felt the wings +Increasing for my flight. When we had run +O’er all the ladder to its topmost round, +As there we stood, on me the Mantuan fix’d +His eyes, and thus he spake: “Both fires, my son, +The temporal and eternal, thou hast seen, +And art arriv’d, where of itself my ken +No further reaches. I with skill and art +Thus far have drawn thee. Now thy pleasure take +For guide. Thou hast o’ercome the steeper way, +O’ercome the straighter. Lo! the sun, that darts +His beam upon thy forehead! lo! the herb, +The arboreta and flowers, which of itself +This land pours forth profuse! Will those bright eyes +With gladness come, which, weeping, made me haste +To succour thee, thou mayst or seat thee down, +Or wander where thou wilt. Expect no more +Sanction of warning voice or sign from me, +Free of thy own arbitrement to choose, +Discreet, judicious. To distrust thy sense +Were henceforth error. I invest thee then +With crown and mitre, sovereign o’er thyself.” + + + + +CANTO XXVIII + + +Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade +With lively greenness the new-springing day +Attemper’d, eager now to roam, and search +Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank, +Along the champain leisurely my way +Pursuing, o’er the ground, that on all sides +Delicious odour breath’d. A pleasant air, +That intermitted never, never veer’d, +Smote on my temples, gently, as a wind +Of softest influence: at which the sprays, +Obedient all, lean’d trembling to that part +Where first the holy mountain casts his shade, +Yet were not so disorder’d, but that still +Upon their top the feather’d quiristers +Applied their wonted art, and with full joy +Welcom’d those hours of prime, and warbled shrill +Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays +inept tenor; even as from branch to branch, +Along the piney forests on the shore +Of Chiassi, rolls the gath’ring melody, +When Eolus hath from his cavern loos’d +The dripping south. Already had my steps, +Though slow, so far into that ancient wood +Transported me, I could not ken the place +Where I had enter’d, when behold! my path +Was bounded by a rill, which to the left +With little rippling waters bent the grass, +That issued from its brink. On earth no wave +How clean soe’er, that would not seem to have +Some mixture in itself, compar’d with this, +Transpicuous, clear; yet darkly on it roll’d, +Darkly beneath perpetual gloom, which ne’er +Admits or sun or moon light there to shine. + +My feet advanc’d not; but my wond’ring eyes +Pass’d onward, o’er the streamlet, to survey +The tender May-bloom, flush’d through many a hue, +In prodigal variety: and there, +As object, rising suddenly to view, +That from our bosom every thought beside +With the rare marvel chases, I beheld +A lady all alone, who, singing, went, +And culling flower from flower, wherewith her way +Was all o’er painted. “Lady beautiful! +Thou, who (if looks, that use to speak the heart, +Are worthy of our trust), with love’s own beam +Dost warm thee,” thus to her my speech I fram’d: +“Ah! please thee hither towards the streamlet bend +Thy steps so near, that I may list thy song. +Beholding thee and this fair place, methinks, +I call to mind where wander’d and how look’d +Proserpine, in that season, when her child +The mother lost, and she the bloomy spring.” + +As when a lady, turning in the dance, +Doth foot it featly, and advances scarce +One step before the other to the ground; +Over the yellow and vermilion flowers +Thus turn’d she at my suit, most maiden-like, +Valing her sober eyes, and came so near, +That I distinctly caught the dulcet sound. +Arriving where the limped waters now +Lav’d the green sward, her eyes she deign’d to raise, +That shot such splendour on me, as I ween +Ne’er glanced from Cytherea’s, when her son +Had sped his keenest weapon to her heart. +Upon the opposite bank she stood and smil’d +through her graceful fingers shifted still +The intermingling dyes, which without seed +That lofty land unbosoms. By the stream +Three paces only were we sunder’d: yet +The Hellespont, where Xerxes pass’d it o’er, +(A curb for ever to the pride of man) +Was by Leander not more hateful held +For floating, with inhospitable wave +’Twixt Sestus and Abydos, than by me +That flood, because it gave no passage thence. + +“Strangers ye come, and haply in this place, +That cradled human nature in its birth, +Wond’ring, ye not without suspicion view +My smiles: but that sweet strain of psalmody, +‘Thou, Lord! hast made me glad,’ will give ye light, +Which may uncloud your minds. And thou, who stand’st +The foremost, and didst make thy suit to me, +Say if aught else thou wish to hear: for I +Came prompt to answer every doubt of thine.” + +She spake; and I replied: “I know not how +To reconcile this wave and rustling sound +Of forest leaves, with what I late have heard +Of opposite report.” She answering thus: +“I will unfold the cause, whence that proceeds, +Which makes thee wonder; and so purge the cloud +That hath enwraps thee. The First Good, whose joy +Is only in himself, created man +For happiness, and gave this goodly place, +His pledge and earnest of eternal peace. +Favour’d thus highly, through his own defect +He fell, and here made short sojourn; he fell, +And, for the bitterness of sorrow, chang’d +Laughter unblam’d and ever-new delight. +That vapours none, exhal’d from earth beneath, +Or from the waters (which, wherever heat +Attracts them, follow), might ascend thus far +To vex man’s peaceful state, this mountain rose +So high toward the heav’n, nor fears the rage +Of elements contending, from that part +Exempted, where the gate his limit bars. +Because the circumambient air throughout +With its first impulse circles still, unless +Aught interpose to cheek or thwart its course; +Upon the summit, which on every side +To visitation of th’ impassive air +Is open, doth that motion strike, and makes +Beneath its sway th’ umbrageous wood resound: +And in the shaken plant such power resides, +That it impregnates with its efficacy +The voyaging breeze, upon whose subtle plume +That wafted flies abroad; and th’ other land +Receiving (as ’tis worthy in itself, +Or in the clime, that warms it), doth conceive, +And from its womb produces many a tree +Of various virtue. This when thou hast heard, +The marvel ceases, if in yonder earth +Some plant without apparent seed be found +To fix its fibrous stem. And further learn, +That with prolific foison of all seeds, +This holy plain is fill’d, and in itself +Bears fruit that ne’er was pluck’d on other soil. + +“The water, thou behold’st, springs not from vein, +As stream, that intermittently repairs +And spends his pulse of life, but issues forth +From fountain, solid, undecaying, sure; +And by the will omnific, full supply +Feeds whatsoe’er On either side it pours; +On this devolv’d with power to take away +Remembrance of offence, on that to bring +Remembrance back of every good deed done. +From whence its name of Lethe on this part; +On th’ other Eunoe: both of which must first +Be tasted ere it work; the last exceeding +All flavours else. Albeit thy thirst may now +Be well contented, if I here break off, +No more revealing: yet a corollary +I freely give beside: nor deem my words +Less grateful to thee, if they somewhat pass +The stretch of promise. They, whose verse of yore +The golden age recorded and its bliss, +On the Parnassian mountain, of this place +Perhaps had dream’d. Here was man guiltless, here +Perpetual spring and every fruit, and this +The far-fam’d nectar.” Turning to the bards, +When she had ceas’d, I noted in their looks +A smile at her conclusion; then my face +Again directed to the lovely dame. + + + + +CANTO XXIX + + +Singing, as if enamour’d, she resum’d +And clos’d the song, with “Blessed they whose sins +Are cover’d.” Like the wood-nymphs then, that tripp’d +Singly across the sylvan shadows, one +Eager to view and one to ’scape the sun, +So mov’d she on, against the current, up +The verdant rivage. I, her mincing step +Observing, with as tardy step pursued. + +Between us not an hundred paces trod, +The bank, on each side bending equally, +Gave me to face the orient. Nor our way +Far onward brought us, when to me at once +She turn’d, and cried: “My brother! look and hearken.” +And lo! a sudden lustre ran across +Through the great forest on all parts, so bright +I doubted whether lightning were abroad; +But that expiring ever in the spleen, +That doth unfold it, and this during still +And waxing still in splendor, made me question +What it might be: and a sweet melody +Ran through the luminous air. Then did I chide +With warrantable zeal the hardihood +Of our first parent, for that there were earth +Stood in obedience to the heav’ns, she only, +Woman, the creature of an hour, endur’d not +Restraint of any veil: which had she borne +Devoutly, joys, ineffable as these, +Had from the first, and long time since, been mine. + +While through that wilderness of primy sweets +That never fade, suspense I walk’d, and yet +Expectant of beatitude more high, +Before us, like a blazing fire, the air +Under the green boughs glow’d; and, for a song, +Distinct the sound of melody was heard. + +O ye thrice holy virgins! for your sakes +If e’er I suffer’d hunger, cold and watching, +Occasion calls on me to crave your bounty. +Now through my breast let Helicon his stream +Pour copious; and Urania with her choir +Arise to aid me: while the verse unfolds +Things that do almost mock the grasp of thought. + +Onward a space, what seem’d seven trees of gold, +The intervening distance to mine eye +Falsely presented; but when I was come +So near them, that no lineament was lost +Of those, with which a doubtful object, seen +Remotely, plays on the misdeeming sense, +Then did the faculty, that ministers +Discourse to reason, these for tapers of gold +Distinguish, and it th’ singing trace the sound +“Hosanna.” Above, their beauteous garniture +Flam’d with more ample lustre, than the moon +Through cloudless sky at midnight in her full. + +I turn’d me full of wonder to my guide; +And he did answer with a countenance +Charg’d with no less amazement: whence my view +Reverted to those lofty things, which came +So slowly moving towards us, that the bride +Would have outstript them on her bridal day. + +The lady called aloud: “Why thus yet burns +Affection in thee for these living, lights, +And dost not look on that which follows them?” + +I straightway mark’d a tribe behind them walk, +As if attendant on their leaders, cloth’d +With raiment of such whiteness, as on earth +Was never. On my left, the wat’ry gleam +Borrow’d, and gave me back, when there I look’d. +As in a mirror, my left side portray’d. + +When I had chosen on the river’s edge +Such station, that the distance of the stream +Alone did separate me; there I stay’d +My steps for clearer prospect, and beheld +The flames go onward, leaving, as they went, +The air behind them painted as with trail +Of liveliest pencils! so distinct were mark’d +All those sev’n listed colours, whence the sun +Maketh his bow, and Cynthia her zone. +These streaming gonfalons did flow beyond +My vision; and ten paces, as I guess, +Parted the outermost. Beneath a sky +So beautiful, came foul and-twenty elders, +By two and two, with flower-de-luces crown’d. + +All sang one song: “Blessed be thou among +The daughters of Adam! and thy loveliness +Blessed for ever!” After that the flowers, +And the fresh herblets, on the opposite brink, +Were free from that elected race; as light +In heav’n doth second light, came after them +Four animals, each crown’d with verdurous leaf. +With six wings each was plum’d, the plumage full +Of eyes, and th’ eyes of Argus would be such, +Were they endued with life. Reader, more rhymes +Will not waste in shadowing forth their form: +For other need no straitens, that in this +I may not give my bounty room. But read +Ezekiel; for he paints them, from the north +How he beheld them come by Chebar’s flood, +In whirlwind, cloud and fire; and even such +As thou shalt find them character’d by him, +Here were they; save as to the pennons; there, +From him departing, John accords with me. + +The space, surrounded by the four, enclos’d +A car triumphal: on two wheels it came +Drawn at a Gryphon’s neck; and he above +Stretch’d either wing uplifted, ’tween the midst +And the three listed hues, on each side three; +So that the wings did cleave or injure none; +And out of sight they rose. The members, far +As he was bird, were golden; white the rest +With vermeil intervein’d. So beautiful +A car in Rome ne’er grac’d Augustus pomp, +Or Africanus’: e’en the sun’s itself +Were poor to this, that chariot of the sun +Erroneous, which in blazing ruin fell +At Tellus’ pray’r devout, by the just doom +Mysterious of all-seeing Jove. Three nymphs +at the right wheel, came circling in smooth dance; +The one so ruddy, that her form had scarce +Been known within a furnace of clear flame: +The next did look, as if the flesh and bones +Were emerald: snow new-fallen seem’d the third. + +Now seem’d the white to lead, the ruddy now; +And from her song who led, the others took +Their treasure, swift or slow. At th’ other wheel, +A band quaternion, each in purple clad, +Advanc’d with festal step, as of them one +The rest conducted, one, upon whose front +Three eyes were seen. In rear of all this group, +Two old men I beheld, dissimilar +In raiment, but in port and gesture like, +Solid and mainly grave; of whom the one +Did show himself some favour’d counsellor +Of the great Coan, him, whom nature made +To serve the costliest creature of her tribe. +His fellow mark’d an opposite intent, +Bearing a sword, whose glitterance and keen edge, +E’en as I view’d it with the flood between, +Appall’d me. Next four others I beheld, +Of humble seeming: and, behind them all, +One single old man, sleeping, as he came, +With a shrewd visage. And these seven, each +Like the first troop were habited, but wore +No braid of lilies on their temples wreath’d. +Rather with roses and each vermeil flower, +A sight, but little distant, might have sworn, +That they were all on fire above their brow. + +Whenas the car was o’er against me, straight. +Was heard a thund’ring, at whose voice it seem’d +The chosen multitude were stay’d; for there, +With the first ensigns, made they solemn halt. + + + + +CANTO XXX + + +Soon as the polar light, which never knows +Setting nor rising, nor the shadowy veil +Of other cloud than sin, fair ornament +Of the first heav’n, to duty each one there +Safely convoying, as that lower doth +The steersman to his port, stood firmly fix’d; +Forthwith the saintly tribe, who in the van +Between the Gryphon and its radiance came, +Did turn them to the car, as to their rest: +And one, as if commission’d from above, +In holy chant thrice shorted forth aloud: +“Come, spouse, from Libanus!” and all the rest +Took up the song—At the last audit so +The blest shall rise, from forth his cavern each +Uplifting lightly his new-vested flesh, +As, on the sacred litter, at the voice +Authoritative of that elder, sprang +A hundred ministers and messengers +Of life eternal. “Blessed thou! who com’st!” +And, “O,” they cried, “from full hands scatter ye +Unwith’ring lilies;” and, so saying, cast +Flowers over head and round them on all sides. + +I have beheld, ere now, at break of day, +The eastern clime all roseate, and the sky +Oppos’d, one deep and beautiful serene, +And the sun’s face so shaded, and with mists +Attemper’d at lids rising, that the eye +Long while endur’d the sight: thus in a cloud +Of flowers, that from those hands angelic rose, +And down, within and outside of the car, +Fell showering, in white veil with olive wreath’d, +A virgin in my view appear’d, beneath +Green mantle, rob’d in hue of living flame: + +And o’er my Spirit, that in former days +Within her presence had abode so long, +No shudd’ring terror crept. Mine eyes no more +Had knowledge of her; yet there mov’d from her +A hidden virtue, at whose touch awak’d, +The power of ancient love was strong within me. + +No sooner on my vision streaming, smote +The heav’nly influence, which years past, and e’en +In childhood, thrill’d me, than towards Virgil I +Turn’d me to leftward, panting, like a babe, +That flees for refuge to his mother’s breast, +If aught have terrified or work’d him woe: +And would have cried: “There is no dram of blood, +That doth not quiver in me. The old flame +Throws out clear tokens of reviving fire:” +But Virgil had bereav’d us of himself, +Virgil, my best-lov’d father; Virgil, he +To whom I gave me up for safety: nor, +All, our prime mother lost, avail’d to save +My undew’d cheeks from blur of soiling tears. + +“Dante, weep not, that Virgil leaves thee: nay, +Weep thou not yet: behooves thee feel the edge +Of other sword, and thou shalt weep for that.” + +As to the prow or stern, some admiral +Paces the deck, inspiriting his crew, +When ’mid the sail-yards all hands ply aloof; +Thus on the left side of the car I saw, +(Turning me at the sound of mine own name, +Which here I am compell’d to register) +The virgin station’d, who before appeared +Veil’d in that festive shower angelical. + +Towards me, across the stream, she bent her eyes; +Though from her brow the veil descending, bound +With foliage of Minerva, suffer’d not +That I beheld her clearly; then with act +Full royal, still insulting o’er her thrall, +Added, as one, who speaking keepeth back +The bitterest saying, to conclude the speech: +“Observe me well. I am, in sooth, I am +Beatrice. What! and hast thou deign’d at last +Approach the mountainnewest not, O man! +Thy happiness is whole?” Down fell mine eyes +On the clear fount, but there, myself espying, +Recoil’d, and sought the greensward: such a weight +Of shame was on my forehead. With a mien +Of that stern majesty, which doth surround +mother’s presence to her awe-struck child, +She look’d; a flavour of such bitterness +Was mingled in her pity. There her words +Brake off, and suddenly the angels sang: +“In thee, O gracious Lord, my hope hath been:” +But went no farther than, “Thou Lord, hast set +My feet in ample room.” As snow, that lies +Amidst the living rafters on the back +Of Italy congeal’d when drifted high +And closely pil’d by rough Sclavonian blasts, +Breathe but the land whereon no shadow falls, +And straightway melting it distils away, +Like a fire-wasted taper: thus was I, +Without a sigh or tear, or ever these +Did sing, that with the chiming of heav’n’s sphere, +Still in their warbling chime: but when the strain +Of dulcet symphony, express’d for me +Their soft compassion, more than could the words +“Virgin, why so consum’st him?” then the ice, +Congeal’d about my bosom, turn’d itself +To spirit and water, and with anguish forth +Gush’d through the lips and eyelids from the heart. + +Upon the chariot’s right edge still she stood, +Immovable, and thus address’d her words +To those bright semblances with pity touch’d: +“Ye in th’ eternal day your vigils keep, +So that nor night nor slumber, with close stealth, +Conveys from you a single step in all +The goings on of life: thence with more heed +I shape mine answer, for his ear intended, +Who there stands weeping, that the sorrow now +May equal the transgression. Not alone +Through operation of the mighty orbs, +That mark each seed to some predestin’d aim, +As with aspect or fortunate or ill +The constellations meet, but through benign +Largess of heav’nly graces, which rain down +From such a height, as mocks our vision, this man +Was in the freshness of his being, such, +So gifted virtually, that in him +All better habits wond’rously had thriv’d. +The more of kindly strength is in the soil, +So much doth evil seed and lack of culture +Mar it the more, and make it run to wildness. +These looks sometime upheld him; for I show’d +My youthful eyes, and led him by their light +In upright walking. Soon as I had reach’d +The threshold of my second age, and chang’d +My mortal for immortal, then he left me, +And gave himself to others. When from flesh +To spirit I had risen, and increase +Of beauty and of virtue circled me, +I was less dear to him, and valued less. +His steps were turn’d into deceitful ways, +Following false images of good, that make +No promise perfect. Nor avail’d me aught +To sue for inspirations, with the which, +I, both in dreams of night, and otherwise, +Did call him back; of them so little reck’d him, +Such depth he fell, that all device was short +Of his preserving, save that he should view +The children of perdition. To this end +I visited the purlieus of the dead: +And one, who hath conducted him thus high, +Receiv’d my supplications urg’d with weeping. +It were a breaking of God’s high decree, +If Lethe should be past, and such food tasted +Without the cost of some repentant tear.” + + + + +CANTO XXXI + + +“O Thou!” her words she thus without delay +Resuming, turn’d their point on me, to whom +They but with lateral edge seem’d harsh before, +“Say thou, who stand’st beyond the holy stream, +If this be true. A charge so grievous needs +Thine own avowal.” On my faculty +Such strange amazement hung, the voice expir’d +Imperfect, ere its organs gave it birth. + +A little space refraining, then she spake: +“What dost thou muse on? Answer me. The wave +On thy remembrances of evil yet +Hath done no injury.” A mingled sense +Of fear and of confusion, from my lips +Did such a “Yea” produce, as needed help +Of vision to interpret. As when breaks +In act to be discharg’d, a cross-bow bent +Beyond its pitch, both nerve and bow o’erstretch’d, +The flagging weapon feebly hits the mark; +Thus, tears and sighs forth gushing, did I burst +Beneath the heavy load, and thus my voice +Was slacken’d on its way. She straight began: +“When my desire invited thee to love +The good, which sets a bound to our aspirings, +What bar of thwarting foss or linked chain +Did meet thee, that thou so should’st quit the hope +Of further progress, or what bait of ease +Or promise of allurement led thee on +Elsewhere, that thou elsewhere should’st rather wait?” + +A bitter sigh I drew, then scarce found voice +To answer, hardly to these sounds my lips +Gave utterance, wailing: “Thy fair looks withdrawn, +Things present, with deceitful pleasures, turn’d +My steps aside.” She answering spake: “Hadst thou +Been silent, or denied what thou avow’st, +Thou hadst not hid thy sin the more: such eye +Observes it. But whene’er the sinner’s cheek +Breaks forth into the precious-streaming tears +Of self-accusing, in our court the wheel +Of justice doth run counter to the edge. +Howe’er that thou may’st profit by thy shame +For errors past, and that henceforth more strength +May arm thee, when thou hear’st the Siren-voice, +Lay thou aside the motive to this grief, +And lend attentive ear, while I unfold +How opposite a way my buried flesh +Should have impell’d thee. Never didst thou spy +In art or nature aught so passing sweet, +As were the limbs, that in their beauteous frame +Enclos’d me, and are scatter’d now in dust. +If sweetest thing thus fail’d thee with my death, +What, afterward, of mortal should thy wish +Have tempted? When thou first hadst felt the dart +Of perishable things, in my departing +For better realms, thy wing thou should’st have prun’d +To follow me, and never stoop’d again +To ’bide a second blow for a slight girl, +Or other gaud as transient and as vain. +The new and inexperienc’d bird awaits, +Twice it may be, or thrice, the fowler’s aim; +But in the sight of one, whose plumes are full, +In vain the net is spread, the arrow wing’d.” + +I stood, as children silent and asham’d +Stand, list’ning, with their eyes upon the earth, +Acknowledging their fault and self-condemn’d. +And she resum’d: “If, but to hear thus pains thee, +Raise thou thy beard, and lo! what sight shall do!” + +With less reluctance yields a sturdy holm, +Rent from its fibers by a blast, that blows +From off the pole, or from Iarbas’ land, +Than I at her behest my visage rais’d: +And thus the face denoting by the beard, +I mark’d the secret sting her words convey’d. + +No sooner lifted I mine aspect up, +Than downward sunk that vision I beheld +Of goodly creatures vanish; and mine eyes +Yet unassur’d and wavering, bent their light +On Beatrice. Towards the animal, +Who joins two natures in one form, she turn’d, +And, even under shadow of her veil, +And parted by the verdant rill, that flow’d +Between, in loveliness appear’d as much +Her former self surpassing, as on earth +All others she surpass’d. Remorseful goads +Shot sudden through me. Each thing else, the more +Its love had late beguil’d me, now the more +I Was loathsome. On my heart so keenly smote +The bitter consciousness, that on the ground +O’erpower’d I fell: and what my state was then, +She knows who was the cause. When now my strength +Flow’d back, returning outward from the heart, +The lady, whom alone I first had seen, +I found above me. “Loose me not,” she cried: +“Loose not thy hold;” and lo! had dragg’d me high +As to my neck into the stream, while she, +Still as she drew me after, swept along, +Swift as a shuttle, bounding o’er the wave. + +The blessed shore approaching then was heard +So sweetly, “Tu asperges me,” that I +May not remember, much less tell the sound. +The beauteous dame, her arms expanding, clasp’d +My temples, and immerg’d me, where ’twas fit +The wave should drench me: and thence raising up, +Within the fourfold dance of lovely nymphs +Presented me so lav’d, and with their arm +They each did cover me. “Here are we nymphs, +And in the heav’n are stars. Or ever earth +Was visited of Beatrice, we +Appointed for her handmaids, tended on her. +We to her eyes will lead thee; but the light +Of gladness that is in them, well to scan, +Those yonder three, of deeper ken than ours, +Thy sight shall quicken.” Thus began their song; +And then they led me to the Gryphon’s breast, +While, turn’d toward us, Beatrice stood. +“Spare not thy vision. We have stationed thee +Before the emeralds, whence love erewhile +Hath drawn his weapons on thee.” As they spake, +A thousand fervent wishes riveted +Mine eyes upon her beaming eyes, that stood +Still fix’d toward the Gryphon motionless. +As the sun strikes a mirror, even thus +Within those orbs the twofold being, shone, +For ever varying, in one figure now +Reflected, now in other. Reader! muse +How wond’rous in my sight it seem’d to mark +A thing, albeit steadfast in itself, +Yet in its imag’d semblance mutable. + +Full of amaze, and joyous, while my soul +Fed on the viand, whereof still desire +Grows with satiety, the other three +With gesture, that declar’d a loftier line, +Advanc’d: to their own carol on they came +Dancing in festive ring angelical. + +“Turn, Beatrice!” was their song: “O turn +Thy saintly sight on this thy faithful one, +Who to behold thee many a wearisome pace +Hath measur’d. Gracious at our pray’r vouchsafe +Unveil to him thy cheeks: that he may mark +Thy second beauty, now conceal’d.” O splendour! +O sacred light eternal! who is he +So pale with musing in Pierian shades, +Or with that fount so lavishly imbued, +Whose spirit should not fail him in th’ essay +To represent thee such as thou didst seem, +When under cope of the still-chiming heaven +Thou gav’st to open air thy charms reveal’d. + + + + +CANTO XXXII + + +Mine eyes with such an eager coveting, +Were bent to rid them of their ten years’ thirst, +No other sense was waking: and e’en they +Were fenc’d on either side from heed of aught; +So tangled in its custom’d toils that smile +Of saintly brightness drew me to itself, +When forcibly toward the left my sight +The sacred virgins turn’d; for from their lips +I heard the warning sounds: “Too fix’d a gaze!” + +Awhile my vision labor’d; as when late +Upon the’ o’erstrained eyes the sun hath smote: +But soon to lesser object, as the view +Was now recover’d (lesser in respect +To that excess of sensible, whence late +I had perforce been sunder’d) on their right +I mark’d that glorious army wheel, and turn, +Against the sun and sev’nfold lights, their front. +As when, their bucklers for protection rais’d, +A well-rang’d troop, with portly banners curl’d, +Wheel circling, ere the whole can change their ground: +E’en thus the goodly regiment of heav’n +Proceeding, all did pass us, ere the car +Had slop’d his beam. Attendant at the wheels +The damsels turn’d; and on the Gryphon mov’d +The sacred burden, with a pace so smooth, +No feather on him trembled. The fair dame +Who through the wave had drawn me, companied +By Statius and myself, pursued the wheel, +Whose orbit, rolling, mark’d a lesser arch. + +Through the high wood, now void (the more her blame, +Who by the serpent was beguil’d) I past +With step in cadence to the harmony +Angelic. Onward had we mov’d, as far +Perchance as arrow at three several flights +Full wing’d had sped, when from her station down +Descended Beatrice. With one voice +All murmur’d “Adam,” circling next a plant +Despoil’d of flowers and leaf on every bough. +Its tresses, spreading more as more they rose, +Were such, as ’midst their forest wilds for height +The Indians might have gaz’d at. “Blessed thou! +Gryphon, whose beak hath never pluck’d that tree +Pleasant to taste: for hence the appetite +Was warp’d to evil.” Round the stately trunk +Thus shouted forth the rest, to whom return’d +The animal twice-gender’d: “Yea: for so +The generation of the just are sav’d.” +And turning to the chariot-pole, to foot +He drew it of the widow’d branch, and bound +There left unto the stock whereon it grew. + +As when large floods of radiance from above +Stream, with that radiance mingled, which ascends +Next after setting of the scaly sign, +Our plants then burgeon, and each wears anew +His wonted colours, ere the sun have yok’d +Beneath another star his flamy steeds; +Thus putting forth a hue, more faint than rose, +And deeper than the violet, was renew’d +The plant, erewhile in all its branches bare. + +Unearthly was the hymn, which then arose. +I understood it not, nor to the end +Endur’d the harmony. Had I the skill +To pencil forth, how clos’d th’ unpitying eyes +Slumb’ring, when Syrinx warbled, (eyes that paid +So dearly for their watching,) then like painter, +That with a model paints, I might design +The manner of my falling into sleep. +But feign who will the slumber cunningly; +I pass it by to when I wak’d, and tell +How suddenly a flash of splendour rent +The curtain of my sleep, and one cries out: +“Arise, what dost thou?” As the chosen three, +On Tabor’s mount, admitted to behold +The blossoming of that fair tree, whose fruit +Is coveted of angels, and doth make +Perpetual feast in heaven, to themselves +Returning at the word, whence deeper sleeps +Were broken, that they their tribe diminish’d saw, +Both Moses and Elias gone, and chang’d +The stole their master wore: thus to myself +Returning, over me beheld I stand +The piteous one, who cross the stream had brought +My steps. “And where,” all doubting, I exclaim’d, +“Is Beatrice?”—“See her,” she replied, +“Beneath the fresh leaf seated on its root. +Behold th’ associate choir that circles her. +The others, with a melody more sweet +And more profound, journeying to higher realms, +Upon the Gryphon tend.” If there her words +Were clos’d, I know not; but mine eyes had now +Ta’en view of her, by whom all other thoughts +Were barr’d admittance. On the very ground +Alone she sat, as she had there been left +A guard upon the wain, which I beheld +Bound to the twyform beast. The seven nymphs +Did make themselves a cloister round about her, +And in their hands upheld those lights secure +From blast septentrion and the gusty south. + +“A little while thou shalt be forester here: +And citizen shalt be forever with me, +Of that true Rome, wherein Christ dwells a Roman +To profit the misguided world, keep now +Thine eyes upon the car; and what thou seest, +Take heed thou write, returning to that place.” + +Thus Beatrice: at whose feet inclin’d +Devout, at her behest, my thought and eyes, +I, as she bade, directed. Never fire, +With so swift motion, forth a stormy cloud +Leap’d downward from the welkin’s farthest bound, +As I beheld the bird of Jove descending +Pounce on the tree, and, as he rush’d, the rind, +Disparting crush beneath him, buds much more +And leaflets. On the car with all his might +He struck, whence, staggering like a ship, it reel’d, +At random driv’n, to starboard now, o’ercome, +And now to larboard, by the vaulting waves. + +Next springing up into the chariot’s womb +A fox I saw, with hunger seeming pin’d +Of all good food. But, for his ugly sins +The saintly maid rebuking him, away +Scamp’ring he turn’d, fast as his hide-bound corpse +Would bear him. Next, from whence before he came, +I saw the eagle dart into the hull +O’ th’ car, and leave it with his feathers lin’d; +And then a voice, like that which issues forth +From heart with sorrow riv’d, did issue forth +From heav’n, and, “O poor bark of mine!” it cried, +“How badly art thou freighted!” Then, it seem’d, +That the earth open’d between either wheel, +And I beheld a dragon issue thence, +That through the chariot fix’d his forked train; +And like a wasp that draggeth back the sting, +So drawing forth his baleful train, he dragg’d +Part of the bottom forth, and went his way +Exulting. What remain’d, as lively turf +With green herb, so did clothe itself with plumes, +Which haply had with purpose chaste and kind +Been offer’d; and therewith were cloth’d the wheels, +Both one and other, and the beam, so quickly +A sigh were not breath’d sooner. Thus transform’d, +The holy structure, through its several parts, +Did put forth heads, three on the beam, and one +On every side; the first like oxen horn’d, +But with a single horn upon their front +The four. Like monster sight hath never seen. +O’er it methought there sat, secure as rock +On mountain’s lofty top, a shameless whore, +Whose ken rov’d loosely round her. At her side, +As ’twere that none might bear her off, I saw +A giant stand; and ever, and anon +They mingled kisses. But, her lustful eyes +Chancing on me to wander, that fell minion +Scourg’d her from head to foot all o’er; then full +Of jealousy, and fierce with rage, unloos’d +The monster, and dragg’d on, so far across +The forest, that from me its shades alone +Shielded the harlot and the new-form’d brute. + + + + +CANTO XXXIII + + +“The heathen, Lord! are come!” responsive thus, +The trinal now, and now the virgin band +Quaternion, their sweet psalmody began, +Weeping; and Beatrice listen’d, sad +And sighing, to the song’, in such a mood, +That Mary, as she stood beside the cross, +Was scarce more chang’d. But when they gave her place +To speak, then, risen upright on her feet, +She, with a colour glowing bright as fire, +Did answer: “Yet a little while, and ye +Shall see me not; and, my beloved sisters, +Again a little while, and ye shall see me.” + +Before her then she marshall’d all the seven, +And, beck’ning only motion’d me, the dame, +And that remaining sage, to follow her. + +So on she pass’d; and had not set, I ween, +Her tenth step to the ground, when with mine eyes +Her eyes encounter’d; and, with visage mild, +“So mend thy pace,” she cried, “that if my words +Address thee, thou mayst still be aptly plac’d +To hear them.” Soon as duly to her side +I now had hasten’d: “Brother!” she began, +“Why mak’st thou no attempt at questioning, +As thus we walk together?” Like to those +Who, speaking with too reverent an awe +Before their betters, draw not forth the voice +Alive unto their lips, befell me shell +That I in sounds imperfect thus began: +“Lady! what I have need of, that thou know’st, +And what will suit my need.” She answering thus: +“Of fearfulness and shame, I will, that thou +Henceforth do rid thee: that thou speak no more, +As one who dreams. Thus far be taught of me: +The vessel, which thou saw’st the serpent break, +Was and is not: let him, who hath the blame, +Hope not to scare God’s vengeance with a sop. +Without an heir for ever shall not be +That eagle, he, who left the chariot plum’d, +Which monster made it first and next a prey. +Plainly I view, and therefore speak, the stars +E’en now approaching, whose conjunction, free +From all impediment and bar, brings on +A season, in the which, one sent from God, +(Five hundred, five, and ten, do mark him out) +That foul one, and th’ accomplice of her guilt, +The giant, both shall slay. And if perchance +My saying, dark as Themis or as Sphinx, +Fail to persuade thee, (since like them it foils +The intellect with blindness) yet ere long +Events shall be the Naiads, that will solve +This knotty riddle, and no damage light +On flock or field. Take heed; and as these words +By me are utter’d, teach them even so +To those who live that life, which is a race +To death: and when thou writ’st them, keep in mind +Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, +That twice hath now been spoil’d. This whoso robs, +This whoso plucks, with blasphemy of deed +Sins against God, who for his use alone +Creating hallow’d it. For taste of this, +In pain and in desire, five thousand years +And upward, the first soul did yearn for him, +Who punish’d in himself the fatal gust. + +“Thy reason slumbers, if it deem this height +And summit thus inverted of the plant, +Without due cause: and were not vainer thoughts, +As Elsa’s numbing waters, to thy soul, +And their fond pleasures had not dyed it dark +As Pyramus the mulberry, thou hadst seen, +In such momentous circumstance alone, +God’s equal justice morally implied +In the forbidden tree. But since I mark thee +In understanding harden’d into stone, +And, to that hardness, spotted too and stain’d, +So that thine eye is dazzled at my word, +I will, that, if not written, yet at least +Painted thou take it in thee, for the cause, +That one brings home his staff inwreath’d with palm.” + +I thus: “As wax by seal, that changeth not +Its impress, now is stamp’d my brain by thee. +But wherefore soars thy wish’d-for speech so high +Beyond my sight, that loses it the more, +The more it strains to reach it?”—“To the end +That thou mayst know,” she answer’d straight, “the school, +That thou hast follow’d; and how far behind, +When following my discourse, its learning halts: +And mayst behold your art, from the divine +As distant, as the disagreement is +’Twixt earth and heaven’s most high and rapturous orb.” + +“I not remember,” I replied, “that e’er +I was estrang’d from thee, nor for such fault +Doth conscience chide me.” Smiling she return’d: +“If thou canst, not remember, call to mind +How lately thou hast drunk of Lethe’s wave; +And, sure as smoke doth indicate a flame, +In that forgetfulness itself conclude +Blame from thy alienated will incurr’d. +From henceforth verily my words shall be +As naked as will suit them to appear +In thy unpractis’d view.” More sparkling now, +And with retarded course the sun possess’d +The circle of mid-day, that varies still +As th’ aspect varies of each several clime, +When, as one, sent in vaward of a troop +For escort, pauses, if perchance he spy +Vestige of somewhat strange and rare: so paus’d +The sev’nfold band, arriving at the verge +Of a dun umbrage hoar, such as is seen, +Beneath green leaves and gloomy branches, oft +To overbrow a bleak and alpine cliff. +And, where they stood, before them, as it seem’d, +Tigris and Euphrates both beheld, +Forth from one fountain issue; and, like friends, +Linger at parting. “O enlight’ning beam! +O glory of our kind! beseech thee say +What water this, which from one source deriv’d +Itself removes to distance from itself?” + +To such entreaty answer thus was made: +“Entreat Matilda, that she teach thee this.” + +And here, as one, who clears himself of blame +Imputed, the fair dame return’d: “Of me +He this and more hath learnt; and I am safe +That Lethe’s water hath not hid it from him.” + +And Beatrice: “Some more pressing care +That oft the memory ’reeves, perchance hath made +His mind’s eye dark. But lo! where Eunoe cows! +Lead thither; and, as thou art wont, revive +His fainting virtue.” As a courteous spirit, +That proffers no excuses, but as soon +As he hath token of another’s will, +Makes it his own; when she had ta’en me, thus +The lovely maiden mov’d her on, and call’d +To Statius with an air most lady-like: +“Come thou with him.” Were further space allow’d, +Then, Reader, might I sing, though but in part, +That beverage, with whose sweetness I had ne’er +Been sated. But, since all the leaves are full, +Appointed for this second strain, mine art +With warning bridle checks me. I return’d +From the most holy wave, regenerate, +If ’en as new plants renew’d with foliage new, +Pure and made apt for mounting to the stars. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1006 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1007-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1007-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7d511b98 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1007-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5090 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1007 *** + +PARADISE + +FROM THE DIVINE COMEDY + +BY +Dante Alighieri + +Translated by +THE REV. H. F. CARY, M.A. + + + + +Contents + + CANTO I. + CANTO II. + CANTO III. + CANTO IV. + CANTO V. + CANTO VI. + CANTO VII. + CANTO VIII. + CANTO IX. + CANTO X. + CANTO XI. + CANTO XII. + CANTO XIII. + CANTO XIV. + CANTO XV. + CANTO XVI. + CANTO XVII. + CANTO XVIII. + CANTO XIX. + CANTO XX. + CANTO XXI. + CANTO XXII. + CANTO XXIII. + CANTO XXIV. + CANTO XXV. + CANTO XXVI. + CANTO XXVII. + CANTO XXVIII. + CANTO XXIX. + CANTO XXX. + CANTO XXXI. + CANTO XXXII. + CANTO XXXIII. + + + + +PARADISE + + + + +CANTO I + + +His glory, by whose might all things are mov’d, +Pierces the universe, and in one part +Sheds more resplendence, elsewhere less. In heav’n, +That largeliest of his light partakes, was I, +Witness of things, which to relate again +Surpasseth power of him who comes from thence; +For that, so near approaching its desire +Our intellect is to such depth absorb’d, +That memory cannot follow. Nathless all, +That in my thoughts I of that sacred realm +Could store, shall now be matter of my song. + +Benign Apollo! this last labour aid, +And make me such a vessel of thy worth, +As thy own laurel claims of me belov’d. +Thus far hath one of steep Parnassus’ brows +Suffic’d me; henceforth there is need of both +For my remaining enterprise Do thou +Enter into my bosom, and there breathe +So, as when Marsyas by thy hand was dragg’d +Forth from his limbs unsheath’d. O power divine! +If thou to me of shine impart so much, +That of that happy realm the shadow’d form +Trac’d in my thoughts I may set forth to view, +Thou shalt behold me of thy favour’d tree +Come to the foot, and crown myself with leaves; +For to that honour thou, and my high theme +Will fit me. If but seldom, mighty Sire! +To grace his triumph gathers thence a wreath +Caesar or bard (more shame for human wills +Deprav’d) joy to the Delphic god must spring +From the Pierian foliage, when one breast +Is with such thirst inspir’d. From a small spark +Great flame hath risen: after me perchance +Others with better voice may pray, and gain +From the Cirrhaean city answer kind. + +Through diver passages, the world’s bright lamp +Rises to mortals, but through that which joins +Four circles with the threefold cross, in best +Course, and in happiest constellation set +He comes, and to the worldly wax best gives +Its temper and impression. Morning there, +Here eve was by almost such passage made; +And whiteness had o’erspread that hemisphere, +Blackness the other part; when to the left +I saw Beatrice turn’d, and on the sun +Gazing, as never eagle fix’d his ken. +As from the first a second beam is wont +To issue, and reflected upwards rise, +E’en as a pilgrim bent on his return, +So of her act, that through the eyesight pass’d +Into my fancy, mine was form’d; and straight, +Beyond our mortal wont, I fix’d mine eyes +Upon the sun. Much is allowed us there, +That here exceeds our pow’r; thanks to the place +Made for the dwelling of the human kind + +I suffer’d it not long, and yet so long +That I beheld it bick’ring sparks around, +As iron that comes boiling from the fire. +And suddenly upon the day appear’d +A day new-ris’n, as he, who hath the power, +Had with another sun bedeck’d the sky. + +Her eyes fast fix’d on the eternal wheels, +Beatrice stood unmov’d; and I with ken +Fix’d upon her, from upward gaze remov’d +At her aspect, such inwardly became +As Glaucus, when he tasted of the herb, +That made him peer among the ocean gods; +Words may not tell of that transhuman change: +And therefore let the example serve, though weak, +For those whom grace hath better proof in store + +If I were only what thou didst create, +Then newly, Love! by whom the heav’n is rul’d, +Thou know’st, who by thy light didst bear me up. +Whenas the wheel which thou dost ever guide, +Desired Spirit! with its harmony +Temper’d of thee and measur’d, charm’d mine ear, +Then seem’d to me so much of heav’n to blaze +With the sun’s flame, that rain or flood ne’er made +A lake so broad. The newness of the sound, +And that great light, inflam’d me with desire, +Keener than e’er was felt, to know their cause. + +Whence she who saw me, clearly as myself, +To calm my troubled mind, before I ask’d, +Open’d her lips, and gracious thus began: +“With false imagination thou thyself +Mak’st dull, so that thou seest not the thing, +Which thou hadst seen, had that been shaken off. +Thou art not on the earth as thou believ’st; +For light’ning scap’d from its own proper place +Ne’er ran, as thou hast hither now return’d.” + +Although divested of my first-rais’d doubt, +By those brief words, accompanied with smiles, +Yet in new doubt was I entangled more, +And said: “Already satisfied, I rest +From admiration deep, but now admire +How I above those lighter bodies rise.” + +Whence, after utt’rance of a piteous sigh, +She tow’rds me bent her eyes, with such a look, +As on her frenzied child a mother casts; +Then thus began: “Among themselves all things +Have order; and from hence the form, which makes +The universe resemble God. In this +The higher creatures see the printed steps +Of that eternal worth, which is the end +Whither the line is drawn. All natures lean, +In this their order, diversely, some more, +Some less approaching to their primal source. +Thus they to different havens are mov’d on +Through the vast sea of being, and each one +With instinct giv’n, that bears it in its course; +This to the lunar sphere directs the fire, +This prompts the hearts of mortal animals, +This the brute earth together knits, and binds. +Nor only creatures, void of intellect, +Are aim’d at by this bow; but even those, +That have intelligence and love, are pierc’d. +That Providence, who so well orders all, +With her own light makes ever calm the heaven, +In which the substance, that hath greatest speed, +Is turn’d: and thither now, as to our seat +Predestin’d, we are carried by the force +Of that strong cord, that never looses dart, +But at fair aim and glad. Yet is it true, +That as ofttimes but ill accords the form +To the design of art, through sluggishness +Of unreplying matter, so this course +Is sometimes quitted by the creature, who +Hath power, directed thus, to bend elsewhere; +As from a cloud the fire is seen to fall, +From its original impulse warp’d, to earth, +By vicious fondness. Thou no more admire +Thy soaring, (if I rightly deem,) than lapse +Of torrent downwards from a mountain’s height. +There would in thee for wonder be more cause, +If, free of hind’rance, thou hadst fix’d thyself +Below, like fire unmoving on the earth.” + +So said, she turn’d toward the heav’n her face. + + + + +CANTO II + + +All ye, who in small bark have following sail’d, +Eager to listen, on the advent’rous track +Of my proud keel, that singing cuts its way, +Backward return with speed, and your own shores +Revisit, nor put out to open sea, +Where losing me, perchance ye may remain +Bewilder’d in deep maze. The way I pass +Ne’er yet was run: Minerva breathes the gale, +Apollo guides me, and another Nine +To my rapt sight the arctic beams reveal. +Ye other few, who have outstretch’d the neck. +Timely for food of angels, on which here +They live, yet never know satiety, +Through the deep brine ye fearless may put out +Your vessel, marking, well the furrow broad +Before you in the wave, that on both sides +Equal returns. Those, glorious, who pass’d o’er +To Colchos, wonder’d not as ye will do, +When they saw Jason following the plough. + +The increate perpetual thirst, that draws +Toward the realm of God’s own form, bore us +Swift almost as the heaven ye behold. + +Beatrice upward gaz’d, and I on her, +And in such space as on the notch a dart +Is plac’d, then loosen’d flies, I saw myself +Arriv’d, where wond’rous thing engag’d my sight. +Whence she, to whom no work of mine was hid, +Turning to me, with aspect glad as fair, +Bespake me: “Gratefully direct thy mind +To God, through whom to this first star we come.” + +Me seem’d as if a cloud had cover’d us, +Translucent, solid, firm, and polish’d bright, +Like adamant, which the sun’s beam had smit +Within itself the ever-during pearl +Receiv’d us, as the wave a ray of light +Receives, and rests unbroken. If I then +Was of corporeal frame, and it transcend +Our weaker thought, how one dimension thus +Another could endure, which needs must be +If body enter body, how much more +Must the desire inflame us to behold +That essence, which discovers by what means +God and our nature join’d! There will be seen +That which we hold through faith, not shown by proof, +But in itself intelligibly plain, +E’en as the truth that man at first believes. + +I answered: “Lady! I with thoughts devout, +Such as I best can frame, give thanks to Him, +Who hath remov’d me from the mortal world. +But tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots +Upon this body, which below on earth +Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint?” + +She somewhat smil’d, then spake: “If mortals err +In their opinion, when the key of sense +Unlocks not, surely wonder’s weapon keen +Ought not to pierce thee; since thou find’st, the wings +Of reason to pursue the senses’ flight +Are short. But what thy own thought is, declare.” + +Then I: “What various here above appears, +Is caus’d, I deem, by bodies dense or rare.” + +She then resum’d: “Thou certainly wilt see +In falsehood thy belief o’erwhelm’d, if well +Thou listen to the arguments, which I +Shall bring to face it. The eighth sphere displays +Numberless lights, the which in kind and size +May be remark’d of different aspects; +If rare or dense of that were cause alone, +One single virtue then would be in all, +Alike distributed, or more, or less. +Different virtues needs must be the fruits +Of formal principles, and these, save one, +Will by thy reasoning be destroy’d. Beside, +If rarity were of that dusk the cause, +Which thou inquirest, either in some part +That planet must throughout be void, nor fed +With its own matter; or, as bodies share +Their fat and leanness, in like manner this +Must in its volume change the leaves. The first, +If it were true, had through the sun’s eclipse +Been manifested, by transparency +Of light, as through aught rare beside effus’d. +But this is not. Therefore remains to see +The other cause: and if the other fall, +Erroneous so must prove what seem’d to thee. +If not from side to side this rarity +Pass through, there needs must be a limit, whence +Its contrary no further lets it pass. +And hence the beam, that from without proceeds, +Must be pour’d back, as colour comes, through glass +Reflected, which behind it lead conceals. +Now wilt thou say, that there of murkier hue +Than in the other part the ray is shown, +By being thence refracted farther back. +From this perplexity will free thee soon +Experience, if thereof thou trial make, +The fountain whence your arts derive their streame. +Three mirrors shalt thou take, and two remove +From thee alike, and more remote the third. +Betwixt the former pair, shall meet thine eyes; +Then turn’d toward them, cause behind thy back +A light to stand, that on the three shall shine, +And thus reflected come to thee from all. +Though that beheld most distant do not stretch +A space so ample, yet in brightness thou +Will own it equaling the rest. But now, +As under snow the ground, if the warm ray +Smites it, remains dismantled of the hue +And cold, that cover’d it before, so thee, +Dismantled in thy mind, I will inform +With light so lively, that the tremulous beam +Shall quiver where it falls. Within the heaven, +Where peace divine inhabits, circles round +A body, in whose virtue dies the being +Of all that it contains. The following heaven, +That hath so many lights, this being divides, +Through different essences, from it distinct, +And yet contain’d within it. The other orbs +Their separate distinctions variously +Dispose, for their own seed and produce apt. +Thus do these organs of the world proceed, +As thou beholdest now, from step to step, +Their influences from above deriving, +And thence transmitting downwards. Mark me well, +How through this passage to the truth I ford, +The truth thou lov’st, that thou henceforth alone, +May’st know to keep the shallows, safe, untold. + +“The virtue and motion of the sacred orbs, +As mallet by the workman’s hand, must needs +By blessed movers be inspir’d. This heaven, +Made beauteous by so many luminaries, +From the deep spirit, that moves its circling sphere, +Its image takes an impress as a seal: +And as the soul, that dwells within your dust, +Through members different, yet together form’d, +In different pow’rs resolves itself; e’en so +The intellectual efficacy unfolds +Its goodness multiplied throughout the stars; +On its own unity revolving still. +Different virtue compact different +Makes with the precious body it enlivens, +With which it knits, as life in you is knit. +From its original nature full of joy, +The virtue mingled through the body shines, +As joy through pupil of the living eye. +From hence proceeds, that which from light to light +Seems different, and not from dense or rare. +This is the formal cause, that generates +Proportion’d to its power, the dusk or clear.” + + + + +CANTO III + + +That sun, which erst with love my bosom warm’d +Had of fair truth unveil’d the sweet aspect, +By proof of right, and of the false reproof; +And I, to own myself convinc’d and free +Of doubt, as much as needed, rais’d my head +Erect for speech. But soon a sight appear’d, +Which, so intent to mark it, held me fix’d, +That of confession I no longer thought. + +As through translucent and smooth glass, or wave +Clear and unmov’d, and flowing not so deep +As that its bed is dark, the shape returns +So faint of our impictur’d lineaments, +That on white forehead set a pearl as strong +Comes to the eye: such saw I many a face, +All stretch’d to speak, from whence I straight conceiv’d +Delusion opposite to that, which rais’d +Between the man and fountain, amorous flame. + +Sudden, as I perceiv’d them, deeming these +Reflected semblances to see of whom +They were, I turn’d mine eyes, and nothing saw; +Then turn’d them back, directed on the light +Of my sweet guide, who smiling shot forth beams +From her celestial eyes. “Wonder not thou,” +She cry’d, “at this my smiling, when I see +Thy childish judgment; since not yet on truth +It rests the foot, but, as it still is wont, +Makes thee fall back in unsound vacancy. +True substances are these, which thou behold’st, +Hither through failure of their vow exil’d. +But speak thou with them; listen, and believe, +That the true light, which fills them with desire, +Permits not from its beams their feet to stray.” + +Straight to the shadow which for converse seem’d +Most earnest, I addressed me, and began, +As one by over-eagerness perplex’d: +“O spirit, born for joy! who in the rays +Of life eternal, of that sweetness know’st +The flavour, which, not tasted, passes far +All apprehension, me it well would please, +If thou wouldst tell me of thy name, and this +Your station here.” Whence she, with kindness prompt, +And eyes glist’ning with smiles: “Our charity, +To any wish by justice introduc’d, +Bars not the door, no more than she above, +Who would have all her court be like herself. +I was a virgin sister in the earth; +And if thy mind observe me well, this form, +With such addition grac’d of loveliness, +Will not conceal me long, but thou wilt know +Piccarda, in the tardiest sphere thus plac’d, +Here ’mid these other blessed also blest. +Our hearts, whose high affections burn alone +With pleasure, from the Holy Spirit conceiv’d, +Admitted to his order dwell in joy. +And this condition, which appears so low, +Is for this cause assign’d us, that our vows +Were in some part neglected and made void.” + +Whence I to her replied: “Something divine +Beams in your countenance, wond’rous fair, +From former knowledge quite transmuting you. +Therefore to recollect was I so slow. +But what thou sayst hath to my memory +Given now such aid, that to retrace your forms +Is easier. Yet inform me, ye, who here +Are happy, long ye for a higher place +More to behold, and more in love to dwell?” + +She with those other spirits gently smil’d, +Then answer’d with such gladness, that she seem’d +With love’s first flame to glow: “Brother! our will +Is in composure settled by the power +Of charity, who makes us will alone +What we possess, and nought beyond desire; +If we should wish to be exalted more, +Then must our wishes jar with the high will +Of him, who sets us here, which in these orbs +Thou wilt confess not possible, if here +To be in charity must needs befall, +And if her nature well thou contemplate. +Rather it is inherent in this state +Of blessedness, to keep ourselves within +The divine will, by which our wills with his +Are one. So that as we from step to step +Are plac’d throughout this kingdom, pleases all, +E’en as our King, who in us plants his will; +And in his will is our tranquillity; +It is the mighty ocean, whither tends +Whatever it creates and nature makes.” + +Then saw I clearly how each spot in heav’n +Is Paradise, though with like gracious dew +The supreme virtue show’r not over all. + +But as it chances, if one sort of food +Hath satiated, and of another still +The appetite remains, that this is ask’d, +And thanks for that return’d; e’en so did I +In word and motion, bent from her to learn +What web it was, through which she had not drawn +The shuttle to its point. She thus began: +“Exalted worth and perfectness of life +The Lady higher up enshrine in heaven, +By whose pure laws upon your nether earth +The robe and veil they wear, to that intent, +That e’en till death they may keep watch or sleep +With their great bridegroom, who accepts each vow, +Which to his gracious pleasure love conforms. +from the world, to follow her, when young +Escap’d; and, in her vesture mantling me, +Made promise of the way her sect enjoins. +Thereafter men, for ill than good more apt, +Forth snatch’d me from the pleasant cloister’s pale. +God knows how after that my life was fram’d. +This other splendid shape, which thou beholdst +At my right side, burning with all the light +Of this our orb, what of myself I tell +May to herself apply. From her, like me +A sister, with like violence were torn +The saintly folds, that shaded her fair brows. +E’en when she to the world again was brought +In spite of her own will and better wont, +Yet not for that the bosom’s inward veil +Did she renounce. This is the luminary +Of mighty Constance, who from that loud blast, +Which blew the second over Suabia’s realm, +That power produc’d, which was the third and last.” + +She ceas’d from further talk, and then began +“Ave Maria” singing, and with that song +Vanish’d, as heavy substance through deep wave. + +Mine eye, that far as it was capable, +Pursued her, when in dimness she was lost, +Turn’d to the mark where greater want impell’d, +And bent on Beatrice all its gaze. +But she as light’ning beam’d upon my looks: +So that the sight sustain’d it not at first. +Whence I to question her became less prompt. + + + + +CANTO IV + + +Between two kinds of food, both equally +Remote and tempting, first a man might die +Of hunger, ere he one could freely choose. +E’en so would stand a lamb between the maw +Of two fierce wolves, in dread of both alike: +E’en so between two deer a dog would stand, +Wherefore, if I was silent, fault nor praise +I to myself impute, by equal doubts +Held in suspense, since of necessity +It happen’d. Silent was I, yet desire +Was painted in my looks; and thus I spake +My wish more earnestly than language could. + +As Daniel, when the haughty king he freed +From ire, that spurr’d him on to deeds unjust +And violent; so look’d Beatrice then. + +“Well I discern,” she thus her words address’d, +“How contrary desires each way constrain thee, +So that thy anxious thought is in itself +Bound up and stifled, nor breathes freely forth. +Thou arguest; if the good intent remain; +What reason that another’s violence +Should stint the measure of my fair desert? + +“Cause too thou findst for doubt, in that it seems, +That spirits to the stars, as Plato deem’d, +Return. These are the questions which thy will +Urge equally; and therefore I the first +Of that will treat which hath the more of gall. +Of seraphim he who is most ensky’d, +Moses and Samuel, and either John, +Choose which thou wilt, nor even Mary’s self, +Have not in any other heav’n their seats, +Than have those spirits which so late thou saw’st; +Nor more or fewer years exist; but all +Make the first circle beauteous, diversely +Partaking of sweet life, as more or less +Afflation of eternal bliss pervades them. +Here were they shown thee, not that fate assigns +This for their sphere, but for a sign to thee +Of that celestial furthest from the height. +Thus needs, that ye may apprehend, we speak: +Since from things sensible alone ye learn +That, which digested rightly after turns +To intellectual. For no other cause +The scripture, condescending graciously +To your perception, hands and feet to God +Attributes, nor so means: and holy church +Doth represent with human countenance +Gabriel, and Michael, and him who made +Tobias whole. Unlike what here thou seest, +The judgment of Timaeus, who affirms +Each soul restor’d to its particular star, +Believing it to have been taken thence, +When nature gave it to inform her mold: +Since to appearance his intention is +E’en what his words declare: or else to shun +Derision, haply thus he hath disguis’d +His true opinion. If his meaning be, +That to the influencing of these orbs revert +The honour and the blame in human acts, +Perchance he doth not wholly miss the truth. +This principle, not understood aright, +Erewhile perverted well nigh all the world; +So that it fell to fabled names of Jove, +And Mercury, and Mars. That other doubt, +Which moves thee, is less harmful; for it brings +No peril of removing thee from me. + +“That, to the eye of man, our justice seems +Unjust, is argument for faith, and not +For heretic declension. To the end +This truth may stand more clearly in your view, +I will content thee even to thy wish + +“If violence be, when that which suffers, nought +Consents to that which forceth, not for this +These spirits stood exculpate. For the will, +That will not, still survives unquench’d, and doth +As nature doth in fire, tho’ violence +Wrest it a thousand times; for, if it yield +Or more or less, so far it follows force. +And thus did these, whom they had power to seek +The hallow’d place again. In them, had will +Been perfect, such as once upon the bars +Held Laurence firm, or wrought in Scaevola +To his own hand remorseless, to the path, +Whence they were drawn, their steps had hasten’d back, +When liberty return’d: but in too few +Resolve so steadfast dwells. And by these words +If duly weigh’d, that argument is void, +Which oft might have perplex’d thee still. But now +Another question thwarts thee, which to solve +Might try thy patience without better aid. +I have, no doubt, instill’d into thy mind, +That blessed spirit may not lie; since near +The source of primal truth it dwells for aye: +And thou might’st after of Piccarda learn +That Constance held affection to the veil; +So that she seems to contradict me here. +Not seldom, brother, it hath chanc’d for men +To do what they had gladly left undone, +Yet to shun peril they have done amiss: +E’en as Alcmaeon, at his father’s suit +Slew his own mother, so made pitiless +Not to lose pity. On this point bethink thee, +That force and will are blended in such wise +As not to make the’ offence excusable. +Absolute will agrees not to the wrong, +That inasmuch as there is fear of woe +From non-compliance, it agrees. Of will +Thus absolute Piccarda spake, and I +Of th’ other; so that both have truly said.” + +Such was the flow of that pure rill, that well’d +From forth the fountain of all truth; and such +The rest, that to my wond’ring thoughts I found. + +“O thou of primal love the prime delight! +Goddess!” I straight reply’d, “whose lively words +Still shed new heat and vigour through my soul! +Affection fails me to requite thy grace +With equal sum of gratitude: be his +To recompense, who sees and can reward thee. +Well I discern, that by that truth alone +Enlighten’d, beyond which no truth may roam, +Our mind can satisfy her thirst to know: +Therein she resteth, e’en as in his lair +The wild beast, soon as she hath reach’d that bound, +And she hath power to reach it; else desire +Were given to no end. And thence doth doubt +Spring, like a shoot, around the stock of truth; +And it is nature which from height to height +On to the summit prompts us. This invites, +This doth assure me, lady, rev’rently +To ask thee of other truth, that yet +Is dark to me. I fain would know, if man +By other works well done may so supply +The failure of his vows, that in your scale +They lack not weight.” I spake; and on me straight +Beatrice look’d with eyes that shot forth sparks +Of love celestial in such copious stream, +That, virtue sinking in me overpower’d, +I turn’d, and downward bent confus’d my sight. + + + + +CANTO V + + +“If beyond earthly wont, the flame of love +Illume me, so that I o’ercome thy power +Of vision, marvel not: but learn the cause +In that perfection of the sight, which soon +As apprehending, hasteneth on to reach +The good it apprehends. I well discern, +How in thine intellect already shines +The light eternal, which to view alone +Ne’er fails to kindle love; and if aught else +Your love seduces, ’tis but that it shows +Some ill-mark’d vestige of that primal beam. + +“This would’st thou know, if failure of the vow +By other service may be so supplied, +As from self-question to assure the soul.” + +Thus she her words, not heedless of my wish, +Began; and thus, as one who breaks not off +Discourse, continued in her saintly strain. +“Supreme of gifts, which God creating gave +Of his free bounty, sign most evident +Of goodness, and in his account most priz’d, +Was liberty of will, the boon wherewith +All intellectual creatures, and them sole +He hath endow’d. Hence now thou mayst infer +Of what high worth the vow, which so is fram’d +That when man offers, God well-pleas’d accepts; +For in the compact between God and him, +This treasure, such as I describe it to thee, +He makes the victim, and of his own act. +What compensation therefore may he find? +If that, whereof thou hast oblation made, +By using well thou think’st to consecrate, +Thou would’st of theft do charitable deed. +Thus I resolve thee of the greater point. + +“But forasmuch as holy church, herein +Dispensing, seems to contradict the truth +I have discover’d to thee, yet behooves +Thou rest a little longer at the board, +Ere the crude aliment, which thou hast taken, +Digested fitly to nutrition turn. +Open thy mind to what I now unfold, +And give it inward keeping. Knowledge comes +Of learning well retain’d, unfruitful else. + +“This sacrifice in essence of two things +Consisteth; one is that, whereof ’tis made, +The covenant the other. For the last, +It ne’er is cancell’d if not kept: and hence +I spake erewhile so strictly of its force. +For this it was enjoin’d the Israelites, +Though leave were giv’n them, as thou know’st, to change +The offering, still to offer. Th’ other part, +The matter and the substance of the vow, +May well be such, to that without offence +It may for other substance be exchang’d. +But at his own discretion none may shift +The burden on his shoulders, unreleas’d +By either key, the yellow and the white. +Nor deem of any change, as less than vain, +If the last bond be not within the new +Included, as the quatre in the six. +No satisfaction therefore can be paid +For what so precious in the balance weighs, +That all in counterpoise must kick the beam. +Take then no vow at random: ta’en, with faith +Preserve it; yet not bent, as Jephthah once, +Blindly to execute a rash resolve, +Whom better it had suited to exclaim, +‘I have done ill,’ than to redeem his pledge +By doing worse or, not unlike to him +In folly, that great leader of the Greeks: +Whence, on the alter, Iphigenia mourn’d +Her virgin beauty, and hath since made mourn +Both wise and simple, even all, who hear +Of so fell sacrifice. Be ye more staid, +O Christians, not, like feather, by each wind +Removable: nor think to cleanse ourselves +In every water. Either testament, +The old and new, is yours: and for your guide +The shepherd of the church let this suffice +To save you. When by evil lust entic’d, +Remember ye be men, not senseless beasts; +Nor let the Jew, who dwelleth in your streets, +Hold you in mock’ry. Be not, as the lamb, +That, fickle wanton, leaves its mother’s milk, +To dally with itself in idle play.” + +Such were the words that Beatrice spake: +These ended, to that region, where the world +Is liveliest, full of fond desire she turn’d. + +Though mainly prompt new question to propose, +Her silence and chang’d look did keep me dumb. +And as the arrow, ere the cord is still, +Leapeth unto its mark; so on we sped +Into the second realm. There I beheld +The dame, so joyous enter, that the orb +Grew brighter at her smiles; and, if the star +Were mov’d to gladness, what then was my cheer, +Whom nature hath made apt for every change! + +As in a quiet and clear lake the fish, +If aught approach them from without, do draw +Towards it, deeming it their food; so drew +Full more than thousand splendours towards us, +And in each one was heard: “Lo! one arriv’d +To multiply our loves!” and as each came +The shadow, streaming forth effulgence new, +Witness’d augmented joy. Here, reader! think, +If thou didst miss the sequel of my tale, +To know the rest how sorely thou wouldst crave; +And thou shalt see what vehement desire +Possess’d me, as soon as these had met my view, +To know their state. “O born in happy hour! +Thou to whom grace vouchsafes, or ere thy close +Of fleshly warfare, to behold the thrones +Of that eternal triumph, know to us +The light communicated, which through heaven +Expatiates without bound. Therefore, if aught +Thou of our beams wouldst borrow for thine aid, +Spare not; and of our radiance take thy fill.” + +Thus of those piteous spirits one bespake me; +And Beatrice next: “Say on; and trust +As unto gods!”—“How in the light supreme +Thou harbour’st, and from thence the virtue bring’st, +That, sparkling in thine eyes, denotes thy joy, +I mark; but, who thou art, am still to seek; +Or wherefore, worthy spirit! for thy lot +This sphere assign’d, that oft from mortal ken +Is veil’d by others’ beams.” I said, and turn’d +Toward the lustre, that with greeting, kind +Erewhile had hail’d me. Forthwith brighter far +Than erst, it wax’d: and, as himself the sun +Hides through excess of light, when his warm gaze +Hath on the mantle of thick vapours prey’d; +Within its proper ray the saintly shape +Was, through increase of gladness, thus conceal’d; +And, shrouded so in splendour answer’d me, +E’en as the tenour of my song declares. + + + + +CANTO VI + + +“After that Constantine the eagle turn’d +Against the motions of the heav’n, that roll’d +Consenting with its course, when he of yore, +Lavinia’s spouse, was leader of the flight, +A hundred years twice told and more, his seat +At Europe’s extreme point, the bird of Jove +Held, near the mountains, whence he issued first. +There, under shadow of his sacred plumes +Swaying the world, till through successive hands +To mine he came devolv’d. Caesar I was, +And am Justinian; destin’d by the will +Of that prime love, whose influence I feel, +From vain excess to clear th’ encumber’d laws. +Or ere that work engag’d me, I did hold +Christ’s nature merely human, with such faith +Contented. But the blessed Agapete, +Who was chief shepherd, he with warning voice +To the true faith recall’d me. I believ’d +His words: and what he taught, now plainly see, +As thou in every contradiction seest +The true and false oppos’d. Soon as my feet +Were to the church reclaim’d, to my great task, +By inspiration of God’s grace impell’d, +I gave me wholly, and consign’d mine arms +To Belisarius, with whom heaven’s right hand +Was link’d in such conjointment, ’twas a sign +That I should rest. To thy first question thus +I shape mine answer, which were ended here, +But that its tendency doth prompt perforce +To some addition; that thou well, mayst mark +What reason on each side they have to plead, +By whom that holiest banner is withstood, +Both who pretend its power and who oppose. + +“Beginning from that hour, when Pallas died +To give it rule, behold the valorous deeds +Have made it worthy reverence. Not unknown +To thee, how for three hundred years and more +It dwelt in Alba, up to those fell lists +Where for its sake were met the rival three; +Nor aught unknown to thee, which it achiev’d +Down to the Sabines’ wrong to Lucrece’ woe, +With its sev’n kings conqu’ring the nation round; +Nor all it wrought, by Roman worthies home +’Gainst Brennus and th’ Epirot prince, and hosts +Of single chiefs, or states in league combin’d +Of social warfare; hence Torquatus stern, +And Quintius nam’d of his neglected locks, +The Decii, and the Fabii hence acquir’d +Their fame, which I with duteous zeal embalm. +By it the pride of Arab hordes was quell’d, +When they led on by Hannibal o’erpass’d +The Alpine rocks, whence glide thy currents, Po! +Beneath its guidance, in their prime of days +Scipio and Pompey triumph’d; and that hill, +Under whose summit thou didst see the light, +Rued its stern bearing. After, near the hour, +When heav’n was minded that o’er all the world +His own deep calm should brood, to Caesar’s hand +Did Rome consign it; and what then it wrought +From Var unto the Rhine, saw Isere’s flood, +Saw Loire and Seine, and every vale, that fills +The torrent Rhone. What after that it wrought, +When from Ravenna it came forth, and leap’d +The Rubicon, was of so bold a flight, +That tongue nor pen may follow it. Tow’rds Spain +It wheel’d its bands, then tow’rd Dyrrachium smote, +And on Pharsalia with so fierce a plunge, +E’en the warm Nile was conscious to the pang; +Its native shores Antandros, and the streams +Of Simois revisited, and there +Where Hector lies; then ill for Ptolemy +His pennons shook again; lightning thence fell +On Juba; and the next upon your west, +At sound of the Pompeian trump, return’d. + +“What following and in its next bearer’s gripe +It wrought, is now by Cassius and Brutus +Bark’d off in hell, and by Perugia’s sons +And Modena’s was mourn’d. Hence weepeth still +Sad Cleopatra, who, pursued by it, +Took from the adder black and sudden death. +With him it ran e’en to the Red Sea coast; +With him compos’d the world to such a peace, +That of his temple Janus barr’d the door. + +“But all the mighty standard yet had wrought, +And was appointed to perform thereafter, +Throughout the mortal kingdom which it sway’d, +Falls in appearance dwindled and obscur’d, +If one with steady eye and perfect thought +On the third Caesar look; for to his hands, +The living Justice, in whose breath I move, +Committed glory, e’en into his hands, +To execute the vengeance of its wrath. + +“Hear now and wonder at what next I tell. +After with Titus it was sent to wreak +Vengeance for vengeance of the ancient sin, +And, when the Lombard tooth, with fangs impure, +Did gore the bosom of the holy church, +Under its wings victorious, Charlemagne +Sped to her rescue. Judge then for thyself +Of those, whom I erewhile accus’d to thee, +What they are, and how grievous their offending, +Who are the cause of all your ills. The one +Against the universal ensign rears +The yellow lilies, and with partial aim +That to himself the other arrogates: +So that ’tis hard to see which more offends. +Be yours, ye Ghibellines, to veil your arts +Beneath another standard: ill is this +Follow’d of him, who severs it and justice: +And let not with his Guelphs the new-crown’d Charles +Assail it, but those talons hold in dread, +Which from a lion of more lofty port +Have rent the easing. Many a time ere now +The sons have for the sire’s transgression wail’d; +Nor let him trust the fond belief, that heav’n +Will truck its armour for his lilied shield. + +“This little star is furnish’d with good spirits, +Whose mortal lives were busied to that end, +That honour and renown might wait on them: +And, when desires thus err in their intention, +True love must needs ascend with slacker beam. +But it is part of our delight, to measure +Our wages with the merit; and admire +The close proportion. Hence doth heav’nly justice +Temper so evenly affection in us, +It ne’er can warp to any wrongfulness. +Of diverse voices is sweet music made: +So in our life the different degrees +Render sweet harmony among these wheels. + +“Within the pearl, that now encloseth us, +Shines Romeo’s light, whose goodly deed and fair +Met ill acceptance. But the Provencals, +That were his foes, have little cause for mirth. +Ill shapes that man his course, who makes his wrong +Of other’s worth. Four daughters were there born +To Raymond Berenger, and every one +Became a queen; and this for him did Romeo, +Though of mean state and from a foreign land. +Yet envious tongues incited him to ask +A reckoning of that just one, who return’d +Twelve fold to him for ten. Aged and poor +He parted thence: and if the world did know +The heart he had, begging his life by morsels, +’Twould deem the praise, it yields him, scantly dealt.” + + + + +CANTO VII + + +“Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth +Superillustrans claritate tua +Felices ignes horum malahoth!” +Thus chanting saw I turn that substance bright +With fourfold lustre to its orb again, +Revolving; and the rest unto their dance +With it mov’d also; and like swiftest sparks, +In sudden distance from my sight were veil’d. + +Me doubt possess’d, and “Speak,” it whisper’d me, +“Speak, speak unto thy lady, that she quench +Thy thirst with drops of sweetness.” Yet blank awe, +Which lords it o’er me, even at the sound +Of Beatrice’s name, did bow me down +As one in slumber held. Not long that mood +Beatrice suffer’d: she, with such a smile, +As might have made one blest amid the flames, +Beaming upon me, thus her words began: +“Thou in thy thought art pond’ring (as I deem), +And what I deem is truth how just revenge +Could be with justice punish’d: from which doubt +I soon will free thee; so thou mark my words; +For they of weighty matter shall possess thee. + +“That man, who was unborn, himself condemn’d, +And, in himself, all, who since him have liv’d, +His offspring: whence, below, the human kind +Lay sick in grievous error many an age; +Until it pleas’d the Word of God to come +Amongst them down, to his own person joining +The nature, from its Maker far estrang’d, +By the mere act of his eternal love. +Contemplate here the wonder I unfold. +The nature with its Maker thus conjoin’d, +Created first was blameless, pure and good; +But through itself alone was driven forth +From Paradise, because it had eschew’d +The way of truth and life, to evil turn’d. +Ne’er then was penalty so just as that +Inflicted by the cross, if thou regard +The nature in assumption doom’d: ne’er wrong +So great, in reference to him, who took +Such nature on him, and endur’d the doom. +God therefore and the Jews one sentence pleased: +So different effects flow’d from one act, +And heav’n was open’d, though the earth did quake. +Count it not hard henceforth, when thou dost hear +That a just vengeance was by righteous court +Justly reveng’d. But yet I see thy mind +By thought on thought arising sore perplex’d, +And with how vehement desire it asks +Solution of the maze. What I have heard, +Is plain, thou sayst: but wherefore God this way +For our redemption chose, eludes my search. + +“Brother! no eye of man not perfected, +Nor fully ripen’d in the flame of love, +May fathom this decree. It is a mark, +In sooth, much aim’d at, and but little kenn’d: +And I will therefore show thee why such way +Was worthiest. The celestial love, that spume +All envying in its bounty, in itself +With such effulgence blazeth, as sends forth +All beauteous things eternal. What distils +Immediate thence, no end of being knows, +Bearing its seal immutably impress’d. +Whatever thence immediate falls, is free, +Free wholly, uncontrollable by power +Of each thing new: by such conformity +More grateful to its author, whose bright beams, +Though all partake their shining, yet in those +Are liveliest, which resemble him the most. +These tokens of pre-eminence on man +Largely bestow’d, if any of them fail, +He needs must forfeit his nobility, +No longer stainless. Sin alone is that, +Which doth disfranchise him, and make unlike +To the chief good; for that its light in him +Is darken’d. And to dignity thus lost +Is no return; unless, where guilt makes void, +He for ill pleasure pay with equal pain. +Your nature, which entirely in its seed +Trangress’d, from these distinctions fell, no less +Than from its state in Paradise; nor means +Found of recovery (search all methods out +As strickly as thou may) save one of these, +The only fords were left through which to wade, +Either that God had of his courtesy +Releas’d him merely, or else man himself +For his own folly by himself aton’d. + +“Fix now thine eye, intently as thou canst, +On th’ everlasting counsel, and explore, +Instructed by my words, the dread abyss. + +“Man in himself had ever lack’d the means +Of satisfaction, for he could not stoop +Obeying, in humility so low, +As high he, disobeying, thought to soar: +And for this reason he had vainly tried +Out of his own sufficiency to pay +The rigid satisfaction. Then behooved +That God should by his own ways lead him back +Unto the life, from whence he fell, restor’d: +By both his ways, I mean, or one alone. +But since the deed is ever priz’d the more, +The more the doer’s good intent appears, +Goodness celestial, whose broad signature +Is on the universe, of all its ways +To raise ye up, was fain to leave out none, +Nor aught so vast or so magnificent, +Either for him who gave or who receiv’d +Between the last night and the primal day, +Was or can be. For God more bounty show’d. +Giving himself to make man capable +Of his return to life, than had the terms +Been mere and unconditional release. +And for his justice, every method else +Were all too scant, had not the Son of God +Humbled himself to put on mortal flesh. + +“Now, to fulfil each wish of thine, remains +I somewhat further to thy view unfold. +That thou mayst see as clearly as myself. + +“I see, thou sayst, the air, the fire I see, +The earth and water, and all things of them +Compounded, to corruption turn, and soon +Dissolve. Yet these were also things create, +Because, if what were told me, had been true +They from corruption had been therefore free. + +“The angels, O my brother! and this clime +Wherein thou art, impassible and pure, +I call created, as indeed they are +In their whole being. But the elements, +Which thou hast nam’d, and what of them is made, +Are by created virtue’ inform’d: create +Their substance, and create the’ informing virtue +In these bright stars, that round them circling move +The soul of every brute and of each plant, +The ray and motion of the sacred lights, +With complex potency attract and turn. +But this our life the’ eternal good inspires +Immediate, and enamours of itself; +So that our wishes rest for ever here. + +“And hence thou mayst by inference conclude +Our resurrection certain, if thy mind +Consider how the human flesh was fram’d, +When both our parents at the first were made.” + + + + +CANTO VIII + + +The world was in its day of peril dark +Wont to believe the dotage of fond love +From the fair Cyprian deity, who rolls +In her third epicycle, shed on men +By stream of potent radiance: therefore they +Of elder time, in their old error blind, +Not her alone with sacrifice ador’d +And invocation, but like honours paid +To Cupid and Dione, deem’d of them +Her mother, and her son, him whom they feign’d +To sit in Dido’s bosom: and from her, +Whom I have sung preluding, borrow’d they +The appellation of that star, which views, +Now obvious and now averse, the sun. + +I was not ware that I was wafted up +Into its orb; but the new loveliness +That grac’d my lady, gave me ample proof +That we had entered there. And as in flame +A sparkle is distinct, or voice in voice +Discern’d, when one its even tenour keeps, +The other comes and goes; so in that light +I other luminaries saw, that cours’d +In circling motion, rapid more or less, +As their eternal phases each impels. + +Never was blast from vapour charged with cold, +Whether invisible to eye or no, +Descended with such speed, it had not seem’d +To linger in dull tardiness, compar’d +To those celestial lights, that tow’rds us came, +Leaving the circuit of their joyous ring, +Conducted by the lofty seraphim. +And after them, who in the van appear’d, +Such an hosanna sounded, as hath left +Desire, ne’er since extinct in me, to hear +Renew’d the strain. Then parting from the rest +One near us drew, and sole began: “We all +Are ready at thy pleasure, well dispos’d +To do thee gentle service. We are they, +To whom thou in the world erewhile didst Sing +‘O ye! whose intellectual ministry +Moves the third heaven!’ and in one orb we roll, +One motion, one impulse, with those who rule +Princedoms in heaven; yet are of love so full, +That to please thee ’twill be as sweet to rest.” + +After mine eyes had with meek reverence +Sought the celestial guide, and were by her +Assur’d, they turn’d again unto the light +Who had so largely promis’d, and with voice +That bare the lively pressure of my zeal, +“Tell who ye are,” I cried. Forthwith it grew +In size and splendour, through augmented joy; +And thus it answer’d: “A short date below +The world possess’d me. Had the time been more, +Much evil, that will come, had never chanc’d. +My gladness hides thee from me, which doth shine +Around, and shroud me, as an animal +In its own silk enswath’d. Thou lov’dst me well, +And had’st good cause; for had my sojourning +Been longer on the earth, the love I bare thee +Had put forth more than blossoms. The left bank, +That Rhone, when he hath mix’d with Sorga, laves. + +“In me its lord expected, and that horn +Of fair Ausonia, with its boroughs old, +Bari, and Croton, and Gaeta pil’d, +From where the Trento disembogues his waves, +With Verde mingled, to the salt sea-flood. +Already on my temples beam’d the crown, +Which gave me sov’reignty over the land +By Danube wash’d, whenas he strays beyond +The limits of his German shores. The realm, +Where, on the gulf by stormy Eurus lash’d, +Betwixt Pelorus and Pachynian heights, +The beautiful Trinacria lies in gloom +(Not through Typhaeus, but the vap’ry cloud +Bituminous upsteam’d), THAT too did look +To have its scepter wielded by a race +Of monarchs, sprung through me from Charles and Rodolph; +had not ill lording which doth spirit up +The people ever, in Palermo rais’d +The shout of ‘death,’ re-echo’d loud and long. +Had but my brother’s foresight kenn’d as much, +He had been warier that the greedy want +Of Catalonia might not work his bale. +And truly need there is, that he forecast, +Or other for him, lest more freight be laid +On his already over-laden bark. +Nature in him, from bounty fall’n to thrift, +Would ask the guard of braver arms, than such +As only care to have their coffers fill’d.” + +“My liege, it doth enhance the joy thy words +Infuse into me, mighty as it is, +To think my gladness manifest to thee, +As to myself, who own it, when thou lookst +Into the source and limit of all good, +There, where thou markest that which thou dost speak, +Thence priz’d of me the more. Glad thou hast made me. +Now make intelligent, clearing the doubt +Thy speech hath raised in me; for much I muse, +How bitter can spring up, when sweet is sown.” + +I thus inquiring; he forthwith replied: +“If I have power to show one truth, soon that +Shall face thee, which thy questioning declares +Behind thee now conceal’d. The Good, that guides +And blessed makes this realm, which thou dost mount, +Ordains its providence to be the virtue +In these great bodies: nor th’ all perfect Mind +Upholds their nature merely, but in them +Their energy to save: for nought, that lies +Within the range of that unerring bow, +But is as level with the destin’d aim, +As ever mark to arrow’s point oppos’d. +Were it not thus, these heavens, thou dost visit, +Would their effect so work, it would not be +Art, but destruction; and this may not chance, +If th’ intellectual powers, that move these stars, +Fail not, or who, first faulty made them fail. +Wilt thou this truth more clearly evidenc’d?” + +To whom I thus: “It is enough: no fear, +I see, lest nature in her part should tire.” + +He straight rejoin’d: “Say, were it worse for man, +If he liv’d not in fellowship on earth?” + +“Yea,” answer’d I; “nor here a reason needs.” + +“And may that be, if different estates +Grow not of different duties in your life? +Consult your teacher, and he tells you ‘no.’” + +Thus did he come, deducing to this point, +And then concluded: “For this cause behooves, +The roots, from whence your operations come, +Must differ. Therefore one is Solon born; +Another, Xerxes; and Melchisidec +A third; and he a fourth, whose airy voyage +Cost him his son. In her circuitous course, +Nature, that is the seal to mortal wax, +Doth well her art, but no distinctions owns +’Twixt one or other household. Hence befalls +That Esau is so wide of Jacob: hence +Quirinus of so base a father springs, +He dates from Mars his lineage. Were it not +That providence celestial overrul’d, +Nature, in generation, must the path +Trac’d by the generator, still pursue +Unswervingly. Thus place I in thy sight +That, which was late behind thee. But, in sign +Of more affection for thee, ’tis my will +Thou wear this corollary. Nature ever +Finding discordant fortune, like all seed +Out of its proper climate, thrives but ill. +And were the world below content to mark +And work on the foundation nature lays, +It would not lack supply of excellence. +But ye perversely to religion strain +Him, who was born to gird on him the sword, +And of the fluent phrasemen make your king; +Therefore your steps have wander’d from the paths.” + + + + +CANTO IX + + +After solution of my doubt, thy Charles, +O fair Clemenza, of the treachery spake +That must befall his seed: but, “Tell it not,” +Said he, “and let the destin’d years come round.” +Nor may I tell thee more, save that the meed +Of sorrow well-deserv’d shall quit your wrongs. + +And now the visage of that saintly light +Was to the sun, that fills it, turn’d again, +As to the good, whose plenitude of bliss +Sufficeth all. O ye misguided souls! +Infatuate, who from such a good estrange +Your hearts, and bend your gaze on vanity, +Alas for you!—And lo! toward me, next, +Another of those splendent forms approach’d, +That, by its outward bright’ning, testified +The will it had to pleasure me. The eyes +Of Beatrice, resting, as before, +Firmly upon me, manifested forth +Approval of my wish. “And O,” I cried, +“Blest spirit! quickly be my will perform’d; +And prove thou to me, that my inmost thoughts +I can reflect on thee.” Thereat the light, +That yet was new to me, from the recess, +Where it before was singing, thus began, +As one who joys in kindness: “In that part +Of the deprav’d Italian land, which lies +Between Rialto, and the fountain-springs +Of Brenta and of Piava, there doth rise, +But to no lofty eminence, a hill, +From whence erewhile a firebrand did descend, +That sorely sheet the region. From one root +I and it sprang; my name on earth Cunizza: +And here I glitter, for that by its light +This star o’ercame me. Yet I naught repine, +Nor grudge myself the cause of this my lot, +Which haply vulgar hearts can scarce conceive. + +“This jewel, that is next me in our heaven, +Lustrous and costly, great renown hath left, +And not to perish, ere these hundred years +Five times absolve their round. Consider thou, +If to excel be worthy man’s endeavour, +When such life may attend the first. Yet they +Care not for this, the crowd that now are girt +By Adice and Tagliamento, still +Impenitent, tho’ scourg’d. The hour is near, +When for their stubbornness at Padua’s marsh +The water shall be chang’d, that laves Vicena +And where Cagnano meets with Sile, one +Lords it, and bears his head aloft, for whom +The web is now a-warping. Feltro too +Shall sorrow for its godless shepherd’s fault, +Of so deep stain, that never, for the like, +Was Malta’s bar unclos’d. Too large should be +The skillet, that would hold Ferrara’s blood, +And wearied he, who ounce by ounce would weight it, +The which this priest, in show of party-zeal, +Courteous will give; nor will the gift ill suit +The country’s custom. We descry above, +Mirrors, ye call them thrones, from which to us +Reflected shine the judgments of our God: +Whence these our sayings we avouch for good.” + +She ended, and appear’d on other thoughts +Intent, re-ent’ring on the wheel she late +Had left. That other joyance meanwhile wax’d +A thing to marvel at, in splendour glowing, +Like choicest ruby stricken by the sun, +For, in that upper clime, effulgence comes +Of gladness, as here laughter: and below, +As the mind saddens, murkier grows the shade. + +“God seeth all: and in him is thy sight,” +Said I, “blest Spirit! Therefore will of his +Cannot to thee be dark. Why then delays +Thy voice to satisfy my wish untold, +That voice which joins the inexpressive song, +Pastime of heav’n, the which those ardours sing, +That cowl them with six shadowing wings outspread? +I would not wait thy asking, wert thou known +To me, as thoroughly I to thee am known.” + +He forthwith answ’ring, thus his words began: +“The valley’ of waters, widest next to that +Which doth the earth engarland, shapes its course, +Between discordant shores, against the sun +Inward so far, it makes meridian there, +Where was before th’ horizon. Of that vale +Dwelt I upon the shore, ’twixt Ebro’s stream +And Macra’s, that divides with passage brief +Genoan bounds from Tuscan. East and west +Are nearly one to Begga and my land, +Whose haven erst was with its own blood warm. +Who knew my name were wont to call me Folco: +And I did bear impression of this heav’n, +That now bears mine: for not with fiercer flame +Glow’d Belus’ daughter, injuring alike +Sichaeus and Creusa, than did I, +Long as it suited the unripen’d down +That fledg’d my cheek: nor she of Rhodope, +That was beguiled of Demophoon; +Nor Jove’s son, when the charms of Iole +Were shrin’d within his heart. And yet there hides +No sorrowful repentance here, but mirth, +Not for the fault (that doth not come to mind), +But for the virtue, whose o’erruling sway +And providence have wrought thus quaintly. Here +The skill is look’d into, that fashioneth +With such effectual working, and the good +Discern’d, accruing to this upper world +From that below. But fully to content +Thy wishes, all that in this sphere have birth, +Demands my further parle. Inquire thou wouldst, +Who of this light is denizen, that here +Beside me sparkles, as the sun-beam doth +On the clear wave. Know then, the soul of Rahab +Is in that gladsome harbour, to our tribe +United, and the foremost rank assign’d. +He to that heav’n, at which the shadow ends +Of your sublunar world, was taken up, +First, in Christ’s triumph, of all souls redeem’d: +For well behoov’d, that, in some part of heav’n, +She should remain a trophy, to declare +The mighty contest won with either palm; +For that she favour’d first the high exploit +Of Joshua on the holy land, whereof +The Pope recks little now. Thy city, plant +Of him, that on his Maker turn’d the back, +And of whose envying so much woe hath sprung, +Engenders and expands the cursed flower, +That hath made wander both the sheep and lambs, +Turning the shepherd to a wolf. For this, +The gospel and great teachers laid aside, +The decretals, as their stuft margins show, +Are the sole study. Pope and Cardinals, +Intent on these, ne’er journey but in thought +To Nazareth, where Gabriel op’d his wings. +Yet it may chance, erelong, the Vatican, +And other most selected parts of Rome, +That were the grave of Peter’s soldiery, +Shall be deliver’d from the adult’rous bond.” + + + + +CANTO X + + +Looking into his first-born with the love, +Which breathes from both eternal, the first Might +Ineffable, whence eye or mind +Can roam, hath in such order all dispos’d, +As none may see and fail to enjoy. Raise, then, +O reader! to the lofty wheels, with me, +Thy ken directed to the point, whereat +One motion strikes on th’ other. There begin +Thy wonder of the mighty Architect, +Who loves his work so inwardly, his eye +Doth ever watch it. See, how thence oblique +Brancheth the circle, where the planets roll +To pour their wished influence on the world; +Whose path not bending thus, in heav’n above +Much virtue would be lost, and here on earth, +All power well nigh extinct: or, from direct +Were its departure distant more or less, +I’ th’ universal order, great defect +Must, both in heav’n and here beneath, ensue. + +Now rest thee, reader! on thy bench, and muse +Anticipative of the feast to come; +So shall delight make thee not feel thy toil. +Lo! I have set before thee, for thyself +Feed now: the matter I indite, henceforth +Demands entire my thought. Join’d with the part, +Which late we told of, the great minister +Of nature, that upon the world imprints +The virtue of the heaven, and doles out +Time for us with his beam, went circling on +Along the spires, where each hour sooner comes; +And I was with him, weetless of ascent, +As one, who till arriv’d, weets not his coming. + +For Beatrice, she who passeth on +So suddenly from good to better, time +Counts not the act, oh then how great must needs +Have been her brightness! What she was i’ th’ sun +(Where I had enter’d), not through change of hue, +But light transparent—did I summon up +Genius, art, practice—I might not so speak, +It should be e’er imagin’d: yet believ’d +It may be, and the sight be justly crav’d. +And if our fantasy fail of such height, +What marvel, since no eye above the sun +Hath ever travel’d? Such are they dwell here, +Fourth family of the Omnipotent Sire, +Who of his spirit and of his offspring shows; +And holds them still enraptur’d with the view. +And thus to me Beatrice: “Thank, oh thank, +The Sun of angels, him, who by his grace +To this perceptible hath lifted thee.” + +Never was heart in such devotion bound, +And with complacency so absolute +Dispos’d to render up itself to God, +As mine was at those words: and so entire +The love for Him, that held me, it eclips’d +Beatrice in oblivion. Naught displeas’d +Was she, but smil’d thereat so joyously, +That of her laughing eyes the radiance brake +And scatter’d my collected mind abroad. + +Then saw I a bright band, in liveliness +Surpassing, who themselves did make the crown, +And us their centre: yet more sweet in voice, +Than in their visage beaming. Cinctur’d thus, +Sometime Latona’s daughter we behold, +When the impregnate air retains the thread, +That weaves her zone. In the celestial court, +Whence I return, are many jewels found, +So dear and beautiful, they cannot brook +Transporting from that realm: and of these lights +Such was the song. Who doth not prune his wing +To soar up thither, let him look from thence +For tidings from the dumb. When, singing thus, +Those burning suns that circled round us thrice, +As nearest stars around the fixed pole, +Then seem’d they like to ladies, from the dance +Not ceasing, but suspense, in silent pause, +List’ning, till they have caught the strain anew: +Suspended so they stood: and, from within, +Thus heard I one, who spake: “Since with its beam +The grace, whence true love lighteth first his flame, +That after doth increase by loving, shines +So multiplied in thee, it leads thee up +Along this ladder, down whose hallow’d steps +None e’er descend, and mount them not again, +Who from his phial should refuse thee wine +To slake thy thirst, no less constrained were, +Than water flowing not unto the sea. +Thou fain wouldst hear, what plants are these, that bloom +In the bright garland, which, admiring, girds +This fair dame round, who strengthens thee for heav’n. +I then was of the lambs, that Dominic +Leads, for his saintly flock, along the way, +Where well they thrive, not sworn with vanity. +He, nearest on my right hand, brother was, +And master to me: Albert of Cologne +Is this: and of Aquinum, Thomas I. +If thou of all the rest wouldst be assur’d, +Let thine eye, waiting on the words I speak, +In circuit journey round the blessed wreath. +That next resplendence issues from the smile +Of Gratian, who to either forum lent +Such help, as favour wins in Paradise. +The other, nearest, who adorns our quire, +Was Peter, he that with the widow gave +To holy church his treasure. The fifth light, +Goodliest of all, is by such love inspired, +That all your world craves tidings of its doom: +Within, there is the lofty light, endow’d +With sapience so profound, if truth be truth, +That with a ken of such wide amplitude +No second hath arisen. Next behold +That taper’s radiance, to whose view was shown, +Clearliest, the nature and the ministry +Angelical, while yet in flesh it dwelt. +In the other little light serenely smiles +That pleader for the Christian temples, he +Who did provide Augustin of his lore. +Now, if thy mind’s eye pass from light to light, +Upon my praises following, of the eighth +Thy thirst is next. The saintly soul, that shows +The world’s deceitfulness, to all who hear him, +Is, with the sight of all the good, that is, +Blest there. The limbs, whence it was driven, lie +Down in Cieldauro, and from martyrdom +And exile came it here. Lo! further on, +Where flames the arduous Spirit of Isidore, +Of Bede, and Richard, more than man, erewhile, +In deep discernment. Lastly this, from whom +Thy look on me reverteth, was the beam +Of one, whose spirit, on high musings bent, +Rebuk’d the ling’ring tardiness of death. +It is the eternal light of Sigebert, +Who ’scap’d not envy, when of truth he argued, +Reading in the straw-litter’d street.” Forthwith, +As clock, that calleth up the spouse of God +To win her bridegroom’s love at matin’s hour, +Each part of other fitly drawn and urg’d, +Sends out a tinkling sound, of note so sweet, +Affection springs in well-disposed breast; +Thus saw I move the glorious wheel, thus heard +Voice answ’ring voice, so musical and soft, +It can be known but where day endless shines. + + + + +CANTO XI + + +O fond anxiety of mortal men! +How vain and inconclusive arguments +Are those, which make thee beat thy wings below +For statues one, and one for aphorisms +Was hunting; this the priesthood follow’d, that +By force or sophistry aspir’d to rule; +To rob another, and another sought +By civil business wealth; one moiling lay +Tangled in net of sensual delight, +And one to witless indolence resign’d; +What time from all these empty things escap’d, +With Beatrice, I thus gloriously +Was rais’d aloft, and made the guest of heav’n. + +They of the circle to that point, each one. +Where erst it was, had turn’d; and steady glow’d, +As candle in his socket. Then within +The lustre, that erewhile bespake me, smiling +With merer gladness, heard I thus begin: + +“E’en as his beam illumes me, so I look +Into the eternal light, and clearly mark +Thy thoughts, from whence they rise. Thou art in doubt, +And wouldst, that I should bolt my words afresh +In such plain open phrase, as may be smooth +To thy perception, where I told thee late +That ‘well they thrive;’ and that ‘no second such +Hath risen,’ which no small distinction needs. + +“The providence, that governeth the world, +In depth of counsel by created ken +Unfathomable, to the end that she, +Who with loud cries was ‘spous’d in precious blood, +Might keep her footing towards her well-belov’d, +Safe in herself and constant unto him, +Hath two ordain’d, who should on either hand +In chief escort her: one seraphic all +In fervency; for wisdom upon earth, +The other splendour of cherubic light. +I but of one will tell: he tells of both, +Who one commendeth which of them so’er +Be taken: for their deeds were to one end. + +“Between Tupino, and the wave, that falls +From blest Ubaldo’s chosen hill, there hangs +Rich slope of mountain high, whence heat and cold +Are wafted through Perugia’s eastern gate: +And Norcera with Gualdo, in its rear +Mourn for their heavy yoke. Upon that side, +Where it doth break its steepness most, arose +A sun upon the world, as duly this +From Ganges doth: therefore let none, who speak +Of that place, say Ascesi; for its name +Were lamely so deliver’d; but the East, +To call things rightly, be it henceforth styl’d. +He was not yet much distant from his rising, +When his good influence ’gan to bless the earth. +A dame to whom none openeth pleasure’s gate +More than to death, was, ’gainst his father’s will, +His stripling choice: and he did make her his, +Before the Spiritual court, by nuptial bonds, +And in his father’s sight: from day to day, +Then lov’d her more devoutly. She, bereav’d +Of her first husband, slighted and obscure, +Thousand and hundred years and more, remain’d +Without a single suitor, till he came. +Nor aught avail’d, that, with Amyclas, she +Was found unmov’d at rumour of his voice, +Who shook the world: nor aught her constant boldness +Whereby with Christ she mounted on the cross, +When Mary stay’d beneath. But not to deal +Thus closely with thee longer, take at large +The rovers’ titles—Poverty and Francis. +Their concord and glad looks, wonder and love, +And sweet regard gave birth to holy thoughts, +So much, that venerable Bernard first +Did bare his feet, and, in pursuit of peace +So heavenly, ran, yet deem’d his footing slow. +O hidden riches! O prolific good! +Egidius bares him next, and next Sylvester, +And follow both the bridegroom; so the bride +Can please them. Thenceforth goes he on his way, +The father and the master, with his spouse, +And with that family, whom now the cord +Girt humbly: nor did abjectness of heart +Weigh down his eyelids, for that he was son +Of Pietro Bernardone, and by men +In wond’rous sort despis’d. But royally +His hard intention he to Innocent +Set forth, and from him first receiv’d the seal +On his religion. Then, when numerous flock’d +The tribe of lowly ones, that trac’d HIS steps, +Whose marvellous life deservedly were sung +In heights empyreal, through Honorius’ hand +A second crown, to deck their Guardian’s virtues, +Was by the eternal Spirit inwreath’d: and when +He had, through thirst of martyrdom, stood up +In the proud Soldan’s presence, and there preach’d +Christ and his followers; but found the race +Unripen’d for conversion: back once more +He hasted (not to intermit his toil), +And reap’d Ausonian lands. On the hard rock, +’Twixt Arno and the Tyber, he from Christ +Took the last Signet, which his limbs two years +Did carry. Then the season come, that he, +Who to such good had destin’d him, was pleas’d +T’ advance him to the meed, which he had earn’d +By his self-humbling, to his brotherhood, +As their just heritage, he gave in charge +His dearest lady, and enjoin’d their love +And faith to her: and, from her bosom, will’d +His goodly spirit should move forth, returning +To its appointed kingdom, nor would have +His body laid upon another bier. + +“Think now of one, who were a fit colleague, +To keep the bark of Peter in deep sea +Helm’d to right point; and such our Patriarch was. +Therefore who follow him, as he enjoins, +Thou mayst be certain, take good lading in. +But hunger of new viands tempts his flock, +So that they needs into strange pastures wide +Must spread them: and the more remote from him +The stragglers wander, so much mole they come +Home to the sheep-fold, destitute of milk. +There are of them, in truth, who fear their harm, +And to the shepherd cleave; but these so few, +A little stuff may furnish out their cloaks. + +“Now, if my words be clear, if thou have ta’en +Good heed, if that, which I have told, recall +To mind, thy wish may be in part fulfill’d: +For thou wilt see the point from whence they split, +Nor miss of the reproof, which that implies, +‘That well they thrive not sworn with vanity.’” + + + + +CANTO XII + + +Soon as its final word the blessed flame +Had rais’d for utterance, straight the holy mill +Began to wheel, nor yet had once revolv’d, +Or ere another, circling, compass’d it, +Motion to motion, song to song, conjoining, +Song, that as much our muses doth excel, +Our Sirens with their tuneful pipes, as ray +Of primal splendour doth its faint reflex. + +As when, if Juno bid her handmaid forth, +Two arches parallel, and trick’d alike, +Span the thin cloud, the outer taking birth +From that within (in manner of that voice +Whom love did melt away, as sun the mist), +And they who gaze, presageful call to mind +The compact, made with Noah, of the world +No more to be o’erflow’d; about us thus +Of sempiternal roses, bending, wreath’d +Those garlands twain, and to the innermost +E’en thus th’ external answered. When the footing, +And other great festivity, of song, +And radiance, light with light accordant, each +Jocund and blythe, had at their pleasure still’d +(E’en as the eyes by quick volition mov’d, +Are shut and rais’d together), from the heart +Of one amongst the new lights mov’d a voice, +That made me seem like needle to the star, +In turning to its whereabout, and thus +Began: “The love, that makes me beautiful, +Prompts me to tell of th’ other guide, for whom +Such good of mine is spoken. Where one is, +The other worthily should also be; +That as their warfare was alike, alike +Should be their glory. Slow, and full of doubt, +And with thin ranks, after its banner mov’d +The army of Christ (which it so clearly cost +To reappoint), when its imperial Head, +Who reigneth ever, for the drooping host +Did make provision, thorough grace alone, +And not through its deserving. As thou heard’st, +Two champions to the succour of his spouse +He sent, who by their deeds and words might join +Again his scatter’d people. In that clime, +Where springs the pleasant west-wind to unfold +The fresh leaves, with which Europe sees herself +New-garmented; nor from those billows far, +Beyond whose chiding, after weary course, +The sun doth sometimes hide him, safe abides +The happy Callaroga, under guard +Of the great shield, wherein the lion lies +Subjected and supreme. And there was born +The loving million of the Christian faith, +The hollow’d wrestler, gentle to his own, +And to his enemies terrible. So replete +His soul with lively virtue, that when first +Created, even in the mother’s womb, +It prophesied. When, at the sacred font, +The spousals were complete ’twixt faith and him, +Where pledge of mutual safety was exchang’d, +The dame, who was his surety, in her sleep +Beheld the wondrous fruit, that was from him +And from his heirs to issue. And that such +He might be construed, as indeed he was, +She was inspir’d to name him of his owner, +Whose he was wholly, and so call’d him Dominic. +And I speak of him, as the labourer, +Whom Christ in his own garden chose to be +His help-mate. Messenger he seem’d, and friend +Fast-knit to Christ; and the first love he show’d, +Was after the first counsel that Christ gave. +Many a time his nurse, at entering found +That he had ris’n in silence, and was prostrate, +As who should say, “My errand was for this.” +O happy father! Felix rightly nam’d! +O favour’d mother! rightly nam’d Joanna! +If that do mean, as men interpret it. +Not for the world’s sake, for which now they pore +Upon Ostiense and Taddeo’s page, +But for the real manna, soon he grew +Mighty in learning, and did set himself +To go about the vineyard, that soon turns +To wan and wither’d, if not tended well: +And from the see (whose bounty to the just +And needy is gone by, not through its fault, +But his who fills it basely, he besought, +No dispensation for commuted wrong, +Nor the first vacant fortune, nor the tenth), +That to God’s paupers rightly appertain, +But, ’gainst an erring and degenerate world, +Licence to fight, in favour of that seed, +From which the twice twelve cions gird thee round. +Then, with sage doctrine and good will to help, +Forth on his great apostleship he far’d, +Like torrent bursting from a lofty vein; +And, dashing ’gainst the stocks of heresy, +Smote fiercest, where resistance was most stout. +Thence many rivulets have since been turn’d, +Over the garden Catholic to lead +Their living waters, and have fed its plants. + +“If such one wheel of that two-yoked car, +Wherein the holy church defended her, +And rode triumphant through the civil broil. +Thou canst not doubt its fellow’s excellence, +Which Thomas, ere my coming, hath declar’d +So courteously unto thee. But the track, +Which its smooth fellies made, is now deserted: +That mouldy mother is where late were lees. +His family, that wont to trace his path, +Turn backward, and invert their steps; erelong +To rue the gathering in of their ill crop, +When the rejected tares in vain shall ask +Admittance to the barn. I question not +But he, who search’d our volume, leaf by leaf, +Might still find page with this inscription on’t, +‘I am as I was wont.’ Yet such were not +From Acquasparta nor Casale, whence +Of those, who come to meddle with the text, +One stretches and another cramps its rule. +Bonaventura’s life in me behold, +From Bagnororegio, one, who in discharge +Of my great offices still laid aside +All sinister aim. Illuminato here, +And Agostino join me: two they were, +Among the first of those barefooted meek ones, +Who sought God’s friendship in the cord: with them +Hugues of Saint Victor, Pietro Mangiadore, +And he of Spain in his twelve volumes shining, +Nathan the prophet, Metropolitan +Chrysostom, and Anselmo, and, who deign’d +To put his hand to the first art, Donatus. +Raban is here: and at my side there shines +Calabria’s abbot, Joachim, endow’d +With soul prophetic. The bright courtesy +Of friar Thomas, and his goodly lore, +Have mov’d me to the blazon of a peer +So worthy, and with me have mov’d this throng.” + + + + +CANTO XIII + + +Let him, who would conceive what now I saw, +Imagine (and retain the image firm, +As mountain rock, the whilst he hears me speak), +Of stars fifteen, from midst the ethereal host +Selected, that, with lively ray serene, +O’ercome the massiest air: thereto imagine +The wain, that, in the bosom of our sky, +Spins ever on its axle night and day, +With the bright summit of that horn which swells +Due from the pole, round which the first wheel rolls, +T’ have rang’d themselves in fashion of two signs +In heav’n, such as Ariadne made, +When death’s chill seized her; and that one of them +Did compass in the other’s beam; and both +In such sort whirl around, that each should tend +With opposite motion and, conceiving thus, +Of that true constellation, and the dance +Twofold, that circled me, he shall attain +As ’twere the shadow; for things there as much +Surpass our usage, as the swiftest heav’n +Is swifter than the Chiana. There was sung +No Bacchus, and no Io Paean, but +Three Persons in the Godhead, and in one +Substance that nature and the human join’d. + +The song fulfill’d its measure; and to us +Those saintly lights attended, happier made +At each new minist’ring. Then silence brake, +Amid th’ accordant sons of Deity, +That luminary, in which the wondrous life +Of the meek man of God was told to me; +And thus it spake: “One ear o’ th’ harvest thresh’d, +And its grain safely stor’d, sweet charity +Invites me with the other to like toil. + +“Thou know’st, that in the bosom, whence the rib +Was ta’en to fashion that fair cheek, whose taste +All the world pays for, and in that, which pierc’d +By the keen lance, both after and before +Such satisfaction offer’d, as outweighs +Each evil in the scale, whate’er of light +To human nature is allow’d, must all +Have by his virtue been infus’d, who form’d +Both one and other: and thou thence admir’st +In that I told thee, of beatitudes +A second, there is none, to his enclos’d +In the fifth radiance. Open now thine eyes +To what I answer thee; and thou shalt see +Thy deeming and my saying meet in truth, +As centre in the round. That which dies not, +And that which can die, are but each the beam +Of that idea, which our Soverign Sire +Engendereth loving; for that lively light, +Which passeth from his brightness; not disjoin’d +From him, nor from his love triune with them, +Doth, through his bounty, congregate itself, +Mirror’d, as ’twere in new existences, +Itself unalterable and ever one. + +“Descending hence unto the lowest powers, +Its energy so sinks, at last it makes +But brief contingencies: for so I name +Things generated, which the heav’nly orbs +Moving, with seed or without seed, produce. +Their wax, and that which molds it, differ much: +And thence with lustre, more or less, it shows +Th’ ideal stamp impress: so that one tree +According to his kind, hath better fruit, +And worse: and, at your birth, ye, mortal men, +Are in your talents various. Were the wax +Molded with nice exactness, and the heav’n +In its disposing influence supreme, +The lustre of the seal should be complete: +But nature renders it imperfect ever, +Resembling thus the artist in her work, +Whose faultering hand is faithless to his skill. +Howe’er, if love itself dispose, and mark +The primal virtue, kindling with bright view, +There all perfection is vouchsafed; and such +The clay was made, accomplish’d with each gift, +That life can teem with; such the burden fill’d +The virgin’s bosom: so that I commend +Thy judgment, that the human nature ne’er +Was or can be, such as in them it was. + +“Did I advance no further than this point, +‘How then had he no peer?’ thou might’st reply. +But, that what now appears not, may appear +Right plainly, ponder, who he was, and what +(When he was bidden ‘Ask’), the motive sway’d +To his requesting. I have spoken thus, +That thou mayst see, he was a king, who ask’d +For wisdom, to the end he might be king +Sufficient: not the number to search out +Of the celestial movers; or to know, +If necessary with contingent e’er +Have made necessity; or whether that +Be granted, that first motion is; or if +Of the mid circle can, by art, be made +Triangle with each corner, blunt or sharp. + +“Whence, noting that, which I have said, and this, +Thou kingly prudence and that ken mayst learn, +At which the dart of my intention aims. +And, marking clearly, that I told thee, ‘Risen,’ +Thou shalt discern it only hath respect +To kings, of whom are many, and the good +Are rare. With this distinction take my words; +And they may well consist with that which thou +Of the first human father dost believe, +And of our well-beloved. And let this +Henceforth be led unto thy feet, to make +Thee slow in motion, as a weary man, +Both to the ‘yea’ and to the ‘nay’ thou seest not. +For he among the fools is down full low, +Whose affirmation, or denial, is +Without distinction, in each case alike +Since it befalls, that in most instances +Current opinion leads to false: and then +Affection bends the judgment to her ply. + +“Much more than vainly doth he loose from shore, +Since he returns not such as he set forth, +Who fishes for the truth and wanteth skill. +And open proofs of this unto the world +Have been afforded in Parmenides, +Melissus, Bryso, and the crowd beside, +Who journey’d on, and knew not whither: so did +Sabellius, Arius, and the other fools, +Who, like to scymitars, reflected back +The scripture-image, by distortion marr’d. + +“Let not the people be too swift to judge, +As one who reckons on the blades in field, +Or ere the crop be ripe. For I have seen +The thorn frown rudely all the winter long +And after bear the rose upon its top; +And bark, that all the way across the sea +Ran straight and speedy, perish at the last, +E’en in the haven’s mouth seeing one steal, +Another brine, his offering to the priest, +Let not Dame Birtha and Sir Martin thence +Into heav’n’s counsels deem that they can pry: +For one of these may rise, the other fall.” + + + + +CANTO XIV + + +From centre to the circle, and so back +From circle to the centre, water moves +In the round chalice, even as the blow +Impels it, inwardly, or from without. +Such was the image glanc’d into my mind, +As the great spirit of Aquinum ceas’d; +And Beatrice after him her words +Resum’d alternate: “Need there is (tho’ yet +He tells it to you not in words, nor e’en +In thought) that he should fathom to its depth +Another mystery. Tell him, if the light, +Wherewith your substance blooms, shall stay with you +Eternally, as now: and, if it doth, +How, when ye shall regain your visible forms, +The sight may without harm endure the change, +That also tell.” As those, who in a ring +Tread the light measure, in their fitful mirth +Raise loud the voice, and spring with gladder bound; +Thus, at the hearing of that pious suit, +The saintly circles in their tourneying +And wond’rous note attested new delight. + +Whoso laments, that we must doff this garb +Of frail mortality, thenceforth to live +Immortally above, he hath not seen +The sweet refreshing, of that heav’nly shower. + +Him, who lives ever, and for ever reigns +In mystic union of the Three in One, +Unbounded, bounding all, each spirit thrice +Sang, with such melody, as but to hear +For highest merit were an ample meed. +And from the lesser orb the goodliest light, +With gentle voice and mild, such as perhaps +The angel’s once to Mary, thus replied: +“Long as the joy of Paradise shall last, +Our love shall shine around that raiment, bright, +As fervent; fervent, as in vision blest; +And that as far in blessedness exceeding, +As it hath grave beyond its virtue great. +Our shape, regarmented with glorious weeds +Of saintly flesh, must, being thus entire, +Show yet more gracious. Therefore shall increase, +Whate’er of light, gratuitous, imparts +The Supreme Good; light, ministering aid, +The better disclose his glory: whence +The vision needs increasing, much increase +The fervour, which it kindles; and that too +The ray, that comes from it. But as the greed +Which gives out flame, yet it its whiteness shines +More lively than that, and so preserves +Its proper semblance; thus this circling sphere +Of splendour, shall to view less radiant seem, +Than shall our fleshly robe, which yonder earth +Now covers. Nor will such excess of light +O’erpower us, in corporeal organs made +Firm, and susceptible of all delight.” + +So ready and so cordial an “Amen,” +Followed from either choir, as plainly spoke +Desire of their dead bodies; yet perchance +Not for themselves, but for their kindred dear, +Mothers and sires, and those whom best they lov’d, +Ere they were made imperishable flame. + +And lo! forthwith there rose up round about +A lustre over that already there, +Of equal clearness, like the brightening up +Of the horizon. As at an evening hour +Of twilight, new appearances through heav’n +Peer with faint glimmer, doubtfully descried; +So there new substances, methought began +To rise in view; and round the other twain +Enwheeling, sweep their ampler circuit wide. + +O gentle glitter of eternal beam! +With what a such whiteness did it flow, +O’erpowering vision in me! But so fair, +So passing lovely, Beatrice show’d, +Mind cannot follow it, nor words express +Her infinite sweetness. Thence mine eyes regain’d +Power to look up, and I beheld myself, +Sole with my lady, to more lofty bliss +Translated: for the star, with warmer smile +Impurpled, well denoted our ascent. + +With all the heart, and with that tongue which speaks +The same in all, an holocaust I made +To God, befitting the new grace vouchsaf’d. +And from my bosom had not yet upsteam’d +The fuming of that incense, when I knew +The rite accepted. With such mighty sheen +And mantling crimson, in two listed rays +The splendours shot before me, that I cried, +“God of Sabaoth! that does prank them thus!” + +As leads the galaxy from pole to pole, +Distinguish’d into greater lights and less, +Its pathway, which the wisest fail to spell; +So thickly studded, in the depth of Mars, +Those rays describ’d the venerable sign, +That quadrants in the round conjoining frame. +Here memory mocks the toil of genius. Christ +Beam’d on that cross; and pattern fails me now. +But whoso takes his cross, and follows Christ +Will pardon me for that I leave untold, +When in the flecker’d dawning he shall spy +The glitterance of Christ. From horn to horn, +And ’tween the summit and the base did move +Lights, scintillating, as they met and pass’d. +Thus oft are seen, with ever-changeful glance, +Straight or athwart, now rapid and now slow, +The atomies of bodies, long or short, +To move along the sunbeam, whose slant line +Checkers the shadow, interpos’d by art +Against the noontide heat. And as the chime +Of minstrel music, dulcimer, and help +With many strings, a pleasant dining makes +To him, who heareth not distinct the note; +So from the lights, which there appear’d to me, +Gather’d along the cross a melody, +That, indistinctly heard, with ravishment +Possess’d me. Yet I mark’d it was a hymn +Of lofty praises; for there came to me +“Arise and conquer,” as to one who hears +And comprehends not. Me such ecstasy +O’ercame, that never till that hour was thing +That held me in so sweet imprisonment. + +Perhaps my saying over bold appears, +Accounting less the pleasure of those eyes, +Whereon to look fulfilleth all desire. +But he, who is aware those living seals +Of every beauty work with quicker force, +The higher they are ris’n; and that there +I had not turn’d me to them; he may well +Excuse me that, whereof in my excuse +I do accuse me, and may own my truth; +That holy pleasure here not yet reveal’d, +Which grows in transport as we mount aloof. + + + + +CANTO XV + + +True love, that ever shows itself as clear +In kindness, as loose appetite in wrong, +Silenced that lyre harmonious, and still’d +The sacred chords, that are by heav’n’s right hand +Unwound and tighten’d, flow to righteous prayers +Should they not hearken, who, to give me will +For praying, in accordance thus were mute? +He hath in sooth good cause for endless grief, +Who, for the love of thing that lasteth not, +Despoils himself forever of that love. + +As oft along the still and pure serene, +At nightfall, glides a sudden trail of fire, +Attracting with involuntary heed +The eye to follow it, erewhile at rest, +And seems some star that shifted place in heav’n, +Only that, whence it kindles, none is lost, +And it is soon extinct; thus from the horn, +That on the dexter of the cross extends, +Down to its foot, one luminary ran +From mid the cluster shone there; yet no gem +Dropp’d from its foil; and through the beamy list +Like flame in alabaster, glow’d its course. + +So forward stretch’d him (if of credence aught +Our greater muse may claim) the pious ghost +Of old Anchises, in the’ Elysian bower, +When he perceiv’d his son. “O thou, my blood! +O most exceeding grace divine! to whom, +As now to thee, hath twice the heav’nly gate +Been e’er unclos’d?” so spake the light; whence I +Turn’d me toward him; then unto my dame +My sight directed, and on either side +Amazement waited me; for in her eyes +Was lighted such a smile, I thought that mine +Had div’d unto the bottom of my grace +And of my bliss in Paradise. Forthwith +To hearing and to sight grateful alike, +The spirit to his proem added things +I understood not, so profound he spake; +Yet not of choice but through necessity +Mysterious; for his high conception scar’d +Beyond the mark of mortals. When the flight +Of holy transport had so spent its rage, +That nearer to the level of our thought +The speech descended, the first sounds I heard +Were, “Best he thou, Triunal Deity! +That hast such favour in my seed vouchsaf’d!” +Then follow’d: “No unpleasant thirst, tho’ long, +Which took me reading in the sacred book, +Whose leaves or white or dusky never change, +Thou hast allay’d, my son, within this light, +From whence my voice thou hear’st; more thanks to her. +Who for such lofty mounting has with plumes +Begirt thee. Thou dost deem thy thoughts to me +From him transmitted, who is first of all, +E’en as all numbers ray from unity; +And therefore dost not ask me who I am, +Or why to thee more joyous I appear, +Than any other in this gladsome throng. +The truth is as thou deem’st; for in this hue +Both less and greater in that mirror look, +In which thy thoughts, or ere thou think’st, are shown. +But, that the love, which keeps me wakeful ever, +Urging with sacred thirst of sweet desire, +May be contended fully, let thy voice, +Fearless, and frank and jocund, utter forth +Thy will distinctly, utter forth the wish, +Whereto my ready answer stands decreed.” + +I turn’d me to Beatrice; and she heard +Ere I had spoken, smiling, an assent, +That to my will gave wings; and I began +“To each among your tribe, what time ye kenn’d +The nature, in whom naught unequal dwells, +Wisdom and love were in one measure dealt; +For that they are so equal in the sun, +From whence ye drew your radiance and your heat, +As makes all likeness scant. But will and means, +In mortals, for the cause ye well discern, +With unlike wings are fledge. A mortal I +Experience inequality like this, +And therefore give no thanks, but in the heart, +For thy paternal greeting. This howe’er +I pray thee, living topaz! that ingemm’st +This precious jewel, let me hear thy name.” + +“I am thy root, O leaf! whom to expect +Even, hath pleas’d me:” thus the prompt reply +Prefacing, next it added; “he, of whom +Thy kindred appellation comes, and who, +These hundred years and more, on its first ledge +Hath circuited the mountain, was my son +And thy great grandsire. Well befits, his long +Endurance should be shorten’d by thy deeds. + +“Florence, within her ancient limit-mark, +Which calls her still to matin prayers and noon, +Was chaste and sober, and abode in peace. +She had no armlets and no head-tires then, +No purfled dames, no zone, that caught the eye +More than the person did. Time was not yet, +When at his daughter’s birth the sire grew pale. +For fear the age and dowry should exceed +On each side just proportion. House was none +Void of its family; nor yet had come +Hardanapalus, to exhibit feats +Of chamber prowess. Montemalo yet +O’er our suburban turret rose; as much +To be surpass in fall, as in its rising. +I saw Bellincione Berti walk abroad +In leathern girdle and a clasp of bone; +And, with no artful colouring on her cheeks, +His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw +Of Nerli and of Vecchio well content +With unrob’d jerkin; and their good dames handling +The spindle and the flax; O happy they! +Each sure of burial in her native land, +And none left desolate a-bed for France! +One wak’d to tend the cradle, hushing it +With sounds that lull’d the parent’s infancy: +Another, with her maidens, drawing off +The tresses from the distaff, lectur’d them +Old tales of Troy and Fesole and Rome. +A Salterello and Cianghella we +Had held as strange a marvel, as ye would +A Cincinnatus or Cornelia now. + +“In such compos’d and seemly fellowship, +Such faithful and such fair equality, +In so sweet household, Mary at my birth +Bestow’d me, call’d on with loud cries; and there +In your old baptistery, I was made +Christian at once and Cacciaguida; as were +My brethren, Eliseo and Moronto. + +“From Valdipado came to me my spouse, +And hence thy surname grew. I follow’d then +The Emperor Conrad; and his knighthood he +Did gird on me; in such good part he took +My valiant service. After him I went +To testify against that evil law, +Whose people, by the shepherd’s fault, possess +Your right, usurping. There, by that foul crew +Was I releas’d from the deceitful world, +Whose base affection many a spirit soils, +And from the martyrdom came to this peace.” + + + + +CANTO XVI + + +O slight respect of man’s nobility! +I never shall account it marvelous, +That our infirm affection here below +Thou mov’st to boasting, when I could not choose, +E’en in that region of unwarp’d desire, +In heav’n itself, but make my vaunt in thee! +Yet cloak thou art soon shorten’d, for that time, +Unless thou be eked out from day to day, +Goes round thee with his shears. Resuming then +With greeting such, as Rome, was first to bear, +But since hath disaccustom’d I began; +And Beatrice, that a little space +Was sever’d, smil’d reminding me of her, +Whose cough embolden’d (as the story holds) +To first offence the doubting Guenever. + +“You are my sire,” said I, “you give me heart +Freely to speak my thought: above myself +You raise me. Through so many streams with joy +My soul is fill’d, that gladness wells from it; +So that it bears the mighty tide, and bursts not +Say then, my honour’d stem! what ancestors +Where those you sprang from, and what years were mark’d +In your first childhood? Tell me of the fold, +That hath Saint John for guardian, what was then +Its state, and who in it were highest seated?” + +As embers, at the breathing of the wind, +Their flame enliven, so that light I saw +Shine at my blandishments; and, as it grew +More fair to look on, so with voice more sweet, +Yet not in this our modern phrase, forthwith +It answer’d: “From the day, when it was said +‘Hail Virgin!’ to the throes, by which my mother, +Who now is sainted, lighten’d her of me +Whom she was heavy with, this fire had come, +Five hundred fifty times and thrice, its beams +To reilumine underneath the foot +Of its own lion. They, of whom I sprang, +And I, had there our birth-place, where the last +Partition of our city first is reach’d +By him, that runs her annual game. Thus much +Suffice of my forefathers: who they were, +And whence they hither came, more honourable +It is to pass in silence than to tell. +All those, who in that time were there from Mars +Until the Baptist, fit to carry arms, +Were but the fifth of them this day alive. +But then the citizen’s blood, that now is mix’d +From Campi and Certaldo and Fighine, +Ran purely through the last mechanic’s veins. +O how much better were it, that these people +Were neighbours to you, and that at Galluzzo +And at Trespiano, ye should have your bound’ry, +Than to have them within, and bear the stench +Of Aguglione’s hind, and Signa’s, him, +That hath his eye already keen for bart’ring! +Had not the people, which of all the world +Degenerates most, been stepdame unto Caesar, +But, as a mother, gracious to her son; +Such one, as hath become a Florentine, +And trades and traffics, had been turn’d adrift +To Simifonte, where his grandsire ply’d +The beggar’s craft. The Conti were possess’d +Of Montemurlo still: the Cerchi still +Were in Acone’s parish; nor had haply +From Valdigrieve past the Buondelmonte. +The city’s malady hath ever source +In the confusion of its persons, as +The body’s, in variety of food: +And the blind bull falls with a steeper plunge, +Than the blind lamb; and oftentimes one sword +Doth more and better execution, +Than five. Mark Luni, Urbisaglia mark, +How they are gone, and after them how go +Chiusi and Sinigaglia; and ’twill seem +No longer new or strange to thee to hear, +That families fail, when cities have their end. +All things, that appertain t’ ye, like yourselves, +Are mortal: but mortality in some +Ye mark not, they endure so long, and you +Pass by so suddenly. And as the moon +Doth, by the rolling of her heav’nly sphere, +Hide and reveal the strand unceasingly; +So fortune deals with Florence. Hence admire not +At what of them I tell thee, whose renown +Time covers, the first Florentines. I saw +The Ughi, Catilini and Filippi, +The Alberichi, Greci and Ormanni, +Now in their wane, illustrious citizens: +And great as ancient, of Sannella him, +With him of Arca saw, and Soldanieri +And Ardinghi, and Bostichi. At the poop, +That now is laden with new felony, +So cumb’rous it may speedily sink the bark, +The Ravignani sat, of whom is sprung +The County Guido, and whoso hath since +His title from the fam’d Bellincione ta’en. +Fair governance was yet an art well priz’d +By him of Pressa: Galigaio show’d +The gilded hilt and pommel, in his house. +The column, cloth’d with verrey, still was seen +Unshaken: the Sacchetti still were great, +Giouchi, Sifanti, Galli and Barucci, +With them who blush to hear the bushel nam’d. +Of the Calfucci still the branchy trunk +Was in its strength: and to the curule chairs +Sizii and Arigucci yet were drawn. +How mighty them I saw, whom since their pride +Hath undone! and in all her goodly deeds +Florence was by the bullets of bright gold +O’erflourish’d. Such the sires of those, who now, +As surely as your church is vacant, flock +Into her consistory, and at leisure +There stall them and grow fat. The o’erweening brood, +That plays the dragon after him that flees, +But unto such, as turn and show the tooth, +Ay or the purse, is gentle as a lamb, +Was on its rise, but yet so slight esteem’d, +That Ubertino of Donati grudg’d +His father-in-law should yoke him to its tribe. +Already Caponsacco had descended +Into the mart from Fesole: and Giuda +And Infangato were good citizens. +A thing incredible I tell, tho’ true: +The gateway, named from those of Pera, led +Into the narrow circuit of your walls. +Each one, who bears the sightly quarterings +Of the great Baron (he whose name and worth +The festival of Thomas still revives) +His knighthood and his privilege retain’d; +Albeit one, who borders them With gold, +This day is mingled with the common herd. +In Borgo yet the Gualterotti dwelt, +And Importuni: well for its repose +Had it still lack’d of newer neighbourhood. +The house, from whence your tears have had their spring, +Through the just anger that hath murder’d ye +And put a period to your gladsome days, +Was honour’d, it, and those consorted with it. +O Buondelmonte! what ill counseling +Prevail’d on thee to break the plighted bond +Many, who now are weeping, would rejoice, +Had God to Ema giv’n thee, the first time +Thou near our city cam’st. But so was doom’d: +On that maim’d stone set up to guard the bridge, +At thy last peace, the victim, Florence! fell. +With these and others like to them, I saw +Florence in such assur’d tranquility, +She had no cause at which to grieve: with these +Saw her so glorious and so just, that ne’er +The lily from the lance had hung reverse, +Or through division been with vermeil dyed.” + + + + +CANTO XVII + + +Such as the youth, who came to Clymene +To certify himself of that reproach, +Which had been fasten’d on him, (he whose end +Still makes the fathers chary to their sons), +E’en such was I; nor unobserv’d was such +Of Beatrice, and that saintly lamp, +Who had erewhile for me his station mov’d; +When thus by lady: “Give thy wish free vent, +That it may issue, bearing true report +Of the mind’s impress; not that aught thy words +May to our knowledge add, but to the end, +That thou mayst use thyself to own thy thirst +And men may mingle for thee when they hear.” + +“O plant! from whence I spring! rever’d and lov’d! +Who soar’st so high a pitch, thou seest as clear, +As earthly thought determines two obtuse +In one triangle not contain’d, so clear +Dost see contingencies, ere in themselves +Existent, looking at the point whereto +All times are present, I, the whilst I scal’d +With Virgil the soul purifying mount, +And visited the nether world of woe, +Touching my future destiny have heard +Words grievous, though I feel me on all sides +Well squar’d to fortune’s blows. Therefore my will +Were satisfied to know the lot awaits me, +The arrow, seen beforehand, slacks its flight.” + +So said I to the brightness, which erewhile +To me had spoken, and my will declar’d, +As Beatrice will’d, explicitly. +Nor with oracular response obscure, +Such, as or ere the Lamb of God was slain, +Beguil’d the credulous nations; but, in terms +Precise and unambiguous lore, replied +The spirit of paternal love, enshrin’d, +Yet in his smile apparent; and thus spake: +“Contingency, unfolded not to view +Upon the tablet of your mortal mold, +Is all depictur’d in the’ eternal sight; +But hence deriveth not necessity, +More then the tall ship, hurried down the flood, +Doth from the vision, that reflects the scene. +From thence, as to the ear sweet harmony +From organ comes, so comes before mine eye +The time prepar’d for thee. Such as driv’n out +From Athens, by his cruel stepdame’s wiles, +Hippolytus departed, such must thou +Depart from Florence. This they wish, and this +Contrive, and will ere long effectuate, there, +Where gainful merchandize is made of Christ, +Throughout the livelong day. The common cry, +Will, as ’tis ever wont, affix the blame +Unto the party injur’d: but the truth +Shall, in the vengeance it dispenseth, find +A faithful witness. Thou shall leave each thing +Belov’d most dearly: this is the first shaft +Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shalt prove +How salt the savour is of other’s bread, +How hard the passage to descend and climb +By other’s stairs, But that shall gall thee most +Will be the worthless and vile company, +With whom thou must be thrown into these straits. +For all ungrateful, impious all and mad, +Shall turn ’gainst thee: but in a little while +Theirs and not thine shall be the crimson’d brow +Their course shall so evince their brutishness +T’ have ta’en thy stand apart shall well become thee. + +“First refuge thou must find, first place of rest, +In the great Lombard’s courtesy, who bears +Upon the ladder perch’d the sacred bird. +He shall behold thee with such kind regard, +That ’twixt ye two, the contrary to that +Which falls ’twixt other men, the granting shall +Forerun the asking. With him shalt thou see +That mortal, who was at his birth impress +So strongly from this star, that of his deeds +The nations shall take note. His unripe age +Yet holds him from observance; for these wheels +Only nine years have compass him about. +But, ere the Gascon practice on great Harry, +Sparkles of virtue shall shoot forth in him, +In equal scorn of labours and of gold. +His bounty shall be spread abroad so widely, +As not to let the tongues e’en of his foes +Be idle in its praise. Look thou to him +And his beneficence: for he shall cause +Reversal of their lot to many people, +Rich men and beggars interchanging fortunes. +And thou shalt bear this written in thy soul +Of him, but tell it not;” and things he told +Incredible to those who witness them; +Then added: “So interpret thou, my son, +What hath been told thee.—Lo! the ambushment +That a few circling seasons hide for thee! +Yet envy not thy neighbours: time extends +Thy span beyond their treason’s chastisement.” + +Soon, as the saintly spirit, by his silence, +Had shown the web, which I had streteh’d for him +Upon the warp, was woven, I began, +As one, who in perplexity desires +Counsel of other, wise, benign and friendly: +“My father! well I mark how time spurs on +Toward me, ready to inflict the blow, +Which falls most heavily on him, who most +Abandoned himself. Therefore ’tis good +I should forecast, that driven from the place +Most dear to me, I may not lose myself +All others by my song. Down through the world +Of infinite mourning, and along the mount +From whose fair height my lady’s eyes did lift me, +And after through this heav’n from light to light, +Have I learnt that, which if I tell again, +It may with many woefully disrelish; +And, if I am a timid friend to truth, +I fear my life may perish among those, +To whom these days shall be of ancient date.” + +The brightness, where enclos’d the treasure smil’d, +Which I had found there, first shone glisteningly, +Like to a golden mirror in the sun; +Next answer’d: “Conscience, dimm’d or by its own +Or other’s shame, will feel thy saying sharp. +Thou, notwithstanding, all deceit remov’d, +See the whole vision be made manifest. +And let them wince who have their withers wrung. +What though, when tasted first, thy voice shall prove +Unwelcome, on digestion it will turn +To vital nourishment. The cry thou raisest, +Shall, as the wind doth, smite the proudest summits; +Which is of honour no light argument, +For this there only have been shown to thee, +Throughout these orbs, the mountain, and the deep, +Spirits, whom fame hath note of. For the mind +Of him, who hears, is loth to acquiesce +And fix its faith, unless the instance brought +Be palpable, and proof apparent urge.” + + + + +CANTO XVIII + + +Now in his word, sole, ruminating, joy’d +That blessed spirit; and I fed on mine, +Tempting the sweet with bitter: she meanwhile, +Who led me unto God, admonish’d: “Muse +On other thoughts: bethink thee, that near Him +I dwell, who recompenseth every wrong.” + +At the sweet sounds of comfort straight I turn’d; +And, in the saintly eyes what love was seen, +I leave in silence here: nor through distrust +Of my words only, but that to such bliss +The mind remounts not without aid. Thus much +Yet may I speak; that, as I gaz’d on her, +Affection found no room for other wish. +While the everlasting pleasure, that did full +On Beatrice shine, with second view +From her fair countenance my gladden’d soul +Contented; vanquishing me with a beam +Of her soft smile, she spake: “Turn thee, and list. +These eyes are not thy only Paradise.” + +As here we sometimes in the looks may see +Th’ affection mark’d, when that its sway hath ta’en +The spirit wholly; thus the hallow’d light, +To whom I turn’d, flashing, bewray’d its will +To talk yet further with me, and began: +“On this fifth lodgment of the tree, whose life +Is from its top, whose fruit is ever fair +And leaf unwith’ring, blessed spirits abide, +That were below, ere they arriv’d in heav’n, +So mighty in renown, as every muse +Might grace her triumph with them. On the horns +Look therefore of the cross: he, whom I name, +Shall there enact, as doth in summer cloud +Its nimble fire.” Along the cross I saw, +At the repeated name of Joshua, +A splendour gliding; nor, the word was said, +Ere it was done: then, at the naming saw +Of the great Maccabee, another move +With whirling speed; and gladness was the scourge +Unto that top. The next for Charlemagne +And for the peer Orlando, two my gaze +Pursued, intently, as the eye pursues +A falcon flying. Last, along the cross, +William, and Renard, and Duke Godfrey drew +My ken, and Robert Guiscard. And the soul, +Who spake with me among the other lights +Did move away, and mix; and with the choir +Of heav’nly songsters prov’d his tuneful skill. + +To Beatrice on my right l bent, +Looking for intimation or by word +Or act, what next behoov’d; and did descry +Such mere effulgence in her eyes, such joy, +It past all former wont. And, as by sense +Of new delight, the man, who perseveres +In good deeds doth perceive from day to day +His virtue growing; I e’en thus perceiv’d +Of my ascent, together with the heav’n +The circuit widen’d, noting the increase +Of beauty in that wonder. Like the change +In a brief moment on some maiden’s cheek, +Which from its fairness doth discharge the weight +Of pudency, that stain’d it; such in her, +And to mine eyes so sudden was the change, +Through silvery whiteness of that temperate star, +Whose sixth orb now enfolded us. I saw, +Within that Jovial cresset, the clear sparks +Of love, that reign’d there, fashion to my view +Our language. And as birds, from river banks +Arisen, now in round, now lengthen’d troop, +Array them in their flight, greeting, as seems, +Their new-found pastures; so, within the lights, +The saintly creatures flying, sang, and made +Now D. now I. now L. figur’d I’ th’ air. + +First, singing, to their notes they mov’d, then one +Becoming of these signs, a little while +Did rest them, and were mute. O nymph divine +Of Pegasean race! whose souls, which thou +Inspir’st, mak’st glorious and long-liv’d, as they +Cities and realms by thee! thou with thyself +Inform me; that I may set forth the shapes, +As fancy doth present them. Be thy power +Display’d in this brief song. The characters, +Vocal and consonant, were five-fold seven. +In order each, as they appear’d, I mark’d. +Diligite Justitiam, the first, +Both verb and noun all blazon’d; and the extreme +Qui judicatis terram. In the M. +Of the fifth word they held their station, +Making the star seem silver streak’d with gold. +And on the summit of the M. I saw +Descending other lights, that rested there, +Singing, methinks, their bliss and primal good. +Then, as at shaking of a lighted brand, +Sparkles innumerable on all sides +Rise scatter’d, source of augury to th’ unwise; +Thus more than thousand twinkling lustres hence +Seem’d reascending, and a higher pitch +Some mounting, and some less; e’en as the sun, +Which kindleth them, decreed. And when each one +Had settled in his place, the head and neck +Then saw I of an eagle, lively +Grav’d in that streaky fire. Who painteth there, +Hath none to guide him; of himself he guides; +And every line and texture of the nest +Doth own from him the virtue, fashions it. +The other bright beatitude, that seem’d +Erewhile, with lilied crowning, well content +To over-canopy the M. mov’d forth, +Following gently the impress of the bird. + + Sweet star! what glorious and thick-studded gems +Declar’d to me our justice on the earth +To be the effluence of that heav’n, which thou, +Thyself a costly jewel, dost inlay! +Therefore I pray the Sovran Mind, from whom +Thy motion and thy virtue are begun, +That he would look from whence the fog doth rise, +To vitiate thy beam: so that once more +He may put forth his hand ’gainst such, as drive +Their traffic in that sanctuary, whose walls +With miracles and martyrdoms were built. + +Ye host of heaven! whose glory I survey! +O beg ye grace for those, that are on earth +All after ill example gone astray. +War once had for its instrument the sword: +But now ’tis made, taking the bread away +Which the good Father locks from none.—And thou, +That writes but to cancel, think, that they, +Who for the vineyard, which thou wastest, died, +Peter and Paul live yet, and mark thy doings. +Thou hast good cause to cry, “My heart so cleaves +To him, that liv’d in solitude remote, +And from the wilds was dragg’d to martyrdom, +I wist not of the fisherman nor Paul.” + + + + +CANTO XIX + + +Before my sight appear’d, with open wings, +The beauteous image, in fruition sweet +Gladdening the thronged spirits. Each did seem +A little ruby, whereon so intense +The sun-beam glow’d that to mine eyes it came +In clear refraction. And that, which next +Befalls me to portray, voice hath not utter’d, +Nor hath ink written, nor in fantasy +Was e’er conceiv’d. For I beheld and heard +The beak discourse; and, what intention form’d +Of many, singly as of one express, +Beginning: “For that I was just and piteous, +l am exalted to this height of glory, +The which no wish exceeds: and there on earth +Have I my memory left, e’en by the bad +Commended, while they leave its course untrod.” + +Thus is one heat from many embers felt, +As in that image many were the loves, +And one the voice, that issued from them all. +Whence I address them: “O perennial flowers +Of gladness everlasting! that exhale +In single breath your odours manifold! +Breathe now; and let the hunger be appeas’d, +That with great craving long hath held my soul, +Finding no food on earth. This well I know, +That if there be in heav’n a realm, that shows +In faithful mirror the celestial Justice, +Yours without veil reflects it. Ye discern +The heed, wherewith I do prepare myself +To hearken; ye the doubt that urges me +With such inveterate craving.” Straight I saw, +Like to a falcon issuing from the hood, +That rears his head, and claps him with his wings, +His beauty and his eagerness bewraying. +So saw I move that stately sign, with praise +Of grace divine inwoven and high song +Of inexpressive joy. “He,” it began, +“Who turn’d his compass on the world’s extreme, +And in that space so variously hath wrought, +Both openly, and in secret, in such wise +Could not through all the universe display +Impression of his glory, that the Word +Of his omniscience should not still remain +In infinite excess. In proof whereof, +He first through pride supplanted, who was sum +Of each created being, waited not +For light celestial, and abortive fell. +Whence needs each lesser nature is but scant +Receptacle unto that Good, which knows +No limit, measur’d by itself alone. +Therefore your sight, of th’ omnipresent Mind +A single beam, its origin must own +Surpassing far its utmost potency. +The ken, your world is gifted with, descends +In th’ everlasting Justice as low down, +As eye doth in the sea; which though it mark +The bottom from the shore, in the wide main +Discerns it not; and ne’ertheless it is, +But hidden through its deepness. Light is none, +Save that which cometh from the pure serene +Of ne’er disturbed ether: for the rest, +’Tis darkness all, or shadow of the flesh, +Or else its poison. Here confess reveal’d +That covert, which hath hidden from thy search +The living justice, of the which thou mad’st +Such frequent question; for thou saidst—‘A man +Is born on Indus’ banks, and none is there +Who speaks of Christ, nor who doth read nor write, +And all his inclinations and his acts, +As far as human reason sees, are good, +And he offendeth not in word or deed. +But unbaptiz’d he dies, and void of faith. +Where is the justice that condemns him? where +His blame, if he believeth not?’—What then, +And who art thou, that on the stool wouldst sit +To judge at distance of a thousand miles +With the short-sighted vision of a span? +To him, who subtilizes thus with me, +There would assuredly be room for doubt +Even to wonder, did not the safe word +Of scripture hold supreme authority. + +“O animals of clay! O spirits gross I +The primal will, that in itself is good, +Hath from itself, the chief Good, ne’er been mov’d. +Justice consists in consonance with it, +Derivable by no created good, +Whose very cause depends upon its beam.” + +As on her nest the stork, that turns about +Unto her young, whom lately she hath fed, +While they with upward eyes do look on her; +So lifted I my gaze; and bending so +The ever-blessed image wav’d its wings, +Lab’ring with such deep counsel. Wheeling round +It warbled, and did say: “As are my notes +To thee, who understand’st them not, such is +Th’ eternal judgment unto mortal ken.” + +Then still abiding in that ensign rang’d, +Wherewith the Romans over-awed the world, +Those burning splendours of the Holy Spirit +Took up the strain; and thus it spake again: +“None ever hath ascended to this realm, +Who hath not a believer been in Christ, +Either before or after the blest limbs +Were nail’d upon the wood. But lo! of those +Who call ‘Christ, Christ,’ there shall be many found, + In judgment, further off from him by far, +Than such, to whom his name was never known. +Christians like these the Ethiop shall condemn: +When that the two assemblages shall part; +One rich eternally, the other poor. + +“What may the Persians say unto your kings, +When they shall see that volume, in the which +All their dispraise is written, spread to view? +There amidst Albert’s works shall that be read, +Which will give speedy motion to the pen, +When Prague shall mourn her desolated realm. +There shall be read the woe, that he doth work +With his adulterate money on the Seine, +Who by the tusk will perish: there be read +The thirsting pride, that maketh fool alike +The English and Scot, impatient of their bound. +There shall be seen the Spaniard’s luxury, +The delicate living there of the Bohemian, +Who still to worth has been a willing stranger. +The halter of Jerusalem shall see +A unit for his virtue, for his vices +No less a mark than million. He, who guards +The isle of fire by old Anchises honour’d +Shall find his avarice there and cowardice; +And better to denote his littleness, +The writing must be letters maim’d, that speak +Much in a narrow space. All there shall know +His uncle and his brother’s filthy doings, +Who so renown’d a nation and two crowns +Have bastardized. And they, of Portugal +And Norway, there shall be expos’d with him +Of Ratza, who hath counterfeited ill +The coin of Venice. O blest Hungary! +If thou no longer patiently abid’st +Thy ill-entreating! and, O blest Navarre! +If with thy mountainous girdle thou wouldst arm thee +In earnest of that day, e’en now are heard +Wailings and groans in Famagosta’s streets +And Nicosia’s, grudging at their beast, +Who keepeth even footing with the rest.” + + + + +CANTO XX + + +When, disappearing, from our hemisphere, +The world’s enlightener vanishes, and day +On all sides wasteth, suddenly the sky, +Erewhile irradiate only with his beam, +Is yet again unfolded, putting forth +Innumerable lights wherein one shines. +Of such vicissitude in heaven I thought, +As the great sign, that marshaleth the world +And the world’s leaders, in the blessed beak +Was silent; for that all those living lights, +Waxing in splendour, burst forth into songs, +Such as from memory glide and fall away. + +Sweet love! that dost apparel thee in smiles, +How lustrous was thy semblance in those sparkles, +Which merely are from holy thoughts inspir’d! + +After the precious and bright beaming stones, +That did ingem the sixth light, ceas’d the chiming +Of their angelic bells; methought I heard +The murmuring of a river, that doth fall +From rock to rock transpicuous, making known +The richness of his spring-head: and as sound +Of cistern, at the fret-board, or of pipe, +Is, at the wind-hole, modulate and tun’d; +Thus up the neck, as it were hollow, rose +That murmuring of the eagle, and forthwith +Voice there assum’d, and thence along the beak +Issued in form of words, such as my heart +Did look for, on whose tables I inscrib’d them. + +“The part in me, that sees, and bears the sun,, +In mortal eagles,” it began, “must now +Be noted steadfastly: for of the fires, +That figure me, those, glittering in mine eye, +Are chief of all the greatest. This, that shines +Midmost for pupil, was the same, who sang +The Holy Spirit’s song, and bare about +The ark from town to town; now doth he know +The merit of his soul-impassion’d strains +By their well-fitted guerdon. Of the five, +That make the circle of the vision, he +Who to the beak is nearest, comforted +The widow for her son: now doth he know +How dear he costeth not to follow Christ, +Both from experience of this pleasant life, +And of its opposite. He next, who follows +In the circumference, for the over arch, +By true repenting slack’d the pace of death: +Now knoweth he, that the degrees of heav’n +Alter not, when through pious prayer below +Today’s is made tomorrow’s destiny. +The other following, with the laws and me, +To yield the shepherd room, pass’d o’er to Greece, +From good intent producing evil fruit: +Now knoweth he, how all the ill, deriv’d +From his well doing, doth not helm him aught, +Though it have brought destruction on the world. +That, which thou seest in the under bow, +Was William, whom that land bewails, which weeps +For Charles and Frederick living: now he knows +How well is lov’d in heav’n the righteous king, +Which he betokens by his radiant seeming. +Who in the erring world beneath would deem, +That Trojan Ripheus in this round was set +Fifth of the saintly splendours? now he knows +Enough of that, which the world cannot see, +The grace divine, albeit e’en his sight +Reach not its utmost depth.” Like to the lark, +That warbling in the air expatiates long, +Then, trilling out his last sweet melody, +Drops satiate with the sweetness; such appear’d +That image stampt by the’ everlasting pleasure, +Which fashions like itself all lovely things. + +I, though my doubting were as manifest, +As is through glass the hue that mantles it, +In silence waited not: for to my lips +“What things are these?” involuntary rush’d, +And forc’d a passage out: whereat I mark’d +A sudden lightening and new revelry. +The eye was kindled: and the blessed sign +No more to keep me wond’ring and suspense, +Replied: “I see that thou believ’st these things, +Because I tell them, but discern’st not how; +So that thy knowledge waits not on thy faith: +As one who knows the name of thing by rote, +But is a stranger to its properties, +Till other’s tongue reveal them. Fervent love +And lively hope with violence assail +The kingdom of the heavens, and overcome +The will of the Most high; not in such sort +As man prevails o’er man; but conquers it, +Because ’tis willing to be conquer’d, still, +Though conquer’d, by its mercy conquering. + +“Those, in the eye who live the first and fifth, +Cause thee to marvel, in that thou behold’st +The region of the angels deck’d with them. +They quitted not their bodies, as thou deem’st, +Gentiles but Christians, in firm rooted faith, +This of the feet in future to be pierc’d, +That of feet nail’d already to the cross. +One from the barrier of the dark abyss, +Where never any with good will returns, +Came back unto his bones. Of lively hope +Such was the meed; of lively hope, that wing’d +The prayers sent up to God for his release, +And put power into them to bend his will. +The glorious Spirit, of whom I speak to thee, +A little while returning to the flesh, +Believ’d in him, who had the means to help, +And, in believing, nourish’d such a flame +Of holy love, that at the second death +He was made sharer in our gamesome mirth. +The other, through the riches of that grace, +Which from so deep a fountain doth distil, +As never eye created saw its rising, +Plac’d all his love below on just and right: +Wherefore of grace God op’d in him the eye +To the redemption of mankind to come; +Wherein believing, he endur’d no more +The filth of paganism, and for their ways +Rebuk’d the stubborn nations. The three nymphs, +Whom at the right wheel thou beheldst advancing, +Were sponsors for him more than thousand years +Before baptizing. O how far remov’d, +Predestination! is thy root from such +As see not the First cause entire: and ye, +O mortal men! be wary how ye judge: +For we, who see our Maker, know not yet +The number of the chosen: and esteem +Such scantiness of knowledge our delight: +For all our good is in that primal good +Concentrate, and God’s will and ours are one.” + +So, by that form divine, was giv’n to me +Sweet medicine to clear and strengthen sight, +And, as one handling skillfully the harp, +Attendant on some skilful songster’s voice +Bids the chords vibrate, and therein the song +Acquires more pleasure; so, the whilst it spake, +It doth remember me, that I beheld +The pair of blessed luminaries move. +Like the accordant twinkling of two eyes, +Their beamy circlets, dancing to the sounds. + + + + +CANTO XXI + + +Again mine eyes were fix’d on Beatrice, +And with mine eyes my soul, that in her looks +Found all contentment. Yet no smile she wore +And, “Did I smile,” quoth she, “thou wouldst be straight +Like Semele when into ashes turn’d: +For, mounting these eternal palace-stairs, +My beauty, which the loftier it climbs, +As thou hast noted, still doth kindle more, +So shines, that, were no temp’ring interpos’d, +Thy mortal puissance would from its rays +Shrink, as the leaf doth from the thunderbolt. +Into the seventh splendour are we wafted, +That underneath the burning lion’s breast +Beams, in this hour, commingled with his might, +Thy mind be with thine eyes: and in them mirror’d +The shape, which in this mirror shall be shown.” +Whoso can deem, how fondly I had fed +My sight upon her blissful countenance, +May know, when to new thoughts I chang’d, what joy +To do the bidding of my heav’nly guide: +In equal balance poising either weight. + +Within the crystal, which records the name, +(As its remoter circle girds the world) +Of that lov’d monarch, in whose happy reign +No ill had power to harm, I saw rear’d up, +In colour like to sun-illumin’d gold. + +A ladder, which my ken pursued in vain, +So lofty was the summit; down whose steps +I saw the splendours in such multitude +Descending, ev’ry light in heav’n, methought, +Was shed thence. As the rooks, at dawn of day +Bestirring them to dry their feathers chill, +Some speed their way a-field, and homeward some, +Returning, cross their flight, while some abide +And wheel around their airy lodge; so seem’d +That glitterance, wafted on alternate wing, +As upon certain stair it met, and clash’d +Its shining. And one ling’ring near us, wax’d +So bright, that in my thought: said: “The love, +Which this betokens me, admits no doubt.” + +Unwillingly from question I refrain, +To her, by whom my silence and my speech +Are order’d, looking for a sign: whence she, +Who in the sight of Him, that seeth all, +Saw wherefore I was silent, prompted me +T’ indulge the fervent wish; and I began: +“I am not worthy, of my own desert, +That thou shouldst answer me; but for her sake, +Who hath vouchsaf’d my asking, spirit blest! +That in thy joy art shrouded! say the cause, +Which bringeth thee so near: and wherefore, say, +Doth the sweet symphony of Paradise +Keep silence here, pervading with such sounds +Of rapt devotion ev’ry lower sphere?” +“Mortal art thou in hearing as in sight;” +Was the reply: “and what forbade the smile +Of Beatrice interrupts our song. +Only to yield thee gladness of my voice, +And of the light that vests me, I thus far +Descend these hallow’d steps: not that more love +Invites me; for lo! there aloft, as much +Or more of love is witness’d in those flames: +But such my lot by charity assign’d, +That makes us ready servants, as thou seest, +To execute the counsel of the Highest.” +“That in this court,” said I, “O sacred lamp! +Love no compulsion needs, but follows free +Th’ eternal Providence, I well discern: +This harder find to deem, why of thy peers +Thou only to this office wert foredoom’d.” +I had not ended, when, like rapid mill, +Upon its centre whirl’d the light; and then +The love, that did inhabit there, replied: +“Splendour eternal, piercing through these folds, +Its virtue to my vision knits, and thus +Supported, lifts me so above myself, +That on the sov’ran essence, which it wells from, +I have the power to gaze: and hence the joy, +Wherewith I sparkle, equaling with my blaze +The keenness of my sight. But not the soul, +That is in heav’n most lustrous, nor the seraph +That hath his eyes most fix’d on God, shall solve +What thou hast ask’d: for in th’ abyss it lies +Of th’ everlasting statute sunk so low, +That no created ken may fathom it. +And, to the mortal world when thou return’st, +Be this reported; that none henceforth dare +Direct his footsteps to so dread a bourn. +The mind, that here is radiant, on the earth +Is wrapt in mist. Look then if she may do, +Below, what passeth her ability, +When she is ta’en to heav’n.” By words like these +Admonish’d, I the question urg’d no more; +And of the spirit humbly sued alone +T’ instruct me of its state. “’Twixt either shore +Of Italy, nor distant from thy land, +A stony ridge ariseth, in such sort, +The thunder doth not lift his voice so high, +They call it Catria: at whose foot a cell +Is sacred to the lonely Eremite, +For worship set apart and holy rites.” +A third time thus it spake; then added: “There +So firmly to God’s service I adher’d, +That with no costlier viands than the juice +Of olives, easily I pass’d the heats +Of summer and the winter frosts, content +In heav’n-ward musings. Rich were the returns +And fertile, which that cloister once was us’d +To render to these heavens: now ’tis fall’n +Into a waste so empty, that ere long +Detection must lay bare its vanity +Pietro Damiano there was I yclept: +Pietro the sinner, when before I dwelt +Beside the Adriatic, in the house +Of our blest Lady. Near upon my close +Of mortal life, through much importuning +I was constrain’d to wear the hat that still +From bad to worse it shifted.—Cephas came; +He came, who was the Holy Spirit’s vessel, +Barefoot and lean, eating their bread, as chanc’d, +At the first table. Modern Shepherd’s need +Those who on either hand may prop and lead them, +So burly are they grown: and from behind +Others to hoist them. Down the palfrey’s sides +Spread their broad mantles, so as both the beasts +Are cover’d with one skin. O patience! thou +That lookst on this and doth endure so long.” +I at those accents saw the splendours down +From step to step alight, and wheel, and wax, +Each circuiting, more beautiful. Round this +They came, and stay’d them; uttered them a shout +So loud, it hath no likeness here: nor I +Wist what it spake, so deaf’ning was the thunder. + + + + +CANTO XXII + + +Astounded, to the guardian of my steps +I turn’d me, like the chill, who always runs +Thither for succour, where he trusteth most, +And she was like the mother, who her son +Beholding pale and breathless, with her voice +Soothes him, and he is cheer’d; for thus she spake, +Soothing me: “Know’st not thou, thou art in heav’n? +And know’st not thou, whatever is in heav’n, +Is holy, and that nothing there is done +But is done zealously and well? Deem now, +What change in thee the song, and what my smile +had wrought, since thus the shout had pow’r to move thee. +In which couldst thou have understood their prayers, +The vengeance were already known to thee, +Which thou must witness ere thy mortal hour, +The sword of heav’n is not in haste to smite, +Nor yet doth linger, save unto his seeming, +Who in desire or fear doth look for it. +But elsewhere now l bid thee turn thy view; +So shalt thou many a famous spirit behold.” +Mine eyes directing, as she will’d, I saw +A hundred little spheres, that fairer grew +By interchange of splendour. I remain’d, +As one, who fearful of o’er-much presuming, +Abates in him the keenness of desire, +Nor dares to question, when amid those pearls, +One largest and most lustrous onward drew, +That it might yield contentment to my wish; +And from within it these the sounds I heard. + +“If thou, like me, beheldst the charity +That burns amongst us, what thy mind conceives, +Were utter’d. But that, ere the lofty bound +Thou reach, expectance may not weary thee, +I will make answer even to the thought, +Which thou hast such respect of. In old days, +That mountain, at whose side Cassino rests, +Was on its height frequented by a race +Deceived and ill dispos’d: and I it was, +Who thither carried first the name of Him, +Who brought the soul-subliming truth to man. +And such a speeding grace shone over me, +That from their impious worship I reclaim’d +The dwellers round about, who with the world +Were in delusion lost. These other flames, +The spirits of men contemplative, were all +Enliven’d by that warmth, whose kindly force +Gives birth to flowers and fruits of holiness. +Here is Macarius; Romoaldo here: +And here my brethren, who their steps refrain’d +Within the cloisters, and held firm their heart.” + +I answ’ring, thus; “Thy gentle words and kind, +And this the cheerful semblance, I behold +Not unobservant, beaming in ye all, +Have rais’d assurance in me, wakening it +Full-blossom’d in my bosom, as a rose +Before the sun, when the consummate flower +Has spread to utmost amplitude. Of thee +Therefore entreat I, father! to declare +If I may gain such favour, as to gaze +Upon thine image, by no covering veil’d.” + +“Brother!” he thus rejoin’d, “in the last sphere +Expect completion of thy lofty aim, +For there on each desire completion waits, +And there on mine: where every aim is found +Perfect, entire, and for fulfillment ripe. +There all things are as they have ever been: +For space is none to bound, nor pole divides, +Our ladder reaches even to that clime, +And so at giddy distance mocks thy view. +Thither the Patriarch Jacob saw it stretch +Its topmost round, when it appear’d to him +With angels laden. But to mount it now +None lifts his foot from earth: and hence my rule +Is left a profitless stain upon the leaves; +The walls, for abbey rear’d, turned into dens, +The cowls to sacks choak’d up with musty meal. +Foul usury doth not more lift itself +Against God’s pleasure, than that fruit which makes +The hearts of monks so wanton: for whate’er +Is in the church’s keeping, all pertains. +To such, as sue for heav’n’s sweet sake, and not +To those who in respect of kindred claim, +Or on more vile allowance. Mortal flesh +Is grown so dainty, good beginnings last not +From the oak’s birth, unto the acorn’s setting. +His convent Peter founded without gold +Or silver; I with pray’rs and fasting mine; +And Francis his in meek humility. +And if thou note the point, whence each proceeds, +Then look what it hath err’d to, thou shalt find +The white grown murky. Jordan was turn’d back; +And a less wonder, then the refluent sea, +May at God’s pleasure work amendment here.” + +So saying, to his assembly back he drew: +And they together cluster’d into one, +Then all roll’d upward like an eddying wind. + +The sweet dame beckon’d me to follow them: +And, by that influence only, so prevail’d +Over my nature, that no natural motion, +Ascending or descending here below, +Had, as I mounted, with my pennon vied. + +So, reader, as my hope is to return +Unto the holy triumph, for the which +I ofttimes wail my sins, and smite my breast, +Thou hadst been longer drawing out and thrusting +Thy finger in the fire, than I was, ere +The sign, that followeth Taurus, I beheld, +And enter’d its precinct. O glorious stars! +O light impregnate with exceeding virtue! +To whom whate’er of genius lifteth me +Above the vulgar, grateful I refer; +With ye the parent of all mortal life +Arose and set, when I did first inhale +The Tuscan air; and afterward, when grace +Vouchsaf’d me entrance to the lofty wheel +That in its orb impels ye, fate decreed +My passage at your clime. To you my soul +Devoutly sighs, for virtue even now +To meet the hard emprize that draws me on. + +“Thou art so near the sum of blessedness,” +Said Beatrice, “that behooves thy ken +Be vigilant and clear. And, to this end, +Or even thou advance thee further, hence +Look downward, and contemplate, what a world +Already stretched under our feet there lies: +So as thy heart may, in its blithest mood, +Present itself to the triumphal throng, +Which through the’ etherial concave comes rejoicing.” + +I straight obey’d; and with mine eye return’d +Through all the seven spheres, and saw this globe +So pitiful of semblance, that perforce +It moved my smiles: and him in truth I hold +For wisest, who esteems it least: whose thoughts +Elsewhere are fix’d, him worthiest call and best. +I saw the daughter of Latona shine +Without the shadow, whereof late I deem’d +That dense and rare were cause. Here I sustain’d +The visage, Hyperion! of thy sun; +And mark’d, how near him with their circle, round +Move Maia and Dione; here discern’d +Jove’s tempering ’twixt his sire and son; and hence +Their changes and their various aspects +Distinctly scann’d. Nor might I not descry +Of all the seven, how bulky each, how swift; +Nor of their several distances not learn. +This petty area (o’er the which we stride +So fiercely), as along the eternal twins +I wound my way, appear’d before me all, +Forth from the havens stretch’d unto the hills. +Then to the beauteous eyes mine eyes return’d. + + + + +CANTO XXIII + + +E’en as the bird, who midst the leafy bower +Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night, +With her sweet brood, impatient to descry +Their wished looks, and to bring home their food, +In the fond quest unconscious of her toil: +She, of the time prevenient, on the spray, +That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze +Expects the sun; nor ever, till the dawn, +Removeth from the east her eager ken; +So stood the dame erect, and bent her glance +Wistfully on that region, where the sun +Abateth most his speed; that, seeing her +Suspense and wand’ring, I became as one, +In whom desire is waken’d, and the hope +Of somewhat new to come fills with delight. + +Short space ensued; I was not held, I say, +Long in expectance, when I saw the heav’n +Wax more and more resplendent; and, “Behold,” +Cried Beatrice, “the triumphal hosts +Of Christ, and all the harvest reap’d at length +Of thy ascending up these spheres.” Meseem’d, +That, while she spake her image all did burn, +And in her eyes such fullness was of joy, +And I am fain to pass unconstrued by. + +As in the calm full moon, when Trivia smiles, +In peerless beauty, ’mid th’ eternal nympus, +That paint through all its gulfs the blue profound +In bright pre-eminence so saw I there, +O’er million lamps a sun, from whom all drew +Their radiance as from ours the starry train: +And through the living light so lustrous glow’d +The substance, that my ken endur’d it not. + +O Beatrice! sweet and precious guide! +Who cheer’d me with her comfortable words! +“Against the virtue, that o’erpow’reth thee, +Avails not to resist. Here is the might, +And here the wisdom, which did open lay +The path, that had been yearned for so long, +Betwixt the heav’n and earth.” Like to the fire, +That, in a cloud imprison’d doth break out +Expansive, so that from its womb enlarg’d, +It falleth against nature to the ground; +Thus in that heav’nly banqueting my soul +Outgrew herself; and, in the transport lost. +Holds now remembrance none of what she was. + +“Ope thou thine eyes, and mark me: thou hast seen +Things, that empower thee to sustain my smile.” + +I was as one, when a forgotten dream +Doth come across him, and he strives in vain +To shape it in his fantasy again, +Whenas that gracious boon was proffer’d me, +Which never may be cancel’d from the book, +Wherein the past is written. Now were all +Those tongues to sound, that have on sweetest milk +Of Polyhymnia and her sisters fed +And fatten’d, not with all their help to boot, +Unto the thousandth parcel of the truth, +My song might shadow forth that saintly smile, +flow merely in her saintly looks it wrought. +And with such figuring of Paradise +The sacred strain must leap, like one, that meets +A sudden interruption to his road. +But he, who thinks how ponderous the theme, +And that ’tis lain upon a mortal shoulder, +May pardon, if it tremble with the burden. +The track, our ventrous keel must furrow, brooks +No unribb’d pinnace, no self-sparing pilot. + +“Why doth my face,” said Beatrice, “thus +Enamour thee, as that thou dost not turn +Unto the beautiful garden, blossoming +Beneath the rays of Christ? Here is the rose, +Wherein the word divine was made incarnate; +And here the lilies, by whose odour known +The way of life was follow’d.” Prompt I heard +Her bidding, and encounter once again +The strife of aching vision. As erewhile, +Through glance of sunlight, stream’d through broken cloud, +Mine eyes a flower-besprinkled mead have seen, +Though veil’d themselves in shade; so saw I there +Legions of splendours, on whom burning rays +Shed lightnings from above, yet saw I not +The fountain whence they flow’d. O gracious virtue! +Thou, whose broad stamp is on them, higher up +Thou didst exalt thy glory to give room +To my o’erlabour’d sight: when at the name +Of that fair flower, whom duly I invoke +Both morn and eve, my soul, with all her might +Collected, on the goodliest ardour fix’d. +And, as the bright dimensions of the star +In heav’n excelling, as once here on earth +Were, in my eyeballs lively portray’d, +Lo! from within the sky a cresset fell, +Circling in fashion of a diadem, +And girt the star, and hov’ring round it wheel’d. + +Whatever melody sounds sweetest here, +And draws the spirit most unto itself, +Might seem a rent cloud when it grates the thunder, +Compar’d unto the sounding of that lyre, +Wherewith the goodliest sapphire, that inlays +The floor of heav’n, was crown’d. “Angelic Love +I am, who thus with hov’ring flight enwheel +The lofty rapture from that womb inspir’d, +Where our desire did dwell: and round thee so, +Lady of Heav’n! will hover; long as thou +Thy Son shalt follow, and diviner joy +Shall from thy presence gild the highest sphere.” + +Such close was to the circling melody: +And, as it ended, all the other lights +Took up the strain, and echoed Mary’s name. + +The robe, that with its regal folds enwraps +The world, and with the nearer breath of God +Doth burn and quiver, held so far retir’d +Its inner hem and skirting over us, +That yet no glimmer of its majesty +Had stream’d unto me: therefore were mine eyes +Unequal to pursue the crowned flame, +That rose and sought its natal seed of fire; +And like to babe, that stretches forth its arms +For very eagerness towards the breast, +After the milk is taken; so outstretch’d +Their wavy summits all the fervent band, +Through zealous love to Mary: then in view +There halted, and “Regina Coeli” sang +So sweetly, the delight hath left me never. + +O what o’erflowing plenty is up-pil’d +In those rich-laden coffers, which below +Sow’d the good seed, whose harvest now they keep. + +Here are the treasures tasted, that with tears +Were in the Babylonian exile won, +When gold had fail’d them. Here in synod high +Of ancient council with the new conven’d, +Under the Son of Mary and of God, +Victorious he his mighty triumph holds, +To whom the keys of glory were assign’d. + + + + +CANTO XXIV + + +“O ye! in chosen fellowship advanc’d +To the great supper of the blessed Lamb, +Whereon who feeds hath every wish fulfill’d! +If to this man through God’s grace be vouchsaf’d +Foretaste of that, which from your table falls, +Or ever death his fated term prescribe; +Be ye not heedless of his urgent will; +But may some influence of your sacred dews +Sprinkle him. Of the fount ye alway drink, +Whence flows what most he craves.” Beatrice spake, +And the rejoicing spirits, like to spheres +On firm-set poles revolving, trail’d a blaze +Of comet splendour; and as wheels, that wind +Their circles in the horologe, so work +The stated rounds, that to th’ observant eye +The first seems still, and, as it flew, the last; +E’en thus their carols weaving variously, +They by the measure pac’d, or swift, or slow, +Made me to rate the riches of their joy. + +From that, which I did note in beauty most +Excelling, saw I issue forth a flame +So bright, as none was left more goodly there. +Round Beatrice thrice it wheel’d about, +With so divine a song, that fancy’s ear +Records it not; and the pen passeth on +And leaves a blank: for that our mortal speech, +Nor e’en the inward shaping of the brain, +Hath colours fine enough to trace such folds. + +“O saintly sister mine! thy prayer devout +Is with so vehement affection urg’d, +Thou dost unbind me from that beauteous sphere.” + +Such were the accents towards my lady breath’d +From that blest ardour, soon as it was stay’d: +To whom she thus: “O everlasting light +Of him, within whose mighty grasp our Lord +Did leave the keys, which of this wondrous bliss +He bare below! tent this man, as thou wilt, +With lighter probe or deep, touching the faith, +By the which thou didst on the billows walk. +If he in love, in hope, and in belief, +Be steadfast, is not hid from thee: for thou +Hast there thy ken, where all things are beheld +In liveliest portraiture. But since true faith +Has peopled this fair realm with citizens, +Meet is, that to exalt its glory more, +Thou in his audience shouldst thereof discourse.” + +Like to the bachelor, who arms himself, +And speaks not, till the master have propos’d +The question, to approve, and not to end it; +So I, in silence, arm’d me, while she spake, +Summoning up each argument to aid; +As was behooveful for such questioner, +And such profession: “As good Christian ought, +Declare thee, What is faith?” Whereat I rais’d +My forehead to the light, whence this had breath’d, +Then turn’d to Beatrice, and in her looks +Approval met, that from their inmost fount +I should unlock the waters. “May the grace, +That giveth me the captain of the church +For confessor,” said I, “vouchsafe to me +Apt utterance for my thoughts!” then added: “Sire! +E’en as set down by the unerring style +Of thy dear brother, who with thee conspir’d +To bring Rome in unto the way of life, +Faith of things hop’d is substance, and the proof +Of things not seen; and herein doth consist +Methinks its essence,”—“Rightly hast thou deem’d,” +Was answer’d: “if thou well discern, why first +He hath defin’d it, substance, and then proof.” + +“The deep things,” I replied, “which here I scan +Distinctly, are below from mortal eye +So hidden, they have in belief alone +Their being, on which credence hope sublime +Is built; and therefore substance it intends. +And inasmuch as we must needs infer +From such belief our reasoning, all respect +To other view excluded, hence of proof +Th’ intention is deriv’d.” Forthwith I heard: +“If thus, whate’er by learning men attain, +Were understood, the sophist would want room +To exercise his wit.” So breath’d the flame +Of love: then added: “Current is the coin +Thou utter’st, both in weight and in alloy. +But tell me, if thou hast it in thy purse.” + +“Even so glittering and so round,” said I, +“I not a whit misdoubt of its assay.” + +Next issued from the deep imbosom’d splendour: +“Say, whence the costly jewel, on the which +Is founded every virtue, came to thee.” +“The flood,” I answer’d, “from the Spirit of God +Rain’d down upon the ancient bond and new,— +Here is the reas’ning, that convinceth me +So feelingly, each argument beside +Seems blunt and forceless in comparison.” +Then heard I: “Wherefore holdest thou that each, +The elder proposition and the new, +Which so persuade thee, are the voice of heav’n?” + +“The works, that follow’d, evidence their truth;” +I answer’d: “Nature did not make for these +The iron hot, or on her anvil mould them.” +“Who voucheth to thee of the works themselves,” +Was the reply, “that they in very deed +Are that they purport? None hath sworn so to thee.” + +“That all the world,” said I, “should have been turn’d +To Christian, and no miracle been wrought, +Would in itself be such a miracle, +The rest were not an hundredth part so great. +E’en thou wentst forth in poverty and hunger +To set the goodly plant, that from the vine, +It once was, now is grown unsightly bramble.” +That ended, through the high celestial court +Resounded all the spheres. “Praise we one God!” +In song of most unearthly melody. +And when that Worthy thus, from branch to branch, +Examining, had led me, that we now +Approach’d the topmost bough, he straight resum’d; +“The grace, that holds sweet dalliance with thy soul, +So far discreetly hath thy lips unclos’d +That, whatsoe’er has past them, I commend. +Behooves thee to express, what thou believ’st, +The next, and whereon thy belief hath grown.” + +“O saintly sire and spirit!” I began, +“Who seest that, which thou didst so believe, +As to outstrip feet younger than thine own, +Toward the sepulchre? thy will is here, +That I the tenour of my creed unfold; +And thou the cause of it hast likewise ask’d. +And I reply: I in one God believe, +One sole eternal Godhead, of whose love +All heav’n is mov’d, himself unmov’d the while. +Nor demonstration physical alone, +Or more intelligential and abstruse, +Persuades me to this faith; but from that truth +It cometh to me rather, which is shed +Through Moses, the rapt Prophets, and the Psalms. +The Gospel, and that ye yourselves did write, +When ye were gifted of the Holy Ghost. +In three eternal Persons I believe, +Essence threefold and one, mysterious league +Of union absolute, which, many a time, +The word of gospel lore upon my mind +Imprints: and from this germ, this firstling spark, +The lively flame dilates, and like heav’n’s star +Doth glitter in me.” As the master hears, +Well pleas’d, and then enfoldeth in his arms +The servant, who hath joyful tidings brought, +And having told the errand keeps his peace; +Thus benediction uttering with song +Soon as my peace I held, compass’d me thrice +The apostolic radiance, whose behest +Had op’d lips; so well their answer pleas’d. + + + + +CANTO XXV + + +If e’er the sacred poem that hath made +Both heav’n and earth copartners in its toil, +And with lean abstinence, through many a year, +Faded my brow, be destin’d to prevail +Over the cruelty, which bars me forth +Of the fair sheep-fold, where a sleeping lamb +The wolves set on and fain had worried me, +With other voice and fleece of other grain +I shall forthwith return, and, standing up +At my baptismal font, shall claim the wreath +Due to the poet’s temples: for I there +First enter’d on the faith which maketh souls +Acceptable to God: and, for its sake, +Peter had then circled my forehead thus. + +Next from the squadron, whence had issued forth +The first fruit of Christ’s vicars on the earth, +Toward us mov’d a light, at view whereof +My Lady, full of gladness, spake to me: +“Lo! lo! behold the peer of mickle might, +That makes Falicia throng’d with visitants!” + +As when the ring-dove by his mate alights, +In circles each about the other wheels, +And murmuring cooes his fondness; thus saw I +One, of the other great and glorious prince, +With kindly greeting hail’d, extolling both +Their heavenly banqueting; but when an end +Was to their gratulation, silent, each, +Before me sat they down, so burning bright, +I could not look upon them. Smiling then, +Beatrice spake: “O life in glory shrin’d!” +Who didst the largess of our kingly court +Set down with faithful pen! let now thy voice +Of hope the praises in this height resound. +For thou, who figur’st them in shapes, as clear, +As Jesus stood before thee, well can’st speak them.” + +“Lift up thy head, and be thou strong in trust: +For that, which hither from the mortal world +Arriveth, must be ripen’d in our beam.” + +Such cheering accents from the second flame +Assur’d me; and mine eyes I lifted up +Unto the mountains that had bow’d them late +With over-heavy burden. “Sith our Liege +Wills of his grace that thou, or ere thy death, +In the most secret council, with his lords +Shouldst be confronted, so that having view’d +The glories of our court, thou mayst therewith +Thyself, and all who hear, invigorate +With hope, that leads to blissful end; declare, +What is that hope, how it doth flourish in thee, +And whence thou hadst it?” Thus proceeding still, +The second light: and she, whose gentle love +My soaring pennons in that lofty flight +Escorted, thus preventing me, rejoin’d: +Among her sons, not one more full of hope, +Hath the church militant: so ’tis of him +Recorded in the sun, whose liberal orb +Enlighteneth all our tribe: and ere his term +Of warfare, hence permitted he is come, +From Egypt to Jerusalem, to see. +The other points, both which thou hast inquir’d, +Not for more knowledge, but that he may tell +How dear thou holdst the virtue, these to him +Leave I; for he may answer thee with ease, +And without boasting, so God give him grace.” +Like to the scholar, practis’d in his task, +Who, willing to give proof of diligence, +Seconds his teacher gladly, “Hope,” said I, +“Is of the joy to come a sure expectance, +Th’ effect of grace divine and merit preceding. +This light from many a star visits my heart, +But flow’d to me the first from him, who sang +The songs of the Supreme, himself supreme +Among his tuneful brethren. ‘Let all hope +In thee,’ so speak his anthem, ‘who have known +Thy name;’ and with my faith who know not that? +From thee, the next, distilling from his spring, +In thine epistle, fell on me the drops +So plenteously, that I on others shower +The influence of their dew.” Whileas I spake, +A lamping, as of quick and vollied lightning, +Within the bosom of that mighty sheen, +Play’d tremulous; then forth these accents breath’d: +“Love for the virtue which attended me +E’en to the palm, and issuing from the field, +Glows vigorous yet within me, and inspires +To ask of thee, whom also it delights; +What promise thou from hope in chief dost win.” + +“Both scriptures, new and ancient,” I reply’d; +“Propose the mark (which even now I view) +For souls belov’d of God. Isaias saith, +That, in their own land, each one must be clad +In twofold vesture; and their proper lands this delicious life. +In terms more full, +And clearer far, thy brother hath set forth +This revelation to us, where he tells +Of the white raiment destin’d to the saints.” +And, as the words were ending, from above, +“They hope in thee,” first heard we cried: whereto +Answer’d the carols all. Amidst them next, +A light of so clear amplitude emerg’d, +That winter’s month were but a single day, +Were such a crystal in the Cancer’s sign. + +Like as a virgin riseth up, and goes, +And enters on the mazes of the dance, +Though gay, yet innocent of worse intent, +Than to do fitting honour to the bride; +So I beheld the new effulgence come +Unto the other two, who in a ring +Wheel’d, as became their rapture. In the dance +And in the song it mingled. And the dame +Held on them fix’d her looks: e’en as the spouse +Silent and moveless. “This is he, who lay +Upon the bosom of our pelican: +This he, into whose keeping from the cross +The mighty charge was given.” Thus she spake, +Yet therefore naught the more remov’d her Sight +From marking them, or ere her words began, +Or when they clos’d. As he, who looks intent, +And strives with searching ken, how he may see +The sun in his eclipse, and, through desire +Of seeing, loseth power of sight: so I +Peer’d on that last resplendence, while I heard: +“Why dazzlest thou thine eyes in seeking that, +Which here abides not? Earth my body is, +In earth: and shall be, with the rest, so long, +As till our number equal the decree +Of the Most High. The two that have ascended, +In this our blessed cloister, shine alone +With the two garments. So report below.” + +As when, for ease of labour, or to shun +Suspected peril at a whistle’s breath, +The oars, erewhile dash’d frequent in the wave, +All rest; the flamy circle at that voice +So rested, and the mingling sound was still, +Which from the trinal band soft-breathing rose. +I turn’d, but ah! how trembled in my thought, +When, looking at my side again to see +Beatrice, I descried her not, although +Not distant, on the happy coast she stood. + + + + +CANTO XXVI + + +With dazzled eyes, whilst wond’ring I remain’d, +Forth of the beamy flame which dazzled me, +Issued a breath, that in attention mute +Detain’d me; and these words it spake: “’Twere well, +That, long as till thy vision, on my form +O’erspent, regain its virtue, with discourse +Thou compensate the brief delay. Say then, +Beginning, to what point thy soul aspires: + +“And meanwhile rest assur’d, that sight in thee +Is but o’erpowered a space, not wholly quench’d: +Since thy fair guide and lovely, in her look +Hath potency, the like to that which dwelt +In Ananias’ hand.” I answering thus: +“Be to mine eyes the remedy or late +Or early, at her pleasure; for they were +The gates, at which she enter’d, and did light +Her never dying fire. My wishes here +Are centered; in this palace is the weal, +That Alpha and Omega, is to all +The lessons love can read me.” Yet again +The voice which had dispers’d my fear, when daz’d +With that excess, to converse urg’d, and spake: +“Behooves thee sift more narrowly thy terms, +And say, who level’d at this scope thy bow.” + +“Philosophy,” said I, “hath arguments, +And this place hath authority enough +T’ imprint in me such love: for, of constraint, +Good, inasmuch as we perceive the good, +Kindles our love, and in degree the more, +As it comprises more of goodness in ’t. +The essence then, where such advantage is, +That each good, found without it, is naught else +But of his light the beam, must needs attract +The soul of each one, loving, who the truth +Discerns, on which this proof is built. Such truth +Learn I from him, who shows me the first love +Of all intelligential substances +Eternal: from his voice I learn, whose word +Is truth, that of himself to Moses saith, +‘I will make all my good before thee pass.’ +Lastly from thee I learn, who chief proclaim’st, +E’en at the outset of thy heralding, +In mortal ears the mystery of heav’n.” + +“Through human wisdom, and th’ authority +Therewith agreeing,” heard I answer’d, “keep +The choicest of thy love for God. But say, +If thou yet other cords within thee feel’st +That draw thee towards him; so that thou report +How many are the fangs, with which this love +Is grappled to thy soul.” I did not miss, +To what intent the eagle of our Lord +Had pointed his demand; yea noted well +Th’ avowal, which he led to; and resum’d: +“All grappling bonds, that knit the heart to God, +Confederate to make fast our clarity. +The being of the world, and mine own being, +The death which he endur’d that I should live, +And that, which all the faithful hope, as I do, +To the foremention’d lively knowledge join’d, +Have from the sea of ill love sav’d my bark, +And on the coast secur’d it of the right. +As for the leaves, that in the garden bloom, +My love for them is great, as is the good +Dealt by th’ eternal hand, that tends them all.” + +I ended, and therewith a song most sweet +Rang through the spheres; and “Holy, holy, holy,” +Accordant with the rest my lady sang. +And as a sleep is broken and dispers’d +Through sharp encounter of the nimble light, +With the eye’s spirit running forth to meet +The ray, from membrane on to the membrane urg’d; +And the upstartled wight loathes that he sees; +So, at his sudden waking, he misdeems +Of all around him, till assurance waits +On better judgment: thus the saintly came +Drove from before mine eyes the motes away, +With the resplendence of her own, that cast +Their brightness downward, thousand miles below. +Whence I my vision, clearer shall before, +Recover’d; and, well nigh astounded, ask’d +Of a fourth light, that now with us I saw. + +And Beatrice: “The first diving soul, +That ever the first virtue fram’d, admires +Within these rays his Maker.” Like the leaf, +That bows its lithe top till the blast is blown; +By its own virtue rear’d then stands aloof; +So I, the whilst she said, awe-stricken bow’d. +Then eagerness to speak embolden’d me; +And I began: “O fruit! that wast alone +Mature, when first engender’d! Ancient father! +That doubly seest in every wedded bride +Thy daughter by affinity and blood! +Devoutly as I may, I pray thee hold +Converse with me: my will thou seest; and I, +More speedily to hear thee, tell it not.” + +It chanceth oft some animal bewrays, +Through the sleek cov’ring of his furry coat. +The fondness, that stirs in him and conforms +His outside seeming to the cheer within: +And in like guise was Adam’s spirit mov’d +To joyous mood, that through the covering shone, +Transparent, when to pleasure me it spake: +“No need thy will be told, which I untold +Better discern, than thou whatever thing +Thou holdst most certain: for that will I see +In Him, who is truth’s mirror, and Himself +Parhelion unto all things, and naught else +To him. This wouldst thou hear; how long since God +Plac’d me high garden, from whose hounds +She led me up in this ladder, steep and long; +What space endur’d my season of delight; +Whence truly sprang the wrath that banish’d me; +And what the language, which I spake and fram’d +Not that I tasted of the tree, my son, +Was in itself the cause of that exile, +But only my transgressing of the mark +Assign’d me. There, whence at thy lady’s hest +The Mantuan mov’d him, still was I debarr’d +This council, till the sun had made complete, +Four thousand and three hundred rounds and twice, +His annual journey; and, through every light +In his broad pathway, saw I him return, +Thousand save sev’nty times, the whilst I dwelt +Upon the earth. The language I did use +Was worn away, or ever Nimrod’s race +Their unaccomplishable work began. +For naught, that man inclines to, ere was lasting, +Left by his reason free, and variable, +As is the sky that sways him. That he speaks, +Is nature’s prompting: whether thus or thus, +She leaves to you, as ye do most affect it. +Ere I descended into hell’s abyss, +El was the name on earth of the Chief Good, +Whose joy enfolds me: Eli then ’twas call’d +And so beseemeth: for, in mortals, use +Is as the leaf upon the bough; that goes, +And other comes instead. Upon the mount +Most high above the waters, all my life, +Both innocent and guilty, did but reach +From the first hour, to that which cometh next +(As the sun changes quarter), to the sixth.” + + + + +CANTO XXVII + + +Then “Glory to the Father, to the Son, +And to the Holy Spirit,” rang aloud +Throughout all Paradise, that with the song +My spirit reel’d, so passing sweet the strain: +And what I saw was equal ecstasy; +One universal smile it seem’d of all things, +Joy past compare, gladness unutterable, +Imperishable life of peace and love, +Exhaustless riches and unmeasur’d bliss. + +Before mine eyes stood the four torches lit; +And that, which first had come, began to wax +In brightness, and in semblance such became, +As Jove might be, if he and Mars were birds, +And interchang’d their plumes. Silence ensued, +Through the blest quire, by Him, who here appoints +Vicissitude of ministry, enjoin’d; +When thus I heard: “Wonder not, if my hue +Be chang’d; for, while I speak, these shalt thou see +All in like manner change with me. My place +He who usurps on earth (my place, ay, mine, +Which in the presence of the Son of God +Is void), the same hath made my cemetery +A common sewer of puddle and of blood: +The more below his triumph, who from hence +Malignant fell.” Such colour, as the sun, +At eve or morning, paints an adverse cloud, +Then saw I sprinkled over all the sky. +And as th’ unblemish’d dame, who in herself +Secure of censure, yet at bare report +Of other’s failing, shrinks with maiden fear; +So Beatrice in her semblance chang’d: +And such eclipse in heav’n methinks was seen, +When the Most Holy suffer’d. Then the words +Proceeded, with voice, alter’d from itself +So clean, the semblance did not alter more. +“Not to this end was Christ’s spouse with my blood, +With that of Linus, and of Cletus fed: +That she might serve for purchase of base gold: +But for the purchase of this happy life +Did Sextus, Pius, and Callixtus bleed, +And Urban, they, whose doom was not without +Much weeping seal’d. No purpose was of our +That on the right hand of our successors +Part of the Christian people should be set, +And part upon their left; nor that the keys, +Which were vouchsaf’d me, should for ensign serve +Unto the banners, that do levy war +On the baptiz’d: nor I, for sigil-mark +Set upon sold and lying privileges; +Which makes me oft to bicker and turn red. +In shepherd’s clothing greedy wolves below +Range wide o’er all the pastures. Arm of God! +Why longer sleepst thou? Caorsines and Gascona +Prepare to quaff our blood. O good beginning +To what a vile conclusion must thou stoop! +But the high providence, which did defend +Through Scipio the world’s glory unto Rome, +Will not delay its succour: and thou, son, +Who through thy mortal weight shall yet again +Return below, open thy lips, nor hide +What is by me not hidden.” As a Hood +Of frozen vapours streams adown the air, +What time the she-goat with her skiey horn +Touches the sun; so saw I there stream wide +The vapours, who with us had linger’d late +And with glad triumph deck th’ ethereal cope. +Onward my sight their semblances pursued; +So far pursued, as till the space between +From its reach sever’d them: whereat the guide +Celestial, marking me no more intent +On upward gazing, said, “Look down and see +What circuit thou hast compass’d.” From the hour +When I before had cast my view beneath, +All the first region overpast I saw, +Which from the midmost to the bound’ry winds; +That onward thence from Gades I beheld +The unwise passage of Laertes’ son, +And hitherward the shore, where thou, Europa! +Mad’st thee a joyful burden: and yet more +Of this dim spot had seen, but that the sun, +A constellation off and more, had ta’en +His progress in the zodiac underneath. + +Then by the spirit, that doth never leave +Its amorous dalliance with my lady’s looks, +Back with redoubled ardour were mine eyes +Led unto her: and from her radiant smiles, +Whenas I turn’d me, pleasure so divine +Did lighten on me, that whatever bait +Or art or nature in the human flesh, +Or in its limn’d resemblance, can combine +Through greedy eyes to take the soul withal, +Were to her beauty nothing. Its boon influence +From the fair nest of Leda rapt me forth, +And wafted on into the swiftest heav’n. + +What place for entrance Beatrice chose, +I may not say, so uniform was all, +Liveliest and loftiest. She my secret wish +Divin’d; and with such gladness, that God’s love +Seem’d from her visage shining, thus began: +“Here is the goal, whence motion on his race +Starts; motionless the centre, and the rest +All mov’d around. Except the soul divine, +Place in this heav’n is none, the soul divine, +Wherein the love, which ruleth o’er its orb, +Is kindled, and the virtue that it sheds; +One circle, light and love, enclasping it, +As this doth clasp the others; and to Him, +Who draws the bound, its limit only known. +Measur’d itself by none, it doth divide +Motion to all, counted unto them forth, +As by the fifth or half ye count forth ten. +The vase, wherein time’s roots are plung’d, thou seest, +Look elsewhere for the leaves. O mortal lust! +That canst not lift thy head above the waves +Which whelm and sink thee down! The will in man +Bears goodly blossoms; but its ruddy promise +Is, by the dripping of perpetual rain, +Made mere abortion: faith and innocence +Are met with but in babes, each taking leave +Ere cheeks with down are sprinkled; he, that fasts, +While yet a stammerer, with his tongue let loose +Gluts every food alike in every moon. +One yet a babbler, loves and listens to +His mother; but no sooner hath free use +Of speech, than he doth wish her in her grave. +So suddenly doth the fair child of him, +Whose welcome is the morn and eve his parting, +To negro blackness change her virgin white. + +“Thou, to abate thy wonder, note that none +Bears rule in earth, and its frail family +Are therefore wand’rers. Yet before the date, +When through the hundredth in his reck’ning drops +Pale January must be shor’d aside +From winter’s calendar, these heav’nly spheres +Shall roar so loud, that fortune shall be fain +To turn the poop, where she hath now the prow; +So that the fleet run onward; and true fruit, +Expected long, shall crown at last the bloom!” + + + + +CANTO XXVII + + +So she who doth imparadise my soul, +Had drawn the veil from off our pleasant life, +And bar’d the truth of poor mortality; +When lo! as one who, in a mirror, spies +The shining of a flambeau at his back, +Lit sudden ore he deem of its approach, +And turneth to resolve him, if the glass +Have told him true, and sees the record faithful +As note is to its metre; even thus, +I well remember, did befall to me, +Looking upon the beauteous eyes, whence love +Had made the leash to take me. As I turn’d; +And that, which, in their circles, none who spies, +Can miss of, in itself apparent, struck +On mine; a point I saw, that darted light +So sharp, no lid, unclosing, may bear up +Against its keenness. The least star we view +From hence, had seem’d a moon, set by its side, +As star by side of star. And so far off, +Perchance, as is the halo from the light +Which paints it, when most dense the vapour spreads, +There wheel’d about the point a circle of fire, +More rapid than the motion, which first girds +The world. Then, circle after circle, round +Enring’d each other; till the seventh reach’d +Circumference so ample, that its bow, +Within the span of Juno’s messenger, +lied scarce been held entire. Beyond the sev’nth, +Follow’d yet other two. And every one, +As more in number distant from the first, +Was tardier in motion; and that glow’d +With flame most pure, that to the sparkle’ of truth +Was nearest, as partaking most, methinks, +Of its reality. The guide belov’d +Saw me in anxious thought suspense, and spake: +“Heav’n, and all nature, hangs upon that point. +The circle thereto most conjoin’d observe; +And know, that by intenser love its course +Is to this swiftness wing’d.” To whom I thus: +“It were enough; nor should I further seek, +Had I but witness’d order, in the world +Appointed, such as in these wheels is seen. +But in the sensible world such diff’rence is, +That is each round shows more divinity, +As each is wider from the centre. Hence, +If in this wondrous and angelic temple, +That hath for confine only light and love, +My wish may have completion I must know, +Wherefore such disagreement is between +Th’ exemplar and its copy: for myself, +Contemplating, I fail to pierce the cause.” + +“It is no marvel, if thy fingers foil’d +Do leave the knot untied: so hard ’tis grown +For want of tenting.” Thus she said: “But take,” +She added, “if thou wish thy cure, my words, +And entertain them subtly. Every orb +Corporeal, doth proportion its extent +Unto the virtue through its parts diffus’d. +The greater blessedness preserves the more. +The greater is the body (if all parts +Share equally) the more is to preserve. +Therefore the circle, whose swift course enwheels +The universal frame answers to that, +Which is supreme in knowledge and in love +Thus by the virtue, not the seeming, breadth +Of substance, measure, thou shalt see the heav’ns, +Each to the’ intelligence that ruleth it, +Greater to more, and smaller unto less, +Suited in strict and wondrous harmony.” + +As when the sturdy north blows from his cheek +A blast, that scours the sky, forthwith our air, +Clear’d of the rack, that hung on it before, +Glitters; and, With his beauties all unveil’d, +The firmament looks forth serene, and smiles; +Such was my cheer, when Beatrice drove +With clear reply the shadows back, and truth +Was manifested, as a star in heaven. +And when the words were ended, not unlike +To iron in the furnace, every cirque +Ebullient shot forth scintillating fires: +And every sparkle shivering to new blaze, +In number did outmillion the account +Reduplicate upon the chequer’d board. +Then heard I echoing on from choir to choir, +“Hosanna,” to the fixed point, that holds, +And shall for ever hold them to their place, +From everlasting, irremovable. + +Musing awhile I stood: and she, who saw +by inward meditations, thus began: +“In the first circles, they, whom thou beheldst, +Are seraphim and cherubim. Thus swift +Follow their hoops, in likeness to the point, +Near as they can, approaching; and they can +The more, the loftier their vision. Those, +That round them fleet, gazing the Godhead next, +Are thrones; in whom the first trine ends. And all +Are blessed, even as their sight descends +Deeper into the truth, wherein rest is +For every mind. Thus happiness hath root +In seeing, not in loving, which of sight +Is aftergrowth. And of the seeing such +The meed, as unto each in due degree +Grace and good-will their measure have assign’d. +The other trine, that with still opening buds +In this eternal springtide blossom fair, +Fearless of bruising from the nightly ram, +Breathe up in warbled melodies threefold +Hosannas blending ever, from the three +Transmitted. hierarchy of gods, for aye +Rejoicing, dominations first, next then +Virtues, and powers the third. The next to whom +Are princedoms and archangels, with glad round +To tread their festal ring; and last the band +Angelical, disporting in their sphere. +All, as they circle in their orders, look +Aloft, and downward with such sway prevail, +That all with mutual impulse tend to God. +These once a mortal view beheld. Desire +In Dionysius so intently wrought, +That he, as I have done rang’d them; and nam’d +Their orders, marshal’d in his thought. From him +Dissentient, one refus’d his sacred read. +But soon as in this heav’n his doubting eyes +Were open’d, Gregory at his error smil’d +Nor marvel, that a denizen of earth +Should scan such secret truth; for he had learnt +Both this and much beside of these our orbs, +From an eye-witness to heav’n’s mysteries.” + + + + +CANTO XXIX + + +No longer than what time Latona’s twins +Cover’d of Libra and the fleecy star, +Together both, girding the’ horizon hang, +In even balance from the zenith pois’d, +Till from that verge, each, changing hemisphere, +Part the nice level; e’en so brief a space +Did Beatrice’s silence hold. A smile +Bat painted on her cheek; and her fix’d gaze +Bent on the point, at which my vision fail’d: +When thus her words resuming she began: +“I speak, nor what thou wouldst inquire demand; +For I have mark’d it, where all time and place +Are present. Not for increase to himself +Of good, which may not be increas’d, but forth +To manifest his glory by its beams, +Inhabiting his own eternity, +Beyond time’s limit or what bound soe’er +To circumscribe his being, as he will’d, +Into new natures, like unto himself, +Eternal Love unfolded. Nor before, +As if in dull inaction torpid lay. +For not in process of before or aft +Upon these waters mov’d the Spirit of God. +Simple and mix’d, both form and substance, forth +To perfect being started, like three darts +Shot from a bow three-corded. And as ray +In crystal, glass, and amber, shines entire, +E’en at the moment of its issuing; thus +Did, from th’ eternal Sovran, beam entire +His threefold operation, at one act +Produc’d coeval. Yet in order each +Created his due station knew: those highest, +Who pure intelligence were made: mere power +The lowest: in the midst, bound with strict league, +Intelligence and power, unsever’d bond. +Long tract of ages by the angels past, +Ere the creating of another world, +Describ’d on Jerome’s pages thou hast seen. +But that what I disclose to thee is true, +Those penmen, whom the Holy Spirit mov’d +In many a passage of their sacred book +Attest; as thou by diligent search shalt find +And reason in some sort discerns the same, +Who scarce would grant the heav’nly ministers +Of their perfection void, so long a space. +Thus when and where these spirits of love were made, +Thou know’st, and how: and knowing hast allay’d +Thy thirst, which from the triple question rose. +Ere one had reckon’d twenty, e’en so soon +Part of the angels fell: and in their fall +Confusion to your elements ensued. +The others kept their station: and this task, +Whereon thou lookst, began with such delight, +That they surcease not ever, day nor night, +Their circling. Of that fatal lapse the cause +Was the curst pride of him, whom thou hast seen +Pent with the world’s incumbrance. Those, whom here +Thou seest, were lowly to confess themselves +Of his free bounty, who had made them apt +For ministries so high: therefore their views +Were by enlight’ning grace and their own merit +Exalted; so that in their will confirm’d +They stand, nor feel to fall. For do not doubt, +But to receive the grace, which heav’n vouchsafes, +Is meritorious, even as the soul +With prompt affection welcometh the guest. +Now, without further help, if with good heed +My words thy mind have treasur’d, thou henceforth +This consistory round about mayst scan, +And gaze thy fill. But since thou hast on earth +Heard vain disputers, reasoners in the schools, +Canvas the’ angelic nature, and dispute +Its powers of apprehension, memory, choice; +Therefore, ’tis well thou take from me the truth, +Pure and without disguise, which they below, +Equivocating, darken and perplex. + +“Know thou, that, from the first, these substances, +Rejoicing in the countenance of God, +Have held unceasingly their view, intent +Upon the glorious vision, from the which +Naught absent is nor hid: where then no change +Of newness with succession interrupts, +Remembrance there needs none to gather up +Divided thought and images remote + +“So that men, thus at variance with the truth +Dream, though their eyes be open; reckless some +Of error; others well aware they err, +To whom more guilt and shame are justly due. +Each the known track of sage philosophy +Deserts, and has a byway of his own: +So much the restless eagerness to shine +And love of singularity prevail. +Yet this, offensive as it is, provokes +Heav’n’s anger less, than when the book of God +Is forc’d to yield to man’s authority, +Or from its straightness warp’d: no reck’ning made +What blood the sowing of it in the world +Has cost; what favour for himself he wins, +Who meekly clings to it. The aim of all +Is how to shine: e’en they, whose office is +To preach the Gospel, let the gospel sleep, +And pass their own inventions off instead. +One tells, how at Christ’s suffering the wan moon +Bent back her steps, and shadow’d o’er the sun +With intervenient disk, as she withdrew: +Another, how the light shrouded itself +Within its tabernacle, and left dark +The Spaniard and the Indian, with the Jew. +Such fables Florence in her pulpit hears, +Bandied about more frequent, than the names +Of Bindi and of Lapi in her streets. +The sheep, meanwhile, poor witless ones, return +From pasture, fed with wind: and what avails +For their excuse, they do not see their harm? +Christ said not to his first conventicle, +‘Go forth and preach impostures to the world,’ +But gave them truth to build on; and the sound +Was mighty on their lips; nor needed they, +Beside the gospel, other spear or shield, +To aid them in their warfare for the faith. +The preacher now provides himself with store +Of jests and gibes; and, so there be no lack +Of laughter, while he vents them, his big cowl +Distends, and he has won the meed he sought: +Could but the vulgar catch a glimpse the while +Of that dark bird which nestles in his hood, +They scarce would wait to hear the blessing said. +Which now the dotards hold in such esteem, +That every counterfeit, who spreads abroad +The hands of holy promise, finds a throng +Of credulous fools beneath. Saint Anthony +Fattens with this his swine, and others worse +Than swine, who diet at his lazy board, +Paying with unstamp’d metal for their fare. + +“But (for we far have wander’d) let us seek +The forward path again; so as the way +Be shorten’d with the time. No mortal tongue +Nor thought of man hath ever reach’d so far, +That of these natures he might count the tribes. +What Daniel of their thousands hath reveal’d +With finite number infinite conceals. +The fountain at whose source these drink their beams, +With light supplies them in as many modes, +As there are splendours, that it shines on: each +According to the virtue it conceives, +Differing in love and sweet affection. +Look then how lofty and how huge in breadth +The’ eternal might, which, broken and dispers’d +Over such countless mirrors, yet remains +Whole in itself and one, as at the first.” + + + + +CANTO XXX + + +Noon’s fervid hour perchance six thousand miles +From hence is distant; and the shadowy cone +Almost to level on our earth declines; +When from the midmost of this blue abyss +By turns some star is to our vision lost. +And straightway as the handmaid of the sun +Puts forth her radiant brow, all, light by light, +Fade, and the spangled firmament shuts in, +E’en to the loveliest of the glittering throng. +Thus vanish’d gradually from my sight +The triumph, which plays ever round the point, +That overcame me, seeming (for it did) +Engirt by that it girdeth. Wherefore love, +With loss of other object, forc’d me bend +Mine eyes on Beatrice once again. + +If all, that hitherto is told of her, +Were in one praise concluded, ’twere too weak +To furnish out this turn. Mine eyes did look +On beauty, such, as I believe in sooth, +Not merely to exceed our human, but, +That save its Maker, none can to the full +Enjoy it. At this point o’erpower’d I fail, +Unequal to my theme, as never bard +Of buskin or of sock hath fail’d before. +For, as the sun doth to the feeblest sight, +E’en so remembrance of that witching smile +Hath dispossess my spirit of itself. +Not from that day, when on this earth I first +Beheld her charms, up to that view of them, +Have I with song applausive ever ceas’d +To follow, but not follow them no more; +My course here bounded, as each artist’s is, +When it doth touch the limit of his skill. + +She (such as I bequeath her to the bruit +Of louder trump than mine, which hasteneth on, +Urging its arduous matter to the close), +Her words resum’d, in gesture and in voice +Resembling one accustom’d to command: +“Forth from the last corporeal are we come +Into the heav’n, that is unbodied light, +Light intellectual replete with love, +Love of true happiness replete with joy, +Joy, that transcends all sweetness of delight. +Here shalt thou look on either mighty host +Of Paradise; and one in that array, +Which in the final judgment thou shalt see.” + +As when the lightning, in a sudden spleen +Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes +The visive spirits dazzled and bedimm’d; +So, round about me, fulminating streams +Of living radiance play’d, and left me swath’d +And veil’d in dense impenetrable blaze. +Such weal is in the love, that stills this heav’n; +For its own flame the torch this fitting ever! + +No sooner to my list’ning ear had come +The brief assurance, than I understood +New virtue into me infus’d, and sight +Kindled afresh, with vigour to sustain +Excess of light, however pure. I look’d; +And in the likeness of a river saw +Light flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves +Flash’d up effulgence, as they glided on +’Twixt banks, on either side, painted with spring, +Incredible how fair; and, from the tide, +There ever and anon, outstarting, flew +Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flow’rs +Did set them, like to rubies chas’d in gold; +Then, as if drunk with odors, plung’d again +Into the wondrous flood; from which, as one +Re’enter’d, still another rose. “The thirst +Of knowledge high, whereby thou art inflam’d, +To search the meaning of what here thou seest, +The more it warms thee, pleases me the more. +But first behooves thee of this water drink, +Or ere that longing be allay’d.” So spake +The day-star of mine eyes; then thus subjoin’d: +“This stream, and these, forth issuing from its gulf, +And diving back, a living topaz each, +With all this laughter on its bloomy shores, +Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth +They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things +Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, +For that thy views not yet aspire so high.” +Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, +Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, +As I toward the water, bending me, +To make the better mirrors of mine eyes +In the refining wave; and, as the eaves +Of mine eyelids did drink of it, forthwith +Seem’d it unto me turn’d from length to round, +Then as a troop of maskers, when they put +Their vizors off, look other than before, +The counterfeited semblance thrown aside; +So into greater jubilee were chang’d +Those flowers and sparkles, and distinct I saw +Before me either court of heav’n displac’d. + +O prime enlightener! thou who crav’st me strength +On the high triumph of thy realm to gaze! +Grant virtue now to utter what I kenn’d, + There is in heav’n a light, whose goodly shine +Makes the Creator visible to all +Created, that in seeing him alone +Have peace; and in a circle spreads so far, +That the circumference were too loose a zone +To girdle in the sun. All is one beam, +Reflected from the summit of the first, +That moves, which being hence and vigour takes, +And as some cliff, that from the bottom eyes +Its image mirror’d in the crystal flood, +As if ’t admire its brave appareling +Of verdure and of flowers: so, round about, +Eyeing the light, on more than million thrones, +Stood, eminent, whatever from our earth +Has to the skies return’d. How wide the leaves +Extended to their utmost of this rose, +Whose lowest step embosoms such a space +Of ample radiance! Yet, nor amplitude +Nor height impeded, but my view with ease +Took in the full dimensions of that joy. +Near or remote, what there avails, where God +Immediate rules, and Nature, awed, suspends +Her sway? Into the yellow of the rose +Perennial, which in bright expansiveness, +Lays forth its gradual blooming, redolent +Of praises to the never-wint’ring sun, +As one, who fain would speak yet holds his peace, +Beatrice led me; and, “Behold,” she said, +“This fair assemblage! stoles of snowy white +How numberless! The city, where we dwell, +Behold how vast! and these our seats so throng’d +Few now are wanting here! In that proud stall, +On which, the crown, already o’er its state +Suspended, holds thine eyes—or ere thyself +Mayst at the wedding sup,—shall rest the soul +Of the great Harry, he who, by the world +Augustas hail’d, to Italy must come, +Before her day be ripe. But ye are sick, +And in your tetchy wantonness as blind, +As is the bantling, that of hunger dies, +And drives away the nurse. Nor may it be, +That he, who in the sacred forum sways, +Openly or in secret, shall with him +Accordant walk: Whom God will not endure +I’ th’ holy office long; but thrust him down +To Simon Magus, where Magna’s priest +Will sink beneath him: such will be his meed.” + + + + +CANTO XXXI + + +In fashion, as a snow-white rose, lay then +Before my view the saintly multitude, +Which in his own blood Christ espous’d. Meanwhile +That other host, that soar aloft to gaze +And celebrate his glory, whom they love, +Hover’d around; and, like a troop of bees, +Amid the vernal sweets alighting now, +Now, clustering, where their fragrant labour glows, +Flew downward to the mighty flow’r, or rose +From the redundant petals, streaming back +Unto the steadfast dwelling of their joy. +Faces had they of flame, and wings of gold; +The rest was whiter than the driven snow. +And as they flitted down into the flower, +From range to range, fanning their plumy loins, +Whisper’d the peace and ardour, which they won +From that soft winnowing. Shadow none, the vast +Interposition of such numerous flight +Cast, from above, upon the flower, or view +Obstructed aught. For, through the universe, +Wherever merited, celestial light +Glides freely, and no obstacle prevents. + +All there, who reign in safety and in bliss, +Ages long past or new, on one sole mark +Their love and vision fix’d. O trinal beam +Of individual star, that charmst them thus, +Vouchsafe one glance to gild our storm below! + +If the grim brood, from Arctic shores that roam’d, +(Where helice, forever, as she wheels, +Sparkles a mother’s fondness on her son) +Stood in mute wonder ’mid the works of Rome, +When to their view the Lateran arose +In greatness more than earthly; I, who then +From human to divine had past, from time +Unto eternity, and out of Florence +To justice and to truth, how might I choose +But marvel too? ’Twixt gladness and amaze, +In sooth no will had I to utter aught, +Or hear. And, as a pilgrim, when he rests +Within the temple of his vow, looks round +In breathless awe, and hopes some time to tell +Of all its goodly state: e’en so mine eyes +Cours’d up and down along the living light, +Now low, and now aloft, and now around, +Visiting every step. Looks I beheld, +Where charity in soft persuasion sat, +Smiles from within and radiance from above, +And in each gesture grace and honour high. + +So rov’d my ken, and its general form +All Paradise survey’d: when round I turn’d +With purpose of my lady to inquire +Once more of things, that held my thought suspense, +But answer found from other than I ween’d; +For, Beatrice, when I thought to see, +I saw instead a senior, at my side, + Rob’d, as the rest, in glory. Joy benign +Glow’d in his eye, and o’er his cheek diffus’d, +With gestures such as spake a father’s love. +And, “Whither is she vanish’d?” straight I ask’d. + +“By Beatrice summon’d,” he replied, +“I come to aid thy wish. Looking aloft +To the third circle from the highest, there +Behold her on the throne, wherein her merit +Hath plac’d her.” Answering not, mine eyes I rais’d, +And saw her, where aloof she sat, her brow +A wreath reflecting of eternal beams. +Not from the centre of the sea so far +Unto the region of the highest thunder, +As was my ken from hers; and yet the form +Came through that medium down, unmix’d and pure, + +“O Lady! thou in whom my hopes have rest! +Who, for my safety, hast not scorn’d, in hell +To leave the traces of thy footsteps mark’d! +For all mine eyes have seen, I, to thy power +And goodness, virtue owe and grace. Of slave, +Thou hast to freedom brought me; and no means, +For my deliverance apt, hast left untried. +Thy liberal bounty still toward me keep. +That, when my spirit, which thou madest whole, +Is loosen’d from this body, it may find +Favour with thee.” So I my suit preferr’d: +And she, so distant, as appear’d, look’d down, +And smil’d; then tow’rds th’ eternal fountain turn’d. + +And thus the senior, holy and rever’d: +“That thou at length mayst happily conclude +Thy voyage (to which end I was dispatch’d, +By supplication mov’d and holy love) +Let thy upsoaring vision range, at large, +This garden through: for so, by ray divine +Kindled, thy ken a higher flight shall mount; +And from heav’n’s queen, whom fervent I adore, +All gracious aid befriend us; for that I +Am her own faithful Bernard.” Like a wight, +Who haply from Croatia wends to see +Our Veronica, and the while ’tis shown, +Hangs over it with never-sated gaze, +And, all that he hath heard revolving, saith +Unto himself in thought: “And didst thou look +E’en thus, O Jesus, my true Lord and God? +And was this semblance thine?” So gaz’d I then +Adoring; for the charity of him, +Who musing, in the world that peace enjoy’d, +Stood lively before me. “Child of grace!” +Thus he began: “thou shalt not knowledge gain +Of this glad being, if thine eyes are held +Still in this depth below. But search around +The circles, to the furthest, till thou spy +Seated in state, the queen, that of this realm +Is sovran.” Straight mine eyes I rais’d; and bright, +As, at the birth of morn, the eastern clime +Above th’ horizon, where the sun declines; +To mine eyes, that upward, as from vale +To mountain sped, at th’ extreme bound, a part +Excell’d in lustre all the front oppos’d. +And as the glow burns ruddiest o’er the wave, +That waits the sloping beam, which Phaeton +Ill knew to guide, and on each part the light +Diminish’d fades, intensest in the midst; +So burn’d the peaceful oriflame, and slack’d +On every side the living flame decay’d. +And in that midst their sportive pennons wav’d +Thousands of angels; in resplendence each +Distinct, and quaint adornment. At their glee +And carol, smil’d the Lovely One of heav’n, +That joy was in the eyes of all the blest. + +Had I a tongue in eloquence as rich, +As is the colouring in fancy’s loom, +’Twere all too poor to utter the least part +Of that enchantment. When he saw mine eyes +Intent on her, that charm’d him, Bernard gaz’d +With so exceeding fondness, as infus’d +Ardour into my breast, unfelt before. + + + + +CANTO XXXII + + +Freely the sage, though wrapt in musings high, +Assum’d the teacher’s part, and mild began: +“The wound, that Mary clos’d, she open’d first, +Who sits so beautiful at Mary’s feet. +The third in order, underneath her, lo! +Rachel with Beatrice. Sarah next, +Judith, Rebecca, and the gleaner maid, +Meek ancestress of him, who sang the songs +Of sore repentance in his sorrowful mood. +All, as I name them, down from deaf to leaf, +Are in gradation throned on the rose. +And from the seventh step, successively, +Adown the breathing tresses of the flow’r +Still doth the file of Hebrew dames proceed. +For these are a partition wall, whereby +The sacred stairs are sever’d, as the faith +In Christ divides them. On this part, where blooms +Each leaf in full maturity, are set +Such as in Christ, or ere he came, believ’d. +On th’ other, where an intersected space +Yet shows the semicircle void, abide +All they, who look’d to Christ already come. +And as our Lady on her glorious stool, +And they who on their stools beneath her sit, +This way distinction make: e’en so on his, +The mighty Baptist that way marks the line +(He who endur’d the desert and the pains +Of martyrdom, and for two years of hell, +Yet still continued holy), and beneath, +Augustin, Francis, Benedict, and the rest, +Thus far from round to round. So heav’n’s decree +Forecasts, this garden equally to fill. +With faith in either view, past or to come, +Learn too, that downward from the step, which cleaves +Midway the twain compartments, none there are +Who place obtain for merit of their own, +But have through others’ merit been advanc’d, +On set conditions: spirits all releas’d, +Ere for themselves they had the power to choose. +And, if thou mark and listen to them well, +Their childish looks and voice declare as much. + +“Here, silent as thou art, I know thy doubt; +And gladly will I loose the knot, wherein +Thy subtle thoughts have bound thee. From this realm +Excluded, chalice no entrance here may find, +No more shall hunger, thirst, or sorrow can. +A law immutable hath establish’d all; +Nor is there aught thou seest, that doth not fit, +Exactly, as the finger to the ring. +It is not therefore without cause, that these, +O’erspeedy comers to immortal life, +Are different in their shares of excellence. +Our Sovran Lord—that settleth this estate +In love and in delight so absolute, +That wish can dare no further—every soul, +Created in his joyous sight to dwell, +With grace at pleasure variously endows. +And for a proof th’ effect may well suffice. +And ’tis moreover most expressly mark’d +In holy scripture, where the twins are said +To, have struggled in the womb. Therefore, as grace +Inweaves the coronet, so every brow +Weareth its proper hue of orient light. +And merely in respect to his prime gift, +Not in reward of meritorious deed, +Hath each his several degree assign’d. +In early times with their own innocence +More was not wanting, than the parents’ faith, +To save them: those first ages past, behoov’d +That circumcision in the males should imp +The flight of innocent wings: but since the day +Of grace hath come, without baptismal rites +In Christ accomplish’d, innocence herself +Must linger yet below. Now raise thy view +Unto the visage most resembling Christ: +For, in her splendour only, shalt thou win +The pow’r to look on him.” Forthwith I saw +Such floods of gladness on her visage shower’d, +From holy spirits, winging that profound; +That, whatsoever I had yet beheld, +Had not so much suspended me with wonder, +Or shown me such similitude of God. +And he, who had to her descended, once, +On earth, now hail’d in heav’n; and on pois’d wing. +“Ave, Maria, Gratia Plena,” sang: +To whose sweet anthem all the blissful court, +From all parts answ’ring, rang: that holier joy +Brooded the deep serene. “Father rever’d: +Who deign’st, for me, to quit the pleasant place, +Wherein thou sittest, by eternal lot! +Say, who that angel is, that with such glee +Beholds our queen, and so enamour’d glows +Of her high beauty, that all fire he seems.” +So I again resorted to the lore +Of my wise teacher, he, whom Mary’s charms +Embellish’d, as the sun the morning star; +Who thus in answer spake: “In him are summ’d, +Whatever of buxomness and free delight +May be in Spirit, or in angel, met: +And so beseems: for that he bare the palm +Down unto Mary, when the Son of God +Vouchsaf’d to clothe him in terrestrial weeds. +Now let thine eyes wait heedful on my words, +And note thou of this just and pious realm +The chiefest nobles. Those, highest in bliss, +The twain, on each hand next our empress thron’d, +Are as it were two roots unto this rose. +He to the left, the parent, whose rash taste +Proves bitter to his seed; and, on the right, +That ancient father of the holy church, +Into whose keeping Christ did give the keys +Of this sweet flow’r: near whom behold the seer, +That, ere he died, saw all the grievous times +Of the fair bride, who with the lance and nails +Was won. And, near unto the other, rests +The leader, under whom on manna fed +Th’ ungrateful nation, fickle and perverse. +On th’ other part, facing to Peter, lo! +Where Anna sits, so well content to look +On her lov’d daughter, that with moveless eye +She chants the loud hosanna: while, oppos’d +To the first father of your mortal kind, +Is Lucia, at whose hest thy lady sped, +When on the edge of ruin clos’d thine eye. + +“But (for the vision hasteneth so an end) +Here break we off, as the good workman doth, +That shapes the cloak according to the cloth: +And to the primal love our ken shall rise; +That thou mayst penetrate the brightness, far +As sight can bear thee. Yet, alas! in sooth +Beating thy pennons, thinking to advance, +Thou backward fall’st. Grace then must first be gain’d; +Her grace, whose might can help thee. Thou in prayer +Seek her: and, with affection, whilst I sue, +Attend, and yield me all thy heart.” He said, +And thus the saintly orison began. + + + + +CANTO XXXIII + + +“O virgin mother, daughter of thy Son, +Created beings all in lowliness +Surpassing, as in height, above them all, +Term by th’ eternal counsel pre-ordain’d, +Ennobler of thy nature, so advanc’d +In thee, that its great Maker did not scorn, +Himself, in his own work enclos’d to dwell! +For in thy womb rekindling shone the love +Reveal’d, whose genial influence makes now +This flower to germin in eternal peace! +Here thou to us, of charity and love, +Art, as the noon-day torch: and art, beneath, +To mortal men, of hope a living spring. +So mighty art thou, lady! and so great, +That he who grace desireth, and comes not +To thee for aidance, fain would have desire +Fly without wings. Nor only him who asks, +Thy bounty succours, but doth freely oft +Forerun the asking. Whatsoe’er may be +Of excellence in creature, pity mild, +Relenting mercy, large munificence, +Are all combin’d in thee. Here kneeleth one, +Who of all spirits hath review’d the state, +From the world’s lowest gap unto this height. +Suppliant to thee he kneels, imploring grace +For virtue, yet more high to lift his ken +Toward the bliss supreme. And I, who ne’er +Coveted sight, more fondly, for myself, +Than now for him, my prayers to thee prefer, +(And pray they be not scant) that thou wouldst drive +Each cloud of his mortality away; +That on the sovran pleasure he may gaze. +This also I entreat of thee, O queen! +Who canst do what thou wilt! that in him thou +Wouldst after all he hath beheld, preserve +Affection sound, and human passions quell. +Lo! Where, with Beatrice, many a saint +Stretch their clasp’d hands, in furtherance of my suit!” + +The eyes, that heav’n with love and awe regards, +Fix’d on the suitor, witness’d, how benign +She looks on pious pray’rs: then fasten’d they +On th’ everlasting light, wherein no eye +Of creature, as may well be thought, so far +Can travel inward. I, meanwhile, who drew +Near to the limit, where all wishes end, +The ardour of my wish (for so behooved), +Ended within me. Beck’ning smil’d the sage, +That I should look aloft: but, ere he bade, +Already of myself aloft I look’d; +For visual strength, refining more and more, +Bare me into the ray authentical +Of sovran light. Thenceforward, what I saw, +Was not for words to speak, nor memory’s self +To stand against such outrage on her skill. +As one, who from a dream awaken’d, straight, +All he hath seen forgets; yet still retains +Impression of the feeling in his dream; +E’en such am I: for all the vision dies, +As ’twere, away; and yet the sense of sweet, +That sprang from it, still trickles in my heart. +Thus in the sun-thaw is the snow unseal’d; +Thus in the winds on flitting leaves was lost +The Sybil’s sentence. O eternal beam! +(Whose height what reach of mortal thought may soar?) +Yield me again some little particle +Of what thou then appearedst, give my tongue +Power, but to leave one sparkle of thy glory, +Unto the race to come, that shall not lose +Thy triumph wholly, if thou waken aught +Of memory in me, and endure to hear +The record sound in this unequal strain. + +Such keenness from the living ray I met, +That, if mine eyes had turn’d away, methinks, +I had been lost; but, so embolden’d, on +I pass’d, as I remember, till my view +Hover’d the brink of dread infinitude. + +O grace! unenvying of thy boon! that gav’st +Boldness to fix so earnestly my ken +On th’ everlasting splendour, that I look’d, +While sight was unconsum’d, and, in that depth, +Saw in one volume clasp’d of love, whatever +The universe unfolds; all properties +Of substance and of accident, beheld, +Compounded, yet one individual light +The whole. And of such bond methinks I saw +The universal form: for that whenever +I do but speak of it, my soul dilates +Beyond her proper self; and, till I speak, +One moment seems a longer lethargy, +Than five-and-twenty ages had appear’d +To that emprize, that first made Neptune wonder +At Argo’s shadow darkening on his flood. + +With fixed heed, suspense and motionless, +Wond’ring I gaz’d; and admiration still +Was kindled, as I gaz’d. It may not be, +That one, who looks upon that light, can turn +To other object, willingly, his view. +For all the good, that will may covet, there +Is summ’d; and all, elsewhere defective found, +Complete. My tongue shall utter now, no more +E’en what remembrance keeps, than could the babe’s +That yet is moisten’d at his mother’s breast. +Not that the semblance of the living light +Was chang’d (that ever as at first remain’d) +But that my vision quickening, in that sole +Appearance, still new miracles descry’d, +And toil’d me with the change. In that abyss +Of radiance, clear and lofty, seem’d methought, +Three orbs of triple hue clipt in one bound: +And, from another, one reflected seem’d, +As rainbow is from rainbow: and the third +Seem’d fire, breath’d equally from both. Oh speech +How feeble and how faint art thou, to give +Conception birth! Yet this to what I saw +Is less than little. Oh eternal light! +Sole in thyself that dwellst; and of thyself +Sole understood, past, present, or to come! +Thou smiledst; on that circling, which in thee +Seem’d as reflected splendour, while I mus’d; +For I therein, methought, in its own hue +Beheld our image painted: steadfastly +I therefore por’d upon the view. As one +Who vers’d in geometric lore, would fain +Measure the circle; and, though pondering long +And deeply, that beginning, which he needs, +Finds not; e’en such was I, intent to scan +The novel wonder, and trace out the form, +How to the circle fitted, and therein +How plac’d: but the flight was not for my wing; +Had not a flash darted athwart my mind, +And in the spleen unfolded what it sought. + +Here vigour fail’d the tow’ring fantasy: +But yet the will roll’d onward, like a wheel +In even motion, by the Love impell’d, +That moves the sun in heav’n and all the stars. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1007 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1008-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1008-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..be0670e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1008-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21957 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1008 *** + +THE DIVINE COMEDY OF DANTE ALIGHIERI + +Translated by +THE REV. H. F. CARY, M.A. + + + + +Contents + + HELL + CANTO I. + CANTO II. + CANTO III. + CANTO IV. + CANTO V. + CANTO VI. + CANTO VII. + CANTO VIII. + CANTO IX. + CANTO X. + CANTO XI. + CANTO XII. + CANTO XIII. + CANTO XIV. + CANTO XV. + CANTO XVI. + CANTO XVII. + CANTO XVIII. + CANTO XIX. + CANTO XX. + CANTO XXI. + CANTO XXII. + CANTO XXIII. + CANTO XXIV. + CANTO XXV. + CANTO XXVI. + CANTO XXVII. + CANTO XXVIII. + CANTO XXIX. + CANTO XXX. + CANTO XXXI. + CANTO XXXII. + CANTO XXXIII. + CANTO XXXIV. + NOTES TO HELL. + + PURGATORY + CANTO I. + CANTO II. + CANTO III. + CANTO IV. + CANTO V. + CANTO VI. + CANTO VII. + CANTO VIII. + CANTO IX. + CANTO X. + CANTO XI. + CANTO XII. + CANTO XIII. + CANTO XIV. + CANTO XV. + CANTO XVI. + CANTO XVII. + CANTO XVIII. + CANTO XIX. + CANTO XX. + CANTO XXI. + CANTO XXII. + CANTO XXIII. + CANTO XXIV. + CANTO XXV. + CANTO XXVI. + CANTO XXVII. + CANTO XXVIII. + CANTO XXIX. + CANTO XXX. + CANTO XXXI. + CANTO XXXII. + CANTO XXXIII. + NOTES TO PURGATORY. + + PARADISE + CANTO I. + CANTO II. + CANTO III. + CANTO IV. + CANTO V. + CANTO VI. + CANTO VII. + CANTO VIII. + CANTO IX. + CANTO X. + CANTO XI. + CANTO XII. + CANTO XIII. + CANTO XIV. + CANTO XV. + CANTO XVI. + CANTO XVII. + CANTO XVIII. + CANTO XIX. + CANTO XX. + CANTO XXI. + CANTO XXII. + CANTO XXIII. + CANTO XXIV. + CANTO XXV. + CANTO XXVI. + CANTO XXVII. + CANTO XXVIII. + CANTO XXIX. + CANTO XXX. + CANTO XXXI. + CANTO XXXII. + CANTO XXXIII. + NOTES TO PARADISE. + + PREFACE + A CHRONOLOGICAL VIEW + + + + +HELL + + + + +CANTO I + + +In the midway of this our mortal life, +I found me in a gloomy wood, astray +Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell +It were no easy task, how savage wild +That forest, how robust and rough its growth, +Which to remember only, my dismay +Renews, in bitterness not far from death. +Yet to discourse of what there good befell, +All else will I relate discover’d there. +How first I enter’d it I scarce can say, +Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh’d +My senses down, when the true path I left, +But when a mountain’s foot I reach’d, where clos’d +The valley, that had pierc’d my heart with dread, +I look’d aloft, and saw his shoulders broad +Already vested with that planet’s beam, +Who leads all wanderers safe through every way. + +Then was a little respite to the fear, +That in my heart’s recesses deep had lain, +All of that night, so pitifully pass’d: +And as a man, with difficult short breath, +Forespent with toiling, ’scap’d from sea to shore, +Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands +At gaze; e’en so my spirit, that yet fail’d +Struggling with terror, turn’d to view the straits, +That none hath pass’d and liv’d. My weary frame +After short pause recomforted, again +I journey’d on over that lonely steep, +The hinder foot still firmer. Scarce the ascent +Began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light, +And cover’d with a speckled skin, appear’d, +Nor, when it saw me, vanish’d, rather strove +To check my onward going; that ofttimes +With purpose to retrace my steps I turn’d. + +The hour was morning’s prime, and on his way +Aloft the sun ascended with those stars, +That with him rose, when Love divine first mov’d +Those its fair works: so that with joyous hope +All things conspir’d to fill me, the gay skin +Of that swift animal, the matin dawn +And the sweet season. Soon that joy was chas’d, +And by new dread succeeded, when in view +A lion came, ’gainst me, as it appear’d, +With his head held aloft and hunger-mad, +That e’en the air was fear-struck. A she-wolf +Was at his heels, who in her leanness seem’d +Full of all wants, and many a land hath made +Disconsolate ere now. She with such fear +O’erwhelmed me, at the sight of her appall’d, +That of the height all hope I lost. As one, +Who with his gain elated, sees the time +When all unwares is gone, he inwardly +Mourns with heart-griping anguish; such was I, +Haunted by that fell beast, never at peace, +Who coming o’er against me, by degrees +Impell’d me where the sun in silence rests. + +While to the lower space with backward step +I fell, my ken discern’d the form one of one, +Whose voice seem’d faint through long disuse of speech. +When him in that great desert I espied, +“Have mercy on me!” cried I out aloud, +“Spirit! or living man! what e’er thou be!” + +He answer’d: “Now not man, man once I was, +And born of Lombard parents, Mantuana both +By country, when the power of Julius yet +Was scarcely firm. At Rome my life was past +Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time +Of fabled deities and false. A bard +Was I, and made Anchises’ upright son +The subject of my song, who came from Troy, +When the flames prey’d on Ilium’s haughty towers. +But thou, say wherefore to such perils past +Return’st thou? wherefore not this pleasant mount +Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?” +“And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring, +From which such copious floods of eloquence +Have issued?” I with front abash’d replied. +“Glory and light of all the tuneful train! +May it avail me that I long with zeal +Have sought thy volume, and with love immense +Have conn’d it o’er. My master thou and guide! +Thou he from whom alone I have deriv’d +That style, which for its beauty into fame +Exalts me. See the beast, from whom I fled. +O save me from her, thou illustrious sage! +For every vein and pulse throughout my frame +She hath made tremble.” He, soon as he saw +That I was weeping, answer’d, “Thou must needs +Another way pursue, if thou wouldst ’scape +From out that savage wilderness. This beast, +At whom thou criest, her way will suffer none +To pass, and no less hindrance makes than death: +So bad and so accursed in her kind, +That never sated is her ravenous will, +Still after food more craving than before. +To many an animal in wedlock vile +She fastens, and shall yet to many more, +Until that greyhound come, who shall destroy +Her with sharp pain. He will not life support +By earth nor its base metals, but by love, +Wisdom, and virtue, and his land shall be +The land ’twixt either Feltro. In his might +Shall safety to Italia’s plains arise, +For whose fair realm, Camilla, virgin pure, +Nisus, Euryalus, and Turnus fell. +He with incessant chase through every town +Shall worry, until he to hell at length +Restore her, thence by envy first let loose. +I for thy profit pond’ring now devise, +That thou mayst follow me, and I thy guide +Will lead thee hence through an eternal space, +Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see +Spirits of old tormented, who invoke +A second death; and those next view, who dwell +Content in fire, for that they hope to come, +Whene’er the time may be, among the blest, +Into whose regions if thou then desire +T’ ascend, a spirit worthier then I +Must lead thee, in whose charge, when I depart, +Thou shalt be left: for that Almighty King, +Who reigns above, a rebel to his law, +Adjudges me, and therefore hath decreed, +That to his city none through me should come. +He in all parts hath sway; there rules, there holds +His citadel and throne. O happy those, +Whom there he chooses!” I to him in few: +“Bard! by that God, whom thou didst not adore, +I do beseech thee (that this ill and worse +I may escape) to lead me, where thou saidst, +That I Saint Peter’s gate may view, and those +Who as thou tell’st, are in such dismal plight.” + +Onward he mov’d, I close his steps pursu’d. + + + + +CANTO II + + +Now was the day departing, and the air, +Imbrown’d with shadows, from their toils releas’d +All animals on earth; and I alone +Prepar’d myself the conflict to sustain, +Both of sad pity, and that perilous road, +Which my unerring memory shall retrace. + +O Muses! O high genius! now vouchsafe +Your aid! O mind! that all I saw hast kept +Safe in a written record, here thy worth +And eminent endowments come to proof. + +I thus began: “Bard! thou who art my guide, +Consider well, if virtue be in me +Sufficient, ere to this high enterprise +Thou trust me. Thou hast told that Silvius’ sire, +Yet cloth’d in corruptible flesh, among +Th’ immortal tribes had entrance, and was there +Sensible present. Yet if heaven’s great Lord, +Almighty foe to ill, such favour shew’d, +In contemplation of the high effect, +Both what and who from him should issue forth, +It seems in reason’s judgment well deserv’d: +Sith he of Rome, and of Rome’s empire wide, +In heaven’s empyreal height was chosen sire: +Both which, if truth be spoken, were ordain’d +And ’stablish’d for the holy place, where sits +Who to great Peter’s sacred chair succeeds. +He from this journey, in thy song renown’d, +Learn’d things, that to his victory gave rise +And to the papal robe. In after-times +The chosen vessel also travel’d there, +To bring us back assurance in that faith, +Which is the entrance to salvation’s way. +But I, why should I there presume? or who +Permits it? not, Aeneas I nor Paul. +Myself I deem not worthy, and none else +Will deem me. I, if on this voyage then +I venture, fear it will in folly end. +Thou, who art wise, better my meaning know’st, +Than I can speak.” As one, who unresolves +What he hath late resolv’d, and with new thoughts +Changes his purpose, from his first intent +Remov’d; e’en such was I on that dun coast, +Wasting in thought my enterprise, at first +So eagerly embrac’d. “If right thy words +I scan,” replied that shade magnanimous, +“Thy soul is by vile fear assail’d, which oft +So overcasts a man, that he recoils +From noblest resolution, like a beast +At some false semblance in the twilight gloom. +That from this terror thou mayst free thyself, +I will instruct thee why I came, and what +I heard in that same instant, when for thee +Grief touch’d me first. I was among the tribe, +Who rest suspended, when a dame, so blest +And lovely, I besought her to command, +Call’d me; her eyes were brighter than the star +Of day; and she with gentle voice and soft +Angelically tun’d her speech address’d: +“O courteous shade of Mantua! thou whose fame +Yet lives, and shall live long as nature lasts! +A friend, not of my fortune but myself, +On the wide desert in his road has met +Hindrance so great, that he through fear has turn’d. +Now much I dread lest he past help have stray’d, +And I be ris’n too late for his relief, +From what in heaven of him I heard. Speed now, +And by thy eloquent persuasive tongue, +And by all means for his deliverance meet, +Assist him. So to me will comfort spring. +I who now bid thee on this errand forth +Am Beatrice; from a place I come +Revisited with joy. Love brought me thence, +Who prompts my speech. When in my Master’s sight +I stand, thy praise to him I oft will tell.” + +(Note: Beatrice. I use this word, as it is pronounced in the Italian, +as consisting of four syllables, of which the third is a long one.) + + +She then was silent, and I thus began: +“O Lady! by whose influence alone, +Mankind excels whatever is contain’d +Within that heaven which hath the smallest orb, +So thy command delights me, that to obey, +If it were done already, would seem late. +No need hast thou farther to speak thy will; +Yet tell the reason, why thou art not loth +To leave that ample space, where to return +Thou burnest, for this centre here beneath.” + +She then: “Since thou so deeply wouldst inquire, +I will instruct thee briefly, why no dread +Hinders my entrance here. Those things alone +Are to be fear’d, whence evil may proceed, +None else, for none are terrible beside. +I am so fram’d by God, thanks to his grace! +That any suff’rance of your misery +Touches me not, nor flame of that fierce fire +Assails me. In high heaven a blessed dame +Besides, who mourns with such effectual grief +That hindrance, which I send thee to remove, +That God’s stern judgment to her will inclines. +To Lucia calling, her she thus bespake: +“Now doth thy faithful servant need thy aid +And I commend him to thee.” At her word +Sped Lucia, of all cruelty the foe, +And coming to the place, where I abode +Seated with Rachel, her of ancient days, +She thus address’d me: “Thou true praise of God! +Beatrice! why is not thy succour lent +To him, who so much lov’d thee, as to leave +For thy sake all the multitude admires? +Dost thou not hear how pitiful his wail, +Nor mark the death, which in the torrent flood, +Swoln mightier than a sea, him struggling holds?” +Ne’er among men did any with such speed +Haste to their profit, flee from their annoy, +As when these words were spoken, I came here, +Down from my blessed seat, trusting the force +Of thy pure eloquence, which thee, and all +Who well have mark’d it, into honour brings.” + +“When she had ended, her bright beaming eyes +Tearful she turn’d aside; whereat I felt +Redoubled zeal to serve thee. As she will’d, +Thus am I come: I sav’d thee from the beast, +Who thy near way across the goodly mount +Prevented. What is this comes o’er thee then? +Why, why dost thou hang back? why in thy breast +Harbour vile fear? why hast not courage there +And noble daring? Since three maids so blest +Thy safety plan, e’en in the court of heaven; +And so much certain good my words forebode.” + +As florets, by the frosty air of night +Bent down and clos’d, when day has blanch’d their leaves, +Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems; +So was my fainting vigour new restor’d, +And to my heart such kindly courage ran, +That I as one undaunted soon replied: +“O full of pity she, who undertook +My succour! and thou kind who didst perform +So soon her true behest! With such desire +Thou hast dispos’d me to renew my voyage, +That my first purpose fully is resum’d. +Lead on: one only will is in us both. +Thou art my guide, my master thou, and lord.” + +So spake I; and when he had onward mov’d, +I enter’d on the deep and woody way. + + + + +CANTO III + + +“Through me you pass into the city of woe: +Through me you pass into eternal pain: +Through me among the people lost for aye. +Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d: +To rear me was the task of power divine, +Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. +Before me things create were none, save things +Eternal, and eternal I endure. +All hope abandon ye who enter here.” + +Such characters in colour dim I mark’d +Over a portal’s lofty arch inscrib’d: +Whereat I thus: “Master, these words import +Hard meaning.” He as one prepar’d replied: +“Here thou must all distrust behind thee leave; +Here be vile fear extinguish’d. We are come +Where I have told thee we shall see the souls +To misery doom’d, who intellectual good +Have lost.” And when his hand he had stretch’d forth +To mine, with pleasant looks, whence I was cheer’d, +Into that secret place he led me on. + +Here sighs with lamentations and loud moans +Resounded through the air pierc’d by no star, +That e’en I wept at entering. Various tongues, +Horrible languages, outcries of woe, +Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse, +With hands together smote that swell’d the sounds, +Made up a tumult, that for ever whirls +Round through that air with solid darkness stain’d, +Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies. + +I then, with error yet encompass’d, cried: +“O master! What is this I hear? What race +Are these, who seem so overcome with woe?” + +He thus to me: “This miserable fate +Suffer the wretched souls of those, who liv’d +Without or praise or blame, with that ill band +Of angels mix’d, who nor rebellious prov’d +Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves +Were only. From his bounds Heaven drove them forth, +Not to impair his lustre, nor the depth +Of Hell receives them, lest th’ accursed tribe +Should glory thence with exultation vain.” + +I then: “Master! what doth aggrieve them thus, +That they lament so loud?” He straight replied: +“That will I tell thee briefly. These of death +No hope may entertain: and their blind life +So meanly passes, that all other lots +They envy. Fame of them the world hath none, +Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both. +Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.” + +And I, who straightway look’d, beheld a flag, +Which whirling ran around so rapidly, +That it no pause obtain’d: and following came +Such a long train of spirits, I should ne’er +Have thought, that death so many had despoil’d. + +When some of these I recogniz’d, I saw +And knew the shade of him, who to base fear +Yielding, abjur’d his high estate. Forthwith +I understood for certain this the tribe +Of those ill spirits both to God displeasing +And to his foes. These wretches, who ne’er lived, +Went on in nakedness, and sorely stung +By wasps and hornets, which bedew’d their cheeks +With blood, that mix’d with tears dropp’d to their feet, +And by disgustful worms was gather’d there. + +Then looking farther onwards I beheld +A throng upon the shore of a great stream: +Whereat I thus: “Sir! grant me now to know +Whom here we view, and whence impell’d they seem +So eager to pass o’er, as I discern +Through the blear light?” He thus to me in few: +“This shalt thou know, soon as our steps arrive +Beside the woeful tide of Acheron.” + +Then with eyes downward cast and fill’d with shame, +Fearing my words offensive to his ear, +Till we had reach’d the river, I from speech +Abstain’d. And lo! toward us in a bark +Comes on an old man hoary white with eld, +Crying, “Woe to you wicked spirits! hope not +Ever to see the sky again. I come +To take you to the other shore across, +Into eternal darkness, there to dwell +In fierce heat and in ice. And thou, who there +Standest, live spirit! get thee hence, and leave +These who are dead.” But soon as he beheld +I left them not, “By other way,” said he, +“By other haven shalt thou come to shore, +Not by this passage; thee a nimbler boat +Must carry.” Then to him thus spake my guide: +“Charon! thyself torment not: so ’tis will’d, +Where will and power are one: ask thou no more.” + +Straightway in silence fell the shaggy cheeks +Of him the boatman o’er the livid lake, +Around whose eyes glar’d wheeling flames. Meanwhile +Those spirits, faint and naked, color chang’d, +And gnash’d their teeth, soon as the cruel words +They heard. God and their parents they blasphem’d, +The human kind, the place, the time, and seed +That did engender them and give them birth. + +Then all together sorely wailing drew +To the curs’d strand, that every man must pass +Who fears not God. Charon, demoniac form, +With eyes of burning coal, collects them all, +Beck’ning, and each, that lingers, with his oar +Strikes. As fall off the light autumnal leaves, +One still another following, till the bough +Strews all its honours on the earth beneath; +E’en in like manner Adam’s evil brood +Cast themselves one by one down from the shore, +Each at a beck, as falcon at his call. + +Thus go they over through the umber’d wave, +And ever they on the opposing bank +Be landed, on this side another throng +Still gathers. “Son,” thus spake the courteous guide, +“Those, who die subject to the wrath of God, +All here together come from every clime, +And to o’erpass the river are not loth: +For so heaven’s justice goads them on, that fear +Is turn’d into desire. Hence ne’er hath past +Good spirit. If of thee Charon complain, +Now mayst thou know the import of his words.” + +This said, the gloomy region trembling shook +So terribly, that yet with clammy dews +Fear chills my brow. The sad earth gave a blast, +That, lightening, shot forth a vermilion flame, +Which all my senses conquer’d quite, and I +Down dropp’d, as one with sudden slumber seiz’d. + + + + +CANTO IV + + +Broke the deep slumber in my brain a crash +Of heavy thunder, that I shook myself, +As one by main force rous’d. Risen upright, +My rested eyes I mov’d around, and search’d +With fixed ken to know what place it was, +Wherein I stood. For certain on the brink +I found me of the lamentable vale, +The dread abyss, that joins a thund’rous sound +Of plaints innumerable. Dark and deep, +And thick with clouds o’erspread, mine eye in vain +Explor’d its bottom, nor could aught discern. + +“Now let us to the blind world there beneath +Descend;” the bard began all pale of look: +“I go the first, and thou shalt follow next.” + +Then I his alter’d hue perceiving, thus: +“How may I speed, if thou yieldest to dread, +Who still art wont to comfort me in doubt?” + +He then: “The anguish of that race below +With pity stains my cheek, which thou for fear +Mistakest. Let us on. Our length of way +Urges to haste.” Onward, this said, he mov’d; +And ent’ring led me with him on the bounds +Of the first circle, that surrounds th’ abyss. +Here, as mine ear could note, no plaint was heard +Except of sighs, that made th’ eternal air +Tremble, not caus’d by tortures, but from grief +Felt by those multitudes, many and vast, +Of men, women, and infants. Then to me +The gentle guide: “Inquir’st thou not what spirits +Are these, which thou beholdest? Ere thou pass +Farther, I would thou know, that these of sin +Were blameless; and if aught they merited, +It profits not, since baptism was not theirs, +The portal to thy faith. If they before +The Gospel liv’d, they serv’d not God aright; +And among such am I. For these defects, +And for no other evil, we are lost; +Only so far afflicted, that we live +Desiring without hope.” So grief assail’d +My heart at hearing this, for well I knew +Suspended in that Limbo many a soul +Of mighty worth. “O tell me, sire rever’d! +Tell me, my master!” I began through wish +Of full assurance in that holy faith, +Which vanquishes all error; “say, did e’er +Any, or through his own or other’s merit, +Come forth from thence, whom afterward was blest?” + +Piercing the secret purport of my speech, +He answer’d: “I was new to that estate, +When I beheld a puissant one arrive +Amongst us, with victorious trophy crown’d. +He forth the shade of our first parent drew, +Abel his child, and Noah righteous man, +Of Moses lawgiver for faith approv’d, +Of patriarch Abraham, and David king, +Israel with his sire and with his sons, +Nor without Rachel whom so hard he won, +And others many more, whom he to bliss +Exalted. Before these, be thou assur’d, +No spirit of human kind was ever sav’d.” + +We, while he spake, ceas’d not our onward road, +Still passing through the wood; for so I name +Those spirits thick beset. We were not far +On this side from the summit, when I kenn’d +A flame, that o’er the darken’d hemisphere +Prevailing shin’d. Yet we a little space +Were distant, not so far but I in part +Discover’d, that a tribe in honour high +That place possess’d. “O thou, who every art +And science valu’st! who are these, that boast +Such honour, separate from all the rest?” + +He answer’d: “The renown of their great names +That echoes through your world above, acquires +Favour in heaven, which holds them thus advanc’d.” +Meantime a voice I heard: “Honour the bard +Sublime! his shade returns that left us late!” +No sooner ceas’d the sound, than I beheld +Four mighty spirits toward us bend their steps, +Of semblance neither sorrowful nor glad. + +When thus my master kind began: “Mark him, +Who in his right hand bears that falchion keen, +The other three preceding, as their lord. +This is that Homer, of all bards supreme: +Flaccus the next in satire’s vein excelling; +The third is Naso; Lucan is the last. +Because they all that appellation own, +With which the voice singly accosted me, +Honouring they greet me thus, and well they judge.” + +So I beheld united the bright school +Of him the monarch of sublimest song, +That o’er the others like an eagle soars. +When they together short discourse had held, +They turn’d to me, with salutation kind +Beck’ning me; at the which my master smil’d: +Nor was this all; but greater honour still +They gave me, for they made me of their tribe; +And I was sixth amid so learn’d a band. + +Far as the luminous beacon on we pass’d +Speaking of matters, then befitting well +To speak, now fitter left untold. At foot +Of a magnificent castle we arriv’d, +Seven times with lofty walls begirt, and round +Defended by a pleasant stream. O’er this +As o’er dry land we pass’d. Next through seven gates +I with those sages enter’d, and we came +Into a mead with lively verdure fresh. + +There dwelt a race, who slow their eyes around +Majestically mov’d, and in their port +Bore eminent authority; they spake +Seldom, but all their words were tuneful sweet. + +We to one side retir’d, into a place +Open and bright and lofty, whence each one +Stood manifest to view. Incontinent +There on the green enamel of the plain +Were shown me the great spirits, by whose sight +I am exalted in my own esteem. + +Electra there I saw accompanied +By many, among whom Hector I knew, +Anchises’ pious son, and with hawk’s eye +Caesar all arm’d, and by Camilla there +Penthesilea. On the other side +Old King Latinus, seated by his child +Lavinia, and that Brutus I beheld, +Who Tarquin chas’d, Lucretia, Cato’s wife +Marcia, with Julia and Cornelia there; +And sole apart retir’d, the Soldan fierce. + +Then when a little more I rais’d my brow, +I spied the master of the sapient throng, +Seated amid the philosophic train. +Him all admire, all pay him rev’rence due. +There Socrates and Plato both I mark’d, +Nearest to him in rank; Democritus, +Who sets the world at chance, Diogenes, +With Heraclitus, and Empedocles, +And Anaxagoras, and Thales sage, +Zeno, and Dioscorides well read +In nature’s secret lore. Orpheus I mark’d +And Linus, Tully and moral Seneca, +Euclid and Ptolemy, Hippocrates, +Galenus, Avicen, and him who made +That commentary vast, Averroes. + +Of all to speak at full were vain attempt; +For my wide theme so urges, that ofttimes +My words fall short of what bechanc’d. In two +The six associates part. Another way +My sage guide leads me, from that air serene, +Into a climate ever vex’d with storms: +And to a part I come where no light shines. + + + + +CANTO V + + +From the first circle I descended thus +Down to the second, which, a lesser space +Embracing, so much more of grief contains +Provoking bitter moans. There, Minos stands +Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all +Who enter, strict examining the crimes, +Gives sentence, and dismisses them beneath, +According as he foldeth him around: +For when before him comes th’ ill fated soul, +It all confesses; and that judge severe +Of sins, considering what place in hell +Suits the transgression, with his tail so oft +Himself encircles, as degrees beneath +He dooms it to descend. Before him stand +Always a num’rous throng; and in his turn +Each one to judgment passing, speaks, and hears +His fate, thence downward to his dwelling hurl’d. + +“O thou! who to this residence of woe +Approachest?” when he saw me coming, cried +Minos, relinquishing his dread employ, +“Look how thou enter here; beware in whom +Thou place thy trust; let not the entrance broad +Deceive thee to thy harm.” To him my guide: +“Wherefore exclaimest? Hinder not his way +By destiny appointed; so ’tis will’d +Where will and power are one. Ask thou no more.” + +Now ’gin the rueful wailings to be heard. +Now am I come where many a plaining voice +Smites on mine ear. Into a place I came +Where light was silent all. Bellowing there groan’d +A noise as of a sea in tempest torn +By warring winds. The stormy blast of hell +With restless fury drives the spirits on +Whirl’d round and dash’d amain with sore annoy. +When they arrive before the ruinous sweep, +There shrieks are heard, there lamentations, moans, +And blasphemies ’gainst the good Power in heaven. + +I understood that to this torment sad +The carnal sinners are condemn’d, in whom +Reason by lust is sway’d. As in large troops +And multitudinous, when winter reigns, +The starlings on their wings are borne abroad; +So bears the tyrannous gust those evil souls. +On this side and on that, above, below, +It drives them: hope of rest to solace them +Is none, nor e’en of milder pang. As cranes, +Chanting their dol’rous notes, traverse the sky, +Stretch’d out in long array: so I beheld +Spirits, who came loud wailing, hurried on +By their dire doom. Then I: “Instructor! who +Are these, by the black air so scourg’d?”—” The first +’Mong those, of whom thou question’st,” he replied, +“O’er many tongues was empress. She in vice +Of luxury was so shameless, that she made +Liking be lawful by promulg’d decree, +To clear the blame she had herself incurr’d. +This is Semiramis, of whom ’tis writ, +That she succeeded Ninus her espous’d; +And held the land, which now the Soldan rules. +The next in amorous fury slew herself, +And to Sicheus’ ashes broke her faith: +Then follows Cleopatra, lustful queen.” + +There mark’d I Helen, for whose sake so long +The time was fraught with evil; there the great +Achilles, who with love fought to the end. +Paris I saw, and Tristan; and beside +A thousand more he show’d me, and by name +Pointed them out, whom love bereav’d of life. + +When I had heard my sage instructor name +Those dames and knights of antique days, o’erpower’d +By pity, well-nigh in amaze my mind +Was lost; and I began: “Bard! willingly +I would address those two together coming, +Which seem so light before the wind.” He thus: +“Note thou, when nearer they to us approach. +Then by that love which carries them along, +Entreat; and they will come.” Soon as the wind +Sway’d them toward us, I thus fram’d my speech: +“O wearied spirits! come, and hold discourse +With us, if by none else restrain’d.” As doves +By fond desire invited, on wide wings +And firm, to their sweet nest returning home, +Cleave the air, wafted by their will along; +Thus issu’d from that troop, where Dido ranks, +They through the ill air speeding; with such force +My cry prevail’d by strong affection urg’d. + +“O gracious creature and benign! who go’st +Visiting, through this element obscure, +Us, who the world with bloody stain imbru’d; +If for a friend the King of all we own’d, +Our pray’r to him should for thy peace arise, +Since thou hast pity on our evil plight. +()f whatsoe’er to hear or to discourse +It pleases thee, that will we hear, of that +Freely with thee discourse, while e’er the wind, +As now, is mute. The land, that gave me birth, +Is situate on the coast, where Po descends +To rest in ocean with his sequent streams. + +“Love, that in gentle heart is quickly learnt, +Entangled him by that fair form, from me +Ta’en in such cruel sort, as grieves me still: +Love, that denial takes from none belov’d, +Caught me with pleasing him so passing well, +That, as thou see’st, he yet deserts me not. +Love brought us to one death: Caina waits +The soul, who spilt our life.” Such were their words; +At hearing which downward I bent my looks, +And held them there so long, that the bard cried: +“What art thou pond’ring?” I in answer thus: +“Alas! by what sweet thoughts, what fond desire +Must they at length to that ill pass have reach’d!” + +Then turning, I to them my speech address’d. +And thus began: “Francesca! your sad fate +Even to tears my grief and pity moves. +But tell me; in the time of your sweet sighs, +By what, and how love granted, that ye knew +Your yet uncertain wishes?” She replied: +“No greater grief than to remember days +Of joy, when mis’ry is at hand! That kens +Thy learn’d instructor. Yet so eagerly +If thou art bent to know the primal root, +From whence our love gat being, I will do, +As one, who weeps and tells his tale. One day +For our delight we read of Lancelot, +How him love thrall’d. Alone we were, and no +Suspicion near us. Ofttimes by that reading +Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue +Fled from our alter’d cheek. But at one point +Alone we fell. When of that smile we read, +The wished smile, rapturously kiss’d +By one so deep in love, then he, who ne’er +From me shall separate, at once my lips +All trembling kiss’d. The book and writer both +Were love’s purveyors. In its leaves that day +We read no more.” While thus one spirit spake, +The other wail’d so sorely, that heartstruck +I through compassion fainting, seem’d not far +From death, and like a corpse fell to the ground. + + + + +CANTO VI + + +My sense reviving, that erewhile had droop’d +With pity for the kindred shades, whence grief +O’ercame me wholly, straight around I see +New torments, new tormented souls, which way +Soe’er I move, or turn, or bend my sight. +In the third circle I arrive, of show’rs +Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang’d +For ever, both in kind and in degree. +Large hail, discolour’d water, sleety flaw +Through the dun midnight air stream’d down amain: +Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell. + +Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange, +Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog +Over the multitude immers’d beneath. +His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard, +His belly large, and claw’d the hands, with which +He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs +Piecemeal disparts. Howling there spread, as curs, +Under the rainy deluge, with one side +The other screening, oft they roll them round, +A wretched, godless crew. When that great worm +Descried us, savage Cerberus, he op’d +His jaws, and the fangs show’d us; not a limb +Of him but trembled. Then my guide, his palms +Expanding on the ground, thence filled with earth +Rais’d them, and cast it in his ravenous maw. +E’en as a dog, that yelling bays for food +His keeper, when the morsel comes, lets fall +His fury, bent alone with eager haste +To swallow it; so dropp’d the loathsome cheeks +Of demon Cerberus, who thund’ring stuns +The spirits, that they for deafness wish in vain. + +We, o’er the shades thrown prostrate by the brunt +Of the heavy tempest passing, set our feet +Upon their emptiness, that substance seem’d. + +They all along the earth extended lay +Save one, that sudden rais’d himself to sit, +Soon as that way he saw us pass. “O thou!” +He cried, “who through the infernal shades art led, +Own, if again thou know’st me. Thou wast fram’d +Or ere my frame was broken.” I replied: +“The anguish thou endur’st perchance so takes +Thy form from my remembrance, that it seems +As if I saw thee never. But inform +Me who thou art, that in a place so sad +Art set, and in such torment, that although +Other be greater, more disgustful none +Can be imagin’d.” He in answer thus: +“Thy city heap’d with envy to the brim, +Ay that the measure overflows its bounds, +Held me in brighter days. Ye citizens +Were wont to name me Ciacco. For the sin +Of glutt’ny, damned vice, beneath this rain, +E’en as thou see’st, I with fatigue am worn; +Nor I sole spirit in this woe: all these +Have by like crime incurr’d like punishment.” + +No more he said, and I my speech resum’d: +“Ciacco! thy dire affliction grieves me much, +Even to tears. But tell me, if thou know’st, +What shall at length befall the citizens +Of the divided city; whether any just one +Inhabit there: and tell me of the cause, +Whence jarring discord hath assail’d it thus?” + +He then: “After long striving they will come +To blood; and the wild party from the woods +Will chase the other with much injury forth. +Then it behoves, that this must fall, within +Three solar circles; and the other rise +By borrow’d force of one, who under shore +Now rests. It shall a long space hold aloof +Its forehead, keeping under heavy weight +The other oppress’d, indignant at the load, +And grieving sore. The just are two in number, +But they neglected. Av’rice, envy, pride, +Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all +On fire.” Here ceas’d the lamentable sound; +And I continu’d thus: “Still would I learn +More from thee, farther parley still entreat. +Of Farinata and Tegghiaio say, +They who so well deserv’d, of Giacopo, +Arrigo, Mosca, and the rest, who bent +Their minds on working good. Oh! tell me where +They bide, and to their knowledge let me come. +For I am press’d with keen desire to hear, +If heaven’s sweet cup or poisonous drug of hell +Be to their lip assign’d.” He answer’d straight: +“These are yet blacker spirits. Various crimes +Have sunk them deeper in the dark abyss. +If thou so far descendest, thou mayst see them. +But to the pleasant world when thou return’st, +Of me make mention, I entreat thee, there. +No more I tell thee, answer thee no more.” + +This said, his fixed eyes he turn’d askance, +A little ey’d me, then bent down his head, +And ’midst his blind companions with it fell. + +When thus my guide: “No more his bed he leaves, +Ere the last angel-trumpet blow. The Power +Adverse to these shall then in glory come, +Each one forthwith to his sad tomb repair, +Resume his fleshly vesture and his form, +And hear the eternal doom re-echoing rend +The vault.” So pass’d we through that mixture foul +Of spirits and rain, with tardy steps; meanwhile +Touching, though slightly, on the life to come. +For thus I question’d: “Shall these tortures, Sir! +When the great sentence passes, be increas’d, +Or mitigated, or as now severe?” + +He then: “Consult thy knowledge; that decides +That as each thing to more perfection grows, +It feels more sensibly both good and pain. +Though ne’er to true perfection may arrive +This race accurs’d, yet nearer then than now +They shall approach it.” Compassing that path +Circuitous we journeyed, and discourse +Much more than I relate between us pass’d: +Till at the point, where the steps led below, +Arriv’d, there Plutus, the great foe, we found. + + + + +CANTO VII + + +“Ah me! O Satan! Satan!” loud exclaim’d +Plutus, in accent hoarse of wild alarm: +And the kind sage, whom no event surpris’d, +To comfort me thus spake: “Let not thy fear +Harm thee, for power in him, be sure, is none +To hinder down this rock thy safe descent.” +Then to that sworn lip turning, “ Peace!” he cried, +“Curs’d wolf! thy fury inward on thyself +Prey, and consume thee! Through the dark profound +Not without cause he passes. So ’tis will’d +On high, there where the great Archangel pour’d +Heav’n’s vengeance on the first adulterer proud.” + +As sails full spread and bellying with the wind +Drop suddenly collaps’d, if the mast split; +So to the ground down dropp’d the cruel fiend. + +Thus we, descending to the fourth steep ledge, +Gain’d on the dismal shore, that all the woe +Hems in of all the universe. Ah me! +Almighty Justice! in what store thou heap’st +New pains, new troubles, as I here beheld! +Wherefore doth fault of ours bring us to this? + +E’en as a billow, on Charybdis rising, +Against encounter’d billow dashing breaks; +Such is the dance this wretched race must lead, +Whom more than elsewhere numerous here I found, +From one side and the other, with loud voice, +Both roll’d on weights by main forge of their breasts, +Then smote together, and each one forthwith +Roll’d them back voluble, turning again, +Exclaiming these, “Why holdest thou so fast?” +Those answering, “And why castest thou away?” +So still repeating their despiteful song, +They to the opposite point on either hand +Travers’d the horrid circle: then arriv’d, +Both turn’d them round, and through the middle space +Conflicting met again. At sight whereof +I, stung with grief, thus spake: “O say, my guide! +What race is this? Were these, whose heads are shorn, +On our left hand, all sep’rate to the church?” + +He straight replied: “In their first life these all +In mind were so distorted, that they made, +According to due measure, of their wealth, +No use. This clearly from their words collect, +Which they howl forth, at each extremity +Arriving of the circle, where their crime +Contrary’ in kind disparts them. To the church +Were separate those, that with no hairy cowls +Are crown’d, both Popes and Cardinals, o’er whom +Av’rice dominion absolute maintains.” + +I then: “Mid such as these some needs must be, +Whom I shall recognize, that with the blot +Of these foul sins were stain’d.” He answering thus: +“Vain thought conceiv’st thou. That ignoble life, +Which made them vile before, now makes them dark, +And to all knowledge indiscernible. +Forever they shall meet in this rude shock: +These from the tomb with clenched grasp shall rise, +Those with close-shaven locks. That ill they gave, +And ill they kept, hath of the beauteous world +Depriv’d, and set them at this strife, which needs +No labour’d phrase of mine to set if off. +Now may’st thou see, my son! how brief, how vain, +The goods committed into fortune’s hands, +For which the human race keep such a coil! +Not all the gold, that is beneath the moon, +Or ever hath been, of these toil-worn souls +Might purchase rest for one.” I thus rejoin’d: + +“My guide! of thee this also would I learn; +This fortune, that thou speak’st of, what it is, +Whose talons grasp the blessings of the world?” + +He thus: “O beings blind! what ignorance +Besets you? Now my judgment hear and mark. +He, whose transcendent wisdom passes all, +The heavens creating, gave them ruling powers +To guide them, so that each part shines to each, +Their light in equal distribution pour’d. +By similar appointment he ordain’d +Over the world’s bright images to rule. +Superintendence of a guiding hand +And general minister, which at due time +May change the empty vantages of life +From race to race, from one to other’s blood, +Beyond prevention of man’s wisest care: +Wherefore one nation rises into sway, +Another languishes, e’en as her will +Decrees, from us conceal’d, as in the grass +The serpent train. Against her nought avails +Your utmost wisdom. She with foresight plans, +Judges, and carries on her reign, as theirs +The other powers divine. Her changes know +Nore intermission: by necessity +She is made swift, so frequent come who claim +Succession in her favours. This is she, +So execrated e’en by those, whose debt +To her is rather praise; they wrongfully +With blame requite her, and with evil word; +But she is blessed, and for that recks not: +Amidst the other primal beings glad +Rolls on her sphere, and in her bliss exults. +Now on our way pass we, to heavier woe +Descending: for each star is falling now, +That mounted at our entrance, and forbids +Too long our tarrying.” We the circle cross’d +To the next steep, arriving at a well, +That boiling pours itself down to a foss +Sluic’d from its source. Far murkier was the wave +Than sablest grain: and we in company +Of the’ inky waters, journeying by their side, +Enter’d, though by a different track, beneath. +Into a lake, the Stygian nam’d, expands +The dismal stream, when it hath reach’d the foot +Of the grey wither’d cliffs. Intent I stood +To gaze, and in the marish sunk descried +A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks +Betok’ning rage. They with their hands alone +Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet, +Cutting each other piecemeal with their fangs. + +The good instructor spake; “Now seest thou, son! +The souls of those, whom anger overcame. +This too for certain know, that underneath +The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs +Into these bubbles make the surface heave, +As thine eye tells thee wheresoe’er it turn. +Fix’d in the slime they say: “Sad once were we +In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun, +Carrying a foul and lazy mist within: +Now in these murky settlings are we sad.” +Such dolorous strain they gurgle in their throats. +But word distinct can utter none.” Our route +Thus compass’d we, a segment widely stretch’d +Between the dry embankment, and the core +Of the loath’d pool, turning meanwhile our eyes +Downward on those who gulp’d its muddy lees; +Nor stopp’d, till to a tower’s low base we came. + + + + +CANTO VIII + + +My theme pursuing, I relate that ere +We reach’d the lofty turret’s base, our eyes +Its height ascended, where two cressets hung +We mark’d, and from afar another light +Return the signal, so remote, that scarce +The eye could catch its beam. I turning round +To the deep source of knowledge, thus inquir’d: +“Say what this means? and what that other light +In answer set? what agency doth this?” + +“There on the filthy waters,” he replied, +“E’en now what next awaits us mayst thou see, +If the marsh-gender’d fog conceal it not.” + +Never was arrow from the cord dismiss’d, +That ran its way so nimbly through the air, +As a small bark, that through the waves I spied +Toward us coming, under the sole sway +Of one that ferried it, who cried aloud: +“Art thou arriv’d, fell spirit?”—“Phlegyas, Phlegyas, +This time thou criest in vain,” my lord replied; +“No longer shalt thou have us, but while o’er +The slimy pool we pass.” As one who hears +Of some great wrong he hath sustain’d, whereat +Inly he pines; so Phlegyas inly pin’d +In his fierce ire. My guide descending stepp’d +Into the skiff, and bade me enter next +Close at his side; nor till my entrance seem’d +The vessel freighted. Soon as both embark’d, +Cutting the waves, goes on the ancient prow, +More deeply than with others it is wont. + +While we our course o’er the dead channel held. +One drench’d in mire before me came, and said; +“Who art thou, that thou comest ere thine hour?” + +I answer’d: “Though I come, I tarry not; +But who art thou, that art become so foul?” + +“One, as thou seest, who mourn: “ he straight replied. + +To which I thus: “ In mourning and in woe, +Curs’d spirit! tarry thou. I know thee well, +E’en thus in filth disguis’d.” Then stretch’d he forth +Hands to the bark; whereof my teacher sage +Aware, thrusting him back: “Away! down there +To the’ other dogs!” then, with his arms my neck +Encircling, kiss’d my cheek, and spake: “O soul +Justly disdainful! blest was she in whom +Thou was conceiv’d! He in the world was one +For arrogance noted; to his memory +No virtue lends its lustre; even so +Here is his shadow furious. There above +How many now hold themselves mighty kings +Who here like swine shall wallow in the mire, +Leaving behind them horrible dispraise!” + +I then: “Master! him fain would I behold +Whelm’d in these dregs, before we quit the lake.” + +He thus: “Or ever to thy view the shore +Be offer’d, satisfied shall be that wish, +Which well deserves completion.” Scarce his words +Were ended, when I saw the miry tribes +Set on him with such violence, that yet +For that render I thanks to God and praise +“To Filippo Argenti:” cried they all: +And on himself the moody Florentine +Turn’d his avenging fangs. Him here we left, +Nor speak I of him more. But on mine ear +Sudden a sound of lamentation smote, +Whereat mine eye unbarr’d I sent abroad. + +And thus the good instructor: “Now, my son! +Draws near the city, that of Dis is nam’d, +With its grave denizens, a mighty throng.” + +I thus: “The minarets already, Sir! +There certes in the valley I descry, +Gleaming vermilion, as if they from fire +Had issu’d.” He replied: “Eternal fire, +That inward burns, shows them with ruddy flame +Illum’d; as in this nether hell thou seest.” + +We came within the fosses deep, that moat +This region comfortless. The walls appear’d +As they were fram’d of iron. We had made +Wide circuit, ere a place we reach’d, where loud +The mariner cried vehement: “Go forth! +The’ entrance is here!” Upon the gates I spied +More than a thousand, who of old from heaven +Were hurl’d. With ireful gestures, “Who is this,” +They cried, “that without death first felt, goes through +The regions of the dead?” My sapient guide +Made sign that he for secret parley wish’d; +Whereat their angry scorn abating, thus +They spake: “Come thou alone; and let him go +Who hath so hardily enter’d this realm. +Alone return he by his witless way; +If well he know it, let him prove. For thee, +Here shalt thou tarry, who through clime so dark +Hast been his escort.” Now bethink thee, reader! +What cheer was mine at sound of those curs’d words. +I did believe I never should return. + +“O my lov’d guide! who more than seven times +Security hast render’d me, and drawn +From peril deep, whereto I stood expos’d, +Desert me not,” I cried, “in this extreme. +And if our onward going be denied, +Together trace we back our steps with speed.” + +My liege, who thither had conducted me, +Replied: “Fear not: for of our passage none +Hath power to disappoint us, by such high +Authority permitted. But do thou +Expect me here; meanwhile thy wearied spirit +Comfort, and feed with kindly hope, assur’d +I will not leave thee in this lower world.” + +This said, departs the sire benevolent, +And quits me. Hesitating I remain +At war ’twixt will and will not in my thoughts. + +I could not hear what terms he offer’d them, +But they conferr’d not long, for all at once +To trial fled within. Clos’d were the gates +By those our adversaries on the breast +Of my liege lord: excluded he return’d +To me with tardy steps. Upon the ground +His eyes were bent, and from his brow eras’d +All confidence, while thus with sighs he spake: +“Who hath denied me these abodes of woe?” +Then thus to me: “That I am anger’d, think +No ground of terror: in this trial I +Shall vanquish, use what arts they may within +For hindrance. This their insolence, not new, +Erewhile at gate less secret they display’d, +Which still is without bolt; upon its arch +Thou saw’st the deadly scroll: and even now +On this side of its entrance, down the steep, +Passing the circles, unescorted, comes +One whose strong might can open us this land.” + + + + +CANTO IX + + +The hue, which coward dread on my pale cheeks +Imprinted, when I saw my guide turn back, +Chas’d that from his which newly they had worn, +And inwardly restrain’d it. He, as one +Who listens, stood attentive: for his eye +Not far could lead him through the sable air, +And the thick-gath’ring cloud. “It yet behooves +We win this fight”—thus he began—” if not— +Such aid to us is offer’d.—Oh, how long +Me seems it, ere the promis’d help arrive!” + +I noted, how the sequel of his words +Clok’d their beginning; for the last he spake +Agreed not with the first. But not the less +My fear was at his saying; sith I drew +To import worse perchance, than that he held, +His mutilated speech. “Doth ever any +Into this rueful concave’s extreme depth +Descend, out of the first degree, whose pain +Is deprivation merely of sweet hope?” + +Thus I inquiring. “Rarely,” he replied, +“It chances, that among us any makes +This journey, which I wend. Erewhile ’tis true +Once came I here beneath, conjur’d by fell +Erictho, sorceress, who compell’d the shades +Back to their bodies. No long space my flesh +Was naked of me, when within these walls +She made me enter, to draw forth a spirit +From out of Judas’ circle. Lowest place +Is that of all, obscurest, and remov’d +Farthest from heav’n’s all-circling orb. The road +Full well I know: thou therefore rest secure. +That lake, the noisome stench exhaling, round +The city’ of grief encompasses, which now +We may not enter without rage.” Yet more +He added: but I hold it not in mind, +For that mine eye toward the lofty tower +Had drawn me wholly, to its burning top. +Where in an instant I beheld uprisen +At once three hellish furies stain’d with blood: +In limb and motion feminine they seem’d; +Around them greenest hydras twisting roll’d +Their volumes; adders and cerastes crept +Instead of hair, and their fierce temples bound. + +He knowing well the miserable hags +Who tend the queen of endless woe, thus spake: +“Mark thou each dire Erinnys. To the left +This is Megaera; on the right hand she, +Who wails, Alecto; and Tisiphone +I’ th’ midst.” This said, in silence he remain’d +Their breast they each one clawing tore; themselves +Smote with their palms, and such shrill clamour rais’d, +That to the bard I clung, suspicion-bound. +“Hasten Medusa: so to adamant +Him shall we change;” all looking down exclaim’d. +“E’en when by Theseus’ might assail’d, we took +No ill revenge.” “Turn thyself round, and keep +Thy count’nance hid; for if the Gorgon dire +Be shown, and thou shouldst view it, thy return +Upwards would be for ever lost.” This said, +Himself my gentle master turn’d me round, +Nor trusted he my hands, but with his own +He also hid me. Ye of intellect +Sound and entire, mark well the lore conceal’d +Under close texture of the mystic strain! + +And now there came o’er the perturbed waves +Loud-crashing, terrible, a sound that made +Either shore tremble, as if of a wind +Impetuous, from conflicting vapours sprung, +That ’gainst some forest driving all its might, +Plucks off the branches, beats them down and hurls +Afar; then onward passing proudly sweeps +Its whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly. + +Mine eyes he loos’d, and spake: “And now direct +Thy visual nerve along that ancient foam, +There, thickest where the smoke ascends.” As frogs +Before their foe the serpent, through the wave +Ply swiftly all, till at the ground each one +Lies on a heap; more than a thousand spirits +Destroy’d, so saw I fleeing before one +Who pass’d with unwet feet the Stygian sound. +He, from his face removing the gross air, +Oft his left hand forth stretch’d, and seem’d alone +By that annoyance wearied. I perceiv’d +That he was sent from heav’n, and to my guide +Turn’d me, who signal made that I should stand +Quiet, and bend to him. Ah me! how full +Of noble anger seem’d he! To the gate +He came, and with his wand touch’d it, whereat +Open without impediment it flew. + +“Outcasts of heav’n! O abject race and scorn’d!” +Began he on the horrid grunsel standing, +“Whence doth this wild excess of insolence +Lodge in you? wherefore kick you ’gainst that will +Ne’er frustrate of its end, and which so oft +Hath laid on you enforcement of your pangs? +What profits at the fays to but the horn? +Your Cerberus, if ye remember, hence +Bears still, peel’d of their hair, his throat and maw.” + +This said, he turn’d back o’er the filthy way, +And syllable to us spake none, but wore +The semblance of a man by other care +Beset, and keenly press’d, than thought of him +Who in his presence stands. Then we our steps +Toward that territory mov’d, secure +After the hallow’d words. We unoppos’d +There enter’d; and my mind eager to learn +What state a fortress like to that might hold, +I soon as enter’d throw mine eye around, +And see on every part wide-stretching space +Replete with bitter pain and torment ill. + +As where Rhone stagnates on the plains of Arles, +Or as at Pola, near Quarnaro’s gulf, +That closes Italy and laves her bounds, +The place is all thick spread with sepulchres; +So was it here, save what in horror here +Excell’d: for ’midst the graves were scattered flames, +Wherewith intensely all throughout they burn’d, +That iron for no craft there hotter needs. + +Their lids all hung suspended, and beneath +From them forth issu’d lamentable moans, +Such as the sad and tortur’d well might raise. + +I thus: “Master! say who are these, interr’d +Within these vaults, of whom distinct we hear +The dolorous sighs?” He answer thus return’d: + +“The arch-heretics are here, accompanied +By every sect their followers; and much more, +Than thou believest, tombs are freighted: like +With like is buried; and the monuments +Are different in degrees of heat. “This said, +He to the right hand turning, on we pass’d +Betwixt the afflicted and the ramparts high. + + + + +CANTO X + + +Now by a secret pathway we proceed, +Between the walls, that hem the region round, +And the tormented souls: my master first, +I close behind his steps. “Virtue supreme!” +I thus began; “who through these ample orbs +In circuit lead’st me, even as thou will’st, +Speak thou, and satisfy my wish. May those, +Who lie within these sepulchres, be seen? +Already all the lids are rais’d, and none +O’er them keeps watch.” He thus in answer spake +“They shall be closed all, what-time they here +From Josaphat return’d shall come, and bring +Their bodies, which above they now have left. +The cemetery on this part obtain +With Epicurus all his followers, +Who with the body make the spirit die. +Here therefore satisfaction shall be soon +Both to the question ask’d, and to the wish, +Which thou conceal’st in silence.” I replied: +“I keep not, guide belov’d! from thee my heart +Secreted, but to shun vain length of words, +A lesson erewhile taught me by thyself.” + +“O Tuscan! thou who through the city of fire +Alive art passing, so discreet of speech! +Here please thee stay awhile. Thy utterance +Declares the place of thy nativity +To be that noble land, with which perchance +I too severely dealt.” Sudden that sound +Forth issu’d from a vault, whereat in fear +I somewhat closer to my leader’s side +Approaching, he thus spake: “What dost thou? Turn. +Lo, Farinata, there! who hath himself +Uplifted: from his girdle upwards all +Expos’d behold him.” On his face was mine +Already fix’d; his breast and forehead there +Erecting, seem’d as in high scorn he held +E’en hell. Between the sepulchres to him +My guide thrust me with fearless hands and prompt, +This warning added: “See thy words be clear!” + +He, soon as there I stood at the tomb’s foot, +Ey’d me a space, then in disdainful mood +Address’d me: “Say, what ancestors were thine?” + +I, willing to obey him, straight reveal’d +The whole, nor kept back aught: whence he, his brow +Somewhat uplifting, cried: “Fiercely were they +Adverse to me, my party, and the blood +From whence I sprang: twice therefore I abroad +Scatter’d them.” “Though driv’n out, yet they each time +From all parts,” answer’d I, “return’d; an art +Which yours have shown, they are not skill’d to learn.” + +Then, peering forth from the unclosed jaw, +Rose from his side a shade, high as the chin, +Leaning, methought, upon its knees uprais’d. +It look’d around, as eager to explore +If there were other with me; but perceiving +That fond imagination quench’d, with tears +Thus spake: “If thou through this blind prison go’st. +Led by thy lofty genius and profound, +Where is my son? and wherefore not with thee?” + +I straight replied: “Not of myself I come, +By him, who there expects me, through this clime +Conducted, whom perchance Guido thy son +Had in contempt.” Already had his words +And mode of punishment read me his name, +Whence I so fully answer’d. He at once +Exclaim’d, up starting, “How! said’st thou he HAD? +No longer lives he? Strikes not on his eye +The blessed daylight?” Then of some delay +I made ere my reply aware, down fell +Supine, not after forth appear’d he more. + +Meanwhile the other, great of soul, near whom +I yet was station’d, chang’d not count’nance stern, +Nor mov’d the neck, nor bent his ribbed side. +“And if,” continuing the first discourse, +“They in this art,” he cried, “small skill have shown, +That doth torment me more e’en than this bed. +But not yet fifty times shall be relum’d +Her aspect, who reigns here Queen of this realm, +Ere thou shalt know the full weight of that art. +So to the pleasant world mayst thou return, +As thou shalt tell me, why in all their laws, +Against my kin this people is so fell?” + +“The slaughter and great havoc,” I replied, +“That colour’d Arbia’s flood with crimson stain— +To these impute, that in our hallow’d dome +Such orisons ascend.” Sighing he shook +The head, then thus resum’d: “In that affray +I stood not singly, nor without just cause +Assuredly should with the rest have stirr’d; +But singly there I stood, when by consent +Of all, Florence had to the ground been raz’d, +The one who openly forbad the deed.” + +“So may thy lineage find at last repose,” +I thus adjur’d him, “as thou solve this knot, +Which now involves my mind. If right I hear, +Ye seem to view beforehand, that which time +Leads with him, of the present uninform’d.” + +“We view, as one who hath an evil sight,” +He answer’d, “plainly, objects far remote: +So much of his large spendour yet imparts +The’ Almighty Ruler; but when they approach +Or actually exist, our intellect +Then wholly fails, nor of your human state +Except what others bring us know we aught. +Hence therefore mayst thou understand, that all +Our knowledge in that instant shall expire, +When on futurity the portals close.” + +Then conscious of my fault, and by remorse +Smitten, I added thus: “Now shalt thou say +To him there fallen, that his offspring still +Is to the living join’d; and bid him know, +That if from answer silent I abstain’d, +’Twas that my thought was occupied intent +Upon that error, which thy help hath solv’d.” + +But now my master summoning me back +I heard, and with more eager haste besought +The spirit to inform me, who with him +Partook his lot. He answer thus return’d: + +“More than a thousand with me here are laid +Within is Frederick, second of that name, +And the Lord Cardinal, and of the rest +I speak not.” He, this said, from sight withdrew. +But I my steps towards the ancient bard +Reverting, ruminated on the words +Betokening me such ill. Onward he mov’d, +And thus in going question’d: “Whence the’ amaze +That holds thy senses wrapt?” I satisfied +The’ inquiry, and the sage enjoin’d me straight: +“Let thy safe memory store what thou hast heard +To thee importing harm; and note thou this,” +With his rais’d finger bidding me take heed, + +“When thou shalt stand before her gracious beam, +Whose bright eye all surveys, she of thy life +The future tenour will to thee unfold.” + +Forthwith he to the left hand turn’d his feet: +We left the wall, and tow’rds the middle space +Went by a path, that to a valley strikes; +Which e’en thus high exhal’d its noisome steam. + + + + +CANTO XI + + +Upon the utmost verge of a high bank, +By craggy rocks environ’d round, we came, +Where woes beneath more cruel yet were stow’d: +And here to shun the horrible excess +Of fetid exhalation, upward cast +From the profound abyss, behind the lid +Of a great monument we stood retir’d, +Whereon this scroll I mark’d: “I have in charge +Pope Anastasius, whom Photinus drew +From the right path.—Ere our descent behooves +We make delay, that somewhat first the sense, +To the dire breath accustom’d, afterward +Regard it not.” My master thus; to whom +Answering I spake: “Some compensation find +That the time past not wholly lost.” He then: +“Lo! how my thoughts e’en to thy wishes tend! +My son! within these rocks,” he thus began, +“Are three close circles in gradation plac’d, +As these which now thou leav’st. Each one is full +Of spirits accurs’d; but that the sight alone +Hereafter may suffice thee, listen how +And for what cause in durance they abide. + +“Of all malicious act abhorr’d in heaven, +The end is injury; and all such end +Either by force or fraud works other’s woe +But fraud, because of man peculiar evil, +To God is more displeasing; and beneath +The fraudulent are therefore doom’d to’ endure +Severer pang. The violent occupy +All the first circle; and because to force +Three persons are obnoxious, in three rounds +Hach within other sep’rate is it fram’d. +To God, his neighbour, and himself, by man +Force may be offer’d; to himself I say +And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear +At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds +Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes +By devastation, pillage, and the flames, +His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites +In malice, plund’rers, and all robbers, hence +The torment undergo of the first round +In different herds. Man can do violence +To himself and his own blessings: and for this +He in the second round must aye deplore +With unavailing penitence his crime, +Whoe’er deprives himself of life and light, +In reckless lavishment his talent wastes, +And sorrows there where he should dwell in joy. +To God may force be offer’d, in the heart +Denying and blaspheming his high power, +And nature with her kindly law contemning. +And thence the inmost round marks with its seal +Sodom and Cahors, and all such as speak +Contemptuously’ of the Godhead in their hearts. + +“Fraud, that in every conscience leaves a sting, +May be by man employ’d on one, whose trust +He wins, or on another who withholds +Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way +Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes. +Whence in the second circle have their nest +Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, +Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce +To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, +With such vile scum as these. The other way +Forgets both Nature’s general love, and that +Which thereto added afterwards gives birth +To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle, +Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis, +The traitor is eternally consum’d.” + +I thus: “Instructor, clearly thy discourse +Proceeds, distinguishing the hideous chasm +And its inhabitants with skill exact. +But tell me this: they of the dull, fat pool, +Whom the rain beats, or whom the tempest drives, +Or who with tongues so fierce conflicting meet, +Wherefore within the city fire-illum’d +Are not these punish’d, if God’s wrath be on them? +And if it be not, wherefore in such guise +Are they condemned?” He answer thus return’d: +“Wherefore in dotage wanders thus thy mind, +Not so accustom’d? or what other thoughts +Possess it? Dwell not in thy memory +The words, wherein thy ethic page describes +Three dispositions adverse to Heav’n’s will, +Incont’nence, malice, and mad brutishness, +And how incontinence the least offends +God, and least guilt incurs? If well thou note +This judgment, and remember who they are, +Without these walls to vain repentance doom’d, +Thou shalt discern why they apart are plac’d +From these fell spirits, and less wreakful pours +Justice divine on them its vengeance down.” + +“O Sun! who healest all imperfect sight, +Thou so content’st me, when thou solv’st my doubt, +That ignorance not less than knowledge charms. +Yet somewhat turn thee back,” I in these words +Continu’d, “where thou saidst, that usury +Offends celestial Goodness; and this knot +Perplex’d unravel.” He thus made reply: +“Philosophy, to an attentive ear, +Clearly points out, not in one part alone, +How imitative nature takes her course +From the celestial mind and from its art: +And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds, +Not many leaves scann’d o’er, observing well +Thou shalt discover, that your art on her +Obsequious follows, as the learner treads +In his instructor’s step, so that your art +Deserves the name of second in descent +From God. These two, if thou recall to mind +Creation’s holy book, from the beginning +Were the right source of life and excellence +To human kind. But in another path +The usurer walks; and Nature in herself +And in her follower thus he sets at nought, +Placing elsewhere his hope. But follow now +My steps on forward journey bent; for now +The Pisces play with undulating glance +Along the’ horizon, and the Wain lies all +O’er the north-west; and onward there a space +Is our steep passage down the rocky height.” + + + + +CANTO XII + + +The place where to descend the precipice +We came, was rough as Alp, and on its verge +Such object lay, as every eye would shun. + +As is that ruin, which Adice’s stream +On this side Trento struck, should’ring the wave, +Or loos’d by earthquake or for lack of prop; +For from the mountain’s summit, whence it mov’d +To the low level, so the headlong rock +Is shiver’d, that some passage it might give +To him who from above would pass; e’en such +Into the chasm was that descent: and there +At point of the disparted ridge lay stretch’d +The infamy of Crete, detested brood +Of the feign’d heifer: and at sight of us +It gnaw’d itself, as one with rage distract. +To him my guide exclaim’d: “Perchance thou deem’st +The King of Athens here, who, in the world +Above, thy death contriv’d. Monster! avaunt! +He comes not tutor’d by thy sister’s art, +But to behold your torments is he come.” + +Like to a bull, that with impetuous spring +Darts, at the moment when the fatal blow +Hath struck him, but unable to proceed +Plunges on either side; so saw I plunge +The Minotaur; whereat the sage exclaim’d: +“Run to the passage! while he storms, ’tis well +That thou descend.” Thus down our road we took +Through those dilapidated crags, that oft +Mov’d underneath my feet, to weight like theirs +Unus’d. I pond’ring went, and thus he spake: + +“Perhaps thy thoughts are of this ruin’d steep, +Guarded by the brute violence, which I +Have vanquish’d now. Know then, that when I erst +Hither descended to the nether hell, +This rock was not yet fallen. But past doubt +(If well I mark) not long ere He arrived, +Who carried off from Dis the mighty spoil +Of the highest circle, then through all its bounds +Such trembling seiz’d the deep concave and foul, +I thought the universe was thrill’d with love, +Whereby, there are who deem, the world hath oft +Been into chaos turn’d: and in that point, +Here, and elsewhere, that old rock toppled down. +But fix thine eyes beneath: the river of blood +Approaches, in the which all those are steep’d, +Who have by violence injur’d.” O blind lust! +O foolish wrath! who so dost goad us on +In the brief life, and in the eternal then +Thus miserably o’erwhelm us. I beheld +An ample foss, that in a bow was bent, +As circling all the plain; for so my guide +Had told. Between it and the rampart’s base +On trail ran Centaurs, with keen arrows arm’d, +As to the chase they on the earth were wont. + +At seeing us descend they each one stood; +And issuing from the troop, three sped with bows +And missile weapons chosen first; of whom +One cried from far: “Say to what pain ye come +Condemn’d, who down this steep have journied? Speak +From whence ye stand, or else the bow I draw.” + +To whom my guide: “Our answer shall be made +To Chiron, there, when nearer him we come. +Ill was thy mind, thus ever quick and rash.” + +Then me he touch’d, and spake: “Nessus is this, +Who for the fair Deianira died, +And wrought himself revenge for his own fate. +He in the midst, that on his breast looks down, +Is the great Chiron who Achilles nurs’d; +That other Pholus, prone to wrath.” Around +The foss these go by thousands, aiming shafts +At whatsoever spirit dares emerge +From out the blood, more than his guilt allows. + +We to those beasts, that rapid strode along, +Drew near, when Chiron took an arrow forth, +And with the notch push’d back his shaggy beard +To the cheek-bone, then his great mouth to view +Exposing, to his fellows thus exclaim’d: +“Are ye aware, that he who comes behind +Moves what he touches? The feet of the dead +Are not so wont.” My trusty guide, who now +Stood near his breast, where the two natures join, +Thus made reply: “He is indeed alive, +And solitary so must needs by me +Be shown the gloomy vale, thereto induc’d +By strict necessity, not by delight. +She left her joyful harpings in the sky, +Who this new office to my care consign’d. +He is no robber, no dark spirit I. +But by that virtue, which empowers my step +To treat so wild a path, grant us, I pray, +One of thy band, whom we may trust secure, +Who to the ford may lead us, and convey +Across, him mounted on his back; for he +Is not a spirit that may walk the air.” + +Then on his right breast turning, Chiron thus +To Nessus spake: “Return, and be their guide. +And if ye chance to cross another troop, +Command them keep aloof.” Onward we mov’d, +The faithful escort by our side, along +The border of the crimson-seething flood, +Whence from those steep’d within loud shrieks arose. + +Some there I mark’d, as high as to their brow +Immers’d, of whom the mighty Centaur thus: +“These are the souls of tyrants, who were given +To blood and rapine. Here they wail aloud +Their merciless wrongs. Here Alexander dwells, +And Dionysius fell, who many a year +Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. That brow +Whereon the hair so jetty clust’ring hangs, +Is Azzolino; that with flaxen locks +Obizzo’ of Este, in the world destroy’d +By his foul step-son.” To the bard rever’d +I turned me round, and thus he spake; “Let him +Be to thee now first leader, me but next +To him in rank.” Then farther on a space +The Centaur paus’d, near some, who at the throat +Were extant from the wave; and showing us +A spirit by itself apart retir’d, +Exclaim’d: “He in God’s bosom smote the heart, +Which yet is honour’d on the bank of Thames.” + +A race I next espied, who held the head, +And even all the bust above the stream. +’Midst these I many a face remember’d well. +Thus shallow more and more the blood became, +So that at last it but imbru’d the feet; +And there our passage lay athwart the foss. + +“As ever on this side the boiling wave +Thou seest diminishing,” the Centaur said, +“So on the other, be thou well assur’d, +It lower still and lower sinks its bed, +Till in that part it reuniting join, +Where ’tis the lot of tyranny to mourn. +There Heav’n’s stern justice lays chastising hand +On Attila, who was the scourge of earth, +On Sextus, and on Pyrrhus, and extracts +Tears ever by the seething flood unlock’d +From the Rinieri, of Corneto this, +Pazzo the other nam’d, who fill’d the ways +With violence and war.” This said, he turn’d, +And quitting us, alone repass’d the ford. + + + + +CANTO XIII + + +Ere Nessus yet had reach’d the other bank, +We enter’d on a forest, where no track +Of steps had worn a way. Not verdant there +The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light +The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform’d +And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns +Instead, with venom fill’d. Less sharp than these, +Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide +Those animals, that hate the cultur’d fields, +Betwixt Corneto and Cecina’s stream. + +Here the brute Harpies make their nest, the same +Who from the Strophades the Trojan band +Drove with dire boding of their future woe. +Broad are their pennons, of the human form +Their neck and count’nance, arm’d with talons keen +The feet, and the huge belly fledge with wings +These sit and wail on the drear mystic wood. + +The kind instructor in these words began: +“Ere farther thou proceed, know thou art now +I’ th’ second round, and shalt be, till thou come +Upon the horrid sand: look therefore well +Around thee, and such things thou shalt behold, +As would my speech discredit.” On all sides +I heard sad plainings breathe, and none could see +From whom they might have issu’d. In amaze +Fast bound I stood. He, as it seem’d, believ’d, +That I had thought so many voices came +From some amid those thickets close conceal’d, +And thus his speech resum’d: “If thou lop off +A single twig from one of those ill plants, +The thought thou hast conceiv’d shall vanish quite.” + +Thereat a little stretching forth my hand, +From a great wilding gather’d I a branch, +And straight the trunk exclaim’d: “Why pluck’st thou me?” +Then as the dark blood trickled down its side, +These words it added: “Wherefore tear’st me thus? +Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast? +Men once were we, that now are rooted here. +Thy hand might well have spar’d us, had we been +The souls of serpents.” As a brand yet green, +That burning at one end from the’ other sends +A groaning sound, and hisses with the wind +That forces out its way, so burst at once, +Forth from the broken splinter words and blood. + +I, letting fall the bough, remain’d as one +Assail’d by terror, and the sage replied: +“If he, O injur’d spirit! could have believ’d +What he hath seen but in my verse describ’d, +He never against thee had stretch’d his hand. +But I, because the thing surpass’d belief, +Prompted him to this deed, which even now +Myself I rue. But tell me, who thou wast; +That, for this wrong to do thee some amends, +In the upper world (for thither to return +Is granted him) thy fame he may revive.” + +“That pleasant word of thine,” the trunk replied +“Hath so inveigled me, that I from speech +Cannot refrain, wherein if I indulge +A little longer, in the snare detain’d, +Count it not grievous. I it was, who held +Both keys to Frederick’s heart, and turn’d the wards, +Opening and shutting, with a skill so sweet, +That besides me, into his inmost breast +Scarce any other could admittance find. +The faith I bore to my high charge was such, +It cost me the life-blood that warm’d my veins. +The harlot, who ne’er turn’d her gloating eyes +From Caesar’s household, common vice and pest +Of courts, ’gainst me inflam’d the minds of all; +And to Augustus they so spread the flame, +That my glad honours chang’d to bitter woes. +My soul, disdainful and disgusted, sought +Refuge in death from scorn, and I became, +Just as I was, unjust toward myself. +By the new roots, which fix this stem, I swear, +That never faith I broke to my liege lord, +Who merited such honour; and of you, +If any to the world indeed return, +Clear he from wrong my memory, that lies +Yet prostrate under envy’s cruel blow.” + +First somewhat pausing, till the mournful words +Were ended, then to me the bard began: +“Lose not the time; but speak and of him ask, +If more thou wish to learn.” Whence I replied: +“Question thou him again of whatsoe’er +Will, as thou think’st, content me; for no power +Have I to ask, such pity’ is at my heart.” + +He thus resum’d; “So may he do for thee +Freely what thou entreatest, as thou yet +Be pleas’d, imprison’d Spirit! to declare, +How in these gnarled joints the soul is tied; +And whether any ever from such frame +Be loosen’d, if thou canst, that also tell.” + +Thereat the trunk breath’d hard, and the wind soon +Chang’d into sounds articulate like these; + +Briefly ye shall be answer’d. When departs +The fierce soul from the body, by itself +Thence torn asunder, to the seventh gulf +By Minos doom’d, into the wood it falls, +No place assign’d, but wheresoever chance +Hurls it, there sprouting, as a grain of spelt, +It rises to a sapling, growing thence +A savage plant. The Harpies, on its leaves +Then feeding, cause both pain and for the pain +A vent to grief. We, as the rest, shall come +For our own spoils, yet not so that with them +We may again be clad; for what a man +Takes from himself it is not just he have. +Here we perforce shall drag them; and throughout +The dismal glade our bodies shall be hung, +Each on the wild thorn of his wretched shade.” + +Attentive yet to listen to the trunk +We stood, expecting farther speech, when us +A noise surpris’d, as when a man perceives +The wild boar and the hunt approach his place +Of station’d watch, who of the beasts and boughs +Loud rustling round him hears. And lo! there came +Two naked, torn with briers, in headlong flight, +That they before them broke each fan o’ th’ wood. +“Haste now,” the foremost cried, “now haste thee death!” +The’ other, as seem’d, impatient of delay +Exclaiming, “Lano! not so bent for speed +Thy sinews, in the lists of Toppo’s field.” +And then, for that perchance no longer breath +Suffic’d him, of himself and of a bush +One group he made. Behind them was the wood +Full of black female mastiffs, gaunt and fleet, +As greyhounds that have newly slipp’d the leash. +On him, who squatted down, they stuck their fangs, +And having rent him piecemeal bore away +The tortur’d limbs. My guide then seiz’d my hand, +And led me to the thicket, which in vain +Mourn’d through its bleeding wounds: “O Giacomo +Of Sant’ Andrea! what avails it thee,” +It cried, “that of me thou hast made thy screen? +For thy ill life what blame on me recoils?” + +When o’er it he had paus’d, my master spake: +“Say who wast thou, that at so many points +Breath’st out with blood thy lamentable speech?” + +He answer’d: “Oh, ye spirits: arriv’d in time +To spy the shameful havoc, that from me +My leaves hath sever’d thus, gather them up, +And at the foot of their sad parent-tree +Carefully lay them. In that city’ I dwelt, +Who for the Baptist her first patron chang’d, +Whence he for this shall cease not with his art +To work her woe: and if there still remain’d not +On Arno’s passage some faint glimpse of him, +Those citizens, who rear’d once more her walls +Upon the ashes left by Attila, +Had labour’d without profit of their toil. +I slung the fatal noose from my own roof.” + + + + +CANTO XIV + + +Soon as the charity of native land +Wrought in my bosom, I the scatter’d leaves +Collected, and to him restor’d, who now +Was hoarse with utt’rance. To the limit thence +We came, which from the third the second round +Divides, and where of justice is display’d +Contrivance horrible. Things then first seen +Clearlier to manifest, I tell how next +A plain we reach’d, that from its sterile bed +Each plant repell’d. The mournful wood waves round +Its garland on all sides, as round the wood +Spreads the sad foss. There, on the very edge, +Our steps we stay’d. It was an area wide +Of arid sand and thick, resembling most +The soil that erst by Cato’s foot was trod. + +Vengeance of Heav’n! Oh ! how shouldst thou be fear’d +By all, who read what here my eyes beheld! + +Of naked spirits many a flock I saw, +All weeping piteously, to different laws +Subjected: for on the’ earth some lay supine, +Some crouching close were seated, others pac’d +Incessantly around; the latter tribe, +More numerous, those fewer who beneath +The torment lay, but louder in their grief. + +O’er all the sand fell slowly wafting down +Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow +On Alpine summit, when the wind is hush’d. +As in the torrid Indian clime, the son +Of Ammon saw upon his warrior band +Descending, solid flames, that to the ground +Came down: whence he bethought him with his troop +To trample on the soil; for easier thus +The vapour was extinguish’d, while alone; +So fell the eternal fiery flood, wherewith +The marble glow’d underneath, as under stove +The viands, doubly to augment the pain. +Unceasing was the play of wretched hands, +Now this, now that way glancing, to shake off +The heat, still falling fresh. I thus began: +“Instructor! thou who all things overcom’st, +Except the hardy demons, that rush’d forth +To stop our entrance at the gate, say who +Is yon huge spirit, that, as seems, heeds not +The burning, but lies writhen in proud scorn, +As by the sultry tempest immatur’d?” + +Straight he himself, who was aware I ask’d +My guide of him, exclaim’d: “Such as I was +When living, dead such now I am. If Jove +Weary his workman out, from whom in ire +He snatch’d the lightnings, that at my last day +Transfix’d me, if the rest be weary out +At their black smithy labouring by turns +In Mongibello, while he cries aloud; +“Help, help, good Mulciber!” as erst he cried +In the Phlegraean warfare, and the bolts +Launch he full aim’d at me with all his might, +He never should enjoy a sweet revenge.” + +Then thus my guide, in accent higher rais’d +Than I before had heard him: “Capaneus! +Thou art more punish’d, in that this thy pride +Lives yet unquench’d: no torrent, save thy rage, +Were to thy fury pain proportion’d full.” + +Next turning round to me with milder lip +He spake: “This of the seven kings was one, +Who girt the Theban walls with siege, and held, +As still he seems to hold, God in disdain, +And sets his high omnipotence at nought. +But, as I told him, his despiteful mood +Is ornament well suits the breast that wears it. +Follow me now; and look thou set not yet +Thy foot in the hot sand, but to the wood +Keep ever close.” Silently on we pass’d +To where there gushes from the forest’s bound +A little brook, whose crimson’d wave yet lifts +My hair with horror. As the rill, that runs +From Bulicame, to be portion’d out +Among the sinful women; so ran this +Down through the sand, its bottom and each bank +Stone-built, and either margin at its side, +Whereon I straight perceiv’d our passage lay. + +“Of all that I have shown thee, since that gate +We enter’d first, whose threshold is to none +Denied, nought else so worthy of regard, +As is this river, has thine eye discern’d, +O’er which the flaming volley all is quench’d.” + +So spake my guide; and I him thence besought, +That having giv’n me appetite to know, +The food he too would give, that hunger crav’d. + +“In midst of ocean,” forthwith he began, +“A desolate country lies, which Crete is nam’d, +Under whose monarch in old times the world +Liv’d pure and chaste. A mountain rises there, +Call’d Ida, joyous once with leaves and streams, +Deserted now like a forbidden thing. +It was the spot which Rhea, Saturn’s spouse, +Chose for the secret cradle of her son; +And better to conceal him, drown’d in shouts +His infant cries. Within the mount, upright +An ancient form there stands and huge, that turns +His shoulders towards Damiata, and at Rome +As in his mirror looks. Of finest gold +His head is shap’d, pure silver are the breast +And arms; thence to the middle is of brass. +And downward all beneath well-temper’d steel, +Save the right foot of potter’s clay, on which +Than on the other more erect he stands, +Each part except the gold, is rent throughout; +And from the fissure tears distil, which join’d +Penetrate to that cave. They in their course +Thus far precipitated down the rock +Form Acheron, and Styx, and Phlegethon; +Then by this straiten’d channel passing hence +Beneath, e’en to the lowest depth of all, +Form there Cocytus, of whose lake (thyself +Shall see it) I here give thee no account.” + +Then I to him: “If from our world this sluice +Be thus deriv’d; wherefore to us but now +Appears it at this edge?” He straight replied: +“The place, thou know’st, is round; and though great part +Thou have already pass’d, still to the left +Descending to the nethermost, not yet +Hast thou the circuit made of the whole orb. +Wherefore if aught of new to us appear, +It needs not bring up wonder in thy looks.” + +Then I again inquir’d: “Where flow the streams +Of Phlegethon and Lethe? for of one +Thou tell’st not, and the other of that shower, +Thou say’st, is form’d.” He answer thus return’d: +“Doubtless thy questions all well pleas’d I hear. +Yet the red seething wave might have resolv’d +One thou proposest. Lethe thou shalt see, +But not within this hollow, in the place, +Whither to lave themselves the spirits go, +Whose blame hath been by penitence remov’d.” +He added: “Time is now we quit the wood. +Look thou my steps pursue: the margins give +Safe passage, unimpeded by the flames; +For over them all vapour is extinct.” + + + + +CANTO XV + + +One of the solid margins bears us now +Envelop’d in the mist, that from the stream +Arising, hovers o’er, and saves from fire +Both piers and water. As the Flemings rear +Their mound, ’twixt Ghent and Bruges, to chase back +The ocean, fearing his tumultuous tide +That drives toward them, or the Paduans theirs +Along the Brenta, to defend their towns +And castles, ere the genial warmth be felt +On Chiarentana’s top; such were the mounds, +So fram’d, though not in height or bulk to these +Made equal, by the master, whosoe’er +He was, that rais’d them here. We from the wood +Were not so far remov’d, that turning round +I might not have discern’d it, when we met +A troop of spirits, who came beside the pier. + +They each one ey’d us, as at eventide +One eyes another under a new moon, +And toward us sharpen’d their sight as keen, +As an old tailor at his needle’s eye. + +Thus narrowly explor’d by all the tribe, +I was agniz’d of one, who by the skirt +Caught me, and cried, “What wonder have we here!” + +And I, when he to me outstretch’d his arm, +Intently fix’d my ken on his parch’d looks, +That although smirch’d with fire, they hinder’d not +But I remember’d him; and towards his face +My hand inclining, answer’d: “Sir! Brunetto! +And art thou here?” He thus to me: “My son! +Oh let it not displease thee, if Brunetto +Latini but a little space with thee +Turn back, and leave his fellows to proceed.” + +I thus to him replied: “Much as I can, +I thereto pray thee; and if thou be willing, +That I here seat me with thee, I consent; +His leave, with whom I journey, first obtain’d.” + +“O son!” said he, “ whoever of this throng +One instant stops, lies then a hundred years, +No fan to ventilate him, when the fire +Smites sorest. Pass thou therefore on. I close +Will at thy garments walk, and then rejoin +My troop, who go mourning their endless doom.” + +I dar’d not from the path descend to tread +On equal ground with him, but held my head +Bent down, as one who walks in reverent guise. + +“What chance or destiny,” thus be began, +“Ere the last day conducts thee here below? +And who is this, that shows to thee the way?” + +“There up aloft,” I answer’d, “in the life +Serene, I wander’d in a valley lost, +Before mine age had to its fullness reach’d. +But yester-morn I left it: then once more +Into that vale returning, him I met; +And by this path homeward he leads me back.” + +“If thou,” he answer’d, “follow but thy star, +Thou canst not miss at last a glorious haven: +Unless in fairer days my judgment err’d. +And if my fate so early had not chanc’d, +Seeing the heav’ns thus bounteous to thee, I +Had gladly giv’n thee comfort in thy work. +But that ungrateful and malignant race, +Who in old times came down from Fesole, +Ay and still smack of their rough mountain-flint, +Will for thy good deeds shew thee enmity. +Nor wonder; for amongst ill-savour’d crabs +It suits not the sweet fig-tree lay her fruit. +Old fame reports them in the world for blind, +Covetous, envious, proud. Look to it well: +Take heed thou cleanse thee of their ways. For thee +Thy fortune hath such honour in reserve, +That thou by either party shalt be crav’d +With hunger keen: but be the fresh herb far +From the goat’s tooth. The herd of Fesole +May of themselves make litter, not touch the plant, +If any such yet spring on their rank bed, +In which the holy seed revives, transmitted +From those true Romans, who still there remain’d, +When it was made the nest of so much ill.” + +“Were all my wish fulfill’d,” I straight replied, +“Thou from the confines of man’s nature yet +Hadst not been driven forth; for in my mind +Is fix’d, and now strikes full upon my heart +The dear, benign, paternal image, such +As thine was, when so lately thou didst teach me +The way for man to win eternity; +And how I priz’d the lesson, it behooves, +That, long as life endures, my tongue should speak, +What of my fate thou tell’st, that write I down: +And with another text to comment on +For her I keep it, the celestial dame, +Who will know all, if I to her arrive. +This only would I have thee clearly note: +That so my conscience have no plea against me; +Do fortune as she list, I stand prepar’d. +Not new or strange such earnest to mine ear. +Speed fortune then her wheel, as likes her best, +The clown his mattock; all things have their course.” + +Thereat my sapient guide upon his right +Turn’d himself back, then look’d at me and spake: +“He listens to good purpose who takes note.” + +I not the less still on my way proceed, +Discoursing with Brunetto, and inquire +Who are most known and chief among his tribe. + +“To know of some is well;” thus he replied, +“But of the rest silence may best beseem. +Time would not serve us for report so long. +In brief I tell thee, that all these were clerks, +Men of great learning and no less renown, +By one same sin polluted in the world. +With them is Priscian, and Accorso’s son +Francesco herds among that wretched throng: +And, if the wish of so impure a blotch +Possess’d thee, him thou also might’st have seen, +Who by the servants’ servant was transferr’d +From Arno’s seat to Bacchiglione, where +His ill-strain’d nerves he left. I more would add, +But must from farther speech and onward way +Alike desist, for yonder I behold +A mist new-risen on the sandy plain. +A company, with whom I may not sort, +Approaches. I commend my TREASURE to thee, +Wherein I yet survive; my sole request.” + +This said he turn’d, and seem’d as one of those, +Who o’er Verona’s champain try their speed +For the green mantle, and of them he seem’d, +Not he who loses but who gains the prize. + + + + +CANTO XVI + + +Now came I where the water’s din was heard, +As down it fell into the other round, +Resounding like the hum of swarming bees: +When forth together issu’d from a troop, +That pass’d beneath the fierce tormenting storm, +Three spirits, running swift. They towards us came, +And each one cried aloud, “Oh do thou stay! +Whom by the fashion of thy garb we deem +To be some inmate of our evil land.” + +Ah me! what wounds I mark’d upon their limbs, +Recent and old, inflicted by the flames! +E’en the remembrance of them grieves me yet. + +Attentive to their cry my teacher paus’d, +And turn’d to me his visage, and then spake; +“Wait now! our courtesy these merit well: +And were ’t not for the nature of the place, +Whence glide the fiery darts, I should have said, +That haste had better suited thee than them.” + +They, when we stopp’d, resum’d their ancient wail, +And soon as they had reach’d us, all the three +Whirl’d round together in one restless wheel. +As naked champions, smear’d with slippery oil, +Are wont intent to watch their place of hold +And vantage, ere in closer strife they meet; +Thus each one, as he wheel’d, his countenance +At me directed, so that opposite +The neck mov’d ever to the twinkling feet. + +“If misery of this drear wilderness,” +Thus one began, “added to our sad cheer +And destitute, do call forth scorn on us +And our entreaties, let our great renown +Incline thee to inform us who thou art, +That dost imprint with living feet unharm’d +The soil of Hell. He, in whose track thou see’st +My steps pursuing, naked though he be +And reft of all, was of more high estate +Than thou believest; grandchild of the chaste +Gualdrada, him they Guidoguerra call’d, +Who in his lifetime many a noble act +Achiev’d, both by his wisdom and his sword. +The other, next to me that beats the sand, +Is Aldobrandi, name deserving well, +In the’ upper world, of honour; and myself +Who in this torment do partake with them, +Am Rusticucci, whom, past doubt, my wife +Of savage temper, more than aught beside +Hath to this evil brought.” If from the fire +I had been shelter’d, down amidst them straight +I then had cast me, nor my guide, I deem, +Would have restrain’d my going; but that fear +Of the dire burning vanquish’d the desire, +Which made me eager of their wish’d embrace. + +I then began: “Not scorn, but grief much more, +Such as long time alone can cure, your doom +Fix’d deep within me, soon as this my lord +Spake words, whose tenour taught me to expect +That such a race, as ye are, was at hand. +I am a countryman of yours, who still +Affectionate have utter’d, and have heard +Your deeds and names renown’d. Leaving the gall +For the sweet fruit I go, that a sure guide +Hath promis’d to me. But behooves, that far +As to the centre first I downward tend.” + +“So may long space thy spirit guide thy limbs,” +He answer straight return’d; “and so thy fame +Shine bright, when thou art gone; as thou shalt tell, +If courtesy and valour, as they wont, +Dwell in our city, or have vanish’d clean? +For one amidst us late condemn’d to wail, +Borsiere, yonder walking with his peers, +Grieves us no little by the news he brings.” + +“An upstart multitude and sudden gains, +Pride and excess, O Florence! have in thee +Engender’d, so that now in tears thou mourn’st!” +Thus cried I with my face uprais’d, and they +All three, who for an answer took my words, +Look’d at each other, as men look when truth +Comes to their ear. “If thou at other times,” +They all at once rejoin’d, “so easily +Satisfy those, who question, happy thou, +Gifted with words, so apt to speak thy thought! +Wherefore if thou escape this darksome clime, +Returning to behold the radiant stars, +When thou with pleasure shalt retrace the past, +See that of us thou speak among mankind.” + +This said, they broke the circle, and so swift +Fled, that as pinions seem’d their nimble feet. + +Not in so short a time might one have said +“Amen,” as they had vanish’d. Straight my guide +Pursu’d his track. I follow’d; and small space +Had we pass’d onward, when the water’s sound +Was now so near at hand, that we had scarce +Heard one another’s speech for the loud din. + +E’en as the river, that holds on its course +Unmingled, from the mount of Vesulo, +On the left side of Apennine, toward +The east, which Acquacheta higher up +They call, ere it descend into the vale, +At Forli by that name no longer known, +Rebellows o’er Saint Benedict, roll’d on +From the’ Alpine summit down a precipice, +Where space enough to lodge a thousand spreads; +Thus downward from a craggy steep we found, +That this dark wave resounded, roaring loud, +So that the ear its clamour soon had stunn’d. + +I had a cord that brac’d my girdle round, +Wherewith I erst had thought fast bound to take +The painted leopard. This when I had all +Unloosen’d from me (so my master bade) +I gather’d up, and stretch’d it forth to him. +Then to the right he turn’d, and from the brink +Standing few paces distant, cast it down +Into the deep abyss. “And somewhat strange,” +Thus to myself I spake, “signal so strange +Betokens, which my guide with earnest eye +Thus follows.” Ah! what caution must men use +With those who look not at the deed alone, +But spy into the thoughts with subtle skill! + +“Quickly shall come,” he said, “what I expect, +Thine eye discover quickly, that whereof +Thy thought is dreaming.” Ever to that truth, +Which but the semblance of a falsehood wears, +A man, if possible, should bar his lip; +Since, although blameless, he incurs reproach. +But silence here were vain; and by these notes +Which now I sing, reader! I swear to thee, +So may they favour find to latest times! +That through the gross and murky air I spied +A shape come swimming up, that might have quell’d +The stoutest heart with wonder, in such guise +As one returns, who hath been down to loose +An anchor grappled fast against some rock, +Or to aught else that in the salt wave lies, +Who upward springing close draws in his feet. + + + + +CANTO XVII + + +“Lo! the fell monster with the deadly sting! +Who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls +And firm embattled spears, and with his filth +Taints all the world!” Thus me my guide address’d, +And beckon’d him, that he should come to shore, +Near to the stony causeway’s utmost edge. + +Forthwith that image vile of fraud appear’d, +His head and upper part expos’d on land, +But laid not on the shore his bestial train. +His face the semblance of a just man’s wore, +So kind and gracious was its outward cheer; +The rest was serpent all: two shaggy claws +Reach’d to the armpits, and the back and breast, +And either side, were painted o’er with nodes +And orbits. Colours variegated more +Nor Turks nor Tartars e’er on cloth of state +With interchangeable embroidery wove, +Nor spread Arachne o’er her curious loom. +As ofttimes a light skiff, moor’d to the shore, +Stands part in water, part upon the land; +Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor, +The beaver settles watching for his prey; +So on the rim, that fenc’d the sand with rock, +Sat perch’d the fiend of evil. In the void +Glancing, his tail upturn’d its venomous fork, +With sting like scorpion’s arm’d. Then thus my guide: +“Now need our way must turn few steps apart, +Far as to that ill beast, who couches there.” + +Thereat toward the right our downward course +We shap’d, and, better to escape the flame +And burning marle, ten paces on the verge +Proceeded. Soon as we to him arrive, +A little further on mine eye beholds +A tribe of spirits, seated on the sand +Near the wide chasm. Forthwith my master spake: +“That to the full thy knowledge may extend +Of all this round contains, go now, and mark +The mien these wear: but hold not long discourse. +Till thou returnest, I with him meantime +Will parley, that to us he may vouchsafe +The aid of his strong shoulders.” Thus alone +Yet forward on the’ extremity I pac’d +Of that seventh circle, where the mournful tribe +Were seated. At the eyes forth gush’d their pangs. +Against the vapours and the torrid soil +Alternately their shifting hands they plied. +Thus use the dogs in summer still to ply +Their jaws and feet by turns, when bitten sore +By gnats, or flies, or gadflies swarming round. + +Noting the visages of some, who lay +Beneath the pelting of that dolorous fire, +One of them all I knew not; but perceiv’d, +That pendent from his neck each bore a pouch +With colours and with emblems various mark’d, +On which it seem’d as if their eye did feed. + +And when amongst them looking round I came, +A yellow purse I saw with azure wrought, +That wore a lion’s countenance and port. +Then still my sight pursuing its career, +Another I beheld, than blood more red. +A goose display of whiter wing than curd. +And one, who bore a fat and azure swine +Pictur’d on his white scrip, addressed me thus: +“What dost thou in this deep? Go now and know, +Since yet thou livest, that my neighbour here +Vitaliano on my left shall sit. +A Paduan with these Florentines am I. +Ofttimes they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming +“O haste that noble knight! he who the pouch +With the three beaks will bring!” This said, he writh’d +The mouth, and loll’d the tongue out, like an ox +That licks his nostrils. I, lest longer stay +He ill might brook, who bade me stay not long, +Backward my steps from those sad spirits turn’d. + +My guide already seated on the haunch +Of the fierce animal I found; and thus +He me encourag’d. “Be thou stout; be bold. +Down such a steep flight must we now descend! +Mount thou before: for that no power the tail +May have to harm thee, I will be i’ th’ midst.” + +As one, who hath an ague fit so near, +His nails already are turn’d blue, and he +Quivers all o’er, if he but eye the shade; +Such was my cheer at hearing of his words. +But shame soon interpos’d her threat, who makes +The servant bold in presence of his lord. + +I settled me upon those shoulders huge, +And would have said, but that the words to aid +My purpose came not, “Look thou clasp me firm!” + +But he whose succour then not first I prov’d, +Soon as I mounted, in his arms aloft, +Embracing, held me up, and thus he spake: +“Geryon! now move thee! be thy wheeling gyres +Of ample circuit, easy thy descent. +Think on th’ unusual burden thou sustain’st.” + +As a small vessel, back’ning out from land, +Her station quits; so thence the monster loos’d, +And when he felt himself at large, turn’d round +There where the breast had been, his forked tail. +Thus, like an eel, outstretch’d at length he steer’d, +Gath’ring the air up with retractile claws. + +Not greater was the dread when Phaeton +The reins let drop at random, whence high heaven, +Whereof signs yet appear, was wrapt in flames; +Nor when ill-fated Icarus perceiv’d, +By liquefaction of the scalded wax, +The trusted pennons loosen’d from his loins, +His sire exclaiming loud, “Ill way thou keep’st!” +Than was my dread, when round me on each part +The air I view’d, and other object none +Save the fell beast. He slowly sailing, wheels +His downward motion, unobserv’d of me, +But that the wind, arising to my face, +Breathes on me from below. Now on our right +I heard the cataract beneath us leap +With hideous crash; whence bending down to’ explore, +New terror I conceiv’d at the steep plunge: +For flames I saw, and wailings smote mine ear: +So that all trembling close I crouch’d my limbs, +And then distinguish’d, unperceiv’d before, +By the dread torments that on every side +Drew nearer, how our downward course we wound. + +As falcon, that hath long been on the wing, +But lure nor bird hath seen, while in despair +The falconer cries, “Ah me! thou stoop’st to earth!” +Wearied descends, and swiftly down the sky +In many an orbit wheels, then lighting sits +At distance from his lord in angry mood; +So Geryon lighting places us on foot +Low down at base of the deep-furrow’d rock, +And, of his burden there discharg’d, forthwith +Sprang forward, like an arrow from the string. + + + + +CANTO XVIII + + +There is a place within the depths of hell +Call’d Malebolge, all of rock dark-stain’d +With hue ferruginous, e’en as the steep +That round it circling winds. Right in the midst +Of that abominable region, yawns +A spacious gulf profound, whereof the frame +Due time shall tell. The circle, that remains, +Throughout its round, between the gulf and base +Of the high craggy banks, successive forms +Ten trenches, in its hollow bottom sunk. + +As where to guard the walls, full many a foss +Begirds some stately castle, sure defence +Affording to the space within, so here +Were model’d these; and as like fortresses +E’en from their threshold to the brink without, +Are flank’d with bridges; from the rock’s low base +Thus flinty paths advanc’d, that ’cross the moles +And dikes, struck onward far as to the gulf, +That in one bound collected cuts them off. +Such was the place, wherein we found ourselves +From Geryon’s back dislodg’d. The bard to left +Held on his way, and I behind him mov’d. + +On our right hand new misery I saw, +New pains, new executioners of wrath, +That swarming peopled the first chasm. Below +Were naked sinners. Hitherward they came, +Meeting our faces from the middle point, +With us beyond but with a larger stride. +E’en thus the Romans, when the year returns +Of Jubilee, with better speed to rid +The thronging multitudes, their means devise +For such as pass the bridge; that on one side +All front toward the castle, and approach +Saint Peter’s fane, on th’ other towards the mount. + +Each divers way along the grisly rock, +Horn’d demons I beheld, with lashes huge, +That on their back unmercifully smote. +Ah! how they made them bound at the first stripe! +None for the second waited nor the third. + +Meantime as on I pass’d, one met my sight +Whom soon as view’d; “Of him,” cried I, “not yet +Mine eye hath had his fill.” With fixed gaze +I therefore scann’d him. Straight the teacher kind +Paus’d with me, and consented I should walk +Backward a space, and the tormented spirit, +Who thought to hide him, bent his visage down. +But it avail’d him nought; for I exclaim’d: +“Thou who dost cast thy eye upon the ground, +Unless thy features do belie thee much, +Venedico art thou. But what brings thee +Into this bitter seas’ning? “ He replied: +“Unwillingly I answer to thy words. +But thy clear speech, that to my mind recalls +The world I once inhabited, constrains me. +Know then ’twas I who led fair Ghisola +To do the Marquis’ will, however fame +The shameful tale have bruited. Nor alone +Bologna hither sendeth me to mourn +Rather with us the place is so o’erthrong’d +That not so many tongues this day are taught, +Betwixt the Reno and Savena’s stream, +To answer SIPA in their country’s phrase. +And if of that securer proof thou need, +Remember but our craving thirst for gold.” + +Him speaking thus, a demon with his thong +Struck, and exclaim’d, “Away! corrupter! here +Women are none for sale.” Forthwith I join’d +My escort, and few paces thence we came +To where a rock forth issued from the bank. +That easily ascended, to the right +Upon its splinter turning, we depart +From those eternal barriers. When arriv’d, +Where underneath the gaping arch lets pass +The scourged souls: “Pause here,” the teacher said, +“And let these others miserable, now +Strike on thy ken, faces not yet beheld, +For that together they with us have walk’d.” + +From the old bridge we ey’d the pack, who came +From th’ other side towards us, like the rest, +Excoriate from the lash. My gentle guide, +By me unquestion’d, thus his speech resum’d: +“Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends, +And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear. +How yet the regal aspect he retains! +Jason is he, whose skill and prowess won +The ram from Colchos. To the Lemnian isle +His passage thither led him, when those bold +And pitiless women had slain all their males. +There he with tokens and fair witching words +Hypsipyle beguil’d, a virgin young, +Who first had all the rest herself beguil’d. +Impregnated he left her there forlorn. +Such is the guilt condemns him to this pain. +Here too Medea’s inj’ries are avenged. +All bear him company, who like deceit +To his have practis’d. And thus much to know +Of the first vale suffice thee, and of those +Whom its keen torments urge.” Now had we come +Where, crossing the next pier, the straighten’d path +Bestrides its shoulders to another arch. + +Hence in the second chasm we heard the ghosts, +Who jibber in low melancholy sounds, +With wide-stretch’d nostrils snort, and on themselves +Smite with their palms. Upon the banks a scurf +From the foul steam condens’d, encrusting hung, +That held sharp combat with the sight and smell. + +So hollow is the depth, that from no part, +Save on the summit of the rocky span, +Could I distinguish aught. Thus far we came; +And thence I saw, within the foss below, +A crowd immers’d in ordure, that appear’d +Draff of the human body. There beneath +Searching with eye inquisitive, I mark’d +One with his head so grim’d, ’twere hard to deem, +If he were clerk or layman. Loud he cried: +“Why greedily thus bendest more on me, +Than on these other filthy ones, thy ken?” + +“Because if true my mem’ry,” I replied, +“I heretofore have seen thee with dry locks, +And thou Alessio art of Lucca sprung. +Therefore than all the rest I scan thee more.” + +Then beating on his brain these words he spake: +“Me thus low down my flatteries have sunk, +Wherewith I ne’er enough could glut my tongue.” + +My leader thus: “A little further stretch +Thy face, that thou the visage well mayst note +Of that besotted, sluttish courtezan, +Who there doth rend her with defiled nails, +Now crouching down, now risen on her feet. +Thais is this, the harlot, whose false lip +Answer’d her doting paramour that ask’d, +‘Thankest me much!’—‘Say rather wondrously,’ +And seeing this here satiate be our view.” + + + + +CANTO XIX + + +Woe to thee, Simon Magus! woe to you, +His wretched followers! who the things of God, +Which should be wedded unto goodness, them, +Rapacious as ye are, do prostitute +For gold and silver in adultery! +Now must the trumpet sound for you, since yours +Is the third chasm. Upon the following vault +We now had mounted, where the rock impends +Directly o’er the centre of the foss. + +Wisdom Supreme! how wonderful the art, +Which thou dost manifest in heaven, in earth, +And in the evil world, how just a meed +Allotting by thy virtue unto all! + +I saw the livid stone, throughout the sides +And in its bottom full of apertures, +All equal in their width, and circular each, +Nor ample less nor larger they appear’d +Than in Saint John’s fair dome of me belov’d +Those fram’d to hold the pure baptismal streams, +One of the which I brake, some few years past, +To save a whelming infant; and be this +A seal to undeceive whoever doubts +The motive of my deed. From out the mouth +Of every one, emerg’d a sinner’s feet +And of the legs high upward as the calf +The rest beneath was hid. On either foot +The soles were burning, whence the flexile joints +Glanc’d with such violent motion, as had snapt +Asunder cords or twisted withs. As flame, +Feeding on unctuous matter, glides along +The surface, scarcely touching where it moves; +So here, from heel to point, glided the flames. + +“Master! say who is he, than all the rest +Glancing in fiercer agony, on whom +A ruddier flame doth prey?” I thus inquir’d. + +“If thou be willing,” he replied, “that I +Carry thee down, where least the slope bank falls, +He of himself shall tell thee and his wrongs.” + +I then: “As pleases thee to me is best. +Thou art my lord; and know’st that ne’er I quit +Thy will: what silence hides that knowest thou.” +Thereat on the fourth pier we came, we turn’d, +And on our left descended to the depth, +A narrow strait and perforated close. +Nor from his side my leader set me down, +Till to his orifice he brought, whose limb +Quiv’ring express’d his pang. “Whoe’er thou art, +Sad spirit! thus revers’d, and as a stake +Driv’n in the soil!” I in these words began, +“If thou be able, utter forth thy voice.” + +There stood I like the friar, that doth shrive +A wretch for murder doom’d, who e’en when fix’d, +Calleth him back, whence death awhile delays. + +He shouted: “Ha! already standest there? +Already standest there, O Boniface! +By many a year the writing play’d me false. +So early dost thou surfeit with the wealth, +For which thou fearedst not in guile to take +The lovely lady, and then mangle her?” + +I felt as those who, piercing not the drift +Of answer made them, stand as if expos’d +In mockery, nor know what to reply, +When Virgil thus admonish’d: “Tell him quick, +I am not he, not he, whom thou believ’st.” + +And I, as was enjoin’d me, straight replied. + +That heard, the spirit all did wrench his feet, +And sighing next in woeful accent spake: +“What then of me requirest?” If to know +So much imports thee, who I am, that thou +Hast therefore down the bank descended, learn +That in the mighty mantle I was rob’d, +And of a she-bear was indeed the son, +So eager to advance my whelps, that there +My having in my purse above I stow’d, +And here myself. Under my head are dragg’d +The rest, my predecessors in the guilt +Of simony. Stretch’d at their length they lie +Along an opening in the rock. ’Midst them +I also low shall fall, soon as he comes, +For whom I took thee, when so hastily +I question’d. But already longer time +Hath pass’d, since my souls kindled, and I thus +Upturn’d have stood, than is his doom to stand +Planted with fiery feet. For after him, +One yet of deeds more ugly shall arrive, +From forth the west, a shepherd without law, +Fated to cover both his form and mine. +He a new Jason shall be call’d, of whom +In Maccabees we read; and favour such +As to that priest his king indulgent show’d, +Shall be of France’s monarch shown to him.” + +I know not if I here too far presum’d, +But in this strain I answer’d: “Tell me now, +What treasures from St. Peter at the first +Our Lord demanded, when he put the keys +Into his charge? Surely he ask’d no more +But, Follow me! Nor Peter nor the rest +Or gold or silver of Matthias took, +When lots were cast upon the forfeit place +Of the condemned soul. Abide thou then; +Thy punishment of right is merited: +And look thou well to that ill-gotten coin, +Which against Charles thy hardihood inspir’d. +If reverence of the keys restrain’d me not, +Which thou in happier time didst hold, I yet +Severer speech might use. Your avarice +O’ercasts the world with mourning, under foot +Treading the good, and raising bad men up. +Of shepherds, like to you, th’ Evangelist +Was ware, when her, who sits upon the waves, +With kings in filthy whoredom he beheld, +She who with seven heads tower’d at her birth, +And from ten horns her proof of glory drew, +Long as her spouse in virtue took delight. +Of gold and silver ye have made your god, +Diff’ring wherein from the idolater, +But he that worships one, a hundred ye? +Ah, Constantine! to how much ill gave birth, +Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dower, +Which the first wealthy Father gain’d from thee!” + +Meanwhile, as thus I sung, he, whether wrath +Or conscience smote him, violent upsprang +Spinning on either sole. I do believe +My teacher well was pleas’d, with so compos’d +A lip, he listen’d ever to the sound +Of the true words I utter’d. In both arms +He caught, and to his bosom lifting me +Upward retrac’d the way of his descent. + +Nor weary of his weight he press’d me close, +Till to the summit of the rock we came, +Our passage from the fourth to the fifth pier. +His cherish’d burden there gently he plac’d +Upon the rugged rock and steep, a path +Not easy for the clamb’ring goat to mount. + +Thence to my view another vale appear’d + + + + +CANTO XX + + +And now the verse proceeds to torments new, +Fit argument of this the twentieth strain +Of the first song, whose awful theme records +The spirits whelm’d in woe. Earnest I look’d +Into the depth, that open’d to my view, +Moisten’d with tears of anguish, and beheld +A tribe, that came along the hollow vale, +In silence weeping: such their step as walk +Quires chanting solemn litanies on earth. + +As on them more direct mine eye descends, +Each wondrously seem’d to be revers’d +At the neck-bone, so that the countenance +Was from the reins averted: and because +None might before him look, they were compell’d +To’ advance with backward gait. Thus one perhaps +Hath been by force of palsy clean transpos’d, +But I ne’er saw it nor believe it so. + +Now, reader! think within thyself, so God +Fruit of thy reading give thee! how I long +Could keep my visage dry, when I beheld +Near me our form distorted in such guise, +That on the hinder parts fall’n from the face +The tears down-streaming roll’d. Against a rock +I leant and wept, so that my guide exclaim’d: +“What, and art thou too witless as the rest? +Here pity most doth show herself alive, +When she is dead. What guilt exceedeth his, +Who with Heaven’s judgment in his passion strives? +Raise up thy head, raise up, and see the man, +Before whose eyes earth gap’d in Thebes, when all +Cried out, ‘Amphiaraus, whither rushest? +‘Why leavest thou the war?’ He not the less +Fell ruining far as to Minos down, +Whose grapple none eludes. Lo! how he makes +The breast his shoulders, and who once too far +Before him wish’d to see, now backward looks, +And treads reverse his path. Tiresias note, +Who semblance chang’d, when woman he became +Of male, through every limb transform’d, and then +Once more behov’d him with his rod to strike +The two entwining serpents, ere the plumes, +That mark’d the better sex, might shoot again. + +“Aruns, with rere his belly facing, comes. +On Luni’s mountains ’midst the marbles white, +Where delves Carrara’s hind, who wons beneath, +A cavern was his dwelling, whence the stars +And main-sea wide in boundless view he held. + +“The next, whose loosen’d tresses overspread +Her bosom, which thou seest not (for each hair +On that side grows) was Manto, she who search’d +Through many regions, and at length her seat +Fix’d in my native land, whence a short space +My words detain thy audience. When her sire +From life departed, and in servitude +The city dedicate to Bacchus mourn’d, +Long time she went a wand’rer through the world. +Aloft in Italy’s delightful land +A lake there lies, at foot of that proud Alp, +That o’er the Tyrol locks Germania in, +Its name Benacus, which a thousand rills, +Methinks, and more, water between the vale +Camonica and Garda and the height +Of Apennine remote. There is a spot +At midway of that lake, where he who bears +Of Trento’s flock the past’ral staff, with him +Of Brescia, and the Veronese, might each +Passing that way his benediction give. +A garrison of goodly site and strong +Peschiera stands, to awe with front oppos’d +The Bergamese and Brescian, whence the shore +More slope each way descends. There, whatsoev’er +Benacus’ bosom holds not, tumbling o’er +Down falls, and winds a river flood beneath +Through the green pastures. Soon as in his course +The steam makes head, Benacus then no more +They call the name, but Mincius, till at last +Reaching Governo into Po he falls. +Not far his course hath run, when a wide flat +It finds, which overstretchmg as a marsh +It covers, pestilent in summer oft. +Hence journeying, the savage maiden saw +’Midst of the fen a territory waste +And naked of inhabitants. To shun +All human converse, here she with her slaves +Plying her arts remain’d, and liv’d, and left +Her body tenantless. Thenceforth the tribes, +Who round were scatter’d, gath’ring to that place +Assembled; for its strength was great, enclos’d +On all parts by the fen. On those dead bones +They rear’d themselves a city, for her sake, +Calling it Mantua, who first chose the spot, +Nor ask’d another omen for the name, +Wherein more numerous the people dwelt, +Ere Casalodi’s madness by deceit +Was wrong’d of Pinamonte. If thou hear +Henceforth another origin assign’d +Of that my country, I forewarn thee now, +That falsehood none beguile thee of the truth.” + +I answer’d: “Teacher, I conclude thy words +So certain, that all else shall be to me +As embers lacking life. But now of these, +Who here proceed, instruct me, if thou see +Any that merit more especial note. +For thereon is my mind alone intent.” + +He straight replied: “That spirit, from whose cheek +The beard sweeps o’er his shoulders brown, what time +Graecia was emptied of her males, that scarce +The cradles were supplied, the seer was he +In Aulis, who with Calchas gave the sign +When first to cut the cable. Him they nam’d +Eurypilus: so sings my tragic strain, +In which majestic measure well thou know’st, +Who know’st it all. That other, round the loins +So slender of his shape, was Michael Scot, +Practis’d in ev’ry slight of magic wile. + +“Guido Bonatti see: Asdente mark, +Who now were willing, he had tended still +The thread and cordwain; and too late repents. + +“See next the wretches, who the needle left, +The shuttle and the spindle, and became +Diviners: baneful witcheries they wrought +With images and herbs. But onward now: +For now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine +On either hemisphere, touching the wave +Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight +The moon was round. Thou mayst remember well: +For she good service did thee in the gloom +Of the deep wood.” This said, both onward mov’d. + + + + +CANTO XXI + + +Thus we from bridge to bridge, with other talk, +The which my drama cares not to rehearse, +Pass’d on; and to the summit reaching, stood +To view another gap, within the round +Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs. + +Marvelous darkness shadow’d o’er the place. + +In the Venetians’ arsenal as boils +Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear +Their unsound vessels; for th’ inclement time +Sea-faring men restrains, and in that while +His bark one builds anew, another stops +The ribs of his, that hath made many a voyage; +One hammers at the prow, one at the poop; +This shapeth oars, that other cables twirls, +The mizen one repairs and main-sail rent +So not by force of fire but art divine +Boil’d here a glutinous thick mass, that round +Lim’d all the shore beneath. I that beheld, +But therein nought distinguish’d, save the surge, +Rais’d by the boiling, in one mighty swell +Heave, and by turns subsiding and fall. While there +I fix’d my ken below, “Mark! mark!” my guide +Exclaiming, drew me towards him from the place, +Wherein I stood. I turn’d myself as one, +Impatient to behold that which beheld +He needs must shun, whom sudden fear unmans, +That he his flight delays not for the view. +Behind me I discern’d a devil black, +That running, up advanc’d along the rock. +Ah! what fierce cruelty his look bespake! +In act how bitter did he seem, with wings +Buoyant outstretch’d and feet of nimblest tread! +His shoulder proudly eminent and sharp +Was with a sinner charg’d; by either haunch +He held him, the foot’s sinew griping fast. + +“Ye of our bridge!” he cried, “keen-talon’d fiends! +Lo! one of Santa Zita’s elders! Him +Whelm ye beneath, while I return for more. +That land hath store of such. All men are there, +Except Bonturo, barterers: of ‘no’ +For lucre there an ‘aye’ is quickly made.” + +Him dashing down, o’er the rough rock he turn’d, +Nor ever after thief a mastiff loos’d +Sped with like eager haste. That other sank +And forthwith writing to the surface rose. +But those dark demons, shrouded by the bridge, +Cried “Here the hallow’d visage saves not: here +Is other swimming than in Serchio’s wave. +Wherefore if thou desire we rend thee not, +Take heed thou mount not o’er the pitch.” This said, +They grappled him with more than hundred hooks, +And shouted: “Cover’d thou must sport thee here; +So, if thou canst, in secret mayst thou filch.” +E’en thus the cook bestirs him, with his grooms, +To thrust the flesh into the caldron down +With flesh-hooks, that it float not on the top. + +Me then my guide bespake: “Lest they descry, +That thou art here, behind a craggy rock +Bend low and screen thee; and whate’er of force +Be offer’d me, or insult, fear thou not: +For I am well advis’d, who have been erst +In the like fray.” Beyond the bridge’s head +Therewith he pass’d, and reaching the sixth pier, +Behov’d him then a forehead terror-proof. + +With storm and fury, as when dogs rush forth +Upon the poor man’s back, who suddenly +From whence he standeth makes his suit; so rush’d +Those from beneath the arch, and against him +Their weapons all they pointed. He aloud: +“Be none of you outrageous: ere your time +Dare seize me, come forth from amongst you one, +Who having heard my words, decide he then +If he shall tear these limbs.” They shouted loud, +“Go, Malacoda!” Whereat one advanc’d, +The others standing firm, and as he came, +“What may this turn avail him?” he exclaim’d. + +“Believ’st thou, Malacoda! I had come +Thus far from all your skirmishing secure,” +My teacher answered, “without will divine +And destiny propitious? Pass we then +For so Heaven’s pleasure is, that I should lead +Another through this savage wilderness.” + +Forthwith so fell his pride, that he let drop +The instrument of torture at his feet, +And to the rest exclaim’d: “We have no power +To strike him.” Then to me my guide: “O thou! +Who on the bridge among the crags dost sit +Low crouching, safely now to me return.” + +I rose, and towards him moved with speed: the fiends +Meantime all forward drew: me terror seiz’d +Lest they should break the compact they had made. +Thus issuing from Caprona, once I saw +Th’ infantry dreading, lest his covenant +The foe should break; so close he hemm’d them round. + +I to my leader’s side adher’d, mine eyes +With fixt and motionless observance bent +On their unkindly visage. They their hooks +Protruding, one the other thus bespake: +“Wilt thou I touch him on the hip?” To whom +Was answer’d: “Even so; nor miss thy aim.” + +But he, who was in conf’rence with my guide, +Turn’d rapid round, and thus the demon spake: +“Stay, stay thee, Scarmiglione!” Then to us +He added: “Further footing to your step +This rock affords not, shiver’d to the base +Of the sixth arch. But would you still proceed, +Up by this cavern go: not distant far, +Another rock will yield you passage safe. +Yesterday, later by five hours than now, +Twelve hundred threescore years and six had fill’d +The circuit of their course, since here the way +Was broken. Thitherward I straight dispatch +Certain of these my scouts, who shall espy +If any on the surface bask. With them +Go ye: for ye shall find them nothing fell. +Come Alichino forth,” with that he cried, +“And Calcabrina, and Cagnazzo thou! +The troop of ten let Barbariccia lead. +With Libicocco Draghinazzo haste, +Fang’d Ciriatto, Grafflacane fierce, +And Farfarello, and mad Rubicant. +Search ye around the bubbling tar. For these, +In safety lead them, where the other crag +Uninterrupted traverses the dens.” + +I then: “O master! what a sight is there! +Ah! without escort, journey we alone, +Which, if thou know the way, I covet not. +Unless thy prudence fail thee, dost not mark +How they do gnarl upon us, and their scowl +Threatens us present tortures?” He replied: +“I charge thee fear not: let them, as they will, +Gnarl on: ’tis but in token of their spite +Against the souls, who mourn in torment steep’d.” + +To leftward o’er the pier they turn’d; but each +Had first between his teeth prest close the tongue, +Toward their leader for a signal looking, +Which he with sound obscene triumphant gave. + + + + +CANTO XXII + + +It hath been heretofore my chance to see +Horsemen with martial order shifting camp, +To onset sallying, or in muster rang’d, +Or in retreat sometimes outstretch’d for flight; +Light-armed squadrons and fleet foragers +Scouring thy plains, Arezzo! have I seen, +And clashing tournaments, and tilting jousts, +Now with the sound of trumpets, now of bells, +Tabors, or signals made from castled heights, +And with inventions multiform, our own, +Or introduc’d from foreign land; but ne’er +To such a strange recorder I beheld, +In evolution moving, horse nor foot, +Nor ship, that tack’d by sign from land or star. + +With the ten demons on our way we went; +Ah fearful company! but in the church +With saints, with gluttons at the tavern’s mess. + +Still earnest on the pitch I gaz’d, to mark +All things whate’er the chasm contain’d, and those +Who burn’d within. As dolphins, that, in sign +To mariners, heave high their arched backs, +That thence forewarn’d they may advise to save +Their threaten’d vessels; so, at intervals, +To ease the pain his back some sinner show’d, +Then hid more nimbly than the lightning glance. + +E’en as the frogs, that of a wat’ry moat +Stand at the brink, with the jaws only out, +Their feet and of the trunk all else concealed, +Thus on each part the sinners stood, but soon +As Barbariccia was at hand, so they +Drew back under the wave. I saw, and yet +My heart doth stagger, one, that waited thus, +As it befalls that oft one frog remains, +While the next springs away: and Graffiacan, +Who of the fiends was nearest, grappling seiz’d +His clotted locks, and dragg’d him sprawling up, +That he appear’d to me an otter. Each +Already by their names I knew, so well +When they were chosen, I observ’d, and mark’d +How one the other call’d. “O Rubicant! +See that his hide thou with thy talons flay,” +Shouted together all the cursed crew. + +Then I: “Inform thee, master! if thou may, +What wretched soul is this, on whom their hand +His foes have laid.” My leader to his side +Approach’d, and whence he came inquir’d, to whom +Was answer’d thus: “Born in Navarre’s domain +My mother plac’d me in a lord’s retinue, +For she had borne me to a losel vile, +A spendthrift of his substance and himself. +The good king Thibault after that I serv’d, +To peculating here my thoughts were turn’d, +Whereof I give account in this dire heat.” + +Straight Ciriatto, from whose mouth a tusk +Issued on either side, as from a boar, +Ript him with one of these. ’Twixt evil claws +The mouse had fall’n: but Barbariccia cried, +Seizing him with both arms: “Stand thou apart, +While I do fix him on my prong transpierc’d.” +Then added, turning to my guide his face, +“Inquire of him, if more thou wish to learn, +Ere he again be rent.” My leader thus: +“Then tell us of the partners in thy guilt; +Knowest thou any sprung of Latian land +Under the tar?”—“I parted,” he replied, +“But now from one, who sojourn’d not far thence; +So were I under shelter now with him! +Nor hook nor talon then should scare me more.”—. + +“Too long we suffer,” Libicocco cried, +Then, darting forth a prong, seiz’d on his arm, +And mangled bore away the sinewy part. +Him Draghinazzo by his thighs beneath +Would next have caught, whence angrily their chief, +Turning on all sides round, with threat’ning brow +Restrain’d them. When their strife a little ceas’d, +Of him, who yet was gazing on his wound, +My teacher thus without delay inquir’d: +“Who was the spirit, from whom by evil hap +Parting, as thou has told, thou cam’st to shore?”— + +“It was the friar Gomita,” he rejoin’d, +“He of Gallura, vessel of all guile, +Who had his master’s enemies in hand, +And us’d them so that they commend him well. +Money he took, and them at large dismiss’d. +So he reports: and in each other charge +Committed to his keeping, play’d the part +Of barterer to the height: with him doth herd +The chief of Logodoro, Michel Zanche. +Sardinia is a theme, whereof their tongue +Is never weary. Out! alas! behold +That other, how he grins! More would I say, +But tremble lest he mean to maul me sore.” + +Their captain then to Farfarello turning, +Who roll’d his moony eyes in act to strike, +Rebuk’d him thus: “Off! cursed bird! Avaunt!”— + +“If ye desire to see or hear,” he thus +Quaking with dread resum’d, “or Tuscan spirits +Or Lombard, I will cause them to appear. +Meantime let these ill talons bate their fury, +So that no vengeance they may fear from them, +And I, remaining in this self-same place, +Will for myself but one, make sev’n appear, +When my shrill whistle shall be heard; for so +Our custom is to call each other up.” + +Cagnazzo at that word deriding grinn’d, +Then wagg’d the head and spake: “Hear his device, +Mischievous as he is, to plunge him down.” + +Whereto he thus, who fail’d not in rich store +Of nice-wove toils; “ Mischief forsooth extreme, +Meant only to procure myself more woe!” + +No longer Alichino then refrain’d, +But thus, the rest gainsaying, him bespake: +“If thou do cast thee down, I not on foot +Will chase thee, but above the pitch will beat +My plumes. Quit we the vantage ground, and let +The bank be as a shield, that we may see +If singly thou prevail against us all.” + +Now, reader, of new sport expect to hear! + +They each one turn’d his eyes to the’ other shore, +He first, who was the hardest to persuade. +The spirit of Navarre chose well his time, +Planted his feet on land, and at one leap +Escaping disappointed their resolve. + +Them quick resentment stung, but him the most, +Who was the cause of failure; in pursuit +He therefore sped, exclaiming; “Thou art caught.” + +But little it avail’d: terror outstripp’d +His following flight: the other plung’d beneath, +And he with upward pinion rais’d his breast: +E’en thus the water-fowl, when she perceives +The falcon near, dives instant down, while he +Enrag’d and spent retires. That mockery +In Calcabrina fury stirr’d, who flew +After him, with desire of strife inflam’d; +And, for the barterer had ’scap’d, so turn’d +His talons on his comrade. O’er the dyke +In grapple close they join’d; but the’ other prov’d +A goshawk able to rend well his foe; +And in the boiling lake both fell. The heat +Was umpire soon between them, but in vain +To lift themselves they strove, so fast were glued +Their pennons. Barbariccia, as the rest, +That chance lamenting, four in flight dispatch’d +From the’ other coast, with all their weapons arm’d. +They, to their post on each side speedily +Descending, stretch’d their hooks toward the fiends, +Who flounder’d, inly burning from their scars: +And we departing left them to that broil. + + + + +CANTO XXIII + + +In silence and in solitude we went, +One first, the other following his steps, +As minor friars journeying on their road. + +The present fray had turn’d my thoughts to muse +Upon old Aesop’s fable, where he told +What fate unto the mouse and frog befell. +For language hath not sounds more like in sense, +Than are these chances, if the origin +And end of each be heedfully compar’d. +And as one thought bursts from another forth, +So afterward from that another sprang, +Which added doubly to my former fear. +For thus I reason’d: “These through us have been +So foil’d, with loss and mock’ry so complete, +As needs must sting them sore. If anger then +Be to their evil will conjoin’d, more fell +They shall pursue us, than the savage hound +Snatches the leveret, panting ’twixt his jaws.” + +Already I perceiv’d my hair stand all +On end with terror, and look’d eager back. + +“Teacher,” I thus began, “if speedily +Thyself and me thou hide not, much I dread +Those evil talons. Even now behind +They urge us: quick imagination works +So forcibly, that I already feel them.” + +He answer’d: “Were I form’d of leaded glass, +I should not sooner draw unto myself +Thy outward image, than I now imprint +That from within. This moment came thy thoughts +Presented before mine, with similar act +And count’nance similar, so that from both +I one design have fram’d. If the right coast +Incline so much, that we may thence descend +Into the other chasm, we shall escape +Secure from this imagined pursuit.” + +He had not spoke his purpose to the end, +When I from far beheld them with spread wings +Approach to take us. Suddenly my guide +Caught me, ev’n as a mother that from sleep +Is by the noise arous’d, and near her sees +The climbing fires, who snatches up her babe +And flies ne’er pausing, careful more of him +Than of herself, that but a single vest +Clings round her limbs. Down from the jutting beach +Supine he cast him, to that pendent rock, +Which closes on one part the other chasm. + +Never ran water with such hurrying pace +Adown the tube to turn a landmill’s wheel, +When nearest it approaches to the spokes, +As then along that edge my master ran, +Carrying me in his bosom, as a child, +Not a companion. Scarcely had his feet +Reach’d to the lowest of the bed beneath, +When over us the steep they reach’d; but fear +In him was none; for that high Providence, +Which plac’d them ministers of the fifth foss, +Power of departing thence took from them all. + +There in the depth we saw a painted tribe, +Who pac’d with tardy steps around, and wept, +Faint in appearance and o’ercome with toil. +Caps had they on, with hoods, that fell low down +Before their eyes, in fashion like to those +Worn by the monks in Cologne. Their outside +Was overlaid with gold, dazzling to view, +But leaden all within, and of such weight, +That Frederick’s compar’d to these were straw. +Oh, everlasting wearisome attire! + +We yet once more with them together turn’d +To leftward, on their dismal moan intent. +But by the weight oppress’d, so slowly came +The fainting people, that our company +Was chang’d at every movement of the step. + +Whence I my guide address’d: “See that thou find +Some spirit, whose name may by his deeds be known, +And to that end look round thee as thou go’st.” + +Then one, who understood the Tuscan voice, +Cried after us aloud: “Hold in your feet, +Ye who so swiftly speed through the dusk air. +Perchance from me thou shalt obtain thy wish.” + +Whereat my leader, turning, me bespake: +“Pause, and then onward at their pace proceed.” + +I staid, and saw two Spirits in whose look +Impatient eagerness of mind was mark’d +To overtake me; but the load they bare +And narrow path retarded their approach. + +Soon as arriv’d, they with an eye askance +Perus’d me, but spake not: then turning each +To other thus conferring said: “This one +Seems, by the action of his throat, alive. +And, be they dead, what privilege allows +They walk unmantled by the cumbrous stole?” + +Then thus to me: “Tuscan, who visitest +The college of the mourning hypocrites, +Disdain not to instruct us who thou art.” + +“By Arno’s pleasant stream,” I thus replied, +“In the great city I was bred and grew, +And wear the body I have ever worn. +but who are ye, from whom such mighty grief, +As now I witness, courseth down your cheeks? +What torment breaks forth in this bitter woe?” +“Our bonnets gleaming bright with orange hue,” +One of them answer’d, “are so leaden gross, +That with their weight they make the balances +To crack beneath them. Joyous friars we were, +Bologna’s natives, Catalano I, +He Loderingo nam’d, and by thy land +Together taken, as men used to take +A single and indifferent arbiter, +To reconcile their strifes. How there we sped, +Gardingo’s vicinage can best declare.” + +“O friars!” I began, “your miseries—” But there brake off, for one had +caught my eye, +Fix’d to a cross with three stakes on the ground: +He, when he saw me, writh’d himself, throughout +Distorted, ruffling with deep sighs his beard. +And Catalano, who thereof was ’ware, +Thus spake: “That pierced spirit, whom intent +Thou view’st, was he who gave the Pharisees +Counsel, that it were fitting for one man +To suffer for the people. He doth lie +Transverse; nor any passes, but him first +Behoves make feeling trial how each weighs. +In straits like this along the foss are plac’d +The father of his consort, and the rest +Partakers in that council, seed of ill +And sorrow to the Jews.” I noted then, +How Virgil gaz’d with wonder upon him, +Thus abjectly extended on the cross +In banishment eternal. To the friar +He next his words address’d: “We pray ye tell, +If so be lawful, whether on our right +Lies any opening in the rock, whereby +We both may issue hence, without constraint +On the dark angels, that compell’d they come +To lead us from this depth.” He thus replied: +“Nearer than thou dost hope, there is a rock +From the next circle moving, which o’ersteps +Each vale of horror, save that here his cope +Is shatter’d. By the ruin ye may mount: +For on the side it slants, and most the height +Rises below.” With head bent down awhile +My leader stood, then spake: “He warn’d us ill, +Who yonder hangs the sinners on his hook.” + +To whom the friar: At Bologna erst +I many vices of the devil heard, +Among the rest was said, ‘He is a liar, +And the father of lies!’” When he had spoke, +My leader with large strides proceeded on, +Somewhat disturb’d with anger in his look. + +I therefore left the spirits heavy laden, +And following, his beloved footsteps mark’d. + + + + +CANTO XXIV + + +In the year’s early nonage, when the sun +Tempers his tresses in Aquarius’ urn, +And now towards equal day the nights recede, +When as the rime upon the earth puts on +Her dazzling sister’s image, but not long +Her milder sway endures, then riseth up +The village hind, whom fails his wintry store, +And looking out beholds the plain around +All whiten’d, whence impatiently he smites +His thighs, and to his hut returning in, +There paces to and fro, wailing his lot, +As a discomfited and helpless man; +Then comes he forth again, and feels new hope +Spring in his bosom, finding e’en thus soon +The world hath chang’d its count’nance, grasps his crook, +And forth to pasture drives his little flock: +So me my guide dishearten’d when I saw +His troubled forehead, and so speedily +That ill was cur’d; for at the fallen bridge +Arriving, towards me with a look as sweet, +He turn’d him back, as that I first beheld +At the steep mountain’s foot. Regarding well +The ruin, and some counsel first maintain’d +With his own thought, he open’d wide his arm +And took me up. As one, who, while he works, +Computes his labour’s issue, that he seems +Still to foresee the’ effect, so lifting me +Up to the summit of one peak, he fix’d +His eye upon another. “Grapple that,” +Said he, “but first make proof, if it be such +As will sustain thee.” For one capp’d with lead +This were no journey. Scarcely he, though light, +And I, though onward push’d from crag to crag, +Could mount. And if the precinct of this coast +Were not less ample than the last, for him +I know not, but my strength had surely fail’d. +But Malebolge all toward the mouth +Inclining of the nethermost abyss, +The site of every valley hence requires, +That one side upward slope, the other fall. + +At length the point of our descent we reach’d +From the last flag: soon as to that arriv’d, +So was the breath exhausted from my lungs, +I could no further, but did seat me there. + +“Now needs thy best of man;” so spake my guide: +“For not on downy plumes, nor under shade +Of canopy reposing, fame is won, +Without which whosoe’er consumes his days +Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth, +As smoke in air or foam upon the wave. +Thou therefore rise: vanish thy weariness +By the mind’s effort, in each struggle form’d +To vanquish, if she suffer not the weight +Of her corporeal frame to crush her down. +A longer ladder yet remains to scale. +From these to have escap’d sufficeth not. +If well thou note me, profit by my words.” + +I straightway rose, and show’d myself less spent +Than I in truth did feel me. “On,” I cried, +“For I am stout and fearless.” Up the rock +Our way we held, more rugged than before, +Narrower and steeper far to climb. From talk +I ceas’d not, as we journey’d, so to seem +Least faint; whereat a voice from the other foss +Did issue forth, for utt’rance suited ill. +Though on the arch that crosses there I stood, +What were the words I knew not, but who spake +Seem’d mov’d in anger. Down I stoop’d to look, +But my quick eye might reach not to the depth +For shrouding darkness; wherefore thus I spake: +“To the next circle, Teacher, bend thy steps, +And from the wall dismount we; for as hence +I hear and understand not, so I see +Beneath, and naught discern.”—“I answer not,” +Said he, “but by the deed. To fair request +Silent performance maketh best return.” + +We from the bridge’s head descended, where +To the eighth mound it joins, and then the chasm +Opening to view, I saw a crowd within +Of serpents terrible, so strange of shape +And hideous, that remembrance in my veins +Yet shrinks the vital current. Of her sands +Let Lybia vaunt no more: if Jaculus, +Pareas and Chelyder be her brood, +Cenchris and Amphisboena, plagues so dire +Or in such numbers swarming ne’er she shew’d, +Not with all Ethiopia, and whate’er +Above the Erythraean sea is spawn’d. + +Amid this dread exuberance of woe +Ran naked spirits wing’d with horrid fear, +Nor hope had they of crevice where to hide, +Or heliotrope to charm them out of view. +With serpents were their hands behind them bound, +Which through their reins infix’d the tail and head +Twisted in folds before. And lo! on one +Near to our side, darted an adder up, +And, where the neck is on the shoulders tied, +Transpierc’d him. Far more quickly than e’er pen +Wrote O or I, he kindled, burn’d, and chang’d +To ashes, all pour’d out upon the earth. +When there dissolv’d he lay, the dust again +Uproll’d spontaneous, and the self-same form +Instant resumed. So mighty sages tell, +The’ Arabian Phoenix, when five hundred years +Have well nigh circled, dies, and springs forthwith +Renascent. Blade nor herb throughout his life +He tastes, but tears of frankincense alone +And odorous amomum: swaths of nard +And myrrh his funeral shroud. As one that falls, +He knows not how, by force demoniac dragg’d +To earth, or through obstruction fettering up +In chains invisible the powers of man, +Who, risen from his trance, gazeth around, +Bewilder’d with the monstrous agony +He hath endur’d, and wildly staring sighs; +So stood aghast the sinner when he rose. + +Oh! how severe God’s judgment, that deals out +Such blows in stormy vengeance! Who he was +My teacher next inquir’d, and thus in few +He answer’d: “Vanni Fucci am I call’d, +Not long since rained down from Tuscany +To this dire gullet. Me the beastial life +And not the human pleas’d, mule that I was, +Who in Pistoia found my worthy den.” + +I then to Virgil: “Bid him stir not hence, +And ask what crime did thrust him hither: once +A man I knew him choleric and bloody.” + +The sinner heard and feign’d not, but towards me +His mind directing and his face, wherein +Was dismal shame depictur’d, thus he spake: +“It grieves me more to have been caught by thee +In this sad plight, which thou beholdest, than +When I was taken from the other life. +I have no power permitted to deny +What thou inquirest.” I am doom’d thus low +To dwell, for that the sacristy by me +Was rifled of its goodly ornaments, +And with the guilt another falsely charged. +But that thou mayst not joy to see me thus, +So as thou e’er shalt ’scape this darksome realm +Open thine ears and hear what I forebode. +Reft of the Neri first Pistoia pines, +Then Florence changeth citizens and laws. +From Valdimagra, drawn by wrathful Mars, +A vapour rises, wrapt in turbid mists, +And sharp and eager driveth on the storm +With arrowy hurtling o’er Piceno’s field, +Whence suddenly the cloud shall burst, and strike +Each helpless Bianco prostrate to the ground. +This have I told, that grief may rend thy heart.” + + + + +CANTO XXV + + +When he had spoke, the sinner rais’d his hands +Pointed in mockery, and cried: “Take them, God! +I level them at thee!” From that day forth +The serpents were my friends; for round his neck +One of then rolling twisted, as it said, +“Be silent, tongue!” Another to his arms +Upgliding, tied them, riveting itself +So close, it took from them the power to move. + +Pistoia! Ah Pistoia! why dost doubt +To turn thee into ashes, cumb’ring earth +No longer, since in evil act so far +Thou hast outdone thy seed? I did not mark, +Through all the gloomy circles of the’ abyss, +Spirit, that swell’d so proudly ’gainst his God, +Not him, who headlong fell from Thebes. He fled, +Nor utter’d more; and after him there came +A centaur full of fury, shouting, “Where +Where is the caitiff?” On Maremma’s marsh +Swarm not the serpent tribe, as on his haunch +They swarm’d, to where the human face begins. +Behind his head upon the shoulders lay, +With open wings, a dragon breathing fire +On whomsoe’er he met. To me my guide: +“Cacus is this, who underneath the rock +Of Aventine spread oft a lake of blood. +He, from his brethren parted, here must tread +A different journey, for his fraudful theft +Of the great herd, that near him stall’d; whence found +His felon deeds their end, beneath the mace +Of stout Alcides, that perchance laid on +A hundred blows, and not the tenth was felt.” + +While yet he spake, the centaur sped away: +And under us three spirits came, of whom +Nor I nor he was ware, till they exclaim’d; +“Say who are ye?” We then brake off discourse, +Intent on these alone. I knew them not; +But, as it chanceth oft, befell, that one +Had need to name another. “Where,” said he, +“Doth Cianfa lurk?” I, for a sign my guide +Should stand attentive, plac’d against my lips +The finger lifted. If, O reader! now +Thou be not apt to credit what I tell, +No marvel; for myself do scarce allow +The witness of mine eyes. But as I looked +Toward them, lo! a serpent with six feet +Springs forth on one, and fastens full upon him: +His midmost grasp’d the belly, a forefoot +Seiz’d on each arm (while deep in either cheek +He flesh’d his fangs); the hinder on the thighs +Were spread, ’twixt which the tail inserted curl’d +Upon the reins behind. Ivy ne’er clasp’d +A dodder’d oak, as round the other’s limbs +The hideous monster intertwin’d his own. +Then, as they both had been of burning wax, +Each melted into other, mingling hues, +That which was either now was seen no more. +Thus up the shrinking paper, ere it burns, +A brown tint glides, not turning yet to black, +And the clean white expires. The other two +Look’d on exclaiming: “Ah, how dost thou change, +Agnello! See! Thou art nor double now, +Nor only one.” The two heads now became +One, and two figures blended in one form +Appear’d, where both were lost. Of the four lengths +Two arms were made: the belly and the chest +The thighs and legs into such members chang’d, +As never eye hath seen. Of former shape +All trace was vanish’d. Two yet neither seem’d +That image miscreate, and so pass’d on +With tardy steps. As underneath the scourge +Of the fierce dog-star, that lays bare the fields, +Shifting from brake to brake, the lizard seems +A flash of lightning, if he thwart the road, +So toward th’ entrails of the other two +Approaching seem’d, an adder all on fire, +As the dark pepper-grain, livid and swart. +In that part, whence our life is nourish’d first, +One he transpierc’d; then down before him fell +Stretch’d out. The pierced spirit look’d on him +But spake not; yea stood motionless and yawn’d, +As if by sleep or fev’rous fit assail’d. +He ey’d the serpent, and the serpent him. +One from the wound, the other from the mouth +Breath’d a thick smoke, whose vap’ry columns join’d. + +Lucan in mute attention now may hear, +Nor thy disastrous fate, Sabellus! tell, +Nor shine, Nasidius! Ovid now be mute. +What if in warbling fiction he record +Cadmus and Arethusa, to a snake +Him chang’d, and her into a fountain clear, +I envy not; for never face to face +Two natures thus transmuted did he sing, +Wherein both shapes were ready to assume +The other’s substance. They in mutual guise +So answer’d, that the serpent split his train +Divided to a fork, and the pierc’d spirit +Drew close his steps together, legs and thighs +Compacted, that no sign of juncture soon +Was visible: the tail disparted took +The figure which the spirit lost, its skin +Soft’ning, his indurated to a rind. +The shoulders next I mark’d, that ent’ring join’d +The monster’s arm-pits, whose two shorter feet +So lengthen’d, as the other’s dwindling shrunk. +The feet behind then twisting up became +That part that man conceals, which in the wretch +Was cleft in twain. While both the shadowy smoke +With a new colour veils, and generates +Th’ excrescent pile on one, peeling it off +From th’ other body, lo! upon his feet +One upright rose, and prone the other fell. +Not yet their glaring and malignant lamps +Were shifted, though each feature chang’d beneath. +Of him who stood erect, the mounting face +Retreated towards the temples, and what there +Superfluous matter came, shot out in ears +From the smooth cheeks, the rest, not backward dragg’d, +Of its excess did shape the nose; and swell’d +Into due size protuberant the lips. +He, on the earth who lay, meanwhile extends +His sharpen’d visage, and draws down the ears +Into the head, as doth the slug his horns. +His tongue continuous before and apt +For utt’rance, severs; and the other’s fork +Closing unites. That done the smoke was laid. +The soul, transform’d into the brute, glides off, +Hissing along the vale, and after him +The other talking sputters; but soon turn’d +His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few +Thus to another spake: “Along this path +Crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now!” + +So saw I fluctuate in successive change +Th’ unsteady ballast of the seventh hold: +And here if aught my tongue have swerv’d, events +So strange may be its warrant. O’er mine eyes +Confusion hung, and on my thoughts amaze. + +Yet ’scap’d they not so covertly, but well +I mark’d Sciancato: he alone it was +Of the three first that came, who chang’d not: thou, +The other’s fate, Gaville, still dost rue. + + + + +CANTO XXVI + + +Florence exult! for thou so mightily +Hast thriven, that o’er land and sea thy wings +Thou beatest, and thy name spreads over hell! +Among the plund’rers such the three I found +Thy citizens, whence shame to me thy son, +And no proud honour to thyself redounds. + +But if our minds, when dreaming near the dawn, +Are of the truth presageful, thou ere long +Shalt feel what Prato, (not to say the rest) +Would fain might come upon thee; and that chance +Were in good time, if it befell thee now. +Would so it were, since it must needs befall! +For as time wears me, I shall grieve the more. + +We from the depth departed; and my guide +Remounting scal’d the flinty steps, which late +We downward trac’d, and drew me up the steep. +Pursuing thus our solitary way +Among the crags and splinters of the rock, +Sped not our feet without the help of hands. + +Then sorrow seiz’d me, which e’en now revives, +As my thought turns again to what I saw, +And, more than I am wont, I rein and curb +The powers of nature in me, lest they run +Where Virtue guides not; that if aught of good +My gentle star, or something better gave me, +I envy not myself the precious boon. + +As in that season, when the sun least veils +His face that lightens all, what time the fly +Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then +Upon some cliff reclin’d, beneath him sees +Fire-flies innumerous spangling o’er the vale, +Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies: +With flames so numberless throughout its space +Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth +Was to my view expos’d. As he, whose wrongs +The bears aveng’d, at its departure saw +Elijah’s chariot, when the steeds erect +Rais’d their steep flight for heav’n; his eyes meanwhile, +Straining pursu’d them, till the flame alone +Upsoaring like a misty speck he kenn’d; +E’en thus along the gulf moves every flame, +A sinner so enfolded close in each, +That none exhibits token of the theft. + +Upon the bridge I forward bent to look, +And grasp’d a flinty mass, or else had fall’n, +Though push’d not from the height. The guide, who mark d +How I did gaze attentive, thus began: +“Within these ardours are the spirits, each +Swath’d in confining fire.”—“Master, thy word,” +I answer’d, “hath assur’d me; yet I deem’d +Already of the truth, already wish’d +To ask thee, who is in yon fire, that comes +So parted at the summit, as it seem’d +Ascending from that funeral pile, where lay +The Theban brothers?” He replied: “Within +Ulysses there and Diomede endure +Their penal tortures, thus to vengeance now +Together hasting, as erewhile to wrath. +These in the flame with ceaseless groans deplore +The ambush of the horse, that open’d wide +A portal for that goodly seed to pass, +Which sow’d imperial Rome; nor less the guile +Lament they, whence of her Achilles ’reft +Deidamia yet in death complains. +And there is rued the stratagem, that Troy +Of her Palladium spoil’d.”—“If they have power +Of utt’rance from within these sparks,” said I, +“O master! think my prayer a thousand fold +In repetition urg’d, that thou vouchsafe +To pause, till here the horned flame arrive. +See, how toward it with desire I bend.” + +He thus: “Thy prayer is worthy of much praise, +And I accept it therefore: but do thou +Thy tongue refrain: to question them be mine, +For I divine thy wish: and they perchance, +For they were Greeks, might shun discourse with thee.” + +When there the flame had come, where time and place +Seem’d fitting to my guide, he thus began: +“O ye, who dwell two spirits in one fire! +If living I of you did merit aught, +Whate’er the measure were of that desert, +When in the world my lofty strain I pour’d, +Move ye not on, till one of you unfold +In what clime death o’ertook him self-destroy’d.” + +Of the old flame forthwith the greater horn +Began to roll, murmuring, as a fire +That labours with the wind, then to and fro +Wagging the top, as a tongue uttering sounds, +Threw out its voice, and spake: “When I escap’d +From Circe, who beyond a circling year +Had held me near Caieta, by her charms, +Ere thus Aeneas yet had nam’d the shore, +Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence +Of my old father, nor return of love, +That should have crown’d Penelope with joy, +Could overcome in me the zeal I had +T’ explore the world, and search the ways of life, +Man’s evil and his virtue. Forth I sail’d +Into the deep illimitable main, +With but one bark, and the small faithful band +That yet cleav’d to me. As Iberia far, +Far as Morocco either shore I saw, +And the Sardinian and each isle beside +Which round that ocean bathes. Tardy with age +Were I and my companions, when we came +To the strait pass, where Hercules ordain’d +The bound’ries not to be o’erstepp’d by man. +The walls of Seville to my right I left, +On the’ other hand already Ceuta past. +“O brothers!” I began, “who to the west +Through perils without number now have reach’d, +To this the short remaining watch, that yet +Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof +Of the unpeopled world, following the track +Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence we sprang: +Ye were not form’d to live the life of brutes +But virtue to pursue and knowledge high. +With these few words I sharpen’d for the voyage +The mind of my associates, that I then +Could scarcely have withheld them. To the dawn +Our poop we turn’d, and for the witless flight +Made our oars wings, still gaining on the left. +Each star of the’ other pole night now beheld, +And ours so low, that from the ocean-floor +It rose not. Five times re-illum’d, as oft +Vanish’d the light from underneath the moon +Since the deep way we enter’d, when from far +Appear’d a mountain dim, loftiest methought +Of all I e’er beheld. Joy seiz’d us straight, +But soon to mourning changed. From the new land +A whirlwind sprung, and at her foremost side +Did strike the vessel. Thrice it whirl’d her round +With all the waves, the fourth time lifted up +The poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed: +And over us the booming billow clos’d.” + + + + +CANTO XXVII + + +Now upward rose the flame, and still’d its light +To speak no more, and now pass’d on with leave +From the mild poet gain’d, when following came +Another, from whose top a sound confus’d, +Forth issuing, drew our eyes that way to look. + +As the Sicilian bull, that rightfully +His cries first echoed, who had shap’d its mould, +Did so rebellow, with the voice of him +Tormented, that the brazen monster seem’d +Pierc’d through with pain; thus while no way they found +Nor avenue immediate through the flame, +Into its language turn’d the dismal words: +But soon as they had won their passage forth, +Up from the point, which vibrating obey’d +Their motion at the tongue, these sounds we heard: +“O thou! to whom I now direct my voice! +That lately didst exclaim in Lombard phrase, + +Depart thou, I solicit thee no more,’ +Though somewhat tardy I perchance arrive +Let it not irk thee here to pause awhile, +And with me parley: lo! it irks not me +And yet I burn. If but e’en now thou fall +into this blind world, from that pleasant land +Of Latium, whence I draw my sum of guilt, +Tell me if those, who in Romagna dwell, +Have peace or war. For of the mountains there +Was I, betwixt Urbino and the height, +Whence Tyber first unlocks his mighty flood.” + +Leaning I listen’d yet with heedful ear, +When, as he touch’d my side, the leader thus: +“Speak thou: he is a Latian.” My reply +Was ready, and I spake without delay: + +“O spirit! who art hidden here below! +Never was thy Romagna without war +In her proud tyrants’ bosoms, nor is now: +But open war there left I none. The state, +Ravenna hath maintain’d this many a year, +Is steadfast. There Polenta’s eagle broods, +And in his broad circumference of plume +O’ershadows Cervia. The green talons grasp +The land, that stood erewhile the proof so long, +And pil’d in bloody heap the host of France. + +“The’ old mastiff of Verruchio and the young, +That tore Montagna in their wrath, still make, +Where they are wont, an augre of their fangs. + +“Lamone’s city and Santerno’s range +Under the lion of the snowy lair. +Inconstant partisan! that changeth sides, +Or ever summer yields to winter’s frost. +And she, whose flank is wash’d of Savio’s wave, +As ’twixt the level and the steep she lies, +Lives so ’twixt tyrant power and liberty. + +“Now tell us, I entreat thee, who art thou? +Be not more hard than others. In the world, +So may thy name still rear its forehead high.” + +Then roar’d awhile the fire, its sharpen’d point +On either side wav’d, and thus breath’d at last: +“If I did think, my answer were to one, +Who ever could return unto the world, +This flame should rest unshaken. But since ne’er, +If true be told me, any from this depth +Has found his upward way, I answer thee, +Nor fear lest infamy record the words. + +“A man of arms at first, I cloth’d me then +In good Saint Francis’ girdle, hoping so +T’ have made amends. And certainly my hope +Had fail’d not, but that he, whom curses light on, +The’ high priest again seduc’d me into sin. +And how and wherefore listen while I tell. +Long as this spirit mov’d the bones and pulp +My mother gave me, less my deeds bespake +The nature of the lion than the fox. +All ways of winding subtlety I knew, +And with such art conducted, that the sound +Reach’d the world’s limit. Soon as to that part +Of life I found me come, when each behoves +To lower sails and gather in the lines; +That which before had pleased me then I rued, +And to repentance and confession turn’d; +Wretch that I was! and well it had bested me! +The chief of the new Pharisees meantime, +Waging his warfare near the Lateran, +Not with the Saracens or Jews (his foes +All Christians were, nor against Acre one +Had fought, nor traffic’d in the Soldan’s land), +He his great charge nor sacred ministry +In himself, rev’renc’d, nor in me that cord, +Which us’d to mark with leanness whom it girded. +As in Socrate, Constantine besought +To cure his leprosy Sylvester’s aid, +So me to cure the fever of his pride +This man besought: my counsel to that end +He ask’d: and I was silent: for his words +Seem’d drunken: but forthwith he thus resum’d: +“From thy heart banish fear: of all offence +I hitherto absolve thee. In return, +Teach me my purpose so to execute, +That Penestrino cumber earth no more. +Heav’n, as thou knowest, I have power to shut +And open: and the keys are therefore twain, +The which my predecessor meanly priz’d.” + +Then, yielding to the forceful arguments, +Of silence as more perilous I deem’d, +And answer’d: “Father! since thou washest me +Clear of that guilt wherein I now must fall, +Large promise with performance scant, be sure, +Shall make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.” + +“When I was number’d with the dead, then came +Saint Francis for me; but a cherub dark +He met, who cried: “‘Wrong me not; he is mine, +And must below to join the wretched crew, +For the deceitful counsel which he gave. +E’er since I watch’d him, hov’ring at his hair, +No power can the impenitent absolve; +Nor to repent and will at once consist, +By contradiction absolute forbid.” +Oh mis’ry! how I shook myself, when he +Seiz’d me, and cried, “Thou haply thought’st me not +A disputant in logic so exact.” +To Minos down he bore me, and the judge +Twin’d eight times round his callous back the tail, +Which biting with excess of rage, he spake: +“This is a guilty soul, that in the fire +Must vanish.’ Hence perdition-doom’d I rove +A prey to rankling sorrow in this garb.” + +When he had thus fulfill’d his words, the flame +In dolour parted, beating to and fro, +And writhing its sharp horn. We onward went, +I and my leader, up along the rock, +Far as another arch, that overhangs +The foss, wherein the penalty is paid +Of those, who load them with committed sin. + + + + +CANTO XXVIII + + +Who, e’en in words unfetter’d, might at full +Tell of the wounds and blood that now I saw, +Though he repeated oft the tale? No tongue +So vast a theme could equal, speech and thought +Both impotent alike. If in one band +Collected, stood the people all, who e’er +Pour’d on Apulia’s happy soil their blood, +Slain by the Trojans, and in that long war +When of the rings the measur’d booty made +A pile so high, as Rome’s historian writes +Who errs not, with the multitude, that felt +The grinding force of Guiscard’s Norman steel, +And those the rest, whose bones are gather’d yet +At Ceperano, there where treachery +Branded th’ Apulian name, or where beyond +Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo, without arms +The old Alardo conquer’d; and his limbs +One were to show transpierc’d, another his +Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this +Were but a thing of nought, to the’ hideous sight +Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost +Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide, +As one I mark’d, torn from the chin throughout +Down to the hinder passage: ’twixt the legs +Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay +Open to view, and wretched ventricle, +That turns th’ englutted aliment to dross. + +Whilst eagerly I fix on him my gaze, +He ey’d me, with his hands laid his breast bare, +And cried; “Now mark how I do rip me! lo! +How is Mohammed mangled! before me +Walks Ali weeping, from the chin his face +Cleft to the forelock; and the others all +Whom here thou seest, while they liv’d, did sow +Scandal and schism, and therefore thus are rent. +A fiend is here behind, who with his sword +Hacks us thus cruelly, slivering again +Each of this ream, when we have compast round +The dismal way, for first our gashes close +Ere we repass before him. But say who +Art thou, that standest musing on the rock, +Haply so lingering to delay the pain +Sentenc’d upon thy crimes?”—“Him death not yet,” +My guide rejoin’d, “hath overta’en, nor sin +Conducts to torment; but, that he may make +Full trial of your state, I who am dead +Must through the depths of hell, from orb to orb, +Conduct him. Trust my words, for they are true.” + +More than a hundred spirits, when that they heard, +Stood in the foss to mark me, through amazed, +Forgetful of their pangs. “Thou, who perchance +Shalt shortly view the sun, this warning thou +Bear to Dolcino: bid him, if he wish not +Here soon to follow me, that with good store +Of food he arm him, lest impris’ning snows +Yield him a victim to Novara’s power, +No easy conquest else.” With foot uprais’d +For stepping, spake Mohammed, on the ground +Then fix’d it to depart. Another shade, +Pierc’d in the throat, his nostrils mutilate +E’en from beneath the eyebrows, and one ear +Lopt off, who with the rest through wonder stood +Gazing, before the rest advanc’d, and bar’d +His wind-pipe, that without was all o’ersmear’d +With crimson stain. “O thou!” said ‘he, “whom sin +Condemns not, and whom erst (unless too near +Resemblance do deceive me) I aloft +Have seen on Latian ground, call thou to mind +Piero of Medicina, if again +Returning, thou behold’st the pleasant land +That from Vercelli slopes to Mercabo; +And there instruct the twain, whom Fano boasts +Her worthiest sons, Guido and Angelo, +That if ’tis giv’n us here to scan aright +The future, they out of life’s tenement +Shall be cast forth, and whelm’d under the waves +Near to Cattolica, through perfidy +Of a fell tyrant. ’Twixt the Cyprian isle +And Balearic, ne’er hath Neptune seen +An injury so foul, by pirates done +Or Argive crew of old. That one-ey’d traitor +(Whose realm there is a spirit here were fain +His eye had still lack’d sight of) them shall bring +To conf’rence with him, then so shape his end, +That they shall need not ’gainst Focara’s wind +Offer up vow nor pray’r.” I answering thus: + +“Declare, as thou dost wish that I above +May carry tidings of thee, who is he, +In whom that sight doth wake such sad remembrance?” + +Forthwith he laid his hand on the cheek-bone +Of one, his fellow-spirit, and his jaws +Expanding, cried: “Lo! this is he I wot of; +He speaks not for himself: the outcast this +Who overwhelm’d the doubt in Caesar’s mind, +Affirming that delay to men prepar’d +Was ever harmful. “Oh how terrified +Methought was Curio, from whose throat was cut +The tongue, which spake that hardy word. Then one +Maim’d of each hand, uplifted in the gloom +The bleeding stumps, that they with gory spots +Sullied his face, and cried: “‘Remember thee +Of Mosca, too, I who, alas! exclaim’d, +‘The deed once done there is an end,’ that prov’d +A seed of sorrow to the Tuscan race.” + +I added: “Ay, and death to thine own tribe.” + +Whence heaping woe on woe he hurried off, +As one grief stung to madness. But I there +Still linger’d to behold the troop, and saw +Things, such as I may fear without more proof +To tell of, but that conscience makes me firm, +The boon companion, who her strong breast-plate +Buckles on him, that feels no guilt within +And bids him on and fear not. Without doubt +I saw, and yet it seems to pass before me, +A headless trunk, that even as the rest +Of the sad flock pac’d onward. By the hair +It bore the sever’d member, lantern-wise +Pendent in hand, which look’d at us and said, +“Woe’s me!” The spirit lighted thus himself, +And two there were in one, and one in two. +How that may be he knows who ordereth so. + +When at the bridge’s foot direct he stood, +His arm aloft he rear’d, thrusting the head +Full in our view, that nearer we might hear +The words, which thus it utter’d: “Now behold +This grievous torment, thou, who breathing go’st +To spy the dead; behold if any else +Be terrible as this. And that on earth +Thou mayst bear tidings of me, know that I +Am Bertrand, he of Born, who gave King John +The counsel mischievous. Father and son +I set at mutual war. For Absalom +And David more did not Ahitophel, +Spurring them on maliciously to strife. +For parting those so closely knit, my brain +Parted, alas! I carry from its source, +That in this trunk inhabits. Thus the law +Of retribution fiercely works in me.” + + + + +CANTO XXIX + + +So were mine eyes inebriate with view +Of the vast multitude, whom various wounds +Disfigur’d, that they long’d to stay and weep. + +But Virgil rous’d me: “What yet gazest on? +Wherefore doth fasten yet thy sight below +Among the maim’d and miserable shades? +Thou hast not shewn in any chasm beside +This weakness. Know, if thou wouldst number them +That two and twenty miles the valley winds +Its circuit, and already is the moon +Beneath our feet: the time permitted now +Is short, and more not seen remains to see.” + +“If thou,” I straight replied, “hadst weigh’d the cause +For which I look’d, thou hadst perchance excus’d +The tarrying still.” My leader part pursu’d +His way, the while I follow’d, answering him, +And adding thus: “Within that cave I deem, +Whereon so fixedly I held my ken, +There is a spirit dwells, one of my blood, +Wailing the crime that costs him now so dear.” + +Then spake my master: “Let thy soul no more +Afflict itself for him. Direct elsewhere +Its thought, and leave him. At the bridge’s foot +I mark’d how he did point with menacing look +At thee, and heard him by the others nam’d +Geri of Bello. Thou so wholly then +Wert busied with his spirit, who once rul’d +The towers of Hautefort, that thou lookedst not +That way, ere he was gone.”—“O guide belov’d! +His violent death yet unaveng’d,” said I, +“By any, who are partners in his shame, +Made him contemptuous: therefore, as I think, +He pass’d me speechless by; and doing so +Hath made me more compassionate his fate.” + +So we discours’d to where the rock first show’d +The other valley, had more light been there, +E’en to the lowest depth. Soon as we came +O’er the last cloister in the dismal rounds +Of Malebolge, and the brotherhood +Were to our view expos’d, then many a dart +Of sore lament assail’d me, headed all +With points of thrilling pity, that I clos’d +Both ears against the volley with mine hands. + +As were the torment, if each lazar-house +Of Valdichiana, in the sultry time +’Twixt July and September, with the isle +Sardinia and Maremma’s pestilent fen, +Had heap’d their maladies all in one foss +Together; such was here the torment: dire +The stench, as issuing steams from fester’d limbs. + +We on the utmost shore of the long rock +Descended still to leftward. Then my sight +Was livelier to explore the depth, wherein +The minister of the most mighty Lord, +All-searching Justice, dooms to punishment +The forgers noted on her dread record. + +More rueful was it not methinks to see +The nation in Aegina droop, what time +Each living thing, e’en to the little worm, +All fell, so full of malice was the air +(And afterward, as bards of yore have told, +The ancient people were restor’d anew +From seed of emmets) than was here to see +The spirits, that languish’d through the murky vale +Up-pil’d on many a stack. Confus’d they lay, +One o’er the belly, o’er the shoulders one +Roll’d of another; sideling crawl’d a third +Along the dismal pathway. Step by step +We journey’d on, in silence looking round +And list’ning those diseas’d, who strove in vain +To lift their forms. Then two I mark’d, that sat +Propp’d ’gainst each other, as two brazen pans +Set to retain the heat. From head to foot, +A tetter bark’d them round. Nor saw I e’er +Groom currying so fast, for whom his lord +Impatient waited, or himself perchance +Tir’d with long watching, as of these each one +Plied quickly his keen nails, through furiousness +Of ne’er abated pruriency. The crust +Came drawn from underneath in flakes, like scales +Scrap’d from the bream or fish of broader mail. + +“O thou, who with thy fingers rendest off +Thy coat of proof,” thus spake my guide to one, +“And sometimes makest tearing pincers of them, +Tell me if any born of Latian land +Be among these within: so may thy nails +Serve thee for everlasting to this toil.” + +“Both are of Latium,” weeping he replied, +“Whom tortur’d thus thou seest: but who art thou +That hast inquir’d of us?” To whom my guide: +“One that descend with this man, who yet lives, +From rock to rock, and show him hell’s abyss.” + +Then started they asunder, and each turn’d +Trembling toward us, with the rest, whose ear +Those words redounding struck. To me my liege +Address’d him: “Speak to them whate’er thou list.” + +And I therewith began: “So may no time +Filch your remembrance from the thoughts of men +In th’ upper world, but after many suns +Survive it, as ye tell me, who ye are, +And of what race ye come. Your punishment, +Unseemly and disgustful in its kind, +Deter you not from opening thus much to me.” + +“Arezzo was my dwelling,” answer’d one, +“And me Albero of Sienna brought +To die by fire; but that, for which I died, +Leads me not here. True is in sport I told him, +That I had learn’d to wing my flight in air. +And he admiring much, as he was void +Of wisdom, will’d me to declare to him +The secret of mine art: and only hence, +Because I made him not a Daedalus, +Prevail’d on one suppos’d his sire to burn me. +But Minos to this chasm last of the ten, +For that I practis’d alchemy on earth, +Has doom’d me. Him no subterfuge eludes.” + +Then to the bard I spake: “Was ever race +Light as Sienna’s? Sure not France herself +Can show a tribe so frivolous and vain.” + +The other leprous spirit heard my words, +And thus return’d: “Be Stricca from this charge +Exempted, he who knew so temp’rately +To lay out fortune’s gifts; and Niccolo +Who first the spice’s costly luxury +Discover’d in that garden, where such seed +Roots deepest in the soil: and be that troop +Exempted, with whom Caccia of Asciano +Lavish’d his vineyards and wide-spreading woods, +And his rare wisdom Abbagliato show’d +A spectacle for all. That thou mayst know +Who seconds thee against the Siennese +Thus gladly, bend this way thy sharpen’d sight, +That well my face may answer to thy ken; +So shalt thou see I am Capocchio’s ghost, +Who forg’d transmuted metals by the power +Of alchemy; and if I scan thee right, +Thus needs must well remember how I aped +Creative nature by my subtle art.” + + + + +CANTO XXX + + +What time resentment burn’d in Juno’s breast +For Semele against the Theban blood, +As more than once in dire mischance was rued, +Such fatal frenzy seiz’d on Athamas, +That he his spouse beholding with a babe +Laden on either arm, “Spread out,” he cried, +“The meshes, that I take the lioness +And the young lions at the pass: “then forth +Stretch’d he his merciless talons, grasping one, +One helpless innocent, Learchus nam’d, +Whom swinging down he dash’d upon a rock, +And with her other burden self-destroy’d +The hapless mother plung’d: and when the pride +Of all-presuming Troy fell from its height, +By fortune overwhelm’d, and the old king +With his realm perish’d, then did Hecuba, +A wretch forlorn and captive, when she saw +Polyxena first slaughter’d, and her son, +Her Polydorus, on the wild sea-beach +Next met the mourner’s view, then reft of sense +Did she run barking even as a dog; +Such mighty power had grief to wrench her soul. +Bet ne’er the Furies or of Thebes or Troy +With such fell cruelty were seen, their goads +Infixing in the limbs of man or beast, +As now two pale and naked ghost I saw +That gnarling wildly scamper’d, like the swine +Excluded from his stye. One reach’d Capocchio, +And in the neck-joint sticking deep his fangs, +Dragg’d him, that o’er the solid pavement rubb’d +His belly stretch’d out prone. The other shape, +He of Arezzo, there left trembling, spake; +“That sprite of air is Schicchi; in like mood +Of random mischief vent he still his spite.” + +To whom I answ’ring: “Oh! as thou dost hope, +The other may not flesh its jaws on thee, +Be patient to inform us, who it is, +Ere it speed hence.”—” That is the ancient soul +Of wretched Myrrha,” he replied, “who burn’d +With most unholy flame for her own sire, +And a false shape assuming, so perform’d +The deed of sin; e’en as the other there, +That onward passes, dar’d to counterfeit +Donati’s features, to feign’d testament +The seal affixing, that himself might gain, +For his own share, the lady of the herd.” + +When vanish’d the two furious shades, on whom +Mine eye was held, I turn’d it back to view +The other cursed spirits. One I saw +In fashion like a lute, had but the groin +Been sever’d, where it meets the forked part. +Swoln dropsy, disproportioning the limbs +With ill-converted moisture, that the paunch +Suits not the visage, open’d wide his lips +Gasping as in the hectic man for drought, +One towards the chin, the other upward curl’d. + +“O ye, who in this world of misery, +Wherefore I know not, are exempt from pain,” +Thus he began, “attentively regard +Adamo’s woe. When living, full supply +Ne’er lack’d me of what most I coveted; +One drop of water now, alas! I crave. +The rills, that glitter down the grassy slopes +Of Casentino, making fresh and soft +The banks whereby they glide to Arno’s stream, +Stand ever in my view; and not in vain; +For more the pictur’d semblance dries me up, +Much more than the disease, which makes the flesh +Desert these shrivel’d cheeks. So from the place, +Where I transgress’d, stern justice urging me, +Takes means to quicken more my lab’ring sighs. +There is Romena, where I falsified +The metal with the Baptist’s form imprest, +For which on earth I left my body burnt. +But if I here might see the sorrowing soul +Of Guido, Alessandro, or their brother, +For Branda’s limpid spring I would not change +The welcome sight. One is e’en now within, +If truly the mad spirits tell, that round +Are wand’ring. But wherein besteads me that? +My limbs are fetter’d. Were I but so light, +That I each hundred years might move one inch, +I had set forth already on this path, +Seeking him out amidst the shapeless crew, +Although eleven miles it wind, not more +Than half of one across. They brought me down +Among this tribe; induc’d by them I stamp’d +The florens with three carats of alloy.” + +“Who are that abject pair,” I next inquir’d, +“That closely bounding thee upon thy right +Lie smoking, like a band in winter steep’d +In the chill stream?”—“When to this gulf I dropt,” +He answer’d, “here I found them; since that hour +They have not turn’d, nor ever shall, I ween, +Till time hath run his course. One is that dame +The false accuser of the Hebrew youth; +Sinon the other, that false Greek from Troy. +Sharp fever drains the reeky moistness out, +In such a cloud upsteam’d.” When that he heard, +One, gall’d perchance to be so darkly nam’d, +With clench’d hand smote him on the braced paunch, +That like a drum resounded: but forthwith +Adamo smote him on the face, the blow +Returning with his arm, that seem’d as hard. + +“Though my o’erweighty limbs have ta’en from me +The power to move,” said he, “I have an arm +At liberty for such employ.” To whom +Was answer’d: “When thou wentest to the fire, +Thou hadst it not so ready at command, +Then readier when it coin’d th’ impostor gold.” + +And thus the dropsied: “Ay, now speak’st thou true. +But there thou gav’st not such true testimony, +When thou wast question’d of the truth, at Troy.” + +“If I spake false, thou falsely stamp’dst the coin,” +Said Sinon; “I am here but for one fault, +And thou for more than any imp beside.” + +“Remember,” he replied, “O perjur’d one, +The horse remember, that did teem with death, +And all the world be witness to thy guilt.” + +“To thine,” return’d the Greek, “witness the thirst +Whence thy tongue cracks, witness the fluid mound, +Rear’d by thy belly up before thine eyes, +A mass corrupt.” To whom the coiner thus: +“Thy mouth gapes wide as ever to let pass +Its evil saying. Me if thirst assails, +Yet I am stuff’d with moisture. Thou art parch’d, +Pains rack thy head, no urging would’st thou need +To make thee lap Narcissus’ mirror up.” + +I was all fix’d to listen, when my guide +Admonish’d: “Now beware: a little more. +And I do quarrel with thee.” I perceiv’d +How angrily he spake, and towards him turn’d +With shame so poignant, as remember’d yet +Confounds me. As a man that dreams of harm +Befall’n him, dreaming wishes it a dream, +And that which is, desires as if it were not, +Such then was I, who wanting power to speak +Wish’d to excuse myself, and all the while +Excus’d me, though unweeting that I did. + +“More grievous fault than thine has been, less shame,” +My master cried, “might expiate. Therefore cast +All sorrow from thy soul; and if again +Chance bring thee, where like conference is held, +Think I am ever at thy side. To hear +Such wrangling is a joy for vulgar minds.” + + + + +CANTO XXXI + + +The very tongue, whose keen reproof before +Had wounded me, that either cheek was stain’d, +Now minister’d my cure. So have I heard, +Achilles and his father’s javelin caus’d +Pain first, and then the boon of health restor’d. + +Turning our back upon the vale of woe, +W cross’d th’ encircled mound in silence. There +Was twilight dim, that far long the gloom +Mine eye advanc’d not: but I heard a horn +Sounded aloud. The peal it blew had made +The thunder feeble. Following its course +The adverse way, my strained eyes were bent +On that one spot. So terrible a blast +Orlando blew not, when that dismal rout +O’erthrew the host of Charlemagne, and quench’d +His saintly warfare. Thitherward not long +My head was rais’d, when many lofty towers +Methought I spied. “Master,” said I, “what land +Is this?” He answer’d straight: “Too long a space +Of intervening darkness has thine eye +To traverse: thou hast therefore widely err’d +In thy imagining. Thither arriv’d +Thou well shalt see, how distance can delude +The sense. A little therefore urge thee on.” + +Then tenderly he caught me by the hand; +“Yet know,” said he, “ere farther we advance, +That it less strange may seem, these are not towers, +But giants. In the pit they stand immers’d, +Each from his navel downward, round the bank.” + +As when a fog disperseth gradually, +Our vision traces what the mist involves +Condens’d in air; so piercing through the gross +And gloomy atmosphere, as more and more +We near’d toward the brink, mine error fled, +And fear came o’er me. As with circling round +Of turrets, Montereggion crowns his walls, +E’en thus the shore, encompassing th’ abyss, +Was turreted with giants, half their length +Uprearing, horrible, whom Jove from heav’n +Yet threatens, when his mutt’ring thunder rolls. + +Of one already I descried the face, +Shoulders, and breast, and of the belly huge +Great part, and both arms down along his ribs. + +All-teeming nature, when her plastic hand +Left framing of these monsters, did display +Past doubt her wisdom, taking from mad War +Such slaves to do his bidding; and if she +Repent her not of th’ elephant and whale, +Who ponders well confesses her therein +Wiser and more discreet; for when brute force +And evil will are back’d with subtlety, +Resistance none avails. His visage seem’d +In length and bulk, as doth the pine, that tops +Saint Peter’s Roman fane; and th’ other bones +Of like proportion, so that from above +The bank, which girdled him below, such height +Arose his stature, that three Friezelanders +Had striv’n in vain to reach but to his hair. +Full thirty ample palms was he expos’d +Downward from whence a man his garments loops. +“Raphel bai ameth sabi almi,” +So shouted his fierce lips, which sweeter hymns +Became not; and my guide address’d him thus: +“O senseless spirit! let thy horn for thee +Interpret: therewith vent thy rage, if rage +Or other passion wring thee. Search thy neck, +There shalt thou find the belt that binds it on. +Wild spirit! lo, upon thy mighty breast +Where hangs the baldrick!” Then to me he spake: +“He doth accuse himself. Nimrod is this, +Through whose ill counsel in the world no more +One tongue prevails. But pass we on, nor waste +Our words; for so each language is to him, +As his to others, understood by none.” + +Then to the leftward turning sped we forth, +And at a sling’s throw found another shade +Far fiercer and more huge. I cannot say +What master hand had girt him; but he held +Behind the right arm fetter’d, and before +The other with a chain, that fasten’d him +From the neck down, and five times round his form +Apparent met the wreathed links. “This proud one +Would of his strength against almighty Jove +Make trial,” said my guide; “whence he is thus +Requited: Ephialtes him they call. +Great was his prowess, when the giants brought +Fear on the gods: those arms, which then he piled, +Now moves he never.” Forthwith I return’d: +“Fain would I, if ’twere possible, mine eyes +Of Briareus immeasurable gain’d +Experience next.” He answer’d: “Thou shalt see +Not far from hence Antaeus, who both speaks +And is unfetter’d, who shall place us there +Where guilt is at its depth. Far onward stands +Whom thou wouldst fain behold, in chains, and made +Like to this spirit, save that in his looks +More fell he seems.” By violent earthquake rock’d +Ne’er shook a tow’r, so reeling to its base, +As Ephialtes. More than ever then +I dreaded death, nor than the terror more +Had needed, if I had not seen the cords +That held him fast. We, straightway journeying on, +Came to Antaeus, who five ells complete +Without the head, forth issued from the cave. + +“O thou, who in the fortunate vale, that made +Great Scipio heir of glory, when his sword +Drove back the troop of Hannibal in flight, +Who thence of old didst carry for thy spoil +An hundred lions; and if thou hadst fought +In the high conflict on thy brethren’s side, +Seems as men yet believ’d, that through thine arm +The sons of earth had conquer’d, now vouchsafe +To place us down beneath, where numbing cold +Locks up Cocytus. Force not that we crave +Or Tityus’ help or Typhon’s. Here is one +Can give what in this realm ye covet. Stoop +Therefore, nor scornfully distort thy lip. +He in the upper world can yet bestow +Renown on thee, for he doth live, and looks +For life yet longer, if before the time +Grace call him not unto herself.” Thus spake +The teacher. He in haste forth stretch’d his hands, +And caught my guide. Alcides whilom felt +That grapple straighten’d score. Soon as my guide +Had felt it, he bespake me thus: “This way +That I may clasp thee;” then so caught me up, +That we were both one burden. As appears +The tower of Carisenda, from beneath +Where it doth lean, if chance a passing cloud +So sail across, that opposite it hangs, +Such then Antaeus seem’d, as at mine ease +I mark’d him stooping. I were fain at times +T’ have pass’d another way. Yet in th’ abyss, +That Lucifer with Judas low ingulfs, +I,ightly he plac’d us; nor there leaning stay’d, +But rose as in a bark the stately mast. + + + + +CANTO XXXII + + +Could I command rough rhimes and hoarse, to suit +That hole of sorrow, o’er which ev’ry rock +His firm abutment rears, then might the vein +Of fancy rise full springing: but not mine +Such measures, and with falt’ring awe I touch +The mighty theme; for to describe the depth +Of all the universe, is no emprize +To jest with, and demands a tongue not us’d +To infant babbling. But let them assist +My song, the tuneful maidens, by whose aid +Amphion wall’d in Thebes, so with the truth +My speech shall best accord. Oh ill-starr’d folk, +Beyond all others wretched! who abide +In such a mansion, as scarce thought finds words +To speak of, better had ye here on earth +Been flocks or mountain goats. As down we stood +In the dark pit beneath the giants’ feet, +But lower far than they, and I did gaze +Still on the lofty battlement, a voice +Bespoke me thus: “Look how thou walkest. Take +Good heed, thy soles do tread not on the heads +Of thy poor brethren.” Thereupon I turn’d, +And saw before and underneath my feet +A lake, whose frozen surface liker seem’d +To glass than water. Not so thick a veil +In winter e’er hath Austrian Danube spread +O’er his still course, nor Tanais far remote +Under the chilling sky. Roll’d o’er that mass +Had Tabernich or Pietrapana fall’n, +Not e’en its rim had creak’d. As peeps the frog +Croaking above the wave, what time in dreams +The village gleaner oft pursues her toil, +So, to where modest shame appears, thus low +Blue pinch’d and shrin’d in ice the spirits stood, +Moving their teeth in shrill note like the stork. +His face each downward held; their mouth the cold, +Their eyes express’d the dolour of their heart. + +A space I look’d around, then at my feet +Saw two so strictly join’d, that of their head +The very hairs were mingled. “Tell me ye, +Whose bosoms thus together press,” said I, +“Who are ye?” At that sound their necks they bent, +And when their looks were lifted up to me, +Straightway their eyes, before all moist within, +Distill’d upon their lips, and the frost bound +The tears betwixt those orbs and held them there. +Plank unto plank hath never cramp clos’d up +So stoutly. Whence like two enraged goats +They clash’d together; them such fury seiz’d. + +And one, from whom the cold both ears had reft, +Exclaim’d, still looking downward: “Why on us +Dost speculate so long? If thou wouldst know +Who are these two, the valley, whence his wave +Bisenzio slopes, did for its master own +Their sire Alberto, and next him themselves. +They from one body issued; and throughout +Caina thou mayst search, nor find a shade +More worthy in congealment to be fix’d, +Not him, whose breast and shadow Arthur’s land +At that one blow dissever’d, not Focaccia, +No not this spirit, whose o’erjutting head +Obstructs my onward view: he bore the name +Of Mascheroni: Tuscan if thou be, +Well knowest who he was: and to cut short +All further question, in my form behold +What once was Camiccione. I await +Carlino here my kinsman, whose deep guilt +Shall wash out mine.” A thousand visages +Then mark’d I, which the keen and eager cold +Had shap’d into a doggish grin; whence creeps +A shiv’ring horror o’er me, at the thought +Of those frore shallows. While we journey’d on +Toward the middle, at whose point unites +All heavy substance, and I trembling went +Through that eternal chillness, I know not +If will it were or destiny, or chance, +But, passing ’midst the heads, my foot did strike +With violent blow against the face of one. + +“Wherefore dost bruise me?” weeping, he exclaim’d, +“Unless thy errand be some fresh revenge +For Montaperto, wherefore troublest me?” + +I thus: “Instructor, now await me here, +That I through him may rid me of my doubt. +Thenceforth what haste thou wilt.” The teacher paus’d, +And to that shade I spake, who bitterly +Still curs’d me in his wrath. “What art thou, speak, +That railest thus on others?” He replied: +“Now who art thou, that smiting others’ cheeks +Through Antenora roamest, with such force +As were past suff’rance, wert thou living still?” + +“And I am living, to thy joy perchance,” +Was my reply, “if fame be dear to thee, +That with the rest I may thy name enrol.” + +“The contrary of what I covet most,” +Said he, “thou tender’st: hence; nor vex me more. +Ill knowest thou to flatter in this vale.” + +Then seizing on his hinder scalp, I cried: +“Name thee, or not a hair shall tarry here.” + +“Rend all away,” he answer’d, “yet for that +I will not tell nor show thee who I am, +Though at my head thou pluck a thousand times.” + +Now I had grasp’d his tresses, and stript off +More than one tuft, he barking, with his eyes +Drawn in and downward, when another cried, +“What ails thee, Bocca? Sound not loud enough +Thy chatt’ring teeth, but thou must bark outright? +What devil wrings thee?”—” Now,” said I, “be dumb, +Accursed traitor! to thy shame of thee +True tidings will I bear.”—” Off,” he replied, +“Tell what thou list; but as thou escape from hence +To speak of him whose tongue hath been so glib, +Forget not: here he wails the Frenchman’s gold. +‘Him of Duera,’ thou canst say, ‘I mark’d, +Where the starv’d sinners pine.’ If thou be ask’d +What other shade was with them, at thy side +Is Beccaria, whose red gorge distain’d +The biting axe of Florence. Farther on, +If I misdeem not, Soldanieri bides, +With Ganellon, and Tribaldello, him +Who op’d Faenza when the people slept.” + +We now had left him, passing on our way, +When I beheld two spirits by the ice +Pent in one hollow, that the head of one +Was cowl unto the other; and as bread +Is raven’d up through hunger, th’ uppermost +Did so apply his fangs to th’ other’s brain, +Where the spine joins it. Not more furiously +On Menalippus’ temples Tydeus gnaw’d, +Than on that skull and on its garbage he. + +“O thou who show’st so beastly sign of hate +’Gainst him thou prey’st on, let me hear,” said I +“The cause, on such condition, that if right +Warrant thy grievance, knowing who ye are, +And what the colour of his sinning was, +I may repay thee in the world above, +If that, wherewith I speak be moist so long.” + + + + +CANTO XXXIII + + +His jaws uplifting from their fell repast, +That sinner wip’d them on the hairs o’ th’ head, +Which he behind had mangled, then began: +“Thy will obeying, I call up afresh +Sorrow past cure, which but to think of wrings +My heart, or ere I tell on’t. But if words, +That I may utter, shall prove seed to bear +Fruit of eternal infamy to him, +The traitor whom I gnaw at, thou at once +Shalt see me speak and weep. Who thou mayst be +I know not, nor how here below art come: +But Florentine thou seemest of a truth, +When I do hear thee. Know I was on earth +Count Ugolino, and th’ Archbishop he +Ruggieri. Why I neighbour him so close, +Now list. That through effect of his ill thoughts +In him my trust reposing, I was ta’en +And after murder’d, need is not I tell. +What therefore thou canst not have heard, that is, +How cruel was the murder, shalt thou hear, +And know if he have wrong’d me. A small grate +Within that mew, which for my sake the name +Of famine bears, where others yet must pine, +Already through its opening sev’ral moons +Had shown me, when I slept the evil sleep, +That from the future tore the curtain off. +This one, methought, as master of the sport, +Rode forth to chase the gaunt wolf and his whelps +Unto the mountain, which forbids the sight +Of Lucca to the Pisan. With lean brachs +Inquisitive and keen, before him rang’d +Lanfranchi with Sismondi and Gualandi. +After short course the father and the sons +Seem’d tir’d and lagging, and methought I saw +The sharp tusks gore their sides. When I awoke +Before the dawn, amid their sleep I heard +My sons (for they were with me) weep and ask +For bread. Right cruel art thou, if no pang +Thou feel at thinking what my heart foretold; +And if not now, why use thy tears to flow? +Now had they waken’d; and the hour drew near +When they were wont to bring us food; the mind +Of each misgave him through his dream, and I +Heard, at its outlet underneath lock’d up +The’ horrible tower: whence uttering not a word +I look’d upon the visage of my sons. +I wept not: so all stone I felt within. +They wept: and one, my little Anslem, cried: +“Thou lookest so! Father what ails thee?” Yet +I shed no tear, nor answer’d all that day +Nor the next night, until another sun +Came out upon the world. When a faint beam +Had to our doleful prison made its way, +And in four countenances I descry’d +The image of my own, on either hand +Through agony I bit, and they who thought +I did it through desire of feeding, rose +O’ th’ sudden, and cried, ‘Father, we should grieve +Far less, if thou wouldst eat of us: thou gav’st +These weeds of miserable flesh we wear, +And do thou strip them off from us again.’ +Then, not to make them sadder, I kept down +My spirit in stillness. That day and the next +We all were silent. Ah, obdurate earth! +Why open’dst not upon us? When we came +To the fourth day, then Geddo at my feet +Outstretch’d did fling him, crying, ‘Hast no help +For me, my father!’ “There he died, and e’en +Plainly as thou seest me, saw I the three +Fall one by one ’twixt the fifth day and sixth: +Whence I betook me now grown blind to grope +Over them all, and for three days aloud +Call’d on them who were dead. Then fasting got +The mastery of grief.” Thus having spoke, +Once more upon the wretched skull his teeth +He fasten’d, like a mastiff’s ’gainst the bone +Firm and unyielding. Oh thou Pisa! shame +Of all the people, who their dwelling make +In that fair region, where th’ Italian voice +Is heard, since that thy neighbours are so slack +To punish, from their deep foundations rise +Capraia and Gorgona, and dam up +The mouth of Arno, that each soul in thee +May perish in the waters! What if fame +Reported that thy castles were betray’d +By Ugolino, yet no right hadst thou +To stretch his children on the rack. For them, +Brigata, Ugaccione, and the pair +Of gentle ones, of whom my song hath told, +Their tender years, thou modern Thebes! did make +Uncapable of guilt. Onward we pass’d, +Where others skarf’d in rugged folds of ice +Not on their feet were turn’d, but each revers’d + +There very weeping suffers not to weep; +For at their eyes grief seeking passage finds +Impediment, and rolling inward turns +For increase of sharp anguish: the first tears +Hang cluster’d, and like crystal vizors show, +Under the socket brimming all the cup. + +Now though the cold had from my face dislodg’d +Each feeling, as ’twere callous, yet me seem’d +Some breath of wind I felt. “Whence cometh this,” +Said I, “my master? Is not here below +All vapour quench’d?”—“‘Thou shalt be speedily,” +He answer’d, “where thine eye shall tell thee whence +The cause descrying of this airy shower.” + +Then cried out one in the chill crust who mourn’d: +“O souls so cruel! that the farthest post +Hath been assign’d you, from this face remove +The harden’d veil, that I may vent the grief +Impregnate at my heart, some little space +Ere it congeal again!” I thus replied: +“Say who thou wast, if thou wouldst have mine aid; +And if I extricate thee not, far down +As to the lowest ice may I descend!” + +“The friar Alberigo,” answered he, +“Am I, who from the evil garden pluck’d +Its fruitage, and am here repaid, the date +More luscious for my fig.”—“Hah!” I exclaim’d, +“Art thou too dead!”—“How in the world aloft +It fareth with my body,” answer’d he, +“I am right ignorant. Such privilege +Hath Ptolomea, that ofttimes the soul +Drops hither, ere by Atropos divorc’d. +And that thou mayst wipe out more willingly +The glazed tear-drops that o’erlay mine eyes, +Know that the soul, that moment she betrays, +As I did, yields her body to a fiend +Who after moves and governs it at will, +Till all its time be rounded; headlong she +Falls to this cistern. And perchance above +Doth yet appear the body of a ghost, +Who here behind me winters. Him thou know’st, +If thou but newly art arriv’d below. +The years are many that have pass’d away, +Since to this fastness Branca Doria came.” + +“Now,” answer’d I, “methinks thou mockest me, +For Branca Doria never yet hath died, +But doth all natural functions of a man, +Eats, drinks, and sleeps, and putteth raiment on.” + +He thus: “Not yet unto that upper foss +By th’ evil talons guarded, where the pitch +Tenacious boils, had Michael Zanche reach’d, +When this one left a demon in his stead +In his own body, and of one his kin, +Who with him treachery wrought. But now put forth +Thy hand, and ope mine eyes.” I op’d them not. +Ill manners were best courtesy to him. + +Ah Genoese! men perverse in every way, +With every foulness stain’d, why from the earth +Are ye not cancel’d? Such an one of yours +I with Romagna’s darkest spirit found, +As for his doings even now in soul +Is in Cocytus plung’d, and yet doth seem +In body still alive upon the earth. + + + + +CANTO XXXIV + + +“The banners of Hell’s Monarch do come forth +Towards us; therefore look,” so spake my guide, +“If thou discern him.” As, when breathes a cloud +Heavy and dense, or when the shades of night +Fall on our hemisphere, seems view’d from far +A windmill, which the blast stirs briskly round, +Such was the fabric then methought I saw, + +To shield me from the wind, forthwith I drew +Behind my guide: no covert else was there. + +Now came I (and with fear I bid my strain +Record the marvel) where the souls were all +Whelm’d underneath, transparent, as through glass +Pellucid the frail stem. Some prone were laid, +Others stood upright, this upon the soles, +That on his head, a third with face to feet +Arch’d like a bow. When to the point we came, +Whereat my guide was pleas’d that I should see +The creature eminent in beauty once, +He from before me stepp’d and made me pause. + +“Lo!” he exclaim’d, “lo Dis! and lo the place, +Where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength.” + +How frozen and how faint I then became, +Ask me not, reader! for I write it not, +Since words would fail to tell thee of my state. +I was not dead nor living. Think thyself +If quick conception work in thee at all, +How I did feel. That emperor, who sways +The realm of sorrow, at mid breast from th’ ice +Stood forth; and I in stature am more like +A giant, than the giants are in his arms. +Mark now how great that whole must be, which suits +With such a part. If he were beautiful +As he is hideous now, and yet did dare +To scowl upon his Maker, well from him +May all our mis’ry flow. Oh what a sight! +How passing strange it seem’d, when I did spy +Upon his head three faces: one in front +Of hue vermilion, th’ other two with this +Midway each shoulder join’d and at the crest; +The right ’twixt wan and yellow seem’d: the left +To look on, such as come from whence old Nile +Stoops to the lowlands. Under each shot forth +Two mighty wings, enormous as became +A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw +Outstretch’d on the wide sea. No plumes had they, +But were in texture like a bat, and these +He flapp’d i’ th’ air, that from him issued still +Three winds, wherewith Cocytus to its depth +Was frozen. At six eyes he wept: the tears +Adown three chins distill’d with bloody foam. +At every mouth his teeth a sinner champ’d +Bruis’d as with pond’rous engine, so that three +Were in this guise tormented. But far more +Than from that gnawing, was the foremost pang’d +By the fierce rending, whence ofttimes the back +Was stript of all its skin. “That upper spirit, +Who hath worse punishment,” so spake my guide, +“Is Judas, he that hath his head within +And plies the feet without. Of th’ other two, +Whose heads are under, from the murky jaw +Who hangs, is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe +And speaks not! Th’ other Cassius, that appears +So large of limb. But night now re-ascends, +And it is time for parting. All is seen.” + +I clipp’d him round the neck, for so he bade; +And noting time and place, he, when the wings +Enough were op’d, caught fast the shaggy sides, +And down from pile to pile descending stepp’d +Between the thick fell and the jagged ice. + +Soon as he reach’d the point, whereat the thigh +Upon the swelling of the haunches turns, +My leader there with pain and struggling hard +Turn’d round his head, where his feet stood before, +And grappled at the fell, as one who mounts, +That into hell methought we turn’d again. + +“Expect that by such stairs as these,” thus spake +The teacher, panting like a man forespent, +“We must depart from evil so extreme.” +Then at a rocky opening issued forth, +And plac’d me on a brink to sit, next join’d +With wary step my side. I rais’d mine eyes, +Believing that I Lucifer should see +Where he was lately left, but saw him now +With legs held upward. Let the grosser sort, +Who see not what the point was I had pass’d, +Bethink them if sore toil oppress’d me then. + +“Arise,” my master cried, “upon thy feet. +“The way is long, and much uncouth the road; +And now within one hour and half of noon +The sun returns.” It was no palace-hall +Lofty and luminous wherein we stood, +But natural dungeon where ill footing was +And scant supply of light. “Ere from th’ abyss +I sep’rate,” thus when risen I began, +“My guide! vouchsafe few words to set me free +From error’s thralldom. Where is now the ice? +How standeth he in posture thus revers’d? +And how from eve to morn in space so brief +Hath the sun made his transit?” He in few +Thus answering spake: “Thou deemest thou art still +On th’ other side the centre, where I grasp’d +Th’ abhorred worm, that boreth through the world. +Thou wast on th’ other side, so long as I +Descended; when I turn’d, thou didst o’erpass +That point, to which from ev’ry part is dragg’d +All heavy substance. Thou art now arriv’d +Under the hemisphere opposed to that, +Which the great continent doth overspread, +And underneath whose canopy expir’d +The Man, that was born sinless, and so liv’d. +Thy feet are planted on the smallest sphere, +Whose other aspect is Judecca. Morn +Here rises, when there evening sets: and he, +Whose shaggy pile was scal’d, yet standeth fix’d, +As at the first. On this part he fell down +From heav’n; and th’ earth, here prominent before, +Through fear of him did veil her with the sea, +And to our hemisphere retir’d. Perchance +To shun him was the vacant space left here +By what of firm land on this side appears, +That sprang aloof.” There is a place beneath, +From Belzebub as distant, as extends +The vaulted tomb, discover’d not by sight, +But by the sound of brooklet, that descends +This way along the hollow of a rock, +Which, as it winds with no precipitous course, +The wave hath eaten. By that hidden way +My guide and I did enter, to return +To the fair world: and heedless of repose +We climbed, he first, I following his steps, +Till on our view the beautiful lights of heav’n +Dawn, through a circular opening in the cave: +Thus issuing we again beheld the stars. + + + + +NOTES TO HELL + +CANTO I + + +Verse 1. In the midway.] That the era of the Poem is intended by these +words to be fixed to the thirty fifth year of the poet’s age, A.D. +1300, will appear more plainly in Canto XXI. where that date is +explicitly marked. + +v. 16. That planet’s beam.] The sun. + +v. 29. The hinder foot.] It is to be remembered, that in ascending a +hill the weight of the body rests on the hinder foot. + +v. 30. A panther.] Pleasure or luxury. + +v. 36. With those stars.] The sun was in Aries, in which sign he +supposes it to have begun its course at the creation. + +v. 43. A lion.] Pride or ambition. + +v. 45. A she wolf.] Avarice. + +v. 56. Where the sun in silence rests.] Hence Milton appears to have +taken his idea in the Samson Agonistes: + + The sun to me is dark + + And silent as the moon, &c +The same metaphor will recur, Canto V. v. 29. + + Into a place I came + + Where light was silent all. + +v. 65. When the power of Julius.] This is explained by the commentators +to mean “Although it was rather late with respect to my birth before +Julius Caesar assumed the supreme authority, and made himself perpetual +dictator.” + +v. 98. That greyhound.] This passage is intended as an eulogium on the +liberal spirit of his Veronese patron Can Grande della Scala. + +v. 102. ’Twizt either Feltro.] Verona, the country of Can della Scala, +is situated between Feltro, a city in the Marca Trivigiana, and Monte +Feltro, a city in the territory of Urbino. + +v. 103. Italia’s plains.] “Umile Italia,” from Virgil, Aen lib. +iii. 522. + + Humilemque videmus + + Italiam. + +v. 115. Content in fire.] The spirits in Purgatory. + +v. 118. A spirit worthier.] Beatrice, who conducts the Poet through +Paradise. + +v. 130. Saint Peter’s gate.] The gate of Purgatory, which the Poet +feigns to be guarded by an angel placed on that station by St. Peter. + +CANTO II + + +v. 1. Now was the day.] A compendium of Virgil’s description Aen. lib. +iv 522. Nox erat, &c. Compare Apollonius Rhodius, lib iii. 744, and +lib. iv. 1058 + +v. 8. O mind.] + + O thought that write all that I met, + + And in the tresorie it set + + Of my braine, now shall men see + + If any virtue in thee be. + + Chaucer. Temple of Fame, b. ii. v.18 + +v. 14. Silvius’sire.] Aeneas. + +v. 30. The chosen vessel.] St.Paul, Acts, c. ix. v. 15. “But the Lord +said unto him, Go thy way; for he is a chosen vessel unto me.” + +v. 46. Thy soul.] L’anima tua e da viltate offesa. So in Berni, Orl +Inn.lib. iii. c. i. st. 53. Se l’alma avete offesa da viltate. + +v. 64. Who rest suspended.] The spirits in Limbo, neither admitted to a +state of glory nor doomed to punishment. + +v. 61. A friend not of my fortune, but myself.] Se non fortunae sed +hominibus solere esse amicum. Cornelii Nepotis Attici Vitae, c. ix. + +v. 78. Whatever is contain’d.] Every other thing comprised within the +lunar heaven, which, being the lowest of all, has the smallest circle. + +v. 93. A blessed dame.] The divine mercy. + +v. 97. Lucia.] The enlightening grace of heaven. + +v. 124. Three maids.] The divine mercy, Lucia, and Beatrice. + +v. 127. As florets.] This simile is well translated by Chaucer— But +right as floures through the cold of night Iclosed, stoupen in her +stalkes lowe, Redressen hem agen the sunne bright, And speden in her +kinde course by rowe, &c. Troilus and Creseide, b.ii. It has been +imitated by many others, among whom see Berni, Orl.Inn. Iib. 1. c. xii. +st. 86. Marino, Adone, c. xvii. st. 63. and Sor. “Donna vestita di +nero.” and Spenser’s Faery Queen, b.4. c. xii. st. 34. and b. 6 c. ii. +st. 35. + +CANTO III + + +v. 5. Power divine Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.] The three +persons of the blessed Trinity. v. 9. all hope abandoned.] Lasciate +ogni speranza voi ch’entrate. So Berni, Orl. Inn. lib. i. c. 8. st. 53. +Lascia pur della vita ogni speranza. + +v. 29. Like to the sand.] + + Unnumber’d as the sands + + Of Barca or Cyrene’s torrid soil + + Levied to side with warring winds, and poise + + Their lighter wings. + + Milton, P. L. ii. 908. + +v. 40. Lest th’ accursed tribe.] Lest the rebellious angels should +exult at seeing those who were neutral and therefore less guilty, +condemned to the same punishment with themselves. + +v. 50. A flag.] + + All the grisly legions that troop + + Under the sooty flag of Acheron + + Milton. Comus. + +v. 56. Who to base fear Yielding, abjur’d his high estate.] This is +commonly understood of Celestine the Fifth, who abdicated the papal +power in 1294. Venturi mentions a work written by Innocenzio +Barcellini, of the Celestine order, and printed in Milan in 1701, In +which an attempt is made to put a different interpretation on this +passage. + +v. 70. through the blear light.] + + Lo fioco lume +So Filicaja, canz. vi. st. 12. + + Qual fioco lume. + +v. 77. An old man.] + + Portitor has horrendus aquas et flumina servat + + Terribili squalore Charon, cui plurima mento + + Canities inculta jacet; stant lumina flamma. + + Virg. 7. Aen. Iib. vi. 2. + +v. 82. In fierce heat and in ice.] + + The delighted spirit + + To bathe in fiery floods or to reside + + In thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice. + + Shakesp. Measure for Measure, a. iii.s.1. +Compare Milton, P. L. b. ii. 600. + +v. 92. The livid lake.] Vada livida. + + Virg. Aen. Iib. vi. 320 + + Totius ut Lacus putidaeque paludis + + Lividissima, maximeque est profunda vorago. + + Catullus. xviii. 10. + +v. 102. With eyes of burning coal.] + + His looks were dreadful, and his fiery eyes + + Like two great beacons glared bright and wide. + + Spenser. F.Q. b. vi. c. vii.st. 42 + +v. 104. As fall off the light of autumnal leaves.] + + Quam multa in silvis autumul frigore primo + + Lapsa cadunt folia. + + Virg. Aen. lib. vi. 309 +Compare Apoll. Rhod. lib. iv. 214. + +CANTO IV + + +v. 8. A thund’rous sound.] Imitated, as Mr. Thyer has remarked, +by Milton, P. L. b. viii. 242. + + But long ere our approaching heard + + Noise, other, than the sound of dance or song + + Torment, and loud lament, and furious rage. + +v. 50. a puissant one.] Our Saviour. + +v. 75. Honour the bard + + Sublime.] + + Onorate l’altissimo poeta. +So Chiabrera, Canz. Eroiche. 32. + + Onorando l’altissimo poeta. + +v. 79. Of semblance neither sorrowful nor glad.] + + She nas to sober ne to glad. + + Chaucer’s Dream. + +v. 90. The Monarch of sublimest song.] Homer. + +v. 100. Fitter left untold.] + + Che’l tacere e bello, +So our Poet, in Canzone 14. + + La vide in parte che’l tacere e bello, +Ruccellai, Le Api, 789. + + Ch’a dire e brutto ed a tacerlo e bello +And Bembo, + + “Vie pui bello e il tacerle, che il favellarne.” + + Gli. Asol. lib. 1. + +v. 117. Electra.] The daughter of Atlas, and mother of Dardanus the +founder of Troy. See Virg. Aen. b. viii. 134. as referred to by Dante +in treatise “De Monarchia,” lib. ii. “Electra, scilicet, nata magni +nombris regis Atlantis, ut de ambobus testimonium reddit poeta noster +in octavo ubi Aeneas ad Avandrum sic ait “Dardanus Iliacae,” &c. + +v. 125. Julia.] The daughter of Julius Caesar, and wife of Pompey. + +v. 126. The Soldan fierce.] Saladin or Salaheddin, the rival of Richard +coeur de lion. See D’Herbelot, Bibl. Orient. and Knolles’s Hist. of the +Turks p. 57 to 73 and the Life of Saladin, by Bohao’edin Ebn Shedad, +published by Albert Schultens, with a Latin translation. He is +introduced by Petrarch in the Triumph of Fame, c. ii + +v. 128. The master of the sapient throng.] + + Maestro di color che sanno. +Aristotle—Petrarch assigns the first place to Plato. See Triumph +of Fame, c. iii. +Pulci, in his Morgante Maggiore, c. xviii. says, + + Tu se’il maestro di color che sanno. + +v. 132. Democritus Who sets the world at chance.] Democritus,who +maintained the world to have been formed by the fortuitous concourse of +atoms. + +v. 140. Avicen.] See D’Herbelot Bibl. Orient. article Sina. He died in +1050. Pulci here again imitates our poet: + + Avicenna quel che il sentimento + + Intese di Aristotile e i segreti, + + Averrois che fece il gran comento. + + Morg. Mag. c. xxv. + +v. 140. Him who made That commentary vast, Averroes.] Averroes, called +by the Arabians Roschd, translated and commented the works of +Aristotle. According to Tiraboschi (storia della Lett. Ital. t. v. 1. +ii. c. ii. sect. 4.) he was the source of modern philosophical impiety. +The critic quotes some passages from Petrarch (Senil. 1. v. ep. iii. +et. Oper. v. ii. p. 1143) to show how strongly such sentiments +prevailed in the time of that poet, by whom they were held in horror +and detestation He adds, that this fanatic admirer of Aristotle +translated his writings with that felicity, which might be expected +from one who did not know a syllable of Greek, and who was therefore +compelled to avail himself of the unfaithful Arabic versions. +D’Herbelot, on the other hand, informs us, that “Averroes was the first +who translated Aristotle from Greek into Arabic, before the Jews had +made their translation: and that we had for a long time no other text +of Aristotle, except that of the Latin translation, which was made from +this Arabic version of this great philosopher (Averroes), who +afterwards added to it a very ample commentary, of which Thomas +Aquinas, and the other scholastic writers, availed themselves, before +the Greek originals of Aristotle and his commentators were known to us +in Europe.” According to D’Herbelot, he died in 1198: but Tiraboschi +places that event about 1206. + +CANTO V + + +v. 5. Grinning with ghastly feature.] Hence Milton: + + Death + + Grinn’d horrible a ghastly smile. + + P. L. b. ii. 845. + +v. 46. As cranes.] This simile is imitated by Lorenzo de +Medici, in his Ambra, a poem, first published by Mr. Roscoe, in +the Appendix to his Life of Lorenzo. + + Marking the tracts of air, the clamorous cranes + + Wheel their due flight in varied ranks descried: + + And each with outstretch’d neck his rank maintains + + In marshal’d order through th’ ethereal void. + + Roscoe, v. i. c. v. p. 257. 4to edit. +Compare Homer. Il. iii. 3. Virgil. Aeneid. 1 x. 264, and +Ruccellai, Le Api, 942, and Dante’s Purgatory, Canto XXIV. 63. + +v. 96. The land.] Ravenna. + +v. 99 Love, that in gentle heart is quickly learnt.] Amor, Ch’ al cor +gentil ratto s’apprende. A line taken by Marino, Adone, c. cxli. st. +251. + +v. 102. Love, that denial takes from none belov’d.] + + Amor, ch’ a null’ amato amar perdona. +So Boccacio, in his Filocopo. l.1. + + Amore mal non perdono l’amore a nullo amato. +And Pulci, in the Morgante Maggiore, c. iv. + + E perche amor mal volontier perdona, + + Che non sia al fin sempre amato chi ama. +Indeed many of the Italian poets have repeated this verse. + +v. 105. Caina.] The place to which murderers are doomed. + +v. 113. Francesca.] Francesca, daughter of Guido da Polenta, lord of +Ravenna, was given by her father in marriage to Lanciotto, son of +Malatesta, lord of Rimini, a man of extraordinary courage, but deformed +in his person. His brother Paolo, who unhappily possessed those graces +which the husband of Francesca wanted, engaged her affections; and +being taken in adultery, they were both put to death by the enraged +Lanciotto. See Notes to Canto XXVII. v. 43 The whole of this passage is +alluded to by Petrarch, in his Triumph of Love c. iii. + +v. 118. + + No greater grief than to remember days + + Of joy,xwhen mis’ry is at hand!] +Imitated by Marino: + + Che non ha doglia il misero maggiore + + Che ricordar la giola entro il dolore. + + Adone, c. xiv. st. 100 +And by Fortiguerra: + + Rimembrare il ben perduto + + Fa piu meschino lo presente stato. + + Ricciardetto, c. xi. st. 83. +The original perhaps was in Boetius de Consol. Philosoph. “In +omni adversitate fortunae infelicissimum genus est infortunii +fuisse felicem et non esse.” 1. 2. pr. 4 + +v. 124. Lancelot.] One of the Knights of the Round Table, and the lover +of Ginevra, or Guinever, celebrated in romance. The incident alluded to +seems to have made a strong impression on the imagination of Dante, who +introduces it again, less happily, in the Paradise, Canto XVI. + +v. 128. At one point.] + + Questo quel punto fu, che sol mi vinse. + + Tasso, Il Torrismondo, a. i. s. 3. + +v. 136. And like a corpse fell to the ground ] + + E caddi, come corpo morto cade. +So Pulci: + + E cadde come morto in terra cade. +Morgante Maggoire, c. xxii + +CANTO VI + + +v. 1. My sense reviving.] + + Al tornar della mente, che si chiuse + + Dinanzi alla pieta de’ duo cognati. +Berni has made a sportive application of these lines, in his Orl. +Inn. l. iii. c. viii. st. 1. + +v. 21. That great worm.] So in Canto XXXIV Lucifer is called + + Th’ abhorred worm, that boreth through the world. +Ariosto has imitated Dante: + + Ch’ al gran verme infernal mette la briglia, + + E che di lui come a lei par dispone. + + Orl. Fur. c. xlvi. st. 76. + +v. 52. Ciacco.] So called from his inordinate appetite: Ciacco, in +Italian, signifying a pig. The real name of this glutton has not been +transmitted to us. He is introduced in Boccaccio’s Decameron, Giorn. +ix. Nov. 8. + +v. 61. The divided city.] The city of Florence, divided into the +Bianchi and Neri factions. + +v. 65. The wild party from the woods.] So called, because it was headed +by Veri de’ Cerchi, whose family had lately come into the city from +Acone, and the woody country of the Val di Nievole. + +v. 66. The other.] The opposite parts of the Neri, at the head of which +was Corso Donati. + +v. 67. This must fall.] The Bianchi. + +v. 69. Of one, who under shore Now rests.] Charles of Valois, by whose +means the Neri were replaced. + +v. 73. The just are two in number.] Who these two were, the +commentators are not agreed. + +v. 79. Of Farinata and Tegghiaio.] See Canto X. and Notes, and Canto +XVI, and Notes. + +v. 80. Giacopo.] Giacopo Rusticucci. See Canto XVI, and Notes. + +v. 81. Arrigo, Mosca.] Of Arrigo, who is said by the commentators to +have been of the noble family of the Fifanti, no mention afterwards +occurs. Mosca degli Uberti is introduced in Canto XXVIII. v. + +108. Consult thy knowledge.] We are referred to the following passage +in St. Augustin:—“Cum fiet resurrectio carnis, et bonorum gaudia et +malorum tormenta majora erunt. “—At the resurrection of the flesh, both +the happiness of the good and the torments of the wicked will be +increased.” + +CANTO VII + + +v. 1. Ah me! O Satan! Satan!] Pape Satan, Pape Satan, aleppe. Pape is +said by the commentators to be the same as the Latin word papae! +“strange!” Of aleppe they do not give a more satisfactory account. See +the Life of Benvenuto Cellini, translated by Dr. Nugent, v. ii. b. iii +c. vii. p 113, where he mentions “having heard the words Paix, paix, +Satan! allez, paix! in the court of justice at Paris. I recollected +what Dante said, when he with his master Virgil entered the gates of +hell: for Dante, and Giotto the painter, were together in France, and +visited Paris with particular attention, where the court of justice may +be considered as hell. Hence it is that Dante, who was likewise perfect +master of the French, made use of that expression, and I have often +been surprised that it was never understood in that sense.” + +v. 12. The first adulterer proud.] Satan. + +v. 22. E’en as a billow.] + + As when two billows in the Irish sowndes + + Forcibly driven with contrarie tides + + Do meet together, each aback rebounds + + With roaring rage, and dashing on all sides, + + That filleth all the sea with foam, divides + + The doubtful current into divers waves. + + Spenser, F.Q. b. iv. c. 1. st. 42. + +v. 48. Popes and cardinals.] Ariosto, having personified +Avarice as a strange and hideous monster, says of her— + + Peggio facea nella Romana corte + + Che v’avea uccisi Cardinali e Papi. + + Orl. Fur. c. xxvi. st. 32. + + Worse did she in the court of Rome, for there + + She had slain Popes and Cardinals. + +v. 91. By necessity.] This sentiment called forth the reprehension of +Cecco d’Ascoli, in his Acerba, l. 1. c. i. + + In cio peccasti, O Fiorentin poeta, &c. + + Herein, O bard of Florence, didst thou err + + Laying it down that fortune’s largesses + + Are fated to their goal. Fortune is none, + + That reason cannot conquer. Mark thou, Dante, + + If any argument may gainsay this. + +CANTO VIII + + +v. 18. Phlegyas.] Phlegyas, who was so incensed against Apollo for +having violated his daughter Coronis, that he set fire to the temple of +that deity, by whose vengeance he was cast into Tartarus. See Virg. +Aen. l. vi. 618. + +v. 59. Filippo Argenti.] Boccaccio tells us, “he was a man remarkable +for the large proportions and extraordinary vigor of his bodily frame, +and the extreme waywardness and irascibility of his temper.” Decam. g. +ix. n. 8. + +v. 66. The city, that of Dis is nam’d.] So Ariosto. Orl. Fur. c. xl. +st. 32 + +v. 94. Seven times.] The commentators, says Venturi, perplex themselves +with the inquiry what seven perils these were from which Dante had been +delivered by Virgil. Reckoning the beasts in the first Canto as one of +them, and adding Charon, Minos, Cerberus, Plutus, Phlegyas and Filippo +Argenti, as so many others, we shall have the number, and if this be +not satisfactory, we may suppose a determinate to have been put for an +indeterminate number. + +v. 109. At war ’twixt will and will not.] Che si, e no nel capo mi +tenzona. So Boccaccio, Ninf. Fiesol. st. 233. + + Il si e il no nel capo gli contende. +The words I have adopted as a translation, are Shakespeare’s, +Measure for Measure. a. ii. s. 1. + +v. 122. This their insolence, not new.] Virgil assures our poet, that +these evil spirits had formerly shown the same insolence when our +Savior descended into hell. They attempted to prevent him from entering +at the gate, over which Dante had read the fatal inscription. “That +gate which,” says the Roman poet, “an angel has just passed, by whose +aid we shall overcome this opposition, and gain admittance into the +city.” + +CANTO IX + + +v. 1. The hue.] Virgil, perceiving that Dante was pale with fear, +restrained those outward tokens of displeasure which his own +countenance had betrayed. + +v. 23. Erictho.] Erictho, a Thessalian sorceress, according to Lucan, +Pharsal. l. vi. was employed by Sextus, son of Pompey the Great, to +conjure up a spirit, who should inform him of the issue of the civil +wars between his father and Caesar. + +v. 25. No long space my flesh + + Was naked of me.] + + Quae corpus complexa animae tam fortis inane. + + Ovid. Met. l. xiii f. 2 +Dante appears to have fallen into a strange anachronism. Virgil’s +death did not happen till long after this period. + +v. 42. Adders and cerastes.] + + Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis. + + Virg. Aen. l. vi. 281. + + —spinaque vagi torquente cerastae + + . . . et torrida dipsas + + Et gravis in geminum vergens eaput amphisbaena. + + Lucan. Pharsal. l. ix. 719. +So Milton: + + Scorpion and asp, and amphisbaena dire, + + Cerastes horn’d, hydrus and elops drear, + + And dipsas. + + P. L. b. x. 524. + +v. 67. A wind.] Imitated by Berni, Orl. Inn. l. 1. e. ii. st. 6. + +v. 83. With his wand.] + + She with her rod did softly smite the raile + + Which straight flew ope. + + Spenser. F. Q. b. iv. c. iii. st. 46. + +v. 96. What profits at the fays to but the horn.] “Of what avail can it +be to offer violence to impassive beings?” + +v. 97. Your Cerberus.] Cerberus is feigned to have been dragged by +Hercules, bound with a three fold chain, of which, says the angel, he +still bears the marks. + +v. 111. The plains of Arles.] In Provence. See Ariosto, Orl. Fur. c. +xxxix. st. 72 + +v. 112. At Pola.] A city of Istria, situated near the gulf of Quarnaro, +in the Adriatic sea. + +CANTO X + + +v. 12. Josaphat.] It seems to have been a common opinion among the +Jews, as well as among many Christians, that the general judgment will +be held in the valley of Josaphat, or Jehoshaphat: “I will also gather +all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, +and will plead with them there for my people, and for my heritage +Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my +land.” Joel, iii. 2. + +v. 32. Farinata.] Farinata degli Uberti, a noble Florentine, was the +leader of the Ghibelline faction, when they obtained a signal victory +over the Guelfi at Montaperto, near the river Arbia. Macchiavelli calls +him “a man of exalted soul, and great military talents.” Hist. of Flor. +b. ii. + +v. 52. A shade.] The spirit of Cavalcante Cavalcanti, a noble +Florentine, of the Guelph party. + +v. 59. My son.] Guido, the son of Cavalcante Cavalcanti; “he whom I +call the first of my friends,” says Dante in his Vita Nuova, where the +commencement of their friendship is related. >From the character given +of him by contemporary writers his temper was well formed to assimilate +with that of our poet. “He was,” according to G. Villani, l. viii. c. +41. “of a philosophical and elegant mind, if he had not been too +delicate and fastidious.” And Dino Compagni terms him “a young and +noble knight, brave and courteous, but of a lofty scornful spirit, much +addicted to solitude and study.” Muratori. Rer. Ital. Script t. 9 l. 1. +p. 481. He died, either in exile at Serrazana, or soon after his return +to Florence, December 1300, during the spring of which year the action +of this poem is supposed to be passing. v. 62. Guido thy son Had in +contempt.] Guido Cavalcanti, being more given to philosophy than +poetry, was perhaps no great admirer of Virgil. Some poetical +compositions by Guido are, however, still extant; and his reputation +for skill in the art was such as to eclipse that of his predecessor and +namesake Guido Guinicelli, as we shall see in the Purgatory, Canto XI. +His “Canzone sopra il Terreno Amore” was thought worthy of being +illustrated by numerous and ample commentaries. Crescimbeni Ist. della +Volg. Poes. l. v. For a playful sonnet which Dante addressed to him, +and a spirited translation of it, see Hayley’s Essay on Epic Poetry, +Notes to Ep. iii. + +v. 66. Saidst thou he had?] In Aeschylus, the shade of Darius is +represented as inquiring with similar anxiety after the fate of his son +Xerxes. + +[GREEK HERE] + + +Atossa: Xerxes astonish’d, desolate, alone— +Ghost of Dar: How will this end? Nay, pause not. Is he safe? + + The Persians. Potter’s Translation. + +v. 77. Not yet fifty times.] “Not fifty months shall be passed, before +thou shalt learn, by woeful experience, the difficulty of returning +from banishment to thy native city” + +v.83. The slaughter.] “By means of Farinata degli Uberti, the Guelfi +were conquered by the army of King Manfredi, near the river Arbia, with +so great a slaughter, that those who escaped from that defeat took +refuge not in Florence, which city they considered as lost to them, but +in Lucca.” Macchiavelli. Hist. of Flor. b 2. + +v. 86. Such orisons.] This appears to allude to certain prayers which +were offered up in the churches of Florence, for deliverance from the +hostile attempts of the Uberti. + +v. 90. Singly there I stood.] Guido Novello assembled a council of the +Ghibellini at Empoli where it was agreed by all, that, in order to +maintain the ascendancy of the Ghibelline party in Tuscany, it was +necessary to destroy Florence, which could serve only (the people of +that city beingvGuelfi) to enable the party attached to the church to +recover its strength. This cruel sentence, passed upon so noble a city, +met with no opposition from any of its citizens or friends, except +Farinata degli Uberti, who openly and without reserve forbade the +measure, affirming that he had endured so many hardships, and +encountered so many dangers, with no other view than that of being able +to pass his days in his own country. Macchiavelli. Hist. of Flor. b. 2. + +v. 103. My fault.] Dante felt remorse for not having returned an +immediate answer to the inquiry of Cavalcante, from which delay he was +led to believe that his son Guido was no longer living. + +v. 120. Frederick.] The Emperor Frederick the Second, who died in 1250. +See Notes to Canto XIII. + +v. 121. The Lord Cardinal.] Ottaviano Ubaldini, a Florentine, made +Cardinal in 1245, and deceased about 1273. On account of his great +influence, he was generally known by the appellation of “the Cardinal.” +It is reported of him that he declared, if there were any such thing as +a human soul, he had lost his for the Ghibellini. + +v. 132. Her gracious beam.] Beatrice. + +CANTO XI + + +v. 9. Pope Anastasius.] The commentators are not agreed concerning the +identity of the person, who is here mentioned as a follower of the +heretical Photinus. By some he is supposed to have been Anastasius the +Second, by others, the Fourth of that name; while a third set, jealous +of the integrity of the papal faith, contend that our poet has +confounded him with Anastasius 1. Emperor of the East. + +v. 17. My son.] The remainder of the present Canto may be considered as +a syllabus of the whole of this part of the poem. + +v. 48. And sorrows.] This fine moral, that not to enjoy our being is to +be ungrateful to the Author of it, is well expressed in Spenser, F. Q. +b. iv. c. viii. st. 15. For he whose daies in wilful woe are worne The +grace of his Creator doth despise, That will not use his gifts for +thankless nigardise. + +v. 53. Cahors.] A city in Guienne, much frequented by usurers + +v. 83. Thy ethic page.] He refers to Aristotle’s Ethics. + +[GREEK HERE] + + +“In the next place, entering, on another division of the subject, let +it be defined. that respecting morals there are three sorts of things +to be avoided, malice, incontinence, and brutishness.” + +v. 104. Her laws.] Aristotle’s Physics. [GREEK HERE] “Art imitates +nature.” —See the Coltivazione of Alamanni, l. i. + +-I’arte umana, &c. + +v. 111. Creation’s holy book.] Genesis, c. iii. v. 19. “In the sweat of +thy face shalt thou eat bread.” + +v. 119. The wain.] The constellation Bootes, or Charles’s wain. + +CANTO XII + + +v. 17. The king of Athens.] Theseus, who was enabled, by the +instructions of Ariadne, the sister of the Minotaur, to destroy that +monster. + +v. 21. Like to a bull.] [GREEK HERE] Homer Il. xvii 522 + + As when some vig’rous youth with sharpen’d axe + + A pastur’d bullock smites behind the horns + + And hews the muscle through; he, at the stroke + + Springs forth and falls. + + Cowper’s Translation. + +v. 36. He arriv’d.] Our Saviour, who, according to Dante, when he +ascended from hell, carried with him the souls of the patriarchs, and +other just men, out of the first circle. See Canto IV. + +v. 96. Nessus.] Our poet was probably induced, by the following +line in Ovid, to assign to Nessus the task of conducting them +over the ford: + + Nessus edit membrisque valens scitusque vadorum. + + Metam, l. ix. +And Ovid’s authority was Sophocles, who says of this Centaur— +[GREEK HERE] Trach.570 + + He in his arms, Evenus’ stream + + Deep flowing, bore the passenger for hire + + Without or sail or billow cleaving oar. + +v. 110. Ezzolino.] Ezzolino, or Azzolino di Romano, a most cruel tyrant +in the Marca Trivigiana, Lord of Padua, Vicenza, Verona, and Brescia, +who died in 1260. His atrocities form the subject of a Latin tragedy, +called Eccerinis, by Albertino Mussato, of Padua, the contemporary of +Dante, and the most elegant writer of Latin verse of that age. See also +the Paradise, Canto IX. Berni Orl. Inn. l ii c. xxv. st. 50. Ariosto. +Orl. Fur. c. iii. st. 33. and Tassoni Secchia Rapita, c. viii. st 11. + +v. 111. Obizzo’ of Este.] Marquis of Ferrara and of the Marca d’Ancona, +was murdered by his own son (whom, for the most unnatural act Dante +calls his step-son), for the sake of the treasures which his rapacity +had amassed. See Ariosto. Orl. Fur. c. iii. st 32. He died in 1293 +according to Gibbon. Ant. of the House of Brunswick. Posth. Works, v. +ii. 4to. + +v. 119. He.] “Henrie, the brother of this Edmund, and son to the +foresaid king of Almaine (Richard, brother of Henry III. of England) as +he returned from Affrike, where he had been with Prince Edward, was +slain at Viterbo in Italy (whither he was come about business which he +had to do with the Pope) by the hand of Guy de Montfort, the son of +Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in revenge of the same Simon’s +death. The murther was committed afore the high altar, as the same +Henrie kneeled there to hear divine service.” A.D. 1272, Holinshed’s +chronicles p 275. See also Giov. Villani Hist. I. vii. c. 40. + +v. 135. On Sextus and on Pyrrhus.] Sextus either the son of Tarquin the +Proud, or of Pompey the Great: or as Vellutelli conjectures, Sextus +Claudius Nero, and Pyrrhus king of Epirus. + +v. 137. + + The Rinieri, of Corneto this, + + Pazzo the other named.] +Two noted marauders, by whose depredations the public ways in +Italy were infested. The latter was of the noble family of Pazzi +in Florence. + +CANTO XIII + + +v. 10. Betwixt Corneto and Cecina’s stream.] A wild and woody tract of +country, abounding in deer, goats, and wild boars. Cecina is a river +not far to the south of Leghorn, Corneto, a small city on the same +coast in the patrimony of the church. + +v. 12. The Strophades.] See Virg. Aen. l. iii. 210. + +v. 14. Broad are their pennons.] From Virg. Aen. l. iii. 216. + +v. 48. In my verse described.] The commentators explain this, “If he +could have believed, in consequence of my assurances alone, that of +which he hath now had ocular proof, he would not have stretched forth +his hand against thee.” But I am of opinion that Dante makes Virgil +allude to his own story of Polydorus in the third book of the Aeneid. + +v. 56. That pleasant word of thine.] “Since you have inveigled me to +speak my holding forth so gratifying an expectation, let it not +displease you if I am as it were detained in the snare you have spread +for me, so as to be somewhat prolix in my answer.” + +v. 60. I it was.] Pietro delle Vigne, a native of Capua, who, from a +low condition, raised himself by his eloquence and legal knowledge to +the office of Chancellor to the Emperor Frederick II. whose confidence +in him was such, that his influence in the empire became unbounded. The +courtiers, envious of his exalted situation, contrived, by means of +forged letters, to make Frederick believe that he held a secret and +traitorous intercourse with the Pope, who was then at enmity with the +Emperor. In consequence of this supposed crime he was cruelly condemned +by his too credulous sovereign to lose his eyes, and, being driven to +despair by his unmerited calamity and disgrace, he put an end to his +life by dashing out his brains against the walls of a church, in the +year 1245. Both Frederick and Pietro delle Vigne composed verses in the +Sicilian dialect which are yet extant. + +v. 67. The harlot.] Envy. Chaucer alludes to this in the +Prologue to the Legende of Good women. + + Envie is lavender to the court alway, + + For she ne parteth neither night ne day + + Out of the house of Cesar; thus saith Dant. + +v. 119. Each fan o’ th’ wood.] Hence perhaps Milton: + + Leaves and fuming rills, Aurora’s fan. + + P. L. b. v. 6. + +v. 122. Lano.] Lano, a Siennese, who, being reduced by prodigality to a +state of extreme want, found his existence no longer supportable; and, +having been sent by his countrymen on a military expedition, to assist +the Florentine against the Aretini, took that opportunity of exposing +himself to certain death, in the engagement which took place at Toppo +near Arezzo. See G. Villani, Hist. l. 7. c. cxix. + +v. 133. O Giocomo Of Sant’ Andrea!] Jacopo da Sant’ Andrea, a Paduan, +who, having wasted his property in the most wanton acts of profusion, +killed himself in despair. v. 144. In that City.] “I was an inhabitant +of Florence, that city which changed her first patron Mars for St. John +the Baptist, for which reason the vengeance of the deity thus slighted +will never be appeased: and, if some remains of his status were not +still visible on the bridge over the Arno, she would have been already +leveled to the ground; and thus the citizens, who raised her again from +the ashes to which Attila had reduced her, would have laboured in +vain.” See Paradise, Canto XVI. 44. The relic of antiquity to which the +superstition of Florence attached so high an importance, was carried +away by a flood, that destroyed the bridge on which it stood, in the +year 1337, but without the ill effects that were apprehended from the +loss of their fancied Palladium. + +v. 152. I slung the fatal noose.] We are not informed who this suicide +was. + +CANTO XIV + + +v. 15. By Cato’s foot.] See Lucan, Phars, l. 9. + +v. 26. Dilated flakes of fire.] Compare Tasso. G. L. c. x. st. 61. + +v. 28. As, in the torrid Indian clime.] Landino refers to Albertus +Magnus for the circumstance here alluded to. + +v. 53. In Mongibello.] + + More hot than Aetn’ or flaming Mongibell. + + Spenser, F. Q. b. ii. c. ix. st. 29. +See Virg. Aen. 1. viii. 416. and Berni. Orl. Inn 1. i. c. xvi. +st. 21. It would be endless to refer to parallel passages in the +Greek writers. + +v. 64. This of the seven kings was one.] Compare Aesch. Seven Chiefs, +425. Euripides, Phoen. 1179 and Statius. Theb. l. x. 821. + +v. 76. Bulicame.] A warm medicinal spring near Viterbo, the waters of +which, as Landino and Vellutelli affirm, passed by a place of ill fame. +Venturi, with less probability, conjectures that Dante would imply, +that it was the scene of much licentious merriment among those who +frequented its baths. + +v. 91. Under whose monarch.] + + Credo pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam + + In terris. + + Juv. Satir. vi. + +v. 102. His head.] Daniel, ch. ii. 32, 33. + +v. 133. Whither.] On the other side of Purgatory. + +CANTO XV + + +v. 10. Chiarentana.] A part of the Alps where the Brenta rises, which +river is much swoln as soon as the snow begins to dissolve on the +mountains. + +v. 28. Brunetto.] “Ser Brunetto, a Florentine, the secretary or +chancellor of the city, and Dante’s preceptor, hath left us a work so +little read, that both the subject of it and the language of it have +been mistaken. It is in the French spoken in the reign of St. +Louis,under the title of Tresor, and contains a species of +philosophical course of lectures divided into theory and practice, or, +as he expresses it, “un enchaussement des choses divines et humaines,” +&c. Sir R. Clayton’s Translation of Tenhove’s Memoirs of the Medici, +vol. i. ch. ii. p. 104. The Tresor has never been printed in the +original language. There is a fine manuscript of it in the British +Museum, with an illuminated portrait of Brunetto in his study prefixed. +Mus. Brit. MSS. 17, E. 1. Tesor. It is divided into four books, the +first, on Cosmogony and Theology, the second, a translation of +Aristotle’s Ethics; the third on Virtues and Vices; the fourth, on +Rhetoric. For an interesting memoir relating to this work, see Hist. de +l’Acad. des Inscriptions, tom. vii. 296. His Tesoretto, one of the +earliest productions of Italian poetry, is a curious work, not unlike +the writings of Chaucer in style and numbers, though Bembo remarks, +that his pupil, however largely he had stolen from it, could not have +much enriched himself. As it is perhaps but little known, I will here +add a slight sketch of it. + +Brunetto describes himself as returning from an embassy to the King of +Spain, on which he had been sent by the Guelph party from Florence. On +the plain of Roncesvalles he meets a scholar on a bay mule, who tells +him that the Guelfi are driven out of the city with great loss. + +Struck with grief at these mournful tidings, and musing with his head +bent downwards, he loses his road, and wanders into a wood. Here +Nature, whose figure is described with sublimity, appears, and +discloses to him the secrets of her operations. After this he wanders +into a desert; but at length proceeds on his way, under the protection +of a banner, with which Nature had furnished him, till on the third day +he finds himself in a large pleasant champaign, where are assembled +many emperors, kings, and sages. It is the habitation of Virtue and her +daughters, the four Cardinal Virtues. Here Brunetto sees also Courtesy, +Bounty, Loyalty, and Prowess, and hears the instructions they give to a +knight, which occupy about a fourth part of the poem. Leaving this +territory, he passes over valleys, mountains, woods, forests, and +bridges, till he arrives in a beautiful valley covered with flowers on +all sides, and the richest in the world; but which was continually +shifting its appearance from a round figure to a square, from obscurity +to light, and from populousness to solitude. This is the region of +Pleasure, or Cupid, who is accompanied by four ladies, Love, Hope, +Fear, and Desire. In one part of it he meets with Ovid, and is +instructed by him how to conquer the passion of love, and to escape +from that place. After his escape he makes his confession to a friar, +and then returns to the forest of visions: and ascending a mountain, he +meets with Ptolemy, a venerable old man. Here the narrative breaks off. +The poem ends, as it began, with an address to Rustico di Filippo, on +whom he lavishes every sort of praise. + +It has been observed, that Dante derived the idea of opening his poem +by describing himself as lost in a wood, from the Tesoretto of his +master. I know not whether it has been remarked, that the crime of +usury is branded by both these poets as offensive to God and Nature: or +that the sin for which Brunetto is condemned by his pupil, is mentioned +in the Tesoretto with great horror. Dante’s twenty-fifth sonnet is a +jocose one, addressed to Brunetto. He died in 1295. + +v. 62. Who in old times came down from Fesole.] See G. Villani Hist. l. +iv. c. 5. and Macchiavelli Hist. of Flor. b. ii. + +v. 89. With another text.] He refers to the prediction of Farinata, in +Canto X. + +v. 110. Priscian.] There is no reason to believe, as the commentators +observe that the grammarian of this name was stained with the vice +imputed to him; and we must therefore suppose that Dante puts the +individual for the species, and implies the frequency of the crime +among those who abused the opportunities which the education of youth +afforded them, to so abominable a purpose. + +v. 111. Francesco.] Son of Accorso, a Florentine, celebrated for his +skill in jurisprudence, and commonly known by the name of Accursius. + +v. 113. Him.] Andrea de’ Mozzi, who, that his scandalous life might be +less exposed to observation, was translated either by Nicholas III, or +Boniface VIII from the see of Florence to that of Vicenza, through +which passes the river Baccchiglione. At the latter of these places he +died. + +v. 114. The servants’ servant.] Servo de’ servi. So Ariosto, +Sat. 3. + + Degli servi + + Io sia il gran servo. + +v. 124. I commend my Treasure to thee.] Brunetto’s great work, +the Tresor. +Sieti raccomandato ’l mio Tesoro. +So Giusto de’ Conti, in his Bella Mano, Son. “Occhi:” + + Siavi raccommandato il mio Tesoro. + +CANTO XVI + + +v. 38. Gualdrada.] Gualdrada was the daughter of Bellincione Berti, of +whom mention is made in the Paradise, Canto XV, and XVI. He was of the +family of Ravignani, a branch of the Adimari. + +The Emperor Otho IV. being at a festival in Florence, where Gualdrada +was present, was struck with her beauty; and inquiring who she was, was +answered by Bellincione, that she was the daughter of one who, if it +was his Majesty’s pleasure, would make her admit the honour of his +salute. On overhearing this, she arose from her seat, and blushing, in +an animated tone of voice, desired her father that he would not be so +liberal in his offers, for that no man should ever be allowed that +freedom, except him who should be her lawful husband. The Emperor was +not less delighted by her resolute modesty than he had before been by +the loveliness of her person, and calling to him Guido, one of his +barons, gave her to him in marriage, at the same time raising him + +to the rank of a count, and bestowing on her the whole of Casentino, +and a part of the territory of Romagna, as her portion. Two sons were +the offspring of this union, Guglielmo and Ruggieri, the latter of whom +was father of Guidoguerra, a man of great military skill and prowess +who, at the head of four hundred Florentines of the Guelph party, was +signally instrumental to the victory obtained at Benevento by Charles +of Anjou, over Manfredi, King of Naples, in 1265. One of the +consequences of this victory was the expulsion of the Ghibellini, and +the re-establishment of the Guelfi at Florence. + +v. 39. Many a noble act.] Compare Tasso, G. L. c. i. st. 1. + +v. 42. Aldobrandiu] Tegghiaio Aldobrandi was of the noble family of +Adimari, and much esteemed for his military talents. He endeavored to +dissuade the Florentines from the attack, which they meditated against +the Siennese, and the rejection of his counsel occasioned the memorable +defeat, which the former sustained at Montaperto, and the consequent +banishment of the Guelfi from Florence. + +v. 45. Rusticucci.] Giacopo Rusticucci, a Florentine, remarkable for +his opulence and the generosity of his spirit. + +v. 70. Borsiere.] Guglielmo Borsiere, another Florentine, whom +Boccaccio, in a story which he relates of him, terms “a man of +courteous and elegant manners, and of great readiness in conversation.” +Dec. Giorn. i. Nov. 8. + +v. 84. When thou with pleasure shalt retrace the past.] + + Quando ti giovera dicere io fui. +So Tasso, G. L. c. xv. st. 38. + + Quando mi giovera narrar altrui + + Le novita vedute, e dire; io fui. + +v. 121. Ever to that truth.] This memorable apophthegm is repeated by +Luigi Pulci and Trissino. + + Sempre a quel ver, ch’ ha faccia di menzogna + + E piu senno tacer la lingua cheta + + Che spesso senza colpa fa vergogna. + + Morgante. Magg. c. xxiv. + + La verita, che par mensogna + + Si dovrebbe tacer dall’ uom ch’e saggio. + + Italia. Lib. C. xvi. + +CANTO XVII + + +v. 1. The fell monster.] Fraud. + +v. 53. A pouch.] A purse, whereon the armorial bearings of each were +emblazoned. According to Landino, our poet implies that the usurer can +pretend to no other honour, than such as he derives from his purse and +his family. + +v. 57. A yellow purse.] The arms of the Gianfigliazzi of Florence. + +v. 60. Another.] Those of the Ubbriachi, another Florentine family of +high distinction. + +v. 62. A fat and azure swine.] The arms of the Scrovigni a noble family +of Padua. + +v. 66. Vitaliano.] Vitaliano del Dente, a Paduan. + +v. 69. That noble knight.] Giovanni Bujamonti, a Florentine usurer, the +most infamous of his time. + +CANTO XVIII + + +v. 28. With us beyond.] Beyond the middle point they tended the same +way with us, but their pace was quicker than ours. + +v. 29. E’en thus the Romans.] In the year 1300, Pope Boniface VIII., to +remedy the inconvenience occasioned by the press of people who were +passing over the bridge of St. Angelo during the time of the Jubilee, +caused it to be divided length wise by a partition, and ordered, that +all those who were going to St. Peter’s should keep one side, and those +returning the other. + +v. 50. Venedico.] Venedico Caccianimico, a Bolognese, who prevailed on +his sister Ghisola to prostitute herself to Obizzo da Este, Marquis of +Ferrara, whom we have seen among the tyrants, Canto XII. + +v. 62. To answer Sipa.] He denotes Bologna by its situation between the +rivers Savena to the east, and Reno to the west of that city; and by a +peculiarity of dialect, the use of the affirmative sipa instead of si. + +v. 90. Hypsipyle.] See Appolonius Rhodius, l. i. and Valerius Flaccus +l.ii. Hypsipyle deceived the other women by concealing her father +Thoas, when they had agreed to put all their males to death. + +v. 120. Alessio.] Alessio, of an ancient and considerable family in +Lucca, called the Interminei. + +v. 130. Thais.] He alludes to that passage in the Eunuchus of Terence +where Thraso asks if Thais was obliged to him for the present he had +sent her, and Gnatho replies, that she had expressed her obligation in +the most forcible terms. T. Magnas vero agere gratias Thais mihi? G. +Ingentes. Eun. a. iii. s. i. + +CANTO XIX + + +v. 18. Saint John’s fair dome.] The apertures in the rock were of the +same dimensions as the fonts of St. John the Baptist at Florence, one +of which, Dante says he had broken, to rescue a child that was playing +near and fell in. He intimates that the motive of his breaking the font +had been maliciously represented by his enemies. + +v. 55. O Boniface!] The spirit mistakes Dante for Boniface VIII. who +was then alive, and who he did not expect would have arrived so soon, +in consequence, as it should seem, of a prophecy, which predicted the +death of that Pope at a later period. Boniface died in 1303. + +v. 58. In guile.] “Thou didst presume to arrive by fraudulent means at +the papal power, and afterwards to abuse it.” + +v. 71. In the mighty mantle I was rob’d.] Nicholas III, of the Orsini +family, whom the poet therefore calls “figliuol dell’ orsa,” “son of +the she-bear.” He died in 1281. + +v. 86. From forth the west, a shepherd without law.] Bertrand de Got +Archbishop of Bordeaux, who succeeded to the pontificate in 1305, and +assumed the title of Clement V. He transferred the holy see to Avignon +in 1308 (where it remained till 1376), and died in 1314. + +v. 88. A new Jason.] See Maccabees, b. ii. c. iv. 7,8. + +v. 97. Nor Peter.] Acts of the Apostles, c.i. 26. + +v. 100. The condemned soul.] Judas. + +v. 103. Against Charles.] Nicholas III. was enraged against Charles I, +King of Sicily, because he rejected with scorn a proposition made by +that Pope for an alliance between their families. See G. Villani, Hist. +l. vii. c. liv. + +v. 109. Th’ Evangelist.] Rev. c. xvii. 1, 2, 3. Compare Petrarch. Opera +fol. ed. Basil. 1551. Epist. sine titulo liber. ep. xvi. p. 729. + +v. 118. Ah, Constantine.] He alludes to the pretended gift of the +Lateran by Constantine to Silvester, of which Dante himself seems to +imply a doubt, in his treatise “De Monarchia.” - “Ergo scindere +Imperium, Imperatori non licet. Si ergo aliquae, dignitates per +Constantinum essent alienatae, (ut dicunt) ab Imperio,” &c. l. iii. The +gift is by Ariosto very humorously placed in the moon, among the things +lost or abused on earth. Di varj fiori, &c. O. F. c. xxxiv. st. 80. + +Milton has translated both this passage and that in the text. +Prose works, vol. i. p. 11. ed. 1753. + +CANTO XX + + +v. 11. Revers’d.] Compare Spenser, F. Q. b. i. c. viii. st. 31 + +v. 30. Before whose eyes.] Amphiaraus, one of the seven kings who +besieged Thebes. He is said to have been swallowed up by an opening of +the earth. See Lidgate’s Storie of Thebes, Part III where it is told +how the “Bishop Amphiaraus” fell down to hell. And thus the devill for +his outrages, Like his desert payed him his wages. A different reason +for his being doomed thus to perish is assigned by Pindar. [GREEK HERE] +Nem ix. + + For thee, Amphiaraus, earth, + + By Jove’s all-riving thunder cleft + + Her mighty bosom open’d wide, + + Thee and thy plunging steeds to hide, + + Or ever on thy back the spear + + Of Periclymenus impress’d + + A wound to shame thy warlike breast + + For struck with panic fear + + The gods’ own children flee. + +v. 37. Tiresias.] + + Duo magnorum viridi coeuntia sylva + + Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu, &c. + + Ovid. Met. iii. + +v. 43. Aruns.] Aruns is said to have dwelt in the mountains of Luni +(from whence that territory is still called Lunigiana), above Carrara, +celebrated for its marble. Lucan. Phars. l. i. 575. So Boccaccio in the +Fiammetta, l. iii. “Quale Arunte,” &c. + +“Like Aruns, who amidst the white marbles of Luni, contemplated the +celestial bodies and their motions.” + +v. 50. Manto.] The daughter of Tiresias of Thebes, a city dedicated to +Bacchus. From Manto Mantua, the country of Virgil derives its name. The +Poet proceeds to describe the situation of that place. + +v. 61. Between the vale.] The lake Benacus, now called the Lago di +Garda, though here said to lie between Garda, Val Camonica, and the +Apennine, is, however, very distant from the latter two + +v. 63. There is a spot.] Prato di Fame, where the dioceses of Trento, +Verona, and Brescia met. + +v. 69. Peschiera.] A garrison situated to the south of the lake, where +it empties itself and forms the Mincius. + +v. 94. Casalodi’s madness.] Alberto da Casalodi, who had got possession +of Mantua, was persuaded by Pinamonte Buonacossi, that he might +ingratiate himself with the people by banishing to their + +own castles the nobles, who were obnoxious to them. No sooner was this +done, than Pinamonte put himself at the head of the populace, drove out +Casalodi and his adherents, and obtained the sovereignty for himself. + +v. 111. So sings my tragic strain.] + + Suspensi Eurypilum scitatum oracula Phoebi + + Mittimus. + + Virg. Aeneid. ii. 14. + +v. 115. Michael Scot.] Sir Michael Scott, of Balwearie, astrologer to +the Emperor Frederick II. lived in the thirteenth century. For further +particulars relating to this singular man, see Warton’s History of +English Poetry, vol. i. diss. ii. and sect. ix. p 292, and the Notes to +Mr. Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” a poem in which a happy use is +made of the traditions that are still current in North Britain +concerning him. He is mentioned by G. Villani. Hist. l. x. c. cv. and +cxli. and l. xii. c. xviii. and by Boccaccio, Dec. Giorn. viii. Nov. 9. + +v. 116. Guido Bonatti.] An astrologer of Forli, on whose skill Guido da +Montefeltro, lord of that place, so much relied, that he is reported +never to have gone into battle, except in the hour recommended to him +as fortunate by Bonatti. + +Landino and Vellutello, speak of a book, which he composed on the +subject of his art. + +v. 116. Asdente.] A shoemaker at Parma, who deserted his business to +practice the arts of divination. + +v. 123. Cain with fork of thorns.] By Cain and the thorns, or what is +still vulgarly called the Man in the Moon, the Poet denotes that +luminary. The same superstition is alluded to in the Paradise, Canto +II. 52. The curious reader may consult Brand on Popular Antiquities, +4to. 1813. vol. ii. p. 476. + +CANTO XXI + + +v. 7. In the Venetians’ arsenal.] Compare Ruccellai, Le Api, 165, and +Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis, st. 146, &c. + +v. 37. One of Santa Zita’s elders.] The elders or chief magistrates of +Lucca, where Santa Zita was held in especial veneration. The name of +this sinner is supposed to have been Martino Botaio. + +v. 40. Except Bonturo, barterers.] This is said ironically of Bonturo +de’ Dati. By barterers are meant peculators, of every description; all +who traffic the interests of the public for their own private +advantage. + +v. 48. Is other swimming than in Serchio’s wave.] + + Qui si nuota altrimenti che nel Serchio. +Serchio is the river that flows by Lucca. So Pulci, Morg. Mag. +c. xxiv. + + Qui si nuota nel sangue, e non nel Serchio. + +v. 92. From Caprona.] The surrender of the castle of Caprona to the +combined forces of Florence and Lucca, on condition that the garrison +should march out in safety, to which event Dante was a witness, took +place in 1290. See G. Villani, Hist. l. vii. c. 136. + +v. 109. Yesterday.] This passage fixes the era of Dante’s descent at +Good Friday, in the year 1300 (34 years from our blessed Lord’s +incarnation being added to 1266), and at the thirty-fifth year of our +poet’s age. See Canto I. v. 1. + +The awful event alluded to, the Evangelists inform us, happened “at the +ninth hour,” that is, our sixth, when “the rocks were rent,” and the +convulsion, according to Dante, was felt even in the depths in Hell. +See Canto XII. 38. + +CANTO XXII + + +v. 16. In the church.] This proverb is repeated by Pulci, Morg. Magg. +c. xvii. + +v. 47. Born in Navarre’s domain.] The name of this peculator is said to +have been Ciampolo. + +v. 51. The good king Thibault.] “Thibault I. king of Navarre, died on +the 8th of June, 1233, as much to be commended for the desire he showed +of aiding the war in the Holy Land, as reprehensible and faulty for his +design of oppressing the rights and privileges of the church, on which +account it is said that the whole kingdom was under an interdict for +the space of three entire years. Thibault undoubtedly merits praise, as +for his other endowments, so especially for his cultivation of the +liberal arts, his exercise and knowledge of music and poetry in which +he much excelled, that he was accustomed to compose verses and sing +them to the viol, and to exhibit his poetical compositions publicly in +his palace, that they might be criticized by all.” Mariana, History of +Spain, b. xiii. c. 9. + +An account of Thibault, and two of his songs, with what were probably +the original melodies, may be seen in Dr. Burney’s History of Music, v. +ii. c. iv. His poems, which are in the French language, were edited by +M. l’Eveque de la Ravalliere. Paris. 1742. 2 vol. 12mo. Dante twice +quotes one of his verses in the Treatise de Vulg. Eloq. l. i. c. ix. +and l. ii. c. v. and refers to him again, l. ii. c. vi. + +From “the good king Thibault” are descended the good, but more +unfortunate monarch, Louis XVI. of France, and consequently the present +legitimate sovereign of that realm. See Henault, Abrege Chron. 1252, 2, +4. + +v. 80. The friar Gomita.] He was entrusted by Nino de’ Visconti with +the government of Gallura, one of the four jurisdictions into which +Sardinia was divided. Having his master’s enemies in his power, he took +a bribe from them, and allowed them to escape. Mention of Nino will +recur in the Notes to Canto XXXIII. and in the Purgatory, Canto VIII. + +v. 88. Michel Zanche.] The president of Logodoro, another of the four +Sardinian jurisdictions. See Canto XXXIII. + +CANTO XXIII + + +v. 5. Aesop’s fable.] The fable of the frog, who offered to carry the +mouse across a ditch, with the intention of drowning him when both were +carried off by a kite. It is not among those Greek Fables which go +under the name of Aesop. + +v. 63. Monks in Cologne.] They wore their cowls unusually large. v. 66. +Frederick’s.] The Emperor Frederick II. is said to have punished those +who were guilty of high treason, by wrapping them up in lead, and +casting them into a furnace. + +v. 101. Our bonnets gleaming bright with orange hue.] It is observed by +Venturi, that the word “rance” does not here signify “rancid or +disgustful,” as it is explained by the old commentators, but +“orange-coloured,” in which sense it occurs in the Purgatory, Canto II. +9. + +v. 104. Joyous friars.] “Those who ruled the city of Florence on the +part of the Ghibillines, perceiving this discontent and murmuring, +which they were fearful might produce a rebellion against themselves, +in order to satisfy the people, made choice of two knights, Frati +Godenti (joyous friars) of Bologna, on whom they conferred the chief +power in Florence. One named M. Catalano de’ Malavolti, the other M. +Loderingo di Liandolo; one an adherent of the Guelph, the other of the +Ghibelline party. It is to be remarked, that the Joyous Friars were +called Knights of St. Mary, and became knights on taking that habit: +their robes were white, the mantle sable, and the arms a white field +and red cross with two stars. Their office was to defend widows and +orphans; they were to act as mediators; they had internal regulations +like other religious bodies. The above-mentioned M. Loderingo was the +founder of that order. But it was not long before they too well +deserved the appellation given them, and were found to be more bent on +enjoying themselves than on any other subject. These two friars were +called in by the Florentines, and had a residence assigned them in the +palace belonging to the people over against the Abbey. Such was the +dependence placed on the character of their order that it was expected +they would be impartial, and would save the commonwealth any +unnecessary expense; instead of which, though inclined to opposite +parties, they secretly and hypocritically concurred in promoting their +own advantage rather than the public good.” G. Villani, b. vii. c.13. +This happened in 1266. + +v. 110. Gardingo’s vicinage.] The name of that part of the city which +was inhabited by the powerful Ghibelline family of Uberti, and +destroyed under the partial and iniquitous administration of Catalano +and Loderingo. + +v. 117. That pierced spirit.] Caiaphas. + +v. 124. The father of his consort.] Annas, father-in-law to Caiaphas. + +v. 146. He is a liar.] John, c. viii. 44. Dante had perhaps heard this +text from one of the pulpits in Bologna. + +CANTO XXIV + + +v. 1. In the year’s early nonage.] “At the latter part of January, when +the sun enters into Aquarius, and the equinox is drawing near, when the +hoar-frosts in the morning often wear the appearance of snow but are +melted by the rising sun.” + +v. 51. Vanquish thy weariness.] + + Quin corpus onustum + + Hesternis vitiis animum quoque praegravat una, + + Atque affigit humi divinae particulam aurae. + + Hor. Sat. ii. l. ii. 78. + +v. 82. Of her sands.] Compare Lucan, Phars. l. ix. 703. + +v. 92. Heliotrope.] The occult properties of this stone are described +by Solinus, c. xl, and by Boccaccio, in his humorous tale of +Calandrino. Decam. G. viii. N. 3. + +In Chiabrera’s Ruggiero, Scaltrimento begs of Sofia, who is +sending him on a perilous errand, to lend him the heliotrope. + + In mia man fida + + L’elitropia, per cui possa involarmi + + Secondo il mio talento agli occhi altrui. + + c. vi. + + Trust to my hand the heliotrope, by which + + I may at will from others’ eyes conceal me +Compare Ariosto, II Negromante, a. 3. s. 3. Pulci, Morg. Magg. +c xxv. and Fortiguerra, Ricciardetto, c. x. st. 17. +Gower in his Confessio Amantis, lib. vii, enumerates it among the +jewels in the diadem of the sun. + + Jaspis and helitropius. + +v. 104. The Arabian phoenix.] This is translated from Ovid, +Metam. l. xv. + + Una est quae reparat, seque ipsa reseminat ales, +&c. +See also Petrarch, Canzone: + +“Qual piu,” &c. + +v. 120. Vanni Fucci.] He is said to have been an illegitimate offspring +of the family of Lazari in Pistoia, and, having robbed the sacristy of +the church of St. James in that city, to have charged Vanni della Nona +with the sacrilege, in consequence of which accusation the latter +suffered death. + +v. 142. Pistoia.] “In May 1301, the Bianchi party, of Pistoia, with the +assistance and favor of the Bianchi who ruled Florence, drove out the +Neri party from the former place, destroying their houses, Palaces and +farms.” Giov. Villani, Hist. l. viii. e xliv. + +v. 144. From Valdimagra.] The commentators explain this prophetical +threat to allude to the victory obtained by the Marquis Marcello +Malaspina of Valdimagra (a tract of country now called the Lunigiana) +who put himself at the head of the Neri and defeated their opponents +the Bianchi, in the Campo Piceno near Pistoia, soon after the +occurrence related in the preceding note. + +Of this engagement I find no mention in Villani. Currado Malaspina is +introduced in the eighth Canto of Purgatory; where it appears that, +although on the present occaision they espoused contrary sides, some +important favours were nevertheless conferred by that family on our +poet at a subsequent perid of his exile in 1307. + +Canto XXV + +v.1. The sinner ] So Trissino + + Poi facea con le man le fiche al cielo + + Dicendo: Togli, Iddio; che puoi piu farmi? + + L’ital. Lib. c. xii + +v. 12. Thy seed] Thy ancestry. + +v. 15. Not him] Capanaeus. Canto XIV. + +v. 18. On Marenna’s marsh.] An extensive tract near the sea-shore in +Tuscany. + +v. 24. Cacus.] Virgil, Aen. l. viii. 193. + +v. 31. A hundred blows.] Less than ten blows, out of the hundred +Hercules gave him, deprived him of feeling. + +v. 39. Cianfa] He is said to have been of the family of Donati at +Florence. + +v. 57. Thus up the shrinking paper.] + + —All my bowels crumble up to dust. + + I am a scribbled form, drawn up with a pen + + Upon a parchment; and against this fire + + Do I shrink up. + + Shakespeare, K. John, a. v. s. 7. + +v. 61. Agnello.] Agnello Brunelleschi + +v. 77. In that part.] The navel. + +v. 81. As if by sleep or fev’rous fit assail’d.] + + O Rome! thy head + + Is drown’d in sleep, and all thy body fev’ry. + + Ben Jonson’s Catiline. + +v. 85. Lucan.] Phars. l. ix. 766 and 793. + +v. 87. Ovid.] Metam. l. iv. and v. + +v. 121. His sharpen’d visage.] Compare Milton, P. L. b. x. 511 &c. + +v. 131. Buoso.] He is said to have been of the Donati family. + +v. 138. Sciancato.] Puccio Sciancato, a noted robber, whose familly, +Venturi says, he has not been able to discover. + +v. 140. Gaville.] Francesco Guercio Cavalcante was killed at Gaville, +near Florence; and in revenge of his death several inhabitants of that +district were put to death. + +CANTO XXVI + + +v. 7. But if our minds.] + + Namque sub Auroram, jam dormitante lucerna, + + Somnia quo cerni tempore vera solent. + + Ovid, Epist. xix + +The same poetical superstition is alluded to in the Purgatory, +Cant. IX. and XXVII. + +v. 9. Shall feel what Prato.] The poet prognosticates the calamities +which were soon to befal his native city, and which he says, even her +nearest neighbor, Prato, would wish her. The calamities more +particularly pointed at, are said to be the fall of a wooden bridge +over the Arno, in May, 1304, where a large multitude were assembled to +witness a representation of hell nnd the infernal torments, in +consequence of which accident many lives were lost; and a conflagration +that in the following month destroyed more than seventeen hundred +houses, many ofthem sumptuous buildings. See G. Villani, Hist. l. viii. +c. 70 and 71. + +v. 22. More than I am wont.] “When I reflect on the punishment allotted +to those who do not give sincere and upright advice to others I am more +anxious than ever not to abuse to so bad a purpose those talents, +whatever they may be, which Nature, or rather Providence, has conferred +on me.” It is probable that this declaration was the result of real +feeling Textd have given great weight to any opinion or party he had +espoused, and to whom indigence and exile might have offerred strong +temptations to deviate from that line of conduct which a strict sense +of duty prescribed. + +v. 35. as he, whose wrongs.] Kings, b. ii. c. ii. + +v. 54. ascending from that funeral pile.] The flame is said to +have divided on the funeral pile which consumed tile bodies of +Eteocles and Polynices, as if conscious of the enmity that +actuated them while living. + + Ecce iterum fratris, &c. + + Statius, Theb. l. xii. + + Ostendens confectas flamma, &c. + + Lucan, Pharsal. l. 1. 145. + +v. 60. The ambush of the horse.] “The ambush of the wooden horse, that +caused Aeneas to quit the city of Troy and seek his fortune in Italy, +where his descendants founded the Roman empire.” + +v. 91. Caieta.] Virgil, Aeneid. l. vii. 1. + +v. 93. Nor fondness for my son] Imitated hp Tasso, G. L. c. +viii. + + Ne timor di fatica o di periglio, + + Ne vaghezza del regno, ne pietade + + Del vecchio genitor, si degno affetto + + Intiepedir nel generoso petto. +This imagined voyage of Ulysses into the Atlantic is alluded to +by Pulci. + + E sopratutto commendava Ulisse, + + Che per veder nell’ altro mondo gisse. + + Morg. Magg. c. xxv +And by Tasso, G. L. c. xv. 25. + +v. 106. The strait pass.] The straits of Gibraltar. + +v. 122. Made our oars wings.l So Chiabrera, Cant. Eroiche. xiii Faro +de’remi un volo. And Tasso Ibid. 26. + +v. 128. A mountain dim.] The mountain of Purgatorg + +CANTO XXVII. + + +v. 6. The Sicilian Bull.] The engine of torture invented by Perillus, +for the tyrant Phalaris. + +v. 26. Of the mountains there.] Montefeltro. + +v. 38. Polenta’s eagle.] Guido Novello da Polenta, who bore an eagle +for his coat of arms. The name of Polenta was derived from a castle so +called in the neighbourhood of Brittonoro. Cervia is a small maritime +city, about fifteen miles to the south of Ravenna. Guido was the son of +Ostasio da Polenta, and made himself master of Ravenna, in 1265. In +1322 he was deprived of his sovereignty, and died at Bologna in the +year following. This last and most munificent patron of Dante is +himself enumerated, by the historian of Italian literature, among the +poets of his time. Tiraboschi, Storia della Lett. Ital. t. v. 1. iii. +c. ii. 13. The passnge in the text might have removed the uncertainty +wwhich Tiraboschi expressed, respecting the duration of Guido’s absence +from Ravenna, when he was driven from that city in 1295, by the arms of +Pietro, archbishop of Monreale. It must evidently have been very short, +since his government is here represented (in 1300) as not having +suffered any material disturbance for many years. + +v. 41. The land.l The territory of Forli, the inhabitants of which, in +1282, mere enabled, hy the strategem of Guido da Montefeltro, who then +governed it, to defeat with great slaughter the French army by which it +had been besieged. See G. Villani, l. vii. c. 81. The poet informs +Guido, its former ruler, that it is now in the possession of Sinibaldo +Ordolaffi, or Ardelaffi, whom he designates by his coat of arms, a lion +vert. + +v. 43. The old mastiff of Verucchio and the young.] Malatesta and +Malatestino his son, lords of Rimini, called, from their ferocity, the +mastiffs of Verruchio, which was the name of their castle. + +v. 44. Montagna.] Montagna de’Parcitati, a noble knight, and leader of +the Ghibelline party at Rimini, murdered by Malatestino. + +v. 46. Lamone’s city and Santerno’s.] Lamone is the river at Faenza, +and Santerno at Imola. + +v. 47. The lion of the snowy lair.] Machinardo Pagano, whose arms were +a lion azure on a field argent; mentioned again in the Purgatory, Canto +XIV. 122. See G. Villani passim, where he is called Machinardo da +Susinana. + +v. 50. Whose flank is wash’d of SSavio’s wave.] Cesena, situated at the +foot of a mountain, and washed by the river Savio, that often descends +with a swoln and rapid stream from the Appenine. + +v. 64. A man of arms.] Guido da Montefeltro. + +v. 68. The high priest.] Boniface VIII. + +v. 72. The nature of the lion than the fox.] Non furon leonine ma di +volpe. So Pulci, Morg. Magg. c. xix. + + E furon le sua opre e le sue colpe + + Non creder leonine ma di volpe. + +v. 81. The chief of the new Pharisee.] Boniface VIII. whose enmity to +the family of Colonna prompted him to destroy their houses near the +Lateran. Wishing to obtain possession of their other seat, Penestrino, +he consulted with Guido da Montefeltro how he might accomplish his +purpose, offering him at the same time absolution for his past sins, as +well as for that which he was then tempting him to commit. Guido’s +advice was, that kind words and fair promises nonld put his enemies +into his power; and they accordingly soon aftermards fell into the +snare laid for them, A.D. 1298. See G. Villani, l. viii. c. 23. + +v. 84. Nor against Acre one Had fought.] He alludes to the renegade +Christians, by whom the Saracens, in Apri., 1291, were assisted to +recover St.John d’Acre, the last possession of the Christians in the +Iloly Land. The regret expressed by the Florentine annalist G. Villani, +for the loss of this valuable fortress, is well worthy of observation, +l. vii. c. 144. + +v. 89. As in Soracte Constantine besought.] So in Dante’s treatise De +Monarchia: “Dicunt quidam adhue, quod Constantinus Imperator, mundatus +a lepra intercessione Syvestri, tunc summni pontificis imperii sedem, +scilicet Romam, donavit ecclesiae, cum multis allis imperii +dignitatibus.” Lib.iii. + +v. 101. My predecessor.] Celestine V. See Notes to Canto III. + +CANTO XXVIII. + + +v.8. In that long war.] The war of Hannibal in Italy. “When Mago +brought news of his victories to Carthage, in order to make his +successes more easily credited, he commanded the golden rings to be +poured out in the senate house, which made so large a heap, that, as +some relate, they filled three modii and a half. A more probable +account represents them not to have exceeded one modius.” Livy, Hist. + +v. 12. Guiscard’s Norman steel.] Robert Guiscard, who conquered the +kingdom of Naples, and died in 1110. G. Villani, l. iv. c. 18. He is +introduced in the Paradise, Canto XVIII. + +v. 13. And those the rest.] The army of Manfredi, which, through the +treachery of the Apulian troops, wns overcome by Charles of Anjou in +1205, and fell in such numbers that the bones of the slain were still +gathered near Ceperano. G. Villani, l. vii. c. 9. See the Purgatory, +Canto III. + +v. 10. O Tagliocozzo.] He alludes to tile victory which Charles gained +over Conradino, by the sage advice of the Sieur de Valeri, in 1208. G. +Villani, l. vii. c. 27. + +v. 32. Ali.] The disciple of Mohammed. + +v. 53. Dolcino.] “In 1305, a friar, called Dolcino, who belonged to no +regular order, contrived to raise in Novarra, in Lombardy, a large +company of the meaner sort of people, declaring himself to be a true +apostle of Christ, and promulgating a community of property and of +wives, with many other such heretical doctrines. He blamed the pope, +cardinals, and other prelates of the holy church, for not observing +their duty, nor leading the angelic life, and affirmed that he ought to +be pope. He was followed by more than three thousand men and women, who +lived promiscuously on the mountains together, like beasts, and, when +they wanted provisions, supplied themselves by depredation and rapine. +This lasted for two years till, many being struck with compunction at +the dissolute life they led, his sect was much diminished; and through +failure of food, and the severity of the snows, he was taken by the +people of Novarra, and burnt, with Margarita his companion and many +other men and women whom his errors had seduced.” G. Villanni, l. viii. +c. 84. + +Landino observes, that he was possessed of singular eloquence, and that +both he and Margarita endored their fate with a firmness worthy of a +better cause. For a further account of him, see Muratori Rer. Ital. +Script. t. ix. p. 427. + +v. 69. Medicina.] A place in the territory of Bologna. Piero fomented +dissensions among the inhabitants of that city, and among the leaders +of the neighbouring states. + +v. 70. The pleasant land.] Lombardy. + +v. 72. The twain.] Guido dal Cassero and Angiolello da Cagnano, two of +the worthiest and most distinguished citizens of Fano, were invited by +Malatestino da Rimini to an entertainment on pretence that he had some +important business to transact with them: and, according to +instructions given by him, they mere drowned in their passage near +Catolica, between Rimini and Fano. + +v. 85. Focara’s wind.] Focara is a mountain, from which a wind blows +that is peculiarly dangerous to the navigators of that coast. + +v. 94. The doubt in Caesar’s mind.] Curio, whose speech (according to +Lucan) determined Julius Caesar to proceed when he had arrived at +Rimini (the ancient Ariminum), and doubted whether he should prosecute +the civil war. Tolle moras: semper nocuit differre paratis Pharsal, l. +i. 281. + +v. 102. Mosca.] Buondelmonte was engaged to marry a lady of the Amidei +family, but broke his promise and united himself to one of the Donati. +This was so much resented by the former, that a meeting of themselves +and their kinsmen was held, to consider of the best means of revenging +the insult. Mosca degli Uberti persuaded them to resolve on the +assassination of Buondelmonte, exclaiming to them “the thing once done, +there is an end.” The counsel and its effects were the source of many +terrible calamities to the state of Florence. “This murder,” says G. +Villani, l. v. c. 38, “was the cause and beginning of the accursed +Guelph and Ghibelline parties in Florence.” It happened in 1215. See +the Paradise, Canto XVI. 139. + +v. 111. The boon companion.] What stronger breastplate than a heart +untainted? Shakespeare, 2 Hen. VI. a. iii. s. 2. + +v. 160. Bertrand.] Bertrand de Born, Vicomte de Hautefort, near +Perigueux in Guienne, who incited John to rebel against his father, +Henry II. of England. Bertrand holds a distinguished place among the +Provencal poets. He is quoted in Dante, “De Vulg. Eloq.” l. ii. c. 2. +For the translation of some extracts from his poems, see Millot, Hist. +Litteraire des Troubadors t. i. p. 210; but the historical parts of +that work are, I believe, not to be relied on. + +CANTO XXIX. + + +v. 26. Geri of Bello.] A kinsman of the Poet’s, who was murdered by one +of the Sacchetti family. His being placed here, may be considered as a +proof that Dante was more impartial in the allotment of his punishments +than has generally been supposed. + +v. 44. As were the torment.] It is very probable that these +lines gave Milton the idea of his celebrated description: + + Immediately a place + + Before their eyes appear’d, sad, noisome, dark, + + A lasar-house it seem’d, wherein were laid + + Numbers of all diseas’d, all maladies, &c. + + P. L. b. xi. 477. + +v. 45. Valdichiana.] The valley through which passes the river Chiana, +bounded by Arezzo, Cortona, Montepulciano, and Chiusi. In the heat of +autumn it was formerly rendered unwholesome by the stagnation of the +water, but has since been drained by the Emperor Leopold II. The Chiana +is mentioned as a remarkably sluggish stream, in the Paradise, Canto +XIII. 21. + +v. 47. Maremma’s pestilent fen.] See Note to Canto XXV. v. 18. + +v. 58. In Aegina.] He alludes to the fable of the ants changed into +Myrmidons. Ovid, Met. 1. vii. + +v. 104. Arezzo was my dwelling.] Grifolino of Arezzo, who promised +Albero, son of the Bishop of Sienna, that he would teach him the art of +flying; and because be did not keep his promise, Albero prevailed on +his father to have him burnt for a necromancer. + +v. 117. + + Was ever race + + Light as Sienna’s?] +The same imputation is again cast on the Siennese, Purg. Canto +XIII. 141. + +v. 121. Stricca.] This is said ironically. Stricca, Niccolo Salimbeni, +Caccia of Asciano, and Abbagliato, or Meo de Folcacchieri, belonged to +a company of prodigal and luxurious young men in Sienna, called the +“brigata godereccia.” Niccolo was the inventor of a new manner of using +cloves in cookery, not very well understood by the commentators, and +which was termed the “costuma ricca.” + +v. 125. In that garden.] Sienna. + +v. 134. Cappocchio’s ghost.] Capocchio of Sienna, who is said to have +been a fellow-student of Dante’s in natural philosophy. + +CANTO XXX. + + +v. 4. Athamas.] From Ovid, Metam. 1. iv. Protinos Aelides, &c. + +v. 16. Hecuba. See Euripedes, Hecuba; and Ovid, Metnm. l. xiii. + +v. 33. Schicchi.] Gianni Schicci, who was of the family of Cavalcanti, +possessed such a faculty of moulding his features to the resemblance of +others, that he was employed by Simon Donati to personate Buoso Donati, +then recently deceased, and to make a will, leaving Simon his heir; for +which service he was renumerated with a mare of extraordinary value, +here called “the lady of the herd.” + +v. 39. Myrrha.] See Ovid, Metam. l. x. + +v. 60. Adamo’s woe.] Adamo of Breschia, at the instigation of Cuido +Alessandro, and their brother Aghinulfo, lords of Romena, coonterfeited +the coin of Florence; for which crime he was burnt. Landino says, that +in his time the peasants still pointed out a pile of stones near Romena +as the place of his execution. + +v. 64. Casentino.] Romena is a part of Casentino. + +v. 77. Branda’s limpid spring.] A fountain in Sienna. + +v. 88. The florens with three carats of alloy.] The floren was a coin +that ought to have had tmenty-four carats of pure gold. Villani +relates, that it was first used at Florence in 1253, an aera of great +prosperity in the annals of the republic; before which time their most +valuable coinage was of silver. Hist. l. vi. c. 54. + +v. 98. The false accuser.] Potiphar’s wife. + +CANTO XXXI. + + +v. 1. The very tongue.] Vulnus in Herculeo quae quondam fecerat hoste +Vulneris auxilium Pellas hasta fuit. Ovid, Rem. Amor. 47. The same +allusion was made by Bernard de Ventadour, a Provencal poet in the +middle of the twelfth century: and Millot observes, that it was a +singular instance of erudition in a Troubadour. But it is not +impossible, as Warton remarks, (Hist. of Engl. Poetry, vol. ii. sec. x. +p 215.) but that he might have been indebted for it to some of the +early romances. + +In Chaucer’s Squier’s Tale, a sword of similar quality is +introduced: + + And other folk have wondred on the sweard, + + That could so piercen through every thing; + + And fell in speech of Telephus the king, + + And of Achillcs for his queint spere, + + For he couth with it both heale and dere. +So Shakspeare, Henry VI. p. ii. a. 5. s. 1. + + Whose smile and frown like to Achilles’ spear + + Is able with the change to kill and cure. + +v. 14. Orlando.l When Charlemain with all his peerage fell At +Fontarabia Milton, P. L. b. i. 586. See Warton’s Hist. of Eng. Poetrg, +v. i. sect. iii. p. 132. “This is the horn which Orlando won from the +giant Jatmund, and which as Turpin and the Islandic bards report, was +endued with magical power, and might be heard at the distance of twenty +miles.” Charlemain and Orlando are introduced in the Paradise, Canto +XVIII. + +v. 36. Montereggnon.] A castle near Sienna. + +v. 105. The fortunate vale.] The country near Carthage. See Liv. Hist. +l. xxx. and Lucan, Phars. l. iv. 590. Dante has kept the latter of +these writers in his eye throughout all this passage. + +v. 123. Alcides.] The combat between Hercules Antaeus is adduced by the +Poet in his treatise “De Monarchia,” l. ii. as a proof of the judgment +of God displayed in the duel, according to the singular superstition of +those times. + +v. 128. The tower of Carisenda.] The leaning tower at Bologna + +CANTO XXXII. + + +v. 8. A tongue not us’d To infant babbling.] Ne da lingua, che chiami +mamma, o babbo. Dante in his treatise “ De Vulg. Eloq.” speaking of +words not admissble in the loftier, or as he calls it, tragic style of +poetry, says- “In quorum numero nec puerilia propter suam simplicitatem +ut Mamma et Babbo,” l. ii. c. vii. + +v. 29. Tabernich or Pietrapana.] The one a mountain in Sclavonia, the +other in that tract of country called the Garfagnana, not far from +Lucca. + +v. 33. To where modest shame appears.] “As high as to the face.” + +v. 35. Moving their teeth in shrill note like the stork.] Mettendo i +denti in nota di cicogna. So Boccaccio, G. viii. n. 7. “Lo scolar +cattivello quasi cicogna divenuto si forte batteva i denti.” + +v. 53. Who are these two.] Alessandro and Napoleone, sons of Alberto +Alberti, who murdered each other. They were proprietors of the valley +of Falterona, where the Bisenzio has its source, a river that falls +into the Arno about six miles from Florence. + +v. 59. Not him,] Mordrec, son of King Arthur. + +v. 60. Foccaccia.] Focaccia of Cancellieri, (the Pistoian family) whose +atrocious act of revenge against his uncle is said to have given rise +to the parties of the Bianchi and Neri, in the year 1300. See G. +Villani, Hist. l, viii. c. 37. and Macchiavelli, Hist. l. ii. The +account of the latter writer differs much from that given by Landino in +his Commentary. + +v. 63. Mascheroni.] Sassol Mascheroni, a Florentiue, who also murdered +his uncle. + +v. 66. Camiccione.] Camiccione de’ Pazzi of Valdarno, by whom his +kinsman Ubertino was treacherously pnt to death. + +v. 67. Carlino.] One of the same family. He betrayed the Castel di +Piano Travigne, in Valdarno, to the Florentines, after the refugees of +the Bianca and Ghibelline party had defended it against a siege for +twenty-nine days, in the summer of 1302. See G. Villani, l. viii. c. 52 +and Dino Compagni, l. ii. + +v. 81. Montaperto.] The defeat of the Guelfi at Montaperto, occasioned +by the treachery of Bocca degli Abbati, who, during the engagement, cut +off the hand of Giacopo del Vacca de’Pazzi, bearer of the Florentine +standard. G. Villani, l. vi. c. 80, and Notes to Canto X. This event +happened in 1260. + +v. 113. Him of Duera.] Buoso of Cremona, of the family of Duera, who +was bribed by Guy de Montfort, to leave a pass between Piedmont and +Parma, with the defence of which he had been entrusted by the +Ghibellines, open to the army of Charles of Anjou, A.D. 1265, at which +the people of Cremona were so enraged, that they extirpated the whole +family. G. Villani, l. vii. c. 4. + +v. 118. Beccaria.] Abbot of Vallombrosa, who was the Pope’s Legate at +Florence, where his intrigues in favour of the Ghibellines being +discovered, he was beheaded. I do not find the occurrence in Vallini, +nor do the commentators say to what pope he was legate. By Landino he +is reported to have been from Parma, by Vellutello from Pavia. + +v. 118. Soldanieri.] “Gianni Soldanieri,” says Villani, Hist. l. vii. +c14, “put himself at the head of the people, in the hopes of rising +into power, not aware that the result would be mischief to the +Ghibelline party, and his own ruin; an event which seems ever to have +befallen him, who has headed the populace in Florence.” A.D. 1266. + +v. 119. Ganellon.] The betrayer of Charlemain, mentioned by Archbishop +Turpin. He is a common instance of treachery with the poets of the +middle ages. Trop son fol e mal pensant, Pis valent que Guenelon. +Thibaut, roi de Navarre O new Scariot, and new Ganilion, O false +dissembler, &c. Chaucer, Nonne’s Prieste’s Tale And in the Monke’s +Tale, Peter of Spaine. v. 119. Tribaldello.] Tribaldello de’Manfredi, +who was bribed to betray the city of Faonza, A. D. 1282. G. Villani, l. +vii. c. 80 + +v. 128. Tydeus.] See Statius, Theb. l. viii. ad finem. + +CANTO XXXIII. + + +v. 14. Count Ugolino.] “In the year 1288, in the month of July, Pisa +was much divided by competitors for the sovereignty; one party, +composed of certain of the Guelphi, being headed by the Judge Nino di +Gallura de’Visconti; another, consisting of others of the same faction, +by the Count Ugolino de’ Gherardeschi; and the third by the Archbishop +Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, with the Lanfranchi, Sismondi, Gualandi, and +other Ghibelline houses. The Count Ugolino,to effect his purpose, +united with the Archbishop and his party, and having betrayed Nino, his +sister’s son, they contrived that he and his followers should either be +driven out of Pisa, or their persons seized. Nino hearing this, and not +seeing any means of defending himself, retired to Calci, his castle, +and formed an alliance with the Florentines and people of Lucca, +against the Pisans. The Count, before Nino was gone, in order to cover +his treachery, when everything was settled for his expulsion, quitted +Pisa, and repaired to a manor of his called Settimo; whence, as soon as +he was informed of Nino’s departure, he returned to Pisa with great +rejoicing and festivity, and was elevated to the supreme power with +every demonstration of triumph and honour. But his greatness was not of +long continuauce. It pleased the Almighty that a total reverse of +fortune should ensue, as a punishment for his acts of treachery and +guilt: for he was said to have poisoned the Count Anselmo da Capraia, +his sister’s son, on account of the envy and fear excited in his mind +by the high esteem in which the gracious manners of Anselmo were held +by the Pisans. The power of the Guelphi being so much diminished, the +Archbishop devised means to betray the Count Uglino and caused him to +be suddenly attacked in his palace by the fury of the people, whom he +had exasperated, by telling them that Ugolino had betrayed Pisa, and +given up their castles to the citizens of Florence and of Lucca. He was +immediately compelled to surrender; his bastard son and his grandson +fell in the assault; and two of his sons, with their two sons also, +were conveyed to prison.” G. Villani l. vii. c. 120. + +“In the following march, the Pisans, who had imprisoned the Count +Uglino, with two of his sons and two of his grandchildren, the +offspring of his son the Count Guelfo, in a tower on the Piazza of the +Anzania, caused the tower to be locked, the key thrown into the Arno, +and all food to be withheld from them. In a few days they died of +hunger; but the Count first with loud cries declared his penitence, and +yet neither priest nor friar was allowed to shrive him. All the five, +when dead, were dragged out of the prison, and meanly interred; and +from thence forward the tower was called the tower of famine, and so +shall ever be.” Ibid. c. 127. + +Chancer has briefly told Ugolino’s story. See Monke’s Tale, +Hugeline of Pise. + +v. 29. Unto the mountain.] The mountain S. Giuliano, between Pisa and +Lucca. + +v. 59. Thou gav’st.] + + Tu ne vestisti + + Queste misere carni, e tu le spoglia. +Imitated by Filicaja, Canz. iii. + + Di questa imperial caduca spoglia + + Tu, Signor, me vestisti e tu mi spoglia: + + Ben puoi’l Regno me tor tu che me’l desti. +And by Maffei, in the Merope: + + Tu disciogleste + + Queste misere membra e tu le annodi. + +v. 79. In that fair region.] Del bel paese la, dove’l si suona. Italy +as explained by Dante himself, in his treatise De Vulg. Eloq. l. i. c. +8. “Qui autem Si dicunt a praedictis finibus. (Januensiem) Oreintalem +(Meridionalis Europae partem) tenent; videlicet usque ad promontorium +illud Italiae, qua sinus Adriatici maris incipit et Siciliam.” + +v. 82. Capraia and Gorgona.] Small islands near the mouth of the Arno. + +v. 94. There very weeping suffers not to weep,] Lo pianto stesso li +pianger non lascia. So Giusto de’Conti, Bella Mano. Son. “Quanto il +ciel.” Che il troppo pianto a me pianger non lassa. v. 116. The friar +Albigero.] Alberigo de’Manfredi, of Faenza, one of the Frati Godenti, +Joyons Friars who having quarrelled with some of his brotherhood, under +pretence of wishing to be reconciled, invited them to a banquet, at the +conclusion of which he called for the fruit, a signal for the assassins +to rush in and dispatch those whom he had marked for destruction. +Hence, adds Landino, it is said proverbially of one who has been +stabbed, that he has had some of the friar Alberigo’s fruit. Thus +Pulci, Morg. Magg. c. xxv. Le frutte amare di frate Alberico. + +v. 123. Ptolomea.] This circle is named Ptolomea from Ptolemy, the son +of Abubus, by whom Simon and his sons were murdered, at a great banquet +he had made for them. See Maccabees, ch xvi. + +v. 126. The glazed tear-drops.] + +-sorrow’s eye, glazed with blinding tears. Shakspeare, Rich. II. a. 2. +s. 2. + +v. 136. Branca Doria.] The family of Doria was possessed of great +influence in Genoa. Branca is said to have murdered his father-in-law, +Michel Zanche, introduced in Canto XXII. + +v. 162 Romagna’s darkest spirit.] The friar Alberigo. + +Canto XXXIV. + +v. 6. A wind-mill.] The author of the Caliph Vathek, in the notes to +that tale, justly observes, that it is more than probable that Don +Quixote’s mistake of the wind-mills for giants was suggested to +Cervantes by this simile. + +v. 37. Three faces.] It can scarcely be doubted but that Milton derived +his description of Satan in those lines, + + Each passion dimm’d his face + + Thrice chang’d with pale, ire, envy, and despair. + + P. L. b. iv. 114. +from this passage, coupled with the remark of Vellutello upon it: + +“The first of these sins is anger which he signifies by the red face; +the second, represented by that between pale and yellow is envy and +not, as others have said, avarice; and the third, denoted by the black, +is a melancholy humour that causes a man’s thoughts to be dark and +evil, and averse from all joy and tranquillity.” + +v. 44. Sails.] + + —His sail-broad vans + + He spreads for flight. + + Milton, P. L. b. ii. 927. +Compare Spenser, F. Q. b. i. c. xi. st. 10; Ben Jonson’s Every +Man out of his humour, v. 7; and Fletcher’s Prophetess, a. 2. s. +3. + +v. 46. Like a bat.] The description of an imaginary being, who is +called Typhurgo, in the Zodiacus Vitae, has some touches very like this +of Dante’s Lucifer. + + Ingentem vidi regem ingentique sedentem + + In solio, crines flammanti stemmate cinctum + + —-utrinque patentes + + Alae humeris magnae, quales vespertilionum + + Membranis contextae amplis— + + Nudus erat longis sed opertus corpora villis. + + M. Palingenii, Zod. Vit. l. ix. + + A mighty king I might discerne, + + Plac’d hie on lofty chaire, + + His haire with fyry garland deckt + + Puft up in fiendish wise. + + x x x x x x + + Large wings on him did grow + + Framde like the wings of flinder mice, &c. + + Googe’s Translation + +v. 61. Brutus.] Landino struggles, but I fear in vain, to extricate +Brutus from the unworthy lot which is here assigned him. He maintains, +that by Brutus and Cassius are not meant the individuals known by those +names, but any who put a lawful monarch to death. Yet if Caesar was +such, the conspirators might be regarded as deserving of their doom. + +v. 89. Within one hour and half of noon.] The poet uses the Hebrew +manner of computing the day, according to which the third hour answers +to our twelve o’clock at noon. + +v. 120. By what of firm land on this side appears.] The mountain of +Purgatory. + +v.123. The vaulted tomb.] “La tomba.” This word is used to express the +whole depth of the infernal region. + + + + +PURGATORY + + + + +CANTO I + + +O’er better waves to speed her rapid course +The light bark of my genius lifts the sail, +Well pleas’d to leave so cruel sea behind; +And of that second region will I sing, +In which the human spirit from sinful blot +Is purg’d, and for ascent to Heaven prepares. + +Here, O ye hallow’d Nine! for in your train +I follow, here the deadened strain revive; +Nor let Calliope refuse to sound +A somewhat higher song, of that loud tone, +Which when the wretched birds of chattering note +Had heard, they of forgiveness lost all hope. + +Sweet hue of eastern sapphire, that was spread +O’er the serene aspect of the pure air, +High up as the first circle, to mine eyes +Unwonted joy renew’d, soon as I ’scap’d +Forth from the atmosphere of deadly gloom, +That had mine eyes and bosom fill’d with grief. +The radiant planet, that to love invites, +Made all the orient laugh, and veil’d beneath +The Pisces’ light, that in his escort came. + +To the right hand I turn’d, and fix’d my mind +On the’ other pole attentive, where I saw +Four stars ne’er seen before save by the ken +Of our first parents. Heaven of their rays +Seem’d joyous. O thou northern site, bereft +Indeed, and widow’d, since of these depriv’d! + +As from this view I had desisted, straight +Turning a little tow’rds the other pole, +There from whence now the wain had disappear’d, +I saw an old man standing by my side +Alone, so worthy of rev’rence in his look, +That ne’er from son to father more was ow’d. +Low down his beard and mix’d with hoary white +Descended, like his locks, which parting fell +Upon his breast in double fold. The beams +Of those four luminaries on his face +So brightly shone, and with such radiance clear +Deck’d it, that I beheld him as the sun. + +“Say who are ye, that stemming the blind stream, +Forth from th’ eternal prison-house have fled?” +He spoke and moved those venerable plumes. +“Who hath conducted, or with lantern sure +Lights you emerging from the depth of night, +That makes the infernal valley ever black? +Are the firm statutes of the dread abyss +Broken, or in high heaven new laws ordain’d, +That thus, condemn’d, ye to my caves approach?” + +My guide, then laying hold on me, by words +And intimations given with hand and head, +Made my bent knees and eye submissive pay +Due reverence; then thus to him replied. + +“Not of myself I come; a Dame from heaven +Descending, had besought me in my charge +To bring. But since thy will implies, that more +Our true condition I unfold at large, +Mine is not to deny thee thy request. +This mortal ne’er hath seen the farthest gloom. +But erring by his folly had approach’d +So near, that little space was left to turn. +Then, as before I told, I was dispatch’d +To work his rescue, and no way remain’d +Save this which I have ta’en. I have display’d +Before him all the regions of the bad; +And purpose now those spirits to display, +That under thy command are purg’d from sin. +How I have brought him would be long to say. +From high descends the virtue, by whose aid +I to thy sight and hearing him have led. +Now may our coming please thee. In the search +Of liberty he journeys: that how dear +They know, who for her sake have life refus’d. +Thou knowest, to whom death for her was sweet +In Utica, where thou didst leave those weeds, +That in the last great day will shine so bright. +For us the’ eternal edicts are unmov’d: +He breathes, and I am free of Minos’ power, +Abiding in that circle where the eyes +Of thy chaste Marcia beam, who still in look +Prays thee, O hallow’d spirit! to own her shine. +Then by her love we’ implore thee, let us pass +Through thy sev’n regions; for which best thanks +I for thy favour will to her return, +If mention there below thou not disdain.” + +“Marcia so pleasing in my sight was found,” +He then to him rejoin’d, “while I was there, +That all she ask’d me I was fain to grant. +Now that beyond the’ accursed stream she dwells, +She may no longer move me, by that law, +Which was ordain’d me, when I issued thence. +Not so, if Dame from heaven, as thou sayst, +Moves and directs thee; then no flattery needs. +Enough for me that in her name thou ask. +Go therefore now: and with a slender reed +See that thou duly gird him, and his face +Lave, till all sordid stain thou wipe from thence. +For not with eye, by any cloud obscur’d, +Would it be seemly before him to come, +Who stands the foremost minister in heaven. +This islet all around, there far beneath, +Where the wave beats it, on the oozy bed +Produces store of reeds. No other plant, +Cover’d with leaves, or harden’d in its stalk, +There lives, not bending to the water’s sway. +After, this way return not; but the sun +Will show you, that now rises, where to take +The mountain in its easiest ascent.” + +He disappear’d; and I myself uprais’d +Speechless, and to my guide retiring close, +Toward him turn’d mine eyes. He thus began; +“My son! observant thou my steps pursue. +We must retreat to rearward, for that way +The champain to its low extreme declines.” + +The dawn had chas’d the matin hour of prime, +Which deaf before it, so that from afar +I spy’d the trembling of the ocean stream. + +We travers’d the deserted plain, as one +Who, wander’d from his track, thinks every step +Trodden in vain till he regain the path. + +When we had come, where yet the tender dew +Strove with the sun, and in a place, where fresh +The wind breath’d o’er it, while it slowly dried; +Both hands extended on the watery grass +My master plac’d, in graceful act and kind. +Whence I of his intent before appriz’d, +Stretch’d out to him my cheeks suffus’d with tears. +There to my visage he anew restor’d +That hue, which the dun shades of hell conceal’d. + +Then on the solitary shore arriv’d, +That never sailing on its waters saw +Man, that could after measure back his course, +He girt me in such manner as had pleas’d +Him who instructed, and O, strange to tell! +As he selected every humble plant, +Wherever one was pluck’d, another there +Resembling, straightway in its place arose. + + + + +CANTO II + + +Now had the sun to that horizon reach’d, +That covers, with the most exalted point +Of its meridian circle, Salem’s walls, +And night, that opposite to him her orb +Sounds, from the stream of Ganges issued forth, +Holding the scales, that from her hands are dropp’d +When she reigns highest: so that where I was, +Aurora’s white and vermeil-tinctur’d cheek +To orange turn’d as she in age increas’d. + +Meanwhile we linger’d by the water’s brink, +Like men, who, musing on their road, in thought +Journey, while motionless the body rests. +When lo! as near upon the hour of dawn, +Through the thick vapours Mars with fiery beam +Glares down in west, over the ocean floor; +So seem’d, what once again I hope to view, +A light so swiftly coming through the sea, +No winged course might equal its career. +From which when for a space I had withdrawn +Thine eyes, to make inquiry of my guide, +Again I look’d and saw it grown in size +And brightness: thou on either side appear’d +Something, but what I knew not of bright hue, +And by degrees from underneath it came +Another. My preceptor silent yet +Stood, while the brightness, that we first discern’d, +Open’d the form of wings: then when he knew +The pilot, cried aloud, “Down, down; bend low +Thy knees; behold God’s angel: fold thy hands: +Now shalt thou see true Ministers indeed. +Lo how all human means he sets at naught! +So that nor oar he needs, nor other sail +Except his wings, between such distant shores. +Lo how straight up to heaven he holds them rear’d, +Winnowing the air with those eternal plumes, +That not like mortal hairs fall off or change!” + +As more and more toward us came, more bright +Appear’d the bird of God, nor could the eye +Endure his splendor near: I mine bent down. +He drove ashore in a small bark so swift +And light, that in its course no wave it drank. +The heav’nly steersman at the prow was seen, +Visibly written blessed in his looks. +Within a hundred spirits and more there sat. +“In Exitu Israel de Aegypto;” +All with one voice together sang, with what +In the remainder of that hymn is writ. +Then soon as with the sign of holy cross +He bless’d them, they at once leap’d out on land, +The swiftly as he came return’d. The crew, +There left, appear’d astounded with the place, +Gazing around as one who sees new sights. + +From every side the sun darted his beams, +And with his arrowy radiance from mid heav’n +Had chas’d the Capricorn, when that strange tribe +Lifting their eyes towards us: If ye know, +Declare what path will Lead us to the mount.” + +Them Virgil answer’d. “Ye suppose perchance +Us well acquainted with this place: but here, +We, as yourselves, are strangers. Not long erst +We came, before you but a little space, +By other road so rough and hard, that now +The’ ascent will seem to us as play.” The spirits, +Who from my breathing had perceiv’d I liv’d, +Grew pale with wonder. As the multitude +Flock round a herald, sent with olive branch, +To hear what news he brings, and in their haste +Tread one another down, e’en so at sight +Of me those happy spirits were fix’d, each one +Forgetful of its errand, to depart, +Where cleans’d from sin, it might be made all fair. + +Then one I saw darting before the rest +With such fond ardour to embrace me, I +To do the like was mov’d. O shadows vain +Except in outward semblance! thrice my hands +I clasp’d behind it, they as oft return’d +Empty into my breast again. Surprise +I needs must think was painted in my looks, +For that the shadow smil’d and backward drew. +To follow it I hasten’d, but with voice +Of sweetness it enjoin’d me to desist. +Then who it was I knew, and pray’d of it, +To talk with me, it would a little pause. +It answered: “Thee as in my mortal frame +I lov’d, so loos’d forth it I love thee still, +And therefore pause; but why walkest thou here?” + +“Not without purpose once more to return, +Thou find’st me, my Casella, where I am +Journeying this way;” I said, “but how of thee +Hath so much time been lost?” He answer’d straight: +“No outrage hath been done to me, if he +Who when and whom he chooses takes, me oft +This passage hath denied, since of just will +His will he makes. These three months past indeed, +He, whose chose to enter, with free leave +Hath taken; whence I wand’ring by the shore +Where Tyber’s wave grows salt, of him gain’d kind +Admittance, at that river’s mouth, tow’rd which +His wings are pointed, for there always throng +All such as not to Archeron descend.” + +Then I: “If new laws have not quite destroy’d +Memory and use of that sweet song of love, +That while all my cares had power to ’swage; +Please thee with it a little to console +My spirit, that incumber’d with its frame, +Travelling so far, of pain is overcome.” + +“Love that discourses in my thoughts.” He then +Began in such soft accents, that within +The sweetness thrills me yet. My gentle guide +And all who came with him, so well were pleas’d, +That seem’d naught else might in their thoughts have room. + +Fast fix’d in mute attention to his notes +We stood, when lo! that old man venerable +Exclaiming, “How is this, ye tardy spirits? +What negligence detains you loit’ring here? +Run to the mountain to cast off those scales, +That from your eyes the sight of God conceal.” + +As a wild flock of pigeons, to their food +Collected, blade or tares, without their pride +Accustom’d, and in still and quiet sort, +If aught alarm them, suddenly desert +Their meal, assail’d by more important care; +So I that new-come troop beheld, the song +Deserting, hasten to the mountain’s side, +As one who goes yet where he tends knows not. + +Nor with less hurried step did we depart. + + + + +CANTO III + + +Them sudden flight had scatter’d over the plain, +Turn’d tow’rds the mountain, whither reason’s voice +Drives us; I to my faithful company +Adhering, left it not. For how of him +Depriv’d, might I have sped, or who beside +Would o’er the mountainous tract have led my steps +He with the bitter pang of self-remorse +Seem’d smitten. O clear conscience and upright +How doth a little fling wound thee sore! + +Soon as his feet desisted (slack’ning pace), +From haste, that mars all decency of act, +My mind, that in itself before was wrapt, +Its thoughts expanded, as with joy restor’d: +And full against the steep ascent I set +My face, where highest to heav’n its top o’erflows. + +The sun, that flar’d behind, with ruddy beam +Before my form was broken; for in me +His rays resistance met. I turn’d aside +With fear of being left, when I beheld +Only before myself the ground obscur’d. +When thus my solace, turning him around, +Bespake me kindly: “Why distrustest thou? +Believ’st not I am with thee, thy sure guide? +It now is evening there, where buried lies +The body, in which I cast a shade, remov’d +To Naples from Brundusium’s wall. Nor thou +Marvel, if before me no shadow fall, +More than that in the sky element +One ray obstructs not other. To endure +Torments of heat and cold extreme, like frames +That virtue hath dispos’d, which how it works +Wills not to us should be reveal’d. Insane +Who hopes, our reason may that space explore, +Which holds three persons in one substance knit. +Seek not the wherefore, race of human kind; +Could ye have seen the whole, no need had been +For Mary to bring forth. Moreover ye +Have seen such men desiring fruitlessly; +To whose desires repose would have been giv’n, +That now but serve them for eternal grief. +I speak of Plato, and the Stagyrite, +And others many more.” And then he bent +Downwards his forehead, and in troubled mood +Broke off his speech. Meanwhile we had arriv’d +Far as the mountain’s foot, and there the rock +Found of so steep ascent, that nimblest steps +To climb it had been vain. The most remote +Most wild untrodden path, in all the tract +’Twixt Lerice and Turbia were to this +A ladder easy’ and open of access. + +“Who knows on which hand now the steep declines?” +My master said and paus’d, “so that he may +Ascend, who journeys without aid of wine,?” +And while with looks directed to the ground +The meaning of the pathway he explor’d, +And I gaz’d upward round the stony height, +Of spirits, that toward us mov’d their steps, +Yet moving seem’d not, they so slow approach’d. + +I thus my guide address’d: “Upraise thine eyes, +Lo that way some, of whom thou may’st obtain +Counsel, if of thyself thou find’st it not!” + +Straightway he look’d, and with free speech replied: +“Let us tend thither: they but softly come. +And thou be firm in hope, my son belov’d.” + +Now was that people distant far in space +A thousand paces behind ours, as much +As at a throw the nervous arm could fling, +When all drew backward on the messy crags +Of the steep bank, and firmly stood unmov’d +As one who walks in doubt might stand to look. + +“O spirits perfect! O already chosen!” +Virgil to them began, “by that blest peace, +Which, as I deem, is for you all prepar’d, +Instruct us where the mountain low declines, +So that attempt to mount it be not vain. +For who knows most, him loss of time most grieves.” + +As sheep, that step from forth their fold, by one, +Or pairs, or three at once; meanwhile the rest +Stand fearfully, bending the eye and nose +To ground, and what the foremost does, that do +The others, gath’ring round her, if she stops, +Simple and quiet, nor the cause discern; +So saw I moving to advance the first, +Who of that fortunate crew were at the head, +Of modest mien and graceful in their gait. +When they before me had beheld the light +From my right side fall broken on the ground, +So that the shadow reach’d the cave, they stopp’d +And somewhat back retir’d: the same did all, +Who follow’d, though unweeting of the cause + +“Unask’d of you, yet freely I confess, +This is a human body which ye see. +That the sun’s light is broken on the ground, +Marvel not: but believe, that not without +Virtue deriv’d from Heaven, we to climb +Over this wall aspire.” So them bespake +My master; and that virtuous tribe rejoin’d; +“ Turn, and before you there the entrance lies,” +Making a signal to us with bent hands. + +Then of them one began. “Whoe’er thou art, +Who journey’st thus this way, thy visage turn, +Think if me elsewhere thou hast ever seen.” + +I tow’rds him turn’d, and with fix’d eye beheld. +Comely, and fair, and gentle of aspect, +He seem’d, but on one brow a gash was mark’d. + +When humbly I disclaim’d to have beheld +Him ever: “Now behold!” he said, and show’d +High on his breast a wound: then smiling spake. + +“I am Manfredi, grandson to the Queen +Costanza: whence I pray thee, when return’d, +To my fair daughter go, the parent glad +Of Aragonia and Sicilia’s pride; +And of the truth inform her, if of me +Aught else be told. When by two mortal blows +My frame was shatter’d, I betook myself +Weeping to him, who of free will forgives. +My sins were horrible; but so wide arms +Hath goodness infinite, that it receives +All who turn to it. Had this text divine +Been of Cosenza’s shepherd better scann’d, +Who then by Clement on my hunt was set, +Yet at the bridge’s head my bones had lain, +Near Benevento, by the heavy mole +Protected; but the rain now drenches them, +And the wind drives, out of the kingdom’s bounds, +Far as the stream of Verde, where, with lights +Extinguish’d, he remov’d them from their bed. +Yet by their curse we are not so destroy’d, +But that the eternal love may turn, while hope +Retains her verdant blossoms. True it is, +That such one as in contumacy dies +Against the holy church, though he repent, +Must wander thirty-fold for all the time +In his presumption past; if such decree +Be not by prayers of good men shorter made +Look therefore if thou canst advance my bliss; +Revealing to my good Costanza, how +Thou hast beheld me, and beside the terms +Laid on me of that interdict; for here +By means of those below much profit comes.” + + + + +CANTO IV + + +When by sensations of delight or pain, +That any of our faculties hath seiz’d, +Entire the soul collects herself, it seems +She is intent upon that power alone, +And thus the error is disprov’d which holds +The soul not singly lighted in the breast. +And therefore when as aught is heard or seen, +That firmly keeps the soul toward it turn’d, +Time passes, and a man perceives it not. +For that, whereby he hearken, is one power, +Another that, which the whole spirit hash; +This is as it were bound, while that is free. + +This found I true by proof, hearing that spirit +And wond’ring; for full fifty steps aloft +The sun had measur’d unobserv’d of me, +When we arriv’d where all with one accord +The spirits shouted, “Here is what ye ask.” + +A larger aperture ofttimes is stopp’d +With forked stake of thorn by villager, +When the ripe grape imbrowns, than was the path, +By which my guide, and I behind him close, +Ascended solitary, when that troop +Departing left us. On Sanleo’s road +Who journeys, or to Noli low descends, +Or mounts Bismantua’s height, must use his feet; +But here a man had need to fly, I mean +With the swift wing and plumes of high desire, +Conducted by his aid, who gave me hope, +And with light furnish’d to direct my way. + +We through the broken rock ascended, close +Pent on each side, while underneath the ground +Ask’d help of hands and feet. When we arriv’d +Near on the highest ridge of the steep bank, +Where the plain level open’d I exclaim’d, +“O master! say which way can we proceed?” + +He answer’d, “Let no step of thine recede. +Behind me gain the mountain, till to us +Some practis’d guide appear.” That eminence +Was lofty that no eye might reach its point, +And the side proudly rising, more than line +From the mid quadrant to the centre drawn. +I wearied thus began: “Parent belov’d! +Turn, and behold how I remain alone, +If thou stay not.”—” My son!” He straight reply’d, +“Thus far put forth thy strength; “and to a track +Pointed, that, on this side projecting, round +Circles the hill. His words so spurr’d me on, +That I behind him clamb’ring, forc’d myself, +Till my feet press’d the circuit plain beneath. +There both together seated, turn’d we round +To eastward, whence was our ascent: and oft +Many beside have with delight look’d back. + +First on the nether shores I turn’d my eyes, +Then rais’d them to the sun, and wond’ring mark’d +That from the left it smote us. Soon perceiv’d +That Poet sage how at the car of light +Amaz’d I stood, where ’twixt us and the north +Its course it enter’d. Whence he thus to me: +“Were Leda’s offspring now in company +Of that broad mirror, that high up and low +Imparts his light beneath, thou might’st behold +The ruddy zodiac nearer to the bears +Wheel, if its ancient course it not forsook. +How that may be if thou would’st think; within +Pond’ring, imagine Sion with this mount +Plac’d on the earth, so that to both be one +Horizon, and two hemispheres apart, +Where lies the path that Phaeton ill knew +To guide his erring chariot: thou wilt see +How of necessity by this on one +He passes, while by that on the’ other side, +If with clear view shine intellect attend.” + +“Of truth, kind teacher!” I exclaim’d, “so clear +Aught saw I never, as I now discern +Where seem’d my ken to fail, that the mid orb +Of the supernal motion (which in terms +Of art is called the Equator, and remains +Ever between the sun and winter) for the cause +Thou hast assign’d, from hence toward the north +Departs, when those who in the Hebrew land +Inhabit, see it tow’rds the warmer part. +But if it please thee, I would gladly know, +How far we have to journey: for the hill +Mounts higher, than this sight of mine can mount.” + +He thus to me: “Such is this steep ascent, +That it is ever difficult at first, +But, more a man proceeds, less evil grows. +When pleasant it shall seem to thee, so much +That upward going shall be easy to thee. +As in a vessel to go down the tide, +Then of this path thou wilt have reach’d the end. +There hope to rest thee from thy toil. No more +I answer, and thus far for certain know.” +As he his words had spoken, near to us +A voice there sounded: “Yet ye first perchance +May to repose you by constraint be led.” +At sound thereof each turn’d, and on the left +A huge stone we beheld, of which nor I +Nor he before was ware. Thither we drew, +find there were some, who in the shady place +Behind the rock were standing, as a man +Thru’ idleness might stand. Among them one, +Who seem’d to me much wearied, sat him down, +And with his arms did fold his knees about, +Holding his face between them downward bent. + +“Sweet Sir!” I cry’d, “behold that man, who shows +Himself more idle, than if laziness +Were sister to him.” Straight he turn’d to us, +And, o’er the thigh lifting his face, observ’d, +Then in these accents spake: “Up then, proceed +Thou valiant one.” Straight who it was I knew; +Nor could the pain I felt (for want of breath +Still somewhat urg’d me) hinder my approach. +And when I came to him, he scarce his head +Uplifted, saying “Well hast thou discern’d, +How from the left the sun his chariot leads.” + +His lazy acts and broken words my lips +To laughter somewhat mov’d; when I began: +“Belacqua, now for thee I grieve no more. +But tell, why thou art seated upright there? +Waitest thou escort to conduct thee hence? +Or blame I only shine accustom’d ways?” +Then he: “My brother, of what use to mount, +When to my suffering would not let me pass +The bird of God, who at the portal sits? +Behooves so long that heav’n first bear me round +Without its limits, as in life it bore, +Because I to the end repentant Sighs +Delay’d, if prayer do not aid me first, +That riseth up from heart which lives in grace. +What other kind avails, not heard in heaven?” + +Before me now the Poet up the mount +Ascending, cried: “Haste thee, for see the sun +Has touch’d the point meridian, and the night +Now covers with her foot Marocco’s shore.” + + + + +CANTO V + + +Now had I left those spirits, and pursued +The steps of my Conductor, when beheld +Pointing the finger at me one exclaim’d: +“See how it seems as if the light not shone +From the left hand of him beneath, and he, +As living, seems to be led on.” Mine eyes +I at that sound reverting, saw them gaze +Through wonder first at me, and then at me +And the light broken underneath, by turns. +“Why are thy thoughts thus riveted?” my guide +Exclaim’d, “that thou hast slack’d thy pace? or how +Imports it thee, what thing is whisper’d here? +Come after me, and to their babblings leave +The crowd. Be as a tower, that, firmly set, +Shakes not its top for any blast that blows! +He, in whose bosom thought on thought shoots out, +Still of his aim is wide, in that the one +Sicklies and wastes to nought the other’s strength.” + +What other could I answer save “I come?” +I said it, somewhat with that colour ting’d +Which ofttimes pardon meriteth for man. + +Meanwhile traverse along the hill there came, +A little way before us, some who sang +The “Miserere” in responsive Strains. +When they perceiv’d that through my body I +Gave way not for the rays to pass, their song +Straight to a long and hoarse exclaim they chang’d; +And two of them, in guise of messengers, +Ran on to meet us, and inquiring ask’d: +Of your condition we would gladly learn.” + +To them my guide. “Ye may return, and bear +Tidings to them who sent you, that his frame +Is real flesh. If, as I deem, to view +His shade they paus’d, enough is answer’d them. +Him let them honour, they may prize him well.” + +Ne’er saw I fiery vapours with such speed +Cut through the serene air at fall of night, +Nor August’s clouds athwart the setting sun, +That upward these did not in shorter space +Return; and, there arriving, with the rest +Wheel back on us, as with loose rein a troop. + +“Many,” exclaim’d the bard, “are these, who throng +Around us: to petition thee they come. +Go therefore on, and listen as thou go’st.” + +“O spirit! who go’st on to blessedness +With the same limbs, that clad thee at thy birth.” +Shouting they came, “a little rest thy step. +Look if thou any one amongst our tribe +Hast e’er beheld, that tidings of him there +Thou mayst report. Ah, wherefore go’st thou on? +Ah wherefore tarriest thou not? We all +By violence died, and to our latest hour +Were sinners, but then warn’d by light from heav’n, +So that, repenting and forgiving, we +Did issue out of life at peace with God, +Who with desire to see him fills our heart.” + +Then I: “The visages of all I scan +Yet none of ye remember. But if aught, +That I can do, may please you, gentle spirits! +Speak; and I will perform it, by that peace, +Which on the steps of guide so excellent +Following from world to world intent I seek.” + +In answer he began: “None here distrusts +Thy kindness, though not promis’d with an oath; +So as the will fail not for want of power. +Whence I, who sole before the others speak, +Entreat thee, if thou ever see that land, +Which lies between Romagna and the realm +Of Charles, that of thy courtesy thou pray +Those who inhabit Fano, that for me +Their adorations duly be put up, +By which I may purge off my grievous sins. +From thence I came. But the deep passages, +Whence issued out the blood wherein I dwelt, +Upon my bosom in Antenor’s land +Were made, where to be more secure I thought. +The author of the deed was Este’s prince, +Who, more than right could warrant, with his wrath +Pursued me. Had I towards Mira fled, +When overta’en at Oriaco, still +Might I have breath’d. But to the marsh I sped, +And in the mire and rushes tangled there +Fell, and beheld my life-blood float the plain.” + +Then said another: “Ah! so may the wish, +That takes thee o’er the mountain, be fulfill’d, +As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine. +Of Montefeltro I; Buonconte I: +Giovanna nor none else have care for me, +Sorrowing with these I therefore go.” I thus: +“From Campaldino’s field what force or chance +Drew thee, that ne’er thy sepulture was known?” + +“Oh!” answer’d he, “at Casentino’s foot +A stream there courseth, nam’d Archiano, sprung +In Apennine above the Hermit’s seat. +E’en where its name is cancel’d, there came I, +Pierc’d in the heart, fleeing away on foot, +And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speech +Fail’d me, and finishing with Mary’s name +I fell, and tenantless my flesh remain’d. +I will report the truth; which thou again0 +Tell to the living. Me God’s angel took, +Whilst he of hell exclaim’d: “O thou from heav’n! +Say wherefore hast thou robb’d me? Thou of him +Th’ eternal portion bear’st with thee away +For one poor tear that he deprives me of. +But of the other, other rule I make.” + +“Thou knowest how in the atmosphere collects +That vapour dank, returning into water, +Soon as it mounts where cold condenses it. +That evil will, which in his intellect +Still follows evil, came, and rais’d the wind +And smoky mist, by virtue of the power +Given by his nature. Thence the valley, soon +As day was spent, he cover’d o’er with cloud +From Pratomagno to the mountain range, +And stretch’d the sky above, so that the air +Impregnate chang’d to water. Fell the rain, +And to the fosses came all that the land +Contain’d not; and, as mightiest streams are wont, +To the great river with such headlong sweep +Rush’d, that nought stay’d its course. My stiffen’d frame +Laid at his mouth the fell Archiano found, +And dash’d it into Arno, from my breast +Loos’ning the cross, that of myself I made +When overcome with pain. He hurl’d me on, +Along the banks and bottom of his course; +Then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.” + +“Ah! when thou to the world shalt be return’d, +And rested after thy long road,” so spake +Next the third spirit; “then remember me. +I once was Pia. Sienna gave me life, +Maremma took it from me. That he knows, +Who me with jewell’d ring had first espous’d.” + + + + +CANTO VI + + +When from their game of dice men separate, +He, who hath lost, remains in sadness fix’d, +Revolving in his mind, what luckless throws +He cast: but meanwhile all the company +Go with the other; one before him runs, +And one behind his mantle twitches, one +Fast by his side bids him remember him. +He stops not; and each one, to whom his hand +Is stretch’d, well knows he bids him stand aside; +And thus he from the press defends himself. +E’en such was I in that close-crowding throng; +And turning so my face around to all, +And promising, I ’scap’d from it with pains. + +Here of Arezzo him I saw, who fell +By Ghino’s cruel arm; and him beside, +Who in his chase was swallow’d by the stream. +Here Frederic Novello, with his hand +Stretch’d forth, entreated; and of Pisa he, +Who put the good Marzuco to such proof +Of constancy. Count Orso I beheld; +And from its frame a soul dismiss’d for spite +And envy, as it said, but for no crime: +I speak of Peter de la Brosse; and here, +While she yet lives, that Lady of Brabant +Let her beware; lest for so false a deed +She herd with worse than these. When I was freed +From all those spirits, who pray’d for others’ prayers +To hasten on their state of blessedness; +Straight I began: “O thou, my luminary! +It seems expressly in thy text denied, +That heaven’s supreme decree can never bend +To supplication; yet with this design +Do these entreat. Can then their hope be vain, +Or is thy saying not to me reveal’d?” + +He thus to me: “Both what I write is plain, +And these deceiv’d not in their hope, if well +Thy mind consider, that the sacred height +Of judgment doth not stoop, because love’s flame +In a short moment all fulfils, which he +Who sojourns here, in right should satisfy. +Besides, when I this point concluded thus, +By praying no defect could be supplied; +Because the pray’r had none access to God. +Yet in this deep suspicion rest thou not +Contented unless she assure thee so, +Who betwixt truth and mind infuses light. +I know not if thou take me right; I mean +Beatrice. Her thou shalt behold above, +Upon this mountain’s crown, fair seat of joy.” + +Then I: “Sir! let us mend our speed; for now +I tire not as before; and lo! the hill +Stretches its shadow far.” He answer’d thus: +“Our progress with this day shall be as much +As we may now dispatch; but otherwise +Than thou supposest is the truth. For there +Thou canst not be, ere thou once more behold +Him back returning, who behind the steep +Is now so hidden, that as erst his beam +Thou dost not break. But lo! a spirit there +Stands solitary, and toward us looks: +It will instruct us in the speediest way.” + +We soon approach’d it. O thou Lombard spirit! +How didst thou stand, in high abstracted mood, +Scarce moving with slow dignity thine eyes! +It spoke not aught, but let us onward pass, +Eyeing us as a lion on his watch. +I3ut Virgil with entreaty mild advanc’d, +Requesting it to show the best ascent. +It answer to his question none return’d, +But of our country and our kind of life +Demanded. When my courteous guide began, +“Mantua,” the solitary shadow quick +Rose towards us from the place in which it stood, +And cry’d, “Mantuan! I am thy countryman +Sordello.” Each the other then embrac’d. + +Ah slavish Italy! thou inn of grief, +Vessel without a pilot in loud storm, +Lady no longer of fair provinces, +But brothel-house impure! this gentle spirit, +Ev’n from the Pleasant sound of his dear land +Was prompt to greet a fellow citizen +With such glad cheer; while now thy living ones +In thee abide not without war; and one +Malicious gnaws another, ay of those +Whom the same wall and the same moat contains, +Seek, wretched one! around thy sea-coasts wide; +Then homeward to thy bosom turn, and mark +If any part of the sweet peace enjoy. +What boots it, that thy reins Justinian’s hand +Befitted, if thy saddle be unpress’d? +Nought doth he now but aggravate thy shame. +Ah people! thou obedient still shouldst live, +And in the saddle let thy Caesar sit, +If well thou marked’st that which God commands + +Look how that beast to felness hath relaps’d +From having lost correction of the spur, +Since to the bridle thou hast set thine hand, +O German Albert! who abandon’st her, +That is grown savage and unmanageable, +When thou should’st clasp her flanks with forked heels. +Just judgment from the stars fall on thy blood! +And be it strange and manifest to all! +Such as may strike thy successor with dread! +For that thy sire and thou have suffer’d thus, +Through greediness of yonder realms detain’d, +The garden of the empire to run waste. +Come see the Capulets and Montagues, +The Philippeschi and Monaldi! man +Who car’st for nought! those sunk in grief, and these +With dire suspicion rack’d. Come, cruel one! +Come and behold the’ oppression of the nobles, +And mark their injuries: and thou mayst see. +What safety Santafiore can supply. +Come and behold thy Rome, who calls on thee, +Desolate widow! day and night with moans: +“My Caesar, why dost thou desert my side?” +Come and behold what love among thy people: +And if no pity touches thee for us, +Come and blush for thine own report. For me, +If it be lawful, O Almighty Power, +Who wast in earth for our sakes crucified! +Are thy just eyes turn’d elsewhere? or is this +A preparation in the wond’rous depth +Of thy sage counsel made, for some good end, +Entirely from our reach of thought cut off? +So are the’ Italian cities all o’erthrong’d +With tyrants, and a great Marcellus made +Of every petty factious villager. + +My Florence! thou mayst well remain unmov’d +At this digression, which affects not thee: +Thanks to thy people, who so wisely speed. +Many have justice in their heart, that long +Waiteth for counsel to direct the bow, +Or ere it dart unto its aim: but shine +Have it on their lip’s edge. Many refuse +To bear the common burdens: readier thine +Answer uneall’d, and cry, “Behold I stoop!” + +Make thyself glad, for thou hast reason now, +Thou wealthy! thou at peace! thou wisdom-fraught! +Facts best witness if I speak the truth. +Athens and Lacedaemon, who of old +Enacted laws, for civil arts renown’d, +Made little progress in improving life +Tow’rds thee, who usest such nice subtlety, +That to the middle of November scarce +Reaches the thread thou in October weav’st. +How many times, within thy memory, +Customs, and laws, and coins, and offices +Have been by thee renew’d, and people chang’d! + +If thou remember’st well and can’st see clear, +Thou wilt perceive thyself like a sick wretch, +Who finds no rest upon her down, hut oft +Shifting her side, short respite seeks from pain. + + + + +CANTO VII + + +After their courteous greetings joyfully +Sev’n times exchang’d, Sordello backward drew +Exclaiming, “Who are ye?” “Before this mount +By spirits worthy of ascent to God +Was sought, my bones had by Octavius’ care +Been buried. I am Virgil, for no sin +Depriv’d of heav’n, except for lack of faith.” + +So answer’d him in few my gentle guide. + +As one, who aught before him suddenly +Beholding, whence his wonder riseth, cries +“It is yet is not,” wav’ring in belief; +Such he appear’d; then downward bent his eyes, +And drawing near with reverential step, +Caught him, where of mean estate might clasp +His lord. “Glory of Latium!” he exclaim’d, +“In whom our tongue its utmost power display’d! +Boast of my honor’d birth-place! what desert +Of mine, what favour rather undeserv’d, +Shows thee to me? If I to hear that voice +Am worthy, say if from below thou com’st +And from what cloister’s pale?”—“Through every orb +Of that sad region,” he reply’d, “thus far +Am I arriv’d, by heav’nly influence led +And with such aid I come. There is a place +There underneath, not made by torments sad, +But by dun shades alone; where mourning’s voice +Sounds not of anguish sharp, but breathes in sighs. +There I with little innocents abide, +Who by death’s fangs were bitten, ere exempt +From human taint. There I with those abide, +Who the three holy virtues put not on, +But understood the rest, and without blame +Follow’d them all. But if thou know’st and canst, +Direct us, how we soonest may arrive, +Where Purgatory its true beginning takes.” + +He answer’d thus: “We have no certain place +Assign’d us: upwards I may go or round, +Far as I can, I join thee for thy guide. +But thou beholdest now how day declines: +And upwards to proceed by night, our power +Excels: therefore it may be well to choose +A place of pleasant sojourn. To the right +Some spirits sit apart retir’d. If thou +Consentest, I to these will lead thy steps: +And thou wilt know them, not without delight.” + +“How chances this?” was answer’d; “who so wish’d +To ascend by night, would he be thence debarr’d +By other, or through his own weakness fail?” + +The good Sordello then, along the ground +Trailing his finger, spoke: “Only this line +Thou shalt not overpass, soon as the sun +Hath disappear’d; not that aught else impedes +Thy going upwards, save the shades of night. +These with the wont of power perplex the will. +With them thou haply mightst return beneath, +Or to and fro around the mountain’s side +Wander, while day is in the horizon shut.” + +My master straight, as wond’ring at his speech, +Exclaim’d: “Then lead us quickly, where thou sayst, +That, while we stay, we may enjoy delight.” + +A little space we were remov’d from thence, +When I perceiv’d the mountain hollow’d out. +Ev’n as large valleys hollow’d out on earth, + +“That way,” the’ escorting spirit cried, “we go, +Where in a bosom the high bank recedes: +And thou await renewal of the day.” + +Betwixt the steep and plain a crooked path +Led us traverse into the ridge’s side, +Where more than half the sloping edge expires. +Refulgent gold, and silver thrice refin’d, +And scarlet grain and ceruse, Indian wood +Of lucid dye serene, fresh emeralds +But newly broken, by the herbs and flowers +Plac’d in that fair recess, in color all +Had been surpass’d, as great surpasses less. +Nor nature only there lavish’d her hues, +But of the sweetness of a thousand smells +A rare and undistinguish’d fragrance made. + +“Salve Regina,” on the grass and flowers +Here chanting I beheld those spirits sit +Who not beyond the valley could be seen. + +“Before the west’ring sun sink to his bed,” +Began the Mantuan, who our steps had turn’d, + +“’Mid those desires not that I lead ye on. +For from this eminence ye shall discern +Better the acts and visages of all, +Than in the nether vale among them mix’d. +He, who sits high above the rest, and seems +To have neglected that he should have done, +And to the others’ song moves not his lip, +The Emperor Rodolph call, who might have heal’d +The wounds whereof fair Italy hath died, +So that by others she revives but slowly, +He, who with kindly visage comforts him, +Sway’d in that country, where the water springs, +That Moldaw’s river to the Elbe, and Elbe +Rolls to the ocean: Ottocar his name: +Who in his swaddling clothes was of more worth +Than Winceslaus his son, a bearded man, +Pamper’d with rank luxuriousness and ease. +And that one with the nose depress, who close +In counsel seems with him of gentle look, +Flying expir’d, with’ring the lily’s flower. +Look there how he doth knock against his breast! +The other ye behold, who for his cheek +Makes of one hand a couch, with frequent sighs. +They are the father and the father-in-law +Of Gallia’s bane: his vicious life they know +And foul; thence comes the grief that rends them thus. + +“He, so robust of limb, who measure keeps +In song, with him of feature prominent, +With ev’ry virtue bore his girdle brac’d. +And if that stripling who behinds him sits, +King after him had liv’d, his virtue then +From vessel to like vessel had been pour’d; +Which may not of the other heirs be said. +By James and Frederick his realms are held; +Neither the better heritage obtains. +Rarely into the branches of the tree +Doth human worth mount up; and so ordains +He who bestows it, that as his free gift +It may be call’d. To Charles my words apply +No less than to his brother in the song; +Which Pouille and Provence now with grief confess. +So much that plant degenerates from its seed, +As more than Beatrice and Margaret +Costanza still boasts of her valorous spouse. + +“Behold the king of simple life and plain, +Harry of England, sitting there alone: +He through his branches better issue spreads. + +“That one, who on the ground beneath the rest +Sits lowest, yet his gaze directs aloft, +Us William, that brave Marquis, for whose cause +The deed of Alexandria and his war +Makes Conferrat and Canavese weep.” + + + + +CANTO VIII + + +Now was the hour that wakens fond desire +In men at sea, and melts their thoughtful heart, +Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell, +And pilgrim newly on his road with love +Thrills, if he hear the vesper bell from far, +That seems to mourn for the expiring day: +When I, no longer taking heed to hear +Began, with wonder, from those spirits to mark +One risen from its seat, which with its hand +Audience implor’d. Both palms it join’d and rais’d, +Fixing its steadfast gaze towards the east, +As telling God, “I care for naught beside.” + +“Te Lucis Ante,” so devoutly then +Came from its lip, and in so soft a strain, +That all my sense in ravishment was lost. +And the rest after, softly and devout, +Follow’d through all the hymn, with upward gaze +Directed to the bright supernal wheels. + +Here, reader! for the truth makes thine eyes keen: +For of so subtle texture is this veil, +That thou with ease mayst pass it through unmark’d. + +I saw that gentle band silently next +Look up, as if in expectation held, +Pale and in lowly guise; and from on high +I saw forth issuing descend beneath +Two angels with two flame-illumin’d swords, +Broken and mutilated at their points. +Green as the tender leaves but newly born, +Their vesture was, the which by wings as green +Beaten, they drew behind them, fann’d in air. +A little over us one took his stand, +The other lighted on the’ Opposing hill, +So that the troop were in the midst contain’d. + +Well I descried the whiteness on their heads; +But in their visages the dazzled eye +Was lost, as faculty that by too much +Is overpower’d. “From Mary’s bosom both +Are come,” exclaim’d Sordello, “as a guard +Over the vale, ganst him, who hither tends, +The serpent.” Whence, not knowing by which path +He came, I turn’d me round, and closely press’d, +All frozen, to my leader’s trusted side. + +Sordello paus’d not: “To the valley now +(For it is time) let us descend; and hold +Converse with those great shadows: haply much +Their sight may please ye.” Only three steps down +Methinks I measur’d, ere I was beneath, +And noted one who look’d as with desire +To know me. Time was now that air arrow dim; +Yet not so dim, that ’twixt his eyes and mine +It clear’d not up what was conceal’d before. +Mutually tow’rds each other we advanc’d. +Nino, thou courteous judge! what joy I felt, +When I perceiv’d thou wert not with the bad! + +No salutation kind on either part +Was left unsaid. He then inquir’d: “How long +Since thou arrived’st at the mountain’s foot, +Over the distant waves?”—“O!” answer’d I, +“Through the sad seats of woe this morn I came, +And still in my first life, thus journeying on, +The other strive to gain.” Soon as they heard +My words, he and Sordello backward drew, +As suddenly amaz’d. To Virgil one, +The other to a spirit turn’d, who near +Was seated, crying: “Conrad! up with speed: +Come, see what of his grace high God hath will’d.” +Then turning round to me: “By that rare mark +Of honour which thou ow’st to him, who hides +So deeply his first cause, it hath no ford, +When thou shalt he beyond the vast of waves. +Tell my Giovanna, that for me she call +There, where reply to innocence is made. +Her mother, I believe, loves me no more; +Since she has chang’d the white and wimpled folds, +Which she is doom’d once more with grief to wish. +By her it easily may be perceiv’d, +How long in women lasts the flame of love, +If sight and touch do not relume it oft. +For her so fair a burial will not make +The viper which calls Milan to the field, +As had been made by shrill Gallura’s bird.” + +He spoke, and in his visage took the stamp +Of that right seal, which with due temperature +Glows in the bosom. My insatiate eyes +Meanwhile to heav’n had travel’d, even there +Where the bright stars are slowest, as a wheel +Nearest the axle; when my guide inquir’d: +“What there aloft, my son, has caught thy gaze?” + +I answer’d: “The three torches, with which here +The pole is all on fire. “He then to me: +“The four resplendent stars, thou saw’st this morn +Are there beneath, and these ris’n in their stead.” + +While yet he spoke. Sordello to himself +Drew him, and cry’d: “Lo there our enemy!” +And with his hand pointed that way to look. + +Along the side, where barrier none arose +Around the little vale, a serpent lay, +Such haply as gave Eve the bitter food. +Between the grass and flowers, the evil snake +Came on, reverting oft his lifted head; +And, as a beast that smoothes its polish’d coat, +Licking his hack. I saw not, nor can tell, +How those celestial falcons from their seat +Mov’d, but in motion each one well descried, +Hearing the air cut by their verdant plumes. +The serpent fled; and to their stations back +The angels up return’d with equal flight. + +The Spirit (who to Nino, when he call’d, +Had come), from viewing me with fixed ken, +Through all that conflict, loosen’d not his sight. + +“So may the lamp, which leads thee up on high, +Find, in thy destin’d lot, of wax so much, +As may suffice thee to the enamel’s height.” +It thus began: “If any certain news +Of Valdimagra and the neighbour part +Thou know’st, tell me, who once was mighty there +They call’d me Conrad Malaspina, not +That old one, but from him I sprang. The love +I bore my people is now here refin’d.” + +“In your dominions,” I answer’d, “ne’er was I. +But through all Europe where do those men dwell, +To whom their glory is not manifest? +The fame, that honours your illustrious house, +Proclaims the nobles and proclaims the land; +So that he knows it who was never there. +I swear to you, so may my upward route +Prosper! your honour’d nation not impairs +The value of her coffer and her sword. +Nature and use give her such privilege, +That while the world is twisted from his course +By a bad head, she only walks aright, +And has the evil way in scorn.” He then: +“Now pass thee on: sev’n times the tired sun +Revisits not the couch, which with four feet +The forked Aries covers, ere that kind +Opinion shall be nail’d into thy brain +With stronger nails than other’s speech can drive, +If the sure course of judgment be not stay’d.” + + + + +CANTO IX + + +Now the fair consort of Tithonus old, +Arisen from her mate’s beloved arms, +Look’d palely o’er the eastern cliff: her brow, +Lucent with jewels, glitter’d, set in sign +Of that chill animal, who with his train +Smites fearful nations: and where then we were, +Two steps of her ascent the night had past, +And now the third was closing up its wing, +When I, who had so much of Adam with me, +Sank down upon the grass, o’ercome with sleep, +There where all five were seated. In that hour, +When near the dawn the swallow her sad lay, +Rememb’ring haply ancient grief, renews, +And with our minds more wand’rers from the flesh, +And less by thought restrain’d are, as ’twere, full +Of holy divination in their dreams, +Then in a vision did I seem to view +A golden-feather’d eagle in the sky, +With open wings, and hov’ring for descent, +And I was in that place, methought, from whence +Young Ganymede, from his associates ’reft, +Was snatch’d aloft to the high consistory. +“Perhaps,” thought I within me, “here alone +He strikes his quarry, and elsewhere disdains +To pounce upon the prey.” Therewith, it seem’d, +A little wheeling in his airy tour +Terrible as the lightning rush’d he down, +And snatch’d me upward even to the fire. +There both, I thought, the eagle and myself +Did burn; and so intense th’ imagin’d flames, +That needs my sleep was broken off. As erst +Achilles shook himself, and round him roll’d +His waken’d eyeballs wond’ring where he was, +Whenas his mother had from Chiron fled +To Scyros, with him sleeping in her arms; +E’en thus I shook me, soon as from my face +The slumber parted, turning deadly pale, +Like one ice-struck with dread. Solo at my side +My comfort stood: and the bright sun was now +More than two hours aloft: and to the sea +My looks were turn’d. “Fear not,” my master cried, +“Assur’d we are at happy point. Thy strength +Shrink not, but rise dilated. Thou art come +To Purgatory now. Lo! there the cliff +That circling bounds it! Lo! the entrance there, +Where it doth seem disparted! Ere the dawn +Usher’d the daylight, when thy wearied soul +Slept in thee, o’er the flowery vale beneath +A lady came, and thus bespake me: “I +Am Lucia. Suffer me to take this man, +Who slumbers. Easier so his way shall speed.” +Sordello and the other gentle shapes +Tarrying, she bare thee up: and, as day shone, +This summit reach’d: and I pursued her steps. +Here did she place thee. First her lovely eyes +That open entrance show’d me; then at once +She vanish’d with thy sleep.” Like one, whose doubts +Are chas’d by certainty, and terror turn’d +To comfort on discovery of the truth, +Such was the change in me: and as my guide +Beheld me fearless, up along the cliff +He mov’d, and I behind him, towards the height. + +Reader! thou markest how my theme doth rise, +Nor wonder therefore, if more artfully +I prop the structure! Nearer now we drew, +Arriv’d’ whence in that part, where first a breach +As of a wall appear’d, I could descry +A portal, and three steps beneath, that led +For inlet there, of different colour each, +And one who watch’d, but spake not yet a word. +As more and more mine eye did stretch its view, +I mark’d him seated on the highest step, +In visage such, as past my power to bear. +Grasp’d in his hand a naked sword, glanc’d back +The rays so toward me, that I oft in vain +My sight directed. “Speak from whence ye stand:” +He cried: “What would ye? Where is your escort? +Take heed your coming upward harm ye not.” + +“A heavenly dame, not skilless of these things,” +Replied the’ instructor, “told us, even now, +Pass that way: here the gate is.”—“And may she +Befriending prosper your ascent,” resum’d +The courteous keeper of the gate: “Come then +Before our steps.” We straightway thither came. + +The lowest stair was marble white so smooth +And polish’d, that therein my mirror’d form +Distinct I saw. The next of hue more dark +Than sablest grain, a rough and singed block, +Crack’d lengthwise and across. The third, that lay +Massy above, seem’d porphyry, that flam’d +Red as the life-blood spouting from a vein. +On this God’s angel either foot sustain’d, +Upon the threshold seated, which appear’d +A rock of diamond. Up the trinal steps +My leader cheerily drew me. “Ask,” said he, + +“With humble heart, that he unbar the bolt.” + +Piously at his holy feet devolv’d +I cast me, praying him for pity’s sake +That he would open to me: but first fell +Thrice on my bosom prostrate. Seven times0 +The letter, that denotes the inward stain, +He on my forehead with the blunted point +Of his drawn sword inscrib’d. And “Look,” he cried, +“When enter’d, that thou wash these scars away.” + +Ashes, or earth ta’en dry out of the ground, +Were of one colour with the robe he wore. +From underneath that vestment forth he drew +Two keys of metal twain: the one was gold, +Its fellow silver. With the pallid first, +And next the burnish’d, he so ply’d the gate, +As to content me well. “Whenever one +Faileth of these, that in the keyhole straight +It turn not, to this alley then expect +Access in vain.” Such were the words he spake. +“One is more precious: but the other needs +Skill and sagacity, large share of each, +Ere its good task to disengage the knot +Be worthily perform’d. From Peter these +I hold, of him instructed, that I err +Rather in opening than in keeping fast; +So but the suppliant at my feet implore.” + +Then of that hallow’d gate he thrust the door, +Exclaiming, “Enter, but this warning hear: +He forth again departs who looks behind.” + +As in the hinges of that sacred ward +The swivels turn’d, sonorous metal strong, +Harsh was the grating; nor so surlily +Roar’d the Tarpeian, when by force bereft +Of good Metellus, thenceforth from his loss +To leanness doom’d. Attentively I turn’d, +List’ning the thunder, that first issued forth; +And “We praise thee, O God,” methought I heard +In accents blended with sweet melody. +The strains came o’er mine ear, e’en as the sound +Of choral voices, that in solemn chant +With organ mingle, and, now high and clear, +Come swelling, now float indistinct away. + + + + +CANTO X + + +When we had passed the threshold of the gate +(Which the soul’s ill affection doth disuse, +Making the crooked seem the straighter path), +I heard its closing sound. Had mine eyes turn’d, +For that offence what plea might have avail’d? + +We mounted up the riven rock, that wound +On either side alternate, as the wave +Flies and advances. “Here some little art +Behooves us,” said my leader, “that our steps +Observe the varying flexure of the path.” + +Thus we so slowly sped, that with cleft orb +The moon once more o’erhangs her wat’ry couch, +Ere we that strait have threaded. But when free +We came and open, where the mount above +One solid mass retires, I spent, with toil, +And both, uncertain of the way, we stood, +Upon a plain more lonesome, than the roads +That traverse desert wilds. From whence the brink +Borders upon vacuity, to foot +Of the steep bank, that rises still, the space +Had measur’d thrice the stature of a man: +And, distant as mine eye could wing its flight, +To leftward now and now to right dispatch’d, +That cornice equal in extent appear’d. + +Not yet our feet had on that summit mov’d, +When I discover’d that the bank around, +Whose proud uprising all ascent denied, +Was marble white, and so exactly wrought +With quaintest sculpture, that not there alone +Had Polycletus, but e’en nature’s self +Been sham’d. The angel who came down to earth +With tidings of the peace so many years +Wept for in vain, that op’d the heavenly gates +From their long interdict) before us seem’d, +In a sweet act, so sculptur’d to the life, +He look’d no silent image. One had sworn +He had said, “Hail!” for she was imag’d there, +By whom the key did open to God’s love, +And in her act as sensibly impress +That word, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” +As figure seal’d on wax. “Fix not thy mind +On one place only,” said the guide belov’d, +Who had me near him on that part where lies +The heart of man. My sight forthwith I turn’d +And mark’d, behind the virgin mother’s form, +Upon that side, where he, that mov’d me, stood, +Another story graven on the rock. + +I passed athwart the bard, and drew me near, +That it might stand more aptly for my view. +There in the self-same marble were engrav’d +The cart and kine, drawing the sacred ark, +That from unbidden office awes mankind. +Before it came much people; and the whole +Parted in seven quires. One sense cried, “Nay,” +Another, “Yes, they sing.” Like doubt arose +Betwixt the eye and smell, from the curl’d fume +Of incense breathing up the well-wrought toil. +Preceding the blest vessel, onward came +With light dance leaping, girt in humble guise, +Sweet Israel’s harper: in that hap he seem’d +Less and yet more than kingly. Opposite, +At a great palace, from the lattice forth +Look’d Michol, like a lady full of scorn +And sorrow. To behold the tablet next, +Which at the hack of Michol whitely shone, +I mov’d me. There was storied on the rock +The’ exalted glory of the Roman prince, +Whose mighty worth mov’d Gregory to earn +His mighty conquest, Trajan th’ Emperor. +A widow at his bridle stood, attir’d +In tears and mourning. Round about them troop’d +Full throng of knights, and overhead in gold +The eagles floated, struggling with the wind. +The wretch appear’d amid all these to say: +“Grant vengeance, sire! for, woe beshrew this heart +My son is murder’d.” He replying seem’d; + +“Wait now till I return.” And she, as one +Made hasty by her grief; “O sire, if thou +Dost not return?”—“Where I am, who then is, +May right thee.”—” What to thee is other’s good, +If thou neglect thy own?”—“Now comfort thee,” +At length he answers. “It beseemeth well +My duty be perform’d, ere I move hence: +So justice wills; and pity bids me stay.” + +He, whose ken nothing new surveys, produc’d +That visible speaking, new to us and strange +The like not found on earth. Fondly I gaz’d +Upon those patterns of meek humbleness, +Shapes yet more precious for their artist’s sake, +When “Lo,” the poet whisper’d, “where this way +(But slack their pace), a multitude advance. +These to the lofty steps shall guide us on.” + +Mine eyes, though bent on view of novel sights +Their lov’d allurement, were not slow to turn. + +Reader! I would not that amaz’d thou miss +Of thy good purpose, hearing how just God +Decrees our debts be cancel’d. Ponder not +The form of suff’ring. Think on what succeeds, +Think that at worst beyond the mighty doom +It cannot pass. “Instructor,” I began, +“What I see hither tending, bears no trace +Of human semblance, nor of aught beside +That my foil’d sight can guess.” He answering thus: +“So courb’d to earth, beneath their heavy teems +Of torment stoop they, that mine eye at first +Struggled as thine. But look intently thither, +An disentangle with thy lab’ring view, +What underneath those stones approacheth: now, +E’en now, mayst thou discern the pangs of each.” + +Christians and proud! O poor and wretched ones! +That feeble in the mind’s eye, lean your trust +Upon unstaid perverseness! Know ye not +That we are worms, yet made at last to form +The winged insect, imp’d with angel plumes +That to heaven’s justice unobstructed soars? +Why buoy ye up aloft your unfleg’d souls? +Abortive then and shapeless ye remain, +Like the untimely embryon of a worm! + +As, to support incumbent floor or roof, +For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, +That crumples up its knees unto its breast, +With the feign’d posture stirring ruth unfeign’d +In the beholder’s fancy; so I saw +These fashion’d, when I noted well their guise. + +Each, as his back was laden, came indeed +Or more or less contract; but it appear’d +As he, who show’d most patience in his look, +Wailing exclaim’d: “I can endure no more.” + + + + +CANTO XI + + +O thou Almighty Father, who dost make +The heavens thy dwelling, not in bounds confin’d, +But that with love intenser there thou view’st +Thy primal effluence, hallow’d be thy name: +Join each created being to extol +Thy might, for worthy humblest thanks and praise +Is thy blest Spirit. May thy kingdom’s peace +Come unto us; for we, unless it come, +With all our striving thither tend in vain. +As of their will the angels unto thee +Tender meet sacrifice, circling thy throne +With loud hosannas, so of theirs be done +By saintly men on earth. Grant us this day +Our daily manna, without which he roams +Through this rough desert retrograde, who most +Toils to advance his steps. As we to each +Pardon the evil done us, pardon thou +Benign, and of our merit take no count. +’Gainst the old adversary prove thou not +Our virtue easily subdu’d; but free +From his incitements and defeat his wiles. +This last petition, dearest Lord! is made +Not for ourselves, since that were needless now, +But for their sakes who after us remain.” + +Thus for themselves and us good speed imploring, +Those spirits went beneath a weight like that +We sometimes feel in dreams, all, sore beset, +But with unequal anguish, wearied all, +Round the first circuit, purging as they go, +The world’s gross darkness off: In our behalf +If there vows still be offer’d, what can here +For them be vow’d and done by such, whose wills +Have root of goodness in them? Well beseems +That we should help them wash away the stains +They carried hence, that so made pure and light, +They may spring upward to the starry spheres. + +“Ah! so may mercy-temper’d justice rid +Your burdens speedily, that ye have power +To stretch your wing, which e’en to your desire +Shall lift you, as ye show us on which hand +Toward the ladder leads the shortest way. +And if there be more passages than one, +Instruct us of that easiest to ascend; +For this man who comes with me, and bears yet +The charge of fleshly raiment Adam left him, +Despite his better will but slowly mounts.” +From whom the answer came unto these words, +Which my guide spake, appear’d not; but ’twas said + +“Along the bank to rightward come with us, +And ye shall find a pass that mocks not toil +Of living man to climb: and were it not +That I am hinder’d by the rock, wherewith +This arrogant neck is tam’d, whence needs I stoop +My visage to the ground, him, who yet lives, +Whose name thou speak’st not him I fain would view. +To mark if e’er I knew him? and to crave +His pity for the fardel that I bear. +I was of Latiun, of a Tuscan horn +A mighty one: Aldobranlesco’s name +My sire’s, I know not if ye e’er have heard. +My old blood and forefathers’ gallant deeds +Made me so haughty, that I clean forgot +The common mother, and to such excess, +Wax’d in my scorn of all men, that I fell, +Fell therefore; by what fate Sienna’s sons, +Each child in Campagnatico, can tell. +I am Omberto; not me only pride +Hath injur’d, but my kindred all involv’d +In mischief with her. Here my lot ordains +Under this weight to groan, till I appease +God’s angry justice, since I did it not +Amongst the living, here amongst the dead.” + +List’ning I bent my visage down: and one +(Not he who spake) twisted beneath the weight +That urg’d him, saw me, knew me straight, and call’d, +Holding his eyes With difficulty fix’d +Intent upon me, stooping as I went +Companion of their way. “O!” I exclaim’d, + +“Art thou not Oderigi, art not thou +Agobbio’s glory, glory of that art +Which they of Paris call the limmer’s skill?” + +“Brother!” said he, “with tints that gayer smile, +Bolognian Franco’s pencil lines the leaves. +His all the honour now; mine borrow’d light. +In truth I had not been thus courteous to him, +The whilst I liv’d, through eagerness of zeal +For that pre-eminence my heart was bent on. +Here of such pride the forfeiture is paid. +Nor were I even here; if, able still +To sin, I had not turn’d me unto God. +O powers of man! how vain your glory, nipp’d +E’en in its height of verdure, if an age +Less bright succeed not! Cimabue thought +To lord it over painting’s field; and now +The cry is Giotto’s, and his name eclips’d. +Thus hath one Guido from the other snatch’d +The letter’d prize: and he perhaps is born, +Who shall drive either from their nest. The noise +Of worldly fame is but a blast of wind, +That blows from divers points, and shifts its name +Shifting the point it blows from. Shalt thou more +Live in the mouths of mankind, if thy flesh +Part shrivel’d from thee, than if thou hadst died, +Before the coral and the pap were left, +Or ere some thousand years have passed? and that +Is, to eternity compar’d, a space, +Briefer than is the twinkling of an eye +To the heaven’s slowest orb. He there who treads +So leisurely before me, far and wide +Through Tuscany resounded once; and now +Is in Sienna scarce with whispers nam’d: +There was he sov’reign, when destruction caught +The madd’ning rage of Florence, in that day +Proud as she now is loathsome. Your renown +Is as the herb, whose hue doth come and go, +And his might withers it, by whom it sprang +Crude from the lap of earth.” I thus to him: +“True are thy sayings: to my heart they breathe +The kindly spirit of meekness, and allay +What tumours rankle there. But who is he +Of whom thou spak’st but now?”—“This,” he replied, +“Is Provenzano. He is here, because +He reach’d, with grasp presumptuous, at the sway +Of all Sienna. Thus he still hath gone, +Thus goeth never-resting, since he died. +Such is th’ acquittance render’d back of him, +Who, beyond measure, dar’d on earth.” I then: +“If soul that to the verge of life delays +Repentance, linger in that lower space, +Nor hither mount, unless good prayers befriend, +How chanc’d admittance was vouchsaf’d to him?” + +“When at his glory’s topmost height,” said he, +“Respect of dignity all cast aside, +Freely He fix’d him on Sienna’s plain, +A suitor to redeem his suff’ring friend, +Who languish’d in the prison-house of Charles, +Nor for his sake refus’d through every vein +To tremble. More I will not say; and dark, +I know, my words are, but thy neighbours soon +Shall help thee to a comment on the text. +This is the work, that from these limits freed him.” + + + + +CANTO XII + + +With equal pace as oxen in the yoke, +I with that laden spirit journey’d on +Long as the mild instructor suffer’d me; +But when he bade me quit him, and proceed +(For “here,” said he, “behooves with sail and oars +Each man, as best he may, push on his bark”), +Upright, as one dispos’d for speed, I rais’d +My body, still in thought submissive bow’d. + +I now my leader’s track not loth pursued; +And each had shown how light we far’d along +When thus he warn’d me: “Bend thine eyesight down: +For thou to ease the way shall find it good +To ruminate the bed beneath thy feet.” + +As in memorial of the buried, drawn +Upon earth-level tombs, the sculptur’d form +Of what was once, appears (at sight whereof +Tears often stream forth by remembrance wak’d, +Whose sacred stings the piteous only feel), +So saw I there, but with more curious skill +Of portraiture o’erwrought, whate’er of space +From forth the mountain stretches. On one part +Him I beheld, above all creatures erst +Created noblest, light’ning fall from heaven: +On th’ other side with bolt celestial pierc’d +Briareus: cumb’ring earth he lay through dint +Of mortal ice-stroke. The Thymbraean god +With Mars, I saw, and Pallas, round their sire, +Arm’d still, and gazing on the giant’s limbs +Strewn o’er th’ ethereal field. Nimrod I saw: +At foot of the stupendous work he stood, +As if bewilder’d, looking on the crowd +Leagued in his proud attempt on Sennaar’s plain. + +O Niobe! in what a trance of woe +Thee I beheld, upon that highway drawn, +Sev’n sons on either side thee slain! O Saul! +How ghastly didst thou look! on thine own sword +Expiring in Gilboa, from that hour +Ne’er visited with rain from heav’n or dew! + +O fond Arachne! thee I also saw +Half spider now in anguish crawling up +Th’ unfinish’d web thou weaved’st to thy bane! + +O Rehoboam! here thy shape doth seem +Louring no more defiance! but fear-smote +With none to chase him in his chariot whirl’d. + +Was shown beside upon the solid floor +How dear Alcmaeon forc’d his mother rate +That ornament in evil hour receiv’d: +How in the temple on Sennacherib fell +His sons, and how a corpse they left him there. +Was shown the scath and cruel mangling made +By Tomyris on Cyrus, when she cried: +“Blood thou didst thirst for, take thy fill of blood!” +Was shown how routed in the battle fled +Th’ Assyrians, Holofernes slain, and e’en +The relics of the carnage. Troy I mark’d +In ashes and in caverns. Oh! how fall’n, +How abject, Ilion, was thy semblance there! + +What master of the pencil or the style +Had trac’d the shades and lines, that might have made +The subtlest workman wonder? Dead the dead, +The living seem’d alive; with clearer view +His eye beheld not who beheld the truth, +Than mine what I did tread on, while I went +Low bending. Now swell out; and with stiff necks +Pass on, ye sons of Eve! veil not your looks, +Lest they descry the evil of your path! + +I noted not (so busied was my thought) +How much we now had circled of the mount, +And of his course yet more the sun had spent, +When he, who with still wakeful caution went, +Admonish’d: “Raise thou up thy head: for know +Time is not now for slow suspense. Behold +That way an angel hasting towards us! Lo +Where duly the sixth handmaid doth return +From service on the day. Wear thou in look +And gesture seemly grace of reverent awe, +That gladly he may forward us aloft. +Consider that this day ne’er dawns again.” + +Time’s loss he had so often warn’d me ’gainst, +I could not miss the scope at which he aim’d. + +The goodly shape approach’d us, snowy white +In vesture, and with visage casting streams +Of tremulous lustre like the matin star. +His arms he open’d, then his wings; and spake: +“Onward: the steps, behold! are near; and now +Th’ ascent is without difficulty gain’d.” + +A scanty few are they, who when they hear +Such tidings, hasten. O ye race of men +Though born to soar, why suffer ye a wind +So slight to baffle ye? He led us on +Where the rock parted; here against my front +Did beat his wings, then promis’d I should fare +In safety on my way. As to ascend +That steep, upon whose brow the chapel stands +(O’er Rubaconte, looking lordly down +On the well-guided city,) up the right +Th’ impetuous rise is broken by the steps +Carv’d in that old and simple age, when still +The registry and label rested safe; +Thus is th’ acclivity reliev’d, which here +Precipitous from the other circuit falls: +But on each hand the tall cliff presses close. + +As ent’ring there we turn’d, voices, in strain +Ineffable, sang: “Blessed are the poor +In spirit.” Ah how far unlike to these +The straits of hell; here songs to usher us, +There shrieks of woe! We climb the holy stairs: +And lighter to myself by far I seem’d +Than on the plain before, whence thus I spake: +“Say, master, of what heavy thing have I +Been lighten’d, that scarce aught the sense of toil +Affects me journeying?” He in few replied: +“When sin’s broad characters, that yet remain +Upon thy temples, though well nigh effac’d, +Shall be, as one is, all clean razed out, +Then shall thy feet by heartiness of will +Be so o’ercome, they not alone shall feel +No sense of labour, but delight much more +Shall wait them urg’d along their upward way.” + +Then like to one, upon whose head is plac’d +Somewhat he deems not of but from the becks +Of others as they pass him by; his hand +Lends therefore help to’ assure him, searches, finds, +And well performs such office as the eye +Wants power to execute: so stretching forth +The fingers of my right hand, did I find +Six only of the letters, which his sword +Who bare the keys had trac’d upon my brow. +The leader, as he mark’d mine action, smil’d. + + + + +CANTO XIII + + +We reach’d the summit of the scale, and stood +Upon the second buttress of that mount +Which healeth him who climbs. A cornice there, +Like to the former, girdles round the hill; +Save that its arch with sweep less ample bends. + +Shadow nor image there is seen; all smooth +The rampart and the path, reflecting nought +But the rock’s sullen hue. “If here we wait +For some to question,” said the bard, “I fear +Our choice may haply meet too long delay.” + +Then fixedly upon the sun his eyes +He fastn’d, made his right the central point +From whence to move, and turn’d the left aside. +“O pleasant light, my confidence and hope, +Conduct us thou,” he cried, “on this new way, +Where now I venture, leading to the bourn +We seek. The universal world to thee +Owes warmth and lustre. If no other cause +Forbid, thy beams should ever be our guide.” + +Far, as is measur’d for a mile on earth, +In brief space had we journey’d; such prompt will +Impell’d; and towards us flying, now were heard +Spirits invisible, who courteously +Unto love’s table bade the welcome guest. +The voice, that first? flew by, call’d forth aloud, +“They have no wine; “ so on behind us past, +Those sounds reiterating, nor yet lost +In the faint distance, when another came +Crying, “I am Orestes,” and alike +Wing’d its fleet way. “Oh father!” I exclaim’d, +“What tongues are these?” and as I question’d, lo! +A third exclaiming, “Love ye those have wrong’d you.” + +“This circuit,” said my teacher, “knots the scourge +For envy, and the cords are therefore drawn +By charity’s correcting hand. The curb +Is of a harsher sound, as thou shalt hear +(If I deem rightly), ere thou reach the pass, +Where pardon sets them free. But fix thine eyes +Intently through the air, and thou shalt see +A multitude before thee seated, each +Along the shelving grot.” Then more than erst +I op’d my eyes, before me view’d, and saw +Shadows with garments dark as was the rock; +And when we pass’d a little forth, I heard +A crying, “Blessed Mary! pray for us, +Michael and Peter! all ye saintly host!” + +I do not think there walks on earth this day +Man so remorseless, that he hath not yearn’d +With pity at the sight that next I saw. +Mine eyes a load of sorrow teemed, when now +I stood so near them, that their semblances +Came clearly to my view. Of sackcloth vile +Their cov’ring seem’d; and on his shoulder one +Did stay another, leaning, and all lean’d +Against the cliff. E’en thus the blind and poor, +Near the confessionals, to crave an alms, +Stand, each his head upon his fellow’s sunk, +So most to stir compassion, not by sound +Of words alone, but that, which moves not less, +The sight of mis’ry. And as never beam +Of noonday visiteth the eyeless man, +E’en so was heav’n a niggard unto these +Of his fair light; for, through the orbs of all, +A thread of wire, impiercing, knits them up, +As for the taming of a haggard hawk. + +It were a wrong, methought, to pass and look +On others, yet myself the while unseen. +To my sage counsel therefore did I turn. +He knew the meaning of the mute appeal, +Nor waited for my questioning, but said: +“Speak; and be brief, be subtle in thy words.” + +On that part of the cornice, whence no rim +Engarlands its steep fall, did Virgil come; +On the’ other side me were the spirits, their cheeks +Bathing devout with penitential tears, +That through the dread impalement forc’d a way. + +I turn’d me to them, and “O shades!” said I, + +“Assur’d that to your eyes unveil’d shall shine +The lofty light, sole object of your wish, +So may heaven’s grace clear whatsoe’er of foam +Floats turbid on the conscience, that thenceforth +The stream of mind roll limpid from its source, +As ye declare (for so shall ye impart +A boon I dearly prize) if any soul +Of Latium dwell among ye; and perchance +That soul may profit, if I learn so much.” + +“My brother, we are each one citizens +Of one true city. Any thou wouldst say, +Who lived a stranger in Italia’s land.” + +So heard I answering, as appeal’d, a voice +That onward came some space from whence I stood. + +A spirit I noted, in whose look was mark’d +Expectance. Ask ye how? The chin was rais’d +As in one reft of sight. “Spirit,” said I, +“Who for thy rise are tutoring (if thou be +That which didst answer to me,) or by place +Or name, disclose thyself, that I may know thee.” + +“I was,” it answer’d, “of Sienna: here +I cleanse away with these the evil life, +Soliciting with tears that He, who is, +Vouchsafe him to us. Though Sapia nam’d +In sapience I excell’d not, gladder far +Of others’ hurt, than of the good befell me. +That thou mayst own I now deceive thee not, +Hear, if my folly were not as I speak it. +When now my years slop’d waning down the arch, +It so bechanc’d, my fellow citizens +Near Colle met their enemies in the field, +And I pray’d God to grant what He had will’d. +There were they vanquish’d, and betook themselves +Unto the bitter passages of flight. +I mark’d the hunt, and waxing out of bounds +In gladness, lifted up my shameless brow, +And like the merlin cheated by a gleam, +Cried, “It is over. Heav’n! I fear thee not.” +Upon my verge of life I wish’d for peace +With God; nor repentance had supplied +What I did lack of duty, were it not +The hermit Piero, touch’d with charity, +In his devout orisons thought on me. +But who art thou that question’st of our state, +Who go’st to my belief, with lids unclos’d, +And breathest in thy talk?”—“Mine eyes,” said I, +“May yet be here ta’en from me; but not long; +For they have not offended grievously +With envious glances. But the woe beneath +Urges my soul with more exceeding dread. +That nether load already weighs me down.” + +She thus: “Who then amongst us here aloft +Hath brought thee, if thou weenest to return?” + +“He,” answer’d I, “who standeth mute beside me. +I live: of me ask therefore, chosen spirit, +If thou desire I yonder yet should move +For thee my mortal feet.”—“Oh!” she replied, +“This is so strange a thing, it is great sign +That God doth love thee. Therefore with thy prayer +Sometime assist me: and by that I crave, +Which most thou covetest, that if thy feet +E’er tread on Tuscan soil, thou save my fame +Amongst my kindred. Them shalt thou behold +With that vain multitude, who set their hope +On Telamone’s haven, there to fail +Confounded, more shall when the fancied stream +They sought of Dian call’d: but they who lead +Their navies, more than ruin’d hopes shall mourn.” + + + + +CANTO XIV + + +“Say who is he around our mountain winds, +Or ever death has prun’d his wing for flight, +That opes his eyes and covers them at will?” + +“I know not who he is, but know thus much +He comes not singly. Do thou ask of him, +For thou art nearer to him, and take heed +Accost him gently, so that he may speak.” + +Thus on the right two Spirits bending each +Toward the other, talk’d of me, then both +Addressing me, their faces backward lean’d, +And thus the one began: “O soul, who yet +Pent in the body, tendest towards the sky! +For charity, we pray thee’ comfort us, +Recounting whence thou com’st, and who thou art: +For thou dost make us at the favour shown thee +Marvel, as at a thing that ne’er hath been.” + +“There stretches through the midst of Tuscany, +I straight began: “a brooklet, whose well-head +Springs up in Falterona, with his race +Not satisfied, when he some hundred miles +Hath measur’d. From his banks bring, I this frame. +To tell you who I am were words misspent: +For yet my name scarce sounds on rumour’s lip.” + +“If well I do incorp’rate with my thought +The meaning of thy speech,” said he, who first +Addrest me, “thou dost speak of Arno’s wave.” + +To whom the other: “Why hath he conceal’d +The title of that river, as a man +Doth of some horrible thing?” The spirit, who +Thereof was question’d, did acquit him thus: +“I know not: but ’tis fitting well the name +Should perish of that vale; for from the source +Where teems so plenteously the Alpine steep +Maim’d of Pelorus, (that doth scarcely pass +Beyond that limit,) even to the point +Whereunto ocean is restor’d, what heaven +Drains from th’ exhaustless store for all earth’s streams, +Throughout the space is virtue worried down, +As ’twere a snake, by all, for mortal foe, +Or through disastrous influence on the place, +Or else distortion of misguided wills, +That custom goads to evil: whence in those, +The dwellers in that miserable vale, +Nature is so transform’d, it seems as they +Had shar’d of Circe’s feeding. ’Midst brute swine, +Worthier of acorns than of other food +Created for man’s use, he shapeth first +His obscure way; then, sloping onward, finds +Curs, snarlers more in spite than power, from whom +He turns with scorn aside: still journeying down, +By how much more the curst and luckless foss +Swells out to largeness, e’en so much it finds +Dogs turning into wolves. Descending still +Through yet more hollow eddies, next he meets +A race of foxes, so replete with craft, +They do not fear that skill can master it. +Nor will I cease because my words are heard +By other ears than thine. It shall be well +For this man, if he keep in memory +What from no erring Spirit I reveal. +Lo! I behold thy grandson, that becomes +A hunter of those wolves, upon the shore +Of the fierce stream, and cows them all with dread: +Their flesh yet living sets he up to sale, +Then like an aged beast to slaughter dooms. +Many of life he reaves, himself of worth +And goodly estimation. Smear’d with gore +Mark how he issues from the rueful wood, +Leaving such havoc, that in thousand years +It spreads not to prime lustihood again.” + +As one, who tidings hears of woe to come, +Changes his looks perturb’d, from whate’er part +The peril grasp him, so beheld I change +That spirit, who had turn’d to listen, struck +With sadness, soon as he had caught the word. + +His visage and the other’s speech did raise +Desire in me to know the names of both, +whereof with meek entreaty I inquir’d. + +The shade, who late addrest me, thus resum’d: +“Thy wish imports that I vouchsafe to do +For thy sake what thou wilt not do for mine. +But since God’s will is that so largely shine +His grace in thee, I will be liberal too. +Guido of Duca know then that I am. +Envy so parch’d my blood, that had I seen +A fellow man made joyous, thou hadst mark’d +A livid paleness overspread my cheek. +Such harvest reap I of the seed I sow’d. +O man, why place thy heart where there doth need +Exclusion of participants in good? +This is Rinieri’s spirit, this the boast +And honour of the house of Calboli, +Where of his worth no heritage remains. +Nor his the only blood, that hath been stript +(’twixt Po, the mount, the Reno, and the shore,) +Of all that truth or fancy asks for bliss; +But in those limits such a growth has sprung +Of rank and venom’d roots, as long would mock +Slow culture’s toil. Where is good Lizio? where +Manardi, Traversalo, and Carpigna? +O bastard slips of old Romagna’s line! +When in Bologna the low artisan, +And in Faenza yon Bernardin sprouts, +A gentle cyon from ignoble stem. +Wonder not, Tuscan, if thou see me weep, +When I recall to mind those once lov’d names, +Guido of Prata, and of Azzo him +That dwelt with you; Tignoso and his troop, +With Traversaro’s house and Anastagio s, +(Each race disherited) and beside these, +The ladies and the knights, the toils and ease, +That witch’d us into love and courtesy; +Where now such malice reigns in recreant hearts. +O Brettinoro! wherefore tarriest still, +Since forth of thee thy family hath gone, +And many, hating evil, join’d their steps? +Well doeth he, that bids his lineage cease, +Bagnacavallo; Castracaro ill, +And Conio worse, who care to propagate +A race of Counties from such blood as theirs. +Well shall ye also do, Pagani, then +When from amongst you tries your demon child. +Not so, howe’er, that henceforth there remain +True proof of what ye were. O Hugolin! +Thou sprung of Fantolini’s line! thy name +Is safe, since none is look’d for after thee +To cloud its lustre, warping from thy stock. +But, Tuscan, go thy ways; for now I take +Far more delight in weeping than in words. +Such pity for your sakes hath wrung my heart.” + +We knew those gentle spirits at parting heard +Our steps. Their silence therefore of our way +Assur’d us. Soon as we had quitted them, +Advancing onward, lo! a voice that seem’d +Like vollied light’ning, when it rives the air, +Met us, and shouted, “Whosoever finds +Will slay me,” then fled from us, as the bolt +Lanc’d sudden from a downward-rushing cloud. +When it had giv’n short truce unto our hearing, +Behold the other with a crash as loud +As the quick-following thunder: “Mark in me +Aglauros turn’d to rock.” I at the sound +Retreating drew more closely to my guide. + +Now in mute stillness rested all the air: +And thus he spake: “There was the galling bit. +But your old enemy so baits his hook, +He drags you eager to him. Hence nor curb +Avails you, nor reclaiming call. Heav’n calls +And round about you wheeling courts your gaze +With everlasting beauties. Yet your eye +Turns with fond doting still upon the earth. +Therefore He smites you who discerneth all.” + + + + +CANTO XV + + +As much as ’twixt the third hour’s close and dawn, +Appeareth of heav’n’s sphere, that ever whirls +As restless as an infant in his play, +So much appear’d remaining to the sun +Of his slope journey towards the western goal. + +Evening was there, and here the noon of night; +and full upon our forehead smote the beams. +For round the mountain, circling, so our path +Had led us, that toward the sun-set now +Direct we journey’d: when I felt a weight +Of more exceeding splendour, than before, +Press on my front. The cause unknown, amaze +Possess’d me, and both hands against my brow +Lifting, I interpos’d them, as a screen, +That of its gorgeous superflux of light +Clipp’d the diminish’d orb. As when the ray, +Striking On water or the surface clear +Of mirror, leaps unto the opposite part, +Ascending at a glance, e’en as it fell, +(And so much differs from the stone, that falls +Through equal space, as practice skill hath shown; +Thus with refracted light before me seemed +The ground there smitten; whence in sudden haste +My sight recoil’d. “What is this, sire belov’d! +’Gainst which I strive to shield the sight in vain?” +Cried I, “and which towards us moving seems?” + +“Marvel not, if the family of heav’n,” +He answer’d, “yet with dazzling radiance dim +Thy sense it is a messenger who comes, +Inviting man’s ascent. Such sights ere long, +Not grievous, shall impart to thee delight, +As thy perception is by nature wrought +Up to their pitch.” The blessed angel, soon +As we had reach’d him, hail’d us with glad voice: +“Here enter on a ladder far less steep +Than ye have yet encounter’d.” We forthwith +Ascending, heard behind us chanted sweet, +“Blessed the merciful,” and “happy thou! +That conquer’st.” Lonely each, my guide and I +Pursued our upward way; and as we went, +Some profit from his words I hop’d to win, +And thus of him inquiring, fram’d my speech: + +“What meant Romagna’s spirit, when he spake +Of bliss exclusive with no partner shar’d?” + +He straight replied: “No wonder, since he knows, +What sorrow waits on his own worst defect, +If he chide others, that they less may mourn. +Because ye point your wishes at a mark, +Where, by communion of possessors, part +Is lessen’d, envy bloweth up the sighs of men. +No fear of that might touch ye, if the love +Of higher sphere exalted your desire. +For there, by how much more they call it ours, +So much propriety of each in good +Increases more, and heighten’d charity +Wraps that fair cloister in a brighter flame.” + +“Now lack I satisfaction more,” said I, +“Than if thou hadst been silent at the first, +And doubt more gathers on my lab’ring thought. +How can it chance, that good distributed, +The many, that possess it, makes more rich, +Than if ’twere shar’d by few?” He answering thus: +“Thy mind, reverting still to things of earth, +Strikes darkness from true light. The highest good +Unlimited, ineffable, doth so speed +To love, as beam to lucid body darts, +Giving as much of ardour as it finds. +The sempiternal effluence streams abroad +Spreading, wherever charity extends. +So that the more aspirants to that bliss +Are multiplied, more good is there to love, +And more is lov’d; as mirrors, that reflect, +Each unto other, propagated light. +If these my words avail not to allay +Thy thirsting, Beatrice thou shalt see, +Who of this want, and of all else thou hast, +Shall rid thee to the full. Provide but thou +That from thy temples may be soon eras’d, +E’en as the two already, those five scars, +That when they pain thee worst, then kindliest heal,” + +“Thou,” I had said, “content’st me,” when I saw +The other round was gain’d, and wond’ring eyes +Did keep me mute. There suddenly I seem’d +By an ecstatic vision wrapt away; +And in a temple saw, methought, a crowd +Of many persons; and at th’ entrance stood +A dame, whose sweet demeanour did express +A mother’s love, who said, “Child! why hast thou +Dealt with us thus? Behold thy sire and I +Sorrowing have sought thee;” and so held her peace, +And straight the vision fled. A female next +Appear’d before me, down whose visage cours’d +Those waters, that grief forces out from one +By deep resentment stung, who seem’d to say: +“If thou, Pisistratus, be lord indeed +Over this city, nam’d with such debate +Of adverse gods, and whence each science sparkles, +Avenge thee of those arms, whose bold embrace +Hath clasp’d our daughter; “and to fuel, meseem’d, +Benign and meek, with visage undisturb’d, +Her sovran spake: “How shall we those requite, +Who wish us evil, if we thus condemn +The man that loves us?” After that I saw +A multitude, in fury burning, slay +With stones a stripling youth, and shout amain +“Destroy, destroy: “and him I saw, who bow’d +Heavy with death unto the ground, yet made +His eyes, unfolded upward, gates to heav’n, +Praying forgiveness of th’ Almighty Sire, +Amidst that cruel conflict, on his foes, +With looks, that With compassion to their aim. + +Soon as my spirit, from her airy flight +Returning, sought again the things, whose truth +Depends not on her shaping, I observ’d +How she had rov’d to no unreal scenes + +Meanwhile the leader, who might see I mov’d, +As one, who struggles to shake off his sleep, +Exclaim’d: “What ails thee, that thou canst not hold +Thy footing firm, but more than half a league +Hast travel’d with clos’d eyes and tott’ring gait, +Like to a man by wine or sleep o’ercharg’d?” + +“Beloved father! so thou deign,” said I, +“To listen, I will tell thee what appear’d +Before me, when so fail’d my sinking steps.” + +He thus: “Not if thy Countenance were mask’d +With hundred vizards, could a thought of thine +How small soe’er, elude me. What thou saw’st +Was shown, that freely thou mightst ope thy heart +To the waters of peace, that flow diffus’d +From their eternal fountain. I not ask’d, +What ails thee? for such cause as he doth, who +Looks only with that eye which sees no more, +When spiritless the body lies; but ask’d, +To give fresh vigour to thy foot. Such goads +The slow and loit’ring need; that they be found +Not wanting, when their hour of watch returns.” + +So on we journey’d through the evening sky +Gazing intent, far onward, as our eyes +With level view could stretch against the bright +Vespertine ray: and lo! by slow degrees +Gath’ring, a fog made tow’rds us, dark as night. +There was no room for ’scaping; and that mist +Bereft us, both of sight and the pure air. + + + + +CANTO XVI + + +Hell’s dunnest gloom, or night unlustrous, dark, +Of every planes ’reft, and pall’d in clouds, +Did never spread before the sight a veil +In thickness like that fog, nor to the sense +So palpable and gross. Ent’ring its shade, +Mine eye endured not with unclosed lids; +Which marking, near me drew the faithful guide, +Offering me his shoulder for a stay. + +As the blind man behind his leader walks, +Lest he should err, or stumble unawares +On what might harm him, or perhaps destroy, +I journey’d through that bitter air and foul, +Still list’ning to my escort’s warning voice, +“Look that from me thou part not.” Straight I heard +Voices, and each one seem’d to pray for peace, +And for compassion, to the Lamb of God +That taketh sins away. Their prelude still +Was “Agnus Dei,” and through all the choir, +One voice, one measure ran, that perfect seem’d +The concord of their song. “Are these I hear +Spirits, O master?” I exclaim’d; and he: +“Thou aim’st aright: these loose the bonds of wrath.” + +“Now who art thou, that through our smoke dost cleave? +And speak’st of us, as thou thyself e’en yet +Dividest time by calends?” So one voice +Bespake me; whence my master said: “Reply; +And ask, if upward hence the passage lead.” + +“O being! who dost make thee pure, to stand +Beautiful once more in thy Maker’s sight! +Along with me: and thou shalt hear and wonder.” +Thus I, whereto the spirit answering spake: +“Long as ’tis lawful for me, shall my steps +Follow on thine; and since the cloudy smoke +Forbids the seeing, hearing in its stead +Shall keep us join’d.” I then forthwith began +“Yet in my mortal swathing, I ascend +To higher regions, and am hither come +Through the fearful agony of hell. +And, if so largely God hath doled his grace, +That, clean beside all modern precedent, +He wills me to behold his kingly state, +From me conceal not who thou wast, ere death +Had loos’d thee; but instruct me: and instruct +If rightly to the pass I tend; thy words +The way directing as a safe escort.” + +“I was of Lombardy, and Marco call’d: +Not inexperienc’d of the world, that worth +I still affected, from which all have turn’d +The nerveless bow aside. Thy course tends right +Unto the summit:” and, replying thus, +He added, “I beseech thee pray for me, +When thou shalt come aloft.” And I to him: +“Accept my faith for pledge I will perform +What thou requirest. Yet one doubt remains, +That wrings me sorely, if I solve it not, +Singly before it urg’d me, doubled now +By thine opinion, when I couple that +With one elsewhere declar’d, each strength’ning other. +The world indeed is even so forlorn +Of all good as thou speak’st it and so swarms +With every evil. Yet, beseech thee, point +The cause out to me, that myself may see, +And unto others show it: for in heaven +One places it, and one on earth below.” + +Then heaving forth a deep and audible sigh, +“Brother!” he thus began, “the world is blind; +And thou in truth com’st from it. Ye, who live, +Do so each cause refer to heav’n above, +E’en as its motion of necessity +Drew with it all that moves. If this were so, +Free choice in you were none; nor justice would +There should be joy for virtue, woe for ill. +Your movements have their primal bent from heaven; +Not all; yet said I all; what then ensues? +Light have ye still to follow evil or good, +And of the will free power, which, if it stand +Firm and unwearied in Heav’n’s first assay, +Conquers at last, so it be cherish’d well, +Triumphant over all. To mightier force, +To better nature subject, ye abide +Free, not constrain’d by that, which forms in you +The reasoning mind uninfluenc’d of the stars. +If then the present race of mankind err, +Seek in yourselves the cause, and find it there. +Herein thou shalt confess me no false spy. + +“Forth from his plastic hand, who charm’d beholds +Her image ere she yet exist, the soul +Comes like a babe, that wantons sportively +Weeping and laughing in its wayward moods, +As artless and as ignorant of aught, +Save that her Maker being one who dwells +With gladness ever, willingly she turns +To whate’er yields her joy. Of some slight good +The flavour soon she tastes; and, snar’d by that, +With fondness she pursues it, if no guide +Recall, no rein direct her wand’ring course. +Hence it behov’d, the law should be a curb; +A sovereign hence behov’d, whose piercing view +Might mark at least the fortress and main tower +Of the true city. Laws indeed there are: +But who is he observes them? None; not he, +Who goes before, the shepherd of the flock, +Who chews the cud but doth not cleave the hoof. +Therefore the multitude, who see their guide +Strike at the very good they covet most, +Feed there and look no further. Thus the cause +Is not corrupted nature in yourselves, +But ill-conducting, that hath turn’d the world +To evil. Rome, that turn’d it unto good, +Was wont to boast two suns, whose several beams +Cast light on either way, the world’s and God’s. +One since hath quench’d the other; and the sword +Is grafted on the crook; and so conjoin’d +Each must perforce decline to worse, unaw’d +By fear of other. If thou doubt me, mark +The blade: each herb is judg’d of by its seed. +That land, through which Adice and the Po +Their waters roll, was once the residence +Of courtesy and velour, ere the day, +That frown’d on Frederick; now secure may pass +Those limits, whosoe’er hath left, for shame, +To talk with good men, or come near their haunts. +Three aged ones are still found there, in whom +The old time chides the new: these deem it long +Ere God restore them to a better world: +The good Gherardo, of Palazzo he +Conrad, and Guido of Castello, nam’d +In Gallic phrase more fitly the plain Lombard. +On this at last conclude. The church of Rome, +Mixing two governments that ill assort, +Hath miss’d her footing, fall’n into the mire, +And there herself and burden much defil’d.” + +“O Marco!” I replied, shine arguments +Convince me: and the cause I now discern +Why of the heritage no portion came +To Levi’s offspring. But resolve me this +Who that Gherardo is, that as thou sayst +Is left a sample of the perish’d race, +And for rebuke to this untoward age?” + +“Either thy words,” said he, “deceive; or else +Are meant to try me; that thou, speaking Tuscan, +Appear’st not to have heard of good Gherado; +The sole addition that, by which I know him; +Unless I borrow’d from his daughter Gaia +Another name to grace him. God be with you. +I bear you company no more. Behold +The dawn with white ray glimm’ring through the mist. +I must away—the angel comes—ere he +Appear.” He said, and would not hear me more. + + + + +CANTO XVII + + +Call to remembrance, reader, if thou e’er +Hast, on a mountain top, been ta’en by cloud, +Through which thou saw’st no better, than the mole +Doth through opacous membrane; then, whene’er +The wat’ry vapours dense began to melt +Into thin air, how faintly the sun’s sphere +Seem’d wading through them; so thy nimble thought +May image, how at first I re-beheld +The sun, that bedward now his couch o’erhung. + +Thus with my leader’s feet still equaling pace +From forth that cloud I came, when now expir’d +The parting beams from off the nether shores. + +O quick and forgetive power! that sometimes dost +So rob us of ourselves, we take no mark +Though round about us thousand trumpets clang! +What moves thee, if the senses stir not? Light +Kindled in heav’n, spontaneous, self-inform’d, +Or likelier gliding down with swift illapse +By will divine. Portray’d before me came +The traces of her dire impiety, +Whose form was chang’d into the bird, that most +Delights itself in song: and here my mind +Was inwardly so wrapt, it gave no place +To aught that ask’d admittance from without. + +Next shower’d into my fantasy a shape +As of one crucified, whose visage spake +Fell rancour, malice deep, wherein he died; +And round him Ahasuerus the great king, +Esther his bride, and Mordecai the just, +Blameless in word and deed. As of itself +That unsubstantial coinage of the brain +Burst, like a bubble, Which the water fails +That fed it; in my vision straight uprose +A damsel weeping loud, and cried, “O queen! +O mother! wherefore has intemperate ire +Driv’n thee to loath thy being? Not to lose +Lavinia, desp’rate thou hast slain thyself. +Now hast thou lost me. I am she, whose tears +Mourn, ere I fall, a mother’s timeless end.” + +E’en as a sleep breaks off, if suddenly +New radiance strike upon the closed lids, +The broken slumber quivering ere it dies; +Thus from before me sunk that imagery +Vanishing, soon as on my face there struck +The light, outshining far our earthly beam. +As round I turn’d me to survey what place +I had arriv’d at, “Here ye mount,” exclaim’d +A voice, that other purpose left me none, +Save will so eager to behold who spake, +I could not choose but gaze. As ’fore the sun, +That weighs our vision down, and veils his form +In light transcendent, thus my virtue fail’d +Unequal. “This is Spirit from above, +Who marshals us our upward way, unsought; +And in his own light shrouds him;. As a man +Doth for himself, so now is done for us. +For whoso waits imploring, yet sees need +Of his prompt aidance, sets himself prepar’d +For blunt denial, ere the suit be made. +Refuse we not to lend a ready foot +At such inviting: haste we to ascend, +Before it darken: for we may not then, +Till morn again return.” So spake my guide; +And to one ladder both address’d our steps; +And the first stair approaching, I perceiv’d +Near me as ’twere the waving of a wing, +That fann’d my face and whisper’d: “Blessed they +The peacemakers: they know not evil wrath.” + +Now to such height above our heads were rais’d +The last beams, follow’d close by hooded night, +That many a star on all sides through the gloom +Shone out. “Why partest from me, O my strength?” +So with myself I commun’d; for I felt +My o’ertoil’d sinews slacken. We had reach’d +The summit, and were fix’d like to a bark +Arriv’d at land. And waiting a short space, +If aught should meet mine ear in that new round, +Then to my guide I turn’d, and said: “Lov’d sire! +Declare what guilt is on this circle purg’d. +If our feet rest, no need thy speech should pause.” + +He thus to me: “The love of good, whate’er +Wanted of just proportion, here fulfils. +Here plies afresh the oar, that loiter’d ill. +But that thou mayst yet clearlier understand, +Give ear unto my words, and thou shalt cull +Some fruit may please thee well, from this delay. + +“Creator, nor created being, ne’er, +My son,” he thus began, “was without love, +Or natural, or the free spirit’s growth. +Thou hast not that to learn. The natural still +Is without error; but the other swerves, +If on ill object bent, or through excess +Of vigour, or defect. While e’er it seeks +The primal blessings, or with measure due +Th’ inferior, no delight, that flows from it, +Partakes of ill. But let it warp to evil, +Or with more ardour than behooves, or less. +Pursue the good, the thing created then +Works ’gainst its Maker. Hence thou must infer +That love is germin of each virtue in ye, +And of each act no less, that merits pain. +Now since it may not be, but love intend +The welfare mainly of the thing it loves, +All from self-hatred are secure; and since +No being can be thought t’ exist apart +And independent of the first, a bar +Of equal force restrains from hating that. + +“Grant the distinction just; and it remains +The’ evil must be another’s, which is lov’d. +Three ways such love is gender’d in your clay. +There is who hopes (his neighbour’s worth deprest,) +Preeminence himself, and coverts hence +For his own greatness that another fall. +There is who so much fears the loss of power, +Fame, favour, glory (should his fellow mount +Above him), and so sickens at the thought, +He loves their opposite: and there is he, +Whom wrong or insult seems to gall and shame +That he doth thirst for vengeance, and such needs +Must doat on other’s evil. Here beneath +This threefold love is mourn’d. Of th’ other sort +Be now instructed, that which follows good +But with disorder’d and irregular course. + +“All indistinctly apprehend a bliss +On which the soul may rest, the hearts of all +Yearn after it, and to that wished bourn +All therefore strive to tend. If ye behold +Or seek it with a love remiss and lax, +This cornice after just repenting lays +Its penal torment on ye. Other good +There is, where man finds not his happiness: +It is not true fruition, not that blest +Essence, of every good the branch and root. +The love too lavishly bestow’d on this, +Along three circles over us, is mourn’d. +Account of that division tripartite +Expect not, fitter for thine own research. + + + + +CANTO XVIII + + +The teacher ended, and his high discourse +Concluding, earnest in my looks inquir’d +If I appear’d content; and I, whom still +Unsated thirst to hear him urg’d, was mute, +Mute outwardly, yet inwardly I said: +“Perchance my too much questioning offends +But he, true father, mark’d the secret wish +By diffidence restrain’d, and speaking, gave +Me boldness thus to speak: “Master, my Sight +Gathers so lively virtue from thy beams, +That all, thy words convey, distinct is seen. +Wherefore I pray thee, father, whom this heart +Holds dearest! thou wouldst deign by proof t’ unfold +That love, from which as from their source thou bring’st +All good deeds and their opposite.” He then: +“To what I now disclose be thy clear ken +Directed, and thou plainly shalt behold +How much those blind have err’d, who make themselves +The guides of men. The soul, created apt +To love, moves versatile which way soe’er +Aught pleasing prompts her, soon as she is wak’d +By pleasure into act. Of substance true +Your apprehension forms its counterfeit, +And in you the ideal shape presenting +Attracts the soul’s regard. If she, thus drawn, +incline toward it, love is that inclining, +And a new nature knit by pleasure in ye. +Then as the fire points up, and mounting seeks +His birth-place and his lasting seat, e’en thus +Enters the captive soul into desire, +Which is a spiritual motion, that ne’er rests +Before enjoyment of the thing it loves. +Enough to show thee, how the truth from those +Is hidden, who aver all love a thing +Praise-worthy in itself: although perhaps +Its substance seem still good. Yet if the wax +Be good, it follows not th’ impression must.” +“What love is,” I return’d, “thy words, O guide! +And my own docile mind, reveal. Yet thence +New doubts have sprung. For from without if love +Be offer’d to us, and the spirit knows +No other footing, tend she right or wrong, +Is no desert of hers.” He answering thus: +“What reason here discovers I have power +To show thee: that which lies beyond, expect +From Beatrice, faith not reason’s task. +Spirit, substantial form, with matter join’d +Not in confusion mix’d, hath in itself +Specific virtue of that union born, +Which is not felt except it work, nor prov’d +But through effect, as vegetable life +By the green leaf. From whence his intellect +Deduced its primal notices of things, +Man therefore knows not, or his appetites +Their first affections; such in you, as zeal +In bees to gather honey; at the first, +Volition, meriting nor blame nor praise. +But o’er each lower faculty supreme, +That as she list are summon’d to her bar, +Ye have that virtue in you, whose just voice +Uttereth counsel, and whose word should keep +The threshold of assent. Here is the source, +Whence cause of merit in you is deriv’d, +E’en as the affections good or ill she takes, +Or severs, winnow’d as the chaff. Those men +Who reas’ning went to depth profoundest, mark’d +That innate freedom, and were thence induc’d +To leave their moral teaching to the world. +Grant then, that from necessity arise +All love that glows within you; to dismiss +Or harbour it, the pow’r is in yourselves. +Remember, Beatrice, in her style, +Denominates free choice by eminence +The noble virtue, if in talk with thee +She touch upon that theme.” The moon, well nigh +To midnight hour belated, made the stars +Appear to wink and fade; and her broad disk +Seem’d like a crag on fire, as up the vault +That course she journey’d, which the sun then warms, +When they of Rome behold him at his set. +Betwixt Sardinia and the Corsic isle. +And now the weight, that hung upon my thought, +Was lighten’d by the aid of that clear spirit, +Who raiseth Andes above Mantua’s name. +I therefore, when my questions had obtain’d +Solution plain and ample, stood as one +Musing in dreary slumber; but not long +Slumber’d; for suddenly a multitude, +The steep already turning, from behind, +Rush’d on. With fury and like random rout, +As echoing on their shores at midnight heard +Ismenus and Asopus, for his Thebes +If Bacchus’ help were needed; so came these +Tumultuous, curving each his rapid step, +By eagerness impell’d of holy love. + +Soon they o’ertook us; with such swiftness mov’d +The mighty crowd. Two spirits at their head +Cried weeping; “Blessed Mary sought with haste +The hilly region. Caesar to subdue +Ilerda, darted in Marseilles his sting, +And flew to Spain.”—“Oh tarry not: away;” +The others shouted; “let not time be lost +Through slackness of affection. Hearty zeal +To serve reanimates celestial grace.” + +“O ye, in whom intenser fervency +Haply supplies, where lukewarm erst ye fail’d, +Slow or neglectful, to absolve your part +Of good and virtuous, this man, who yet lives, +(Credit my tale, though strange) desires t’ ascend, +So morning rise to light us. Therefore say +Which hand leads nearest to the rifted rock?” + +So spake my guide, to whom a shade return’d: +“Come after us, and thou shalt find the cleft. +We may not linger: such resistless will +Speeds our unwearied course. Vouchsafe us then +Thy pardon, if our duty seem to thee +Discourteous rudeness. In Verona I +Was abbot of San Zeno, when the hand +Of Barbarossa grasp’d Imperial sway, +That name, ne’er utter’d without tears in Milan. +And there is he, hath one foot in his grave, +Who for that monastery ere long shall weep, +Ruing his power misus’d: for that his son, +Of body ill compact, and worse in mind, +And born in evil, he hath set in place +Of its true pastor.” Whether more he spake, +Or here was mute, I know not: he had sped +E’en now so far beyond us. Yet thus much +I heard, and in rememb’rance treasur’d it. + +He then, who never fail’d me at my need, +Cried, “Hither turn. Lo! two with sharp remorse +Chiding their sin!” In rear of all the troop +These shouted: “First they died, to whom the sea +Open’d, or ever Jordan saw his heirs: +And they, who with Aeneas to the end +Endur’d not suffering, for their portion chose +Life without glory.” Soon as they had fled +Past reach of sight, new thought within me rose +By others follow’d fast, and each unlike +Its fellow: till led on from thought to thought, +And pleasur’d with the fleeting train, mine eye +Was clos’d, and meditation chang’d to dream. + + + + +CANTO XIX + + +It was the hour, when of diurnal heat +No reliques chafe the cold beams of the moon, +O’erpower’d by earth, or planetary sway +Of Saturn; and the geomancer sees +His Greater Fortune up the east ascend, +Where gray dawn checkers first the shadowy cone; +When ’fore me in my dream a woman’s shape +There came, with lips that stammer’d, eyes aslant, +Distorted feet, hands maim’d, and colour pale. + +I look’d upon her; and as sunshine cheers +Limbs numb’d by nightly cold, e’en thus my look +Unloos’d her tongue, next in brief space her form +Decrepit rais’d erect, and faded face +With love’s own hue illum’d. Recov’ring speech +She forthwith warbling such a strain began, +That I, how loth soe’er, could scarce have held +Attention from the song. “I,” thus she sang, +“I am the Siren, she, whom mariners +On the wide sea are wilder’d when they hear: +Such fulness of delight the list’ner feels. +I from his course Ulysses by my lay +Enchanted drew. Whoe’er frequents me once +Parts seldom; so I charm him, and his heart +Contented knows no void.” Or ere her mouth +Was clos’d, to shame her at her side appear’d +A dame of semblance holy. With stern voice +She utter’d; “Say, O Virgil, who is this?” +Which hearing, he approach’d, with eyes still bent +Toward that goodly presence: th’ other seiz’d her, +And, her robes tearing, open’d her before, +And show’d the belly to me, whence a smell, +Exhaling loathsome, wak’d me. Round I turn’d +Mine eyes, and thus the teacher: “At the least +Three times my voice hath call’d thee. Rise, begone. +Let us the opening find where thou mayst pass.” + +I straightway rose. Now day, pour’d down from high, +Fill’d all the circuits of the sacred mount; +And, as we journey’d, on our shoulder smote +The early ray. I follow’d, stooping low +My forehead, as a man, o’ercharg’d with thought, +Who bends him to the likeness of an arch, +That midway spans the flood; when thus I heard, +“Come, enter here,” in tone so soft and mild, +As never met the ear on mortal strand. + +With swan-like wings dispread and pointing up, +Who thus had spoken marshal’d us along, +Where each side of the solid masonry +The sloping, walls retir’d; then mov’d his plumes, +And fanning us, affirm’d that those, who mourn, +Are blessed, for that comfort shall be theirs. + +“What aileth thee, that still thou look’st to earth?” +Began my leader; while th’ angelic shape +A little over us his station took. + +“New vision,” I replied, “hath rais’d in me +8urmisings strange and anxious doubts, whereon +My soul intent allows no other thought +Or room or entrance.—“Hast thou seen,” said he, +“That old enchantress, her, whose wiles alone +The spirits o’er us weep for? Hast thou seen +How man may free him of her bonds? Enough. +Let thy heels spurn the earth, and thy rais’d ken +Fix on the lure, which heav’n’s eternal King +Whirls in the rolling spheres.” As on his feet +The falcon first looks down, then to the sky +Turns, and forth stretches eager for the food, +That woos him thither; so the call I heard, +So onward, far as the dividing rock +Gave way, I journey’d, till the plain was reach’d. + +On the fifth circle when I stood at large, +A race appear’d before me, on the ground +All downward lying prone and weeping sore. +“My soul hath cleaved to the dust,” I heard +With sighs so deep, they well nigh choak’d the words. +“O ye elect of God, whose penal woes +Both hope and justice mitigate, direct +Tow’rds the steep rising our uncertain way.” + +“If ye approach secure from this our doom, +Prostration—and would urge your course with speed, +See that ye still to rightward keep the brink.” + +So them the bard besought; and such the words, +Beyond us some short space, in answer came. + +I noted what remain’d yet hidden from them: +Thence to my liege’s eyes mine eyes I bent, +And he, forthwith interpreting their suit, +Beckon’d his glad assent. Free then to act, +As pleas’d me, I drew near, and took my stand +O`er that shade, whose words I late had mark’d. +And, “Spirit!” I said, “in whom repentant tears +Mature that blessed hour, when thou with God +Shalt find acceptance, for a while suspend +For me that mightier care. Say who thou wast, +Why thus ye grovel on your bellies prone, +And if in aught ye wish my service there, +Whence living I am come.” He answering spake +“The cause why Heav’n our back toward his cope +Reverses, shalt thou know: but me know first +The successor of Peter, and the name +And title of my lineage from that stream, +That’ twixt Chiaveri and Siestri draws +His limpid waters through the lowly glen. +A month and little more by proof I learnt, +With what a weight that robe of sov’reignty +Upon his shoulder rests, who from the mire +Would guard it: that each other fardel seems +But feathers in the balance. Late, alas! +Was my conversion: but when I became +Rome’s pastor, I discern’d at once the dream +And cozenage of life, saw that the heart +Rested not there, and yet no prouder height +Lur’d on the climber: wherefore, of that life +No more enamour’d, in my bosom love +Of purer being kindled. For till then +I was a soul in misery, alienate +From God, and covetous of all earthly things; +Now, as thou seest, here punish’d for my doting. +Such cleansing from the taint of avarice +Do spirits converted need. This mount inflicts +No direr penalty. E’en as our eyes +Fasten’d below, nor e’er to loftier clime +Were lifted, thus hath justice level’d us +Here on the earth. As avarice quench’d our love +Of good, without which is no working, thus +Here justice holds us prison’d, hand and foot +Chain’d down and bound, while heaven’s just Lord shall please. +So long to tarry motionless outstretch’d.” + +My knees I stoop’d, and would have spoke; but he, +Ere my beginning, by his ear perceiv’d +I did him reverence; and “What cause,” said he, +“Hath bow’d thee thus!”—” Compunction,” I rejoin’d. +“And inward awe of your high dignity.” + +“Up,” he exclaim’d, “brother! upon thy feet +Arise: err not: thy fellow servant I, +(Thine and all others’) of one Sovran Power. +If thou hast ever mark’d those holy sounds +Of gospel truth, ‘nor shall be given ill marriage,’ +Thou mayst discern the reasons of my speech. +Go thy ways now; and linger here no more. +Thy tarrying is a let unto the tears, +With which I hasten that whereof thou spak’st. +I have on earth a kinswoman; her name +Alagia, worthy in herself, so ill +Example of our house corrupt her not: +And she is all remaineth of me there.” + + + + +CANTO XX + + +Ill strives the will, ’gainst will more wise that strives +His pleasure therefore to mine own preferr’d, +I drew the sponge yet thirsty from the wave. + +Onward I mov’d: he also onward mov’d, +Who led me, coasting still, wherever place +Along the rock was vacant, as a man +Walks near the battlements on narrow wall. +For those on th’ other part, who drop by drop +Wring out their all-infecting malady, +Too closely press the verge. Accurst be thou! +Inveterate wolf! whose gorge ingluts more prey, +Than every beast beside, yet is not fill’d! +So bottomless thy maw!—Ye spheres of heaven! +To whom there are, as seems, who attribute +All change in mortal state, when is the day +Of his appearing, for whom fate reserves +To chase her hence?—With wary steps and slow +We pass’d; and I attentive to the shades, +Whom piteously I heard lament and wail; +And, ’midst the wailing, one before us heard +Cry out “O blessed Virgin!” as a dame +In the sharp pangs of childbed; and “How poor +Thou wast,” it added, “witness that low roof +Where thou didst lay thy sacred burden down. +O good Fabricius! thou didst virtue choose +With poverty, before great wealth with vice.” + +The words so pleas’d me, that desire to know +The spirit, from whose lip they seem’d to come, +Did draw me onward. Yet it spake the gift +Of Nicholas, which on the maidens he +Bounteous bestow’d, to save their youthful prime +Unblemish’d. “Spirit! who dost speak of deeds +So worthy, tell me who thou was,” I said, +“And why thou dost with single voice renew +Memorial of such praise. That boon vouchsaf’d +Haply shall meet reward; if I return +To finish the Short pilgrimage of life, +Still speeding to its close on restless wing.” + +“I,” answer’d he, “will tell thee, not for hell, +Which thence I look for; but that in thyself +Grace so exceeding shines, before thy time +Of mortal dissolution. I was root +Of that ill plant, whose shade such poison sheds +O’er all the Christian land, that seldom thence +Good fruit is gather’d. Vengeance soon should come, +Had Ghent and Douay, Lille and Bruges power; +And vengeance I of heav’n’s great Judge implore. +Hugh Capet was I high: from me descend +The Philips and the Louis, of whom France +Newly is govern’d; born of one, who ply’d +The slaughterer’s trade at Paris. When the race +Of ancient kings had vanish’d (all save one +Wrapt up in sable weeds) within my gripe +I found the reins of empire, and such powers +Of new acquirement, with full store of friends, +That soon the widow’d circlet of the crown +Was girt upon the temples of my son, +He, from whose bones th’ anointed race begins. +Till the great dower of Provence had remov’d +The stains, that yet obscur’d our lowly blood, +Its sway indeed was narrow, but howe’er +It wrought no evil: there, with force and lies, +Began its rapine; after, for amends, +Poitou it seiz’d, Navarre and Gascony. +To Italy came Charles, and for amends +Young Conradine an innocent victim slew, +And sent th’ angelic teacher back to heav’n, +Still for amends. I see the time at hand, +That forth from France invites another Charles +To make himself and kindred better known. +Unarm’d he issues, saving with that lance, +Which the arch-traitor tilted with; and that +He carries with so home a thrust, as rives +The bowels of poor Florence. No increase +Of territory hence, but sin and shame +Shall be his guerdon, and so much the more +As he more lightly deems of such foul wrong. +I see the other, who a prisoner late +Had steps on shore, exposing to the mart +His daughter, whom he bargains for, as do +The Corsairs for their slaves. O avarice! +What canst thou more, who hast subdued our blood +So wholly to thyself, they feel no care +Of their own flesh? To hide with direr guilt +Past ill and future, lo! the flower-de-luce +Enters Alagna! in his Vicar Christ +Himself a captive, and his mockery +Acted again! Lo! to his holy lip +The vinegar and gall once more applied! +And he ’twixt living robbers doom’d to bleed! +Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty +Such violence cannot fill the measure up, +With no degree to sanction, pushes on +Into the temple his yet eager sails! + +“O sovran Master! when shall I rejoice +To see the vengeance, which thy wrath well-pleas’d +In secret silence broods?—While daylight lasts, +So long what thou didst hear of her, sole spouse +Of the Great Spirit, and on which thou turn’dst +To me for comment, is the general theme +Of all our prayers: but when it darkens, then +A different strain we utter, then record +Pygmalion, whom his gluttonous thirst of gold +Made traitor, robber, parricide: the woes +Of Midas, which his greedy wish ensued, +Mark’d for derision to all future times: +And the fond Achan, how he stole the prey, +That yet he seems by Joshua’s ire pursued. +Sapphira with her husband next, we blame; +And praise the forefeet, that with furious ramp +Spurn’d Heliodorus. All the mountain round +Rings with the infamy of Thracia’s king, +Who slew his Phrygian charge: and last a shout +Ascends: “Declare, O Crassus! for thou know’st, +The flavour of thy gold.” The voice of each +Now high now low, as each his impulse prompts, +Is led through many a pitch, acute or grave. +Therefore, not singly, I erewhile rehears’d +That blessedness we tell of in the day: +But near me none beside his accent rais’d.” + +From him we now had parted, and essay’d +With utmost efforts to surmount the way, +When I did feel, as nodding to its fall, +The mountain tremble; whence an icy chill +Seiz’d on me, as on one to death convey’d. +So shook not Delos, when Latona there +Couch’d to bring forth the twin-born eyes of heaven. + +Forthwith from every side a shout arose +So vehement, that suddenly my guide +Drew near, and cried: “Doubt not, while I conduct thee.” +“Glory!” all shouted (such the sounds mine ear +Gather’d from those, who near me swell’d the sounds) +“Glory in the highest be to God.” We stood +Immovably suspended, like to those, +The shepherds, who first heard in Bethlehem’s field +That song: till ceas’d the trembling, and the song +Was ended: then our hallow’d path resum’d, +Eying the prostrate shadows, who renew’d +Their custom’d mourning. Never in my breast +Did ignorance so struggle with desire +Of knowledge, if my memory do not err, +As in that moment; nor through haste dar’d I +To question, nor myself could aught discern, +So on I far’d in thoughtfulness and dread. + + + + +CANTO XXI + + +The natural thirst, ne’er quench’d but from the well, +Whereof the woman of Samaria crav’d, +Excited: haste along the cumber’d path, +After my guide, impell’d; and pity mov’d +My bosom for the ’vengeful deed, though just. +When lo! even as Luke relates, that Christ +Appear’d unto the two upon their way, +New-risen from his vaulted grave; to us +A shade appear’d, and after us approach’d, +Contemplating the crowd beneath its feet. +We were not ware of it; so first it spake, +Saying, “God give you peace, my brethren!” then +Sudden we turn’d: and Virgil such salute, +As fitted that kind greeting, gave, and cried: +“Peace in the blessed council be thy lot +Awarded by that righteous court, which me +To everlasting banishment exiles!” + +“How!” he exclaim’d, nor from his speed meanwhile +Desisting, “If that ye be spirits, whom God +Vouchsafes not room above, who up the height +Has been thus far your guide?” To whom the bard: +“If thou observe the tokens, which this man +Trac’d by the finger of the angel bears, +’Tis plain that in the kingdom of the just +He needs must share. But sithence she, whose wheel +Spins day and night, for him not yet had drawn +That yarn, which, on the fatal distaff pil’d, +Clotho apportions to each wight that breathes, +His soul, that sister is to mine and thine, +Not of herself could mount, for not like ours +Her ken: whence I, from forth the ample gulf +Of hell was ta’en, to lead him, and will lead +Far as my lore avails. But, if thou know, +Instruct us for what cause, the mount erewhile +Thus shook and trembled: wherefore all at once +Seem’d shouting, even from his wave-wash’d foot.” + +That questioning so tallied with my wish, +The thirst did feel abatement of its edge +E’en from expectance. He forthwith replied, +“In its devotion nought irregular +This mount can witness, or by punctual rule +Unsanction’d; here from every change exempt. +Other than that, which heaven in itself +Doth of itself receive, no influence +Can reach us. Tempest none, shower, hail or snow, +Hoar frost or dewy moistness, higher falls +Than that brief scale of threefold steps: thick clouds +Nor scudding rack are ever seen: swift glance +Ne’er lightens, nor Thaumantian Iris gleams, +That yonder often shift on each side heav’n. +Vapour adust doth never mount above +The highest of the trinal stairs, whereon +Peter’s vicegerent stands. Lower perchance, +With various motion rock’d, trembles the soil: +But here, through wind in earth’s deep hollow pent, +I know not how, yet never trembled: then +Trembles, when any spirit feels itself +So purified, that it may rise, or move +For rising, and such loud acclaim ensues. +Purification by the will alone +Is prov’d, that free to change society +Seizes the soul rejoicing in her will. +Desire of bliss is present from the first; +But strong propension hinders, to that wish +By the just ordinance of heav’n oppos’d; +Propension now as eager to fulfil +Th’ allotted torment, as erewhile to sin. +And I who in this punishment had lain +Five hundred years and more, but now have felt +Free wish for happier clime. Therefore thou felt’st +The mountain tremble, and the spirits devout +Heard’st, over all his limits, utter praise +To that liege Lord, whom I entreat their joy +To hasten.” Thus he spake: and since the draught +Is grateful ever as the thirst is keen, +No words may speak my fullness of content. + +“Now,” said the instructor sage, “I see the net +That takes ye here, and how the toils are loos’d, +Why rocks the mountain and why ye rejoice. +Vouchsafe, that from thy lips I next may learn, +Who on the earth thou wast, and wherefore here +So many an age wert prostrate.”—“In that time, +When the good Titus, with Heav’n’s King to help, +Aveng’d those piteous gashes, whence the blood +By Judas sold did issue, with the name +Most lasting and most honour’d there was I +Abundantly renown’d,” the shade reply’d, +“Not yet with faith endued. So passing sweet +My vocal Spirit, from Tolosa, Rome +To herself drew me, where I merited +A myrtle garland to inwreathe my brow. +Statius they name me still. Of Thebes I sang, +And next of great Achilles: but i’ th’ way +Fell with the second burthen. Of my flame +Those sparkles were the seeds, which I deriv’d +From the bright fountain of celestial fire +That feeds unnumber’d lamps, the song I mean +Which sounds Aeneas’ wand’rings: that the breast +I hung at, that the nurse, from whom my veins +Drank inspiration: whose authority +Was ever sacred with me. To have liv’d +Coeval with the Mantuan, I would bide +The revolution of another sun +Beyond my stated years in banishment.” + +The Mantuan, when he heard him, turn’d to me, +And holding silence: by his countenance +Enjoin’d me silence but the power which wills, +Bears not supreme control: laughter and tears +Follow so closely on the passion prompts them, +They wait not for the motions of the will +In natures most sincere. I did but smile, +As one who winks; and thereupon the shade +Broke off, and peer’d into mine eyes, where best +Our looks interpret. “So to good event +Mayst thou conduct such great emprize,” he cried, +“Say, why across thy visage beam’d, but now, +The lightning of a smile!” On either part +Now am I straiten’d; one conjures me speak, +Th’ other to silence binds me: whence a sigh +I utter, and the sigh is heard. “Speak on; “ +The teacher cried; “and do not fear to speak, +But tell him what so earnestly he asks.” +Whereon I thus: “Perchance, O ancient spirit! +Thou marvel’st at my smiling. There is room +For yet more wonder. He who guides my ken +On high, he is that Mantuan, led by whom +Thou didst presume of men arid gods to sing. +If other cause thou deem’dst for which I smil’d, +Leave it as not the true one; and believe +Those words, thou spak’st of him, indeed the cause.” + +Now down he bent t’ embrace my teacher’s feet; +But he forbade him: “Brother! do it not: +Thou art a shadow, and behold’st a shade.” +He rising answer’d thus: “Now hast thou prov’d +The force and ardour of the love I bear thee, +When I forget we are but things of air, +And as a substance treat an empty shade.” + + + + +CANTO XXII + + +Now we had left the angel, who had turn’d +To the sixth circle our ascending step, +One gash from off my forehead raz’d: while they, +Whose wishes tend to justice, shouted forth: +“Blessed!” and ended with, “I thirst:” and I, +More nimble than along the other straits, +So journey’d, that, without the sense of toil, +I follow’d upward the swift-footed shades; +When Virgil thus began: “Let its pure flame +From virtue flow, and love can never fail +To warm another’s bosom’ so the light +Shine manifestly forth. Hence from that hour, +When ’mongst us in the purlieus of the deep, +Came down the spirit of Aquinum’s hard, +Who told of thine affection, my good will +Hath been for thee of quality as strong +As ever link’d itself to one not seen. +Therefore these stairs will now seem short to me. +But tell me: and if too secure I loose +The rein with a friend’s license, as a friend +Forgive me, and speak now as with a friend: +How chanc’d it covetous desire could find +Place in that bosom, ’midst such ample store +Of wisdom, as thy zeal had treasur’d there?” + +First somewhat mov’d to laughter by his words, +Statius replied: “Each syllable of thine +Is a dear pledge of love. Things oft appear +That minister false matters to our doubts, +When their true causes are remov’d from sight. +Thy question doth assure me, thou believ’st +I was on earth a covetous man, perhaps +Because thou found’st me in that circle plac’d. +Know then I was too wide of avarice: +And e’en for that excess, thousands of moons +Have wax’d and wan’d upon my sufferings. +And were it not that I with heedful care +Noted where thou exclaim’st as if in ire +With human nature, ‘Why, thou cursed thirst +Of gold! dost not with juster measure guide +The appetite of mortals?’ I had met +The fierce encounter of the voluble rock. +Then was I ware that with too ample wing +The hands may haste to lavishment, and turn’d, +As from my other evil, so from this +In penitence. How many from their grave +Shall with shorn locks arise, who living, aye +And at life’s last extreme, of this offence, +Through ignorance, did not repent. And know, +The fault which lies direct from any sin +In level opposition, here With that +Wastes its green rankness on one common heap. +Therefore if I have been with those, who wail +Their avarice, to cleanse me, through reverse +Of their transgression, such hath been my lot.” + +To whom the sovran of the pastoral song: +“While thou didst sing that cruel warfare wag’d +By the twin sorrow of Jocasta’s womb, +From thy discourse with Clio there, it seems +As faith had not been shine: without the which +Good deeds suffice not. And if so, what sun +Rose on thee, or what candle pierc’d the dark +That thou didst after see to hoist the sail, +And follow, where the fisherman had led?” + +He answering thus: “By thee conducted first, +I enter’d the Parnassian grots, and quaff’d +Of the clear spring; illumin’d first by thee +Open’d mine eyes to God. Thou didst, as one, +Who, journeying through the darkness, hears a light +Behind, that profits not himself, but makes +His followers wise, when thou exclaimedst, ‘Lo! +A renovated world! Justice return’d! +Times of primeval innocence restor’d! +And a new race descended from above!’ +Poet and Christian both to thee I owed. +That thou mayst mark more clearly what I trace, +My hand shall stretch forth to inform the lines +With livelier colouring. Soon o’er all the world, +By messengers from heav’n, the true belief +Teem’d now prolific, and that word of thine +Accordant, to the new instructors chim’d. +Induc’d by which agreement, I was wont +Resort to them; and soon their sanctity +So won upon me, that, Domitian’s rage +Pursuing them, I mix’d my tears with theirs, +And, while on earth I stay’d, still succour’d them; +And their most righteous customs made me scorn +All sects besides. Before I led the Greeks +In tuneful fiction, to the streams of Thebes, +I was baptiz’d; but secretly, through fear, +Remain’d a Christian, and conform’d long time +To Pagan rites. Five centuries and more, +T for that lukewarmness was fain to pace +Round the fourth circle. Thou then, who hast rais’d +The covering, which did hide such blessing from me, +Whilst much of this ascent is yet to climb, +Say, if thou know, where our old Terence bides, +Caecilius, Plautus, Varro: if condemn’d +They dwell, and in what province of the deep.” +“These,” said my guide, “with Persius and myself, +And others many more, are with that Greek, +Of mortals, the most cherish’d by the Nine, +In the first ward of darkness. There ofttimes +We of that mount hold converse, on whose top +For aye our nurses live. We have the bard +Of Pella, and the Teian, Agatho, +Simonides, and many a Grecian else +Ingarlanded with laurel. Of thy train +Antigone is there, Deiphile, +Argia, and as sorrowful as erst +Ismene, and who show’d Langia’s wave: +Deidamia with her sisters there, +And blind Tiresias’ daughter, and the bride +Sea-born of Peleus.” Either poet now +Was silent, and no longer by th’ ascent +Or the steep walls obstructed, round them cast +Inquiring eyes. Four handmaids of the day +Had finish’d now their office, and the fifth +Was at the chariot-beam, directing still +Its balmy point aloof, when thus my guide: +“Methinks, it well behooves us to the brink +Bend the right shoulder’ circuiting the mount, +As we have ever us’d.” So custom there +Was usher to the road, the which we chose +Less doubtful, as that worthy shade complied. + +They on before me went; I sole pursued, +List’ning their speech, that to my thoughts convey’d +Mysterious lessons of sweet poesy. +But soon they ceas’d; for midway of the road +A tree we found, with goodly fruitage hung, +And pleasant to the smell: and as a fir +Upward from bough to bough less ample spreads, +So downward this less ample spread, that none. +Methinks, aloft may climb. Upon the side, +That clos’d our path, a liquid crystal fell +From the steep rock, and through the sprays above +Stream’d showering. With associate step the bards +Drew near the plant; and from amidst the leaves +A voice was heard: “Ye shall be chary of me;” +And after added: “Mary took more thought +For joy and honour of the nuptial feast, +Than for herself who answers now for you. +The women of old Rome were satisfied +With water for their beverage. Daniel fed +On pulse, and wisdom gain’d. The primal age +Was beautiful as gold; and hunger then +Made acorns tasteful, thirst each rivulet +Run nectar. Honey and locusts were the food, +Whereon the Baptist in the wilderness +Fed, and that eminence of glory reach’d +And greatness, which the’ Evangelist records.” + + + + +CANTO XXIII + + +On the green leaf mine eyes were fix’d, like his +Who throws away his days in idle chase +Of the diminutive, when thus I heard +The more than father warn me: “Son! our time +Asks thriftier using. Linger not: away.” + +Thereat my face and steps at once I turn’d +Toward the sages, by whose converse cheer’d +I journey’d on, and felt no toil: and lo! +A sound of weeping and a song: “My lips, +O Lord!” and these so mingled, it gave birth +To pleasure and to pain. “O Sire, belov’d! +Say what is this I hear?” Thus I inquir’d. + +“Spirits,” said he, “who as they go, perchance, +Their debt of duty pay.” As on their road +The thoughtful pilgrims, overtaking some +Not known unto them, turn to them, and look, +But stay not; thus, approaching from behind +With speedier motion, eyed us, as they pass’d, +A crowd of spirits, silent and devout. +The eyes of each were dark and hollow: pale +Their visage, and so lean withal, the bones +Stood staring thro’ the skin. I do not think +Thus dry and meagre Erisicthon show’d, +When pinc’ed by sharp-set famine to the quick. + +“Lo!” to myself I mus’d, “the race, who lost +Jerusalem, when Mary with dire beak +Prey’d on her child.” The sockets seem’d as rings, +From which the gems were drops. Who reads the name +Of man upon his forehead, there the M +Had trac’d most plainly. Who would deem, that scent +Of water and an apple, could have prov’d +Powerful to generate such pining want, +Not knowing how it wrought? While now I stood +Wond’ring what thus could waste them (for the cause +Of their gaunt hollowness and scaly rind +Appear’d not) lo! a spirit turn’d his eyes +In their deep-sunken cell, and fasten’d then +On me, then cried with vehemence aloud: +“What grace is this vouchsaf’d me?” By his looks +I ne’er had recogniz’d him: but the voice +Brought to my knowledge what his cheer conceal’d. +Remembrance of his alter’d lineaments +Was kindled from that spark; and I agniz’d +The visage of Forese. “Ah! respect +This wan and leprous wither’d skin,” thus he +Suppliant implor’d, “this macerated flesh. +Speak to me truly of thyself. And who +Are those twain spirits, that escort thee there? +Be it not said thou Scorn’st to talk with me.” + +“That face of thine,” I answer’d him, “which dead +I once bewail’d, disposes me not less +For weeping, when I see It thus transform’d. +Say then, by Heav’n, what blasts ye thus? The whilst +I wonder, ask not Speech from me: unapt +Is he to speak, whom other will employs. + +He thus: “The water and tee plant we pass’d, +Virtue possesses, by th’ eternal will +Infus’d, the which so pines me. Every spirit, +Whose song bewails his gluttony indulg’d +Too grossly, here in hunger and in thirst +Is purified. The odour, which the fruit, +And spray, that showers upon the verdure, breathe, +Inflames us with desire to feed and drink. +Nor once alone encompassing our route +We come to add fresh fuel to the pain: +Pain, said I? solace rather: for that will +To the tree leads us, by which Christ was led +To call Elias, joyful when he paid +Our ransom from his vein.” I answering thus: +“Forese! from that day, in which the world +For better life thou changedst, not five years +Have circled. If the power of sinning more +Were first concluded in thee, ere thou knew’st +That kindly grief, which re-espouses us +To God, how hither art thou come so soon? +I thought to find thee lower, there, where time +Is recompense for time.” He straight replied: +“To drink up the sweet wormwood of affliction +I have been brought thus early by the tears +Stream’d down my Nella’s cheeks. Her prayers devout, +Her sighs have drawn me from the coast, where oft +Expectance lingers, and have set me free +From th’ other circles. In the sight of God +So much the dearer is my widow priz’d, +She whom I lov’d so fondly, as she ranks +More singly eminent for virtuous deeds. +The tract most barb’rous of Sardinia’s isle, +Hath dames more chaste and modester by far +Than that wherein I left her. O sweet brother! +What wouldst thou have me say? A time to come +Stands full within my view, to which this hour +Shall not be counted of an ancient date, +When from the pulpit shall be loudly warn’d +Th’ unblushing dames of Florence, lest they bare +Unkerchief’d bosoms to the common gaze. +What savage women hath the world e’er seen, +What Saracens, for whom there needed scourge +Of spiritual or other discipline, +To force them walk with cov’ring on their limbs! +But did they see, the shameless ones, that Heav’n +Wafts on swift wing toward them, while I speak, +Their mouths were op’d for howling: they shall taste +Of Borrow (unless foresight cheat me here) +Or ere the cheek of him be cloth’d with down +Who is now rock’d with lullaby asleep. +Ah! now, my brother, hide thyself no more, +Thou seest how not I alone but all +Gaze, where thou veil’st the intercepted sun.” + +Whence I replied: “If thou recall to mind +What we were once together, even yet +Remembrance of those days may grieve thee sore. +That I forsook that life, was due to him +Who there precedes me, some few evenings past, +When she was round, who shines with sister lamp +To his, that glisters yonder,” and I show’d +The sun. “Tis he, who through profoundest night +Of he true dead has brought me, with this flesh +As true, that follows. From that gloom the aid +Of his sure comfort drew me on to climb, +And climbing wind along this mountain-steep, +Which rectifies in you whate’er the world +Made crooked and deprav’d I have his word, +That he will bear me company as far +As till I come where Beatrice dwells: +But there must leave me. Virgil is that spirit, +Who thus hath promis’d,” and I pointed to him; +“The other is that shade, for whom so late +Your realm, as he arose, exulting shook +Through every pendent cliff and rocky bound.” + + + + +CANTO XXIV + + +Our journey was not slacken’d by our talk, +Nor yet our talk by journeying. Still we spake, +And urg’d our travel stoutly, like a ship +When the wind sits astern. The shadowy forms, +That seem’d things dead and dead again, drew in +At their deep-delved orbs rare wonder of me, +Perceiving I had life; and I my words +Continued, and thus spake; “He journeys up +Perhaps more tardily then else he would, +For others’ sake. But tell me, if thou know’st, +Where is Piccarda? Tell me, if I see +Any of mark, among this multitude, +Who eye me thus.”—“My sister (she for whom, +’Twixt beautiful and good I cannot say +Which name was fitter) wears e’en now her crown, +And triumphs in Olympus.” Saying this, +He added: “Since spare diet hath so worn +Our semblance out, ’tis lawful here to name +Each one . This,” and his finger then he rais’d, +“Is Buonaggiuna,—Buonaggiuna, he +Of Lucca: and that face beyond him, pierc’d +Unto a leaner fineness than the rest, +Had keeping of the church: he was of Tours, +And purges by wan abstinence away +Bolsena’s eels and cups of muscadel.” + +He show’d me many others, one by one, +And all, as they were nam’d, seem’d well content; +For no dark gesture I discern’d in any. +I saw through hunger Ubaldino grind +His teeth on emptiness; and Boniface, +That wav’d the crozier o’er a num’rous flock. +I saw the Marquis, who tad time erewhile +To swill at Forli with less drought, yet so +Was one ne’er sated. I howe’er, like him, +That gazing ’midst a crowd, singles out one, +So singled him of Lucca; for methought +Was none amongst them took such note of me. +Somewhat I heard him whisper of Gentucca: +The sound was indistinct, and murmur’d there, +Where justice, that so strips them, fix’d her sting. + +“Spirit!” said I, “it seems as thou wouldst fain +Speak with me. Let me hear thee. Mutual wish +To converse prompts, which let us both indulge.” + +He, answ’ring, straight began: “Woman is born, +Whose brow no wimple shades yet, that shall make +My city please thee, blame it as they may. +Go then with this forewarning. If aught false +My whisper too implied, th’ event shall tell +But say, if of a truth I see the man +Of that new lay th’ inventor, which begins +With ‘Ladies, ye that con the lore of love’.” + +To whom I thus: “Count of me but as one +Who am the scribe of love; that, when he breathes, +Take up my pen, and, as he dictates, write.” + +“Brother!” said he, “the hind’rance which once held +The notary with Guittone and myself, +Short of that new and sweeter style I hear, +Is now disclos’d. I see how ye your plumes +Stretch, as th’ inditer guides them; which, no question, +Ours did not. He that seeks a grace beyond, +Sees not the distance parts one style from other.” +And, as contented, here he held his peace. + +Like as the bird, that winter near the Nile, +In squared regiment direct their course, +Then stretch themselves in file for speedier flight; +Thus all the tribe of spirits, as they turn’d +Their visage, faster deaf, nimble alike +Through leanness and desire. And as a man, +Tir’d With the motion of a trotting steed, +Slacks pace, and stays behind his company, +Till his o’erbreathed lungs keep temperate time; +E’en so Forese let that holy crew +Proceed, behind them lingering at my side, +And saying: “When shall I again behold thee?” + +“How long my life may last,” said I, “I know not; +This know, how soon soever I return, +My wishes will before me have arriv’d. +Sithence the place, where I am set to live, +Is, day by day, more scoop’d of all its good, +And dismal ruin seems to threaten it.” + +“Go now,” he cried: “lo! he, whose guilt is most, +Passes before my vision, dragg’d at heels +Of an infuriate beast. Toward the vale, +Where guilt hath no redemption, on it speeds, +Each step increasing swiftness on the last; +Until a blow it strikes, that leaveth him +A corse most vilely shatter’d. No long space +Those wheels have yet to roll” (therewith his eyes +Look’d up to heav’n) “ere thou shalt plainly see +That which my words may not more plainly tell. +I quit thee: time is precious here: I lose +Too much, thus measuring my pace with shine.” + +As from a troop of well-rank’d chivalry +One knight, more enterprising than the rest, +Pricks forth at gallop, eager to display +His prowess in the first encounter prov’d +So parted he from us with lengthen’d strides, +And left me on the way with those twain spirits, +Who were such mighty marshals of the world. + +When he beyond us had so fled mine eyes +No nearer reach’d him, than my thought his words, +The branches of another fruit, thick hung, +And blooming fresh, appear’d. E’en as our steps +Turn’d thither, not far off it rose to view. +Beneath it were a multitude, that rais’d +Their hands, and shouted forth I know not What +Unto the boughs; like greedy and fond brats, +That beg, and answer none obtain from him, +Of whom they beg; but more to draw them on, +He at arm’s length the object of their wish +Above them holds aloft, and hides it not. + +At length, as undeceiv’d they went their way: +And we approach the tree, who vows and tears +Sue to in vain, the mighty tree. “Pass on, +And come not near. Stands higher up the wood, +Whereof Eve tasted, and from it was ta’en +‘this plant.” Such sounds from midst the thickets came. +Whence I, with either bard, close to the side +That rose, pass’d forth beyond. “Remember,” next +We heard, “those noblest creatures of the clouds, +How they their twofold bosoms overgorg’d +Oppos’d in fight to Theseus: call to mind +The Hebrews, how effeminate they stoop’d +To ease their thirst; whence Gideon’s ranks were thinn’d, +As he to Midian march’d adown the hills.” + +Thus near one border coasting, still we heard +The sins of gluttony, with woe erewhile +Reguerdon’d. Then along the lonely path, +Once more at large, full thousand paces on +We travel’d, each contemplative and mute. + +“Why pensive journey thus ye three alone?” +Thus suddenly a voice exclaim’d: whereat +I shook, as doth a scar’d and paltry beast; +Then rais’d my head to look from whence it came. + +Was ne’er, in furnace, glass, or metal seen +So bright and glowing red, as was the shape +I now beheld. “If ye desire to mount,” +He cried, “here must ye turn. This way he goes, +Who goes in quest of peace.” His countenance +Had dazzled me; and to my guides I fac’d +Backward, like one who walks, as sound directs. + +As when, to harbinger the dawn, springs up +On freshen’d wing the air of May, and breathes +Of fragrance, all impregn’d with herb and flowers, +E’en such a wind I felt upon my front +Blow gently, and the moving of a wing +Perceiv’d, that moving shed ambrosial smell; +And then a voice: “Blessed are they, whom grace +Doth so illume, that appetite in them +Exhaleth no inordinate desire, +Still hung’ring as the rule of temperance wills.” + + + + +CANTO XXV + + +It was an hour, when he who climbs, had need +To walk uncrippled: for the sun had now +To Taurus the meridian circle left, +And to the Scorpion left the night. As one +That makes no pause, but presses on his road, +Whate’er betide him, if some urgent need +Impel: so enter’d we upon our way, +One before other; for, but singly, none +That steep and narrow scale admits to climb. + +E’en as the young stork lifteth up his wing +Through wish to fly, yet ventures not to quit +The nest, and drops it; so in me desire +Of questioning my guide arose, and fell, +Arriving even to the act, that marks +A man prepar’d for speech. Him all our haste +Restrain’d not, but thus spake the sire belov’d: +Fear not to speed the shaft, that on thy lip +Stands trembling for its flight.” Encourag’d thus +I straight began: “How there can leanness come, +Where is no want of nourishment to feed?” + +“If thou,” he answer’d, “hadst remember’d thee, +How Meleager with the wasting brand +Wasted alike, by equal fires consm’d, +This would not trouble thee: and hadst thou thought, +How in the mirror your reflected form +With mimic motion vibrates, what now seems +Hard, had appear’d no harder than the pulp +Of summer fruit mature. But that thy will +In certainty may find its full repose, +Lo Statius here! on him I call, and pray +That he would now be healer of thy wound.” + +“If in thy presence I unfold to him +The secrets of heaven’s vengeance, let me plead +Thine own injunction, to exculpate me.” +So Statius answer’d, and forthwith began: +“Attend my words, O son, and in thy mind +Receive them: so shall they be light to clear +The doubt thou offer’st. Blood, concocted well, +Which by the thirsty veins is ne’er imbib’d, +And rests as food superfluous, to be ta’en +From the replenish’d table, in the heart +Derives effectual virtue, that informs +The several human limbs, as being that, +Which passes through the veins itself to make them. +Yet more concocted it descends, where shame +Forbids to mention: and from thence distils +In natural vessel on another’s blood. +Then each unite together, one dispos’d +T’ endure, to act the other, through meet frame +Of its recipient mould: that being reach’d, +It ’gins to work, coagulating first; +Then vivifies what its own substance caus’d +To bear. With animation now indued, +The active virtue (differing from a plant +No further, than that this is on the way +And at its limit that) continues yet +To operate, that now it moves, and feels, +As sea sponge clinging to the rock: and there +Assumes th’ organic powers its seed convey’d. +‘This is the period, son! at which the virtue, +That from the generating heart proceeds, +Is pliant and expansive; for each limb +Is in the heart by forgeful nature plann’d. +How babe of animal becomes, remains +For thy consid’ring. At this point, more wise, +Than thou hast err’d, making the soul disjoin’d +From passive intellect, because he saw +No organ for the latter’s use assign’d. + +“Open thy bosom to the truth that comes. +Know soon as in the embryo, to the brain, +Articulation is complete, then turns +The primal Mover with a smile of joy +On such great work of nature, and imbreathes +New spirit replete with virtue, that what here +Active it finds, to its own substance draws, +And forms an individual soul, that lives, +And feels, and bends reflective on itself. +And that thou less mayst marvel at the word, +Mark the sun’s heat, how that to wine doth change, +Mix’d with the moisture filter’d through the vine. + +“When Lachesis hath spun the thread, the soul +Takes with her both the human and divine, +Memory, intelligence, and will, in act +Far keener than before, the other powers +Inactive all and mute. No pause allow’d, +In wond’rous sort self-moving, to one strand +Of those, where the departed roam, she falls, +Here learns her destin’d path. Soon as the place +Receives her, round the plastic virtue beams, +Distinct as in the living limbs before: +And as the air, when saturate with showers, +The casual beam refracting, decks itself +With many a hue; so here the ambient air +Weareth that form, which influence of the soul +Imprints on it; and like the flame, that where +The fire moves, thither follows, so henceforth +The new form on the spirit follows still: +Hence hath it semblance, and is shadow call’d, +With each sense even to the sight endued: +Hence speech is ours, hence laughter, tears, and sighs +Which thou mayst oft have witness’d on the mount +Th’ obedient shadow fails not to present +Whatever varying passion moves within us. +And this the cause of what thou marvel’st at.” + +Now the last flexure of our way we reach’d, +And to the right hand turning, other care +Awaits us. Here the rocky precipice +Hurls forth redundant flames, and from the rim +A blast upblown, with forcible rebuff +Driveth them back, sequester’d from its bound. + +Behoov’d us, one by one, along the side, +That border’d on the void, to pass; and I +Fear’d on one hand the fire, on th’ other fear’d +Headlong to fall: when thus th’ instructor warn’d: +“Strict rein must in this place direct the eyes. +A little swerving and the way is lost.” + +Then from the bosom of the burning mass, +“O God of mercy!” heard I sung; and felt +No less desire to turn. And when I saw +Spirits along the flame proceeding, I +Between their footsteps and mine own was fain +To share by turns my view. At the hymn’s close +They shouted loud, “I do not know a man;” +Then in low voice again took up the strain, +Which once more ended, “To the wood,” they cried, +“Ran Dian, and drave forth Callisto, stung +With Cytherea’s poison:” then return’d +Unto their song; then marry a pair extoll’d, +Who liv’d in virtue chastely, and the bands +Of wedded love. Nor from that task, I ween, +Surcease they; whilesoe’er the scorching fire +Enclasps them. Of such skill appliance needs +To medicine the wound, that healeth last. + + + + +CANTO XXVI + + +While singly thus along the rim we walk’d, +Oft the good master warn’d me: “Look thou well. +Avail it that I caution thee.” The sun +Now all the western clime irradiate chang’d +From azure tinct to white; and, as I pass’d, +My passing shadow made the umber’d flame +Burn ruddier. At so strange a sight I mark’d +That many a spirit marvel’d on his way. + +This bred occasion first to speak of me, +“He seems,” said they, “no insubstantial frame:” +Then to obtain what certainty they might, +Stretch’d towards me, careful not to overpass +The burning pale. “O thou, who followest +The others, haply not more slow than they, +But mov’d by rev’rence, answer me, who burn +In thirst and fire: nor I alone, but these +All for thine answer do more thirst, than doth +Indian or Aethiop for the cooling stream. +Tell us, how is it that thou mak’st thyself +A wall against the sun, as thou not yet +Into th’ inextricable toils of death +Hadst enter’d?” Thus spake one, and I had straight +Declar’d me, if attention had not turn’d +To new appearance. Meeting these, there came, +Midway the burning path, a crowd, on whom +Earnestly gazing, from each part I view +The shadows all press forward, sev’rally +Each snatch a hasty kiss, and then away. +E’en so the emmets, ’mid their dusky troops, +Peer closely one at other, to spy out +Their mutual road perchance, and how they thrive. + +That friendly greeting parted, ere dispatch +Of the first onward step, from either tribe +Loud clamour rises: those, who newly come, +Shout Sodom and Gomorrah!” these, “The cow +Pasiphae enter’d, that the beast she woo’d +Might rush unto her luxury.” Then as cranes, +That part towards the Riphaean mountains fly, +Part towards the Lybic sands, these to avoid +The ice, and those the sun; so hasteth off +One crowd, advances th’ other; and resume +Their first song weeping, and their several shout. + +Again drew near my side the very same, +Who had erewhile besought me, and their looks +Mark’d eagerness to listen. I, who twice +Their will had noted, spake: “O spirits secure, +Whene’er the time may be, of peaceful end! +My limbs, nor crude, nor in mature old age, +Have I left yonder: here they bear me, fed +With blood, and sinew-strung. That I no more +May live in blindness, hence I tend aloft. +There is a dame on high, who wind for us +This grace, by which my mortal through your realm +I bear. But may your utmost wish soon meet +Such full fruition, that the orb of heaven, +Fullest of love, and of most ample space, +Receive you, as ye tell (upon my page +Henceforth to stand recorded) who ye are, +And what this multitude, that at your backs +Have past behind us.” As one, mountain-bred, +Rugged and clownish, if some city’s walls +He chance to enter, round him stares agape, +Confounded and struck dumb; e’en such appear’d +Each spirit. But when rid of that amaze, +(Not long the inmate of a noble heart) +He, who before had question’d, thus resum’d: +“O blessed, who, for death preparing, tak’st +Experience of our limits, in thy bark! +Their crime, who not with us proceed, was that, +For which, as he did triumph, Caesar heard +The snout of ‘queen,’ to taunt him. Hence their cry +Of ‘Sodom,’ as they parted, to rebuke +Themselves, and aid the burning by their shame. +Our sinning was Hermaphrodite: but we, +Because the law of human kind we broke, +Following like beasts our vile concupiscence, +Hence parting from them, to our own disgrace +Record the name of her, by whom the beast +In bestial tire was acted. Now our deeds +Thou know’st, and how we sinn’d. If thou by name +Wouldst haply know us, time permits not now +To tell so much, nor can I. Of myself +Learn what thou wishest. Guinicelli I, +Who having truly sorrow’d ere my last, +Already cleanse me.” With such pious joy, +As the two sons upon their mother gaz’d +From sad Lycurgus rescu’d, such my joy +(Save that I more represt it) when I heard +From his own lips the name of him pronounc’d, +Who was a father to me, and to those +My betters, who have ever us’d the sweet +And pleasant rhymes of love. So nought I heard +Nor spake, but long time thoughtfully I went, +Gazing on him; and, only for the fire, +Approach’d not nearer. When my eyes were fed +By looking on him, with such solemn pledge, +As forces credence, I devoted me +Unto his service wholly. In reply +He thus bespake me: “What from thee I hear +Is grav’d so deeply on my mind, the waves +Of Lethe shall not wash it off, nor make +A whit less lively. But as now thy oath +Has seal’d the truth, declare what cause impels +That love, which both thy looks and speech bewray.” + +“Those dulcet lays,” I answer’d, “which, as long +As of our tongue the beauty does not fade, +Shall make us love the very ink that trac’d them.” + +“Brother!” he cried, and pointed at a shade +Before him, “there is one, whose mother speech +Doth owe to him a fairer ornament. +He in love ditties and the tales of prose +Without a rival stands, and lets the fools +Talk on, who think the songster of Limoges +O’ertops him. Rumour and the popular voice +They look to more than truth, and so confirm +Opinion, ere by art or reason taught. +Thus many of the elder time cried up +Guittone, giving him the prize, till truth +By strength of numbers vanquish’d. If thou own +So ample privilege, as to have gain’d +Free entrance to the cloister, whereof Christ +Is Abbot of the college, say to him +One paternoster for me, far as needs +For dwellers in this world, where power to sin +No longer tempts us.” Haply to make way +For one, that follow’d next, when that was said, +He vanish’d through the fire, as through the wave +A fish, that glances diving to the deep. + +I, to the spirit he had shown me, drew +A little onward, and besought his name, +For which my heart, I said, kept gracious room. +He frankly thus began: “Thy courtesy +So wins on me, I have nor power nor will +To hide me. I am Arnault; and with songs, +Sorely lamenting for my folly past, +Thorough this ford of fire I wade, and see +The day, I hope for, smiling in my view. +I pray ye by the worth that guides ye up +Unto the summit of the scale, in time +Remember ye my suff’rings.” With such words +He disappear’d in the refining flame. + + + + +CANTO XXVII + + +Now was the sun so station’d, as when first +His early radiance quivers on the heights, +Where stream’d his Maker’s blood, while Libra hangs +Above Hesperian Ebro, and new fires +Meridian flash on Ganges’ yellow tide. + +So day was sinking, when the’ angel of God +Appear’d before us. Joy was in his mien. +Forth of the flame he stood upon the brink, +And with a voice, whose lively clearness far +Surpass’d our human, “Blessed are the pure +In heart,” he Sang: then near him as we came, +“Go ye not further, holy spirits!” he cried, +“Ere the fire pierce you: enter in; and list +Attentive to the song ye hear from thence.” + +I, when I heard his saying, was as one +Laid in the grave. My hands together clasp’d, +And upward stretching, on the fire I look’d, +And busy fancy conjur’d up the forms +Erewhile beheld alive consum’d in flames. + +Th’ escorting spirits turn’d with gentle looks +Toward me, and the Mantuan spake: “My son, +Here torment thou mayst feel, but canst not death. +Remember thee, remember thee, if I +Safe e’en on Geryon brought thee: now I come +More near to God, wilt thou not trust me now? +Of this be sure: though in its womb that flame +A thousand years contain’d thee, from thy head +No hair should perish. If thou doubt my truth, +Approach, and with thy hands thy vesture’s hem +Stretch forth, and for thyself confirm belief. +Lay now all fear, O lay all fear aside. +Turn hither, and come onward undismay’d.” +I still, though conscience urg’d’ no step advanc’d. + +When still he saw me fix’d and obstinate, +Somewhat disturb’d he cried: “Mark now, my son, +From Beatrice thou art by this wall +Divided.” As at Thisbe’s name the eye +Of Pyramus was open’d (when life ebb’d +Fast from his veins), and took one parting glance, +While vermeil dyed the mulberry; thus I turn’d +To my sage guide, relenting, when I heard +The name, that springs forever in my breast. + +He shook his forehead; and, “How long,” he said, +“Linger we now?” then smil’d, as one would smile +Upon a child, that eyes the fruit and yields. +Into the fire before me then he walk’d; +And Statius, who erewhile no little space +Had parted us, he pray’d to come behind. + +I would have cast me into molten glass +To cool me, when I enter’d; so intense +Rag’d the conflagrant mass. The sire belov’d, +To comfort me, as he proceeded, still +Of Beatrice talk’d. “Her eyes,” saith he, +“E’en now I seem to view.” From the other side +A voice, that sang, did guide us, and the voice +Following, with heedful ear, we issued forth, +There where the path led upward. “Come,” we heard, +“Come, blessed of my Father.” Such the sounds, +That hail’d us from within a light, which shone +So radiant, I could not endure the view. +“The sun,” it added, “hastes: and evening comes. +Delay not: ere the western sky is hung +With blackness, strive ye for the pass.” Our way +Upright within the rock arose, and fac’d +Such part of heav’n, that from before my steps +The beams were shrouded of the sinking sun. + +Nor many stairs were overpass, when now +By fading of the shadow we perceiv’d +The sun behind us couch’d: and ere one face +Of darkness o’er its measureless expanse +Involv’d th’ horizon, and the night her lot +Held individual, each of us had made +A stair his pallet: not that will, but power, +Had fail’d us, by the nature of that mount +Forbidden further travel. As the goats, +That late have skipp’d and wanton’d rapidly +Upon the craggy cliffs, ere they had ta’en +Their supper on the herb, now silent lie +And ruminate beneath the umbrage brown, +While noonday rages; and the goatherd leans +Upon his staff, and leaning watches them: +And as the swain, that lodges out all night +In quiet by his flock, lest beast of prey +Disperse them; even so all three abode, +I as a goat and as the shepherds they, +Close pent on either side by shelving rock. + +A little glimpse of sky was seen above; +Yet by that little I beheld the stars +In magnitude and rustle shining forth +With more than wonted glory. As I lay, +Gazing on them, and in that fit of musing, +Sleep overcame me, sleep, that bringeth oft +Tidings of future hap. About the hour, +As I believe, when Venus from the east +First lighten’d on the mountain, she whose orb +Seems always glowing with the fire of love, +A lady young and beautiful, I dream’d, +Was passing o’er a lea; and, as she came, +Methought I saw her ever and anon +Bending to cull the flowers; and thus she sang: +“Know ye, whoever of my name would ask, +That I am Leah: for my brow to weave +A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply. +To please me at the crystal mirror, here +I deck me. But my sister Rachel, she +Before her glass abides the livelong day, +Her radiant eyes beholding, charm’d no less, +Than I with this delightful task. Her joy +In contemplation, as in labour mine.” + +And now as glimm’ring dawn appear’d, that breaks +More welcome to the pilgrim still, as he +Sojourns less distant on his homeward way, +Darkness from all sides fled, and with it fled +My slumber; whence I rose and saw my guide +Already risen. “That delicious fruit, +Which through so many a branch the zealous care +Of mortals roams in quest of, shall this day +Appease thy hunger.” Such the words I heard +From Virgil’s lip; and never greeting heard +So pleasant as the sounds. Within me straight +Desire so grew upon desire to mount, +Thenceforward at each step I felt the wings +Increasing for my flight. When we had run +O’er all the ladder to its topmost round, +As there we stood, on me the Mantuan fix’d +His eyes, and thus he spake: “Both fires, my son, +The temporal and eternal, thou hast seen, +And art arriv’d, where of itself my ken +No further reaches. I with skill and art +Thus far have drawn thee. Now thy pleasure take +For guide. Thou hast o’ercome the steeper way, +O’ercome the straighter. Lo! the sun, that darts +His beam upon thy forehead! lo! the herb, +The arboreta and flowers, which of itself +This land pours forth profuse! Till those bright eyes +With gladness come, which, weeping, made me haste +To succour thee, thou mayst or seat thee down, +Or wander where thou wilt. Expect no more +Sanction of warning voice or sign from me, +Free of thy own arbitrement to choose, +Discreet, judicious. To distrust thy sense +Were henceforth error. I invest thee then +With crown and mitre, sovereign o’er thyself.” + + + + +CANTO XXVIII + + +Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade +With lively greenness the new-springing day +Attemper’d, eager now to roam, and search +Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank, +Along the champain leisurely my way +Pursuing, o’er the ground, that on all sides +Delicious odour breath’d. A pleasant air, +That intermitted never, never veer’d, +Smote on my temples, gently, as a wind +Of softest influence: at which the sprays, +Obedient all, lean’d trembling to that part +Where first the holy mountain casts his shade, +Yet were not so disorder’d, but that still +Upon their top the feather’d quiristers +Applied their wonted art, and with full joy +Welcom’d those hours of prime, and warbled shrill +Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays +inept tenor; even as from branch to branch, +Along the piney forests on the shore +Of Chiassi, rolls the gath’ring melody, +When Eolus hath from his cavern loos’d +The dripping south. Already had my steps, +Though slow, so far into that ancient wood +Transported me, I could not ken the place +Where I had enter’d, when behold! my path +Was bounded by a rill, which to the left +With little rippling waters bent the grass, +That issued from its brink. On earth no wave +How clean soe’er, that would not seem to have +Some mixture in itself, compar’d with this, +Transpicuous, clear; yet darkly on it roll’d, +Darkly beneath perpetual gloom, which ne’er +Admits or sun or moon light there to shine. + +My feet advanc’d not; but my wond’ring eyes +Pass’d onward, o’er the streamlet, to survey +The tender May-bloom, flush’d through many a hue, +In prodigal variety: and there, +As object, rising suddenly to view, +That from our bosom every thought beside +With the rare marvel chases, I beheld +A lady all alone, who, singing, went, +And culling flower from flower, wherewith her way +Was all o’er painted. “Lady beautiful! +Thou, who (if looks, that use to speak the heart, +Are worthy of our trust), with love’s own beam +Dost warm thee,” thus to her my speech I fram’d: +“Ah! please thee hither towards the streamlet bend +Thy steps so near, that I may list thy song. +Beholding thee and this fair place, methinks, +I call to mind where wander’d and how look’d +Proserpine, in that season, when her child +The mother lost, and she the bloomy spring.” + +As when a lady, turning in the dance, +Doth foot it featly, and advances scarce +One step before the other to the ground; +Over the yellow and vermilion flowers +Thus turn’d she at my suit, most maiden-like, +Valing her sober eyes, and came so near, +That I distinctly caught the dulcet sound. +Arriving where the limped waters now +Lav’d the green sward, her eyes she deign’d to raise, +That shot such splendour on me, as I ween +Ne’er glanced from Cytherea’s, when her son +Had sped his keenest weapon to her heart. +Upon the opposite bank she stood and smil’d +through her graceful fingers shifted still +The intermingling dyes, which without seed +That lofty land unbosoms. By the stream +Three paces only were we sunder’d: yet +The Hellespont, where Xerxes pass’d it o’er, +(A curb for ever to the pride of man) +Was by Leander not more hateful held +For floating, with inhospitable wave +’Twixt Sestus and Abydos, than by me +That flood, because it gave no passage thence. + +“Strangers ye come, and haply in this place, +That cradled human nature in its birth, +Wond’ring, ye not without suspicion view +My smiles: but that sweet strain of psalmody, +‘Thou, Lord! hast made me glad,’ will give ye light, +Which may uncloud your minds. And thou, who stand’st +The foremost, and didst make thy suit to me, +Say if aught else thou wish to hear: for I +Came prompt to answer every doubt of thine.” + +She spake; and I replied: “l know not how +To reconcile this wave and rustling sound +Of forest leaves, with what I late have heard +Of opposite report.” She answering thus: +“I will unfold the cause, whence that proceeds, +Which makes thee wonder; and so purge the cloud +That hath enwraps thee. The First Good, whose joy +Is only in himself, created man +For happiness, and gave this goodly place, +His pledge and earnest of eternal peace. +Favour’d thus highly, through his own defect +He fell, and here made short sojourn; he fell, +And, for the bitterness of sorrow, chang’d +Laughter unblam’d and ever-new delight. +That vapours none, exhal’d from earth beneath, +Or from the waters (which, wherever heat +Attracts them, follow), might ascend thus far +To vex man’s peaceful state, this mountain rose +So high toward the heav’n, nor fears the rage +0f elements contending, from that part +Exempted, where the gate his limit bars. +Because the circumambient air throughout +With its first impulse circles still, unless +Aught interpose to cheek or thwart its course; +Upon the summit, which on every side +To visitation of th’ impassive air +Is open, doth that motion strike, and makes +Beneath its sway th’ umbrageous wood resound: +And in the shaken plant such power resides, +That it impregnates with its efficacy +The voyaging breeze, upon whose subtle plume +That wafted flies abroad; and th’ other land +Receiving (as ’tis worthy in itself, +Or in the clime, that warms it), doth conceive, +And from its womb produces many a tree +Of various virtue. This when thou hast heard, +The marvel ceases, if in yonder earth +Some plant without apparent seed be found +To fix its fibrous stem. And further learn, +That with prolific foison of all seeds, +This holy plain is fill’d, and in itself +Bears fruit that ne’er was pluck’d on other soil. + “The water, thou behold’st, springs not from vein, +As stream, that intermittently repairs +And spends his pulse of life, but issues forth +From fountain, solid, undecaying, sure; +And by the will omnific, full supply +Feeds whatsoe’er On either side it pours; +On this devolv’d with power to take away +Remembrance of offence, on that to bring +Remembrance back of every good deed done. +From whence its name of Lethe on this part; +On th’ other Eunoe: both of which must first +Be tasted ere it work; the last exceeding +All flavours else. Albeit thy thirst may now +Be well contented, if I here break off, +No more revealing: yet a corollary +I freely give beside: nor deem my words +Less grateful to thee, if they somewhat pass +The stretch of promise. They, whose verse of yore +The golden age recorded and its bliss, +On the Parnassian mountain, of this place +Perhaps had dream’d. Here was man guiltless, here +Perpetual spring and every fruit, and this +The far-fam’d nectar.” Turning to the bards, +When she had ceas’d, I noted in their looks +A smile at her conclusion; then my face +Again directed to the lovely dame. + + + + +CANTO XXIX + + +Singing, as if enamour’d, she resum’d +And clos’d the song, with “Blessed they whose sins +Are cover’d.” Like the wood-nymphs then, that tripp’d +Singly across the sylvan shadows, one +Eager to view and one to ’scape the sun, +So mov’d she on, against the current, up +The verdant rivage. I, her mincing step +Observing, with as tardy step pursued. + +Between us not an hundred paces trod, +The bank, on each side bending equally, +Gave me to face the orient. Nor our way +Far onward brought us, when to me at once +She turn’d, and cried: “My brother! look and hearken.” +And lo! a sudden lustre ran across +Through the great forest on all parts, so bright +I doubted whether lightning were abroad; +But that expiring ever in the spleen, +That doth unfold it, and this during still +And waxing still in splendor, made me question +What it might be: and a sweet melody +Ran through the luminous air. Then did I chide +With warrantable zeal the hardihood +Of our first parent, for that there were earth +Stood in obedience to the heav’ns, she only, +Woman, the creature of an hour, endur’d not +Restraint of any veil: which had she borne +Devoutly, joys, ineffable as these, +Had from the first, and long time since, been mine. + +While through that wilderness of primy sweets +That never fade, suspense I walk’d, and yet +Expectant of beatitude more high, +Before us, like a blazing fire, the air +Under the green boughs glow’d; and, for a song, +Distinct the sound of melody was heard. + +O ye thrice holy virgins! for your sakes +If e’er I suffer’d hunger, cold and watching, +Occasion calls on me to crave your bounty. +Now through my breast let Helicon his stream +Pour copious; and Urania with her choir +Arise to aid me: while the verse unfolds +Things that do almost mock the grasp of thought. + +Onward a space, what seem’d seven trees of gold, +The intervening distance to mine eye +Falsely presented; but when I was come +So near them, that no lineament was lost +Of those, with which a doubtful object, seen +Remotely, plays on the misdeeming sense, +Then did the faculty, that ministers +Discourse to reason, these for tapers of gold +Distinguish, and it th’ singing trace the sound +“Hosanna.” Above, their beauteous garniture +Flam’d with more ample lustre, than the moon +Through cloudless sky at midnight in her full. + +I turn’d me full of wonder to my guide; +And he did answer with a countenance +Charg’d with no less amazement: whence my view +Reverted to those lofty things, which came +So slowly moving towards us, that the bride +Would have outstript them on her bridal day. + +The lady called aloud: “Why thus yet burns +Affection in thee for these living, lights, +And dost not look on that which follows them?” + +I straightway mark’d a tribe behind them walk, +As if attendant on their leaders, cloth’d +With raiment of such whiteness, as on earth +Was never. On my left, the wat’ry gleam +Borrow’d, and gave me back, when there I look’d. +As in a mirror, my left side portray’d. + +When I had chosen on the river’s edge +Such station, that the distance of the stream +Alone did separate me; there I stay’d +My steps for clearer prospect, and beheld +The flames go onward, leaving, as they went, +The air behind them painted as with trail +Of liveliest pencils! so distinct were mark’d +All those sev’n listed colours, whence the sun +Maketh his bow, and Cynthia her zone. +These streaming gonfalons did flow beyond +My vision; and ten paces, as I guess, +Parted the outermost. Beneath a sky +So beautiful, came foul and-twenty elders, +By two and two, with flower-de-luces crown’d. +All sang one song: “Blessed be thou among +The daughters of Adam! and thy loveliness +Blessed for ever!” After that the flowers, +And the fresh herblets, on the opposite brink, +Were free from that elected race; as light +In heav’n doth second light, came after them +Four animals, each crown’d with verdurous leaf. +With six wings each was plum’d, the plumage full +Of eyes, and th’ eyes of Argus would be such, +Were they endued with life. Reader, more rhymes +Will not waste in shadowing forth their form: +For other need no straitens, that in this +I may not give my bounty room. But read +Ezekiel; for he paints them, from the north +How he beheld them come by Chebar’s flood, +In whirlwind, cloud and fire; and even such +As thou shalt find them character’d by him, +Here were they; save as to the pennons; there, +From him departing, John accords with me. + +The space, surrounded by the four, enclos’d +A car triumphal: on two wheels it came +Drawn at a Gryphon’s neck; and he above +Stretch’d either wing uplifted, ’tween the midst +And the three listed hues, on each side three; +So that the wings did cleave or injure none; +And out of sight they rose. The members, far +As he was bird, were golden; white the rest +With vermeil intervein’d. So beautiful +A car in Rome ne’er grac’d Augustus pomp, +Or Africanus’: e’en the sun’s itself +Were poor to this, that chariot of the sun +Erroneous, which in blazing ruin fell +At Tellus’ pray’r devout, by the just doom +Mysterious of all-seeing Jove. Three nymphs +,k the right wheel, came circling in smooth dance; +The one so ruddy, that her form had scarce +Been known within a furnace of clear flame: +The next did look, as if the flesh and bones +Were emerald: snow new-fallen seem’d the third. +Now seem’d the white to lead, the ruddy now; +And from her song who led, the others took +Their treasure, swift or slow. At th’ other wheel, +A band quaternion, each in purple clad, +Advanc’d with festal step, as of them one +The rest conducted, one, upon whose front +Three eyes were seen. In rear of all this group, +Two old men I beheld, dissimilar +In raiment, but in port and gesture like, +Solid and mainly grave; of whom the one +Did show himself some favour’d counsellor +Of the great Coan, him, whom nature made +To serve the costliest creature of her tribe. +His fellow mark’d an opposite intent, +Bearing a sword, whose glitterance and keen edge, +E’en as I view’d it with the flood between, +Appall’d me. Next four others I beheld, +Of humble seeming: and, behind them all, +One single old man, sleeping, as he came, +With a shrewd visage. And these seven, each +Like the first troop were habited, hut wore +No braid of lilies on their temples wreath’d. +Rather with roses and each vermeil flower, +A sight, but little distant, might have sworn, +That they were all on fire above their brow. + +Whenas the car was o’er against me, straight. +Was heard a thund’ring, at whose voice it seem’d +The chosen multitude were stay’d; for there, +With the first ensigns, made they solemn halt. + + + + +CANTO XXX + + +Soon as the polar light, which never knows +Setting nor rising, nor the shadowy veil +Of other cloud than sin, fair ornament +Of the first heav’n, to duty each one there +Safely convoying, as that lower doth +The steersman to his port, stood firmly fix’d; +Forthwith the saintly tribe, who in the van +Between the Gryphon and its radiance came, +Did turn them to the car, as to their rest: +And one, as if commission’d from above, +In holy chant thrice shorted forth aloud: +“Come, spouse, from Libanus!” and all the rest +Took up the song—At the last audit so +The blest shall rise, from forth his cavern each +Uplifting lightly his new-vested flesh, +As, on the sacred litter, at the voice +Authoritative of that elder, sprang +A hundred ministers and messengers +Of life eternal. “Blessed thou! who com’st!” +And, “O,” they cried, “from full hands scatter ye +Unwith’ring lilies;” and, so saying, cast +Flowers over head and round them on all sides. + +I have beheld, ere now, at break of day, +The eastern clime all roseate, and the sky +Oppos’d, one deep and beautiful serene, +And the sun’s face so shaded, and with mists +Attemper’d at lids rising, that the eye +Long while endur’d the sight: thus in a cloud +Of flowers, that from those hands angelic rose, +And down, within and outside of the car, +Fell showering, in white veil with olive wreath’d, +A virgin in my view appear’d, beneath +Green mantle, rob’d in hue of living flame: +And o’er my Spirit, that in former days +Within her presence had abode so long, +No shudd’ring terror crept. Mine eyes no more +Had knowledge of her; yet there mov’d from her +A hidden virtue, at whose touch awak’d, +The power of ancient love was strong within me. + +No sooner on my vision streaming, smote +The heav’nly influence, which years past, and e’en +In childhood, thrill’d me, than towards Virgil I +Turn’d me to leftward, panting, like a babe, +That flees for refuge to his mother’s breast, +If aught have terrified or work’d him woe: +And would have cried: “There is no dram of blood, +That doth not quiver in me. The old flame +Throws out clear tokens of reviving fire:” +But Virgil had bereav’d us of himself, +Virgil, my best-lov’d father; Virgil, he +To whom I gave me up for safety: nor, +All, our prime mother lost, avail’d to save +My undew’d cheeks from blur of soiling tears. + +“Dante, weep not, that Virgil leaves thee: nay, +Weep thou not yet: behooves thee feel the edge +Of other sword, and thou shalt weep for that.” + +As to the prow or stern, some admiral +Paces the deck, inspiriting his crew, +When ’mid the sail-yards all hands ply aloof; +Thus on the left side of the car I saw, +(Turning me at the sound of mine own name, +Which here I am compell’d to register) +The virgin station’d, who before appeared +Veil’d in that festive shower angelical. + +Towards me, across the stream, she bent her eyes; +Though from her brow the veil descending, bound +With foliage of Minerva, suffer’d not +That I beheld her clearly; then with act +Full royal, still insulting o’er her thrall, +Added, as one, who speaking keepeth back +The bitterest saying, to conclude the speech: +“Observe me well. I am, in sooth, I am +Beatrice. What! and hast thou deign’d at last +Approach the mountain? knewest not, O man! +Thy happiness is whole?” Down fell mine eyes +On the clear fount, but there, myself espying, +Recoil’d, and sought the greensward: such a weight +Of shame was on my forehead. With a mien +Of that stern majesty, which doth surround +mother’s presence to her awe-struck child, +She look’d; a flavour of such bitterness +Was mingled in her pity. There her words +Brake off, and suddenly the angels sang: +“In thee, O gracious Lord, my hope hath been:” +But went no farther than, “Thou Lord, hast set +My feet in ample room.” As snow, that lies +Amidst the living rafters on the back +Of Italy congeal’d when drifted high +And closely pil’d by rough Sclavonian blasts, +Breathe but the land whereon no shadow falls, +And straightway melting it distils away, +Like a fire-wasted taper: thus was I, +Without a sigh or tear, or ever these +Did sing, that with the chiming of heav’n’s sphere, +Still in their warbling chime: but when the strain +Of dulcet symphony, express’d for me +Their soft compassion, more than could the words +“Virgin, why so consum’st him?” then the ice, +Congeal’d about my bosom, turn’d itself +To spirit and water, and with anguish forth +Gush’d through the lips and eyelids from the heart. + +Upon the chariot’s right edge still she stood, +Immovable, and thus address’d her words +To those bright semblances with pity touch’d: +“Ye in th’ eternal day your vigils keep, +So that nor night nor slumber, with close stealth, +Conveys from you a single step in all +The goings on of life: thence with more heed +I shape mine answer, for his ear intended, +Who there stands weeping, that the sorrow now +May equal the transgression. Not alone +Through operation of the mighty orbs, +That mark each seed to some predestin’d aim, +As with aspect or fortunate or ill +The constellations meet, but through benign +Largess of heav’nly graces, which rain down +From such a height, as mocks our vision, this man +Was in the freshness of his being, such, +So gifted virtually, that in him +All better habits wond’rously had thriv’d. +The more of kindly strength is in the soil, +So much doth evil seed and lack of culture +Mar it the more, and make it run to wildness. +These looks sometime upheld him; for I show’d +My youthful eyes, and led him by their light +In upright walking. Soon as I had reach’d +The threshold of my second age, and chang’d +My mortal for immortal, then he left me, +And gave himself to others. When from flesh +To spirit I had risen, and increase +Of beauty and of virtue circled me, +I was less dear to him, and valued less. +His steps were turn’d into deceitful ways, +Following false images of good, that make +No promise perfect. Nor avail’d me aught +To sue for inspirations, with the which, +I, both in dreams of night, and otherwise, +Did call him back; of them so little reck’d him, +Such depth he fell, that all device was short +Of his preserving, save that he should view +The children of perdition. To this end +I visited the purlieus of the dead: +And one, who hath conducted him thus high, +Receiv’d my supplications urg’d with weeping. +It were a breaking of God’s high decree, +If Lethe should be past, and such food tasted +Without the cost of some repentant tear.” + + + + +CANTO XXXI + + +“O Thou!” her words she thus without delay +Resuming, turn’d their point on me, to whom +They but with lateral edge seem’d harsh before, +‘Say thou, who stand’st beyond the holy stream, +If this be true. A charge so grievous needs +Thine own avowal.” On my faculty +Such strange amazement hung, the voice expir’d +Imperfect, ere its organs gave it birth. + +A little space refraining, then she spake: +“What dost thou muse on? Answer me. The wave +On thy remembrances of evil yet +Hath done no injury.” A mingled sense +Of fear and of confusion, from my lips +Did such a “Yea “ produce, as needed help +Of vision to interpret. As when breaks +In act to be discharg’d, a cross-bow bent +Beyond its pitch, both nerve and bow o’erstretch’d, +The flagging weapon feebly hits the mark; +Thus, tears and sighs forth gushing, did I burst +Beneath the heavy load, and thus my voice +Was slacken’d on its way. She straight began: +“When my desire invited thee to love +The good, which sets a bound to our aspirings, +What bar of thwarting foss or linked chain +Did meet thee, that thou so should’st quit the hope +Of further progress, or what bait of ease +Or promise of allurement led thee on +Elsewhere, that thou elsewhere should’st rather wait?” + +A bitter sigh I drew, then scarce found voice +To answer, hardly to these sounds my lips +Gave utterance, wailing: “Thy fair looks withdrawn, +Things present, with deceitful pleasures, turn’d +My steps aside.” She answering spake: “Hadst thou +Been silent, or denied what thou avow’st, +Thou hadst not hid thy sin the more: such eye +Observes it. But whene’er the sinner’s cheek +Breaks forth into the precious-streaming tears +Of self-accusing, in our court the wheel +Of justice doth run counter to the edge. +Howe’er that thou may’st profit by thy shame +For errors past, and that henceforth more strength +May arm thee, when thou hear’st the Siren-voice, +Lay thou aside the motive to this grief, +And lend attentive ear, while I unfold +How opposite a way my buried flesh +Should have impell’d thee. Never didst thou spy +In art or nature aught so passing sweet, +As were the limbs, that in their beauteous frame +Enclos’d me, and are scatter’d now in dust. +If sweetest thing thus fail’d thee with my death, +What, afterward, of mortal should thy wish +Have tempted? When thou first hadst felt the dart +Of perishable things, in my departing +For better realms, thy wing thou should’st have prun’d +To follow me, and never stoop’d again +To ’bide a second blow for a slight girl, +Or other gaud as transient and as vain. +The new and inexperienc’d bird awaits, +Twice it may be, or thrice, the fowler’s aim; +But in the sight of one, whose plumes are full, +In vain the net is spread, the arrow wing’d.” + +I stood, as children silent and asham’d +Stand, list’ning, with their eyes upon the earth, +Acknowledging their fault and self-condemn’d. +And she resum’d: “If, but to hear thus pains thee, +Raise thou thy beard, and lo! what sight shall do!” + +With less reluctance yields a sturdy holm, +Rent from its fibers by a blast, that blows +From off the pole, or from Iarbas’ land, +Than I at her behest my visage rais’d: +And thus the face denoting by the beard, +I mark’d the secret sting her words convey’d. + +No sooner lifted I mine aspect up, +Than downward sunk that vision I beheld +Of goodly creatures vanish; and mine eyes +Yet unassur’d and wavering, bent their light +On Beatrice. Towards the animal, +Who joins two natures in one form, she turn’d, +And, even under shadow of her veil, +And parted by the verdant rill, that flow’d +Between, in loveliness appear’d as much +Her former self surpassing, as on earth +All others she surpass’d. Remorseful goads +Shot sudden through me. Each thing else, the more +Its love had late beguil’d me, now the more +I Was loathsome. On my heart so keenly smote +The bitter consciousness, that on the ground +O’erpower’d I fell: and what my state was then, +She knows who was the cause. When now my strength +Flow’d back, returning outward from the heart, +The lady, whom alone I first had seen, +I found above me. “Loose me not,” she cried: +“Loose not thy hold;” and lo! had dragg’d me high +As to my neck into the stream, while she, +Still as she drew me after, swept along, +Swift as a shuttle, bounding o’er the wave. + +The blessed shore approaching then was heard +So sweetly, “Tu asperges me,” that I +May not remember, much less tell the sound. +The beauteous dame, her arms expanding, clasp’d +My temples, and immerg’d me, where ’twas fit +The wave should drench me: and thence raising up, +Within the fourfold dance of lovely nymphs +Presented me so lav’d, and with their arm +They each did cover me. “Here are we nymphs, +And in the heav’n are stars. Or ever earth +Was visited of Beatrice, we +Appointed for her handmaids, tended on her. +We to her eyes will lead thee; but the light +Of gladness that is in them, well to scan, +Those yonder three, of deeper ken than ours, +Thy sight shall quicken.” Thus began their song; +And then they led me to the Gryphon’s breast, +While, turn’d toward us, Beatrice stood. +“Spare not thy vision. We have stationed thee +Before the emeralds, whence love erewhile +Hath drawn his weapons on thee. “As they spake, +A thousand fervent wishes riveted +Mine eyes upon her beaming eyes, that stood +Still fix’d toward the Gryphon motionless. +As the sun strikes a mirror, even thus +Within those orbs the twofold being, shone, +For ever varying, in one figure now +Reflected, now in other. Reader! muse +How wond’rous in my sight it seem’d to mark +A thing, albeit steadfast in itself, +Yet in its imag’d semblance mutable. + +Full of amaze, and joyous, while my soul +Fed on the viand, whereof still desire +Grows with satiety, the other three +With gesture, that declar’d a loftier line, +Advanc’d: to their own carol on they came +Dancing in festive ring angelical. + +“Turn, Beatrice!” was their song: “O turn +Thy saintly sight on this thy faithful one, +Who to behold thee many a wearisome pace +Hath measur’d. Gracious at our pray’r vouchsafe +Unveil to him thy cheeks: that he may mark +Thy second beauty, now conceal’d.” O splendour! +O sacred light eternal! who is he +So pale with musing in Pierian shades, +Or with that fount so lavishly imbued, +Whose spirit should not fail him in th’ essay +To represent thee such as thou didst seem, +When under cope of the still-chiming heaven +Thou gav’st to open air thy charms reveal’d. + + + + +CANTO XXXII + + +Mine eyes with such an eager coveting, +Were bent to rid them of their ten years’ thirst, +No other sense was waking: and e’en they +Were fenc’d on either side from heed of aught; +So tangled in its custom’d toils that smile +Of saintly brightness drew me to itself, +When forcibly toward the left my sight +The sacred virgins turn’d; for from their lips +I heard the warning sounds: “Too fix’d a gaze!” + +Awhile my vision labor’d; as when late +Upon the’ o’erstrained eyes the sun hath smote: +But soon to lesser object, as the view +Was now recover’d (lesser in respect +To that excess of sensible, whence late +I had perforce been sunder’d) on their right +I mark’d that glorious army wheel, and turn, +Against the sun and sev’nfold lights, their front. +As when, their bucklers for protection rais’d, +A well-rang’d troop, with portly banners curl’d, +Wheel circling, ere the whole can change their ground: +E’en thus the goodly regiment of heav’n +Proceeding, all did pass us, ere the car +Had slop’d his beam. Attendant at the wheels +The damsels turn’d; and on the Gryphon mov’d +The sacred burden, with a pace so smooth, +No feather on him trembled. The fair dame +Who through the wave had drawn me, companied +By Statius and myself, pursued the wheel, +Whose orbit, rolling, mark’d a lesser arch. + +Through the high wood, now void (the more her blame, +Who by the serpent was beguil’d) I past +With step in cadence to the harmony +Angelic. Onward had we mov’d, as far +Perchance as arrow at three several flights +Full wing’d had sped, when from her station down +Descended Beatrice. With one voice +All murmur’d “Adam,” circling next a plant +Despoil’d of flowers and leaf on every bough. +Its tresses, spreading more as more they rose, +Were such, as ’midst their forest wilds for height +The Indians might have gaz’d at. “Blessed thou! +Gryphon, whose beak hath never pluck’d that tree +Pleasant to taste: for hence the appetite +Was warp’d to evil.” Round the stately trunk +Thus shouted forth the rest, to whom return’d +The animal twice-gender’d: “Yea: for so +The generation of the just are sav’d.” +And turning to the chariot-pole, to foot +He drew it of the widow’d branch, and bound +There left unto the stock whereon it grew. + +As when large floods of radiance from above +Stream, with that radiance mingled, which ascends +Next after setting of the scaly sign, +Our plants then burgeon, and each wears anew +His wonted colours, ere the sun have yok’d +Beneath another star his flamy steeds; +Thus putting forth a hue, more faint than rose, +And deeper than the violet, was renew’d +The plant, erewhile in all its branches bare. + +Unearthly was the hymn, which then arose. +I understood it not, nor to the end +Endur’d the harmony. Had I the skill +To pencil forth, how clos’d th’ unpitying eyes +Slumb’ring, when Syrinx warbled, (eyes that paid +So dearly for their watching,) then like painter, +That with a model paints, I might design +The manner of my falling into sleep. +But feign who will the slumber cunningly; +I pass it by to when I wak’d, and tell +How suddenly a flash of splendour rent +The curtain of my sleep, and one cries out: +“Arise, what dost thou?” As the chosen three, +On Tabor’s mount, admitted to behold +The blossoming of that fair tree, whose fruit +Is coveted of angels, and doth make +Perpetual feast in heaven, to themselves +Returning at the word, whence deeper sleeps +Were broken, that they their tribe diminish’d saw, +Both Moses and Elias gone, and chang’d +The stole their master wore: thus to myself +Returning, over me beheld I stand +The piteous one, who cross the stream had brought +My steps. “And where,” all doubting, I exclaim’d, +“Is Beatrice?”—“See her,” she replied, +“Beneath the fresh leaf seated on its root. +Behold th’ associate choir that circles her. +The others, with a melody more sweet +And more profound, journeying to higher realms, +Upon the Gryphon tend.” If there her words +Were clos’d, I know not; but mine eyes had now +Ta’en view of her, by whom all other thoughts +Were barr’d admittance. On the very ground +Alone she sat, as she had there been left +A guard upon the wain, which I beheld +Bound to the twyform beast. The seven nymphs +Did make themselves a cloister round about her, +And in their hands upheld those lights secure +From blast septentrion and the gusty south. + +“A little while thou shalt be forester here: +And citizen shalt be forever with me, +Of that true Rome, wherein Christ dwells a Roman +To profit the misguided world, keep now +Thine eyes upon the car; and what thou seest, +Take heed thou write, returning to that place.” + +Thus Beatrice: at whose feet inclin’d +Devout, at her behest, my thought and eyes, +I, as she bade, directed. Never fire, +With so swift motion, forth a stormy cloud +Leap’d downward from the welkin’s farthest bound, +As I beheld the bird of Jove descending +Pounce on the tree, and, as he rush’d, the rind, +Disparting crush beneath him, buds much more +And leaflets. On the car with all his might +He struck, whence, staggering like a ship, it reel’d, +At random driv’n, to starboard now, o’ercome, +And now to larboard, by the vaulting waves. + +Next springing up into the chariot’s womb +A fox I saw, with hunger seeming pin’d +Of all good food. But, for his ugly sins +The saintly maid rebuking him, away +Scamp’ring he turn’d, fast as his hide-bound corpse +Would bear him. Next, from whence before he came, +I saw the eagle dart into the hull +O’ th’ car, and leave it with his feathers lin’d; +And then a voice, like that which issues forth +From heart with sorrow riv’d, did issue forth +From heav’n, and, “O poor bark of mine!” it cried, +“How badly art thou freighted!” Then, it seem’d, +That the earth open’d between either wheel, +And I beheld a dragon issue thence, +That through the chariot fix’d his forked train; +And like a wasp that draggeth back the sting, +So drawing forth his baleful train, he dragg’d +Part of the bottom forth, and went his way +Exulting. What remain’d, as lively turf +With green herb, so did clothe itself with plumes, +Which haply had with purpose chaste and kind +Been offer’d; and therewith were cloth’d the wheels, +Both one and other, and the beam, so quickly +A sigh were not breath’d sooner. Thus transform’d, +The holy structure, through its several parts, +Did put forth heads, three on the beam, and one +On every side; the first like oxen horn’d, +But with a single horn upon their front +The four. Like monster sight hath never seen. +O’er it methought there sat, secure as rock +On mountain’s lofty top, a shameless whore, +Whose ken rov’d loosely round her. At her side, +As ’twere that none might bear her off, I saw +A giant stand; and ever, and anon +They mingled kisses. But, her lustful eyes +Chancing on me to wander, that fell minion +Scourg’d her from head to foot all o’er; then full +Of jealousy, and fierce with rage, unloos’d +The monster, and dragg’d on, so far across +The forest, that from me its shades alone +Shielded the harlot and the new-form’d brute. + + + + +CANTO XXXIII + + +“The heathen, Lord! are come!” responsive thus, +The trinal now, and now the virgin band +Quaternion, their sweet psalmody began, +Weeping; and Beatrice listen’d, sad +And sighing, to the song’, in such a mood, +That Mary, as she stood beside the cross, +Was scarce more chang’d. But when they gave her place +To speak, then, risen upright on her feet, +She, with a colour glowing bright as fire, +Did answer: “Yet a little while, and ye +Shall see me not; and, my beloved sisters, +Again a little while, and ye shall see me.” + +Before her then she marshall’d all the seven, +And, beck’ning only motion’d me, the dame, +And that remaining sage, to follow her. + +So on she pass’d; and had not set, I ween, +Her tenth step to the ground, when with mine eyes +Her eyes encounter’d; and, with visage mild, +“So mend thy pace,” she cried, “that if my words +Address thee, thou mayst still be aptly plac’d +To hear them.” Soon as duly to her side +I now had hasten’d: “Brother!” she began, +“Why mak’st thou no attempt at questioning, +As thus we walk together?” Like to those +Who, speaking with too reverent an awe +Before their betters, draw not forth the voice +Alive unto their lips, befell me shell +That I in sounds imperfect thus began: +“Lady! what I have need of, that thou know’st, +And what will suit my need.” She answering thus: +“Of fearfulness and shame, I will, that thou +Henceforth do rid thee: that thou speak no more, +As one who dreams. Thus far be taught of me: +The vessel, which thou saw’st the serpent break, +Was and is not: let him, who hath the blame, +Hope not to scare God’s vengeance with a sop. +Without an heir for ever shall not be +That eagle, he, who left the chariot plum’d, +Which monster made it first and next a prey. +Plainly I view, and therefore speak, the stars +E’en now approaching, whose conjunction, free +From all impediment and bar, brings on +A season, in the which, one sent from God, +(Five hundred, five, and ten, do mark him out) +That foul one, and th’ accomplice of her guilt, +The giant, both shall slay. And if perchance +My saying, dark as Themis or as Sphinx, +Fail to persuade thee, (since like them it foils +The intellect with blindness) yet ere long +Events shall be the Naiads, that will solve +This knotty riddle, and no damage light +On flock or field. Take heed; and as these words +By me are utter’d, teach them even so +To those who live that life, which is a race +To death: and when thou writ’st them, keep in mind +Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, +That twice hath now been spoil’d. This whoso robs, +This whoso plucks, with blasphemy of deed +Sins against God, who for his use alone +Creating hallow’d it. For taste of this, +In pain and in desire, five thousand years +And upward, the first soul did yearn for him, +Who punish’d in himself the fatal gust. + +“Thy reason slumbers, if it deem this height +And summit thus inverted of the plant, +Without due cause: and were not vainer thoughts, +As Elsa’s numbing waters, to thy soul, +And their fond pleasures had not dyed it dark +As Pyramus the mulberry, thou hadst seen, +In such momentous circumstance alone, +God’s equal justice morally implied +In the forbidden tree. But since I mark thee +In understanding harden’d into stone, +And, to that hardness, spotted too and stain’d, +So that thine eye is dazzled at my word, +I will, that, if not written, yet at least +Painted thou take it in thee, for the cause, +That one brings home his staff inwreath’d with palm. + +“I thus: “As wax by seal, that changeth not +Its impress, now is stamp’d my brain by thee. +But wherefore soars thy wish’d-for speech so high +Beyond my sight, that loses it the more, +The more it strains to reach it?”—“To the end +That thou mayst know,” she answer’d straight, “the school, +That thou hast follow’d; and how far behind, +When following my discourse, its learning halts: +And mayst behold your art, from the divine +As distant, as the disagreement is +’Twixt earth and heaven’s most high and rapturous orb.” + +“I not remember,” I replied, “that e’er +I was estrang’d from thee, nor for such fault +Doth conscience chide me.” Smiling she return’d: +“If thou canst, not remember, call to mind +How lately thou hast drunk of Lethe’s wave; +And, sure as smoke doth indicate a flame, +In that forgetfulness itself conclude +Blame from thy alienated will incurr’d. +From henceforth verily my words shall be +As naked as will suit them to appear +In thy unpractis’d view.” More sparkling now, +And with retarded course the sun possess’d +The circle of mid-day, that varies still +As th’ aspect varies of each several clime, +When, as one, sent in vaward of a troop +For escort, pauses, if perchance he spy +Vestige of somewhat strange and rare: so paus’d +The sev’nfold band, arriving at the verge +Of a dun umbrage hoar, such as is seen, +Beneath green leaves and gloomy branches, oft +To overbrow a bleak and alpine cliff. +And, where they stood, before them, as it seem’d, +Tigris and Euphrates both beheld, +Forth from one fountain issue; and, like friends, +Linger at parting. “O enlight’ning beam! +O glory of our kind! beseech thee say +What water this, which from one source deriv’d +Itself removes to distance from itself?” + +To such entreaty answer thus was made: +“Entreat Matilda, that she teach thee this.” + +And here, as one, who clears himself of blame +Imputed, the fair dame return’d: “Of me +He this and more hath learnt; and I am safe +That Lethe’s water hath not hid it from him.” + +And Beatrice: “Some more pressing care +That oft the memory ’reeves, perchance hath made +His mind’s eye dark. But lo! where Eunoe cows! +Lead thither; and, as thou art wont, revive +His fainting virtue.” As a courteous spirit, +That proffers no excuses, but as soon +As he hath token of another’s will, +Makes it his own; when she had ta’en me, thus +The lovely maiden mov’d her on, and call’d +To Statius with an air most lady-like: +“Come thou with him.” Were further space allow’d, +Then, Reader, might I sing, though but in part, +That beverage, with whose sweetness I had ne’er +Been sated. But, since all the leaves are full, +Appointed for this second strain, mine art +With warning bridle checks me. I return’d +From the most holy wave, regenerate, +If ’en as new plants renew’d with foliage new, +Pure and made apt for mounting to the stars. + + + + +NOTES TO PURGATORY + +CANTO I + + +Verse 1. O’er better waves.] Berni, Orl. Inn. L 2. c. i. +Per correr maggior acqua alza le vele, +O debil navicella del mio ingegno. + +v. 11. Birds of chattering note.] For the fable of the daughters of +Pierus, who challenged the muses to sing, and were by them changed into +magpies, see Ovid, Met. 1. v. fab. 5. + +v. 19. Planet.] Venus. + +v. 20. Made all the orient laugh.] Hence Chaucer, Knight’s Tale: And +all the orisont laugheth of the sight. + +It is sometimes read “orient.” + +v. 24. Four stars.] Symbolical of the four cardinal virtues, Prudence +Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. See Canto XXXI v. 105. + +v. 30. The wain.] Charles’s wain, or Bootes. + +v. 31. An old man.] Cato. + +v. 92. Venerable plumes.] The same metaphor has occurred in Hell Canto +XX. v. 41: + +—the plumes, That mark’d the better sex. + +It is used by Ford in the Lady’s Trial, a. 4. s. 2. + +Now the down +Of softness is exchang’d for plumes of age. + +v. 58. The farthest gloom.] L’ultima sera. Ariosto, Oroando Furioso c. +xxxiv st. 59: Che non hen visto ancor l’ultima sera. + +And Filicaja, c. ix. Al Sonno. +L’ultima sera. + +v. 79. Marcia.] +Da fredera prisci +Illibata tori: da tantum nomen inane +Connubil: liceat tumulo scripsisse, Catonis +Martia +Lucan, Phars. 1. ii. 344. + +v. 110. I spy’d the trembling of the ocean stream.] Connubil il +tremolar della marina. + +Trissino, in the Sofonisba.] +E resta in tremolar l’onda marina + +And Fortiguerra, Rleelardetto, c. ix. st. 17. —visto il tremolar della +marine. + +v. 135. another.] From Virg, Aen. 1. vi. 143. Primo avulso non deficit +alter + +CANTO II + + +v. 1. Now had the sun.] Dante was now antipodal to Jerusalem, so that +while the sun was setting with respect to that place which he supposes +to be the middle of the inhabited earth, to him it was rising. + +v. 6. The scales.] The constellation Libra. + +v. 35. Winnowing the air.] Trattando l’acre con l’eterne penne. + +80 Filicaja, canz. viii. st. 11. Ma trattar l’acre coll’ eterne plume + +v. 45. In exitu.] “When Israel came out of Egypt.” Ps. cxiv. + +v. 75. Thrice my hands.] +Ter conatus ibi eollo dare brachia eircum, +Ter frustra eomprensa manus effugit imago, +Par levibus ventis voluerique simillima sommo. +Virg. Aen. ii. 794. + +Compare Homer, Od. xl. 205. + +v. 88. My Casella.] A Florentine, celebrated for his skill in music, +“in whose company,” says Landine, “Dante often recreated his spirits +wearied by severe studies.” See Dr. Burney’s History of Music, vol. ii. +c. iv. p. 322. Milton has a fine allusion to this meeting in his sonnet +to Henry Lawes. + +v. 90. Hath so much time been lost.] Casella had been dead some years +but was only just arrived. + +v. 91. He.] The eonducting angel. + +v. 94. These three months past.] Since the time of the Jubilee, during +which all spirits not condemned to eternal punishment, were supposed to +pass over to Purgatory as soon as they pleased. + +v. 96. The shore.] Ostia. + +v. 170. “Love that discourses in my thoughts.”] “Amor che nella mente +mi ragiona.” The first verse of a eanzone or song in the Convito of +Dante, which he again cites in his Treatise de Vulg. Eloq. 1. ii. c. +vi. + +CANTO III + + +v. 9. How doth a little failing wound thee sore.] (Ch’era al cor +picciol fallo amaro morso. Tasso, G. L. c. x. st. 59. + +v. 11. Haste, that mars all decency of act. Aristotle in his Physiog +iii. reekons it among the “the signs of an impudent man,” that he is +“quick in his motions.” Compare Sophoeles, Electra, 878. + +v. 26. To Naples.] Virgil died at Brundusium, from whence his body is +said to have been removed to Naples. + +v. 38. Desiring fruitlessly.] See H. Canto IV, 39. + +v. 49. ’Twixt Lerice and Turbia.] At that time the two extremities of +the Genoese republic, the former on the east, the latter on the west. A +very ingenious writer has had occasion, for a different purpose, to +mention one of these places as remarkably secluded by its mountainous +situation “On an eminence among the mountains, between the two little +cities, Nice and Manoca, is the village of Torbia, a name formed from +the Greek [GREEK HERE] Mitford on the Harmony of Language, sect. x. p. +351. 2d edit. + +v. 78. As sheep.] The imitative nature of these animals supplies our +Poet with another comparison in his Convito Opere, t. i. p 34. Ediz. +Ven. 1793. + +v. 110. Manfredi. King of Naples and Sicily, and the natural son of +Frederick II. He was lively end agreeable in his manners, and delighted +in poetry, music, and dancing. But he was luxurious and ambitious. Void +of religion, and in his philosophy an Epicurean. See G. Villani l. vi. +c. xlvii. and Mr. Matthias’s Tiraboschi, v. I. p. 38. He fell in the +battle with Charles of Anjou in 1265, alluded to in Canto XXVIII, of +Hell, v. 13, “Dying, excommunicated, King Charles did allow of his +being buried in sacred ground, but he was interred near the bridge of +Benevento, and on his grave there was cast a stone by every one of the +army whence there was formed a great mound of stones. But some ave +said, that afterwards, by command of the Pope. the Bishop of Cosenza +took up his body and sent it out of the kingdom, because it was the +land of the church, and that it was buried by the river Verde, on the +borders of the kingdom and of Carapagna. this, however, we do not +affirm.” G. Villani, Hist. l. vii. c. 9. + +v. 111. Costanza.] See Paradise Canto III. v. 121. + +v. 112. My fair daughter.] Costanza, the daughter of Manfredi, and wife +of Peter III. King of Arragon, by whom she was mother to Frederick, +King of Sicily and James, King of Arragon With the latter of these she +was at Rome 1296. See G. Villani, 1. viii. c. 18. and notes to Canto +VII. + +v. 122. Clement.] Pope Clement IV. + +v. 127. The stream of Verde.] A river near Ascoli, that falls into he +Toronto. The “xtinguished lights “ formed part of the ceremony t the +interment of one excommunicated. + +v. 130. Hope.] Mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde. Tasso, G. L. +c. xix. st. 53. —infin che verde e fior di speme. + +CANTO IV + + +v. 1. When.] It must be owned the beginning of this Canto is somewhat +obscure. Bellutello refers, for an elucidation of it, to the reasoning +of Statius in the twenty-fifth canto. Perhaps some illustration may be +derived from the following, passage in South’s Sermons, in which I have +ventured to supply the words between crotchets that seemed to be +wanting to complete the sense. Now whether these three, judgement +memory, and invention, are three distinct things, both in being +distinguished from one another, and likewise from the substance of the +soul itself, considered without any such faculties, (or whether the +soul be one individual substance) but only receiving these several +denominations rom the several respects arising from the several actions +exerted immediately by itself upon several objects, or several +qualities of the same object, I say whether of these it is, is not easy +to decide, and it is well that it is not necessary Aquinas, and most +with him, affirm the former, and Scotus with his followers the latter.” +Vol. iv. Serm. 1. + +v. 23. Sanleo.] A fortress on the summit of Montefeltro. + +v. 24. Noli.] In the Genoese territory, between Finale and Savona. + +v. 25. Bismantua.] A steep mountain in the territory of Reggio. + +v. 55. From the left.] Vellutello observes an imitation of Lucan in +this passage: + +Ignotum vobis, Arabes, venistis in orbem, +Umbras mirati nemornm non ire sinistras. +Phars. s. 1. iii. 248 + +v. 69 Thou wilt see.] “If you consider that this mountain of Purgatory +and that of Sion are antipodal to each other, you will perceive that +the sun must rise on opposite sides of the respective eminences.” + +v. 119. Belacqua.] Concerning this man, the commentators afford no +information. + +CANTO V + + +v. 14. Be as a tower.] Sta ome torre ferma + +Berni, Orl. Inn. 1. 1. c. xvi. st. 48: +In quei due piedi sta fermo il gigante +Com’ una torre in mezzo d’un castello. + +And Milton, P. L. b. i. 591. +Stood like a tower. + +v. 36. Ne’er saw I fiery vapours.] Imitated by Tasso, G. L, c. +xix t. 62: +Tal suol fendendo liquido sereno +Stella cader della gran madre in seno. + +And by Milton, P. L. b. iv. 558: +Swift as a shooting star +In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fir’d +Impress the air. + +v. 67. That land.] The Marca d’Ancona, between Romagna and Apulia, the +kingdom of Charles of Anjou. + +v. 76. From thence I came.] Giacopo del Cassero, a citizen of Fano who +having spoken ill of Azzo da Este, Marquis of Ferrara, was by his +orders put to death. Giacopo, was overtaken by the assassins at Oriaco +a place near the Brenta, from whence, if he had fled towards Mira, +higher up on that river, instead of making for the marsh on the sea +shore, he might have escaped. + +v. 75. Antenor’s land.] The city of Padua, said to be founded by +Antenor. + +v. 87. Of Montefeltro I.] Buonconte (son of Guido da Montefeltro, whom +we have had in the twenty-seventh Canto of Hell) fell in the battle of +Campaldino (1289), fighting on the side of the Aretini. + +v. 88. Giovanna.] Either the wife, or kinswoman, of Buonconte. + +v. 91. The hermit’s seat.] The hermitage of Camaldoli. + +v. 95. Where its name is cancel’d.] That is, between Bibbiena and +Poppi, where the Archiano falls into the Arno. + +v. 115. From Pratomagno to the mountain range.] From Pratomagno now +called Prato Vecchio (which divides the Valdarno from Casentino) as far +as to the Apennine. + +v. 131. Pia.] She is said to have been a Siennese lady, of the family +of Tolommei, secretly made away with by her husband, Nello della +Pietra, of the same city, in Maremma, where he had some possessions. + +CANTO VI + + +v. 14. Of Arezzo him.] Benincasa of Arezzo, eminent for his skill in +jurisprudence, who, having condemned to death Turrino da Turrita +brother of Ghino di Tacco, for his robberies in Maremma, was murdered +by Ghino, in an apartment of his own house, in the presence of many +witnesses. Ghino was not only suffered to escape in safety, but (as the +commentators inform us) obtained so high a reputation by the liberality +with which he was accustomed to dispense the fruits of his plunder, and +treated those who fell into his hands with so much courtesy, that he +was afterwards invited to Rome, and knighted by Boniface VIII. A story +is told of him by Boccaccio, G. x. N. 2. + +v. 15. Him beside.] Ciacco de’ Tariatti of Arezzo. He is said to have +been carried by his horse into the Arno, and there drowned, while he +was in pursuit of certain of his enemies. + +v. 17. Frederic Novello.] Son of the Conte Guido da Battifolle, and +slain by one of the family of Bostoli. + +v. 18. Of Pisa he.] Farinata de’ Scornigiani of Pisa. His father +Marzuco, who had entered the order of the Frati Minori, so entirely +overcame the feelings of resentment, that he even kissed the hands of +the slayer of his son, and, as he was following the funeral, exhorted +his kinsmen to reconciliation. + +v. 20. Count 0rso.] Son of Napoleone da Cerbaia, slain by Alberto da +Mangona, his uncle. + +v. 23. Peter de la Brosse.] Secretary of Philip III of France. The +courtiers, envying the high place which he held in the king’s favour, +prevailed on Mary of Brabant to charge him falsely with an attempt upon +her person for which supposed crime he suffered death. So say the +Italian commentators. Henault represents the matter very differently: +“Pierre de la Brosse, formerly barber to St. Louis, afterwards the +favorite of Philip, fearing the too great attachment of the king for +his wife Mary, accuses this princess of having poisoned Louis, eldest +son of Philip, by his first marriage. This calumny is discovered by a +nun of Nivelle in Flanders. La Brosse is hung.” Abrege Chron. t. 275, +&c. + +v. 30. In thy text.] He refers to Virgil, Aen. 1, vi. 376. +Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando, 37. The sacred height +Of judgment. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, a. ii. s. 2. +If he, which is the top of judgment + +v. 66. Eyeing us as a lion on his watch.] A guisa di Leon quando si +posa. A line taken by Tasso, G. L. c. x. st. 56. + +v. 76. Sordello.] The history of Sordello’s life is wrapt in the +obscurity of romance. That he distinguished himself by his skill in +Provencal poetry is certain. It is probable that he was born towards +the end of the twelfth, and died about the middle of the succeeding +century. Tiraboschi has taken much pains to sift all the notices he +could collect relating to him. Honourable mention of his name is made +by our Poet in the Treatise de Vulg. Eloq. 1. i. c. 15. + +v. 76. Thou inn of grief.] +Thou most beauteous inn +Why should hard-favour’d grief be lodg’d in thee? +Shakespeare, Richard II a. 5. s. 1. + +v. 89. Justinian’s hand.] “What avails it that Justinian delivered thee +from the Goths, and reformed thy laws, if thou art no longer under the +control of his successors in the empire?” + +v. 94. That which God commands.] He alludes to the precept- “Render +unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” + +v. 98. O German Albert!] The Emperor Albert I. succeeded Adolphus in +1298, and was murdered in 1308. See Par Canto XIX 114 v. 103. Thy +successor.] The successor of Albert was Henry of Luxembourg, by whose +interposition in the affairs of Italy our Poet hoped to have been +reinstated in his native city. + +v. 101. Thy sire.] The Emperor Rodolph, too intent on increasing his +power in Germany to give much of his thoughts to Italy, “the garden of +the empire.” + +v. 107. Capulets and Montagues.] Our ears are so familiarized to the +names of these rival families in the language of Shakespeare, that I +have used them instead of the “Montecchi” and “Cappelletti.” + +v. 108. Philippeschi and Monaldi.] Two other rival families in Orvieto. + +v. 113. What safety, Santafiore can supply.] A place between Pisa and +Sienna. What he alludes to is so doubtful, that it is not certain +whether we should not read “come si cura”—” How Santafiore is +governed.” Perhaps the event related in the note to v. 58, Canto XI. +may be pointed at. + +v. 127. Marcellus.] +Un Marcel diventa +Ogni villan che parteggiando viene. +Repeated by Alamanni in his Coltivazione, 1. i. + +v. 51. I sick wretch.] Imitated by the Cardinal de Polignac in his +Anti-Lucretius, 1. i. 1052. + +Ceu lectum peragrat membris languentibus aeger +In latus alterne faevum dextrumque recumbens +Nec javat: inde oculos tollit resupinus in altum: +Nusquam inventa quies; semper quaesita: quod illi +Primum in deliciis fuerat, mox torquet et angit: +Nec morburm sanat, nec fallit taedia morbi. + +CANTO VII + + +v. 14. Where one of mean estate might clasp his lord.] Ariosto Orl. F. +c. xxiv. st. 19 + +E l’abbracciaro, ove il maggior s’abbraccia +Col capo nudo e col ginocchio chino. + +v. 31. The three holy virtues.] Faith, Hope and Charity. + +v. 32. The red.] Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. + +v. 72. Fresh emeralds.] +Under foot the violet, +Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay +Broider’d the ground, more colour’d than with stone +Of costliest emblem. +Milton, P. L. b. iv. 793 + +Compare Ariosto, Orl. F. c. xxxiv. st. 49. + +v. 79. Salve Regina.] The beginning of a prayer to the Virgin. It is +sufficient here to observe, that in similar instances I shall either +preserve the original Latin words or translate them, as it may seem +best to suit the purpose of the verse. + +v. 91. The Emperor Rodolph.] See the last Canto, v. 104. He died in +1291. + +v. 95. That country.] Bohemia. + +v. 97. Ottocar.] King of Bohemia, was killed in the battle of +Marchfield, fought with Rodolph, August 26, 1278. Winceslaus II. His +son,who succeeded him in the kingdom of Bohemia. died in 1305. He is +again taxed with luxury in the Paradise Canto XIX. 123. + +v. 101. That one with the nose deprest. ] Philip III of France, who +died in 1285, at Perpignan, in his retreat from Arragon. + +v. 102. Him of gentle look.] Henry of Naverre, father of Jane married +to Philip IV of France, whom Dante calls “mal di Francia” -“Gallia’s +bane.” + +v. 110. He so robust of limb.] Peter III called the Great, King of +Arragon, who died in 1285, leaving four sons, Alonzo, James, Frederick +and Peter. The two former succeeded him in the kingdom of Arragon, and +Frederick in that of Sicily. See G. Villani, 1. vii. c. 102. and +Mariana, I. xiv. c. 9. He is enumerated among the Provencal poets by +Millot, Hist. Litt. Des Troubadours, t. iii. p. 150. + +v. 111. Him of feature prominent.] “Dal maschio naso”-with the +masculine nose.” Charles I. King of Naples, Count of Anjou, and brother +of St. Lonis. He died in 1284. The annalist of Florence remarks, that +“there had been no sovereign of the house of France, since the time of +Charlemagne, by whom Charles was surpassed either in military renown, +and prowess, or in the loftiness of his understanding.” G. Villani, 1. +vii. c. 94. We shall, however, find many of his actions severely +reprobated in the twentieth Canto. + +v. 113. That stripling.] Either (as the old commentators suppose) +Alonzo III King of Arragon, the eldest son of Peter III who died in +1291, at the age of 27, or, according to Venturi, Peter the youngest +son. The former was a young prince of virtue sufficient to have +justified the eulogium and the hopes of Dante. + +See Mariana, 1. xiv. c. 14. + +v. 119. Rarely.] +Full well can the wise poet of Florence +That hight Dante, speaken in this sentence +Lo! in such manner rime is Dantes tale. +Full selde upriseth by his branches smale +Prowesse of man for God of his goodnesse +Woll that we claim of him our gentlenesse: +For of our elders may we nothing claime +But temporal thing, that men may hurt and maime. +Chaucer, Wife of Bathe’s Tale. + +Compare Homer, Od. b. ii. v. 276; Pindar, Nem. xi. 48 and +Euripides, Electra, 369. + +v. 122. To Charles.] “Al Nasuto.” -“Charles II King of Naples, is no +less inferior to his father Charles I. than James and Frederick to +theirs, Peter III.” + +v. 127. Costanza.] Widow of Peter III She has been already mentioned in +the third Canto, v. 112. By Beatrice and Margaret are probably meant +two of the daughters of Raymond Berenger, Count of Provence; the former +married to St. Louis of France, the latter to his brother Charles of +Anjou. See Paradise, Canto Vl. 135. Dante therefore considers Peter as +the most illustrious of the three monarchs. + +v. 129. Harry of England.] Henry III. + +v. 130. Better issue.] Edward l. of whose glory our Poet was perhaps a +witness, in his visit to England. + +v. 133. William, that brave Marquis.] William, Marquis of Monferrat, +was treacherously seized by his own subjects, at Alessandria, in +Lombardy, A.D. 1290, and ended his life in prison. See G. Villani, 1. +vii. c. 135. A war ensued between the people of Alessandria and those +of Monferrat and the Canavese. + +CANTO VIII + + +v. 6. That seems to mourn for the expiring day.] The curfew tolls the +knell of parting day. Gray’s Elegy. + +v. 13. Te Lucis Ante.] The beginning of one of the evening hymns. + +v. 36. As faculty.] + +My earthly by his heav’nly overpower’d + +* * * * +As with an object, that excels the sense, +Dazzled and spent. +Milton, P. L. b. viii. 457. + +v. 53. Nino, thou courteous judge.] Nino di Gallura de’ Visconti nephew +to Count Ugolino de’ Gherardeschi, and betrayed by him. See Notes to +Hell Canto XXXIII. + +v. 65. Conrad.] Currado Malaspina. + +v. 71 My Giovanna.] The daughter of Nino, and wife of Riccardo da +Cammino of Trevigi. + +v. 73. Her mother.] Beatrice, marchioness of Este wife of Nino, and +after his death married to Galeazzo de’ Visconti of Milan. + +v. 74. The white and wimpled folds.] The weeds of widowhood. + +v. 80. The viper.] The arms of Galeazzo and the ensign of the Milanese. + +v. 81. Shrill Gallura’s bird.] The cock was the ensign of Gallura, +Nino’s province in Sardinia. Hell, Canto XXII. 80. and Notes. + +v. 115. Valdimagra.] See Hell, Canto XXIV. 144. and Notes. + +v. 133. Sev’n times the tired sun.] “The sun shall not enter into the +constellation of Aries seven times more, before thou shalt have still +better cause for the good opinion thou expresses” of Valdimagra, in the +kind reception thou shalt there meet with.” Dante was hospitably +received by the Marchese Marcello Malaspina, during his banishment. +A.D. 1307. + +CANTO IX + + +v. 1. Now the fair consort of Tithonus old.] +La concubina di Titone antico. +So Tassoni, Secchia Rapita, c. viii. st. 15. +La puttanella del canuto amante. + +v. 5. Of that chill animal.] The scorpion. + +v. 14. Our minds.] Compare Hell, Canto XXVI. 7. + +v. 18. A golden-feathered eagle. ] Chaucer, in the house of Fame at the +conclusion of the first book and beginning of the second, represents +himself carried up by the “grim pawes” of a golden eagle. Much of his +description is closely imitated from Dante. + +v. 50. Lucia.] The enIightening, grace of heaven Hell, Canto II. 97. + +v. 85. The lowest stair.] By the white step is meant the distinctness +with which the conscience of the penitent reflects his offences, by the +burnt and cracked one, his contrition on, their account; and by that of +porphyry, the fervour with which he resolves on the future pursuit of +piety and virtue. Hence, no doubt, Milton describing “the gate of +heaven,” P. L. b. iii. 516. + +Each stair mysteriously was meant. + +v. 100. Seven times.] Seven P’s, to denote the seven sins (Peccata) of +which he was to be cleansed in his passage through purgatory. + +v. 115. One is more precious.] The golden key denotes the divine +authority by which the priest absolves the sinners the silver expresses +the learning and judgment requisite for the due discharge of that +office. + +v. 127. Harsh was the grating.] +On a sudden open fly +With impetuous recoil and jarring, sound +Th’ infernal doors, and on their hinges grate +Harsh thunder +Milton, P. L. b. ii 882 + +v. 128. The Turpeian.] +Protinus, abducto patuerunt temple Metello. +Tunc rupes Tarpeia sonat: magnoque reclusas +Testatur stridore fores: tune conditus imo +Eruitur tempo multis intactus ab annnis +Romani census populi, &c. +Lucan. Ph. 1. iii. 157. + +CANTO X + + +v. 6. That Wound.] Venturi justly observes, that the Padre d’Aquino has +misrepresented the sense of this passage in his translation. + +—dabat ascensum tendentibus ultra Scissa tremensque silex, tenuique +erratica motu. + +The verb “muover” is used in the same signification in the +Inferno, Canto XVIII. 21. + +Cosi da imo della roccia scogli +Moven. + +—from the rock’s low base Thus flinty paths advanc’d. + +In neither place is actual motion intended to be expressed. + +v. 52. That from unbidden. office awes mankind.] Seo 2 Sam. G. + +v 58. Preceding.] Ibid. 14, &c. + +v. 68. Gregory.] St. Gregory’s prayers are said to have delivered +Trajan from hell. See Paradise, Canto XX. 40. + +v. 69. Trajan the Emperor. For this story, Landino refers to two +writers, whom he calls “Heunando,” of France, by whom he means Elinand, +a monk and chronicler, in the reign of Philip Augustus, and +“Polycrato,” of England, by whom is meant John of Salisbury, author of +the Polycraticus de Curialium Nugis, in the twelfth century. The +passage in the text I find to be nearly a translation from that work, +1. v. c. 8. The original appears to be in Dio Cassius, where it is told +of the Emperor Hadrian, lib. I xix. [GREEK HERE] When a woman appeared +to him with a suit, as he was on a journey, at first he answered her, +‘I have no leisure,’ but she crying out to him, ‘then reign no longer’ +he turned about, and heard her cause.” + +v. 119. As to support.] Chillingworth, ch.vi. 54. speaks of “those +crouching anticks, which seem in great buildings to labour under the +weight they bear.” And Lord Shaftesbury has a similar illustration in +his Essay on Wit and Humour, p. 4. s. 3. + +CANTO XI + + +v. 1. 0 thou Mighty Father.] The first four lines are borrowed by +Pulci, Morg. Magg. c. vi. Dante, in his ‘Credo,’ has again versified +the Lord’s prayer. + +v. 58. I was of Latinum.] Omberto, the son of Guglielino Aldobrandeseo, +Count of Santafiore, in the territory of Sienna His arrogance provoked +his countrymen to such a pitch of fury against him, that he was +murdered by them at Campagnatico. + +v. 79. Oderigi.] The illuminator, or miniature painter, a friend of +Giotto and Dante + +v. 83. Bolognian Franco.] Franco of Bologna, who is said to have been a +pupil of Oderigi’s. + +v. 93. Cimabue.] Giovanni Cimabue, the restorer of painting, was born +at Florence, of a noble family, in 1240, and died in 1300. The passage +in the text is an illusion to his epitaph: + +Credidit ut Cimabos picturae castra tenere, +Sic tenuit vivens: nunc tenet astra poli. + +v. 95. The cry is Giotto’s.] In Giotto we have a proof at how early a +period the fine arts were encouraged in Italy. His talents were +discovered by Cimabue, while he was tending sheep for his father in the +neighbourhood of Florence, and he was afterwards patronized by Pope +Benedict XI and Robert King of Naples, and enjoyed the society and +friendship of Dante, whose likeness he has transmitted to posterity. He +died in 1336, at the age of 60. + +v. 96. One Guido from the other.] Guido Cavalcanti, the friend of our +Poet, (see Hell, Canto X. 59.) had eclipsed the literary fame of Guido +Guinicelli, of a noble family in Bologna, whom we shall meet with in +the twenty-sixth Canto and of whom frequent mention is made by our Poet +in his Treatise de Vulg. Eloq. Guinicelli died in 1276. Many of +Cavalcanti’s writings, hitherto in MS. are now publishing at Florence” +Esprit des Journaux, Jan. 1813. + +v. 97. He perhaps is born.] Some imagine, with much probability, that +Dante here augurs the greatness of his own poetical reputation. Others +have fancied that he prophesies the glory of Petrarch. But Petrarch was +not yet born. + +v. 136. suitor.] Provenzano salvani humbled himself so far for the sake +of one of his friends, who was detained in captivity by Charles I of +Sicily, as personally to supplicate the people of Sienna to contribute +the sum required by the king for his ransom: + +and this act of self-abasement atoned for his general ambition and +pride. + +v. 140. Thy neighbours soon.] “Thou wilt know in the time of thy +banishment, which is near at hand, what it is to solicit favours of +others and ‘tremble through every vein,’ lest they should be refused +thee.” + +CANTO XII + + +v. 26. The Thymbraen god.] Apollo + +Si modo, quem perhibes, pater est Thymbraeus Apollo. Virg. Georg. iv. +323. + +v. 37. Mars.] + +With such a grace, +The giants that attempted to scale heaven +When they lay dead on the Phlegren plain +Mars did appear to Jove. +Beaumont and Fletcher, The Prophetess, a. 2. s. 3. + +v. 42. O Rehoboam.] 1 Kings, c. xii. 18. + +v. 46. A1cmaeon.] Virg. Aen. l. vi. 445, and Homer, Od. xi. 325. + +v. 48. Sennacherib.] 2 Kings, c. xix. 37. + +v. 58. What master of the pencil or the style.] —inimitable on earth By +model, or by shading pencil drawn. Milton, P. L. b. iii. 509. + +v. 94. The chapel stands.] The church of San Miniato in Florence +situated on a height that overlooks the Arno, where it is crossed by +the bridge Rubaconte, so called from Messer Rubaconte da Mandelia, of +Milan chief magistrate of Florence, by whom the bridge was founded in +1237. See G. Villani, 1. vi. c. 27. + +v. 96. The well-guided city] This is said ironically of Florence. + +v. 99. The registry.] In allusion to certain instances of fraud +committed with respect to the public accounts and measures See Paradise +Canto XVI. 103. + +CANTO XIII + + +v. 26. They have no wine.] John, ii. 3. These words of the Virgin are +referred to as an instance of charity. + +v. 29. Orestes] Alluding to his friendship with Pylades + +v. 32. Love ye those have wrong’d you.] Matt. c. v. 44. + +v. 33. The scourge.] “The chastisement of envy consists in hearing +examples of the opposite virtue, charity. As a curb and restraint on +this vice, you will presently hear very different sounds, those of +threatening and punishment.” + +v. 87. Citizens Of one true city.] “For here we have no continuing +city, but we seek to come.” Heb. C. xiii. 14. + +v. 101. Sapia.] A lady of Sienna, who, living in exile at Colle, was so +overjoyed at a defeat which her countrymen sustained near that place +that she declared nothing more was wanting to make her die contented. + +v. 114. The merlin.] The story of the merlin is that having been +induced by a gleam of fine weather in the winter to escape from his +master, he was soon oppressed by the rigour of the season. + +v. 119. The hermit Piero.] Piero Pettinagno, a holy hermit of Florence. + +v. 141. That vain multitude.] The Siennese. See Hell, Canto XXIX. 117. +“Their acquisition of Telamone, a seaport on the confines of the +Maremma, has led them to conceive hopes of becoming a naval power: but +this scheme will prove as chimerical as their former plan for the +discovery of a subterraneous stream under their city.” Why they gave +the appellation of Diana to the imagined stream, Venturi says he leaves +it to the antiquaries of Sienna to conjecture. + +CANTO XIV + + +v. 34. Maim’d of Pelorus.] Virg. Aen. 1. iii. 414. + +—a hill Torn from Pelorus Milton P. L. b. i. 232 + +v. 45. ’Midst brute swine.] The people of Casentino. + +v. 49. Curs.] The Arno leaves Arezzo about four miles to the left. + +v. 53. Wolves.] The Florentines. + +v. 55. Foxes.] The Pisans + +v. 61. Thy grandson.] Fulcieri de’ Calboli, grandson of Rinieri de’ +Calboli, who is here spoken to. The atrocities predicted came to pass +in 1302. See G. Villani, 1. viii c. 59 + +v. 95. ’Twixt Po, the mount, the Reno, and the shore.] The boundaries +of Romagna. + +v. 99. Lizio.] Lizio da Valbona, introduced into Boccaccio’s Decameron, +G. v. N, 4. + +v. 100. Manardi, Traversaro, and Carpigna.1 Arrigo Manardi of Faenza, +or as some say, of Brettinoro, Pier Traversaro, lord of Ravenna, and +Guido di Carpigna of Montefeltro. + +v. 102. In Bologna the low artisan.] One who had been a mechanic named +Lambertaccio, arrived at almost supreme power in Bologna. + +v. 103. Yon Bernardin.] Bernardin di Fosco, a man of low origin but +great talents, who governed at Faenza. + +v. 107. Prata.] A place between Faenza and Ravenna + +v. 107. Of Azzo him.] Ugolino of the Ubaldini family in Tuscany He is +recounted among the poets by Crescimbeni and Tiraboschi. + +v. 108. Tignoso.] Federigo Tignoso of Rimini. + +v. 109. Traversaro’s house and Anastagio’s.] Two noble families of +Ravenna. She to whom Dryden has given the name of Honoria, in the fable +so admirably paraphrased from Boccaccio, was of the former: her lover +and the specter were of the Anastagi family. + +v. 111. The ladies, &c.] These two lines express the true spirit of +chivalry. “Agi” is understood by the commentators whom I have +consulted,to mean “the ease procured for others by the exertions of +knight-errantry.” But surely it signifies the alternation of ease with +labour. + +v. 114. O Brettinoro.] A beautifully situated castle in Romagna, the +hospitable residence of Guido del Duca, who is here speaking. + +v. 118. Baynacavallo.] A castle between Imola and Ravenna + +v. 118. Castracaro ill And Conio worse.] Both in Romagna. + +v. 121. Pagani.] The Pagani were lords of Faenza and Imola. One of them +Machinardo, was named the Demon, from his treachery. See Hell, Canto +XXVII. 47, and Note. + +v. 124. Hugolin.] Ugolino Ubaldini, a noble and virtuous person in +Faenza, who, on account of his age probably, was not likely to leave +any offspring behind him. He is enumerated among the poets by +Crescimbeni, and Tiraboschi. Mr. Matthias’s edit. vol. i. 143 + +v. 136. Whosoever finds Will slay me.] The words of Cain, Gen. e. iv. +14. + +v. 142. Aglauros.] Ovid, Met. I, ii. fate. 12. + +v. 145. There was the galling bit.] Referring to what had been before +said, Canto XIII. 35. + +CANTO XV + + +v. 1. As much.] It wanted three hours of sunset. + +v. 16. As when the ray.] Compare Virg. Aen. 1.viii. 22, and Apol. Rhod. +1. iii. 755. + +v. 19. Ascending at a glance.] Lucretius, 1. iv. 215. + +v. 20. Differs from the stone.] The motion of light being quicker than +that of a stone through an equal space. + +v. 38. Blessed the merciful. Matt. c. v. 7. + +v. 43. Romagna’s spirit.] Guido del Duea, of Brettinoro whom we have +seen in the preceding Canto. + +v. 87. A dame.] Luke, c. ii. 18 + +v. 101. How shall we those requite.] The answer of Pisistratus the +tyrant to his wife, when she urged him to inflict the punishment of +death on a young man, who, inflamed with love for his daughter, had +snatched from her a kiss in public. The story is told by Valerius +Maximus, 1.v. 1. + +v. 105. A stripling youth.] The protomartyr Stephen. + +CANTO XVI + + +v. 94. As thou.] “If thou wert still living.” + +v. 46. I was of Lombardy, and Marco call’d.] A Venetian gentleman. +“Lombardo” both was his surname and denoted the country to which he +belonged. G. Villani, 1. vii. c. 120, terms him “a wise and worthy +courtier.” + +v. 58. Elsewhere.] He refers to what Guido del Duca had said in the +thirteenth Canto, concerning the degeneracy of his countrymen. + +v. 70. If this were so.] Mr. Crowe in his Lewesdon Hill has expressed +similar sentiments with much energy. + +Of this be sure, +Where freedom is not, there no virtue is, &c. + +Compare Origen in Genesim, Patrum Graecorum, vol. xi. p. 14. Wirer +burgi, 1783. 8vo. + +v. 79. To mightier force.] “Though ye are subject to a higher power +than that of the heavenly constellations, e`en to the power of the +great Creator himself, yet ye are still left in the possession of +liberty.” + +v. 88. Like a babe that wantons sportively.] This reminds one of the +Emperor Hadrian’s verses to his departing soul: + +Animula vagula blandula, &c + +v. 99. The fortress.] Justice, the most necessary virtue in the chief +magistrate, as the commentators explain it. + +v. 103. Who.] He compares the Pope, on account of the union of the +temporal with the spiritual power in his person, to an unclean beast in +the levitical law. “The camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth +not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.” Levit. c. xi. 4. + +v. 110. Two sons.] The Emperor and the Bishop of Rome. + +v. 117. That land.] Lombardy. + +v. 119. Ere the day.] Before the Emperor Frederick II was defeated +before Parma, in 1248. G. Villani, 1. vi. c. 35. + +v. 126. The good Gherardo.] Gherardo di Camino of Trevigi. He is +honourably mentioned in our Poet’s “Convito.” Opere di Dante, t. i. p. +173 Venez. 8vo. 1793. And Tiraboschi supposes him to have been the same +Gherardo with whom the Provencal poets were used to meet with +hospitable reception. See Mr. Matthias’s edition, t. i. p. 137, v. 127. +Conrad.] Currado da Palazzo, a gentleman of Brescia. + +v. 127. Guido of Castello.] Of Reggio. All the Italians were called +Lombards by the French. + +v. 144. His daughter Gaia.] A lady equally admired for her modesty, the +beauty of her person, and the excellency of her talents. Gaia, says +Tiraboschi, may perhaps lay claim to the praise of having been the +first among the Italian ladies, by whom the vernacular poetry was +cultivated. Ibid. p. 137. + +CANTO XVII + + +v. 21. The bird, that most Delights itself in song.] I cannot think +with Vellutello, that the swallow is here meant. Dante probably alludes +to the story of Philomela, as it is found in Homer’s Odyssey, b. xix. +518 rather than as later poets have told it. “She intended to slay the +son of her husband’s brother Amphion, incited to it, by the envy of his +wife, who had six children, while herself had only two, but through +mistake slew her own son Itylus, and for her punishment was transformed +by Jupiter into a nightingale.” Cowper’s note on the passage. In +speaking of the nightingale, let me observe, that while some have +considered its song as a melancholy, and others as a cheerful one, +Chiabrera appears to have come nearest the truth, when he says, in the +Alcippo, a. l. s. 1, Non mal si stanca d’ iterar le note O gioconde o +dogliose, Al sentir dilettose. + +Unwearied still reiterates her lays, +Jocund or sad, delightful to the ear. + +v. 26. One crucified.] Haman. See the book of Esther, c. vii. v. 34. A +damsel.] Lavinia, mourning for her mother Amata, who, impelled by grief +and indignation for the supposed death of Turnus, destroyed herself. +Aen. 1. xii. 595. + +v. 43. The broken slumber quivering ere it dies.] Venturi suggests that +this bold and unusual metaphor may have been formed on that in Virgil. + +Tempus erat quo prima quies mortalibus aegris +Incipit, et dono divun gratissima serpit. +Aen. 1. ii. 268. + +v. 68. The peace-makers.] Matt. c. v. 9. + +v. 81. The love.] “A defect in our love towards God, or lukewarmness in +piety, is here removed.” + +v. 94. The primal blessings.] Spiritual good. + +v. 95. Th’ inferior.] Temporal good. + +v. 102. Now.] “It is impossible for any being, either to hate itself, +or to hate the First Cause of all, by which it exists. We can therefore +only rejoice in the evil which befalls others.” + +v. 111. There is.] The proud. + +v. 114. There is.] The envious. + +v. 117. There is he.] The resentful. + +v. 135. Along Three circles.] According to the allegorical +commentators, as Venturi has observed, Reason is represented under the +person of Virgil, and Sense under that of Dante. The former leaves to +the latter to discover for itself the three carnal sins, avarice, +gluttony and libidinousness; having already declared the nature of the +spiritual sins, pride, envy, anger, and indifference, or lukewarmness +in piety, which the Italians call accidia, from the Greek word. [GREEK +HERE] + +CANTO XVIII + + +v. 1. The teacher ended.] Compare Plato, Protagoras, v. iii. p. 123. +Bip. edit. [GREEK HERE] Apoll. Rhod. 1. i. 513, and Milton, P. L. b. +viii. 1. The angel ended, &c. + +v. 23. Your apprehension.] It is literally, “Your apprehensive faculty +derives intention from a thing really existing, and displays the +intention within you, so that it makes the soul turn to it.” The +commentators labour in explaining this; and whatever sense they have +elicited may, I think, be resolved into the words of the translation in +the text. + +v. 47. Spirit.] The human soul, which differs from that of brutes, +inasmuch as, though united with the body, it has a separate existence +of its own. v. 65. Three men.] The great moral philosophers among the +heathens. + +v. 78. A crag.] I have preferred the reading of Landino, scheggion, +“crag,” conceiving it to be more poetical than secchion, “bucket,” +which is the common reading. The same cause, the vapours, which the +commentators say might give the appearance of increased magnitude to +the moon, might also make her seem broken at her rise. + +v. 78. Up the vault.] The moon passed with a motion opposite to that of +the heavens, through the constellation of the scorpion, in which the +sun is, when to those who are in Rome he appears to set between the +isles of Corsica and Sardinia. + +v. 84. Andes.] Andes, now Pietola, made more famous than Mantua near +which it is situated, by having been the birthplace of Virgil. + +v. 92. Ismenus and Asopus.] Rivers near Thebes + +v. 98. Mary.] Luke, c i. 39, 40 + +v. 99. Caesar.] See Lucan, Phars. I. iii. and iv, and Caesar de Bello +Civiii, I. i. Caesar left Brutus to complete the siege of Marseilles, +and hastened on to the attack of Afranius and Petreius, the generals of +Pompey, at Ilerda (Lerida) in Spain. + +v. 118. abbot.] Alberto, abbot of San Zeno in Verona, when Frederick I +was emperor, by whom Milan was besieged and reduced to ashes. + +v. 121. There is he.] Alberto della Scala, lord of Verona, who had made +his natural son abbot of San Zeno. + +v. 133. First they died.] The Israelites, who, on account of their +disobedience, died before reaching the promised land. + +v. 135. And they.] Virg Aen. 1. v. + +CANTO XIX + + +v. 1. The hour.] Near the dawn. + +v. 4. The geomancer.] The geomancers, says Landino, when they divined, +drew a figure consisting of sixteen marks, named from so many stars +which constitute the end of Aquarius and the beginning of Pisces. One +of these they called “the greater fortune.” + +v. 7. A woman’s shape.] Worldly happiness. This allegory reminds us of +the “Choice of Hercules.” + +v. 14. Love’s own hue.] +A smile that glow’d +Celestial rosy red, love’s proper hue. +Milton, P. L. b. viii. 619 + +—facies pulcherrima tune est +Quum porphyriaco variatur candida rubro +Quid color hic roseus sibi vult? designat amorem: +Quippe amor est igni similis; flammasque rubentes +Ignus habere solet. +Palingenii Zodiacus Vitae, 1. xii. + +v. 26. A dame.] Philosophy. + +v. 49. Who mourn.] Matt. c. v. 4. + +v. 72. My soul.] Psalm cxix. 5 + +v. 97. The successor of Peter Ottobuono, of the family of Fieschi +Counts of Lavagna, died thirty-nine days after he became Pope, with the +title of Adrian V, in 1276. + +v. 98. That stream.] The river Lavagna, in the Genoese territory. + +v. 135. nor shall be giv’n in marriage.] Matt. c. xxii. 30. “Since in +this state we neither marry nor are given in marriage, I am no longer +the spouse of the church, and therefore no longer retain my former +dignity. + +v. 140. A kinswoman.] Alagia is said to have been the wife of the +Marchese Marcello Malaspina, one of the poet’s protectors during his +exile. See Canto VIII. 133. + +CANTO XX + + +v. 3. I drew the sponge.] “I did not persevere in my inquiries from the +spirit though still anxious to learn more.” v. 11. Wolf.] Avarice. + +v. 16. Of his appearing.] He is thought to allude to Can Grande della +Scala. See Hell, Canto I. 98. + +v. 25. Fabricius.] Compare Petrarch, Tr. della Fama, c. 1. + +Un Curio ed un Fabricio, &c. + +v. 30. Nicholas.] The story of Nicholas is, that an angel having +revealed to him that the father of a family was so impoverished as to +resolve on exposing the chastity of his three daughters to sale, he +threw in at the window of their house three bags of money, containing a +sufficient portion for each of them. v. 42. Root.] Hugh Capet, ancestor +of Philip IV. v. 46. Had Ghent and Douay, Lille and Bruges power.] +These cities had lately been seized by Philip IV. The spirit is made to +imitate the approaching defeat of the French army by the Flemings, in +the battle of Courtrai, which happened in 1302. v. 51. The slaughter’s +trade.] This reflection on the birth of his ancestor induced Francis I +to forbid the reading of Dante in his dominions Hugh Capet, who came to +the throne of France in 987, was however the grandson of Robert, who +was the brother of Eudes, King of France in 888. + +v. 52. All save one.] The posterity of Charlemagne, the second race of +French monarchs, had failed, with the exception of Charles of Lorraine +who is said, on account of the melancholy temper of his mind, to have +always clothed himself in black. Venturi suggest that Dante may have +confounded him with Childeric III the last of the Merosvingian, or +first, race, who was deposed and made a monk in 751. + +v. 57. My son.] Hugh Capet caused his son Robert to be crowned at +Orleans. + +v. 59. The Great dower of Provence.] Louis IX, and his brother Charles +of Anjou, married two of the four daughters of Raymond Berenger Count +of Provence. See Par. Canto VI. 135. + +v. 63. For amends.] This is ironical + +v. 64. Poitou it seiz’d, Navarre and Gascony.] I venture to read- Potti +e Navarra prese e Guascogna, + +instead of + +Ponti e Normandia prese e Guascogna +Seiz’d Ponthieu, Normandy and Gascogny. + +Landino has “Potti,” and he is probably right for Poitou was annexed to +the French crown by Philip IV. See Henault, Abrege Chron. A.D. l283, +&c. Normandy had been united to it long before by Philip Augustus, a +circumstance of which it is difficult to imagine that Dante should have +been ignorant, but Philip IV, says Henault, ibid., took the title of +King of Navarre: and the subjugation of Navarre is also alluded to in +the Paradise, Canto XIX. 140. In 1293, Philip IV summoned Edward I. to +do him homage for the duchy of Gascogny, which he had conceived the +design of seizing. See G. Villani, l. viii. c. 4. + +v. 66. Young Conradine.] Charles of Anjou put Conradine to death in +1268; and became King of Naples. See Hell, Canto XXVIII, 16, and Note. + +v. 67. Th’ angelic teacher.] Thomas Aquinas. He was reported to have +been poisoned by a physician, who wished to ingratiate himself with +Charles of Anjou. G. Villani, I. ix. c. 218. We shall find him in the +Paradise, Canto X. + +v. 69. Another Charles.] Charles of Valois, brother of Philip IV, was +sent by Pope Boniface VIII to settle the disturbed state of Florence. +In consequence of the measures he adopted for that purpose, our poet +and his friend, were condemned to exile and death. + +v. 71. -with that lance Which the arch-traitor tilted with.] + +con la lancia Con la qual giostro Guida. + +If I remember right, in one of the old romances, Judas is represented +tilting with our Saviour. + +v. 78. The other.] Charles, King of Naples, the eldest son of Charles +of Anjou, having, contrary to the directions of his father, engaged +with Ruggier de Lauria, the admiral of Peter of Arragon, was made +prisoner and carried into Sicily, June, 1284. He afterwards, in +consideration of a large sum of money, married his daughter to Azzo +VI11, Marquis of Ferrara. + +v. 85. The flower-de-luce.] Boniface VIII was seized at Alagna in +Campagna, by order of Philip IV., in the year 1303, and soon after died +of grief. G. Villani, 1. viii. c. 63. + +v. 94. Into the temple.] It is uncertain whether our Poet alludes still +to the event mentioned in the preceding Note, or to the destruction of +the order of the Templars in 1310, but the latter appears more +probable. + +v. 103. Pygmalion.] Virg. Aen. 1. i. 348. + +v. 107. Achan.] Joshua, c. vii. + +v. 111. Heliodorus.] 2 Maccabees, c. iii. 25. “For there appeared unto +them a horse, with a terrible rider upon him, and adorned with a very +fair covering, and he ran fiercely and smote at Heliodorus with his +forefeet.” + +v. 112. Thracia’s king.] Polymnestor, the murderer of Polydorus. Hell, +Canto XXX, 19. + +v. 114. Crassus.] Marcus Crassus, who fell miserably in the Parthian +war. See Appian, Parthica. + +CANTO XXI + + +v. 26. She.] Lachesis, one of the three fates. + +v. 43. —that, which heaven in itself Doth of itself receive.] Venturi, +I think rightly interprets this to be light. + +v. 49. Thaumantian.] Figlia di Taumante [GREEK HERE] + +Compare Plato, Theaet. v. ii. p. 76. Bip. edit., Virg; Aen. ix. 5, and +Spenser, Faery Queen, b. v. c. 3. st. 25. + +v. 85. The name.] The name of Poet. + +v. 89. From Tolosa.] Dante, as many others have done, confounds Statius +the poet, who was a Neapolitan, with a rhetorician of the same name, +who was of Tolosa, or Thoulouse. Thus Chaucer, Temple of Fame, b. iii. +The Tholason, that height Stace. + +v. 94. Fell.] Statius lived to write only a small part of the +Achilleid. + +CANTO XXII + + +v. 5. Blessed.] Matt. v. 6. + +v. 14. Aquinum’s bard.] Juvenal had celebrated his contemporary +Statius, Sat. vii. 82; though some critics imagine that there is a +secret derision couched under his praise. + +v. 28. Why.] Quid non mortalia pecaora cogis Anri sacra fames? Virg. +Aen. 1. iii. 57 + +Venturi supposes that Dante might have mistaken the meaning of the word +sacra, and construed it “holy,” instead of “cursed.” But I see no +necessity for having recourse to so improbable a conjecture. + +v. 41. The fierce encounter.] See Hell, Canto VII. 26. + +v. 46. With shorn locks.] Ibid. 58. + +v. 57. The twin sorrow of Jocasta’s womb.] Eteocles and Polynices + +v. 71. A renovated world.] Virg. Ecl. iv. 5 + +v. 100. That Greek.] Homer + +v. 107. Of thy train. ] Of those celebrated in thy Poem.” + +v. 112. Tiresias’ daughter.] Dante appears to have forgotten that he +had placed Manto, the daughter of Tiresias, among the sorcerers. See +Hell Canto XX. Vellutello endeavours, rather awkwardly, to reconcile +the inconsistency, by observing, that although she was placed there as +a sinner, yet, as one of famous memory, she had also a place among the +worthies in Limbo. + +Lombardi excuses our author better, by observing that Tiresias had a +daughter named Daphne. See Diodorus Siculus, 1. iv. 66. + +v. 139. Mary took more thought.] “The blessed virgin, who answers for +yon now in heaven, when she said to Jesus, at the marriage in Cana of +Galilee, ‘they have no wine,’ regarded not the gratification of her own +taste, but the honour of the nuptial banquet.” + +v. 142 The women of old Rome.] See Valerius Maximus, 1. ii. c. i. + +CANTO XXIII + + +v. 9. My lips.] Psalm ii. 15. + +v. 20. The eyes.] Compare Ovid, Metam. 1. viii. 801 + +v. 26. When Mary.] Josephus, De Bello Jud. 1. vii. c. xxi. p. 954 Ed +Genev. fol. 1611. The shocking story is well told + +v. 27. Rings.] +In this habit +Met I my father with his bleeding rings +Their precious stones new lost. +Shakespeare, Lear, a. 5. s. 3 + +v. 28. Who reads the name.] “He, who pretends to distinguish the +letters which form OMO in the features of the human face, “might easily +have traced out the M on their emaciated countenances.” The temples, +nose, and forehead are supposed to represent this letter; and the eyes +the two O’s placed within each side of it. + +v. 44. Forese.] One of the brothers of Piccarda, she who is again +spoken of in the next Canto, and introduced in the Paradise, Canto III. + +V. 72. If the power.] “If thou didst delay thy repentance to the last, +when thou hadst lost the power of sinning, how happens it thou art +arrived here so early?” + +v. 76. Lower.] In the Ante-Purgatory. See Canto II. + +v. 80. My Nella.] The wife of Forese. + +v. 87. The tract most barb’rous of Sardinia’s isle.] The Barbagia is +part of Sardinia, to which that name was given, on account of the +uncivilized state of its inhabitants, who are said to have gone nearly +naked. + +v. 91. The’ unblushing domes of Florence.] Landino’s note exhibits a +curious instance of the changeableness of his countrywomen. He even +goes beyond the acrimony of the original. “In those days,” says the +commentator, “no less than in ours, the Florentine ladies exposed the +neck and bosom, a dress, no doubt, more suitable to a harlot than a +matron. But, as they changed soon after, insomuch that they wore +collars up to the chin, covering the whole of the neck and throat, so +have I hopes they will change again; not indeed so much from motives of +decency, as through that fickleness, which pervades every action of +their lives.” + +v. 97. Saracens.] “This word, during the middle ages, was +indiscriminately applied to Pagans and Mahometans; in short, to all +nations (except the Jew’s) who did not profess Christianity.” Mr. +Ellis’s specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. i. page 196, +a note. Lond. 8vo. 1805. + +CANTO XXIV + + +v. 20. Buonaggiunta.] Buonaggiunta Urbiciani, of Lucca. “There is a +canzone by this poet, printed in the collection made by the Giunti, (p. +209,).land a sonnet to Guido Guinicelli in that made by Corbinelli, (p +169,) from which we collect that he lived not about 1230, as Quadrio +supposes, (t. ii. p. 159,) but towards the end of the thirteenth +century. Concerning, other poems by Buonaggiunta, that are preserved in +MS. in some libraries, Crescimbeni may be consulted.” Tiraboschi, Mr. +Matthias’s ed. v. i. p. 115. + +v. 23. He was of Tours.] Simon of Tours became Pope, with the title of +Martin IV in 1281 and died in 1285. + +v. 29. Ubaldino.] Ubaldino degli Ubaldini, of Pila, in the Florentine +territory. + +v. 30. Boniface.] Archbishop of Ravenna. By Venturi he is called +Bonifazio de Fieschi, a Genoese, by Vellutello, the son of the above, +mentioned Ubaldini and by Laudino Francioso, a Frenchman. + +v. 32. The Marquis.] The Marchese de’ Rigogliosi, of Forli. + +v. 38. gentucca.] Of this lady it is thought that our Poet became +enamoured during his exile. v. 45. Whose brow no wimple shades yet.] +“Who has not yet assumed the dress of a woman.” + +v. 46. Blame it as they may.] See Hell, Canto XXI. 39. + +v. 51. Ladies, ye that con the lore of love.]Donne ch’ avete intelletto +d’amore.The first verse of a canzone in our author’s Vita Nuova. + +v. 56. The Notary.] Jucopo da Lentino, called the Notary, a poet of +these times. He was probably an Apulian: for Dante, (De Vulg. Eloq. I. +i. c 12.) quoting a verse which belongs to a canzone of his published +by the Giunti, without mentioning the writer’s name, terms him one of +“the illustrious Apulians,” praefulgentes Apuli. See Tiraboschi, Mr. +Matthias’s edit. vol. i. p. 137. Crescimbeni (1. i. Della Volg. Poes p. +72. 4to. ed. 1698) gives an extract from one of his poems, printed in +Allacci’s Collection, to show that the whimsical compositions called +“Ariette “ are not of modern invention. + +v. 56. Guittone.] Fra Guittone, of Arezzo, holds a distinguished place +in Italian literature, as besides his poems printed in the collection +of the Giunti, he has left a collection of letters, forty in number, +which afford the earliest specimen of that kind of writing in the +language. They were published at Rome in 1743, with learned +illustrations by Giovanni Bottari. He was also the first who gave to +the sonnet its regular and legitimate form, a species of composition in +which not only his own countrymen, but many of the best poets in all +the cultivated languages of modern Europe, have since so much +delighted. + +Guittone, a native of Arezzo, was the son of Viva di Michele. He was of +the order of the “ Frati Godenti,” of which an account may be seen in +the Notes to Hell, Canto XXIII. In the year 1293, he founded a +monastery of the order of Camaldoli, in Florence, and died in the +following year. Tiraboschi, Ibid. p. 119. Dante, in the Treatise de +Vulg. Eloq. 1. i. c. 13, and 1. ii. c. 6., blames him for preferring +the plebeian to the mor courtly style; and Petrarch twice places him in +the company of our Poet. Triumph of Love, cap. iv. and Son. Par. See +“Sennuccio mio” + +v. 63. The birds.] Hell, Canto V. 46, Euripides, Helena, 1495, and +Statius; Theb. 1. V. 12. v. 81. He.] Corso Donati was suspected of +aiming at the sovereignty of Florence. To escape the fury of his fellow +citizens, he fled away on horseback, but failing, was overtaken and +slain, A.D. 1308. The contemporary annalist, after relating at length +the circumstances of his fate, adds, “that he was one of the wisest and +most valorous knights the best speaker, the most expert statesman, the +most renowned and enterprising, man of his age in Italy, a comely +knight and of graceful carriage, but very worldly, and in his time had +formed many conspiracies in Florence and entered into many scandalous +practices, for the sake of attaining state and lordship.” G. Villani, +1. viii. c. 96. The character of Corso is forcibly drawn by another of +his contemporaries Dino Compagni. 1. iii., Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. +t. ix. p. 523. + +v. 129. Creatures of the clouds.] The Centaurs. Ovid. Met. 1. fab. 4 v. +123. The Hebrews.] Judges, c. vii. + +CANTO XXV + + +v. 58. As sea-sponge.] The fetus is in this stage is zoophyte. + +v. 66. -More wise Than thou, has erred.] Averroes is said to be here +meant. Venturi refers to his commentary on Aristotle, De Anim 1. iii. +c. 5. for the opinion that there is only one universal intellect or +mind pervading every individual of the human race. Much of the +knowledge displayed by our Poet in the present Canto appears to have +been derived from the medical work o+ Averroes, called the Colliget. +Lib. ii. f. 10. Ven. 1400. fol. + +v. 79. Mark the sun’s heat.] Redi and Tiraboschi (Mr. Matthias’s ed. v. +ii. p. 36.) have considered this an anticipation of a profound +discovery of Galileo’s in natural philosophy, but it is in reality +taken from a passage in Cicero “de Senectute,” where, speaking of the +grape, he says, “ quae, et succo terrae et calore solis augescens, +primo est peracerba gustatu, deinde maturata dulcescit.” + +v. 123. I do, not know a man.] Luke, c. i. 34. + +v. 126. Callisto.] See Ovid, Met. 1. ii. fab. 5. + +CANTO XXVI + + +v. 70. Caesar.] For the opprobrium east on Caesar’s effeminacy, see +Suetonius, Julius Caesar, c. 49. + +v. 83. Guinicelli.] See Note to Canto XI. 96. + +v. 87. lycurgus.] Statius, Theb. 1. iv. and v. Hypsipile had left her +infant charge, the son of Lycurgus, on a bank, where it was destroyed +by a serpent, when she went to show the Argive army the river of +Langia: and, on her escaping the effects of Lycurgus’s resentment, the +joy her own children felt at the sight of her was such as our Poet felt +on beholding his predecessor Guinicelli. + +The incidents are beautifully described in Statius, and seem to have +made an impression on Dante, for he again (Canto XXII. 110.) +characterizes Hypsipile, as her- Who show’d Langia’s wave. + +v. 111. He.] The united testimony of Dante, and of Petrarch, in his +Triumph of Love, e. iv. places Arnault Daniel at the head of the +Provencal poets. That he was born of poor but noble parents, at the +castle of Ribeyrae in Perigord, and that he was at the English court, +is the amount of Millot’s information concerning him (t. ii. p. 479). + +The account there given of his writings is not much more satisfactory, +and the criticism on them must go for little better than nothing. + +It is to be regretted that we have not an opportunity of judging for +ourselves of his “love ditties and his tales of prose “ + +Versi d’amore e prose di romanzi. + +Our Poet frequently cities him in the work De Vulgari Eloquentia. +According to Crescimbeni, (Della Volg. Poes. 1. 1. p. 7. ed. 1698.) He +died in 1189. + +v. 113. The songster of Limoges.] Giraud de Borneil, of Sideuil, a +castle in Limoges. He was a troubadour, much admired and caressed in +his day, and appears to have been in favour with the monarchs of +Castile, Leon, Navarre, and Arragon He is quoted by Dante, De Vulg. +Eloq., and many of his poems are still remaining in MS. According to +Nostradamus he died in 1278. Millot, Hist. Litt. des Troub. t. ii. p. 1 +and 23. But I suspect that there is some error in this date, and that +he did not live to see so late a period. + +v. 118. Guittone.] See Cano XXIV. 56. + +v. 123. Far as needs.] See Canto XI. 23. + +v. 132. Thy courtesy.] Arnault is here made to speak in his own tongue, +the Provencal. According to Dante, (De Vulg. Eloq. 1. 1. c. 8.) the +Provencal was one language with the Spanish. What he says on this +subject is so curious, that the reader will perhaps not be displeased +it I give an abstract of it. + +He first makes three great divisions of the European languages. “One of +these extends from the mouths of the Danube, or the lake of Maeotis, to +the western limits of England, and is bounded by the limits of the +French and Italians, and by the ocean. One idiom obtained over the +whole of this space: but was afterwards subdivided into, the +Sclavonian, Hungarian, Teutonic, Saxon, English, and the vernacular +tongues of several other people, one sign remaining to all, that they +use the affirmative io, (our English ay.) The whole of Europe, +beginning from the Hungarian limits and stretching towards the east, +has a second idiom which reaches still further than the end of Europe +into Asia. This is the Greek. In all that remains of Europe, there is a +third idiom subdivided into three dialects, which may be severally +distinguished by the use of the affirmatives, oc, oil, and si; the +first spoken by the Spaniards, the next by the French, and the third by +the Latins (or Italians). The first occupy the western part of southern +Europe, beginning from the limits of the Genoese. The third occupy the +eastern part from the said limits, as far, that is, as the promontory +of Italy, where the Adriatic sea begins, and to Sicily. The second are +in a manner northern with respect to these for they have the Germans to +the east and north, on the west they are bounded by the English sea, +and the mountains of Arragon, and on the south by the people of +Provence and the declivity of the Apennine.” Ibid. c. x. “Each of these +three,” he observes, “has its own claims to distinction The excellency +of the French language consists in its being best adapted, on account +of its facility and agreeableness, to prose narration, (quicquid +redactum, sive inventum est ad vulgare prosaicum suum est); and he +instances the books compiled on the gests of the Trojans and Romans and +the delightful adventures of King Arthur, with many other histories and +works of instruction. The Spanish (or Provencal) may boast of its +having produced such as first cultivated in this as in a more perfect +and sweet language, the vernacular poetry: among whom are Pierre +d’Auvergne, and others more ancient. The privileges of the Latin, or +Italian are two: first that it may reckon for its own those writers who +have adopted a more sweet and subtle style of poetry, in the number of +whom are Cino, da Pistoia and his friend, and the next, that its +writers seem to adhere to, certain general rules of grammar, and in so +doing give it, in the opinion of the intelligent, a very weighty +pretension to preference.” + +CANTO XXVII + + +v. 1. The sun.] At Jerusalem it was dawn, in Spain midnight, and in +India noonday, while it was sunset in Purgatory + +v. 10. Blessed.] Matt. c. v. 8. + +v. 57. Come.] Matt. c. xxv. 34. + +v. 102. I am Leah.] By Leah is understood the active life, as Rachel +figures the contemplative. The divinity is the mirror in which the +latter looks. Michel Angelo has made these allegorical personages the +subject of two statues on the monument of Julius II. in the church of +S. Pietro in Vincolo. See Mr. Duppa’s Life of Michel Angelo, Sculpture +viii. And x. and p 247. + +v. 135. Those bright eyes.] The eyes of Beatrice. + +CANTO XXVIII + + +v. 11. To that part.] The west. + +v. 14. The feather’d quiristers] Imitated by Boccaccio, Fiammetta, 1. +iv. “Odi i queruli uccelli,” &c. —“Hear the querulous birds plaining +with sweet songs, and the boughs trembling, and, moved by a gentle +wind, as it were keeping tenor to their notes.” + +v. 7. A pleasant air.] Compare Ariosto, O. F. c. xxxiv. st. 50. + +v. Chiassi.] This is the wood where the scene of Boccaccio’s sublimest +story is laid. See Dec. g. 5. n. 8. and Dryden’s Theodore and Honoria +Our Poet perhaps wandered in it daring his abode with Guido Novello da +Polenta. + +v. 41. A lady.] Most of the commentators suppose, that by this lady, +who in the last Canto is called Matilda, is to be understood the +Countess Matilda, who endowed the holy see with the estates called the +Patrimony of St. Peter, and died in 1115. See G. Villani, 1. iv. e. 20 +But it seems more probable that she should be intended for an +allegorical personage. + +v. 80. Thou, Lord hast made me glad.] Psalm xcii. 4 + +v. 146. On the Parnassian mountain.] In bicipiti somniasse Parnasso. +Persius Prol. + +CANTO XXIX + + +v. 76. Listed colours.] +Di sette liste tutte in quel colori, &c. +—a bow +Conspicuous with three listed colours gay. +Milton, P. L. b. xi. 865. + +v. 79. Ten paces.] For an explanation of the allegorical meaning of +this mysterious procession, Venturi refers those “who would see in the +dark” to the commentaries of Landino, Vellutello, and others: and adds +that it is evident the Poet has accommodated to his own fancy many +sacred images in the Apocalypse. In Vasari’s Life of Giotto, we learn +that Dante recommended that book to his friend, as affording fit +subjects for his pencil. + +v. 89. Four.] The four evangelists. + +v. 96. Ezekiel.] Chap. 1. 4. + +v. 101. John.] Rev. c. iv. 8. + +v. 104. Gryphon.] Under the Gryphon, an imaginary creature, the +forepart of which is an eagle, and the hinder a lion, is shadowed forth +the union of the divine and human nature in Jesus Christ. The car is +the church. + +v. 115. Tellus’ prayer.] Ovid, Met. 1. ii. v. 279. + +v. 116. Three nymphs.] The three evangelical virtues: the first +Charity, the next Hope, and the third Faith. Faith may be produced by +charity, or charity by faith, but the inducements to hope must arise +either from one or other of these. + +v. 125. A band quaternion.] The four moral or cardinal virtues, of whom +Prudence directs the others. + +v. 129. Two old men.] Saint Luke, characterized as the writer of the +Arts of the Apostles and Saint Paul. + +v. 133. Of the great Coan.] Hippocrates, “whom nature made for the +benefit of her favourite creature, man.” + +v. 138. Four others.] “The commentators,” says Venturi; “suppose these +four to be the four evangelists, but I should rather take them to be +four principal doctors of the church.” Yet both Landino and Vellutello +expressly call them the authors of the epistles, James, Peter, John and +Jude. + +v. 140. One single old man.] As some say, St. John, under his character +of the author of the Apocalypse. But in the poem attributed to Giacopo, +the son of our Poet, which in some MSS, accompanies the original of +this work, and is descriptive of its plan, this old man is said to be +Moses. + +E’l vecchio, ch’ era dietro a tutti loro +Fu Moyse. + +And the old man, who was behind them all, +Was Moses. +See No. 3459 of the Harl. MSS. in the British Museum. + +CANTO XXX + + +v. 1. The polar light.] The seven candlesticks. + +v. 12. Come.] Song of Solomon, c. iv. 8. + +v. 19. Blessed.] Matt. c. xxi. 9. + +v. 20. From full hands.] Virg. Aen 1. vi. 884. + +v. 97. The old flame.] Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae Virg. Aen. I. +I. 23. + +Conosco i segni dell’ antico fuoco. +Giusto de’ Conti, La Bella Mano. + +v. 61. Nor.] “Not all the beauties of the terrestrial Paradise; in +which I was, were sufficient to allay my grief.” + +v. 85. But.] They sang the thirty-first Psalm, to the end of the eighth +verse. + +v. 87. The living rafters.] The leafless woods on the Apennine. + +v. 90. The land whereon no shadow falls.] “When the wind blows, from +off Africa, where, at the time of the equinox, bodies being under the +equator cast little or no shadow; or, in other words, when the wind is +south.” + +v. 98. The ice.] Milton has transferred this conceit, though scarcely +worth the pains of removing, into one of his Italian poems, son. + +CANTO XXXI + + +v. 3. With lateral edge.] The words of Beatrice, when not addressed +directly to himself, but speaking to the angel of hell, Dante had +thought sufficiently harsh. + +v. 39. Counter to the edge.] “The weapons of divine justice are blunted +by the confession and sorrow of the offender.” + +v. 58. Bird.] Prov. c. i. 17 + +v. 69. From Iarbas’ land.] The south. + +v. 71. The beard.] “I perceived, that when she desired me to raise my +beard, instead of telling me to lift up my head, a severe reflection +was implied on my want of that wisdom which should accompany the age of +manhood.” + +v. 98. Tu asperges me.] A prayer repeated by the priest at sprinkling +the holy water. + +v. 106. And in the heaven are stars.] See Canto I. 24. + +v. 116. The emeralds.] The eyes of Beatrice. + +CANTO XXXII + + +v. 2. Their ten years’ thirst.] Beatrice had been dead ten years. + +v. 9. Two fix’d a gaze.] The allegorical interpretation of Vellutello +whether it be considered as justly terrible from the text or not, +conveys so useful a lesson, that it deserves our notice. “The +understanding is sometimes so intently engaged in contemplating the +light of divine truth in the scriptures, that it becomes dazzled, and +is made less capable of attaining such knowledge, than if it had sought +after it with greater moderation” + +v. 39. Its tresses.] Daniel, c. iv. 10, &c. + +v. 41. The Indians.] +Quos oceano proprior gerit India lucos. +Virg. Georg. 1. ii. 122, +Such as at this day to Indians known. +Milton, P. L. b. ix. 1102. + +v. 51. When large floods of radiance.] When the sun enters into Aries, +the constellation next to that of the Fish. + +v. 63. Th’ unpitying eyes.] See Ovid, Met. 1. i. 689. + +v. 74. The blossoming of that fair tree.] Our Saviour’s +transfiguration. + +v. 97. Those lights.] The tapers of gold. + +v. 101. That true Rome.] Heaven. + +v. 110. The bird of Jove.] This, which is imitated from Ezekiel, c. +xvii. 3, 4. appears to be typical of the persecutions which the church +sustained from the Roman Emperors. + +v. 118. A fox.] By the fox perhaps is represented the treachery of the +heretics. + +v. 124. With his feathers lin’d.]. An allusion to the donations made by +the Roman Emperors to the church. + +v. 130. A dragon.] Probably Mahomet. + +v. 136. With plumes.] The donations before mentioned. + +v. 142. Heads.] By the seven heads, it is supposed with sufficient +probability, are meant the seven capital sins, by the three with two +horns, pride, anger, and avarice, injurious both to man himself and to +his neighbor: by the four with one horn, gluttony, lukewarmness, +concupiscence, and envy, hurtful, at least in their primary effects, +chiefly to him who is guilty of them. + +v. 146. O’er it.] The harlot is thought to represent the state of the +church under Boniface VIII and the giant to figure Philip IV of France. + +v. 155. Dragg’d on.] The removal of the Pope’s residence from Rome to +Avignon is pointed at. + +CANTO XXXIII + + +v. 1. The Heathen.] Psalm lxxix. 1. + +v. 36. Hope not to scare God’s vengeance with a sop.] “Let not him who +hath occasioned the destruction of the church, that vessel which the +serpent brake, hope to appease the anger of the Deity by any outward +acts of religious, or rather superstitious, ceremony, such as was that, +in our poet’s time, performed by a murderer at Florence, who imagined +himself secure from vengeance, if he ate a sop of bread in wine, upon +the grave of the person murdered, within the space of nine days.” + +v. 38. That eagle.] He prognosticates that the Emperor of Germany will +not always continue to submit to the usurpations of the Pope, and +foretells the coming of Henry VII Duke of Luxembourg signified by the +numerical figures DVX; or, as Lombardi supposes, of Can Grande della +Scala, appointed the leader of the Ghibelline forces. It is unnecessary +to point out the imitation of the Apocalypse in the manner of this +prophecy. + +v. 50. The Naiads.] Dante, it is observed, has been led into a mistake +by a corruption in the text of Ovid’s Metam. I. vii. 75, where he +found- Carmina Naiades non intellecta priorum; + +instead of Carmina Laiades, &c. as it has been since corrected. +Lombardi refers to Pansanias, where “the Nymphs” are spoken of as +expounders of oracles for a vindication of the poet’s accuracy. Should +the reader blame me for not departing from the error of the original +(if error it be), he may substitute + +Events shall be the Oedipus will solve, &c. + +v. 67. Elsa’s numbing waters.] The Elsa, a little stream, which flows +into the Arno about twenty miles below Florence, is said to possess a +petrifying quality. + +v. 78. That one brings home his staff inwreath’d with palm.] “For the +same cause that the pilgrim, returning from Palestine, brings home his +staff, or bourdon, bound with palm,” that is, to show where he has +been. + +Che si reca ’I bordon di palma cinto. + +“In regard to the word bourdon, why it has been applied to a pilgrim’s +staff, it is not easy to guess. I believe, however that this name has +been given to such sort of staves, because pilgrims usually travel and +perform their pilgrimages on foot, their staves serving them instead of +horses or mules, then called bourdons and burdones, by writers in the +middle ages.” Mr. Johnes’s Translation of Joinville’s Memoirs. +Dissertation xv, by M. du Cange p. 152. 4to. edit. The word is thrice +used by Chaucer in the Romaunt of the Rose. + + + + +PARADISE + + + + +CANTO I + + +His glory, by whose might all things are mov’d, +Pierces the universe, and in one part +Sheds more resplendence, elsewhere less. In heav’n, +That largeliest of his light partakes, was I, +Witness of things, which to relate again +Surpasseth power of him who comes from thence; +For that, so near approaching its desire +Our intellect is to such depth absorb’d, +That memory cannot follow. Nathless all, +That in my thoughts I of that sacred realm +Could store, shall now be matter of my song. + +Benign Apollo! this last labour aid, +And make me such a vessel of thy worth, +As thy own laurel claims of me belov’d. +Thus far hath one of steep Parnassus’ brows +Suffic’d me; henceforth there is need of both +For my remaining enterprise Do thou +Enter into my bosom, and there breathe +So, as when Marsyas by thy hand was dragg’d +Forth from his limbs unsheath’d. O power divine! +If thou to me of shine impart so much, +That of that happy realm the shadow’d form +Trac’d in my thoughts I may set forth to view, +Thou shalt behold me of thy favour’d tree +Come to the foot, and crown myself with leaves; +For to that honour thou, and my high theme +Will fit me. If but seldom, mighty Sire! +To grace his triumph gathers thence a wreath +Caesar or bard (more shame for human wills +Deprav’d) joy to the Delphic god must spring +From the Pierian foliage, when one breast +Is with such thirst inspir’d. From a small spark +Great flame hath risen: after me perchance +Others with better voice may pray, and gain +From the Cirrhaean city answer kind. + +Through diver passages, the world’s bright lamp +Rises to mortals, but through that which joins +Four circles with the threefold cross, in best +Course, and in happiest constellation set +He comes, and to the worldly wax best gives +Its temper and impression. Morning there, +Here eve was by almost such passage made; +And whiteness had o’erspread that hemisphere, +Blackness the other part; when to the left +I saw Beatrice turn’d, and on the sun +Gazing, as never eagle fix’d his ken. +As from the first a second beam is wont +To issue, and reflected upwards rise, +E’en as a pilgrim bent on his return, +So of her act, that through the eyesight pass’d +Into my fancy, mine was form’d; and straight, +Beyond our mortal wont, I fix’d mine eyes +Upon the sun. Much is allowed us there, +That here exceeds our pow’r; thanks to the place +Made for the dwelling of the human kind + +I suffer’d it not long, and yet so long +That I beheld it bick’ring sparks around, +As iron that comes boiling from the fire. +And suddenly upon the day appear’d +A day new-ris’n, as he, who hath the power, +Had with another sun bedeck’d the sky. + +Her eyes fast fix’d on the eternal wheels, +Beatrice stood unmov’d; and I with ken +Fix’d upon her, from upward gaze remov’d +At her aspect, such inwardly became +As Glaucus, when he tasted of the herb, +That made him peer among the ocean gods; +Words may not tell of that transhuman change: +And therefore let the example serve, though weak, +For those whom grace hath better proof in store + +If I were only what thou didst create, +Then newly, Love! by whom the heav’n is rul’d, +Thou know’st, who by thy light didst bear me up. +Whenas the wheel which thou dost ever guide, +Desired Spirit! with its harmony +Temper’d of thee and measur’d, charm’d mine ear, +Then seem’d to me so much of heav’n to blaze +With the sun’s flame, that rain or flood ne’er made +A lake so broad. The newness of the sound, +And that great light, inflam’d me with desire, +Keener than e’er was felt, to know their cause. + +Whence she who saw me, clearly as myself, +To calm my troubled mind, before I ask’d, +Open’d her lips, and gracious thus began: +“With false imagination thou thyself +Mak’st dull, so that thou seest not the thing, +Which thou hadst seen, had that been shaken off. +Thou art not on the earth as thou believ’st; +For light’ning scap’d from its own proper place +Ne’er ran, as thou hast hither now return’d.” + +Although divested of my first-rais’d doubt, +By those brief words, accompanied with smiles, +Yet in new doubt was I entangled more, +And said: “Already satisfied, I rest +From admiration deep, but now admire +How I above those lighter bodies rise.” + +Whence, after utt’rance of a piteous sigh, +She tow’rds me bent her eyes, with such a look, +As on her frenzied child a mother casts; +Then thus began: “Among themselves all things +Have order; and from hence the form, which makes +The universe resemble God. In this +The higher creatures see the printed steps +Of that eternal worth, which is the end +Whither the line is drawn. All natures lean, +In this their order, diversely, some more, +Some less approaching to their primal source. +Thus they to different havens are mov’d on +Through the vast sea of being, and each one +With instinct giv’n, that bears it in its course; +This to the lunar sphere directs the fire, +This prompts the hearts of mortal animals, +This the brute earth together knits, and binds. +Nor only creatures, void of intellect, +Are aim’d at by this bow; hut even those, +That have intelligence and love, are pierc’d. +That Providence, who so well orders all, +With her own light makes ever calm the heaven, +In which the substance, that hath greatest speed, +Is turn’d: and thither now, as to our seat +Predestin’d, we are carried by the force +Of that strong cord, that never looses dart, +But at fair aim and glad. Yet is it true, +That as ofttimes but ill accords the form +To the design of art, through sluggishness +Of unreplying matter, so this course +Is sometimes quitted by the creature, who +Hath power, directed thus, to bend elsewhere; +As from a cloud the fire is seen to fall, +From its original impulse warp’d, to earth, +By vicious fondness. Thou no more admire +Thy soaring, (if I rightly deem,) than lapse +Of torrent downwards from a mountain’s height. +There would in thee for wonder be more cause, +If, free of hind’rance, thou hadst fix’d thyself +Below, like fire unmoving on the earth.” + +So said, she turn’d toward the heav’n her face. + + + + +CANTO II + + +All ye, who in small bark have following sail’d, +Eager to listen, on the advent’rous track +Of my proud keel, that singing cuts its way, +Backward return with speed, and your own shores +Revisit, nor put out to open sea, +Where losing me, perchance ye may remain +Bewilder’d in deep maze. The way I pass +Ne’er yet was run: Minerva breathes the gale, +Apollo guides me, and another Nine +To my rapt sight the arctic beams reveal. +Ye other few, who have outstretch’d the neck. +Timely for food of angels, on which here +They live, yet never know satiety, +Through the deep brine ye fearless may put out +Your vessel, marking, well the furrow broad +Before you in the wave, that on both sides +Equal returns. Those, glorious, who pass’d o’er +To Colchos, wonder’d not as ye will do, +When they saw Jason following the plough. + +The increate perpetual thirst, that draws +Toward the realm of God’s own form, bore us +Swift almost as the heaven ye behold. + +Beatrice upward gaz’d, and I on her, +And in such space as on the notch a dart +Is plac’d, then loosen’d flies, I saw myself +Arriv’d, where wond’rous thing engag’d my sight. +Whence she, to whom no work of mine was hid, +Turning to me, with aspect glad as fair, +Bespake me: “Gratefully direct thy mind +To God, through whom to this first star we come.” + +Me seem’d as if a cloud had cover’d us, +Translucent, solid, firm, and polish’d bright, +Like adamant, which the sun’s beam had smit +Within itself the ever-during pearl +Receiv’d us, as the wave a ray of light +Receives, and rests unbroken. If I then +Was of corporeal frame, and it transcend +Our weaker thought, how one dimension thus +Another could endure, which needs must be +If body enter body, how much more +Must the desire inflame us to behold +That essence, which discovers by what means +God and our nature join’d! There will be seen +That which we hold through faith, not shown by proof, +But in itself intelligibly plain, +E’en as the truth that man at first believes. + +I answered: “Lady! I with thoughts devout, +Such as I best can frame, give thanks to Him, +Who hath remov’d me from the mortal world. +But tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots +Upon this body, which below on earth +Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint?” + +She somewhat smil’d, then spake: “If mortals err +In their opinion, when the key of sense +Unlocks not, surely wonder’s weapon keen +Ought not to pierce thee; since thou find’st, the wings +Of reason to pursue the senses’ flight +Are short. But what thy own thought is, declare.” + +Then I: “What various here above appears, +Is caus’d, I deem, by bodies dense or rare.” + +She then resum’d: “Thou certainly wilt see +In falsehood thy belief o’erwhelm’d, if well +Thou listen to the arguments, which I +Shall bring to face it. The eighth sphere displays +Numberless lights, the which in kind and size +May be remark’d of different aspects; +If rare or dense of that were cause alone, +One single virtue then would be in all, +Alike distributed, or more, or less. +Different virtues needs must be the fruits +Of formal principles, and these, save one, +Will by thy reasoning be destroy’d. Beside, +If rarity were of that dusk the cause, +Which thou inquirest, either in some part +That planet must throughout be void, nor fed +With its own matter; or, as bodies share +Their fat and leanness, in like manner this +Must in its volume change the leaves. The first, +If it were true, had through the sun’s eclipse +Been manifested, by transparency +Of light, as through aught rare beside effus’d. +But this is not. Therefore remains to see +The other cause: and if the other fall, +Erroneous so must prove what seem’d to thee. +If not from side to side this rarity +Pass through, there needs must be a limit, whence +Its contrary no further lets it pass. +And hence the beam, that from without proceeds, +Must be pour’d back, as colour comes, through glass +Reflected, which behind it lead conceals. +Now wilt thou say, that there of murkier hue +Than in the other part the ray is shown, +By being thence refracted farther back. +From this perplexity will free thee soon +Experience, if thereof thou trial make, +The fountain whence your arts derive their streame. +Three mirrors shalt thou take, and two remove +From thee alike, and more remote the third. +Betwixt the former pair, shall meet thine eyes; +Then turn’d toward them, cause behind thy back +A light to stand, that on the three shall shine, +And thus reflected come to thee from all. +Though that beheld most distant do not stretch +A space so ample, yet in brightness thou +Will own it equaling the rest. But now, +As under snow the ground, if the warm ray +Smites it, remains dismantled of the hue +And cold, that cover’d it before, so thee, +Dismantled in thy mind, I will inform +With light so lively, that the tremulous beam +Shall quiver where it falls. Within the heaven, +Where peace divine inhabits, circles round +A body, in whose virtue dies the being +Of all that it contains. The following heaven, +That hath so many lights, this being divides, +Through different essences, from it distinct, +And yet contain’d within it. The other orbs +Their separate distinctions variously +Dispose, for their own seed and produce apt. +Thus do these organs of the world proceed, +As thou beholdest now, from step to step, +Their influences from above deriving, +And thence transmitting downwards. Mark me well, +How through this passage to the truth I ford, +The truth thou lov’st, that thou henceforth alone, +May’st know to keep the shallows, safe, untold. + +“The virtue and motion of the sacred orbs, +As mallet by the workman’s hand, must needs +By blessed movers be inspir’d. This heaven, +Made beauteous by so many luminaries, +From the deep spirit, that moves its circling sphere, +Its image takes an impress as a seal: +And as the soul, that dwells within your dust, +Through members different, yet together form’d, +In different pow’rs resolves itself; e’en so +The intellectual efficacy unfolds +Its goodness multiplied throughout the stars; +On its own unity revolving still. +Different virtue compact different +Makes with the precious body it enlivens, +With which it knits, as life in you is knit. +From its original nature full of joy, +The virtue mingled through the body shines, +As joy through pupil of the living eye. +From hence proceeds, that which from light to light +Seems different, and not from dense or rare. +This is the formal cause, that generates +Proportion’d to its power, the dusk or clear.” + + + + +CANTO III + + +That sun, which erst with love my bosom warm’d +Had of fair truth unveil’d the sweet aspect, +By proof of right, and of the false reproof; +And I, to own myself convinc’d and free +Of doubt, as much as needed, rais’d my head +Erect for speech. But soon a sight appear’d, +Which, so intent to mark it, held me fix’d, +That of confession I no longer thought. + +As through translucent and smooth glass, or wave +Clear and unmov’d, and flowing not so deep +As that its bed is dark, the shape returns +So faint of our impictur’d lineaments, +That on white forehead set a pearl as strong +Comes to the eye: such saw I many a face, +All stretch’d to speak, from whence I straight conceiv’d +Delusion opposite to that, which rais’d +Between the man and fountain, amorous flame. + +Sudden, as I perceiv’d them, deeming these +Reflected semblances to see of whom +They were, I turn’d mine eyes, and nothing saw; +Then turn’d them back, directed on the light +Of my sweet guide, who smiling shot forth beams +From her celestial eyes. “Wonder not thou,” +She cry’d, “at this my smiling, when I see +Thy childish judgment; since not yet on truth +It rests the foot, but, as it still is wont, +Makes thee fall back in unsound vacancy. +True substances are these, which thou behold’st, +Hither through failure of their vow exil’d. +But speak thou with them; listen, and believe, +That the true light, which fills them with desire, +Permits not from its beams their feet to stray.” + +Straight to the shadow which for converse seem’d +Most earnest, I addressed me, and began, +As one by over-eagerness perplex’d: +“O spirit, born for joy! who in the rays +Of life eternal, of that sweetness know’st +The flavour, which, not tasted, passes far +All apprehension, me it well would please, +If thou wouldst tell me of thy name, and this +Your station here.” Whence she, with kindness prompt, +And eyes glist’ning with smiles: “Our charity, +To any wish by justice introduc’d, +Bars not the door, no more than she above, +Who would have all her court be like herself. +I was a virgin sister in the earth; +And if thy mind observe me well, this form, +With such addition grac’d of loveliness, +Will not conceal me long, but thou wilt know +Piccarda, in the tardiest sphere thus plac’d, +Here ’mid these other blessed also blest. +Our hearts, whose high affections burn alone +With pleasure, from the Holy Spirit conceiv’d, +Admitted to his order dwell in joy. +And this condition, which appears so low, +Is for this cause assign’d us, that our vows +Were in some part neglected and made void.” + +Whence I to her replied: “Something divine +Beams in your countenance, wond’rous fair, +From former knowledge quite transmuting you. +Therefore to recollect was I so slow. +But what thou sayst hath to my memory +Given now such aid, that to retrace your forms +Is easier. Yet inform me, ye, who here +Are happy, long ye for a higher place +More to behold, and more in love to dwell?” + +She with those other spirits gently smil’d, +Then answer’d with such gladness, that she seem’d +With love’s first flame to glow: “Brother! our will +Is in composure settled by the power +Of charity, who makes us will alone +What we possess, and nought beyond desire; +If we should wish to be exalted more, +Then must our wishes jar with the high will +Of him, who sets us here, which in these orbs +Thou wilt confess not possible, if here +To be in charity must needs befall, +And if her nature well thou contemplate. +Rather it is inherent in this state +Of blessedness, to keep ourselves within +The divine will, by which our wills with his +Are one. So that as we from step to step +Are plac’d throughout this kingdom, pleases all, +E’en as our King, who in us plants his will; +And in his will is our tranquillity; +It is the mighty ocean, whither tends +Whatever it creates and nature makes.” + +Then saw I clearly how each spot in heav’n +Is Paradise, though with like gracious dew +The supreme virtue show’r not over all. + +But as it chances, if one sort of food +Hath satiated, and of another still +The appetite remains, that this is ask’d, +And thanks for that return’d; e’en so did I +In word and motion, bent from her to learn +What web it was, through which she had not drawn +The shuttle to its point. She thus began: +“Exalted worth and perfectness of life +The Lady higher up enshrine in heaven, +By whose pure laws upon your nether earth +The robe and veil they wear, to that intent, +That e’en till death they may keep watch or sleep +With their great bridegroom, who accepts each vow, +Which to his gracious pleasure love conforms. +from the world, to follow her, when young +Escap’d; and, in her vesture mantling me, +Made promise of the way her sect enjoins. +Thereafter men, for ill than good more apt, +Forth snatch’d me from the pleasant cloister’s pale. +God knows how after that my life was fram’d. +This other splendid shape, which thou beholdst +At my right side, burning with all the light +Of this our orb, what of myself I tell +May to herself apply. From her, like me +A sister, with like violence were torn +The saintly folds, that shaded her fair brows. +E’en when she to the world again was brought +In spite of her own will and better wont, +Yet not for that the bosom’s inward veil +Did she renounce. This is the luminary +Of mighty Constance, who from that loud blast, +Which blew the second over Suabia’s realm, +That power produc’d, which was the third and last.” + +She ceas’d from further talk, and then began +“Ave Maria” singing, and with that song +Vanish’d, as heavy substance through deep wave. + +Mine eye, that far as it was capable, +Pursued her, when in dimness she was lost, +Turn’d to the mark where greater want impell’d, +And bent on Beatrice all its gaze. +But she as light’ning beam’d upon my looks: +So that the sight sustain’d it not at first. +Whence I to question her became less prompt. + + + + +CANTO IV + + +Between two kinds of food, both equally +Remote and tempting, first a man might die +Of hunger, ere he one could freely choose. +E’en so would stand a lamb between the maw +Of two fierce wolves, in dread of both alike: +E’en so between two deer a dog would stand, +Wherefore, if I was silent, fault nor praise +I to myself impute, by equal doubts +Held in suspense, since of necessity +It happen’d. Silent was I, yet desire +Was painted in my looks; and thus I spake +My wish more earnestly than language could. + +As Daniel, when the haughty king he freed +From ire, that spurr’d him on to deeds unjust +And violent; so look’d Beatrice then. + +“Well I discern,” she thus her words address’d, +“How contrary desires each way constrain thee, +So that thy anxious thought is in itself +Bound up and stifled, nor breathes freely forth. +Thou arguest; if the good intent remain; +What reason that another’s violence +Should stint the measure of my fair desert? + +“Cause too thou findst for doubt, in that it seems, +That spirits to the stars, as Plato deem’d, +Return. These are the questions which thy will +Urge equally; and therefore I the first +Of that will treat which hath the more of gall. +Of seraphim he who is most ensky’d, +Moses and Samuel, and either John, +Choose which thou wilt, nor even Mary’s self, +Have not in any other heav’n their seats, +Than have those spirits which so late thou saw’st; +Nor more or fewer years exist; but all +Make the first circle beauteous, diversely +Partaking of sweet life, as more or less +Afflation of eternal bliss pervades them. +Here were they shown thee, not that fate assigns +This for their sphere, but for a sign to thee +Of that celestial furthest from the height. +Thus needs, that ye may apprehend, we speak: +Since from things sensible alone ye learn +That, which digested rightly after turns +To intellectual. For no other cause +The scripture, condescending graciously +To your perception, hands and feet to God +Attributes, nor so means: and holy church +Doth represent with human countenance +Gabriel, and Michael, and him who made +Tobias whole. Unlike what here thou seest, +The judgment of Timaeus, who affirms +Each soul restor’d to its particular star, +Believing it to have been taken thence, +When nature gave it to inform her mold: +Since to appearance his intention is +E’en what his words declare: or else to shun +Derision, haply thus he hath disguis’d +His true opinion. If his meaning be, +That to the influencing of these orbs revert +The honour and the blame in human acts, +Perchance he doth not wholly miss the truth. +This principle, not understood aright, +Erewhile perverted well nigh all the world; +So that it fell to fabled names of Jove, +And Mercury, and Mars. That other doubt, +Which moves thee, is less harmful; for it brings +No peril of removing thee from me. + +“That, to the eye of man, our justice seems +Unjust, is argument for faith, and not +For heretic declension. To the end +This truth may stand more clearly in your view, +I will content thee even to thy wish + +“If violence be, when that which suffers, nought +Consents to that which forceth, not for this +These spirits stood exculpate. For the will, +That will not, still survives unquench’d, and doth +As nature doth in fire, tho’ violence +Wrest it a thousand times; for, if it yield +Or more or less, so far it follows force. +And thus did these, whom they had power to seek +The hallow’d place again. In them, had will +Been perfect, such as once upon the bars +Held Laurence firm, or wrought in Scaevola +To his own hand remorseless, to the path, +Whence they were drawn, their steps had hasten’d back, +When liberty return’d: but in too few +Resolve so steadfast dwells. And by these words +If duly weigh’d, that argument is void, +Which oft might have perplex’d thee still. But now +Another question thwarts thee, which to solve +Might try thy patience without better aid. +I have, no doubt, instill’d into thy mind, +That blessed spirit may not lie; since near +The source of primal truth it dwells for aye: +And thou might’st after of Piccarda learn +That Constance held affection to the veil; +So that she seems to contradict me here. +Not seldom, brother, it hath chanc’d for men +To do what they had gladly left undone, +Yet to shun peril they have done amiss: +E’en as Alcmaeon, at his father’s suit +Slew his own mother, so made pitiless +Not to lose pity. On this point bethink thee, +That force and will are blended in such wise +As not to make the’ offence excusable. +Absolute will agrees not to the wrong, +That inasmuch as there is fear of woe +From non-compliance, it agrees. Of will +Thus absolute Piccarda spake, and I +Of th’ other; so that both have truly said.” + +Such was the flow of that pure rill, that well’d +From forth the fountain of all truth; and such +The rest, that to my wond’ring thoughts l found. + +“O thou of primal love the prime delight! +Goddess! “I straight reply’d, “whose lively words +Still shed new heat and vigour through my soul! +Affection fails me to requite thy grace +With equal sum of gratitude: be his +To recompense, who sees and can reward thee. +Well I discern, that by that truth alone +Enlighten’d, beyond which no truth may roam, +Our mind can satisfy her thirst to know: +Therein she resteth, e’en as in his lair +The wild beast, soon as she hath reach’d that bound, +And she hath power to reach it; else desire +Were given to no end. And thence doth doubt +Spring, like a shoot, around the stock of truth; +And it is nature which from height to height +On to the summit prompts us. This invites, +This doth assure me, lady, rev’rently +To ask thee of other truth, that yet +Is dark to me. I fain would know, if man +By other works well done may so supply +The failure of his vows, that in your scale +They lack not weight.” I spake; and on me straight +Beatrice look’d with eyes that shot forth sparks +Of love celestial in such copious stream, +That, virtue sinking in me overpower’d, +I turn’d, and downward bent confus’d my sight. + + + + +CANTO V + + +“If beyond earthly wont, the flame of love +Illume me, so that I o’ercome thy power +Of vision, marvel not: but learn the cause +In that perfection of the sight, which soon +As apprehending, hasteneth on to reach +The good it apprehends. I well discern, +How in thine intellect already shines +The light eternal, which to view alone +Ne’er fails to kindle love; and if aught else +Your love seduces, ’tis but that it shows +Some ill-mark’d vestige of that primal beam. + +“This would’st thou know, if failure of the vow +By other service may be so supplied, +As from self-question to assure the soul.” + +Thus she her words, not heedless of my wish, +Began; and thus, as one who breaks not off +Discourse, continued in her saintly strain. +“Supreme of gifts, which God creating gave +Of his free bounty, sign most evident +Of goodness, and in his account most priz’d, +Was liberty of will, the boon wherewith +All intellectual creatures, and them sole +He hath endow’d. Hence now thou mayst infer +Of what high worth the vow, which so is fram’d +That when man offers, God well-pleas’d accepts; +For in the compact between God and him, +This treasure, such as I describe it to thee, +He makes the victim, and of his own act. +What compensation therefore may he find? +If that, whereof thou hast oblation made, +By using well thou think’st to consecrate, +Thou would’st of theft do charitable deed. +Thus I resolve thee of the greater point. + +“But forasmuch as holy church, herein +Dispensing, seems to contradict the truth +I have discover’d to thee, yet behooves +Thou rest a little longer at the board, +Ere the crude aliment, which thou hast taken, +Digested fitly to nutrition turn. +Open thy mind to what I now unfold, +And give it inward keeping. Knowledge comes +Of learning well retain’d, unfruitful else. + +“This sacrifice in essence of two things +Consisteth; one is that, whereof ’tis made, +The covenant the other. For the last, +It ne’er is cancell’d if not kept: and hence +I spake erewhile so strictly of its force. +For this it was enjoin’d the Israelites, +Though leave were giv’n them, as thou know’st, to change +The offering, still to offer. Th’ other part, +The matter and the substance of the vow, +May well be such, to that without offence +It may for other substance be exchang’d. +But at his own discretion none may shift +The burden on his shoulders, unreleas’d +By either key, the yellow and the white. +Nor deem of any change, as less than vain, +If the last bond be not within the new +Included, as the quatre in the six. +No satisfaction therefore can be paid +For what so precious in the balance weighs, +That all in counterpoise must kick the beam. +Take then no vow at random: ta’en, with faith +Preserve it; yet not bent, as Jephthah once, +Blindly to execute a rash resolve, +Whom better it had suited to exclaim, +‘I have done ill,’ than to redeem his pledge +By doing worse or, not unlike to him +In folly, that great leader of the Greeks: +Whence, on the alter, Iphigenia mourn’d +Her virgin beauty, and hath since made mourn +Both wise and simple, even all, who hear +Of so fell sacrifice. Be ye more staid, +O Christians, not, like feather, by each wind +Removable: nor think to cleanse ourselves +In every water. Either testament, +The old and new, is yours: and for your guide +The shepherd of the church let this suffice +To save you. When by evil lust entic’d, +Remember ye be men, not senseless beasts; +Nor let the Jew, who dwelleth in your streets, +Hold you in mock’ry. Be not, as the lamb, +That, fickle wanton, leaves its mother’s milk, +To dally with itself in idle play.” + +Such were the words that Beatrice spake: +These ended, to that region, where the world +Is liveliest, full of fond desire she turn’d. + +Though mainly prompt new question to propose, +Her silence and chang’d look did keep me dumb. +And as the arrow, ere the cord is still, +Leapeth unto its mark; so on we sped +Into the second realm. There I beheld +The dame, so joyous enter, that the orb +Grew brighter at her smiles; and, if the star +Were mov’d to gladness, what then was my cheer, +Whom nature hath made apt for every change! + +As in a quiet and clear lake the fish, +If aught approach them from without, do draw +Towards it, deeming it their food; so drew +Full more than thousand splendours towards us, +And in each one was heard: “Lo! one arriv’d +To multiply our loves!” and as each came +The shadow, streaming forth effulgence new, +Witness’d augmented joy. Here, reader! think, +If thou didst miss the sequel of my tale, +To know the rest how sorely thou wouldst crave; +And thou shalt see what vehement desire +Possess’d me, as soon as these had met my view, +To know their state. “O born in happy hour! +Thou to whom grace vouchsafes, or ere thy close +Of fleshly warfare, to behold the thrones +Of that eternal triumph, know to us +The light communicated, which through heaven +Expatiates without bound. Therefore, if aught +Thou of our beams wouldst borrow for thine aid, +Spare not; and of our radiance take thy fill.” + +Thus of those piteous spirits one bespake me; +And Beatrice next: “Say on; and trust +As unto gods!”—“How in the light supreme +Thou harbour’st, and from thence the virtue bring’st, +That, sparkling in thine eyes, denotes thy joy, +l mark; but, who thou art, am still to seek; +Or wherefore, worthy spirit! for thy lot +This sphere assign’d, that oft from mortal ken +Is veil’d by others’ beams.” I said, and turn’d +Toward the lustre, that with greeting, kind +Erewhile had hail’d me. Forthwith brighter far +Than erst, it wax’d: and, as himself the sun +Hides through excess of light, when his warm gaze +Hath on the mantle of thick vapours prey’d; +Within its proper ray the saintly shape +Was, through increase of gladness, thus conceal’d; +And, shrouded so in splendour answer’d me, +E’en as the tenour of my song declares. + + + + +CANTO VI + + +“After that Constantine the eagle turn’d +Against the motions of the heav’n, that roll’d +Consenting with its course, when he of yore, +Lavinia’s spouse, was leader of the flight, +A hundred years twice told and more, his seat +At Europe’s extreme point, the bird of Jove +Held, near the mountains, whence he issued first. +There, under shadow of his sacred plumes +Swaying the world, till through successive hands +To mine he came devolv’d. Caesar I was, +And am Justinian; destin’d by the will +Of that prime love, whose influence I feel, +From vain excess to clear th’ encumber’d laws. +Or ere that work engag’d me, I did hold +Christ’s nature merely human, with such faith +Contented. But the blessed Agapete, +Who was chief shepherd, he with warning voice +To the true faith recall’d me. I believ’d +His words: and what he taught, now plainly see, +As thou in every contradiction seest +The true and false oppos’d. Soon as my feet +Were to the church reclaim’d, to my great task, +By inspiration of God’s grace impell’d, +I gave me wholly, and consign’d mine arms +To Belisarius, with whom heaven’s right hand +Was link’d in such conjointment, ’twas a sign +That I should rest. To thy first question thus +I shape mine answer, which were ended here, +But that its tendency doth prompt perforce +To some addition; that thou well, mayst mark +What reason on each side they have to plead, +By whom that holiest banner is withstood, +Both who pretend its power and who oppose. + “Beginning from that hour, when Pallas died +To give it rule, behold the valorous deeds +Have made it worthy reverence. Not unknown +To thee, how for three hundred years and more +It dwelt in Alba, up to those fell lists +Where for its sake were met the rival three; +Nor aught unknown to thee, which it achiev’d +Down to the Sabines’ wrong to Lucrece’ woe, +With its sev’n kings conqu’ring the nation round; +Nor all it wrought, by Roman worthies home +’Gainst Brennus and th’ Epirot prince, and hosts +Of single chiefs, or states in league combin’d +Of social warfare; hence Torquatus stern, +And Quintius nam’d of his neglected locks, +The Decii, and the Fabii hence acquir’d +Their fame, which I with duteous zeal embalm. +By it the pride of Arab hordes was quell’d, +When they led on by Hannibal o’erpass’d +The Alpine rocks, whence glide thy currents, Po! +Beneath its guidance, in their prime of days +Scipio and Pompey triumph’d; and that hill, +Under whose summit thou didst see the light, +Rued its stern bearing. After, near the hour, +When heav’n was minded that o’er all the world +His own deep calm should brood, to Caesar’s hand +Did Rome consign it; and what then it wrought +From Var unto the Rhine, saw Isere’s flood, +Saw Loire and Seine, and every vale, that fills +The torrent Rhone. What after that it wrought, +When from Ravenna it came forth, and leap’d +The Rubicon, was of so bold a flight, +That tongue nor pen may follow it. Tow’rds Spain +It wheel’d its bands, then tow’rd Dyrrachium smote, +And on Pharsalia with so fierce a plunge, +E’en the warm Nile was conscious to the pang; +Its native shores Antandros, and the streams +Of Simois revisited, and there +Where Hector lies; then ill for Ptolemy +His pennons shook again; lightning thence fell +On Juba; and the next upon your west, +At sound of the Pompeian trump, return’d. + +“What following and in its next bearer’s gripe +It wrought, is now by Cassius and Brutus +Bark’d off in hell, and by Perugia’s sons +And Modena’s was mourn’d. Hence weepeth still +Sad Cleopatra, who, pursued by it, +Took from the adder black and sudden death. +With him it ran e’en to the Red Sea coast; +With him compos’d the world to such a peace, +That of his temple Janus barr’d the door. + +“But all the mighty standard yet had wrought, +And was appointed to perform thereafter, +Throughout the mortal kingdom which it sway’d, +Falls in appearance dwindled and obscur’d, +If one with steady eye and perfect thought +On the third Caesar look; for to his hands, +The living Justice, in whose breath I move, +Committed glory, e’en into his hands, +To execute the vengeance of its wrath. + +“Hear now and wonder at what next I tell. +After with Titus it was sent to wreak +Vengeance for vengeance of the ancient sin, +And, when the Lombard tooth, with fangs impure, +Did gore the bosom of the holy church, +Under its wings victorious, Charlemagne +Sped to her rescue. Judge then for thyself +Of those, whom I erewhile accus’d to thee, +What they are, and how grievous their offending, +Who are the cause of all your ills. The one +Against the universal ensign rears +The yellow lilies, and with partial aim +That to himself the other arrogates: +So that ’tis hard to see which more offends. +Be yours, ye Ghibellines, to veil your arts +Beneath another standard: ill is this +Follow’d of him, who severs it and justice: +And let not with his Guelphs the new-crown’d Charles +Assail it, but those talons hold in dread, +Which from a lion of more lofty port +Have rent the easing. Many a time ere now +The sons have for the sire’s transgression wail’d; +Nor let him trust the fond belief, that heav’n +Will truck its armour for his lilied shield. + +“This little star is furnish’d with good spirits, +Whose mortal lives were busied to that end, +That honour and renown might wait on them: +And, when desires thus err in their intention, +True love must needs ascend with slacker beam. +But it is part of our delight, to measure +Our wages with the merit; and admire +The close proportion. Hence doth heav’nly justice +Temper so evenly affection in us, +It ne’er can warp to any wrongfulness. +Of diverse voices is sweet music made: +So in our life the different degrees +Render sweet harmony among these wheels. + +“Within the pearl, that now encloseth us, +Shines Romeo’s light, whose goodly deed and fair +Met ill acceptance. But the Provencals, +That were his foes, have little cause for mirth. +Ill shapes that man his course, who makes his wrong +Of other’s worth. Four daughters were there born +To Raymond Berenger, and every one +Became a queen; and this for him did Romeo, +Though of mean state and from a foreign land. +Yet envious tongues incited him to ask +A reckoning of that just one, who return’d +Twelve fold to him for ten. Aged and poor +He parted thence: and if the world did know +The heart he had, begging his life by morsels, +’Twould deem the praise, it yields him, scantly dealt.” + + + + +CANTO VII + + +“Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth +Superillustrans claritate tua +Felices ignes horum malahoth!” +Thus chanting saw I turn that substance bright +With fourfold lustre to its orb again, +Revolving; and the rest unto their dance +With it mov’d also; and like swiftest sparks, +In sudden distance from my sight were veil’d. + +Me doubt possess’d, and “Speak,” it whisper’d me, +“Speak, speak unto thy lady, that she quench +Thy thirst with drops of sweetness.” Yet blank awe, +Which lords it o’er me, even at the sound +Of Beatrice’s name, did bow me down +As one in slumber held. Not long that mood +Beatrice suffer’d: she, with such a smile, +As might have made one blest amid the flames, +Beaming upon me, thus her words began: +“Thou in thy thought art pond’ring (as I deem, +And what I deem is truth how just revenge +Could be with justice punish’d: from which doubt +I soon will free thee; so thou mark my words; +For they of weighty matter shall possess thee. + +“That man, who was unborn, himself condemn’d, +And, in himself, all, who since him have liv’d, +His offspring: whence, below, the human kind +Lay sick in grievous error many an age; +Until it pleas’d the Word of God to come +Amongst them down, to his own person joining +The nature, from its Maker far estrang’d, +By the mere act of his eternal love. +Contemplate here the wonder I unfold. +The nature with its Maker thus conjoin’d, +Created first was blameless, pure and good; +But through itself alone was driven forth +From Paradise, because it had eschew’d +The way of truth and life, to evil turn’d. +Ne’er then was penalty so just as that +Inflicted by the cross, if thou regard +The nature in assumption doom’d: ne’er wrong +So great, in reference to him, who took +Such nature on him, and endur’d the doom. +God therefore and the Jews one sentence pleased: +So different effects flow’d from one act, +And heav’n was open’d, though the earth did quake. +Count it not hard henceforth, when thou dost hear +That a just vengeance was by righteous court +Justly reveng’d. But yet I see thy mind +By thought on thought arising sore perplex’d, +And with how vehement desire it asks +Solution of the maze. What I have heard, +Is plain, thou sayst: but wherefore God this way +For our redemption chose, eludes my search. + +“Brother! no eye of man not perfected, +Nor fully ripen’d in the flame of love, +May fathom this decree. It is a mark, +In sooth, much aim’d at, and but little kenn’d: +And I will therefore show thee why such way +Was worthiest. The celestial love, that spume +All envying in its bounty, in itself +With such effulgence blazeth, as sends forth +All beauteous things eternal. What distils +Immediate thence, no end of being knows, +Bearing its seal immutably impress’d. +Whatever thence immediate falls, is free, +Free wholly, uncontrollable by power +Of each thing new: by such conformity +More grateful to its author, whose bright beams, +Though all partake their shining, yet in those +Are liveliest, which resemble him the most. +These tokens of pre-eminence on man +Largely bestow’d, if any of them fail, +He needs must forfeit his nobility, +No longer stainless. Sin alone is that, +Which doth disfranchise him, and make unlike +To the chief good; for that its light in him +Is darken’d. And to dignity thus lost +Is no return; unless, where guilt makes void, +He for ill pleasure pay with equal pain. +Your nature, which entirely in its seed +Trangress’d, from these distinctions fell, no less +Than from its state in Paradise; nor means +Found of recovery (search all methods out +As strickly as thou may) save one of these, +The only fords were left through which to wade, +Either that God had of his courtesy +Releas’d him merely, or else man himself +For his own folly by himself aton’d. + +“Fix now thine eye, intently as thou canst, +On th’ everlasting counsel, and explore, +Instructed by my words, the dread abyss. + +“Man in himself had ever lack’d the means +Of satisfaction, for he could not stoop +Obeying, in humility so low, +As high he, disobeying, thought to soar: +And for this reason he had vainly tried +Out of his own sufficiency to pay +The rigid satisfaction. Then behooved +That God should by his own ways lead him back +Unto the life, from whence he fell, restor’d: +By both his ways, I mean, or one alone. +But since the deed is ever priz’d the more, +The more the doer’s good intent appears, +Goodness celestial, whose broad signature +Is on the universe, of all its ways +To raise ye up, was fain to leave out none, +Nor aught so vast or so magnificent, +Either for him who gave or who receiv’d +Between the last night and the primal day, +Was or can be. For God more bounty show’d. +Giving himself to make man capable +Of his return to life, than had the terms +Been mere and unconditional release. +And for his justice, every method else +Were all too scant, had not the Son of God +Humbled himself to put on mortal flesh. + +“Now, to fulfil each wish of thine, remains +I somewhat further to thy view unfold. +That thou mayst see as clearly as myself. + +“I see, thou sayst, the air, the fire I see, +The earth and water, and all things of them +Compounded, to corruption turn, and soon +Dissolve. Yet these were also things create, +Because, if what were told me, had been true +They from corruption had been therefore free. + +“The angels, O my brother! and this clime +Wherein thou art, impassible and pure, +I call created, as indeed they are +In their whole being. But the elements, +Which thou hast nam’d, and what of them is made, +Are by created virtue’ inform’d: create +Their substance, and create the’ informing virtue +In these bright stars, that round them circling move +The soul of every brute and of each plant, +The ray and motion of the sacred lights, +With complex potency attract and turn. +But this our life the’ eternal good inspires +Immediate, and enamours of itself; +So that our wishes rest for ever here. + +“And hence thou mayst by inference conclude +Our resurrection certain, if thy mind +Consider how the human flesh was fram’d, +When both our parents at the first were made.” + + + + +CANTO VIII + + +The world was in its day of peril dark +Wont to believe the dotage of fond love +From the fair Cyprian deity, who rolls +In her third epicycle, shed on men +By stream of potent radiance: therefore they +Of elder time, in their old error blind, +Not her alone with sacrifice ador’d +And invocation, but like honours paid +To Cupid and Dione, deem’d of them +Her mother, and her son, him whom they feign’d +To sit in Dido’s bosom: and from her, +Whom I have sung preluding, borrow’d they +The appellation of that star, which views, +Now obvious and now averse, the sun. + +I was not ware that I was wafted up +Into its orb; but the new loveliness +That grac’d my lady, gave me ample proof +That we had entered there. And as in flame +A sparkle is distinct, or voice in voice +Discern’d, when one its even tenour keeps, +The other comes and goes; so in that light +I other luminaries saw, that cours’d +In circling motion. rapid more or less, +As their eternal phases each impels. + +Never was blast from vapour charged with cold, +Whether invisible to eye or no, +Descended with such speed, it had not seem’d +To linger in dull tardiness, compar’d +To those celestial lights, that tow’rds us came, +Leaving the circuit of their joyous ring, +Conducted by the lofty seraphim. +And after them, who in the van appear’d, +Such an hosanna sounded, as hath left +Desire, ne’er since extinct in me, to hear +Renew’d the strain. Then parting from the rest +One near us drew, and sole began: “We all +Are ready at thy pleasure, well dispos’d +To do thee gentle service. We are they, +To whom thou in the world erewhile didst Sing +‘O ye! whose intellectual ministry +Moves the third heaven!’ and in one orb we roll, +One motion, one impulse, with those who rule +Princedoms in heaven; yet are of love so full, +That to please thee ’twill be as sweet to rest.” + +After mine eyes had with meek reverence +Sought the celestial guide, and were by her +Assur’d, they turn’d again unto the light +Who had so largely promis’d, and with voice +That bare the lively pressure of my zeal, +“Tell who ye are,” I cried. Forthwith it grew +In size and splendour, through augmented joy; +And thus it answer’d: “A short date below +The world possess’d me. Had the time been more, +Much evil, that will come, had never chanc’d. +My gladness hides thee from me, which doth shine . +Around, and shroud me, as an animal +In its own silk enswath’d. Thou lov’dst me well, +And had’st good cause; for had my sojourning +Been longer on the earth, the love I bare thee +Had put forth more than blossoms. The left bank, +That Rhone, when he hath mix’d with Sorga, laves. +In me its lord expected, and that horn +Of fair Ausonia, with its boroughs old, +Bari, and Croton, and Gaeta pil’d, +From where the Trento disembogues his waves, +With Verde mingled, to the salt sea-flood. +Already on my temples beam’d the crown, +Which gave me sov’reignty over the land +By Danube wash’d, whenas he strays beyond +The limits of his German shores. The realm, +Where, on the gulf by stormy Eurus lash’d, +Betwixt Pelorus and Pachynian heights, +The beautiful Trinacria lies in gloom +(Not through Typhaeus, but the vap’ry cloud +Bituminous upsteam’d), THAT too did look +To have its scepter wielded by a race +Of monarchs, sprung through me from Charles and Rodolph; +had not ill lording which doth spirit up +The people ever, in Palermo rais’d +The shout of ‘death,’ re-echo’d loud and long. +Had but my brother’s foresight kenn’d as much, +He had been warier that the greedy want +Of Catalonia might not work his bale. +And truly need there is, that he forecast, +Or other for him, lest more freight be laid +On his already over-laden bark. +Nature in him, from bounty fall’n to thrift, +Would ask the guard of braver arms, than such +As only care to have their coffers fill’d.” + +“My liege, it doth enhance the joy thy words +Infuse into me, mighty as it is, +To think my gladness manifest to thee, +As to myself, who own it, when thou lookst +Into the source and limit of all good, +There, where thou markest that which thou dost speak, +Thence priz’d of me the more. Glad thou hast made me. +Now make intelligent, clearing the doubt +Thy speech hath raised in me; for much I muse, +How bitter can spring up, when sweet is sown.” + +I thus inquiring; he forthwith replied: +“If I have power to show one truth, soon that +Shall face thee, which thy questioning declares +Behind thee now conceal’d. The Good, that guides +And blessed makes this realm, which thou dost mount, +Ordains its providence to be the virtue +In these great bodies: nor th’ all perfect Mind +Upholds their nature merely, but in them +Their energy to save: for nought, that lies +Within the range of that unerring bow, +But is as level with the destin’d aim, +As ever mark to arrow’s point oppos’d. +Were it not thus, these heavens, thou dost visit, +Would their effect so work, it would not be +Art, but destruction; and this may not chance, +If th’ intellectual powers, that move these stars, +Fail not, or who, first faulty made them fail. +Wilt thou this truth more clearly evidenc’d?” + +To whom I thus: “It is enough: no fear, +I see, lest nature in her part should tire.” + +He straight rejoin’d: “Say, were it worse for man, +If he liv’d not in fellowship on earth?” + +“Yea,” answer’d I; “nor here a reason needs.” + +“And may that be, if different estates +Grow not of different duties in your life? +Consult your teacher, and he tells you ‘no.’” + +Thus did he come, deducing to this point, +And then concluded: “For this cause behooves, +The roots, from whence your operations come, +Must differ. Therefore one is Solon born; +Another, Xerxes; and Melchisidec +A third; and he a fourth, whose airy voyage +Cost him his son. In her circuitous course, +Nature, that is the seal to mortal wax, +Doth well her art, but no distinctions owns +’Twixt one or other household. Hence befalls +That Esau is so wide of Jacob: hence +Quirinus of so base a father springs, +He dates from Mars his lineage. Were it not +That providence celestial overrul’d, +Nature, in generation, must the path +Trac’d by the generator, still pursue +Unswervingly. Thus place I in thy sight +That, which was late behind thee. But, in sign +Of more affection for thee, ’tis my will +Thou wear this corollary. Nature ever +Finding discordant fortune, like all seed +Out of its proper climate, thrives but ill. +And were the world below content to mark +And work on the foundation nature lays, +It would not lack supply of excellence. +But ye perversely to religion strain +Him, who was born to gird on him the sword, +And of the fluent phrasemen make your king; +Therefore your steps have wander’d from the paths.” + + + + +CANTO IX + + +After solution of my doubt, thy Charles, +O fair Clemenza, of the treachery spake +That must befall his seed: but, “Tell it not,” +Said he, “and let the destin’d years come round.” +Nor may I tell thee more, save that the meed +Of sorrow well-deserv’d shall quit your wrongs. + +And now the visage of that saintly light +Was to the sun, that fills it, turn’d again, +As to the good, whose plenitude of bliss +Sufficeth all. O ye misguided souls! +Infatuate, who from such a good estrange +Your hearts, and bend your gaze on vanity, +Alas for you!—And lo! toward me, next, +Another of those splendent forms approach’d, +That, by its outward bright’ning, testified +The will it had to pleasure me. The eyes +Of Beatrice, resting, as before, +Firmly upon me, manifested forth +Approva1 of my wish. “And O,” I cried, +Blest spirit! quickly be my will perform’d; +And prove thou to me, that my inmost thoughts +I can reflect on thee.” Thereat the light, +That yet was new to me, from the recess, +Where it before was singing, thus began, +As one who joys in kindness: “In that part +Of the deprav’d Italian land, which lies +Between Rialto, and the fountain-springs +Of Brenta and of Piava, there doth rise, +But to no lofty eminence, a hill, +From whence erewhile a firebrand did descend, +That sorely sheet the region. From one root +I and it sprang; my name on earth Cunizza: +And here I glitter, for that by its light +This star o’ercame me. Yet I naught repine, +Nor grudge myself the cause of this my lot, +Which haply vulgar hearts can scarce conceive. + +“This jewel, that is next me in our heaven, +Lustrous and costly, great renown hath left, +And not to perish, ere these hundred years +Five times absolve their round. Consider thou, +If to excel be worthy man’s endeavour, +When such life may attend the first. Yet they +Care not for this, the crowd that now are girt +By Adice and Tagliamento, still +Impenitent, tho’ scourg’d. The hour is near, +When for their stubbornness at Padua’s marsh +The water shall be chang’d, that laves Vicena +And where Cagnano meets with Sile, one +Lords it, and bears his head aloft, for whom +The web is now a-warping. Feltro too +Shall sorrow for its godless shepherd’s fault, +Of so deep stain, that never, for the like, +Was Malta’s bar unclos’d. Too large should be +The skillet, that would hold Ferrara’s blood, +And wearied he, who ounce by ounce would weight it, +The which this priest, in show of party-zeal, +Courteous will give; nor will the gift ill suit +The country’s custom. We descry above, +Mirrors, ye call them thrones, from which to us +Reflected shine the judgments of our God: +Whence these our sayings we avouch for good.” + +She ended, and appear’d on other thoughts +Intent, re-ent’ring on the wheel she late +Had left. That other joyance meanwhile wax’d +A thing to marvel at, in splendour glowing, +Like choicest ruby stricken by the sun, +For, in that upper clime, effulgence comes +Of gladness, as here laughter: and below, +As the mind saddens, murkier grows the shade. + +“God seeth all: and in him is thy sight,” +Said I, “blest Spirit! Therefore will of his +Cannot to thee be dark. Why then delays +Thy voice to satisfy my wish untold, +That voice which joins the inexpressive song, +Pastime of heav’n, the which those ardours sing, +That cowl them with six shadowing wings outspread? +I would not wait thy asking, wert thou known +To me, as thoroughly I to thee am known.” + +He forthwith answ’ring, thus his words began: +“The valley’ of waters, widest next to that +Which doth the earth engarland, shapes its course, +Between discordant shores, against the sun +Inward so far, it makes meridian there, +Where was before th’ horizon. Of that vale +Dwelt I upon the shore, ’twixt Ebro’s stream +And Macra’s, that divides with passage brief +Genoan bounds from Tuscan. East and west +Are nearly one to Begga and my land, +Whose haven erst was with its own blood warm. +Who knew my name were wont to call me Folco: +And I did bear impression of this heav’n, +That now bears mine: for not with fiercer flame +Glow’d Belus’ daughter, injuring alike +Sichaeus and Creusa, than did I, +Long as it suited the unripen’d down +That fledg’d my cheek: nor she of Rhodope, +That was beguiled of Demophoon; +Nor Jove’s son, when the charms of Iole +Were shrin’d within his heart. And yet there hides +No sorrowful repentance here, but mirth, +Not for the fault (that doth not come to mind), +But for the virtue, whose o’erruling sway +And providence have wrought thus quaintly. Here +The skill is look’d into, that fashioneth +With such effectual working, and the good +Discern’d, accruing to this upper world +From that below. But fully to content +Thy wishes, all that in this sphere have birth, +Demands my further parle. Inquire thou wouldst, +Who of this light is denizen, that here +Beside me sparkles, as the sun-beam doth +On the clear wave. Know then, the soul of Rahab +Is in that gladsome harbour, to our tribe +United, and the foremost rank assign’d. +He to that heav’n, at which the shadow ends +Of your sublunar world, was taken up, +First, in Christ’s triumph, of all souls redeem’d: +For well behoov’d, that, in some part of heav’n, +She should remain a trophy, to declare +The mighty contest won with either palm; +For that she favour’d first the high exploit +Of Joshua on the holy land, whereof +The Pope recks little now. Thy city, plant +Of him, that on his Maker turn’d the back, +And of whose envying so much woe hath sprung, +Engenders and expands the cursed flower, +That hath made wander both the sheep and lambs, +Turning the shepherd to a wolf. For this, +The gospel and great teachers laid aside, +The decretals, as their stuft margins show, +Are the sole study. Pope and Cardinals, +Intent on these, ne’er journey but in thought +To Nazareth, where Gabriel op’d his wings. +Yet it may chance, erelong, the Vatican, +And other most selected parts of Rome, +That were the grave of Peter’s soldiery, +Shall be deliver’d from the adult’rous bond.” + + + + +CANTO X + + +Looking into his first-born with the love, +Which breathes from both eternal, the first Might +Ineffable, whence eye or mind +Can roam, hath in such order all dispos’d, +As none may see and fail to’ enjoy. Raise, then, +O reader! to the lofty wheels, with me, +Thy ken directed to the point, whereat +One motion strikes on th’ other. There begin +Thy wonder of the mighty Architect, +Who loves his work so inwardly, his eye +Doth ever watch it. See, how thence oblique +Brancheth the circle, where the planets roll +To pour their wished influence on the world; +Whose path not bending thus, in heav’n above +Much virtue would be lost, and here on earth, +All power well nigh extinct: or, from direct +Were its departure distant more or less, +I’ th’ universal order, great defect +Must, both in heav’n and here beneath, ensue. + +Now rest thee, reader! on thy bench, and muse +Anticipative of the feast to come; +So shall delight make thee not feel thy toil. +Lo! I have set before thee, for thyself +Feed now: the matter I indite, henceforth +Demands entire my thought. Join’d with the part, +Which late we told of, the great minister +Of nature, that upon the world imprints +The virtue of the heaven, and doles out +Time for us with his beam, went circling on +Along the spires, where each hour sooner comes; +And I was with him, weetless of ascent, +As one, who till arriv’d, weets not his coming. + +For Beatrice, she who passeth on +So suddenly from good to better, time +Counts not the act, oh then how great must needs +Have been her brightness! What she was i’ th’ sun +(Where I had enter’d), not through change of hue, +But light transparent—did I summon up +Genius, art, practice—I might not so speak, +It should be e’er imagin’d: yet believ’d +It may be, and the sight be justly crav’d. +And if our fantasy fail of such height, +What marvel, since no eye above the sun +Hath ever travel’d? Such are they dwell here, +Fourth family of the Omnipotent Sire, +Who of his spirit and of his offspring shows; +And holds them still enraptur’d with the view. +And thus to me Beatrice: “Thank, oh thank, +The Sun of angels, him, who by his grace +To this perceptible hath lifted thee.” + +Never was heart in such devotion bound, +And with complacency so absolute +Dispos’d to render up itself to God, +As mine was at those words: and so entire +The love for Him, that held me, it eclips’d +Beatrice in oblivion. Naught displeas’d +Was she, but smil’d thereat so joyously, +That of her laughing eyes the radiance brake +And scatter’d my collected mind abroad. + +Then saw I a bright band, in liveliness +Surpassing, who themselves did make the crown, +And us their centre: yet more sweet in voice, +Than in their visage beaming. Cinctur’d thus, +Sometime Latona’s daughter we behold, +When the impregnate air retains the thread, +That weaves her zone. In the celestial court, +Whence I return, are many jewels found, +So dear and beautiful, they cannot brook +Transporting from that realm: and of these lights +Such was the song. Who doth not prune his wing +To soar up thither, let him look from thence +For tidings from the dumb. When, singing thus, +Those burning suns that circled round us thrice, +As nearest stars around the fixed pole, +Then seem’d they like to ladies, from the dance +Not ceasing, but suspense, in silent pause, +List’ning, till they have caught the strain anew: +Suspended so they stood: and, from within, +Thus heard I one, who spake: “Since with its beam +The grace, whence true love lighteth first his flame, +That after doth increase by loving, shines +So multiplied in thee, it leads thee up +Along this ladder, down whose hallow’d steps +None e’er descend, and mount them not again, +Who from his phial should refuse thee wine +To slake thy thirst, no less constrained were, +Than water flowing not unto the sea. +Thou fain wouldst hear, what plants are these, that bloom +In the bright garland, which, admiring, girds +This fair dame round, who strengthens thee for heav’n. +I then was of the lambs, that Dominic +Leads, for his saintly flock, along the way, +Where well they thrive, not sworn with vanity. +He, nearest on my right hand, brother was, +And master to me: Albert of Cologne +Is this: and of Aquinum, Thomas I. +If thou of all the rest wouldst be assur’d, +Let thine eye, waiting on the words I speak, +In circuit journey round the blessed wreath. +That next resplendence issues from the smile +Of Gratian, who to either forum lent +Such help, as favour wins in Paradise. +The other, nearest, who adorns our quire, +Was Peter, he that with the widow gave +To holy church his treasure. The fifth light, +Goodliest of all, is by such love inspired, +That all your world craves tidings of its doom: +Within, there is the lofty light, endow’d +With sapience so profound, if truth be truth, +That with a ken of such wide amplitude +No second hath arisen. Next behold +That taper’s radiance, to whose view was shown, +Clearliest, the nature and the ministry +Angelical, while yet in flesh it dwelt. +In the other little light serenely smiles +That pleader for the Christian temples, he +Who did provide Augustin of his lore. +Now, if thy mind’s eye pass from light to light, +Upon my praises following, of the eighth +Thy thirst is next. The saintly soul, that shows +The world’s deceitfulness, to all who hear him, +Is, with the sight of all the good, that is, +Blest there. The limbs, whence it was driven, lie +Down in Cieldauro, and from martyrdom +And exile came it here. Lo! further on, +Where flames the arduous Spirit of Isidore, +Of Bede, and Richard, more than man, erewhile, +In deep discernment. Lastly this, from whom +Thy look on me reverteth, was the beam +Of one, whose spirit, on high musings bent, +Rebuk’d the ling’ring tardiness of death. +It is the eternal light of Sigebert, +Who ’scap’d not envy, when of truth he argued, +Reading in the straw-litter’d street.” Forthwith, +As clock, that calleth up the spouse of God +To win her bridegroom’s love at matin’s hour, +Each part of other fitly drawn and urg’d, +Sends out a tinkling sound, of note so sweet, +Affection springs in well-disposed breast; +Thus saw I move the glorious wheel, thus heard +Voice answ’ring voice, so musical and soft, +It can be known but where day endless shines. + + + + +CANTO XI + + +O fond anxiety of mortal men! +How vain and inconclusive arguments +Are those, which make thee beat thy wings below +For statues one, and one for aphorisms +Was hunting; this the priesthood follow’d, that +By force or sophistry aspir’d to rule; +To rob another, and another sought +By civil business wealth; one moiling lay +Tangled in net of sensual delight, +And one to witless indolence resign’d; +What time from all these empty things escap’d, +With Beatrice, I thus gloriously +Was rais’d aloft, and made the guest of heav’n. + +They of the circle to that point, each one. +Where erst it was, had turn’d; and steady glow’d, +As candle in his socket. Then within +The lustre, that erewhile bespake me, smiling +With merer gladness, heard I thus begin: + +“E’en as his beam illumes me, so I look +Into the eternal light, and clearly mark +Thy thoughts, from whence they rise. Thou art in doubt, +And wouldst, that I should bolt my words afresh +In such plain open phrase, as may be smooth +To thy perception, where I told thee late +That ‘well they thrive;’ and that ‘no second such +Hath risen,’ which no small distinction needs. + +“The providence, that governeth the world, +In depth of counsel by created ken +Unfathomable, to the end that she, +Who with loud cries was ’spous’d in precious blood, +Might keep her footing towards her well-belov’d, +Safe in herself and constant unto him, +Hath two ordain’d, who should on either hand +In chief escort her: one seraphic all +In fervency; for wisdom upon earth, +The other splendour of cherubic light. +I but of one will tell: he tells of both, +Who one commendeth. which of them so’er +Be taken: for their deeds were to one end. + +“Between Tupino, and the wave, that falls +From blest Ubaldo’s chosen hill, there hangs +Rich slope of mountain high, whence heat and cold +Are wafted through Perugia’s eastern gate: +And Norcera with Gualdo, in its rear +Mourn for their heavy yoke. Upon that side, +Where it doth break its steepness most, arose +A sun upon the world, as duly this +From Ganges doth: therefore let none, who speak +Of that place, say Ascesi; for its name +Were lamely so deliver’d; but the East, +To call things rightly, be it henceforth styl’d. +He was not yet much distant from his rising, +When his good influence ’gan to bless the earth. +A dame to whom none openeth pleasure’s gate +More than to death, was, ’gainst his father’s will, +His stripling choice: and he did make her his, +Before the Spiritual court, by nuptial bonds, +And in his father’s sight: from day to day, +Then lov’d her more devoutly. She, bereav’d +Of her first husband, slighted and obscure, +Thousand and hundred years and more, remain’d +Without a single suitor, till he came. +Nor aught avail’d, that, with Amyclas, she +Was found unmov’d at rumour of his voice, +Who shook the world: nor aught her constant boldness +Whereby with Christ she mounted on the cross, +When Mary stay’d beneath. But not to deal +Thus closely with thee longer, take at large +The rovers’ titles—Poverty and Francis. +Their concord and glad looks, wonder and love, +And sweet regard gave birth to holy thoughts, +So much, that venerable Bernard first +Did bare his feet, and, in pursuit of peace +So heavenly, ran, yet deem’d his footing slow. +O hidden riches! O prolific good! +Egidius bares him next, and next Sylvester, +And follow both the bridegroom; so the bride +Can please them. Thenceforth goes he on his way, +The father and the master, with his spouse, +And with that family, whom now the cord +Girt humbly: nor did abjectness of heart +Weigh down his eyelids, for that he was son +Of Pietro Bernardone, and by men +In wond’rous sort despis’d. But royally +His hard intention he to Innocent +Set forth, and from him first receiv’d the seal +On his religion. Then, when numerous flock’d +The tribe of lowly ones, that trac’d HIS steps, +Whose marvellous life deservedly were sung +In heights empyreal, through Honorius’ hand +A second crown, to deck their Guardian’s virtues, +Was by the eternal Spirit inwreath’d: and when +He had, through thirst of martyrdom, stood up +In the proud Soldan’s presence, and there preach’d +Christ and his followers; but found the race +Unripen’d for conversion: back once more +He hasted (not to intermit his toil), +And reap’d Ausonian lands. On the hard rock, +’Twixt Arno and the Tyber, he from Christ +Took the last Signet, which his limbs two years +Did carry. Then the season come, that he, +Who to such good had destin’d him, was pleas’d +T’ advance him to the meed, which he had earn’d +By his self-humbling, to his brotherhood, +As their just heritage, he gave in charge +His dearest lady, and enjoin’d their love +And faith to her: and, from her bosom, will’d +His goodly spirit should move forth, returning +To its appointed kingdom, nor would have +His body laid upon another bier. + +“Think now of one, who were a fit colleague, +To keep the bark of Peter in deep sea +Helm’d to right point; and such our Patriarch was. +Therefore who follow him, as he enjoins, +Thou mayst be certain, take good lading in. +But hunger of new viands tempts his flock, +So that they needs into strange pastures wide +Must spread them: and the more remote from him +The stragglers wander, so much mole they come +Home to the sheep-fold, destitute of milk. +There are of them, in truth, who fear their harm, +And to the shepherd cleave; but these so few, +A little stuff may furnish out their cloaks. + +“Now, if my words be clear, if thou have ta’en +Good heed, if that, which I have told, recall +To mind, thy wish may be in part fulfill’d: +For thou wilt see the point from whence they split, +Nor miss of the reproof, which that implies, +‘That well they thrive not sworn with vanity.’” + + + + +CANTO XII + + +Soon as its final word the blessed flame +Had rais’d for utterance, straight the holy mill +Began to wheel, nor yet had once revolv’d, +Or ere another, circling, compass’d it, +Motion to motion, song to song, conjoining, +Song, that as much our muses doth excel, +Our Sirens with their tuneful pipes, as ray +Of primal splendour doth its faint reflex. + +As when, if Juno bid her handmaid forth, +Two arches parallel, and trick’d alike, +Span the thin cloud, the outer taking birth +From that within (in manner of that voice +Whom love did melt away, as sun the mist), +And they who gaze, presageful call to mind +The compact, made with Noah, of the world +No more to be o’erflow’d; about us thus +Of sempiternal roses, bending, wreath’d +Those garlands twain, and to the innermost +E’en thus th’ external answered. When the footing, +And other great festivity, of song, +And radiance, light with light accordant, each +Jocund and blythe, had at their pleasure still’d +(E’en as the eyes by quick volition mov’d, +Are shut and rais’d together), from the heart +Of one amongst the new lights mov’d a voice, +That made me seem like needle to the star, +In turning to its whereabout, and thus +Began: “The love, that makes me beautiful, +Prompts me to tell of th’ other guide, for whom +Such good of mine is spoken. Where one is, +The other worthily should also be; +That as their warfare was alike, alike +Should be their glory. Slow, and full of doubt, +And with thin ranks, after its banner mov’d +The army of Christ (which it so clearly cost +To reappoint), when its imperial Head, +Who reigneth ever, for the drooping host +Did make provision, thorough grace alone, +And not through its deserving. As thou heard’st, +Two champions to the succour of his spouse +He sent, who by their deeds and words might join +Again his scatter’d people. In that clime, +Where springs the pleasant west-wind to unfold +The fresh leaves, with which Europe sees herself +New-garmented; nor from those billows far, +Beyond whose chiding, after weary course, +The sun doth sometimes hide him, safe abides +The happy Callaroga, under guard +Of the great shield, wherein the lion lies +Subjected and supreme. And there was born +The loving million of the Christian faith, +The hollow’d wrestler, gentle to his own, +And to his enemies terrible. So replete +His soul with lively virtue, that when first +Created, even in the mother’s womb, +It prophesied. When, at the sacred font, +The spousals were complete ’twixt faith and him, +Where pledge of mutual safety was exchang’d, +The dame, who was his surety, in her sleep +Beheld the wondrous fruit, that was from him +And from his heirs to issue. And that such +He might be construed, as indeed he was, +She was inspir’d to name him of his owner, +Whose he was wholly, and so call’d him Dominic. +And I speak of him, as the labourer, +Whom Christ in his own garden chose to be +His help-mate. Messenger he seem’d, and friend +Fast-knit to Christ; and the first love he show’d, +Was after the first counsel that Christ gave. +Many a time his nurse, at entering found +That he had ris’n in silence, and was prostrate, +As who should say, “My errand was for this.” +O happy father! Felix rightly nam’d! +O favour’d mother! rightly nam’d Joanna! +If that do mean, as men interpret it. +Not for the world’s sake, for which now they pore +Upon Ostiense and Taddeo’s page, +But for the real manna, soon he grew +Mighty in learning, and did set himself +To go about the vineyard, that soon turns +To wan and wither’d, if not tended well: +And from the see (whose bounty to the just +And needy is gone by, not through its fault, +But his who fills it basely), he besought, +No dispensation for commuted wrong, +Nor the first vacant fortune, nor the tenth), +That to God’s paupers rightly appertain, +But, ’gainst an erring and degenerate world, +Licence to fight, in favour of that seed, +From which the twice twelve cions gird thee round. +Then, with sage doctrine and good will to help, +Forth on his great apostleship he far’d, +Like torrent bursting from a lofty vein; +And, dashing ’gainst the stocks of heresy, +Smote fiercest, where resistance was most stout. +Thence many rivulets have since been turn’d, +Over the garden Catholic to lead +Their living waters, and have fed its plants. + +“If such one wheel of that two-yoked car, +Wherein the holy church defended her, +And rode triumphant through the civil broil. +Thou canst not doubt its fellow’s excellence, +Which Thomas, ere my coming, hath declar’d +So courteously unto thee. But the track, +Which its smooth fellies made, is now deserted: +That mouldy mother is where late were lees. +His family, that wont to trace his path, +Turn backward, and invert their steps; erelong +To rue the gathering in of their ill crop, +When the rejected tares in vain shall ask +Admittance to the barn. I question not +But he, who search’d our volume, leaf by leaf, +Might still find page with this inscription on’t, +‘I am as I was wont.’ Yet such were not +From Acquasparta nor Casale, whence +Of those, who come to meddle with the text, +One stretches and another cramps its rule. +Bonaventura’s life in me behold, +From Bagnororegio, one, who in discharge +Of my great offices still laid aside +All sinister aim. Illuminato here, +And Agostino join me: two they were, +Among the first of those barefooted meek ones, +Who sought God’s friendship in the cord: with them +Hugues of Saint Victor, Pietro Mangiadore, +And he of Spain in his twelve volumes shining, +Nathan the prophet, Metropolitan +Chrysostom, and Anselmo, and, who deign’d +To put his hand to the first art, Donatus. +Raban is here: and at my side there shines +Calabria’s abbot, Joachim , endow’d +With soul prophetic. The bright courtesy +Of friar Thomas, and his goodly lore, +Have mov’d me to the blazon of a peer +So worthy, and with me have mov’d this throng.” + + + + +CANTO XIII + + +Let him, who would conceive what now I saw, +Imagine (and retain the image firm, +As mountain rock, the whilst he hears me speak), +Of stars fifteen, from midst the ethereal host +Selected, that, with lively ray serene, +O’ercome the massiest air: thereto imagine +The wain, that, in the bosom of our sky, +Spins ever on its axle night and day, +With the bright summit of that horn which swells +Due from the pole, round which the first wheel rolls, +T’ have rang’d themselves in fashion of two signs +In heav’n, such as Ariadne made, +When death’s chill seized her; and that one of them +Did compass in the other’s beam; and both +In such sort whirl around, that each should tend +With opposite motion and, conceiving thus, +Of that true constellation, and the dance +Twofold, that circled me, he shall attain +As ’twere the shadow; for things there as much +Surpass our usage, as the swiftest heav’n +Is swifter than the Chiana. There was sung +No Bacchus, and no Io Paean, but +Three Persons in the Godhead, and in one +Substance that nature and the human join’d. + +The song fulfill’d its measure; and to us +Those saintly lights attended, happier made +At each new minist’ring. Then silence brake, +Amid th’ accordant sons of Deity, +That luminary, in which the wondrous life +Of the meek man of God was told to me; +And thus it spake: “One ear o’ th’ harvest thresh’d, +And its grain safely stor’d, sweet charity +Invites me with the other to like toil. + +“Thou know’st, that in the bosom, whence the rib +Was ta’en to fashion that fair cheek, whose taste +All the world pays for, and in that, which pierc’d +By the keen lance, both after and before +Such satisfaction offer’d, as outweighs +Each evil in the scale, whate’er of light +To human nature is allow’d, must all +Have by his virtue been infus’d, who form’d +Both one and other: and thou thence admir’st +In that I told thee, of beatitudes +A second, there is none, to his enclos’d +In the fifth radiance. Open now thine eyes +To what I answer thee; and thou shalt see +Thy deeming and my saying meet in truth, +As centre in the round. That which dies not, +And that which can die, are but each the beam +Of that idea, which our Soverign Sire +Engendereth loving; for that lively light, +Which passeth from his brightness; not disjoin’d +From him, nor from his love triune with them, +Doth, through his bounty, congregate itself, +Mirror’d, as ’twere in new existences, +Itself unalterable and ever one. + +“Descending hence unto the lowest powers, +Its energy so sinks, at last it makes +But brief contingencies: for so I name +Things generated, which the heav’nly orbs +Moving, with seed or without seed, produce. +Their wax, and that which molds it, differ much: +And thence with lustre, more or less, it shows +Th’ ideal stamp impress: so that one tree +According to his kind, hath better fruit, +And worse: and, at your birth, ye, mortal men, +Are in your talents various. Were the wax +Molded with nice exactness, and the heav’n +In its disposing influence supreme, +The lustre of the seal should be complete: +But nature renders it imperfect ever, +Resembling thus the artist in her work, +Whose faultering hand is faithless to his skill. +Howe’er, if love itself dispose, and mark +The primal virtue, kindling with bright view, +There all perfection is vouchsafed; and such +The clay was made, accomplish’d with each gift, +That life can teem with; such the burden fill’d +The virgin’s bosom: so that I commend +Thy judgment, that the human nature ne’er +Was or can be, such as in them it was. + +“Did I advance no further than this point, +‘How then had he no peer?’ thou might’st reply. +But, that what now appears not, may appear +Right plainly, ponder, who he was, and what +(When he was bidden ‘Ask’), the motive sway’d +To his requesting. I have spoken thus, +That thou mayst see, he was a king, who ask’d +For wisdom, to the end he might be king +Sufficient: not the number to search out +Of the celestial movers; or to know, +If necessary with contingent e’er +Have made necessity; or whether that +Be granted, that first motion is; or if +Of the mid circle can, by art, be made +Triangle with each corner, blunt or sharp. + +“Whence, noting that, which I have said, and this, +Thou kingly prudence and that ken mayst learn, +At which the dart of my intention aims. +And, marking clearly, that I told thee, ‘Risen,’ +Thou shalt discern it only hath respect +To kings, of whom are many, and the good +Are rare. With this distinction take my words; +And they may well consist with that which thou +Of the first human father dost believe, +And of our well-beloved. And let this +Henceforth be led unto thy feet, to make +Thee slow in motion, as a weary man, +Both to the ‘yea’ and to the ‘nay’ thou seest not. +For he among the fools is down full low, +Whose affirmation, or denial, is +Without distinction, in each case alike +Since it befalls, that in most instances +Current opinion leads to false: and then +Affection bends the judgment to her ply. + +“Much more than vainly doth he loose from shore, +Since he returns not such as he set forth, +Who fishes for the truth and wanteth skill. +And open proofs of this unto the world +Have been afforded in Parmenides, +Melissus, Bryso, and the crowd beside, +Who journey’d on, and knew not whither: so did +Sabellius, Arius, and the other fools, +Who, like to scymitars, reflected back +The scripture-image, by distortion marr’d. + +“Let not the people be too swift to judge, +As one who reckons on the blades in field, +Or ere the crop be ripe. For I have seen +The thorn frown rudely all the winter long +And after bear the rose upon its top; +And bark, that all the way across the sea +Ran straight and speedy, perish at the last, +E’en in the haven’s mouth seeing one steal, +Another brine, his offering to the priest, +Let not Dame Birtha and Sir Martin thence +Into heav’n’s counsels deem that they can pry: +For one of these may rise, the other fall.” + + + + +CANTO XIV + + +From centre to the circle, and so back +From circle to the centre, water moves +In the round chalice, even as the blow +Impels it, inwardly, or from without. +Such was the image glanc’d into my mind, +As the great spirit of Aquinum ceas’d; +And Beatrice after him her words +Resum’d alternate: “Need there is (tho’ yet +He tells it to you not in words, nor e’en +In thought) that he should fathom to its depth +Another mystery. Tell him, if the light, +Wherewith your substance blooms, shall stay with you +Eternally, as now: and, if it doth, +How, when ye shall regain your visible forms, +The sight may without harm endure the change, +That also tell.” As those, who in a ring +Tread the light measure, in their fitful mirth +Raise loud the voice, and spring with gladder bound; +Thus, at the hearing of that pious suit, +The saintly circles in their tourneying +And wond’rous note attested new delight. + +Whoso laments, that we must doff this garb +Of frail mortality, thenceforth to live +Immortally above, he hath not seen +The sweet refreshing, of that heav’nly shower. + +Him, who lives ever, and for ever reigns +In mystic union of the Three in One, +Unbounded, bounding all, each spirit thrice +Sang, with such melody, as but to hear +For highest merit were an ample meed. +And from the lesser orb the goodliest light, +With gentle voice and mild, such as perhaps +The angel’s once to Mary, thus replied: +“Long as the joy of Paradise shall last, +Our love shall shine around that raiment, bright, +As fervent; fervent, as in vision blest; +And that as far in blessedness exceeding, +As it hath grave beyond its virtue great. +Our shape, regarmented with glorious weeds +Of saintly flesh, must, being thus entire, +Show yet more gracious. Therefore shall increase, +Whate’er of light, gratuitous, imparts +The Supreme Good; light, ministering aid, +The better disclose his glory: whence +The vision needs increasing, much increase +The fervour, which it kindles; and that too +The ray, that comes from it. But as the greed +Which gives out flame, yet it its whiteness shines +More lively than that, and so preserves +Its proper semblance; thus this circling sphere +Of splendour, shall to view less radiant seem, +Than shall our fleshly robe, which yonder earth +Now covers. Nor will such excess of light +O’erpower us, in corporeal organs made +Firm, and susceptible of all delight.” + +So ready and so cordial an “Amen,” +Followed from either choir, as plainly spoke +Desire of their dead bodies; yet perchance +Not for themselves, but for their kindred dear, +Mothers and sires, and those whom best they lov’d, +Ere they were made imperishable flame. + +And lo! forthwith there rose up round about +A lustre over that already there, +Of equal clearness, like the brightening up +Of the horizon. As at an evening hour +Of twilight, new appearances through heav’n +Peer with faint glimmer, doubtfully descried; +So there new substances, methought began +To rise in view; and round the other twain +Enwheeling, sweep their ampler circuit wide. + +O gentle glitter of eternal beam! +With what a such whiteness did it flow, +O’erpowering vision in me! But so fair, +So passing lovely, Beatrice show’d, +Mind cannot follow it, nor words express +Her infinite sweetness. Thence mine eyes regain’d +Power to look up, and I beheld myself, +Sole with my lady, to more lofty bliss +Translated: for the star, with warmer smile +Impurpled, well denoted our ascent. + +With all the heart, and with that tongue which speaks +The same in all, an holocaust I made +To God, befitting the new grace vouchsaf’d. +And from my bosom had not yet upsteam’d +The fuming of that incense, when I knew +The rite accepted. With such mighty sheen +And mantling crimson, in two listed rays +The splendours shot before me, that I cried, +“God of Sabaoth! that does prank them thus!” + +As leads the galaxy from pole to pole, +Distinguish’d into greater lights and less, +Its pathway, which the wisest fail to spell; +So thickly studded, in the depth of Mars, +Those rays describ’d the venerable sign, +That quadrants in the round conjoining frame. +Here memory mocks the toil of genius. Christ +Beam’d on that cross; and pattern fails me now. +But whoso takes his cross, and follows Christ +Will pardon me for that I leave untold, +When in the flecker’d dawning he shall spy +The glitterance of Christ. From horn to horn, +And ’tween the summit and the base did move +Lights, scintillating, as they met and pass’d. +Thus oft are seen, with ever-changeful glance, +Straight or athwart, now rapid and now slow, +The atomies of bodies, long or short, +To move along the sunbeam, whose slant line +Checkers the shadow, interpos’d by art +Against the noontide heat. And as the chime +Of minstrel music, dulcimer, and help +With many strings, a pleasant dining makes +To him, who heareth not distinct the note; +So from the lights, which there appear’d to me, +Gather’d along the cross a melody, +That, indistinctly heard, with ravishment +Possess’d me. Yet I mark’d it was a hymn +Of lofty praises; for there came to me +“Arise and conquer,” as to one who hears +And comprehends not. Me such ecstasy +O’ercame, that never till that hour was thing +That held me in so sweet imprisonment. + +Perhaps my saying over bold appears, +Accounting less the pleasure of those eyes, +Whereon to look fulfilleth all desire. +But he, who is aware those living seals +Of every beauty work with quicker force, +The higher they are ris’n; and that there +I had not turn’d me to them; he may well +Excuse me that, whereof in my excuse +I do accuse me, and may own my truth; +That holy pleasure here not yet reveal’d, +Which grows in transport as we mount aloof. + + + + +CANTO XV + + +True love, that ever shows itself as clear +In kindness, as loose appetite in wrong, +Silenced that lyre harmonious, and still’d +The sacred chords, that are by heav’n’s right hand +Unwound and tighten’d, flow to righteous prayers +Should they not hearken, who, to give me will +For praying, in accordance thus were mute? +He hath in sooth good cause for endless grief, +Who, for the love of thing that lasteth not, +Despoils himself forever of that love. + +As oft along the still and pure serene, +At nightfall, glides a sudden trail of fire, +Attracting with involuntary heed +The eye to follow it, erewhile at rest, +And seems some star that shifted place in heav’n, +Only that, whence it kindles, none is lost, +And it is soon extinct; thus from the horn, +That on the dexter of the cross extends, +Down to its foot, one luminary ran +From mid the cluster shone there; yet no gem +Dropp’d from its foil; and through the beamy list +Like flame in alabaster, glow’d its course. + +So forward stretch’d him (if of credence aught +Our greater muse may claim) the pious ghost +Of old Anchises, in the’ Elysian bower, +When he perceiv’d his son. “O thou, my blood! +O most exceeding grace divine! to whom, +As now to thee, hath twice the heav’nly gate +Been e’er unclos’d?” so spake the light; whence I +Turn’d me toward him; then unto my dame +My sight directed, and on either side +Amazement waited me; for in her eyes +Was lighted such a smile, I thought that mine +Had div’d unto the bottom of my grace +And of my bliss in Paradise. Forthwith +To hearing and to sight grateful alike, +The spirit to his proem added things +I understood not, so profound he spake; +Yet not of choice but through necessity +Mysterious; for his high conception scar’d +Beyond the mark of mortals. When the flight +Of holy transport had so spent its rage, +That nearer to the level of our thought +The speech descended, the first sounds I heard +Were, “Best he thou, Triunal Deity! +That hast such favour in my seed vouchsaf’d!” +Then follow’d: “No unpleasant thirst, tho’ long, +Which took me reading in the sacred book, +Whose leaves or white or dusky never change, +Thou hast allay’d, my son, within this light, +From whence my voice thou hear’st; more thanks to her. +Who for such lofty mounting has with plumes +Begirt thee. Thou dost deem thy thoughts to me +From him transmitted, who is first of all, +E’en as all numbers ray from unity; +And therefore dost not ask me who I am, +Or why to thee more joyous I appear, +Than any other in this gladsome throng. +The truth is as thou deem’st; for in this hue +Both less and greater in that mirror look, +In which thy thoughts, or ere thou think’st, are shown. +But, that the love, which keeps me wakeful ever, +Urging with sacred thirst of sweet desire, +May be contended fully, let thy voice, +Fearless, and frank and jocund, utter forth +Thy will distinctly, utter forth the wish, +Whereto my ready answer stands decreed.” + +I turn’d me to Beatrice; and she heard +Ere I had spoken, smiling, an assent, +That to my will gave wings; and I began +“To each among your tribe, what time ye kenn’d +The nature, in whom naught unequal dwells, +Wisdom and love were in one measure dealt; +For that they are so equal in the sun, +From whence ye drew your radiance and your heat, +As makes all likeness scant. But will and means, +In mortals, for the cause ye well discern, +With unlike wings are fledge. A mortal I +Experience inequality like this, +And therefore give no thanks, but in the heart, +For thy paternal greeting. This howe’er +I pray thee, living topaz! that ingemm’st +This precious jewel, let me hear thy name.” + +“I am thy root, O leaf! whom to expect +Even, hath pleas’d me: “thus the prompt reply +Prefacing, next it added; “he, of whom +Thy kindred appellation comes, and who, +These hundred years and more, on its first ledge +Hath circuited the mountain, was my son +And thy great grandsire. Well befits, his long +Endurance should he shorten’d by thy deeds. + +“Florence, within her ancient limit-mark, +Which calls her still to matin prayers and noon, +Was chaste and sober, and abode in peace. +She had no armlets and no head-tires then, +No purfled dames, no zone, that caught the eye +More than the person did. Time was not yet, +When at his daughter’s birth the sire grew pale. +For fear the age and dowry should exceed +On each side just proportion. House was none +Void of its family; nor yet had come +Hardanapalus, to exhibit feats +Of chamber prowess. Montemalo yet +O’er our suburban turret rose; as much +To be surpass in fall, as in its rising. +I saw Bellincione Berti walk abroad +In leathern girdle and a clasp of bone; +And, with no artful colouring on her cheeks, +His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw +Of Nerli and of Vecchio well content +With unrob’d jerkin; and their good dames handling +The spindle and the flax; O happy they! +Each sure of burial in her native land, +And none left desolate a-bed for France! +One wak’d to tend the cradle, hushing it +With sounds that lull’d the parent’s infancy: +Another, with her maidens, drawing off +The tresses from the distaff, lectur’d them +Old tales of Troy and Fesole and Rome. +A Salterello and Cianghella we +Had held as strange a marvel, as ye would +A Cincinnatus or Cornelia now. + +“In such compos’d and seemly fellowship, +Such faithful and such fair equality, +In so sweet household, Mary at my birth +Bestow’d me, call’d on with loud cries; and there +In your old baptistery, I was made +Christian at once and Cacciaguida; as were +My brethren, Eliseo and Moronto. + +“From Valdipado came to me my spouse, +And hence thy surname grew. I follow’d then +The Emperor Conrad; and his knighthood he +Did gird on me; in such good part he took +My valiant service. After him I went +To testify against that evil law, +Whose people, by the shepherd’s fault, possess +Your right, usurping. There, by that foul crew +Was I releas’d from the deceitful world, +Whose base affection many a spirit soils, +And from the martyrdom came to this peace.” + + + + +CANTO XVI + + +O slight respect of man’s nobility! +I never shall account it marvelous, +That our infirm affection here below +Thou mov’st to boasting, when I could not choose, +E’en in that region of unwarp’d desire, +In heav’n itself, but make my vaunt in thee! +Yet cloak thou art soon shorten’d, for that time, +Unless thou be eked out from day to day, +Goes round thee with his shears. Resuming then +With greeting such, as Rome, was first to bear, +But since hath disaccustom’d I began; +And Beatrice, that a little space +Was sever’d, smil’d reminding me of her, +Whose cough embolden’d (as the story holds) +To first offence the doubting Guenever. + +“You are my sire,” said I, “you give me heart +Freely to speak my thought: above myself +You raise me. Through so many streams with joy +My soul is fill’d, that gladness wells from it; +So that it bears the mighty tide, and bursts not +Say then, my honour’d stem! what ancestors +Where those you sprang from, and what years were mark’d +In your first childhood? Tell me of the fold, +That hath Saint John for guardian, what was then +Its state, and who in it were highest seated?” + +As embers, at the breathing of the wind, +Their flame enliven, so that light I saw +Shine at my blandishments; and, as it grew +More fair to look on, so with voice more sweet, +Yet not in this our modern phrase, forthwith +It answer’d: “From the day, when it was said +‘Hail Virgin!’ to the throes, by which my mother, +Who now is sainted, lighten’d her of me +Whom she was heavy with, this fire had come, +Five hundred fifty times and thrice, its beams +To reilumine underneath the foot +Of its own lion. They, of whom I sprang, +And I, had there our birth-place, where the last +Partition of our city first is reach’d +By him, that runs her annual game. Thus much +Suffice of my forefathers: who they were, +And whence they hither came, more honourable +It is to pass in silence than to tell. +All those, who in that time were there from Mars +Until the Baptist, fit to carry arms, +Were but the fifth of them this day alive. +But then the citizen’s blood, that now is mix’d +From Campi and Certaldo and Fighine, +Ran purely through the last mechanic’s veins. +O how much better were it, that these people +Were neighbours to you, and that at Galluzzo +And at Trespiano, ye should have your bound’ry, +Than to have them within, and bear the stench +Of Aguglione’s hind, and Signa’s, him, +That hath his eye already keen for bart’ring! +Had not the people, which of all the world +Degenerates most, been stepdame unto Caesar, +But, as a mother, gracious to her son; +Such one, as hath become a Florentine, +And trades and traffics, had been turn’d adrift +To Simifonte, where his grandsire ply’d +The beggar’s craft. The Conti were possess’d +Of Montemurlo still: the Cerchi still +Were in Acone’s parish; nor had haply +From Valdigrieve past the Buondelmonte. +The city’s malady hath ever source +In the confusion of its persons, as +The body’s, in variety of food: +And the blind bull falls with a steeper plunge, +Than the blind lamb; and oftentimes one sword +Doth more and better execution, +Than five. Mark Luni, Urbisaglia mark, +How they are gone, and after them how go +Chiusi and Sinigaglia; and ’twill seem +No longer new or strange to thee to hear, +That families fail, when cities have their end. +All things, that appertain t’ ye, like yourselves, +Are mortal: but mortality in some +Ye mark not, they endure so long, and you +Pass by so suddenly. And as the moon +Doth, by the rolling of her heav’nly sphere, +Hide and reveal the strand unceasingly; +So fortune deals with Florence. Hence admire not +At what of them I tell thee, whose renown +Time covers, the first Florentines. I saw +The Ughi, Catilini and Filippi, +The Alberichi, Greci and Ormanni, +Now in their wane, illustrious citizens: +And great as ancient, of Sannella him, +With him of Arca saw, and Soldanieri +And Ardinghi, and Bostichi. At the poop, +That now is laden with new felony, +So cumb’rous it may speedily sink the bark, +The Ravignani sat, of whom is sprung +The County Guido, and whoso hath since +His title from the fam’d Bellincione ta’en. +Fair governance was yet an art well priz’d +By him of Pressa: Galigaio show’d +The gilded hilt and pommel, in his house. +The column, cloth’d with verrey, still was seen +Unshaken: the Sacchetti still were great, +Giouchi, Sifanti, Galli and Barucci, +With them who blush to hear the bushel nam’d. +Of the Calfucci still the branchy trunk +Was in its strength: and to the curule chairs +Sizii and Arigucci yet were drawn. +How mighty them I saw, whom since their pride +Hath undone! and in all her goodly deeds +Florence was by the bullets of bright gold +O’erflourish’d. Such the sires of those, who now, +As surely as your church is vacant, flock +Into her consistory, and at leisure +There stall them and grow fat. The o’erweening brood, +That plays the dragon after him that flees, +But unto such, as turn and show the tooth, +Ay or the purse, is gentle as a lamb, +Was on its rise, but yet so slight esteem’d, +That Ubertino of Donati grudg’d +His father-in-law should yoke him to its tribe. +Already Caponsacco had descended +Into the mart from Fesole: and Giuda +And Infangato were good citizens. +A thing incredible I tell, tho’ true: +The gateway, named from those of Pera, led +Into the narrow circuit of your walls. +Each one, who bears the sightly quarterings +Of the great Baron (he whose name and worth +The festival of Thomas still revives) +His knighthood and his privilege retain’d; +Albeit one, who borders them With gold, +This day is mingled with the common herd. +In Borgo yet the Gualterotti dwelt, +And Importuni: well for its repose +Had it still lack’d of newer neighbourhood. +The house, from whence your tears have had their spring, +Through the just anger that hath murder’d ye +And put a period to your gladsome days, +Was honour’d, it, and those consorted with it. +O Buondelmonte! what ill counseling +Prevail’d on thee to break the plighted bond +Many, who now are weeping, would rejoice, +Had God to Ema giv’n thee, the first time +Thou near our city cam’st. But so was doom’d: +On that maim’d stone set up to guard the bridge, +At thy last peace, the victim, Florence! fell. +With these and others like to them, I saw +Florence in such assur’d tranquility, +She had no cause at which to grieve: with these +Saw her so glorious and so just, that ne’er +The lily from the lance had hung reverse, +Or through division been with vermeil dyed.” + + + + +CANTO XVII + + +Such as the youth, who came to Clymene +To certify himself of that reproach, +Which had been fasten’d on him, (he whose end +Still makes the fathers chary to their sons, +E’en such was I; nor unobserv’d was such +Of Beatrice, and that saintly lamp, +Who had erewhile for me his station mov’d; +When thus by lady: “Give thy wish free vent, +That it may issue, bearing true report +Of the mind’s impress; not that aught thy words +May to our knowledge add, but to the end, +That thou mayst use thyself to own thy thirst +And men may mingle for thee when they hear.” + +“O plant! from whence I spring! rever’d and lov’d! +Who soar’st so high a pitch, thou seest as clear, +As earthly thought determines two obtuse +In one triangle not contain’d, so clear +Dost see contingencies, ere in themselves +Existent, looking at the point whereto +All times are present, I, the whilst I scal’d +With Virgil the soul purifying mount, +And visited the nether world of woe, +Touching my future destiny have heard +Words grievous, though I feel me on all sides +Well squar’d to fortune’s blows. Therefore my will +Were satisfied to know the lot awaits me, +The arrow, seen beforehand, slacks its flight.” + +So said I to the brightness, which erewhile +To me had spoken, and my will declar’d, +As Beatrice will’d, explicitly. +Nor with oracular response obscure, +Such, as or ere the Lamb of God was slain, +Beguil’d the credulous nations; but, in terms +Precise and unambiguous lore, replied +The spirit of paternal love, enshrin’d, +Yet in his smile apparent; and thus spake: +“Contingency, unfolded not to view +Upon the tablet of your mortal mold, +Is all depictur’d in the’ eternal sight; +But hence deriveth not necessity, +More then the tall ship, hurried down the flood, +Doth from the vision, that reflects the scene. +From thence, as to the ear sweet harmony +From organ comes, so comes before mine eye +The time prepar’d for thee. Such as driv’n out +From Athens, by his cruel stepdame’s wiles, +Hippolytus departed, such must thou +Depart from Florence. This they wish, and this +Contrive, and will ere long effectuate, there, +Where gainful merchandize is made of Christ, +Throughout the livelong day. The common cry, +Will, as ’tis ever wont, affix the blame +Unto the party injur’d: but the truth +Shall, in the vengeance it dispenseth, find +A faithful witness. Thou shall leave each thing +Belov’d most dearly: this is the first shaft +Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shalt prove +How salt the savour is of other’s bread, +How hard the passage to descend and climb +By other’s stairs, But that shall gall thee most +Will he the worthless and vile company, +With whom thou must be thrown into these straits. +For all ungrateful, impious all and mad, +Shall turn ’gainst thee: but in a little while +Theirs and not thine shall be the crimson’d brow +Their course shall so evince their brutishness +T’ have ta’en thy stand apart shall well become thee. + +“First refuge thou must find, first place of rest, +In the great Lombard’s courtesy, who bears +Upon the ladder perch’d the sacred bird. +He shall behold thee with such kind regard, +That ’twixt ye two, the contrary to that +Which falls ’twixt other men, the granting shall +Forerun the asking. With him shalt thou see +That mortal, who was at his birth impress +So strongly from this star, that of his deeds +The nations shall take note. His unripe age +Yet holds him from observance; for these wheels +Only nine years have compass him about. +But, ere the Gascon practice on great Harry, +Sparkles of virtue shall shoot forth in him, +In equal scorn of labours and of gold. +His bounty shall be spread abroad so widely, +As not to let the tongues e’en of his foes +Be idle in its praise. Look thou to him +And his beneficence: for he shall cause +Reversal of their lot to many people, +Rich men and beggars interchanging fortunes. +And thou shalt bear this written in thy soul +Of him, but tell it not; “and things he told +Incredible to those who witness them; +Then added: “So interpret thou, my son, +What hath been told thee.—Lo! the ambushment +That a few circling seasons hide for thee! +Yet envy not thy neighbours: time extends +Thy span beyond their treason’s chastisement.” + +Soon, as the saintly spirit, by his silence, +Had shown the web, which I had streteh’d for him +Upon the warp, was woven, I began, +As one, who in perplexity desires +Counsel of other, wise, benign and friendly: +“My father! well I mark how time spurs on +Toward me, ready to inflict the blow, +Which falls most heavily on him, who most +Abandoned himself. Therefore ’tis good +I should forecast, that driven from the place +Most dear to me, I may not lose myself +All others by my song. Down through the world +Of infinite mourning, and along the mount +From whose fair height my lady’s eyes did lift me, +And after through this heav’n from light to light, +Have I learnt that, which if I tell again, +It may with many woefully disrelish; +And, if I am a timid friend to truth, +I fear my life may perish among those, +To whom these days shall be of ancient date.” + +The brightness, where enclos’d the treasure smil’d, +Which I had found there, first shone glisteningly, +Like to a golden mirror in the sun; +Next answer’d: “Conscience, dimm’d or by its own +Or other’s shame, will feel thy saying sharp. +Thou, notwithstanding, all deceit remov’d, +See the whole vision be made manifest. +And let them wince who have their withers wrung. +What though, when tasted first, thy voice shall prove +Unwelcome, on digestion it will turn +To vital nourishment. The cry thou raisest, +Shall, as the wind doth, smite the proudest summits; +Which is of honour no light argument, +For this there only have been shown to thee, +Throughout these orbs, the mountain, and the deep, +Spirits, whom fame hath note of. For the mind +Of him, who hears, is loth to acquiesce +And fix its faith, unless the instance brought +Be palpable, and proof apparent urge.” + + + + +CANTO XVIII + + +Now in his word, sole, ruminating, joy’d +That blessed spirit; and I fed on mine, +Tempting the sweet with bitter: she meanwhile, +Who led me unto God, admonish’d: “Muse +On other thoughts: bethink thee, that near Him +I dwell, who recompenseth every wrong.” + +At the sweet sounds of comfort straight I turn’d; +And, in the saintly eyes what love was seen, +I leave in silence here: nor through distrust +Of my words only, but that to such bliss +The mind remounts not without aid. Thus much +Yet may I speak; that, as I gaz’d on her, +Affection found no room for other wish. +While the everlasting pleasure, that did full +On Beatrice shine, with second view +From her fair countenance my gladden’d soul +Contented; vanquishing me with a beam +Of her soft smile, she spake: “Turn thee, and list. +These eyes are not thy only Paradise.” + +As here we sometimes in the looks may see +Th’ affection mark’d, when that its sway hath ta’en +The spirit wholly; thus the hallow’d light, +To whom I turn’d, flashing, bewray’d its will +To talk yet further with me, and began: +“On this fifth lodgment of the tree, whose life +Is from its top, whose fruit is ever fair +And leaf unwith’ring, blessed spirits abide, +That were below, ere they arriv’d in heav’n, +So mighty in renown, as every muse +Might grace her triumph with them. On the horns +Look therefore of the cross: he, whom I name, +Shall there enact, as doth 1n summer cloud +Its nimble fire.” Along the cross I saw, +At the repeated name of Joshua, +A splendour gliding; nor, the word was said, +Ere it was done: then, at the naming saw +Of the great Maccabee, another move +With whirling speed; and gladness was the scourge +Unto that top. The next for Charlemagne +And for the peer Orlando, two my gaze +Pursued, intently, as the eye pursues +A falcon flying. Last, along the cross, +William, and Renard, and Duke Godfrey drew +My ken, and Robert Guiscard. And the soul, +Who spake with me among the other lights +Did move away, and mix; and with the choir +Of heav’nly songsters prov’d his tuneful skill. + +To Beatrice on my right l bent, +Looking for intimation or by word +Or act, what next behoov’d; and did descry +Such mere effulgence in her eyes, such joy, +It past all former wont. And, as by sense +Of new delight, the man, who perseveres +In good deeds doth perceive from day to day +His virtue growing; I e’en thus perceiv’d +Of my ascent, together with the heav’n +The circuit widen’d, noting the increase +Of beauty in that wonder. Like the change +In a brief moment on some maiden’s cheek, +Which from its fairness doth discharge the weight +Of pudency, that stain’d it; such in her, +And to mine eyes so sudden was the change, +Through silvery whiteness of that temperate star, +Whose sixth orb now enfolded us. I saw, +Within that Jovial cresset, the clear sparks +Of love, that reign’d there, fashion to my view +Our language. And as birds, from river banks +Arisen, now in round, now lengthen’d troop, +Array them in their flight, greeting, as seems, +Their new-found pastures; so, within the lights, +The saintly creatures flying, sang, and made +Now D. now I. now L. figur’d I’ th’ air. +First, singing, to their notes they mov’d, then one +Becoming of these signs, a little while +Did rest them, and were mute. O nymph divine +Of Pegasean race! whose souls, which thou +Inspir’st, mak’st glorious and long-liv’d, as they +Cities and realms by thee! thou with thyself +Inform me; that I may set forth the shapes, +As fancy doth present them. Be thy power +Display’d in this brief song. The characters, +Vocal and consonant, were five-fold seven. +In order each, as they appear’d, I mark’d. +Diligite Justitiam, the first, +Both verb and noun all blazon’d; and the extreme +Qui judicatis terram. In the M. +Of the fifth word they held their station, +Making the star seem silver streak’d with gold. +And on the summit of the M. I saw +Descending other lights, that rested there, +Singing, methinks, their bliss and primal good. +Then, as at shaking of a lighted brand, +Sparkles innumerable on all sides +Rise scatter’d, source of augury to th’ unwise; +Thus more than thousand twinkling lustres hence +Seem’d reascending, and a higher pitch +Some mounting, and some less; e’en as the sun, +Which kindleth them, decreed. And when each one +Had settled in his place, the head and neck +Then saw I of an eagle, lively +Grav’d in that streaky fire. Who painteth there, +Hath none to guide him; of himself he guides; +And every line and texture of the nest +Doth own from him the virtue, fashions it. +The other bright beatitude, that seem’d +Erewhile, with lilied crowning, well content +To over-canopy the M. mov’d forth, +Following gently the impress of the bird. + + Sweet star! what glorious and thick-studded gems +Declar’d to me our justice on the earth +To be the effluence of that heav’n, which thou, +Thyself a costly jewel, dost inlay! +Therefore I pray the Sovran Mind, from whom +Thy motion and thy virtue are begun, +That he would look from whence the fog doth rise, +To vitiate thy beam: so that once more +He may put forth his hand ’gainst such, as drive +Their traffic in that sanctuary, whose walls +With miracles and martyrdoms were built. + +Ye host of heaven! whose glory I survey l +O beg ye grace for those, that are on earth +All after ill example gone astray. +War once had for its instrument the sword: +But now ’tis made, taking the bread away +Which the good Father locks from none.—And thou, +That writes but to cancel, think, that they, +Who for the vineyard, which thou wastest, died, +Peter and Paul live yet, and mark thy doings. +Thou hast good cause to cry, “My heart so cleaves +To him, that liv’d in solitude remote, +And from the wilds was dragg’d to martyrdom, +I wist not of the fisherman nor Paul.” + + + + +CANTO XIX + + +Before my sight appear’d, with open wings, +The beauteous image, in fruition sweet +Gladdening the thronged spirits. Each did seem +A little ruby, whereon so intense +The sun-beam glow’d that to mine eyes it came +In clear refraction. And that, which next +Befalls me to portray, voice hath not utter’d, +Nor hath ink written, nor in fantasy +Was e’er conceiv’d. For I beheld and heard +The beak discourse; and, what intention form’d +Of many, singly as of one express, +Beginning: “For that I was just and piteous, +l am exalted to this height of glory, +The which no wish exceeds: and there on earth +Have I my memory left, e’en by the bad +Commended, while they leave its course untrod.” + +Thus is one heat from many embers felt, +As in that image many were the loves, +And one the voice, that issued from them all. +Whence I address them: “O perennial flowers +Of gladness everlasting! that exhale +In single breath your odours manifold! +Breathe now; and let the hunger be appeas’d, +That with great craving long hath held my soul, +Finding no food on earth. This well I know, +That if there be in heav’n a realm, that shows +In faithful mirror the celestial Justice, +Yours without veil reflects it. Ye discern +The heed, wherewith I do prepare myself +To hearken; ye the doubt that urges me +With such inveterate craving.” Straight I saw, +Like to a falcon issuing from the hood, +That rears his head, and claps him with his wings, +His beauty and his eagerness bewraying. +So saw I move that stately sign, with praise +Of grace divine inwoven and high song +Of inexpressive joy. “He,” it began, +“Who turn’d his compass on the world’s extreme, +And in that space so variously hath wrought, +Both openly, and in secret, in such wise +Could not through all the universe display +Impression of his glory, that the Word +Of his omniscience should not still remain +In infinite excess. In proof whereof, +He first through pride supplanted, who was sum +Of each created being, waited not +For light celestial, and abortive fell. +Whence needs each lesser nature is but scant +Receptacle unto that Good, which knows +No limit, measur’d by itself alone. +Therefore your sight, of th’ omnipresent Mind +A single beam, its origin must own +Surpassing far its utmost potency. +The ken, your world is gifted with, descends +In th’ everlasting Justice as low down, +As eye doth in the sea; which though it mark +The bottom from the shore, in the wide main +Discerns it not; and ne’ertheless it is, +But hidden through its deepness. Light is none, +Save that which cometh from the pure serene +Of ne’er disturbed ether: for the rest, +’Tis darkness all, or shadow of the flesh, +Or else its poison. Here confess reveal’d +That covert, which hath hidden from thy search +The living justice, of the which thou mad’st +Such frequent question; for thou saidst—‘A man +Is born on Indus’ banks, and none is there +Who speaks of Christ, nor who doth read nor write, +And all his inclinations and his acts, +As far as human reason sees, are good, +And he offendeth not in word or deed. +But unbaptiz’d he dies, and void of faith. +Where is the justice that condemns him? where +His blame, if he believeth not?’—What then, +And who art thou, that on the stool wouldst sit +To judge at distance of a thousand miles +With the short-sighted vision of a span? +To him, who subtilizes thus with me, +There would assuredly be room for doubt +Even to wonder, did not the safe word +Of scripture hold supreme authority. + +“O animals of clay! O spirits gross I +The primal will, that in itself is good, +Hath from itself, the chief Good, ne’er been mov’d. +Justice consists in consonance with it, +Derivable by no created good, +Whose very cause depends upon its beam.” + +As on her nest the stork, that turns about +Unto her young, whom lately she hath fed, +While they with upward eyes do look on her; +So lifted I my gaze; and bending so +The ever-blessed image wav’d its wings, +Lab’ring with such deep counsel. Wheeling round +It warbled, and did say: “As are my notes +To thee, who understand’st them not, such is +Th’ eternal judgment unto mortal ken.” + +Then still abiding in that ensign rang’d, +Wherewith the Romans over-awed the world, +Those burning splendours of the Holy Spirit +Took up the strain; and thus it spake again: +“None ever hath ascended to this realm, +Who hath not a believer been in Christ, +Either before or after the blest limbs +Were nail’d upon the wood. But lo! of those +Who call ‘Christ, Christ,’ there shall be many found, + In judgment, further off from him by far, +Than such, to whom his name was never known. +Christians like these the Ethiop shall condemn: +When that the two assemblages shall part; +One rich eternally, the other poor. + +“What may the Persians say unto your kings, +When they shall see that volume, in the which +All their dispraise is written, spread to view? +There amidst Albert’s works shall that be read, +Which will give speedy motion to the pen, +When Prague shall mourn her desolated realm. +There shall be read the woe, that he doth work +With his adulterate money on the Seine, +Who by the tusk will perish: there be read +The thirsting pride, that maketh fool alike +The English and Scot, impatient of their bound. +There shall be seen the Spaniard’s luxury, +The delicate living there of the Bohemian, +Who still to worth has been a willing stranger. +The halter of Jerusalem shall see +A unit for his virtue, for his vices +No less a mark than million. He, who guards +The isle of fire by old Anchises honour’d +Shall find his avarice there and cowardice; +And better to denote his littleness, +The writing must be letters maim’d, that speak +Much in a narrow space. All there shall know +His uncle and his brother’s filthy doings, +Who so renown’d a nation and two crowns +Have bastardized. And they, of Portugal +And Norway, there shall be expos’d with him +Of Ratza, who hath counterfeited ill +The coin of Venice. O blest Hungary! +If thou no longer patiently abid’st +Thy ill-entreating! and, O blest Navarre! +If with thy mountainous girdle thou wouldst arm thee +In earnest of that day, e’en now are heard +Wailings and groans in Famagosta’s streets +And Nicosia’s, grudging at their beast, +Who keepeth even footing with the rest.” + + + + +CANTO XX + + +When, disappearing, from our hemisphere, +The world’s enlightener vanishes, and day +On all sides wasteth, suddenly the sky, +Erewhile irradiate only with his beam, +Is yet again unfolded, putting forth +Innumerable lights wherein one shines. +Of such vicissitude in heaven I thought, +As the great sign, that marshaleth the world +And the world’s leaders, in the blessed beak +Was silent; for that all those living lights, +Waxing in splendour, burst forth into songs, +Such as from memory glide and fall away. + +Sweet love! that dost apparel thee in smiles, +How lustrous was thy semblance in those sparkles, +Which merely are from holy thoughts inspir’d! + +After the precious and bright beaming stones, +That did ingem the sixth light, ceas’d the chiming +Of their angelic bells; methought I heard +The murmuring of a river, that doth fall +From rock to rock transpicuous, making known +The richness of his spring-head: and as sound +Of cistern, at the fret-board, or of pipe, +Is, at the wind-hole, modulate and tun’d; +Thus up the neck, as it were hollow, rose +That murmuring of the eagle, and forthwith +Voice there assum’d, and thence along the beak +Issued in form of words, such as my heart +Did look for, on whose tables I inscrib’d them. + +“The part in me, that sees, and bears the sun,, +In mortal eagles,” it began, “must now +Be noted steadfastly: for of the fires, +That figure me, those, glittering in mine eye, +Are chief of all the greatest. This, that shines +Midmost for pupil, was the same, who sang +The Holy Spirit’s song, and bare about +The ark from town to town; now doth he know +The merit of his soul-impassion’d strains +By their well-fitted guerdon. Of the five, +That make the circle of the vision, he +Who to the beak is nearest, comforted +The widow for her son: now doth he know +How dear he costeth not to follow Christ, +Both from experience of this pleasant life, +And of its opposite. He next, who follows +In the circumference, for the over arch, +By true repenting slack’d the pace of death: +Now knoweth he, that the degrees of heav’n +Alter not, when through pious prayer below +Today’s is made tomorrow’s destiny. +The other following, with the laws and me, +To yield the shepherd room, pass’d o’er to Greece, +From good intent producing evil fruit: +Now knoweth he, how all the ill, deriv’d +From his well doing, doth not helm him aught, +Though it have brought destruction on the world. +That, which thou seest in the under bow, +Was William, whom that land bewails, which weeps +For Charles and Frederick living: now he knows +How well is lov’d in heav’n the righteous king, +Which he betokens by his radiant seeming. +Who in the erring world beneath would deem, +That Trojan Ripheus in this round was set +Fifth of the saintly splendours? now he knows +Enough of that, which the world cannot see, +The grace divine, albeit e’en his sight +Reach not its utmost depth.” Like to the lark, +That warbling in the air expatiates long, +Then, trilling out his last sweet melody, +Drops satiate with the sweetness; such appear’d +That image stampt by the’ everlasting pleasure, +Which fashions like itself all lovely things. + +I, though my doubting were as manifest, +As is through glass the hue that mantles it, +In silence waited not: for to my lips +“What things are these?” involuntary rush’d, +And forc’d a passage out: whereat I mark’d +A sudden lightening and new revelry. +The eye was kindled: and the blessed sign +No more to keep me wond’ring and suspense, +Replied: “I see that thou believ’st these things, +Because I tell them, but discern’st not how; +So that thy knowledge waits not on thy faith: +As one who knows the name of thing by rote, +But is a stranger to its properties, +Till other’s tongue reveal them. Fervent love +And lively hope with violence assail +The kingdom of the heavens, and overcome +The will of the Most high; not in such sort +As man prevails o’er man; but conquers it, +Because ’tis willing to be conquer’d, still, +Though conquer’d, by its mercy conquering. + +“Those, in the eye who live the first and fifth, +Cause thee to marvel, in that thou behold’st +The region of the angels deck’d with them. +They quitted not their bodies, as thou deem’st, +Gentiles but Christians, in firm rooted faith, +This of the feet in future to be pierc’d, +That of feet nail’d already to the cross. +One from the barrier of the dark abyss, +Where never any with good will returns, +Came back unto his bones. Of lively hope +Such was the meed; of lively hope, that wing’d +The prayers sent up to God for his release, +And put power into them to bend his will. +The glorious Spirit, of whom I speak to thee, +A little while returning to the flesh, +Believ’d in him, who had the means to help, +And, in believing, nourish’d such a flame +Of holy love, that at the second death +He was made sharer in our gamesome mirth. +The other, through the riches of that grace, +Which from so deep a fountain doth distil, +As never eye created saw its rising, +Plac’d all his love below on just and right: +Wherefore of grace God op’d in him the eye +To the redemption of mankind to come; +Wherein believing, he endur’d no more +The filth of paganism, and for their ways +Rebuk’d the stubborn nations. The three nymphs, +Whom at the right wheel thou beheldst advancing, +Were sponsors for him more than thousand years +Before baptizing. O how far remov’d, +Predestination! is thy root from such +As see not the First cause entire: and ye, +O mortal men! be wary how ye judge: +For we, who see our Maker, know not yet +The number of the chosen: and esteem +Such scantiness of knowledge our delight: +For all our good is in that primal good +Concentrate, and God’s will and ours are one.” + +So, by that form divine, was giv’n to me +Sweet medicine to clear and strengthen sight, +And, as one handling skillfully the harp, +Attendant on some skilful songster’s voice +Bids the chords vibrate, and therein the song +Acquires more pleasure; so, the whilst it spake, +It doth remember me, that I beheld +The pair of blessed luminaries move. +Like the accordant twinkling of two eyes, +Their beamy circlets, dancing to the sounds. + + + + +CANTO XXI + + +Again mine eyes were fix’d on Beatrice, +And with mine eyes my soul, that in her looks +Found all contentment. Yet no smile she wore +And, “Did I smile,” quoth she, “thou wouldst be straight +Like Semele when into ashes turn’d: +For, mounting these eternal palace-stairs, +My beauty, which the loftier it climbs, +As thou hast noted, still doth kindle more, +So shines, that, were no temp’ring interpos’d, +Thy mortal puissance would from its rays +Shrink, as the leaf doth from the thunderbolt. +Into the seventh splendour are we wafted, +That underneath the burning lion’s breast +Beams, in this hour, commingled with his might, +Thy mind be with thine eyes: and in them mirror’d +The shape, which in this mirror shall be shown.” +Whoso can deem, how fondly I had fed +My sight upon her blissful countenance, +May know, when to new thoughts I chang’d, what joy +To do the bidding of my heav’nly guide: +In equal balance poising either weight. + +Within the crystal, which records the name, +(As its remoter circle girds the world) +Of that lov’d monarch, in whose happy reign +No ill had power to harm, I saw rear’d up, +In colour like to sun-illumin’d gold. +A ladder, which my ken pursued in vain, +So lofty was the summit; down whose steps +I saw the splendours in such multitude +Descending, ev’ry light in heav’n, methought, +Was shed thence. As the rooks, at dawn of day +Bestirring them to dry their feathers chill, +Some speed their way a-field, and homeward some, +Returning, cross their flight, while some abide +And wheel around their airy lodge; so seem’d +That glitterance, wafted on alternate wing, +As upon certain stair it met, and clash’d +Its shining. And one ling’ring near us, wax’d +So bright, that in my thought: said: “The love, +Which this betokens me, admits no doubt.” + +Unwillingly from question I refrain, +To her, by whom my silence and my speech +Are order’d, looking for a sign: whence she, +Who in the sight of Him, that seeth all, +Saw wherefore I was silent, prompted me +T’ indulge the fervent wish; and I began: +“I am not worthy, of my own desert, +That thou shouldst answer me; but for her sake, +Who hath vouchsaf’d my asking, spirit blest! +That in thy joy art shrouded! say the cause, +Which bringeth thee so near: and wherefore, say, +Doth the sweet symphony of Paradise +Keep silence here, pervading with such sounds +Of rapt devotion ev’ry lower sphere?” +“Mortal art thou in hearing as in sight;” +Was the reply: “and what forbade the smile +Of Beatrice interrupts our song. +Only to yield thee gladness of my voice, +And of the light that vests me, I thus far +Descend these hallow’d steps: not that more love +Invites me; for lo! there aloft, as much +Or more of love is witness’d in those flames: +But such my lot by charity assign’d, +That makes us ready servants, as thou seest, +To execute the counsel of the Highest. +“That in this court,” said I, “O sacred lamp! +Love no compulsion needs, but follows free +Th’ eternal Providence, I well discern: +This harder find to deem, why of thy peers +Thou only to this office wert foredoom’d.” +I had not ended, when, like rapid mill, +Upon its centre whirl’d the light; and then +The love, that did inhabit there, replied: +“Splendour eternal, piercing through these folds, +Its virtue to my vision knits, and thus +Supported, lifts me so above myself, +That on the sov’ran essence, which it wells from, +I have the power to gaze: and hence the joy, +Wherewith I sparkle, equaling with my blaze +The keenness of my sight. But not the soul, +That is in heav’n most lustrous, nor the seraph +That hath his eyes most fix’d on God, shall solve +What thou hast ask’d: for in th’ abyss it lies +Of th’ everlasting statute sunk so low, +That no created ken may fathom it. +And, to the mortal world when thou return’st, +Be this reported; that none henceforth dare +Direct his footsteps to so dread a bourn. +The mind, that here is radiant, on the earth +Is wrapt in mist. Look then if she may do, +Below, what passeth her ability, +When she is ta’en to heav’n.” By words like these +Admonish’d, I the question urg’d no more; +And of the spirit humbly sued alone +T’ instruct me of its state. “’Twixt either shore +Of Italy, nor distant from thy land, +A stony ridge ariseth, in such sort, +The thunder doth not lift his voice so high, +They call it Catria: at whose foot a cell +Is sacred to the lonely Eremite, +For worship set apart and holy rites.” +A third time thus it spake; then added: “There +So firmly to God’s service I adher’d, +That with no costlier viands than the juice +Of olives, easily I pass’d the heats +Of summer and the winter frosts, content +In heav’n-ward musings. Rich were the returns +And fertile, which that cloister once was us’d +To render to these heavens: now ’tis fall’n +Into a waste so empty, that ere long +Detection must lay bare its vanity +Pietro Damiano there was I y-clept: +Pietro the sinner, when before I dwelt +Beside the Adriatic, in the house +Of our blest Lady. Near upon my close +Of mortal life, through much importuning +I was constrain’d to wear the hat that still +From bad to worse it shifted.—Cephas came; +He came, who was the Holy Spirit’s vessel, +Barefoot and lean, eating their bread, as chanc’d, +At the first table. Modern Shepherd’s need +Those who on either hand may prop and lead them, +So burly are they grown: and from behind +Others to hoist them. Down the palfrey’s sides +Spread their broad mantles, so as both the beasts +Are cover’d with one skin. O patience! thou +That lookst on this and doth endure so long.” +I at those accents saw the splendours down +From step to step alight, and wheel, and wax, +Each circuiting, more beautiful. Round this +They came, and stay’d them; uttered them a shout +So loud, it hath no likeness here: nor I +Wist what it spake, so deaf’ning was the thunder. + + + + +CANTO XXII + + +Astounded, to the guardian of my steps +I turn’d me, like the chill, who always runs +Thither for succour, where he trusteth most, +And she was like the mother, who her son +Beholding pale and breathless, with her voice +Soothes him, and he is cheer’d; for thus she spake, +Soothing me: “Know’st not thou, thou art in heav’n? +And know’st not thou, whatever is in heav’n, +Is holy, and that nothing there is done +But is done zealously and well? Deem now, +What change in thee the song, and what my smile +had wrought, since thus the shout had pow’r to move thee. +In which couldst thou have understood their prayers, +The vengeance were already known to thee, +Which thou must witness ere thy mortal hour, +The sword of heav’n is not in haste to smite, +Nor yet doth linger, save unto his seeming, +Who in desire or fear doth look for it. +But elsewhere now l bid thee turn thy view; +So shalt thou many a famous spirit behold.” +Mine eyes directing, as she will’d, I saw +A hundred little spheres, that fairer grew +By interchange of splendour. I remain’d, +As one, who fearful of o’er-much presuming, +Abates in him the keenness of desire, +Nor dares to question, when amid those pearls, +One largest and most lustrous onward drew, +That it might yield contentment to my wish; +And from within it these the sounds I heard. + +“If thou, like me, beheldst the charity +That burns amongst us, what thy mind conceives, +Were utter’d. But that, ere the lofty bound +Thou reach, expectance may not weary thee, +I will make answer even to the thought, +Which thou hast such respect of. In old days, +That mountain, at whose side Cassino rests, +Was on its height frequented by a race +Deceived and ill dispos’d: and I it was, +Who thither carried first the name of Him, +Who brought the soul-subliming truth to man. +And such a speeding grace shone over me, +That from their impious worship I reclaim’d +The dwellers round about, who with the world +Were in delusion lost. These other flames, +The spirits of men contemplative, were all +Enliven’d by that warmth, whose kindly force +Gives birth to flowers and fruits of holiness. +Here is Macarius; Romoaldo here: +And here my brethren, who their steps refrain’d +Within the cloisters, and held firm their heart.” + +I answ’ring, thus; “Thy gentle words and kind, +And this the cheerful semblance, I behold +Not unobservant, beaming in ye all, +Have rais’d assurance in me, wakening it +Full-blossom’d in my bosom, as a rose +Before the sun, when the consummate flower +Has spread to utmost amplitude. Of thee +Therefore entreat I, father! to declare +If I may gain such favour, as to gaze +Upon thine image, by no covering veil’d.” + +“Brother!” he thus rejoin’d, “in the last sphere +Expect completion of thy lofty aim, +For there on each desire completion waits, +And there on mine: where every aim is found +Perfect, entire, and for fulfillment ripe. +There all things are as they have ever been: +For space is none to bound, nor pole divides, +Our ladder reaches even to that clime, +And so at giddy distance mocks thy view. +Thither the Patriarch Jacob saw it stretch +Its topmost round, when it appear’d to him +With angels laden. But to mount it now +None lifts his foot from earth: and hence my rule +Is left a profitless stain upon the leaves; +The walls, for abbey rear’d, turned into dens, +The cowls to sacks choak’d up with musty meal. +Foul usury doth not more lift itself +Against God’s pleasure, than that fruit which makes +The hearts of monks so wanton: for whate’er +Is in the church’s keeping, all pertains. +To such, as sue for heav’n’s sweet sake, and not +To those who in respect of kindred claim, +Or on more vile allowance. Mortal flesh +Is grown so dainty, good beginnings last not +From the oak’s birth, unto the acorn’s setting. +His convent Peter founded without gold +Or silver; I with pray’rs and fasting mine; +And Francis his in meek humility. +And if thou note the point, whence each proceeds, +Then look what it hath err’d to, thou shalt find +The white grown murky. Jordan was turn’d back; +And a less wonder, then the refluent sea, +May at God’s pleasure work amendment here.” + +So saying, to his assembly back he drew: +And they together cluster’d into one, +Then all roll’d upward like an eddying wind. + +The sweet dame beckon’d me to follow them: +And, by that influence only, so prevail’d +Over my nature, that no natural motion, +Ascending or descending here below, +Had, as I mounted, with my pennon vied. + +So, reader, as my hope is to return +Unto the holy triumph, for the which +I ofttimes wail my sins, and smite my breast, +Thou hadst been longer drawing out and thrusting +Thy finger in the fire, than I was, ere +The sign, that followeth Taurus, I beheld, +And enter’d its precinct. O glorious stars! +O light impregnate with exceeding virtue! +To whom whate’er of genius lifteth me +Above the vulgar, grateful I refer; +With ye the parent of all mortal life +Arose and set, when I did first inhale +The Tuscan air; and afterward, when grace +Vouchsaf’d me entrance to the lofty wheel +That in its orb impels ye, fate decreed +My passage at your clime. To you my soul +Devoutly sighs, for virtue even now +To meet the hard emprize that draws me on. + +“Thou art so near the sum of blessedness,” +Said Beatrice, “that behooves thy ken +Be vigilant and clear. And, to this end, +Or even thou advance thee further, hence +Look downward, and contemplate, what a world +Already stretched under our feet there lies: +So as thy heart may, in its blithest mood, +Present itself to the triumphal throng, +Which through the’ etherial concave comes rejoicing.” + +I straight obey’d; and with mine eye return’d +Through all the seven spheres, and saw this globe +So pitiful of semblance, that perforce +It moved my smiles: and him in truth I hold +For wisest, who esteems it least: whose thoughts +Elsewhere are fix’d, him worthiest call and best. +I saw the daughter of Latona shine +Without the shadow, whereof late I deem’d +That dense and rare were cause. Here I sustain’d +The visage, Hyperion! of thy sun; +And mark’d, how near him with their circle, round +Move Maia and Dione; here discern’d +Jove’s tempering ’twixt his sire and son; and hence +Their changes and their various aspects +Distinctly scann’d. Nor might I not descry +Of all the seven, how bulky each, how swift; +Nor of their several distances not learn. +This petty area (o’er the which we stride +So fiercely), as along the eternal twins +I wound my way, appear’d before me all, +Forth from the havens stretch’d unto the hills. +Then to the beauteous eyes mine eyes return’d. + + + + +CANTO XXIII + + +E’en as the bird, who midst the leafy bower +Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night, +With her sweet brood, impatient to descry +Their wished looks, and to bring home their food, +In the fond quest unconscious of her toil: +She, of the time prevenient, on the spray, +That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze +Expects the sun; nor ever, till the dawn, +Removeth from the east her eager ken; +So stood the dame erect, and bent her glance +Wistfully on that region, where the sun +Abateth most his speed; that, seeing her +Suspense and wand’ring, I became as one, +In whom desire is waken’d, and the hope +Of somewhat new to come fills with delight. + +Short space ensued; I was not held, I say, +Long in expectance, when I saw the heav’n +Wax more and more resplendent; and, “Behold,” +Cried Beatrice, “the triumphal hosts +Of Christ, and all the harvest reap’d at length +Of thy ascending up these spheres.” Meseem’d, +That, while she spake her image all did burn, +And in her eyes such fullness was of joy, +And I am fain to pass unconstrued by. + +As in the calm full moon, when Trivia smiles, +In peerless beauty, ’mid th’ eternal nympus, +That paint through all its gulfs the blue profound +In bright pre-eminence so saw I there, +O’er million lamps a sun, from whom all drew +Their radiance as from ours the starry train: +And through the living light so lustrous glow’d +The substance, that my ken endur’d it not. + +O Beatrice! sweet and precious guide! +Who cheer’d me with her comfortable words! +“Against the virtue, that o’erpow’reth thee, +Avails not to resist. Here is the might, +And here the wisdom, which did open lay +The path, that had been yearned for so long, +Betwixt the heav’n and earth.” Like to the fire, +That, in a cloud imprison’d doth break out +Expansive, so that from its womb enlarg’d, +It falleth against nature to the ground; +Thus in that heav’nly banqueting my soul +Outgrew herself; and, in the transport lost. +Holds now remembrance none of what she was. + +“Ope thou thine eyes, and mark me: thou hast seen +Things, that empower thee to sustain my smile.” + +I was as one, when a forgotten dream +Doth come across him, and he strives in vain +To shape it in his fantasy again, +Whenas that gracious boon was proffer’d me, +Which never may be cancel’d from the book, +Wherein the past is written. Now were all +Those tongues to sound, that have on sweetest milk +Of Polyhymnia and her sisters fed +And fatten’d, not with all their help to boot, +Unto the thousandth parcel of the truth, +My song might shadow forth that saintly smile, +flow merely in her saintly looks it wrought. +And with such figuring of Paradise +The sacred strain must leap, like one, that meets +A sudden interruption to his road. +But he, who thinks how ponderous the theme, +And that ’tis lain upon a mortal shoulder, +May pardon, if it tremble with the burden. +The track, our ventrous keel must furrow, brooks +No unribb’d pinnace, no self-sparing pilot. + +“Why doth my face,” said Beatrice, “thus +Enamour thee, as that thou dost not turn +Unto the beautiful garden, blossoming +Beneath the rays of Christ? Here is the rose, +Wherein the word divine was made incarnate; +And here the lilies, by whose odour known +The way of life was follow’d.” Prompt I heard +Her bidding, and encounter once again +The strife of aching vision. As erewhile, +Through glance of sunlight, stream’d through broken cloud, +Mine eyes a flower-besprinkled mead have seen, +Though veil’d themselves in shade; so saw I there +Legions of splendours, on whom burning rays +Shed lightnings from above, yet saw I not +The fountain whence they flow’d. O gracious virtue! +Thou, whose broad stamp is on them, higher up +Thou didst exalt thy glory to give room +To my o’erlabour’d sight: when at the name +Of that fair flower, whom duly I invoke +Both morn and eve, my soul, with all her might +Collected, on the goodliest ardour fix’d. +And, as the bright dimensions of the star +In heav’n excelling, as once here on earth +Were, in my eyeballs lively portray’d, +Lo! from within the sky a cresset fell, +Circling in fashion of a diadem, +And girt the star, and hov’ring round it wheel’d. + +Whatever melody sounds sweetest here, +And draws the spirit most unto itself, +Might seem a rent cloud when it grates the thunder, +Compar’d unto the sounding of that lyre, +Wherewith the goodliest sapphire, that inlays +The floor of heav’n, was crown’d. “ Angelic Love +I am, who thus with hov’ring flight enwheel +The lofty rapture from that womb inspir’d, +Where our desire did dwell: and round thee so, +Lady of Heav’n! will hover; long as thou +Thy Son shalt follow, and diviner joy +Shall from thy presence gild the highest sphere.” + +Such close was to the circling melody: +And, as it ended, all the other lights +Took up the strain, and echoed Mary’s name. + +The robe, that with its regal folds enwraps +The world, and with the nearer breath of God +Doth burn and quiver, held so far retir’d +Its inner hem and skirting over us, +That yet no glimmer of its majesty +Had stream’d unto me: therefore were mine eyes +Unequal to pursue the crowned flame, +That rose and sought its natal seed of fire; +And like to babe, that stretches forth its arms +For very eagerness towards the breast, +After the milk is taken; so outstretch’d +Their wavy summits all the fervent band, +Through zealous love to Mary: then in view +There halted, and “Regina Coeli “ sang +So sweetly, the delight hath left me never. + +O what o’erflowing plenty is up-pil’d +In those rich-laden coffers, which below +Sow’d the good seed, whose harvest now they keep. + +Here are the treasures tasted, that with tears +Were in the Babylonian exile won, +When gold had fail’d them. Here in synod high +Of ancient council with the new conven’d, +Under the Son of Mary and of God, +Victorious he his mighty triumph holds, +To whom the keys of glory were assign’d. + + + + +CANTO XXIV + + +“O ye! in chosen fellowship advanc’d +To the great supper of the blessed Lamb, +Whereon who feeds hath every wish fulfill’d! +If to this man through God’s grace be vouchsaf’d +Foretaste of that, which from your table falls, +Or ever death his fated term prescribe; +Be ye not heedless of his urgent will; +But may some influence of your sacred dews +Sprinkle him. Of the fount ye alway drink, +Whence flows what most he craves.” Beatrice spake, +And the rejoicing spirits, like to spheres +On firm-set poles revolving, trail’d a blaze +Of comet splendour; and as wheels, that wind +Their circles in the horologe, so work +The stated rounds, that to th’ observant eye +The first seems still, and, as it flew, the last; +E’en thus their carols weaving variously, +They by the measure pac’d, or swift, or slow, +Made me to rate the riches of their joy. + +From that, which I did note in beauty most +Excelling, saw I issue forth a flame +So bright, as none was left more goodly there. +Round Beatrice thrice it wheel’d about, +With so divine a song, that fancy’s ear +Records it not; and the pen passeth on +And leaves a blank: for that our mortal speech, +Nor e’en the inward shaping of the brain, +Hath colours fine enough to trace such folds. + +“O saintly sister mine! thy prayer devout +Is with so vehement affection urg’d, +Thou dost unbind me from that beauteous sphere.” + +Such were the accents towards my lady breath’d +From that blest ardour, soon as it was stay’d: +To whom she thus: “O everlasting light +Of him, within whose mighty grasp our Lord +Did leave the keys, which of this wondrous bliss +He bare below! tent this man, as thou wilt, +With lighter probe or deep, touching the faith, +By the which thou didst on the billows walk. +If he in love, in hope, and in belief, +Be steadfast, is not hid from thee: for thou +Hast there thy ken, where all things are beheld +In liveliest portraiture. But since true faith +Has peopled this fair realm with citizens, +Meet is, that to exalt its glory more, +Thou in his audience shouldst thereof discourse.” + +Like to the bachelor, who arms himself, +And speaks not, till the master have propos’d +The question, to approve, and not to end it; +So I, in silence, arm’d me, while she spake, +Summoning up each argument to aid; +As was behooveful for such questioner, +And such profession: “As good Christian ought, +Declare thee, What is faith?” Whereat I rais’d +My forehead to the light, whence this had breath’d, +Then turn’d to Beatrice, and in her looks +Approval met, that from their inmost fount +I should unlock the waters. “May the grace, +That giveth me the captain of the church +For confessor,” said I, “vouchsafe to me +Apt utterance for my thoughts!” then added: “Sire! +E’en as set down by the unerring style +Of thy dear brother, who with thee conspir’d +To bring Rome in unto the way of life, +Faith of things hop’d is substance, and the proof +Of things not seen; and herein doth consist +Methinks its essence,”—” Rightly hast thou deem’d,” +Was answer’d: “if thou well discern, why first +He hath defin’d it, substance, and then proof.” + +“The deep things,” I replied, “which here I scan +Distinctly, are below from mortal eye +So hidden, they have in belief alone +Their being, on which credence hope sublime +Is built; and therefore substance it intends. +And inasmuch as we must needs infer +From such belief our reasoning, all respect +To other view excluded, hence of proof +Th’ intention is deriv’d.” Forthwith I heard: +“If thus, whate’er by learning men attain, +Were understood, the sophist would want room +To exercise his wit.” So breath’d the flame +Of love: then added: “Current is the coin +Thou utter’st, both in weight and in alloy. +But tell me, if thou hast it in thy purse.” + +“Even so glittering and so round,” said I, +“I not a whit misdoubt of its assay.” + +Next issued from the deep imbosom’d splendour: +“Say, whence the costly jewel, on the which +Is founded every virtue, came to thee.” +“The flood,” I answer’d, “from the Spirit of God +Rain’d down upon the ancient bond and new,— +Here is the reas’ning, that convinceth me +So feelingly, each argument beside +Seems blunt and forceless in comparison.” +Then heard I: “Wherefore holdest thou that each, +The elder proposition and the new, +Which so persuade thee, are the voice of heav’n?” + +“The works, that follow’d, evidence their truth; “ +I answer’d: “Nature did not make for these +The iron hot, or on her anvil mould them.” +“Who voucheth to thee of the works themselves, +Was the reply, “that they in very deed +Are that they purport? None hath sworn so to thee.” + +“That all the world,” said I, “should have bee turn’d +To Christian, and no miracle been wrought, +Would in itself be such a miracle, +The rest were not an hundredth part so great. +E’en thou wentst forth in poverty and hunger +To set the goodly plant, that from the vine, +It once was, now is grown unsightly bramble.” +That ended, through the high celestial court +Resounded all the spheres. “Praise we one God!” +In song of most unearthly melody. +And when that Worthy thus, from branch to branch, +Examining, had led me, that we now +Approach’d the topmost bough, he straight resum’d; +“The grace, that holds sweet dalliance with thy soul, +So far discreetly hath thy lips unclos’d +That, whatsoe’er has past them, I commend. +Behooves thee to express, what thou believ’st, +The next, and whereon thy belief hath grown.” + +“O saintly sire and spirit!” I began, +“Who seest that, which thou didst so believe, +As to outstrip feet younger than thine own, +Toward the sepulchre? thy will is here, +That I the tenour of my creed unfold; +And thou the cause of it hast likewise ask’d. +And I reply: I in one God believe, +One sole eternal Godhead, of whose love +All heav’n is mov’d, himself unmov’d the while. +Nor demonstration physical alone, +Or more intelligential and abstruse, +Persuades me to this faith; but from that truth +It cometh to me rather, which is shed +Through Moses, the rapt Prophets, and the Psalms. +The Gospel, and that ye yourselves did write, +When ye were gifted of the Holy Ghost. +In three eternal Persons I believe, +Essence threefold and one, mysterious league +Of union absolute, which, many a time, +The word of gospel lore upon my mind +Imprints: and from this germ, this firstling spark, +The lively flame dilates, and like heav’n’s star +Doth glitter in me.” As the master hears, +Well pleas’d, and then enfoldeth in his arms +The servant, who hath joyful tidings brought, +And having told the errand keeps his peace; +Thus benediction uttering with song +Soon as my peace I held, compass’d me thrice +The apostolic radiance, whose behest +Had op’d lips; so well their answer pleas’d. + + + + +CANTO XXV + + +If e’er the sacred poem that hath made +Both heav’n and earth copartners in its toil, +And with lean abstinence, through many a year, +Faded my brow, be destin’d to prevail +Over the cruelty, which bars me forth +Of the fair sheep-fold, where a sleeping lamb +The wolves set on and fain had worried me, +With other voice and fleece of other grain +I shall forthwith return, and, standing up +At my baptismal font, shall claim the wreath +Due to the poet’s temples: for I there +First enter’d on the faith which maketh souls +Acceptable to God: and, for its sake, +Peter had then circled my forehead thus. + +Next from the squadron, whence had issued forth +The first fruit of Christ’s vicars on the earth, +Toward us mov’d a light, at view whereof +My Lady, full of gladness, spake to me: +“Lo! lo! behold the peer of mickle might, +That makes Falicia throng’d with visitants!” + +As when the ring-dove by his mate alights, +In circles each about the other wheels, +And murmuring cooes his fondness; thus saw I +One, of the other great and glorious prince, +With kindly greeting hail’d, extolling both +Their heavenly banqueting; but when an end +Was to their gratulation, silent, each, +Before me sat they down, so burning bright, +I could not look upon them. Smiling then, +Beatrice spake: “O life in glory shrin’d!” +Who didst the largess of our kingly court +Set down with faithful pen! let now thy voice +Of hope the praises in this height resound. +For thou, who figur’st them in shapes, as clear, +As Jesus stood before thee, well can’st speak them.” + +“Lift up thy head, and be thou strong in trust: +For that, which hither from the mortal world +Arriveth, must be ripen’d in our beam.” + +Such cheering accents from the second flame +Assur’d me; and mine eyes I lifted up +Unto the mountains that had bow’d them late +With over-heavy burden. “Sith our Liege +Wills of his grace that thou, or ere thy death, +In the most secret council, with his lords +Shouldst be confronted, so that having view’d +The glories of our court, thou mayst therewith +Thyself, and all who hear, invigorate +With hope, that leads to blissful end; declare, +What is that hope, how it doth flourish in thee, +And whence thou hadst it?” Thus proceeding still, +The second light: and she, whose gentle love +My soaring pennons in that lofty flight +Escorted, thus preventing me, rejoin’d: +Among her sons, not one more full of hope, +Hath the church militant: so ’tis of him +Recorded in the sun, whose liberal orb +Enlighteneth all our tribe: and ere his term +Of warfare, hence permitted he is come, +From Egypt to Jerusalem, to see. +The other points, both which thou hast inquir’d, +Not for more knowledge, but that he may tell +How dear thou holdst the virtue, these to him +Leave I; for he may answer thee with ease, +And without boasting, so God give him grace.” +Like to the scholar, practis’d in his task, +Who, willing to give proof of diligence, +Seconds his teacher gladly, “Hope,” said I, +“Is of the joy to come a sure expectance, +Th’ effect of grace divine and merit preceding. +This light from many a star visits my heart, +But flow’d to me the first from him, who sang +The songs of the Supreme, himself supreme +Among his tuneful brethren. ‘Let all hope +In thee,’ so speak his anthem, ‘who have known +Thy name;’ and with my faith who know not that? +From thee, the next, distilling from his spring, +In thine epistle, fell on me the drops +So plenteously, that I on others shower +The influence of their dew.” Whileas I spake, +A lamping, as of quick and vollied lightning, +Within the bosom of that mighty sheen, +Play’d tremulous; then forth these accents breath’d: +“Love for the virtue which attended me +E’en to the palm, and issuing from the field, +Glows vigorous yet within me, and inspires +To ask of thee, whom also it delights; +What promise thou from hope in chief dost win.” + +“Both scriptures, new and ancient,” I reply’d; +“Propose the mark (which even now I view) +For souls belov’d of God. Isaias saith, + +That, in their own land, each one must be clad +In twofold vesture; and their proper lands this delicious life. +In terms more full, +And clearer far, thy brother hath set forth +This revelation to us, where he tells +Of the white raiment destin’d to the saints.” +And, as the words were ending, from above, +“They hope in thee,” first heard we cried: whereto +Answer’d the carols all. Amidst them next, +A light of so clear amplitude emerg’d, +That winter’s month were but a single day, +Were such a crystal in the Cancer’s sign. + +Like as a virgin riseth up, and goes, +And enters on the mazes of the dance, +Though gay, yet innocent of worse intent, +Than to do fitting honour to the bride; +So I beheld the new effulgence come +Unto the other two, who in a ring +Wheel’d, as became their rapture. In the dance +And in the song it mingled. And the dame +Held on them fix’d her looks: e’en as the spouse +Silent and moveless. “This is he, who lay +Upon the bosom of our pelican: +This he, into whose keeping from the cross +The mighty charge was given.” Thus she spake, +Yet therefore naught the more remov’d her Sight +From marking them, or ere her words began, +Or when they clos’d. As he, who looks intent, +And strives with searching ken, how he may see +The sun in his eclipse, and, through desire +Of seeing, loseth power of sight: so I +Peer’d on that last resplendence, while I heard: +“Why dazzlest thou thine eyes in seeking that, +Which here abides not? Earth my body is, +In earth: and shall be, with the rest, so long, +As till our number equal the decree +Of the Most High. The two that have ascended, +In this our blessed cloister, shine alone +With the two garments. So report below.” + +As when, for ease of labour, or to shun +Suspected peril at a whistle’s breath, +The oars, erewhile dash’d frequent in the wave, +All rest; the flamy circle at that voice +So rested, and the mingling sound was still, +Which from the trinal band soft-breathing rose. +I turn’d, but ah! how trembled in my thought, +When, looking at my side again to see +Beatrice, I descried her not, although +Not distant, on the happy coast she stood. + + + + +CANTO XXVI + + +With dazzled eyes, whilst wond’ring I remain’d, +Forth of the beamy flame which dazzled me, +Issued a breath, that in attention mute +Detain’d me; and these words it spake: “’Twere well, +That, long as till thy vision, on my form +O’erspent, regain its virtue, with discourse +Thou compensate the brief delay. Say then, +Beginning, to what point thy soul aspires: +And meanwhile rest assur’d, that sight in thee +Is but o’erpowered a space, not wholly quench’d: +Since thy fair guide and lovely, in her look +Hath potency, the like to that which dwelt +In Ananias’ hand.” I answering thus: +“Be to mine eyes the remedy or late +Or early, at her pleasure; for they were +The gates, at which she enter’d, and did light +Her never dying fire. My wishes here +Are centered; in this palace is the weal, +That Alpha and Omega, is to all +The lessons love can read me.” Yet again +The voice which had dispers’d my fear, when daz’d +With that excess, to converse urg’d, and spake: +“Behooves thee sift more narrowly thy terms, +And say, who level’d at this scope thy bow.” + +“Philosophy,” said I, “hath arguments, +And this place hath authority enough +’T’ imprint in me such love: for, of constraint, +Good, inasmuch as we perceive the good, +Kindles our love, and in degree the more, +As it comprises more of goodness in ’t. +The essence then, where such advantage is, +That each good, found without it, is naught else +But of his light the beam, must needs attract +The soul of each one, loving, who the truth +Discerns, on which this proof is built. Such truth +Learn I from him, who shows me the first love +Of all intelligential substances +Eternal: from his voice I learn, whose word +Is truth, that of himself to Moses saith, +‘I will make all my good before thee pass.’ +Lastly from thee I learn, who chief proclaim’st, +E’en at the outset of thy heralding, +In mortal ears the mystery of heav’n.” + +“Through human wisdom, and th’ authority +Therewith agreeing,” heard I answer’d, “keep +The choicest of thy love for God. But say, +If thou yet other cords within thee feel’st +That draw thee towards him; so that thou report +How many are the fangs, with which this love +Is grappled to thy soul.” I did not miss, +To what intent the eagle of our Lord +Had pointed his demand; yea noted well +Th’ avowal, which he led to; and resum’d: +“All grappling bonds, that knit the heart to God, +Confederate to make fast our clarity. +The being of the world, and mine own being, +The death which he endur’d that I should live, +And that, which all the faithful hope, as I do, +To the foremention’d lively knowledge join’d, +Have from the sea of ill love sav’d my bark, +And on the coast secur’d it of the right. +As for the leaves, that in the garden bloom, +My love for them is great, as is the good +Dealt by th’ eternal hand, that tends them all.” + +I ended, and therewith a song most sweet +Rang through the spheres; and “Holy, holy, holy,” +Accordant with the rest my lady sang. +And as a sleep is broken and dispers’d +Through sharp encounter of the nimble light, +With the eye’s spirit running forth to meet +The ray, from membrane on to the membrane urg’d; +And the upstartled wight loathes that be sees; +So, at his sudden waking, he misdeems +Of all around him, till assurance waits +On better judgment: thus the saintly came +Drove from before mine eyes the motes away, +With the resplendence of her own, that cast +Their brightness downward, thousand miles below. +Whence I my vision, clearer shall before, +Recover’d; and, well nigh astounded, ask’d +Of a fourth light, that now with us I saw. + +And Beatrice: “The first diving soul, +That ever the first virtue fram’d, admires +Within these rays his Maker.” Like the leaf, +That bows its lithe top till the blast is blown; +By its own virtue rear’d then stands aloof; +So I, the whilst she said, awe-stricken bow’d. +Then eagerness to speak embolden’d me; +And I began: “O fruit! that wast alone +Mature, when first engender’d! Ancient father! +That doubly seest in every wedded bride +Thy daughter by affinity and blood! +Devoutly as I may, I pray thee hold +Converse with me: my will thou seest; and I, +More speedily to hear thee, tell it not “ + +It chanceth oft some animal bewrays, +Through the sleek cov’ring of his furry coat. +The fondness, that stirs in him and conforms +His outside seeming to the cheer within: +And in like guise was Adam’s spirit mov’d +To joyous mood, that through the covering shone, +Transparent, when to pleasure me it spake: +“No need thy will be told, which I untold +Better discern, than thou whatever thing +Thou holdst most certain: for that will I see +In Him, who is truth’s mirror, and Himself +Parhelion unto all things, and naught else +To him. This wouldst thou hear; how long since God +Plac’d me high garden, from whose hounds +She led me up in this ladder, steep and long; +What space endur’d my season of delight; +Whence truly sprang the wrath that banish’d me; +And what the language, which I spake and fram’d +Not that I tasted of the tree, my son, +Was in itself the cause of that exile, +But only my transgressing of the mark +Assign’d me. There, whence at thy lady’s hest +The Mantuan mov’d him, still was I debarr’d +This council, till the sun had made complete, +Four thousand and three hundred rounds and twice, +His annual journey; and, through every light +In his broad pathway, saw I him return, +Thousand save sev’nty times, the whilst I dwelt +Upon the earth. The language I did use +Was worn away, or ever Nimrod’s race +Their unaccomplishable work began. +For naught, that man inclines to, ere was lasting, +Left by his reason free, and variable, +As is the sky that sways him. That he speaks, +Is nature’s prompting: whether thus or thus, +She leaves to you, as ye do most affect it. +Ere I descended into hell’s abyss, +El was the name on earth of the Chief Good, +Whose joy enfolds me: Eli then ’twas call’d +And so beseemeth: for, in mortals, use +Is as the leaf upon the bough; that goes, +And other comes instead. Upon the mount +Most high above the waters, all my life, +Both innocent and guilty, did but reach +From the first hour, to that which cometh next +(As the sun changes quarter), to the sixth. + + + + +CANTO XXVII + + +Then “Glory to the Father, to the Son, +And to the Holy Spirit,” rang aloud +Throughout all Paradise, that with the song +My spirit reel’d, so passing sweet the strain: +And what I saw was equal ecstasy; +One universal smile it seem’d of all things, +Joy past compare, gladness unutterable, +Imperishable life of peace and love, +Exhaustless riches and unmeasur’d bliss. + +Before mine eyes stood the four torches lit; +And that, which first had come, began to wax +In brightness, and in semblance such became, +As Jove might be, if he and Mars were birds, +And interchang’d their plumes. Silence ensued, +Through the blest quire, by Him, who here appoints +Vicissitude of ministry, enjoin’d; +When thus I heard: “Wonder not, if my hue +Be chang’d; for, while I speak, these shalt thou see +All in like manner change with me. My place +He who usurps on earth (my place, ay, mine, +Which in the presence of the Son of God +Is void), the same hath made my cemetery +A common sewer of puddle and of blood: +The more below his triumph, who from hence +Malignant fell.” Such colour, as the sun, +At eve or morning, paints and adverse cloud, +Then saw I sprinkled over all the sky. +And as th’ unblemish’d dame, who in herself +Secure of censure, yet at bare report +Of other’s failing, shrinks with maiden fear; +So Beatrice in her semblance chang’d: +And such eclipse in heav’n methinks was seen, +When the Most Holy suffer’d. Then the words +Proceeded, with voice, alter’d from itself +So clean, the semblance did not alter more. +“Not to this end was Christ’s spouse with my blood, +With that of Linus, and of Cletus fed: +That she might serve for purchase of base gold: +But for the purchase of this happy life +Did Sextus, Pius, and Callixtus bleed, +And Urban, they, whose doom was not without +Much weeping seal’d. No purpose was of our +That on the right hand of our successors +Part of the Christian people should be set, +And part upon their left; nor that the keys, +Which were vouchsaf’d me, should for ensign serve +Unto the banners, that do levy war +On the baptiz’d: nor I, for sigil-mark +Set upon sold and lying privileges; +Which makes me oft to bicker and turn red. +In shepherd’s clothing greedy wolves below +Range wide o’er all the pastures. Arm of God! +Why longer sleepst thou? Caorsines and Gascona +Prepare to quaff our blood. O good beginning +To what a vile conclusion must thou stoop! +But the high providence, which did defend +Through Scipio the world’s glory unto Rome, +Will not delay its succour: and thou, son, +Who through thy mortal weight shall yet again +Return below, open thy lips, nor hide +What is by me not hidden.” As a Hood +Of frozen vapours streams adown the air, +What time the she-goat with her skiey horn +Touches the sun; so saw I there stream wide +The vapours, who with us had linger’d late +And with glad triumph deck th’ ethereal cope. +Onward my sight their semblances pursued; +So far pursued, as till the space between +From its reach sever’d them: whereat the guide +Celestial, marking me no more intent +On upward gazing, said, “Look down and see +What circuit thou hast compass’d.” From the hour +When I before had cast my view beneath, +All the first region overpast I saw, +Which from the midmost to the bound’ry winds; +That onward thence from Gades I beheld +The unwise passage of Laertes’ son, +And hitherward the shore, where thou, Europa! +Mad’st thee a joyful burden: and yet more +Of this dim spot had seen, but that the sun, +A constellation off and more, had ta’en +His progress in the zodiac underneath. + +Then by the spirit, that doth never leave +Its amorous dalliance with my lady’s looks, +Back with redoubled ardour were mine eyes +Led unto her: and from her radiant smiles, +Whenas I turn’d me, pleasure so divine +Did lighten on me, that whatever bait +Or art or nature in the human flesh, +Or in its limn’d resemblance, can combine +Through greedy eyes to take the soul withal, +Were to her beauty nothing. Its boon influence +From the fair nest of Leda rapt me forth, +And wafted on into the swiftest heav’n. + +What place for entrance Beatrice chose, +I may not say, so uniform was all, +Liveliest and loftiest. She my secret wish +Divin’d; and with such gladness, that God’s love +Seem’d from her visage shining, thus began: +“Here is the goal, whence motion on his race +Starts; motionless the centre, and the rest +All mov’d around. Except the soul divine, +Place in this heav’n is none, the soul divine, +Wherein the love, which ruleth o’er its orb, +Is kindled, and the virtue that it sheds; +One circle, light and love, enclasping it, +As this doth clasp the others; and to Him, +Who draws the bound, its limit only known. +Measur’d itself by none, it doth divide +Motion to all, counted unto them forth, +As by the fifth or half ye count forth ten. +The vase, wherein time’s roots are plung’d, thou seest, +Look elsewhere for the leaves. O mortal lust! +That canst not lift thy head above the waves +Which whelm and sink thee down! The will in man +Bears goodly blossoms; but its ruddy promise +Is, by the dripping of perpetual rain, +Made mere abortion: faith and innocence +Are met with but in babes, each taking leave +Ere cheeks with down are sprinkled; he, that fasts, +While yet a stammerer, with his tongue let loose +Gluts every food alike in every moon. +One yet a babbler, loves and listens to +His mother; but no sooner hath free use +Of speech, than he doth wish her in her grave. +So suddenly doth the fair child of him, +Whose welcome is the morn and eve his parting, +To negro blackness change her virgin white. + +“Thou, to abate thy wonder, note that none +Bears rule in earth, and its frail family +Are therefore wand’rers. Yet before the date, +When through the hundredth in his reck’ning drops +Pale January must be shor’d aside +From winter’s calendar, these heav’nly spheres +Shall roar so loud, that fortune shall be fain +To turn the poop, where she hath now the prow; +So that the fleet run onward; and true fruit, +Expected long, shall crown at last the bloom!” + + + + +CANTO XXVIII + + +So she who doth imparadise my soul, +Had drawn the veil from off our pleasant life, +And bar’d the truth of poor mortality; +When lo! as one who, in a mirror, spies +The shining of a flambeau at his back, +Lit sudden ore he deem of its approach, +And turneth to resolve him, if the glass +Have told him true, and sees the record faithful +As note is to its metre; even thus, +I well remember, did befall to me, +Looking upon the beauteous eyes, whence love +Had made the leash to take me. As I turn’d; +And that, which, in their circles, none who spies, +Can miss of, in itself apparent, struck +On mine; a point I saw, that darted light +So sharp, no lid, unclosing, may bear up +Against its keenness. The least star we view +From hence, had seem’d a moon, set by its side, +As star by side of star. And so far off, +Perchance, as is the halo from the light +Which paints it, when most dense the vapour spreads, +There wheel’d about the point a circle of fire, +More rapid than the motion, which first girds +The world. Then, circle after circle, round +Enring’d each other; till the seventh reach’d +Circumference so ample, that its bow, +Within the span of Juno’s messenger, +lied scarce been held entire. Beyond the sev’nth, +Follow’d yet other two. And every one, +As more in number distant from the first, +Was tardier in motion; and that glow’d +With flame most pure, that to the sparkle’ of truth +Was nearest, as partaking most, methinks, +Of its reality. The guide belov’d +Saw me in anxious thought suspense, and spake: +“Heav’n, and all nature, hangs upon that point. +The circle thereto most conjoin’d observe; +And know, that by intenser love its course +Is to this swiftness wing’d. “To whom I thus: +“It were enough; nor should I further seek, +Had I but witness’d order, in the world +Appointed, such as in these wheels is seen. +But in the sensible world such diff’rence is, +That is each round shows more divinity, +As each is wider from the centre. Hence, +If in this wondrous and angelic temple, +That hath for confine only light and love, +My wish may have completion I must know, +Wherefore such disagreement is between +Th’ exemplar and its copy: for myself, +Contemplating, I fail to pierce the cause.” + +“It is no marvel, if thy fingers foil’d +Do leave the knot untied: so hard ’tis grown +For want of tenting.” Thus she said: “But take,” +She added, “if thou wish thy cure, my words, +And entertain them subtly. Every orb +Corporeal, doth proportion its extent +Unto the virtue through its parts diffus’d. +The greater blessedness preserves the more. +The greater is the body (if all parts +Share equally) the more is to preserve. +Therefore the circle, whose swift course enwheels +The universal frame answers to that, +Which is supreme in knowledge and in love +Thus by the virtue, not the seeming, breadth +Of substance, measure, thou shalt see the heav’ns, +Each to the’ intelligence that ruleth it, +Greater to more, and smaller unto less, +Suited in strict and wondrous harmony.” + +As when the sturdy north blows from his cheek +A blast, that scours the sky, forthwith our air, +Clear’d of the rack, that hung on it before, +Glitters; and, With his beauties all unveil’d, +The firmament looks forth serene, and smiles; +Such was my cheer, when Beatrice drove +With clear reply the shadows back, and truth +Was manifested, as a star in heaven. +And when the words were ended, not unlike +To iron in the furnace, every cirque +Ebullient shot forth scintillating fires: +And every sparkle shivering to new blaze, +In number did outmillion the account +Reduplicate upon the chequer’d board. +Then heard I echoing on from choir to choir, +“Hosanna,” to the fixed point, that holds, +And shall for ever hold them to their place, +From everlasting, irremovable. + +Musing awhile I stood: and she, who saw +by inward meditations, thus began: +“In the first circles, they, whom thou beheldst, +Are seraphim and cherubim. Thus swift +Follow their hoops, in likeness to the point, +Near as they can, approaching; and they can +The more, the loftier their vision. Those, +That round them fleet, gazing the Godhead next, +Are thrones; in whom the first trine ends. And all +Are blessed, even as their sight descends +Deeper into the truth, wherein rest is +For every mind. Thus happiness hath root +In seeing, not in loving, which of sight +Is aftergrowth. And of the seeing such +The meed, as unto each in due degree +Grace and good-will their measure have assign’d. +The other trine, that with still opening buds +In this eternal springtide blossom fair, +Fearless of bruising from the nightly ram, +Breathe up in warbled melodies threefold +Hosannas blending ever, from the three +Transmitted. hierarchy of gods, for aye +Rejoicing, dominations first, next then +Virtues, and powers the third. The next to whom +Are princedoms and archangels, with glad round +To tread their festal ring; and last the band +Angelical, disporting in their sphere. +All, as they circle in their orders, look +Aloft, and downward with such sway prevail, +That all with mutual impulse tend to God. +These once a mortal view beheld. Desire +In Dionysius so intently wrought, +That he, as I have done rang’d them; and nam’d +Their orders, marshal’d in his thought. From him +Dissentient, one refus’d his sacred read. +But soon as in this heav’n his doubting eyes +Were open’d, Gregory at his error smil’d +Nor marvel, that a denizen of earth +Should scan such secret truth; for he had learnt +Both this and much beside of these our orbs, +From an eye-witness to heav’n’s mysteries.” + + + + +CANTO XXIX + + +No longer than what time Latona’s twins +Cover’d of Libra and the fleecy star, +Together both, girding the’ horizon hang, +In even balance from the zenith pois’d, +Till from that verge, each, changing hemisphere, +Part the nice level; e’en so brief a space +Did Beatrice’s silence hold. A smile +Bat painted on her cheek; and her fix’d gaze +Bent on the point, at which my vision fail’d: +When thus her words resuming she began: +“I speak, nor what thou wouldst inquire demand; +For I have mark’d it, where all time and place +Are present. Not for increase to himself +Of good, which may not be increas’d, but forth +To manifest his glory by its beams, +Inhabiting his own eternity, +Beyond time’s limit or what bound soe’er +To circumscribe his being, as he will’d, +Into new natures, like unto himself, +Eternal Love unfolded. Nor before, +As if in dull inaction torpid lay. +For not in process of before or aft +Upon these waters mov’d the Spirit of God. +Simple and mix’d, both form and substance, forth +To perfect being started, like three darts +Shot from a bow three-corded. And as ray +In crystal, glass, and amber, shines entire, +E’en at the moment of its issuing; thus +Did, from th’ eternal Sovran, beam entire +His threefold operation, at one act +Produc’d coeval. Yet in order each +Created his due station knew: those highest, +Who pure intelligence were made: mere power +The lowest: in the midst, bound with strict league, +Intelligence and power, unsever’d bond. +Long tract of ages by the angels past, +Ere the creating of another world, +Describ’d on Jerome’s pages thou hast seen. +But that what I disclose to thee is true, +Those penmen, whom the Holy Spirit mov’d +In many a passage of their sacred book +Attest; as thou by diligent search shalt find +And reason in some sort discerns the same, +Who scarce would grant the heav’nly ministers +Of their perfection void, so long a space. +Thus when and where these spirits of love were made, +Thou know’st, and how: and knowing hast allay’d +Thy thirst, which from the triple question rose. +Ere one had reckon’d twenty, e’en so soon +Part of the angels fell: and in their fall +Confusion to your elements ensued. +The others kept their station: and this task, +Whereon thou lookst, began with such delight, +That they surcease not ever, day nor night, +Their circling. Of that fatal lapse the cause +Was the curst pride of him, whom thou hast seen +Pent with the world’s incumbrance. Those, whom here +Thou seest, were lowly to confess themselves +Of his free bounty, who had made them apt +For ministries so high: therefore their views +Were by enlight’ning grace and their own merit +Exalted; so that in their will confirm’d +They stand, nor feel to fall. For do not doubt, +But to receive the grace, which heav’n vouchsafes, +Is meritorious, even as the soul +With prompt affection welcometh the guest. +Now, without further help, if with good heed +My words thy mind have treasur’d, thou henceforth +This consistory round about mayst scan, +And gaze thy fill. But since thou hast on earth +Heard vain disputers, reasoners in the schools, +Canvas the’ angelic nature, and dispute +Its powers of apprehension, memory, choice; +Therefore, ’tis well thou take from me the truth, +Pure and without disguise, which they below, +Equivocating, darken and perplex. + +“Know thou, that, from the first, these substances, +Rejoicing in the countenance of God, +Have held unceasingly their view, intent +Upon the glorious vision, from the which +Naught absent is nor hid: where then no change +Of newness with succession interrupts, +Remembrance there needs none to gather up +Divided thought and images remote + +“So that men, thus at variance with the truth +Dream, though their eyes be open; reckless some +Of error; others well aware they err, +To whom more guilt and shame are justly due. +Each the known track of sage philosophy +Deserts, and has a byway of his own: +So much the restless eagerness to shine +And love of singularity prevail. +Yet this, offensive as it is, provokes +Heav’n’s anger less, than when the book of God +Is forc’d to yield to man’s authority, +Or from its straightness warp’d: no reck’ning made +What blood the sowing of it in the world +Has cost; what favour for himself he wins, +Who meekly clings to it. The aim of all +Is how to shine: e’en they, whose office is +To preach the Gospel, let the gospel sleep, +And pass their own inventions off instead. +One tells, how at Christ’s suffering the wan moon +Bent back her steps, and shadow’d o’er the sun +With intervenient disk, as she withdrew: +Another, how the light shrouded itself +Within its tabernacle, and left dark +The Spaniard and the Indian, with the Jew. +Such fables Florence in her pulpit hears, +Bandied about more frequent, than the names +Of Bindi and of Lapi in her streets. +The sheep, meanwhile, poor witless ones, return +From pasture, fed with wind: and what avails +For their excuse, they do not see their harm? +Christ said not to his first conventicle, +‘Go forth and preach impostures to the world,’ +But gave them truth to build on; and the sound +Was mighty on their lips; nor needed they, +Beside the gospel, other spear or shield, +To aid them in their warfare for the faith. +The preacher now provides himself with store +Of jests and gibes; and, so there be no lack +Of laughter, while he vents them, his big cowl +Distends, and he has won the meed he sought: +Could but the vulgar catch a glimpse the while +Of that dark bird which nestles in his hood, +They scarce would wait to hear the blessing said. +Which now the dotards hold in such esteem, +That every counterfeit, who spreads abroad +The hands of holy promise, finds a throng +Of credulous fools beneath. Saint Anthony +Fattens with this his swine, and others worse +Than swine, who diet at his lazy board, +Paying with unstamp’d metal for their fare. + +“But (for we far have wander’d) let us seek +The forward path again; so as the way +Be shorten’d with the time. No mortal tongue +Nor thought of man hath ever reach’d so far, +That of these natures he might count the tribes. +What Daniel of their thousands hath reveal’d +With finite number infinite conceals. +The fountain at whose source these drink their beams, +With light supplies them in as many modes, +As there are splendours, that it shines on: each +According to the virtue it conceives, +Differing in love and sweet affection. +Look then how lofty and how huge in breadth +The’ eternal might, which, broken and dispers’d +Over such countless mirrors, yet remains +Whole in itself and one, as at the first.” + + + + +CANTO XXX + + +Noon’s fervid hour perchance six thousand miles +From hence is distant; and the shadowy cone +Almost to level on our earth declines; +When from the midmost of this blue abyss +By turns some star is to our vision lost. +And straightway as the handmaid of the sun +Puts forth her radiant brow, all, light by light, +Fade, and the spangled firmament shuts in, +E’en to the loveliest of the glittering throng. +Thus vanish’d gradually from my sight +The triumph, which plays ever round the point, +That overcame me, seeming (for it did) +Engirt by that it girdeth. Wherefore love, +With loss of other object, forc’d me bend +Mine eyes on Beatrice once again. + +If all, that hitherto is told of her, +Were in one praise concluded, ’twere too weak +To furnish out this turn. Mine eyes did look +On beauty, such, as I believe in sooth, +Not merely to exceed our human, but, +That save its Maker, none can to the full +Enjoy it. At this point o’erpower’d I fail, +Unequal to my theme, as never bard +Of buskin or of sock hath fail’d before. +For, as the sun doth to the feeblest sight, +E’en so remembrance of that witching smile +Hath dispossess my spirit of itself. +Not from that day, when on this earth I first +Beheld her charms, up to that view of them, +Have I with song applausive ever ceas’d +To follow, but not follow them no more; +My course here bounded, as each artist’s is, +When it doth touch the limit of his skill. + +She (such as I bequeath her to the bruit +Of louder trump than mine, which hasteneth on, +Urging its arduous matter to the close), +Her words resum’d, in gesture and in voice +Resembling one accustom’d to command: +“Forth from the last corporeal are we come +Into the heav’n, that is unbodied light, +Light intellectual replete with love, +Love of true happiness replete with joy, +Joy, that transcends all sweetness of delight. +Here shalt thou look on either mighty host +Of Paradise; and one in that array, +Which in the final judgment thou shalt see.” + +As when the lightning, in a sudden spleen +Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes +The visive spirits dazzled and bedimm’d; +So, round about me, fulminating streams +Of living radiance play’d, and left me swath’d +And veil’d in dense impenetrable blaze. +Such weal is in the love, that stills this heav’n; +For its own flame the torch this fitting ever! + +No sooner to my list’ning ear had come +The brief assurance, than I understood +New virtue into me infus’d, and sight +Kindled afresh, with vigour to sustain +Excess of light, however pure. I look’d; +And in the likeness of a river saw +Light flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves +Flash’d up effulgence, as they glided on +’Twixt banks, on either side, painted with spring, +Incredible how fair; and, from the tide, +There ever and anon, outstarting, flew +Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flow’rs +Did set them, like to rubies chas’d in gold; +Then, as if drunk with odors, plung’d again +Into the wondrous flood; from which, as one +Re’enter’d, still another rose. “The thirst +Of knowledge high, whereby thou art inflam’d, +To search the meaning of what here thou seest, +The more it warms thee, pleases me the more. +But first behooves thee of this water drink, +Or ere that longing be allay’d.” So spake +The day-star of mine eyes; then thus subjoin’d: +“This stream, and these, forth issuing from its gulf, +And diving back, a living topaz each, +With all this laughter on its bloomy shores, +Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth +They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things +Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, +For that thy views not yet aspire so high.” +Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, +Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, +As I toward the water, bending me, +To make the better mirrors of mine eyes +In the refining wave; and, as the eaves +Of mine eyelids did drink of it, forthwith +Seem’d it unto me turn’d from length to round, +Then as a troop of maskers, when they put +Their vizors off, look other than before, +The counterfeited semblance thrown aside; +So into greater jubilee were chang’d +Those flowers and sparkles, and distinct I saw +Before me either court of heav’n displac’d. + +O prime enlightener! thou who crav’st me strength +On the high triumph of thy realm to gaze! +Grant virtue now to utter what I kenn’d, + There is in heav’n a light, whose goodly shine +Makes the Creator visible to all +Created, that in seeing him alone +Have peace; and in a circle spreads so far, +That the circumference were too loose a zone +To girdle in the sun. All is one beam, +Reflected from the summit of the first, +That moves, which being hence and vigour takes, +And as some cliff, that from the bottom eyes +Its image mirror’d in the crystal flood, +As if ’t admire its brave appareling +Of verdure and of flowers: so, round about, +Eyeing the light, on more than million thrones, +Stood, eminent, whatever from our earth +Has to the skies return’d. How wide the leaves +Extended to their utmost of this rose, +Whose lowest step embosoms such a space +Of ample radiance! Yet, nor amplitude +Nor height impeded, but my view with ease +Took in the full dimensions of that joy. +Near or remote, what there avails, where God +Immediate rules, and Nature, awed, suspends +Her sway? Into the yellow of the rose +Perennial, which in bright expansiveness, +Lays forth its gradual blooming, redolent +Of praises to the never-wint’ring sun, +As one, who fain would speak yet holds his peace, +Beatrice led me; and, “Behold,” she said, +“This fair assemblage! stoles of snowy white +How numberless! The city, where we dwell, +Behold how vast! and these our seats so throng’d +Few now are wanting here! In that proud stall, +On which, the crown, already o’er its state +Suspended, holds thine eyes—or ere thyself +Mayst at the wedding sup,—shall rest the soul +Of the great Harry, he who, by the world +Augustas hail’d, to Italy must come, +Before her day be ripe. But ye are sick, +And in your tetchy wantonness as blind, +As is the bantling, that of hunger dies, +And drives away the nurse. Nor may it be, +That he, who in the sacred forum sways, +Openly or in secret, shall with him +Accordant walk: Whom God will not endure +I’ th’ holy office long; but thrust him down +To Simon Magus, where Magna’s priest +Will sink beneath him: such will be his meed.” + + + + +CANTO XXXI + + +In fashion, as a snow-white rose, lay then +Before my view the saintly multitude, +Which in his own blood Christ espous’d. Meanwhile +That other host, that soar aloft to gaze +And celebrate his glory, whom they love, +Hover’d around; and, like a troop of bees, +Amid the vernal sweets alighting now, +Now, clustering, where their fragrant labour glows, +Flew downward to the mighty flow’r, or rose +From the redundant petals, streaming back +Unto the steadfast dwelling of their joy. +Faces had they of flame, and wings of gold; +The rest was whiter than the driven snow. +And as they flitted down into the flower, +From range to range, fanning their plumy loins, +Whisper’d the peace and ardour, which they won +From that soft winnowing. Shadow none, the vast +Interposition of such numerous flight +Cast, from above, upon the flower, or view +Obstructed aught. For, through the universe, +Wherever merited, celestial light +Glides freely, and no obstacle prevents. + +All there, who reign in safety and in bliss, +Ages long past or new, on one sole mark +Their love and vision fix’d. O trinal beam +Of individual star, that charmst them thus, +Vouchsafe one glance to gild our storm below! + +If the grim brood, from Arctic shores that roam’d, +(Where helice, forever, as she wheels, +Sparkles a mother’s fondness on her son) +Stood in mute wonder ’mid the works of Rome, +When to their view the Lateran arose +In greatness more than earthly; I, who then +From human to divine had past, from time +Unto eternity, and out of Florence +To justice and to truth, how might I choose +But marvel too? ’Twixt gladness and amaze, +In sooth no will had I to utter aught, +Or hear. And, as a pilgrim, when he rests +Within the temple of his vow, looks round +In breathless awe, and hopes some time to tell +Of all its goodly state: e’en so mine eyes +Cours’d up and down along the living light, +Now low, and now aloft, and now around, +Visiting every step. Looks I beheld, +Where charity in soft persuasion sat, +Smiles from within and radiance from above, +And in each gesture grace and honour high. + +So rov’d my ken, and its general form +All Paradise survey’d: when round I turn’d +With purpose of my lady to inquire +Once more of things, that held my thought suspense, +But answer found from other than I ween’d; +For, Beatrice, when I thought to see, +I saw instead a senior, at my side, + Rob’d, as the rest, in glory. Joy benign +Glow’d in his eye, and o’er his cheek diffus’d, +With gestures such as spake a father’s love. +And, “Whither is she vanish’d?” straight I ask’d. + +“By Beatrice summon’d,” he replied, +“I come to aid thy wish. Looking aloft +To the third circle from the highest, there +Behold her on the throne, wherein her merit +Hath plac’d her.” Answering not, mine eyes I rais’d, +And saw her, where aloof she sat, her brow +A wreath reflecting of eternal beams. +Not from the centre of the sea so far +Unto the region of the highest thunder, +As was my ken from hers; and yet the form +Came through that medium down, unmix’d and pure, + +“O Lady! thou in whom my hopes have rest! +Who, for my safety, hast not scorn’d, in hell +To leave the traces of thy footsteps mark’d! +For all mine eyes have seen, I, to thy power +And goodness, virtue owe and grace. Of slave, +Thou hast to freedom brought me; and no means, +For my deliverance apt, hast left untried. +Thy liberal bounty still toward me keep. +That, when my spirit, which thou madest whole, +Is loosen’d from this body, it may find +Favour with thee.” So I my suit preferr’d: +And she, so distant, as appear’d, look’d down, +And smil’d; then tow’rds th’ eternal fountain turn’d. + +And thus the senior, holy and rever’d: +“That thou at length mayst happily conclude +Thy voyage (to which end I was dispatch’d, +By supplication mov’d and holy love) +Let thy upsoaring vision range, at large, +This garden through: for so, by ray divine +Kindled, thy ken a higher flight shall mount; +And from heav’n’s queen, whom fervent I adore, +All gracious aid befriend us; for that I +Am her own faithful Bernard.” Like a wight, +Who haply from Croatia wends to see +Our Veronica, and the while ’tis shown, +Hangs over it with never-sated gaze, +And, all that he hath heard revolving, saith +Unto himself in thought: “And didst thou look +E’en thus, O Jesus, my true Lord and God? +And was this semblance thine?” So gaz’d I then +Adoring; for the charity of him, +Who musing, in the world that peace enjoy’d, +Stood lively before me. “Child of grace!” +Thus he began: “thou shalt not knowledge gain +Of this glad being, if thine eyes are held +Still in this depth below. But search around +The circles, to the furthest, till thou spy +Seated in state, the queen, that of this realm +Is sovran.” Straight mine eyes I rais’d; and bright, +As, at the birth of morn, the eastern clime +Above th’ horizon, where the sun declines; +To mine eyes, that upward, as from vale +To mountain sped, at th’ extreme bound, a part +Excell’d in lustre all the front oppos’d. +And as the glow burns ruddiest o’er the wave, +That waits the sloping beam, which Phaeton +Ill knew to guide, and on each part the light +Diminish’d fades, intensest in the midst; +So burn’d the peaceful oriflamb, and slack’d +On every side the living flame decay’d. +And in that midst their sportive pennons wav’d +Thousands of angels; in resplendence each +Distinct, and quaint adornment. At their glee +And carol, smil’d the Lovely One of heav’n, +That joy was in the eyes of all the blest. + +Had I a tongue in eloquence as rich, +As is the colouring in fancy’s loom, +’Twere all too poor to utter the least part +Of that enchantment. When he saw mine eyes +Intent on her, that charm’d him, Bernard gaz’d +With so exceeding fondness, as infus’d +Ardour into my breast, unfelt before. + + + + +CANTO XXXII + + +Freely the sage, though wrapt in musings high, +Assum’d the teacher’s part, and mild began: +“The wound, that Mary clos’d, she open’d first, +Who sits so beautiful at Mary’s feet. +The third in order, underneath her, lo! +Rachel with Beatrice. Sarah next, +Judith, Rebecca, and the gleaner maid, +Meek ancestress of him, who sang the songs +Of sore repentance in his sorrowful mood. +All, as I name them, down from deaf to leaf, +Are in gradation throned on the rose. +And from the seventh step, successively, +Adown the breathing tresses of the flow’r +Still doth the file of Hebrew dames proceed. +For these are a partition wall, whereby +The sacred stairs are sever’d, as the faith +In Christ divides them. On this part, where blooms +Each leaf in full maturity, are set +Such as in Christ, or ere he came, believ’d. +On th’ other, where an intersected space +Yet shows the semicircle void, abide +All they, who look’d to Christ already come. +And as our Lady on her glorious stool, +And they who on their stools beneath her sit, +This way distinction make: e’en so on his, +The mighty Baptist that way marks the line +(He who endur’d the desert and the pains +Of martyrdom, and for two years of hell, +Yet still continued holy), and beneath, +Augustin, Francis, Benedict, and the rest, +Thus far from round to round. So heav’n’s decree +Forecasts, this garden equally to fill. +With faith in either view, past or to come, +Learn too, that downward from the step, which cleaves +Midway the twain compartments, none there are +Who place obtain for merit of their own, +But have through others’ merit been advanc’d, +On set conditions: spirits all releas’d, +Ere for themselves they had the power to choose. +And, if thou mark and listen to them well, +Their childish looks and voice declare as much. + +“Here, silent as thou art, I know thy doubt; +And gladly will I loose the knot, wherein +Thy subtle thoughts have bound thee. From this realm +Excluded, chalice no entrance here may find, +No more shall hunger, thirst, or sorrow can. +A law immutable hath establish’d all; +Nor is there aught thou seest, that doth not fit, +Exactly, as the finger to the ring. +It is not therefore without cause, that these, +O’erspeedy comers to immortal life, +Are different in their shares of excellence. +Our Sovran Lord—that settleth this estate +In love and in delight so absolute, +That wish can dare no further—every soul, +Created in his joyous sight to dwell, +With grace at pleasure variously endows. +And for a proof th’ effect may well suffice. +And ’tis moreover most expressly mark’d +In holy scripture, where the twins are said +To, have struggled in the womb. Therefore, as grace +Inweaves the coronet, so every brow +Weareth its proper hue of orient light. +And merely in respect to his prime gift, +Not in reward of meritorious deed, +Hath each his several degree assign’d. +In early times with their own innocence +More was not wanting, than the parents’ faith, +To save them: those first ages past, behoov’d +That circumcision in the males should imp +The flight of innocent wings: but since the day +Of grace hath come, without baptismal rites +In Christ accomplish’d, innocence herself +Must linger yet below. Now raise thy view +Unto the visage most resembling Christ: +For, in her splendour only, shalt thou win +The pow’r to look on him.” Forthwith I saw +Such floods of gladness on her visage shower’d, +From holy spirits, winging that profound; +That, whatsoever I had yet beheld, +Had not so much suspended me with wonder, +Or shown me such similitude of God. +And he, who had to her descended, once, +On earth, now hail’d in heav’n; and on pois’d wing. +“Ave, Maria, Gratia Plena,” sang: +To whose sweet anthem all the blissful court, +From all parts answ’ring, rang: that holier joy +Brooded the deep serene. “Father rever’d: +Who deign’st, for me, to quit the pleasant place, +Wherein thou sittest, by eternal lot! +Say, who that angel is, that with such glee +Beholds our queen, and so enamour’d glows +Of her high beauty, that all fire he seems.” +So I again resorted to the lore +Of my wise teacher, he, whom Mary’s charms +Embellish’d, as the sun the morning star; +Who thus in answer spake: “In him are summ’d, +Whatever of buxomness and free delight +May be in Spirit, or in angel, met: +And so beseems: for that he bare the palm +Down unto Mary, when the Son of God +Vouchsaf’d to clothe him in terrestrial weeds. +Now let thine eyes wait heedful on my words, +And note thou of this just and pious realm +The chiefest nobles. Those, highest in bliss, +The twain, on each hand next our empress thron’d, +Are as it were two roots unto this rose. +He to the left, the parent, whose rash taste +Proves bitter to his seed; and, on the right, +That ancient father of the holy church, +Into whose keeping Christ did give the keys +Of this sweet flow’r: near whom behold the seer, +That, ere he died, saw all the grievous times +Of the fair bride, who with the lance and nails +Was won. And, near unto the other, rests +The leader, under whom on manna fed +Th’ ungrateful nation, fickle and perverse. +On th’ other part, facing to Peter, lo! +Where Anna sits, so well content to look +On her lov’d daughter, that with moveless eye +She chants the loud hosanna: while, oppos’d +To the first father of your mortal kind, +Is Lucia, at whose hest thy lady sped, +When on the edge of ruin clos’d thine eye. + +“But (for the vision hasteneth so an end) +Here break we off, as the good workman doth, +That shapes the cloak according to the cloth: +And to the primal love our ken shall rise; +That thou mayst penetrate the brightness, far +As sight can bear thee. Yet, alas! in sooth +Beating thy pennons, thinking to advance, +Thou backward fall’st. Grace then must first be gain’d; +Her grace, whose might can help thee. Thou in prayer +Seek her: and, with affection, whilst I sue, +Attend, and yield me all thy heart.” He said, +And thus the saintly orison began. + + + + +CANTO XXXIII + + +“O virgin mother, daughter of thy Son, +Created beings all in lowliness +Surpassing, as in height, above them all, +Term by th’ eternal counsel pre-ordain’d, +Ennobler of thy nature, so advanc’d +In thee, that its great Maker did not scorn, +Himself, in his own work enclos’d to dwell! +For in thy womb rekindling shone the love +Reveal’d, whose genial influence makes now +This flower to germin in eternal peace! +Here thou to us, of charity and love, +Art, as the noon-day torch: and art, beneath, +To mortal men, of hope a living spring. +So mighty art thou, lady! and so great, +That he who grace desireth, and comes not +To thee for aidance, fain would have desire +Fly without wings. Nor only him who asks, +Thy bounty succours, but doth freely oft +Forerun the asking. Whatsoe’er may be +Of excellence in creature, pity mild, +Relenting mercy, large munificence, +Are all combin’d in thee. Here kneeleth one, +Who of all spirits hath review’d the state, +From the world’s lowest gap unto this height. +Suppliant to thee he kneels, imploring grace +For virtue, yet more high to lift his ken +Toward the bliss supreme. And I, who ne’er +Coveted sight, more fondly, for myself, +Than now for him, my prayers to thee prefer, +(And pray they be not scant) that thou wouldst drive +Each cloud of his mortality away; +That on the sovran pleasure he may gaze. +This also I entreat of thee, O queen! +Who canst do what thou wilt! that in him thou +Wouldst after all he hath beheld, preserve +Affection sound, and human passions quell. +Lo! Where, with Beatrice, many a saint +Stretch their clasp’d hands, in furtherance of my suit!” + +The eyes, that heav’n with love and awe regards, +Fix’d on the suitor, witness’d, how benign +She looks on pious pray’rs: then fasten’d they +On th’ everlasting light, wherein no eye +Of creature, as may well be thought, so far +Can travel inward. I, meanwhile, who drew +Near to the limit, where all wishes end, +The ardour of my wish (for so behooved), +Ended within me. Beck’ning smil’d the sage, +That I should look aloft: but, ere he bade, +Already of myself aloft I look’d; +For visual strength, refining more and more, +Bare me into the ray authentical +Of sovran light. Thenceforward, what I saw, +Was not for words to speak, nor memory’s self +To stand against such outrage on her skill. +As one, who from a dream awaken’d, straight, +All he hath seen forgets; yet still retains +Impression of the feeling in his dream; +E’en such am I: for all the vision dies, +As ’twere, away; and yet the sense of sweet, +That sprang from it, still trickles in my heart. +Thus in the sun-thaw is the snow unseal’d; +Thus in the winds on flitting leaves was lost +The Sybil’s sentence. O eternal beam! +(Whose height what reach of mortal thought may soar?) +Yield me again some little particle +Of what thou then appearedst, give my tongue +Power, but to leave one sparkle of thy glory, +Unto the race to come, that shall not lose +Thy triumph wholly, if thou waken aught +Of memory in me, and endure to hear +The record sound in this unequal strain. + +Such keenness from the living ray I met, +That, if mine eyes had turn’d away, methinks, +I had been lost; but, so embolden’d, on +I pass’d, as I remember, till my view +Hover’d the brink of dread infinitude. + +O grace! unenvying of thy boon! that gav’st +Boldness to fix so earnestly my ken +On th’ everlasting splendour, that I look’d, +While sight was unconsum’d, and, in that depth, +Saw in one volume clasp’d of love, whatever +The universe unfolds; all properties +Of substance and of accident, beheld, +Compounded, yet one individual light +The whole. And of such bond methinks I saw +The universal form: for that whenever +I do but speak of it, my soul dilates +Beyond her proper self; and, till I speak, +One moment seems a longer lethargy, +Than five-and-twenty ages had appear’d +To that emprize, that first made Neptune wonder +At Argo’s shadow darkening on his flood. + +With fixed heed, suspense and motionless, +Wond’ring I gaz’d; and admiration still +Was kindled, as I gaz’d. It may not be, +That one, who looks upon that light, can turn +To other object, willingly, his view. +For all the good, that will may covet, there +Is summ’d; and all, elsewhere defective found, +Complete. My tongue shall utter now, no more +E’en what remembrance keeps, than could the babe’s +That yet is moisten’d at his mother’s breast. +Not that the semblance of the living light +Was chang’d (that ever as at first remain’d) +But that my vision quickening, in that sole +Appearance, still new miracles descry’d, +And toil’d me with the change. In that abyss +Of radiance, clear and lofty, seem’d methought, +Three orbs of triple hue clipt in one bound: +And, from another, one reflected seem’d, +As rainbow is from rainbow: and the third +Seem’d fire, breath’d equally from both. Oh speech +How feeble and how faint art thou, to give +Conception birth! Yet this to what I saw +Is less than little. Oh eternal light! +Sole in thyself that dwellst; and of thyself +Sole understood, past, present, or to come! +Thou smiledst; on that circling, which in thee +Seem’d as reflected splendour, while I mus’d; +For I therein, methought, in its own hue +Beheld our image painted: steadfastly +I therefore por’d upon the view. As one +Who vers’d in geometric lore, would fain +Measure the circle; and, though pondering long +And deeply, that beginning, which he needs, +Finds not; e’en such was I, intent to scan +The novel wonder, and trace out the form, +How to the circle fitted, and therein +How plac’d: but the flight was not for my wing; +Had not a flash darted athwart my mind, +And in the spleen unfolded what it sought. + +Here vigour fail’d the tow’ring fantasy: +But yet the will roll’d onward, like a wheel +In even motion, by the Love impell’d, +That moves the sun in heav’n and all the stars. + + + + +NOTES TO PARADISE + +CANTO 1 + + +Verse 12. Benign Apollo.] Chaucer has imitated this invention very +closely at the beginning of the Third Booke of Fame. + +If, divine vertue, thou +Wilt helpe me to shewe now +That in my head ymarked is, + +* * * * * +Thou shalt see me go as blive +Unto the next laurer I see, +And kisse it for it is thy tree +Now entre thou my breast anone. + +v. 15. Thus for.] He appears to mean nothing more than that this part +of his poem will require a greater exertion of his powers than the +former. + +v. 19. Marsyas.] Ovid, Met. 1. vi. fab. 7. Compare Boccaccio, II +Filocopo, 1. 5. p. 25. v. ii. Ediz. Fir. 1723. “Egli nel mio petto +entri,” &c. - “May he enter my bosom, and let my voice sound like his +own, when he made that daring mortal deserve to come forth unsheathed +from his limbs. “ v. 29. Caesar, or bard.] So Petrarch, Son. Par. +Prima. + +Arbor vittoriosa e trionfale, +Onor d’imperadori e di poeti. + +And Spenser, F. Q. b. i. c. 1. st. 9, +The laurel, meed of mighty conquerours +And poets sage. + +v. 37. Through that.] “Where the four circles, the horizon, the zodiac, +the equator, and the equinoctial colure, join; the last +threeintersecting each other so as to form three crosses, as may be +seen in the armillary sphere.” + +v. 39. In happiest constellation.] Aries. Some understand the +planetVenus by the “miglior stella “ + +v. 44. To the left.] Being in the opposite hemisphere to ours, Beatrice +that she may behold the rising sun, turns herself to the left. + +v. 47. As from the first a second beam.] “Like a reflected sunbeam,” +which he compares to a pilgrim hastening homewards. + +Ne simil tanto mal raggio secondo +Dal primo usci. +Filicaja, canz. 15. st. 4. + +v. 58. As iron that comes boiling from the fire.] So Milton, P. L. b. +iii. 594. —As glowing iron with fire. + +v. 69. Upon the day appear’d. + +—If the heaven had ywonne, +All new of God another sunne. +Chaucer, First Booke of Fame + +E par ch’ agginuga un altro sole al cielo. +Ariosto, O F. c. x. st. 109. + +Ed ecco un lustro lampeggiar d’ intorno +Che sole a sole aggiunse e giorno a giorno. +Manno, Adone. c. xi. st. 27. + +Quando a paro col sol ma piu lucente +L’angelo gli appari sull; oriente +Tasso, G. L. c. i. + +-Seems another morn +Ris’n on mid-noon. +Milton, P. L. b. v. 311. + +Compare Euripides, Ion. 1550. [GREEK HERE] 66. as Glaucus. ] Ovid, Met. +1. Xiii. Fab. 9 + +v. 71. If.] “Thou O divine Spirit, knowest whether 1 had not risen +above my human nature, and were not merely such as thou hadst then, +formed me.” + +v. 125. Through sluggishness.] Perch’ a risponder la materia e sorda. + +So Filicaja, canz. vi. st 9. +Perche a risponder la discordia e sorda + +“The workman hath in his heart a purpose, he carrieth in mind the whole +form which his work should have; there wanteth not him skill and desire +to bring his labour to the best effect, only the matter, which he hath +to work on is unframeable.” Hooker’s Eccl. Polity, b. 5. 9. + +CANTO II + + +v. 1. In small bark.] + +Con la barchetta mia cantando in rima +Pulci, Morg. Magg. c. xxviii. + +Io me n’andro con la barchetta mia, +Quanto l’acqua comporta un picciol legno +Ibid. + +v. 30. This first star.] the moon + +v. 46. E’en as the truth.] Like a truth that does not need +demonstration, but is self-evident.” + +v. 52. Cain.] Compare Hell, Canto XX. 123. And Note + +v. 65. Number1ess lights.] The fixed stars, which differ both in bulk +and splendor. + +v. 71. Save one.] “Except that principle of rarity and denseness which +thou hast assigned.” By “formal principles, “principj formali, are +meant constituent or essential causes.” Milton, in imitation of this +passage, introduces the angel arguing with Adam respecting the causes +of the spots on the moon. + +But, as a late French translator of the Paradise well remarks, his +reasoning is physical; that of Dante partly metaphysical and partly +theologic. + +v. 111. Within the heaven.] According to our Poet’s system, there are +ten heavens; the seven planets, the eighth spheres containing the fixed +stars, the primum mobile, and the empyrean. + +v. 143. The virtue mingled.] Virg. Aen. 1. vi 724. Principio coelum, +&c. + +CANTO III + + +v. 16. Delusion.] “An error the contrary to that of Narcissus, because +he mistook a shadow for a substance, I a substance for a shadow.” + +v. 50. Piccarda.] The sister of Forese whom we have seen in the +Purgatory, Canto XXIII. + +v. 90. The Lady.] St. Clare, the foundress of the order called after +her She was born of opulent and noble parents at Assisi, in 1193, and +died in 1253. See Biogr. Univ. t. 1. p. 598. 8vo. Paris, 1813. + +v. 121. Constance.] Daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, who, being +taken by force out of a monastery where she had professed, was married +to the Emperor Henry Vl. and by him was mother to Frederick 11. She was +fifty years old or more at the time, and “because it was not credited +that she could have a child at that age, she was delivered in a +pavilion and it was given out, that any lady, who pleased, was at +liberty to see her. Many came, and saw her, and the suspicion ceased.” +Ricordano Malaspina in Muratori, Rer. It. Script. t. viii. p. 939; and +G. Villani, in the same words, Hist. I v. c. 16 + +The French translator above mentored speaks of her having poisoned her +husband. The death of Henry Vl. is recorded in the Chronicon Siciliae, +by an anonymous writer, (Muratori, t. x.) but not a word of his having +been poisoned by Constance, and Ricordano Malaspina even mentions her +decease as happening before that of her husband, Henry V., for so this +author, with some others, terms him. v. 122. The second.] Henry Vl. son +of Frederick I was the second emperor of the house of Saab; and his son +Frederick II “the third and last.” + +CANTO IV + + +v. 6. Between two deer] + +Tigris ut auditis, diversa valle duorum +Extimulata fame, mugitibus armentorum +Neseit utro potius ruat, et ruere ardet utroque. +Ovid, Metam. 1. v. 166 + +v. 13. Daniel.] See Daniel, c. ii. + +v. 24. Plato.] [GREEK HERE] Plato Timaeus v. ix. p. 326. Edit. Bip. +“The Creator, when he had framed the universe, distributed to the stars +an equal number of souls, appointing to each soul its several star.” + +v. 27. Of that.] Plato’s opinion. + +v. 34. The first circle.] The empyrean. + +v. 48. Him who made Tobias whole.] + +Raphael, the sociable spirit, that deign’d +To travel with Tobias, and secur’d +His marriage with the sev’n times wedded maid, +Milton, P. L. b. v. 223. + +v. 67. That to the eye of man.] “That the ways of divine justice are +often inscrutable to man, ought rather to be a motive to faith than an +inducement to heresy.” Such appears to me the most satisfactory +explanation of the passage. + +v. 82. Laurence.] Who suffered martyrdom in the third century. + +v. 82. Scaevola.] See Liv. Hist. D. 1. 1. ii. 12. + +v. 100. Alcmaeon.] Ovid, Met. 1. ix. f. 10. + +—Ultusque parente parentem +Natus, erit facto pius et sceleratus eodem. + +v. 107. Of will.] “What Piccarda asserts of Constance, that she +retained her affection to the monastic life, is said absolutely and +without relation to circumstances; and that which I affirm is spoken of +the will conditionally and respectively: so that our apparent +difference is without any disagreement.” v. 119. That truth.] The light +of divine truth. + +CANTO V + + +v. 43. Two things.] The one, the substance of the vow; the other, the +compact, or form of it. + +v. 48. It was enjoin’d the Israelites.] See Lev. e. xii, and xxvii. + +v. 56. Either key.] Purgatory, Canto IX. 108. + +v. 86. That region.] As some explain it, the east, according to others +the equinoctial line. + +v. 124. This sphere.] The planet Mercury, which, being nearest to the +sun, is oftenest hidden by that luminary + +CANTO VI + + +v. 1. After that Constantine the eagle turn’d.] Constantine, in +transferring the seat of empire from Rome to Byzantium, carried the +eagle, the Imperial ensign, from the west to the east. Aeneas, on the +contrary had moved along with the sun’s course, when he passed from +Troy to Italy. + +v. 5. A hundred years twice told and more.] The Emperor Constantine +entered Byzantium in 324, and Justinian began his reign in 527. + +v. 6. At Europe’s extreme point.] Constantinople being situated at the +extreme of Europe, and on the borders of Asia, near those mountains in +the neighbourhood of Troy, from whence the first founders of Rome had +emigrated. + +v. 13. To clear th’ incumber’d laws.] The code of laws was abridged and +reformed by Justinian. + +v. 15. Christ’s nature merely human.] Justinian is said to have been a +follower of the heretical Opinions held by Eutyches,” who taught that +in Christ there was but one nature, viz. that of the incarnate word.” +Maclaine’s Mosheim, t. ii. Cent. v. p. ii. c. v. 13. + +v. 16. Agapete.] Agapetus, Bishop of Rome, whose Scheda Regia, +addressed to the Emperor Justinian, procured him a place among the +wisest and most judicious writers of this century.” Ibid. Cent. vi. p. +ii c. ii. 8. + +v. 33. Who pretend its power.] The Ghibellines. + +v. 33. And who oppose ] The Guelphs. + +v. 34. Pallas died.] See Virgil, Aen. 1. X. + +v. 39. The rival three.] The Horatii and Curiatii. + +v. 41. Down.] “From the rape of the Sabine women to the violation of +Lucretia.” v. 47. Quintius.] Quintius Cincinnatus. + +E Cincinnato dall’ inculta chioma. +Petrarca. + +v. 50. Arab hordes.] The Arabians seem to be put for the barbarians in +general. + +v. 54. That hill.] The city of Fesulae, which was sacked by the Romans +after the defeat of Cataline. + +v. 56. Near the hour.] Near the time of our Saviour’s birth. + +v. 59. What then it wrought.] In the following fifteen lines the Poet +has comprised the exploits of Julius Caesar. + +v. 75. In its next bearer’s gripe.] With Augustus Caesar. + +v. 89. The third Caesar.] “Tiberius the third of the Caesars, had it in +his power to surpass the glory of all who either preceded or came after +him, by destroying the city of .Jerusalem, as Titus afterwards did, and +thus revenging the cause of God himself on the Jews.” + +v. 95. Vengeance for vengeance ] This will be afterwards explained by +the Poet himself. v. 98. Charlemagne.] Dante could not be ignorant that +the reign of Justinian was long prior to that of Charlemagne; but the +spirit of the former emperor is represented, both in this instance and +in what follows, as conscious of the events that had taken place after +his own time. + +v. 104. The yellow lilies.] The French ensign. + +v. 110. Charles.] The commentators explain this to mean Charles II, +king of Naples and Sicily. Is it not more likely to allude to Charles +of Valois, son of Philip III of France, who was sent for, about this +time, into Italy by Pope Boniface, with the promise of being made +emperor? See G. Villani, 1. viii. c. 42. + +v. 131. Romeo’s light.] The story of Romeo is involved in some +uncertainty. The French writers assert the continuance of his +ministerial office even after the decease of his soverign Raymond +Berenger, count of Provence: and they rest this assertion chiefly on +the fact of a certain Romieu de Villeneuve, who was the contemporary of +that prince, having left large possessions behind him, as appears by +his will, preserved in the archives of the bishopric of Venice. There +might however have been more than one person of the name of Romieu, or +Romeo which answers to that of Palmer in our language. Nor is it +probable that the Italians, who lived so near the time, were +misinformed in an occurrence of such notoriety. According to them, +after he had long been a faithful steward to Raymond, when an account +was required from him of the revenues whichhe had carefully husbanded, +and his master as lavishly disbursed, “He demanded the little mule, the +staff, and the scrip, with which he had first entered into the count’s +service, a stranger pilgrim from the shrine of St. James in Galicia, +and parted as he came; nor was it ever known whence he was or wither he +went.” G. Villani, 1. vi. c. 92. + +v. 135. Four daughters.] Of the four daughters of Raymond Berenger, +Margaret, the eldest, was married to Louis IX of France; Eleanor; the +next, to Henry III, of England; Sancha, the third, to Richard, Henry’s +brother, and King of the Romans; and the youngest, Beatrice, to Charles +I, King of Naples and Sicily, and brother to Louis. + +v. 136. Raymond Berenger.] This prince, the last of the house of +Barcelona, who was count of Provence, died in 1245. He is in the list +of Provencal poets. See Millot, Hist, Litt des Troubadours, t. ii. P. +112. + +CANTO VII + + +v. 3. Malahoth.] A Hebrew word, signifying “kingdoms.” + +v. 4. That substance bright.] Justinian. + +v. 17. As might have made one blest amid the flames.] So Giusto de’ +Conti, Bella Mano. “Qual salamandra.” + +Che puommi nelle fiammi far beato. + +v. 23. That man who was unborn.] Adam. + +v. 61. What distils.] “That which proceeds immediately from God, and +without intervention of secondary causes, in immortal.” + +v. 140. Our resurrection certain.] “Venturi appears to mistake the +Poet’s reasoning, when he observes: “Wretched for us, if we had not +arguments more convincing, and of a higher kind, to assure us of the +truth of our resurrection.” It is here intended, I think, that the +whole of God’s dispensations to man should be considered as a proof of +our resurrection. The conclusion is that as before sin man was +immortal, so being restored to the favor of heaven by the expiation +made for sin, he necessarily recovers his claim to immortality. + +There is much in this poem to justify the encomium which the learned +Salvini has passed on it, when, in an epistle to Redi, imitating what +Horace had said of Homer, that the duties of life might be better +learnt from the Grecian bard than from the teachers of the porch or the +academy, he says— + +And dost thou ask, what themes my mind engage? +The lonely hours I give to Dante’s page; +And meet more sacred learning in his lines +Than I had gain’d from all the school divines. + +Se volete saper la vita mia, +Studiando io sto lungi da tutti gli nomini +Ed ho irnparato piu teologia +In questi giorni, che ho riletto Dante, +Che nelle scuole fattto io non avria. + +CANTO VIII + + +v. 4. Epicycle,] “In sul dosso di questo cerchio,” &c. Convito di +Dante, Opere, t. i. p. 48, ed. Ven. 1793. “Upon the back of this +circle, in the heaven of Venus, whereof we are now treating, is a +little sphere, which has in that heaven a revolution of its own: whose +circle the astronomers term epicycle.” + +v. 11. To sit in Dido’s bosom.] Virgil. Aen. 1. i. 718, + +v. 40. ‘O ye whose intellectual ministry.] Voi ch’ intendendo il terzo +ciel movete. The first line in our Poet” first canzone. See his +Convito, Ibid. p. 40. + +v. 53. had the time been more.] The spirit now speaking is Charles +Martel crowned king of Hungary, and son of Charles 11 king of Naples +and Sicily, to which dominions dying in his father’s lifetime, he did +not succeed. + +v. 57. Thou lov’dst me well.] Charles Martel might have been known to +our poet at Florence whither he came to meet his father in 1295, the +year of his death. The retinue and the habiliments of the young monarch +are minutely described by G. Villani, who adds, that “he remained more +than twenty days in Florence, waiting for his father King Charles and +his brothers during which time great honour was done him by the, +Florentines and he showed no less love towards them, and he was much in +favour with all.” 1. viii. c. 13. His brother Robert, king of Naples, +was the friend of Petrarch. + +v. 60. The left bank.] Provence. + +v. 62. That horn Of fair Ausonia.] The kingdom of Naples. + +v. 68. The land.] Hungary. + +v. 73. The beautiful Trinaeria.] Sicily, so called from its three +promontories, of which Pachynus and Pelorus, here mentioned, are two. + +v. 14 Typhaeus.] The giant whom Jupiter is fabled to have overwhelmed +under the mountain Aetna from whence he vomits forth smoke and flame. + +v. 77. Sprang through me from Charles and Rodolph.] “Sicily would be +still ruled by a race of monarchs, descended through me from Charles I +and Rodolph I the former my grandfather king of Naples and Sicily; the +latter emperor of Germany, my father-in-law; “both celebrated in the +Purgatory Canto, Vll. + +v. 78. Had not ill lording.] “If the ill conduct of our governors in +Sicily had not excited the resentment and hatred of the people and +stimulated them to that dreadful massacre at the Sicilian vespers;” in +consequence of which the kingdom fell into the hands of Peter III of +Arragon, in 1282 + +v. 81. My brother’s foresight.] He seems to tax his brother Robert with +employing necessitous and greedy Catalonians to administer the affairs +of his kingdom. + +v. 99. How bitter can spring up.] “How a covetous son can spring from a +liberal father.” Yet that father has himself been accused of avarice in +the Purgatory Canto XX. v. 78; though his general character was that of +a bounteous prince. + +v. 125. Consult your teacher.] Aristole. [GREEK HERE] De Rep. 1. iii. +c. 4. “Since a state is made up of members differing from one another, +(for even as an animal, in the first instance, consists of soul and +body, and the soul, of reason and desire; and a family, of man and +woman, and property of master and slave; in like manner a state +consists both of all these and besides these of other dissimilar +kinds,) it necessarily follows that the excellence of all the members +of the state cannot be one and the same.” + +v. 136. Esau.] Genesis c. xxv. 22. + +v. 137. Quirinus.] Romulus, born of so obscure a father, that his +parentage was attributed to Mars. + +CANTO IX + + +v. 2. O fair Clemenza.] Daughter of Charles Martel, and second wife of +Louis X. of France. + +v. 2. The treachery.] He alludes to the occupation of the kingdom of +Sicily by Robert, in exclusion of his brother s son Carobert, or +Charles. Robert, the rightful heir. See G. Villani, 1. viii. c. 112. + +v. 7. That saintly light.] Charles Martel. + +v. 25. In that part.] Between Rialto and the Venetian territory, and +the sources of the rivers Brenta and Piava is situated a castle called +Romano, the birth-place of the famous tyrant Ezzolino or Azzolino, the +brother of Cunizza, who is now speaking. The tyrant we have seen in +“the river of blood.” Hell, Canto XII. v. 110. + +v. 32. Cunizza.] The adventures of Cunizza, overcome by the influence +of her star, are related by the chronicler Rolandino of Padua, 1. i. c. +3, in Muratori Rer. It. Script. t. viii. p. 173. + +She eloped from her first husband, Richard of St. Boniface, in the +company of Sordello, (see Purgatory, Canto VI. and VII. ) with whom she +is supposed to have cohabited before her marriage: then lived with a +soldier of Trevigi, whose wife was living at the same time in the same +city, and on his being murdered by her brother the tyrant, was by her +brother married to a nobleman of Braganzo, lastly when he also had +fallen by the same hand she, after her brother’s death, was again +wedded in Verona. + +v. 37. This.] Folco of Genoa, a celebrated Provencal poet, commonly +termed Folques of Marseilles, of which place he was perhaps bishop. +Many errors of Nostradamus, regarding him, which have been followed by +Crescimbeni, Quadrio, and Millot, are detected by the diligence of +Tiraboschi. Mr. Matthias’s ed. v. 1. P. 18. All that appears certain, +is what we are told in this Canto, that he was of Genoa, and by +Petrarch in the Triumph of Love, c. iv. that he was better known by the +appellation he derived from Marseilles, and at last resumed the +religious habit. One of his verses is cited by Dante, De Vulg. Eloq. 1. +ii. c. 6. + +v. 40. Five times.] The five hundred years are elapsed: and unless the +Provencal MSS. should be brought to light the poetical reputation of +Folco must rest on the mention made of him by the more fortunate +Italians. + +v. 43 The crowd.] The people who inhabited the tract of country bounded +by the river Tagliamento to the east, and Adice to the west. + +v. 45. The hour is near.] Cunizza foretells the defeat of Giacopo da +Carrara, Lord of Padua by Can Grande, at Vicenza, on the 18th September +1314. See G. Villani, 1. ix. c. 62. v. 48. One.] She predicts also the +fate of Ricciardo da Camino, who is said to have been murdered at +Trevigi, where the rivers (Sile and Cagnano meet) while he was engaged +in playing at chess. + +v. 50. The web.] The net or snare into, which he is destined to fall. + +v. 50. Feltro.] The Bishop of Felto having received a number of +fugitives from Ferrara, who were in opposition to the Pope, under a +promise of protection, afterwards gave them up, so that they were +reconducted to that city, and the greater part of them there put to +death. + +v. 53. Malta’s.] A tower, either in the citadel of Padua, which under +the tyranny of Ezzolino, had been “with many a foul and midnight murder +fed,” or (as some say) near a river of the same name, that falls into +the lake of Bolsena, in which the Pope was accustomed to imprison such +as had been guilty of an irremissible sin. + +v. 56 This priest.] The bishop, who, to show himself a zealous partisan +of the Pope, had committed the above-mentioned act of treachery. + +v. 58. We descry.] “We behold the things that we predict, in the +mirrors of eternal truth.” + +v. 64. That other joyance.] Folco. + +v. 76. Six shadowing wings.] “Above it stood the seraphims: each one +had six wings.” Isaiah, c. vi. 2. + +v. 80. The valley of waters.] The Mediterranean sea. + +v. 80. That.] The great ocean. + +v. 82. Discordant shores.] Europe and Africa. + +v. 83. Meridian.] Extending to the east, the Mediterranean at last +reaches the coast of Palestine, which is on its horizon when it enters +the straits of Gibraltar. “Wherever a man is,” says Vellutello, “there +he has, above his head, his own particular meridian circle.” + +v. 85. —’Twixt Ebro’s stream +And Macra’s.] +Eora, a river to the west, and Macra, to the east of Genoa, where +Folco was born. + +v. 88. Begga.] A place in Africa, nearly opposite to Genoa. + +v. 89. Whose haven.] Alluding to the terrible slaughter of the Genoese +made by the Saracens in 936, for which event Vellutello refers to the +history of Augustino Giustiniani. + +v. 91. This heav’n.] The planet Venus. + +v. 93. Belus’ daughter.] Dido. + +v. 96. She of Rhodope.] Phyllis. + +v. 98. Jove’s son.] Hercules. + +v. 112. Rahab.] Heb. c. xi. 31. + +v. 120. With either palm.] “By the crucifixion of Christ” + +v. 126. The cursed flower.] The coin of Florence, called the florin. + +v. 130. The decretals.] The canon law. + +v. 134. The Vatican.] He alludes either to the death of Pope Boniface +VIII. or, as Venturi supposes, to the coming of the Emperor Henry VII. +into Italy, or else, according to the yet more probable conjecture of +Lombardi, to the transfer of the holy see from Rome to Avignon, which +took place in the pontificate of Clement V. + +CANTO X + + +v. 7. The point.] “To that part of heaven,” as Venturi explains it, “in +which the equinoctial circle and the Zodiac intersect each other, where +the common motion of the heavens from east to west may be said to +strike with greatest force against the motion proper to the planets; +and this repercussion, as it were, is here the strongest, because the +velocity of each is increased to the utmost by their respective +distance from the poles. Such at least is the system of Dante.” + +v. 11. Oblique.] The zodiac. + +v. 25. The part.] The above-mentioned intersection of the equinoctial +circle and the zodiac. + +v. 26. Minister.] The sun. + +v. 30. Where.] In which the sun rises every day earlier after the +vernal equinox. + +v. 45. Fourth family.] The inhabitants of the sun, the fourth planet. + +v. 46. Of his spirit and of his offspring.] The procession of the +third, and the generation of the second person in the Trinity. + +v. 70. Such was the song.] “The song of these spirits was ineffable. + +v. 86. No less constrained.] “The rivers might as easily cease to flow +towards the sea, as we could deny thee thy request.” + +v. 91. I then.] “I was of the Dominican order.” + +v. 95. Albert of Cologne.] Albertus Magnus was born at Laugingen, in +Thuringia, in 1193, and studied at Paris and at Padua, at the latter of +which places he entered into the Dominican order. He then taught +theology in various parts of Germany, and particularly at Cologne. +Thomas Aquinas was his favourite pupil. In 1260, he reluctantly +accepted the bishopric of Ratisbon, and in two years after resigned it, +and returned to his cell in Cologne, where the remainder of his life +was passed in superintending the school, and in composing his +voluminous works on divinity and natural science. He died in 1280. The +absurd imputation of his having dealt in the magical art is well known; +and his biographers take some pains to clear him of it. Scriptores +Ordinis Praedicatorum, by Quetif and Echard, Lut. Par. 1719. fol. t. 1. +p. 162. + +v. 96. Of Aquinum, Thomas.] Thomas Aquinas, of whom Bucer is reported +to have said, “Take but Thomas away, and I will overturn the church of +Rome,” and whom Hooker terms “the greatest among the school divines,” +(Eccl. Pol. b. 3. 9), was born of noble parents, who anxiously, but +vainly, endeavoured to divert him from a life of celibacy and study; +and died in 1274, at the age of fourty-seven. Echard and Quetif, ibid. +p. 271. See also Purgatory Canto XX. v. 67. + +v. 101. Gratian.] “Gratian, a Benedictine monk belonging to the convent +of St. Felix and Nabor, at Bologna, and by birth a Tuscan, composed, +about the year 1130, for the use of the schools, an abridgment or +epitome of canon law, drawn from the letters of the pontiffs, the +decrees of councils, and the writings of the ancient doctors.” +Maclaine’s Mosheim, v. iii. cent. 12. part 2. c. i. 6. + +v. 101. To either forum.] “By reconciling,” as Venturi explains it “the +civil with the canon law.” + +v. 104. Peter.] “Pietro Lombardo was of obscure origin, nor is the +place of his birth in Lombardy ascertained. With a recommendation from +the bishop of Lucca to St. Bernard, he went into France to continue his +studies, and for that purpose remained some time at Rheims, whence he +afterwards proceeded to Paris. Here his reputation was so great that +Philip, brother of Louis VII., being chosen bishop of Paris, resigned +that dignity to Pietro, whose pupil he had been. He held his bishopric +only one year, and died in 1160. His Liber Sententiarum is highly +esteemed. It contains a system of scholastic theology, so much more +complete than any which had been yet seen, that it may be deemed an +original work.” Tiraboschi, Storia della Lett. Ital. t. iii. 1. 4. c. +2. + +v. 104. Who with the widow gave.] This alludes to the beginning of the +Liber Sententiarum, where Peter says: “Cupiens aliquid de penuria ac +tenuitate nostra cum paupercula in gazophylacium domini mittere,” v. +105. The fifth light.] Solomon. + +v. 112. That taper’s radiance.] St. Dionysius the Areopagite. “The +famous Grecian fanatic, who gave himself out for Dionysius the +Areopagite, disciple of St. Paul, and who, under the protection of this +venerable name, gave laws and instructions to those that were desirous +of raising their souls above all human things in order to unite them to +their great source by sublime contemplation, lived most probably in +this century (the fourth), though some place him before, others after, +the present period.” Maclaine’s Mosheim, v. i. cent. iv. p. 2. c. 3. +12. + +v. 116. That pleader.] 1n the fifth century, Paulus Orosius, “acquired +a considerable degree of reputation by the History he wrote to refute +the cavils of the Pagans against Christianity, and by his books against +the Pelagians and Priscillianists.” Ibid. v. ii. cent. v. p. 2. c. 2. +11. A similar train of argument was pursued by Augustine, in his book +De Civitate Dei. Orosius is classed by Dante, in his treatise De Vulg. +Eloq. I ii c. 6. as one of his favourite authors, among those “qui usi +sunt altissimas prosas,”—” who have written prose with the greatest +loftiness of style.” + +v. 119. The eighth.] Boetius, whose book De Consolatione Philosophiae +excited so much attention during the middle ages, was born, as +Tiraboschi conjectures, about 470. “In 524 he was cruelly put to death +by command of Theodoric, either on real or pretended suspicion of his +being engaged in a conspiracy.” Della Lett. Ital. t. iii. 1. i. c. 4. + +v. 124. Cieldauro.] Boetius was buried at Pavia, in the monastery of +St. Pietro in Ciel d’oro. + +v. 126. Isidore.] He was Archbishop of Seville during forty years, and +died in 635. See Mariana, Hist. 1. vi. c. 7. Mosheim, whose critical +opinions in general must be taken with some allowance, observes that +“his grammatical theological, and historical productions, discover more +learning and pedantry, than judgment and taste.” + +v. 127. Bede.] Bede, whose virtues obtained him the appellation of the +Venerable, was born in 672 at Wearmouth and Jarrow, in the bishopric of +Durham, and died in 735. Invited to Rome by Pope Sergius I., he +preferred passing almost the whole of his life in the seclusion of a +monastery. A catalogue of his numerous writings may be seen in Kippis’s +Biographia Britannica, v. ii. + +v. 127. Richard.] Richard of St. Victor, a native either of Scotland or +Ireland, was canon and prior of the monastery of that name at Paris and +died in 1173. “He was at the head of the Mystics in this century and +his treatise, entitled the Mystical Ark, which contains as it were the +marrow of this kind of theology, was received with the greatest +avidity.” Maclaine’s Mosheim, v. iii. cent. xii. p. 2. c. 2. 23. + +v. 132. Sigebert.] “A monk of the abbey of Gemblours who was in high +repute at the end of the eleventh, and beginning of the twelfth +century.” Dict. de Moreri. + +v. 131. The straw-litter’d street.] The name of a street in Paris: the +“Rue du Fouarre.” + +v. 136. The spouse of God.] The church. + +CANTO XI + + +v. 1. O fond anxiety of mortal men.] Lucretius, 1. ii. 14 + +O miseras hominum mentes ! O pectora caeca +Qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis +Degitur hoc aevi quodcunque est! + +v. 4. Aphorisms,] The study of medicine. + +v. 17. The lustre.] The spirit of Thomas Aquinas + +v. 29. She.] The church. + +v. 34. One.] Saint Francis. + +v. 36. The other.] Saint Dominic. + +v. 40. Tupino.] A rivulet near Assisi, or Ascesi where Francis was born +in 1182. + +v. 40. The wave.] Chiascio, a stream that rises in a mountain near +Agobbio, chosen by St. Ubaldo for the place of his retirement. + +v. 42. Heat and cold.] Cold from the snow, and heat from the reflection +of the sun. + +v. 45. Yoke.] Vellutello understands this of the vicinity of the +mountain to Nocera and Gualdo; and Venturi (as I have taken it) of the +heavy impositions laid on those places by the Perugians. For GIOGO, +like the Latin JUGUM, will admit of either sense. + +v. 50. The east.] + +This is the east, and Juliet is the sun. +Shakespeare. + +v. 55. Gainst his father’s will.] In opposition to the wishes of his +natural father + +v. 58. In his father’s sight.] The spiritual father, or bishop, in +whose presence he made a profession of poverty. + +v. 60. Her first husband.] Christ. + +v. 63. Amyclas.] Lucan makes Caesar exclaim, on witnessing the secure +poverty of the fisherman Amyclas: + +—O vite tuta facultas +Pauperis, angustique lares! O munera nondum +Intellecta deum! quibus hoc contingere templis, +Aut potuit muris, nullo trepidare tumultu, +Caesarea pulsante manu? +Lucan Phars. 1. v. 531. + +v. 72. Bernard.] One of the first followers of the saint. + +v. 76. Egidius.] The third of his disciples, who died in 1262. His +work, entitled Verba Aurea, was published in 1534, at Antwerp See Lucas +Waddingus, Annales Ordinis Minoris, p. 5. + +v. 76. Sylvester.] Another of his earliest associates. + +v. 83. Pietro Bernardone.] A man in an humble station of life at +Assisi. + +v. 86. Innocent.] Pope Innocent III. + +v. 90. Honorius.] His successor Honorius III who granted certain +privileges to the Franciscans. + +v. 93. On the hard rock.] The mountain Alverna in the Apennine. + +v. 100. The last signet.] Alluding to the stigmata, or marks resembling +the wounds of Christ, said to have been found on the saint’s body. + +v. 106. His dearest lady.] Poverty. + +v. 113. Our Patriarch ] Saint Dominic. + +v. 316. His flock ] The Dominicans. + +v. 127. The planet from whence they split.] “The rule of their order, +which the Dominicans neglect to observe.” + +CANTO XII + + +v. 1. The blessed flame.] Thomas Aquinas + +v. 12. That voice.] The nymph Echo, transformed into the repercussion +of the voice. + +v. 25. One.] Saint Buonaventura, general of the Franciscan order, in +which he effected some reformation, and one of the most profound +divines of his age. “He refused the archbishopric of York, which was +offered him by Clement IV, but afterwards was prevailed on to accept +the bishopric of Albano and a cardinal’s hat. He was born at Bagnoregio +or Bagnorea, in Tuscany, A.D. 1221, and died in 1274.” Dict. Histor. +par Chaudon et Delandine. Ed. Lyon. 1804. + +v. 28. The love.] By an act of mutual courtesy, Buonaventura, a +Franciscan, is made to proclaim the praises of St. Dominic, as Thomas +Aquinas, a Dominican, has celebrated those of St. Francis. + +v. 42. In that clime.] Spain. + +v. 48. Callaroga.] Between Osma and Aranda, in Old Castile, designated +by the royal coat of arms. + +v. 51. The loving minion of the Christian faith.] Dominic was born +April 5, 1170, and died August 6, 1221. His birthplace, Callaroga; his +father and mother’s names, Felix and Joanna, his mother’s dream; his +name of Dominic, given him in consequence of a vision by a noble +matron, who stood sponsor to him, are all told in an anonymous life of +the saint, said to be written in the thirteenth century, and published +by Quetif and Echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum. Par. 1719. fol. +t 1. p. 25. These writers deny his having been an inquisitor, and +indeed the establishment of the inquisition itself before the fourth +Lateran council. Ibid. p. 88. + +v. 55. In the mother’s womb.] His mother, when pregnant with him, is +said to have dreamt that she should bring forth a white and black dog, +with a lighted torch in its mouth. + +v. 59. The dame.] His godmother’s dream was, that he had one star in +his forehead, and another in the nape of his neck, from which he +communicated light to the east and the west. + +v. 73. Felix.] Felix Gusman. + +v. 75. As men interpret it.] Grace or gift of the Lord. + +v. 77. Ostiense.] A cardinal, who explained the decretals. + +v. 77. Taddeo.] A physician, of Florence. + +v. 82. The see.] “The apostolic see, which no longer continues its +wonted liberality towards the indigent and deserving; not indeed +through its own fault, as its doctrines are still the same, but through +the fault of the pontiff, who is seated in it.” + +v. 85. No dispensation.] Dominic did not ask license to compound for +the use of unjust acquisitions, by dedicating a part of them to pious +purposes. + +v. 89. In favour of that seed.] “For that seed of the divine word, from +which have sprung up these four-and-twenty plants, that now environ +thee.” + +v. 101. But the track.] “But the rule of St. Francis is already +deserted and the lees of the wine are turned into mouldiness.” + +v. 110. Tares.] He adverts to the parable of the taxes and the wheat. + +v. 111. I question not.] “Some indeed might be found, who still observe +the rule of the order, but such would come neither from Casale nor +Acquasparta:” of the former of which places was Uberto, one master +general, by whom the discipline had been relaxed; and of the latter, +Matteo, another, who had enforced it with unnecessary rigour. + +v. 121. -Illuminato here, And Agostino.] Two among the earliest +followers of St. Francis. + +v. 125. Hugues of St. Victor.] A Saxon of the monastery of Saint Victor +at Paris, who fed ill 1142 at the age of forty-four. “A man +distinguished by the fecundity of his genius, who treated in his +writings of all the branches of sacred and profane erudition that were +known in his time, and who composed several dissertations that are not +destitute of merit.” Maclaine’s Mosheim, Eccl. Hist. v. iii . cent. +xii. p. 2. 2. 23. I have looked into his writings, and found some +reason for this high eulogium. + +v. 125. Piatro Mangiadore.] “Petrus Comestor, or the Eater, born at +Troyes, was canon and dean of that church, and afterwards chancellor of +the church of Paris. He relinquished these benefices to become a +regular canon of St. Victor at Paris, where he died in 1198. Chaudon et +Delandine Dict. Hist. Ed. Lyon. 1804. The work by which he is best +known, is his Historia Scolastica, which I shall have occasion to cite +in the Notes to Canto XXVI. + +v. 126. He of Spain.] “To Pope Adrian V succeeded John XXI a native of +Lisbon a man of great genius and extraordinary acquirements, especially +in logic and in medicine, as his books, written in the name of Peter of +Spain (by which he was known before he became Pope), may testify. His +life was not much longer than that of his predecessors, for he was +killed at Viterbo, by the falling in of the roof of his chamber, after +he had been pontiff only eight months and as many days. A.D. 1277. +Mariana, Hist. de Esp. l. xiv. c. 2. + +v. 128. Chrysostom.] The eloquent patriarch of Constantinople. + +v. 128. Anselmo.] “Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Aosta, +about 1034, and studied under Lanfrane at the monastery of Bec, in +Normandy, where he afterwards devoted himself to a religious life, in +his twenty-seventh year. In three years he was made prior, and then +abbot of that monastery! from whence he was taken, in 1093, to succeed +to the archbishopric, vacant by the death of Lanfrane. He enjoyed this +dignity till his death, in 1109, though it was disturbed by many +dissentions with William II and Henry I respecting the immunities and +investitures. There is much depth and precisian in his theological +works.” Tiraboschi, Stor. della Lett. Ital. t. iii. + +1. iv. c. 2. Ibid. c. v. “It is an observation made by many modern +writers, that the demonstration of the existence of God, taken from the +idea of a Supreme Being, of which Des Cartes is thought to be the +author, was so many ages back discovered and brought to light by +Anselm. Leibnitz himself makes the remark, vol. v. Oper. p. 570. Edit. +Genev. 1768.” + +v. 129. Donatus.] Aelius Donatus, the grammarian, in the fourth +century, one of the preceptors of St. Jerome. + +v. 130. Raban.] “Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mentz, is deservedly +placed at the head of the Latin writers of this age.” Mosheim, v. ii. +cent. ix. p. 2 c. 2. 14. + +v. 131. Joachim.] Abbot of Flora in Calabria; “whom the multitude +revered as a person divinely inspired and equal to the most illustrious +prophets of ancient times.” Ibid. v. iii. cent. xiii. p. 2. c. 2. 33. + +v. 134. A peer.] St. Dominic. + +CANTO XIII + + +v. 1. Let him.] “Whoever would conceive the sight that now presented +itself to me, must imagine to himself fifteen of the brightest stars in +heaven, together with seven stars of Arcturus Major and two of Arcturus +Minor, ranged in two circles, one within the other, each resembling the +crown of Ariadne, and moving round m opposite directions.” + +v. 21. The Chiava.] See Hell, Canto XXIX. 45. + +v. 29. That luminary.] Thomas Aquinas. + +v. 31. One ear.] “Having solved one of thy questions, I proceed to +answer the other. Thou thinkest, then, that Adam and Christ were both +endued with all the perfection of which the human nature is capable and +therefore wonderest at what has been said concerning Solomon” + +v. 48. That.] “Things corruptible and incorruptible, are only +emanations from the archetypal idea residing in the Divine mind.” + +v. 52. His brightness.] The Word: the Son of God. + +v. 53. His love triune with them.] The Holy Ghost. + +v. 55. New existences.] Angels and human souls. + +v. 57. The lowest powers.] Irrational life and brute matter. + +v. 62. Their wax and that which moulds it.] Matter, and the virtue or +energy that acts on it. + +v. 68. The heav’n.] The influence of the planetary bodies. + +v. 77. The clay.] Adam. + +v. 88. Who ask’d.] “He did not desire to know the number of the stars, +or to pry into the subtleties of metaphysical and mathematical science: +but asked for that wisdom which might fit him for his kingly office.” + +v. 120. —Parmenides Melissus Bryso.] For the singular opinions +entertained by the two former of these heathen philosophers, see +Diogenes Laertius, 1. ix. and Aristot. de Caelo, 1. iii. c. 1 and Phys. +l. i. c. 2. The last is also twice adduced by 2. Aristotle (Anal Post. +1. i. c. 9. and Rhet. 1. iii. c. 2.) as 3. affording instances of false +reasoning. + +v. 123. Sabellius, Arius.] Well-known heretics. + +v. 124. Scymitars.] A passage in the travels of Bertradon de la +Brocquiere, translated by Mr. Johnes, will explain this allusion, which +has given some trouble to the commentators. That traveler, who wrote +before Dante, informs us, p. 138, that the wandering Arabs used their +scymitars as mirrors. + +v. 126. Let not.] “Let not short-sighted mortals presume to decide on +the future doom of any man, from a consideration of his present +character and actions.” + +CANTO XIV + + +v. 5. Such was the image.] The voice of Thomas Aquinas proceeding, from +the circle to the centre and that of Beatrice from the centre to the +circle. + +v. 26. Him.] Literally translated by Chaucer, Troilus and Cresseide. + +Thou one two, and three eterne on live +That raignest aie in three, two and one +Uncircumscript, and all maist circonscrive, + +v. 81. The goodliest light.] Solomon. + +v. 78. To more lofty bliss.] To the planet Mars. + +v. 94. The venerable sign.] The cross. + +v. 125. He.] “He who considers that the eyes of Beatrice became more +radiant the higher we ascended, must not wonder that I do not except +even them as I had not yet beheld them since our entrance into this +planet.” + +CANTO XV + + +v. 24. Our greater Muse.] Virgil Aen. 1. vi. 684. v. 84. I am thy +root.] Cacciaguida, father to Alighieri, of whom our Poet was the +great-grandson. + +v. 89. The mountain.] Purgatory. + +v. 92. Florence.] See G. Villani, l. iii. c. 2. + +v. 93. Which calls her still.] The public clock being still within the +circuit of the ancient walls. + +v. 98. When.] When the women were not married at too early an age, and +did not expect too large a portion. + +v. 101. Void.] Through the civil wars. + +v. 102 Sardanapalus.] The luxurious monarch of Assyria Juvenal is here +imitated, who uses his name for an instance of effeminacy. Sat. + +v. 103. Montemalo ] Either an elevated spot between Rome and Viterbo, +or Monte Mario, the site of the villa Mellini, commanding a view of +Rome. + +v. 101. Our suburban turret.] Uccellatojo, near Florence, from whence +that city was discovered. + +v. 103. Bellincion Berti.] Hell, Canto XVI. 38. nd Notes. There is a +curious description of the simple manner in which the earlier +Florentines dressed themselves in G. Villani, 1 vi. c. 71. + +v. 110. Of Nerli and of Vecchio.] Two of the most opulent families in +Florence. + +v. 113. Each.] “None fearful either of dying in banishment, or of being +deserted by her husband on a scheme of battle in France. + +v. 120. A Salterello and Cianghella.] The latter a shameless woman of +the family of Tosa, married to Lito degli Alidosi of Imola: the former +Lapo Salterello, a lawyer, with whom Dante was at variance. + +v. 125. Mary.] The Virgin was involved in the pains of child-birth +Purgatory, Canto XX. 21. + +v. 130 Valdipado.] Cacciaguida’s wife, whose family name was +Aldighieri; came from Ferrara, called Val di Pado, from its being +watered by the Po. + +v. 131. Conrad.] The Emperor Conrad III who died in 1152. See G. +Villani, 1. iv. 34. + +v. 136. Whose people.] The Mahometans, who were left in possession of +the Holy Land, through the supineness of the Pope. + +CANTO XVI + + +v. 10. With greeting.] The Poet, who had addressed the spirit, not +knowing him to be his ancestor, with a plain “Thou,” now uses more +ceremony, and calls him “You,” according to a custom introduced among +the Romans in the latter times of the empire. + +v. 15. Guinever.] Beatrice’s smile encouraged him to proceed just as +the cough of Ginevra’s female servant gave her mistress assurance to +admit the freedoms of Lancelot. See Hell, Canto V. 124. + +v. 23. The fold.] Florence, of which John the Baptist was the patron +saint. + +v. 31. From the day.] From the Incarnation to the birth of Cacciaguida, +the planet Mars had returned five hundred and fifty-three times to the +constellation of Leo, with which it is supposed to have a congenial +influence. His birth may, therefore, be placed about 1106. + +v. 38. The last.] The city was divided into four compartments. The +Elisei, the ancestors of Dante, resided near the entrance of that named +from the Porta S. Piero, which was the last reached by the competitor +in the annual race at Florence. See G. Villani, 1. iv. c. 10. + +v. 44. From Mars.] “Both in the times of heathenish and of +Christianity.” Hell, Canto XIII. 144. + +v. 48. Campi and Certaldo and Fighine.] Country places near Florence. + +v. 50. That these people.] That the inhabitants of the above- mentioned +places had not been mixed with the citizens: nor the limits of Florence +extended beyond Galluzzo and Trespiano.” + +v. 54. Aguglione’s hind and Signa’s.] Baldo of Aguglione, and Bonifazio +of Signa. + +v. 56. Had not the people.] If Rome had continued in her allegiance to +the emperor, and the Guelph and Ghibelline factions had thus been +prevented, Florence would not have been polluted by a race of upstarts, +nor lost the most respectable of her ancient families. + +v. 61. Simifonte.] A castle dismantled by the Florentines. G. Villani, +1. v. c. 30. The individual here alluded to is no longer known. + +v. 69. The blind bull.] So Chaucer, Troilus and Cresseide. b. 2. + +For swifter course cometh thing that is of wight +When it descendeth than done things light. + +Compare Aristotle, Ethic. Nic. l. vi. c. 13. [GREEK HERE] + +v. 72. Luni, Urbisaglia.] Cities formerly of importance, but then +fallen to decay. + +v. 74. Chiusi and Sinigaglia.] The same. + +v. 80. As the moon.] “The fortune of us, that are the moon’s men doth +ebb and flow like the sea.” Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV. a. i. s. 2. + +v. 86. The Ughi.] Whoever is curious to know the habitations of these +and the other ancient Florentines, may consult G. Villani, l. iv. + +v. 91. At the poop.] Many editions read porta, “gate.” -The same +metaphor is found in Aeschylus, Supp. 356, and is there also scarce +understood by the critics. [GREEK HERE] Respect these wreaths, that +crown your city’s poop. + +v. 99. The gilded hilt and pommel.] The symbols of knighthood + +v. 100. The column cloth’d with verrey.] The arms of the Pigli. + +v. 103. With them.] Either the Chiaramontesi, or the Tosinghi one of +which had committed a fraud in measuring out the wheat from the public +granary. See Purgatory, Canto XII. 99 + +v. 109. The bullets of bright gold.] The arms of the Abbati, as it is +conjectured. + +v. 110. The sires of those.] “Of the Visdomini, the Tosinghi and the +Cortigiani, who, being sprung from the founders of the bishopric of +Florence are the curators of its revenues, which they do not spare, +whenever it becomes vacant.” + +v. 113. Th’ o’erweening brood.] The Adimari. This family was so little +esteemed, that Ubertino Donato, who had married a daughter of +Bellincion Berti, himself indeed derived from the same stock (see Note +to Hell Canto XVI. 38.) was offended with his father-in-law, for giving +another of his daughters in marriage to one of them. + +v. 124. The gateway.] Landino refers this to the smallness of the city: +Vellutello, with less probability, to the simplicity of the people in +naming one of the gates after a private family. + +v. 127. The great baron.] The Marchese Ugo, who resided at Florence as +lieutenant of the Emperor Otho III, gave many of the chief families +license to bear his arms. See G. Villani, 1. iv. c. 2., where the +vision is related, in consequence of which he sold all his possessions +in Germany, and founded seven abbeys, in one whereof his memory was +celebrated at Florence on St. Thomas’s day. v. 130. One.] Giano della +Bella, belonging to one of the families thus distinguished, who no +longer retained his place among the nobility, and had yet added to his +arms a bordure or. See Macchiavelli, 1st. Fior. 1. ii. p. 86. Ediz. +Giolito. + +v. 132. -Gualterotti dwelt And Importuni.] Two families in the +compartment of the city called Borgo. + +v. 135. The house.] Of Amidei. See Notes to Canto XXVIII. of Hell. v. +102. + +v. 142. To Ema.] “It had been well for the city, if thy ancestor had +been drowned in the Ema, when he crossed that stream on his way from +Montebuono to Florence.” + +v. 144. On that maim’d stone.] See Hell, Canto XIII. 144. Near the +remains of the statue of Mars. Buondelmonti was slain, as if he had +been a victim to the god; and Florence had not since known the blessing +of peace. + +v. 150. The lily.] “The arms of Florence had never hung reversed on the +spear of her enemies, in token of her defeat; nor been changed from +argent to gules;” as they afterwards were, when the Guelfi gained the +predominance. + +CANTO XVII + + +v. 1. The youth.] Phaeton, who came to his mother Clymene, to inquire +of her if he were indeed the son of Apollo. See Ovid, Met. 1. i. ad +finem. + +v. 6. That saintly lamp.] Cacciaguida. + +v. 12. To own thy thirst.] “That thou mayst obtain from others a +solution of any doubt that may occur to thee.” + +v. 15. Thou seest as clear.] “Thou beholdest future events, with the +same clearness of evidence, that we discern the simplest mathematical +demonstrations.” + +v. 19. The point.] The divine nature. + +v. 27. The arrow.] Nam praevisa minus laedere tela solent. Ovid. + +Che piaga antiveduta assai men duole. +Petrarca, Trionfo del Tempo + +v. 38. Contingency.] “The evidence with which we see the future +portrayed in the source of all truth, no more necessitates that future +than does the image, reflected in the sight by a ship sailing down a +stream, necessitate the motion of the vessel.” + +v. 43. From thence.] “From the eternal sight; the view of the Deity. + +v. 49. There.] At Rome, where the expulsion of Dante’s party from +Florence was then plotting, in 1300. + +v. 65. Theirs.] “They shall be ashamed of the part they have taken +aga’nst thee.” + +v. 69. The great Lombard.] Either Alberto della Scala, or Bartolommeo +his eldest son. Their coat of arms was a ladder and an eagle. + +v. 75. That mortal.] Can Grande della Scala, born under the influence +of Mars, but at this time only nine years old + +v. 80. The Gascon.] Pope Clement V. + +v. 80. Great Harry.] The Emperor Henry VII. + +v. 127. The cry thou raisest.] “Thou shalt stigmatize the faults of +those who are most eminent and powerful.” + +CANTO XVIII + + +v. 3. Temp’ring the sweet with bitter.] Chewing the end of sweet and +bitter fancy. Shakespeare, As you Like it, a. 3. s. 3. + +v. 26. On this fifth lodgment of the tree.] Mars, the fifth ot the @ + +v. 37. The great Maccabee.] Judas Maccabeus. + +v. 39. Charlemagne.] L. Pulci commends Dante for placing +Charlemagne and Orlando here: +Io mi confido ancor molto qui a Dante +Che non sanza cagion nel ciel su misse +Carlo ed Orlando in quelle croci sante, +Che come diligente intese e scrisse. +Morg. Magg. c. 28. + +v. 43. William and Renard.] Probably not, as the commentators have +imagined, William II of Orange, and his kinsman Raimbaud, two of the +crusaders under Godfrey of Bouillon, (Maimbourg, Hist. des Croisades, +ed. Par. 1682. 12mo. t. i. p. 96.) but rather the two more celebrated +heroes in the age of Charlemagne. The former, William l. of Orange, +supposed to have been the founder of the present illustrious family of +that name, died about 808, according to Joseph de la Piser, Tableau de +l’Hist. des Princes et Principante d’Orange. Our countryman, Ordericus +Vitalis, professes to give his true life, which had been misrepresented +in the songs of the itinerant bards.” Vulgo canitur a joculatoribus de +illo, cantilena; sed jure praeferenda est relatio authentica.” Eccl. +Hist. in Duchesne, Hist. Normann Script. p. 508. The latter is better +known by having been celebrated by Ariosto, under the name of Rinaldo. + +v. 43. Duke Godfey.] Godfrey of Bouillon. + +v. 46. Robert Guiscard.] See Hell, Canto XXVIII. v. 12. + +v. 81. The characters.] Diligite justitiam qui judicatis terrarm. “Love +righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth “ Wisdom of Solomon, c. +i. 1. + +v. 116. That once more.] “That he may again drive out those who buy and +sell in the temple.” + +v. 124. Taking the bread away.] “Excommunication, or the interdiction +of the Eucharist, is now employed as a weapon of warfare.” + +v. 126. That writest but to cancel.] “And thou, Pope Boniface, who +writest thy ecclesiastical censures for no other purpose than to be +paid for revoking them.” + +v. 130. To him.] The coin of Florence was stamped with the impression +of John the Baptist. + +CANTO XIX + + +v. 38. Who turn’d his compass.] Compare Proverbs, c. viii. 27. And +Milton, P. L. b. vii 224. + +v. 42. The Word] “The divine nature still remained incomprehensible. Of +this Lucifer was a proof; for had he thoroughly comprehended it, he +would not have fallen.” + +v. 108. The Ethiop.] Matt. c. xii. 41. + +v. 112. That volume.] Rev. c. xx. 12. + +v. 114. Albert.] Purgatory, Canto VI. v. 98. + +v. 116. Prague.] The eagle predicts the devastation of Bohemia by +Albert, which happened soon after this time, when that Emperor obtained +the kingdom for his eldest son Rodolph. See Coxe’s House of Austria, +4to. ed. v. i. part 1. p. 87 + +v. 117. He.] Philip IV of France, after the battle of Courtrai, 1302, +in which the French were defeated by the Flemings, raised the nominal +value of the coin. This king died in consequence of his horse being +thrown to the ground by a wild boar, in 1314 + +v. 121. The English and Scot.] He adverts to the disputes between John +Baliol and Edward I, the latter of whom is commended in the Purgatory, +Canto VII. v. 130. + +v. 122. The Spaniard’s luxury.] The commentators refer this to Alonzo X +of Spain. It seems probable that the allusion is to Ferdinand IV who +came to the crown in 1295, and died in 1312, at the age of twenty four, +in consequence, as it was supposed, of his extreme intemperance. See +Mariana, Hist I. xv. c. 11. + +v. 123. The Bohemian.] Winceslaus II. Purgatory, Canto VII. v. + +v. 125. The halter of Jerusalem.] Charles II of Naples and Jerusalem +who was lame. See note to Purgatory, Canto VII. v. 122, and XX. v. 78. + +v. 127. He.] Frederick of Sicily son of Peter III of Arragon. +Purgatory, Canto VII. v. 117. The isle of fire is Sicily, where was the +tomb of Anchises. + +v. 133. His uncle.] James, king of Majorca and Minorca, brother to +Peter III. + +v. 133. His brother.] James II of Arragon, who died in 1327. See +Purgatory, Canto VII. v. 117. + +v. 135. Of Portugal.] In the time of Dante, Dionysius was king of +Portugal. He died in 1328, after a reign of near forty-six years, and +does not seem to have deserved the stigma here fastened on him. See +Mariana. and 1. xv. c. 18. Perhaps the rebellious son of Dionysius may +be alluded to. + +v. 136. Norway.] Haquin, king of Norway, is probably meant; who, having +given refuge to the murderers of Eric VII king of Denmark, A D. 1288, +commenced a war against his successor, Erie VIII, “which continued for +nine years, almost to the utter ruin and destruction of both kingdoms.” +Modern Univ. Hist. v. xxxii p. 215. + +v. 136. -Him Of Ratza.] One of the dynasty of the house of Nemagna, +which ruled the kingdom of Rassia, or Ratza, in Sclavonia, from 1161 to +1371, and whose history may be found in Mauro Orbino, Regno degli +Slavi, Ediz. Pesaro. 1601. Uladislaus appears to have been the +sovereign in Dante’s time, but the disgraceful forgery adverted to in +the text, is not recorded by the historian v. 138. Hungary.] The +kingdom of Hungary was about this time disputed by Carobert, son of +Charles Martel, and Winceslaus, prince of Bohemia, son of Winceslaus +II. See Coxe’s House of Austria, vol. i. p. 1. p. 86. + +4to edit. + +v. 140. Navarre.] Navarre was now under the yoke of France. It soon +after (in 1328) followed the advice of Dante and had a monarch of its +own. Mariana, 1. xv. c. 19. + +v. 141. Mountainous girdle.] The Pyrenees. + +v. 143. -Famagosta’s streets And Nicosia’s.] + +Cities in the kingdom of Cyprus, at that time ruled by Henry II a +pusillanimous prince. Vertot. Hist. des Chev. de Malte, 1. iii. iv. The +meaning appears to be, that the complaints made by those cities of +their weak and worthless governor, may be regarded as an earnest of his +condemnation at the last doom. + +CANTO XX + + +v. 6. Wherein one shines.] The light of the sun, whence he supposes the +other celestial bodies to derive their light + +v. 8. The great sign.] The eagle, the Imperial ensign. + +v. 34. Who.] David. + +v. 39. He.] Trajan. See Purgatory, Canto X. 68. + +v. 44. He next.] Hezekiah. + +v. 50. The other following.] Constantine. There is no passage in which +Dante’s opinion of the evil; that had arisen from the mixture of the +civil with the ecclesiastical power, is more unequivocally declared. + +v. 57. William.] William II, king of Sicily, at the latter part of the +twelfth century He was of the Norman line of sovereigns, and obtained +the appellation of “the Good” and, as the poet says his loss was as +much the subject of regret in his dominions, as the presence of Charles +I of Anjou and Frederick of Arragon, was of sorrow and complaint. + +v. 62. Trojan Ripheus.] +Ripheus, justissimus unus +Qui fuit in Teneris, et servantissimus aequi. +Virg. Aen. 1. ii. 4—. + +v. 97. This.] Ripheus. + +v. 98. That.] Trajan. + +v. 103. The prayers,] The prayers of St. Gregory + +v. 119. The three nymphs.] Faith, Hope, and Charity. Purgatory, Canto +XXIX. 116. v. 138. The pair.] Ripheus and Trajan. + +CANTO XXI + + +v. 12. The seventh splendour.] The planet Saturn + +v. 13. The burning lion’s breast.] The constellation Leo. + +v. 21. In equal balance.] “My pleasure was as great in complying with +her will as in beholding her countenance.” + +v. 24. Of that lov’d monarch.] Saturn. Compare Hell, Canto XIV. 91. + +v. 56. What forbade the smile.] “Because it would have overcome thee.” + +v. 61. There aloft.] Where the other souls were. + +v. 97. A stony ridge.] The Apennine. + +v. 112. Pietro Damiano.] “S. Pietro Damiano obtained a great and +well-merited reputation, by the pains he took to correct the abuses +among the clergy. Ravenna is supposed to have been the place of his +birth, about 1007. He was employed in several important missions, and +rewarded by Stephen IX with the dignity of cardinal, and the bishopric +of Ostia, to which, however, he preferred his former retreat in the +monastery of Fonte Aveliana, and prevailed on Alexander II to permit +him to retire thither. Yet he did not long continue in this seclusion, +before he was sent on other embassies. He died at Faenza in 1072. His +letters throw much light on the obscure history of these times. Besides +them, he has left several treatises on sacred and ecclesiastical +subjects. His eloquence is worthy of a better age.” Tiraboschi, Storia +della Lett Ital. t. iii. 1. iv. c. 2. + +v. 114. Beside the Adriatic.] At Ravenna. Some editions have FU instead +of FUI, according to which reading, Pietro distinguishes himself from +another Pietro, who was termed “Peccator,” the sinner. + +v. 117. The hat.] The cardinal’s hat. + +v. 118. Cephas.] St. Peter. + +v. 119 The Holy Spirit’s vessel.] St. Paul. See Hell, Canto II. 30. + +v. 130. Round this.] Round the spirit of Pietro Damiano. + +CANTO XXII + + +v. 14. The vengeance.] Beatrice, it is supposed, intimates the +approaching fate of Boniface VIII. See Purgatory, Canto XX. 86. + +v. 36. Cassino.] A castle in the Terra di Lavoro. + +v. 38. I it was.] “A new order of monks, which in a manner absorbed all +the others that were established in the west, was instituted, A.D. 529, +by Benedict of Nursis, a man of piety and reputation for the age he +lived in.” Maclaine’s Mosheim, Eccles. Hist. v. ii. cent. vi. p. 2. ch. +2 - 6. + +v. 48. Macarius.] There are two of this name enumerated by Mosheim +among the Greek theologians of the fourth century, v. i. cent. iv p. 11 +ch. 2 - 9. In the following chapter, 10, it is said, “Macarius, an +Egyptian monk, undoubtedly deserves the first rank among the practical +matters of this time, as his works displayed, some few things excepted, +the brightest and most lovely portraiture of sanctity and virtue.” + +v. 48. Romoaldo.] S. Romoaldo, a native of Ravenna, and the founder of +the order of Camaldoli, died in 1027. He was the author of a commentary +on the Psalms. + +v. 70. The patriarch Jacob.] So Milton, P. L. b. iii. 510: +The stairs were such, as whereon Jacob saw +Angels ascending and descending, bands +Of guardians bright. + +v. 107. The sign.] The constellation of Gemini. + +v. 130. This globe.] So Chaucer, Troilus and Cresseide, b. v, + +And down from thence fast he gan avise +This little spot of earth, that with the sea +Embraced is, and fully gan despite +This wretched world. + +Compare Cicero, Somn. Scip. “Jam ipsa terra ita mihi parva visa est.” +&c. Lucan, Phar 1. ix. 11; and Tasso, G. L. c. xiv. st, 9, 10, 11. + +v. 140. Maia and Dione.] The planets Mercury and Venus. + +CANTO XXIII + + +v. 11. That region.] Towards the south, where the course of the sun +appears less rapid, than, when he is in the east or the west. + +v. 26. Trivia.] A name of Diana. + +v. 26. Th’ eternal nymphs.] The stars. + +v. 36. The Might.] Our Saviour + +v. 71. The rose.] The Virgin Mary. + +v. 73. The lilies.] The apostles. + +v. 84. Thou didst exalt thy glory.] The diving light retired upwards, +to render the eyes of Dante more capable of enduring the spectacle +which now presented itself. + +v. 86. The name of that fair flower.] The name of the Virgin. + +v. 92. A cresset.] The angel Gabriel. + +v. 98. That lyre.] By synecdoche, the lyre is put for the angel + +v. 99. The goodliest sapphire.] The Virgin + +v. 126. Those rich-laden coffers.] Those spirits who, having sown the +seed of good works on earth, now contain the fruit of their pious +endeavours. + +v. 129. In the Babylonian exile.] During their abode in this world. + +v. 133. He.] St. Peter, with the other holy men of the Old and New +testament. + +CANTO XXIV + + +v. 28. Such folds.] Pindar has the same bold image: [GREEK HERE?] On +which Hayne strangely remarks: Ad ambitus stropharum vldetur + +v. 65. Faith.] Hebrews, c. xi. 1. So Marino, in one of his sonnets, +which calls Divozioni: + +Fede e sustanza di sperate cose, +E delle non visioili argomento. + +v. 82. Current.] “The answer thou hast made is right; but let me know +if thy inward persuasion is conformable to thy profession.” + +v. 91. The ancient bond and new.] The Old and New Testament. + +v. 114. That Worthy.] Quel Baron. In the next Canto, St. James is +called “Barone.” So in Boccaccio, G. vi. N. 10, we find “Baron Messer +Santo Antonio.” v. 124. As to outstrip.] Venturi insists that the Poet +has here, “made a slip;” for that John came first to the sepulchre, +though Peter was the first to enter it. But let Dante have leave to +explain his own meaning, in a passage from his third book De Monarchia: +“Dicit etiam Johannes ipsum (scilicet Petrum) introiisse SUBITO, cum +venit in monumentum, videns allum discipulum cunctantem ad ostium.” +Opere de Dante, Ven. 1793. T. ii. P. 146. + +CANTO XXV + + +v. 6. The fair sheep-fold.] Florence, whence he was banished. + +v. 13. For its sake.] For the sake of that faith. + +v. 20. Galicia throng’d with visitants.] See Mariana, Hist. 1. xi. + +v. 13. “En el tiempo,” &c. “At the time that the sepulchre of the +apostle St. James was discovered, the devotion for that place extended +itself not only over all Spain, but even round about to foreign +nations. Multitudes from all parts of the world came to visit it. Many +others were deterred by the difficulty for the journey, by the +roughness and barrenness of those parts, and by the incursions of the +Moors, who made captives many of the pilgrims. The canons of St. Eloy +afterwards (the precise time is not known), with a desire of remedying +these evils, built, in many places, along the whole read, which reached +as far as to France, hospitals for the reception of the pilgrims.” + +v. 31. Who.] The Epistle of St. James is here attributed to the elder +apostle of that name, whose shrine was at Compostella, in Galicia. +Which of the two was the author of it is yet doubtful. The learned and +candid Michaelis contends very forcibly for its having been written by +James the Elder. Lardner rejects that opinion as absurd; while Benson +argues against it, but is well answered by Michaelis, who after all, is +obliged to leave the question undecided. See his Introduction to the +New Testament, translated by Dr. Marsh, ed. Cambridge, 1793. V. iv. c. +26. - 1, 2, 3. + +v. 35. As Jesus.] In the transfiguration on Mount Tabor. + +v. 39. The second flame.] St. James. + +v. 40. I lifted up.] “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from +whence cometh my help.” Ps. Cxxi. 1. + +v. 59. From Egypt to Jerusalem.] From the lower world to heaven. + +v. 67. Hope.] This is from the Sentences of Petrus Lombardus. “Est +autem spes virtus, qua spiritualia et aeterna bona speratam, id est, +beatitudinem aeternam. Sine meritis enim aliquid sperare non spes, sed +praesumptio, dici potest.” Pet. Lomb. Sent. 1. Iii. Dist. 26. Ed. Bas. +1486. Fol. + +v. 74. His anthem.] Psalm ix. 10. + +v. 90. Isaias ] Chap. lxi. 10. + +v. 94. Thy brother.] St. John in the Revelation, c. vii. 9. + +v. 101. Winter’s month.] “If a luminary, like that which now appeared, +were to shine throughout the month following the winter solstice during +which the constellation Cancer appears in the east at the setting of +the sun, there would be no interruption to the light, but the whole +month would be as a single day.” + +v. 112. This.] St. John, who reclined on the bosom of our Saviour, and +to whose charge Jesus recommended his mother. + +v. 121. So I.] He looked so earnestly, to descry whether St. John were +present there in body, or in spirit only, having had his doubts raised +by that saying of our Saviour’s: “If I will, that he tarry till I come +what is that to thee.” + +v. 127. The two.] Christ and Mary, whom he has described, in the last +Canto but one, as rising above his sight + +CANTO XXVI + + +v. 2. The beamy flame.] St. John. + +v. 13. Ananias’ hand.] Who, by putting his hand on St. Paul, restored +his sight. Acts, c. ix. 17. + +v. 36. From him.] Some suppose that Plato is here meant, who, in his +Banquet, makes Phaedrus say: “Love is confessedly amongst the eldest of +beings, and, being the eldest, is the cause to us of the greatest goods +“ Plat. Op. t. x. p. 177. Bip. ed. Others have understood it of +Aristotle, and others, of the writer who goes by the name of Dionysius +the Areopagite, referred to in the twenty-eighth Canto. + +v. 40. I will make.] Exodus, c. xxxiii. 19. + +v. 42. At the outset.] John, c. i. 1. &c. + +v. 51. The eagle of our Lord.] St. John + +v. 62. The leaves.] Created beings. + +v. 82. The first living soul.] Adam. + +v. 107. Parhelion.] Who enlightens and comprehends all things; but is +himself enlightened and comprehended by none. + +v. 117. Whence.] That is, from Limbo. See Hell, Canto II. 53. Adam says +that 5232 years elapsed from his creation to the time of his +deliverance, which followed the death of Christ. + +v. 133. EL] Some read UN, “One,” instead of EL: but the latter of these +readings is confirmed by a passage from Dante’s Treatise De Vulg. Eloq. +1. i. cap. 4. “Quod prius vox primi loquentis sonaverit, viro sanae +mentis in promptu esse non dubito ipsum fuisse quod Deus est, videlicet +El.” St. Isidore in the Origines, 1. vii. c. 1. had said, “Primum apud +Hebraeos Dei nomen El dicitur.” + +v. 135. Use.] From Horace, Ars. Poet. 62. + +v. 138. All my life.] “I remained in the terrestrial Paradise only +tothe seventh hour.” In the Historia Scolastica of Petrus Comestor, it +is said of our first parents: Quidam tradunt eos fuisse in Paradiso +septem horae.” I. 9. ed. Par. 1513. 4to. + +CANTO XXVII + + +v. 1. Four torches.] St. Peter, St. James, St. John, and Adam. + +v. 11. That.] St. Peter’ who looked as the planet Jupiter would, if it +assumed the sanguine appearance of liars. + +v. 20. He.] Boniface VIII. + +v. 26. such colour.] +Qui color infectis adversi solis ab ietu +Nubibus esse solet; aut purpureae Aurorae. +Ovid, Met. 1. iii. 184. + +v. 37. Of Linus and of Cletus.] Bishops of Rome in the first century. + +v. 40. Did Sextus, Pius, and Callixtus bleed And Urban.] The former +two, bishops of the same see, in the second; and the others, in the +fourth century. v. 42. No purpose was of ours.] “We did not intend that +our successors should take any part in the political divisions among +Christians, or that my figure (the seal of St. Peter) should serve as a +mark to authorize iniquitous grants and privileges.” + +v. 51. Wolves.] Compare Milton, P. L. b. xii. 508, &c. + +v. 53. Cahorsines and Gascons.] He alludes to Jacques d’Ossa, a native +of Cahors, who filled the papal chair in 1316, after it had been two +years vacant, and assumed the name of John XXII., and to Clement V, a +Gascon, of whom see Hell, Canto XIX. 86, and Note. + +v. 63. The she-goat.] When the sun is in Capricorn. + +v. 72. From the hour.] Since he had last looked (see Canto XXII.) he +perceived that he had passed from the meridian circle to the eastern +horizon, the half of our hemisphere, and a quarter of the heaven. + +v. 76. From Gades.] See Hell, Canto XXVI. 106 + +v. 78. The shore.] Phoenicia, where Europa, the daughter of Agenor +mounted on the back of Jupiter, in his shape of a bull. + +v. 80. The sun.] Dante was in the constellation Gemini, and the sun in +Aries. There was, therefore, part of those two constellations, and the +whole of Taurus, between them. + +v. 93. The fair nest of Leda.] “From the Gemini;” thus called, because +Leda was the mother of the twins, Castor and Pollux + +v. 112. Time’s roots.] “Here,” says Beatrice, “are the roots, from +whence time springs: for the parts, into which it is divided, the other +heavens must be considered.” And she then breaks out into an +exclamation on the degeneracy of human nature, which does not lift +itself to the contemplation of divine things. + +v. 126. The fair child of him.] So she calls human nature. Pindar by a +more easy figure, terms the day, “child of the sun.” + +v. 129. None.] Because, as has been before said, the shepherds are +become wolves. + +v. 131. Before the date.] “Before many ages are past, before those +fractions, which are drops in the reckoning of every year, shall amount +to so large a portion of time, that January shall be no more a winter +month.” By this periphrasis is meant “ in a short time,” as we say +familiarly, such a thing will happen before a thousand years are over +when we mean, it will happen soon. + +v. 135. Fortune shall be fain.] The commentators in general suppose +that our Poet here augurs that great reform, which he vainly hoped +would follow on the arrival of the Emperor Henry VII. in Italy. +Lombardi refers the prognostication to Can Grande della Scala: and, +when we consider that this Canto was not finished till after the death +of Henry, as appears from the mention that is made of John XXII, it +cannot be denied but the conjecture is probable. + +CANTO XXVIII + + +v. 36. Heav’n, and all nature, hangs upon that point.] [GREEK HERE] +Aristot. Metaph. 1. xii. c. 7. “From that beginning depend heaven and +nature.” + +v. 43. Such diff’rence.] The material world and the intelligential (the +copy and the pattern) appear to Dante to differ in this respect, that +the orbits of the latter are more swift, the nearer they are to the +centre, whereas the contrary is the case with the orbits of the former. +The seeming contradiction is thus accounted for by Beatrice. In the +material world, the more ample the body is, the greater is the good of +which itis capable supposing all the parts to be equally perfect. But +in the intelligential world, the circles are more excellent and +powerful, the more they approximate to the central point, which is God. +Thus the first circle, that of the seraphim, corresponds to the ninth +sphere, or primum mobile, the second, that of the cherubim, to the +eighth sphere, or heaven of fixed stars; the third, or circle of +thrones, to the seventh sphere, or planet of Saturn; and in like manner +throughout the two other trines of circles and spheres. + +In orbs +Of circuit inexpressible they stood, +Orb within orb +Milton, P. L. b. v. 596. + +v. 70. The sturdy north.] Compare Homer, II. b. v. 524. + +v. 82. In number.] The sparkles exceeded the number which would be +produced by the sixty-four squares of a chess-board, if for the first +we reckoned one, for the next, two; for the third, four; and so went on +doubling to the end of the account. + +v. 106. Fearless of bruising from the nightly ram.] Not injured, like +the productions of our spring, by the influence of autumn, when the +constellation Aries rises at sunset. + +v. 110. Dominations.] +Hear all ye angels, progeny of light, +Thrones, domination’s, princedoms, virtues, powers. +Milton, P. L. b. v. 601. + +v. 119. Dionysius.] The Areopagite, in his book De Caelesti Hierarchia. + +v. 124. Gregory.] Gregory the Great. “Novem vero angelorum ordines +diximus, quia videlicet esse, testante sacro eloquio, scimus: Angelos, +archangelos, virtutes, potestates, principatus, dominationae, thronos, +cherubin atque seraphin.” Divi Gregorii, Hom. xxxiv. f. 125. ed. Par. +1518. fol. + +v. 126. He had learnt.] Dionysius, he says, had learnt from St. Paul. +It is almost unnecessary to add, that the book, above referred to, +which goes under his name, was the production of a later age. + +CANTO XXIX + + +v. 1. No longer.] As short a space, as the sun and moon are in changing +hemispheres, when they are opposite to one another, the one under the +sign of Aries, and the other under that of Libra, and both hang for a +moment, noised as it were in the hand of the zenith. + +v. 22. For, not in process of before or aft.] There was neither “before +nor after,” no distinction, that is, of time, till the creation of the +world. + +v. 30. His threefold operation.] He seems to mean that spiritual +beings, brute matter, and the intermediate part of the creation, which +participates both of spirit and matter, were produced at once. + +v. 38. On Jerome’s pages.] St. Jerome had described the angels as +created before the rest of the universe: an opinion which Thomas +Aquinas controverted; and the latter, as Dante thinks, had Scripture on +his side. + +v. 51. Pent.] See Hell, Canto XXXIV. 105. + +v. 111. Of Bindi and of Lapi.] Common names of men at Florence + +v. 112. The sheep.] So Milton, Lycidas. +The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, +But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, +Rot inwardly. + +v. 121. The preacher.] Thus Cowper, Task, b. ii. + +’Tis pitiful +To court a grin, when you should woo a soul, &c. + +v. 131. Saint Anthony. Fattens with this his swine.] On the sale of +these blessings, the brothers of St. Anthony supported themselves and +their paramours. From behind the swine of St. Anthony, our Poet levels +a blow at the object of his inveterate enmity, Boniface VIII, from +whom, “in 1297, they obtained the dignity and privileges of an +independent congregation.” See Mosheim’s Eccles. History in Dr. +Maclaine’s Translation, v. ii. cent. xi. p. 2. c. 2. - 28. + +v. 140. Daniel.] “Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten +thousand times ten thousand stood before him.” Dan. c. vii. 10. + +CANTO XXX + + +v. 1. Six thousand miles.] He compares the vanishing of the vision to +the fading away of the stars at dawn, when it is noon-day six thousand +miles off, and the shadow, formed by the earth over the part of it +inhabited by the Poet, is about to disappear. + +v. 13. Engirt.] “ ppearing to be encompassed by these angelic bands, +which are in reality encompassed by it.” + +v. 18. This turn.] Questa vice. Hence perhaps Milton, P. L. b. viii. +491. This turn hath made amends. + +v. 39. Forth.] From the ninth sphere to the empyrean, which is more +light. + +v. 44. Either mighty host.] Of angels, that remained faithful, and of +beatified souls, the latter in that form which they will have at the +last day. v. 61. Light flowing.] “And he showed me a pure river of +water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God +and of the Lamb.” Rev. cxxii. I. + +—underneath a bright sea flow’d Of jasper, or of liquid pearl. Milton, +P. L. b. iii. 518. + +v. 80. Shadowy of the truth.] +Son di lor vero ombriferi prefazii. +So Mr. Coleridge, in his Religious Musings, v. 406. +Life is a vision shadowy of truth. + +v. 88. —the eves Of mine eyelids.] Thus Shakespeare calls the eyelids +“penthouse lids.” Macbeth, a, 1. s, 3. + +v. 108. As some cliff.] +A lake +That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown’d +Her crystal mirror holds. +Milton, P. L. b. iv. 263. + +v. 118. My view with ease.] +Far and wide his eye commands +For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade, But all sunshine. +Milton, P. l. b. iii. 616. + +v. 135. Of the great Harry.] The Emperor Henry VII, who died in 1313. + +v. 141. He.] Pope Clement V. See Canto XXVII. 53. + +v. 145. Alagna’s priest.] Pope Boniface VIII. Hell, Canto XIX. + +79. + +CANTO XXXI + + +v. 6. Bees.] Compare Homer, Iliad, ii. 87. Virg. Aen. I. 430, and +Milton, P. L. b. 1. 768. + +v. 29. Helice.] Callisto, and her son Arcas, changed into the +constellations of the Greater Bear and Arctophylax, or Bootes. See +Ovid, Met. l. ii. fab. v. vi. + +v. 93. Bernard.] St. Bernard, the venerable abbot of Clairvaux, and the +great promoter of the second crusade, who died A.D. 1153, in his +sixty-third year. His sermons are called by Henault, “chefs~d’oeuvres +de sentiment et de force.” Abrege Chron. de l’Hist. de Fr. 1145. They +have even been preferred to al1 the productions of the ancients, and +the author has been termed the last of the fathers of the church. It is +uncertain whether they were not delivered originally in the French +tongue. + +That the part he acts in the present Poem should be assigned to him. +appears somewhat remarkable, when we consider that he severely censured +the new festival established in honour of the Immaculate Conception of +the virgin, and opposed the doctrine itself with the greatest vigour, +as it supposed her being honoured with a privilegewhich belonged to +Christ Alone Dr. Maclaine’s Mosheim, v. iii. cent. xii. p. ii. c. 3 - +19. + +v. 95. Our Veronica ] The holy handkerchief, then preserved at Rome, on +which the countenance of our Saviour was supposed to have been imprest. + +v. 101. Him.] St. Bernard. + +v. 108. The queen.] The Virgin Mary. + +v. 119. Oriflamb.] Menage on this word quotes the Roman des +Royau +-Iignages of Guillaume Ghyart. +Oriflamme est une banniere +De cendal roujoyant et simple +Sans portraiture d’autre affaire, + +CANTO XXXII + + +v. 3. She.] Eve. + +v. 8. Ancestress.] Ruth, the ancestress of David. + +v. 60. In holy scripture.] Gen. c. xxv. 22. v. 123. Lucia.] See Hell, +Canto II. 97. + +CANTO XXXIII + + +v. 63. The Sybil’s sentence.] Virg. Aen. iii. 445. + +v. 89. One moment.] “A moment seems to me more tedious, than +five-and-twenty ages would have appeared to the Argonauts, when they +had resolved on their expedition. + +v. 92. Argo’s shadow] +Quae simul ac rostro ventosnm proscidit aequor, +Tortaque remigio spumis incanduit unda, +Emersere feri candenti e gurgite vultus +Aequoreae monstrum Nereides admirantes. +Catullus, De Nupt. Pel. et Thet. 15. + +v. 109. Three orbs of triple hue, clipt in one bound.] The Trinity. + +v. 118. That circling.] The second of the circles, “Light of Light,” in +which he dimly beheld the mystery of the incarnation. + +End Paradise. + +PREFACE + + +In the years 1805 and 1806, I published the first part of the following +translation, with the text of the original. Since that period, two +impressions of the whole of the Divina Commedia, in Italian, have made +their appearance in this country. It is not necessary that I should add +a third: and I am induced to hope that the Poem, even in the present +version of it, may not be without interest for the mere English reader. + +The translation of the second and third parts, “The Purgatory” and “The +Paradise,” was begun long before the first, and as early as the year +1797; but, owing to many interruptions, not concluded till the summer +before last. On a retrospect of the time and exertions that have been +thus employed, I do not regard those hours as the least happy of my +life, during which (to use the eloquent language of Mr. Coleridge) “my +individual recollections have been suspended, and lulled to sleep amid +the music of nobler thoughts;” nor that study as misapplied, which has +familiarized me with one of the sublimest efforts of the human +invention. + +To those, who shall be at the trouble of examining into the degree of +accuracy with which the task has been executed, I may be allowed to +suggest, that their judgment should not be formed on a comparison with +any single text of my Author; since, in more instances than I have +noticed, I have had to make my choice out of a variety of readings and +interpretations, presented by different editions and commentators. + +In one or two of those editions is to be found the title of “The +Vision,” which I have adopted, as more conformable to the genius of our +language than that of “The Divine Comedy.” Dante himself, I believe, +termed it simply “The Comedy;” in the first place, because the style +was of the middle kind: and in the next, because the story (if story it +may be called) ends happily. + +Instead of a Life of my Author, I have subjoined, in chronological +order, a view not only of the principal events which befell him, but of +the chief public occurrences that happened in his time: concerning both +of which the reader may obtain further information, by turning to the +passages referred to in the Poem and Notes. + +January, 1814 + +A CHRONOLOGICAL VIEW + +OF + +THE AGE OF DANTE + +A. D. + +1265. Dante, son of Alighieri degli Alighieri and Bella, is born at +Florence. Of his own ancestry he speaks in the Paradise, Canto XV. and +XVI. + +In the same year, Manfredi, king of Naples and Sicily, is defeated and +slain by Charles of Anjou. Hell, C. XXVIII. 13. And Purgatory, C. III. +110. + +Guido Novello of Polenta obtains the sovereignty of Ravenna. +H. C. XXVII. 38. + +1266. Two of the Frati Godenti chosen arbitrators of the differences at +Florence. H. C. XXIII. 104. Gianni de’ Soldanieri heads the populace in +that city. H. C. XXXII. 118. + +1268. Charles of Anjou puts Conradine to death, and becomes King of +Naples. H. C. XXVIII. 16 and Purg C. XX. 66. + +1272. Henry III. of England is succeeded by Edward I. Purg. C. VII. +129. + +1274. Our Poet first sees Beatrice, daughter of Folco Portinari. + +Fra. +Guittone d’Arezzo, the poet, dies. Purg. C. XXIV. 56. +Thomas Aquinas dies. Purg. C. XX. 67. and Par. C. X. 96. +Buonaventura dies. Par. C. XII. 25. + +1275. Pierre de la Brosse, secretary to Philip III. of France, +executed. Purg. C. VI. 23. + +1276. Giotto, the painter, is born. Purg. C. XI. 95. Pope Adrian V. +dies. Purg. C. XIX. 97. Guido Guinicelli, the poet, dies. Purg. C. XI. +96. and C. XXVI. 83. + +1277. Pope John XXI. dies. Par. C. XII. 126. + +1278. Ottocar, king of Bohemia, dies. Purg. C. VII. 97. + +1279. Dionysius succeeds to the throne of Portugal. Par. C. XIX. 135. + +1280. Albertus Magnus dies. Par. C. X. 95. + +1281. Pope Nicholas III. dies. H. C. XIX 71. Dante studies at the +universities of Bologna and Padua. + +1282. The Sicilian vespers. Par. C. VIII. 80. +The French defeated by the people of Forli. H. C. XXVII. 41. +Tribaldello de’ Manfredi betrays the city of Faenza. H. C. +XXXII. 119. + +1284. Prince Charles of Anjou is defeated and made prisoner by Rugiez +de Lauria, admiral to Peter III. of Arragon. Purg. C. XX. 78. Charles +I. king of Naples, dies. Purg. C. VII. 111. + +1285. Pope Martin IV. dies. Purg. C. XXIV. 23. +Philip III. of France, and Peter III. of Arragon, die. Purg. C. +VII. 101 and +110. +Henry II. king of Cyprus, comes to the throne. Par. C. XIX. 144. + +1287. Guido dalle Colonne (mentioned by Dante in his De Vulgari +Eloquio) writes “The War of Troy.” + +1288. Haquin, king of Norway, makes war on Denmark. Par. C. XIX. 135. +Count Ugolino de’ Gherardeschi dies of famine. H. C. XXXIII. 14. + +1289. Dante is in the battle of Campaldino, where the Florentines +defeat the people of Arezzo, June 11. Purg. C. V. 90. + +1290. Beatrice dies. Purg. C. XXXII. 2. He serves in the war waged by +the Florentines upon the Pisans, and is present at the surrender of +Caprona in the autumn. H. C. XXI. 92. + +1291. He marries Gemma de’ Donati, with whom he lives unhappily. + +By this marriage he had five sons and a daughter. +Can Grande della Scala is born, March 9. H. C. I. 98. Purg. C. +XX. 16. Par. C. XVII. 75. and XXVII. 135. +The renegade Christians assist the Saracens to recover St. John +D’Acre. H. C. XXVII. 84. +The Emperor Rodolph dies. Purg. C. VI. 104. and VII. 91. +Alonzo III. of Arragon dies, and is succeeded by James II. +Purg. C. VII. 113. and Par. C. XIX. 133. + +1294. Clement V. abdicates the papal chair. H. C. III. 56. Dante writes +his Vita Nuova. + +1295. His preceptor, Brunetto Latini, dies. H. C. XV. 28. Charles +Martel, king of Hungary, visits Florence, Par. C. VIII. 57. and dies in +the same year. Frederick, son of Peter III. of Arragon, becomes king of +Sicily. Purg. C. VII. 117. and Par. C. XIX. 127. + +1296. Forese, the companion of Dante, dies. Purg. C. XXXIII. 44. + +1300. The Bianca and Nera parties take their rise in Pistoia. +H. C. XXXII. 60. +This is the year in which he supposes himself to see his Vision. +H. C. I. 1. and XXI. 109. +He is chosen chief magistrate, or first of the Priors of +Florence; and continues in office from June 15 to August 15. +Cimabue, the painter, dies. Purg. C. XI. 93. +Guido Cavalcanti, the most beloved of our Poet’s friends, dies. +H. C. X. 59. and Purg C. XI. 96. + +1301. The Bianca party expels the Nera from Pistoia. H. C. XXIV. 142. + +1302. January 27. During his absence at Rome, Dante is mulcted +by his fellow-citizens in the sum of 8000 lire, and condemned to +two years’ banishment. +March 10. He is sentenced, if taken, to be burned. +Fulcieri de’ Calboli commits great atrocities on certain of the +Ghibelline party. Purg. C. XIV. 61. +Carlino de’ Pazzi betrays the castle di Piano Travigne, in +Valdarno, to the Florentines. H. C. XXXII. 67. +The French vanquished in the battle of Courtrai. Purg. C. XX. 47. +James, king of Majorca and Minorca, dies. Par. C. XIX. 133. + +1303. Pope Boniface VIII. dies. H. C. XIX. 55. Purg. C. XX. 86. XXXII. +146. and Par. C. XXVII. 20. The other exiles appoint Dante one of a +council of twelve, under Alessandro da Romena. He appears to have been +much dissatisfied with his colleagues. Par. C. XVII. 61. + +1304. He joins with the exiles in an unsuccessful attack on the city of +Florence. May. The bridge over the Arno breaks down during a +representation of the infernal torments exhibited on that river. H. C. +XXVI. 9. July 20. Petrarch, whose father had been banished two years +before from Florence, is born at Arezzo. + +1305. Winceslaus II. king of Bohemia, dies. Purg. C. VII. 99. and Par. +C. XIX 123. A conflagration happens at Florence. H. C. XXVI. 9. + +1306. Dante visits Padua. + +1307. He is in Lunigiana with the Marchese Marcello Malaspina. Purg. C. +VIII. 133. and C. XIX. 140. Dolcino, the fanatic, is burned. H. C. +XXVIII. 53. + +1308. The Emperor Albert I. murdered. Purg. C. VI. 98. and +Par. C. XIX. 114. +Corso Donati, Dante’s political enemy, slain. Purg. C. XXIV. 81. +He seeks an asylum at Verona, under the roof of the Signori della + +Scala. Par. C. XVII. 69. He wanders, about this time, over various +parts of Italy. See his Convito. He is at Paris twice; and, as one of +the early commentators reports, at Oxford. + +1309. Charles II. king of Naples, dies. Par. C. XIX. 125. + +1310. The Order of the Templars abolished. Purg. C. XX. 94. + +1313. The Emperor Henry of Luxemburg, by whom he had hoped to be +restored to Florence, dies. Par. C. XVII. 80. and XXX. 135. He takes +refuge at Ravenna with Guido Novello da Polenta. + +1314. Pope Clement V. dies. H. C. XIX. 86. and +Par. C. XXVII. 53. and XXX. 141. +Philip IV. of France dies. Purg. C. VII. 108. and Par. C. XIX. +117. +Ferdinand IV. of Spain, dies. Par. C. XIX. 122. +Giacopo da Carrara defeated by Can Grande. Par. C. IX. 45. + +1316. John XXII. elected Pope. Par. C. XXVII. 53. + +1321. July. Dante dies at Ravenna, of a complaint brought on by +disappointment at his failure in a negotiation which he had been +conducting with the Venetians, for his patron Guido Novello da Polenta. +His obsequies are sumptuously performed at Ravenna by Guido, who +himself died in the ensuing year. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1008 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1009-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1009-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9c119d37 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1009-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6531 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1009 *** + +LA DIVINA COMMEDIA +di Dante Alighieri + + + + +INFERNO + + + + +Canto I + + +Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita +mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, +ché la diritta via era smarrita. + +Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura +esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte +che nel pensier rinova la paura! + +Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte; +ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai, +dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte. + +Io non so ben ridir com’ i’ v’intrai, +tant’ era pien di sonno a quel punto +che la verace via abbandonai. + +Ma poi ch’i’ fui al piè d’un colle giunto, +là dove terminava quella valle +che m’avea di paura il cor compunto, + +guardai in alto e vidi le sue spalle +vestite già de’ raggi del pianeta +che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle. + +Allor fu la paura un poco queta, +che nel lago del cor m’era durata +la notte ch’i’ passai con tanta pieta. + +E come quei che con lena affannata, +uscito fuor del pelago a la riva, +si volge a l’acqua perigliosa e guata, + +così l’animo mio, ch’ancor fuggiva, +si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo +che non lasciò già mai persona viva. + +Poi ch’èi posato un poco il corpo lasso, +ripresi via per la piaggia diserta, +sì che ’l piè fermo sempre era ’l più basso. + +Ed ecco, quasi al cominciar de l’erta, +una lonza leggera e presta molto, +che di pel macolato era coverta; + +e non mi si partia dinanzi al volto, +anzi ’mpediva tanto il mio cammino, +ch’i’ fui per ritornar più volte vòlto. + +Temp’ era dal principio del mattino, +e ’l sol montava ’n sù con quelle stelle +ch’eran con lui quando l’amor divino + +mosse di prima quelle cose belle; +sì ch’a bene sperar m’era cagione +di quella fiera a la gaetta pelle + +l’ora del tempo e la dolce stagione; +ma non sì che paura non mi desse +la vista che m’apparve d’un leone. + +Questi parea che contra me venisse +con la test’ alta e con rabbiosa fame, +sì che parea che l’aere ne tremesse. + +Ed una lupa, che di tutte brame +sembiava carca ne la sua magrezza, +e molte genti fé già viver grame, + +questa mi porse tanto di gravezza +con la paura ch’uscia di sua vista, +ch’io perdei la speranza de l’altezza. + +E qual è quei che volontieri acquista, +e giugne ’l tempo che perder lo face, +che ’n tutti suoi pensier piange e s’attrista; + +tal mi fece la bestia sanza pace, +che, venendomi ’ncontro, a poco a poco +mi ripigneva là dove ’l sol tace. + +Mentre ch’i’ rovinava in basso loco, +dinanzi a li occhi mi si fu offerto +chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco. + +Quando vidi costui nel gran diserto, +«Miserere di me», gridai a lui, +«qual che tu sii, od ombra od omo certo!». + +Rispuosemi: «Non omo, omo già fui, +e li parenti miei furon lombardi, +mantoani per patrïa ambedui. + +Nacqui sub Iulio, ancor che fosse tardi, +e vissi a Roma sotto ’l buono Augusto +nel tempo de li dèi falsi e bugiardi. + +Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto +figliuol d’Anchise che venne di Troia, +poi che ’l superbo Ilïón fu combusto. + +Ma tu perché ritorni a tanta noia? +perché non sali il dilettoso monte +ch’è principio e cagion di tutta gioia?». + +«Or se’ tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte +che spandi di parlar sì largo fiume?», +rispuos’ io lui con vergognosa fronte. + +«O de li altri poeti onore e lume, +vagliami ’l lungo studio e ’l grande amore +che m’ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume. + +Tu se’ lo mio maestro e ’l mio autore, +tu se’ solo colui da cu’ io tolsi +lo bello stilo che m’ha fatto onore. + +Vedi la bestia per cu’ io mi volsi; +aiutami da lei, famoso saggio, +ch’ella mi fa tremar le vene e i polsi». + +«A te convien tenere altro vïaggio», +rispuose, poi che lagrimar mi vide, +«se vuo’ campar d’esto loco selvaggio; + +ché questa bestia, per la qual tu gride, +non lascia altrui passar per la sua via, +ma tanto lo ’mpedisce che l’uccide; + +e ha natura sì malvagia e ria, +che mai non empie la bramosa voglia, +e dopo ’l pasto ha più fame che pria. + +Molti son li animali a cui s’ammoglia, +e più saranno ancora, infin che ’l veltro +verrà, che la farà morir con doglia. + +Questi non ciberà terra né peltro, +ma sapïenza, amore e virtute, +e sua nazion sarà tra feltro e feltro. + +Di quella umile Italia fia salute +per cui morì la vergine Cammilla, +Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute. + +Questi la caccerà per ogne villa, +fin che l’avrà rimessa ne lo ’nferno, +là onde ’nvidia prima dipartilla. + +Ond’ io per lo tuo me’ penso e discerno +che tu mi segui, e io sarò tua guida, +e trarrotti di qui per loco etterno; + +ove udirai le disperate strida, +vedrai li antichi spiriti dolenti, +ch’a la seconda morte ciascun grida; + +e vederai color che son contenti +nel foco, perché speran di venire +quando che sia a le beate genti. + +A le quai poi se tu vorrai salire, +anima fia a ciò più di me degna: +con lei ti lascerò nel mio partire; + +ché quello imperador che là sù regna, +perch’ i’ fu’ ribellante a la sua legge, +non vuol che ’n sua città per me si vegna. + +In tutte parti impera e quivi regge; +quivi è la sua città e l’alto seggio: +oh felice colui cu’ ivi elegge!». + +E io a lui: «Poeta, io ti richeggio +per quello Dio che tu non conoscesti, +acciò ch’io fugga questo male e peggio, + +che tu mi meni là dov’ or dicesti, +sì ch’io veggia la porta di san Pietro +e color cui tu fai cotanto mesti». + +Allor si mosse, e io li tenni dietro. + + + + +Canto II + + +Lo giorno se n’andava, e l’aere bruno +toglieva li animai che sono in terra +da le fatiche loro; e io sol uno + +m’apparecchiava a sostener la guerra +sì del cammino e sì de la pietate, +che ritrarrà la mente che non erra. + +O muse, o alto ingegno, or m’aiutate; +o mente che scrivesti ciò ch’io vidi, +qui si parrà la tua nobilitate. + +Io cominciai: «Poeta che mi guidi, +guarda la mia virtù s’ell’ è possente, +prima ch’a l’alto passo tu mi fidi. + +Tu dici che di Silvïo il parente, +corruttibile ancora, ad immortale +secolo andò, e fu sensibilmente. + +Però, se l’avversario d’ogne male +cortese i fu, pensando l’alto effetto +ch’uscir dovea di lui, e ’l chi e ’l quale + +non pare indegno ad omo d’intelletto; +ch’e’ fu de l’alma Roma e di suo impero +ne l’empireo ciel per padre eletto: + +la quale e ’l quale, a voler dir lo vero, +fu stabilita per lo loco santo +u’ siede il successor del maggior Piero. + +Per quest’ andata onde li dai tu vanto, +intese cose che furon cagione +di sua vittoria e del papale ammanto. + +Andovvi poi lo Vas d’elezïone, +per recarne conforto a quella fede +ch’è principio a la via di salvazione. + +Ma io, perché venirvi? o chi ’l concede? +Io non Enëa, io non Paulo sono; +me degno a ciò né io né altri ’l crede. + +Per che, se del venire io m’abbandono, +temo che la venuta non sia folle. +Se’ savio; intendi me’ ch’i’ non ragiono». + +E qual è quei che disvuol ciò che volle +e per novi pensier cangia proposta, +sì che dal cominciar tutto si tolle, + +tal mi fec’ ïo ’n quella oscura costa, +perché, pensando, consumai la ’mpresa +che fu nel cominciar cotanto tosta. + +«S’i’ ho ben la parola tua intesa», +rispuose del magnanimo quell’ ombra, +«l’anima tua è da viltade offesa; + +la qual molte fïate l’omo ingombra +sì che d’onrata impresa lo rivolve, +come falso veder bestia quand’ ombra. + +Da questa tema acciò che tu ti solve, +dirotti perch’ io venni e quel ch’io ’ntesi +nel primo punto che di te mi dolve. + +Io era tra color che son sospesi, +e donna mi chiamò beata e bella, +tal che di comandare io la richiesi. + +Lucevan li occhi suoi più che la stella; +e cominciommi a dir soave e piana, +con angelica voce, in sua favella: + +“O anima cortese mantoana, +di cui la fama ancor nel mondo dura, +e durerà quanto ’l mondo lontana, + +l’amico mio, e non de la ventura, +ne la diserta piaggia è impedito +sì nel cammin, che vòlt’ è per paura; + +e temo che non sia già sì smarrito, +ch’io mi sia tardi al soccorso levata, +per quel ch’i’ ho di lui nel cielo udito. + +Or movi, e con la tua parola ornata +e con ciò c’ha mestieri al suo campare, +l’aiuta sì ch’i’ ne sia consolata. + +I’ son Beatrice che ti faccio andare; +vegno del loco ove tornar disio; +amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare. + +Quando sarò dinanzi al segnor mio, +di te mi loderò sovente a lui”. +Tacette allora, e poi comincia’ io: + +“O donna di virtù sola per cui +l’umana spezie eccede ogne contento +di quel ciel c’ha minor li cerchi sui, + +tanto m’aggrada il tuo comandamento, +che l’ubidir, se già fosse, m’è tardi; +più non t’è uo’ ch’aprirmi il tuo talento. + +Ma dimmi la cagion che non ti guardi +de lo scender qua giuso in questo centro +de l’ampio loco ove tornar tu ardi”. + +“Da che tu vuo’ saver cotanto a dentro, +dirotti brievemente”, mi rispuose, +“perch’ i’ non temo di venir qua entro. + +Temer si dee di sole quelle cose +c’hanno potenza di fare altrui male; +de l’altre no, ché non son paurose. + +I’ son fatta da Dio, sua mercé, tale, +che la vostra miseria non mi tange, +né fiamma d’esto ’ncendio non m’assale. + +Donna è gentil nel ciel che si compiange +di questo ’mpedimento ov’ io ti mando, +sì che duro giudicio là sù frange. + +Questa chiese Lucia in suo dimando +e disse:—Or ha bisogno il tuo fedele +di te, e io a te lo raccomando—. + +Lucia, nimica di ciascun crudele, +si mosse, e venne al loco dov’ i’ era, +che mi sedea con l’antica Rachele. + +Disse:—Beatrice, loda di Dio vera, +ché non soccorri quei che t’amò tanto, +ch’uscì per te de la volgare schiera? + +Non odi tu la pieta del suo pianto, +non vedi tu la morte che ’l combatte +su la fiumana ove ’l mar non ha vanto?—. + +Al mondo non fur mai persone ratte +a far lor pro o a fuggir lor danno, +com’ io, dopo cotai parole fatte, + +venni qua giù del mio beato scanno, +fidandomi del tuo parlare onesto, +ch’onora te e quei ch’udito l’hanno”. + +Poscia che m’ebbe ragionato questo, +li occhi lucenti lagrimando volse, +per che mi fece del venir più presto. + +E venni a te così com’ ella volse: +d’inanzi a quella fiera ti levai +che del bel monte il corto andar ti tolse. + +Dunque: che è? perché, perché restai, +perché tanta viltà nel core allette, +perché ardire e franchezza non hai, + +poscia che tai tre donne benedette +curan di te ne la corte del cielo, +e ’l mio parlar tanto ben ti promette?». + +Quali fioretti dal notturno gelo +chinati e chiusi, poi che ’l sol li ’mbianca, +si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo, + +tal mi fec’ io di mia virtude stanca, +e tanto buono ardire al cor mi corse, +ch’i’ cominciai come persona franca: + +«Oh pietosa colei che mi soccorse! +e te cortese ch’ubidisti tosto +a le vere parole che ti porse! + +Tu m’hai con disiderio il cor disposto +sì al venir con le parole tue, +ch’i’ son tornato nel primo proposto. + +Or va, ch’un sol volere è d’ambedue: +tu duca, tu segnore e tu maestro». +Così li dissi; e poi che mosso fue, + +intrai per lo cammino alto e silvestro. + + + + +Canto III + + +‘Per me si va ne la città dolente, +per me si va ne l’etterno dolore, +per me si va tra la perduta gente. + +Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; +fecemi la divina podestate, +la somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore. + +Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create +se non etterne, e io etterno duro. +Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate’. + +Queste parole di colore oscuro +vid’ ïo scritte al sommo d’una porta; +per ch’io: «Maestro, il senso lor m’è duro». + +Ed elli a me, come persona accorta: +«Qui si convien lasciare ogne sospetto; +ogne viltà convien che qui sia morta. + +Noi siam venuti al loco ov’ i’ t’ho detto +che tu vedrai le genti dolorose +c’hanno perduto il ben de l’intelletto». + +E poi che la sua mano a la mia puose +con lieto volto, ond’ io mi confortai, +mi mise dentro a le segrete cose. + +Quivi sospiri, pianti e alti guai +risonavan per l’aere sanza stelle, +per ch’io al cominciar ne lagrimai. + +Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, +parole di dolore, accenti d’ira, +voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle + +facevano un tumulto, il qual s’aggira +sempre in quell’ aura sanza tempo tinta, +come la rena quando turbo spira. + +E io ch’avea d’error la testa cinta, +dissi: «Maestro, che è quel ch’i’ odo? +e che gent’ è che par nel duol sì vinta?». + +Ed elli a me: «Questo misero modo +tegnon l’anime triste di coloro +che visser sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo. + +Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro +de li angeli che non furon ribelli +né fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro. + +Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli, +né lo profondo inferno li riceve, +ch’alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d’elli». + +E io: «Maestro, che è tanto greve +a lor che lamentar li fa sì forte?». +Rispuose: «Dicerolti molto breve. + +Questi non hanno speranza di morte, +e la lor cieca vita è tanto bassa, +che ’nvidïosi son d’ogne altra sorte. + +Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa; +misericordia e giustizia li sdegna: +non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa». + +E io, che riguardai, vidi una ’nsegna +che girando correva tanto ratta, +che d’ogne posa mi parea indegna; + +e dietro le venìa sì lunga tratta +di gente, ch’i’ non averei creduto +che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta. + +Poscia ch’io v’ebbi alcun riconosciuto, +vidi e conobbi l’ombra di colui +che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto. + +Incontanente intesi e certo fui +che questa era la setta d’i cattivi, +a Dio spiacenti e a’ nemici sui. + +Questi sciaurati, che mai non fur vivi, +erano ignudi e stimolati molto +da mosconi e da vespe ch’eran ivi. + +Elle rigavan lor di sangue il volto, +che, mischiato di lagrime, a’ lor piedi +da fastidiosi vermi era ricolto. + +E poi ch’a riguardar oltre mi diedi, +vidi genti a la riva d’un gran fiume; +per ch’io dissi: «Maestro, or mi concedi + +ch’i’ sappia quali sono, e qual costume +le fa di trapassar parer sì pronte, +com’ i’ discerno per lo fioco lume». + +Ed elli a me: «Le cose ti fier conte +quando noi fermerem li nostri passi +su la trista riviera d’Acheronte». + +Allor con li occhi vergognosi e bassi, +temendo no ’l mio dir li fosse grave, +infino al fiume del parlar mi trassi. + +Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave +un vecchio, bianco per antico pelo, +gridando: «Guai a voi, anime prave! + +Non isperate mai veder lo cielo: +i’ vegno per menarvi a l’altra riva +ne le tenebre etterne, in caldo e ’n gelo. + +E tu che se’ costì, anima viva, +pàrtiti da cotesti che son morti». +Ma poi che vide ch’io non mi partiva, + +disse: «Per altra via, per altri porti +verrai a piaggia, non qui, per passare: +più lieve legno convien che ti porti». + +E ’l duca lui: «Caron, non ti crucciare: +vuolsi così colà dove si puote +ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare». + +Quinci fuor quete le lanose gote +al nocchier de la livida palude, +che ’ntorno a li occhi avea di fiamme rote. + +Ma quell’ anime, ch’eran lasse e nude, +cangiar colore e dibattero i denti, +ratto che ’nteser le parole crude. + +Bestemmiavano Dio e lor parenti, +l’umana spezie e ’l loco e ’l tempo e ’l seme +di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti. + +Poi si ritrasser tutte quante insieme, +forte piangendo, a la riva malvagia +ch’attende ciascun uom che Dio non teme. + +Caron dimonio, con occhi di bragia +loro accennando, tutte le raccoglie; +batte col remo qualunque s’adagia. + +Come d’autunno si levan le foglie +l’una appresso de l’altra, fin che ’l ramo +vede a la terra tutte le sue spoglie, + +similemente il mal seme d’Adamo +gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una, +per cenni come augel per suo richiamo. + +Così sen vanno su per l’onda bruna, +e avanti che sien di là discese, +anche di qua nuova schiera s’auna. + +«Figliuol mio», disse ’l maestro cortese, +«quelli che muoion ne l’ira di Dio +tutti convegnon qui d’ogne paese; + +e pronti sono a trapassar lo rio, +ché la divina giustizia li sprona, +sì che la tema si volve in disio. + +Quinci non passa mai anima buona; +e però, se Caron di te si lagna, +ben puoi sapere omai che ’l suo dir suona». + +Finito questo, la buia campagna +tremò sì forte, che de lo spavento +la mente di sudore ancor mi bagna. + +La terra lagrimosa diede vento, +che balenò una luce vermiglia +la qual mi vinse ciascun sentimento; + +e caddi come l’uom cui sonno piglia. + + + + +Canto IV + + +Ruppemi l’alto sonno ne la testa +un greve truono, sì ch’io mi riscossi +come persona ch’è per forza desta; + +e l’occhio riposato intorno mossi, +dritto levato, e fiso riguardai +per conoscer lo loco dov’ io fossi. + +Vero è che ’n su la proda mi trovai +de la valle d’abisso dolorosa +che ’ntrono accoglie d’infiniti guai. + +Oscura e profonda era e nebulosa +tanto che, per ficcar lo viso a fondo, +io non vi discernea alcuna cosa. + +«Or discendiam qua giù nel cieco mondo», +cominciò il poeta tutto smorto. +«Io sarò primo, e tu sarai secondo». + +E io, che del color mi fui accorto, +dissi: «Come verrò, se tu paventi +che suoli al mio dubbiare esser conforto?». + +Ed elli a me: «L’angoscia de le genti +che son qua giù, nel viso mi dipigne +quella pietà che tu per tema senti. + +Andiam, ché la via lunga ne sospigne». +Così si mise e così mi fé intrare +nel primo cerchio che l’abisso cigne. + +Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, +non avea pianto mai che di sospiri +che l’aura etterna facevan tremare; + +ciò avvenia di duol sanza martìri, +ch’avean le turbe, ch’eran molte e grandi, +d’infanti e di femmine e di viri. + +Lo buon maestro a me: «Tu non dimandi +che spiriti son questi che tu vedi? +Or vo’ che sappi, innanzi che più andi, + +ch’ei non peccaro; e s’elli hanno mercedi, +non basta, perché non ebber battesmo, +ch’è porta de la fede che tu credi; + +e s’e’ furon dinanzi al cristianesmo, +non adorar debitamente a Dio: +e di questi cotai son io medesmo. + +Per tai difetti, non per altro rio, +semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi +che sanza speme vivemo in disio». + +Gran duol mi prese al cor quando lo ’ntesi, +però che gente di molto valore +conobbi che ’n quel limbo eran sospesi. + +«Dimmi, maestro mio, dimmi, segnore», +comincia’ io per voler esser certo +di quella fede che vince ogne errore: + +«uscicci mai alcuno, o per suo merto +o per altrui, che poi fosse beato?». +E quei che ’ntese il mio parlar coverto, + +rispuose: «Io era nuovo in questo stato, +quando ci vidi venire un possente, +con segno di vittoria coronato. + +Trasseci l’ombra del primo parente, +d’Abèl suo figlio e quella di Noè, +di Moïsè legista e ubidente; + +Abraàm patrïarca e Davìd re, +Israèl con lo padre e co’ suoi nati +e con Rachele, per cui tanto fé, + +e altri molti, e feceli beati. +E vo’ che sappi che, dinanzi ad essi, +spiriti umani non eran salvati». + +Non lasciavam l’andar perch’ ei dicessi, +ma passavam la selva tuttavia, +la selva, dico, di spiriti spessi. + +Non era lunga ancor la nostra via +di qua dal sonno, quand’ io vidi un foco +ch’emisperio di tenebre vincia. + +Di lungi n’eravamo ancora un poco, +ma non sì ch’io non discernessi in parte +ch’orrevol gente possedea quel loco. + +«O tu ch’onori scïenzïa e arte, +questi chi son c’hanno cotanta onranza, +che dal modo de li altri li diparte?». + +E quelli a me: «L’onrata nominanza +che di lor suona sù ne la tua vita, +grazïa acquista in ciel che sì li avanza». + +Intanto voce fu per me udita: +«Onorate l’altissimo poeta; +l’ombra sua torna, ch’era dipartita». + +Poi che la voce fu restata e queta, +vidi quattro grand’ ombre a noi venire: +sembianz’ avevan né trista né lieta. + +Lo buon maestro cominciò a dire: +«Mira colui con quella spada in mano, +che vien dinanzi ai tre sì come sire: + +quelli è Omero poeta sovrano; +l’altro è Orazio satiro che vene; +Ovidio è ’l terzo, e l’ultimo Lucano. + +Però che ciascun meco si convene +nel nome che sonò la voce sola, +fannomi onore, e di ciò fanno bene». + +Così vid’ i’ adunar la bella scola +di quel segnor de l’altissimo canto +che sovra li altri com’ aquila vola. + +Da ch’ebber ragionato insieme alquanto, +volsersi a me con salutevol cenno, +e ’l mio maestro sorrise di tanto; + +e più d’onore ancora assai mi fenno, +ch’e’ sì mi fecer de la loro schiera, +sì ch’io fui sesto tra cotanto senno. + +Così andammo infino a la lumera, +parlando cose che ’l tacere è bello, +sì com’ era ’l parlar colà dov’ era. + +Venimmo al piè d’un nobile castello, +sette volte cerchiato d’alte mura, +difeso intorno d’un bel fiumicello. + +Questo passammo come terra dura; +per sette porte intrai con questi savi: +giugnemmo in prato di fresca verdura. + +Genti v’eran con occhi tardi e gravi, +di grande autorità ne’ lor sembianti: +parlavan rado, con voci soavi. + +Traemmoci così da l’un de’ canti, +in loco aperto, luminoso e alto, +sì che veder si potien tutti quanti. + +Colà diritto, sovra ’l verde smalto, +mi fuor mostrati li spiriti magni, +che del vedere in me stesso m’essalto. + +I’ vidi Eletra con molti compagni, +tra ’ quai conobbi Ettòr ed Enea, +Cesare armato con li occhi grifagni. + +Vidi Cammilla e la Pantasilea; +da l’altra parte vidi ’l re Latino +che con Lavina sua figlia sedea. + +Vidi quel Bruto che cacciò Tarquino, +Lucrezia, Iulia, Marzïa e Corniglia; +e solo, in parte, vidi ’l Saladino. + +Poi ch’innalzai un poco più le ciglia, +vidi ’l maestro di color che sanno +seder tra filosofica famiglia. + +Tutti lo miran, tutti onor li fanno: +quivi vid’ ïo Socrate e Platone, +che ’nnanzi a li altri più presso li stanno; + +Democrito che ’l mondo a caso pone, +Dïogenès, Anassagora e Tale, +Empedoclès, Eraclito e Zenone; + +e vidi il buono accoglitor del quale, +Dïascoride dico; e vidi Orfeo, +Tulïo e Lino e Seneca morale; + +Euclide geomètra e Tolomeo, +Ipocràte, Avicenna e Galïeno, +Averoìs, che ’l gran comento feo. + +Io non posso ritrar di tutti a pieno, +però che sì mi caccia il lungo tema, +che molte volte al fatto il dir vien meno. + +La sesta compagnia in due si scema: +per altra via mi mena il savio duca, +fuor de la queta, ne l’aura che trema. + +E vegno in parte ove non è che luca. + + + + +Canto V + + +Così discesi del cerchio primaio +giù nel secondo, che men loco cinghia +e tanto più dolor, che punge a guaio. + +Stavvi Minòs orribilmente, e ringhia: +essamina le colpe ne l’intrata; +giudica e manda secondo ch’avvinghia. + +Dico che quando l’anima mal nata +li vien dinanzi, tutta si confessa; +e quel conoscitor de le peccata + +vede qual loco d’inferno è da essa; +cignesi con la coda tante volte +quantunque gradi vuol che giù sia messa. + +Sempre dinanzi a lui ne stanno molte: +vanno a vicenda ciascuna al giudizio, +dicono e odono e poi son giù volte. + +«O tu che vieni al doloroso ospizio», +disse Minòs a me quando mi vide, +lasciando l’atto di cotanto offizio, + +«guarda com’ entri e di cui tu ti fide; +non t’inganni l’ampiezza de l’intrare!». +E ’l duca mio a lui: «Perché pur gride? + +Non impedir lo suo fatale andare: +vuolsi così colà dove si puote +ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare». + +Or incomincian le dolenti note +a farmisi sentire; or son venuto +là dove molto pianto mi percuote. + +Io venni in loco d’ogne luce muto, +che mugghia come fa mar per tempesta, +se da contrari venti è combattuto. + +La bufera infernal, che mai non resta, +mena li spirti con la sua rapina; +voltando e percotendo li molesta. + +Quando giungon davanti a la ruina, +quivi le strida, il compianto, il lamento; +bestemmian quivi la virtù divina. + +Intesi ch’a così fatto tormento +enno dannati i peccator carnali, +che la ragion sommettono al talento. + +E come li stornei ne portan l’ali +nel freddo tempo, a schiera larga e piena, +così quel fiato li spiriti mali + +di qua, di là, di giù, di sù li mena; +nulla speranza li conforta mai, +non che di posa, ma di minor pena. + +E come i gru van cantando lor lai, +faccendo in aere di sé lunga riga, +così vid’ io venir, traendo guai, + +ombre portate da la detta briga; +per ch’i’ dissi: «Maestro, chi son quelle +genti che l’aura nera sì gastiga?». + +«La prima di color di cui novelle +tu vuo’ saper», mi disse quelli allotta, +«fu imperadrice di molte favelle. + +A vizio di lussuria fu sì rotta, +che libito fé licito in sua legge, +per tòrre il biasmo in che era condotta. + +Ell’ è Semiramìs, di cui si legge +che succedette a Nino e fu sua sposa: +tenne la terra che ’l Soldan corregge. + +L’altra è colei che s’ancise amorosa, +e ruppe fede al cener di Sicheo; +poi è Cleopatràs lussurïosa. + +Elena vedi, per cui tanto reo +tempo si volse, e vedi ’l grande Achille, +che con amore al fine combatteo. + +Vedi Parìs, Tristano»; e più di mille +ombre mostrommi e nominommi a dito, +ch’amor di nostra vita dipartille. + +Poscia ch’io ebbi ’l mio dottore udito +nomar le donne antiche e ’ cavalieri, +pietà mi giunse, e fui quasi smarrito. + +I’ cominciai: «Poeta, volontieri +parlerei a quei due che ’nsieme vanno, +e paion sì al vento esser leggeri». + +Ed elli a me: «Vedrai quando saranno +più presso a noi; e tu allor li priega +per quello amor che i mena, ed ei verranno». + +Sì tosto come il vento a noi li piega, +mossi la voce: «O anime affannate, +venite a noi parlar, s’altri nol niega!». + +Quali colombe dal disio chiamate +con l’ali alzate e ferme al dolce nido +vegnon per l’aere, dal voler portate; + +cotali uscir de la schiera ov’ è Dido, +a noi venendo per l’aere maligno, +sì forte fu l’affettüoso grido. + +«O animal grazïoso e benigno +che visitando vai per l’aere perso +noi che tignemmo il mondo di sanguigno, + +se fosse amico il re de l’universo, +noi pregheremmo lui de la tua pace, +poi c’hai pietà del nostro mal perverso. + +Di quel che udire e che parlar vi piace, +noi udiremo e parleremo a voi, +mentre che ’l vento, come fa, ci tace. + +Siede la terra dove nata fui +su la marina dove ’l Po discende +per aver pace co’ seguaci sui. + +Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende, +prese costui de la bella persona +che mi fu tolta; e ’l modo ancor m’offende. + +Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona, +mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, +che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona. + +Amor condusse noi ad una morte. +Caina attende chi a vita ci spense». +Queste parole da lor ci fuor porte. + +Quand’ io intesi quell’ anime offense, +china’ il viso, e tanto il tenni basso, +fin che ’l poeta mi disse: «Che pense?». + +Quando rispuosi, cominciai: «Oh lasso, +quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio +menò costoro al doloroso passo!». + +Poi mi rivolsi a loro e parla’ io, +e cominciai: «Francesca, i tuoi martìri +a lagrimar mi fanno tristo e pio. + +Ma dimmi: al tempo d’i dolci sospiri, +a che e come concedette amore +che conosceste i dubbiosi disiri?». + +E quella a me: «Nessun maggior dolore +che ricordarsi del tempo felice +ne la miseria; e ciò sa ’l tuo dottore. + +Ma s’a conoscer la prima radice +del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto, +dirò come colui che piange e dice. + +Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto +di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse; +soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto. + +Per più fïate li occhi ci sospinse +quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso; +ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse. + +Quando leggemmo il disïato riso +esser basciato da cotanto amante, +questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, + +la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante. +Galeotto fu ’l libro e chi lo scrisse: +quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante». + +Mentre che l’uno spirto questo disse, +l’altro piangëa; sì che di pietade +io venni men così com’ io morisse. + +E caddi come corpo morto cade. + + + + +Canto VI + + +Al tornar de la mente, che si chiuse +dinanzi a la pietà d’i due cognati, +che di trestizia tutto mi confuse, + +novi tormenti e novi tormentati +mi veggio intorno, come ch’io mi mova +e ch’io mi volga, e come che io guati. + +Io sono al terzo cerchio, de la piova +etterna, maladetta, fredda e greve; +regola e qualità mai non l’è nova. + +Grandine grossa, acqua tinta e neve +per l’aere tenebroso si riversa; +pute la terra che questo riceve. + +Cerbero, fiera crudele e diversa, +con tre gole caninamente latra +sovra la gente che quivi è sommersa. + +Li occhi ha vermigli, la barba unta e atra, +e ’l ventre largo, e unghiate le mani; +graffia li spirti ed iscoia ed isquatra. + +Urlar li fa la pioggia come cani; +de l’un de’ lati fanno a l’altro schermo; +volgonsi spesso i miseri profani. + +Quando ci scorse Cerbero, il gran vermo, +le bocche aperse e mostrocci le sanne; +non avea membro che tenesse fermo. + +E ’l duca mio distese le sue spanne, +prese la terra, e con piene le pugna +la gittò dentro a le bramose canne. + +Qual è quel cane ch’abbaiando agogna, +e si racqueta poi che ’l pasto morde, +ché solo a divorarlo intende e pugna, + +cotai si fecer quelle facce lorde +de lo demonio Cerbero, che ’ntrona +l’anime sì, ch’esser vorrebber sorde. + +Noi passavam su per l’ombre che adona +la greve pioggia, e ponavam le piante +sovra lor vanità che par persona. + +Elle giacean per terra tutte quante, +fuor d’una ch’a seder si levò, ratto +ch’ella ci vide passarsi davante. + +«O tu che se’ per questo ’nferno tratto», +mi disse, «riconoscimi, se sai: +tu fosti, prima ch’io disfatto, fatto». + +E io a lui: «L’angoscia che tu hai +forse ti tira fuor de la mia mente, +sì che non par ch’i’ ti vedessi mai. + +Ma dimmi chi tu se’ che ’n sì dolente +loco se’ messo, e hai sì fatta pena, +che, s’altra è maggio, nulla è sì spiacente». + +Ed elli a me: «La tua città, ch’è piena +d’invidia sì che già trabocca il sacco, +seco mi tenne in la vita serena. + +Voi cittadini mi chiamaste Ciacco: +per la dannosa colpa de la gola, +come tu vedi, a la pioggia mi fiacco. + +E io anima trista non son sola, +ché tutte queste a simil pena stanno +per simil colpa». E più non fé parola. + +Io li rispuosi: «Ciacco, il tuo affanno +mi pesa sì, ch’a lagrimar mi ’nvita; +ma dimmi, se tu sai, a che verranno + +li cittadin de la città partita; +s’alcun v’è giusto; e dimmi la cagione +per che l’ha tanta discordia assalita». + +E quelli a me: «Dopo lunga tencione +verranno al sangue, e la parte selvaggia +caccerà l’altra con molta offensione. + +Poi appresso convien che questa caggia +infra tre soli, e che l’altra sormonti +con la forza di tal che testé piaggia. + +Alte terrà lungo tempo le fronti, +tenendo l’altra sotto gravi pesi, +come che di ciò pianga o che n’aonti. + +Giusti son due, e non vi sono intesi; +superbia, invidia e avarizia sono +le tre faville c’hanno i cuori accesi». + +Qui puose fine al lagrimabil suono. +E io a lui: «Ancor vo’ che mi ’nsegni +e che di più parlar mi facci dono. + +Farinata e ’l Tegghiaio, che fuor sì degni, +Iacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo e ’l Mosca +e li altri ch’a ben far puoser li ’ngegni, + +dimmi ove sono e fa ch’io li conosca; +ché gran disio mi stringe di savere +se ’l ciel li addolcia o lo ’nferno li attosca». + +E quelli: «Ei son tra l’anime più nere; +diverse colpe giù li grava al fondo: +se tanto scendi, là i potrai vedere. + +Ma quando tu sarai nel dolce mondo, +priegoti ch’a la mente altrui mi rechi: +più non ti dico e più non ti rispondo». + +Li diritti occhi torse allora in biechi; +guardommi un poco e poi chinò la testa: +cadde con essa a par de li altri ciechi. + +E ’l duca disse a me: «Più non si desta +di qua dal suon de l’angelica tromba, +quando verrà la nimica podesta: + +ciascun rivederà la trista tomba, +ripiglierà sua carne e sua figura, +udirà quel ch’in etterno rimbomba». + +Sì trapassammo per sozza mistura +de l’ombre e de la pioggia, a passi lenti, +toccando un poco la vita futura; + +per ch’io dissi: «Maestro, esti tormenti +crescerann’ ei dopo la gran sentenza, +o fier minori, o saran sì cocenti?». + +Ed elli a me: «Ritorna a tua scïenza, +che vuol, quanto la cosa è più perfetta, +più senta il bene, e così la doglienza. + +Tutto che questa gente maladetta +in vera perfezion già mai non vada, +di là più che di qua essere aspetta». + +Noi aggirammo a tondo quella strada, +parlando più assai ch’i’ non ridico; +venimmo al punto dove si digrada: + +quivi trovammo Pluto, il gran nemico. + + + + +Canto VII + + +«Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe!», +cominciò Pluto con la voce chioccia; +e quel savio gentil, che tutto seppe, + +disse per confortarmi: «Non ti noccia +la tua paura; ché, poder ch’elli abbia, +non ci torrà lo scender questa roccia». + +Poi si rivolse a quella ’nfiata labbia, +e disse: «Taci, maladetto lupo! +consuma dentro te con la tua rabbia. + +Non è sanza cagion l’andare al cupo: +vuolsi ne l’alto, là dove Michele +fé la vendetta del superbo strupo». + +Quali dal vento le gonfiate vele +caggiono avvolte, poi che l’alber fiacca, +tal cadde a terra la fiera crudele. + +Così scendemmo ne la quarta lacca, +pigliando più de la dolente ripa +che ’l mal de l’universo tutto insacca. + +Ahi giustizia di Dio! tante chi stipa +nove travaglie e pene quant’ io viddi? +e perché nostra colpa sì ne scipa? + +Come fa l’onda là sovra Cariddi, +che si frange con quella in cui s’intoppa, +così convien che qui la gente riddi. + +Qui vid’ i’ gente più ch’altrove troppa, +e d’una parte e d’altra, con grand’ urli, +voltando pesi per forza di poppa. + +Percotëansi ’ncontro; e poscia pur lì +si rivolgea ciascun, voltando a retro, +gridando: «Perché tieni?» e «Perché burli?». + +Così tornavan per lo cerchio tetro +da ogne mano a l’opposito punto, +gridandosi anche loro ontoso metro; + +poi si volgea ciascun, quand’ era giunto, +per lo suo mezzo cerchio a l’altra giostra. +E io, ch’avea lo cor quasi compunto, + +dissi: «Maestro mio, or mi dimostra +che gente è questa, e se tutti fuor cherci +questi chercuti a la sinistra nostra». + +Ed elli a me: «Tutti quanti fuor guerci +sì de la mente in la vita primaia, +che con misura nullo spendio ferci. + +Assai la voce lor chiaro l’abbaia, +quando vegnono a’ due punti del cerchio +dove colpa contraria li dispaia. + +Questi fuor cherci, che non han coperchio +piloso al capo, e papi e cardinali, +in cui usa avarizia il suo soperchio». + +E io: «Maestro, tra questi cotali +dovre’ io ben riconoscere alcuni +che furo immondi di cotesti mali». + +Ed elli a me: «Vano pensiero aduni: +la sconoscente vita che i fé sozzi, +ad ogne conoscenza or li fa bruni. + +In etterno verranno a li due cozzi: +questi resurgeranno del sepulcro +col pugno chiuso, e questi coi crin mozzi. + +Mal dare e mal tener lo mondo pulcro +ha tolto loro, e posti a questa zuffa: +qual ella sia, parole non ci appulcro. + +Or puoi, figliuol, veder la corta buffa +d’i ben che son commessi a la fortuna, +per che l’umana gente si rabbuffa; + +ché tutto l’oro ch’è sotto la luna +e che già fu, di quest’ anime stanche +non poterebbe farne posare una». + +«Maestro mio», diss’ io, «or mi dì anche: +questa fortuna di che tu mi tocche, +che è, che i ben del mondo ha sì tra branche?». + +E quelli a me: «Oh creature sciocche, +quanta ignoranza è quella che v’offende! +Or vo’ che tu mia sentenza ne ’mbocche. + +Colui lo cui saver tutto trascende, +fece li cieli e diè lor chi conduce +sì, ch’ogne parte ad ogne parte splende, + +distribuendo igualmente la luce. +Similemente a li splendor mondani +ordinò general ministra e duce + +che permutasse a tempo li ben vani +di gente in gente e d’uno in altro sangue, +oltre la difension d’i senni umani; + +per ch’una gente impera e l’altra langue, +seguendo lo giudicio di costei, +che è occulto come in erba l’angue. + +Vostro saver non ha contasto a lei: +questa provede, giudica, e persegue +suo regno come il loro li altri dèi. + +Le sue permutazion non hanno triegue: +necessità la fa esser veloce; +sì spesso vien chi vicenda consegue. + +Quest’ è colei ch’è tanto posta in croce +pur da color che le dovrien dar lode, +dandole biasmo a torto e mala voce; + +ma ella s’è beata e ciò non ode: +con l’altre prime creature lieta +volve sua spera e beata si gode. + +Or discendiamo omai a maggior pieta; +già ogne stella cade che saliva +quand’ io mi mossi, e ’l troppo star si vieta». + +Noi ricidemmo il cerchio a l’altra riva +sovr’ una fonte che bolle e riversa +per un fossato che da lei deriva. + +L’acqua era buia assai più che persa; +e noi, in compagnia de l’onde bige, +intrammo giù per una via diversa. + +In la palude va c’ha nome Stige +questo tristo ruscel, quand’ è disceso +al piè de le maligne piagge grige. + +E io, che di mirare stava inteso, +vidi genti fangose in quel pantano, +ignude tutte, con sembiante offeso. + +Queste si percotean non pur con mano, +ma con la testa e col petto e coi piedi, +troncandosi co’ denti a brano a brano. + +Lo buon maestro disse: «Figlio, or vedi +l’anime di color cui vinse l’ira; +e anche vo’ che tu per certo credi + +che sotto l’acqua è gente che sospira, +e fanno pullular quest’ acqua al summo, +come l’occhio ti dice, u’ che s’aggira. + +Fitti nel limo dicon: “Tristi fummo +ne l’aere dolce che dal sol s’allegra, +portando dentro accidïoso fummo: + +or ci attristiam ne la belletta negra”. +Quest’ inno si gorgoglian ne la strozza, +ché dir nol posson con parola integra». + +Così girammo de la lorda pozza +grand’ arco tra la ripa secca e ’l mézzo, +con li occhi vòlti a chi del fango ingozza. + +Venimmo al piè d’una torre al da sezzo. + + + + +Canto VIII + + +Io dico, seguitando, ch’assai prima +che noi fossimo al piè de l’alta torre, +li occhi nostri n’andar suso a la cima + +per due fiammette che i vedemmo porre, +e un’altra da lungi render cenno, +tanto ch’a pena il potea l’occhio tòrre. + +E io mi volsi al mar di tutto ’l senno; +dissi: «Questo che dice? e che risponde +quell’ altro foco? e chi son quei che ’l fenno?». + +Ed elli a me: «Su per le sucide onde +già scorgere puoi quello che s’aspetta, +se ’l fummo del pantan nol ti nasconde». + +Corda non pinse mai da sé saetta +che sì corresse via per l’aere snella, +com’ io vidi una nave piccioletta + +venir per l’acqua verso noi in quella, +sotto ’l governo d’un sol galeoto, +che gridava: «Or se’ giunta, anima fella!». + +«Flegïàs, Flegïàs, tu gridi a vòto», +disse lo mio segnore, «a questa volta: +più non ci avrai che sol passando il loto». + +Qual è colui che grande inganno ascolta +che li sia fatto, e poi se ne rammarca, +fecesi Flegïàs ne l’ira accolta. + +Lo duca mio discese ne la barca, +e poi mi fece intrare appresso lui; +e sol quand’ io fui dentro parve carca. + +Tosto che ’l duca e io nel legno fui, +segando se ne va l’antica prora +de l’acqua più che non suol con altrui. + +Mentre noi corravam la morta gora, +dinanzi mi si fece un pien di fango, +e disse: «Chi se’ tu che vieni anzi ora?». + +E io a lui: «S’i’ vegno, non rimango; +ma tu chi se’, che sì se’ fatto brutto?». +Rispuose: «Vedi che son un che piango». + +E io a lui: «Con piangere e con lutto, +spirito maladetto, ti rimani; +ch’i’ ti conosco, ancor sie lordo tutto». + +Allor distese al legno ambo le mani; +per che ’l maestro accorto lo sospinse, +dicendo: «Via costà con li altri cani!». + +Lo collo poi con le braccia mi cinse; +basciommi ’l volto e disse: «Alma sdegnosa, +benedetta colei che ’n te s’incinse! + +Quei fu al mondo persona orgogliosa; +bontà non è che sua memoria fregi: +così s’è l’ombra sua qui furïosa. + +Quanti si tegnon or là sù gran regi +che qui staranno come porci in brago, +di sé lasciando orribili dispregi!». + +E io: «Maestro, molto sarei vago +di vederlo attuffare in questa broda +prima che noi uscissimo del lago». + +Ed elli a me: «Avante che la proda +ti si lasci veder, tu sarai sazio: +di tal disïo convien che tu goda». + +Dopo ciò poco vid’ io quello strazio +far di costui a le fangose genti, +che Dio ancor ne lodo e ne ringrazio. + +Tutti gridavano: «A Filippo Argenti!»; +e ’l fiorentino spirito bizzarro +in sé medesmo si volvea co’ denti. + +Quivi il lasciammo, che più non ne narro; +ma ne l’orecchie mi percosse un duolo, +per ch’io avante l’occhio intento sbarro. + +Lo buon maestro disse: «Omai, figliuolo, +s’appressa la città c’ha nome Dite, +coi gravi cittadin, col grande stuolo». + +E io: «Maestro, già le sue meschite +là entro certe ne la valle cerno, +vermiglie come se di foco uscite + +fossero». Ed ei mi disse: «Il foco etterno +ch’entro l’affoca le dimostra rosse, +come tu vedi in questo basso inferno». + +Noi pur giugnemmo dentro a l’alte fosse +che vallan quella terra sconsolata: +le mura mi parean che ferro fosse. + +Non sanza prima far grande aggirata, +venimmo in parte dove il nocchier forte +«Usciteci», gridò: «qui è l’intrata». + +Io vidi più di mille in su le porte +da ciel piovuti, che stizzosamente +dicean: «Chi è costui che sanza morte + +va per lo regno de la morta gente?». +E ’l savio mio maestro fece segno +di voler lor parlar segretamente. + +Allor chiusero un poco il gran disdegno +e disser: «Vien tu solo, e quei sen vada +che sì ardito intrò per questo regno. + +Sol si ritorni per la folle strada: +pruovi, se sa; ché tu qui rimarrai, +che li ha’ iscorta sì buia contrada». + +Pensa, lettor, se io mi sconfortai +nel suon de le parole maladette, +ché non credetti ritornarci mai. + +«O caro duca mio, che più di sette +volte m’hai sicurtà renduta e tratto +d’alto periglio che ’ncontra mi stette, + +non mi lasciar», diss’ io, «così disfatto; +e se ’l passar più oltre ci è negato, +ritroviam l’orme nostre insieme ratto». + +E quel segnor che lì m’avea menato, +mi disse: «Non temer; ché ’l nostro passo +non ci può tòrre alcun: da tal n’è dato. + +Ma qui m’attendi, e lo spirito lasso +conforta e ciba di speranza buona, +ch’i’ non ti lascerò nel mondo basso». + +Così sen va, e quivi m’abbandona +lo dolce padre, e io rimagno in forse, +che sì e no nel capo mi tenciona. + +Udir non potti quello ch’a lor porse; +ma ei non stette là con essi guari, +che ciascun dentro a pruova si ricorse. + +Chiuser le porte que’ nostri avversari +nel petto al mio segnor, che fuor rimase +e rivolsesi a me con passi rari. + +Li occhi a la terra e le ciglia avea rase +d’ogne baldanza, e dicea ne’ sospiri: +«Chi m’ha negate le dolenti case!». + +E a me disse: «Tu, perch’ io m’adiri, +non sbigottir, ch’io vincerò la prova, +qual ch’a la difension dentro s’aggiri. + +Questa lor tracotanza non è nova; +ché già l’usaro a men segreta porta, +la qual sanza serrame ancor si trova. + +Sovr’ essa vedestù la scritta morta: +e già di qua da lei discende l’erta, +passando per li cerchi sanza scorta, + +tal che per lui ne fia la terra aperta». + + + + +Canto IX + + +Quel color che viltà di fuor mi pinse +veggendo il duca mio tornare in volta, +più tosto dentro il suo novo ristrinse. + +Attento si fermò com’ uom ch’ascolta; +ché l’occhio nol potea menare a lunga +per l’aere nero e per la nebbia folta. + +«Pur a noi converrà vincer la punga», +cominciò el, «se non . . . Tal ne s’offerse. +Oh quanto tarda a me ch’altri qui giunga!». + +I’ vidi ben sì com’ ei ricoperse +lo cominciar con l’altro che poi venne, +che fur parole a le prime diverse; + +ma nondimen paura il suo dir dienne, +perch’ io traeva la parola tronca +forse a peggior sentenzia che non tenne. + +«In questo fondo de la trista conca +discende mai alcun del primo grado, +che sol per pena ha la speranza cionca?». + +Questa question fec’ io; e quei «Di rado +incontra», mi rispuose, «che di noi +faccia il cammino alcun per qual io vado. + +Ver è ch’altra fïata qua giù fui, +congiurato da quella Eritón cruda +che richiamava l’ombre a’ corpi sui. + +Di poco era di me la carne nuda, +ch’ella mi fece intrar dentr’ a quel muro, +per trarne un spirto del cerchio di Giuda. + +Quell’ è ’l più basso loco e ’l più oscuro, +e ’l più lontan dal ciel che tutto gira: +ben so ’l cammin; però ti fa sicuro. + +Questa palude che ’l gran puzzo spira +cigne dintorno la città dolente, +u’ non potemo intrare omai sanz’ ira». + +E altro disse, ma non l’ho a mente; +però che l’occhio m’avea tutto tratto +ver’ l’alta torre a la cima rovente, + +dove in un punto furon dritte ratto +tre furïe infernal di sangue tinte, +che membra feminine avieno e atto, + +e con idre verdissime eran cinte; +serpentelli e ceraste avien per crine, +onde le fiere tempie erano avvinte. + +E quei, che ben conobbe le meschine +de la regina de l’etterno pianto, +«Guarda», mi disse, «le feroci Erine. + +Quest’ è Megera dal sinistro canto; +quella che piange dal destro è Aletto; +Tesifón è nel mezzo»; e tacque a tanto. + +Con l’unghie si fendea ciascuna il petto; +battiensi a palme e gridavan sì alto, +ch’i’ mi strinsi al poeta per sospetto. + +«Vegna Medusa: sì ’l farem di smalto», +dicevan tutte riguardando in giuso; +«mal non vengiammo in Tesëo l’assalto». + +«Volgiti ’n dietro e tien lo viso chiuso; +ché se ’l Gorgón si mostra e tu ’l vedessi, +nulla sarebbe di tornar mai suso». + +Così disse ’l maestro; ed elli stessi +mi volse, e non si tenne a le mie mani, +che con le sue ancor non mi chiudessi. + +O voi ch’avete li ’ntelletti sani, +mirate la dottrina che s’asconde +sotto ’l velame de li versi strani. + +E già venìa su per le torbide onde +un fracasso d’un suon, pien di spavento, +per cui tremavano amendue le sponde, + +non altrimenti fatto che d’un vento +impetüoso per li avversi ardori, +che fier la selva e sanz’ alcun rattento + +li rami schianta, abbatte e porta fori; +dinanzi polveroso va superbo, +e fa fuggir le fiere e li pastori. + +Li occhi mi sciolse e disse: «Or drizza il nerbo +del viso su per quella schiuma antica +per indi ove quel fummo è più acerbo». + +Come le rane innanzi a la nimica +biscia per l’acqua si dileguan tutte, +fin ch’a la terra ciascuna s’abbica, + +vid’ io più di mille anime distrutte +fuggir così dinanzi ad un ch’al passo +passava Stige con le piante asciutte. + +Dal volto rimovea quell’ aere grasso, +menando la sinistra innanzi spesso; +e sol di quell’ angoscia parea lasso. + +Ben m’accorsi ch’elli era da ciel messo, +e volsimi al maestro; e quei fé segno +ch’i’ stessi queto ed inchinassi ad esso. + +Ahi quanto mi parea pien di disdegno! +Venne a la porta e con una verghetta +l’aperse, che non v’ebbe alcun ritegno. + +«O cacciati del ciel, gente dispetta», +cominciò elli in su l’orribil soglia, +«ond’ esta oltracotanza in voi s’alletta? + +Perché recalcitrate a quella voglia +a cui non puote il fin mai esser mozzo, +e che più volte v’ha cresciuta doglia? + +Che giova ne le fata dar di cozzo? +Cerbero vostro, se ben vi ricorda, +ne porta ancor pelato il mento e ’l gozzo». + +Poi si rivolse per la strada lorda, +e non fé motto a noi, ma fé sembiante +d’omo cui altra cura stringa e morda + +che quella di colui che li è davante; +e noi movemmo i piedi inver’ la terra, +sicuri appresso le parole sante. + +Dentro li ’ntrammo sanz’ alcuna guerra; +e io, ch’avea di riguardar disio +la condizion che tal fortezza serra, + +com’ io fui dentro, l’occhio intorno invio: +e veggio ad ogne man grande campagna, +piena di duolo e di tormento rio. + +Sì come ad Arli, ove Rodano stagna, +sì com’ a Pola, presso del Carnaro +ch’Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna, + +fanno i sepulcri tutt’ il loco varo, +così facevan quivi d’ogne parte, +salvo che ’l modo v’era più amaro; + +ché tra li avelli fiamme erano sparte, +per le quali eran sì del tutto accesi, +che ferro più non chiede verun’ arte. + +Tutti li lor coperchi eran sospesi, +e fuor n’uscivan sì duri lamenti, +che ben parean di miseri e d’offesi. + +E io: «Maestro, quai son quelle genti +che, seppellite dentro da quell’ arche, +si fan sentir coi sospiri dolenti?». + +E quelli a me: «Qui son li eresïarche +con lor seguaci, d’ogne setta, e molto +più che non credi son le tombe carche. + +Simile qui con simile è sepolto, +e i monimenti son più e men caldi». +E poi ch’a la man destra si fu vòlto, + +passammo tra i martìri e li alti spaldi. + + + + +Canto X + + +Ora sen va per un secreto calle, +tra ’l muro de la terra e li martìri, +lo mio maestro, e io dopo le spalle. + +«O virtù somma, che per li empi giri +mi volvi», cominciai, «com’ a te piace, +parlami, e sodisfammi a’ miei disiri. + +La gente che per li sepolcri giace +potrebbesi veder? già son levati +tutt’ i coperchi, e nessun guardia face». + +E quelli a me: «Tutti saran serrati +quando di Iosafàt qui torneranno +coi corpi che là sù hanno lasciati. + +Suo cimitero da questa parte hanno +con Epicuro tutti suoi seguaci, +che l’anima col corpo morta fanno. + +Però a la dimanda che mi faci +quinc’ entro satisfatto sarà tosto, +e al disio ancor che tu mi taci». + +E io: «Buon duca, non tegno riposto +a te mio cuor se non per dicer poco, +e tu m’hai non pur mo a ciò disposto». + +«O Tosco che per la città del foco +vivo ten vai così parlando onesto, +piacciati di restare in questo loco. + +La tua loquela ti fa manifesto +di quella nobil patrïa natio, +a la qual forse fui troppo molesto». + +Subitamente questo suono uscìo +d’una de l’arche; però m’accostai, +temendo, un poco più al duca mio. + +Ed el mi disse: «Volgiti! Che fai? +Vedi là Farinata che s’è dritto: +da la cintola in sù tutto ’l vedrai». + +Io avea già il mio viso nel suo fitto; +ed el s’ergea col petto e con la fronte +com’ avesse l’inferno a gran dispitto. + +E l’animose man del duca e pronte +mi pinser tra le sepulture a lui, +dicendo: «Le parole tue sien conte». + +Com’ io al piè de la sua tomba fui, +guardommi un poco, e poi, quasi sdegnoso, +mi dimandò: «Chi fuor li maggior tui?». + +Io ch’era d’ubidir disideroso, +non gliel celai, ma tutto gliel’ apersi; +ond’ ei levò le ciglia un poco in suso; + +poi disse: «Fieramente furo avversi +a me e a miei primi e a mia parte, +sì che per due fïate li dispersi». + +«S’ei fur cacciati, ei tornar d’ogne parte», +rispuos’ io lui, «l’una e l’altra fïata; +ma i vostri non appreser ben quell’ arte». + +Allor surse a la vista scoperchiata +un’ombra, lungo questa, infino al mento: +credo che s’era in ginocchie levata. + +Dintorno mi guardò, come talento +avesse di veder s’altri era meco; +e poi che ’l sospecciar fu tutto spento, + +piangendo disse: «Se per questo cieco +carcere vai per altezza d’ingegno, +mio figlio ov’ è? e perché non è teco?». + +E io a lui: «Da me stesso non vegno: +colui ch’attende là, per qui mi mena +forse cui Guido vostro ebbe a disdegno». + +Le sue parole e ’l modo de la pena +m’avean di costui già letto il nome; +però fu la risposta così piena. + +Di sùbito drizzato gridò: «Come? +dicesti “elli ebbe”? non viv’ elli ancora? +non fiere li occhi suoi lo dolce lume?». + +Quando s’accorse d’alcuna dimora +ch’io facëa dinanzi a la risposta, +supin ricadde e più non parve fora. + +Ma quell’ altro magnanimo, a cui posta +restato m’era, non mutò aspetto, +né mosse collo, né piegò sua costa; + +e sé continüando al primo detto, +«S’elli han quell’ arte», disse, «male appresa, +ciò mi tormenta più che questo letto. + +Ma non cinquanta volte fia raccesa +la faccia de la donna che qui regge, +che tu saprai quanto quell’ arte pesa. + +E se tu mai nel dolce mondo regge, +dimmi: perché quel popolo è sì empio +incontr’ a’ miei in ciascuna sua legge?». + +Ond’ io a lui: «Lo strazio e ’l grande scempio +che fece l’Arbia colorata in rosso, +tal orazion fa far nel nostro tempio». + +Poi ch’ebbe sospirando il capo mosso, +«A ciò non fu’ io sol», disse, «né certo +sanza cagion con li altri sarei mosso. + +Ma fu’ io solo, là dove sofferto +fu per ciascun di tòrre via Fiorenza, +colui che la difesi a viso aperto». + +«Deh, se riposi mai vostra semenza», +prega’ io lui, «solvetemi quel nodo +che qui ha ’nviluppata mia sentenza. + +El par che voi veggiate, se ben odo, +dinanzi quel che ’l tempo seco adduce, +e nel presente tenete altro modo». + +«Noi veggiam, come quei c’ha mala luce, +le cose», disse, «che ne son lontano; +cotanto ancor ne splende il sommo duce. + +Quando s’appressano o son, tutto è vano +nostro intelletto; e s’altri non ci apporta, +nulla sapem di vostro stato umano. + +Però comprender puoi che tutta morta +fia nostra conoscenza da quel punto +che del futuro fia chiusa la porta». + +Allor, come di mia colpa compunto, +dissi: «Or direte dunque a quel caduto +che ’l suo nato è co’ vivi ancor congiunto; + +e s’i’ fui, dianzi, a la risposta muto, +fate i saper che ’l fei perché pensava +già ne l’error che m’avete soluto». + +E già ’l maestro mio mi richiamava; +per ch’i’ pregai lo spirto più avaccio +che mi dicesse chi con lu’ istava. + +Dissemi: «Qui con più di mille giaccio: +qua dentro è ’l secondo Federico +e ’l Cardinale; e de li altri mi taccio». + +Indi s’ascose; e io inver’ l’antico +poeta volsi i passi, ripensando +a quel parlar che mi parea nemico. + +Elli si mosse; e poi, così andando, +mi disse: «Perché se’ tu sì smarrito?». +E io li sodisfeci al suo dimando. + +«La mente tua conservi quel ch’udito +hai contra te», mi comandò quel saggio; +«e ora attendi qui», e drizzò ’l dito: + +«quando sarai dinanzi al dolce raggio +di quella il cui bell’ occhio tutto vede, +da lei saprai di tua vita il vïaggio». + +Appresso mosse a man sinistra il piede: +lasciammo il muro e gimmo inver’ lo mezzo +per un sentier ch’a una valle fiede, + +che ’nfin là sù facea spiacer suo lezzo. + + + + +Canto XI + + +In su l’estremità d’un’alta ripa +che facevan gran pietre rotte in cerchio, +venimmo sopra più crudele stipa; + +e quivi, per l’orribile soperchio +del puzzo che ’l profondo abisso gitta, +ci raccostammo, in dietro, ad un coperchio + +d’un grand’ avello, ov’ io vidi una scritta +che dicea: ‘Anastasio papa guardo, +lo qual trasse Fotin de la via dritta’. + +«Lo nostro scender conviene esser tardo, +sì che s’ausi un poco in prima il senso +al tristo fiato; e poi no i fia riguardo». + +Così ’l maestro; e io «Alcun compenso», +dissi lui, «trova che ’l tempo non passi +perduto». Ed elli: «Vedi ch’a ciò penso». + +«Figliuol mio, dentro da cotesti sassi», +cominciò poi a dir, «son tre cerchietti +di grado in grado, come que’ che lassi. + +Tutti son pien di spirti maladetti; +ma perché poi ti basti pur la vista, +intendi come e perché son costretti. + +D’ogne malizia, ch’odio in cielo acquista, +ingiuria è ’l fine, ed ogne fin cotale +o con forza o con frode altrui contrista. + +Ma perché frode è de l’uom proprio male, +più spiace a Dio; e però stan di sotto +li frodolenti, e più dolor li assale. + +Di vïolenti il primo cerchio è tutto; +ma perché si fa forza a tre persone, +in tre gironi è distinto e costrutto. + +A Dio, a sé, al prossimo si pòne +far forza, dico in loro e in lor cose, +come udirai con aperta ragione. + +Morte per forza e ferute dogliose +nel prossimo si danno, e nel suo avere +ruine, incendi e tollette dannose; + +onde omicide e ciascun che mal fiere, +guastatori e predon, tutti tormenta +lo giron primo per diverse schiere. + +Puote omo avere in sé man vïolenta +e ne’ suoi beni; e però nel secondo +giron convien che sanza pro si penta + +qualunque priva sé del vostro mondo, +biscazza e fonde la sua facultade, +e piange là dov’ esser de’ giocondo. + +Puossi far forza ne la deïtade, +col cor negando e bestemmiando quella, +e spregiando natura e sua bontade; + +e però lo minor giron suggella +del segno suo e Soddoma e Caorsa +e chi, spregiando Dio col cor, favella. + +La frode, ond’ ogne coscïenza è morsa, +può l’omo usare in colui che ’n lui fida +e in quel che fidanza non imborsa. + +Questo modo di retro par ch’incida +pur lo vinco d’amor che fa natura; +onde nel cerchio secondo s’annida + +ipocresia, lusinghe e chi affattura, +falsità, ladroneccio e simonia, +ruffian, baratti e simile lordura. + +Per l’altro modo quell’ amor s’oblia +che fa natura, e quel ch’è poi aggiunto, +di che la fede spezïal si cria; + +onde nel cerchio minore, ov’ è ’l punto +de l’universo in su che Dite siede, +qualunque trade in etterno è consunto». + +E io: «Maestro, assai chiara procede +la tua ragione, e assai ben distingue +questo baràtro e ’l popol ch’e’ possiede. + +Ma dimmi: quei de la palude pingue, +che mena il vento, e che batte la pioggia, +e che s’incontran con sì aspre lingue, + +perché non dentro da la città roggia +sono ei puniti, se Dio li ha in ira? +e se non li ha, perché sono a tal foggia?». + +Ed elli a me «Perché tanto delira», +disse, «lo ’ngegno tuo da quel che sòle? +o ver la mente dove altrove mira? + +Non ti rimembra di quelle parole +con le quai la tua Etica pertratta +le tre disposizion che ’l ciel non vole, + +incontenenza, malizia e la matta +bestialitade? e come incontenenza +men Dio offende e men biasimo accatta? + +Se tu riguardi ben questa sentenza, +e rechiti a la mente chi son quelli +che sù di fuor sostegnon penitenza, + +tu vedrai ben perché da questi felli +sien dipartiti, e perché men crucciata +la divina vendetta li martelli». + +«O sol che sani ogne vista turbata, +tu mi contenti sì quando tu solvi, +che, non men che saver, dubbiar m’aggrata. + +Ancora in dietro un poco ti rivolvi», +diss’ io, «là dove di’ ch’usura offende +la divina bontade, e ’l groppo solvi». + +«Filosofia», mi disse, «a chi la ’ntende, +nota, non pure in una sola parte, +come natura lo suo corso prende + +dal divino ’ntelletto e da sua arte; +e se tu ben la tua Fisica note, +tu troverai, non dopo molte carte, + +che l’arte vostra quella, quanto pote, +segue, come ’l maestro fa ’l discente; +sì che vostr’ arte a Dio quasi è nepote. + +Da queste due, se tu ti rechi a mente +lo Genesì dal principio, convene +prender sua vita e avanzar la gente; + +e perché l’usuriere altra via tene, +per sé natura e per la sua seguace +dispregia, poi ch’in altro pon la spene. + +Ma seguimi oramai che ’l gir mi piace; +ché i Pesci guizzan su per l’orizzonta, +e ’l Carro tutto sovra ’l Coro giace, + +e ’l balzo via là oltra si dismonta». + + + + +Canto XII + + +Era lo loco ov’ a scender la riva +venimmo, alpestro e, per quel che v’er’ anco, +tal, ch’ogne vista ne sarebbe schiva. + +Qual è quella ruina che nel fianco +di qua da Trento l’Adice percosse, +o per tremoto o per sostegno manco, + +che da cima del monte, onde si mosse, +al piano è sì la roccia discoscesa, +ch’alcuna via darebbe a chi sù fosse: + +cotal di quel burrato era la scesa; +e ’n su la punta de la rotta lacca +l’infamïa di Creti era distesa + +che fu concetta ne la falsa vacca; +e quando vide noi, sé stesso morse, +sì come quei cui l’ira dentro fiacca. + +Lo savio mio inver’ lui gridò: «Forse +tu credi che qui sia ’l duca d’Atene, +che sù nel mondo la morte ti porse? + +Pàrtiti, bestia, ché questi non vene +ammaestrato da la tua sorella, +ma vassi per veder le vostre pene». + +Qual è quel toro che si slaccia in quella +c’ha ricevuto già ’l colpo mortale, +che gir non sa, ma qua e là saltella, + +vid’ io lo Minotauro far cotale; +e quello accorto gridò: «Corri al varco; +mentre ch’e’ ’nfuria, è buon che tu ti cale». + +Così prendemmo via giù per lo scarco +di quelle pietre, che spesso moviensi +sotto i miei piedi per lo novo carco. + +Io gia pensando; e quei disse: «Tu pensi +forse a questa ruina, ch’è guardata +da quell’ ira bestial ch’i’ ora spensi. + +Or vo’ che sappi che l’altra fïata +ch’i’ discesi qua giù nel basso inferno, +questa roccia non era ancor cascata. + +Ma certo poco pria, se ben discerno, +che venisse colui che la gran preda +levò a Dite del cerchio superno, + +da tutte parti l’alta valle feda +tremò sì, ch’i’ pensai che l’universo +sentisse amor, per lo qual è chi creda + +più volte il mondo in caòsso converso; +e in quel punto questa vecchia roccia, +qui e altrove, tal fece riverso. + +Ma ficca li occhi a valle, ché s’approccia +la riviera del sangue in la qual bolle +qual che per vïolenza in altrui noccia». + +Oh cieca cupidigia e ira folle, +che sì ci sproni ne la vita corta, +e ne l’etterna poi sì mal c’immolle! + +Io vidi un’ampia fossa in arco torta, +come quella che tutto ’l piano abbraccia, +secondo ch’avea detto la mia scorta; + +e tra ’l piè de la ripa ed essa, in traccia +corrien centauri, armati di saette, +come solien nel mondo andare a caccia. + +Veggendoci calar, ciascun ristette, +e de la schiera tre si dipartiro +con archi e asticciuole prima elette; + +e l’un gridò da lungi: «A qual martiro +venite voi che scendete la costa? +Ditel costinci; se non, l’arco tiro». + +Lo mio maestro disse: «La risposta +farem noi a Chirón costà di presso: +mal fu la voglia tua sempre sì tosta». + +Poi mi tentò, e disse: «Quelli è Nesso, +che morì per la bella Deianira, +e fé di sé la vendetta elli stesso. + +E quel di mezzo, ch’al petto si mira, +è il gran Chirón, il qual nodrì Achille; +quell’ altro è Folo, che fu sì pien d’ira. + +Dintorno al fosso vanno a mille a mille, +saettando qual anima si svelle +del sangue più che sua colpa sortille». + +Noi ci appressammo a quelle fiere isnelle: +Chirón prese uno strale, e con la cocca +fece la barba in dietro a le mascelle. + +Quando s’ebbe scoperta la gran bocca, +disse a’ compagni: «Siete voi accorti +che quel di retro move ciò ch’el tocca? + +Così non soglion far li piè d’i morti». +E ’l mio buon duca, che già li er’ al petto, +dove le due nature son consorti, + +rispuose: «Ben è vivo, e sì soletto +mostrar li mi convien la valle buia; +necessità ’l ci ’nduce, e non diletto. + +Tal si partì da cantare alleluia +che mi commise quest’ officio novo: +non è ladron, né io anima fuia. + +Ma per quella virtù per cu’ io movo +li passi miei per sì selvaggia strada, +danne un de’ tuoi, a cui noi siamo a provo, + +e che ne mostri là dove si guada, +e che porti costui in su la groppa, +ché non è spirto che per l’aere vada». + +Chirón si volse in su la destra poppa, +e disse a Nesso: «Torna, e sì li guida, +e fa cansar s’altra schiera v’intoppa». + +Or ci movemmo con la scorta fida +lungo la proda del bollor vermiglio, +dove i bolliti facieno alte strida. + +Io vidi gente sotto infino al ciglio; +e ’l gran centauro disse: «E’ son tiranni +che dier nel sangue e ne l’aver di piglio. + +Quivi si piangon li spietati danni; +quivi è Alessandro, e Dïonisio fero +che fé Cicilia aver dolorosi anni. + +E quella fronte c’ha ’l pel così nero, +è Azzolino; e quell’ altro ch’è biondo, +è Opizzo da Esti, il qual per vero + +fu spento dal figliastro sù nel mondo». +Allor mi volsi al poeta, e quei disse: +«Questi ti sia or primo, e io secondo». + +Poco più oltre il centauro s’affisse +sovr’ una gente che ’nfino a la gola +parea che di quel bulicame uscisse. + +Mostrocci un’ombra da l’un canto sola, +dicendo: «Colui fesse in grembo a Dio +lo cor che ’n su Tamisi ancor si cola». + +Poi vidi gente che di fuor del rio +tenean la testa e ancor tutto ’l casso; +e di costoro assai riconobb’ io. + +Così a più a più si facea basso +quel sangue, sì che cocea pur li piedi; +e quindi fu del fosso il nostro passo. + +«Sì come tu da questa parte vedi +lo bulicame che sempre si scema», +disse ’l centauro, «voglio che tu credi + +che da quest’ altra a più a più giù prema +lo fondo suo, infin ch’el si raggiunge +ove la tirannia convien che gema. + +La divina giustizia di qua punge +quell’ Attila che fu flagello in terra, +e Pirro e Sesto; e in etterno munge + +le lagrime, che col bollor diserra, +a Rinier da Corneto, a Rinier Pazzo, +che fecero a le strade tanta guerra». + +Poi si rivolse e ripassossi ’l guazzo. + + + + +Canto XIII + + +Non era ancor di là Nesso arrivato, +quando noi ci mettemmo per un bosco +che da neun sentiero era segnato. + +Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco; +non rami schietti, ma nodosi e ’nvolti; +non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tòsco. + +Non han sì aspri sterpi né sì folti +quelle fiere selvagge che ’n odio hanno +tra Cecina e Corneto i luoghi cólti. + +Quivi le brutte Arpie lor nidi fanno, +che cacciar de le Strofade i Troiani +con tristo annunzio di futuro danno. + +Ali hanno late, e colli e visi umani, +piè con artigli, e pennuto ’l gran ventre; +fanno lamenti in su li alberi strani. + +E ’l buon maestro «Prima che più entre, +sappi che se’ nel secondo girone», +mi cominciò a dire, «e sarai mentre + +che tu verrai ne l’orribil sabbione. +Però riguarda ben; sì vederai +cose che torrien fede al mio sermone». + +Io sentia d’ogne parte trarre guai +e non vedea persona che ’l facesse; +per ch’io tutto smarrito m’arrestai. + +Cred’ ïo ch’ei credette ch’io credesse +che tante voci uscisser, tra quei bronchi, +da gente che per noi si nascondesse. + +Però disse ’l maestro: «Se tu tronchi +qualche fraschetta d’una d’este piante, +li pensier c’hai si faran tutti monchi». + +Allor porsi la mano un poco avante +e colsi un ramicel da un gran pruno; +e ’l tronco suo gridò: «Perché mi schiante?». + +Da che fatto fu poi di sangue bruno, +ricominciò a dir: «Perché mi scerpi? +non hai tu spirto di pietade alcuno? + +Uomini fummo, e or siam fatti sterpi: +ben dovrebb’ esser la tua man più pia, +se state fossimo anime di serpi». + +Come d’un stizzo verde ch’arso sia +da l’un de’ capi, che da l’altro geme +e cigola per vento che va via, + +sì de la scheggia rotta usciva insieme +parole e sangue; ond’ io lasciai la cima +cadere, e stetti come l’uom che teme. + +«S’elli avesse potuto creder prima», +rispuose ’l savio mio, «anima lesa, +ciò c’ha veduto pur con la mia rima, + +non averebbe in te la man distesa; +ma la cosa incredibile mi fece +indurlo ad ovra ch’a me stesso pesa. + +Ma dilli chi tu fosti, sì che ’n vece +d’alcun’ ammenda tua fama rinfreschi +nel mondo sù, dove tornar li lece». + +E ’l tronco: «Sì col dolce dir m’adeschi, +ch’i’ non posso tacere; e voi non gravi +perch’ ïo un poco a ragionar m’inveschi. + +Io son colui che tenni ambo le chiavi +del cor di Federigo, e che le volsi, +serrando e diserrando, sì soavi, + +che dal secreto suo quasi ogn’ uom tolsi; +fede portai al glorïoso offizio, +tanto ch’i’ ne perde’ li sonni e ’ polsi. + +La meretrice che mai da l’ospizio +di Cesare non torse li occhi putti, +morte comune e de le corti vizio, + +infiammò contra me li animi tutti; +e li ’nfiammati infiammar sì Augusto, +che ’ lieti onor tornaro in tristi lutti. + +L’animo mio, per disdegnoso gusto, +credendo col morir fuggir disdegno, +ingiusto fece me contra me giusto. + +Per le nove radici d’esto legno +vi giuro che già mai non ruppi fede +al mio segnor, che fu d’onor sì degno. + +E se di voi alcun nel mondo riede, +conforti la memoria mia, che giace +ancor del colpo che ’nvidia le diede». + +Un poco attese, e poi «Da ch’el si tace», +disse ’l poeta a me, «non perder l’ora; +ma parla, e chiedi a lui, se più ti piace». + +Ond’ ïo a lui: «Domandal tu ancora +di quel che credi ch’a me satisfaccia; +ch’i’ non potrei, tanta pietà m’accora». + +Perciò ricominciò: «Se l’om ti faccia +liberamente ciò che ’l tuo dir priega, +spirito incarcerato, ancor ti piaccia + +di dirne come l’anima si lega +in questi nocchi; e dinne, se tu puoi, +s’alcuna mai di tai membra si spiega». + +Allor soffiò il tronco forte, e poi +si convertì quel vento in cotal voce: +«Brievemente sarà risposto a voi. + +Quando si parte l’anima feroce +dal corpo ond’ ella stessa s’è disvelta, +Minòs la manda a la settima foce. + +Cade in la selva, e non l’è parte scelta; +ma là dove fortuna la balestra, +quivi germoglia come gran di spelta. + +Surge in vermena e in pianta silvestra: +l’Arpie, pascendo poi de le sue foglie, +fanno dolore, e al dolor fenestra. + +Come l’altre verrem per nostre spoglie, +ma non però ch’alcuna sen rivesta, +ché non è giusto aver ciò ch’om si toglie. + +Qui le strascineremo, e per la mesta +selva saranno i nostri corpi appesi, +ciascuno al prun de l’ombra sua molesta». + +Noi eravamo ancora al tronco attesi, +credendo ch’altro ne volesse dire, +quando noi fummo d’un romor sorpresi, + +similemente a colui che venire +sente ’l porco e la caccia a la sua posta, +ch’ode le bestie, e le frasche stormire. + +Ed ecco due da la sinistra costa, +nudi e graffiati, fuggendo sì forte, +che de la selva rompieno ogne rosta. + +Quel dinanzi: «Or accorri, accorri, morte!». +E l’altro, cui pareva tardar troppo, +gridava: «Lano, sì non furo accorte + +le gambe tue a le giostre dal Toppo!». +E poi che forse li fallia la lena, +di sé e d’un cespuglio fece un groppo. + +Di rietro a loro era la selva piena +di nere cagne, bramose e correnti +come veltri ch’uscisser di catena. + +In quel che s’appiattò miser li denti, +e quel dilaceraro a brano a brano; +poi sen portar quelle membra dolenti. + +Presemi allor la mia scorta per mano, +e menommi al cespuglio che piangea +per le rotture sanguinenti in vano. + +«O Iacopo», dicea, «da Santo Andrea, +che t’è giovato di me fare schermo? +che colpa ho io de la tua vita rea?». + +Quando ’l maestro fu sovr’ esso fermo, +disse: «Chi fosti, che per tante punte +soffi con sangue doloroso sermo?». + +Ed elli a noi: «O anime che giunte +siete a veder lo strazio disonesto +c’ha le mie fronde sì da me disgiunte, + +raccoglietele al piè del tristo cesto. +I’ fui de la città che nel Batista +mutò ’l primo padrone; ond’ ei per questo + +sempre con l’arte sua la farà trista; +e se non fosse che ’n sul passo d’Arno +rimane ancor di lui alcuna vista, + +que’ cittadin che poi la rifondarno +sovra ’l cener che d’Attila rimase, +avrebber fatto lavorare indarno. + +Io fei gibetto a me de le mie case». + + + + +Canto XIV + + +Poi che la carità del natio loco +mi strinse, raunai le fronde sparte +e rende’le a colui, ch’era già fioco. + +Indi venimmo al fine ove si parte +lo secondo giron dal terzo, e dove +si vede di giustizia orribil arte. + +A ben manifestar le cose nove, +dico che arrivammo ad una landa +che dal suo letto ogne pianta rimove. + +La dolorosa selva l’è ghirlanda +intorno, come ’l fosso tristo ad essa; +quivi fermammo i passi a randa a randa. + +Lo spazzo era una rena arida e spessa, +non d’altra foggia fatta che colei +che fu da’ piè di Caton già soppressa. + +O vendetta di Dio, quanto tu dei +esser temuta da ciascun che legge +ciò che fu manifesto a li occhi mei! + +D’anime nude vidi molte gregge +che piangean tutte assai miseramente, +e parea posta lor diversa legge. + +Supin giacea in terra alcuna gente, +alcuna si sedea tutta raccolta, +e altra andava continüamente. + +Quella che giva ’ntorno era più molta, +e quella men che giacëa al tormento, +ma più al duolo avea la lingua sciolta. + +Sovra tutto ’l sabbion, d’un cader lento, +piovean di foco dilatate falde, +come di neve in alpe sanza vento. + +Quali Alessandro in quelle parti calde +d’Indïa vide sopra ’l süo stuolo +fiamme cadere infino a terra salde, + +per ch’ei provide a scalpitar lo suolo +con le sue schiere, acciò che lo vapore +mei si stingueva mentre ch’era solo: + +tale scendeva l’etternale ardore; +onde la rena s’accendea, com’ esca +sotto focile, a doppiar lo dolore. + +Sanza riposo mai era la tresca +de le misere mani, or quindi or quinci +escotendo da sé l’arsura fresca. + +I’ cominciai: «Maestro, tu che vinci +tutte le cose, fuor che ’ demon duri +ch’a l’intrar de la porta incontra uscinci, + +chi è quel grande che non par che curi +lo ’ncendio e giace dispettoso e torto, +sì che la pioggia non par che ’l marturi?». + +E quel medesmo, che si fu accorto +ch’io domandava il mio duca di lui, +gridò: «Qual io fui vivo, tal son morto. + +Se Giove stanchi ’l suo fabbro da cui +crucciato prese la folgore aguta +onde l’ultimo dì percosso fui; + +o s’elli stanchi li altri a muta a muta +in Mongibello a la focina negra, +chiamando “Buon Vulcano, aiuta, aiuta!”, + +sì com’ el fece a la pugna di Flegra, +e me saetti con tutta sua forza: +non ne potrebbe aver vendetta allegra». + +Allora il duca mio parlò di forza +tanto, ch’i’ non l’avea sì forte udito: +«O Capaneo, in ciò che non s’ammorza + +la tua superbia, se’ tu più punito; +nullo martiro, fuor che la tua rabbia, +sarebbe al tuo furor dolor compito». + +Poi si rivolse a me con miglior labbia, +dicendo: «Quei fu l’un d’i sette regi +ch’assiser Tebe; ed ebbe e par ch’elli abbia + +Dio in disdegno, e poco par che ’l pregi; +ma, com’ io dissi lui, li suoi dispetti +sono al suo petto assai debiti fregi. + +Or mi vien dietro, e guarda che non metti, +ancor, li piedi ne la rena arsiccia; +ma sempre al bosco tien li piedi stretti». + +Tacendo divenimmo là ’ve spiccia +fuor de la selva un picciol fiumicello, +lo cui rossore ancor mi raccapriccia. + +Quale del Bulicame esce ruscello +che parton poi tra lor le peccatrici, +tal per la rena giù sen giva quello. + +Lo fondo suo e ambo le pendici +fatt’ era ’n pietra, e ’ margini dallato; +per ch’io m’accorsi che ’l passo era lici. + +«Tra tutto l’altro ch’i’ t’ho dimostrato, +poscia che noi intrammo per la porta +lo cui sogliare a nessuno è negato, + +cosa non fu da li tuoi occhi scorta +notabile com’ è ’l presente rio, +che sovra sé tutte fiammelle ammorta». + +Queste parole fuor del duca mio; +per ch’io ’l pregai che mi largisse ’l pasto +di cui largito m’avëa il disio. + +«In mezzo mar siede un paese guasto», +diss’ elli allora, «che s’appella Creta, +sotto ’l cui rege fu già ’l mondo casto. + +Una montagna v’è che già fu lieta +d’acqua e di fronde, che si chiamò Ida; +or è diserta come cosa vieta. + +Rëa la scelse già per cuna fida +del suo figliuolo, e per celarlo meglio, +quando piangea, vi facea far le grida. + +Dentro dal monte sta dritto un gran veglio, +che tien volte le spalle inver’ Dammiata +e Roma guarda come süo speglio. + +La sua testa è di fin oro formata, +e puro argento son le braccia e ’l petto, +poi è di rame infino a la forcata; + +da indi in giuso è tutto ferro eletto, +salvo che ’l destro piede è terra cotta; +e sta ’n su quel, più che ’n su l’altro, eretto. + +Ciascuna parte, fuor che l’oro, è rotta +d’una fessura che lagrime goccia, +le quali, accolte, fóran quella grotta. + +Lor corso in questa valle si diroccia; +fanno Acheronte, Stige e Flegetonta; +poi sen van giù per questa stretta doccia, + +infin, là ove più non si dismonta, +fanno Cocito; e qual sia quello stagno +tu lo vedrai, però qui non si conta». + +E io a lui: «Se ’l presente rigagno +si diriva così dal nostro mondo, +perché ci appar pur a questo vivagno?». + +Ed elli a me: «Tu sai che ’l loco è tondo; +e tutto che tu sie venuto molto, +pur a sinistra, giù calando al fondo, + +non se’ ancor per tutto ’l cerchio vòlto; +per che, se cosa n’apparisce nova, +non de’ addur maraviglia al tuo volto». + +E io ancor: «Maestro, ove si trova +Flegetonta e Letè? ché de l’un taci, +e l’altro di’ che si fa d’esta piova». + +«In tutte tue question certo mi piaci», +rispuose, «ma ’l bollor de l’acqua rossa +dovea ben solver l’una che tu faci. + +Letè vedrai, ma fuor di questa fossa, +là dove vanno l’anime a lavarsi +quando la colpa pentuta è rimossa». + +Poi disse: «Omai è tempo da scostarsi +dal bosco; fa che di retro a me vegne: +li margini fan via, che non son arsi, + +e sopra loro ogne vapor si spegne». + + + + +Canto XV + + +Ora cen porta l’un de’ duri margini; +e ’l fummo del ruscel di sopra aduggia, +sì che dal foco salva l’acqua e li argini. + +Quali Fiamminghi tra Guizzante e Bruggia, +temendo ’l fiotto che ’nver’ lor s’avventa, +fanno lo schermo perché ’l mar si fuggia; + +e quali Padoan lungo la Brenta, +per difender lor ville e lor castelli, +anzi che Carentana il caldo senta: + +a tale imagine eran fatti quelli, +tutto che né sì alti né sì grossi, +qual che si fosse, lo maestro félli. + +Già eravam da la selva rimossi +tanto, ch’i’ non avrei visto dov’ era, +perch’ io in dietro rivolto mi fossi, + +quando incontrammo d’anime una schiera +che venian lungo l’argine, e ciascuna +ci riguardava come suol da sera + +guardare uno altro sotto nuova luna; +e sì ver’ noi aguzzavan le ciglia +come ’l vecchio sartor fa ne la cruna. + +Così adocchiato da cotal famiglia, +fui conosciuto da un, che mi prese +per lo lembo e gridò: «Qual maraviglia!». + +E io, quando ’l suo braccio a me distese, +ficcaï li occhi per lo cotto aspetto, +sì che ’l viso abbrusciato non difese + +la conoscenza süa al mio ’ntelletto; +e chinando la mano a la sua faccia, +rispuosi: «Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?». + +E quelli: «O figliuol mio, non ti dispiaccia +se Brunetto Latino un poco teco +ritorna ’n dietro e lascia andar la traccia». + +I’ dissi lui: «Quanto posso, ven preco; +e se volete che con voi m’asseggia, +faròl, se piace a costui che vo seco». + +«O figliuol», disse, «qual di questa greggia +s’arresta punto, giace poi cent’ anni +sanz’ arrostarsi quando ’l foco il feggia. + +Però va oltre: i’ ti verrò a’ panni; +e poi rigiugnerò la mia masnada, +che va piangendo i suoi etterni danni». + +Io non osava scender de la strada +per andar par di lui; ma ’l capo chino +tenea com’ uom che reverente vada. + +El cominciò: «Qual fortuna o destino +anzi l’ultimo dì qua giù ti mena? +e chi è questi che mostra ’l cammino?». + +«Là sù di sopra, in la vita serena», +rispuos’ io lui, «mi smarri’ in una valle, +avanti che l’età mia fosse piena. + +Pur ier mattina le volsi le spalle: +questi m’apparve, tornand’ ïo in quella, +e reducemi a ca per questo calle». + +Ed elli a me: «Se tu segui tua stella, +non puoi fallire a glorïoso porto, +se ben m’accorsi ne la vita bella; + +e s’io non fossi sì per tempo morto, +veggendo il cielo a te così benigno, +dato t’avrei a l’opera conforto. + +Ma quello ingrato popolo maligno +che discese di Fiesole ab antico, +e tiene ancor del monte e del macigno, + +ti si farà, per tuo ben far, nimico; +ed è ragion, ché tra li lazzi sorbi +si disconvien fruttare al dolce fico. + +Vecchia fama nel mondo li chiama orbi; +gent’ è avara, invidiosa e superba: +dai lor costumi fa che tu ti forbi. + +La tua fortuna tanto onor ti serba, +che l’una parte e l’altra avranno fame +di te; ma lungi fia dal becco l’erba. + +Faccian le bestie fiesolane strame +di lor medesme, e non tocchin la pianta, +s’alcuna surge ancora in lor letame, + +in cui riviva la sementa santa +di que’ Roman che vi rimaser quando +fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta». + +«Se fosse tutto pieno il mio dimando», +rispuos’ io lui, «voi non sareste ancora +de l’umana natura posto in bando; + +ché ’n la mente m’è fitta, e or m’accora, +la cara e buona imagine paterna +di voi quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora + +m’insegnavate come l’uom s’etterna: +e quant’ io l’abbia in grado, mentr’ io vivo +convien che ne la mia lingua si scerna. + +Ciò che narrate di mio corso scrivo, +e serbolo a chiosar con altro testo +a donna che saprà, s’a lei arrivo. + +Tanto vogl’ io che vi sia manifesto, +pur che mia coscïenza non mi garra, +ch’a la Fortuna, come vuol, son presto. + +Non è nuova a li orecchi miei tal arra: +però giri Fortuna la sua rota +come le piace, e ’l villan la sua marra». + +Lo mio maestro allora in su la gota +destra si volse in dietro e riguardommi; +poi disse: «Bene ascolta chi la nota». + +Né per tanto di men parlando vommi +con ser Brunetto, e dimando chi sono +li suoi compagni più noti e più sommi. + +Ed elli a me: «Saper d’alcuno è buono; +de li altri fia laudabile tacerci, +ché ’l tempo saria corto a tanto suono. + +In somma sappi che tutti fur cherci +e litterati grandi e di gran fama, +d’un peccato medesmo al mondo lerci. + +Priscian sen va con quella turba grama, +e Francesco d’Accorso anche; e vedervi, +s’avessi avuto di tal tigna brama, + +colui potei che dal servo de’ servi +fu trasmutato d’Arno in Bacchiglione, +dove lasciò li mal protesi nervi. + +Di più direi; ma ’l venire e ’l sermone +più lungo esser non può, però ch’i’ veggio +là surger nuovo fummo del sabbione. + +Gente vien con la quale esser non deggio. +Sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro, +nel qual io vivo ancora, e più non cheggio». + +Poi si rivolse, e parve di coloro +che corrono a Verona il drappo verde +per la campagna; e parve di costoro + +quelli che vince, non colui che perde. + + + + +Canto XVI + + +Già era in loco onde s’udia ’l rimbombo +de l’acqua che cadea ne l’altro giro, +simile a quel che l’arnie fanno rombo, + +quando tre ombre insieme si partiro, +correndo, d’una torma che passava +sotto la pioggia de l’aspro martiro. + +Venian ver’ noi, e ciascuna gridava: +«Sòstati tu ch’a l’abito ne sembri +esser alcun di nostra terra prava». + +Ahimè, che piaghe vidi ne’ lor membri, +ricenti e vecchie, da le fiamme incese! +Ancor men duol pur ch’i’ me ne rimembri. + +A le lor grida il mio dottor s’attese; +volse ’l viso ver’ me, e «Or aspetta», +disse, «a costor si vuole esser cortese. + +E se non fosse il foco che saetta +la natura del loco, i’ dicerei +che meglio stesse a te che a lor la fretta». + +Ricominciar, come noi restammo, ei +l’antico verso; e quando a noi fuor giunti, +fenno una rota di sé tutti e trei. + +Qual sogliono i campion far nudi e unti, +avvisando lor presa e lor vantaggio, +prima che sien tra lor battuti e punti, + +così rotando, ciascuno il visaggio +drizzava a me, sì che ’n contraro il collo +faceva ai piè continüo vïaggio. + +E «Se miseria d’esto loco sollo +rende in dispetto noi e nostri prieghi», +cominciò l’uno, «e ’l tinto aspetto e brollo, + +la fama nostra il tuo animo pieghi +a dirne chi tu se’, che i vivi piedi +così sicuro per lo ’nferno freghi. + +Questi, l’orme di cui pestar mi vedi, +tutto che nudo e dipelato vada, +fu di grado maggior che tu non credi: + +nepote fu de la buona Gualdrada; +Guido Guerra ebbe nome, e in sua vita +fece col senno assai e con la spada. + +L’altro, ch’appresso me la rena trita, +è Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, la cui voce +nel mondo sù dovria esser gradita. + +E io, che posto son con loro in croce, +Iacopo Rusticucci fui, e certo +la fiera moglie più ch’altro mi nuoce». + +S’i’ fossi stato dal foco coperto, +gittato mi sarei tra lor di sotto, +e credo che ’l dottor l’avria sofferto; + +ma perch’ io mi sarei brusciato e cotto, +vinse paura la mia buona voglia +che di loro abbracciar mi facea ghiotto. + +Poi cominciai: «Non dispetto, ma doglia +la vostra condizion dentro mi fisse, +tanta che tardi tutta si dispoglia, + +tosto che questo mio segnor mi disse +parole per le quali i’ mi pensai +che qual voi siete, tal gente venisse. + +Di vostra terra sono, e sempre mai +l’ovra di voi e li onorati nomi +con affezion ritrassi e ascoltai. + +Lascio lo fele e vo per dolci pomi +promessi a me per lo verace duca; +ma ’nfino al centro pria convien ch’i’ tomi». + +«Se lungamente l’anima conduca +le membra tue», rispuose quelli ancora, +«e se la fama tua dopo te luca, + +cortesia e valor dì se dimora +ne la nostra città sì come suole, +o se del tutto se n’è gita fora; + +ché Guiglielmo Borsiere, il qual si duole +con noi per poco e va là coi compagni, +assai ne cruccia con le sue parole». + +«La gente nuova e i sùbiti guadagni +orgoglio e dismisura han generata, +Fiorenza, in te, sì che tu già ten piagni». + +Così gridai con la faccia levata; +e i tre, che ciò inteser per risposta, +guardar l’un l’altro com’ al ver si guata. + +«Se l’altre volte sì poco ti costa», +rispuoser tutti, «il satisfare altrui, +felice te se sì parli a tua posta! + +Però, se campi d’esti luoghi bui +e torni a riveder le belle stelle, +quando ti gioverà dicere “I’ fui”, + +fa che di noi a la gente favelle». +Indi rupper la rota, e a fuggirsi +ali sembiar le gambe loro isnelle. + +Un amen non saria possuto dirsi +tosto così com’ e’ fuoro spariti; +per ch’al maestro parve di partirsi. + +Io lo seguiva, e poco eravam iti, +che ’l suon de l’acqua n’era sì vicino, +che per parlar saremmo a pena uditi. + +Come quel fiume c’ha proprio cammino +prima dal Monte Viso ’nver’ levante, +da la sinistra costa d’Apennino, + +che si chiama Acquacheta suso, avante +che si divalli giù nel basso letto, +e a Forlì di quel nome è vacante, + +rimbomba là sovra San Benedetto +de l’Alpe per cadere ad una scesa +ove dovea per mille esser recetto; + +così, giù d’una ripa discoscesa, +trovammo risonar quell’ acqua tinta, +sì che ’n poc’ ora avria l’orecchia offesa. + +Io avea una corda intorno cinta, +e con essa pensai alcuna volta +prender la lonza a la pelle dipinta. + +Poscia ch’io l’ebbi tutta da me sciolta, +sì come ’l duca m’avea comandato, +porsila a lui aggroppata e ravvolta. + +Ond’ ei si volse inver’ lo destro lato, +e alquanto di lunge da la sponda +la gittò giuso in quell’ alto burrato. + +‘E’ pur convien che novità risponda’, +dicea fra me medesmo, ‘al novo cenno +che ’l maestro con l’occhio sì seconda’. + +Ahi quanto cauti li uomini esser dienno +presso a color che non veggion pur l’ovra, +ma per entro i pensier miran col senno! + +El disse a me: «Tosto verrà di sovra +ciò ch’io attendo e che il tuo pensier sogna; +tosto convien ch’al tuo viso si scovra». + +Sempre a quel ver c’ha faccia di menzogna +de’ l’uom chiuder le labbra fin ch’el puote, +però che sanza colpa fa vergogna; + +ma qui tacer nol posso; e per le note +di questa comedìa, lettor, ti giuro, +s’elle non sien di lunga grazia vòte, + +ch’i’ vidi per quell’ aere grosso e scuro +venir notando una figura in suso, +maravigliosa ad ogne cor sicuro, + +sì come torna colui che va giuso +talora a solver l’àncora ch’aggrappa +o scoglio o altro che nel mare è chiuso, + +che ’n sù si stende e da piè si rattrappa. + + + + +Canto XVII + + +«Ecco la fiera con la coda aguzza, +che passa i monti e rompe i muri e l’armi! +Ecco colei che tutto ’l mondo appuzza!». + +Sì cominciò lo mio duca a parlarmi; +e accennolle che venisse a proda, +vicino al fin d’i passeggiati marmi. + +E quella sozza imagine di froda +sen venne, e arrivò la testa e ’l busto, +ma ’n su la riva non trasse la coda. + +La faccia sua era faccia d’uom giusto, +tanto benigna avea di fuor la pelle, +e d’un serpente tutto l’altro fusto; + +due branche avea pilose insin l’ascelle; +lo dosso e ’l petto e ambedue le coste +dipinti avea di nodi e di rotelle. + +Con più color, sommesse e sovraposte +non fer mai drappi Tartari né Turchi, +né fuor tai tele per Aragne imposte. + +Come talvolta stanno a riva i burchi, +che parte sono in acqua e parte in terra, +e come là tra li Tedeschi lurchi + +lo bivero s’assetta a far sua guerra, +così la fiera pessima si stava +su l’orlo ch’è di pietra e ’l sabbion serra. + +Nel vano tutta sua coda guizzava, +torcendo in sù la venenosa forca +ch’a guisa di scorpion la punta armava. + +Lo duca disse: «Or convien che si torca +la nostra via un poco insino a quella +bestia malvagia che colà si corca». + +Però scendemmo a la destra mammella, +e diece passi femmo in su lo stremo, +per ben cessar la rena e la fiammella. + +E quando noi a lei venuti semo, +poco più oltre veggio in su la rena +gente seder propinqua al loco scemo. + +Quivi ’l maestro «Acciò che tutta piena +esperïenza d’esto giron porti», +mi disse, «va, e vedi la lor mena. + +Li tuoi ragionamenti sian là corti; +mentre che torni, parlerò con questa, +che ne conceda i suoi omeri forti». + +Così ancor su per la strema testa +di quel settimo cerchio tutto solo +andai, dove sedea la gente mesta. + +Per li occhi fora scoppiava lor duolo; +di qua, di là soccorrien con le mani +quando a’ vapori, e quando al caldo suolo: + +non altrimenti fan di state i cani +or col ceffo or col piè, quando son morsi +o da pulci o da mosche o da tafani. + +Poi che nel viso a certi li occhi porsi, +ne’ quali ’l doloroso foco casca, +non ne conobbi alcun; ma io m’accorsi + +che dal collo a ciascun pendea una tasca +ch’avea certo colore e certo segno, +e quindi par che ’l loro occhio si pasca. + +E com’ io riguardando tra lor vegno, +in una borsa gialla vidi azzurro +che d’un leone avea faccia e contegno. + +Poi, procedendo di mio sguardo il curro, +vidine un’altra come sangue rossa, +mostrando un’oca bianca più che burro. + +E un che d’una scrofa azzurra e grossa +segnato avea lo suo sacchetto bianco, +mi disse: «Che fai tu in questa fossa? + +Or te ne va; e perché se’ vivo anco, +sappi che ’l mio vicin Vitalïano +sederà qui dal mio sinistro fianco. + +Con questi Fiorentin son padoano: +spesse fïate mi ’ntronan li orecchi +gridando: “Vegna ’l cavalier sovrano, + +che recherà la tasca con tre becchi!”». +Qui distorse la bocca e di fuor trasse +la lingua, come bue che ’l naso lecchi. + +E io, temendo no ’l più star crucciasse +lui che di poco star m’avea ’mmonito, +torna’mi in dietro da l’anime lasse. + +Trova’ il duca mio ch’era salito +già su la groppa del fiero animale, +e disse a me: «Or sie forte e ardito. + +Omai si scende per sì fatte scale; +monta dinanzi, ch’i’ voglio esser mezzo, +sì che la coda non possa far male». + +Qual è colui che sì presso ha ’l riprezzo +de la quartana, c’ha già l’unghie smorte, +e triema tutto pur guardando ’l rezzo, + +tal divenn’ io a le parole porte; +ma vergogna mi fé le sue minacce, +che innanzi a buon segnor fa servo forte. + +I’ m’assettai in su quelle spallacce; +sì volli dir, ma la voce non venne +com’ io credetti: ‘Fa che tu m’abbracce’. + +Ma esso, ch’altra volta mi sovvenne +ad altro forse, tosto ch’i’ montai +con le braccia m’avvinse e mi sostenne; + +e disse: «Gerïon, moviti omai: +le rote larghe, e lo scender sia poco; +pensa la nova soma che tu hai». + +Come la navicella esce di loco +in dietro in dietro, sì quindi si tolse; +e poi ch’al tutto si sentì a gioco, + +là ’v’ era ’l petto, la coda rivolse, +e quella tesa, come anguilla, mosse, +e con le branche l’aere a sé raccolse. + +Maggior paura non credo che fosse +quando Fetonte abbandonò li freni, +per che ’l ciel, come pare ancor, si cosse; + +né quando Icaro misero le reni +sentì spennar per la scaldata cera, +gridando il padre a lui «Mala via tieni!», + +che fu la mia, quando vidi ch’i’ era +ne l’aere d’ogne parte, e vidi spenta +ogne veduta fuor che de la fera. + +Ella sen va notando lenta lenta; +rota e discende, ma non me n’accorgo +se non che al viso e di sotto mi venta. + +Io sentia già da la man destra il gorgo +far sotto noi un orribile scroscio, +per che con li occhi ’n giù la testa sporgo. + +Allor fu’ io più timido a lo stoscio, +però ch’i’ vidi fuochi e senti’ pianti; +ond’ io tremando tutto mi raccoscio. + +E vidi poi, ché nol vedea davanti, +lo scendere e ’l girar per li gran mali +che s’appressavan da diversi canti. + +Come ’l falcon ch’è stato assai su l’ali, +che sanza veder logoro o uccello +fa dire al falconiere «Omè, tu cali!», + +discende lasso onde si move isnello, +per cento rote, e da lunge si pone +dal suo maestro, disdegnoso e fello; + +così ne puose al fondo Gerïone +al piè al piè de la stagliata rocca, +e, discarcate le nostre persone, + +si dileguò come da corda cocca. + + + + +Canto XVIII + + +Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge, +tutto di pietra di color ferrigno, +come la cerchia che dintorno il volge. + +Nel dritto mezzo del campo maligno +vaneggia un pozzo assai largo e profondo, +di cui suo loco dicerò l’ordigno. + +Quel cinghio che rimane adunque è tondo +tra ’l pozzo e ’l piè de l’alta ripa dura, +e ha distinto in dieci valli il fondo. + +Quale, dove per guardia de le mura +più e più fossi cingon li castelli, +la parte dove son rende figura, + +tale imagine quivi facean quelli; +e come a tai fortezze da’ lor sogli +a la ripa di fuor son ponticelli, + +così da imo de la roccia scogli +movien che ricidien li argini e ’ fossi +infino al pozzo che i tronca e raccogli. + +In questo luogo, de la schiena scossi +di Gerïon, trovammoci; e ’l poeta +tenne a sinistra, e io dietro mi mossi. + +A la man destra vidi nova pieta, +novo tormento e novi frustatori, +di che la prima bolgia era repleta. + +Nel fondo erano ignudi i peccatori; +dal mezzo in qua ci venien verso ’l volto, +di là con noi, ma con passi maggiori, + +come i Roman per l’essercito molto, +l’anno del giubileo, su per lo ponte +hanno a passar la gente modo colto, + +che da l’un lato tutti hanno la fronte +verso ’l castello e vanno a Santo Pietro, +da l’altra sponda vanno verso ’l monte. + +Di qua, di là, su per lo sasso tetro +vidi demon cornuti con gran ferze, +che li battien crudelmente di retro. + +Ahi come facean lor levar le berze +a le prime percosse! già nessuno +le seconde aspettava né le terze. + +Mentr’ io andava, li occhi miei in uno +furo scontrati; e io sì tosto dissi: +«Già di veder costui non son digiuno». + +Per ch’ïo a figurarlo i piedi affissi; +e ’l dolce duca meco si ristette, +e assentio ch’alquanto in dietro gissi. + +E quel frustato celar si credette +bassando ’l viso; ma poco li valse, +ch’io dissi: «O tu che l’occhio a terra gette, + +se le fazion che porti non son false, +Venedico se’ tu Caccianemico. +Ma che ti mena a sì pungenti salse?». + +Ed elli a me: «Mal volontier lo dico; +ma sforzami la tua chiara favella, +che mi fa sovvenir del mondo antico. + +I’ fui colui che la Ghisolabella +condussi a far la voglia del marchese, +come che suoni la sconcia novella. + +E non pur io qui piango bolognese; +anzi n’è questo loco tanto pieno, +che tante lingue non son ora apprese + +a dicer ‘sipa’ tra Sàvena e Reno; +e se di ciò vuoi fede o testimonio, +rècati a mente il nostro avaro seno». + +Così parlando il percosse un demonio +de la sua scurïada, e disse: «Via, +ruffian! qui non son femmine da conio». + +I’ mi raggiunsi con la scorta mia; +poscia con pochi passi divenimmo +là ’v’ uno scoglio de la ripa uscia. + +Assai leggeramente quel salimmo; +e vòlti a destra su per la sua scheggia, +da quelle cerchie etterne ci partimmo. + +Quando noi fummo là dov’ el vaneggia +di sotto per dar passo a li sferzati, +lo duca disse: «Attienti, e fa che feggia + +lo viso in te di quest’ altri mal nati, +ai quali ancor non vedesti la faccia +però che son con noi insieme andati». + +Del vecchio ponte guardavam la traccia +che venìa verso noi da l’altra banda, +e che la ferza similmente scaccia. + +E ’l buon maestro, sanza mia dimanda, +mi disse: «Guarda quel grande che vene, +e per dolor non par lagrime spanda: + +quanto aspetto reale ancor ritene! +Quelli è Iasón, che per cuore e per senno +li Colchi del monton privati féne. + +Ello passò per l’isola di Lenno +poi che l’ardite femmine spietate +tutti li maschi loro a morte dienno. + +Ivi con segni e con parole ornate +Isifile ingannò, la giovinetta +che prima avea tutte l’altre ingannate. + +Lasciolla quivi, gravida, soletta; +tal colpa a tal martiro lui condanna; +e anche di Medea si fa vendetta. + +Con lui sen va chi da tal parte inganna; +e questo basti de la prima valle +sapere e di color che ’n sé assanna». + +Già eravam là ’ve lo stretto calle +con l’argine secondo s’incrocicchia, +e fa di quello ad un altr’ arco spalle. + +Quindi sentimmo gente che si nicchia +ne l’altra bolgia e che col muso scuffa, +e sé medesma con le palme picchia. + +Le ripe eran grommate d’una muffa, +per l’alito di giù che vi s’appasta, +che con li occhi e col naso facea zuffa. + +Lo fondo è cupo sì, che non ci basta +loco a veder sanza montare al dosso +de l’arco, ove lo scoglio più sovrasta. + +Quivi venimmo; e quindi giù nel fosso +vidi gente attuffata in uno sterco +che da li uman privadi parea mosso. + +E mentre ch’io là giù con l’occhio cerco, +vidi un col capo sì di merda lordo, +che non parëa s’era laico o cherco. + +Quei mi sgridò: «Perché se’ tu sì gordo +di riguardar più me che li altri brutti?». +E io a lui: «Perché, se ben ricordo, + +già t’ho veduto coi capelli asciutti, +e se’ Alessio Interminei da Lucca: +però t’adocchio più che li altri tutti». + +Ed elli allor, battendosi la zucca: +«Qua giù m’hanno sommerso le lusinghe +ond’ io non ebbi mai la lingua stucca». + +Appresso ciò lo duca «Fa che pinghe», +mi disse, «il viso un poco più avante, +sì che la faccia ben con l’occhio attinghe + +di quella sozza e scapigliata fante +che là si graffia con l’unghie merdose, +e or s’accoscia e ora è in piedi stante. + +Taïde è, la puttana che rispuose +al drudo suo quando disse “Ho io grazie +grandi apo te?”: “Anzi maravigliose!”. + +E quinci sian le nostre viste sazie». + + + + +Canto XIX + + +O Simon mago, o miseri seguaci +che le cose di Dio, che di bontate +deon essere spose, e voi rapaci + +per oro e per argento avolterate, +or convien che per voi suoni la tromba, +però che ne la terza bolgia state. + +Già eravamo, a la seguente tomba, +montati de lo scoglio in quella parte +ch’a punto sovra mezzo ’l fosso piomba. + +O somma sapïenza, quanta è l’arte +che mostri in cielo, in terra e nel mal mondo, +e quanto giusto tua virtù comparte! + +Io vidi per le coste e per lo fondo +piena la pietra livida di fóri, +d’un largo tutti e ciascun era tondo. + +Non mi parean men ampi né maggiori +che que’ che son nel mio bel San Giovanni, +fatti per loco d’i battezzatori; + +l’un de li quali, ancor non è molt’ anni, +rupp’ io per un che dentro v’annegava: +e questo sia suggel ch’ogn’ omo sganni. + +Fuor de la bocca a ciascun soperchiava +d’un peccator li piedi e de le gambe +infino al grosso, e l’altro dentro stava. + +Le piante erano a tutti accese intrambe; +per che sì forte guizzavan le giunte, +che spezzate averien ritorte e strambe. + +Qual suole il fiammeggiar de le cose unte +muoversi pur su per la strema buccia, +tal era lì dai calcagni a le punte. + +«Chi è colui, maestro, che si cruccia +guizzando più che li altri suoi consorti», +diss’ io, «e cui più roggia fiamma succia?». + +Ed elli a me: «Se tu vuo’ ch’i’ ti porti +là giù per quella ripa che più giace, +da lui saprai di sé e de’ suoi torti». + +E io: «Tanto m’è bel, quanto a te piace: +tu se’ segnore, e sai ch’i’ non mi parto +dal tuo volere, e sai quel che si tace». + +Allor venimmo in su l’argine quarto; +volgemmo e discendemmo a mano stanca +là giù nel fondo foracchiato e arto. + +Lo buon maestro ancor de la sua anca +non mi dipuose, sì mi giunse al rotto +di quel che si piangeva con la zanca. + +«O qual che se’ che ’l di sù tien di sotto, +anima trista come pal commessa», +comincia’ io a dir, «se puoi, fa motto». + +Io stava come ’l frate che confessa +lo perfido assessin, che, poi ch’è fitto, +richiama lui per che la morte cessa. + +Ed el gridò: «Se’ tu già costì ritto, +se’ tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio? +Di parecchi anni mi mentì lo scritto. + +Se’ tu sì tosto di quell’ aver sazio +per lo qual non temesti tòrre a ’nganno +la bella donna, e poi di farne strazio?». + +Tal mi fec’ io, quai son color che stanno, +per non intender ciò ch’è lor risposto, +quasi scornati, e risponder non sanno. + +Allor Virgilio disse: «Dilli tosto: +“Non son colui, non son colui che credi”»; +e io rispuosi come a me fu imposto. + +Per che lo spirto tutti storse i piedi; +poi, sospirando e con voce di pianto, +mi disse: «Dunque che a me richiedi? + +Se di saper ch’i’ sia ti cal cotanto, +che tu abbi però la ripa corsa, +sappi ch’i’ fui vestito del gran manto; + +e veramente fui figliuol de l’orsa, +cupido sì per avanzar li orsatti, +che sù l’avere e qui me misi in borsa. + +Di sotto al capo mio son li altri tratti +che precedetter me simoneggiando, +per le fessure de la pietra piatti. + +Là giù cascherò io altresì quando +verrà colui ch’i’ credea che tu fossi, +allor ch’i’ feci ’l sùbito dimando. + +Ma più è ’l tempo già che i piè mi cossi +e ch’i’ son stato così sottosopra, +ch’el non starà piantato coi piè rossi: + +ché dopo lui verrà di più laida opra, +di ver’ ponente, un pastor sanza legge, +tal che convien che lui e me ricuopra. + +Nuovo Iasón sarà, di cui si legge +ne’ Maccabei; e come a quel fu molle +suo re, così fia lui chi Francia regge». + +Io non so s’i’ mi fui qui troppo folle, +ch’i’ pur rispuosi lui a questo metro: +«Deh, or mi dì: quanto tesoro volle + +Nostro Segnore in prima da san Pietro +ch’ei ponesse le chiavi in sua balìa? +Certo non chiese se non “Viemmi retro”. + +Né Pier né li altri tolsero a Matia +oro od argento, quando fu sortito +al loco che perdé l’anima ria. + +Però ti sta, ché tu se’ ben punito; +e guarda ben la mal tolta moneta +ch’esser ti fece contra Carlo ardito. + +E se non fosse ch’ancor lo mi vieta +la reverenza de le somme chiavi +che tu tenesti ne la vita lieta, + +io userei parole ancor più gravi; +ché la vostra avarizia il mondo attrista, +calcando i buoni e sollevando i pravi. + +Di voi pastor s’accorse il Vangelista, +quando colei che siede sopra l’acque +puttaneggiar coi regi a lui fu vista; + +quella che con le sette teste nacque, +e da le diece corna ebbe argomento, +fin che virtute al suo marito piacque. + +Fatto v’avete dio d’oro e d’argento; +e che altro è da voi a l’idolatre, +se non ch’elli uno, e voi ne orate cento? + +Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre, +non la tua conversion, ma quella dote +che da te prese il primo ricco patre!». + +E mentr’ io li cantava cotai note, +o ira o coscïenza che ’l mordesse, +forte spingava con ambo le piote. + +I’ credo ben ch’al mio duca piacesse, +con sì contenta labbia sempre attese +lo suon de le parole vere espresse. + +Però con ambo le braccia mi prese; +e poi che tutto su mi s’ebbe al petto, +rimontò per la via onde discese. + +Né si stancò d’avermi a sé distretto, +sì men portò sovra ’l colmo de l’arco +che dal quarto al quinto argine è tragetto. + +Quivi soavemente spuose il carco, +soave per lo scoglio sconcio ed erto +che sarebbe a le capre duro varco. + +Indi un altro vallon mi fu scoperto. + + + + +Canto XX + + +Di nova pena mi conven far versi +e dar matera al ventesimo canto +de la prima canzon, ch’è d’i sommersi. + +Io era già disposto tutto quanto +a riguardar ne lo scoperto fondo, +che si bagnava d’angoscioso pianto; + +e vidi gente per lo vallon tondo +venir, tacendo e lagrimando, al passo +che fanno le letane in questo mondo. + +Come ’l viso mi scese in lor più basso, +mirabilmente apparve esser travolto +ciascun tra ’l mento e ’l principio del casso, + +ché da le reni era tornato ’l volto, +e in dietro venir li convenia, +perché ’l veder dinanzi era lor tolto. + +Forse per forza già di parlasia +si travolse così alcun del tutto; +ma io nol vidi, né credo che sia. + +Se Dio ti lasci, lettor, prender frutto +di tua lezione, or pensa per te stesso +com’ io potea tener lo viso asciutto, + +quando la nostra imagine di presso +vidi sì torta, che ’l pianto de li occhi +le natiche bagnava per lo fesso. + +Certo io piangea, poggiato a un de’ rocchi +del duro scoglio, sì che la mia scorta +mi disse: «Ancor se’ tu de li altri sciocchi? + +Qui vive la pietà quand’ è ben morta; +chi è più scellerato che colui +che al giudicio divin passion comporta? + +Drizza la testa, drizza, e vedi a cui +s’aperse a li occhi d’i Teban la terra; +per ch’ei gridavan tutti: “Dove rui, + +Anfïarao? perché lasci la guerra?”. +E non restò di ruinare a valle +fino a Minòs che ciascheduno afferra. + +Mira c’ha fatto petto de le spalle; +perché volle veder troppo davante, +di retro guarda e fa retroso calle. + +Vedi Tiresia, che mutò sembiante +quando di maschio femmina divenne, +cangiandosi le membra tutte quante; + +e prima, poi, ribatter li convenne +li duo serpenti avvolti, con la verga, +che rïavesse le maschili penne. + +Aronta è quel ch’al ventre li s’atterga, +che ne’ monti di Luni, dove ronca +lo Carrarese che di sotto alberga, + +ebbe tra ’ bianchi marmi la spelonca +per sua dimora; onde a guardar le stelle +e ’l mar non li era la veduta tronca. + +E quella che ricuopre le mammelle, +che tu non vedi, con le trecce sciolte, +e ha di là ogne pilosa pelle, + +Manto fu, che cercò per terre molte; +poscia si puose là dove nacqu’ io; +onde un poco mi piace che m’ascolte. + +Poscia che ’l padre suo di vita uscìo +e venne serva la città di Baco, +questa gran tempo per lo mondo gio. + +Suso in Italia bella giace un laco, +a piè de l’Alpe che serra Lamagna +sovra Tiralli, c’ha nome Benaco. + +Per mille fonti, credo, e più si bagna +tra Garda e Val Camonica e Pennino +de l’acqua che nel detto laco stagna. + +Loco è nel mezzo là dove ’l trentino +pastore e quel di Brescia e ’l veronese +segnar poria, s’e’ fesse quel cammino. + +Siede Peschiera, bello e forte arnese +da fronteggiar Bresciani e Bergamaschi, +ove la riva ’ntorno più discese. + +Ivi convien che tutto quanto caschi +ciò che ’n grembo a Benaco star non può, +e fassi fiume giù per verdi paschi. + +Tosto che l’acqua a correr mette co, +non più Benaco, ma Mencio si chiama +fino a Governol, dove cade in Po. + +Non molto ha corso, ch’el trova una lama, +ne la qual si distende e la ’mpaluda; +e suol di state talor essere grama. + +Quindi passando la vergine cruda +vide terra, nel mezzo del pantano, +sanza coltura e d’abitanti nuda. + +Lì, per fuggire ogne consorzio umano, +ristette con suoi servi a far sue arti, +e visse, e vi lasciò suo corpo vano. + +Li uomini poi che ’ntorno erano sparti +s’accolsero a quel loco, ch’era forte +per lo pantan ch’avea da tutte parti. + +Fer la città sovra quell’ ossa morte; +e per colei che ’l loco prima elesse, +Mantüa l’appellar sanz’ altra sorte. + +Già fuor le genti sue dentro più spesse, +prima che la mattia da Casalodi +da Pinamonte inganno ricevesse. + +Però t’assenno che, se tu mai odi +originar la mia terra altrimenti, +la verità nulla menzogna frodi». + +E io: «Maestro, i tuoi ragionamenti +mi son sì certi e prendon sì mia fede, +che li altri mi sarien carboni spenti. + +Ma dimmi, de la gente che procede, +se tu ne vedi alcun degno di nota; +ché solo a ciò la mia mente rifiede». + +Allor mi disse: «Quel che da la gota +porge la barba in su le spalle brune, +fu—quando Grecia fu di maschi vòta, + +sì ch’a pena rimaser per le cune— +augure, e diede ’l punto con Calcanta +in Aulide a tagliar la prima fune. + +Euripilo ebbe nome, e così ’l canta +l’alta mia tragedìa in alcun loco: +ben lo sai tu che la sai tutta quanta. + +Quell’ altro che ne’ fianchi è così poco, +Michele Scotto fu, che veramente +de le magiche frode seppe ’l gioco. + +Vedi Guido Bonatti; vedi Asdente, +ch’avere inteso al cuoio e a lo spago +ora vorrebbe, ma tardi si pente. + +Vedi le triste che lasciaron l’ago, +la spuola e ’l fuso, e fecersi ’ndivine; +fecer malie con erbe e con imago. + +Ma vienne omai, ché già tiene ’l confine +d’amendue li emisperi e tocca l’onda +sotto Sobilia Caino e le spine; + +e già iernotte fu la luna tonda: +ben ten de’ ricordar, ché non ti nocque +alcuna volta per la selva fonda». + +Sì mi parlava, e andavamo introcque. + + + + +Canto XXI + + +Così di ponte in ponte, altro parlando +che la mia comedìa cantar non cura, +venimmo; e tenavamo ’l colmo, quando + +restammo per veder l’altra fessura +di Malebolge e li altri pianti vani; +e vidila mirabilmente oscura. + +Quale ne l’arzanà de’ Viniziani +bolle l’inverno la tenace pece +a rimpalmare i legni lor non sani, + +ché navicar non ponno—in quella vece +chi fa suo legno novo e chi ristoppa +le coste a quel che più vïaggi fece; + +chi ribatte da proda e chi da poppa; +altri fa remi e altri volge sarte; +chi terzeruolo e artimon rintoppa—: + +tal, non per foco ma per divin’ arte, +bollia là giuso una pegola spessa, +che ’nviscava la ripa d’ogne parte. + +I’ vedea lei, ma non vedëa in essa +mai che le bolle che ’l bollor levava, +e gonfiar tutta, e riseder compressa. + +Mentr’ io là giù fisamente mirava, +lo duca mio, dicendo «Guarda, guarda!», +mi trasse a sé del loco dov’ io stava. + +Allor mi volsi come l’uom cui tarda +di veder quel che li convien fuggire +e cui paura sùbita sgagliarda, + +che, per veder, non indugia ’l partire: +e vidi dietro a noi un diavol nero +correndo su per lo scoglio venire. + +Ahi quant’ elli era ne l’aspetto fero! +e quanto mi parea ne l’atto acerbo, +con l’ali aperte e sovra i piè leggero! + +L’omero suo, ch’era aguto e superbo, +carcava un peccator con ambo l’anche, +e quei tenea de’ piè ghermito ’l nerbo. + +Del nostro ponte disse: «O Malebranche, +ecco un de li anzïan di Santa Zita! +Mettetel sotto, ch’i’ torno per anche + +a quella terra, che n’è ben fornita: +ogn’ uom v’è barattier, fuor che Bonturo; +del no, per li denar, vi si fa ita». + +Là giù ’l buttò, e per lo scoglio duro +si volse; e mai non fu mastino sciolto +con tanta fretta a seguitar lo furo. + +Quel s’attuffò, e tornò sù convolto; +ma i demon che del ponte avean coperchio, +gridar: «Qui non ha loco il Santo Volto! + +qui si nuota altrimenti che nel Serchio! +Però, se tu non vuo’ di nostri graffi, +non far sopra la pegola soverchio». + +Poi l’addentar con più di cento raffi, +disser: «Coverto convien che qui balli, +sì che, se puoi, nascosamente accaffi». + +Non altrimenti i cuoci a’ lor vassalli +fanno attuffare in mezzo la caldaia +la carne con li uncin, perché non galli. + +Lo buon maestro «Acciò che non si paia +che tu ci sia», mi disse, «giù t’acquatta +dopo uno scheggio, ch’alcun schermo t’aia; + +e per nulla offension che mi sia fatta, +non temer tu, ch’i’ ho le cose conte, +perch’ altra volta fui a tal baratta». + +Poscia passò di là dal co del ponte; +e com’ el giunse in su la ripa sesta, +mestier li fu d’aver sicura fronte. + +Con quel furore e con quella tempesta +ch’escono i cani a dosso al poverello +che di sùbito chiede ove s’arresta, + +usciron quei di sotto al ponticello, +e volser contra lui tutt’ i runcigli; +ma el gridò: «Nessun di voi sia fello! + +Innanzi che l’uncin vostro mi pigli, +traggasi avante l’un di voi che m’oda, +e poi d’arruncigliarmi si consigli». + +Tutti gridaron: «Vada Malacoda!»; +per ch’un si mosse—e li altri stetter fermi— +e venne a lui dicendo: «Che li approda?». + +«Credi tu, Malacoda, qui vedermi +esser venuto», disse ’l mio maestro, +«sicuro già da tutti vostri schermi, + +sanza voler divino e fato destro? +Lascian’ andar, ché nel cielo è voluto +ch’i’ mostri altrui questo cammin silvestro». + +Allor li fu l’orgoglio sì caduto, +ch’e’ si lasciò cascar l’uncino a’ piedi, +e disse a li altri: «Omai non sia feruto». + +E ’l duca mio a me: «O tu che siedi +tra li scheggion del ponte quatto quatto, +sicuramente omai a me ti riedi». + +Per ch’io mi mossi e a lui venni ratto; +e i diavoli si fecer tutti avanti, +sì ch’io temetti ch’ei tenesser patto; + +così vid’ ïo già temer li fanti +ch’uscivan patteggiati di Caprona, +veggendo sé tra nemici cotanti. + +I’ m’accostai con tutta la persona +lungo ’l mio duca, e non torceva li occhi +da la sembianza lor ch’era non buona. + +Ei chinavan li raffi e «Vuo’ che ’l tocchi», +diceva l’un con l’altro, «in sul groppone?». +E rispondien: «Sì, fa che gliel’ accocchi». + +Ma quel demonio che tenea sermone +col duca mio, si volse tutto presto +e disse: «Posa, posa, Scarmiglione!». + +Poi disse a noi: «Più oltre andar per questo +iscoglio non si può, però che giace +tutto spezzato al fondo l’arco sesto. + +E se l’andare avante pur vi piace, +andatevene su per questa grotta; +presso è un altro scoglio che via face. + +Ier, più oltre cinqu’ ore che quest’ otta, +mille dugento con sessanta sei +anni compié che qui la via fu rotta. + +Io mando verso là di questi miei +a riguardar s’alcun se ne sciorina; +gite con lor, che non saranno rei». + +«Tra’ti avante, Alichino, e Calcabrina», +cominciò elli a dire, «e tu, Cagnazzo; +e Barbariccia guidi la decina. + +Libicocco vegn’ oltre e Draghignazzo, +Cirïatto sannuto e Graffiacane +e Farfarello e Rubicante pazzo. + +Cercate ’ntorno le boglienti pane; +costor sian salvi infino a l’altro scheggio +che tutto intero va sovra le tane». + +«Omè, maestro, che è quel ch’i’ veggio?», +diss’ io, «deh, sanza scorta andianci soli, +se tu sa’ ir; ch’i’ per me non la cheggio. + +Se tu se’ sì accorto come suoli, +non vedi tu ch’e’ digrignan li denti +e con le ciglia ne minaccian duoli?». + +Ed elli a me: «Non vo’ che tu paventi; +lasciali digrignar pur a lor senno, +ch’e’ fanno ciò per li lessi dolenti». + +Per l’argine sinistro volta dienno; +ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta +coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno; + +ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta. + + + + +Canto XXII + + +Io vidi già cavalier muover campo, +e cominciare stormo e far lor mostra, +e talvolta partir per loro scampo; + +corridor vidi per la terra vostra, +o Aretini, e vidi gir gualdane, +fedir torneamenti e correr giostra; + +quando con trombe, e quando con campane, +con tamburi e con cenni di castella, +e con cose nostrali e con istrane; + +né già con sì diversa cennamella +cavalier vidi muover né pedoni, +né nave a segno di terra o di stella. + +Noi andavam con li diece demoni. +Ahi fiera compagnia! ma ne la chiesa +coi santi, e in taverna coi ghiottoni. + +Pur a la pegola era la mia ’ntesa, +per veder de la bolgia ogne contegno +e de la gente ch’entro v’era incesa. + +Come i dalfini, quando fanno segno +a’ marinar con l’arco de la schiena +che s’argomentin di campar lor legno, + +talor così, ad alleggiar la pena, +mostrav’ alcun de’ peccatori ’l dosso +e nascondea in men che non balena. + +E come a l’orlo de l’acqua d’un fosso +stanno i ranocchi pur col muso fuori, +sì che celano i piedi e l’altro grosso, + +sì stavan d’ogne parte i peccatori; +ma come s’appressava Barbariccia, +così si ritraén sotto i bollori. + +I’ vidi, e anco il cor me n’accapriccia, +uno aspettar così, com’ elli ’ncontra +ch’una rana rimane e l’altra spiccia; + +e Graffiacan, che li era più di contra, +li arruncigliò le ’mpegolate chiome +e trassel sù, che mi parve una lontra. + +I’ sapea già di tutti quanti ’l nome, +sì li notai quando fuorono eletti, +e poi ch’e’ si chiamaro, attesi come. + +«O Rubicante, fa che tu li metti +li unghioni a dosso, sì che tu lo scuoi!», +gridavan tutti insieme i maladetti. + +E io: «Maestro mio, fa, se tu puoi, +che tu sappi chi è lo sciagurato +venuto a man de li avversari suoi». + +Lo duca mio li s’accostò allato; +domandollo ond’ ei fosse, e quei rispuose: +«I’ fui del regno di Navarra nato. + +Mia madre a servo d’un segnor mi puose, +che m’avea generato d’un ribaldo, +distruggitor di sé e di sue cose. + +Poi fui famiglia del buon re Tebaldo; +quivi mi misi a far baratteria, +di ch’io rendo ragione in questo caldo». + +E Cirïatto, a cui di bocca uscia +d’ogne parte una sanna come a porco, +li fé sentir come l’una sdruscia. + +Tra male gatte era venuto ’l sorco; +ma Barbariccia il chiuse con le braccia +e disse: «State in là, mentr’ io lo ’nforco». + +E al maestro mio volse la faccia; +«Domanda», disse, «ancor, se più disii +saper da lui, prima ch’altri ’l disfaccia». + +Lo duca dunque: «Or dì: de li altri rii +conosci tu alcun che sia latino +sotto la pece?». E quelli: «I’ mi partii, + +poco è, da un che fu di là vicino. +Così foss’ io ancor con lui coperto, +ch’i’ non temerei unghia né uncino!». + +E Libicocco «Troppo avem sofferto», +disse; e preseli ’l braccio col runciglio, +sì che, stracciando, ne portò un lacerto. + +Draghignazzo anco i volle dar di piglio +giuso a le gambe; onde ’l decurio loro +si volse intorno intorno con mal piglio. + +Quand’ elli un poco rappaciati fuoro, +a lui, ch’ancor mirava sua ferita, +domandò ’l duca mio sanza dimoro: + +«Chi fu colui da cui mala partita +di’ che facesti per venire a proda?». +Ed ei rispuose: «Fu frate Gomita, + +quel di Gallura, vasel d’ogne froda, +ch’ebbe i nemici di suo donno in mano, +e fé sì lor, che ciascun se ne loda. + +Danar si tolse e lasciolli di piano, +sì com’ e’ dice; e ne li altri offici anche +barattier fu non picciol, ma sovrano. + +Usa con esso donno Michel Zanche +di Logodoro; e a dir di Sardigna +le lingue lor non si sentono stanche. + +Omè, vedete l’altro che digrigna; +i’ direi anche, ma i’ temo ch’ello +non s’apparecchi a grattarmi la tigna». + +E ’l gran proposto, vòlto a Farfarello +che stralunava li occhi per fedire, +disse: «Fatti ’n costà, malvagio uccello!». + +«Se voi volete vedere o udire», +ricominciò lo spaürato appresso, +«Toschi o Lombardi, io ne farò venire; + +ma stieno i Malebranche un poco in cesso, +sì ch’ei non teman de le lor vendette; +e io, seggendo in questo loco stesso, + +per un ch’io son, ne farò venir sette +quand’ io suffolerò, com’ è nostro uso +di fare allor che fori alcun si mette». + +Cagnazzo a cotal motto levò ’l muso, +crollando ’l capo, e disse: «Odi malizia +ch’elli ha pensata per gittarsi giuso!». + +Ond’ ei, ch’avea lacciuoli a gran divizia, +rispuose: «Malizioso son io troppo, +quand’ io procuro a’ mia maggior trestizia». + +Alichin non si tenne e, di rintoppo +a li altri, disse a lui: «Se tu ti cali, +io non ti verrò dietro di gualoppo, + +ma batterò sovra la pece l’ali. +Lascisi ’l collo, e sia la ripa scudo, +a veder se tu sol più di noi vali». + +O tu che leggi, udirai nuovo ludo: +ciascun da l’altra costa li occhi volse, +quel prima, ch’a ciò fare era più crudo. + +Lo Navarrese ben suo tempo colse; +fermò le piante a terra, e in un punto +saltò e dal proposto lor si sciolse. + +Di che ciascun di colpa fu compunto, +ma quei più che cagion fu del difetto; +però si mosse e gridò: «Tu se’ giunto!». + +Ma poco i valse: ché l’ali al sospetto +non potero avanzar; quelli andò sotto, +e quei drizzò volando suso il petto: + +non altrimenti l’anitra di botto, +quando ’l falcon s’appressa, giù s’attuffa, +ed ei ritorna sù crucciato e rotto. + +Irato Calcabrina de la buffa, +volando dietro li tenne, invaghito +che quei campasse per aver la zuffa; + +e come ’l barattier fu disparito, +così volse li artigli al suo compagno, +e fu con lui sopra ’l fosso ghermito. + +Ma l’altro fu bene sparvier grifagno +ad artigliar ben lui, e amendue +cadder nel mezzo del bogliente stagno. + +Lo caldo sghermitor sùbito fue; +ma però di levarsi era neente, +sì avieno inviscate l’ali sue. + +Barbariccia, con li altri suoi dolente, +quattro ne fé volar da l’altra costa +con tutt’ i raffi, e assai prestamente + +di qua, di là discesero a la posta; +porser li uncini verso li ’mpaniati, +ch’eran già cotti dentro da la crosta. + +E noi lasciammo lor così ’mpacciati. + + + + +Canto XXIII + + +Taciti, soli, sanza compagnia +n’andavam l’un dinanzi e l’altro dopo, +come frati minor vanno per via. + +Vòlt’ era in su la favola d’Isopo +lo mio pensier per la presente rissa, +dov’ el parlò de la rana e del topo; + +ché più non si pareggia ‘mo’ e ‘issa’ +che l’un con l’altro fa, se ben s’accoppia +principio e fine con la mente fissa. + +E come l’un pensier de l’altro scoppia, +così nacque di quello un altro poi, +che la prima paura mi fé doppia. + +Io pensava così: ‘Questi per noi +sono scherniti con danno e con beffa +sì fatta, ch’assai credo che lor nòi. + +Se l’ira sovra ’l mal voler s’aggueffa, +ei ne verranno dietro più crudeli +che ’l cane a quella lievre ch’elli acceffa’. + +Già mi sentia tutti arricciar li peli +de la paura e stava in dietro intento, +quand’ io dissi: «Maestro, se non celi + +te e me tostamente, i’ ho pavento +d’i Malebranche. Noi li avem già dietro; +io li ’magino sì, che già li sento». + +E quei: «S’i’ fossi di piombato vetro, +l’imagine di fuor tua non trarrei +più tosto a me, che quella dentro ’mpetro. + +Pur mo venieno i tuo’ pensier tra ’ miei, +con simile atto e con simile faccia, +sì che d’intrambi un sol consiglio fei. + +S’elli è che sì la destra costa giaccia, +che noi possiam ne l’altra bolgia scendere, +noi fuggirem l’imaginata caccia». + +Già non compié di tal consiglio rendere, +ch’io li vidi venir con l’ali tese +non molto lungi, per volerne prendere. + +Lo duca mio di sùbito mi prese, +come la madre ch’al romore è desta +e vede presso a sé le fiamme accese, + +che prende il figlio e fugge e non s’arresta, +avendo più di lui che di sé cura, +tanto che solo una camiscia vesta; + +e giù dal collo de la ripa dura +supin si diede a la pendente roccia, +che l’un de’ lati a l’altra bolgia tura. + +Non corse mai sì tosto acqua per doccia +a volger ruota di molin terragno, +quand’ ella più verso le pale approccia, + +come ’l maestro mio per quel vivagno, +portandosene me sovra ’l suo petto, +come suo figlio, non come compagno. + +A pena fuoro i piè suoi giunti al letto +del fondo giù, ch’e’ furon in sul colle +sovresso noi; ma non lì era sospetto: + +ché l’alta provedenza che lor volle +porre ministri de la fossa quinta, +poder di partirs’ indi a tutti tolle. + +Là giù trovammo una gente dipinta +che giva intorno assai con lenti passi, +piangendo e nel sembiante stanca e vinta. + +Elli avean cappe con cappucci bassi +dinanzi a li occhi, fatte de la taglia +che in Clugnì per li monaci fassi. + +Di fuor dorate son, sì ch’elli abbaglia; +ma dentro tutte piombo, e gravi tanto, +che Federigo le mettea di paglia. + +Oh in etterno faticoso manto! +Noi ci volgemmo ancor pur a man manca +con loro insieme, intenti al tristo pianto; + +ma per lo peso quella gente stanca +venìa sì pian, che noi eravam nuovi +di compagnia ad ogne mover d’anca. + +Per ch’io al duca mio: «Fa che tu trovi +alcun ch’al fatto o al nome si conosca, +e li occhi, sì andando, intorno movi». + +E un che ’ntese la parola tosca, +di retro a noi gridò: «Tenete i piedi, +voi che correte sì per l’aura fosca! + +Forse ch’avrai da me quel che tu chiedi». +Onde ’l duca si volse e disse: «Aspetta, +e poi secondo il suo passo procedi». + +Ristetti, e vidi due mostrar gran fretta +de l’animo, col viso, d’esser meco; +ma tardavali ’l carco e la via stretta. + +Quando fuor giunti, assai con l’occhio bieco +mi rimiraron sanza far parola; +poi si volsero in sé, e dicean seco: + +«Costui par vivo a l’atto de la gola; +e s’e’ son morti, per qual privilegio +vanno scoperti de la grave stola?». + +Poi disser me: «O Tosco, ch’al collegio +de l’ipocriti tristi se’ venuto, +dir chi tu se’ non avere in dispregio». + +E io a loro: «I’ fui nato e cresciuto +sovra ’l bel fiume d’Arno a la gran villa, +e son col corpo ch’i’ ho sempre avuto. + +Ma voi chi siete, a cui tanto distilla +quant’ i’ veggio dolor giù per le guance? +e che pena è in voi che sì sfavilla?». + +E l’un rispuose a me: «Le cappe rance +son di piombo sì grosse, che li pesi +fan così cigolar le lor bilance. + +Frati godenti fummo, e bolognesi; +io Catalano e questi Loderingo +nomati, e da tua terra insieme presi + +come suole esser tolto un uom solingo, +per conservar sua pace; e fummo tali, +ch’ancor si pare intorno dal Gardingo». + +Io cominciai: «O frati, i vostri mali . . . »; +ma più non dissi, ch’a l’occhio mi corse +un, crucifisso in terra con tre pali. + +Quando mi vide, tutto si distorse, +soffiando ne la barba con sospiri; +e ’l frate Catalan, ch’a ciò s’accorse, + +mi disse: «Quel confitto che tu miri, +consigliò i Farisei che convenia +porre un uom per lo popolo a’ martìri. + +Attraversato è, nudo, ne la via, +come tu vedi, ed è mestier ch’el senta +qualunque passa, come pesa, pria. + +E a tal modo il socero si stenta +in questa fossa, e li altri dal concilio +che fu per li Giudei mala sementa». + +Allor vid’ io maravigliar Virgilio +sovra colui ch’era disteso in croce +tanto vilmente ne l’etterno essilio. + +Poscia drizzò al frate cotal voce: +«Non vi dispiaccia, se vi lece, dirci +s’a la man destra giace alcuna foce + +onde noi amendue possiamo uscirci, +sanza costrigner de li angeli neri +che vegnan d’esto fondo a dipartirci». + +Rispuose adunque: «Più che tu non speri +s’appressa un sasso che da la gran cerchia +si move e varca tutt’ i vallon feri, + +salvo che ’n questo è rotto e nol coperchia; +montar potrete su per la ruina, +che giace in costa e nel fondo soperchia». + +Lo duca stette un poco a testa china; +poi disse: «Mal contava la bisogna +colui che i peccator di qua uncina». + +E ’l frate: «Io udi’ già dire a Bologna +del diavol vizi assai, tra ’ quali udi’ +ch’elli è bugiardo, e padre di menzogna». + +Appresso il duca a gran passi sen gì, +turbato un poco d’ira nel sembiante; +ond’ io da li ’ncarcati mi parti’ + +dietro a le poste de le care piante. + + + + +Canto XXIV + + +In quella parte del giovanetto anno +che ’l sole i crin sotto l’Aquario tempra +e già le notti al mezzo dì sen vanno, + +quando la brina in su la terra assempra +l’imagine di sua sorella bianca, +ma poco dura a la sua penna tempra, + +lo villanello a cui la roba manca, +si leva, e guarda, e vede la campagna +biancheggiar tutta; ond’ ei si batte l’anca, + +ritorna in casa, e qua e là si lagna, +come ’l tapin che non sa che si faccia; +poi riede, e la speranza ringavagna, + +veggendo ’l mondo aver cangiata faccia +in poco d’ora, e prende suo vincastro +e fuor le pecorelle a pascer caccia. + +Così mi fece sbigottir lo mastro +quand’ io li vidi sì turbar la fronte, +e così tosto al mal giunse lo ’mpiastro; + +ché, come noi venimmo al guasto ponte, +lo duca a me si volse con quel piglio +dolce ch’io vidi prima a piè del monte. + +Le braccia aperse, dopo alcun consiglio +eletto seco riguardando prima +ben la ruina, e diedemi di piglio. + +E come quei ch’adopera ed estima, +che sempre par che ’nnanzi si proveggia, +così, levando me sù ver’ la cima + +d’un ronchione, avvisava un’altra scheggia +dicendo: «Sovra quella poi t’aggrappa; +ma tenta pria s’è tal ch’ella ti reggia». + +Non era via da vestito di cappa, +ché noi a pena, ei lieve e io sospinto, +potavam sù montar di chiappa in chiappa. + +E se non fosse che da quel precinto +più che da l’altro era la costa corta, +non so di lui, ma io sarei ben vinto. + +Ma perché Malebolge inver’ la porta +del bassissimo pozzo tutta pende, +lo sito di ciascuna valle porta + +che l’una costa surge e l’altra scende; +noi pur venimmo al fine in su la punta +onde l’ultima pietra si scoscende. + +La lena m’era del polmon sì munta +quand’ io fui sù, ch’i’ non potea più oltre, +anzi m’assisi ne la prima giunta. + +«Omai convien che tu così ti spoltre», +disse ’l maestro; «ché, seggendo in piuma, +in fama non si vien, né sotto coltre; + +sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma, +cotal vestigio in terra di sé lascia, +qual fummo in aere e in acqua la schiuma. + +E però leva sù; vinci l’ambascia +con l’animo che vince ogne battaglia, +se col suo grave corpo non s’accascia. + +Più lunga scala convien che si saglia; +non basta da costoro esser partito. +Se tu mi ’ntendi, or fa sì che ti vaglia». + +Leva’mi allor, mostrandomi fornito +meglio di lena ch’i’ non mi sentia, +e dissi: «Va, ch’i’ son forte e ardito». + +Su per lo scoglio prendemmo la via, +ch’era ronchioso, stretto e malagevole, +ed erto più assai che quel di pria. + +Parlando andava per non parer fievole; +onde una voce uscì de l’altro fosso, +a parole formar disconvenevole. + +Non so che disse, ancor che sovra ’l dosso +fossi de l’arco già che varca quivi; +ma chi parlava ad ire parea mosso. + +Io era vòlto in giù, ma li occhi vivi +non poteano ire al fondo per lo scuro; +per ch’io: «Maestro, fa che tu arrivi + +da l’altro cinghio e dismontiam lo muro; +ché, com’ i’ odo quinci e non intendo, +così giù veggio e neente affiguro». + +«Altra risposta», disse, «non ti rendo +se non lo far; ché la dimanda onesta +si de’ seguir con l’opera tacendo». + +Noi discendemmo il ponte da la testa +dove s’aggiugne con l’ottava ripa, +e poi mi fu la bolgia manifesta: + +e vidivi entro terribile stipa +di serpenti, e di sì diversa mena +che la memoria il sangue ancor mi scipa. + +Più non si vanti Libia con sua rena; +ché se chelidri, iaculi e faree +produce, e cencri con anfisibena, + +né tante pestilenzie né sì ree +mostrò già mai con tutta l’Etïopia +né con ciò che di sopra al Mar Rosso èe. + +Tra questa cruda e tristissima copia +corrëan genti nude e spaventate, +sanza sperar pertugio o elitropia: + +con serpi le man dietro avean legate; +quelle ficcavan per le ren la coda +e ’l capo, ed eran dinanzi aggroppate. + +Ed ecco a un ch’era da nostra proda, +s’avventò un serpente che ’l trafisse +là dove ’l collo a le spalle s’annoda. + +Né O sì tosto mai né I si scrisse, +com’ el s’accese e arse, e cener tutto +convenne che cascando divenisse; + +e poi che fu a terra sì distrutto, +la polver si raccolse per sé stessa +e ’n quel medesmo ritornò di butto. + +Così per li gran savi si confessa +che la fenice more e poi rinasce, +quando al cinquecentesimo anno appressa; + +erba né biado in sua vita non pasce, +ma sol d’incenso lagrime e d’amomo, +e nardo e mirra son l’ultime fasce. + +E qual è quel che cade, e non sa como, +per forza di demon ch’a terra il tira, +o d’altra oppilazion che lega l’omo, + +quando si leva, che ’ntorno si mira +tutto smarrito de la grande angoscia +ch’elli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira: + +tal era ’l peccator levato poscia. +Oh potenza di Dio, quant’ è severa, +che cotai colpi per vendetta croscia! + +Lo duca il domandò poi chi ello era; +per ch’ei rispuose: «Io piovvi di Toscana, +poco tempo è, in questa gola fiera. + +Vita bestial mi piacque e non umana, +sì come a mul ch’i’ fui; son Vanni Fucci +bestia, e Pistoia mi fu degna tana». + +E ïo al duca: «Dilli che non mucci, +e domanda che colpa qua giù ’l pinse; +ch’io ’l vidi uomo di sangue e di crucci». + +E ’l peccator, che ’ntese, non s’infinse, +ma drizzò verso me l’animo e ’l volto, +e di trista vergogna si dipinse; + +poi disse: «Più mi duol che tu m’hai colto +ne la miseria dove tu mi vedi, +che quando fui de l’altra vita tolto. + +Io non posso negar quel che tu chiedi; +in giù son messo tanto perch’ io fui +ladro a la sagrestia d’i belli arredi, + +e falsamente già fu apposto altrui. +Ma perché di tal vista tu non godi, +se mai sarai di fuor da’ luoghi bui, + +apri li orecchi al mio annunzio, e odi. +Pistoia in pria d’i Neri si dimagra; +poi Fiorenza rinova gente e modi. + +Tragge Marte vapor di Val di Magra +ch’è di torbidi nuvoli involuto; +e con tempesta impetüosa e agra + +sovra Campo Picen fia combattuto; +ond’ ei repente spezzerà la nebbia, +sì ch’ogne Bianco ne sarà feruto. + +E detto l’ho perché doler ti debbia!». + + + + +Canto XXV + + +Al fine de le sue parole il ladro +le mani alzò con amendue le fiche, +gridando: «Togli, Dio, ch’a te le squadro!». + +Da indi in qua mi fuor le serpi amiche, +perch’ una li s’avvolse allora al collo, +come dicesse ‘Non vo’ che più diche’; + +e un’altra a le braccia, e rilegollo, +ribadendo sé stessa sì dinanzi, +che non potea con esse dare un crollo. + +Ahi Pistoia, Pistoia, ché non stanzi +d’incenerarti sì che più non duri, +poi che ’n mal fare il seme tuo avanzi? + +Per tutt’ i cerchi de lo ’nferno scuri +non vidi spirto in Dio tanto superbo, +non quel che cadde a Tebe giù da’ muri. + +El si fuggì che non parlò più verbo; +e io vidi un centauro pien di rabbia +venir chiamando: «Ov’ è, ov’ è l’acerbo?». + +Maremma non cred’ io che tante n’abbia, +quante bisce elli avea su per la groppa +infin ove comincia nostra labbia. + +Sovra le spalle, dietro da la coppa, +con l’ali aperte li giacea un draco; +e quello affuoca qualunque s’intoppa. + +Lo mio maestro disse: «Questi è Caco, +che, sotto ’l sasso di monte Aventino, +di sangue fece spesse volte laco. + +Non va co’ suoi fratei per un cammino, +per lo furto che frodolente fece +del grande armento ch’elli ebbe a vicino; + +onde cessar le sue opere biece +sotto la mazza d’Ercule, che forse +gliene diè cento, e non sentì le diece». + +Mentre che sì parlava, ed el trascorse, +e tre spiriti venner sotto noi, +de’ quai né io né ’l duca mio s’accorse, + +se non quando gridar: «Chi siete voi?»; +per che nostra novella si ristette, +e intendemmo pur ad essi poi. + +Io non li conoscea; ma ei seguette, +come suol seguitar per alcun caso, +che l’un nomar un altro convenette, + +dicendo: «Cianfa dove fia rimaso?»; +per ch’io, acciò che ’l duca stesse attento, +mi puosi ’l dito su dal mento al naso. + +Se tu se’ or, lettore, a creder lento +ciò ch’io dirò, non sarà maraviglia, +ché io che ’l vidi, a pena il mi consento. + +Com’ io tenea levate in lor le ciglia, +e un serpente con sei piè si lancia +dinanzi a l’uno, e tutto a lui s’appiglia. + +Co’ piè di mezzo li avvinse la pancia +e con li anterïor le braccia prese; +poi li addentò e l’una e l’altra guancia; + +li diretani a le cosce distese, +e miseli la coda tra ’mbedue +e dietro per le ren sù la ritese. + +Ellera abbarbicata mai non fue +ad alber sì, come l’orribil fiera +per l’altrui membra avviticchiò le sue. + +Poi s’appiccar, come di calda cera +fossero stati, e mischiar lor colore, +né l’un né l’altro già parea quel ch’era: + +come procede innanzi da l’ardore, +per lo papiro suso, un color bruno +che non è nero ancora e ’l bianco more. + +Li altri due ’l riguardavano, e ciascuno +gridava: «Omè, Agnel, come ti muti! +Vedi che già non se’ né due né uno». + +Già eran li due capi un divenuti, +quando n’apparver due figure miste +in una faccia, ov’ eran due perduti. + +Fersi le braccia due di quattro liste; +le cosce con le gambe e ’l ventre e ’l casso +divenner membra che non fuor mai viste. + +Ogne primaio aspetto ivi era casso: +due e nessun l’imagine perversa +parea; e tal sen gio con lento passo. + +Come ’l ramarro sotto la gran fersa +dei dì canicular, cangiando sepe, +folgore par se la via attraversa, + +sì pareva, venendo verso l’epe +de li altri due, un serpentello acceso, +livido e nero come gran di pepe; + +e quella parte onde prima è preso +nostro alimento, a l’un di lor trafisse; +poi cadde giuso innanzi lui disteso. + +Lo trafitto ’l mirò, ma nulla disse; +anzi, co’ piè fermati, sbadigliava +pur come sonno o febbre l’assalisse. + +Elli ’l serpente e quei lui riguardava; +l’un per la piaga e l’altro per la bocca +fummavan forte, e ’l fummo si scontrava. + +Taccia Lucano ormai là dov’ e’ tocca +del misero Sabello e di Nasidio, +e attenda a udir quel ch’or si scocca. + +Taccia di Cadmo e d’Aretusa Ovidio, +ché se quello in serpente e quella in fonte +converte poetando, io non lo ’nvidio; + +ché due nature mai a fronte a fronte +non trasmutò sì ch’amendue le forme +a cambiar lor matera fosser pronte. + +Insieme si rispuosero a tai norme, +che ’l serpente la coda in forca fesse, +e ’l feruto ristrinse insieme l’orme. + +Le gambe con le cosce seco stesse +s’appiccar sì, che ’n poco la giuntura +non facea segno alcun che si paresse. + +Togliea la coda fessa la figura +che si perdeva là, e la sua pelle +si facea molle, e quella di là dura. + +Io vidi intrar le braccia per l’ascelle, +e i due piè de la fiera, ch’eran corti, +tanto allungar quanto accorciavan quelle. + +Poscia li piè di rietro, insieme attorti, +diventaron lo membro che l’uom cela, +e ’l misero del suo n’avea due porti. + +Mentre che ’l fummo l’uno e l’altro vela +di color novo, e genera ’l pel suso +per l’una parte e da l’altra il dipela, + +l’un si levò e l’altro cadde giuso, +non torcendo però le lucerne empie, +sotto le quai ciascun cambiava muso. + +Quel ch’era dritto, il trasse ver’ le tempie, +e di troppa matera ch’in là venne +uscir li orecchi de le gote scempie; + +ciò che non corse in dietro e si ritenne +di quel soverchio, fé naso a la faccia +e le labbra ingrossò quanto convenne. + +Quel che giacëa, il muso innanzi caccia, +e li orecchi ritira per la testa +come face le corna la lumaccia; + +e la lingua, ch’avëa unita e presta +prima a parlar, si fende, e la forcuta +ne l’altro si richiude; e ’l fummo resta. + +L’anima ch’era fiera divenuta, +suffolando si fugge per la valle, +e l’altro dietro a lui parlando sputa. + +Poscia li volse le novelle spalle, +e disse a l’altro: «I’ vo’ che Buoso corra, +com’ ho fatt’ io, carpon per questo calle». + +Così vid’ io la settima zavorra +mutare e trasmutare; e qui mi scusi +la novità se fior la penna abborra. + +E avvegna che li occhi miei confusi +fossero alquanto e l’animo smagato, +non poter quei fuggirsi tanto chiusi, + +ch’i’ non scorgessi ben Puccio Sciancato; +ed era quel che sol, di tre compagni +che venner prima, non era mutato; + +l’altr’ era quel che tu, Gaville, piagni. + + + + +Canto XXVI + + +Godi, Fiorenza, poi che se’ sì grande +che per mare e per terra batti l’ali, +e per lo ’nferno tuo nome si spande! + +Tra li ladron trovai cinque cotali +tuoi cittadini onde mi ven vergogna, +e tu in grande orranza non ne sali. + +Ma se presso al mattin del ver si sogna, +tu sentirai, di qua da picciol tempo, +di quel che Prato, non ch’altri, t’agogna. + +E se già fosse, non saria per tempo. +Così foss’ ei, da che pur esser dee! +ché più mi graverà, com’ più m’attempo. + +Noi ci partimmo, e su per le scalee +che n’avea fatto iborni a scender pria, +rimontò ’l duca mio e trasse mee; + +e proseguendo la solinga via, +tra le schegge e tra ’ rocchi de lo scoglio +lo piè sanza la man non si spedia. + +Allor mi dolsi, e ora mi ridoglio +quando drizzo la mente a ciò ch’io vidi, +e più lo ’ngegno affreno ch’i’ non soglio, + +perché non corra che virtù nol guidi; +sì che, se stella bona o miglior cosa +m’ha dato ’l ben, ch’io stessi nol m’invidi. + +Quante ’l villan ch’al poggio si riposa, +nel tempo che colui che ’l mondo schiara +la faccia sua a noi tien meno ascosa, + +come la mosca cede a la zanzara, +vede lucciole giù per la vallea, +forse colà dov’ e’ vendemmia e ara: + +di tante fiamme tutta risplendea +l’ottava bolgia, sì com’ io m’accorsi +tosto che fui là ’ve ’l fondo parea. + +E qual colui che si vengiò con li orsi +vide ’l carro d’Elia al dipartire, +quando i cavalli al cielo erti levorsi, + +che nol potea sì con li occhi seguire, +ch’el vedesse altro che la fiamma sola, +sì come nuvoletta, in sù salire: + +tal si move ciascuna per la gola +del fosso, ché nessuna mostra ’l furto, +e ogne fiamma un peccatore invola. + +Io stava sovra ’l ponte a veder surto, +sì che s’io non avessi un ronchion preso, +caduto sarei giù sanz’ esser urto. + +E ’l duca che mi vide tanto atteso, +disse: «Dentro dai fuochi son li spirti; +catun si fascia di quel ch’elli è inceso». + +«Maestro mio», rispuos’ io, «per udirti +son io più certo; ma già m’era avviso +che così fosse, e già voleva dirti: + +chi è ’n quel foco che vien sì diviso +di sopra, che par surger de la pira +dov’ Eteòcle col fratel fu miso?». + +Rispuose a me: «Là dentro si martira +Ulisse e Dïomede, e così insieme +a la vendetta vanno come a l’ira; + +e dentro da la lor fiamma si geme +l’agguato del caval che fé la porta +onde uscì de’ Romani il gentil seme. + +Piangevisi entro l’arte per che, morta, +Deïdamìa ancor si duol d’Achille, +e del Palladio pena vi si porta». + +«S’ei posson dentro da quelle faville +parlar», diss’ io, «maestro, assai ten priego +e ripriego, che ’l priego vaglia mille, + +che non mi facci de l’attender niego +fin che la fiamma cornuta qua vegna; +vedi che del disio ver’ lei mi piego!». + +Ed elli a me: «La tua preghiera è degna +di molta loda, e io però l’accetto; +ma fa che la tua lingua si sostegna. + +Lascia parlare a me, ch’i’ ho concetto +ciò che tu vuoi; ch’ei sarebbero schivi, +perch’ e’ fuor greci, forse del tuo detto». + +Poi che la fiamma fu venuta quivi +dove parve al mio duca tempo e loco, +in questa forma lui parlare audivi: + +«O voi che siete due dentro ad un foco, +s’io meritai di voi mentre ch’io vissi, +s’io meritai di voi assai o poco + +quando nel mondo li alti versi scrissi, +non vi movete; ma l’un di voi dica +dove, per lui, perduto a morir gissi». + +Lo maggior corno de la fiamma antica +cominciò a crollarsi mormorando, +pur come quella cui vento affatica; + +indi la cima qua e là menando, +come fosse la lingua che parlasse, +gittò voce di fuori e disse: «Quando + +mi diparti’ da Circe, che sottrasse +me più d’un anno là presso a Gaeta, +prima che sì Enëa la nomasse, + +né dolcezza di figlio, né la pieta +del vecchio padre, né ’l debito amore +lo qual dovea Penelopè far lieta, + +vincer potero dentro a me l’ardore +ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto +e de li vizi umani e del valore; + +ma misi me per l’alto mare aperto +sol con un legno e con quella compagna +picciola da la qual non fui diserto. + +L’un lito e l’altro vidi infin la Spagna, +fin nel Morrocco, e l’isola d’i Sardi, +e l’altre che quel mare intorno bagna. + +Io e ’ compagni eravam vecchi e tardi +quando venimmo a quella foce stretta +dov’ Ercule segnò li suoi riguardi + +acciò che l’uom più oltre non si metta; +da la man destra mi lasciai Sibilia, +da l’altra già m’avea lasciata Setta. + +“O frati”, dissi “che per cento milia +perigli siete giunti a l’occidente, +a questa tanto picciola vigilia + +d’i nostri sensi ch’è del rimanente +non vogliate negar l’esperïenza, +di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente. + +Considerate la vostra semenza: +fatti non foste a viver come bruti, +ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza”. + +Li miei compagni fec’ io sì aguti, +con questa orazion picciola, al cammino, +che a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti; + +e volta nostra poppa nel mattino, +de’ remi facemmo ali al folle volo, +sempre acquistando dal lato mancino. + +Tutte le stelle già de l’altro polo +vedea la notte, e ’l nostro tanto basso, +che non surgëa fuor del marin suolo. + +Cinque volte racceso e tante casso +lo lume era di sotto da la luna, +poi che ’ntrati eravam ne l’alto passo, + +quando n’apparve una montagna, bruna +per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto +quanto veduta non avëa alcuna. + +Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto; +ché de la nova terra un turbo nacque +e percosse del legno il primo canto. + +Tre volte il fé girar con tutte l’acque; +a la quarta levar la poppa in suso +e la prora ire in giù, com’ altrui piacque, + +infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso». + + + + +Canto XXVII + + +Già era dritta in sù la fiamma e queta +per non dir più, e già da noi sen gia +con la licenza del dolce poeta, + +quand’ un’altra, che dietro a lei venìa, +ne fece volger li occhi a la sua cima +per un confuso suon che fuor n’uscia. + +Come ’l bue cicilian che mugghiò prima +col pianto di colui, e ciò fu dritto, +che l’avea temperato con sua lima, + +mugghiava con la voce de l’afflitto, +sì che, con tutto che fosse di rame, +pur el pareva dal dolor trafitto; + +così, per non aver via né forame +dal principio nel foco, in suo linguaggio +si convertïan le parole grame. + +Ma poscia ch’ebber colto lor vïaggio +su per la punta, dandole quel guizzo +che dato avea la lingua in lor passaggio, + +udimmo dire: «O tu a cu’ io drizzo +la voce e che parlavi mo lombardo, +dicendo “Istra ten va, più non t’adizzo”, + +perch’ io sia giunto forse alquanto tardo, +non t’incresca restare a parlar meco; +vedi che non incresce a me, e ardo! + +Se tu pur mo in questo mondo cieco +caduto se’ di quella dolce terra +latina ond’ io mia colpa tutta reco, + +dimmi se Romagnuoli han pace o guerra; +ch’io fui d’i monti là intra Orbino +e ’l giogo di che Tever si diserra». + +Io era in giuso ancora attento e chino, +quando il mio duca mi tentò di costa, +dicendo: «Parla tu; questi è latino». + +E io, ch’avea già pronta la risposta, +sanza indugio a parlare incominciai: +«O anima che se’ là giù nascosta, + +Romagna tua non è, e non fu mai, +sanza guerra ne’ cuor de’ suoi tiranni; +ma ’n palese nessuna or vi lasciai. + +Ravenna sta come stata è molt’ anni: +l’aguglia da Polenta la si cova, +sì che Cervia ricuopre co’ suoi vanni. + +La terra che fé già la lunga prova +e di Franceschi sanguinoso mucchio, +sotto le branche verdi si ritrova. + +E ’l mastin vecchio e ’l nuovo da Verrucchio, +che fecer di Montagna il mal governo, +là dove soglion fan d’i denti succhio. + +Le città di Lamone e di Santerno +conduce il lïoncel dal nido bianco, +che muta parte da la state al verno. + +E quella cu’ il Savio bagna il fianco, +così com’ ella sie’ tra ’l piano e ’l monte, +tra tirannia si vive e stato franco. + +Ora chi se’, ti priego che ne conte; +non esser duro più ch’altri sia stato, +se ’l nome tuo nel mondo tegna fronte». + +Poscia che ’l foco alquanto ebbe rugghiato +al modo suo, l’aguta punta mosse +di qua, di là, e poi diè cotal fiato: + +«S’i’ credesse che mia risposta fosse +a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, +questa fiamma staria sanza più scosse; + +ma però che già mai di questo fondo +non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’ odo il vero, +sanza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. + +Io fui uom d’arme, e poi fui cordigliero, +credendomi, sì cinto, fare ammenda; +e certo il creder mio venìa intero, + +se non fosse il gran prete, a cui mal prenda!, +che mi rimise ne le prime colpe; +e come e quare, voglio che m’intenda. + +Mentre ch’io forma fui d’ossa e di polpe +che la madre mi diè, l’opere mie +non furon leonine, ma di volpe. + +Li accorgimenti e le coperte vie +io seppi tutte, e sì menai lor arte, +ch’al fine de la terra il suono uscie. + +Quando mi vidi giunto in quella parte +di mia etade ove ciascun dovrebbe +calar le vele e raccoglier le sarte, + +ciò che pria mi piacëa, allor m’increbbe, +e pentuto e confesso mi rendei; +ahi miser lasso! e giovato sarebbe. + +Lo principe d’i novi Farisei, +avendo guerra presso a Laterano, +e non con Saracin né con Giudei, + +ché ciascun suo nimico era cristiano, +e nessun era stato a vincer Acri +né mercatante in terra di Soldano, + +né sommo officio né ordini sacri +guardò in sé, né in me quel capestro +che solea fare i suoi cinti più macri. + +Ma come Costantin chiese Silvestro +d’entro Siratti a guerir de la lebbre, +così mi chiese questi per maestro + +a guerir de la sua superba febbre; +domandommi consiglio, e io tacetti +perché le sue parole parver ebbre. + +E’ poi ridisse: “Tuo cuor non sospetti; +finor t’assolvo, e tu m’insegna fare +sì come Penestrino in terra getti. + +Lo ciel poss’ io serrare e diserrare, +come tu sai; però son due le chiavi +che ’l mio antecessor non ebbe care”. + +Allor mi pinser li argomenti gravi +là ’ve ’l tacer mi fu avviso ’l peggio, +e dissi: “Padre, da che tu mi lavi + +di quel peccato ov’ io mo cader deggio, +lunga promessa con l’attender corto +ti farà trïunfar ne l’alto seggio”. + +Francesco venne poi, com’ io fu’ morto, +per me; ma un d’i neri cherubini +li disse: “Non portar: non mi far torto. + +Venir se ne dee giù tra ’ miei meschini +perché diede ’l consiglio frodolente, +dal quale in qua stato li sono a’ crini; + +ch’assolver non si può chi non si pente, +né pentere e volere insieme puossi +per la contradizion che nol consente”. + +Oh me dolente! come mi riscossi +quando mi prese dicendomi: “Forse +tu non pensavi ch’io löico fossi!”. + +A Minòs mi portò; e quelli attorse +otto volte la coda al dosso duro; +e poi che per gran rabbia la si morse, + +disse: “Questi è d’i rei del foco furo”; +per ch’io là dove vedi son perduto, +e sì vestito, andando, mi rancuro». + +Quand’ elli ebbe ’l suo dir così compiuto, +la fiamma dolorando si partio, +torcendo e dibattendo ’l corno aguto. + +Noi passamm’ oltre, e io e ’l duca mio, +su per lo scoglio infino in su l’altr’ arco +che cuopre ’l fosso in che si paga il fio + +a quei che scommettendo acquistan carco. + + + + +Canto XXVIII + + +Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte +dicer del sangue e de le piaghe a pieno +ch’i’ ora vidi, per narrar più volte? + +Ogne lingua per certo verria meno +per lo nostro sermone e per la mente +c’hanno a tanto comprender poco seno. + +S’el s’aunasse ancor tutta la gente +che già, in su la fortunata terra +di Puglia, fu del suo sangue dolente + +per li Troiani e per la lunga guerra +che de l’anella fé sì alte spoglie, +come Livïo scrive, che non erra, + +con quella che sentio di colpi doglie +per contastare a Ruberto Guiscardo; +e l’altra il cui ossame ancor s’accoglie + +a Ceperan, là dove fu bugiardo +ciascun Pugliese, e là da Tagliacozzo, +dove sanz’ arme vinse il vecchio Alardo; + +e qual forato suo membro e qual mozzo +mostrasse, d’aequar sarebbe nulla +il modo de la nona bolgia sozzo. + +Già veggia, per mezzul perdere o lulla, +com’ io vidi un, così non si pertugia, +rotto dal mento infin dove si trulla. + +Tra le gambe pendevan le minugia; +la corata pareva e ’l tristo sacco +che merda fa di quel che si trangugia. + +Mentre che tutto in lui veder m’attacco, +guardommi e con le man s’aperse il petto, +dicendo: «Or vedi com’ io mi dilacco! + +vedi come storpiato è Mäometto! +Dinanzi a me sen va piangendo Alì, +fesso nel volto dal mento al ciuffetto. + +E tutti li altri che tu vedi qui, +seminator di scandalo e di scisma +fuor vivi, e però son fessi così. + +Un diavolo è qua dietro che n’accisma +sì crudelmente, al taglio de la spada +rimettendo ciascun di questa risma, + +quand’ avem volta la dolente strada; +però che le ferite son richiuse +prima ch’altri dinanzi li rivada. + +Ma tu chi se’ che ’n su lo scoglio muse, +forse per indugiar d’ire a la pena +ch’è giudicata in su le tue accuse?». + +«Né morte ’l giunse ancor, né colpa ’l mena», +rispuose ’l mio maestro, «a tormentarlo; +ma per dar lui esperïenza piena, + +a me, che morto son, convien menarlo +per lo ’nferno qua giù di giro in giro; +e quest’ è ver così com’ io ti parlo». + +Più fuor di cento che, quando l’udiro, +s’arrestaron nel fosso a riguardarmi +per maraviglia, oblïando il martiro. + +«Or dì a fra Dolcin dunque che s’armi, +tu che forse vedra’ il sole in breve, +s’ello non vuol qui tosto seguitarmi, + +sì di vivanda, che stretta di neve +non rechi la vittoria al Noarese, +ch’altrimenti acquistar non saria leve». + +Poi che l’un piè per girsene sospese, +Mäometto mi disse esta parola; +indi a partirsi in terra lo distese. + +Un altro, che forata avea la gola +e tronco ’l naso infin sotto le ciglia, +e non avea mai ch’una orecchia sola, + +ristato a riguardar per maraviglia +con li altri, innanzi a li altri aprì la canna, +ch’era di fuor d’ogne parte vermiglia, + +e disse: «O tu cui colpa non condanna +e cu’ io vidi su in terra latina, +se troppa simiglianza non m’inganna, + +rimembriti di Pier da Medicina, +se mai torni a veder lo dolce piano +che da Vercelli a Marcabò dichina. + +E fa saper a’ due miglior da Fano, +a messer Guido e anco ad Angiolello, +che, se l’antiveder qui non è vano, + +gittati saran fuor di lor vasello +e mazzerati presso a la Cattolica +per tradimento d’un tiranno fello. + +Tra l’isola di Cipri e di Maiolica +non vide mai sì gran fallo Nettuno, +non da pirate, non da gente argolica. + +Quel traditor che vede pur con l’uno, +e tien la terra che tale qui meco +vorrebbe di vedere esser digiuno, + +farà venirli a parlamento seco; +poi farà sì, ch’al vento di Focara +non sarà lor mestier voto né preco». + +E io a lui: «Dimostrami e dichiara, +se vuo’ ch’i’ porti sù di te novella, +chi è colui da la veduta amara». + +Allor puose la mano a la mascella +d’un suo compagno e la bocca li aperse, +gridando: «Questi è desso, e non favella. + +Questi, scacciato, il dubitar sommerse +in Cesare, affermando che ’l fornito +sempre con danno l’attender sofferse». + +Oh quanto mi pareva sbigottito +con la lingua tagliata ne la strozza +Curïo, ch’a dir fu così ardito! + +E un ch’avea l’una e l’altra man mozza, +levando i moncherin per l’aura fosca, +sì che ’l sangue facea la faccia sozza, + +gridò: «Ricordera’ti anche del Mosca, +che disse, lasso!, “Capo ha cosa fatta”, +che fu mal seme per la gente tosca». + +E io li aggiunsi: «E morte di tua schiatta»; +per ch’elli, accumulando duol con duolo, +sen gio come persona trista e matta. + +Ma io rimasi a riguardar lo stuolo, +e vidi cosa ch’io avrei paura, +sanza più prova, di contarla solo; + +se non che coscïenza m’assicura, +la buona compagnia che l’uom francheggia +sotto l’asbergo del sentirsi pura. + +Io vidi certo, e ancor par ch’io ’l veggia, +un busto sanza capo andar sì come +andavan li altri de la trista greggia; + +e ’l capo tronco tenea per le chiome, +pesol con mano a guisa di lanterna: +e quel mirava noi e dicea: «Oh me!». + +Di sé facea a sé stesso lucerna, +ed eran due in uno e uno in due; +com’ esser può, quei sa che sì governa. + +Quando diritto al piè del ponte fue, +levò ’l braccio alto con tutta la testa +per appressarne le parole sue, + +che fuoro: «Or vedi la pena molesta, +tu che, spirando, vai veggendo i morti: +vedi s’alcuna è grande come questa. + +E perché tu di me novella porti, +sappi ch’i’ son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli +che diedi al re giovane i ma’ conforti. + +Io feci il padre e ’l figlio in sé ribelli; +Achitofèl non fé più d’Absalone +e di Davìd coi malvagi punzelli. + +Perch’ io parti’ così giunte persone, +partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!, +dal suo principio ch’è in questo troncone. + +Così s’osserva in me lo contrapasso». + + + + +Canto XXIX + + +La molta gente e le diverse piaghe +avean le luci mie sì inebrïate, +che de lo stare a piangere eran vaghe. + +Ma Virgilio mi disse: «Che pur guate? +perché la vista tua pur si soffolge +là giù tra l’ombre triste smozzicate? + +Tu non hai fatto sì a l’altre bolge; +pensa, se tu annoverar le credi, +che miglia ventidue la valle volge. + +E già la luna è sotto i nostri piedi; +lo tempo è poco omai che n’è concesso, +e altro è da veder che tu non vedi». + +«Se tu avessi», rispuos’ io appresso, +«atteso a la cagion per ch’io guardava, +forse m’avresti ancor lo star dimesso». + +Parte sen giva, e io retro li andava, +lo duca, già faccendo la risposta, +e soggiugnendo: «Dentro a quella cava + +dov’ io tenea or li occhi sì a posta, +credo ch’un spirto del mio sangue pianga +la colpa che là giù cotanto costa». + +Allor disse ’l maestro: «Non si franga +lo tuo pensier da qui innanzi sovr’ ello. +Attendi ad altro, ed ei là si rimanga; + +ch’io vidi lui a piè del ponticello +mostrarti e minacciar forte col dito, +e udi’ ’l nominar Geri del Bello. + +Tu eri allor sì del tutto impedito +sovra colui che già tenne Altaforte, +che non guardasti in là, sì fu partito». + +«O duca mio, la vïolenta morte +che non li è vendicata ancor», diss’ io, +«per alcun che de l’onta sia consorte, + +fece lui disdegnoso; ond’ el sen gio +sanza parlarmi, sì com’ ïo estimo: +e in ciò m’ha el fatto a sé più pio». + +Così parlammo infino al loco primo +che de lo scoglio l’altra valle mostra, +se più lume vi fosse, tutto ad imo. + +Quando noi fummo sor l’ultima chiostra +di Malebolge, sì che i suoi conversi +potean parere a la veduta nostra, + +lamenti saettaron me diversi, +che di pietà ferrati avean li strali; +ond’ io li orecchi con le man copersi. + +Qual dolor fora, se de li spedali +di Valdichiana tra ’l luglio e ’l settembre +e di Maremma e di Sardigna i mali + +fossero in una fossa tutti ’nsembre, +tal era quivi, e tal puzzo n’usciva +qual suol venir de le marcite membre. + +Noi discendemmo in su l’ultima riva +del lungo scoglio, pur da man sinistra; +e allor fu la mia vista più viva + +giù ver’ lo fondo, la ’ve la ministra +de l’alto Sire infallibil giustizia +punisce i falsador che qui registra. + +Non credo ch’a veder maggior tristizia +fosse in Egina il popol tutto infermo, +quando fu l’aere sì pien di malizia, + +che li animali, infino al picciol vermo, +cascaron tutti, e poi le genti antiche, +secondo che i poeti hanno per fermo, + +si ristorar di seme di formiche; +ch’era a veder per quella oscura valle +languir li spirti per diverse biche. + +Qual sovra ’l ventre e qual sovra le spalle +l’un de l’altro giacea, e qual carpone +si trasmutava per lo tristo calle. + +Passo passo andavam sanza sermone, +guardando e ascoltando li ammalati, +che non potean levar le lor persone. + +Io vidi due sedere a sé poggiati, +com’ a scaldar si poggia tegghia a tegghia, +dal capo al piè di schianze macolati; + +e non vidi già mai menare stregghia +a ragazzo aspettato dal segnorso, +né a colui che mal volontier vegghia, + +come ciascun menava spesso il morso +de l’unghie sopra sé per la gran rabbia +del pizzicor, che non ha più soccorso; + +e sì traevan giù l’unghie la scabbia, +come coltel di scardova le scaglie +o d’altro pesce che più larghe l’abbia. + +«O tu che con le dita ti dismaglie», +cominciò ’l duca mio a l’un di loro, +«e che fai d’esse talvolta tanaglie, + +dinne s’alcun Latino è tra costoro +che son quinc’ entro, se l’unghia ti basti +etternalmente a cotesto lavoro». + +«Latin siam noi, che tu vedi sì guasti +qui ambedue», rispuose l’un piangendo; +«ma tu chi se’ che di noi dimandasti?». + +E ’l duca disse: «I’ son un che discendo +con questo vivo giù di balzo in balzo, +e di mostrar lo ’nferno a lui intendo». + +Allor si ruppe lo comun rincalzo; +e tremando ciascuno a me si volse +con altri che l’udiron di rimbalzo. + +Lo buon maestro a me tutto s’accolse, +dicendo: «Dì a lor ciò che tu vuoli»; +e io incominciai, poscia ch’ei volse: + +«Se la vostra memoria non s’imboli +nel primo mondo da l’umane menti, +ma s’ella viva sotto molti soli, + +ditemi chi voi siete e di che genti; +la vostra sconcia e fastidiosa pena +di palesarvi a me non vi spaventi». + +«Io fui d’Arezzo, e Albero da Siena», +rispuose l’un, «mi fé mettere al foco; +ma quel per ch’io mori’ qui non mi mena. + +Vero è ch’i’ dissi lui, parlando a gioco: +“I’ mi saprei levar per l’aere a volo”; +e quei, ch’avea vaghezza e senno poco, + +volle ch’i’ li mostrassi l’arte; e solo +perch’ io nol feci Dedalo, mi fece +ardere a tal che l’avea per figliuolo. + +Ma ne l’ultima bolgia de le diece +me per l’alchìmia che nel mondo usai +dannò Minòs, a cui fallar non lece». + +E io dissi al poeta: «Or fu già mai +gente sì vana come la sanese? +Certo non la francesca sì d’assai!». + +Onde l’altro lebbroso, che m’intese, +rispuose al detto mio: «Tra’mene Stricca +che seppe far le temperate spese, + +e Niccolò che la costuma ricca +del garofano prima discoverse +ne l’orto dove tal seme s’appicca; + +e tra’ne la brigata in che disperse +Caccia d’Ascian la vigna e la gran fonda, +e l’Abbagliato suo senno proferse. + +Ma perché sappi chi sì ti seconda +contra i Sanesi, aguzza ver’ me l’occhio, +sì che la faccia mia ben ti risponda: + +sì vedrai ch’io son l’ombra di Capocchio, +che falsai li metalli con l’alchìmia; +e te dee ricordar, se ben t’adocchio, + +com’ io fui di natura buona scimia». + + + + +Canto XXX + + +Nel tempo che Iunone era crucciata +per Semelè contra ’l sangue tebano, +come mostrò una e altra fïata, + +Atamante divenne tanto insano, +che veggendo la moglie con due figli +andar carcata da ciascuna mano, + +gridò: «Tendiam le reti, sì ch’io pigli +la leonessa e ’ leoncini al varco»; +e poi distese i dispietati artigli, + +prendendo l’un ch’avea nome Learco, +e rotollo e percosselo ad un sasso; +e quella s’annegò con l’altro carco. + +E quando la fortuna volse in basso +l’altezza de’ Troian che tutto ardiva, +sì che ’nsieme col regno il re fu casso, + +Ecuba trista, misera e cattiva, +poscia che vide Polissena morta, +e del suo Polidoro in su la riva + +del mar si fu la dolorosa accorta, +forsennata latrò sì come cane; +tanto il dolor le fé la mente torta. + +Ma né di Tebe furie né troiane +si vider mäi in alcun tanto crude, +non punger bestie, nonché membra umane, + +quant’ io vidi in due ombre smorte e nude, +che mordendo correvan di quel modo +che ’l porco quando del porcil si schiude. + +L’una giunse a Capocchio, e in sul nodo +del collo l’assannò, sì che, tirando, +grattar li fece il ventre al fondo sodo. + +E l’Aretin che rimase, tremando +mi disse: «Quel folletto è Gianni Schicchi, +e va rabbioso altrui così conciando». + +«Oh», diss’ io lui, «se l’altro non ti ficchi +li denti a dosso, non ti sia fatica +a dir chi è, pria che di qui si spicchi». + +Ed elli a me: «Quell’ è l’anima antica +di Mirra scellerata, che divenne +al padre, fuor del dritto amore, amica. + +Questa a peccar con esso così venne, +falsificando sé in altrui forma, +come l’altro che là sen va, sostenne, + +per guadagnar la donna de la torma, +falsificare in sé Buoso Donati, +testando e dando al testamento norma». + +E poi che i due rabbiosi fuor passati +sovra cu’ io avea l’occhio tenuto, +rivolsilo a guardar li altri mal nati. + +Io vidi un, fatto a guisa di lëuto, +pur ch’elli avesse avuta l’anguinaia +tronca da l’altro che l’uomo ha forcuto. + +La grave idropesì, che sì dispaia +le membra con l’omor che mal converte, +che ’l viso non risponde a la ventraia, + +faceva lui tener le labbra aperte +come l’etico fa, che per la sete +l’un verso ’l mento e l’altro in sù rinverte. + +«O voi che sanz’ alcuna pena siete, +e non so io perché, nel mondo gramo», +diss’ elli a noi, «guardate e attendete + +a la miseria del maestro Adamo; +io ebbi, vivo, assai di quel ch’i’ volli, +e ora, lasso!, un gocciol d’acqua bramo. + +Li ruscelletti che d’i verdi colli +del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno, +faccendo i lor canali freddi e molli, + +sempre mi stanno innanzi, e non indarno, +ché l’imagine lor vie più m’asciuga +che ’l male ond’ io nel volto mi discarno. + +La rigida giustizia che mi fruga +tragge cagion del loco ov’ io peccai +a metter più li miei sospiri in fuga. + +Ivi è Romena, là dov’ io falsai +la lega suggellata del Batista; +per ch’io il corpo sù arso lasciai. + +Ma s’io vedessi qui l’anima trista +di Guido o d’Alessandro o di lor frate, +per Fonte Branda non darei la vista. + +Dentro c’è l’una già, se l’arrabbiate +ombre che vanno intorno dicon vero; +ma che mi val, c’ho le membra legate? + +S’io fossi pur di tanto ancor leggero +ch’i’ potessi in cent’ anni andare un’oncia, +io sarei messo già per lo sentiero, + +cercando lui tra questa gente sconcia, +con tutto ch’ella volge undici miglia, +e men d’un mezzo di traverso non ci ha. + +Io son per lor tra sì fatta famiglia; +e’ m’indussero a batter li fiorini +ch’avevan tre carati di mondiglia». + +E io a lui: «Chi son li due tapini +che fumman come man bagnate ’l verno, +giacendo stretti a’ tuoi destri confini?». + +«Qui li trovai—e poi volta non dierno—», +rispuose, «quando piovvi in questo greppo, +e non credo che dieno in sempiterno. + +L’una è la falsa ch’accusò Gioseppo; +l’altr’ è ’l falso Sinon greco di Troia: +per febbre aguta gittan tanto leppo». + +E l’un di lor, che si recò a noia +forse d’esser nomato sì oscuro, +col pugno li percosse l’epa croia. + +Quella sonò come fosse un tamburo; +e mastro Adamo li percosse il volto +col braccio suo, che non parve men duro, + +dicendo a lui: «Ancor che mi sia tolto +lo muover per le membra che son gravi, +ho io il braccio a tal mestiere sciolto». + +Ond’ ei rispuose: «Quando tu andavi +al fuoco, non l’avei tu così presto; +ma sì e più l’avei quando coniavi». + +E l’idropico: «Tu di’ ver di questo: +ma tu non fosti sì ver testimonio +là ’ve del ver fosti a Troia richesto». + +«S’io dissi falso, e tu falsasti il conio», +disse Sinon; «e son qui per un fallo, +e tu per più ch’alcun altro demonio!». + +«Ricorditi, spergiuro, del cavallo», +rispuose quel ch’avëa infiata l’epa; +«e sieti reo che tutto il mondo sallo!». + +«E te sia rea la sete onde ti crepa», +disse ’l Greco, «la lingua, e l’acqua marcia +che ’l ventre innanzi a li occhi sì t’assiepa!». + +Allora il monetier: «Così si squarcia +la bocca tua per tuo mal come suole; +ché, s’i’ ho sete e omor mi rinfarcia, + +tu hai l’arsura e ’l capo che ti duole, +e per leccar lo specchio di Narcisso, +non vorresti a ’nvitar molte parole». + +Ad ascoltarli er’ io del tutto fisso, +quando ’l maestro mi disse: «Or pur mira, +che per poco che teco non mi risso!». + +Quand’ io ’l senti’ a me parlar con ira, +volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna, +ch’ancor per la memoria mi si gira. + +Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna, +che sognando desidera sognare, +sì che quel ch’è, come non fosse, agogna, + +tal mi fec’ io, non possendo parlare, +che disïava scusarmi, e scusava +me tuttavia, e nol mi credea fare. + +«Maggior difetto men vergogna lava», +disse ’l maestro, «che ’l tuo non è stato; +però d’ogne trestizia ti disgrava. + +E fa ragion ch’io ti sia sempre allato, +se più avvien che fortuna t’accoglia +dove sien genti in simigliante piato: + +ché voler ciò udire è bassa voglia». + + + + +Canto XXXI + + +Una medesma lingua pria mi morse, +sì che mi tinse l’una e l’altra guancia, +e poi la medicina mi riporse; + +così od’ io che solea far la lancia +d’Achille e del suo padre esser cagione +prima di trista e poi di buona mancia. + +Noi demmo il dosso al misero vallone +su per la ripa che ’l cinge dintorno, +attraversando sanza alcun sermone. + +Quiv’ era men che notte e men che giorno, +sì che ’l viso m’andava innanzi poco; +ma io senti’ sonare un alto corno, + +tanto ch’avrebbe ogne tuon fatto fioco, +che, contra sé la sua via seguitando, +dirizzò li occhi miei tutti ad un loco. + +Dopo la dolorosa rotta, quando +Carlo Magno perdé la santa gesta, +non sonò sì terribilmente Orlando. + +Poco portäi in là volta la testa, +che me parve veder molte alte torri; +ond’ io: «Maestro, dì, che terra è questa?». + +Ed elli a me: «Però che tu trascorri +per le tenebre troppo da la lungi, +avvien che poi nel maginare abborri. + +Tu vedrai ben, se tu là ti congiungi, +quanto ’l senso s’inganna di lontano; +però alquanto più te stesso pungi». + +Poi caramente mi prese per mano +e disse: «Pria che noi siam più avanti, +acciò che ’l fatto men ti paia strano, + +sappi che non son torri, ma giganti, +e son nel pozzo intorno da la ripa +da l’umbilico in giuso tutti quanti». + +Come quando la nebbia si dissipa, +lo sguardo a poco a poco raffigura +ciò che cela ’l vapor che l’aere stipa, + +così forando l’aura grossa e scura, +più e più appressando ver’ la sponda, +fuggiemi errore e cresciemi paura; + +però che, come su la cerchia tonda +Montereggion di torri si corona, +così la proda che ’l pozzo circonda + +torreggiavan di mezza la persona +li orribili giganti, cui minaccia +Giove del cielo ancora quando tuona. + +E io scorgeva già d’alcun la faccia, +le spalle e ’l petto e del ventre gran parte, +e per le coste giù ambo le braccia. + +Natura certo, quando lasciò l’arte +di sì fatti animali, assai fé bene +per tòrre tali essecutori a Marte. + +E s’ella d’elefanti e di balene +non si pente, chi guarda sottilmente, +più giusta e più discreta la ne tene; + +ché dove l’argomento de la mente +s’aggiugne al mal volere e a la possa, +nessun riparo vi può far la gente. + +La faccia sua mi parea lunga e grossa +come la pina di San Pietro a Roma, +e a sua proporzione eran l’altre ossa; + +sì che la ripa, ch’era perizoma +dal mezzo in giù, ne mostrava ben tanto +di sovra, che di giugnere a la chioma + +tre Frison s’averien dato mal vanto; +però ch’i’ ne vedea trenta gran palmi +dal loco in giù dov’ omo affibbia ’l manto. + +«Raphèl maì amècche zabì almi», +cominciò a gridar la fiera bocca, +cui non si convenia più dolci salmi. + +E ’l duca mio ver’ lui: «Anima sciocca, +tienti col corno, e con quel ti disfoga +quand’ ira o altra passïon ti tocca! + +Cércati al collo, e troverai la soga +che ’l tien legato, o anima confusa, +e vedi lui che ’l gran petto ti doga». + +Poi disse a me: «Elli stessi s’accusa; +questi è Nembrotto per lo cui mal coto +pur un linguaggio nel mondo non s’usa. + +Lasciànlo stare e non parliamo a vòto; +ché così è a lui ciascun linguaggio +come ’l suo ad altrui, ch’a nullo è noto». + +Facemmo adunque più lungo vïaggio, +vòlti a sinistra; e al trar d’un balestro +trovammo l’altro assai più fero e maggio. + +A cigner lui qual che fosse ’l maestro, +non so io dir, ma el tenea soccinto +dinanzi l’altro e dietro il braccio destro + +d’una catena che ’l tenea avvinto +dal collo in giù, sì che ’n su lo scoperto +si ravvolgëa infino al giro quinto. + +«Questo superbo volle esser esperto +di sua potenza contra ’l sommo Giove», +disse ’l mio duca, «ond’ elli ha cotal merto. + +Fïalte ha nome, e fece le gran prove +quando i giganti fer paura a’ dèi; +le braccia ch’el menò, già mai non move». + +E io a lui: «S’esser puote, io vorrei +che de lo smisurato Brïareo +esperïenza avesser li occhi mei». + +Ond’ ei rispuose: «Tu vedrai Anteo +presso di qui che parla ed è disciolto, +che ne porrà nel fondo d’ogne reo. + +Quel che tu vuo’ veder, più là è molto +ed è legato e fatto come questo, +salvo che più feroce par nel volto». + +Non fu tremoto già tanto rubesto, +che scotesse una torre così forte, +come Fïalte a scuotersi fu presto. + +Allor temett’ io più che mai la morte, +e non v’era mestier più che la dotta, +s’io non avessi viste le ritorte. + +Noi procedemmo più avante allotta, +e venimmo ad Anteo, che ben cinque alle, +sanza la testa, uscia fuor de la grotta. + +«O tu che ne la fortunata valle +che fece Scipïon di gloria reda, +quand’ Anibàl co’ suoi diede le spalle, + +recasti già mille leon per preda, +e che, se fossi stato a l’alta guerra +de’ tuoi fratelli, ancor par che si creda + +ch’avrebber vinto i figli de la terra: +mettine giù, e non ten vegna schifo, +dove Cocito la freddura serra. + +Non ci fare ire a Tizio né a Tifo: +questi può dar di quel che qui si brama; +però ti china e non torcer lo grifo. + +Ancor ti può nel mondo render fama, +ch’el vive, e lunga vita ancor aspetta +se ’nnanzi tempo grazia a sé nol chiama». + +Così disse ’l maestro; e quelli in fretta +le man distese, e prese ’l duca mio, +ond’ Ercule sentì già grande stretta. + +Virgilio, quando prender si sentio, +disse a me: «Fatti qua, sì ch’io ti prenda»; +poi fece sì ch’un fascio era elli e io. + +Qual pare a riguardar la Carisenda +sotto ’l chinato, quando un nuvol vada +sovr’ essa sì, ched ella incontro penda: + +tal parve Antëo a me che stava a bada +di vederlo chinare, e fu tal ora +ch’i’ avrei voluto ir per altra strada. + +Ma lievemente al fondo che divora +Lucifero con Giuda, ci sposò; +né, sì chinato, lì fece dimora, + +e come albero in nave si levò. + + + + +Canto XXXII + + +S’ïo avessi le rime aspre e chiocce, +come si converrebbe al tristo buco +sovra ’l qual pontan tutte l’altre rocce, + +io premerei di mio concetto il suco +più pienamente; ma perch’ io non l’abbo, +non sanza tema a dicer mi conduco; + +ché non è impresa da pigliare a gabbo +discriver fondo a tutto l’universo, +né da lingua che chiami mamma o babbo. + +Ma quelle donne aiutino il mio verso +ch’aiutaro Anfïone a chiuder Tebe, +sì che dal fatto il dir non sia diverso. + +Oh sovra tutte mal creata plebe +che stai nel loco onde parlare è duro, +mei foste state qui pecore o zebe! + +Come noi fummo giù nel pozzo scuro +sotto i piè del gigante assai più bassi, +e io mirava ancora a l’alto muro, + +dicere udi’mi: «Guarda come passi: +va sì, che tu non calchi con le piante +le teste de’ fratei miseri lassi». + +Per ch’io mi volsi, e vidimi davante +e sotto i piedi un lago che per gelo +avea di vetro e non d’acqua sembiante. + +Non fece al corso suo sì grosso velo +di verno la Danoia in Osterlicchi, +né Tanaï là sotto ’l freddo cielo, + +com’ era quivi; che se Tambernicchi +vi fosse sù caduto, o Pietrapana, +non avria pur da l’orlo fatto cricchi. + +E come a gracidar si sta la rana +col muso fuor de l’acqua, quando sogna +di spigolar sovente la villana, + +livide, insin là dove appar vergogna +eran l’ombre dolenti ne la ghiaccia, +mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna. + +Ognuna in giù tenea volta la faccia; +da bocca il freddo, e da li occhi il cor tristo +tra lor testimonianza si procaccia. + +Quand’ io m’ebbi dintorno alquanto visto, +volsimi a’ piedi, e vidi due sì stretti, +che ’l pel del capo avieno insieme misto. + +«Ditemi, voi che sì strignete i petti», +diss’ io, «chi siete?». E quei piegaro i colli; +e poi ch’ebber li visi a me eretti, + +li occhi lor, ch’eran pria pur dentro molli, +gocciar su per le labbra, e ’l gelo strinse +le lagrime tra essi e riserrolli. + +Con legno legno spranga mai non cinse +forte così; ond’ ei come due becchi +cozzaro insieme, tanta ira li vinse. + +E un ch’avea perduti ambo li orecchi +per la freddura, pur col viso in giùe, +disse: «Perché cotanto in noi ti specchi? + +Se vuoi saper chi son cotesti due, +la valle onde Bisenzo si dichina +del padre loro Alberto e di lor fue. + +D’un corpo usciro; e tutta la Caina +potrai cercare, e non troverai ombra +degna più d’esser fitta in gelatina: + +non quelli a cui fu rotto il petto e l’ombra +con esso un colpo per la man d’Artù; +non Focaccia; non questi che m’ingombra + +col capo sì, ch’i’ non veggio oltre più, +e fu nomato Sassol Mascheroni; +se tosco se’, ben sai omai chi fu. + +E perché non mi metti in più sermoni, +sappi ch’i’ fu’ il Camiscion de’ Pazzi; +e aspetto Carlin che mi scagioni». + +Poscia vid’ io mille visi cagnazzi +fatti per freddo; onde mi vien riprezzo, +e verrà sempre, de’ gelati guazzi. + +E mentre ch’andavamo inver’ lo mezzo +al quale ogne gravezza si rauna, +e io tremava ne l’etterno rezzo; + +se voler fu o destino o fortuna, +non so; ma, passeggiando tra le teste, +forte percossi ’l piè nel viso ad una. + +Piangendo mi sgridò: «Perché mi peste? +se tu non vieni a crescer la vendetta +di Montaperti, perché mi moleste?». + +E io: «Maestro mio, or qui m’aspetta, +sì ch’io esca d’un dubbio per costui; +poi mi farai, quantunque vorrai, fretta». + +Lo duca stette, e io dissi a colui +che bestemmiava duramente ancora: +«Qual se’ tu che così rampogni altrui?». + +«Or tu chi se’ che vai per l’Antenora, +percotendo», rispuose, «altrui le gote, +sì che, se fossi vivo, troppo fora?». + +«Vivo son io, e caro esser ti puote», +fu mia risposta, «se dimandi fama, +ch’io metta il nome tuo tra l’altre note». + +Ed elli a me: «Del contrario ho io brama. +Lèvati quinci e non mi dar più lagna, +ché mal sai lusingar per questa lama!». + +Allor lo presi per la cuticagna +e dissi: «El converrà che tu ti nomi, +o che capel qui sù non ti rimagna». + +Ond’ elli a me: «Perché tu mi dischiomi, +né ti dirò ch’io sia, né mosterrolti, +se mille fiate in sul capo mi tomi». + +Io avea già i capelli in mano avvolti, +e tratti glien’ avea più d’una ciocca, +latrando lui con li occhi in giù raccolti, + +quando un altro gridò: «Che hai tu, Bocca? +non ti basta sonar con le mascelle, +se tu non latri? qual diavol ti tocca?». + +«Omai», diss’ io, «non vo’ che più favelle, +malvagio traditor; ch’a la tua onta +io porterò di te vere novelle». + +«Va via», rispuose, «e ciò che tu vuoi conta; +ma non tacer, se tu di qua entro eschi, +di quel ch’ebbe or così la lingua pronta. + +El piange qui l’argento de’ Franceschi: +“Io vidi”, potrai dir, “quel da Duera +là dove i peccatori stanno freschi”. + +Se fossi domandato “Altri chi v’era?”, +tu hai dallato quel di Beccheria +di cui segò Fiorenza la gorgiera. + +Gianni de’ Soldanier credo che sia +più là con Ganellone e Tebaldello, +ch’aprì Faenza quando si dormia». + +Noi eravam partiti già da ello, +ch’io vidi due ghiacciati in una buca, +sì che l’un capo a l’altro era cappello; + +e come ’l pan per fame si manduca, +così ’l sovran li denti a l’altro pose +là ’ve ’l cervel s’aggiugne con la nuca: + +non altrimenti Tidëo si rose +le tempie a Menalippo per disdegno, +che quei faceva il teschio e l’altre cose. + +«O tu che mostri per sì bestial segno +odio sovra colui che tu ti mangi, +dimmi ’l perché», diss’ io, «per tal convegno, + +che se tu a ragion di lui ti piangi, +sappiendo chi voi siete e la sua pecca, +nel mondo suso ancora io te ne cangi, + +se quella con ch’io parlo non si secca». + + + + +Canto XXXIII + + +La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto +quel peccator, forbendola a’ capelli +del capo ch’elli avea di retro guasto. + +Poi cominciò: «Tu vuo’ ch’io rinovelli +disperato dolor che ’l cor mi preme +già pur pensando, pria ch’io ne favelli. + +Ma se le mie parole esser dien seme +che frutti infamia al traditor ch’i’ rodo, +parlar e lagrimar vedrai insieme. + +Io non so chi tu se’ né per che modo +venuto se’ qua giù; ma fiorentino +mi sembri veramente quand’ io t’odo. + +Tu dei saper ch’i’ fui conte Ugolino, +e questi è l’arcivescovo Ruggieri: +or ti dirò perché i son tal vicino. + +Che per l’effetto de’ suo’ mai pensieri, +fidandomi di lui, io fossi preso +e poscia morto, dir non è mestieri; + +però quel che non puoi avere inteso, +cioè come la morte mia fu cruda, +udirai, e saprai s’e’ m’ha offeso. + +Breve pertugio dentro da la Muda, +la qual per me ha ’l titol de la fame, +e che conviene ancor ch’altrui si chiuda, + +m’avea mostrato per lo suo forame +più lune già, quand’ io feci ’l mal sonno +che del futuro mi squarciò ’l velame. + +Questi pareva a me maestro e donno, +cacciando il lupo e ’ lupicini al monte +per che i Pisan veder Lucca non ponno. + +Con cagne magre, studïose e conte +Gualandi con Sismondi e con Lanfranchi +s’avea messi dinanzi da la fronte. + +In picciol corso mi parieno stanchi +lo padre e ’ figli, e con l’agute scane +mi parea lor veder fender li fianchi. + +Quando fui desto innanzi la dimane, +pianger senti’ fra ’l sonno i miei figliuoli +ch’eran con meco, e dimandar del pane. + +Ben se’ crudel, se tu già non ti duoli +pensando ciò che ’l mio cor s’annunziava; +e se non piangi, di che pianger suoli? + +Già eran desti, e l’ora s’appressava +che ’l cibo ne solëa essere addotto, +e per suo sogno ciascun dubitava; + +e io senti’ chiavar l’uscio di sotto +a l’orribile torre; ond’ io guardai +nel viso a’ mie’ figliuoi sanza far motto. + +Io non piangëa, sì dentro impetrai: +piangevan elli; e Anselmuccio mio +disse: “Tu guardi sì, padre! che hai?”. + +Perciò non lagrimai né rispuos’ io +tutto quel giorno né la notte appresso, +infin che l’altro sol nel mondo uscìo. + +Come un poco di raggio si fu messo +nel doloroso carcere, e io scorsi +per quattro visi il mio aspetto stesso, + +ambo le man per lo dolor mi morsi; +ed ei, pensando ch’io ’l fessi per voglia +di manicar, di sùbito levorsi + +e disser: “Padre, assai ci fia men doglia +se tu mangi di noi: tu ne vestisti +queste misere carni, e tu le spoglia”. + +Queta’mi allor per non farli più tristi; +lo dì e l’altro stemmo tutti muti; +ahi dura terra, perché non t’apristi? + +Poscia che fummo al quarto dì venuti, +Gaddo mi si gittò disteso a’ piedi, +dicendo: “Padre mio, ché non m’aiuti?”. + +Quivi morì; e come tu mi vedi, +vid’ io cascar li tre ad uno ad uno +tra ’l quinto dì e ’l sesto; ond’ io mi diedi, + +già cieco, a brancolar sovra ciascuno, +e due dì li chiamai, poi che fur morti. +Poscia, più che ’l dolor, poté ’l digiuno». + +Quand’ ebbe detto ciò, con li occhi torti +riprese ’l teschio misero co’ denti, +che furo a l’osso, come d’un can, forti. + +Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti +del bel paese là dove ’l sì suona, +poi che i vicini a te punir son lenti, + +muovasi la Capraia e la Gorgona, +e faccian siepe ad Arno in su la foce, +sì ch’elli annieghi in te ogne persona! + +Che se ’l conte Ugolino aveva voce +d’aver tradita te de le castella, +non dovei tu i figliuoi porre a tal croce. + +Innocenti facea l’età novella, +novella Tebe, Uguiccione e ’l Brigata +e li altri due che ’l canto suso appella. + +Noi passammo oltre, là ’ve la gelata +ruvidamente un’altra gente fascia, +non volta in giù, ma tutta riversata. + +Lo pianto stesso lì pianger non lascia, +e ’l duol che truova in su li occhi rintoppo, +si volge in entro a far crescer l’ambascia; + +ché le lagrime prime fanno groppo, +e sì come visiere di cristallo, +rïempion sotto ’l ciglio tutto il coppo. + +E avvegna che, sì come d’un callo, +per la freddura ciascun sentimento +cessato avesse del mio viso stallo, + +già mi parea sentire alquanto vento; +per ch’io: «Maestro mio, questo chi move? +non è qua giù ogne vapore spento?». + +Ond’ elli a me: «Avaccio sarai dove +di ciò ti farà l’occhio la risposta, +veggendo la cagion che ’l fiato piove». + +E un de’ tristi de la fredda crosta +gridò a noi: «O anime crudeli +tanto che data v’è l’ultima posta, + +levatemi dal viso i duri veli, +sì ch’ïo sfoghi ’l duol che ’l cor m’impregna, +un poco, pria che ’l pianto si raggeli». + +Per ch’io a lui: «Se vuo’ ch’i’ ti sovvegna, +dimmi chi se’, e s’io non ti disbrigo, +al fondo de la ghiaccia ir mi convegna». + +Rispuose adunque: «I’ son frate Alberigo; +i’ son quel da le frutta del mal orto, +che qui riprendo dattero per figo». + +«Oh», diss’ io lui, «or se’ tu ancor morto?». +Ed elli a me: «Come ’l mio corpo stea +nel mondo sù, nulla scïenza porto. + +Cotal vantaggio ha questa Tolomea, +che spesse volte l’anima ci cade +innanzi ch’Atropòs mossa le dea. + +E perché tu più volentier mi rade +le ’nvetrïate lagrime dal volto, +sappie che, tosto che l’anima trade + +come fec’ ïo, il corpo suo l’è tolto +da un demonio, che poscia il governa +mentre che ’l tempo suo tutto sia vòlto. + +Ella ruina in sì fatta cisterna; +e forse pare ancor lo corpo suso +de l’ombra che di qua dietro mi verna. + +Tu ’l dei saper, se tu vien pur mo giuso: +elli è ser Branca Doria, e son più anni +poscia passati ch’el fu sì racchiuso». + +«Io credo», diss’ io lui, «che tu m’inganni; +ché Branca Doria non morì unquanche, +e mangia e bee e dorme e veste panni». + +«Nel fosso sù», diss’ el, «de’ Malebranche, +là dove bolle la tenace pece, +non era ancora giunto Michel Zanche, + +che questi lasciò il diavolo in sua vece +nel corpo suo, ed un suo prossimano +che ’l tradimento insieme con lui fece. + +Ma distendi oggimai in qua la mano; +aprimi li occhi». E io non gliel’ apersi; +e cortesia fu lui esser villano. + +Ahi Genovesi, uomini diversi +d’ogne costume e pien d’ogne magagna, +perché non siete voi del mondo spersi? + +Ché col peggiore spirto di Romagna +trovai di voi un tal, che per sua opra +in anima in Cocito già si bagna, + +e in corpo par vivo ancor di sopra. + + + + +Canto XXXIV + + +«Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni +verso di noi; però dinanzi mira», +disse ’l maestro mio, «se tu ’l discerni». + +Come quando una grossa nebbia spira, +o quando l’emisperio nostro annotta, +par di lungi un molin che ’l vento gira, + +veder mi parve un tal dificio allotta; +poi per lo vento mi ristrinsi retro +al duca mio, ché non lì era altra grotta. + +Già era, e con paura il metto in metro, +là dove l’ombre tutte eran coperte, +e trasparien come festuca in vetro. + +Altre sono a giacere; altre stanno erte, +quella col capo e quella con le piante; +altra, com’ arco, il volto a’ piè rinverte. + +Quando noi fummo fatti tanto avante, +ch’al mio maestro piacque di mostrarmi +la creatura ch’ebbe il bel sembiante, + +d’innanzi mi si tolse e fé restarmi, +«Ecco Dite», dicendo, «ed ecco il loco +ove convien che di fortezza t’armi». + +Com’ io divenni allor gelato e fioco, +nol dimandar, lettor, ch’i’ non lo scrivo, +però ch’ogne parlar sarebbe poco. + +Io non mori’ e non rimasi vivo; +pensa oggimai per te, s’hai fior d’ingegno, +qual io divenni, d’uno e d’altro privo. + +Lo ’mperador del doloroso regno +da mezzo ’l petto uscia fuor de la ghiaccia; +e più con un gigante io mi convegno, + +che i giganti non fan con le sue braccia: +vedi oggimai quant’ esser dee quel tutto +ch’a così fatta parte si confaccia. + +S’el fu sì bel com’ elli è ora brutto, +e contra ’l suo fattore alzò le ciglia, +ben dee da lui procedere ogne lutto. + +Oh quanto parve a me gran maraviglia +quand’ io vidi tre facce a la sua testa! +L’una dinanzi, e quella era vermiglia; + +l’altr’ eran due, che s’aggiugnieno a questa +sovresso ’l mezzo di ciascuna spalla, +e sé giugnieno al loco de la cresta: + +e la destra parea tra bianca e gialla; +la sinistra a vedere era tal, quali +vegnon di là onde ’l Nilo s’avvalla. + +Sotto ciascuna uscivan due grand’ ali, +quanto si convenia a tanto uccello: +vele di mar non vid’ io mai cotali. + +Non avean penne, ma di vispistrello +era lor modo; e quelle svolazzava, +sì che tre venti si movean da ello: + +quindi Cocito tutto s’aggelava. +Con sei occhi piangëa, e per tre menti +gocciava ’l pianto e sanguinosa bava. + +Da ogne bocca dirompea co’ denti +un peccatore, a guisa di maciulla, +sì che tre ne facea così dolenti. + +A quel dinanzi il mordere era nulla +verso ’l graffiar, che talvolta la schiena +rimanea de la pelle tutta brulla. + +«Quell’ anima là sù c’ha maggior pena», +disse ’l maestro, «è Giuda Scarïotto, +che ’l capo ha dentro e fuor le gambe mena. + +De li altri due c’hanno il capo di sotto, +quel che pende dal nero ceffo è Bruto: +vedi come si storce, e non fa motto!; + +e l’altro è Cassio, che par sì membruto. +Ma la notte risurge, e oramai +è da partir, ché tutto avem veduto». + +Com’ a lui piacque, il collo li avvinghiai; +ed el prese di tempo e loco poste, +e quando l’ali fuoro aperte assai, + +appigliò sé a le vellute coste; +di vello in vello giù discese poscia +tra ’l folto pelo e le gelate croste. + +Quando noi fummo là dove la coscia +si volge, a punto in sul grosso de l’anche, +lo duca, con fatica e con angoscia, + +volse la testa ov’ elli avea le zanche, +e aggrappossi al pel com’ om che sale, +sì che ’n inferno i’ credea tornar anche. + +«Attienti ben, ché per cotali scale», +disse ’l maestro, ansando com’ uom lasso, +«conviensi dipartir da tanto male». + +Poi uscì fuor per lo fóro d’un sasso +e puose me in su l’orlo a sedere; +appresso porse a me l’accorto passo. + +Io levai li occhi e credetti vedere +Lucifero com’ io l’avea lasciato, +e vidili le gambe in sù tenere; + +e s’io divenni allora travagliato, +la gente grossa il pensi, che non vede +qual è quel punto ch’io avea passato. + +«Lèvati sù», disse ’l maestro, «in piede: +la via è lunga e ’l cammino è malvagio, +e già il sole a mezza terza riede». + +Non era camminata di palagio +là ’v’ eravam, ma natural burella +ch’avea mal suolo e di lume disagio. + +«Prima ch’io de l’abisso mi divella, +maestro mio», diss’ io quando fui dritto, +«a trarmi d’erro un poco mi favella: + +ov’ è la ghiaccia? e questi com’ è fitto +sì sottosopra? e come, in sì poc’ ora, +da sera a mane ha fatto il sol tragitto?». + +Ed elli a me: «Tu imagini ancora +d’esser di là dal centro, ov’ io mi presi +al pel del vermo reo che ’l mondo fóra. + +Di là fosti cotanto quant’ io scesi; +quand’ io mi volsi, tu passasti ’l punto +al qual si traggon d’ogne parte i pesi. + +E se’ or sotto l’emisperio giunto +ch’è contraposto a quel che la gran secca +coverchia, e sotto ’l cui colmo consunto + +fu l’uom che nacque e visse sanza pecca; +tu haï i piedi in su picciola spera +che l’altra faccia fa de la Giudecca. + +Qui è da man, quando di là è sera; +e questi, che ne fé scala col pelo, +fitto è ancora sì come prim’ era. + +Da questa parte cadde giù dal cielo; +e la terra, che pria di qua si sporse, +per paura di lui fé del mar velo, + +e venne a l’emisperio nostro; e forse +per fuggir lui lasciò qui loco vòto +quella ch’appar di qua, e sù ricorse». + +Luogo è là giù da Belzebù remoto +tanto quanto la tomba si distende, +che non per vista, ma per suono è noto + +d’un ruscelletto che quivi discende +per la buca d’un sasso, ch’elli ha roso, +col corso ch’elli avvolge, e poco pende. + +Lo duca e io per quel cammino ascoso +intrammo a ritornar nel chiaro mondo; +e sanza cura aver d’alcun riposo, + +salimmo sù, el primo e io secondo, +tanto ch’i’ vidi de le cose belle +che porta ’l ciel, per un pertugio tondo. + +E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1009 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1010-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1010-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1f9d0f08 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1010-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6595 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1010 *** + + LA DIVINA COMMEDIA + di Dante Alighieri + + + + + + PURGATORIO + + + + + Purgatorio • Canto I + + + Per correr miglior acque alza le vele + omai la navicella del mio ingegno, + che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele; + + e canterò di quel secondo regno + dove l’umano spirito si purga + e di salire al ciel diventa degno. + + Ma qui la morta poesì resurga, + o sante Muse, poi che vostro sono; + e qui Calïopè alquanto surga, + + seguitando il mio canto con quel suono + di cui le Piche misere sentiro + lo colpo tal, che disperar perdono. + + Dolce color d’orïental zaffiro, + che s’accoglieva nel sereno aspetto + del mezzo, puro infino al primo giro, + + a li occhi miei ricominciò diletto, + tosto ch’io usci’ fuor de l’aura morta + che m’avea contristati li occhi e ’l petto. + + Lo bel pianeto che d’amar conforta + faceva tutto rider l’orïente, + velando i Pesci ch’erano in sua scorta. + + I’ mi volsi a man destra, e puosi mente + a l’altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle + non viste mai fuor ch’a la prima gente. + + Goder pareva ’l ciel di lor fiammelle: + oh settentrïonal vedovo sito, + poi che privato se’ di mirar quelle! + + Com’ io da loro sguardo fui partito, + un poco me volgendo a l ’altro polo, + là onde ’l Carro già era sparito, + + vidi presso di me un veglio solo, + degno di tanta reverenza in vista, + che più non dee a padre alcun figliuolo. + + Lunga la barba e di pel bianco mista + portava, a’ suoi capelli simigliante, + de’ quai cadeva al petto doppia lista. + + Li raggi de le quattro luci sante + fregiavan sì la sua faccia di lume, + ch’i’ ’l vedea come ’l sol fosse davante. + + «Chi siete voi che contro al cieco fiume + fuggita avete la pregione etterna?», + diss’ el, movendo quelle oneste piume. + + «Chi v’ha guidati, o che vi fu lucerna, + uscendo fuor de la profonda notte + che sempre nera fa la valle inferna? + + Son le leggi d’abisso così rotte? + o è mutato in ciel novo consiglio, + che, dannati, venite a le mie grotte?». + + Lo duca mio allor mi diè di piglio, + e con parole e con mani e con cenni + reverenti mi fé le gambe e ’l ciglio. + + Poscia rispuose lui: «Da me non venni: + donna scese del ciel, per li cui prieghi + de la mia compagnia costui sovvenni. + + Ma da ch’è tuo voler che più si spieghi + di nostra condizion com’ ell’ è vera, + esser non puote il mio che a te si nieghi. + + Questi non vide mai l’ultima sera; + ma per la sua follia le fu sì presso, + che molto poco tempo a volger era. + + Sì com’ io dissi, fui mandato ad esso + per lui campare; e non lì era altra via + che questa per la quale i’ mi son messo. + + Mostrata ho lui tutta la gente ria; + e ora intendo mostrar quelli spirti + che purgan sé sotto la tua balìa. + + Com’ io l’ho tratto, saria lungo a dirti; + de l’alto scende virtù che m’aiuta + conducerlo a vederti e a udirti. + + Or ti piaccia gradir la sua venuta: + libertà va cercando, ch’è sì cara, + come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta. + + Tu ’l sai, ché non ti fu per lei amara + in Utica la morte, ove lasciasti + la vesta ch’al gran dì sarà sì chiara. + + Non son li editti etterni per noi guasti, + ché questi vive e Minòs me non lega; + ma son del cerchio ove son li occhi casti + + di Marzia tua, che ’n vista ancor ti priega, + o santo petto, che per tua la tegni: + per lo suo amore adunque a noi ti piega. + + Lasciane andar per li tuoi sette regni; + grazie riporterò di te a lei, + se d’esser mentovato là giù degni». + + «Marzïa piacque tanto a li occhi miei + mentre ch’i’ fu’ di là», diss’ elli allora, + «che quante grazie volse da me, fei. + + Or che di là dal mal fiume dimora, + più muover non mi può, per quella legge + che fatta fu quando me n’usci’ fora. + + Ma se donna del ciel ti move e regge, + come tu di’, non c’è mestier lusinghe: + bastisi ben che per lei mi richegge. + + Va dunque, e fa che tu costui ricinghe + d’un giunco schietto e che li lavi ’l viso, + sì ch’ogne sucidume quindi stinghe; + + ché non si converria, l’occhio sorpriso + d’alcuna nebbia, andar dinanzi al primo + ministro, ch’è di quei di paradiso. + + Questa isoletta intorno ad imo ad imo, + là giù colà dove la batte l’onda, + porta di giunchi sovra ’l molle limo: + + null’ altra pianta che facesse fronda + o indurasse, vi puote aver vita, + però ch’a le percosse non seconda. + + Poscia non sia di qua vostra reddita; + lo sol vi mosterrà, che surge omai, + prendere il monte a più lieve salita». + + Così sparì; e io sù mi levai + sanza parlare, e tutto mi ritrassi + al duca mio, e li occhi a lui drizzai. + + El cominciò: «Figliuol, segui i miei passi: + volgianci in dietro, ché di qua dichina + questa pianura a’ suoi termini bassi». + + L’alba vinceva l’ora mattutina + che fuggia innanzi, sì che di lontano + conobbi il tremolar de la marina. + + Noi andavam per lo solingo piano + com’ om che torna a la perduta strada, + che ’nfino ad essa li pare ire in vano. + + Quando noi fummo là ’ve la rugiada + pugna col sole, per essere in parte + dove, ad orezza, poco si dirada, + + ambo le mani in su l’erbetta sparte + soavemente ’l mio maestro pose: + ond’ io, che fui accorto di sua arte, + + porsi ver’ lui le guance lagrimose; + ivi mi fece tutto discoverto + quel color che l’inferno mi nascose. + + Venimmo poi in sul lito diserto, + che mai non vide navicar sue acque + omo, che di tornar sia poscia esperto. + + Quivi mi cinse sì com’ altrui piacque: + oh maraviglia! ché qual elli scelse + l’umile pianta, cotal si rinacque + + subitamente là onde l’avelse. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto II + + + Già era ’l sole a l’orizzonte giunto + lo cui meridïan cerchio coverchia + Ierusalèm col suo più alto punto; + + e la notte, che opposita a lui cerchia, + uscia di Gange fuor con le Bilance, + che le caggion di man quando soverchia; + + sì che le bianche e le vermiglie guance, + là dov’ i’ era, de la bella Aurora + per troppa etate divenivan rance. + + Noi eravam lunghesso mare ancora, + come gente che pensa a suo cammino, + che va col cuore e col corpo dimora. + + Ed ecco, qual, sorpreso dal mattino, + per li grossi vapor Marte rosseggia + giù nel ponente sovra ’l suol marino, + + cotal m’apparve, s’io ancor lo veggia, + un lume per lo mar venir sì ratto, + che ’l muover suo nessun volar pareggia. + + Dal qual com’ io un poco ebbi ritratto + l’occhio per domandar lo duca mio, + rividil più lucente e maggior fatto. + + Poi d’ogne lato ad esso m’appario + un non sapeva che bianco, e di sotto + a poco a poco un altro a lui uscìo. + + Lo mio maestro ancor non facea motto, + mentre che i primi bianchi apparver ali; + allor che ben conobbe il galeotto, + + gridò: «Fa, fa che le ginocchia cali. + Ecco l’angel di Dio: piega le mani; + omai vedrai di sì fatti officiali. + + Vedi che sdegna li argomenti umani, + sì che remo non vuol, né altro velo + che l’ali sue, tra liti sì lontani. + + Vedi come l’ha dritte verso ’l cielo, + trattando l’aere con l’etterne penne, + che non si mutan come mortal pelo». + + Poi, come più e più verso noi venne + l’uccel divino, più chiaro appariva: + per che l’occhio da presso nol sostenne, + + ma chinail giuso; e quei sen venne a riva + con un vasello snelletto e leggero, + tanto che l’acqua nulla ne ’nghiottiva. + + Da poppa stava il celestial nocchiero, + tal che faria beato pur descripto; + e più di cento spirti entro sediero. + + ‘In exitu Isräel de Aegypto’ + cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce + con quanto di quel salmo è poscia scripto. + + Poi fece il segno lor di santa croce; + ond’ ei si gittar tutti in su la piaggia: + ed el sen gì, come venne, veloce. + + La turba che rimase lì, selvaggia + parea del loco, rimirando intorno + come colui che nove cose assaggia. + + Da tutte parti saettava il giorno + lo sol, ch’avea con le saette conte + di mezzo ’l ciel cacciato Capricorno, + + quando la nova gente alzò la fronte + ver’ noi, dicendo a noi: «Se voi sapete, + mostratene la via di gire al monte». + + E Virgilio rispuose: «Voi credete + forse che siamo esperti d’esto loco; + ma noi siam peregrin come voi siete. + + Dianzi venimmo, innanzi a voi un poco, + per altra via, che fu sì aspra e forte, + che lo salire omai ne parrà gioco». + + L’anime, che si fuor di me accorte, + per lo spirare, ch’i’ era ancor vivo, + maravigliando diventaro smorte. + + E come a messagger che porta ulivo + tragge la gente per udir novelle, + e di calcar nessun si mostra schivo, + + così al viso mio s’affisar quelle + anime fortunate tutte quante, + quasi oblïando d’ire a farsi belle. + + Io vidi una di lor trarresi avante + per abbracciarmi con sì grande affetto, + che mosse me a far lo somigliante. + + Ohi ombre vane, fuor che ne l’aspetto! + tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi, + e tante mi tornai con esse al petto. + + Di maraviglia, credo, mi dipinsi; + per che l’ombra sorrise e si ritrasse, + e io, seguendo lei, oltre mi pinsi. + + Soavemente disse ch’io posasse; + allor conobbi chi era, e pregai + che, per parlarmi, un poco s’arrestasse. + + Rispuosemi: «Così com’ io t’amai + nel mortal corpo, così t’amo sciolta: + però m’arresto; ma tu perché vai?». + + «Casella mio, per tornar altra volta + là dov’ io son, fo io questo vïaggio», + diss’ io; «ma a te com’ è tanta ora tolta?». + + Ed elli a me: «Nessun m’è fatto oltraggio, + se quei che leva quando e cui li piace, + più volte m’ha negato esto passaggio; + + ché di giusto voler lo suo si face: + veramente da tre mesi elli ha tolto + chi ha voluto intrar, con tutta pace. + + Ond’ io, ch’era ora a la marina vòlto + dove l’acqua di Tevero s’insala, + benignamente fu’ da lui ricolto. + + A quella foce ha elli or dritta l’ala, + però che sempre quivi si ricoglie + qual verso Acheronte non si cala». + + E io: «Se nuova legge non ti toglie + memoria o uso a l’amoroso canto + che mi solea quetar tutte mie doglie, + + di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto + l’anima mia, che, con la sua persona + venendo qui, è affannata tanto!». + + ‘Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona’ + cominciò elli allor sì dolcemente, + che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona. + + Lo mio maestro e io e quella gente + ch’eran con lui parevan sì contenti, + come a nessun toccasse altro la mente. + + Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti + a le sue note; ed ecco il veglio onesto + gridando: «Che è ciò, spiriti lenti? + + qual negligenza, quale stare è questo? + Correte al monte a spogliarvi lo scoglio + ch’esser non lascia a voi Dio manifesto». + + Come quando, cogliendo biado o loglio, + li colombi adunati a la pastura, + queti, sanza mostrar l’usato orgoglio, + + se cosa appare ond’ elli abbian paura, + subitamente lasciano star l’esca, + perch’ assaliti son da maggior cura; + + così vid’ io quella masnada fresca + lasciar lo canto, e fuggir ver’ la costa, + com’ om che va, né sa dove rïesca; + + né la nostra partita fu men tosta. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto III + + + Avvegna che la subitana fuga + dispergesse color per la campagna, + rivolti al monte ove ragion ne fruga, + + i’ mi ristrinsi a la fida compagna: + e come sare’ io sanza lui corso? + chi m’avria tratto su per la montagna? + + El mi parea da sé stesso rimorso: + o dignitosa coscïenza e netta, + come t’è picciol fallo amaro morso! + + Quando li piedi suoi lasciar la fretta, + che l’onestade ad ogn’ atto dismaga, + la mente mia, che prima era ristretta, + + lo ’ntento rallargò, sì come vaga, + e diedi ’l viso mio incontr’ al poggio + che ’nverso ’l ciel più alto si dislaga. + + Lo sol, che dietro fiammeggiava roggio, + rotto m’era dinanzi a la figura, + ch’avëa in me de’ suoi raggi l’appoggio. + + Io mi volsi dallato con paura + d’essere abbandonato, quand’ io vidi + solo dinanzi a me la terra oscura; + + e ’l mio conforto: «Perché pur diffidi?», + a dir mi cominciò tutto rivolto; + «non credi tu me teco e ch’io ti guidi? + + Vespero è già colà dov’ è sepolto + lo corpo dentro al quale io facea ombra; + Napoli l’ha, e da Brandizio è tolto. + + Ora, se innanzi a me nulla s’aombra, + non ti maravigliar più che d’i cieli + che l’uno a l’altro raggio non ingombra. + + A sofferir tormenti, caldi e geli + simili corpi la Virtù dispone + che, come fa, non vuol ch’a noi si sveli. + + Matto è chi spera che nostra ragione + possa trascorrer la infinita via + che tiene una sustanza in tre persone. + + State contenti, umana gente, al quia; + ché, se potuto aveste veder tutto, + mestier non era parturir Maria; + + e disïar vedeste sanza frutto + tai che sarebbe lor disio quetato, + ch’etternalmente è dato lor per lutto: + + io dico d’Aristotile e di Plato + e di molt’ altri»; e qui chinò la fronte, + e più non disse, e rimase turbato. + + Noi divenimmo intanto a piè del monte; + quivi trovammo la roccia sì erta, + che ’ndarno vi sarien le gambe pronte. + + Tra Lerice e Turbìa la più diserta, + la più rotta ruina è una scala, + verso di quella, agevole e aperta. + + «Or chi sa da qual man la costa cala», + disse ’l maestro mio fermando ’l passo, + «sì che possa salir chi va sanz’ ala?». + + E mentre ch’e’ tenendo ’l viso basso + essaminava del cammin la mente, + e io mirava suso intorno al sasso, + + da man sinistra m’apparì una gente + d’anime, che movieno i piè ver’ noi, + e non pareva, sì venïan lente. + + «Leva», diss’ io, «maestro, li occhi tuoi: + ecco di qua chi ne darà consiglio, + se tu da te medesmo aver nol puoi». + + Guardò allora, e con libero piglio + rispuose: «Andiamo in là, ch’ei vegnon piano; + e tu ferma la spene, dolce figlio». + + Ancora era quel popol di lontano, + i’ dico dopo i nostri mille passi, + quanto un buon gittator trarria con mano, + + quando si strinser tutti ai duri massi + de l’alta ripa, e stetter fermi e stretti + com’ a guardar, chi va dubbiando, stassi. + + «O ben finiti, o già spiriti eletti», + Virgilio incominciò, «per quella pace + ch’i’ credo che per voi tutti s’aspetti, + + ditene dove la montagna giace, + sì che possibil sia l’andare in suso; + ché perder tempo a chi più sa più spiace». + + Come le pecorelle escon del chiuso + a una, a due, a tre, e l’altre stanno + timidette atterrando l’occhio e ’l muso; + + e ciò che fa la prima, e l’altre fanno, + addossandosi a lei, s’ella s’arresta, + semplici e quete, e lo ’mperché non sanno; + + sì vid’ io muovere a venir la testa + di quella mandra fortunata allotta, + pudica in faccia e ne l’andare onesta. + + Come color dinanzi vider rotta + la luce in terra dal mio destro canto, + sì che l’ombra era da me a la grotta, + + restaro, e trasser sé in dietro alquanto, + e tutti li altri che venieno appresso, + non sappiendo ’l perché, fenno altrettanto. + + «Sanza vostra domanda io vi confesso + che questo è corpo uman che voi vedete; + per che ’l lume del sole in terra è fesso. + + Non vi maravigliate, ma credete + che non sanza virtù che da ciel vegna + cerchi di soverchiar questa parete». + + Così ’l maestro; e quella gente degna + «Tornate», disse, «intrate innanzi dunque», + coi dossi de le man faccendo insegna. + + E un di loro incominciò: «Chiunque + tu se’, così andando, volgi ’l viso: + pon mente se di là mi vedesti unque». + + Io mi volsi ver’ lui e guardail fiso: + biondo era e bello e di gentile aspetto, + ma l’un de’ cigli un colpo avea diviso. + + Quand’ io mi fui umilmente disdetto + d’averlo visto mai, el disse: «Or vedi»; + e mostrommi una piaga a sommo ’l petto. + + Poi sorridendo disse: «Io son Manfredi, + nepote di Costanza imperadrice; + ond’ io ti priego che, quando tu riedi, + + vadi a mia bella figlia, genitrice + de l’onor di Cicilia e d’Aragona, + e dichi ’l vero a lei, s’altro si dice. + + Poscia ch’io ebbi rotta la persona + di due punte mortali, io mi rendei, + piangendo, a quei che volontier perdona. + + Orribil furon li peccati miei; + ma la bontà infinita ha sì gran braccia, + che prende ciò che si rivolge a lei. + + Se ’l pastor di Cosenza, che a la caccia + di me fu messo per Clemente allora, + avesse in Dio ben letta questa faccia, + + l’ossa del corpo mio sarieno ancora + in co del ponte presso a Benevento, + sotto la guardia de la grave mora. + + Or le bagna la pioggia e move il vento + di fuor dal regno, quasi lungo ’l Verde, + dov’ e’ le trasmutò a lume spento. + + Per lor maladizion sì non si perde, + che non possa tornar, l’etterno amore, + mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde. + + Vero è che quale in contumacia more + di Santa Chiesa, ancor ch’al fin si penta, + star li convien da questa ripa in fore, + + per ognun tempo ch’elli è stato, trenta, + in sua presunzïon, se tal decreto + più corto per buon prieghi non diventa. + + Vedi oggimai se tu mi puoi far lieto, + revelando a la mia buona Costanza + come m’hai visto, e anco esto divieto; + + ché qui per quei di là molto s’avanza». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto IV + + + Quando per dilettanze o ver per doglie, + che alcuna virtù nostra comprenda, + l’anima bene ad essa si raccoglie, + + par ch’a nulla potenza più intenda; + e questo è contra quello error che crede + ch’un’anima sovr’ altra in noi s’accenda. + + E però, quando s’ode cosa o vede + che tegna forte a sé l’anima volta, + vassene ’l tempo e l’uom non se n’avvede; + + ch’altra potenza è quella che l’ascolta, + e altra è quella c’ha l’anima intera: + questa è quasi legata e quella è sciolta. + + Di ciò ebb’ io esperïenza vera, + udendo quello spirto e ammirando; + ché ben cinquanta gradi salito era + + lo sole, e io non m’era accorto, quando + venimmo ove quell’ anime ad una + gridaro a noi: «Qui è vostro dimando». + + Maggiore aperta molte volte impruna + con una forcatella di sue spine + l’uom de la villa quando l’uva imbruna, + + che non era la calla onde salìne + lo duca mio, e io appresso, soli, + come da noi la schiera si partìne. + + Vassi in Sanleo e discendesi in Noli, + montasi su in Bismantova e ’n Cacume + con esso i piè; ma qui convien ch’om voli; + + dico con l’ale snelle e con le piume + del gran disio, di retro a quel condotto + che speranza mi dava e facea lume. + + Noi salavam per entro ’l sasso rotto, + e d’ogne lato ne stringea lo stremo, + e piedi e man volea il suol di sotto. + + Poi che noi fummo in su l’orlo suppremo + de l’alta ripa, a la scoperta piaggia, + «Maestro mio», diss’ io, «che via faremo?». + + Ed elli a me: «Nessun tuo passo caggia; + pur su al monte dietro a me acquista, + fin che n’appaia alcuna scorta saggia». + + Lo sommo er’ alto che vincea la vista, + e la costa superba più assai + che da mezzo quadrante a centro lista. + + Io era lasso, quando cominciai: + «O dolce padre, volgiti, e rimira + com’ io rimango sol, se non restai». + + «Figliuol mio», disse, «infin quivi ti tira», + additandomi un balzo poco in sùe + che da quel lato il poggio tutto gira. + + Sì mi spronaron le parole sue, + ch’i’ mi sforzai carpando appresso lui, + tanto che ’l cinghio sotto i piè mi fue. + + A seder ci ponemmo ivi ambedui + vòlti a levante ond’ eravam saliti, + che suole a riguardar giovare altrui. + + Li occhi prima drizzai ai bassi liti; + poscia li alzai al sole, e ammirava + che da sinistra n’eravam feriti. + + Ben s’avvide il poeta ch’ïo stava + stupido tutto al carro de la luce, + ove tra noi e Aquilone intrava. + + Ond’ elli a me: «Se Castore e Poluce + fossero in compagnia di quello specchio + che sù e giù del suo lume conduce, + + tu vedresti il Zodïaco rubecchio + ancora a l’Orse più stretto rotare, + se non uscisse fuor del cammin vecchio. + + Come ciò sia, se ’l vuoi poter pensare, + dentro raccolto, imagina Sïòn + con questo monte in su la terra stare + + sì, ch’amendue hanno un solo orizzòn + e diversi emisperi; onde la strada + che mal non seppe carreggiar Fetòn, + + vedrai come a costui convien che vada + da l’un, quando a colui da l’altro fianco, + se lo ’ntelletto tuo ben chiaro bada». + + «Certo, maestro mio,» diss’ io, «unquanco + non vid’ io chiaro sì com’ io discerno + là dove mio ingegno parea manco, + + che ’l mezzo cerchio del moto superno, + che si chiama Equatore in alcun’ arte, + e che sempre riman tra ’l sole e ’l verno, + + per la ragion che di’, quinci si parte + verso settentrïon, quanto li Ebrei + vedevan lui verso la calda parte. + + Ma se a te piace, volontier saprei + quanto avemo ad andar; ché ’l poggio sale + più che salir non posson li occhi miei». + + Ed elli a me: «Questa montagna è tale, + che sempre al cominciar di sotto è grave; + e quant’ om più va sù, e men fa male. + + Però, quand’ ella ti parrà soave + tanto, che sù andar ti fia leggero + com’ a seconda giù andar per nave, + + allor sarai al fin d’esto sentiero; + quivi di riposar l’affanno aspetta. + Più non rispondo, e questo so per vero». + + E com’ elli ebbe sua parola detta, + una voce di presso sonò: «Forse + che di sedere in pria avrai distretta!». + + Al suon di lei ciascun di noi si torse, + e vedemmo a mancina un gran petrone, + del qual né io né ei prima s’accorse. + + Là ci traemmo; e ivi eran persone + che si stavano a l’ombra dietro al sasso + come l’uom per negghienza a star si pone. + + E un di lor, che mi sembiava lasso, + sedeva e abbracciava le ginocchia, + tenendo ’l viso giù tra esse basso. + + «O dolce segnor mio», diss’ io, «adocchia + colui che mostra sé più negligente + che se pigrizia fosse sua serocchia». + + Allor si volse a noi e puose mente, + movendo ’l viso pur su per la coscia, + e disse: «Or va tu sù, che se’ valente!». + + Conobbi allor chi era, e quella angoscia + che m’avacciava un poco ancor la lena, + non m’impedì l’andare a lui; e poscia + + ch’a lui fu’ giunto, alzò la testa a pena, + dicendo: «Hai ben veduto come ’l sole + da l’omero sinistro il carro mena?». + + Li atti suoi pigri e le corte parole + mosser le labbra mie un poco a riso; + poi cominciai: «Belacqua, a me non dole + + di te omai; ma dimmi: perché assiso + quiritto se’? attendi tu iscorta, + o pur lo modo usato t’ha’ ripriso?». + + Ed elli: «O frate, andar in sù che porta? + ché non mi lascerebbe ire a’ martìri + l’angel di Dio che siede in su la porta. + + Prima convien che tanto il ciel m’aggiri + di fuor da essa, quanto fece in vita, + per ch’io ’ndugiai al fine i buon sospiri, + + se orazïone in prima non m’aita + che surga sù di cuor che in grazia viva; + l’altra che val, che ’n ciel non è udita?». + + E già il poeta innanzi mi saliva, + e dicea: «Vienne omai; vedi ch’è tocco + meridïan dal sole e a la riva + + cuopre la notte già col piè Morrocco». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto V + + + Io era già da quell’ ombre partito, + e seguitava l’orme del mio duca, + quando di retro a me, drizzando ’l dito, + + una gridò: «Ve’ che non par che luca + lo raggio da sinistra a quel di sotto, + e come vivo par che si conduca!». + + Li occhi rivolsi al suon di questo motto, + e vidile guardar per maraviglia + pur me, pur me, e ’l lume ch’era rotto. + + «Perché l’animo tuo tanto s’impiglia», + disse ’l maestro, «che l’andare allenti? + che ti fa ciò che quivi si pispiglia? + + Vien dietro a me, e lascia dir le genti: + sta come torre ferma, che non crolla + già mai la cima per soffiar di venti; + + ché sempre l’omo in cui pensier rampolla + sovra pensier, da sé dilunga il segno, + perché la foga l’un de l’altro insolla». + + Che potea io ridir, se non «Io vegno»? + Dissilo, alquanto del color consperso + che fa l’uom di perdon talvolta degno. + + E ’ntanto per la costa di traverso + venivan genti innanzi a noi un poco, + cantando ‘Miserere’ a verso a verso. + + Quando s’accorser ch’i’ non dava loco + per lo mio corpo al trapassar d’i raggi, + mutar lor canto in un «oh!» lungo e roco; + + e due di loro, in forma di messaggi, + corsero incontr’ a noi e dimandarne: + «Di vostra condizion fatene saggi». + + E ’l mio maestro: «Voi potete andarne + e ritrarre a color che vi mandaro + che ’l corpo di costui è vera carne. + + Se per veder la sua ombra restaro, + com’ io avviso, assai è lor risposto: + fàccianli onore, ed esser può lor caro». + + Vapori accesi non vid’ io sì tosto + di prima notte mai fender sereno, + né, sol calando, nuvole d’agosto, + + che color non tornasser suso in meno; + e, giunti là, con li altri a noi dier volta, + come schiera che scorre sanza freno. + + «Questa gente che preme a noi è molta, + e vegnonti a pregar», disse ’l poeta: + «però pur va, e in andando ascolta». + + «O anima che vai per esser lieta + con quelle membra con le quai nascesti», + venian gridando, «un poco il passo queta. + + Guarda s’alcun di noi unqua vedesti, + sì che di lui di là novella porti: + deh, perché vai? deh, perché non t’arresti? + + Noi fummo tutti già per forza morti, + e peccatori infino a l’ultima ora; + quivi lume del ciel ne fece accorti, + + sì che, pentendo e perdonando, fora + di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati, + che del disio di sé veder n’accora». + + E io: «Perché ne’ vostri visi guati, + non riconosco alcun; ma s’a voi piace + cosa ch’io possa, spiriti ben nati, + + voi dite, e io farò per quella pace + che, dietro a’ piedi di sì fatta guida, + di mondo in mondo cercar mi si face». + + E uno incominciò: «Ciascun si fida + del beneficio tuo sanza giurarlo, + pur che ’l voler nonpossa non ricida. + + Ond’ io, che solo innanzi a li altri parlo, + ti priego, se mai vedi quel paese + che siede tra Romagna e quel di Carlo, + + che tu mi sie di tuoi prieghi cortese + in Fano, sì che ben per me s’adori + pur ch’i’ possa purgar le gravi offese. + + Quindi fu’ io; ma li profondi fóri + ond’ uscì ’l sangue in sul quale io sedea, + fatti mi fuoro in grembo a li Antenori, + + là dov’ io più sicuro esser credea: + quel da Esti il fé far, che m’avea in ira + assai più là che dritto non volea. + + Ma s’io fosse fuggito inver’ la Mira, + quando fu’ sovragiunto ad Orïaco, + ancor sarei di là dove si spira. + + Corsi al palude, e le cannucce e ’l braco + m’impigliar sì ch’i’ caddi; e lì vid’ io + de le mie vene farsi in terra laco». + + Poi disse un altro: «Deh, se quel disio + si compia che ti tragge a l’alto monte, + con buona pïetate aiuta il mio! + + Io fui di Montefeltro, io son Bonconte; + Giovanna o altri non ha di me cura; + per ch’io vo tra costor con bassa fronte». + + E io a lui: «Qual forza o qual ventura + ti travïò sì fuor di Campaldino, + che non si seppe mai tua sepultura?». + + «Oh!», rispuos’ elli, «a piè del Casentino + traversa un’acqua c’ha nome l’Archiano, + che sovra l’Ermo nasce in Apennino. + + Là ’ve ’l vocabol suo diventa vano, + arriva’ io forato ne la gola, + fuggendo a piede e sanguinando il piano. + + Quivi perdei la vista e la parola; + nel nome di Maria fini’, e quivi + caddi, e rimase la mia carne sola. + + Io dirò vero, e tu ’l ridì tra ’ vivi: + l’angel di Dio mi prese, e quel d’inferno + gridava: “O tu del ciel, perché mi privi? + + Tu te ne porti di costui l’etterno + per una lagrimetta che ’l mi toglie; + ma io farò de l’altro altro governo!”. + + Ben sai come ne l’aere si raccoglie + quell’ umido vapor che in acqua riede, + tosto che sale dove ’l freddo il coglie. + + Giunse quel mal voler che pur mal chiede + con lo ’ntelletto, e mosse il fummo e ’l vento + per la virtù che sua natura diede. + + Indi la valle, come ’l dì fu spento, + da Pratomagno al gran giogo coperse + di nebbia; e ’l ciel di sopra fece intento, + + sì che ’l pregno aere in acqua si converse; + la pioggia cadde, e a’ fossati venne + di lei ciò che la terra non sofferse; + + e come ai rivi grandi si convenne, + ver’ lo fiume real tanto veloce + si ruinò, che nulla la ritenne. + + Lo corpo mio gelato in su la foce + trovò l’Archian rubesto; e quel sospinse + ne l’Arno, e sciolse al mio petto la croce + + ch’i’ fe’ di me quando ’l dolor mi vinse; + voltòmmi per le ripe e per lo fondo, + poi di sua preda mi coperse e cinse». + + «Deh, quando tu sarai tornato al mondo + e riposato de la lunga via», + seguitò ’l terzo spirito al secondo, + + «ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; + Siena mi fé, disfecemi Maremma: + salsi colui che ’nnanellata pria + + disposando m’avea con la sua gemma». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto VI + + + Quando si parte il gioco de la zara, + colui che perde si riman dolente, + repetendo le volte, e tristo impara; + + con l’altro se ne va tutta la gente; + qual va dinanzi, e qual di dietro il prende, + e qual dallato li si reca a mente; + + el non s’arresta, e questo e quello intende; + a cui porge la man, più non fa pressa; + e così da la calca si difende. + + Tal era io in quella turba spessa, + volgendo a loro, e qua e là, la faccia, + e promettendo mi sciogliea da essa. + + Quiv’ era l’Aretin che da le braccia + fiere di Ghin di Tacco ebbe la morte, + e l’altro ch’annegò correndo in caccia. + + Quivi pregava con le mani sporte + Federigo Novello, e quel da Pisa + che fé parer lo buon Marzucco forte. + + Vidi conte Orso e l’anima divisa + dal corpo suo per astio e per inveggia, + com’ e’ dicea, non per colpa commisa; + + Pier da la Broccia dico; e qui proveggia, + mentr’ è di qua, la donna di Brabante, + sì che però non sia di peggior greggia. + + Come libero fui da tutte quante + quell’ ombre che pregar pur ch’altri prieghi, + sì che s’avacci lor divenir sante, + + io cominciai: «El par che tu mi nieghi, + o luce mia, espresso in alcun testo + che decreto del cielo orazion pieghi; + + e questa gente prega pur di questo: + sarebbe dunque loro speme vana, + o non m’è ’l detto tuo ben manifesto?». + + Ed elli a me: «La mia scrittura è piana; + e la speranza di costor non falla, + se ben si guarda con la mente sana; + + ché cima di giudicio non s’avvalla + perché foco d’amor compia in un punto + ciò che de’ sodisfar chi qui s’astalla; + + e là dov’ io fermai cotesto punto, + non s’ammendava, per pregar, difetto, + perché ’l priego da Dio era disgiunto. + + Veramente a così alto sospetto + non ti fermar, se quella nol ti dice + che lume fia tra ’l vero e lo ’ntelletto. + + Non so se ’ntendi: io dico di Beatrice; + tu la vedrai di sopra, in su la vetta + di questo monte, ridere e felice». + + E io: «Segnore, andiamo a maggior fretta, + ché già non m’affatico come dianzi, + e vedi omai che ’l poggio l’ombra getta». + + «Noi anderem con questo giorno innanzi», + rispuose, «quanto più potremo omai; + ma ’l fatto è d’altra forma che non stanzi. + + Prima che sie là sù, tornar vedrai + colui che già si cuopre de la costa, + sì che ’ suoi raggi tu romper non fai. + + Ma vedi là un’anima che, posta + sola soletta, inverso noi riguarda: + quella ne ’nsegnerà la via più tosta». + + Venimmo a lei: o anima lombarda, + come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa + e nel mover de li occhi onesta e tarda! + + Ella non ci dicëa alcuna cosa, + ma lasciavane gir, solo sguardando + a guisa di leon quando si posa. + + Pur Virgilio si trasse a lei, pregando + che ne mostrasse la miglior salita; + e quella non rispuose al suo dimando, + + ma di nostro paese e de la vita + ci ’nchiese; e ’l dolce duca incominciava + «Mantüa . . . », e l’ombra, tutta in sé romita, + + surse ver’ lui del loco ove pria stava, + dicendo: «O Mantoano, io son Sordello + de la tua terra!»; e l’un l’altro abbracciava. + + Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, + nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta, + non donna di province, ma bordello! + + Quell’ anima gentil fu così presta, + sol per lo dolce suon de la sua terra, + di fare al cittadin suo quivi festa; + + e ora in te non stanno sanza guerra + li vivi tuoi, e l’un l’altro si rode + di quei ch’un muro e una fossa serra. + + Cerca, misera, intorno da le prode + le tue marine, e poi ti guarda in seno, + s’alcuna parte in te di pace gode. + + Che val perché ti racconciasse il freno + Iustinïano, se la sella è vòta? + Sanz’ esso fora la vergogna meno. + + Ahi gente che dovresti esser devota, + e lasciar seder Cesare in la sella, + se bene intendi ciò che Dio ti nota, + + guarda come esta fiera è fatta fella + per non esser corretta da li sproni, + poi che ponesti mano a la predella. + + O Alberto tedesco ch’abbandoni + costei ch’è fatta indomita e selvaggia, + e dovresti inforcar li suoi arcioni, + + giusto giudicio da le stelle caggia + sovra ’l tuo sangue, e sia novo e aperto, + tal che ’l tuo successor temenza n’aggia! + + Ch’avete tu e ’l tuo padre sofferto, + per cupidigia di costà distretti, + che ’l giardin de lo ’mperio sia diserto. + + Vieni a veder Montecchi e Cappelletti, + Monaldi e Filippeschi, uom sanza cura: + color già tristi, e questi con sospetti! + + Vien, crudel, vieni, e vedi la pressura + d’i tuoi gentili, e cura lor magagne; + e vedrai Santafior com’ è oscura! + + Vieni a veder la tua Roma che piagne + vedova e sola, e dì e notte chiama: + «Cesare mio, perché non m’accompagne?». + + Vieni a veder la gente quanto s’ama! + e se nulla di noi pietà ti move, + a vergognar ti vien de la tua fama. + + E se licito m’è, o sommo Giove + che fosti in terra per noi crucifisso, + son li giusti occhi tuoi rivolti altrove? + + O è preparazion che ne l’abisso + del tuo consiglio fai per alcun bene + in tutto de l’accorger nostro scisso? + + Ché le città d’Italia tutte piene + son di tiranni, e un Marcel diventa + ogne villan che parteggiando viene. + + Fiorenza mia, ben puoi esser contenta + di questa digression che non ti tocca, + mercé del popol tuo che si argomenta. + + Molti han giustizia in cuore, e tardi scocca + per non venir sanza consiglio a l’arco; + ma il popol tuo l’ha in sommo de la bocca. + + Molti rifiutan lo comune incarco; + ma il popol tuo solicito risponde + sanza chiamare, e grida: «I’ mi sobbarco!». + + Or ti fa lieta, ché tu hai ben onde: + tu ricca, tu con pace e tu con senno! + S’io dico ’l ver, l’effetto nol nasconde. + + Atene e Lacedemona, che fenno + l’antiche leggi e furon sì civili, + fecero al viver bene un picciol cenno + + verso di te, che fai tanto sottili + provedimenti, ch’a mezzo novembre + non giugne quel che tu d’ottobre fili. + + Quante volte, del tempo che rimembre, + legge, moneta, officio e costume + hai tu mutato, e rinovate membre! + + E se ben ti ricordi e vedi lume, + vedrai te somigliante a quella inferma + che non può trovar posa in su le piume, + + ma con dar volta suo dolore scherma. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto VII + + + Poscia che l’accoglienze oneste e liete + furo iterate tre e quattro volte, + Sordel si trasse, e disse: «Voi, chi siete?». + + «Anzi che a questo monte fosser volte + l’anime degne di salire a Dio, + fur l’ossa mie per Ottavian sepolte. + + Io son Virgilio; e per null’ altro rio + lo ciel perdei che per non aver fé». + Così rispuose allora il duca mio. + + Qual è colui che cosa innanzi sé + sùbita vede ond’ e’ si maraviglia, + che crede e non, dicendo «Ella è . . . non è . . . », + + tal parve quelli; e poi chinò le ciglia, + e umilmente ritornò ver’ lui, + e abbracciòl là ’ve ’l minor s’appiglia. + + «O gloria di Latin», disse, «per cui + mostrò ciò che potea la lingua nostra, + o pregio etterno del loco ond’ io fui, + + qual merito o qual grazia mi ti mostra? + S’io son d’udir le tue parole degno, + dimmi se vien d’inferno, e di qual chiostra». + + «Per tutt’ i cerchi del dolente regno», + rispuose lui, «son io di qua venuto; + virtù del ciel mi mosse, e con lei vegno. + + Non per far, ma per non fare ho perduto + a veder l’alto Sol che tu disiri + e che fu tardi per me conosciuto. + + Luogo è là giù non tristo di martìri, + ma di tenebre solo, ove i lamenti + non suonan come guai, ma son sospiri. + + Quivi sto io coi pargoli innocenti + dai denti morsi de la morte avante + che fosser da l’umana colpa essenti; + + quivi sto io con quei che le tre sante + virtù non si vestiro, e sanza vizio + conobber l’altre e seguir tutte quante. + + Ma se tu sai e puoi, alcuno indizio + dà noi per che venir possiam più tosto + là dove purgatorio ha dritto inizio». + + Rispuose: «Loco certo non c’è posto; + licito m’è andar suso e intorno; + per quanto ir posso, a guida mi t’accosto. + + Ma vedi già come dichina il giorno, + e andar sù di notte non si puote; + però è buon pensar di bel soggiorno. + + Anime sono a destra qua remote; + se mi consenti, io ti merrò ad esse, + e non sanza diletto ti fier note». + + «Com’ è ciò?», fu risposto. «Chi volesse + salir di notte, fora elli impedito + d’altrui, o non sarria ché non potesse?». + + E ’l buon Sordello in terra fregò ’l dito, + dicendo: «Vedi? sola questa riga + non varcheresti dopo ’l sol partito: + + non però ch’altra cosa desse briga, + che la notturna tenebra, ad ir suso; + quella col nonpoder la voglia intriga. + + Ben si poria con lei tornare in giuso + e passeggiar la costa intorno errando, + mentre che l’orizzonte il dì tien chiuso». + + Allora il mio segnor, quasi ammirando, + «Menane», disse, «dunque là ’ve dici + ch’aver si può diletto dimorando». + + Poco allungati c’eravam di lici, + quand’ io m’accorsi che ’l monte era scemo, + a guisa che i vallon li sceman quici. + + «Colà», disse quell’ ombra, «n’anderemo + dove la costa face di sé grembo; + e là il novo giorno attenderemo». + + Tra erto e piano era un sentiero schembo, + che ne condusse in fianco de la lacca, + là dove più ch’a mezzo muore il lembo. + + Oro e argento fine, cocco e biacca, + indaco, legno lucido e sereno, + fresco smeraldo in l’ora che si fiacca, + + da l’erba e da li fior, dentr’ a quel seno + posti, ciascun saria di color vinto, + come dal suo maggiore è vinto il meno. + + Non avea pur natura ivi dipinto, + ma di soavità di mille odori + vi facea uno incognito e indistinto. + + ‘Salve, Regina’ in sul verde e ’n su’ fiori + quindi seder cantando anime vidi, + che per la valle non parean di fuori. + + «Prima che ’l poco sole omai s’annidi», + cominciò ’l Mantoan che ci avea vòlti, + «tra color non vogliate ch’io vi guidi. + + Di questo balzo meglio li atti e ’ volti + conoscerete voi di tutti quanti, + che ne la lama giù tra essi accolti. + + Colui che più siede alto e fa sembianti + d’aver negletto ciò che far dovea, + e che non move bocca a li altrui canti, + + Rodolfo imperador fu, che potea + sanar le piaghe c’hanno Italia morta, + sì che tardi per altri si ricrea. + + L’altro che ne la vista lui conforta, + resse la terra dove l’acqua nasce + che Molta in Albia, e Albia in mar ne porta: + + Ottacchero ebbe nome, e ne le fasce + fu meglio assai che Vincislao suo figlio + barbuto, cui lussuria e ozio pasce. + + E quel nasetto che stretto a consiglio + par con colui c’ha sì benigno aspetto, + morì fuggendo e disfiorando il giglio: + + guardate là come si batte il petto! + L’altro vedete c’ha fatto a la guancia + de la sua palma, sospirando, letto. + + Padre e suocero son del mal di Francia: + sanno la vita sua viziata e lorda, + e quindi viene il duol che sì li lancia. + + Quel che par sì membruto e che s’accorda, + cantando, con colui dal maschio naso, + d’ogne valor portò cinta la corda; + + e se re dopo lui fosse rimaso + lo giovanetto che retro a lui siede, + ben andava il valor di vaso in vaso, + + che non si puote dir de l’altre rede; + Iacomo e Federigo hanno i reami; + del retaggio miglior nessun possiede. + + Rade volte risurge per li rami + l’umana probitate; e questo vole + quei che la dà, perché da lui si chiami. + + Anche al nasuto vanno mie parole + non men ch’a l’altro, Pier, che con lui canta, + onde Puglia e Proenza già si dole. + + Tant’ è del seme suo minor la pianta, + quanto, più che Beatrice e Margherita, + Costanza di marito ancor si vanta. + + Vedete il re de la semplice vita + seder là solo, Arrigo d’Inghilterra: + questi ha ne’ rami suoi migliore uscita. + + Quel che più basso tra costor s’atterra, + guardando in suso, è Guiglielmo marchese, + per cui e Alessandria e la sua guerra + + fa pianger Monferrato e Canavese». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto VIII + + + Era già l’ora che volge il disio + ai navicanti e ’ntenerisce il core + lo dì c’han detto ai dolci amici addio; + + e che lo novo peregrin d’amore + punge, se ode squilla di lontano + che paia il giorno pianger che si more; + + quand’ io incominciai a render vano + l’udire e a mirare una de l’alme + surta, che l’ascoltar chiedea con mano. + + Ella giunse e levò ambo le palme, + ficcando li occhi verso l’orïente, + come dicesse a Dio: ‘D’altro non calme’. + + ‘Te lucis ante’ sì devotamente + le uscìo di bocca e con sì dolci note, + che fece me a me uscir di mente; + + e l’altre poi dolcemente e devote + seguitar lei per tutto l’inno intero, + avendo li occhi a le superne rote. + + Aguzza qui, lettor, ben li occhi al vero, + ché ’l velo è ora ben tanto sottile, + certo che ’l trapassar dentro è leggero. + + Io vidi quello essercito gentile + tacito poscia riguardare in sùe, + quasi aspettando, palido e umìle; + + e vidi uscir de l’alto e scender giùe + due angeli con due spade affocate, + tronche e private de le punte sue. + + Verdi come fogliette pur mo nate + erano in veste, che da verdi penne + percosse traean dietro e ventilate. + + L’un poco sovra noi a star si venne, + e l’altro scese in l’opposita sponda, + sì che la gente in mezzo si contenne. + + Ben discernëa in lor la testa bionda; + ma ne la faccia l’occhio si smarria, + come virtù ch’a troppo si confonda. + + «Ambo vegnon del grembo di Maria», + disse Sordello, «a guardia de la valle, + per lo serpente che verrà vie via». + + Ond’ io, che non sapeva per qual calle, + mi volsi intorno, e stretto m’accostai, + tutto gelato, a le fidate spalle. + + E Sordello anco: «Or avvalliamo omai + tra le grandi ombre, e parleremo ad esse; + grazïoso fia lor vedervi assai». + + Solo tre passi credo ch’i’ scendesse, + e fui di sotto, e vidi un che mirava + pur me, come conoscer mi volesse. + + Temp’ era già che l’aere s’annerava, + ma non sì che tra li occhi suoi e ’ miei + non dichiarisse ciò che pria serrava. + + Ver’ me si fece, e io ver’ lui mi fei: + giudice Nin gentil, quanto mi piacque + quando ti vidi non esser tra ’ rei! + + Nullo bel salutar tra noi si tacque; + poi dimandò: «Quant’ è che tu venisti + a piè del monte per le lontane acque?». + + «Oh!», diss’ io lui, «per entro i luoghi tristi + venni stamane, e sono in prima vita, + ancor che l’altra, sì andando, acquisti». + + E come fu la mia risposta udita, + Sordello ed elli in dietro si raccolse + come gente di sùbito smarrita. + + L’uno a Virgilio e l’altro a un si volse + che sedea lì, gridando: «Sù, Currado! + vieni a veder che Dio per grazia volse». + + Poi, vòlto a me: «Per quel singular grado + che tu dei a colui che sì nasconde + lo suo primo perché, che non lì è guado, + + quando sarai di là da le larghe onde, + dì a Giovanna mia che per me chiami + là dove a li ’nnocenti si risponde. + + Non credo che la sua madre più m’ami, + poscia che trasmutò le bianche bende, + le quai convien che, misera!, ancor brami. + + Per lei assai di lieve si comprende + quanto in femmina foco d’amor dura, + se l’occhio o ’l tatto spesso non l’accende. + + Non le farà sì bella sepultura + la vipera che Melanesi accampa, + com’ avria fatto il gallo di Gallura». + + Così dicea, segnato de la stampa, + nel suo aspetto, di quel dritto zelo + che misuratamente in core avvampa. + + Li occhi miei ghiotti andavan pur al cielo, + pur là dove le stelle son più tarde, + sì come rota più presso a lo stelo. + + E ’l duca mio: «Figliuol, che là sù guarde?». + E io a lui: «A quelle tre facelle + di che ’l polo di qua tutto quanto arde». + + Ond’ elli a me: «Le quattro chiare stelle + che vedevi staman, son di là basse, + e queste son salite ov’ eran quelle». + + Com’ ei parlava, e Sordello a sé il trasse + dicendo: «Vedi là ’l nostro avversaro»; + e drizzò il dito perché ’n là guardasse. + + Da quella parte onde non ha riparo + la picciola vallea, era una biscia, + forse qual diede ad Eva il cibo amaro. + + Tra l’erba e ’ fior venìa la mala striscia, + volgendo ad ora ad or la testa, e ’l dosso + leccando come bestia che si liscia. + + Io non vidi, e però dicer non posso, + come mosser li astor celestïali; + ma vidi bene e l’uno e l’altro mosso. + + Sentendo fender l’aere a le verdi ali, + fuggì ’l serpente, e li angeli dier volta, + suso a le poste rivolando iguali. + + L’ombra che s’era al giudice raccolta + quando chiamò, per tutto quello assalto + punto non fu da me guardare sciolta. + + «Se la lucerna che ti mena in alto + truovi nel tuo arbitrio tanta cera + quant’ è mestiere infino al sommo smalto», + + cominciò ella, «se novella vera + di Val di Magra o di parte vicina + sai, dillo a me, che già grande là era. + + Fui chiamato Currado Malaspina; + non son l’antico, ma di lui discesi; + a’ miei portai l’amor che qui raffina». + + «Oh!», diss’ io lui, «per li vostri paesi + già mai non fui; ma dove si dimora + per tutta Europa ch’ei non sien palesi? + + La fama che la vostra casa onora, + grida i segnori e grida la contrada, + sì che ne sa chi non vi fu ancora; + + e io vi giuro, s’io di sopra vada, + che vostra gente onrata non si sfregia + del pregio de la borsa e de la spada. + + Uso e natura sì la privilegia, + che, perché il capo reo il mondo torca, + sola va dritta e ’l mal cammin dispregia». + + Ed elli: «Or va; che ’l sol non si ricorca + sette volte nel letto che ’l Montone + con tutti e quattro i piè cuopre e inforca, + + che cotesta cortese oppinïone + ti fia chiavata in mezzo de la testa + con maggior chiovi che d’altrui sermone, + + se corso di giudicio non s’arresta». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto IX + + + La concubina di Titone antico + già s’imbiancava al balco d’orïente, + fuor de le braccia del suo dolce amico; + + di gemme la sua fronte era lucente, + poste in figura del freddo animale + che con la coda percuote la gente; + + e la notte, de’ passi con che sale, + fatti avea due nel loco ov’ eravamo, + e ’l terzo già chinava in giuso l’ale; + + quand’ io, che meco avea di quel d’Adamo, + vinto dal sonno, in su l’erba inchinai + là ’ve già tutti e cinque sedavamo. + + Ne l’ora che comincia i tristi lai + la rondinella presso a la mattina, + forse a memoria de’ suo’ primi guai, + + e che la mente nostra, peregrina + più da la carne e men da’ pensier presa, + a le sue visïon quasi è divina, + + in sogno mi parea veder sospesa + un’aguglia nel ciel con penne d’oro, + con l’ali aperte e a calare intesa; + + ed esser mi parea là dove fuoro + abbandonati i suoi da Ganimede, + quando fu ratto al sommo consistoro. + + Fra me pensava: ‘Forse questa fiede + pur qui per uso, e forse d’altro loco + disdegna di portarne suso in piede’. + + Poi mi parea che, poi rotata un poco, + terribil come folgor discendesse, + e me rapisse suso infino al foco. + + Ivi parea che ella e io ardesse; + e sì lo ’ncendio imaginato cosse, + che convenne che ’l sonno si rompesse. + + Non altrimenti Achille si riscosse, + li occhi svegliati rivolgendo in giro + e non sappiendo là dove si fosse, + + quando la madre da Chirón a Schiro + trafuggò lui dormendo in le sue braccia, + là onde poi li Greci il dipartiro; + + che mi scoss’ io, sì come da la faccia + mi fuggì ’l sonno, e diventa’ ismorto, + come fa l’uom che, spaventato, agghiaccia. + + Dallato m’era solo il mio conforto, + e ’l sole er’ alto già più che due ore, + e ’l viso m’era a la marina torto. + + «Non aver tema», disse il mio segnore; + «fatti sicur, ché noi semo a buon punto; + non stringer, ma rallarga ogne vigore. + + Tu se’ omai al purgatorio giunto: + vedi là il balzo che ’l chiude dintorno; + vedi l’entrata là ’ve par digiunto. + + Dianzi, ne l’alba che procede al giorno, + quando l’anima tua dentro dormia, + sovra li fiori ond’ è là giù addorno + + venne una donna, e disse: “I’ son Lucia; + lasciatemi pigliar costui che dorme; + sì l’agevolerò per la sua via”. + + Sordel rimase e l’altre genti forme; + ella ti tolse, e come ’l dì fu chiaro, + sen venne suso; e io per le sue orme. + + Qui ti posò, ma pria mi dimostraro + li occhi suoi belli quella intrata aperta; + poi ella e ’l sonno ad una se n’andaro». + + A guisa d’uom che ’n dubbio si raccerta + e che muta in conforto sua paura, + poi che la verità li è discoperta, + + mi cambia’ io; e come sanza cura + vide me ’l duca mio, su per lo balzo + si mosse, e io di rietro inver’ l’altura. + + Lettor, tu vedi ben com’ io innalzo + la mia matera, e però con più arte + non ti maravigliar s’io la rincalzo. + + Noi ci appressammo, ed eravamo in parte + che là dove pareami prima rotto, + pur come un fesso che muro diparte, + + vidi una porta, e tre gradi di sotto + per gire ad essa, di color diversi, + e un portier ch’ancor non facea motto. + + E come l’occhio più e più v’apersi, + vidil seder sovra ’l grado sovrano, + tal ne la faccia ch’io non lo soffersi; + + e una spada nuda avëa in mano, + che reflettëa i raggi sì ver’ noi, + ch’io drizzava spesso il viso in vano. + + «Dite costinci: che volete voi?», + cominciò elli a dire, «ov’ è la scorta? + Guardate che ’l venir sù non vi nòi». + + «Donna del ciel, di queste cose accorta», + rispuose ’l mio maestro a lui, «pur dianzi + ne disse: “Andate là: quivi è la porta”». + + «Ed ella i passi vostri in bene avanzi», + ricominciò il cortese portinaio: + «Venite dunque a’ nostri gradi innanzi». + + Là ne venimmo; e lo scaglion primaio + bianco marmo era sì pulito e terso, + ch’io mi specchiai in esso qual io paio. + + Era il secondo tinto più che perso, + d’una petrina ruvida e arsiccia, + crepata per lo lungo e per traverso. + + Lo terzo, che di sopra s’ammassiccia, + porfido mi parea, sì fiammeggiante + come sangue che fuor di vena spiccia. + + Sovra questo tenëa ambo le piante + l’angel di Dio sedendo in su la soglia + che mi sembiava pietra di diamante. + + Per li tre gradi sù di buona voglia + mi trasse il duca mio, dicendo: «Chiedi + umilemente che ’l serrame scioglia». + + Divoto mi gittai a’ santi piedi; + misericordia chiesi e ch’el m’aprisse, + ma tre volte nel petto pria mi diedi. + + Sette P ne la fronte mi descrisse + col punton de la spada, e «Fa che lavi, + quando se’ dentro, queste piaghe» disse. + + Cenere, o terra che secca si cavi, + d’un color fora col suo vestimento; + e di sotto da quel trasse due chiavi. + + L’una era d’oro e l’altra era d’argento; + pria con la bianca e poscia con la gialla + fece a la porta sì, ch’i’ fu’ contento. + + «Quandunque l’una d’este chiavi falla, + che non si volga dritta per la toppa», + diss’ elli a noi, «non s’apre questa calla. + + Più cara è l’una; ma l’altra vuol troppa + d’arte e d’ingegno avanti che diserri, + perch’ ella è quella che ’l nodo digroppa. + + Da Pier le tegno; e dissemi ch’i’ erri + anzi ad aprir ch’a tenerla serrata, + pur che la gente a’ piedi mi s’atterri». + + Poi pinse l’uscio a la porta sacrata, + dicendo: «Intrate; ma facciovi accorti + che di fuor torna chi ’n dietro si guata». + + E quando fuor ne’ cardini distorti + li spigoli di quella regge sacra, + che di metallo son sonanti e forti, + + non rugghiò sì né si mostrò sì acra + Tarpëa, come tolto le fu il buono + Metello, per che poi rimase macra. + + Io mi rivolsi attento al primo tuono, + e ‘Te Deum laudamus’ mi parea + udire in voce mista al dolce suono. + + Tale imagine a punto mi rendea + ciò ch’io udiva, qual prender si suole + quando a cantar con organi si stea; + + ch’or sì or no s’intendon le parole. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto X + + + Poi fummo dentro al soglio de la porta + che ’l mal amor de l’anime disusa, + perché fa parer dritta la via torta, + + sonando la senti’ esser richiusa; + e s’io avesse li occhi vòlti ad essa, + qual fora stata al fallo degna scusa? + + Noi salavam per una pietra fessa, + che si moveva e d’una e d’altra parte, + sì come l’onda che fugge e s’appressa. + + «Qui si conviene usare un poco d’arte», + cominciò ’l duca mio, «in accostarsi + or quinci, or quindi al lato che si parte». + + E questo fece i nostri passi scarsi, + tanto che pria lo scemo de la luna + rigiunse al letto suo per ricorcarsi, + + che noi fossimo fuor di quella cruna; + ma quando fummo liberi e aperti + sù dove il monte in dietro si rauna, + + ïo stancato e amendue incerti + di nostra via, restammo in su un piano + solingo più che strade per diserti. + + Da la sua sponda, ove confina il vano, + al piè de l’alta ripa che pur sale, + misurrebbe in tre volte un corpo umano; + + e quanto l’occhio mio potea trar d’ale, + or dal sinistro e or dal destro fianco, + questa cornice mi parea cotale. + + Là sù non eran mossi i piè nostri anco, + quand’ io conobbi quella ripa intorno + che dritto di salita aveva manco, + + esser di marmo candido e addorno + d’intagli sì, che non pur Policleto, + ma la natura lì avrebbe scorno. + + L’angel che venne in terra col decreto + de la molt’ anni lagrimata pace, + ch’aperse il ciel del suo lungo divieto, + + dinanzi a noi pareva sì verace + quivi intagliato in un atto soave, + che non sembiava imagine che tace. + + Giurato si saria ch’el dicesse ‘Ave!’; + perché iv’ era imaginata quella + ch’ad aprir l’alto amor volse la chiave; + + e avea in atto impressa esta favella + ‘Ecce ancilla Deï’, propriamente + come figura in cera si suggella. + + «Non tener pur ad un loco la mente», + disse ’l dolce maestro, che m’avea + da quella parte onde ’l cuore ha la gente. + + Per ch’i’ mi mossi col viso, e vedea + di retro da Maria, da quella costa + onde m’era colui che mi movea, + + un’altra storia ne la roccia imposta; + per ch’io varcai Virgilio, e fe’mi presso, + acciò che fosse a li occhi miei disposta. + + Era intagliato lì nel marmo stesso + lo carro e ’ buoi, traendo l’arca santa, + per che si teme officio non commesso. + + Dinanzi parea gente; e tutta quanta, + partita in sette cori, a’ due mie’ sensi + faceva dir l’un ‘No’, l’altro ‘Sì, canta’. + + Similemente al fummo de li ’ncensi + che v’era imaginato, li occhi e ’l naso + e al sì e al no discordi fensi. + + Lì precedeva al benedetto vaso, + trescando alzato, l’umile salmista, + e più e men che re era in quel caso. + + Di contra, effigïata ad una vista + d’un gran palazzo, Micòl ammirava + sì come donna dispettosa e trista. + + I’ mossi i piè del loco dov’ io stava, + per avvisar da presso un’altra istoria, + che di dietro a Micòl mi biancheggiava. + + Quiv’ era storïata l’alta gloria + del roman principato, il cui valore + mosse Gregorio a la sua gran vittoria; + + i’ dico di Traiano imperadore; + e una vedovella li era al freno, + di lagrime atteggiata e di dolore. + + Intorno a lui parea calcato e pieno + di cavalieri, e l’aguglie ne l’oro + sovr’ essi in vista al vento si movieno. + + La miserella intra tutti costoro + pareva dir: «Segnor, fammi vendetta + di mio figliuol ch’è morto, ond’ io m’accoro»; + + ed elli a lei rispondere: «Or aspetta + tanto ch’i’ torni»; e quella: «Segnor mio», + come persona in cui dolor s’affretta, + + «se tu non torni?»; ed ei: «Chi fia dov’ io, + la ti farà»; ed ella: «L’altrui bene + a te che fia, se ’l tuo metti in oblio?»; + + ond’ elli: «Or ti conforta; ch’ei convene + ch’i’ solva il mio dovere anzi ch’i’ mova: + giustizia vuole e pietà mi ritene». + + Colui che mai non vide cosa nova + produsse esto visibile parlare, + novello a noi perché qui non si trova. + + Mentr’ io mi dilettava di guardare + l’imagini di tante umilitadi, + e per lo fabbro loro a veder care, + + «Ecco di qua, ma fanno i passi radi», + mormorava il poeta, «molte genti: + questi ne ’nvïeranno a li alti gradi». + + Li occhi miei, ch’a mirare eran contenti + per veder novitadi ond’ e’ son vaghi, + volgendosi ver’ lui non furon lenti. + + Non vo’ però, lettor, che tu ti smaghi + di buon proponimento per udire + come Dio vuol che ’l debito si paghi. + + Non attender la forma del martìre: + pensa la succession; pensa ch’al peggio + oltre la gran sentenza non può ire. + + Io cominciai: «Maestro, quel ch’io veggio + muovere a noi, non mi sembian persone, + e non so che, sì nel veder vaneggio». + + Ed elli a me: «La grave condizione + di lor tormento a terra li rannicchia, + sì che ’ miei occhi pria n’ebber tencione. + + Ma guarda fiso là, e disviticchia + col viso quel che vien sotto a quei sassi: + già scorger puoi come ciascun si picchia». + + O superbi cristian, miseri lassi, + che, de la vista de la mente infermi, + fidanza avete ne’ retrosi passi, + + non v’accorgete voi che noi siam vermi + nati a formar l’angelica farfalla, + che vola a la giustizia sanza schermi? + + Di che l’animo vostro in alto galla, + poi siete quasi antomata in difetto, + sì come vermo in cui formazion falla? + + Come per sostentar solaio o tetto, + per mensola talvolta una figura + si vede giugner le ginocchia al petto, + + la qual fa del non ver vera rancura + nascere ’n chi la vede; così fatti + vid’ io color, quando puosi ben cura. + + Vero è che più e meno eran contratti + secondo ch’avien più e meno a dosso; + e qual più pazïenza avea ne li atti, + + piangendo parea dicer: ‘Più non posso’. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XI + + + «O Padre nostro, che ne’ cieli stai, + non circunscritto, ma per più amore + ch’ai primi effetti di là sù tu hai, + + laudato sia ’l tuo nome e ’l tuo valore + da ogne creatura, com’ è degno + di render grazie al tuo dolce vapore. + + Vegna ver’ noi la pace del tuo regno, + ché noi ad essa non potem da noi, + s’ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno. + + Come del suo voler li angeli tuoi + fan sacrificio a te, cantando osanna, + così facciano li uomini de’ suoi. + + Dà oggi a noi la cotidiana manna, + sanza la qual per questo aspro diserto + a retro va chi più di gir s’affanna. + + E come noi lo mal ch’avem sofferto + perdoniamo a ciascuno, e tu perdona + benigno, e non guardar lo nostro merto. + + Nostra virtù che di legger s’adona, + non spermentar con l’antico avversaro, + ma libera da lui che sì la sprona. + + Quest’ ultima preghiera, segnor caro, + già non si fa per noi, ché non bisogna, + ma per color che dietro a noi restaro». + + Così a sé e noi buona ramogna + quell’ ombre orando, andavan sotto ’l pondo, + simile a quel che talvolta si sogna, + + disparmente angosciate tutte a tondo + e lasse su per la prima cornice, + purgando la caligine del mondo. + + Se di là sempre ben per noi si dice, + di qua che dire e far per lor si puote + da quei c’hanno al voler buona radice? + + Ben si de’ loro atar lavar le note + che portar quinci, sì che, mondi e lievi, + possano uscire a le stellate ruote. + + «Deh, se giustizia e pietà vi disgrievi + tosto, sì che possiate muover l’ala, + che secondo il disio vostro vi lievi, + + mostrate da qual mano inver’ la scala + si va più corto; e se c’è più d’un varco, + quel ne ’nsegnate che men erto cala; + + ché questi che vien meco, per lo ’ncarco + de la carne d’Adamo onde si veste, + al montar sù, contra sua voglia, è parco». + + Le lor parole, che rendero a queste + che dette avea colui cu’ io seguiva, + non fur da cui venisser manifeste; + + ma fu detto: «A man destra per la riva + con noi venite, e troverete il passo + possibile a salir persona viva. + + E s’io non fossi impedito dal sasso + che la cervice mia superba doma, + onde portar convienmi il viso basso, + + cotesti, ch’ancor vive e non si noma, + guardere’ io, per veder s’i’ ’l conosco, + e per farlo pietoso a questa soma. + + Io fui latino e nato d’un gran Tosco: + Guiglielmo Aldobrandesco fu mio padre; + non so se ’l nome suo già mai fu vosco. + + L’antico sangue e l’opere leggiadre + d’i miei maggior mi fer sì arrogante, + che, non pensando a la comune madre, + + ogn’ uomo ebbi in despetto tanto avante, + ch’io ne mori’, come i Sanesi sanno, + e sallo in Campagnatico ogne fante. + + Io sono Omberto; e non pur a me danno + superbia fa, ché tutti miei consorti + ha ella tratti seco nel malanno. + + E qui convien ch’io questo peso porti + per lei, tanto che a Dio si sodisfaccia, + poi ch’io nol fe’ tra ’ vivi, qui tra ’ morti». + + Ascoltando chinai in giù la faccia; + e un di lor, non questi che parlava, + si torse sotto il peso che li ’mpaccia, + + e videmi e conobbemi e chiamava, + tenendo li occhi con fatica fisi + a me che tutto chin con loro andava. + + «Oh!», diss’ io lui, «non se’ tu Oderisi, + l’onor d’Agobbio e l’onor di quell’ arte + ch’alluminar chiamata è in Parisi?». + + «Frate», diss’ elli, «più ridon le carte + che pennelleggia Franco Bolognese; + l’onore è tutto or suo, e mio in parte. + + Ben non sare’ io stato sì cortese + mentre ch’io vissi, per lo gran disio + de l’eccellenza ove mio core intese. + + Di tal superbia qui si paga il fio; + e ancor non sarei qui, se non fosse + che, possendo peccar, mi volsi a Dio. + + Oh vana gloria de l’umane posse! + com’ poco verde in su la cima dura, + se non è giunta da l’etati grosse! + + Credette Cimabue ne la pittura + tener lo campo, e ora ha Giotto il grido, + sì che la fama di colui è scura. + + Così ha tolto l’uno a l’altro Guido + la gloria de la lingua; e forse è nato + chi l’uno e l’altro caccerà del nido. + + Non è il mondan romore altro ch’un fiato + di vento, ch’or vien quinci e or vien quindi, + e muta nome perché muta lato. + + Che voce avrai tu più, se vecchia scindi + da te la carne, che se fossi morto + anzi che tu lasciassi il ‘pappo’ e ’l ‘dindi’, + + pria che passin mill’ anni? ch’è più corto + spazio a l’etterno, ch’un muover di ciglia + al cerchio che più tardi in cielo è torto. + + Colui che del cammin sì poco piglia + dinanzi a me, Toscana sonò tutta; + e ora a pena in Siena sen pispiglia, + + ond’ era sire quando fu distrutta + la rabbia fiorentina, che superba + fu a quel tempo sì com’ ora è putta. + + La vostra nominanza è color d’erba, + che viene e va, e quei la discolora + per cui ella esce de la terra acerba». + + E io a lui: «Tuo vero dir m’incora + bona umiltà, e gran tumor m’appiani; + ma chi è quei di cui tu parlavi ora?». + + «Quelli è», rispuose, «Provenzan Salvani; + ed è qui perché fu presuntüoso + a recar Siena tutta a le sue mani. + + Ito è così e va, sanza riposo, + poi che morì; cotal moneta rende + a sodisfar chi è di là troppo oso». + + E io: «Se quello spirito ch’attende, + pria che si penta, l’orlo de la vita, + qua giù dimora e qua sù non ascende, + + se buona orazïon lui non aita, + prima che passi tempo quanto visse, + come fu la venuta lui largita?». + + «Quando vivea più glorïoso», disse, + «liberamente nel Campo di Siena, + ogne vergogna diposta, s’affisse; + + e lì, per trar l’amico suo di pena, + ch’e’ sostenea ne la prigion di Carlo, + si condusse a tremar per ogne vena. + + Più non dirò, e scuro so che parlo; + ma poco tempo andrà, che ’ tuoi vicini + faranno sì che tu potrai chiosarlo. + + Quest’ opera li tolse quei confini». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XII + + + Di pari, come buoi che vanno a giogo, + m’andava io con quell’ anima carca, + fin che ’l sofferse il dolce pedagogo. + + Ma quando disse: «Lascia lui e varca; + ché qui è buono con l’ali e coi remi, + quantunque può, ciascun pinger sua barca»; + + dritto sì come andar vuolsi rife’mi + con la persona, avvegna che i pensieri + mi rimanessero e chinati e scemi. + + Io m’era mosso, e seguia volontieri + del mio maestro i passi, e amendue + già mostravam com’ eravam leggeri; + + ed el mi disse: «Volgi li occhi in giùe: + buon ti sarà, per tranquillar la via, + veder lo letto de le piante tue». + + Come, perché di lor memoria sia, + sovra i sepolti le tombe terragne + portan segnato quel ch’elli eran pria, + + onde lì molte volte si ripiagne + per la puntura de la rimembranza, + che solo a’ pïi dà de le calcagne; + + sì vid’ io lì, ma di miglior sembianza + secondo l’artificio, figurato + quanto per via di fuor del monte avanza. + + Vedea colui che fu nobil creato + più ch’altra creatura, giù dal cielo + folgoreggiando scender, da l’un lato. + + Vedëa Brïareo fitto dal telo + celestïal giacer, da l’altra parte, + grave a la terra per lo mortal gelo. + + Vedea Timbreo, vedea Pallade e Marte, + armati ancora, intorno al padre loro, + mirar le membra d’i Giganti sparte. + + Vedea Nembròt a piè del gran lavoro + quasi smarrito, e riguardar le genti + che ’n Sennaàr con lui superbi fuoro. + + O Nïobè, con che occhi dolenti + vedea io te segnata in su la strada, + tra sette e sette tuoi figliuoli spenti! + + O Saùl, come in su la propria spada + quivi parevi morto in Gelboè, + che poi non sentì pioggia né rugiada! + + O folle Aragne, sì vedea io te + già mezza ragna, trista in su li stracci + de l’opera che mal per te si fé. + + O Roboàm, già non par che minacci + quivi ’l tuo segno; ma pien di spavento + nel porta un carro, sanza ch’altri il cacci. + + Mostrava ancor lo duro pavimento + come Almeon a sua madre fé caro + parer lo sventurato addornamento. + + Mostrava come i figli si gittaro + sovra Sennacherìb dentro dal tempio, + e come, morto lui, quivi il lasciaro. + + Mostrava la ruina e ’l crudo scempio + che fé Tamiri, quando disse a Ciro: + «Sangue sitisti, e io di sangue t’empio». + + Mostrava come in rotta si fuggiro + li Assiri, poi che fu morto Oloferne, + e anche le reliquie del martiro. + + Vedeva Troia in cenere e in caverne; + o Ilïón, come te basso e vile + mostrava il segno che lì si discerne! + + Qual di pennel fu maestro o di stile + che ritraesse l’ombre e ’ tratti ch’ivi + mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile? + + Morti li morti e i vivi parean vivi: + non vide mei di me chi vide il vero, + quant’ io calcai, fin che chinato givi. + + Or superbite, e via col viso altero, + figliuoli d’Eva, e non chinate il volto + sì che veggiate il vostro mal sentero! + + Più era già per noi del monte vòlto + e del cammin del sole assai più speso + che non stimava l’animo non sciolto, + + quando colui che sempre innanzi atteso + andava, cominciò: «Drizza la testa; + non è più tempo di gir sì sospeso. + + Vedi colà un angel che s’appresta + per venir verso noi; vedi che torna + dal servigio del dì l’ancella sesta. + + Di reverenza il viso e li atti addorna, + sì che i diletti lo ’nvïarci in suso; + pensa che questo dì mai non raggiorna!». + + Io era ben del suo ammonir uso + pur di non perder tempo, sì che ’n quella + materia non potea parlarmi chiuso. + + A noi venìa la creatura bella, + biancovestito e ne la faccia quale + par tremolando mattutina stella. + + Le braccia aperse, e indi aperse l’ale; + disse: «Venite: qui son presso i gradi, + e agevolemente omai si sale. + + A questo invito vegnon molto radi: + o gente umana, per volar sù nata, + perché a poco vento così cadi?». + + Menocci ove la roccia era tagliata; + quivi mi batté l’ali per la fronte; + poi mi promise sicura l’andata. + + Come a man destra, per salire al monte + dove siede la chiesa che soggioga + la ben guidata sopra Rubaconte, + + si rompe del montar l’ardita foga + per le scalee che si fero ad etade + ch’era sicuro il quaderno e la doga; + + così s’allenta la ripa che cade + quivi ben ratta da l’altro girone; + ma quinci e quindi l’alta pietra rade. + + Noi volgendo ivi le nostre persone, + ‘Beati pauperes spiritu!’ voci + cantaron sì, che nol diria sermone. + + Ahi quanto son diverse quelle foci + da l’infernali! ché quivi per canti + s’entra, e là giù per lamenti feroci. + + Già montavam su per li scaglion santi, + ed esser mi parea troppo più lieve + che per lo pian non mi parea davanti. + + Ond’ io: «Maestro, dì, qual cosa greve + levata s’è da me, che nulla quasi + per me fatica, andando, si riceve?». + + Rispuose: «Quando i P che son rimasi + ancor nel volto tuo presso che stinti, + saranno, com’ è l’un, del tutto rasi, + + fier li tuoi piè dal buon voler sì vinti, + che non pur non fatica sentiranno, + ma fia diletto loro esser sù pinti». + + Allor fec’ io come color che vanno + con cosa in capo non da lor saputa, + se non che ’ cenni altrui sospecciar fanno; + + per che la mano ad accertar s’aiuta, + e cerca e truova e quello officio adempie + che non si può fornir per la veduta; + + e con le dita de la destra scempie + trovai pur sei le lettere che ’ncise + quel da le chiavi a me sovra le tempie: + + a che guardando, il mio duca sorrise. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XIII + + + Noi eravamo al sommo de la scala, + dove secondamente si risega + lo monte che salendo altrui dismala. + + Ivi così una cornice lega + dintorno il poggio, come la primaia; + se non che l’arco suo più tosto piega. + + Ombra non lì è né segno che si paia: + parsi la ripa e parsi la via schietta + col livido color de la petraia. + + «Se qui per dimandar gente s’aspetta», + ragionava il poeta, «io temo forse + che troppo avrà d’indugio nostra eletta». + + Poi fisamente al sole li occhi porse; + fece del destro lato a muover centro, + e la sinistra parte di sé torse. + + «O dolce lume a cui fidanza i’ entro + per lo novo cammin, tu ne conduci», + dicea, «come condur si vuol quinc’ entro. + + Tu scaldi il mondo, tu sovr’ esso luci; + s’altra ragione in contrario non ponta, + esser dien sempre li tuoi raggi duci». + + Quanto di qua per un migliaio si conta, + tanto di là eravam noi già iti, + con poco tempo, per la voglia pronta; + + e verso noi volar furon sentiti, + non però visti, spiriti parlando + a la mensa d’amor cortesi inviti. + + La prima voce che passò volando + ‘Vinum non habent’ altamente disse, + e dietro a noi l’andò reïterando. + + E prima che del tutto non si udisse + per allungarsi, un’altra ‘I’ sono Oreste’ + passò gridando, e anco non s’affisse. + + «Oh!», diss’ io, «padre, che voci son queste?». + E com’ io domandai, ecco la terza + dicendo: ‘Amate da cui male aveste’. + + E ’l buon maestro: «Questo cinghio sferza + la colpa de la invidia, e però sono + tratte d’amor le corde de la ferza. + + Lo fren vuol esser del contrario suono; + credo che l’udirai, per mio avviso, + prima che giunghi al passo del perdono. + + Ma ficca li occhi per l’aere ben fiso, + e vedrai gente innanzi a noi sedersi, + e ciascun è lungo la grotta assiso». + + Allora più che prima li occhi apersi; + guarda’mi innanzi, e vidi ombre con manti + al color de la pietra non diversi. + + E poi che fummo un poco più avanti, + udia gridar: ‘Maria, òra per noi’: + gridar ‘Michele’ e ‘Pietro’ e ‘Tutti santi’. + + Non credo che per terra vada ancoi + omo sì duro, che non fosse punto + per compassion di quel ch’i’ vidi poi; + + ché, quando fui sì presso di lor giunto, + che li atti loro a me venivan certi, + per li occhi fui di grave dolor munto. + + Di vil ciliccio mi parean coperti, + e l’un sofferia l’altro con la spalla, + e tutti da la ripa eran sofferti. + + Così li ciechi a cui la roba falla, + stanno a’ perdoni a chieder lor bisogna, + e l’uno il capo sopra l’altro avvalla, + + perché ’n altrui pietà tosto si pogna, + non pur per lo sonar de le parole, + ma per la vista che non meno agogna. + + E come a li orbi non approda il sole, + così a l’ombre quivi, ond’ io parlo ora, + luce del ciel di sé largir non vole; + + ché a tutti un fil di ferro i cigli fóra + e cusce sì, come a sparvier selvaggio + si fa però che queto non dimora. + + A me pareva, andando, fare oltraggio, + veggendo altrui, non essendo veduto: + per ch’io mi volsi al mio consiglio saggio. + + Ben sapev’ ei che volea dir lo muto; + e però non attese mia dimanda, + ma disse: «Parla, e sie breve e arguto». + + Virgilio mi venìa da quella banda + de la cornice onde cader si puote, + perché da nulla sponda s’inghirlanda; + + da l’altra parte m’eran le divote + ombre, che per l’orribile costura + premevan sì, che bagnavan le gote. + + Volsimi a loro e: «O gente sicura», + incominciai, «di veder l’alto lume + che ’l disio vostro solo ha in sua cura, + + se tosto grazia resolva le schiume + di vostra coscïenza sì che chiaro + per essa scenda de la mente il fiume, + + ditemi, ché mi fia grazioso e caro, + s’anima è qui tra voi che sia latina; + e forse lei sarà buon s’i’ l’apparo». + + «O frate mio, ciascuna è cittadina + d’una vera città; ma tu vuo’ dire + che vivesse in Italia peregrina». + + Questo mi parve per risposta udire + più innanzi alquanto che là dov’ io stava, + ond’ io mi feci ancor più là sentire. + + Tra l’altre vidi un’ombra ch’aspettava + in vista; e se volesse alcun dir ‘Come?’, + lo mento a guisa d’orbo in sù levava. + + «Spirto», diss’ io, «che per salir ti dome, + se tu se’ quelli che mi rispondesti, + fammiti conto o per luogo o per nome». + + «Io fui sanese», rispuose, «e con questi + altri rimendo qui la vita ria, + lagrimando a colui che sé ne presti. + + Savia non fui, avvegna che Sapìa + fossi chiamata, e fui de li altrui danni + più lieta assai che di ventura mia. + + E perché tu non creda ch’io t’inganni, + odi s’i’ fui, com’ io ti dico, folle, + già discendendo l’arco d’i miei anni. + + Eran li cittadin miei presso a Colle + in campo giunti co’ loro avversari, + e io pregava Iddio di quel ch’e’ volle. + + Rotti fuor quivi e vòlti ne li amari + passi di fuga; e veggendo la caccia, + letizia presi a tutte altre dispari, + + tanto ch’io volsi in sù l’ardita faccia, + gridando a Dio: “Omai più non ti temo!”, + come fé ’l merlo per poca bonaccia. + + Pace volli con Dio in su lo stremo + de la mia vita; e ancor non sarebbe + lo mio dover per penitenza scemo, + + se ciò non fosse, ch’a memoria m’ebbe + Pier Pettinaio in sue sante orazioni, + a cui di me per caritate increbbe. + + Ma tu chi se’, che nostre condizioni + vai dimandando, e porti li occhi sciolti, + sì com’ io credo, e spirando ragioni?». + + «Li occhi», diss’ io, «mi fieno ancor qui tolti, + ma picciol tempo, ché poca è l’offesa + fatta per esser con invidia vòlti. + + Troppa è più la paura ond’ è sospesa + l’anima mia del tormento di sotto, + che già lo ’ncarco di là giù mi pesa». + + Ed ella a me: «Chi t’ha dunque condotto + qua sù tra noi, se giù ritornar credi?». + E io: «Costui ch’è meco e non fa motto. + + E vivo sono; e però mi richiedi, + spirito eletto, se tu vuo’ ch’i’ mova + di là per te ancor li mortai piedi». + + «Oh, questa è a udir sì cosa nuova», + rispuose, «che gran segno è che Dio t’ami; + però col priego tuo talor mi giova. + + E cheggioti, per quel che tu più brami, + se mai calchi la terra di Toscana, + che a’ miei propinqui tu ben mi rinfami. + + Tu li vedrai tra quella gente vana + che spera in Talamone, e perderagli + più di speranza ch’a trovar la Diana; + + ma più vi perderanno li ammiragli». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XIV + + + «Chi è costui che ’l nostro monte cerchia + prima che morte li abbia dato il volo, + e apre li occhi a sua voglia e coverchia?». + + «Non so chi sia, ma so ch’e’ non è solo; + domandal tu che più li t’avvicini, + e dolcemente, sì che parli, acco’lo». + + Così due spirti, l’uno a l’altro chini, + ragionavan di me ivi a man dritta; + poi fer li visi, per dirmi, supini; + + e disse l’uno: «O anima che fitta + nel corpo ancora inver’ lo ciel ten vai, + per carità ne consola e ne ditta + + onde vieni e chi se’; ché tu ne fai + tanto maravigliar de la tua grazia, + quanto vuol cosa che non fu più mai». + + E io: «Per mezza Toscana si spazia + un fiumicel che nasce in Falterona, + e cento miglia di corso nol sazia. + + Di sovr’ esso rech’ io questa persona: + dirvi ch’i’ sia, saria parlare indarno, + ché ’l nome mio ancor molto non suona». + + «Se ben lo ’ntendimento tuo accarno + con lo ’ntelletto», allora mi rispuose + quei che diceva pria, «tu parli d’Arno». + + E l’altro disse lui: «Perché nascose + questi il vocabol di quella riviera, + pur com’ om fa de l’orribili cose?». + + E l’ombra che di ciò domandata era, + si sdebitò così: «Non so; ma degno + ben è che ’l nome di tal valle pèra; + + ché dal principio suo, ov’ è sì pregno + l’alpestro monte ond’ è tronco Peloro, + che ’n pochi luoghi passa oltra quel segno, + + infin là ’ve si rende per ristoro + di quel che ’l ciel de la marina asciuga, + ond’ hanno i fiumi ciò che va con loro, + + vertù così per nimica si fuga + da tutti come biscia, o per sventura + del luogo, o per mal uso che li fruga: + + ond’ hanno sì mutata lor natura + li abitator de la misera valle, + che par che Circe li avesse in pastura. + + Tra brutti porci, più degni di galle + che d’altro cibo fatto in uman uso, + dirizza prima il suo povero calle. + + Botoli trova poi, venendo giuso, + ringhiosi più che non chiede lor possa, + e da lor disdegnosa torce il muso. + + Vassi caggendo; e quant’ ella più ’ngrossa, + tanto più trova di can farsi lupi + la maladetta e sventurata fossa. + + Discesa poi per più pelaghi cupi, + trova le volpi sì piene di froda, + che non temono ingegno che le occùpi. + + Né lascerò di dir perch’ altri m’oda; + e buon sarà costui, s’ancor s’ammenta + di ciò che vero spirto mi disnoda. + + Io veggio tuo nepote che diventa + cacciator di quei lupi in su la riva + del fiero fiume, e tutti li sgomenta. + + Vende la carne loro essendo viva; + poscia li ancide come antica belva; + molti di vita e sé di pregio priva. + + Sanguinoso esce de la trista selva; + lasciala tal, che di qui a mille anni + ne lo stato primaio non si rinselva». + + Com’ a l’annunzio di dogliosi danni + si turba il viso di colui ch’ascolta, + da qual che parte il periglio l’assanni, + + così vid’ io l’altr’ anima, che volta + stava a udir, turbarsi e farsi trista, + poi ch’ebbe la parola a sé raccolta. + + Lo dir de l’una e de l’altra la vista + mi fer voglioso di saper lor nomi, + e dimanda ne fei con prieghi mista; + + per che lo spirto che di pria parlòmi + ricominciò: «Tu vuo’ ch’io mi deduca + nel fare a te ciò che tu far non vuo’mi. + + Ma da che Dio in te vuol che traluca + tanto sua grazia, non ti sarò scarso; + però sappi ch’io fui Guido del Duca. + + Fu il sangue mio d’invidia sì rïarso, + che se veduto avesse uom farsi lieto, + visto m’avresti di livore sparso. + + Di mia semente cotal paglia mieto; + o gente umana, perché poni ’l core + là ’v’ è mestier di consorte divieto? + + Questi è Rinier; questi è ’l pregio e l’onore + de la casa da Calboli, ove nullo + fatto s’è reda poi del suo valore. + + E non pur lo suo sangue è fatto brullo, + tra ’l Po e ’l monte e la marina e ’l Reno, + del ben richesto al vero e al trastullo; + + ché dentro a questi termini è ripieno + di venenosi sterpi, sì che tardi + per coltivare omai verrebber meno. + + Ov’ è ’l buon Lizio e Arrigo Mainardi? + Pier Traversaro e Guido di Carpigna? + Oh Romagnuoli tornati in bastardi! + + Quando in Bologna un Fabbro si ralligna? + quando in Faenza un Bernardin di Fosco, + verga gentil di picciola gramigna? + + Non ti maravigliar s’io piango, Tosco, + quando rimembro, con Guido da Prata, + Ugolin d’Azzo che vivette nosco, + + Federigo Tignoso e sua brigata, + la casa Traversara e li Anastagi + (e l’una gente e l’altra è diretata), + + le donne e ’ cavalier, li affanni e li agi + che ne ’nvogliava amore e cortesia + là dove i cuor son fatti sì malvagi. + + O Bretinoro, ché non fuggi via, + poi che gita se n’è la tua famiglia + e molta gente per non esser ria? + + Ben fa Bagnacaval, che non rifiglia; + e mal fa Castrocaro, e peggio Conio, + che di figliar tai conti più s’impiglia. + + Ben faranno i Pagan, da che ’l demonio + lor sen girà; ma non però che puro + già mai rimagna d’essi testimonio. + + O Ugolin de’ Fantolin, sicuro + è ’l nome tuo, da che più non s’aspetta + chi far lo possa, tralignando, scuro. + + Ma va via, Tosco, omai; ch’or mi diletta + troppo di pianger più che di parlare, + sì m’ha nostra ragion la mente stretta». + + Noi sapavam che quell’ anime care + ci sentivano andar; però, tacendo, + facëan noi del cammin confidare. + + Poi fummo fatti soli procedendo, + folgore parve quando l’aere fende, + voce che giunse di contra dicendo: + + ‘Anciderammi qualunque m’apprende’; + e fuggì come tuon che si dilegua, + se sùbito la nuvola scoscende. + + Come da lei l’udir nostro ebbe triegua, + ed ecco l’altra con sì gran fracasso, + che somigliò tonar che tosto segua: + + «Io sono Aglauro che divenni sasso»; + e allor, per ristrignermi al poeta, + in destro feci, e non innanzi, il passo. + + Già era l’aura d’ogne parte queta; + ed el mi disse: «Quel fu ’l duro camo + che dovria l’uom tener dentro a sua meta. + + Ma voi prendete l’esca, sì che l’amo + de l’antico avversaro a sé vi tira; + e però poco val freno o richiamo. + + Chiamavi ’l cielo e ’ntorno vi si gira, + mostrandovi le sue bellezze etterne, + e l’occhio vostro pur a terra mira; + + onde vi batte chi tutto discerne». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XV + + + Quanto tra l’ultimar de l’ora terza + e ’l principio del dì par de la spera + che sempre a guisa di fanciullo scherza, + + tanto pareva già inver’ la sera + essere al sol del suo corso rimaso; + vespero là, e qui mezza notte era. + + E i raggi ne ferien per mezzo ’l naso, + perché per noi girato era sì ’l monte, + che già dritti andavamo inver’ l’occaso, + + quand’ io senti’ a me gravar la fronte + a lo splendore assai più che di prima, + e stupor m’eran le cose non conte; + + ond’ io levai le mani inver’ la cima + de le mie ciglia, e fecimi ’l solecchio, + che del soverchio visibile lima. + + Come quando da l’acqua o da lo specchio + salta lo raggio a l’opposita parte, + salendo su per lo modo parecchio + + a quel che scende, e tanto si diparte + dal cader de la pietra in igual tratta, + sì come mostra esperïenza e arte; + + così mi parve da luce rifratta + quivi dinanzi a me esser percosso; + per che a fuggir la mia vista fu ratta. + + «Che è quel, dolce padre, a che non posso + schermar lo viso tanto che mi vaglia», + diss’ io, «e pare inver’ noi esser mosso?». + + «Non ti maravigliar s’ancor t’abbaglia + la famiglia del cielo», a me rispuose: + «messo è che viene ad invitar ch’om saglia. + + Tosto sarà ch’a veder queste cose + non ti fia grave, ma fieti diletto + quanto natura a sentir ti dispuose». + + Poi giunti fummo a l’angel benedetto, + con lieta voce disse: «Intrate quinci + ad un scaleo vie men che li altri eretto». + + Noi montavam, già partiti di linci, + e ‘Beati misericordes!’ fue + cantato retro, e ‘Godi tu che vinci!’. + + Lo mio maestro e io soli amendue + suso andavamo; e io pensai, andando, + prode acquistar ne le parole sue; + + e dirizza’mi a lui sì dimandando: + «Che volse dir lo spirto di Romagna, + e ‘divieto’ e ‘consorte’ menzionando?». + + Per ch’elli a me: «Di sua maggior magagna + conosce il danno; e però non s’ammiri + se ne riprende perché men si piagna. + + Perché s’appuntano i vostri disiri + dove per compagnia parte si scema, + invidia move il mantaco a’ sospiri. + + Ma se l’amor de la spera supprema + torcesse in suso il disiderio vostro, + non vi sarebbe al petto quella tema; + + ché, per quanti si dice più lì ‘nostro’, + tanto possiede più di ben ciascuno, + e più di caritate arde in quel chiostro». + + «Io son d’esser contento più digiuno», + diss’ io, «che se mi fosse pria taciuto, + e più di dubbio ne la mente aduno. + + Com’ esser puote ch’un ben, distributo + in più posseditor, faccia più ricchi + di sé che se da pochi è posseduto?». + + Ed elli a me: «Però che tu rificchi + la mente pur a le cose terrene, + di vera luce tenebre dispicchi. + + Quello infinito e ineffabil bene + che là sù è, così corre ad amore + com’ a lucido corpo raggio vene. + + Tanto si dà quanto trova d’ardore; + sì che, quantunque carità si stende, + cresce sovr’ essa l’etterno valore. + + E quanta gente più là sù s’intende, + più v’è da bene amare, e più vi s’ama, + e come specchio l’uno a l’altro rende. + + E se la mia ragion non ti disfama, + vedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamente + ti torrà questa e ciascun’ altra brama. + + Procaccia pur che tosto sieno spente, + come son già le due, le cinque piaghe, + che si richiudon per esser dolente». + + Com’ io voleva dicer ‘Tu m’appaghe’, + vidimi giunto in su l’altro girone, + sì che tacer mi fer le luci vaghe. + + Ivi mi parve in una visïone + estatica di sùbito esser tratto, + e vedere in un tempio più persone; + + e una donna, in su l’entrar, con atto + dolce di madre dicer: «Figliuol mio, + perché hai tu così verso noi fatto? + + Ecco, dolenti, lo tuo padre e io + ti cercavamo». E come qui si tacque, + ciò che pareva prima, dispario. + + Indi m’apparve un’altra con quell’ acque + giù per le gote che ’l dolor distilla + quando di gran dispetto in altrui nacque, + + e dir: «Se tu se’ sire de la villa + del cui nome ne’ dèi fu tanta lite, + e onde ogne scïenza disfavilla, + + vendica te di quelle braccia ardite + ch’abbracciar nostra figlia, o Pisistràto». + E ’l segnor mi parea, benigno e mite, + + risponder lei con viso temperato: + «Che farem noi a chi mal ne disira, + se quei che ci ama è per noi condannato?», + + Poi vidi genti accese in foco d’ira + con pietre un giovinetto ancider, forte + gridando a sé pur: «Martira, martira!». + + E lui vedea chinarsi, per la morte + che l’aggravava già, inver’ la terra, + ma de li occhi facea sempre al ciel porte, + + orando a l’alto Sire, in tanta guerra, + che perdonasse a’ suoi persecutori, + con quello aspetto che pietà diserra. + + Quando l’anima mia tornò di fori + a le cose che son fuor di lei vere, + io riconobbi i miei non falsi errori. + + Lo duca mio, che mi potea vedere + far sì com’ om che dal sonno si slega, + disse: «Che hai che non ti puoi tenere, + + ma se’ venuto più che mezza lega + velando li occhi e con le gambe avvolte, + a guisa di cui vino o sonno piega?». + + «O dolce padre mio, se tu m’ascolte, + io ti dirò», diss’ io, «ciò che m’apparve + quando le gambe mi furon sì tolte». + + Ed ei: «Se tu avessi cento larve + sovra la faccia, non mi sarian chiuse + le tue cogitazion, quantunque parve. + + Ciò che vedesti fu perché non scuse + d’aprir lo core a l’acque de la pace + che da l’etterno fonte son diffuse. + + Non dimandai “Che hai?” per quel che face + chi guarda pur con l’occhio che non vede, + quando disanimato il corpo giace; + + ma dimandai per darti forza al piede: + così frugar conviensi i pigri, lenti + ad usar lor vigilia quando riede». + + Noi andavam per lo vespero, attenti + oltre quanto potean li occhi allungarsi + contra i raggi serotini e lucenti. + + Ed ecco a poco a poco un fummo farsi + verso di noi come la notte oscuro; + né da quello era loco da cansarsi. + + Questo ne tolse li occhi e l’aere puro. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XVI + + + Buio d’inferno e di notte privata + d’ogne pianeto, sotto pover cielo, + quant’ esser può di nuvol tenebrata, + + non fece al viso mio sì grosso velo + come quel fummo ch’ivi ci coperse, + né a sentir di così aspro pelo, + + che l’occhio stare aperto non sofferse; + onde la scorta mia saputa e fida + mi s’accostò e l’omero m’offerse. + + Sì come cieco va dietro a sua guida + per non smarrirsi e per non dar di cozzo + in cosa che ’l molesti, o forse ancida, + + m’andava io per l’aere amaro e sozzo, + ascoltando il mio duca che diceva + pur: «Guarda che da me tu non sia mozzo». + + Io sentia voci, e ciascuna pareva + pregar per pace e per misericordia + l’Agnel di Dio che le peccata leva. + + Pur ‘Agnus Dei’ eran le loro essordia; + una parola in tutte era e un modo, + sì che parea tra esse ogne concordia. + + «Quei sono spirti, maestro, ch’i’ odo?», + diss’ io. Ed elli a me: «Tu vero apprendi, + e d’iracundia van solvendo il nodo». + + «Or tu chi se’ che ’l nostro fummo fendi, + e di noi parli pur come se tue + partissi ancor lo tempo per calendi?». + + Così per una voce detto fue; + onde ’l maestro mio disse: «Rispondi, + e domanda se quinci si va sùe». + + E io: «O creatura che ti mondi + per tornar bella a colui che ti fece, + maraviglia udirai, se mi secondi». + + «Io ti seguiterò quanto mi lece», + rispuose; «e se veder fummo non lascia, + l’udir ci terrà giunti in quella vece». + + Allora incominciai: «Con quella fascia + che la morte dissolve men vo suso, + e venni qui per l’infernale ambascia. + + E se Dio m’ha in sua grazia rinchiuso, + tanto che vuol ch’i’ veggia la sua corte + per modo tutto fuor del moderno uso, + + non mi celar chi fosti anzi la morte, + ma dilmi, e dimmi s’i’ vo bene al varco; + e tue parole fier le nostre scorte». + + «Lombardo fui, e fu’ chiamato Marco; + del mondo seppi, e quel valore amai + al quale ha or ciascun disteso l’arco. + + Per montar sù dirittamente vai». + Così rispuose, e soggiunse: «I’ ti prego + che per me prieghi quando sù sarai». + + E io a lui: «Per fede mi ti lego + di far ciò che mi chiedi; ma io scoppio + dentro ad un dubbio, s’io non me ne spiego. + + Prima era scempio, e ora è fatto doppio + ne la sentenza tua, che mi fa certo + qui, e altrove, quello ov’ io l’accoppio. + + Lo mondo è ben così tutto diserto + d’ogne virtute, come tu mi sone, + e di malizia gravido e coverto; + + ma priego che m’addite la cagione, + sì ch’i’ la veggia e ch’i’ la mostri altrui; + ché nel cielo uno, e un qua giù la pone». + + Alto sospir, che duolo strinse in «uhi!», + mise fuor prima; e poi cominciò: «Frate, + lo mondo è cieco, e tu vien ben da lui. + + Voi che vivete ogne cagion recate + pur suso al cielo, pur come se tutto + movesse seco di necessitate. + + Se così fosse, in voi fora distrutto + libero arbitrio, e non fora giustizia + per ben letizia, e per male aver lutto. + + Lo cielo i vostri movimenti inizia; + non dico tutti, ma, posto ch’i’ ’l dica, + lume v’è dato a bene e a malizia, + + e libero voler; che, se fatica + ne le prime battaglie col ciel dura, + poi vince tutto, se ben si notrica. + + A maggior forza e a miglior natura + liberi soggiacete; e quella cria + la mente in voi, che ’l ciel non ha in sua cura. + + Però, se ’l mondo presente disvia, + in voi è la cagione, in voi si cheggia; + e io te ne sarò or vera spia. + + Esce di mano a lui che la vagheggia + prima che sia, a guisa di fanciulla + che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia, + + l’anima semplicetta che sa nulla, + salvo che, mossa da lieto fattore, + volontier torna a ciò che la trastulla. + + Di picciol bene in pria sente sapore; + quivi s’inganna, e dietro ad esso corre, + se guida o fren non torce suo amore. + + Onde convenne legge per fren porre; + convenne rege aver, che discernesse + de la vera cittade almen la torre. + + Le leggi son, ma chi pon mano ad esse? + Nullo, però che ’l pastor che procede, + rugumar può, ma non ha l’unghie fesse; + + per che la gente, che sua guida vede + pur a quel ben fedire ond’ ella è ghiotta, + di quel si pasce, e più oltre non chiede. + + Ben puoi veder che la mala condotta + è la cagion che ’l mondo ha fatto reo, + e non natura che ’n voi sia corrotta. + + Soleva Roma, che ’l buon mondo feo, + due soli aver, che l’una e l’altra strada + facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo. + + L’un l’altro ha spento; ed è giunta la spada + col pasturale, e l’un con l’altro insieme + per viva forza mal convien che vada; + + però che, giunti, l’un l’altro non teme: + se non mi credi, pon mente a la spiga, + ch’ogn’ erba si conosce per lo seme. + + In sul paese ch’Adice e Po riga, + solea valore e cortesia trovarsi, + prima che Federigo avesse briga; + + or può sicuramente indi passarsi + per qualunque lasciasse, per vergogna + di ragionar coi buoni o d’appressarsi. + + Ben v’èn tre vecchi ancora in cui rampogna + l’antica età la nova, e par lor tardo + che Dio a miglior vita li ripogna: + + Currado da Palazzo e ’l buon Gherardo + e Guido da Castel, che mei si noma, + francescamente, il semplice Lombardo. + + Dì oggimai che la Chiesa di Roma, + per confondere in sé due reggimenti, + cade nel fango, e sé brutta e la soma». + + «O Marco mio», diss’ io, «bene argomenti; + e or discerno perché dal retaggio + li figli di Levì furono essenti. + + Ma qual Gherardo è quel che tu per saggio + di’ ch’è rimaso de la gente spenta, + in rimprovèro del secol selvaggio?». + + «O tuo parlar m’inganna, o el mi tenta», + rispuose a me; «ché, parlandomi tosco, + par che del buon Gherardo nulla senta. + + Per altro sopranome io nol conosco, + s’io nol togliessi da sua figlia Gaia. + Dio sia con voi, ché più non vegno vosco. + + Vedi l’albor che per lo fummo raia + già biancheggiare, e me convien partirmi + (l’angelo è ivi) prima ch’io li paia». + + Così tornò, e più non volle udirmi. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XVII + + + Ricorditi, lettor, se mai ne l’alpe + ti colse nebbia per la qual vedessi + non altrimenti che per pelle talpe, + + come, quando i vapori umidi e spessi + a diradar cominciansi, la spera + del sol debilemente entra per essi; + + e fia la tua imagine leggera + in giugnere a veder com’ io rividi + lo sole in pria, che già nel corcar era. + + Sì, pareggiando i miei co’ passi fidi + del mio maestro, usci’ fuor di tal nube + ai raggi morti già ne’ bassi lidi. + + O imaginativa che ne rube + talvolta sì di fuor, ch’om non s’accorge + perché dintorno suonin mille tube, + + chi move te, se ’l senso non ti porge? + Moveti lume che nel ciel s’informa, + per sé o per voler che giù lo scorge. + + De l’empiezza di lei che mutò forma + ne l’uccel ch’a cantar più si diletta, + ne l’imagine mia apparve l’orma; + + e qui fu la mia mente sì ristretta + dentro da sé, che di fuor non venìa + cosa che fosse allor da lei ricetta. + + Poi piovve dentro a l’alta fantasia + un crucifisso, dispettoso e fero + ne la sua vista, e cotal si moria; + + intorno ad esso era il grande Assüero, + Estèr sua sposa e ’l giusto Mardoceo, + che fu al dire e al far così intero. + + E come questa imagine rompeo + sé per sé stessa, a guisa d’una bulla + cui manca l’acqua sotto qual si feo, + + surse in mia visïone una fanciulla + piangendo forte, e dicea: «O regina, + perché per ira hai voluto esser nulla? + + Ancisa t’hai per non perder Lavina; + or m’hai perduta! Io son essa che lutto, + madre, a la tua pria ch’a l’altrui ruina». + + Come si frange il sonno ove di butto + nova luce percuote il viso chiuso, + che fratto guizza pria che muoia tutto; + + così l’imaginar mio cadde giuso + tosto che lume il volto mi percosse, + maggior assai che quel ch’è in nostro uso. + + I’ mi volgea per veder ov’ io fosse, + quando una voce disse «Qui si monta», + che da ogne altro intento mi rimosse; + + e fece la mia voglia tanto pronta + di riguardar chi era che parlava, + che mai non posa, se non si raffronta. + + Ma come al sol che nostra vista grava + e per soverchio sua figura vela, + così la mia virtù quivi mancava. + + «Questo è divino spirito, che ne la + via da ir sù ne drizza sanza prego, + e col suo lume sé medesmo cela. + + Sì fa con noi, come l’uom si fa sego; + ché quale aspetta prego e l’uopo vede, + malignamente già si mette al nego. + + Or accordiamo a tanto invito il piede; + procacciam di salir pria che s’abbui, + ché poi non si poria, se ’l dì non riede». + + Così disse il mio duca, e io con lui + volgemmo i nostri passi ad una scala; + e tosto ch’io al primo grado fui, + + senti’mi presso quasi un muover d’ala + e ventarmi nel viso e dir: ‘Beati + pacifici, che son sanz’ ira mala!’. + + Già eran sovra noi tanto levati + li ultimi raggi che la notte segue, + che le stelle apparivan da più lati. + + ‘O virtù mia, perché sì ti dilegue?’, + fra me stesso dicea, ché mi sentiva + la possa de le gambe posta in triegue. + + Noi eravam dove più non saliva + la scala sù, ed eravamo affissi, + pur come nave ch’a la piaggia arriva. + + E io attesi un poco, s’io udissi + alcuna cosa nel novo girone; + poi mi volsi al maestro mio, e dissi: + + «Dolce mio padre, dì, quale offensione + si purga qui nel giro dove semo? + Se i piè si stanno, non stea tuo sermone». + + Ed elli a me: «L’amor del bene, scemo + del suo dover, quiritta si ristora; + qui si ribatte il mal tardato remo. + + Ma perché più aperto intendi ancora, + volgi la mente a me, e prenderai + alcun buon frutto di nostra dimora». + + «Né creator né creatura mai», + cominciò el, «figliuol, fu sanza amore, + o naturale o d’animo; e tu ’l sai. + + Lo naturale è sempre sanza errore, + ma l’altro puote errar per malo obietto + o per troppo o per poco di vigore. + + Mentre ch’elli è nel primo ben diretto, + e ne’ secondi sé stesso misura, + esser non può cagion di mal diletto; + + ma quando al mal si torce, o con più cura + o con men che non dee corre nel bene, + contra ’l fattore adovra sua fattura. + + Quinci comprender puoi ch’esser convene + amor sementa in voi d’ogne virtute + e d’ogne operazion che merta pene. + + Or, perché mai non può da la salute + amor del suo subietto volger viso, + da l’odio proprio son le cose tute; + + e perché intender non si può diviso, + e per sé stante, alcuno esser dal primo, + da quello odiare ogne effetto è deciso. + + Resta, se dividendo bene stimo, + che ’l mal che s’ama è del prossimo; ed esso + amor nasce in tre modi in vostro limo. + + È chi, per esser suo vicin soppresso, + spera eccellenza, e sol per questo brama + ch’el sia di sua grandezza in basso messo; + + è chi podere, grazia, onore e fama + teme di perder perch’ altri sormonti, + onde s’attrista sì che ’l contrario ama; + + ed è chi per ingiuria par ch’aonti, + sì che si fa de la vendetta ghiotto, + e tal convien che ’l male altrui impronti. + + Questo triforme amor qua giù di sotto + si piange: or vo’ che tu de l’altro intende, + che corre al ben con ordine corrotto. + + Ciascun confusamente un bene apprende + nel qual si queti l’animo, e disira; + per che di giugner lui ciascun contende. + + Se lento amore a lui veder vi tira + o a lui acquistar, questa cornice, + dopo giusto penter, ve ne martira. + + Altro ben è che non fa l’uom felice; + non è felicità, non è la buona + essenza, d’ogne ben frutto e radice. + + L’amor ch’ad esso troppo s’abbandona, + di sovr’ a noi si piange per tre cerchi; + ma come tripartito si ragiona, + + tacciolo, acciò che tu per te ne cerchi». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XVIII + + + Posto avea fine al suo ragionamento + l’alto dottore, e attento guardava + ne la mia vista s’io parea contento; + + e io, cui nova sete ancor frugava, + di fuor tacea, e dentro dicea: ‘Forse + lo troppo dimandar ch’io fo li grava’. + + Ma quel padre verace, che s’accorse + del timido voler che non s’apriva, + parlando, di parlare ardir mi porse. + + Ond’ io: «Maestro, il mio veder s’avviva + sì nel tuo lume, ch’io discerno chiaro + quanto la tua ragion parta o descriva. + + Però ti prego, dolce padre caro, + che mi dimostri amore, a cui reduci + ogne buono operare e ’l suo contraro». + + «Drizza», disse, «ver’ me l’agute luci + de lo ’ntelletto, e fieti manifesto + l’error de’ ciechi che si fanno duci. + + L’animo, ch’è creato ad amar presto, + ad ogne cosa è mobile che piace, + tosto che dal piacere in atto è desto. + + Vostra apprensiva da esser verace + tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega, + sì che l’animo ad essa volger face; + + e se, rivolto, inver’ di lei si piega, + quel piegare è amor, quell’ è natura + che per piacer di novo in voi si lega. + + Poi, come ’l foco movesi in altura + per la sua forma ch’è nata a salire + là dove più in sua matera dura, + + così l’animo preso entra in disire, + ch’è moto spiritale, e mai non posa + fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire. + + Or ti puote apparer quant’ è nascosa + la veritate a la gente ch’avvera + ciascun amore in sé laudabil cosa; + + però che forse appar la sua matera + sempre esser buona, ma non ciascun segno + è buono, ancor che buona sia la cera». + + «Le tue parole e ’l mio seguace ingegno», + rispuos’ io lui, «m’hanno amor discoverto, + ma ciò m’ha fatto di dubbiar più pregno; + + ché, s’amore è di fuori a noi offerto + e l’anima non va con altro piede, + se dritta o torta va, non è suo merto». + + Ed elli a me: «Quanto ragion qui vede, + dir ti poss’ io; da indi in là t’aspetta + pur a Beatrice, ch’è opra di fede. + + Ogne forma sustanzïal, che setta + è da matera ed è con lei unita, + specifica vertute ha in sé colletta, + + la qual sanza operar non è sentita, + né si dimostra mai che per effetto, + come per verdi fronde in pianta vita. + + Però, là onde vegna lo ’ntelletto + de le prime notizie, omo non sape, + e de’ primi appetibili l’affetto, + + che sono in voi sì come studio in ape + di far lo mele; e questa prima voglia + merto di lode o di biasmo non cape. + + Or perché a questa ogn’ altra si raccoglia, + innata v’è la virtù che consiglia, + e de l’assenso de’ tener la soglia. + + Quest’ è ’l principio là onde si piglia + ragion di meritare in voi, secondo + che buoni e rei amori accoglie e viglia. + + Color che ragionando andaro al fondo, + s’accorser d’esta innata libertate; + però moralità lasciaro al mondo. + + Onde, poniam che di necessitate + surga ogne amor che dentro a voi s’accende, + di ritenerlo è in voi la podestate. + + La nobile virtù Beatrice intende + per lo libero arbitrio, e però guarda + che l’abbi a mente, s’a parlar ten prende». + + La luna, quasi a mezza notte tarda, + facea le stelle a noi parer più rade, + fatta com’ un secchion che tuttor arda; + + e correa contro ’l ciel per quelle strade + che ’l sole infiamma allor che quel da Roma + tra ’ Sardi e ’ Corsi il vede quando cade. + + E quell’ ombra gentil per cui si noma + Pietola più che villa mantoana, + del mio carcar diposta avea la soma; + + per ch’io, che la ragione aperta e piana + sovra le mie quistioni avea ricolta, + stava com’ om che sonnolento vana. + + Ma questa sonnolenza mi fu tolta + subitamente da gente che dopo + le nostre spalle a noi era già volta. + + E quale Ismeno già vide e Asopo + lungo di sè di notte furia e calca, + pur che i Teban di Bacco avesser uopo, + + cotal per quel giron suo passo falca, + per quel ch’io vidi di color, venendo, + cui buon volere e giusto amor cavalca. + + Tosto fur sovr’ a noi, perché correndo + si movea tutta quella turba magna; + e due dinanzi gridavan piangendo: + + «Maria corse con fretta a la montagna; + e Cesare, per soggiogare Ilerda, + punse Marsilia e poi corse in Ispagna». + + «Ratto, ratto, che ’l tempo non si perda + per poco amor», gridavan li altri appresso, + «che studio di ben far grazia rinverda». + + «O gente in cui fervore aguto adesso + ricompie forse negligenza e indugio + da voi per tepidezza in ben far messo, + + questi che vive, e certo i’ non vi bugio, + vuole andar sù, pur che ’l sol ne riluca; + però ne dite ond’ è presso il pertugio». + + Parole furon queste del mio duca; + e un di quelli spirti disse: «Vieni + di retro a noi, e troverai la buca. + + Noi siam di voglia a muoverci sì pieni, + che restar non potem; però perdona, + se villania nostra giustizia tieni. + + Io fui abate in San Zeno a Verona + sotto lo ’mperio del buon Barbarossa, + di cui dolente ancor Milan ragiona. + + E tale ha già l’un piè dentro la fossa, + che tosto piangerà quel monastero, + e tristo fia d’avere avuta possa; + + perché suo figlio, mal del corpo intero, + e de la mente peggio, e che mal nacque, + ha posto in loco di suo pastor vero». + + Io non so se più disse o s’ei si tacque, + tant’ era già di là da noi trascorso; + ma questo intesi, e ritener mi piacque. + + E quei che m’era ad ogne uopo soccorso + disse: «Volgiti qua: vedine due + venir dando a l’accidïa di morso». + + Di retro a tutti dicean: «Prima fue + morta la gente a cui il mar s’aperse, + che vedesse Iordan le rede sue. + + E quella che l’affanno non sofferse + fino a la fine col figlio d’Anchise, + sé stessa a vita sanza gloria offerse». + + Poi quando fuor da noi tanto divise + quell’ ombre, che veder più non potiersi, + novo pensiero dentro a me si mise, + + del qual più altri nacquero e diversi; + e tanto d’uno in altro vaneggiai, + che li occhi per vaghezza ricopersi, + + e ’l pensamento in sogno trasmutai. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XIX + + + Ne l’ora che non può ’l calor dïurno + intepidar più ’l freddo de la luna, + vinto da terra, e talor da Saturno + + —quando i geomanti lor Maggior Fortuna + veggiono in orïente, innanzi a l’alba, + surger per via che poco le sta bruna—, + + mi venne in sogno una femmina balba, + ne li occhi guercia, e sovra i piè distorta, + con le man monche, e di colore scialba. + + Io la mirava; e come ’l sol conforta + le fredde membra che la notte aggrava, + così lo sguardo mio le facea scorta + + la lingua, e poscia tutta la drizzava + in poco d’ora, e lo smarrito volto, + com’ amor vuol, così le colorava. + + Poi ch’ell’ avea ’l parlar così disciolto, + cominciava a cantar sì, che con pena + da lei avrei mio intento rivolto. + + «Io son», cantava, «io son dolce serena, + che ’ marinari in mezzo mar dismago; + tanto son di piacere a sentir piena! + + Io volsi Ulisse del suo cammin vago + al canto mio; e qual meco s’ausa, + rado sen parte; sì tutto l’appago!». + + Ancor non era sua bocca richiusa, + quand’ una donna apparve santa e presta + lunghesso me per far colei confusa. + + «O Virgilio, Virgilio, chi è questa?», + fieramente dicea; ed el venìa + con li occhi fitti pur in quella onesta. + + L’altra prendea, e dinanzi l’apria + fendendo i drappi, e mostravami ’l ventre; + quel mi svegliò col puzzo che n’uscia. + + Io mossi li occhi, e ’l buon maestro: «Almen tre + voci t’ho messe!», dicea, «Surgi e vieni; + troviam l’aperta per la qual tu entre». + + Sù mi levai, e tutti eran già pieni + de l’alto dì i giron del sacro monte, + e andavam col sol novo a le reni. + + Seguendo lui, portava la mia fronte + come colui che l’ha di pensier carca, + che fa di sé un mezzo arco di ponte; + + quand’ io udi’ «Venite; qui si varca» + parlare in modo soave e benigno, + qual non si sente in questa mortal marca. + + Con l’ali aperte, che parean di cigno, + volseci in sù colui che sì parlonne + tra due pareti del duro macigno. + + Mosse le penne poi e ventilonne, + ‘Qui lugent’ affermando esser beati, + ch’avran di consolar l’anime donne. + + «Che hai che pur inver’ la terra guati?», + la guida mia incominciò a dirmi, + poco amendue da l’angel sormontati. + + E io: «Con tanta sospeccion fa irmi + novella visïon ch’a sé mi piega, + sì ch’io non posso dal pensar partirmi». + + «Vedesti», disse, «quell’antica strega + che sola sovr’ a noi omai si piagne; + vedesti come l’uom da lei si slega. + + Bastiti, e batti a terra le calcagne; + li occhi rivolgi al logoro che gira + lo rege etterno con le rote magne». + + Quale ’l falcon, che prima a’ pié si mira, + indi si volge al grido e si protende + per lo disio del pasto che là il tira, + + tal mi fec’ io; e tal, quanto si fende + la roccia per dar via a chi va suso, + n’andai infin dove ’l cerchiar si prende. + + Com’ io nel quinto giro fui dischiuso, + vidi gente per esso che piangea, + giacendo a terra tutta volta in giuso. + + ‘Adhaesit pavimento anima mea’ + sentia dir lor con sì alti sospiri, + che la parola a pena s’intendea. + + «O eletti di Dio, li cui soffriri + e giustizia e speranza fa men duri, + drizzate noi verso li alti saliri». + + «Se voi venite dal giacer sicuri, + e volete trovar la via più tosto, + le vostre destre sien sempre di fori». + + Così pregò ’l poeta, e sì risposto + poco dinanzi a noi ne fu; per ch’io + nel parlare avvisai l’altro nascosto, + + e volsi li occhi a li occhi al segnor mio: + ond’ elli m’assentì con lieto cenno + ciò che chiedea la vista del disio. + + Poi ch’io potei di me fare a mio senno, + trassimi sovra quella creatura + le cui parole pria notar mi fenno, + + dicendo: «Spirto in cui pianger matura + quel sanza ’l quale a Dio tornar non pòssi, + sosta un poco per me tua maggior cura. + + Chi fosti e perché vòlti avete i dossi + al sù, mi dì, e se vuo’ ch’io t’impetri + cosa di là ond’ io vivendo mossi». + + Ed elli a me: «Perché i nostri diretri + rivolga il cielo a sé, saprai; ma prima + scias quod ego fui successor Petri. + + Intra Sïestri e Chiaveri s’adima + una fiumana bella, e del suo nome + lo titol del mio sangue fa sua cima. + + Un mese e poco più prova’ io come + pesa il gran manto a chi dal fango il guarda, + che piuma sembran tutte l’altre some. + + La mia conversïone, omè!, fu tarda; + ma, come fatto fui roman pastore, + così scopersi la vita bugiarda. + + Vidi che lì non s’acquetava il core, + né più salir potiesi in quella vita; + per che di questa in me s’accese amore. + + Fino a quel punto misera e partita + da Dio anima fui, del tutto avara; + or, come vedi, qui ne son punita. + + Quel ch’avarizia fa, qui si dichiara + in purgazion de l’anime converse; + e nulla pena il monte ha più amara. + + Sì come l’occhio nostro non s’aderse + in alto, fisso a le cose terrene, + così giustizia qui a terra il merse. + + Come avarizia spense a ciascun bene + lo nostro amore, onde operar perdési, + così giustizia qui stretti ne tene, + + ne’ piedi e ne le man legati e presi; + e quanto fia piacer del giusto Sire, + tanto staremo immobili e distesi». + + Io m’era inginocchiato e volea dire; + ma com’ io cominciai ed el s’accorse, + solo ascoltando, del mio reverire, + + «Qual cagion», disse, «in giù così ti torse?». + E io a lui: «Per vostra dignitate + mia coscïenza dritto mi rimorse». + + «Drizza le gambe, lèvati sù, frate!», + rispuose; «non errar: conservo sono + teco e con li altri ad una podestate. + + Se mai quel santo evangelico suono + che dice ‘Neque nubent’ intendesti, + ben puoi veder perch’ io così ragiono. + + Vattene omai: non vo’ che più t’arresti; + ché la tua stanza mio pianger disagia, + col qual maturo ciò che tu dicesti. + + Nepote ho io di là c’ha nome Alagia, + buona da sé, pur che la nostra casa + non faccia lei per essempro malvagia; + + e questa sola di là m’è rimasa». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XX + + + Contra miglior voler voler mal pugna; + onde contra ’l piacer mio, per piacerli, + trassi de l’acqua non sazia la spugna. + + Mossimi; e ’l duca mio si mosse per li + luoghi spediti pur lungo la roccia, + come si va per muro stretto a’ merli; + + ché la gente che fonde a goccia a goccia + per li occhi il mal che tutto ’l mondo occupa, + da l’altra parte in fuor troppo s’approccia. + + Maladetta sie tu, antica lupa, + che più che tutte l’altre bestie hai preda + per la tua fame sanza fine cupa! + + O ciel, nel cui girar par che si creda + le condizion di qua giù trasmutarsi, + quando verrà per cui questa disceda? + + Noi andavam con passi lenti e scarsi, + e io attento a l’ombre, ch’i’ sentia + pietosamente piangere e lagnarsi; + + e per ventura udi’ «Dolce Maria!» + dinanzi a noi chiamar così nel pianto + come fa donna che in parturir sia; + + e seguitar: «Povera fosti tanto, + quanto veder si può per quello ospizio + dove sponesti il tuo portato santo». + + Seguentemente intesi: «O buon Fabrizio, + con povertà volesti anzi virtute + che gran ricchezza posseder con vizio». + + Queste parole m’eran sì piaciute, + ch’io mi trassi oltre per aver contezza + di quello spirto onde parean venute. + + Esso parlava ancor de la larghezza + che fece Niccolò a le pulcelle, + per condurre ad onor lor giovinezza. + + «O anima che tanto ben favelle, + dimmi chi fosti», dissi, «e perché sola + tu queste degne lode rinovelle. + + Non fia sanza mercé la tua parola, + s’io ritorno a compiér lo cammin corto + di quella vita ch’al termine vola». + + Ed elli: «Io ti dirò, non per conforto + ch’io attenda di là, ma perché tanta + grazia in te luce prima che sie morto. + + Io fui radice de la mala pianta + che la terra cristiana tutta aduggia, + sì che buon frutto rado se ne schianta. + + Ma se Doagio, Lilla, Guanto e Bruggia + potesser, tosto ne saria vendetta; + e io la cheggio a lui che tutto giuggia. + + Chiamato fui di là Ugo Ciappetta; + di me son nati i Filippi e i Luigi + per cui novellamente è Francia retta. + + Figliuol fu’ io d’un beccaio di Parigi: + quando li regi antichi venner meno + tutti, fuor ch’un renduto in panni bigi, + + trova’mi stretto ne le mani il freno + del governo del regno, e tanta possa + di nuovo acquisto, e sì d’amici pieno, + + ch’a la corona vedova promossa + la testa di mio figlio fu, dal quale + cominciar di costor le sacrate ossa. + + Mentre che la gran dota provenzale + al sangue mio non tolse la vergogna, + poco valea, ma pur non facea male. + + Lì cominciò con forza e con menzogna + la sua rapina; e poscia, per ammenda, + Pontì e Normandia prese e Guascogna. + + Carlo venne in Italia e, per ammenda, + vittima fé di Curradino; e poi + ripinse al ciel Tommaso, per ammenda. + + Tempo vegg’ io, non molto dopo ancoi, + che tragge un altro Carlo fuor di Francia, + per far conoscer meglio e sé e ’ suoi. + + Sanz’ arme n’esce e solo con la lancia + con la qual giostrò Giuda, e quella ponta + sì, ch’a Fiorenza fa scoppiar la pancia. + + Quindi non terra, ma peccato e onta + guadagnerà, per sé tanto più grave, + quanto più lieve simil danno conta. + + L’altro, che già uscì preso di nave, + veggio vender sua figlia e patteggiarne + come fanno i corsar de l’altre schiave. + + O avarizia, che puoi tu più farne, + poscia c’ha’ il mio sangue a te sì tratto, + che non si cura de la propria carne? + + Perché men paia il mal futuro e ’l fatto, + veggio in Alagna intrar lo fiordaliso, + e nel vicario suo Cristo esser catto. + + Veggiolo un’altra volta esser deriso; + veggio rinovellar l’aceto e ’l fiele, + e tra vivi ladroni esser anciso. + + Veggio il novo Pilato sì crudele, + che ciò nol sazia, ma sanza decreto + portar nel Tempio le cupide vele. + + O Segnor mio, quando sarò io lieto + a veder la vendetta che, nascosa, + fa dolce l’ira tua nel tuo secreto? + + Ciò ch’io dicea di quell’ unica sposa + de lo Spirito Santo e che ti fece + verso me volger per alcuna chiosa, + + tanto è risposto a tutte nostre prece + quanto ’l dì dura; ma com’ el s’annotta, + contrario suon prendemo in quella vece. + + Noi repetiam Pigmalïon allotta, + cui traditore e ladro e paricida + fece la voglia sua de l’oro ghiotta; + + e la miseria de l’avaro Mida, + che seguì a la sua dimanda gorda, + per la qual sempre convien che si rida. + + Del folle Acàn ciascun poi si ricorda, + come furò le spoglie, sì che l’ira + di Iosüè qui par ch’ancor lo morda. + + Indi accusiam col marito Saffira; + lodiam i calci ch’ebbe Elïodoro; + e in infamia tutto ’l monte gira + + Polinestòr ch’ancise Polidoro; + ultimamente ci si grida: “Crasso, + dilci, che ’l sai: di che sapore è l’oro?”. + + Talor parla l’uno alto e l’altro basso, + secondo l’affezion ch’ad ir ci sprona + ora a maggiore e ora a minor passo: + + però al ben che ’l dì ci si ragiona, + dianzi non era io sol; ma qui da presso + non alzava la voce altra persona». + + Noi eravam partiti già da esso, + e brigavam di soverchiar la strada + tanto quanto al poder n’era permesso, + + quand’ io senti’, come cosa che cada, + tremar lo monte; onde mi prese un gelo + qual prender suol colui ch’a morte vada. + + Certo non si scoteo sì forte Delo, + pria che Latona in lei facesse ’l nido + a parturir li due occhi del cielo. + + Poi cominciò da tutte parti un grido + tal, che ’l maestro inverso me si feo, + dicendo: «Non dubbiar, mentr’ io ti guido». + + ‘Glorïa in excelsis’ tutti ‘Deo’ + dicean, per quel ch’io da’ vicin compresi, + onde intender lo grido si poteo. + + No’ istavamo immobili e sospesi + come i pastor che prima udir quel canto, + fin che ’l tremar cessò ed el compiési. + + Poi ripigliammo nostro cammin santo, + guardando l’ombre che giacean per terra, + tornate già in su l’usato pianto. + + Nulla ignoranza mai con tanta guerra + mi fé desideroso di sapere, + se la memoria mia in ciò non erra, + + quanta pareami allor, pensando, avere; + né per la fretta dimandare er’ oso, + né per me lì potea cosa vedere: + + così m’andava timido e pensoso. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXI + + + La sete natural che mai non sazia + se non con l’acqua onde la femminetta + samaritana domandò la grazia, + + mi travagliava, e pungeami la fretta + per la ’mpacciata via dietro al mio duca, + e condoleami a la giusta vendetta. + + Ed ecco, sì come ne scrive Luca + che Cristo apparve a’ due ch’erano in via, + già surto fuor de la sepulcral buca, + + ci apparve un’ombra, e dietro a noi venìa, + dal piè guardando la turba che giace; + né ci addemmo di lei, sì parlò pria, + + dicendo: «O frati miei, Dio vi dea pace». + Noi ci volgemmo sùbiti, e Virgilio + rendéli ’l cenno ch’a ciò si conface. + + Poi cominciò: «Nel beato concilio + ti ponga in pace la verace corte + che me rilega ne l’etterno essilio». + + «Come!», diss’ elli, e parte andavam forte: + «se voi siete ombre che Dio sù non degni, + chi v’ha per la sua scala tanto scorte?». + + E ’l dottor mio: «Se tu riguardi a’ segni + che questi porta e che l’angel profila, + ben vedrai che coi buon convien ch’e’ regni. + + Ma perché lei che dì e notte fila + non li avea tratta ancora la conocchia + che Cloto impone a ciascuno e compila, + + l’anima sua, ch’è tua e mia serocchia, + venendo sù, non potea venir sola, + però ch’al nostro modo non adocchia. + + Ond’ io fui tratto fuor de l’ampia gola + d’inferno per mostrarli, e mosterrolli + oltre, quanto ’l potrà menar mia scola. + + Ma dimmi, se tu sai, perché tai crolli + diè dianzi ’l monte, e perché tutto ad una + parve gridare infino a’ suoi piè molli». + + Sì mi diè, dimandando, per la cruna + del mio disio, che pur con la speranza + si fece la mia sete men digiuna. + + Quei cominciò: «Cosa non è che sanza + ordine senta la religïone + de la montagna, o che sia fuor d’usanza. + + Libero è qui da ogne alterazione: + di quel che ’l ciel da sé in sé riceve + esser ci puote, e non d’altro, cagione. + + Per che non pioggia, non grando, non neve, + non rugiada, non brina più sù cade + che la scaletta di tre gradi breve; + + nuvole spesse non paion né rade, + né coruscar, né figlia di Taumante, + che di là cangia sovente contrade; + + secco vapor non surge più avante + ch’al sommo d’i tre gradi ch’io parlai, + dov’ ha ’l vicario di Pietro le piante. + + Trema forse più giù poco o assai; + ma per vento che ’n terra si nasconda, + non so come, qua sù non tremò mai. + + Tremaci quando alcuna anima monda + sentesi, sì che surga o che si mova + per salir sù; e tal grido seconda. + + De la mondizia sol voler fa prova, + che, tutto libero a mutar convento, + l’alma sorprende, e di voler le giova. + + Prima vuol ben, ma non lascia il talento + che divina giustizia, contra voglia, + come fu al peccar, pone al tormento. + + E io, che son giaciuto a questa doglia + cinquecent’ anni e più, pur mo sentii + libera volontà di miglior soglia: + + però sentisti il tremoto e li pii + spiriti per lo monte render lode + a quel Segnor, che tosto sù li ’nvii». + + Così ne disse; e però ch’el si gode + tanto del ber quant’ è grande la sete, + non saprei dir quant’ el mi fece prode. + + E ’l savio duca: «Omai veggio la rete + che qui vi ’mpiglia e come si scalappia, + perché ci trema e di che congaudete. + + Ora chi fosti, piacciati ch’io sappia, + e perché tanti secoli giaciuto + qui se’, ne le parole tue mi cappia». + + «Nel tempo che ’l buon Tito, con l’aiuto + del sommo rege, vendicò le fóra + ond’ uscì ’l sangue per Giuda venduto, + + col nome che più dura e più onora + era io di là», rispuose quello spirto, + «famoso assai, ma non con fede ancora. + + Tanto fu dolce mio vocale spirto, + che, tolosano, a sé mi trasse Roma, + dove mertai le tempie ornar di mirto. + + Stazio la gente ancor di là mi noma: + cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille; + ma caddi in via con la seconda soma. + + Al mio ardor fuor seme le faville, + che mi scaldar, de la divina fiamma + onde sono allumati più di mille; + + de l’Eneïda dico, la qual mamma + fummi, e fummi nutrice, poetando: + sanz’ essa non fermai peso di dramma. + + E per esser vivuto di là quando + visse Virgilio, assentirei un sole + più che non deggio al mio uscir di bando». + + Volser Virgilio a me queste parole + con viso che, tacendo, disse ‘Taci’; + ma non può tutto la virtù che vuole; + + ché riso e pianto son tanto seguaci + a la passion di che ciascun si spicca, + che men seguon voler ne’ più veraci. + + Io pur sorrisi come l’uom ch’ammicca; + per che l’ombra si tacque, e riguardommi + ne li occhi ove ’l sembiante più si ficca; + + e «Se tanto labore in bene assommi», + disse, «perché la tua faccia testeso + un lampeggiar di riso dimostrommi?». + + Or son io d’una parte e d’altra preso: + l’una mi fa tacer, l’altra scongiura + ch’io dica; ond’ io sospiro, e sono inteso + + dal mio maestro, e «Non aver paura», + mi dice, «di parlar; ma parla e digli + quel ch’e’ dimanda con cotanta cura». + + Ond’ io: «Forse che tu ti maravigli, + antico spirto, del rider ch’io fei; + ma più d’ammirazion vo’ che ti pigli. + + Questi che guida in alto li occhi miei, + è quel Virgilio dal qual tu togliesti + forte a cantar de li uomini e d’i dèi. + + Se cagion altra al mio rider credesti, + lasciala per non vera, ed esser credi + quelle parole che di lui dicesti». + + Già s’inchinava ad abbracciar li piedi + al mio dottor, ma el li disse: «Frate, + non far, ché tu se’ ombra e ombra vedi». + + Ed ei surgendo: «Or puoi la quantitate + comprender de l’amor ch’a te mi scalda, + quand’ io dismento nostra vanitate, + + trattando l’ombre come cosa salda». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXII + + + Già era l’angel dietro a noi rimaso, + l’angel che n’avea vòlti al sesto giro, + avendomi dal viso un colpo raso; + + e quei c’hanno a giustizia lor disiro + detto n’avea beati, e le sue voci + con ‘sitiunt’, sanz’ altro, ciò forniro. + + E io più lieve che per l’altre foci + m’andava, sì che sanz’ alcun labore + seguiva in sù li spiriti veloci; + + quando Virgilio incominciò: «Amore, + acceso di virtù, sempre altro accese, + pur che la fiamma sua paresse fore; + + onde da l’ora che tra noi discese + nel limbo de lo ’nferno Giovenale, + che la tua affezion mi fé palese, + + mia benvoglienza inverso te fu quale + più strinse mai di non vista persona, + sì ch’or mi parran corte queste scale. + + Ma dimmi, e come amico mi perdona + se troppa sicurtà m’allarga il freno, + e come amico omai meco ragiona: + + come poté trovar dentro al tuo seno + loco avarizia, tra cotanto senno + di quanto per tua cura fosti pieno?». + + Queste parole Stazio mover fenno + un poco a riso pria; poscia rispuose: + «Ogne tuo dir d’amor m’è caro cenno. + + Veramente più volte appaion cose + che danno a dubitar falsa matera + per le vere ragion che son nascose. + + La tua dimanda tuo creder m’avvera + esser ch’i’ fossi avaro in l’altra vita, + forse per quella cerchia dov’ io era. + + Or sappi ch’avarizia fu partita + troppo da me, e questa dismisura + migliaia di lunari hanno punita. + + E se non fosse ch’io drizzai mia cura, + quand’ io intesi là dove tu chiame, + crucciato quasi a l’umana natura: + + ‘Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fame + de l’oro, l’appetito de’ mortali?’, + voltando sentirei le giostre grame. + + Allor m’accorsi che troppo aprir l’ali + potean le mani a spendere, e pente’mi + così di quel come de li altri mali. + + Quanti risurgeran coi crini scemi + per ignoranza, che di questa pecca + toglie ’l penter vivendo e ne li stremi! + + E sappie che la colpa che rimbecca + per dritta opposizione alcun peccato, + con esso insieme qui suo verde secca; + + però, s’io son tra quella gente stato + che piange l’avarizia, per purgarmi, + per lo contrario suo m’è incontrato». + + «Or quando tu cantasti le crude armi + de la doppia trestizia di Giocasta», + disse ’l cantor de’ buccolici carmi, + + «per quello che Clïò teco lì tasta, + non par che ti facesse ancor fedele + la fede, sanza qual ben far non basta. + + Se così è, qual sole o quai candele + ti stenebraron sì, che tu drizzasti + poscia di retro al pescator le vele?». + + Ed elli a lui: «Tu prima m’invïasti + verso Parnaso a ber ne le sue grotte, + e prima appresso Dio m’alluminasti. + + Facesti come quei che va di notte, + che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova, + ma dopo sé fa le persone dotte, + + quando dicesti: ‘Secol si rinova; + torna giustizia e primo tempo umano, + e progenïe scende da ciel nova’. + + Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano: + ma perché veggi mei ciò ch’io disegno, + a colorare stenderò la mano. + + Già era ’l mondo tutto quanto pregno + de la vera credenza, seminata + per li messaggi de l’etterno regno; + + e la parola tua sopra toccata + si consonava a’ nuovi predicanti; + ond’ io a visitarli presi usata. + + Vennermi poi parendo tanto santi, + che, quando Domizian li perseguette, + sanza mio lagrimar non fur lor pianti; + + e mentre che di là per me si stette, + io li sovvenni, e i lor dritti costumi + fer dispregiare a me tutte altre sette. + + E pria ch’io conducessi i Greci a’ fiumi + di Tebe poetando, ebb’ io battesmo; + ma per paura chiuso cristian fu’mi, + + lungamente mostrando paganesmo; + e questa tepidezza il quarto cerchio + cerchiar mi fé più che ’l quarto centesmo. + + Tu dunque, che levato hai il coperchio + che m’ascondeva quanto bene io dico, + mentre che del salire avem soverchio, + + dimmi dov’ è Terrenzio nostro antico, + Cecilio e Plauto e Varro, se lo sai: + dimmi se son dannati, e in qual vico». + + «Costoro e Persio e io e altri assai», + rispuose il duca mio, «siam con quel Greco + che le Muse lattar più ch’altri mai, + + nel primo cinghio del carcere cieco; + spesse fïate ragioniam del monte + che sempre ha le nutrice nostre seco. + + Euripide v’è nosco e Antifonte, + Simonide, Agatone e altri piùe + Greci che già di lauro ornar la fronte. + + Quivi si veggion de le genti tue + Antigone, Deïfile e Argia, + e Ismene sì trista come fue. + + Védeisi quella che mostrò Langia; + èvvi la figlia di Tiresia, e Teti, + e con le suore sue Deïdamia». + + Tacevansi ambedue già li poeti, + di novo attenti a riguardar dintorno, + liberi da saliri e da pareti; + + e già le quattro ancelle eran del giorno + rimase a dietro, e la quinta era al temo, + drizzando pur in sù l’ardente corno, + + quando il mio duca: «Io credo ch’a lo stremo + le destre spalle volger ne convegna, + girando il monte come far solemo». + + Così l’usanza fu lì nostra insegna, + e prendemmo la via con men sospetto + per l’assentir di quell’ anima degna. + + Elli givan dinanzi, e io soletto + di retro, e ascoltava i lor sermoni, + ch’a poetar mi davano intelletto. + + Ma tosto ruppe le dolci ragioni + un alber che trovammo in mezza strada, + con pomi a odorar soavi e buoni; + + e come abete in alto si digrada + di ramo in ramo, così quello in giuso, + cred’ io, perché persona sù non vada. + + Dal lato onde ’l cammin nostro era chiuso, + cadea de l’alta roccia un liquor chiaro + e si spandeva per le foglie suso. + + Li due poeti a l’alber s’appressaro; + e una voce per entro le fronde + gridò: «Di questo cibo avrete caro». + + Poi disse: «Più pensava Maria onde + fosser le nozze orrevoli e intere, + ch’a la sua bocca, ch’or per voi risponde. + + E le Romane antiche, per lor bere, + contente furon d’acqua; e Danïello + dispregiò cibo e acquistò savere. + + Lo secol primo, quant’ oro fu bello, + fé savorose con fame le ghiande, + e nettare con sete ogne ruscello. + + Mele e locuste furon le vivande + che nodriro il Batista nel diserto; + per ch’elli è glorïoso e tanto grande + + quanto per lo Vangelio v’è aperto». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXIII + + + Mentre che li occhi per la fronda verde + ficcava ïo sì come far suole + chi dietro a li uccellin sua vita perde, + + lo più che padre mi dicea: «Figliuole, + vienne oramai, ché ’l tempo che n’è imposto + più utilmente compartir si vuole». + + Io volsi ’l viso, e ’l passo non men tosto, + appresso i savi, che parlavan sìe, + che l’andar mi facean di nullo costo. + + Ed ecco piangere e cantar s’udìe + ‘Labïa mëa, Domine’ per modo + tal, che diletto e doglia parturìe. + + «O dolce padre, che è quel ch’i’ odo?», + comincia’ io; ed elli: «Ombre che vanno + forse di lor dover solvendo il nodo». + + Sì come i peregrin pensosi fanno, + giugnendo per cammin gente non nota, + che si volgono ad essa e non restanno, + + così di retro a noi, più tosto mota, + venendo e trapassando ci ammirava + d’anime turba tacita e devota. + + Ne li occhi era ciascuna oscura e cava, + palida ne la faccia, e tanto scema + che da l’ossa la pelle s’informava. + + Non credo che così a buccia strema + Erisittone fosse fatto secco, + per digiunar, quando più n’ebbe tema. + + Io dicea fra me stesso pensando: ‘Ecco + la gente che perdé Ierusalemme, + quando Maria nel figlio diè di becco!’ + + Parean l’occhiaie anella sanza gemme: + chi nel viso de li uomini legge ‘omo’ + ben avria quivi conosciuta l’emme. + + Chi crederebbe che l’odor d’un pomo + sì governasse, generando brama, + e quel d’un’acqua, non sappiendo como? + + Già era in ammirar che sì li affama, + per la cagione ancor non manifesta + di lor magrezza e di lor trista squama, + + ed ecco del profondo de la testa + volse a me li occhi un’ombra e guardò fiso; + poi gridò forte: «Qual grazia m’è questa?». + + Mai non l’avrei riconosciuto al viso; + ma ne la voce sua mi fu palese + ciò che l’aspetto in sé avea conquiso. + + Questa favilla tutta mi raccese + mia conoscenza a la cangiata labbia, + e ravvisai la faccia di Forese. + + «Deh, non contendere a l’asciutta scabbia + che mi scolora», pregava, «la pelle, + né a difetto di carne ch’io abbia; + + ma dimmi il ver di te, dì chi son quelle + due anime che là ti fanno scorta; + non rimaner che tu non mi favelle!». + + «La faccia tua, ch’io lagrimai già morta, + mi dà di pianger mo non minor doglia», + rispuos’ io lui, «veggendola sì torta. + + Però mi dì, per Dio, che sì vi sfoglia; + non mi far dir mentr’ io mi maraviglio, + ché mal può dir chi è pien d’altra voglia». + + Ed elli a me: «De l’etterno consiglio + cade vertù ne l’acqua e ne la pianta + rimasa dietro ond’ io sì m’assottiglio. + + Tutta esta gente che piangendo canta + per seguitar la gola oltra misura, + in fame e ’n sete qui si rifà santa. + + Di bere e di mangiar n’accende cura + l’odor ch’esce del pomo e de lo sprazzo + che si distende su per sua verdura. + + E non pur una volta, questo spazzo + girando, si rinfresca nostra pena: + io dico pena, e dovria dir sollazzo, + + ché quella voglia a li alberi ci mena + che menò Cristo lieto a dire ‘Elì’, + quando ne liberò con la sua vena». + + E io a lui: «Forese, da quel dì + nel qual mutasti mondo a miglior vita, + cinqu’ anni non son vòlti infino a qui. + + Se prima fu la possa in te finita + di peccar più, che sovvenisse l’ora + del buon dolor ch’a Dio ne rimarita, + + come se’ tu qua sù venuto ancora? + Io ti credea trovar là giù di sotto, + dove tempo per tempo si ristora». + + Ond’ elli a me: «Sì tosto m’ha condotto + a ber lo dolce assenzo d’i martìri + la Nella mia con suo pianger dirotto. + + Con suoi prieghi devoti e con sospiri + tratto m’ha de la costa ove s’aspetta, + e liberato m’ha de li altri giri. + + Tanto è a Dio più cara e più diletta + la vedovella mia, che molto amai, + quanto in bene operare è più soletta; + + ché la Barbagia di Sardigna assai + ne le femmine sue più è pudica + che la Barbagia dov’ io la lasciai. + + O dolce frate, che vuo’ tu ch’io dica? + Tempo futuro m’è già nel cospetto, + cui non sarà quest’ ora molto antica, + + nel qual sarà in pergamo interdetto + a le sfacciate donne fiorentine + l’andar mostrando con le poppe il petto. + + Quai barbare fuor mai, quai saracine, + cui bisognasse, per farle ir coperte, + o spiritali o altre discipline? + + Ma se le svergognate fosser certe + di quel che ’l ciel veloce loro ammanna, + già per urlare avrian le bocche aperte; + + ché, se l’antiveder qui non m’inganna, + prima fien triste che le guance impeli + colui che mo si consola con nanna. + + Deh, frate, or fa che più non mi ti celi! + vedi che non pur io, ma questa gente + tutta rimira là dove ’l sol veli». + + Per ch’io a lui: «Se tu riduci a mente + qual fosti meco, e qual io teco fui, + ancor fia grave il memorar presente. + + Di quella vita mi volse costui + che mi va innanzi, l’altr’ ier, quando tonda + vi si mostrò la suora di colui», + + e ’l sol mostrai; «costui per la profonda + notte menato m’ha d’i veri morti + con questa vera carne che ’l seconda. + + Indi m’han tratto sù li suoi conforti, + salendo e rigirando la montagna + che drizza voi che ’l mondo fece torti. + + Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna + che io sarò là dove fia Beatrice; + quivi convien che sanza lui rimagna. + + Virgilio è questi che così mi dice», + e addita’lo; «e quest’ altro è quell’ ombra + per cuï scosse dianzi ogne pendice + + lo vostro regno, che da sé lo sgombra». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXIV + + + Né ’l dir l’andar, né l’andar lui più lento + facea, ma ragionando andavam forte, + sì come nave pinta da buon vento; + + e l’ombre, che parean cose rimorte, + per le fosse de li occhi ammirazione + traean di me, di mio vivere accorte. + + E io, continüando al mio sermone, + dissi: «Ella sen va sù forse più tarda + che non farebbe, per altrui cagione. + + Ma dimmi, se tu sai, dov’ è Piccarda; + dimmi s’io veggio da notar persona + tra questa gente che sì mi riguarda». + + «La mia sorella, che tra bella e buona + non so qual fosse più, trïunfa lieta + ne l’alto Olimpo già di sua corona». + + Sì disse prima; e poi: «Qui non si vieta + di nominar ciascun, da ch’è sì munta + nostra sembianza via per la dïeta. + + Questi», e mostrò col dito, «è Bonagiunta, + Bonagiunta da Lucca; e quella faccia + di là da lui più che l’altre trapunta + + ebbe la Santa Chiesa in le sue braccia: + dal Torso fu, e purga per digiuno + l’anguille di Bolsena e la vernaccia». + + Molti altri mi nomò ad uno ad uno; + e del nomar parean tutti contenti, + sì ch’io però non vidi un atto bruno. + + Vidi per fame a vòto usar li denti + Ubaldin da la Pila e Bonifazio + che pasturò col rocco molte genti. + + Vidi messer Marchese, ch’ebbe spazio + già di bere a Forlì con men secchezza, + e sì fu tal, che non si sentì sazio. + + Ma come fa chi guarda e poi s’apprezza + più d’un che d’altro, fei a quel da Lucca, + che più parea di me aver contezza. + + El mormorava; e non so che «Gentucca» + sentiv’ io là, ov’ el sentia la piaga + de la giustizia che sì li pilucca. + + «O anima», diss’ io, «che par sì vaga + di parlar meco, fa sì ch’io t’intenda, + e te e me col tuo parlare appaga». + + «Femmina è nata, e non porta ancor benda», + cominciò el, «che ti farà piacere + la mia città, come ch’om la riprenda. + + Tu te n’andrai con questo antivedere: + se nel mio mormorar prendesti errore, + dichiareranti ancor le cose vere. + + Ma dì s’i’ veggio qui colui che fore + trasse le nove rime, cominciando + ‘Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore’». + + E io a lui: «I’ mi son un che, quando + Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo + ch’e’ ditta dentro vo significando». + + «O frate, issa vegg’ io», diss’ elli, «il nodo + che ’l Notaro e Guittone e me ritenne + di qua dal dolce stil novo ch’i’ odo! + + Io veggio ben come le vostre penne + di retro al dittator sen vanno strette, + che de le nostre certo non avvenne; + + e qual più a gradire oltre si mette, + non vede più da l’uno a l’altro stilo»; + e, quasi contentato, si tacette. + + Come li augei che vernan lungo ’l Nilo, + alcuna volta in aere fanno schiera, + poi volan più a fretta e vanno in filo, + + così tutta la gente che lì era, + volgendo ’l viso, raffrettò suo passo, + e per magrezza e per voler leggera. + + E come l’uom che di trottare è lasso, + lascia andar li compagni, e sì passeggia + fin che si sfoghi l’affollar del casso, + + sì lasciò trapassar la santa greggia + Forese, e dietro meco sen veniva, + dicendo: «Quando fia ch’io ti riveggia?». + + «Non so», rispuos’ io lui, «quant’ io mi viva; + ma già non fïa il tornar mio tantosto, + ch’io non sia col voler prima a la riva; + + però che ’l loco u’ fui a viver posto, + di giorno in giorno più di ben si spolpa, + e a trista ruina par disposto». + + «Or va», diss’ el; «che quei che più n’ha colpa, + vegg’ ïo a coda d’una bestia tratto + inver’ la valle ove mai non si scolpa. + + La bestia ad ogne passo va più ratto, + crescendo sempre, fin ch’ella il percuote, + e lascia il corpo vilmente disfatto. + + Non hanno molto a volger quelle ruote», + e drizzò li occhi al ciel, «che ti fia chiaro + ciò che ’l mio dir più dichiarar non puote. + + Tu ti rimani omai; ché ’l tempo è caro + in questo regno, sì ch’io perdo troppo + venendo teco sì a paro a paro». + + Qual esce alcuna volta di gualoppo + lo cavalier di schiera che cavalchi, + e va per farsi onor del primo intoppo, + + tal si partì da noi con maggior valchi; + e io rimasi in via con esso i due + che fuor del mondo sì gran marescalchi. + + E quando innanzi a noi intrato fue, + che li occhi miei si fero a lui seguaci, + come la mente a le parole sue, + + parvermi i rami gravidi e vivaci + d’un altro pomo, e non molto lontani + per esser pur allora vòlto in laci. + + Vidi gente sott’ esso alzar le mani + e gridar non so che verso le fronde, + quasi bramosi fantolini e vani + + che pregano, e ’l pregato non risponde, + ma, per fare esser ben la voglia acuta, + tien alto lor disio e nol nasconde. + + Poi si partì sì come ricreduta; + e noi venimmo al grande arbore adesso, + che tanti prieghi e lagrime rifiuta. + + «Trapassate oltre sanza farvi presso: + legno è più sù che fu morso da Eva, + e questa pianta si levò da esso». + + Sì tra le frasche non so chi diceva; + per che Virgilio e Stazio e io, ristretti, + oltre andavam dal lato che si leva. + + «Ricordivi», dicea, «d’i maladetti + nei nuvoli formati, che, satolli, + Tesëo combatter co’ doppi petti; + + e de li Ebrei ch’al ber si mostrar molli, + per che no i volle Gedeon compagni, + quando inver’ Madïan discese i colli». + + Sì accostati a l’un d’i due vivagni + passammo, udendo colpe de la gola + seguite già da miseri guadagni. + + Poi, rallargati per la strada sola, + ben mille passi e più ci portar oltre, + contemplando ciascun sanza parola. + + «Che andate pensando sì voi sol tre?». + sùbita voce disse; ond’ io mi scossi + come fan bestie spaventate e poltre. + + Drizzai la testa per veder chi fossi; + e già mai non si videro in fornace + vetri o metalli sì lucenti e rossi, + + com’ io vidi un che dicea: «S’a voi piace + montare in sù, qui si convien dar volta; + quinci si va chi vuole andar per pace». + + L’aspetto suo m’avea la vista tolta; + per ch’io mi volsi dietro a’ miei dottori, + com’ om che va secondo ch’elli ascolta. + + E quale, annunziatrice de li albori, + l’aura di maggio movesi e olezza, + tutta impregnata da l’erba e da’ fiori; + + tal mi senti’ un vento dar per mezza + la fronte, e ben senti’ mover la piuma, + che fé sentir d’ambrosïa l’orezza. + + E senti’ dir: «Beati cui alluma + tanto di grazia, che l’amor del gusto + nel petto lor troppo disir non fuma, + + esurïendo sempre quanto è giusto!». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXV + + + Ora era onde ’l salir non volea storpio; + ché ’l sole avëa il cerchio di merigge + lasciato al Tauro e la notte a lo Scorpio: + + per che, come fa l’uom che non s’affigge + ma vassi a la via sua, che che li appaia, + se di bisogno stimolo il trafigge, + + così intrammo noi per la callaia, + uno innanzi altro prendendo la scala + che per artezza i salitor dispaia. + + E quale il cicognin che leva l’ala + per voglia di volare, e non s’attenta + d’abbandonar lo nido, e giù la cala; + + tal era io con voglia accesa e spenta + di dimandar, venendo infino a l’atto + che fa colui ch’a dicer s’argomenta. + + Non lasciò, per l’andar che fosse ratto, + lo dolce padre mio, ma disse: «Scocca + l’arco del dir, che ’nfino al ferro hai tratto». + + Allor sicuramente apri’ la bocca + e cominciai: «Come si può far magro + là dove l’uopo di nodrir non tocca?». + + «Se t’ammentassi come Meleagro + si consumò al consumar d’un stizzo, + non fora», disse, «a te questo sì agro; + + e se pensassi come, al vostro guizzo, + guizza dentro a lo specchio vostra image, + ciò che par duro ti parrebbe vizzo. + + Ma perché dentro a tuo voler t’adage, + ecco qui Stazio; e io lui chiamo e prego + che sia or sanator de le tue piage». + + «Se la veduta etterna li dislego», + rispuose Stazio, «là dove tu sie, + discolpi me non potert’ io far nego». + + Poi cominciò: «Se le parole mie, + figlio, la mente tua guarda e riceve, + lume ti fiero al come che tu die. + + Sangue perfetto, che poi non si beve + da l’assetate vene, e si rimane + quasi alimento che di mensa leve, + + prende nel core a tutte membra umane + virtute informativa, come quello + ch’a farsi quelle per le vene vane. + + Ancor digesto, scende ov’ è più bello + tacer che dire; e quindi poscia geme + sovr’ altrui sangue in natural vasello. + + Ivi s’accoglie l’uno e l’altro insieme, + l’un disposto a patire, e l’altro a fare + per lo perfetto loco onde si preme; + + e, giunto lui, comincia ad operare + coagulando prima, e poi avviva + ciò che per sua matera fé constare. + + Anima fatta la virtute attiva + qual d’una pianta, in tanto differente, + che questa è in via e quella è già a riva, + + tanto ovra poi, che già si move e sente, + come spungo marino; e indi imprende + ad organar le posse ond’ è semente. + + Or si spiega, figliuolo, or si distende + la virtù ch’è dal cor del generante, + dove natura a tutte membra intende. + + Ma come d’animal divegna fante, + non vedi tu ancor: quest’ è tal punto, + che più savio di te fé già errante, + + sì che per sua dottrina fé disgiunto + da l’anima il possibile intelletto, + perché da lui non vide organo assunto. + + Apri a la verità che viene il petto; + e sappi che, sì tosto come al feto + l’articular del cerebro è perfetto, + + lo motor primo a lui si volge lieto + sovra tant’ arte di natura, e spira + spirito novo, di vertù repleto, + + che ciò che trova attivo quivi, tira + in sua sustanzia, e fassi un’alma sola, + che vive e sente e sé in sé rigira. + + E perché meno ammiri la parola, + guarda il calor del sole che si fa vino, + giunto a l’omor che de la vite cola. + + Quando Làchesis non ha più del lino, + solvesi da la carne, e in virtute + ne porta seco e l’umano e ’l divino: + + l’altre potenze tutte quante mute; + memoria, intelligenza e volontade + in atto molto più che prima agute. + + Sanza restarsi, per sé stessa cade + mirabilmente a l’una de le rive; + quivi conosce prima le sue strade. + + Tosto che loco lì la circunscrive, + la virtù formativa raggia intorno + così e quanto ne le membra vive. + + E come l’aere, quand’ è ben pïorno, + per l’altrui raggio che ’n sé si reflette, + di diversi color diventa addorno; + + così l’aere vicin quivi si mette + e in quella forma ch’è in lui suggella + virtüalmente l’alma che ristette; + + e simigliante poi a la fiammella + che segue il foco là ’vunque si muta, + segue lo spirto sua forma novella. + + Però che quindi ha poscia sua paruta, + è chiamata ombra; e quindi organa poi + ciascun sentire infino a la veduta. + + Quindi parliamo e quindi ridiam noi; + quindi facciam le lagrime e ’ sospiri + che per lo monte aver sentiti puoi. + + Secondo che ci affliggono i disiri + e li altri affetti, l’ombra si figura; + e quest’ è la cagion di che tu miri». + + E già venuto a l’ultima tortura + s’era per noi, e vòlto a la man destra, + ed eravamo attenti ad altra cura. + + Quivi la ripa fiamma in fuor balestra, + e la cornice spira fiato in suso + che la reflette e via da lei sequestra; + + ond’ ir ne convenia dal lato schiuso + ad uno ad uno; e io temëa ’l foco + quinci, e quindi temeva cader giuso. + + Lo duca mio dicea: «Per questo loco + si vuol tenere a li occhi stretto il freno, + però ch’errar potrebbesi per poco». + + ‘Summae Deus clementïae’ nel seno + al grande ardore allora udi’ cantando, + che di volger mi fé caler non meno; + + e vidi spirti per la fiamma andando; + per ch’io guardava a loro e a’ miei passi + compartendo la vista a quando a quando. + + Appresso il fine ch’a quell’ inno fassi, + gridavano alto: ‘Virum non cognosco’; + indi ricominciavan l’inno bassi. + + Finitolo, anco gridavano: «Al bosco + si tenne Diana, ed Elice caccionne + che di Venere avea sentito il tòsco». + + Indi al cantar tornavano; indi donne + gridavano e mariti che fuor casti + come virtute e matrimonio imponne. + + E questo modo credo che lor basti + per tutto il tempo che ’l foco li abbruscia: + con tal cura conviene e con tai pasti + + che la piaga da sezzo si ricuscia. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXVI + + + Mentre che sì per l’orlo, uno innanzi altro, + ce n’andavamo, e spesso il buon maestro + diceami: «Guarda: giovi ch’io ti scaltro»; + + feriami il sole in su l’omero destro, + che già, raggiando, tutto l’occidente + mutava in bianco aspetto di cilestro; + + e io facea con l’ombra più rovente + parer la fiamma; e pur a tanto indizio + vidi molt’ ombre, andando, poner mente. + + Questa fu la cagion che diede inizio + loro a parlar di me; e cominciarsi + a dir: «Colui non par corpo fittizio»; + + poi verso me, quanto potëan farsi, + certi si fero, sempre con riguardo + di non uscir dove non fosser arsi. + + «O tu che vai, non per esser più tardo, + ma forse reverente, a li altri dopo, + rispondi a me che ’n sete e ’n foco ardo. + + Né solo a me la tua risposta è uopo; + ché tutti questi n’hanno maggior sete + che d’acqua fredda Indo o Etïopo. + + Dinne com’ è che fai di te parete + al sol, pur come tu non fossi ancora + di morte intrato dentro da la rete». + + Sì mi parlava un d’essi; e io mi fora + già manifesto, s’io non fossi atteso + ad altra novità ch’apparve allora; + + ché per lo mezzo del cammino acceso + venne gente col viso incontro a questa, + la qual mi fece a rimirar sospeso. + + Lì veggio d’ogne parte farsi presta + ciascun’ ombra e basciarsi una con una + sanza restar, contente a brieve festa; + + così per entro loro schiera bruna + s’ammusa l’una con l’altra formica, + forse a spïar lor via e lor fortuna. + + Tosto che parton l’accoglienza amica, + prima che ’l primo passo lì trascorra, + sopragridar ciascuna s’affatica: + + la nova gente: «Soddoma e Gomorra»; + e l’altra: «Ne la vacca entra Pasife, + perché ’l torello a sua lussuria corra». + + Poi, come grue ch’a le montagne Rife + volasser parte, e parte inver’ l’arene, + queste del gel, quelle del sole schife, + + l’una gente sen va, l’altra sen vene; + e tornan, lagrimando, a’ primi canti + e al gridar che più lor si convene; + + e raccostansi a me, come davanti, + essi medesmi che m’avean pregato, + attenti ad ascoltar ne’ lor sembianti. + + Io, che due volte avea visto lor grato, + incominciai: «O anime sicure + d’aver, quando che sia, di pace stato, + + non son rimase acerbe né mature + le membra mie di là, ma son qui meco + col sangue suo e con le sue giunture. + + Quinci sù vo per non esser più cieco; + donna è di sopra che m’acquista grazia, + per che ’l mortal per vostro mondo reco. + + Ma se la vostra maggior voglia sazia + tosto divegna, sì che ’l ciel v’alberghi + ch’è pien d’amore e più ampio si spazia, + + ditemi, acciò ch’ancor carte ne verghi, + chi siete voi, e chi è quella turba + che se ne va di retro a’ vostri terghi». + + Non altrimenti stupido si turba + lo montanaro, e rimirando ammuta, + quando rozzo e salvatico s’inurba, + + che ciascun’ ombra fece in sua paruta; + ma poi che furon di stupore scarche, + lo qual ne li alti cuor tosto s’attuta, + + «Beato te, che de le nostre marche», + ricominciò colei che pria m’inchiese, + «per morir meglio, esperïenza imbarche! + + La gente che non vien con noi, offese + di ciò per che già Cesar, trïunfando, + “Regina” contra sé chiamar s’intese: + + però si parton “Soddoma” gridando, + rimproverando a sé com’ hai udito, + e aiutan l’arsura vergognando. + + Nostro peccato fu ermafrodito; + ma perché non servammo umana legge, + seguendo come bestie l’appetito, + + in obbrobrio di noi, per noi si legge, + quando partinci, il nome di colei + che s’imbestiò ne le ’mbestiate schegge. + + Or sai nostri atti e di che fummo rei: + se forse a nome vuo’ saper chi semo, + tempo non è di dire, e non saprei. + + Farotti ben di me volere scemo: + son Guido Guinizzelli, e già mi purgo + per ben dolermi prima ch’a lo stremo». + + Quali ne la tristizia di Ligurgo + si fer due figli a riveder la madre, + tal mi fec’ io, ma non a tanto insurgo, + + quand’ io odo nomar sé stesso il padre + mio e de li altri miei miglior che mai + rime d’amore usar dolci e leggiadre; + + e sanza udire e dir pensoso andai + lunga fïata rimirando lui, + né, per lo foco, in là più m’appressai. + + Poi che di riguardar pasciuto fui, + tutto m’offersi pronto al suo servigio + con l’affermar che fa credere altrui. + + Ed elli a me: «Tu lasci tal vestigio, + per quel ch’i’ odo, in me, e tanto chiaro, + che Letè nol può tòrre né far bigio. + + Ma se le tue parole or ver giuraro, + dimmi che è cagion per che dimostri + nel dire e nel guardar d’avermi caro». + + E io a lui: «Li dolci detti vostri, + che, quanto durerà l’uso moderno, + faranno cari ancora i loro incostri». + + «O frate», disse, «questi ch’io ti cerno + col dito», e additò un spirto innanzi, + «fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno. + + Versi d’amore e prose di romanzi + soverchiò tutti; e lascia dir li stolti + che quel di Lemosì credon ch’avanzi. + + A voce più ch’al ver drizzan li volti, + e così ferman sua oppinïone + prima ch’arte o ragion per lor s’ascolti. + + Così fer molti antichi di Guittone, + di grido in grido pur lui dando pregio, + fin che l’ha vinto il ver con più persone. + + Or se tu hai sì ampio privilegio, + che licito ti sia l’andare al chiostro + nel quale è Cristo abate del collegio, + + falli per me un dir d’un paternostro, + quanto bisogna a noi di questo mondo, + dove poter peccar non è più nostro». + + Poi, forse per dar luogo altrui secondo + che presso avea, disparve per lo foco, + come per l’acqua il pesce andando al fondo. + + Io mi fei al mostrato innanzi un poco, + e dissi ch’al suo nome il mio disire + apparecchiava grazïoso loco. + + El cominciò liberamente a dire: + «Tan m’abellis vostre cortes deman, + qu’ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire. + + Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan; + consiros vei la passada folor, + e vei jausen lo joi qu’esper, denan. + + Ara vos prec, per aquella valor + que vos guida al som de l’escalina, + sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor!». + + Poi s’ascose nel foco che li affina. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXVII + + + Sì come quando i primi raggi vibra + là dove il suo fattor lo sangue sparse, + cadendo Ibero sotto l’alta Libra, + + e l’onde in Gange da nona rïarse, + sì stava il sole; onde ’l giorno sen giva, + come l’angel di Dio lieto ci apparse. + + Fuor de la fiamma stava in su la riva, + e cantava ‘Beati mundo corde!’ + in voce assai più che la nostra viva. + + Poscia «Più non si va, se pria non morde, + anime sante, il foco: intrate in esso, + e al cantar di là non siate sorde», + + ci disse come noi li fummo presso; + per ch’io divenni tal, quando lo ’ntesi, + qual è colui che ne la fossa è messo. + + In su le man commesse mi protesi, + guardando il foco e imaginando forte + umani corpi già veduti accesi. + + Volsersi verso me le buone scorte; + e Virgilio mi disse: «Figliuol mio, + qui può esser tormento, ma non morte. + + Ricorditi, ricorditi! E se io + sovresso Gerïon ti guidai salvo, + che farò ora presso più a Dio? + + Credi per certo che se dentro a l’alvo + di questa fiamma stessi ben mille anni, + non ti potrebbe far d’un capel calvo. + + E se tu forse credi ch’io t’inganni, + fatti ver’ lei, e fatti far credenza + con le tue mani al lembo d’i tuoi panni. + + Pon giù omai, pon giù ogne temenza; + volgiti in qua e vieni: entra sicuro!». + E io pur fermo e contra coscïenza. + + Quando mi vide star pur fermo e duro, + turbato un poco disse: «Or vedi, figlio: + tra Bëatrice e te è questo muro». + + Come al nome di Tisbe aperse il ciglio + Piramo in su la morte, e riguardolla, + allor che ’l gelso diventò vermiglio; + + così, la mia durezza fatta solla, + mi volsi al savio duca, udendo il nome + che ne la mente sempre mi rampolla. + + Ond’ ei crollò la fronte e disse: «Come! + volenci star di qua?»; indi sorrise + come al fanciul si fa ch’è vinto al pome. + + Poi dentro al foco innanzi mi si mise, + pregando Stazio che venisse retro, + che pria per lunga strada ci divise. + + Sì com’ fui dentro, in un bogliente vetro + gittato mi sarei per rinfrescarmi, + tant’ era ivi lo ’ncendio sanza metro. + + Lo dolce padre mio, per confortarmi, + pur di Beatrice ragionando andava, + dicendo: «Li occhi suoi già veder parmi». + + Guidavaci una voce che cantava + di là; e noi, attenti pur a lei, + venimmo fuor là ove si montava. + + ‘Venite, benedicti Patris mei’, + sonò dentro a un lume che lì era, + tal che mi vinse e guardar nol potei. + + «Lo sol sen va», soggiunse, «e vien la sera; + non v’arrestate, ma studiate il passo, + mentre che l’occidente non si annera». + + Dritta salia la via per entro ’l sasso + verso tal parte ch’io toglieva i raggi + dinanzi a me del sol ch’era già basso. + + E di pochi scaglion levammo i saggi, + che ’l sol corcar, per l’ombra che si spense, + sentimmo dietro e io e li miei saggi. + + E pria che ’n tutte le sue parti immense + fosse orizzonte fatto d’uno aspetto, + e notte avesse tutte sue dispense, + + ciascun di noi d’un grado fece letto; + ché la natura del monte ci affranse + la possa del salir più e ’l diletto. + + Quali si stanno ruminando manse + le capre, state rapide e proterve + sovra le cime avante che sien pranse, + + tacite a l’ombra, mentre che ’l sol ferve, + guardate dal pastor, che ’n su la verga + poggiato s’è e lor di posa serve; + + e quale il mandrïan che fori alberga, + lungo il pecuglio suo queto pernotta, + guardando perché fiera non lo sperga; + + tali eravamo tutti e tre allotta, + io come capra, ed ei come pastori, + fasciati quinci e quindi d’alta grotta. + + Poco parer potea lì del di fori; + ma, per quel poco, vedea io le stelle + di lor solere e più chiare e maggiori. + + Sì ruminando e sì mirando in quelle, + mi prese il sonno; il sonno che sovente, + anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle. + + Ne l’ora, credo, che de l’orïente + prima raggiò nel monte Citerea, + che di foco d’amor par sempre ardente, + + giovane e bella in sogno mi parea + donna vedere andar per una landa + cogliendo fiori; e cantando dicea: + + «Sappia qualunque il mio nome dimanda + ch’i’ mi son Lia, e vo movendo intorno + le belle mani a farmi una ghirlanda. + + Per piacermi a lo specchio, qui m’addorno; + ma mia suora Rachel mai non si smaga + dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto giorno. + + Ell’ è d’i suoi belli occhi veder vaga + com’ io de l’addornarmi con le mani; + lei lo vedere, e me l’ovrare appaga». + + E già per li splendori antelucani, + che tanto a’ pellegrin surgon più grati, + quanto, tornando, albergan men lontani, + + le tenebre fuggian da tutti lati, + e ’l sonno mio con esse; ond’ io leva’mi, + veggendo i gran maestri già levati. + + «Quel dolce pome che per tanti rami + cercando va la cura de’ mortali, + oggi porrà in pace le tue fami». + + Virgilio inverso me queste cotali + parole usò; e mai non furo strenne + che fosser di piacere a queste iguali. + + Tanto voler sopra voler mi venne + de l’esser sù, ch’ad ogne passo poi + al volo mi sentia crescer le penne. + + Come la scala tutta sotto noi + fu corsa e fummo in su ’l grado superno, + in me ficcò Virgilio li occhi suoi, + + e disse: «Il temporal foco e l’etterno + veduto hai, figlio; e se’ venuto in parte + dov’ io per me più oltre non discerno. + + Tratto t’ho qui con ingegno e con arte; + lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce; + fuor se’ de l’erte vie, fuor se’ de l’arte. + + Vedi lo sol che ’n fronte ti riluce; + vedi l’erbette, i fiori e li arbuscelli + che qui la terra sol da sé produce. + + Mentre che vegnan lieti li occhi belli + che, lagrimando, a te venir mi fenno, + seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli. + + Non aspettar mio dir più né mio cenno; + libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio, + e fallo fora non fare a suo senno: + + per ch’io te sovra te corono e mitrio». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXVIII + + + Vago già di cercar dentro e dintorno + la divina foresta spessa e viva, + ch’a li occhi temperava il novo giorno, + + sanza più aspettar, lasciai la riva, + prendendo la campagna lento lento + su per lo suol che d’ogne parte auliva. + + Un’aura dolce, sanza mutamento + avere in sé, mi feria per la fronte + non di più colpo che soave vento; + + per cui le fronde, tremolando, pronte + tutte quante piegavano a la parte + u’ la prim’ ombra gitta il santo monte; + + non però dal loro esser dritto sparte + tanto, che li augelletti per le cime + lasciasser d’operare ogne lor arte; + + ma con piena letizia l’ore prime, + cantando, ricevieno intra le foglie, + che tenevan bordone a le sue rime, + + tal qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie + per la pineta in su ’l lito di Chiassi, + quand’ Ëolo scilocco fuor discioglie. + + Già m’avean trasportato i lenti passi + dentro a la selva antica tanto, ch’io + non potea rivedere ond’ io mi ’ntrassi; + + ed ecco più andar mi tolse un rio, + che ’nver’ sinistra con sue picciole onde + piegava l’erba che ’n sua ripa uscìo. + + Tutte l’acque che son di qua più monde, + parrieno avere in sé mistura alcuna + verso di quella, che nulla nasconde, + + avvegna che si mova bruna bruna + sotto l’ombra perpetüa, che mai + raggiar non lascia sole ivi né luna. + + Coi piè ristetti e con li occhi passai + di là dal fiumicello, per mirare + la gran varïazion d’i freschi mai; + + e là m’apparve, sì com’ elli appare + subitamente cosa che disvia + per maraviglia tutto altro pensare, + + una donna soletta che si gia + e cantando e scegliendo fior da fiore + ond’ era pinta tutta la sua via. + + «Deh, bella donna, che a’ raggi d’amore + ti scaldi, s’i’ vo’ credere a’ sembianti + che soglion esser testimon del core, + + vegnati in voglia di trarreti avanti», + diss’ io a lei, «verso questa rivera, + tanto ch’io possa intender che tu canti. + + Tu mi fai rimembrar dove e qual era + Proserpina nel tempo che perdette + la madre lei, ed ella primavera». + + Come si volge, con le piante strette + a terra e intra sé, donna che balli, + e piede innanzi piede a pena mette, + + volsesi in su i vermigli e in su i gialli + fioretti verso me, non altrimenti + che vergine che li occhi onesti avvalli; + + e fece i prieghi miei esser contenti, + sì appressando sé, che ’l dolce suono + veniva a me co’ suoi intendimenti. + + Tosto che fu là dove l’erbe sono + bagnate già da l’onde del bel fiume, + di levar li occhi suoi mi fece dono. + + Non credo che splendesse tanto lume + sotto le ciglia a Venere, trafitta + dal figlio fuor di tutto suo costume. + + Ella ridea da l’altra riva dritta, + trattando più color con le sue mani, + che l’alta terra sanza seme gitta. + + Tre passi ci facea il fiume lontani; + ma Elesponto, là ’ve passò Serse, + ancora freno a tutti orgogli umani, + + più odio da Leandro non sofferse + per mareggiare intra Sesto e Abido, + che quel da me perch’ allor non s’aperse. + + «Voi siete nuovi, e forse perch’ io rido», + cominciò ella, «in questo luogo eletto + a l’umana natura per suo nido, + + maravigliando tienvi alcun sospetto; + ma luce rende il salmo Delectasti, + che puote disnebbiar vostro intelletto. + + E tu che se’ dinanzi e mi pregasti, + dì s’altro vuoli udir; ch’i’ venni presta + ad ogne tua question tanto che basti». + + «L’acqua», diss’ io, «e ’l suon de la foresta + impugnan dentro a me novella fede + di cosa ch’io udi’ contraria a questa». + + Ond’ ella: «Io dicerò come procede + per sua cagion ciò ch’ammirar ti face, + e purgherò la nebbia che ti fiede. + + Lo sommo Ben, che solo esso a sé piace, + fé l’uom buono e a bene, e questo loco + diede per arr’ a lui d’etterna pace. + + Per sua difalta qui dimorò poco; + per sua difalta in pianto e in affanno + cambiò onesto riso e dolce gioco. + + Perché ’l turbar che sotto da sé fanno + l’essalazion de l’acqua e de la terra, + che quanto posson dietro al calor vanno, + + a l’uomo non facesse alcuna guerra, + questo monte salìo verso ’l ciel tanto, + e libero n’è d’indi ove si serra. + + Or perché in circuito tutto quanto + l’aere si volge con la prima volta, + se non li è rotto il cerchio d’alcun canto, + + in questa altezza ch’è tutta disciolta + ne l’aere vivo, tal moto percuote, + e fa sonar la selva perch’ è folta; + + e la percossa pianta tanto puote, + che de la sua virtute l’aura impregna + e quella poi, girando, intorno scuote; + + e l’altra terra, secondo ch’è degna + per sé e per suo ciel, concepe e figlia + di diverse virtù diverse legna. + + Non parrebbe di là poi maraviglia, + udito questo, quando alcuna pianta + sanza seme palese vi s’appiglia. + + E saper dei che la campagna santa + dove tu se’, d’ogne semenza è piena, + e frutto ha in sé che di là non si schianta. + + L’acqua che vedi non surge di vena + che ristori vapor che gel converta, + come fiume ch’acquista e perde lena; + + ma esce di fontana salda e certa, + che tanto dal voler di Dio riprende, + quant’ ella versa da due parti aperta. + + Da questa parte con virtù discende + che toglie altrui memoria del peccato; + da l’altra d’ogne ben fatto la rende. + + Quinci Letè; così da l’altro lato + Eünoè si chiama, e non adopra + se quinci e quindi pria non è gustato: + + a tutti altri sapori esto è di sopra. + E avvegna ch’assai possa esser sazia + la sete tua perch’ io più non ti scuopra, + + darotti un corollario ancor per grazia; + né credo che ’l mio dir ti sia men caro, + se oltre promession teco si spazia. + + Quelli ch’anticamente poetaro + l’età de l’oro e suo stato felice, + forse in Parnaso esto loco sognaro. + + Qui fu innocente l’umana radice; + qui primavera sempre e ogne frutto; + nettare è questo di che ciascun dice». + + Io mi rivolsi ’n dietro allora tutto + a’ miei poeti, e vidi che con riso + udito avëan l’ultimo costrutto; + + poi a la bella donna torna’ il viso. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXIX + + + Cantando come donna innamorata, + continüò col fin di sue parole: + ‘Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata!’. + + E come ninfe che si givan sole + per le salvatiche ombre, disïando + qual di veder, qual di fuggir lo sole, + + allor si mosse contra ’l fiume, andando + su per la riva; e io pari di lei, + picciol passo con picciol seguitando. + + Non eran cento tra ’ suoi passi e ’ miei, + quando le ripe igualmente dier volta, + per modo ch’a levante mi rendei. + + Né ancor fu così nostra via molta, + quando la donna tutta a me si torse, + dicendo: «Frate mio, guarda e ascolta». + + Ed ecco un lustro sùbito trascorse + da tutte parti per la gran foresta, + tal che di balenar mi mise in forse. + + Ma perché ’l balenar, come vien, resta, + e quel, durando, più e più splendeva, + nel mio pensier dicea: ‘Che cosa è questa?’. + + E una melodia dolce correva + per l’aere luminoso; onde buon zelo + mi fé riprender l’ardimento d’Eva, + + che là dove ubidia la terra e ’l cielo, + femmina, sola e pur testé formata, + non sofferse di star sotto alcun velo; + + sotto ’l qual se divota fosse stata, + avrei quelle ineffabili delizie + sentite prima e più lunga fïata. + + Mentr’ io m’andava tra tante primizie + de l’etterno piacer tutto sospeso, + e disïoso ancora a più letizie, + + dinanzi a noi, tal quale un foco acceso, + ci si fé l’aere sotto i verdi rami; + e ’l dolce suon per canti era già inteso. + + O sacrosante Vergini, se fami, + freddi o vigilie mai per voi soffersi, + cagion mi sprona ch’io mercé vi chiami. + + Or convien che Elicona per me versi, + e Uranìe m’aiuti col suo coro + forti cose a pensar mettere in versi. + + Poco più oltre, sette alberi d’oro + falsava nel parere il lungo tratto + del mezzo ch’era ancor tra noi e loro; + + ma quand’ i’ fui sì presso di lor fatto, + che l’obietto comun, che ’l senso inganna, + non perdea per distanza alcun suo atto, + + la virtù ch’a ragion discorso ammanna, + sì com’ elli eran candelabri apprese, + e ne le voci del cantare ‘Osanna’. + + Di sopra fiammeggiava il bello arnese + più chiaro assai che luna per sereno + di mezza notte nel suo mezzo mese. + + Io mi rivolsi d’ammirazion pieno + al buon Virgilio, ed esso mi rispuose + con vista carca di stupor non meno. + + Indi rendei l’aspetto a l’alte cose + che si movieno incontr’ a noi sì tardi, + che foran vinte da novelle spose. + + La donna mi sgridò: «Perché pur ardi + sì ne l’affetto de le vive luci, + e ciò che vien di retro a lor non guardi?». + + Genti vid’ io allor, come a lor duci, + venire appresso, vestite di bianco; + e tal candor di qua già mai non fuci. + + L’acqua imprendëa dal sinistro fianco, + e rendea me la mia sinistra costa, + s’io riguardava in lei, come specchio anco. + + Quand’ io da la mia riva ebbi tal posta, + che solo il fiume mi facea distante, + per veder meglio ai passi diedi sosta, + + e vidi le fiammelle andar davante, + lasciando dietro a sé l’aere dipinto, + e di tratti pennelli avean sembiante; + + sì che lì sopra rimanea distinto + di sette liste, tutte in quei colori + onde fa l’arco il Sole e Delia il cinto. + + Questi ostendali in dietro eran maggiori + che la mia vista; e, quanto a mio avviso, + diece passi distavan quei di fori. + + Sotto così bel ciel com’ io diviso, + ventiquattro seniori, a due a due, + coronati venien di fiordaliso. + + Tutti cantavan: «Benedicta tue + ne le figlie d’Adamo, e benedette + sieno in etterno le bellezze tue!». + + Poscia che i fiori e l’altre fresche erbette + a rimpetto di me da l’altra sponda + libere fuor da quelle genti elette, + + sì come luce luce in ciel seconda, + vennero appresso lor quattro animali, + coronati ciascun di verde fronda. + + Ognuno era pennuto di sei ali; + le penne piene d’occhi; e li occhi d’Argo, + se fosser vivi, sarebber cotali. + + A descriver lor forme più non spargo + rime, lettor; ch’altra spesa mi strigne, + tanto ch’a questa non posso esser largo; + + ma leggi Ezechïel, che li dipigne + come li vide da la fredda parte + venir con vento e con nube e con igne; + + e quali i troverai ne le sue carte, + tali eran quivi, salvo ch’a le penne + Giovanni è meco e da lui si diparte. + + Lo spazio dentro a lor quattro contenne + un carro, in su due rote, trïunfale, + ch’al collo d’un grifon tirato venne. + + Esso tendeva in sù l’una e l’altra ale + tra la mezzana e le tre e tre liste, + sì ch’a nulla, fendendo, facea male. + + Tanto salivan che non eran viste; + le membra d’oro avea quant’ era uccello, + e bianche l’altre, di vermiglio miste. + + Non che Roma di carro così bello + rallegrasse Affricano, o vero Augusto, + ma quel del Sol saria pover con ello; + + quel del Sol che, svïando, fu combusto + per l’orazion de la Terra devota, + quando fu Giove arcanamente giusto. + + Tre donne in giro da la destra rota + venian danzando; l’una tanto rossa + ch’a pena fora dentro al foco nota; + + l’altr’ era come se le carni e l’ossa + fossero state di smeraldo fatte; + la terza parea neve testé mossa; + + e or parëan da la bianca tratte, + or da la rossa; e dal canto di questa + l’altre toglien l’andare e tarde e ratte. + + Da la sinistra quattro facean festa, + in porpore vestite, dietro al modo + d’una di lor ch’avea tre occhi in testa. + + Appresso tutto il pertrattato nodo + vidi due vecchi in abito dispari, + ma pari in atto e onesto e sodo. + + L’un si mostrava alcun de’ famigliari + di quel sommo Ipocràte che natura + a li animali fé ch’ell’ ha più cari; + + mostrava l’altro la contraria cura + con una spada lucida e aguta, + tal che di qua dal rio mi fé paura. + + Poi vidi quattro in umile paruta; + e di retro da tutti un vecchio solo + venir, dormendo, con la faccia arguta. + + E questi sette col primaio stuolo + erano abitüati, ma di gigli + dintorno al capo non facëan brolo, + + anzi di rose e d’altri fior vermigli; + giurato avria poco lontano aspetto + che tutti ardesser di sopra da’ cigli. + + E quando il carro a me fu a rimpetto, + un tuon s’udì, e quelle genti degne + parvero aver l’andar più interdetto, + + fermandosi ivi con le prime insegne. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXX + + + Quando il settentrïon del primo cielo, + che né occaso mai seppe né orto + né d’altra nebbia che di colpa velo, + + e che faceva lì ciascun accorto + di suo dover, come ’l più basso face + qual temon gira per venire a porto, + + fermo s’affisse: la gente verace, + venuta prima tra ’l grifone ed esso, + al carro volse sé come a sua pace; + + e un di loro, quasi da ciel messo, + ‘Veni, sponsa, de Libano’ cantando + gridò tre volte, e tutti li altri appresso. + + Quali i beati al novissimo bando + surgeran presti ognun di sua caverna, + la revestita voce alleluiando, + + cotali in su la divina basterna + si levar cento, ad vocem tanti senis, + ministri e messaggier di vita etterna. + + Tutti dicean: ‘Benedictus qui venis!’, + e fior gittando e di sopra e dintorno, + ‘Manibus, oh, date lilïa plenis!’. + + Io vidi già nel cominciar del giorno + la parte orïental tutta rosata, + e l’altro ciel di bel sereno addorno; + + e la faccia del sol nascere ombrata, + sì che per temperanza di vapori + l’occhio la sostenea lunga fïata: + + così dentro una nuvola di fiori + che da le mani angeliche saliva + e ricadeva in giù dentro e di fori, + + sovra candido vel cinta d’uliva + donna m’apparve, sotto verde manto + vestita di color di fiamma viva. + + E lo spirito mio, che già cotanto + tempo era stato ch’a la sua presenza + non era di stupor, tremando, affranto, + + sanza de li occhi aver più conoscenza, + per occulta virtù che da lei mosse, + d’antico amor sentì la gran potenza. + + Tosto che ne la vista mi percosse + l’alta virtù che già m’avea trafitto + prima ch’io fuor di püerizia fosse, + + volsimi a la sinistra col respitto + col quale il fantolin corre a la mamma + quando ha paura o quando elli è afflitto, + + per dicere a Virgilio: ‘Men che dramma + di sangue m’è rimaso che non tremi: + conosco i segni de l’antica fiamma’. + + Ma Virgilio n’avea lasciati scemi + di sé, Virgilio dolcissimo patre, + Virgilio a cui per mia salute die’mi; + + né quantunque perdeo l’antica matre, + valse a le guance nette di rugiada, + che, lagrimando, non tornasser atre. + + «Dante, perché Virgilio se ne vada, + non pianger anco, non piangere ancora; + ché pianger ti conven per altra spada». + + Quasi ammiraglio che in poppa e in prora + viene a veder la gente che ministra + per li altri legni, e a ben far l’incora; + + in su la sponda del carro sinistra, + quando mi volsi al suon del nome mio, + che di necessità qui si registra, + + vidi la donna che pria m’appario + velata sotto l’angelica festa, + drizzar li occhi ver’ me di qua dal rio. + + Tutto che ’l vel che le scendea di testa, + cerchiato de le fronde di Minerva, + non la lasciasse parer manifesta, + + regalmente ne l’atto ancor proterva + continüò come colui che dice + e ’l più caldo parlar dietro reserva: + + «Guardaci ben! Ben son, ben son Beatrice. + Come degnasti d’accedere al monte? + non sapei tu che qui è l’uom felice?». + + Li occhi mi cadder giù nel chiaro fonte; + ma veggendomi in esso, i trassi a l’erba, + tanta vergogna mi gravò la fronte. + + Così la madre al figlio par superba, + com’ ella parve a me; perché d’amaro + sente il sapor de la pietade acerba. + + Ella si tacque; e li angeli cantaro + di sùbito ‘In te, Domine, speravi’; + ma oltre ‘pedes meos’ non passaro. + + Sì come neve tra le vive travi + per lo dosso d’Italia si congela, + soffiata e stretta da li venti schiavi, + + poi, liquefatta, in sé stessa trapela, + pur che la terra che perde ombra spiri, + sì che par foco fonder la candela; + + così fui sanza lagrime e sospiri + anzi ’l cantar di quei che notan sempre + dietro a le note de li etterni giri; + + ma poi che ’ntesi ne le dolci tempre + lor compatire a me, par che se detto + avesser: ‘Donna, perché sì lo stempre?’, + + lo gel che m’era intorno al cor ristretto, + spirito e acqua fessi, e con angoscia + de la bocca e de li occhi uscì del petto. + + Ella, pur ferma in su la detta coscia + del carro stando, a le sustanze pie + volse le sue parole così poscia: + + «Voi vigilate ne l’etterno die, + sì che notte né sonno a voi non fura + passo che faccia il secol per sue vie; + + onde la mia risposta è con più cura + che m’intenda colui che di là piagne, + perché sia colpa e duol d’una misura. + + Non pur per ovra de le rote magne, + che drizzan ciascun seme ad alcun fine + secondo che le stelle son compagne, + + ma per larghezza di grazie divine, + che sì alti vapori hanno a lor piova, + che nostre viste là non van vicine, + + questi fu tal ne la sua vita nova + virtüalmente, ch’ogne abito destro + fatto averebbe in lui mirabil prova. + + Ma tanto più maligno e più silvestro + si fa ’l terren col mal seme e non cólto, + quant’ elli ha più di buon vigor terrestro. + + Alcun tempo il sostenni col mio volto: + mostrando li occhi giovanetti a lui, + meco il menava in dritta parte vòlto. + + Sì tosto come in su la soglia fui + di mia seconda etade e mutai vita, + questi si tolse a me, e diessi altrui. + + Quando di carne a spirto era salita, + e bellezza e virtù cresciuta m’era, + fu’ io a lui men cara e men gradita; + + e volse i passi suoi per via non vera, + imagini di ben seguendo false, + che nulla promession rendono intera. + + Né l’impetrare ispirazion mi valse, + con le quali e in sogno e altrimenti + lo rivocai: sì poco a lui ne calse! + + Tanto giù cadde, che tutti argomenti + a la salute sua eran già corti, + fuor che mostrarli le perdute genti. + + Per questo visitai l’uscio d’i morti, + e a colui che l’ha qua sù condotto, + li prieghi miei, piangendo, furon porti. + + Alto fato di Dio sarebbe rotto, + se Letè si passasse e tal vivanda + fosse gustata sanza alcuno scotto + + di pentimento che lagrime spanda». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXXI + + + «O tu che se’ di là dal fiume sacro», + volgendo suo parlare a me per punta, + che pur per taglio m’era paruto acro, + + ricominciò, seguendo sanza cunta, + «dì, dì se questo è vero: a tanta accusa + tua confession conviene esser congiunta». + + Era la mia virtù tanto confusa, + che la voce si mosse, e pria si spense + che da li organi suoi fosse dischiusa. + + Poco sofferse; poi disse: «Che pense? + Rispondi a me; ché le memorie triste + in te non sono ancor da l’acqua offense». + + Confusione e paura insieme miste + mi pinsero un tal «sì» fuor de la bocca, + al quale intender fuor mestier le viste. + + Come balestro frange, quando scocca + da troppa tesa, la sua corda e l’arco, + e con men foga l’asta il segno tocca, + + sì scoppia’ io sottesso grave carco, + fuori sgorgando lagrime e sospiri, + e la voce allentò per lo suo varco. + + Ond’ ella a me: «Per entro i mie’ disiri, + che ti menavano ad amar lo bene + di là dal qual non è a che s’aspiri, + + quai fossi attraversati o quai catene + trovasti, per che del passare innanzi + dovessiti così spogliar la spene? + + E quali agevolezze o quali avanzi + ne la fronte de li altri si mostraro, + per che dovessi lor passeggiare anzi?». + + Dopo la tratta d’un sospiro amaro, + a pena ebbi la voce che rispuose, + e le labbra a fatica la formaro. + + Piangendo dissi: «Le presenti cose + col falso lor piacer volser miei passi, + tosto che ’l vostro viso si nascose». + + Ed ella: «Se tacessi o se negassi + ciò che confessi, non fora men nota + la colpa tua: da tal giudice sassi! + + Ma quando scoppia de la propria gota + l’accusa del peccato, in nostra corte + rivolge sé contra ’l taglio la rota. + + Tuttavia, perché mo vergogna porte + del tuo errore, e perché altra volta, + udendo le serene, sie più forte, + + pon giù il seme del piangere e ascolta: + sì udirai come in contraria parte + mover dovieti mia carne sepolta. + + Mai non t’appresentò natura o arte + piacer, quanto le belle membra in ch’io + rinchiusa fui, e che so’ ’n terra sparte; + + e se ’l sommo piacer sì ti fallio + per la mia morte, qual cosa mortale + dovea poi trarre te nel suo disio? + + Ben ti dovevi, per lo primo strale + de le cose fallaci, levar suso + di retro a me che non era più tale. + + Non ti dovea gravar le penne in giuso, + ad aspettar più colpo, o pargoletta + o altra novità con sì breve uso. + + Novo augelletto due o tre aspetta; + ma dinanzi da li occhi d’i pennuti + rete si spiega indarno o si saetta». + + Quali fanciulli, vergognando, muti + con li occhi a terra stannosi, ascoltando + e sé riconoscendo e ripentuti, + + tal mi stav’ io; ed ella disse: «Quando + per udir se’ dolente, alza la barba, + e prenderai più doglia riguardando». + + Con men di resistenza si dibarba + robusto cerro, o vero al nostral vento + o vero a quel de la terra di Iarba, + + ch’io non levai al suo comando il mento; + e quando per la barba il viso chiese, + ben conobbi il velen de l’argomento. + + E come la mia faccia si distese, + posarsi quelle prime creature + da loro aspersïon l’occhio comprese; + + e le mie luci, ancor poco sicure, + vider Beatrice volta in su la fiera + ch’è sola una persona in due nature. + + Sotto ’l suo velo e oltre la rivera + vincer pariemi più sé stessa antica, + vincer che l’altre qui, quand’ ella c’era. + + Di penter sì mi punse ivi l’ortica, + che di tutte altre cose qual mi torse + più nel suo amor, più mi si fé nemica. + + Tanta riconoscenza il cor mi morse, + ch’io caddi vinto; e quale allora femmi, + salsi colei che la cagion mi porse. + + Poi, quando il cor virtù di fuor rendemmi, + la donna ch’io avea trovata sola + sopra me vidi, e dicea: «Tiemmi, tiemmi!». + + Tratto m’avea nel fiume infin la gola, + e tirandosi me dietro sen giva + sovresso l’acqua lieve come scola. + + Quando fui presso a la beata riva, + ‘Asperges me’ sì dolcemente udissi, + che nol so rimembrar, non ch’io lo scriva. + + La bella donna ne le braccia aprissi; + abbracciommi la testa e mi sommerse + ove convenne ch’io l’acqua inghiottissi. + + Indi mi tolse, e bagnato m’offerse + dentro a la danza de le quattro belle; + e ciascuna del braccio mi coperse. + + «Noi siam qui ninfe e nel ciel siamo stelle; + pria che Beatrice discendesse al mondo, + fummo ordinate a lei per sue ancelle. + + Merrenti a li occhi suoi; ma nel giocondo + lume ch’è dentro aguzzeranno i tuoi + le tre di là, che miran più profondo». + + Così cantando cominciaro; e poi + al petto del grifon seco menarmi, + ove Beatrice stava volta a noi. + + Disser: «Fa che le viste non risparmi; + posto t’avem dinanzi a li smeraldi + ond’ Amor già ti trasse le sue armi». + + Mille disiri più che fiamma caldi + strinsermi li occhi a li occhi rilucenti, + che pur sopra ’l grifone stavan saldi. + + Come in lo specchio il sol, non altrimenti + la doppia fiera dentro vi raggiava, + or con altri, or con altri reggimenti. + + Pensa, lettor, s’io mi maravigliava, + quando vedea la cosa in sé star queta, + e ne l’idolo suo si trasmutava. + + Mentre che piena di stupore e lieta + l’anima mia gustava di quel cibo + che, saziando di sé, di sé asseta, + + sé dimostrando di più alto tribo + ne li atti, l’altre tre si fero avanti, + danzando al loro angelico caribo. + + «Volgi, Beatrice, volgi li occhi santi», + era la sua canzone, «al tuo fedele + che, per vederti, ha mossi passi tanti! + + Per grazia fa noi grazia che disvele + a lui la bocca tua, sì che discerna + la seconda bellezza che tu cele». + + O isplendor di viva luce etterna, + chi palido si fece sotto l’ombra + sì di Parnaso, o bevve in sua cisterna, + + che non paresse aver la mente ingombra, + tentando a render te qual tu paresti + là dove armonizzando il ciel t’adombra, + + quando ne l’aere aperto ti solvesti? + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXXII + + + Tant’ eran li occhi miei fissi e attenti + a disbramarsi la decenne sete, + che li altri sensi m’eran tutti spenti. + + Ed essi quinci e quindi avien parete + di non caler—così lo santo riso + a sé traéli con l’antica rete!—; + + quando per forza mi fu vòlto il viso + ver’ la sinistra mia da quelle dee, + perch’ io udi’ da loro un «Troppo fiso!»; + + e la disposizion ch’a veder èe + ne li occhi pur testé dal sol percossi, + sanza la vista alquanto esser mi fée. + + Ma poi ch’al poco il viso riformossi + (e dico ‘al poco’ per rispetto al molto + sensibile onde a forza mi rimossi), + + vidi ’n sul braccio destro esser rivolto + lo glorïoso essercito, e tornarsi + col sole e con le sette fiamme al volto. + + Come sotto li scudi per salvarsi + volgesi schiera, e sé gira col segno, + prima che possa tutta in sé mutarsi; + + quella milizia del celeste regno + che procedeva, tutta trapassonne + pria che piegasse il carro il primo legno. + + Indi a le rote si tornar le donne, + e ’l grifon mosse il benedetto carco + sì, che però nulla penna crollonne. + + La bella donna che mi trasse al varco + e Stazio e io seguitavam la rota + che fé l’orbita sua con minore arco. + + Sì passeggiando l’alta selva vòta, + colpa di quella ch’al serpente crese, + temprava i passi un’angelica nota. + + Forse in tre voli tanto spazio prese + disfrenata saetta, quanto eramo + rimossi, quando Bëatrice scese. + + Io senti’ mormorare a tutti «Adamo»; + poi cerchiaro una pianta dispogliata + di foglie e d’altra fronda in ciascun ramo. + + La coma sua, che tanto si dilata + più quanto più è sù, fora da l’Indi + ne’ boschi lor per altezza ammirata. + + «Beato se’, grifon, che non discindi + col becco d’esto legno dolce al gusto, + poscia che mal si torce il ventre quindi». + + Così dintorno a l’albero robusto + gridaron li altri; e l’animal binato: + «Sì si conserva il seme d’ogne giusto». + + E vòlto al temo ch’elli avea tirato, + trasselo al piè de la vedova frasca, + e quel di lei a lei lasciò legato. + + Come le nostre piante, quando casca + giù la gran luce mischiata con quella + che raggia dietro a la celeste lasca, + + turgide fansi, e poi si rinovella + di suo color ciascuna, pria che ’l sole + giunga li suoi corsier sotto altra stella; + + men che di rose e più che di vïole + colore aprendo, s’innovò la pianta, + che prima avea le ramora sì sole. + + Io non lo ’ntesi, né qui non si canta + l’inno che quella gente allor cantaro, + né la nota soffersi tutta quanta. + + S’io potessi ritrar come assonnaro + li occhi spietati udendo di Siringa, + li occhi a cui pur vegghiar costò sì caro; + + come pintor che con essempro pinga, + disegnerei com’ io m’addormentai; + ma qual vuol sia che l’assonnar ben finga. + + Però trascorro a quando mi svegliai, + e dico ch’un splendor mi squarciò ’l velo + del sonno, e un chiamar: «Surgi: che fai?». + + Quali a veder de’ fioretti del melo + che del suo pome li angeli fa ghiotti + e perpetüe nozze fa nel cielo, + + Pietro e Giovanni e Iacopo condotti + e vinti, ritornaro a la parola + da la qual furon maggior sonni rotti, + + e videro scemata loro scuola + così di Moïsè come d’Elia, + e al maestro suo cangiata stola; + + tal torna’ io, e vidi quella pia + sovra me starsi che conducitrice + fu de’ miei passi lungo ’l fiume pria. + + E tutto in dubbio dissi: «Ov’ è Beatrice?». + Ond’ ella: «Vedi lei sotto la fronda + nova sedere in su la sua radice. + + Vedi la compagnia che la circonda: + li altri dopo ’l grifon sen vanno suso + con più dolce canzone e più profonda». + + E se più fu lo suo parlar diffuso, + non so, però che già ne li occhi m’era + quella ch’ad altro intender m’avea chiuso. + + Sola sedeasi in su la terra vera, + come guardia lasciata lì del plaustro + che legar vidi a la biforme fera. + + In cerchio le facevan di sé claustro + le sette ninfe, con quei lumi in mano + che son sicuri d’Aquilone e d’Austro. + + «Qui sarai tu poco tempo silvano; + e sarai meco sanza fine cive + di quella Roma onde Cristo è romano. + + Però, in pro del mondo che mal vive, + al carro tieni or li occhi, e quel che vedi, + ritornato di là, fa che tu scrive». + + Così Beatrice; e io, che tutto ai piedi + d’i suoi comandamenti era divoto, + la mente e li occhi ov’ ella volle diedi. + + Non scese mai con sì veloce moto + foco di spessa nube, quando piove + da quel confine che più va remoto, + + com’ io vidi calar l’uccel di Giove + per l’alber giù, rompendo de la scorza, + non che d’i fiori e de le foglie nove; + + e ferì ’l carro di tutta sua forza; + ond’ el piegò come nave in fortuna, + vinta da l’onda, or da poggia, or da orza. + + Poscia vidi avventarsi ne la cuna + del trïunfal veiculo una volpe + che d’ogne pasto buon parea digiuna; + + ma, riprendendo lei di laide colpe, + la donna mia la volse in tanta futa + quanto sofferser l’ossa sanza polpe. + + Poscia per indi ond’ era pria venuta, + l’aguglia vidi scender giù ne l’arca + del carro e lasciar lei di sé pennuta; + + e qual esce di cuor che si rammarca, + tal voce uscì del cielo e cotal disse: + «O navicella mia, com’ mal se’ carca!». + + Poi parve a me che la terra s’aprisse + tr’ambo le ruote, e vidi uscirne un drago + che per lo carro sù la coda fisse; + + e come vespa che ritragge l’ago, + a sé traendo la coda maligna, + trasse del fondo, e gissen vago vago. + + Quel che rimase, come da gramigna + vivace terra, da la piuma, offerta + forse con intenzion sana e benigna, + + si ricoperse, e funne ricoperta + e l’una e l’altra rota e ’l temo, in tanto + che più tiene un sospir la bocca aperta. + + Trasformato così ’l dificio santo + mise fuor teste per le parti sue, + tre sovra ’l temo e una in ciascun canto. + + Le prime eran cornute come bue, + ma le quattro un sol corno avean per fronte: + simile mostro visto ancor non fue. + + Sicura, quasi rocca in alto monte, + seder sovresso una puttana sciolta + m’apparve con le ciglia intorno pronte; + + e come perché non li fosse tolta, + vidi di costa a lei dritto un gigante; + e basciavansi insieme alcuna volta. + + Ma perché l’occhio cupido e vagante + a me rivolse, quel feroce drudo + la flagellò dal capo infin le piante; + + poi, di sospetto pieno e d’ira crudo, + disciolse il mostro, e trassel per la selva, + tanto che sol di lei mi fece scudo + + a la puttana e a la nova belva. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXXIII + + + ‘Deus, venerunt gentes’, alternando + or tre or quattro dolce salmodia, + le donne incominciaro, e lagrimando; + + e Bëatrice, sospirosa e pia, + quelle ascoltava sì fatta, che poco + più a la croce si cambiò Maria. + + Ma poi che l’altre vergini dier loco + a lei di dir, levata dritta in pè, + rispuose, colorata come foco: + + ‘Modicum, et non videbitis me; + et iterum, sorelle mie dilette, + modicum, et vos videbitis me’. + + Poi le si mise innanzi tutte e sette, + e dopo sé, solo accennando, mosse + me e la donna e ’l savio che ristette. + + Così sen giva; e non credo che fosse + lo decimo suo passo in terra posto, + quando con li occhi li occhi mi percosse; + + e con tranquillo aspetto «Vien più tosto», + mi disse, «tanto che, s’io parlo teco, + ad ascoltarmi tu sie ben disposto». + + Sì com’ io fui, com’ io dovëa, seco, + dissemi: «Frate, perché non t’attenti + a domandarmi omai venendo meco?». + + Come a color che troppo reverenti + dinanzi a suo maggior parlando sono, + che non traggon la voce viva ai denti, + + avvenne a me, che sanza intero suono + incominciai: «Madonna, mia bisogna + voi conoscete, e ciò ch’ad essa è buono». + + Ed ella a me: «Da tema e da vergogna + voglio che tu omai ti disviluppe, + sì che non parli più com’ om che sogna. + + Sappi che ’l vaso che ’l serpente ruppe, + fu e non è; ma chi n’ha colpa, creda + che vendetta di Dio non teme suppe. + + Non sarà tutto tempo sanza reda + l’aguglia che lasciò le penne al carro, + per che divenne mostro e poscia preda; + + ch’io veggio certamente, e però il narro, + a darne tempo già stelle propinque, + secure d’ogn’ intoppo e d’ogne sbarro, + + nel quale un cinquecento diece e cinque, + messo di Dio, anciderà la fuia + con quel gigante che con lei delinque. + + E forse che la mia narrazion buia, + qual Temi e Sfinge, men ti persuade, + perch’ a lor modo lo ’ntelletto attuia; + + ma tosto fier li fatti le Naiade, + che solveranno questo enigma forte + sanza danno di pecore o di biade. + + Tu nota; e sì come da me son porte, + così queste parole segna a’ vivi + del viver ch’è un correre a la morte. + + E aggi a mente, quando tu le scrivi, + di non celar qual hai vista la pianta + ch’è or due volte dirubata quivi. + + Qualunque ruba quella o quella schianta, + con bestemmia di fatto offende a Dio, + che solo a l’uso suo la creò santa. + + Per morder quella, in pena e in disio + cinquemilia anni e più l’anima prima + bramò colui che ’l morso in sé punio. + + Dorme lo ’ngegno tuo, se non estima + per singular cagione esser eccelsa + lei tanto e sì travolta ne la cima. + + E se stati non fossero acqua d’Elsa + li pensier vani intorno a la tua mente, + e ’l piacer loro un Piramo a la gelsa, + + per tante circostanze solamente + la giustizia di Dio, ne l’interdetto, + conosceresti a l’arbor moralmente. + + Ma perch’ io veggio te ne lo ’ntelletto + fatto di pietra e, impetrato, tinto, + sì che t’abbaglia il lume del mio detto, + + voglio anco, e se non scritto, almen dipinto, + che ’l te ne porti dentro a te per quello + che si reca il bordon di palma cinto». + + E io: «Sì come cera da suggello, + che la figura impressa non trasmuta, + segnato è or da voi lo mio cervello. + + Ma perché tanto sovra mia veduta + vostra parola disïata vola, + che più la perde quanto più s’aiuta?». + + «Perché conoschi», disse, «quella scuola + c’hai seguitata, e veggi sua dottrina + come può seguitar la mia parola; + + e veggi vostra via da la divina + distar cotanto, quanto si discorda + da terra il ciel che più alto festina». + + Ond’ io rispuosi lei: «Non mi ricorda + ch’i’ stranïasse me già mai da voi, + né honne coscïenza che rimorda». + + «E se tu ricordar non te ne puoi», + sorridendo rispuose, «or ti rammenta + come bevesti di Letè ancoi; + + e se dal fummo foco s’argomenta, + cotesta oblivïon chiaro conchiude + colpa ne la tua voglia altrove attenta. + + Veramente oramai saranno nude + le mie parole, quanto converrassi + quelle scovrire a la tua vista rude». + + E più corusco e con più lenti passi + teneva il sole il cerchio di merigge, + che qua e là, come li aspetti, fassi, + + quando s’affisser, sì come s’affigge + chi va dinanzi a gente per iscorta + se trova novitate o sue vestigge, + + le sette donne al fin d’un’ombra smorta, + qual sotto foglie verdi e rami nigri + sovra suoi freddi rivi l’alpe porta. + + Dinanzi ad esse Ëufratès e Tigri + veder mi parve uscir d’una fontana, + e, quasi amici, dipartirsi pigri. + + «O luce, o gloria de la gente umana, + che acqua è questa che qui si dispiega + da un principio e sé da sé lontana?». + + Per cotal priego detto mi fu: «Priega + Matelda che ’l ti dica». E qui rispuose, + come fa chi da colpa si dislega, + + la bella donna: «Questo e altre cose + dette li son per me; e son sicura + che l’acqua di Letè non gliel nascose». + + E Bëatrice: «Forse maggior cura, + che spesse volte la memoria priva, + fatt’ ha la mente sua ne li occhi oscura. + + Ma vedi Eünoè che là diriva: + menalo ad esso, e come tu se’ usa, + la tramortita sua virtù ravviva». + + Come anima gentil, che non fa scusa, + ma fa sua voglia de la voglia altrui + tosto che è per segno fuor dischiusa; + + così, poi che da essa preso fui, + la bella donna mossesi, e a Stazio + donnescamente disse: «Vien con lui». + + S’io avessi, lettor, più lungo spazio + da scrivere, i’ pur cantere’ in parte + lo dolce ber che mai non m’avria sazio; + + ma perché piene son tutte le carte + ordite a questa cantica seconda, + non mi lascia più ir lo fren de l’arte. + + Io ritornai da la santissima onda + rifatto sì come piante novelle + rinovellate di novella fronda, + + puro e disposto a salire a le stelle. + + + + + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + + TAVOLA DEI CARATTERI SPECIALI + TABLE OF SPECIAL CHARACTERS + + à = a grave + è = e grave + ì = i grave + ò = o grave + ù = u grave + + é = e acute + ó = o acute + + ä = a uml + ë = e uml + ï = i uml + ö = o uml + ü = u uml + + È = E grave + Ë = E uml + Ï = I uml + + « = left angle quotation mark + » = right angle quotation mark + + “ = left double quotation mark + ” = right double quotation mark + + ‘ = left single quotation mark + ’ = right single quotation mark + + — = em dash + + • = middot + + . . . = ellipsis + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of La Divina Commedia di Dante: Purgatorio, by +Dante Alighieri + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1010 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1011-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1011-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0ca01bac --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1011-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6600 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1011 *** + + LA DIVINA COMMEDIA + di Dante Alighieri + + + + + + PARADISO + + + + + Paradiso • Canto I + + + La gloria di colui che tutto move + per l’universo penetra, e risplende + in una parte più e meno altrove. + + Nel ciel che più de la sua luce prende + fu’ io, e vidi cose che ridire + né sa né può chi di là sù discende; + + perché appressando sé al suo disire, + nostro intelletto si profonda tanto, + che dietro la memoria non può ire. + + Veramente quant’ io del regno santo + ne la mia mente potei far tesoro, + sarà ora materia del mio canto. + + O buono Appollo, a l’ultimo lavoro + fammi del tuo valor sì fatto vaso, + come dimandi a dar l’amato alloro. + + Infino a qui l’un giogo di Parnaso + assai mi fu; ma or con amendue + m’è uopo intrar ne l’aringo rimaso. + + Entra nel petto mio, e spira tue + sì come quando Marsïa traesti + de la vagina de le membra sue. + + O divina virtù, se mi ti presti + tanto che l’ombra del beato regno + segnata nel mio capo io manifesti, + + vedra’mi al piè del tuo diletto legno + venire, e coronarmi de le foglie + che la materia e tu mi farai degno. + + Sì rade volte, padre, se ne coglie + per trïunfare o cesare o poeta, + colpa e vergogna de l’umane voglie, + + che parturir letizia in su la lieta + delfica deïtà dovria la fronda + peneia, quando alcun di sé asseta. + + Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda: + forse di retro a me con miglior voci + si pregherà perché Cirra risponda. + + Surge ai mortali per diverse foci + la lucerna del mondo; ma da quella + che quattro cerchi giugne con tre croci, + + con miglior corso e con migliore stella + esce congiunta, e la mondana cera + più a suo modo tempera e suggella. + + Fatto avea di là mane e di qua sera + tal foce, e quasi tutto era là bianco + quello emisperio, e l’altra parte nera, + + quando Beatrice in sul sinistro fianco + vidi rivolta e riguardar nel sole: + aguglia sì non li s’affisse unquanco. + + E sì come secondo raggio suole + uscir del primo e risalire in suso, + pur come pelegrin che tornar vuole, + + così de l’atto suo, per li occhi infuso + ne l’imagine mia, il mio si fece, + e fissi li occhi al sole oltre nostr’ uso. + + Molto è licito là, che qui non lece + a le nostre virtù, mercé del loco + fatto per proprio de l’umana spece. + + Io nol soffersi molto, né sì poco, + ch’io nol vedessi sfavillar dintorno, + com’ ferro che bogliente esce del foco; + + e di sùbito parve giorno a giorno + essere aggiunto, come quei che puote + avesse il ciel d’un altro sole addorno. + + Beatrice tutta ne l’etterne rote + fissa con li occhi stava; e io in lei + le luci fissi, di là sù rimote. + + Nel suo aspetto tal dentro mi fei, + qual si fé Glauco nel gustar de l’erba + che ’l fé consorto in mar de li altri dèi. + + Trasumanar significar per verba + non si poria; però l’essemplo basti + a cui esperïenza grazia serba. + + S’i’ era sol di me quel che creasti + novellamente, amor che ’l ciel governi, + tu ’l sai, che col tuo lume mi levasti. + + Quando la rota che tu sempiterni + desiderato, a sé mi fece atteso + con l’armonia che temperi e discerni, + + parvemi tanto allor del cielo acceso + de la fiamma del sol, che pioggia o fiume + lago non fece alcun tanto disteso. + + La novità del suono e ’l grande lume + di lor cagion m’accesero un disio + mai non sentito di cotanto acume. + + Ond’ ella, che vedea me sì com’ io, + a quïetarmi l’animo commosso, + pria ch’io a dimandar, la bocca aprio + + e cominciò: «Tu stesso ti fai grosso + col falso imaginar, sì che non vedi + ciò che vedresti se l’avessi scosso. + + Tu non se’ in terra, sì come tu credi; + ma folgore, fuggendo il proprio sito, + non corse come tu ch’ad esso riedi». + + S’io fui del primo dubbio disvestito + per le sorrise parolette brevi, + dentro ad un nuovo più fu’ inretito + + e dissi: «Già contento requïevi + di grande ammirazion; ma ora ammiro + com’ io trascenda questi corpi levi». + + Ond’ ella, appresso d’un pïo sospiro, + li occhi drizzò ver’ me con quel sembiante + che madre fa sovra figlio deliro, + + e cominciò: «Le cose tutte quante + hanno ordine tra loro, e questo è forma + che l’universo a Dio fa simigliante. + + Qui veggion l’alte creature l’orma + de l’etterno valore, il qual è fine + al quale è fatta la toccata norma. + + Ne l’ordine ch’io dico sono accline + tutte nature, per diverse sorti, + più al principio loro e men vicine; + + onde si muovono a diversi porti + per lo gran mar de l’essere, e ciascuna + con istinto a lei dato che la porti. + + Questi ne porta il foco inver’ la luna; + questi ne’ cor mortali è permotore; + questi la terra in sé stringe e aduna; + + né pur le creature che son fore + d’intelligenza quest’ arco saetta, + ma quelle c’hanno intelletto e amore. + + La provedenza, che cotanto assetta, + del suo lume fa ’l ciel sempre quïeto + nel qual si volge quel c’ha maggior fretta; + + e ora lì, come a sito decreto, + cen porta la virtù di quella corda + che ciò che scocca drizza in segno lieto. + + Vero è che, come forma non s’accorda + molte fïate a l’intenzion de l’arte, + perch’ a risponder la materia è sorda, + + così da questo corso si diparte + talor la creatura, c’ha podere + di piegar, così pinta, in altra parte; + + e sì come veder si può cadere + foco di nube, sì l’impeto primo + l’atterra torto da falso piacere. + + Non dei più ammirar, se bene stimo, + lo tuo salir, se non come d’un rivo + se d’alto monte scende giuso ad imo. + + Maraviglia sarebbe in te se, privo + d’impedimento, giù ti fossi assiso, + com’ a terra quïete in foco vivo». + + Quinci rivolse inver’ lo cielo il viso. + + + + Paradiso • Canto II + + + O voi che siete in piccioletta barca, + desiderosi d’ascoltar, seguiti + dietro al mio legno che cantando varca, + + tornate a riveder li vostri liti: + non vi mettete in pelago, ché forse, + perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti. + + L’acqua ch’io prendo già mai non si corse; + Minerva spira, e conducemi Appollo, + e nove Muse mi dimostran l’Orse. + + Voialtri pochi che drizzaste il collo + per tempo al pan de li angeli, del quale + vivesi qui ma non sen vien satollo, + + metter potete ben per l’alto sale + vostro navigio, servando mio solco + dinanzi a l’acqua che ritorna equale. + + Que’ glorïosi che passaro al Colco + non s’ammiraron come voi farete, + quando Iasón vider fatto bifolco. + + La concreata e perpetüa sete + del deïforme regno cen portava + veloci quasi come ’l ciel vedete. + + Beatrice in suso, e io in lei guardava; + e forse in tanto in quanto un quadrel posa + e vola e da la noce si dischiava, + + giunto mi vidi ove mirabil cosa + mi torse il viso a sé; e però quella + cui non potea mia cura essere ascosa, + + volta ver’ me, sì lieta come bella, + «Drizza la mente in Dio grata», mi disse, + «che n’ha congiunti con la prima stella». + + Parev’ a me che nube ne coprisse + lucida, spessa, solida e pulita, + quasi adamante che lo sol ferisse. + + Per entro sé l’etterna margarita + ne ricevette, com’ acqua recepe + raggio di luce permanendo unita. + + S’io era corpo, e qui non si concepe + com’ una dimensione altra patio, + ch’esser convien se corpo in corpo repe, + + accender ne dovria più il disio + di veder quella essenza in che si vede + come nostra natura e Dio s’unio. + + Lì si vedrà ciò che tenem per fede, + non dimostrato, ma fia per sé noto + a guisa del ver primo che l’uom crede. + + Io rispuosi: «Madonna, sì devoto + com’ esser posso più, ringrazio lui + lo qual dal mortal mondo m’ha remoto. + + Ma ditemi: che son li segni bui + di questo corpo, che là giuso in terra + fan di Cain favoleggiare altrui?». + + Ella sorrise alquanto, e poi «S’elli erra + l’oppinïon», mi disse, «d’i mortali + dove chiave di senso non diserra, + + certo non ti dovrien punger li strali + d’ammirazione omai, poi dietro ai sensi + vedi che la ragione ha corte l’ali. + + Ma dimmi quel che tu da te ne pensi». + E io: «Ciò che n’appar qua sù diverso + credo che fanno i corpi rari e densi». + + Ed ella: «Certo assai vedrai sommerso + nel falso il creder tuo, se bene ascolti + l’argomentar ch’io li farò avverso. + + La spera ottava vi dimostra molti + lumi, li quali e nel quale e nel quanto + notar si posson di diversi volti. + + Se raro e denso ciò facesser tanto, + una sola virtù sarebbe in tutti, + più e men distributa e altrettanto. + + Virtù diverse esser convegnon frutti + di princìpi formali, e quei, for ch’uno, + seguiterieno a tua ragion distrutti. + + Ancor, se raro fosse di quel bruno + cagion che tu dimandi, o d’oltre in parte + fora di sua materia sì digiuno + + esto pianeto, o, sì come comparte + lo grasso e ’l magro un corpo, così questo + nel suo volume cangerebbe carte. + + Se ’l primo fosse, fora manifesto + ne l’eclissi del sol, per trasparere + lo lume come in altro raro ingesto. + + Questo non è: però è da vedere + de l’altro; e s’elli avvien ch’io l’altro cassi, + falsificato fia lo tuo parere. + + S’elli è che questo raro non trapassi, + esser conviene un termine da onde + lo suo contrario più passar non lassi; + + e indi l’altrui raggio si rifonde + così come color torna per vetro + lo qual di retro a sé piombo nasconde. + + Or dirai tu ch’el si dimostra tetro + ivi lo raggio più che in altre parti, + per esser lì refratto più a retro. + + Da questa instanza può deliberarti + esperïenza, se già mai la provi, + ch’esser suol fonte ai rivi di vostr’ arti. + + Tre specchi prenderai; e i due rimovi + da te d’un modo, e l’altro, più rimosso, + tr’ambo li primi li occhi tuoi ritrovi. + + Rivolto ad essi, fa che dopo il dosso + ti stea un lume che i tre specchi accenda + e torni a te da tutti ripercosso. + + Ben che nel quanto tanto non si stenda + la vista più lontana, lì vedrai + come convien ch’igualmente risplenda. + + Or, come ai colpi de li caldi rai + de la neve riman nudo il suggetto + e dal colore e dal freddo primai, + + così rimaso te ne l’intelletto + voglio informar di luce sì vivace, + che ti tremolerà nel suo aspetto. + + Dentro dal ciel de la divina pace + si gira un corpo ne la cui virtute + l’esser di tutto suo contento giace. + + Lo ciel seguente, c’ha tante vedute, + quell’ esser parte per diverse essenze, + da lui distratte e da lui contenute. + + Li altri giron per varie differenze + le distinzion che dentro da sé hanno + dispongono a lor fini e lor semenze. + + Questi organi del mondo così vanno, + come tu vedi omai, di grado in grado, + che di sù prendono e di sotto fanno. + + Riguarda bene omai sì com’ io vado + per questo loco al vero che disiri, + sì che poi sappi sol tener lo guado. + + Lo moto e la virtù d’i santi giri, + come dal fabbro l’arte del martello, + da’ beati motor convien che spiri; + + e ’l ciel cui tanti lumi fanno bello, + de la mente profonda che lui volve + prende l’image e fassene suggello. + + E come l’alma dentro a vostra polve + per differenti membra e conformate + a diverse potenze si risolve, + + così l’intelligenza sua bontate + multiplicata per le stelle spiega, + girando sé sovra sua unitate. + + Virtù diversa fa diversa lega + col prezïoso corpo ch’ella avviva, + nel qual, sì come vita in voi, si lega. + + Per la natura lieta onde deriva, + la virtù mista per lo corpo luce + come letizia per pupilla viva. + + Da essa vien ciò che da luce a luce + par differente, non da denso e raro; + essa è formal principio che produce, + + conforme a sua bontà, lo turbo e ’l chiaro». + + + + Paradiso • Canto III + + + Quel sol che pria d’amor mi scaldò ’l petto, + di bella verità m’avea scoverto, + provando e riprovando, il dolce aspetto; + + e io, per confessar corretto e certo + me stesso, tanto quanto si convenne + leva’ il capo a proferer più erto; + + ma visïone apparve che ritenne + a sé me tanto stretto, per vedersi, + che di mia confession non mi sovvenne. + + Quali per vetri trasparenti e tersi, + o ver per acque nitide e tranquille, + non sì profonde che i fondi sien persi, + + tornan d’i nostri visi le postille + debili sì, che perla in bianca fronte + non vien men forte a le nostre pupille; + + tali vid’ io più facce a parlar pronte; + per ch’io dentro a l’error contrario corsi + a quel ch’accese amor tra l’omo e ’l fonte. + + Sùbito sì com’ io di lor m’accorsi, + quelle stimando specchiati sembianti, + per veder di cui fosser, li occhi torsi; + + e nulla vidi, e ritorsili avanti + dritti nel lume de la dolce guida, + che, sorridendo, ardea ne li occhi santi. + + «Non ti maravigliar perch’ io sorrida», + mi disse, «appresso il tuo püeril coto, + poi sopra ’l vero ancor lo piè non fida, + + ma te rivolve, come suole, a vòto: + vere sustanze son ciò che tu vedi, + qui rilegate per manco di voto. + + Però parla con esse e odi e credi; + ché la verace luce che le appaga + da sé non lascia lor torcer li piedi». + + E io a l’ombra che parea più vaga + di ragionar, drizza’mi, e cominciai, + quasi com’ uom cui troppa voglia smaga: + + «O ben creato spirito, che a’ rai + di vita etterna la dolcezza senti + che, non gustata, non s’intende mai, + + grazïoso mi fia se mi contenti + del nome tuo e de la vostra sorte». + Ond’ ella, pronta e con occhi ridenti: + + «La nostra carità non serra porte + a giusta voglia, se non come quella + che vuol simile a sé tutta sua corte. + + I’ fui nel mondo vergine sorella; + e se la mente tua ben sé riguarda, + non mi ti celerà l’esser più bella, + + ma riconoscerai ch’i’ son Piccarda, + che, posta qui con questi altri beati, + beata sono in la spera più tarda. + + Li nostri affetti, che solo infiammati + son nel piacer de lo Spirito Santo, + letizian del suo ordine formati. + + E questa sorte che par giù cotanto, + però n’è data, perché fuor negletti + li nostri voti, e vòti in alcun canto». + + Ond’ io a lei: «Ne’ mirabili aspetti + vostri risplende non so che divino + che vi trasmuta da’ primi concetti: + + però non fui a rimembrar festino; + ma or m’aiuta ciò che tu mi dici, + sì che raffigurar m’è più latino. + + Ma dimmi: voi che siete qui felici, + disiderate voi più alto loco + per più vedere e per più farvi amici?». + + Con quelle altr’ ombre pria sorrise un poco; + da indi mi rispuose tanto lieta, + ch’arder parea d’amor nel primo foco: + + «Frate, la nostra volontà quïeta + virtù di carità, che fa volerne + sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta. + + Se disïassimo esser più superne, + foran discordi li nostri disiri + dal voler di colui che qui ne cerne; + + che vedrai non capere in questi giri, + s’essere in carità è qui necesse, + e se la sua natura ben rimiri. + + Anzi è formale ad esto beato esse + tenersi dentro a la divina voglia, + per ch’una fansi nostre voglie stesse; + + sì che, come noi sem di soglia in soglia + per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace + com’ a lo re che ’n suo voler ne ’nvoglia. + + E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace: + ell’ è quel mare al qual tutto si move + ciò ch’ella crïa o che natura face». + + Chiaro mi fu allor come ogne dove + in cielo è paradiso, etsi la grazia + del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove. + + Ma sì com’ elli avvien, s’un cibo sazia + e d’un altro rimane ancor la gola, + che quel si chere e di quel si ringrazia, + + così fec’ io con atto e con parola, + per apprender da lei qual fu la tela + onde non trasse infino a co la spuola. + + «Perfetta vita e alto merto inciela + donna più sù», mi disse, «a la cui norma + nel vostro mondo giù si veste e vela, + + perché fino al morir si vegghi e dorma + con quello sposo ch’ogne voto accetta + che caritate a suo piacer conforma. + + Dal mondo, per seguirla, giovinetta + fuggi’mi, e nel suo abito mi chiusi + e promisi la via de la sua setta. + + Uomini poi, a mal più ch’a bene usi, + fuor mi rapiron de la dolce chiostra: + Iddio si sa qual poi mia vita fusi. + + E quest’ altro splendor che ti si mostra + da la mia destra parte e che s’accende + di tutto il lume de la spera nostra, + + ciò ch’io dico di me, di sé intende; + sorella fu, e così le fu tolta + di capo l’ombra de le sacre bende. + + Ma poi che pur al mondo fu rivolta + contra suo grado e contra buona usanza, + non fu dal vel del cor già mai disciolta. + + Quest’ è la luce de la gran Costanza + che del secondo vento di Soave + generò ’l terzo e l’ultima possanza». + + Così parlommi, e poi cominciò ‘Ave, + Maria’ cantando, e cantando vanio + come per acqua cupa cosa grave. + + La vista mia, che tanto lei seguio + quanto possibil fu, poi che la perse, + volsesi al segno di maggior disio, + + e a Beatrice tutta si converse; + ma quella folgorò nel mïo sguardo + sì che da prima il viso non sofferse; + + e ciò mi fece a dimandar più tardo. + + + + Paradiso • Canto IV + + + Intra due cibi, distanti e moventi + d’un modo, prima si morria di fame, + che liber’ omo l’un recasse ai denti; + + sì si starebbe un agno intra due brame + di fieri lupi, igualmente temendo; + sì si starebbe un cane intra due dame: + + per che, s’i’ mi tacea, me non riprendo, + da li miei dubbi d’un modo sospinto, + poi ch’era necessario, né commendo. + + Io mi tacea, ma ’l mio disir dipinto + m’era nel viso, e ’l dimandar con ello, + più caldo assai che per parlar distinto. + + Fé sì Beatrice qual fé Danïello, + Nabuccodonosor levando d’ira, + che l’avea fatto ingiustamente fello; + + e disse: «Io veggio ben come ti tira + uno e altro disio, sì che tua cura + sé stessa lega sì che fuor non spira. + + Tu argomenti: “Se ’l buon voler dura, + la vïolenza altrui per qual ragione + di meritar mi scema la misura?”. + + Ancor di dubitar ti dà cagione + parer tornarsi l’anime a le stelle, + secondo la sentenza di Platone. + + Queste son le question che nel tuo velle + pontano igualmente; e però pria + tratterò quella che più ha di felle. + + D’i Serafin colui che più s’india, + Moïsè, Samuel, e quel Giovanni + che prender vuoli, io dico, non Maria, + + non hanno in altro cielo i loro scanni + che questi spirti che mo t’appariro, + né hanno a l’esser lor più o meno anni; + + ma tutti fanno bello il primo giro, + e differentemente han dolce vita + per sentir più e men l’etterno spiro. + + Qui si mostraro, non perché sortita + sia questa spera lor, ma per far segno + de la celestïal c’ha men salita. + + Così parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno, + però che solo da sensato apprende + ciò che fa poscia d’intelletto degno. + + Per questo la Scrittura condescende + a vostra facultate, e piedi e mano + attribuisce a Dio e altro intende; + + e Santa Chiesa con aspetto umano + Gabrïel e Michel vi rappresenta, + e l’altro che Tobia rifece sano. + + Quel che Timeo de l’anime argomenta + non è simile a ciò che qui si vede, + però che, come dice, par che senta. + + Dice che l’alma a la sua stella riede, + credendo quella quindi esser decisa + quando natura per forma la diede; + + e forse sua sentenza è d’altra guisa + che la voce non suona, ed esser puote + con intenzion da non esser derisa. + + S’elli intende tornare a queste ruote + l’onor de la influenza e ’l biasmo, forse + in alcun vero suo arco percuote. + + Questo principio, male inteso, torse + già tutto il mondo quasi, sì che Giove, + Mercurio e Marte a nominar trascorse. + + L’altra dubitazion che ti commove + ha men velen, però che sua malizia + non ti poria menar da me altrove. + + Parere ingiusta la nostra giustizia + ne li occhi d’i mortali, è argomento + di fede e non d’eretica nequizia. + + Ma perché puote vostro accorgimento + ben penetrare a questa veritate, + come disiri, ti farò contento. + + Se vïolenza è quando quel che pate + nïente conferisce a quel che sforza, + non fuor quest’ alme per essa scusate: + + ché volontà, se non vuol, non s’ammorza, + ma fa come natura face in foco, + se mille volte vïolenza il torza. + + Per che, s’ella si piega assai o poco, + segue la forza; e così queste fero + possendo rifuggir nel santo loco. + + Se fosse stato lor volere intero, + come tenne Lorenzo in su la grada, + e fece Muzio a la sua man severo, + + così l’avria ripinte per la strada + ond’ eran tratte, come fuoro sciolte; + ma così salda voglia è troppo rada. + + E per queste parole, se ricolte + l’hai come dei, è l’argomento casso + che t’avria fatto noia ancor più volte. + + Ma or ti s’attraversa un altro passo + dinanzi a li occhi, tal che per te stesso + non usciresti: pria saresti lasso. + + Io t’ho per certo ne la mente messo + ch’alma beata non poria mentire, + però ch’è sempre al primo vero appresso; + + e poi potesti da Piccarda udire + che l’affezion del vel Costanza tenne; + sì ch’ella par qui meco contradire. + + Molte fïate già, frate, addivenne + che, per fuggir periglio, contra grato + si fé di quel che far non si convenne; + + come Almeone, che, di ciò pregato + dal padre suo, la propria madre spense, + per non perder pietà si fé spietato. + + A questo punto voglio che tu pense + che la forza al voler si mischia, e fanno + sì che scusar non si posson l’offense. + + Voglia assoluta non consente al danno; + ma consentevi in tanto in quanto teme, + se si ritrae, cadere in più affanno. + + Però, quando Piccarda quello spreme, + de la voglia assoluta intende, e io + de l’altra; sì che ver diciamo insieme». + + Cotal fu l’ondeggiar del santo rio + ch’uscì del fonte ond’ ogne ver deriva; + tal puose in pace uno e altro disio. + + «O amanza del primo amante, o diva», + diss’ io appresso, «il cui parlar m’inonda + e scalda sì, che più e più m’avviva, + + non è l’affezion mia tanto profonda, + che basti a render voi grazia per grazia; + ma quei che vede e puote a ciò risponda. + + Io veggio ben che già mai non si sazia + nostro intelletto, se ’l ver non lo illustra + di fuor dal qual nessun vero si spazia. + + Posasi in esso, come fera in lustra, + tosto che giunto l’ha; e giugner puollo: + se non, ciascun disio sarebbe frustra. + + Nasce per quello, a guisa di rampollo, + a piè del vero il dubbio; ed è natura + ch’al sommo pinge noi di collo in collo. + + Questo m’invita, questo m’assicura + con reverenza, donna, a dimandarvi + d’un’altra verità che m’è oscura. + + Io vo’ saper se l’uom può sodisfarvi + ai voti manchi sì con altri beni, + ch’a la vostra statera non sien parvi». + + Beatrice mi guardò con li occhi pieni + di faville d’amor così divini, + che, vinta, mia virtute diè le reni, + + e quasi mi perdei con li occhi chini. + + + + Paradiso • Canto V + + + «S’io ti fiammeggio nel caldo d’amore + di là dal modo che ’n terra si vede, + sì che del viso tuo vinco il valore, + + non ti maravigliar, ché ciò procede + da perfetto veder, che, come apprende, + così nel bene appreso move il piede. + + Io veggio ben sì come già resplende + ne l’intelletto tuo l’etterna luce, + che, vista, sola e sempre amore accende; + + e s’altra cosa vostro amor seduce, + non è se non di quella alcun vestigio, + mal conosciuto, che quivi traluce. + + Tu vuo’ saper se con altro servigio, + per manco voto, si può render tanto + che l’anima sicuri di letigio». + + Sì cominciò Beatrice questo canto; + e sì com’ uom che suo parlar non spezza, + continüò così ’l processo santo: + + «Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza + fesse creando, e a la sua bontate + più conformato, e quel ch’e’ più apprezza, + + fu de la volontà la libertate; + di che le creature intelligenti, + e tutte e sole, fuoro e son dotate. + + Or ti parrà, se tu quinci argomenti, + l’alto valor del voto, s’è sì fatto + che Dio consenta quando tu consenti; + + ché, nel fermar tra Dio e l’omo il patto, + vittima fassi di questo tesoro, + tal quale io dico; e fassi col suo atto. + + Dunque che render puossi per ristoro? + Se credi bene usar quel c’hai offerto, + di maltolletto vuo’ far buon lavoro. + + Tu se’ omai del maggior punto certo; + ma perché Santa Chiesa in ciò dispensa, + che par contra lo ver ch’i’ t’ho scoverto, + + convienti ancor sedere un poco a mensa, + però che ’l cibo rigido c’hai preso, + richiede ancora aiuto a tua dispensa. + + Apri la mente a quel ch’io ti paleso + e fermalvi entro; ché non fa scïenza, + sanza lo ritenere, avere inteso. + + Due cose si convegnono a l’essenza + di questo sacrificio: l’una è quella + di che si fa; l’altr’ è la convenenza. + + Quest’ ultima già mai non si cancella + se non servata; e intorno di lei + sì preciso di sopra si favella: + + però necessitato fu a li Ebrei + pur l’offerere, ancor ch’alcuna offerta + sì permutasse, come saver dei. + + L’altra, che per materia t’è aperta, + puote ben esser tal, che non si falla + se con altra materia si converta. + + Ma non trasmuti carco a la sua spalla + per suo arbitrio alcun, sanza la volta + e de la chiave bianca e de la gialla; + + e ogne permutanza credi stolta, + se la cosa dimessa in la sorpresa + come ’l quattro nel sei non è raccolta. + + Però qualunque cosa tanto pesa + per suo valor che tragga ogne bilancia, + sodisfar non si può con altra spesa. + + Non prendan li mortali il voto a ciancia; + siate fedeli, e a ciò far non bieci, + come Ieptè a la sua prima mancia; + + cui più si convenia dicer ‘Mal feci’, + che, servando, far peggio; e così stolto + ritrovar puoi il gran duca de’ Greci, + + onde pianse Efigènia il suo bel volto, + e fé pianger di sé i folli e i savi + ch’udir parlar di così fatto cólto. + + Siate, Cristiani, a muovervi più gravi: + non siate come penna ad ogne vento, + e non crediate ch’ogne acqua vi lavi. + + Avete il novo e ’l vecchio Testamento, + e ’l pastor de la Chiesa che vi guida; + questo vi basti a vostro salvamento. + + Se mala cupidigia altro vi grida, + uomini siate, e non pecore matte, + sì che ’l Giudeo di voi tra voi non rida! + + Non fate com’ agnel che lascia il latte + de la sua madre, e semplice e lascivo + seco medesmo a suo piacer combatte!». + + Così Beatrice a me com’ ïo scrivo; + poi si rivolse tutta disïante + a quella parte ove ’l mondo è più vivo. + + Lo suo tacere e ’l trasmutar sembiante + puoser silenzio al mio cupido ingegno, + che già nuove questioni avea davante; + + e sì come saetta che nel segno + percuote pria che sia la corda queta, + così corremmo nel secondo regno. + + Quivi la donna mia vid’ io sì lieta, + come nel lume di quel ciel si mise, + che più lucente se ne fé ’l pianeta. + + E se la stella si cambiò e rise, + qual mi fec’ io che pur da mia natura + trasmutabile son per tutte guise! + + Come ’n peschiera ch’è tranquilla e pura + traggonsi i pesci a ciò che vien di fori + per modo che lo stimin lor pastura, + + sì vid’ io ben più di mille splendori + trarsi ver’ noi, e in ciascun s’udia: + «Ecco chi crescerà li nostri amori». + + E sì come ciascuno a noi venìa, + vedeasi l’ombra piena di letizia + nel folgór chiaro che di lei uscia. + + Pensa, lettor, se quel che qui s’inizia + non procedesse, come tu avresti + di più savere angosciosa carizia; + + e per te vederai come da questi + m’era in disio d’udir lor condizioni, + sì come a li occhi mi fur manifesti. + + «O bene nato a cui veder li troni + del trïunfo etternal concede grazia + prima che la milizia s’abbandoni, + + del lume che per tutto il ciel si spazia + noi semo accesi; e però, se disii + di noi chiarirti, a tuo piacer ti sazia». + + Così da un di quelli spirti pii + detto mi fu; e da Beatrice: «Dì, dì + sicuramente, e credi come a dii». + + «Io veggio ben sì come tu t’annidi + nel proprio lume, e che de li occhi il traggi, + perch’ e’ corusca sì come tu ridi; + + ma non so chi tu se’, né perché aggi, + anima degna, il grado de la spera + che si vela a’ mortai con altrui raggi». + + Questo diss’ io diritto a la lumera + che pria m’avea parlato; ond’ ella fessi + lucente più assai di quel ch’ell’ era. + + Sì come il sol che si cela elli stessi + per troppa luce, come ’l caldo ha róse + le temperanze d’i vapori spessi, + + per più letizia sì mi si nascose + dentro al suo raggio la figura santa; + e così chiusa chiusa mi rispuose + + nel modo che ’l seguente canto canta. + + + + Paradiso • Canto VI + + + «Poscia che Costantin l’aquila volse + contr’ al corso del ciel, ch’ella seguio + dietro a l’antico che Lavina tolse, + + cento e cent’ anni e più l’uccel di Dio + ne lo stremo d’Europa si ritenne, + vicino a’ monti de’ quai prima uscìo; + + e sotto l’ombra de le sacre penne + governò ’l mondo lì di mano in mano, + e, sì cangiando, in su la mia pervenne. + + Cesare fui e son Iustinïano, + che, per voler del primo amor ch’i’ sento, + d’entro le leggi trassi il troppo e ’l vano. + + E prima ch’io a l’ovra fossi attento, + una natura in Cristo esser, non piùe, + credea, e di tal fede era contento; + + ma ’l benedetto Agapito, che fue + sommo pastore, a la fede sincera + mi dirizzò con le parole sue. + + Io li credetti; e ciò che ’n sua fede era, + vegg’ io or chiaro sì, come tu vedi + ogni contradizione e falsa e vera. + + Tosto che con la Chiesa mossi i piedi, + a Dio per grazia piacque di spirarmi + l’alto lavoro, e tutto ’n lui mi diedi; + + e al mio Belisar commendai l’armi, + cui la destra del ciel fu sì congiunta, + che segno fu ch’i’ dovessi posarmi. + + Or qui a la question prima s’appunta + la mia risposta; ma sua condizione + mi stringe a seguitare alcuna giunta, + + perché tu veggi con quanta ragione + si move contr’ al sacrosanto segno + e chi ’l s’appropria e chi a lui s’oppone. + + Vedi quanta virtù l’ha fatto degno + di reverenza; e cominciò da l’ora + che Pallante morì per darli regno. + + Tu sai ch’el fece in Alba sua dimora + per trecento anni e oltre, infino al fine + che i tre a’ tre pugnar per lui ancora. + + E sai ch’el fé dal mal de le Sabine + al dolor di Lucrezia in sette regi, + vincendo intorno le genti vicine. + + Sai quel ch’el fé portato da li egregi + Romani incontro a Brenno, incontro a Pirro, + incontro a li altri principi e collegi; + + onde Torquato e Quinzio, che dal cirro + negletto fu nomato, i Deci e ’ Fabi + ebber la fama che volontier mirro. + + Esso atterrò l’orgoglio de li Aràbi + che di retro ad Anibale passaro + l’alpestre rocce, Po, di che tu labi. + + Sott’ esso giovanetti trïunfaro + Scipïone e Pompeo; e a quel colle + sotto ’l qual tu nascesti parve amaro. + + Poi, presso al tempo che tutto ’l ciel volle + redur lo mondo a suo modo sereno, + Cesare per voler di Roma il tolle. + + E quel che fé da Varo infino a Reno, + Isara vide ed Era e vide Senna + e ogne valle onde Rodano è pieno. + + Quel che fé poi ch’elli uscì di Ravenna + e saltò Rubicon, fu di tal volo, + che nol seguiteria lingua né penna. + + Inver’ la Spagna rivolse lo stuolo, + poi ver’ Durazzo, e Farsalia percosse + sì ch’al Nil caldo si sentì del duolo. + + Antandro e Simeonta, onde si mosse, + rivide e là dov’ Ettore si cuba; + e mal per Tolomeo poscia si scosse. + + Da indi scese folgorando a Iuba; + onde si volse nel vostro occidente, + ove sentia la pompeana tuba. + + Di quel che fé col baiulo seguente, + Bruto con Cassio ne l’inferno latra, + e Modena e Perugia fu dolente. + + Piangene ancor la trista Cleopatra, + che, fuggendoli innanzi, dal colubro + la morte prese subitana e atra. + + Con costui corse infino al lito rubro; + con costui puose il mondo in tanta pace, + che fu serrato a Giano il suo delubro. + + Ma ciò che ’l segno che parlar mi face + fatto avea prima e poi era fatturo + per lo regno mortal ch’a lui soggiace, + + diventa in apparenza poco e scuro, + se in mano al terzo Cesare si mira + con occhio chiaro e con affetto puro; + + ché la viva giustizia che mi spira, + li concedette, in mano a quel ch’i’ dico, + gloria di far vendetta a la sua ira. + + Or qui t’ammira in ciò ch’io ti replìco: + poscia con Tito a far vendetta corse + de la vendetta del peccato antico. + + E quando il dente longobardo morse + la Santa Chiesa, sotto le sue ali + Carlo Magno, vincendo, la soccorse. + + Omai puoi giudicar di quei cotali + ch’io accusai di sopra e di lor falli, + che son cagion di tutti vostri mali. + + L’uno al pubblico segno i gigli gialli + oppone, e l’altro appropria quello a parte, + sì ch’è forte a veder chi più si falli. + + Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor arte + sott’ altro segno, ché mal segue quello + sempre chi la giustizia e lui diparte; + + e non l’abbatta esto Carlo novello + coi Guelfi suoi, ma tema de li artigli + ch’a più alto leon trasser lo vello. + + Molte fïate già pianser li figli + per la colpa del padre, e non si creda + che Dio trasmuti l’armi per suoi gigli! + + Questa picciola stella si correda + d’i buoni spirti che son stati attivi + perché onore e fama li succeda: + + e quando li disiri poggian quivi, + sì disvïando, pur convien che i raggi + del vero amore in sù poggin men vivi. + + Ma nel commensurar d’i nostri gaggi + col merto è parte di nostra letizia, + perché non li vedem minor né maggi. + + Quindi addolcisce la viva giustizia + in noi l’affetto sì, che non si puote + torcer già mai ad alcuna nequizia. + + Diverse voci fanno dolci note; + così diversi scanni in nostra vita + rendon dolce armonia tra queste rote. + + E dentro a la presente margarita + luce la luce di Romeo, di cui + fu l’ovra grande e bella mal gradita. + + Ma i Provenzai che fecer contra lui + non hanno riso; e però mal cammina + qual si fa danno del ben fare altrui. + + Quattro figlie ebbe, e ciascuna reina, + Ramondo Beringhiere, e ciò li fece + Romeo, persona umìle e peregrina. + + E poi il mosser le parole biece + a dimandar ragione a questo giusto, + che li assegnò sette e cinque per diece, + + indi partissi povero e vetusto; + e se ’l mondo sapesse il cor ch’elli ebbe + mendicando sua vita a frusto a frusto, + + assai lo loda, e più lo loderebbe». + + + + Paradiso • Canto VII + + + «Osanna, sanctus Deus sabaòth, + superillustrans claritate tua + felices ignes horum malacòth!». + + Così, volgendosi a la nota sua, + fu viso a me cantare essa sustanza, + sopra la qual doppio lume s’addua; + + ed essa e l’altre mossero a sua danza, + e quasi velocissime faville + mi si velar di sùbita distanza. + + Io dubitava e dicea ‘Dille, dille!’ + fra me, ‘dille’ dicea, ‘a la mia donna + che mi diseta con le dolci stille’. + + Ma quella reverenza che s’indonna + di tutto me, pur per Be e per ice, + mi richinava come l’uom ch’assonna. + + Poco sofferse me cotal Beatrice + e cominciò, raggiandomi d’un riso + tal, che nel foco faria l’uom felice: + + «Secondo mio infallibile avviso, + come giusta vendetta giustamente + punita fosse, t’ha in pensier miso; + + ma io ti solverò tosto la mente; + e tu ascolta, ché le mie parole + di gran sentenza ti faran presente. + + Per non soffrire a la virtù che vole + freno a suo prode, quell’ uom che non nacque, + dannando sé, dannò tutta sua prole; + + onde l’umana specie inferma giacque + giù per secoli molti in grande errore, + fin ch’al Verbo di Dio discender piacque + + u’ la natura, che dal suo fattore + s’era allungata, unì a sé in persona + con l’atto sol del suo etterno amore. + + Or drizza il viso a quel ch’or si ragiona: + questa natura al suo fattore unita, + qual fu creata, fu sincera e buona; + + ma per sé stessa pur fu ella sbandita + di paradiso, però che si torse + da via di verità e da sua vita. + + La pena dunque che la croce porse + s’a la natura assunta si misura, + nulla già mai sì giustamente morse; + + e così nulla fu di tanta ingiura, + guardando a la persona che sofferse, + in che era contratta tal natura. + + Però d’un atto uscir cose diverse: + ch’a Dio e a’ Giudei piacque una morte; + per lei tremò la terra e ’l ciel s’aperse. + + Non ti dee oramai parer più forte, + quando si dice che giusta vendetta + poscia vengiata fu da giusta corte. + + Ma io veggi’ or la tua mente ristretta + di pensiero in pensier dentro ad un nodo, + del qual con gran disio solver s’aspetta. + + Tu dici: “Ben discerno ciò ch’i’ odo; + ma perché Dio volesse, m’è occulto, + a nostra redenzion pur questo modo”. + + Questo decreto, frate, sta sepulto + a li occhi di ciascuno il cui ingegno + ne la fiamma d’amor non è adulto. + + Veramente, però ch’a questo segno + molto si mira e poco si discerne, + dirò perché tal modo fu più degno. + + La divina bontà, che da sé sperne + ogne livore, ardendo in sé, sfavilla + sì che dispiega le bellezze etterne. + + Ciò che da lei sanza mezzo distilla + non ha poi fine, perché non si move + la sua imprenta quand’ ella sigilla. + + Ciò che da essa sanza mezzo piove + libero è tutto, perché non soggiace + a la virtute de le cose nove. + + Più l’è conforme, e però più le piace; + ché l’ardor santo ch’ogne cosa raggia, + ne la più somigliante è più vivace. + + Di tutte queste dote s’avvantaggia + l’umana creatura, e s’una manca, + di sua nobilità convien che caggia. + + Solo il peccato è quel che la disfranca + e falla dissimìle al sommo bene, + per che del lume suo poco s’imbianca; + + e in sua dignità mai non rivene, + se non rïempie, dove colpa vòta, + contra mal dilettar con giuste pene. + + Vostra natura, quando peccò tota + nel seme suo, da queste dignitadi, + come di paradiso, fu remota; + + né ricovrar potiensi, se tu badi + ben sottilmente, per alcuna via, + sanza passar per un di questi guadi: + + o che Dio solo per sua cortesia + dimesso avesse, o che l’uom per sé isso + avesse sodisfatto a sua follia. + + Ficca mo l’occhio per entro l’abisso + de l’etterno consiglio, quanto puoi + al mio parlar distrettamente fisso. + + Non potea l’uomo ne’ termini suoi + mai sodisfar, per non potere ir giuso + con umiltate obedïendo poi, + + quanto disobediendo intese ir suso; + e questa è la cagion per che l’uom fue + da poter sodisfar per sé dischiuso. + + Dunque a Dio convenia con le vie sue + riparar l’omo a sua intera vita, + dico con l’una, o ver con amendue. + + Ma perché l’ovra tanto è più gradita + da l’operante, quanto più appresenta + de la bontà del core ond’ ell’ è uscita, + + la divina bontà che ’l mondo imprenta, + di proceder per tutte le sue vie, + a rilevarvi suso, fu contenta. + + Né tra l’ultima notte e ’l primo die + sì alto o sì magnifico processo, + o per l’una o per l’altra, fu o fie: + + ché più largo fu Dio a dar sé stesso + per far l’uom sufficiente a rilevarsi, + che s’elli avesse sol da sé dimesso; + + e tutti li altri modi erano scarsi + a la giustizia, se ’l Figliuol di Dio + non fosse umilïato ad incarnarsi. + + Or per empierti bene ogne disio, + ritorno a dichiararti in alcun loco, + perché tu veggi lì così com’ io. + + Tu dici: “Io veggio l’acqua, io veggio il foco, + l’aere e la terra e tutte lor misture + venire a corruzione, e durar poco; + + e queste cose pur furon creature; + per che, se ciò ch’è detto è stato vero, + esser dovrien da corruzion sicure”. + + Li angeli, frate, e ’l paese sincero + nel qual tu se’, dir si posson creati, + sì come sono, in loro essere intero; + + ma li alimenti che tu hai nomati + e quelle cose che di lor si fanno + da creata virtù sono informati. + + Creata fu la materia ch’elli hanno; + creata fu la virtù informante + in queste stelle che ’ntorno a lor vanno. + + L’anima d’ogne bruto e de le piante + di complession potenzïata tira + lo raggio e ’l moto de le luci sante; + + ma vostra vita sanza mezzo spira + la somma beninanza, e la innamora + di sé sì che poi sempre la disira. + + E quinci puoi argomentare ancora + vostra resurrezion, se tu ripensi + come l’umana carne fessi allora + + che li primi parenti intrambo fensi». + + + + Paradiso • Canto VIII + + + Solea creder lo mondo in suo periclo + che la bella Ciprigna il folle amore + raggiasse, volta nel terzo epiciclo; + + per che non pur a lei faceano onore + di sacrificio e di votivo grido + le genti antiche ne l’antico errore; + + ma Dïone onoravano e Cupido, + quella per madre sua, questo per figlio, + e dicean ch’el sedette in grembo a Dido; + + e da costei ond’ io principio piglio + pigliavano il vocabol de la stella + che ’l sol vagheggia or da coppa or da ciglio. + + Io non m’accorsi del salire in ella; + ma d’esservi entro mi fé assai fede + la donna mia ch’i’ vidi far più bella. + + E come in fiamma favilla si vede, + e come in voce voce si discerne, + quand’ una è ferma e altra va e riede, + + vid’ io in essa luce altre lucerne + muoversi in giro più e men correnti, + al modo, credo, di lor viste interne. + + Di fredda nube non disceser venti, + o visibili o no, tanto festini, + che non paressero impediti e lenti + + a chi avesse quei lumi divini + veduti a noi venir, lasciando il giro + pria cominciato in li alti Serafini; + + e dentro a quei che più innanzi appariro + sonava ‘Osanna’ sì, che unque poi + di rïudir non fui sanza disiro. + + Indi si fece l’un più presso a noi + e solo incominciò: «Tutti sem presti + al tuo piacer, perché di noi ti gioi. + + Noi ci volgiam coi principi celesti + d’un giro e d’un girare e d’una sete, + ai quali tu del mondo già dicesti: + + ‘Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete’; + e sem sì pien d’amor, che, per piacerti, + non fia men dolce un poco di quïete». + + Poscia che li occhi miei si fuoro offerti + a la mia donna reverenti, ed essa + fatti li avea di sé contenti e certi, + + rivolsersi a la luce che promessa + tanto s’avea, e «Deh, chi siete?» fue + la voce mia di grande affetto impressa. + + E quanta e quale vid’ io lei far piùe + per allegrezza nova che s’accrebbe, + quando parlai, a l’allegrezze sue! + + Così fatta, mi disse: «Il mondo m’ebbe + giù poco tempo; e se più fosse stato, + molto sarà di mal, che non sarebbe. + + La mia letizia mi ti tien celato + che mi raggia dintorno e mi nasconde + quasi animal di sua seta fasciato. + + Assai m’amasti, e avesti ben onde; + che s’io fossi giù stato, io ti mostrava + di mio amor più oltre che le fronde. + + Quella sinistra riva che si lava + di Rodano poi ch’è misto con Sorga, + per suo segnore a tempo m’aspettava, + + e quel corno d’Ausonia che s’imborga + di Bari e di Gaeta e di Catona, + da ove Tronto e Verde in mare sgorga. + + Fulgeami già in fronte la corona + di quella terra che ’l Danubio riga + poi che le ripe tedesche abbandona. + + E la bella Trinacria, che caliga + tra Pachino e Peloro, sopra ’l golfo + che riceve da Euro maggior briga, + + non per Tifeo ma per nascente solfo, + attesi avrebbe li suoi regi ancora, + nati per me di Carlo e di Ridolfo, + + se mala segnoria, che sempre accora + li popoli suggetti, non avesse + mosso Palermo a gridar: “Mora, mora!”. + + E se mio frate questo antivedesse, + l’avara povertà di Catalogna + già fuggeria, perché non li offendesse; + + ché veramente proveder bisogna + per lui, o per altrui, sì ch’a sua barca + carcata più d’incarco non si pogna. + + La sua natura, che di larga parca + discese, avria mestier di tal milizia + che non curasse di mettere in arca». + + «Però ch’i’ credo che l’alta letizia + che ’l tuo parlar m’infonde, segnor mio, + là ’ve ogne ben si termina e s’inizia, + + per te si veggia come la vegg’ io, + grata m’è più; e anco quest’ ho caro + perché ’l discerni rimirando in Dio. + + Fatto m’hai lieto, e così mi fa chiaro, + poi che, parlando, a dubitar m’hai mosso + com’ esser può, di dolce seme, amaro». + + Questo io a lui; ed elli a me: «S’io posso + mostrarti un vero, a quel che tu dimandi + terrai lo viso come tien lo dosso. + + Lo ben che tutto il regno che tu scandi + volge e contenta, fa esser virtute + sua provedenza in questi corpi grandi. + + E non pur le nature provedute + sono in la mente ch’è da sé perfetta, + ma esse insieme con la lor salute: + + per che quantunque quest’ arco saetta + disposto cade a proveduto fine, + sì come cosa in suo segno diretta. + + Se ciò non fosse, il ciel che tu cammine + producerebbe sì li suoi effetti, + che non sarebbero arti, ma ruine; + + e ciò esser non può, se li ’ntelletti + che muovon queste stelle non son manchi, + e manco il primo, che non li ha perfetti. + + Vuo’ tu che questo ver più ti s’imbianchi?». + E io: «Non già; ché impossibil veggio + che la natura, in quel ch’è uopo, stanchi». + + Ond’ elli ancora: «Or dì: sarebbe il peggio + per l’omo in terra, se non fosse cive?». + «Sì», rispuos’ io; «e qui ragion non cheggio». + + «E puot’ elli esser, se giù non si vive + diversamente per diversi offici? + Non, se ’l maestro vostro ben vi scrive». + + Sì venne deducendo infino a quici; + poscia conchiuse: «Dunque esser diverse + convien di vostri effetti le radici: + + per ch’un nasce Solone e altro Serse, + altro Melchisedèch e altro quello + che, volando per l’aere, il figlio perse. + + La circular natura, ch’è suggello + a la cera mortal, fa ben sua arte, + ma non distingue l’un da l’altro ostello. + + Quinci addivien ch’Esaù si diparte + per seme da Iacòb; e vien Quirino + da sì vil padre, che si rende a Marte. + + Natura generata il suo cammino + simil farebbe sempre a’ generanti, + se non vincesse il proveder divino. + + Or quel che t’era dietro t’è davanti: + ma perché sappi che di te mi giova, + un corollario voglio che t’ammanti. + + Sempre natura, se fortuna trova + discorde a sé, com’ ogne altra semente + fuor di sua regïon, fa mala prova. + + E se ’l mondo là giù ponesse mente + al fondamento che natura pone, + seguendo lui, avria buona la gente. + + Ma voi torcete a la religïone + tal che fia nato a cignersi la spada, + e fate re di tal ch’è da sermone; + + onde la traccia vostra è fuor di strada». + + + + Paradiso • Canto IX + + + Da poi che Carlo tuo, bella Clemenza, + m’ebbe chiarito, mi narrò li ’nganni + che ricever dovea la sua semenza; + + ma disse: «Taci e lascia muover li anni»; + sì ch’io non posso dir se non che pianto + giusto verrà di retro ai vostri danni. + + E già la vita di quel lume santo + rivolta s’era al Sol che la rïempie + come quel ben ch’a ogne cosa è tanto. + + Ahi anime ingannate e fatture empie, + che da sì fatto ben torcete i cuori, + drizzando in vanità le vostre tempie! + + Ed ecco un altro di quelli splendori + ver’ me si fece, e ’l suo voler piacermi + significava nel chiarir di fori. + + Li occhi di Bëatrice, ch’eran fermi + sovra me, come pria, di caro assenso + al mio disio certificato fermi. + + «Deh, metti al mio voler tosto compenso, + beato spirto», dissi, «e fammi prova + ch’i’ possa in te refletter quel ch’io penso!». + + Onde la luce che m’era ancor nova, + del suo profondo, ond’ ella pria cantava, + seguette come a cui di ben far giova: + + «In quella parte de la terra prava + italica che siede tra Rïalto + e le fontane di Brenta e di Piava, + + si leva un colle, e non surge molt’ alto, + là onde scese già una facella + che fece a la contrada un grande assalto. + + D’una radice nacqui e io ed ella: + Cunizza fui chiamata, e qui refulgo + perché mi vinse il lume d’esta stella; + + ma lietamente a me medesma indulgo + la cagion di mia sorte, e non mi noia; + che parria forse forte al vostro vulgo. + + Di questa luculenta e cara gioia + del nostro cielo che più m’è propinqua, + grande fama rimase; e pria che moia, + + questo centesimo anno ancor s’incinqua: + vedi se far si dee l’omo eccellente, + sì ch’altra vita la prima relinqua. + + E ciò non pensa la turba presente + che Tagliamento e Adice richiude, + né per esser battuta ancor si pente; + + ma tosto fia che Padova al palude + cangerà l’acqua che Vincenza bagna, + per essere al dover le genti crude; + + e dove Sile e Cagnan s’accompagna, + tal signoreggia e va con la testa alta, + che già per lui carpir si fa la ragna. + + Piangerà Feltro ancora la difalta + de l’empio suo pastor, che sarà sconcia + sì, che per simil non s’entrò in malta. + + Troppo sarebbe larga la bigoncia + che ricevesse il sangue ferrarese, + e stanco chi ’l pesasse a oncia a oncia, + + che donerà questo prete cortese + per mostrarsi di parte; e cotai doni + conformi fieno al viver del paese. + + Sù sono specchi, voi dicete Troni, + onde refulge a noi Dio giudicante; + sì che questi parlar ne paion buoni». + + Qui si tacette; e fecemi sembiante + che fosse ad altro volta, per la rota + in che si mise com’ era davante. + + L’altra letizia, che m’era già nota + per cara cosa, mi si fece in vista + qual fin balasso in che lo sol percuota. + + Per letiziar là sù fulgor s’acquista, + sì come riso qui; ma giù s’abbuia + l’ombra di fuor, come la mente è trista. + + «Dio vede tutto, e tuo veder s’inluia», + diss’ io, «beato spirto, sì che nulla + voglia di sé a te puot’ esser fuia. + + Dunque la voce tua, che ’l ciel trastulla + sempre col canto di quei fuochi pii + che di sei ali facen la coculla, + + perché non satisface a’ miei disii? + Già non attendere’ io tua dimanda, + s’io m’intuassi, come tu t’inmii». + + «La maggior valle in che l’acqua si spanda», + incominciaro allor le sue parole, + «fuor di quel mar che la terra inghirlanda, + + tra ’ discordanti liti contra ’l sole + tanto sen va, che fa meridïano + là dove l’orizzonte pria far suole. + + Di quella valle fu’ io litorano + tra Ebro e Macra, che per cammin corto + parte lo Genovese dal Toscano. + + Ad un occaso quasi e ad un orto + Buggea siede e la terra ond’ io fui, + che fé del sangue suo già caldo il porto. + + Folco mi disse quella gente a cui + fu noto il nome mio; e questo cielo + di me s’imprenta, com’ io fe’ di lui; + + ché più non arse la figlia di Belo, + noiando e a Sicheo e a Creusa, + di me, infin che si convenne al pelo; + + né quella Rodopëa che delusa + fu da Demofoonte, né Alcide + quando Iole nel core ebbe rinchiusa. + + Non però qui si pente, ma si ride, + non de la colpa, ch’a mente non torna, + ma del valor ch’ordinò e provide. + + Qui si rimira ne l’arte ch’addorna + cotanto affetto, e discernesi ’l bene + per che ’l mondo di sù quel di giù torna. + + Ma perché tutte le tue voglie piene + ten porti che son nate in questa spera, + proceder ancor oltre mi convene. + + Tu vuo’ saper chi è in questa lumera + che qui appresso me così scintilla + come raggio di sole in acqua mera. + + Or sappi che là entro si tranquilla + Raab; e a nostr’ ordine congiunta, + di lei nel sommo grado si sigilla. + + Da questo cielo, in cui l’ombra s’appunta + che ’l vostro mondo face, pria ch’altr’ alma + del trïunfo di Cristo fu assunta. + + Ben si convenne lei lasciar per palma + in alcun cielo de l’alta vittoria + che s’acquistò con l’una e l’altra palma, + + perch’ ella favorò la prima gloria + di Iosüè in su la Terra Santa, + che poco tocca al papa la memoria. + + La tua città, che di colui è pianta + che pria volse le spalle al suo fattore + e di cui è la ’nvidia tanto pianta, + + produce e spande il maladetto fiore + c’ha disvïate le pecore e li agni, + però che fatto ha lupo del pastore. + + Per questo l’Evangelio e i dottor magni + son derelitti, e solo ai Decretali + si studia, sì che pare a’ lor vivagni. + + A questo intende il papa e ’ cardinali; + non vanno i lor pensieri a Nazarette, + là dove Gabrïello aperse l’ali. + + Ma Vaticano e l’altre parti elette + di Roma che son state cimitero + a la milizia che Pietro seguette, + + tosto libere fien de l’avoltero». + + + + Paradiso • Canto X + + + Guardando nel suo Figlio con l’Amore + che l’uno e l’altro etternalmente spira, + lo primo e ineffabile Valore + + quanto per mente e per loco si gira + con tant’ ordine fé, ch’esser non puote + sanza gustar di lui chi ciò rimira. + + Leva dunque, lettore, a l’alte rote + meco la vista, dritto a quella parte + dove l’un moto e l’altro si percuote; + + e lì comincia a vagheggiar ne l’arte + di quel maestro che dentro a sé l’ama, + tanto che mai da lei l’occhio non parte. + + Vedi come da indi si dirama + l’oblico cerchio che i pianeti porta, + per sodisfare al mondo che li chiama. + + Che se la strada lor non fosse torta, + molta virtù nel ciel sarebbe in vano, + e quasi ogne potenza qua giù morta; + + e se dal dritto più o men lontano + fosse ’l partire, assai sarebbe manco + e giù e sù de l’ordine mondano. + + Or ti riman, lettor, sovra ’l tuo banco, + dietro pensando a ciò che si preliba, + s’esser vuoi lieto assai prima che stanco. + + Messo t’ho innanzi: omai per te ti ciba; + ché a sé torce tutta la mia cura + quella materia ond’ io son fatto scriba. + + Lo ministro maggior de la natura, + che del valor del ciel lo mondo imprenta + e col suo lume il tempo ne misura, + + con quella parte che sù si rammenta + congiunto, si girava per le spire + in che più tosto ognora s’appresenta; + + e io era con lui; ma del salire + non m’accors’ io, se non com’ uom s’accorge, + anzi ’l primo pensier, del suo venire. + + È Bëatrice quella che sì scorge + di bene in meglio, sì subitamente + che l’atto suo per tempo non si sporge. + + Quant’ esser convenia da sé lucente + quel ch’era dentro al sol dov’ io entra’mi, + non per color, ma per lume parvente! + + Perch’ io lo ’ngegno e l’arte e l’uso chiami, + sì nol direi che mai s’imaginasse; + ma creder puossi e di veder si brami. + + E se le fantasie nostre son basse + a tanta altezza, non è maraviglia; + ché sopra ’l sol non fu occhio ch’andasse. + + Tal era quivi la quarta famiglia + de l’alto Padre, che sempre la sazia, + mostrando come spira e come figlia. + + E Bëatrice cominciò: «Ringrazia, + ringrazia il Sol de li angeli, ch’a questo + sensibil t’ha levato per sua grazia». + + Cor di mortal non fu mai sì digesto + a divozione e a rendersi a Dio + con tutto ’l suo gradir cotanto presto, + + come a quelle parole mi fec’ io; + e sì tutto ’l mio amore in lui si mise, + che Bëatrice eclissò ne l’oblio. + + Non le dispiacque; ma sì se ne rise, + che lo splendor de li occhi suoi ridenti + mia mente unita in più cose divise. + + Io vidi più folgór vivi e vincenti + far di noi centro e di sé far corona, + più dolci in voce che in vista lucenti: + + così cinger la figlia di Latona + vedem talvolta, quando l’aere è pregno, + sì che ritenga il fil che fa la zona. + + Ne la corte del cielo, ond’ io rivegno, + si trovan molte gioie care e belle + tanto che non si posson trar del regno; + + e ’l canto di quei lumi era di quelle; + chi non s’impenna sì che là sù voli, + dal muto aspetti quindi le novelle. + + Poi, sì cantando, quelli ardenti soli + si fuor girati intorno a noi tre volte, + come stelle vicine a’ fermi poli, + + donne mi parver, non da ballo sciolte, + ma che s’arrestin tacite, ascoltando + fin che le nove note hanno ricolte. + + E dentro a l’un senti’ cominciar: «Quando + lo raggio de la grazia, onde s’accende + verace amore e che poi cresce amando, + + multiplicato in te tanto resplende, + che ti conduce su per quella scala + u’ sanza risalir nessun discende; + + qual ti negasse il vin de la sua fiala + per la tua sete, in libertà non fora + se non com’ acqua ch’al mar non si cala. + + Tu vuo’ saper di quai piante s’infiora + questa ghirlanda che ’ntorno vagheggia + la bella donna ch’al ciel t’avvalora. + + Io fui de li agni de la santa greggia + che Domenico mena per cammino + u’ ben s’impingua se non si vaneggia. + + Questi che m’è a destra più vicino, + frate e maestro fummi, ed esso Alberto + è di Cologna, e io Thomas d’Aquino. + + Se sì di tutti li altri esser vuo’ certo, + di retro al mio parlar ten vien col viso + girando su per lo beato serto. + + Quell’ altro fiammeggiare esce del riso + di Grazïan, che l’uno e l’altro foro + aiutò sì che piace in paradiso. + + L’altro ch’appresso addorna il nostro coro, + quel Pietro fu che con la poverella + offerse a Santa Chiesa suo tesoro. + + La quinta luce, ch’è tra noi più bella, + spira di tale amor, che tutto ’l mondo + là giù ne gola di saper novella: + + entro v’è l’alta mente u’ sì profondo + saver fu messo, che, se ’l vero è vero, + a veder tanto non surse il secondo. + + Appresso vedi il lume di quel cero + che giù in carne più a dentro vide + l’angelica natura e ’l ministero. + + Ne l’altra piccioletta luce ride + quello avvocato de’ tempi cristiani + del cui latino Augustin si provide. + + Or se tu l’occhio de la mente trani + di luce in luce dietro a le mie lode, + già de l’ottava con sete rimani. + + Per vedere ogne ben dentro vi gode + l’anima santa che ’l mondo fallace + fa manifesto a chi di lei ben ode. + + Lo corpo ond’ ella fu cacciata giace + giuso in Cieldauro; ed essa da martiro + e da essilio venne a questa pace. + + Vedi oltre fiammeggiar l’ardente spiro + d’Isidoro, di Beda e di Riccardo, + che a considerar fu più che viro. + + Questi onde a me ritorna il tuo riguardo, + è ’l lume d’uno spirto che ’n pensieri + gravi a morir li parve venir tardo: + + essa è la luce etterna di Sigieri, + che, leggendo nel Vico de li Strami, + silogizzò invidïosi veri». + + Indi, come orologio che ne chiami + ne l’ora che la sposa di Dio surge + a mattinar lo sposo perché l’ami, + + che l’una parte e l’altra tira e urge, + tin tin sonando con sì dolce nota, + che ’l ben disposto spirto d’amor turge; + + così vid’ ïo la gloriosa rota + muoversi e render voce a voce in tempra + e in dolcezza ch’esser non pò nota + + se non colà dove gioir s’insempra. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XI + + + O insensata cura de’ mortali, + quanto son difettivi silogismi + quei che ti fanno in basso batter l’ali! + + Chi dietro a iura e chi ad amforismi + sen giva, e chi seguendo sacerdozio, + e chi regnar per forza o per sofismi, + + e chi rubare e chi civil negozio, + chi nel diletto de la carne involto + s’affaticava e chi si dava a l’ozio, + + quando, da tutte queste cose sciolto, + con Bëatrice m’era suso in cielo + cotanto glorïosamente accolto. + + Poi che ciascuno fu tornato ne lo + punto del cerchio in che avanti s’era, + fermossi, come a candellier candelo. + + E io senti’ dentro a quella lumera + che pria m’avea parlato, sorridendo + incominciar, faccendosi più mera: + + «Così com’ io del suo raggio resplendo, + sì, riguardando ne la luce etterna, + li tuoi pensieri onde cagioni apprendo. + + Tu dubbi, e hai voler che si ricerna + in sì aperta e ’n sì distesa lingua + lo dicer mio, ch’al tuo sentir si sterna, + + ove dinanzi dissi: “U’ ben s’impingua”, + e là u’ dissi: “Non nacque il secondo”; + e qui è uopo che ben si distingua. + + La provedenza, che governa il mondo + con quel consiglio nel quale ogne aspetto + creato è vinto pria che vada al fondo, + + però che andasse ver’ lo suo diletto + la sposa di colui ch’ad alte grida + disposò lei col sangue benedetto, + + in sé sicura e anche a lui più fida, + due principi ordinò in suo favore, + che quinci e quindi le fosser per guida. + + L’un fu tutto serafico in ardore; + l’altro per sapïenza in terra fue + di cherubica luce uno splendore. + + De l’un dirò, però che d’amendue + si dice l’un pregiando, qual ch’om prende, + perch’ ad un fine fur l’opere sue. + + Intra Tupino e l’acqua che discende + del colle eletto dal beato Ubaldo, + fertile costa d’alto monte pende, + + onde Perugia sente freddo e caldo + da Porta Sole; e di rietro le piange + per grave giogo Nocera con Gualdo. + + Di questa costa, là dov’ ella frange + più sua rattezza, nacque al mondo un sole, + come fa questo talvolta di Gange. + + Però chi d’esso loco fa parole, + non dica Ascesi, ché direbbe corto, + ma Orïente, se proprio dir vuole. + + Non era ancor molto lontan da l’orto, + ch’el cominciò a far sentir la terra + de la sua gran virtute alcun conforto; + + ché per tal donna, giovinetto, in guerra + del padre corse, a cui, come a la morte, + la porta del piacer nessun diserra; + + e dinanzi a la sua spirital corte + et coram patre le si fece unito; + poscia di dì in dì l’amò più forte. + + Questa, privata del primo marito, + millecent’ anni e più dispetta e scura + fino a costui si stette sanza invito; + + né valse udir che la trovò sicura + con Amiclate, al suon de la sua voce, + colui ch’a tutto ’l mondo fé paura; + + né valse esser costante né feroce, + sì che, dove Maria rimase giuso, + ella con Cristo pianse in su la croce. + + Ma perch’ io non proceda troppo chiuso, + Francesco e Povertà per questi amanti + prendi oramai nel mio parlar diffuso. + + La lor concordia e i lor lieti sembianti, + amore e maraviglia e dolce sguardo + facieno esser cagion di pensier santi; + + tanto che ’l venerabile Bernardo + si scalzò prima, e dietro a tanta pace + corse e, correndo, li parve esser tardo. + + Oh ignota ricchezza! oh ben ferace! + Scalzasi Egidio, scalzasi Silvestro + dietro a lo sposo, sì la sposa piace. + + Indi sen va quel padre e quel maestro + con la sua donna e con quella famiglia + che già legava l’umile capestro. + + Né li gravò viltà di cuor le ciglia + per esser fi’ di Pietro Bernardone, + né per parer dispetto a maraviglia; + + ma regalmente sua dura intenzione + ad Innocenzio aperse, e da lui ebbe + primo sigillo a sua religïone. + + Poi che la gente poverella crebbe + dietro a costui, la cui mirabil vita + meglio in gloria del ciel si canterebbe, + + di seconda corona redimita + fu per Onorio da l’Etterno Spiro + la santa voglia d’esto archimandrita. + + E poi che, per la sete del martiro, + ne la presenza del Soldan superba + predicò Cristo e li altri che ’l seguiro, + + e per trovare a conversione acerba + troppo la gente e per non stare indarno, + redissi al frutto de l’italica erba, + + nel crudo sasso intra Tevero e Arno + da Cristo prese l’ultimo sigillo, + che le sue membra due anni portarno. + + Quando a colui ch’a tanto ben sortillo + piacque di trarlo suso a la mercede + ch’el meritò nel suo farsi pusillo, + + a’ frati suoi, sì com’ a giuste rede, + raccomandò la donna sua più cara, + e comandò che l’amassero a fede; + + e del suo grembo l’anima preclara + mover si volle, tornando al suo regno, + e al suo corpo non volle altra bara. + + Pensa oramai qual fu colui che degno + collega fu a mantener la barca + di Pietro in alto mar per dritto segno; + + e questo fu il nostro patrïarca; + per che qual segue lui, com’ el comanda, + discerner puoi che buone merce carca. + + Ma ’l suo pecuglio di nova vivanda + è fatto ghiotto, sì ch’esser non puote + che per diversi salti non si spanda; + + e quanto le sue pecore remote + e vagabunde più da esso vanno, + più tornano a l’ovil di latte vòte. + + Ben son di quelle che temono ’l danno + e stringonsi al pastor; ma son sì poche, + che le cappe fornisce poco panno. + + Or, se le mie parole non son fioche, + se la tua audïenza è stata attenta, + se ciò ch’è detto a la mente revoche, + + in parte fia la tua voglia contenta, + perché vedrai la pianta onde si scheggia, + e vedra’ il corrègger che argomenta + + “U’ ben s’impingua, se non si vaneggia”». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XII + + + Sì tosto come l’ultima parola + la benedetta fiamma per dir tolse, + a rotar cominciò la santa mola; + + e nel suo giro tutta non si volse + prima ch’un’altra di cerchio la chiuse, + e moto a moto e canto a canto colse; + + canto che tanto vince nostre muse, + nostre serene in quelle dolci tube, + quanto primo splendor quel ch’e’ refuse. + + Come si volgon per tenera nube + due archi paralelli e concolori, + quando Iunone a sua ancella iube, + + nascendo di quel d’entro quel di fori, + a guisa del parlar di quella vaga + ch’amor consunse come sol vapori, + + e fanno qui la gente esser presaga, + per lo patto che Dio con Noè puose, + del mondo che già mai più non s’allaga: + + così di quelle sempiterne rose + volgiensi circa noi le due ghirlande, + e sì l’estrema a l’intima rispuose. + + Poi che ’l tripudio e l’altra festa grande, + sì del cantare e sì del fiammeggiarsi + luce con luce gaudïose e blande, + + insieme a punto e a voler quetarsi, + pur come li occhi ch’al piacer che i move + conviene insieme chiudere e levarsi; + + del cor de l’una de le luci nove + si mosse voce, che l’ago a la stella + parer mi fece in volgermi al suo dove; + + e cominciò: «L’amor che mi fa bella + mi tragge a ragionar de l’altro duca + per cui del mio sì ben ci si favella. + + Degno è che, dov’ è l’un, l’altro s’induca: + sì che, com’ elli ad una militaro, + così la gloria loro insieme luca. + + L’essercito di Cristo, che sì caro + costò a rïarmar, dietro a la ’nsegna + si movea tardo, sospeccioso e raro, + + quando lo ’mperador che sempre regna + provide a la milizia, ch’era in forse, + per sola grazia, non per esser degna; + + e, come è detto, a sua sposa soccorse + con due campioni, al cui fare, al cui dire + lo popol disvïato si raccorse. + + In quella parte ove surge ad aprire + Zefiro dolce le novelle fronde + di che si vede Europa rivestire, + + non molto lungi al percuoter de l’onde + dietro a le quali, per la lunga foga, + lo sol talvolta ad ogne uom si nasconde, + + siede la fortunata Calaroga + sotto la protezion del grande scudo + in che soggiace il leone e soggioga: + + dentro vi nacque l’amoroso drudo + de la fede cristiana, il santo atleta + benigno a’ suoi e a’ nemici crudo; + + e come fu creata, fu repleta + sì la sua mente di viva vertute + che, ne la madre, lei fece profeta. + + Poi che le sponsalizie fuor compiute + al sacro fonte intra lui e la Fede, + u’ si dotar di mutüa salute, + + la donna che per lui l’assenso diede, + vide nel sonno il mirabile frutto + ch’uscir dovea di lui e de le rede; + + e perché fosse qual era in costrutto, + quinci si mosse spirito a nomarlo + del possessivo di cui era tutto. + + Domenico fu detto; e io ne parlo + sì come de l’agricola che Cristo + elesse a l’orto suo per aiutarlo. + + Ben parve messo e famigliar di Cristo: + che ’l primo amor che ’n lui fu manifesto, + fu al primo consiglio che diè Cristo. + + Spesse fïate fu tacito e desto + trovato in terra da la sua nutrice, + come dicesse: ‘Io son venuto a questo’. + + Oh padre suo veramente Felice! + oh madre sua veramente Giovanna, + se, interpretata, val come si dice! + + Non per lo mondo, per cui mo s’affanna + di retro ad Ostïense e a Taddeo, + ma per amor de la verace manna + + in picciol tempo gran dottor si feo; + tal che si mise a circüir la vigna + che tosto imbianca, se ’l vignaio è reo. + + E a la sedia che fu già benigna + più a’ poveri giusti, non per lei, + ma per colui che siede, che traligna, + + non dispensare o due o tre per sei, + non la fortuna di prima vacante, + non decimas, quae sunt pauperum Dei, + + addimandò, ma contro al mondo errante + licenza di combatter per lo seme + del qual ti fascian ventiquattro piante. + + Poi, con dottrina e con volere insieme, + con l’officio appostolico si mosse + quasi torrente ch’alta vena preme; + + e ne li sterpi eretici percosse + l’impeto suo, più vivamente quivi + dove le resistenze eran più grosse. + + Di lui si fecer poi diversi rivi + onde l’orto catolico si riga, + sì che i suoi arbuscelli stan più vivi. + + Se tal fu l’una rota de la biga + in che la Santa Chiesa si difese + e vinse in campo la sua civil briga, + + ben ti dovrebbe assai esser palese + l’eccellenza de l’altra, di cui Tomma + dinanzi al mio venir fu sì cortese. + + Ma l’orbita che fé la parte somma + di sua circunferenza, è derelitta, + sì ch’è la muffa dov’ era la gromma. + + La sua famiglia, che si mosse dritta + coi piedi a le sue orme, è tanto volta, + che quel dinanzi a quel di retro gitta; + + e tosto si vedrà de la ricolta + de la mala coltura, quando il loglio + si lagnerà che l’arca li sia tolta. + + Ben dico, chi cercasse a foglio a foglio + nostro volume, ancor troveria carta + u’ leggerebbe “I’ mi son quel ch’i’ soglio”; + + ma non fia da Casal né d’Acquasparta, + là onde vegnon tali a la scrittura, + ch’uno la fugge e altro la coarta. + + Io son la vita di Bonaventura + da Bagnoregio, che ne’ grandi offici + sempre pospuosi la sinistra cura. + + Illuminato e Augustin son quici, + che fuor de’ primi scalzi poverelli + che nel capestro a Dio si fero amici. + + Ugo da San Vittore è qui con elli, + e Pietro Mangiadore e Pietro Spano, + lo qual giù luce in dodici libelli; + + Natàn profeta e ’l metropolitano + Crisostomo e Anselmo e quel Donato + ch’a la prim’ arte degnò porre mano. + + Rabano è qui, e lucemi dallato + il calavrese abate Giovacchino + di spirito profetico dotato. + + Ad inveggiar cotanto paladino + mi mosse l’infiammata cortesia + di fra Tommaso e ’l discreto latino; + + e mosse meco questa compagnia». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XIII + + + Imagini, chi bene intender cupe + quel ch’i’ or vidi—e ritegna l’image, + mentre ch’io dico, come ferma rupe—, + + quindici stelle che ’n diverse plage + lo ciel avvivan di tanto sereno + che soperchia de l’aere ogne compage; + + imagini quel carro a cu’ il seno + basta del nostro cielo e notte e giorno, + sì ch’al volger del temo non vien meno; + + imagini la bocca di quel corno + che si comincia in punta de lo stelo + a cui la prima rota va dintorno, + + aver fatto di sé due segni in cielo, + qual fece la figliuola di Minoi + allora che sentì di morte il gelo; + + e l’un ne l’altro aver li raggi suoi, + e amendue girarsi per maniera + che l’uno andasse al primo e l’altro al poi; + + e avrà quasi l’ombra de la vera + costellazione e de la doppia danza + che circulava il punto dov’ io era: + + poi ch’è tanto di là da nostra usanza, + quanto di là dal mover de la Chiana + si move il ciel che tutti li altri avanza. + + Lì si cantò non Bacco, non Peana, + ma tre persone in divina natura, + e in una persona essa e l’umana. + + Compié ’l cantare e ’l volger sua misura; + e attesersi a noi quei santi lumi, + felicitando sé di cura in cura. + + Ruppe il silenzio ne’ concordi numi + poscia la luce in che mirabil vita + del poverel di Dio narrata fumi, + + e disse: «Quando l’una paglia è trita, + quando la sua semenza è già riposta, + a batter l’altra dolce amor m’invita. + + Tu credi che nel petto onde la costa + si trasse per formar la bella guancia + il cui palato a tutto ’l mondo costa, + + e in quel che, forato da la lancia, + e prima e poscia tanto sodisfece, + che d’ogne colpa vince la bilancia, + + quantunque a la natura umana lece + aver di lume, tutto fosse infuso + da quel valor che l’uno e l’altro fece; + + e però miri a ciò ch’io dissi suso, + quando narrai che non ebbe ’l secondo + lo ben che ne la quinta luce è chiuso. + + Or apri li occhi a quel ch’io ti rispondo, + e vedräi il tuo credere e ’l mio dire + nel vero farsi come centro in tondo. + + Ciò che non more e ciò che può morire + non è se non splendor di quella idea + che partorisce, amando, il nostro Sire; + + ché quella viva luce che sì mea + dal suo lucente, che non si disuna + da lui né da l’amor ch’a lor s’intrea, + + per sua bontate il suo raggiare aduna, + quasi specchiato, in nove sussistenze, + etternalmente rimanendosi una. + + Quindi discende a l’ultime potenze + giù d’atto in atto, tanto divenendo, + che più non fa che brevi contingenze; + + e queste contingenze essere intendo + le cose generate, che produce + con seme e sanza seme il ciel movendo. + + La cera di costoro e chi la duce + non sta d’un modo; e però sotto ’l segno + idëale poi più e men traluce. + + Ond’ elli avvien ch’un medesimo legno, + secondo specie, meglio e peggio frutta; + e voi nascete con diverso ingegno. + + Se fosse a punto la cera dedutta + e fosse il cielo in sua virtù supprema, + la luce del suggel parrebbe tutta; + + ma la natura la dà sempre scema, + similemente operando a l’artista + ch’a l’abito de l’arte ha man che trema. + + Però se ’l caldo amor la chiara vista + de la prima virtù dispone e segna, + tutta la perfezion quivi s’acquista. + + Così fu fatta già la terra degna + di tutta l’animal perfezïone; + così fu fatta la Vergine pregna; + + sì ch’io commendo tua oppinïone, + che l’umana natura mai non fue + né fia qual fu in quelle due persone. + + Or s’i’ non procedesse avanti piùe, + ‘Dunque, come costui fu sanza pare?’ + comincerebber le parole tue. + + Ma perché paia ben ciò che non pare, + pensa chi era, e la cagion che ’l mosse, + quando fu detto “Chiedi”, a dimandare. + + Non ho parlato sì, che tu non posse + ben veder ch’el fu re, che chiese senno + acciò che re sufficïente fosse; + + non per sapere il numero in che enno + li motor di qua sù, o se necesse + con contingente mai necesse fenno; + + non si est dare primum motum esse, + o se del mezzo cerchio far si puote + trïangol sì ch’un retto non avesse. + + Onde, se ciò ch’io dissi e questo note, + regal prudenza è quel vedere impari + in che lo stral di mia intenzion percuote; + + e se al “surse” drizzi li occhi chiari, + vedrai aver solamente respetto + ai regi, che son molti, e ’ buon son rari. + + Con questa distinzion prendi ’l mio detto; + e così puote star con quel che credi + del primo padre e del nostro Diletto. + + E questo ti sia sempre piombo a’ piedi, + per farti mover lento com’ uom lasso + e al sì e al no che tu non vedi: + + ché quelli è tra li stolti bene a basso, + che sanza distinzione afferma e nega + ne l’un così come ne l’altro passo; + + perch’ elli ’ncontra che più volte piega + l’oppinïon corrente in falsa parte, + e poi l’affetto l’intelletto lega. + + Vie più che ’ndarno da riva si parte, + perché non torna tal qual e’ si move, + chi pesca per lo vero e non ha l’arte. + + E di ciò sono al mondo aperte prove + Parmenide, Melisso e Brisso e molti, + li quali andaro e non sapëan dove; + + sì fé Sabellio e Arrio e quelli stolti + che furon come spade a le Scritture + in render torti li diritti volti. + + Non sien le genti, ancor, troppo sicure + a giudicar, sì come quei che stima + le biade in campo pria che sien mature; + + ch’i’ ho veduto tutto ’l verno prima + lo prun mostrarsi rigido e feroce, + poscia portar la rosa in su la cima; + + e legno vidi già dritto e veloce + correr lo mar per tutto suo cammino, + perire al fine a l’intrar de la foce. + + Non creda donna Berta e ser Martino, + per vedere un furare, altro offerere, + vederli dentro al consiglio divino; + + ché quel può surgere, e quel può cadere». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XIV + + + Dal centro al cerchio, e sì dal cerchio al centro + movesi l’acqua in un ritondo vaso, + secondo ch’è percosso fuori o dentro: + + ne la mia mente fé sùbito caso + questo ch’io dico, sì come si tacque + la glorïosa vita di Tommaso, + + per la similitudine che nacque + del suo parlare e di quel di Beatrice, + a cui sì cominciar, dopo lui, piacque: + + «A costui fa mestieri, e nol vi dice + né con la voce né pensando ancora, + d’un altro vero andare a la radice. + + Diteli se la luce onde s’infiora + vostra sustanza, rimarrà con voi + etternalmente sì com’ ell’ è ora; + + e se rimane, dite come, poi + che sarete visibili rifatti, + esser porà ch’al veder non vi nòi». + + Come, da più letizia pinti e tratti, + a la fïata quei che vanno a rota + levan la voce e rallegrano li atti, + + così, a l’orazion pronta e divota, + li santi cerchi mostrar nova gioia + nel torneare e ne la mira nota. + + Qual si lamenta perché qui si moia + per viver colà sù, non vide quive + lo refrigerio de l’etterna ploia. + + Quell’ uno e due e tre che sempre vive + e regna sempre in tre e ’n due e ’n uno, + non circunscritto, e tutto circunscrive, + + tre volte era cantato da ciascuno + di quelli spirti con tal melodia, + ch’ad ogne merto saria giusto muno. + + E io udi’ ne la luce più dia + del minor cerchio una voce modesta, + forse qual fu da l’angelo a Maria, + + risponder: «Quanto fia lunga la festa + di paradiso, tanto il nostro amore + si raggerà dintorno cotal vesta. + + La sua chiarezza séguita l’ardore; + l’ardor la visïone, e quella è tanta, + quant’ ha di grazia sovra suo valore. + + Come la carne glorïosa e santa + fia rivestita, la nostra persona + più grata fia per esser tutta quanta; + + per che s’accrescerà ciò che ne dona + di gratüito lume il sommo bene, + lume ch’a lui veder ne condiziona; + + onde la visïon crescer convene, + crescer l’ardor che di quella s’accende, + crescer lo raggio che da esso vene. + + Ma sì come carbon che fiamma rende, + e per vivo candor quella soverchia, + sì che la sua parvenza si difende; + + così questo folgór che già ne cerchia + fia vinto in apparenza da la carne + che tutto dì la terra ricoperchia; + + né potrà tanta luce affaticarne: + ché li organi del corpo saran forti + a tutto ciò che potrà dilettarne». + + Tanto mi parver sùbiti e accorti + e l’uno e l’altro coro a dicer «Amme!», + che ben mostrar disio d’i corpi morti: + + forse non pur per lor, ma per le mamme, + per li padri e per li altri che fuor cari + anzi che fosser sempiterne fiamme. + + Ed ecco intorno, di chiarezza pari, + nascere un lustro sopra quel che v’era, + per guisa d’orizzonte che rischiari. + + E sì come al salir di prima sera + comincian per lo ciel nove parvenze, + sì che la vista pare e non par vera, + + parvemi lì novelle sussistenze + cominciare a vedere, e fare un giro + di fuor da l’altre due circunferenze. + + Oh vero sfavillar del Santo Spiro! + come si fece sùbito e candente + a li occhi miei che, vinti, nol soffriro! + + Ma Bëatrice sì bella e ridente + mi si mostrò, che tra quelle vedute + si vuol lasciar che non seguir la mente. + + Quindi ripreser li occhi miei virtute + a rilevarsi; e vidimi translato + sol con mia donna in più alta salute. + + Ben m’accors’ io ch’io era più levato, + per l’affocato riso de la stella, + che mi parea più roggio che l’usato. + + Con tutto ’l core e con quella favella + ch’è una in tutti, a Dio feci olocausto, + qual conveniesi a la grazia novella. + + E non er’ anco del mio petto essausto + l’ardor del sacrificio, ch’io conobbi + esso litare stato accetto e fausto; + + ché con tanto lucore e tanto robbi + m’apparvero splendor dentro a due raggi, + ch’io dissi: «O Elïòs che sì li addobbi!». + + Come distinta da minori e maggi + lumi biancheggia tra ’ poli del mondo + Galassia sì, che fa dubbiar ben saggi; + + sì costellati facean nel profondo + Marte quei raggi il venerabil segno + che fan giunture di quadranti in tondo. + + Qui vince la memoria mia lo ’ngegno; + ché quella croce lampeggiava Cristo, + sì ch’io non so trovare essempro degno; + + ma chi prende sua croce e segue Cristo, + ancor mi scuserà di quel ch’io lasso, + vedendo in quell’ albor balenar Cristo. + + Di corno in corno e tra la cima e ’l basso + si movien lumi, scintillando forte + nel congiugnersi insieme e nel trapasso: + + così si veggion qui diritte e torte, + veloci e tarde, rinovando vista, + le minuzie d’i corpi, lunghe e corte, + + moversi per lo raggio onde si lista + talvolta l’ombra che, per sua difesa, + la gente con ingegno e arte acquista. + + E come giga e arpa, in tempra tesa + di molte corde, fa dolce tintinno + a tal da cui la nota non è intesa, + + così da’ lumi che lì m’apparinno + s’accogliea per la croce una melode + che mi rapiva, sanza intender l’inno. + + Ben m’accors’ io ch’elli era d’alte lode, + però ch’a me venìa «Resurgi» e «Vinci» + come a colui che non intende e ode. + + Ïo m’innamorava tanto quinci, + che ’nfino a lì non fu alcuna cosa + che mi legasse con sì dolci vinci. + + Forse la mia parola par troppo osa, + posponendo il piacer de li occhi belli, + ne’ quai mirando mio disio ha posa; + + ma chi s’avvede che i vivi suggelli + d’ogne bellezza più fanno più suso, + e ch’io non m’era lì rivolto a quelli, + + escusar puommi di quel ch’io m’accuso + per escusarmi, e vedermi dir vero: + ché ’l piacer santo non è qui dischiuso, + + perché si fa, montando, più sincero. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XV + + + Benigna volontade in che si liqua + sempre l’amor che drittamente spira, + come cupidità fa ne la iniqua, + + silenzio puose a quella dolce lira, + e fece quïetar le sante corde + che la destra del cielo allenta e tira. + + Come saranno a’ giusti preghi sorde + quelle sustanze che, per darmi voglia + ch’io le pregassi, a tacer fur concorde? + + Bene è che sanza termine si doglia + chi, per amor di cosa che non duri + etternalmente, quello amor si spoglia. + + Quale per li seren tranquilli e puri + discorre ad ora ad or sùbito foco, + movendo li occhi che stavan sicuri, + + e pare stella che tramuti loco, + se non che da la parte ond’ e’ s’accende + nulla sen perde, ed esso dura poco: + + tale dal corno che ’n destro si stende + a piè di quella croce corse un astro + de la costellazion che lì resplende; + + né si partì la gemma dal suo nastro, + ma per la lista radïal trascorse, + che parve foco dietro ad alabastro. + + Sì pïa l’ombra d’Anchise si porse, + se fede merta nostra maggior musa, + quando in Eliso del figlio s’accorse. + + «O sanguis meus, o superinfusa + gratïa Deï, sicut tibi cui + bis unquam celi ianüa reclusa?». + + Così quel lume: ond’ io m’attesi a lui; + poscia rivolsi a la mia donna il viso, + e quinci e quindi stupefatto fui; + + ché dentro a li occhi suoi ardeva un riso + tal, ch’io pensai co’ miei toccar lo fondo + de la mia gloria e del mio paradiso. + + Indi, a udire e a veder giocondo, + giunse lo spirto al suo principio cose, + ch’io non lo ’ntesi, sì parlò profondo; + + né per elezïon mi si nascose, + ma per necessità, ché ’l suo concetto + al segno d’i mortal si soprapuose. + + E quando l’arco de l’ardente affetto + fu sì sfogato, che ’l parlar discese + inver’ lo segno del nostro intelletto, + + la prima cosa che per me s’intese, + «Benedetto sia tu», fu, «trino e uno, + che nel mio seme se’ tanto cortese!». + + E seguì: «Grato e lontano digiuno, + tratto leggendo del magno volume + du’ non si muta mai bianco né bruno, + + solvuto hai, figlio, dentro a questo lume + in ch’io ti parlo, mercè di colei + ch’a l’alto volo ti vestì le piume. + + Tu credi che a me tuo pensier mei + da quel ch’è primo, così come raia + da l’un, se si conosce, il cinque e ’l sei; + + e però ch’io mi sia e perch’ io paia + più gaudïoso a te, non mi domandi, + che alcun altro in questa turba gaia. + + Tu credi ’l vero; ché i minori e ’ grandi + di questa vita miran ne lo speglio + in che, prima che pensi, il pensier pandi; + + ma perché ’l sacro amore in che io veglio + con perpetüa vista e che m’asseta + di dolce disïar, s’adempia meglio, + + la voce tua sicura, balda e lieta + suoni la volontà, suoni ’l disio, + a che la mia risposta è già decreta!». + + Io mi volsi a Beatrice, e quella udio + pria ch’io parlassi, e arrisemi un cenno + che fece crescer l’ali al voler mio. + + Poi cominciai così: «L’affetto e ’l senno, + come la prima equalità v’apparse, + d’un peso per ciascun di voi si fenno, + + però che ’l sol che v’allumò e arse, + col caldo e con la luce è sì iguali, + che tutte simiglianze sono scarse. + + Ma voglia e argomento ne’ mortali, + per la cagion ch’a voi è manifesta, + diversamente son pennuti in ali; + + ond’ io, che son mortal, mi sento in questa + disagguaglianza, e però non ringrazio + se non col core a la paterna festa. + + Ben supplico io a te, vivo topazio + che questa gioia prezïosa ingemmi, + perché mi facci del tuo nome sazio». + + «O fronda mia in che io compiacemmi + pur aspettando, io fui la tua radice»: + cotal principio, rispondendo, femmi. + + Poscia mi disse: «Quel da cui si dice + tua cognazione e che cent’ anni e piùe + girato ha ’l monte in la prima cornice, + + mio figlio fu e tuo bisavol fue: + ben si convien che la lunga fatica + tu li raccorci con l’opere tue. + + Fiorenza dentro da la cerchia antica, + ond’ ella toglie ancora e terza e nona, + si stava in pace, sobria e pudica. + + Non avea catenella, non corona, + non gonne contigiate, non cintura + che fosse a veder più che la persona. + + Non faceva, nascendo, ancor paura + la figlia al padre, che ’l tempo e la dote + non fuggien quinci e quindi la misura. + + Non avea case di famiglia vòte; + non v’era giunto ancor Sardanapalo + a mostrar ciò che ’n camera si puote. + + Non era vinto ancora Montemalo + dal vostro Uccellatoio, che, com’ è vinto + nel montar sù, così sarà nel calo. + + Bellincion Berti vid’ io andar cinto + di cuoio e d’osso, e venir da lo specchio + la donna sua sanza ’l viso dipinto; + + e vidi quel d’i Nerli e quel del Vecchio + esser contenti a la pelle scoperta, + e le sue donne al fuso e al pennecchio. + + Oh fortunate! ciascuna era certa + de la sua sepultura, e ancor nulla + era per Francia nel letto diserta. + + L’una vegghiava a studio de la culla, + e, consolando, usava l’idïoma + che prima i padri e le madri trastulla; + + l’altra, traendo a la rocca la chioma, + favoleggiava con la sua famiglia + d’i Troiani, di Fiesole e di Roma. + + Saria tenuta allor tal maraviglia + una Cianghella, un Lapo Salterello, + qual or saria Cincinnato e Corniglia. + + A così riposato, a così bello + viver di cittadini, a così fida + cittadinanza, a così dolce ostello, + + Maria mi diè, chiamata in alte grida; + e ne l’antico vostro Batisteo + insieme fui cristiano e Cacciaguida. + + Moronto fu mio frate ed Eliseo; + mia donna venne a me di val di Pado, + e quindi il sopranome tuo si feo. + + Poi seguitai lo ’mperador Currado; + ed el mi cinse de la sua milizia, + tanto per bene ovrar li venni in grado. + + Dietro li andai incontro a la nequizia + di quella legge il cui popolo usurpa, + per colpa d’i pastor, vostra giustizia. + + Quivi fu’ io da quella gente turpa + disviluppato dal mondo fallace, + lo cui amor molt’ anime deturpa; + + e venni dal martiro a questa pace». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XVI + + + O poca nostra nobiltà di sangue, + se glorïar di te la gente fai + qua giù dove l’affetto nostro langue, + + mirabil cosa non mi sarà mai: + ché là dove appetito non si torce, + dico nel cielo, io me ne gloriai. + + Ben se’ tu manto che tosto raccorce: + sì che, se non s’appon di dì in die, + lo tempo va dintorno con le force. + + Dal ‘voi’ che prima a Roma s’offerie, + in che la sua famiglia men persevra, + ricominciaron le parole mie; + + onde Beatrice, ch’era un poco scevra, + ridendo, parve quella che tossio + al primo fallo scritto di Ginevra. + + Io cominciai: «Voi siete il padre mio; + voi mi date a parlar tutta baldezza; + voi mi levate sì, ch’i’ son più ch’io. + + Per tanti rivi s’empie d’allegrezza + la mente mia, che di sé fa letizia + perché può sostener che non si spezza. + + Ditemi dunque, cara mia primizia, + quai fuor li vostri antichi e quai fuor li anni + che si segnaro in vostra püerizia; + + ditemi de l’ovil di San Giovanni + quanto era allora, e chi eran le genti + tra esso degne di più alti scanni». + + Come s’avviva a lo spirar d’i venti + carbone in fiamma, così vid’ io quella + luce risplendere a’ miei blandimenti; + + e come a li occhi miei si fé più bella, + così con voce più dolce e soave, + ma non con questa moderna favella, + + dissemi: «Da quel dì che fu detto ‘Ave’ + al parto in che mia madre, ch’è or santa, + s’allevïò di me ond’ era grave, + + al suo Leon cinquecento cinquanta + e trenta fiate venne questo foco + a rinfiammarsi sotto la sua pianta. + + Li antichi miei e io nacqui nel loco + dove si truova pria l’ultimo sesto + da quei che corre il vostro annüal gioco. + + Basti d’i miei maggiori udirne questo: + chi ei si fosser e onde venner quivi, + più è tacer che ragionare onesto. + + Tutti color ch’a quel tempo eran ivi + da poter arme tra Marte e ’l Batista, + eran il quinto di quei ch’or son vivi. + + Ma la cittadinanza, ch’è or mista + di Campi, di Certaldo e di Fegghine, + pura vediesi ne l’ultimo artista. + + Oh quanto fora meglio esser vicine + quelle genti ch’io dico, e al Galluzzo + e a Trespiano aver vostro confine, + + che averle dentro e sostener lo puzzo + del villan d’Aguglion, di quel da Signa, + che già per barattare ha l’occhio aguzzo! + + Se la gente ch’al mondo più traligna + non fosse stata a Cesare noverca, + ma come madre a suo figlio benigna, + + tal fatto è fiorentino e cambia e merca, + che si sarebbe vòlto a Simifonti, + là dove andava l’avolo a la cerca; + + sariesi Montemurlo ancor de’ Conti; + sarieno i Cerchi nel piovier d’Acone, + e forse in Valdigrieve i Buondelmonti. + + Sempre la confusion de le persone + principio fu del mal de la cittade, + come del vostro il cibo che s’appone; + + e cieco toro più avaccio cade + che cieco agnello; e molte volte taglia + più e meglio una che le cinque spade. + + Se tu riguardi Luni e Orbisaglia + come sono ite, e come se ne vanno + di retro ad esse Chiusi e Sinigaglia, + + udir come le schiatte si disfanno + non ti parrà nova cosa né forte, + poscia che le cittadi termine hanno. + + Le vostre cose tutte hanno lor morte, + sì come voi; ma celasi in alcuna + che dura molto, e le vite son corte. + + E come ’l volger del ciel de la luna + cuopre e discuopre i liti sanza posa, + così fa di Fiorenza la Fortuna: + + per che non dee parer mirabil cosa + ciò ch’io dirò de li alti Fiorentini + onde è la fama nel tempo nascosa. + + Io vidi li Ughi e vidi i Catellini, + Filippi, Greci, Ormanni e Alberichi, + già nel calare, illustri cittadini; + + e vidi così grandi come antichi, + con quel de la Sannella, quel de l’Arca, + e Soldanieri e Ardinghi e Bostichi. + + Sovra la porta ch’al presente è carca + di nova fellonia di tanto peso + che tosto fia iattura de la barca, + + erano i Ravignani, ond’ è disceso + il conte Guido e qualunque del nome + de l’alto Bellincione ha poscia preso. + + Quel de la Pressa sapeva già come + regger si vuole, e avea Galigaio + dorata in casa sua già l’elsa e ’l pome. + + Grand’ era già la colonna del Vaio, + Sacchetti, Giuochi, Fifanti e Barucci + e Galli e quei ch’arrossan per lo staio. + + Lo ceppo di che nacquero i Calfucci + era già grande, e già eran tratti + a le curule Sizii e Arrigucci. + + Oh quali io vidi quei che son disfatti + per lor superbia! e le palle de l’oro + fiorian Fiorenza in tutt’ i suoi gran fatti. + + Così facieno i padri di coloro + che, sempre che la vostra chiesa vaca, + si fanno grassi stando a consistoro. + + L’oltracotata schiatta che s’indraca + dietro a chi fugge, e a chi mostra ’l dente + o ver la borsa, com’ agnel si placa, + + già venìa sù, ma di picciola gente; + sì che non piacque ad Ubertin Donato + che poï il suocero il fé lor parente. + + Già era ’l Caponsacco nel mercato + disceso giù da Fiesole, e già era + buon cittadino Giuda e Infangato. + + Io dirò cosa incredibile e vera: + nel picciol cerchio s’entrava per porta + che si nomava da quei de la Pera. + + Ciascun che de la bella insegna porta + del gran barone il cui nome e ’l cui pregio + la festa di Tommaso riconforta, + + da esso ebbe milizia e privilegio; + avvegna che con popol si rauni + oggi colui che la fascia col fregio. + + Già eran Gualterotti e Importuni; + e ancor saria Borgo più quïeto, + se di novi vicin fosser digiuni. + + La casa di che nacque il vostro fleto, + per lo giusto disdegno che v’ha morti + e puose fine al vostro viver lieto, + + era onorata, essa e suoi consorti: + o Buondelmonte, quanto mal fuggisti + le nozze süe per li altrui conforti! + + Molti sarebber lieti, che son tristi, + se Dio t’avesse conceduto ad Ema + la prima volta ch’a città venisti. + + Ma conveniesi a quella pietra scema + che guarda ’l ponte, che Fiorenza fesse + vittima ne la sua pace postrema. + + Con queste genti, e con altre con esse, + vid’ io Fiorenza in sì fatto riposo, + che non avea cagione onde piangesse. + + Con queste genti vid’io glorïoso + e giusto il popol suo, tanto che ’l giglio + non era ad asta mai posto a ritroso, + + né per divisïon fatto vermiglio». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XVII + + + Qual venne a Climenè, per accertarsi + di ciò ch’avëa incontro a sé udito, + quei ch’ancor fa li padri ai figli scarsi; + + tal era io, e tal era sentito + e da Beatrice e da la santa lampa + che pria per me avea mutato sito. + + Per che mia donna «Manda fuor la vampa + del tuo disio», mi disse, «sì ch’ella esca + segnata bene de la interna stampa: + + non perché nostra conoscenza cresca + per tuo parlare, ma perché t’ausi + a dir la sete, sì che l’uom ti mesca». + + «O cara piota mia che sì t’insusi, + che, come veggion le terrene menti + non capere in trïangol due ottusi, + + così vedi le cose contingenti + anzi che sieno in sé, mirando il punto + a cui tutti li tempi son presenti; + + mentre ch’io era a Virgilio congiunto + su per lo monte che l’anime cura + e discendendo nel mondo defunto, + + dette mi fuor di mia vita futura + parole gravi, avvegna ch’io mi senta + ben tetragono ai colpi di ventura; + + per che la voglia mia saria contenta + d’intender qual fortuna mi s’appressa: + ché saetta previsa vien più lenta». + + Così diss’ io a quella luce stessa + che pria m’avea parlato; e come volle + Beatrice, fu la mia voglia confessa. + + Né per ambage, in che la gente folle + già s’inviscava pria che fosse anciso + l’Agnel di Dio che le peccata tolle, + + ma per chiare parole e con preciso + latin rispuose quello amor paterno, + chiuso e parvente del suo proprio riso: + + «La contingenza, che fuor del quaderno + de la vostra matera non si stende, + tutta è dipinta nel cospetto etterno; + + necessità però quindi non prende + se non come dal viso in che si specchia + nave che per torrente giù discende. + + Da indi, sì come viene ad orecchia + dolce armonia da organo, mi viene + a vista il tempo che ti s’apparecchia. + + Qual si partio Ipolito d’Atene + per la spietata e perfida noverca, + tal di Fiorenza partir ti convene. + + Questo si vuole e questo già si cerca, + e tosto verrà fatto a chi ciò pensa + là dove Cristo tutto dì si merca. + + La colpa seguirà la parte offensa + in grido, come suol; ma la vendetta + fia testimonio al ver che la dispensa. + + Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta + più caramente; e questo è quello strale + che l’arco de lo essilio pria saetta. + + Tu proverai sì come sa di sale + lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle + lo scendere e ’l salir per l’altrui scale. + + E quel che più ti graverà le spalle, + sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia + con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle; + + che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia + si farà contr’ a te; ma, poco appresso, + ella, non tu, n’avrà rossa la tempia. + + Di sua bestialitate il suo processo + farà la prova; sì ch’a te fia bello + averti fatta parte per te stesso. + + Lo primo tuo refugio e ’l primo ostello + sarà la cortesia del gran Lombardo + che ’n su la scala porta il santo uccello; + + ch’in te avrà sì benigno riguardo, + che del fare e del chieder, tra voi due, + fia primo quel che tra li altri è più tardo. + + Con lui vedrai colui che ’mpresso fue, + nascendo, sì da questa stella forte, + che notabili fier l’opere sue. + + Non se ne son le genti ancora accorte + per la novella età, ché pur nove anni + son queste rote intorno di lui torte; + + ma pria che ’l Guasco l’alto Arrigo inganni, + parran faville de la sua virtute + in non curar d’argento né d’affanni. + + Le sue magnificenze conosciute + saranno ancora, sì che ’ suoi nemici + non ne potran tener le lingue mute. + + A lui t’aspetta e a’ suoi benefici; + per lui fia trasmutata molta gente, + cambiando condizion ricchi e mendici; + + e portera’ne scritto ne la mente + di lui, e nol dirai»; e disse cose + incredibili a quei che fier presente. + + Poi giunse: «Figlio, queste son le chiose + di quel che ti fu detto; ecco le ’nsidie + che dietro a pochi giri son nascose. + + Non vo’ però ch’a’ tuoi vicini invidie, + poscia che s’infutura la tua vita + vie più là che ’l punir di lor perfidie». + + Poi che, tacendo, si mostrò spedita + l’anima santa di metter la trama + in quella tela ch’io le porsi ordita, + + io cominciai, come colui che brama, + dubitando, consiglio da persona + che vede e vuol dirittamente e ama: + + «Ben veggio, padre mio, sì come sprona + lo tempo verso me, per colpo darmi + tal, ch’è più grave a chi più s’abbandona; + + per che di provedenza è buon ch’io m’armi, + sì che, se loco m’è tolto più caro, + io non perdessi li altri per miei carmi. + + Giù per lo mondo sanza fine amaro, + e per lo monte del cui bel cacume + li occhi de la mia donna mi levaro, + + e poscia per lo ciel, di lume in lume, + ho io appreso quel che s’io ridico, + a molti fia sapor di forte agrume; + + e s’io al vero son timido amico, + temo di perder viver tra coloro + che questo tempo chiameranno antico». + + La luce in che rideva il mio tesoro + ch’io trovai lì, si fé prima corusca, + quale a raggio di sole specchio d’oro; + + indi rispuose: «Coscïenza fusca + o de la propria o de l’altrui vergogna + pur sentirà la tua parola brusca. + + Ma nondimen, rimossa ogne menzogna, + tutta tua visïon fa manifesta; + e lascia pur grattar dov’ è la rogna. + + Ché se la voce tua sarà molesta + nel primo gusto, vital nodrimento + lascerà poi, quando sarà digesta. + + Questo tuo grido farà come vento, + che le più alte cime più percuote; + e ciò non fa d’onor poco argomento. + + Però ti son mostrate in queste rote, + nel monte e ne la valle dolorosa + pur l’anime che son di fama note, + + che l’animo di quel ch’ode, non posa + né ferma fede per essempro ch’aia + la sua radice incognita e ascosa, + + né per altro argomento che non paia». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XVIII + + + Già si godeva solo del suo verbo + quello specchio beato, e io gustava + lo mio, temprando col dolce l’acerbo; + + e quella donna ch’a Dio mi menava + disse: «Muta pensier; pensa ch’i’ sono + presso a colui ch’ogne torto disgrava». + + Io mi rivolsi a l’amoroso suono + del mio conforto; e qual io allor vidi + ne li occhi santi amor, qui l’abbandono: + + non perch’ io pur del mio parlar diffidi, + ma per la mente che non può redire + sovra sé tanto, s’altri non la guidi. + + Tanto poss’ io di quel punto ridire, + che, rimirando lei, lo mio affetto + libero fu da ogne altro disire, + + fin che ’l piacere etterno, che diretto + raggiava in Bëatrice, dal bel viso + mi contentava col secondo aspetto. + + Vincendo me col lume d’un sorriso, + ella mi disse: «Volgiti e ascolta; + ché non pur ne’ miei occhi è paradiso». + + Come si vede qui alcuna volta + l’affetto ne la vista, s’elli è tanto, + che da lui sia tutta l’anima tolta, + + così nel fiammeggiar del folgór santo, + a ch’io mi volsi, conobbi la voglia + in lui di ragionarmi ancora alquanto. + + El cominciò: «In questa quinta soglia + de l’albero che vive de la cima + e frutta sempre e mai non perde foglia, + + spiriti son beati, che giù, prima + che venissero al ciel, fuor di gran voce, + sì ch’ogne musa ne sarebbe opima. + + Però mira ne’ corni de la croce: + quello ch’io nomerò, lì farà l’atto + che fa in nube il suo foco veloce». + + Io vidi per la croce un lume tratto + dal nomar Iosuè, com’ el si feo; + né mi fu noto il dir prima che ’l fatto. + + E al nome de l’alto Macabeo + vidi moversi un altro roteando, + e letizia era ferza del paleo. + + Così per Carlo Magno e per Orlando + due ne seguì lo mio attento sguardo, + com’ occhio segue suo falcon volando. + + Poscia trasse Guiglielmo e Rinoardo + e ’l duca Gottifredi la mia vista + per quella croce, e Ruberto Guiscardo. + + Indi, tra l’altre luci mota e mista, + mostrommi l’alma che m’avea parlato + qual era tra i cantor del cielo artista. + + Io mi rivolsi dal mio destro lato + per vedere in Beatrice il mio dovere, + o per parlare o per atto, segnato; + + e vidi le sue luci tanto mere, + tanto gioconde, che la sua sembianza + vinceva li altri e l’ultimo solere. + + E come, per sentir più dilettanza + bene operando, l’uom di giorno in giorno + s’accorge che la sua virtute avanza, + + sì m’accors’ io che ’l mio girare intorno + col cielo insieme avea cresciuto l’arco, + veggendo quel miracol più addorno. + + E qual è ’l trasmutare in picciol varco + di tempo in bianca donna, quando ’l volto + suo si discarchi di vergogna il carco, + + tal fu ne li occhi miei, quando fui vòlto, + per lo candor de la temprata stella + sesta, che dentro a sé m’avea ricolto. + + Io vidi in quella giovïal facella + lo sfavillar de l’amor che lì era + segnare a li occhi miei nostra favella. + + E come augelli surti di rivera, + quasi congratulando a lor pasture, + fanno di sé or tonda or altra schiera, + + sì dentro ai lumi sante creature + volitando cantavano, e faciensi + or D, or I, or L in sue figure. + + Prima, cantando, a sua nota moviensi; + poi, diventando l’un di questi segni, + un poco s’arrestavano e taciensi. + + O diva Pegasëa che li ’ngegni + fai glorïosi e rendili longevi, + ed essi teco le cittadi e ’ regni, + + illustrami di te, sì ch’io rilevi + le lor figure com’ io l’ho concette: + paia tua possa in questi versi brevi! + + Mostrarsi dunque in cinque volte sette + vocali e consonanti; e io notai + le parti sì, come mi parver dette. + + ‘DILIGITE IUSTITIAM’, primai + fur verbo e nome di tutto ’l dipinto; + ‘QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM’, fur sezzai. + + Poscia ne l’emme del vocabol quinto + rimasero ordinate; sì che Giove + pareva argento lì d’oro distinto. + + E vidi scendere altre luci dove + era il colmo de l’emme, e lì quetarsi + cantando, credo, il ben ch’a sé le move. + + Poi, come nel percuoter d’i ciocchi arsi + surgono innumerabili faville, + onde li stolti sogliono agurarsi, + + resurger parver quindi più di mille + luci e salir, qual assai e qual poco, + sì come ’l sol che l’accende sortille; + + e quïetata ciascuna in suo loco, + la testa e ’l collo d’un’aguglia vidi + rappresentare a quel distinto foco. + + Quei che dipinge lì, non ha chi ’l guidi; + ma esso guida, e da lui si rammenta + quella virtù ch’è forma per li nidi. + + L’altra bëatitudo, che contenta + pareva prima d’ingigliarsi a l’emme, + con poco moto seguitò la ’mprenta. + + O dolce stella, quali e quante gemme + mi dimostraro che nostra giustizia + effetto sia del ciel che tu ingemme! + + Per ch’io prego la mente in che s’inizia + tuo moto e tua virtute, che rimiri + ond’ esce il fummo che ’l tuo raggio vizia; + + sì ch’un’altra fïata omai s’adiri + del comperare e vender dentro al templo + che si murò di segni e di martìri. + + O milizia del ciel cu’ io contemplo, + adora per color che sono in terra + tutti svïati dietro al malo essemplo! + + Già si solea con le spade far guerra; + ma or si fa togliendo or qui or quivi + lo pan che ’l pïo Padre a nessun serra. + + Ma tu che sol per cancellare scrivi, + pensa che Pietro e Paulo, che moriro + per la vigna che guasti, ancor son vivi. + + Ben puoi tu dire: «I’ ho fermo ’l disiro + sì a colui che volle viver solo + e che per salti fu tratto al martiro, + + ch’io non conosco il pescator né Polo». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XIX + + + Parea dinanzi a me con l’ali aperte + la bella image che nel dolce frui + liete facevan l’anime conserte; + + parea ciascuna rubinetto in cui + raggio di sole ardesse sì acceso, + che ne’ miei occhi rifrangesse lui. + + E quel che mi convien ritrar testeso, + non portò voce mai, né scrisse incostro, + né fu per fantasia già mai compreso; + + ch’io vidi e anche udi’ parlar lo rostro, + e sonar ne la voce e «io» e «mio», + quand’ era nel concetto e ‘noi’ e ‘nostro’. + + E cominciò: «Per esser giusto e pio + son io qui essaltato a quella gloria + che non si lascia vincere a disio; + + e in terra lasciai la mia memoria + sì fatta, che le genti lì malvage + commendan lei, ma non seguon la storia». + + Così un sol calor di molte brage + si fa sentir, come di molti amori + usciva solo un suon di quella image. + + Ond’ io appresso: «O perpetüi fiori + de l’etterna letizia, che pur uno + parer mi fate tutti vostri odori, + + solvetemi, spirando, il gran digiuno + che lungamente m’ha tenuto in fame, + non trovandoli in terra cibo alcuno. + + Ben so io che, se ’n cielo altro reame + la divina giustizia fa suo specchio, + che ’l vostro non l’apprende con velame. + + Sapete come attento io m’apparecchio + ad ascoltar; sapete qual è quello + dubbio che m’è digiun cotanto vecchio». + + Quasi falcone ch’esce del cappello, + move la testa e con l’ali si plaude, + voglia mostrando e faccendosi bello, + + vid’ io farsi quel segno, che di laude + de la divina grazia era contesto, + con canti quai si sa chi là sù gaude. + + Poi cominciò: «Colui che volse il sesto + a lo stremo del mondo, e dentro ad esso + distinse tanto occulto e manifesto, + + non poté suo valor sì fare impresso + in tutto l’universo, che ’l suo verbo + non rimanesse in infinito eccesso. + + E ciò fa certo che ’l primo superbo, + che fu la somma d’ogne creatura, + per non aspettar lume, cadde acerbo; + + e quinci appar ch’ogne minor natura + è corto recettacolo a quel bene + che non ha fine e sé con sé misura. + + Dunque vostra veduta, che convene + esser alcun de’ raggi de la mente + di che tutte le cose son ripiene, + + non pò da sua natura esser possente + tanto, che suo principio discerna + molto di là da quel che l’è parvente. + + Però ne la giustizia sempiterna + la vista che riceve il vostro mondo, + com’ occhio per lo mare, entro s’interna; + + che, ben che da la proda veggia il fondo, + in pelago nol vede; e nondimeno + èli, ma cela lui l’esser profondo. + + Lume non è, se non vien dal sereno + che non si turba mai; anzi è tenèbra + od ombra de la carne o suo veleno. + + Assai t’è mo aperta la latebra + che t’ascondeva la giustizia viva, + di che facei question cotanto crebra; + + ché tu dicevi: “Un uom nasce a la riva + de l’Indo, e quivi non è chi ragioni + di Cristo né chi legga né chi scriva; + + e tutti suoi voleri e atti buoni + sono, quanto ragione umana vede, + sanza peccato in vita o in sermoni. + + Muore non battezzato e sanza fede: + ov’ è questa giustizia che ’l condanna? + ov’ è la colpa sua, se ei non crede?”. + + Or tu chi se’, che vuo’ sedere a scranna, + per giudicar di lungi mille miglia + con la veduta corta d’una spanna? + + Certo a colui che meco s’assottiglia, + se la Scrittura sovra voi non fosse, + da dubitar sarebbe a maraviglia. + + Oh terreni animali! oh menti grosse! + La prima volontà, ch’è da sé buona, + da sé, ch’è sommo ben, mai non si mosse. + + Cotanto è giusto quanto a lei consuona: + nullo creato bene a sé la tira, + ma essa, radïando, lui cagiona». + + Quale sovresso il nido si rigira + poi c’ha pasciuti la cicogna i figli, + e come quel ch’è pasto la rimira; + + cotal si fece, e sì leväi i cigli, + la benedetta imagine, che l’ali + movea sospinte da tanti consigli. + + Roteando cantava, e dicea: «Quali + son le mie note a te, che non le ’ntendi, + tal è il giudicio etterno a voi mortali». + + Poi si quetaro quei lucenti incendi + de lo Spirito Santo ancor nel segno + che fé i Romani al mondo reverendi, + + esso ricominciò: «A questo regno + non salì mai chi non credette ’n Cristo, + né pria né poi ch’el si chiavasse al legno. + + Ma vedi: molti gridan “Cristo, Cristo!”, + che saranno in giudicio assai men prope + a lui, che tal che non conosce Cristo; + + e tai Cristian dannerà l’Etïòpe, + quando si partiranno i due collegi, + l’uno in etterno ricco e l’altro inòpe. + + Che poran dir li Perse a’ vostri regi, + come vedranno quel volume aperto + nel qual si scrivon tutti suoi dispregi? + + Lì si vedrà, tra l’opere d’Alberto, + quella che tosto moverà la penna, + per che ’l regno di Praga fia diserto. + + Lì si vedrà il duol che sovra Senna + induce, falseggiando la moneta, + quel che morrà di colpo di cotenna. + + Lì si vedrà la superbia ch’asseta, + che fa lo Scotto e l’Inghilese folle, + sì che non può soffrir dentro a sua meta. + + Vedrassi la lussuria e ’l viver molle + di quel di Spagna e di quel di Boemme, + che mai valor non conobbe né volle. + + Vedrassi al Ciotto di Ierusalemme + segnata con un i la sua bontate, + quando ’l contrario segnerà un emme. + + Vedrassi l’avarizia e la viltate + di quei che guarda l’isola del foco, + ove Anchise finì la lunga etate; + + e a dare ad intender quanto è poco, + la sua scrittura fian lettere mozze, + che noteranno molto in parvo loco. + + E parranno a ciascun l’opere sozze + del barba e del fratel, che tanto egregia + nazione e due corone han fatte bozze. + + E quel di Portogallo e di Norvegia + lì si conosceranno, e quel di Rascia + che male ha visto il conio di Vinegia. + + Oh beata Ungheria, se non si lascia + più malmenare! e beata Navarra, + se s’armasse del monte che la fascia! + + E creder de’ ciascun che già, per arra + di questo, Niccosïa e Famagosta + per la lor bestia si lamenti e garra, + + che dal fianco de l’altre non si scosta». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XX + + + Quando colui che tutto ’l mondo alluma + de l’emisperio nostro sì discende, + che ’l giorno d’ogne parte si consuma, + + lo ciel, che sol di lui prima s’accende, + subitamente si rifà parvente + per molte luci, in che una risplende; + + e questo atto del ciel mi venne a mente, + come ’l segno del mondo e de’ suoi duci + nel benedetto rostro fu tacente; + + però che tutte quelle vive luci, + vie più lucendo, cominciaron canti + da mia memoria labili e caduci. + + O dolce amor che di riso t’ammanti, + quanto parevi ardente in que’ flailli, + ch’avieno spirto sol di pensier santi! + + Poscia che i cari e lucidi lapilli + ond’ io vidi ingemmato il sesto lume + puoser silenzio a li angelici squilli, + + udir mi parve un mormorar di fiume + che scende chiaro giù di pietra in pietra, + mostrando l’ubertà del suo cacume. + + E come suono al collo de la cetra + prende sua forma, e sì com’ al pertugio + de la sampogna vento che penètra, + + così, rimosso d’aspettare indugio, + quel mormorar de l’aguglia salissi + su per lo collo, come fosse bugio. + + Fecesi voce quivi, e quindi uscissi + per lo suo becco in forma di parole, + quali aspettava il core ov’ io le scrissi. + + «La parte in me che vede e pate il sole + ne l’aguglie mortali», incominciommi, + «or fisamente riguardar si vole, + + perché d’i fuochi ond’ io figura fommi, + quelli onde l’occhio in testa mi scintilla, + e’ di tutti lor gradi son li sommi. + + Colui che luce in mezzo per pupilla, + fu il cantor de lo Spirito Santo, + che l’arca traslatò di villa in villa: + + ora conosce il merto del suo canto, + in quanto effetto fu del suo consiglio, + per lo remunerar ch’è altrettanto. + + Dei cinque che mi fan cerchio per ciglio, + colui che più al becco mi s’accosta, + la vedovella consolò del figlio: + + ora conosce quanto caro costa + non seguir Cristo, per l’esperïenza + di questa dolce vita e de l’opposta. + + E quel che segue in la circunferenza + di che ragiono, per l’arco superno, + morte indugiò per vera penitenza: + + ora conosce che ’l giudicio etterno + non si trasmuta, quando degno preco + fa crastino là giù de l’odïerno. + + L’altro che segue, con le leggi e meco, + sotto buona intenzion che fé mal frutto, + per cedere al pastor si fece greco: + + ora conosce come il mal dedutto + dal suo bene operar non li è nocivo, + avvegna che sia ’l mondo indi distrutto. + + E quel che vedi ne l’arco declivo, + Guiglielmo fu, cui quella terra plora + che piagne Carlo e Federigo vivo: + + ora conosce come s’innamora + lo ciel del giusto rege, e al sembiante + del suo fulgore il fa vedere ancora. + + Chi crederebbe giù nel mondo errante + che Rifëo Troiano in questo tondo + fosse la quinta de le luci sante? + + Ora conosce assai di quel che ’l mondo + veder non può de la divina grazia, + ben che sua vista non discerna il fondo». + + Quale allodetta che ’n aere si spazia + prima cantando, e poi tace contenta + de l’ultima dolcezza che la sazia, + + tal mi sembiò l’imago de la ’mprenta + de l’etterno piacere, al cui disio + ciascuna cosa qual ell’ è diventa. + + E avvegna ch’io fossi al dubbiar mio + lì quasi vetro a lo color ch’el veste, + tempo aspettar tacendo non patio, + + ma de la bocca, «Che cose son queste?», + mi pinse con la forza del suo peso: + per ch’io di coruscar vidi gran feste. + + Poi appresso, con l’occhio più acceso, + lo benedetto segno mi rispuose + per non tenermi in ammirar sospeso: + + «Io veggio che tu credi queste cose + perch’ io le dico, ma non vedi come; + sì che, se son credute, sono ascose. + + Fai come quei che la cosa per nome + apprende ben, ma la sua quiditate + veder non può se altri non la prome. + + Regnum celorum vïolenza pate + da caldo amore e da viva speranza, + che vince la divina volontate: + + non a guisa che l’omo a l’om sobranza, + ma vince lei perché vuole esser vinta, + e, vinta, vince con sua beninanza. + + La prima vita del ciglio e la quinta + ti fa maravigliar, perché ne vedi + la regïon de li angeli dipinta. + + D’i corpi suoi non uscir, come credi, + Gentili, ma Cristiani, in ferma fede + quel d’i passuri e quel d’i passi piedi. + + Ché l’una de lo ’nferno, u’ non si riede + già mai a buon voler, tornò a l’ossa; + e ciò di viva spene fu mercede: + + di viva spene, che mise la possa + ne’ prieghi fatti a Dio per suscitarla, + sì che potesse sua voglia esser mossa. + + L’anima glorïosa onde si parla, + tornata ne la carne, in che fu poco, + credette in lui che potëa aiutarla; + + e credendo s’accese in tanto foco + di vero amor, ch’a la morte seconda + fu degna di venire a questo gioco. + + L’altra, per grazia che da sì profonda + fontana stilla, che mai creatura + non pinse l’occhio infino a la prima onda, + + tutto suo amor là giù pose a drittura: + per che, di grazia in grazia, Dio li aperse + l’occhio a la nostra redenzion futura; + + ond’ ei credette in quella, e non sofferse + da indi il puzzo più del paganesmo; + e riprendiene le genti perverse. + + Quelle tre donne li fur per battesmo + che tu vedesti da la destra rota, + dinanzi al battezzar più d’un millesmo. + + O predestinazion, quanto remota + è la radice tua da quelli aspetti + che la prima cagion non veggion tota! + + E voi, mortali, tenetevi stretti + a giudicar: ché noi, che Dio vedemo, + non conosciamo ancor tutti li eletti; + + ed ènne dolce così fatto scemo, + perché il ben nostro in questo ben s’affina, + che quel che vole Iddio, e noi volemo». + + Così da quella imagine divina, + per farmi chiara la mia corta vista, + data mi fu soave medicina. + + E come a buon cantor buon citarista + fa seguitar lo guizzo de la corda, + in che più di piacer lo canto acquista, + + sì, mentre ch’e’ parlò, sì mi ricorda + ch’io vidi le due luci benedette, + pur come batter d’occhi si concorda, + + con le parole mover le fiammette. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXI + + + Già eran li occhi miei rifissi al volto + de la mia donna, e l’animo con essi, + e da ogne altro intento s’era tolto. + + E quella non ridea; ma «S’io ridessi», + mi cominciò, «tu ti faresti quale + fu Semelè quando di cener fessi: + + ché la bellezza mia, che per le scale + de l’etterno palazzo più s’accende, + com’ hai veduto, quanto più si sale, + + se non si temperasse, tanto splende, + che ’l tuo mortal podere, al suo fulgore, + sarebbe fronda che trono scoscende. + + Noi sem levati al settimo splendore, + che sotto ’l petto del Leone ardente + raggia mo misto giù del suo valore. + + Ficca di retro a li occhi tuoi la mente, + e fa di quelli specchi a la figura + che ’n questo specchio ti sarà parvente». + + Qual savesse qual era la pastura + del viso mio ne l’aspetto beato + quand’ io mi trasmutai ad altra cura, + + conoscerebbe quanto m’era a grato + ubidire a la mia celeste scorta, + contrapesando l’un con l’altro lato. + + Dentro al cristallo che ’l vocabol porta, + cerchiando il mondo, del suo caro duce + sotto cui giacque ogne malizia morta, + + di color d’oro in che raggio traluce + vid’ io uno scaleo eretto in suso + tanto, che nol seguiva la mia luce. + + Vidi anche per li gradi scender giuso + tanti splendor, ch’io pensai ch’ogne lume + che par nel ciel, quindi fosse diffuso. + + E come, per lo natural costume, + le pole insieme, al cominciar del giorno, + si movono a scaldar le fredde piume; + + poi altre vanno via sanza ritorno, + altre rivolgon sé onde son mosse, + e altre roteando fan soggiorno; + + tal modo parve me che quivi fosse + in quello sfavillar che ’nsieme venne, + sì come in certo grado si percosse. + + E quel che presso più ci si ritenne, + si fé sì chiaro, ch’io dicea pensando: + ‘Io veggio ben l’amor che tu m’accenne. + + Ma quella ond’ io aspetto il come e ’l quando + del dire e del tacer, si sta; ond’ io, + contra ’l disio, fo ben ch’io non dimando’. + + Per ch’ella, che vedëa il tacer mio + nel veder di colui che tutto vede, + mi disse: «Solvi il tuo caldo disio». + + E io incominciai: «La mia mercede + non mi fa degno de la tua risposta; + ma per colei che ’l chieder mi concede, + + vita beata che ti stai nascosta + dentro a la tua letizia, fammi nota + la cagion che sì presso mi t’ha posta; + + e dì perché si tace in questa rota + la dolce sinfonia di paradiso, + che giù per l’altre suona sì divota». + + «Tu hai l’udir mortal sì come il viso», + rispuose a me; «onde qui non si canta + per quel che Bëatrice non ha riso. + + Giù per li gradi de la scala santa + discesi tanto sol per farti festa + col dire e con la luce che mi ammanta; + + né più amor mi fece esser più presta, + ché più e tanto amor quinci sù ferve, + sì come il fiammeggiar ti manifesta. + + Ma l’alta carità, che ci fa serve + pronte al consiglio che ’l mondo governa, + sorteggia qui sì come tu osserve». + + «Io veggio ben», diss’ io, «sacra lucerna, + come libero amore in questa corte + basta a seguir la provedenza etterna; + + ma questo è quel ch’a cerner mi par forte, + perché predestinata fosti sola + a questo officio tra le tue consorte». + + Né venni prima a l’ultima parola, + che del suo mezzo fece il lume centro, + girando sé come veloce mola; + + poi rispuose l’amor che v’era dentro: + «Luce divina sopra me s’appunta, + penetrando per questa in ch’io m’inventro, + + la cui virtù, col mio veder congiunta, + mi leva sopra me tanto, ch’i’ veggio + la somma essenza de la quale è munta. + + Quinci vien l’allegrezza ond’ io fiammeggio; + per ch’a la vista mia, quant’ ella è chiara, + la chiarità de la fiamma pareggio. + + Ma quell’ alma nel ciel che più si schiara, + quel serafin che ’n Dio più l’occhio ha fisso, + a la dimanda tua non satisfara, + + però che sì s’innoltra ne lo abisso + de l’etterno statuto quel che chiedi, + che da ogne creata vista è scisso. + + E al mondo mortal, quando tu riedi, + questo rapporta, sì che non presumma + a tanto segno più mover li piedi. + + La mente, che qui luce, in terra fumma; + onde riguarda come può là giùe + quel che non pote perché ’l ciel l’assumma». + + Sì mi prescrisser le parole sue, + ch’io lasciai la quistione e mi ritrassi + a dimandarla umilmente chi fue. + + «Tra ’ due liti d’Italia surgon sassi, + e non molto distanti a la tua patria, + tanto che ’ troni assai suonan più bassi, + + e fanno un gibbo che si chiama Catria, + di sotto al quale è consecrato un ermo, + che suole esser disposto a sola latria». + + Così ricominciommi il terzo sermo; + e poi, continüando, disse: «Quivi + al servigio di Dio mi fe’ sì fermo, + + che pur con cibi di liquor d’ulivi + lievemente passava caldi e geli, + contento ne’ pensier contemplativi. + + Render solea quel chiostro a questi cieli + fertilemente; e ora è fatto vano, + sì che tosto convien che si riveli. + + In quel loco fu’ io Pietro Damiano, + e Pietro Peccator fu’ ne la casa + di Nostra Donna in sul lito adriano. + + Poca vita mortal m’era rimasa, + quando fui chiesto e tratto a quel cappello, + che pur di male in peggio si travasa. + + Venne Cefàs e venne il gran vasello + de lo Spirito Santo, magri e scalzi, + prendendo il cibo da qualunque ostello. + + Or voglion quinci e quindi chi rincalzi + li moderni pastori e chi li meni, + tanto son gravi, e chi di rietro li alzi. + + Cuopron d’i manti loro i palafreni, + sì che due bestie van sott’ una pelle: + oh pazïenza che tanto sostieni!». + + A questa voce vid’ io più fiammelle + di grado in grado scendere e girarsi, + e ogne giro le facea più belle. + + Dintorno a questa vennero e fermarsi, + e fero un grido di sì alto suono, + che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi; + + né io lo ’ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXII + + + Oppresso di stupore, a la mia guida + mi volsi, come parvol che ricorre + sempre colà dove più si confida; + + e quella, come madre che soccorre + sùbito al figlio palido e anelo + con la sua voce, che ’l suol ben disporre, + + mi disse: «Non sai tu che tu se’ in cielo? + e non sai tu che ’l cielo è tutto santo, + e ciò che ci si fa vien da buon zelo? + + Come t’avrebbe trasmutato il canto, + e io ridendo, mo pensar lo puoi, + poscia che ’l grido t’ha mosso cotanto; + + nel qual, se ’nteso avessi i prieghi suoi, + già ti sarebbe nota la vendetta + che tu vedrai innanzi che tu muoi. + + La spada di qua sù non taglia in fretta + né tardo, ma’ ch’al parer di colui + che disïando o temendo l’aspetta. + + Ma rivolgiti omai inverso altrui; + ch’assai illustri spiriti vedrai, + se com’ io dico l’aspetto redui». + + Come a lei piacque, li occhi ritornai, + e vidi cento sperule che ’nsieme + più s’abbellivan con mutüi rai. + + Io stava come quei che ’n sé repreme + la punta del disio, e non s’attenta + di domandar, sì del troppo si teme; + + e la maggiore e la più luculenta + di quelle margherite innanzi fessi, + per far di sé la mia voglia contenta. + + Poi dentro a lei udi’: «Se tu vedessi + com’ io la carità che tra noi arde, + li tuoi concetti sarebbero espressi. + + Ma perché tu, aspettando, non tarde + a l’alto fine, io ti farò risposta + pur al pensier, da che sì ti riguarde. + + Quel monte a cui Cassino è ne la costa + fu frequentato già in su la cima + da la gente ingannata e mal disposta; + + e quel son io che sù vi portai prima + lo nome di colui che ’n terra addusse + la verità che tanto ci soblima; + + e tanta grazia sopra me relusse, + ch’io ritrassi le ville circunstanti + da l’empio cólto che ’l mondo sedusse. + + Questi altri fuochi tutti contemplanti + uomini fuoro, accesi di quel caldo + che fa nascere i fiori e ’ frutti santi. + + Qui è Maccario, qui è Romoaldo, + qui son li frati miei che dentro ai chiostri + fermar li piedi e tennero il cor saldo». + + E io a lui: «L’affetto che dimostri + meco parlando, e la buona sembianza + ch’io veggio e noto in tutti li ardor vostri, + + così m’ha dilatata mia fidanza, + come ’l sol fa la rosa quando aperta + tanto divien quant’ ell’ ha di possanza. + + Però ti priego, e tu, padre, m’accerta + s’io posso prender tanta grazia, ch’io + ti veggia con imagine scoverta». + + Ond’ elli: «Frate, il tuo alto disio + s’adempierà in su l’ultima spera, + ove s’adempion tutti li altri e ’l mio. + + Ivi è perfetta, matura e intera + ciascuna disïanza; in quella sola + è ogne parte là ove sempr’ era, + + perché non è in loco e non s’impola; + e nostra scala infino ad essa varca, + onde così dal viso ti s’invola. + + Infin là sù la vide il patriarca + Iacobbe porger la superna parte, + quando li apparve d’angeli sì carca. + + Ma, per salirla, mo nessun diparte + da terra i piedi, e la regola mia + rimasa è per danno de le carte. + + Le mura che solieno esser badia + fatte sono spelonche, e le cocolle + sacca son piene di farina ria. + + Ma grave usura tanto non si tolle + contra ’l piacer di Dio, quanto quel frutto + che fa il cor de’ monaci sì folle; + + ché quantunque la Chiesa guarda, tutto + è de la gente che per Dio dimanda; + non di parenti né d’altro più brutto. + + La carne d’i mortali è tanto blanda, + che giù non basta buon cominciamento + dal nascer de la quercia al far la ghianda. + + Pier cominciò sanz’ oro e sanz’ argento, + e io con orazione e con digiuno, + e Francesco umilmente il suo convento; + + e se guardi ’l principio di ciascuno, + poscia riguardi là dov’ è trascorso, + tu vederai del bianco fatto bruno. + + Veramente Iordan vòlto retrorso + più fu, e ’l mar fuggir, quando Dio volse, + mirabile a veder che qui ’l soccorso». + + Così mi disse, e indi si raccolse + al suo collegio, e ’l collegio si strinse; + poi, come turbo, in sù tutto s’avvolse. + + La dolce donna dietro a lor mi pinse + con un sol cenno su per quella scala, + sì sua virtù la mia natura vinse; + + né mai qua giù dove si monta e cala + naturalmente, fu sì ratto moto + ch’agguagliar si potesse a la mia ala. + + S’io torni mai, lettore, a quel divoto + trïunfo per lo quale io piango spesso + le mie peccata e ’l petto mi percuoto, + + tu non avresti in tanto tratto e messo + nel foco il dito, in quant’ io vidi ’l segno + che segue il Tauro e fui dentro da esso. + + O glorïose stelle, o lume pregno + di gran virtù, dal quale io riconosco + tutto, qual che si sia, il mio ingegno, + + con voi nasceva e s’ascondeva vosco + quelli ch’è padre d’ogne mortal vita, + quand’ io senti’ di prima l’aere tosco; + + e poi, quando mi fu grazia largita + d’entrar ne l’alta rota che vi gira, + la vostra regïon mi fu sortita. + + A voi divotamente ora sospira + l’anima mia, per acquistar virtute + al passo forte che a sé la tira. + + «Tu se’ sì presso a l’ultima salute», + cominciò Bëatrice, «che tu dei + aver le luci tue chiare e acute; + + e però, prima che tu più t’inlei, + rimira in giù, e vedi quanto mondo + sotto li piedi già esser ti fei; + + sì che ’l tuo cor, quantunque può, giocondo + s’appresenti a la turba trïunfante + che lieta vien per questo etera tondo». + + Col viso ritornai per tutte quante + le sette spere, e vidi questo globo + tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante; + + e quel consiglio per migliore approbo + che l’ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa + chiamar si puote veramente probo. + + Vidi la figlia di Latona incensa + sanza quell’ ombra che mi fu cagione + per che già la credetti rara e densa. + + L’aspetto del tuo nato, Iperïone, + quivi sostenni, e vidi com’ si move + circa e vicino a lui Maia e Dïone. + + Quindi m’apparve il temperar di Giove + tra ’l padre e ’l figlio; e quindi mi fu chiaro + il varïar che fanno di lor dove; + + e tutti e sette mi si dimostraro + quanto son grandi e quanto son veloci + e come sono in distante riparo. + + L’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci, + volgendom’ io con li etterni Gemelli, + tutta m’apparve da’ colli a le foci; + + poscia rivolsi li occhi a li occhi belli. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXIII + + + Come l’augello, intra l’amate fronde, + posato al nido de’ suoi dolci nati + la notte che le cose ci nasconde, + + che, per veder li aspetti disïati + e per trovar lo cibo onde li pasca, + in che gravi labor li sono aggrati, + + previene il tempo in su aperta frasca, + e con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, + fiso guardando pur che l’alba nasca; + + così la donna mïa stava eretta + e attenta, rivolta inver’ la plaga + sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta: + + sì che, veggendola io sospesa e vaga, + fecimi qual è quei che disïando + altro vorria, e sperando s’appaga. + + Ma poco fu tra uno e altro quando, + del mio attender, dico, e del vedere + lo ciel venir più e più rischiarando; + + e Bëatrice disse: «Ecco le schiere + del trïunfo di Cristo e tutto ’l frutto + ricolto del girar di queste spere!». + + Pariemi che ’l suo viso ardesse tutto, + e li occhi avea di letizia sì pieni, + che passarmen convien sanza costrutto. + + Quale ne’ plenilunïi sereni + Trivïa ride tra le ninfe etterne + che dipingon lo ciel per tutti i seni, + + vid’ i’ sopra migliaia di lucerne + un sol che tutte quante l’accendea, + come fa ’l nostro le viste superne; + + e per la viva luce trasparea + la lucente sustanza tanto chiara + nel viso mio, che non la sostenea. + + Oh Bëatrice, dolce guida e cara! + Ella mi disse: «Quel che ti sobranza + è virtù da cui nulla si ripara. + + Quivi è la sapïenza e la possanza + ch’aprì le strade tra ’l cielo e la terra, + onde fu già sì lunga disïanza». + + Come foco di nube si diserra + per dilatarsi sì che non vi cape, + e fuor di sua natura in giù s’atterra, + + la mente mia così, tra quelle dape + fatta più grande, di sé stessa uscìo, + e che si fesse rimembrar non sape. + + «Apri li occhi e riguarda qual son io; + tu hai vedute cose, che possente + se’ fatto a sostener lo riso mio». + + Io era come quei che si risente + di visïone oblita e che s’ingegna + indarno di ridurlasi a la mente, + + quand’ io udi’ questa proferta, degna + di tanto grato, che mai non si stingue + del libro che ’l preterito rassegna. + + Se mo sonasser tutte quelle lingue + che Polimnïa con le suore fero + del latte lor dolcissimo più pingue, + + per aiutarmi, al millesmo del vero + non si verria, cantando il santo riso + e quanto il santo aspetto facea mero; + + e così, figurando il paradiso, + convien saltar lo sacrato poema, + come chi trova suo cammin riciso. + + Ma chi pensasse il ponderoso tema + e l’omero mortal che se ne carca, + nol biasmerebbe se sott’ esso trema: + + non è pareggio da picciola barca + quel che fendendo va l’ardita prora, + né da nocchier ch’a sé medesmo parca. + + «Perché la faccia mia sì t’innamora, + che tu non ti rivolgi al bel giardino + che sotto i raggi di Cristo s’infiora? + + Quivi è la rosa in che ’l verbo divino + carne si fece; quivi son li gigli + al cui odor si prese il buon cammino». + + Così Beatrice; e io, che a’ suoi consigli + tutto era pronto, ancora mi rendei + a la battaglia de’ debili cigli. + + Come a raggio di sol, che puro mei + per fratta nube, già prato di fiori + vider, coverti d’ombra, li occhi miei; + + vid’ io così più turbe di splendori, + folgorate di sù da raggi ardenti, + sanza veder principio di folgóri. + + O benigna vertù che sì li ’mprenti, + sù t’essaltasti, per largirmi loco + a li occhi lì che non t’eran possenti. + + Il nome del bel fior ch’io sempre invoco + e mane e sera, tutto mi ristrinse + l’animo ad avvisar lo maggior foco; + + e come ambo le luci mi dipinse + il quale e il quanto de la viva stella + che là sù vince come qua giù vinse, + + per entro il cielo scese una facella, + formata in cerchio a guisa di corona, + e cinsela e girossi intorno ad ella. + + Qualunque melodia più dolce suona + qua giù e più a sé l’anima tira, + parrebbe nube che squarciata tona, + + comparata al sonar di quella lira + onde si coronava il bel zaffiro + del quale il ciel più chiaro s’inzaffira. + + «Io sono amore angelico, che giro + l’alta letizia che spira del ventre + che fu albergo del nostro disiro; + + e girerommi, donna del ciel, mentre + che seguirai tuo figlio, e farai dia + più la spera suprema perché lì entre». + + Così la circulata melodia + si sigillava, e tutti li altri lumi + facean sonare il nome di Maria. + + Lo real manto di tutti i volumi + del mondo, che più ferve e più s’avviva + ne l’alito di Dio e nei costumi, + + avea sopra di noi l’interna riva + tanto distante, che la sua parvenza, + là dov’ io era, ancor non appariva: + + però non ebber li occhi miei potenza + di seguitar la coronata fiamma + che si levò appresso sua semenza. + + E come fantolin che ’nver’ la mamma + tende le braccia, poi che ’l latte prese, + per l’animo che ’nfin di fuor s’infiamma; + + ciascun di quei candori in sù si stese + con la sua cima, sì che l’alto affetto + ch’elli avieno a Maria mi fu palese. + + Indi rimaser lì nel mio cospetto, + ‘Regina celi’ cantando sì dolce, + che mai da me non si partì ’l diletto. + + Oh quanta è l’ubertà che si soffolce + in quelle arche ricchissime che fuoro + a seminar qua giù buone bobolce! + + Quivi si vive e gode del tesoro + che s’acquistò piangendo ne lo essilio + di Babillòn, ove si lasciò l’oro. + + Quivi trïunfa, sotto l’alto Filio + di Dio e di Maria, di sua vittoria, + e con l’antico e col novo concilio, + + colui che tien le chiavi di tal gloria. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXIV + + + «O sodalizio eletto a la gran cena + del benedetto Agnello, il qual vi ciba + sì, che la vostra voglia è sempre piena, + + se per grazia di Dio questi preliba + di quel che cade de la vostra mensa, + prima che morte tempo li prescriba, + + ponete mente a l’affezione immensa + e roratelo alquanto: voi bevete + sempre del fonte onde vien quel ch’ei pensa». + + Così Beatrice; e quelle anime liete + si fero spere sopra fissi poli, + fiammando, a volte, a guisa di comete. + + E come cerchi in tempra d’orïuoli + si giran sì, che ’l primo a chi pon mente + quïeto pare, e l’ultimo che voli; + + così quelle carole, differente- + mente danzando, de la sua ricchezza + mi facieno stimar, veloci e lente. + + Di quella ch’io notai di più carezza + vid’ ïo uscire un foco sì felice, + che nullo vi lasciò di più chiarezza; + + e tre fïate intorno di Beatrice + si volse con un canto tanto divo, + che la mia fantasia nol mi ridice. + + Però salta la penna e non lo scrivo: + ché l’imagine nostra a cotai pieghe, + non che ’l parlare, è troppo color vivo. + + «O santa suora mia che sì ne prieghe + divota, per lo tuo ardente affetto + da quella bella spera mi disleghe». + + Poscia fermato, il foco benedetto + a la mia donna dirizzò lo spiro, + che favellò così com’ i’ ho detto. + + Ed ella: «O luce etterna del gran viro + a cui Nostro Segnor lasciò le chiavi, + ch’ei portò giù, di questo gaudio miro, + + tenta costui di punti lievi e gravi, + come ti piace, intorno de la fede, + per la qual tu su per lo mare andavi. + + S’elli ama bene e bene spera e crede, + non t’è occulto, perché ’l viso hai quivi + dov’ ogne cosa dipinta si vede; + + ma perché questo regno ha fatto civi + per la verace fede, a glorïarla, + di lei parlare è ben ch’a lui arrivi». + + Sì come il baccialier s’arma e non parla + fin che ’l maestro la question propone, + per approvarla, non per terminarla, + + così m’armava io d’ogne ragione + mentre ch’ella dicea, per esser presto + a tal querente e a tal professione. + + «Dì, buon Cristiano, fatti manifesto: + fede che è?». Ond’ io levai la fronte + in quella luce onde spirava questo; + + poi mi volsi a Beatrice, ed essa pronte + sembianze femmi perch’ ïo spandessi + l’acqua di fuor del mio interno fonte. + + «La Grazia che mi dà ch’io mi confessi», + comincia’ io, «da l’alto primipilo, + faccia li miei concetti bene espressi». + + E seguitai: «Come ’l verace stilo + ne scrisse, padre, del tuo caro frate + che mise teco Roma nel buon filo, + + fede è sustanza di cose sperate + e argomento de le non parventi; + e questa pare a me sua quiditate». + + Allora udi’: «Dirittamente senti, + se bene intendi perché la ripuose + tra le sustanze, e poi tra li argomenti». + + E io appresso: «Le profonde cose + che mi largiscon qui la lor parvenza, + a li occhi di là giù son sì ascose, + + che l’esser loro v’è in sola credenza, + sopra la qual si fonda l’alta spene; + e però di sustanza prende intenza. + + E da questa credenza ci convene + silogizzar, sanz’ avere altra vista: + però intenza d’argomento tene». + + Allora udi’: «Se quantunque s’acquista + giù per dottrina, fosse così ’nteso, + non lì avria loco ingegno di sofista». + + Così spirò di quello amore acceso; + indi soggiunse: «Assai bene è trascorsa + d’esta moneta già la lega e ’l peso; + + ma dimmi se tu l’hai ne la tua borsa». + Ond’ io: «Sì ho, sì lucida e sì tonda, + che nel suo conio nulla mi s’inforsa». + + Appresso uscì de la luce profonda + che lì splendeva: «Questa cara gioia + sopra la quale ogne virtù si fonda, + + onde ti venne?». E io: «La larga ploia + de lo Spirito Santo, ch’è diffusa + in su le vecchie e ’n su le nuove cuoia, + + è silogismo che la m’ha conchiusa + acutamente sì, che ’nverso d’ella + ogne dimostrazion mi pare ottusa». + + Io udi’ poi: «L’antica e la novella + proposizion che così ti conchiude, + perché l’hai tu per divina favella?». + + E io: «La prova che ’l ver mi dischiude, + son l’opere seguite, a che natura + non scalda ferro mai né batte incude». + + Risposto fummi: «Dì, chi t’assicura + che quell’ opere fosser? Quel medesmo + che vuol provarsi, non altri, il ti giura». + + «Se ’l mondo si rivolse al cristianesmo», + diss’ io, «sanza miracoli, quest’ uno + è tal, che li altri non sono il centesmo: + + ché tu intrasti povero e digiuno + in campo, a seminar la buona pianta + che fu già vite e ora è fatta pruno». + + Finito questo, l’alta corte santa + risonò per le spere un ‘Dio laudamo’ + ne la melode che là sù si canta. + + E quel baron che sì di ramo in ramo, + essaminando, già tratto m’avea, + che a l’ultime fronde appressavamo, + + ricominciò: «La Grazia, che donnea + con la tua mente, la bocca t’aperse + infino a qui come aprir si dovea, + + sì ch’io approvo ciò che fuori emerse; + ma or convien espremer quel che credi, + e onde a la credenza tua s’offerse». + + «O santo padre, e spirito che vedi + ciò che credesti sì, che tu vincesti + ver’ lo sepulcro più giovani piedi», + + comincia’ io, «tu vuo’ ch’io manifesti + la forma qui del pronto creder mio, + e anche la cagion di lui chiedesti. + + E io rispondo: Io credo in uno Dio + solo ed etterno, che tutto ’l ciel move, + non moto, con amore e con disio; + + e a tal creder non ho io pur prove + fisice e metafisice, ma dalmi + anche la verità che quinci piove + + per Moïsè, per profeti e per salmi, + per l’Evangelio e per voi che scriveste + poi che l’ardente Spirto vi fé almi; + + e credo in tre persone etterne, e queste + credo una essenza sì una e sì trina, + che soffera congiunto ‘sono’ ed ‘este’. + + De la profonda condizion divina + ch’io tocco mo, la mente mi sigilla + più volte l’evangelica dottrina. + + Quest’ è ’l principio, quest’ è la favilla + che si dilata in fiamma poi vivace, + e come stella in cielo in me scintilla». + + Come ’l segnor ch’ascolta quel che i piace, + da indi abbraccia il servo, gratulando + per la novella, tosto ch’el si tace; + + così, benedicendomi cantando, + tre volte cinse me, sì com’ io tacqui, + l’appostolico lume al cui comando + + io avea detto: sì nel dir li piacqui! + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXV + + + Se mai continga che ’l poema sacro + al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, + sì che m’ha fatto per molti anni macro, + + vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra + del bello ovile ov’ io dormi’ agnello, + nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra; + + con altra voce omai, con altro vello + ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte + del mio battesmo prenderò ’l cappello; + + però che ne la fede, che fa conte + l’anime a Dio, quivi intra’ io, e poi + Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte. + + Indi si mosse un lume verso noi + di quella spera ond’ uscì la primizia + che lasciò Cristo d’i vicari suoi; + + e la mia donna, piena di letizia, + mi disse: «Mira, mira: ecco il barone + per cui là giù si vicita Galizia». + + Sì come quando il colombo si pone + presso al compagno, l’uno a l’altro pande, + girando e mormorando, l’affezione; + + così vid’ ïo l’un da l’altro grande + principe glorïoso essere accolto, + laudando il cibo che là sù li prande. + + Ma poi che ’l gratular si fu assolto, + tacito coram me ciascun s’affisse, + ignito sì che vincëa ’l mio volto. + + Ridendo allora Bëatrice disse: + «Inclita vita per cui la larghezza + de la nostra basilica si scrisse, + + fa risonar la spene in questa altezza: + tu sai, che tante fiate la figuri, + quante Iesù ai tre fé più carezza». + + «Leva la testa e fa che t’assicuri: + che ciò che vien qua sù del mortal mondo, + convien ch’ai nostri raggi si maturi». + + Questo conforto del foco secondo + mi venne; ond’ io leväi li occhi a’ monti + che li ’ncurvaron pria col troppo pondo. + + «Poi che per grazia vuol che tu t’affronti + lo nostro Imperadore, anzi la morte, + ne l’aula più secreta co’ suoi conti, + + sì che, veduto il ver di questa corte, + la spene, che là giù bene innamora, + in te e in altrui di ciò conforte, + + di’ quel ch’ell’ è, di’ come se ne ’nfiora + la mente tua, e dì onde a te venne». + Così seguì ’l secondo lume ancora. + + E quella pïa che guidò le penne + de le mie ali a così alto volo, + a la risposta così mi prevenne: + + «La Chiesa militante alcun figliuolo + non ha con più speranza, com’ è scritto + nel Sol che raggia tutto nostro stuolo: + + però li è conceduto che d’Egitto + vegna in Ierusalemme per vedere, + anzi che ’l militar li sia prescritto. + + Li altri due punti, che non per sapere + son dimandati, ma perch’ ei rapporti + quanto questa virtù t’è in piacere, + + a lui lasc’ io, ché non li saran forti + né di iattanza; ed elli a ciò risponda, + e la grazia di Dio ciò li comporti». + + Come discente ch’a dottor seconda + pronto e libente in quel ch’elli è esperto, + perché la sua bontà si disasconda, + + «Spene», diss’ io, «è uno attender certo + de la gloria futura, il qual produce + grazia divina e precedente merto. + + Da molte stelle mi vien questa luce; + ma quei la distillò nel mio cor pria + che fu sommo cantor del sommo duce. + + ‘Sperino in te’, ne la sua tëodia + dice, ‘color che sanno il nome tuo’: + e chi nol sa, s’elli ha la fede mia? + + Tu mi stillasti, con lo stillar suo, + ne la pistola poi; sì ch’io son pieno, + e in altrui vostra pioggia repluo». + + Mentr’ io diceva, dentro al vivo seno + di quello incendio tremolava un lampo + sùbito e spesso a guisa di baleno. + + Indi spirò: «L’amore ond’ ïo avvampo + ancor ver’ la virtù che mi seguette + infin la palma e a l’uscir del campo, + + vuol ch’io respiri a te che ti dilette + di lei; ed emmi a grato che tu diche + quello che la speranza ti ’mpromette». + + E io: «Le nove e le scritture antiche + pongon lo segno, ed esso lo mi addita, + de l’anime che Dio s’ha fatte amiche. + + Dice Isaia che ciascuna vestita + ne la sua terra fia di doppia vesta: + e la sua terra è questa dolce vita; + + e ’l tuo fratello assai vie più digesta, + là dove tratta de le bianche stole, + questa revelazion ci manifesta». + + E prima, appresso al fin d’este parole, + ‘Sperent in te’ di sopr’ a noi s’udì; + a che rispuoser tutte le carole. + + Poscia tra esse un lume si schiarì + sì che, se ’l Cancro avesse un tal cristallo, + l’inverno avrebbe un mese d’un sol dì. + + E come surge e va ed entra in ballo + vergine lieta, sol per fare onore + a la novizia, non per alcun fallo, + + così vid’ io lo schiarato splendore + venire a’ due che si volgieno a nota + qual conveniesi al loro ardente amore. + + Misesi lì nel canto e ne la rota; + e la mia donna in lor tenea l’aspetto, + pur come sposa tacita e immota. + + «Questi è colui che giacque sopra ’l petto + del nostro pellicano, e questi fue + di su la croce al grande officio eletto». + + La donna mia così; né però piùe + mosser la vista sua di stare attenta + poscia che prima le parole sue. + + Qual è colui ch’adocchia e s’argomenta + di vedere eclissar lo sole un poco, + che, per veder, non vedente diventa; + + tal mi fec’ ïo a quell’ ultimo foco + mentre che detto fu: «Perché t’abbagli + per veder cosa che qui non ha loco? + + In terra è terra il mio corpo, e saragli + tanto con li altri, che ’l numero nostro + con l’etterno proposito s’agguagli. + + Con le due stole nel beato chiostro + son le due luci sole che saliro; + e questo apporterai nel mondo vostro». + + A questa voce l’infiammato giro + si quïetò con esso il dolce mischio + che si facea nel suon del trino spiro, + + sì come, per cessar fatica o rischio, + li remi, pria ne l’acqua ripercossi, + tutti si posano al sonar d’un fischio. + + Ahi quanto ne la mente mi commossi, + quando mi volsi per veder Beatrice, + per non poter veder, benché io fossi + + presso di lei, e nel mondo felice! + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXVI + + + Mentr’ io dubbiava per lo viso spento, + de la fulgida fiamma che lo spense + uscì un spiro che mi fece attento, + + dicendo: «Intanto che tu ti risense + de la vista che haï in me consunta, + ben è che ragionando la compense. + + Comincia dunque; e dì ove s’appunta + l’anima tua, e fa ragion che sia + la vista in te smarrita e non defunta: + + perché la donna che per questa dia + regïon ti conduce, ha ne lo sguardo + la virtù ch’ebbe la man d’Anania». + + Io dissi: «Al suo piacere e tosto e tardo + vegna remedio a li occhi, che fuor porte + quand’ ella entrò col foco ond’ io sempr’ ardo. + + Lo ben che fa contenta questa corte, + Alfa e O è di quanta scrittura + mi legge Amore o lievemente o forte». + + Quella medesma voce che paura + tolta m’avea del sùbito abbarbaglio, + di ragionare ancor mi mise in cura; + + e disse: «Certo a più angusto vaglio + ti conviene schiarar: dicer convienti + chi drizzò l’arco tuo a tal berzaglio». + + E io: «Per filosofici argomenti + e per autorità che quinci scende + cotale amor convien che in me si ’mprenti: + + ché ’l bene, in quanto ben, come s’intende, + così accende amore, e tanto maggio + quanto più di bontate in sé comprende. + + Dunque a l’essenza ov’ è tanto avvantaggio, + che ciascun ben che fuor di lei si trova + altro non è ch’un lume di suo raggio, + + più che in altra convien che si mova + la mente, amando, di ciascun che cerne + il vero in che si fonda questa prova. + + Tal vero a l’intelletto mïo sterne + colui che mi dimostra il primo amore + di tutte le sustanze sempiterne. + + Sternel la voce del verace autore, + che dice a Moïsè, di sé parlando: + ‘Io ti farò vedere ogne valore’. + + Sternilmi tu ancora, incominciando + l’alto preconio che grida l’arcano + di qui là giù sovra ogne altro bando». + + E io udi’: «Per intelletto umano + e per autoritadi a lui concorde + d’i tuoi amori a Dio guarda il sovrano. + + Ma dì ancor se tu senti altre corde + tirarti verso lui, sì che tu suone + con quanti denti questo amor ti morde». + + Non fu latente la santa intenzione + de l’aguglia di Cristo, anzi m’accorsi + dove volea menar mia professione. + + Però ricominciai: «Tutti quei morsi + che posson far lo cor volgere a Dio, + a la mia caritate son concorsi: + + ché l’essere del mondo e l’esser mio, + la morte ch’el sostenne perch’ io viva, + e quel che spera ogne fedel com’ io, + + con la predetta conoscenza viva, + tratto m’hanno del mar de l’amor torto, + e del diritto m’han posto a la riva. + + Le fronde onde s’infronda tutto l’orto + de l’ortolano etterno, am’ io cotanto + quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto». + + Sì com’ io tacqui, un dolcissimo canto + risonò per lo cielo, e la mia donna + dicea con li altri: «Santo, santo, santo!». + + E come a lume acuto si disonna + per lo spirto visivo che ricorre + a lo splendor che va di gonna in gonna, + + e lo svegliato ciò che vede aborre, + sì nescïa è la sùbita vigilia + fin che la stimativa non soccorre; + + così de li occhi miei ogne quisquilia + fugò Beatrice col raggio d’i suoi, + che rifulgea da più di mille milia: + + onde mei che dinanzi vidi poi; + e quasi stupefatto domandai + d’un quarto lume ch’io vidi tra noi. + + E la mia donna: «Dentro da quei rai + vagheggia il suo fattor l’anima prima + che la prima virtù creasse mai». + + Come la fronda che flette la cima + nel transito del vento, e poi si leva + per la propria virtù che la soblima, + + fec’ io in tanto in quant’ ella diceva, + stupendo, e poi mi rifece sicuro + un disio di parlare ond’ ïo ardeva. + + E cominciai: «O pomo che maturo + solo prodotto fosti, o padre antico + a cui ciascuna sposa è figlia e nuro, + + divoto quanto posso a te supplìco + perché mi parli: tu vedi mia voglia, + e per udirti tosto non la dico». + + Talvolta un animal coverto broglia, + sì che l’affetto convien che si paia + per lo seguir che face a lui la ’nvoglia; + + e similmente l’anima primaia + mi facea trasparer per la coverta + quant’ ella a compiacermi venìa gaia. + + Indi spirò: «Sanz’ essermi proferta + da te, la voglia tua discerno meglio + che tu qualunque cosa t’è più certa; + + perch’ io la veggio nel verace speglio + che fa di sé pareglio a l’altre cose, + e nulla face lui di sé pareglio. + + Tu vuogli udir quant’ è che Dio mi puose + ne l’eccelso giardino, ove costei + a così lunga scala ti dispuose, + + e quanto fu diletto a li occhi miei, + e la propria cagion del gran disdegno, + e l’idïoma ch’usai e che fei. + + Or, figluol mio, non il gustar del legno + fu per sé la cagion di tanto essilio, + ma solamente il trapassar del segno. + + Quindi onde mosse tua donna Virgilio, + quattromilia trecento e due volumi + di sol desiderai questo concilio; + + e vidi lui tornare a tutt’ i lumi + de la sua strada novecento trenta + fïate, mentre ch’ïo in terra fu’mi. + + La lingua ch’io parlai fu tutta spenta + innanzi che a l’ovra inconsummabile + fosse la gente di Nembròt attenta: + + ché nullo effetto mai razïonabile, + per lo piacere uman che rinovella + seguendo il cielo, sempre fu durabile. + + Opera naturale è ch’uom favella; + ma così o così, natura lascia + poi fare a voi secondo che v’abbella. + + Pria ch’i’ scendessi a l’infernale ambascia, + I s’appellava in terra il sommo bene + onde vien la letizia che mi fascia; + + e El si chiamò poi: e ciò convene, + ché l’uso d’i mortali è come fronda + in ramo, che sen va e altra vene. + + Nel monte che si leva più da l’onda, + fu’ io, con vita pura e disonesta, + da la prim’ ora a quella che seconda, + + come ’l sol muta quadra, l’ora sesta». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXVII + + + ‘Al Padre, al Figlio, a lo Spirito Santo’, + cominciò, ‘gloria!’, tutto ’l paradiso, + sì che m’inebrïava il dolce canto. + + Ciò ch’io vedeva mi sembiava un riso + de l’universo; per che mia ebbrezza + intrava per l’udire e per lo viso. + + Oh gioia! oh ineffabile allegrezza! + oh vita intègra d’amore e di pace! + oh sanza brama sicura ricchezza! + + Dinanzi a li occhi miei le quattro face + stavano accese, e quella che pria venne + incominciò a farsi più vivace, + + e tal ne la sembianza sua divenne, + qual diverrebbe Iove, s’elli e Marte + fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne. + + La provedenza, che quivi comparte + vice e officio, nel beato coro + silenzio posto avea da ogne parte, + + quand’ ïo udi’: «Se io mi trascoloro, + non ti maravigliar, ché, dicend’ io, + vedrai trascolorar tutti costoro. + + Quelli ch’usurpa in terra il luogo mio, + il luogo mio, il luogo mio, che vaca + ne la presenza del Figliuol di Dio, + + fatt’ ha del cimitero mio cloaca + del sangue e de la puzza; onde ’l perverso + che cadde di qua sù, là giù si placa». + + Di quel color che per lo sole avverso + nube dipigne da sera e da mane, + vid’ ïo allora tutto ’l ciel cosperso. + + E come donna onesta che permane + di sé sicura, e per l’altrui fallanza, + pur ascoltando, timida si fane, + + così Beatrice trasmutò sembianza; + e tale eclissi credo che ’n ciel fue + quando patì la supprema possanza. + + Poi procedetter le parole sue + con voce tanto da sé trasmutata, + che la sembianza non si mutò piùe: + + «Non fu la sposa di Cristo allevata + del sangue mio, di Lin, di quel di Cleto, + per essere ad acquisto d’oro usata; + + ma per acquisto d’esto viver lieto + e Sisto e Pïo e Calisto e Urbano + sparser lo sangue dopo molto fleto. + + Non fu nostra intenzion ch’a destra mano + d’i nostri successor parte sedesse, + parte da l’altra del popol cristiano; + + né che le chiavi che mi fuor concesse, + divenisser signaculo in vessillo + che contra battezzati combattesse; + + né ch’io fossi figura di sigillo + a privilegi venduti e mendaci, + ond’ io sovente arrosso e disfavillo. + + In vesta di pastor lupi rapaci + si veggion di qua sù per tutti i paschi: + o difesa di Dio, perché pur giaci? + + Del sangue nostro Caorsini e Guaschi + s’apparecchian di bere: o buon principio, + a che vil fine convien che tu caschi! + + Ma l’alta provedenza, che con Scipio + difese a Roma la gloria del mondo, + soccorrà tosto, sì com’ io concipio; + + e tu, figliuol, che per lo mortal pondo + ancor giù tornerai, apri la bocca, + e non asconder quel ch’io non ascondo». + + Sì come di vapor gelati fiocca + in giuso l’aere nostro, quando ’l corno + de la capra del ciel col sol si tocca, + + in sù vid’ io così l’etera addorno + farsi e fioccar di vapor trïunfanti + che fatto avien con noi quivi soggiorno. + + Lo viso mio seguiva i suoi sembianti, + e seguì fin che ’l mezzo, per lo molto, + li tolse il trapassar del più avanti. + + Onde la donna, che mi vide assolto + de l’attendere in sù, mi disse: «Adima + il viso e guarda come tu se’ vòlto». + + Da l’ora ch’ïo avea guardato prima + i’ vidi mosso me per tutto l’arco + che fa dal mezzo al fine il primo clima; + + sì ch’io vedea di là da Gade il varco + folle d’Ulisse, e di qua presso il lito + nel qual si fece Europa dolce carco. + + E più mi fora discoverto il sito + di questa aiuola; ma ’l sol procedea + sotto i mie’ piedi un segno e più partito. + + La mente innamorata, che donnea + con la mia donna sempre, di ridure + ad essa li occhi più che mai ardea; + + e se natura o arte fé pasture + da pigliare occhi, per aver la mente, + in carne umana o ne le sue pitture, + + tutte adunate, parrebber nïente + ver’ lo piacer divin che mi refulse, + quando mi volsi al suo viso ridente. + + E la virtù che lo sguardo m’indulse, + del bel nido di Leda mi divelse, + e nel ciel velocissimo m’impulse. + + Le parti sue vivissime ed eccelse + sì uniforme son, ch’i’ non so dire + qual Bëatrice per loco mi scelse. + + Ma ella, che vedëa ’l mio disire, + incominciò, ridendo tanto lieta, + che Dio parea nel suo volto gioire: + + «La natura del mondo, che quïeta + il mezzo e tutto l’altro intorno move, + quinci comincia come da sua meta; + + e questo cielo non ha altro dove + che la mente divina, in che s’accende + l’amor che ’l volge e la virtù ch’ei piove. + + Luce e amor d’un cerchio lui comprende, + sì come questo li altri; e quel precinto + colui che ’l cinge solamente intende. + + Non è suo moto per altro distinto, + ma li altri son mensurati da questo, + sì come diece da mezzo e da quinto; + + e come il tempo tegna in cotal testo + le sue radici e ne li altri le fronde, + omai a te può esser manifesto. + + Oh cupidigia che i mortali affonde + sì sotto te, che nessuno ha podere + di trarre li occhi fuor de le tue onde! + + Ben fiorisce ne li uomini il volere; + ma la pioggia continüa converte + in bozzacchioni le sosine vere. + + Fede e innocenza son reperte + solo ne’ parvoletti; poi ciascuna + pria fugge che le guance sian coperte. + + Tale, balbuzïendo ancor, digiuna, + che poi divora, con la lingua sciolta, + qualunque cibo per qualunque luna; + + e tal, balbuzïendo, ama e ascolta + la madre sua, che, con loquela intera, + disïa poi di vederla sepolta. + + Così si fa la pelle bianca nera + nel primo aspetto de la bella figlia + di quel ch’apporta mane e lascia sera. + + Tu, perché non ti facci maraviglia, + pensa che ’n terra non è chi governi; + onde sì svïa l’umana famiglia. + + Ma prima che gennaio tutto si sverni + per la centesma ch’è là giù negletta, + raggeran sì questi cerchi superni, + + che la fortuna che tanto s’aspetta, + le poppe volgerà u’ son le prore, + sì che la classe correrà diretta; + + e vero frutto verrà dopo ’l fiore». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXVIII + + + Poscia che ’ncontro a la vita presente + d’i miseri mortali aperse ’l vero + quella che ’mparadisa la mia mente, + + come in lo specchio fiamma di doppiero + vede colui che se n’alluma retro, + prima che l’abbia in vista o in pensiero, + + e sé rivolge per veder se ’l vetro + li dice il vero, e vede ch’el s’accorda + con esso come nota con suo metro; + + così la mia memoria si ricorda + ch’io feci riguardando ne’ belli occhi + onde a pigliarmi fece Amor la corda. + + E com’ io mi rivolsi e furon tocchi + li miei da ciò che pare in quel volume, + quandunque nel suo giro ben s’adocchi, + + un punto vidi che raggiava lume + acuto sì, che ’l viso ch’elli affoca + chiuder conviensi per lo forte acume; + + e quale stella par quinci più poca, + parrebbe luna, locata con esso + come stella con stella si collòca. + + Forse cotanto quanto pare appresso + alo cigner la luce che ’l dipigne + quando ’l vapor che ’l porta più è spesso, + + distante intorno al punto un cerchio d’igne + si girava sì ratto, ch’avria vinto + quel moto che più tosto il mondo cigne; + + e questo era d’un altro circumcinto, + e quel dal terzo, e ’l terzo poi dal quarto, + dal quinto il quarto, e poi dal sesto il quinto. + + Sopra seguiva il settimo sì sparto + già di larghezza, che ’l messo di Iuno + intero a contenerlo sarebbe arto. + + Così l’ottavo e ’l nono; e chiascheduno + più tardo si movea, secondo ch’era + in numero distante più da l’uno; + + e quello avea la fiamma più sincera + cui men distava la favilla pura, + credo, però che più di lei s’invera. + + La donna mia, che mi vedëa in cura + forte sospeso, disse: «Da quel punto + depende il cielo e tutta la natura. + + Mira quel cerchio che più li è congiunto; + e sappi che ’l suo muovere è sì tosto + per l’affocato amore ond’ elli è punto». + + E io a lei: «Se ’l mondo fosse posto + con l’ordine ch’io veggio in quelle rote, + sazio m’avrebbe ciò che m’è proposto; + + ma nel mondo sensibile si puote + veder le volte tanto più divine, + quant’ elle son dal centro più remote. + + Onde, se ’l mio disir dee aver fine + in questo miro e angelico templo + che solo amore e luce ha per confine, + + udir convienmi ancor come l’essemplo + e l’essemplare non vanno d’un modo, + ché io per me indarno a ciò contemplo». + + «Se li tuoi diti non sono a tal nodo + sufficïenti, non è maraviglia: + tanto, per non tentare, è fatto sodo!». + + Così la donna mia; poi disse: «Piglia + quel ch’io ti dicerò, se vuo’ saziarti; + e intorno da esso t’assottiglia. + + Li cerchi corporai sono ampi e arti + secondo il più e ’l men de la virtute + che si distende per tutte lor parti. + + Maggior bontà vuol far maggior salute; + maggior salute maggior corpo cape, + s’elli ha le parti igualmente compiute. + + Dunque costui che tutto quanto rape + l’altro universo seco, corrisponde + al cerchio che più ama e che più sape: + + per che, se tu a la virtù circonde + la tua misura, non a la parvenza + de le sustanze che t’appaion tonde, + + tu vederai mirabil consequenza + di maggio a più e di minore a meno, + in ciascun cielo, a süa intelligenza». + + Come rimane splendido e sereno + l’emisperio de l’aere, quando soffia + Borea da quella guancia ond’ è più leno, + + per che si purga e risolve la roffia + che pria turbava, sì che ’l ciel ne ride + con le bellezze d’ogne sua paroffia; + + così fec’ïo, poi che mi provide + la donna mia del suo risponder chiaro, + e come stella in cielo il ver si vide. + + E poi che le parole sue restaro, + non altrimenti ferro disfavilla + che bolle, come i cerchi sfavillaro. + + L’incendio suo seguiva ogne scintilla; + ed eran tante, che ’l numero loro + più che ’l doppiar de li scacchi s’inmilla. + + Io sentiva osannar di coro in coro + al punto fisso che li tiene a li ubi, + e terrà sempre, ne’ quai sempre fuoro. + + E quella che vedëa i pensier dubi + ne la mia mente, disse: «I cerchi primi + t’hanno mostrato Serafi e Cherubi. + + Così veloci seguono i suoi vimi, + per somigliarsi al punto quanto ponno; + e posson quanto a veder son soblimi. + + Quelli altri amori che ’ntorno li vonno, + si chiaman Troni del divino aspetto, + per che ’l primo ternaro terminonno; + + e dei saper che tutti hanno diletto + quanto la sua veduta si profonda + nel vero in che si queta ogne intelletto. + + Quinci si può veder come si fonda + l’esser beato ne l’atto che vede, + non in quel ch’ama, che poscia seconda; + + e del vedere è misura mercede, + che grazia partorisce e buona voglia: + così di grado in grado si procede. + + L’altro ternaro, che così germoglia + in questa primavera sempiterna + che notturno Arïete non dispoglia, + + perpetüalemente ‘Osanna’ sberna + con tre melode, che suonano in tree + ordini di letizia onde s’interna. + + In essa gerarcia son l’altre dee: + prima Dominazioni, e poi Virtudi; + l’ordine terzo di Podestadi èe. + + Poscia ne’ due penultimi tripudi + Principati e Arcangeli si girano; + l’ultimo è tutto d’Angelici ludi. + + Questi ordini di sù tutti s’ammirano, + e di giù vincon sì, che verso Dio + tutti tirati sono e tutti tirano. + + E Dïonisio con tanto disio + a contemplar questi ordini si mise, + che li nomò e distinse com’ io. + + Ma Gregorio da lui poi si divise; + onde, sì tosto come li occhi aperse + in questo ciel, di sé medesmo rise. + + E se tanto secreto ver proferse + mortale in terra, non voglio ch’ammiri: + ché chi ’l vide qua sù gliel discoperse + + con altro assai del ver di questi giri». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXIX + + + Quando ambedue li figli di Latona, + coperti del Montone e de la Libra, + fanno de l’orizzonte insieme zona, + + quant’ è dal punto che ’l cenìt inlibra + infin che l’uno e l’altro da quel cinto, + cambiando l’emisperio, si dilibra, + + tanto, col volto di riso dipinto, + si tacque Bëatrice, riguardando + fiso nel punto che m’avëa vinto. + + Poi cominciò: «Io dico, e non dimando, + quel che tu vuoli udir, perch’ io l’ho visto + là ’ve s’appunta ogne ubi e ogne quando. + + Non per aver a sé di bene acquisto, + ch’esser non può, ma perché suo splendore + potesse, risplendendo, dir “Subsisto”, + + in sua etternità di tempo fore, + fuor d’ogne altro comprender, come i piacque, + s’aperse in nuovi amor l’etterno amore. + + Né prima quasi torpente si giacque; + ché né prima né poscia procedette + lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’ acque. + + Forma e materia, congiunte e purette, + usciro ad esser che non avia fallo, + come d’arco tricordo tre saette. + + E come in vetro, in ambra o in cristallo + raggio resplende sì, che dal venire + a l’esser tutto non è intervallo, + + così ’l triforme effetto del suo sire + ne l’esser suo raggiò insieme tutto + sanza distinzïone in essordire. + + Concreato fu ordine e costrutto + a le sustanze; e quelle furon cima + nel mondo in che puro atto fu produtto; + + pura potenza tenne la parte ima; + nel mezzo strinse potenza con atto + tal vime, che già mai non si divima. + + Ieronimo vi scrisse lungo tratto + di secoli de li angeli creati + anzi che l’altro mondo fosse fatto; + + ma questo vero è scritto in molti lati + da li scrittor de lo Spirito Santo, + e tu te n’avvedrai se bene agguati; + + e anche la ragione il vede alquanto, + che non concederebbe che ’ motori + sanza sua perfezion fosser cotanto. + + Or sai tu dove e quando questi amori + furon creati e come: sì che spenti + nel tuo disïo già son tre ardori. + + Né giugneriesi, numerando, al venti + sì tosto, come de li angeli parte + turbò il suggetto d’i vostri alimenti. + + L’altra rimase, e cominciò quest’ arte + che tu discerni, con tanto diletto, + che mai da circüir non si diparte. + + Principio del cader fu il maladetto + superbir di colui che tu vedesti + da tutti i pesi del mondo costretto. + + Quelli che vedi qui furon modesti + a riconoscer sé da la bontate + che li avea fatti a tanto intender presti: + + per che le viste lor furo essaltate + con grazia illuminante e con lor merto, + si c’hanno ferma e piena volontate; + + e non voglio che dubbi, ma sia certo, + che ricever la grazia è meritorio + secondo che l’affetto l’è aperto. + + Omai dintorno a questo consistorio + puoi contemplare assai, se le parole + mie son ricolte, sanz’ altro aiutorio. + + Ma perché ’n terra per le vostre scole + si legge che l’angelica natura + è tal, che ’ntende e si ricorda e vole, + + ancor dirò, perché tu veggi pura + la verità che là giù si confonde, + equivocando in sì fatta lettura. + + Queste sustanze, poi che fur gioconde + de la faccia di Dio, non volser viso + da essa, da cui nulla si nasconde: + + però non hanno vedere interciso + da novo obietto, e però non bisogna + rememorar per concetto diviso; + + sì che là giù, non dormendo, si sogna, + credendo e non credendo dicer vero; + ma ne l’uno è più colpa e più vergogna. + + Voi non andate giù per un sentiero + filosofando: tanto vi trasporta + l’amor de l’apparenza e ’l suo pensiero! + + E ancor questo qua sù si comporta + con men disdegno che quando è posposta + la divina Scrittura o quando è torta. + + Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa + seminarla nel mondo e quanto piace + chi umilmente con essa s’accosta. + + Per apparer ciascun s’ingegna e face + sue invenzioni; e quelle son trascorse + da’ predicanti e ’l Vangelio si tace. + + Un dice che la luna si ritorse + ne la passion di Cristo e s’interpuose, + per che ’l lume del sol giù non si porse; + + e mente, ché la luce si nascose + da sé: però a li Spani e a l’Indi + come a’ Giudei tale eclissi rispuose. + + Non ha Fiorenza tanti Lapi e Bindi + quante sì fatte favole per anno + in pergamo si gridan quinci e quindi: + + sì che le pecorelle, che non sanno, + tornan del pasco pasciute di vento, + e non le scusa non veder lo danno. + + Non disse Cristo al suo primo convento: + ‘Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance’; + ma diede lor verace fondamento; + + e quel tanto sonò ne le sue guance, + sì ch’a pugnar per accender la fede + de l’Evangelio fero scudo e lance. + + Ora si va con motti e con iscede + a predicare, e pur che ben si rida, + gonfia il cappuccio e più non si richiede. + + Ma tale uccel nel becchetto s’annida, + che se ’l vulgo il vedesse, vederebbe + la perdonanza di ch’el si confida: + + per cui tanta stoltezza in terra crebbe, + che, sanza prova d’alcun testimonio, + ad ogne promession si correrebbe. + + Di questo ingrassa il porco sant’ Antonio, + e altri assai che sono ancor più porci, + pagando di moneta sanza conio. + + Ma perché siam digressi assai, ritorci + li occhi oramai verso la dritta strada, + sì che la via col tempo si raccorci. + + Questa natura sì oltre s’ingrada + in numero, che mai non fu loquela + né concetto mortal che tanto vada; + + e se tu guardi quel che si revela + per Danïel, vedrai che ’n sue migliaia + determinato numero si cela. + + La prima luce, che tutta la raia, + per tanti modi in essa si recepe, + quanti son li splendori a chi s’appaia. + + Onde, però che a l’atto che concepe + segue l’affetto, d’amar la dolcezza + diversamente in essa ferve e tepe. + + Vedi l’eccelso omai e la larghezza + de l’etterno valor, poscia che tanti + speculi fatti s’ha in che si spezza, + + uno manendo in sé come davanti». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXX + + + Forse semilia miglia di lontano + ci ferve l’ora sesta, e questo mondo + china già l’ombra quasi al letto piano, + + quando ’l mezzo del cielo, a noi profondo, + comincia a farsi tal, ch’alcuna stella + perde il parere infino a questo fondo; + + e come vien la chiarissima ancella + del sol più oltre, così ’l ciel si chiude + di vista in vista infino a la più bella. + + Non altrimenti il trïunfo che lude + sempre dintorno al punto che mi vinse, + parendo inchiuso da quel ch’elli ’nchiude, + + a poco a poco al mio veder si stinse: + per che tornar con li occhi a Bëatrice + nulla vedere e amor mi costrinse. + + Se quanto infino a qui di lei si dice + fosse conchiuso tutto in una loda, + poca sarebbe a fornir questa vice. + + La bellezza ch’io vidi si trasmoda + non pur di là da noi, ma certo io credo + che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda. + + Da questo passo vinto mi concedo + più che già mai da punto di suo tema + soprato fosse comico o tragedo: + + ché, come sole in viso che più trema, + così lo rimembrar del dolce riso + la mente mia da me medesmo scema. + + Dal primo giorno ch’i’ vidi il suo viso + in questa vita, infino a questa vista, + non m’è il seguire al mio cantar preciso; + + ma or convien che mio seguir desista + più dietro a sua bellezza, poetando, + come a l’ultimo suo ciascuno artista. + + Cotal qual io lascio a maggior bando + che quel de la mia tuba, che deduce + l’ardüa sua matera terminando, + + con atto e voce di spedito duce + ricominciò: «Noi siamo usciti fore + del maggior corpo al ciel ch’è pura luce: + + luce intellettüal, piena d’amore; + amor di vero ben, pien di letizia; + letizia che trascende ogne dolzore. + + Qui vederai l’una e l’altra milizia + di paradiso, e l’una in quelli aspetti + che tu vedrai a l’ultima giustizia». + + Come sùbito lampo che discetti + li spiriti visivi, sì che priva + da l’atto l’occhio di più forti obietti, + + così mi circunfulse luce viva, + e lasciommi fasciato di tal velo + del suo fulgor, che nulla m’appariva. + + «Sempre l’amor che queta questo cielo + accoglie in sé con sì fatta salute, + per far disposto a sua fiamma il candelo». + + Non fur più tosto dentro a me venute + queste parole brievi, ch’io compresi + me sormontar di sopr’ a mia virtute; + + e di novella vista mi raccesi + tale, che nulla luce è tanto mera, + che li occhi miei non si fosser difesi; + + e vidi lume in forma di rivera + fulvido di fulgore, intra due rive + dipinte di mirabil primavera. + + Di tal fiumana uscian faville vive, + e d’ogne parte si mettien ne’ fiori, + quasi rubin che oro circunscrive; + + poi, come inebrïate da li odori, + riprofondavan sé nel miro gurge, + e s’una intrava, un’altra n’uscia fori. + + «L’alto disio che mo t’infiamma e urge, + d’aver notizia di ciò che tu vei, + tanto mi piace più quanto più turge; + + ma di quest’ acqua convien che tu bei + prima che tanta sete in te si sazi»: + così mi disse il sol de li occhi miei. + + Anche soggiunse: «Il fiume e li topazi + ch’entrano ed escono e ’l rider de l’erbe + son di lor vero umbriferi prefazi. + + Non che da sé sian queste cose acerbe; + ma è difetto da la parte tua, + che non hai viste ancor tanto superbe». + + Non è fantin che sì sùbito rua + col volto verso il latte, se si svegli + molto tardato da l’usanza sua, + + come fec’ io, per far migliori spegli + ancor de li occhi, chinandomi a l’onda + che si deriva perché vi s’immegli; + + e sì come di lei bevve la gronda + de le palpebre mie, così mi parve + di sua lunghezza divenuta tonda. + + Poi, come gente stata sotto larve, + che pare altro che prima, se si sveste + la sembianza non süa in che disparve, + + così mi si cambiaro in maggior feste + li fiori e le faville, sì ch’io vidi + ambo le corti del ciel manifeste. + + O isplendor di Dio, per cu’ io vidi + l’alto trïunfo del regno verace, + dammi virtù a dir com’ ïo il vidi! + + Lume è là sù che visibile face + lo creatore a quella creatura + che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace. + + E’ si distende in circular figura, + in tanto che la sua circunferenza + sarebbe al sol troppo larga cintura. + + Fassi di raggio tutta sua parvenza + reflesso al sommo del mobile primo, + che prende quindi vivere e potenza. + + E come clivo in acqua di suo imo + si specchia, quasi per vedersi addorno, + quando è nel verde e ne’ fioretti opimo, + + sì, soprastando al lume intorno intorno, + vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie + quanto di noi là sù fatto ha ritorno. + + E se l’infimo grado in sé raccoglie + sì grande lume, quanta è la larghezza + di questa rosa ne l’estreme foglie! + + La vista mia ne l’ampio e ne l’altezza + non si smarriva, ma tutto prendeva + il quanto e ’l quale di quella allegrezza. + + Presso e lontano, lì, né pon né leva: + ché dove Dio sanza mezzo governa, + la legge natural nulla rileva. + + Nel giallo de la rosa sempiterna, + che si digrada e dilata e redole + odor di lode al sol che sempre verna, + + qual è colui che tace e dicer vole, + mi trasse Bëatrice, e disse: «Mira + quanto è ’l convento de le bianche stole! + + Vedi nostra città quant’ ella gira; + vedi li nostri scanni sì ripieni, + che poca gente più ci si disira. + + E ’n quel gran seggio a che tu li occhi tieni + per la corona che già v’è sù posta, + prima che tu a queste nozze ceni, + + sederà l’alma, che fia giù agosta, + de l’alto Arrigo, ch’a drizzare Italia + verrà in prima ch’ella sia disposta. + + La cieca cupidigia che v’ammalia + simili fatti v’ha al fantolino + che muor per fame e caccia via la balia. + + E fia prefetto nel foro divino + allora tal, che palese e coverto + non anderà con lui per un cammino. + + Ma poco poi sarà da Dio sofferto + nel santo officio; ch’el sarà detruso + là dove Simon mago è per suo merto, + + e farà quel d’Alagna intrar più giuso». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXXI + + + In forma dunque di candida rosa + mi si mostrava la milizia santa + che nel suo sangue Cristo fece sposa; + + ma l’altra, che volando vede e canta + la gloria di colui che la ’nnamora + e la bontà che la fece cotanta, + + sì come schiera d’ape che s’infiora + una fïata e una si ritorna + là dove suo laboro s’insapora, + + nel gran fior discendeva che s’addorna + di tante foglie, e quindi risaliva + là dove ’l süo amor sempre soggiorna. + + Le facce tutte avean di fiamma viva + e l’ali d’oro, e l’altro tanto bianco, + che nulla neve a quel termine arriva. + + Quando scendean nel fior, di banco in banco + porgevan de la pace e de l’ardore + ch’elli acquistavan ventilando il fianco. + + Né l’interporsi tra ’l disopra e ’l fiore + di tanta moltitudine volante + impediva la vista e lo splendore: + + ché la luce divina è penetrante + per l’universo secondo ch’è degno, + sì che nulla le puote essere ostante. + + Questo sicuro e gaudïoso regno, + frequente in gente antica e in novella, + viso e amore avea tutto ad un segno. + + O trina luce che ’n unica stella + scintillando a lor vista, sì li appaga! + guarda qua giuso a la nostra procella! + + Se i barbari, venendo da tal plaga + che ciascun giorno d’Elice si cuopra, + rotante col suo figlio ond’ ella è vaga, + + veggendo Roma e l’ardüa sua opra, + stupefaciensi, quando Laterano + a le cose mortali andò di sopra; + + ïo, che al divino da l’umano, + a l’etterno dal tempo era venuto, + e di Fiorenza in popol giusto e sano, + + di che stupor dovea esser compiuto! + Certo tra esso e ’l gaudio mi facea + libito non udire e starmi muto. + + E quasi peregrin che si ricrea + nel tempio del suo voto riguardando, + e spera già ridir com’ ello stea, + + su per la viva luce passeggiando, + menava ïo li occhi per li gradi, + mo sù, mo giù e mo recirculando. + + Vedëa visi a carità süadi, + d’altrui lume fregiati e di suo riso, + e atti ornati di tutte onestadi. + + La forma general di paradiso + già tutta mïo sguardo avea compresa, + in nulla parte ancor fermato fiso; + + e volgeami con voglia rïaccesa + per domandar la mia donna di cose + di che la mente mia era sospesa. + + Uno intendëa, e altro mi rispuose: + credea veder Beatrice e vidi un sene + vestito con le genti glorïose. + + Diffuso era per li occhi e per le gene + di benigna letizia, in atto pio + quale a tenero padre si convene. + + E «Ov’ è ella?», sùbito diss’ io. + Ond’ elli: «A terminar lo tuo disiro + mosse Beatrice me del loco mio; + + e se riguardi sù nel terzo giro + dal sommo grado, tu la rivedrai + nel trono che suoi merti le sortiro». + + Sanza risponder, li occhi sù levai, + e vidi lei che si facea corona + reflettendo da sé li etterni rai. + + Da quella regïon che più sù tona + occhio mortale alcun tanto non dista, + qualunque in mare più giù s’abbandona, + + quanto lì da Beatrice la mia vista; + ma nulla mi facea, ché süa effige + non discendëa a me per mezzo mista. + + «O donna in cui la mia speranza vige, + e che soffristi per la mia salute + in inferno lasciar le tue vestige, + + di tante cose quant’ i’ ho vedute, + dal tuo podere e da la tua bontate + riconosco la grazia e la virtute. + + Tu m’hai di servo tratto a libertate + per tutte quelle vie, per tutt’ i modi + che di ciò fare avei la potestate. + + La tua magnificenza in me custodi, + sì che l’anima mia, che fatt’ hai sana, + piacente a te dal corpo si disnodi». + + Così orai; e quella, sì lontana + come parea, sorrise e riguardommi; + poi si tornò a l’etterna fontana. + + E ’l santo sene: «Acciò che tu assommi + perfettamente», disse, «il tuo cammino, + a che priego e amor santo mandommi, + + vola con li occhi per questo giardino; + ché veder lui t’acconcerà lo sguardo + più al montar per lo raggio divino. + + E la regina del cielo, ond’ ïo ardo + tutto d’amor, ne farà ogne grazia, + però ch’i’ sono il suo fedel Bernardo». + + Qual è colui che forse di Croazia + viene a veder la Veronica nostra, + che per l’antica fame non sen sazia, + + ma dice nel pensier, fin che si mostra: + ‘Segnor mio Iesù Cristo, Dio verace, + or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?’; + + tal era io mirando la vivace + carità di colui che ’n questo mondo, + contemplando, gustò di quella pace. + + «Figliuol di grazia, quest’ esser giocondo», + cominciò elli, «non ti sarà noto, + tenendo li occhi pur qua giù al fondo; + + ma guarda i cerchi infino al più remoto, + tanto che veggi seder la regina + cui questo regno è suddito e devoto». + + Io levai li occhi; e come da mattina + la parte orïental de l’orizzonte + soverchia quella dove ’l sol declina, + + così, quasi di valle andando a monte + con li occhi, vidi parte ne lo stremo + vincer di lume tutta l’altra fronte. + + E come quivi ove s’aspetta il temo + che mal guidò Fetonte, più s’infiamma, + e quinci e quindi il lume si fa scemo, + + così quella pacifica oriafiamma + nel mezzo s’avvivava, e d’ogne parte + per igual modo allentava la fiamma; + + e a quel mezzo, con le penne sparte, + vid’ io più di mille angeli festanti, + ciascun distinto di fulgore e d’arte. + + Vidi a lor giochi quivi e a lor canti + ridere una bellezza, che letizia + era ne li occhi a tutti li altri santi; + + e s’io avessi in dir tanta divizia + quanta ad imaginar, non ardirei + lo minimo tentar di sua delizia. + + Bernardo, come vide li occhi miei + nel caldo suo caler fissi e attenti, + li suoi con tanto affetto volse a lei, + + che ’ miei di rimirar fé più ardenti. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXXII + + + Affetto al suo piacer, quel contemplante + libero officio di dottore assunse, + e cominciò queste parole sante: + + «La piaga che Maria richiuse e unse, + quella ch’è tanto bella da’ suoi piedi + è colei che l’aperse e che la punse. + + Ne l’ordine che fanno i terzi sedi, + siede Rachel di sotto da costei + con Bëatrice, sì come tu vedi. + + Sarra e Rebecca, Iudìt e colei + che fu bisava al cantor che per doglia + del fallo disse ‘Miserere mei’, + + puoi tu veder così di soglia in soglia + giù digradar, com’ io ch’a proprio nome + vo per la rosa giù di foglia in foglia. + + E dal settimo grado in giù, sì come + infino ad esso, succedono Ebree, + dirimendo del fior tutte le chiome; + + perché, secondo lo sguardo che fée + la fede in Cristo, queste sono il muro + a che si parton le sacre scalee. + + Da questa parte onde ’l fiore è maturo + di tutte le sue foglie, sono assisi + quei che credettero in Cristo venturo; + + da l’altra parte onde sono intercisi + di vòti i semicirculi, si stanno + quei ch’a Cristo venuto ebber li visi. + + E come quinci il glorïoso scanno + de la donna del cielo e li altri scanni + di sotto lui cotanta cerna fanno, + + così di contra quel del gran Giovanni, + che sempre santo ’l diserto e ’l martiro + sofferse, e poi l’inferno da due anni; + + e sotto lui così cerner sortiro + Francesco, Benedetto e Augustino + e altri fin qua giù di giro in giro. + + Or mira l’alto proveder divino: + ché l’uno e l’altro aspetto de la fede + igualmente empierà questo giardino. + + E sappi che dal grado in giù che fiede + a mezzo il tratto le due discrezioni, + per nullo proprio merito si siede, + + ma per l’altrui, con certe condizioni: + ché tutti questi son spiriti ascolti + prima ch’avesser vere elezïoni. + + Ben te ne puoi accorger per li volti + e anche per le voci püerili, + se tu li guardi bene e se li ascolti. + + Or dubbi tu e dubitando sili; + ma io discioglierò ’l forte legame + in che ti stringon li pensier sottili. + + Dentro a l’ampiezza di questo reame + casüal punto non puote aver sito, + se non come tristizia o sete o fame: + + ché per etterna legge è stabilito + quantunque vedi, sì che giustamente + ci si risponde da l’anello al dito; + + e però questa festinata gente + a vera vita non è sine causa + intra sé qui più e meno eccellente. + + Lo rege per cui questo regno pausa + in tanto amore e in tanto diletto, + che nulla volontà è di più ausa, + + le menti tutte nel suo lieto aspetto + creando, a suo piacer di grazia dota + diversamente; e qui basti l’effetto. + + E ciò espresso e chiaro vi si nota + ne la Scrittura santa in quei gemelli + che ne la madre ebber l’ira commota. + + Però, secondo il color d’i capelli, + di cotal grazia l’altissimo lume + degnamente convien che s’incappelli. + + Dunque, sanza mercé di lor costume, + locati son per gradi differenti, + sol differendo nel primiero acume. + + Bastavasi ne’ secoli recenti + con l’innocenza, per aver salute, + solamente la fede d’i parenti; + + poi che le prime etadi fuor compiute, + convenne ai maschi a l’innocenti penne + per circuncidere acquistar virtute; + + ma poi che ’l tempo de la grazia venne, + sanza battesmo perfetto di Cristo + tale innocenza là giù si ritenne. + + Riguarda omai ne la faccia che a Cristo + più si somiglia, ché la sua chiarezza + sola ti può disporre a veder Cristo». + + Io vidi sopra lei tanta allegrezza + piover, portata ne le menti sante + create a trasvolar per quella altezza, + + che quantunque io avea visto davante, + di tanta ammirazion non mi sospese, + né mi mostrò di Dio tanto sembiante; + + e quello amor che primo lì discese, + cantando ‘Ave, Maria, gratïa plena’, + dinanzi a lei le sue ali distese. + + Rispuose a la divina cantilena + da tutte parti la beata corte, + sì ch’ogne vista sen fé più serena. + + «O santo padre, che per me comporte + l’esser qua giù, lasciando il dolce loco + nel qual tu siedi per etterna sorte, + + qual è quell’ angel che con tanto gioco + guarda ne li occhi la nostra regina, + innamorato sì che par di foco?». + + Così ricorsi ancora a la dottrina + di colui ch’abbelliva di Maria, + come del sole stella mattutina. + + Ed elli a me: «Baldezza e leggiadria + quant’ esser puote in angelo e in alma, + tutta è in lui; e sì volem che sia, + + perch’ elli è quelli che portò la palma + giuso a Maria, quando ’l Figliuol di Dio + carcar si volse de la nostra salma. + + Ma vieni omai con li occhi sì com’ io + andrò parlando, e nota i gran patrici + di questo imperio giustissimo e pio. + + Quei due che seggon là sù più felici + per esser propinquissimi ad Agusta, + son d’esta rosa quasi due radici: + + colui che da sinistra le s’aggiusta + è il padre per lo cui ardito gusto + l’umana specie tanto amaro gusta; + + dal destro vedi quel padre vetusto + di Santa Chiesa a cui Cristo le chiavi + raccomandò di questo fior venusto. + + E quei che vide tutti i tempi gravi, + pria che morisse, de la bella sposa + che s’acquistò con la lancia e coi clavi, + + siede lungh’ esso, e lungo l’altro posa + quel duca sotto cui visse di manna + la gente ingrata, mobile e retrosa. + + Di contr’ a Pietro vedi sedere Anna, + tanto contenta di mirar sua figlia, + che non move occhio per cantare osanna; + + e contro al maggior padre di famiglia + siede Lucia, che mosse la tua donna + quando chinavi, a rovinar, le ciglia. + + Ma perché ’l tempo fugge che t’assonna, + qui farem punto, come buon sartore + che com’ elli ha del panno fa la gonna; + + e drizzeremo li occhi al primo amore, + sì che, guardando verso lui, penètri + quant’ è possibil per lo suo fulgore. + + Veramente, ne forse tu t’arretri + movendo l’ali tue, credendo oltrarti, + orando grazia conven che s’impetri + + grazia da quella che puote aiutarti; + e tu mi seguirai con l’affezione, + sì che dal dicer mio lo cor non parti». + + E cominciò questa santa orazione: + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXXIII + + + «Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio, + umile e alta più che creatura, + termine fisso d’etterno consiglio, + + tu se’ colei che l’umana natura + nobilitasti sì, che ’l suo fattore + non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura. + + Nel ventre tuo si raccese l’amore, + per lo cui caldo ne l’etterna pace + così è germinato questo fiore. + + Qui se’ a noi meridïana face + di caritate, e giuso, intra ’ mortali, + se’ di speranza fontana vivace. + + Donna, se’ tanto grande e tanto vali, + che qual vuol grazia e a te non ricorre, + sua disïanza vuol volar sanz’ ali. + + La tua benignità non pur soccorre + a chi domanda, ma molte fïate + liberamente al dimandar precorre. + + In te misericordia, in te pietate, + in te magnificenza, in te s’aduna + quantunque in creatura è di bontate. + + Or questi, che da l’infima lacuna + de l’universo infin qui ha vedute + le vite spiritali ad una ad una, + + supplica a te, per grazia, di virtute + tanto, che possa con li occhi levarsi + più alto verso l’ultima salute. + + E io, che mai per mio veder non arsi + più ch’i’ fo per lo suo, tutti miei prieghi + ti porgo, e priego che non sieno scarsi, + + perché tu ogne nube li disleghi + di sua mortalità co’ prieghi tuoi, + sì che ’l sommo piacer li si dispieghi. + + Ancor ti priego, regina, che puoi + ciò che tu vuoli, che conservi sani, + dopo tanto veder, li affetti suoi. + + Vinca tua guardia i movimenti umani: + vedi Beatrice con quanti beati + per li miei prieghi ti chiudon le mani!». + + Li occhi da Dio diletti e venerati, + fissi ne l’orator, ne dimostraro + quanto i devoti prieghi le son grati; + + indi a l’etterno lume s’addrizzaro, + nel qual non si dee creder che s’invii + per creatura l’occhio tanto chiaro. + + E io ch’al fine di tutt’ i disii + appropinquava, sì com’ io dovea, + l’ardor del desiderio in me finii. + + Bernardo m’accennava, e sorridea, + perch’ io guardassi suso; ma io era + già per me stesso tal qual ei volea: + + ché la mia vista, venendo sincera, + e più e più intrava per lo raggio + de l’alta luce che da sé è vera. + + Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggio + che ’l parlar mostra, ch’a tal vista cede, + e cede la memoria a tanto oltraggio. + + Qual è colüi che sognando vede, + che dopo ’l sogno la passione impressa + rimane, e l’altro a la mente non riede, + + cotal son io, ché quasi tutta cessa + mia visïone, e ancor mi distilla + nel core il dolce che nacque da essa. + + Così la neve al sol si disigilla; + così al vento ne le foglie levi + si perdea la sentenza di Sibilla. + + O somma luce che tanto ti levi + da’ concetti mortali, a la mia mente + ripresta un poco di quel che parevi, + + e fa la lingua mia tanto possente, + ch’una favilla sol de la tua gloria + possa lasciare a la futura gente; + + ché, per tornare alquanto a mia memoria + e per sonare un poco in questi versi, + più si conceperà di tua vittoria. + + Io credo, per l’acume ch’io soffersi + del vivo raggio, ch’i’ sarei smarrito, + se li occhi miei da lui fossero aversi. + + E’ mi ricorda ch’io fui più ardito + per questo a sostener, tanto ch’i’ giunsi + l’aspetto mio col valore infinito. + + Oh abbondante grazia ond’ io presunsi + ficcar lo viso per la luce etterna, + tanto che la veduta vi consunsi! + + Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna, + legato con amore in un volume, + ciò che per l’universo si squaderna: + + sustanze e accidenti e lor costume + quasi conflati insieme, per tal modo + che ciò ch’i’ dico è un semplice lume. + + La forma universal di questo nodo + credo ch’i’ vidi, perché più di largo, + dicendo questo, mi sento ch’i’ godo. + + Un punto solo m’è maggior letargo + che venticinque secoli a la ’mpresa + che fé Nettuno ammirar l’ombra d’Argo. + + Così la mente mia, tutta sospesa, + mirava fissa, immobile e attenta, + e sempre di mirar faceasi accesa. + + A quella luce cotal si diventa, + che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto + è impossibil che mai si consenta; + + però che ’l ben, ch’è del volere obietto, + tutto s’accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella + è defettivo ciò ch’è lì perfetto. + + Omai sarà più corta mia favella, + pur a quel ch’io ricordo, che d’un fante + che bagni ancor la lingua a la mammella. + + Non perché più ch’un semplice sembiante + fosse nel vivo lume ch’io mirava, + che tal è sempre qual s’era davante; + + ma per la vista che s’avvalorava + in me guardando, una sola parvenza, + mutandom’ io, a me si travagliava. + + Ne la profonda e chiara sussistenza + de l’alto lume parvermi tre giri + di tre colori e d’una contenenza; + + e l’un da l’altro come iri da iri + parea reflesso, e ’l terzo parea foco + che quinci e quindi igualmente si spiri. + + Oh quanto è corto il dire e come fioco + al mio concetto! e questo, a quel ch’i’ vidi, + è tanto, che non basta a dicer ‘poco’. + + O luce etterna che sola in te sidi, + sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta + e intendente te ami e arridi! + + Quella circulazion che sì concetta + pareva in te come lume reflesso, + da li occhi miei alquanto circunspetta, + + dentro da sé, del suo colore stesso, + mi parve pinta de la nostra effige: + per che ’l mio viso in lei tutto era messo. + + Qual è ’l geomètra che tutto s’affige + per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova, + pensando, quel principio ond’ elli indige, + + tal era io a quella vista nova: + veder voleva come si convenne + l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova; + + ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne: + se non che la mia mente fu percossa + da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne. + + A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa; + ma già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle, + sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa, + + l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. + + + + + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + + TAVOLA DEI CARATTERI SPECIALI + TABLE OF SPECIAL CHARACTERS + + à = a grave + è = e grave + ì = i grave + ò = o grave + ù = u grave + + é = e acute + ó = o acute + + ä = a uml + ë = e uml + ï = i uml + ö = o uml + ü = u uml + + È = E grave + Ë = E uml + Ï = I uml + + « = left angle quotation mark + » = right angle quotation mark + + “ = left double quotation mark + ” = right double quotation mark + + ‘ = left single quotation mark + ’ = right single quotation mark + + — = em dash + + • = middot + + . . . = ellipsis + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of La Divina Commedia di Dante: Paradiso, by +Dante Alighieri + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1011 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1012-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1012-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..694efc2a --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1012-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19625 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1012 *** + + LA DIVINA COMMEDIA + di Dante Alighieri + + + + + + INFERNO + + + + + Inferno • Canto I + + + Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita + mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, + ché la diritta via era smarrita. + + Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura + esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte + che nel pensier rinova la paura! + + Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte; + ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai, + dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte. + + Io non so ben ridir com’ i’ v’intrai, + tant’ era pien di sonno a quel punto + che la verace via abbandonai. + + Ma poi ch’i’ fui al piè d’un colle giunto, + là dove terminava quella valle + che m’avea di paura il cor compunto, + + guardai in alto e vidi le sue spalle + vestite già de’ raggi del pianeta + che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle. + + Allor fu la paura un poco queta, + che nel lago del cor m’era durata + la notte ch’i’ passai con tanta pieta. + + E come quei che con lena affannata, + uscito fuor del pelago a la riva, + si volge a l’acqua perigliosa e guata, + + così l’animo mio, ch’ancor fuggiva, + si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo + che non lasciò già mai persona viva. + + Poi ch’èi posato un poco il corpo lasso, + ripresi via per la piaggia diserta, + sì che ’l piè fermo sempre era ’l più basso. + + Ed ecco, quasi al cominciar de l’erta, + una lonza leggera e presta molto, + che di pel macolato era coverta; + + e non mi si partia dinanzi al volto, + anzi ’mpediva tanto il mio cammino, + ch’i’ fui per ritornar più volte vòlto. + + Temp’ era dal principio del mattino, + e ’l sol montava ’n sù con quelle stelle + ch’eran con lui quando l’amor divino + + mosse di prima quelle cose belle; + sì ch’a bene sperar m’era cagione + di quella fiera a la gaetta pelle + + l’ora del tempo e la dolce stagione; + ma non sì che paura non mi desse + la vista che m’apparve d’un leone. + + Questi parea che contra me venisse + con la test’ alta e con rabbiosa fame, + sì che parea che l’aere ne tremesse. + + Ed una lupa, che di tutte brame + sembiava carca ne la sua magrezza, + e molte genti fé già viver grame, + + questa mi porse tanto di gravezza + con la paura ch’uscia di sua vista, + ch’io perdei la speranza de l’altezza. + + E qual è quei che volontieri acquista, + e giugne ’l tempo che perder lo face, + che ’n tutti suoi pensier piange e s’attrista; + + tal mi fece la bestia sanza pace, + che, venendomi ’ncontro, a poco a poco + mi ripigneva là dove ’l sol tace. + + Mentre ch’i’ rovinava in basso loco, + dinanzi a li occhi mi si fu offerto + chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco. + + Quando vidi costui nel gran diserto, + «Miserere di me», gridai a lui, + «qual che tu sii, od ombra od omo certo!». + + Rispuosemi: «Non omo, omo già fui, + e li parenti miei furon lombardi, + mantoani per patrïa ambedui. + + Nacqui sub Iulio, ancor che fosse tardi, + e vissi a Roma sotto ’l buono Augusto + nel tempo de li dèi falsi e bugiardi. + + Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto + figliuol d’Anchise che venne di Troia, + poi che ’l superbo Ilïón fu combusto. + + Ma tu perché ritorni a tanta noia? + perché non sali il dilettoso monte + ch’è principio e cagion di tutta gioia?». + + «Or se’ tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte + che spandi di parlar sì largo fiume?», + rispuos’ io lui con vergognosa fronte. + + «O de li altri poeti onore e lume, + vagliami ’l lungo studio e ’l grande amore + che m’ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume. + + Tu se’ lo mio maestro e ’l mio autore, + tu se’ solo colui da cu’ io tolsi + lo bello stilo che m’ha fatto onore. + + Vedi la bestia per cu’ io mi volsi; + aiutami da lei, famoso saggio, + ch’ella mi fa tremar le vene e i polsi». + + «A te convien tenere altro vïaggio», + rispuose, poi che lagrimar mi vide, + «se vuo’ campar d’esto loco selvaggio; + + ché questa bestia, per la qual tu gride, + non lascia altrui passar per la sua via, + ma tanto lo ’mpedisce che l’uccide; + + e ha natura sì malvagia e ria, + che mai non empie la bramosa voglia, + e dopo ’l pasto ha più fame che pria. + + Molti son li animali a cui s’ammoglia, + e più saranno ancora, infin che ’l veltro + verrà, che la farà morir con doglia. + + Questi non ciberà terra né peltro, + ma sapïenza, amore e virtute, + e sua nazion sarà tra feltro e feltro. + + Di quella umile Italia fia salute + per cui morì la vergine Cammilla, + Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute. + + Questi la caccerà per ogne villa, + fin che l’avrà rimessa ne lo ’nferno, + là onde ’nvidia prima dipartilla. + + Ond’ io per lo tuo me’ penso e discerno + che tu mi segui, e io sarò tua guida, + e trarrotti di qui per loco etterno; + + ove udirai le disperate strida, + vedrai li antichi spiriti dolenti, + ch’a la seconda morte ciascun grida; + + e vederai color che son contenti + nel foco, perché speran di venire + quando che sia a le beate genti. + + A le quai poi se tu vorrai salire, + anima fia a ciò più di me degna: + con lei ti lascerò nel mio partire; + + ché quello imperador che là sù regna, + perch’ i’ fu’ ribellante a la sua legge, + non vuol che ’n sua città per me si vegna. + + In tutte parti impera e quivi regge; + quivi è la sua città e l’alto seggio: + oh felice colui cu’ ivi elegge!». + + E io a lui: «Poeta, io ti richeggio + per quello Dio che tu non conoscesti, + acciò ch’io fugga questo male e peggio, + + che tu mi meni là dov’ or dicesti, + sì ch’io veggia la porta di san Pietro + e color cui tu fai cotanto mesti». + + Allor si mosse, e io li tenni dietro. + + + + Inferno • Canto II + + + Lo giorno se n’andava, e l’aere bruno + toglieva li animai che sono in terra + da le fatiche loro; e io sol uno + + m’apparecchiava a sostener la guerra + sì del cammino e sì de la pietate, + che ritrarrà la mente che non erra. + + O muse, o alto ingegno, or m’aiutate; + o mente che scrivesti ciò ch’io vidi, + qui si parrà la tua nobilitate. + + Io cominciai: «Poeta che mi guidi, + guarda la mia virtù s’ell’ è possente, + prima ch’a l’alto passo tu mi fidi. + + Tu dici che di Silvïo il parente, + corruttibile ancora, ad immortale + secolo andò, e fu sensibilmente. + + Però, se l’avversario d’ogne male + cortese i fu, pensando l’alto effetto + ch’uscir dovea di lui, e ’l chi e ’l quale + + non pare indegno ad omo d’intelletto; + ch’e’ fu de l’alma Roma e di suo impero + ne l’empireo ciel per padre eletto: + + la quale e ’l quale, a voler dir lo vero, + fu stabilita per lo loco santo + u’ siede il successor del maggior Piero. + + Per quest’ andata onde li dai tu vanto, + intese cose che furon cagione + di sua vittoria e del papale ammanto. + + Andovvi poi lo Vas d’elezïone, + per recarne conforto a quella fede + ch’è principio a la via di salvazione. + + Ma io, perché venirvi? o chi ’l concede? + Io non Enëa, io non Paulo sono; + me degno a ciò né io né altri ’l crede. + + Per che, se del venire io m’abbandono, + temo che la venuta non sia folle. + Se’ savio; intendi me’ ch’i’ non ragiono». + + E qual è quei che disvuol ciò che volle + e per novi pensier cangia proposta, + sì che dal cominciar tutto si tolle, + + tal mi fec’ ïo ’n quella oscura costa, + perché, pensando, consumai la ’mpresa + che fu nel cominciar cotanto tosta. + + «S’i’ ho ben la parola tua intesa», + rispuose del magnanimo quell’ ombra, + «l’anima tua è da viltade offesa; + + la qual molte fïate l’omo ingombra + sì che d’onrata impresa lo rivolve, + come falso veder bestia quand’ ombra. + + Da questa tema acciò che tu ti solve, + dirotti perch’ io venni e quel ch’io ’ntesi + nel primo punto che di te mi dolve. + + Io era tra color che son sospesi, + e donna mi chiamò beata e bella, + tal che di comandare io la richiesi. + + Lucevan li occhi suoi più che la stella; + e cominciommi a dir soave e piana, + con angelica voce, in sua favella: + + “O anima cortese mantoana, + di cui la fama ancor nel mondo dura, + e durerà quanto ’l mondo lontana, + + l’amico mio, e non de la ventura, + ne la diserta piaggia è impedito + sì nel cammin, che vòlt’ è per paura; + + e temo che non sia già sì smarrito, + ch’io mi sia tardi al soccorso levata, + per quel ch’i’ ho di lui nel cielo udito. + + Or movi, e con la tua parola ornata + e con ciò c’ha mestieri al suo campare, + l’aiuta sì ch’i’ ne sia consolata. + + I’ son Beatrice che ti faccio andare; + vegno del loco ove tornar disio; + amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare. + + Quando sarò dinanzi al segnor mio, + di te mi loderò sovente a lui”. + Tacette allora, e poi comincia’ io: + + “O donna di virtù sola per cui + l’umana spezie eccede ogne contento + di quel ciel c’ha minor li cerchi sui, + + tanto m’aggrada il tuo comandamento, + che l’ubidir, se già fosse, m’è tardi; + più non t’è uo’ ch’aprirmi il tuo talento. + + Ma dimmi la cagion che non ti guardi + de lo scender qua giuso in questo centro + de l’ampio loco ove tornar tu ardi”. + + “Da che tu vuo’ saver cotanto a dentro, + dirotti brievemente”, mi rispuose, + “perch’ i’ non temo di venir qua entro. + + Temer si dee di sole quelle cose + c’hanno potenza di fare altrui male; + de l’altre no, ché non son paurose. + + I’ son fatta da Dio, sua mercé, tale, + che la vostra miseria non mi tange, + né fiamma d’esto ’ncendio non m’assale. + + Donna è gentil nel ciel che si compiange + di questo ’mpedimento ov’ io ti mando, + sì che duro giudicio là sù frange. + + Questa chiese Lucia in suo dimando + e disse:—Or ha bisogno il tuo fedele + di te, e io a te lo raccomando—. + + Lucia, nimica di ciascun crudele, + si mosse, e venne al loco dov’ i’ era, + che mi sedea con l’antica Rachele. + + Disse:—Beatrice, loda di Dio vera, + ché non soccorri quei che t’amò tanto, + ch’uscì per te de la volgare schiera? + + Non odi tu la pieta del suo pianto, + non vedi tu la morte che ’l combatte + su la fiumana ove ’l mar non ha vanto?—. + + Al mondo non fur mai persone ratte + a far lor pro o a fuggir lor danno, + com’ io, dopo cotai parole fatte, + + venni qua giù del mio beato scanno, + fidandomi del tuo parlare onesto, + ch’onora te e quei ch’udito l’hanno”. + + Poscia che m’ebbe ragionato questo, + li occhi lucenti lagrimando volse, + per che mi fece del venir più presto. + + E venni a te così com’ ella volse: + d’inanzi a quella fiera ti levai + che del bel monte il corto andar ti tolse. + + Dunque: che è? perché, perché restai, + perché tanta viltà nel core allette, + perché ardire e franchezza non hai, + + poscia che tai tre donne benedette + curan di te ne la corte del cielo, + e ’l mio parlar tanto ben ti promette?». + + Quali fioretti dal notturno gelo + chinati e chiusi, poi che ’l sol li ’mbianca, + si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo, + + tal mi fec’ io di mia virtude stanca, + e tanto buono ardire al cor mi corse, + ch’i’ cominciai come persona franca: + + «Oh pietosa colei che mi soccorse! + e te cortese ch’ubidisti tosto + a le vere parole che ti porse! + + Tu m’hai con disiderio il cor disposto + sì al venir con le parole tue, + ch’i’ son tornato nel primo proposto. + + Or va, ch’un sol volere è d’ambedue: + tu duca, tu segnore e tu maestro». + Così li dissi; e poi che mosso fue, + + intrai per lo cammino alto e silvestro. + + + + Inferno • Canto III + + + ‘Per me si va ne la città dolente, + per me si va ne l’etterno dolore, + per me si va tra la perduta gente. + + Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; + fecemi la divina podestate, + la somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore. + + Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create + se non etterne, e io etterno duro. + Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate’. + + Queste parole di colore oscuro + vid’ ïo scritte al sommo d’una porta; + per ch’io: «Maestro, il senso lor m’è duro». + + Ed elli a me, come persona accorta: + «Qui si convien lasciare ogne sospetto; + ogne viltà convien che qui sia morta. + + Noi siam venuti al loco ov’ i’ t’ho detto + che tu vedrai le genti dolorose + c’hanno perduto il ben de l’intelletto». + + E poi che la sua mano a la mia puose + con lieto volto, ond’ io mi confortai, + mi mise dentro a le segrete cose. + + Quivi sospiri, pianti e alti guai + risonavan per l’aere sanza stelle, + per ch’io al cominciar ne lagrimai. + + Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, + parole di dolore, accenti d’ira, + voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle + + facevano un tumulto, il qual s’aggira + sempre in quell’ aura sanza tempo tinta, + come la rena quando turbo spira. + + E io ch’avea d’error la testa cinta, + dissi: «Maestro, che è quel ch’i’ odo? + e che gent’ è che par nel duol sì vinta?». + + Ed elli a me: «Questo misero modo + tegnon l’anime triste di coloro + che visser sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo. + + Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro + de li angeli che non furon ribelli + né fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro. + + Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli, + né lo profondo inferno li riceve, + ch’alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d’elli». + + E io: «Maestro, che è tanto greve + a lor che lamentar li fa sì forte?». + Rispuose: «Dicerolti molto breve. + + Questi non hanno speranza di morte, + e la lor cieca vita è tanto bassa, + che ’nvidïosi son d’ogne altra sorte. + + Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa; + misericordia e giustizia li sdegna: + non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa». + + E io, che riguardai, vidi una ’nsegna + che girando correva tanto ratta, + che d’ogne posa mi parea indegna; + + e dietro le venìa sì lunga tratta + di gente, ch’i’ non averei creduto + che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta. + + Poscia ch’io v’ebbi alcun riconosciuto, + vidi e conobbi l’ombra di colui + che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto. + + Incontanente intesi e certo fui + che questa era la setta d’i cattivi, + a Dio spiacenti e a’ nemici sui. + + Questi sciaurati, che mai non fur vivi, + erano ignudi e stimolati molto + da mosconi e da vespe ch’eran ivi. + + Elle rigavan lor di sangue il volto, + che, mischiato di lagrime, a’ lor piedi + da fastidiosi vermi era ricolto. + + E poi ch’a riguardar oltre mi diedi, + vidi genti a la riva d’un gran fiume; + per ch’io dissi: «Maestro, or mi concedi + + ch’i’ sappia quali sono, e qual costume + le fa di trapassar parer sì pronte, + com’ i’ discerno per lo fioco lume». + + Ed elli a me: «Le cose ti fier conte + quando noi fermerem li nostri passi + su la trista riviera d’Acheronte». + + Allor con li occhi vergognosi e bassi, + temendo no ’l mio dir li fosse grave, + infino al fiume del parlar mi trassi. + + Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave + un vecchio, bianco per antico pelo, + gridando: «Guai a voi, anime prave! + + Non isperate mai veder lo cielo: + i’ vegno per menarvi a l’altra riva + ne le tenebre etterne, in caldo e ’n gelo. + + E tu che se’ costì, anima viva, + pàrtiti da cotesti che son morti». + Ma poi che vide ch’io non mi partiva, + + disse: «Per altra via, per altri porti + verrai a piaggia, non qui, per passare: + più lieve legno convien che ti porti». + + E ’l duca lui: «Caron, non ti crucciare: + vuolsi così colà dove si puote + ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare». + + Quinci fuor quete le lanose gote + al nocchier de la livida palude, + che ’ntorno a li occhi avea di fiamme rote. + + Ma quell’ anime, ch’eran lasse e nude, + cangiar colore e dibattero i denti, + ratto che ’nteser le parole crude. + + Bestemmiavano Dio e lor parenti, + l’umana spezie e ’l loco e ’l tempo e ’l seme + di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti. + + Poi si ritrasser tutte quante insieme, + forte piangendo, a la riva malvagia + ch’attende ciascun uom che Dio non teme. + + Caron dimonio, con occhi di bragia + loro accennando, tutte le raccoglie; + batte col remo qualunque s’adagia. + + Come d’autunno si levan le foglie + l’una appresso de l’altra, fin che ’l ramo + vede a la terra tutte le sue spoglie, + + similemente il mal seme d’Adamo + gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una, + per cenni come augel per suo richiamo. + + Così sen vanno su per l’onda bruna, + e avanti che sien di là discese, + anche di qua nuova schiera s’auna. + + «Figliuol mio», disse ’l maestro cortese, + «quelli che muoion ne l’ira di Dio + tutti convegnon qui d’ogne paese; + + e pronti sono a trapassar lo rio, + ché la divina giustizia li sprona, + sì che la tema si volve in disio. + + Quinci non passa mai anima buona; + e però, se Caron di te si lagna, + ben puoi sapere omai che ’l suo dir suona». + + Finito questo, la buia campagna + tremò sì forte, che de lo spavento + la mente di sudore ancor mi bagna. + + La terra lagrimosa diede vento, + che balenò una luce vermiglia + la qual mi vinse ciascun sentimento; + + e caddi come l’uom cui sonno piglia. + + + + Inferno • Canto IV + + + Ruppemi l’alto sonno ne la testa + un greve truono, sì ch’io mi riscossi + come persona ch’è per forza desta; + + e l’occhio riposato intorno mossi, + dritto levato, e fiso riguardai + per conoscer lo loco dov’ io fossi. + + Vero è che ’n su la proda mi trovai + de la valle d’abisso dolorosa + che ’ntrono accoglie d’infiniti guai. + + Oscura e profonda era e nebulosa + tanto che, per ficcar lo viso a fondo, + io non vi discernea alcuna cosa. + + «Or discendiam qua giù nel cieco mondo», + cominciò il poeta tutto smorto. + «Io sarò primo, e tu sarai secondo». + + E io, che del color mi fui accorto, + dissi: «Come verrò, se tu paventi + che suoli al mio dubbiare esser conforto?». + + Ed elli a me: «L’angoscia de le genti + che son qua giù, nel viso mi dipigne + quella pietà che tu per tema senti. + + Andiam, ché la via lunga ne sospigne». + Così si mise e così mi fé intrare + nel primo cerchio che l’abisso cigne. + + Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, + non avea pianto mai che di sospiri + che l’aura etterna facevan tremare; + + ciò avvenia di duol sanza martìri, + ch’avean le turbe, ch’eran molte e grandi, + d’infanti e di femmine e di viri. + + Lo buon maestro a me: «Tu non dimandi + che spiriti son questi che tu vedi? + Or vo’ che sappi, innanzi che più andi, + + ch’ei non peccaro; e s’elli hanno mercedi, + non basta, perché non ebber battesmo, + ch’è porta de la fede che tu credi; + + e s’e’ furon dinanzi al cristianesmo, + non adorar debitamente a Dio: + e di questi cotai son io medesmo. + + Per tai difetti, non per altro rio, + semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi + che sanza speme vivemo in disio». + + Gran duol mi prese al cor quando lo ’ntesi, + però che gente di molto valore + conobbi che ’n quel limbo eran sospesi. + + «Dimmi, maestro mio, dimmi, segnore», + comincia’ io per voler esser certo + di quella fede che vince ogne errore: + + «uscicci mai alcuno, o per suo merto + o per altrui, che poi fosse beato?». + E quei che ’ntese il mio parlar coverto, + + rispuose: «Io era nuovo in questo stato, + quando ci vidi venire un possente, + con segno di vittoria coronato. + + Trasseci l’ombra del primo parente, + d’Abèl suo figlio e quella di Noè, + di Moïsè legista e ubidente; + + Abraàm patrïarca e Davìd re, + Israèl con lo padre e co’ suoi nati + e con Rachele, per cui tanto fé, + + e altri molti, e feceli beati. + E vo’ che sappi che, dinanzi ad essi, + spiriti umani non eran salvati». + + Non lasciavam l’andar perch’ ei dicessi, + ma passavam la selva tuttavia, + la selva, dico, di spiriti spessi. + + Non era lunga ancor la nostra via + di qua dal sonno, quand’ io vidi un foco + ch’emisperio di tenebre vincia. + + Di lungi n’eravamo ancora un poco, + ma non sì ch’io non discernessi in parte + ch’orrevol gente possedea quel loco. + + «O tu ch’onori scïenzïa e arte, + questi chi son c’hanno cotanta onranza, + che dal modo de li altri li diparte?». + + E quelli a me: «L’onrata nominanza + che di lor suona sù ne la tua vita, + grazïa acquista in ciel che sì li avanza». + + Intanto voce fu per me udita: + «Onorate l’altissimo poeta; + l’ombra sua torna, ch’era dipartita». + + Poi che la voce fu restata e queta, + vidi quattro grand’ ombre a noi venire: + sembianz’ avevan né trista né lieta. + + Lo buon maestro cominciò a dire: + «Mira colui con quella spada in mano, + che vien dinanzi ai tre sì come sire: + + quelli è Omero poeta sovrano; + l’altro è Orazio satiro che vene; + Ovidio è ’l terzo, e l’ultimo Lucano. + + Però che ciascun meco si convene + nel nome che sonò la voce sola, + fannomi onore, e di ciò fanno bene». + + Così vid’ i’ adunar la bella scola + di quel segnor de l’altissimo canto + che sovra li altri com’ aquila vola. + + Da ch’ebber ragionato insieme alquanto, + volsersi a me con salutevol cenno, + e ’l mio maestro sorrise di tanto; + + e più d’onore ancora assai mi fenno, + ch’e’ sì mi fecer de la loro schiera, + sì ch’io fui sesto tra cotanto senno. + + Così andammo infino a la lumera, + parlando cose che ’l tacere è bello, + sì com’ era ’l parlar colà dov’ era. + + Venimmo al piè d’un nobile castello, + sette volte cerchiato d’alte mura, + difeso intorno d’un bel fiumicello. + + Questo passammo come terra dura; + per sette porte intrai con questi savi: + giugnemmo in prato di fresca verdura. + + Genti v’eran con occhi tardi e gravi, + di grande autorità ne’ lor sembianti: + parlavan rado, con voci soavi. + + Traemmoci così da l’un de’ canti, + in loco aperto, luminoso e alto, + sì che veder si potien tutti quanti. + + Colà diritto, sovra ’l verde smalto, + mi fuor mostrati li spiriti magni, + che del vedere in me stesso m’essalto. + + I’ vidi Eletra con molti compagni, + tra ’ quai conobbi Ettòr ed Enea, + Cesare armato con li occhi grifagni. + + Vidi Cammilla e la Pantasilea; + da l’altra parte vidi ’l re Latino + che con Lavina sua figlia sedea. + + Vidi quel Bruto che cacciò Tarquino, + Lucrezia, Iulia, Marzïa e Corniglia; + e solo, in parte, vidi ’l Saladino. + + Poi ch’innalzai un poco più le ciglia, + vidi ’l maestro di color che sanno + seder tra filosofica famiglia. + + Tutti lo miran, tutti onor li fanno: + quivi vid’ ïo Socrate e Platone, + che ’nnanzi a li altri più presso li stanno; + + Democrito che ’l mondo a caso pone, + Dïogenès, Anassagora e Tale, + Empedoclès, Eraclito e Zenone; + + e vidi il buono accoglitor del quale, + Dïascoride dico; e vidi Orfeo, + Tulïo e Lino e Seneca morale; + + Euclide geomètra e Tolomeo, + Ipocràte, Avicenna e Galïeno, + Averoìs, che ’l gran comento feo. + + Io non posso ritrar di tutti a pieno, + però che sì mi caccia il lungo tema, + che molte volte al fatto il dir vien meno. + + La sesta compagnia in due si scema: + per altra via mi mena il savio duca, + fuor de la queta, ne l’aura che trema. + + E vegno in parte ove non è che luca. + + + + Inferno • Canto V + + + Così discesi del cerchio primaio + giù nel secondo, che men loco cinghia + e tanto più dolor, che punge a guaio. + + Stavvi Minòs orribilmente, e ringhia: + essamina le colpe ne l’intrata; + giudica e manda secondo ch’avvinghia. + + Dico che quando l’anima mal nata + li vien dinanzi, tutta si confessa; + e quel conoscitor de le peccata + + vede qual loco d’inferno è da essa; + cignesi con la coda tante volte + quantunque gradi vuol che giù sia messa. + + Sempre dinanzi a lui ne stanno molte: + vanno a vicenda ciascuna al giudizio, + dicono e odono e poi son giù volte. + + «O tu che vieni al doloroso ospizio», + disse Minòs a me quando mi vide, + lasciando l’atto di cotanto offizio, + + «guarda com’ entri e di cui tu ti fide; + non t’inganni l’ampiezza de l’intrare!». + E ’l duca mio a lui: «Perché pur gride? + + Non impedir lo suo fatale andare: + vuolsi così colà dove si puote + ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare». + + Or incomincian le dolenti note + a farmisi sentire; or son venuto + là dove molto pianto mi percuote. + + Io venni in loco d’ogne luce muto, + che mugghia come fa mar per tempesta, + se da contrari venti è combattuto. + + La bufera infernal, che mai non resta, + mena li spirti con la sua rapina; + voltando e percotendo li molesta. + + Quando giungon davanti a la ruina, + quivi le strida, il compianto, il lamento; + bestemmian quivi la virtù divina. + + Intesi ch’a così fatto tormento + enno dannati i peccator carnali, + che la ragion sommettono al talento. + + E come li stornei ne portan l’ali + nel freddo tempo, a schiera larga e piena, + così quel fiato li spiriti mali + + di qua, di là, di giù, di sù li mena; + nulla speranza li conforta mai, + non che di posa, ma di minor pena. + + E come i gru van cantando lor lai, + faccendo in aere di sé lunga riga, + così vid’ io venir, traendo guai, + + ombre portate da la detta briga; + per ch’i’ dissi: «Maestro, chi son quelle + genti che l’aura nera sì gastiga?». + + «La prima di color di cui novelle + tu vuo’ saper», mi disse quelli allotta, + «fu imperadrice di molte favelle. + + A vizio di lussuria fu sì rotta, + che libito fé licito in sua legge, + per tòrre il biasmo in che era condotta. + + Ell’ è Semiramìs, di cui si legge + che succedette a Nino e fu sua sposa: + tenne la terra che ’l Soldan corregge. + + L’altra è colei che s’ancise amorosa, + e ruppe fede al cener di Sicheo; + poi è Cleopatràs lussurïosa. + + Elena vedi, per cui tanto reo + tempo si volse, e vedi ’l grande Achille, + che con amore al fine combatteo. + + Vedi Parìs, Tristano»; e più di mille + ombre mostrommi e nominommi a dito, + ch’amor di nostra vita dipartille. + + Poscia ch’io ebbi ’l mio dottore udito + nomar le donne antiche e ’ cavalieri, + pietà mi giunse, e fui quasi smarrito. + + I’ cominciai: «Poeta, volontieri + parlerei a quei due che ’nsieme vanno, + e paion sì al vento esser leggeri». + + Ed elli a me: «Vedrai quando saranno + più presso a noi; e tu allor li priega + per quello amor che i mena, ed ei verranno». + + Sì tosto come il vento a noi li piega, + mossi la voce: «O anime affannate, + venite a noi parlar, s’altri nol niega!». + + Quali colombe dal disio chiamate + con l’ali alzate e ferme al dolce nido + vegnon per l’aere, dal voler portate; + + cotali uscir de la schiera ov’ è Dido, + a noi venendo per l’aere maligno, + sì forte fu l’affettüoso grido. + + «O animal grazïoso e benigno + che visitando vai per l’aere perso + noi che tignemmo il mondo di sanguigno, + + se fosse amico il re de l’universo, + noi pregheremmo lui de la tua pace, + poi c’hai pietà del nostro mal perverso. + + Di quel che udire e che parlar vi piace, + noi udiremo e parleremo a voi, + mentre che ’l vento, come fa, ci tace. + + Siede la terra dove nata fui + su la marina dove ’l Po discende + per aver pace co’ seguaci sui. + + Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende, + prese costui de la bella persona + che mi fu tolta; e ’l modo ancor m’offende. + + Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona, + mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, + che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona. + + Amor condusse noi ad una morte. + Caina attende chi a vita ci spense». + Queste parole da lor ci fuor porte. + + Quand’ io intesi quell’ anime offense, + china’ il viso, e tanto il tenni basso, + fin che ’l poeta mi disse: «Che pense?». + + Quando rispuosi, cominciai: «Oh lasso, + quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio + menò costoro al doloroso passo!». + + Poi mi rivolsi a loro e parla’ io, + e cominciai: «Francesca, i tuoi martìri + a lagrimar mi fanno tristo e pio. + + Ma dimmi: al tempo d’i dolci sospiri, + a che e come concedette amore + che conosceste i dubbiosi disiri?». + + E quella a me: «Nessun maggior dolore + che ricordarsi del tempo felice + ne la miseria; e ciò sa ’l tuo dottore. + + Ma s’a conoscer la prima radice + del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto, + dirò come colui che piange e dice. + + Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto + di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse; + soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto. + + Per più fïate li occhi ci sospinse + quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso; + ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse. + + Quando leggemmo il disïato riso + esser basciato da cotanto amante, + questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, + + la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante. + Galeotto fu ’l libro e chi lo scrisse: + quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante». + + Mentre che l’uno spirto questo disse, + l’altro piangëa; sì che di pietade + io venni men così com’ io morisse. + + E caddi come corpo morto cade. + + + + Inferno • Canto VI + + + Al tornar de la mente, che si chiuse + dinanzi a la pietà d’i due cognati, + che di trestizia tutto mi confuse, + + novi tormenti e novi tormentati + mi veggio intorno, come ch’io mi mova + e ch’io mi volga, e come che io guati. + + Io sono al terzo cerchio, de la piova + etterna, maladetta, fredda e greve; + regola e qualità mai non l’è nova. + + Grandine grossa, acqua tinta e neve + per l’aere tenebroso si riversa; + pute la terra che questo riceve. + + Cerbero, fiera crudele e diversa, + con tre gole caninamente latra + sovra la gente che quivi è sommersa. + + Li occhi ha vermigli, la barba unta e atra, + e ’l ventre largo, e unghiate le mani; + graffia li spirti ed iscoia ed isquatra. + + Urlar li fa la pioggia come cani; + de l’un de’ lati fanno a l’altro schermo; + volgonsi spesso i miseri profani. + + Quando ci scorse Cerbero, il gran vermo, + le bocche aperse e mostrocci le sanne; + non avea membro che tenesse fermo. + + E ’l duca mio distese le sue spanne, + prese la terra, e con piene le pugna + la gittò dentro a le bramose canne. + + Qual è quel cane ch’abbaiando agogna, + e si racqueta poi che ’l pasto morde, + ché solo a divorarlo intende e pugna, + + cotai si fecer quelle facce lorde + de lo demonio Cerbero, che ’ntrona + l’anime sì, ch’esser vorrebber sorde. + + Noi passavam su per l’ombre che adona + la greve pioggia, e ponavam le piante + sovra lor vanità che par persona. + + Elle giacean per terra tutte quante, + fuor d’una ch’a seder si levò, ratto + ch’ella ci vide passarsi davante. + + «O tu che se’ per questo ’nferno tratto», + mi disse, «riconoscimi, se sai: + tu fosti, prima ch’io disfatto, fatto». + + E io a lui: «L’angoscia che tu hai + forse ti tira fuor de la mia mente, + sì che non par ch’i’ ti vedessi mai. + + Ma dimmi chi tu se’ che ’n sì dolente + loco se’ messo, e hai sì fatta pena, + che, s’altra è maggio, nulla è sì spiacente». + + Ed elli a me: «La tua città, ch’è piena + d’invidia sì che già trabocca il sacco, + seco mi tenne in la vita serena. + + Voi cittadini mi chiamaste Ciacco: + per la dannosa colpa de la gola, + come tu vedi, a la pioggia mi fiacco. + + E io anima trista non son sola, + ché tutte queste a simil pena stanno + per simil colpa». E più non fé parola. + + Io li rispuosi: «Ciacco, il tuo affanno + mi pesa sì, ch’a lagrimar mi ’nvita; + ma dimmi, se tu sai, a che verranno + + li cittadin de la città partita; + s’alcun v’è giusto; e dimmi la cagione + per che l’ha tanta discordia assalita». + + E quelli a me: «Dopo lunga tencione + verranno al sangue, e la parte selvaggia + caccerà l’altra con molta offensione. + + Poi appresso convien che questa caggia + infra tre soli, e che l’altra sormonti + con la forza di tal che testé piaggia. + + Alte terrà lungo tempo le fronti, + tenendo l’altra sotto gravi pesi, + come che di ciò pianga o che n’aonti. + + Giusti son due, e non vi sono intesi; + superbia, invidia e avarizia sono + le tre faville c’hanno i cuori accesi». + + Qui puose fine al lagrimabil suono. + E io a lui: «Ancor vo’ che mi ’nsegni + e che di più parlar mi facci dono. + + Farinata e ’l Tegghiaio, che fuor sì degni, + Iacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo e ’l Mosca + e li altri ch’a ben far puoser li ’ngegni, + + dimmi ove sono e fa ch’io li conosca; + ché gran disio mi stringe di savere + se ’l ciel li addolcia o lo ’nferno li attosca». + + E quelli: «Ei son tra l’anime più nere; + diverse colpe giù li grava al fondo: + se tanto scendi, là i potrai vedere. + + Ma quando tu sarai nel dolce mondo, + priegoti ch’a la mente altrui mi rechi: + più non ti dico e più non ti rispondo». + + Li diritti occhi torse allora in biechi; + guardommi un poco e poi chinò la testa: + cadde con essa a par de li altri ciechi. + + E ’l duca disse a me: «Più non si desta + di qua dal suon de l’angelica tromba, + quando verrà la nimica podesta: + + ciascun rivederà la trista tomba, + ripiglierà sua carne e sua figura, + udirà quel ch’in etterno rimbomba». + + Sì trapassammo per sozza mistura + de l’ombre e de la pioggia, a passi lenti, + toccando un poco la vita futura; + + per ch’io dissi: «Maestro, esti tormenti + crescerann’ ei dopo la gran sentenza, + o fier minori, o saran sì cocenti?». + + Ed elli a me: «Ritorna a tua scïenza, + che vuol, quanto la cosa è più perfetta, + più senta il bene, e così la doglienza. + + Tutto che questa gente maladetta + in vera perfezion già mai non vada, + di là più che di qua essere aspetta». + + Noi aggirammo a tondo quella strada, + parlando più assai ch’i’ non ridico; + venimmo al punto dove si digrada: + + quivi trovammo Pluto, il gran nemico. + + + + Inferno • Canto VII + + + «Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe!», + cominciò Pluto con la voce chioccia; + e quel savio gentil, che tutto seppe, + + disse per confortarmi: «Non ti noccia + la tua paura; ché, poder ch’elli abbia, + non ci torrà lo scender questa roccia». + + Poi si rivolse a quella ’nfiata labbia, + e disse: «Taci, maladetto lupo! + consuma dentro te con la tua rabbia. + + Non è sanza cagion l’andare al cupo: + vuolsi ne l’alto, là dove Michele + fé la vendetta del superbo strupo». + + Quali dal vento le gonfiate vele + caggiono avvolte, poi che l’alber fiacca, + tal cadde a terra la fiera crudele. + + Così scendemmo ne la quarta lacca, + pigliando più de la dolente ripa + che ’l mal de l’universo tutto insacca. + + Ahi giustizia di Dio! tante chi stipa + nove travaglie e pene quant’ io viddi? + e perché nostra colpa sì ne scipa? + + Come fa l’onda là sovra Cariddi, + che si frange con quella in cui s’intoppa, + così convien che qui la gente riddi. + + Qui vid’ i’ gente più ch’altrove troppa, + e d’una parte e d’altra, con grand’ urli, + voltando pesi per forza di poppa. + + Percotëansi ’ncontro; e poscia pur lì + si rivolgea ciascun, voltando a retro, + gridando: «Perché tieni?» e «Perché burli?». + + Così tornavan per lo cerchio tetro + da ogne mano a l’opposito punto, + gridandosi anche loro ontoso metro; + + poi si volgea ciascun, quand’ era giunto, + per lo suo mezzo cerchio a l’altra giostra. + E io, ch’avea lo cor quasi compunto, + + dissi: «Maestro mio, or mi dimostra + che gente è questa, e se tutti fuor cherci + questi chercuti a la sinistra nostra». + + Ed elli a me: «Tutti quanti fuor guerci + sì de la mente in la vita primaia, + che con misura nullo spendio ferci. + + Assai la voce lor chiaro l’abbaia, + quando vegnono a’ due punti del cerchio + dove colpa contraria li dispaia. + + Questi fuor cherci, che non han coperchio + piloso al capo, e papi e cardinali, + in cui usa avarizia il suo soperchio». + + E io: «Maestro, tra questi cotali + dovre’ io ben riconoscere alcuni + che furo immondi di cotesti mali». + + Ed elli a me: «Vano pensiero aduni: + la sconoscente vita che i fé sozzi, + ad ogne conoscenza or li fa bruni. + + In etterno verranno a li due cozzi: + questi resurgeranno del sepulcro + col pugno chiuso, e questi coi crin mozzi. + + Mal dare e mal tener lo mondo pulcro + ha tolto loro, e posti a questa zuffa: + qual ella sia, parole non ci appulcro. + + Or puoi, figliuol, veder la corta buffa + d’i ben che son commessi a la fortuna, + per che l’umana gente si rabbuffa; + + ché tutto l’oro ch’è sotto la luna + e che già fu, di quest’ anime stanche + non poterebbe farne posare una». + + «Maestro mio», diss’ io, «or mi dì anche: + questa fortuna di che tu mi tocche, + che è, che i ben del mondo ha sì tra branche?». + + E quelli a me: «Oh creature sciocche, + quanta ignoranza è quella che v’offende! + Or vo’ che tu mia sentenza ne ’mbocche. + + Colui lo cui saver tutto trascende, + fece li cieli e diè lor chi conduce + sì, ch’ogne parte ad ogne parte splende, + + distribuendo igualmente la luce. + Similemente a li splendor mondani + ordinò general ministra e duce + + che permutasse a tempo li ben vani + di gente in gente e d’uno in altro sangue, + oltre la difension d’i senni umani; + + per ch’una gente impera e l’altra langue, + seguendo lo giudicio di costei, + che è occulto come in erba l’angue. + + Vostro saver non ha contasto a lei: + questa provede, giudica, e persegue + suo regno come il loro li altri dèi. + + Le sue permutazion non hanno triegue: + necessità la fa esser veloce; + sì spesso vien chi vicenda consegue. + + Quest’ è colei ch’è tanto posta in croce + pur da color che le dovrien dar lode, + dandole biasmo a torto e mala voce; + + ma ella s’è beata e ciò non ode: + con l’altre prime creature lieta + volve sua spera e beata si gode. + + Or discendiamo omai a maggior pieta; + già ogne stella cade che saliva + quand’ io mi mossi, e ’l troppo star si vieta». + + Noi ricidemmo il cerchio a l’altra riva + sovr’ una fonte che bolle e riversa + per un fossato che da lei deriva. + + L’acqua era buia assai più che persa; + e noi, in compagnia de l’onde bige, + intrammo giù per una via diversa. + + In la palude va c’ha nome Stige + questo tristo ruscel, quand’ è disceso + al piè de le maligne piagge grige. + + E io, che di mirare stava inteso, + vidi genti fangose in quel pantano, + ignude tutte, con sembiante offeso. + + Queste si percotean non pur con mano, + ma con la testa e col petto e coi piedi, + troncandosi co’ denti a brano a brano. + + Lo buon maestro disse: «Figlio, or vedi + l’anime di color cui vinse l’ira; + e anche vo’ che tu per certo credi + + che sotto l’acqua è gente che sospira, + e fanno pullular quest’ acqua al summo, + come l’occhio ti dice, u’ che s’aggira. + + Fitti nel limo dicon: “Tristi fummo + ne l’aere dolce che dal sol s’allegra, + portando dentro accidïoso fummo: + + or ci attristiam ne la belletta negra”. + Quest’ inno si gorgoglian ne la strozza, + ché dir nol posson con parola integra». + + Così girammo de la lorda pozza + grand’ arco tra la ripa secca e ’l mézzo, + con li occhi vòlti a chi del fango ingozza. + + Venimmo al piè d’una torre al da sezzo. + + + + Inferno • Canto VIII + + + Io dico, seguitando, ch’assai prima + che noi fossimo al piè de l’alta torre, + li occhi nostri n’andar suso a la cima + + per due fiammette che i vedemmo porre, + e un’altra da lungi render cenno, + tanto ch’a pena il potea l’occhio tòrre. + + E io mi volsi al mar di tutto ’l senno; + dissi: «Questo che dice? e che risponde + quell’ altro foco? e chi son quei che ’l fenno?». + + Ed elli a me: «Su per le sucide onde + già scorgere puoi quello che s’aspetta, + se ’l fummo del pantan nol ti nasconde». + + Corda non pinse mai da sé saetta + che sì corresse via per l’aere snella, + com’ io vidi una nave piccioletta + + venir per l’acqua verso noi in quella, + sotto ’l governo d’un sol galeoto, + che gridava: «Or se’ giunta, anima fella!». + + «Flegïàs, Flegïàs, tu gridi a vòto», + disse lo mio segnore, «a questa volta: + più non ci avrai che sol passando il loto». + + Qual è colui che grande inganno ascolta + che li sia fatto, e poi se ne rammarca, + fecesi Flegïàs ne l’ira accolta. + + Lo duca mio discese ne la barca, + e poi mi fece intrare appresso lui; + e sol quand’ io fui dentro parve carca. + + Tosto che ’l duca e io nel legno fui, + segando se ne va l’antica prora + de l’acqua più che non suol con altrui. + + Mentre noi corravam la morta gora, + dinanzi mi si fece un pien di fango, + e disse: «Chi se’ tu che vieni anzi ora?». + + E io a lui: «S’i’ vegno, non rimango; + ma tu chi se’, che sì se’ fatto brutto?». + Rispuose: «Vedi che son un che piango». + + E io a lui: «Con piangere e con lutto, + spirito maladetto, ti rimani; + ch’i’ ti conosco, ancor sie lordo tutto». + + Allor distese al legno ambo le mani; + per che ’l maestro accorto lo sospinse, + dicendo: «Via costà con li altri cani!». + + Lo collo poi con le braccia mi cinse; + basciommi ’l volto e disse: «Alma sdegnosa, + benedetta colei che ’n te s’incinse! + + Quei fu al mondo persona orgogliosa; + bontà non è che sua memoria fregi: + così s’è l’ombra sua qui furïosa. + + Quanti si tegnon or là sù gran regi + che qui staranno come porci in brago, + di sé lasciando orribili dispregi!». + + E io: «Maestro, molto sarei vago + di vederlo attuffare in questa broda + prima che noi uscissimo del lago». + + Ed elli a me: «Avante che la proda + ti si lasci veder, tu sarai sazio: + di tal disïo convien che tu goda». + + Dopo ciò poco vid’ io quello strazio + far di costui a le fangose genti, + che Dio ancor ne lodo e ne ringrazio. + + Tutti gridavano: «A Filippo Argenti!»; + e ’l fiorentino spirito bizzarro + in sé medesmo si volvea co’ denti. + + Quivi il lasciammo, che più non ne narro; + ma ne l’orecchie mi percosse un duolo, + per ch’io avante l’occhio intento sbarro. + + Lo buon maestro disse: «Omai, figliuolo, + s’appressa la città c’ha nome Dite, + coi gravi cittadin, col grande stuolo». + + E io: «Maestro, già le sue meschite + là entro certe ne la valle cerno, + vermiglie come se di foco uscite + + fossero». Ed ei mi disse: «Il foco etterno + ch’entro l’affoca le dimostra rosse, + come tu vedi in questo basso inferno». + + Noi pur giugnemmo dentro a l’alte fosse + che vallan quella terra sconsolata: + le mura mi parean che ferro fosse. + + Non sanza prima far grande aggirata, + venimmo in parte dove il nocchier forte + «Usciteci», gridò: «qui è l’intrata». + + Io vidi più di mille in su le porte + da ciel piovuti, che stizzosamente + dicean: «Chi è costui che sanza morte + + va per lo regno de la morta gente?». + E ’l savio mio maestro fece segno + di voler lor parlar segretamente. + + Allor chiusero un poco il gran disdegno + e disser: «Vien tu solo, e quei sen vada + che sì ardito intrò per questo regno. + + Sol si ritorni per la folle strada: + pruovi, se sa; ché tu qui rimarrai, + che li ha’ iscorta sì buia contrada». + + Pensa, lettor, se io mi sconfortai + nel suon de le parole maladette, + ché non credetti ritornarci mai. + + «O caro duca mio, che più di sette + volte m’hai sicurtà renduta e tratto + d’alto periglio che ’ncontra mi stette, + + non mi lasciar», diss’ io, «così disfatto; + e se ’l passar più oltre ci è negato, + ritroviam l’orme nostre insieme ratto». + + E quel segnor che lì m’avea menato, + mi disse: «Non temer; ché ’l nostro passo + non ci può tòrre alcun: da tal n’è dato. + + Ma qui m’attendi, e lo spirito lasso + conforta e ciba di speranza buona, + ch’i’ non ti lascerò nel mondo basso». + + Così sen va, e quivi m’abbandona + lo dolce padre, e io rimagno in forse, + che sì e no nel capo mi tenciona. + + Udir non potti quello ch’a lor porse; + ma ei non stette là con essi guari, + che ciascun dentro a pruova si ricorse. + + Chiuser le porte que’ nostri avversari + nel petto al mio segnor, che fuor rimase + e rivolsesi a me con passi rari. + + Li occhi a la terra e le ciglia avea rase + d’ogne baldanza, e dicea ne’ sospiri: + «Chi m’ha negate le dolenti case!». + + E a me disse: «Tu, perch’ io m’adiri, + non sbigottir, ch’io vincerò la prova, + qual ch’a la difension dentro s’aggiri. + + Questa lor tracotanza non è nova; + ché già l’usaro a men segreta porta, + la qual sanza serrame ancor si trova. + + Sovr’ essa vedestù la scritta morta: + e già di qua da lei discende l’erta, + passando per li cerchi sanza scorta, + + tal che per lui ne fia la terra aperta». + + + + Inferno • Canto IX + + + Quel color che viltà di fuor mi pinse + veggendo il duca mio tornare in volta, + più tosto dentro il suo novo ristrinse. + + Attento si fermò com’ uom ch’ascolta; + ché l’occhio nol potea menare a lunga + per l’aere nero e per la nebbia folta. + + «Pur a noi converrà vincer la punga», + cominciò el, «se non . . . Tal ne s’offerse. + Oh quanto tarda a me ch’altri qui giunga!». + + I’ vidi ben sì com’ ei ricoperse + lo cominciar con l’altro che poi venne, + che fur parole a le prime diverse; + + ma nondimen paura il suo dir dienne, + perch’ io traeva la parola tronca + forse a peggior sentenzia che non tenne. + + «In questo fondo de la trista conca + discende mai alcun del primo grado, + che sol per pena ha la speranza cionca?». + + Questa question fec’ io; e quei «Di rado + incontra», mi rispuose, «che di noi + faccia il cammino alcun per qual io vado. + + Ver è ch’altra fïata qua giù fui, + congiurato da quella Eritón cruda + che richiamava l’ombre a’ corpi sui. + + Di poco era di me la carne nuda, + ch’ella mi fece intrar dentr’ a quel muro, + per trarne un spirto del cerchio di Giuda. + + Quell’ è ’l più basso loco e ’l più oscuro, + e ’l più lontan dal ciel che tutto gira: + ben so ’l cammin; però ti fa sicuro. + + Questa palude che ’l gran puzzo spira + cigne dintorno la città dolente, + u’ non potemo intrare omai sanz’ ira». + + E altro disse, ma non l’ho a mente; + però che l’occhio m’avea tutto tratto + ver’ l’alta torre a la cima rovente, + + dove in un punto furon dritte ratto + tre furïe infernal di sangue tinte, + che membra feminine avieno e atto, + + e con idre verdissime eran cinte; + serpentelli e ceraste avien per crine, + onde le fiere tempie erano avvinte. + + E quei, che ben conobbe le meschine + de la regina de l’etterno pianto, + «Guarda», mi disse, «le feroci Erine. + + Quest’ è Megera dal sinistro canto; + quella che piange dal destro è Aletto; + Tesifón è nel mezzo»; e tacque a tanto. + + Con l’unghie si fendea ciascuna il petto; + battiensi a palme e gridavan sì alto, + ch’i’ mi strinsi al poeta per sospetto. + + «Vegna Medusa: sì ’l farem di smalto», + dicevan tutte riguardando in giuso; + «mal non vengiammo in Tesëo l’assalto». + + «Volgiti ’n dietro e tien lo viso chiuso; + ché se ’l Gorgón si mostra e tu ’l vedessi, + nulla sarebbe di tornar mai suso». + + Così disse ’l maestro; ed elli stessi + mi volse, e non si tenne a le mie mani, + che con le sue ancor non mi chiudessi. + + O voi ch’avete li ’ntelletti sani, + mirate la dottrina che s’asconde + sotto ’l velame de li versi strani. + + E già venìa su per le torbide onde + un fracasso d’un suon, pien di spavento, + per cui tremavano amendue le sponde, + + non altrimenti fatto che d’un vento + impetüoso per li avversi ardori, + che fier la selva e sanz’ alcun rattento + + li rami schianta, abbatte e porta fori; + dinanzi polveroso va superbo, + e fa fuggir le fiere e li pastori. + + Li occhi mi sciolse e disse: «Or drizza il nerbo + del viso su per quella schiuma antica + per indi ove quel fummo è più acerbo». + + Come le rane innanzi a la nimica + biscia per l’acqua si dileguan tutte, + fin ch’a la terra ciascuna s’abbica, + + vid’ io più di mille anime distrutte + fuggir così dinanzi ad un ch’al passo + passava Stige con le piante asciutte. + + Dal volto rimovea quell’ aere grasso, + menando la sinistra innanzi spesso; + e sol di quell’ angoscia parea lasso. + + Ben m’accorsi ch’elli era da ciel messo, + e volsimi al maestro; e quei fé segno + ch’i’ stessi queto ed inchinassi ad esso. + + Ahi quanto mi parea pien di disdegno! + Venne a la porta e con una verghetta + l’aperse, che non v’ebbe alcun ritegno. + + «O cacciati del ciel, gente dispetta», + cominciò elli in su l’orribil soglia, + «ond’ esta oltracotanza in voi s’alletta? + + Perché recalcitrate a quella voglia + a cui non puote il fin mai esser mozzo, + e che più volte v’ha cresciuta doglia? + + Che giova ne le fata dar di cozzo? + Cerbero vostro, se ben vi ricorda, + ne porta ancor pelato il mento e ’l gozzo». + + Poi si rivolse per la strada lorda, + e non fé motto a noi, ma fé sembiante + d’omo cui altra cura stringa e morda + + che quella di colui che li è davante; + e noi movemmo i piedi inver’ la terra, + sicuri appresso le parole sante. + + Dentro li ’ntrammo sanz’ alcuna guerra; + e io, ch’avea di riguardar disio + la condizion che tal fortezza serra, + + com’ io fui dentro, l’occhio intorno invio: + e veggio ad ogne man grande campagna, + piena di duolo e di tormento rio. + + Sì come ad Arli, ove Rodano stagna, + sì com’ a Pola, presso del Carnaro + ch’Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna, + + fanno i sepulcri tutt’ il loco varo, + così facevan quivi d’ogne parte, + salvo che ’l modo v’era più amaro; + + ché tra li avelli fiamme erano sparte, + per le quali eran sì del tutto accesi, + che ferro più non chiede verun’ arte. + + Tutti li lor coperchi eran sospesi, + e fuor n’uscivan sì duri lamenti, + che ben parean di miseri e d’offesi. + + E io: «Maestro, quai son quelle genti + che, seppellite dentro da quell’ arche, + si fan sentir coi sospiri dolenti?». + + E quelli a me: «Qui son li eresïarche + con lor seguaci, d’ogne setta, e molto + più che non credi son le tombe carche. + + Simile qui con simile è sepolto, + e i monimenti son più e men caldi». + E poi ch’a la man destra si fu vòlto, + + passammo tra i martìri e li alti spaldi. + + + + Inferno • Canto X + + + Ora sen va per un secreto calle, + tra ’l muro de la terra e li martìri, + lo mio maestro, e io dopo le spalle. + + «O virtù somma, che per li empi giri + mi volvi», cominciai, «com’ a te piace, + parlami, e sodisfammi a’ miei disiri. + + La gente che per li sepolcri giace + potrebbesi veder? già son levati + tutt’ i coperchi, e nessun guardia face». + + E quelli a me: «Tutti saran serrati + quando di Iosafàt qui torneranno + coi corpi che là sù hanno lasciati. + + Suo cimitero da questa parte hanno + con Epicuro tutti suoi seguaci, + che l’anima col corpo morta fanno. + + Però a la dimanda che mi faci + quinc’ entro satisfatto sarà tosto, + e al disio ancor che tu mi taci». + + E io: «Buon duca, non tegno riposto + a te mio cuor se non per dicer poco, + e tu m’hai non pur mo a ciò disposto». + + «O Tosco che per la città del foco + vivo ten vai così parlando onesto, + piacciati di restare in questo loco. + + La tua loquela ti fa manifesto + di quella nobil patrïa natio, + a la qual forse fui troppo molesto». + + Subitamente questo suono uscìo + d’una de l’arche; però m’accostai, + temendo, un poco più al duca mio. + + Ed el mi disse: «Volgiti! Che fai? + Vedi là Farinata che s’è dritto: + da la cintola in sù tutto ’l vedrai». + + Io avea già il mio viso nel suo fitto; + ed el s’ergea col petto e con la fronte + com’ avesse l’inferno a gran dispitto. + + E l’animose man del duca e pronte + mi pinser tra le sepulture a lui, + dicendo: «Le parole tue sien conte». + + Com’ io al piè de la sua tomba fui, + guardommi un poco, e poi, quasi sdegnoso, + mi dimandò: «Chi fuor li maggior tui?». + + Io ch’era d’ubidir disideroso, + non gliel celai, ma tutto gliel’ apersi; + ond’ ei levò le ciglia un poco in suso; + + poi disse: «Fieramente furo avversi + a me e a miei primi e a mia parte, + sì che per due fïate li dispersi». + + «S’ei fur cacciati, ei tornar d’ogne parte», + rispuos’ io lui, «l’una e l’altra fïata; + ma i vostri non appreser ben quell’ arte». + + Allor surse a la vista scoperchiata + un’ombra, lungo questa, infino al mento: + credo che s’era in ginocchie levata. + + Dintorno mi guardò, come talento + avesse di veder s’altri era meco; + e poi che ’l sospecciar fu tutto spento, + + piangendo disse: «Se per questo cieco + carcere vai per altezza d’ingegno, + mio figlio ov’ è? e perché non è teco?». + + E io a lui: «Da me stesso non vegno: + colui ch’attende là, per qui mi mena + forse cui Guido vostro ebbe a disdegno». + + Le sue parole e ’l modo de la pena + m’avean di costui già letto il nome; + però fu la risposta così piena. + + Di sùbito drizzato gridò: «Come? + dicesti “elli ebbe”? non viv’ elli ancora? + non fiere li occhi suoi lo dolce lume?». + + Quando s’accorse d’alcuna dimora + ch’io facëa dinanzi a la risposta, + supin ricadde e più non parve fora. + + Ma quell’ altro magnanimo, a cui posta + restato m’era, non mutò aspetto, + né mosse collo, né piegò sua costa; + + e sé continüando al primo detto, + «S’elli han quell’ arte», disse, «male appresa, + ciò mi tormenta più che questo letto. + + Ma non cinquanta volte fia raccesa + la faccia de la donna che qui regge, + che tu saprai quanto quell’ arte pesa. + + E se tu mai nel dolce mondo regge, + dimmi: perché quel popolo è sì empio + incontr’ a’ miei in ciascuna sua legge?». + + Ond’ io a lui: «Lo strazio e ’l grande scempio + che fece l’Arbia colorata in rosso, + tal orazion fa far nel nostro tempio». + + Poi ch’ebbe sospirando il capo mosso, + «A ciò non fu’ io sol», disse, «né certo + sanza cagion con li altri sarei mosso. + + Ma fu’ io solo, là dove sofferto + fu per ciascun di tòrre via Fiorenza, + colui che la difesi a viso aperto». + + «Deh, se riposi mai vostra semenza», + prega’ io lui, «solvetemi quel nodo + che qui ha ’nviluppata mia sentenza. + + El par che voi veggiate, se ben odo, + dinanzi quel che ’l tempo seco adduce, + e nel presente tenete altro modo». + + «Noi veggiam, come quei c’ha mala luce, + le cose», disse, «che ne son lontano; + cotanto ancor ne splende il sommo duce. + + Quando s’appressano o son, tutto è vano + nostro intelletto; e s’altri non ci apporta, + nulla sapem di vostro stato umano. + + Però comprender puoi che tutta morta + fia nostra conoscenza da quel punto + che del futuro fia chiusa la porta». + + Allor, come di mia colpa compunto, + dissi: «Or direte dunque a quel caduto + che ’l suo nato è co’ vivi ancor congiunto; + + e s’i’ fui, dianzi, a la risposta muto, + fate i saper che ’l fei perché pensava + già ne l’error che m’avete soluto». + + E già ’l maestro mio mi richiamava; + per ch’i’ pregai lo spirto più avaccio + che mi dicesse chi con lu’ istava. + + Dissemi: «Qui con più di mille giaccio: + qua dentro è ’l secondo Federico + e ’l Cardinale; e de li altri mi taccio». + + Indi s’ascose; e io inver’ l’antico + poeta volsi i passi, ripensando + a quel parlar che mi parea nemico. + + Elli si mosse; e poi, così andando, + mi disse: «Perché se’ tu sì smarrito?». + E io li sodisfeci al suo dimando. + + «La mente tua conservi quel ch’udito + hai contra te», mi comandò quel saggio; + «e ora attendi qui», e drizzò ’l dito: + + «quando sarai dinanzi al dolce raggio + di quella il cui bell’ occhio tutto vede, + da lei saprai di tua vita il vïaggio». + + Appresso mosse a man sinistra il piede: + lasciammo il muro e gimmo inver’ lo mezzo + per un sentier ch’a una valle fiede, + + che ’nfin là sù facea spiacer suo lezzo. + + + + Inferno • Canto XI + + + In su l’estremità d’un’alta ripa + che facevan gran pietre rotte in cerchio, + venimmo sopra più crudele stipa; + + e quivi, per l’orribile soperchio + del puzzo che ’l profondo abisso gitta, + ci raccostammo, in dietro, ad un coperchio + + d’un grand’ avello, ov’ io vidi una scritta + che dicea: ‘Anastasio papa guardo, + lo qual trasse Fotin de la via dritta’. + + «Lo nostro scender conviene esser tardo, + sì che s’ausi un poco in prima il senso + al tristo fiato; e poi no i fia riguardo». + + Così ’l maestro; e io «Alcun compenso», + dissi lui, «trova che ’l tempo non passi + perduto». Ed elli: «Vedi ch’a ciò penso». + + «Figliuol mio, dentro da cotesti sassi», + cominciò poi a dir, «son tre cerchietti + di grado in grado, come que’ che lassi. + + Tutti son pien di spirti maladetti; + ma perché poi ti basti pur la vista, + intendi come e perché son costretti. + + D’ogne malizia, ch’odio in cielo acquista, + ingiuria è ’l fine, ed ogne fin cotale + o con forza o con frode altrui contrista. + + Ma perché frode è de l’uom proprio male, + più spiace a Dio; e però stan di sotto + li frodolenti, e più dolor li assale. + + Di vïolenti il primo cerchio è tutto; + ma perché si fa forza a tre persone, + in tre gironi è distinto e costrutto. + + A Dio, a sé, al prossimo si pòne + far forza, dico in loro e in lor cose, + come udirai con aperta ragione. + + Morte per forza e ferute dogliose + nel prossimo si danno, e nel suo avere + ruine, incendi e tollette dannose; + + onde omicide e ciascun che mal fiere, + guastatori e predon, tutti tormenta + lo giron primo per diverse schiere. + + Puote omo avere in sé man vïolenta + e ne’ suoi beni; e però nel secondo + giron convien che sanza pro si penta + + qualunque priva sé del vostro mondo, + biscazza e fonde la sua facultade, + e piange là dov’ esser de’ giocondo. + + Puossi far forza ne la deïtade, + col cor negando e bestemmiando quella, + e spregiando natura e sua bontade; + + e però lo minor giron suggella + del segno suo e Soddoma e Caorsa + e chi, spregiando Dio col cor, favella. + + La frode, ond’ ogne coscïenza è morsa, + può l’omo usare in colui che ’n lui fida + e in quel che fidanza non imborsa. + + Questo modo di retro par ch’incida + pur lo vinco d’amor che fa natura; + onde nel cerchio secondo s’annida + + ipocresia, lusinghe e chi affattura, + falsità, ladroneccio e simonia, + ruffian, baratti e simile lordura. + + Per l’altro modo quell’ amor s’oblia + che fa natura, e quel ch’è poi aggiunto, + di che la fede spezïal si cria; + + onde nel cerchio minore, ov’ è ’l punto + de l’universo in su che Dite siede, + qualunque trade in etterno è consunto». + + E io: «Maestro, assai chiara procede + la tua ragione, e assai ben distingue + questo baràtro e ’l popol ch’e’ possiede. + + Ma dimmi: quei de la palude pingue, + che mena il vento, e che batte la pioggia, + e che s’incontran con sì aspre lingue, + + perché non dentro da la città roggia + sono ei puniti, se Dio li ha in ira? + e se non li ha, perché sono a tal foggia?». + + Ed elli a me «Perché tanto delira», + disse, «lo ’ngegno tuo da quel che sòle? + o ver la mente dove altrove mira? + + Non ti rimembra di quelle parole + con le quai la tua Etica pertratta + le tre disposizion che ’l ciel non vole, + + incontenenza, malizia e la matta + bestialitade? e come incontenenza + men Dio offende e men biasimo accatta? + + Se tu riguardi ben questa sentenza, + e rechiti a la mente chi son quelli + che sù di fuor sostegnon penitenza, + + tu vedrai ben perché da questi felli + sien dipartiti, e perché men crucciata + la divina vendetta li martelli». + + «O sol che sani ogne vista turbata, + tu mi contenti sì quando tu solvi, + che, non men che saver, dubbiar m’aggrata. + + Ancora in dietro un poco ti rivolvi», + diss’ io, «là dove di’ ch’usura offende + la divina bontade, e ’l groppo solvi». + + «Filosofia», mi disse, «a chi la ’ntende, + nota, non pure in una sola parte, + come natura lo suo corso prende + + dal divino ’ntelletto e da sua arte; + e se tu ben la tua Fisica note, + tu troverai, non dopo molte carte, + + che l’arte vostra quella, quanto pote, + segue, come ’l maestro fa ’l discente; + sì che vostr’ arte a Dio quasi è nepote. + + Da queste due, se tu ti rechi a mente + lo Genesì dal principio, convene + prender sua vita e avanzar la gente; + + e perché l’usuriere altra via tene, + per sé natura e per la sua seguace + dispregia, poi ch’in altro pon la spene. + + Ma seguimi oramai che ’l gir mi piace; + ché i Pesci guizzan su per l’orizzonta, + e ’l Carro tutto sovra ’l Coro giace, + + e ’l balzo via là oltra si dismonta». + + + + Inferno • Canto XII + + + Era lo loco ov’ a scender la riva + venimmo, alpestro e, per quel che v’er’ anco, + tal, ch’ogne vista ne sarebbe schiva. + + Qual è quella ruina che nel fianco + di qua da Trento l’Adice percosse, + o per tremoto o per sostegno manco, + + che da cima del monte, onde si mosse, + al piano è sì la roccia discoscesa, + ch’alcuna via darebbe a chi sù fosse: + + cotal di quel burrato era la scesa; + e ’n su la punta de la rotta lacca + l’infamïa di Creti era distesa + + che fu concetta ne la falsa vacca; + e quando vide noi, sé stesso morse, + sì come quei cui l’ira dentro fiacca. + + Lo savio mio inver’ lui gridò: «Forse + tu credi che qui sia ’l duca d’Atene, + che sù nel mondo la morte ti porse? + + Pàrtiti, bestia, ché questi non vene + ammaestrato da la tua sorella, + ma vassi per veder le vostre pene». + + Qual è quel toro che si slaccia in quella + c’ha ricevuto già ’l colpo mortale, + che gir non sa, ma qua e là saltella, + + vid’ io lo Minotauro far cotale; + e quello accorto gridò: «Corri al varco; + mentre ch’e’ ’nfuria, è buon che tu ti cale». + + Così prendemmo via giù per lo scarco + di quelle pietre, che spesso moviensi + sotto i miei piedi per lo novo carco. + + Io gia pensando; e quei disse: «Tu pensi + forse a questa ruina, ch’è guardata + da quell’ ira bestial ch’i’ ora spensi. + + Or vo’ che sappi che l’altra fïata + ch’i’ discesi qua giù nel basso inferno, + questa roccia non era ancor cascata. + + Ma certo poco pria, se ben discerno, + che venisse colui che la gran preda + levò a Dite del cerchio superno, + + da tutte parti l’alta valle feda + tremò sì, ch’i’ pensai che l’universo + sentisse amor, per lo qual è chi creda + + più volte il mondo in caòsso converso; + e in quel punto questa vecchia roccia, + qui e altrove, tal fece riverso. + + Ma ficca li occhi a valle, ché s’approccia + la riviera del sangue in la qual bolle + qual che per vïolenza in altrui noccia». + + Oh cieca cupidigia e ira folle, + che sì ci sproni ne la vita corta, + e ne l’etterna poi sì mal c’immolle! + + Io vidi un’ampia fossa in arco torta, + come quella che tutto ’l piano abbraccia, + secondo ch’avea detto la mia scorta; + + e tra ’l piè de la ripa ed essa, in traccia + corrien centauri, armati di saette, + come solien nel mondo andare a caccia. + + Veggendoci calar, ciascun ristette, + e de la schiera tre si dipartiro + con archi e asticciuole prima elette; + + e l’un gridò da lungi: «A qual martiro + venite voi che scendete la costa? + Ditel costinci; se non, l’arco tiro». + + Lo mio maestro disse: «La risposta + farem noi a Chirón costà di presso: + mal fu la voglia tua sempre sì tosta». + + Poi mi tentò, e disse: «Quelli è Nesso, + che morì per la bella Deianira, + e fé di sé la vendetta elli stesso. + + E quel di mezzo, ch’al petto si mira, + è il gran Chirón, il qual nodrì Achille; + quell’ altro è Folo, che fu sì pien d’ira. + + Dintorno al fosso vanno a mille a mille, + saettando qual anima si svelle + del sangue più che sua colpa sortille». + + Noi ci appressammo a quelle fiere isnelle: + Chirón prese uno strale, e con la cocca + fece la barba in dietro a le mascelle. + + Quando s’ebbe scoperta la gran bocca, + disse a’ compagni: «Siete voi accorti + che quel di retro move ciò ch’el tocca? + + Così non soglion far li piè d’i morti». + E ’l mio buon duca, che già li er’ al petto, + dove le due nature son consorti, + + rispuose: «Ben è vivo, e sì soletto + mostrar li mi convien la valle buia; + necessità ’l ci ’nduce, e non diletto. + + Tal si partì da cantare alleluia + che mi commise quest’ officio novo: + non è ladron, né io anima fuia. + + Ma per quella virtù per cu’ io movo + li passi miei per sì selvaggia strada, + danne un de’ tuoi, a cui noi siamo a provo, + + e che ne mostri là dove si guada, + e che porti costui in su la groppa, + ché non è spirto che per l’aere vada». + + Chirón si volse in su la destra poppa, + e disse a Nesso: «Torna, e sì li guida, + e fa cansar s’altra schiera v’intoppa». + + Or ci movemmo con la scorta fida + lungo la proda del bollor vermiglio, + dove i bolliti facieno alte strida. + + Io vidi gente sotto infino al ciglio; + e ’l gran centauro disse: «E’ son tiranni + che dier nel sangue e ne l’aver di piglio. + + Quivi si piangon li spietati danni; + quivi è Alessandro, e Dïonisio fero + che fé Cicilia aver dolorosi anni. + + E quella fronte c’ha ’l pel così nero, + è Azzolino; e quell’ altro ch’è biondo, + è Opizzo da Esti, il qual per vero + + fu spento dal figliastro sù nel mondo». + Allor mi volsi al poeta, e quei disse: + «Questi ti sia or primo, e io secondo». + + Poco più oltre il centauro s’affisse + sovr’ una gente che ’nfino a la gola + parea che di quel bulicame uscisse. + + Mostrocci un’ombra da l’un canto sola, + dicendo: «Colui fesse in grembo a Dio + lo cor che ’n su Tamisi ancor si cola». + + Poi vidi gente che di fuor del rio + tenean la testa e ancor tutto ’l casso; + e di costoro assai riconobb’ io. + + Così a più a più si facea basso + quel sangue, sì che cocea pur li piedi; + e quindi fu del fosso il nostro passo. + + «Sì come tu da questa parte vedi + lo bulicame che sempre si scema», + disse ’l centauro, «voglio che tu credi + + che da quest’ altra a più a più giù prema + lo fondo suo, infin ch’el si raggiunge + ove la tirannia convien che gema. + + La divina giustizia di qua punge + quell’ Attila che fu flagello in terra, + e Pirro e Sesto; e in etterno munge + + le lagrime, che col bollor diserra, + a Rinier da Corneto, a Rinier Pazzo, + che fecero a le strade tanta guerra». + + Poi si rivolse e ripassossi ’l guazzo. + + + + Inferno • Canto XIII + + + Non era ancor di là Nesso arrivato, + quando noi ci mettemmo per un bosco + che da neun sentiero era segnato. + + Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco; + non rami schietti, ma nodosi e ’nvolti; + non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tòsco. + + Non han sì aspri sterpi né sì folti + quelle fiere selvagge che ’n odio hanno + tra Cecina e Corneto i luoghi cólti. + + Quivi le brutte Arpie lor nidi fanno, + che cacciar de le Strofade i Troiani + con tristo annunzio di futuro danno. + + Ali hanno late, e colli e visi umani, + piè con artigli, e pennuto ’l gran ventre; + fanno lamenti in su li alberi strani. + + E ’l buon maestro «Prima che più entre, + sappi che se’ nel secondo girone», + mi cominciò a dire, «e sarai mentre + + che tu verrai ne l’orribil sabbione. + Però riguarda ben; sì vederai + cose che torrien fede al mio sermone». + + Io sentia d’ogne parte trarre guai + e non vedea persona che ’l facesse; + per ch’io tutto smarrito m’arrestai. + + Cred’ ïo ch’ei credette ch’io credesse + che tante voci uscisser, tra quei bronchi, + da gente che per noi si nascondesse. + + Però disse ’l maestro: «Se tu tronchi + qualche fraschetta d’una d’este piante, + li pensier c’hai si faran tutti monchi». + + Allor porsi la mano un poco avante + e colsi un ramicel da un gran pruno; + e ’l tronco suo gridò: «Perché mi schiante?». + + Da che fatto fu poi di sangue bruno, + ricominciò a dir: «Perché mi scerpi? + non hai tu spirto di pietade alcuno? + + Uomini fummo, e or siam fatti sterpi: + ben dovrebb’ esser la tua man più pia, + se state fossimo anime di serpi». + + Come d’un stizzo verde ch’arso sia + da l’un de’ capi, che da l’altro geme + e cigola per vento che va via, + + sì de la scheggia rotta usciva insieme + parole e sangue; ond’ io lasciai la cima + cadere, e stetti come l’uom che teme. + + «S’elli avesse potuto creder prima», + rispuose ’l savio mio, «anima lesa, + ciò c’ha veduto pur con la mia rima, + + non averebbe in te la man distesa; + ma la cosa incredibile mi fece + indurlo ad ovra ch’a me stesso pesa. + + Ma dilli chi tu fosti, sì che ’n vece + d’alcun’ ammenda tua fama rinfreschi + nel mondo sù, dove tornar li lece». + + E ’l tronco: «Sì col dolce dir m’adeschi, + ch’i’ non posso tacere; e voi non gravi + perch’ ïo un poco a ragionar m’inveschi. + + Io son colui che tenni ambo le chiavi + del cor di Federigo, e che le volsi, + serrando e diserrando, sì soavi, + + che dal secreto suo quasi ogn’ uom tolsi; + fede portai al glorïoso offizio, + tanto ch’i’ ne perde’ li sonni e ’ polsi. + + La meretrice che mai da l’ospizio + di Cesare non torse li occhi putti, + morte comune e de le corti vizio, + + infiammò contra me li animi tutti; + e li ’nfiammati infiammar sì Augusto, + che ’ lieti onor tornaro in tristi lutti. + + L’animo mio, per disdegnoso gusto, + credendo col morir fuggir disdegno, + ingiusto fece me contra me giusto. + + Per le nove radici d’esto legno + vi giuro che già mai non ruppi fede + al mio segnor, che fu d’onor sì degno. + + E se di voi alcun nel mondo riede, + conforti la memoria mia, che giace + ancor del colpo che ’nvidia le diede». + + Un poco attese, e poi «Da ch’el si tace», + disse ’l poeta a me, «non perder l’ora; + ma parla, e chiedi a lui, se più ti piace». + + Ond’ ïo a lui: «Domandal tu ancora + di quel che credi ch’a me satisfaccia; + ch’i’ non potrei, tanta pietà m’accora». + + Perciò ricominciò: «Se l’om ti faccia + liberamente ciò che ’l tuo dir priega, + spirito incarcerato, ancor ti piaccia + + di dirne come l’anima si lega + in questi nocchi; e dinne, se tu puoi, + s’alcuna mai di tai membra si spiega». + + Allor soffiò il tronco forte, e poi + si convertì quel vento in cotal voce: + «Brievemente sarà risposto a voi. + + Quando si parte l’anima feroce + dal corpo ond’ ella stessa s’è disvelta, + Minòs la manda a la settima foce. + + Cade in la selva, e non l’è parte scelta; + ma là dove fortuna la balestra, + quivi germoglia come gran di spelta. + + Surge in vermena e in pianta silvestra: + l’Arpie, pascendo poi de le sue foglie, + fanno dolore, e al dolor fenestra. + + Come l’altre verrem per nostre spoglie, + ma non però ch’alcuna sen rivesta, + ché non è giusto aver ciò ch’om si toglie. + + Qui le strascineremo, e per la mesta + selva saranno i nostri corpi appesi, + ciascuno al prun de l’ombra sua molesta». + + Noi eravamo ancora al tronco attesi, + credendo ch’altro ne volesse dire, + quando noi fummo d’un romor sorpresi, + + similemente a colui che venire + sente ’l porco e la caccia a la sua posta, + ch’ode le bestie, e le frasche stormire. + + Ed ecco due da la sinistra costa, + nudi e graffiati, fuggendo sì forte, + che de la selva rompieno ogne rosta. + + Quel dinanzi: «Or accorri, accorri, morte!». + E l’altro, cui pareva tardar troppo, + gridava: «Lano, sì non furo accorte + + le gambe tue a le giostre dal Toppo!». + E poi che forse li fallia la lena, + di sé e d’un cespuglio fece un groppo. + + Di rietro a loro era la selva piena + di nere cagne, bramose e correnti + come veltri ch’uscisser di catena. + + In quel che s’appiattò miser li denti, + e quel dilaceraro a brano a brano; + poi sen portar quelle membra dolenti. + + Presemi allor la mia scorta per mano, + e menommi al cespuglio che piangea + per le rotture sanguinenti in vano. + + «O Iacopo», dicea, «da Santo Andrea, + che t’è giovato di me fare schermo? + che colpa ho io de la tua vita rea?». + + Quando ’l maestro fu sovr’ esso fermo, + disse: «Chi fosti, che per tante punte + soffi con sangue doloroso sermo?». + + Ed elli a noi: «O anime che giunte + siete a veder lo strazio disonesto + c’ha le mie fronde sì da me disgiunte, + + raccoglietele al piè del tristo cesto. + I’ fui de la città che nel Batista + mutò ’l primo padrone; ond’ ei per questo + + sempre con l’arte sua la farà trista; + e se non fosse che ’n sul passo d’Arno + rimane ancor di lui alcuna vista, + + que’ cittadin che poi la rifondarno + sovra ’l cener che d’Attila rimase, + avrebber fatto lavorare indarno. + + Io fei gibetto a me de le mie case». + + + + Inferno • Canto XIV + + + Poi che la carità del natio loco + mi strinse, raunai le fronde sparte + e rende’le a colui, ch’era già fioco. + + Indi venimmo al fine ove si parte + lo secondo giron dal terzo, e dove + si vede di giustizia orribil arte. + + A ben manifestar le cose nove, + dico che arrivammo ad una landa + che dal suo letto ogne pianta rimove. + + La dolorosa selva l’è ghirlanda + intorno, come ’l fosso tristo ad essa; + quivi fermammo i passi a randa a randa. + + Lo spazzo era una rena arida e spessa, + non d’altra foggia fatta che colei + che fu da’ piè di Caton già soppressa. + + O vendetta di Dio, quanto tu dei + esser temuta da ciascun che legge + ciò che fu manifesto a li occhi mei! + + D’anime nude vidi molte gregge + che piangean tutte assai miseramente, + e parea posta lor diversa legge. + + Supin giacea in terra alcuna gente, + alcuna si sedea tutta raccolta, + e altra andava continüamente. + + Quella che giva ’ntorno era più molta, + e quella men che giacëa al tormento, + ma più al duolo avea la lingua sciolta. + + Sovra tutto ’l sabbion, d’un cader lento, + piovean di foco dilatate falde, + come di neve in alpe sanza vento. + + Quali Alessandro in quelle parti calde + d’Indïa vide sopra ’l süo stuolo + fiamme cadere infino a terra salde, + + per ch’ei provide a scalpitar lo suolo + con le sue schiere, acciò che lo vapore + mei si stingueva mentre ch’era solo: + + tale scendeva l’etternale ardore; + onde la rena s’accendea, com’ esca + sotto focile, a doppiar lo dolore. + + Sanza riposo mai era la tresca + de le misere mani, or quindi or quinci + escotendo da sé l’arsura fresca. + + I’ cominciai: «Maestro, tu che vinci + tutte le cose, fuor che ’ demon duri + ch’a l’intrar de la porta incontra uscinci, + + chi è quel grande che non par che curi + lo ’ncendio e giace dispettoso e torto, + sì che la pioggia non par che ’l marturi?». + + E quel medesmo, che si fu accorto + ch’io domandava il mio duca di lui, + gridò: «Qual io fui vivo, tal son morto. + + Se Giove stanchi ’l suo fabbro da cui + crucciato prese la folgore aguta + onde l’ultimo dì percosso fui; + + o s’elli stanchi li altri a muta a muta + in Mongibello a la focina negra, + chiamando “Buon Vulcano, aiuta, aiuta!”, + + sì com’ el fece a la pugna di Flegra, + e me saetti con tutta sua forza: + non ne potrebbe aver vendetta allegra». + + Allora il duca mio parlò di forza + tanto, ch’i’ non l’avea sì forte udito: + «O Capaneo, in ciò che non s’ammorza + + la tua superbia, se’ tu più punito; + nullo martiro, fuor che la tua rabbia, + sarebbe al tuo furor dolor compito». + + Poi si rivolse a me con miglior labbia, + dicendo: «Quei fu l’un d’i sette regi + ch’assiser Tebe; ed ebbe e par ch’elli abbia + + Dio in disdegno, e poco par che ’l pregi; + ma, com’ io dissi lui, li suoi dispetti + sono al suo petto assai debiti fregi. + + Or mi vien dietro, e guarda che non metti, + ancor, li piedi ne la rena arsiccia; + ma sempre al bosco tien li piedi stretti». + + Tacendo divenimmo là ’ve spiccia + fuor de la selva un picciol fiumicello, + lo cui rossore ancor mi raccapriccia. + + Quale del Bulicame esce ruscello + che parton poi tra lor le peccatrici, + tal per la rena giù sen giva quello. + + Lo fondo suo e ambo le pendici + fatt’ era ’n pietra, e ’ margini dallato; + per ch’io m’accorsi che ’l passo era lici. + + «Tra tutto l’altro ch’i’ t’ho dimostrato, + poscia che noi intrammo per la porta + lo cui sogliare a nessuno è negato, + + cosa non fu da li tuoi occhi scorta + notabile com’ è ’l presente rio, + che sovra sé tutte fiammelle ammorta». + + Queste parole fuor del duca mio; + per ch’io ’l pregai che mi largisse ’l pasto + di cui largito m’avëa il disio. + + «In mezzo mar siede un paese guasto», + diss’ elli allora, «che s’appella Creta, + sotto ’l cui rege fu già ’l mondo casto. + + Una montagna v’è che già fu lieta + d’acqua e di fronde, che si chiamò Ida; + or è diserta come cosa vieta. + + Rëa la scelse già per cuna fida + del suo figliuolo, e per celarlo meglio, + quando piangea, vi facea far le grida. + + Dentro dal monte sta dritto un gran veglio, + che tien volte le spalle inver’ Dammiata + e Roma guarda come süo speglio. + + La sua testa è di fin oro formata, + e puro argento son le braccia e ’l petto, + poi è di rame infino a la forcata; + + da indi in giuso è tutto ferro eletto, + salvo che ’l destro piede è terra cotta; + e sta ’n su quel, più che ’n su l’altro, eretto. + + Ciascuna parte, fuor che l’oro, è rotta + d’una fessura che lagrime goccia, + le quali, accolte, fóran quella grotta. + + Lor corso in questa valle si diroccia; + fanno Acheronte, Stige e Flegetonta; + poi sen van giù per questa stretta doccia, + + infin, là ove più non si dismonta, + fanno Cocito; e qual sia quello stagno + tu lo vedrai, però qui non si conta». + + E io a lui: «Se ’l presente rigagno + si diriva così dal nostro mondo, + perché ci appar pur a questo vivagno?». + + Ed elli a me: «Tu sai che ’l loco è tondo; + e tutto che tu sie venuto molto, + pur a sinistra, giù calando al fondo, + + non se’ ancor per tutto ’l cerchio vòlto; + per che, se cosa n’apparisce nova, + non de’ addur maraviglia al tuo volto». + + E io ancor: «Maestro, ove si trova + Flegetonta e Letè? ché de l’un taci, + e l’altro di’ che si fa d’esta piova». + + «In tutte tue question certo mi piaci», + rispuose, «ma ’l bollor de l’acqua rossa + dovea ben solver l’una che tu faci. + + Letè vedrai, ma fuor di questa fossa, + là dove vanno l’anime a lavarsi + quando la colpa pentuta è rimossa». + + Poi disse: «Omai è tempo da scostarsi + dal bosco; fa che di retro a me vegne: + li margini fan via, che non son arsi, + + e sopra loro ogne vapor si spegne». + + + + Inferno • Canto XV + + + Ora cen porta l’un de’ duri margini; + e ’l fummo del ruscel di sopra aduggia, + sì che dal foco salva l’acqua e li argini. + + Quali Fiamminghi tra Guizzante e Bruggia, + temendo ’l fiotto che ’nver’ lor s’avventa, + fanno lo schermo perché ’l mar si fuggia; + + e quali Padoan lungo la Brenta, + per difender lor ville e lor castelli, + anzi che Carentana il caldo senta: + + a tale imagine eran fatti quelli, + tutto che né sì alti né sì grossi, + qual che si fosse, lo maestro félli. + + Già eravam da la selva rimossi + tanto, ch’i’ non avrei visto dov’ era, + perch’ io in dietro rivolto mi fossi, + + quando incontrammo d’anime una schiera + che venian lungo l’argine, e ciascuna + ci riguardava come suol da sera + + guardare uno altro sotto nuova luna; + e sì ver’ noi aguzzavan le ciglia + come ’l vecchio sartor fa ne la cruna. + + Così adocchiato da cotal famiglia, + fui conosciuto da un, che mi prese + per lo lembo e gridò: «Qual maraviglia!». + + E io, quando ’l suo braccio a me distese, + ficcaï li occhi per lo cotto aspetto, + sì che ’l viso abbrusciato non difese + + la conoscenza süa al mio ’ntelletto; + e chinando la mano a la sua faccia, + rispuosi: «Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?». + + E quelli: «O figliuol mio, non ti dispiaccia + se Brunetto Latino un poco teco + ritorna ’n dietro e lascia andar la traccia». + + I’ dissi lui: «Quanto posso, ven preco; + e se volete che con voi m’asseggia, + faròl, se piace a costui che vo seco». + + «O figliuol», disse, «qual di questa greggia + s’arresta punto, giace poi cent’ anni + sanz’ arrostarsi quando ’l foco il feggia. + + Però va oltre: i’ ti verrò a’ panni; + e poi rigiugnerò la mia masnada, + che va piangendo i suoi etterni danni». + + Io non osava scender de la strada + per andar par di lui; ma ’l capo chino + tenea com’ uom che reverente vada. + + El cominciò: «Qual fortuna o destino + anzi l’ultimo dì qua giù ti mena? + e chi è questi che mostra ’l cammino?». + + «Là sù di sopra, in la vita serena», + rispuos’ io lui, «mi smarri’ in una valle, + avanti che l’età mia fosse piena. + + Pur ier mattina le volsi le spalle: + questi m’apparve, tornand’ ïo in quella, + e reducemi a ca per questo calle». + + Ed elli a me: «Se tu segui tua stella, + non puoi fallire a glorïoso porto, + se ben m’accorsi ne la vita bella; + + e s’io non fossi sì per tempo morto, + veggendo il cielo a te così benigno, + dato t’avrei a l’opera conforto. + + Ma quello ingrato popolo maligno + che discese di Fiesole ab antico, + e tiene ancor del monte e del macigno, + + ti si farà, per tuo ben far, nimico; + ed è ragion, ché tra li lazzi sorbi + si disconvien fruttare al dolce fico. + + Vecchia fama nel mondo li chiama orbi; + gent’ è avara, invidiosa e superba: + dai lor costumi fa che tu ti forbi. + + La tua fortuna tanto onor ti serba, + che l’una parte e l’altra avranno fame + di te; ma lungi fia dal becco l’erba. + + Faccian le bestie fiesolane strame + di lor medesme, e non tocchin la pianta, + s’alcuna surge ancora in lor letame, + + in cui riviva la sementa santa + di que’ Roman che vi rimaser quando + fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta». + + «Se fosse tutto pieno il mio dimando», + rispuos’ io lui, «voi non sareste ancora + de l’umana natura posto in bando; + + ché ’n la mente m’è fitta, e or m’accora, + la cara e buona imagine paterna + di voi quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora + + m’insegnavate come l’uom s’etterna: + e quant’ io l’abbia in grado, mentr’ io vivo + convien che ne la mia lingua si scerna. + + Ciò che narrate di mio corso scrivo, + e serbolo a chiosar con altro testo + a donna che saprà, s’a lei arrivo. + + Tanto vogl’ io che vi sia manifesto, + pur che mia coscïenza non mi garra, + ch’a la Fortuna, come vuol, son presto. + + Non è nuova a li orecchi miei tal arra: + però giri Fortuna la sua rota + come le piace, e ’l villan la sua marra». + + Lo mio maestro allora in su la gota + destra si volse in dietro e riguardommi; + poi disse: «Bene ascolta chi la nota». + + Né per tanto di men parlando vommi + con ser Brunetto, e dimando chi sono + li suoi compagni più noti e più sommi. + + Ed elli a me: «Saper d’alcuno è buono; + de li altri fia laudabile tacerci, + ché ’l tempo saria corto a tanto suono. + + In somma sappi che tutti fur cherci + e litterati grandi e di gran fama, + d’un peccato medesmo al mondo lerci. + + Priscian sen va con quella turba grama, + e Francesco d’Accorso anche; e vedervi, + s’avessi avuto di tal tigna brama, + + colui potei che dal servo de’ servi + fu trasmutato d’Arno in Bacchiglione, + dove lasciò li mal protesi nervi. + + Di più direi; ma ’l venire e ’l sermone + più lungo esser non può, però ch’i’ veggio + là surger nuovo fummo del sabbione. + + Gente vien con la quale esser non deggio. + Sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro, + nel qual io vivo ancora, e più non cheggio». + + Poi si rivolse, e parve di coloro + che corrono a Verona il drappo verde + per la campagna; e parve di costoro + + quelli che vince, non colui che perde. + + + + Inferno • Canto XVI + + + Già era in loco onde s’udia ’l rimbombo + de l’acqua che cadea ne l’altro giro, + simile a quel che l’arnie fanno rombo, + + quando tre ombre insieme si partiro, + correndo, d’una torma che passava + sotto la pioggia de l’aspro martiro. + + Venian ver’ noi, e ciascuna gridava: + «Sòstati tu ch’a l’abito ne sembri + esser alcun di nostra terra prava». + + Ahimè, che piaghe vidi ne’ lor membri, + ricenti e vecchie, da le fiamme incese! + Ancor men duol pur ch’i’ me ne rimembri. + + A le lor grida il mio dottor s’attese; + volse ’l viso ver’ me, e «Or aspetta», + disse, «a costor si vuole esser cortese. + + E se non fosse il foco che saetta + la natura del loco, i’ dicerei + che meglio stesse a te che a lor la fretta». + + Ricominciar, come noi restammo, ei + l’antico verso; e quando a noi fuor giunti, + fenno una rota di sé tutti e trei. + + Qual sogliono i campion far nudi e unti, + avvisando lor presa e lor vantaggio, + prima che sien tra lor battuti e punti, + + così rotando, ciascuno il visaggio + drizzava a me, sì che ’n contraro il collo + faceva ai piè continüo vïaggio. + + E «Se miseria d’esto loco sollo + rende in dispetto noi e nostri prieghi», + cominciò l’uno, «e ’l tinto aspetto e brollo, + + la fama nostra il tuo animo pieghi + a dirne chi tu se’, che i vivi piedi + così sicuro per lo ’nferno freghi. + + Questi, l’orme di cui pestar mi vedi, + tutto che nudo e dipelato vada, + fu di grado maggior che tu non credi: + + nepote fu de la buona Gualdrada; + Guido Guerra ebbe nome, e in sua vita + fece col senno assai e con la spada. + + L’altro, ch’appresso me la rena trita, + è Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, la cui voce + nel mondo sù dovria esser gradita. + + E io, che posto son con loro in croce, + Iacopo Rusticucci fui, e certo + la fiera moglie più ch’altro mi nuoce». + + S’i’ fossi stato dal foco coperto, + gittato mi sarei tra lor di sotto, + e credo che ’l dottor l’avria sofferto; + + ma perch’ io mi sarei brusciato e cotto, + vinse paura la mia buona voglia + che di loro abbracciar mi facea ghiotto. + + Poi cominciai: «Non dispetto, ma doglia + la vostra condizion dentro mi fisse, + tanta che tardi tutta si dispoglia, + + tosto che questo mio segnor mi disse + parole per le quali i’ mi pensai + che qual voi siete, tal gente venisse. + + Di vostra terra sono, e sempre mai + l’ovra di voi e li onorati nomi + con affezion ritrassi e ascoltai. + + Lascio lo fele e vo per dolci pomi + promessi a me per lo verace duca; + ma ’nfino al centro pria convien ch’i’ tomi». + + «Se lungamente l’anima conduca + le membra tue», rispuose quelli ancora, + «e se la fama tua dopo te luca, + + cortesia e valor dì se dimora + ne la nostra città sì come suole, + o se del tutto se n’è gita fora; + + ché Guiglielmo Borsiere, il qual si duole + con noi per poco e va là coi compagni, + assai ne cruccia con le sue parole». + + «La gente nuova e i sùbiti guadagni + orgoglio e dismisura han generata, + Fiorenza, in te, sì che tu già ten piagni». + + Così gridai con la faccia levata; + e i tre, che ciò inteser per risposta, + guardar l’un l’altro com’ al ver si guata. + + «Se l’altre volte sì poco ti costa», + rispuoser tutti, «il satisfare altrui, + felice te se sì parli a tua posta! + + Però, se campi d’esti luoghi bui + e torni a riveder le belle stelle, + quando ti gioverà dicere “I’ fui”, + + fa che di noi a la gente favelle». + Indi rupper la rota, e a fuggirsi + ali sembiar le gambe loro isnelle. + + Un amen non saria possuto dirsi + tosto così com’ e’ fuoro spariti; + per ch’al maestro parve di partirsi. + + Io lo seguiva, e poco eravam iti, + che ’l suon de l’acqua n’era sì vicino, + che per parlar saremmo a pena uditi. + + Come quel fiume c’ha proprio cammino + prima dal Monte Viso ’nver’ levante, + da la sinistra costa d’Apennino, + + che si chiama Acquacheta suso, avante + che si divalli giù nel basso letto, + e a Forlì di quel nome è vacante, + + rimbomba là sovra San Benedetto + de l’Alpe per cadere ad una scesa + ove dovea per mille esser recetto; + + così, giù d’una ripa discoscesa, + trovammo risonar quell’ acqua tinta, + sì che ’n poc’ ora avria l’orecchia offesa. + + Io avea una corda intorno cinta, + e con essa pensai alcuna volta + prender la lonza a la pelle dipinta. + + Poscia ch’io l’ebbi tutta da me sciolta, + sì come ’l duca m’avea comandato, + porsila a lui aggroppata e ravvolta. + + Ond’ ei si volse inver’ lo destro lato, + e alquanto di lunge da la sponda + la gittò giuso in quell’ alto burrato. + + ‘E’ pur convien che novità risponda’, + dicea fra me medesmo, ‘al novo cenno + che ’l maestro con l’occhio sì seconda’. + + Ahi quanto cauti li uomini esser dienno + presso a color che non veggion pur l’ovra, + ma per entro i pensier miran col senno! + + El disse a me: «Tosto verrà di sovra + ciò ch’io attendo e che il tuo pensier sogna; + tosto convien ch’al tuo viso si scovra». + + Sempre a quel ver c’ha faccia di menzogna + de’ l’uom chiuder le labbra fin ch’el puote, + però che sanza colpa fa vergogna; + + ma qui tacer nol posso; e per le note + di questa comedìa, lettor, ti giuro, + s’elle non sien di lunga grazia vòte, + + ch’i’ vidi per quell’ aere grosso e scuro + venir notando una figura in suso, + maravigliosa ad ogne cor sicuro, + + sì come torna colui che va giuso + talora a solver l’àncora ch’aggrappa + o scoglio o altro che nel mare è chiuso, + + che ’n sù si stende e da piè si rattrappa. + + + + Inferno • Canto XVII + + + «Ecco la fiera con la coda aguzza, + che passa i monti e rompe i muri e l’armi! + Ecco colei che tutto ’l mondo appuzza!». + + Sì cominciò lo mio duca a parlarmi; + e accennolle che venisse a proda, + vicino al fin d’i passeggiati marmi. + + E quella sozza imagine di froda + sen venne, e arrivò la testa e ’l busto, + ma ’n su la riva non trasse la coda. + + La faccia sua era faccia d’uom giusto, + tanto benigna avea di fuor la pelle, + e d’un serpente tutto l’altro fusto; + + due branche avea pilose insin l’ascelle; + lo dosso e ’l petto e ambedue le coste + dipinti avea di nodi e di rotelle. + + Con più color, sommesse e sovraposte + non fer mai drappi Tartari né Turchi, + né fuor tai tele per Aragne imposte. + + Come talvolta stanno a riva i burchi, + che parte sono in acqua e parte in terra, + e come là tra li Tedeschi lurchi + + lo bivero s’assetta a far sua guerra, + così la fiera pessima si stava + su l’orlo ch’è di pietra e ’l sabbion serra. + + Nel vano tutta sua coda guizzava, + torcendo in sù la venenosa forca + ch’a guisa di scorpion la punta armava. + + Lo duca disse: «Or convien che si torca + la nostra via un poco insino a quella + bestia malvagia che colà si corca». + + Però scendemmo a la destra mammella, + e diece passi femmo in su lo stremo, + per ben cessar la rena e la fiammella. + + E quando noi a lei venuti semo, + poco più oltre veggio in su la rena + gente seder propinqua al loco scemo. + + Quivi ’l maestro «Acciò che tutta piena + esperïenza d’esto giron porti», + mi disse, «va, e vedi la lor mena. + + Li tuoi ragionamenti sian là corti; + mentre che torni, parlerò con questa, + che ne conceda i suoi omeri forti». + + Così ancor su per la strema testa + di quel settimo cerchio tutto solo + andai, dove sedea la gente mesta. + + Per li occhi fora scoppiava lor duolo; + di qua, di là soccorrien con le mani + quando a’ vapori, e quando al caldo suolo: + + non altrimenti fan di state i cani + or col ceffo or col piè, quando son morsi + o da pulci o da mosche o da tafani. + + Poi che nel viso a certi li occhi porsi, + ne’ quali ’l doloroso foco casca, + non ne conobbi alcun; ma io m’accorsi + + che dal collo a ciascun pendea una tasca + ch’avea certo colore e certo segno, + e quindi par che ’l loro occhio si pasca. + + E com’ io riguardando tra lor vegno, + in una borsa gialla vidi azzurro + che d’un leone avea faccia e contegno. + + Poi, procedendo di mio sguardo il curro, + vidine un’altra come sangue rossa, + mostrando un’oca bianca più che burro. + + E un che d’una scrofa azzurra e grossa + segnato avea lo suo sacchetto bianco, + mi disse: «Che fai tu in questa fossa? + + Or te ne va; e perché se’ vivo anco, + sappi che ’l mio vicin Vitalïano + sederà qui dal mio sinistro fianco. + + Con questi Fiorentin son padoano: + spesse fïate mi ’ntronan li orecchi + gridando: “Vegna ’l cavalier sovrano, + + che recherà la tasca con tre becchi!”». + Qui distorse la bocca e di fuor trasse + la lingua, come bue che ’l naso lecchi. + + E io, temendo no ’l più star crucciasse + lui che di poco star m’avea ’mmonito, + torna’mi in dietro da l’anime lasse. + + Trova’ il duca mio ch’era salito + già su la groppa del fiero animale, + e disse a me: «Or sie forte e ardito. + + Omai si scende per sì fatte scale; + monta dinanzi, ch’i’ voglio esser mezzo, + sì che la coda non possa far male». + + Qual è colui che sì presso ha ’l riprezzo + de la quartana, c’ha già l’unghie smorte, + e triema tutto pur guardando ’l rezzo, + + tal divenn’ io a le parole porte; + ma vergogna mi fé le sue minacce, + che innanzi a buon segnor fa servo forte. + + I’ m’assettai in su quelle spallacce; + sì volli dir, ma la voce non venne + com’ io credetti: ‘Fa che tu m’abbracce’. + + Ma esso, ch’altra volta mi sovvenne + ad altro forse, tosto ch’i’ montai + con le braccia m’avvinse e mi sostenne; + + e disse: «Gerïon, moviti omai: + le rote larghe, e lo scender sia poco; + pensa la nova soma che tu hai». + + Come la navicella esce di loco + in dietro in dietro, sì quindi si tolse; + e poi ch’al tutto si sentì a gioco, + + là ’v’ era ’l petto, la coda rivolse, + e quella tesa, come anguilla, mosse, + e con le branche l’aere a sé raccolse. + + Maggior paura non credo che fosse + quando Fetonte abbandonò li freni, + per che ’l ciel, come pare ancor, si cosse; + + né quando Icaro misero le reni + sentì spennar per la scaldata cera, + gridando il padre a lui «Mala via tieni!», + + che fu la mia, quando vidi ch’i’ era + ne l’aere d’ogne parte, e vidi spenta + ogne veduta fuor che de la fera. + + Ella sen va notando lenta lenta; + rota e discende, ma non me n’accorgo + se non che al viso e di sotto mi venta. + + Io sentia già da la man destra il gorgo + far sotto noi un orribile scroscio, + per che con li occhi ’n giù la testa sporgo. + + Allor fu’ io più timido a lo stoscio, + però ch’i’ vidi fuochi e senti’ pianti; + ond’ io tremando tutto mi raccoscio. + + E vidi poi, ché nol vedea davanti, + lo scendere e ’l girar per li gran mali + che s’appressavan da diversi canti. + + Come ’l falcon ch’è stato assai su l’ali, + che sanza veder logoro o uccello + fa dire al falconiere «Omè, tu cali!», + + discende lasso onde si move isnello, + per cento rote, e da lunge si pone + dal suo maestro, disdegnoso e fello; + + così ne puose al fondo Gerïone + al piè al piè de la stagliata rocca, + e, discarcate le nostre persone, + + si dileguò come da corda cocca. + + + + Inferno • Canto XVIII + + + Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge, + tutto di pietra di color ferrigno, + come la cerchia che dintorno il volge. + + Nel dritto mezzo del campo maligno + vaneggia un pozzo assai largo e profondo, + di cui suo loco dicerò l’ordigno. + + Quel cinghio che rimane adunque è tondo + tra ’l pozzo e ’l piè de l’alta ripa dura, + e ha distinto in dieci valli il fondo. + + Quale, dove per guardia de le mura + più e più fossi cingon li castelli, + la parte dove son rende figura, + + tale imagine quivi facean quelli; + e come a tai fortezze da’ lor sogli + a la ripa di fuor son ponticelli, + + così da imo de la roccia scogli + movien che ricidien li argini e ’ fossi + infino al pozzo che i tronca e raccogli. + + In questo luogo, de la schiena scossi + di Gerïon, trovammoci; e ’l poeta + tenne a sinistra, e io dietro mi mossi. + + A la man destra vidi nova pieta, + novo tormento e novi frustatori, + di che la prima bolgia era repleta. + + Nel fondo erano ignudi i peccatori; + dal mezzo in qua ci venien verso ’l volto, + di là con noi, ma con passi maggiori, + + come i Roman per l’essercito molto, + l’anno del giubileo, su per lo ponte + hanno a passar la gente modo colto, + + che da l’un lato tutti hanno la fronte + verso ’l castello e vanno a Santo Pietro, + da l’altra sponda vanno verso ’l monte. + + Di qua, di là, su per lo sasso tetro + vidi demon cornuti con gran ferze, + che li battien crudelmente di retro. + + Ahi come facean lor levar le berze + a le prime percosse! già nessuno + le seconde aspettava né le terze. + + Mentr’ io andava, li occhi miei in uno + furo scontrati; e io sì tosto dissi: + «Già di veder costui non son digiuno». + + Per ch’ïo a figurarlo i piedi affissi; + e ’l dolce duca meco si ristette, + e assentio ch’alquanto in dietro gissi. + + E quel frustato celar si credette + bassando ’l viso; ma poco li valse, + ch’io dissi: «O tu che l’occhio a terra gette, + + se le fazion che porti non son false, + Venedico se’ tu Caccianemico. + Ma che ti mena a sì pungenti salse?». + + Ed elli a me: «Mal volontier lo dico; + ma sforzami la tua chiara favella, + che mi fa sovvenir del mondo antico. + + I’ fui colui che la Ghisolabella + condussi a far la voglia del marchese, + come che suoni la sconcia novella. + + E non pur io qui piango bolognese; + anzi n’è questo loco tanto pieno, + che tante lingue non son ora apprese + + a dicer ‘sipa’ tra Sàvena e Reno; + e se di ciò vuoi fede o testimonio, + rècati a mente il nostro avaro seno». + + Così parlando il percosse un demonio + de la sua scurïada, e disse: «Via, + ruffian! qui non son femmine da conio». + + I’ mi raggiunsi con la scorta mia; + poscia con pochi passi divenimmo + là ’v’ uno scoglio de la ripa uscia. + + Assai leggeramente quel salimmo; + e vòlti a destra su per la sua scheggia, + da quelle cerchie etterne ci partimmo. + + Quando noi fummo là dov’ el vaneggia + di sotto per dar passo a li sferzati, + lo duca disse: «Attienti, e fa che feggia + + lo viso in te di quest’ altri mal nati, + ai quali ancor non vedesti la faccia + però che son con noi insieme andati». + + Del vecchio ponte guardavam la traccia + che venìa verso noi da l’altra banda, + e che la ferza similmente scaccia. + + E ’l buon maestro, sanza mia dimanda, + mi disse: «Guarda quel grande che vene, + e per dolor non par lagrime spanda: + + quanto aspetto reale ancor ritene! + Quelli è Iasón, che per cuore e per senno + li Colchi del monton privati féne. + + Ello passò per l’isola di Lenno + poi che l’ardite femmine spietate + tutti li maschi loro a morte dienno. + + Ivi con segni e con parole ornate + Isifile ingannò, la giovinetta + che prima avea tutte l’altre ingannate. + + Lasciolla quivi, gravida, soletta; + tal colpa a tal martiro lui condanna; + e anche di Medea si fa vendetta. + + Con lui sen va chi da tal parte inganna; + e questo basti de la prima valle + sapere e di color che ’n sé assanna». + + Già eravam là ’ve lo stretto calle + con l’argine secondo s’incrocicchia, + e fa di quello ad un altr’ arco spalle. + + Quindi sentimmo gente che si nicchia + ne l’altra bolgia e che col muso scuffa, + e sé medesma con le palme picchia. + + Le ripe eran grommate d’una muffa, + per l’alito di giù che vi s’appasta, + che con li occhi e col naso facea zuffa. + + Lo fondo è cupo sì, che non ci basta + loco a veder sanza montare al dosso + de l’arco, ove lo scoglio più sovrasta. + + Quivi venimmo; e quindi giù nel fosso + vidi gente attuffata in uno sterco + che da li uman privadi parea mosso. + + E mentre ch’io là giù con l’occhio cerco, + vidi un col capo sì di merda lordo, + che non parëa s’era laico o cherco. + + Quei mi sgridò: «Perché se’ tu sì gordo + di riguardar più me che li altri brutti?». + E io a lui: «Perché, se ben ricordo, + + già t’ho veduto coi capelli asciutti, + e se’ Alessio Interminei da Lucca: + però t’adocchio più che li altri tutti». + + Ed elli allor, battendosi la zucca: + «Qua giù m’hanno sommerso le lusinghe + ond’ io non ebbi mai la lingua stucca». + + Appresso ciò lo duca «Fa che pinghe», + mi disse, «il viso un poco più avante, + sì che la faccia ben con l’occhio attinghe + + di quella sozza e scapigliata fante + che là si graffia con l’unghie merdose, + e or s’accoscia e ora è in piedi stante. + + Taïde è, la puttana che rispuose + al drudo suo quando disse “Ho io grazie + grandi apo te?”: “Anzi maravigliose!”. + + E quinci sian le nostre viste sazie». + + + + Inferno • Canto XIX + + + O Simon mago, o miseri seguaci + che le cose di Dio, che di bontate + deon essere spose, e voi rapaci + + per oro e per argento avolterate, + or convien che per voi suoni la tromba, + però che ne la terza bolgia state. + + Già eravamo, a la seguente tomba, + montati de lo scoglio in quella parte + ch’a punto sovra mezzo ’l fosso piomba. + + O somma sapïenza, quanta è l’arte + che mostri in cielo, in terra e nel mal mondo, + e quanto giusto tua virtù comparte! + + Io vidi per le coste e per lo fondo + piena la pietra livida di fóri, + d’un largo tutti e ciascun era tondo. + + Non mi parean men ampi né maggiori + che que’ che son nel mio bel San Giovanni, + fatti per loco d’i battezzatori; + + l’un de li quali, ancor non è molt’ anni, + rupp’ io per un che dentro v’annegava: + e questo sia suggel ch’ogn’ omo sganni. + + Fuor de la bocca a ciascun soperchiava + d’un peccator li piedi e de le gambe + infino al grosso, e l’altro dentro stava. + + Le piante erano a tutti accese intrambe; + per che sì forte guizzavan le giunte, + che spezzate averien ritorte e strambe. + + Qual suole il fiammeggiar de le cose unte + muoversi pur su per la strema buccia, + tal era lì dai calcagni a le punte. + + «Chi è colui, maestro, che si cruccia + guizzando più che li altri suoi consorti», + diss’ io, «e cui più roggia fiamma succia?». + + Ed elli a me: «Se tu vuo’ ch’i’ ti porti + là giù per quella ripa che più giace, + da lui saprai di sé e de’ suoi torti». + + E io: «Tanto m’è bel, quanto a te piace: + tu se’ segnore, e sai ch’i’ non mi parto + dal tuo volere, e sai quel che si tace». + + Allor venimmo in su l’argine quarto; + volgemmo e discendemmo a mano stanca + là giù nel fondo foracchiato e arto. + + Lo buon maestro ancor de la sua anca + non mi dipuose, sì mi giunse al rotto + di quel che si piangeva con la zanca. + + «O qual che se’ che ’l di sù tien di sotto, + anima trista come pal commessa», + comincia’ io a dir, «se puoi, fa motto». + + Io stava come ’l frate che confessa + lo perfido assessin, che, poi ch’è fitto, + richiama lui per che la morte cessa. + + Ed el gridò: «Se’ tu già costì ritto, + se’ tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio? + Di parecchi anni mi mentì lo scritto. + + Se’ tu sì tosto di quell’ aver sazio + per lo qual non temesti tòrre a ’nganno + la bella donna, e poi di farne strazio?». + + Tal mi fec’ io, quai son color che stanno, + per non intender ciò ch’è lor risposto, + quasi scornati, e risponder non sanno. + + Allor Virgilio disse: «Dilli tosto: + “Non son colui, non son colui che credi”»; + e io rispuosi come a me fu imposto. + + Per che lo spirto tutti storse i piedi; + poi, sospirando e con voce di pianto, + mi disse: «Dunque che a me richiedi? + + Se di saper ch’i’ sia ti cal cotanto, + che tu abbi però la ripa corsa, + sappi ch’i’ fui vestito del gran manto; + + e veramente fui figliuol de l’orsa, + cupido sì per avanzar li orsatti, + che sù l’avere e qui me misi in borsa. + + Di sotto al capo mio son li altri tratti + che precedetter me simoneggiando, + per le fessure de la pietra piatti. + + Là giù cascherò io altresì quando + verrà colui ch’i’ credea che tu fossi, + allor ch’i’ feci ’l sùbito dimando. + + Ma più è ’l tempo già che i piè mi cossi + e ch’i’ son stato così sottosopra, + ch’el non starà piantato coi piè rossi: + + ché dopo lui verrà di più laida opra, + di ver’ ponente, un pastor sanza legge, + tal che convien che lui e me ricuopra. + + Nuovo Iasón sarà, di cui si legge + ne’ Maccabei; e come a quel fu molle + suo re, così fia lui chi Francia regge». + + Io non so s’i’ mi fui qui troppo folle, + ch’i’ pur rispuosi lui a questo metro: + «Deh, or mi dì: quanto tesoro volle + + Nostro Segnore in prima da san Pietro + ch’ei ponesse le chiavi in sua balìa? + Certo non chiese se non “Viemmi retro”. + + Né Pier né li altri tolsero a Matia + oro od argento, quando fu sortito + al loco che perdé l’anima ria. + + Però ti sta, ché tu se’ ben punito; + e guarda ben la mal tolta moneta + ch’esser ti fece contra Carlo ardito. + + E se non fosse ch’ancor lo mi vieta + la reverenza de le somme chiavi + che tu tenesti ne la vita lieta, + + io userei parole ancor più gravi; + ché la vostra avarizia il mondo attrista, + calcando i buoni e sollevando i pravi. + + Di voi pastor s’accorse il Vangelista, + quando colei che siede sopra l’acque + puttaneggiar coi regi a lui fu vista; + + quella che con le sette teste nacque, + e da le diece corna ebbe argomento, + fin che virtute al suo marito piacque. + + Fatto v’avete dio d’oro e d’argento; + e che altro è da voi a l’idolatre, + se non ch’elli uno, e voi ne orate cento? + + Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre, + non la tua conversion, ma quella dote + che da te prese il primo ricco patre!». + + E mentr’ io li cantava cotai note, + o ira o coscïenza che ’l mordesse, + forte spingava con ambo le piote. + + I’ credo ben ch’al mio duca piacesse, + con sì contenta labbia sempre attese + lo suon de le parole vere espresse. + + Però con ambo le braccia mi prese; + e poi che tutto su mi s’ebbe al petto, + rimontò per la via onde discese. + + Né si stancò d’avermi a sé distretto, + sì men portò sovra ’l colmo de l’arco + che dal quarto al quinto argine è tragetto. + + Quivi soavemente spuose il carco, + soave per lo scoglio sconcio ed erto + che sarebbe a le capre duro varco. + + Indi un altro vallon mi fu scoperto. + + + + Inferno • Canto XX + + + Di nova pena mi conven far versi + e dar matera al ventesimo canto + de la prima canzon, ch’è d’i sommersi. + + Io era già disposto tutto quanto + a riguardar ne lo scoperto fondo, + che si bagnava d’angoscioso pianto; + + e vidi gente per lo vallon tondo + venir, tacendo e lagrimando, al passo + che fanno le letane in questo mondo. + + Come ’l viso mi scese in lor più basso, + mirabilmente apparve esser travolto + ciascun tra ’l mento e ’l principio del casso, + + ché da le reni era tornato ’l volto, + e in dietro venir li convenia, + perché ’l veder dinanzi era lor tolto. + + Forse per forza già di parlasia + si travolse così alcun del tutto; + ma io nol vidi, né credo che sia. + + Se Dio ti lasci, lettor, prender frutto + di tua lezione, or pensa per te stesso + com’ io potea tener lo viso asciutto, + + quando la nostra imagine di presso + vidi sì torta, che ’l pianto de li occhi + le natiche bagnava per lo fesso. + + Certo io piangea, poggiato a un de’ rocchi + del duro scoglio, sì che la mia scorta + mi disse: «Ancor se’ tu de li altri sciocchi? + + Qui vive la pietà quand’ è ben morta; + chi è più scellerato che colui + che al giudicio divin passion comporta? + + Drizza la testa, drizza, e vedi a cui + s’aperse a li occhi d’i Teban la terra; + per ch’ei gridavan tutti: “Dove rui, + + Anfïarao? perché lasci la guerra?”. + E non restò di ruinare a valle + fino a Minòs che ciascheduno afferra. + + Mira c’ha fatto petto de le spalle; + perché volle veder troppo davante, + di retro guarda e fa retroso calle. + + Vedi Tiresia, che mutò sembiante + quando di maschio femmina divenne, + cangiandosi le membra tutte quante; + + e prima, poi, ribatter li convenne + li duo serpenti avvolti, con la verga, + che rïavesse le maschili penne. + + Aronta è quel ch’al ventre li s’atterga, + che ne’ monti di Luni, dove ronca + lo Carrarese che di sotto alberga, + + ebbe tra ’ bianchi marmi la spelonca + per sua dimora; onde a guardar le stelle + e ’l mar non li era la veduta tronca. + + E quella che ricuopre le mammelle, + che tu non vedi, con le trecce sciolte, + e ha di là ogne pilosa pelle, + + Manto fu, che cercò per terre molte; + poscia si puose là dove nacqu’ io; + onde un poco mi piace che m’ascolte. + + Poscia che ’l padre suo di vita uscìo + e venne serva la città di Baco, + questa gran tempo per lo mondo gio. + + Suso in Italia bella giace un laco, + a piè de l’Alpe che serra Lamagna + sovra Tiralli, c’ha nome Benaco. + + Per mille fonti, credo, e più si bagna + tra Garda e Val Camonica e Pennino + de l’acqua che nel detto laco stagna. + + Loco è nel mezzo là dove ’l trentino + pastore e quel di Brescia e ’l veronese + segnar poria, s’e’ fesse quel cammino. + + Siede Peschiera, bello e forte arnese + da fronteggiar Bresciani e Bergamaschi, + ove la riva ’ntorno più discese. + + Ivi convien che tutto quanto caschi + ciò che ’n grembo a Benaco star non può, + e fassi fiume giù per verdi paschi. + + Tosto che l’acqua a correr mette co, + non più Benaco, ma Mencio si chiama + fino a Governol, dove cade in Po. + + Non molto ha corso, ch’el trova una lama, + ne la qual si distende e la ’mpaluda; + e suol di state talor essere grama. + + Quindi passando la vergine cruda + vide terra, nel mezzo del pantano, + sanza coltura e d’abitanti nuda. + + Lì, per fuggire ogne consorzio umano, + ristette con suoi servi a far sue arti, + e visse, e vi lasciò suo corpo vano. + + Li uomini poi che ’ntorno erano sparti + s’accolsero a quel loco, ch’era forte + per lo pantan ch’avea da tutte parti. + + Fer la città sovra quell’ ossa morte; + e per colei che ’l loco prima elesse, + Mantüa l’appellar sanz’ altra sorte. + + Già fuor le genti sue dentro più spesse, + prima che la mattia da Casalodi + da Pinamonte inganno ricevesse. + + Però t’assenno che, se tu mai odi + originar la mia terra altrimenti, + la verità nulla menzogna frodi». + + E io: «Maestro, i tuoi ragionamenti + mi son sì certi e prendon sì mia fede, + che li altri mi sarien carboni spenti. + + Ma dimmi, de la gente che procede, + se tu ne vedi alcun degno di nota; + ché solo a ciò la mia mente rifiede». + + Allor mi disse: «Quel che da la gota + porge la barba in su le spalle brune, + fu—quando Grecia fu di maschi vòta, + + sì ch’a pena rimaser per le cune— + augure, e diede ’l punto con Calcanta + in Aulide a tagliar la prima fune. + + Euripilo ebbe nome, e così ’l canta + l’alta mia tragedìa in alcun loco: + ben lo sai tu che la sai tutta quanta. + + Quell’ altro che ne’ fianchi è così poco, + Michele Scotto fu, che veramente + de le magiche frode seppe ’l gioco. + + Vedi Guido Bonatti; vedi Asdente, + ch’avere inteso al cuoio e a lo spago + ora vorrebbe, ma tardi si pente. + + Vedi le triste che lasciaron l’ago, + la spuola e ’l fuso, e fecersi ’ndivine; + fecer malie con erbe e con imago. + + Ma vienne omai, ché già tiene ’l confine + d’amendue li emisperi e tocca l’onda + sotto Sobilia Caino e le spine; + + e già iernotte fu la luna tonda: + ben ten de’ ricordar, ché non ti nocque + alcuna volta per la selva fonda». + + Sì mi parlava, e andavamo introcque. + + + + Inferno • Canto XXI + + + Così di ponte in ponte, altro parlando + che la mia comedìa cantar non cura, + venimmo; e tenavamo ’l colmo, quando + + restammo per veder l’altra fessura + di Malebolge e li altri pianti vani; + e vidila mirabilmente oscura. + + Quale ne l’arzanà de’ Viniziani + bolle l’inverno la tenace pece + a rimpalmare i legni lor non sani, + + ché navicar non ponno—in quella vece + chi fa suo legno novo e chi ristoppa + le coste a quel che più vïaggi fece; + + chi ribatte da proda e chi da poppa; + altri fa remi e altri volge sarte; + chi terzeruolo e artimon rintoppa—: + + tal, non per foco ma per divin’ arte, + bollia là giuso una pegola spessa, + che ’nviscava la ripa d’ogne parte. + + I’ vedea lei, ma non vedëa in essa + mai che le bolle che ’l bollor levava, + e gonfiar tutta, e riseder compressa. + + Mentr’ io là giù fisamente mirava, + lo duca mio, dicendo «Guarda, guarda!», + mi trasse a sé del loco dov’ io stava. + + Allor mi volsi come l’uom cui tarda + di veder quel che li convien fuggire + e cui paura sùbita sgagliarda, + + che, per veder, non indugia ’l partire: + e vidi dietro a noi un diavol nero + correndo su per lo scoglio venire. + + Ahi quant’ elli era ne l’aspetto fero! + e quanto mi parea ne l’atto acerbo, + con l’ali aperte e sovra i piè leggero! + + L’omero suo, ch’era aguto e superbo, + carcava un peccator con ambo l’anche, + e quei tenea de’ piè ghermito ’l nerbo. + + Del nostro ponte disse: «O Malebranche, + ecco un de li anzïan di Santa Zita! + Mettetel sotto, ch’i’ torno per anche + + a quella terra, che n’è ben fornita: + ogn’ uom v’è barattier, fuor che Bonturo; + del no, per li denar, vi si fa ita». + + Là giù ’l buttò, e per lo scoglio duro + si volse; e mai non fu mastino sciolto + con tanta fretta a seguitar lo furo. + + Quel s’attuffò, e tornò sù convolto; + ma i demon che del ponte avean coperchio, + gridar: «Qui non ha loco il Santo Volto! + + qui si nuota altrimenti che nel Serchio! + Però, se tu non vuo’ di nostri graffi, + non far sopra la pegola soverchio». + + Poi l’addentar con più di cento raffi, + disser: «Coverto convien che qui balli, + sì che, se puoi, nascosamente accaffi». + + Non altrimenti i cuoci a’ lor vassalli + fanno attuffare in mezzo la caldaia + la carne con li uncin, perché non galli. + + Lo buon maestro «Acciò che non si paia + che tu ci sia», mi disse, «giù t’acquatta + dopo uno scheggio, ch’alcun schermo t’aia; + + e per nulla offension che mi sia fatta, + non temer tu, ch’i’ ho le cose conte, + perch’ altra volta fui a tal baratta». + + Poscia passò di là dal co del ponte; + e com’ el giunse in su la ripa sesta, + mestier li fu d’aver sicura fronte. + + Con quel furore e con quella tempesta + ch’escono i cani a dosso al poverello + che di sùbito chiede ove s’arresta, + + usciron quei di sotto al ponticello, + e volser contra lui tutt’ i runcigli; + ma el gridò: «Nessun di voi sia fello! + + Innanzi che l’uncin vostro mi pigli, + traggasi avante l’un di voi che m’oda, + e poi d’arruncigliarmi si consigli». + + Tutti gridaron: «Vada Malacoda!»; + per ch’un si mosse—e li altri stetter fermi— + e venne a lui dicendo: «Che li approda?». + + «Credi tu, Malacoda, qui vedermi + esser venuto», disse ’l mio maestro, + «sicuro già da tutti vostri schermi, + + sanza voler divino e fato destro? + Lascian’ andar, ché nel cielo è voluto + ch’i’ mostri altrui questo cammin silvestro». + + Allor li fu l’orgoglio sì caduto, + ch’e’ si lasciò cascar l’uncino a’ piedi, + e disse a li altri: «Omai non sia feruto». + + E ’l duca mio a me: «O tu che siedi + tra li scheggion del ponte quatto quatto, + sicuramente omai a me ti riedi». + + Per ch’io mi mossi e a lui venni ratto; + e i diavoli si fecer tutti avanti, + sì ch’io temetti ch’ei tenesser patto; + + così vid’ ïo già temer li fanti + ch’uscivan patteggiati di Caprona, + veggendo sé tra nemici cotanti. + + I’ m’accostai con tutta la persona + lungo ’l mio duca, e non torceva li occhi + da la sembianza lor ch’era non buona. + + Ei chinavan li raffi e «Vuo’ che ’l tocchi», + diceva l’un con l’altro, «in sul groppone?». + E rispondien: «Sì, fa che gliel’ accocchi». + + Ma quel demonio che tenea sermone + col duca mio, si volse tutto presto + e disse: «Posa, posa, Scarmiglione!». + + Poi disse a noi: «Più oltre andar per questo + iscoglio non si può, però che giace + tutto spezzato al fondo l’arco sesto. + + E se l’andare avante pur vi piace, + andatevene su per questa grotta; + presso è un altro scoglio che via face. + + Ier, più oltre cinqu’ ore che quest’ otta, + mille dugento con sessanta sei + anni compié che qui la via fu rotta. + + Io mando verso là di questi miei + a riguardar s’alcun se ne sciorina; + gite con lor, che non saranno rei». + + «Tra’ti avante, Alichino, e Calcabrina», + cominciò elli a dire, «e tu, Cagnazzo; + e Barbariccia guidi la decina. + + Libicocco vegn’ oltre e Draghignazzo, + Cirïatto sannuto e Graffiacane + e Farfarello e Rubicante pazzo. + + Cercate ’ntorno le boglienti pane; + costor sian salvi infino a l’altro scheggio + che tutto intero va sovra le tane». + + «Omè, maestro, che è quel ch’i’ veggio?», + diss’ io, «deh, sanza scorta andianci soli, + se tu sa’ ir; ch’i’ per me non la cheggio. + + Se tu se’ sì accorto come suoli, + non vedi tu ch’e’ digrignan li denti + e con le ciglia ne minaccian duoli?». + + Ed elli a me: «Non vo’ che tu paventi; + lasciali digrignar pur a lor senno, + ch’e’ fanno ciò per li lessi dolenti». + + Per l’argine sinistro volta dienno; + ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta + coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno; + + ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta. + + + + Inferno • Canto XXII + + + Io vidi già cavalier muover campo, + e cominciare stormo e far lor mostra, + e talvolta partir per loro scampo; + + corridor vidi per la terra vostra, + o Aretini, e vidi gir gualdane, + fedir torneamenti e correr giostra; + + quando con trombe, e quando con campane, + con tamburi e con cenni di castella, + e con cose nostrali e con istrane; + + né già con sì diversa cennamella + cavalier vidi muover né pedoni, + né nave a segno di terra o di stella. + + Noi andavam con li diece demoni. + Ahi fiera compagnia! ma ne la chiesa + coi santi, e in taverna coi ghiottoni. + + Pur a la pegola era la mia ’ntesa, + per veder de la bolgia ogne contegno + e de la gente ch’entro v’era incesa. + + Come i dalfini, quando fanno segno + a’ marinar con l’arco de la schiena + che s’argomentin di campar lor legno, + + talor così, ad alleggiar la pena, + mostrav’ alcun de’ peccatori ’l dosso + e nascondea in men che non balena. + + E come a l’orlo de l’acqua d’un fosso + stanno i ranocchi pur col muso fuori, + sì che celano i piedi e l’altro grosso, + + sì stavan d’ogne parte i peccatori; + ma come s’appressava Barbariccia, + così si ritraén sotto i bollori. + + I’ vidi, e anco il cor me n’accapriccia, + uno aspettar così, com’ elli ’ncontra + ch’una rana rimane e l’altra spiccia; + + e Graffiacan, che li era più di contra, + li arruncigliò le ’mpegolate chiome + e trassel sù, che mi parve una lontra. + + I’ sapea già di tutti quanti ’l nome, + sì li notai quando fuorono eletti, + e poi ch’e’ si chiamaro, attesi come. + + «O Rubicante, fa che tu li metti + li unghioni a dosso, sì che tu lo scuoi!», + gridavan tutti insieme i maladetti. + + E io: «Maestro mio, fa, se tu puoi, + che tu sappi chi è lo sciagurato + venuto a man de li avversari suoi». + + Lo duca mio li s’accostò allato; + domandollo ond’ ei fosse, e quei rispuose: + «I’ fui del regno di Navarra nato. + + Mia madre a servo d’un segnor mi puose, + che m’avea generato d’un ribaldo, + distruggitor di sé e di sue cose. + + Poi fui famiglia del buon re Tebaldo; + quivi mi misi a far baratteria, + di ch’io rendo ragione in questo caldo». + + E Cirïatto, a cui di bocca uscia + d’ogne parte una sanna come a porco, + li fé sentir come l’una sdruscia. + + Tra male gatte era venuto ’l sorco; + ma Barbariccia il chiuse con le braccia + e disse: «State in là, mentr’ io lo ’nforco». + + E al maestro mio volse la faccia; + «Domanda», disse, «ancor, se più disii + saper da lui, prima ch’altri ’l disfaccia». + + Lo duca dunque: «Or dì: de li altri rii + conosci tu alcun che sia latino + sotto la pece?». E quelli: «I’ mi partii, + + poco è, da un che fu di là vicino. + Così foss’ io ancor con lui coperto, + ch’i’ non temerei unghia né uncino!». + + E Libicocco «Troppo avem sofferto», + disse; e preseli ’l braccio col runciglio, + sì che, stracciando, ne portò un lacerto. + + Draghignazzo anco i volle dar di piglio + giuso a le gambe; onde ’l decurio loro + si volse intorno intorno con mal piglio. + + Quand’ elli un poco rappaciati fuoro, + a lui, ch’ancor mirava sua ferita, + domandò ’l duca mio sanza dimoro: + + «Chi fu colui da cui mala partita + di’ che facesti per venire a proda?». + Ed ei rispuose: «Fu frate Gomita, + + quel di Gallura, vasel d’ogne froda, + ch’ebbe i nemici di suo donno in mano, + e fé sì lor, che ciascun se ne loda. + + Danar si tolse e lasciolli di piano, + sì com’ e’ dice; e ne li altri offici anche + barattier fu non picciol, ma sovrano. + + Usa con esso donno Michel Zanche + di Logodoro; e a dir di Sardigna + le lingue lor non si sentono stanche. + + Omè, vedete l’altro che digrigna; + i’ direi anche, ma i’ temo ch’ello + non s’apparecchi a grattarmi la tigna». + + E ’l gran proposto, vòlto a Farfarello + che stralunava li occhi per fedire, + disse: «Fatti ’n costà, malvagio uccello!». + + «Se voi volete vedere o udire», + ricominciò lo spaürato appresso, + «Toschi o Lombardi, io ne farò venire; + + ma stieno i Malebranche un poco in cesso, + sì ch’ei non teman de le lor vendette; + e io, seggendo in questo loco stesso, + + per un ch’io son, ne farò venir sette + quand’ io suffolerò, com’ è nostro uso + di fare allor che fori alcun si mette». + + Cagnazzo a cotal motto levò ’l muso, + crollando ’l capo, e disse: «Odi malizia + ch’elli ha pensata per gittarsi giuso!». + + Ond’ ei, ch’avea lacciuoli a gran divizia, + rispuose: «Malizioso son io troppo, + quand’ io procuro a’ mia maggior trestizia». + + Alichin non si tenne e, di rintoppo + a li altri, disse a lui: «Se tu ti cali, + io non ti verrò dietro di gualoppo, + + ma batterò sovra la pece l’ali. + Lascisi ’l collo, e sia la ripa scudo, + a veder se tu sol più di noi vali». + + O tu che leggi, udirai nuovo ludo: + ciascun da l’altra costa li occhi volse, + quel prima, ch’a ciò fare era più crudo. + + Lo Navarrese ben suo tempo colse; + fermò le piante a terra, e in un punto + saltò e dal proposto lor si sciolse. + + Di che ciascun di colpa fu compunto, + ma quei più che cagion fu del difetto; + però si mosse e gridò: «Tu se’ giunto!». + + Ma poco i valse: ché l’ali al sospetto + non potero avanzar; quelli andò sotto, + e quei drizzò volando suso il petto: + + non altrimenti l’anitra di botto, + quando ’l falcon s’appressa, giù s’attuffa, + ed ei ritorna sù crucciato e rotto. + + Irato Calcabrina de la buffa, + volando dietro li tenne, invaghito + che quei campasse per aver la zuffa; + + e come ’l barattier fu disparito, + così volse li artigli al suo compagno, + e fu con lui sopra ’l fosso ghermito. + + Ma l’altro fu bene sparvier grifagno + ad artigliar ben lui, e amendue + cadder nel mezzo del bogliente stagno. + + Lo caldo sghermitor sùbito fue; + ma però di levarsi era neente, + sì avieno inviscate l’ali sue. + + Barbariccia, con li altri suoi dolente, + quattro ne fé volar da l’altra costa + con tutt’ i raffi, e assai prestamente + + di qua, di là discesero a la posta; + porser li uncini verso li ’mpaniati, + ch’eran già cotti dentro da la crosta. + + E noi lasciammo lor così ’mpacciati. + + + + Inferno • Canto XXIII + + + Taciti, soli, sanza compagnia + n’andavam l’un dinanzi e l’altro dopo, + come frati minor vanno per via. + + Vòlt’ era in su la favola d’Isopo + lo mio pensier per la presente rissa, + dov’ el parlò de la rana e del topo; + + ché più non si pareggia ‘mo’ e ‘issa’ + che l’un con l’altro fa, se ben s’accoppia + principio e fine con la mente fissa. + + E come l’un pensier de l’altro scoppia, + così nacque di quello un altro poi, + che la prima paura mi fé doppia. + + Io pensava così: ‘Questi per noi + sono scherniti con danno e con beffa + sì fatta, ch’assai credo che lor nòi. + + Se l’ira sovra ’l mal voler s’aggueffa, + ei ne verranno dietro più crudeli + che ’l cane a quella lievre ch’elli acceffa’. + + Già mi sentia tutti arricciar li peli + de la paura e stava in dietro intento, + quand’ io dissi: «Maestro, se non celi + + te e me tostamente, i’ ho pavento + d’i Malebranche. Noi li avem già dietro; + io li ’magino sì, che già li sento». + + E quei: «S’i’ fossi di piombato vetro, + l’imagine di fuor tua non trarrei + più tosto a me, che quella dentro ’mpetro. + + Pur mo venieno i tuo’ pensier tra ’ miei, + con simile atto e con simile faccia, + sì che d’intrambi un sol consiglio fei. + + S’elli è che sì la destra costa giaccia, + che noi possiam ne l’altra bolgia scendere, + noi fuggirem l’imaginata caccia». + + Già non compié di tal consiglio rendere, + ch’io li vidi venir con l’ali tese + non molto lungi, per volerne prendere. + + Lo duca mio di sùbito mi prese, + come la madre ch’al romore è desta + e vede presso a sé le fiamme accese, + + che prende il figlio e fugge e non s’arresta, + avendo più di lui che di sé cura, + tanto che solo una camiscia vesta; + + e giù dal collo de la ripa dura + supin si diede a la pendente roccia, + che l’un de’ lati a l’altra bolgia tura. + + Non corse mai sì tosto acqua per doccia + a volger ruota di molin terragno, + quand’ ella più verso le pale approccia, + + come ’l maestro mio per quel vivagno, + portandosene me sovra ’l suo petto, + come suo figlio, non come compagno. + + A pena fuoro i piè suoi giunti al letto + del fondo giù, ch’e’ furon in sul colle + sovresso noi; ma non lì era sospetto: + + ché l’alta provedenza che lor volle + porre ministri de la fossa quinta, + poder di partirs’ indi a tutti tolle. + + Là giù trovammo una gente dipinta + che giva intorno assai con lenti passi, + piangendo e nel sembiante stanca e vinta. + + Elli avean cappe con cappucci bassi + dinanzi a li occhi, fatte de la taglia + che in Clugnì per li monaci fassi. + + Di fuor dorate son, sì ch’elli abbaglia; + ma dentro tutte piombo, e gravi tanto, + che Federigo le mettea di paglia. + + Oh in etterno faticoso manto! + Noi ci volgemmo ancor pur a man manca + con loro insieme, intenti al tristo pianto; + + ma per lo peso quella gente stanca + venìa sì pian, che noi eravam nuovi + di compagnia ad ogne mover d’anca. + + Per ch’io al duca mio: «Fa che tu trovi + alcun ch’al fatto o al nome si conosca, + e li occhi, sì andando, intorno movi». + + E un che ’ntese la parola tosca, + di retro a noi gridò: «Tenete i piedi, + voi che correte sì per l’aura fosca! + + Forse ch’avrai da me quel che tu chiedi». + Onde ’l duca si volse e disse: «Aspetta, + e poi secondo il suo passo procedi». + + Ristetti, e vidi due mostrar gran fretta + de l’animo, col viso, d’esser meco; + ma tardavali ’l carco e la via stretta. + + Quando fuor giunti, assai con l’occhio bieco + mi rimiraron sanza far parola; + poi si volsero in sé, e dicean seco: + + «Costui par vivo a l’atto de la gola; + e s’e’ son morti, per qual privilegio + vanno scoperti de la grave stola?». + + Poi disser me: «O Tosco, ch’al collegio + de l’ipocriti tristi se’ venuto, + dir chi tu se’ non avere in dispregio». + + E io a loro: «I’ fui nato e cresciuto + sovra ’l bel fiume d’Arno a la gran villa, + e son col corpo ch’i’ ho sempre avuto. + + Ma voi chi siete, a cui tanto distilla + quant’ i’ veggio dolor giù per le guance? + e che pena è in voi che sì sfavilla?». + + E l’un rispuose a me: «Le cappe rance + son di piombo sì grosse, che li pesi + fan così cigolar le lor bilance. + + Frati godenti fummo, e bolognesi; + io Catalano e questi Loderingo + nomati, e da tua terra insieme presi + + come suole esser tolto un uom solingo, + per conservar sua pace; e fummo tali, + ch’ancor si pare intorno dal Gardingo». + + Io cominciai: «O frati, i vostri mali . . . »; + ma più non dissi, ch’a l’occhio mi corse + un, crucifisso in terra con tre pali. + + Quando mi vide, tutto si distorse, + soffiando ne la barba con sospiri; + e ’l frate Catalan, ch’a ciò s’accorse, + + mi disse: «Quel confitto che tu miri, + consigliò i Farisei che convenia + porre un uom per lo popolo a’ martìri. + + Attraversato è, nudo, ne la via, + come tu vedi, ed è mestier ch’el senta + qualunque passa, come pesa, pria. + + E a tal modo il socero si stenta + in questa fossa, e li altri dal concilio + che fu per li Giudei mala sementa». + + Allor vid’ io maravigliar Virgilio + sovra colui ch’era disteso in croce + tanto vilmente ne l’etterno essilio. + + Poscia drizzò al frate cotal voce: + «Non vi dispiaccia, se vi lece, dirci + s’a la man destra giace alcuna foce + + onde noi amendue possiamo uscirci, + sanza costrigner de li angeli neri + che vegnan d’esto fondo a dipartirci». + + Rispuose adunque: «Più che tu non speri + s’appressa un sasso che da la gran cerchia + si move e varca tutt’ i vallon feri, + + salvo che ’n questo è rotto e nol coperchia; + montar potrete su per la ruina, + che giace in costa e nel fondo soperchia». + + Lo duca stette un poco a testa china; + poi disse: «Mal contava la bisogna + colui che i peccator di qua uncina». + + E ’l frate: «Io udi’ già dire a Bologna + del diavol vizi assai, tra ’ quali udi’ + ch’elli è bugiardo, e padre di menzogna». + + Appresso il duca a gran passi sen gì, + turbato un poco d’ira nel sembiante; + ond’ io da li ’ncarcati mi parti’ + + dietro a le poste de le care piante. + + + + Inferno • Canto XXIV + + + In quella parte del giovanetto anno + che ’l sole i crin sotto l’Aquario tempra + e già le notti al mezzo dì sen vanno, + + quando la brina in su la terra assempra + l’imagine di sua sorella bianca, + ma poco dura a la sua penna tempra, + + lo villanello a cui la roba manca, + si leva, e guarda, e vede la campagna + biancheggiar tutta; ond’ ei si batte l’anca, + + ritorna in casa, e qua e là si lagna, + come ’l tapin che non sa che si faccia; + poi riede, e la speranza ringavagna, + + veggendo ’l mondo aver cangiata faccia + in poco d’ora, e prende suo vincastro + e fuor le pecorelle a pascer caccia. + + Così mi fece sbigottir lo mastro + quand’ io li vidi sì turbar la fronte, + e così tosto al mal giunse lo ’mpiastro; + + ché, come noi venimmo al guasto ponte, + lo duca a me si volse con quel piglio + dolce ch’io vidi prima a piè del monte. + + Le braccia aperse, dopo alcun consiglio + eletto seco riguardando prima + ben la ruina, e diedemi di piglio. + + E come quei ch’adopera ed estima, + che sempre par che ’nnanzi si proveggia, + così, levando me sù ver’ la cima + + d’un ronchione, avvisava un’altra scheggia + dicendo: «Sovra quella poi t’aggrappa; + ma tenta pria s’è tal ch’ella ti reggia». + + Non era via da vestito di cappa, + ché noi a pena, ei lieve e io sospinto, + potavam sù montar di chiappa in chiappa. + + E se non fosse che da quel precinto + più che da l’altro era la costa corta, + non so di lui, ma io sarei ben vinto. + + Ma perché Malebolge inver’ la porta + del bassissimo pozzo tutta pende, + lo sito di ciascuna valle porta + + che l’una costa surge e l’altra scende; + noi pur venimmo al fine in su la punta + onde l’ultima pietra si scoscende. + + La lena m’era del polmon sì munta + quand’ io fui sù, ch’i’ non potea più oltre, + anzi m’assisi ne la prima giunta. + + «Omai convien che tu così ti spoltre», + disse ’l maestro; «ché, seggendo in piuma, + in fama non si vien, né sotto coltre; + + sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma, + cotal vestigio in terra di sé lascia, + qual fummo in aere e in acqua la schiuma. + + E però leva sù; vinci l’ambascia + con l’animo che vince ogne battaglia, + se col suo grave corpo non s’accascia. + + Più lunga scala convien che si saglia; + non basta da costoro esser partito. + Se tu mi ’ntendi, or fa sì che ti vaglia». + + Leva’mi allor, mostrandomi fornito + meglio di lena ch’i’ non mi sentia, + e dissi: «Va, ch’i’ son forte e ardito». + + Su per lo scoglio prendemmo la via, + ch’era ronchioso, stretto e malagevole, + ed erto più assai che quel di pria. + + Parlando andava per non parer fievole; + onde una voce uscì de l’altro fosso, + a parole formar disconvenevole. + + Non so che disse, ancor che sovra ’l dosso + fossi de l’arco già che varca quivi; + ma chi parlava ad ire parea mosso. + + Io era vòlto in giù, ma li occhi vivi + non poteano ire al fondo per lo scuro; + per ch’io: «Maestro, fa che tu arrivi + + da l’altro cinghio e dismontiam lo muro; + ché, com’ i’ odo quinci e non intendo, + così giù veggio e neente affiguro». + + «Altra risposta», disse, «non ti rendo + se non lo far; ché la dimanda onesta + si de’ seguir con l’opera tacendo». + + Noi discendemmo il ponte da la testa + dove s’aggiugne con l’ottava ripa, + e poi mi fu la bolgia manifesta: + + e vidivi entro terribile stipa + di serpenti, e di sì diversa mena + che la memoria il sangue ancor mi scipa. + + Più non si vanti Libia con sua rena; + ché se chelidri, iaculi e faree + produce, e cencri con anfisibena, + + né tante pestilenzie né sì ree + mostrò già mai con tutta l’Etïopia + né con ciò che di sopra al Mar Rosso èe. + + Tra questa cruda e tristissima copia + corrëan genti nude e spaventate, + sanza sperar pertugio o elitropia: + + con serpi le man dietro avean legate; + quelle ficcavan per le ren la coda + e ’l capo, ed eran dinanzi aggroppate. + + Ed ecco a un ch’era da nostra proda, + s’avventò un serpente che ’l trafisse + là dove ’l collo a le spalle s’annoda. + + Né O sì tosto mai né I si scrisse, + com’ el s’accese e arse, e cener tutto + convenne che cascando divenisse; + + e poi che fu a terra sì distrutto, + la polver si raccolse per sé stessa + e ’n quel medesmo ritornò di butto. + + Così per li gran savi si confessa + che la fenice more e poi rinasce, + quando al cinquecentesimo anno appressa; + + erba né biado in sua vita non pasce, + ma sol d’incenso lagrime e d’amomo, + e nardo e mirra son l’ultime fasce. + + E qual è quel che cade, e non sa como, + per forza di demon ch’a terra il tira, + o d’altra oppilazion che lega l’omo, + + quando si leva, che ’ntorno si mira + tutto smarrito de la grande angoscia + ch’elli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira: + + tal era ’l peccator levato poscia. + Oh potenza di Dio, quant’ è severa, + che cotai colpi per vendetta croscia! + + Lo duca il domandò poi chi ello era; + per ch’ei rispuose: «Io piovvi di Toscana, + poco tempo è, in questa gola fiera. + + Vita bestial mi piacque e non umana, + sì come a mul ch’i’ fui; son Vanni Fucci + bestia, e Pistoia mi fu degna tana». + + E ïo al duca: «Dilli che non mucci, + e domanda che colpa qua giù ’l pinse; + ch’io ’l vidi uomo di sangue e di crucci». + + E ’l peccator, che ’ntese, non s’infinse, + ma drizzò verso me l’animo e ’l volto, + e di trista vergogna si dipinse; + + poi disse: «Più mi duol che tu m’hai colto + ne la miseria dove tu mi vedi, + che quando fui de l’altra vita tolto. + + Io non posso negar quel che tu chiedi; + in giù son messo tanto perch’ io fui + ladro a la sagrestia d’i belli arredi, + + e falsamente già fu apposto altrui. + Ma perché di tal vista tu non godi, + se mai sarai di fuor da’ luoghi bui, + + apri li orecchi al mio annunzio, e odi. + Pistoia in pria d’i Neri si dimagra; + poi Fiorenza rinova gente e modi. + + Tragge Marte vapor di Val di Magra + ch’è di torbidi nuvoli involuto; + e con tempesta impetüosa e agra + + sovra Campo Picen fia combattuto; + ond’ ei repente spezzerà la nebbia, + sì ch’ogne Bianco ne sarà feruto. + + E detto l’ho perché doler ti debbia!». + + + + Inferno • Canto XXV + + + Al fine de le sue parole il ladro + le mani alzò con amendue le fiche, + gridando: «Togli, Dio, ch’a te le squadro!». + + Da indi in qua mi fuor le serpi amiche, + perch’ una li s’avvolse allora al collo, + come dicesse ‘Non vo’ che più diche’; + + e un’altra a le braccia, e rilegollo, + ribadendo sé stessa sì dinanzi, + che non potea con esse dare un crollo. + + Ahi Pistoia, Pistoia, ché non stanzi + d’incenerarti sì che più non duri, + poi che ’n mal fare il seme tuo avanzi? + + Per tutt’ i cerchi de lo ’nferno scuri + non vidi spirto in Dio tanto superbo, + non quel che cadde a Tebe giù da’ muri. + + El si fuggì che non parlò più verbo; + e io vidi un centauro pien di rabbia + venir chiamando: «Ov’ è, ov’ è l’acerbo?». + + Maremma non cred’ io che tante n’abbia, + quante bisce elli avea su per la groppa + infin ove comincia nostra labbia. + + Sovra le spalle, dietro da la coppa, + con l’ali aperte li giacea un draco; + e quello affuoca qualunque s’intoppa. + + Lo mio maestro disse: «Questi è Caco, + che, sotto ’l sasso di monte Aventino, + di sangue fece spesse volte laco. + + Non va co’ suoi fratei per un cammino, + per lo furto che frodolente fece + del grande armento ch’elli ebbe a vicino; + + onde cessar le sue opere biece + sotto la mazza d’Ercule, che forse + gliene diè cento, e non sentì le diece». + + Mentre che sì parlava, ed el trascorse, + e tre spiriti venner sotto noi, + de’ quai né io né ’l duca mio s’accorse, + + se non quando gridar: «Chi siete voi?»; + per che nostra novella si ristette, + e intendemmo pur ad essi poi. + + Io non li conoscea; ma ei seguette, + come suol seguitar per alcun caso, + che l’un nomar un altro convenette, + + dicendo: «Cianfa dove fia rimaso?»; + per ch’io, acciò che ’l duca stesse attento, + mi puosi ’l dito su dal mento al naso. + + Se tu se’ or, lettore, a creder lento + ciò ch’io dirò, non sarà maraviglia, + ché io che ’l vidi, a pena il mi consento. + + Com’ io tenea levate in lor le ciglia, + e un serpente con sei piè si lancia + dinanzi a l’uno, e tutto a lui s’appiglia. + + Co’ piè di mezzo li avvinse la pancia + e con li anterïor le braccia prese; + poi li addentò e l’una e l’altra guancia; + + li diretani a le cosce distese, + e miseli la coda tra ’mbedue + e dietro per le ren sù la ritese. + + Ellera abbarbicata mai non fue + ad alber sì, come l’orribil fiera + per l’altrui membra avviticchiò le sue. + + Poi s’appiccar, come di calda cera + fossero stati, e mischiar lor colore, + né l’un né l’altro già parea quel ch’era: + + come procede innanzi da l’ardore, + per lo papiro suso, un color bruno + che non è nero ancora e ’l bianco more. + + Li altri due ’l riguardavano, e ciascuno + gridava: «Omè, Agnel, come ti muti! + Vedi che già non se’ né due né uno». + + Già eran li due capi un divenuti, + quando n’apparver due figure miste + in una faccia, ov’ eran due perduti. + + Fersi le braccia due di quattro liste; + le cosce con le gambe e ’l ventre e ’l casso + divenner membra che non fuor mai viste. + + Ogne primaio aspetto ivi era casso: + due e nessun l’imagine perversa + parea; e tal sen gio con lento passo. + + Come ’l ramarro sotto la gran fersa + dei dì canicular, cangiando sepe, + folgore par se la via attraversa, + + sì pareva, venendo verso l’epe + de li altri due, un serpentello acceso, + livido e nero come gran di pepe; + + e quella parte onde prima è preso + nostro alimento, a l’un di lor trafisse; + poi cadde giuso innanzi lui disteso. + + Lo trafitto ’l mirò, ma nulla disse; + anzi, co’ piè fermati, sbadigliava + pur come sonno o febbre l’assalisse. + + Elli ’l serpente e quei lui riguardava; + l’un per la piaga e l’altro per la bocca + fummavan forte, e ’l fummo si scontrava. + + Taccia Lucano ormai là dov’ e’ tocca + del misero Sabello e di Nasidio, + e attenda a udir quel ch’or si scocca. + + Taccia di Cadmo e d’Aretusa Ovidio, + ché se quello in serpente e quella in fonte + converte poetando, io non lo ’nvidio; + + ché due nature mai a fronte a fronte + non trasmutò sì ch’amendue le forme + a cambiar lor matera fosser pronte. + + Insieme si rispuosero a tai norme, + che ’l serpente la coda in forca fesse, + e ’l feruto ristrinse insieme l’orme. + + Le gambe con le cosce seco stesse + s’appiccar sì, che ’n poco la giuntura + non facea segno alcun che si paresse. + + Togliea la coda fessa la figura + che si perdeva là, e la sua pelle + si facea molle, e quella di là dura. + + Io vidi intrar le braccia per l’ascelle, + e i due piè de la fiera, ch’eran corti, + tanto allungar quanto accorciavan quelle. + + Poscia li piè di rietro, insieme attorti, + diventaron lo membro che l’uom cela, + e ’l misero del suo n’avea due porti. + + Mentre che ’l fummo l’uno e l’altro vela + di color novo, e genera ’l pel suso + per l’una parte e da l’altra il dipela, + + l’un si levò e l’altro cadde giuso, + non torcendo però le lucerne empie, + sotto le quai ciascun cambiava muso. + + Quel ch’era dritto, il trasse ver’ le tempie, + e di troppa matera ch’in là venne + uscir li orecchi de le gote scempie; + + ciò che non corse in dietro e si ritenne + di quel soverchio, fé naso a la faccia + e le labbra ingrossò quanto convenne. + + Quel che giacëa, il muso innanzi caccia, + e li orecchi ritira per la testa + come face le corna la lumaccia; + + e la lingua, ch’avëa unita e presta + prima a parlar, si fende, e la forcuta + ne l’altro si richiude; e ’l fummo resta. + + L’anima ch’era fiera divenuta, + suffolando si fugge per la valle, + e l’altro dietro a lui parlando sputa. + + Poscia li volse le novelle spalle, + e disse a l’altro: «I’ vo’ che Buoso corra, + com’ ho fatt’ io, carpon per questo calle». + + Così vid’ io la settima zavorra + mutare e trasmutare; e qui mi scusi + la novità se fior la penna abborra. + + E avvegna che li occhi miei confusi + fossero alquanto e l’animo smagato, + non poter quei fuggirsi tanto chiusi, + + ch’i’ non scorgessi ben Puccio Sciancato; + ed era quel che sol, di tre compagni + che venner prima, non era mutato; + + l’altr’ era quel che tu, Gaville, piagni. + + + + Inferno • Canto XXVI + + + Godi, Fiorenza, poi che se’ sì grande + che per mare e per terra batti l’ali, + e per lo ’nferno tuo nome si spande! + + Tra li ladron trovai cinque cotali + tuoi cittadini onde mi ven vergogna, + e tu in grande orranza non ne sali. + + Ma se presso al mattin del ver si sogna, + tu sentirai, di qua da picciol tempo, + di quel che Prato, non ch’altri, t’agogna. + + E se già fosse, non saria per tempo. + Così foss’ ei, da che pur esser dee! + ché più mi graverà, com’ più m’attempo. + + Noi ci partimmo, e su per le scalee + che n’avea fatto iborni a scender pria, + rimontò ’l duca mio e trasse mee; + + e proseguendo la solinga via, + tra le schegge e tra ’ rocchi de lo scoglio + lo piè sanza la man non si spedia. + + Allor mi dolsi, e ora mi ridoglio + quando drizzo la mente a ciò ch’io vidi, + e più lo ’ngegno affreno ch’i’ non soglio, + + perché non corra che virtù nol guidi; + sì che, se stella bona o miglior cosa + m’ha dato ’l ben, ch’io stessi nol m’invidi. + + Quante ’l villan ch’al poggio si riposa, + nel tempo che colui che ’l mondo schiara + la faccia sua a noi tien meno ascosa, + + come la mosca cede a la zanzara, + vede lucciole giù per la vallea, + forse colà dov’ e’ vendemmia e ara: + + di tante fiamme tutta risplendea + l’ottava bolgia, sì com’ io m’accorsi + tosto che fui là ’ve ’l fondo parea. + + E qual colui che si vengiò con li orsi + vide ’l carro d’Elia al dipartire, + quando i cavalli al cielo erti levorsi, + + che nol potea sì con li occhi seguire, + ch’el vedesse altro che la fiamma sola, + sì come nuvoletta, in sù salire: + + tal si move ciascuna per la gola + del fosso, ché nessuna mostra ’l furto, + e ogne fiamma un peccatore invola. + + Io stava sovra ’l ponte a veder surto, + sì che s’io non avessi un ronchion preso, + caduto sarei giù sanz’ esser urto. + + E ’l duca che mi vide tanto atteso, + disse: «Dentro dai fuochi son li spirti; + catun si fascia di quel ch’elli è inceso». + + «Maestro mio», rispuos’ io, «per udirti + son io più certo; ma già m’era avviso + che così fosse, e già voleva dirti: + + chi è ’n quel foco che vien sì diviso + di sopra, che par surger de la pira + dov’ Eteòcle col fratel fu miso?». + + Rispuose a me: «Là dentro si martira + Ulisse e Dïomede, e così insieme + a la vendetta vanno come a l’ira; + + e dentro da la lor fiamma si geme + l’agguato del caval che fé la porta + onde uscì de’ Romani il gentil seme. + + Piangevisi entro l’arte per che, morta, + Deïdamìa ancor si duol d’Achille, + e del Palladio pena vi si porta». + + «S’ei posson dentro da quelle faville + parlar», diss’ io, «maestro, assai ten priego + e ripriego, che ’l priego vaglia mille, + + che non mi facci de l’attender niego + fin che la fiamma cornuta qua vegna; + vedi che del disio ver’ lei mi piego!». + + Ed elli a me: «La tua preghiera è degna + di molta loda, e io però l’accetto; + ma fa che la tua lingua si sostegna. + + Lascia parlare a me, ch’i’ ho concetto + ciò che tu vuoi; ch’ei sarebbero schivi, + perch’ e’ fuor greci, forse del tuo detto». + + Poi che la fiamma fu venuta quivi + dove parve al mio duca tempo e loco, + in questa forma lui parlare audivi: + + «O voi che siete due dentro ad un foco, + s’io meritai di voi mentre ch’io vissi, + s’io meritai di voi assai o poco + + quando nel mondo li alti versi scrissi, + non vi movete; ma l’un di voi dica + dove, per lui, perduto a morir gissi». + + Lo maggior corno de la fiamma antica + cominciò a crollarsi mormorando, + pur come quella cui vento affatica; + + indi la cima qua e là menando, + come fosse la lingua che parlasse, + gittò voce di fuori e disse: «Quando + + mi diparti’ da Circe, che sottrasse + me più d’un anno là presso a Gaeta, + prima che sì Enëa la nomasse, + + né dolcezza di figlio, né la pieta + del vecchio padre, né ’l debito amore + lo qual dovea Penelopè far lieta, + + vincer potero dentro a me l’ardore + ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto + e de li vizi umani e del valore; + + ma misi me per l’alto mare aperto + sol con un legno e con quella compagna + picciola da la qual non fui diserto. + + L’un lito e l’altro vidi infin la Spagna, + fin nel Morrocco, e l’isola d’i Sardi, + e l’altre che quel mare intorno bagna. + + Io e ’ compagni eravam vecchi e tardi + quando venimmo a quella foce stretta + dov’ Ercule segnò li suoi riguardi + + acciò che l’uom più oltre non si metta; + da la man destra mi lasciai Sibilia, + da l’altra già m’avea lasciata Setta. + + “O frati”, dissi “che per cento milia + perigli siete giunti a l’occidente, + a questa tanto picciola vigilia + + d’i nostri sensi ch’è del rimanente + non vogliate negar l’esperïenza, + di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente. + + Considerate la vostra semenza: + fatti non foste a viver come bruti, + ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza”. + + Li miei compagni fec’ io sì aguti, + con questa orazion picciola, al cammino, + che a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti; + + e volta nostra poppa nel mattino, + de’ remi facemmo ali al folle volo, + sempre acquistando dal lato mancino. + + Tutte le stelle già de l’altro polo + vedea la notte, e ’l nostro tanto basso, + che non surgëa fuor del marin suolo. + + Cinque volte racceso e tante casso + lo lume era di sotto da la luna, + poi che ’ntrati eravam ne l’alto passo, + + quando n’apparve una montagna, bruna + per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto + quanto veduta non avëa alcuna. + + Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto; + ché de la nova terra un turbo nacque + e percosse del legno il primo canto. + + Tre volte il fé girar con tutte l’acque; + a la quarta levar la poppa in suso + e la prora ire in giù, com’ altrui piacque, + + infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso». + + + + Inferno • Canto XXVII + + + Già era dritta in sù la fiamma e queta + per non dir più, e già da noi sen gia + con la licenza del dolce poeta, + + quand’ un’altra, che dietro a lei venìa, + ne fece volger li occhi a la sua cima + per un confuso suon che fuor n’uscia. + + Come ’l bue cicilian che mugghiò prima + col pianto di colui, e ciò fu dritto, + che l’avea temperato con sua lima, + + mugghiava con la voce de l’afflitto, + sì che, con tutto che fosse di rame, + pur el pareva dal dolor trafitto; + + così, per non aver via né forame + dal principio nel foco, in suo linguaggio + si convertïan le parole grame. + + Ma poscia ch’ebber colto lor vïaggio + su per la punta, dandole quel guizzo + che dato avea la lingua in lor passaggio, + + udimmo dire: «O tu a cu’ io drizzo + la voce e che parlavi mo lombardo, + dicendo “Istra ten va, più non t’adizzo”, + + perch’ io sia giunto forse alquanto tardo, + non t’incresca restare a parlar meco; + vedi che non incresce a me, e ardo! + + Se tu pur mo in questo mondo cieco + caduto se’ di quella dolce terra + latina ond’ io mia colpa tutta reco, + + dimmi se Romagnuoli han pace o guerra; + ch’io fui d’i monti là intra Orbino + e ’l giogo di che Tever si diserra». + + Io era in giuso ancora attento e chino, + quando il mio duca mi tentò di costa, + dicendo: «Parla tu; questi è latino». + + E io, ch’avea già pronta la risposta, + sanza indugio a parlare incominciai: + «O anima che se’ là giù nascosta, + + Romagna tua non è, e non fu mai, + sanza guerra ne’ cuor de’ suoi tiranni; + ma ’n palese nessuna or vi lasciai. + + Ravenna sta come stata è molt’ anni: + l’aguglia da Polenta la si cova, + sì che Cervia ricuopre co’ suoi vanni. + + La terra che fé già la lunga prova + e di Franceschi sanguinoso mucchio, + sotto le branche verdi si ritrova. + + E ’l mastin vecchio e ’l nuovo da Verrucchio, + che fecer di Montagna il mal governo, + là dove soglion fan d’i denti succhio. + + Le città di Lamone e di Santerno + conduce il lïoncel dal nido bianco, + che muta parte da la state al verno. + + E quella cu’ il Savio bagna il fianco, + così com’ ella sie’ tra ’l piano e ’l monte, + tra tirannia si vive e stato franco. + + Ora chi se’, ti priego che ne conte; + non esser duro più ch’altri sia stato, + se ’l nome tuo nel mondo tegna fronte». + + Poscia che ’l foco alquanto ebbe rugghiato + al modo suo, l’aguta punta mosse + di qua, di là, e poi diè cotal fiato: + + «S’i’ credesse che mia risposta fosse + a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, + questa fiamma staria sanza più scosse; + + ma però che già mai di questo fondo + non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’ odo il vero, + sanza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. + + Io fui uom d’arme, e poi fui cordigliero, + credendomi, sì cinto, fare ammenda; + e certo il creder mio venìa intero, + + se non fosse il gran prete, a cui mal prenda!, + che mi rimise ne le prime colpe; + e come e quare, voglio che m’intenda. + + Mentre ch’io forma fui d’ossa e di polpe + che la madre mi diè, l’opere mie + non furon leonine, ma di volpe. + + Li accorgimenti e le coperte vie + io seppi tutte, e sì menai lor arte, + ch’al fine de la terra il suono uscie. + + Quando mi vidi giunto in quella parte + di mia etade ove ciascun dovrebbe + calar le vele e raccoglier le sarte, + + ciò che pria mi piacëa, allor m’increbbe, + e pentuto e confesso mi rendei; + ahi miser lasso! e giovato sarebbe. + + Lo principe d’i novi Farisei, + avendo guerra presso a Laterano, + e non con Saracin né con Giudei, + + ché ciascun suo nimico era cristiano, + e nessun era stato a vincer Acri + né mercatante in terra di Soldano, + + né sommo officio né ordini sacri + guardò in sé, né in me quel capestro + che solea fare i suoi cinti più macri. + + Ma come Costantin chiese Silvestro + d’entro Siratti a guerir de la lebbre, + così mi chiese questi per maestro + + a guerir de la sua superba febbre; + domandommi consiglio, e io tacetti + perché le sue parole parver ebbre. + + E’ poi ridisse: “Tuo cuor non sospetti; + finor t’assolvo, e tu m’insegna fare + sì come Penestrino in terra getti. + + Lo ciel poss’ io serrare e diserrare, + come tu sai; però son due le chiavi + che ’l mio antecessor non ebbe care”. + + Allor mi pinser li argomenti gravi + là ’ve ’l tacer mi fu avviso ’l peggio, + e dissi: “Padre, da che tu mi lavi + + di quel peccato ov’ io mo cader deggio, + lunga promessa con l’attender corto + ti farà trïunfar ne l’alto seggio”. + + Francesco venne poi, com’ io fu’ morto, + per me; ma un d’i neri cherubini + li disse: “Non portar: non mi far torto. + + Venir se ne dee giù tra ’ miei meschini + perché diede ’l consiglio frodolente, + dal quale in qua stato li sono a’ crini; + + ch’assolver non si può chi non si pente, + né pentere e volere insieme puossi + per la contradizion che nol consente”. + + Oh me dolente! come mi riscossi + quando mi prese dicendomi: “Forse + tu non pensavi ch’io löico fossi!”. + + A Minòs mi portò; e quelli attorse + otto volte la coda al dosso duro; + e poi che per gran rabbia la si morse, + + disse: “Questi è d’i rei del foco furo”; + per ch’io là dove vedi son perduto, + e sì vestito, andando, mi rancuro». + + Quand’ elli ebbe ’l suo dir così compiuto, + la fiamma dolorando si partio, + torcendo e dibattendo ’l corno aguto. + + Noi passamm’ oltre, e io e ’l duca mio, + su per lo scoglio infino in su l’altr’ arco + che cuopre ’l fosso in che si paga il fio + + a quei che scommettendo acquistan carco. + + + + Inferno • Canto XXVIII + + + Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte + dicer del sangue e de le piaghe a pieno + ch’i’ ora vidi, per narrar più volte? + + Ogne lingua per certo verria meno + per lo nostro sermone e per la mente + c’hanno a tanto comprender poco seno. + + S’el s’aunasse ancor tutta la gente + che già, in su la fortunata terra + di Puglia, fu del suo sangue dolente + + per li Troiani e per la lunga guerra + che de l’anella fé sì alte spoglie, + come Livïo scrive, che non erra, + + con quella che sentio di colpi doglie + per contastare a Ruberto Guiscardo; + e l’altra il cui ossame ancor s’accoglie + + a Ceperan, là dove fu bugiardo + ciascun Pugliese, e là da Tagliacozzo, + dove sanz’ arme vinse il vecchio Alardo; + + e qual forato suo membro e qual mozzo + mostrasse, d’aequar sarebbe nulla + il modo de la nona bolgia sozzo. + + Già veggia, per mezzul perdere o lulla, + com’ io vidi un, così non si pertugia, + rotto dal mento infin dove si trulla. + + Tra le gambe pendevan le minugia; + la corata pareva e ’l tristo sacco + che merda fa di quel che si trangugia. + + Mentre che tutto in lui veder m’attacco, + guardommi e con le man s’aperse il petto, + dicendo: «Or vedi com’ io mi dilacco! + + vedi come storpiato è Mäometto! + Dinanzi a me sen va piangendo Alì, + fesso nel volto dal mento al ciuffetto. + + E tutti li altri che tu vedi qui, + seminator di scandalo e di scisma + fuor vivi, e però son fessi così. + + Un diavolo è qua dietro che n’accisma + sì crudelmente, al taglio de la spada + rimettendo ciascun di questa risma, + + quand’ avem volta la dolente strada; + però che le ferite son richiuse + prima ch’altri dinanzi li rivada. + + Ma tu chi se’ che ’n su lo scoglio muse, + forse per indugiar d’ire a la pena + ch’è giudicata in su le tue accuse?». + + «Né morte ’l giunse ancor, né colpa ’l mena», + rispuose ’l mio maestro, «a tormentarlo; + ma per dar lui esperïenza piena, + + a me, che morto son, convien menarlo + per lo ’nferno qua giù di giro in giro; + e quest’ è ver così com’ io ti parlo». + + Più fuor di cento che, quando l’udiro, + s’arrestaron nel fosso a riguardarmi + per maraviglia, oblïando il martiro. + + «Or dì a fra Dolcin dunque che s’armi, + tu che forse vedra’ il sole in breve, + s’ello non vuol qui tosto seguitarmi, + + sì di vivanda, che stretta di neve + non rechi la vittoria al Noarese, + ch’altrimenti acquistar non saria leve». + + Poi che l’un piè per girsene sospese, + Mäometto mi disse esta parola; + indi a partirsi in terra lo distese. + + Un altro, che forata avea la gola + e tronco ’l naso infin sotto le ciglia, + e non avea mai ch’una orecchia sola, + + ristato a riguardar per maraviglia + con li altri, innanzi a li altri aprì la canna, + ch’era di fuor d’ogne parte vermiglia, + + e disse: «O tu cui colpa non condanna + e cu’ io vidi su in terra latina, + se troppa simiglianza non m’inganna, + + rimembriti di Pier da Medicina, + se mai torni a veder lo dolce piano + che da Vercelli a Marcabò dichina. + + E fa saper a’ due miglior da Fano, + a messer Guido e anco ad Angiolello, + che, se l’antiveder qui non è vano, + + gittati saran fuor di lor vasello + e mazzerati presso a la Cattolica + per tradimento d’un tiranno fello. + + Tra l’isola di Cipri e di Maiolica + non vide mai sì gran fallo Nettuno, + non da pirate, non da gente argolica. + + Quel traditor che vede pur con l’uno, + e tien la terra che tale qui meco + vorrebbe di vedere esser digiuno, + + farà venirli a parlamento seco; + poi farà sì, ch’al vento di Focara + non sarà lor mestier voto né preco». + + E io a lui: «Dimostrami e dichiara, + se vuo’ ch’i’ porti sù di te novella, + chi è colui da la veduta amara». + + Allor puose la mano a la mascella + d’un suo compagno e la bocca li aperse, + gridando: «Questi è desso, e non favella. + + Questi, scacciato, il dubitar sommerse + in Cesare, affermando che ’l fornito + sempre con danno l’attender sofferse». + + Oh quanto mi pareva sbigottito + con la lingua tagliata ne la strozza + Curïo, ch’a dir fu così ardito! + + E un ch’avea l’una e l’altra man mozza, + levando i moncherin per l’aura fosca, + sì che ’l sangue facea la faccia sozza, + + gridò: «Ricordera’ti anche del Mosca, + che disse, lasso!, “Capo ha cosa fatta”, + che fu mal seme per la gente tosca». + + E io li aggiunsi: «E morte di tua schiatta»; + per ch’elli, accumulando duol con duolo, + sen gio come persona trista e matta. + + Ma io rimasi a riguardar lo stuolo, + e vidi cosa ch’io avrei paura, + sanza più prova, di contarla solo; + + se non che coscïenza m’assicura, + la buona compagnia che l’uom francheggia + sotto l’asbergo del sentirsi pura. + + Io vidi certo, e ancor par ch’io ’l veggia, + un busto sanza capo andar sì come + andavan li altri de la trista greggia; + + e ’l capo tronco tenea per le chiome, + pesol con mano a guisa di lanterna: + e quel mirava noi e dicea: «Oh me!». + + Di sé facea a sé stesso lucerna, + ed eran due in uno e uno in due; + com’ esser può, quei sa che sì governa. + + Quando diritto al piè del ponte fue, + levò ’l braccio alto con tutta la testa + per appressarne le parole sue, + + che fuoro: «Or vedi la pena molesta, + tu che, spirando, vai veggendo i morti: + vedi s’alcuna è grande come questa. + + E perché tu di me novella porti, + sappi ch’i’ son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli + che diedi al re giovane i ma’ conforti. + + Io feci il padre e ’l figlio in sé ribelli; + Achitofèl non fé più d’Absalone + e di Davìd coi malvagi punzelli. + + Perch’ io parti’ così giunte persone, + partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!, + dal suo principio ch’è in questo troncone. + + Così s’osserva in me lo contrapasso». + + + + Inferno • Canto XXIX + + + La molta gente e le diverse piaghe + avean le luci mie sì inebrïate, + che de lo stare a piangere eran vaghe. + + Ma Virgilio mi disse: «Che pur guate? + perché la vista tua pur si soffolge + là giù tra l’ombre triste smozzicate? + + Tu non hai fatto sì a l’altre bolge; + pensa, se tu annoverar le credi, + che miglia ventidue la valle volge. + + E già la luna è sotto i nostri piedi; + lo tempo è poco omai che n’è concesso, + e altro è da veder che tu non vedi». + + «Se tu avessi», rispuos’ io appresso, + «atteso a la cagion per ch’io guardava, + forse m’avresti ancor lo star dimesso». + + Parte sen giva, e io retro li andava, + lo duca, già faccendo la risposta, + e soggiugnendo: «Dentro a quella cava + + dov’ io tenea or li occhi sì a posta, + credo ch’un spirto del mio sangue pianga + la colpa che là giù cotanto costa». + + Allor disse ’l maestro: «Non si franga + lo tuo pensier da qui innanzi sovr’ ello. + Attendi ad altro, ed ei là si rimanga; + + ch’io vidi lui a piè del ponticello + mostrarti e minacciar forte col dito, + e udi’ ’l nominar Geri del Bello. + + Tu eri allor sì del tutto impedito + sovra colui che già tenne Altaforte, + che non guardasti in là, sì fu partito». + + «O duca mio, la vïolenta morte + che non li è vendicata ancor», diss’ io, + «per alcun che de l’onta sia consorte, + + fece lui disdegnoso; ond’ el sen gio + sanza parlarmi, sì com’ ïo estimo: + e in ciò m’ha el fatto a sé più pio». + + Così parlammo infino al loco primo + che de lo scoglio l’altra valle mostra, + se più lume vi fosse, tutto ad imo. + + Quando noi fummo sor l’ultima chiostra + di Malebolge, sì che i suoi conversi + potean parere a la veduta nostra, + + lamenti saettaron me diversi, + che di pietà ferrati avean li strali; + ond’ io li orecchi con le man copersi. + + Qual dolor fora, se de li spedali + di Valdichiana tra ’l luglio e ’l settembre + e di Maremma e di Sardigna i mali + + fossero in una fossa tutti ’nsembre, + tal era quivi, e tal puzzo n’usciva + qual suol venir de le marcite membre. + + Noi discendemmo in su l’ultima riva + del lungo scoglio, pur da man sinistra; + e allor fu la mia vista più viva + + giù ver’ lo fondo, la ’ve la ministra + de l’alto Sire infallibil giustizia + punisce i falsador che qui registra. + + Non credo ch’a veder maggior tristizia + fosse in Egina il popol tutto infermo, + quando fu l’aere sì pien di malizia, + + che li animali, infino al picciol vermo, + cascaron tutti, e poi le genti antiche, + secondo che i poeti hanno per fermo, + + si ristorar di seme di formiche; + ch’era a veder per quella oscura valle + languir li spirti per diverse biche. + + Qual sovra ’l ventre e qual sovra le spalle + l’un de l’altro giacea, e qual carpone + si trasmutava per lo tristo calle. + + Passo passo andavam sanza sermone, + guardando e ascoltando li ammalati, + che non potean levar le lor persone. + + Io vidi due sedere a sé poggiati, + com’ a scaldar si poggia tegghia a tegghia, + dal capo al piè di schianze macolati; + + e non vidi già mai menare stregghia + a ragazzo aspettato dal segnorso, + né a colui che mal volontier vegghia, + + come ciascun menava spesso il morso + de l’unghie sopra sé per la gran rabbia + del pizzicor, che non ha più soccorso; + + e sì traevan giù l’unghie la scabbia, + come coltel di scardova le scaglie + o d’altro pesce che più larghe l’abbia. + + «O tu che con le dita ti dismaglie», + cominciò ’l duca mio a l’un di loro, + «e che fai d’esse talvolta tanaglie, + + dinne s’alcun Latino è tra costoro + che son quinc’ entro, se l’unghia ti basti + etternalmente a cotesto lavoro». + + «Latin siam noi, che tu vedi sì guasti + qui ambedue», rispuose l’un piangendo; + «ma tu chi se’ che di noi dimandasti?». + + E ’l duca disse: «I’ son un che discendo + con questo vivo giù di balzo in balzo, + e di mostrar lo ’nferno a lui intendo». + + Allor si ruppe lo comun rincalzo; + e tremando ciascuno a me si volse + con altri che l’udiron di rimbalzo. + + Lo buon maestro a me tutto s’accolse, + dicendo: «Dì a lor ciò che tu vuoli»; + e io incominciai, poscia ch’ei volse: + + «Se la vostra memoria non s’imboli + nel primo mondo da l’umane menti, + ma s’ella viva sotto molti soli, + + ditemi chi voi siete e di che genti; + la vostra sconcia e fastidiosa pena + di palesarvi a me non vi spaventi». + + «Io fui d’Arezzo, e Albero da Siena», + rispuose l’un, «mi fé mettere al foco; + ma quel per ch’io mori’ qui non mi mena. + + Vero è ch’i’ dissi lui, parlando a gioco: + “I’ mi saprei levar per l’aere a volo”; + e quei, ch’avea vaghezza e senno poco, + + volle ch’i’ li mostrassi l’arte; e solo + perch’ io nol feci Dedalo, mi fece + ardere a tal che l’avea per figliuolo. + + Ma ne l’ultima bolgia de le diece + me per l’alchìmia che nel mondo usai + dannò Minòs, a cui fallar non lece». + + E io dissi al poeta: «Or fu già mai + gente sì vana come la sanese? + Certo non la francesca sì d’assai!». + + Onde l’altro lebbroso, che m’intese, + rispuose al detto mio: «Tra’mene Stricca + che seppe far le temperate spese, + + e Niccolò che la costuma ricca + del garofano prima discoverse + ne l’orto dove tal seme s’appicca; + + e tra’ne la brigata in che disperse + Caccia d’Ascian la vigna e la gran fonda, + e l’Abbagliato suo senno proferse. + + Ma perché sappi chi sì ti seconda + contra i Sanesi, aguzza ver’ me l’occhio, + sì che la faccia mia ben ti risponda: + + sì vedrai ch’io son l’ombra di Capocchio, + che falsai li metalli con l’alchìmia; + e te dee ricordar, se ben t’adocchio, + + com’ io fui di natura buona scimia». + + + + Inferno • Canto XXX + + + Nel tempo che Iunone era crucciata + per Semelè contra ’l sangue tebano, + come mostrò una e altra fïata, + + Atamante divenne tanto insano, + che veggendo la moglie con due figli + andar carcata da ciascuna mano, + + gridò: «Tendiam le reti, sì ch’io pigli + la leonessa e ’ leoncini al varco»; + e poi distese i dispietati artigli, + + prendendo l’un ch’avea nome Learco, + e rotollo e percosselo ad un sasso; + e quella s’annegò con l’altro carco. + + E quando la fortuna volse in basso + l’altezza de’ Troian che tutto ardiva, + sì che ’nsieme col regno il re fu casso, + + Ecuba trista, misera e cattiva, + poscia che vide Polissena morta, + e del suo Polidoro in su la riva + + del mar si fu la dolorosa accorta, + forsennata latrò sì come cane; + tanto il dolor le fé la mente torta. + + Ma né di Tebe furie né troiane + si vider mäi in alcun tanto crude, + non punger bestie, nonché membra umane, + + quant’ io vidi in due ombre smorte e nude, + che mordendo correvan di quel modo + che ’l porco quando del porcil si schiude. + + L’una giunse a Capocchio, e in sul nodo + del collo l’assannò, sì che, tirando, + grattar li fece il ventre al fondo sodo. + + E l’Aretin che rimase, tremando + mi disse: «Quel folletto è Gianni Schicchi, + e va rabbioso altrui così conciando». + + «Oh», diss’ io lui, «se l’altro non ti ficchi + li denti a dosso, non ti sia fatica + a dir chi è, pria che di qui si spicchi». + + Ed elli a me: «Quell’ è l’anima antica + di Mirra scellerata, che divenne + al padre, fuor del dritto amore, amica. + + Questa a peccar con esso così venne, + falsificando sé in altrui forma, + come l’altro che là sen va, sostenne, + + per guadagnar la donna de la torma, + falsificare in sé Buoso Donati, + testando e dando al testamento norma». + + E poi che i due rabbiosi fuor passati + sovra cu’ io avea l’occhio tenuto, + rivolsilo a guardar li altri mal nati. + + Io vidi un, fatto a guisa di lëuto, + pur ch’elli avesse avuta l’anguinaia + tronca da l’altro che l’uomo ha forcuto. + + La grave idropesì, che sì dispaia + le membra con l’omor che mal converte, + che ’l viso non risponde a la ventraia, + + faceva lui tener le labbra aperte + come l’etico fa, che per la sete + l’un verso ’l mento e l’altro in sù rinverte. + + «O voi che sanz’ alcuna pena siete, + e non so io perché, nel mondo gramo», + diss’ elli a noi, «guardate e attendete + + a la miseria del maestro Adamo; + io ebbi, vivo, assai di quel ch’i’ volli, + e ora, lasso!, un gocciol d’acqua bramo. + + Li ruscelletti che d’i verdi colli + del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno, + faccendo i lor canali freddi e molli, + + sempre mi stanno innanzi, e non indarno, + ché l’imagine lor vie più m’asciuga + che ’l male ond’ io nel volto mi discarno. + + La rigida giustizia che mi fruga + tragge cagion del loco ov’ io peccai + a metter più li miei sospiri in fuga. + + Ivi è Romena, là dov’ io falsai + la lega suggellata del Batista; + per ch’io il corpo sù arso lasciai. + + Ma s’io vedessi qui l’anima trista + di Guido o d’Alessandro o di lor frate, + per Fonte Branda non darei la vista. + + Dentro c’è l’una già, se l’arrabbiate + ombre che vanno intorno dicon vero; + ma che mi val, c’ho le membra legate? + + S’io fossi pur di tanto ancor leggero + ch’i’ potessi in cent’ anni andare un’oncia, + io sarei messo già per lo sentiero, + + cercando lui tra questa gente sconcia, + con tutto ch’ella volge undici miglia, + e men d’un mezzo di traverso non ci ha. + + Io son per lor tra sì fatta famiglia; + e’ m’indussero a batter li fiorini + ch’avevan tre carati di mondiglia». + + E io a lui: «Chi son li due tapini + che fumman come man bagnate ’l verno, + giacendo stretti a’ tuoi destri confini?». + + «Qui li trovai—e poi volta non dierno—», + rispuose, «quando piovvi in questo greppo, + e non credo che dieno in sempiterno. + + L’una è la falsa ch’accusò Gioseppo; + l’altr’ è ’l falso Sinon greco di Troia: + per febbre aguta gittan tanto leppo». + + E l’un di lor, che si recò a noia + forse d’esser nomato sì oscuro, + col pugno li percosse l’epa croia. + + Quella sonò come fosse un tamburo; + e mastro Adamo li percosse il volto + col braccio suo, che non parve men duro, + + dicendo a lui: «Ancor che mi sia tolto + lo muover per le membra che son gravi, + ho io il braccio a tal mestiere sciolto». + + Ond’ ei rispuose: «Quando tu andavi + al fuoco, non l’avei tu così presto; + ma sì e più l’avei quando coniavi». + + E l’idropico: «Tu di’ ver di questo: + ma tu non fosti sì ver testimonio + là ’ve del ver fosti a Troia richesto». + + «S’io dissi falso, e tu falsasti il conio», + disse Sinon; «e son qui per un fallo, + e tu per più ch’alcun altro demonio!». + + «Ricorditi, spergiuro, del cavallo», + rispuose quel ch’avëa infiata l’epa; + «e sieti reo che tutto il mondo sallo!». + + «E te sia rea la sete onde ti crepa», + disse ’l Greco, «la lingua, e l’acqua marcia + che ’l ventre innanzi a li occhi sì t’assiepa!». + + Allora il monetier: «Così si squarcia + la bocca tua per tuo mal come suole; + ché, s’i’ ho sete e omor mi rinfarcia, + + tu hai l’arsura e ’l capo che ti duole, + e per leccar lo specchio di Narcisso, + non vorresti a ’nvitar molte parole». + + Ad ascoltarli er’ io del tutto fisso, + quando ’l maestro mi disse: «Or pur mira, + che per poco che teco non mi risso!». + + Quand’ io ’l senti’ a me parlar con ira, + volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna, + ch’ancor per la memoria mi si gira. + + Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna, + che sognando desidera sognare, + sì che quel ch’è, come non fosse, agogna, + + tal mi fec’ io, non possendo parlare, + che disïava scusarmi, e scusava + me tuttavia, e nol mi credea fare. + + «Maggior difetto men vergogna lava», + disse ’l maestro, «che ’l tuo non è stato; + però d’ogne trestizia ti disgrava. + + E fa ragion ch’io ti sia sempre allato, + se più avvien che fortuna t’accoglia + dove sien genti in simigliante piato: + + ché voler ciò udire è bassa voglia». + + + + Inferno • Canto XXXI + + + Una medesma lingua pria mi morse, + sì che mi tinse l’una e l’altra guancia, + e poi la medicina mi riporse; + + così od’ io che solea far la lancia + d’Achille e del suo padre esser cagione + prima di trista e poi di buona mancia. + + Noi demmo il dosso al misero vallone + su per la ripa che ’l cinge dintorno, + attraversando sanza alcun sermone. + + Quiv’ era men che notte e men che giorno, + sì che ’l viso m’andava innanzi poco; + ma io senti’ sonare un alto corno, + + tanto ch’avrebbe ogne tuon fatto fioco, + che, contra sé la sua via seguitando, + dirizzò li occhi miei tutti ad un loco. + + Dopo la dolorosa rotta, quando + Carlo Magno perdé la santa gesta, + non sonò sì terribilmente Orlando. + + Poco portäi in là volta la testa, + che me parve veder molte alte torri; + ond’ io: «Maestro, dì, che terra è questa?». + + Ed elli a me: «Però che tu trascorri + per le tenebre troppo da la lungi, + avvien che poi nel maginare abborri. + + Tu vedrai ben, se tu là ti congiungi, + quanto ’l senso s’inganna di lontano; + però alquanto più te stesso pungi». + + Poi caramente mi prese per mano + e disse: «Pria che noi siam più avanti, + acciò che ’l fatto men ti paia strano, + + sappi che non son torri, ma giganti, + e son nel pozzo intorno da la ripa + da l’umbilico in giuso tutti quanti». + + Come quando la nebbia si dissipa, + lo sguardo a poco a poco raffigura + ciò che cela ’l vapor che l’aere stipa, + + così forando l’aura grossa e scura, + più e più appressando ver’ la sponda, + fuggiemi errore e cresciemi paura; + + però che, come su la cerchia tonda + Montereggion di torri si corona, + così la proda che ’l pozzo circonda + + torreggiavan di mezza la persona + li orribili giganti, cui minaccia + Giove del cielo ancora quando tuona. + + E io scorgeva già d’alcun la faccia, + le spalle e ’l petto e del ventre gran parte, + e per le coste giù ambo le braccia. + + Natura certo, quando lasciò l’arte + di sì fatti animali, assai fé bene + per tòrre tali essecutori a Marte. + + E s’ella d’elefanti e di balene + non si pente, chi guarda sottilmente, + più giusta e più discreta la ne tene; + + ché dove l’argomento de la mente + s’aggiugne al mal volere e a la possa, + nessun riparo vi può far la gente. + + La faccia sua mi parea lunga e grossa + come la pina di San Pietro a Roma, + e a sua proporzione eran l’altre ossa; + + sì che la ripa, ch’era perizoma + dal mezzo in giù, ne mostrava ben tanto + di sovra, che di giugnere a la chioma + + tre Frison s’averien dato mal vanto; + però ch’i’ ne vedea trenta gran palmi + dal loco in giù dov’ omo affibbia ’l manto. + + «Raphèl maì amècche zabì almi», + cominciò a gridar la fiera bocca, + cui non si convenia più dolci salmi. + + E ’l duca mio ver’ lui: «Anima sciocca, + tienti col corno, e con quel ti disfoga + quand’ ira o altra passïon ti tocca! + + Cércati al collo, e troverai la soga + che ’l tien legato, o anima confusa, + e vedi lui che ’l gran petto ti doga». + + Poi disse a me: «Elli stessi s’accusa; + questi è Nembrotto per lo cui mal coto + pur un linguaggio nel mondo non s’usa. + + Lasciànlo stare e non parliamo a vòto; + ché così è a lui ciascun linguaggio + come ’l suo ad altrui, ch’a nullo è noto». + + Facemmo adunque più lungo vïaggio, + vòlti a sinistra; e al trar d’un balestro + trovammo l’altro assai più fero e maggio. + + A cigner lui qual che fosse ’l maestro, + non so io dir, ma el tenea soccinto + dinanzi l’altro e dietro il braccio destro + + d’una catena che ’l tenea avvinto + dal collo in giù, sì che ’n su lo scoperto + si ravvolgëa infino al giro quinto. + + «Questo superbo volle esser esperto + di sua potenza contra ’l sommo Giove», + disse ’l mio duca, «ond’ elli ha cotal merto. + + Fïalte ha nome, e fece le gran prove + quando i giganti fer paura a’ dèi; + le braccia ch’el menò, già mai non move». + + E io a lui: «S’esser puote, io vorrei + che de lo smisurato Brïareo + esperïenza avesser li occhi mei». + + Ond’ ei rispuose: «Tu vedrai Anteo + presso di qui che parla ed è disciolto, + che ne porrà nel fondo d’ogne reo. + + Quel che tu vuo’ veder, più là è molto + ed è legato e fatto come questo, + salvo che più feroce par nel volto». + + Non fu tremoto già tanto rubesto, + che scotesse una torre così forte, + come Fïalte a scuotersi fu presto. + + Allor temett’ io più che mai la morte, + e non v’era mestier più che la dotta, + s’io non avessi viste le ritorte. + + Noi procedemmo più avante allotta, + e venimmo ad Anteo, che ben cinque alle, + sanza la testa, uscia fuor de la grotta. + + «O tu che ne la fortunata valle + che fece Scipïon di gloria reda, + quand’ Anibàl co’ suoi diede le spalle, + + recasti già mille leon per preda, + e che, se fossi stato a l’alta guerra + de’ tuoi fratelli, ancor par che si creda + + ch’avrebber vinto i figli de la terra: + mettine giù, e non ten vegna schifo, + dove Cocito la freddura serra. + + Non ci fare ire a Tizio né a Tifo: + questi può dar di quel che qui si brama; + però ti china e non torcer lo grifo. + + Ancor ti può nel mondo render fama, + ch’el vive, e lunga vita ancor aspetta + se ’nnanzi tempo grazia a sé nol chiama». + + Così disse ’l maestro; e quelli in fretta + le man distese, e prese ’l duca mio, + ond’ Ercule sentì già grande stretta. + + Virgilio, quando prender si sentio, + disse a me: «Fatti qua, sì ch’io ti prenda»; + poi fece sì ch’un fascio era elli e io. + + Qual pare a riguardar la Carisenda + sotto ’l chinato, quando un nuvol vada + sovr’ essa sì, ched ella incontro penda: + + tal parve Antëo a me che stava a bada + di vederlo chinare, e fu tal ora + ch’i’ avrei voluto ir per altra strada. + + Ma lievemente al fondo che divora + Lucifero con Giuda, ci sposò; + né, sì chinato, lì fece dimora, + + e come albero in nave si levò. + + + + Inferno • Canto XXXII + + + S’ïo avessi le rime aspre e chiocce, + come si converrebbe al tristo buco + sovra ’l qual pontan tutte l’altre rocce, + + io premerei di mio concetto il suco + più pienamente; ma perch’ io non l’abbo, + non sanza tema a dicer mi conduco; + + ché non è impresa da pigliare a gabbo + discriver fondo a tutto l’universo, + né da lingua che chiami mamma o babbo. + + Ma quelle donne aiutino il mio verso + ch’aiutaro Anfïone a chiuder Tebe, + sì che dal fatto il dir non sia diverso. + + Oh sovra tutte mal creata plebe + che stai nel loco onde parlare è duro, + mei foste state qui pecore o zebe! + + Come noi fummo giù nel pozzo scuro + sotto i piè del gigante assai più bassi, + e io mirava ancora a l’alto muro, + + dicere udi’mi: «Guarda come passi: + va sì, che tu non calchi con le piante + le teste de’ fratei miseri lassi». + + Per ch’io mi volsi, e vidimi davante + e sotto i piedi un lago che per gelo + avea di vetro e non d’acqua sembiante. + + Non fece al corso suo sì grosso velo + di verno la Danoia in Osterlicchi, + né Tanaï là sotto ’l freddo cielo, + + com’ era quivi; che se Tambernicchi + vi fosse sù caduto, o Pietrapana, + non avria pur da l’orlo fatto cricchi. + + E come a gracidar si sta la rana + col muso fuor de l’acqua, quando sogna + di spigolar sovente la villana, + + livide, insin là dove appar vergogna + eran l’ombre dolenti ne la ghiaccia, + mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna. + + Ognuna in giù tenea volta la faccia; + da bocca il freddo, e da li occhi il cor tristo + tra lor testimonianza si procaccia. + + Quand’ io m’ebbi dintorno alquanto visto, + volsimi a’ piedi, e vidi due sì stretti, + che ’l pel del capo avieno insieme misto. + + «Ditemi, voi che sì strignete i petti», + diss’ io, «chi siete?». E quei piegaro i colli; + e poi ch’ebber li visi a me eretti, + + li occhi lor, ch’eran pria pur dentro molli, + gocciar su per le labbra, e ’l gelo strinse + le lagrime tra essi e riserrolli. + + Con legno legno spranga mai non cinse + forte così; ond’ ei come due becchi + cozzaro insieme, tanta ira li vinse. + + E un ch’avea perduti ambo li orecchi + per la freddura, pur col viso in giùe, + disse: «Perché cotanto in noi ti specchi? + + Se vuoi saper chi son cotesti due, + la valle onde Bisenzo si dichina + del padre loro Alberto e di lor fue. + + D’un corpo usciro; e tutta la Caina + potrai cercare, e non troverai ombra + degna più d’esser fitta in gelatina: + + non quelli a cui fu rotto il petto e l’ombra + con esso un colpo per la man d’Artù; + non Focaccia; non questi che m’ingombra + + col capo sì, ch’i’ non veggio oltre più, + e fu nomato Sassol Mascheroni; + se tosco se’, ben sai omai chi fu. + + E perché non mi metti in più sermoni, + sappi ch’i’ fu’ il Camiscion de’ Pazzi; + e aspetto Carlin che mi scagioni». + + Poscia vid’ io mille visi cagnazzi + fatti per freddo; onde mi vien riprezzo, + e verrà sempre, de’ gelati guazzi. + + E mentre ch’andavamo inver’ lo mezzo + al quale ogne gravezza si rauna, + e io tremava ne l’etterno rezzo; + + se voler fu o destino o fortuna, + non so; ma, passeggiando tra le teste, + forte percossi ’l piè nel viso ad una. + + Piangendo mi sgridò: «Perché mi peste? + se tu non vieni a crescer la vendetta + di Montaperti, perché mi moleste?». + + E io: «Maestro mio, or qui m’aspetta, + sì ch’io esca d’un dubbio per costui; + poi mi farai, quantunque vorrai, fretta». + + Lo duca stette, e io dissi a colui + che bestemmiava duramente ancora: + «Qual se’ tu che così rampogni altrui?». + + «Or tu chi se’ che vai per l’Antenora, + percotendo», rispuose, «altrui le gote, + sì che, se fossi vivo, troppo fora?». + + «Vivo son io, e caro esser ti puote», + fu mia risposta, «se dimandi fama, + ch’io metta il nome tuo tra l’altre note». + + Ed elli a me: «Del contrario ho io brama. + Lèvati quinci e non mi dar più lagna, + ché mal sai lusingar per questa lama!». + + Allor lo presi per la cuticagna + e dissi: «El converrà che tu ti nomi, + o che capel qui sù non ti rimagna». + + Ond’ elli a me: «Perché tu mi dischiomi, + né ti dirò ch’io sia, né mosterrolti, + se mille fiate in sul capo mi tomi». + + Io avea già i capelli in mano avvolti, + e tratti glien’ avea più d’una ciocca, + latrando lui con li occhi in giù raccolti, + + quando un altro gridò: «Che hai tu, Bocca? + non ti basta sonar con le mascelle, + se tu non latri? qual diavol ti tocca?». + + «Omai», diss’ io, «non vo’ che più favelle, + malvagio traditor; ch’a la tua onta + io porterò di te vere novelle». + + «Va via», rispuose, «e ciò che tu vuoi conta; + ma non tacer, se tu di qua entro eschi, + di quel ch’ebbe or così la lingua pronta. + + El piange qui l’argento de’ Franceschi: + “Io vidi”, potrai dir, “quel da Duera + là dove i peccatori stanno freschi”. + + Se fossi domandato “Altri chi v’era?”, + tu hai dallato quel di Beccheria + di cui segò Fiorenza la gorgiera. + + Gianni de’ Soldanier credo che sia + più là con Ganellone e Tebaldello, + ch’aprì Faenza quando si dormia». + + Noi eravam partiti già da ello, + ch’io vidi due ghiacciati in una buca, + sì che l’un capo a l’altro era cappello; + + e come ’l pan per fame si manduca, + così ’l sovran li denti a l’altro pose + là ’ve ’l cervel s’aggiugne con la nuca: + + non altrimenti Tidëo si rose + le tempie a Menalippo per disdegno, + che quei faceva il teschio e l’altre cose. + + «O tu che mostri per sì bestial segno + odio sovra colui che tu ti mangi, + dimmi ’l perché», diss’ io, «per tal convegno, + + che se tu a ragion di lui ti piangi, + sappiendo chi voi siete e la sua pecca, + nel mondo suso ancora io te ne cangi, + + se quella con ch’io parlo non si secca». + + + + Inferno • Canto XXXIII + + + La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto + quel peccator, forbendola a’ capelli + del capo ch’elli avea di retro guasto. + + Poi cominciò: «Tu vuo’ ch’io rinovelli + disperato dolor che ’l cor mi preme + già pur pensando, pria ch’io ne favelli. + + Ma se le mie parole esser dien seme + che frutti infamia al traditor ch’i’ rodo, + parlar e lagrimar vedrai insieme. + + Io non so chi tu se’ né per che modo + venuto se’ qua giù; ma fiorentino + mi sembri veramente quand’ io t’odo. + + Tu dei saper ch’i’ fui conte Ugolino, + e questi è l’arcivescovo Ruggieri: + or ti dirò perché i son tal vicino. + + Che per l’effetto de’ suo’ mai pensieri, + fidandomi di lui, io fossi preso + e poscia morto, dir non è mestieri; + + però quel che non puoi avere inteso, + cioè come la morte mia fu cruda, + udirai, e saprai s’e’ m’ha offeso. + + Breve pertugio dentro da la Muda, + la qual per me ha ’l titol de la fame, + e che conviene ancor ch’altrui si chiuda, + + m’avea mostrato per lo suo forame + più lune già, quand’ io feci ’l mal sonno + che del futuro mi squarciò ’l velame. + + Questi pareva a me maestro e donno, + cacciando il lupo e ’ lupicini al monte + per che i Pisan veder Lucca non ponno. + + Con cagne magre, studïose e conte + Gualandi con Sismondi e con Lanfranchi + s’avea messi dinanzi da la fronte. + + In picciol corso mi parieno stanchi + lo padre e ’ figli, e con l’agute scane + mi parea lor veder fender li fianchi. + + Quando fui desto innanzi la dimane, + pianger senti’ fra ’l sonno i miei figliuoli + ch’eran con meco, e dimandar del pane. + + Ben se’ crudel, se tu già non ti duoli + pensando ciò che ’l mio cor s’annunziava; + e se non piangi, di che pianger suoli? + + Già eran desti, e l’ora s’appressava + che ’l cibo ne solëa essere addotto, + e per suo sogno ciascun dubitava; + + e io senti’ chiavar l’uscio di sotto + a l’orribile torre; ond’ io guardai + nel viso a’ mie’ figliuoi sanza far motto. + + Io non piangëa, sì dentro impetrai: + piangevan elli; e Anselmuccio mio + disse: “Tu guardi sì, padre! che hai?”. + + Perciò non lagrimai né rispuos’ io + tutto quel giorno né la notte appresso, + infin che l’altro sol nel mondo uscìo. + + Come un poco di raggio si fu messo + nel doloroso carcere, e io scorsi + per quattro visi il mio aspetto stesso, + + ambo le man per lo dolor mi morsi; + ed ei, pensando ch’io ’l fessi per voglia + di manicar, di sùbito levorsi + + e disser: “Padre, assai ci fia men doglia + se tu mangi di noi: tu ne vestisti + queste misere carni, e tu le spoglia”. + + Queta’mi allor per non farli più tristi; + lo dì e l’altro stemmo tutti muti; + ahi dura terra, perché non t’apristi? + + Poscia che fummo al quarto dì venuti, + Gaddo mi si gittò disteso a’ piedi, + dicendo: “Padre mio, ché non m’aiuti?”. + + Quivi morì; e come tu mi vedi, + vid’ io cascar li tre ad uno ad uno + tra ’l quinto dì e ’l sesto; ond’ io mi diedi, + + già cieco, a brancolar sovra ciascuno, + e due dì li chiamai, poi che fur morti. + Poscia, più che ’l dolor, poté ’l digiuno». + + Quand’ ebbe detto ciò, con li occhi torti + riprese ’l teschio misero co’ denti, + che furo a l’osso, come d’un can, forti. + + Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti + del bel paese là dove ’l sì suona, + poi che i vicini a te punir son lenti, + + muovasi la Capraia e la Gorgona, + e faccian siepe ad Arno in su la foce, + sì ch’elli annieghi in te ogne persona! + + Che se ’l conte Ugolino aveva voce + d’aver tradita te de le castella, + non dovei tu i figliuoi porre a tal croce. + + Innocenti facea l’età novella, + novella Tebe, Uguiccione e ’l Brigata + e li altri due che ’l canto suso appella. + + Noi passammo oltre, là ’ve la gelata + ruvidamente un’altra gente fascia, + non volta in giù, ma tutta riversata. + + Lo pianto stesso lì pianger non lascia, + e ’l duol che truova in su li occhi rintoppo, + si volge in entro a far crescer l’ambascia; + + ché le lagrime prime fanno groppo, + e sì come visiere di cristallo, + rïempion sotto ’l ciglio tutto il coppo. + + E avvegna che, sì come d’un callo, + per la freddura ciascun sentimento + cessato avesse del mio viso stallo, + + già mi parea sentire alquanto vento; + per ch’io: «Maestro mio, questo chi move? + non è qua giù ogne vapore spento?». + + Ond’ elli a me: «Avaccio sarai dove + di ciò ti farà l’occhio la risposta, + veggendo la cagion che ’l fiato piove». + + E un de’ tristi de la fredda crosta + gridò a noi: «O anime crudeli + tanto che data v’è l’ultima posta, + + levatemi dal viso i duri veli, + sì ch’ïo sfoghi ’l duol che ’l cor m’impregna, + un poco, pria che ’l pianto si raggeli». + + Per ch’io a lui: «Se vuo’ ch’i’ ti sovvegna, + dimmi chi se’, e s’io non ti disbrigo, + al fondo de la ghiaccia ir mi convegna». + + Rispuose adunque: «I’ son frate Alberigo; + i’ son quel da le frutta del mal orto, + che qui riprendo dattero per figo». + + «Oh», diss’ io lui, «or se’ tu ancor morto?». + Ed elli a me: «Come ’l mio corpo stea + nel mondo sù, nulla scïenza porto. + + Cotal vantaggio ha questa Tolomea, + che spesse volte l’anima ci cade + innanzi ch’Atropòs mossa le dea. + + E perché tu più volentier mi rade + le ’nvetrïate lagrime dal volto, + sappie che, tosto che l’anima trade + + come fec’ ïo, il corpo suo l’è tolto + da un demonio, che poscia il governa + mentre che ’l tempo suo tutto sia vòlto. + + Ella ruina in sì fatta cisterna; + e forse pare ancor lo corpo suso + de l’ombra che di qua dietro mi verna. + + Tu ’l dei saper, se tu vien pur mo giuso: + elli è ser Branca Doria, e son più anni + poscia passati ch’el fu sì racchiuso». + + «Io credo», diss’ io lui, «che tu m’inganni; + ché Branca Doria non morì unquanche, + e mangia e bee e dorme e veste panni». + + «Nel fosso sù», diss’ el, «de’ Malebranche, + là dove bolle la tenace pece, + non era ancora giunto Michel Zanche, + + che questi lasciò il diavolo in sua vece + nel corpo suo, ed un suo prossimano + che ’l tradimento insieme con lui fece. + + Ma distendi oggimai in qua la mano; + aprimi li occhi». E io non gliel’ apersi; + e cortesia fu lui esser villano. + + Ahi Genovesi, uomini diversi + d’ogne costume e pien d’ogne magagna, + perché non siete voi del mondo spersi? + + Ché col peggiore spirto di Romagna + trovai di voi un tal, che per sua opra + in anima in Cocito già si bagna, + + e in corpo par vivo ancor di sopra. + + + + Inferno • Canto XXXIV + + + «Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni + verso di noi; però dinanzi mira», + disse ’l maestro mio, «se tu ’l discerni». + + Come quando una grossa nebbia spira, + o quando l’emisperio nostro annotta, + par di lungi un molin che ’l vento gira, + + veder mi parve un tal dificio allotta; + poi per lo vento mi ristrinsi retro + al duca mio, ché non lì era altra grotta. + + Già era, e con paura il metto in metro, + là dove l’ombre tutte eran coperte, + e trasparien come festuca in vetro. + + Altre sono a giacere; altre stanno erte, + quella col capo e quella con le piante; + altra, com’ arco, il volto a’ piè rinverte. + + Quando noi fummo fatti tanto avante, + ch’al mio maestro piacque di mostrarmi + la creatura ch’ebbe il bel sembiante, + + d’innanzi mi si tolse e fé restarmi, + «Ecco Dite», dicendo, «ed ecco il loco + ove convien che di fortezza t’armi». + + Com’ io divenni allor gelato e fioco, + nol dimandar, lettor, ch’i’ non lo scrivo, + però ch’ogne parlar sarebbe poco. + + Io non mori’ e non rimasi vivo; + pensa oggimai per te, s’hai fior d’ingegno, + qual io divenni, d’uno e d’altro privo. + + Lo ’mperador del doloroso regno + da mezzo ’l petto uscia fuor de la ghiaccia; + e più con un gigante io mi convegno, + + che i giganti non fan con le sue braccia: + vedi oggimai quant’ esser dee quel tutto + ch’a così fatta parte si confaccia. + + S’el fu sì bel com’ elli è ora brutto, + e contra ’l suo fattore alzò le ciglia, + ben dee da lui procedere ogne lutto. + + Oh quanto parve a me gran maraviglia + quand’ io vidi tre facce a la sua testa! + L’una dinanzi, e quella era vermiglia; + + l’altr’ eran due, che s’aggiugnieno a questa + sovresso ’l mezzo di ciascuna spalla, + e sé giugnieno al loco de la cresta: + + e la destra parea tra bianca e gialla; + la sinistra a vedere era tal, quali + vegnon di là onde ’l Nilo s’avvalla. + + Sotto ciascuna uscivan due grand’ ali, + quanto si convenia a tanto uccello: + vele di mar non vid’ io mai cotali. + + Non avean penne, ma di vispistrello + era lor modo; e quelle svolazzava, + sì che tre venti si movean da ello: + + quindi Cocito tutto s’aggelava. + Con sei occhi piangëa, e per tre menti + gocciava ’l pianto e sanguinosa bava. + + Da ogne bocca dirompea co’ denti + un peccatore, a guisa di maciulla, + sì che tre ne facea così dolenti. + + A quel dinanzi il mordere era nulla + verso ’l graffiar, che talvolta la schiena + rimanea de la pelle tutta brulla. + + «Quell’ anima là sù c’ha maggior pena», + disse ’l maestro, «è Giuda Scarïotto, + che ’l capo ha dentro e fuor le gambe mena. + + De li altri due c’hanno il capo di sotto, + quel che pende dal nero ceffo è Bruto: + vedi come si storce, e non fa motto!; + + e l’altro è Cassio, che par sì membruto. + Ma la notte risurge, e oramai + è da partir, ché tutto avem veduto». + + Com’ a lui piacque, il collo li avvinghiai; + ed el prese di tempo e loco poste, + e quando l’ali fuoro aperte assai, + + appigliò sé a le vellute coste; + di vello in vello giù discese poscia + tra ’l folto pelo e le gelate croste. + + Quando noi fummo là dove la coscia + si volge, a punto in sul grosso de l’anche, + lo duca, con fatica e con angoscia, + + volse la testa ov’ elli avea le zanche, + e aggrappossi al pel com’ om che sale, + sì che ’n inferno i’ credea tornar anche. + + «Attienti ben, ché per cotali scale», + disse ’l maestro, ansando com’ uom lasso, + «conviensi dipartir da tanto male». + + Poi uscì fuor per lo fóro d’un sasso + e puose me in su l’orlo a sedere; + appresso porse a me l’accorto passo. + + Io levai li occhi e credetti vedere + Lucifero com’ io l’avea lasciato, + e vidili le gambe in sù tenere; + + e s’io divenni allora travagliato, + la gente grossa il pensi, che non vede + qual è quel punto ch’io avea passato. + + «Lèvati sù», disse ’l maestro, «in piede: + la via è lunga e ’l cammino è malvagio, + e già il sole a mezza terza riede». + + Non era camminata di palagio + là ’v’ eravam, ma natural burella + ch’avea mal suolo e di lume disagio. + + «Prima ch’io de l’abisso mi divella, + maestro mio», diss’ io quando fui dritto, + «a trarmi d’erro un poco mi favella: + + ov’ è la ghiaccia? e questi com’ è fitto + sì sottosopra? e come, in sì poc’ ora, + da sera a mane ha fatto il sol tragitto?». + + Ed elli a me: «Tu imagini ancora + d’esser di là dal centro, ov’ io mi presi + al pel del vermo reo che ’l mondo fóra. + + Di là fosti cotanto quant’ io scesi; + quand’ io mi volsi, tu passasti ’l punto + al qual si traggon d’ogne parte i pesi. + + E se’ or sotto l’emisperio giunto + ch’è contraposto a quel che la gran secca + coverchia, e sotto ’l cui colmo consunto + + fu l’uom che nacque e visse sanza pecca; + tu haï i piedi in su picciola spera + che l’altra faccia fa de la Giudecca. + + Qui è da man, quando di là è sera; + e questi, che ne fé scala col pelo, + fitto è ancora sì come prim’ era. + + Da questa parte cadde giù dal cielo; + e la terra, che pria di qua si sporse, + per paura di lui fé del mar velo, + + e venne a l’emisperio nostro; e forse + per fuggir lui lasciò qui loco vòto + quella ch’appar di qua, e sù ricorse». + + Luogo è là giù da Belzebù remoto + tanto quanto la tomba si distende, + che non per vista, ma per suono è noto + + d’un ruscelletto che quivi discende + per la buca d’un sasso, ch’elli ha roso, + col corso ch’elli avvolge, e poco pende. + + Lo duca e io per quel cammino ascoso + intrammo a ritornar nel chiaro mondo; + e sanza cura aver d’alcun riposo, + + salimmo sù, el primo e io secondo, + tanto ch’i’ vidi de le cose belle + che porta ’l ciel, per un pertugio tondo. + + E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle. + + + + + + PURGATORIO + + + + + Purgatorio • Canto I + + + Per correr miglior acque alza le vele + omai la navicella del mio ingegno, + che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele; + + e canterò di quel secondo regno + dove l’umano spirito si purga + e di salire al ciel diventa degno. + + Ma qui la morta poesì resurga, + o sante Muse, poi che vostro sono; + e qui Calïopè alquanto surga, + + seguitando il mio canto con quel suono + di cui le Piche misere sentiro + lo colpo tal, che disperar perdono. + + Dolce color d’orïental zaffiro, + che s’accoglieva nel sereno aspetto + del mezzo, puro infino al primo giro, + + a li occhi miei ricominciò diletto, + tosto ch’io usci’ fuor de l’aura morta + che m’avea contristati li occhi e ’l petto. + + Lo bel pianeto che d’amar conforta + faceva tutto rider l’orïente, + velando i Pesci ch’erano in sua scorta. + + I’ mi volsi a man destra, e puosi mente + a l’altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle + non viste mai fuor ch’a la prima gente. + + Goder pareva ’l ciel di lor fiammelle: + oh settentrïonal vedovo sito, + poi che privato se’ di mirar quelle! + + Com’ io da loro sguardo fui partito, + un poco me volgendo a l ’altro polo, + là onde ’l Carro già era sparito, + + vidi presso di me un veglio solo, + degno di tanta reverenza in vista, + che più non dee a padre alcun figliuolo. + + Lunga la barba e di pel bianco mista + portava, a’ suoi capelli simigliante, + de’ quai cadeva al petto doppia lista. + + Li raggi de le quattro luci sante + fregiavan sì la sua faccia di lume, + ch’i’ ’l vedea come ’l sol fosse davante. + + «Chi siete voi che contro al cieco fiume + fuggita avete la pregione etterna?», + diss’ el, movendo quelle oneste piume. + + «Chi v’ha guidati, o che vi fu lucerna, + uscendo fuor de la profonda notte + che sempre nera fa la valle inferna? + + Son le leggi d’abisso così rotte? + o è mutato in ciel novo consiglio, + che, dannati, venite a le mie grotte?». + + Lo duca mio allor mi diè di piglio, + e con parole e con mani e con cenni + reverenti mi fé le gambe e ’l ciglio. + + Poscia rispuose lui: «Da me non venni: + donna scese del ciel, per li cui prieghi + de la mia compagnia costui sovvenni. + + Ma da ch’è tuo voler che più si spieghi + di nostra condizion com’ ell’ è vera, + esser non puote il mio che a te si nieghi. + + Questi non vide mai l’ultima sera; + ma per la sua follia le fu sì presso, + che molto poco tempo a volger era. + + Sì com’ io dissi, fui mandato ad esso + per lui campare; e non lì era altra via + che questa per la quale i’ mi son messo. + + Mostrata ho lui tutta la gente ria; + e ora intendo mostrar quelli spirti + che purgan sé sotto la tua balìa. + + Com’ io l’ho tratto, saria lungo a dirti; + de l’alto scende virtù che m’aiuta + conducerlo a vederti e a udirti. + + Or ti piaccia gradir la sua venuta: + libertà va cercando, ch’è sì cara, + come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta. + + Tu ’l sai, ché non ti fu per lei amara + in Utica la morte, ove lasciasti + la vesta ch’al gran dì sarà sì chiara. + + Non son li editti etterni per noi guasti, + ché questi vive e Minòs me non lega; + ma son del cerchio ove son li occhi casti + + di Marzia tua, che ’n vista ancor ti priega, + o santo petto, che per tua la tegni: + per lo suo amore adunque a noi ti piega. + + Lasciane andar per li tuoi sette regni; + grazie riporterò di te a lei, + se d’esser mentovato là giù degni». + + «Marzïa piacque tanto a li occhi miei + mentre ch’i’ fu’ di là», diss’ elli allora, + «che quante grazie volse da me, fei. + + Or che di là dal mal fiume dimora, + più muover non mi può, per quella legge + che fatta fu quando me n’usci’ fora. + + Ma se donna del ciel ti move e regge, + come tu di’, non c’è mestier lusinghe: + bastisi ben che per lei mi richegge. + + Va dunque, e fa che tu costui ricinghe + d’un giunco schietto e che li lavi ’l viso, + sì ch’ogne sucidume quindi stinghe; + + ché non si converria, l’occhio sorpriso + d’alcuna nebbia, andar dinanzi al primo + ministro, ch’è di quei di paradiso. + + Questa isoletta intorno ad imo ad imo, + là giù colà dove la batte l’onda, + porta di giunchi sovra ’l molle limo: + + null’ altra pianta che facesse fronda + o indurasse, vi puote aver vita, + però ch’a le percosse non seconda. + + Poscia non sia di qua vostra reddita; + lo sol vi mosterrà, che surge omai, + prendere il monte a più lieve salita». + + Così sparì; e io sù mi levai + sanza parlare, e tutto mi ritrassi + al duca mio, e li occhi a lui drizzai. + + El cominciò: «Figliuol, segui i miei passi: + volgianci in dietro, ché di qua dichina + questa pianura a’ suoi termini bassi». + + L’alba vinceva l’ora mattutina + che fuggia innanzi, sì che di lontano + conobbi il tremolar de la marina. + + Noi andavam per lo solingo piano + com’ om che torna a la perduta strada, + che ’nfino ad essa li pare ire in vano. + + Quando noi fummo là ’ve la rugiada + pugna col sole, per essere in parte + dove, ad orezza, poco si dirada, + + ambo le mani in su l’erbetta sparte + soavemente ’l mio maestro pose: + ond’ io, che fui accorto di sua arte, + + porsi ver’ lui le guance lagrimose; + ivi mi fece tutto discoverto + quel color che l’inferno mi nascose. + + Venimmo poi in sul lito diserto, + che mai non vide navicar sue acque + omo, che di tornar sia poscia esperto. + + Quivi mi cinse sì com’ altrui piacque: + oh maraviglia! ché qual elli scelse + l’umile pianta, cotal si rinacque + + subitamente là onde l’avelse. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto II + + + Già era ’l sole a l’orizzonte giunto + lo cui meridïan cerchio coverchia + Ierusalèm col suo più alto punto; + + e la notte, che opposita a lui cerchia, + uscia di Gange fuor con le Bilance, + che le caggion di man quando soverchia; + + sì che le bianche e le vermiglie guance, + là dov’ i’ era, de la bella Aurora + per troppa etate divenivan rance. + + Noi eravam lunghesso mare ancora, + come gente che pensa a suo cammino, + che va col cuore e col corpo dimora. + + Ed ecco, qual, sorpreso dal mattino, + per li grossi vapor Marte rosseggia + giù nel ponente sovra ’l suol marino, + + cotal m’apparve, s’io ancor lo veggia, + un lume per lo mar venir sì ratto, + che ’l muover suo nessun volar pareggia. + + Dal qual com’ io un poco ebbi ritratto + l’occhio per domandar lo duca mio, + rividil più lucente e maggior fatto. + + Poi d’ogne lato ad esso m’appario + un non sapeva che bianco, e di sotto + a poco a poco un altro a lui uscìo. + + Lo mio maestro ancor non facea motto, + mentre che i primi bianchi apparver ali; + allor che ben conobbe il galeotto, + + gridò: «Fa, fa che le ginocchia cali. + Ecco l’angel di Dio: piega le mani; + omai vedrai di sì fatti officiali. + + Vedi che sdegna li argomenti umani, + sì che remo non vuol, né altro velo + che l’ali sue, tra liti sì lontani. + + Vedi come l’ha dritte verso ’l cielo, + trattando l’aere con l’etterne penne, + che non si mutan come mortal pelo». + + Poi, come più e più verso noi venne + l’uccel divino, più chiaro appariva: + per che l’occhio da presso nol sostenne, + + ma chinail giuso; e quei sen venne a riva + con un vasello snelletto e leggero, + tanto che l’acqua nulla ne ’nghiottiva. + + Da poppa stava il celestial nocchiero, + tal che faria beato pur descripto; + e più di cento spirti entro sediero. + + ‘In exitu Isräel de Aegypto’ + cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce + con quanto di quel salmo è poscia scripto. + + Poi fece il segno lor di santa croce; + ond’ ei si gittar tutti in su la piaggia: + ed el sen gì, come venne, veloce. + + La turba che rimase lì, selvaggia + parea del loco, rimirando intorno + come colui che nove cose assaggia. + + Da tutte parti saettava il giorno + lo sol, ch’avea con le saette conte + di mezzo ’l ciel cacciato Capricorno, + + quando la nova gente alzò la fronte + ver’ noi, dicendo a noi: «Se voi sapete, + mostratene la via di gire al monte». + + E Virgilio rispuose: «Voi credete + forse che siamo esperti d’esto loco; + ma noi siam peregrin come voi siete. + + Dianzi venimmo, innanzi a voi un poco, + per altra via, che fu sì aspra e forte, + che lo salire omai ne parrà gioco». + + L’anime, che si fuor di me accorte, + per lo spirare, ch’i’ era ancor vivo, + maravigliando diventaro smorte. + + E come a messagger che porta ulivo + tragge la gente per udir novelle, + e di calcar nessun si mostra schivo, + + così al viso mio s’affisar quelle + anime fortunate tutte quante, + quasi oblïando d’ire a farsi belle. + + Io vidi una di lor trarresi avante + per abbracciarmi con sì grande affetto, + che mosse me a far lo somigliante. + + Ohi ombre vane, fuor che ne l’aspetto! + tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi, + e tante mi tornai con esse al petto. + + Di maraviglia, credo, mi dipinsi; + per che l’ombra sorrise e si ritrasse, + e io, seguendo lei, oltre mi pinsi. + + Soavemente disse ch’io posasse; + allor conobbi chi era, e pregai + che, per parlarmi, un poco s’arrestasse. + + Rispuosemi: «Così com’ io t’amai + nel mortal corpo, così t’amo sciolta: + però m’arresto; ma tu perché vai?». + + «Casella mio, per tornar altra volta + là dov’ io son, fo io questo vïaggio», + diss’ io; «ma a te com’ è tanta ora tolta?». + + Ed elli a me: «Nessun m’è fatto oltraggio, + se quei che leva quando e cui li piace, + più volte m’ha negato esto passaggio; + + ché di giusto voler lo suo si face: + veramente da tre mesi elli ha tolto + chi ha voluto intrar, con tutta pace. + + Ond’ io, ch’era ora a la marina vòlto + dove l’acqua di Tevero s’insala, + benignamente fu’ da lui ricolto. + + A quella foce ha elli or dritta l’ala, + però che sempre quivi si ricoglie + qual verso Acheronte non si cala». + + E io: «Se nuova legge non ti toglie + memoria o uso a l’amoroso canto + che mi solea quetar tutte mie doglie, + + di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto + l’anima mia, che, con la sua persona + venendo qui, è affannata tanto!». + + ‘Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona’ + cominciò elli allor sì dolcemente, + che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona. + + Lo mio maestro e io e quella gente + ch’eran con lui parevan sì contenti, + come a nessun toccasse altro la mente. + + Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti + a le sue note; ed ecco il veglio onesto + gridando: «Che è ciò, spiriti lenti? + + qual negligenza, quale stare è questo? + Correte al monte a spogliarvi lo scoglio + ch’esser non lascia a voi Dio manifesto». + + Come quando, cogliendo biado o loglio, + li colombi adunati a la pastura, + queti, sanza mostrar l’usato orgoglio, + + se cosa appare ond’ elli abbian paura, + subitamente lasciano star l’esca, + perch’ assaliti son da maggior cura; + + così vid’ io quella masnada fresca + lasciar lo canto, e fuggir ver’ la costa, + com’ om che va, né sa dove rïesca; + + né la nostra partita fu men tosta. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto III + + + Avvegna che la subitana fuga + dispergesse color per la campagna, + rivolti al monte ove ragion ne fruga, + + i’ mi ristrinsi a la fida compagna: + e come sare’ io sanza lui corso? + chi m’avria tratto su per la montagna? + + El mi parea da sé stesso rimorso: + o dignitosa coscïenza e netta, + come t’è picciol fallo amaro morso! + + Quando li piedi suoi lasciar la fretta, + che l’onestade ad ogn’ atto dismaga, + la mente mia, che prima era ristretta, + + lo ’ntento rallargò, sì come vaga, + e diedi ’l viso mio incontr’ al poggio + che ’nverso ’l ciel più alto si dislaga. + + Lo sol, che dietro fiammeggiava roggio, + rotto m’era dinanzi a la figura, + ch’avëa in me de’ suoi raggi l’appoggio. + + Io mi volsi dallato con paura + d’essere abbandonato, quand’ io vidi + solo dinanzi a me la terra oscura; + + e ’l mio conforto: «Perché pur diffidi?», + a dir mi cominciò tutto rivolto; + «non credi tu me teco e ch’io ti guidi? + + Vespero è già colà dov’ è sepolto + lo corpo dentro al quale io facea ombra; + Napoli l’ha, e da Brandizio è tolto. + + Ora, se innanzi a me nulla s’aombra, + non ti maravigliar più che d’i cieli + che l’uno a l’altro raggio non ingombra. + + A sofferir tormenti, caldi e geli + simili corpi la Virtù dispone + che, come fa, non vuol ch’a noi si sveli. + + Matto è chi spera che nostra ragione + possa trascorrer la infinita via + che tiene una sustanza in tre persone. + + State contenti, umana gente, al quia; + ché, se potuto aveste veder tutto, + mestier non era parturir Maria; + + e disïar vedeste sanza frutto + tai che sarebbe lor disio quetato, + ch’etternalmente è dato lor per lutto: + + io dico d’Aristotile e di Plato + e di molt’ altri»; e qui chinò la fronte, + e più non disse, e rimase turbato. + + Noi divenimmo intanto a piè del monte; + quivi trovammo la roccia sì erta, + che ’ndarno vi sarien le gambe pronte. + + Tra Lerice e Turbìa la più diserta, + la più rotta ruina è una scala, + verso di quella, agevole e aperta. + + «Or chi sa da qual man la costa cala», + disse ’l maestro mio fermando ’l passo, + «sì che possa salir chi va sanz’ ala?». + + E mentre ch’e’ tenendo ’l viso basso + essaminava del cammin la mente, + e io mirava suso intorno al sasso, + + da man sinistra m’apparì una gente + d’anime, che movieno i piè ver’ noi, + e non pareva, sì venïan lente. + + «Leva», diss’ io, «maestro, li occhi tuoi: + ecco di qua chi ne darà consiglio, + se tu da te medesmo aver nol puoi». + + Guardò allora, e con libero piglio + rispuose: «Andiamo in là, ch’ei vegnon piano; + e tu ferma la spene, dolce figlio». + + Ancora era quel popol di lontano, + i’ dico dopo i nostri mille passi, + quanto un buon gittator trarria con mano, + + quando si strinser tutti ai duri massi + de l’alta ripa, e stetter fermi e stretti + com’ a guardar, chi va dubbiando, stassi. + + «O ben finiti, o già spiriti eletti», + Virgilio incominciò, «per quella pace + ch’i’ credo che per voi tutti s’aspetti, + + ditene dove la montagna giace, + sì che possibil sia l’andare in suso; + ché perder tempo a chi più sa più spiace». + + Come le pecorelle escon del chiuso + a una, a due, a tre, e l’altre stanno + timidette atterrando l’occhio e ’l muso; + + e ciò che fa la prima, e l’altre fanno, + addossandosi a lei, s’ella s’arresta, + semplici e quete, e lo ’mperché non sanno; + + sì vid’ io muovere a venir la testa + di quella mandra fortunata allotta, + pudica in faccia e ne l’andare onesta. + + Come color dinanzi vider rotta + la luce in terra dal mio destro canto, + sì che l’ombra era da me a la grotta, + + restaro, e trasser sé in dietro alquanto, + e tutti li altri che venieno appresso, + non sappiendo ’l perché, fenno altrettanto. + + «Sanza vostra domanda io vi confesso + che questo è corpo uman che voi vedete; + per che ’l lume del sole in terra è fesso. + + Non vi maravigliate, ma credete + che non sanza virtù che da ciel vegna + cerchi di soverchiar questa parete». + + Così ’l maestro; e quella gente degna + «Tornate», disse, «intrate innanzi dunque», + coi dossi de le man faccendo insegna. + + E un di loro incominciò: «Chiunque + tu se’, così andando, volgi ’l viso: + pon mente se di là mi vedesti unque». + + Io mi volsi ver’ lui e guardail fiso: + biondo era e bello e di gentile aspetto, + ma l’un de’ cigli un colpo avea diviso. + + Quand’ io mi fui umilmente disdetto + d’averlo visto mai, el disse: «Or vedi»; + e mostrommi una piaga a sommo ’l petto. + + Poi sorridendo disse: «Io son Manfredi, + nepote di Costanza imperadrice; + ond’ io ti priego che, quando tu riedi, + + vadi a mia bella figlia, genitrice + de l’onor di Cicilia e d’Aragona, + e dichi ’l vero a lei, s’altro si dice. + + Poscia ch’io ebbi rotta la persona + di due punte mortali, io mi rendei, + piangendo, a quei che volontier perdona. + + Orribil furon li peccati miei; + ma la bontà infinita ha sì gran braccia, + che prende ciò che si rivolge a lei. + + Se ’l pastor di Cosenza, che a la caccia + di me fu messo per Clemente allora, + avesse in Dio ben letta questa faccia, + + l’ossa del corpo mio sarieno ancora + in co del ponte presso a Benevento, + sotto la guardia de la grave mora. + + Or le bagna la pioggia e move il vento + di fuor dal regno, quasi lungo ’l Verde, + dov’ e’ le trasmutò a lume spento. + + Per lor maladizion sì non si perde, + che non possa tornar, l’etterno amore, + mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde. + + Vero è che quale in contumacia more + di Santa Chiesa, ancor ch’al fin si penta, + star li convien da questa ripa in fore, + + per ognun tempo ch’elli è stato, trenta, + in sua presunzïon, se tal decreto + più corto per buon prieghi non diventa. + + Vedi oggimai se tu mi puoi far lieto, + revelando a la mia buona Costanza + come m’hai visto, e anco esto divieto; + + ché qui per quei di là molto s’avanza». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto IV + + + Quando per dilettanze o ver per doglie, + che alcuna virtù nostra comprenda, + l’anima bene ad essa si raccoglie, + + par ch’a nulla potenza più intenda; + e questo è contra quello error che crede + ch’un’anima sovr’ altra in noi s’accenda. + + E però, quando s’ode cosa o vede + che tegna forte a sé l’anima volta, + vassene ’l tempo e l’uom non se n’avvede; + + ch’altra potenza è quella che l’ascolta, + e altra è quella c’ha l’anima intera: + questa è quasi legata e quella è sciolta. + + Di ciò ebb’ io esperïenza vera, + udendo quello spirto e ammirando; + ché ben cinquanta gradi salito era + + lo sole, e io non m’era accorto, quando + venimmo ove quell’ anime ad una + gridaro a noi: «Qui è vostro dimando». + + Maggiore aperta molte volte impruna + con una forcatella di sue spine + l’uom de la villa quando l’uva imbruna, + + che non era la calla onde salìne + lo duca mio, e io appresso, soli, + come da noi la schiera si partìne. + + Vassi in Sanleo e discendesi in Noli, + montasi su in Bismantova e ’n Cacume + con esso i piè; ma qui convien ch’om voli; + + dico con l’ale snelle e con le piume + del gran disio, di retro a quel condotto + che speranza mi dava e facea lume. + + Noi salavam per entro ’l sasso rotto, + e d’ogne lato ne stringea lo stremo, + e piedi e man volea il suol di sotto. + + Poi che noi fummo in su l’orlo suppremo + de l’alta ripa, a la scoperta piaggia, + «Maestro mio», diss’ io, «che via faremo?». + + Ed elli a me: «Nessun tuo passo caggia; + pur su al monte dietro a me acquista, + fin che n’appaia alcuna scorta saggia». + + Lo sommo er’ alto che vincea la vista, + e la costa superba più assai + che da mezzo quadrante a centro lista. + + Io era lasso, quando cominciai: + «O dolce padre, volgiti, e rimira + com’ io rimango sol, se non restai». + + «Figliuol mio», disse, «infin quivi ti tira», + additandomi un balzo poco in sùe + che da quel lato il poggio tutto gira. + + Sì mi spronaron le parole sue, + ch’i’ mi sforzai carpando appresso lui, + tanto che ’l cinghio sotto i piè mi fue. + + A seder ci ponemmo ivi ambedui + vòlti a levante ond’ eravam saliti, + che suole a riguardar giovare altrui. + + Li occhi prima drizzai ai bassi liti; + poscia li alzai al sole, e ammirava + che da sinistra n’eravam feriti. + + Ben s’avvide il poeta ch’ïo stava + stupido tutto al carro de la luce, + ove tra noi e Aquilone intrava. + + Ond’ elli a me: «Se Castore e Poluce + fossero in compagnia di quello specchio + che sù e giù del suo lume conduce, + + tu vedresti il Zodïaco rubecchio + ancora a l’Orse più stretto rotare, + se non uscisse fuor del cammin vecchio. + + Come ciò sia, se ’l vuoi poter pensare, + dentro raccolto, imagina Sïòn + con questo monte in su la terra stare + + sì, ch’amendue hanno un solo orizzòn + e diversi emisperi; onde la strada + che mal non seppe carreggiar Fetòn, + + vedrai come a costui convien che vada + da l’un, quando a colui da l’altro fianco, + se lo ’ntelletto tuo ben chiaro bada». + + «Certo, maestro mio,» diss’ io, «unquanco + non vid’ io chiaro sì com’ io discerno + là dove mio ingegno parea manco, + + che ’l mezzo cerchio del moto superno, + che si chiama Equatore in alcun’ arte, + e che sempre riman tra ’l sole e ’l verno, + + per la ragion che di’, quinci si parte + verso settentrïon, quanto li Ebrei + vedevan lui verso la calda parte. + + Ma se a te piace, volontier saprei + quanto avemo ad andar; ché ’l poggio sale + più che salir non posson li occhi miei». + + Ed elli a me: «Questa montagna è tale, + che sempre al cominciar di sotto è grave; + e quant’ om più va sù, e men fa male. + + Però, quand’ ella ti parrà soave + tanto, che sù andar ti fia leggero + com’ a seconda giù andar per nave, + + allor sarai al fin d’esto sentiero; + quivi di riposar l’affanno aspetta. + Più non rispondo, e questo so per vero». + + E com’ elli ebbe sua parola detta, + una voce di presso sonò: «Forse + che di sedere in pria avrai distretta!». + + Al suon di lei ciascun di noi si torse, + e vedemmo a mancina un gran petrone, + del qual né io né ei prima s’accorse. + + Là ci traemmo; e ivi eran persone + che si stavano a l’ombra dietro al sasso + come l’uom per negghienza a star si pone. + + E un di lor, che mi sembiava lasso, + sedeva e abbracciava le ginocchia, + tenendo ’l viso giù tra esse basso. + + «O dolce segnor mio», diss’ io, «adocchia + colui che mostra sé più negligente + che se pigrizia fosse sua serocchia». + + Allor si volse a noi e puose mente, + movendo ’l viso pur su per la coscia, + e disse: «Or va tu sù, che se’ valente!». + + Conobbi allor chi era, e quella angoscia + che m’avacciava un poco ancor la lena, + non m’impedì l’andare a lui; e poscia + + ch’a lui fu’ giunto, alzò la testa a pena, + dicendo: «Hai ben veduto come ’l sole + da l’omero sinistro il carro mena?». + + Li atti suoi pigri e le corte parole + mosser le labbra mie un poco a riso; + poi cominciai: «Belacqua, a me non dole + + di te omai; ma dimmi: perché assiso + quiritto se’? attendi tu iscorta, + o pur lo modo usato t’ha’ ripriso?». + + Ed elli: «O frate, andar in sù che porta? + ché non mi lascerebbe ire a’ martìri + l’angel di Dio che siede in su la porta. + + Prima convien che tanto il ciel m’aggiri + di fuor da essa, quanto fece in vita, + per ch’io ’ndugiai al fine i buon sospiri, + + se orazïone in prima non m’aita + che surga sù di cuor che in grazia viva; + l’altra che val, che ’n ciel non è udita?». + + E già il poeta innanzi mi saliva, + e dicea: «Vienne omai; vedi ch’è tocco + meridïan dal sole e a la riva + + cuopre la notte già col piè Morrocco». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto V + + + Io era già da quell’ ombre partito, + e seguitava l’orme del mio duca, + quando di retro a me, drizzando ’l dito, + + una gridò: «Ve’ che non par che luca + lo raggio da sinistra a quel di sotto, + e come vivo par che si conduca!». + + Li occhi rivolsi al suon di questo motto, + e vidile guardar per maraviglia + pur me, pur me, e ’l lume ch’era rotto. + + «Perché l’animo tuo tanto s’impiglia», + disse ’l maestro, «che l’andare allenti? + che ti fa ciò che quivi si pispiglia? + + Vien dietro a me, e lascia dir le genti: + sta come torre ferma, che non crolla + già mai la cima per soffiar di venti; + + ché sempre l’omo in cui pensier rampolla + sovra pensier, da sé dilunga il segno, + perché la foga l’un de l’altro insolla». + + Che potea io ridir, se non «Io vegno»? + Dissilo, alquanto del color consperso + che fa l’uom di perdon talvolta degno. + + E ’ntanto per la costa di traverso + venivan genti innanzi a noi un poco, + cantando ‘Miserere’ a verso a verso. + + Quando s’accorser ch’i’ non dava loco + per lo mio corpo al trapassar d’i raggi, + mutar lor canto in un «oh!» lungo e roco; + + e due di loro, in forma di messaggi, + corsero incontr’ a noi e dimandarne: + «Di vostra condizion fatene saggi». + + E ’l mio maestro: «Voi potete andarne + e ritrarre a color che vi mandaro + che ’l corpo di costui è vera carne. + + Se per veder la sua ombra restaro, + com’ io avviso, assai è lor risposto: + fàccianli onore, ed esser può lor caro». + + Vapori accesi non vid’ io sì tosto + di prima notte mai fender sereno, + né, sol calando, nuvole d’agosto, + + che color non tornasser suso in meno; + e, giunti là, con li altri a noi dier volta, + come schiera che scorre sanza freno. + + «Questa gente che preme a noi è molta, + e vegnonti a pregar», disse ’l poeta: + «però pur va, e in andando ascolta». + + «O anima che vai per esser lieta + con quelle membra con le quai nascesti», + venian gridando, «un poco il passo queta. + + Guarda s’alcun di noi unqua vedesti, + sì che di lui di là novella porti: + deh, perché vai? deh, perché non t’arresti? + + Noi fummo tutti già per forza morti, + e peccatori infino a l’ultima ora; + quivi lume del ciel ne fece accorti, + + sì che, pentendo e perdonando, fora + di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati, + che del disio di sé veder n’accora». + + E io: «Perché ne’ vostri visi guati, + non riconosco alcun; ma s’a voi piace + cosa ch’io possa, spiriti ben nati, + + voi dite, e io farò per quella pace + che, dietro a’ piedi di sì fatta guida, + di mondo in mondo cercar mi si face». + + E uno incominciò: «Ciascun si fida + del beneficio tuo sanza giurarlo, + pur che ’l voler nonpossa non ricida. + + Ond’ io, che solo innanzi a li altri parlo, + ti priego, se mai vedi quel paese + che siede tra Romagna e quel di Carlo, + + che tu mi sie di tuoi prieghi cortese + in Fano, sì che ben per me s’adori + pur ch’i’ possa purgar le gravi offese. + + Quindi fu’ io; ma li profondi fóri + ond’ uscì ’l sangue in sul quale io sedea, + fatti mi fuoro in grembo a li Antenori, + + là dov’ io più sicuro esser credea: + quel da Esti il fé far, che m’avea in ira + assai più là che dritto non volea. + + Ma s’io fosse fuggito inver’ la Mira, + quando fu’ sovragiunto ad Orïaco, + ancor sarei di là dove si spira. + + Corsi al palude, e le cannucce e ’l braco + m’impigliar sì ch’i’ caddi; e lì vid’ io + de le mie vene farsi in terra laco». + + Poi disse un altro: «Deh, se quel disio + si compia che ti tragge a l’alto monte, + con buona pïetate aiuta il mio! + + Io fui di Montefeltro, io son Bonconte; + Giovanna o altri non ha di me cura; + per ch’io vo tra costor con bassa fronte». + + E io a lui: «Qual forza o qual ventura + ti travïò sì fuor di Campaldino, + che non si seppe mai tua sepultura?». + + «Oh!», rispuos’ elli, «a piè del Casentino + traversa un’acqua c’ha nome l’Archiano, + che sovra l’Ermo nasce in Apennino. + + Là ’ve ’l vocabol suo diventa vano, + arriva’ io forato ne la gola, + fuggendo a piede e sanguinando il piano. + + Quivi perdei la vista e la parola; + nel nome di Maria fini’, e quivi + caddi, e rimase la mia carne sola. + + Io dirò vero, e tu ’l ridì tra ’ vivi: + l’angel di Dio mi prese, e quel d’inferno + gridava: “O tu del ciel, perché mi privi? + + Tu te ne porti di costui l’etterno + per una lagrimetta che ’l mi toglie; + ma io farò de l’altro altro governo!”. + + Ben sai come ne l’aere si raccoglie + quell’ umido vapor che in acqua riede, + tosto che sale dove ’l freddo il coglie. + + Giunse quel mal voler che pur mal chiede + con lo ’ntelletto, e mosse il fummo e ’l vento + per la virtù che sua natura diede. + + Indi la valle, come ’l dì fu spento, + da Pratomagno al gran giogo coperse + di nebbia; e ’l ciel di sopra fece intento, + + sì che ’l pregno aere in acqua si converse; + la pioggia cadde, e a’ fossati venne + di lei ciò che la terra non sofferse; + + e come ai rivi grandi si convenne, + ver’ lo fiume real tanto veloce + si ruinò, che nulla la ritenne. + + Lo corpo mio gelato in su la foce + trovò l’Archian rubesto; e quel sospinse + ne l’Arno, e sciolse al mio petto la croce + + ch’i’ fe’ di me quando ’l dolor mi vinse; + voltòmmi per le ripe e per lo fondo, + poi di sua preda mi coperse e cinse». + + «Deh, quando tu sarai tornato al mondo + e riposato de la lunga via», + seguitò ’l terzo spirito al secondo, + + «ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; + Siena mi fé, disfecemi Maremma: + salsi colui che ’nnanellata pria + + disposando m’avea con la sua gemma». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto VI + + + Quando si parte il gioco de la zara, + colui che perde si riman dolente, + repetendo le volte, e tristo impara; + + con l’altro se ne va tutta la gente; + qual va dinanzi, e qual di dietro il prende, + e qual dallato li si reca a mente; + + el non s’arresta, e questo e quello intende; + a cui porge la man, più non fa pressa; + e così da la calca si difende. + + Tal era io in quella turba spessa, + volgendo a loro, e qua e là, la faccia, + e promettendo mi sciogliea da essa. + + Quiv’ era l’Aretin che da le braccia + fiere di Ghin di Tacco ebbe la morte, + e l’altro ch’annegò correndo in caccia. + + Quivi pregava con le mani sporte + Federigo Novello, e quel da Pisa + che fé parer lo buon Marzucco forte. + + Vidi conte Orso e l’anima divisa + dal corpo suo per astio e per inveggia, + com’ e’ dicea, non per colpa commisa; + + Pier da la Broccia dico; e qui proveggia, + mentr’ è di qua, la donna di Brabante, + sì che però non sia di peggior greggia. + + Come libero fui da tutte quante + quell’ ombre che pregar pur ch’altri prieghi, + sì che s’avacci lor divenir sante, + + io cominciai: «El par che tu mi nieghi, + o luce mia, espresso in alcun testo + che decreto del cielo orazion pieghi; + + e questa gente prega pur di questo: + sarebbe dunque loro speme vana, + o non m’è ’l detto tuo ben manifesto?». + + Ed elli a me: «La mia scrittura è piana; + e la speranza di costor non falla, + se ben si guarda con la mente sana; + + ché cima di giudicio non s’avvalla + perché foco d’amor compia in un punto + ciò che de’ sodisfar chi qui s’astalla; + + e là dov’ io fermai cotesto punto, + non s’ammendava, per pregar, difetto, + perché ’l priego da Dio era disgiunto. + + Veramente a così alto sospetto + non ti fermar, se quella nol ti dice + che lume fia tra ’l vero e lo ’ntelletto. + + Non so se ’ntendi: io dico di Beatrice; + tu la vedrai di sopra, in su la vetta + di questo monte, ridere e felice». + + E io: «Segnore, andiamo a maggior fretta, + ché già non m’affatico come dianzi, + e vedi omai che ’l poggio l’ombra getta». + + «Noi anderem con questo giorno innanzi», + rispuose, «quanto più potremo omai; + ma ’l fatto è d’altra forma che non stanzi. + + Prima che sie là sù, tornar vedrai + colui che già si cuopre de la costa, + sì che ’ suoi raggi tu romper non fai. + + Ma vedi là un’anima che, posta + sola soletta, inverso noi riguarda: + quella ne ’nsegnerà la via più tosta». + + Venimmo a lei: o anima lombarda, + come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa + e nel mover de li occhi onesta e tarda! + + Ella non ci dicëa alcuna cosa, + ma lasciavane gir, solo sguardando + a guisa di leon quando si posa. + + Pur Virgilio si trasse a lei, pregando + che ne mostrasse la miglior salita; + e quella non rispuose al suo dimando, + + ma di nostro paese e de la vita + ci ’nchiese; e ’l dolce duca incominciava + «Mantüa . . . », e l’ombra, tutta in sé romita, + + surse ver’ lui del loco ove pria stava, + dicendo: «O Mantoano, io son Sordello + de la tua terra!»; e l’un l’altro abbracciava. + + Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, + nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta, + non donna di province, ma bordello! + + Quell’ anima gentil fu così presta, + sol per lo dolce suon de la sua terra, + di fare al cittadin suo quivi festa; + + e ora in te non stanno sanza guerra + li vivi tuoi, e l’un l’altro si rode + di quei ch’un muro e una fossa serra. + + Cerca, misera, intorno da le prode + le tue marine, e poi ti guarda in seno, + s’alcuna parte in te di pace gode. + + Che val perché ti racconciasse il freno + Iustinïano, se la sella è vòta? + Sanz’ esso fora la vergogna meno. + + Ahi gente che dovresti esser devota, + e lasciar seder Cesare in la sella, + se bene intendi ciò che Dio ti nota, + + guarda come esta fiera è fatta fella + per non esser corretta da li sproni, + poi che ponesti mano a la predella. + + O Alberto tedesco ch’abbandoni + costei ch’è fatta indomita e selvaggia, + e dovresti inforcar li suoi arcioni, + + giusto giudicio da le stelle caggia + sovra ’l tuo sangue, e sia novo e aperto, + tal che ’l tuo successor temenza n’aggia! + + Ch’avete tu e ’l tuo padre sofferto, + per cupidigia di costà distretti, + che ’l giardin de lo ’mperio sia diserto. + + Vieni a veder Montecchi e Cappelletti, + Monaldi e Filippeschi, uom sanza cura: + color già tristi, e questi con sospetti! + + Vien, crudel, vieni, e vedi la pressura + d’i tuoi gentili, e cura lor magagne; + e vedrai Santafior com’ è oscura! + + Vieni a veder la tua Roma che piagne + vedova e sola, e dì e notte chiama: + «Cesare mio, perché non m’accompagne?». + + Vieni a veder la gente quanto s’ama! + e se nulla di noi pietà ti move, + a vergognar ti vien de la tua fama. + + E se licito m’è, o sommo Giove + che fosti in terra per noi crucifisso, + son li giusti occhi tuoi rivolti altrove? + + O è preparazion che ne l’abisso + del tuo consiglio fai per alcun bene + in tutto de l’accorger nostro scisso? + + Ché le città d’Italia tutte piene + son di tiranni, e un Marcel diventa + ogne villan che parteggiando viene. + + Fiorenza mia, ben puoi esser contenta + di questa digression che non ti tocca, + mercé del popol tuo che si argomenta. + + Molti han giustizia in cuore, e tardi scocca + per non venir sanza consiglio a l’arco; + ma il popol tuo l’ha in sommo de la bocca. + + Molti rifiutan lo comune incarco; + ma il popol tuo solicito risponde + sanza chiamare, e grida: «I’ mi sobbarco!». + + Or ti fa lieta, ché tu hai ben onde: + tu ricca, tu con pace e tu con senno! + S’io dico ’l ver, l’effetto nol nasconde. + + Atene e Lacedemona, che fenno + l’antiche leggi e furon sì civili, + fecero al viver bene un picciol cenno + + verso di te, che fai tanto sottili + provedimenti, ch’a mezzo novembre + non giugne quel che tu d’ottobre fili. + + Quante volte, del tempo che rimembre, + legge, moneta, officio e costume + hai tu mutato, e rinovate membre! + + E se ben ti ricordi e vedi lume, + vedrai te somigliante a quella inferma + che non può trovar posa in su le piume, + + ma con dar volta suo dolore scherma. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto VII + + + Poscia che l’accoglienze oneste e liete + furo iterate tre e quattro volte, + Sordel si trasse, e disse: «Voi, chi siete?». + + «Anzi che a questo monte fosser volte + l’anime degne di salire a Dio, + fur l’ossa mie per Ottavian sepolte. + + Io son Virgilio; e per null’ altro rio + lo ciel perdei che per non aver fé». + Così rispuose allora il duca mio. + + Qual è colui che cosa innanzi sé + sùbita vede ond’ e’ si maraviglia, + che crede e non, dicendo «Ella è . . . non è . . . », + + tal parve quelli; e poi chinò le ciglia, + e umilmente ritornò ver’ lui, + e abbracciòl là ’ve ’l minor s’appiglia. + + «O gloria di Latin», disse, «per cui + mostrò ciò che potea la lingua nostra, + o pregio etterno del loco ond’ io fui, + + qual merito o qual grazia mi ti mostra? + S’io son d’udir le tue parole degno, + dimmi se vien d’inferno, e di qual chiostra». + + «Per tutt’ i cerchi del dolente regno», + rispuose lui, «son io di qua venuto; + virtù del ciel mi mosse, e con lei vegno. + + Non per far, ma per non fare ho perduto + a veder l’alto Sol che tu disiri + e che fu tardi per me conosciuto. + + Luogo è là giù non tristo di martìri, + ma di tenebre solo, ove i lamenti + non suonan come guai, ma son sospiri. + + Quivi sto io coi pargoli innocenti + dai denti morsi de la morte avante + che fosser da l’umana colpa essenti; + + quivi sto io con quei che le tre sante + virtù non si vestiro, e sanza vizio + conobber l’altre e seguir tutte quante. + + Ma se tu sai e puoi, alcuno indizio + dà noi per che venir possiam più tosto + là dove purgatorio ha dritto inizio». + + Rispuose: «Loco certo non c’è posto; + licito m’è andar suso e intorno; + per quanto ir posso, a guida mi t’accosto. + + Ma vedi già come dichina il giorno, + e andar sù di notte non si puote; + però è buon pensar di bel soggiorno. + + Anime sono a destra qua remote; + se mi consenti, io ti merrò ad esse, + e non sanza diletto ti fier note». + + «Com’ è ciò?», fu risposto. «Chi volesse + salir di notte, fora elli impedito + d’altrui, o non sarria ché non potesse?». + + E ’l buon Sordello in terra fregò ’l dito, + dicendo: «Vedi? sola questa riga + non varcheresti dopo ’l sol partito: + + non però ch’altra cosa desse briga, + che la notturna tenebra, ad ir suso; + quella col nonpoder la voglia intriga. + + Ben si poria con lei tornare in giuso + e passeggiar la costa intorno errando, + mentre che l’orizzonte il dì tien chiuso». + + Allora il mio segnor, quasi ammirando, + «Menane», disse, «dunque là ’ve dici + ch’aver si può diletto dimorando». + + Poco allungati c’eravam di lici, + quand’ io m’accorsi che ’l monte era scemo, + a guisa che i vallon li sceman quici. + + «Colà», disse quell’ ombra, «n’anderemo + dove la costa face di sé grembo; + e là il novo giorno attenderemo». + + Tra erto e piano era un sentiero schembo, + che ne condusse in fianco de la lacca, + là dove più ch’a mezzo muore il lembo. + + Oro e argento fine, cocco e biacca, + indaco, legno lucido e sereno, + fresco smeraldo in l’ora che si fiacca, + + da l’erba e da li fior, dentr’ a quel seno + posti, ciascun saria di color vinto, + come dal suo maggiore è vinto il meno. + + Non avea pur natura ivi dipinto, + ma di soavità di mille odori + vi facea uno incognito e indistinto. + + ‘Salve, Regina’ in sul verde e ’n su’ fiori + quindi seder cantando anime vidi, + che per la valle non parean di fuori. + + «Prima che ’l poco sole omai s’annidi», + cominciò ’l Mantoan che ci avea vòlti, + «tra color non vogliate ch’io vi guidi. + + Di questo balzo meglio li atti e ’ volti + conoscerete voi di tutti quanti, + che ne la lama giù tra essi accolti. + + Colui che più siede alto e fa sembianti + d’aver negletto ciò che far dovea, + e che non move bocca a li altrui canti, + + Rodolfo imperador fu, che potea + sanar le piaghe c’hanno Italia morta, + sì che tardi per altri si ricrea. + + L’altro che ne la vista lui conforta, + resse la terra dove l’acqua nasce + che Molta in Albia, e Albia in mar ne porta: + + Ottacchero ebbe nome, e ne le fasce + fu meglio assai che Vincislao suo figlio + barbuto, cui lussuria e ozio pasce. + + E quel nasetto che stretto a consiglio + par con colui c’ha sì benigno aspetto, + morì fuggendo e disfiorando il giglio: + + guardate là come si batte il petto! + L’altro vedete c’ha fatto a la guancia + de la sua palma, sospirando, letto. + + Padre e suocero son del mal di Francia: + sanno la vita sua viziata e lorda, + e quindi viene il duol che sì li lancia. + + Quel che par sì membruto e che s’accorda, + cantando, con colui dal maschio naso, + d’ogne valor portò cinta la corda; + + e se re dopo lui fosse rimaso + lo giovanetto che retro a lui siede, + ben andava il valor di vaso in vaso, + + che non si puote dir de l’altre rede; + Iacomo e Federigo hanno i reami; + del retaggio miglior nessun possiede. + + Rade volte risurge per li rami + l’umana probitate; e questo vole + quei che la dà, perché da lui si chiami. + + Anche al nasuto vanno mie parole + non men ch’a l’altro, Pier, che con lui canta, + onde Puglia e Proenza già si dole. + + Tant’ è del seme suo minor la pianta, + quanto, più che Beatrice e Margherita, + Costanza di marito ancor si vanta. + + Vedete il re de la semplice vita + seder là solo, Arrigo d’Inghilterra: + questi ha ne’ rami suoi migliore uscita. + + Quel che più basso tra costor s’atterra, + guardando in suso, è Guiglielmo marchese, + per cui e Alessandria e la sua guerra + + fa pianger Monferrato e Canavese». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto VIII + + + Era già l’ora che volge il disio + ai navicanti e ’ntenerisce il core + lo dì c’han detto ai dolci amici addio; + + e che lo novo peregrin d’amore + punge, se ode squilla di lontano + che paia il giorno pianger che si more; + + quand’ io incominciai a render vano + l’udire e a mirare una de l’alme + surta, che l’ascoltar chiedea con mano. + + Ella giunse e levò ambo le palme, + ficcando li occhi verso l’orïente, + come dicesse a Dio: ‘D’altro non calme’. + + ‘Te lucis ante’ sì devotamente + le uscìo di bocca e con sì dolci note, + che fece me a me uscir di mente; + + e l’altre poi dolcemente e devote + seguitar lei per tutto l’inno intero, + avendo li occhi a le superne rote. + + Aguzza qui, lettor, ben li occhi al vero, + ché ’l velo è ora ben tanto sottile, + certo che ’l trapassar dentro è leggero. + + Io vidi quello essercito gentile + tacito poscia riguardare in sùe, + quasi aspettando, palido e umìle; + + e vidi uscir de l’alto e scender giùe + due angeli con due spade affocate, + tronche e private de le punte sue. + + Verdi come fogliette pur mo nate + erano in veste, che da verdi penne + percosse traean dietro e ventilate. + + L’un poco sovra noi a star si venne, + e l’altro scese in l’opposita sponda, + sì che la gente in mezzo si contenne. + + Ben discernëa in lor la testa bionda; + ma ne la faccia l’occhio si smarria, + come virtù ch’a troppo si confonda. + + «Ambo vegnon del grembo di Maria», + disse Sordello, «a guardia de la valle, + per lo serpente che verrà vie via». + + Ond’ io, che non sapeva per qual calle, + mi volsi intorno, e stretto m’accostai, + tutto gelato, a le fidate spalle. + + E Sordello anco: «Or avvalliamo omai + tra le grandi ombre, e parleremo ad esse; + grazïoso fia lor vedervi assai». + + Solo tre passi credo ch’i’ scendesse, + e fui di sotto, e vidi un che mirava + pur me, come conoscer mi volesse. + + Temp’ era già che l’aere s’annerava, + ma non sì che tra li occhi suoi e ’ miei + non dichiarisse ciò che pria serrava. + + Ver’ me si fece, e io ver’ lui mi fei: + giudice Nin gentil, quanto mi piacque + quando ti vidi non esser tra ’ rei! + + Nullo bel salutar tra noi si tacque; + poi dimandò: «Quant’ è che tu venisti + a piè del monte per le lontane acque?». + + «Oh!», diss’ io lui, «per entro i luoghi tristi + venni stamane, e sono in prima vita, + ancor che l’altra, sì andando, acquisti». + + E come fu la mia risposta udita, + Sordello ed elli in dietro si raccolse + come gente di sùbito smarrita. + + L’uno a Virgilio e l’altro a un si volse + che sedea lì, gridando: «Sù, Currado! + vieni a veder che Dio per grazia volse». + + Poi, vòlto a me: «Per quel singular grado + che tu dei a colui che sì nasconde + lo suo primo perché, che non lì è guado, + + quando sarai di là da le larghe onde, + dì a Giovanna mia che per me chiami + là dove a li ’nnocenti si risponde. + + Non credo che la sua madre più m’ami, + poscia che trasmutò le bianche bende, + le quai convien che, misera!, ancor brami. + + Per lei assai di lieve si comprende + quanto in femmina foco d’amor dura, + se l’occhio o ’l tatto spesso non l’accende. + + Non le farà sì bella sepultura + la vipera che Melanesi accampa, + com’ avria fatto il gallo di Gallura». + + Così dicea, segnato de la stampa, + nel suo aspetto, di quel dritto zelo + che misuratamente in core avvampa. + + Li occhi miei ghiotti andavan pur al cielo, + pur là dove le stelle son più tarde, + sì come rota più presso a lo stelo. + + E ’l duca mio: «Figliuol, che là sù guarde?». + E io a lui: «A quelle tre facelle + di che ’l polo di qua tutto quanto arde». + + Ond’ elli a me: «Le quattro chiare stelle + che vedevi staman, son di là basse, + e queste son salite ov’ eran quelle». + + Com’ ei parlava, e Sordello a sé il trasse + dicendo: «Vedi là ’l nostro avversaro»; + e drizzò il dito perché ’n là guardasse. + + Da quella parte onde non ha riparo + la picciola vallea, era una biscia, + forse qual diede ad Eva il cibo amaro. + + Tra l’erba e ’ fior venìa la mala striscia, + volgendo ad ora ad or la testa, e ’l dosso + leccando come bestia che si liscia. + + Io non vidi, e però dicer non posso, + come mosser li astor celestïali; + ma vidi bene e l’uno e l’altro mosso. + + Sentendo fender l’aere a le verdi ali, + fuggì ’l serpente, e li angeli dier volta, + suso a le poste rivolando iguali. + + L’ombra che s’era al giudice raccolta + quando chiamò, per tutto quello assalto + punto non fu da me guardare sciolta. + + «Se la lucerna che ti mena in alto + truovi nel tuo arbitrio tanta cera + quant’ è mestiere infino al sommo smalto», + + cominciò ella, «se novella vera + di Val di Magra o di parte vicina + sai, dillo a me, che già grande là era. + + Fui chiamato Currado Malaspina; + non son l’antico, ma di lui discesi; + a’ miei portai l’amor che qui raffina». + + «Oh!», diss’ io lui, «per li vostri paesi + già mai non fui; ma dove si dimora + per tutta Europa ch’ei non sien palesi? + + La fama che la vostra casa onora, + grida i segnori e grida la contrada, + sì che ne sa chi non vi fu ancora; + + e io vi giuro, s’io di sopra vada, + che vostra gente onrata non si sfregia + del pregio de la borsa e de la spada. + + Uso e natura sì la privilegia, + che, perché il capo reo il mondo torca, + sola va dritta e ’l mal cammin dispregia». + + Ed elli: «Or va; che ’l sol non si ricorca + sette volte nel letto che ’l Montone + con tutti e quattro i piè cuopre e inforca, + + che cotesta cortese oppinïone + ti fia chiavata in mezzo de la testa + con maggior chiovi che d’altrui sermone, + + se corso di giudicio non s’arresta». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto IX + + + La concubina di Titone antico + già s’imbiancava al balco d’orïente, + fuor de le braccia del suo dolce amico; + + di gemme la sua fronte era lucente, + poste in figura del freddo animale + che con la coda percuote la gente; + + e la notte, de’ passi con che sale, + fatti avea due nel loco ov’ eravamo, + e ’l terzo già chinava in giuso l’ale; + + quand’ io, che meco avea di quel d’Adamo, + vinto dal sonno, in su l’erba inchinai + là ’ve già tutti e cinque sedavamo. + + Ne l’ora che comincia i tristi lai + la rondinella presso a la mattina, + forse a memoria de’ suo’ primi guai, + + e che la mente nostra, peregrina + più da la carne e men da’ pensier presa, + a le sue visïon quasi è divina, + + in sogno mi parea veder sospesa + un’aguglia nel ciel con penne d’oro, + con l’ali aperte e a calare intesa; + + ed esser mi parea là dove fuoro + abbandonati i suoi da Ganimede, + quando fu ratto al sommo consistoro. + + Fra me pensava: ‘Forse questa fiede + pur qui per uso, e forse d’altro loco + disdegna di portarne suso in piede’. + + Poi mi parea che, poi rotata un poco, + terribil come folgor discendesse, + e me rapisse suso infino al foco. + + Ivi parea che ella e io ardesse; + e sì lo ’ncendio imaginato cosse, + che convenne che ’l sonno si rompesse. + + Non altrimenti Achille si riscosse, + li occhi svegliati rivolgendo in giro + e non sappiendo là dove si fosse, + + quando la madre da Chirón a Schiro + trafuggò lui dormendo in le sue braccia, + là onde poi li Greci il dipartiro; + + che mi scoss’ io, sì come da la faccia + mi fuggì ’l sonno, e diventa’ ismorto, + come fa l’uom che, spaventato, agghiaccia. + + Dallato m’era solo il mio conforto, + e ’l sole er’ alto già più che due ore, + e ’l viso m’era a la marina torto. + + «Non aver tema», disse il mio segnore; + «fatti sicur, ché noi semo a buon punto; + non stringer, ma rallarga ogne vigore. + + Tu se’ omai al purgatorio giunto: + vedi là il balzo che ’l chiude dintorno; + vedi l’entrata là ’ve par digiunto. + + Dianzi, ne l’alba che procede al giorno, + quando l’anima tua dentro dormia, + sovra li fiori ond’ è là giù addorno + + venne una donna, e disse: “I’ son Lucia; + lasciatemi pigliar costui che dorme; + sì l’agevolerò per la sua via”. + + Sordel rimase e l’altre genti forme; + ella ti tolse, e come ’l dì fu chiaro, + sen venne suso; e io per le sue orme. + + Qui ti posò, ma pria mi dimostraro + li occhi suoi belli quella intrata aperta; + poi ella e ’l sonno ad una se n’andaro». + + A guisa d’uom che ’n dubbio si raccerta + e che muta in conforto sua paura, + poi che la verità li è discoperta, + + mi cambia’ io; e come sanza cura + vide me ’l duca mio, su per lo balzo + si mosse, e io di rietro inver’ l’altura. + + Lettor, tu vedi ben com’ io innalzo + la mia matera, e però con più arte + non ti maravigliar s’io la rincalzo. + + Noi ci appressammo, ed eravamo in parte + che là dove pareami prima rotto, + pur come un fesso che muro diparte, + + vidi una porta, e tre gradi di sotto + per gire ad essa, di color diversi, + e un portier ch’ancor non facea motto. + + E come l’occhio più e più v’apersi, + vidil seder sovra ’l grado sovrano, + tal ne la faccia ch’io non lo soffersi; + + e una spada nuda avëa in mano, + che reflettëa i raggi sì ver’ noi, + ch’io drizzava spesso il viso in vano. + + «Dite costinci: che volete voi?», + cominciò elli a dire, «ov’ è la scorta? + Guardate che ’l venir sù non vi nòi». + + «Donna del ciel, di queste cose accorta», + rispuose ’l mio maestro a lui, «pur dianzi + ne disse: “Andate là: quivi è la porta”». + + «Ed ella i passi vostri in bene avanzi», + ricominciò il cortese portinaio: + «Venite dunque a’ nostri gradi innanzi». + + Là ne venimmo; e lo scaglion primaio + bianco marmo era sì pulito e terso, + ch’io mi specchiai in esso qual io paio. + + Era il secondo tinto più che perso, + d’una petrina ruvida e arsiccia, + crepata per lo lungo e per traverso. + + Lo terzo, che di sopra s’ammassiccia, + porfido mi parea, sì fiammeggiante + come sangue che fuor di vena spiccia. + + Sovra questo tenëa ambo le piante + l’angel di Dio sedendo in su la soglia + che mi sembiava pietra di diamante. + + Per li tre gradi sù di buona voglia + mi trasse il duca mio, dicendo: «Chiedi + umilemente che ’l serrame scioglia». + + Divoto mi gittai a’ santi piedi; + misericordia chiesi e ch’el m’aprisse, + ma tre volte nel petto pria mi diedi. + + Sette P ne la fronte mi descrisse + col punton de la spada, e «Fa che lavi, + quando se’ dentro, queste piaghe» disse. + + Cenere, o terra che secca si cavi, + d’un color fora col suo vestimento; + e di sotto da quel trasse due chiavi. + + L’una era d’oro e l’altra era d’argento; + pria con la bianca e poscia con la gialla + fece a la porta sì, ch’i’ fu’ contento. + + «Quandunque l’una d’este chiavi falla, + che non si volga dritta per la toppa», + diss’ elli a noi, «non s’apre questa calla. + + Più cara è l’una; ma l’altra vuol troppa + d’arte e d’ingegno avanti che diserri, + perch’ ella è quella che ’l nodo digroppa. + + Da Pier le tegno; e dissemi ch’i’ erri + anzi ad aprir ch’a tenerla serrata, + pur che la gente a’ piedi mi s’atterri». + + Poi pinse l’uscio a la porta sacrata, + dicendo: «Intrate; ma facciovi accorti + che di fuor torna chi ’n dietro si guata». + + E quando fuor ne’ cardini distorti + li spigoli di quella regge sacra, + che di metallo son sonanti e forti, + + non rugghiò sì né si mostrò sì acra + Tarpëa, come tolto le fu il buono + Metello, per che poi rimase macra. + + Io mi rivolsi attento al primo tuono, + e ‘Te Deum laudamus’ mi parea + udire in voce mista al dolce suono. + + Tale imagine a punto mi rendea + ciò ch’io udiva, qual prender si suole + quando a cantar con organi si stea; + + ch’or sì or no s’intendon le parole. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto X + + + Poi fummo dentro al soglio de la porta + che ’l mal amor de l’anime disusa, + perché fa parer dritta la via torta, + + sonando la senti’ esser richiusa; + e s’io avesse li occhi vòlti ad essa, + qual fora stata al fallo degna scusa? + + Noi salavam per una pietra fessa, + che si moveva e d’una e d’altra parte, + sì come l’onda che fugge e s’appressa. + + «Qui si conviene usare un poco d’arte», + cominciò ’l duca mio, «in accostarsi + or quinci, or quindi al lato che si parte». + + E questo fece i nostri passi scarsi, + tanto che pria lo scemo de la luna + rigiunse al letto suo per ricorcarsi, + + che noi fossimo fuor di quella cruna; + ma quando fummo liberi e aperti + sù dove il monte in dietro si rauna, + + ïo stancato e amendue incerti + di nostra via, restammo in su un piano + solingo più che strade per diserti. + + Da la sua sponda, ove confina il vano, + al piè de l’alta ripa che pur sale, + misurrebbe in tre volte un corpo umano; + + e quanto l’occhio mio potea trar d’ale, + or dal sinistro e or dal destro fianco, + questa cornice mi parea cotale. + + Là sù non eran mossi i piè nostri anco, + quand’ io conobbi quella ripa intorno + che dritto di salita aveva manco, + + esser di marmo candido e addorno + d’intagli sì, che non pur Policleto, + ma la natura lì avrebbe scorno. + + L’angel che venne in terra col decreto + de la molt’ anni lagrimata pace, + ch’aperse il ciel del suo lungo divieto, + + dinanzi a noi pareva sì verace + quivi intagliato in un atto soave, + che non sembiava imagine che tace. + + Giurato si saria ch’el dicesse ‘Ave!’; + perché iv’ era imaginata quella + ch’ad aprir l’alto amor volse la chiave; + + e avea in atto impressa esta favella + ‘Ecce ancilla Deï’, propriamente + come figura in cera si suggella. + + «Non tener pur ad un loco la mente», + disse ’l dolce maestro, che m’avea + da quella parte onde ’l cuore ha la gente. + + Per ch’i’ mi mossi col viso, e vedea + di retro da Maria, da quella costa + onde m’era colui che mi movea, + + un’altra storia ne la roccia imposta; + per ch’io varcai Virgilio, e fe’mi presso, + acciò che fosse a li occhi miei disposta. + + Era intagliato lì nel marmo stesso + lo carro e ’ buoi, traendo l’arca santa, + per che si teme officio non commesso. + + Dinanzi parea gente; e tutta quanta, + partita in sette cori, a’ due mie’ sensi + faceva dir l’un ‘No’, l’altro ‘Sì, canta’. + + Similemente al fummo de li ’ncensi + che v’era imaginato, li occhi e ’l naso + e al sì e al no discordi fensi. + + Lì precedeva al benedetto vaso, + trescando alzato, l’umile salmista, + e più e men che re era in quel caso. + + Di contra, effigïata ad una vista + d’un gran palazzo, Micòl ammirava + sì come donna dispettosa e trista. + + I’ mossi i piè del loco dov’ io stava, + per avvisar da presso un’altra istoria, + che di dietro a Micòl mi biancheggiava. + + Quiv’ era storïata l’alta gloria + del roman principato, il cui valore + mosse Gregorio a la sua gran vittoria; + + i’ dico di Traiano imperadore; + e una vedovella li era al freno, + di lagrime atteggiata e di dolore. + + Intorno a lui parea calcato e pieno + di cavalieri, e l’aguglie ne l’oro + sovr’ essi in vista al vento si movieno. + + La miserella intra tutti costoro + pareva dir: «Segnor, fammi vendetta + di mio figliuol ch’è morto, ond’ io m’accoro»; + + ed elli a lei rispondere: «Or aspetta + tanto ch’i’ torni»; e quella: «Segnor mio», + come persona in cui dolor s’affretta, + + «se tu non torni?»; ed ei: «Chi fia dov’ io, + la ti farà»; ed ella: «L’altrui bene + a te che fia, se ’l tuo metti in oblio?»; + + ond’ elli: «Or ti conforta; ch’ei convene + ch’i’ solva il mio dovere anzi ch’i’ mova: + giustizia vuole e pietà mi ritene». + + Colui che mai non vide cosa nova + produsse esto visibile parlare, + novello a noi perché qui non si trova. + + Mentr’ io mi dilettava di guardare + l’imagini di tante umilitadi, + e per lo fabbro loro a veder care, + + «Ecco di qua, ma fanno i passi radi», + mormorava il poeta, «molte genti: + questi ne ’nvïeranno a li alti gradi». + + Li occhi miei, ch’a mirare eran contenti + per veder novitadi ond’ e’ son vaghi, + volgendosi ver’ lui non furon lenti. + + Non vo’ però, lettor, che tu ti smaghi + di buon proponimento per udire + come Dio vuol che ’l debito si paghi. + + Non attender la forma del martìre: + pensa la succession; pensa ch’al peggio + oltre la gran sentenza non può ire. + + Io cominciai: «Maestro, quel ch’io veggio + muovere a noi, non mi sembian persone, + e non so che, sì nel veder vaneggio». + + Ed elli a me: «La grave condizione + di lor tormento a terra li rannicchia, + sì che ’ miei occhi pria n’ebber tencione. + + Ma guarda fiso là, e disviticchia + col viso quel che vien sotto a quei sassi: + già scorger puoi come ciascun si picchia». + + O superbi cristian, miseri lassi, + che, de la vista de la mente infermi, + fidanza avete ne’ retrosi passi, + + non v’accorgete voi che noi siam vermi + nati a formar l’angelica farfalla, + che vola a la giustizia sanza schermi? + + Di che l’animo vostro in alto galla, + poi siete quasi antomata in difetto, + sì come vermo in cui formazion falla? + + Come per sostentar solaio o tetto, + per mensola talvolta una figura + si vede giugner le ginocchia al petto, + + la qual fa del non ver vera rancura + nascere ’n chi la vede; così fatti + vid’ io color, quando puosi ben cura. + + Vero è che più e meno eran contratti + secondo ch’avien più e meno a dosso; + e qual più pazïenza avea ne li atti, + + piangendo parea dicer: ‘Più non posso’. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XI + + + «O Padre nostro, che ne’ cieli stai, + non circunscritto, ma per più amore + ch’ai primi effetti di là sù tu hai, + + laudato sia ’l tuo nome e ’l tuo valore + da ogne creatura, com’ è degno + di render grazie al tuo dolce vapore. + + Vegna ver’ noi la pace del tuo regno, + ché noi ad essa non potem da noi, + s’ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno. + + Come del suo voler li angeli tuoi + fan sacrificio a te, cantando osanna, + così facciano li uomini de’ suoi. + + Dà oggi a noi la cotidiana manna, + sanza la qual per questo aspro diserto + a retro va chi più di gir s’affanna. + + E come noi lo mal ch’avem sofferto + perdoniamo a ciascuno, e tu perdona + benigno, e non guardar lo nostro merto. + + Nostra virtù che di legger s’adona, + non spermentar con l’antico avversaro, + ma libera da lui che sì la sprona. + + Quest’ ultima preghiera, segnor caro, + già non si fa per noi, ché non bisogna, + ma per color che dietro a noi restaro». + + Così a sé e noi buona ramogna + quell’ ombre orando, andavan sotto ’l pondo, + simile a quel che talvolta si sogna, + + disparmente angosciate tutte a tondo + e lasse su per la prima cornice, + purgando la caligine del mondo. + + Se di là sempre ben per noi si dice, + di qua che dire e far per lor si puote + da quei c’hanno al voler buona radice? + + Ben si de’ loro atar lavar le note + che portar quinci, sì che, mondi e lievi, + possano uscire a le stellate ruote. + + «Deh, se giustizia e pietà vi disgrievi + tosto, sì che possiate muover l’ala, + che secondo il disio vostro vi lievi, + + mostrate da qual mano inver’ la scala + si va più corto; e se c’è più d’un varco, + quel ne ’nsegnate che men erto cala; + + ché questi che vien meco, per lo ’ncarco + de la carne d’Adamo onde si veste, + al montar sù, contra sua voglia, è parco». + + Le lor parole, che rendero a queste + che dette avea colui cu’ io seguiva, + non fur da cui venisser manifeste; + + ma fu detto: «A man destra per la riva + con noi venite, e troverete il passo + possibile a salir persona viva. + + E s’io non fossi impedito dal sasso + che la cervice mia superba doma, + onde portar convienmi il viso basso, + + cotesti, ch’ancor vive e non si noma, + guardere’ io, per veder s’i’ ’l conosco, + e per farlo pietoso a questa soma. + + Io fui latino e nato d’un gran Tosco: + Guiglielmo Aldobrandesco fu mio padre; + non so se ’l nome suo già mai fu vosco. + + L’antico sangue e l’opere leggiadre + d’i miei maggior mi fer sì arrogante, + che, non pensando a la comune madre, + + ogn’ uomo ebbi in despetto tanto avante, + ch’io ne mori’, come i Sanesi sanno, + e sallo in Campagnatico ogne fante. + + Io sono Omberto; e non pur a me danno + superbia fa, ché tutti miei consorti + ha ella tratti seco nel malanno. + + E qui convien ch’io questo peso porti + per lei, tanto che a Dio si sodisfaccia, + poi ch’io nol fe’ tra ’ vivi, qui tra ’ morti». + + Ascoltando chinai in giù la faccia; + e un di lor, non questi che parlava, + si torse sotto il peso che li ’mpaccia, + + e videmi e conobbemi e chiamava, + tenendo li occhi con fatica fisi + a me che tutto chin con loro andava. + + «Oh!», diss’ io lui, «non se’ tu Oderisi, + l’onor d’Agobbio e l’onor di quell’ arte + ch’alluminar chiamata è in Parisi?». + + «Frate», diss’ elli, «più ridon le carte + che pennelleggia Franco Bolognese; + l’onore è tutto or suo, e mio in parte. + + Ben non sare’ io stato sì cortese + mentre ch’io vissi, per lo gran disio + de l’eccellenza ove mio core intese. + + Di tal superbia qui si paga il fio; + e ancor non sarei qui, se non fosse + che, possendo peccar, mi volsi a Dio. + + Oh vana gloria de l’umane posse! + com’ poco verde in su la cima dura, + se non è giunta da l’etati grosse! + + Credette Cimabue ne la pittura + tener lo campo, e ora ha Giotto il grido, + sì che la fama di colui è scura. + + Così ha tolto l’uno a l’altro Guido + la gloria de la lingua; e forse è nato + chi l’uno e l’altro caccerà del nido. + + Non è il mondan romore altro ch’un fiato + di vento, ch’or vien quinci e or vien quindi, + e muta nome perché muta lato. + + Che voce avrai tu più, se vecchia scindi + da te la carne, che se fossi morto + anzi che tu lasciassi il ‘pappo’ e ’l ‘dindi’, + + pria che passin mill’ anni? ch’è più corto + spazio a l’etterno, ch’un muover di ciglia + al cerchio che più tardi in cielo è torto. + + Colui che del cammin sì poco piglia + dinanzi a me, Toscana sonò tutta; + e ora a pena in Siena sen pispiglia, + + ond’ era sire quando fu distrutta + la rabbia fiorentina, che superba + fu a quel tempo sì com’ ora è putta. + + La vostra nominanza è color d’erba, + che viene e va, e quei la discolora + per cui ella esce de la terra acerba». + + E io a lui: «Tuo vero dir m’incora + bona umiltà, e gran tumor m’appiani; + ma chi è quei di cui tu parlavi ora?». + + «Quelli è», rispuose, «Provenzan Salvani; + ed è qui perché fu presuntüoso + a recar Siena tutta a le sue mani. + + Ito è così e va, sanza riposo, + poi che morì; cotal moneta rende + a sodisfar chi è di là troppo oso». + + E io: «Se quello spirito ch’attende, + pria che si penta, l’orlo de la vita, + qua giù dimora e qua sù non ascende, + + se buona orazïon lui non aita, + prima che passi tempo quanto visse, + come fu la venuta lui largita?». + + «Quando vivea più glorïoso», disse, + «liberamente nel Campo di Siena, + ogne vergogna diposta, s’affisse; + + e lì, per trar l’amico suo di pena, + ch’e’ sostenea ne la prigion di Carlo, + si condusse a tremar per ogne vena. + + Più non dirò, e scuro so che parlo; + ma poco tempo andrà, che ’ tuoi vicini + faranno sì che tu potrai chiosarlo. + + Quest’ opera li tolse quei confini». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XII + + + Di pari, come buoi che vanno a giogo, + m’andava io con quell’ anima carca, + fin che ’l sofferse il dolce pedagogo. + + Ma quando disse: «Lascia lui e varca; + ché qui è buono con l’ali e coi remi, + quantunque può, ciascun pinger sua barca»; + + dritto sì come andar vuolsi rife’mi + con la persona, avvegna che i pensieri + mi rimanessero e chinati e scemi. + + Io m’era mosso, e seguia volontieri + del mio maestro i passi, e amendue + già mostravam com’ eravam leggeri; + + ed el mi disse: «Volgi li occhi in giùe: + buon ti sarà, per tranquillar la via, + veder lo letto de le piante tue». + + Come, perché di lor memoria sia, + sovra i sepolti le tombe terragne + portan segnato quel ch’elli eran pria, + + onde lì molte volte si ripiagne + per la puntura de la rimembranza, + che solo a’ pïi dà de le calcagne; + + sì vid’ io lì, ma di miglior sembianza + secondo l’artificio, figurato + quanto per via di fuor del monte avanza. + + Vedea colui che fu nobil creato + più ch’altra creatura, giù dal cielo + folgoreggiando scender, da l’un lato. + + Vedëa Brïareo fitto dal telo + celestïal giacer, da l’altra parte, + grave a la terra per lo mortal gelo. + + Vedea Timbreo, vedea Pallade e Marte, + armati ancora, intorno al padre loro, + mirar le membra d’i Giganti sparte. + + Vedea Nembròt a piè del gran lavoro + quasi smarrito, e riguardar le genti + che ’n Sennaàr con lui superbi fuoro. + + O Nïobè, con che occhi dolenti + vedea io te segnata in su la strada, + tra sette e sette tuoi figliuoli spenti! + + O Saùl, come in su la propria spada + quivi parevi morto in Gelboè, + che poi non sentì pioggia né rugiada! + + O folle Aragne, sì vedea io te + già mezza ragna, trista in su li stracci + de l’opera che mal per te si fé. + + O Roboàm, già non par che minacci + quivi ’l tuo segno; ma pien di spavento + nel porta un carro, sanza ch’altri il cacci. + + Mostrava ancor lo duro pavimento + come Almeon a sua madre fé caro + parer lo sventurato addornamento. + + Mostrava come i figli si gittaro + sovra Sennacherìb dentro dal tempio, + e come, morto lui, quivi il lasciaro. + + Mostrava la ruina e ’l crudo scempio + che fé Tamiri, quando disse a Ciro: + «Sangue sitisti, e io di sangue t’empio». + + Mostrava come in rotta si fuggiro + li Assiri, poi che fu morto Oloferne, + e anche le reliquie del martiro. + + Vedeva Troia in cenere e in caverne; + o Ilïón, come te basso e vile + mostrava il segno che lì si discerne! + + Qual di pennel fu maestro o di stile + che ritraesse l’ombre e ’ tratti ch’ivi + mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile? + + Morti li morti e i vivi parean vivi: + non vide mei di me chi vide il vero, + quant’ io calcai, fin che chinato givi. + + Or superbite, e via col viso altero, + figliuoli d’Eva, e non chinate il volto + sì che veggiate il vostro mal sentero! + + Più era già per noi del monte vòlto + e del cammin del sole assai più speso + che non stimava l’animo non sciolto, + + quando colui che sempre innanzi atteso + andava, cominciò: «Drizza la testa; + non è più tempo di gir sì sospeso. + + Vedi colà un angel che s’appresta + per venir verso noi; vedi che torna + dal servigio del dì l’ancella sesta. + + Di reverenza il viso e li atti addorna, + sì che i diletti lo ’nvïarci in suso; + pensa che questo dì mai non raggiorna!». + + Io era ben del suo ammonir uso + pur di non perder tempo, sì che ’n quella + materia non potea parlarmi chiuso. + + A noi venìa la creatura bella, + biancovestito e ne la faccia quale + par tremolando mattutina stella. + + Le braccia aperse, e indi aperse l’ale; + disse: «Venite: qui son presso i gradi, + e agevolemente omai si sale. + + A questo invito vegnon molto radi: + o gente umana, per volar sù nata, + perché a poco vento così cadi?». + + Menocci ove la roccia era tagliata; + quivi mi batté l’ali per la fronte; + poi mi promise sicura l’andata. + + Come a man destra, per salire al monte + dove siede la chiesa che soggioga + la ben guidata sopra Rubaconte, + + si rompe del montar l’ardita foga + per le scalee che si fero ad etade + ch’era sicuro il quaderno e la doga; + + così s’allenta la ripa che cade + quivi ben ratta da l’altro girone; + ma quinci e quindi l’alta pietra rade. + + Noi volgendo ivi le nostre persone, + ‘Beati pauperes spiritu!’ voci + cantaron sì, che nol diria sermone. + + Ahi quanto son diverse quelle foci + da l’infernali! ché quivi per canti + s’entra, e là giù per lamenti feroci. + + Già montavam su per li scaglion santi, + ed esser mi parea troppo più lieve + che per lo pian non mi parea davanti. + + Ond’ io: «Maestro, dì, qual cosa greve + levata s’è da me, che nulla quasi + per me fatica, andando, si riceve?». + + Rispuose: «Quando i P che son rimasi + ancor nel volto tuo presso che stinti, + saranno, com’ è l’un, del tutto rasi, + + fier li tuoi piè dal buon voler sì vinti, + che non pur non fatica sentiranno, + ma fia diletto loro esser sù pinti». + + Allor fec’ io come color che vanno + con cosa in capo non da lor saputa, + se non che ’ cenni altrui sospecciar fanno; + + per che la mano ad accertar s’aiuta, + e cerca e truova e quello officio adempie + che non si può fornir per la veduta; + + e con le dita de la destra scempie + trovai pur sei le lettere che ’ncise + quel da le chiavi a me sovra le tempie: + + a che guardando, il mio duca sorrise. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XIII + + + Noi eravamo al sommo de la scala, + dove secondamente si risega + lo monte che salendo altrui dismala. + + Ivi così una cornice lega + dintorno il poggio, come la primaia; + se non che l’arco suo più tosto piega. + + Ombra non lì è né segno che si paia: + parsi la ripa e parsi la via schietta + col livido color de la petraia. + + «Se qui per dimandar gente s’aspetta», + ragionava il poeta, «io temo forse + che troppo avrà d’indugio nostra eletta». + + Poi fisamente al sole li occhi porse; + fece del destro lato a muover centro, + e la sinistra parte di sé torse. + + «O dolce lume a cui fidanza i’ entro + per lo novo cammin, tu ne conduci», + dicea, «come condur si vuol quinc’ entro. + + Tu scaldi il mondo, tu sovr’ esso luci; + s’altra ragione in contrario non ponta, + esser dien sempre li tuoi raggi duci». + + Quanto di qua per un migliaio si conta, + tanto di là eravam noi già iti, + con poco tempo, per la voglia pronta; + + e verso noi volar furon sentiti, + non però visti, spiriti parlando + a la mensa d’amor cortesi inviti. + + La prima voce che passò volando + ‘Vinum non habent’ altamente disse, + e dietro a noi l’andò reïterando. + + E prima che del tutto non si udisse + per allungarsi, un’altra ‘I’ sono Oreste’ + passò gridando, e anco non s’affisse. + + «Oh!», diss’ io, «padre, che voci son queste?». + E com’ io domandai, ecco la terza + dicendo: ‘Amate da cui male aveste’. + + E ’l buon maestro: «Questo cinghio sferza + la colpa de la invidia, e però sono + tratte d’amor le corde de la ferza. + + Lo fren vuol esser del contrario suono; + credo che l’udirai, per mio avviso, + prima che giunghi al passo del perdono. + + Ma ficca li occhi per l’aere ben fiso, + e vedrai gente innanzi a noi sedersi, + e ciascun è lungo la grotta assiso». + + Allora più che prima li occhi apersi; + guarda’mi innanzi, e vidi ombre con manti + al color de la pietra non diversi. + + E poi che fummo un poco più avanti, + udia gridar: ‘Maria, òra per noi’: + gridar ‘Michele’ e ‘Pietro’ e ‘Tutti santi’. + + Non credo che per terra vada ancoi + omo sì duro, che non fosse punto + per compassion di quel ch’i’ vidi poi; + + ché, quando fui sì presso di lor giunto, + che li atti loro a me venivan certi, + per li occhi fui di grave dolor munto. + + Di vil ciliccio mi parean coperti, + e l’un sofferia l’altro con la spalla, + e tutti da la ripa eran sofferti. + + Così li ciechi a cui la roba falla, + stanno a’ perdoni a chieder lor bisogna, + e l’uno il capo sopra l’altro avvalla, + + perché ’n altrui pietà tosto si pogna, + non pur per lo sonar de le parole, + ma per la vista che non meno agogna. + + E come a li orbi non approda il sole, + così a l’ombre quivi, ond’ io parlo ora, + luce del ciel di sé largir non vole; + + ché a tutti un fil di ferro i cigli fóra + e cusce sì, come a sparvier selvaggio + si fa però che queto non dimora. + + A me pareva, andando, fare oltraggio, + veggendo altrui, non essendo veduto: + per ch’io mi volsi al mio consiglio saggio. + + Ben sapev’ ei che volea dir lo muto; + e però non attese mia dimanda, + ma disse: «Parla, e sie breve e arguto». + + Virgilio mi venìa da quella banda + de la cornice onde cader si puote, + perché da nulla sponda s’inghirlanda; + + da l’altra parte m’eran le divote + ombre, che per l’orribile costura + premevan sì, che bagnavan le gote. + + Volsimi a loro e: «O gente sicura», + incominciai, «di veder l’alto lume + che ’l disio vostro solo ha in sua cura, + + se tosto grazia resolva le schiume + di vostra coscïenza sì che chiaro + per essa scenda de la mente il fiume, + + ditemi, ché mi fia grazioso e caro, + s’anima è qui tra voi che sia latina; + e forse lei sarà buon s’i’ l’apparo». + + «O frate mio, ciascuna è cittadina + d’una vera città; ma tu vuo’ dire + che vivesse in Italia peregrina». + + Questo mi parve per risposta udire + più innanzi alquanto che là dov’ io stava, + ond’ io mi feci ancor più là sentire. + + Tra l’altre vidi un’ombra ch’aspettava + in vista; e se volesse alcun dir ‘Come?’, + lo mento a guisa d’orbo in sù levava. + + «Spirto», diss’ io, «che per salir ti dome, + se tu se’ quelli che mi rispondesti, + fammiti conto o per luogo o per nome». + + «Io fui sanese», rispuose, «e con questi + altri rimendo qui la vita ria, + lagrimando a colui che sé ne presti. + + Savia non fui, avvegna che Sapìa + fossi chiamata, e fui de li altrui danni + più lieta assai che di ventura mia. + + E perché tu non creda ch’io t’inganni, + odi s’i’ fui, com’ io ti dico, folle, + già discendendo l’arco d’i miei anni. + + Eran li cittadin miei presso a Colle + in campo giunti co’ loro avversari, + e io pregava Iddio di quel ch’e’ volle. + + Rotti fuor quivi e vòlti ne li amari + passi di fuga; e veggendo la caccia, + letizia presi a tutte altre dispari, + + tanto ch’io volsi in sù l’ardita faccia, + gridando a Dio: “Omai più non ti temo!”, + come fé ’l merlo per poca bonaccia. + + Pace volli con Dio in su lo stremo + de la mia vita; e ancor non sarebbe + lo mio dover per penitenza scemo, + + se ciò non fosse, ch’a memoria m’ebbe + Pier Pettinaio in sue sante orazioni, + a cui di me per caritate increbbe. + + Ma tu chi se’, che nostre condizioni + vai dimandando, e porti li occhi sciolti, + sì com’ io credo, e spirando ragioni?». + + «Li occhi», diss’ io, «mi fieno ancor qui tolti, + ma picciol tempo, ché poca è l’offesa + fatta per esser con invidia vòlti. + + Troppa è più la paura ond’ è sospesa + l’anima mia del tormento di sotto, + che già lo ’ncarco di là giù mi pesa». + + Ed ella a me: «Chi t’ha dunque condotto + qua sù tra noi, se giù ritornar credi?». + E io: «Costui ch’è meco e non fa motto. + + E vivo sono; e però mi richiedi, + spirito eletto, se tu vuo’ ch’i’ mova + di là per te ancor li mortai piedi». + + «Oh, questa è a udir sì cosa nuova», + rispuose, «che gran segno è che Dio t’ami; + però col priego tuo talor mi giova. + + E cheggioti, per quel che tu più brami, + se mai calchi la terra di Toscana, + che a’ miei propinqui tu ben mi rinfami. + + Tu li vedrai tra quella gente vana + che spera in Talamone, e perderagli + più di speranza ch’a trovar la Diana; + + ma più vi perderanno li ammiragli». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XIV + + + «Chi è costui che ’l nostro monte cerchia + prima che morte li abbia dato il volo, + e apre li occhi a sua voglia e coverchia?». + + «Non so chi sia, ma so ch’e’ non è solo; + domandal tu che più li t’avvicini, + e dolcemente, sì che parli, acco’lo». + + Così due spirti, l’uno a l’altro chini, + ragionavan di me ivi a man dritta; + poi fer li visi, per dirmi, supini; + + e disse l’uno: «O anima che fitta + nel corpo ancora inver’ lo ciel ten vai, + per carità ne consola e ne ditta + + onde vieni e chi se’; ché tu ne fai + tanto maravigliar de la tua grazia, + quanto vuol cosa che non fu più mai». + + E io: «Per mezza Toscana si spazia + un fiumicel che nasce in Falterona, + e cento miglia di corso nol sazia. + + Di sovr’ esso rech’ io questa persona: + dirvi ch’i’ sia, saria parlare indarno, + ché ’l nome mio ancor molto non suona». + + «Se ben lo ’ntendimento tuo accarno + con lo ’ntelletto», allora mi rispuose + quei che diceva pria, «tu parli d’Arno». + + E l’altro disse lui: «Perché nascose + questi il vocabol di quella riviera, + pur com’ om fa de l’orribili cose?». + + E l’ombra che di ciò domandata era, + si sdebitò così: «Non so; ma degno + ben è che ’l nome di tal valle pèra; + + ché dal principio suo, ov’ è sì pregno + l’alpestro monte ond’ è tronco Peloro, + che ’n pochi luoghi passa oltra quel segno, + + infin là ’ve si rende per ristoro + di quel che ’l ciel de la marina asciuga, + ond’ hanno i fiumi ciò che va con loro, + + vertù così per nimica si fuga + da tutti come biscia, o per sventura + del luogo, o per mal uso che li fruga: + + ond’ hanno sì mutata lor natura + li abitator de la misera valle, + che par che Circe li avesse in pastura. + + Tra brutti porci, più degni di galle + che d’altro cibo fatto in uman uso, + dirizza prima il suo povero calle. + + Botoli trova poi, venendo giuso, + ringhiosi più che non chiede lor possa, + e da lor disdegnosa torce il muso. + + Vassi caggendo; e quant’ ella più ’ngrossa, + tanto più trova di can farsi lupi + la maladetta e sventurata fossa. + + Discesa poi per più pelaghi cupi, + trova le volpi sì piene di froda, + che non temono ingegno che le occùpi. + + Né lascerò di dir perch’ altri m’oda; + e buon sarà costui, s’ancor s’ammenta + di ciò che vero spirto mi disnoda. + + Io veggio tuo nepote che diventa + cacciator di quei lupi in su la riva + del fiero fiume, e tutti li sgomenta. + + Vende la carne loro essendo viva; + poscia li ancide come antica belva; + molti di vita e sé di pregio priva. + + Sanguinoso esce de la trista selva; + lasciala tal, che di qui a mille anni + ne lo stato primaio non si rinselva». + + Com’ a l’annunzio di dogliosi danni + si turba il viso di colui ch’ascolta, + da qual che parte il periglio l’assanni, + + così vid’ io l’altr’ anima, che volta + stava a udir, turbarsi e farsi trista, + poi ch’ebbe la parola a sé raccolta. + + Lo dir de l’una e de l’altra la vista + mi fer voglioso di saper lor nomi, + e dimanda ne fei con prieghi mista; + + per che lo spirto che di pria parlòmi + ricominciò: «Tu vuo’ ch’io mi deduca + nel fare a te ciò che tu far non vuo’mi. + + Ma da che Dio in te vuol che traluca + tanto sua grazia, non ti sarò scarso; + però sappi ch’io fui Guido del Duca. + + Fu il sangue mio d’invidia sì rïarso, + che se veduto avesse uom farsi lieto, + visto m’avresti di livore sparso. + + Di mia semente cotal paglia mieto; + o gente umana, perché poni ’l core + là ’v’ è mestier di consorte divieto? + + Questi è Rinier; questi è ’l pregio e l’onore + de la casa da Calboli, ove nullo + fatto s’è reda poi del suo valore. + + E non pur lo suo sangue è fatto brullo, + tra ’l Po e ’l monte e la marina e ’l Reno, + del ben richesto al vero e al trastullo; + + ché dentro a questi termini è ripieno + di venenosi sterpi, sì che tardi + per coltivare omai verrebber meno. + + Ov’ è ’l buon Lizio e Arrigo Mainardi? + Pier Traversaro e Guido di Carpigna? + Oh Romagnuoli tornati in bastardi! + + Quando in Bologna un Fabbro si ralligna? + quando in Faenza un Bernardin di Fosco, + verga gentil di picciola gramigna? + + Non ti maravigliar s’io piango, Tosco, + quando rimembro, con Guido da Prata, + Ugolin d’Azzo che vivette nosco, + + Federigo Tignoso e sua brigata, + la casa Traversara e li Anastagi + (e l’una gente e l’altra è diretata), + + le donne e ’ cavalier, li affanni e li agi + che ne ’nvogliava amore e cortesia + là dove i cuor son fatti sì malvagi. + + O Bretinoro, ché non fuggi via, + poi che gita se n’è la tua famiglia + e molta gente per non esser ria? + + Ben fa Bagnacaval, che non rifiglia; + e mal fa Castrocaro, e peggio Conio, + che di figliar tai conti più s’impiglia. + + Ben faranno i Pagan, da che ’l demonio + lor sen girà; ma non però che puro + già mai rimagna d’essi testimonio. + + O Ugolin de’ Fantolin, sicuro + è ’l nome tuo, da che più non s’aspetta + chi far lo possa, tralignando, scuro. + + Ma va via, Tosco, omai; ch’or mi diletta + troppo di pianger più che di parlare, + sì m’ha nostra ragion la mente stretta». + + Noi sapavam che quell’ anime care + ci sentivano andar; però, tacendo, + facëan noi del cammin confidare. + + Poi fummo fatti soli procedendo, + folgore parve quando l’aere fende, + voce che giunse di contra dicendo: + + ‘Anciderammi qualunque m’apprende’; + e fuggì come tuon che si dilegua, + se sùbito la nuvola scoscende. + + Come da lei l’udir nostro ebbe triegua, + ed ecco l’altra con sì gran fracasso, + che somigliò tonar che tosto segua: + + «Io sono Aglauro che divenni sasso»; + e allor, per ristrignermi al poeta, + in destro feci, e non innanzi, il passo. + + Già era l’aura d’ogne parte queta; + ed el mi disse: «Quel fu ’l duro camo + che dovria l’uom tener dentro a sua meta. + + Ma voi prendete l’esca, sì che l’amo + de l’antico avversaro a sé vi tira; + e però poco val freno o richiamo. + + Chiamavi ’l cielo e ’ntorno vi si gira, + mostrandovi le sue bellezze etterne, + e l’occhio vostro pur a terra mira; + + onde vi batte chi tutto discerne». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XV + + + Quanto tra l’ultimar de l’ora terza + e ’l principio del dì par de la spera + che sempre a guisa di fanciullo scherza, + + tanto pareva già inver’ la sera + essere al sol del suo corso rimaso; + vespero là, e qui mezza notte era. + + E i raggi ne ferien per mezzo ’l naso, + perché per noi girato era sì ’l monte, + che già dritti andavamo inver’ l’occaso, + + quand’ io senti’ a me gravar la fronte + a lo splendore assai più che di prima, + e stupor m’eran le cose non conte; + + ond’ io levai le mani inver’ la cima + de le mie ciglia, e fecimi ’l solecchio, + che del soverchio visibile lima. + + Come quando da l’acqua o da lo specchio + salta lo raggio a l’opposita parte, + salendo su per lo modo parecchio + + a quel che scende, e tanto si diparte + dal cader de la pietra in igual tratta, + sì come mostra esperïenza e arte; + + così mi parve da luce rifratta + quivi dinanzi a me esser percosso; + per che a fuggir la mia vista fu ratta. + + «Che è quel, dolce padre, a che non posso + schermar lo viso tanto che mi vaglia», + diss’ io, «e pare inver’ noi esser mosso?». + + «Non ti maravigliar s’ancor t’abbaglia + la famiglia del cielo», a me rispuose: + «messo è che viene ad invitar ch’om saglia. + + Tosto sarà ch’a veder queste cose + non ti fia grave, ma fieti diletto + quanto natura a sentir ti dispuose». + + Poi giunti fummo a l’angel benedetto, + con lieta voce disse: «Intrate quinci + ad un scaleo vie men che li altri eretto». + + Noi montavam, già partiti di linci, + e ‘Beati misericordes!’ fue + cantato retro, e ‘Godi tu che vinci!’. + + Lo mio maestro e io soli amendue + suso andavamo; e io pensai, andando, + prode acquistar ne le parole sue; + + e dirizza’mi a lui sì dimandando: + «Che volse dir lo spirto di Romagna, + e ‘divieto’ e ‘consorte’ menzionando?». + + Per ch’elli a me: «Di sua maggior magagna + conosce il danno; e però non s’ammiri + se ne riprende perché men si piagna. + + Perché s’appuntano i vostri disiri + dove per compagnia parte si scema, + invidia move il mantaco a’ sospiri. + + Ma se l’amor de la spera supprema + torcesse in suso il disiderio vostro, + non vi sarebbe al petto quella tema; + + ché, per quanti si dice più lì ‘nostro’, + tanto possiede più di ben ciascuno, + e più di caritate arde in quel chiostro». + + «Io son d’esser contento più digiuno», + diss’ io, «che se mi fosse pria taciuto, + e più di dubbio ne la mente aduno. + + Com’ esser puote ch’un ben, distributo + in più posseditor, faccia più ricchi + di sé che se da pochi è posseduto?». + + Ed elli a me: «Però che tu rificchi + la mente pur a le cose terrene, + di vera luce tenebre dispicchi. + + Quello infinito e ineffabil bene + che là sù è, così corre ad amore + com’ a lucido corpo raggio vene. + + Tanto si dà quanto trova d’ardore; + sì che, quantunque carità si stende, + cresce sovr’ essa l’etterno valore. + + E quanta gente più là sù s’intende, + più v’è da bene amare, e più vi s’ama, + e come specchio l’uno a l’altro rende. + + E se la mia ragion non ti disfama, + vedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamente + ti torrà questa e ciascun’ altra brama. + + Procaccia pur che tosto sieno spente, + come son già le due, le cinque piaghe, + che si richiudon per esser dolente». + + Com’ io voleva dicer ‘Tu m’appaghe’, + vidimi giunto in su l’altro girone, + sì che tacer mi fer le luci vaghe. + + Ivi mi parve in una visïone + estatica di sùbito esser tratto, + e vedere in un tempio più persone; + + e una donna, in su l’entrar, con atto + dolce di madre dicer: «Figliuol mio, + perché hai tu così verso noi fatto? + + Ecco, dolenti, lo tuo padre e io + ti cercavamo». E come qui si tacque, + ciò che pareva prima, dispario. + + Indi m’apparve un’altra con quell’ acque + giù per le gote che ’l dolor distilla + quando di gran dispetto in altrui nacque, + + e dir: «Se tu se’ sire de la villa + del cui nome ne’ dèi fu tanta lite, + e onde ogne scïenza disfavilla, + + vendica te di quelle braccia ardite + ch’abbracciar nostra figlia, o Pisistràto». + E ’l segnor mi parea, benigno e mite, + + risponder lei con viso temperato: + «Che farem noi a chi mal ne disira, + se quei che ci ama è per noi condannato?», + + Poi vidi genti accese in foco d’ira + con pietre un giovinetto ancider, forte + gridando a sé pur: «Martira, martira!». + + E lui vedea chinarsi, per la morte + che l’aggravava già, inver’ la terra, + ma de li occhi facea sempre al ciel porte, + + orando a l’alto Sire, in tanta guerra, + che perdonasse a’ suoi persecutori, + con quello aspetto che pietà diserra. + + Quando l’anima mia tornò di fori + a le cose che son fuor di lei vere, + io riconobbi i miei non falsi errori. + + Lo duca mio, che mi potea vedere + far sì com’ om che dal sonno si slega, + disse: «Che hai che non ti puoi tenere, + + ma se’ venuto più che mezza lega + velando li occhi e con le gambe avvolte, + a guisa di cui vino o sonno piega?». + + «O dolce padre mio, se tu m’ascolte, + io ti dirò», diss’ io, «ciò che m’apparve + quando le gambe mi furon sì tolte». + + Ed ei: «Se tu avessi cento larve + sovra la faccia, non mi sarian chiuse + le tue cogitazion, quantunque parve. + + Ciò che vedesti fu perché non scuse + d’aprir lo core a l’acque de la pace + che da l’etterno fonte son diffuse. + + Non dimandai “Che hai?” per quel che face + chi guarda pur con l’occhio che non vede, + quando disanimato il corpo giace; + + ma dimandai per darti forza al piede: + così frugar conviensi i pigri, lenti + ad usar lor vigilia quando riede». + + Noi andavam per lo vespero, attenti + oltre quanto potean li occhi allungarsi + contra i raggi serotini e lucenti. + + Ed ecco a poco a poco un fummo farsi + verso di noi come la notte oscuro; + né da quello era loco da cansarsi. + + Questo ne tolse li occhi e l’aere puro. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XVI + + + Buio d’inferno e di notte privata + d’ogne pianeto, sotto pover cielo, + quant’ esser può di nuvol tenebrata, + + non fece al viso mio sì grosso velo + come quel fummo ch’ivi ci coperse, + né a sentir di così aspro pelo, + + che l’occhio stare aperto non sofferse; + onde la scorta mia saputa e fida + mi s’accostò e l’omero m’offerse. + + Sì come cieco va dietro a sua guida + per non smarrirsi e per non dar di cozzo + in cosa che ’l molesti, o forse ancida, + + m’andava io per l’aere amaro e sozzo, + ascoltando il mio duca che diceva + pur: «Guarda che da me tu non sia mozzo». + + Io sentia voci, e ciascuna pareva + pregar per pace e per misericordia + l’Agnel di Dio che le peccata leva. + + Pur ‘Agnus Dei’ eran le loro essordia; + una parola in tutte era e un modo, + sì che parea tra esse ogne concordia. + + «Quei sono spirti, maestro, ch’i’ odo?», + diss’ io. Ed elli a me: «Tu vero apprendi, + e d’iracundia van solvendo il nodo». + + «Or tu chi se’ che ’l nostro fummo fendi, + e di noi parli pur come se tue + partissi ancor lo tempo per calendi?». + + Così per una voce detto fue; + onde ’l maestro mio disse: «Rispondi, + e domanda se quinci si va sùe». + + E io: «O creatura che ti mondi + per tornar bella a colui che ti fece, + maraviglia udirai, se mi secondi». + + «Io ti seguiterò quanto mi lece», + rispuose; «e se veder fummo non lascia, + l’udir ci terrà giunti in quella vece». + + Allora incominciai: «Con quella fascia + che la morte dissolve men vo suso, + e venni qui per l’infernale ambascia. + + E se Dio m’ha in sua grazia rinchiuso, + tanto che vuol ch’i’ veggia la sua corte + per modo tutto fuor del moderno uso, + + non mi celar chi fosti anzi la morte, + ma dilmi, e dimmi s’i’ vo bene al varco; + e tue parole fier le nostre scorte». + + «Lombardo fui, e fu’ chiamato Marco; + del mondo seppi, e quel valore amai + al quale ha or ciascun disteso l’arco. + + Per montar sù dirittamente vai». + Così rispuose, e soggiunse: «I’ ti prego + che per me prieghi quando sù sarai». + + E io a lui: «Per fede mi ti lego + di far ciò che mi chiedi; ma io scoppio + dentro ad un dubbio, s’io non me ne spiego. + + Prima era scempio, e ora è fatto doppio + ne la sentenza tua, che mi fa certo + qui, e altrove, quello ov’ io l’accoppio. + + Lo mondo è ben così tutto diserto + d’ogne virtute, come tu mi sone, + e di malizia gravido e coverto; + + ma priego che m’addite la cagione, + sì ch’i’ la veggia e ch’i’ la mostri altrui; + ché nel cielo uno, e un qua giù la pone». + + Alto sospir, che duolo strinse in «uhi!», + mise fuor prima; e poi cominciò: «Frate, + lo mondo è cieco, e tu vien ben da lui. + + Voi che vivete ogne cagion recate + pur suso al cielo, pur come se tutto + movesse seco di necessitate. + + Se così fosse, in voi fora distrutto + libero arbitrio, e non fora giustizia + per ben letizia, e per male aver lutto. + + Lo cielo i vostri movimenti inizia; + non dico tutti, ma, posto ch’i’ ’l dica, + lume v’è dato a bene e a malizia, + + e libero voler; che, se fatica + ne le prime battaglie col ciel dura, + poi vince tutto, se ben si notrica. + + A maggior forza e a miglior natura + liberi soggiacete; e quella cria + la mente in voi, che ’l ciel non ha in sua cura. + + Però, se ’l mondo presente disvia, + in voi è la cagione, in voi si cheggia; + e io te ne sarò or vera spia. + + Esce di mano a lui che la vagheggia + prima che sia, a guisa di fanciulla + che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia, + + l’anima semplicetta che sa nulla, + salvo che, mossa da lieto fattore, + volontier torna a ciò che la trastulla. + + Di picciol bene in pria sente sapore; + quivi s’inganna, e dietro ad esso corre, + se guida o fren non torce suo amore. + + Onde convenne legge per fren porre; + convenne rege aver, che discernesse + de la vera cittade almen la torre. + + Le leggi son, ma chi pon mano ad esse? + Nullo, però che ’l pastor che procede, + rugumar può, ma non ha l’unghie fesse; + + per che la gente, che sua guida vede + pur a quel ben fedire ond’ ella è ghiotta, + di quel si pasce, e più oltre non chiede. + + Ben puoi veder che la mala condotta + è la cagion che ’l mondo ha fatto reo, + e non natura che ’n voi sia corrotta. + + Soleva Roma, che ’l buon mondo feo, + due soli aver, che l’una e l’altra strada + facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo. + + L’un l’altro ha spento; ed è giunta la spada + col pasturale, e l’un con l’altro insieme + per viva forza mal convien che vada; + + però che, giunti, l’un l’altro non teme: + se non mi credi, pon mente a la spiga, + ch’ogn’ erba si conosce per lo seme. + + In sul paese ch’Adice e Po riga, + solea valore e cortesia trovarsi, + prima che Federigo avesse briga; + + or può sicuramente indi passarsi + per qualunque lasciasse, per vergogna + di ragionar coi buoni o d’appressarsi. + + Ben v’èn tre vecchi ancora in cui rampogna + l’antica età la nova, e par lor tardo + che Dio a miglior vita li ripogna: + + Currado da Palazzo e ’l buon Gherardo + e Guido da Castel, che mei si noma, + francescamente, il semplice Lombardo. + + Dì oggimai che la Chiesa di Roma, + per confondere in sé due reggimenti, + cade nel fango, e sé brutta e la soma». + + «O Marco mio», diss’ io, «bene argomenti; + e or discerno perché dal retaggio + li figli di Levì furono essenti. + + Ma qual Gherardo è quel che tu per saggio + di’ ch’è rimaso de la gente spenta, + in rimprovèro del secol selvaggio?». + + «O tuo parlar m’inganna, o el mi tenta», + rispuose a me; «ché, parlandomi tosco, + par che del buon Gherardo nulla senta. + + Per altro sopranome io nol conosco, + s’io nol togliessi da sua figlia Gaia. + Dio sia con voi, ché più non vegno vosco. + + Vedi l’albor che per lo fummo raia + già biancheggiare, e me convien partirmi + (l’angelo è ivi) prima ch’io li paia». + + Così tornò, e più non volle udirmi. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XVII + + + Ricorditi, lettor, se mai ne l’alpe + ti colse nebbia per la qual vedessi + non altrimenti che per pelle talpe, + + come, quando i vapori umidi e spessi + a diradar cominciansi, la spera + del sol debilemente entra per essi; + + e fia la tua imagine leggera + in giugnere a veder com’ io rividi + lo sole in pria, che già nel corcar era. + + Sì, pareggiando i miei co’ passi fidi + del mio maestro, usci’ fuor di tal nube + ai raggi morti già ne’ bassi lidi. + + O imaginativa che ne rube + talvolta sì di fuor, ch’om non s’accorge + perché dintorno suonin mille tube, + + chi move te, se ’l senso non ti porge? + Moveti lume che nel ciel s’informa, + per sé o per voler che giù lo scorge. + + De l’empiezza di lei che mutò forma + ne l’uccel ch’a cantar più si diletta, + ne l’imagine mia apparve l’orma; + + e qui fu la mia mente sì ristretta + dentro da sé, che di fuor non venìa + cosa che fosse allor da lei ricetta. + + Poi piovve dentro a l’alta fantasia + un crucifisso, dispettoso e fero + ne la sua vista, e cotal si moria; + + intorno ad esso era il grande Assüero, + Estèr sua sposa e ’l giusto Mardoceo, + che fu al dire e al far così intero. + + E come questa imagine rompeo + sé per sé stessa, a guisa d’una bulla + cui manca l’acqua sotto qual si feo, + + surse in mia visïone una fanciulla + piangendo forte, e dicea: «O regina, + perché per ira hai voluto esser nulla? + + Ancisa t’hai per non perder Lavina; + or m’hai perduta! Io son essa che lutto, + madre, a la tua pria ch’a l’altrui ruina». + + Come si frange il sonno ove di butto + nova luce percuote il viso chiuso, + che fratto guizza pria che muoia tutto; + + così l’imaginar mio cadde giuso + tosto che lume il volto mi percosse, + maggior assai che quel ch’è in nostro uso. + + I’ mi volgea per veder ov’ io fosse, + quando una voce disse «Qui si monta», + che da ogne altro intento mi rimosse; + + e fece la mia voglia tanto pronta + di riguardar chi era che parlava, + che mai non posa, se non si raffronta. + + Ma come al sol che nostra vista grava + e per soverchio sua figura vela, + così la mia virtù quivi mancava. + + «Questo è divino spirito, che ne la + via da ir sù ne drizza sanza prego, + e col suo lume sé medesmo cela. + + Sì fa con noi, come l’uom si fa sego; + ché quale aspetta prego e l’uopo vede, + malignamente già si mette al nego. + + Or accordiamo a tanto invito il piede; + procacciam di salir pria che s’abbui, + ché poi non si poria, se ’l dì non riede». + + Così disse il mio duca, e io con lui + volgemmo i nostri passi ad una scala; + e tosto ch’io al primo grado fui, + + senti’mi presso quasi un muover d’ala + e ventarmi nel viso e dir: ‘Beati + pacifici, che son sanz’ ira mala!’. + + Già eran sovra noi tanto levati + li ultimi raggi che la notte segue, + che le stelle apparivan da più lati. + + ‘O virtù mia, perché sì ti dilegue?’, + fra me stesso dicea, ché mi sentiva + la possa de le gambe posta in triegue. + + Noi eravam dove più non saliva + la scala sù, ed eravamo affissi, + pur come nave ch’a la piaggia arriva. + + E io attesi un poco, s’io udissi + alcuna cosa nel novo girone; + poi mi volsi al maestro mio, e dissi: + + «Dolce mio padre, dì, quale offensione + si purga qui nel giro dove semo? + Se i piè si stanno, non stea tuo sermone». + + Ed elli a me: «L’amor del bene, scemo + del suo dover, quiritta si ristora; + qui si ribatte il mal tardato remo. + + Ma perché più aperto intendi ancora, + volgi la mente a me, e prenderai + alcun buon frutto di nostra dimora». + + «Né creator né creatura mai», + cominciò el, «figliuol, fu sanza amore, + o naturale o d’animo; e tu ’l sai. + + Lo naturale è sempre sanza errore, + ma l’altro puote errar per malo obietto + o per troppo o per poco di vigore. + + Mentre ch’elli è nel primo ben diretto, + e ne’ secondi sé stesso misura, + esser non può cagion di mal diletto; + + ma quando al mal si torce, o con più cura + o con men che non dee corre nel bene, + contra ’l fattore adovra sua fattura. + + Quinci comprender puoi ch’esser convene + amor sementa in voi d’ogne virtute + e d’ogne operazion che merta pene. + + Or, perché mai non può da la salute + amor del suo subietto volger viso, + da l’odio proprio son le cose tute; + + e perché intender non si può diviso, + e per sé stante, alcuno esser dal primo, + da quello odiare ogne effetto è deciso. + + Resta, se dividendo bene stimo, + che ’l mal che s’ama è del prossimo; ed esso + amor nasce in tre modi in vostro limo. + + È chi, per esser suo vicin soppresso, + spera eccellenza, e sol per questo brama + ch’el sia di sua grandezza in basso messo; + + è chi podere, grazia, onore e fama + teme di perder perch’ altri sormonti, + onde s’attrista sì che ’l contrario ama; + + ed è chi per ingiuria par ch’aonti, + sì che si fa de la vendetta ghiotto, + e tal convien che ’l male altrui impronti. + + Questo triforme amor qua giù di sotto + si piange: or vo’ che tu de l’altro intende, + che corre al ben con ordine corrotto. + + Ciascun confusamente un bene apprende + nel qual si queti l’animo, e disira; + per che di giugner lui ciascun contende. + + Se lento amore a lui veder vi tira + o a lui acquistar, questa cornice, + dopo giusto penter, ve ne martira. + + Altro ben è che non fa l’uom felice; + non è felicità, non è la buona + essenza, d’ogne ben frutto e radice. + + L’amor ch’ad esso troppo s’abbandona, + di sovr’ a noi si piange per tre cerchi; + ma come tripartito si ragiona, + + tacciolo, acciò che tu per te ne cerchi». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XVIII + + + Posto avea fine al suo ragionamento + l’alto dottore, e attento guardava + ne la mia vista s’io parea contento; + + e io, cui nova sete ancor frugava, + di fuor tacea, e dentro dicea: ‘Forse + lo troppo dimandar ch’io fo li grava’. + + Ma quel padre verace, che s’accorse + del timido voler che non s’apriva, + parlando, di parlare ardir mi porse. + + Ond’ io: «Maestro, il mio veder s’avviva + sì nel tuo lume, ch’io discerno chiaro + quanto la tua ragion parta o descriva. + + Però ti prego, dolce padre caro, + che mi dimostri amore, a cui reduci + ogne buono operare e ’l suo contraro». + + «Drizza», disse, «ver’ me l’agute luci + de lo ’ntelletto, e fieti manifesto + l’error de’ ciechi che si fanno duci. + + L’animo, ch’è creato ad amar presto, + ad ogne cosa è mobile che piace, + tosto che dal piacere in atto è desto. + + Vostra apprensiva da esser verace + tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega, + sì che l’animo ad essa volger face; + + e se, rivolto, inver’ di lei si piega, + quel piegare è amor, quell’ è natura + che per piacer di novo in voi si lega. + + Poi, come ’l foco movesi in altura + per la sua forma ch’è nata a salire + là dove più in sua matera dura, + + così l’animo preso entra in disire, + ch’è moto spiritale, e mai non posa + fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire. + + Or ti puote apparer quant’ è nascosa + la veritate a la gente ch’avvera + ciascun amore in sé laudabil cosa; + + però che forse appar la sua matera + sempre esser buona, ma non ciascun segno + è buono, ancor che buona sia la cera». + + «Le tue parole e ’l mio seguace ingegno», + rispuos’ io lui, «m’hanno amor discoverto, + ma ciò m’ha fatto di dubbiar più pregno; + + ché, s’amore è di fuori a noi offerto + e l’anima non va con altro piede, + se dritta o torta va, non è suo merto». + + Ed elli a me: «Quanto ragion qui vede, + dir ti poss’ io; da indi in là t’aspetta + pur a Beatrice, ch’è opra di fede. + + Ogne forma sustanzïal, che setta + è da matera ed è con lei unita, + specifica vertute ha in sé colletta, + + la qual sanza operar non è sentita, + né si dimostra mai che per effetto, + come per verdi fronde in pianta vita. + + Però, là onde vegna lo ’ntelletto + de le prime notizie, omo non sape, + e de’ primi appetibili l’affetto, + + che sono in voi sì come studio in ape + di far lo mele; e questa prima voglia + merto di lode o di biasmo non cape. + + Or perché a questa ogn’ altra si raccoglia, + innata v’è la virtù che consiglia, + e de l’assenso de’ tener la soglia. + + Quest’ è ’l principio là onde si piglia + ragion di meritare in voi, secondo + che buoni e rei amori accoglie e viglia. + + Color che ragionando andaro al fondo, + s’accorser d’esta innata libertate; + però moralità lasciaro al mondo. + + Onde, poniam che di necessitate + surga ogne amor che dentro a voi s’accende, + di ritenerlo è in voi la podestate. + + La nobile virtù Beatrice intende + per lo libero arbitrio, e però guarda + che l’abbi a mente, s’a parlar ten prende». + + La luna, quasi a mezza notte tarda, + facea le stelle a noi parer più rade, + fatta com’ un secchion che tuttor arda; + + e correa contro ’l ciel per quelle strade + che ’l sole infiamma allor che quel da Roma + tra ’ Sardi e ’ Corsi il vede quando cade. + + E quell’ ombra gentil per cui si noma + Pietola più che villa mantoana, + del mio carcar diposta avea la soma; + + per ch’io, che la ragione aperta e piana + sovra le mie quistioni avea ricolta, + stava com’ om che sonnolento vana. + + Ma questa sonnolenza mi fu tolta + subitamente da gente che dopo + le nostre spalle a noi era già volta. + + E quale Ismeno già vide e Asopo + lungo di sè di notte furia e calca, + pur che i Teban di Bacco avesser uopo, + + cotal per quel giron suo passo falca, + per quel ch’io vidi di color, venendo, + cui buon volere e giusto amor cavalca. + + Tosto fur sovr’ a noi, perché correndo + si movea tutta quella turba magna; + e due dinanzi gridavan piangendo: + + «Maria corse con fretta a la montagna; + e Cesare, per soggiogare Ilerda, + punse Marsilia e poi corse in Ispagna». + + «Ratto, ratto, che ’l tempo non si perda + per poco amor», gridavan li altri appresso, + «che studio di ben far grazia rinverda». + + «O gente in cui fervore aguto adesso + ricompie forse negligenza e indugio + da voi per tepidezza in ben far messo, + + questi che vive, e certo i’ non vi bugio, + vuole andar sù, pur che ’l sol ne riluca; + però ne dite ond’ è presso il pertugio». + + Parole furon queste del mio duca; + e un di quelli spirti disse: «Vieni + di retro a noi, e troverai la buca. + + Noi siam di voglia a muoverci sì pieni, + che restar non potem; però perdona, + se villania nostra giustizia tieni. + + Io fui abate in San Zeno a Verona + sotto lo ’mperio del buon Barbarossa, + di cui dolente ancor Milan ragiona. + + E tale ha già l’un piè dentro la fossa, + che tosto piangerà quel monastero, + e tristo fia d’avere avuta possa; + + perché suo figlio, mal del corpo intero, + e de la mente peggio, e che mal nacque, + ha posto in loco di suo pastor vero». + + Io non so se più disse o s’ei si tacque, + tant’ era già di là da noi trascorso; + ma questo intesi, e ritener mi piacque. + + E quei che m’era ad ogne uopo soccorso + disse: «Volgiti qua: vedine due + venir dando a l’accidïa di morso». + + Di retro a tutti dicean: «Prima fue + morta la gente a cui il mar s’aperse, + che vedesse Iordan le rede sue. + + E quella che l’affanno non sofferse + fino a la fine col figlio d’Anchise, + sé stessa a vita sanza gloria offerse». + + Poi quando fuor da noi tanto divise + quell’ ombre, che veder più non potiersi, + novo pensiero dentro a me si mise, + + del qual più altri nacquero e diversi; + e tanto d’uno in altro vaneggiai, + che li occhi per vaghezza ricopersi, + + e ’l pensamento in sogno trasmutai. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XIX + + + Ne l’ora che non può ’l calor dïurno + intepidar più ’l freddo de la luna, + vinto da terra, e talor da Saturno + + —quando i geomanti lor Maggior Fortuna + veggiono in orïente, innanzi a l’alba, + surger per via che poco le sta bruna—, + + mi venne in sogno una femmina balba, + ne li occhi guercia, e sovra i piè distorta, + con le man monche, e di colore scialba. + + Io la mirava; e come ’l sol conforta + le fredde membra che la notte aggrava, + così lo sguardo mio le facea scorta + + la lingua, e poscia tutta la drizzava + in poco d’ora, e lo smarrito volto, + com’ amor vuol, così le colorava. + + Poi ch’ell’ avea ’l parlar così disciolto, + cominciava a cantar sì, che con pena + da lei avrei mio intento rivolto. + + «Io son», cantava, «io son dolce serena, + che ’ marinari in mezzo mar dismago; + tanto son di piacere a sentir piena! + + Io volsi Ulisse del suo cammin vago + al canto mio; e qual meco s’ausa, + rado sen parte; sì tutto l’appago!». + + Ancor non era sua bocca richiusa, + quand’ una donna apparve santa e presta + lunghesso me per far colei confusa. + + «O Virgilio, Virgilio, chi è questa?», + fieramente dicea; ed el venìa + con li occhi fitti pur in quella onesta. + + L’altra prendea, e dinanzi l’apria + fendendo i drappi, e mostravami ’l ventre; + quel mi svegliò col puzzo che n’uscia. + + Io mossi li occhi, e ’l buon maestro: «Almen tre + voci t’ho messe!», dicea, «Surgi e vieni; + troviam l’aperta per la qual tu entre». + + Sù mi levai, e tutti eran già pieni + de l’alto dì i giron del sacro monte, + e andavam col sol novo a le reni. + + Seguendo lui, portava la mia fronte + come colui che l’ha di pensier carca, + che fa di sé un mezzo arco di ponte; + + quand’ io udi’ «Venite; qui si varca» + parlare in modo soave e benigno, + qual non si sente in questa mortal marca. + + Con l’ali aperte, che parean di cigno, + volseci in sù colui che sì parlonne + tra due pareti del duro macigno. + + Mosse le penne poi e ventilonne, + ‘Qui lugent’ affermando esser beati, + ch’avran di consolar l’anime donne. + + «Che hai che pur inver’ la terra guati?», + la guida mia incominciò a dirmi, + poco amendue da l’angel sormontati. + + E io: «Con tanta sospeccion fa irmi + novella visïon ch’a sé mi piega, + sì ch’io non posso dal pensar partirmi». + + «Vedesti», disse, «quell’antica strega + che sola sovr’ a noi omai si piagne; + vedesti come l’uom da lei si slega. + + Bastiti, e batti a terra le calcagne; + li occhi rivolgi al logoro che gira + lo rege etterno con le rote magne». + + Quale ’l falcon, che prima a’ pié si mira, + indi si volge al grido e si protende + per lo disio del pasto che là il tira, + + tal mi fec’ io; e tal, quanto si fende + la roccia per dar via a chi va suso, + n’andai infin dove ’l cerchiar si prende. + + Com’ io nel quinto giro fui dischiuso, + vidi gente per esso che piangea, + giacendo a terra tutta volta in giuso. + + ‘Adhaesit pavimento anima mea’ + sentia dir lor con sì alti sospiri, + che la parola a pena s’intendea. + + «O eletti di Dio, li cui soffriri + e giustizia e speranza fa men duri, + drizzate noi verso li alti saliri». + + «Se voi venite dal giacer sicuri, + e volete trovar la via più tosto, + le vostre destre sien sempre di fori». + + Così pregò ’l poeta, e sì risposto + poco dinanzi a noi ne fu; per ch’io + nel parlare avvisai l’altro nascosto, + + e volsi li occhi a li occhi al segnor mio: + ond’ elli m’assentì con lieto cenno + ciò che chiedea la vista del disio. + + Poi ch’io potei di me fare a mio senno, + trassimi sovra quella creatura + le cui parole pria notar mi fenno, + + dicendo: «Spirto in cui pianger matura + quel sanza ’l quale a Dio tornar non pòssi, + sosta un poco per me tua maggior cura. + + Chi fosti e perché vòlti avete i dossi + al sù, mi dì, e se vuo’ ch’io t’impetri + cosa di là ond’ io vivendo mossi». + + Ed elli a me: «Perché i nostri diretri + rivolga il cielo a sé, saprai; ma prima + scias quod ego fui successor Petri. + + Intra Sïestri e Chiaveri s’adima + una fiumana bella, e del suo nome + lo titol del mio sangue fa sua cima. + + Un mese e poco più prova’ io come + pesa il gran manto a chi dal fango il guarda, + che piuma sembran tutte l’altre some. + + La mia conversïone, omè!, fu tarda; + ma, come fatto fui roman pastore, + così scopersi la vita bugiarda. + + Vidi che lì non s’acquetava il core, + né più salir potiesi in quella vita; + per che di questa in me s’accese amore. + + Fino a quel punto misera e partita + da Dio anima fui, del tutto avara; + or, come vedi, qui ne son punita. + + Quel ch’avarizia fa, qui si dichiara + in purgazion de l’anime converse; + e nulla pena il monte ha più amara. + + Sì come l’occhio nostro non s’aderse + in alto, fisso a le cose terrene, + così giustizia qui a terra il merse. + + Come avarizia spense a ciascun bene + lo nostro amore, onde operar perdési, + così giustizia qui stretti ne tene, + + ne’ piedi e ne le man legati e presi; + e quanto fia piacer del giusto Sire, + tanto staremo immobili e distesi». + + Io m’era inginocchiato e volea dire; + ma com’ io cominciai ed el s’accorse, + solo ascoltando, del mio reverire, + + «Qual cagion», disse, «in giù così ti torse?». + E io a lui: «Per vostra dignitate + mia coscïenza dritto mi rimorse». + + «Drizza le gambe, lèvati sù, frate!», + rispuose; «non errar: conservo sono + teco e con li altri ad una podestate. + + Se mai quel santo evangelico suono + che dice ‘Neque nubent’ intendesti, + ben puoi veder perch’ io così ragiono. + + Vattene omai: non vo’ che più t’arresti; + ché la tua stanza mio pianger disagia, + col qual maturo ciò che tu dicesti. + + Nepote ho io di là c’ha nome Alagia, + buona da sé, pur che la nostra casa + non faccia lei per essempro malvagia; + + e questa sola di là m’è rimasa». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XX + + + Contra miglior voler voler mal pugna; + onde contra ’l piacer mio, per piacerli, + trassi de l’acqua non sazia la spugna. + + Mossimi; e ’l duca mio si mosse per li + luoghi spediti pur lungo la roccia, + come si va per muro stretto a’ merli; + + ché la gente che fonde a goccia a goccia + per li occhi il mal che tutto ’l mondo occupa, + da l’altra parte in fuor troppo s’approccia. + + Maladetta sie tu, antica lupa, + che più che tutte l’altre bestie hai preda + per la tua fame sanza fine cupa! + + O ciel, nel cui girar par che si creda + le condizion di qua giù trasmutarsi, + quando verrà per cui questa disceda? + + Noi andavam con passi lenti e scarsi, + e io attento a l’ombre, ch’i’ sentia + pietosamente piangere e lagnarsi; + + e per ventura udi’ «Dolce Maria!» + dinanzi a noi chiamar così nel pianto + come fa donna che in parturir sia; + + e seguitar: «Povera fosti tanto, + quanto veder si può per quello ospizio + dove sponesti il tuo portato santo». + + Seguentemente intesi: «O buon Fabrizio, + con povertà volesti anzi virtute + che gran ricchezza posseder con vizio». + + Queste parole m’eran sì piaciute, + ch’io mi trassi oltre per aver contezza + di quello spirto onde parean venute. + + Esso parlava ancor de la larghezza + che fece Niccolò a le pulcelle, + per condurre ad onor lor giovinezza. + + «O anima che tanto ben favelle, + dimmi chi fosti», dissi, «e perché sola + tu queste degne lode rinovelle. + + Non fia sanza mercé la tua parola, + s’io ritorno a compiér lo cammin corto + di quella vita ch’al termine vola». + + Ed elli: «Io ti dirò, non per conforto + ch’io attenda di là, ma perché tanta + grazia in te luce prima che sie morto. + + Io fui radice de la mala pianta + che la terra cristiana tutta aduggia, + sì che buon frutto rado se ne schianta. + + Ma se Doagio, Lilla, Guanto e Bruggia + potesser, tosto ne saria vendetta; + e io la cheggio a lui che tutto giuggia. + + Chiamato fui di là Ugo Ciappetta; + di me son nati i Filippi e i Luigi + per cui novellamente è Francia retta. + + Figliuol fu’ io d’un beccaio di Parigi: + quando li regi antichi venner meno + tutti, fuor ch’un renduto in panni bigi, + + trova’mi stretto ne le mani il freno + del governo del regno, e tanta possa + di nuovo acquisto, e sì d’amici pieno, + + ch’a la corona vedova promossa + la testa di mio figlio fu, dal quale + cominciar di costor le sacrate ossa. + + Mentre che la gran dota provenzale + al sangue mio non tolse la vergogna, + poco valea, ma pur non facea male. + + Lì cominciò con forza e con menzogna + la sua rapina; e poscia, per ammenda, + Pontì e Normandia prese e Guascogna. + + Carlo venne in Italia e, per ammenda, + vittima fé di Curradino; e poi + ripinse al ciel Tommaso, per ammenda. + + Tempo vegg’ io, non molto dopo ancoi, + che tragge un altro Carlo fuor di Francia, + per far conoscer meglio e sé e ’ suoi. + + Sanz’ arme n’esce e solo con la lancia + con la qual giostrò Giuda, e quella ponta + sì, ch’a Fiorenza fa scoppiar la pancia. + + Quindi non terra, ma peccato e onta + guadagnerà, per sé tanto più grave, + quanto più lieve simil danno conta. + + L’altro, che già uscì preso di nave, + veggio vender sua figlia e patteggiarne + come fanno i corsar de l’altre schiave. + + O avarizia, che puoi tu più farne, + poscia c’ha’ il mio sangue a te sì tratto, + che non si cura de la propria carne? + + Perché men paia il mal futuro e ’l fatto, + veggio in Alagna intrar lo fiordaliso, + e nel vicario suo Cristo esser catto. + + Veggiolo un’altra volta esser deriso; + veggio rinovellar l’aceto e ’l fiele, + e tra vivi ladroni esser anciso. + + Veggio il novo Pilato sì crudele, + che ciò nol sazia, ma sanza decreto + portar nel Tempio le cupide vele. + + O Segnor mio, quando sarò io lieto + a veder la vendetta che, nascosa, + fa dolce l’ira tua nel tuo secreto? + + Ciò ch’io dicea di quell’ unica sposa + de lo Spirito Santo e che ti fece + verso me volger per alcuna chiosa, + + tanto è risposto a tutte nostre prece + quanto ’l dì dura; ma com’ el s’annotta, + contrario suon prendemo in quella vece. + + Noi repetiam Pigmalïon allotta, + cui traditore e ladro e paricida + fece la voglia sua de l’oro ghiotta; + + e la miseria de l’avaro Mida, + che seguì a la sua dimanda gorda, + per la qual sempre convien che si rida. + + Del folle Acàn ciascun poi si ricorda, + come furò le spoglie, sì che l’ira + di Iosüè qui par ch’ancor lo morda. + + Indi accusiam col marito Saffira; + lodiam i calci ch’ebbe Elïodoro; + e in infamia tutto ’l monte gira + + Polinestòr ch’ancise Polidoro; + ultimamente ci si grida: “Crasso, + dilci, che ’l sai: di che sapore è l’oro?”. + + Talor parla l’uno alto e l’altro basso, + secondo l’affezion ch’ad ir ci sprona + ora a maggiore e ora a minor passo: + + però al ben che ’l dì ci si ragiona, + dianzi non era io sol; ma qui da presso + non alzava la voce altra persona». + + Noi eravam partiti già da esso, + e brigavam di soverchiar la strada + tanto quanto al poder n’era permesso, + + quand’ io senti’, come cosa che cada, + tremar lo monte; onde mi prese un gelo + qual prender suol colui ch’a morte vada. + + Certo non si scoteo sì forte Delo, + pria che Latona in lei facesse ’l nido + a parturir li due occhi del cielo. + + Poi cominciò da tutte parti un grido + tal, che ’l maestro inverso me si feo, + dicendo: «Non dubbiar, mentr’ io ti guido». + + ‘Glorïa in excelsis’ tutti ‘Deo’ + dicean, per quel ch’io da’ vicin compresi, + onde intender lo grido si poteo. + + No’ istavamo immobili e sospesi + come i pastor che prima udir quel canto, + fin che ’l tremar cessò ed el compiési. + + Poi ripigliammo nostro cammin santo, + guardando l’ombre che giacean per terra, + tornate già in su l’usato pianto. + + Nulla ignoranza mai con tanta guerra + mi fé desideroso di sapere, + se la memoria mia in ciò non erra, + + quanta pareami allor, pensando, avere; + né per la fretta dimandare er’ oso, + né per me lì potea cosa vedere: + + così m’andava timido e pensoso. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXI + + + La sete natural che mai non sazia + se non con l’acqua onde la femminetta + samaritana domandò la grazia, + + mi travagliava, e pungeami la fretta + per la ’mpacciata via dietro al mio duca, + e condoleami a la giusta vendetta. + + Ed ecco, sì come ne scrive Luca + che Cristo apparve a’ due ch’erano in via, + già surto fuor de la sepulcral buca, + + ci apparve un’ombra, e dietro a noi venìa, + dal piè guardando la turba che giace; + né ci addemmo di lei, sì parlò pria, + + dicendo: «O frati miei, Dio vi dea pace». + Noi ci volgemmo sùbiti, e Virgilio + rendéli ’l cenno ch’a ciò si conface. + + Poi cominciò: «Nel beato concilio + ti ponga in pace la verace corte + che me rilega ne l’etterno essilio». + + «Come!», diss’ elli, e parte andavam forte: + «se voi siete ombre che Dio sù non degni, + chi v’ha per la sua scala tanto scorte?». + + E ’l dottor mio: «Se tu riguardi a’ segni + che questi porta e che l’angel profila, + ben vedrai che coi buon convien ch’e’ regni. + + Ma perché lei che dì e notte fila + non li avea tratta ancora la conocchia + che Cloto impone a ciascuno e compila, + + l’anima sua, ch’è tua e mia serocchia, + venendo sù, non potea venir sola, + però ch’al nostro modo non adocchia. + + Ond’ io fui tratto fuor de l’ampia gola + d’inferno per mostrarli, e mosterrolli + oltre, quanto ’l potrà menar mia scola. + + Ma dimmi, se tu sai, perché tai crolli + diè dianzi ’l monte, e perché tutto ad una + parve gridare infino a’ suoi piè molli». + + Sì mi diè, dimandando, per la cruna + del mio disio, che pur con la speranza + si fece la mia sete men digiuna. + + Quei cominciò: «Cosa non è che sanza + ordine senta la religïone + de la montagna, o che sia fuor d’usanza. + + Libero è qui da ogne alterazione: + di quel che ’l ciel da sé in sé riceve + esser ci puote, e non d’altro, cagione. + + Per che non pioggia, non grando, non neve, + non rugiada, non brina più sù cade + che la scaletta di tre gradi breve; + + nuvole spesse non paion né rade, + né coruscar, né figlia di Taumante, + che di là cangia sovente contrade; + + secco vapor non surge più avante + ch’al sommo d’i tre gradi ch’io parlai, + dov’ ha ’l vicario di Pietro le piante. + + Trema forse più giù poco o assai; + ma per vento che ’n terra si nasconda, + non so come, qua sù non tremò mai. + + Tremaci quando alcuna anima monda + sentesi, sì che surga o che si mova + per salir sù; e tal grido seconda. + + De la mondizia sol voler fa prova, + che, tutto libero a mutar convento, + l’alma sorprende, e di voler le giova. + + Prima vuol ben, ma non lascia il talento + che divina giustizia, contra voglia, + come fu al peccar, pone al tormento. + + E io, che son giaciuto a questa doglia + cinquecent’ anni e più, pur mo sentii + libera volontà di miglior soglia: + + però sentisti il tremoto e li pii + spiriti per lo monte render lode + a quel Segnor, che tosto sù li ’nvii». + + Così ne disse; e però ch’el si gode + tanto del ber quant’ è grande la sete, + non saprei dir quant’ el mi fece prode. + + E ’l savio duca: «Omai veggio la rete + che qui vi ’mpiglia e come si scalappia, + perché ci trema e di che congaudete. + + Ora chi fosti, piacciati ch’io sappia, + e perché tanti secoli giaciuto + qui se’, ne le parole tue mi cappia». + + «Nel tempo che ’l buon Tito, con l’aiuto + del sommo rege, vendicò le fóra + ond’ uscì ’l sangue per Giuda venduto, + + col nome che più dura e più onora + era io di là», rispuose quello spirto, + «famoso assai, ma non con fede ancora. + + Tanto fu dolce mio vocale spirto, + che, tolosano, a sé mi trasse Roma, + dove mertai le tempie ornar di mirto. + + Stazio la gente ancor di là mi noma: + cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille; + ma caddi in via con la seconda soma. + + Al mio ardor fuor seme le faville, + che mi scaldar, de la divina fiamma + onde sono allumati più di mille; + + de l’Eneïda dico, la qual mamma + fummi, e fummi nutrice, poetando: + sanz’ essa non fermai peso di dramma. + + E per esser vivuto di là quando + visse Virgilio, assentirei un sole + più che non deggio al mio uscir di bando». + + Volser Virgilio a me queste parole + con viso che, tacendo, disse ‘Taci’; + ma non può tutto la virtù che vuole; + + ché riso e pianto son tanto seguaci + a la passion di che ciascun si spicca, + che men seguon voler ne’ più veraci. + + Io pur sorrisi come l’uom ch’ammicca; + per che l’ombra si tacque, e riguardommi + ne li occhi ove ’l sembiante più si ficca; + + e «Se tanto labore in bene assommi», + disse, «perché la tua faccia testeso + un lampeggiar di riso dimostrommi?». + + Or son io d’una parte e d’altra preso: + l’una mi fa tacer, l’altra scongiura + ch’io dica; ond’ io sospiro, e sono inteso + + dal mio maestro, e «Non aver paura», + mi dice, «di parlar; ma parla e digli + quel ch’e’ dimanda con cotanta cura». + + Ond’ io: «Forse che tu ti maravigli, + antico spirto, del rider ch’io fei; + ma più d’ammirazion vo’ che ti pigli. + + Questi che guida in alto li occhi miei, + è quel Virgilio dal qual tu togliesti + forte a cantar de li uomini e d’i dèi. + + Se cagion altra al mio rider credesti, + lasciala per non vera, ed esser credi + quelle parole che di lui dicesti». + + Già s’inchinava ad abbracciar li piedi + al mio dottor, ma el li disse: «Frate, + non far, ché tu se’ ombra e ombra vedi». + + Ed ei surgendo: «Or puoi la quantitate + comprender de l’amor ch’a te mi scalda, + quand’ io dismento nostra vanitate, + + trattando l’ombre come cosa salda». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXII + + + Già era l’angel dietro a noi rimaso, + l’angel che n’avea vòlti al sesto giro, + avendomi dal viso un colpo raso; + + e quei c’hanno a giustizia lor disiro + detto n’avea beati, e le sue voci + con ‘sitiunt’, sanz’ altro, ciò forniro. + + E io più lieve che per l’altre foci + m’andava, sì che sanz’ alcun labore + seguiva in sù li spiriti veloci; + + quando Virgilio incominciò: «Amore, + acceso di virtù, sempre altro accese, + pur che la fiamma sua paresse fore; + + onde da l’ora che tra noi discese + nel limbo de lo ’nferno Giovenale, + che la tua affezion mi fé palese, + + mia benvoglienza inverso te fu quale + più strinse mai di non vista persona, + sì ch’or mi parran corte queste scale. + + Ma dimmi, e come amico mi perdona + se troppa sicurtà m’allarga il freno, + e come amico omai meco ragiona: + + come poté trovar dentro al tuo seno + loco avarizia, tra cotanto senno + di quanto per tua cura fosti pieno?». + + Queste parole Stazio mover fenno + un poco a riso pria; poscia rispuose: + «Ogne tuo dir d’amor m’è caro cenno. + + Veramente più volte appaion cose + che danno a dubitar falsa matera + per le vere ragion che son nascose. + + La tua dimanda tuo creder m’avvera + esser ch’i’ fossi avaro in l’altra vita, + forse per quella cerchia dov’ io era. + + Or sappi ch’avarizia fu partita + troppo da me, e questa dismisura + migliaia di lunari hanno punita. + + E se non fosse ch’io drizzai mia cura, + quand’ io intesi là dove tu chiame, + crucciato quasi a l’umana natura: + + ‘Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fame + de l’oro, l’appetito de’ mortali?’, + voltando sentirei le giostre grame. + + Allor m’accorsi che troppo aprir l’ali + potean le mani a spendere, e pente’mi + così di quel come de li altri mali. + + Quanti risurgeran coi crini scemi + per ignoranza, che di questa pecca + toglie ’l penter vivendo e ne li stremi! + + E sappie che la colpa che rimbecca + per dritta opposizione alcun peccato, + con esso insieme qui suo verde secca; + + però, s’io son tra quella gente stato + che piange l’avarizia, per purgarmi, + per lo contrario suo m’è incontrato». + + «Or quando tu cantasti le crude armi + de la doppia trestizia di Giocasta», + disse ’l cantor de’ buccolici carmi, + + «per quello che Clïò teco lì tasta, + non par che ti facesse ancor fedele + la fede, sanza qual ben far non basta. + + Se così è, qual sole o quai candele + ti stenebraron sì, che tu drizzasti + poscia di retro al pescator le vele?». + + Ed elli a lui: «Tu prima m’invïasti + verso Parnaso a ber ne le sue grotte, + e prima appresso Dio m’alluminasti. + + Facesti come quei che va di notte, + che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova, + ma dopo sé fa le persone dotte, + + quando dicesti: ‘Secol si rinova; + torna giustizia e primo tempo umano, + e progenïe scende da ciel nova’. + + Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano: + ma perché veggi mei ciò ch’io disegno, + a colorare stenderò la mano. + + Già era ’l mondo tutto quanto pregno + de la vera credenza, seminata + per li messaggi de l’etterno regno; + + e la parola tua sopra toccata + si consonava a’ nuovi predicanti; + ond’ io a visitarli presi usata. + + Vennermi poi parendo tanto santi, + che, quando Domizian li perseguette, + sanza mio lagrimar non fur lor pianti; + + e mentre che di là per me si stette, + io li sovvenni, e i lor dritti costumi + fer dispregiare a me tutte altre sette. + + E pria ch’io conducessi i Greci a’ fiumi + di Tebe poetando, ebb’ io battesmo; + ma per paura chiuso cristian fu’mi, + + lungamente mostrando paganesmo; + e questa tepidezza il quarto cerchio + cerchiar mi fé più che ’l quarto centesmo. + + Tu dunque, che levato hai il coperchio + che m’ascondeva quanto bene io dico, + mentre che del salire avem soverchio, + + dimmi dov’ è Terrenzio nostro antico, + Cecilio e Plauto e Varro, se lo sai: + dimmi se son dannati, e in qual vico». + + «Costoro e Persio e io e altri assai», + rispuose il duca mio, «siam con quel Greco + che le Muse lattar più ch’altri mai, + + nel primo cinghio del carcere cieco; + spesse fïate ragioniam del monte + che sempre ha le nutrice nostre seco. + + Euripide v’è nosco e Antifonte, + Simonide, Agatone e altri piùe + Greci che già di lauro ornar la fronte. + + Quivi si veggion de le genti tue + Antigone, Deïfile e Argia, + e Ismene sì trista come fue. + + Védeisi quella che mostrò Langia; + èvvi la figlia di Tiresia, e Teti, + e con le suore sue Deïdamia». + + Tacevansi ambedue già li poeti, + di novo attenti a riguardar dintorno, + liberi da saliri e da pareti; + + e già le quattro ancelle eran del giorno + rimase a dietro, e la quinta era al temo, + drizzando pur in sù l’ardente corno, + + quando il mio duca: «Io credo ch’a lo stremo + le destre spalle volger ne convegna, + girando il monte come far solemo». + + Così l’usanza fu lì nostra insegna, + e prendemmo la via con men sospetto + per l’assentir di quell’ anima degna. + + Elli givan dinanzi, e io soletto + di retro, e ascoltava i lor sermoni, + ch’a poetar mi davano intelletto. + + Ma tosto ruppe le dolci ragioni + un alber che trovammo in mezza strada, + con pomi a odorar soavi e buoni; + + e come abete in alto si digrada + di ramo in ramo, così quello in giuso, + cred’ io, perché persona sù non vada. + + Dal lato onde ’l cammin nostro era chiuso, + cadea de l’alta roccia un liquor chiaro + e si spandeva per le foglie suso. + + Li due poeti a l’alber s’appressaro; + e una voce per entro le fronde + gridò: «Di questo cibo avrete caro». + + Poi disse: «Più pensava Maria onde + fosser le nozze orrevoli e intere, + ch’a la sua bocca, ch’or per voi risponde. + + E le Romane antiche, per lor bere, + contente furon d’acqua; e Danïello + dispregiò cibo e acquistò savere. + + Lo secol primo, quant’ oro fu bello, + fé savorose con fame le ghiande, + e nettare con sete ogne ruscello. + + Mele e locuste furon le vivande + che nodriro il Batista nel diserto; + per ch’elli è glorïoso e tanto grande + + quanto per lo Vangelio v’è aperto». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXIII + + + Mentre che li occhi per la fronda verde + ficcava ïo sì come far suole + chi dietro a li uccellin sua vita perde, + + lo più che padre mi dicea: «Figliuole, + vienne oramai, ché ’l tempo che n’è imposto + più utilmente compartir si vuole». + + Io volsi ’l viso, e ’l passo non men tosto, + appresso i savi, che parlavan sìe, + che l’andar mi facean di nullo costo. + + Ed ecco piangere e cantar s’udìe + ‘Labïa mëa, Domine’ per modo + tal, che diletto e doglia parturìe. + + «O dolce padre, che è quel ch’i’ odo?», + comincia’ io; ed elli: «Ombre che vanno + forse di lor dover solvendo il nodo». + + Sì come i peregrin pensosi fanno, + giugnendo per cammin gente non nota, + che si volgono ad essa e non restanno, + + così di retro a noi, più tosto mota, + venendo e trapassando ci ammirava + d’anime turba tacita e devota. + + Ne li occhi era ciascuna oscura e cava, + palida ne la faccia, e tanto scema + che da l’ossa la pelle s’informava. + + Non credo che così a buccia strema + Erisittone fosse fatto secco, + per digiunar, quando più n’ebbe tema. + + Io dicea fra me stesso pensando: ‘Ecco + la gente che perdé Ierusalemme, + quando Maria nel figlio diè di becco!’ + + Parean l’occhiaie anella sanza gemme: + chi nel viso de li uomini legge ‘omo’ + ben avria quivi conosciuta l’emme. + + Chi crederebbe che l’odor d’un pomo + sì governasse, generando brama, + e quel d’un’acqua, non sappiendo como? + + Già era in ammirar che sì li affama, + per la cagione ancor non manifesta + di lor magrezza e di lor trista squama, + + ed ecco del profondo de la testa + volse a me li occhi un’ombra e guardò fiso; + poi gridò forte: «Qual grazia m’è questa?». + + Mai non l’avrei riconosciuto al viso; + ma ne la voce sua mi fu palese + ciò che l’aspetto in sé avea conquiso. + + Questa favilla tutta mi raccese + mia conoscenza a la cangiata labbia, + e ravvisai la faccia di Forese. + + «Deh, non contendere a l’asciutta scabbia + che mi scolora», pregava, «la pelle, + né a difetto di carne ch’io abbia; + + ma dimmi il ver di te, dì chi son quelle + due anime che là ti fanno scorta; + non rimaner che tu non mi favelle!». + + «La faccia tua, ch’io lagrimai già morta, + mi dà di pianger mo non minor doglia», + rispuos’ io lui, «veggendola sì torta. + + Però mi dì, per Dio, che sì vi sfoglia; + non mi far dir mentr’ io mi maraviglio, + ché mal può dir chi è pien d’altra voglia». + + Ed elli a me: «De l’etterno consiglio + cade vertù ne l’acqua e ne la pianta + rimasa dietro ond’ io sì m’assottiglio. + + Tutta esta gente che piangendo canta + per seguitar la gola oltra misura, + in fame e ’n sete qui si rifà santa. + + Di bere e di mangiar n’accende cura + l’odor ch’esce del pomo e de lo sprazzo + che si distende su per sua verdura. + + E non pur una volta, questo spazzo + girando, si rinfresca nostra pena: + io dico pena, e dovria dir sollazzo, + + ché quella voglia a li alberi ci mena + che menò Cristo lieto a dire ‘Elì’, + quando ne liberò con la sua vena». + + E io a lui: «Forese, da quel dì + nel qual mutasti mondo a miglior vita, + cinqu’ anni non son vòlti infino a qui. + + Se prima fu la possa in te finita + di peccar più, che sovvenisse l’ora + del buon dolor ch’a Dio ne rimarita, + + come se’ tu qua sù venuto ancora? + Io ti credea trovar là giù di sotto, + dove tempo per tempo si ristora». + + Ond’ elli a me: «Sì tosto m’ha condotto + a ber lo dolce assenzo d’i martìri + la Nella mia con suo pianger dirotto. + + Con suoi prieghi devoti e con sospiri + tratto m’ha de la costa ove s’aspetta, + e liberato m’ha de li altri giri. + + Tanto è a Dio più cara e più diletta + la vedovella mia, che molto amai, + quanto in bene operare è più soletta; + + ché la Barbagia di Sardigna assai + ne le femmine sue più è pudica + che la Barbagia dov’ io la lasciai. + + O dolce frate, che vuo’ tu ch’io dica? + Tempo futuro m’è già nel cospetto, + cui non sarà quest’ ora molto antica, + + nel qual sarà in pergamo interdetto + a le sfacciate donne fiorentine + l’andar mostrando con le poppe il petto. + + Quai barbare fuor mai, quai saracine, + cui bisognasse, per farle ir coperte, + o spiritali o altre discipline? + + Ma se le svergognate fosser certe + di quel che ’l ciel veloce loro ammanna, + già per urlare avrian le bocche aperte; + + ché, se l’antiveder qui non m’inganna, + prima fien triste che le guance impeli + colui che mo si consola con nanna. + + Deh, frate, or fa che più non mi ti celi! + vedi che non pur io, ma questa gente + tutta rimira là dove ’l sol veli». + + Per ch’io a lui: «Se tu riduci a mente + qual fosti meco, e qual io teco fui, + ancor fia grave il memorar presente. + + Di quella vita mi volse costui + che mi va innanzi, l’altr’ ier, quando tonda + vi si mostrò la suora di colui», + + e ’l sol mostrai; «costui per la profonda + notte menato m’ha d’i veri morti + con questa vera carne che ’l seconda. + + Indi m’han tratto sù li suoi conforti, + salendo e rigirando la montagna + che drizza voi che ’l mondo fece torti. + + Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna + che io sarò là dove fia Beatrice; + quivi convien che sanza lui rimagna. + + Virgilio è questi che così mi dice», + e addita’lo; «e quest’ altro è quell’ ombra + per cuï scosse dianzi ogne pendice + + lo vostro regno, che da sé lo sgombra». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXIV + + + Né ’l dir l’andar, né l’andar lui più lento + facea, ma ragionando andavam forte, + sì come nave pinta da buon vento; + + e l’ombre, che parean cose rimorte, + per le fosse de li occhi ammirazione + traean di me, di mio vivere accorte. + + E io, continüando al mio sermone, + dissi: «Ella sen va sù forse più tarda + che non farebbe, per altrui cagione. + + Ma dimmi, se tu sai, dov’ è Piccarda; + dimmi s’io veggio da notar persona + tra questa gente che sì mi riguarda». + + «La mia sorella, che tra bella e buona + non so qual fosse più, trïunfa lieta + ne l’alto Olimpo già di sua corona». + + Sì disse prima; e poi: «Qui non si vieta + di nominar ciascun, da ch’è sì munta + nostra sembianza via per la dïeta. + + Questi», e mostrò col dito, «è Bonagiunta, + Bonagiunta da Lucca; e quella faccia + di là da lui più che l’altre trapunta + + ebbe la Santa Chiesa in le sue braccia: + dal Torso fu, e purga per digiuno + l’anguille di Bolsena e la vernaccia». + + Molti altri mi nomò ad uno ad uno; + e del nomar parean tutti contenti, + sì ch’io però non vidi un atto bruno. + + Vidi per fame a vòto usar li denti + Ubaldin da la Pila e Bonifazio + che pasturò col rocco molte genti. + + Vidi messer Marchese, ch’ebbe spazio + già di bere a Forlì con men secchezza, + e sì fu tal, che non si sentì sazio. + + Ma come fa chi guarda e poi s’apprezza + più d’un che d’altro, fei a quel da Lucca, + che più parea di me aver contezza. + + El mormorava; e non so che «Gentucca» + sentiv’ io là, ov’ el sentia la piaga + de la giustizia che sì li pilucca. + + «O anima», diss’ io, «che par sì vaga + di parlar meco, fa sì ch’io t’intenda, + e te e me col tuo parlare appaga». + + «Femmina è nata, e non porta ancor benda», + cominciò el, «che ti farà piacere + la mia città, come ch’om la riprenda. + + Tu te n’andrai con questo antivedere: + se nel mio mormorar prendesti errore, + dichiareranti ancor le cose vere. + + Ma dì s’i’ veggio qui colui che fore + trasse le nove rime, cominciando + ‘Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore’». + + E io a lui: «I’ mi son un che, quando + Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo + ch’e’ ditta dentro vo significando». + + «O frate, issa vegg’ io», diss’ elli, «il nodo + che ’l Notaro e Guittone e me ritenne + di qua dal dolce stil novo ch’i’ odo! + + Io veggio ben come le vostre penne + di retro al dittator sen vanno strette, + che de le nostre certo non avvenne; + + e qual più a gradire oltre si mette, + non vede più da l’uno a l’altro stilo»; + e, quasi contentato, si tacette. + + Come li augei che vernan lungo ’l Nilo, + alcuna volta in aere fanno schiera, + poi volan più a fretta e vanno in filo, + + così tutta la gente che lì era, + volgendo ’l viso, raffrettò suo passo, + e per magrezza e per voler leggera. + + E come l’uom che di trottare è lasso, + lascia andar li compagni, e sì passeggia + fin che si sfoghi l’affollar del casso, + + sì lasciò trapassar la santa greggia + Forese, e dietro meco sen veniva, + dicendo: «Quando fia ch’io ti riveggia?». + + «Non so», rispuos’ io lui, «quant’ io mi viva; + ma già non fïa il tornar mio tantosto, + ch’io non sia col voler prima a la riva; + + però che ’l loco u’ fui a viver posto, + di giorno in giorno più di ben si spolpa, + e a trista ruina par disposto». + + «Or va», diss’ el; «che quei che più n’ha colpa, + vegg’ ïo a coda d’una bestia tratto + inver’ la valle ove mai non si scolpa. + + La bestia ad ogne passo va più ratto, + crescendo sempre, fin ch’ella il percuote, + e lascia il corpo vilmente disfatto. + + Non hanno molto a volger quelle ruote», + e drizzò li occhi al ciel, «che ti fia chiaro + ciò che ’l mio dir più dichiarar non puote. + + Tu ti rimani omai; ché ’l tempo è caro + in questo regno, sì ch’io perdo troppo + venendo teco sì a paro a paro». + + Qual esce alcuna volta di gualoppo + lo cavalier di schiera che cavalchi, + e va per farsi onor del primo intoppo, + + tal si partì da noi con maggior valchi; + e io rimasi in via con esso i due + che fuor del mondo sì gran marescalchi. + + E quando innanzi a noi intrato fue, + che li occhi miei si fero a lui seguaci, + come la mente a le parole sue, + + parvermi i rami gravidi e vivaci + d’un altro pomo, e non molto lontani + per esser pur allora vòlto in laci. + + Vidi gente sott’ esso alzar le mani + e gridar non so che verso le fronde, + quasi bramosi fantolini e vani + + che pregano, e ’l pregato non risponde, + ma, per fare esser ben la voglia acuta, + tien alto lor disio e nol nasconde. + + Poi si partì sì come ricreduta; + e noi venimmo al grande arbore adesso, + che tanti prieghi e lagrime rifiuta. + + «Trapassate oltre sanza farvi presso: + legno è più sù che fu morso da Eva, + e questa pianta si levò da esso». + + Sì tra le frasche non so chi diceva; + per che Virgilio e Stazio e io, ristretti, + oltre andavam dal lato che si leva. + + «Ricordivi», dicea, «d’i maladetti + nei nuvoli formati, che, satolli, + Tesëo combatter co’ doppi petti; + + e de li Ebrei ch’al ber si mostrar molli, + per che no i volle Gedeon compagni, + quando inver’ Madïan discese i colli». + + Sì accostati a l’un d’i due vivagni + passammo, udendo colpe de la gola + seguite già da miseri guadagni. + + Poi, rallargati per la strada sola, + ben mille passi e più ci portar oltre, + contemplando ciascun sanza parola. + + «Che andate pensando sì voi sol tre?». + sùbita voce disse; ond’ io mi scossi + come fan bestie spaventate e poltre. + + Drizzai la testa per veder chi fossi; + e già mai non si videro in fornace + vetri o metalli sì lucenti e rossi, + + com’ io vidi un che dicea: «S’a voi piace + montare in sù, qui si convien dar volta; + quinci si va chi vuole andar per pace». + + L’aspetto suo m’avea la vista tolta; + per ch’io mi volsi dietro a’ miei dottori, + com’ om che va secondo ch’elli ascolta. + + E quale, annunziatrice de li albori, + l’aura di maggio movesi e olezza, + tutta impregnata da l’erba e da’ fiori; + + tal mi senti’ un vento dar per mezza + la fronte, e ben senti’ mover la piuma, + che fé sentir d’ambrosïa l’orezza. + + E senti’ dir: «Beati cui alluma + tanto di grazia, che l’amor del gusto + nel petto lor troppo disir non fuma, + + esurïendo sempre quanto è giusto!». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXV + + + Ora era onde ’l salir non volea storpio; + ché ’l sole avëa il cerchio di merigge + lasciato al Tauro e la notte a lo Scorpio: + + per che, come fa l’uom che non s’affigge + ma vassi a la via sua, che che li appaia, + se di bisogno stimolo il trafigge, + + così intrammo noi per la callaia, + uno innanzi altro prendendo la scala + che per artezza i salitor dispaia. + + E quale il cicognin che leva l’ala + per voglia di volare, e non s’attenta + d’abbandonar lo nido, e giù la cala; + + tal era io con voglia accesa e spenta + di dimandar, venendo infino a l’atto + che fa colui ch’a dicer s’argomenta. + + Non lasciò, per l’andar che fosse ratto, + lo dolce padre mio, ma disse: «Scocca + l’arco del dir, che ’nfino al ferro hai tratto». + + Allor sicuramente apri’ la bocca + e cominciai: «Come si può far magro + là dove l’uopo di nodrir non tocca?». + + «Se t’ammentassi come Meleagro + si consumò al consumar d’un stizzo, + non fora», disse, «a te questo sì agro; + + e se pensassi come, al vostro guizzo, + guizza dentro a lo specchio vostra image, + ciò che par duro ti parrebbe vizzo. + + Ma perché dentro a tuo voler t’adage, + ecco qui Stazio; e io lui chiamo e prego + che sia or sanator de le tue piage». + + «Se la veduta etterna li dislego», + rispuose Stazio, «là dove tu sie, + discolpi me non potert’ io far nego». + + Poi cominciò: «Se le parole mie, + figlio, la mente tua guarda e riceve, + lume ti fiero al come che tu die. + + Sangue perfetto, che poi non si beve + da l’assetate vene, e si rimane + quasi alimento che di mensa leve, + + prende nel core a tutte membra umane + virtute informativa, come quello + ch’a farsi quelle per le vene vane. + + Ancor digesto, scende ov’ è più bello + tacer che dire; e quindi poscia geme + sovr’ altrui sangue in natural vasello. + + Ivi s’accoglie l’uno e l’altro insieme, + l’un disposto a patire, e l’altro a fare + per lo perfetto loco onde si preme; + + e, giunto lui, comincia ad operare + coagulando prima, e poi avviva + ciò che per sua matera fé constare. + + Anima fatta la virtute attiva + qual d’una pianta, in tanto differente, + che questa è in via e quella è già a riva, + + tanto ovra poi, che già si move e sente, + come spungo marino; e indi imprende + ad organar le posse ond’ è semente. + + Or si spiega, figliuolo, or si distende + la virtù ch’è dal cor del generante, + dove natura a tutte membra intende. + + Ma come d’animal divegna fante, + non vedi tu ancor: quest’ è tal punto, + che più savio di te fé già errante, + + sì che per sua dottrina fé disgiunto + da l’anima il possibile intelletto, + perché da lui non vide organo assunto. + + Apri a la verità che viene il petto; + e sappi che, sì tosto come al feto + l’articular del cerebro è perfetto, + + lo motor primo a lui si volge lieto + sovra tant’ arte di natura, e spira + spirito novo, di vertù repleto, + + che ciò che trova attivo quivi, tira + in sua sustanzia, e fassi un’alma sola, + che vive e sente e sé in sé rigira. + + E perché meno ammiri la parola, + guarda il calor del sole che si fa vino, + giunto a l’omor che de la vite cola. + + Quando Làchesis non ha più del lino, + solvesi da la carne, e in virtute + ne porta seco e l’umano e ’l divino: + + l’altre potenze tutte quante mute; + memoria, intelligenza e volontade + in atto molto più che prima agute. + + Sanza restarsi, per sé stessa cade + mirabilmente a l’una de le rive; + quivi conosce prima le sue strade. + + Tosto che loco lì la circunscrive, + la virtù formativa raggia intorno + così e quanto ne le membra vive. + + E come l’aere, quand’ è ben pïorno, + per l’altrui raggio che ’n sé si reflette, + di diversi color diventa addorno; + + così l’aere vicin quivi si mette + e in quella forma ch’è in lui suggella + virtüalmente l’alma che ristette; + + e simigliante poi a la fiammella + che segue il foco là ’vunque si muta, + segue lo spirto sua forma novella. + + Però che quindi ha poscia sua paruta, + è chiamata ombra; e quindi organa poi + ciascun sentire infino a la veduta. + + Quindi parliamo e quindi ridiam noi; + quindi facciam le lagrime e ’ sospiri + che per lo monte aver sentiti puoi. + + Secondo che ci affliggono i disiri + e li altri affetti, l’ombra si figura; + e quest’ è la cagion di che tu miri». + + E già venuto a l’ultima tortura + s’era per noi, e vòlto a la man destra, + ed eravamo attenti ad altra cura. + + Quivi la ripa fiamma in fuor balestra, + e la cornice spira fiato in suso + che la reflette e via da lei sequestra; + + ond’ ir ne convenia dal lato schiuso + ad uno ad uno; e io temëa ’l foco + quinci, e quindi temeva cader giuso. + + Lo duca mio dicea: «Per questo loco + si vuol tenere a li occhi stretto il freno, + però ch’errar potrebbesi per poco». + + ‘Summae Deus clementïae’ nel seno + al grande ardore allora udi’ cantando, + che di volger mi fé caler non meno; + + e vidi spirti per la fiamma andando; + per ch’io guardava a loro e a’ miei passi + compartendo la vista a quando a quando. + + Appresso il fine ch’a quell’ inno fassi, + gridavano alto: ‘Virum non cognosco’; + indi ricominciavan l’inno bassi. + + Finitolo, anco gridavano: «Al bosco + si tenne Diana, ed Elice caccionne + che di Venere avea sentito il tòsco». + + Indi al cantar tornavano; indi donne + gridavano e mariti che fuor casti + come virtute e matrimonio imponne. + + E questo modo credo che lor basti + per tutto il tempo che ’l foco li abbruscia: + con tal cura conviene e con tai pasti + + che la piaga da sezzo si ricuscia. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXVI + + + Mentre che sì per l’orlo, uno innanzi altro, + ce n’andavamo, e spesso il buon maestro + diceami: «Guarda: giovi ch’io ti scaltro»; + + feriami il sole in su l’omero destro, + che già, raggiando, tutto l’occidente + mutava in bianco aspetto di cilestro; + + e io facea con l’ombra più rovente + parer la fiamma; e pur a tanto indizio + vidi molt’ ombre, andando, poner mente. + + Questa fu la cagion che diede inizio + loro a parlar di me; e cominciarsi + a dir: «Colui non par corpo fittizio»; + + poi verso me, quanto potëan farsi, + certi si fero, sempre con riguardo + di non uscir dove non fosser arsi. + + «O tu che vai, non per esser più tardo, + ma forse reverente, a li altri dopo, + rispondi a me che ’n sete e ’n foco ardo. + + Né solo a me la tua risposta è uopo; + ché tutti questi n’hanno maggior sete + che d’acqua fredda Indo o Etïopo. + + Dinne com’ è che fai di te parete + al sol, pur come tu non fossi ancora + di morte intrato dentro da la rete». + + Sì mi parlava un d’essi; e io mi fora + già manifesto, s’io non fossi atteso + ad altra novità ch’apparve allora; + + ché per lo mezzo del cammino acceso + venne gente col viso incontro a questa, + la qual mi fece a rimirar sospeso. + + Lì veggio d’ogne parte farsi presta + ciascun’ ombra e basciarsi una con una + sanza restar, contente a brieve festa; + + così per entro loro schiera bruna + s’ammusa l’una con l’altra formica, + forse a spïar lor via e lor fortuna. + + Tosto che parton l’accoglienza amica, + prima che ’l primo passo lì trascorra, + sopragridar ciascuna s’affatica: + + la nova gente: «Soddoma e Gomorra»; + e l’altra: «Ne la vacca entra Pasife, + perché ’l torello a sua lussuria corra». + + Poi, come grue ch’a le montagne Rife + volasser parte, e parte inver’ l’arene, + queste del gel, quelle del sole schife, + + l’una gente sen va, l’altra sen vene; + e tornan, lagrimando, a’ primi canti + e al gridar che più lor si convene; + + e raccostansi a me, come davanti, + essi medesmi che m’avean pregato, + attenti ad ascoltar ne’ lor sembianti. + + Io, che due volte avea visto lor grato, + incominciai: «O anime sicure + d’aver, quando che sia, di pace stato, + + non son rimase acerbe né mature + le membra mie di là, ma son qui meco + col sangue suo e con le sue giunture. + + Quinci sù vo per non esser più cieco; + donna è di sopra che m’acquista grazia, + per che ’l mortal per vostro mondo reco. + + Ma se la vostra maggior voglia sazia + tosto divegna, sì che ’l ciel v’alberghi + ch’è pien d’amore e più ampio si spazia, + + ditemi, acciò ch’ancor carte ne verghi, + chi siete voi, e chi è quella turba + che se ne va di retro a’ vostri terghi». + + Non altrimenti stupido si turba + lo montanaro, e rimirando ammuta, + quando rozzo e salvatico s’inurba, + + che ciascun’ ombra fece in sua paruta; + ma poi che furon di stupore scarche, + lo qual ne li alti cuor tosto s’attuta, + + «Beato te, che de le nostre marche», + ricominciò colei che pria m’inchiese, + «per morir meglio, esperïenza imbarche! + + La gente che non vien con noi, offese + di ciò per che già Cesar, trïunfando, + “Regina” contra sé chiamar s’intese: + + però si parton “Soddoma” gridando, + rimproverando a sé com’ hai udito, + e aiutan l’arsura vergognando. + + Nostro peccato fu ermafrodito; + ma perché non servammo umana legge, + seguendo come bestie l’appetito, + + in obbrobrio di noi, per noi si legge, + quando partinci, il nome di colei + che s’imbestiò ne le ’mbestiate schegge. + + Or sai nostri atti e di che fummo rei: + se forse a nome vuo’ saper chi semo, + tempo non è di dire, e non saprei. + + Farotti ben di me volere scemo: + son Guido Guinizzelli, e già mi purgo + per ben dolermi prima ch’a lo stremo». + + Quali ne la tristizia di Ligurgo + si fer due figli a riveder la madre, + tal mi fec’ io, ma non a tanto insurgo, + + quand’ io odo nomar sé stesso il padre + mio e de li altri miei miglior che mai + rime d’amore usar dolci e leggiadre; + + e sanza udire e dir pensoso andai + lunga fïata rimirando lui, + né, per lo foco, in là più m’appressai. + + Poi che di riguardar pasciuto fui, + tutto m’offersi pronto al suo servigio + con l’affermar che fa credere altrui. + + Ed elli a me: «Tu lasci tal vestigio, + per quel ch’i’ odo, in me, e tanto chiaro, + che Letè nol può tòrre né far bigio. + + Ma se le tue parole or ver giuraro, + dimmi che è cagion per che dimostri + nel dire e nel guardar d’avermi caro». + + E io a lui: «Li dolci detti vostri, + che, quanto durerà l’uso moderno, + faranno cari ancora i loro incostri». + + «O frate», disse, «questi ch’io ti cerno + col dito», e additò un spirto innanzi, + «fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno. + + Versi d’amore e prose di romanzi + soverchiò tutti; e lascia dir li stolti + che quel di Lemosì credon ch’avanzi. + + A voce più ch’al ver drizzan li volti, + e così ferman sua oppinïone + prima ch’arte o ragion per lor s’ascolti. + + Così fer molti antichi di Guittone, + di grido in grido pur lui dando pregio, + fin che l’ha vinto il ver con più persone. + + Or se tu hai sì ampio privilegio, + che licito ti sia l’andare al chiostro + nel quale è Cristo abate del collegio, + + falli per me un dir d’un paternostro, + quanto bisogna a noi di questo mondo, + dove poter peccar non è più nostro». + + Poi, forse per dar luogo altrui secondo + che presso avea, disparve per lo foco, + come per l’acqua il pesce andando al fondo. + + Io mi fei al mostrato innanzi un poco, + e dissi ch’al suo nome il mio disire + apparecchiava grazïoso loco. + + El cominciò liberamente a dire: + «Tan m’abellis vostre cortes deman, + qu’ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire. + + Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan; + consiros vei la passada folor, + e vei jausen lo joi qu’esper, denan. + + Ara vos prec, per aquella valor + que vos guida al som de l’escalina, + sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor!». + + Poi s’ascose nel foco che li affina. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXVII + + + Sì come quando i primi raggi vibra + là dove il suo fattor lo sangue sparse, + cadendo Ibero sotto l’alta Libra, + + e l’onde in Gange da nona rïarse, + sì stava il sole; onde ’l giorno sen giva, + come l’angel di Dio lieto ci apparse. + + Fuor de la fiamma stava in su la riva, + e cantava ‘Beati mundo corde!’ + in voce assai più che la nostra viva. + + Poscia «Più non si va, se pria non morde, + anime sante, il foco: intrate in esso, + e al cantar di là non siate sorde», + + ci disse come noi li fummo presso; + per ch’io divenni tal, quando lo ’ntesi, + qual è colui che ne la fossa è messo. + + In su le man commesse mi protesi, + guardando il foco e imaginando forte + umani corpi già veduti accesi. + + Volsersi verso me le buone scorte; + e Virgilio mi disse: «Figliuol mio, + qui può esser tormento, ma non morte. + + Ricorditi, ricorditi! E se io + sovresso Gerïon ti guidai salvo, + che farò ora presso più a Dio? + + Credi per certo che se dentro a l’alvo + di questa fiamma stessi ben mille anni, + non ti potrebbe far d’un capel calvo. + + E se tu forse credi ch’io t’inganni, + fatti ver’ lei, e fatti far credenza + con le tue mani al lembo d’i tuoi panni. + + Pon giù omai, pon giù ogne temenza; + volgiti in qua e vieni: entra sicuro!». + E io pur fermo e contra coscïenza. + + Quando mi vide star pur fermo e duro, + turbato un poco disse: «Or vedi, figlio: + tra Bëatrice e te è questo muro». + + Come al nome di Tisbe aperse il ciglio + Piramo in su la morte, e riguardolla, + allor che ’l gelso diventò vermiglio; + + così, la mia durezza fatta solla, + mi volsi al savio duca, udendo il nome + che ne la mente sempre mi rampolla. + + Ond’ ei crollò la fronte e disse: «Come! + volenci star di qua?»; indi sorrise + come al fanciul si fa ch’è vinto al pome. + + Poi dentro al foco innanzi mi si mise, + pregando Stazio che venisse retro, + che pria per lunga strada ci divise. + + Sì com’ fui dentro, in un bogliente vetro + gittato mi sarei per rinfrescarmi, + tant’ era ivi lo ’ncendio sanza metro. + + Lo dolce padre mio, per confortarmi, + pur di Beatrice ragionando andava, + dicendo: «Li occhi suoi già veder parmi». + + Guidavaci una voce che cantava + di là; e noi, attenti pur a lei, + venimmo fuor là ove si montava. + + ‘Venite, benedicti Patris mei’, + sonò dentro a un lume che lì era, + tal che mi vinse e guardar nol potei. + + «Lo sol sen va», soggiunse, «e vien la sera; + non v’arrestate, ma studiate il passo, + mentre che l’occidente non si annera». + + Dritta salia la via per entro ’l sasso + verso tal parte ch’io toglieva i raggi + dinanzi a me del sol ch’era già basso. + + E di pochi scaglion levammo i saggi, + che ’l sol corcar, per l’ombra che si spense, + sentimmo dietro e io e li miei saggi. + + E pria che ’n tutte le sue parti immense + fosse orizzonte fatto d’uno aspetto, + e notte avesse tutte sue dispense, + + ciascun di noi d’un grado fece letto; + ché la natura del monte ci affranse + la possa del salir più e ’l diletto. + + Quali si stanno ruminando manse + le capre, state rapide e proterve + sovra le cime avante che sien pranse, + + tacite a l’ombra, mentre che ’l sol ferve, + guardate dal pastor, che ’n su la verga + poggiato s’è e lor di posa serve; + + e quale il mandrïan che fori alberga, + lungo il pecuglio suo queto pernotta, + guardando perché fiera non lo sperga; + + tali eravamo tutti e tre allotta, + io come capra, ed ei come pastori, + fasciati quinci e quindi d’alta grotta. + + Poco parer potea lì del di fori; + ma, per quel poco, vedea io le stelle + di lor solere e più chiare e maggiori. + + Sì ruminando e sì mirando in quelle, + mi prese il sonno; il sonno che sovente, + anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle. + + Ne l’ora, credo, che de l’orïente + prima raggiò nel monte Citerea, + che di foco d’amor par sempre ardente, + + giovane e bella in sogno mi parea + donna vedere andar per una landa + cogliendo fiori; e cantando dicea: + + «Sappia qualunque il mio nome dimanda + ch’i’ mi son Lia, e vo movendo intorno + le belle mani a farmi una ghirlanda. + + Per piacermi a lo specchio, qui m’addorno; + ma mia suora Rachel mai non si smaga + dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto giorno. + + Ell’ è d’i suoi belli occhi veder vaga + com’ io de l’addornarmi con le mani; + lei lo vedere, e me l’ovrare appaga». + + E già per li splendori antelucani, + che tanto a’ pellegrin surgon più grati, + quanto, tornando, albergan men lontani, + + le tenebre fuggian da tutti lati, + e ’l sonno mio con esse; ond’ io leva’mi, + veggendo i gran maestri già levati. + + «Quel dolce pome che per tanti rami + cercando va la cura de’ mortali, + oggi porrà in pace le tue fami». + + Virgilio inverso me queste cotali + parole usò; e mai non furo strenne + che fosser di piacere a queste iguali. + + Tanto voler sopra voler mi venne + de l’esser sù, ch’ad ogne passo poi + al volo mi sentia crescer le penne. + + Come la scala tutta sotto noi + fu corsa e fummo in su ’l grado superno, + in me ficcò Virgilio li occhi suoi, + + e disse: «Il temporal foco e l’etterno + veduto hai, figlio; e se’ venuto in parte + dov’ io per me più oltre non discerno. + + Tratto t’ho qui con ingegno e con arte; + lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce; + fuor se’ de l’erte vie, fuor se’ de l’arte. + + Vedi lo sol che ’n fronte ti riluce; + vedi l’erbette, i fiori e li arbuscelli + che qui la terra sol da sé produce. + + Mentre che vegnan lieti li occhi belli + che, lagrimando, a te venir mi fenno, + seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli. + + Non aspettar mio dir più né mio cenno; + libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio, + e fallo fora non fare a suo senno: + + per ch’io te sovra te corono e mitrio». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXVIII + + + Vago già di cercar dentro e dintorno + la divina foresta spessa e viva, + ch’a li occhi temperava il novo giorno, + + sanza più aspettar, lasciai la riva, + prendendo la campagna lento lento + su per lo suol che d’ogne parte auliva. + + Un’aura dolce, sanza mutamento + avere in sé, mi feria per la fronte + non di più colpo che soave vento; + + per cui le fronde, tremolando, pronte + tutte quante piegavano a la parte + u’ la prim’ ombra gitta il santo monte; + + non però dal loro esser dritto sparte + tanto, che li augelletti per le cime + lasciasser d’operare ogne lor arte; + + ma con piena letizia l’ore prime, + cantando, ricevieno intra le foglie, + che tenevan bordone a le sue rime, + + tal qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie + per la pineta in su ’l lito di Chiassi, + quand’ Ëolo scilocco fuor discioglie. + + Già m’avean trasportato i lenti passi + dentro a la selva antica tanto, ch’io + non potea rivedere ond’ io mi ’ntrassi; + + ed ecco più andar mi tolse un rio, + che ’nver’ sinistra con sue picciole onde + piegava l’erba che ’n sua ripa uscìo. + + Tutte l’acque che son di qua più monde, + parrieno avere in sé mistura alcuna + verso di quella, che nulla nasconde, + + avvegna che si mova bruna bruna + sotto l’ombra perpetüa, che mai + raggiar non lascia sole ivi né luna. + + Coi piè ristetti e con li occhi passai + di là dal fiumicello, per mirare + la gran varïazion d’i freschi mai; + + e là m’apparve, sì com’ elli appare + subitamente cosa che disvia + per maraviglia tutto altro pensare, + + una donna soletta che si gia + e cantando e scegliendo fior da fiore + ond’ era pinta tutta la sua via. + + «Deh, bella donna, che a’ raggi d’amore + ti scaldi, s’i’ vo’ credere a’ sembianti + che soglion esser testimon del core, + + vegnati in voglia di trarreti avanti», + diss’ io a lei, «verso questa rivera, + tanto ch’io possa intender che tu canti. + + Tu mi fai rimembrar dove e qual era + Proserpina nel tempo che perdette + la madre lei, ed ella primavera». + + Come si volge, con le piante strette + a terra e intra sé, donna che balli, + e piede innanzi piede a pena mette, + + volsesi in su i vermigli e in su i gialli + fioretti verso me, non altrimenti + che vergine che li occhi onesti avvalli; + + e fece i prieghi miei esser contenti, + sì appressando sé, che ’l dolce suono + veniva a me co’ suoi intendimenti. + + Tosto che fu là dove l’erbe sono + bagnate già da l’onde del bel fiume, + di levar li occhi suoi mi fece dono. + + Non credo che splendesse tanto lume + sotto le ciglia a Venere, trafitta + dal figlio fuor di tutto suo costume. + + Ella ridea da l’altra riva dritta, + trattando più color con le sue mani, + che l’alta terra sanza seme gitta. + + Tre passi ci facea il fiume lontani; + ma Elesponto, là ’ve passò Serse, + ancora freno a tutti orgogli umani, + + più odio da Leandro non sofferse + per mareggiare intra Sesto e Abido, + che quel da me perch’ allor non s’aperse. + + «Voi siete nuovi, e forse perch’ io rido», + cominciò ella, «in questo luogo eletto + a l’umana natura per suo nido, + + maravigliando tienvi alcun sospetto; + ma luce rende il salmo Delectasti, + che puote disnebbiar vostro intelletto. + + E tu che se’ dinanzi e mi pregasti, + dì s’altro vuoli udir; ch’i’ venni presta + ad ogne tua question tanto che basti». + + «L’acqua», diss’ io, «e ’l suon de la foresta + impugnan dentro a me novella fede + di cosa ch’io udi’ contraria a questa». + + Ond’ ella: «Io dicerò come procede + per sua cagion ciò ch’ammirar ti face, + e purgherò la nebbia che ti fiede. + + Lo sommo Ben, che solo esso a sé piace, + fé l’uom buono e a bene, e questo loco + diede per arr’ a lui d’etterna pace. + + Per sua difalta qui dimorò poco; + per sua difalta in pianto e in affanno + cambiò onesto riso e dolce gioco. + + Perché ’l turbar che sotto da sé fanno + l’essalazion de l’acqua e de la terra, + che quanto posson dietro al calor vanno, + + a l’uomo non facesse alcuna guerra, + questo monte salìo verso ’l ciel tanto, + e libero n’è d’indi ove si serra. + + Or perché in circuito tutto quanto + l’aere si volge con la prima volta, + se non li è rotto il cerchio d’alcun canto, + + in questa altezza ch’è tutta disciolta + ne l’aere vivo, tal moto percuote, + e fa sonar la selva perch’ è folta; + + e la percossa pianta tanto puote, + che de la sua virtute l’aura impregna + e quella poi, girando, intorno scuote; + + e l’altra terra, secondo ch’è degna + per sé e per suo ciel, concepe e figlia + di diverse virtù diverse legna. + + Non parrebbe di là poi maraviglia, + udito questo, quando alcuna pianta + sanza seme palese vi s’appiglia. + + E saper dei che la campagna santa + dove tu se’, d’ogne semenza è piena, + e frutto ha in sé che di là non si schianta. + + L’acqua che vedi non surge di vena + che ristori vapor che gel converta, + come fiume ch’acquista e perde lena; + + ma esce di fontana salda e certa, + che tanto dal voler di Dio riprende, + quant’ ella versa da due parti aperta. + + Da questa parte con virtù discende + che toglie altrui memoria del peccato; + da l’altra d’ogne ben fatto la rende. + + Quinci Letè; così da l’altro lato + Eünoè si chiama, e non adopra + se quinci e quindi pria non è gustato: + + a tutti altri sapori esto è di sopra. + E avvegna ch’assai possa esser sazia + la sete tua perch’ io più non ti scuopra, + + darotti un corollario ancor per grazia; + né credo che ’l mio dir ti sia men caro, + se oltre promession teco si spazia. + + Quelli ch’anticamente poetaro + l’età de l’oro e suo stato felice, + forse in Parnaso esto loco sognaro. + + Qui fu innocente l’umana radice; + qui primavera sempre e ogne frutto; + nettare è questo di che ciascun dice». + + Io mi rivolsi ’n dietro allora tutto + a’ miei poeti, e vidi che con riso + udito avëan l’ultimo costrutto; + + poi a la bella donna torna’ il viso. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXIX + + + Cantando come donna innamorata, + continüò col fin di sue parole: + ‘Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata!’. + + E come ninfe che si givan sole + per le salvatiche ombre, disïando + qual di veder, qual di fuggir lo sole, + + allor si mosse contra ’l fiume, andando + su per la riva; e io pari di lei, + picciol passo con picciol seguitando. + + Non eran cento tra ’ suoi passi e ’ miei, + quando le ripe igualmente dier volta, + per modo ch’a levante mi rendei. + + Né ancor fu così nostra via molta, + quando la donna tutta a me si torse, + dicendo: «Frate mio, guarda e ascolta». + + Ed ecco un lustro sùbito trascorse + da tutte parti per la gran foresta, + tal che di balenar mi mise in forse. + + Ma perché ’l balenar, come vien, resta, + e quel, durando, più e più splendeva, + nel mio pensier dicea: ‘Che cosa è questa?’. + + E una melodia dolce correva + per l’aere luminoso; onde buon zelo + mi fé riprender l’ardimento d’Eva, + + che là dove ubidia la terra e ’l cielo, + femmina, sola e pur testé formata, + non sofferse di star sotto alcun velo; + + sotto ’l qual se divota fosse stata, + avrei quelle ineffabili delizie + sentite prima e più lunga fïata. + + Mentr’ io m’andava tra tante primizie + de l’etterno piacer tutto sospeso, + e disïoso ancora a più letizie, + + dinanzi a noi, tal quale un foco acceso, + ci si fé l’aere sotto i verdi rami; + e ’l dolce suon per canti era già inteso. + + O sacrosante Vergini, se fami, + freddi o vigilie mai per voi soffersi, + cagion mi sprona ch’io mercé vi chiami. + + Or convien che Elicona per me versi, + e Uranìe m’aiuti col suo coro + forti cose a pensar mettere in versi. + + Poco più oltre, sette alberi d’oro + falsava nel parere il lungo tratto + del mezzo ch’era ancor tra noi e loro; + + ma quand’ i’ fui sì presso di lor fatto, + che l’obietto comun, che ’l senso inganna, + non perdea per distanza alcun suo atto, + + la virtù ch’a ragion discorso ammanna, + sì com’ elli eran candelabri apprese, + e ne le voci del cantare ‘Osanna’. + + Di sopra fiammeggiava il bello arnese + più chiaro assai che luna per sereno + di mezza notte nel suo mezzo mese. + + Io mi rivolsi d’ammirazion pieno + al buon Virgilio, ed esso mi rispuose + con vista carca di stupor non meno. + + Indi rendei l’aspetto a l’alte cose + che si movieno incontr’ a noi sì tardi, + che foran vinte da novelle spose. + + La donna mi sgridò: «Perché pur ardi + sì ne l’affetto de le vive luci, + e ciò che vien di retro a lor non guardi?». + + Genti vid’ io allor, come a lor duci, + venire appresso, vestite di bianco; + e tal candor di qua già mai non fuci. + + L’acqua imprendëa dal sinistro fianco, + e rendea me la mia sinistra costa, + s’io riguardava in lei, come specchio anco. + + Quand’ io da la mia riva ebbi tal posta, + che solo il fiume mi facea distante, + per veder meglio ai passi diedi sosta, + + e vidi le fiammelle andar davante, + lasciando dietro a sé l’aere dipinto, + e di tratti pennelli avean sembiante; + + sì che lì sopra rimanea distinto + di sette liste, tutte in quei colori + onde fa l’arco il Sole e Delia il cinto. + + Questi ostendali in dietro eran maggiori + che la mia vista; e, quanto a mio avviso, + diece passi distavan quei di fori. + + Sotto così bel ciel com’ io diviso, + ventiquattro seniori, a due a due, + coronati venien di fiordaliso. + + Tutti cantavan: «Benedicta tue + ne le figlie d’Adamo, e benedette + sieno in etterno le bellezze tue!». + + Poscia che i fiori e l’altre fresche erbette + a rimpetto di me da l’altra sponda + libere fuor da quelle genti elette, + + sì come luce luce in ciel seconda, + vennero appresso lor quattro animali, + coronati ciascun di verde fronda. + + Ognuno era pennuto di sei ali; + le penne piene d’occhi; e li occhi d’Argo, + se fosser vivi, sarebber cotali. + + A descriver lor forme più non spargo + rime, lettor; ch’altra spesa mi strigne, + tanto ch’a questa non posso esser largo; + + ma leggi Ezechïel, che li dipigne + come li vide da la fredda parte + venir con vento e con nube e con igne; + + e quali i troverai ne le sue carte, + tali eran quivi, salvo ch’a le penne + Giovanni è meco e da lui si diparte. + + Lo spazio dentro a lor quattro contenne + un carro, in su due rote, trïunfale, + ch’al collo d’un grifon tirato venne. + + Esso tendeva in sù l’una e l’altra ale + tra la mezzana e le tre e tre liste, + sì ch’a nulla, fendendo, facea male. + + Tanto salivan che non eran viste; + le membra d’oro avea quant’ era uccello, + e bianche l’altre, di vermiglio miste. + + Non che Roma di carro così bello + rallegrasse Affricano, o vero Augusto, + ma quel del Sol saria pover con ello; + + quel del Sol che, svïando, fu combusto + per l’orazion de la Terra devota, + quando fu Giove arcanamente giusto. + + Tre donne in giro da la destra rota + venian danzando; l’una tanto rossa + ch’a pena fora dentro al foco nota; + + l’altr’ era come se le carni e l’ossa + fossero state di smeraldo fatte; + la terza parea neve testé mossa; + + e or parëan da la bianca tratte, + or da la rossa; e dal canto di questa + l’altre toglien l’andare e tarde e ratte. + + Da la sinistra quattro facean festa, + in porpore vestite, dietro al modo + d’una di lor ch’avea tre occhi in testa. + + Appresso tutto il pertrattato nodo + vidi due vecchi in abito dispari, + ma pari in atto e onesto e sodo. + + L’un si mostrava alcun de’ famigliari + di quel sommo Ipocràte che natura + a li animali fé ch’ell’ ha più cari; + + mostrava l’altro la contraria cura + con una spada lucida e aguta, + tal che di qua dal rio mi fé paura. + + Poi vidi quattro in umile paruta; + e di retro da tutti un vecchio solo + venir, dormendo, con la faccia arguta. + + E questi sette col primaio stuolo + erano abitüati, ma di gigli + dintorno al capo non facëan brolo, + + anzi di rose e d’altri fior vermigli; + giurato avria poco lontano aspetto + che tutti ardesser di sopra da’ cigli. + + E quando il carro a me fu a rimpetto, + un tuon s’udì, e quelle genti degne + parvero aver l’andar più interdetto, + + fermandosi ivi con le prime insegne. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXX + + + Quando il settentrïon del primo cielo, + che né occaso mai seppe né orto + né d’altra nebbia che di colpa velo, + + e che faceva lì ciascun accorto + di suo dover, come ’l più basso face + qual temon gira per venire a porto, + + fermo s’affisse: la gente verace, + venuta prima tra ’l grifone ed esso, + al carro volse sé come a sua pace; + + e un di loro, quasi da ciel messo, + ‘Veni, sponsa, de Libano’ cantando + gridò tre volte, e tutti li altri appresso. + + Quali i beati al novissimo bando + surgeran presti ognun di sua caverna, + la revestita voce alleluiando, + + cotali in su la divina basterna + si levar cento, ad vocem tanti senis, + ministri e messaggier di vita etterna. + + Tutti dicean: ‘Benedictus qui venis!’, + e fior gittando e di sopra e dintorno, + ‘Manibus, oh, date lilïa plenis!’. + + Io vidi già nel cominciar del giorno + la parte orïental tutta rosata, + e l’altro ciel di bel sereno addorno; + + e la faccia del sol nascere ombrata, + sì che per temperanza di vapori + l’occhio la sostenea lunga fïata: + + così dentro una nuvola di fiori + che da le mani angeliche saliva + e ricadeva in giù dentro e di fori, + + sovra candido vel cinta d’uliva + donna m’apparve, sotto verde manto + vestita di color di fiamma viva. + + E lo spirito mio, che già cotanto + tempo era stato ch’a la sua presenza + non era di stupor, tremando, affranto, + + sanza de li occhi aver più conoscenza, + per occulta virtù che da lei mosse, + d’antico amor sentì la gran potenza. + + Tosto che ne la vista mi percosse + l’alta virtù che già m’avea trafitto + prima ch’io fuor di püerizia fosse, + + volsimi a la sinistra col respitto + col quale il fantolin corre a la mamma + quando ha paura o quando elli è afflitto, + + per dicere a Virgilio: ‘Men che dramma + di sangue m’è rimaso che non tremi: + conosco i segni de l’antica fiamma’. + + Ma Virgilio n’avea lasciati scemi + di sé, Virgilio dolcissimo patre, + Virgilio a cui per mia salute die’mi; + + né quantunque perdeo l’antica matre, + valse a le guance nette di rugiada, + che, lagrimando, non tornasser atre. + + «Dante, perché Virgilio se ne vada, + non pianger anco, non piangere ancora; + ché pianger ti conven per altra spada». + + Quasi ammiraglio che in poppa e in prora + viene a veder la gente che ministra + per li altri legni, e a ben far l’incora; + + in su la sponda del carro sinistra, + quando mi volsi al suon del nome mio, + che di necessità qui si registra, + + vidi la donna che pria m’appario + velata sotto l’angelica festa, + drizzar li occhi ver’ me di qua dal rio. + + Tutto che ’l vel che le scendea di testa, + cerchiato de le fronde di Minerva, + non la lasciasse parer manifesta, + + regalmente ne l’atto ancor proterva + continüò come colui che dice + e ’l più caldo parlar dietro reserva: + + «Guardaci ben! Ben son, ben son Beatrice. + Come degnasti d’accedere al monte? + non sapei tu che qui è l’uom felice?». + + Li occhi mi cadder giù nel chiaro fonte; + ma veggendomi in esso, i trassi a l’erba, + tanta vergogna mi gravò la fronte. + + Così la madre al figlio par superba, + com’ ella parve a me; perché d’amaro + sente il sapor de la pietade acerba. + + Ella si tacque; e li angeli cantaro + di sùbito ‘In te, Domine, speravi’; + ma oltre ‘pedes meos’ non passaro. + + Sì come neve tra le vive travi + per lo dosso d’Italia si congela, + soffiata e stretta da li venti schiavi, + + poi, liquefatta, in sé stessa trapela, + pur che la terra che perde ombra spiri, + sì che par foco fonder la candela; + + così fui sanza lagrime e sospiri + anzi ’l cantar di quei che notan sempre + dietro a le note de li etterni giri; + + ma poi che ’ntesi ne le dolci tempre + lor compatire a me, par che se detto + avesser: ‘Donna, perché sì lo stempre?’, + + lo gel che m’era intorno al cor ristretto, + spirito e acqua fessi, e con angoscia + de la bocca e de li occhi uscì del petto. + + Ella, pur ferma in su la detta coscia + del carro stando, a le sustanze pie + volse le sue parole così poscia: + + «Voi vigilate ne l’etterno die, + sì che notte né sonno a voi non fura + passo che faccia il secol per sue vie; + + onde la mia risposta è con più cura + che m’intenda colui che di là piagne, + perché sia colpa e duol d’una misura. + + Non pur per ovra de le rote magne, + che drizzan ciascun seme ad alcun fine + secondo che le stelle son compagne, + + ma per larghezza di grazie divine, + che sì alti vapori hanno a lor piova, + che nostre viste là non van vicine, + + questi fu tal ne la sua vita nova + virtüalmente, ch’ogne abito destro + fatto averebbe in lui mirabil prova. + + Ma tanto più maligno e più silvestro + si fa ’l terren col mal seme e non cólto, + quant’ elli ha più di buon vigor terrestro. + + Alcun tempo il sostenni col mio volto: + mostrando li occhi giovanetti a lui, + meco il menava in dritta parte vòlto. + + Sì tosto come in su la soglia fui + di mia seconda etade e mutai vita, + questi si tolse a me, e diessi altrui. + + Quando di carne a spirto era salita, + e bellezza e virtù cresciuta m’era, + fu’ io a lui men cara e men gradita; + + e volse i passi suoi per via non vera, + imagini di ben seguendo false, + che nulla promession rendono intera. + + Né l’impetrare ispirazion mi valse, + con le quali e in sogno e altrimenti + lo rivocai: sì poco a lui ne calse! + + Tanto giù cadde, che tutti argomenti + a la salute sua eran già corti, + fuor che mostrarli le perdute genti. + + Per questo visitai l’uscio d’i morti, + e a colui che l’ha qua sù condotto, + li prieghi miei, piangendo, furon porti. + + Alto fato di Dio sarebbe rotto, + se Letè si passasse e tal vivanda + fosse gustata sanza alcuno scotto + + di pentimento che lagrime spanda». + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXXI + + + «O tu che se’ di là dal fiume sacro», + volgendo suo parlare a me per punta, + che pur per taglio m’era paruto acro, + + ricominciò, seguendo sanza cunta, + «dì, dì se questo è vero: a tanta accusa + tua confession conviene esser congiunta». + + Era la mia virtù tanto confusa, + che la voce si mosse, e pria si spense + che da li organi suoi fosse dischiusa. + + Poco sofferse; poi disse: «Che pense? + Rispondi a me; ché le memorie triste + in te non sono ancor da l’acqua offense». + + Confusione e paura insieme miste + mi pinsero un tal «sì» fuor de la bocca, + al quale intender fuor mestier le viste. + + Come balestro frange, quando scocca + da troppa tesa, la sua corda e l’arco, + e con men foga l’asta il segno tocca, + + sì scoppia’ io sottesso grave carco, + fuori sgorgando lagrime e sospiri, + e la voce allentò per lo suo varco. + + Ond’ ella a me: «Per entro i mie’ disiri, + che ti menavano ad amar lo bene + di là dal qual non è a che s’aspiri, + + quai fossi attraversati o quai catene + trovasti, per che del passare innanzi + dovessiti così spogliar la spene? + + E quali agevolezze o quali avanzi + ne la fronte de li altri si mostraro, + per che dovessi lor passeggiare anzi?». + + Dopo la tratta d’un sospiro amaro, + a pena ebbi la voce che rispuose, + e le labbra a fatica la formaro. + + Piangendo dissi: «Le presenti cose + col falso lor piacer volser miei passi, + tosto che ’l vostro viso si nascose». + + Ed ella: «Se tacessi o se negassi + ciò che confessi, non fora men nota + la colpa tua: da tal giudice sassi! + + Ma quando scoppia de la propria gota + l’accusa del peccato, in nostra corte + rivolge sé contra ’l taglio la rota. + + Tuttavia, perché mo vergogna porte + del tuo errore, e perché altra volta, + udendo le serene, sie più forte, + + pon giù il seme del piangere e ascolta: + sì udirai come in contraria parte + mover dovieti mia carne sepolta. + + Mai non t’appresentò natura o arte + piacer, quanto le belle membra in ch’io + rinchiusa fui, e che so’ ’n terra sparte; + + e se ’l sommo piacer sì ti fallio + per la mia morte, qual cosa mortale + dovea poi trarre te nel suo disio? + + Ben ti dovevi, per lo primo strale + de le cose fallaci, levar suso + di retro a me che non era più tale. + + Non ti dovea gravar le penne in giuso, + ad aspettar più colpo, o pargoletta + o altra novità con sì breve uso. + + Novo augelletto due o tre aspetta; + ma dinanzi da li occhi d’i pennuti + rete si spiega indarno o si saetta». + + Quali fanciulli, vergognando, muti + con li occhi a terra stannosi, ascoltando + e sé riconoscendo e ripentuti, + + tal mi stav’ io; ed ella disse: «Quando + per udir se’ dolente, alza la barba, + e prenderai più doglia riguardando». + + Con men di resistenza si dibarba + robusto cerro, o vero al nostral vento + o vero a quel de la terra di Iarba, + + ch’io non levai al suo comando il mento; + e quando per la barba il viso chiese, + ben conobbi il velen de l’argomento. + + E come la mia faccia si distese, + posarsi quelle prime creature + da loro aspersïon l’occhio comprese; + + e le mie luci, ancor poco sicure, + vider Beatrice volta in su la fiera + ch’è sola una persona in due nature. + + Sotto ’l suo velo e oltre la rivera + vincer pariemi più sé stessa antica, + vincer che l’altre qui, quand’ ella c’era. + + Di penter sì mi punse ivi l’ortica, + che di tutte altre cose qual mi torse + più nel suo amor, più mi si fé nemica. + + Tanta riconoscenza il cor mi morse, + ch’io caddi vinto; e quale allora femmi, + salsi colei che la cagion mi porse. + + Poi, quando il cor virtù di fuor rendemmi, + la donna ch’io avea trovata sola + sopra me vidi, e dicea: «Tiemmi, tiemmi!». + + Tratto m’avea nel fiume infin la gola, + e tirandosi me dietro sen giva + sovresso l’acqua lieve come scola. + + Quando fui presso a la beata riva, + ‘Asperges me’ sì dolcemente udissi, + che nol so rimembrar, non ch’io lo scriva. + + La bella donna ne le braccia aprissi; + abbracciommi la testa e mi sommerse + ove convenne ch’io l’acqua inghiottissi. + + Indi mi tolse, e bagnato m’offerse + dentro a la danza de le quattro belle; + e ciascuna del braccio mi coperse. + + «Noi siam qui ninfe e nel ciel siamo stelle; + pria che Beatrice discendesse al mondo, + fummo ordinate a lei per sue ancelle. + + Merrenti a li occhi suoi; ma nel giocondo + lume ch’è dentro aguzzeranno i tuoi + le tre di là, che miran più profondo». + + Così cantando cominciaro; e poi + al petto del grifon seco menarmi, + ove Beatrice stava volta a noi. + + Disser: «Fa che le viste non risparmi; + posto t’avem dinanzi a li smeraldi + ond’ Amor già ti trasse le sue armi». + + Mille disiri più che fiamma caldi + strinsermi li occhi a li occhi rilucenti, + che pur sopra ’l grifone stavan saldi. + + Come in lo specchio il sol, non altrimenti + la doppia fiera dentro vi raggiava, + or con altri, or con altri reggimenti. + + Pensa, lettor, s’io mi maravigliava, + quando vedea la cosa in sé star queta, + e ne l’idolo suo si trasmutava. + + Mentre che piena di stupore e lieta + l’anima mia gustava di quel cibo + che, saziando di sé, di sé asseta, + + sé dimostrando di più alto tribo + ne li atti, l’altre tre si fero avanti, + danzando al loro angelico caribo. + + «Volgi, Beatrice, volgi li occhi santi», + era la sua canzone, «al tuo fedele + che, per vederti, ha mossi passi tanti! + + Per grazia fa noi grazia che disvele + a lui la bocca tua, sì che discerna + la seconda bellezza che tu cele». + + O isplendor di viva luce etterna, + chi palido si fece sotto l’ombra + sì di Parnaso, o bevve in sua cisterna, + + che non paresse aver la mente ingombra, + tentando a render te qual tu paresti + là dove armonizzando il ciel t’adombra, + + quando ne l’aere aperto ti solvesti? + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXXII + + + Tant’ eran li occhi miei fissi e attenti + a disbramarsi la decenne sete, + che li altri sensi m’eran tutti spenti. + + Ed essi quinci e quindi avien parete + di non caler—così lo santo riso + a sé traéli con l’antica rete!—; + + quando per forza mi fu vòlto il viso + ver’ la sinistra mia da quelle dee, + perch’ io udi’ da loro un «Troppo fiso!»; + + e la disposizion ch’a veder èe + ne li occhi pur testé dal sol percossi, + sanza la vista alquanto esser mi fée. + + Ma poi ch’al poco il viso riformossi + (e dico ‘al poco’ per rispetto al molto + sensibile onde a forza mi rimossi), + + vidi ’n sul braccio destro esser rivolto + lo glorïoso essercito, e tornarsi + col sole e con le sette fiamme al volto. + + Come sotto li scudi per salvarsi + volgesi schiera, e sé gira col segno, + prima che possa tutta in sé mutarsi; + + quella milizia del celeste regno + che procedeva, tutta trapassonne + pria che piegasse il carro il primo legno. + + Indi a le rote si tornar le donne, + e ’l grifon mosse il benedetto carco + sì, che però nulla penna crollonne. + + La bella donna che mi trasse al varco + e Stazio e io seguitavam la rota + che fé l’orbita sua con minore arco. + + Sì passeggiando l’alta selva vòta, + colpa di quella ch’al serpente crese, + temprava i passi un’angelica nota. + + Forse in tre voli tanto spazio prese + disfrenata saetta, quanto eramo + rimossi, quando Bëatrice scese. + + Io senti’ mormorare a tutti «Adamo»; + poi cerchiaro una pianta dispogliata + di foglie e d’altra fronda in ciascun ramo. + + La coma sua, che tanto si dilata + più quanto più è sù, fora da l’Indi + ne’ boschi lor per altezza ammirata. + + «Beato se’, grifon, che non discindi + col becco d’esto legno dolce al gusto, + poscia che mal si torce il ventre quindi». + + Così dintorno a l’albero robusto + gridaron li altri; e l’animal binato: + «Sì si conserva il seme d’ogne giusto». + + E vòlto al temo ch’elli avea tirato, + trasselo al piè de la vedova frasca, + e quel di lei a lei lasciò legato. + + Come le nostre piante, quando casca + giù la gran luce mischiata con quella + che raggia dietro a la celeste lasca, + + turgide fansi, e poi si rinovella + di suo color ciascuna, pria che ’l sole + giunga li suoi corsier sotto altra stella; + + men che di rose e più che di vïole + colore aprendo, s’innovò la pianta, + che prima avea le ramora sì sole. + + Io non lo ’ntesi, né qui non si canta + l’inno che quella gente allor cantaro, + né la nota soffersi tutta quanta. + + S’io potessi ritrar come assonnaro + li occhi spietati udendo di Siringa, + li occhi a cui pur vegghiar costò sì caro; + + come pintor che con essempro pinga, + disegnerei com’ io m’addormentai; + ma qual vuol sia che l’assonnar ben finga. + + Però trascorro a quando mi svegliai, + e dico ch’un splendor mi squarciò ’l velo + del sonno, e un chiamar: «Surgi: che fai?». + + Quali a veder de’ fioretti del melo + che del suo pome li angeli fa ghiotti + e perpetüe nozze fa nel cielo, + + Pietro e Giovanni e Iacopo condotti + e vinti, ritornaro a la parola + da la qual furon maggior sonni rotti, + + e videro scemata loro scuola + così di Moïsè come d’Elia, + e al maestro suo cangiata stola; + + tal torna’ io, e vidi quella pia + sovra me starsi che conducitrice + fu de’ miei passi lungo ’l fiume pria. + + E tutto in dubbio dissi: «Ov’ è Beatrice?». + Ond’ ella: «Vedi lei sotto la fronda + nova sedere in su la sua radice. + + Vedi la compagnia che la circonda: + li altri dopo ’l grifon sen vanno suso + con più dolce canzone e più profonda». + + E se più fu lo suo parlar diffuso, + non so, però che già ne li occhi m’era + quella ch’ad altro intender m’avea chiuso. + + Sola sedeasi in su la terra vera, + come guardia lasciata lì del plaustro + che legar vidi a la biforme fera. + + In cerchio le facevan di sé claustro + le sette ninfe, con quei lumi in mano + che son sicuri d’Aquilone e d’Austro. + + «Qui sarai tu poco tempo silvano; + e sarai meco sanza fine cive + di quella Roma onde Cristo è romano. + + Però, in pro del mondo che mal vive, + al carro tieni or li occhi, e quel che vedi, + ritornato di là, fa che tu scrive». + + Così Beatrice; e io, che tutto ai piedi + d’i suoi comandamenti era divoto, + la mente e li occhi ov’ ella volle diedi. + + Non scese mai con sì veloce moto + foco di spessa nube, quando piove + da quel confine che più va remoto, + + com’ io vidi calar l’uccel di Giove + per l’alber giù, rompendo de la scorza, + non che d’i fiori e de le foglie nove; + + e ferì ’l carro di tutta sua forza; + ond’ el piegò come nave in fortuna, + vinta da l’onda, or da poggia, or da orza. + + Poscia vidi avventarsi ne la cuna + del trïunfal veiculo una volpe + che d’ogne pasto buon parea digiuna; + + ma, riprendendo lei di laide colpe, + la donna mia la volse in tanta futa + quanto sofferser l’ossa sanza polpe. + + Poscia per indi ond’ era pria venuta, + l’aguglia vidi scender giù ne l’arca + del carro e lasciar lei di sé pennuta; + + e qual esce di cuor che si rammarca, + tal voce uscì del cielo e cotal disse: + «O navicella mia, com’ mal se’ carca!». + + Poi parve a me che la terra s’aprisse + tr’ambo le ruote, e vidi uscirne un drago + che per lo carro sù la coda fisse; + + e come vespa che ritragge l’ago, + a sé traendo la coda maligna, + trasse del fondo, e gissen vago vago. + + Quel che rimase, come da gramigna + vivace terra, da la piuma, offerta + forse con intenzion sana e benigna, + + si ricoperse, e funne ricoperta + e l’una e l’altra rota e ’l temo, in tanto + che più tiene un sospir la bocca aperta. + + Trasformato così ’l dificio santo + mise fuor teste per le parti sue, + tre sovra ’l temo e una in ciascun canto. + + Le prime eran cornute come bue, + ma le quattro un sol corno avean per fronte: + simile mostro visto ancor non fue. + + Sicura, quasi rocca in alto monte, + seder sovresso una puttana sciolta + m’apparve con le ciglia intorno pronte; + + e come perché non li fosse tolta, + vidi di costa a lei dritto un gigante; + e basciavansi insieme alcuna volta. + + Ma perché l’occhio cupido e vagante + a me rivolse, quel feroce drudo + la flagellò dal capo infin le piante; + + poi, di sospetto pieno e d’ira crudo, + disciolse il mostro, e trassel per la selva, + tanto che sol di lei mi fece scudo + + a la puttana e a la nova belva. + + + + Purgatorio • Canto XXXIII + + + ‘Deus, venerunt gentes’, alternando + or tre or quattro dolce salmodia, + le donne incominciaro, e lagrimando; + + e Bëatrice, sospirosa e pia, + quelle ascoltava sì fatta, che poco + più a la croce si cambiò Maria. + + Ma poi che l’altre vergini dier loco + a lei di dir, levata dritta in pè, + rispuose, colorata come foco: + + ‘Modicum, et non videbitis me; + et iterum, sorelle mie dilette, + modicum, et vos videbitis me’. + + Poi le si mise innanzi tutte e sette, + e dopo sé, solo accennando, mosse + me e la donna e ’l savio che ristette. + + Così sen giva; e non credo che fosse + lo decimo suo passo in terra posto, + quando con li occhi li occhi mi percosse; + + e con tranquillo aspetto «Vien più tosto», + mi disse, «tanto che, s’io parlo teco, + ad ascoltarmi tu sie ben disposto». + + Sì com’ io fui, com’ io dovëa, seco, + dissemi: «Frate, perché non t’attenti + a domandarmi omai venendo meco?». + + Come a color che troppo reverenti + dinanzi a suo maggior parlando sono, + che non traggon la voce viva ai denti, + + avvenne a me, che sanza intero suono + incominciai: «Madonna, mia bisogna + voi conoscete, e ciò ch’ad essa è buono». + + Ed ella a me: «Da tema e da vergogna + voglio che tu omai ti disviluppe, + sì che non parli più com’ om che sogna. + + Sappi che ’l vaso che ’l serpente ruppe, + fu e non è; ma chi n’ha colpa, creda + che vendetta di Dio non teme suppe. + + Non sarà tutto tempo sanza reda + l’aguglia che lasciò le penne al carro, + per che divenne mostro e poscia preda; + + ch’io veggio certamente, e però il narro, + a darne tempo già stelle propinque, + secure d’ogn’ intoppo e d’ogne sbarro, + + nel quale un cinquecento diece e cinque, + messo di Dio, anciderà la fuia + con quel gigante che con lei delinque. + + E forse che la mia narrazion buia, + qual Temi e Sfinge, men ti persuade, + perch’ a lor modo lo ’ntelletto attuia; + + ma tosto fier li fatti le Naiade, + che solveranno questo enigma forte + sanza danno di pecore o di biade. + + Tu nota; e sì come da me son porte, + così queste parole segna a’ vivi + del viver ch’è un correre a la morte. + + E aggi a mente, quando tu le scrivi, + di non celar qual hai vista la pianta + ch’è or due volte dirubata quivi. + + Qualunque ruba quella o quella schianta, + con bestemmia di fatto offende a Dio, + che solo a l’uso suo la creò santa. + + Per morder quella, in pena e in disio + cinquemilia anni e più l’anima prima + bramò colui che ’l morso in sé punio. + + Dorme lo ’ngegno tuo, se non estima + per singular cagione esser eccelsa + lei tanto e sì travolta ne la cima. + + E se stati non fossero acqua d’Elsa + li pensier vani intorno a la tua mente, + e ’l piacer loro un Piramo a la gelsa, + + per tante circostanze solamente + la giustizia di Dio, ne l’interdetto, + conosceresti a l’arbor moralmente. + + Ma perch’ io veggio te ne lo ’ntelletto + fatto di pietra e, impetrato, tinto, + sì che t’abbaglia il lume del mio detto, + + voglio anco, e se non scritto, almen dipinto, + che ’l te ne porti dentro a te per quello + che si reca il bordon di palma cinto». + + E io: «Sì come cera da suggello, + che la figura impressa non trasmuta, + segnato è or da voi lo mio cervello. + + Ma perché tanto sovra mia veduta + vostra parola disïata vola, + che più la perde quanto più s’aiuta?». + + «Perché conoschi», disse, «quella scuola + c’hai seguitata, e veggi sua dottrina + come può seguitar la mia parola; + + e veggi vostra via da la divina + distar cotanto, quanto si discorda + da terra il ciel che più alto festina». + + Ond’ io rispuosi lei: «Non mi ricorda + ch’i’ stranïasse me già mai da voi, + né honne coscïenza che rimorda». + + «E se tu ricordar non te ne puoi», + sorridendo rispuose, «or ti rammenta + come bevesti di Letè ancoi; + + e se dal fummo foco s’argomenta, + cotesta oblivïon chiaro conchiude + colpa ne la tua voglia altrove attenta. + + Veramente oramai saranno nude + le mie parole, quanto converrassi + quelle scovrire a la tua vista rude». + + E più corusco e con più lenti passi + teneva il sole il cerchio di merigge, + che qua e là, come li aspetti, fassi, + + quando s’affisser, sì come s’affigge + chi va dinanzi a gente per iscorta + se trova novitate o sue vestigge, + + le sette donne al fin d’un’ombra smorta, + qual sotto foglie verdi e rami nigri + sovra suoi freddi rivi l’alpe porta. + + Dinanzi ad esse Ëufratès e Tigri + veder mi parve uscir d’una fontana, + e, quasi amici, dipartirsi pigri. + + «O luce, o gloria de la gente umana, + che acqua è questa che qui si dispiega + da un principio e sé da sé lontana?». + + Per cotal priego detto mi fu: «Priega + Matelda che ’l ti dica». E qui rispuose, + come fa chi da colpa si dislega, + + la bella donna: «Questo e altre cose + dette li son per me; e son sicura + che l’acqua di Letè non gliel nascose». + + E Bëatrice: «Forse maggior cura, + che spesse volte la memoria priva, + fatt’ ha la mente sua ne li occhi oscura. + + Ma vedi Eünoè che là diriva: + menalo ad esso, e come tu se’ usa, + la tramortita sua virtù ravviva». + + Come anima gentil, che non fa scusa, + ma fa sua voglia de la voglia altrui + tosto che è per segno fuor dischiusa; + + così, poi che da essa preso fui, + la bella donna mossesi, e a Stazio + donnescamente disse: «Vien con lui». + + S’io avessi, lettor, più lungo spazio + da scrivere, i’ pur cantere’ in parte + lo dolce ber che mai non m’avria sazio; + + ma perché piene son tutte le carte + ordite a questa cantica seconda, + non mi lascia più ir lo fren de l’arte. + + Io ritornai da la santissima onda + rifatto sì come piante novelle + rinovellate di novella fronda, + + puro e disposto a salire a le stelle. + + + + + + PARADISO + + + + + Paradiso • Canto I + + + La gloria di colui che tutto move + per l’universo penetra, e risplende + in una parte più e meno altrove. + + Nel ciel che più de la sua luce prende + fu’ io, e vidi cose che ridire + né sa né può chi di là sù discende; + + perché appressando sé al suo disire, + nostro intelletto si profonda tanto, + che dietro la memoria non può ire. + + Veramente quant’ io del regno santo + ne la mia mente potei far tesoro, + sarà ora materia del mio canto. + + O buono Appollo, a l’ultimo lavoro + fammi del tuo valor sì fatto vaso, + come dimandi a dar l’amato alloro. + + Infino a qui l’un giogo di Parnaso + assai mi fu; ma or con amendue + m’è uopo intrar ne l’aringo rimaso. + + Entra nel petto mio, e spira tue + sì come quando Marsïa traesti + de la vagina de le membra sue. + + O divina virtù, se mi ti presti + tanto che l’ombra del beato regno + segnata nel mio capo io manifesti, + + vedra’mi al piè del tuo diletto legno + venire, e coronarmi de le foglie + che la materia e tu mi farai degno. + + Sì rade volte, padre, se ne coglie + per trïunfare o cesare o poeta, + colpa e vergogna de l’umane voglie, + + che parturir letizia in su la lieta + delfica deïtà dovria la fronda + peneia, quando alcun di sé asseta. + + Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda: + forse di retro a me con miglior voci + si pregherà perché Cirra risponda. + + Surge ai mortali per diverse foci + la lucerna del mondo; ma da quella + che quattro cerchi giugne con tre croci, + + con miglior corso e con migliore stella + esce congiunta, e la mondana cera + più a suo modo tempera e suggella. + + Fatto avea di là mane e di qua sera + tal foce, e quasi tutto era là bianco + quello emisperio, e l’altra parte nera, + + quando Beatrice in sul sinistro fianco + vidi rivolta e riguardar nel sole: + aguglia sì non li s’affisse unquanco. + + E sì come secondo raggio suole + uscir del primo e risalire in suso, + pur come pelegrin che tornar vuole, + + così de l’atto suo, per li occhi infuso + ne l’imagine mia, il mio si fece, + e fissi li occhi al sole oltre nostr’ uso. + + Molto è licito là, che qui non lece + a le nostre virtù, mercé del loco + fatto per proprio de l’umana spece. + + Io nol soffersi molto, né sì poco, + ch’io nol vedessi sfavillar dintorno, + com’ ferro che bogliente esce del foco; + + e di sùbito parve giorno a giorno + essere aggiunto, come quei che puote + avesse il ciel d’un altro sole addorno. + + Beatrice tutta ne l’etterne rote + fissa con li occhi stava; e io in lei + le luci fissi, di là sù rimote. + + Nel suo aspetto tal dentro mi fei, + qual si fé Glauco nel gustar de l’erba + che ’l fé consorto in mar de li altri dèi. + + Trasumanar significar per verba + non si poria; però l’essemplo basti + a cui esperïenza grazia serba. + + S’i’ era sol di me quel che creasti + novellamente, amor che ’l ciel governi, + tu ’l sai, che col tuo lume mi levasti. + + Quando la rota che tu sempiterni + desiderato, a sé mi fece atteso + con l’armonia che temperi e discerni, + + parvemi tanto allor del cielo acceso + de la fiamma del sol, che pioggia o fiume + lago non fece alcun tanto disteso. + + La novità del suono e ’l grande lume + di lor cagion m’accesero un disio + mai non sentito di cotanto acume. + + Ond’ ella, che vedea me sì com’ io, + a quïetarmi l’animo commosso, + pria ch’io a dimandar, la bocca aprio + + e cominciò: «Tu stesso ti fai grosso + col falso imaginar, sì che non vedi + ciò che vedresti se l’avessi scosso. + + Tu non se’ in terra, sì come tu credi; + ma folgore, fuggendo il proprio sito, + non corse come tu ch’ad esso riedi». + + S’io fui del primo dubbio disvestito + per le sorrise parolette brevi, + dentro ad un nuovo più fu’ inretito + + e dissi: «Già contento requïevi + di grande ammirazion; ma ora ammiro + com’ io trascenda questi corpi levi». + + Ond’ ella, appresso d’un pïo sospiro, + li occhi drizzò ver’ me con quel sembiante + che madre fa sovra figlio deliro, + + e cominciò: «Le cose tutte quante + hanno ordine tra loro, e questo è forma + che l’universo a Dio fa simigliante. + + Qui veggion l’alte creature l’orma + de l’etterno valore, il qual è fine + al quale è fatta la toccata norma. + + Ne l’ordine ch’io dico sono accline + tutte nature, per diverse sorti, + più al principio loro e men vicine; + + onde si muovono a diversi porti + per lo gran mar de l’essere, e ciascuna + con istinto a lei dato che la porti. + + Questi ne porta il foco inver’ la luna; + questi ne’ cor mortali è permotore; + questi la terra in sé stringe e aduna; + + né pur le creature che son fore + d’intelligenza quest’ arco saetta, + ma quelle c’hanno intelletto e amore. + + La provedenza, che cotanto assetta, + del suo lume fa ’l ciel sempre quïeto + nel qual si volge quel c’ha maggior fretta; + + e ora lì, come a sito decreto, + cen porta la virtù di quella corda + che ciò che scocca drizza in segno lieto. + + Vero è che, come forma non s’accorda + molte fïate a l’intenzion de l’arte, + perch’ a risponder la materia è sorda, + + così da questo corso si diparte + talor la creatura, c’ha podere + di piegar, così pinta, in altra parte; + + e sì come veder si può cadere + foco di nube, sì l’impeto primo + l’atterra torto da falso piacere. + + Non dei più ammirar, se bene stimo, + lo tuo salir, se non come d’un rivo + se d’alto monte scende giuso ad imo. + + Maraviglia sarebbe in te se, privo + d’impedimento, giù ti fossi assiso, + com’ a terra quïete in foco vivo». + + Quinci rivolse inver’ lo cielo il viso. + + + + Paradiso • Canto II + + + O voi che siete in piccioletta barca, + desiderosi d’ascoltar, seguiti + dietro al mio legno che cantando varca, + + tornate a riveder li vostri liti: + non vi mettete in pelago, ché forse, + perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti. + + L’acqua ch’io prendo già mai non si corse; + Minerva spira, e conducemi Appollo, + e nove Muse mi dimostran l’Orse. + + Voialtri pochi che drizzaste il collo + per tempo al pan de li angeli, del quale + vivesi qui ma non sen vien satollo, + + metter potete ben per l’alto sale + vostro navigio, servando mio solco + dinanzi a l’acqua che ritorna equale. + + Que’ glorïosi che passaro al Colco + non s’ammiraron come voi farete, + quando Iasón vider fatto bifolco. + + La concreata e perpetüa sete + del deïforme regno cen portava + veloci quasi come ’l ciel vedete. + + Beatrice in suso, e io in lei guardava; + e forse in tanto in quanto un quadrel posa + e vola e da la noce si dischiava, + + giunto mi vidi ove mirabil cosa + mi torse il viso a sé; e però quella + cui non potea mia cura essere ascosa, + + volta ver’ me, sì lieta come bella, + «Drizza la mente in Dio grata», mi disse, + «che n’ha congiunti con la prima stella». + + Parev’ a me che nube ne coprisse + lucida, spessa, solida e pulita, + quasi adamante che lo sol ferisse. + + Per entro sé l’etterna margarita + ne ricevette, com’ acqua recepe + raggio di luce permanendo unita. + + S’io era corpo, e qui non si concepe + com’ una dimensione altra patio, + ch’esser convien se corpo in corpo repe, + + accender ne dovria più il disio + di veder quella essenza in che si vede + come nostra natura e Dio s’unio. + + Lì si vedrà ciò che tenem per fede, + non dimostrato, ma fia per sé noto + a guisa del ver primo che l’uom crede. + + Io rispuosi: «Madonna, sì devoto + com’ esser posso più, ringrazio lui + lo qual dal mortal mondo m’ha remoto. + + Ma ditemi: che son li segni bui + di questo corpo, che là giuso in terra + fan di Cain favoleggiare altrui?». + + Ella sorrise alquanto, e poi «S’elli erra + l’oppinïon», mi disse, «d’i mortali + dove chiave di senso non diserra, + + certo non ti dovrien punger li strali + d’ammirazione omai, poi dietro ai sensi + vedi che la ragione ha corte l’ali. + + Ma dimmi quel che tu da te ne pensi». + E io: «Ciò che n’appar qua sù diverso + credo che fanno i corpi rari e densi». + + Ed ella: «Certo assai vedrai sommerso + nel falso il creder tuo, se bene ascolti + l’argomentar ch’io li farò avverso. + + La spera ottava vi dimostra molti + lumi, li quali e nel quale e nel quanto + notar si posson di diversi volti. + + Se raro e denso ciò facesser tanto, + una sola virtù sarebbe in tutti, + più e men distributa e altrettanto. + + Virtù diverse esser convegnon frutti + di princìpi formali, e quei, for ch’uno, + seguiterieno a tua ragion distrutti. + + Ancor, se raro fosse di quel bruno + cagion che tu dimandi, o d’oltre in parte + fora di sua materia sì digiuno + + esto pianeto, o, sì come comparte + lo grasso e ’l magro un corpo, così questo + nel suo volume cangerebbe carte. + + Se ’l primo fosse, fora manifesto + ne l’eclissi del sol, per trasparere + lo lume come in altro raro ingesto. + + Questo non è: però è da vedere + de l’altro; e s’elli avvien ch’io l’altro cassi, + falsificato fia lo tuo parere. + + S’elli è che questo raro non trapassi, + esser conviene un termine da onde + lo suo contrario più passar non lassi; + + e indi l’altrui raggio si rifonde + così come color torna per vetro + lo qual di retro a sé piombo nasconde. + + Or dirai tu ch’el si dimostra tetro + ivi lo raggio più che in altre parti, + per esser lì refratto più a retro. + + Da questa instanza può deliberarti + esperïenza, se già mai la provi, + ch’esser suol fonte ai rivi di vostr’ arti. + + Tre specchi prenderai; e i due rimovi + da te d’un modo, e l’altro, più rimosso, + tr’ambo li primi li occhi tuoi ritrovi. + + Rivolto ad essi, fa che dopo il dosso + ti stea un lume che i tre specchi accenda + e torni a te da tutti ripercosso. + + Ben che nel quanto tanto non si stenda + la vista più lontana, lì vedrai + come convien ch’igualmente risplenda. + + Or, come ai colpi de li caldi rai + de la neve riman nudo il suggetto + e dal colore e dal freddo primai, + + così rimaso te ne l’intelletto + voglio informar di luce sì vivace, + che ti tremolerà nel suo aspetto. + + Dentro dal ciel de la divina pace + si gira un corpo ne la cui virtute + l’esser di tutto suo contento giace. + + Lo ciel seguente, c’ha tante vedute, + quell’ esser parte per diverse essenze, + da lui distratte e da lui contenute. + + Li altri giron per varie differenze + le distinzion che dentro da sé hanno + dispongono a lor fini e lor semenze. + + Questi organi del mondo così vanno, + come tu vedi omai, di grado in grado, + che di sù prendono e di sotto fanno. + + Riguarda bene omai sì com’ io vado + per questo loco al vero che disiri, + sì che poi sappi sol tener lo guado. + + Lo moto e la virtù d’i santi giri, + come dal fabbro l’arte del martello, + da’ beati motor convien che spiri; + + e ’l ciel cui tanti lumi fanno bello, + de la mente profonda che lui volve + prende l’image e fassene suggello. + + E come l’alma dentro a vostra polve + per differenti membra e conformate + a diverse potenze si risolve, + + così l’intelligenza sua bontate + multiplicata per le stelle spiega, + girando sé sovra sua unitate. + + Virtù diversa fa diversa lega + col prezïoso corpo ch’ella avviva, + nel qual, sì come vita in voi, si lega. + + Per la natura lieta onde deriva, + la virtù mista per lo corpo luce + come letizia per pupilla viva. + + Da essa vien ciò che da luce a luce + par differente, non da denso e raro; + essa è formal principio che produce, + + conforme a sua bontà, lo turbo e ’l chiaro». + + + + Paradiso • Canto III + + + Quel sol che pria d’amor mi scaldò ’l petto, + di bella verità m’avea scoverto, + provando e riprovando, il dolce aspetto; + + e io, per confessar corretto e certo + me stesso, tanto quanto si convenne + leva’ il capo a proferer più erto; + + ma visïone apparve che ritenne + a sé me tanto stretto, per vedersi, + che di mia confession non mi sovvenne. + + Quali per vetri trasparenti e tersi, + o ver per acque nitide e tranquille, + non sì profonde che i fondi sien persi, + + tornan d’i nostri visi le postille + debili sì, che perla in bianca fronte + non vien men forte a le nostre pupille; + + tali vid’ io più facce a parlar pronte; + per ch’io dentro a l’error contrario corsi + a quel ch’accese amor tra l’omo e ’l fonte. + + Sùbito sì com’ io di lor m’accorsi, + quelle stimando specchiati sembianti, + per veder di cui fosser, li occhi torsi; + + e nulla vidi, e ritorsili avanti + dritti nel lume de la dolce guida, + che, sorridendo, ardea ne li occhi santi. + + «Non ti maravigliar perch’ io sorrida», + mi disse, «appresso il tuo püeril coto, + poi sopra ’l vero ancor lo piè non fida, + + ma te rivolve, come suole, a vòto: + vere sustanze son ciò che tu vedi, + qui rilegate per manco di voto. + + Però parla con esse e odi e credi; + ché la verace luce che le appaga + da sé non lascia lor torcer li piedi». + + E io a l’ombra che parea più vaga + di ragionar, drizza’mi, e cominciai, + quasi com’ uom cui troppa voglia smaga: + + «O ben creato spirito, che a’ rai + di vita etterna la dolcezza senti + che, non gustata, non s’intende mai, + + grazïoso mi fia se mi contenti + del nome tuo e de la vostra sorte». + Ond’ ella, pronta e con occhi ridenti: + + «La nostra carità non serra porte + a giusta voglia, se non come quella + che vuol simile a sé tutta sua corte. + + I’ fui nel mondo vergine sorella; + e se la mente tua ben sé riguarda, + non mi ti celerà l’esser più bella, + + ma riconoscerai ch’i’ son Piccarda, + che, posta qui con questi altri beati, + beata sono in la spera più tarda. + + Li nostri affetti, che solo infiammati + son nel piacer de lo Spirito Santo, + letizian del suo ordine formati. + + E questa sorte che par giù cotanto, + però n’è data, perché fuor negletti + li nostri voti, e vòti in alcun canto». + + Ond’ io a lei: «Ne’ mirabili aspetti + vostri risplende non so che divino + che vi trasmuta da’ primi concetti: + + però non fui a rimembrar festino; + ma or m’aiuta ciò che tu mi dici, + sì che raffigurar m’è più latino. + + Ma dimmi: voi che siete qui felici, + disiderate voi più alto loco + per più vedere e per più farvi amici?». + + Con quelle altr’ ombre pria sorrise un poco; + da indi mi rispuose tanto lieta, + ch’arder parea d’amor nel primo foco: + + «Frate, la nostra volontà quïeta + virtù di carità, che fa volerne + sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta. + + Se disïassimo esser più superne, + foran discordi li nostri disiri + dal voler di colui che qui ne cerne; + + che vedrai non capere in questi giri, + s’essere in carità è qui necesse, + e se la sua natura ben rimiri. + + Anzi è formale ad esto beato esse + tenersi dentro a la divina voglia, + per ch’una fansi nostre voglie stesse; + + sì che, come noi sem di soglia in soglia + per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace + com’ a lo re che ’n suo voler ne ’nvoglia. + + E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace: + ell’ è quel mare al qual tutto si move + ciò ch’ella crïa o che natura face». + + Chiaro mi fu allor come ogne dove + in cielo è paradiso, etsi la grazia + del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove. + + Ma sì com’ elli avvien, s’un cibo sazia + e d’un altro rimane ancor la gola, + che quel si chere e di quel si ringrazia, + + così fec’ io con atto e con parola, + per apprender da lei qual fu la tela + onde non trasse infino a co la spuola. + + «Perfetta vita e alto merto inciela + donna più sù», mi disse, «a la cui norma + nel vostro mondo giù si veste e vela, + + perché fino al morir si vegghi e dorma + con quello sposo ch’ogne voto accetta + che caritate a suo piacer conforma. + + Dal mondo, per seguirla, giovinetta + fuggi’mi, e nel suo abito mi chiusi + e promisi la via de la sua setta. + + Uomini poi, a mal più ch’a bene usi, + fuor mi rapiron de la dolce chiostra: + Iddio si sa qual poi mia vita fusi. + + E quest’ altro splendor che ti si mostra + da la mia destra parte e che s’accende + di tutto il lume de la spera nostra, + + ciò ch’io dico di me, di sé intende; + sorella fu, e così le fu tolta + di capo l’ombra de le sacre bende. + + Ma poi che pur al mondo fu rivolta + contra suo grado e contra buona usanza, + non fu dal vel del cor già mai disciolta. + + Quest’ è la luce de la gran Costanza + che del secondo vento di Soave + generò ’l terzo e l’ultima possanza». + + Così parlommi, e poi cominciò ‘Ave, + Maria’ cantando, e cantando vanio + come per acqua cupa cosa grave. + + La vista mia, che tanto lei seguio + quanto possibil fu, poi che la perse, + volsesi al segno di maggior disio, + + e a Beatrice tutta si converse; + ma quella folgorò nel mïo sguardo + sì che da prima il viso non sofferse; + + e ciò mi fece a dimandar più tardo. + + + + Paradiso • Canto IV + + + Intra due cibi, distanti e moventi + d’un modo, prima si morria di fame, + che liber’ omo l’un recasse ai denti; + + sì si starebbe un agno intra due brame + di fieri lupi, igualmente temendo; + sì si starebbe un cane intra due dame: + + per che, s’i’ mi tacea, me non riprendo, + da li miei dubbi d’un modo sospinto, + poi ch’era necessario, né commendo. + + Io mi tacea, ma ’l mio disir dipinto + m’era nel viso, e ’l dimandar con ello, + più caldo assai che per parlar distinto. + + Fé sì Beatrice qual fé Danïello, + Nabuccodonosor levando d’ira, + che l’avea fatto ingiustamente fello; + + e disse: «Io veggio ben come ti tira + uno e altro disio, sì che tua cura + sé stessa lega sì che fuor non spira. + + Tu argomenti: “Se ’l buon voler dura, + la vïolenza altrui per qual ragione + di meritar mi scema la misura?”. + + Ancor di dubitar ti dà cagione + parer tornarsi l’anime a le stelle, + secondo la sentenza di Platone. + + Queste son le question che nel tuo velle + pontano igualmente; e però pria + tratterò quella che più ha di felle. + + D’i Serafin colui che più s’india, + Moïsè, Samuel, e quel Giovanni + che prender vuoli, io dico, non Maria, + + non hanno in altro cielo i loro scanni + che questi spirti che mo t’appariro, + né hanno a l’esser lor più o meno anni; + + ma tutti fanno bello il primo giro, + e differentemente han dolce vita + per sentir più e men l’etterno spiro. + + Qui si mostraro, non perché sortita + sia questa spera lor, ma per far segno + de la celestïal c’ha men salita. + + Così parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno, + però che solo da sensato apprende + ciò che fa poscia d’intelletto degno. + + Per questo la Scrittura condescende + a vostra facultate, e piedi e mano + attribuisce a Dio e altro intende; + + e Santa Chiesa con aspetto umano + Gabrïel e Michel vi rappresenta, + e l’altro che Tobia rifece sano. + + Quel che Timeo de l’anime argomenta + non è simile a ciò che qui si vede, + però che, come dice, par che senta. + + Dice che l’alma a la sua stella riede, + credendo quella quindi esser decisa + quando natura per forma la diede; + + e forse sua sentenza è d’altra guisa + che la voce non suona, ed esser puote + con intenzion da non esser derisa. + + S’elli intende tornare a queste ruote + l’onor de la influenza e ’l biasmo, forse + in alcun vero suo arco percuote. + + Questo principio, male inteso, torse + già tutto il mondo quasi, sì che Giove, + Mercurio e Marte a nominar trascorse. + + L’altra dubitazion che ti commove + ha men velen, però che sua malizia + non ti poria menar da me altrove. + + Parere ingiusta la nostra giustizia + ne li occhi d’i mortali, è argomento + di fede e non d’eretica nequizia. + + Ma perché puote vostro accorgimento + ben penetrare a questa veritate, + come disiri, ti farò contento. + + Se vïolenza è quando quel che pate + nïente conferisce a quel che sforza, + non fuor quest’ alme per essa scusate: + + ché volontà, se non vuol, non s’ammorza, + ma fa come natura face in foco, + se mille volte vïolenza il torza. + + Per che, s’ella si piega assai o poco, + segue la forza; e così queste fero + possendo rifuggir nel santo loco. + + Se fosse stato lor volere intero, + come tenne Lorenzo in su la grada, + e fece Muzio a la sua man severo, + + così l’avria ripinte per la strada + ond’ eran tratte, come fuoro sciolte; + ma così salda voglia è troppo rada. + + E per queste parole, se ricolte + l’hai come dei, è l’argomento casso + che t’avria fatto noia ancor più volte. + + Ma or ti s’attraversa un altro passo + dinanzi a li occhi, tal che per te stesso + non usciresti: pria saresti lasso. + + Io t’ho per certo ne la mente messo + ch’alma beata non poria mentire, + però ch’è sempre al primo vero appresso; + + e poi potesti da Piccarda udire + che l’affezion del vel Costanza tenne; + sì ch’ella par qui meco contradire. + + Molte fïate già, frate, addivenne + che, per fuggir periglio, contra grato + si fé di quel che far non si convenne; + + come Almeone, che, di ciò pregato + dal padre suo, la propria madre spense, + per non perder pietà si fé spietato. + + A questo punto voglio che tu pense + che la forza al voler si mischia, e fanno + sì che scusar non si posson l’offense. + + Voglia assoluta non consente al danno; + ma consentevi in tanto in quanto teme, + se si ritrae, cadere in più affanno. + + Però, quando Piccarda quello spreme, + de la voglia assoluta intende, e io + de l’altra; sì che ver diciamo insieme». + + Cotal fu l’ondeggiar del santo rio + ch’uscì del fonte ond’ ogne ver deriva; + tal puose in pace uno e altro disio. + + «O amanza del primo amante, o diva», + diss’ io appresso, «il cui parlar m’inonda + e scalda sì, che più e più m’avviva, + + non è l’affezion mia tanto profonda, + che basti a render voi grazia per grazia; + ma quei che vede e puote a ciò risponda. + + Io veggio ben che già mai non si sazia + nostro intelletto, se ’l ver non lo illustra + di fuor dal qual nessun vero si spazia. + + Posasi in esso, come fera in lustra, + tosto che giunto l’ha; e giugner puollo: + se non, ciascun disio sarebbe frustra. + + Nasce per quello, a guisa di rampollo, + a piè del vero il dubbio; ed è natura + ch’al sommo pinge noi di collo in collo. + + Questo m’invita, questo m’assicura + con reverenza, donna, a dimandarvi + d’un’altra verità che m’è oscura. + + Io vo’ saper se l’uom può sodisfarvi + ai voti manchi sì con altri beni, + ch’a la vostra statera non sien parvi». + + Beatrice mi guardò con li occhi pieni + di faville d’amor così divini, + che, vinta, mia virtute diè le reni, + + e quasi mi perdei con li occhi chini. + + + + Paradiso • Canto V + + + «S’io ti fiammeggio nel caldo d’amore + di là dal modo che ’n terra si vede, + sì che del viso tuo vinco il valore, + + non ti maravigliar, ché ciò procede + da perfetto veder, che, come apprende, + così nel bene appreso move il piede. + + Io veggio ben sì come già resplende + ne l’intelletto tuo l’etterna luce, + che, vista, sola e sempre amore accende; + + e s’altra cosa vostro amor seduce, + non è se non di quella alcun vestigio, + mal conosciuto, che quivi traluce. + + Tu vuo’ saper se con altro servigio, + per manco voto, si può render tanto + che l’anima sicuri di letigio». + + Sì cominciò Beatrice questo canto; + e sì com’ uom che suo parlar non spezza, + continüò così ’l processo santo: + + «Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza + fesse creando, e a la sua bontate + più conformato, e quel ch’e’ più apprezza, + + fu de la volontà la libertate; + di che le creature intelligenti, + e tutte e sole, fuoro e son dotate. + + Or ti parrà, se tu quinci argomenti, + l’alto valor del voto, s’è sì fatto + che Dio consenta quando tu consenti; + + ché, nel fermar tra Dio e l’omo il patto, + vittima fassi di questo tesoro, + tal quale io dico; e fassi col suo atto. + + Dunque che render puossi per ristoro? + Se credi bene usar quel c’hai offerto, + di maltolletto vuo’ far buon lavoro. + + Tu se’ omai del maggior punto certo; + ma perché Santa Chiesa in ciò dispensa, + che par contra lo ver ch’i’ t’ho scoverto, + + convienti ancor sedere un poco a mensa, + però che ’l cibo rigido c’hai preso, + richiede ancora aiuto a tua dispensa. + + Apri la mente a quel ch’io ti paleso + e fermalvi entro; ché non fa scïenza, + sanza lo ritenere, avere inteso. + + Due cose si convegnono a l’essenza + di questo sacrificio: l’una è quella + di che si fa; l’altr’ è la convenenza. + + Quest’ ultima già mai non si cancella + se non servata; e intorno di lei + sì preciso di sopra si favella: + + però necessitato fu a li Ebrei + pur l’offerere, ancor ch’alcuna offerta + sì permutasse, come saver dei. + + L’altra, che per materia t’è aperta, + puote ben esser tal, che non si falla + se con altra materia si converta. + + Ma non trasmuti carco a la sua spalla + per suo arbitrio alcun, sanza la volta + e de la chiave bianca e de la gialla; + + e ogne permutanza credi stolta, + se la cosa dimessa in la sorpresa + come ’l quattro nel sei non è raccolta. + + Però qualunque cosa tanto pesa + per suo valor che tragga ogne bilancia, + sodisfar non si può con altra spesa. + + Non prendan li mortali il voto a ciancia; + siate fedeli, e a ciò far non bieci, + come Ieptè a la sua prima mancia; + + cui più si convenia dicer ‘Mal feci’, + che, servando, far peggio; e così stolto + ritrovar puoi il gran duca de’ Greci, + + onde pianse Efigènia il suo bel volto, + e fé pianger di sé i folli e i savi + ch’udir parlar di così fatto cólto. + + Siate, Cristiani, a muovervi più gravi: + non siate come penna ad ogne vento, + e non crediate ch’ogne acqua vi lavi. + + Avete il novo e ’l vecchio Testamento, + e ’l pastor de la Chiesa che vi guida; + questo vi basti a vostro salvamento. + + Se mala cupidigia altro vi grida, + uomini siate, e non pecore matte, + sì che ’l Giudeo di voi tra voi non rida! + + Non fate com’ agnel che lascia il latte + de la sua madre, e semplice e lascivo + seco medesmo a suo piacer combatte!». + + Così Beatrice a me com’ ïo scrivo; + poi si rivolse tutta disïante + a quella parte ove ’l mondo è più vivo. + + Lo suo tacere e ’l trasmutar sembiante + puoser silenzio al mio cupido ingegno, + che già nuove questioni avea davante; + + e sì come saetta che nel segno + percuote pria che sia la corda queta, + così corremmo nel secondo regno. + + Quivi la donna mia vid’ io sì lieta, + come nel lume di quel ciel si mise, + che più lucente se ne fé ’l pianeta. + + E se la stella si cambiò e rise, + qual mi fec’ io che pur da mia natura + trasmutabile son per tutte guise! + + Come ’n peschiera ch’è tranquilla e pura + traggonsi i pesci a ciò che vien di fori + per modo che lo stimin lor pastura, + + sì vid’ io ben più di mille splendori + trarsi ver’ noi, e in ciascun s’udia: + «Ecco chi crescerà li nostri amori». + + E sì come ciascuno a noi venìa, + vedeasi l’ombra piena di letizia + nel folgór chiaro che di lei uscia. + + Pensa, lettor, se quel che qui s’inizia + non procedesse, come tu avresti + di più savere angosciosa carizia; + + e per te vederai come da questi + m’era in disio d’udir lor condizioni, + sì come a li occhi mi fur manifesti. + + «O bene nato a cui veder li troni + del trïunfo etternal concede grazia + prima che la milizia s’abbandoni, + + del lume che per tutto il ciel si spazia + noi semo accesi; e però, se disii + di noi chiarirti, a tuo piacer ti sazia». + + Così da un di quelli spirti pii + detto mi fu; e da Beatrice: «Dì, dì + sicuramente, e credi come a dii». + + «Io veggio ben sì come tu t’annidi + nel proprio lume, e che de li occhi il traggi, + perch’ e’ corusca sì come tu ridi; + + ma non so chi tu se’, né perché aggi, + anima degna, il grado de la spera + che si vela a’ mortai con altrui raggi». + + Questo diss’ io diritto a la lumera + che pria m’avea parlato; ond’ ella fessi + lucente più assai di quel ch’ell’ era. + + Sì come il sol che si cela elli stessi + per troppa luce, come ’l caldo ha róse + le temperanze d’i vapori spessi, + + per più letizia sì mi si nascose + dentro al suo raggio la figura santa; + e così chiusa chiusa mi rispuose + + nel modo che ’l seguente canto canta. + + + + Paradiso • Canto VI + + + «Poscia che Costantin l’aquila volse + contr’ al corso del ciel, ch’ella seguio + dietro a l’antico che Lavina tolse, + + cento e cent’ anni e più l’uccel di Dio + ne lo stremo d’Europa si ritenne, + vicino a’ monti de’ quai prima uscìo; + + e sotto l’ombra de le sacre penne + governò ’l mondo lì di mano in mano, + e, sì cangiando, in su la mia pervenne. + + Cesare fui e son Iustinïano, + che, per voler del primo amor ch’i’ sento, + d’entro le leggi trassi il troppo e ’l vano. + + E prima ch’io a l’ovra fossi attento, + una natura in Cristo esser, non piùe, + credea, e di tal fede era contento; + + ma ’l benedetto Agapito, che fue + sommo pastore, a la fede sincera + mi dirizzò con le parole sue. + + Io li credetti; e ciò che ’n sua fede era, + vegg’ io or chiaro sì, come tu vedi + ogni contradizione e falsa e vera. + + Tosto che con la Chiesa mossi i piedi, + a Dio per grazia piacque di spirarmi + l’alto lavoro, e tutto ’n lui mi diedi; + + e al mio Belisar commendai l’armi, + cui la destra del ciel fu sì congiunta, + che segno fu ch’i’ dovessi posarmi. + + Or qui a la question prima s’appunta + la mia risposta; ma sua condizione + mi stringe a seguitare alcuna giunta, + + perché tu veggi con quanta ragione + si move contr’ al sacrosanto segno + e chi ’l s’appropria e chi a lui s’oppone. + + Vedi quanta virtù l’ha fatto degno + di reverenza; e cominciò da l’ora + che Pallante morì per darli regno. + + Tu sai ch’el fece in Alba sua dimora + per trecento anni e oltre, infino al fine + che i tre a’ tre pugnar per lui ancora. + + E sai ch’el fé dal mal de le Sabine + al dolor di Lucrezia in sette regi, + vincendo intorno le genti vicine. + + Sai quel ch’el fé portato da li egregi + Romani incontro a Brenno, incontro a Pirro, + incontro a li altri principi e collegi; + + onde Torquato e Quinzio, che dal cirro + negletto fu nomato, i Deci e ’ Fabi + ebber la fama che volontier mirro. + + Esso atterrò l’orgoglio de li Aràbi + che di retro ad Anibale passaro + l’alpestre rocce, Po, di che tu labi. + + Sott’ esso giovanetti trïunfaro + Scipïone e Pompeo; e a quel colle + sotto ’l qual tu nascesti parve amaro. + + Poi, presso al tempo che tutto ’l ciel volle + redur lo mondo a suo modo sereno, + Cesare per voler di Roma il tolle. + + E quel che fé da Varo infino a Reno, + Isara vide ed Era e vide Senna + e ogne valle onde Rodano è pieno. + + Quel che fé poi ch’elli uscì di Ravenna + e saltò Rubicon, fu di tal volo, + che nol seguiteria lingua né penna. + + Inver’ la Spagna rivolse lo stuolo, + poi ver’ Durazzo, e Farsalia percosse + sì ch’al Nil caldo si sentì del duolo. + + Antandro e Simeonta, onde si mosse, + rivide e là dov’ Ettore si cuba; + e mal per Tolomeo poscia si scosse. + + Da indi scese folgorando a Iuba; + onde si volse nel vostro occidente, + ove sentia la pompeana tuba. + + Di quel che fé col baiulo seguente, + Bruto con Cassio ne l’inferno latra, + e Modena e Perugia fu dolente. + + Piangene ancor la trista Cleopatra, + che, fuggendoli innanzi, dal colubro + la morte prese subitana e atra. + + Con costui corse infino al lito rubro; + con costui puose il mondo in tanta pace, + che fu serrato a Giano il suo delubro. + + Ma ciò che ’l segno che parlar mi face + fatto avea prima e poi era fatturo + per lo regno mortal ch’a lui soggiace, + + diventa in apparenza poco e scuro, + se in mano al terzo Cesare si mira + con occhio chiaro e con affetto puro; + + ché la viva giustizia che mi spira, + li concedette, in mano a quel ch’i’ dico, + gloria di far vendetta a la sua ira. + + Or qui t’ammira in ciò ch’io ti replìco: + poscia con Tito a far vendetta corse + de la vendetta del peccato antico. + + E quando il dente longobardo morse + la Santa Chiesa, sotto le sue ali + Carlo Magno, vincendo, la soccorse. + + Omai puoi giudicar di quei cotali + ch’io accusai di sopra e di lor falli, + che son cagion di tutti vostri mali. + + L’uno al pubblico segno i gigli gialli + oppone, e l’altro appropria quello a parte, + sì ch’è forte a veder chi più si falli. + + Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor arte + sott’ altro segno, ché mal segue quello + sempre chi la giustizia e lui diparte; + + e non l’abbatta esto Carlo novello + coi Guelfi suoi, ma tema de li artigli + ch’a più alto leon trasser lo vello. + + Molte fïate già pianser li figli + per la colpa del padre, e non si creda + che Dio trasmuti l’armi per suoi gigli! + + Questa picciola stella si correda + d’i buoni spirti che son stati attivi + perché onore e fama li succeda: + + e quando li disiri poggian quivi, + sì disvïando, pur convien che i raggi + del vero amore in sù poggin men vivi. + + Ma nel commensurar d’i nostri gaggi + col merto è parte di nostra letizia, + perché non li vedem minor né maggi. + + Quindi addolcisce la viva giustizia + in noi l’affetto sì, che non si puote + torcer già mai ad alcuna nequizia. + + Diverse voci fanno dolci note; + così diversi scanni in nostra vita + rendon dolce armonia tra queste rote. + + E dentro a la presente margarita + luce la luce di Romeo, di cui + fu l’ovra grande e bella mal gradita. + + Ma i Provenzai che fecer contra lui + non hanno riso; e però mal cammina + qual si fa danno del ben fare altrui. + + Quattro figlie ebbe, e ciascuna reina, + Ramondo Beringhiere, e ciò li fece + Romeo, persona umìle e peregrina. + + E poi il mosser le parole biece + a dimandar ragione a questo giusto, + che li assegnò sette e cinque per diece, + + indi partissi povero e vetusto; + e se ’l mondo sapesse il cor ch’elli ebbe + mendicando sua vita a frusto a frusto, + + assai lo loda, e più lo loderebbe». + + + + Paradiso • Canto VII + + + «Osanna, sanctus Deus sabaòth, + superillustrans claritate tua + felices ignes horum malacòth!». + + Così, volgendosi a la nota sua, + fu viso a me cantare essa sustanza, + sopra la qual doppio lume s’addua; + + ed essa e l’altre mossero a sua danza, + e quasi velocissime faville + mi si velar di sùbita distanza. + + Io dubitava e dicea ‘Dille, dille!’ + fra me, ‘dille’ dicea, ‘a la mia donna + che mi diseta con le dolci stille’. + + Ma quella reverenza che s’indonna + di tutto me, pur per Be e per ice, + mi richinava come l’uom ch’assonna. + + Poco sofferse me cotal Beatrice + e cominciò, raggiandomi d’un riso + tal, che nel foco faria l’uom felice: + + «Secondo mio infallibile avviso, + come giusta vendetta giustamente + punita fosse, t’ha in pensier miso; + + ma io ti solverò tosto la mente; + e tu ascolta, ché le mie parole + di gran sentenza ti faran presente. + + Per non soffrire a la virtù che vole + freno a suo prode, quell’ uom che non nacque, + dannando sé, dannò tutta sua prole; + + onde l’umana specie inferma giacque + giù per secoli molti in grande errore, + fin ch’al Verbo di Dio discender piacque + + u’ la natura, che dal suo fattore + s’era allungata, unì a sé in persona + con l’atto sol del suo etterno amore. + + Or drizza il viso a quel ch’or si ragiona: + questa natura al suo fattore unita, + qual fu creata, fu sincera e buona; + + ma per sé stessa pur fu ella sbandita + di paradiso, però che si torse + da via di verità e da sua vita. + + La pena dunque che la croce porse + s’a la natura assunta si misura, + nulla già mai sì giustamente morse; + + e così nulla fu di tanta ingiura, + guardando a la persona che sofferse, + in che era contratta tal natura. + + Però d’un atto uscir cose diverse: + ch’a Dio e a’ Giudei piacque una morte; + per lei tremò la terra e ’l ciel s’aperse. + + Non ti dee oramai parer più forte, + quando si dice che giusta vendetta + poscia vengiata fu da giusta corte. + + Ma io veggi’ or la tua mente ristretta + di pensiero in pensier dentro ad un nodo, + del qual con gran disio solver s’aspetta. + + Tu dici: “Ben discerno ciò ch’i’ odo; + ma perché Dio volesse, m’è occulto, + a nostra redenzion pur questo modo”. + + Questo decreto, frate, sta sepulto + a li occhi di ciascuno il cui ingegno + ne la fiamma d’amor non è adulto. + + Veramente, però ch’a questo segno + molto si mira e poco si discerne, + dirò perché tal modo fu più degno. + + La divina bontà, che da sé sperne + ogne livore, ardendo in sé, sfavilla + sì che dispiega le bellezze etterne. + + Ciò che da lei sanza mezzo distilla + non ha poi fine, perché non si move + la sua imprenta quand’ ella sigilla. + + Ciò che da essa sanza mezzo piove + libero è tutto, perché non soggiace + a la virtute de le cose nove. + + Più l’è conforme, e però più le piace; + ché l’ardor santo ch’ogne cosa raggia, + ne la più somigliante è più vivace. + + Di tutte queste dote s’avvantaggia + l’umana creatura, e s’una manca, + di sua nobilità convien che caggia. + + Solo il peccato è quel che la disfranca + e falla dissimìle al sommo bene, + per che del lume suo poco s’imbianca; + + e in sua dignità mai non rivene, + se non rïempie, dove colpa vòta, + contra mal dilettar con giuste pene. + + Vostra natura, quando peccò tota + nel seme suo, da queste dignitadi, + come di paradiso, fu remota; + + né ricovrar potiensi, se tu badi + ben sottilmente, per alcuna via, + sanza passar per un di questi guadi: + + o che Dio solo per sua cortesia + dimesso avesse, o che l’uom per sé isso + avesse sodisfatto a sua follia. + + Ficca mo l’occhio per entro l’abisso + de l’etterno consiglio, quanto puoi + al mio parlar distrettamente fisso. + + Non potea l’uomo ne’ termini suoi + mai sodisfar, per non potere ir giuso + con umiltate obedïendo poi, + + quanto disobediendo intese ir suso; + e questa è la cagion per che l’uom fue + da poter sodisfar per sé dischiuso. + + Dunque a Dio convenia con le vie sue + riparar l’omo a sua intera vita, + dico con l’una, o ver con amendue. + + Ma perché l’ovra tanto è più gradita + da l’operante, quanto più appresenta + de la bontà del core ond’ ell’ è uscita, + + la divina bontà che ’l mondo imprenta, + di proceder per tutte le sue vie, + a rilevarvi suso, fu contenta. + + Né tra l’ultima notte e ’l primo die + sì alto o sì magnifico processo, + o per l’una o per l’altra, fu o fie: + + ché più largo fu Dio a dar sé stesso + per far l’uom sufficiente a rilevarsi, + che s’elli avesse sol da sé dimesso; + + e tutti li altri modi erano scarsi + a la giustizia, se ’l Figliuol di Dio + non fosse umilïato ad incarnarsi. + + Or per empierti bene ogne disio, + ritorno a dichiararti in alcun loco, + perché tu veggi lì così com’ io. + + Tu dici: “Io veggio l’acqua, io veggio il foco, + l’aere e la terra e tutte lor misture + venire a corruzione, e durar poco; + + e queste cose pur furon creature; + per che, se ciò ch’è detto è stato vero, + esser dovrien da corruzion sicure”. + + Li angeli, frate, e ’l paese sincero + nel qual tu se’, dir si posson creati, + sì come sono, in loro essere intero; + + ma li alimenti che tu hai nomati + e quelle cose che di lor si fanno + da creata virtù sono informati. + + Creata fu la materia ch’elli hanno; + creata fu la virtù informante + in queste stelle che ’ntorno a lor vanno. + + L’anima d’ogne bruto e de le piante + di complession potenzïata tira + lo raggio e ’l moto de le luci sante; + + ma vostra vita sanza mezzo spira + la somma beninanza, e la innamora + di sé sì che poi sempre la disira. + + E quinci puoi argomentare ancora + vostra resurrezion, se tu ripensi + come l’umana carne fessi allora + + che li primi parenti intrambo fensi». + + + + Paradiso • Canto VIII + + + Solea creder lo mondo in suo periclo + che la bella Ciprigna il folle amore + raggiasse, volta nel terzo epiciclo; + + per che non pur a lei faceano onore + di sacrificio e di votivo grido + le genti antiche ne l’antico errore; + + ma Dïone onoravano e Cupido, + quella per madre sua, questo per figlio, + e dicean ch’el sedette in grembo a Dido; + + e da costei ond’ io principio piglio + pigliavano il vocabol de la stella + che ’l sol vagheggia or da coppa or da ciglio. + + Io non m’accorsi del salire in ella; + ma d’esservi entro mi fé assai fede + la donna mia ch’i’ vidi far più bella. + + E come in fiamma favilla si vede, + e come in voce voce si discerne, + quand’ una è ferma e altra va e riede, + + vid’ io in essa luce altre lucerne + muoversi in giro più e men correnti, + al modo, credo, di lor viste interne. + + Di fredda nube non disceser venti, + o visibili o no, tanto festini, + che non paressero impediti e lenti + + a chi avesse quei lumi divini + veduti a noi venir, lasciando il giro + pria cominciato in li alti Serafini; + + e dentro a quei che più innanzi appariro + sonava ‘Osanna’ sì, che unque poi + di rïudir non fui sanza disiro. + + Indi si fece l’un più presso a noi + e solo incominciò: «Tutti sem presti + al tuo piacer, perché di noi ti gioi. + + Noi ci volgiam coi principi celesti + d’un giro e d’un girare e d’una sete, + ai quali tu del mondo già dicesti: + + ‘Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete’; + e sem sì pien d’amor, che, per piacerti, + non fia men dolce un poco di quïete». + + Poscia che li occhi miei si fuoro offerti + a la mia donna reverenti, ed essa + fatti li avea di sé contenti e certi, + + rivolsersi a la luce che promessa + tanto s’avea, e «Deh, chi siete?» fue + la voce mia di grande affetto impressa. + + E quanta e quale vid’ io lei far piùe + per allegrezza nova che s’accrebbe, + quando parlai, a l’allegrezze sue! + + Così fatta, mi disse: «Il mondo m’ebbe + giù poco tempo; e se più fosse stato, + molto sarà di mal, che non sarebbe. + + La mia letizia mi ti tien celato + che mi raggia dintorno e mi nasconde + quasi animal di sua seta fasciato. + + Assai m’amasti, e avesti ben onde; + che s’io fossi giù stato, io ti mostrava + di mio amor più oltre che le fronde. + + Quella sinistra riva che si lava + di Rodano poi ch’è misto con Sorga, + per suo segnore a tempo m’aspettava, + + e quel corno d’Ausonia che s’imborga + di Bari e di Gaeta e di Catona, + da ove Tronto e Verde in mare sgorga. + + Fulgeami già in fronte la corona + di quella terra che ’l Danubio riga + poi che le ripe tedesche abbandona. + + E la bella Trinacria, che caliga + tra Pachino e Peloro, sopra ’l golfo + che riceve da Euro maggior briga, + + non per Tifeo ma per nascente solfo, + attesi avrebbe li suoi regi ancora, + nati per me di Carlo e di Ridolfo, + + se mala segnoria, che sempre accora + li popoli suggetti, non avesse + mosso Palermo a gridar: “Mora, mora!”. + + E se mio frate questo antivedesse, + l’avara povertà di Catalogna + già fuggeria, perché non li offendesse; + + ché veramente proveder bisogna + per lui, o per altrui, sì ch’a sua barca + carcata più d’incarco non si pogna. + + La sua natura, che di larga parca + discese, avria mestier di tal milizia + che non curasse di mettere in arca». + + «Però ch’i’ credo che l’alta letizia + che ’l tuo parlar m’infonde, segnor mio, + là ’ve ogne ben si termina e s’inizia, + + per te si veggia come la vegg’ io, + grata m’è più; e anco quest’ ho caro + perché ’l discerni rimirando in Dio. + + Fatto m’hai lieto, e così mi fa chiaro, + poi che, parlando, a dubitar m’hai mosso + com’ esser può, di dolce seme, amaro». + + Questo io a lui; ed elli a me: «S’io posso + mostrarti un vero, a quel che tu dimandi + terrai lo viso come tien lo dosso. + + Lo ben che tutto il regno che tu scandi + volge e contenta, fa esser virtute + sua provedenza in questi corpi grandi. + + E non pur le nature provedute + sono in la mente ch’è da sé perfetta, + ma esse insieme con la lor salute: + + per che quantunque quest’ arco saetta + disposto cade a proveduto fine, + sì come cosa in suo segno diretta. + + Se ciò non fosse, il ciel che tu cammine + producerebbe sì li suoi effetti, + che non sarebbero arti, ma ruine; + + e ciò esser non può, se li ’ntelletti + che muovon queste stelle non son manchi, + e manco il primo, che non li ha perfetti. + + Vuo’ tu che questo ver più ti s’imbianchi?». + E io: «Non già; ché impossibil veggio + che la natura, in quel ch’è uopo, stanchi». + + Ond’ elli ancora: «Or dì: sarebbe il peggio + per l’omo in terra, se non fosse cive?». + «Sì», rispuos’ io; «e qui ragion non cheggio». + + «E puot’ elli esser, se giù non si vive + diversamente per diversi offici? + Non, se ’l maestro vostro ben vi scrive». + + Sì venne deducendo infino a quici; + poscia conchiuse: «Dunque esser diverse + convien di vostri effetti le radici: + + per ch’un nasce Solone e altro Serse, + altro Melchisedèch e altro quello + che, volando per l’aere, il figlio perse. + + La circular natura, ch’è suggello + a la cera mortal, fa ben sua arte, + ma non distingue l’un da l’altro ostello. + + Quinci addivien ch’Esaù si diparte + per seme da Iacòb; e vien Quirino + da sì vil padre, che si rende a Marte. + + Natura generata il suo cammino + simil farebbe sempre a’ generanti, + se non vincesse il proveder divino. + + Or quel che t’era dietro t’è davanti: + ma perché sappi che di te mi giova, + un corollario voglio che t’ammanti. + + Sempre natura, se fortuna trova + discorde a sé, com’ ogne altra semente + fuor di sua regïon, fa mala prova. + + E se ’l mondo là giù ponesse mente + al fondamento che natura pone, + seguendo lui, avria buona la gente. + + Ma voi torcete a la religïone + tal che fia nato a cignersi la spada, + e fate re di tal ch’è da sermone; + + onde la traccia vostra è fuor di strada». + + + + Paradiso • Canto IX + + + Da poi che Carlo tuo, bella Clemenza, + m’ebbe chiarito, mi narrò li ’nganni + che ricever dovea la sua semenza; + + ma disse: «Taci e lascia muover li anni»; + sì ch’io non posso dir se non che pianto + giusto verrà di retro ai vostri danni. + + E già la vita di quel lume santo + rivolta s’era al Sol che la rïempie + come quel ben ch’a ogne cosa è tanto. + + Ahi anime ingannate e fatture empie, + che da sì fatto ben torcete i cuori, + drizzando in vanità le vostre tempie! + + Ed ecco un altro di quelli splendori + ver’ me si fece, e ’l suo voler piacermi + significava nel chiarir di fori. + + Li occhi di Bëatrice, ch’eran fermi + sovra me, come pria, di caro assenso + al mio disio certificato fermi. + + «Deh, metti al mio voler tosto compenso, + beato spirto», dissi, «e fammi prova + ch’i’ possa in te refletter quel ch’io penso!». + + Onde la luce che m’era ancor nova, + del suo profondo, ond’ ella pria cantava, + seguette come a cui di ben far giova: + + «In quella parte de la terra prava + italica che siede tra Rïalto + e le fontane di Brenta e di Piava, + + si leva un colle, e non surge molt’ alto, + là onde scese già una facella + che fece a la contrada un grande assalto. + + D’una radice nacqui e io ed ella: + Cunizza fui chiamata, e qui refulgo + perché mi vinse il lume d’esta stella; + + ma lietamente a me medesma indulgo + la cagion di mia sorte, e non mi noia; + che parria forse forte al vostro vulgo. + + Di questa luculenta e cara gioia + del nostro cielo che più m’è propinqua, + grande fama rimase; e pria che moia, + + questo centesimo anno ancor s’incinqua: + vedi se far si dee l’omo eccellente, + sì ch’altra vita la prima relinqua. + + E ciò non pensa la turba presente + che Tagliamento e Adice richiude, + né per esser battuta ancor si pente; + + ma tosto fia che Padova al palude + cangerà l’acqua che Vincenza bagna, + per essere al dover le genti crude; + + e dove Sile e Cagnan s’accompagna, + tal signoreggia e va con la testa alta, + che già per lui carpir si fa la ragna. + + Piangerà Feltro ancora la difalta + de l’empio suo pastor, che sarà sconcia + sì, che per simil non s’entrò in malta. + + Troppo sarebbe larga la bigoncia + che ricevesse il sangue ferrarese, + e stanco chi ’l pesasse a oncia a oncia, + + che donerà questo prete cortese + per mostrarsi di parte; e cotai doni + conformi fieno al viver del paese. + + Sù sono specchi, voi dicete Troni, + onde refulge a noi Dio giudicante; + sì che questi parlar ne paion buoni». + + Qui si tacette; e fecemi sembiante + che fosse ad altro volta, per la rota + in che si mise com’ era davante. + + L’altra letizia, che m’era già nota + per cara cosa, mi si fece in vista + qual fin balasso in che lo sol percuota. + + Per letiziar là sù fulgor s’acquista, + sì come riso qui; ma giù s’abbuia + l’ombra di fuor, come la mente è trista. + + «Dio vede tutto, e tuo veder s’inluia», + diss’ io, «beato spirto, sì che nulla + voglia di sé a te puot’ esser fuia. + + Dunque la voce tua, che ’l ciel trastulla + sempre col canto di quei fuochi pii + che di sei ali facen la coculla, + + perché non satisface a’ miei disii? + Già non attendere’ io tua dimanda, + s’io m’intuassi, come tu t’inmii». + + «La maggior valle in che l’acqua si spanda», + incominciaro allor le sue parole, + «fuor di quel mar che la terra inghirlanda, + + tra ’ discordanti liti contra ’l sole + tanto sen va, che fa meridïano + là dove l’orizzonte pria far suole. + + Di quella valle fu’ io litorano + tra Ebro e Macra, che per cammin corto + parte lo Genovese dal Toscano. + + Ad un occaso quasi e ad un orto + Buggea siede e la terra ond’ io fui, + che fé del sangue suo già caldo il porto. + + Folco mi disse quella gente a cui + fu noto il nome mio; e questo cielo + di me s’imprenta, com’ io fe’ di lui; + + ché più non arse la figlia di Belo, + noiando e a Sicheo e a Creusa, + di me, infin che si convenne al pelo; + + né quella Rodopëa che delusa + fu da Demofoonte, né Alcide + quando Iole nel core ebbe rinchiusa. + + Non però qui si pente, ma si ride, + non de la colpa, ch’a mente non torna, + ma del valor ch’ordinò e provide. + + Qui si rimira ne l’arte ch’addorna + cotanto affetto, e discernesi ’l bene + per che ’l mondo di sù quel di giù torna. + + Ma perché tutte le tue voglie piene + ten porti che son nate in questa spera, + proceder ancor oltre mi convene. + + Tu vuo’ saper chi è in questa lumera + che qui appresso me così scintilla + come raggio di sole in acqua mera. + + Or sappi che là entro si tranquilla + Raab; e a nostr’ ordine congiunta, + di lei nel sommo grado si sigilla. + + Da questo cielo, in cui l’ombra s’appunta + che ’l vostro mondo face, pria ch’altr’ alma + del trïunfo di Cristo fu assunta. + + Ben si convenne lei lasciar per palma + in alcun cielo de l’alta vittoria + che s’acquistò con l’una e l’altra palma, + + perch’ ella favorò la prima gloria + di Iosüè in su la Terra Santa, + che poco tocca al papa la memoria. + + La tua città, che di colui è pianta + che pria volse le spalle al suo fattore + e di cui è la ’nvidia tanto pianta, + + produce e spande il maladetto fiore + c’ha disvïate le pecore e li agni, + però che fatto ha lupo del pastore. + + Per questo l’Evangelio e i dottor magni + son derelitti, e solo ai Decretali + si studia, sì che pare a’ lor vivagni. + + A questo intende il papa e ’ cardinali; + non vanno i lor pensieri a Nazarette, + là dove Gabrïello aperse l’ali. + + Ma Vaticano e l’altre parti elette + di Roma che son state cimitero + a la milizia che Pietro seguette, + + tosto libere fien de l’avoltero». + + + + Paradiso • Canto X + + + Guardando nel suo Figlio con l’Amore + che l’uno e l’altro etternalmente spira, + lo primo e ineffabile Valore + + quanto per mente e per loco si gira + con tant’ ordine fé, ch’esser non puote + sanza gustar di lui chi ciò rimira. + + Leva dunque, lettore, a l’alte rote + meco la vista, dritto a quella parte + dove l’un moto e l’altro si percuote; + + e lì comincia a vagheggiar ne l’arte + di quel maestro che dentro a sé l’ama, + tanto che mai da lei l’occhio non parte. + + Vedi come da indi si dirama + l’oblico cerchio che i pianeti porta, + per sodisfare al mondo che li chiama. + + Che se la strada lor non fosse torta, + molta virtù nel ciel sarebbe in vano, + e quasi ogne potenza qua giù morta; + + e se dal dritto più o men lontano + fosse ’l partire, assai sarebbe manco + e giù e sù de l’ordine mondano. + + Or ti riman, lettor, sovra ’l tuo banco, + dietro pensando a ciò che si preliba, + s’esser vuoi lieto assai prima che stanco. + + Messo t’ho innanzi: omai per te ti ciba; + ché a sé torce tutta la mia cura + quella materia ond’ io son fatto scriba. + + Lo ministro maggior de la natura, + che del valor del ciel lo mondo imprenta + e col suo lume il tempo ne misura, + + con quella parte che sù si rammenta + congiunto, si girava per le spire + in che più tosto ognora s’appresenta; + + e io era con lui; ma del salire + non m’accors’ io, se non com’ uom s’accorge, + anzi ’l primo pensier, del suo venire. + + È Bëatrice quella che sì scorge + di bene in meglio, sì subitamente + che l’atto suo per tempo non si sporge. + + Quant’ esser convenia da sé lucente + quel ch’era dentro al sol dov’ io entra’mi, + non per color, ma per lume parvente! + + Perch’ io lo ’ngegno e l’arte e l’uso chiami, + sì nol direi che mai s’imaginasse; + ma creder puossi e di veder si brami. + + E se le fantasie nostre son basse + a tanta altezza, non è maraviglia; + ché sopra ’l sol non fu occhio ch’andasse. + + Tal era quivi la quarta famiglia + de l’alto Padre, che sempre la sazia, + mostrando come spira e come figlia. + + E Bëatrice cominciò: «Ringrazia, + ringrazia il Sol de li angeli, ch’a questo + sensibil t’ha levato per sua grazia». + + Cor di mortal non fu mai sì digesto + a divozione e a rendersi a Dio + con tutto ’l suo gradir cotanto presto, + + come a quelle parole mi fec’ io; + e sì tutto ’l mio amore in lui si mise, + che Bëatrice eclissò ne l’oblio. + + Non le dispiacque; ma sì se ne rise, + che lo splendor de li occhi suoi ridenti + mia mente unita in più cose divise. + + Io vidi più folgór vivi e vincenti + far di noi centro e di sé far corona, + più dolci in voce che in vista lucenti: + + così cinger la figlia di Latona + vedem talvolta, quando l’aere è pregno, + sì che ritenga il fil che fa la zona. + + Ne la corte del cielo, ond’ io rivegno, + si trovan molte gioie care e belle + tanto che non si posson trar del regno; + + e ’l canto di quei lumi era di quelle; + chi non s’impenna sì che là sù voli, + dal muto aspetti quindi le novelle. + + Poi, sì cantando, quelli ardenti soli + si fuor girati intorno a noi tre volte, + come stelle vicine a’ fermi poli, + + donne mi parver, non da ballo sciolte, + ma che s’arrestin tacite, ascoltando + fin che le nove note hanno ricolte. + + E dentro a l’un senti’ cominciar: «Quando + lo raggio de la grazia, onde s’accende + verace amore e che poi cresce amando, + + multiplicato in te tanto resplende, + che ti conduce su per quella scala + u’ sanza risalir nessun discende; + + qual ti negasse il vin de la sua fiala + per la tua sete, in libertà non fora + se non com’ acqua ch’al mar non si cala. + + Tu vuo’ saper di quai piante s’infiora + questa ghirlanda che ’ntorno vagheggia + la bella donna ch’al ciel t’avvalora. + + Io fui de li agni de la santa greggia + che Domenico mena per cammino + u’ ben s’impingua se non si vaneggia. + + Questi che m’è a destra più vicino, + frate e maestro fummi, ed esso Alberto + è di Cologna, e io Thomas d’Aquino. + + Se sì di tutti li altri esser vuo’ certo, + di retro al mio parlar ten vien col viso + girando su per lo beato serto. + + Quell’ altro fiammeggiare esce del riso + di Grazïan, che l’uno e l’altro foro + aiutò sì che piace in paradiso. + + L’altro ch’appresso addorna il nostro coro, + quel Pietro fu che con la poverella + offerse a Santa Chiesa suo tesoro. + + La quinta luce, ch’è tra noi più bella, + spira di tale amor, che tutto ’l mondo + là giù ne gola di saper novella: + + entro v’è l’alta mente u’ sì profondo + saver fu messo, che, se ’l vero è vero, + a veder tanto non surse il secondo. + + Appresso vedi il lume di quel cero + che giù in carne più a dentro vide + l’angelica natura e ’l ministero. + + Ne l’altra piccioletta luce ride + quello avvocato de’ tempi cristiani + del cui latino Augustin si provide. + + Or se tu l’occhio de la mente trani + di luce in luce dietro a le mie lode, + già de l’ottava con sete rimani. + + Per vedere ogne ben dentro vi gode + l’anima santa che ’l mondo fallace + fa manifesto a chi di lei ben ode. + + Lo corpo ond’ ella fu cacciata giace + giuso in Cieldauro; ed essa da martiro + e da essilio venne a questa pace. + + Vedi oltre fiammeggiar l’ardente spiro + d’Isidoro, di Beda e di Riccardo, + che a considerar fu più che viro. + + Questi onde a me ritorna il tuo riguardo, + è ’l lume d’uno spirto che ’n pensieri + gravi a morir li parve venir tardo: + + essa è la luce etterna di Sigieri, + che, leggendo nel Vico de li Strami, + silogizzò invidïosi veri». + + Indi, come orologio che ne chiami + ne l’ora che la sposa di Dio surge + a mattinar lo sposo perché l’ami, + + che l’una parte e l’altra tira e urge, + tin tin sonando con sì dolce nota, + che ’l ben disposto spirto d’amor turge; + + così vid’ ïo la gloriosa rota + muoversi e render voce a voce in tempra + e in dolcezza ch’esser non pò nota + + se non colà dove gioir s’insempra. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XI + + + O insensata cura de’ mortali, + quanto son difettivi silogismi + quei che ti fanno in basso batter l’ali! + + Chi dietro a iura e chi ad amforismi + sen giva, e chi seguendo sacerdozio, + e chi regnar per forza o per sofismi, + + e chi rubare e chi civil negozio, + chi nel diletto de la carne involto + s’affaticava e chi si dava a l’ozio, + + quando, da tutte queste cose sciolto, + con Bëatrice m’era suso in cielo + cotanto glorïosamente accolto. + + Poi che ciascuno fu tornato ne lo + punto del cerchio in che avanti s’era, + fermossi, come a candellier candelo. + + E io senti’ dentro a quella lumera + che pria m’avea parlato, sorridendo + incominciar, faccendosi più mera: + + «Così com’ io del suo raggio resplendo, + sì, riguardando ne la luce etterna, + li tuoi pensieri onde cagioni apprendo. + + Tu dubbi, e hai voler che si ricerna + in sì aperta e ’n sì distesa lingua + lo dicer mio, ch’al tuo sentir si sterna, + + ove dinanzi dissi: “U’ ben s’impingua”, + e là u’ dissi: “Non nacque il secondo”; + e qui è uopo che ben si distingua. + + La provedenza, che governa il mondo + con quel consiglio nel quale ogne aspetto + creato è vinto pria che vada al fondo, + + però che andasse ver’ lo suo diletto + la sposa di colui ch’ad alte grida + disposò lei col sangue benedetto, + + in sé sicura e anche a lui più fida, + due principi ordinò in suo favore, + che quinci e quindi le fosser per guida. + + L’un fu tutto serafico in ardore; + l’altro per sapïenza in terra fue + di cherubica luce uno splendore. + + De l’un dirò, però che d’amendue + si dice l’un pregiando, qual ch’om prende, + perch’ ad un fine fur l’opere sue. + + Intra Tupino e l’acqua che discende + del colle eletto dal beato Ubaldo, + fertile costa d’alto monte pende, + + onde Perugia sente freddo e caldo + da Porta Sole; e di rietro le piange + per grave giogo Nocera con Gualdo. + + Di questa costa, là dov’ ella frange + più sua rattezza, nacque al mondo un sole, + come fa questo talvolta di Gange. + + Però chi d’esso loco fa parole, + non dica Ascesi, ché direbbe corto, + ma Orïente, se proprio dir vuole. + + Non era ancor molto lontan da l’orto, + ch’el cominciò a far sentir la terra + de la sua gran virtute alcun conforto; + + ché per tal donna, giovinetto, in guerra + del padre corse, a cui, come a la morte, + la porta del piacer nessun diserra; + + e dinanzi a la sua spirital corte + et coram patre le si fece unito; + poscia di dì in dì l’amò più forte. + + Questa, privata del primo marito, + millecent’ anni e più dispetta e scura + fino a costui si stette sanza invito; + + né valse udir che la trovò sicura + con Amiclate, al suon de la sua voce, + colui ch’a tutto ’l mondo fé paura; + + né valse esser costante né feroce, + sì che, dove Maria rimase giuso, + ella con Cristo pianse in su la croce. + + Ma perch’ io non proceda troppo chiuso, + Francesco e Povertà per questi amanti + prendi oramai nel mio parlar diffuso. + + La lor concordia e i lor lieti sembianti, + amore e maraviglia e dolce sguardo + facieno esser cagion di pensier santi; + + tanto che ’l venerabile Bernardo + si scalzò prima, e dietro a tanta pace + corse e, correndo, li parve esser tardo. + + Oh ignota ricchezza! oh ben ferace! + Scalzasi Egidio, scalzasi Silvestro + dietro a lo sposo, sì la sposa piace. + + Indi sen va quel padre e quel maestro + con la sua donna e con quella famiglia + che già legava l’umile capestro. + + Né li gravò viltà di cuor le ciglia + per esser fi’ di Pietro Bernardone, + né per parer dispetto a maraviglia; + + ma regalmente sua dura intenzione + ad Innocenzio aperse, e da lui ebbe + primo sigillo a sua religïone. + + Poi che la gente poverella crebbe + dietro a costui, la cui mirabil vita + meglio in gloria del ciel si canterebbe, + + di seconda corona redimita + fu per Onorio da l’Etterno Spiro + la santa voglia d’esto archimandrita. + + E poi che, per la sete del martiro, + ne la presenza del Soldan superba + predicò Cristo e li altri che ’l seguiro, + + e per trovare a conversione acerba + troppo la gente e per non stare indarno, + redissi al frutto de l’italica erba, + + nel crudo sasso intra Tevero e Arno + da Cristo prese l’ultimo sigillo, + che le sue membra due anni portarno. + + Quando a colui ch’a tanto ben sortillo + piacque di trarlo suso a la mercede + ch’el meritò nel suo farsi pusillo, + + a’ frati suoi, sì com’ a giuste rede, + raccomandò la donna sua più cara, + e comandò che l’amassero a fede; + + e del suo grembo l’anima preclara + mover si volle, tornando al suo regno, + e al suo corpo non volle altra bara. + + Pensa oramai qual fu colui che degno + collega fu a mantener la barca + di Pietro in alto mar per dritto segno; + + e questo fu il nostro patrïarca; + per che qual segue lui, com’ el comanda, + discerner puoi che buone merce carca. + + Ma ’l suo pecuglio di nova vivanda + è fatto ghiotto, sì ch’esser non puote + che per diversi salti non si spanda; + + e quanto le sue pecore remote + e vagabunde più da esso vanno, + più tornano a l’ovil di latte vòte. + + Ben son di quelle che temono ’l danno + e stringonsi al pastor; ma son sì poche, + che le cappe fornisce poco panno. + + Or, se le mie parole non son fioche, + se la tua audïenza è stata attenta, + se ciò ch’è detto a la mente revoche, + + in parte fia la tua voglia contenta, + perché vedrai la pianta onde si scheggia, + e vedra’ il corrègger che argomenta + + “U’ ben s’impingua, se non si vaneggia”». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XII + + + Sì tosto come l’ultima parola + la benedetta fiamma per dir tolse, + a rotar cominciò la santa mola; + + e nel suo giro tutta non si volse + prima ch’un’altra di cerchio la chiuse, + e moto a moto e canto a canto colse; + + canto che tanto vince nostre muse, + nostre serene in quelle dolci tube, + quanto primo splendor quel ch’e’ refuse. + + Come si volgon per tenera nube + due archi paralelli e concolori, + quando Iunone a sua ancella iube, + + nascendo di quel d’entro quel di fori, + a guisa del parlar di quella vaga + ch’amor consunse come sol vapori, + + e fanno qui la gente esser presaga, + per lo patto che Dio con Noè puose, + del mondo che già mai più non s’allaga: + + così di quelle sempiterne rose + volgiensi circa noi le due ghirlande, + e sì l’estrema a l’intima rispuose. + + Poi che ’l tripudio e l’altra festa grande, + sì del cantare e sì del fiammeggiarsi + luce con luce gaudïose e blande, + + insieme a punto e a voler quetarsi, + pur come li occhi ch’al piacer che i move + conviene insieme chiudere e levarsi; + + del cor de l’una de le luci nove + si mosse voce, che l’ago a la stella + parer mi fece in volgermi al suo dove; + + e cominciò: «L’amor che mi fa bella + mi tragge a ragionar de l’altro duca + per cui del mio sì ben ci si favella. + + Degno è che, dov’ è l’un, l’altro s’induca: + sì che, com’ elli ad una militaro, + così la gloria loro insieme luca. + + L’essercito di Cristo, che sì caro + costò a rïarmar, dietro a la ’nsegna + si movea tardo, sospeccioso e raro, + + quando lo ’mperador che sempre regna + provide a la milizia, ch’era in forse, + per sola grazia, non per esser degna; + + e, come è detto, a sua sposa soccorse + con due campioni, al cui fare, al cui dire + lo popol disvïato si raccorse. + + In quella parte ove surge ad aprire + Zefiro dolce le novelle fronde + di che si vede Europa rivestire, + + non molto lungi al percuoter de l’onde + dietro a le quali, per la lunga foga, + lo sol talvolta ad ogne uom si nasconde, + + siede la fortunata Calaroga + sotto la protezion del grande scudo + in che soggiace il leone e soggioga: + + dentro vi nacque l’amoroso drudo + de la fede cristiana, il santo atleta + benigno a’ suoi e a’ nemici crudo; + + e come fu creata, fu repleta + sì la sua mente di viva vertute + che, ne la madre, lei fece profeta. + + Poi che le sponsalizie fuor compiute + al sacro fonte intra lui e la Fede, + u’ si dotar di mutüa salute, + + la donna che per lui l’assenso diede, + vide nel sonno il mirabile frutto + ch’uscir dovea di lui e de le rede; + + e perché fosse qual era in costrutto, + quinci si mosse spirito a nomarlo + del possessivo di cui era tutto. + + Domenico fu detto; e io ne parlo + sì come de l’agricola che Cristo + elesse a l’orto suo per aiutarlo. + + Ben parve messo e famigliar di Cristo: + che ’l primo amor che ’n lui fu manifesto, + fu al primo consiglio che diè Cristo. + + Spesse fïate fu tacito e desto + trovato in terra da la sua nutrice, + come dicesse: ‘Io son venuto a questo’. + + Oh padre suo veramente Felice! + oh madre sua veramente Giovanna, + se, interpretata, val come si dice! + + Non per lo mondo, per cui mo s’affanna + di retro ad Ostïense e a Taddeo, + ma per amor de la verace manna + + in picciol tempo gran dottor si feo; + tal che si mise a circüir la vigna + che tosto imbianca, se ’l vignaio è reo. + + E a la sedia che fu già benigna + più a’ poveri giusti, non per lei, + ma per colui che siede, che traligna, + + non dispensare o due o tre per sei, + non la fortuna di prima vacante, + non decimas, quae sunt pauperum Dei, + + addimandò, ma contro al mondo errante + licenza di combatter per lo seme + del qual ti fascian ventiquattro piante. + + Poi, con dottrina e con volere insieme, + con l’officio appostolico si mosse + quasi torrente ch’alta vena preme; + + e ne li sterpi eretici percosse + l’impeto suo, più vivamente quivi + dove le resistenze eran più grosse. + + Di lui si fecer poi diversi rivi + onde l’orto catolico si riga, + sì che i suoi arbuscelli stan più vivi. + + Se tal fu l’una rota de la biga + in che la Santa Chiesa si difese + e vinse in campo la sua civil briga, + + ben ti dovrebbe assai esser palese + l’eccellenza de l’altra, di cui Tomma + dinanzi al mio venir fu sì cortese. + + Ma l’orbita che fé la parte somma + di sua circunferenza, è derelitta, + sì ch’è la muffa dov’ era la gromma. + + La sua famiglia, che si mosse dritta + coi piedi a le sue orme, è tanto volta, + che quel dinanzi a quel di retro gitta; + + e tosto si vedrà de la ricolta + de la mala coltura, quando il loglio + si lagnerà che l’arca li sia tolta. + + Ben dico, chi cercasse a foglio a foglio + nostro volume, ancor troveria carta + u’ leggerebbe “I’ mi son quel ch’i’ soglio”; + + ma non fia da Casal né d’Acquasparta, + là onde vegnon tali a la scrittura, + ch’uno la fugge e altro la coarta. + + Io son la vita di Bonaventura + da Bagnoregio, che ne’ grandi offici + sempre pospuosi la sinistra cura. + + Illuminato e Augustin son quici, + che fuor de’ primi scalzi poverelli + che nel capestro a Dio si fero amici. + + Ugo da San Vittore è qui con elli, + e Pietro Mangiadore e Pietro Spano, + lo qual giù luce in dodici libelli; + + Natàn profeta e ’l metropolitano + Crisostomo e Anselmo e quel Donato + ch’a la prim’ arte degnò porre mano. + + Rabano è qui, e lucemi dallato + il calavrese abate Giovacchino + di spirito profetico dotato. + + Ad inveggiar cotanto paladino + mi mosse l’infiammata cortesia + di fra Tommaso e ’l discreto latino; + + e mosse meco questa compagnia». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XIII + + + Imagini, chi bene intender cupe + quel ch’i’ or vidi—e ritegna l’image, + mentre ch’io dico, come ferma rupe—, + + quindici stelle che ’n diverse plage + lo ciel avvivan di tanto sereno + che soperchia de l’aere ogne compage; + + imagini quel carro a cu’ il seno + basta del nostro cielo e notte e giorno, + sì ch’al volger del temo non vien meno; + + imagini la bocca di quel corno + che si comincia in punta de lo stelo + a cui la prima rota va dintorno, + + aver fatto di sé due segni in cielo, + qual fece la figliuola di Minoi + allora che sentì di morte il gelo; + + e l’un ne l’altro aver li raggi suoi, + e amendue girarsi per maniera + che l’uno andasse al primo e l’altro al poi; + + e avrà quasi l’ombra de la vera + costellazione e de la doppia danza + che circulava il punto dov’ io era: + + poi ch’è tanto di là da nostra usanza, + quanto di là dal mover de la Chiana + si move il ciel che tutti li altri avanza. + + Lì si cantò non Bacco, non Peana, + ma tre persone in divina natura, + e in una persona essa e l’umana. + + Compié ’l cantare e ’l volger sua misura; + e attesersi a noi quei santi lumi, + felicitando sé di cura in cura. + + Ruppe il silenzio ne’ concordi numi + poscia la luce in che mirabil vita + del poverel di Dio narrata fumi, + + e disse: «Quando l’una paglia è trita, + quando la sua semenza è già riposta, + a batter l’altra dolce amor m’invita. + + Tu credi che nel petto onde la costa + si trasse per formar la bella guancia + il cui palato a tutto ’l mondo costa, + + e in quel che, forato da la lancia, + e prima e poscia tanto sodisfece, + che d’ogne colpa vince la bilancia, + + quantunque a la natura umana lece + aver di lume, tutto fosse infuso + da quel valor che l’uno e l’altro fece; + + e però miri a ciò ch’io dissi suso, + quando narrai che non ebbe ’l secondo + lo ben che ne la quinta luce è chiuso. + + Or apri li occhi a quel ch’io ti rispondo, + e vedräi il tuo credere e ’l mio dire + nel vero farsi come centro in tondo. + + Ciò che non more e ciò che può morire + non è se non splendor di quella idea + che partorisce, amando, il nostro Sire; + + ché quella viva luce che sì mea + dal suo lucente, che non si disuna + da lui né da l’amor ch’a lor s’intrea, + + per sua bontate il suo raggiare aduna, + quasi specchiato, in nove sussistenze, + etternalmente rimanendosi una. + + Quindi discende a l’ultime potenze + giù d’atto in atto, tanto divenendo, + che più non fa che brevi contingenze; + + e queste contingenze essere intendo + le cose generate, che produce + con seme e sanza seme il ciel movendo. + + La cera di costoro e chi la duce + non sta d’un modo; e però sotto ’l segno + idëale poi più e men traluce. + + Ond’ elli avvien ch’un medesimo legno, + secondo specie, meglio e peggio frutta; + e voi nascete con diverso ingegno. + + Se fosse a punto la cera dedutta + e fosse il cielo in sua virtù supprema, + la luce del suggel parrebbe tutta; + + ma la natura la dà sempre scema, + similemente operando a l’artista + ch’a l’abito de l’arte ha man che trema. + + Però se ’l caldo amor la chiara vista + de la prima virtù dispone e segna, + tutta la perfezion quivi s’acquista. + + Così fu fatta già la terra degna + di tutta l’animal perfezïone; + così fu fatta la Vergine pregna; + + sì ch’io commendo tua oppinïone, + che l’umana natura mai non fue + né fia qual fu in quelle due persone. + + Or s’i’ non procedesse avanti piùe, + ‘Dunque, come costui fu sanza pare?’ + comincerebber le parole tue. + + Ma perché paia ben ciò che non pare, + pensa chi era, e la cagion che ’l mosse, + quando fu detto “Chiedi”, a dimandare. + + Non ho parlato sì, che tu non posse + ben veder ch’el fu re, che chiese senno + acciò che re sufficïente fosse; + + non per sapere il numero in che enno + li motor di qua sù, o se necesse + con contingente mai necesse fenno; + + non si est dare primum motum esse, + o se del mezzo cerchio far si puote + trïangol sì ch’un retto non avesse. + + Onde, se ciò ch’io dissi e questo note, + regal prudenza è quel vedere impari + in che lo stral di mia intenzion percuote; + + e se al “surse” drizzi li occhi chiari, + vedrai aver solamente respetto + ai regi, che son molti, e ’ buon son rari. + + Con questa distinzion prendi ’l mio detto; + e così puote star con quel che credi + del primo padre e del nostro Diletto. + + E questo ti sia sempre piombo a’ piedi, + per farti mover lento com’ uom lasso + e al sì e al no che tu non vedi: + + ché quelli è tra li stolti bene a basso, + che sanza distinzione afferma e nega + ne l’un così come ne l’altro passo; + + perch’ elli ’ncontra che più volte piega + l’oppinïon corrente in falsa parte, + e poi l’affetto l’intelletto lega. + + Vie più che ’ndarno da riva si parte, + perché non torna tal qual e’ si move, + chi pesca per lo vero e non ha l’arte. + + E di ciò sono al mondo aperte prove + Parmenide, Melisso e Brisso e molti, + li quali andaro e non sapëan dove; + + sì fé Sabellio e Arrio e quelli stolti + che furon come spade a le Scritture + in render torti li diritti volti. + + Non sien le genti, ancor, troppo sicure + a giudicar, sì come quei che stima + le biade in campo pria che sien mature; + + ch’i’ ho veduto tutto ’l verno prima + lo prun mostrarsi rigido e feroce, + poscia portar la rosa in su la cima; + + e legno vidi già dritto e veloce + correr lo mar per tutto suo cammino, + perire al fine a l’intrar de la foce. + + Non creda donna Berta e ser Martino, + per vedere un furare, altro offerere, + vederli dentro al consiglio divino; + + ché quel può surgere, e quel può cadere». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XIV + + + Dal centro al cerchio, e sì dal cerchio al centro + movesi l’acqua in un ritondo vaso, + secondo ch’è percosso fuori o dentro: + + ne la mia mente fé sùbito caso + questo ch’io dico, sì come si tacque + la glorïosa vita di Tommaso, + + per la similitudine che nacque + del suo parlare e di quel di Beatrice, + a cui sì cominciar, dopo lui, piacque: + + «A costui fa mestieri, e nol vi dice + né con la voce né pensando ancora, + d’un altro vero andare a la radice. + + Diteli se la luce onde s’infiora + vostra sustanza, rimarrà con voi + etternalmente sì com’ ell’ è ora; + + e se rimane, dite come, poi + che sarete visibili rifatti, + esser porà ch’al veder non vi nòi». + + Come, da più letizia pinti e tratti, + a la fïata quei che vanno a rota + levan la voce e rallegrano li atti, + + così, a l’orazion pronta e divota, + li santi cerchi mostrar nova gioia + nel torneare e ne la mira nota. + + Qual si lamenta perché qui si moia + per viver colà sù, non vide quive + lo refrigerio de l’etterna ploia. + + Quell’ uno e due e tre che sempre vive + e regna sempre in tre e ’n due e ’n uno, + non circunscritto, e tutto circunscrive, + + tre volte era cantato da ciascuno + di quelli spirti con tal melodia, + ch’ad ogne merto saria giusto muno. + + E io udi’ ne la luce più dia + del minor cerchio una voce modesta, + forse qual fu da l’angelo a Maria, + + risponder: «Quanto fia lunga la festa + di paradiso, tanto il nostro amore + si raggerà dintorno cotal vesta. + + La sua chiarezza séguita l’ardore; + l’ardor la visïone, e quella è tanta, + quant’ ha di grazia sovra suo valore. + + Come la carne glorïosa e santa + fia rivestita, la nostra persona + più grata fia per esser tutta quanta; + + per che s’accrescerà ciò che ne dona + di gratüito lume il sommo bene, + lume ch’a lui veder ne condiziona; + + onde la visïon crescer convene, + crescer l’ardor che di quella s’accende, + crescer lo raggio che da esso vene. + + Ma sì come carbon che fiamma rende, + e per vivo candor quella soverchia, + sì che la sua parvenza si difende; + + così questo folgór che già ne cerchia + fia vinto in apparenza da la carne + che tutto dì la terra ricoperchia; + + né potrà tanta luce affaticarne: + ché li organi del corpo saran forti + a tutto ciò che potrà dilettarne». + + Tanto mi parver sùbiti e accorti + e l’uno e l’altro coro a dicer «Amme!», + che ben mostrar disio d’i corpi morti: + + forse non pur per lor, ma per le mamme, + per li padri e per li altri che fuor cari + anzi che fosser sempiterne fiamme. + + Ed ecco intorno, di chiarezza pari, + nascere un lustro sopra quel che v’era, + per guisa d’orizzonte che rischiari. + + E sì come al salir di prima sera + comincian per lo ciel nove parvenze, + sì che la vista pare e non par vera, + + parvemi lì novelle sussistenze + cominciare a vedere, e fare un giro + di fuor da l’altre due circunferenze. + + Oh vero sfavillar del Santo Spiro! + come si fece sùbito e candente + a li occhi miei che, vinti, nol soffriro! + + Ma Bëatrice sì bella e ridente + mi si mostrò, che tra quelle vedute + si vuol lasciar che non seguir la mente. + + Quindi ripreser li occhi miei virtute + a rilevarsi; e vidimi translato + sol con mia donna in più alta salute. + + Ben m’accors’ io ch’io era più levato, + per l’affocato riso de la stella, + che mi parea più roggio che l’usato. + + Con tutto ’l core e con quella favella + ch’è una in tutti, a Dio feci olocausto, + qual conveniesi a la grazia novella. + + E non er’ anco del mio petto essausto + l’ardor del sacrificio, ch’io conobbi + esso litare stato accetto e fausto; + + ché con tanto lucore e tanto robbi + m’apparvero splendor dentro a due raggi, + ch’io dissi: «O Elïòs che sì li addobbi!». + + Come distinta da minori e maggi + lumi biancheggia tra ’ poli del mondo + Galassia sì, che fa dubbiar ben saggi; + + sì costellati facean nel profondo + Marte quei raggi il venerabil segno + che fan giunture di quadranti in tondo. + + Qui vince la memoria mia lo ’ngegno; + ché quella croce lampeggiava Cristo, + sì ch’io non so trovare essempro degno; + + ma chi prende sua croce e segue Cristo, + ancor mi scuserà di quel ch’io lasso, + vedendo in quell’ albor balenar Cristo. + + Di corno in corno e tra la cima e ’l basso + si movien lumi, scintillando forte + nel congiugnersi insieme e nel trapasso: + + così si veggion qui diritte e torte, + veloci e tarde, rinovando vista, + le minuzie d’i corpi, lunghe e corte, + + moversi per lo raggio onde si lista + talvolta l’ombra che, per sua difesa, + la gente con ingegno e arte acquista. + + E come giga e arpa, in tempra tesa + di molte corde, fa dolce tintinno + a tal da cui la nota non è intesa, + + così da’ lumi che lì m’apparinno + s’accogliea per la croce una melode + che mi rapiva, sanza intender l’inno. + + Ben m’accors’ io ch’elli era d’alte lode, + però ch’a me venìa «Resurgi» e «Vinci» + come a colui che non intende e ode. + + Ïo m’innamorava tanto quinci, + che ’nfino a lì non fu alcuna cosa + che mi legasse con sì dolci vinci. + + Forse la mia parola par troppo osa, + posponendo il piacer de li occhi belli, + ne’ quai mirando mio disio ha posa; + + ma chi s’avvede che i vivi suggelli + d’ogne bellezza più fanno più suso, + e ch’io non m’era lì rivolto a quelli, + + escusar puommi di quel ch’io m’accuso + per escusarmi, e vedermi dir vero: + ché ’l piacer santo non è qui dischiuso, + + perché si fa, montando, più sincero. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XV + + + Benigna volontade in che si liqua + sempre l’amor che drittamente spira, + come cupidità fa ne la iniqua, + + silenzio puose a quella dolce lira, + e fece quïetar le sante corde + che la destra del cielo allenta e tira. + + Come saranno a’ giusti preghi sorde + quelle sustanze che, per darmi voglia + ch’io le pregassi, a tacer fur concorde? + + Bene è che sanza termine si doglia + chi, per amor di cosa che non duri + etternalmente, quello amor si spoglia. + + Quale per li seren tranquilli e puri + discorre ad ora ad or sùbito foco, + movendo li occhi che stavan sicuri, + + e pare stella che tramuti loco, + se non che da la parte ond’ e’ s’accende + nulla sen perde, ed esso dura poco: + + tale dal corno che ’n destro si stende + a piè di quella croce corse un astro + de la costellazion che lì resplende; + + né si partì la gemma dal suo nastro, + ma per la lista radïal trascorse, + che parve foco dietro ad alabastro. + + Sì pïa l’ombra d’Anchise si porse, + se fede merta nostra maggior musa, + quando in Eliso del figlio s’accorse. + + «O sanguis meus, o superinfusa + gratïa Deï, sicut tibi cui + bis unquam celi ianüa reclusa?». + + Così quel lume: ond’ io m’attesi a lui; + poscia rivolsi a la mia donna il viso, + e quinci e quindi stupefatto fui; + + ché dentro a li occhi suoi ardeva un riso + tal, ch’io pensai co’ miei toccar lo fondo + de la mia gloria e del mio paradiso. + + Indi, a udire e a veder giocondo, + giunse lo spirto al suo principio cose, + ch’io non lo ’ntesi, sì parlò profondo; + + né per elezïon mi si nascose, + ma per necessità, ché ’l suo concetto + al segno d’i mortal si soprapuose. + + E quando l’arco de l’ardente affetto + fu sì sfogato, che ’l parlar discese + inver’ lo segno del nostro intelletto, + + la prima cosa che per me s’intese, + «Benedetto sia tu», fu, «trino e uno, + che nel mio seme se’ tanto cortese!». + + E seguì: «Grato e lontano digiuno, + tratto leggendo del magno volume + du’ non si muta mai bianco né bruno, + + solvuto hai, figlio, dentro a questo lume + in ch’io ti parlo, mercè di colei + ch’a l’alto volo ti vestì le piume. + + Tu credi che a me tuo pensier mei + da quel ch’è primo, così come raia + da l’un, se si conosce, il cinque e ’l sei; + + e però ch’io mi sia e perch’ io paia + più gaudïoso a te, non mi domandi, + che alcun altro in questa turba gaia. + + Tu credi ’l vero; ché i minori e ’ grandi + di questa vita miran ne lo speglio + in che, prima che pensi, il pensier pandi; + + ma perché ’l sacro amore in che io veglio + con perpetüa vista e che m’asseta + di dolce disïar, s’adempia meglio, + + la voce tua sicura, balda e lieta + suoni la volontà, suoni ’l disio, + a che la mia risposta è già decreta!». + + Io mi volsi a Beatrice, e quella udio + pria ch’io parlassi, e arrisemi un cenno + che fece crescer l’ali al voler mio. + + Poi cominciai così: «L’affetto e ’l senno, + come la prima equalità v’apparse, + d’un peso per ciascun di voi si fenno, + + però che ’l sol che v’allumò e arse, + col caldo e con la luce è sì iguali, + che tutte simiglianze sono scarse. + + Ma voglia e argomento ne’ mortali, + per la cagion ch’a voi è manifesta, + diversamente son pennuti in ali; + + ond’ io, che son mortal, mi sento in questa + disagguaglianza, e però non ringrazio + se non col core a la paterna festa. + + Ben supplico io a te, vivo topazio + che questa gioia prezïosa ingemmi, + perché mi facci del tuo nome sazio». + + «O fronda mia in che io compiacemmi + pur aspettando, io fui la tua radice»: + cotal principio, rispondendo, femmi. + + Poscia mi disse: «Quel da cui si dice + tua cognazione e che cent’ anni e piùe + girato ha ’l monte in la prima cornice, + + mio figlio fu e tuo bisavol fue: + ben si convien che la lunga fatica + tu li raccorci con l’opere tue. + + Fiorenza dentro da la cerchia antica, + ond’ ella toglie ancora e terza e nona, + si stava in pace, sobria e pudica. + + Non avea catenella, non corona, + non gonne contigiate, non cintura + che fosse a veder più che la persona. + + Non faceva, nascendo, ancor paura + la figlia al padre, che ’l tempo e la dote + non fuggien quinci e quindi la misura. + + Non avea case di famiglia vòte; + non v’era giunto ancor Sardanapalo + a mostrar ciò che ’n camera si puote. + + Non era vinto ancora Montemalo + dal vostro Uccellatoio, che, com’ è vinto + nel montar sù, così sarà nel calo. + + Bellincion Berti vid’ io andar cinto + di cuoio e d’osso, e venir da lo specchio + la donna sua sanza ’l viso dipinto; + + e vidi quel d’i Nerli e quel del Vecchio + esser contenti a la pelle scoperta, + e le sue donne al fuso e al pennecchio. + + Oh fortunate! ciascuna era certa + de la sua sepultura, e ancor nulla + era per Francia nel letto diserta. + + L’una vegghiava a studio de la culla, + e, consolando, usava l’idïoma + che prima i padri e le madri trastulla; + + l’altra, traendo a la rocca la chioma, + favoleggiava con la sua famiglia + d’i Troiani, di Fiesole e di Roma. + + Saria tenuta allor tal maraviglia + una Cianghella, un Lapo Salterello, + qual or saria Cincinnato e Corniglia. + + A così riposato, a così bello + viver di cittadini, a così fida + cittadinanza, a così dolce ostello, + + Maria mi diè, chiamata in alte grida; + e ne l’antico vostro Batisteo + insieme fui cristiano e Cacciaguida. + + Moronto fu mio frate ed Eliseo; + mia donna venne a me di val di Pado, + e quindi il sopranome tuo si feo. + + Poi seguitai lo ’mperador Currado; + ed el mi cinse de la sua milizia, + tanto per bene ovrar li venni in grado. + + Dietro li andai incontro a la nequizia + di quella legge il cui popolo usurpa, + per colpa d’i pastor, vostra giustizia. + + Quivi fu’ io da quella gente turpa + disviluppato dal mondo fallace, + lo cui amor molt’ anime deturpa; + + e venni dal martiro a questa pace». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XVI + + + O poca nostra nobiltà di sangue, + se glorïar di te la gente fai + qua giù dove l’affetto nostro langue, + + mirabil cosa non mi sarà mai: + ché là dove appetito non si torce, + dico nel cielo, io me ne gloriai. + + Ben se’ tu manto che tosto raccorce: + sì che, se non s’appon di dì in die, + lo tempo va dintorno con le force. + + Dal ‘voi’ che prima a Roma s’offerie, + in che la sua famiglia men persevra, + ricominciaron le parole mie; + + onde Beatrice, ch’era un poco scevra, + ridendo, parve quella che tossio + al primo fallo scritto di Ginevra. + + Io cominciai: «Voi siete il padre mio; + voi mi date a parlar tutta baldezza; + voi mi levate sì, ch’i’ son più ch’io. + + Per tanti rivi s’empie d’allegrezza + la mente mia, che di sé fa letizia + perché può sostener che non si spezza. + + Ditemi dunque, cara mia primizia, + quai fuor li vostri antichi e quai fuor li anni + che si segnaro in vostra püerizia; + + ditemi de l’ovil di San Giovanni + quanto era allora, e chi eran le genti + tra esso degne di più alti scanni». + + Come s’avviva a lo spirar d’i venti + carbone in fiamma, così vid’ io quella + luce risplendere a’ miei blandimenti; + + e come a li occhi miei si fé più bella, + così con voce più dolce e soave, + ma non con questa moderna favella, + + dissemi: «Da quel dì che fu detto ‘Ave’ + al parto in che mia madre, ch’è or santa, + s’allevïò di me ond’ era grave, + + al suo Leon cinquecento cinquanta + e trenta fiate venne questo foco + a rinfiammarsi sotto la sua pianta. + + Li antichi miei e io nacqui nel loco + dove si truova pria l’ultimo sesto + da quei che corre il vostro annüal gioco. + + Basti d’i miei maggiori udirne questo: + chi ei si fosser e onde venner quivi, + più è tacer che ragionare onesto. + + Tutti color ch’a quel tempo eran ivi + da poter arme tra Marte e ’l Batista, + eran il quinto di quei ch’or son vivi. + + Ma la cittadinanza, ch’è or mista + di Campi, di Certaldo e di Fegghine, + pura vediesi ne l’ultimo artista. + + Oh quanto fora meglio esser vicine + quelle genti ch’io dico, e al Galluzzo + e a Trespiano aver vostro confine, + + che averle dentro e sostener lo puzzo + del villan d’Aguglion, di quel da Signa, + che già per barattare ha l’occhio aguzzo! + + Se la gente ch’al mondo più traligna + non fosse stata a Cesare noverca, + ma come madre a suo figlio benigna, + + tal fatto è fiorentino e cambia e merca, + che si sarebbe vòlto a Simifonti, + là dove andava l’avolo a la cerca; + + sariesi Montemurlo ancor de’ Conti; + sarieno i Cerchi nel piovier d’Acone, + e forse in Valdigrieve i Buondelmonti. + + Sempre la confusion de le persone + principio fu del mal de la cittade, + come del vostro il cibo che s’appone; + + e cieco toro più avaccio cade + che cieco agnello; e molte volte taglia + più e meglio una che le cinque spade. + + Se tu riguardi Luni e Orbisaglia + come sono ite, e come se ne vanno + di retro ad esse Chiusi e Sinigaglia, + + udir come le schiatte si disfanno + non ti parrà nova cosa né forte, + poscia che le cittadi termine hanno. + + Le vostre cose tutte hanno lor morte, + sì come voi; ma celasi in alcuna + che dura molto, e le vite son corte. + + E come ’l volger del ciel de la luna + cuopre e discuopre i liti sanza posa, + così fa di Fiorenza la Fortuna: + + per che non dee parer mirabil cosa + ciò ch’io dirò de li alti Fiorentini + onde è la fama nel tempo nascosa. + + Io vidi li Ughi e vidi i Catellini, + Filippi, Greci, Ormanni e Alberichi, + già nel calare, illustri cittadini; + + e vidi così grandi come antichi, + con quel de la Sannella, quel de l’Arca, + e Soldanieri e Ardinghi e Bostichi. + + Sovra la porta ch’al presente è carca + di nova fellonia di tanto peso + che tosto fia iattura de la barca, + + erano i Ravignani, ond’ è disceso + il conte Guido e qualunque del nome + de l’alto Bellincione ha poscia preso. + + Quel de la Pressa sapeva già come + regger si vuole, e avea Galigaio + dorata in casa sua già l’elsa e ’l pome. + + Grand’ era già la colonna del Vaio, + Sacchetti, Giuochi, Fifanti e Barucci + e Galli e quei ch’arrossan per lo staio. + + Lo ceppo di che nacquero i Calfucci + era già grande, e già eran tratti + a le curule Sizii e Arrigucci. + + Oh quali io vidi quei che son disfatti + per lor superbia! e le palle de l’oro + fiorian Fiorenza in tutt’ i suoi gran fatti. + + Così facieno i padri di coloro + che, sempre che la vostra chiesa vaca, + si fanno grassi stando a consistoro. + + L’oltracotata schiatta che s’indraca + dietro a chi fugge, e a chi mostra ’l dente + o ver la borsa, com’ agnel si placa, + + già venìa sù, ma di picciola gente; + sì che non piacque ad Ubertin Donato + che poï il suocero il fé lor parente. + + Già era ’l Caponsacco nel mercato + disceso giù da Fiesole, e già era + buon cittadino Giuda e Infangato. + + Io dirò cosa incredibile e vera: + nel picciol cerchio s’entrava per porta + che si nomava da quei de la Pera. + + Ciascun che de la bella insegna porta + del gran barone il cui nome e ’l cui pregio + la festa di Tommaso riconforta, + + da esso ebbe milizia e privilegio; + avvegna che con popol si rauni + oggi colui che la fascia col fregio. + + Già eran Gualterotti e Importuni; + e ancor saria Borgo più quïeto, + se di novi vicin fosser digiuni. + + La casa di che nacque il vostro fleto, + per lo giusto disdegno che v’ha morti + e puose fine al vostro viver lieto, + + era onorata, essa e suoi consorti: + o Buondelmonte, quanto mal fuggisti + le nozze süe per li altrui conforti! + + Molti sarebber lieti, che son tristi, + se Dio t’avesse conceduto ad Ema + la prima volta ch’a città venisti. + + Ma conveniesi a quella pietra scema + che guarda ’l ponte, che Fiorenza fesse + vittima ne la sua pace postrema. + + Con queste genti, e con altre con esse, + vid’ io Fiorenza in sì fatto riposo, + che non avea cagione onde piangesse. + + Con queste genti vid’io glorïoso + e giusto il popol suo, tanto che ’l giglio + non era ad asta mai posto a ritroso, + + né per divisïon fatto vermiglio». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XVII + + + Qual venne a Climenè, per accertarsi + di ciò ch’avëa incontro a sé udito, + quei ch’ancor fa li padri ai figli scarsi; + + tal era io, e tal era sentito + e da Beatrice e da la santa lampa + che pria per me avea mutato sito. + + Per che mia donna «Manda fuor la vampa + del tuo disio», mi disse, «sì ch’ella esca + segnata bene de la interna stampa: + + non perché nostra conoscenza cresca + per tuo parlare, ma perché t’ausi + a dir la sete, sì che l’uom ti mesca». + + «O cara piota mia che sì t’insusi, + che, come veggion le terrene menti + non capere in trïangol due ottusi, + + così vedi le cose contingenti + anzi che sieno in sé, mirando il punto + a cui tutti li tempi son presenti; + + mentre ch’io era a Virgilio congiunto + su per lo monte che l’anime cura + e discendendo nel mondo defunto, + + dette mi fuor di mia vita futura + parole gravi, avvegna ch’io mi senta + ben tetragono ai colpi di ventura; + + per che la voglia mia saria contenta + d’intender qual fortuna mi s’appressa: + ché saetta previsa vien più lenta». + + Così diss’ io a quella luce stessa + che pria m’avea parlato; e come volle + Beatrice, fu la mia voglia confessa. + + Né per ambage, in che la gente folle + già s’inviscava pria che fosse anciso + l’Agnel di Dio che le peccata tolle, + + ma per chiare parole e con preciso + latin rispuose quello amor paterno, + chiuso e parvente del suo proprio riso: + + «La contingenza, che fuor del quaderno + de la vostra matera non si stende, + tutta è dipinta nel cospetto etterno; + + necessità però quindi non prende + se non come dal viso in che si specchia + nave che per torrente giù discende. + + Da indi, sì come viene ad orecchia + dolce armonia da organo, mi viene + a vista il tempo che ti s’apparecchia. + + Qual si partio Ipolito d’Atene + per la spietata e perfida noverca, + tal di Fiorenza partir ti convene. + + Questo si vuole e questo già si cerca, + e tosto verrà fatto a chi ciò pensa + là dove Cristo tutto dì si merca. + + La colpa seguirà la parte offensa + in grido, come suol; ma la vendetta + fia testimonio al ver che la dispensa. + + Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta + più caramente; e questo è quello strale + che l’arco de lo essilio pria saetta. + + Tu proverai sì come sa di sale + lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle + lo scendere e ’l salir per l’altrui scale. + + E quel che più ti graverà le spalle, + sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia + con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle; + + che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia + si farà contr’ a te; ma, poco appresso, + ella, non tu, n’avrà rossa la tempia. + + Di sua bestialitate il suo processo + farà la prova; sì ch’a te fia bello + averti fatta parte per te stesso. + + Lo primo tuo refugio e ’l primo ostello + sarà la cortesia del gran Lombardo + che ’n su la scala porta il santo uccello; + + ch’in te avrà sì benigno riguardo, + che del fare e del chieder, tra voi due, + fia primo quel che tra li altri è più tardo. + + Con lui vedrai colui che ’mpresso fue, + nascendo, sì da questa stella forte, + che notabili fier l’opere sue. + + Non se ne son le genti ancora accorte + per la novella età, ché pur nove anni + son queste rote intorno di lui torte; + + ma pria che ’l Guasco l’alto Arrigo inganni, + parran faville de la sua virtute + in non curar d’argento né d’affanni. + + Le sue magnificenze conosciute + saranno ancora, sì che ’ suoi nemici + non ne potran tener le lingue mute. + + A lui t’aspetta e a’ suoi benefici; + per lui fia trasmutata molta gente, + cambiando condizion ricchi e mendici; + + e portera’ne scritto ne la mente + di lui, e nol dirai»; e disse cose + incredibili a quei che fier presente. + + Poi giunse: «Figlio, queste son le chiose + di quel che ti fu detto; ecco le ’nsidie + che dietro a pochi giri son nascose. + + Non vo’ però ch’a’ tuoi vicini invidie, + poscia che s’infutura la tua vita + vie più là che ’l punir di lor perfidie». + + Poi che, tacendo, si mostrò spedita + l’anima santa di metter la trama + in quella tela ch’io le porsi ordita, + + io cominciai, come colui che brama, + dubitando, consiglio da persona + che vede e vuol dirittamente e ama: + + «Ben veggio, padre mio, sì come sprona + lo tempo verso me, per colpo darmi + tal, ch’è più grave a chi più s’abbandona; + + per che di provedenza è buon ch’io m’armi, + sì che, se loco m’è tolto più caro, + io non perdessi li altri per miei carmi. + + Giù per lo mondo sanza fine amaro, + e per lo monte del cui bel cacume + li occhi de la mia donna mi levaro, + + e poscia per lo ciel, di lume in lume, + ho io appreso quel che s’io ridico, + a molti fia sapor di forte agrume; + + e s’io al vero son timido amico, + temo di perder viver tra coloro + che questo tempo chiameranno antico». + + La luce in che rideva il mio tesoro + ch’io trovai lì, si fé prima corusca, + quale a raggio di sole specchio d’oro; + + indi rispuose: «Coscïenza fusca + o de la propria o de l’altrui vergogna + pur sentirà la tua parola brusca. + + Ma nondimen, rimossa ogne menzogna, + tutta tua visïon fa manifesta; + e lascia pur grattar dov’ è la rogna. + + Ché se la voce tua sarà molesta + nel primo gusto, vital nodrimento + lascerà poi, quando sarà digesta. + + Questo tuo grido farà come vento, + che le più alte cime più percuote; + e ciò non fa d’onor poco argomento. + + Però ti son mostrate in queste rote, + nel monte e ne la valle dolorosa + pur l’anime che son di fama note, + + che l’animo di quel ch’ode, non posa + né ferma fede per essempro ch’aia + la sua radice incognita e ascosa, + + né per altro argomento che non paia». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XVIII + + + Già si godeva solo del suo verbo + quello specchio beato, e io gustava + lo mio, temprando col dolce l’acerbo; + + e quella donna ch’a Dio mi menava + disse: «Muta pensier; pensa ch’i’ sono + presso a colui ch’ogne torto disgrava». + + Io mi rivolsi a l’amoroso suono + del mio conforto; e qual io allor vidi + ne li occhi santi amor, qui l’abbandono: + + non perch’ io pur del mio parlar diffidi, + ma per la mente che non può redire + sovra sé tanto, s’altri non la guidi. + + Tanto poss’ io di quel punto ridire, + che, rimirando lei, lo mio affetto + libero fu da ogne altro disire, + + fin che ’l piacere etterno, che diretto + raggiava in Bëatrice, dal bel viso + mi contentava col secondo aspetto. + + Vincendo me col lume d’un sorriso, + ella mi disse: «Volgiti e ascolta; + ché non pur ne’ miei occhi è paradiso». + + Come si vede qui alcuna volta + l’affetto ne la vista, s’elli è tanto, + che da lui sia tutta l’anima tolta, + + così nel fiammeggiar del folgór santo, + a ch’io mi volsi, conobbi la voglia + in lui di ragionarmi ancora alquanto. + + El cominciò: «In questa quinta soglia + de l’albero che vive de la cima + e frutta sempre e mai non perde foglia, + + spiriti son beati, che giù, prima + che venissero al ciel, fuor di gran voce, + sì ch’ogne musa ne sarebbe opima. + + Però mira ne’ corni de la croce: + quello ch’io nomerò, lì farà l’atto + che fa in nube il suo foco veloce». + + Io vidi per la croce un lume tratto + dal nomar Iosuè, com’ el si feo; + né mi fu noto il dir prima che ’l fatto. + + E al nome de l’alto Macabeo + vidi moversi un altro roteando, + e letizia era ferza del paleo. + + Così per Carlo Magno e per Orlando + due ne seguì lo mio attento sguardo, + com’ occhio segue suo falcon volando. + + Poscia trasse Guiglielmo e Rinoardo + e ’l duca Gottifredi la mia vista + per quella croce, e Ruberto Guiscardo. + + Indi, tra l’altre luci mota e mista, + mostrommi l’alma che m’avea parlato + qual era tra i cantor del cielo artista. + + Io mi rivolsi dal mio destro lato + per vedere in Beatrice il mio dovere, + o per parlare o per atto, segnato; + + e vidi le sue luci tanto mere, + tanto gioconde, che la sua sembianza + vinceva li altri e l’ultimo solere. + + E come, per sentir più dilettanza + bene operando, l’uom di giorno in giorno + s’accorge che la sua virtute avanza, + + sì m’accors’ io che ’l mio girare intorno + col cielo insieme avea cresciuto l’arco, + veggendo quel miracol più addorno. + + E qual è ’l trasmutare in picciol varco + di tempo in bianca donna, quando ’l volto + suo si discarchi di vergogna il carco, + + tal fu ne li occhi miei, quando fui vòlto, + per lo candor de la temprata stella + sesta, che dentro a sé m’avea ricolto. + + Io vidi in quella giovïal facella + lo sfavillar de l’amor che lì era + segnare a li occhi miei nostra favella. + + E come augelli surti di rivera, + quasi congratulando a lor pasture, + fanno di sé or tonda or altra schiera, + + sì dentro ai lumi sante creature + volitando cantavano, e faciensi + or D, or I, or L in sue figure. + + Prima, cantando, a sua nota moviensi; + poi, diventando l’un di questi segni, + un poco s’arrestavano e taciensi. + + O diva Pegasëa che li ’ngegni + fai glorïosi e rendili longevi, + ed essi teco le cittadi e ’ regni, + + illustrami di te, sì ch’io rilevi + le lor figure com’ io l’ho concette: + paia tua possa in questi versi brevi! + + Mostrarsi dunque in cinque volte sette + vocali e consonanti; e io notai + le parti sì, come mi parver dette. + + ‘DILIGITE IUSTITIAM’, primai + fur verbo e nome di tutto ’l dipinto; + ‘QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM’, fur sezzai. + + Poscia ne l’emme del vocabol quinto + rimasero ordinate; sì che Giove + pareva argento lì d’oro distinto. + + E vidi scendere altre luci dove + era il colmo de l’emme, e lì quetarsi + cantando, credo, il ben ch’a sé le move. + + Poi, come nel percuoter d’i ciocchi arsi + surgono innumerabili faville, + onde li stolti sogliono agurarsi, + + resurger parver quindi più di mille + luci e salir, qual assai e qual poco, + sì come ’l sol che l’accende sortille; + + e quïetata ciascuna in suo loco, + la testa e ’l collo d’un’aguglia vidi + rappresentare a quel distinto foco. + + Quei che dipinge lì, non ha chi ’l guidi; + ma esso guida, e da lui si rammenta + quella virtù ch’è forma per li nidi. + + L’altra bëatitudo, che contenta + pareva prima d’ingigliarsi a l’emme, + con poco moto seguitò la ’mprenta. + + O dolce stella, quali e quante gemme + mi dimostraro che nostra giustizia + effetto sia del ciel che tu ingemme! + + Per ch’io prego la mente in che s’inizia + tuo moto e tua virtute, che rimiri + ond’ esce il fummo che ’l tuo raggio vizia; + + sì ch’un’altra fïata omai s’adiri + del comperare e vender dentro al templo + che si murò di segni e di martìri. + + O milizia del ciel cu’ io contemplo, + adora per color che sono in terra + tutti svïati dietro al malo essemplo! + + Già si solea con le spade far guerra; + ma or si fa togliendo or qui or quivi + lo pan che ’l pïo Padre a nessun serra. + + Ma tu che sol per cancellare scrivi, + pensa che Pietro e Paulo, che moriro + per la vigna che guasti, ancor son vivi. + + Ben puoi tu dire: «I’ ho fermo ’l disiro + sì a colui che volle viver solo + e che per salti fu tratto al martiro, + + ch’io non conosco il pescator né Polo». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XIX + + + Parea dinanzi a me con l’ali aperte + la bella image che nel dolce frui + liete facevan l’anime conserte; + + parea ciascuna rubinetto in cui + raggio di sole ardesse sì acceso, + che ne’ miei occhi rifrangesse lui. + + E quel che mi convien ritrar testeso, + non portò voce mai, né scrisse incostro, + né fu per fantasia già mai compreso; + + ch’io vidi e anche udi’ parlar lo rostro, + e sonar ne la voce e «io» e «mio», + quand’ era nel concetto e ‘noi’ e ‘nostro’. + + E cominciò: «Per esser giusto e pio + son io qui essaltato a quella gloria + che non si lascia vincere a disio; + + e in terra lasciai la mia memoria + sì fatta, che le genti lì malvage + commendan lei, ma non seguon la storia». + + Così un sol calor di molte brage + si fa sentir, come di molti amori + usciva solo un suon di quella image. + + Ond’ io appresso: «O perpetüi fiori + de l’etterna letizia, che pur uno + parer mi fate tutti vostri odori, + + solvetemi, spirando, il gran digiuno + che lungamente m’ha tenuto in fame, + non trovandoli in terra cibo alcuno. + + Ben so io che, se ’n cielo altro reame + la divina giustizia fa suo specchio, + che ’l vostro non l’apprende con velame. + + Sapete come attento io m’apparecchio + ad ascoltar; sapete qual è quello + dubbio che m’è digiun cotanto vecchio». + + Quasi falcone ch’esce del cappello, + move la testa e con l’ali si plaude, + voglia mostrando e faccendosi bello, + + vid’ io farsi quel segno, che di laude + de la divina grazia era contesto, + con canti quai si sa chi là sù gaude. + + Poi cominciò: «Colui che volse il sesto + a lo stremo del mondo, e dentro ad esso + distinse tanto occulto e manifesto, + + non poté suo valor sì fare impresso + in tutto l’universo, che ’l suo verbo + non rimanesse in infinito eccesso. + + E ciò fa certo che ’l primo superbo, + che fu la somma d’ogne creatura, + per non aspettar lume, cadde acerbo; + + e quinci appar ch’ogne minor natura + è corto recettacolo a quel bene + che non ha fine e sé con sé misura. + + Dunque vostra veduta, che convene + esser alcun de’ raggi de la mente + di che tutte le cose son ripiene, + + non pò da sua natura esser possente + tanto, che suo principio discerna + molto di là da quel che l’è parvente. + + Però ne la giustizia sempiterna + la vista che riceve il vostro mondo, + com’ occhio per lo mare, entro s’interna; + + che, ben che da la proda veggia il fondo, + in pelago nol vede; e nondimeno + èli, ma cela lui l’esser profondo. + + Lume non è, se non vien dal sereno + che non si turba mai; anzi è tenèbra + od ombra de la carne o suo veleno. + + Assai t’è mo aperta la latebra + che t’ascondeva la giustizia viva, + di che facei question cotanto crebra; + + ché tu dicevi: “Un uom nasce a la riva + de l’Indo, e quivi non è chi ragioni + di Cristo né chi legga né chi scriva; + + e tutti suoi voleri e atti buoni + sono, quanto ragione umana vede, + sanza peccato in vita o in sermoni. + + Muore non battezzato e sanza fede: + ov’ è questa giustizia che ’l condanna? + ov’ è la colpa sua, se ei non crede?”. + + Or tu chi se’, che vuo’ sedere a scranna, + per giudicar di lungi mille miglia + con la veduta corta d’una spanna? + + Certo a colui che meco s’assottiglia, + se la Scrittura sovra voi non fosse, + da dubitar sarebbe a maraviglia. + + Oh terreni animali! oh menti grosse! + La prima volontà, ch’è da sé buona, + da sé, ch’è sommo ben, mai non si mosse. + + Cotanto è giusto quanto a lei consuona: + nullo creato bene a sé la tira, + ma essa, radïando, lui cagiona». + + Quale sovresso il nido si rigira + poi c’ha pasciuti la cicogna i figli, + e come quel ch’è pasto la rimira; + + cotal si fece, e sì leväi i cigli, + la benedetta imagine, che l’ali + movea sospinte da tanti consigli. + + Roteando cantava, e dicea: «Quali + son le mie note a te, che non le ’ntendi, + tal è il giudicio etterno a voi mortali». + + Poi si quetaro quei lucenti incendi + de lo Spirito Santo ancor nel segno + che fé i Romani al mondo reverendi, + + esso ricominciò: «A questo regno + non salì mai chi non credette ’n Cristo, + né pria né poi ch’el si chiavasse al legno. + + Ma vedi: molti gridan “Cristo, Cristo!”, + che saranno in giudicio assai men prope + a lui, che tal che non conosce Cristo; + + e tai Cristian dannerà l’Etïòpe, + quando si partiranno i due collegi, + l’uno in etterno ricco e l’altro inòpe. + + Che poran dir li Perse a’ vostri regi, + come vedranno quel volume aperto + nel qual si scrivon tutti suoi dispregi? + + Lì si vedrà, tra l’opere d’Alberto, + quella che tosto moverà la penna, + per che ’l regno di Praga fia diserto. + + Lì si vedrà il duol che sovra Senna + induce, falseggiando la moneta, + quel che morrà di colpo di cotenna. + + Lì si vedrà la superbia ch’asseta, + che fa lo Scotto e l’Inghilese folle, + sì che non può soffrir dentro a sua meta. + + Vedrassi la lussuria e ’l viver molle + di quel di Spagna e di quel di Boemme, + che mai valor non conobbe né volle. + + Vedrassi al Ciotto di Ierusalemme + segnata con un i la sua bontate, + quando ’l contrario segnerà un emme. + + Vedrassi l’avarizia e la viltate + di quei che guarda l’isola del foco, + ove Anchise finì la lunga etate; + + e a dare ad intender quanto è poco, + la sua scrittura fian lettere mozze, + che noteranno molto in parvo loco. + + E parranno a ciascun l’opere sozze + del barba e del fratel, che tanto egregia + nazione e due corone han fatte bozze. + + E quel di Portogallo e di Norvegia + lì si conosceranno, e quel di Rascia + che male ha visto il conio di Vinegia. + + Oh beata Ungheria, se non si lascia + più malmenare! e beata Navarra, + se s’armasse del monte che la fascia! + + E creder de’ ciascun che già, per arra + di questo, Niccosïa e Famagosta + per la lor bestia si lamenti e garra, + + che dal fianco de l’altre non si scosta». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XX + + + Quando colui che tutto ’l mondo alluma + de l’emisperio nostro sì discende, + che ’l giorno d’ogne parte si consuma, + + lo ciel, che sol di lui prima s’accende, + subitamente si rifà parvente + per molte luci, in che una risplende; + + e questo atto del ciel mi venne a mente, + come ’l segno del mondo e de’ suoi duci + nel benedetto rostro fu tacente; + + però che tutte quelle vive luci, + vie più lucendo, cominciaron canti + da mia memoria labili e caduci. + + O dolce amor che di riso t’ammanti, + quanto parevi ardente in que’ flailli, + ch’avieno spirto sol di pensier santi! + + Poscia che i cari e lucidi lapilli + ond’ io vidi ingemmato il sesto lume + puoser silenzio a li angelici squilli, + + udir mi parve un mormorar di fiume + che scende chiaro giù di pietra in pietra, + mostrando l’ubertà del suo cacume. + + E come suono al collo de la cetra + prende sua forma, e sì com’ al pertugio + de la sampogna vento che penètra, + + così, rimosso d’aspettare indugio, + quel mormorar de l’aguglia salissi + su per lo collo, come fosse bugio. + + Fecesi voce quivi, e quindi uscissi + per lo suo becco in forma di parole, + quali aspettava il core ov’ io le scrissi. + + «La parte in me che vede e pate il sole + ne l’aguglie mortali», incominciommi, + «or fisamente riguardar si vole, + + perché d’i fuochi ond’ io figura fommi, + quelli onde l’occhio in testa mi scintilla, + e’ di tutti lor gradi son li sommi. + + Colui che luce in mezzo per pupilla, + fu il cantor de lo Spirito Santo, + che l’arca traslatò di villa in villa: + + ora conosce il merto del suo canto, + in quanto effetto fu del suo consiglio, + per lo remunerar ch’è altrettanto. + + Dei cinque che mi fan cerchio per ciglio, + colui che più al becco mi s’accosta, + la vedovella consolò del figlio: + + ora conosce quanto caro costa + non seguir Cristo, per l’esperïenza + di questa dolce vita e de l’opposta. + + E quel che segue in la circunferenza + di che ragiono, per l’arco superno, + morte indugiò per vera penitenza: + + ora conosce che ’l giudicio etterno + non si trasmuta, quando degno preco + fa crastino là giù de l’odïerno. + + L’altro che segue, con le leggi e meco, + sotto buona intenzion che fé mal frutto, + per cedere al pastor si fece greco: + + ora conosce come il mal dedutto + dal suo bene operar non li è nocivo, + avvegna che sia ’l mondo indi distrutto. + + E quel che vedi ne l’arco declivo, + Guiglielmo fu, cui quella terra plora + che piagne Carlo e Federigo vivo: + + ora conosce come s’innamora + lo ciel del giusto rege, e al sembiante + del suo fulgore il fa vedere ancora. + + Chi crederebbe giù nel mondo errante + che Rifëo Troiano in questo tondo + fosse la quinta de le luci sante? + + Ora conosce assai di quel che ’l mondo + veder non può de la divina grazia, + ben che sua vista non discerna il fondo». + + Quale allodetta che ’n aere si spazia + prima cantando, e poi tace contenta + de l’ultima dolcezza che la sazia, + + tal mi sembiò l’imago de la ’mprenta + de l’etterno piacere, al cui disio + ciascuna cosa qual ell’ è diventa. + + E avvegna ch’io fossi al dubbiar mio + lì quasi vetro a lo color ch’el veste, + tempo aspettar tacendo non patio, + + ma de la bocca, «Che cose son queste?», + mi pinse con la forza del suo peso: + per ch’io di coruscar vidi gran feste. + + Poi appresso, con l’occhio più acceso, + lo benedetto segno mi rispuose + per non tenermi in ammirar sospeso: + + «Io veggio che tu credi queste cose + perch’ io le dico, ma non vedi come; + sì che, se son credute, sono ascose. + + Fai come quei che la cosa per nome + apprende ben, ma la sua quiditate + veder non può se altri non la prome. + + Regnum celorum vïolenza pate + da caldo amore e da viva speranza, + che vince la divina volontate: + + non a guisa che l’omo a l’om sobranza, + ma vince lei perché vuole esser vinta, + e, vinta, vince con sua beninanza. + + La prima vita del ciglio e la quinta + ti fa maravigliar, perché ne vedi + la regïon de li angeli dipinta. + + D’i corpi suoi non uscir, come credi, + Gentili, ma Cristiani, in ferma fede + quel d’i passuri e quel d’i passi piedi. + + Ché l’una de lo ’nferno, u’ non si riede + già mai a buon voler, tornò a l’ossa; + e ciò di viva spene fu mercede: + + di viva spene, che mise la possa + ne’ prieghi fatti a Dio per suscitarla, + sì che potesse sua voglia esser mossa. + + L’anima glorïosa onde si parla, + tornata ne la carne, in che fu poco, + credette in lui che potëa aiutarla; + + e credendo s’accese in tanto foco + di vero amor, ch’a la morte seconda + fu degna di venire a questo gioco. + + L’altra, per grazia che da sì profonda + fontana stilla, che mai creatura + non pinse l’occhio infino a la prima onda, + + tutto suo amor là giù pose a drittura: + per che, di grazia in grazia, Dio li aperse + l’occhio a la nostra redenzion futura; + + ond’ ei credette in quella, e non sofferse + da indi il puzzo più del paganesmo; + e riprendiene le genti perverse. + + Quelle tre donne li fur per battesmo + che tu vedesti da la destra rota, + dinanzi al battezzar più d’un millesmo. + + O predestinazion, quanto remota + è la radice tua da quelli aspetti + che la prima cagion non veggion tota! + + E voi, mortali, tenetevi stretti + a giudicar: ché noi, che Dio vedemo, + non conosciamo ancor tutti li eletti; + + ed ènne dolce così fatto scemo, + perché il ben nostro in questo ben s’affina, + che quel che vole Iddio, e noi volemo». + + Così da quella imagine divina, + per farmi chiara la mia corta vista, + data mi fu soave medicina. + + E come a buon cantor buon citarista + fa seguitar lo guizzo de la corda, + in che più di piacer lo canto acquista, + + sì, mentre ch’e’ parlò, sì mi ricorda + ch’io vidi le due luci benedette, + pur come batter d’occhi si concorda, + + con le parole mover le fiammette. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXI + + + Già eran li occhi miei rifissi al volto + de la mia donna, e l’animo con essi, + e da ogne altro intento s’era tolto. + + E quella non ridea; ma «S’io ridessi», + mi cominciò, «tu ti faresti quale + fu Semelè quando di cener fessi: + + ché la bellezza mia, che per le scale + de l’etterno palazzo più s’accende, + com’ hai veduto, quanto più si sale, + + se non si temperasse, tanto splende, + che ’l tuo mortal podere, al suo fulgore, + sarebbe fronda che trono scoscende. + + Noi sem levati al settimo splendore, + che sotto ’l petto del Leone ardente + raggia mo misto giù del suo valore. + + Ficca di retro a li occhi tuoi la mente, + e fa di quelli specchi a la figura + che ’n questo specchio ti sarà parvente». + + Qual savesse qual era la pastura + del viso mio ne l’aspetto beato + quand’ io mi trasmutai ad altra cura, + + conoscerebbe quanto m’era a grato + ubidire a la mia celeste scorta, + contrapesando l’un con l’altro lato. + + Dentro al cristallo che ’l vocabol porta, + cerchiando il mondo, del suo caro duce + sotto cui giacque ogne malizia morta, + + di color d’oro in che raggio traluce + vid’ io uno scaleo eretto in suso + tanto, che nol seguiva la mia luce. + + Vidi anche per li gradi scender giuso + tanti splendor, ch’io pensai ch’ogne lume + che par nel ciel, quindi fosse diffuso. + + E come, per lo natural costume, + le pole insieme, al cominciar del giorno, + si movono a scaldar le fredde piume; + + poi altre vanno via sanza ritorno, + altre rivolgon sé onde son mosse, + e altre roteando fan soggiorno; + + tal modo parve me che quivi fosse + in quello sfavillar che ’nsieme venne, + sì come in certo grado si percosse. + + E quel che presso più ci si ritenne, + si fé sì chiaro, ch’io dicea pensando: + ‘Io veggio ben l’amor che tu m’accenne. + + Ma quella ond’ io aspetto il come e ’l quando + del dire e del tacer, si sta; ond’ io, + contra ’l disio, fo ben ch’io non dimando’. + + Per ch’ella, che vedëa il tacer mio + nel veder di colui che tutto vede, + mi disse: «Solvi il tuo caldo disio». + + E io incominciai: «La mia mercede + non mi fa degno de la tua risposta; + ma per colei che ’l chieder mi concede, + + vita beata che ti stai nascosta + dentro a la tua letizia, fammi nota + la cagion che sì presso mi t’ha posta; + + e dì perché si tace in questa rota + la dolce sinfonia di paradiso, + che giù per l’altre suona sì divota». + + «Tu hai l’udir mortal sì come il viso», + rispuose a me; «onde qui non si canta + per quel che Bëatrice non ha riso. + + Giù per li gradi de la scala santa + discesi tanto sol per farti festa + col dire e con la luce che mi ammanta; + + né più amor mi fece esser più presta, + ché più e tanto amor quinci sù ferve, + sì come il fiammeggiar ti manifesta. + + Ma l’alta carità, che ci fa serve + pronte al consiglio che ’l mondo governa, + sorteggia qui sì come tu osserve». + + «Io veggio ben», diss’ io, «sacra lucerna, + come libero amore in questa corte + basta a seguir la provedenza etterna; + + ma questo è quel ch’a cerner mi par forte, + perché predestinata fosti sola + a questo officio tra le tue consorte». + + Né venni prima a l’ultima parola, + che del suo mezzo fece il lume centro, + girando sé come veloce mola; + + poi rispuose l’amor che v’era dentro: + «Luce divina sopra me s’appunta, + penetrando per questa in ch’io m’inventro, + + la cui virtù, col mio veder congiunta, + mi leva sopra me tanto, ch’i’ veggio + la somma essenza de la quale è munta. + + Quinci vien l’allegrezza ond’ io fiammeggio; + per ch’a la vista mia, quant’ ella è chiara, + la chiarità de la fiamma pareggio. + + Ma quell’ alma nel ciel che più si schiara, + quel serafin che ’n Dio più l’occhio ha fisso, + a la dimanda tua non satisfara, + + però che sì s’innoltra ne lo abisso + de l’etterno statuto quel che chiedi, + che da ogne creata vista è scisso. + + E al mondo mortal, quando tu riedi, + questo rapporta, sì che non presumma + a tanto segno più mover li piedi. + + La mente, che qui luce, in terra fumma; + onde riguarda come può là giùe + quel che non pote perché ’l ciel l’assumma». + + Sì mi prescrisser le parole sue, + ch’io lasciai la quistione e mi ritrassi + a dimandarla umilmente chi fue. + + «Tra ’ due liti d’Italia surgon sassi, + e non molto distanti a la tua patria, + tanto che ’ troni assai suonan più bassi, + + e fanno un gibbo che si chiama Catria, + di sotto al quale è consecrato un ermo, + che suole esser disposto a sola latria». + + Così ricominciommi il terzo sermo; + e poi, continüando, disse: «Quivi + al servigio di Dio mi fe’ sì fermo, + + che pur con cibi di liquor d’ulivi + lievemente passava caldi e geli, + contento ne’ pensier contemplativi. + + Render solea quel chiostro a questi cieli + fertilemente; e ora è fatto vano, + sì che tosto convien che si riveli. + + In quel loco fu’ io Pietro Damiano, + e Pietro Peccator fu’ ne la casa + di Nostra Donna in sul lito adriano. + + Poca vita mortal m’era rimasa, + quando fui chiesto e tratto a quel cappello, + che pur di male in peggio si travasa. + + Venne Cefàs e venne il gran vasello + de lo Spirito Santo, magri e scalzi, + prendendo il cibo da qualunque ostello. + + Or voglion quinci e quindi chi rincalzi + li moderni pastori e chi li meni, + tanto son gravi, e chi di rietro li alzi. + + Cuopron d’i manti loro i palafreni, + sì che due bestie van sott’ una pelle: + oh pazïenza che tanto sostieni!». + + A questa voce vid’ io più fiammelle + di grado in grado scendere e girarsi, + e ogne giro le facea più belle. + + Dintorno a questa vennero e fermarsi, + e fero un grido di sì alto suono, + che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi; + + né io lo ’ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXII + + + Oppresso di stupore, a la mia guida + mi volsi, come parvol che ricorre + sempre colà dove più si confida; + + e quella, come madre che soccorre + sùbito al figlio palido e anelo + con la sua voce, che ’l suol ben disporre, + + mi disse: «Non sai tu che tu se’ in cielo? + e non sai tu che ’l cielo è tutto santo, + e ciò che ci si fa vien da buon zelo? + + Come t’avrebbe trasmutato il canto, + e io ridendo, mo pensar lo puoi, + poscia che ’l grido t’ha mosso cotanto; + + nel qual, se ’nteso avessi i prieghi suoi, + già ti sarebbe nota la vendetta + che tu vedrai innanzi che tu muoi. + + La spada di qua sù non taglia in fretta + né tardo, ma’ ch’al parer di colui + che disïando o temendo l’aspetta. + + Ma rivolgiti omai inverso altrui; + ch’assai illustri spiriti vedrai, + se com’ io dico l’aspetto redui». + + Come a lei piacque, li occhi ritornai, + e vidi cento sperule che ’nsieme + più s’abbellivan con mutüi rai. + + Io stava come quei che ’n sé repreme + la punta del disio, e non s’attenta + di domandar, sì del troppo si teme; + + e la maggiore e la più luculenta + di quelle margherite innanzi fessi, + per far di sé la mia voglia contenta. + + Poi dentro a lei udi’: «Se tu vedessi + com’ io la carità che tra noi arde, + li tuoi concetti sarebbero espressi. + + Ma perché tu, aspettando, non tarde + a l’alto fine, io ti farò risposta + pur al pensier, da che sì ti riguarde. + + Quel monte a cui Cassino è ne la costa + fu frequentato già in su la cima + da la gente ingannata e mal disposta; + + e quel son io che sù vi portai prima + lo nome di colui che ’n terra addusse + la verità che tanto ci soblima; + + e tanta grazia sopra me relusse, + ch’io ritrassi le ville circunstanti + da l’empio cólto che ’l mondo sedusse. + + Questi altri fuochi tutti contemplanti + uomini fuoro, accesi di quel caldo + che fa nascere i fiori e ’ frutti santi. + + Qui è Maccario, qui è Romoaldo, + qui son li frati miei che dentro ai chiostri + fermar li piedi e tennero il cor saldo». + + E io a lui: «L’affetto che dimostri + meco parlando, e la buona sembianza + ch’io veggio e noto in tutti li ardor vostri, + + così m’ha dilatata mia fidanza, + come ’l sol fa la rosa quando aperta + tanto divien quant’ ell’ ha di possanza. + + Però ti priego, e tu, padre, m’accerta + s’io posso prender tanta grazia, ch’io + ti veggia con imagine scoverta». + + Ond’ elli: «Frate, il tuo alto disio + s’adempierà in su l’ultima spera, + ove s’adempion tutti li altri e ’l mio. + + Ivi è perfetta, matura e intera + ciascuna disïanza; in quella sola + è ogne parte là ove sempr’ era, + + perché non è in loco e non s’impola; + e nostra scala infino ad essa varca, + onde così dal viso ti s’invola. + + Infin là sù la vide il patriarca + Iacobbe porger la superna parte, + quando li apparve d’angeli sì carca. + + Ma, per salirla, mo nessun diparte + da terra i piedi, e la regola mia + rimasa è per danno de le carte. + + Le mura che solieno esser badia + fatte sono spelonche, e le cocolle + sacca son piene di farina ria. + + Ma grave usura tanto non si tolle + contra ’l piacer di Dio, quanto quel frutto + che fa il cor de’ monaci sì folle; + + ché quantunque la Chiesa guarda, tutto + è de la gente che per Dio dimanda; + non di parenti né d’altro più brutto. + + La carne d’i mortali è tanto blanda, + che giù non basta buon cominciamento + dal nascer de la quercia al far la ghianda. + + Pier cominciò sanz’ oro e sanz’ argento, + e io con orazione e con digiuno, + e Francesco umilmente il suo convento; + + e se guardi ’l principio di ciascuno, + poscia riguardi là dov’ è trascorso, + tu vederai del bianco fatto bruno. + + Veramente Iordan vòlto retrorso + più fu, e ’l mar fuggir, quando Dio volse, + mirabile a veder che qui ’l soccorso». + + Così mi disse, e indi si raccolse + al suo collegio, e ’l collegio si strinse; + poi, come turbo, in sù tutto s’avvolse. + + La dolce donna dietro a lor mi pinse + con un sol cenno su per quella scala, + sì sua virtù la mia natura vinse; + + né mai qua giù dove si monta e cala + naturalmente, fu sì ratto moto + ch’agguagliar si potesse a la mia ala. + + S’io torni mai, lettore, a quel divoto + trïunfo per lo quale io piango spesso + le mie peccata e ’l petto mi percuoto, + + tu non avresti in tanto tratto e messo + nel foco il dito, in quant’ io vidi ’l segno + che segue il Tauro e fui dentro da esso. + + O glorïose stelle, o lume pregno + di gran virtù, dal quale io riconosco + tutto, qual che si sia, il mio ingegno, + + con voi nasceva e s’ascondeva vosco + quelli ch’è padre d’ogne mortal vita, + quand’ io senti’ di prima l’aere tosco; + + e poi, quando mi fu grazia largita + d’entrar ne l’alta rota che vi gira, + la vostra regïon mi fu sortita. + + A voi divotamente ora sospira + l’anima mia, per acquistar virtute + al passo forte che a sé la tira. + + «Tu se’ sì presso a l’ultima salute», + cominciò Bëatrice, «che tu dei + aver le luci tue chiare e acute; + + e però, prima che tu più t’inlei, + rimira in giù, e vedi quanto mondo + sotto li piedi già esser ti fei; + + sì che ’l tuo cor, quantunque può, giocondo + s’appresenti a la turba trïunfante + che lieta vien per questo etera tondo». + + Col viso ritornai per tutte quante + le sette spere, e vidi questo globo + tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante; + + e quel consiglio per migliore approbo + che l’ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa + chiamar si puote veramente probo. + + Vidi la figlia di Latona incensa + sanza quell’ ombra che mi fu cagione + per che già la credetti rara e densa. + + L’aspetto del tuo nato, Iperïone, + quivi sostenni, e vidi com’ si move + circa e vicino a lui Maia e Dïone. + + Quindi m’apparve il temperar di Giove + tra ’l padre e ’l figlio; e quindi mi fu chiaro + il varïar che fanno di lor dove; + + e tutti e sette mi si dimostraro + quanto son grandi e quanto son veloci + e come sono in distante riparo. + + L’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci, + volgendom’ io con li etterni Gemelli, + tutta m’apparve da’ colli a le foci; + + poscia rivolsi li occhi a li occhi belli. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXIII + + + Come l’augello, intra l’amate fronde, + posato al nido de’ suoi dolci nati + la notte che le cose ci nasconde, + + che, per veder li aspetti disïati + e per trovar lo cibo onde li pasca, + in che gravi labor li sono aggrati, + + previene il tempo in su aperta frasca, + e con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, + fiso guardando pur che l’alba nasca; + + così la donna mïa stava eretta + e attenta, rivolta inver’ la plaga + sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta: + + sì che, veggendola io sospesa e vaga, + fecimi qual è quei che disïando + altro vorria, e sperando s’appaga. + + Ma poco fu tra uno e altro quando, + del mio attender, dico, e del vedere + lo ciel venir più e più rischiarando; + + e Bëatrice disse: «Ecco le schiere + del trïunfo di Cristo e tutto ’l frutto + ricolto del girar di queste spere!». + + Pariemi che ’l suo viso ardesse tutto, + e li occhi avea di letizia sì pieni, + che passarmen convien sanza costrutto. + + Quale ne’ plenilunïi sereni + Trivïa ride tra le ninfe etterne + che dipingon lo ciel per tutti i seni, + + vid’ i’ sopra migliaia di lucerne + un sol che tutte quante l’accendea, + come fa ’l nostro le viste superne; + + e per la viva luce trasparea + la lucente sustanza tanto chiara + nel viso mio, che non la sostenea. + + Oh Bëatrice, dolce guida e cara! + Ella mi disse: «Quel che ti sobranza + è virtù da cui nulla si ripara. + + Quivi è la sapïenza e la possanza + ch’aprì le strade tra ’l cielo e la terra, + onde fu già sì lunga disïanza». + + Come foco di nube si diserra + per dilatarsi sì che non vi cape, + e fuor di sua natura in giù s’atterra, + + la mente mia così, tra quelle dape + fatta più grande, di sé stessa uscìo, + e che si fesse rimembrar non sape. + + «Apri li occhi e riguarda qual son io; + tu hai vedute cose, che possente + se’ fatto a sostener lo riso mio». + + Io era come quei che si risente + di visïone oblita e che s’ingegna + indarno di ridurlasi a la mente, + + quand’ io udi’ questa proferta, degna + di tanto grato, che mai non si stingue + del libro che ’l preterito rassegna. + + Se mo sonasser tutte quelle lingue + che Polimnïa con le suore fero + del latte lor dolcissimo più pingue, + + per aiutarmi, al millesmo del vero + non si verria, cantando il santo riso + e quanto il santo aspetto facea mero; + + e così, figurando il paradiso, + convien saltar lo sacrato poema, + come chi trova suo cammin riciso. + + Ma chi pensasse il ponderoso tema + e l’omero mortal che se ne carca, + nol biasmerebbe se sott’ esso trema: + + non è pareggio da picciola barca + quel che fendendo va l’ardita prora, + né da nocchier ch’a sé medesmo parca. + + «Perché la faccia mia sì t’innamora, + che tu non ti rivolgi al bel giardino + che sotto i raggi di Cristo s’infiora? + + Quivi è la rosa in che ’l verbo divino + carne si fece; quivi son li gigli + al cui odor si prese il buon cammino». + + Così Beatrice; e io, che a’ suoi consigli + tutto era pronto, ancora mi rendei + a la battaglia de’ debili cigli. + + Come a raggio di sol, che puro mei + per fratta nube, già prato di fiori + vider, coverti d’ombra, li occhi miei; + + vid’ io così più turbe di splendori, + folgorate di sù da raggi ardenti, + sanza veder principio di folgóri. + + O benigna vertù che sì li ’mprenti, + sù t’essaltasti, per largirmi loco + a li occhi lì che non t’eran possenti. + + Il nome del bel fior ch’io sempre invoco + e mane e sera, tutto mi ristrinse + l’animo ad avvisar lo maggior foco; + + e come ambo le luci mi dipinse + il quale e il quanto de la viva stella + che là sù vince come qua giù vinse, + + per entro il cielo scese una facella, + formata in cerchio a guisa di corona, + e cinsela e girossi intorno ad ella. + + Qualunque melodia più dolce suona + qua giù e più a sé l’anima tira, + parrebbe nube che squarciata tona, + + comparata al sonar di quella lira + onde si coronava il bel zaffiro + del quale il ciel più chiaro s’inzaffira. + + «Io sono amore angelico, che giro + l’alta letizia che spira del ventre + che fu albergo del nostro disiro; + + e girerommi, donna del ciel, mentre + che seguirai tuo figlio, e farai dia + più la spera suprema perché lì entre». + + Così la circulata melodia + si sigillava, e tutti li altri lumi + facean sonare il nome di Maria. + + Lo real manto di tutti i volumi + del mondo, che più ferve e più s’avviva + ne l’alito di Dio e nei costumi, + + avea sopra di noi l’interna riva + tanto distante, che la sua parvenza, + là dov’ io era, ancor non appariva: + + però non ebber li occhi miei potenza + di seguitar la coronata fiamma + che si levò appresso sua semenza. + + E come fantolin che ’nver’ la mamma + tende le braccia, poi che ’l latte prese, + per l’animo che ’nfin di fuor s’infiamma; + + ciascun di quei candori in sù si stese + con la sua cima, sì che l’alto affetto + ch’elli avieno a Maria mi fu palese. + + Indi rimaser lì nel mio cospetto, + ‘Regina celi’ cantando sì dolce, + che mai da me non si partì ’l diletto. + + Oh quanta è l’ubertà che si soffolce + in quelle arche ricchissime che fuoro + a seminar qua giù buone bobolce! + + Quivi si vive e gode del tesoro + che s’acquistò piangendo ne lo essilio + di Babillòn, ove si lasciò l’oro. + + Quivi trïunfa, sotto l’alto Filio + di Dio e di Maria, di sua vittoria, + e con l’antico e col novo concilio, + + colui che tien le chiavi di tal gloria. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXIV + + + «O sodalizio eletto a la gran cena + del benedetto Agnello, il qual vi ciba + sì, che la vostra voglia è sempre piena, + + se per grazia di Dio questi preliba + di quel che cade de la vostra mensa, + prima che morte tempo li prescriba, + + ponete mente a l’affezione immensa + e roratelo alquanto: voi bevete + sempre del fonte onde vien quel ch’ei pensa». + + Così Beatrice; e quelle anime liete + si fero spere sopra fissi poli, + fiammando, a volte, a guisa di comete. + + E come cerchi in tempra d’orïuoli + si giran sì, che ’l primo a chi pon mente + quïeto pare, e l’ultimo che voli; + + così quelle carole, differente- + mente danzando, de la sua ricchezza + mi facieno stimar, veloci e lente. + + Di quella ch’io notai di più carezza + vid’ ïo uscire un foco sì felice, + che nullo vi lasciò di più chiarezza; + + e tre fïate intorno di Beatrice + si volse con un canto tanto divo, + che la mia fantasia nol mi ridice. + + Però salta la penna e non lo scrivo: + ché l’imagine nostra a cotai pieghe, + non che ’l parlare, è troppo color vivo. + + «O santa suora mia che sì ne prieghe + divota, per lo tuo ardente affetto + da quella bella spera mi disleghe». + + Poscia fermato, il foco benedetto + a la mia donna dirizzò lo spiro, + che favellò così com’ i’ ho detto. + + Ed ella: «O luce etterna del gran viro + a cui Nostro Segnor lasciò le chiavi, + ch’ei portò giù, di questo gaudio miro, + + tenta costui di punti lievi e gravi, + come ti piace, intorno de la fede, + per la qual tu su per lo mare andavi. + + S’elli ama bene e bene spera e crede, + non t’è occulto, perché ’l viso hai quivi + dov’ ogne cosa dipinta si vede; + + ma perché questo regno ha fatto civi + per la verace fede, a glorïarla, + di lei parlare è ben ch’a lui arrivi». + + Sì come il baccialier s’arma e non parla + fin che ’l maestro la question propone, + per approvarla, non per terminarla, + + così m’armava io d’ogne ragione + mentre ch’ella dicea, per esser presto + a tal querente e a tal professione. + + «Dì, buon Cristiano, fatti manifesto: + fede che è?». Ond’ io levai la fronte + in quella luce onde spirava questo; + + poi mi volsi a Beatrice, ed essa pronte + sembianze femmi perch’ ïo spandessi + l’acqua di fuor del mio interno fonte. + + «La Grazia che mi dà ch’io mi confessi», + comincia’ io, «da l’alto primipilo, + faccia li miei concetti bene espressi». + + E seguitai: «Come ’l verace stilo + ne scrisse, padre, del tuo caro frate + che mise teco Roma nel buon filo, + + fede è sustanza di cose sperate + e argomento de le non parventi; + e questa pare a me sua quiditate». + + Allora udi’: «Dirittamente senti, + se bene intendi perché la ripuose + tra le sustanze, e poi tra li argomenti». + + E io appresso: «Le profonde cose + che mi largiscon qui la lor parvenza, + a li occhi di là giù son sì ascose, + + che l’esser loro v’è in sola credenza, + sopra la qual si fonda l’alta spene; + e però di sustanza prende intenza. + + E da questa credenza ci convene + silogizzar, sanz’ avere altra vista: + però intenza d’argomento tene». + + Allora udi’: «Se quantunque s’acquista + giù per dottrina, fosse così ’nteso, + non lì avria loco ingegno di sofista». + + Così spirò di quello amore acceso; + indi soggiunse: «Assai bene è trascorsa + d’esta moneta già la lega e ’l peso; + + ma dimmi se tu l’hai ne la tua borsa». + Ond’ io: «Sì ho, sì lucida e sì tonda, + che nel suo conio nulla mi s’inforsa». + + Appresso uscì de la luce profonda + che lì splendeva: «Questa cara gioia + sopra la quale ogne virtù si fonda, + + onde ti venne?». E io: «La larga ploia + de lo Spirito Santo, ch’è diffusa + in su le vecchie e ’n su le nuove cuoia, + + è silogismo che la m’ha conchiusa + acutamente sì, che ’nverso d’ella + ogne dimostrazion mi pare ottusa». + + Io udi’ poi: «L’antica e la novella + proposizion che così ti conchiude, + perché l’hai tu per divina favella?». + + E io: «La prova che ’l ver mi dischiude, + son l’opere seguite, a che natura + non scalda ferro mai né batte incude». + + Risposto fummi: «Dì, chi t’assicura + che quell’ opere fosser? Quel medesmo + che vuol provarsi, non altri, il ti giura». + + «Se ’l mondo si rivolse al cristianesmo», + diss’ io, «sanza miracoli, quest’ uno + è tal, che li altri non sono il centesmo: + + ché tu intrasti povero e digiuno + in campo, a seminar la buona pianta + che fu già vite e ora è fatta pruno». + + Finito questo, l’alta corte santa + risonò per le spere un ‘Dio laudamo’ + ne la melode che là sù si canta. + + E quel baron che sì di ramo in ramo, + essaminando, già tratto m’avea, + che a l’ultime fronde appressavamo, + + ricominciò: «La Grazia, che donnea + con la tua mente, la bocca t’aperse + infino a qui come aprir si dovea, + + sì ch’io approvo ciò che fuori emerse; + ma or convien espremer quel che credi, + e onde a la credenza tua s’offerse». + + «O santo padre, e spirito che vedi + ciò che credesti sì, che tu vincesti + ver’ lo sepulcro più giovani piedi», + + comincia’ io, «tu vuo’ ch’io manifesti + la forma qui del pronto creder mio, + e anche la cagion di lui chiedesti. + + E io rispondo: Io credo in uno Dio + solo ed etterno, che tutto ’l ciel move, + non moto, con amore e con disio; + + e a tal creder non ho io pur prove + fisice e metafisice, ma dalmi + anche la verità che quinci piove + + per Moïsè, per profeti e per salmi, + per l’Evangelio e per voi che scriveste + poi che l’ardente Spirto vi fé almi; + + e credo in tre persone etterne, e queste + credo una essenza sì una e sì trina, + che soffera congiunto ‘sono’ ed ‘este’. + + De la profonda condizion divina + ch’io tocco mo, la mente mi sigilla + più volte l’evangelica dottrina. + + Quest’ è ’l principio, quest’ è la favilla + che si dilata in fiamma poi vivace, + e come stella in cielo in me scintilla». + + Come ’l segnor ch’ascolta quel che i piace, + da indi abbraccia il servo, gratulando + per la novella, tosto ch’el si tace; + + così, benedicendomi cantando, + tre volte cinse me, sì com’ io tacqui, + l’appostolico lume al cui comando + + io avea detto: sì nel dir li piacqui! + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXV + + + Se mai continga che ’l poema sacro + al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, + sì che m’ha fatto per molti anni macro, + + vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra + del bello ovile ov’ io dormi’ agnello, + nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra; + + con altra voce omai, con altro vello + ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte + del mio battesmo prenderò ’l cappello; + + però che ne la fede, che fa conte + l’anime a Dio, quivi intra’ io, e poi + Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte. + + Indi si mosse un lume verso noi + di quella spera ond’ uscì la primizia + che lasciò Cristo d’i vicari suoi; + + e la mia donna, piena di letizia, + mi disse: «Mira, mira: ecco il barone + per cui là giù si vicita Galizia». + + Sì come quando il colombo si pone + presso al compagno, l’uno a l’altro pande, + girando e mormorando, l’affezione; + + così vid’ ïo l’un da l’altro grande + principe glorïoso essere accolto, + laudando il cibo che là sù li prande. + + Ma poi che ’l gratular si fu assolto, + tacito coram me ciascun s’affisse, + ignito sì che vincëa ’l mio volto. + + Ridendo allora Bëatrice disse: + «Inclita vita per cui la larghezza + de la nostra basilica si scrisse, + + fa risonar la spene in questa altezza: + tu sai, che tante fiate la figuri, + quante Iesù ai tre fé più carezza». + + «Leva la testa e fa che t’assicuri: + che ciò che vien qua sù del mortal mondo, + convien ch’ai nostri raggi si maturi». + + Questo conforto del foco secondo + mi venne; ond’ io leväi li occhi a’ monti + che li ’ncurvaron pria col troppo pondo. + + «Poi che per grazia vuol che tu t’affronti + lo nostro Imperadore, anzi la morte, + ne l’aula più secreta co’ suoi conti, + + sì che, veduto il ver di questa corte, + la spene, che là giù bene innamora, + in te e in altrui di ciò conforte, + + di’ quel ch’ell’ è, di’ come se ne ’nfiora + la mente tua, e dì onde a te venne». + Così seguì ’l secondo lume ancora. + + E quella pïa che guidò le penne + de le mie ali a così alto volo, + a la risposta così mi prevenne: + + «La Chiesa militante alcun figliuolo + non ha con più speranza, com’ è scritto + nel Sol che raggia tutto nostro stuolo: + + però li è conceduto che d’Egitto + vegna in Ierusalemme per vedere, + anzi che ’l militar li sia prescritto. + + Li altri due punti, che non per sapere + son dimandati, ma perch’ ei rapporti + quanto questa virtù t’è in piacere, + + a lui lasc’ io, ché non li saran forti + né di iattanza; ed elli a ciò risponda, + e la grazia di Dio ciò li comporti». + + Come discente ch’a dottor seconda + pronto e libente in quel ch’elli è esperto, + perché la sua bontà si disasconda, + + «Spene», diss’ io, «è uno attender certo + de la gloria futura, il qual produce + grazia divina e precedente merto. + + Da molte stelle mi vien questa luce; + ma quei la distillò nel mio cor pria + che fu sommo cantor del sommo duce. + + ‘Sperino in te’, ne la sua tëodia + dice, ‘color che sanno il nome tuo’: + e chi nol sa, s’elli ha la fede mia? + + Tu mi stillasti, con lo stillar suo, + ne la pistola poi; sì ch’io son pieno, + e in altrui vostra pioggia repluo». + + Mentr’ io diceva, dentro al vivo seno + di quello incendio tremolava un lampo + sùbito e spesso a guisa di baleno. + + Indi spirò: «L’amore ond’ ïo avvampo + ancor ver’ la virtù che mi seguette + infin la palma e a l’uscir del campo, + + vuol ch’io respiri a te che ti dilette + di lei; ed emmi a grato che tu diche + quello che la speranza ti ’mpromette». + + E io: «Le nove e le scritture antiche + pongon lo segno, ed esso lo mi addita, + de l’anime che Dio s’ha fatte amiche. + + Dice Isaia che ciascuna vestita + ne la sua terra fia di doppia vesta: + e la sua terra è questa dolce vita; + + e ’l tuo fratello assai vie più digesta, + là dove tratta de le bianche stole, + questa revelazion ci manifesta». + + E prima, appresso al fin d’este parole, + ‘Sperent in te’ di sopr’ a noi s’udì; + a che rispuoser tutte le carole. + + Poscia tra esse un lume si schiarì + sì che, se ’l Cancro avesse un tal cristallo, + l’inverno avrebbe un mese d’un sol dì. + + E come surge e va ed entra in ballo + vergine lieta, sol per fare onore + a la novizia, non per alcun fallo, + + così vid’ io lo schiarato splendore + venire a’ due che si volgieno a nota + qual conveniesi al loro ardente amore. + + Misesi lì nel canto e ne la rota; + e la mia donna in lor tenea l’aspetto, + pur come sposa tacita e immota. + + «Questi è colui che giacque sopra ’l petto + del nostro pellicano, e questi fue + di su la croce al grande officio eletto». + + La donna mia così; né però piùe + mosser la vista sua di stare attenta + poscia che prima le parole sue. + + Qual è colui ch’adocchia e s’argomenta + di vedere eclissar lo sole un poco, + che, per veder, non vedente diventa; + + tal mi fec’ ïo a quell’ ultimo foco + mentre che detto fu: «Perché t’abbagli + per veder cosa che qui non ha loco? + + In terra è terra il mio corpo, e saragli + tanto con li altri, che ’l numero nostro + con l’etterno proposito s’agguagli. + + Con le due stole nel beato chiostro + son le due luci sole che saliro; + e questo apporterai nel mondo vostro». + + A questa voce l’infiammato giro + si quïetò con esso il dolce mischio + che si facea nel suon del trino spiro, + + sì come, per cessar fatica o rischio, + li remi, pria ne l’acqua ripercossi, + tutti si posano al sonar d’un fischio. + + Ahi quanto ne la mente mi commossi, + quando mi volsi per veder Beatrice, + per non poter veder, benché io fossi + + presso di lei, e nel mondo felice! + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXVI + + + Mentr’ io dubbiava per lo viso spento, + de la fulgida fiamma che lo spense + uscì un spiro che mi fece attento, + + dicendo: «Intanto che tu ti risense + de la vista che haï in me consunta, + ben è che ragionando la compense. + + Comincia dunque; e dì ove s’appunta + l’anima tua, e fa ragion che sia + la vista in te smarrita e non defunta: + + perché la donna che per questa dia + regïon ti conduce, ha ne lo sguardo + la virtù ch’ebbe la man d’Anania». + + Io dissi: «Al suo piacere e tosto e tardo + vegna remedio a li occhi, che fuor porte + quand’ ella entrò col foco ond’ io sempr’ ardo. + + Lo ben che fa contenta questa corte, + Alfa e O è di quanta scrittura + mi legge Amore o lievemente o forte». + + Quella medesma voce che paura + tolta m’avea del sùbito abbarbaglio, + di ragionare ancor mi mise in cura; + + e disse: «Certo a più angusto vaglio + ti conviene schiarar: dicer convienti + chi drizzò l’arco tuo a tal berzaglio». + + E io: «Per filosofici argomenti + e per autorità che quinci scende + cotale amor convien che in me si ’mprenti: + + ché ’l bene, in quanto ben, come s’intende, + così accende amore, e tanto maggio + quanto più di bontate in sé comprende. + + Dunque a l’essenza ov’ è tanto avvantaggio, + che ciascun ben che fuor di lei si trova + altro non è ch’un lume di suo raggio, + + più che in altra convien che si mova + la mente, amando, di ciascun che cerne + il vero in che si fonda questa prova. + + Tal vero a l’intelletto mïo sterne + colui che mi dimostra il primo amore + di tutte le sustanze sempiterne. + + Sternel la voce del verace autore, + che dice a Moïsè, di sé parlando: + ‘Io ti farò vedere ogne valore’. + + Sternilmi tu ancora, incominciando + l’alto preconio che grida l’arcano + di qui là giù sovra ogne altro bando». + + E io udi’: «Per intelletto umano + e per autoritadi a lui concorde + d’i tuoi amori a Dio guarda il sovrano. + + Ma dì ancor se tu senti altre corde + tirarti verso lui, sì che tu suone + con quanti denti questo amor ti morde». + + Non fu latente la santa intenzione + de l’aguglia di Cristo, anzi m’accorsi + dove volea menar mia professione. + + Però ricominciai: «Tutti quei morsi + che posson far lo cor volgere a Dio, + a la mia caritate son concorsi: + + ché l’essere del mondo e l’esser mio, + la morte ch’el sostenne perch’ io viva, + e quel che spera ogne fedel com’ io, + + con la predetta conoscenza viva, + tratto m’hanno del mar de l’amor torto, + e del diritto m’han posto a la riva. + + Le fronde onde s’infronda tutto l’orto + de l’ortolano etterno, am’ io cotanto + quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto». + + Sì com’ io tacqui, un dolcissimo canto + risonò per lo cielo, e la mia donna + dicea con li altri: «Santo, santo, santo!». + + E come a lume acuto si disonna + per lo spirto visivo che ricorre + a lo splendor che va di gonna in gonna, + + e lo svegliato ciò che vede aborre, + sì nescïa è la sùbita vigilia + fin che la stimativa non soccorre; + + così de li occhi miei ogne quisquilia + fugò Beatrice col raggio d’i suoi, + che rifulgea da più di mille milia: + + onde mei che dinanzi vidi poi; + e quasi stupefatto domandai + d’un quarto lume ch’io vidi tra noi. + + E la mia donna: «Dentro da quei rai + vagheggia il suo fattor l’anima prima + che la prima virtù creasse mai». + + Come la fronda che flette la cima + nel transito del vento, e poi si leva + per la propria virtù che la soblima, + + fec’ io in tanto in quant’ ella diceva, + stupendo, e poi mi rifece sicuro + un disio di parlare ond’ ïo ardeva. + + E cominciai: «O pomo che maturo + solo prodotto fosti, o padre antico + a cui ciascuna sposa è figlia e nuro, + + divoto quanto posso a te supplìco + perché mi parli: tu vedi mia voglia, + e per udirti tosto non la dico». + + Talvolta un animal coverto broglia, + sì che l’affetto convien che si paia + per lo seguir che face a lui la ’nvoglia; + + e similmente l’anima primaia + mi facea trasparer per la coverta + quant’ ella a compiacermi venìa gaia. + + Indi spirò: «Sanz’ essermi proferta + da te, la voglia tua discerno meglio + che tu qualunque cosa t’è più certa; + + perch’ io la veggio nel verace speglio + che fa di sé pareglio a l’altre cose, + e nulla face lui di sé pareglio. + + Tu vuogli udir quant’ è che Dio mi puose + ne l’eccelso giardino, ove costei + a così lunga scala ti dispuose, + + e quanto fu diletto a li occhi miei, + e la propria cagion del gran disdegno, + e l’idïoma ch’usai e che fei. + + Or, figluol mio, non il gustar del legno + fu per sé la cagion di tanto essilio, + ma solamente il trapassar del segno. + + Quindi onde mosse tua donna Virgilio, + quattromilia trecento e due volumi + di sol desiderai questo concilio; + + e vidi lui tornare a tutt’ i lumi + de la sua strada novecento trenta + fïate, mentre ch’ïo in terra fu’mi. + + La lingua ch’io parlai fu tutta spenta + innanzi che a l’ovra inconsummabile + fosse la gente di Nembròt attenta: + + ché nullo effetto mai razïonabile, + per lo piacere uman che rinovella + seguendo il cielo, sempre fu durabile. + + Opera naturale è ch’uom favella; + ma così o così, natura lascia + poi fare a voi secondo che v’abbella. + + Pria ch’i’ scendessi a l’infernale ambascia, + I s’appellava in terra il sommo bene + onde vien la letizia che mi fascia; + + e El si chiamò poi: e ciò convene, + ché l’uso d’i mortali è come fronda + in ramo, che sen va e altra vene. + + Nel monte che si leva più da l’onda, + fu’ io, con vita pura e disonesta, + da la prim’ ora a quella che seconda, + + come ’l sol muta quadra, l’ora sesta». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXVII + + + ‘Al Padre, al Figlio, a lo Spirito Santo’, + cominciò, ‘gloria!’, tutto ’l paradiso, + sì che m’inebrïava il dolce canto. + + Ciò ch’io vedeva mi sembiava un riso + de l’universo; per che mia ebbrezza + intrava per l’udire e per lo viso. + + Oh gioia! oh ineffabile allegrezza! + oh vita intègra d’amore e di pace! + oh sanza brama sicura ricchezza! + + Dinanzi a li occhi miei le quattro face + stavano accese, e quella che pria venne + incominciò a farsi più vivace, + + e tal ne la sembianza sua divenne, + qual diverrebbe Iove, s’elli e Marte + fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne. + + La provedenza, che quivi comparte + vice e officio, nel beato coro + silenzio posto avea da ogne parte, + + quand’ ïo udi’: «Se io mi trascoloro, + non ti maravigliar, ché, dicend’ io, + vedrai trascolorar tutti costoro. + + Quelli ch’usurpa in terra il luogo mio, + il luogo mio, il luogo mio, che vaca + ne la presenza del Figliuol di Dio, + + fatt’ ha del cimitero mio cloaca + del sangue e de la puzza; onde ’l perverso + che cadde di qua sù, là giù si placa». + + Di quel color che per lo sole avverso + nube dipigne da sera e da mane, + vid’ ïo allora tutto ’l ciel cosperso. + + E come donna onesta che permane + di sé sicura, e per l’altrui fallanza, + pur ascoltando, timida si fane, + + così Beatrice trasmutò sembianza; + e tale eclissi credo che ’n ciel fue + quando patì la supprema possanza. + + Poi procedetter le parole sue + con voce tanto da sé trasmutata, + che la sembianza non si mutò piùe: + + «Non fu la sposa di Cristo allevata + del sangue mio, di Lin, di quel di Cleto, + per essere ad acquisto d’oro usata; + + ma per acquisto d’esto viver lieto + e Sisto e Pïo e Calisto e Urbano + sparser lo sangue dopo molto fleto. + + Non fu nostra intenzion ch’a destra mano + d’i nostri successor parte sedesse, + parte da l’altra del popol cristiano; + + né che le chiavi che mi fuor concesse, + divenisser signaculo in vessillo + che contra battezzati combattesse; + + né ch’io fossi figura di sigillo + a privilegi venduti e mendaci, + ond’ io sovente arrosso e disfavillo. + + In vesta di pastor lupi rapaci + si veggion di qua sù per tutti i paschi: + o difesa di Dio, perché pur giaci? + + Del sangue nostro Caorsini e Guaschi + s’apparecchian di bere: o buon principio, + a che vil fine convien che tu caschi! + + Ma l’alta provedenza, che con Scipio + difese a Roma la gloria del mondo, + soccorrà tosto, sì com’ io concipio; + + e tu, figliuol, che per lo mortal pondo + ancor giù tornerai, apri la bocca, + e non asconder quel ch’io non ascondo». + + Sì come di vapor gelati fiocca + in giuso l’aere nostro, quando ’l corno + de la capra del ciel col sol si tocca, + + in sù vid’ io così l’etera addorno + farsi e fioccar di vapor trïunfanti + che fatto avien con noi quivi soggiorno. + + Lo viso mio seguiva i suoi sembianti, + e seguì fin che ’l mezzo, per lo molto, + li tolse il trapassar del più avanti. + + Onde la donna, che mi vide assolto + de l’attendere in sù, mi disse: «Adima + il viso e guarda come tu se’ vòlto». + + Da l’ora ch’ïo avea guardato prima + i’ vidi mosso me per tutto l’arco + che fa dal mezzo al fine il primo clima; + + sì ch’io vedea di là da Gade il varco + folle d’Ulisse, e di qua presso il lito + nel qual si fece Europa dolce carco. + + E più mi fora discoverto il sito + di questa aiuola; ma ’l sol procedea + sotto i mie’ piedi un segno e più partito. + + La mente innamorata, che donnea + con la mia donna sempre, di ridure + ad essa li occhi più che mai ardea; + + e se natura o arte fé pasture + da pigliare occhi, per aver la mente, + in carne umana o ne le sue pitture, + + tutte adunate, parrebber nïente + ver’ lo piacer divin che mi refulse, + quando mi volsi al suo viso ridente. + + E la virtù che lo sguardo m’indulse, + del bel nido di Leda mi divelse, + e nel ciel velocissimo m’impulse. + + Le parti sue vivissime ed eccelse + sì uniforme son, ch’i’ non so dire + qual Bëatrice per loco mi scelse. + + Ma ella, che vedëa ’l mio disire, + incominciò, ridendo tanto lieta, + che Dio parea nel suo volto gioire: + + «La natura del mondo, che quïeta + il mezzo e tutto l’altro intorno move, + quinci comincia come da sua meta; + + e questo cielo non ha altro dove + che la mente divina, in che s’accende + l’amor che ’l volge e la virtù ch’ei piove. + + Luce e amor d’un cerchio lui comprende, + sì come questo li altri; e quel precinto + colui che ’l cinge solamente intende. + + Non è suo moto per altro distinto, + ma li altri son mensurati da questo, + sì come diece da mezzo e da quinto; + + e come il tempo tegna in cotal testo + le sue radici e ne li altri le fronde, + omai a te può esser manifesto. + + Oh cupidigia che i mortali affonde + sì sotto te, che nessuno ha podere + di trarre li occhi fuor de le tue onde! + + Ben fiorisce ne li uomini il volere; + ma la pioggia continüa converte + in bozzacchioni le sosine vere. + + Fede e innocenza son reperte + solo ne’ parvoletti; poi ciascuna + pria fugge che le guance sian coperte. + + Tale, balbuzïendo ancor, digiuna, + che poi divora, con la lingua sciolta, + qualunque cibo per qualunque luna; + + e tal, balbuzïendo, ama e ascolta + la madre sua, che, con loquela intera, + disïa poi di vederla sepolta. + + Così si fa la pelle bianca nera + nel primo aspetto de la bella figlia + di quel ch’apporta mane e lascia sera. + + Tu, perché non ti facci maraviglia, + pensa che ’n terra non è chi governi; + onde sì svïa l’umana famiglia. + + Ma prima che gennaio tutto si sverni + per la centesma ch’è là giù negletta, + raggeran sì questi cerchi superni, + + che la fortuna che tanto s’aspetta, + le poppe volgerà u’ son le prore, + sì che la classe correrà diretta; + + e vero frutto verrà dopo ’l fiore». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXVIII + + + Poscia che ’ncontro a la vita presente + d’i miseri mortali aperse ’l vero + quella che ’mparadisa la mia mente, + + come in lo specchio fiamma di doppiero + vede colui che se n’alluma retro, + prima che l’abbia in vista o in pensiero, + + e sé rivolge per veder se ’l vetro + li dice il vero, e vede ch’el s’accorda + con esso come nota con suo metro; + + così la mia memoria si ricorda + ch’io feci riguardando ne’ belli occhi + onde a pigliarmi fece Amor la corda. + + E com’ io mi rivolsi e furon tocchi + li miei da ciò che pare in quel volume, + quandunque nel suo giro ben s’adocchi, + + un punto vidi che raggiava lume + acuto sì, che ’l viso ch’elli affoca + chiuder conviensi per lo forte acume; + + e quale stella par quinci più poca, + parrebbe luna, locata con esso + come stella con stella si collòca. + + Forse cotanto quanto pare appresso + alo cigner la luce che ’l dipigne + quando ’l vapor che ’l porta più è spesso, + + distante intorno al punto un cerchio d’igne + si girava sì ratto, ch’avria vinto + quel moto che più tosto il mondo cigne; + + e questo era d’un altro circumcinto, + e quel dal terzo, e ’l terzo poi dal quarto, + dal quinto il quarto, e poi dal sesto il quinto. + + Sopra seguiva il settimo sì sparto + già di larghezza, che ’l messo di Iuno + intero a contenerlo sarebbe arto. + + Così l’ottavo e ’l nono; e chiascheduno + più tardo si movea, secondo ch’era + in numero distante più da l’uno; + + e quello avea la fiamma più sincera + cui men distava la favilla pura, + credo, però che più di lei s’invera. + + La donna mia, che mi vedëa in cura + forte sospeso, disse: «Da quel punto + depende il cielo e tutta la natura. + + Mira quel cerchio che più li è congiunto; + e sappi che ’l suo muovere è sì tosto + per l’affocato amore ond’ elli è punto». + + E io a lei: «Se ’l mondo fosse posto + con l’ordine ch’io veggio in quelle rote, + sazio m’avrebbe ciò che m’è proposto; + + ma nel mondo sensibile si puote + veder le volte tanto più divine, + quant’ elle son dal centro più remote. + + Onde, se ’l mio disir dee aver fine + in questo miro e angelico templo + che solo amore e luce ha per confine, + + udir convienmi ancor come l’essemplo + e l’essemplare non vanno d’un modo, + ché io per me indarno a ciò contemplo». + + «Se li tuoi diti non sono a tal nodo + sufficïenti, non è maraviglia: + tanto, per non tentare, è fatto sodo!». + + Così la donna mia; poi disse: «Piglia + quel ch’io ti dicerò, se vuo’ saziarti; + e intorno da esso t’assottiglia. + + Li cerchi corporai sono ampi e arti + secondo il più e ’l men de la virtute + che si distende per tutte lor parti. + + Maggior bontà vuol far maggior salute; + maggior salute maggior corpo cape, + s’elli ha le parti igualmente compiute. + + Dunque costui che tutto quanto rape + l’altro universo seco, corrisponde + al cerchio che più ama e che più sape: + + per che, se tu a la virtù circonde + la tua misura, non a la parvenza + de le sustanze che t’appaion tonde, + + tu vederai mirabil consequenza + di maggio a più e di minore a meno, + in ciascun cielo, a süa intelligenza». + + Come rimane splendido e sereno + l’emisperio de l’aere, quando soffia + Borea da quella guancia ond’ è più leno, + + per che si purga e risolve la roffia + che pria turbava, sì che ’l ciel ne ride + con le bellezze d’ogne sua paroffia; + + così fec’ïo, poi che mi provide + la donna mia del suo risponder chiaro, + e come stella in cielo il ver si vide. + + E poi che le parole sue restaro, + non altrimenti ferro disfavilla + che bolle, come i cerchi sfavillaro. + + L’incendio suo seguiva ogne scintilla; + ed eran tante, che ’l numero loro + più che ’l doppiar de li scacchi s’inmilla. + + Io sentiva osannar di coro in coro + al punto fisso che li tiene a li ubi, + e terrà sempre, ne’ quai sempre fuoro. + + E quella che vedëa i pensier dubi + ne la mia mente, disse: «I cerchi primi + t’hanno mostrato Serafi e Cherubi. + + Così veloci seguono i suoi vimi, + per somigliarsi al punto quanto ponno; + e posson quanto a veder son soblimi. + + Quelli altri amori che ’ntorno li vonno, + si chiaman Troni del divino aspetto, + per che ’l primo ternaro terminonno; + + e dei saper che tutti hanno diletto + quanto la sua veduta si profonda + nel vero in che si queta ogne intelletto. + + Quinci si può veder come si fonda + l’esser beato ne l’atto che vede, + non in quel ch’ama, che poscia seconda; + + e del vedere è misura mercede, + che grazia partorisce e buona voglia: + così di grado in grado si procede. + + L’altro ternaro, che così germoglia + in questa primavera sempiterna + che notturno Arïete non dispoglia, + + perpetüalemente ‘Osanna’ sberna + con tre melode, che suonano in tree + ordini di letizia onde s’interna. + + In essa gerarcia son l’altre dee: + prima Dominazioni, e poi Virtudi; + l’ordine terzo di Podestadi èe. + + Poscia ne’ due penultimi tripudi + Principati e Arcangeli si girano; + l’ultimo è tutto d’Angelici ludi. + + Questi ordini di sù tutti s’ammirano, + e di giù vincon sì, che verso Dio + tutti tirati sono e tutti tirano. + + E Dïonisio con tanto disio + a contemplar questi ordini si mise, + che li nomò e distinse com’ io. + + Ma Gregorio da lui poi si divise; + onde, sì tosto come li occhi aperse + in questo ciel, di sé medesmo rise. + + E se tanto secreto ver proferse + mortale in terra, non voglio ch’ammiri: + ché chi ’l vide qua sù gliel discoperse + + con altro assai del ver di questi giri». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXIX + + + Quando ambedue li figli di Latona, + coperti del Montone e de la Libra, + fanno de l’orizzonte insieme zona, + + quant’ è dal punto che ’l cenìt inlibra + infin che l’uno e l’altro da quel cinto, + cambiando l’emisperio, si dilibra, + + tanto, col volto di riso dipinto, + si tacque Bëatrice, riguardando + fiso nel punto che m’avëa vinto. + + Poi cominciò: «Io dico, e non dimando, + quel che tu vuoli udir, perch’ io l’ho visto + là ’ve s’appunta ogne ubi e ogne quando. + + Non per aver a sé di bene acquisto, + ch’esser non può, ma perché suo splendore + potesse, risplendendo, dir “Subsisto”, + + in sua etternità di tempo fore, + fuor d’ogne altro comprender, come i piacque, + s’aperse in nuovi amor l’etterno amore. + + Né prima quasi torpente si giacque; + ché né prima né poscia procedette + lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’ acque. + + Forma e materia, congiunte e purette, + usciro ad esser che non avia fallo, + come d’arco tricordo tre saette. + + E come in vetro, in ambra o in cristallo + raggio resplende sì, che dal venire + a l’esser tutto non è intervallo, + + così ’l triforme effetto del suo sire + ne l’esser suo raggiò insieme tutto + sanza distinzïone in essordire. + + Concreato fu ordine e costrutto + a le sustanze; e quelle furon cima + nel mondo in che puro atto fu produtto; + + pura potenza tenne la parte ima; + nel mezzo strinse potenza con atto + tal vime, che già mai non si divima. + + Ieronimo vi scrisse lungo tratto + di secoli de li angeli creati + anzi che l’altro mondo fosse fatto; + + ma questo vero è scritto in molti lati + da li scrittor de lo Spirito Santo, + e tu te n’avvedrai se bene agguati; + + e anche la ragione il vede alquanto, + che non concederebbe che ’ motori + sanza sua perfezion fosser cotanto. + + Or sai tu dove e quando questi amori + furon creati e come: sì che spenti + nel tuo disïo già son tre ardori. + + Né giugneriesi, numerando, al venti + sì tosto, come de li angeli parte + turbò il suggetto d’i vostri alimenti. + + L’altra rimase, e cominciò quest’ arte + che tu discerni, con tanto diletto, + che mai da circüir non si diparte. + + Principio del cader fu il maladetto + superbir di colui che tu vedesti + da tutti i pesi del mondo costretto. + + Quelli che vedi qui furon modesti + a riconoscer sé da la bontate + che li avea fatti a tanto intender presti: + + per che le viste lor furo essaltate + con grazia illuminante e con lor merto, + si c’hanno ferma e piena volontate; + + e non voglio che dubbi, ma sia certo, + che ricever la grazia è meritorio + secondo che l’affetto l’è aperto. + + Omai dintorno a questo consistorio + puoi contemplare assai, se le parole + mie son ricolte, sanz’ altro aiutorio. + + Ma perché ’n terra per le vostre scole + si legge che l’angelica natura + è tal, che ’ntende e si ricorda e vole, + + ancor dirò, perché tu veggi pura + la verità che là giù si confonde, + equivocando in sì fatta lettura. + + Queste sustanze, poi che fur gioconde + de la faccia di Dio, non volser viso + da essa, da cui nulla si nasconde: + + però non hanno vedere interciso + da novo obietto, e però non bisogna + rememorar per concetto diviso; + + sì che là giù, non dormendo, si sogna, + credendo e non credendo dicer vero; + ma ne l’uno è più colpa e più vergogna. + + Voi non andate giù per un sentiero + filosofando: tanto vi trasporta + l’amor de l’apparenza e ’l suo pensiero! + + E ancor questo qua sù si comporta + con men disdegno che quando è posposta + la divina Scrittura o quando è torta. + + Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa + seminarla nel mondo e quanto piace + chi umilmente con essa s’accosta. + + Per apparer ciascun s’ingegna e face + sue invenzioni; e quelle son trascorse + da’ predicanti e ’l Vangelio si tace. + + Un dice che la luna si ritorse + ne la passion di Cristo e s’interpuose, + per che ’l lume del sol giù non si porse; + + e mente, ché la luce si nascose + da sé: però a li Spani e a l’Indi + come a’ Giudei tale eclissi rispuose. + + Non ha Fiorenza tanti Lapi e Bindi + quante sì fatte favole per anno + in pergamo si gridan quinci e quindi: + + sì che le pecorelle, che non sanno, + tornan del pasco pasciute di vento, + e non le scusa non veder lo danno. + + Non disse Cristo al suo primo convento: + ‘Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance’; + ma diede lor verace fondamento; + + e quel tanto sonò ne le sue guance, + sì ch’a pugnar per accender la fede + de l’Evangelio fero scudo e lance. + + Ora si va con motti e con iscede + a predicare, e pur che ben si rida, + gonfia il cappuccio e più non si richiede. + + Ma tale uccel nel becchetto s’annida, + che se ’l vulgo il vedesse, vederebbe + la perdonanza di ch’el si confida: + + per cui tanta stoltezza in terra crebbe, + che, sanza prova d’alcun testimonio, + ad ogne promession si correrebbe. + + Di questo ingrassa il porco sant’ Antonio, + e altri assai che sono ancor più porci, + pagando di moneta sanza conio. + + Ma perché siam digressi assai, ritorci + li occhi oramai verso la dritta strada, + sì che la via col tempo si raccorci. + + Questa natura sì oltre s’ingrada + in numero, che mai non fu loquela + né concetto mortal che tanto vada; + + e se tu guardi quel che si revela + per Danïel, vedrai che ’n sue migliaia + determinato numero si cela. + + La prima luce, che tutta la raia, + per tanti modi in essa si recepe, + quanti son li splendori a chi s’appaia. + + Onde, però che a l’atto che concepe + segue l’affetto, d’amar la dolcezza + diversamente in essa ferve e tepe. + + Vedi l’eccelso omai e la larghezza + de l’etterno valor, poscia che tanti + speculi fatti s’ha in che si spezza, + + uno manendo in sé come davanti». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXX + + + Forse semilia miglia di lontano + ci ferve l’ora sesta, e questo mondo + china già l’ombra quasi al letto piano, + + quando ’l mezzo del cielo, a noi profondo, + comincia a farsi tal, ch’alcuna stella + perde il parere infino a questo fondo; + + e come vien la chiarissima ancella + del sol più oltre, così ’l ciel si chiude + di vista in vista infino a la più bella. + + Non altrimenti il trïunfo che lude + sempre dintorno al punto che mi vinse, + parendo inchiuso da quel ch’elli ’nchiude, + + a poco a poco al mio veder si stinse: + per che tornar con li occhi a Bëatrice + nulla vedere e amor mi costrinse. + + Se quanto infino a qui di lei si dice + fosse conchiuso tutto in una loda, + poca sarebbe a fornir questa vice. + + La bellezza ch’io vidi si trasmoda + non pur di là da noi, ma certo io credo + che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda. + + Da questo passo vinto mi concedo + più che già mai da punto di suo tema + soprato fosse comico o tragedo: + + ché, come sole in viso che più trema, + così lo rimembrar del dolce riso + la mente mia da me medesmo scema. + + Dal primo giorno ch’i’ vidi il suo viso + in questa vita, infino a questa vista, + non m’è il seguire al mio cantar preciso; + + ma or convien che mio seguir desista + più dietro a sua bellezza, poetando, + come a l’ultimo suo ciascuno artista. + + Cotal qual io lascio a maggior bando + che quel de la mia tuba, che deduce + l’ardüa sua matera terminando, + + con atto e voce di spedito duce + ricominciò: «Noi siamo usciti fore + del maggior corpo al ciel ch’è pura luce: + + luce intellettüal, piena d’amore; + amor di vero ben, pien di letizia; + letizia che trascende ogne dolzore. + + Qui vederai l’una e l’altra milizia + di paradiso, e l’una in quelli aspetti + che tu vedrai a l’ultima giustizia». + + Come sùbito lampo che discetti + li spiriti visivi, sì che priva + da l’atto l’occhio di più forti obietti, + + così mi circunfulse luce viva, + e lasciommi fasciato di tal velo + del suo fulgor, che nulla m’appariva. + + «Sempre l’amor che queta questo cielo + accoglie in sé con sì fatta salute, + per far disposto a sua fiamma il candelo». + + Non fur più tosto dentro a me venute + queste parole brievi, ch’io compresi + me sormontar di sopr’ a mia virtute; + + e di novella vista mi raccesi + tale, che nulla luce è tanto mera, + che li occhi miei non si fosser difesi; + + e vidi lume in forma di rivera + fulvido di fulgore, intra due rive + dipinte di mirabil primavera. + + Di tal fiumana uscian faville vive, + e d’ogne parte si mettien ne’ fiori, + quasi rubin che oro circunscrive; + + poi, come inebrïate da li odori, + riprofondavan sé nel miro gurge, + e s’una intrava, un’altra n’uscia fori. + + «L’alto disio che mo t’infiamma e urge, + d’aver notizia di ciò che tu vei, + tanto mi piace più quanto più turge; + + ma di quest’ acqua convien che tu bei + prima che tanta sete in te si sazi»: + così mi disse il sol de li occhi miei. + + Anche soggiunse: «Il fiume e li topazi + ch’entrano ed escono e ’l rider de l’erbe + son di lor vero umbriferi prefazi. + + Non che da sé sian queste cose acerbe; + ma è difetto da la parte tua, + che non hai viste ancor tanto superbe». + + Non è fantin che sì sùbito rua + col volto verso il latte, se si svegli + molto tardato da l’usanza sua, + + come fec’ io, per far migliori spegli + ancor de li occhi, chinandomi a l’onda + che si deriva perché vi s’immegli; + + e sì come di lei bevve la gronda + de le palpebre mie, così mi parve + di sua lunghezza divenuta tonda. + + Poi, come gente stata sotto larve, + che pare altro che prima, se si sveste + la sembianza non süa in che disparve, + + così mi si cambiaro in maggior feste + li fiori e le faville, sì ch’io vidi + ambo le corti del ciel manifeste. + + O isplendor di Dio, per cu’ io vidi + l’alto trïunfo del regno verace, + dammi virtù a dir com’ ïo il vidi! + + Lume è là sù che visibile face + lo creatore a quella creatura + che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace. + + E’ si distende in circular figura, + in tanto che la sua circunferenza + sarebbe al sol troppo larga cintura. + + Fassi di raggio tutta sua parvenza + reflesso al sommo del mobile primo, + che prende quindi vivere e potenza. + + E come clivo in acqua di suo imo + si specchia, quasi per vedersi addorno, + quando è nel verde e ne’ fioretti opimo, + + sì, soprastando al lume intorno intorno, + vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie + quanto di noi là sù fatto ha ritorno. + + E se l’infimo grado in sé raccoglie + sì grande lume, quanta è la larghezza + di questa rosa ne l’estreme foglie! + + La vista mia ne l’ampio e ne l’altezza + non si smarriva, ma tutto prendeva + il quanto e ’l quale di quella allegrezza. + + Presso e lontano, lì, né pon né leva: + ché dove Dio sanza mezzo governa, + la legge natural nulla rileva. + + Nel giallo de la rosa sempiterna, + che si digrada e dilata e redole + odor di lode al sol che sempre verna, + + qual è colui che tace e dicer vole, + mi trasse Bëatrice, e disse: «Mira + quanto è ’l convento de le bianche stole! + + Vedi nostra città quant’ ella gira; + vedi li nostri scanni sì ripieni, + che poca gente più ci si disira. + + E ’n quel gran seggio a che tu li occhi tieni + per la corona che già v’è sù posta, + prima che tu a queste nozze ceni, + + sederà l’alma, che fia giù agosta, + de l’alto Arrigo, ch’a drizzare Italia + verrà in prima ch’ella sia disposta. + + La cieca cupidigia che v’ammalia + simili fatti v’ha al fantolino + che muor per fame e caccia via la balia. + + E fia prefetto nel foro divino + allora tal, che palese e coverto + non anderà con lui per un cammino. + + Ma poco poi sarà da Dio sofferto + nel santo officio; ch’el sarà detruso + là dove Simon mago è per suo merto, + + e farà quel d’Alagna intrar più giuso». + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXXI + + + In forma dunque di candida rosa + mi si mostrava la milizia santa + che nel suo sangue Cristo fece sposa; + + ma l’altra, che volando vede e canta + la gloria di colui che la ’nnamora + e la bontà che la fece cotanta, + + sì come schiera d’ape che s’infiora + una fïata e una si ritorna + là dove suo laboro s’insapora, + + nel gran fior discendeva che s’addorna + di tante foglie, e quindi risaliva + là dove ’l süo amor sempre soggiorna. + + Le facce tutte avean di fiamma viva + e l’ali d’oro, e l’altro tanto bianco, + che nulla neve a quel termine arriva. + + Quando scendean nel fior, di banco in banco + porgevan de la pace e de l’ardore + ch’elli acquistavan ventilando il fianco. + + Né l’interporsi tra ’l disopra e ’l fiore + di tanta moltitudine volante + impediva la vista e lo splendore: + + ché la luce divina è penetrante + per l’universo secondo ch’è degno, + sì che nulla le puote essere ostante. + + Questo sicuro e gaudïoso regno, + frequente in gente antica e in novella, + viso e amore avea tutto ad un segno. + + O trina luce che ’n unica stella + scintillando a lor vista, sì li appaga! + guarda qua giuso a la nostra procella! + + Se i barbari, venendo da tal plaga + che ciascun giorno d’Elice si cuopra, + rotante col suo figlio ond’ ella è vaga, + + veggendo Roma e l’ardüa sua opra, + stupefaciensi, quando Laterano + a le cose mortali andò di sopra; + + ïo, che al divino da l’umano, + a l’etterno dal tempo era venuto, + e di Fiorenza in popol giusto e sano, + + di che stupor dovea esser compiuto! + Certo tra esso e ’l gaudio mi facea + libito non udire e starmi muto. + + E quasi peregrin che si ricrea + nel tempio del suo voto riguardando, + e spera già ridir com’ ello stea, + + su per la viva luce passeggiando, + menava ïo li occhi per li gradi, + mo sù, mo giù e mo recirculando. + + Vedëa visi a carità süadi, + d’altrui lume fregiati e di suo riso, + e atti ornati di tutte onestadi. + + La forma general di paradiso + già tutta mïo sguardo avea compresa, + in nulla parte ancor fermato fiso; + + e volgeami con voglia rïaccesa + per domandar la mia donna di cose + di che la mente mia era sospesa. + + Uno intendëa, e altro mi rispuose: + credea veder Beatrice e vidi un sene + vestito con le genti glorïose. + + Diffuso era per li occhi e per le gene + di benigna letizia, in atto pio + quale a tenero padre si convene. + + E «Ov’ è ella?», sùbito diss’ io. + Ond’ elli: «A terminar lo tuo disiro + mosse Beatrice me del loco mio; + + e se riguardi sù nel terzo giro + dal sommo grado, tu la rivedrai + nel trono che suoi merti le sortiro». + + Sanza risponder, li occhi sù levai, + e vidi lei che si facea corona + reflettendo da sé li etterni rai. + + Da quella regïon che più sù tona + occhio mortale alcun tanto non dista, + qualunque in mare più giù s’abbandona, + + quanto lì da Beatrice la mia vista; + ma nulla mi facea, ché süa effige + non discendëa a me per mezzo mista. + + «O donna in cui la mia speranza vige, + e che soffristi per la mia salute + in inferno lasciar le tue vestige, + + di tante cose quant’ i’ ho vedute, + dal tuo podere e da la tua bontate + riconosco la grazia e la virtute. + + Tu m’hai di servo tratto a libertate + per tutte quelle vie, per tutt’ i modi + che di ciò fare avei la potestate. + + La tua magnificenza in me custodi, + sì che l’anima mia, che fatt’ hai sana, + piacente a te dal corpo si disnodi». + + Così orai; e quella, sì lontana + come parea, sorrise e riguardommi; + poi si tornò a l’etterna fontana. + + E ’l santo sene: «Acciò che tu assommi + perfettamente», disse, «il tuo cammino, + a che priego e amor santo mandommi, + + vola con li occhi per questo giardino; + ché veder lui t’acconcerà lo sguardo + più al montar per lo raggio divino. + + E la regina del cielo, ond’ ïo ardo + tutto d’amor, ne farà ogne grazia, + però ch’i’ sono il suo fedel Bernardo». + + Qual è colui che forse di Croazia + viene a veder la Veronica nostra, + che per l’antica fame non sen sazia, + + ma dice nel pensier, fin che si mostra: + ‘Segnor mio Iesù Cristo, Dio verace, + or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?’; + + tal era io mirando la vivace + carità di colui che ’n questo mondo, + contemplando, gustò di quella pace. + + «Figliuol di grazia, quest’ esser giocondo», + cominciò elli, «non ti sarà noto, + tenendo li occhi pur qua giù al fondo; + + ma guarda i cerchi infino al più remoto, + tanto che veggi seder la regina + cui questo regno è suddito e devoto». + + Io levai li occhi; e come da mattina + la parte orïental de l’orizzonte + soverchia quella dove ’l sol declina, + + così, quasi di valle andando a monte + con li occhi, vidi parte ne lo stremo + vincer di lume tutta l’altra fronte. + + E come quivi ove s’aspetta il temo + che mal guidò Fetonte, più s’infiamma, + e quinci e quindi il lume si fa scemo, + + così quella pacifica oriafiamma + nel mezzo s’avvivava, e d’ogne parte + per igual modo allentava la fiamma; + + e a quel mezzo, con le penne sparte, + vid’ io più di mille angeli festanti, + ciascun distinto di fulgore e d’arte. + + Vidi a lor giochi quivi e a lor canti + ridere una bellezza, che letizia + era ne li occhi a tutti li altri santi; + + e s’io avessi in dir tanta divizia + quanta ad imaginar, non ardirei + lo minimo tentar di sua delizia. + + Bernardo, come vide li occhi miei + nel caldo suo caler fissi e attenti, + li suoi con tanto affetto volse a lei, + + che ’ miei di rimirar fé più ardenti. + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXXII + + + Affetto al suo piacer, quel contemplante + libero officio di dottore assunse, + e cominciò queste parole sante: + + «La piaga che Maria richiuse e unse, + quella ch’è tanto bella da’ suoi piedi + è colei che l’aperse e che la punse. + + Ne l’ordine che fanno i terzi sedi, + siede Rachel di sotto da costei + con Bëatrice, sì come tu vedi. + + Sarra e Rebecca, Iudìt e colei + che fu bisava al cantor che per doglia + del fallo disse ‘Miserere mei’, + + puoi tu veder così di soglia in soglia + giù digradar, com’ io ch’a proprio nome + vo per la rosa giù di foglia in foglia. + + E dal settimo grado in giù, sì come + infino ad esso, succedono Ebree, + dirimendo del fior tutte le chiome; + + perché, secondo lo sguardo che fée + la fede in Cristo, queste sono il muro + a che si parton le sacre scalee. + + Da questa parte onde ’l fiore è maturo + di tutte le sue foglie, sono assisi + quei che credettero in Cristo venturo; + + da l’altra parte onde sono intercisi + di vòti i semicirculi, si stanno + quei ch’a Cristo venuto ebber li visi. + + E come quinci il glorïoso scanno + de la donna del cielo e li altri scanni + di sotto lui cotanta cerna fanno, + + così di contra quel del gran Giovanni, + che sempre santo ’l diserto e ’l martiro + sofferse, e poi l’inferno da due anni; + + e sotto lui così cerner sortiro + Francesco, Benedetto e Augustino + e altri fin qua giù di giro in giro. + + Or mira l’alto proveder divino: + ché l’uno e l’altro aspetto de la fede + igualmente empierà questo giardino. + + E sappi che dal grado in giù che fiede + a mezzo il tratto le due discrezioni, + per nullo proprio merito si siede, + + ma per l’altrui, con certe condizioni: + ché tutti questi son spiriti ascolti + prima ch’avesser vere elezïoni. + + Ben te ne puoi accorger per li volti + e anche per le voci püerili, + se tu li guardi bene e se li ascolti. + + Or dubbi tu e dubitando sili; + ma io discioglierò ’l forte legame + in che ti stringon li pensier sottili. + + Dentro a l’ampiezza di questo reame + casüal punto non puote aver sito, + se non come tristizia o sete o fame: + + ché per etterna legge è stabilito + quantunque vedi, sì che giustamente + ci si risponde da l’anello al dito; + + e però questa festinata gente + a vera vita non è sine causa + intra sé qui più e meno eccellente. + + Lo rege per cui questo regno pausa + in tanto amore e in tanto diletto, + che nulla volontà è di più ausa, + + le menti tutte nel suo lieto aspetto + creando, a suo piacer di grazia dota + diversamente; e qui basti l’effetto. + + E ciò espresso e chiaro vi si nota + ne la Scrittura santa in quei gemelli + che ne la madre ebber l’ira commota. + + Però, secondo il color d’i capelli, + di cotal grazia l’altissimo lume + degnamente convien che s’incappelli. + + Dunque, sanza mercé di lor costume, + locati son per gradi differenti, + sol differendo nel primiero acume. + + Bastavasi ne’ secoli recenti + con l’innocenza, per aver salute, + solamente la fede d’i parenti; + + poi che le prime etadi fuor compiute, + convenne ai maschi a l’innocenti penne + per circuncidere acquistar virtute; + + ma poi che ’l tempo de la grazia venne, + sanza battesmo perfetto di Cristo + tale innocenza là giù si ritenne. + + Riguarda omai ne la faccia che a Cristo + più si somiglia, ché la sua chiarezza + sola ti può disporre a veder Cristo». + + Io vidi sopra lei tanta allegrezza + piover, portata ne le menti sante + create a trasvolar per quella altezza, + + che quantunque io avea visto davante, + di tanta ammirazion non mi sospese, + né mi mostrò di Dio tanto sembiante; + + e quello amor che primo lì discese, + cantando ‘Ave, Maria, gratïa plena’, + dinanzi a lei le sue ali distese. + + Rispuose a la divina cantilena + da tutte parti la beata corte, + sì ch’ogne vista sen fé più serena. + + «O santo padre, che per me comporte + l’esser qua giù, lasciando il dolce loco + nel qual tu siedi per etterna sorte, + + qual è quell’ angel che con tanto gioco + guarda ne li occhi la nostra regina, + innamorato sì che par di foco?». + + Così ricorsi ancora a la dottrina + di colui ch’abbelliva di Maria, + come del sole stella mattutina. + + Ed elli a me: «Baldezza e leggiadria + quant’ esser puote in angelo e in alma, + tutta è in lui; e sì volem che sia, + + perch’ elli è quelli che portò la palma + giuso a Maria, quando ’l Figliuol di Dio + carcar si volse de la nostra salma. + + Ma vieni omai con li occhi sì com’ io + andrò parlando, e nota i gran patrici + di questo imperio giustissimo e pio. + + Quei due che seggon là sù più felici + per esser propinquissimi ad Agusta, + son d’esta rosa quasi due radici: + + colui che da sinistra le s’aggiusta + è il padre per lo cui ardito gusto + l’umana specie tanto amaro gusta; + + dal destro vedi quel padre vetusto + di Santa Chiesa a cui Cristo le chiavi + raccomandò di questo fior venusto. + + E quei che vide tutti i tempi gravi, + pria che morisse, de la bella sposa + che s’acquistò con la lancia e coi clavi, + + siede lungh’ esso, e lungo l’altro posa + quel duca sotto cui visse di manna + la gente ingrata, mobile e retrosa. + + Di contr’ a Pietro vedi sedere Anna, + tanto contenta di mirar sua figlia, + che non move occhio per cantare osanna; + + e contro al maggior padre di famiglia + siede Lucia, che mosse la tua donna + quando chinavi, a rovinar, le ciglia. + + Ma perché ’l tempo fugge che t’assonna, + qui farem punto, come buon sartore + che com’ elli ha del panno fa la gonna; + + e drizzeremo li occhi al primo amore, + sì che, guardando verso lui, penètri + quant’ è possibil per lo suo fulgore. + + Veramente, ne forse tu t’arretri + movendo l’ali tue, credendo oltrarti, + orando grazia conven che s’impetri + + grazia da quella che puote aiutarti; + e tu mi seguirai con l’affezione, + sì che dal dicer mio lo cor non parti». + + E cominciò questa santa orazione: + + + + Paradiso • Canto XXXIII + + + «Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio, + umile e alta più che creatura, + termine fisso d’etterno consiglio, + + tu se’ colei che l’umana natura + nobilitasti sì, che ’l suo fattore + non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura. + + Nel ventre tuo si raccese l’amore, + per lo cui caldo ne l’etterna pace + così è germinato questo fiore. + + Qui se’ a noi meridïana face + di caritate, e giuso, intra ’ mortali, + se’ di speranza fontana vivace. + + Donna, se’ tanto grande e tanto vali, + che qual vuol grazia e a te non ricorre, + sua disïanza vuol volar sanz’ ali. + + La tua benignità non pur soccorre + a chi domanda, ma molte fïate + liberamente al dimandar precorre. + + In te misericordia, in te pietate, + in te magnificenza, in te s’aduna + quantunque in creatura è di bontate. + + Or questi, che da l’infima lacuna + de l’universo infin qui ha vedute + le vite spiritali ad una ad una, + + supplica a te, per grazia, di virtute + tanto, che possa con li occhi levarsi + più alto verso l’ultima salute. + + E io, che mai per mio veder non arsi + più ch’i’ fo per lo suo, tutti miei prieghi + ti porgo, e priego che non sieno scarsi, + + perché tu ogne nube li disleghi + di sua mortalità co’ prieghi tuoi, + sì che ’l sommo piacer li si dispieghi. + + Ancor ti priego, regina, che puoi + ciò che tu vuoli, che conservi sani, + dopo tanto veder, li affetti suoi. + + Vinca tua guardia i movimenti umani: + vedi Beatrice con quanti beati + per li miei prieghi ti chiudon le mani!». + + Li occhi da Dio diletti e venerati, + fissi ne l’orator, ne dimostraro + quanto i devoti prieghi le son grati; + + indi a l’etterno lume s’addrizzaro, + nel qual non si dee creder che s’invii + per creatura l’occhio tanto chiaro. + + E io ch’al fine di tutt’ i disii + appropinquava, sì com’ io dovea, + l’ardor del desiderio in me finii. + + Bernardo m’accennava, e sorridea, + perch’ io guardassi suso; ma io era + già per me stesso tal qual ei volea: + + ché la mia vista, venendo sincera, + e più e più intrava per lo raggio + de l’alta luce che da sé è vera. + + Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggio + che ’l parlar mostra, ch’a tal vista cede, + e cede la memoria a tanto oltraggio. + + Qual è colüi che sognando vede, + che dopo ’l sogno la passione impressa + rimane, e l’altro a la mente non riede, + + cotal son io, ché quasi tutta cessa + mia visïone, e ancor mi distilla + nel core il dolce che nacque da essa. + + Così la neve al sol si disigilla; + così al vento ne le foglie levi + si perdea la sentenza di Sibilla. + + O somma luce che tanto ti levi + da’ concetti mortali, a la mia mente + ripresta un poco di quel che parevi, + + e fa la lingua mia tanto possente, + ch’una favilla sol de la tua gloria + possa lasciare a la futura gente; + + ché, per tornare alquanto a mia memoria + e per sonare un poco in questi versi, + più si conceperà di tua vittoria. + + Io credo, per l’acume ch’io soffersi + del vivo raggio, ch’i’ sarei smarrito, + se li occhi miei da lui fossero aversi. + + E’ mi ricorda ch’io fui più ardito + per questo a sostener, tanto ch’i’ giunsi + l’aspetto mio col valore infinito. + + Oh abbondante grazia ond’ io presunsi + ficcar lo viso per la luce etterna, + tanto che la veduta vi consunsi! + + Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna, + legato con amore in un volume, + ciò che per l’universo si squaderna: + + sustanze e accidenti e lor costume + quasi conflati insieme, per tal modo + che ciò ch’i’ dico è un semplice lume. + + La forma universal di questo nodo + credo ch’i’ vidi, perché più di largo, + dicendo questo, mi sento ch’i’ godo. + + Un punto solo m’è maggior letargo + che venticinque secoli a la ’mpresa + che fé Nettuno ammirar l’ombra d’Argo. + + Così la mente mia, tutta sospesa, + mirava fissa, immobile e attenta, + e sempre di mirar faceasi accesa. + + A quella luce cotal si diventa, + che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto + è impossibil che mai si consenta; + + però che ’l ben, ch’è del volere obietto, + tutto s’accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella + è defettivo ciò ch’è lì perfetto. + + Omai sarà più corta mia favella, + pur a quel ch’io ricordo, che d’un fante + che bagni ancor la lingua a la mammella. + + Non perché più ch’un semplice sembiante + fosse nel vivo lume ch’io mirava, + che tal è sempre qual s’era davante; + + ma per la vista che s’avvalorava + in me guardando, una sola parvenza, + mutandom’ io, a me si travagliava. + + Ne la profonda e chiara sussistenza + de l’alto lume parvermi tre giri + di tre colori e d’una contenenza; + + e l’un da l’altro come iri da iri + parea reflesso, e ’l terzo parea foco + che quinci e quindi igualmente si spiri. + + Oh quanto è corto il dire e come fioco + al mio concetto! e questo, a quel ch’i’ vidi, + è tanto, che non basta a dicer ‘poco’. + + O luce etterna che sola in te sidi, + sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta + e intendente te ami e arridi! + + Quella circulazion che sì concetta + pareva in te come lume reflesso, + da li occhi miei alquanto circunspetta, + + dentro da sé, del suo colore stesso, + mi parve pinta de la nostra effige: + per che ’l mio viso in lei tutto era messo. + + Qual è ’l geomètra che tutto s’affige + per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova, + pensando, quel principio ond’ elli indige, + + tal era io a quella vista nova: + veder voleva come si convenne + l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova; + + ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne: + se non che la mia mente fu percossa + da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne. + + A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa; + ma già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle, + sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa, + + l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. + + + + + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + + TAVOLA DEI CARATTERI SPECIALI + TABLE OF SPECIAL CHARACTERS + + à = a grave + è = e grave + ì = i grave + ò = o grave + ù = u grave + + é = e acute + ó = o acute + + ä = a uml + ë = e uml + ï = i uml + ö = o uml + ü = u uml + + È = E grave + Ë = E uml + Ï = I uml + + « = left angle quotation mark + » = right angle quotation mark + + “ = left double quotation mark + ” = right double quotation mark + + ‘ = left single quotation mark + ’ = right single quotation mark + + — = em dash + + • = middot + + . . . = ellipsis + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's La Divina Commedia di Dante, by Dante Alighieri + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1012 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1013-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1013-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7454ae03 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1013-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7745 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1013 *** + +[Illustration] + + + + +The First Men In The Moon + +by H. G. Wells + + +Contents + + I. Mr. Bedford Meets Mr. Cavor at Lympne + II. The First Making of Cavorite + III. The Building of the sphere + IV. Inside the Sphere + V. The Journey to the Moon + VI. The Landing on the Moon + VII. Sunrise on the Moon + VIII. A Lunar Morning + IX. Prospecting Begins + X. Lost Men in the Moon + XI. The Mooncalf Pastures + XII. The Selenite’s Face + XIII. Mr. Cavor Makes Some Suggestions + XIV. Experiments in intercourse + XV. The Giddy Bridge + XVI. Points of View + XVII. The Fight in the Cave of the Moon Butchers + XVIII. In the Sunlight + XIX. Mr. Bedford Alone + XX. Mr. Bedford in Infinite Space + XXI. Mr. Bedford at Littlestone + XXII. The Astonishing Communication of Mr. Julius Wendigee + XXIII. An Abstract of the Six Messages First Received from Mr. Cavor + XXIV. The Natural History of the Selenites + XXV. The Grand Lunar + XXVI. The Last Message Cavor sent to the Earth + + + + +I. +Mr. Bedford Meets Mr. Cavor at Lympne + + +As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the +blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of +astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr. +Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have +been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself +removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. I had +gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most uneventful place in +the world. “Here, at any rate,” said I, “I shall find peace and a +chance to work!” + +And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is destiny with all +the little plans of men. I may perhaps mention here that very recently +I had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now +surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in +admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my +disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are +directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business +operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my +youth among other objectionable forms took that of a pride in my +capacity for affairs. I am young still in years, but the things that +have happened to me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. +Whether they have brought any wisdom to light below it is a more +doubtful matter. + +It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations +that landed me at Lympne, in Kent. Nowadays even about business +transactions there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In +these things there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and +it fell to me finally to do the giving reluctantly enough. Even when I +had got out of everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be +malignant. Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, +or perhaps you have only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me, at +last, that there was nothing for it but to write a play, unless I +wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk. I have a certain +imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to make a vigorous fight +for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to my belief in my +powers as a business man, I had always in those days had an idea that I +was equal to writing a very good play. It is not, I believe, a very +uncommon persuasion. I knew there is nothing a man can do outside +legitimate business transactions that has such opulent possibilities, +and very probably that biased my opinion. I had, indeed, got into the +habit of regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient little reserve +put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come, and I set to work. + +I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had +supposed; at first I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a +_pied-à-terre_ while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckoned +myself lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a three +years’ agreement. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the +play was in hand I did my own cooking. My cooking would have shocked +Mrs. Bond. And yet, you know, it had flavour. I had a coffee-pot, a +sauce-pan for eggs, and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausages +and bacon—such was the simple apparatus of my comfort. One cannot +always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible alternative. +For the rest I laid in an eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, and a +trustful baker came each day. It was not, perhaps, in the style of +Sybaris, but I have had worse times. I was a little sorry for the +baker, who was a very decent man indeed, but even for him I hoped. + +Certainly if any one wants solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in the +clay part of Kent, and my bungalow stood on the edge of an old sea +cliff and stared across the flats of Romney Marsh at the sea. In very +wet weather the place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard that at +times the postman used to traverse the more succulent portions of his +route with boards upon his feet. I never saw him doing so, but I can +quite imagine it. Outside the doors of the few cottages and houses that +make up the present village big birch besoms are stuck, to wipe off the +worst of the clay, which will give some idea of the texture of the +district. I doubt if the place would be there at all, if it were not a +fading memory of things gone for ever. It was the big port of England +in Roman times, Portus Lemanis, and now the sea is four miles away. All +down the steep hill are boulders and masses of Roman brickwork, and +from it old Watling Street, still paved in places, starts like an arrow +to the north. I used to stand on the hill and think of it all, the +galleys and legions, the captives and officials, the women and traders, +the speculators like myself, all the swarm and tumult that came +clanking in and out of the harbour. And now just a few lumps of rubble +on a grassy slope, and a sheep or two—and I. And where the port had +been were the levels of the marsh, sweeping round in a broad curve to +distant Dungeness, and dotted here and there with tree clumps and the +church towers of old mediæval towns that are following Lemanis now +towards extinction. + +That outlook on the marsh was, indeed, one of the finest views I have +ever seen. I suppose Dungeness was fifteen miles away; it lay like a +raft on the sea, and farther westward were the hills by Hastings under +the setting sun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes they +were faded and low, and often the drift of the weather took them clean +out of sight. And all the nearer parts of the marsh were laced and lit +by ditches and canals. + +The window at which I worked looked over the skyline of this crest, and +it was from this window that I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just as +I was struggling with my scenario, holding down my mind to the sheer +hard work of it, and naturally enough he arrested my attention. + +The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow, +and against that he came out black—the oddest little figure. + +He was a short, round-bodied, thin-legged little man, with a jerky +quality in his motions; he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinary +mind in a cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers and +stockings. Why he did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he +never played cricket. It was a fortuitous concurrence of garments, +arising I know not how. He gesticulated with his hands and arms, and +jerked his head about and buzzed. He buzzed like something electric. +You never heard such buzzing. And ever and again he cleared his throat +with a most extraordinary noise. + +There had been rain, and that spasmodic walk of his was enhanced by the +extreme slipperiness of the footpath. Exactly as he came against the +sun he stopped, pulled out a watch, hesitated. Then with a sort of +convulsive gesture he turned and retreated with every manifestation of +haste, no longer gesticulating, but going with ample strides that +showed the relatively large size of his feet—they were, I remember, +grotesquely exaggerated in size by adhesive clay—to the best possible +advantage. + +This occurred on the first day of my sojourn, when my play-writing +energy was at its height and I regarded the incident simply as an +annoying distraction—the waste of five minutes. I returned to my +scenario. But when next evening the apparition was repeated with +remarkable precision, and again the next evening, and indeed every +evening when rain was not falling, concentration upon the scenario +became a considerable effort. “Confound the man,” I said, “one would +think he was learning to be a marionette!” and for several evenings I +cursed him pretty heartily. Then my annoyance gave way to amazement and +curiosity. Why on earth should a man do this thing? On the fourteenth +evening I could stand it no longer, and so soon as he appeared I opened +the french window, crossed the verandah, and directed myself to the +point where he invariably stopped. + +He had his watch out as I came up to him. He had a chubby, rubicund +face with reddish brown eyes—previously I had seen him only against the +light. “One moment, sir,” said I as he turned. He stared. “One moment,” +he said, “certainly. Or if you wish to speak to me for longer, and it +is not asking too much—your moment is up—would it trouble you to +accompany me?” + +“Not in the least,” said I, placing myself beside him. + +“My habits are regular. My time for intercourse—limited.” + +“This, I presume, is your time for exercise?” + +“It is. I come here to enjoy the sunset.” + +“You don’t.” + +“Sir?” + +“You never look at it.” + +“Never look at it?” + +“No. I’ve watched you thirteen nights, and not once have you looked at +the sunset—not once.” + +He knitted his brows like one who encounters a problem. + +“Well, I enjoy the sunlight—the atmosphere—I go along this path, +through that gate”—he jerked his head over his shoulder—“and round—” + +“You don’t. You never have been. It’s all nonsense. There isn’t a way. +To-night for instance—” + +“Oh! to-night! Let me see. Ah! I just glanced at my watch, saw that I +had already been out just three minutes over the precise half-hour, +decided there was not time to go round, turned—” + +“You always do.” + +He looked at me—reflected. “Perhaps I do, now I come to think of it. +But what was it you wanted to speak to me about?” + +“Why, this!” + +“This?” + +“Yes. Why do you do it? Every night you come making a noise—” + +“Making a noise?” + +“Like this.” I imitated his buzzing noise. He looked at me, and it was +evident the buzzing awakened distaste. “Do I do _that?_” he asked. + +“Every blessed evening.” + +“I had no idea.” + +He stopped dead. He regarded me gravely. “Can it be,” he said, “that I +have formed a Habit?” + +“Well, it looks like it. Doesn’t it?” + +He pulled down his lower lip between finger and thumb. He regarded a +puddle at his feet. + +“My mind is much occupied,” he said. “And you want to know _why!_ Well, +sir, I can assure you that not only do I not know why I do these +things, but I did not even know I did them. Come to think, it is just +as you say; I never _have_ been beyond that field.... And these things +annoy you?” + +For some reason I was beginning to relent towards him. “Not _annoy_,” I +said. “But—imagine yourself writing a play!” + +“I couldn’t.” + +“Well, anything that needs concentration.” + +“Ah!” he said, “of course,” and meditated. His expression became so +eloquent of distress, that I relented still more. After all, there is a +touch of aggression in demanding of a man you don’t know why he hums on +a public footpath. + +“You see,” he said weakly, “it’s a habit.” + +“Oh, I recognise that.” + +“I must stop it.” + +“But not if it puts you out. After all, I had no business—it’s +something of a liberty.” + +“Not at all, sir,” he said, “not at all. I am greatly indebted to you. +I should guard myself against these things. In future I will. Could I +trouble you—once again? That noise?” + +“Something like this,” I said. “Zuzzoo, zuzzoo. But really, you know—” + +“I am greatly obliged to you. In fact, I know I am getting absurdly +absent-minded. You are quite justified, sir—perfectly justified. +Indeed, I am indebted to you. The thing shall end. And now, sir, I have +already brought you farther than I should have done.” + +“I do hope my impertinence—” + +“Not at all, sir, not at all.” + +We regarded each other for a moment. I raised my hat and wished him a +good evening. He responded convulsively, and so we went our ways. + +At the stile I looked back at his receding figure. His bearing had +changed remarkably, he seemed limp, shrunken. The contrast with his +former gesticulating, zuzzoing self took me in some absurd way as +pathetic. I watched him out of sight. Then wishing very heartily I had +kept to my own business, I returned to my bungalow and my play. + +The next evening I saw nothing of him, nor the next. But he was very +much in my mind, and it had occurred to me that as a sentimental comic +character he might serve a useful purpose in the development of my +plot. The third day he called upon me. + +For a time I was puzzled to think what had brought him. He made +indifferent conversation in the most formal way, then abruptly he came +to business. He wanted to buy me out of my bungalow. + +“You see,” he said, “I don’t blame you in the least, but you’ve +destroyed a habit, and it disorganises my day. I’ve walked past here +for years—years. No doubt I’ve hummed.... You’ve made all that +impossible!” + +I suggested he might try some other direction. + +“No. There is no other direction. This is the only one. I’ve inquired. +And now—every afternoon at four—I come to a dead wall.” + +“But, my dear sir, if the thing is so important to you—” + +“It’s vital. You see, I’m—I’m an investigator—I am engaged in a +scientific research. I live—” he paused and seemed to think. “Just over +there,” he said, and pointed suddenly dangerously near my eye. “The +house with white chimneys you see just over the trees. And my +circumstances are abnormal—abnormal. I am on the point of completing +one of the most important—demonstrations—I can assure you one of _the +most important_ demonstrations that have ever been made. It requires +constant thought, constant mental ease and activity. And the afternoon +was my brightest time!—effervescing with new ideas—new points of view.” + +“But why not come by still?” + +“It would be all different. I should be self-conscious. I should think +of you at your play—watching me irritated—instead of thinking of my +work. No! I must have the bungalow.” + +I meditated. Naturally, I wanted to think the matter over thoroughly +before anything decisive was said. I was generally ready enough for +business in those days, and selling always attracted me; but in the +first place it was not my bungalow, and even if I sold it to him at a +good price I might get inconvenienced in the delivery of goods if the +current owner got wind of the transaction, and in the second I was, +well—undischarged. It was clearly a business that required delicate +handling. Moreover, the possibility of his being in pursuit of some +valuable invention also interested me. It occurred to me that I would +like to know more of this research, not with any dishonest intention, +but simply with an idea that to know what it was would be a relief from +play-writing. I threw out feelers. + +He was quite willing to supply information. Indeed, once he was fairly +under way the conversation became a monologue. He talked like a man +long pent up, who has had it over with himself again and again. He +talked for nearly an hour, and I must confess I found it a pretty stiff +bit of listening. But through it all there was the undertone of +satisfaction one feels when one is neglecting work one has set oneself. +During that first interview I gathered very little of the drift of his +work. Half his words were technicalities entirely strange to me, and he +illustrated one or two points with what he was pleased to call +elementary mathematics, computing on an envelope with a copying-ink +pencil, in a manner that made it hard even to seem to understand. +“Yes,” I said, “yes. Go on!” Nevertheless I made out enough to convince +me that he was no mere crank playing at discoveries. In spite of his +crank-like appearance there was a force about him that made that +impossible. Whatever it was, it was a thing with mechanical +possibilities. He told me of a work-shed he had, and of three +assistants—originally jobbing carpenters—whom he had trained. Now, from +the work-shed to the patent office is clearly only one step. He invited +me to see those things. I accepted readily, and took care, by a remark +or so, to underline that. The proposed transfer of the bungalow +remained very conveniently in suspense. + +At last he rose to depart, with an apology for the length of his call. +Talking over his work was, he said, a pleasure enjoyed only too rarely. +It was not often he found such an intelligent listener as myself, he +mingled very little with professional scientific men. + +“So much pettiness,” he explained; “so much intrigue! And really, when +one has an idea—a novel, fertilising idea—I don’t want to be +uncharitable, but—” + +I am a man who believes in impulses. I made what was perhaps a rash +proposition. But you must remember, that I had been alone, play-writing +in Lympne, for fourteen days, and my compunction for his ruined walk +still hung about me. “Why not,” said I, “make this your new habit? In +the place of the one I spoilt? At least, until we can settle about the +bungalow. What you want is to turn over your work in your mind. That +you have always done during your afternoon walk. Unfortunately that’s +over—you can’t get things back as they were. But why not come and talk +about your work to me; use me as a sort of wall against which you may +throw your thoughts and catch them again? It’s certain I don’t know +enough to steal your ideas myself—and I know no scientific men—” + +I stopped. He was considering. Evidently the thing attracted him. “But +I’m afraid I should bore you,” he said. + +“You think I’m too dull?” + +“Oh, no; but technicalities—” + +“Anyhow, you’ve interested me immensely this afternoon.” + +“Of course it _would_ be a great help to me. Nothing clears up one’s +ideas so much as explaining them. Hitherto—” + +“My dear sir, say no more.” + +“But really can you spare the time?” + +“There is no rest like change of occupation,” I said, with profound +conviction. + +The affair was over. On my verandah steps he turned. “I am already +greatly indebted to you,” he said. + +I made an interrogative noise. + +“You have completely cured me of that ridiculous habit of humming,” he +explained. + +I think I said I was glad to be of any service to him, and he turned +away. + +Immediately the train of thought that our conversation had suggested +must have resumed its sway. His arms began to wave in their former +fashion. The faint echo of “zuzzoo” came back to me on the breeze.... + +Well, after all, that was not my affair.... + +He came the next day, and again the next day after that, and delivered +two lectures on physics to our mutual satisfaction. He talked with an +air of being extremely lucid about the “ether” and “tubes of force,” +and “gravitational potential,” and things like that, and I sat in my +other folding-chair and said, “Yes,” “Go on,” “I follow you,” to keep +him going. It was tremendously difficult stuff, but I do not think he +ever suspected how much I did not understand him. There were moments +when I doubted whether I was well employed, but at any rate I was +resting from that confounded play. Now and then things gleamed on me +clearly for a space, only to vanish just when I thought I had hold of +them. Sometimes my attention failed altogether, and I would give it up +and sit and stare at him, wondering whether, after all, it would not be +better to use him as a central figure in a good farce and let all this +other stuff slide. And then, perhaps, I would catch on again for a bit. + +At the earliest opportunity I went to see his house. It was large and +carelessly furnished; there were no servants other than his three +assistants, and his dietary and private life were characterised by a +philosophical simplicity. He was a water-drinker, a vegetarian, and all +those logical disciplinary things. But the sight of his equipment +settled many doubts. It looked like business from cellar to attic—an +amazing little place to find in an out-of-the-way village. The +ground-floor rooms contained benches and apparatus, the bakehouse and +scullery boiler had developed into respectable furnaces, dynamos +occupied the cellar, and there was a gasometer in the garden. He showed +it to me with all the confiding zest of a man who has been living too +much alone. His seclusion was overflowing now in an excess of +confidence, and I had the good luck to be the recipient. + +The three assistants were creditable specimens of the class of +“handy-men” from which they came. Conscientious if unintelligent, +strong, civil, and willing. One, Spargus, who did the cooking and all +the metal work, had been a sailor; a second, Gibbs, was a joiner; and +the third was an ex-jobbing gardener, and now general assistant. They +were the merest labourers. All the intelligent work was done by Cavor. +Theirs was the darkest ignorance compared even with my muddled +impression. + +And now, as to the nature of these inquiries. Here, unhappily, comes a +grave difficulty. I am no scientific expert, and if I were to attempt +to set forth in the highly scientific language of Mr. Cavor the aim to +which his experiments tended, I am afraid I should confuse not only the +reader but myself, and almost certainly I should make some blunder that +would bring upon me the mockery of every up-to-date student of +mathematical physics in the country. The best thing I can do therefore +is, I think to give my impressions in my own inexact language, without +any attempt to wear a garment of knowledge to which I have no claim. + +The object of Mr. Cavor’s search was a substance that should be +“opaque”—he used some other word I have forgotten, but “opaque” conveys +the idea—to “all forms of radiant energy.” “Radiant energy,” he made me +understand, was anything like light or heat, or those Röntgen Rays +there was so much talk about a year or so ago, or the electric waves of +Marconi, or gravitation. All these things, he said, _radiate_ out from +centres, and act on bodies at a distance, whence comes the term +“radiant energy.” Now almost all substances are opaque to some form or +other of radiant energy. Glass, for example, is transparent to light, +but much less so to heat, so that it is useful as a fire-screen; and +alum is transparent to light, but blocks heat completely. A solution of +iodine in carbon bisulphide, on the other hand, completely blocks +light, but is quite transparent to heat. It will hide a fire from you, +but permit all its warmth to reach you. Metals are not only opaque to +light and heat, but also to electrical energy, which passes through +both iodine solution and glass almost as though they were not +interposed. And so on. + +Now all known substances are “transparent” to gravitation. You can use +screens of various sorts to cut off the light or heat, or electrical +influence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth from anything; you can +screen things by sheets of metal from Marconi’s rays, but nothing will +cut off the gravitational attraction of the sun or the gravitational +attraction of the earth. Yet why there should be nothing is hard to +say. Cavor did not see why such a substance should not exist, and +certainly I could not tell him. I had never thought of such a +possibility before. He showed me by calculations on paper, which Lord +Kelvin, no doubt, or Professor Lodge, or Professor Karl Pearson, or any +of those great scientific people might have understood, but which +simply reduced me to a hopeless muddle, that not only was such a +substance possible, but that it must satisfy certain conditions. It was +an amazing piece of reasoning. Much as it amazed and exercised me at +the time, it would be impossible to reproduce it here. “Yes,” I said to +it all, “yes; go on!” Suffice it for this story that he believed he +might be able to manufacture this possible substance opaque to +gravitation out of a complicated alloy of metals and something new—a +new element, I fancy—called, I believe, _helium_, which was sent to him +from London in sealed stone jars. Doubt has been thrown upon this +detail, but I am almost certain it was _helium_ he had sent him in +sealed stone jars. It was certainly something very gaseous and thin. If +only I had taken notes... + +But then, how was I to foresee the necessity of taking notes? + +Any one with the merest germ of an imagination will understand the +extraordinary possibilities of such a substance, and will sympathise a +little with the emotion I felt as this understanding emerged from the +haze of abstruse phrases in which Cavor expressed himself. Comic relief +in a play indeed! It was some time before I would believe that I had +interpreted him aright, and I was very careful not to ask questions +that would have enabled him to gauge the profundity of misunderstanding +into which he dropped his daily exposition. But no one reading the +story of it here will sympathise fully, because from my barren +narrative it will be impossible to gather the strength of my conviction +that this astonishing substance was positively going to be made. + +I do not recall that I gave my play an hour’s consecutive work at any +time after my visit to his house. My imagination had other things to +do. There seemed no limit to the possibilities of the stuff; whichever +way I tried I came on miracles and revolutions. For example, if one +wanted to lift a weight, however enormous, one had only to get a sheet +of this substance beneath it, and one might lift it with a straw. My +first natural impulse was to apply this principle to guns and +ironclads, and all the material and methods of war, and from that to +shipping, locomotion, building, every conceivable form of human +industry. The chance that had brought me into the very birth-chamber of +this new time—it was an epoch, no less—was one of those chances that +come once in a thousand years. The thing unrolled, it expanded and +expanded. Among other things I saw in it my redemption as a business +man. I saw a parent company, and daughter companies, applications to +right of us, applications to left, rings and trusts, privileges, and +concessions spreading and spreading, until one vast, stupendous +Cavorite company ran and ruled the world. + +And I was in it! + +I took my line straight away. I knew I was staking everything, but I +jumped there and then. + +“We’re on absolutely the biggest thing that has ever been invented,” I +said, and put the accent on “we.” “If you want to keep me out of this, +you’ll have to do it with a gun. I’m coming down to be your fourth +labourer to-morrow.” + +He seemed surprised at my enthusiasm, but not a bit suspicious or +hostile. Rather, he was self-depreciatory. He looked at me doubtfully. +“But do you really think—?” he said. “And your play! How about that +play?” + +“It’s vanished!” I cried. “My dear sir, don’t you see what you’ve got? +Don’t you see what you’re going to do?” + +That was merely a rhetorical turn, but positively, he didn’t. At first +I could not believe it. He had not had the beginning of the inkling of +an idea. This astonishing little man had been working on purely +theoretical grounds the whole time! When he said it was “the most +important” research the world had ever seen, he simply meant it squared +up so many theories, settled so much that was in doubt; he had troubled +no more about the application of the stuff he was going to turn out +than if he had been a machine that makes guns. This was a possible +substance, and he was going to make it! _V’la tout_, as the Frenchman +says. + +Beyond that, he was childish! If he made it, it would go down to +posterity as Cavorite or Cavorine, and he would be made an F.R.S., and +his portrait given away as a scientific worthy with _Nature_, and +things like that. And that was all he saw! He would have dropped this +bombshell into the world as though he had discovered a new species of +gnat, if it had not happened that I had come along. And there it would +have lain and fizzled, like one or two other little things these +scientific people have lit and dropped about us. + +When I realised this, it was I did the talking, and Cavor who said, “Go +on!” I jumped up. I paced the room, gesticulating like a boy of twenty. +I tried to make him understand his duties and responsibilities in the +matter—_our_ duties and responsibilities in the matter. I assured him +we might make wealth enough to work any sort of social revolution we +fancied, we might own and order the whole world. I told him of +companies and patents, and the case for secret processes. All these +things seemed to take him much as his mathematics had taken me. A look +of perplexity came into his ruddy little face. He stammered something +about indifference to wealth, but I brushed all that aside. He had got +to be rich, and it was no good his stammering. I gave him to understand +the sort of man I was, and that I had had very considerable business +experience. I did not tell him I was an undischarged bankrupt at the +time, because that was temporary, but I think I reconciled my evident +poverty with my financial claims. And quite insensibly, in the way such +projects grow, the understanding of a Cavorite monopoly grew up between +us. He was to make the stuff, and I was to make the boom. + +I stuck like a leech to the “we”—“you” and “I” didn’t exist for me. + +His idea was that the profits I spoke of might go to endow research, +but that, of course, was a matter we had to settle later. “That’s all +right,” I shouted, “that’s all right.” The great point, as I insisted, +was to get the thing done. + +“Here is a substance,” I cried, “no home, no factory, no fortress, no +ship can dare to be without—more universally applicable even than a +patent medicine. There isn’t a solitary aspect of it, not one of its +ten thousand possible uses that will not make us rich, Cavor, beyond +the dreams of avarice!” + +“No!” he said. “I begin to see. It’s extraordinary how one gets new +points of view by talking over things!” + +“And as it happens you have just talked to the right man!” + +“I suppose no one,” he said, “is absolutely _averse_ to enormous +wealth. Of course there is one thing—” + +He paused. I stood still. + +“It is just possible, you know, that we may not be able to make it +after all! It may be one of those things that are a theoretical +possibility, but a practical absurdity. Or when we make it, there may +be some little hitch!” + +“We’ll tackle the hitch when it comes,” said I. + + + + +II. +The First Making of Cavorite + + +But Cavor’s fears were groundless, so far as the actual making was +concerned. On the 14th of October, 1899, this incredible substance was +made! + +Oddly enough, it was made at last by accident, when Mr. Cavor least +expected it. He had fused together a number of metals and certain other +things—I wish I knew the particulars now!—and he intended to leave the +mixture a week and then allow it to cool slowly. Unless he had +miscalculated, the last stage in the combination would occur when the +stuff sank to a temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But it chanced +that, unknown to Cavor, dissension had arisen about the furnace +tending. Gibbs, who had previously seen to this, had suddenly attempted +to shift it to the man who had been a gardener, on the score that coal +was soil, being dug, and therefore could not possibly fall within the +province of a joiner; the man who had been a jobbing gardener alleged, +however, that coal was a metallic or ore-like substance, let alone that +he was cook. But Spargus insisted on Gibbs doing the coaling, seeing +that he was a joiner and that coal is notoriously fossil wood. +Consequently Gibbs ceased to replenish the furnace, and no one else did +so, and Cavor was too much immersed in certain interesting problems +concerning a Cavorite flying machine (neglecting the resistance of the +air and one or two other points) to perceive that anything was wrong. +And the premature birth of his invention took place just as he was +coming across the field to my bungalow for our afternoon talk and tea. + +I remember the occasion with extreme vividness. The water was boiling, +and everything was prepared, and the sound of his “zuzzoo” had brought +me out upon the verandah. His active little figure was black against +the autumnal sunset, and to the right the chimneys of his house just +rose above a gloriously tinted group of trees. Remoter rose the Wealden +Hills, faint and blue, while to the left the hazy marsh spread out +spacious and serene. And then— + +The chimneys jerked heavenward, smashing into a string of bricks as +they rose, and the roof and a miscellany of furniture followed. Then +overtaking them came a huge white flame. The trees about the building +swayed and whirled and tore themselves to pieces, that sprang towards +the flare. My ears were smitten with a clap of thunder that left me +deaf on one side for life, and all about me windows smashed, unheeded. + +I took three steps from the verandah towards Cavor’s house, and even as +I did so came the wind. + +Instantly my coat tails were over my head, and I was progressing in +great leaps and bounds, and quite against my will, towards him. In the +same moment the discoverer was seized, whirled about, and flew through +the screaming air. I saw one of my chimney pots hit the ground within +six yards of me, leap a score of feet, and so hurry in great strides +towards the focus of the disturbance. Cavor, kicking and flapping, came +down again, rolled over and over on the ground for a space, struggled +up and was lifted and borne forward at an enormous velocity, vanishing +at last among the labouring, lashing trees that writhed about his +house. + +A mass of smoke and ashes, and a square of bluish shining substance +rushed up towards the zenith. A large fragment of fencing came sailing +past me, dropped edgeways, hit the ground and fell flat, and then the +worst was over. The aerial commotion fell swiftly until it was a mere +strong gale, and I became once more aware that I had breath and feet. +By leaning back against the wind I managed to stop, and could collect +such wits as still remained to me. + +In that instant the whole face of the world had changed. The tranquil +sunset had vanished, the sky was dark with scurrying clouds, everything +was flattened and swaying with the gale. I glanced back to see if my +bungalow was still in a general way standing, then staggered forwards +towards the trees amongst which Cavor had vanished, and through whose +tall and leaf-denuded branches shone the flames of his burning house. + +I entered the copse, dashing from one tree to another and clinging to +them, and for a space I sought him in vain. Then amidst a heap of +smashed branches and fencing that had banked itself against a portion +of his garden wall I perceived something stir. I made a run for this, +but before I reached it a brown object separated itself, rose on two +muddy legs, and protruded two drooping, bleeding hands. Some tattered +ends of garment fluttered out from its middle portion and streamed +before the wind. + +For a moment I did not recognise this earthy lump, and then I saw that +it was Cavor, caked in the mud in which he had rolled. He leant forward +against the wind, rubbing the dirt from his eyes and mouth. + +He extended a muddy lump of hand, and staggered a pace towards me. His +face worked with emotion, little lumps of mud kept falling from it. He +looked as damaged and pitiful as any living creature I have ever seen, +and his remark therefore amazed me exceedingly. + +“Gratulate me,” he gasped; “gratulate me!” + +“Congratulate you!” said I. “Good heavens! What for?” + +“I’ve done it.” + +“You _have_. What on earth caused that explosion?” + +A gust of wind blew his words away. I understood him to say that it +wasn’t an explosion at all. The wind hurled me into collision with him, +and we stood clinging to one another. + +“Try and get back—to my bungalow,” I bawled in his ear. He did not hear +me, and shouted something about “three martyrs—science,” and also +something about “not much good.” At the time he laboured under the +impression that his three attendants had perished in the whirlwind. +Happily this was incorrect. Directly he had left for my bungalow they +had gone off to the public-house in Lympne to discuss the question of +the furnaces over some trivial refreshment. + +I repeated my suggestion of getting back to my bungalow, and this time +he understood. We clung arm-in-arm and started, and managed at last to +reach the shelter of as much roof as was left to me. For a space we sat +in arm-chairs and panted. All the windows were broken, and the lighter +articles of furniture were in great disorder, but no irrevocable damage +was done. Happily the kitchen door had stood the pressure upon it, so +that all my crockery and cooking materials had survived. The oil stove +was still burning, and I put on the water to boil again for tea. And +that prepared, I could turn on Cavor for his explanation. + +“Quite correct,” he insisted; “quite correct. I’ve done it, and it’s +all right.” + +“But,” I protested. “All right! Why, there can’t be a rick standing, or +a fence or a thatched roof undamaged for twenty miles round....” + +“It’s all right—_really_. I didn’t, of course, foresee this little +upset. My mind was preoccupied with another problem, and I’m apt to +disregard these practical side issues. But it’s all right—” + +“My dear sir,” I cried, “don’t you see you’ve done thousands of pounds’ +worth of damage?” + +“There, I throw myself on your discretion. I’m not a practical man, of +course, but don’t you think they will regard it as a cyclone?” + +“But the explosion—” + +“It was _not_ an explosion. It’s perfectly simple. Only, as I say, I’m +apt to overlook these little things. It’s that zuzzoo business on a +larger scale. Inadvertently I made this substance of mine, this +Cavorite, in a thin, wide sheet....” + +He paused. “You are quite clear that the stuff is opaque to +gravitation, that it cuts off things from gravitating towards each +other?” + +“Yes,” said I. “Yes.” + +“Well, so soon as it reached a temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit, +and the process of its manufacture was complete, the air above it, the +portions of roof and ceiling and floor above it ceased to have weight. +I suppose you know—everybody knows nowadays—that, as a usual thing, the +air _has_ weight, that it presses on everything at the surface of the +earth, presses in all directions, with a pressure of fourteen and a +half pounds to the square inch?” + +“I know that,” said I. “Go on.” + +“I know that too,” he remarked. “Only this shows you how useless +knowledge is unless you apply it. You see, over our Cavorite this +ceased to be the case, the air there ceased to exert any pressure, and +the air round it and not over the Cavorite was exerting a pressure of +fourteen pounds and a half to the square inch upon this suddenly +weightless air. Ah! you begin to see! The air all about the Cavorite +crushed in upon the air above it with irresistible force. The air above +the Cavorite was forced upward violently, the air that rushed in to +replace it immediately lost weight, ceased to exert any pressure, +followed suit, blew the ceiling through and the roof off.... + +“You perceive,” he said, “it formed a sort of atmospheric fountain, a +kind of chimney in the atmosphere. And if the Cavorite itself hadn’t +been loose and so got sucked up the chimney, does it occur to you what +would have happened?” + +I thought. “I suppose,” I said, “the air would be rushing up and up +over that infernal piece of stuff now.” + +“Precisely,” he said. “A huge fountain—” + +“Spouting into space! Good heavens! Why, it would have squirted all the +atmosphere of the earth away! It would have robbed the world of air! It +would have been the death of all mankind! That little lump of stuff!” + +“Not exactly into space,” said Cavor, “but as bad—practically. It would +have whipped the air off the world as one peels a banana, and flung it +thousands of miles. It would have dropped back again, of course—but on +an asphyxiated world! From our point of view very little better than if +it never came back!” + +I stared. As yet I was too amazed to realise how all my expectations +had been upset. “What do you mean to do now?” I asked. + +“In the first place if I may borrow a garden trowel I will remove some +of this earth with which I am encased, and then if I may avail myself +of your domestic conveniences I will have a bath. This done, we will +converse more at leisure. It will be wise, I think”—he laid a muddy +hand on my arm—“if nothing were said of this affair beyond ourselves. I +know I have caused great damage—probably even dwelling-houses may be +ruined here and there upon the country-side. But on the other hand, I +cannot possibly pay for the damage I have done, and if the real cause +of this is published, it will lead only to heartburning and the +obstruction of my work. One cannot foresee _everything_, you know, and +I cannot consent for one moment to add the burthen of practical +considerations to my theorising. Later on, when you have come in with +your practical mind, and Cavorite is floated—floated _is_ the word, +isn’t it?—and it has realised all you anticipate for it, we may set +matters right with these persons. But not now—not now. If no other +explanation is offered, people, in the present unsatisfactory state of +meteorological science, will ascribe all this to a cyclone; there might +be a public subscription, and as my house has collapsed and been burnt, +I should in that case receive a considerable share in the compensation, +which would be extremely helpful to the prosecution of our researches. +But if it is known that _I_ caused this, there will be no public +subscription, and everybody will be put out. Practically I should never +get a chance of working in peace again. My three assistants may or may +not have perished. That is a detail. If they have, it is no great loss; +they were more zealous than able, and this premature event must be +largely due to their joint neglect of the furnace. If they have not +perished, I doubt if they have the intelligence to explain the affair. +They will accept the cyclone story. And if during the temporary +unfitness of my house for occupation, I may lodge in one of the +untenanted rooms of this bungalow of yours—” + +He paused and regarded me. + +A man of such possibilities, I reflected, is no ordinary guest to +entertain. + +“Perhaps,” said I, rising to my feet, “we had better begin by looking +for a trowel,” and I led the way to the scattered vestiges of the +greenhouse. + +And while he was having his bath I considered the entire question +alone. It was clear there were drawbacks to Mr. Cavor’s society I had +not foreseen. The absentmindedness that had just escaped depopulating +the terrestrial globe, might at any moment result in some other grave +inconvenience. On the other hand I was young, my affairs were in a +mess, and I was in just the mood for reckless adventure—with a chance +of something good at the end of it. I had quite settled in my mind that +I was to have half at least in that aspect of the affair. Fortunately I +held my bungalow, as I have already explained, on a three-year +agreement, without being responsible for repairs; and my furniture, +such as there was of it, had been hastily purchased, was unpaid for, +insured, and altogether devoid of associations. In the end I decided to +keep on with him, and see the business through. + +Certainly the aspect of things had changed very greatly. I no longer +doubted at all the enormous possibilities of the substance, but I began +to have doubts about the gun-carriage and the patent boots. We set to +work at once to reconstruct his laboratory and proceed with our +experiments. Cavor talked more on my level than he had ever done +before, when it came to the question of how we should make the stuff +next. + +“Of course we must make it again,” he said, with a sort of glee I had +not expected in him, “of course we must make it again. We have caught a +Tartar, perhaps, but we have left the theoretical behind us for good +and all. If we can possibly avoid wrecking this little planet of ours, +we will. But—there _must_ be risks! There must be. In experimental work +there always are. And here, as a practical man, _you_ must come in. For +my own part it seems to me we might make it edgeways, perhaps, and very +thin. Yet I don’t know. I have a certain dim perception of another +method. I can hardly explain it yet. But curiously enough it came into +my mind, while I was rolling over and over in the mud before the wind, +and very doubtful how the whole adventure was to end, as being +absolutely the thing I ought to have done.” + +Even with my aid we found some little difficulty, and meanwhile we kept +at work restoring the laboratory. There was plenty to do before it +became absolutely necessary to decide upon the precise form and method +of our second attempt. Our only hitch was the strike of the three +labourers, who objected to my activity as a foreman. But that matter we +compromised after two days’ delay. + + + + +III. +The Building of the sphere + + +I remember the occasion very distinctly when Cavor told me of his idea +of the sphere. He had had intimations of it before, but at the time it +seemed to come to him in a rush. We were returning to the bungalow for +tea, and on the way he fell humming. Suddenly he shouted, “That’s it! +That finishes it! A sort of roller blind!” + +“Finishes what?” I asked. + +“Space—anywhere! The moon.” + +“What do you mean?” + +“Mean? Why—it must be a sphere! That’s what I mean!” + +I saw I was out of it, and for a time I let him talk in his own +fashion. I hadn’t the ghost of an idea then of his drift. But after he +had taken tea he made it clear to me. + +“It’s like this,” he said. “Last time I ran this stuff that cuts things +off from gravitation into a flat tank with an overlap that held it +down. And directly it had cooled and the manufacture was completed all +that uproar happened, nothing above it weighed anything, the air went +squirting up, the house squirted up, and if the stuff itself hadn’t +squirted up too, I don’t know what would have happened! But suppose the +substance is loose, and quite free to go up?” + +“It will go up at once!” + +“Exactly. With no more disturbance than firing a big gun.” + +“But what good will that do?” + +“I’m going up with it!” + +I put down my teacup and stared at him. + +“Imagine a sphere,” he explained, “large enough to hold two people and +their luggage. It will be made of steel lined with thick glass; it will +contain a proper store of solidified air, concentrated food, water +distilling apparatus, and so forth. And enamelled, as it were, on the +outer steel—” + +“Cavorite?” + +“Yes.” + +“But how will you get inside?” + +“There was a similar problem about a dumpling.” + +“Yes, I know. But how?” + +“That’s perfectly easy. An air-tight manhole is all that is needed. +That, of course, will have to be a little complicated; there will have +to be a valve, so that things may be thrown out, if necessary, without +much loss of air.” + +“Like Jules Verne’s thing in _A Trip to the Moon_.” + +But Cavor was not a reader of fiction. + +“I begin to see,” I said slowly. “And you could get in and screw +yourself up while the Cavorite was warm, and as soon as it cooled it +would become impervious to gravitation, and off you would fly—” + +“At a tangent.” + +“You would go off in a straight line—” I stopped abruptly. “What is to +prevent the thing travelling in a straight line into space for ever?” I +asked. “You’re not safe to get anywhere, and if you do—how will you get +back?” + +“I’ve just thought of that,” said Cavor. “That’s what I meant when I +said the thing is finished. The inner glass sphere can be air-tight, +and, except for the manhole, continuous, and the steel sphere can be +made in sections, each section capable of rolling up after the fashion +of a roller blind. These can easily be worked by springs, and released +and checked by electricity conveyed by platinum wires fused through the +glass. All that is merely a question of detail. So you see, that except +for the thickness of the blind rollers, the Cavorite exterior of the +sphere will consist of windows or blinds, whichever you like to call +them. Well, when all these windows or blinds are shut, no light, no +heat, no gravitation, no radiant energy of any sort will get at the +inside of the sphere, it will fly on through space in a straight line, +as you say. But open a window, imagine one of the windows open. Then at +once any heavy body that chances to be in that direction will attract +us—” + +I sat taking it in. + +“You see?” he said. + +“Oh, I _see_.” + +“Practically we shall be able to tack about in space just as we wish. +Get attracted by this and that.” + +“Oh, yes. _That’s_ clear enough. Only—” + +“Well?” + +“I don’t quite see what we shall do it for! It’s really only jumping +off the world and back again.” + +“Surely! For example, one might go to the moon.” + +“And when one got there? What would you find?” + +“We should see—Oh! consider the new knowledge.” + +“Is there air there?” + +“There may be.” + +“It’s a fine idea,” I said, “but it strikes me as a large order all the +same. The moon! I’d much rather try some smaller things first.” + +“They’re out of the question, because of the air difficulty.” + +“Why not apply that idea of spring blinds—Cavorite blinds in strong +steel cases—to lifting weights?” + +“It wouldn’t work,” he insisted. “After all, to go into outer space is +not so much worse, if at all, than a polar expedition. Men go on polar +expeditions.” + +“Not business men. And besides, they get paid for polar expeditions. +And if anything goes wrong there are relief parties. But this—it’s just +firing ourselves off the world for nothing.” + +“Call it prospecting.” + +“You’ll have to call it that.... One might make a book of it perhaps,” +I said. + +“I have no doubt there will be minerals,” said Cavor. + +“For example?” + +“Oh! sulphur, ores, gold perhaps, possibly new elements.” + +“Cost of carriage,” I said. “You know you’re _not_ a practical man. The +moon’s a quarter of a million miles away.” + +“It seems to me it wouldn’t cost much to cart any weight anywhere if +you packed it in a Cavorite case.” + +I had not thought of that. “Delivered free on head of purchaser, eh?” + +“It isn’t as though we were confined to the moon.” + +“You mean?” + +“There’s Mars—clear atmosphere, novel surroundings, exhilarating sense +of lightness. It might be pleasant to go there.” + +“Is there air on Mars?” + +“Oh, yes!” + +“Seems as though you might run it as a sanatorium. By the way, how far +is Mars?” + +“Two hundred million miles at present,” said Cavor airily; “and you go +close by the sun.” + +My imagination was picking itself up again. “After all,” I said, +“there’s something in these things. There’s travel—” + +An extraordinary possibility came rushing into my mind. Suddenly I saw, +as in a vision, the whole solar system threaded with Cavorite liners +and spheres _de luxe_. “Rights of pre-emption,” came floating into my +head—planetary rights of pre-emption. I recalled the old Spanish +monopoly in American gold. It wasn’t as though it was just this planet +or that—it was all of them. I stared at Cavor’s rubicund face, and +suddenly my imagination was leaping and dancing. I stood up, I walked +up and down; my tongue was unloosened. + +“I’m beginning to take it in,” I said; “I’m beginning to take it in.” +The transition from doubt to enthusiasm seemed to take scarcely any +time at all. “But this is tremendous!” I cried. “This is Imperial! I +haven’t been dreaming of this sort of thing.” + +Once the chill of my opposition was removed, his own pent-up excitement +had play. He too got up and paced. He too gesticulated and shouted. We +behaved like men inspired. We _were_ men inspired. + +“We’ll settle all that!” he said in answer to some incidental +difficulty that had pulled me up. “We’ll soon settle that! We’ll start +the drawings for mouldings this very night.” + +“We’ll start them now,” I responded, and we hurried off to the +laboratory to begin upon this work forthwith. + +I was like a child in Wonderland all that night. The dawn found us both +still at work—we kept our electric light going heedless of the day. I +remember now exactly how these drawings looked. I shaded and tinted +while Cavor drew—smudged and haste-marked they were in every line, but +wonderfully correct. We got out the orders for the steel blinds and +frames we needed from that night’s work, and the glass sphere was +designed within a week. We gave up our afternoon conversations and our +old routine altogether. We worked, and we slept and ate when we could +work no longer for hunger and fatigue. Our enthusiasm infected even our +three men, though they had no idea what the sphere was for. Through +those days the man Gibbs gave up walking, and went everywhere, even +across the room, at a sort of fussy run. + +And it grew—the sphere. December passed, January—I spent a day with a +broom sweeping a path through the snow from bungalow to +laboratory—February, March. By the end of March the completion was in +sight. In January had come a team of horses, a huge packing-case; we +had our thick glass sphere now ready, and in position under the crane +we had rigged to sling it into the steel shell. All the bars and blinds +of the steel shell—it was not really a spherical shell, but polyhedral, +with a roller blind to each facet—had arrived by February, and the +lower half was bolted together. The Cavorite was half made by March, +the metallic paste had gone through two of the stages in its +manufacture, and we had plastered quite half of it on to the steel bars +and blinds. It was astonishing how closely we kept to the lines of +Cavor’s first inspiration in working out the scheme. When the bolting +together of the sphere was finished, he proposed to remove the rough +roof of the temporary laboratory in which the work was done, and build +a furnace about it. So the last stage of Cavorite making, in which the +paste is heated to a dull red glow in a stream of helium, would be +accomplished when it was already on the sphere. + +And then we had to discuss and decide what provisions we were to +take—compressed foods, concentrated essences, steel cylinders +containing reserve oxygen, an arrangement for removing carbonic acid +and waste from the air and restoring oxygen by means of sodium +peroxide, water condensers, and so forth. I remember the little heap +they made in the corner—tins, and rolls, and boxes—convincingly +matter-of-fact. + +It was a strenuous time, with little chance of thinking. But one day, +when we were drawing near the end, an odd mood came over me. I had been +bricking up the furnace all the morning, and I sat down by these +possessions dead beat. Everything seemed dull and incredible. + +“But look here, Cavor,” I said. “After all! What’s it all for?” + +He smiled. “The thing now is to go.” + +“The moon,” I reflected. “But what do you expect? I thought the moon +was a dead world.” + +He shrugged his shoulders. + +“We’re going to see.” + +“_Are_ we?” I said, and stared before me. + +“You are tired,” he remarked. “You’d better take a walk this +afternoon.” + +“No,” I said obstinately; “I’m going to finish this brickwork.” + +And I did, and insured myself a night of insomnia. I don’t think I have +ever had such a night. I had some bad times before my business +collapse, but the very worst of those was sweet slumber compared to +this infinity of aching wakefulness. I was suddenly in the most +enormous funk at the thing we were going to do. + +I do not remember before that night thinking at all of the risks we +were running. Now they came like that array of spectres that once +beleaguered Prague, and camped around me. The strangeness of what we +were about to do, the unearthliness of it, overwhelmed me. I was like a +man awakened out of pleasant dreams to the most horrible surroundings. +I lay, eyes wide open, and the sphere seemed to get more flimsy and +feeble, and Cavor more unreal and fantastic, and the whole enterprise +madder and madder every moment. + +I got out of bed and wandered about. I sat at the window and stared at +the immensity of space. Between the stars was the void, the +unfathomable darkness! I tried to recall the fragmentary knowledge of +astronomy I had gained in my irregular reading, but it was all too +vague to furnish any idea of the things we might expect. At last I got +back to bed and snatched some moments of sleep—moments of nightmare +rather—in which I fell and fell and fell for evermore into the abyss of +the sky. + +I astonished Cavor at breakfast. I told him shortly, “I’m not coming +with you in the sphere.” + +I met all his protests with a sullen persistence. “The thing’s too +mad,” I said, “and I won’t come. The thing’s too mad.” + +I would not go with him to the laboratory. I fretted about my bungalow +for a time, and then took hat and stick and set out alone, I knew not +whither. It chanced to be a glorious morning: a warm wind and deep blue +sky, the first green of spring abroad, and multitudes of birds singing. +I lunched on beef and beer in a little public-house near Elham, and +startled the landlord by remarking _apropos_ of the weather, “A man who +leaves the world when days of this sort are about is a fool!” + +“That’s what I says when I heerd on it!” said the landlord, and I found +that for one poor soul at least this world had proved excessive, and +there had been a throat-cutting. I went on with a new twist to my +thoughts. + +In the afternoon I had a pleasant sleep in a sunny place, and went on +my way refreshed. + +I came to a comfortable-looking inn near Canterbury. It was bright with +creepers, and the landlady was a clean old woman and took my eye. I +found I had just enough money to pay for my lodging with her. I decided +to stop the night there. She was a talkative body, and among many other +particulars I learnt she had never been to London. “Canterbury’s as far +as ever I been,” she said. “I’m not one of your gad-about sort.” + +“How would you like a trip to the moon?” I cried. + +“I never did hold with them ballooneys,” she said evidently under the +impression that this was a common excursion enough. “I wouldn’t go up +in one—not for ever so.” + +This struck me as being funny. After I had supped I sat on a bench by +the door of the inn and gossiped with two labourers about brickmaking, +and motor cars, and the cricket of last year. And in the sky a faint +new crescent, blue and vague as a distant Alp, sank westward over the +sun. + +The next day I returned to Cavor. “I am coming,” I said. “I’ve been a +little out of order, that’s all.” + +That was the only time I felt any serious doubt our enterprise. Nerves +purely! After that I worked a little more carefully, and took a trudge +for an hour every day. And at last, save for the heating in the +furnace, our labours were at an end. + + + + +IV. +Inside the Sphere + + +“Go on,” said Cavor, as I sat across the edge of the manhole, and +looked down into the black interior of the sphere. We two were alone. +It was evening, the sun had set, and the stillness of the twilight was +upon everything. + +I drew my other leg inside and slid down the smooth glass to the bottom +of the sphere, then turned to take the cans of food and other +impedimenta from Cavor. The interior was warm, the thermometer stood at +eighty, and as we should lose little or none of this by radiation, we +were dressed in shoes and thin flannels. We had, however, a bundle of +thick woollen clothing and several thick blankets to guard against +mischance. + +By Cavor’s direction I placed the packages, the cylinders of oxygen, +and so forth, loosely about my feet, and soon we had everything in. He +walked about the roofless shed for a time seeking anything we had +overlooked, and then crawled in after me. I noted something in his +hand. + +“What have you got there?” I asked. + +“Haven’t you brought anything to read?” + +“Good Lord! No.” + +“I forgot to tell you. There are uncertainties— The voyage may last— We +may be weeks!” + +“But—” + +“We shall be floating in this sphere with absolutely no occupation.” + +“I wish I’d known—” + +He peered out of the manhole. “Look!” he said. “There’s something +there!” + +“Is there time?” + +“We shall be an hour.” + +I looked out. It was an old number of _Tit-Bits_ that one of the men +must have brought. Farther away in the corner I saw a torn _Lloyd’s +News_. I scrambled back into the sphere with these things. “What have +you got?” I said. + +I took the book from his hand and read, “The Works of William +Shakespeare”. + +He coloured slightly. “My education has been so purely scientific—” he +said apologetically. + +“Never read him?” + +“Never.” + +“He knew a little, you know—in an irregular sort of way.” + +“Precisely what I am told,” said Cavor. + +I assisted him to screw in the glass cover of the manhole, and then he +pressed a stud to close the corresponding blind in the outer case. The +little oblong of twilight vanished. We were in darkness. For a time +neither of us spoke. Although our case would not be impervious to +sound, everything was very still. I perceived there was nothing to grip +when the shock of our start should come, and I realised that I should +be uncomfortable for want of a chair. + +“Why have we no chairs?” I asked. + +“I’ve settled all that,” said Cavor. “We won’t need them.” + +“Why not?” + +“You will see,” he said, in the tone of a man who refuses to talk. + +I became silent. Suddenly it had come to me clear and vivid that I was +a fool to be inside that sphere. Even now, I asked myself, is to too +late to withdraw? The world outside the sphere, I knew, would be cold +and inhospitable enough for me—for weeks I had been living on subsidies +from Cavor—but after all, would it be as cold as the infinite zero, as +inhospitable as empty space? If it had not been for the appearance of +cowardice, I believe that even then I should have made him let me out. +But I hesitated on that score, and hesitated, and grew fretful and +angry, and the time passed. + +There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in +another room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant I had a +sense of enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet were +pressing downward with a force of countless tons. It lasted for an +infinitesimal time. + +But it stirred me to action. “Cavor!” I said into the darkness, “my +nerve’s in rags. I don’t think—” + +I stopped. He made no answer. + +“Confound it!” I cried; “I’m a fool! What business have I here? I’m not +coming, Cavor. The thing’s too risky. I’m getting out.” + +“You can’t,” he said. + +“Can’t! We’ll soon see about that!” + +He made no answer for ten seconds. “It’s too late for us to quarrel +now, Bedford,” he said. “That little jerk was the start. Already we are +flying as swiftly as a bullet up into the gulf of space.” + +“I—” I said, and then it didn’t seem to matter what happened. For a +time I was, as it were, stunned; I had nothing to say. It was just as +if I had never heard of this idea of leaving the world before. Then I +perceived an unaccountable change in my bodily sensations. It was a +feeling of lightness, of unreality. Coupled with that was a queer +sensation in the head, an apoplectic effect almost, and a thumping of +blood vessels at the ears. Neither of these feelings diminished as time +went on, but at last I got so used to them that I experienced no +inconvenience. + +I heard a click, and a little glow lamp came into being. + +I saw Cavor’s face, as white as I felt my own to be. We regarded one +another in silence. The transparent blackness of the glass behind him +made him seem as though he floated in a void. + +“Well, we’re committed,” I said at last. + +“Yes,” he said, “we’re committed.” + +“Don’t move,” he exclaimed, at some suggestion of a gesture. “Let your +muscles keep quite lax—as if you were in bed. We are in a little +universe of our own. Look at those things!” + +He pointed to the loose cases and bundles that had been lying on the +blankets in the bottom of the sphere. I was astonished to see that they +were floating now nearly a foot from the spherical wall. Then I saw +from his shadow that Cavor was no longer leaning against the glass. I +thrust out my hand behind me, and found that I too was suspended in +space, clear of the glass. + +I did not cry out nor gesticulate, but fear came upon me. It was like +being held and lifted by something—you know not what. The mere touch of +my hand against the glass moved me rapidly. I understood what had +happened, but that did not prevent my being afraid. We were cut off +from all exterior gravitation, only the attraction of objects within +our sphere had effect. Consequently everything that was not fixed to +the glass was falling—slowly because of the slightness of our +masses—towards the centre of gravity of our little world, which seemed +to be somewhere about the middle of the sphere, but rather nearer to +myself than Cavor, on account of my greater weight. + +“We must turn round,” said Cavor, “and float back to back, with the +things between us.” + +It was the strangest sensation conceivable, floating thus loosely in +space, at first indeed horribly strange, and when the horror passed, +not disagreeable at all, exceeding restful; indeed, the nearest thing +in earthly experience to it that I know is lying on a very thick, soft +feather bed. But the quality of utter detachment and independence! I +had not reckoned on things like this. I had expected a violent jerk at +starting, a giddy sense of speed. Instead I felt—as if I were +disembodied. It was not like the beginning of a journey; it was like +the beginning of a dream. + + + + +V. +The Journey to the Moon + + +Presently Cavor extinguished the light. He said we had not overmuch +energy stored, and that what we had we must economise for reading. For +a time, whether it was long or short I do not know, there was nothing +but blank darkness. + +A question floated up out of the void. “How are we pointing?” I said. +“What is our direction?” + +“We are flying away from the earth at a tangent, and as the moon is +near her third quarter we are going somewhere towards her. I will open +a blind—” + +Came a click, and then a window in the outer case yawned open. The sky +outside was as black as the darkness within the sphere, but the shape +of the open window was marked by an infinite number of stars. + +Those who have only seen the starry sky from the earth cannot imagine +its appearance when the vague, half luminous veil of our air has been +withdrawn. The stars we see on earth are the mere scattered survivors +that penetrate our misty atmosphere. But now at last I could realise +the meaning of the hosts of heaven! + +Stranger things we were presently to see, but that airless, star-dusted +sky! Of all things, I think that will be one of the last I shall +forget. + +The little window vanished with a click, another beside it snapped open +and instantly closed, and then a third, and for a moment I had to close +my eyes because of the blinding splendour of the waning moon. + +For a space I had to stare at Cavor and the white-lit things about me +to season my eyes to light again, before I could turn them towards that +pallid glare. + +Four windows were open in order that the gravitation of the moon might +act upon all the substances in our sphere. I found I was no longer +floating freely in space, but that my feet were resting on the glass in +the direction of the moon. The blankets and cases of provisions were +also creeping slowly down the glass, and presently came to rest so as +to block out a portion of the view. It seemed to me, of course, that I +looked “down” when I looked at the moon. On earth “down” means +earthward, the way things fall, and “up” the reverse direction. Now the +pull of gravitation was towards the moon, and for all I knew to the +contrary our earth was overhead. And, of course, when all the Cavorite +blinds were closed, “down” was towards the centre of our sphere, and +“up” towards its outer wall. + +It was curiously unlike earthly experience, too, to have the light +coming _up_ to one. On earth light falls from above, or comes slanting +down sideways, but here it came from beneath our feet, and to see our +shadows we had to look up. + +At first it gave me a sort of vertigo to stand only on thick glass and +look down upon the moon through hundreds of thousands of miles of +vacant space; but this sickness passed very speedily. And then—the +splendour of the sight! + +The reader may imagine it best if he will lie on the ground some warm +summer’s night and look between his upraised feet at the moon, but for +some reason, probably because the absence of air made it so much more +luminous, the moon seemed already considerably larger than it does from +earth. The minutest details of its surface were acutely clear. And +since we did not see it through air, its outline was bright and sharp, +there was no glow or halo about it, and the star-dust that covered the +sky came right to its very margin, and marked the outline of its +unilluminated part. And as I stood and stared at the moon between my +feet, that perception of the impossible that had been with me off and +on ever since our start, returned again with tenfold conviction. + +“Cavor,” I said, “this takes me queerly. Those companies we were going +to run, and all that about minerals?” + +“Well?” + +“I don’t see ‘em here.” + +“No,” said Cavor; “but you’ll get over all that.” + +“I suppose I’m made to turn right side up again. Still, _this_— For a +moment I could half believe there never was a world.” + +“That copy of _Lloyd’s News_ might help you.” + +I stared at the paper for a moment, then held it above the level of my +face, and found I could read it quite easily. I struck a column of mean +little advertisements. “A gentleman of private means is willing to lend +money,” I read. I knew that gentleman. Then somebody eccentric wanted +to sell a Cutaway bicycle, “quite new and cost £15,” for five pounds; +and a lady in distress wished to dispose of some fish knives and forks, +“a wedding present,” at a great sacrifice. No doubt some simple soul +was sagely examining these knives and forks, and another triumphantly +riding off on that bicycle, and a third trustfully consulting that +benevolent gentleman of means even as I read. I laughed, and let the +paper drift from my hand. + +“Are we visible from the earth?” I asked. + +“Why?” + +“I knew some one who was rather interested in astronomy. It occurred to +me that it would be rather odd if—my friend—chanced to be looking +through some telescope.” + +“It would need the most powerful telescope on earth even now to see us +as the minutest speck.” + +For a time I stared in silence at the moon. + +“It’s a world,” I said; “one feels that infinitely more than one ever +did on earth. People perhaps—” + +“People!” he exclaimed. “_No!_ Banish all that! Think yourself a sort +of ultra-arctic voyager exploring the desolate places of space. Look at +it!” + +He waved his hand at the shining whiteness below. “It’s dead—dead! Vast +extinct volcanoes, lava wildernesses, tumbled wastes of snow, or frozen +carbonic acid, or frozen air, and everywhere landslip seams and cracks +and gulfs. Nothing happens. Men have watched this planet systematically +with telescopes for over two hundred years. How much change do you +think they have seen?” + +“None.” + +“They have traced two indisputable landslips, a doubtful crack, and one +slight periodic change of colour, and that’s all.” + +“I didn’t know they’d traced even that.” + +“Oh, yes. But as for people—!” + +“By the way,” I asked, “how small a thing will the biggest telescopes +show upon the moon?” + +“One could see a fair-sized church. One could certainly see any towns +or buildings, or anything like the handiwork of men. There might +perhaps be insects, something in the way of ants, for example, so that +they could hide in deep burrows from the lunar light, or some new sort +of creatures having no earthly parallel. That is the most probable +thing, if we are to find life there at all. Think of the difference in +conditions! Life must fit itself to a day as long as fourteen earthly +days, a cloudless sun-blaze of fourteen days, and then a night of equal +length, growing ever colder and colder under these cold, sharp stars. +In that night there must be cold, the ultimate cold, absolute zero, +273° C. below the earthly freezing point. Whatever life there is must +hibernate through _that_, and rise again each day.” + +He mused. “One can imagine something worm-like,” he said, “taking its +air solid as an earth-worm swallows earth, or thick-skinned monsters—” + +“By the bye,” I said, “why didn’t we bring a gun?” + +He did not answer that question. “No,” he concluded, “we just have to +go. We shall see when we get there.” + +I remembered something. “Of course, there’s my minerals, anyhow,” I +said; “whatever the conditions may be.” + +Presently he told me he wished to alter our course a little by letting +the earth tug at us for a moment. He was going to open one earthward +blind for thirty seconds. He warned me that it would make my head swim, +and advised me to extend my hands against the glass to break my fall. I +did as he directed, and thrust my feet against the bales of food cases +and air cylinders to prevent their falling upon me. Then with a click +the window flew open. I fell clumsily upon hands and face, and saw for +a moment between my black extended fingers our mother earth—a planet in +a downward sky. + +We were still very near—Cavor told me the distance was perhaps eight +hundred miles and the huge terrestrial disc filled all heaven. But +already it was plain to see that the world was a globe. The land below +us was in twilight and vague, but westward the vast grey stretches of +the Atlantic shone like molten silver under the receding day. I think I +recognised the cloud-dimmed coast-lines of France and Spain and the +south of England, and then, with a click, the shutter closed again, and +I found myself in a state of extraordinary confusion sliding slowly +over the smooth glass. + +When at last things settled themselves in my mind again, it seemed +quite beyond question that the moon was “down” and under my feet, and +that the earth was somewhere away on the level of the horizon—the earth +that had been “down” to me and my kindred since the beginning of +things. + +So slight were the exertions required of us, so easy did the practical +annihilation of our weight make all we had to do, that the necessity +for taking refreshment did not occur to us for nearly six hours (by +Cavor’s chronometer) after our start. I was amazed at that lapse of +time. Even then I was satisfied with very little. Cavor examined the +apparatus for absorbing carbonic acid and water, and pronounced it to +be in satisfactory order, our consumption of oxygen having been +extraordinarily slight. And our talk being exhausted for the time, and +there being nothing further for us to do, we gave way to a curious +drowsiness that had come upon us, and spreading our blankets on the +bottom of the sphere in such a manner as to shut out most of the +moonlight, wished each other good-night, and almost immediately fell +asleep. + +And so, sleeping, and sometimes talking and reading a little, and at +times eating, although without any keenness of appetite,[1] but for the +most part in a sort of quiescence that was neither waking nor slumber, +we fell through a space of time that had neither night nor day in it, +silently, softly, and swiftly down towards the moon. + + [1] It is a curious thing, that while we were in the sphere we felt + not the slightest desire for food, nor did we feel the want of it when + we abstained. At first we forced our appetites, but afterwards we + fasted completely. Altogether we did not consume one-hundredth part of + the compressed provisions we had brought with us. The amount of + carbonic acid we breathed was also unnaturally low, but why this was, + I am quite unable to explain. + + + + +VI. +The Landing on the Moon + + +I remember how one day Cavor suddenly opened six of our shutters and +blinded me so that I cried aloud at him. The whole area was moon, a +stupendous scimitar of white dawn with its edge hacked out by notches +of darkness, the crescent shore of an ebbing tide of darkness, out of +which peaks and pinnacles came glittering into the blaze of the sun. I +take it the reader has seen pictures or photographs of the moon and +that I need not describe the broader features of that landscape, those +spacious ring-like ranges vaster than any terrestrial mountains, their +summits shining in the day, their shadows harsh and deep, the grey +disordered plains, the ridges, hills, and craterlets, all passing at +last from a blazing illumination into a common mystery of black. +Athwart this world we were flying scarcely a hundred miles above its +crests and pinnacles. And now we could see, what no eye on earth will +ever see, that under the blaze of the day the harsh outlines of the +rocks and ravines of the plains and crater floor grew grey and +indistinct under a thickening haze, that the white of their lit +surfaces broke into lumps and patches, and broke again and shrank and +vanished, and that here and there strange tints of brown and olive grew +and spread. + +But little time we had for watching then. For now we had come to the +real danger of our journey. We had to drop ever closer to the moon as +we spun about it, to slacken our pace and watch our chance, until at +last we could dare to drop upon its surface. + +For Cavor that was a time of intense exertion; for me it was an anxious +inactivity. I seemed perpetually to be getting out of his way. He leapt +about the sphere from point to point with an agility that would have +been impossible on earth. He was perpetually opening and closing the +Cavorite windows, making calculations, consulting his chronometer by +means of the glow lamp during those last eventful hours. For a long +time we had all our windows closed and hung silently in darkness +hurling through space. + +Then he was feeling for the shutter studs, and suddenly four windows +were open. I staggered and covered my eyes, drenched and scorched and +blinded by the unaccustomed splendour of the sun beneath my feet. Then +again the shutters snapped, leaving my brain spinning in a darkness +that pressed against the eyes. And after that I floated in another +vast, black silence. + +Then Cavor switched on the electric light, and told me he proposed to +bind all our luggage together with the blankets about it, against the +concussion of our descent. We did this with our windows closed, because +in that way our goods arranged themselves naturally at the centre of +the sphere. That too was a strange business; we two men floating loose +in that spherical space, and packing and pulling ropes. Imagine it if +you can! No up nor down, and every effort resulting in unexpected +movements. Now I would be pressed against the glass with the full force +of Cavor’s thrust, now I would be kicking helplessly in a void. Now the +star of the electric light would be overhead, now under foot. Now +Cavor’s feet would float up before my eyes, and now we would be +crossways to each other. But at last our goods were safely bound +together in a big soft bale, all except two blankets with head holes +that we were to wrap about ourselves. + +Then for a flash Cavor opened a window moonward, and we saw that we +were dropping towards a huge central crater with a number of minor +craters grouped in a sort of cross about it. And then again Cavor flung +our little sphere open to the scorching, blinding sun. I think he was +using the sun’s attraction as a brake. “Cover yourself with a blanket,” +he cried, thrusting himself from me, and for a moment I did not +understand. + +Then I hauled the blanket from beneath my feet and got it about me and +over my head and eyes. Abruptly he closed the shutters again, snapped +one open again and closed it, then suddenly began snapping them all +open, each safely into its steel roller. There came a jar, and then we +were rolling over and over, bumping against the glass and against the +big bale of our luggage, and clutching at each other, and outside some +white substance splashed as if we were rolling down a slope of snow.... + +Over, clutch, bump, clutch, bump, over.... + +Came a thud, and I was half buried under the bale of our possessions, +and for a space everything was still. Then I could hear Cavor puffing +and grunting, and the snapping of a shutter in its sash. I made an +effort, thrust back our blanket-wrapped luggage, and emerged from +beneath it. Our open windows were just visible as a deeper black set +with stars. + +We were still alive, and we were lying in the darkness of the shadow of +the wall of the great crater into which we had fallen. + +We sat getting our breath again, and feeling the bruises on our limbs. +I don’t think either of us had had a very clear expectation of such +rough handling as we had received. I struggled painfully to my feet. +“And now,” said I, “to look at the landscape of the moon! But—! It’s +tremendously dark, Cavor!” + +The glass was dewy, and as I spoke I wiped at it with my blanket. +“We’re half an hour or so beyond the day,” he said. “We must wait.” + +It was impossible to distinguish anything. We might have been in a +sphere of steel for all that we could see. My rubbing with the blanket +simply smeared the glass, and as fast as I wiped it, it became opaque +again with freshly condensed moisture mixed with an increasing quantity +of blanket hairs. Of course I ought not to have used the blanket. In my +efforts to clear the glass I slipped upon the damp surface, and hurt my +shin against one of the oxygen cylinders that protruded from our bale. + +The thing was exasperating—it was absurd. Here we were just arrived +upon the moon, amidst we knew not what wonders, and all we could see +was the grey and streaming wall of the bubble in which we had come. + +“Confound it!” I said, “but at this rate we might have stopped at +home;” and I squatted on the bale and shivered, and drew my blanket +closer about me. + +Abruptly the moisture turned to spangles and fronds of frost. “Can you +reach the electric heater,” said Cavor. “Yes—that black knob. Or we +shall freeze.” + +I did not wait to be told twice. “And now,” said I, “what are we to +do?” + +“Wait,” he said. + +“Wait?” + +“Of course. We shall have to wait until our air gets warm again, and +then this glass will clear. We can’t do anything till then. It’s night +here yet; we must wait for the day to overtake us. Meanwhile, don’t you +feel hungry?” + +For a space I did not answer him, but sat fretting. I turned +reluctantly from the smeared puzzle of the glass and stared at his +face. “Yes,” I said, “I am hungry. I feel somehow enormously +disappointed. I had expected—I don’t know what I had expected, but not +this.” + +I summoned my philosophy, and rearranging my blanket about me sat down +on the bale again and began my first meal on the moon. I don’t think I +finished it—I forget. Presently, first in patches, then running rapidly +together into wider spaces, came the clearing of the glass, came the +drawing of the misty veil that hid the moon world from our eyes. + +We peered out upon the landscape of the moon. + + + + +VII. +Sunrise on the Moon + + +As we saw it first it was the wildest and most desolate of scenes. We +were in an enormous amphitheatre, a vast circular plain, the floor of +the giant crater. Its cliff-like walls closed us in on every side. From +the westward the light of the unseen sun fell upon them, reaching to +the very foot of the cliff, and showed a disordered escarpment of drab +and greyish rock, lined here and there with banks and crevices of snow. +This was perhaps a dozen miles away, but at first no intervening +atmosphere diminished in the slightest the minutely detailed brilliancy +with which these things glared at us. They stood out clear and dazzling +against a background of starry blackness that seemed to our earthly +eyes rather a gloriously spangled velvet curtain than the spaciousness +of the sky. + +The eastward cliff was at first merely a starless selvedge to the +starry dome. No rosy flush, no creeping pallor, announced the +commencing day. Only the Corona, the Zodiacal light, a huge +cone-shaped, luminous haze, pointing up towards the splendour of the +morning star, warned us of the imminent nearness of the sun. + +Whatever light was about us was reflected by the westward cliffs. It +showed a huge undulating plain, cold and grey, a grey that deepened +eastward into the absolute raven darkness of the cliff shadow. +Innumerable rounded grey summits, ghostly hummocks, billows of snowy +substance, stretching crest beyond crest into the remote obscurity, +gave us our first inkling of the distance of the crater wall. These +hummocks looked like snow. At the time I thought they were snow. But +they were not—they were mounds and masses of frozen air. + +So it was at first; and then, sudden, swift, and amazing, came the +lunar day. + +The sunlight had crept down the cliff, it touched the drifted masses at +its base and incontinently came striding with seven-leagued boots +towards us. The distant cliff seemed to shift and quiver, and at the +touch of the dawn a reek of grey vapour poured upward from the crater +floor, whirls and puffs and drifting wraiths of grey, thicker and +broader and denser, until at last the whole westward plain was steaming +like a wet handkerchief held before the fire, and the westward cliffs +were no more than refracted glare beyond. + +“It is air,” said Cavor. “It must be air—or it would not rise like +this—at the mere touch of a sun-beam. And at this pace....” + +He peered upwards. “Look!” he said. + +“What?” I asked. + +“In the sky. Already. On the blackness—a little touch of blue. See! The +stars seem larger. And the little ones and all those dim nebulosities +we saw in empty space—they are hidden!” + +Swiftly, steadily, the day approached us. Grey summit after grey summit +was overtaken by the blaze, and turned to a smoking white intensity. At +last there was nothing to the west of us but a bank of surging fog, the +tumultuous advance and ascent of cloudy haze. The distant cliff had +receded farther and farther, had loomed and changed through the whirl, +and foundered and vanished at last in its confusion. + +Nearer came that steaming advance, nearer and nearer, coming as fast as +the shadow of a cloud before the south-west wind. About us rose a thin +anticipatory haze. + +Cavor gripped my arm. “What?” I said. + +“Look! The sunrise! The sun!” + +He turned me about and pointed to the brow of the eastward cliff, +looming above the haze about us, scarce lighter than the darkness of +the sky. But now its line was marked by strange reddish shapes, tongues +of vermilion flame that writhed and danced. I fancied it must be +spirals of vapour that had caught the light and made this crest of +fiery tongues against the sky, but indeed it was the solar prominences +I saw, a crown of fire about the sun that is forever hidden from +earthly eyes by our atmospheric veil. + +And then—the sun! + +Steadily, inevitably came a brilliant line, came a thin edge of +intolerable effulgence that took a circular shape, became a bow, became +a blazing sceptre, and hurled a shaft of heat at us as though it was a +spear. + +It seemed verily to stab my eyes! I cried aloud and turned about +blinded, groping for my blanket beneath the bale. + +And with that incandescence came a sound, the first sound that had +reached us from without since we left the earth, a hissing and +rustling, the stormy trailing of the aerial garment of the advancing +day. And with the coming of the sound and the light the sphere lurched, +and blinded and dazzled we staggered helplessly against each other. It +lurched again, and the hissing grew louder. I had shut my eyes +perforce, I was making clumsy efforts to cover my head with my blanket, +and this second lurch sent me helplessly off my feet. I fell against +the bale, and opening my eyes had a momentary glimpse of the air just +outside our glass. It was running—it was boiling—like snow into which a +white-hot rod is thrust. What had been solid air had suddenly at the +touch of the sun become a paste, a mud, a slushy liquefaction, that +hissed and bubbled into gas. + +There came a still more violent whirl of the sphere and we had clutched +one another. In another moment we were spun about again. Round we went +and over, and then I was on all fours. The lunar dawn had hold of us. +It meant to show us little men what the moon could do with us. + +I caught a second glimpse of things without, puffs of vapour, half +liquid slush, excavated, sliding, falling, sliding. We dropped into +darkness. I went down with Cavor’s knees in my chest. Then he seemed to +fly away from me, and for a moment I lay with all the breath out of my +body staring upward. A toppling crag of the melting stuff had splashed +over us, buried us, and now it thinned and boiled off us. I saw the +bubbles dancing on the glass above. I heard Cavor exclaiming feebly. + +Then some huge landslip in the thawing air had caught us, and +spluttering expostulation, we began to roll down a slope, rolling +faster and faster, leaping crevasses and rebounding from banks, faster +and faster, westward into the white-hot boiling tumult of the lunar +day. + +Clutching at one another we spun about, pitched this way and that, our +bale of packages leaping at us, pounding at us. We collided, we +gripped, we were torn asunder—our heads met, and the whole universe +burst into fiery darts and stars! On the earth we should have smashed +one another a dozen times, but on the moon, luckily for us, our weight +was only one-sixth of what it is terrestrially, and we fell very +mercifully. I recall a sensation of utter sickness, a feeling as if my +brain were upside down within my skull, and then— + +Something was at work upon my face, some thin feelers worried my ears. +Then I discovered the brilliance of the landscape around was mitigated +by blue spectacles. Cavor bent over me, and I saw his face upside down, +his eyes also protected by tinted goggles. His breath came irregularly, +and his lip was bleeding from a bruise. “Better?” he said, wiping the +blood with the back of his hand. + +Everything seemed swaying for a space, but that was simply my +giddiness. I perceived that he had closed some of the shutters in the +outer sphere to save me—from the direct blaze of the sun. I was aware +that everything about us was very brilliant. + +“Lord!” I gasped. “But this—” + +I craned my neck to see. I perceived there was a blinding glare +outside, an utter change from the gloomy darkness of our first +impressions. “Have I been insensible long?” I asked. + +“I don’t know—the chronometer is broken. Some little time.... My dear +chap! I have been afraid...” + +I lay for a space taking this in. I saw his face still bore evidences +of emotion. For a while I said nothing. I passed an inquisitive hand +over my contusions, and surveyed his face for similar damages. The back +of my right hand had suffered most, and was skinless and raw. My +forehead was bruised and had bled. He handed me a little measure with +some of the restorative—I forget the name of it—he had brought with us. +After a time I felt a little better. I began to stretch my limbs +carefully. Soon I could talk. + +“It wouldn’t have done,” I said, as though there had been no interval. + +“No! it _wouldn’t_.” + +He thought, his hands hanging over his knees. He peered through the +glass and then stared at me. “Good Lord!” he said. “_No!_” + +“What has happened?” I asked after a pause. “Have we jumped to the +tropics?” + +“It was as I expected. This air has evaporated—if it is air. At any +rate, it has evaporated, and the surface of the moon is showing. We are +lying on a bank of earthy rock. Here and there bare soil is exposed. A +queer sort of soil!” + +It occurred to him that it was unnecessary to explain. He assisted me +into a sitting position, and I could see with my own eyes. + + + + +VIII. +A Lunar Morning + + +The harsh emphasis, the pitiless black and white of scenery had +altogether disappeared. The glare of the sun had taken upon itself a +faint tinge of amber; the shadows upon the cliff of the crater wall +were deeply purple. To the eastward a dark bank of fog still crouched +and sheltered from the sunrise, but to the westward the sky was blue +and clear. I began to realise the length of my insensibility. + +We were no longer in a void. An atmosphere had arisen about us. The +outline of things had gained in character, had grown acute and varied; +save for a shadowed space of white substance here and there, white +substance that was no longer air but snow, the arctic appearance had +gone altogether. Everywhere broad rusty brown spaces of bare and +tumbled earth spread to the blaze of the sun. Here and there at the +edge of the snowdrifts were transient little pools and eddies of water, +the only things stirring in that expanse of barrenness. The sunlight +inundated the upper two blinds of our sphere and turned our climate to +high summer, but our feet were still in shadow, and the sphere was +lying upon a drift of snow. + +And scattered here and there upon the slope, and emphasised by little +white threads of unthawed snow upon their shady sides, were shapes like +sticks, dry twisted sticks of the same rusty hue as the rock upon which +they lay. That caught one’s thoughts sharply. Sticks! On a lifeless +world? Then as my eye grew more accustomed to the texture of their +substance, I perceived that almost all this surface had a fibrous +texture, like the carpet of brown needles one finds beneath the shade +of pine trees. + +“Cavor!” I said. + +“Yes.” + +“It may be a dead world now—but once—” + +Something arrested my attention. I had discovered among these needles a +number of little round objects. And it seemed to me that one of these +had moved. “Cavor,” I whispered. + +“What?” + +But I did not answer at once. I stared incredulous. For an instant I +could not believe my eyes. I gave an inarticulate cry. I gripped his +arm. I pointed. “Look!” I cried, finding my tongue. “There! Yes! And +there!” + +His eyes followed my pointing finger. “Eh?” he said. + +How can I describe the thing I saw? It is so petty a thing to state, +and yet it seemed so wonderful, so pregnant with emotion. I have said +that amidst the stick-like litter were these rounded bodies, these +little oval bodies that might have passed as very small pebbles. And +now first one and then another had stirred, had rolled over and +cracked, and down the crack of each of them showed a minute line of +yellowish green, thrusting outward to meet the hot encouragement of the +newly-risen sun. For a moment that was all, and then there stirred, and +burst a third! + +“It is a seed,” said Cavor. And then I heard him whisper very softly, +“_Life!_” + +“Life!” And immediately it poured upon us that our vast journey had not +been made in vain, that we had come to no arid waste of minerals, but +to a world that lived and moved! We watched intensely. I remember I +kept rubbing the glass before me with my sleeve, jealous of the +faintest suspicion of mist. + +The picture was clear and vivid only in the middle of the field. All +about that centre the dead fibres and seeds were magnified and +distorted by the curvature of the glass. But we could see enough! One +after another all down the sunlit slope these miraculous little brown +bodies burst and gaped apart, like seed-pods, like the husks of fruits; +opened eager mouths that drank in the heat and light pouring in a +cascade from the newly-risen sun. + +Every moment more of these seed coats ruptured, and even as they did so +the swelling pioneers overflowed their rent-distended seed-cases, and +passed into the second stage of growth. With a steady assurance, a +swift deliberation, these amazing seeds thrust a rootlet downward to +the earth and a queer little bundle-like bud into the air. In a little +while the whole slope was dotted with minute plantlets standing at +attention in the blaze of the sun. + +They did not stand for long. The bundle-like buds swelled and strained +and opened with a jerk, thrusting out a coronet of little sharp tips, +spreading a whorl of tiny, spiky, brownish leaves, that lengthened +rapidly, lengthened visibly even as we watched. The movement was slower +than any animal’s, swifter than any plant’s I have ever seen before. +How can I suggest it to you—the way that growth went on? The leaf tips +grew so that they moved onward even while we looked at them. The brown +seed-case shrivelled and was absorbed with an equal rapidity. Have you +ever on a cold day taken a thermometer into your warm hand and watched +the little thread of mercury creep up the tube? These moon plants grew +like that. + +In a few minutes, as it seemed, the buds of the more forward of these +plants had lengthened into a stem and were even putting forth a second +whorl of leaves, and all the slope that had seemed so recently a +lifeless stretch of litter was now dark with the stunted olive-green +herbage of bristling spikes that swayed with the vigour of their +growing. + +I turned about, and behold! along the upper edge of a rock to the +eastward a similar fringe in a scarcely less forward condition swayed +and bent, dark against the blinding glare of the sun. And beyond this +fringe was the silhouette of a plant mass, branching clumsily like a +cactus, and swelling visibly, swelling like a bladder that fills with +air. + +Then to the westward also I discovered that another such distended form +was rising over the scrub. But here the light fell upon its sleek +sides, and I could see that its colour was a vivid orange hue. It rose +as one watched it; if one looked away from it for a minute and then +back, its outline had changed; it thrust out blunt congested branches +until in a little time it rose a coralline shape of many feet in +height. Compared with such a growth the terrestrial puff-ball, which +will sometimes swell a foot in diameter in a single night, would be a +hopeless laggard. But then the puff-ball grows against a gravitational +pull six times that of the moon. Beyond, out of gullies and flats that +had been hidden from us, but not from the quickening sun, over reefs +and banks of shining rock, a bristling beard of spiky and fleshy +vegetation was straining into view, hurrying tumultuously to take +advantage of the brief day in which it must flower and fruit and seed +again and die. It was like a miracle, that growth. So, one must +imagine, the trees and plants arose at the Creation and covered the +desolation of the new-made earth. + +Imagine it! Imagine that dawn! The resurrection of the frozen air, the +stirring and quickening of the soil, and then this silent uprising of +vegetation, this unearthly ascent of fleshiness and spikes. Conceive it +all lit by a blaze that would make the intensest sunlight of earth seem +watery and weak. And still around this stirring jungle, wherever there +was shadow, lingered banks of bluish snow. And to have the picture of +our impression complete, you must bear in mind that we saw it all +through a thick bent glass, distorting it as things are distorted by a +lens, acute only in the centre of the picture, and very bright there, +and towards the edges magnified and unreal. + + + + +IX. +Prospecting Begins + + +We ceased to gaze. We turned to each other, the same thought, the same +question in our eyes. For these plants to grow, there must be some air, +however attenuated, air that we also should be able to breathe. + +“The manhole?” I said. + +“Yes!” said Cavor, “if it is air we see!” + +“In a little while,” I said, “these plants will be as high as we are. +Suppose—suppose after all— Is it certain? How do you know that stuff +_is_ air? It may be nitrogen—it may be carbonic acid even!” + +“That’s easy,” he said, and set about proving it. He produced a big +piece of crumpled paper from the bale, lit it, and thrust it hastily +through the man-hole valve. I bent forward and peered down through the +thick glass for its appearance outside, that little flame on whose +evidence depended so much! + +I saw the paper drop out and lie lightly upon the snow. The pink flame +of its burning vanished. For an instant it seemed to be extinguished. +And then I saw a little blue tongue upon the edge of it that trembled, +and crept, and spread! + +Quietly the whole sheet, save where it lay in immediate contact with +the snow, charred and shrivelled and sent up a quivering thread of +smoke. There was no doubt left to me; the atmosphere of the moon was +either pure oxygen or air, and capable therefore—unless its tenuity was +excessive—of supporting our alien life. We might emerge—and live! + +I sat down with my legs on either side of the manhole and prepared to +unscrew it, but Cavor stopped me. “There is first a little precaution,” +he said. He pointed out that although it was certainly an oxygenated +atmosphere outside, it might still be so rarefied as to cause us grave +injury. He reminded me of mountain sickness, and of the bleeding that +often afflicts aeronauts who have ascended too swiftly, and he spent +some time in the preparation of a sickly-tasting drink which he +insisted on my sharing. It made me feel a little numb, but otherwise +had no effect on me. Then he permitted me to begin unscrewing. + +Presently the glass stopper of the manhole was so far undone that the +denser air within our sphere began to escape along the thread of the +screw, singing as a kettle sings before it boils. Thereupon he made me +desist. It speedily became evident that the pressure outside was very +much less than it was within. How much less it was we had no means of +telling. + +I sat grasping the stopper with both hands, ready to close it again if, +in spite of our intense hope, the lunar atmosphere should after all +prove too rarefied for us, and Cavor sat with a cylinder of compressed +oxygen at hand to restore our pressure. We looked at one another in +silence, and then at the fantastic vegetation that swayed and grew +visibly and noiselessly without. And ever that shrill piping continued. + +My blood-vessels began to throb in my ears, and the sound of Cavor’s +movements diminished. I noted how still everything had become, because +of the thinning of the air. + +As our air sizzled out from the screw the moisture of it condensed in +little puffs. + +Presently I experienced a peculiar shortness of breath that lasted +indeed during the whole of the time of our exposure to the moon’s +exterior atmosphere, and a rather unpleasant sensation about the ears +and finger-nails and the back of the throat grew upon my attention, and +presently passed off again. + +But then came vertigo and nausea that abruptly changed the quality of +my courage. I gave the lid of the manhole half a turn and made a hasty +explanation to Cavor; but now he was the more sanguine. He answered me +in a voice that seemed extraordinarily small and remote, because of the +thinness of the air that carried the sound. He recommended a nip of +brandy, and set me the example, and presently I felt better. I turned +the manhole stopper back again. The throbbing in my ears grew louder, +and then I remarked that the piping note of the outrush had ceased. For +a time I could not be sure that it had ceased. + +“Well?” said Cavor, in the ghost of a voice. + +“Well?” said I. + +“Shall we go on?” + +I thought. “Is this all?” + +“If you can stand it.” + +By way of answer I went on unscrewing. I lifted the circular operculum +from its place and laid it carefully on the bale. A flake or so of snow +whirled and vanished as that thin and unfamiliar air took possession of +our sphere. I knelt, and then seated myself at the edge of the manhole, +peering over it. Beneath, within a yard of my face, lay the untrodden +snow of the moon. + +There came a little pause. Our eyes met. + +“It doesn’t distress your lungs too much?” said Cavor. + +“No,” I said. “I can stand this.” + +He stretched out his hand for his blanket, thrust his head through its +central hole, and wrapped it about him. He sat down on the edge of the +manhole, he let his feet drop until they were within six inches of the +lunar ground. He hesitated for a moment, then thrust himself forward, +dropped these intervening inches, and stood upon the untrodden soil of +the moon. + +As he stepped forward he was refracted grotesquely by the edge of the +glass. He stood for a moment looking this way and that. Then he drew +himself together and leapt. + +The glass distorted everything, but it seemed to me even then to be an +extremely big leap. He had at one bound become remote. He seemed twenty +or thirty feet off. He was standing high upon a rocky mass and +gesticulating back to me. Perhaps he was shouting—but the sound did not +reach me. But how the deuce had he done this? I felt like a man who has +just seen a new conjuring trick. + +In a puzzled state of mind I too dropped through the manhole. I stood +up. Just in front of me the snowdrift had fallen away and made a sort +of ditch. I made a step and jumped. + +I found myself flying through the air, saw the rock on which he stood +coming to meet me, clutched it and clung in a state of infinite +amazement. + +I gasped a painful laugh. I was tremendously confused. Cavor bent down +and shouted in piping tones for me to be careful. + +I had forgotten that on the moon, with only an eighth part of the +earth’s mass and a quarter of its diameter, my weight was barely a +sixth what it was on earth. But now that fact insisted on being +remembered. + +“We are out of Mother Earth’s leading-strings now,” he said. + +With a guarded effort I raised myself to the top, and moving as +cautiously as a rheumatic patient, stood up beside him under the blaze +of the sun. The sphere lay behind us on its dwindling snowdrift thirty +feet away. + +As far as the eye could see over the enormous disorder of rocks that +formed the crater floor, the same bristling scrub that surrounded us +was starting into life, diversified here and there by bulging masses of +a cactus form, and scarlet and purple lichens that grew so fast they +seemed to crawl over the rocks. The whole area of the crater seemed to +me then to be one similar wilderness up to the very foot of the +surrounding cliff. + +This cliff was apparently bare of vegetation save at its base, and with +buttresses and terraces and platforms that did not very greatly attract +our attention at the time. It was many miles away from us in every +direction; we seemed to be almost at the centre of the crater, and we +saw it through a certain haziness that drove before the wind. For there +was even a wind now in the thin air, a swift yet weak wind that chilled +exceedingly but exerted little pressure. It was blowing round the +crater, as it seemed, to the hot illuminated side from the foggy +darkness under the sunward wall. It was difficult to look into this +eastward fog; we had to peer with half-closed eyes beneath the shade of +our hands, because of the fierce intensity of the motionless sun. + +“It seems to be deserted,” said Cavor, “absolutely desolate.” + +I looked about me again. I retained even then a clinging hope of some +quasi-human evidence, some pinnacle of building, some house or engine, +but everywhere one looked spread the tumbled rocks in peaks and crests, +and the darting scrub and those bulging cacti that swelled and swelled, +a flat negation as it seemed of all such hope. + +“It looks as though these plants had it to themselves,” I said. “I see +no trace of any other creature.” + +“No insects—no birds, no! Not a trace, not a scrap nor particle of +animal life. If there was—what would they do in the night? ... No; +there’s just these plants alone.” + +I shaded my eyes with my hand. “It’s like the landscape of a dream. +These things are less like earthly land plants than the things one +imagines among the rocks at the bottom of the sea. Look at that yonder! +One might imagine it a lizard changed into a plant. And the glare!” + +“This is only the fresh morning,” said Cavor. + +He sighed and looked about him. “This is no world for men,” he said. +“And yet in a way—it appeals.” + +He became silent for a time, then commenced his meditative humming. + +I started at a gentle touch, and found a thin sheet of livid lichen +lapping over my shoe. I kicked at it and it fell to powder, and each +speck began to grow. + +I heard Cavor exclaim sharply, and perceived that one of the fixed +bayonets of the scrub had pricked him. He hesitated, his eyes sought +among the rocks about us. A sudden blaze of pink had crept up a ragged +pillar of crag. It was a most extraordinary pink, a livid magenta. + +“Look!” said I, turning, and behold Cavor had vanished. + +For an instant I stood transfixed. Then I made a hasty step to look +over the verge of the rock. But in my surprise at his disappearance I +forgot once more that we were on the moon. The thrust of my foot that I +made in striding would have carried me a yard on earth; on the moon it +carried me six—a good five yards over the edge. For the moment the +thing had something of the effect of those nightmares when one falls +and falls. For while one falls sixteen feet in the first second of a +fall on earth, on the moon one falls two, and with only a sixth of +one’s weight. I fell, or rather I jumped down, about ten yards I +suppose. It seemed to take quite a long time, five or six seconds, I +should think. I floated through the air and fell like a feather, +knee-deep in a snow-drift in the bottom of a gully of blue-grey, +white-veined rock. + +I looked about me. “Cavor!” I cried; but no Cavor was visible. + +“Cavor!” I cried louder, and the rocks echoed me. + +I turned fiercely to the rocks and clambered to the summit of them. +“Cavor!” I cried. My voice sounded like the voice of a lost lamb. + +The sphere, too, was not in sight, and for a moment a horrible feeling +of desolation pinched my heart. + +Then I saw him. He was laughing and gesticulating to attract my +attention. He was on a bare patch of rock twenty or thirty yards away. +I could not hear his voice, but “jump” said his gestures. I hesitated, +the distance seemed enormous. Yet I reflected that surely I must be +able to clear a greater distance than Cavor. + +I made a step back, gathered myself together, and leapt with all my +might. I seemed to shoot right up in the air as though I should never +come down. + +It was horrible and delightful, and as wild as a nightmare, to go +flying off in this fashion. I realised my leap had been altogether too +violent. I flew clean over Cavor’s head and beheld a spiky confusion in +a gully spreading to meet my fall. I gave a yelp of alarm. I put out my +hands and straightened my legs. + +I hit a huge fungoid bulk that burst all about me, scattering a mass of +orange spores in every direction, and covering me with orange powder. I +rolled over spluttering, and came to rest convulsed with breathless +laughter. + +I became aware of Cavor’s little round face peering over a bristling +hedge. He shouted some faded inquiry. “Eh?” I tried to shout, but could +not do so for want of breath. He made his way towards me, coming +gingerly among the bushes. + +“We’ve got to be careful,” he said. “This moon has no discipline. +She’ll let us smash ourselves.” + +He helped me to my feet. “You exerted yourself too much,” he said, +dabbing at the yellow stuff with his hand to remove it from my +garments. + +I stood passive and panting, allowing him to beat off the jelly from my +knees and elbows and lecture me upon my misfortunes. “We don’t quite +allow for the gravitation. Our muscles are scarcely educated yet. We +must practise a little, when you have got your breath.” + +I pulled two or three little thorns out of my hand, and sat for a time +on a boulder of rock. My muscles were quivering, and I had that feeling +of personal disillusionment that comes at the first fall to the learner +of cycling on earth. + +It suddenly occurred to Cavor that the cold air in the gully, after the +brightness of the sun, might give me a fever. So we clambered back into +the sunlight. We found that beyond a few abrasions I had received no +serious injuries from my tumble, and at Cavor’s suggestion we were +presently looking round for some safe and easy landing-place for my +next leap. We chose a rocky slab some ten yards off, separated from us +by a little thicket of olive-green spikes. + +“Imagine it there!” said Cavor, who was assuming the airs of a trainer, +and he pointed to a spot about four feet from my toes. This leap I +managed without difficulty, and I must confess I found a certain +satisfaction in Cavor’s falling short by a foot or so and tasting the +spikes of the scrub. “One has to be careful, you see,” he said, pulling +out his thorns, and with that he ceased to be my mentor and became my +fellow-learner in the art of lunar locomotion. + +We chose a still easier jump and did it without difficulty, and then +leapt back again, and to and fro several times, accustoming our muscles +to the new standard. I could never have believed had I not experienced +it, how rapid that adaptation would be. In a very little time indeed, +certainly after fewer than thirty leaps, we could judge the effort +necessary for a distance with almost terrestrial assurance. + +And all this time the lunar plants were growing around us, higher and +denser and more entangled, every moment thicker and taller, spiked +plants, green cactus masses, fungi, fleshy and lichenous things, +strangest radiate and sinuous shapes. But we were so intent upon our +leaping, that for a time we gave no heed to their unfaltering +expansion. + +An extraordinary elation had taken possession of us. Partly, I think, +it was our sense of release from the confinement of the sphere. Mainly, +however, the thin sweetness of the air, which I am certain contained a +much larger proportion of oxygen than our terrestrial atmosphere. In +spite of the strange quality of all about us, I felt as adventurous and +experimental as a cockney would do placed for the first time among +mountains and I do not think it occurred to either of us, face to face +though we were with the unknown, to be very greatly afraid. + +We were bitten by a spirit of enterprise. We selected a lichenous kopje +perhaps fifteen yards away, and landed neatly on its summit one after +the other. “Good!” we cried to each other; “good!” and Cavor made three +steps and went off to a tempting slope of snow a good twenty yards and +more beyond. I stood for a moment struck by the grotesque effect of his +soaring figure—his dirty cricket cap, and spiky hair, his little round +body, his arms and his knicker-bockered legs tucked up tightly—against +the weird spaciousness of the lunar scene. A gust of laughter seized +me, and then I stepped off to follow. Plump! I dropped beside him. + +We made a few gargantuan strides, leapt three or four times more, and +sat down at last in a lichenous hollow. Our lungs were painful. We sat +holding our sides and recovering our breath, looking appreciation to +one another. Cavor panted something about “amazing sensations.” And +then came a thought into my head. For the moment it did not seem a +particularly appalling thought, simply a natural question arising out +of the situation. + +“By the way,” I said, “where exactly is the sphere?” + +Cavor looked at me. “Eh?” + +The full meaning of what we were saying struck me sharply. + +“Cavor!” I cried, laying a hand on his arm, “where is the sphere?” + + + + +X. +Lost Men in the Moon + + +His face caught something of my dismay. He stood up and stared about +him at the scrub that fenced us in and rose about us, straining upward +in a passion of growth. He put a dubious hand to his lips. He spoke +with a sudden lack of assurance. “I think,” he said slowly, “we left it +... somewhere ... about _there_.” + +He pointed a hesitating finger that wavered in an arc. + +“I’m not sure.” His look of consternation deepened. “Anyhow,” he said, +with his eyes on me, “it can’t be far.” + +We had both stood up. We made unmeaning ejaculations, our eyes sought +in the twining, thickening jungle round about us. + +All about us on the sunlit slopes frothed and swayed the darting +shrubs, the swelling cactus, the creeping lichens, and wherever the +shade remained the snow-drifts lingered. North, south, east, and west +spread an identical monotony of unfamiliar forms. And somewhere, buried +already among this tangled confusion, was our sphere, our home, our +only provision, our only hope of escape from this fantastic wilderness +of ephemeral growths into which we had come. + +“I think after all,” he said, pointing suddenly, “it might be over +there.” + +“No,” I said. “We have turned in a curve. See! here is the mark of my +heels. It’s clear the thing must be more to the eastward, much more. +No—the sphere must be over there.” + +“I _think_,” said Cavor, “I kept the sun upon my right all the time.” + +“Every leap, it seems to _me_,” I said, “my shadow flew before me.” + +We stared into one another’s eyes. The area of the crater had become +enormously vast to our imaginations, the growing thickets already +impenetrably dense. + +“Good heavens! What fools we have been!” + +“It’s evident that we must find it again,” said Cavor, “and that soon. +The sun grows stronger. We should be fainting with the heat already if +it wasn’t so dry. And ... I’m hungry.” + +I stared at him. I had not suspected this aspect of the matter before. +But it came to me at once—a positive craving. “Yes,” I said with +emphasis. “I am hungry too.” + +He stood up with a look of active resolution. “Certainly we must find +the sphere.” + +As calmly as possible we surveyed the interminable reefs and thickets +that formed the floor of the crater, each of us weighing in silence the +chances of our finding the sphere before we were overtaken by heat and +hunger. + +“It can’t be fifty yards from here,” said Cavor, with indecisive +gestures. “The only thing is to beat round about until we come upon +it.” + +“That is all we can do,” I said, without any alacrity to begin our +hunt. “I wish this confounded spike bush did not grow so fast!” + +“That’s just it,” said Cavor. “But it was lying on a bank of snow.” + +I stared about me in the vain hope of recognising some knoll or shrub +that had been near the sphere. But everywhere was a confusing sameness, +everywhere the aspiring bushes, the distending fungi, the dwindling +snow banks, steadily and inevitably changed. The sun scorched and +stung, the faintness of an unaccountable hunger mingled with our +infinite perplexity. And even as we stood there, confused and lost +amidst unprecedented things, we became aware for the first time of a +sound upon the moon other than the air of the growing plants, the faint +sighing of the wind, or those that we ourselves had made. + +Boom.... Boom.... Boom. + +It came from beneath our feet, a sound in the earth. We seemed to hear +it with our feet as much as with our ears. Its dull resonance was +muffled by distance, thick with the quality of intervening substance. +No sound that I can imagine could have astonished us more, or have +changed more completely the quality of things about us. For this sound, +rich, slow, and deliberate, seemed to us as though it could be nothing +but the striking of some gigantic buried clock. + +Boom.... Boom.... Boom. + +Sound suggestive of still cloisters, of sleepless nights in crowded +cities, of vigils and the awaited hour, of all that is orderly and +methodical in life, booming out pregnant and mysterious in this +fantastic desert! To the eye everything was unchanged: the desolation +of bushes and cacti waving silently in the wind, stretched unbroken to +the distant cliffs, the still dark sky was empty overhead, and the hot +sun hung and burned. And through it all, a warning, a threat, throbbed +this enigma of sound. + +Boom.... Boom.... Boom.... + +We questioned one another in faint and faded voices. + +“A clock?” + +“Like a clock!” + +“What is it?” + +“What can it be?” + +“Count,” was Cavor’s belated suggestion, and at that word the striking +ceased. + +The silence, the rhythmic disappointment of the silence, came as a +fresh shock. For a moment one could doubt whether one had ever heard a +sound. Or whether it might not still be going on. Had I indeed heard a +sound? + +I felt the pressure of Cavor’s hand upon my arm. He spoke in an +undertone, as though he feared to wake some sleeping thing. “Let us +keep together,” he whispered, “and look for the sphere. We must get +back to the sphere. This is beyond our understanding.” + +“Which way shall we go?” + +He hesitated. An intense persuasion of presences, of unseen things +about us and near us, dominated our minds. What could they be? Where +could they be? Was this arid desolation, alternately frozen and +scorched, only the outer rind and mask of some subterranean world? And +if so, what sort of world? What sort of inhabitants might it not +presently disgorge upon us? + +And then, stabbing the aching stillness as vivid and sudden as an +unexpected thunderclap, came a clang and rattle as though great gates +of metal had suddenly been flung apart. + +It arrested our steps. We stood gaping helplessly. Then Cavor stole +towards me. + +“I do not understand!” he whispered close to my face. He waved his hand +vaguely skyward, the vague suggestion of still vaguer thoughts. + +“A hiding-place! If anything came...” + +I looked about us. I nodded my head in assent to him. + +We started off, moving stealthily with the most exaggerated precautions +against noise. We went towards a thicket of scrub. A clangour like +hammers flung about a boiler hastened our steps. “We must crawl,” +whispered Cavor. + +The lower leaves of the bayonet plants, already overshadowed by the +newer ones above, were beginning to wilt and shrivel so that we could +thrust our way in among the thickening stems without serious injury. A +stab in the face or arm we did not heed. At the heart of the thicket I +stopped, and stared panting into Cavor’s face. + +“Subterranean,” he whispered. “Below.” + +“They may come out.” + +“We must find the sphere!” + +“Yes,” I said; “but how?” + +“Crawl till we come to it.” + +“But if we don’t?” + +“Keep hidden. See what they are like.” + +“We will keep together,” said I. + +He thought. “Which way shall we go?” + +“We must take our chance.” + +We peered this way and that. Then very circumspectly, we began to crawl +through the lower jungle, making, so far as we could judge, a circuit, +halting now at every waving fungus, at every sound, intent only on the +sphere from which we had so foolishly emerged. Ever and again from out +of the earth beneath us came concussions, beatings, strange, +inexplicable, mechanical sounds; and once, and then again, we thought +we heard something, a faint rattle and tumult, borne to us through the +air. But fearful as we were we dared essay no vantage-point to survey +the crater. For long we saw nothing of the beings whose sounds were so +abundant and insistent. But for the faintness of our hunger and the +drying of our throats that crawling would have had the quality of a +very vivid dream. It was so absolutely unreal. The only element with +any touch of reality was these sounds. + +Picture it to yourself! About us the dream-like jungle, with the silent +bayonet leaves darting overhead, and the silent, vivid, sun-splashed +lichens under our hands and knees, waving with the vigour of their +growth as a carpet waves when the wind gets beneath it. Ever and again +one of the bladder fungi, bulging and distending under the sun, loomed +upon us. Ever and again some novel shape in vivid colour obtruded. The +very cells that built up these plants were as large as my thumb, like +beads of coloured glass. And all these things were saturated in the +unmitigated glare of the sun, were seen against a sky that was bluish +black and spangled still, in spite of the sunlight, with a few +surviving stars. Strange! the very forms and texture of the stones were +strange. It was all strange, the feeling of one’s body was +unprecedented, every other movement ended in a surprise. The breath +sucked thin in one’s throat, the blood flowed through one’s ears in a +throbbing tide—thud, thud, thud, thud.... + +And ever and again came gusts of turmoil, hammering, the clanging and +throb of machinery, and presently—the bellowing of great beasts! + + + + +XI. +The Mooncalf Pastures + + +So we two poor terrestrial castaways, lost in that wild-growing moon +jungle, crawled in terror before the sounds that had come upon us. We +crawled, as it seemed, a long time before we saw either Selenite or +mooncalf, though we heard the bellowing and gruntulous noises of these +latter continually drawing nearer to us. We crawled through stony +ravines, over snow slopes, amidst fungi that ripped like thin bladders +at our thrust, emitting a watery humour, over a perfect pavement of +things like puff-balls, and beneath interminable thickets of scrub. And +ever more helplessly our eyes sought for our abandoned sphere. The +noise of the mooncalves would at times be a vast flat calf-like sound, +at times it rose to an amazed and wrathy bellowing, and again it would +become a clogged bestial sound, as though these unseen creatures had +sought to eat and bellow at the same time. + +Our first view was but an inadequate transitory glimpse, yet none the +less disturbing because it was incomplete. Cavor was crawling in front +at the time, and he first was aware of their proximity. He stopped +dead, arresting me with a single gesture. + +A crackling and smashing of the scrub appeared to be advancing directly +upon us, and then, as we squatted close and endeavoured to judge of the +nearness and direction of this noise, there came a terrific bellow +behind us, so close and vehement that the tops of the bayonet scrub +bent before it, and one felt the breath of it hot and moist. And, +turning about, we saw indistinctly through a crowd of swaying stems the +mooncalf’s shining sides, and the long line of its back loomed out +against the sky. + +Of course it is hard for me now to say how much I saw at that time, +because my impressions were corrected by subsequent observation. First +of all impressions was its enormous size; the girth of its body was +some fourscore feet, its length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose and +fell with its laboured breathing. I perceived that its gigantic, flabby +body lay along the ground, and that its skin was of a corrugated white, +dappling into blackness along the backbone. But of its feet we saw +nothing. I think also that we saw then the profile at least of the +almost brainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, its slobbering +omnivorous mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. (For the +mooncalf invariably shuts its eyes in the presence of the sun.) We had +a glimpse of a vast red pit as it opened its mouth to bleat and bellow +again; we had a breath from the pit, and then the monster heeled over +like a ship, dragged forward along the ground, creasing all its +leathery skin, rolled again, and so wallowed past us, smashing a path +amidst the scrub, and was speedily hidden from our eyes by the dense +interlacings beyond. Another appeared more distantly, and then another, +and then, as though he was guiding these animated lumps of provender to +their pasture, a Selenite came momentarily into ken. My grip upon +Cavor’s foot became convulsive at the sight of him, and we remained +motionless and peering long after he had passed out of our range. + +By contrast with the mooncalves he seemed a trivial being, a mere ant, +scarcely five feet high. He was wearing garments of some leathery +substance, so that no portion of his actual body appeared, but of this, +of course, we were entirely ignorant. He presented himself, therefore, +as a compact, bristling creature, having much of the quality of a +complicated insect, with whip-like tentacles and a clanging arm +projecting from his shining cylindrical body case. The form of his head +was hidden by his enormous many-spiked helmet—we discovered afterwards +that he used the spikes for prodding refractory mooncalves—and a pair +of goggles of darkened glass, set very much at the side, gave a +bird-like quality to the metallic apparatus that covered his face. His +arms did not project beyond his body case, and he carried himself upon +short legs that, wrapped though they were in warm coverings, seemed to +our terrestrial eyes inordinately flimsy. They had very short thighs, +very long shanks, and little feet. + +In spite of his heavy-looking clothing, he was progressing with what +would be, from the terrestrial point of view, very considerable +strides, and his clanging arm was busy. The quality of his motion +during the instant of his passing suggested haste and a certain anger, +and soon after we had lost sight of him we heard the bellow of a +mooncalf change abruptly into a short, sharp squeal followed by the +scuffle of its acceleration. And gradually that bellowing receded, and +then came to an end, as if the pastures sought had been attained. + +We listened. For a space the moon world was still. But it was some time +before we resumed our crawling search for the vanished sphere. + +When next we saw mooncalves they were some little distance away from us +in a place of tumbled rocks. The less vertical surfaces of the rocks +were thick with a speckled green plant growing in dense mossy clumps, +upon which these creatures were browsing. We stopped at the edge of the +reeds amidst which we were crawling at the sight of them, peering out +at them and looking round for a second glimpse of a Selenite. They lay +against their food like stupendous slugs, huge, greasy hulls, eating +greedily and noisily, with a sort of sobbing avidity. They seemed +monsters of mere fatness, clumsy and overwhelmed to a degree that would +make a Smithfield ox seem a model of agility. Their busy, writhing, +chewing mouths, and eyes closed, together with the appetising sound of +their munching, made up an effect of animal enjoyment that was +singularly stimulating to our empty frames. + +“Hogs!” said Cavor, with unusual passion. “Disgusting hogs!” and after +one glare of angry envy crawled off through the bushes to our right. I +stayed long enough to see that the speckled plant was quite hopeless +for human nourishment, then crawled after him, nibbling a quill of it +between my teeth. + +Presently we were arrested again by the proximity of a Selenite, and +this time we were able to observe him more exactly. Now we could see +that the Selenite covering was indeed clothing, and not a sort of +crustacean integument. He was quite similar in his costume to the +former one we had glimpsed, except that ends of something like wadding +were protruding from his neck, and he stood on a promontory of rock and +moved his head this way and that, as though he was surveying the +crater. We lay quite still, fearing to attract his attention if we +moved, and after a time he turned about and disappeared. + +We came upon another drove of mooncalves bellowing up a ravine, and +then we passed over a place of sounds, sounds of beating machinery as +if some huge hall of industry came near the surface there. And while +these sounds were still about us we came to the edge of a great open +space, perhaps two hundred yards in diameter, and perfectly level. Save +for a few lichens that advanced from its margin this space was bare, +and presented a powdery surface of a dusty yellow colour. We were +afraid to strike out across this space, but as it presented less +obstruction to our crawling than the scrub, we went down upon it and +began very circumspectly to skirt its edge. + +For a little while the noises from below ceased and everything, save +for the faint stir of the growing vegetation, was very still. Then +abruptly there began an uproar, louder, more vehement, and nearer than +any we had so far heard. Of a certainty it came from below. +Instinctively we crouched as flat as we could, ready for a prompt +plunge into the thicket beside us. Each knock and throb seemed to +vibrate through our bodies. Louder grew this throbbing and beating, and +that irregular vibration increased until the whole moon world seemed to +be jerking and pulsing. + +“Cover,” whispered Cavor, and I turned towards the bushes. + +At that instant came a thud like the thud of a gun, and then a thing +happened—it still haunts me in my dreams. I had turned my head to look +at Cavor’s face, and thrust out my hand in front of me as I did so. And +my hand met nothing! I plunged suddenly into a bottomless hole! + +My chest hit something hard, and I found myself with my chin on the +edge of an unfathomable abyss that had suddenly opened beneath me, my +hand extended stiffly into the void. The whole of that flat circular +area was no more than a gigantic lid, that was now sliding sideways +from off the pit it had covered into a slot prepared for it. + +Had it not been for Cavor I think I should have remained rigid, hanging +over this margin and staring into the enormous gulf below, until at +last the edges of the slot scraped me off and hurled me into its +depths. But Cavor had not received the shock that had paralysed me. He +had been a little distance from the edge when the lid had first opened, +and perceiving the peril that held me helpless, gripped my legs and +pulled me backward. I came into a sitting position, crawled away from +the edge for a space on all fours, then staggered up and ran after him +across the thundering, quivering sheet of metal. It seemed to be +swinging open with a steadily accelerated velocity, and the bushes in +front of me shifted sideways as I ran. + +I was none too soon. Cavor’s back vanished amidst the bristling +thicket, and as I scrambled up after him, the monstrous valve came into +its position with a clang. For a long time we lay panting, not daring +to approach the pit. + +But at last very cautiously and bit by bit we crept into a position +from which we could peer down. The bushes about us creaked and waved +with the force of a breeze that was blowing down the shaft. We could +see nothing at first except smooth vertical walls descending at last +into an impenetrable black. And then very gradually we became aware of +a number of very faint and little lights going to and fro. + +For a time that stupendous gulf of mystery held us so that we forgot +even our sphere. In time, as we grew more accustomed to the darkness, +we could make out very small, dim, elusive shapes moving about among +those needle-point illuminations. We peered amazed and incredulous, +understanding so little that we could find no words to say. We could +distinguish nothing that would give us a clue to the meaning of the +faint shapes we saw. + +“What can it be?” I asked; “what can it be?” + +“The engineering!... They must live in these caverns during the night, +and come out during the day.” + +“Cavor!” I said. “Can they be—_that_—it was something like—men?” + +“_That_ was not a man.” + +“We dare risk nothing!” + +“We dare do nothing until we find the sphere!” + +“We _can_ do nothing until we find the sphere.” + +He assented with a groan and stirred himself to move. He stared about +him for a space, sighed, and indicated a direction. We struck out +through the jungle. For a time we crawled resolutely, then with +diminishing vigour. Presently among great shapes of flabby purple there +came a noise of trampling and cries about us. We lay close, and for a +long time the sounds went to and fro and very near. But this time we +saw nothing. I tried to whisper to Cavor that I could hardly go without +food much longer, but my mouth had become too dry for whispering. + +“Cavor,” I said, “I must have food.” + +He turned a face full of dismay towards me. “It’s a case for holding +out,” he said. + +“But I _must_,” I said, “and look at my lips!” + +“I’ve been thirsty some time.” + +“If only some of that snow had remained!” + +“It’s clean gone! We’re driving from arctic to tropical at the rate of +a degree a minute....” + +I gnawed my hand. + +“The sphere!” he said. “There is nothing for it but the sphere.” + +We roused ourselves to another spurt of crawling. My mind ran entirely +on edible things, on the hissing profundity of summer drinks, more +particularly I craved for beer. I was haunted by the memory of a +sixteen gallon cask that had swaggered in my Lympne cellar. I thought +of the adjacent larder, and especially of steak and kidney pie—tender +steak and plenty of kidney, and rich, thick gravy between. Ever and +again I was seized with fits of hungry yawning. We came to flat places +overgrown with fleshy red things, monstrous coralline growths; as we +pushed against them they snapped and broke. I noted the quality of the +broken surfaces. The confounded stuff certainly looked of a biteable +texture. Then it seemed to me that it smelt rather well. + +I picked up a fragment and sniffed at it. + +“Cavor,” I said in a hoarse undertone. + +He glanced at me with his face screwed up. “Don’t,” he said. I put down +the fragment, and we crawled on through this tempting fleshiness for a +space. + +“Cavor,” I asked, “why _not?_” + +“Poison,” I heard him say, but he did not look round. + +We crawled some way before I decided. + +“I’ll chance it,” said I. + +He made a belated gesture to prevent me. I stuffed my mouth full. He +crouched watching my face, his own twisted into the oddest expression. +“It’s good,” I said. + +“O Lord!” he cried. + +He watched me munch, his face wrinkled between desire and disapproval, +then suddenly succumbed to appetite and began to tear off huge +mouthfuls. For a time we did nothing but eat. + +The stuff was not unlike a terrestrial mushroom, only it was much laxer +in texture, and, as one swallowed it, it warmed the throat. At first we +experienced a mere mechanical satisfaction in eating; then our blood +began to run warmer, and we tingled at the lips and fingers, and then +new and slightly irrelevant ideas came bubbling up in our minds. + +“It’s good,” said I. “Infernally good! What a home for our surplus +population! Our poor surplus population,” and I broke off another large +portion. It filled me with a curiously benevolent satisfaction that +there was such good food in the moon. The depression of my hunger gave +way to an irrational exhilaration. The dread and discomfort in which I +had been living vanished entirely. I perceived the moon no longer as a +planet from which I most earnestly desired the means of escape, but as +a possible refuge from human destitution. I think I forgot the +Selenites, the mooncalves, the lid, and the noises completely so soon +as I had eaten that fungus. + +Cavor replied to my third repetition of my “surplus population” remark +with similar words of approval. I felt that my head swam, but I put +this down to the stimulating effect of food after a long fast. +“Ess’lent discov’ry yours, Cavor,” said I. “Se’nd on’y to the ‘tato.” + +“Whajer mean?” asked Cavor. “‘Scovery of the moon—se’nd on’y to the +tato?” + +I looked at him, shocked at his suddenly hoarse voice, and by the +badness of his articulation. It occurred to me in a flash that he was +intoxicated, possibly by the fungus. It also occurred to me that he +erred in imagining that he had discovered the moon; he had not +discovered it, he had only reached it. I tried to lay my hand on his +arm and explain this to him, but the issue was too subtle for his +brain. It was also unexpectedly difficult to express. After a momentary +attempt to understand me—I remember wondering if the fungus had made my +eyes as fishy as his—he set off upon some observations on his own +account. + +“We are,” he announced with a solemn hiccup, “the creashurs o’ what we +eat and drink.” + +He repeated this, and as I was now in one of my subtle moods, I +determined to dispute it. Possibly I wandered a little from the point. +But Cavor certainly did not attend at all properly. He stood up as well +as he could, putting a hand on my head to steady himself, which was +disrespectful, and stood staring about him, quite devoid now of any +fear of the moon beings. + +I tried to point out that this was dangerous for some reason that was +not perfectly clear to me, but the word “dangerous” had somehow got +mixed with “indiscreet,” and came out rather more like “injurious” than +either; and after an attempt to disentangle them, I resumed my +argument, addressing myself principally to the unfamiliar but attentive +coralline growths on either side. I felt that it was necessary to clear +up this confusion between the moon and a potato at once—I wandered into +a long parenthesis on the importance of precision of definition in +argument. I did my best to ignore the fact that my bodily sensations +were no longer agreeable. + +In some way that I have now forgotten, my mind was led back to projects +of colonisation. “We must annex this moon,” I said. “There must be no +shilly-shally. This is part of the White Man’s Burthen. Cavor—we +are—_hic_—Satap—mean Satraps! Nempire Cæsar never dreamt. B’in all the +newspapers. Cavorecia. Bedfordecia. Bedfordecia—hic—Limited. +Mean—unlimited! Practically.” + +Certainly I was intoxicated. + +I embarked upon an argument to show the infinite benefits our arrival +would confer on the moon. I involved myself in a rather difficult proof +that the arrival of Columbus was, on the whole, beneficial to America. +I found I had forgotten the line of argument I had intended to pursue, +and continued to repeat “sim’lar to C’lumbus,” to fill up time. + +From that point my memory of the action of that abominable fungus +becomes confused. I remember vaguely that we declared our intention of +standing no nonsense from any confounded insects, that we decided it +ill became men to hide shamefully upon a mere satellite, that we +equipped ourselves with huge armfuls of the fungus—whether for missile +purposes or not I do not know—and, heedless of the stabs of the bayonet +scrub, we started forth into the sunshine. + +Almost immediately we must have come upon the Selenites. There were six +of them, and they were marching in single file over a rocky place, +making the most remarkable piping and whining sounds. They all seemed +to become aware of us at once, all instantly became silent and +motionless, like animals, with their faces turned towards us. + +For a moment I was sobered. + +“Insects,” murmured Cavor, “insects! And they think I’m going to crawl +about on my stomach—on my vertebrated stomach! + +“Stomach,” he repeated slowly, as though he chewed the indignity. + +Then suddenly, with a sort of fury, he made three vast strides and +leapt towards them. He leapt badly; he made a series of somersaults in +the air, whirled right over them, and vanished with an enormous splash +amidst the cactus bladders. What the Selenites made of this amazing, +and to my mind undignified irruption from another planet, I have no +means of guessing. I seem to remember the sight of their backs as they +ran in all directions, but I am not sure. All these last incidents +before oblivion came are vague and faint in my mind. I know I made a +step to follow Cavor, and tripped and fell headlong among the rocks. I +was, I am certain, suddenly and vehemently ill. I seem to remember a +violent struggle and being gripped by metallic clasps.... + +My next clear recollection is that we were prisoners at we knew not +what depths beneath the moon’s surface; we were in darkness amidst +strange distracting noises; our bodies were covered with scratches and +bruises, and our heads racked with pain. + + + + +XII. +The Selenite’s Face + + +I found myself sitting crouched together in a tumultuous darkness. For +a long time I could not understand where I was, nor how I had come to +this perplexity. I thought of the cupboard into which I had been thrust +at times when I was a child, and then of a very dark and noisy bedroom +in which I had slept during an illness. But these sounds about me were +not the noises I had known, and there was a thin flavour in the air +like the wind of a stable. Then I supposed we must still be at work +upon the sphere, and that somehow I had got into the cellar of Cavor’s +house. I remembered we had finished the sphere, and fancied I must +still be in it and travelling through space. + +“Cavor,” I said, “cannot we have some light?” + +There came no answer. + +“Cavor!” I insisted. + +I was answered by a groan. “My head!” I heard him say; “my head!” + +I attempted to press my hands to my brow, which ached, and discovered +they were tied together. This startled me very much. I brought them up +to my mouth and felt the cold smoothness of metal. They were chained +together. I tried to separate my legs and made out they were similarly +fastened, and also that I was fastened to the ground by a much thicker +chain about the middle of my body. + +I was more frightened than I had yet been by anything in all our +strange experiences. For a time I tugged silently at my bonds. “Cavor!” +I cried out sharply. “Why am I tied? Why have you tied me hand and +foot?” + +“I haven’t tied you,” he answered. “It’s the Selenites.” + +The Selenites! My mind hung on that for a space. Then my memories came +back to me: the snowy desolation, the thawing of the air, the growth of +the plants, our strange hopping and crawling among the rocks and +vegetation of the crater. All the distress of our frantic search for +the sphere returned to me.... Finally the opening of the great lid that +covered the pit! + +Then as I strained to trace our later movements down to our present +plight, the pain in my head became intolerable. I came to an +insurmountable barrier, an obstinate blank. + +“Cavor!” + +“Yes?” + +“Where are we?” + +“How should I know?” + +“Are we dead?” + +“What nonsense!” + +“They’ve got us, then!” + +He made no answer but a grunt. The lingering traces of the poison +seemed to make him oddly irritable. + +“What do you mean to do?” + +“How should I know what to do?” + +“Oh, very well!” said I, and became silent. Presently, I was roused +from a stupor. “O _Lord!_” I cried; “I wish you’d stop that buzzing!” + +We lapsed into silence again, listening to the dull confusion of noises +like the muffled sounds of a street or factory that filled our ears. I +could make nothing of it, my mind pursued first one rhythm and then +another, and questioned it in vain. But after a long time I became +aware of a new and sharper element, not mingling with the rest but +standing out, as it were, against that cloudy background of sound. It +was a series of relatively very little definite sounds, tappings and +rubbings, like a loose spray of ivy against a window or a bird moving +about upon a box. We listened and peered about us, but the darkness was +a velvet pall. There followed a noise like the subtle movement of the +wards of a well-oiled lock. And then there appeared before me, hanging +as it seemed in an immensity of black, a thin bright line. + +“Look!” whispered Cavor very softly. + +“What is it?” + +“I don’t know.” + +We stared. + +The thin bright line became a band, and broader and paler. It took upon +itself the quality of a bluish light falling upon a white-washed wall. +It ceased to be parallel-sided; it developed a deep indentation on one +side. I turned to remark this to Cavor, and was amazed to see his ear +in a brilliant illumination—all the rest of him in shadow. I twisted my +head round as well as my bonds would permit. “Cavor,” I said, “it’s +behind!” + +His ear vanished—gave place to an eye! + +Suddenly the crack that had been admitting the light broadened out, and +revealed itself as the space of an opening door. Beyond was a sapphire +vista, and in the doorway stood a grotesque outline silhouetted against +the glare. + +We both made convulsive efforts to turn, and failing, sat staring over +our shoulders at this. My first impression was of some clumsy quadruped +with lowered head. Then I perceived it was the slender pinched body and +short and extremely attenuated bandy legs of a Selenite, with his head +depressed between his shoulders. He was without the helmet and body +covering they wear upon the exterior. + +He was a blank, black figure to us, but instinctively our imaginations +supplied features to his very human outline. I, at least, took it +instantly that he was somewhat hunchbacked, with a high forehead and +long features. + +He came forward three steps and paused for a time. His movements seemed +absolutely noiseless. Then he came forward again. He walked like a +bird, his feet fell one in front of the other. He stepped out of the +ray of light that came through the doorway, and it seemed as though he +vanished altogether in the shadow. + +For a moment my eyes sought him in the wrong place, and then I +perceived him standing facing us both in the full light. Only the human +features I had attributed to him were not there at all! + +Of course I ought to have expected that, only I didn’t. It came to me +as an absolute, for a moment an overwhelming shock. It seemed as though +it wasn’t a face, as though it must needs be a mask, a horror, a +deformity, that would presently be disavowed or explained. There was no +nose, and the thing had dull bulging eyes at the side—in the silhouette +I had supposed they were ears. There were no ears.... I have tried to +draw one of these heads, but I cannot. There was a mouth, downwardly +curved, like a human mouth in a face that stares ferociously.... + +The neck on which the head was poised was jointed in three places, +almost like the short joints in the leg of a crab. The joints of the +limbs I could not see, because of the puttee-like straps in which they +were swathed, and which formed the only clothing the being wore. + +There the thing was, looking at us! + +At the time my mind was taken up by the mad impossibility of the +creature. I suppose he also was amazed, and with more reason, perhaps, +for amazement than we. Only, confound him! he did not show it. We did +at least know what had brought about this meeting of incompatible +creatures. But conceive how it would seem to decent Londoners, for +example, to come upon a couple of living things, as big as men and +absolutely unlike any other earthly animals, careering about among the +sheep in Hyde Park! It must have taken him like that. + +Figure us! We were bound hand and foot, fagged and filthy; our beards +two inches long, our faces scratched and bloody. Cavor you must imagine +in his knickerbockers (torn in several places by the bayonet scrub) his +Jaegar shirt and old cricket cap, his wiry hair wildly disordered, a +tail to every quarter of the heavens. In that blue light his face did +not look red but very dark, his lips and the drying blood upon my hands +seemed black. If possible I was in a worse plight than he, on account +of the yellow fungus into which I had jumped. Our jackets were +unbuttoned, and our shoes had been taken off and lay at our feet. And +we were sitting with our backs to this queer bluish light, peering at +such a monster as Durer might have invented. + +Cavor broke the silence; started to speak, went hoarse, and cleared his +throat. Outside began a terrific bellowing, as if a mooncalf were in +trouble. It ended in a shriek, and everything was still again. + +Presently the Selenite turned about, flickered into the shadow, stood +for a moment retrospective at the door, and then closed it on us; and +once more we were in that murmurous mystery of darkness into which we +had awakened. + + + + +XIII. +Mr. Cavor Makes Some Suggestions + + +For a time neither of us spoke. To focus together all the things we had +brought upon ourselves seemed beyond my mental powers. + +“They’ve got us,” I said at last. + +“It was that fungus.” + +“Well—if I hadn’t taken it we should have fainted and starved.” + +“We might have found the sphere.” + +I lost my temper at his persistence, and swore to myself. For a time we +hated one another in silence. I drummed with my fingers on the floor +between my knees, and gritted the links of my fetters together. +Presently I was forced to talk again. + +“What do you make of it, anyhow?” I asked humbly. + +“They are reasonable creatures—they can make things and do things. +Those lights we saw...” + +He stopped. It was clear he could make nothing of it. + +When he spoke again it was to confess, “After all, they are more human +than we had a right to expect. I suppose—” + +He stopped irritatingly. + +“Yes?” + +“I suppose, anyhow—on any planet where there is an intelligent +animal—it will carry its brain case upward, and have hands, and walk +erect.” + +Presently he broke away in another direction. + +“We are some way in,” he said. “I mean—perhaps a couple of thousand +feet or more.” + +“Why?” + +“It’s cooler. And our voices are so much louder. That faded quality—it +has altogether gone. And the feeling in one’s ears and throat.” + +I had not noted that, but I did now. + +“The air is denser. We must be some depths—a mile even, we may +be—inside the moon.” + +“We never thought of a world inside the moon.” + +“No.” + +“How could we?” + +“We might have done. Only one gets into habits of mind.” + +He thought for a time. + +“_Now_,” he said, “it seems such an obvious thing.” + +“Of course! The moon must be enormously cavernous, with an atmosphere +within, and at the centre of its caverns a sea. + +“One knew that the moon had a lower specific gravity than the earth, +one knew that it had little air or water outside, one knew, too, that +it was sister planet to the earth, and that it was unaccountable that +it should be different in composition. The inference that it was +hollowed out was as clear as day. And yet one never saw it as a fact. +Kepler, of course—” + +His voice had the interest now of a man who has discerned a pretty +sequence of reasoning. + +“Yes,” he said, “Kepler with his _sub-volvani_ was right after all.” + +“I wish you had taken the trouble to find that out before we came,” I +said. + +He answered nothing, buzzing to himself softly, as he pursued his +thoughts. My temper was going. + +“What do you think has become of the sphere, anyhow?” I asked. + +“Lost,” he said, like a man who answers an uninteresting question. + +“Among those plants?” + +“Unless they find it.” + +“And then?” + +“How can I tell?” + +“Cavor,” I said, with a sort of hysterical bitterness, “things look +bright for my Company...” + +He made no answer. + +“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “Just think of all the trouble we took to get +into this pickle! What did we come for? What are we after? What was the +moon to us or we to the moon? We wanted too much, we tried too much. We +ought to have started the little things first. It was you proposed the +moon! Those Cavorite spring blinds! I am certain we could have worked +them for terrestrial purposes. Certain! Did you really understand what +I proposed? A steel cylinder—” + +“Rubbish!” said Cavor. + +We ceased to converse. + +For a time Cavor kept up a broken monologue without much help from me. + +“If they find it,” he began, “if they find it ... what will they do +with it? Well, that’s a question. It may be that’s _the_ question. They +won’t understand it, anyhow. If they understood that sort of thing they +would have come long since to the earth. Would they? Why shouldn’t +they? But they would have sent something—they couldn’t keep their hands +off such a possibility. No! But they will examine it. Clearly they are +intelligent and inquisitive. They will examine it—get inside it—trifle +with the studs. Off! ... That would mean the moon for us for all the +rest of our lives. Strange creatures, strange knowledge....” + +“As for strange knowledge—” said I, and language failed me. + +“Look here, Bedford,” said Cavor, “you came on this expedition of your +own free will.” + +“You said to me, ‘Call it prospecting’.” + +“There’s always risks in prospecting.” + +“Especially when you do it unarmed and without thinking out every +possibility.” + +“I was so taken up with the sphere. The thing rushed on us, and carried +us away.” + +“Rushed on _me_, you mean.” + +“Rushed on me just as much. How was I to know when I set to work on +molecular physics that the business would bring me here—of all places?” + +“It’s this accursed science,” I cried. “It’s the very Devil. The +mediæval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all +wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you +take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions +and new weapons—now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social +ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and misery!” + +“Anyhow, it’s no use your quarrelling with me _now_. These +creatures—these Selenites, or whatever we choose to call them—have got +us tied hand and foot. Whatever temper you choose to go through with it +in, you will have to go through with it.... We have experiences before +us that will need all our coolness.” + +He paused as if he required my assent. But I sat sulking. “Confound +your science!” I said. + +“The problem is communication. Gestures, I fear, will be different. +Pointing, for example. No creatures but men and monkeys point.” + +That was too obviously wrong for me. “Pretty nearly every animal,” I +cried, “points with its eyes or nose.” + +Cavor meditated over that. “Yes,” he said at last, “and we don’t. +There’s such differences—such differences!” + +“One might.... But how can I tell? There is speech. The sounds they +make, a sort of fluting and piping. I don’t see how we are to imitate +that. Is it their speech, that sort of thing? They may have different +senses, different means of communication. Of course they are minds and +we are minds; there must be something in common. Who knows how far we +may not get to an understanding?” + +“The things are outside us,” I said. “They’re more different from us +than the strangest animals on earth. They are a different clay. What is +the good of talking like this?” + +Cavor thought. “I don’t see that. Where there are minds they will have +something _similar_—even though they have been evolved on different +planets. Of course if it was a question of instincts, if we or they are +no more than animals—” + +“Well, _are_ they? They’re much more like ants on their hind legs than +human beings, and who ever got to any sort of understanding with ants?” + +“But these machines and clothing! No, I don’t hold with you, Bedford. +The difference is wide—” + +“It’s insurmountable.” + +“The resemblance must bridge it. I remember reading once a paper by the +late Professor Galton on the possibility of communication between the +planets. Unhappily, at that time it did not seem probable that that +would be of any material benefit to me, and I fear I did not give it +the attention I should have done—in view of this state of affairs. +Yet.... Now, let me see! + +“His idea was to begin with those broad truths that must underlie all +conceivable mental existences and establish a basis on those. The great +principles of geometry, to begin with. He proposed to take some leading +proposition of Euclid’s, and show by construction that its truth was +known to us, to demonstrate, for example, that the angles at the base +of an isosceles triangle are equal, and that if the equal sides be +produced the angles on the other side of the base are equal also, or +that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal +to the sum of the squares on the two other sides. By demonstrating our +knowledge of these things we should demonstrate our possession of a +reasonable intelligence.... Now, suppose I ... I might draw the +geometrical figure with a wet finger, or even trace it in the air....” + +He fell silent. I sat meditating his words. For a time his wild hope of +communication, of interpretation, with these weird beings held me. Then +that angry despair that was a part of my exhaustion and physical misery +resumed its sway. I perceived with a sudden novel vividness the +extraordinary folly of everything I had ever done. “Ass!” I said; “oh, +ass, unutterable ass.... I seem to exist only to go about doing +preposterous things. Why did we ever leave the thing? ... Hopping about +looking for patents and concessions in the craters of the moon!... If +only we had had the sense to fasten a handkerchief to a stick to show +where we had left the sphere!” + +I subsided, fuming. + +“It is clear,” meditated Cavor, “they are intelligent. One can +hypothecate certain things. As they have not killed us at once, they +must have ideas of mercy. Mercy! at any rate of restraint. Possibly of +intercourse. They may meet us. And this apartment and the glimpses we +had of its guardian. These fetters! A high degree of intelligence...” + +“I wish to heaven,” cried I, “I’d thought even twice! Plunge after +plunge. First one fluky start and then another. It was my confidence in +you! _Why_ didn’t I stick to my play? That was what I was equal to. +That was my world and the life I was made for. I could have finished +that play. I’m certain ... it was a good play. I had the scenario as +good as done. Then.... Conceive it! leaping to the moon! +Practically—I’ve thrown my life away! That old woman in the inn near +Canterbury had better sense.” + +I looked up, and stopped in mid-sentence. The darkness had given place +to that bluish light again. The door was opening, and several noiseless +Selenites were coming into the chamber. I became quite still, staring +at their grotesque faces. + +Then suddenly my sense of disagreeable strangeness changed to interest. +I perceived that the foremost and second carried bowls. One elemental +need at least our minds could understand in common. They were bowls of +some metal that, like our fetters, looked dark in that bluish light; +and each contained a number of whitish fragments. All the cloudy pain +and misery that oppressed me rushed together and took the shape of +hunger. I eyed these bowls wolfishly, and, though it returned to me in +dreams, at that time it seemed a small matter that at the end of the +arms that lowered one towards me were not hands, but a sort of flap and +thumb, like the end of an elephant’s trunk. The stuff in the bowl was +loose in texture, and whitish brown in colour—rather like lumps of some +cold souffle, and it smelt faintly like mushrooms. From a partially +divided carcass of a mooncalf that we presently saw, I am inclined to +believe it must have been mooncalf flesh. + +My hands were so tightly chained that I could barely contrive to reach +the bowl; but when they saw the effort I made, two of them dexterously +released one of the turns about my wrist. Their tentacle hands were +soft and cold to my skin. I immediately seized a mouthful of the food. +It had the same laxness in texture that all organic structures seem to +have upon the moon; it tasted rather like a gauffre or a damp meringue, +but in no way was it disagreeable. I took two other mouthfuls. “I +_wanted_—foo’!” said I, tearing off a still larger piece.... + +For a time we ate with an utter absence of self-consciousness. We ate +and presently drank like tramps in a soup kitchen. Never before nor +since have I been hungry to the ravenous pitch, and save that I have +had this very experience I could never have believed that, a quarter of +a million of miles out of our proper world, in utter perplexity of +soul, surrounded, watched, touched by beings more grotesque and inhuman +than the worst creations of a nightmare, it would be possible for me to +eat in utter forgetfulness of all these things. They stood about us +watching us, and ever and again making a slight elusive twittering that +stood, I suppose, in the stead of speech. I did not even shiver at +their touch. And when the first zeal of my feeding was over, I could +note that Cavor, too, had been eating with the same shameless abandon. + + + + +XIV. +Experiments in intercourse + + +When at last we had made an end of eating, the Selenites linked our +hands closely together again, and then untwisted the chains about our +feet and rebound them, so as to give us a limited freedom of movement. +Then they unfastened the chains about our waists. To do all this they +had to handle us freely, and ever and again one of their queer heads +came down close to my face, or a soft tentacle-hand touched my head or +neck. I don’t remember that I was afraid then or repelled by their +proximity. I think that our incurable anthropomorphism made us imagine +there were human heads inside their masks. The skin, like everything +else, looked bluish, but that was on account of the light; and it was +hard and shiny, quite in the beetle-wing fashion, not soft, or moist, +or hairy, as a vertebrated animal’s would be. Along the crest of the +head was a low ridge of whitish spines running from back to front, and +a much larger ridge curved on either side over the eyes. The Selenite +who untied me used his mouth to help his hands. + +“They seem to be releasing us,” said Cavor. “Remember we are on the +moon! Make no sudden movements!” + +“Are you going to try that geometry?” + +“If I get a chance. But, of course, they may make an advance first.” + +We remained passive, and the Selenites, having finished their +arrangements, stood back from us, and seemed to be looking at us. I say +seemed to be, because as their eyes were at the side and not in front, +one had the same difficulty in determining the direction in which they +were looking as one has in the case of a hen or a fish. They conversed +with one another in their reedy tones, that seemed to me impossible to +imitate or define. The door behind us opened wider, and, glancing over +my shoulder, I saw a vague large space beyond, in which quite a little +crowd of Selenites were standing. They seemed a curiously miscellaneous +rabble. + +“Do they want us to imitate those sounds?” I asked Cavor. + +“I don’t think so,” he said. + +“It seems to me that they are trying to make us understand something.” + +“I can’t make anything of their gestures. Do you notice this one, who +is worrying with his head like a man with an uncomfortable collar?” + +“Let us shake our heads at him.” + +We did that, and finding it ineffectual, attempted an imitation of the +Selenites’ movements. That seemed to interest them. At any rate they +all set up the same movement. But as that seemed to lead to nothing, we +desisted at last and so did they, and fell into a piping argument among +themselves. Then one of them, shorter and very much thicker than the +others, and with a particularly wide mouth, squatted down suddenly +beside Cavor, and put his hands and feet in the same posture as Cavor’s +were bound, and then by a dexterous movement stood up. + +“Cavor,” I shouted, “they want us to get up!” + +He stared open-mouthed. “That’s it!” he said. + +And with much heaving and grunting, because our hands were tied +together, we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way +for our elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As +soon as we were on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and patted each +of our faces with his tentacles, and walked towards the open doorway. +That also was plain enough, and we followed him. We saw that four of +the Selenites standing in the doorway were much taller than the others, +and clothed in the same manner as those we had seen in the crater, +namely, with spiked round helmets and cylindrical body-cases, and that +each of the four carried a goad with spike and guard made of that same +dull-looking metal as the bowls. These four closed about us, one on +either side of each of us, as we emerged from our chamber into the +cavern from which the light had come. + +We did not get our impression of that cavern all at once. Our attention +was taken up by the movements and attitudes of the Selenites +immediately about us, and by the necessity of controlling our motion, +lest we should startle and alarm them and ourselves by some excessive +stride. In front of us was the short, thick-set being who had solved +the problem of asking us to get up, moving with gestures that seemed, +almost all of them, intelligible to us, inviting us to follow him. His +spout-like face turned from one of us to the other with a quickness +that was clearly interrogative. For a time, I say, we were taken up +with these things. + +But at last the great place that formed a background to our movements +asserted itself. It became apparent that the source of much, at least, +of the tumult of sounds which had filled our ears ever since we had +recovered from the stupefaction of the fungus was a vast mass of +machinery in active movement, whose flying and whirling parts were +visible indistinctly over the heads and between the bodies of the +Selenites who walked about us. And not only did the web of sounds that +filled the air proceed from this mechanism, but also the peculiar blue +light that irradiated the whole place. We had taken it as a natural +thing that a subterranean cavern should be artificially lit, and even +now, though the fact was patent to my eyes, I did not really grasp its +import until presently the darkness came. The meaning and structure of +this huge apparatus we saw I cannot explain, because we neither of us +learnt what it was for or how it worked. One after another, big shafts +of metal flung out and up from its centre, their heads travelling in +what seemed to me to be a parabolic path; each dropped a sort of +dangling arm as it rose towards the apex of its flight and plunged down +into a vertical cylinder, forcing this down before it. About it moved +the shapes of tenders, little figures that seemed vaguely different +from the beings about us. As each of the three dangling arms of the +machine plunged down, there was a clank and then a roaring, and out of +the top of the vertical cylinder came pouring this incandescent +substance that lit the place, and ran over as milk runs over a boiling +pot, and dripped luminously into a tank of light below. It was a cold +blue light, a sort of phosphorescent glow but infinitely brighter, and +from the tanks into which it fell it ran in conduits athwart the +cavern. + +Thud, thud, thud, thud, came the sweeping arms of this unintelligible +apparatus, and the light substance hissed and poured. At first the +thing seemed only reasonably large and near to us, and then I saw how +exceedingly little the Selenites upon it seemed, and I realised the +full immensity of cavern and machine. I looked from this tremendous +affair to the faces of the Selenites with a new respect. I stopped, and +Cavor stopped, and stared at this thunderous engine. + +“But this is stupendous!” I said. “What can it be for?” + +Cavor’s blue-lit face was full of an intelligent respect. “I can’t +dream! Surely these beings— Men could not make a thing like that! Look +at those arms, are they on connecting rods?” + +The thick-set Selenite had gone some paces unheeded. He came back and +stood between us and the great machine. I avoided seeing him, because I +guessed somehow that his idea was to beckon us onward. He walked away +in the direction he wished us to go, and turned and came back, and +flicked our faces to attract our attention. + +Cavor and I looked at one another. + +“Cannot we show him we are interested in the machine?” I said. + +“Yes,” said Cavor. “We’ll try that.” He turned to our guide and smiled, +and pointed to the machine, and pointed again, and then to his head, +and then to the machine. By some defect of reasoning he seemed to +imagine that broken English might help these gestures. “Me look ‘im,” +he said, “me think ‘im very much. Yes.” + +His behaviour seemed to check the Selenites in their desire for our +progress for a moment. They faced one another, their queer heads moved, +the twittering voices came quick and liquid. Then one of them, a lean, +tall creature, with a sort of mantle added to the puttee in which the +others were dressed, twisted his elephant trunk of a hand about Cavor’s +waist, and pulled him gently to follow our guide, who again went on +ahead. Cavor resisted. “We may just as well begin explaining ourselves +now. They may think we are new animals, a new sort of mooncalf perhaps! +It is most important that we should show an intelligent interest from +the outset.” + +He began to shake his head violently. “No, no,” he said, “me not come +on one minute. Me look at ‘im.” + +“Isn’t there some geometrical point you might bring in _apropos_ of +that affair?” I suggested, as the Selenites conferred again. + +“Possibly a parabolic—” he began. + +He yelled loudly, and leaped six feet or more! + +One of the four armed moon-men had pricked him with a goad! + +I turned on the goad-bearer behind me with a swift threatening gesture, +and he started back. This and Cavor’s sudden shout and leap clearly +astonished all the Selenites. They receded hastily, facing us. For one +of those moments that seem to last for ever, we stood in angry protest, +with a scattered semicircle of these inhuman beings about us. + +“He pricked me!” said Cavor, with a catching of the voice. + +“I saw him,” I answered. + +“Confound it!” I said to the Selenites; “we’re not going to stand that! +What on earth do you take us for?” + +I glanced quickly right and left. Far away across the blue wilderness +of cavern I saw a number of other Selenites running towards us; broad +and slender they were, and one with a larger head than the others. The +cavern spread wide and low, and receded in every direction into +darkness. Its roof, I remember, seemed to bulge down as if with the +weight of the vast thickness of rocks that prisoned us. There was no +way out of it—no way out of it. Above, below, in every direction, was +the unknown, and these inhuman creatures, with goads and gestures, +confronting us, and we two unsupported men! + + + + +XV. +The Giddy Bridge + + +Just for a moment that hostile pause endured. I suppose that both we +and the Selenites did some very rapid thinking. My clearest impression +was that there was nothing to put my back against, and that we were +bound to be surrounded and killed. The overwhelming folly of our +presence there loomed over me in black, enormous reproach. Why had I +ever launched myself on this mad, inhuman expedition? + +Cavor came to my side and laid his hand on my arm. His pale and +terrified face was ghastly in the blue light. + +“We can’t do anything,” he said. “It’s a mistake. They don’t +understand. We must go. As they want us to go.” + +I looked down at him, and then at the fresh Selenites who were coming +to help their fellows. “If I had my hands free—” + +“It’s no use,” he panted. + +“No.” + +“We’ll go.” + +And he turned about and led the way in the direction that had been +indicated for us. + +I followed, trying to look as subdued as possible, and feeling at the +chains about my wrists. My blood was boiling. I noted nothing more of +that cavern, though it seemed to take a long time before we had marched +across it, or if I noted anything I forgot it as I saw it. My thoughts +were concentrated, I think, upon my chains and the Selenites, and +particularly upon the helmeted ones with the goads. At first they +marched parallel with us, and at a respectful distance, but presently +they were overtaken by three others, and then they drew nearer, until +they were within arms length again. I winced like a beaten horse as +they came near to us. The shorter, thicker Selenite marched at first on +our right flank, but presently came in front of us again. + +How well the picture of that grouping has bitten into my brain; the +back of Cavor’s downcast head just in front of me, and the dejected +droop of his shoulders, and our guide’s gaping visage, perpetually +jerking about him, and the goad-bearers on either side, watchful, yet +open-mouthed—a blue monochrome. And after all, I _do_ remember one +other thing besides the purely personal affair, which is, that a sort +of gutter came presently across the floor of the cavern, and then ran +along by the side of the path of rock we followed. And it was full of +that same bright blue luminous stuff that flowed out of the great +machine. I walked close beside it, and I can testify it radiated not a +particle of heat. It was brightly shining, and yet it was neither +warmer nor colder than anything else in the cavern. + +Clang, clang, clang, we passed right under the thumping levers of +another vast machine, and so came at last to a wide tunnel, in which we +could even hear the pad, pad, of our shoeless feet, and which, save for +the trickling thread of blue to the right of us, was quite unlit. The +shadows made gigantic travesties of our shapes and those of the +Selenites on the irregular wall and roof of the tunnel. Ever and again +crystals in the walls of the tunnel scintillated like gems, ever and +again the tunnel expanded into a stalactitic cavern, or gave off +branches that vanished into darkness. + +We seemed to be marching down that tunnel for a long time. “Trickle, +trickle,” went the flowing light very softly, and our footfalls and +their echoes made an irregular paddle, paddle. My mind settled down to +the question of my chains. If I were to slip off one turn _so_, and +then to twist it _so_ ... + +If I tried to do it very gradually, would they see I was slipping my +wrist out of the looser turn? If they did, what would they do? + +“Bedford,” said Cavor, “it goes down. It keeps on going down.” + +His remark roused me from my sullen pre-occupation. + +“If they wanted to kill us,” he said, dropping back to come level with +me, “there is no reason why they should not have done it.” + +“No,” I admitted, “that’s true.” + +“They don’t understand us,” he said, “they think we are merely strange +animals, some wild sort of mooncalf birth, perhaps. It will be only +when they have observed us better that they will begin to think we have +minds—” + +“When you trace those geometrical problems,” said I. + +“It may be that.” + +We tramped on for a space. + +“You see,” said Cavor, “these may be Selenites of a lower class.” + +“The infernal fools!” said I viciously, glancing at their exasperating +faces. + +“If we endure what they do to us—” + +“We’ve got to endure it,” said I. + +“There may be others less stupid. This is the mere outer fringe of +their world. It must go down and down, cavern, passage, tunnel, down at +last to the sea—hundreds of miles below.” + +His words made me think of the mile or so of rock and tunnel that might +be over our heads already. It was like a weight dropping on my +shoulders. “Away from the sun and air,” I said. “Even a mine half a +mile deep is stuffy.” + +“This is not, anyhow. It’s probable—Ventilation! The air would blow +from the dark side of the moon to the sunlit, and all the carbonic acid +would well out there and feed those plants. Up this tunnel, for +example, there is quite a breeze. And what a world it must be. The +earnest we have in that shaft, and those machines—” + +“And the goad,” I said. “Don’t forget the goad!” + +He walked a little in front of me for a time. + +“Even that goad—” he said. + +“Well?” + +“I was angry at the time. But—it was perhaps necessary we should get +on. They have different skins, and probably different nerves. They may +not understand our objection—just as a being from Mars might not like +our earthly habit of nudging.” + +“They’d better be careful how they nudge _me_.” + +“And about that geometry. After all, their way is a way of +understanding, too. They begin with the elements of life and not of +thought. Food. Compulsion. Pain. They strike at fundamentals.” + +“There’s no doubt about _that_,” I said. + +He went on to talk of the enormous and wonderful world into which we +were being taken. I realised slowly from his tone, that even now he was +not absolutely in despair at the prospect of going ever deeper into +this inhuman planet-burrow. His mind ran on machines and invention, to +the exclusion of a thousand dark things that beset me. It wasn’t that +he intended to make any use of these things, he simply wanted to know +them. + +“After all,” he said, “this is a tremendous occasion. It is the meeting +of two worlds! What are we going to see? Think of what is below us +here.” + +“We shan’t see much if the light isn’t better,” I remarked. + +“This is only the outer crust. Down below— On this scale— There will be +everything. Do you notice how different they seem one from another? The +story we shall take back!” + +“Some rare sort of animal,” I said, “might comfort himself in that way +while they were bringing him to the Zoo.... It doesn’t follow that we +are going to be shown all these things.” + +“When they find we have reasonable minds,” said Cavor, “they will want +to learn about the earth. Even if they have no generous emotions, they +will teach in order to learn.... And the things they must know! The +unanticipated things!” + +He went on to speculate on the possibility of their knowing things he +had never hoped to learn on earth, speculating in that way, with a raw +wound from that goad already in his skin! Much that he said I forget, +for my attention was drawn to the fact that the tunnel along which we +had been marching was opening out wider and wider. We seemed, from the +feeling of the air, to be going out into a huge space. But how big the +space might really be we could not tell, because it was unlit. Our +little stream of light ran in a dwindling thread and vanished far +ahead. Presently the rocky walls had vanished altogether on either +hand. There was nothing to be seen but the path in front of us and the +trickling hurrying rivulet of blue phosphorescence. The figures of +Cavor and the guiding Selenite marched before me, the sides of their +legs and heads that were towards the rivulet were clear and bright +blue, their darkened sides, now that the reflection of the tunnel wall +no longer lit them, merged indistinguishably in the darkness beyond. + +And soon I perceived that we were approaching a declivity of some sort, +because the little blue stream dipped suddenly out of sight. + +In another moment, as it seemed, we had reached the edge. The shining +stream gave one meander of hesitation and then rushed over. It fell to +a depth at which the sound of its descent was absolutely lost to us. +Far below was a bluish glow, a sort of blue mist—at an infinite +distance below. And the darkness the stream dropped out of became +utterly void and black, save that a thing like a plank projected from +the edge of the cliff and stretched out and faded and vanished +altogether. There was a warm air blowing up out of the gulf. + +For a moment I and Cavor stood as near the edge as we dared, peering +into a blue-tinged profundity. And then our guide was pulling at my +arm. + +Then he left me, and walked to the end of that plank and stepped upon +it, looking back. Then when he perceived we watched him, he turned +about and went on along it, walking as surely as though he was on firm +earth. For a moment his form was distinct, then he became a blue blur, +and then vanished into the obscurity. I became aware of some vague +shape looming darkly out of the black. + +There was a pause. “Surely!—” said Cavor. + +One of the other Selenites walked a few paces out upon the plank, and +turned and looked back at us unconcernedly. The others stood ready to +follow after us. Our guide’s expectant figure reappeared. He was +returning to see why we had not advanced. + +“What is that beyond there?” I asked. + +“I can’t see.” + +“We can’t cross this at any price,” said I. + +“I could not go three steps on it,” said Cavor, “even with my hands +free.” + +We looked at each other’s drawn faces in blank consternation. + +“They can’t know what it is to be giddy!” said Cavor. + +“It’s quite impossible for us to walk that plank.” + +“I don’t believe they see as we do. I’ve been watching them. I wonder +if they know this is simply blackness for us. How can we make them +understand?” + +“Anyhow, we must make them understand.” + +I think we said these things with a vague half hope the Selenites might +somehow understand. I knew quite clearly that all that was needed was +an explanation. Then as I saw their faces, I realised that an +explanation was impossible. Just here it was that our resemblances were +not going to bridge our differences. Well, I wasn’t going to walk the +plank, anyhow. I slipped my wrist very quickly out of the coil of chain +that was loose, and then began to twist my wrists in opposite +directions. I was standing nearest to the bridge, and as I did this two +of the Selenites laid hold of me, and pulled me gently towards it. + +I shook my head violently. “No go,” I said, “no use. You don’t +understand.” + +Another Selenite added his compulsion. I was forced to step forward. + +“I’ve got an idea,” said Cavor; but I knew his ideas. + +“Look here!” I exclaimed to the Selenites. “Steady on! It’s all very +well for you—” + +I sprang round upon my heel. I burst out into curses. For one of the +armed Selenites had stabbed me behind with his goad. + +I wrenched my wrists free from the little tentacles that held them. I +turned on the goad-bearer. “Confound you!” I cried. “I’ve warned you of +that. What on earth do you think I’m made of, to stick that into me? If +you touch me again—” + +By way of answer he pricked me forthwith. + +I heard Cavor’s voice in alarm and entreaty. Even then I think he +wanted to compromise with these creatures. “I say, Bedford,” he cried, +“I know a way!” But the sting of that second stab seemed to set free +some pent-up reserve of energy in my being. Instantly the link of the +wrist-chain snapped, and with it snapped all considerations that had +held us unresisting in the hands of these moon creatures. For that +second, at least, I was mad with fear and anger. I took no thought of +consequences. I hit straight out at the face of the thing with the +goad. The chain was twisted round my fist. + +There came another of these beastly surprises of which the moon world +is full. + +My mailed hand seemed to go clean through him. He smashed like—like +some softish sort of sweet with liquid in it! He broke right in! He +squelched and splashed. It was like hitting a damp toadstool. The +flimsy body went spinning a dozen yards, and fell with a flabby impact. +I was astonished. I was incredulous that any living thing could be so +flimsy. For an instant I could have believed the whole thing a dream. + +Then it had become real and imminent again. Neither Cavor nor the other +Selenites seemed to have done anything from the time when I had turned +about to the time when the dead Selenite hit the ground. Every one +stood back from us two, every one alert. That arrest seemed to last at +least a second after the Selenite was down. Every one must have been +taking the thing in. I seem to remember myself standing with my arm +half retracted, trying also to take it in. “What next?” clamoured my +brain; “what next?” Then in a moment every one was moving! + +I perceived we must get our chains loose, and that before we could do +this these Selenites had to be beaten off. I faced towards the group of +the three goad-bearers. Instantly one threw his goad at me. It swished +over my head, and I suppose went flying into the abyss behind. + +I leaped right at him with all my might as the goad flew over me. He +turned to run as I jumped, and I bore him to the ground, came down +right upon him, and slipped upon his smashed body and fell. He seemed +to wriggle under my foot. + +I came into a sitting position, and on every hand the blue backs of the +Selenites were receding into the darkness. I bent a link by main force +and untwisted the chain that had hampered me about the ankles, and +sprang to my feet, with the chain in my hand. Another goad, flung +javelin-wise, whistled by me, and I made a rush towards the darkness +out of which it had come. Then I turned back towards Cavor, who was +still standing in the light of the rivulet near the gulf convulsively +busy with his wrists, and at the same time jabbering nonsense about his +idea. + +“Come on!” I cried. + +“My hands!” he answered. + +Then, realising that I dared not run back to him, because my +ill-calculated steps might carry me over the edge, he came shuffling +towards me, with his hands held out before him. + +I gripped his chains at once to unfasten them. + +“Where are they?” he panted. + +“Run away. They’ll come back. They’re throwing things! Which way shall +we go?” + +“By the light. To that tunnel. Eh?” + +“Yes,” said I, and his hands were free. + +I dropped on my knees and fell to work on his ankle bonds. Whack came +something—I know not what—and splashed the livid streamlet into drops +about us. Far away on our right a piping and whistling began. + +I whipped the chain off his feet, and put it in his hand. “Hit with +that!” I said, and without waiting for an answer, set off in big bounds +along the path by which we had come. I had a nasty sort of feeling that +these things could jump out of the darkness on to my back. I heard the +impact of his leaps come following after me. + +We ran in vast strides. But that running, you must understand, was an +altogether different thing from any running on earth. On earth one +leaps and almost instantly hits the ground again, but on the moon, +because of its weaker pull, one shot through the air for several +seconds before one came to earth. In spite of our violent hurry this +gave an effect of long pauses, pauses in which one might have counted +seven or eight. “Step,” and one soared off! All sorts of questions ran +through my mind: “Where are the Selenites? What will they do? Shall we +ever get to that tunnel? Is Cavor far behind? Are they likely to cut +him off?” Then whack, stride, and off again for another step. + +I saw a Selenite running in front of me, his legs going exactly as a +man’s would go on earth, saw him glance over his shoulder, and heard +him shriek as he ran aside out of my way into the darkness. He was, I +think, our guide, but I am not sure. Then in another vast stride the +walls of rock had come into view on either hand, and in two more +strides I was in the tunnel, and tempering my pace to its low roof. I +went on to a bend, then stopped and turned back, and plug, plug, plug, +Cavor came into view, splashing into the stream of blue light at every +stride, and grew larger and blundered into me. We stood clutching each +other. For a moment, at least, we had shaken off our captors and were +alone. + +We were both very much out of breath. We spoke in panting, broken +sentences. + +“You’ve spoilt it all!” panted Cavor. “Nonsense,” I cried. “It was that +or death!” + +“What are we to do?” + +“Hide.” + +“How can we?” + +“It’s dark enough.” + +“But where?” + +“Up one of these side caverns.” + +“And then?” + +“Think.” + +“Right—come on.” + +We strode on, and presently came to a radiating dark cavern. Cavor was +in front. He hesitated, and chose a black mouth that seemed to promise +good hiding. He went towards it and turned. + +“It’s dark,” he said. + +“Your legs and feet will light us. You’re wet with that luminous +stuff.” + +“But—” + +A tumult of sounds, and in particular a sound like a clanging gong, +advancing up the main tunnel, became audible. It was horribly +suggestive of a tumultuous pursuit. We made a bolt for the unlit side +cavern forthwith. As we ran along it our way was lit by the irradiation +of Cavor’s legs. “It’s lucky,” I panted, “they took off our boots, or +we should fill this place with clatter.” On we rushed, taking as small +steps as we could to avoid striking the roof of the cavern. After a +time we seemed to be gaining on the uproar. It became muffled, it +dwindled, it died away. + +I stopped and looked back, and I heard the pad, pad of Cavor’s feet +receding. Then he stopped also. “Bedford,” he whispered; “there’s a +sort of light in front of us.” + +I looked, and at first could see nothing. Then I perceived his head and +shoulders dimly outlined against a fainter darkness. I saw, also, that +this mitigation of the darkness was not blue, as all the other light +within the moon had been, but a pallid grey, a very vague, faint white, +the daylight colour. Cavor noted this difference as soon, or sooner, +than I did, and I think, too, that it filled him with much the same +wild hope. + +“Bedford,” he whispered, and his voice trembled. “That light—it is +possible—” + +He did not dare to say the thing he hoped. Then came a pause. Suddenly +I knew by the sound of his feet that he was striding towards that +pallor. I followed him with a beating heart. + + + + +XVI. +Points of View + + +The light grew stronger as we advanced. In a little time it was nearly +as strong as the phosphorescence on Cavor’s legs. Our tunnel was +expanding into a cavern, and this new light was at the farther end of +it. I perceived something that set my hopes leaping and bounding. + +“Cavor,” I said, “it comes from above! I am certain it comes from +above!” + +He made no answer, but hurried on. + +Indisputably it was a grey light, a silvery light. + +In another moment we were beneath it. It filtered down through a chink +in the walls of the cavern, and as I stared up, drip, came a drop of +water upon my face. I started and stood aside—drip, fell another drop +quite audibly on the rocky floor. + +“Cavor,” I said, “if one of us lifts the other, he can reach that +crack!” + +“I’ll lift you,” he said, and incontinently hoisted me as though I was +a baby. + +I thrust an arm into the crack, and just at my finger tips found a +little ledge by which I could hold. I could see the white light was +very much brighter now. I pulled myself up by two fingers with scarcely +an effort, though on earth I weigh twelve stone, reached to a still +higher corner of rock, and so got my feet on the narrow ledge. I stood +up and searched up the rocks with my fingers; the cleft broadened out +upwardly. “It’s climbable,” I said to Cavor. “Can you jump up to my +hand if I hold it down to you?” + +I wedged myself between the sides of the cleft, rested knee and foot on +the ledge, and extended a hand. I could not see Cavor, but I could hear +the rustle of his movements as he crouched to spring. Then whack and he +was hanging to my arm—and no heavier than a kitten! I lugged him up +until he had a hand on my ledge, and could release me. + +“Confound it!” I said, “any one could be a mountaineer on the moon;” +and so set myself in earnest to the climbing. For a few minutes I +clambered steadily, and then I looked up again. The cleft opened out +steadily, and the light was brighter. Only— + +It was not daylight after all. + +In another moment I could see what it was, and at the sight I could +have beaten my head against the rocks with disappointment. For I beheld +simply an irregularly sloping open space, and all over its slanting +floor stood a forest of little club-shaped fungi, each shining +gloriously with that pinkish silvery light. For a moment I stared at +their soft radiance, then sprang forward and upward among them. I +plucked up half a dozen and flung them against the rocks, and then sat +down, laughing bitterly, as Cavor’s ruddy face came into view. + +“It’s phosphorescence again!” I said. “No need to hurry. Sit down and +make yourself at home.” And as he spluttered over our disappointment, I +began to lob more of these growths into the cleft. + +“I thought it was daylight,” he said. + +“Daylight!” cried I. “Daybreak, sunset, clouds, and windy skies! Shall +we ever see such things again?” + +As I spoke, a little picture of our world seemed to rise before me, +bright and little and clear, like the background of some old Italian +picture. “The sky that changes, and the sea that changes, and the hills +and the green trees and the towns and cities shining in the sun. Think +of a wet roof at sunset, Cavor! Think of the windows of a westward +house!” He made no answer. + +“Here we are burrowing in this beastly world that isn’t a world, with +its inky ocean hidden in some abominable blackness below, and outside +that torrid day and that death stillness of night. And all these things +that are chasing us now, beastly men of leather—insect men, that come +out of a nightmare! After all, they’re right! What business have we +here smashing them and disturbing their world! For all we know the +whole planet is up and after us already. In a minute we may hear them +whimpering, and their gongs going. What are we to do? Where are we to +go? Here we are as comfortable as snakes from Jamrach’s loose in a +Surbiton villa!” + +“It was your fault,” said Cavor. + +“My fault!” I shouted. “Good Lord!” + +“I had an idea!” + +“Curse your ideas!” + +“If we had refused to budge—” + +“Under those goads?” + +“Yes. They would have carried us!” + +“Over that bridge?” + +“Yes. They must have carried us from outside.” + +“I’d rather be carried by a fly across a ceiling.” + +“Good Heavens!” + +I resumed my destruction of the fungi. Then suddenly I saw something +that struck me even then. “Cavor,” I said, “these chains are of gold!” + +He was thinking intently, with his hands gripping his cheeks. He turned +his head slowly and stared at me, and when I had repeated my words, at +the twisted chain about his right hand. “So they are,” he said, “so +they are.” His face lost its transitory interest even as he looked. He +hesitated for a moment, then went on with his interrupted meditation. I +sat for a space puzzling over the fact that I had only just observed +this, until I considered the blue light in which we had been, and which +had taken all the colour out of the metal. And from that discovery I +also started upon a train of thought that carried me wide and far. I +forgot that I had just been asking what business we had in the moon. +Gold.... + +It was Cavor who spoke first. “It seems to me that there are two +courses open to us.” + +“Well?” + +“Either we can attempt to make our way—fight our way if necessary—out +to the exterior again, and then hunt for our sphere until we find it, +or the cold of the night comes to kill us, or else—” + +He paused. “Yes?” I said, though I knew what was coming. + +“We might attempt once more to establish some sort of understanding +with the minds of the people in the moon.” + +“So far as I’m concerned—it’s the first.” + +“I doubt.” + +“I don’t.” + +“You see,” said Cavor, “I do not think we can judge the Selenites by +what we have seen of them. Their central world, their civilised world +will be far below in the profounder caverns about their sea. This +region of the crust in which we are is an outlying district, a pastoral +region. At any rate, that is my interpretation. These Selenites we have +seen may be only the equivalent of cowboys and engine-tenders. Their +use of goads—in all probability mooncalf goads—the lack of imagination +they show in expecting us to be able to do just what they can do, their +indisputable brutality, all seem to point to something of that sort. +But if we endured—” + +“Neither of us could endure a six-inch plank across the bottomless pit +for very long.” + +“No,” said Cavor; “but then—” + +“I _won’t_,” I said. + +He discovered a new line of possibilities. “Well, suppose we got +ourselves into some corner, where we could defend ourselves against +these hinds and labourers. If, for example, we could hold out for a +week or so, it is probable that the news of our appearance would filter +down to the more intelligent and populous parts—” + +“If they exist.” + +“They must exist, or whence came those tremendous machines?” + +“That’s possible, but it’s the worst of the two chances.” + +“We might write up inscriptions on walls—” + +“How do we know their eyes would see the sort of marks we made?” + +“If we cut them—” + +“That’s possible, of course.” + +I took up a new thread of thought. “After all,” I said, “I suppose you +don’t think these Selenites so infinitely wiser than men.” + +“They must know a lot more—or at least a lot of different things.” + +“Yes, but—” I hesitated. + +“I think you’ll quite admit, Cavor, that you’re rather an exceptional +man.” + +“How?” + +“Well, you—you’re a rather lonely man—have been, that is. You haven’t +married.” + +“Never wanted to. But why—” + +“And you never grew richer than you happened to be?” + +“Never wanted that either.” + +“You’ve just rooted after knowledge?” + +“Well, a certain curiosity is natural—” + +“You think so. That’s just it. You think every other mind wants to +_know_. I remember once, when I asked you why you conducted all these +researches, you said you wanted your F.R.S., and to have the stuff +called Cavorite, and things like that. You know perfectly well you +didn’t do it for that; but at the time my question took you by +surprise, and you felt you ought to have something to look like a +motive. Really you conducted researches because you _had_ to. It’s your +twist.” + +“Perhaps it is—” + +“It isn’t one man in a million has that twist. Most men want—well, +various things, but very few want knowledge for its own sake. _I_ +don’t, I know perfectly well. Now, these Selenites seem to be a +driving, busy sort of being, but how do you know that even the most +intelligent will take an interest in us or our world? I don’t believe +they’ll even know we have a world. They never come out at night—they’d +freeze if they did. They’ve probably never seen any heavenly body at +all except the blazing sun. How are they to know there is another +world? What does it matter to them if they do? Well, even if they +_have_ had a glimpse of a few stars, or even of the earth crescent, +what of that? Why should people living _inside_ a planet trouble to +observe that sort of thing? Men wouldn’t have done it except for the +seasons and sailing; why should the moon people?... + +“Well, suppose there are a few philosophers like yourself. They are +just the very Selenites who’ll never have heard of our existence. +Suppose a Selenite had dropped on the earth when you were at Lympne, +you’d have been the last man in the world to hear he had come. You +never read a newspaper! You see the chances against you. Well, it’s for +these chances we’re sitting here doing nothing while precious time is +flying. I tell you we’ve got into a fix. We’ve come unarmed, we’ve lost +our sphere, we’ve got no food, we’ve shown ourselves to the Selenites, +and made them think we’re strange, strong, dangerous animals; and +unless these Selenites are perfect fools, they’ll set about now and +hunt us till they find us, and when they find us they’ll try to take us +if they can, and kill us if they can’t, and that’s the end of the +matter. If they take us, they’ll probably kill us, through some +misunderstanding. After we’re done for, they may discuss us perhaps, +but we shan’t get much fun out of that.” + +“Go on.” + +“On the other hand, here’s gold knocking about like cast iron at home. +If only we can get some of it back, if only we can find our sphere +again before they do, and get back, then—” + +“Yes?” + +“We might put the thing on a sounder footing. Come back in a bigger +sphere with guns.” + +“Good Lord!” cried Cavor, as though that was horrible. + +I shied another luminous fungus down the cleft. + +“Look here, Cavor,” I said, “I’ve half the voting power anyhow in this +affair, and this is a case for a practical man. I’m a practical man, +and you are not. I’m not going to trust to Selenites and geometrical +diagrams if I can help it. That’s all. Get back. Drop all this +secrecy—or most of it. And come again.” + +He reflected. “When I came to the moon,” he said, “I ought to have come +alone.” + +“The question before the meeting,” I said, “is how to get back to the +sphere.” + +For a time we nursed our knees in silence. Then he seemed to decide for +my reasons. + +“I think,” he said, “one can get data. It is clear that while the sun +is on this side of the moon the air will be blowing through this planet +sponge from the dark side hither. On this side, at any rate, the air +will be expanding and flowing out of the moon caverns into the +craters.... Very well, there’s a draught here.” + +“So there is.” + +“And that means that this is not a dead end; somewhere behind us this +cleft goes on and up. The draught is blowing up, and that is the way we +have to go. If we try to get up any sort of chimney or gully there is, +we shall not only get out of these passages where they are hunting for +us—” + +“But suppose the gully is too narrow?” + +“We’ll come down again.” + +“Ssh!” I said suddenly; “what’s that?” + +We listened. At first it was an indistinct murmur, and then one picked +out the clang of a gong. “They must think we are mooncalves,” said I, +“to be frightened at that.” + +“They’re coming along that passage,” said Cavor. + +“They must be.” + +“They’ll not think of the cleft. They’ll go past.” + +I listened again for a space. “This time,” I whispered, “they’re likely +to have some sort of weapon.” + +Then suddenly I sprang to my feet. “Good heavens, Cavor!” I cried. “But +they _will!_ They’ll see the fungi I have been pitching down. They’ll—” + +I didn’t finish my sentence. I turned about and made a leap over the +fungus tops towards the upper end of the cavity. I saw that the space +turned upward and became a draughty cleft again, ascending to +impenetrable darkness. I was about to clamber up into this, and then +with a happy inspiration turned back. + +“What are you doing?” asked Cavor. + +“Go on!” said I, and went back and got two of the shining fungi, and +putting one into the breast pocket of my flannel jacket, so that it +stuck out to light our climbing, went back with the other for Cavor. +The noise of the Selenites was now so loud that it seemed they must be +already beneath the cleft. But it might be they would have difficulty +in clambering in to it, or might hesitate to ascend it against our +possible resistance. At any rate, we had now the comforting knowledge +of the enormous muscular superiority our birth in another planet gave +us. In other minute I was clambering with gigantic vigour after Cavor’s +blue-lit heels. + + + + +XVII. +The Fight in the Cave of the Moon Butchers + + +I do not know how far we clambered before we came to the grating. It +may be we ascended only a few hundred feet, but at the time it seemed +to me we might have hauled and jammed and hopped and wedged ourselves +through a mile or more of vertical ascent. Whenever I recall that time, +there comes into my head the heavy clank of our golden chains that +followed every movement. Very soon my knuckles and knees were raw, and +I had a bruise on one cheek. After a time the first violence of our +efforts diminished, and our movements became more deliberate and less +painful. The noise of the pursuing Selenites had died away altogether. +It seemed almost as though they had not traced us up the crack after +all, in spite of the tell-tale heap of broken fungi that must have lain +beneath it. At times the cleft narrowed so much that we could scarce +squeeze up it; at others it expanded into great drusy cavities, studded +with prickly crystals or thickly beset with dull, shining fungoid +pimples. Sometimes it twisted spirally, and at other times slanted down +nearly to the horizontal direction. Ever and again there was the +intermittent drip and trickle of water by us. Once or twice it seemed +to us that small living things had rustled out of our reach, but what +they were we never saw. They may have been venomous beasts for all I +know, but they did us no harm, and we were now tuned to a pitch when a +weird creeping thing more or less mattered little. And at last, far +above, came the familiar bluish light again, and then we saw that it +filtered through a grating that barred our way. + +We whispered as we pointed this out to one another, and became more and +more cautious in our ascent. Presently we were close under the grating, +and by pressing my face against its bars I could see a limited portion +of the cavern beyond. It was clearly a large space, and lit no doubt by +some rivulet of the same blue light that we had seen flow from the +beating machinery. An intermittent trickle of water dropped ever and +again between the bars near my face. + +My first endeavour was naturally to see what might be upon the floor of +the cavern, but our grating lay in a depression whose rim hid all this +from our eyes. Our foiled attention then fell back upon the suggestion +of the various sounds we heard, and presently my eye caught a number of +faint shadows that played across the dim roof far overhead. + +Indisputably there were several Selenites, perhaps a considerable +number, in this space, for we could hear the noises of their +intercourse, and faint sounds that I identified as their footfalls. +There was also a succession of regularly repeated sounds—chid, chid, +chid—which began and ceased, suggestive of a knife or spade hacking at +some soft substance. Then came a clank as if of chains, a whistle and a +rumble as of a truck running over a hollowed place, and then again that +chid, chid, chid resumed. The shadows told of shapes that moved quickly +and rhythmically, in agreement with that regular sound, and rested when +it ceased. + +We put our heads close together, and began to discuss these things in +noiseless whispers. + +“They are occupied,” I said, “they are occupied in some way.” + +“Yes.” + +“They’re not seeking us, or thinking of us.” + +“Perhaps they have not heard of us.” + +“Those others are hunting about below. If suddenly we appeared here—” + +We looked at one another. + +“There might be a chance to parley,” said Cavor. + +“No,” I said. “Not as we are.” + +For a space we remained, each occupied by his own thoughts. + +Chid, chid, chid went the chipping, and the shadows moved to and fro. + +I looked at the grating. “It’s flimsy,” I said. “We might bend two of +the bars and crawl through.” + +We wasted a little time in vague discussion. Then I took one of the +bars in both hands, and got my feet up against the rock until they were +almost on a level with my head, and so thrust against the bar. It bent +so suddenly that I almost slipped. I clambered about and bent the +adjacent bar in the opposite direction, and then took the luminous +fungus from my pocket and dropped it down the fissure. + +“Don’t do anything hastily,” whispered Cavor, as I twisted myself up +through the opening I had enlarged. I had a glimpse of busy figures as +I came through the grating, and immediately bent down, so that the rim +of the depression in which the grating lay hid me from their eyes, and +so lay flat, signalling advice to Cavor as he also prepared to come +through. Presently we were side by side in the depression, peering over +the edge at the cavern and its occupants. + +It was a much larger cavern than we had supposed from our first glimpse +of it, and we looked up from the lowest portion of its sloping floor. +It widened out as it receded from us, and its roof came down and hid +the remoter portion altogether. And lying in a line along its length, +vanishing at last far away in that tremendous perspective, were a +number of huge shapes, huge pallid hulls, upon which the Selenites were +busy. At first they seemed big white cylinders of vague import. Then I +noted the heads upon them lying towards us, eyeless and skinless like +the heads of sheep at a butcher’s, and perceived they were the +carcasses of mooncalves being cut up, much as the crew of a whaler +might cut up a moored whale. They were cutting off the flesh in strips, +and on some of the farther trunks the white ribs were showing. It was +the sound of their hatchets that made that chid, chid, chid. Some way +away a thing like a trolley cable, drawn and loaded with chunks of lax +meat, was running up the slope of the cavern floor. This enormous long +avenue of hulls that were destined to be food gave us a sense of the +vast populousness of the moon world second only to the effect of our +first glimpse down the shaft. + +It seemed to me at first that the Selenites must be standing on +trestle-supported planks,[2] and then I saw that the planks and +supports and the hatchets were really of the same leaden hue as my +fetters had seemed before white light came to bear on them. A number of +very thick-looking crowbars lay about the floor, and had apparently +assisted to turn the dead mooncalf over on its side. They were perhaps +six feet long, with shaped handles, very tempting-looking weapons. The +whole place was lit by three transverse streams of the blue fluid. + + [2] I do not remember seeing any wooden things on the moon; doors, + tables, everything corresponding to our terrestrial joinery was made + of metal, and I believe for the most part of gold, which as a metal + would, of course, naturally recommend itself—other things being + equal—on account of the ease in working it, and its toughness and + durability. + + +We lay for a long time noting all these things in silence. “Well?” said +Cavor at last. + +I crouched over and turned to him. I had come upon a brilliant idea. +“Unless they lowered those bodies by a crane,” I said, “we must be +nearer the surface than I thought.” + +“Why?” + +“The mooncalf doesn’t hop, and it hasn’t got wings.” + +He peered over the edge of the hollow again. “I wonder now—” he began. +“After all, we have never gone far from the surface—” + +I stopped him by a grip on his arm. I had heard a noise from the cleft +below us! + +We twisted ourselves about, and lay as still as death, with every sense +alert. In a little while I did not doubt that something was quietly +ascending the cleft. Very slowly and quite noiselessly I assured myself +of a good grip on my chain, and waited for that something to appear. + +“Just look at those chaps with the hatchets again,” I said. + +“They’re all right,” said Cavor. + +I took a sort of provisional aim at the gap in the grating. I could +hear now quite distinctly the soft twittering of the ascending +Selenites, the dab of their hands against the rock, and the falling of +dust from their grips as they clambered. + +Then I could see that there was something moving dimly in the blackness +below the grating, but what it might be I could not distinguish. The +whole thing seemed to hang fire just for a moment—then smash! I had +sprung to my feet, struck savagely at something that had flashed out at +me. It was the keen point of a spear. I have thought since that its +length in the narrowness of the cleft must have prevented its being +sloped to reach me. Anyhow, it shot out from the grating like the +tongue of a snake, and missed and flew back and flashed again. But the +second time I snatched and caught it, and wrenched it away, but not +before another had darted ineffectually at me. + +I shouted with triumph as I felt the hold of the Selenite resist my +pull for a moment and give, and then I was jabbing down through the +bars, amidst squeals from the darkness, and Cavor had snapped off the +other spear, and was leaping and flourishing it beside me, and making +inefficient jabs. Clang, clang, came up through the grating, and then +an axe hurtled through the air and whacked against the rocks beyond, to +remind me of the fleshers at the carcasses up the cavern. + +I turned, and they were all coming towards us in open order waving +their axes. They were short, thick, little beggars, with long arms, +strikingly different from the ones we had seen before. If they had not +heard of us before, they must have realised the situation with +incredible swiftness. I stared at them for a moment, spear in hand. +“Guard that grating, Cavor,” I cried, howled to intimidate them, and +rushed to meet them. Two of them missed with their hatchets, and the +rest fled incontinently. Then the two also were sprinting away up the +cavern, with hands clenched and heads down. I never saw men run like +them! + +I knew the spear I had was no good for me. It was thin and flimsy, only +effectual for a thrust, and too long for a quick recover. So I only +chased the Selenites as far as the first carcass, and stopped there and +picked up one of the crowbars that were lying about. It felt +comfortingly heavy, and equal to smashing any number of Selenites. I +threw away my spear, and picked up a second crowbar for the other hand. +I felt five times better than I had with the spear. I shook the two +threateningly at the Selenites, who had come to a halt in a little +crowd far away up the cavern, and then turned about to look at Cavor. + +He was leaping from side to side of the grating, making threatening +jabs with his broken spear. That was all right. It would keep the +Selenites down—for a time at any rate. I looked up the cavern again. +What on earth were we going to do now? + +We were cornered in a sort of way already. But these butchers up the +cavern had been surprised, they were probably scared, and they had no +special weapons, only those little hatchets of theirs. And that way lay +escape. Their sturdy little forms—ever so much shorter and thicker than +the mooncalf herds—were scattered up the slope in a way that was +eloquent of indecision. I had the moral advantage of a mad bull in a +street. But for all that, there seemed a tremendous crowd of them. Very +probably there was. Those Selenites down the cleft had certainly some +infernally long spears. It might be they had other surprises for us.... +But, confound it! if we charged up the cave we should let them up +behind us, and if we didn’t those little brutes up the cave would +probably get reinforced. Heaven alone knew what tremendous engines of +warfare—guns, bombs, terrestrial torpedoes—this unknown world below our +feet, this vaster world of which we had only pricked the outer cuticle, +might not presently send up to our destruction. It became clear the +only thing to do was to charge! It became clearer as the legs of a +number of fresh Selenites appeared running down the cavern towards us. + +“Bedford!” cried Cavor, and behold! he was halfway between me and the +grating. + +“Go back!” I cried. “What are you doing—” + +“They’ve got—it’s like a gun!” + +And struggling in the grating between those defensive spears appeared +the head and shoulders of a singularly lean and angular Selenite, +bearing some complicated apparatus. + +I realised Cavor’s utter incapacity for the fight we had in hand. For a +moment I hesitated. Then I rushed past him whirling my crowbars, and +shouting to confound the aim of the Selenite. He was aiming in the +queerest way with the thing against his stomach. “_Chuzz!_” The thing +wasn’t a gun; it went off like a cross-bow more, and dropped me in the +middle of a leap. + +I didn’t fall down, I simply came down a little shorter than I should +have done if I hadn’t been hit, and from the feel of my shoulder the +thing might have tapped me and glanced off. Then my left hand hit +against the shaft, and I perceived there was a sort of spear sticking +half through my shoulder. The moment after I got home with the crowbar +in my right hand, and hit the Selenite fair and square. He collapsed—he +crushed and crumpled—his head smashed like an egg. + +I dropped a crowbar, pulled the spear out of my shoulder, and began to +jab it down the grating into the darkness. At each jab came a shriek +and twitter. Finally I hurled the spear down upon them with all my +strength, leapt up, picked up the crowbar again, and started for the +multitude up the cavern. + +“Bedford!” cried Cavor. “Bedford!” as I flew past him. + +I seem to remember his footsteps coming on behind me. + +Step, leap ... whack, step, leap.... Each leap seemed to last ages. +With each, the cave opened out and the number of Selenites visible +increased. At first they seemed all running about like ants in a +disturbed ant-hill, one or two waving hatchets and coming to meet me, +more running away, some bolting sideways into the avenue of carcasses, +then presently others came in sight carrying spears, and then others. I +saw a most extraordinary thing, all hands and feet, bolting for cover. +The cavern grew darker farther up. + +Flick! something flew over my head. Flick! As I soared in mid-stride I +saw a spear hit and quiver in one of the carcasses to my left. Then, as +I came down, one hit the ground before me, and I heard the remote +chuzz! with which their things were fired. Flick, flick! for a moment +it was a shower. They were volleying! + +I stopped dead. + +I don’t think I thought clearly then. I seem to remember a kind of +stereotyped phrase running through my mind: “Zone of fire, seek cover!” +I know I made a dash for the space between two of the carcasses, and +stood there panting and feeling very wicked. + +I looked round for Cavor, and for a moment it seemed as if he had +vanished from the world. Then he came out of the darkness between the +row of the carcasses and the rocky wall of the cavern. I saw his little +face, dark and blue, and shining with perspiration and emotion. + +He was saying something, but what it was I did not heed. I had realised +that we might work from mooncalf to mooncalf up the cave until we were +near enough to charge home. It was charge or nothing. “Come on!” I +said, and led the way. + +“Bedford!” he cried unavailingly. + +My mind was busy as we went up that narrow alley between the dead +bodies and the wall of the cavern. The rocks curved about—they could +not enfilade us. Though in that narrow space we could not leap, yet +with our earth-born strength we were still able to go very much faster +than the Selenites. I reckoned we should presently come right among +them. Once we were on them, they would be nearly as formidable as black +beetles. Only there would first of all be a volley. I thought of a +stratagem. I whipped off my flannel jacket as I ran. + +“Bedford!” panted Cavor behind me. + +I glanced back. “What?” said I. + +He was pointing upward over the carcasses. “White light!” he said. +“White light again!” + +I looked, and it was even so; a faint white ghost of light in the +remoter cavern roof. That seemed to give me double strength. + +“Keep close,” I said. A flat, long Selenite dashed out of the darkness, +and squealed and fled. I halted, and stopped Cavor with my hand. I hung +my jacket over my crowbar, ducked round the next carcass, dropped +jacket and crowbar, showed myself, and darted back. + +“Chuzz-flick,” just one arrow came. We were close on the Selenites, and +they were standing in a crowd, broad, short, and tall together, with a +little battery of their shooting implements pointing down the cave. +Three or four other arrows followed the first, then their fire ceased. + +I stuck out my head, and escaped by a hair’s-breadth. This time I drew +a dozen shots or more, and heard the Selenites shouting and twittering +as if with excitement as they shot. I picked up jacket and crowbar +again. + +“_Now!_” said I, and thrust out the jacket. + +“Chuzz-zz-zz-zz! Chuzz!” In an instant my jacket had grown a thick +beard of arrows, and they were quivering all over the carcass behind +us. Instantly I slipped the crowbar out of the jacket, dropped the +jacket—for all I know to the contrary it is lying up there in the moon +now—and rushed out upon them. + +For a minute perhaps it was massacre. I was too fierce to discriminate, +and the Selenites were probably too scared to fight. At any rate they +made no sort of fight against me. I saw scarlet, as the saying is. I +remember I seemed to be wading among those leathery, thin things as a +man wades through tall grass, mowing and hitting, first right, then +left; smash. Little drops of moisture flew about. I trod on things that +crushed and piped and went slippery. The crowd seemed to open and close +and flow like water. They seemed to have no combined plan whatever. +There were spears flew about me, I was grazed over the ear by one. I +was stabbed once in the arm and once in the cheek, but I only found +that out afterwards, when the blood had had time to run and cool and +feel wet. + +What Cavor did I do not know. For a space it seemed that this fighting +had lasted for an age, and must needs go on for ever. Then suddenly it +was all over, and there was nothing to be seen but the backs of heads +bobbing up and down as their owners ran in all directions.... I seemed +altogether unhurt. I ran forward some paces, shouting, then turned +about. I was amazed. + +I had come right through them in vast flying strides, they were all +behind me, and running hither and thither to hide. + +I felt an enormous astonishment at the evaporation of the great fight +into which I had hurled myself, and not a little exultation. It did not +seem to me that I had discovered the Selenites were unexpectedly +flimsy, but that I was unexpectedly strong. I laughed stupidly. This +fantastic moon! + +I glanced for a moment at the smashed and writhing bodies that were +scattered over the cavern floor, with a vague idea of further violence, +then hurried on after Cavor. + + + + +XVIII. +In the Sunlight + + +Presently we saw that the cavern before us opened upon a hazy void. In +another moment we had emerged upon a sort of slanting gallery, that +projected into a vast circular space, a huge cylindrical pit running +vertically up and down. Round this pit the slanting gallery ran without +any parapet or protection for a turn and a half, and then plunged high +above into the rock again. Somehow it reminded me then of one of those +spiral turns of the railway through the Saint Gothard. It was all +tremendously huge. I can scarcely hope to convey to you the Titanic +proportion of all that place, the Titanic effect of it. Our eyes +followed up the vast declivity of the pit wall, and overhead and far +above we beheld a round opening set with faint stars, and half of the +lip about it well nigh blinding with the white light of the sun. At +that we cried aloud simultaneously. + +“Come on!” I said, leading the way. + +“But there?” said Cavor, and very carefully stepped nearer the edge of +the gallery. I followed his example, and craned forward and looked +down, but I was dazzled by that gleam of light above, and I could see +only a bottomless darkness with spectral patches of crimson and purple +floating therein. Yet if I could not see, I could hear. Out of this +darkness came a sound, a sound like the angry hum one can hear if one +puts one’s ear outside a hive of bees, a sound out of that enormous +hollow, it may be, four miles beneath our feet... + +For a moment I listened, then tightened my grip on my crowbar, and led +the way up the gallery. + +“This must be the shaft we looked down upon,” said Cavor. “Under that +lid.” + +“And below there, is where we saw the lights.” + +“The lights!” said he. “Yes—the lights of the world that now we shall +never see.” + +“We’ll come back,” I said, for now we had escaped so much I was rashly +sanguine that we should recover the sphere. + +His answer I did not catch. + +“Eh?” I asked. + +“It doesn’t matter,” he answered, and we hurried on in silence. + +I suppose that slanting lateral way was four or five miles long, +allowing for its curvature, and it ascended at a slope that would have +made it almost impossibly steep on earth, but which one strode up +easily under lunar conditions. We saw only two Selenites during all +that portion of our flight, and directly they became aware of us they +ran headlong. It was clear that the knowledge of our strength and +violence had reached them. Our way to the exterior was unexpectedly +plain. The spiral gallery straightened into a steeply ascendent tunnel, +its floor bearing abundant traces of the mooncalves, and so straight +and short in proportion to its vast arch, that no part of it was +absolutely dark. Almost immediately it began to lighten, and then far +off and high up, and quite blindingly brilliant, appeared its opening +on the exterior, a slope of Alpine steepness surmounted by a crest of +bayonet shrub, tall and broken down now, and dry and dead, in spiky +silhouette against the sun. + +And it is strange that we men, to whom this very vegetation had seemed +so weird and horrible a little time ago, should now behold it with the +emotion a home-coming exile might feel at sight of his native land. We +welcomed even the rareness of the air that made us pant as we ran, and +which rendered speaking no longer the easy thing that it had been, but +an effort to make oneself heard. Larger grew the sunlit circle above +us, and larger, and all the nearer tunnel sank into a rim of +indistinguishable black. We saw the dead bayonet shrub no longer with +any touch of green in it, but brown and dry and thick, and the shadow +of its upper branches high out of sight made a densely interlaced +pattern upon the tumbled rocks. And at the immediate mouth of the +tunnel was a wide trampled space where the mooncalves had come and +gone. + +We came out upon this space at last into a light and heat that hit and +pressed upon us. We traversed the exposed area painfully, and clambered +up a slope among the scrub stems, and sat down at last panting in a +high place beneath the shadow of a mass of twisted lava. Even in the +shade the rock felt hot. + +The air was intensely hot, and we were in great physical discomfort, +but for all that we were no longer in a nightmare. We seemed to have +come to our own province again, beneath the stars. All the fear and +stress of our flight through the dim passages and fissures below had +fallen from us. That last fight had filled us with an enormous +confidence in ourselves so far as the Selenites were concerned. We +looked back almost incredulously at the black opening from which we had +just emerged. Down there it was, in a blue glow that now in our +memories seemed the next thing to absolute darkness, we had met with +things like mad mockeries of men, helmet-headed creatures, and had +walked in fear before them, and had submitted to them until we could +submit no longer. And behold, they had smashed like wax and scattered +like chaff, and fled and vanished like the creatures of a dream! + +I rubbed my eyes, doubting whether we had not slept and dreamt these +things by reason of the fungus we had eaten, and suddenly discovered +the blood upon my face, and then that my shirt was sticking painfully +to my shoulder and arm. + +“Confound it!” I said, gauging my injuries with an investigatory hand, +and suddenly that distant tunnel mouth became, as it were, a watching +eye. + +“Cavor!” I said; “what are they going to do now? And what are we going +to do?” + +He shook his head, with his eyes fixed upon the tunnel. “How can one +tell what they will do?” + +“It depends on what they think of us, and I don’t see how we can begin +to guess that. And it depends upon what they have in reserve. It’s as +you say, Cavor, we have touched the merest outside of this world. They +may have all sorts of things inside here. Even with those shooting +things they might make it bad for us.... + +“Yet after all,” I said, “even if we _don’t_ find the sphere at once, +there is a chance for us. We might hold out. Even through the night. We +might go down there again and make a fight for it.” + +I stared about me with speculative eyes. The character of the scenery +had altered altogether by reason of the enormous growth and subsequent +drying of the scrub. The crest on which we sat was high, and commanded +a wide prospect of the crater landscape, and we saw it now all sere and +dry in the late autumn of the lunar afternoon. Rising one behind the +other were long slopes and fields of trampled brown where the +mooncalves had pastured, and far away in the full blaze of the sun a +drove of them basked slumberously, scattered shapes, each with a blot +of shadow against it like sheep on the side of a down. But never a sign +of a Selenite was to be seen. Whether they had fled on our emergence +from the interior passages, or whether they were accustomed to retire +after driving out the mooncalves, I cannot guess. At the time I +believed the former was the case. + +“If we were to set fire to all this stuff,” I said, “we might find the +sphere among the ashes.” + +Cavor did not seem to hear me. He was peering under his hand at the +stars, that still, in spite of the intense sunlight, were abundantly +visible in the sky. “How long do you think we’ve have been here?” he +asked at last. + +“Been where?” + +“On the moon.” + +“Two earthly days, perhaps.” + +“More nearly ten. Do you know, the sun is past its zenith, and sinking +in the west. In four days’ time or less it will be night.” + +“But—we’ve only eaten once!” + +“I know that. And— But there are the stars!” + +“But why should time seem different because we are on a smaller +planet?” + +“I don’t know. There it is!” + +“How does one tell time?” + +“Hunger—fatigue—all those things are different. Everything is +different—everything. To me it seems that since first we came out of +the sphere has been only a question of hours—long hours—at most.” + +“Ten days,” I said; “that leaves—” I looked up at the sun for a moment, +and then saw that it was halfway from the zenith to the western edge of +things. “Four days! ... Cavor, we mustn’t sit here and dream. How do +you think we may begin?” + +I stood up. “We must get a fixed point we can recognise—we might hoist +a flag, or a handkerchief, or something—and quarter the ground, and +work round that.” + +He stood up beside me. + +“Yes,” he said, “there is nothing for it but to hunt the sphere. +Nothing. We may find it—certainly we may find it. And if not—” + +“We must keep on looking.” + +He looked this way and that, glanced up at the sky and down at the +tunnel, and astonished me by a sudden gesture of impatience. “Oh! but +we have done foolishly! To have come to this pass! Think how it might +have been, and the things we might have done!” + +“We might do something yet.” + +“Never the thing we might have done. Here below our feet is a world. +Think of what that world must be! Think of that machine we saw, and the +lid and the shaft! They were just remote outlying things, and those +creatures we have seen and fought with no more than ignorant peasants, +dwellers in the outskirts, yokels and labourers half akin to brutes. +Down below! Caverns beneath caverns, tunnels, structures, ways... It +must open out, and be greater and wider and more populous as one +descends. Assuredly. Right down at the last the central sea that washes +round the core of the moon. Think of its inky waters under the spare +lights—if, indeed, their eyes _need_ lights! Think of the cascading +tributaries pouring down their channels to feed it! Think of the tides +upon its surface, and the rush and swirl of its ebb and flow! Perhaps +they have ships that go upon it, perhaps down there are mighty cities +and swarming ways, and wisdom and order passing the wit of man. And we +may die here upon it, and never see the masters who _must_ be—ruling +over these things! We may freeze and die here, and the air will freeze +and thaw upon us, and then—! Then they will come upon us, come on our +stiff and silent bodies, and find the sphere we cannot find, and they +will understand at last too late all the thought and effort that ended +here in vain!” + +His voice for all that speech sounded like the voice of someone heard +in a telephone, weak and far away. + +“But the darkness,” I said. + +“One might get over that.” + +“How?” + +“I don’t know. How am I to know? One might carry a torch, one might +have a lamp— The others—might understand.” + +He stood for a moment with his hands held down and a rueful face, +staring out over the waste that defied him. Then with a gesture of +renunciation he turned towards me with proposals for the systematic +hunting of the sphere. + +“We can return,” I said. + +He looked about him. “First of all we shall have to get to earth.” + +“We could bring back lamps to carry and climbing irons, and a hundred +necessary things.” + +“Yes,” he said. + +“We can take back an earnest of success in this gold.” + +He looked at my golden crowbars, and said nothing for a space. He stood +with his hands clasped behind his back, staring across the crater. At +last he signed and spoke. “It was _I_ found the way here, but to find a +way isn’t always to be master of a way. If I take my secret back to +earth, what will happen? I do not see how I can keep my secret for a +year, for even a part of a year. Sooner or later it must come out, even +if other men rediscover it. And then ... Governments and powers will +struggle to get hither, they will fight against one another, and +against these moon people; it will only spread warfare and multiply the +occasions of war. In a little while, in a very little while, if I tell +my secret, this planet to its deepest galleries will be strewn with +human dead. Other things are doubtful, but that is certain. It is not +as though man had any use for the moon. What good would the moon be to +men? Even of their own planet what have they made but a battle-ground +and theatre of infinite folly? Small as his world is, and short as his +time, he has still in his little life down there far more than he can +do. No! Science has toiled too long forging weapons for fools to use. +It is time she held her hand. Let him find it out for himself again—in +a thousand years’ time.” + +“There are methods of secrecy,” I said. + +He looked up at me and smiled. “After all,” he said, “why should one +worry? There is little chance of our finding the sphere, and down below +things are brewing. It’s simply the human habit of hoping till we die +that makes us think of return. Our troubles are only beginning. We have +shown these moon folk violence, we have given them a taste of our +quality, and our chances are about as good as a tiger’s that has got +loose and killed a man in Hyde Park. The news of us must be running +down from gallery to gallery, down towards the central parts.... No +sane beings will ever let us take that sphere back to earth after so +much as they have seen of us.” + +“We aren’t improving our chances,” said I, “by sitting here.” + +We stood up side by side. + +“After all,” he said, “we must separate. We must stick up a +handkerchief on these tall spikes here and fasten it firmly, and from +this as a centre we must work over the crater. You must go westward, +moving out in semicircles to and fro towards the setting sun. You must +move first with your shadow on your right until it is at right angles +with the direction of your handkerchief, and then with your shadow on +your left. And I will do the same to the east. We will look into every +gully, examine every skerry of rocks; we will do all we can to find my +sphere. If we see the Selenites we will hide from them as well as we +can. For drink we must take snow, and if we feel the need of food, we +must kill a mooncalf if we can, and eat such flesh as it has—raw—and so +each will go his own way.” + +“And if one of us comes upon the sphere?” + +“He must come back to the white handkerchief, and stand by it and +signal to the other.” + +“And if neither?” + +Cavor glanced up at the sun. “We go on seeking until the night and cold +overtake us.” + +“Suppose the Selenites have found the sphere and hidden it?” + +He shrugged his shoulders. + +“Or if presently they come hunting us?” + +He made no answer. + +“You had better take a club,” I said. + +He shook his head, and stared away from me across the waste. + +But for a moment he did not start. He looked round at me shyly, +hesitated. “_Au revoir_,” he said. + +I felt an odd stab of emotion. A sense of how we had galled each other, +and particularly how I must have galled him, came to me. “Confound it,” +thought I, “we might have done better!” I was on the point of asking +him to shake hands—for that, somehow, was how I felt just then—when he +put his feet together and leapt away from me towards the north. He +seemed to drift through the air as a dead leaf would do, fell lightly, +and leapt again. I stood for a moment watching him, then faced westward +reluctantly, pulled myself together, and with something of the feeling +of a man who leaps into icy water, selected a leaping point, and +plunged forward to explore my solitary half of the moon world. I +dropped rather clumsily among rocks, stood up and looked about me, +clambered on to a rocky slab, and leapt again.... + +When presently I looked for Cavor he was hidden from my eyes, but the +handkerchief showed out bravely on its headland, white in the blaze of +the sun. + +I determined not to lose sight of that handkerchief whatever might +betide. + + + + +XIX. +Mr. Bedford Alone + + +In a little while it seemed to me as though I had always been alone on +the moon. I hunted for a time with a certain intentness, but the heat +was still very great, and the thinness of the air felt like a hoop +about one’s chest. I came presently into a hollow basin bristling with +tall, brown, dry fronds about its edge, and I sat down under these to +rest and cool. I intended to rest for only a little while. I put down +my clubs beside me, and sat resting my chin on my hands. I saw with a +sort of colourless interest that the rocks of the basin, where here and +there the crackling dry lichens had shrunk away to show them, were all +veined and splattered with gold, that here and there bosses of rounded +and wrinkled gold projected from among the litter. What did that matter +now? A sort of languor had possession of my limbs and mind, I did not +believe for a moment that we should ever find the sphere in that vast +desiccated wilderness. I seemed to lack a motive for effort until the +Selenites should come. Then I supposed I should exert myself, obeying +that unreasonable imperative that urges a man before all things to +preserve and defend his life, albeit he may preserve it only to die +more painfully in a little while. + +Why had we come to the moon? + +The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this +spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and +security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk even a +reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me up there in the moon +as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made simply to +go about being safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. Almost any +man, if you put the thing to him, not in words, but in the shape of +opportunities, will show that he knows as much. Against his interest, +against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable +things. Some force not himself impels him, and go he must. But why? +Why? Sitting there in the midst of that useless moon gold, amidst the +things of another world, I took count of all my life. Assuming I was to +die a castaway upon the moon, I failed altogether to see what purpose I +had served. I got no light on that point, but at any rate it was +clearer to me than it had ever been in my life before that I was not +serving my own purpose, that all my life I had in truth never served +the purposes of my private life. Whose purposes, what purposes, was I +serving? ... I ceased to speculate on why we had come to the moon, and +took a wider sweep. Why had I come to the earth? Why had I a private +life at all? ... I lost myself at last in bottomless speculations.... + +My thoughts became vague and cloudy, no longer leading in definite +directions. I had not felt heavy or weary—I cannot imagine one doing so +upon the moon—but I suppose I was greatly fatigued. At any rate I +slept. + +Slumbering there rested me greatly, I think, and the sun was setting +and the violence of the heat abating, through all the time I slumbered. +When at last I was roused from my slumbers by a remote clamour, I felt +active and capable again. I rubbed my eyes and stretched my arms. I +rose to my feet—I was a little stiff—and at once prepared to resume my +search. I shouldered my golden clubs, one on each shoulder, and went on +out of the ravine of the gold-veined rocks. + +The sun was certainly lower, much lower than it had been; the air was +very much cooler. I perceived I must have slept some time. It seemed to +me that a faint touch of misty blueness hung about the western cliff. I +leapt to a little boss of rock and surveyed the crater. I could see no +signs of mooncalves or Selenites, nor could I see Cavor, but I could +see my handkerchief far off, spread out on its thicket of thorns. I +looked about me, and then leapt forward to the next convenient +view-point. + +I beat my way round in a semicircle, and back again in a still remoter +crescent. It was very fatiguing and hopeless. The air was really very +much cooler, and it seemed to me that the shadow under the westward +cliff was growing broad. Ever and again I stopped and reconnoitred, but +there was no sign of Cavor, no sign of Selenites; and it seemed to me +the mooncalves must have been driven into the interior again—I could +see none of them. I became more and more desirous of seeing Cavor. The +winged outline of the sun had sunk now, until it was scarcely the +distance of its diameter from the rim of the sky. I was oppressed by +the idea that the Selenites would presently close their lids and +valves, and shut us out under the inexorable onrush of the lunar night. +It seemed to me high time that he abandoned his search, and that we +took counsel together. I felt how urgent it was that we should decide +soon upon our course. We had failed to find the sphere, we no longer +had time to seek it, and once these valves were closed with us outside, +we were lost men. The great night of space would descend upon us—that +blackness of the void which is the only absolute death. All my being +shrank from that approach. We must get into the moon again, though we +were slain in doing it. I was haunted by a vision of our freezing to +death, of our hammering with our last strength on the valve of the +great pit. + +I took no thought any more of the sphere. I thought only of finding +Cavor again. I was half inclined to go back into the moon without him, +rather than seek him until it was too late. I was already half-way back +towards our handkerchief, when suddenly— + +I saw the sphere! + +I did not find it so much as it found me. It was lying much farther to +the westward than I had gone, and the sloping rays of the sinking sun +reflected from its glass had suddenly proclaimed its presence in a +dazzling beam. For an instant I thought this was some new device of the +Selenites against us, and then I understood. + +I threw up my arms, shouted a ghostly shout, and set off in vast leaps +towards it. I missed one of my leaps and dropped into a deep ravine and +twisted my ankle, and after that I stumbled at almost every leap. I was +in a state of hysterical agitation, trembling violently, and quite +breathless long before I got to it. Three times at least I had to stop +with my hands resting on my side and in spite of the thin dryness of +the air, the perspiration was wet upon my face. + +I thought of nothing but the sphere until I reached it, I forgot even +my trouble of Cavor’s whereabouts. My last leap flung me with my hands +hard against its glass; then I lay against it panting, and trying +vainly to shout, “Cavor! here is the sphere!” When I had recovered a +little I peered through the thick glass, and the things inside seemed +tumbled. I stooped to peer closer. Then I attempted to get in. I had to +hoist it over a little to get my head through the manhole. The screw +stopper was inside, and I could see now that nothing had been touched, +nothing had suffered. It lay there as we had left it when we had +dropped out amidst the snow. For a time I was wholly occupied in making +and remaking this inventory. I found I was trembling violently. It was +good to see that familiar dark interior again! I cannot tell you how +good. Presently I crept inside and sat down among the things. I looked +through the glass at the moon world and shivered. I placed my gold +clubs upon the table, and sought out and took a little food; not so +much because I wanted it, but because it was there. Then it occurred to +me that it was time to go out and signal for Cavor. But I did not go +out and signal for Cavor forthwith. Something held me to the sphere. + +After all, everything was coming right. There would be still time for +us to get more of the magic stone that gives one mastery over men. Away +there, close handy, was gold for the picking up; and the sphere would +travel as well half full of gold as though it were empty. We could go +back now, masters of ourselves and our world, and then— + +I roused myself at last, and with an effort got myself out of the +sphere. I shivered as I emerged, for the evening air was growing very +cold. I stood in the hollow staring about me. I scrutinised the bushes +round me very carefully before I leapt to the rocky shelf hard by, and +took once more what had been my first leap in the moon. But now I made +it with no effort whatever. + +The growth and decay of the vegetation had gone on apace, and the whole +aspect of the rocks had changed, but still it was possible to make out +the slope on which the seeds had germinated, and the rocky mass from +which we had taken our first view of the crater. But the spiky shrub on +the slope stood brown and sere now, and thirty feet high, and cast long +shadows that stretched out of sight, and the little seeds that +clustered in its upper branches were brown and ripe. Its work was done, +and it was brittle and ready to fall and crumple under the freezing +air, so soon as the nightfall came. And the huge cacti, that had +swollen as we watched them, had long since burst and scattered their +spores to the four quarters of the moon. Amazing little corner in the +universe—the landing place of men! + +Some day, thought I, I will have an inscription standing there right in +the midst of the hollow. It came to me, if only this teeming world +within knew of the full import of the moment, how furious its tumult +would become! + +But as yet it could scarcely be dreaming of the significance of our +coming. For if it did, the crater would surely be an uproar of pursuit, +instead of as still as death! I looked about for some place from which +I might signal Cavor, and saw that same patch of rock to which he had +leapt from my present standpoint, still bare and barren in the sun. For +a moment I hesitated at going so far from the sphere. Then with a pang +of shame at that hesitation, I leapt.... + +From this vantage point I surveyed the crater again. Far away at the +top of the enormous shadow I cast was the little white handkerchief +fluttering on the bushes. It was very little and very far, and Cavor +was not in sight. It seemed to me that by this time he ought to be +looking for me. That was the agreement. But he was nowhere to be seen. + +I stood waiting and watching, hands shading my eyes, expecting every +moment to distinguish him. Very probably I stood there for quite a long +time. I tried to shout, and was reminded of the thinness of the air. I +made an undecided step back towards the sphere. But a lurking dread of +the Selenites made me hesitate to signal my whereabouts by hoisting one +of our sleeping-blankets on to the adjacent scrub. I searched the +crater again. + +It had an effect of emptiness that chilled me. And it was still. Any +sound from the Selenites in the world beneath had died away. It was as +still as death. Save for the faint stir of the shrub about me in the +little breeze that was rising, there was no sound nor shadow of a +sound. And the breeze blew chill. + +Confound Cavor! + +I took a deep breath. I put my hands to the sides of my mouth. “Cavor!” +I bawled, and the sound was like some manikin shouting far away. + +I looked at the handkerchief, I looked behind me at the broadening +shadow of the westward cliff, I looked under my hand at the sun. It +seemed to me that almost visibly it was creeping down the sky. + +I felt I must act instantly if I was to save Cavor. I whipped off my +vest and flung it as a mark on the sere bayonets of the shrubs behind +me, and then set off in a straight line towards the handkerchief. +Perhaps it was a couple of miles away—a matter of a few hundred leaps +and strides. I have already told how one seemed to hang through those +lunar leaps. In each suspense I sought Cavor, and marvelled why he +should be hidden. In each leap I could feel the sun setting behind me. +Each time I touched the ground I was tempted to go back. + +A last leap and I was in the depression below our handkerchief, a +stride, and I stood on our former vantage point within arms’ reach of +it. I stood up straight and scanned the world about me, between its +lengthening bars of shadow. Far away, down a long declivity, was the +opening of the tunnel up which we had fled, and my shadow reached +towards it, stretched towards it, and touched it, like a finger of the +night. + +Not a sign of Cavor, not a sound in all the stillness, only the stir +and waving of the scrub and of the shadows increased. And suddenly and +violently I shivered. “Cav—” I began, and realised once more the +uselessness of the human voice in that thin air. Silence. The silence +of death. + +Then it was my eye caught something—a little thing lying, perhaps fifty +yards away down the slope, amidst a litter of bent and broken branches. +What was it? I knew, and yet for some reason I would not know. I went +nearer to it. It was the little cricket-cap Cavor had worn. I did not +touch it, I stood looking at it. + +I saw then that the scattered branches about it had been forcibly +smashed and trampled. I hesitated, stepped forward, and picked it up. + +I stood with Cavor’s cap in my hand, staring at the trampled reeds and +thorns about me. On some of them were little smears of something dark, +something that I dared not touch. A dozen yards away, perhaps, the +rising breeze dragged something into view, something small and vividly +white. + +It was a little piece of paper crumpled tightly, as though it had been +clutched tightly. I picked it up, and on it were smears of red. My eye +caught faint pencil marks. I smoothed it out, and saw uneven and broken +writing ending at last in a crooked streak upon the paper. + +I set myself to decipher this. + +“I have been injured about the knee, I think my kneecap is hurt, and I +cannot run or crawl,” it began—pretty distinctly written. + +Then less legibly: “They have been chasing me for some time, and it is +only a question of”—the word “time” seemed to have been written here +and erased in favour of something illegible—“before they get me. They +are beating all about me.” + +Then the writing became convulsive. “I can hear them,” I guessed the +tracing meant, and then it was quite unreadable for a space. Then came +a little string of words that were quite distinct: “a different sort of +Selenite altogether, who appears to be directing the—” The writing +became a mere hasty confusion again. + +“They have larger brain cases—much larger, and slenderer bodies, and +very short legs. They make gentle noises, and move with organized +deliberation... + +“And though I am wounded and helpless here, their appearance still +gives me hope.” That was like Cavor. “They have not shot at me or +attempted... injury. I intend—” + +Then came the sudden streak of the pencil across the paper, and on the +back and edges—blood! + +And as I stood there stupid, and perplexed, with this dumbfounding +relic in my hand, something very soft and light and chill touched my +hand for a moment and ceased to be, and then a thing, a little white +speck, drifted athwart a shadow. It was a tiny snowflake, the first +snowflake, the herald of the night. + +I looked up with a start, and the sky had darkened almost to blackness, +and was thick with a gathering multitude of coldly watchful stars. I +looked eastward, and the light of that shrivelled world was touched +with sombre bronze; westward, and the sun robbed now by a thickening +white mist of half its heat and splendour, was touching the crater rim, +was sinking out of sight, and all the shrubs and jagged and tumbled +rocks stood out against it in a bristling disorder of black shapes. +Into the great lake of darkness westward, a vast wreath of mist was +sinking. A cold wind set all the crater shivering. Suddenly, for a +moment, I was in a puff of falling snow, and all the world about me +grey and dim. + +And then it was I heard, not loud and penetrating as at first, but +faint and dim like a dying voice, that tolling, that same tolling that +had welcomed the coming of the day: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!... + +It echoed about the crater, it seemed to throb with the throbbing of +the greater stars, the blood-red crescent of the sun’s disc sank as it +tolled out: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!... + +What had happened to Cavor? All through that tolling I stood there +stupidly, and at last the tolling ceased. + +And suddenly the open mouth of the tunnel down below there, shut like +an eye and vanished out of sight. + +Then indeed was I alone. + +Over me, around me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the +Eternal; that which was before the beginning, and that which triumphs +over the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being +is but the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, +the stillness, the silence—the infinite and final Night of space. + +The sense of solitude and desolation became the sense of an +overwhelming presence that stooped towards me, that almost touched me. + +“No,” I cried. “_No!_ Not yet! not yet! Wait! Wait! Oh, wait!” My voice +went up to a shriek. I flung the crumpled paper from me, scrambled back +to the crest to take my bearings, and then, with all the will that was +in me, leapt out towards the mark I had left, dim and distant now in +the very margin of the shadow. + +Leap, leap, leap, and each leap was seven ages. + +Before me the pale serpent-girdled section of the sun sank and sank, +and the advancing shadow swept to seize the sphere before I could reach +it. I was two miles away, a hundred leaps or more, and the air about me +was thinning out as it thins under an air-pump, and the cold was +gripping at my joints. But had I died, I should have died leaping. +Once, and then again my foot slipped on the gathering snow as I leapt +and shortened my leap; once I fell short into bushes that crashed and +smashed into dusty chips and nothingness, and once I stumbled as I +dropped and rolled head over heels into a gully, and rose bruised and +bleeding and confused as to my direction. + +But such incidents were as nothing to the intervals, those awful pauses +when one drifted through the air towards that pouring tide of night. My +breathing made a piping noise, and it was as though knives were +whirling in my lungs. My heart seemed to beat against the top of my +brain. “Shall I reach it? O Heaven! Shall I reach it?” + +My whole being became anguish. + +“Lie down!” screamed my pain and despair; “lie down!” + +The nearer I struggled, the more awfully remote it seemed. I was numb, +I stumbled, I bruised and cut myself and did not bleed. + +It was in sight. + +I fell on all fours, and my lungs whooped. + +I crawled. The frost gathered on my lips, icicles hung from my +moustache, I was white with the freezing atmosphere. + +I was a dozen yards from it. My eyes had become dim. “Lie down!” +screamed despair; “lie down!” + +I touched it, and halted. “Too late!” screamed despair; “lie down!” + +I fought stiffly with it. I was on the manhole lip, a stupefied, +half-dead being. The snow was all about me. I pulled myself in. There +lurked within a little warmer air. + +The snowflakes—the airflakes—danced in about me, as I tried with +chilling hands to thrust the valve in and spun it tight and hard. I +sobbed. “I will,” I chattered in my teeth. And then, with fingers that +quivered and felt brittle, I turned to the shutter studs. + +As I fumbled with the switches—for I had never controlled them before—I +could see dimly through the steaming glass the blazing red streamers of +the sinking sun, dancing and flickering through the snowstorm, and the +black forms of the scrub thickening and bending and breaking beneath +the accumulating snow. Thicker whirled the snow and thicker, black +against the light. What if even now the switches overcame me? Then +something clicked under my hands, and in an instant that last vision of +the moon world was hidden from my eyes. I was in the silence and +darkness of the inter-planetary sphere. + + + + +XX. +Mr. Bedford in Infinite Space + + +It was almost as though I had been killed. Indeed, I could imagine a +man suddenly and violently killed would feel very much as I did. One +moment, a passion of agonising existence and fear; the next, darkness +and stillness, neither light nor life nor sun, moon nor stars, the +blank infinite. Although the thing was done by my own act, although I +had already tasted this very of effect in Cavor’s company, I felt +astonished, dumbfounded, and overwhelmed. I seemed to be borne upward +into an enormous darkness. My fingers floated off the studs, I hung as +if I were annihilated, and at last very softly and gently I came +against the bale and the golden chain, and the crowbars that had +drifted to the middle of the sphere. + +I do not know how long that drifting took. In the sphere of course, +even more than on the moon, one’s earthly time sense was ineffectual. +At the touch of the bale it was as if I had awakened from a dreamless +sleep. I immediately perceived that if I wanted to keep awake and alive +I must get a light or open a window, so as to get a grip of something +with my eyes. And besides, I was cold. I kicked off from the bale, +therefore, clawed on to the thin cords within the glass, crawled along +until I got to the manhole rim, and so got my bearings for the light +and blind studs, took a shove off, and flying once round the bale, and +getting a scare from something big and flimsy that was drifting loose, +I got my hand on the cord quite close to the studs, and reached them. I +lit the little lamp first of all to see what it was I had collided +with, and discovered that old copy of _Lloyd’s News_ had slipped its +moorings, and was adrift in the void. That brought me out of the +infinite to my own proper dimensions again. It made me laugh and pant +for a time, and suggested the idea of a little oxygen from one of the +cylinders. After that I lit the heater until I felt warm, and then I +took food. Then I set to work in a very gingerly fashion on the +Cavorite blinds, to see if I could guess by any means how the sphere +was travelling. + +The first blind I opened I shut at once, and hung for a time flattened +and blinded by the sunlight that had hit me. After thinking a little I +started upon the windows at right angles to this one, and got the huge +crescent moon and the little crescent earth behind it, the second time. +I was amazed to find how far I was from the moon. I had reckoned that +not only should I have little or none of the “kick-off” that the +earth’s atmosphere had given us at our start, but that the tangential +“fly off” of the moon’s spin would be at least twenty-eight times less +than the earth’s. I had expected to discover myself hanging over our +crater, and on the edge of the night, but all that was now only a part +of the outline of the white crescent that filled the sky. And Cavor—? + +He was already infinitesimal. + +I tried to imagine what could have happened to him. But at that time I +could think of nothing but death. I seemed to see him, bent and smashed +at the foot of some interminably high cascade of blue. And all about +him the stupid insects stared... + +Under the inspiring touch of the drifting newspaper I became practical +again for a while. It was quite clear to me that what I had to do was +to get back to earth, but as far as I could see I was drifting away +from it. Whatever had happened to Cavor, even if he was still alive, +which seemed to me incredible after that blood-stained scrap, I was +powerless to help him. There he was, living or dead behind the mantle +of that rayless night, and there he must remain at least until I could +summon our fellow men to his assistance. Should I do that? Something of +the sort I had in my mind; to come back to earth if it were possible, +and then as maturer consideration might determine, either to show and +explain the sphere to a few discreet persons, and act with them, or +else to keep my secret, sell my gold, obtain weapons, provisions, and +an assistant, and return with these advantages to deal on equal terms +with the flimsy people of the moon, to rescue Cavor, if that were still +possible, and at any rate to procure a sufficient supply of gold to +place my subsequent proceedings on a firmer basis. But that was hoping +far; I had first to get back. + +I set myself to decide just exactly how the return to earth could be +contrived. As I struggled with that problem I ceased to worry about +what I should do when I got there. At last my only care was to get +back. + +I puzzled out at last that my best chance would be to drop back towards +the moon as near as I dared in order to gather velocity, then to shut +my windows, and fly behind it, and when I was past to open my earthward +windows, and so get off at a good pace homeward. But whether I should +ever reach the earth by that device, or whether I might not simply find +myself spinning about it in some hyperbolic or parabolic curve or +other, I could not tell. Later I had a happy inspiration, and by +opening certain windows to the moon, which had appeared in the sky in +front of the earth, I turned my course aside so as to head off the +earth, which it had become evident to me I must pass behind without +some such expedient. I did a very great deal of complicated thinking +over these problems—for I am no mathematician—and in the end I am +certain it was much more my good luck than my reasoning that enabled me +to hit the earth. Had I known then, as I know now, the mathematical +chances there were against me, I doubt if I should have troubled even +to touch the studs to make any attempt. And having puzzled out what I +considered to be the thing to do, I opened all my moonward windows, and +squatted down—the effort lifted me for a time some feet or so into the +air, and I hung there in the oddest way—and waited for the crescent to +get bigger and bigger until I felt I was near enough for safety. Then I +would shut the windows, fly past the moon with the velocity I had got +from it—if I did not smash upon it—and so go on towards the earth. + +And that is what I did. + +At last I felt my moonward start was sufficient. I shut out the sight +of the moon from my eyes, and in a state of mind that was, I now +recall, incredibly free from anxiety or any distressful quality, I sat +down to begin a vigil in that little speck of matter in infinite space +that would last until I should strike the earth. The heater had made +the sphere tolerably warm, the air had been refreshed by the oxygen, +and except for that faint congestion of the head that was always with +me while I was away from earth, I felt entire physical comfort. I had +extinguished the light again, lest it should fail me in the end; I was +in darkness, save for the earthshine and the glitter of the stars below +me. Everything was so absolutely silent and still that I might indeed +have been the only being in the universe, and yet, strangely enough, I +had no more feeling of loneliness or fear than if I had been lying in +bed on earth. Now, this seems all the stranger to me, since during my +last hours in that crater of the moon, the sense of my utter loneliness +had been an agony.... + +Incredible as it will seem, this interval of time that I spent in space +has no sort of proportion to any other interval of time in my life. +Sometimes it seemed as though I sat through immeasurable eternities +like some god upon a lotus leaf, and again as though there was a +momentary pause as I leapt from moon to earth. In truth, it was +altogether some weeks of earthly time. But I had done with care and +anxiety, hunger or fear, for that space. I floated, thinking with a +strange breadth and freedom of all that we had undergone, and of all my +life and motives, and the secret issues of my being. I seemed to myself +to have grown greater and greater, to have lost all sense of movement; +to be floating amidst the stars, and always the sense of earth’s +littleness and the infinite littleness of my life upon it, was implicit +in my thoughts. + +I can’t profess to explain the things that happened in my mind. No +doubt they could all be traced directly or indirectly to the curious +physical conditions under which I was living. I set them down here just +for what they are worth, and without any comment. The most prominent +quality of it was a pervading doubt of my own identity. I became, if I +may so express it, dissociate from Bedford; I looked down on Bedford as +a trivial, incidental thing with which I chanced to be connected. I saw +Bedford in many relations—as an ass or as a poor beast, where I had +hitherto been inclined to regard him with a quiet pride as a very +spirited or rather forcible person. I saw him not only as an ass, but +as the son of many generations of asses. I reviewed his school-days and +his early manhood, and his first encounter with love, very much as one +might review the proceedings of an ant in the sand. Something of that +period of lucidity I regret still hangs about me, and I doubt if I +shall ever recover the full-bodied self satisfaction of my early days. +But at the time the thing was not in the least painful, because I had +that extraordinary persuasion that, as a matter of fact, I was no more +Bedford than I was any one else, but only a mind floating in the still +serenity of space. Why should I be disturbed about this Bedford’s +shortcomings? I was not responsible for him or them. + +For a time I struggled against this really very grotesque delusion. I +tried to summon the memory of vivid moments, of tender or intense +emotions to my assistance; I felt that if I could recall one genuine +twinge of feeling the growing severance would be stopped. But I could +not do it. I saw Bedford rushing down Chancery Lane, hat on the back of +his head, coat tails flying out, _en route_ for his public examination. +I saw him dodging and bumping against, and even saluting, other similar +little creatures in that swarming gutter of people. Me? I saw Bedford +that same evening in the sitting-room of a certain lady, and his hat +was on the table beside him, and it wanted brushing badly, and he was +in tears. Me? I saw him with that lady in various attitudes and +emotions—I never felt so detached before.... I saw him hurrying off to +Lympne to write a play, and accosting Cavor, and in his shirt sleeves +working at the sphere, and walking out to Canterbury because he was +afraid to come! Me? I did not believe it. + +I still reasoned that all this was hallucination due to my solitude, +and the fact that I had lost all weight and sense of resistance. I +endeavoured to recover that sense by banging myself about the sphere, +by pinching my hands and clasping them together. Among other things, I +lit the light, captured that torn copy of _Lloyd’s_, and read those +convincingly realistic advertisements about the Cutaway bicycle, and +the gentleman of private means, and the lady in distress who was +selling those “forks and spoons.” There was no doubt they existed +surely enough, and, said I, “This is your world, and you are Bedford, +and you are going back to live among things like that for all the rest +of your life.” But the doubts within me could still argue: “It is not +you that is reading, it is Bedford, but you are not Bedford, you know. +That’s just where the mistake comes in.” + +“Confound it!” I cried; “and if I am not Bedford, what am I?” + +But in that direction no light was forthcoming, though the strangest +fancies came drifting into my brain, queer remote suspicions, like +shadows seen from away. Do you know, I had a sort of idea that really I +was something quite outside not only the world, but all worlds, and out +of space and time, and that this poor Bedford was just a peephole +through which I looked at life? ... + +Bedford! However I disavowed him, there I was most certainly bound up +with him, and I knew that wherever or whatever I might be, I must needs +feel the stress of his desires, and sympathise with all his joys and +sorrows until his life should end. And with the dying of Bedford—what +then? ... + +Enough of this remarkable phase of my experiences! I tell it here +simply to show how one’s isolation and departure from this planet +touched not only the functions and feeling of every organ of the body, +but indeed also the very fabric of the mind, with strange and +unanticipated disturbances. All through the major portion of that vast +space journey I hung thinking of such immaterial things as these, hung +dissociated and apathetic, a cloudy megalomaniac, as it were, amidst +the stars and planets in the void of space; and not only the world to +which I was returning, but the blue-lit caverns of the Selenites, their +helmet faces, their gigantic and wonderful machines, and the fate of +Cavor, dragged helpless into that world, seemed infinitely minute and +altogether trivial things to me. + +Until at last I began to feel the pull of the earth upon my being, +drawing me back again to the life that is real for men. And then, +indeed, it grew clearer and clearer to me that I was quite certainly +Bedford after all, and returning after amazing adventures to this world +of ours, and with a life that I was very likely to lose in this return. +I set myself to puzzle out the conditions under which I must fall to +earth. + + + + +XXI. +Mr. Bedford at Littlestone + + +My line of flight was about parallel with the surface as I came into +the upper air. The temperature of the sphere began to rise forthwith. I +knew it behoved me to drop at once. Far below me, in a darkling +twilight, stretched a great expanse of sea. I opened every window I +could, and fell—out of sunshine into evening, and out of evening into +night. Vaster grew the earth and vaster, swallowing up the stars, and +the silvery translucent starlit veil of cloud it wore spread out to +catch me. At last the world seemed no longer a sphere but flat, and +then concave. It was no longer a planet in the sky, but the world of +Man. I shut all but an inch or so of earthward window, and dropped with +a slackening velocity. The broadening water, now so near that I could +see the dark glitter of the waves, rushed up to meet me. The sphere +became very hot. I snapped the last strip of window, and sat scowling +and biting my knuckles, waiting for the impact.... + +The sphere hit the water with a huge splash: it must have sent it +fathoms high. At the splash I flung the Cavorite shutters open. Down I +went, but slower and slower, and then I felt the sphere pressing +against my feet, and so drove up again as a bubble drives. And at the +last I was floating and rocking upon the surface of the sea, and my +journey in space was at an end. + +The night was dark and overcast. Two yellow pinpoints far away showed +the passing of a ship, and nearer was a red glare that came and went. +Had not the electricity of my glow-lamp exhausted itself, I could have +got picked up that night. In spite of the inordinate fatigue I was +beginning to feel, I was excited now, and for a time hopeful, in a +feverish, impatient way, that so my travelling might end. + +But at last I ceased to move about, and sat, wrists on knees, staring +at a distant red light. It swayed up and down, rocking, rocking. My +excitement passed. I realised I had yet to spend another night at least +in the sphere. I perceived myself infinitely heavy and fatigued. And so +I fell asleep. + +A change in my rhythmic motion awakened me. I peered through the +refracting glass, and saw that I had come aground upon a huge shallow +of sand. Far away I seemed to see houses and trees, and seaward a +curved, vague distortion of a ship hung between sea and sky. + +I stood up and staggered. My one desire was to emerge. The manhole was +upward, and I wrestled with the screw. Slowly I opened the manhole. At +last the air was singing in again as once it had sung out. But this +time I did not wait until the pressure was adjusted. In another moment +I had the weight of the window on my hands, and I was open, wide open, +to the old familiar sky of earth. + +The air hit me on the chest so that I gasped. I dropped the glass +screw. I cried out, put my hands to my chest, and sat down. For a time +I was in pain. Then I took deep breaths. At last I could rise and move +about again. + +I tried to thrust my head through the manhole, and the sphere rolled +over. It was as though something had lugged my head down directly it +emerged. I ducked back sharply, or I should have been pinned face under +water. After some wriggling and shoving I managed to crawl out upon +sand, over which the retreating waves still came and went. + +I did not attempt to stand up. It seemed to me that my body must be +suddenly changed to lead. Mother Earth had her grip on me now—no +Cavorite intervening. I sat down heedless of the water that came over +my feet. + +It was dawn, a grey dawn, rather overcast but showing here and there a +long patch of greenish grey. Some way out a ship was lying at anchor, a +pale silhouette of a ship with one yellow light. The water came +rippling in in long shallow waves. Away to the right curved the land, a +shingle bank with little hovels, and at last a lighthouse, a sailing +mark and a point. Inland stretched a space of level sand, broken here +and there by pools of water, and ending a mile away perhaps in a low +shore of scrub. To the north-east some isolated watering-place was +visible, a row of gaunt lodging-houses, the tallest things that I could +see on earth, dull dabs against the brightening sky. What strange men +can have reared these vertical piles in such an amplitude of space I do +not know. There they are, like pieces of Brighton lost in the waste. + +For a long time I sat there, yawning and rubbing my face. At last I +struggled to rise. It made me feel that I was lifting a weight. I stood +up. + +I stared at the distant houses. For the first time since our starvation +in the crater I thought of earthly food. “Bacon,” I whispered, “eggs. +Good toast and good coffee.... And how the devil am I going to get all +this stuff to Lympne?” I wondered where I was. It was an east shore +anyhow, and I had seen Europe before I dropped. + +I heard footsteps crunching in the sand, and a little round-faced, +friendly-looking man in flannels, with a bathing towel wrapped about +his shoulders, and his bathing dress over his arm, appeared up the +beach. I knew instantly that I must be in England. He was staring most +intently at the sphere and me. He advanced staring. I dare say I looked +a ferocious savage enough—dirty, unkempt, to an indescribable degree; +but it did not occur to me at the time. He stopped at a distance of +twenty yards. “Hul-lo, my man!” he said doubtfully. + +“Hullo yourself!” said I. + +He advanced, reassured by that. “What on earth is that thing?” he +asked. + +“Can you tell me where I am?” I asked. + +“That’s Littlestone,” he said, pointing to the houses; “and that’s +Dungeness! Have you just landed? What’s that thing you’ve got? Some +sort of machine?” + +“Yes.” + +“Have you floated ashore? Have you been wrecked or something? What is +it?” + +I meditated swiftly. I made an estimate of the little man’s appearance +as he drew nearer. “By Jove!” he said, “you’ve had a time of it! I +thought you— Well— Where were you cast away? Is that thing a sort of +floating thing for saving life?” + +I decided to take that line for the present. I made a few vague +affirmatives. “I want help,” I said hoarsely. “I want to get some stuff +up the beach—stuff I can’t very well leave about.” I became aware of +three other pleasant-looking young men with towels, blazers, and straw +hats, coming down the sands towards me. Evidently the early bathing +section of this Littlestone. + +“Help!” said the young man: “rather!” He became vaguely active. “What +particularly do you want done?” He turned round and gesticulated. The +three young men accelerated their pace. In a minute they were about me, +plying me with questions I was indisposed to answer. “I’ll tell all +that later,” I said. “I’m dead beat. I’m a rag.” + +“Come up to the hotel,” said the foremost little man. “We’ll look after +that thing there.” + +I hesitated. “I can’t,” I said. “In that sphere there’s two big bars of +gold.” + +They looked incredulously at one another, then at me with a new +inquiry. I went to the sphere, stooped, crept in, and presently they +had the Selenites’ crowbars and the broken chain before them. If I had +not been so horribly fagged I could have laughed at them. It was like +kittens round a beetle. They didn’t know what to do with the stuff. The +fat little man stooped and lifted the end of one of the bars, and then +dropped it with a grunt. Then they all did. + +“It’s lead, or gold!” said one. + +“Oh, it’s _gold!_” said another. + +“Gold, right enough,” said the third. + +Then they all stared at me, and then they all stared at the ship lying +at anchor. + +“I say!” cried the little man. “But where did you get that?” + +I was too tired to keep up a lie. “I got it in the moon.” + +I saw them stare at one another. + +“Look here!” said I, “I’m not going to argue now. Help me carry these +lumps of gold up to the hotel—I guess, with rests, two of you can +manage one, and I’ll trail this chain thing—and I’ll tell you more when +I’ve had some food.” + +“And how about that thing?” + +“It won’t hurt there,” I said. “Anyhow—confound it!—it must stop there +now. If the tide comes up, it will float all right.” + +And in a state of enormous wonderment, these young men most obediently +hoisted my treasures on their shoulders, and with limbs that felt like +lead I headed a sort of procession towards that distant fragment of +“sea-front.” Half-way there we were reinforced by two awe-stricken +little girls with spades, and later a lean little boy, with a +penetrating sniff, appeared. He was, I remember, wheeling a bicycle, +and he accompanied us at a distance of about a hundred yards on our +right flank, and then I suppose, gave us up as uninteresting, mounted +his bicycle and rode off over the level sands in the direction of the +sphere. + +I glanced back after him. + +“_He_ won’t touch it,” said the stout young man reassuringly, and I was +only too willing to be reassured. + +At first something of the grey of the morning was in my mind, but +presently the sun disengaged itself from the level clouds of the +horizon and lit the world, and turned the leaden sea to glittering +waters. My spirits rose. A sense of the vast importance of the things I +had done and had yet to do came with the sunlight into my mind. I +laughed aloud as the foremost man staggered under my gold. When indeed +I took my place in the world, how amazed the world would be! + +If it had not been for my inordinate fatigue, the landlord of the +Littlestone hotel would have been amusing, as he hesitated between my +gold and my respectable company on the one and my filthy appearance on +the other. But at last I found myself in a terrestrial bathroom once +more with warm water to wash myself with, and a change of raiment, +preposterously small indeed, but anyhow clean, that the genial little +man had lent me. He lent me a razor too, but I could not screw up my +resolution to attack even the outposts of the bristling beard that +covered my face. + +I sat down to an English breakfast and ate with a sort of languid +appetite—an appetite many weeks old and very decrepit—and stirred +myself to answer the questions of the four young men. And I told them +the truth. + +“Well,” said I, “as you press me—I got it in the moon.” + +“The moon?” + +“Yes, the moon in the sky.” + +“But how do you mean?” + +“What I say, confound it!” + +“Then you have just come from the moon?” + +“Exactly! through space—in that ball.” And I took a delicious mouthful +of egg. I made a private note that when I went back to the moon I would +take a box of eggs. + +I could see clearly that they did not believe one word of what I told +them, but evidently they considered me the most respectable liar they +had ever met. They glanced at one another, and then concentrated the +fire of their eyes on me. I fancy they expected a clue to me in the way +I helped myself to salt. They seemed to find something significant in +my peppering my egg. These strangely shaped masses of gold they had +staggered under held their minds. There the lumps lay in front of me, +each worth thousands of pounds, and as impossible for any one to steal +as a house or a piece of land. As I looked at their curious faces over +my coffee-cup, I realised something of the enormous wilderness of +explanations into which I should have to wander to render myself +comprehensible again. + +“You don’t _really_ mean—” began the youngest young man, in the tone of +one who speaks to an obstinate child. + +“Just pass me that toast-rack,” I said, and shut him up completely. + +“But look here, I say,” began one of the others. “We’re not going to +believe that, you know.” + +“Ah, well,” said I, and shrugged my shoulders. + +“He doesn’t want to tell us,” said the youngest young man in a stage +aside; and then, with an appearance of great _sang-froid_, “You don’t +mind if I take a cigarette?” + +I waved him a cordial assent, and proceeded with my breakfast. Two of +the others went and looked out of the farther window and talked +inaudibly. I was struck by a thought. “The tide,” I said, “is running +out?” + +There was a pause, a doubt who should answer me. + +“It’s near the ebb,” said the fat little man. + +“Well, anyhow,” I said, “it won’t float far.” + +I decapitated my third egg, and began a little speech. “Look here,” I +said. “Please don’t imagine I’m surly or telling you uncivil lies, or +anything of that sort. I’m forced almost, to be a little short and +mysterious. I can quite understand this is as queer as it can be, and +that your imaginations must be going it. I can assure you, you’re in at +a memorable time. But I can’t make it clear to you now—it’s impossible. +I give you my word of honour I’ve come from the moon, and that’s all I +can tell you.... All the same, I’m tremendously obliged to you, you +know, tremendously. I hope that my manner hasn’t in any way given you +offence.” + +“Oh, not in the least!” said the youngest young man affably. “We can +quite understand,” and staring hard at me all the time, he heeled his +chair back until it very nearly upset, and recovered with some +exertion. “Not a bit of it,” said the fat young man. + +“Don’t you imagine _that!_” and they all got up and dispersed, and +walked about and lit cigarettes, and generally tried to show they were +perfectly amiable and disengaged, and entirely free from the slightest +curiosity about me and the sphere. “I’m going to keep an eye on that +ship out there all the same,” I heard one of them remarking in an +undertone. If only they could have forced themselves to it, they would, +I believe, even have gone out and left me. I went on with my third egg. + +“The weather,” the fat little man remarked presently, “has been +immense, has it not? I don’t know _when_ we have had such a summer.” + +Phoo-whizz! Like a tremendous rocket! + +And somewhere a window was broken.... + +“What’s that?” said I. + +“It isn’t—?” cried the little man, and rushed to the corner window. + +All the others rushed to the window likewise. I sat staring at them. + +Suddenly I leapt up, knocked over my third egg, rushed for the window +also. I had just thought of something. “Nothing to be seen there,” +cried the little man, rushing for the door. + +“It’s that boy!” I cried, bawling in hoarse fury; “it’s that accursed +boy!” and turning about I pushed the waiter aside—he was just bringing +me some more toast—and rushed violently out of the room and down and +out upon the queer little esplanade in front of the hotel. + +The sea, which had been smooth, was rough now with hurrying cat’s-paws, +and all about where the sphere had been was tumbled water like the wake +of a ship. Above, a little puff of cloud whirled like dispersing smoke, +and the three or four people on the beach were staring up with +interrogative faces towards the point of that unexpected report. And +that was all! Boots and waiter and the four young men in blazers came +rushing out behind me. Shouts came from windows and doors, and all +sorts of worrying people came into sight—agape. + +For a time I stood there, too overwhelmed by this new development to +think of the people. + +At first I was too stunned to see the thing as any definite disaster—I +was just stunned, as a man is by some accidental violent blow. It is +only afterwards he begins to appreciate his specific injury. + +“Good Lord!” + +I felt as though somebody was pouring funk out of a can down the back +of my neck. My legs became feeble. I had got the first intimation of +what the disaster meant for me. There was that confounded boy—sky high! +I was utterly left. There was the gold in the coffee-room—my only +possession on earth. How would it all work out? The general effect was +of a gigantic unmanageable confusion. + +“I say,” said the voice of the little man behind. “I _say_, you know.” + +I wheeled about, and there were twenty or thirty people, a sort of +irregular investment of people, all bombarding me with dumb +interrogation, with infinite doubt and suspicion. I felt the compulsion +of their eyes intolerably. I groaned aloud. + +“I _can’t_,” I shouted. “I tell you I can’t! I’m not equal to it! You +must puzzle and—and be damned to you!” + +I gesticulated convulsively. He receded a step as though I had +threatened him. I made a bolt through them into the hotel. I charged +back into the coffee-room, rang the bell furiously. I gripped the +waiter as he entered. “D’ye hear?” I shouted. “Get help and carry these +bars up to my room right away.” + +He failed to understand me, and I shouted and raved at him. A +scared-looking little old man in a green apron appeared, and further +two of the young men in flannels. I made a dash at them and +commandeered their services. As soon as the gold was in my room I felt +free to quarrel. “Now get out,” I shouted; “all of you get out if you +don’t want to see a man go mad before your eyes!” And I helped the +waiter by the shoulder as he hesitated in the doorway. And then, as +soon as I had the door locked on them all, I tore off the little man’s +clothes again, shied them right and left, and got into bed forthwith. +And there I lay swearing and panting and cooling for a very long time. + +At last I was calm enough to get out of bed and ring up the round-eyed +waiter for a flannel nightshirt, a soda and whisky, and some good +cigars. And these things being procured me, after an exasperating delay +that drove me several times to the bell, I locked the door again and +proceeded very deliberately to look the entire situation in the face. + +The net result of the great experiment presented itself as an absolute +failure. It was a rout, and I was the sole survivor. It was an absolute +collapse, and this was the final disaster. There was nothing for it but +to save myself, and as much as I could in the way of prospects from our +_débâcle_. At one fatal crowning blow all my vague resolutions of +return and recovery had vanished. My intention of going back to the +moon, of getting a sphereful of gold, and afterwards of having a +fragment of Cavorite analysed and so recovering the great +secret—perhaps, finally, even of recovering Cavor’s body—all these +ideas vanished altogether. + +I was the sole survivor, and that was all. + +I think that going to bed was one of the luckiest ideas I have ever had +in an emergency. I really believe I should either have got loose-headed +or done some indiscreet thing. But there, locked in and secure from all +interruptions, I could think out the position in all its bearings and +make my arrangements at leisure. + +Of course, it was quite clear to me what had happened to the boy. He +had crawled into the sphere, meddled with the studs, shut the Cavorite +windows, and gone up. It was highly improbable he had screwed the +manhole stopper, and, even if he had, the chances were a thousand to +one against his getting back. It was fairly evident that he would +gravitate with my bales to somewhere near the middle of the sphere and +remain there, and so cease to be a legitimate terrestrial interest, +however remarkable he might seem to the inhabitants of some remote +quarter of space. I very speedily convinced myself on that point. And +as for any responsibility I might have in the matter, the more I +reflected upon that, the clearer it became that if only I kept quiet +about things, I need not trouble myself about that. If I was faced by +sorrowing parents demanding their lost boy, I had merely to demand my +lost sphere—or ask them what they meant. At first I had had a vision of +weeping parents and guardians, and all sorts of complications; but now +I saw that I simply had to keep my mouth shut, and nothing in that way +could arise. And, indeed, the more I lay and smoked and thought, the +more evident became the wisdom of impenetrability. + +It is within the right of every British citizen, provided he does not +commit damage nor indecorum, to appear suddenly wherever he pleases, +and as ragged and filthy as he pleases, and with whatever amount of +virgin gold he sees fit to encumber himself, and no one has any right +at all to hinder and detain him in this procedure. I formulated that at +last to myself, and repeated it over as a sort of private Magna Charta +of my liberty. + +Once I had put that issue on one side, I could take up and consider in +an equable manner certain considerations I had scarcely dared to think +of before, namely, those arising out of the circumstances of my +bankruptcy. But now, looking at this matter calmly and at leisure, I +could see that if only I suppressed my identity by a temporary +assumption of some less well-known name, and if I retained the two +months’ beard that had grown upon me, the risks of any annoyance from +the spiteful creditor to whom I have already alluded became very small +indeed. From that to a definite course of rational worldly action was +plain sailing. It was all amazingly petty, no doubt, but what was there +remaining for me to do? + +Whatever I did I was resolved that I would keep myself level and right +side up. + +I ordered up writing materials, and addressed a letter to the New +Romney Bank—the nearest, the waiter informed me—telling the manager I +wished to open an account with him, and requesting him to send two +trustworthy persons properly authenticated in a cab with a good horse +to fetch some hundredweight of gold with which I happened to be +encumbered. I signed the letter “Blake,” which seemed to me to be a +thoroughly respectable sort of name. This done, I got a Folkstone Blue +Book, picked out an outfitter, and asked him to send a cutter to +measure me for a dark tweed suit, ordering at the same time a valise, +dressing bag, brown boots, shirts, hat (to fit), and so forth; and from +a watchmaker I also ordered a watch. And these letters being +despatched, I had up as good a lunch as the hotel could give, and then +lay smoking a cigar, as calm and ordinary as possible, until in +accordance with my instructions two duly authenticated clerks came from +the bank and weighed and took away my gold. After which I pulled the +clothes over my ears in order to drown any knocking, and went very +comfortably to sleep. + +I went to sleep. No doubt it was a prosaic thing for the first man back +from the moon to do, and I can imagine that the young and imaginative +reader will find my behaviour disappointing. But I was horribly +fatigued and bothered, and, confound it! what else was there to do? +There certainly was not the remotest chance of my being believed, if I +had told my story then, and it would certainly have subjected me to +intolerable annoyances. I went to sleep. When at last I woke up again I +was ready to face the world as I have always been accustomed to face it +since I came to years of discretion. And so I got away to Italy, and +there it is I am writing this story. If the world will not have it as +fact, then the world may take it as fiction. It is no concern of mine. + +And now that the account is finished, I am amazed to think how +completely this adventure is gone and done with. Everybody believes +that Cavor was a not very brilliant scientific experimenter who blew up +his house and himself at Lympne, and they explain the bang that +followed my arrival at Littlestone by a reference to the experiments +with explosives that are going on continually at the government +establishment of Lydd, two miles away. I must confess that hitherto I +have not acknowledged my share in the disappearance of Master Tommy +Simmons, which was that little boy’s name. That, perhaps, may prove a +difficult item of corroboration to explain away. They account for my +appearance in rags with two bars of indisputable gold upon the +Littlestone beach in various ingenious ways—it doesn’t worry me what +they think of me. They say I have strung all these things together to +avoid being questioned too closely as to the source of my wealth. I +would like to see the man who could invent a story that would hold +together like this one. Well, they must take it as fiction—there it is. + +I have told my story—and now, I suppose, I have to take up the worries +of this terrestrial life again. Even if one has been to the moon, one +has still to earn a living. So I am working here at Amalfi, on the +scenario of that play I sketched before Cavor came walking into my +world, and I am trying to piece my life together as it was before ever +I saw him. I must confess that I find it hard to keep my mind on the +play when the moonshine comes into my room. It is full moon here, and +last night I was out on the pergola for hours, staring away at the +shining blankness that hides so much. Imagine it! tables and chairs, +and trestles and bars of gold! Confound it!—if only one could hit on +that Cavorite again! But a thing like that doesn’t come twice in a +life. Here I am, a little better off than I was at Lympne, and that is +all. And Cavor has committed suicide in a more elaborate way than any +human being ever did before. So the story closes as finally and +completely as a dream. It fits in so little with all the other things +of life, so much of it is so utterly remote from all human experience, +the leaping, the eating, the breathing, and these weightless times, +that indeed there are moments when, in spite of my moon gold, I do more +than half believe myself that the whole thing was a dream.... + + + + +XXII. +The Astonishing Communication of Mr. Julius Wendigee + + +When I had finished my account of my return to the earth at +Littlestone, I wrote, “The End,” made a flourish, and threw my pen +aside, fully believing that the whole story of the First Men in the +Moon was done. Not only had I done this, but I had placed my manuscript +in the hands of a literary agent, had permitted it to be sold, had seen +the greater portion of it appear in the _Strand Magazine_, and was +setting to work again upon the scenario of the play I had commenced at +Lympne before I realised that the end was not yet. And then, following +me from Amalfi to Algiers, there reached me (it is now about six months +ago) one of the most astounding communications I have ever been fated +to receive. Briefly, it informed me that Mr. Julius Wendigee, a Dutch +electrician, who has been experimenting with certain apparatus akin to +the apparatus used by Mr. Tesla in America, in the hope of discovering +some method of communication with Mars, was receiving day by day a +curiously fragmentary message in English, which was indisputably +emanating from Mr. Cavor in the moon. + +At first I thought the thing was an elaborate practical joke by some +one who had seen the manuscript of my narrative. I answered Mr. +Wendigee jestingly, but he replied in a manner that put such suspicion +altogether aside, and in a state of inconceivable excitement I hurried +from Algiers to the little observatory upon the Monte Rosa in which he +was working. In the presence of his record and his appliances—and above +all of the messages from Cavor that were coming to hand—my lingering +doubts vanished. I decided at once to accept a proposal he made to me +to remain with him, assisting him to take down the record from day to +day, and endeavouring with him to send a message back to the moon. +Cavor, we learnt, was not only alive, but free, in the midst of an +almost inconceivable community of these ant-like beings, these ant-men, +in the blue darkness of the lunar caves. He was lamed, it seemed, but +otherwise in quite good health—in better health, he distinctly said, +than he usually enjoyed on earth. He had had a fever, but it had left +no bad effects. But curiously enough he seemed to be labouring under a +conviction that I was either dead in the moon crater or lost in the +deep of space. + +His message began to be received by Mr. Wendigee when that gentleman +was engaged in quite a different investigation. The reader will no +doubt recall the little excitement that began the century, arising out +of an announcement by Mr. Nikola Tesla, the American electrical +celebrity, that he had received a message from Mars. His announcement +renewed attention to a fact that had long been familiar to scientific +people, namely: that from some unknown source in space, waves of +electromagnetic disturbance, entirely similar to those used by Signor +Marconi for his wireless telegraphy, are constantly reaching the earth. +Besides Tesla quite a number of other observers have been engaged in +perfecting apparatus for receiving and recording these vibrations, +though few would go so far as to consider them actual messages from +some extraterrestrial sender. Among that few, however, we must +certainly count Mr. Wendigee. Ever since 1898 he had devoted himself +almost entirely to this subject, and being a man of ample means he had +erected an observatory on the flanks of Monte Rosa, in a position +singularly adapted in every way for such observations. + +My scientific attainments, I must admit, are not great, but so far as +they enable me to judge, Mr. Wendigee’s contrivances for detecting and +recording any disturbances in the electromagnetic conditions of space +are singularly original and ingenious. And by a happy combination of +circumstances they were set up and in operation about two months before +Cavor made his first attempt to call up the earth. Consequently we have +fragments of his communication even from the beginning. Unhappily, they +are only fragments, and the most momentous of all the things that he +had to tell humanity—the instructions, that is, for the making of +Cavorite, if, indeed, he ever transmitted them—have throbbed themselves +away unrecorded into space. We never succeeded in getting a response +back to Cavor. He was unable to tell, therefore, what we had received +or what we had missed; nor, indeed, did he certainly know that any one +on earth was really aware of his efforts to reach us. And the +persistence he displayed in sending eighteen long descriptions of lunar +affairs—as they would be if we had them complete—shows how much his +mind must have turned back towards his native planet since he left it +two years ago. + +You can imagine how amazed Mr. Wendigee must have been when he +discovered his record of electromagnetic disturbances interlaced by +Cavor’s straightforward English. Mr. Wendigee knew nothing of our wild +journey moonward, and suddenly—this English out of the void! + +It is well the reader should understand the conditions under which it +would seem these messages were sent. Somewhere within the moon Cavor +certainly had access for a time to a considerable amount of electrical +apparatus, and it would seem he rigged up—perhaps furtively—a +transmitting arrangement of the Marconi type. This he was able to +operate at irregular intervals: sometimes for only half an hour or so, +sometimes for three or four hours at a stretch. At these times he +transmitted his earthward message, regardless of the fact that the +relative position of the moon and points upon the earth’s surface is +constantly altering. As a consequence of this and of the necessary +imperfections of our recording instruments his communication comes and +goes in our records in an extremely fitful manner; it becomes blurred; +it “fades out” in a mysterious and altogether exasperating way. And +added to this is the fact that he was not an expert operator; he had +partly forgotten, or never completely mastered, the code in general +use, and as he became fatigued he dropped words and misspelt in a +curious manner. + +Altogether we have probably lost quite half of the communications he +made, and much we have is damaged, broken, and partly effaced. In the +abstract that follows the reader must be prepared therefore for a +considerable amount of break, hiatus, and change of topic. Mr. Wendigee +and I are collaborating in a complete and annotated edition of the +Cavor record, which we hope to publish, together with a detailed +account of the instruments employed, beginning with the first volume in +January next. That will be the full and scientific report, of which +this is only the popular transcript. But here we give at least +sufficient to complete the story I have told, and to give the broad +outlines of the state of that other world so near, so akin, and yet so +dissimilar to our own. + + + + +XXIII. +An Abstract of the Six Messages First Received from Mr. Cavor + + +The two earlier messages of Mr. Cavor may very well be reserved for +that larger volume. They simply tell, with greater brevity and with a +difference in several details that is interesting, but not of any vital +importance, the bare facts of the making of the sphere and our +departure from the world. Throughout, Cavor speaks of me as a man who +is dead, but with a curious change of temper as he approaches our +landing on the moon. “Poor Bedford,” he says of me, and “this poor +young man,” and he blames himself for inducing a young man, “by no +means well equipped for such adventures,” to leave a planet “on which +he was indisputably fitted to succeed” on so precarious a mission. I +think he underrates the part my energy and practical capacity played in +bringing about the realisation of his theoretical sphere. “We arrived,” +he says, with no more account of our passage through space than if we +had made a journey of common occurrence in a railway train. + +And then he becomes increasingly unfair to me. Unfair, indeed, to an +extent I should not have expected in a man trained in the search for +truth. Looking back over my previously written account of these things, +I must insist that I have been altogether juster to Cavor than he has +been to me. I have extenuated little and suppressed nothing. But his +account is:— + +“It speedily became apparent that the entire strangeness of our +circumstances and surroundings—great loss of weight, attenuated but +highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration of the results of +muscular effort, rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores, +lurid sky—was exciting my companion unduly. On the moon his character +seemed to deteriorate. He became impulsive, rash, and quarrelsome. In a +little while his folly in devouring some gigantic vesicles and his +consequent intoxication led to our capture by the Selenites—before we +had had the slightest opportunity of properly observing their ways....” + +(He says, you observe, nothing of his own concession to these same +“vesicles.”) + +And he goes on from that point to say that “We came to a difficult +passage with them, and Bedford mistaking certain gestures of +theirs”—pretty gestures they were!—“gave way to a panic violence. He +ran amuck, killed three, and perforce I had to flee with him after the +outrage. Subsequently we fought with a number who endeavoured to bar +our way, and slew seven or eight more. It says much for the tolerance +of these beings that on my recapture I was not instantly slain. We made +our way to the exterior and separated in the crater of our arrival, to +increase our chances of recovering our sphere. But presently I came +upon a body of Selenites, led by two who were curiously different, even +in form, from any of these we had seen hitherto, with larger heads and +smaller bodies, and much more elaborately wrapped about. And after +evading them for some time I fell into a crevasse, cut my head rather +badly, and displaced my patella, and, finding crawling very painful, +decided to surrender—if they would still permit me to do so. This they +did, and, perceiving my helpless condition, carried me with them again +into the moon. And of Bedford I have heard or seen nothing more, nor, +so far as I can gather, has any Selenite. Either the night overtook him +in the crater, or else, which is more probable, he found the sphere, +and, desiring to steal a march upon me, made off with it—only, I fear, +to find it uncontrollable, and to meet a more lingering fate in outer +space.” + +And with that Cavor dismisses me and goes on to more interesting +topics. I dislike the idea of seeming to use my position as his editor +to deflect his story in my own interest, but I am obliged to protest +here against the turn he gives these occurrences. He said nothing about +that gasping message on the blood-stained paper in which he told, or +attempted to tell, a very different story. The dignified self-surrender +is an altogether new view of the affair that has come to him, I must +insist, since he began to feel secure among the lunar people; and as +for the “stealing a march” conception, I am quite willing to let the +reader decide between us on what he has before him. I know I am not a +model man—I have made no pretence to be. But am I _that?_ + +However, that is the sum of my wrongs. From this point I can edit Cavor +with an untroubled mind, for he mentions me no more. + +It would seem the Selenites who had come upon him carried him to some +point in the interior down “a great shaft” by means of what he +describes as “a sort of balloon.” We gather from the rather confused +passage in which he describes this, and from a number of chance +allusions and hints in other and subsequent messages, that this “great +shaft” is one of an enormous system of artificial shafts that run, each +from what is called a lunar “crater,” downwards for very nearly a +hundred miles towards the central portion of our satellite. These +shafts communicate by transverse tunnels, they throw out abysmal +caverns and expand into great globular places; the whole of the moon’s +substance for a hundred miles inward, indeed, is a mere sponge of rock. +“Partly,” says Cavor, “this sponginess is natural, but very largely it +is due to the enormous industry of the Selenites in the past. The +enormous circular mounds of the excavated rock and earth it is that +form these great circles about the tunnels known to earthly astronomers +(misled by a false analogy) as volcanoes.” + +It was down this shaft they took him, in this “sort of balloon” he +speaks of, at first into an inky blackness and then into a region of +continually increasing phosphorescence. Cavor’s despatches show him to +be curiously regardless of detail for a scientific man, but we gather +that this light was due to the streams and cascades of water—“no doubt +containing some phosphorescent organism”—that flowed ever more +abundantly downward towards the Central Sea. And as he descended, he +says, “The Selenites also became luminous.” And at last far below him +he saw, as it were, a lake of heatless fire, the waters of the Central +Sea, glowing and eddying in strange perturbation, “like luminous blue +milk that is just on the boil.” + +“This Lunar Sea,” says Cavor, in a later passage, “is not a stagnant +ocean; a solar tide sends it in a perpetual flow around the lunar axis, +and strange storms and boilings and rushings of its waters occur, and +at times cold winds and thunderings that ascend out of it into the busy +ways of the great ant-hill above. It is only when the water is in +motion that it gives out light; in its rare seasons of calm it is +black. Commonly, when one sees it, its waters rise and fall in an oily +swell, and flakes and big rafts of shining, bubbly foam drift with the +sluggish, faintly glowing current. The Selenites navigate its cavernous +straits and lagoons in little shallow boats of a canoe-like shape; and +even before my journey to the galleries about the Grand Lunar, who is +Master of the Moon, I was permitted to make a brief excursion on its +waters. + +“The caverns and passages are naturally very tortuous. A large +proportion of these ways are known only to expert pilots among the +fishermen, and not infrequently Selenites are lost for ever in their +labyrinths. In their remoter recesses, I am told, strange creatures +lurk, some of them terrible and dangerous creatures that all the +science of the moon has been unable to exterminate. There is +particularly the Rapha, an inextricable mass of clutching tentacles +that one hacks to pieces only to multiply; and the Tzee, a darting +creature that is never seen, so subtly and suddenly does it slay...” + +He gives us a gleam of description. + +“I was reminded on this excursion of what I have read of the Mammoth +Caves; if only I had had a yellow flambeau instead of the pervading +blue light, and a solid-looking boatman with an oar instead of a +scuttle-faced Selenite working an engine at the back of the canoe, I +could have imagined I had suddenly got back to earth. The rocks about +us were very various, sometimes black, sometimes pale blue and veined, +and once they flashed and glittered as though we had come into a mine +of sapphires. And below one saw the ghostly phosphorescent fishes flash +and vanish in the hardly less phosphorescent deep. Then, presently, a +long ultra-marine vista down the turgid stream of one of the channels +of traffic, and a landing stage, and then, perhaps, a glimpse up the +enormous crowded shaft of one of the vertical ways. + +“In one great place heavy with glistening stalactites a number of boats +were fishing. We went alongside one of these and watched the long-armed +Selenites winding in a net. They were little, hunchbacked insects, with +very strong arms, short, bandy legs, and crinkled face-masks. As they +pulled at it that net seemed the heaviest thing I had come upon in the +moon; it was loaded with weights—no doubt of gold—and it took a long +time to draw, for in those waters the larger and more edible fish lurk +deep. The fish in the net came up like a blue moonrise—a blaze of +darting, tossing blue. + +“Among their catch was a many-tentaculate, evil-eyed black thing, +ferociously active, whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and +twitters, and which with quick, nervous movements they hacked to pieces +by means of little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash +and writhe in a vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold of me, +I dreamt again and again of that bitter, furious creature rising so +vigorous and active out of the unknown sea. It was the most active and +malignant thing of all the living creatures I have yet seen in this +world inside the moon.... + +“The surface of this sea must be very nearly two hundred miles (if not +more) below the level of the moon’s exterior; all the cities of the +moon lie, I learnt, immediately above this Central Sea, in such +cavernous spaces and artificial galleries as I have described, and they +communicate with the exterior by enormous vertical shafts which open +invariably in what are called by earthly astronomers the ‘craters’ of +the moon. The lid covering one such aperture I had already seen during +the wanderings that had preceded my capture. + +“Upon the condition of the less central portion of the moon I have not +yet arrived at very precise knowledge. There is an enormous system of +caverns in which the mooncalves shelter during the night; and there are +abattoirs and the like—in one of these it was that I and Bedford fought +with the Selenite butchers—and I have since seen balloons laden with +meat descending out of the upper dark. I have as yet scarcely learnt as +much of these things as a Zulu in London would learn about the British +corn supplies in the same time. It is clear, however, that these +vertical shafts and the vegetation of the surface must play an +essential role in ventilating and keeping fresh the atmosphere of the +moon. At one time, and particularly on my first emergence from my +prison, there was certainly a cold wind blowing _down_ the shaft, and +later there was a kind of sirocco upward that corresponded with my +fever. For at the end of about three weeks I fell ill of an indefinable +sort of fever, and in spite of sleep and the quinine tabloids that very +fortunately I had brought in my pocket, I remained ill and fretting +miserably, almost to the time when I was taken into the presence of the +Grand Lunar, who is Master of the Moon. + +“I will not dilate on the wretchedness of my condition,” he remarks, +“during those days of ill-health.” And he goes on with great amplitude +with details I omit here. “My temperature,” he concludes, “kept +abnormally high for a long time, and I lost all desire for food. I had +stagnant waking intervals, and sleep tormented by dreams, and at one +phase I was, I remember, so weak as to be earth-sick and almost +hysterical. I longed almost intolerably for colour to break the +everlasting blue...” + +He reverts again presently to the topic of this sponge-caught lunar +atmosphere. I am told by astronomers and physicists that all he tells +is in absolute accordance with what was already known of the moon’s +condition. Had earthly astronomers had the courage and imagination to +push home a bold induction, says Mr. Wendigee, they might have foretold +almost everything that Cavor has to say of the general structure of the +moon. They know now pretty certainly that moon and earth are not so +much satellite and primary as smaller and greater sisters, made out of +one mass, and consequently made of the same material. And since the +density of the moon is only three-fifths that of the earth, there can +be nothing for it but that she is hollowed out by a great system of +caverns. There was no necessity, said Sir Jabez Flap, F.R.S., that most +entertaining exponent of the facetious side of the stars, that we +should ever have gone to the moon to find out such easy inferences, and +points the pun with an allusion to Gruyère, but he certainly might have +announced his knowledge of the hollowness of the moon before. And if +the moon is hollow, then the apparent absence of air and water is, of +course, quite easily explained. The sea lies within at the bottom of +the caverns, and the air travels through the great sponge of galleries, +in accordance with simple physical laws. The caverns of the moon, on +the whole, are very windy places. As the sunlight comes round the moon +the air in the outer galleries on that side is heated, its pressure +increases, some flows out on the exterior and mingles with the +evaporating air of the craters (where the plants remove its carbonic +acid), while the greater portion flows round through the galleries to +replace the shrinking air of the cooling side that the sunlight has +left. There is, therefore, a constant eastward breeze in the air of the +outer galleries, and an upflow during the lunar day up the shafts, +complicated, of course, very greatly by the varying shape of the +galleries, and the ingenious contrivances of the Selenite mind.... + + + + +XXIV. +The Natural History of the Selenites + + +The messages of Cavor from the sixth up to the sixteenth are for the +most part so much broken, and they abound so in repetitions, that they +scarcely form a consecutive narrative. They will be given in full, of +course, in the scientific report, but here it will be far more +convenient to continue simply to abstract and quote as in the former +chapter. We have subjected every word to a keen critical scrutiny, and +my own brief memories and impressions of lunar things have been of +inestimable help in interpreting what would otherwise have been +impenetrably dark. And, naturally, as living beings, our interest +centres far more upon the strange community of lunar insects in which +he was living, it would seem, as an honoured guest than upon the mere +physical condition of their world. + +I have already made it clear, I think, that the Selenites I saw +resembled man in maintaining the erect attitude, and in having four +limbs, and I have compared the general appearance of their heads and +the jointing of their limbs to that of insects. I have mentioned, too, +the peculiar consequence of the smaller gravitation of the moon on +their fragile slightness. Cavor confirms me upon all these points. He +calls them “animals,” though of course they fall under no division of +the classification of earthly creatures, and he points out “the insect +type of anatomy had, fortunately for men, never exceeded a relatively +very small size on earth.” The largest terrestrial insects, living or +extinct, do not, as a matter of fact, measure six inches in length; +“but here, against the lesser gravitation of the moon, a creature +certainly as much an insect as vertebrate seems to have been able to +attain to human and ultra-human dimensions.” + +He does not mention the ant, but throughout his allusions the ant is +continually being brought before my mind, in its sleepless activity, in +its intelligence and social organisation, in its structure, and more +particularly in the fact that it displays, in addition to the two +forms, the male and the female form, that almost all other animals +possess, a number of other sexless creatures, workers, soldiers, and +the like, differing from one another in structure, character, power, +and use, and yet all members of the same species. For these Selenites, +also, have a great variety of forms. Of course, they are not only +colossally greater in size than ants, but also, in Cavor’s opinion at +least, in intelligence, morality, and social wisdom are they colossally +greater than men. And instead of the four or five different forms of +ant that are found, there are almost innumerably different forms of +Selenite. I had endeavoured to indicate the very considerable +difference observable in such Selenites of the outer crust as I +happened to encounter; the differences in size and proportions were +certainly as wide as the differences between the most widely separated +races of men. But such differences as I saw fade absolutely to nothing +in comparison with the huge distinctions of which Cavor tells. It would +seem the exterior Selenites I saw were, indeed, mostly engaged in +kindred occupations—mooncalf herds, butchers, fleshers, and the like. +But within the moon, practically unsuspected by me, there are, it +seems, a number of other sorts of Selenite, differing in size, +differing in the relative size of part to part, differing in power and +appearance, and yet not different species of creatures, but only +different forms of one species, and retaining through all their +variations a certain common likeness that marks their specific unity. +The moon is, indeed, a sort of vast ant-hill, only, instead of there +being only four or five sorts of ant, there are many hundred different +sorts of Selenite, and almost every gradation between one sort and +another. + +It would seem the discovery came upon Cavor very speedily. I infer +rather than learn from his narrative that he was captured by the +mooncalf herds under the direction of these other Selenites who “have +larger brain cases (heads?) and very much shorter legs.” Finding he +would not walk even under the goad, they carried him into darkness, +crossed a narrow, plank-like bridge that may have been the identical +bridge I had refused, and put him down in something that must have +seemed at first to be some sort of lift. This was the balloon—it had +certainly been absolutely invisible to us in the darkness—and what had +seemed to me a mere plank-walking into the void was really, no doubt, +the passage of the gangway. In this he descended towards constantly +more luminous caverns of the moon. At first they descended in +silence—save for the twitterings of the Selenites—and then into a stir +of windy movement. In a little while the profound blackness had made +his eyes so sensitive that he began to see more and more of the things +about him, and at last the vague took shape. + +“Conceive an enormous cylindrical space,” says Cavor, in his seventh +message, “a quarter of a mile across, perhaps; very dimly lit at first +and then brighter, with big platforms twisting down its sides in a +spiral that vanishes at last below in a blue profundity; and lit even +more brightly—one could not tell how or why. Think of the well of the +very largest spiral staircase or lift-shaft that you have ever looked +down, and magnify that by a hundred. Imagine it at twilight seen +through blue glass. Imagine yourself looking down that; only imagine +also that you feel extraordinarily light, and have got rid of any giddy +feeling you might have on earth, and you will have the first conditions +of my impression. Round this enormous shaft imagine a broad gallery +running in a much steeper spiral than would be credible on earth, and +forming a steep road protected from the gulf only by a little parapet +that vanishes at last in perspective a couple of miles below. + +“Looking up, I saw the very fellow of the downward vision; it had, of +course, the effect of looking into a very steep cone. A wind was +blowing down the shaft, and far above I fancy I heard, growing fainter +and fainter, the bellowing of the mooncalves that were being driven +down again from their evening pasturage on the exterior. And up and +down the spiral galleries were scattered numerous moon people, pallid, +faintly luminous beings, regarding our appearance or busied on unknown +errands. + +“Either I fancied it or a flake of snow came drifting down on the icy +breeze. And then, falling like a snowflake, a little figure, a little +man-insect, clinging to a parachute, drove down very swiftly towards +the central places of the moon. + +“The big-headed Selenite sitting beside me, seeing me move my head with +the gesture of one who saw, pointed with his trunk-like ‘hand’ and +indicated a sort of jetty coming into sight very far below: a little +landing-stage, as it were, hanging into the void. As it swept up +towards us our pace diminished very rapidly, and in a few moments, as +it seemed, we were abreast of it, and at rest. A mooring-rope was flung +and grasped, and I found myself pulled down to a level with a great +crowd of Selenites, who jostled to see me. + +“It was an incredible crowd. Suddenly and violently there was forced +upon my attention the vast amount of difference there is amongst these +beings of the moon. + +“Indeed, there seemed not two alike in all that jostling multitude. +They differed in shape, they differed in size, they rang all the +horrible changes on the theme of Selenite form! Some bulged and +overhung, some ran about among the feet of their fellows. All of them +had a grotesque and disquieting suggestion of an insect that has +somehow contrived to mock humanity; but all seemed to present an +incredible exaggeration of some particular feature: one had a vast +right fore-limb, an enormous antennal arm, as it were; one seemed all +leg, poised, as it were, on stilts; another protruded the edge of his +face mask into a nose-like organ that made him startlingly human until +one saw his expressionless gaping mouth. The strange and (except for +the want of mandibles and palps) most insect-like head of the +mooncalf-minders underwent, indeed, the most incredible +transformations: here it was broad and low, here high and narrow; here +its leathery brow was drawn out into horns and strange features; here +it was whiskered and divided, and there with a grotesquely human +profile. One distortion was particularly conspicuous. There were +several brain cases distended like bladders to a huge size, with the +face mask reduced to quite small proportions. There were several +amazing forms, with heads reduced to microscopic proportions and blobby +bodies; and fantastic, flimsy things that existed, it would seem, only +as a basis for vast, trumpet-like protrusions of the lower part of the +mask. And oddest of all, as it seemed to me for the moment, two or +three of these weird inhabitants of a subterranean world, a world +sheltered by innumerable miles of rock from sun or rain, _carried +umbrellas_ in their tentaculate hands—real terrestrial looking +umbrellas! And then I thought of the parachutist I had watched descend. + +“These moon people behaved exactly as a human crowd might have done in +similar circumstances: they jostled and thrust one another, they shoved +one another aside, they even clambered upon one another to get a +glimpse of me. Every moment they increased in numbers, and pressed more +urgently upon the discs of my ushers”—Cavor does not explain what he +means by this—“every moment fresh shapes emerged from the shadows and +forced themselves upon my astounded attention. And presently I was +signed and helped into a sort of litter, and lifted up on the shoulders +of strong-armed bearers, and so borne through the twilight over this +seething multitude towards the apartments that were provided for me in +the moon. All about me were eyes, faces, masks, a leathery noise like +the rustling of beetle wings, and a great bleating and cricket-like +twittering of Selenite voices.” + +We gather he was taken to a “hexagonal apartment,” and there for a +space he was confined. Afterwards he was given a much more considerable +liberty; indeed, almost as much freedom as one has in a civilised town +on earth. And it would appear that the mysterious being who is the +ruler and master of the moon appointed two Selenites “with large heads” +to guard and study him, and to establish whatever mental communications +were possible with him. And, amazing and incredible as it may seem, +these two creatures, these fantastic men insects, these beings of other +world, were presently communicating with Cavor by means of terrestrial +speech. + +Cavor speaks of them as Phi-oo and Tsi-puff. Phi-oo, he says, was about +5 feet high; he had small slender legs about 18 inches long, and slight +feet of the common lunar pattern. On these balanced a little body, +throbbing with the pulsations of his heart. He had long, soft, +many-jointed arms ending in a tentacled grip, and his neck was +many-jointed in the usual way, but exceptionally short and thick. His +head, says Cavor—apparently alluding to some previous description that +has gone astray in space—“is of the common lunar type, but strangely +modified. The mouth has the usual expressionless gape, but it is +unusually small and pointing downward, and the mask is reduced to the +size of a large flat nose-flap. On either side are the little eyes. + +“The rest of the head is distended into a huge globe and the chitinous +leathery cuticle of the mooncalf herds thins out to a mere membrane, +through which the pulsating brain movements are distinctly visible. He +is a creature, indeed, with a tremendously hypertrophied brain, and +with the rest of his organism both relatively and absolutely dwarfed.” + +In another passage Cavor compares the back view of him to Atlas +supporting the world. Tsi-puff it seems was a very similar insect, but +his “face” was drawn out to a considerable length, and the brain +hypertrophy being in different regions, his head was not round but +pear-shaped, with the stalk downward. There were also litter-carriers, +lopsided beings, with enormous shoulders, very spidery ushers, and a +squat foot attendant in Cavor’s retinue. + +The manner in which Phi-oo and Tsi-puff attacked the problem of speech +was fairly obvious. They came into this “hexagonal cell” in which Cavor +was confined, and began imitating every sound he made, beginning with a +cough. He seems to have grasped their intention with great quickness, +and to have begun repeating words to them and pointing to indicate the +application. The procedure was probably always the same. Phi-oo would +attend to Cavor for a space, then point also and say the word he had +heard. + +The first word he mastered was “man,” and the second “Mooney”—which +Cavor on the spur of the moment seems to have used instead of +“Selenite” for the moon race. As soon as Phi-oo was assured of the +meaning of a word he repeated it to Tsi-puff, who remembered it +infallibly. They mastered over one hundred English nouns at their first +session. + +Subsequently it seems they brought an artist with them to assist the +work of explanation with sketches and diagrams—Cavor’s drawings being +rather crude. “He was,” says Cavor, “a being with an active arm and an +arresting eye,” and he seemed to draw with incredible swiftness. + +The eleventh message is undoubtedly only a fragment of a longer +communication. After some broken sentences, the record of which is +unintelligible, it goes on:— + +“But it will interest only linguists, and delay me too long, to give +the details of the series of intent parleys of which these were the +beginning, and, indeed, I very much doubt if I could give in anything +like the proper order all the twistings and turnings that we made in +our pursuit of mutual comprehension. Verbs were soon plain sailing—at +least, such active verbs as I could express by drawings; some +adjectives were easy, but when it came to abstract nouns, to +prepositions, and the sort of hackneyed figures of speech, by means of +which so much is expressed on earth, it was like diving in +cork-jackets. Indeed, these difficulties were insurmountable until to +the sixth lesson came a fourth assistant, a being with a huge +football-shaped head, whose _forte_ was clearly the pursuit of +intricate analogy. He entered in a preoccupied manner, stumbling +against a stool, and the difficulties that arose had to be presented to +him with a certain amount of clamour and hitting and pricking before +they reached his apprehension. But once he was involved his penetration +was amazing. Whenever there came a need of thinking beyond Phi-oo’s by +no means limited scope, this prolate-headed person was in request, but +he invariably told the conclusion to Tsi-puff, in order that it might +be remembered; Tsi-puff was ever the arsenal for facts. And so we +advanced again. + +“It seemed long and yet brief—a matter of days—before I was positively +talking with these insects of the moon. Of course, at first it was an +intercourse infinitely tedious and exasperating, but imperceptibly it +has grown to comprehension. And my patience has grown to meet its +limitations, Phi-oo it is who does all the talking. He does it with a +vast amount of meditative provisional ‘M’m—M’m’ and has caught up one +or two phrases, If I may say,’ ‘If you understand,’ and beads all his +speech with them. + +“Thus he would discourse. Imagine him explaining his artist. + +“‘M’m—M’m—he—if I may say—draw. Eat little—drink little—draw. Love +draw. No other thing. Hate all who not draw like him. Angry. Hate all +who draw like him better. Hate most people. Hate all who not think all +world for to draw. Angry. M’m. All things mean nothing to him—only +draw. He like you ... if you understand.... New thing to draw. +Ugly—striking. Eh? + +“‘He’—turning to Tsi-puff—‘love remember words. Remember wonderful more +than any. Think no, draw no—remember. Say’—here he referred to his +gifted assistant for a word—‘histories—all things. He hear once—say +ever.’ + +“It is more wonderful to me than I dreamt that anything ever could be +again, to hear, in this perpetual obscurity, these extraordinary +creatures—for even familiarity fails to weaken the inhuman effect of +their appearance—continually piping a nearer approach to coherent +earthly speech—asking questions, giving answers. I feel that I am +casting back to the fable-hearing period of childhood again, when the +ant and the grasshopper talked together and the bee judged between +them...” + +And while these linguistic exercises were going on Cavor seems to have +experienced a considerable relaxation of his confinement. “The first +dread and distrust our unfortunate conflict aroused is being,” he said, +“continually effaced by the deliberate rationality of all I do.... I am +now able to come and go as I please, or I am restricted only for my own +good. So it is I have been able to get at this apparatus, and, assisted +by a happy find among the material that is littered in this enormous +store-cave, I have contrived to despatch these messages. So far not the +slightest attempt has been made to interfere with me in this, though I +have made it quite clear to Phi-oo that I am signalling to the earth. + +“‘You talk to other?’ he asked, watching me. + +“‘Others,’ said I. + +“‘Others,’ he said. ‘Oh yes, Men?’ + +“And I went on transmitting.” + +Cavor was continually making corrections in his previous accounts of +the Selenites as fresh facts flowed upon him to modify his conclusions, +and accordingly one gives the quotations that follow with a certain +amount of reservation. They are quoted from the ninth, thirteenth, and +sixteenth messages, and, altogether vague and fragmentary as they are, +they probably give as complete a picture of the social life of this +strange community as mankind can now hope to have for many generations. + +“In the moon,” says Cavor, “every citizen knows his place. He is born +to that place, and the elaborate discipline of training and education +and surgery he undergoes fits him at last so completely to it that he +has neither ideas nor organs for any purpose beyond it. ‘Why should +he?’ Phi-oo would ask. If, for example, a Selenite is destined to be a +mathematician, his teachers and trainers set out at once to that end. +They check any incipient disposition to other pursuits, they encourage +his mathematical bias with a perfect psychological skill. His brain +grows, or at least the mathematical faculties of his brain grow, and +the rest of him only so much as is necessary to sustain this essential +part of him. At last, save for rest and food, his one delight lies in +the exercise and display of his faculty, his one interest in its +application, his sole society with other specialists in his own line. +His brain grows continually larger, at least so far as the portions +engaging in mathematics are concerned; they bulge ever larger and seem +to suck all life and vigour from the rest of his frame. His limbs +shrivel, his heart and digestive organs diminish, his insect face is +hidden under its bulging contours. His voice becomes a mere +stridulation for the stating of formulæ; he seems deaf to all but +properly enunciated problems. The faculty of laughter, save for the +sudden discovery of some paradox, is lost to him; his deepest emotion +is the evolution of a novel computation. And so he attains his end. + +“Or, again, a Selenite appointed to be a minder of mooncalves is from +his earliest years induced to think and live mooncalf, to find his +pleasure in mooncalf lore, his exercise in their tending and pursuit. +He is trained to become wiry and active, his eye is indurated to the +tight wrappings, the angular contours that constitute a ‘smart +mooncalfishness.’ He takes at last no interest in the deeper part of +the moon; he regards all Selenites not equally versed in mooncalves +with indifference, derision, or hostility. His thoughts are of mooncalf +pastures, and his dialect an accomplished mooncalf technique. So also +he loves his work, and discharges in perfect happiness the duty that +justifies his being. And so it is with all sorts and conditions of +Selenites—each is a perfect unit in a world machine.... + +“These beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall, +form a sort of aristocracy in this strange society, and at the head of +them, quintessential of the moon, is that marvellous gigantic ganglion +the Grand Lunar, into whose presence I am finally to come. The +unlimited development of the minds of the intellectual class is +rendered possible by the absence of any bony skull in the lunar +anatomy, that strange box of bone that clamps about the developing +brain of man, imperiously insisting ‘thus far and no farther’ to all +his possibilities. They fall into three main classes differing greatly +in influence and respect. There are administrators, of whom Phi-oo is +one, Selenites of considerable initiative and versatility, responsible +each for a certain cubic content of the moon’s bulk; the experts like +the football-headed thinker, who are trained to perform certain special +operations; and the erudite, who are the repositories of all knowledge. +To the latter class belongs Tsi-puff, the first lunar professor of +terrestrial languages. With regard to these latter, it is a curious +little thing to note that the unlimited growth of the lunar brain has +rendered unnecessary the invention of all those mechanical aids to +brain work which have distinguished the career of man. There are no +books, no records of any sort, no libraries or inscriptions. All +knowledge is stored in distended brains much as the honey-ants of Texas +store honey in their distended abdomens. The lunar Somerset House and +the lunar British Museum Library are collections of living brains... + +“The less specialised administrators, I note, do for the most part take +a very lively interest in me whenever they encounter me. They will come +out of the way and stare at me and ask questions to which Phi-oo will +reply. I see them going hither and thither with a retinue of bearers, +attendants, shouters, parachute-carriers, and so forth—queer groups to +see. The experts for the most part ignore me completely, even as they +ignore each other, or notice me only to begin a clamorous exhibition of +their distinctive skill. The erudite for the most part are rapt in an +impervious and apoplectic complacency, from which only a denial of +their erudition can rouse them. Usually they are led about by little +watchers and attendants, and often there are small and active-looking +creatures, small females usually, that I am inclined to think are a +sort of wife to them; but some of the profounder scholars are +altogether too great for locomotion, and are carried from place to +place in a sort of sedan tub, wabbling jellies of knowledge that enlist +my respectful astonishment. I have just passed one in coming to this +place where I am permitted to amuse myself with these electrical toys, +a vast, shaven, shaky head, bald and thin-skinned, carried on his +grotesque stretcher. In front and behind came his bearers, and curious, +almost trumpet-faced, news disseminators shrieked his fame. + +“I have already mentioned the retinues that accompany most of the +intellectuals: ushers, bearers, valets, extraneous tentacles and +muscles, as it were, to replace the abortive physical powers of these +hypertrophied minds. Porters almost invariably accompany them. There +are also extremely swift messengers with spider-like legs and ‘hands’ +for grasping parachutes, and attendants with vocal organs that could +well nigh wake the dead. Apart from their controlling intelligence +these subordinates are as inert and helpless as umbrellas in a stand. +They exist only in relation to the orders they have to obey, the duties +they have to perform. + +“The bulk of these insects, however, who go to and fro upon the spiral +ways, who fill the ascending balloons and drop past me clinging to +flimsy parachutes are, I gather, of the operative class. ‘Machine +hands,’ indeed, some of these are in actual nature—it is no figure of +speech, the single tentacle of the mooncalf herd is profoundly modified +for clawing, lifting, guiding, the rest of them no more than necessary +subordinate appendages to these important parts. Some, who I suppose +deal with bell-striking mechanisms, have enormously developed auditory +organs; some whose work lies in delicate chemical operations project a +vast olfactory organ; others again have flat feet for treadles with +anchylosed joints; and others—who I have been told are +glassblowers—seem mere lung-bellows. But every one of these common +Selenites I have seen at work is exquisitely adapted to the social need +it meets. Fine work is done by fined-down workers, amazingly dwarfed +and neat. Some I could hold on the palm of my hand. There is even a +sort of turnspit Selenite, very common, whose duty and only delight it +is to apply the motive power for various small appliances. And to rule +over these things and order any erring tendency there might be in some +aberrant natures are the most muscular beings I have seen in the moon, +a sort of lunar police, who must have been trained from their earliest +years to give a perfect respect and obedience to the swollen heads. + +“The making of these various sorts of operative must be a very curious +and interesting process. I am very much in the dark about it, but quite +recently I came upon a number of young Selenites confined in jars from +which only the fore-limbs protruded, who were being compressed to +become machine-minders of a special sort. The extended ‘hand’ in this +highly developed system of technical education is stimulated by +irritants and nourished by injection, while the rest of the body is +starved. Phi-oo, unless I misunderstood him, explained that in the +earlier stages these queer little creatures are apt to display signs of +suffering in their various cramped situations, but they easily become +indurated to their lot; and he took me on to where a number of +flexible-minded messengers were being drawn out and broken in. It is +quite unreasonable, I know, but such glimpses of the educational +methods of these beings affect me disagreeably. I hope, however, that +may pass off, and I may be able to see more of this aspect of their +wonderful social order. That wretched-looking hand-tentacle sticking +out of its jar seemed to have a sort of limp appeal for lost +possibilities; it haunts me still, although, of course it is really in +the end a far more humane proceeding than our earthly method of leaving +children to grow into human beings, and then making machines of them. + +“Quite recently, too—I think it was on the eleventh or twelfth visit I +made to this apparatus—I had a curious light upon the lives of these +operatives. I was being guided through a short cut hither, instead of +going down the spiral, and by the quays to the Central Sea. From the +devious windings of a long, dark gallery, we emerged into a vast, low +cavern, pervaded by an earthy smell, and as things go in this darkness, +rather brightly lit. The light came from a tumultuous growth of livid +fungoid shapes—some indeed singularly like our terrestrial mushrooms, +but standing as high or higher than a man. + +“‘Mooneys eat these?’ said I to Phi-oo. + +“‘Yes, food.’ + +“‘Goodness me!’ I cried; ‘what’s that?’ + +“My eye had just caught the figure of an exceptionally big and ungainly +Selenite lying motionless among the stems, face downward. We stopped. + +“‘Dead?’ I asked. (For as yet I have seen no dead in the moon, and I +have grown curious.) + +“‘_No!_’ exclaimed Phi-oo. ‘Him—worker—no work to do. Get little drink +then—make sleep—till we him want. What good him wake, eh? No want him +walking about.’ + +“‘There’s another!’ cried I. + +“And indeed all that huge extent of mushroom ground was, I found, +peppered with these prostrate figures sleeping under an opiate until +the moon had need of them. There were scores of them of all sorts, and +we were able to turn over some of them, and examine them more precisely +than I had been able to do previously. They breathed noisily at my +doing so, but did not wake. One, I remember very distinctly: he left a +strong impression, I think, because some trick of the light and of his +attitude was strongly suggestive of a drawn-up human figure. His +fore-limbs were long, delicate tentacles—he was some kind of refined +manipulator—and the pose of his slumber suggested a submissive +suffering. No doubt it was a mistake for me to interpret his expression +in that way, but I did. And as Phi-oo rolled him over into the darkness +among the livid fleshiness again I felt a distinctly unpleasant +sensation, although as he rolled the insect in him was confessed. + +“It simply illustrates the unthinking way in which one acquires habits +of feeling. To drug the worker one does not want and toss him aside is +surely far better than to expel him from his factory to wander starving +in the streets. In every complicated social community there is +necessarily a certain intermittency of employment for all specialised +labour, and in this way the trouble of an ‘unemployed’ problem is +altogether anticipated. And yet, so unreasonable are even +scientifically trained minds, I still do not like the memory of those +prostrate forms amidst those quiet, luminous arcades of fleshy growth, +and I avoid that short cut in spite of the inconveniences of the +longer, more noisy, and more crowded alternative. + +“My alternative route takes me round by a huge, shadowy cavern, very +crowded and clamorous, and here it is I see peering out of the +hexagonal openings of a sort of honeycomb wall, or parading a large +open space behind, or selecting the toys and amulets made to please +them by the dainty-tentacled jewellers who work in kennels below, the +mothers of the moon world—the queen bees, as it were, of the hive. They +are noble-looking beings, fantastically and sometimes quite beautifully +adorned, with a proud carriage, and, save for their mouths, almost +microscopic heads. + +“Of the condition of the moon sexes, marrying and giving in marriage, +and of birth and so forth among the Selenites, I have as yet been able +to learn very little. With the steady progress of Phi-oo in English, +however, my ignorance will no doubt as steadily disappear. I am of +opinion that, as with the ants and bees, there is a large majority of +the members in this community of the neuter sex. Of course on earth in +our cities there are now many who never live that life of parentage +which is the natural life of man. Here, as with the ants, this thing +has become a normal condition of the race, and the whole of such +replacement as is necessary falls upon this special and by no means +numerous class of matrons, the mothers of the moon-world, large and +stately beings beautifully fitted to bear the larval Selenite. Unless I +misunderstand an explanation of Phi-oo’s, they are absolutely incapable +of cherishing the young they bring into the moon; periods of foolish +indulgence alternate with moods of aggressive violence, and as soon as +possible the little creatures, who are quite soft and flabby and pale +coloured, are transferred to the charge of celibate females, women +‘workers’ as it were, who in some cases possess brains of almost +masculine dimensions.” + +Just at this point, unhappily, this message broke off. Fragmentary and +tantalising as the matter constituting this chapter is, it does +nevertheless give a vague, broad impression of an altogether strange +and wonderful world—a world with which our own may have to reckon we +know not how speedily. This intermittent trickle of messages, this +whispering of a record needle in the stillness of the mountain slopes, +is the first warning of such a change in human conditions as mankind +has scarcely imagined heretofore. In that satellite of ours there are +new elements, new appliances, traditions, an overwhelming avalanche of +new ideas, a strange race with whom we must inevitably struggle for +mastery—gold as common as iron or wood... + + + + +XXV. +The Grand Lunar + + +The penultimate message describes, with occasionally elaborate detail, +the encounter between Cavor and the Grand Lunar, who is the ruler or +master of the moon. Cavor seems to have sent most of it without +interference, but to have been interrupted in the concluding portion. +The second came after an interval of a week. + +The first message begins: “At last I am able to resume this—” it then +becomes illegible for a space, and after a time resumed in +mid-sentence. + +The missing words of the following sentence are probably “the crowd.” +There follows quite clearly: “grew ever denser as we drew near the +palace of the Grand Lunar—if I may call a series of excavations a +palace. Everywhere faces stared at me—blank, chitinous gapes and masks, +eyes peering over tremendous olfactory developments, eyes beneath +monstrous forehead plates; and undergrowth of smaller creatures dodged +and yelped, and helmet faces poised on sinuous, long-jointed necks +appeared craning over shoulders and beneath armpits. Keeping a welcome +space about me marched a cordon of stolid, scuttle-headed guards, who +had joined us on our leaving the boat in which we had come along the +channels of the Central Sea. The quick-eyed artist with the little +brain joined us also, and a thick bunch of lean porter-insects swayed +and struggled under the multitude of conveniences that were considered +essential to my state. I was carried in a litter during the final stage +of our journey. This litter was made of some very ductile metal that +looked dark to me, meshed and woven, and with bars of paler metal, and +about me as I advanced there grouped itself a long and complicated +procession. + +“In front, after the manner of heralds, marched four trumpet-faced +creatures making a devastating bray; and then came squat, +resolute-moving ushers before and behind, and on either hand a galaxy +of learned heads, a sort of animated encyclopedia, who were, Phi-oo +explained, to stand about the Grand Lunar for purposes of reference. +(Not a thing in lunar science, not a point of view or method of +thinking, that these wonderful beings did not carry in their heads!) +Followed guards and porters, and then Phi-oo’s shivering brain borne +also on a litter. Then came Tsi-puff in a slightly less important +litter; then myself on a litter of greater elegance than any other, and +surrounded by my food and drink attendants. More trumpeters came next, +splitting the ear with vehement outcries, and then several big brains, +special correspondents one might well call them, or historiographers, +charged with the task of observing and remembering every detail of this +epoch-making interview. A company of attendants, bearing and dragging +banners and masses of scented fungus and curious symbols, vanished in +the darkness behind. The way was lined by ushers and officers in +caparisons that gleamed like steel, and beyond their line, so far as my +eyes could pierce the gloom, the heads of that enormous crowd extended. + +“I will own that I am still by no means indurated to the peculiar +effect of the Selenite appearance, and to find myself, as it were, +adrift on this broad sea of excited entomology was by no means +agreeable. Just for a space I had something very like what I should +imagine people mean when they speak of the ‘horrors.’ It had come to me +before in these lunar caverns, when on occasion I have found myself +weaponless and with an undefended back, amidst a crowd of these +Selenites, but never quite so vividly. It is, of course, as absolutely +irrational a feeling as one could well have, and I hope gradually to +subdue it. But just for a moment, as I swept forward into the welter of +the vast crowd, it was only by gripping my litter tightly and summoning +all my will-power that I succeeded in avoiding an outcry or some such +manifestation. It lasted perhaps three minutes; then I had myself in +hand again. + +“We ascended the spiral of a vertical way for some time, and then +passed through a series of huge halls dome-roofed and elaborately +decorated. The approach to the Grand Lunar was certainly contrived to +give one a vivid impression of his greatness. Each cavern one entered +seemed greater and more boldly arched than its predecessor. This effect +of progressive size was enhanced by a thin haze of faintly +phosphorescent blue incense that thickened as one advanced, and robbed +even the nearer figures of clearness. I seemed to advance continually +to something larger, dimmer, and less material. + +“I must confess that all this multitude made me feel extremely shabby +and unworthy. I was unshaven and unkempt; I had brought no razor; I had +a coarse beard over my mouth. On earth I have always been inclined to +despise any attention to my person beyond a proper care for +cleanliness; but under the exceptional circumstances in which I found +myself, representing, as I did, my planet and my kind, and depending +very largely upon the attractiveness of my appearance for a proper +reception, I could have given much for something a little more artistic +and dignified than the husks I wore. I had been so serene in the belief +that the moon was uninhabited as to overlook such precautions +altogether. As it was I was dressed in a flannel jacket, +knickerbockers, and golfing stockings, stained with every sort of dirt +the moon offered, slippers (of which the left heel was wanting), and a +blanket, through a hole in which I thrust my head. (These clothes, +indeed, I still wear.) Sharp bristles are anything but an improvement +to my cast of features, and there was an unmended tear at the knee of +my knickerbockers that showed conspicuously as I squatted in my litter; +my right stocking, too, persisted in getting about my ankle. I am fully +alive to the injustice my appearance did humanity, and if by any +expedient I could have improvised something a little out of the way and +imposing I would have done so. But I could hit upon nothing. I did what +I could with my blanket—folding it somewhat after the fashion of a +toga, and for the rest I sat as upright as the swaying of my litter +permitted. + +“Imagine the largest hall you have ever been in, imperfectly lit with +blue light and obscured by a grey-blue fog, surging with metallic or +livid-grey creatures of such a mad diversity as I have hinted. Imagine +this hall to end in an open archway beyond which is a still larger +hall, and beyond this yet another and still larger one, and so on. At +the end of the vista, dimly seen, a flight of steps, like the steps of +Ara Coeli at Rome, ascend out of sight. Higher and higher these steps +appear to go as one draws nearer their base. But at last I came under a +huge archway and beheld the summit of these steps, and upon it the +Grand Lunar exalted on his throne. + +“He was seated in what was relatively a blaze of incandescent blue. +This, and the darkness about him gave him an effect of floating in a +blue-black void. He seemed a small, self-luminous cloud at first, +brooding on his sombre throne; his brain case must have measured many +yards in diameter. For some reason that I cannot fathom a number of +blue search-lights radiated from behind the throne on which he sat, and +immediately encircling him was a halo. About him, and little and +indistinct in this glow, a number of body-servants sustained and +supported him, and overshadowed and standing in a huge semicircle +beneath him were his intellectual subordinates, his remembrancers and +computators and searchers and servants, and all the distinguished +insects of the court of the moon. Still lower stood ushers and +messengers, and then all down the countless steps of the throne were +guards, and at the base, enormous, various, indistinct, vanishing at +last into an absolute black, a vast swaying multitude of the minor +dignitaries of the moon. Their feet made a perpetual scraping whisper +on the rocky floor, as their limbs moved with a rustling murmur. + +“As I entered the penultimate hall the music rose and expanded into an +imperial magnificence of sound, and the shrieks of the news-bearers +died away.... + +“I entered the last and greatest hall.... + +“My procession opened out like a fan. My ushers and guards went right +and left, and the three litters bearing myself and Phi-oo and Tsi-puff +marched across a shiny darkness of floor to the foot of the giant +stairs. Then began a vast throbbing hum, that mingled with the music. +The two Selenites dismounted, but I was bidden remain seated—I imagine +as a special honour. The music ceased, but not that humming, and by a +simultaneous movement of ten thousand respectful heads my attention was +directed to the enhaloed supreme intelligence that hovered above me. + +“At first as I peered into the radiating glow this quintessential brain +looked very much like an opaque, featureless bladder with dim, +undulating ghosts of convolutions writhing visibly within. Then beneath +its enormity and just above the edge of the throne one saw with a start +minute elfin eyes peering out of the glow. No face, but eyes, as if +they peered through holes. At first I could see no more than these two +staring little eyes, and then below I distinguished the little dwarfed +body and its insect-jointed limbs shrivelled and white. The eyes stared +down at me with a strange intensity, and the lower part of the swollen +globe was wrinkled. Ineffectual-looking little hand-tentacles steadied +this shape on the throne.... + +“It was great. It was pitiful. One forgot the hall and the crowd. + +“I ascended the staircase by jerks. It seemed to me that this darkly +glowing brain case above us spread over me, and took more and more of +the whole effect into itself as I drew nearer. The tiers of attendants +and helpers grouped about their master seemed to dwindle and fade into +the night. I saw that shadowy attendants were busy spraying that great +brain with a cooling spray, and patting and sustaining it. For my own +part, I sat gripping my swaying litter and staring at the Grand Lunar, +unable to turn my gaze aside. And at last, as I reached a little +landing that was separated only by ten steps or so from the supreme +seat, the woven splendour of the music reached a climax and ceased, and +I was left naked, as it were, in that vastness, beneath the still +scrutiny of the Grand Lunar’s eyes. + +“He was scrutinising the first man he had ever seen.... + +“My eyes dropped at last from his greatness to the ant figures in the +blue mist about him, and then down the steps to the massed Selenites, +still and expectant in their thousands, packed on the floor below. Once +again an unreasonable horror reached out towards me.... And passed. + +“After the pause came the salutation. I was assisted from my litter, +and stood awkwardly while a number of curious and no doubt deeply +symbolical gestures were vicariously performed for me by two slender +officials. The encyclopaedic galaxy of the learned that had accompanied +me to the entrance of the last hall appeared two steps above me and +left and right of me, in readiness for the Grand Lunar’s need, and +Phi-oo’s pale brain placed itself about half-way up to the throne in +such a position as to communicate easily between us without turning his +back on either the Grand Lunar or myself. Tsi-puff took up a position +behind him. Dexterous ushers sidled sideways towards me, keeping a full +face to the Presence. I seated myself Turkish fashion, and Phi-oo and +Tsi-puff also knelt down above me. There came a pause. The eyes of the +nearer court went from me to the Grand Lunar and came back to me, and a +hissing and piping of expectation passed across the hidden multitudes +below and ceased. + +“That humming ceased. + +“For the first and last time in my experience the moon was silent. + +“I became aware of a faint wheezy noise. The Grand Lunar was addressing +me. It was like the rubbing of a finger upon a pane of glass. + +“I watched him attentively for a time, and then glanced at the alert +Phi-oo. I felt amidst these slender beings ridiculously thick and +fleshy and solid; my head all jaw and black hair. My eyes went back to +the Grand Lunar. He had ceased; his attendants were busy, and his +shining superficies was glistening and running with cooling spray. + +“Phi-oo meditated through an interval. He consulted Tsi-puff. Then he +began piping his recognisable English—at first a little nervously, so +that he was not very clear. + +“‘M’m—the Grand Lunar—wished to say—wishes to say—he gathers you +are—m’m—men—that you are a man from the planet earth. He wishes to say +that he welcomes you—welcomes you—and wishes to learn—learn, if I may +use the word—the state of your world, and the reason why you came to +this.’ + +“He paused. I was about to reply when he resumed. He proceeded to +remarks of which the drift was not very clear, though I am inclined to +think they were intended to be complimentary. He told me that the earth +was to the moon what the sun is to the earth, and that the Selenites +desired very greatly to learn about the earth and men. He then told me +no doubt in compliment also, the relative magnitude and diameter of +earth and moon, and the perpetual wonder and speculation with which the +Selenites had regarded our planet. I meditated with downcast eyes, and +decided to reply that men too had wondered what might lie in the moon, +and had judged it dead, little recking of such magnificence as I had +seen that day. The Grand Lunar, in token of recognition, caused his +long blue rays to rotate in a very confusing manner, and all about the +great hall ran the pipings and whisperings and rustlings of the report +of what I had said. He then proceeded to put to Phi-oo a number of +inquiries which were easier to answer. + +“He understood, he explained, that we lived on the surface of the +earth, that our air and sea were outside the globe; the latter part, +indeed, he already knew from his astronomical specialists. He was very +anxious to have more detailed information of what he called this +extraordinary state of affairs, for from the solidity of the earth +there had always been a disposition to regard it as uninhabitable. He +endeavoured first to ascertain the extremes of temperature to which we +earth beings were exposed, and he was deeply interested by my +descriptive treatment of clouds and rain. His imagination was assisted +by the fact that the lunar atmosphere in the outer galleries of the +night side is not infrequently very foggy. He seemed inclined to marvel +that we did not find the sunlight too intense for our eyes, and was +interested in my attempt to explain that the sky was tempered to a +bluish colour through the refraction of the air, though I doubt if he +clearly understood that. I explained how the iris of the human eyes can +contract the pupil and save the delicate internal structure from the +excess of sunlight, and was allowed to approach within a few feet of +the Presence in order that this structure might be seen. This led to a +comparison of the lunar and terrestrial eyes. The former is not only +excessively sensitive to such light as men can see, but it can also +_see_ heat, and every difference in temperature within the moon renders +objects visible to it. + +“The iris was quite a new organ to the Grand Lunar. For a time he +amused himself by flashing his rays into my face and watching my pupils +contract. As a consequence, I was dazzled and blinded for some little +time.... + +“But in spite of that discomfort I found something reassuring by +insensible degrees in the rationality of this business of question and +answer. I could shut my eyes, think of my answer, and almost forget +that the the Grand Lunar has no face.... + +“When I had descended again to my proper place the Grand Lunar asked +how we sheltered ourselves from heat and storms, and I expounded to him +the arts of building and furnishing. Here we wandered into +misunderstandings and cross-purposes, due largely, I must admit, to the +looseness of my expressions. For a long time I had great difficulty in +making him understand the nature of a house. To him and his attendant +Selenites it seemed, no doubt, the most whimsical thing in the world +that men should build houses when they might descend into excavations, +and an additional complication was introduced by the attempt I made to +explain that men had originally begun their homes in caves, and that +they were now taking their railways and many establishments beneath the +surface. Here I think a desire for intellectual completeness betrayed +me. There was also a considerable tangle due to an equally unwise +attempt on my part to explain about mines. Dismissing this topic at +last in an incomplete state, the Grand Lunar inquired what we did with +the interior of our globe. + +“A tide of twittering and piping swept into the remotest corners of +that great assembly when it was at last made clear that we men know +absolutely nothing of the contents of the world upon which the +immemorial generations of our ancestors had been evolved. Three times +had I to repeat that of all the 4000 miles of distance between the +earth and its centre men knew only to the depth of a mile, and that +very vaguely. I understood the Grand Lunar to ask why had I come to the +moon seeing we had scarcely touched our own planet yet, but he did not +trouble me at that time to proceed to an explanation, being too anxious +to pursue the details of this mad inversion of all his ideas. + +“He reverted to the question of weather, and I tried to describe the +perpetually changing sky, and snow, and frost and hurricanes. ‘But when +the night comes,’ he asked, ‘is it not cold?’ + +“I told him it was colder than by day. + +“‘And does not your atmosphere freeze?’ + +“I told him not; that it was never cold enough for that, because our +nights were so short. + +“‘Not even liquefy?’ + +“I was about to say ‘No,’ but then it occurred to me that one part at +least of our atmosphere, the water vapour of it, does sometimes liquefy +and form dew, and sometimes freeze and form frost—a process perfectly +analogous to the freezing of all the external atmosphere of the moon +during its longer night. I made myself clear on this point, and from +that the Grand Lunar went on to speak with me of sleep. For the need of +sleep that comes so regularly every twenty-four hours to all things is +part also of our earthly inheritance. On the moon they rest only at +rare intervals, and after exceptional exertions. Then I tried to +describe to him the soft splendours of a summer night, and from that I +passed to a description of those animals that prowl by night and sleep +by day. I told him of lions and tigers, and here it seemed as though we +had come to a deadlock. For, save in their waters, there are no +creatures in the moon not absolutely domestic and subject to his will, +and so it has been for immemorial years. They have monstrous water +creatures, but no evil beasts, and the idea of anything strong and +large existing ‘outside’ in the night is very difficult for them....” + +[The record is here too broken to transcribe for the space of perhaps +twenty words or more.] + +“He talked with his attendants, as I suppose, upon the strange +superficiality and unreasonableness of (man) who lives on the mere +surface of a world, a creature of waves and winds, and all the chances +of space, who cannot even unite to overcome the beasts that prey upon +his kind, and yet who dares to invade another planet. During this aside +I sat thinking, and then at his desire I told him of the different +sorts of men. He searched me with questions. ‘And for all sorts of work +you have the same sort of men. But who thinks? Who governs?’ + +“I gave him an outline of the democratic method. + +“When I had done he ordered cooling sprays upon his brow, and then +requested me to repeat my explanation conceiving something had +miscarried. + +“‘Do they not do different things, then?’ said Phi-oo. + +“Some, I admitted, were thinkers and some officials; some hunted, some +were mechanics, some artists, some toilers. ‘But _all_ rule,’ I said. + +“‘And have they not different shapes to fit them to their different +duties?’ + +“‘None that you can see,’ I said, ‘except perhaps, for clothes. Their +minds perhaps differ a little,’ I reflected. + +“‘Their minds must differ a great deal,’ said the Grand Lunar, ‘or they +would all want to do the same things.’ + +“In order to bring myself into a closer harmony with his +preconceptions, I said that his surmise was right. ‘It was all hidden +in the brain,’ I said; but the difference was there. Perhaps if one +could see the minds and souls of men they would be as varied and +unequal as the Selenites. There were great men and small men, men who +could reach out far and wide, men who could go swiftly; noisy, +trumpet-minded men, and men who could remember without thinking....’” +[The record is indistinct for three words.] + +“He interrupted me to recall me to my previous statements. ‘But you +said all men rule?’ he pressed. + +“‘To a certain extent,’ I said, and made, I fear, a denser fog with my +explanation. + +“He reached out to a salient fact. ‘Do you mean,’ asked, ‘that there is +no Grand Earthly?’ + +“I thought of several people, but assured him finally there was none. I +explained that such autocrats and emperors as we had tried upon earth +had usually ended in drink, or vice, or violence, and that the large +and influential section of the people of the earth to which I belonged, +the Anglo-Saxons, did not mean to try that sort of thing again. At +which the Grand Lunar was even more amazed. + +“‘But how do you keep even such wisdom as you have?’ he asked; and I +explained to him the way we helped our limited [A word omitted here, +probably “brains.”] with libraries of books. I explained to him how our +science was growing by the united labours of innumerable little men, +and on that he made no comment save that it was evident we had mastered +much in spite of our social savagery, or we could not have come to the +moon. Yet the contrast was very marked. With knowledge the Selenites +grew and changed; mankind stored their knowledge about them and +remained brutes—equipped. He said this...” [Here there is a short piece +of the record indistinct.] + +“He then caused me to describe how we went about this earth of ours, +and I described to him our railways and ships. For a time he could not +understand that we had had the use of steam only one hundred years, but +when he did he was clearly amazed. (I may mention as a singular thing, +that the Selenites use years to count by, just as we do on earth, +though I can make nothing of their numeral system. That, however, does +not matter, because Phi-oo understands ours.) From that I went on to +tell him that mankind had dwelt in cities only for nine or ten thousand +years, and that we were still not united in one brotherhood, but under +many different forms of government. This astonished the Grand Lunar +very much, when it was made clear to him. At first he thought we +referred merely to administrative areas. + +“‘Our States and Empires are still the rawest sketches of what order +will some day be,’ I said, and so I came to tell him....” [At this +point a length of record that probably represents thirty or forty words +is totally illegible.] + +“The Grand Lunar was greatly impressed by the folly of men in clinging +to the inconvenience of diverse tongues. ‘They want to communicate, and +yet not to communicate,’ he said, and then for a long time he +questioned me closely concerning war. + +“He was at first perplexed and incredulous. ‘You mean to say,’ he +asked, seeking confirmation, ‘that you run about over the surface of +your world—this world, whose riches you have scarcely begun to +scrape—killing one another for beasts to eat?’ + +“I told him that was perfectly correct. + +“He asked for particulars to assist his imagination. + +“‘But do not ships and your poor little cities get injured?’ he asked, +and I found the waste of property and conveniences seemed to impress +him almost as much as the killing. ‘Tell me more,’ said the Grand +Lunar; ‘make me see pictures. I cannot conceive these things.’ + +“And so, for a space, though something loath, I told him the story of +earthly War. + +“I told him of the first orders and ceremonies of war, of warnings and +ultimatums, and the marshalling and marching of troops. I gave him an +idea of manoeuvres and positions and battle joined. I told him of +sieges and assaults, of starvation and hardship in trenches, and of +sentinels freezing in the snow. I told him of routs and surprises, and +desperate last stands and faint hopes, and the pitiless pursuit of +fugitives and the dead upon the field. I told, too, of the past, of +invasions and massacres, of the Huns and Tartars, and the wars of +Mahomet and the Caliphs, and of the Crusades. And as I went on, and +Phi-oo translated, the Selenites cooed and murmured in a steadily +intensified emotion. + +“I told them an ironclad could fire a shot of a ton twelve miles, and +go through 20 feet of iron—and how we could steer torpedoes under +water. I went on to describe a Maxim gun in action, and what I could +imagine of the Battle of Colenso. The Grand Lunar was so incredulous +that he interrupted the translation of what I had said in order to have +my verification of my account. They particularly doubted my description +of the men cheering and rejoicing as they went into battle. + +“‘But surely they do not like it!’ translated Phi-oo. + +“I assured them men of my race considered battle the most glorious +experience of life, at which the whole assembly was stricken with +amazement. + +“‘But what good is this war?’ asked the Grand Lunar, sticking to his +theme. + +“‘Oh! as for _good_!’ said I; ‘it thins the population!’ + +“‘But why should there be a need—?’ + +“There came a pause, the cooling sprays impinged upon his brow, and +then he spoke again.” + +At this point a series of undulations that have been apparent as a +perplexing complication as far back as Cavor’s description of the +silence that fell before the first speaking of the Grand Lunar become +confusingly predominant in the record. These undulations are evidently +the result of radiations proceeding from a lunar source, and their +persistent approximation to the alternating signals of Cavor is +curiously suggestive of some operator deliberately seeking to mix them +in with his message and render it illegible. At first they are small +and regular, so that with a little care and the loss of very few words +we have been able to disentangle Cavor’s message; then they become +broad and larger, then suddenly they are irregular, with an +irregularity that gives the effect at last of some one scribbling +through a line of writing. For a long time nothing can be made of this +madly zigzagging trace; then quite abruptly the interruption ceases, +leaves a few words clear, and then resumes and continues for the rest +of the message, completely obliterating whatever Cavor was attempting +to transmit. Why, if this is indeed a deliberate intervention, the +Selenites should have preferred to let Cavor go on transmitting his +message in happy ignorance of their obliteration of its record, when it +was clearly quite in their power and much more easy and convenient for +them to stop his proceedings at any time, is a problem to which I can +contribute nothing. The thing seems to have happened so, and that is +all I can say. This last rag of his description of the Grand Lunar +begins in mid-sentence. + + +“...interrogated me very closely upon my secret. I was able in a little +while to get to an understanding with them, and at last to elucidate +what has been a puzzle to me ever since I realised the vastness of +their science, namely, how it is they themselves have never discovered +Cavorite.’ I find they know of it as a theoretical substance, but they +have always regarded it as a practical impossibility, because for some +reason there is no helium in the moon, and helium...” + +Across the last letters of helium slashes the resumption of that +obliterating trace. Note that word “secret,” for on that, and that +alone, I base my interpretation of the message that follows, the last +message, as both Mr. Wendigee and myself now believe it to be, that he +is ever likely to send us. + + + + +XXVI. +The Last Message Cavor sent to the Earth + + +On this unsatisfactory manner the penultimate message of Cavor dies +out. One seems to see him away there in the blue obscurity amidst his +apparatus intently signalling us to the last, all unaware of the +curtain of confusion that drops between us; all unaware, too, of the +final dangers that even then must have been creeping upon him. His +disastrous want of vulgar common sense had utterly betrayed him. He had +talked of war, he had talked of all the strength and irrational +violence of men, of their insatiable aggressions, their tireless +futility of conflict. He had filled the whole moon world with this +impression of our race, and then I think it is plain that he made the +most fatal admission that upon himself alone hung the possibility—at +least for a long time—of any further men reaching the moon. The line +the cold, inhuman reason of the moon would take seems plain enough to +me, and a suspicion of it, and then perhaps some sudden sharp +realisation of it, must have come to him. One imagines him about the +moon with the remorse of this fatal indiscretion growing in his mind. +During a certain time I am inclined to guess the Grand Lunar was +deliberating the new situation, and for all that time Cavor may have +gone as free as ever he had gone. But obstacles of some sort prevented +his getting to his electromagnetic apparatus again after that message I +have just given. For some days we received nothing. Perhaps he was +having fresh audiences, and trying to evade his previous admissions. +Who can hope to guess? + +And then suddenly, like a cry in the night, like a cry that is followed +by a stillness, came the last message. It is the briefest fragment, the +broken beginnings of two sentences. + +The first was: “I was mad to let the Grand Lunar know—” + +There was an interval of perhaps a minute. One imagines some +interruption from without. A departure from the instrument—a dreadful +hesitation among the looming masses of apparatus in that dim, blue-lit +cavern—a sudden rush back to it, full of a resolve that came too late. +Then, as if it were hastily transmitted came: “Cavorite made as +follows: take—” + +There followed one word, a quite unmeaning word as it stands: “uless.” + +And that is all. + +It may be he made a hasty attempt to spell “useless” when his fate was +close upon him. Whatever it was that was happening about that apparatus +we cannot tell. Whatever it was we shall never, I know, receive another +message from the moon. For my own part a vivid dream has come to my +help, and I see, almost as plainly as though I had seen it in actual +fact, a blue-lit shadowy dishevelled Cavor struggling in the grip of +these insect Selenites, struggling ever more desperately and hopelessly +as they press upon him, shouting, expostulating, perhaps even at last +fighting, and being forced backwards step by step out of all speech or +sign of his fellows, for evermore into the Unknown—into the dark, into +that silence that has no end.... + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1013 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1014-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1014-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9819463d --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1014-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3080 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1014 *** + +THE LURE OF THE DIM TRAILS + +By B. M. Bower + + + + +CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF THE WESTERN TONE + +“What do you care, anyway?” asked Reeve-Howard philosophically. “It +isn't as if you depended on the work for a living. Why worry over the +fact that a mere pastime fails to be financially a success. You don't +need to write--” + +“Neither do you need to slave over those dry-point things,” Thurston +retorted, in none the best humor with his comforter “You've an income +bigger than mine; yet you toil over Grecian-nosed women with untidy hair +as if each one meant a meal and a bed.” + +“A meal and a bed--that's good; you must think I live like a king.” + +“And I notice you hate like the mischief to fail, even though.” + +“Only I never have failed,” put in Reeve-Howard, with the amused +complacency born of much adulation. + +Thurston kicked a foot-rest out of his way. “Well, I have. The fashion +now is for swashbuckling tales with a haze of powder smoke rising +to high heaven. The public taste runs to gore and more gore, and +kidnappings of beautiful maidens-bah!” + +“Follow the fashion then--if you must write. Get out of your pink tea +and orchid atmosphere, and take your heroines out West--away out, beyond +the Mississippi, and let them be kidnapped. Or New Mexico would do.” + +“New Mexico is also beyond the Mississippi, I believe,” Thurston hinted. + +“Perhaps it is. What I mean is, write what the public wants, since you +don't relish failure. Why don't you do things about the plains? It +ought to be easy, and you were born out there somewhere. It should come +natural.” + +“I have,” Thurston sighed. “My last rejection states that the local +color is weak and unconvincing. Hang the local color!” The foot-rest +suffered again. + +Reeve-Howard was getting into his topcoat languidly, as he did +everything else. “The thing to do, then,” he drawled, “is to go out and +study up on it. Get in touch with that country, and your local color +will convince. Personally though, I like those little society skits you +do--” + +“Skits!” exploded Thurston. “My last was a four-part serial. I never did +a skit in my life.” + +“Beg pardon-which is more than you did after accusing my studies of +having untidy hair. Don't look so glum, Phil. Go out and learn your +West; a month or so will put you up to date--and by Jove! I half envy +you the trip.” + +That is what put the idea into Thurston's head; and as Thurston's ideas +generally bore fruit of one sort or another, he went out that very day +and ordered from his tailor a complete riding outfit, and because he +was a good customer the tailor consented to rush the work. It seemed to +Thurston, looking over cuts of the very latest styles in riding clothes, +that already he was breathing the atmosphere of the plains. + +That night he stayed at home and dreamed, of the West. His memory, +coupled with what he had heard and idealized by his imagination, +conjured dim visions of what he had once known had known and forgotten; +of a land here men and conditions harked back to the raw foundations +of civilization; where wide plains flecked with sage-brush and ribboned +with faint, brown trails, spread away and away to a far sky-line. For +Phil Thurston was range-born, if not range-bred, His father had chosen +always to live out on the edge of things--out where the trails of men +are dim and far apart-and the silent prairie bequeaths a heritage of +distance-hunger to her sons. + +While he brooded grew a keen longing to see again the little town +huddled under the bare, brown hills that shut out the world; to see the +gay-blanketed Indians who stole like painted shadows about the place, +and the broad river always hurrying away to the sunrise. He had been +afraid of the river and of the bare hills and the Indians. He felt that +his mother, also, had been afraid. He pictured again--and he picture was +blurred and indistinct-the day when strange men had brought his father +mysteriously home; men who were silent save for the shuffling of their +feet, and who carried their big hats awkwardly in their hands. + +There had been a day of hushed voices and much weeping and gloom, and +he had been afraid to play. Then they had carried his father as +mysteriously away again, and his mother had hugged him close and cried +bitterly and long. The rest was blank. When one is only five, the +present quickly blurs what is past, and he wondered that, after +all these years, he should feel the grip of something very like +homesickness--and for something more than half forgotten. But though +he did not realize it, in his veins flowed the adventurous blood of his +father, and to it the dim trails were calling. + +In four days he set his face eagerly toward the dun deserts and the +sage-brush gray. + +At Chicago a man took the upper berth in Thurston's section, and settled +into the seat with a deep sigh--presumably of thankfulness. Thurston, +with the quick eye of those who write, observed the whiteness of his +ungloved hands, the coppery tan of cheeks and throat, the clear keenness +of his eyes, and the four dimples in the crown of his soft, gray hat, +and recognized him as a fine specimen of the Western type of farmer, +returning home from the stockman's Mecca. After that he went calmly back +to his magazine and forgot all about him. + +Twenty miles out, the stranger leaned forward and tapped him lightly on +the knee. “Say, I hate to interrupt yuh,” he began in a whimsical drawl, +evidently characteristic of the man, “but I'd like to know where it is +I've seen yuh before.” + +Thurston glanced up impersonally, hesitated between annoyance and a +natural desire to, be courteous, and replied that he had no memory of +any previous meeting. + +“Mebby not,” admitted the other, and searched the face of Thurston with +his keen eyes. It came to Phil that they were also a bit wistful, but he +went unsympathetically back to his reading. + +Five miles more and be touched Thurston again, apologetically yet +insistently. “Say,” he drawled, “ain't your name Thurston? I'll bet +a carload uh steers it is--Bud Thurston. And your home range is Fort +Benton.” + +Phil stared and confessed to all but the “Bud.” + +“That's what me and your dad always called yuh,” the man asserted. +“Well, I'll be hanged! But I knew it. I knew I'd run acrost yuh +somewheres. You're the dead image uh your dad, Bill Thurston. And me and +Bill freighted together from Whoop-up to Benton along in the seventies. +Before yuh was born we was chums. I don't reckon you'd remember me? Hank +Graves, that used to pack yuh around on his back, and fill yuh up on +dried prunes--when dried prunes was worth money? Yuh used to call 'em +'frumes,' and--Why, it was me with your dad when the Indians pot-shot +him at Chimney Rock; and it was me helped your mother straighten things +up so she could pull out, back where she come from. She never took to +the West much. How is she? Dead? Too bad; she was a mighty fine woman, +your mother was. + +“Well, I'll-be-hanged! Bud Thurston little, tow-headed Bud that used to +holler for 'frumes' if he seen me coming a mile off. Doggone your measly +hide, where's all them pink apurns yuh used to wear?” He leaned back and +laughed--a silent, inner convulsion of pure gladness. + +Philip Thurston was, generally speaking, a conservative young man +and one slow to make friends; slower still to discard them. He was +astonished to feel a choky sensation in his throat and a stinging of +eyelids, and a leap in his blood. To be thus taken possession of by +a blunt-speaking stranger not at all in his class; to be addressed +as “Bud,” and informed that he once devoured dried prunes; to be told +“Doggone your measly hide” should have affronted him much. Instead, he +seemed to be swept mysteriously back into the primitive past, and to +feel akin to this stranger with the drawl and the keen eyes. It was the +blood of his father coming to its own. + +From that hour the two were friends. Hank Graves, in his whimsical +drawl, told Phil things about his father that made his blood tingle +with pride; his father, whom he had almost forgotten, yet who had lived +bravely his life, daring where other men quailed, going steadfastly upon +his way when other men hesitated. + +So, borne swiftly into the West they talked, and the time seemed short. +The train had long since been racing noisily over the silent prairies +spread invitingly with tender green--great, lonely, inscrutable, luring +men with a spell as sure and as strong as is the spell of the sea. + +The train reeled across a trestle that spanned a deep, dry gash in the +earth. In the green bottom huddled a cluster of pygmy cattle and mounted +men; farther down were two white flakes of tents, like huge snowflakes +left unmelted in the green canyon. + +“That's the Lazy Eight--my outfit,” Graves informed Thurston with the +unconscious pride of possession, pointing a forefinger as they whirled +on. “I've got to get off, next station. Yuh want to remember, Bud, the +Lazy Eight's your home from now on. We'll make a cow-puncher of yuh in +no time; you've got it in yuh, or yuh wouldn't look so much like your +dad. And you can write stories about us all yuh want--we won't kick. +The way I've got the summer planned out, you'll waller chin-deep in +material; all yuh got to do is foller the Lazy Eight through till +shipping time.” + +Thurston had not intended learning to be a cow-puncher, or following +the Lazy Eight or any other hieroglyphic through 'till shipping +time--whenever that was. + +But facing Hank Graves, he had not the heart to tell him so, or that he +had planned to spend only a month--or six weeks at most--in the West, +gathering local color and perhaps a plot or two? and a few types. +Thurston was great on types. + +The train slowed at a little station with a dismal red section house in +the immediate background and a red-fronted saloon close beside. “Here +we are,” cried Graves, “and I ain't sorry; only I wisht you was going +to stop right now. But I'll look for yuh in three or four days at the +outside. So-long, Bud. Remember, the Lazy Eight's your hang-out.” + + + +CHAPTER II. LOCAL COLOR IN THE RAW + +For the rest of the way Thurston watched the green hills slide by--and +the greener hollows--and gave himself up to visions of Fort Benton; +visions of creaking bull-trains crawling slowly, like giant brown worms, +up and down the long hill; of many high-piled bales of buffalo hides +upon the river bank, and clamorous little steamers churning up against +the current; the Fort Benton that had, for many rushing miles, filled +and colored the speech of Hank Graves and stimulated his childish +half-memory. + +But when he reached the place and wandered aimlessly about the streets, +the vision faded into half-resentful realization that these things were +no more forever. For the bull-trains, a roundup outfit clattered +noisily out of town and disappeared in an elusive dust-cloud; for the +gay-blanketed Indians slipping like painted shadows from view, stray +cow-boys galloped into town, slid from their saddles and clanked with +dragging rowels into the nearest saloon, or the post-office. Between +whiles the town cuddled luxuriously down in the deep little valley +and slept while the river, undisturbed by pompous steamers, murmured a +lullaby. + +It was not the Fort Benton he had come far to see, so that on the second +day he went away up the long hill that shut out the world and, until the +east-bound train came from over the prairies, paced the depot platform +impatiently with never a vision to keep him company. + +For a long time the gaze of Thurston clung fascinated to the wide +prairie land, feeling again the stir in his blood. Then, when a deep cut +shut from him the sight of the wilderness, he chanced to turn his head, +and looked straight into the clear, blue-gray eyes of a girl across +the aisle. Thurston considered himself immune from blue-gray--or any +other-eyes, so that he permitted himself to regard her calmly and +judicially, his mind reverting to the fact that he would need a heroine +to be kidnapped, and wondering if she would do. She was a Western girl, +he could tell that by the tan and by her various little departures from +the Eastern styles--such as doing her hair low rather than high. Where +he had been used to seeing the hair of woman piled high and skewered +with many pins, hers was brushed smoothly back-smoothly save for little, +irresponsible waves here and there. Thurston decided that the style was +becoming to her. He wondered if the fellow beside her were her brother; +and then reminded himself sagely that brothers do not, as a rule, devote +their time quite so assiduously to the entertainment of their sisters. +He could not stare at her forever, and so he gave over his speculations +and went back to the prairies. + +Another hour, and Thurston was stiffing a yawn when the coaches bumped +sharply together and, with wheels screeching protest as the brakes +clutched them, the train, grinding protest in every joint, came, with a +final heavy jar, to a dead stop. Thurston thought it was a wreck, until +out ahead came the sharp crackling of rifles. A passenger behind him +leaned out of the window and a bullet shattered the glass above his +head; he drew back hastily. + +Some one hurried through the front vestibule, the door was pushed +unceremoniously open and a man--a giant, he seemed to Thurston--stopped +just inside, glared down the length of the coach through slits in the +black cloth over his face and bawled, “Hands up!” + +Thurston was so utterly surprised that his hands jerked themselves +involuntarily above his head, though he did not feel particularly +frightened; he was filled with a stupefied sort of curiosity to know +what would come next. The coach, so far as he could see, seemed filled +with uplifted, trembling hands, so that he did not feel ashamed of his +own. The man behind him put up his hands with the other--but one of them +held a revolver that barked savagely and unexpectedly close against the +car of Thurston. Thurston ducked. There was an echo from the front, and +the man behind, who risked so much on one shot, lurched into the aisle, +swaying uncertainly between the seats. He of the mask fired again, +viciously, and the other collapsed into a still, awkwardly huddled heap +on the floor. The revolver dropped from his fingers and struck against +Thurston's foot, making him wince. + +Thurston had never before seen death come to a man, and the very +suddenness of it unnerved him. All his faculties were numbed before that +terrible, pitiless form in the door, and the limp, dead body at his feet +in the aisle. He did not even remember that here was the savage +local color he had come far a-seeking. He quite forgot to improve the +opportunity by making mental note of all the little, convincing details, +as was his wont. + +Presently he awoke to the realization of certain words spoken +insistently close beside him. He turned his eyes and saw that the girl, +her eyes staring straight before her, her slim, brown hands uplifted, +was yet commanding him imperiously, her voice holding to that murmuring +monotone more discreet than a whisper. + +“The gun--drop down--and get it. He can't see to shoot for the seat in +front. Get the gun. Get the gun!” was what she was saying. + +Thurston looked at her helplessly, imploringly. In truth, he had never +fired a gun in all his peaceful life. + +“The gun--get it--and shoot!” Her eyes moved quickly in a cautious, +side-long glance that commanded impatiently. Her straight eyebrows drew +together imperiously. Then, when he met her eyes with that same helpless +look, she said another word that hurt. It was “Coward!” + +Thurston looked down at the gun, and at the huddled form. A tiny river +of blood was creeping toward him. Already it had reached his foot, and +his shoe was red along the sole. He moved his foot quickly away from it, +and shuddered. + +“Coward!” murmured the girl contemptuously again, and a splotch of anger +showed under the tan of her cheek. + +Thurston caught his breath and wondered if he could do it; he looked +toward the door and thought how far it was to send a bullet straight +when a man has never, in all his life, fired a gun. And without looking +he could see that horrible, red stream creeping toward him like some +monster in a nightmare. His flesh crimpled with physical repulsion, but +he meant to try; perhaps he could shoot the man in the mask, so that +there would be another huddled, lifeless Thing on the floor, and another +creeping red stream. + +At that instant the tawny-haired young fellow beside the girl gathered +himself for a spring, flung himself headlong before her and into the +aisle; caught the dead man's pistol from the floor and fired, seemingly +with one movement. Then he sprang up, still firing as fast as the +trigger could move. From the door came answer, shot for shot, and the +car was filled with the stifling odor of burnt powder. A woman screamed +hysterically. + +Then a puff of cool, prairie breeze came in through the shattered window +behind Thurston, and the smoke-cloud lifted like a curtain blown upward +in the wind. The tawny-haired young fellow was walking coolly down the +aisle, the smoking revolver pointing like an accusing finger toward the +outlaw who lay stretched upon his face, his fingers twitching. + +Outside, rifles were crackling like corn in a giant popper. Presently +it slackened to an occasional shot. A brakeman, followed by two coatless +mail-clerks with Winchesters, ran down the length of the train calling +out that there was no danger. The thud of their running feet, and the +wholesome mingling of their shouting struck sharply in the silence after +the shooting. One of the men swung up on the steps of the day coach and +came in. + +“Hello, Park,” he cried to the tawny haired boy. “Got one, did yuh? +That's good. We did, too got him alive. Think uh the nerve uh that +Wagner bunch! to go up against a train in broad daylight. Made an easy +getaway, too, except the feller we gloomed in the express car. How's +this one? Dead?” + +“No. I reckon he'll get well enough to stretch a rope; he killed a man, +in here.” He motioned toward the huddled figure in the aisle. They came +together, lifted the dead man and carried him away to the baggage car. +A brakeman came with a cloth and wiped up the red pool, and Thurston +pressed his lips tightly together and turned away his head; he could not +remember when the sight of anything had made him so deathly sick. Once +he glanced slyly at the girl opposite, and saw that she was very white +under her tan, and that the hands in her lap were clasped tightly and +yet shook. But she met his eyes squarely, and Thurston did not look at +her again; he did not like the expression of her mouth. + +News of the holdup had been telegraphed ahead, and all Shellanne--which +was not much of a crowd--gathered at the station to meet the train and +congratulate the heroes. Thurston alighted almost shamefacedly into the +midst of the loud-voiced commotion. While he was looking uncertainly +about him, wondering where to go and what to do, a voice he knew hailed +him with drawling welcome. + +“Hello, Bud. Got back quicker than you expected, didn't yuh? It's lucky +I happened to be in town--yuh can ride out with me. Say, yuh got quite +a bunch uh local color for a story, didn't yuh? You'll be writing +blood-and-thunder for a month on the strength of this little episode, I +reckon.” his twinkling eyes teased, though his face was quite serious, +as was his voice. + +She of the blue-gray eyes turned and measured Thurston with a +deliberate, leisurely glance, and her mouth still had that unpleasant +expression. Thurston colored guiltily, but Hank Graves lifted his hat +and called her Mona, and asked her if she wasn't scared stiff, and if +she were home to stay. Then he beckoned to the tawny-haired fellow with +his finger, and winked at Mona--a proceeding which shocked Thurston +considerably. + +“Mona--here, hold on a minute, can't yuh? Mona, this is a friend uh +mine; Bud Thurston's his name. He's come out to study us up and round up +a hunch uh real Western atmosphere. He's a story-writer. I used to whack +bulls all over the country with his father. Bud, this is Mona Stevens; +she ranges down close to the Lazy Eight, so the sooner yuh git +acquainted, the quicker.” He did not explain what would be the quicker, +and Thurston's embarrassment was only aggravated by the introduction. + +Miss Stevens gave him a chilly smile, the kind that is worse than none +at all and turned her back, thinly pretending that she heard her brother +calling her, which she did not. Her brother was loudly explaining what +would have happened if he had been on that train and had got a whack at +the robbers, and his sister was far from his mind. + +Graves slapped the shoulder of the fellow they had called Park. +“You young devil, next time I leave the place for a week--yes, or +overnight--I'll lock yuh up in the blacksmith shop. Have yuh got to be +Mona's special escort, these days?” + +“Wish I was,” Park retorted, unmoved. + +“Different here--yuh ain't much account, as it is. Bud, this here's my +wagon-boss, Park Holloway; one of 'em, that is. I'm going to turn yuh +over to him and let him wise yuh up. Say, you young bucks ought to get +along together pretty smooth. Your dads run buffalo together before +either of yuh was born. Well, let's be moving--we ain't home yet. Got a +war-bag, Bud?” + +Late that night Thurston lay upon a home-made bed and listened to the +frogs croaking monotonously in the hollow behind the house, and to +the lone coyote which harped upon the subject of his wrongs away on a +distant hillside, and to the subdued snoring of Hank Graves in the room +beyond. He was trying to adjust himself to this new condition of things, +and the new condition refused utterly to be measured by his accepted +standard. + +According to that standard, he should feel repulsed and annoyed by the +familiarity of strangers who persisted in calling him “Bud” without +taking the trouble to find out whether or not he liked it. And what +puzzled Thurston and put him all at sea was the consciousness that he +did like it, and that it struck familiarly upon his ears as something to +which he had been accustomed in the past. + +Also, according to his well-ordered past, he should hate this raw life +and rawer country where could occur such brutal things as he had that +day witnessed. He should dislike a man like Park Holloway who, having +wounded a man unto death, had calmly dismissed the subject with the +regret that his aim had not been better, so that he could have saved the +county the expense of trying and hanging the fellow. Thurston was amazed +to find that, down in the inner man of him, he admired Park Holloway +exceedingly, and privately resolved to perfect himself in the use of +fire-arms, he who had been wont to deplore the thinly veneered savagery +of men who liked such things. + +After much speculation he decided that Mona Stevens would not do for a +kidnapped heroine. He could not seem to “see” her in such a position, +and, besides, he told himself that such a type of girl did not attract +him at all. She had called him a coward--and why? simply because he, +straight from the trammels of civilization, had not been prepared to +meet the situation thrust upon him-which she had thrust upon him. She +had demanded of him something he had not the power to accomplish, and +she had called him a coward. And in his heart Thurston knew that it was +unjust, and that he was not a coward. + + + +CHAPTER III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS + +Thurston, dressed immaculately in riding clothes of the latest English +cut, went airily down the stairs and discovered that he was not early, +as he had imagined. Seven o'clock, he had told himself proudly, was not +bad for a beginner; and he had smiled in anticipation of Hank Graves' +surprise which was fortunate, since he would otherwise have been cheated +of smiling at all. For Hank Graves, he learned from the cook, had eaten +breakfast at five and had left the ranch more than an hour before; the +men also were scattered to their work. + +Properly humbled in spirit, he sat down to the kitchen table and ate his +belated breakfast, while the cook kneaded bread at the other end of the +same table and eyed Thurston with frank amusement. Thurston had never +before been conscious of feeling ill at ease in the presence of a +servant, and hurried through the meal so that he could escape into the +clear sunshine, feeling a bit foolish in the unaccustomed bagginess of +his riding breeches and the snugness of his leggings; for he had never +taken to outdoor sports, except as an onlooker from the shade of a grand +stand or piazza. + +While he was debating the wisdom of writing a detailed description of +yesterday's tragedy while it was still fresh in his mind and stowing it +away for future “color,” Park Holloway rode into the yard and on to the +stables. He nodded at Thurston and grinned without apparent cause, as +the cook had done. Thurston followed him to the corral and watched him +pull the saddle off his horse, and throw it carelessly to one side. It +looked cumbersome, that saddle; quite unlike the ones he had inspected +in the New York shops. He grasped the horn, lifted upon it and said, +“Jove!” + +“Heavy, ain't it?” Park laughed, and slipped the bridle down over the +ears of his horse and dismissed him with a slap on the rump. “Don't yuh +like the looks of it?” he added indulgently. + +Thurston, engaged in wondering what all those little strings were for, +felt the indulgence and straightened. “How should I know?” he retorted. +“Anyone can see that my ignorance is absolute. I expect you to laugh at +me, Mr. Holloway.” + +“Call me Park,” said he of the tawny hair, and leaned against the fence +looking extremely boyish and utterly incapable of walking calmly down +upon a barking revolver and shooting as he went. “You're bound to learn +all about saddles and what they're made for,” he went on. “So long as +yuh don't get swell-headed the first time yuh stick on a horse that +side-steps a little, or back down from a few hard knocks, you'll be all +right.” + +Thurston had not intended getting out and actually living the life he +had come to observe, but something got in his nerves and his blood and +bred an impulse to which he yielded without reserve. “Park, see +here,” he said eagerly. “Graves said he'd turn me over to you, so you +could--er--teach me wisdom. It's deuced rough on you, but I hope you +won't refuse to be bothered with me. I want to learn--everything. And I +want you to find fault like the mischief, and--er--knock me into shape, +if it's possible.” He was very modest over his ignorance, and his voice +rang true. + +Park studied him gravely. “Bud,” he said at last, “you'll do. You're +greener right now than a blue-joint meadow in June, but yuh got the +right stuff in yuh, and it's a go with me. You come along with us after +that trail-herd, and you'll get knocked into shape fast enough. Smoke?” + +Thurston shook his head. “Not those.” + +“I dunno I'm afraid yuh can't be the real thing unless yuh fan your +lungs with cigarette smoke regular.” The twinkle belied him, though. +“Say, where did you pick them bloomers?” + +“They were made in New York.” Thurston smiled in sickly fashion. He had +all along been uncomfortably aware of the sharp contrast between his own +modish attire and the somewhat disreputable leathern chaps of his host's +foreman. + +“Well,” commented Park, “you told me to find fault like the mischief, +and I'm going to call your bluff. This here's Montana, recollect, and I +raise the long howl over them habiliments. The best thing you can do is +pace along to the house and discard before the boys get sight of yuh. +They'd queer yuh with the whole outfit, sure. Uh course,” he went on +soothingly when he saw the resentment in Thurston's eyes, “I expect +they're real stylish--back East--but the boys ain't educated to stand +for anything like that; they'd likely tell yuh they set like the hide +on the hind legs of an elephant--which is a fact. I hate to say it, Kid, +but they sure do look like the devil.” + +“So would you, in New York,” Thurston flung back at him. + +“Why, sure. But this ain't New York; this here's the Lazy Eight corral, +and I'm doing yuh a favor. You wouldn't like to have the boys shooting +holes through the slack, would yuh? You amble right along and get some +pants on--and when you've wised up some you'll thank me a lot. I'm going +on a little jaunt down the creek, before dinner, and you might go along; +you'll need to get hardened to the saddle anyway, before we start for +Billings, or you'll do most uh riding on the mess-wagon.” + +Thurston, albeit in resentful mood, went meekly and did as he was +commanded to do; and no man save Park and the cook ever glimpsed those +smart riding clothes of English cut. + +“Now yuh look a heap more human,” was the way Park signified his +approval of the change. “Here's a little horse that's easy to ride and +dead gentle if yuh don't spur him in the neck, which you ain't liable +to do at present; and Hank says you can have this saddle for keeps. Hank +used to ride it, but he out-growed it and got one longer in the seat. +When we start for Billings to trail up them cattle, of course you'll get +a string of your own to ride.” + +“A string? I'm afraid I don't quite understand.” + +“Yuh don't savvy riding a string? A string, m'son, is ten or a dozen +saddle-horses that yuh ride turn about, and nobody else has got any +right to top one; every fellow has got his own string, yuh see.” + +Thurston eyed his horse distrustfully. “I think,” he ventured, “one will +be enough for me. I'll scarcely need a dozen.” The truth was that he +thought Park was laughing at him. + +Park slid sidewise in the saddle and proceeded to roll another +cigarette. “I'd be willing to bet that by fall you'll have a good-sized +string rode down to a whisper. You wait; wait till it gets in your +blood. Why, I'd die if you took me off the range. Wait till yuh set out +in the dark, on your horse, and count the stars and watch the big dipper +swing around towards morning, and listen to the cattle breathing close +by--sleeping while you ride around 'em playing guardian angel over their +dreams. Wait till yuh get up at daybreak and are in the saddle with +the pink uh sunrise, and know you'll sleep fifteen or twenty miles from +there that night; and yuh lay down at night with the smell of new grass +in your nostrils where your bed had bruised it. + +“Why, Bud, if you're a man, you'll be plumb spoiled for your little +old East.” Then he swung back his feet and the horses broke into a lope +which jarred the unaccustomed frame of Thurston mightily, though he kept +the pace doggedly. + +“I've got to go down to the Stevens place,” Park informed him. “You +met Mona yesterday--it was her come down on the train with me, yuh +remember.” Thurston did remember very distinctly. “Hank says yuh compose +stories. Is that right?” + +Thurston's mind came back from wondering how Mona Stevens' mouth looked +when she was pleased with one, and he nodded. + +“Well, there's a lot in this country that ain't ever been wrote about, I +guess; at least if it was I never read it, and I read considerable. But +the trouble is, them that know ain't in the writing business, and them +that write don't know. The way I've figured it, they set back East +somewhere and write it like they think maybe it is; and it's a hell of a +job they make of it.” + +Thurston, remembering the time when he, too, “set back East” and wrote +it like he thought maybe it was, blushed guiltily. He was thankful that +his stories of the West had, without exception, been rejected as of +little worth. He shuddered to think of one of them falling into the +hands of Park Holloway. + +“I came out to learn, and I want to learn it thoroughly,” he said, in +the face of much physical discomfort. Just then the horses slowed for a +climb, and he breathed thanks. “In the first place,” he began again when +he had readjusted himself carefully in the saddle, “I wish you'd tell me +just where you are going with the wagons, and what you mean by trailing +a herd.” + +“Why, I thought I said we were going to Billings,” Park answered, +surprised. “What we're going to do when we get there is to receive a +shipment of cattle young steer that's coming up from the Panhandle which +is a part uh Texas. And we trail 'em up here and turn 'em loose this +side the river. After that we'll start the calf roundup. The Lazy Eight +runs two wagons, yuh know. I run one, and Deacon Smith runs the other; +we work together, though, most of the time. It makes quite a crew, +twenty-five or thirty men.” + +“I didn't know,” said Thurston dubiously, “that you ever shipped cattle +into this country. I supposed you shipped them out. Is Mr. Graves buying +some?” + +“Hank? I guess yes! six thousand head uh yearlings and two year-olds, +this spring; some seasons it's more. We get in young stock every year +and turn 'em loose on the range till they're ready to ship. It's cheaper +than raising calves, yuh know. When yuh get to Billings, Bud, you'll see +some cattle! Why, our bunch alone will make seven trains, and that ain't +a commencement. Cattle's cheap down South, this year, and seems like +everybody's buying. Hank didn't buy as much as some, because he runs +quite a bunch uh cows; we'll brand six or seven thousand calves this +spring. Hank sure knows how to rake in the coin.” + +Thurston agreed as politely as he could for the jolting. They had +again struck the level and seven miles, at Park's usual pace, was +heartbreaking to a man not accustomed to the saddle. Thurston had +written, just before leaving home, a musical bit of verse born of his +luring dreams, about “the joy of speeding fleetly where the grassland +meets the sky,” and he was gritting his teeth now over the idiotic +lines. + +When they reached the ranch and Mona's mother came to the door and +invited them in, he declined almost rudely, for he had a feeling that +once out of the saddle he would have difficulty in getting into it +again. Besides, Mona was not at home, according to her mother. + +So they did not tarry, and Thurston reached the Lazy Eight alive, but +with the glamour quite gone from his West. If he had not been the son of +his father, he would have taken the first train which pointed its +nose to the East, and he would never again have essayed the writing +of Western stories or musical verse which sung the joys of galloping +blithely off to the sky-line. He had just been galloping off to a +sky-line that was always just before and he had not been blithe; nor did +the memory of it charm. Of a truth, the very thought of things Western +made him swear mild, city-bred oaths. + +He choked back his awe of the cook and asked him, quite humbly, what +was good to take the soreness from one's muscles; afterward he had crept +painfully up the stairs, clasping to his bosom a beer bottle filled with +pungent, home-made liniment which the cook had gravely declared “out uh +sight for saddle-galls.” + +Hank Graves, when he heard the story, with artistic touches from the +cook, slapped his thigh and laughed one of his soundless chuckles. “The +son-of-a-gun! He's the right stuff. Never whined, eh? I knew it. He's +his dad over again, from the ground up.” And loved him the better. + + + +CHAPTER IV. THE TRAIL-HERD + +Thurston tucked the bulb of his camera down beside the bellows and +closed the box with a snap. “I wonder what old Reeve would say to that +view,” he mused aloud. + +“Old who?” + +“Oh, a fellow back in New York. Jove! he'd throw up his dry-point heads +and take to oils and landscapes if he could see this.” + +The “this” was a panoramic view of the town and surrounding valley of +Billings. The day was sunlit and still, and far objects stood up with +sharp outlines in the clear atmosphere. Here and there the white tents +of waiting trail-outfits splotched the bright green of the prairie. +Horsemen galloped to and from the town at top speed, and a long, grimy +red stock train had just snorted out on a siding by the stockyards where +the bellowing of thirsty cattle came faintly like the roar of pounding +surf in the distance. + +Thurston--quite a different Thurston from the trim, pale young man who +had followed the lure of the West two weeks before--drew a long breath +and looked out over the hurrying waters of the Yellowstone. It was good +to be alive and young, and to live the tented life of the plains; it +was good even to be “speeding fleetly where the grassland meets the sky +“--for two weeks in the saddle had changed considerably his view-point. +He turned again to the dust and roar of the stockyards a mile or so +away. + +“Perhaps,” he remarked hopefully, “the next train will be ours.” Strange +how soon a man may identify himself with new conditions and new aims. He +had come West to look upon the life from the outside, and now his chief +thought was of the coming steers, which he referred to unblushingly as +“our cattle.” Such is the spell of the range. + +“Let's ride on over, Bud,” Park proposed. “That's likely the Circle Bar +shipment. Their bunch comes from the same place ours does, and I want to +see how they stack up.” + +Thurston agreed and went to saddle up. He had mastered the art of +saddling and could, on lucky days and when he was in what he called +“form,” rope the horse he wanted; to say nothing of the times when his +loop settled unexpectedly over the wrong victim. Park Holloway, for +instance, who once got it neatly under his chin, much to his disgust and +the astonishment of Thurston. + +“I'm going to take my Kodak,” said he. “I like to watch them unload, and +I can get some good pictures, with this sunlight.” + +“When you've hollered 'em up and down the chutes as many times as I +have,” Park told him, “yuh won't need no pictures to help yuh remember +what it's like.” + +It was an old story with Park, and Thurston's enthusiasm struck him as +a bit funny. He perched upon a corner of the fence out of the way, and +smoked cigarettes while he watched the cattle and shouted pleasantries +to the men who prodded and swore and gesticulated at the wild-eyed +huddle in the pens. Soon his turn would come, but just now he was +content to look on and take his ease. + +“For the life of me,” cried Thurston, sidling gingerly over to him, “I +can't see where they all come from. For two days these yards have never +been empty. The country will soon be one vast herd.” + +“Two days--huh! this thing'll go on for weeks, m'son. And after all is +over, you'll wonder where the dickens they all went to. Montana is some +bigger than you realize, I guess. And next fall, when shipping starts, +you'll think you're seeing raw porterhouse steaks for the whole world. +Let's drift out uh this dust; you'll have time to get a carload uh +pictures before our bunch rolls in.” + +As a matter of fact, it was two weeks before the Lazy Eight consignment +arrived. Thurston haunted the stockyards with his Kodak, but after the +first two or three days he took no pictures. For every day was but a +repetition of those that had gone before: a great, grimy engine shunting +cars back and forth on the siding; an endless stream of weary, young +cattle flowing down the steep chutes into the pens, from the pens to the +branding chutes, where they were burned deep with the mark of their new +owners; then out through the great gate, crowding, pushing, wild to flee +from restraint, yet held in and guided by mounted cowboys; out upon the +green prairie where they could feast once more upon sweet grasses and +drink their fill from the river of clear, mountain water; out upon the +weary march of the trail, on and on for long days until some boundary +which their drivers hailed with joy was passed, and they were free at +last to roam at will over the wind-brushed range land; to lie down in +some cool, sweet-scented swale and chew their cuds in peace. + +Two weeks, and then came a telegram for Park. In the reading of it he +shuffled off his attitude of boyish irresponsibility and became in a +breath the cool, business-like leader of men. Holding the envelope still +in his hand he sought out Thurston, who was practicing with a rope. As +Park approached him he whirled the noose and cast it neatly over the +peak of the night-hawk's teepee. + +“Good shot,” Park encouraged, “but I'd advise yuh to take another +target. You'll have the tent down over Scotty's ears, and then you'll +think yuh stirred up a mess uh hornets. + +“Say, Bud, our cattle are coming, and I'm going to be short uh men. If +you'd like a job I'll take yuh on, and take chances on licking yuh into +shape. Maybe the wages won't appeal to yuh, but I'm willing to throw in +heaps uh valuable experience that won't cost yuh a cent.” He lowered an +eyelid toward the cook-tent, although no one was visible. + +Thurston studied the matter while he coiled his rope, and no longer. +Secretly he had wanted all along to be a part of the life instead of an +onlooker. “I'll take the job, Park--if you think I can hold it down.” + The speech would doubtless have astonished Reeve-Howard in more ways +than one; but Reeve-Howard was already a part of the past in Thurston's +mind. He was for living the present. + +“Well,” Park retorted, “it'll be your own funeral if yuh get fired. +Better stake yourself to a pair uh chaps; you'll need 'em on the trip.” + +“Also a large, rainbow-hued silk handkerchief if I want to look the +part,” Thurston bantered. + +“If yuh don't want your darned neck blistered, yuh mean,” Park flung +over his shoulders. “Your wages and schooling start in to-morrow at +sunup.” + +It was early in the morning when the first train arrived, hungry, +thirsty, tired, bawling a general protest against fate and man's mode +of travel. Thurston, with a long pole in his hand, stood on the narrow +plank near the top of a chute wall and prodded vaguely at an endless, +moving incline of backs. Incidentally he took his cue from his +neighbors, and shouted till his voice was a croak-though he could +not see that he accomplished anything either by his prodding or his +shouting. + +Below him surged the sea of hide and horns which was barely suggestive +of the animals as individuals. Out in the corrals the dust-cloud hung +low, just as it had hovered every day for more than two weeks; just as +it would hover every day for two weeks longer. Across the yards near the +big, outer gate Deacon Smith's crew was already beginning to brand. The +first train was barely unloaded when the second trailed in and out +on the siding; and so the third came also. Then came a lull, for the +consignment had been split in two and the second section was several +hours behind the first. + +Thurston rode out to camp, aching with the strain and ravenously hungry, +after toiling with his muscles for the first time in his life; for his +had been days of physical ease. He had yet to learn the art of working +so that every movement counted something accomplished, as did the +others; besides, he had been in constant fear of losing his hold on the +fence and plunging headlong amongst the trampling hoofs below, a fate +that he shuddered to contemplate. He did not, however, mention that +fear, or his muscle ache, to any man; he might be green, but he was not +the man to whine. + +When he went back into the dust and roar, Park ordered him curtly to +tend the branding fire, since both crews would brand that afternoon and +get the corrals cleared for the next shipment. Thurston thanked Park +mentally; tending branding-fire sounded very much like child's play. + +Soon the gray dust-cloud took on a shade of blue in places where the +smoke from the fires cut through; a new tang smote the nostrils: the +rank odor of burning hair and searing hides; a new note crept into the +clamoring roar: the low-keyed blat of pain and fright. + +Thurston turned away his head from the sight and the smell, and piled +on wood until Park stopped him with. “Say, Bud, we ain't celebrating any +election! It ain't a bonfire we want, it's heat; just keep her going and +save wood all yuh can.” After an hour of fire-tending Thurston decided +that there were things more wearisome than “hollering 'em down the +chutes.” His eyes were smarting intolerably with smoke and heat, and the +smell of the branding was not nice; but through the long afternoon he +stuck to the work, shrewdly guessing that the others were not having any +fun either. Park and “the Deacon” worked as hard as any, branding the +steers as they were squeezed, one by one, fast in the little branding +chutes. The setting sun shone redly through the smoke before Thurston +was free to kick the half-burnt sticks apart and pour water upon them as +directed by Park. + +“Think yuh earned your little old dollar and thirty three cents, Bud?” + Park asked him. And Thurston smiled a tired, sooty smile that seemed all +teeth. + +“I hope so; at any rate, I have a deep, inner knowledge of the joys of +branding cattle.” + +“Wait 'till yuh burn Lazy Eights on wriggling, blatting calves for two +or three hours at a stretch before yuh talk about the joys uh branding.” + Park rubbed eloquently his aching biceps. + +At dusk Thurston crept into his blankets, feeling that he would like the +night to be at least thirty six hours long. He was just settling into +a luxurious, leather-upholstered dream chair preparatory to telling +Reeve-Howard his Western experiences when Park's voice bellowed into the +tent: + +“Roll out, boys--we got a train pulling in!” + +There was hurried dressing in the dark of the bed-tent, hasty mounting, +and a hastier ride through the cool night air. There were long hours at +the chutes, prodding down at a wavering line of moving shadows, while +the “big dipper” hung bright in the sky and lighted lanterns bobbed back +and forth along the train waving signals to one another. At intervals +Park's voice cut crisply through the turmoil, giving orders to men whom +he could not see. + +The east was lightening to a pale yellow when the men climbed at last +into their saddles and galloped out to camp for a hurried breakfast. +Thurston had been comforting his aching body with the promise of rest +and sleep; but three thousand cattle were milling impatiently in the +stockyards, so presently he found himself fanning a sickly little blaze +with his hat while he endeavored to keep the smoke from his tired eyes. +Of a truth, Reeve-Howard would have stared mightily at sight of him. + +Once Park, passing by, smiled down upon him grimly. “Here's where yuh +get the real thing in local color,” he taunted, but Thurston was +too busy to answer. The stress of living had dimmed his eye for the +picturesque. + +That night, one Philip Thurston slept as sleeps the dead. But he awoke +with the others and thanked the Lord there were no more cattle to unload +and brand. + +When he went out on day-herd that afternoon he fancied that he was +getting into the midst of things and taking his place with the veterans. +He would have been filled with resentment had he suspected the truth: +that Park carefully eased those first days of his novitiate. That was +why none of the night-guarding fell to him until they had left Billings +many miles behind them. + + + +CHAPTER V. THE STORM + +The third night he was detailed to stand with Bob MacGregor on the +middle guard, which lasts from eleven o'clock until two. The outfit had +camped near the head of a long, shallow basin that had a creek running +through; down the winding banks of it lay the white-tented camps of +seven other trail-herds, the cattle making great brown blotches against +the green at sundown. Thurston hoped they would all be there in the +morning when the sun came up, so that he could get a picture. + +“Aw, they'll be miles away by then,” Bob assured him unfeelingly. “By +the signs, you can take snap-shots by lightning in another hour. Got +your slicker, Bud?” + +Thurston said he hadn't, and Bob shook his head prophetically. “You'll +sure wish yuh had it before yuh hit camp again; when yuh get wise, +you'll ride with your slicker behind the cantle, rain or shine. They'll +need singing to, to-night.” + +Thurston prudently kept silent, since he knew nothing whatever about it, +and Bob gave him minute directions about riding his rounds, and how to +turn a stray animal back into the herd without disturbing the others. + +The man they relieved met them silently and rode away to camp. Off +to the right an animal coughed, and a black shape moved out from the +shadows. + +Bob swung towards it, and the shape melted again into the splotch of +shade which was the sleeping herd. He motioned to the left. “Yuh can go +that way; and yuh want to sing something, or whistle, so they'll know +what yuh are.” His tone was subdued, as it had not been before. He +seemed to drift away into the darkness, and soon his voice rose, away +across the herd, singing. As he drew nearer Thurston caught the words, +at first disjointed and indistinct, then plainer as they met. It was a +song he had never heard before, because its first popularity had swept +far below his social plane. + + “She's o-only a bird in a gil-ded cage, + A beautiful sight to see-e-e; + You may think she seems ha-a-aappy and free from ca-a-re..” + +The singer passed on and away, and only the high notes floated across to +Thurston, who whistled softly under his breath while he listened. Then, +as they neared again on the second round, the words came pensively: + + “Her beauty was so-o-old + For an old man's go-o-old, She's a bird in a gilded ca-a-age.” + +Thurston rode slowly like one in a dream, and the lure of the range-land +was strong upon him. The deep breathing of three thousand sleeping +cattle; the strong, animal odor; the black night which grew each moment +blacker, and the rhythmic ebb and flow of the clear, untrained voice +of a cowboy singing to his charge. If he could put it into words; if +he could but picture the broody stillness, with frogs cr-ekk, er-ekking +along the reedy creek-bank and a coyote yapping weirdly upon a distant +hilltop! From the southwest came mutterings half-defiant and ominous. +A breeze whispered something to the grasses as it crept away down the +valley. + + “I stood in a church-yard just at ee-eve, + While the sunset adorned the west.” + +It was Bob, drawing close out of the night. “You're doing fine, Kid; +keep her a-going,” he commended, in an undertone as he passed, and +Thurston moistened his unaccustomed lips and began industriously +whistling “The Heart Bowed Down,” and from that jumped to Faust. Fifteen +minutes exhausted his memory of the whistleable parts, and he was not +given to tiresome repetitions. He stopped for a moment, and Bob's voice +chanted admonishingly from somewhere, “Keep her a-go-o-ing, Bud, old +boy!” So Thurston took breath and began on “The Holy City,” and came +near laughing at the incongruity of the song; only he remembered that he +must not frighten the cattle, and checked the impulse. + +“Say,” Bob began when he came near enough, “do yuh know the words uh +that piece? It's a peach; I wisht you'd sing it.” He rode on, still +humming the woes of the lady who married for gold. + +Thurston obeyed while the high-piled thunder-heads rumbled deep +accompaniment, like the resonant lower tones of a bass viol. + + “Last night I lay a-sleeping, there came a dream so fair; + I stood in old Jerusalem, beside the temple there.” + +A steer stepped restlessly out of the herd, and Thurston's horse, +trained to the work, of his own accord turned him gently back. + + “I heard the children singing; and ever as they sang, + Me thought the voice of angels from heaven in answer rang.” + +From the west the thunder boomed, drowning the words in its +deep-throated growl. + + “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up your gates and sing.” + +“Hit her up a little faster, Bud, or we'll lose some. They're getting on +their feet with that thunder.” + +Sunfish, in answer to Thurston's touch on the reins, quickened to a +trot. The joggling was not conducive to the best vocal expression, but +the singer persevered: + + “Hosanna in the highest, + Hosanna to your King!” + +Flash! the lightning cut through the storm-clouds, and Bob, who had +contented himself with a subdued whistling while he listened, took up +the refrain: + + “Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” + +It was as if a battery of heavy field pieces boomed overhead. The entire +herd was on its feet and stood close-huddled, their tails to the coming +storm. Now the horses were loping steadily in their endless circling--a +pace they could hold for hours if need be. For one blinding instant +Thurston saw far down the valley; then the black curtain dropped as +suddenly as it had lifted. + +“Keep a-hollering, Bud!” came the command, and after it Bob's voice +trilled high above the thunder-growl: + + “Hosanna in the high-est. + Hosanna to your King!” + +A strange thrill of excitement came to Thurston. It was all new to him; +for his life had been sheltered from the rages of nature. He had never +before been out under the night sky when it was threatening as now. He +flinched when came an ear-splitting crash that once again lifted the +black curtain and showed him, white-lighted, the plain. In the dark that +followed came a rhythmic thud of hoofs far up the creek, and the rattle +of living castanets. Sunfish threw up his head and listened, muscles +a-quiver. + +“There's a bunch a-running,” called Bob from across the frightened herd. +“If they hit us, give Sunfish his head, he's been there before--and keep +on the outside!” + +Thurston yelled “All right!” but the pounding roar of the stampede +drowned his voice. A whirlwind of frenzied steers bore down upon +him--twenty-five hundred Panhandle two-year-olds, though he did not know +it then, his mind was all a daze, with one sentence zigzagging through +it like the lightning over his head, “Give Sunfish his head, and keep on +the outside!” + +That was what saved him, for he had the sense to obey. After a few +minutes of breathless racing, with a roar as of breakers in his ears and +the crackle of clashing horns and the gleaming of rolling eyeballs close +upon his horse's heels, he found himself washed high and dry, as it +were, while the tumult swept by. Presently he was galloping along behind +and wondering dully how he got there, though perhaps Sunfish knew well +enough. + +In his story of the West--the one that had failed to be convincing--he +had in his ignorance described a stampede, and it had not been in the +least like this one. He blushed at the memory, and wondered if he should +ever again feel qualified to write of these things. + +Great drops of rain pounded him on the back as he rode--chill drops, +that went to the skin. He thought of his new canary-colored slicker in +the bed-tent, and before he knew it swore just as any of the other +men would have done under similar provocation; it was the first real, +able-bodied oath he had ever uttered. He was becoming assimilated with +the raw conditions of life. + +He heard a man's voice calling to him, and distinguished the dim shape +of a rider close by. He shouted that password of the range, “Hello!” + +“What outfit is this?” the man cried again. + +“The Lazy Eight!” snapped Thurston, sure that the other had come with +the stampede. Then, feeling the anger of temporary authority, “What in +hell are you up to, letting your cattle run?” If Park could have heard +him say that for Reeve-Howard! + +Down the long length of the valley they swept, gathering to themselves +other herds and other riders as incensed as were themselves. It is not +pretty work, nor amusing, to gallop madly in the wake of a stampede at +night, keeping up the stragglers and taking the chance of a broken neck +with the rain to make matters worse. + +Bob MacGregor sought Thurston with much shouting, and having found him +they rode side by side. And always the thunder boomed overhead, and by +the lightning flashes they glimpsed the turbulent sea of cattle fleeing, +they knew not where or why, with blind fear crowding their heels. + +The noise of it roused the camps as they thundered by; men rose up, +peered out from bed-tents as the stampede swept past, cursed the delay +it would probably make, hoped none of the boys got hurt, and thanked the +Lord the tents were pitched close to the creek and out of the track of +the maddened herds. + +Then they went back to bed to wait philosophically for daylight. + +When Sunfish, between flashes, stumbled into a shallow washout, and sent +Thurston sailing unbeautifully over his head, Bob pulled up and slid off +his horse in a hurry. + +“Yuh hurt, Bud?” he cried anxiously, bending over him. For Thurston, +from the very frankness of his verdant ignorance, had won for himself +the indulgent protectiveness of the whole outfit; not a man but watched +unobtrusively over his welfare--and Bob MacGregor went farther and +loved him whole-heartedly. His voice, when he spoke, was unequivocally +frightened. + +Thurston sat up and wiped a handful of mud off his face; if it had not +been so dark Bob would have shouted at the spectacle. “I'm 'kinda sorter +shuck up like,”' he quoted ruefully. “And my nose is skinned, thank you. +Where's that devil of a horse?” + +Bob stood over him and grinned. “My, I'm surprised at yuh, Bud! What +would your Sunday-school teacher say if she heard yuh? Anyway, yuh ain't +got any call to cuss Sunfish; he ain't to blame. He's used to fellows +that can ride.” + +“Shut up!” Thurston commanded inelegantly. “I'd like to see you ride a +horse when he's upside down!” + +“Aw, come on,” urged Bob, giving up the argument. “We'll be plumb lost +from the herd if we don't hustle.” + +They got into their saddles again and went on, riding by sound and the +rare glimpses the lightning gave them as it flared through the storm +away to the east. + +“Wet?” Bob sung out sympathetically from the streaming shelter of his +slicker. Thurston, wriggling away from his soaked clothing, grunted a +sarcastic negative. + +The cattle were drifting now before the storm which had settled to a +monotonous downpour. The riders--two or three men for every herd that +had joined in the panic--circled, a veritable picket line without the +password. There would be no relief ride out to them that night, and they +knew it and settled to the long wait for morning. + +Thurston took up his station next to Bob; rode until he met the next +man, and then retraced his steps till he faced Bob again; rode until the +world seemed unreal and far away, with nothing left but the night and +the riding back and forth on his beat, and the rain that oozed through +his clothes and trickled uncomfortably down inside his collar. He lost +all count of time, and was startled when at last came gray dawn. + +As the light grew brighter his eyes widened and forgot their +sleep-hunger; he had not thought it would be like this. He was riding +part way across one end of a herd larger than his imagination had ever +pictured; three thousand cattle had seemed to him a multitude--yet +here were more than twenty thousand, wet, draggled, their backs humped +miserably from the rain which but a half hour since had ceased. He was +still gazing and wondering when Park rode up to him. + +“Lord! Bud, you're a sight! Did the bunch walk over yuh?” he greeted. + +“No, only Sunfish,” snapped Thurston crossly. Time was when Philip +Thurston would not have answered any man abruptly, however great the +provocation. He was only lately getting down to the real, elemental man +of him; to the son of Bill Thurston, bull-whacker, prospector, +follower of dim trails. He rode silently back to camp with Bob, ate +his breakfast, got into dry clothes and went out and tied his slicker +deliberately and securely behind the cantle of his saddle, though the +sun was shining straight into his eyes and the sky fairly twinkled, it +was so clean of clouds. + +Bob watched him with eyes that laughed. “My, you're an ambitious +son-of-a-gun,” he chuckled. “And you've got the slicker question settled +in your mind, I see; yuh learn easy; it takes two or three soakings to +learn some folks.” + +“We've got to go back and help with the herd, haven't we?” Thurston +asked. “The horses are all out.” + +“Yep. They'll stay out, too, till noon, m'son. We hike to bed, if +anybody should ask yuh.” + +So it was not till after dinner that he rode back to the great +herd--with his Kodak in his pocket--to find the cattle split up +into several bunches. The riders at once went to work separating the +different brands. He was too green a hand to do anything but help hold +the “cut,” and that was so much like ordinary herd-ing that his interest +flagged. He wanted, more than anything, to ride into the bunch and +single out a Lazy Eight steer, skillfully hazing him down the slope to +the cut, as he saw the others do. + +Bob told him it was the biggest mix-up he had ever seen, and Bob had +ridden the range in every State where beef grows wild. He was in the +thickest of the huddle, was Bob, working as if he did not know the +meaning of fatigue. Thurston, watching him thread his way in and out of +the restless, milling herd, only to reappear unexpectedly at the edge +with a steer just before the nose of his horse, rush it out from among +the others--wheeling, darting this way and that, as it tried to dodge +back, and always coming off victor, wondered if he could ever learn to +do it. + +Being in pessimistic mood, he told himself that he would probably always +remain a greenhorn, to be borne with and coached and given boy's work to +do; all because he had been cheated of his legacy of the dim trails and +forced to grow up in a city, hedged about all his life by artificial +conditions, his conscience wedded to convention. + + + +CHAPTER VI. THE BIG DIVIDE + +The long drive was nearly over. Even Thurston's eyes brightened when +he saw, away upon the sky-line, the hills that squatted behind the home +ranch of the Lazy Eight. The past month had been one of rapid living +under new conditions, and at sight of them it seemed only a few days +since he had first glimpsed that broken line of hills and the bachelor +household in the coulee below. + +As the travel-weary herd swung down the long hill into the valley of the +Milk River, stepping out briskly as they sighted the cool water in the +near distance, the past month dropped away from Thurston, and what had +gone just before came back fresh as the happenings of the morning. +There was the Stevens ranch, a scant half mile away from where the tents +already gleamed on their last camp of the long trail; the smoke from +the cook-tent telling of savory meats and puddings, the bare thought of +which made one hurry his horse. + +His eyes dwelt longest, however, upon the Stevens house half hidden +among the giant cottonwoods, and he wondered if Mona would still smile +at him with that unpleasant uplift at the corner of her red mouth. He +would take care that she did not get the chance to smile at him in any +fashion, he told himself with decision. + +He wondered if those train-robbers had been captured, and if the one +Park wounded was still alive. He shivered when he thought of the dead +man in the aisle, and hoped he would never witness another death; +involuntarily he glanced down at his right stirrup, half expecting to +see his boot red with human blood. It was not nice to remember that +scene, and he gave his shoulders an impatient hitch and tried to think +of something else. + +Mindful of his vow, he had bought a gun in Billings, but he had not yet +learned to hit anything he aimed at; for firearms are hushed in roundup +camps, except when dire necessity breeds a law of its own. Range cattle +do not take kindly to the popping of pistols. So Thurston's revolver was +yet unstained with powder grime, and was packed away inside his bed. +He was promising his pride that he would go up on the hill, back of the +Lazy Eight corrals, and shoot until even Mona Stevens must respect his +marksmanship, when Park galloped back to him--“The world has moved some +while we was gone,” he announced in the tone of one who has news to tell +and enjoys thoroughly the telling. “Yuh mind the fellow I laid out in +the hold-up? He got all right again, and they stuck him in jail along +with another one old Lauman, the sheriff, glommed a week ago. Well, they +didn't do a thing last night but knock a deputy in the head, annex his +gun, swipe a Winchester and a box uh shells out uh the office and hit +the high places. Old Lauman is hot on their trail, but he ain't met +up with 'em yet, that anybody's heard. When he does, there'll sure be +something doing! They say the deputy's about all in; they smashed his +skull with a big iron poker.” + +“I wish I could handle a gun,” Thurston said between his teeth. “I'd +go after them myself. I wish I'd been left to grow up out here where I +belong. I'm all West but the training--and I never knew it till a month +ago! I ought to ride and rope and shoot with the best of you, and I +can't do a thing. All I know is books. I can criticize an opera and a +new play, and I'm considered something of an authority on clothes, but I +can't shoot.” + +“Aw, go easy,” Park laughed at him. “What if yuh can't do the +double-roll? Riding and shooting and roping's all right--we couldn't +very well get along without them accomplishments. But that's all they +are; just accomplishments. We know a man when we see him, and it don't +matter whether he can ride a bronk straight up, or don't know which way +a saddle sets on a horse. If he's a man he gets as square a deal as we +can give him.” Park reached for his cigarette book. “And as for hunting +outlaws,” he finished, “we've got old Lauman paid to do that. And he's +dead onto his job, you bet; when he goes out after a man he comes pretty +near getting him, m'son. But I sure do wish I'd killed that jasper while +I was about it; it would have saved Lauman a lot uh hard riding.” + +Thurston could scarcely explain to Park that his desire to hunt +train-robbers was born of a half-defiant wish to vindicate to Mona +Stevens his courage, and so he said nothing at all. He wondered if Park +had heard her whisper, that day, and knew how he had failed to obey +her commands; and if he had heard her call him a coward. He had often +wondered that, but Park had a way of keeping things to himself, and +Thurston could never quite bring himself to open the subject boldly. At +any rate, if Park had heard, he hoped that he understood how it was and +did not secretly despise him for it. Women, he told himself bitterly, +are never quite just. + +After the four o'clock supper he and Bob MacGregor went up the valley +to relieve the men on herd. There was one nice thing about Park as a +foreman: he tried to pair off his crew according to their congeniality. +That was why Thurston usually stood guard with Bob, whom he liked better +than any of the others-always excepting Park himself. + +“I brought my gun along,” Bob told him apologetically when they were +left to themselves. “It's a habit I've got when I know there's bad men +rampaging around the country. The boys kinda gave me the laugh when +they seen me haul it out uh my war bag, but I just told 'em to go to +thunder.” + +“Do you think those--” + +“Naw. Uh course not. I just pack it on general principles, same as an +old woman packs her umbrella.” + +“Say, this is dead easy! The bunch is pretty well broke, ain't it? I'm +sure glad to see old Milk River again; this here trailing cattle gets +plumb monotonous.” He got down and settled his back comfortably against +a rock. Below them spread the herd, feeding quietly. “Yes, sir, this is +sure a snap,” he repeated, after he had made himself a smoke. “They's +only two ways a bunch could drift if they wanted to which they don't-up +the river, or down. This hill's a little too steep for 'em to tackle +unless they was crowded hard. Good feed here, too. + +“Too bad yuh don't smoke, Bud. There's nothing like a good, smooth rock +to your back and a cigarette in your face, on a nice, lazy day like +this. It's the only kind uh day-herding I got any use for.” + +“I'll take the rock to my back, if you'll just slide along and make +room,” Thurston laughed. “I don't hanker for a cigarette, but I do wish +I had my Kodak.” + +“Aw, t'ell with your Kodak!” Bob snorted. “Can't yuh carry this layout +in your head? I've got a picture gallery in mine that I wouldn't trade +for a farm; I don't need no Kodak in mine, thankye. You just let this +here view soak into your system, Bud, where yuh can't lose it.” + +Thurston did. Long after he could close his eyes and see it in every +detail; the long, green slope with hundreds of cattle loitering in the +rank grass-growth; the winding sweep of the river and the green, rolling +hills beyond; and Bob leaning against the rock beside him, smoking +luxuriously with half-closed eyes, while their horses dozed with +drooping heads a rein-length away. + +“Say, Bud,” Bob's voice drawled sleepily, “I wisht you'd sing that +Jerusalem song. I want to learn the words to it; I'm plumb stuck on that +piece. It's different from the general run uh songs, don't yuh think? +Most of 'em's about your old home that yuh left in boyhood's happy days, +and go back to find your girl dead and sleeping in a little church-yard +or else it's your mother; or your girl marries the other man and you get +it handed to yuh right along--and they make a fellow kinda sick to his +stomach when he's got to sing 'em two or three hours at a stretch on +night-guard, just because he's plumb ignorant of anything better. This +here Jerusalem one sounds kinda grand, and--the cattle seems to like it, +too, for a change.” + +“The composer would feel flattered if he heard that,” Thurston laughed. +He wanted to be left alone to day-dream and watch the clouds trail +lazily across to meet the hills; and there was an embryonic poem +forming, phrase by phrase, in his mind. But he couldn't refuse Bob +anything, so he sat a bit straighter and cleared his throat. He sang +well--well enough indeed to be sought after at informal affairs among +his set at home. When he came to the refrain Bob took his cigarette from +between his lips and held it in his fingers while he joined his voice +lustily to Thurston's: + + “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, + Lift up your gates and sing + Hosanna in the high-est. + Hosanna to your King!” + +The near cattle lifted their heads to stare stupidly a moment, then +moved a few steps slowly, nosing for the sweetest grass-tufts. The +horses shifted their weight, resting one leg with the hoof barely +touching the earth, twitched their ears at the flies and slept again. + + “And then me thought my dream was changed, + The streets no longer rang, + Hushed were the glad Hosannas + The little children sang--” + +Tamale lifted his head and gazed inquiringly up the hill; but Bob was +not observant of signs just then. He was Striving with his recreant +memory for the words that came after: + + “The sun grew dark with mystery, + The morn was cold and still, + As the shadow of a cross arose + Upon a lonely hill.” + +Tamale stirred restlessly with head uplifted and ears pointed straight +before up the steep bluff. Old Ironsides, Thurston's mount, was not the +sort to worry about anything but his feed, and paid no attention. Bob +turned and glanced the way Tamale was looking; saw nothing, and settled +down again on the small of his back. + +“He sees a badger or something,” he Said. “Go on, Bud, with the chorus.” + + “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, + Lift up your gates and sing.” + +“Lift up your hands damn quick!” mimicked a voice just behind. “If yuh +ain't got anything to do but lay in the shade of a rock and yawp, we'll +borrow your cayuses. You ain't needin' 'em, by the looks!” + +They squirmed around until they could stare into two black +gun-barrels--and then their hands went up; their faces held a +particularly foolish expression that must have been amusing to the men +behind the guns. + +One of the gun-barrels lowered and a hand reached out and quietly took +possession of Tamale's reins; the owner of the hand got calmly into +Bob's saddle. Bob gritted his teeth. It was evident their movements had +been planned minutely in advance, for, once settled to his liking, the +fellow tested the stirrups to make sure they were the right length, and +raising his gun pointed it at the two in a business-like manner that +left no doubt of his meaning. Whereupon the man behind them came forward +and appropriated Old Ironsides to his own use. + +“Too bad we had to interrupt Sunday-school,” he remarked ironically. +“You can go ahead with the meetin' now--the collection has been took +up.” He laughed without any real mirth in his voice and gathered up the +reins. “If yuh want our horses, they're up on the bench. I don't +reckon they'll ever turn another cow, but such as they are you're quite +welcome. Better set still, boys, till we get out uh sight; one of us'll +keep an eye peeled for yuh. So long, and much obliged.” They turned and +rode warily down the slope. + +“Now, wouldn't that jar yuh?” asked Bob in deep disgust His hands +dropped to his sides; in another second he was up and shooting savagely. +“Get behind the rock, Bud,” he commanded. + +Just then a rifle cracked, and Bob toppled drunkenly and went limply to +the grass. + +“My God!” cried Thurston, and didn't know that he spoke. He snatched up +Bob's revolver and fired shot after shot at the galloping figures. Not +one seemed to do any good; the first shot hit a two-year-old square in +the ribs. After that there were no cattle within rifle range. + +One of the outlaws stopped, took deliberate aim with the stolen +Winchester and fired, meaning to kill; but he miscalculated the range a +bit and Thurston crumpled down with a bullet in his thigh. The revolver +was empty now and fell smoking at his feet. So he lay and cursed +impotently while he watched the marauders ride out of sight up the +valley. + +When the rank timber-growth hid their flying figures he crawled over to +where Bob lay and tried to lift him. + +“Art you hurt?” was the idiotic question he asked. + +Bob opened his eyes and waited a breath, as if to steady his thought. +“Did I get one, Bud?” + +“I'm afraid not,” Thurston confessed, and immediately after wished that +he had lied and said yes. “Are you hurt?” he repeated senselessly. + +“Who, me?” Bob's eyes wavered in their directness. “Don't yuh bother +none about me,” evasively. + +“But you've got to tell me. You--they--” He choked over the words. + +“Well--I guess they got me, all right. But don't let that worry yuh; it +don't me.” He tried to speak carelessly and convincingly, but it was +a miserable failure. He did not want to die, did Bob, however much he +might try to hide the fact. + +Thurston was not in the least imposed upon. He turned away his head, +pretending to look after the outlaws, and set his teeth together tight. +He did not want to act a fool. All at once he grew dizzy and sick, and +lay down heavily till the faintness passed. + +Bob tried to lift himself to his elbow; failing that, he put out a hand +and laid it on Thurston's shoulder. “Did they--get you--too?” he queried +anxiously. + +“The damn coyotes!” + +“It's nothing; just a leg put out of business,” Thurston hurried to +assure him. “Where are you hurt, Bob?” + +“Aw, I ain't any X-ray,” Bob retorted weakly but gamely. “Somewheres +inside uh me. It went in my side but the Lord knows where it wound +up. It hurts, like the devil.” He lay quiet a minute. “I wish--do yuh +feel--like finishing--that song, Bud?” + +Thurston gulped down a lump that was making his throat ache. When he +answered, his voice was very gentle: + +“I'll try a verse, old man.” + +“The last one--we'd just come to the last. It's most like church. I--I +never went--much on religion, Bud; but when a fellow's--going out over +the Big Divide.” + +“You're not!” Thurston contradicted fiercely, as if that could make it +different. He thought he could not bear those jerky sentences. + +“All right--Bud. We won't fight over it. Go ahead. The last verse.” + +Thurston eased his leg to a better position, drew himself up till his +shoulders rested against the rock and began, with an occasional, odd +break in his voice: + + “I saw the holy city + Beside the tideless Sea; + The light of God was on its street + The gates were open wide. + And all who would might enter + And no one was denied.” + +“Wonder if that there--applies--to bone-headed--cowpunchers,” Bob +muttered drowsily. “'And all--who would--” Thurston glanced quickly at +his face; caught his breath sharply at what he saw there written, and +dropped his head upon his arms. + +And so Park and his men, hurrying to the sound of the shooting, found +them in the shadow of the rock. + + + +CHAPTER VII. AT THE STEVENS PLACE + +When the excitement of the outrage had been pushed aside by the +insistent routine of everyday living, Thurston found himself thrust from +the fascination of range life and into the monotony of invalidism, and +he was anything but resigned. To be sure, he was well cared for at the +Stevens ranch, where Park and the boys had taken him that day, and Mrs. +Stevens mothered him as he could not remember being mothered before. + +Hank Graves rode over nearly every day to sit beside the bed and curse +the Wagner gang back to their great-great-grandfathers and down to more +than the third generation yet unborn, and to tell him the news. On the +second visit he started to give him the details of Bob's funeral; but +Thurston would not listen, and told him so plainly. + +“All right then, Bud, I won't talk about it. But we sure done the right +thing by the boy; had the best preacher in Shellanne out, and flowers +till further notice: a cross uh carnations, and the boys sent up to +Minot and had a spur made uh--oh, well, all right; I'll shut up about +it, I know how yuh feel, Bud; it broke us all up to have him go that +way. He sure was a white boy, if ever there was one, and--ahem!” + +“I'd give a thousand dollars, hard coin, to get my hands on them +Wagners. It would uh been all off with them, sure, if the boys had run +acrost 'em. I'd uh let 'em stay out and hunt a while longer, only old +Lauman'll get 'em, all right, and we're late as it is with the calf +roundup. Lauman'll run 'em down--and by the Lord! I'll hire Bowman +myself and ship him out from Helena to help prosecute 'em. They're dead +men if he takes the case against 'em, Bud, and I'll get him, sure--and +to hell with the cost of it! They'll swing for what they done to you and +Bob, if it takes every hoof I own.” + +Thurston told him he hoped they would be caught and--yes, hanged; though +he had never before advocated capital punishment. + +But when he thought of Bob, the care-naught, whole-souled fellow. + +He tried not to think of him, for thinking unmanned him. He had the +softest of hearts where his friends were concerned, and there were +times when he felt that he could with relish officiate at the Wagners' +execution. + +He fought against remembrance of that day; and for sake of diversion he +took to studying a large, pastel portrait of Mona which hung against the +wall opposite his bed. It was rather badly; done, and at first, when he +saw it, he laughed at the thought that even the great, still plains of +the range land cannot protect one against the ubiquitous picture +agent. In the parlor, he supposed there would be crayon pictures of +grandmothers and aunts-further evidence of the agent's glibness. + +He was glad that it was Mona who smiled down at him instead of a +grand-mother or an aunt. For Mona did smile, and in spite of the cheap +crudity the smile was roguish, with little dimply creases at the corners +of the mouth, and not at all unpleasant. If the girl would only look +like that in real life, he told himself, a fellow would probably get to +liking her. He supposed she thought him a greater coward than ever now, +just because he hadn't got killed. If he had, he would be a hero now, +like Bob. Well, Bob was a hero; the way he had jumped up and begun +shooting required courage of the suicidal sort. He had stood up and +shot, also and had succeeded only in being ridiculous; he hoped nobody +had told Mona about his hitting that steer. When he could walk again he +would learn to shoot, so that the range stock wouldn't suffer from his +marksmanship. + +After a week of seeing only Mrs. Stevens or sympathetic men +acquaintances, he began to wonder why Mona stayed so persistently away. +Then one morning she came in to take his breakfast things out. She did +not, however, stay a second longer than was absolutely necessary, and +she was perfectly composed and said good morning in her most impersonal +tone. At least Thurston hoped she had no tone more impersonal than that. +He decided that she had really beautiful eyes and hair; after she had +gone he looked up at the picture, told himself that it did not begin +to do her justice, and sighed a bit. He was very dull, and even her +companionship, he thought, would be pleasant if only she would come down +off her pedestal and be humanly sociable. + +When he wrote a story about a fellow being laid up in the same house +with a girl--a girl with big, blue-gray eyes and ripply brown hair--he +would have the girl treat the fellow at least decently. She would read +poetry to him and bring him flowers, and do ever so many nice things +that would make him hate to get well. He decided that he would write +just that kind of story; he would idealize it, of course, and have the +fellow in love with the girl; you have to, in stories. In real life it +doesn't necessarily follow that, because a fellow admires a girl's hair +and eyes, and wants to be on friendly terms, he is in love with her. +For example, he emphatically was not in love with Mona Stevens. He only +wanted her to be decently civil and to stop holding a foolish grudge +against him for not standing up and letting himself be shot full of +holes because she commanded it. + +In the afternoons, Mrs. Stevens would sit beside him and knit things +and talk to him in a pleasantly garrulous fashion, and he would lie and +listen to her--and to Mona, singing somewhere. Mona sang very well, he +thought; he wondered if she had ever had any training. Also, he wished +he dared ask her not to sing that song about “She's only a bird in a +gilded cage.” It brought back too vividly the nights when he and Bob +stood guard under the quiet stars. + +And then one day he hobbled out into the dining-room and ate dinner with +the family. Since he sat opposite Mona she was obliged to look at +him occasionally, whether she would or no. Thurston had a strain of +obstinacy in his nature, and when he decided that Mona should not only +look at him, but should talk to him as well, he set himself diligently +to attain that end. He was not the man to sit down supinely and let a +girl calmly ignore him; so Mona presently found herself talking to him +with some degree of cordiality; and what is more to the point, listening +to him when he talked. It is probable that Thurston never had tried so +hard in his life to win a girl's attention. + +It was while he was still hobbling with a cane and taxing his +imagination daily to invent excuses for remaining, that Lauman, the +sheriff, rode up to the door with a deputy and asked shelter for +themselves and the two Wagners, who glowered sullenly down from their +weary horses. When they had been safely disposed in Thurston's bedroom, +with one of the ranch hands detailed to guard them, Lauman and his man +gave themselves up to the joy of a good meal. Their own cooking, they +said, got mighty tame especially when they hadn't much to cook and dared +not have a fire. + +They had come upon the outlaws by mere accident, and it is hard telling +which was the most surprised. But Lauman was, perhaps, the quickest man +with a gun in Valley County, else he would not have been serving his +fourth term as sheriff. He got the drop and kept it while his deputy +did the rest. It had been a hard chase, he said, and a long one if you +counted time instead of miles. But he had them now, harmless as rattlers +with their fangs fresh drawn. He wanted to get them to Glasgow before +people got to hear of their capture; he thought they wouldn't be any too +safe if the boys knew he had them. + +If he had known that the Lazy Eight roundup had just pulled in to the +home ranch that afternoon, and that Dick Farney, one of the Stevens +men, had slipped out to the corral and saddled his swiftest horse, it +is quite possible that Lauman would not have lingered so long over his +supper, or drank his third cup of coffee--with real cream in it--with so +great a relish. And if he had known that the Circle Bar boys were camped +just three miles away within hailing distance of the Lazy Eight trail, +he would doubtless have postponed his after-supper smoke. + +He was sitting, revolver in hand, watching the Wagners give a practical +demonstration of the extent of their appetites, when Thurston limped in +from the porch, his eyes darker than usual. “There are a lot of riders +coming, Mr. Lauman,” he announced quietly. “It sounds like a whole +roundup. I thought you ought to know.” + +The prisoners went white, and put down knife and fork. If they had never +feared before, plainly they were afraid then. + +Lauman's face did not in the least change. “Put the hand-cuffs on, +Waller,” he said. “If you've got a room that ain't easy to get at from +the outside, Mrs. Stevens, I guess I'll have to ask yuh for the use of +it.” + +Mrs. Stevens had lived long in Valley County, and had learned how to +meet emergencies. “Put 'em right down cellar,” she invited briskly. +“There's just the trap-door into it, and the windows ain't big enough +for a cat to go through. Mona, get a candle for Mr. Lauman.” She turned +to hurry the girl, and found Mona at her elbow with a light. + +“That's the kind uh woman I like to have around,” Lauman chuckled. “Come +on, boys; hustle down there if yuh want to see Glasgow again.” + +Trembling, all their dare-devil courage sapped from them by the menace +of Thurston's words, they stumbled down the steep stairs, and the +darkness swallowed them. Lauman beckoned to his deputy. + +“You go with 'em, Waller,” he ordered. “If anybody but me offers to lift +this trap, shoot. Don't yuh take any chances. Blow out that candle soon +as you're located.” + +It was then that fifty riders clattered into the yard and up to the +front door, grouping in a way that left no exit unseen. Thurston, +standing in the doorway, knew them almost to a man. Lazy Eight boys, +they were; men who night after night had spread their blankets under the +tent-roof with him and with Bob MacGregor; Bob, who lay silently out +on the hill back of the home ranch-house, waiting for the last, great +round-up. They glanced at him in mute greeting and dismounted without a +word. With them mingled the Circle Bar boys, as silent and grim as their +fellows. Lauman came up and peered into the dusk; Thurston observed that +he carried his Winchester unobtrusively in one hand. + +“Why, hello, boys,” he greeted cheerfully. But for the rifle you never +would have guessed he knew their errand. + +“Hello, Lauman,” answered Park, matching him for cheerfulness. Then: + +“We rode over to hang them Wagners.” Lauman grinned. “I hate to +disappoint yuh, Park, but I've kinda set my heart on doing that little +job myself. I'm the one that caught 'em, and if you'd followed my trail +the last month you'd say I earned the privilege.” + +“Maybe so,” Park admitted pleasantly, “but we've got a little personal +matter to settle up with those jaspers. Bob MacGregor was one of us, yuh +remember.” + +“I'll hang 'em just as dead as you can,” Lauman argued. + +“But yuh won't do it so quick,” Park lashed back. “They're spoiling the +air every breath they draw. We want 'em, and I guess that pretty near +settles it.” + +“Not by a damn sight it don't! I've never had a man took away from me +yet, boys, and I've been your sheriff a good many years. You hike right +back to camp; yuh can't have 'em.” + +Thurston could scarcely realize the deadliness of their purpose. He knew +them for kind-hearted, laughter-loving young fellows, who would give +their last dollar to a friend. He could not believe that they would +resort to violence now. Besides, this was not his idea of a mob; he +had fancied they would howl threats and wave bludgeons, as they did in +stories. Mobs always “howled and seethed with passion” at one's doors; +they did not stand about and talk quietly as though the subject was +trivial and did not greatly concern them. + +But the men were pressing closer, and their very calmness, had he known +it, was ominous. Lauman shifted his rifle ready for instant aim. + +“Boys, look here,” he began more gravely, “I can't say I blame yuh, +looking at it from your view-point. If you'd caught these men when yuh +was out hunting 'em, you could uh strung 'em up--and I'd likely uh had +business somewhere else about that time. But yuh didn't catch 'em; yuh +give up the chase and left 'em to me. And yuh got to remember that I'm +the one that brought 'em in. They're in my care. I'm sworn to protect +'em and turn 'em over to the law--and it ain't a question uh whether +they deserve it or not. That's what I'm paid for, and I expect to go +right ahead according to orders and hang 'em by law. You can't have +'em--unless yuh lay me out first, and I don't reckon any of yuh would go +that far.” + +“There's never been a man hung by law in this county yet,” a voice cried +angrily and impatiently. + +“That ain't saying there never will be,” Lauman flung back. “Don't yuh +worry, they'll get all that's coming to them, all right.” + +“How about the time yuh had 'em in your rotten old jail, and let 'em get +out and run loose around the country, killing off white men?” drawled +another-a Circle-Bar man. + +“Now boys.” + +A hand--the hand of him who had stood guard over the Wagners in the +bedroom during supper--reached out through the doorway and caught his +rifle arm. Taken unawares from behind, he whirled and then went down +under the weight of men used to “wrassling” calves. Even old Lauman was +no match for them, and presently he found himself stretched upon the +porch with three Lazy Eight boys sitting on his person; which, being +inclined to portliness, he found very uncomfortable. + +Moved by an impulse he had no name for, Thurston snatched the sheriff's +revolver from its scabbard. As the heap squirmed pantingly upon the +porch he stepped into the doorway to avoid being tripped, which was the +wisest move he could have made, for it put him in the shadow--and +there were men of the Circle Bar whose trigger-finger would not have +hesitated, just then, had he been in plain sight and had they known his +purpose. + +“Just hold on there, boys,” he called, and they could see the glimmer of +the gun-barrel. Those of the Lazy Eight laughed at him. + +“Aw, put it down, Bud,” Park admonished. “That's too dangerous a toy for +you to be playing with--and yuh know damn well yuh can't hit anything.” + +“I killed a steer once,” Thurston reminded him meekly, whereat the laugh +hushed; for they remembered. + +“I know I can't shoot straight,” he went on frankly, “but you're taking +that much the greater chance. If I have to, I'll cut loose--and there's +no telling where the bullets may strike.” + +“That's right,” Park admitted. “Stand still, boys; he's more dangerous +than a gun that isn't loaded. What d'yuh want, m'son?” + +“I want to talk to you for about five minutes. I've got a game leg, so +that I can neither run nor fight, but I hope you'll listen to me. The +Wagners can't get away--they're locked up, with a deputy standing over +them with a gun; and on top of that they're handcuffed. They're as +helpless, boys, as two trapped coyotes.” He looked down over the crowd, +which shifted uneasily; no one spoke. + +“That's what struck me most,” he continued. “You know what I thought of +Bob, don't you? And I didn't thank them for boring a hole in my leg; it +wasn't any kindness of theirs that it didn't land higher--they weren't +shooting at me for fun. And I'd have killed them both with a clear +conscience, if I could. I tried hard enough. But it was different then; +out in the open, where a man had an even break. I don't believe if I +had shot as straight as I wanted to that I'd ever have felt a moment's +compunction. But now, when they're disarmed and shackled and altogether +helpless, I couldn't walk up to them deliberately and kill them could +you? + +“It could be done, and done easily. You have Lauman where he can't do +anything, and I'm not of much account in a fight; so you've really only +one deputy sheriff and two women to get the best of. You could drag +these men out and hang them in the cottonwoods, and they couldn't raise +a hand to defend themselves. We could do it easily--but when it was done +and the excitement had passed I'd have a picture in my memory that I'd +hate to look at. I'd have an hour in my life that would haunt me. And +so would you. You'd hate to look back and think that one time you helped +kill a couple of men who couldn't fight back. + +“Let the law do it, boys. You don't want them to live, and I don't; +nobody does, for they deserve to die. But it isn't for us to play judge +and jury and hangman here to-night. Let them get what's coming to them +at the hands of the officers you've elected for that purpose. They won't +get off. Hank Graves says they will hang if it takes every hoof he owns. +He said he would bring Bowman down here to help prosecute them. I don't +know Bowman--” + +“I do,” a voice spoke, somewhere in the darkness. “Lawyer from Helena. +Never lost a case.” + +“I'm glad to hear it, for he's the man that will prosecute. They haven't +a ghost of a show to get out of it. Lauman here is responsible for their +safe keeping and I guess, now that he knows them better, we needn't be +afraid they'll escape again. And it's as Lauman said; he'll hang them +quite as dead as you can. He's drawing a salary to do these things, make +him earn it. It's a nasty job, boys, and you wouldn't get anything out +of it but a nasty memory.” + +A hand that did not feel like the hand of a man rested for an instant on +his arm. Mona brushed by him and stepped out where the rising moon shone +on her hair and into her big, blue-gray eyes. + +“I wish you all would please go away,” she said. “You are making mamma +sick. She's got it in her head that you are going to do something awful, +and I can't convince her you're not. I told her you wouldn't do anything +so sneaking, but she's awfully nervous about it. Won't you please go, +right now?” + +They looked sheepishly at one another; every man of them feared the +ridicule of his neighbor. + +“Why, sure we'll go,” cried Park, rallying. “We were going anyway in a +minute. Tell your mother we were just congratulating Lauman on rounding +up these Wagners. Come on, boys. And you, Bud, hurry up and get well +again; we miss yuh round the Lazy Eight.” + +The three who were sitting on Lauman got up, and he gave a sigh of +relief. “Say, yuh darned cowpunchers don't have no mercy on an old man's +carcass at all,” he groaned, in exaggerated self-pity. “Next time yuh +want to congratulate me, I wish you'd put it in writing and send it by +mail.” + +A little ripple of laughter went through the crowd. Then they swung up +on their horses and galloped away in the moonlight. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. A QUESTION OF NERVE + +“That was your victory, Miss Stevens. Allow me to congratulate you.” If +Thurston showed any ill grace in his tone it was without intent. But it +did seem unfortunate that just as he was waxing eloquent and felt sure +of himself and something of a hero, Mona should push him aside as though +he were of no account and disperse a bunch of angry cowboys with half a +dozen words. + +She looked at him with her direct, blue-gray eyes, and smiled. And +her smile had no unpleasant uplift at the corners; it was the dimply, +roguish smile of the pastel portrait only several times nicer. Re could +hardly believe it; he just opened his eyes wide and stared. When he came +to a sense of his rudeness, Mona was back in the kitchen helping with +the supper dishes, just as though nothing had happened--unless one +observed the deep, apple-red of her cheeks--while her mother, who showed +not the faintest symptoms of collapse, flourished a dish towel made of +a bleached flour sack with the stamp showing a faint pink and blue XXXX +across the center. + +“I knew all the time they wouldn't do anything when it came right +to the point,” she declared. “Bless their hearts, they thought they +would--but they're too soft-hearted, even when they are mad. If yuh go +at 'em right yuh can talk 'em over easy. It done me good to hear yuh +talk right up to 'em, Bud.” Mrs. Stevens had called hi Bud from +the first time she laid eyes on him. “That's all under the sun they +needed--just somebody to set 'em thinking about the other side. You're a +real good speaker; seems to me you ought to study to be a preacher.” + +Thurston's face turned red. But presently he forgot everything in his +amazement, for Mona the dignified, Mona of the scornful eyes and the +chilly smile, actually giggled--giggled like any ordinary girl, and shot +him a glance that had in it pure mirth and roguish teasing, and a dash +of coquetry. He sat down and giggled with her, feeling idiotically happy +and for no reason under the sun that he could name. + +He had promised his conscience that he would go home to the Lazy Eight +in the morning, but he didn't; he somehow contrived, overnight, to +invent a brand new excuse for his conscience to swallow or not, as it +liked. Hank Graves had the same privilege; as for the Stevens trio, he +blessed their hospitable souls for not wanting any excuse whatever for +his staying. They were frankly glad to have him there; at least Mrs. +Stevens and Jack were. As for Mona, he was not so sure, but he hoped she +didn't mind. + +This was the reason inspired by his great desire: he was going to write +a story, and Mona was unconsciously to furnish the material for his +heroine, and so, of course, he needed to be there so that he might study +his subject. That sounded very well, to himself, but to Hank Graves, +for some reason, it seemed very funny. When Thurston told him, Hank +was taken with a fit of strangling that turned his face a dark purple. +Afterward he explained brokenly that something had got down his Sunday +throat--and Thurston, who had never heard of a man's Sunday throat, +eyed him with suspicion. Hank blinked at him with tears still in +his quizzical eyes and slapped him on the back, after the way of the +West--and any other enlightened country where men are not too dignified +to be their real selves--and drawled, in a way peculiar to himself: + +“That's all right, Bud. You stay right here as long as yuh want to. I +don't blame yuh--if I was you I'd want to spend a lot uh time studying +this particular brand uh female girl myself. She's out uh sight, +Bud--and I don't believe any uh the boys has got his loop on her so far; +though I could name a dozen or so that would be tickled to death if they +had. You just go right ahead and file your little, old claim--” + +“You're getting things mixed,” Thurston interrupted, rather testily. +“I'm not in love with her. I, well, it's like this: if you were going to +paint a picture of those mountains off there, you'd want to be where you +could look at them--wouldn't you? You wouldn't necessarily want to--to +own them, just because you felt they'd make a fine picture. Your +interest would be, er, entirely impersonal.” + +“Uh-huh,” Hank agreed, his keen eyes searching Phil's face amusedly. + +“Therefore, it doesn't follow that I'm getting foolish about a girl just +because I--hang it! what the Dickens makes you look at a fellow that +way? You make me?” + +“Uh-huh,” said Hank again, smoothing the lower half of his face with one +hand. “You're a mighty nice little boy, Bud. I'll bet Mona thinks so, +too and when yuh get growed up you'll know a whole lot more than yuh do +right now. Well, I guess I'll be moving. When yuh get that--er--story +done, you'll come back to the ranch, I reckon. Be good.” + +Thurston watched him ride away, and then flounced, oh, men do flounce at +times, in spirit, if not in deed; and there would be no lack of the deed +if only they wore skirts that could rustle indignantly in sympathy with +the wearer--to his room. Plainly, Hank did not swallow the excuse any +more readily than did his conscience. + +To prove the sincerity of his assertion to himself, his conscience, +and to Hank Graves, he straightway got out a thick pad of paper and +sharpened three lead pencils to an exceeding fine point. Then he sat him +down by the window--where he could see the kitchen door, which was the +one most used by the family--and nibbled the tip off one of the pencils +like any school-girl. For ten minutes he bluffed himself into believing +that he was trying to think of a title; the plain truth is, he was +wondering if Mona would go for a ride that afternoon and if so, might he +venture to suggest going with her. + +He thought of the crimply waves in Mona's hair, and pondered what +adjectives would best describe it without seeming commonplace. +“Rippling” was too old, though it did seem to hit the case all right. +He laid down the pad and nearly stood on his head trying to reach his +Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms without getting out of his chair. +While he was clawing after it--it lay on the floor, where he had thrown +it that morning because it refused to divulge some information he +wanted--he heard some one open and close the kitchen door, and came near +kinking his neck trying to get up in time to see who it was. He failed +to see anyone, and returned to the dictionary. + +“'Ripple--to have waves--like running water.'” (That was just the way +her hair looked, especially over the temples and at the nape of her +neck--Jove, what a tempting white neck it was!) “Um-m. 'Ripple; wave; +undulate; uneven; irregular.'” (Lord, what fools are the men who write +dictionaries!) “'Antonym--hang the antonyms!” + +The kitchen door slammed. He craned again. It was Jack--going to town +most likely. Thurston shrewdly guessed that Mrs. Stevens leaned far more +upon Mona than she did upon Jack, although he could hardly accuse her +of leaning on anyone. But he observed that the men looked to her for +orders. + +He perceived that the point was gone from his pencil, and proceeded to +sharpen it. Then he heard Mona singing in the kitchen, and recollected +that Mrs. Stevens had promised him warm doughnuts for supper. Perhaps +Mona was frying them at that identical moment--and he had never seen +anyone frying doughnuts. He caught up his cane and limped out to +investigate. That is how much his heart just then was set upon writing a +story that would breathe of the plains. + +One great hindrance to the progress of his story was the difficulty he +had in selecting a hero for his heroine. Hank Graves suggested that he +use Park, and even went so far as to supply Thurston with considerable +data which went to prove that Park would not be averse to figuring in +a love story with Mona. But Thurston was not what one might call +enthusiastic, and Hank laughed his deep, inner laugh when he was well +away from the house. + +Thurston, on the contrary, glowered at the world for two hours after. +Park was a fine fellow, and Thurston liked him about as well as any man +he knew in the West, but--And thus it went. On each and every visit to +the Stevens ranch--and they were many--Hank, learning by direct inquiry +that the story still suffered for lack of a hero, suggested some fellow +whom he had at one time and another caught “shining” around Mona. And +with each suggestion Thurston would draw down his eyebrows till he came +near getting a permanent frown. + +A love story without a hero, while it would no doubt be original and +all that, would hardly appeal to an editor. Phil tried heroes wholly +imaginary, but he had a trick of making his characters seem very real +to himself and sometimes to other people as well. So that, after a few +passages of more or less ardent love-making, he would in a sense grow +jealous and spoil the story by annihilating the hero thereof. + +Heaven only knows how long the thing would have gone on if he hadn't, +one temptingly beautiful evening, reverted to the day of the hold-up and +apologized for not obeying her command. He explained as well as he could +just why he sat petrified with his hands in the air. + +And then having brought the thing freshly to her mind, he somehow lost +control of his wits and told her he loved her. He told her a good deal +in the next two minutes that he might better have kept to himself just +then. But a man generally makes a glorious fool of himself once or twice +in his life and it seems the more sensible the man the more thorough a +job he makes of it. + +Mona moved a little farther away from him, and when she answered she +did not choose her words. “Of all things,” she said, evenly, “I admire +a brave man and despise a coward. You were chicken-hearted that day, and +you know it; you've just admitted it. Why, in another minute I'd have +had that gun myself, and I'd have shown you--but Park got it before +I really had a chance. I hated to seem spectacular, but it served you +right. If you'd had any nerve I wouldn't have had to sit there and tell +you what to do. If ever I marry anybody, Mr. Thurston, it will be a +man.” + +“Which means, I suppose, that I'm not one?” he asked angrily. + +“I don't know yet.” Mona smiled her unpleasant smile--the one that +did not belong in the story he was going to write. “You're new to the +country, you see. Maybe you've got nerve; you haven't shown much, so far +as I know--except when you talked to the boys that night. But you must +have known that they wouldn't hurt you anyway. A man must have a little +courage as much as I have; which isn't asking much--or I'd never marry +him in the world.” + +“Not even if you--liked him?” his smile was wistful. + +“Not even if I loved him!” Mona declared, and fled into the house. + +Thurston gathered himself together and went down to the stable and +borrowed a horse of Jack, who had just got back from town, and rode home +to the Lazy Eight. + +When Hank heard that he was home to stay--at least until he could join +the roundup again--he didn't say a word for full five minutes. Then, +“Got your story done?” he drawled, and his eyes twinkled. + +Thurston was going up the stairs to his old room, and Hank could not +swear positively to the reply he got. But he thought it sounded like, +“Oh, damn the story!” + + + +CHAPTER IX. THE DRIFT OF THE HERDS + +Weeks slipped by, and to Thurston they seemed but days. His +world-weariness and cynicism disappeared the first time he met Mona +after he had left there so unceremoniously; for Mona, not being aware of +his cynicism, received him on the old, friendly footing, and seemed to +have quite forgotten that she had ever called him a coward, or refused +to marry him. So Thurston forgot it also--so long as he was with her. + +How he filled in the hours he could scarcely have told; certain it +is that he accomplished nothing at all so far as Western stories were +concerned. Reeve-Howard wrote in slightly shocked phrases to ask what +was keeping him so long; and assured him that he was missing much by +staying away. Thurston mentally agreed with him long enough to begin +packing his trunk; it was idiotic to keep staying on when he was clearly +receiving no benefit thereby. When, however, he picked up a book which +he had told Mona he would take over to her the next time he went, he +stopped and considered: + +There was the Wagner trial coming off in a month or so; he couldn't get +out of attending it, for he had been subpoenaed as a witness for the +prosecution. And there was the beef roundup going to start before +long--he really ought to stay and take that in; there would be some fine +chances for pictures. And really he didn't care so much for the Barry +Wilson bunch and the long list of festivities which trailed ever in +its wake; at any rate, they weren't worth rushing two-thirds across the +continent for. + +He sat down and wrote at length to Reeve-Howard, explaining very +carefully--and not altogether convincingly--just why he could not +possibly go home at present. After that he saddled and rode over to the +Stevens place with the book, leaving his trunk yawning emptily in the +middle of his badly jumbled belongings. + +After that he spent three weeks on the beef roundup. At first he was +full of enthusiasm, and worked quite as if he had need of the wages, but +after two or three big drives the novelty wore off quite suddenly, and +nothing then remained but a lot of hard work. For instance, standing +guard on long, rainy nights when the cattle walked and walked might at +first seem picturesque and all that, but must at length, cease to be +amusing. + +Likewise the long hours which he spent on day-herd, when the wind +was raw and penetrating and like to blow him out of the saddle; also +standing at the stockyard chutes and forcing an unwilling stream of +rollicky, wild-eyed steers up into the cars that would carry them to +Chicago. + +After three weeks of it he awoke one particularly nasty morning and +thanked the Lord he was not obliged to earn his bread at all, to say +nothing of earning it in so distressful a fashion. There was a lull +in the shipping because cars were not then available. He promptly took +advantage of it and rode by the very shortest trail to the ranch--and +Mona. But Mona was visiting friends in Chinook, and there was no telling +when she would return. Thurston, in the next few days, owned to himself +that there was no good reason for his tarrying longer in the big, +un-peopled West, and that the proper thing for him to do was go back +home to New York. + +He had come to stay a month, and he had stayed five. He could ride and +rope like an old-timer, and he was well qualified to put up a stiff +gun-fight had the necessity ever arisen--which it had not. + +He had three hundred and seventy-one pictures of different phases of +range life, not counting as many that were over-exposed or under-exposed +or out of focus. He had six unfinished stories, in each of which the +heroine had big, blue-gray eyes and crimply hair, and the title and bare +skeleton of a seventh, in which the same sort of eyes and hair would +probably develop later. He had proposed to Mona three times, and had +been three times rebuffed--though not, it must be owned, with that tone +of finality which precludes hope. + +He was tanned a fine brown, which became him well. His eyes had lost the +dreamy, introspective look of the student and author, and had grown keen +with the habit of studying objects at long range. He walked with that +peculiar, stiff-legged gait which betrays long hours spent in the +saddle, and he wore a silk handkerchief around his neck habitually and +had forgotten the feel of a dress-suit. + +He answered to the name “Bud” more readily than to his own, and he made +practical use of the slang and colloquialisms of the plains without any +mental quotation marks. + +By all these signs and tokens he had learned his West, and should have +taken himself back to civilization when came the frost. He had come to +get into touch with his chosen field of fiction, that he might write +as one knowing whereof he spoke. So far as he had gone, he was in touch +with it; he was steeped to the eyes in local color--and there was the +rub The lure of it was strong upon him, and he might not loosen its +hold. He was the son of his father; he had found himself, and knew that, +like him, he loved best to travel the dim trails. + +Gene Wasson came in and slammed the door emphatically shut after him. +“She's sure coming,” he complained, while he pulled the icicles from +his mustache and cast them into the fire. “She's going to be a real, old +howler by the signs. What yuh doing, Bud? Writing poetry?” + +Thurston nodded assent with certain mental reservations; so far the +editors couldn't seem to make up their minds that it was poetry. + +“Well, say, I wish you'd slap in a lot uh things about hazy, lazy, daisy +days in the spring--that jingles fine!--and green grass and the +sun shining and making the hills all goldy yellow, and prairie dogs +chip-chip-chipping on the 'dobe flats. (Prairie dogs would go all right +in poetry, wouldn't they? They're sassy little cusses, and I don't know +of anything that would rhyme with 'em, but maybe you do.) And read it +all out to me after supper. Maybe it'll make me kinda forget there's a +blizzard on.” + +“Another one?” Thurston got up to scratch a trench in the half-inch +layer of frost on the cabin window. “Why, it only cleared up this +morning after three days of it.” + +“Can't help that. This is just another chapter uh that same story. When +these here Klondike Chinooks gets to lapping over each other they never +know when to quit. Every darn one has got to be continued tacked onto +the tail of it the winter. All the difference is, you can't read the +writing; but I can.” + +“I've got some mail for yuh, Bud. And old Hank wanted me to ask yuh if +you'd like to go to Glasgow next Thursday and watch old Lauman start the +Wagner boys for wherever's hot enough. He can get yuh in, you being in +the writing business. He says to tell yuh it's a good chance to take +notes, so yuh can write a real stylish story, with lots uh murder and +sudden death in it. We don't hang folks out here very often, and yuh +might have to go back East after pointers, if yuh pass this up.” + +“Oh, go easy. It turns me sick when I think about it; how they looked +when they got their sentence, and all that. I certainly don't care to +see them hanged, though they do deserve it. Where are the letters?” + Thurston sprawled across the table for them. One was from Reeve-Howard; +he put it by. Another had a printed address in the corner--an address +that started his pulse a beat or two faster; for he had not yet reached +that blase stage where he could receive a personal letter from one of +the “Eight Leading” without the flicker of an eye-lash. He still gloated +over his successes, and was cast into the deeps by his failures. + +He held the envelope to the light, shook it tentatively, like any woman, +guessed hastily and hopefully at the contents, and tore off an end +impatiently. From the great fireplace Gene watched him curiously and +half enviously. He wished he could get important-looking letters from +New York every few days. It must make a fellow feel that he amounted to +something. + +“Gene, you remember that story I read to you one night--that yarn about +the fellow that lived alone in the hills, and how the wolves used to +come and sit on the ridge and howl o' nights--you know, the one you +said was 'out uh sight'? They took it, all right, and--here, what do you +think of that?” He tossed the letter over to Gene, who caught it just as +it was about to be swept into the flame with the draught in Thurston, in +the days which he spent one of the half-dozen Lazy Eight line-camps with +Gene, down by the river, had been writing of the West--writing in +fear and trembling, for now he knew how great was his subject and his +ignorance of it. In the long evenings, while the fire crackled and the +flames played a game they had invented, a game where they tried which +could leap highest up the great chimney; while the north wind whoo-ooed +around the eaves and fine, frozen snow meal swished against the one +little window; while shivering, drifting range cattle tramped restlessly +through the sparse willow-growth seeking comfort where was naught but +cold and snow and bitter, driving wind; while the gray wolves hunted in +packs and had not long to wait for their supper, Thurston had written +better than he knew. He had sent the cold of the blizzards and the howl +of the wolves; he had sent bits of the wind-swept plains back to New +York in long, white envelopes. And the editors were beginning to watch +for his white envelopes and to seize them eagerly when they came, greedy +for what was within. Not every day can they look upon a few typewritten +pages and see the range-land spread, now frowning, now smiling, before +them. + +“Gee! they say here they want a lot the same brand, and at any old price +yuh might name. I wouldn't mind writing stories myself.” Gene kicked +a log back into the flame where it would do the most good. His big, +square-shouldered figure stood out sharply against the glow. + +Thurston, watching him meditatively, wanted to tell him that he was +the sort of whom good stories are made. But for men like Gene--strong, +purposeful, brave, the West would lose half its charm. He was like Bob +in many ways, and for that Thurston liked him and, stayed with him in +the line-camp when he might have been taking his ease at the home ranch. + +It was wild and lonely down there between the bare hills and the frozen +river, but the wildness and the loneliness appealed to him. It was +primitive and at times uncomfortable. He slept in a bunk built against +the wall, with hard boards under him and a sod roof over his head. There +were times when the wind blew its fiercest and rattled dirt down into +his face unless he covered it with a blanket. And every other day he +had to wash the dishes and cook, and when it was Gene's turn to cook, +Thurston chopped great armloads of wood for the fireplace to eat o' +nights. Also he must fare forth, wrapped to the eyes, and help Gene +drive back the cattle which drifted into the river bottom, lest they +cross the river on the ice and range where they should not. + +But in the evenings he could sit in the fire-glow and listen to the wind +and to the coyotes and the gray wolves, and weave stories that even the +most hyper-critical of editors could not fail to find convincing. By +day he could push the coffee-box that held his typewriter over by the +frosted window--when he had an hour or two to spare--and whang away at +a rate which filled Gene with wonder. Sometimes he rode over to the home +ranch for a day or two, but Mona was away studying music, so he found no +inducement to remain, and drifted back to the little, sod-roofed cabin +by the river, and to Gene. + +The winter settled down with bared teeth like a bull-dog, and never +a chinook came to temper the cold and give respite to man or beast. +Blizzards that held them, in fear of their lives, close to shelter for +days, came down from the north; and with them came the drifting herds. +By hundreds they came, hurrying miserably before the storms. When the +wind lashed them without mercy even in the bottom-land, they pushed +reluctantly out upon the snow-covered ice of the Missouri. Then Gene and +Thurston watching from their cabin window would ride out and turn them +pitilessly back into the teeth of the storm. + +They came by hundreds--thin, gaunt from cold and hunger. They came by +thousands, lowing their misery as they wandered aimlessly, seeking that +which none might find: food and shelter and warmth for their chilled +bodies. When the Canada herds pushed down upon them the boys gave over +trying to keep them north of the river; while they turned one bunch a +dozen others were straggling out from shore, the timid following +single file behind a leader more venturesome or more desperate than his +fellows. + +So the march went on and on: big, Southern-bred steer grappling the +problem of his first Northern winter; thin-flanked cow with shivering, +rough-coated calf trailing at her heels; humpbacked yearling with little +nubs of horns telling that he was lately in his calfhood; red cattle, +spotted cattle, white cattle, black cattle; white-faced Herefords, +Short-horns, scrubs; Texas longhorns--of the sort invariably pictured +in stampedes--still they came drifting out of the cold wilderness and on +into wilderness as cold. + +Through the shifting wall of the worst blizzard that season Thurston +watched the weary, fruitless, endless march of the range. “Where do they +all come from?” he exclaimed once when the snow-veil lifted and showed +the river black with cattle. + +“Lord! I dunno,” Gene answered, shrugging his shoulders against the +pity of it. “I seen some brands yesterday that I know belongs up in the +Cypress Hills country. If things don't loosen up pretty soon, the whole +darned range will be swept clean uh stock as far north as cattle run. +I'm looking for reindeer next.” + +“Something ought to be done,” Thurston declared uneasily, turning away +from the sight. “I've had the bellowing of starving cattle in my ears +day and night for nearly a month. The thing's getting on my nerves.” + +“It's getting on the nerves uh them that own 'em a heap worse,” Gene +told him grimly, and piled more wood on the fire; for the cold bit +through even the thick walls of the cabin when the flames in the +fireplace died, and the door hinges were crusted deep with ice. “There's +going to be the biggest loss this range has ever known.” + +“It's the owners' fault,” snapped Thurston, whose nerves were in +that irritable state which calls loudly for a vent of some sort. Even +argument with Gene, fruitless though it perforce must be, would be a +relief. “It's their own fault. I don't pity them any--why don't they +take care of their stock? If I owned cattle, do you think I'd sit in the +house and watch them starve through the winter?” + +“What if yuh owned more than yuh could feed? It'd be a case uh have-to +then. There's fifty thousand Lazy Eight cattle walking the range +somewhere today. How the dickens is old Hank going to feed them fifty +thousand? or five thousand? It takes every spear uh hay he's got to feed +his calves.” + +“He could buy hay,” Thurston persisted. + +“Buy hay for fifty thousand cattle? Where would he get it? Say, Bud, I +guess yuh don't realize that's some cattle. All ails you is, yuh don't +savvy the size uh the thing. I'll bet yuh there won't be less than three +hundred thousand head cross this river before spring.” + +“Some of them belong in Canada--you said so yourself.” + +“I know it, but look at all the country south of us: all the other cow +States. Why, Bud, when yuh talk about feeding every critter that runs +the range, you're plumb foolish.” + +“Anyway, it's a damnable pity!” Thurston asserted petulantly. + +“Sure it is. The grass is there, but it's under fourteen inches uh snow +right now, and more coming; they say it's twelve feet deep up in the +mountains. You'll see some great old times in the spring, Bud, if yuh +stay. You will, won't yuh?” + +Thurston laughed shortly. “I suppose it's safe to say I will,” he +answered. “I ought to have gone last fall, but I didn't. It will +probably be the same thing over again; I ought to go in the spring, but +I won't.” + +“You bet you won't. Talk about big roundups! what yuh seen last spring +wasn't a commencement. Every hoof that crosses this river and lives till +spring will have to be rounded up and brought back again. They'll be +scattered clean down to the Yellowstone, and every Northern outfit has +got to go down and help work the range from there back. I tell yuh, Bud, +yuh want to lay in a car-load uh films and throw away all them little, +jerk-water snap-shots yuh got. There's going to be roundups like these +old Panhandle rannies tell about, when the green grass comes.” Gene, +thinking blissfully of the tented life, sprawled his long legs toward +the snapping blaze and crooned dreamily, while without the blizzard +raged more fiercely, a verse from an old camp song: + + “Out on the roundup, boys, I tell yuh what yuh get + Little chunk uh bread and a little chunk uh meat; + Little black coffee, boys, chuck full uh alkali, + Dust in your throat, boys, and gravel in your eye! + So polish up your saddles, oil your slickers and your guns, + For we're bound for Lonesome Prairie when the green grass comes.” + + + +CHAPTER X. THE CHINOOK + +One night in late March a sullen, faraway roar awakened Thurston in +his bunk. He turned over and listened, wondering what on earth was the +matter. More than anything it sounded like a hurrying freight train only +the railroad lay many miles to the north, and trains do not run at large +over the prairie. Gene snored peacefully an arm's length away. Outside +the snow lay deep on the levels, while in the hollows were great, white +drifts that at bedtime had glittered frostily in the moonlight. On the +hill-tops the gray wolves howled across coulees to their neighbors, and +slinking coyotes yapped foolishly at the moon. + +Thurston drew the blanket up over his ears, for the fire had died to a +heap of whitening embers and the cold of the cabin made the nose of +him tingle. The roar grew louder and nearer-then the cabin shivered and +creaked in the suddenness of the blast that struck it. A clod of dirt +plumbed down upon his shoulder, bringing with it a shower of finer +particles. “Another blizzard!” he groaned, “and the worst we've had yet, +by the sound.” + +The wind shrieked down the chimney and sought the places where the +chinking was loose. It howled up the coulees, putting the wolves +themselves to shame. Gene flopped over like a newly landed fish, grunted +some unintelligible words and slept again. + +For an hour Thurston lay and listened to the blast and selfishly thanked +heaven it was his turn at the cooking. If the storm kept up like that, +he told himself, he was glad he did not have to chop the wood. He +lifted the blanket and sniffed tentatively, then cuddled back into cover +swearing that a thermometer would register zero at that very moment on +his pillow. + +The storm came in gusts as the worst blizzards do at times. It made him +think of the nursery story about the fifth little pig who built a cabin +of rocks, and how the wolf threatened: “I'll huff and I'll puff, and +I'll blow your house down!” It was as if he himself were the fifth +little pig, and as if the wind were the wolf. The wolf-wind would stop +for whole minutes, gather his great lungs full of air and then without +warning would “huff and puff” his hardest. But though the cabin was +not built of rocks, it was nevertheless a staunch little shelter and +sturdily withstood the shocks. + +He pitied the poor cattle still fighting famine and frost as only +range-bred stock can fight. He pictured them drifting miserably before +the fury of the wind or crowding for shelter under some friendly +cutback, their tails to the storm, waiting stolidly for the dawn that +would bring no relief. Then, with the roar and rattle in his ears, he +fell asleep. + +In that particular line-camp on the Missouri the cook's duties began +with building a fire in the morning. Thurston waked reluctantly, +shivered in anticipation under the blankets, gathered together his +fortitude and crept out of his bunk. While he was dressing his teeth +chattered like castanets in a minstrel show. He lighted the fire +hurriedly and stood backed close before it, listening to the rage of the +wind. He was growing very tired of the monotony of winter; he could no +longer see any beauty in the high-turreted, snow-clad hills, nor the +bare, red faces of the cliffs frowning down upon him. + +“I don't suppose you could see to the river bank,” he mused, “and Gene +will certainly tear the third commandment to shreds before he gets the +water-hole open.” + +He went over to the window, meaning to scratch a peep-hole in the frost, +just as he had done every day for the past three months; lifted a hand, +then stopped bewildered. For instead of frost there was only steam with +ridges of ice yet clinging to the sash and dripping water in a tiny +rivulet. He wiped the steam hastily away with his palm and looked out. + +“Good heavens, Gene!” he shouted in a voice to wake the Seven Sleepers. +“The world's gone mad overnight. Are you dead, man? Get up and look out. +The whole damn country is running water, and the hills are bare as this +floor!” + +“Uh-huh!” Gene knuckled his eyes and sat up. “Chinook struck us in the +night. Didn't yuh hear it?” + +Thurston pulled open the door and stood face to face with the miracle of +the West. He had seen Mother Nature in many a changeful mood, but never +like this. The wind blew warm from the southwest and carried hints of +green things growing and the song of birds; he breathed it gratefully +into his lungs and let it riot in his hair. The sky was purplish and +soft, with heavy, drifting clouds high-piled like a summer storm. It +looked like rain, he thought. + +The bare hills were sodden with snow-water, and the drifts in the +coulees were dirt-grimed and forbidding. The great river lay, a gray +stretch of water-soaked snow over the ice, with little, clear pools +reflecting the drab clouds above. A crow flapped lazily across the +foreground and perched like a blot of fresh-spilled ink on the top of a +dead cottonwood and cawed raucous greeting to the spring. + +The wonder of it dazed Thurston and made him do unusual things that +morning. All winter he had been puffed with pride over his cooking, but +now he scorched the oatmeal, let the coffee boil over, and blackened the +bacon, and committed divers other grievous sins against Gene's clamoring +appetite. Nor did he feel the shame that he should have felt. He simply +could not stay in the cabin five minutes at a time, and for it he had no +apology. + +After breakfast he left the dishes un-washed upon the table and went out +and made merry with nature. He could scarce believe that yesterday he +had frosted his left ear while he brought a bucket of water up from the +river, and that it had made his lungs ache to breathe the chill air. Now +the path to the river was black and dry and steamed with warmth. Across +the water cattle were feeding greedily upon the brown grasses that only +a few hours before had been locked away under a crust of frozen snow. + +“They won't starve now,” he exulted, pointing them out to Gene. + +“No, you bet not!” Gene answered. “If this don't freeze up on us the +wagons 'll be starting in a month or so. I guess we can be thinking +about hitting the trail for home pretty soon now. The river'll break up +if this keeps going a week. Say, this is out uh sight! It's warmer out +uh doors than it is in the house. Darn the old shack, anyway! I'm plumb +sick uh the sight of it. It looked all right to me in a blizzard, but +now--it's me for the range, m'son.” He went off to the stable with long, +swinging strides that matched all nature for gladness, singing cheerily: + + “So polish up your saddles, oil your slickers and your guns, + For we're hound for Lonesome Prairie when the green grass comes.” + + + +CHAPTER XI. FOLLOWING THE DIM TRAILS! + +Thurston did not go on the horse roundup. He explained to the boys, +when they clamored against his staying, that he had a host of things to +write, and it would keep him busy till they were ready to start with +the wagons for the big rendezvous on the Yellowstone, the exact point of +which had yet to be decided upon by the Stock Association when it met. +The editors were after him, he said, and if he ever expected to get +anywhere, in a literary sense, it be-hooved him to keep on the smiley +side of the editors. + +That sounded all right as far as it went, but unfortunately it did +not go far. The boys winked at one another gravely behind his back and +jerked their thumbs knowingly toward Milk River; by which pantomime they +reminded one another--quite unnecessarily that Mona Stevens had come +home. However, they kept their skepticism from becoming obtrusive, so +that Thurston believed his excuses passed on their face value. The boys, +it would seem, realized that it is against human nature for a man to +declare openly to his fellows his intention of laying last, desperate +siege to the heart of a girl who has already refused him three times, +and to ask her for the fourth time if she will reconsider her former +decisions and marry him. + +That is really what kept Thurston at the Lazy Eight. His writing became +once more a mere incident in his life. During the winter, when he did +not see her, he could bring himself to think occasionally of other +things; and it is a fact that the stories he wrote with no heroine at +all hit the mark the straightest. + +Now, when he was once again under the spell of big, clear, blue gray +eyes and crimply brown hair, his stories lost something of their +virility and verged upon the sentimental in tone. And since he was not a +fool he realized the falling off and chafed against it and wondered why +it was. Surely a man who is in love should be well qualified to write +convincingly of the obsession but Thurston did not. He came near going +to the other extreme and refusing to write at all. + +The wagons were out two weeks--which is quite long enough for a crisis +to arise in the love affair of any man. By the time the horse roundup +was over, one Philip Thurston was in pessimistic mood and quite ready +to follow the wagons, the farther the better. Also, they could not start +too soon to please him. His thoughts still ran to blue-gray eyes and +ripply hair, but he made no attempt to put them into a story. + +He packed his trunk carefully with everything he would not need on +the roundup, and his typewriter he put in the middle. He told himself +bitterly that he had done with crimply haired girls, and with every +other sort of girl. If he could figure in something heroic--only he +said melodramatic--he might possibly force her to think well of him. +But heroic situations and opportunities come not every day to a man, and +girls who demand that their knights shall be brave in face of death need +not complain if they are left knightless at the last. + +He wrote to Reeve-Howard, the night before they were to start, and +apologized gracefully for having neglected him during the past three +weeks and told him he would certainly be home in another month. He said +that he was “in danger of being satiated with the Western tone” and +would be glad to shake the hand of civilized man once more. This was +distinctly unfair, because he had no quarrel with the masculine portion +of the West. If he had said civilized woman it would have been more just +and more illuminating to Reeve-Howard who wondered what scrape Phil had +gotten himself into with those savages. + +For the first few days of the trip Thurston was in that frame of mind +which makes a man want to ride by himself, with shoulders hunched +moodily and eyes staring straight before the nose of his horse. + +But the sky was soft and seemed to smile down at him, and the clouds +loitered in the blue of it and drifted aimlessly with no thought of +reaching harbor on the sky-line. From under his horse's feet the prairie +sod sent up sweet, earthy odors into his nostrils and the tinkle of the +bells in the saddle-bunch behind him made music in his ears--the sort of +music a true cowboy loves. Yellow-throated meadow larks perched swaying +in the top of gray sage bushes and sang to him that the world was good. +Sober gray curlews circled over his head, their long, funny bills thrust +out straight as if to point the way for their bodies to follow and +cried, “Kor-r-eck, kor-r-eck!”--which means just what the meadow larks +sang. So Thurston, hearing it all about him, seeing it and smelling it +and feeling the riot of Spring in his blood, straightened the hunch out +of his shoulders and admitted that it was all true: that the world was +good. + +At Miles City he found himself in the midst of a small army, the +regulars of the range---which grew hourly larger as the outfits rolled +in. The rattle of mess-wagons, driven by the camp cook and followed by +the bed-wagon, was heard from all directions. Jingling cavvies (herds of +saddle horses they were, driven and watched over by the horse wrangler) +came out of the wilderness in the wake of the wagons. Thurston got out +his camera and took pictures of the scene. In the first, ten different +camps appeared; he mourned because two others were perforced omitted. +Two hours later he snapped the Kodak upon fifteen, and there were four +beyond range of the lens. + +Park came along, saw what he was doing and laughed. “Yuh better wait +till they commence to come,” he said. “When yuh can stand on this little +hill and count fifty or sixty outfits camped within two or three miles +uh here, yuh might begin taking pictures.” + +“I think you're loading me,” Thurston retorted calmly, winding up the +roll for another exposure. + +“All right--suit yourself about it.” Park walked off and left him +peering into the view-finder. + +Still they came. From Swift Current to the Cypress Hills the Canadian +cattlemen sent their wagons to join the big meet. From the Sweet Grass +Hills to the mouth of Milk River not a stock-grower but was represented. +From the upper Musselshell they came, and from out the Judith Basin; +from Shellanne east to Fort Buford. Truly it was a gathering of the +clans such as eastern Montana had never before seen. + +For a day and a night the cowboys made merry in town while their foremen +consulted and the captains appointed by the Association mapped out the +different routes. At times like these, foremen such as Park and Deacon +Smith were shorn of their accustomed power, and worked under orders as +strict as those they gave their men. + +Their future movements thoroughly understood, the army moved down upon +the range in companies of five and six crews, and the long summer's work +began; each rider a unit in the war against the chaos which the winter +had wrought; in the fight of the stockmen to wrest back their fortunes +from the wilderness, and to hold once more their sway over the +range-land. + +Their method called for concerted action, although it was simple enough. +Two of the Lazy Eight wagons, under Park and Gene Wasson (for Hank that +spring was running four crews and had promoted Gene wagon-boss of one), +joined forces with the Circle-Bar, the Flying U, and a Yellowstone +outfit whose wagon-boss, knowing best the range, was captain of the five +crews; and drove north, gathering and holding all stock which properly +ranged beyond the Missouri. + +That meant day after day of “riding circle”--which is, being +interpreted, riding out ten or twelve miles from camp, then turning and +driving everything before them to a point near the center of the circle +thus formed. When they met the cattle were bunched, and all stock which +belonged on that range was cut out, leaving only those which had crossed +the river during the storms of winter. These were driven on to the +next camping place and held, which meant constant day-herding and +night-guarding work which cowboys hate more than anything else. + +There would be no calf roundup proper that spring, for all calves were +branded as they were gathered. Many there were among the she-stock that +would not cross the river again; their carcasses made unsightly blots in +the coulee-bottoms and on the wind-swept levels. Of the calves that had +followed their mothers on the long trail, hundreds had dropped out of +the march and been left behind for the wolves. But not all. Range-bred +cattle are blessed with rugged constitutions and can bear much of cold +and hunger. The cow that can turn tail to a biting wind the while she +ploughs to the eyes in snow and roots out a very satisfactory living +for herself breeds calves that will in time do likewise and grow fat and +strong in the doing. He is a sturdy, self-reliant little rascal, is the +range-bred calf. + +When fifteen hundred head of mixed stock, bearing Northern brands, were +in the hands of the day-herders, Park and his crew were detailed to take +them on and turn them loose upon their own range north of Milk River. +Thurston felt that he had gleaned about all the experience he needed, +and more than enough hard riding and short sleeping and hurried eating. +He announced that he was ready to bid good-by to the range. He would +help take the herd home, he told Park, and then he intended to hit the +trail for little, old New York. + +He still agreed with the meadow larks that the world was good, but he +had made himself believe that he really thought the civilized portion +of it was better, especially when the uncivilized part holds a girl who +persists in saying no when she should undoubtedly say yes, and insists +that a man must be a hero, else she will have none of him. + + + +CHAPTER XII. HIGH WATER + +It was nearing the middle of June, and it was getting to be a very hot +June at that. For two days the trail-herd had toiled wearily over the +hills and across the coulees between the Missouri and Milk River. Then +the sky threatened for a day, and after that they plodded in the rain. + +“Thank the Lord that's done with,” sighed Park when he saw the last +of the herd climb, all dripping, up the north bank of the Milk River. +“To-morrow we can turn 'em loose. And I tell yuh, Bud, we didn't get +across none too soon. Yuh notice how the river's coming up? A day later +and we'd have had to hold the herd on the other side, no telling how +long.” + +“It is higher than usual; I noticed that,” Thurston agreed absently. He +was thinking more of Mona just then than of the river. He wondered if +she would be at home. He could easily ride down there and find out. +It wasn't far; not a quarter of a mile, but he assured himself that he +wasn't going, and that he was not quite a fool, he hoped Even if she +were at home, what good could that possibly do him? Just give him +several bad nights, when he would lie in his corner of the tent and +listen to the boys snoring with a different key for every man. Such +nights were not pleasant, nor were the thoughts that caused them. + +From where they were camped upon a ridge which bounded a broad coulee +on the east, he could look down upon the Stevens ranch nestling in the +bottomland, the house half hidden among the cottonwoods. Through the +last hours of the afternoon he watched it hungrily. The big corral ran +down to the water's edge, and he noted idly that three panels of the +fence extended out into the river, and that the muddy water was creeping +steadily up until at sundown the posts of the first panel barely showed +above the water. + +Park came up to him and looked down upon the little valley. “I never +did see any sense in Jack Stevens building where he did,” he remarked. +“There ain't a June flood that don't put his corral under water, and +some uh these days it's going to get the house. He was too lazy to dig +a well back on high ground; he'd rather take chances on having the whole +business washed off the face uh the earth.” + +“There must be danger of it this year if ever,” Thurston observed +uneasily. “The river is coming up pretty fast, it seems to me. It must +have raised three feet since we crossed this afternoon.” + +“I'll course there's danger, with all that snow coming out uh the +mountains. And like as not Jack's in Shellanne roosting on somebody's +pool table and telling it scary, instead uh staying at home looking +after his stuff. Where yuh going, Bud?” + +“I'm going to ride down there,” Thurston answered constrainedly. “The +women may be all alone.” + +“Well, I'll go along, if you'll hold on a minute. Jack ain't got a lick +uh sense. I don't care if he is Mona's brother.” + +“Half brother,” corrected Thurston, as he swung up into the saddle. He +had a poor opinion of Jack and resented even that slight relation to +Mona. + +The road was soggy with the rain which fell steadily; down in the +bottom, the low places in the road were already under water, and the +river, widening almost perceptibly in its headlong rush down the narrow +valley, crept inch by inch up its low banks. When they galloped into the +yard which sloped from the house gently down to the river fifty yards +away, Mona's face appeared for a moment in the window. Evidently she had +been watching for some one, and Thurston's heart flopped in his chest +as he wondered, fleetingly, if it could be himself. When she opened the +door her eyes greeted him with a certain wistful expression that he had +never seen in them before. He was guilty of wishing that Park had stayed +in camp. + +“Oh, I'm glad you rode over,” she welcomed--but she was careful, after +that first swift glance, to look at Park. “Jack wasn't at camp, was he? +He went to town this morning, and I looked for hi back long before now. +But it's a mistake ever to look for Jack until he's actually in sight.” + +Park smiled vaguely. He was afraid it would not be polite to agree with +her as emphatically as he would like to have done. But Thurston had no +smile ready, polite or otherwise. Instead he drew down his brows in a +way not complimentary to Jack. + +“Where is your mother?” he asked, almost peremptorily. + +“Mamma went to Great Falls last week,” she told him primly, just +grazing him with one of her impersonal glances which nearly drove him to +desperation. “Aunt Mary has typhoid fever--there seems to be so much of +that this spring and they sent for mamma. She's such a splendid nurse, +you know.” + +Thurston did know, but he passed over the subject. “And you're alone?” + he demanded. + +“Certainly not; aren't you two here?” Mona could be very pert when she +tried. “Jack and I are holding down the ranch just now; the boys are all +on roundup, of course. Jack went to town today to see some one. + +“Um-m-yes, of course.” It was Park, still trying to be polite and not +commit himself on the subject of Jack. The “some one” whom Jack went +oftenest to see was the bartender in the Palace saloon, but it was not +necessary to tell her that. + +“The river's coming up pretty fast, Mona,” he ventured. “Don't yuh think +yuh ought to pull out and go visiting?” + +“No, I don't.” Mona's tone was very decided. “I wouldn't drop down on a +neighbor without warning just because the river happens to be coming up. +It has 'come up' every June since we've been living here, and there have +been several of them. At the worst it never came inside the gate.” + +“You can never tell what it might do,” Park argued. “Yuh know yourself +there's never been so much snow in the mountains. This hot weather we've +been having lately, and then the rain, will bring it a-whooping. Can't +yuh ride over to the Jonses? One of us'll go with yuh.” + +“No, I can't.” Mona's chin went up perversely. “I'm no coward, I hope, +even if there was any danger which there isn't.” + +Thurston's chin went up also, and he sat a bit straighter. Whether she +meant it or not, he took her words as a covert stab at himself. Probably +she did not mean it; at any rate the blood flew consciously to her +cheeks after she had spoken, and she caught her under lip sharply +between her teeth. And that did not help matters or make her temper more +yielding. + +“Anyway,” she added hurriedly, “Jack will be here; he's likely to come +any minute now.” + +“Uh course, if Jack's got some new kind of half-hitch he can put on +the river and hold it back yuh'll be all right,” fleered Park, with the +freedom of an old friend. He had known Mona when she wore dresses to her +shoe-tops and her hair in long, brown curls down her back. + +She wrinkled her nose at him also with the freedom of an old friend and +Thurston stirred restlessly in his chair. He did not like even Park to +be too familiar with Mona, though he knew there was a girl in Shellanne +whose name Park sometimes spoke in his sleep. + +She lifted the big glass lamp down from its place on the clock shelf +and lighted it with fingers not quite steady. “You men,” she remarked, +“think women ought to be wrapped in pink cotton and put in a glass +cabinet. If, by any miracle, the river should come up around the house, +I flatter myself I should be able to cope with the situation. I'd just +saddle my horse and ride out to high ground!” + +“Would yuh?” Park grinned skeptically. “The road from here to the hill +is half under water right now; the river's got over the bank above, and +is flooding down through the horse pasture. By the time the water got up +here the river'd be as wide and deep one side uh yuh as the other. Then +where'd yuh be at?” + +“It won't get up here, though,” Mona asserted coolly. “It never has.” + +“No, and the Lazy Eight never had to work the Yellowstone range on +spring roundup before either,” Park told her meaningly. + +Whereupon Mona got upon her pedestal and smiled her unpleasant smile, +against which even Park had no argument ready. + +They lingered till long after all good cowpunchers are supposed to be +in their beds--unless they are standing night-guard--but Jack failed to +appear. The rain drummed upon the roof and the river swished and gurgled +against the crumbling banks, and grumbled audibly to itself because the +hills stood immovably in their places and set bounds which it could not +pass, however much it might rage against their base. + +When the clock struck a wheezy nine Mona glanced at it significantly +and smothered a yawn more than half affected. It was a hint which no man +with an atom of self-respect could overlook. With mutual understanding +the two rose. + +“I guess we'll have to be going,” Park said with some ceremony. “I kept +think ing maybe Jack would show up; it ain't right to leave yuh here +alone like this.” + +“I don't see why not; I'm not the least bit afraid,” Mona said. Her tone +was impersonal and had in it a note of dismissal. + +So, there being nothing else that they could do, they said good-night +and took themselves off. + +“This is sure fierce,” Park grumbled when they struck the lower ground. +“Darn a man like Jack Stevens! He'll hang out there in town and bowl up +on other men's money till plumb daylight. It's a wonder Mona didn't go +with her mother. But no--it'd be awful if Jack had to cook his own grub +for a week. Say, the water has come up a lot, don't yuh think, Bud? +If it raises much more Mona'll sure have a chance to 'cope with the +situation. It'd just about serve her right, too.” + +Thurston did not think so, but he was in too dispirited a mood to argue +the point. It had not been good for his peace of mind to sit and +watch the color come and go in Mona's cheeks, and the laughter spring +unheralded into her dear, big eyes, and the light tangle itself in the +waves of her hair. + +He guided his horse carefully through the deep places, and noted +uneasily how much deeper it was than when they had crossed before. He +cursed the conventions which forbade his staying and watching over the +girl back there in the house which already stood upon an island, cut off +from the safe, high land by a strip of backwater that was widening and +deepening every minute, and, when it rose high enough to flow into the +river below, would have a current that would make a nasty crossing. + +On the first rise he stopped and looked back at the light which shone +out from among the dripping cottonwoods. Even then he was tempted to go +back and brave her anger that he might feel assured of her safety. + +“Oh, come on,” Park cried impatiently. “We can't do any good sitting +out here in the rain. I don't suppose the water will get clear up to +the house; it'll likely do things to the sheds and corrals, though, and +serve Jack right. Come on, Bud. Mona won't have us around, so the sooner +we get under cover the better for us. She's got lots uh nerve; I guess +she'll make out all right.” + +There was common sense in the argument, and Thurston recognized it and +rode on to camp. But instead of unsaddling, as he would naturally have +done, he tied Sunfish to the bed-wagon and threw his slicker over his +back to protect him from the rain. And though Park said nothing, he +followed Thurston's example. + + + +CHAPTER XIII. “I'll STAY--ALWAYS” + +For a long time Thurston lay with wide-open eyes staring up at nothing, +listening to the rain and thinking. By and by the rain ceased and he +could tell by the dim whiteness of the tent roof that the clouds must +have been swept away from before the moon, then just past the full. + +He got up carefully so as not to disturb the others, and crept over two +or three sleeping forms on his way to the opening, untied the flap and +went out. The whole hilltop and the valley below were bathed in mellow +radiance. He studied critically the wide sweep of the river. He might +almost have thought it the Missouri itself, it stretched so far +from bank to bank; indeed, it seemed to know no banks but the hills +themselves. He turned toward where the light had shone among the +cottonwoods below; there was nothing but a great blot of shade that told +him nothing. + +A step sounded just behind. A hand, the hand of Park, rested upon his +shoulder. “Looks kinda dubious, don't it, kid? Was yuh thinking about +riding down there?” + +“Yes,” Thurston answered simply. “Are you coming?” + +“Sure,” Park assented. + +They got upon their horses and headed down the trail to the Stevens +place. Thurston would have put Sunfish to a run, but Park checked him. + +“Go easy,” he admonished. “If there's swimming to be done and it's a +cinch there will be, he's going to need all the wind he's got.” + +Down the hill they stopped at the edge of a raging torrent and strained +their eyes to see what lay on the other side. While they looked, a +light twinkled out from among the tree-tops. Thurston caught his breath +sharply. + +“She's upstairs,” he said, and his voice sounded strained and unnatural. +“It's just a loft where they store stuff.” He started to ride into the +flood. + +“Come on back here, yuh chump!” Park roared. “Get off and loosen the +cinch before yuh go in there, or yuh won't get far. Sunfish'll need +room to breathe, once he gets to bucking that current. He's a good water +horse, just give him his head and don't get rattled and interfere with +him. And we've got to go up a ways before we start in.” + +He led the way upstream, skirting under the bluff, and Thurston, chafing +against the delay, followed obediently. Trees were racing down, their +clean-washed roots reaching up in a tangle from the water, their +branches waving like imploring arms. A black, tar-papered shack went +scudding past, lodged upon a ridge where the water was shallower, and +sat there swaying drunkenly. Upon it a great yellow cat clung and yowled +his fear. + +“That's old Dutch Henry's house,” Park shouted above the roar. “I'll bet +he's cussing things blue on some pinnacle up there.” He laughed at the +picture his imagination conjured, and rode out into the swirl. + +Thurston kept close behind, mindful of Park's command to give Sunfish +his head. Sunfish had carried him safely out of the stampede and he had +no fear of him now. + +His chief thought was a wish that he might do this thing quite alone. +He was jealous of Park's leading, and thought bitterly that Mona would +thank Park alone and pass him by with scant praise and he did so want +to vindicate himself. The next minute he was cursing his damnable +selfishness. A tree had swept down just before him, caught Park and his +horse in its branches and hurried on as if ashamed of what it had done. +Thurston, in that instant, came near jerking Sunfish around to follow; +but he checked the impulse as it was formed and left the reins alone +which was wise. He could not have helped Park, and he could very easily +have drowned himself. Though it was not thought of himself but of Mona +that stayed his hand. + +They landed at the gate. Sunfish scrambled with his feet for secure +footing, found it and waded up to the front door. The water was a foot +deep on the porch. Thurston beat an imperative tattoo upon the door +with the butt of his quirt, and shouted. And Mona's voice, shorn of its +customary assurance, answered faintly from the loft. + +He shouted again, giving directions in a tone of authority which must +have sounded strange to her, but which she did not seem to resent and +obeyed without protest. She had to wade from the stairs to the door and +when Thurston stooped and lifted her up in front of him, she looked as +if she were very glad to have him there. + +“You didn't 'cope with the situation,' after all,” he remarked while she +was settling herself firmly in the saddle. + +“I went to sleep and didn't notice the water till it was coming in at +the door,” she explained. “And then--” She stopped abruptly. + +“Then what?” he demanded maliciously. “Were you afraid?” + +“A little,” she confessed reluctantly. + +Thurston gloated over it in silence--until he remembered Park. After +that he could think of little else. As before, now Sunfish battled as +seemed to him best, for Thurston, astride behind the saddle, held Mona +somewhat tighter than he need to have done, and let the horse go. + +So long as Sunfish had footing he braced himself against the mad rush of +waters and forged ahead. But out where the current ran swimming deep +he floundered desperately under his double burden. While his strength +lasted he kept his head above water, struggling gamely against the flood +that lapped over his back and bubbled in his nostrils. Thurston felt his +laboring and clutched Mona still tighter. Of a sudden the horse's head +went under; the black water came up around Thurston's throat with a +hungry swish, and Sunfish went out from under him like an eel. + +There was a confused roaring in his ears, a horrid sense of suffocation +for a moment. But he had learned to swim when he was a boy at school, +and he freed one hand from its grip on Mona and set to paddling with +much vigor and considerably less skill. And though the under-current +clutched him and the weight of Mona taxed his strength, he managed to +keep them both afloat and to make a little headway until the deepest +part lay behind them. + +How thankful he was when his feet touched bottom, no one but himself +ever knew! His ears hummed from the water in them, and the roar of +the river was to him as the roar of the sea; his eyes smarted from the +clammy touch of the dingy froth that went hurrying by in monster flakes; +his lungs ached and his heart pounded heavily against his ribs when he +stopped, gasping, beyond reach of the water-devils that lapped viciously +behind. + +He stood a minute with his arm still around her, and coughed his voice +clear. “Park went down,” he began, hardly knowing what it was he was +saying. “Park--” He stopped, then shouted the name aloud. “Park! Oh-h, +Park!” + +And from somewhere down the river came a faint reassuring whoop. + +“Thank the Lord!” gasped Thurston, and leaned against her for a second. +Then he straightened. “Are you all right?” he asked, and drew her toward +a rock near at hand--for in truth, the knees of him were shaking. They +sat down, and he looked more closely at her face and discovered that +it was wet with something more than river water. Mona the self-assured, +Mona the strong-hearted, was crying. And instinctively he knew that not +the chill alone made her shiver. He was keeping his arm around her waist +deliberately, and it pleased him that she let it stay. After a minute +she did something which surprised him mightily--and pleased him more: +she dropped her face down against the soaked lapels of his coat, and +left it there. He laid a hand tenderly against her cheek and wondered if +he dared feel so happy. + +“Little girl--oh, little girl,” he said softly, and stopped. For the +crowding emotions in his heart and brain the English language has no +words. + +Mona lifted her face and looked into his eyes. Her own were soft and +shining in the moonlight, and she was smiling a little--the roguish +little smile of the imitation pastel portrait. “You--you'll unpack your +typewriter, won't you please, and--and stay?” + +Thurston crushed her close. “Stay? The range-land will never get rid +of me now,” he cried jubilantly. “Hank wanted to take me into the Lazy +Eight, so now I'll buy an interest, and stay--always.” + +“You dear!” Mona snuggled close and learned how it feels to be kissed, +if she had never known before. + +Sunfish, having scrambled ashore a few yards farther down, came up to +them and stood waiting, as if to be forgiven for his failure to carry +them safe to land, but Thurston, after the first inattentive glance, +ungratefully took no heed of him. + +There was a sound of scrambling foot-steps and Park came dripping up to +them. “Well, say!” he greeted. “Ain't yuh got anything to do but set here +and er--look at the moon? Break away and come up to camp. I'll rout out +the cook and make him boil us some coffee.” + +Thurston turned joyfully toward him. “Park, old fellow, I was afraid.” + +“Yuh better reform and quit being afraid,” Park bantered. “I got out uh +the mix-up fine, but I guess my horse went on down--poor devil. I was +poking around below there looking for him.” + +“Well, Mona, I see yuh was able to 'cope with the situation,' all +right--but yuh needed Bud mighty bad, I reckon. The chances is yuh won't +have no house in the morning, so Bud'll have to get busy and rustle one +for yuh. I guess you'll own up, now, that the water can get through the +gate.” He laughed in his teasing way. + +Mona stood up, and her shining eyes were turned to Thurston. “I don't +care,” she asserted with reddened cheeks. “I'm just glad it did get +through.” + +“Same here,” said Thurston with much emphasis. + +Then, with Mona once more in the saddle, and with Thurston leading +Sunfish by the bridle-rein, they trailed damply and happily up the long +ridge to where the white tents of the roundup gleamed sharply against +the sky-line. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lure of the Dim Trails, by +by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1014 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1015-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1015-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4190f062 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1015-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11799 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1015 *** + +THE OREGON TRAIL + +by Francis Parkman, Jr. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I THE FRONTIER + +II BREAKING THE ICE + +III FORT LEAVENWORTH + +IV “JUMPING OFF” + +V “THE BIG BLUE” + +VI THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT + +VII THE BUFFALO + +VIII TAKING FRENCH LEAVE + +IX SCENES AT FORT LARAMIE + +X THE WAR PARTIES + +XI SCENES AT THE CAMP + +XII ILL LUCK + +XIII HUNTING INDIANS + +XIV THE OGALLALLA VILLAGR + +XV THE HUNTING CAMP + +XVI THE TRAPPERS + +XVII THE BLACK HILLS + +XVIII A MOUNTAIN HUNT + +XIX PASSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS + +XX THE LONELY JOURNEY + +XXI THE PUEBLO AND BENT’S FORT + +XXII TETE ROUGE, THE VOLUNTEER + +XXIII INDIAN ALARMS + +XXIV THE CHASE + +XXV THE BUFFALO CAMP + +XXVI DOWN THE ARKANSAS + +XXVII THE SETTLEMENTS + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE FRONTIER + + +Last spring, 1846, was a busy season in the City of St. Louis. Not only +were emigrants from every part of the country preparing for the journey +to Oregon and California, but an unusual number of traders were making +ready their wagons and outfits for Santa Fe. Many of the emigrants, +especially of those bound for California, were persons of wealth and +standing. The hotels were crowded, and the gunsmiths and saddlers +were kept constantly at work in providing arms and equipments for the +different parties of travelers. Almost every day steamboats were leaving +the levee and passing up the Missouri, crowded with passengers on their +way to the frontier. + +In one of these, the Radnor, since snagged and lost, my friend and +relative, Quincy A. Shaw, and myself, left St. Louis on the 28th of +April, on a tour of curiosity and amusement to the Rocky Mountains. The +boat was loaded until the water broke alternately over her guards. Her +upper deck was covered with large weapons of a peculiar form, for +the Santa Fe trade, and her hold was crammed with goods for the same +destination. There were also the equipments and provisions of a party +of Oregon emigrants, a band of mules and horses, piles of saddles and +harness, and a multitude of nondescript articles, indispensable on +the prairies. Almost hidden in this medley one might have seen a small +French cart, of the sort very appropriately called a “mule-killer” + beyond the frontiers, and not far distant a tent, together with a +miscellaneous assortment of boxes and barrels. The whole equipage was +far from prepossessing in its appearance; yet, such as it was, it was +destined to a long and arduous journey, on which the persevering reader +will accompany it. + +The passengers on board the Radnor corresponded with her freight. In her +cabin were Santa Fe traders, gamblers, speculators, and adventurers +of various descriptions, and her steerage was crowded with Oregon +emigrants, “mountain men,” negroes, and a party of Kansas Indians, who +had been on a visit to St. Louis. + +Thus laden, the boat struggled upward for seven or eight days against +the rapid current of the Missouri, grating upon snags, and hanging for +two or three hours at a time upon sand-bars. We entered the mouth of +the Missouri in a drizzling rain, but the weather soon became clear, +and showed distinctly the broad and turbid river, with its eddies, its +sand-bars, its ragged islands, and forest-covered shores. The Missouri +is constantly changing its course; wearing away its banks on one +side, while it forms new ones on the other. Its channel is shifting +continually. Islands are formed, and then washed away; and while the old +forests on one side are undermined and swept off, a young growth springs +up from the new soil upon the other. With all these changes, the water +is so charged with mud and sand that it is perfectly opaque, and in +a few minutes deposits a sediment an inch thick in the bottom of a +tumbler. The river was now high; but when we descended in the autumn +it was fallen very low, and all the secrets of its treacherous shallows +were exposed to view. It was frightful to see the dead and broken trees, +thick-set as a military abatis, firmly imbedded in the sand, and all +pointing down stream, ready to impale any unhappy steamboat that at high +water should pass over that dangerous ground. + +In five or six days we began to see signs of the great western movement +that was then taking place. Parties of emigrants, with their tents and +wagons, would be encamped on open spots near the bank, on their way to +the common rendezvous at Independence. On a rainy day, near sunset, we +reached the landing of this place, which is situated some miles from +the river, on the extreme frontier of Missouri. The scene was +characteristic, for here were represented at one view the most +remarkable features of this wild and enterprising region. On the muddy +shore stood some thirty or forty dark slavish-looking Spaniards, gazing +stupidly out from beneath their broad hats. They were attached to one of +the Santa Fe companies, whose wagons were crowded together on the banks +above. In the midst of these, crouching over a smoldering fire, was a +group of Indians, belonging to a remote Mexican tribe. One or two French +hunters from the mountains with their long hair and buckskin dresses, +were looking at the boat; and seated on a log close at hand were three +men, with rifles lying across their knees. The foremost of these, a +tall, strong figure, with a clear blue eye and an open, intelligent +face, might very well represent that race of restless and intrepid +pioneers whose axes and rifles have opened a path from the Alleghenies +to the western prairies. He was on his way to Oregon, probably a more +congenial field to him than any that now remained on this side the great +plains. + +Early on the next morning we reached Kansas, about five hundred +miles from the mouth of the Missouri. Here we landed and leaving our +equipments in charge of my good friend Colonel Chick, whose log-house +was the substitute for a tavern, we set out in a wagon for Westport, +where we hoped to procure mules and horses for the journey. + +It was a remarkably fresh and beautiful May morning. The rich and +luxuriant woods through which the miserable road conducted us were +lighted by the bright sunshine and enlivened by a multitude of birds. We +overtook on the way our late fellow-travelers, the Kansas Indians, who, +adorned with all their finery, were proceeding homeward at a round pace; +and whatever they might have seemed on board the boat, they made a very +striking and picturesque feature in the forest landscape. + +Westport was full of Indians, whose little shaggy ponies were tied by +dozens along the houses and fences. Sacs and Foxes, with shaved heads +and painted faces, Shawanoes and Delawares, fluttering in calico frocks, +and turbans, Wyandottes dressed like white men, and a few wretched +Kansas wrapped in old blankets, were strolling about the streets, or +lounging in and out of the shops and houses. + +As I stood at the door of the tavern, I saw a remarkable looking person +coming up the street. He had a ruddy face, garnished with the stumps of +a bristly red beard and mustache; on one side of his head was a round +cap with a knob at the top, such as Scottish laborers sometimes wear; +his coat was of a nondescript form, and made of a gray Scotch plaid, +with the fringes hanging all about it; he wore pantaloons of coarse +homespun, and hob-nailed shoes; and to complete his equipment, a little +black pipe was stuck in one corner of his mouth. In this curious attire, +I recognized Captain C. of the British army, who, with his brother, and +Mr. R., an English gentleman, was bound on a hunting expedition across +the continent. I had seen the captain and his companions at St. Louis. +They had now been for some time at Westport, making preparations for +their departure, and waiting for a re-enforcement, since they were too +few in number to attempt it alone. They might, it is true, have joined +some of the parties of emigrants who were on the point of setting out +for Oregon and California; but they professed great disinclination to +have any connection with the “Kentucky fellows.” + +The captain now urged it upon us, that we should join forces and proceed +to the mountains in company. Feeling no greater partiality for the +society of the emigrants than they did, we thought the arrangement an +advantageous one, and consented to it. Our future fellow-travelers had +installed themselves in a little log-house, where we found them all +surrounded by saddles, harness, guns, pistols, telescopes, knives, and +in short their complete appointments for the prairie. R., who professed +a taste for natural history, sat at a table stuffing a woodpecker; the +brother of the captain, who was an Irishman, was splicing a trail-rope +on the floor, as he had been an amateur sailor. The captain pointed +out, with much complacency, the different articles of their outfit. “You +see,” said he, “that we are all old travelers. I am convinced that no +party ever went upon the prairie better provided.” The hunter whom they +had employed, a surly looking Canadian, named Sorel, and their muleteer, +an American from St. Louis, were lounging about the building. In a +little log stable close at hand were their horses and mules, selected by +the captain, who was an excellent judge. + +The alliance entered into, we left them to complete their arrangements, +while we pushed our own to all convenient speed. The emigrants for whom +our friends professed such contempt were encamped on the prairie about +eight or ten miles distant, to the number of a thousand or more, and new +parties were constantly passing out from Independence to join them. +They were in great confusion, holding meetings, passing resolutions, and +drawing up regulations, but unable to unite in the choice of leaders to +conduct them across the prairie. Being at leisure one day, I rode over +to Independence. The town was crowded. A multitude of shops had sprung +up to furnish the emigrants and Santa Fe traders with necessaries for +their journey; and there was an incessant hammering and banging from a +dozen blacksmiths’ sheds, where the heavy wagons were being repaired, +and the horses and oxen shod. The streets were thronged with men, +horses, and mules. While I was in the town, a train of emigrant wagons +from Illinois passed through, to join the camp on the prairie, and +stopped in the principal street. A multitude of healthy children’s faces +were peeping out from under the covers of the wagons. Here and there a +buxom damsel was seated on horseback, holding over her sunburnt face an +old umbrella or a parasol, once gaudy enough but now miserably faded. +The men, very sober-looking countrymen, stood about their oxen; and as I +passed I noticed three old fellows, who, with their long whips in their +hands, were zealously discussing the doctrine of regeneration. The +emigrants, however, are not all of this stamp. Among them are some of +the vilest outcasts in the country. I have often perplexed myself to +divine the various motives that give impulse to this strange migration; +but whatever they may be, whether an insane hope of a better condition +in life, or a desire of shaking off restraints of law and society, or +mere restlessness, certain it is that multitudes bitterly repent the +journey, and after they have reached the land of promise are happy +enough to escape from it. + +In the course of seven or eight days we had brought our preparations +near to a close. Meanwhile our friends had completed theirs, and +becoming tired of Westport, they told us that they would set out in +advance and wait at the crossing of the Kansas till we should come up. +Accordingly R. and the muleteers went forward with the wagon and tent, +while the captain and his brother, together with Sorel, and a trapper +named Boisverd, who had joined them, followed with the band of horses. +The commencement of the journey was ominous, for the captain was +scarcely a mile from Westport, riding along in state at the head of his +party, leading his intended buffalo horse by a rope, when a tremendous +thunderstorm came on, and drenched them all to the skin. They hurried on +to reach the place, about seven miles off, where R. was to have had the +camp in readiness to receive them. But this prudent person, when he +saw the storm approaching, had selected a sheltered glade in the woods, +where he pitched his tent, and was sipping a comfortable cup of coffee, +while the captain galloped for miles beyond through the rain to look +for him. At length the storm cleared away, and the sharp-eyed trapper +succeeded in discovering his tent: R. had by this time finished his +coffee, and was seated on a buffalo robe smoking his pipe. The captain +was one of the most easy-tempered men in existence, so he bore his +ill-luck with great composure, shared the dregs of the coffee with his +brother, and lay down to sleep in his wet clothes. + +We ourselves had our share of the deluge. We were leading a pair of +mules to Kansas when the storm broke. Such sharp and incessant flashes +of lightning, such stunning and continuous thunder, I have never known +before. The woods were completely obscured by the diagonal sheets of +rain that fell with a heavy roar, and rose in spray from the ground; and +the streams rose so rapidly that we could hardly ford them. At length, +looming through the rain, we saw the log-house of Colonel Chick, who +received us with his usual bland hospitality; while his wife, who, +though a little soured and stiffened by too frequent attendance on +camp-meetings, was not behind him in hospitable feeling, supplied us +with the means of repairing our drenched and bedraggled condition. The +storm, clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the +porch of the colonel’s house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun +streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and +on the immense expanse of luxuriant forest that stretched from its banks +back to the distant bluffs. + +Returning on the next day to Westport, we received a message from the +captain, who had ridden back to deliver it in person, but finding that +we were in Kansas, had intrusted it with an acquaintance of his named +Vogel, who kept a small grocery and liquor shop. Whisky by the way +circulates more freely in Westport than is altogether safe in a place +where every man carries a loaded pistol in his pocket. As we passed this +establishment, we saw Vogel’s broad German face and knavish-looking eyes +thrust from his door. He said he had something to tell us, and +invited us to take a dram. Neither his liquor nor his message was very +palatable. The captain had returned to give us notice that R., who +assumed the direction of his party, had determined upon another route +from that agreed upon between us; and instead of taking the course of +the traders, to pass northward by Fort Leavenworth, and follow the path +marked out by the dragoons in their expedition of last summer. To adopt +such a plan without consulting us, we looked upon as a very high-handed +proceeding; but suppressing our dissatisfaction as well as we could, we +made up our minds to join them at Fort Leavenworth, where they were to +wait for us. + +Accordingly, our preparation being now complete, we attempted one fine +morning to commence our journey. The first step was an unfortunate one. +No sooner were our animals put in harness, than the shaft mule reared +and plunged, burst ropes and straps, and nearly flung the cart into +the Missouri. Finding her wholly uncontrollable, we exchanged her +for another, with which we were furnished by our friend Mr. Boone of +Westport, a grandson of Daniel Boone, the pioneer. This foretaste of +prairie experience was very soon followed by another. Westport was +scarcely out of sight, when we encountered a deep muddy gully, of a +species that afterward became but too familiar to us; and here for the +space of an hour or more the car stuck fast. + + + +CHAPTER II + +BREAKING THE ICE + + +Both Shaw and myself were tolerably inured to the vicissitudes of +traveling. We had experienced them under various forms, and a birch +canoe was as familiar to us as a steamboat. The restlessness, the love +of wilds and hatred of cities, natural perhaps in early years to every +unperverted son of Adam, was not our only motive for undertaking the +present journey. My companion hoped to shake off the effects of a +disorder that had impaired a constitution originally hardy and robust; +and I was anxious to pursue some inquiries relative to the character and +usages of the remote Indian nations, being already familiar with many of +the border tribes. + +Emerging from the mud-hole where we last took leave of the reader, we +pursued our way for some time along the narrow track, in the checkered +sunshine and shadow of the woods, till at length, issuing forth into +the broad light, we left behind us the farthest outskirts of that great +forest, that once spread unbroken from the western plains to the shore +of the Atlantic. Looking over an intervening belt of shrubbery, we saw +the green, oceanlike expanse of prairie, stretching swell over swell to +the horizon. + +It was a mild, calm spring day; a day when one is more disposed to +musing and reverie than to action, and the softest part of his nature is +apt to gain the ascendency. I rode in advance of the party, as we passed +through the shrubbery, and as a nook of green grass offered a strong +temptation, I dismounted and lay down there. All the trees and saplings +were in flower, or budding into fresh leaf; the red clusters of the +maple-blossoms and the rich flowers of the Indian apple were there in +profusion; and I was half inclined to regret leaving behind the land of +gardens for the rude and stern scenes of the prairie and the mountains. + +Meanwhile the party came in sight from out of the bushes. Foremost rode +Henry Chatillon, our guide and hunter, a fine athletic figure, mounted +on a hardy gray Wyandotte pony. He wore a white blanket-coat, a broad +hat of felt, moccasins, and pantaloons of deerskin, ornamented along the +seams with rows of long fringes. His knife was stuck in his belt; his +bullet-pouch and powder-horn hung at his side, and his rifle lay before +him, resting against the high pommel of his saddle, which, like all his +equipments, had seen hard service, and was much the worse for wear. Shaw +followed close, mounted on a little sorrel horse, and leading a larger +animal by a rope. His outfit, which resembled mine, had been provided +with a view to use rather than ornament. It consisted of a plain, black +Spanish saddle, with holsters of heavy pistols, a blanket rolled up +behind it, and the trail-rope attached to his horse’s neck hanging +coiled in front. He carried a double-barreled smooth-bore, while I +boasted a rifle of some fifteen pounds’ weight. At that time our attire, +though far from elegant, bore some marks of civilization, and offered a +very favorable contrast to the inimitable shabbiness of our appearance +on the return journey. A red flannel shirt, belted around the waist like +a frock, then constituted our upper garment; moccasins had supplanted +our failing boots; and the remaining essential portion of our attire +consisted of an extraordinary article, manufactured by a squaw out of +smoked buckskin. Our muleteer, Delorier, brought up the rear with his +cart, waddling ankle-deep in the mud, alternately puffing at his pipe, +and ejaculating in his prairie patois: “Sacre enfant de garce!” as +one of the mules would seem to recoil before some abyss of unusual +profundity. The cart was of the kind that one may see by scores around +the market-place in Montreal, and had a white covering to protect the +articles within. These were our provisions and a tent, with ammunition, +blankets, and presents for the Indians. + +We were in all four men with eight animals; for besides the spare horses +led by Shaw and myself, an additional mule was driven along with us as a +reserve in case of accident. + +After this summing up of our forces, it may not be amiss to glance at +the characters of the two men who accompanied us. + +Delorier was a Canadian, with all the characteristics of the true Jean +Baptiste. Neither fatigue, exposure, nor hard labor could ever impair +his cheerfulness and gayety, or his obsequious politeness to his +bourgeois; and when night came he would sit down by the fire, smoke his +pipe, and tell stories with the utmost contentment. In fact, the prairie +was his congenial element. Henry Chatillon was of a different stamp. +When we were at St. Louis, several gentlemen of the Fur Company had +kindly offered to procure for us a hunter and guide suited for our +purposes, and on coming one afternoon to the office, we found there a +tall and exceedingly well-dressed man with a face so open and frank that +it attracted our notice at once. We were surprised at being told that it +was he who wished to guide us to the mountains. He was born in a little +French town near St. Louis, and from the age of fifteen years had been +constantly in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, employed for the +most part by the Company to supply their forts with buffalo meat. As a +hunter he had but one rival in the whole region, a man named Cimoneau, +with whom, to the honor of both of them, he was on terms of the closest +friendship. He had arrived at St. Louis the day before, from the +mountains, where he had remained for four years; and he now only asked +to go and spend a day with his mother before setting out on another +expedition. His age was about thirty; he was six feet high, and very +powerfully and gracefully molded. The prairies had been his school; +he could neither read nor write, but he had a natural refinement and +delicacy of mind such as is rarely found, even in women. His manly face +was a perfect mirror of uprightness, simplicity, and kindness of heart; +he had, moreover, a keen perception of character and a tact that would +preserve him from flagrant error in any society. Henry had not the +restless energy of an Anglo-American. He was content to take things +as he found them; and his chief fault arose from an excess of easy +generosity, impelling him to give away too profusely ever to thrive in +the world. Yet it was commonly remarked of him, that whatever he might +choose to do with what belonged to himself, the property of others was +always safe in his hands. His bravery was as much celebrated in the +mountains as his skill in hunting; but it is characteristic of him that +in a country where the rifle is the chief arbiter between man and man, +Henry was very seldom involved in quarrels. Once or twice, indeed, +his quiet good-nature had been mistaken and presumed upon, but the +consequences of the error were so formidable that no one was ever known +to repeat it. No better evidence of the intrepidity of his temper could +be wished than the common report that he had killed more than thirty +grizzly bears. He was a proof of what unaided nature will sometimes do. +I have never, in the city or in the wilderness, met a better man than my +noble and true-hearted friend, Henry Chatillon. + +We were soon free of the woods and bushes, and fairly upon the broad +prairie. Now and then a Shawanoe passed us, riding his little shaggy +pony at a “lope”; his calico shirt, his gaudy sash, and the gay +handkerchief bound around his snaky hair fluttering in the wind. At noon +we stopped to rest not far from a little creek replete with frogs and +young turtles. There had been an Indian encampment at the place, and +the framework of their lodges still remained, enabling us very easily +to gain a shelter from the sun, by merely spreading one or two blankets +over them. Thus shaded, we sat upon our saddles, and Shaw for the first +time lighted his favorite Indian pipe; while Delorier was squatted over +a hot bed of coals, shading his eyes with one hand, and holding a little +stick in the other, with which he regulated the hissing contents of the +frying-pan. The horses were turned to feed among the scattered bushes of +a low oozy meadow. A drowzy springlike sultriness pervaded the air, and +the voices of ten thousand young frogs and insects, just awakened into +life, rose in varied chorus from the creek and the meadows. + +Scarcely were we seated when a visitor approached. This was an old +Kansas Indian; a man of distinction, if one might judge from his dress. +His head was shaved and painted red, and from the tuft of hair remaining +on the crown dangled several eagles’ feathers, and the tails of two or +three rattlesnakes. His cheeks, too, were daubed with vermilion; his +ears were adorned with green glass pendants; a collar of grizzly bears’ +claws surrounded his neck, and several large necklaces of wampum hung +on his breast. Having shaken us by the hand with a cordial grunt of +salutation, the old man, dropping his red blanket from his shoulders, +sat down cross-legged on the ground. In the absence of liquor we offered +him a cup of sweetened water, at which he ejaculated “Good!” and was +beginning to tell us how great a man he was, and how many Pawnees he +had killed, when suddenly a motley concourse appeared wading across the +creek toward us. They filed past in rapid succession, men, women, and +children; some were on horseback, some on foot, but all were alike +squalid and wretched. Old squaws, mounted astride of shaggy, meager +little ponies, with perhaps one or two snake-eyed children seated behind +them, clinging to their tattered blankets; tall lank young men on foot, +with bows and arrows in their hands; and girls whose native ugliness not +all the charms of glass beads and scarlet cloth could disguise, made up +the procession; although here and there was a man who, like our visitor, +seemed to hold some rank in this respectable community. They were the +dregs of the Kansas nation, who, while their betters were gone to hunt +buffalo, had left the village on a begging expedition to Westport. + +When this ragamuffin horde had passed, we caught our horses, saddled, +harnessed, and resumed our journey. Fording the creek, the low roofs of +a number of rude buildings appeared, rising from a cluster of groves and +woods on the left; and riding up through a long lane, amid a profusion +of wild roses and early spring flowers, we found the log-church and +school-houses belonging to the Methodist Shawanoe Mission. The Indians +were on the point of gathering to a religious meeting. Some scores of +them, tall men in half-civilized dress, were seated on wooden benches +under the trees; while their horses were tied to the sheds and fences. +Their chief, Parks, a remarkably large and athletic man, was just +arrived from Westport, where he owns a trading establishment. Beside +this, he has a fine farm and a considerable number of slaves. Indeed the +Shawanoes have made greater progress in agriculture than any other tribe +on the Missouri frontier; and both in appearance and in character form a +marked contrast to our late acquaintance, the Kansas. + +A few hours’ ride brought us to the banks of the river Kansas. +Traversing the woods that lined it, and plowing through the deep sand, +we encamped not far from the bank, at the Lower Delaware crossing. Our +tent was erected for the first time on a meadow close to the woods, and +the camp preparations being complete we began to think of supper. An old +Delaware woman, of some three hundred pounds’ weight, sat in the porch +of a little log-house close to the water, and a very pretty half-breed +girl was engaged, under her superintendence, in feeding a large flock of +turkeys that were fluttering and gobbling about the door. But no offers +of money, or even of tobacco, could induce her to part with one of her +favorites; so I took my rifle, to see if the woods or the river could +furnish us anything. A multitude of quails were plaintively whistling +in the woods and meadows; but nothing appropriate to the rifle was to be +seen, except three buzzards, seated on the spectral limbs of an old dead +sycamore, that thrust itself out over the river from the dense sunny +wall of fresh foliage. Their ugly heads were drawn down between their +shoulders, and they seemed to luxuriate in the soft sunshine that was +pouring from the west. As they offered no epicurean temptations, I +refrained from disturbing their enjoyment; but contented myself with +admiring the calm beauty of the sunset, for the river, eddying swiftly +in deep purple shadows between the impending woods, formed a wild but +tranquillizing scene. + +When I returned to the camp I found Shaw and an old Indian seated on the +ground in close conference, passing the pipe between them. The old man +was explaining that he loved the whites, and had an especial partiality +for tobacco. Delorier was arranging upon the ground our service of tin +cups and plates; and as other viands were not to be had, he set before +us a repast of biscuit and bacon, and a large pot of coffee. Unsheathing +our knives, we attacked it, disposed of the greater part, and tossed the +residue to the Indian. Meanwhile our horses, now hobbled for the first +time, stood among the trees, with their fore-legs tied together, in +great disgust and astonishment. They seemed by no means to relish this +foretaste of what was before them. Mine, in particular, had conceived a +moral aversion to the prairie life. One of them, christened Hendrick, +an animal whose strength and hardihood were his only merits, and who +yielded to nothing but the cogent arguments of the whip, looked toward +us with an indignant countenance, as if he meditated avenging his +wrongs with a kick. The other, Pontiac, a good horse, though of plebeian +lineage, stood with his head drooping and his mane hanging about his +eyes, with the grieved and sulky air of a lubberly boy sent off to +school. Poor Pontiac! his forebodings were but too just; for when I last +heard from him, he was under the lash of an Ogallalla brave, on a war +party against the Crows. + +As it grew dark, and the voices of the whip-poor-wills succeeded the +whistle of the quails, we removed our saddles to the tent, to serve as +pillows, spread our blankets upon the ground, and prepared to bivouac +for the first time that season. Each man selected the place in the +tent which he was to occupy for the journey. To Delorier, however, was +assigned the cart, into which he could creep in wet weather, and find a +much better shelter than his bourgeois enjoyed in the tent. + +The river Kansas at this point forms the boundary line between the +country of the Shawanoes and that of the Delawares. We crossed it on +the following day, rafting over our horses and equipage with much +difficulty, and unloading our cart in order to make our way up the steep +ascent on the farther bank. It was a Sunday morning; warm, tranquil and +bright; and a perfect stillness reigned over the rough inclosures +and neglected fields of the Delawares, except the ceaseless hum and +chirruping of myriads of insects. Now and then, an Indian rode past on +his way to the meeting-house, or through the dilapidated entrance of +some shattered log-house an old woman might be discerned, enjoying all +the luxury of idleness. There was no village bell, for the Delawares +have none; and yet upon that forlorn and rude settlement was the same +spirit of Sabbath repose and tranquillity as in some little New England +village among the mountains of New Hampshire or the Vermont woods. + +Having at present no leisure for such reflections, we pursued our +journey. A military road led from this point to Fort Leavenworth, and +for many miles the farms and cabins of the Delawares were scattered +at short intervals on either hand. The little rude structures of logs, +erected usually on the borders of a tract of woods, made a picturesque +feature in the landscape. But the scenery needed no foreign aid. Nature +had done enough for it; and the alteration of rich green prairies and +groves that stood in clusters or lined the banks of the numerous little +streams, had all the softened and polished beauty of a region that has +been for centuries under the hand of man. At that early season, too, +it was in the height of its freshness and luxuriance. The woods were +flushed with the red buds of the maple; there were frequent flowering +shrubs unknown in the east; and the green swells of the prairies were +thickly studded with blossoms. + +Encamping near a spring by the side of a hill, we resumed our journey in +the morning, and early in the afternoon had arrived within a few miles +of Fort Leavenworth. The road crossed a stream densely bordered with +trees, and running in the bottom of a deep woody hollow. We were about +to descend into it, when a wild and confused procession appeared, +passing through the water below, and coming up the steep ascent toward +us. We stopped to let them pass. They were Delawares, just returned +from a hunting expedition. All, both men and women, were mounted on +horseback, and drove along with them a considerable number of pack +mules, laden with the furs they had taken, together with the buffalo +robes, kettles, and other articles of their traveling equipment, which +as well as their clothing and their weapons, had a worn and dingy +aspect, as if they had seen hard service of late. At the rear of the +party was an old man, who, as he came up, stopped his horse to speak to +us. He rode a little tough shaggy pony, with mane and tail well knotted +with burrs, and a rusty Spanish bit in its mouth, to which, by way of +reins, was attached a string of raw hide. His saddle, robbed probably +from a Mexican, had no covering, being merely a tree of the Spanish +form, with a piece of grizzly bear’s skin laid over it, a pair of rude +wooden stirrups attached, and in the absence of girth, a thong of hide +passing around the horse’s belly. The rider’s dark features and keen +snaky eyes were unequivocally Indian. He wore a buckskin frock, which, +like his fringed leggings, was well polished and blackened by grease and +long service; and an old handkerchief was tied around his head. Resting +on the saddle before him lay his rifle; a weapon in the use of which +the Delawares are skillful; though from its weight, the distant prairie +Indians are too lazy to carry it. + +“Who’s your chief?” he immediately inquired. + +Henry Chatillon pointed to us. The old Delaware fixed his eyes intently +upon us for a moment, and then sententiously remarked: + +“No good! Too young!” With this flattering comment he left us, and rode +after his people. + +This tribe, the Delawares, once the peaceful allies of William Penn, the +tributaries of the conquering Iroquois, are now the most adventurous and +dreaded warriors upon the prairies. They make war upon remote tribes the +very names of which were unknown to their fathers in their ancient +seats in Pennsylvania; and they push these new quarrels with true +Indian rancor, sending out their little war parties as far as the Rocky +Mountains, and into the Mexican territories. Their neighbors and +former confederates, the Shawanoes, who are tolerable farmers, are in +a prosperous condition; but the Delawares dwindle every year, from the +number of men lost in their warlike expeditions. + +Soon after leaving this party, we saw, stretching on the right, the +forests that follow the course of the Missouri, and the deep woody +channel through which at this point it runs. At a distance in front were +the white barracks of Fort Leavenworth, just visible through the trees +upon an eminence above a bend of the river. A wide green meadow, as +level as a lake, lay between us and the Missouri, and upon this, close +to a line of trees that bordered a little brook, stood the tent of the +captain and his companions, with their horses feeding around it, but +they themselves were invisible. Wright, their muleteer, was there, +seated on the tongue of the wagon, repairing his harness. Boisverd +stood cleaning his rifle at the door of the tent, and Sorel lounged +idly about. On closer examination, however, we discovered the captain’s +brother, Jack, sitting in the tent, at his old occupation of splicing +trail-ropes. He welcomed us in his broad Irish brogue, and said that +his brother was fishing in the river, and R. gone to the garrison. They +returned before sunset. Meanwhile we erected our own tent not far off, +and after supper a council was held, in which it was resolved to remain +one day at Fort Leavenworth, and on the next to bid a final adieu to +the frontier: or in the phraseology of the region, to “jump off.” Our +deliberations were conducted by the ruddy light from a distant swell of +the prairie, where the long dry grass of last summer was on fire. + + + +CHAPTER III + +FORT LEAVENWORTH + + +On the next morning we rode to Fort Leavenworth. Colonel, now General, +Kearny, to whom I had had the honor of an introduction when at St. +Louis, was just arrived, and received us at his headquarters with the +high-bred courtesy habitual to him. Fort Leavenworth is in fact no fort, +being without defensive works, except two block-houses. No rumors of +war had as yet disturbed its tranquillity. In the square grassy area, +surrounded by barracks and the quarters of the officers, the men were +passing and repassing, or lounging among the trees; although not many +weeks afterward it presented a different scene; for here the very +off-scourings of the frontier were congregated, to be marshaled for the +expedition against Santa Fe. + +Passing through the garrison, we rode toward the Kickapoo village, five +or six miles beyond. The path, a rather dubious and uncertain one, led +us along the ridge of high bluffs that bordered the Missouri; and by +looking to the right or to the left, we could enjoy a strange contrast +of opposite scenery. On the left stretched the prairie, rising into +swells and undulations, thickly sprinkled with groves, or gracefully +expanding into wide grassy basins of miles in extent; while its +curvatures, swelling against the horizon, were often surmounted by lines +of sunny woods; a scene to which the freshness of the season and the +peculiar mellowness of the atmosphere gave additional softness. Below +us, on the right, was a tract of ragged and broken woods. We could look +down on the summits of the trees, some living and some dead; some erect, +others leaning at every angle, and others still piled in masses together +by the passage of a hurricane. Beyond their extreme verge, the turbid +waters of the Missouri were discernible through the boughs, rolling +powerfully along at the foot of the woody declivities of its farther +bank. + +The path soon after led inland; and as we crossed an open meadow we saw +a cluster of buildings on a rising ground before us, with a crowd of +people surrounding them. They were the storehouse, cottage, and stables +of the Kickapoo trader’s establishment. Just at that moment, as it +chanced, he was beset with half the Indians of the settlement. They had +tied their wretched, neglected little ponies by dozens along the fences +and outhouses, and were either lounging about the place, or crowding +into the trading house. Here were faces of various colors; red, green, +white, and black, curiously intermingled and disposed over the visage +in a variety of patterns. Calico shirts, red and blue blankets, brass +ear-rings, wampum necklaces, appeared in profusion. The trader was a +blue-eyed open-faced man who neither in his manners nor his appearance +betrayed any of the roughness of the frontier; though just at present he +was obliged to keep a lynx eye on his suspicious customers, who, men +and women, were climbing on his counter and seating themselves among his +boxes and bales. + +The village itself was not far off, and sufficiently illustrated the +condition of its unfortunate and self-abandoned occupants. Fancy to +yourself a little swift stream, working its devious way down a woody +valley; sometimes wholly hidden under logs and fallen trees, sometimes +issuing forth and spreading into a broad, clear pool; and on its banks +in little nooks cleared away among the trees, miniature log-houses +in utter ruin and neglect. A labyrinth of narrow, obstructed paths +connected these habitations one with another. Sometimes we met a stray +calf, a pig or a pony, belonging to some of the villagers, who usually +lay in the sun in front of their dwellings, and looked on us with cold, +suspicious eyes as we approached. Farther on, in place of the log-huts +of the Kickapoos, we found the pukwi lodges of their neighbors, the +Pottawattamies, whose condition seemed no better than theirs. + +Growing tired at last, and exhausted by the excessive heat and +sultriness of the day, we returned to our friend, the trader. By this +time the crowd around him had dispersed, and left him at leisure. He +invited us to his cottage, a little white-and-green building, in +the style of the old French settlements; and ushered us into a neat, +well-furnished room. The blinds were closed, and the heat and glare +of the sun excluded; the room was as cool as a cavern. It was neatly +carpeted too and furnished in a manner that we hardly expected on the +frontier. The sofas, chairs, tables, and a well-filled bookcase would +not have disgraced an Eastern city; though there were one or two little +tokens that indicated the rather questionable civilization of the +region. A pistol, loaded and capped, lay on the mantelpiece; and through +the glass of the bookcase, peeping above the works of John Milton +glittered the handle of a very mischievous-looking knife. + +Our host went out, and returned with iced water, glasses, and a bottle +of excellent claret; a refreshment most welcome in the extreme heat of +the day; and soon after appeared a merry, laughing woman, who must have +been, a year of two before, a very rich and luxuriant specimen of Creole +beauty. She came to say that lunch was ready in the next room. Our +hostess evidently lived on the sunny side of life, and troubled herself +with none of its cares. She sat down and entertained us while we were +at table with anecdotes of fishing parties, frolics, and the officers +at the fort. Taking leave at length of the hospitable trader and his +friend, we rode back to the garrison. + +Shaw passed on to the camp, while I remained to call upon Colonel +Kearny. I found him still at table. There sat our friend the captain, +in the same remarkable habiliments in which we saw him at Westport; the +black pipe, however, being for the present laid aside. He dangled +his little cap in his hand and talked of steeple-chases, touching +occasionally upon his anticipated exploits in buffalo-hunting. There, +too, was R., somewhat more elegantly attired. For the last time we +tasted the luxuries of civilization, and drank adieus to it in wine good +enough to make us almost regret the leave-taking. Then, mounting, +we rode together to the camp, where everything was in readiness for +departure on the morrow. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +“JUMPING OFF” + + +The reader need not be told that John Bull never leaves home without +encumbering himself with the greatest possible load of luggage. Our +companions were no exception to the rule. They had a wagon drawn by six +mules and crammed with provisions for six months, besides ammunition +enough for a regiment; spare rifles and fowling-pieces, ropes and +harness; personal baggage, and a miscellaneous assortment of articles, +which produced infinite embarrassment on the journey. They had also +decorated their persons with telescopes and portable compasses, and +carried English double-barreled rifles of sixteen to the pound caliber, +slung to their saddles in dragoon fashion. + +By sunrise on the 23d of May we had breakfasted; the tents were leveled, +the animals saddled and harnessed, and all was prepared. “Avance donc! +get up!” cried Delorier from his seat in front of the cart. Wright, +our friend’s muleteer, after some swearing and lashing, got his +insubordinate train in motion, and then the whole party filed from the +ground. Thus we bade a long adieu to bed and board, and the principles +of Blackstone’s Commentaries. The day was a most auspicious one; and yet +Shaw and I felt certain misgivings, which in the sequel proved but too +well founded. We had just learned that though R. had taken it upon him +to adopt this course without consulting us, not a single man in +the party was acquainted with it; and the absurdity of our friend’s +high-handed measure very soon became manifest. His plan was to strike +the trail of several companies of dragoons, who last summer had made an +expedition under Colonel Kearny to Fort Laramie, and by this means to +reach the grand trail of the Oregon emigrants up the Platte. + +We rode for an hour or two when a familiar cluster of buildings appeared +on a little hill. “Hallo!” shouted the Kickapoo trader from over his +fence. “Where are you going?” A few rather emphatic exclamations might +have been heard among us, when we found that we had gone miles out of +our way, and were not advanced an inch toward the Rocky Mountains. So +we turned in the direction the trader indicated, and with the sun for +a guide, began to trace a “bee line” across the prairies. We struggled +through copses and lines of wood; we waded brooks and pools of water; we +traversed prairies as green as an emerald, expanding before us for mile +after mile; wider and more wild than the wastes Mazeppa rode over: + + “Man nor brute, + Nor dint of hoof, nor print of foot, + Lay in the wild luxuriant soil; + No sign of travel; none of toil; + The very air was mute.” + +Riding in advance, we passed over one of these great plains; we looked +back and saw the line of scattered horsemen stretching for a mile or +more; and far in the rear against the horizon, the white wagons creeping +slowly along. “Here we are at last!” shouted the captain. And in truth +we had struck upon the traces of a large body of horse. We turned +joyfully and followed this new course, with tempers somewhat improved; +and toward sunset encamped on a high swell of the prairie, at the foot +of which a lazy stream soaked along through clumps of rank grass. It +was getting dark. We turned the horses loose to feed. “Drive down the +tent-pickets hard,” said Henry Chatillon, “it is going to blow.” We did +so, and secured the tent as well as we could; for the sky had changed +totally, and a fresh damp smell in the wind warned us that a stormy +night was likely to succeed the hot clear day. The prairie also wore +a new aspect, and its vast swells had grown black and somber under the +shadow of the clouds. The thunder soon began to growl at a distance. +Picketing and hobbling the horses among the rich grass at the foot of +the slope, where we encamped, we gained a shelter just as the rain began +to fall; and sat at the opening of the tent, watching the proceedings of +the captain. In defiance of the rain he was stalking among the horses, +wrapped in an old Scotch plaid. An extreme solicitude tormented him, +lest some of his favorites should escape, or some accident should befall +them; and he cast an anxious eye toward three wolves who were sneaking +along over the dreary surface of the plain, as if he dreaded some +hostile demonstration on their part. + +On the next morning we had gone but a mile or two, when we came to an +extensive belt of woods, through the midst of which ran a stream, wide, +deep, and of an appearance particularly muddy and treacherous. Delorier +was in advance with his cart; he jerked his pipe from his mouth, lashed +his mules, and poured forth a volley of Canadian ejaculations. In +plunged the cart, but midway it stuck fast. Delorier leaped out +knee-deep in water, and by dint of sacres and a vigorous application of +the whip, he urged the mules out of the slough. Then approached the long +team and heavy wagon of our friends; but it paused on the brink. + +“Now my advice is--” began the captain, who had been anxiously +contemplating the muddy gulf. + +“Drive on!” cried R. + +But Wright, the muleteer, apparently had not as yet decided the point +in his own mind; and he sat still in his seat on one of the shaft-mules, +whistling in a low contemplative strain to himself. + +“My advice is,” resumed the captain, “that we unload; for I’ll bet any +man five pounds that if we try to go through, we shall stick fast.” + +“By the powers, we shall stick fast!” echoed Jack, the captain’s +brother, shaking his large head with an air of firm conviction. + +“Drive on! drive on!” cried R. petulantly. + +“Well,” observed the captain, turning to us as we sat looking on, much +edified by this by-play among our confederates, “I can only give my +advice and if people won’t be reasonable, why, they won’t; that’s all!” + +Meanwhile Wright had apparently made up his mind; for he suddenly began +to shout forth a volley of oaths and curses, that, compared with the +French imprecations of Delorier, sounded like the roaring of heavy +cannon after the popping and sputtering of a bunch of Chinese crackers. +At the same time he discharged a shower of blows upon his mules, who +hastily dived into the mud and drew the wagon lumbering after them. For +a moment the issue was dubious. Wright writhed about in his saddle, +and swore and lashed like a madman; but who can count on a team of +half-broken mules? At the most critical point, when all should have been +harmony and combined effort, the perverse brutes fell into lamentable +disorder, and huddled together in confusion on the farther bank. There +was the wagon up to the hub in mud, and visibly settling every instant. +There was nothing for it but to unload; then to dig away the mud +from before the wheels with a spade, and lay a causeway of bushes and +branches. This agreeable labor accomplished, the wagon at last emerged; +but if I mention that some interruption of this sort occurred at least +four or five times a day for a fortnight, the reader will understand +that our progress toward the Platte was not without its obstacles. + +We traveled six or seven miles farther, and “nooned” near a brook. On +the point of resuming our journey, when the horses were all driven down +to water, my homesick charger, Pontiac, made a sudden leap across, and +set off at a round trot for the settlements. I mounted my remaining +horse, and started in pursuit. Making a circuit, I headed the runaway, +hoping to drive him back to camp; but he instantly broke into a gallop, +made a wide tour on the prairie, and got past me again. I tried this +plan repeatedly, with the same result; Pontiac was evidently disgusted +with the prairie; so I abandoned it, and tried another, trotting along +gently behind him, in hopes that I might quietly get near enough to +seize the trail-rope which was fastened to his neck, and dragged about a +dozen feet behind him. The chase grew interesting. For mile after mile +I followed the rascal, with the utmost care not to alarm him, and +gradually got nearer, until at length old Hendrick’s nose was fairly +brushed by the whisking tail of the unsuspecting Pontiac. Without +drawing rein, I slid softly to the ground; but my long heavy rifle +encumbered me, and the low sound it made in striking the horn of the +saddle startled him; he pricked up his ears, and sprang off at a run. +“My friend,” thought I, remounting, “do that again, and I will shoot +you!” + +Fort Leavenworth was about forty miles distant, and thither I determined +to follow him. I made up my mind to spend a solitary and supperless +night, and then set out again in the morning. One hope, however, +remained. The creek where the wagon had stuck was just before us; +Pontiac might be thirsty with his run, and stop there to drink. I kept +as near to him as possible, taking every precaution not to alarm him +again; and the result proved as I had hoped: for he walked deliberately +among the trees, and stooped down to the water. I alighted, dragged old +Hendrick through the mud, and with a feeling of infinite satisfaction +picked up the slimy trail-rope and twisted it three times round my hand. +“Now let me see you get away again!” I thought, as I remounted. But +Pontiac was exceedingly reluctant to turn back; Hendrick, too, who +had evidently flattered himself with vain hopes, showed the utmost +repugnance, and grumbled in a manner peculiar to himself at being +compelled to face about. A smart cut of the whip restored his +cheerfulness; and dragging the recovered truant behind, I set out in +search of the camp. An hour or two elapsed, when, near sunset, I saw the +tents, standing on a rich swell of the prairie, beyond a line of woods, +while the bands of horses were feeding in a low meadow close at hand. +There sat Jack C., cross-legged, in the sun, splicing a trail-rope, +and the rest were lying on the grass, smoking and telling stories. That +night we enjoyed a serenade from the wolves, more lively than any with +which they had yet favored us; and in the morning one of the musicians +appeared, not many rods from the tents, quietly seated among the horses, +looking at us with a pair of large gray eyes; but perceiving a rifle +leveled at him, he leaped up and made off in hot haste. + +I pass by the following day or two of our journey, for nothing occurred +worthy of record. Should any one of my readers ever be impelled to visit +the prairies, and should he choose the route of the Platte (the best, +perhaps, that can be adopted), I can assure him that he need not +think to enter at once upon the paradise of his imagination. A dreary +preliminary, protracted crossing of the threshold awaits him before +he finds himself fairly upon the verge of the “great American desert,” + those barren wastes, the haunts of the buffalo and the Indian, where +the very shadow of civilization lies a hundred leagues behind him. The +intervening country, the wide and fertile belt that extends for +several hundred miles beyond the extreme frontier, will probably answer +tolerably well to his preconceived ideas of the prairie; for this it +is from which picturesque tourists, painters, poets, and novelists, who +have seldom penetrated farther, have derived their conceptions of the +whole region. If he has a painter’s eye, he may find his period of +probation not wholly void of interest. The scenery, though tame, is +graceful and pleasing. Here are level plains, too wide for the eye +to measure green undulations, like motionless swells of the ocean; +abundance of streams, followed through all their windings by lines of +woods and scattered groves. But let him be as enthusiastic as he may, +he will find enough to damp his ardor. His wagons will stick in the mud; +his horses will break loose; harness will give way, and axle-trees prove +unsound. His bed will be a soft one, consisting often of black mud, +of the richest consistency. As for food, he must content himself with +biscuit and salt provisions; for strange as it may seem, this tract of +country produces very little game. As he advances, indeed, he will see, +moldering in the grass by his path, the vast antlers of the elk, and +farther on, the whitened skulls of the buffalo, once swarming over this +now deserted region. Perhaps, like us, he may journey for a fortnight, +and see not so much as the hoof-print of a deer; in the spring, not even +a prairie hen is to be had. + +Yet, to compensate him for this unlooked-for deficiency of game, he +will find himself beset with “varmints” innumerable. The wolves will +entertain him with a concerto at night, and skulk around him by day, +just beyond rifle shot; his horse will step into badger-holes; from +every marsh and mud puddle will arise the bellowing, croaking, and +trilling of legions of frogs, infinitely various in color, shape and +dimensions. A profusion of snakes will glide away from under his horse’s +feet, or quietly visit him in his tent at night; while the pertinacious +humming of unnumbered mosquitoes will banish sleep from his eyelids. +When thirsty with a long ride in the scorching sun over some boundless +reach of prairie, he comes at length to a pool of water, and alights to +drink, he discovers a troop of young tadpoles sporting in the bottom of +his cup. Add to this, that all the morning the hot sun beats upon him +with sultry, penetrating heat, and that, with provoking regularity, at +about four o’clock in the afternoon, a thunderstorm rises and drenches +him to the skin. Such being the charms of this favored region, the +reader will easily conceive the extent of our gratification at learning +that for a week we had been journeying on the wrong track! How this +agreeable discovery was made I will presently explain. + +One day, after a protracted morning’s ride, we stopped to rest at noon +upon the open prairie. No trees were in sight; but close at hand, a +little dribbling brook was twisting from side to side through a hollow; +now forming holes of stagnant water, and now gliding over the mud in a +scarcely perceptible current, among a growth of sickly bushes, and great +clumps of tall rank grass. The day was excessively hot and oppressive. +The horses and mules were rolling on the prairie to refresh themselves, +or feeding among the bushes in the hollow. We had dined; and Delorier, +puffing at his pipe, knelt on the grass, scrubbing our service of tin +plate. Shaw lay in the shade, under the cart, to rest for a while, +before the word should be given to “catch up.” Henry Chatillon, before +lying down, was looking about for signs of snakes, the only living +things that he feared, and uttering various ejaculations of disgust, +at finding several suspicious-looking holes close to the cart. I sat +leaning against the wheel in a scanty strip of shade, making a pair of +hobbles to replace those which my contumacious steed Pontiac had +broken the night before. The camp of our friends, a rod or two distant, +presented the same scene of lazy tranquillity. + +“Hallo!” cried Henry, looking up from his inspection of the snake-holes, +“here comes the old captain!” + +The captain approached, and stood for a moment contemplating us in +silence. + +“I say, Parkman,” he began, “look at Shaw there, asleep under the cart, +with the tar dripping off the hub of the wheel on his shoulder!” + +At this Shaw got up, with his eyes half opened, and feeling the part +indicated, he found his hand glued fast to his red flannel shirt. + +“He’ll look well when he gets among the squaws, won’t he?” observed the +captain, with a grin. + +He then crawled under the cart, and began to tell stories of which his +stock was inexhaustible. Yet every moment he would glance nervously at +the horses. At last he jumped up in great excitement. “See that horse! +There--that fellow just walking over the hill! By Jove; he’s off. It’s +your big horse, Shaw; no it isn’t, it’s Jack’s! Jack! Jack! hallo, +Jack!” Jack thus invoked, jumped up and stared vacantly at us. + +“Go and catch your horse, if you don’t want to lose him!” roared the +captain. + +Jack instantly set off at a run through the grass, his broad pantaloons +flapping about his feet. The captain gazed anxiously till he saw +that the horse was caught; then he sat down, with a countenance of +thoughtfulness and care. + +“I tell you what it is,” he said, “this will never do at all. We shall +lose every horse in the band someday or other, and then a pretty plight +we should be in! Now I am convinced that the only way for us is to have +every man in the camp stand horse-guard in rotation whenever we stop. +Supposing a hundred Pawnees should jump up out of that ravine, all +yelling and flapping their buffalo robes, in the way they do? Why, in +two minutes not a hoof would be in sight.” We reminded the captain that +a hundred Pawnees would probably demolish the horse-guard, if he were to +resist their depredations. + +“At any rate,” pursued the captain, evading the point, “our whole system +is wrong; I’m convinced of it; it is totally unmilitary. Why, the way +we travel, strung out over the prairie for a mile, an enemy might attack +the foremost men, and cut them off before the rest could come up.” + +“We are not in an enemy’s country, yet,” said Shaw; “when we are, we’ll +travel together.” + +“Then,” said the captain, “we might be attacked in camp. We’ve no +sentinels; we camp in disorder; no precautions at all to guard against +surprise. My own convictions are that we ought to camp in a hollow +square, with the fires in the center; and have sentinels, and a regular +password appointed for every night. Besides, there should be vedettes, +riding in advance, to find a place for the camp and give warning of an +enemy. These are my convictions. I don’t want to dictate to any man. I +give advice to the best of my judgment, that’s all; and then let people +do as they please.” + +We intimated that perhaps it would be as well to postpone such +burdensome precautions until there should be some actual need of +them; but he shook his head dubiously. The captain’s sense of military +propriety had been severely shocked by what he considered the irregular +proceedings of the party; and this was not the first time he had +expressed himself upon the subject. But his convictions seldom produced +any practical results. In the present case, he contented himself, +as usual, with enlarging on the importance of his suggestions, and +wondering that they were not adopted. But his plan of sending out +vedettes seemed particularly dear to him; and as no one else was +disposed to second his views on this point, he took it into his head to +ride forward that afternoon, himself. + +“Come, Parkman,” said he, “will you go with me?” + +We set out together, and rode a mile or two in advance. The captain, +in the course of twenty years’ service in the British army, had seen +something of life; one extensive side of it, at least, he had enjoyed +the best opportunities for studying; and being naturally a pleasant +fellow, he was a very entertaining companion. He cracked jokes and told +stories for an hour or two; until, looking back, we saw the prairie +behind us stretching away to the horizon, without a horseman or a wagon +in sight. + +“Now,” said the captain, “I think the vedettes had better stop till the +main body comes up.” + +I was of the same opinion. There was a thick growth of woods just before +us, with a stream running through them. Having crossed this, we found +on the other side a fine level meadow, half encircled by the trees; and +fastening our horses to some bushes, we sat down on the grass; while, +with an old stump of a tree for a target, I began to display the +superiority of the renowned rifle of the back woods over the foreign +innovation borne by the captain. At length voices could be heard in the +distance behind the trees. + +“There they come!” said the captain: “let’s go and see how they get +through the creek.” + +We mounted and rode to the bank of the stream, where the trail crossed +it. It ran in a deep hollow, full of trees; as we looked down, we saw a +confused crowd of horsemen riding through the water; and among the dingy +habiliment of our party glittered the uniforms of four dragoons. + +Shaw came whipping his horse up the back, in advance of the rest, with +a somewhat indignant countenance. The first word he spoke was a blessing +fervently invoked on the head of R., who was riding, with a crest-fallen +air, in the rear. Thanks to the ingenious devices of the gentleman, we +had missed the track entirely, and wandered, not toward the Platte, but +to the village of the Iowa Indians. This we learned from the dragoons, +who had lately deserted from Fort Leavenworth. They told us that our +best plan now was to keep to the northward until we should strike the +trail formed by several parties of Oregon emigrants, who had that season +set out from St. Joseph’s in Missouri. + +In extremely bad temper, we encamped on this ill-starred spot; while the +deserters, whose case admitted of no delay rode rapidly forward. On the +day following, striking the St. Joseph’s trail, we turned our horses’ +heads toward Fort Laramie, then about seven hundred miles to the +westward. + + + +CHAPTER V + +“THE BIG BLUE” + + +The great medley of Oregon and California emigrants, at their camps +around Independence, had heard reports that several additional parties +were on the point of setting out from St. Joseph’s farther to the +northward. The prevailing impression was that these were Mormons, +twenty-three hundred in number; and a great alarm was excited in +consequence. The people of Illinois and Missouri, who composed by far +the greater part of the emigrants, have never been on the best terms +with the “Latter Day Saints”; and it is notorious throughout the country +how much blood has been spilt in their feuds, even far within the limits +of the settlements. No one could predict what would be the result, when +large armed bodies of these fanatics should encounter the most impetuous +and reckless of their old enemies on the broad prairie, far beyond the +reach of law or military force. The women and children at Independence +raised a great outcry; the men themselves were seriously alarmed; and, +as I learned, they sent to Colonel Kearny, requesting an escort of +dragoons as far as the Platte. This was refused; and as the sequel +proved, there was no occasion for it. The St. Joseph’s emigrants were as +good Christians and as zealous Mormon-haters as the rest; and the very +few families of the “Saints” who passed out this season by the route of +the Platte remained behind until the great tide of emigration had gone +by; standing in quite as much awe of the “gentiles” as the latter did of +them. + +We were now, as I before mentioned, upon this St. Joseph’s trail. It was +evident, by the traces, that large parties were a few days in advance of +us; and as we too supposed them to be Mormons, we had some apprehension +of interruption. + +The journey was somewhat monotonous. One day we rode on for hours, +without seeing a tree or a bush; before, behind, and on either side, +stretched the vast expanse, rolling in a succession of graceful swells, +covered with the unbroken carpet of fresh green grass. Here and there a +crow, or a raven, or a turkey-buzzard, relieved the uniformity. + +“What shall we do to-night for wood and water?” we began to ask of each +other; for the sun was within an hour of setting. At length a dark green +speck appeared, far off on the right; it was the top of a tree, peering +over a swell of the prairie; and leaving the trail, we made all haste +toward it. It proved to be the vanguard of a cluster of bushes and low +trees, that surrounded some pools of water in an extensive hollow; so we +encamped on the rising ground near it. + +Shaw and I were sitting in the tent, when Delorier thrust his brown face +and old felt hat into the opening, and dilating his eyes to their utmost +extent, announced supper. There were the tin cups and the iron spoons, +arranged in military order on the grass, and the coffee-pot predominant +in the midst. The meal was soon dispatched; but Henry Chatillon still +sat cross-legged, dallying with the remnant of his coffee, the beverage +in universal use upon the prairie, and an especial favorite with him. He +preferred it in its virgin flavor, unimpaired by sugar or cream; and +on the present occasion it met his entire approval, being exceedingly +strong, or, as he expressed it, “right black.” + +It was a rich and gorgeous sunset--an American sunset; and the ruddy +glow of the sky was reflected from some extensive pools of water among +the shadowy copses in the meadow below. + +“I must have a bath to-night,” said Shaw. “How is it, Delorier? Any +chance for a swim down here?” + +“Ah! I cannot tell; just as you please, monsieur,” replied Delorier, +shrugging his shoulders, perplexed by his ignorance of English, and +extremely anxious to conform in all respects to the opinion and wishes +of his bourgeois. + +“Look at his moccasion,” said I. “It has evidently been lately immersed +in a profound abyss of black mud.” + +“Come,” said Shaw; “at any rate we can see for ourselves.” + +We set out together; and as we approached the bushes, which were at some +distance, we found the ground becoming rather treacherous. We could +only get along by stepping upon large clumps of tall rank grass, with +fathomless gulfs between, like innumerable little quaking islands in +an ocean of mud, where a false step would have involved our boots in a +catastrophe like that which had befallen Delorier’s moccasins. The thing +looked desperate; we separated, so as to search in different directions, +Shaw going off to the right, while I kept straight forward. At last I +came to the edge of the bushes: they were young waterwillows, covered +with their caterpillar-like blossoms, but intervening between them +and the last grass clump was a black and deep slough, over which, by a +vigorous exertion, I contrived to jump. Then I shouldered my way through +the willows, tramping them down by main force, till I came to a wide +stream of water, three inches deep, languidly creeping along over a +bottom of sleek mud. My arrival produced a great commotion. A huge green +bull-frog uttered an indignant croak, and jumped off the bank with a +loud splash: his webbed feet twinkled above the surface, as he jerked +them energetically upward, and I could see him ensconcing himself in +the unresisting slime at the bottom, whence several large air bubbles +struggled lazily to the top. Some little spotted frogs instantly +followed the patriarch’s example; and then three turtles, not larger +than a dollar, tumbled themselves off a broad “lily pad,” where they had +been reposing. At the same time a snake, gayly striped with black and +yellow, glided out from the bank, and writhed across to the other side; +and a small stagnant pool into which my foot had inadvertently pushed a +stone was instantly alive with a congregation of black tadpoles. + +“Any chance for a bath, where you are?” called out Shaw, from a +distance. + +The answer was not encouraging. I retreated through the willows, and +rejoining my companion, we proceeded to push our researches in company. +Not far on the right, a rising ground, covered with trees and bushes, +seemed to sink down abruptly to the water, and give hope of better +success; so toward this we directed our steps. When we reached the place +we found it no easy matter to get along between the hill and the water, +impeded as we were by a growth of stiff, obstinate young birch-trees, +laced together by grapevines. In the twilight, we now and then, to +support ourselves, snatched at the touch-me-not stem of some ancient +sweet-brier. Shaw, who was in advance, suddenly uttered a somewhat +emphatic monosyllable; and looking up I saw him with one hand grasping a +sapling, and one foot immersed in the water, from which he had forgotten +to withdraw it, his whole attention being engaged in contemplating the +movements of a water-snake, about five feet long, curiously checkered +with black and green, who was deliberately swimming across the pool. +There being no stick or stone at hand to pelt him with, we looked at him +for a time in silent disgust; and then pushed forward. Our perseverence +was at last rewarded; for several rods farther on, we emerged upon a +little level grassy nook among the brushwood, and by an extraordinary +dispensation of fortune, the weeds and floating sticks, which elsewhere +covered the pool, seemed to have drawn apart, and left a few yards of +clear water just in front of this favored spot. We sounded it with a +stick; it was four feet deep; we lifted a specimen in our cupped hands; +it seemed reasonably transparent, so we decided that the time for action +was arrived. But our ablutions were suddenly interrupted by ten +thousand punctures, like poisoned needles, and the humming of myriads +of over-grown mosquitoes, rising in all directions from their native mud +and slime and swarming to the feast. We were fain to beat a retreat with +all possible speed. + +We made toward the tents, much refreshed by the bath which the heat of +the weather, joined to our prejudices, had rendered very desirable. + +“What’s the matter with the captain? look at him!” said Shaw. The +captain stood alone on the prairie, swinging his hat violently around +his head, and lifting first one foot and then the other, without moving +from the spot. First he looked down to the ground with an air of +supreme abhorrence; then he gazed upward with a perplexed and indignant +countenance, as if trying to trace the flight of an unseen enemy. We +called to know what was the matter; but he replied only by execrations +directed against some unknown object. We approached, when our ears were +saluted by a droning sound, as if twenty bee-hives had been overturned +at once. The air above was full of large black insects, in a state of +great commotion, and multitudes were flying about just above the tops of +the grass blades. + +“Don’t be afraid,” called the captain, observing us recoil. “The brutes +won’t sting.” + +At this I knocked one down with my hat, and discovered him to be no +other than a “dorbug”; and looking closer, we found the ground thickly +perforated with their holes. + +We took a hasty leave of this flourishing colony, and walking up +the rising ground to the tents, found Delorier’s fire still glowing +brightly. We sat down around it, and Shaw began to expatiate on the +admirable facilities for bathing that we had discovered, and recommended +the captain by all means to go down there before breakfast in the +morning. The captain was in the act of remarking that he couldn’t have +believed it possible, when he suddenly interrupted himself, and clapped +his hand to his cheek, exclaiming that “those infernal humbugs were at +him again.” In fact, we began to hear sounds as if bullets were humming +over our heads. In a moment something rapped me sharply on the forehead, +then upon the neck, and immediately I felt an indefinite number of sharp +wiry claws in active motion, as if their owner were bent on pushing his +explorations farther. I seized him, and dropped him into the fire. +Our party speedily broke up, and we adjourned to our respective tents, +where, closing the opening fast, we hoped to be exempt from invasion. +But all precaution was fruitless. The dorbugs hummed through the tent, +and marched over our faces until day-light; when, opening our blankets, +we found several dozen clinging there with the utmost tenacity. The +first object that met our eyes in the morning was Delorier, who seemed +to be apostrophizing his frying-pan, which he held by the handle at +arm’s length. It appeared that he had left it at night by the fire; and +the bottom was now covered with dorbugs, firmly imbedded. Multitudes +beside, curiously parched and shriveled, lay scattered among the ashes. + +The horses and mules were turned loose to feed. We had just taken our +seats at breakfast, or rather reclined in the classic mode, when an +exclamation from Henry Chatillon, and a shout of alarm from the captain, +gave warning of some casualty, and looking up, we saw the whole band +of animals, twenty-three in number, filing off for the settlements, the +incorrigible Pontiac at their head, jumping along with hobbled feet, +at a gait much more rapid than graceful. Three or four of us ran to cut +them off, dashing as best we might through the tall grass, which was +glittering with myriads of dewdrops. After a race of a mile or more, +Shaw caught a horse. Tying the trail-rope by way of bridle round the +animal’s jaw, and leaping upon his back, he got in advance of the +remaining fugitives, while we, soon bringing them together, drove them +in a crowd up to the tents, where each man caught and saddled his own. +Then we heard lamentations and curses; for half the horses had broke +their hobbles, and many were seriously galled by attempting to run in +fetters. + +It was late that morning before we were on the march; and early in the +afternoon we were compelled to encamp, for a thunder-gust came up and +suddenly enveloped us in whirling sheets of rain. With much ado, we +pitched our tents amid the tempest, and all night long the thunder +bellowed and growled over our heads. In the morning, light peaceful +showers succeeded the cataracts of rain, that had been drenching us +through the canvas of our tents. About noon, when there were some +treacherous indications of fair weather, we got in motion again. + +Not a breath of air stirred over the free and open prairie; the clouds +were like light piles of cotton; and where the blue sky was visible, it +wore a hazy and languid aspect. The sun beat down upon us with a sultry +penetrating heat almost insupportable, and as our party crept slowly +along over the interminable level, the horses hung their heads as +they waded fetlock deep through the mud, and the men slouched into +the easiest position upon the saddle. At last, toward evening, the old +familiar black heads of thunderclouds rose fast above the horizon, and +the same deep muttering of distant thunder that had become the ordinary +accompaniment of our afternoon’s journey began to roll hoarsely over +the prairie. Only a few minutes elapsed before the whole sky was densely +shrouded, and the prairie and some clusters of woods in front assumed a +purple hue beneath the inky shadows. Suddenly from the densest fold of +the cloud the flash leaped out, quivering again and again down to the +edge of the prairie; and at the same instant came the sharp burst and +the long rolling peal of the thunder. A cool wind, filled with the smell +of rain, just then overtook us, leveling the tall grass by the side of +the path. + +“Come on; we must ride for it!” shouted Shaw, rushing past at full +speed, his led horse snorting at his side. The whole party broke into +full gallop, and made for the trees in front. Passing these, we found +beyond them a meadow which they half inclosed. We rode pell-mell upon +the ground, leaped from horseback, tore off our saddles; and in a moment +each man was kneeling at his horse’s feet. The hobbles were adjusted, +and the animals turned loose; then, as the wagons came wheeling rapidly +to the spot, we seized upon the tent-poles, and just as the storm broke, +we were prepared to receive it. It came upon us almost with the darkness +of night; the trees, which were close at hand, were completely shrouded +by the roaring torrents of rain. + +We were sitting in the tent, when Delorier, with his broad felt hat +hanging about his ears, and his shoulders glistening with rain, thrust +in his head. + +“Voulez-vous du souper, tout de suite? I can make a fire, sous la +charette--I b’lieve so--I try.” + +“Never mind supper, man; come in out of the rain.” + +Delorier accordingly crouched in the entrance, for modesty would not +permit him to intrude farther. + +Our tent was none of the best defense against such a cataract. The +rain could not enter bodily, but it beat through the canvas in a fine +drizzle, that wetted us just as effectively. We sat upon our saddles +with faces of the utmost surliness, while the water dropped from the +vizors of our caps, and trickled down our cheeks. My india-rubber cloak +conducted twenty little rapid streamlets to the ground; and Shaw’s +blanket-coat was saturated like a sponge. But what most concerned us +was the sight of several puddles of water rapidly accumulating; one +in particular, that was gathering around the tent-pole, threatened +to overspread the whole area within the tent, holding forth but an +indifferent promise of a comfortable night’s rest. Toward sunset, +however, the storm ceased as suddenly as it began. A bright streak +of clear red sky appeared above the western verge of the prairie, the +horizontal rays of the sinking sun streamed through it and glittered in +a thousand prismatic colors upon the dripping groves and the prostrate +grass. The pools in the tent dwindled and sunk into the saturated soil. + +But all our hopes were delusive. Scarcely had night set in, when the +tumult broke forth anew. The thunder here is not like the tame thunder +of the Atlantic coast. Bursting with a terrific crash directly above our +heads, it roared over the boundless waste of prairie, seeming to roll +around the whole circle of the firmament with a peculiar and awful +reverberation. The lightning flashed all night, playing with its livid +glare upon the neighboring trees, revealing the vast expanse of the +plain, and then leaving us shut in as by a palpable wall of darkness. + +It did not disturb us much. Now and then a peal awakened us, and made us +conscious of the electric battle that was raging, and of the floods that +dashed upon the stanch canvas over our heads. We lay upon india-rubber +cloths, placed between our blankets and the soil. For a while they +excluded the water to admiration; but when at length it accumulated and +began to run over the edges, they served equally well to retain it, so +that toward the end of the night we were unconsciously reposing in small +pools of rain. + +On finally awaking in the morning the prospect was not a cheerful one. +The rain no longer poured in torrents; but it pattered with a quiet +pertinacity upon the strained and saturated canvas. We disengaged +ourselves from our blankets, every fiber of which glistened with little +beadlike drops of water, and looked out in vain hope of discovering some +token of fair weather. The clouds, in lead-colored volumes, rested upon +the dismal verge of the prairie, or hung sluggishly overhead, while the +earth wore an aspect no more attractive than the heavens, exhibiting +nothing but pools of water, grass beaten down, and mud well trampled by +our mules and horses. Our companions’ tent, with an air of forlorn +and passive misery, and their wagons in like manner, drenched and +woe-begone, stood not far off. The captain was just returning from his +morning’s inspection of the horses. He stalked through the mist and +rain, with his plaid around his shoulders; his little pipe, dingy as an +antiquarian relic, projecting from beneath his mustache, and his brother +Jack at his heels. + +“Good-morning, captain.” + +“Good-morning to your honors,” said the captain, affecting the Hibernian +accent; but at that instant, as he stooped to enter the tent, he tripped +upon the cords at the entrance, and pitched forward against the guns +which were strapped around the pole in the center. + +“You are nice men, you are!” said he, after an ejaculation not necessary +to be recorded, “to set a man-trap before your door every morning to +catch your visitors.” + +Then he sat down upon Henry Chatillon’s saddle. We tossed a piece of +buffalo robe to Jack, who was looking about in some embarrassment. He +spread it on the ground, and took his seat, with a stolid countenance, +at his brother’s side. + +“Exhilarating weather, captain!” + +“Oh, delightful, delightful!” replied the captain. “I knew it would be +so; so much for starting yesterday at noon! I knew how it would turn +out; and I said so at the time.” + +“You said just the contrary to us. We were in no hurry, and only moved +because you insisted on it.” + +“Gentlemen,” said the captain, taking his pipe from his mouth with an +air of extreme gravity, “it was no plan of mine. There is a man among us +who is determined to have everything his own way. You may express your +opinion; but don’t expect him to listen. You may be as reasonable as +you like: oh, it all goes for nothing! That man is resolved to rule the +roost and he’ll set his face against any plan that he didn’t think of +himself.” + +The captain puffed for a while at his pipe, as if meditating upon his +grievances; then he began again: + +“For twenty years I have been in the British army; and in all that time +I never had half so much dissension, and quarreling, and nonsense, as +since I have been on this cursed prairie. He’s the most uncomfortable +man I ever met.” + +“Yes,” said Jack; “and don’t you know, Bill, how he drank up all the +coffee last night, and put the rest by for himself till the morning!” + +“He pretends to know everything,” resumed the captain; “nobody must give +orders but he! It’s, oh! we must do this; and, oh! we must do that; and +the tent must be pitched here, and the horses must be picketed there; +for nobody knows as well as he does.” + +We were a little surprised at this disclosure of domestic dissensions +among our allies, for though we knew of their existence, we were not +aware of their extent. The persecuted captain seeming wholly at a loss +as to the course of conduct that he should pursue, we recommended him to +adopt prompt and energetic measures; but all his military experience +had failed to teach him the indispensable lesson to be “hard,” when the +emergency requires it. + +“For twenty years,” he repeated, “I have been in the British army, and +in that time I have been intimately acquainted with some two hundred +officers, young and old, and I never yet quarreled with any man. Oh, +‘anything for a quiet life!’ that’s my maxim.” + +We intimated that the prairie was hardly the place to enjoy a quiet +life, but that, in the present circumstances, the best thing he could +do toward securing his wished-for tranquillity, was immediately to put +a period to the nuisance that disturbed it. But again the captain’s +easy good-nature recoiled from the task. The somewhat vigorous measures +necessary to gain the desired result were utterly repugnant to him; he +preferred to pocket his grievances, still retaining the privilege of +grumbling about them. “Oh, anything for a quiet life!” he said again, +circling back to his favorite maxim. + +But to glance at the previous history of our transatlantic confederates. +The captain had sold his commission, and was living in bachelor ease +and dignity in his paternal halls, near Dublin. He hunted, fished, rode +steeple-chases, ran races, and talked of his former exploits. He +was surrounded with the trophies of his rod and gun; the walls were +plentifully garnished, he told us, with moose-horns and deer-horns, +bear-skins, and fox-tails; for the captain’s double-barreled rifle had +seen service in Canada and Jamaica; he had killed salmon in Nova Scotia, +and trout, by his own account, in all the streams of the three kingdoms. +But in an evil hour a seductive stranger came from London; no less a +person than R., who, among other multitudinous wanderings, had once been +upon the western prairies, and naturally enough was anxious to visit +them again. The captain’s imagination was inflamed by the pictures of a +hunter’s paradise that his guest held forth; he conceived an ambition +to add to his other trophies the horns of a buffalo, and the claws of +a grizzly bear; so he and R. struck a league to travel in company. Jack +followed his brother, as a matter of course. Two weeks on board the +Atlantic steamer brought them to Boston; in two weeks more of hard +traveling they reached St. Louis, from which a ride of six days +carried them to the frontier; and here we found them, in full tide of +preparation for their journey. + +We had been throughout on terms of intimacy with the captain, but +R., the motive power of our companions’ branch of the expedition, was +scarcely known to us. His voice, indeed, might be heard incessantly; but +at camp he remained chiefly within the tent, and on the road he either +rode by himself, or else remained in close conversation with his friend +Wright, the muleteer. As the captain left the tent that morning, I +observed R. standing by the fire, and having nothing else to do, I +determined to ascertain, if possible, what manner of man he was. He had +a book under his arm, but just at present he was engrossed in actively +superintending the operations of Sorel, the hunter, who was cooking some +corn-bread over the coals for breakfast. R. was a well-formed and rather +good-looking man, some thirty years old; considerably younger than the +captain. He wore a beard and mustache of the oakum complexion, and +his attire was altogether more elegant than one ordinarily sees on the +prairie. He wore his cap on one side of his head; his checked shirt, +open in front, was in very neat order, considering the circumstances, +and his blue pantaloons, of the John Bull cut, might once have figured +in Bond Street. + +“Turn over that cake, man! turn it over, quick! Don’t you see it +burning?” + +“It ain’t half done,” growled Sorel, in the amiable tone of a whipped +bull-dog. + +“It is. Turn it over, I tell you!” + +Sorel, a strong, sullen-looking Canadian, who from having spent his life +among the wildest and most remote of the Indian tribes, had imbibed much +of their dark, vindictive spirit, looked ferociously up, as if he longed +to leap upon his bourgeois and throttle him; but he obeyed the order, +coming from so experienced an artist. + +“It was a good idea of yours,” said I, seating myself on the tongue of a +wagon, “to bring Indian meal with you.” + +“Yes, yes” said R. “It’s good bread for the prairie--good bread for the +prairie. I tell you that’s burning again.” + +Here he stooped down, and unsheathing the silver-mounted hunting-knife +in his belt, began to perform the part of cook himself; at the same +time requesting me to hold for a moment the book under his arm, which +interfered with the exercise of these important functions. I opened +it; it was “Macaulay’s Lays”; and I made some remark, expressing my +admiration of the work. + +“Yes, yes; a pretty good thing. Macaulay can do better than that though. +I know him very well. I have traveled with him. Where was it we first +met--at Damascus? No, no; it was in Italy.” + +“So,” said I, “you have been over the same ground with your countryman, +the author of ‘Eothen’? There has been some discussion in America as to +who he is. I have heard Milne’s name mentioned.” + +“Milne’s? Oh, no, no, no; not at all. It was Kinglake; Kinglake’s the +man. I know him very well; that is, I have seen him.” + +Here Jack C., who stood by, interposed a remark (a thing not common with +him), observing that he thought the weather would become fair before +twelve o’clock. + +“It’s going to rain all day,” said R., “and clear up in the middle of +the night.” + +Just then the clouds began to dissipate in a very unequivocal manner; +but Jack, not caring to defend his point against so authoritative a +declaration, walked away whistling, and we resumed our conversation. + +“Borrow, the author of ‘The Bible in Spain,’ I presume you know him +too?” + +“Oh, certainly; I know all those men. By the way, they told me that one +of your American writers, Judge Story, had died lately. I edited some of +his works in London; not without faults, though.” + +Here followed an erudite commentary on certain points of law, in which +he particularly animadverted on the errors into which he considered that +the judge had been betrayed. At length, having touched successively +on an infinite variety of topics, I found that I had the happiness +of discovering a man equally competent to enlighten me upon them all, +equally an authority on matters of science or literature, philosophy or +fashion. The part I bore in the conversation was by no means a prominent +one; it was only necessary to set him going, and when he had run long +enough upon one topic, to divert him to another and lead him on to pour +out his heaps of treasure in succession. + +“What has that fellow been saying to you?” said Shaw, as I returned to +the tent. “I have heard nothing but his talking for the last half-hour.” + +R. had none of the peculiar traits of the ordinary “British snob”; +his absurdities were all his own, belonging to no particular nation or +clime. He was possessed with an active devil that had driven him over +land and sea, to no great purpose, as it seemed; for although he had the +usual complement of eyes and ears, the avenues between these organs and +his brain appeared remarkably narrow and untrodden. His energy was much +more conspicuous than his wisdom; but his predominant characteristic was +a magnanimous ambition to exercise on all occasions an awful rule and +supremacy, and this propensity equally displayed itself, as the reader +will have observed, whether the matter in question was the baking of a +hoe-cake or a point of international law. When such diverse elements +as he and the easy-tempered captain came in contact, no wonder some +commotion ensued; R. rode roughshod, from morning till night, over his +military ally. + +At noon the sky was clear and we set out, trailing through mud and slime +six inches deep. That night we were spared the customary infliction of +the shower bath. + +On the next afternoon we were moving slowly along, not far from a patch +of woods which lay on the right. Jack C. rode a little in advance; + + +The livelong day he had not spoke; + + +when suddenly he faced about, pointed to the woods, and roared out to +his brother: + +“O Bill! here’s a cow!” + +The captain instantly galloped forward, and he and Jack made a vain +attempt to capture the prize; but the cow, with a well-grounded distrust +of their intentions, took refuge among the trees. R. joined them, and +they soon drove her out. We watched their evolutions as they galloped +around here, trying in vain to noose her with their trail-ropes, which +they had converted into lariettes for the occasion. At length they +resorted to milder measures, and the cow was driven along with the +party. Soon after the usual thunderstorm came up, the wind blowing with +such fury that the streams of rain flew almost horizontally along the +prairie, roaring like a cataract. The horses turned tail to the storm, +and stood hanging their heads, bearing the infliction with an air of +meekness and resignation; while we drew our heads between our shoulders, +and crouched forward, so as to make our backs serve as a pent-house +for the rest of our persons. Meanwhile the cow, taking advantage of the +tumult, ran off, to the great discomfiture of the captain, who seemed to +consider her as his own especial prize, since she had been discovered by +Jack. In defiance of the storm, he pulled his cap tight over his brows, +jerked a huge buffalo pistol from his holster, and set out at full speed +after her. This was the last we saw of them for some time, the mist and +rain making an impenetrable veil; but at length we heard the captain’s +shout, and saw him looming through the tempest, the picture of a +Hibernian cavalier, with his cocked pistol held aloft for safety’s sake, +and a countenance of anxiety and excitement. The cow trotted before him, +but exhibited evident signs of an intention to run off again, and the +captain was roaring to us to head her. But the rain had got in behind +our coat collars, and was traveling over our necks in numerous little +streamlets, and being afraid to move our heads, for fear of admitting +more, we sat stiff and immovable, looking at the captain askance, and +laughing at his frantic movements. At last the cow made a sudden plunge +and ran off; the captain grasped his pistol firmly, spurred his horse, +and galloped after, with evident designs of mischief. In a moment we +heard the faint report, deadened by the rain, and then the conqueror +and his victim reappeared, the latter shot through the body, and quite +helpless. Not long after the storm moderated and we advanced again. The +cow walked painfully along under the charge of Jack, to whom the captain +had committed her, while he himself rode forward in his old capacity +of vedette. We were approaching a long line of trees, that followed +a stream stretching across our path, far in front, when we beheld the +vedette galloping toward us, apparently much excited, but with a broad +grin on his face. + +“Let that cow drop behind!” he shouted to us; “here’s her owners!” And +in fact, as we approached the line of trees, a large white object, like +a tent, was visible behind them. On approaching, however, we found, +instead of the expected Mormon camp, nothing but the lonely prairie, and +a large white rock standing by the path. The cow therefore resumed her +place in our procession. She walked on until we encamped, when R. firmly +approaching with his enormous English double-barreled rifle, calmly and +deliberately took aim at her heart, and discharged into it first one +bullet and then the other. She was then butchered on the most approved +principles of woodcraft, and furnished a very welcome item to our +somewhat limited bill of fare. + +In a day or two more we reached the river called the “Big Blue.” By +titles equally elegant, almost all the streams of this region are +designated. We had struggled through ditches and little brooks all that +morning; but on traversing the dense woods that lined the banks of the +Blue, we found more formidable difficulties awaited us, for the stream, +swollen by the rains, was wide, deep, and rapid. + +No sooner were we on the spot than R. had flung off his clothes, and was +swimming across, or splashing through the shallows, with the end of a +rope between his teeth. We all looked on in admiration, wondering what +might be the design of this energetic preparation; but soon we heard him +shouting: “Give that rope a turn round that stump! You, Sorel: do you +hear? Look sharp now, Boisverd! Come over to this side, some of you, and +help me!” The men to whom these orders were directed paid not the +least attention to them, though they were poured out without pause +or intermission. Henry Chatillon directed the work, and it proceeded +quietly and rapidly. R.’s sharp brattling voice might have been +heard incessantly; and he was leaping about with the utmost activity, +multiplying himself, after the manner of great commanders, as if his +universal presence and supervision were of the last necessity. His +commands were rather amusingly inconsistent; for when he saw that the +men would not do as he told them, he wisely accommodated himself +to circumstances, and with the utmost vehemence ordered them to do +precisely that which they were at the time engaged upon, no doubt +recollecting the story of Mahomet and the refractory mountain. +Shaw smiled significantly; R. observed it, and, approaching with a +countenance of lofty indignation, began to vapor a little, but was +instantly reduced to silence. + +The raft was at length complete. We piled our goods upon it, with +the exception of our guns, which each man chose to retain in his own +keeping. Sorel, Boisverd, Wright and Delorier took their stations at +the four corners, to hold it together, and swim across with it; and in +a moment more, all our earthly possessions were floating on the turbid +waters of the Big Blue. We sat on the bank, anxiously watching the +result, until we saw the raft safe landed in a little cove far down on +the opposite bank. The empty wagons were easily passed across; and then +each man mounting a horse, we rode through the stream, the stray animals +following of their own accord. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT + + +We were now arrived at the close of our solitary journeyings along the +St. Joseph’s trail. On the evening of the 23d of May we encamped near +its junction with the old legitimate trail of the Oregon emigrants. We +had ridden long that afternoon, trying in vain to find wood and water, +until at length we saw the sunset sky reflected from a pool encircled by +bushes and a rock or two. The water lay in the bottom of a hollow, the +smooth prairie gracefully rising in oceanlike swells on every side. +We pitched our tents by it; not however before the keen eye of Henry +Chatillon had discerned some unusual object upon the faintly-defined +outline of the distant swell. But in the moist, hazy atmosphere of the +evening, nothing could be clearly distinguished. As we lay around the +fire after supper, a low and distant sound, strange enough amid the +loneliness of the prairie, reached our ears--peals of laughter, and the +faint voices of men and women. For eight days we had not encountered a +human being, and this singular warning of their vicinity had an effect +extremely wild and impressive. + +About dark a sallow-faced fellow descended the hill on horseback, and +splashing through the pool rode up to the tents. He was enveloped in a +huge cloak, and his broad felt hat was weeping about his ears with +the drizzling moisture of the evening. Another followed, a stout, +square-built, intelligent-looking man, who announced himself as leader +of an emigrant party encamped a mile in advance of us. About twenty +wagons, he said, were with him; the rest of his party were on the +other side of the Big Blue, waiting for a woman who was in the pains of +child-birth, and quarreling meanwhile among themselves. + +These were the first emigrants that we had overtaken, although we had +found abundant and melancholy traces of their progress throughout the +whole course of the journey. Sometimes we passed the grave of one who +had sickened and died on the way. The earth was usually torn up, and +covered thickly with wolf-tracks. Some had escaped this violation. One +morning a piece of plank, standing upright on the summit of a grassy +hill, attracted our notice, and riding up to it we found the following +words very roughly traced upon it, apparently by a red-hot piece of +iron: + + +MARY ELLIS + +DIED MAY 7TH, 1845. + +Aged two months. + + +Such tokens were of common occurrence, nothing could speak more for the +hardihood, or rather infatuation, of the adventurers, or the sufferings +that await them upon the journey. + +We were late in breaking up our camp on the following morning, and +scarcely had we ridden a mile when we saw, far in advance of us, drawn +against the horizon, a line of objects stretching at regular intervals +along the level edge of the prairie. An intervening swell soon hid them +from sight, until, ascending it a quarter of an hour after, we saw close +before us the emigrant caravan, with its heavy white wagons creeping on +in their slow procession, and a large drove of cattle following behind. +Half a dozen yellow-visaged Missourians, mounted on horseback, were +cursing and shouting among them; their lank angular proportions +enveloped in brown homespun, evidently cut and adjusted by the hands +of a domestic female tailor. As we approached, they greeted us with +the polished salutation: “How are ye, boys? Are ye for Oregon or +California?” + +As we pushed rapidly past the wagons, children’s faces were thrust +out from the white coverings to look at us; while the care-worn, +thin-featured matron, or the buxom girl, seated in front, suspended +the knitting on which most of them were engaged to stare at us with +wondering curiosity. By the side of each wagon stalked the proprietor, +urging on his patient oxen, who shouldered heavily along, inch by +inch, on their interminable journey. It was easy to see that fear and +dissension prevailed among them; some of the men--but these, with one +exception, were bachelors--looked wistfully upon us as we rode lightly +and swiftly past, and then impatiently at their own lumbering wagons +and heavy-gaited oxen. Others were unwilling to advance at all until +the party they had left behind should have rejoined them. Many were +murmuring against the leader they had chosen, and wished to depose him; +and this discontent was fermented by some ambitious spirits, who had +hopes of succeeding in his place. The women were divided between regrets +for the homes they had left and apprehension of the deserts and the +savages before them. + +We soon left them far behind, and fondly hoped that we had taken a final +leave; but unluckily our companions’ wagon stuck so long in a deep muddy +ditch that, before it was extricated, the van of the emigrant caravan +appeared again, descending a ridge close at hand. Wagon after wagon +plunged through the mud; and as it was nearly noon, and the place +promised shade and water, we saw with much gratification that they were +resolved to encamp. Soon the wagons were wheeled into a circle; the +cattle were grazing over the meadow, and the men with sour, sullen +faces, were looking about for wood and water. They seemed to meet with +but indifferent success. As we left the ground, I saw a tall slouching +fellow with the nasal accent of “down east,” contemplating the contents +of his tin cup, which he had just filled with water. + +“Look here, you,” he said; “it’s chock full of animals!” + +The cup, as he held it out, exhibited in fact an extraordinary variety +and profusion of animal and vegetable life. + +Riding up the little hill and looking back on the meadow, we could +easily see that all was not right in the camp of the emigrants. The +men were crowded together, and an angry discussion seemed to be going +forward. R. was missing from his wonted place in the line, and the +captain told us that he had remained behind to get his horse shod by a +blacksmith who was attached to the emigrant party. Something whispered +in our ears that mischief was on foot; we kept on, however, and coming +soon to a stream of tolerable water, we stopped to rest and dine. Still +the absentee lingered behind. At last, at the distance of a mile, he +and his horse suddenly appeared, sharply defined against the sky on the +summit of a hill; and close behind, a huge white object rose slowly into +view. + +“What is that blockhead bringing with him now?” + +A moment dispelled the mystery. Slowly and solemnly one behind the +other, four long trains of oxen and four emigrant wagons rolled over the +crest of the declivity and gravely descended, while R. rode in state +in the van. It seems that, during the process of shoeing the horse, +the smothered dissensions among the emigrants suddenly broke into open +rupture. Some insisted on pushing forward, some on remaining where they +were, and some on going back. Kearsley, their captain, threw up his +command in disgust. “And now, boys,” said he, “if any of you are for +going ahead, just you come along with me.” + +Four wagons, with ten men, one woman, and one small child, made up +the force of the “go-ahead” faction, and R., with his usual proclivity +toward mischief, invited them to join our party. Fear of the +Indians--for I can conceive of no other motive--must have induced him +to court so burdensome an alliance. As may well be conceived, these +repeated instances of high-handed dealing sufficiently exasperated +us. In this case, indeed, the men who joined us were all that could be +desired; rude indeed in manner, but frank, manly, and intelligent. +To tell them we could not travel with them was of course out of the +question. I merely reminded Kearsley that if his oxen could not keep up +with our mules he must expect to be left behind, as we could not consent +to be further delayed on the journey; but he immediately replied, that +his oxen “SHOULD keep up; and if they couldn’t, why he allowed that he’d +find out how to make ‘em!” Having availed myself of what satisfaction +could be derived from giving R. to understand my opinion of his conduct, +I returned to our side of the camp. + +On the next day, as it chanced, our English companions broke the +axle-tree of their wagon, and down came the whole cumbrous machine +lumbering into the bed of a brook! Here was a day’s work cut out for us. +Meanwhile, our emigrant associates kept on their way, and so vigorously +did they urge forward their powerful oxen that, with the broken +axle-tree and other calamities, it was full a week before we overtook +them; when at length we discovered them, one afternoon, crawling quietly +along the sandy brink of the Platte. But meanwhile various incidents +occurred to ourselves. + +It was probable that at this stage of our journey the Pawnees would +attempt to rob us. We began therefore to stand guard in turn, dividing +the night into three watches, and appointing two men for each. Delorier +and I held guard together. We did not march with military precision to +and fro before the tents; our discipline was by no means so stringent +and rigid. We wrapped ourselves in our blankets, and sat down by the +fire; and Delorier, combining his culinary functions with his duties as +sentinel, employed himself in boiling the head of an antelope for our +morning’s repast. Yet we were models of vigilance in comparison with +some of the party; for the ordinary practice of the guard was to +establish himself in the most comfortable posture he could; lay his +rifle on the ground, and enveloping his nose in the blanket, meditate +on his mistress, or whatever subject best pleased him. This is all well +enough when among Indians who do not habitually proceed further in their +hostility than robbing travelers of their horses and mules, though, +indeed, a Pawnee’s forebearance is not always to be trusted; but in +certain regions farther to the west, the guard must beware how he +exposes his person to the light of the fire, lest perchance some +keen-eyed skulking marksman should let fly a bullet or an arrow from +amid the darkness. + +Among various tales that circulated around our camp fire was a rather +curious one, told by Boisverd, and not inappropriate here. Boisverd was +trapping with several companions on the skirts of the Blackfoot country. +The man on guard, well knowing that it behooved him to put forth his +utmost precaution, kept aloof from the firelight, and sat watching +intently on all sides. At length he was aware of a dark, crouching +figure, stealing noiselessly into the circle of the light. He hastily +cocked his rifle, but the sharp click of the lock caught the ear of +Blackfoot, whose senses were all on the alert. Raising his arrow, +already fitted to the string, he shot in the direction of the sound. So +sure was his aim that he drove it through the throat of the unfortunate +guard, and then, with a loud yell, bounded from the camp. + +As I looked at the partner of my watch, puffing and blowing over his +fire, it occurred to me that he might not prove the most efficient +auxiliary in time of trouble. + +“Delorier,” said I, “would you run away if the Pawnees should fire at +us?” + +“Ah! oui, oui, monsieur!” he replied very decisively. + +I did not doubt the fact, but was a little surprised at the frankness of +the confession. + +At this instant a most whimsical variety of voices--barks, howls, yelps, +and whines--all mingled as it were together, sounded from the prairie, +not far off, as if a whole conclave of wolves of every age and sex were +assembled there. Delorier looked up from his work with a laugh, and +began to imitate this curious medley of sounds with a most ludicrous +accuracy. At this they were repeated with redoubled emphasis, the +musician being apparently indignant at the successful efforts of a +rival. They all proceeded from the throat of one little wolf, not +larger than a spaniel, seated by himself at some distance. He was of +the species called the prairie wolf; a grim-visaged, but harmless little +brute, whose worst propensity is creeping among horses and gnawing the +ropes of raw hide by which they are picketed around the camp. But +other beasts roam the prairies, far more formidable in aspect and in +character. These are the large white and gray wolves, whose deep howl we +heard at intervals from far and near. + +At last I fell into a doze, and, awakening from it, found Delorier +fast asleep. Scandalized by this breach of discipline, I was about to +stimulate his vigilance by stirring him with the stock of my rifle; but +compassion prevailing, I determined to let him sleep awhile, and then to +arouse him, and administer a suitable reproof for such a forgetfulness +of duty. Now and then I walked the rounds among the silent horses, to +see that all was right. The night was chill, damp, and dark, the dank +grass bending under the icy dewdrops. At the distance of a rod or two +the tents were invisible, and nothing could be seen but the obscure +figures of the horses, deeply breathing, and restlessly starting as they +slept, or still slowly champing the grass. Far off, beyond the black +outline of the prairie, there was a ruddy light, gradually increasing, +like the glow of a conflagration; until at length the broad disk of the +moon, blood-red, and vastly magnified by the vapors, rose slowly upon +the darkness, flecked by one or two little clouds, and as the light +poured over the gloomy plain, a fierce and stern howl, close at hand, +seemed to greet it as an unwelcome intruder. There was something +impressive and awful in the place and the hour; for I and the beasts +were all that had consciousness for many a league around. + +Some days elapsed, and brought us near the Platte. Two men on horseback +approached us one morning, and we watched them with the curiosity and +interest that, upon the solitude of the plains, such an encounter always +excites. They were evidently whites, from their mode of riding, though, +contrary to the usage of that region, neither of them carried a rifle. + +“Fools!” remarked Henry Chatillon, “to ride that way on the prairie; +Pawnee find them--then they catch it!” + +Pawnee HAD found them, and they had come very near “catching it”; +indeed, nothing saved them from trouble but the approach of our party. +Shaw and I knew one of them; a man named Turner, whom we had seen at +Westport. He and his companion belonged to an emigrant party encamped +a few miles in advance, and had returned to look for some stray oxen, +leaving their rifles, with characteristic rashness or ignorance behind +them. Their neglect had nearly cost them dear; for just before we +came up, half a dozen Indians approached, and seeing them apparently +defenseless, one of the rascals seized the bridle of Turner’s fine +horse, and ordered him to dismount. Turner was wholly unarmed; but the +other jerked a little revolving pistol out of his pocket, at which +the Pawnee recoiled; and just then some of our men appearing in the +distance, the whole party whipped their rugged little horses, and made +off. In no way daunted, Turner foolishly persisted in going forward. + +Long after leaving him, and late this afternoon, in the midst of a +gloomy and barren prairie, we came suddenly upon the great Pawnee trail, +leading from their villages on the Platte to their war and hunting +grounds to the southward. Here every summer pass the motley concourse; +thousands of savages, men, women, and children, horses and mules, laden +with their weapons and implements, and an innumerable multitude of +unruly wolfish dogs, who have not acquired the civilized accomplishment +of barking, but howl like their wild cousins of the prairie. + +The permanent winter villages of the Pawnees stand on the lower Platte, +but throughout the summer the greater part of the inhabitants are +wandering over the plains, a treacherous cowardly banditti, who by a +thousand acts of pillage and murder have deserved summary chastisement +at the hands of government. Last year a Dakota warrior performed a +signal exploit at one of these villages. He approached it alone in the +middle of a dark night, and clambering up the outside of one of the +lodges which are in the form of a half-sphere, he looked in at the round +hole made at the top for the escape of smoke. The dusky light from the +smoldering embers showed him the forms of the sleeping inmates; and +dropping lightly through the opening, he unsheathed his knife, and +stirring the fire coolly selected his victims. One by one he stabbed and +scalped them, when a child suddenly awoke and screamed. He rushed from +the lodge, yelled a Sioux war-cry, shouted his name in triumph and +defiance, and in a moment had darted out upon the dark prairie, leaving +the whole village behind him in a tumult, with the howling and baying of +dogs, the screams of women and the yells of the enraged warriors. + +Our friend Kearsley, as we learned on rejoining him, signalized himself +by a less bloody achievement. He and his men were good woodsmen, and +well skilled in the use of the rifle, but found themselves wholly out of +their element on the prairie. None of them had ever seen a buffalo and +they had very vague conceptions of his nature and appearance. On the +day after they reached the Platte, looking toward a distant swell, they +beheld a multitude of little black specks in motion upon its surface. + +“Take your rifles, boys,” said Kearslcy, “and we’ll have fresh meat for +supper.” This inducement was quite sufficient. The ten men left their +wagons and set out in hot haste, some on horseback and some on foot, in +pursuit of the supposed buffalo. Meanwhile a high grassy ridge shut the +game from view; but mounting it after half an hour’s running and riding, +they found themselves suddenly confronted by about thirty mounted +Pawnees! The amazement and consternation were mutual. Having nothing but +their bows and arrows, the Indians thought their hour was come, and +the fate that they were no doubt conscious of richly deserving about +to overtake them. So they began, one and all, to shout forth the most +cordial salutations of friendship, running up with extreme earnestness +to shake hands with the Missourians, who were as much rejoiced as they +were to escape the expected conflict. + +A low undulating line of sand-hills bounded the horizon before us. That +day we rode ten consecutive hours, and it was dusk before we entered the +hollows and gorges of these gloomy little hills. At length we gained the +summit, and the long expected valley of the Platte lay before us. We +all drew rein, and, gathering in a knot on the crest of the hill, sat +joyfully looking down upon the prospect. It was right welcome; strange +too, and striking to the imagination, and yet it had not one picturesque +or beautiful feature; nor had it any of the features of grandeur, other +than its vast extent, its solitude, and its wilderness. For league after +league a plain as level as a frozen lake was outspread beneath us; +here and there the Platte, divided into a dozen threadlike sluices, was +traversing it, and an occasional clump of wood, rising in the midst like +a shadowy island, relieved the monotony of the waste. No living thing +was moving throughout the vast landscape, except the lizards that darted +over the sand and through the rank grass and prickly-pear just at our +feet. And yet stern and wild associations gave a singular interest to +the view; for here each man lives by the strength of his arm and the +valor of his heart. Here society is reduced to its original elements, +the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck rudely to pieces, +and men find themselves suddenly brought back to the wants and resources +of their original natures. + +We had passed the more toilsome and monotonous part of the journey; but +four hundred miles still intervened between us and Fort Laramie; and to +reach that point cost us the travel of three additional weeks. During +the whole of this time we were passing up the center of a long narrow +sandy plain, reaching like an outstretched belt nearly to the Rocky +Mountains. Two lines of sand-hills, broken often into the wildest and +most fantastic forms, flanked the valley at the distance of a mile or +two on the right and left; while beyond them lay a barren, trackless +waste--The Great American Desert--extending for hundreds of miles to the +Arkansas on the one side, and the Missouri on the other. Before us and +behind us, the level monotony of the plain was unbroken as far as the +eye could reach. Sometimes it glared in the sun, an expanse of hot, +bare sand; sometimes it was veiled by long coarse grass. Huge skulls +and whitening bones of buffalo were scattered everywhere; the ground +was tracked by myriads of them, and often covered with the circular +indentations where the bulls had wallowed in the hot weather. From every +gorge and ravine, opening from the hills, descended deep, well-worn +paths, where the buffalo issue twice a day in regular procession down +to drink in the Platte. The river itself runs through the midst, a thin +sheet of rapid, turbid water, half a mile wide, and scarce two feet +deep. Its low banks for the most part without a bush or a tree, are of +loose sand, with which the stream is so charged that it grates on +the teeth in drinking. The naked landscape is, of itself, dreary and +monotonous enough, and yet the wild beasts and wild men that frequent +the valley of the Platte make it a scene of interest and excitement to +the traveler. Of those who have journeyed there, scarce one, perhaps, +fails to look back with fond regret to his horse and his rifle. + +Early in the morning after we reached the Platte, a long procession of +squalid savages approached our camp. Each was on foot, leading his horse +by a rope of bull-hide. His attire consisted merely of a scanty cincture +and an old buffalo robe, tattered and begrimed by use, which hung +over his shoulders. His head was close shaven, except a ridge of hair +reaching over the crown from the center of the forehead, very much like +the long bristles on the back of a hyena, and he carried his bow and +arrows in his hand, while his meager little horse was laden with dried +buffalo meat, the produce of his hunting. Such were the first specimens +that we met--and very indifferent ones they were--of the genuine savages +of the prairie. + +They were the Pawnees whom Kearsley had encountered the day before, and +belonged to a large hunting party known to be ranging the prairie in the +vicinity. They strode rapidly past, within a furlong of our tents, +not pausing or looking toward us, after the manner of Indians when +meditating mischief or conscious of ill-desert. I went out and met them; +and had an amicable conference with the chief, presenting him with +half a pound of tobacco, at which unmerited bounty he expressed much +gratification. These fellows, or some of their companions had committed +a dastardly outrage upon an emigrant party in advance of us. Two men, +out on horseback at a distance, were seized by them, but lashing their +horses, they broke loose and fled. At this the Pawnees raised the yell +and shot at them, transfixing the hindermost through the back with +several arrows, while his companion galloped away and brought in the +news to his party. The panic-stricken emigrants remained for several +days in camp, not daring even to send out in quest of the dead body. + +The reader will recollect Turner, the man whose narrow escape was +mentioned not long since. We heard that the men, whom the entreaties +of his wife induced to go in search of him, found him leisurely driving +along his recovered oxen, and whistling in utter contempt of the Pawnee +nation. His party was encamped within two miles of us; but we passed +them that morning, while the men were driving in the oxen, and the women +packing their domestic utensils and their numerous offspring in the +spacious patriarchal wagons. As we looked back we saw their caravan +dragging its slow length along the plain; wearily toiling on its way, to +found new empires in the West. + +Our New England climate is mild and equable compared with that of the +Platte. This very morning, for instance, was close and sultry, the sun +rising with a faint oppressive heat; when suddenly darkness gathered in +the west, and a furious blast of sleet and hail drove full in our faces, +icy cold, and urged with such demoniac vehemence that it felt like a +storm of needles. It was curious to see the horses; they faced about +in extreme displeasure, holding their tails like whipped dogs, and +shivering as the angry gusts, howling louder than a concert of wolves, +swept over us. Wright’s long train of mules came sweeping round before +the storm like a flight of brown snowbirds driven by a winter tempest. +Thus we all remained stationary for some minutes, crouching close to our +horses’ necks, much too surly to speak, though once the captain looked +up from between the collars of his coat, his face blood-red, and the +muscles of his mouth contracted by the cold into a most ludicrous grin +of agony. He grumbled something that sounded like a curse, directed +as we believed, against the unhappy hour when he had first thought of +leaving home. The thing was too good to last long; and the instant the +puffs of wind subsided we erected our tents, and remained in camp for +the rest of a gloomy and lowering day. The emigrants also encamped near +at hand. We, being first on the ground, had appropriated all the wood +within reach; so that our fire alone blazed cheerfully. Around it soon +gathered a group of uncouth figures, shivering in the drizzling rain. +Conspicuous among them were two or three of the half-savage men who +spend their reckless lives in trapping among the Rocky Mountains, or +in trading for the Fur Company in the Indian villages. They were all +of Canadian extraction; their hard, weather-beaten faces and bushy +mustaches looked out from beneath the hoods of their white capotes with +a bad and brutish expression, as if their owner might be the willing +agent of any villainy. And such in fact is the character of many of +these men. + +On the day following we overtook Kearsley’s wagons, and thenceforward, +for a week or two, we were fellow-travelers. One good effect, at least, +resulted from the alliance; it materially diminished the serious fatigue +of standing guard; for the party being now more numerous, there were +longer intervals between each man’s turns of duty. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE BUFFALO + + +Four days on the Platte, and yet no buffalo! Last year’s signs of them +were provokingly abundant; and wood being extremely scarce, we found an +admirable substitute in bois de vache, which burns exactly like peat, +producing no unpleasant effects. The wagons one morning had left the +camp; Shaw and I were already on horseback, but Henry Chatillon still +sat cross-legged by the dead embers of the fire, playing pensively with +the lock of his rifle, while his sturdy Wyandotte pony stood quietly +behind him, looking over his head. At last he got up, patted the neck of +the pony (whom, from an exaggerated appreciation of his merits, he had +christened “Five Hundred Dollar”), and then mounted with a melancholy +air. + +“What is it, Henry?” + +“Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before; but I see away yonder +over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black--all black with +buffalo!” + +In the afternoon he and I left the party in search of an antelope; until +at the distance of a mile or two on the right, the tall white wagons +and the little black specks of horsemen were just visible, so slowly +advancing that they seemed motionless; and far on the left rose the +broken line of scorched, desolate sand-hills. The vast plain waved with +tall rank grass that swept our horses’ bellies; it swayed to and fro in +billows with the light breeze, and far and near antelope and wolves were +moving through it, the hairy backs of the latter alternately appearing +and disappearing as they bounded awkwardly along; while the antelope, +with the simple curiosity peculiar to them, would often approach as +closely, their little horns and white throats just visible above the +grass tops, as they gazed eagerly at us with their round black eyes. + +I dismounted, and amused myself with firing at the wolves. Henry +attentively scrutinized the surrounding landscape; at length he gave a +shout, and called on me to mount again, pointing in the direction of the +sand-hills. A mile and a half from us, two minute black specks +slowly traversed the face of one of the bare glaring declivities, and +disappeared behind the summit. “Let us go!” cried Henry, belaboring the +sides of Five Hundred Dollar; and I following in his wake, we galloped +rapidly through the rank grass toward the base of the hills. + +From one of their openings descended a deep ravine, widening as it +issued on the prairie. We entered it, and galloping up, in a moment were +surrounded by the bleak sand-hills. Half of their steep sides were bare; +the rest were scantily clothed with clumps of grass, and various uncouth +plants, conspicuous among which appeared the reptile-like prickly-pear. +They were gashed with numberless ravines; and as the sky had suddenly +darkened, and a cold gusty wind arisen, the strange shrubs and the +dreary hills looked doubly wild and desolate. But Henry’s face was all +eagerness. He tore off a little hair from the piece of buffalo robe +under his saddle, and threw it up, to show the course of the wind. It +blew directly before us. The game were therefore to windward, and it was +necessary to make our best speed to get around them. + +We scrambled from this ravine, and galloping away through the hollows, +soon found another, winding like a snake among the hills, and so deep +that it completely concealed us. We rode up the bottom of it, glancing +through the shrubbery at its edge, till Henry abruptly jerked his rein, +and slid out of his saddle. Full a quarter of a mile distant, on the +outline of the farthest hill, a long procession of buffalo were walking, +in Indian file, with the utmost gravity and deliberation; then more +appeared, clambering from a hollow not far off, and ascending, one +behind the other, the grassy slope of another hill; then a shaggy head +and a pair of short broken horns appeared issuing out of a ravine close +at hand, and with a slow, stately step, one by one, the enormous brutes +came into view, taking their way across the valley, wholly unconscious +of an enemy. In a moment Henry was worming his way, lying flat on +the ground, through grass and prickly-pears, toward his unsuspecting +victims. He had with him both my rifle and his own. He was soon out of +sight, and still the buffalo kept issuing into the valley. For a long +time all was silent. I sat holding his horse, and wondering what he was +about, when suddenly, in rapid succession, came the sharp reports of the +two rifles, and the whole line of buffalo, quickening their pace into +a clumsy trot, gradually disappeared over the ridge of the hill. Henry +rose to his feet, and stood looking after them. + +“You have missed them,” said I. + +“Yes,” said Henry; “let us go.” He descended into the ravine, loaded the +rifles, and mounted his horse. + +We rode up the hill after the buffalo. The herd was out of sight when +we reached the top, but lying on the grass not far off, was one quite +lifeless, and another violently struggling in the death agony. + +“You see I miss him!” remarked Henry. He had fired from a distance of +more than a hundred and fifty yards, and both balls had passed through +the lungs--the true mark in shooting buffalo. + +The darkness increased, and a driving storm came on. Tying our horses +to the horns of the victims, Henry began the bloody work of dissection, +slashing away with the science of a connoisseur, while I vainly +endeavored to imitate him. Old Hendrick recoiled with horror and +indignation when I endeavored to tie the meat to the strings of raw +hide, always carried for this purpose, dangling at the back of the +saddle. After some difficulty we overcame his scruples; and heavily +burdened with the more eligible portions of the buffalo, we set out on +our return. Scarcely had we emerged from the labyrinth of gorges and +ravines, and issued upon the open prairie, when the pricking sleet came +driving, gust upon gust, directly in our faces. It was strangely +dark, though wanting still an hour of sunset. The freezing storm soon +penetrated to the skin, but the uneasy trot of our heavy-gaited horses +kept us warm enough, as we forced them unwillingly in the teeth of the +sleet and rain, by the powerful suasion of our Indian whips. The prairie +in this place was hard and level. A flourishing colony of prairie dogs +had burrowed into it in every direction, and the little mounds of +fresh earth around their holes were about as numerous as the hills in +a cornfield; but not a yelp was to be heard; not the nose of a single +citizen was visible; all had retired to the depths of their burrows, +and we envied them their dry and comfortable habitations. An hour’s +hard riding showed us our tent dimly looming through the storm, one +side puffed out by the force of the wind, and the other collapsed in +proportion, while the disconsolate horses stood shivering close around, +and the wind kept up a dismal whistling in the boughs of three old +half-dead trees above. Shaw, like a patriarch, sat on his saddle in the +entrance, with a pipe in his mouth, and his arms folded, contemplating, +with cool satisfaction, the piles of meat that we flung on the ground +before him. A dark and dreary night succeeded; but the sun rose with +heat so sultry and languid that the captain excused himself on that +account from waylaying an old buffalo bull, who with stupid gravity was +walking over the prairie to drink at the river. So much for the climate +of the Platte! + +But it was not the weather alone that had produced this sudden abatement +of the sportsmanlike zeal which the captain had always professed. He had +been out on the afternoon before, together with several members of his +party; but their hunting was attended with no other result than the +loss of one of their best horses, severely injured by Sorel, in vainly +chasing a wounded bull. The captain, whose ideas of hard riding were all +derived from transatlantic sources, expressed the utmost amazement at +the feats of Sorel, who went leaping ravines, and dashing at full speed +up and down the sides of precipitous hills, lashing his horse with +the recklessness of a Rocky Mountain rider. Unfortunately for the poor +animal he was the property of R., against whom Sorel entertained an +unbounded aversion. The captain himself, it seemed, had also attempted +to “run” a buffalo, but though a good and practiced horseman, he had +soon given over the attempt, being astonished and utterly disgusted at +the nature of the ground he was required to ride over. + +Nothing unusual occurred on that day; but on the following morning Henry +Chatillon, looking over the oceanlike expanse, saw near the foot of the +distant hills something that looked like a band of buffalo. He was not +sure, he said, but at all events, if they were buffalo, there was a fine +chance for a race. Shaw and I at once determined to try the speed of our +horses. + +“Come, captain; we’ll see which can ride hardest, a Yankee or an +Irishman.” + +But the captain maintained a grave and austere countenance. He mounted +his led horse, however, though very slowly; and we set out at a trot. +The game appeared about three miles distant. As we proceeded the captain +made various remarks of doubt and indecision; and at length declared he +would have nothing to do with such a breakneck business; protesting that +he had ridden plenty of steeple-chases in his day, but he never knew +what riding was till he found himself behind a band of buffalo day +before yesterday. “I am convinced,” said the captain, “that, ‘running’ +is out of the question.* Take my advice now and don’t attempt it. It’s +dangerous, and of no use at all.” + + *The method of hunting called “running” consists in + attacking the buffalo on horseback and shooting him with + bullets or arrows when at full-speed. In “approaching,” the + hunter conceals himself and crawls on the ground toward the + game, or lies in wait to kill them. + +“Then why did you come out with us? What do you mean to do?” + +“I shall ‘approach,’” replied the captain. + +“You don’t mean to ‘approach’ with your pistols, do you? We have all of +us left our rifles in the wagons.” + +The captain seemed staggered at the suggestion. In his characteristic +indecision, at setting out, pistols, rifles, “running” and “approaching” + were mingled in an inextricable medley in his brain. He trotted on in +silence between us for a while; but at length he dropped behind and +slowly walked his horse back to rejoin the party. Shaw and I kept on; +when lo! as we advanced, the band of buffalo were transformed into +certain clumps of tall bushes, dotting the prairie for a considerable +distance. At this ludicrous termination of our chase, we followed the +example of our late ally, and turned back toward the party. We +were skirting the brink of a deep ravine, when we saw Henry and the +broad-chested pony coming toward us at a gallop. + +“Here’s old Papin and Frederic, down from Fort Laramie!” shouted Henry, +long before he came up. We had for some days expected this encounter. +Papin was the bourgeois of Fort Laramie. He had come down the river +with the buffalo robes and the beaver, the produce of the last winter’s +trading. I had among our baggage a letter which I wished to commit to +their hands; so requesting Henry to detain the boats if he could until +my return, I set out after the wagons. They were about four miles in +advance. In half an hour I overtook them, got the letter, trotted back +upon the trail, and looking carefully, as I rode, saw a patch of broken, +storm-blasted trees, and moving near them some little black specks like +men and horses. Arriving at the place, I found a strange assembly. The +boats, eleven in number, deep-laden with the skins, hugged close to +the shore, to escape being borne down by the swift current. The rowers, +swarthy ignoble Mexicans, turned their brutish faces upward to look, as +I reached the bank. Papin sat in the middle of one of the boats upon the +canvas covering that protected the robes. He was a stout, robust fellow, +with a little gray eye, that had a peculiarly sly twinkle. “Frederic” + also stretched his tall rawboned proportions close by the bourgeois, +and “mountain-men” completed the group; some lounging in the boats, some +strolling on shore; some attired in gayly painted buffalo robes, like +Indian dandies; some with hair saturated with red paint, and beplastered +with glue to their temples; and one bedaubed with vermilion upon his +forehead and each cheek. They were a mongrel race; yet the French blood +seemed to predominate; in a few, indeed, might be seen the black snaky +eye of the Indian half-breed, and one and all, they seemed to aim at +assimilating themselves to their savage associates. + +I shook hands with the bourgeois, and delivered the letter; then the +boats swung round into the stream and floated away. They had reason +for haste, for already the voyage from Fort Laramie had occupied a full +month, and the river was growing daily more shallow. Fifty times a +day the boats had been aground, indeed; those who navigate the Platte +invariably spend half their time upon sand-bars. Two of these boats, +the property of private traders, afterward separating from the rest, +got hopelessly involved in the shallows, not very far from the Pawnee +villages, and were soon surrounded by a swarm of the inhabitants. They +carried off everything that they considered valuable, including most of +the robes; and amused themselves by tying up the men left on guard and +soundly whipping them with sticks. + +We encamped that night upon the bank of the river. Among the emigrants +there was an overgrown boy, some eighteen years old, with a head as +round and about as large as a pumpkin, and fever-and-ague fits had dyed +his face of a corresponding color. He wore an old white hat, tied under +his chin with a handkerchief; his body was short and stout, but his +legs of disproportioned and appalling length. I observed him at sunset, +breasting the hill with gigantic strides, and standing against the sky +on the summit, like a colossal pair of tongs. In a moment after we heard +him screaming frantically behind the ridge, and nothing doubting that +he was in the clutches of Indians or grizzly bears, some of the party +caught up their rifles and ran to the rescue. His outcries, however, +proved but an ebullition of joyous excitement; he had chased two little +wolf pups to their burrow, and he was on his knees, grubbing away like a +dog at the mouth of the hole, to get at them. + +Before morning he caused more serious disquiet in the camp. It was his +turn to hold the middle guard; but no sooner was he called up, than he +coolly arranged a pair of saddle-bags under a wagon, laid his head upon +them, closed his eyes, opened his mouth and fell asleep. The guard on +our side of the camp, thinking it no part of his duty to look after the +cattle of the emigrants, contented himself with watching our own horses +and mules; the wolves, he said, were unusually noisy; but still no +mischief was anticipated until the sun rose, and not a hoof or horn was +in sight! The cattle were gone! While Tom was quietly slumbering, the +wolves had driven them away. + +Then we reaped the fruits of R.’s precious plan of traveling in company +with emigrants. To leave them in their distress was not to be thought +of, and we felt bound to wait until the cattle could be searched for, +and, if possible, recovered. But the reader may be curious to know +what punishment awaited the faithless Tom. By the wholesome law of +the prairie, he who falls asleep on guard is condemned to walk all +day leading his horse by the bridle, and we found much fault with +our companions for not enforcing such a sentence on the offender. +Nevertheless had he been of our party, I have no doubt he would in like +manner have escaped scot-free. But the emigrants went farther than mere +forebearance; they decreed that since Tom couldn’t stand guard without +falling asleep, he shouldn’t stand guard at all, and henceforward his +slumbers were unbroken. Establishing such a premium on drowsiness could +have no very beneficial effect upon the vigilance of our sentinels; for +it is far from agreeable, after riding from sunrise to sunset, to feel +your slumbers interrupted by the butt of a rifle nudging your side, and +a sleepy voice growling in your ear that you must get up, to shiver and +freeze for three weary hours at midnight. + +“Buffalo! buffalo!” It was but a grim old bull, roaming the prairie by +himself in misanthropic seclusion; but there might be more behind the +hills. Dreading the monotony and languor of the camp, Shaw and I saddled +our horses, buckled our holsters in their places, and set out with Henry +Chatillon in search of the game. Henry, not intending to take part in +the chase, but merely conducting us, carried his rifle with him, while +we left ours behind as incumbrances. We rode for some five or six miles, +and saw no living thing but wolves, snakes, and prairie dogs. + +“This won’t do at all,” said Shaw. + +“What won’t do?” + +“There’s no wood about here to make a litter for the wounded man; I have +an idea that one of us will need something of the sort before the day is +over.” + +There was some foundation for such an apprehension, for the ground was +none of the best for a race, and grew worse continually as we proceeded; +indeed it soon became desperately bad, consisting of abrupt hills and +deep hollows, cut by frequent ravines not easy to pass. At length, a +mile in advance, we saw a band of bulls. Some were scattered grazing +over a green declivity, while the rest were crowded more densely +together in the wide hollow below. Making a circuit to keep out of +sight, we rode toward them until we ascended a hill within a furlong of +them, beyond which nothing intervened that could possibly screen us from +their view. We dismounted behind the ridge just out of sight, drew our +saddle-girths, examined our pistols, and mounting again rode over +the hill, and descended at a canter toward them, bending close to +our horses’ necks. Instantly they took the alarm; those on the hill +descended; those below gathered into a mass, and the whole got in +motion, shouldering each other along at a clumsy gallop. We followed, +spurring our horses to full speed; and as the herd rushed, crowding and +trampling in terror through an opening in the hills, we were close at +their heels, half suffocated by the clouds of dust. But as we drew near, +their alarm and speed increased; our horses showed signs of the utmost +fear, bounding violently aside as we approached, and refusing to +enter among the herd. The buffalo now broke into several small bodies, +scampering over the hills in different directions, and I lost sight of +Shaw; neither of us knew where the other had gone. Old Pontiac ran like +a frantic elephant up hill and down hill, his ponderous hoofs striking +the prairie like sledge-hammers. He showed a curious mixture of +eagerness and terror, straining to overtake the panic-stricken herd, but +constantly recoiling in dismay as we drew near. The fugitives, indeed, +offered no very attractive spectacle, with their enormous size and +weight, their shaggy manes and the tattered remnants of their last +winter’s hair covering their backs in irregular shreds and patches, and +flying off in the wind as they ran. At length I urged my horse close +behind a bull, and after trying in vain, by blows and spurring, to +bring him alongside, I shot a bullet into the buffalo from this +disadvantageous position. At the report, Pontiac swerved so much that I +was again thrown a little behind the game. The bullet, entering too much +in the rear, failed to disable the bull, for a buffalo requires to be +shot at particular points, or he will certainly escape. The herd ran up +a hill, and I followed in pursuit. As Pontiac rushed headlong down on +the other side, I saw Shaw and Henry descending the hollow on the right, +at a leisurely gallop; and in front, the buffalo were just disappearing +behind the crest of the next hill, their short tails erect, and their +hoofs twinkling through a cloud of dust. + +At that moment, I heard Shaw and Henry shouting to me; but the muscles +of a stronger arm than mine could not have checked at once the furious +course of Pontiac, whose mouth was as insensible as leather. Added to +this, I rode him that morning with a common snaffle, having the day +before, for the benefit of my other horse, unbuckled from my bridle the +curb which I ordinarily used. A stronger and hardier brute never trod +the prairie; but the novel sight of the buffalo filled him with terror, +and when at full speed he was almost incontrollable. Gaining the top of +the ridge, I saw nothing of the buffalo; they had all vanished amid the +intricacies of the hills and hollows. Reloading my pistols, in the best +way I could, I galloped on until I saw them again scuttling along at +the base of the hill, their panic somewhat abated. Down went old Pontiac +among them, scattering them to the right and left, and then we had +another long chase. About a dozen bulls were before us, scouring over +the hills, rushing down the declivities with tremendous weight and +impetuosity, and then laboring with a weary gallop upward. Still +Pontiac, in spite of spurring and beating, would not close with them. +One bull at length fell a little behind the rest, and by dint of much +effort I urged my horse within six or eight yards of his side. His back +was darkened with sweat; he was panting heavily, while his tongue lolled +out a foot from his jaws. Gradually I came up abreast of him, urging +Pontiac with leg and rein nearer to his side, then suddenly he did what +buffalo in such circumstances will always do; he slackened his gallop, +and turning toward us, with an aspect of mingled rage and distress, +lowered his huge shaggy head for a charge. Pontiac with a snort, leaped +aside in terror, nearly throwing me to the ground, as I was wholly +unprepared for such an evolution. I raised my pistol in a passion to +strike him on the head, but thinking better of it fired the bullet after +the bull, who had resumed his flight, then drew rein and determined +to rejoin my companions. It was high time. The breath blew hard from +Pontiac’s nostrils, and the sweat rolled in big drops down his sides; +I myself felt as if drenched in warm water. Pledging myself (and I +redeemed the pledge) to take my revenge at a future opportunity, I +looked round for some indications to show me where I was, and what +course I ought to pursue; I might as well have looked for landmarks in +the midst of the ocean. How many miles I had run or in what direction, +I had no idea; and around me the prairie was rolling in steep swells +and pitches, without a single distinctive feature to guide me. I had +a little compass hung at my neck; and ignorant that the Platte at this +point diverged considerably from its easterly course, I thought that by +keeping to the northward I should certainly reach it. So I turned +and rode about two hours in that direction. The prairie changed as I +advanced, softening away into easier undulations, but nothing like the +Platte appeared, nor any sign of a human being; the same wild endless +expanse lay around me still; and to all appearance I was as far from my +object as ever. I began now to consider myself in danger of being +lost; and therefore, reining in my horse, summoned the scanty share of +woodcraft that I possessed (if that term he applicable upon the prairie) +to extricate me. Looking round, it occurred to me that the buffalo might +prove my best guides. I soon found one of the paths made by them in +their passage to the river; it ran nearly at right angles to my course; +but turning my horse’s head in the direction it indicated, his freer +gait and erected ears assured me that I was right. + +But in the meantime my ride had been by no means a solitary one. +The whole face of the country was dotted far and wide with countless +hundreds of buffalo. They trooped along in files and columns, bulls +cows, and calves, on the green faces of the declivities in front. They +scrambled away over the hills to the right and left; and far off, the +pale blue swells in the extreme distance were dotted with innumerable +specks. Sometimes I surprised shaggy old bulls grazing alone, or +sleeping behind the ridges I ascended. They would leap up at my +approach, stare stupidly at me through their tangled manes, and then +gallop heavily away. The antelope were very numerous; and as they are +always bold when in the neighborhood of buffalo, they would approach +quite near to look at me, gazing intently with their great round eyes, +then suddenly leap aside, and stretch lightly away over the prairie, as +swiftly as a racehorse. Squalid, ruffianlike wolves sneaked through the +hollows and sandy ravines. Several times I passed through villages of +prairie dogs, who sat, each at the mouth of his burrow, holding his paws +before him in a supplicating attitude, and yelping away most vehemently, +energetically whisking his little tail with every squeaking cry he +uttered. Prairie dogs are not fastidious in their choice of companions; +various long, checkered snakes were sunning themselves in the midst of +the village, and demure little gray owls, with a large white ring around +each eye, were perched side by side with the rightful inhabitants. The +prairie teemed with life. Again and again I looked toward the crowded +hillsides, and was sure I saw horsemen; and riding near, with a mixture +of hope and dread, for Indians were abroad, I found them transformed +into a group of buffalo. There was nothing in human shape amid all this +vast congregation of brute forms. + +When I turned down the buffalo path, the prairie seemed changed; only +a wolf or two glided past at intervals, like conscious felons, never +looking to the right or left. Being now free from anxiety, I was at +leisure to observe minutely the objects around me; and here, for the +first time, I noticed insects wholly different from any of the varieties +found farther to the eastward. Gaudy butterflies fluttered about my +horse’s head; strangely formed beetles, glittering with metallic luster, +were crawling upon plants that I had never seen before; multitudes of +lizards, too, were darting like lightning over the sand. + +I had run to a great distance from the river. It cost me a long ride +on the buffalo path before I saw from the ridge of a sand-hill the pale +surface of the Platte glistening in the midst of its desert valleys, and +the faint outline of the hills beyond waving along the sky. From where +I stood, not a tree nor a bush nor a living thing was visible throughout +the whole extent of the sun-scorched landscape. In half an hour I came +upon the trail, not far from the river; and seeing that the party had +not yet passed, I turned eastward to meet them, old Pontiac’s long +swinging trot again assuring me that I was right in doing so. Having +been slightly ill on leaving camp in the morning six or seven hours of +rough riding had fatigued me extremely. I soon stopped, therefore; flung +my saddle on the ground, and with my head resting on it, and my horse’s +trail-rope tied loosely to my arm, lay waiting the arrival of the +party, speculating meanwhile on the extent of the injuries Pontiac had +received. At length the white wagon coverings rose from the verge of the +plain. By a singular coincidence, almost at the same moment two horsemen +appeared coming down from the hills. They were Shaw and Henry, who had +searched for me a while in the morning, but well knowing the futility of +the attempt in such a broken country, had placed themselves on the top +of the highest hill they could find, and picketing their horses near +them, as a signal to me, had laid down and fallen asleep. The stray +cattle had been recovered, as the emigrants told us, about noon. Before +sunset, we pushed forward eight miles farther. + + +JUNE 7, 1846.--Four men are missing; R., Sorel and two emigrants. +They set out this morning after buffalo, and have not yet made their +appearance; whether killed or lost, we cannot tell. + + +I find the above in my notebook, and well remember the council held on +the occasion. Our fire was the scene of it; or the palpable superiority +of Henry Chatillon’s experience and skill made him the resort of the +whole camp upon every question of difficulty. He was molding bullets +at the fire, when the captain drew near, with a perturbed and care-worn +expression of countenance, faithfully reflected on the heavy features +of Jack, who followed close behind. Then emigrants came straggling from +their wagons toward the common center; various suggestions were made to +account for the absence of the four men, and one or two of the emigrants +declared that when out after the cattle they had seen Indians dogging +them, and crawling like wolves along the ridges of the hills. At this +time the captain slowly shook his head with double gravity, and solemnly +remarked: + +“It’s a serious thing to be traveling through this cursed wilderness”; +an opinion in which Jack immediately expressed a thorough coincidence. +Henry would not commit himself by declaring any positive opinion. + +“Maybe he only follow the buffalo too far; maybe Indian kill him; maybe +he got lost; I cannot tell!” + +With this the auditors were obliged to rest content; the emigrants, not +in the least alarmed, though curious to know what had become of their +comrades, walked back to their wagons and the captain betook himself +pensively to his tent. Shaw and I followed his example. + +“It will be a bad thing for our plans,” said he as we entered, “if these +fellows don’t get back safe. The captain is as helpless on the prairie +as a child. We shall have to take him and his brother in tow; they will +hang on us like lead.” + +“The prairie is a strange place,” said I. “A month ago I should have +thought it rather a startling affair to have an acquaintance ride out in +the morning and lose his scalp before night, but here it seems the most +natural thing in the world; not that I believe that R. has lost his +yet.” + +If a man is constitutionally liable to nervous apprehensions, a tour on +the distant prairies would prove the best prescription; for though when +in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains he may at times find himself +placed in circumstances of some danger, I believe that few ever breathe +that reckless atmosphere without becoming almost indifferent to any evil +chance that may befall themselves or their friends. + +Shaw had a propensity for luxurious indulgence. He spread his blanket +with the utmost accuracy on the ground, picked up the sticks and stones +that he thought might interfere with his comfort, adjusted his saddle to +serve as a pillow, and composed himself for his night’s rest. I had the +first guard that evening; so, taking my rifle, I went out of the tent. +It was perfectly dark. A brisk wind blew down from the hills, and +the sparks from the fire were streaming over the prairie. One of the +emigrants, named Morton, was my companion; and laying our rifles on the +grass, we sat down together by the fire. Morton was a Kentuckian, an +athletic fellow, with a fine intelligent face, and in his manners and +conversation he showed the essential characteristics of a gentleman. +Our conversation turned on the pioneers of his gallant native State. The +three hours of our watch dragged away at last, and we went to call up +the relief. + +R.’s guard succeeded mine. He was absent; but the captain, anxious lest +the camp should be left defenseless, had volunteered to stand in his +place; so I went to wake him up. There was no occasion for it, for the +captain had been awake since nightfall. A fire was blazing outside of +the tent, and by the light which struck through the canvas, I saw him +and Jack lying on their backs, with their eyes wide open. The captain +responded instantly to my call; he jumped up, seized the double-barreled +rifle, and came out of the tent with an air of solemn determination, as +if about to devote himself to the safety of the party. I went and lay +down, not doubting that for the next three hours our slumbers would be +guarded with sufficient vigilance. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +TAKING FRENCH LEAVE + + +On the 8th of June, at eleven o’clock, we reached the South Fork of the +Platte, at the usual fording place. For league upon league the desert +uniformity of the prospect was almost unbroken; the hills were dotted +with little tufts of shriveled grass, but betwixt these the white sand +was glaring in the sun; and the channel of the river, almost on a level +with the plain, was but one great sand-bed, about half a mile wide. It +was covered with water, but so scantily that the bottom was scarcely +hidden; for, wide as it is, the average depth of the Platte does not at +this point exceed a foot and a half. Stopping near its bank, we gathered +bois de vache, and made a meal of buffalo meat. Far off, on the other +side, was a green meadow, where we could see the white tents and wagons +of an emigrant camp; and just opposite to us we could discern a group of +men and animals at the water’s edge. Four or five horsemen soon entered +the river, and in ten minutes had waded across and clambered up the +loose sand-bank. They were ill-looking fellows, thin and swarthy, with +care-worn, anxious faces and lips rigidly compressed. They had good +cause for anxiety; it was three days since they first encamped here, and +on the night of their arrival they had lost 123 of their best cattle, +driven off by the wolves, through the neglect of the man on guard. This +discouraging and alarming calamity was not the first that had overtaken +them. Since leaving the settlements, they had met with nothing but +misfortune. Some of their party had died; one man had been killed by the +Pawnees; and about a week before, they had been plundered by the Dakotas +of all their best horses, the wretched animals on which our visitors +were mounted being the only ones that were left. They had encamped, they +told us, near sunset, by the side of the Platte, and their oxen were +scattered over the meadow, while the band of horses were feeding a +little farther off. Suddenly the ridges of the hills were alive with a +swarm of mounted Indians, at least six hundred in number, who, with a +tremendous yell, came pouring down toward the camp, rushing up within a +few rods, to the great terror of the emigrants; but suddenly wheeling, +they swept around the band of horses, and in five minutes had +disappeared with their prey through the openings of the hills. + +As these emigrants were telling their story, we saw four other +men approaching. They proved to be R. and his companions, who had +encountered no mischance of any kind, but had only wandered too far +in pursuit of the game. They said they had seen no Indians, but only +“millions of buffalo”; and both R. and Sorel had meat dangling behind +their saddles. + +The emigrants re-crossed the river, and we prepared to follow. First +the heavy ox-wagons plunged down the bank, and dragged slowly over the +sand-beds; sometimes the hoofs of the oxen were scarcely wetted by the +thin sheet of water; and the next moment the river would be boiling +against their sides, and eddying fiercely around the wheels. Inch by +inch they receded from the shore, dwindling every moment, until at +length they seemed to be floating far in the very middle of the river. +A more critical experiment awaited us; for our little mule-cart was +but ill-fitted for the passage of so swift a stream. We watched it with +anxiety till it seemed to be a little motionless white speck in the +midst of the waters; and it WAS motionless, for it had stuck fast in a +quicksand. The little mules were losing their footing, the wheels were +sinking deeper and deeper, and the water began to rise through the +bottom and drench the goods within. All of us who had remained on the +hither bank galloped to the rescue; the men jumped into the water, +adding their strength to that of the mules, until by much effort the +cart was extricated, and conveyed in safety across. + +As we gained the other bank, a rough group of men surrounded us. They +were not robust, nor large of frame, yet they had an aspect of hardy +endurance. Finding at home no scope for their fiery energies, they had +betaken themselves to the prairie; and in them seemed to be revived, +with redoubled force, that fierce spirit which impelled their ancestors, +scarce more lawless than themselves, from the German forests, to +inundate Europe and break to pieces the Roman empire. A fortnight +afterward this unfortunate party passed Fort Laramie, while we were +there. Not one of their missing oxen had been recovered, though they had +remained encamped a week in search of them; and they had been compelled +to abandon a great part of their baggage and provisions, and yoke cows +and heifers to their wagons to carry them forward upon their journey, +the most toilsome and hazardous part of which lay still before them. + +It is worth noticing that on the Platte one may sometimes see the +shattered wrecks of ancient claw-footed tables, well waxed and rubbed, +or massive bureaus of carved oak. These, many of them no doubt +the relics of ancestral prosperity in the colonial time, must have +encountered strange vicissitudes. Imported, perhaps, originally from +England; then, with the declining fortunes of their owners, borne across +the Alleghenies to the remote wilderness of Ohio or Kentucky; then to +Illinois or Missouri; and now at last fondly stowed away in the family +wagon for the interminable journey to Oregon. But the stern privations +of the way are little anticipated. The cherished relic is soon flung out +to scorch and crack upon the hot prairie. + +We resumed our journey; but we had gone scarcely a mile, when R. called +out from the rear: + +“We’ll camp here.” + +“Why do you want to camp? Look at the sun. It is not three o’clock yet.” + +“We’ll camp here!” + +This was the only reply vouchsafed. Delorier was in advance with his +cart. Seeing the mule-wagon wheeling from the track, he began to turn +his own team in the same direction. + +“Go on, Delorier,” and the little cart advanced again. As we rode on, we +soon heard the wagon of our confederates creaking and jolting on behind +us, and the driver, Wright, discharging a furious volley of oaths +against his mules; no doubt venting upon them the wrath which he dared +not direct against a more appropriate object. + +Something of this sort had frequently occurred. Our English friend was +by no means partial to us, and we thought we discovered in his conduct a +deliberate intention to thwart and annoy us, especially by retarding +the movements of the party, which he knew that we, being Yankees, were +anxious to quicken. Therefore, he would insist on encamping at all +unseasonable hours, saying that fifteen miles was a sufficient day’s +journey. Finding our wishes systematically disregarded, we took the +direction of affairs into our own hands. Keeping always in advance, to +the inexpressible indignation of R., we encamped at what time and place +we thought proper, not much caring whether the rest chose to follow or +not. They always did so, however, pitching their tents near ours, with +sullen and wrathful countenances. + +Traveling together on these agreeable terms did not suit our tastes; for +some time we had meditated a separation. The connection with this party +had cost us various delays and inconveniences; and the glaring want +of courtesy and good sense displayed by their virtual leader did not +dispose us to bear these annoyances with much patience. We resolved to +leave camp early in the morning, and push forward as rapidly as possible +for Fort Laramie, which we hoped to reach, by hard traveling, in four or +five days. The captain soon trotted up between us, and we explained our +intentions. + +“A very extraordinary proceeding, upon my word!” he remarked. Then he +began to enlarge upon the enormity of the design. The most prominent +impression in his mind evidently was that we were acting a base and +treacherous part in deserting his party, in what he considered a very +dangerous stage of the journey. To palliate the atrocity of our conduct, +we ventured to suggest that we were only four in number while his party +still included sixteen men; and as, moreover, we were to go forward +and they were to follow, at least a full proportion of the perils he +apprehended would fall upon us. But the austerity of the captain’s +features would not relax. “A very extraordinary proceeding, gentlemen!” + and repeating this, he rode off to confer with his principal. + +By good luck, we found a meadow of fresh grass, and a large pool of +rain-water in the midst of it. We encamped here at sunset. Plenty of +buffalo skulls were lying around, bleaching in the sun; and sprinkled +thickly among the grass was a great variety of strange flowers. I had +nothing else to do, and so gathering a handful, I sat down on a buffalo +skull to study them. Although the offspring of a wilderness, their +texture was frail and delicate, and their colors extremely rich; pure +white, dark blue, and a transparent crimson. One traveling in this +country seldom has leisure to think of anything but the stern features +of the scenery and its accompaniments, or the practical details of each +day’s journey. Like them, he and his thoughts grow hard and rough. But +now these flowers suddenly awakened a train of associations as alien to +the rude scene around me as they were themselves; and for the moment my +thoughts went back to New England. A throng of fair and well-remembered +faces rose, vividly as life, before me. “There are good things,” thought +I, “in the savage life, but what can it offer to replace those powerful +and ennobling influences that can reach unimpaired over more than three +thousand miles of mountains, forests and deserts?” + +Before sunrise on the next morning our tent was down; we harnessed our +best horses to the cart and left the camp. But first we shook hands +with our friends the emigrants, who sincerely wished us a safe journey, +though some others of the party might easily have been consoled had we +encountered an Indian war party on the way. The captain and his brother +were standing on the top of a hill, wrapped in their plaids, like +spirits of the mist, keeping an anxious eye on the band of horses below. +We waved adieu to them as we rode off the ground. The captain replied +with a salutation of the utmost dignity, which Jack tried to imitate; +but being little practiced in the gestures of polite society, his effort +was not a very successful one. + +In five minutes we had gained the foot of the hills, but here we came to +a stop. Old Hendrick was in the shafts, and being the very incarnation +of perverse and brutish obstinacy, he utterly refused to move. Delorier +lashed and swore till he was tired, but Hendrick stood like a rock, +grumbling to himself and looking askance at his enemy, until he saw a +favorable opportunity to take his revenge, when he struck out under the +shaft with such cool malignity of intention that Delorier only escaped +the blow by a sudden skip into the air, such as no one but a Frenchman +could achieve. Shaw and he then joined forces, and lashed on both sides +at once. The brute stood still for a while till he could bear it no +longer, when all at once he began to kick and plunge till he threatened +the utter demolition of the cart and harness. We glanced back at the +camp, which was in full sight. Our companions, inspired by emulation, +were leveling their tents and driving in their cattle and horses. + +“Take the horse out,” said I. + +I took the saddle from Pontiac and put it upon Hendrick; the former +was harnessed to the cart in an instant. “Avance donc!” cried Delorier. +Pontiac strode up the hill, twitching the little cart after him as if +it were a feather’s weight; and though, as we gained the top, we saw the +wagons of our deserted comrades just getting into motion, we had little +fear that they could overtake us. Leaving the trail, we struck directly +across the country, and took the shortest cut to reach the main stream +of the Platte. A deep ravine suddenly intercepted us. We skirted its +sides until we found them less abrupt, and then plunged through the best +way we could. Passing behind the sandy ravines called “Ash Hollow,” we +stopped for a short nooning at the side of a pool of rain-water; but +soon resumed our journey, and some hours before sunset were descending +the ravines and gorges opening downward upon the Platte to the west of +Ash Hollow. Our horses waded to the fetlock in sand; the sun scorched +like fire, and the air swarmed with sand-flies and mosquitoes. + +At last we gained the Platte. Following it for about five miles, we saw, +just as the sun was sinking, a great meadow, dotted with hundreds of +cattle, and beyond them an emigrant encampment. A party of about a dozen +came out to meet us, looking upon us at first with cold and suspicious +faces. Seeing four men, different in appearance and equipment from +themselves, emerging from the hills, they had taken us for the van +of the much-dreaded Mormons, whom they were very apprehensive of +encountering. We made known our true character, and then they greeted +us cordially. They expressed much surprise that so small a party should +venture to traverse that region, though in fact such attempts are not +unfrequently made by trappers and Indian traders. We rode with them to +their camp. The wagons, some fifty in number, with here and there a tent +intervening, were arranged as usual in a circle; in the area within the +best horses were picketed, and the whole circumference was glowing with +the dusky light of the fires, displaying the forms of the women and +children who were crowded around them. This patriarchal scene was +curious and striking enough; but we made our escape from the place with +all possible dispatch, being tormented by the intrusive curiosity of the +men who crowded around us. Yankee curiosity was nothing to theirs. They +demanded our names, where we came from, where we were going, and what +was our business. The last query was particularly embarrassing; since +traveling in that country, or indeed anywhere, from any other motive +than gain, was an idea of which they took no cognizance. Yet they were +fine-looking fellows, with an air of frankness, generosity, and even +courtesy, having come from one of the least barbarous of the frontier +counties. + +We passed about a mile beyond them, and encamped. Being too few in +number to stand guard without excessive fatigue, we extinguished our +fire, lest it should attract the notice of wandering Indians; and +picketing our horses close around us, slept undisturbed till morning. +For three days we traveled without interruption, and on the evening of +the third encamped by the well-known spring on Scott’s Bluff. + +Henry Chatillon and I rode out in the morning, and descending the +western side of the Bluff, were crossing the plain beyond. Something +that seemed to me a file of buffalo came into view, descending the +hills several miles before us. But Henry reined in his horse, and keenly +peering across the prairie with a better and more practiced eye, soon +discovered its real nature. “Indians!” he said. “Old Smoke’s lodges, I +b’lieve. Come! let us go! Wah! get up, now, Five Hundred Dollar!” And +laying on the lash with good will, he galloped forward, and I rode by +his side. Not long after, a black speck became visible on the prairie, +full two miles off. It grew larger and larger; it assumed the form of +a man and horse; and soon we could discern a naked Indian, careering at +full gallop toward us. When within a furlong he wheeled his horse in +a wide circle, and made him describe various mystic figures upon the +prairie; and Henry immediately compelled Five Hundred Dollar to execute +similar evolutions. “It IS Old Smoke’s village,” said he, interpreting +these signals; “didn’t I say so?” + +As the Indian approached we stopped to wait for him, when suddenly he +vanished, sinking, as it were, into the earth. He had come upon one of +the deep ravines that everywhere intersect these prairies. In an instant +the rough head of his horse stretched upward from the edge and the rider +and steed came scrambling out, and bounded up to us; a sudden jerk of +the rein brought the wild panting horse to a full stop. Then followed +the needful formality of shaking hands. I forget our visitor’s name. +He was a young fellow, of no note in his nation; yet in his person and +equipments he was a good specimen of a Dakota warrior in his ordinary +traveling dress. Like most of his people, he was nearly six feet high; +lithely and gracefully, yet strongly proportioned; and with a skin +singularly clear and delicate. He wore no paint; his head was bare; and +his long hair was gathered in a clump behind, to the top of which was +attached transversely, both by way of ornament and of talisman, the +mystic whistle, made of the wingbone of the war eagle, and endowed with +various magic virtues. From the back of his head descended a line of +glittering brass plates, tapering from the size of a doubloon to that of +a half-dime, a cumbrous ornament, in high vogue among the Dakotas, and +for which they pay the traders a most extravagant price; his chest and +arms were naked, the buffalo robe, worn over them when at rest, had +fallen about his waist, and was confined there by a belt. This, with the +gay moccasins on his feet, completed his attire. For arms he carried a +quiver of dogskin at his back, and a rude but powerful bow in his hand. +His horse had no bridle; a cord of hair, lashed around his jaw, served +in place of one. The saddle was of most singular construction; it was +made of wood covered with raw hide, and both pommel and cantle rose +perpendicularly full eighteen inches, so that the warrior was wedged +firmly in his seat, whence nothing could dislodge him but the bursting +of the girths. + +Advancing with our new companion, we found more of his people seated in +a circle on the top of a hill; while a rude procession came straggling +down the neighboring hollow, men, women, and children, with horses +dragging the lodge-poles behind them. All that morning, as we moved +forward, tall savages were stalking silently about us. At noon we +reached Horse Creek; and as we waded through the shallow water, we saw a +wild and striking scene. The main body of the Indians had arrived before +us. On the farther bank stood a large and strong man, nearly naked, +holding a white horse by a long cord, and eyeing us as we approached. +This was the chief, whom Henry called “Old Smoke.” Just behind him his +youngest and favorite squaw sat astride of a fine mule; it was covered +with caparisons of whitened skins, garnished with blue and white beads, +and fringed with little ornaments of metal that tinkled with every +movement of the animal. The girl had a light clear complexion, enlivened +by a spot of vermilion on each cheek; she smiled, not to say grinned, +upon us, showing two gleaming rows of white teeth. In her hand, she +carried the tall lance of her unchivalrous lord, fluttering with +feathers; his round white shield hung at the side of her mule; and his +pipe was slung at her back. Her dress was a tunic of deerskin, made +beautifully white by means of a species of clay found on the prairie, +and ornamented with beads, arrayed in figures more gay than tasteful, +and with long fringes at all the seams. Not far from the chief stood a +group of stately figures, their white buffalo robes thrown over their +shoulders, gazing coldly upon us; and in the rear, for several acres, +the ground was covered with a temporary encampment; men, women, and +children swarmed like bees; hundreds of dogs, of all sizes and colors, +ran restlessly about; and, close at hand, the wide shallow stream was +alive with boys, girls, and young squaws, splashing, screaming, and +laughing in the water. At the same time a long train of emigrant +wagons were crossing the creek, and dragging on in their slow, heavy +procession, passed the encampment of the people whom they and their +descendants, in the space of a century, are to sweep from the face of +the earth. + +The encampment itself was merely a temporary one during the heat of the +day. None of the lodges were erected; but their heavy leather coverings, +and the long poles used to support them, were scattered everywhere +around, among weapons, domestic utensils, and the rude harness of mules +and horses. The squaws of each lazy warrior had made him a shelter +from the sun, by stretching a few buffalo robes, or the corner of a +lodge-covering upon poles; and here he sat in the shade, with a favorite +young squaw, perhaps, at his side, glittering with all imaginable +trinkets. Before him stood the insignia of his rank as a warrior, his +white shield of bull-hide, his medicine bag, his bow and quiver, his +lance and his pipe, raised aloft on a tripod of three poles. Except the +dogs, the most active and noisy tenants of the camp were the old women, +ugly as Macbeth’s witches, with their hair streaming loose in the wind, +and nothing but the tattered fragment of an old buffalo robe to hide +their shriveled wiry limbs. The day of their favoritism passed two +generations ago; now the heaviest labors of the camp devolved upon them; +they were to harness the horses, pitch the lodges, dress the buffalo +robes, and bring in meat for the hunters. With the cracked voices of +these hags, the clamor of dogs, the shouting and laughing of children +and girls, and the listless tranquillity of the warriors, the whole +scene had an effect too lively and picturesque ever to be forgotten. + +We stopped not far from the Indian camp, and having invited some of the +chiefs and warriors to dinner, placed before them a sumptuous repast of +biscuit and coffee. Squatted in a half circle on the ground, they soon +disposed of it. As we rode forward on the afternoon journey, several of +our late guests accompanied us. Among the rest was a huge bloated savage +of more than three hundred pounds’ weight, christened La Cochon, in +consideration of his preposterous dimensions and certain corresponding +traits of his character. “The Hog” bestrode a little white pony, scarce +able to bear up under the enormous burden, though, by way of keeping +up the necessary stimulus, the rider kept both feet in constant motion, +playing alternately against his ribs. The old man was not a chief; he +never had ambition enough to become one; he was not a warrior nor a +hunter, for he was too fat and lazy: but he was the richest man in the +whole village. Riches among the Dakotas consist in horses, and of these +The Hog had accumulated more than thirty. He had already ten times as +many as he wanted, yet still his appetite for horses was insatiable. +Trotting up to me he shook me by the hand, and gave me to understand +that he was a very devoted friend; and then he began a series of most +earnest signs and gesticulations, his oily countenance radiant with +smiles, and his little eyes peeping out with a cunning twinkle from +between the masses of flesh that almost obscured them. Knowing nothing +at that time of the sign language of the Indians, I could only guess at +his meaning. So I called on Henry to explain it. + +The Hog, it seems, was anxious to conclude a matrimonial bargain. He +said he had a very pretty daughter in his lodge, whom he would give +me, if I would give him my horse. These flattering overtures I chose to +reject; at which The Hog, still laughing with undiminished good humor, +gathered his robe about his shoulders, and rode away. + +Where we encamped that night, an arm of the Platte ran between high +bluffs; it was turbid and swift as heretofore, but trees were growing on +its crumbling banks, and there was a nook of grass between the water +and the hill. Just before entering this place, we saw the emigrants +encamping at two or three miles’ distance on the right; while the whole +Indian rabble were pouring down the neighboring hill in hope of the same +sort of entertainment which they had experienced from us. In the savage +landscape before our camp, nothing but the rushing of the Platte broke +the silence. Through the ragged boughs of the trees, dilapidated and +half dead, we saw the sun setting in crimson behind the peaks of the +Black Hills; the restless bosom of the river was suffused with red; our +white tent was tinged with it, and the sterile bluffs, up to the rocks +that crowned them, partook of the same fiery hue. It soon passed away; +no light remained, but that from our fire, blazing high among the dusky +trees and bushes. We lay around it wrapped in our blankets, smoking and +conversing until a late hour, and then withdrew to our tent. + +We crossed a sun-scorched plain on the next morning; the line of old +cotton-wood trees that fringed the bank of the Platte forming its +extreme verge. Nestled apparently close beneath them, we could discern +in the distance something like a building. As we came nearer, it assumed +form and dimensions, and proved to be a rough structure of logs. It was +a little trading fort, belonging to two private traders; and originally +intended, like all the forts of the country, to form a hollow square, +with rooms for lodging and storage opening upon the area within. Only +two sides of it had been completed; the place was now as ill-fitted for +the purposes of defense as any of those little log-houses, which +upon our constantly shifting frontier have been so often successfully +maintained against overwhelming odds of Indians. Two lodges were pitched +close to the fort; the sun beat scorching upon the logs; no living thing +was stirring except one old squaw, who thrust her round head from the +opening of the nearest lodge, and three or four stout young pups, who +were peeping with looks of eager inquiry from under the covering. In a +moment a door opened, and a little, swarthy black-eyed Frenchman came +out. His dress was rather singular; his black curling hair was parted +in the middle of his head, and fell below his shoulders; he wore a tight +frock of smoked deerskin, very gayly ornamented with figures worked +in dyed porcupine quills. His moccasins and leggings were also gaudily +adorned in the same manner; and the latter had in addition a line of +long fringes, reaching down the seams. The small frame of Richard, +for by this name Henry made him known to us, was in the highest degree +athletic and vigorous. There was no superfluity, and indeed there +seldom is among the active white men of this country, but every limb was +compact and hard; every sinew had its full tone and elasticity, and the +whole man wore an air of mingled hardihood and buoyancy. + +Richard committed our horses to a Navahoe slave, a mean looking fellow +taken prisoner on the Mexican frontier; and, relieving us of our rifles +with ready politeness, led the way into the principal apartment of his +establishment. This was a room ten feet square. The walls and floor were +of black mud, and the roof of rough timber; there was a huge fireplace +made of four flat rocks, picked up on the prairie. An Indian bow and +otter-skin quiver, several gaudy articles of Rocky Mountain finery, an +Indian medicine bag, and a pipe and tobacco pouch, garnished the walls, +and rifles rested in a corner. There was no furniture except a sort +of rough settle covered with buffalo robes, upon which lolled a +tall half-breed, with his hair glued in masses upon each temple, +and saturated with vermilion. Two or three more “mountain men” sat +cross-legged on the floor. Their attire was not unlike that of Richard +himself; but the most striking figure of the group was a naked Indian +boy of sixteen, with a handsome face, and light, active proportions, who +sat in an easy posture in the corner near the door. Not one of his limbs +moved the breadth of a hair; his eye was fixed immovably, not on any +person present, but, as it appeared, on the projecting corner of the +fireplace opposite to him. + +On these prairies the custom of smoking with friends is seldom omitted, +whether among Indians or whites. The pipe, therefore, was taken from the +wall, and its great red bowl crammed with the tobacco and shongsasha, +mixed in suitable proportions. Then it passed round the circle, each man +inhaling a few whiffs and handing it to his neighbor. Having spent half +an hour here, we took our leave; first inviting our new friends to drink +a cup of coffee with us at our camp, a mile farther up the river. By +this time, as the reader may conceive, we had grown rather shabby; our +clothes had burst into rags and tatters; and what was worse, we had very +little means of renovation. Fort Laramie was but seven miles before us. +Being totally averse to appearing in such plight among any society that +could boast an approximation to the civilized, we soon stopped by the +river to make our toilet in the best way we could. We hung up small +looking-glasses against the trees and shaved, an operation neglected for +six weeks; we performed our ablutions in the Platte, though the utility +of such a proceeding was questionable, the water looking exactly like +a cup of chocolate, and the banks consisting of the softest and richest +yellow mud, so that we were obliged, as a preliminary, to build a +cause-way of stout branches and twigs. Having also put on radiant +moccasins, procured from a squaw of Richard’s establishment, and made +what other improvements our narrow circumstances allowed, we took our +seats on the grass with a feeling of greatly increased respectability, +to wait the arrival of our guests. They came; the banquet was concluded, +and the pipe smoked. Bidding them adieu, we turned our horses’ heads +toward the fort. + +An hour elapsed. The barren hills closed across our front, and we could +see no farther; until having surmounted them, a rapid stream appeared +at the foot of the descent, running into the Platte; beyond was a green +meadow, dotted with bushes, and in the midst of these, at the point +where the two rivers joined, were the low clay walls of a fort. This +was not Fort Laramie, but another post of less recent date, which having +sunk before its successful competitor was now deserted and ruinous. A +moment after the hills, seeming to draw apart as we advanced, disclosed +Fort Laramie itself, its high bastions and perpendicular walls of +clay crowning an eminence on the left beyond the stream, while behind +stretched a line of arid and desolate ridges, and behind these again, +towering aloft seven thousand feet, arose the grim Black Hills. + +We tried to ford Laramie Creek at a point nearly opposite the fort, but +the stream, swollen with the rains in the mountains, was too rapid. We +passed up along its bank to find a better crossing place. Men gathered +on the wall to look at us. “There’s Bordeaux!” called Henry, his face +brightening as he recognized his acquaintance; “him there with the +spyglass; and there’s old Vaskiss, and Tucker, and May; and, by George! +there’s Cimoneau!” This Cimoneau was Henry’s fast friend, and the only +man in the country who could rival him in hunting. + +We soon found a ford. Henry led the way, the pony approaching the bank +with a countenance of cool indifference, bracing his feet and sliding +into the stream with the most unmoved composure. + + At the first plunge the horse sunk low, + And the water broke o’er the saddle-bow + +We followed; the water boiled against our saddles, but our horses bore +us easily through. The unfortunate little mules came near going down +with the current, cart and all; and we watched them with some solicitude +scrambling over the loose round stones at the bottom, and bracing +stoutly against the stream. All landed safely at last; we crossed a +little plain, descended a hollow, and riding up a steep bank found +ourselves before the gateway of Fort Laramie, under the impending +blockhouse erected above it to defend the entrance. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +SCENES AT FORT LARAMIE + + +Looking back, after the expiration of a year, upon Fort Laramie and its +inmates, they seem less like a reality than like some fanciful picture +of the olden time; so different was the scene from any which this tamer +side of the world can present. Tall Indians, enveloped in their white +buffalo robes, were striding across the area or reclining at full length +on the low roofs of the buildings which inclosed it. Numerous squaws, +gayly bedizened, sat grouped in front of the apartments they occupied; +their mongrel offspring, restless and vociferous, rambled in every +direction through the fort; and the trappers, traders, and ENGAGES of +the establishment were busy at their labor or their amusements. + +We were met at the gate, but by no means cordially welcomed. Indeed, +we seemed objects of some distrust and suspicion until Henry Chatillon +explained that we were not traders, and we, in confirmation, handed to +the bourgeois a letter of introduction from his principals. He took +it, turned it upside down, and tried hard to read it; but his literary +attainments not being adequate to the task, he applied for relief to +the clerk, a sleek, smiling Frenchman, named Montalon. The letter read, +Bordeaux (the bourgeois) seemed gradually to awaken to a sense of what +was expected of him. Though not deficient in hospitable intentions, he +was wholly unaccustomed to act as master of ceremonies. Discarding all +formalities of reception, he did not honor us with a single word, but +walked swiftly across the area, while we followed in some admiration to +a railing and a flight of steps opposite the entrance. He signed to us +that we had better fasten our horses to the railing; then he walked +up the steps, tramped along a rude balcony, and kicking open a door +displayed a large room, rather more elaborately finished than a barn. +For furniture it had a rough bedstead, but no bed; two chairs, a chest +of drawers, a tin pail to hold water, and a board to cut tobacco upon. A +brass crucifix hung on the wall, and close at hand a recent scalp, with +hair full a yard long, was suspended from a nail. I shall again have +occasion to mention this dismal trophy, its history being connected with +that of our subsequent proceedings. + +This apartment, the best in Fort Laramie, was that usually occupied by +the legitimate bourgeois, Papin; in whose absence the command devolved +upon Bordeaux. The latter, a stout, bluff little fellow, much inflated +by a sense of his new authority, began to roar for buffalo robes. These +being brought and spread upon the floor formed our beds; much better +ones than we had of late been accustomed to. Our arrangements made, we +stepped out to the balcony to take a more leisurely survey of the long +looked-for haven at which we had arrived at last. Beneath us was the +square area surrounded by little rooms, or rather cells, which opened +upon it. These were devoted to various purposes, but served chiefly for +the accommodation of the men employed at the fort, or of the equally +numerous squaws, whom they were allowed to maintain in it. Opposite to +us rose the blockhouse above the gateway; it was adorned with a figure +which even now haunts my memory; a horse at full speed, daubed upon +the boards with red paint, and exhibiting a degree of skill which might +rival that displayed by the Indians in executing similar designs upon +their robes and lodges. A busy scene was enacting in the area. The +wagons of Vaskiss, an old trader, were about to set out for a remote +post in the mountains, and the Canadians were going through their +preparations with all possible bustle, while here and there an Indian +stood looking on with imperturbable gravity. + +Fort Laramie is one of the posts established by the American Fur +Company, who well-nigh monopolize the Indian trade of this whole region. +Here their officials rule with an absolute sway; the arm of the United +States has little force; for when we were there, the extreme outposts +of her troops were about seven hundred miles to the eastward. The little +fort is built of bricks dried in the sun, and externally is of an oblong +form, with bastions of clay, in the form of ordinary blockhouses, at two +of the corners. The walls are about fifteen feet high, and surmounted by +a slender palisade. The roofs of the apartments within, which are built +close against the walls, serve the purpose of a banquette. Within, +the fort is divided by a partition; on one side is the square area +surrounded by the storerooms, offices, and apartments of the inmates; +on the other is the corral, a narrow place, encompassed by the high clay +walls, where at night, or in presence of dangerous Indians, the horses +and mules of the fort are crowded for safe-keeping. The main entrance +has two gates, with an arched passage intervening. A little square +window, quite high above the ground, opens laterally from an adjoining +chamber into this passage; so that when the inner gate is closed and +barred, a person without may still hold communication with those within +through this narrow aperture. This obviates the necessity of admitting +suspicious Indians, for purposes of trading, into the body of the fort; +for when danger is apprehended, the inner gate is shut fast, and all +traffic is carried on by means of the little window. This precaution, +though highly necessary at some of the company’s posts, is now seldom +resorted to at Fort Laramie; where, though men are frequently killed in +its neighborhood, no apprehensions are now entertained of any general +designs of hostility from the Indians. + +We did not long enjoy our new quarters undisturbed. The door was +silently pushed open, and two eyeballs and a visage as black as night +looked in upon us; then a red arm and shoulder intruded themselves, and +a tall Indian, gliding in, shook us by the hand, grunted his salutation, +and sat down on the floor. Others followed, with faces of the natural +hue; and letting fall their heavy robes from their shoulders, they took +their seats, quite at ease, in a semicircle before us. The pipe was now +to be lighted and passed round from one to another; and this was the +only entertainment that at present they expected from us. These visitors +were fathers, brothers, or other relatives of the squaws in the +fort, where they were permitted to remain, loitering about in perfect +idleness. All those who smoked with us were men of standing and repute. +Two or three others dropped in also; young fellows who neither by their +years nor their exploits were entitled to rank with the old men and +warriors, and who, abashed in the presence of their superiors, stood +aloof, never withdrawing their eyes from us. Their cheeks were adorned +with vermilion, their ears with pendants of shell, and their necks with +beads. Never yet having signalized themselves as hunters, or performed +the honorable exploit of killing a man, they were held in slight +esteem, and were diffident and bashful in proportion. Certain formidable +inconveniences attended this influx of visitors. They were bent on +inspecting everything in the room; our equipments and our dress alike +underwent their scrutiny; for though the contrary has been carelessly +asserted, few beings have more curiosity than Indians in regard to +subjects within their ordinary range of thought. As to other matters, +indeed, they seemed utterly indifferent. They will not trouble +themselves to inquire into what they cannot comprehend, but are quite +contented to place their hands over their mouths in token of wonder, and +exclaim that it is “great medicine.” With this comprehensive solution, +an Indian never is at a loss. He never launches forth into speculation +and conjecture; his reason moves in its beaten track. His soul is +dormant; and no exertions of the missionaries, Jesuit or Puritan, of the +Old World or of the New, have as yet availed to rouse it. + +As we were looking, at sunset, from the wall, upon the wild and desolate +plains that surround the fort, we observed a cluster of strange objects +like scaffolds rising in the distance against the red western sky. They +bore aloft some singular looking burdens; and at their foot glimmered +something white like bones. This was the place of sepulture of some +Dakota chiefs, whose remains their people are fond of placing in the +vicinity of the fort, in the hope that they may thus be protected from +violation at the hands of their enemies. Yet it has happened more than +once, and quite recently, that war parties of the Crow Indians, ranging +through the country, have thrown the bodies from the scaffolds, and +broken them to pieces amid the yells of the Dakotas, who remained pent +up in the fort, too few to defend the honored relics from insult. The +white objects upon the ground were buffalo skulls, arranged in the +mystic circle commonly seen at Indian places of sepulture upon the +prairie. + +We soon discovered, in the twilight, a band of fifty or sixty +horses approaching the fort. These were the animals belonging to the +establishment; who having been sent out to feed, under the care of armed +guards, in the meadows below, were now being driven into the corral for +the night. A little gate opened into this inclosure; by the side of it +stood one of the guards, an old Canadian, with gray bushy eyebrows, +and a dragoon pistol stuck into his belt; while his comrade, mounted +on horseback, his rifle laid across the saddle in front of him, and +his long hair blowing before his swarthy face, rode at the rear of the +disorderly troop, urging them up the ascent. In a moment the narrow +corral was thronged with the half-wild horses, kicking, biting, and +crowding restlessly together. + +The discordant jingling of a bell, rung by a Canadian in the area, +summoned us to supper. This sumptuous repast was served on a rough table +in one of the lower apartments of the fort, and consisted of cakes of +bread and dried buffalo meat--an excellent thing for strengthening the +teeth. At this meal were seated the bourgeois and superior dignitaries +of the establishment, among whom Henry Chatillon was worthily included. +No sooner was it finished, than the table was spread a second time (the +luxury of bread being now, however, omitted), for the benefit of +certain hunters and trappers of an inferior standing; while the ordinary +Canadian ENGAGES were regaled on dried meat in one of their lodging +rooms. By way of illustrating the domestic economy of Fort Laramie, it +may not be amiss to introduce in this place a story current among the +men when we were there. + +There was an old man named Pierre, whose duty it was to bring the meat +from the storeroom for the men. Old Pierre, in the kindness of +his heart, used to select the fattest and the best pieces for his +companions. This did not long escape the keen-eyed bourgeois, who was +greatly disturbed at such improvidence, and cast about for some means to +stop it. At last he hit on a plan that exactly suited him. At the side +of the meat-room, and separated from it by a clay partition, was another +compartment, used for the storage of furs. It had no other communication +with the fort, except through a square hole in the partition; and of +course it was perfectly dark. One evening the bourgeois, watching for +a moment when no one observed him, dodged into the meat-room, clambered +through the hole, and ensconced himself among the furs and buffalo +robes. Soon after, old Pierre came in with his lantern; and, muttering +to himself, began to pull over the bales of meat, and select the best +pieces, as usual. But suddenly a hollow and sepulchral voice proceeded +from the inner apartment: “Pierre! Pierre! Let that fat meat alone! Take +nothing but lean!” Pierre dropped his lantern, and bolted out into +the fort, screaming, in an agony of terror, that the devil was in the +storeroom; but tripping on the threshold, he pitched over upon the +gravel, and lay senseless, stunned by the fall. The Canadians ran out +to the rescue. Some lifted the unlucky Pierre; and others, making an +extempore crucifix out of two sticks, were proceeding to attack the +devil in his stronghold, when the bourgeois, with a crest-fallen +countenance, appeared at the door. To add to the bourgeois’ +mortification, he was obliged to explain the whole stratagem to Pierre, +in order to bring the latter to his senses. + +We were sitting, on the following morning, in the passage-way between +the gates, conversing with the traders Vaskiss and May. These two men, +together with our sleek friend, the clerk Montalon, were, I believe, the +only persons then in the fort who could read and write. May was telling +a curious story about the traveler Catlin, when an ugly, diminutive +Indian, wretchedly mounted, came up at a gallop, and rode past us into +the fort. On being questioned, he said that Smoke’s village was close at +hand. Accordingly only a few minutes elapsed before the hills beyond the +river were covered with a disorderly swarm of savages, on horseback and +on foot. May finished his story; and by that time the whole array had +descended to Laramie Creek, and commenced crossing it in a mass. I +walked down to the bank. The stream is wide, and was then between three +and four feet deep, with a very swift current. For several rods the +water was alive with dogs, horses, and Indians. The long poles used in +erecting the lodges are carried by the horses, being fastened by the +heavier end, two or three on each side, to a rude sort of pack saddle, +while the other end drags on the ground. About a foot behind the horse, +a kind of large basket or pannier is suspended between the poles, and +firmly lashed in its place on the back of the horse are piled various +articles of luggage; the basket also is well filled with domestic +utensils, or, quite as often, with a litter of puppies, a brood of small +children, or a superannuated old man. Numbers of these curious vehicles, +called, in the bastard language of the country travaux were now +splashing together through the stream. Among them swam countless dogs, +often burdened with miniature travaux; and dashing forward on horseback +through the throng came the superbly formed warriors, the slender figure +of some lynx-eyed boy, clinging fast behind them. The women sat perched +on the pack saddles, adding not a little to the load of the already +overburdened horses. The confusion was prodigious. The dogs yelled and +howled in chorus; the puppies in the travaux set up a dismal whine +as the water invaded their comfortable retreat; the little black-eyed +children, from one year of age upward, clung fast with both hands to the +edge of their basket, and looked over in alarm at the water rushing so +near them, sputtering and making wry mouths as it splashed against their +faces. Some of the dogs, encumbered by their loads, were carried down by +the current, yelping piteously; and the old squaws would rush into the +water, seize their favorites by the neck, and drag them out. As each +horse gained the bank, he scrambled up as he could. Stray horses and +colts came among the rest, often breaking away at full speed through the +crowd, followed by the old hags, screaming after their fashion on all +occasions of excitement. Buxom young squaws, blooming in all the charms +of vermilion, stood here and there on the bank, holding aloft their +master’s lance, as a signal to collect the scattered portions of his +household. In a few moments the crowd melted away; each family, with its +horses and equipage, filing off to the plain at the rear of the fort; +and here, in the space of half an hour, arose sixty or seventy of +their tapering lodges. Their horses were feeding by hundreds over the +surrounding prairie, and their dogs were roaming everywhere. The fort +was full of men, and the children were whooping and yelling incessantly +under the walls. + +These newcomers were scarcely arrived, when Bordeaux was running across +the fort, shouting to his squaw to bring him his spyglass. The obedient +Marie, the very model of a squaw, produced the instrument, and Bordeaux +hurried with it up to the wall. Pointing it to the eastward, he +exclaimed, with an oath, that the families were coming. But a few +moments elapsed before the heavy caravan of the emigrant wagons could +be seen, steadily advancing from the hills. They gained the river, and +without turning or pausing plunged in; they passed through, and slowly +ascending the opposing bank, kept directly on their way past the fort +and the Indian village, until, gaining a spot a quarter of a mile +distant, they wheeled into a circle. For some time our tranquillity +was undisturbed. The emigrants were preparing their encampment; but +no sooner was this accomplished than Fort Laramie was fairly taken by +storm. A crowd of broad-brimmed hats, thin visages, and staring eyes +appeared suddenly at the gate. Tall awkward men, in brown homespun; +women with cadaverous faces and long lank figures came thronging in +together, and, as if inspired by the very demon of curiosity, ransacked +every nook and corner of the fort. Dismayed at this invasion, we +withdrew in all speed to our chamber, vainly hoping that it might prove +an inviolable sanctuary. The emigrants prosecuted their investigations +with untiring vigor. They penetrated the rooms or rather dens, inhabited +by the astonished squaws. They explored the apartments of the men, and +even that of Marie and the bourgeois. At last a numerous deputation +appeared at our door, but were immediately expelled. Being totally +devoid of any sense of delicacy or propriety, they seemed resolved to +search every mystery to the bottom. + +Having at length satisfied their curiosity, they next proceeded to +business. The men occupied themselves in procuring supplies for their +onward journey; either buying them with money or giving in exchange +superfluous articles of their own. + +The emigrants felt a violent prejudice against the French Indians, +as they called the trappers and traders. They thought, and with some +justice, that these men bore them no good will. Many of them were firmly +persuaded that the French were instigating the Indians to attack and +cut them off. On visiting the encampment we were at once struck with +the extraordinary perplexity and indecision that prevailed among +the emigrants. They seemed like men totally out of their elements; +bewildered and amazed, like a troop of school-boys lost in the woods. It +was impossible to be long among them without being conscious of the high +and bold spirit with which most of them were animated. But the FOREST is +the home of the backwoodsman. On the remote prairie he is totally at a +loss. He differs much from the genuine “mountain man,” the wild prairie +hunter, as a Canadian voyageur, paddling his canoe on the rapids of the +Ottawa, differs from an American sailor among the storms of Cape Horn. +Still my companion and I were somewhat at a loss to account for this +perturbed state of mind. It could not be cowardice; these men were of +the same stock with the volunteers of Monterey and Buena Vista. Yet, for +the most part, they were the rudest and most ignorant of the frontier +population; they knew absolutely nothing of the country and its +inhabitants; they had already experienced much misfortune, and +apprehended more; they had seen nothing of mankind, and had never put +their own resources to the test. + +A full proportion of suspicion fell upon us. Being strangers we were +looked upon as enemies. Having occasion for a supply of lead and a few +other necessary articles, we used to go over to the emigrant camps to +obtain them. After some hesitation, some dubious glances, and fumbling +of the hands in the pockets, the terms would be agreed upon, the +price tendered, and the emigrant would go off to bring the article in +question. After waiting until our patience gave out, we would go in +search of him, and find him seated on the tongue of his wagon. + +“Well, stranger,” he would observe, as he saw us approach, “I reckon I +won’t trade!” + +Some friend of his followed him from the scene of the bargain and +suggested in his ear, that clearly we meant to cheat him, and he had +better have nothing to do with us. + +This timorous mood of the emigrants was doubly unfortunate, as it +exposed them to real danger. Assume, in the presence of Indians a bold +bearing, self-confident yet vigilant, and you will find them tolerably +safe neighbors. But your safety depends on the respect and fear you are +able to inspire. If you betray timidity or indecision, you convert them +from that moment into insidious and dangerous enemies. The Dakotas saw +clearly enough the perturbation of the emigrants and instantly availed +themselves of it. They became extremely insolent and exacting in their +demands. It has become an established custom with them to go to the camp +of every party, as it arrives in succession at the fort, and demand a +feast. Smoke’s village had come with the express design, having made +several days’ journey with no other object than that of enjoying a cup +of coffee and two or three biscuits. So the “feast” was demanded, and +the emigrants dared not refuse it. + +One evening, about sunset, the village was deserted. We met old men, +warriors, squaws, and children in gay attire, trooping off to the +encampment, with faces of anticipation; and, arriving here, they seated +themselves in a semicircle. Smoke occupied the center, with his warriors +on either hand; the young men and boys next succeeded, and the squaws +and children formed the horns of the crescent. The biscuit and coffee +were most promptly dispatched, the emigrants staring open-mouthed at +their savage guests. With each new emigrant party that arrived at Fort +Laramie this scene was renewed; and every day the Indians grew more +rapacious and presumptuous. One evening they broke to pieces, out of +mere wantonness, the cups from which they had been feasted; and this +so exasperated the emigrants that many of them seized their rifles and +could scarcely be restrained from firing on the insolent mob of Indians. +Before we left the country this dangerous spirit on the part of the +Dakota had mounted to a yet higher pitch. They began openly to threaten +the emigrants with destruction, and actually fired upon one or two +parties of whites. A military force and military law are urgently called +for in that perilous region; and unless troops are speedily stationed at +Fort Laramie, or elsewhere in the neighborhood, both the emigrants and +other travelers will be exposed to most imminent risks. + +The Ogallalla, the Brules, and other western bands of the Dakota, are +thorough savages, unchanged by any contact with civilization. Not one +of them can speak a European tongue, or has ever visited an American +settlement. Until within a year or two, when the emigrants began to +pass through their country on the way to Oregon, they had seen no whites +except the handful employed about the Fur Company’s posts. They esteemed +them a wise people, inferior only to themselves, living in leather +lodges, like their own, and subsisting on buffalo. But when the swarm +of MENEASKA, with their oxen and wagons, began to invade them, their +astonishment was unbounded. They could scarcely believe that the earth +contained such a multitude of white men. Their wonder is now giving way +to indignation; and the result, unless vigilantly guarded against, may +be lamentable in the extreme. + +But to glance at the interior of a lodge. Shaw and I used often to +visit them. Indeed, we spent most of our evenings in the Indian village; +Shaw’s assumption of the medical character giving us a fair pretext. As +a sample of the rest I will describe one of these visits. The sun had +just set, and the horses were driven into the corral. The Prairie Cock, +a noted beau, came in at the gate with a bevy of young girls, with whom +he began to dance in the area, leading them round and round in a circle, +while he jerked up from his chest a succession of monotonous sounds, to +which they kept time in a rueful chant. Outside the gate boys and young +men were idly frolicking; and close by, looking grimly upon them, stood +a warrior in his robe, with his face painted jet-black, in token that +he had lately taken a Pawnee scalp. Passing these, the tall dark lodges +rose between us and the red western sky. We repaired at once to the +lodge of Old Smoke himself. It was by no means better than the others; +indeed, it was rather shabby; for in this democratic community, the +chief never assumes superior state. Smoke sat cross-legged on a buffalo +robe, and his grunt of salutation as we entered was unusually cordial, +out of respect no doubt to Shaw’s medical character. Seated around the +lodge were several squaws, and an abundance of children. The complaint +of Shaw’s patients was, for the most part, a severe inflammation of the +eyes, occasioned by exposure to the sun, a species of disorder which +he treated with some success. He had brought with him a homeopathic +medicine chest, and was, I presume, the first who introduced that +harmless system of treatment among the Ogallalla. No sooner had a robe +been spread at the head of the lodge for our accommodation, and we +had seated ourselves upon it, than a patient made her appearance; the +chief’s daughter herself, who, to do her justice, was the best-looking +girl in the village. Being on excellent terms with the physician, she +placed herself readily under his hands, and submitted with a good grace +to his applications, laughing in his face during the whole process, for +a squaw hardly knows how to smile. This case dispatched, another of +a different kind succeeded. A hideous, emaciated old woman sat in the +darkest corner of the lodge rocking to and fro with pain and hiding +her eyes from the light by pressing the palms of both hands against +her face. At Smoke’s command, she came forward, very unwillingly, and +exhibited a pair of eyes that had nearly disappeared from excess of +inflammation. No sooner had the doctor fastened his grips upon her than +she set up a dismal moaning, and writhed so in his grasp that he lost +all patience, but being resolved to carry his point, he succeeded at +last in applying his favorite remedies. + +“It is strange,” he said, when the operation was finished, “that I +forgot to bring any Spanish flies with me; we must have something here +to answer for a counter-irritant!” + +So, in the absence of better, he seized upon a red-hot brand from the +fire, and clapped it against the temple of the old squaw, who set up an +unearthly howl, at which the rest of the family broke out into a laugh. + +During these medical operations Smoke’s eldest squaw entered the lodge, +with a sort of stone mallet in her hand. I had observed some time before +a litter of well-grown black puppies, comfortably nestled among some +buffalo robes at one side; but this newcomer speedily disturbed their +enjoyment; for seizing one of them by the hind paw, she dragged him out, +and carrying him to the entrance of the lodge, hammered him on the head +till she killed him. Being quite conscious to what this preparation +tended, I looked through a hole in the back of the lodge to see the +next steps of the process. The squaw, holding the puppy by the legs, was +swinging him to and fro through the blaze of a fire, until the hair was +singed off. This done, she unsheathed her knife and cut him into small +pieces, which she dropped into a kettle to boil. In a few moments +a large wooden dish was set before us, filled with this delicate +preparation. We felt conscious of the honor. A dog-feast is the greatest +compliment a Dakota can offer to his guest; and knowing that to refuse +eating would be an affront, we attacked the little dog and devoured him +before the eyes of his unconscious parent. Smoke in the meantime was +preparing his great pipe. It was lighted when we had finished our +repast, and we passed it from one to another till the bowl was empty. +This done, we took our leave without further ceremony, knocked at the +gate of the fort, and after making ourselves known were admitted. + +One morning, about a week after reaching Fort Laramie, we were holding +our customary Indian levee, when a bustle in the area below announced +a new arrival; and looking down from our balcony, I saw a familiar red +beard and mustache in the gateway. They belonged to the captain, who +with his party had just crossed the stream. We met him on the stairs as +he came up, and congratulated him on the safe arrival of himself and his +devoted companions. But he remembered our treachery, and was grave and +dignified accordingly; a tendency which increased as he observed on our +part a disposition to laugh at him. After remaining an hour or two at +the fort he rode away with his friends, and we have heard nothing of him +since. As for R., he kept carefully aloof. It was but too evident that +we had the unhappiness to have forfeited the kind regards of our London +fellow-traveler. + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE WAR PARTIES + + +The summer of 1846 was a season of much warlike excitement among all the +western bands of the Dakota. In 1845 they encountered great reverses. +Many war parties had been sent out; some of them had been totally cut +off, and others had returned broken and disheartened, so that the whole +nation was in mourning. Among the rest, ten warriors had gone to the +Snake country, led by the son of a prominent Ogallalla chief, called The +Whirlwind. In passing over Laramie Plains they encountered a superior +number of their enemies, were surrounded, and killed to a man. +Having performed this exploit the Snakes became alarmed, dreading the +resentment of the Dakota, and they hastened therefore to signify their +wish for peace by sending the scalp of the slain partisan, together with +a small parcel of tobacco attached, to his tribesmen and relations. They +had employed old Vaskiss, the trader, as their messenger, and the scalp +was the same that hung in our room at the fort. But The Whirlwind proved +inexorable. Though his character hardly corresponds with his name, he is +nevertheless an Indian, and hates the Snakes with his whole soul. Long +before the scalp arrived he had made his preparations for revenge. He +sent messengers with presents and tobacco to all the Dakota within three +hundred miles, proposing a grand combination to chastise the Snakes, and +naming a place and time of rendezvous. The plan was readily adopted and +at this moment many villages, probably embracing in the whole five or +six thousand souls, were slowly creeping over the prairies and tending +towards the common center at La Bonte’s Camp, on the Platte. Here their +war-like rites were to be celebrated with more than ordinary solemnity, +and a thousand warriors, as it was said, were to set out for the enemy +country. The characteristic result of this preparation will appear in +the sequel. + +I was greatly rejoiced to hear of it. I had come into the country almost +exclusively with a view of observing the Indian character. Having from +childhood felt a curiosity on this subject, and having failed completely +to gratify it by reading, I resolved to have recourse to observation. +I wished to satisfy myself with regard to the position of the Indians +among the races of men; the vices and the virtues that have sprung from +their innate character and from their modes of life, their government, +their superstitions, and their domestic situation. To accomplish my +purpose it was necessary to live in the midst of them, and become, as +it were, one of them. I proposed to join a village and make myself an +inmate of one of their lodges; and henceforward this narrative, so far +as I am concerned, will be chiefly a record of the progress of this +design apparently so easy of accomplishment, and the unexpected +impediments that opposed it. + +We resolved on no account to miss the rendezvous at La Bonte’s Camp. Our +plan was to leave Delorier at the fort, in charge of our equipage and +the better part of our horses, while we took with us nothing but our +weapons and the worst animals we had. In all probability jealousies and +quarrels would arise among so many hordes of fierce impulsive savages, +congregated together under no common head, and many of them strangers, +from remote prairies and mountains. We were bound in common prudence to +be cautious how we excited any feeling of cupidity. This was our plan, +but unhappily we were not destined to visit La Bonte’s Camp in this +manner; for one morning a young Indian came to the fort and brought us +evil tidings. The newcomer was a dandy of the first water. His ugly face +was painted with vermilion; on his head fluttered the tail of a prairie +cock (a large species of pheasant, not found, as I have heard, eastward +of the Rocky Mountains); in his ears were hung pendants of shell, and a +flaming red blanket was wrapped around him. He carried a dragoon sword +in his hand, solely for display, since the knife, the arrow, and the +rifle are the arbiters of every prairie fight; but no one in this +country goes abroad unarmed, the dandy carried a bow and arrows in an +otter-skin quiver at his back. In this guise, and bestriding his yellow +horse with an air of extreme dignity, The Horse, for that was his name, +rode in at the gate, turning neither to the right nor the left, but +casting glances askance at the groups of squaws who, with their mongrel +progeny, were sitting in the sun before their doors. The evil tidings +brought by The Horse were of the following import: The squaw of Henry +Chatillon, a woman with whom he had been connected for years by the +strongest ties which in that country exist between the sexes, was +dangerously ill. She and her children were in the village of The +Whirlwind, at the distance of a few days’ journey. Henry was anxious to +see the woman before she died, and provide for the safety and support +of his children, of whom he was extremely fond. To have refused him +this would have been gross inhumanity. We abandoned our plan of joining +Smoke’s village, and of proceeding with it to the rendezvous, and +determined to meet The Whirlwind, and go in his company. + +I had been slightly ill for several weeks, but on the third night +after reaching Fort Laramie a violent pain awoke me, and I found myself +attacked by the same disorder that occasioned such heavy losses to the +army on the Rio Grande. In a day and a half I was reduced to extreme +weakness, so that I could not walk without pain and effort. Having +within that time taken six grains of opium, without the least beneficial +effect, and having no medical adviser, nor any choice of diet, I +resolved to throw myself upon Providence for recovery, using, without +regard to the disorder, any portion of strength that might remain to +me. So on the 20th of June we set out from Fort Laramie to meet The +Whirlwind’s village. Though aided by the high-bowed “mountain saddle,” + I could scarcely keep my seat on horseback. Before we left the fort we +hired another man, a long-haired Canadian, with a face like an owl’s, +contrasting oddly enough with Delorier’s mercurial countenance. This was +not the only re-enforcement to our party. A vagrant Indian trader, named +Reynal, joined us, together with his squaw Margot, and her two nephews, +our dandy friend, The Horse, and his younger brother, The Hail Storm. +Thus accompanied, we betook ourselves to the prairie, leaving the beaten +trail, and passing over the desolate hills that flank the bottoms of +Laramie Creek. In all, Indians and whites, we counted eight men and one +woman. + +Reynal, the trader, the image of sleek and selfish complacency, carried +The Horse’s dragoon sword in his hand, delighting apparently in this +useless parade; for, from spending half his life among Indians, he had +caught not only their habits but their ideas. Margot, a female animal +of more than two hundred pounds’ weight, was couched in the basket of +a travail, such as I have before described; besides her ponderous bulk, +various domestic utensils were attached to the vehicle, and she was +leading by a trail-rope a packhorse, who carried the covering of +Reynal’s lodge. Delorier walked briskly by the side of the cart, and +Raymond came behind, swearing at the spare horses, which it was his +business to drive. The restless young Indians, their quivers at their +backs, and their bows in their hand, galloped over the hills, often +starting a wolf or an antelope from the thick growth of wild-sage +bushes. Shaw and I were in keeping with the rest of the rude cavalcade, +having in the absence of other clothing adopted the buckskin attire +of the trappers. Henry Chatillon rode in advance of the whole. Thus we +passed hill after hill and hollow after hollow, a country arid, broken +and so parched by the sun that none of the plants familiar to our more +favored soil would flourish upon it, though there were multitudes of +strange medicinal herbs, more especially the absanth, which covered +every declivity, and cacti were hanging like reptiles at the edges of +every ravine. At length we ascended a high hill, our horses treading +upon pebbles of flint, agate, and rough jasper, until, gaining the top, +we looked down on the wild bottoms of Laramie Creek, which far below us +wound like a writhing snake from side to side of the narrow interval, +amid a growth of shattered cotton-wood and ash trees. Lines of tall +cliffs, white as chalk, shut in this green strip of woods and meadow +land, into which we descended and encamped for the night. In the morning +we passed a wide grassy plain by the river; there was a grove in front, +and beneath its shadows the ruins of an old trading fort of logs. The +grove bloomed with myriads of wild roses, with their sweet perfume +fraught with recollections of home. As we emerged from the trees, a +rattlesnake, as large as a man’s arm, and more than four feet long, +lay coiled on a rock, fiercely rattling and hissing at us; a gray hare, +double the size of those in New England, leaped up from the tall ferns; +curlew were screaming over our heads, and a whole host of little prairie +dogs sat yelping at us at the mouths of their burrows on the dry plain +beyond. Suddenly an antelope leaped up from the wild-sage bushes, gazed +eagerly at us, and then, erecting his white tail, stretched away like a +greyhound. The two Indian boys found a white wolf, as large as a calf in +a hollow, and giving a sharp yell, they galloped after him; but the wolf +leaped into the stream and swam across. Then came the crack of a rifle, +the bullet whistling harmlessly over his head, as he scrambled up the +steep declivity, rattling down stones and earth into the water below. +Advancing a little, we beheld on the farther bank of the stream, a +spectacle not common even in that region; for, emerging from among the +trees, a herd of some two hundred elk came out upon the meadow, their +antlers clattering as they walked forward in dense throng. Seeing us, +they broke into a run, rushing across the opening and disappearing +among the trees and scattered groves. On our left was a barren prairie, +stretching to the horizon; on our right, a deep gulf, with Laramie +Creek at the bottom. We found ourselves at length at the edge of a +steep descent; a narrow valley, with long rank grass and scattered trees +stretching before us for a mile or more along the course of the +stream. Reaching the farther end, we stopped and encamped. An old huge +cotton-wood tree spread its branches horizontally over our tent. Laramie +Creek, circling before our camp, half inclosed us; it swept along the +bottom of a line of tall white cliffs that looked down on us from the +farther bank. There were dense copses on our right; the cliffs, too, +were half hidden by shrubbery, though behind us a few cotton-wood trees, +dotting the green prairie, alone impeded the view, and friend or enemy +could be discerned in that direction at a mile’s distance. Here we +resolved to remain and await the arrival of The Whirlwind, who would +certainly pass this way in his progress toward La Bonte’s Camp. To go +in search of him was not expedient, both on account of the broken and +impracticable nature of the country and the uncertainty of his position +and movements; besides, our horses were almost worn out, and I was in no +condition to travel. We had good grass, good water, tolerable fish +from the stream, and plenty of smaller game, such as antelope and deer, +though no buffalo. There was one little drawback to our satisfaction--a +certain extensive tract of bushes and dried grass, just behind us, which +it was by no means advisable to enter, since it sheltered a numerous +brood of rattlesnakes. Henry Chatillon again dispatched The Horse to the +village, with a message to his squaw that she and her relatives should +leave the rest and push on as rapidly as possible to our camp. + +Our daily routine soon became as regular as that of a well-ordered +household. The weather-beaten old tree was in the center; our rifles +generally rested against its vast trunk, and our saddles were flung on +the ground around it; its distorted roots were so twisted as to form one +or two convenient arm-chairs, where we could sit in the shade and read +or smoke; but meal-times became, on the whole, the most interesting +hours of the day, and a bountiful provision was made for them. An +antelope or a deer usually swung from a stout bough, and haunches were +suspended against the trunk. That camp is daguerreotyped on my memory; +the old tree, the white tent, with Shaw sleeping in the shadow of it, +and Reynal’s miserable lodge close by the bank of the stream. It was a +wretched oven-shaped structure, made of begrimed and tattered buffalo +hides stretched over a frame of poles; one side was open, and at the +side of the opening hung the powder horn and bullet pouch of the owner, +together with his long red pipe, and a rich quiver of otterskin, with a +bow and arrows; for Reynal, an Indian in most things but color, chose +to hunt buffalo with these primitive weapons. In the darkness of this +cavern-like habitation, might be discerned Madame Margot, her overgrown +bulk stowed away among her domestic implements, furs, robes, blankets, +and painted cases of PAR’ FLECHE, in which dried meat is kept. Here +she sat from sunrise to sunset, a bloated impersonation of gluttony +and laziness, while her affectionate proprietor was smoking, or begging +petty gifts from us, or telling lies concerning his own achievements, +or perchance engaged in the more profitable occupation of cooking some +preparation of prairie delicacies. Reynal was an adept at this work; he +and Delorier have joined forces and are hard at work together over +the fire, while Raymond spreads, by way of tablecloth, a buffalo hide, +carefully whitened with pipeclay, on the grass before the tent. Here, +with ostentatious display, he arranges the teacups and plates; and then, +creeping on all fours like a dog, he thrusts his head in at the opening +of the tent. For a moment we see his round owlish eyes rolling wildly, +as if the idea he came to communicate had suddenly escaped him; then +collecting his scattered thoughts, as if by an effort, he informs us +that supper is ready, and instantly withdraws. + +When sunset came, and at that hour the wild and desolate scene would +assume a new aspect, the horses were driven in. They had been grazing +all day in the neighboring meadow, but now they were picketed close +about the camp. As the prairie darkened we sat and conversed around the +fire, until becoming drowsy we spread our saddles on the ground, wrapped +our blankets around us and lay down. We never placed a guard, having +by this time become too indolent; but Henry Chatillon folded his loaded +rifle in the same blanket with himself, observing that he always took it +to bed with him when he camped in that place. Henry was too bold a man +to use such a precaution without good cause. We had a hint now and then +that our situation was none of the safest; several Crow war parties were +known to be in the vicinity, and one of them, that passed here some time +before, had peeled the bark from a neighboring tree, and engraved upon +the white wood certain hieroglyphics, to signify that they had invaded +the territories of their enemies, the Dakota, and set them at defiance. +One morning a thick mist covered the whole country. Shaw and Henry went +out to ride, and soon came back with a startling piece of intelligence; +they had found within rifle-shot of our camp the recent trail of about +thirty horsemen. They could not be whites, and they could not be Dakota, +since we knew no such parties to be in the neighborhood; therefore +they must be Crows. Thanks to that friendly mist, we had escaped a hard +battle; they would inevitably have attacked us and our Indian companions +had they seen our camp. Whatever doubts we might have entertained, were +quite removed a day or two after, by two or three Dakota, who came to us +with an account of having hidden in a ravine on that very morning, from +whence they saw and counted the Crows; they said that they followed +them, carefully keeping out of sight, as they passed up Chugwater; that +here the Crows discovered five dead bodies of Dakota, placed according +to the national custom in trees, and flinging them to the ground, they +held their guns against them and blew them to atoms. + +If our camp were not altogether safe, still it was comfortable enough; +at least it was so to Shaw, for I was tormented with illness and vexed +by the delay in the accomplishment of my designs. When a respite in my +disorder gave me some returning strength, I rode out well-armed upon +the prairie, or bathed with Shaw in the stream, or waged a petty warfare +with the inhabitants of a neighborhood prairie-dog village. Around our +fire at night we employed ourselves in inveighing against the fickleness +and inconstancy of Indians, and execrating The Whirlwind and all his +village. At last the thing grew insufferable. + +“To-morrow morning,” said I, “I will start for the fort, and see if I +can hear any news there.” Late that evening, when the fire had sunk +low, and all the camp were asleep, a loud cry sounded from the darkness. +Henry started up, recognized the voice, replied to it, and our dandy +friend, The Horse, rode in among us, just returned from his mission to +the village. He coolly picketed his mare, without saying a word, sat +down by the fire and began to eat, but his imperturbable philosophy +was too much for our patience. Where was the village? about fifty miles +south of us; it was moving slowly and would not arrive in less than +a week; and where was Henry’s squaw? coming as fast as she could with +Mahto-Tatonka, and the rest of her brothers, but she would never reach +us, for she was dying, and asking every moment for Henry. Henry’s manly +face became clouded and downcast; he said that if we were willing he +would go in the morning to find her, at which Shaw offered to accompany +him. + +We saddled our horses at sunrise. Reynal protested vehemently against +being left alone, with nobody but the two Canadians and the young +Indians, when enemies were in the neighborhood. Disregarding his +complaints, we left him, and coming to the mouth of Chugwater, +separated, Shaw and Henry turning to the right, up the bank of the +stream, while I made for the fort. + +Taking leave for a while of my friend and the unfortunate squaw, I will +relate by way of episode what I saw and did at Fort Laramie. It was not +more than eighteen miles distant, and I reached it in three hours; a +shriveled little figure, wrapped from head to foot in a dingy white +Canadian capote, stood in the gateway, holding by a cord of bull’s hide +a shaggy wild horse, which he had lately caught. His sharp prominent +features, and his little keen snakelike eyes, looked out from beneath +the shadowy hood of the capote, which was drawn over his head exactly +like the cowl of a Capuchin friar. His face was extremely thin and like +an old piece of leather, and his mouth spread from ear to ear. Extending +his long wiry hand, he welcomed me with something more cordial than the +ordinary cold salute of an Indian, for we were excellent friends. He had +made an exchange of horses to our mutual advantage; and Paul, thinking +himself well-treated, had declared everywhere that the white man had +a good heart. He was a Dakota from the Missouri, a reputed son of the +half-breed interpreter, Pierre Dorion, so often mentioned in Irving’s +“Astoria.” He said that he was going to Richard’s trading house to sell +his horse to some emigrants who were encamped there, and asked me to go +with him. We forded the stream together, Paul dragging his wild charge +behind him. As we passed over the sandy plains beyond, he grew quite +communicative. Paul was a cosmopolitan in his way; he had been to the +settlements of the whites, and visited in peace and war most of the +tribes within the range of a thousand miles. He spoke a jargon of French +and another of English, yet nevertheless he was a thorough Indian; and +as he told of the bloody deeds of his own people against their enemies, +his little eye would glitter with a fierce luster. He told how the +Dakota exterminated a village of the Hohays on the Upper Missouri, +slaughtering men, women, and children; and how an overwhelming force of +them cut off sixteen of the brave Delawares, who fought like wolves +to the last, amid the throng of their enemies. He told me also another +story, which I did not believe until I had it confirmed from so many +independent sources that no room was left for doubt. I am tempted to +introduce it here. + +Six years ago a fellow named Jim Beckwith, a mongrel of French, +American, and negro blood, was trading for the Fur Company, in a very +large village of the Crows. Jim Beckwith was last summer at St. Louis. +He is a ruffian of the first stamp; bloody and treacherous, without +honor or honesty; such at least is the character he bears upon the +prairie. Yet in his case all the standard rules of character fail, +for though he will stab a man in his sleep, he will also perform most +desperate acts of daring; such, for instance, as the following: While he +was in the Crow village, a Blackfoot war party, between thirty and forty +in number came stealing through the country, killing stragglers and +carrying off horses. The Crow warriors got upon their trail and pressed +them so closely that they could not escape, at which the Blackfeet, +throwing up a semicircular breastwork of logs at the foot of a +precipice, coolly awaited their approach. The logs and sticks, piled +four or five high, protected them in front. The Crows might have +swept over the breastwork and exterminated their enemies; but though +out-numbering them tenfold, they did not dream of storming the little +fortification. Such a proceeding would be altogether repugnant to their +notions of warfare. Whooping and yelling, and jumping from side to side +like devils incarnate, they showered bullets and arrows upon the logs; +not a Blackfoot was hurt, but several Crows, in spite of their leaping +and dodging, were shot down. In this childish manner the fight went on +for an hour or two. Now and then a Crow warrior in an ecstasy of valor +and vainglory would scream forth his war song, boasting himself the +bravest and greatest of mankind, and grasping his hatchet, would rush +up and strike it upon the breastwork, and then as he retreated to his +companions, fall dead under a shower of arrows; yet no combined +attack seemed to be dreamed of. The Blackfeet remained secure in their +intrenchment. At last Jim Beckwith lost patience. + +“You are all fools and old women,” he said to the Crows; “come with me, +if any of you are brave enough, and I will show you how to fight.” + +He threw off his trapper’s frock of buckskin and stripped himself naked +like the Indians themselves. He left his rifle on the ground, and taking +in his hand a small light hatchet, he ran over the prairie to the right, +concealed by a hollow from the eyes of the Blackfeet. Then climbing +up the rocks, he gained the top of the precipice behind them. Forty or +fifty young Crow warriors followed him. By the cries and whoops that +rose from below he knew that the Blackfeet were just beneath him; and +running forward, he leaped down the rock into the midst of them. As +he fell he caught one by the long loose hair and dragging him down +tomahawked him; then grasping another by the belt at his waist, he +struck him also a stunning blow, and gaining his feet, shouted the Crow +war-cry. He swung his hatchet so fiercely around him that the astonished +Blackfeet bore back and gave him room. He might, had he chosen, have +leaped over the breastwork and escaped; but this was not necessary, for +with devilish yells the Crow warriors came dropping in quick succession +over the rock among their enemies. The main body of the Crows, too, +answered the cry from the front and rushed up simultaneously. The +convulsive struggle within the breastwork was frightful; for an instant +the Blackfeet fought and yelled like pent-up tigers; but the butchery +was soon complete, and the mangled bodies lay piled up together under +the precipice. Not a Blackfoot made his escape. + +As Paul finished his story we came in sight of Richard’s Fort. It stood +in the middle of the plain; a disorderly crowd of men around it, and an +emigrant camp a little in front. + +“Now, Paul,” said I, “where are your Winnicongew lodges?” + +“Not come yet,” said Paul, “maybe come to-morrow.” + +Two large villages of a band of Dakota had come three hundred miles +from the Missouri, to join in the war, and they were expected to reach +Richard’s that morning. There was as yet no sign of their approach; so +pushing through a noisy, drunken crowd, I entered an apartment of logs +and mud, the largest in the fort; it was full of men of various races +and complexions, all more or less drunk. A company of California +emigrants, it seemed, had made the discovery at this late day that they +had encumbered themselves with too many supplies for their journey. +A part, therefore, they had thrown away or sold at great loss to +the traders, but had determined to get rid of their copious stock of +Missouri whisky, by drinking it on the spot. Here were maudlin squaws +stretched on piles of buffalo robes; squalid Mexicans, armed with bows +and arrows; Indians sedately drunk; long-haired Canadians and trappers, +and American backwoodsmen in brown homespun, the well-beloved pistol and +bowie knife displayed openly at their sides. In the middle of the room a +tall, lank man, with a dingy broadcloth coat, was haranguing the company +in the style of the stump orator. With one hand he sawed the air, and +with the other clutched firmly a brown jug of whisky, which he applied +every moment to his lips, forgetting that he had drained the contents +long ago. Richard formally introduced me to this personage, who was no +less a man than Colonel R., once the leader of the party. Instantly the +colonel seizing me, in the absence of buttons by the leather fringes of +my frock, began to define his position. His men, he said, had mutinied +and deposed him; but still he exercised over them the influence of +a superior mind; in all but the name he was yet their chief. As the +colonel spoke, I looked round on the wild assemblage, and could not help +thinking that he was but ill qualified to conduct such men across the +desert to California. Conspicuous among the rest stood three tail +young men, grandsons of Daniel Boone. They had clearly inherited the +adventurous character of that prince of pioneers; but I saw no signs of +the quiet and tranquil spirit that so remarkably distinguished him. + +Fearful was the fate that months after overtook some of the members of +that party. General Kearny, on his late return from California, brought +in the account how they were interrupted by the deep snows among the +mountains, and maddened by cold and hunger fed upon each other’s flesh. + +I got tired of the confusion. “Come, Paul,” said I, “we will be off.” + Paul sat in the sun, under the wall of the fort. He jumped up, mounted, +and we rode toward Fort Laramie. When we reached it, a man came out of +the gate with a pack at his back and a rifle on his shoulder; others +were gathering about him, shaking him by the hand, as if taking leave. +I thought it a strange thing that a man should set out alone and on +foot for the prairie. I soon got an explanation. Perrault--this, if +I recollect right was the Canadian’s name--had quarreled with the +bourgeois, and the fort was too hot to hold him. Bordeaux, inflated with +his transient authority, had abused him, and received a blow in return. +The men then sprang at each other, and grappled in the middle of the +fort. Bordeaux was down in an instant, at the mercy of the incensed +Canadian; had not an old Indian, the brother of his squaw, seized hold +of his antagonist, he would have fared ill. Perrault broke loose from +the old Indian, and both the white men ran to their rooms for their +guns; but when Bordeaux, looking from his door, saw the Canadian, gun in +hand, standing in the area and calling on him to come out and fight, +his heart failed him; he chose to remain where he was. In vain the old +Indian, scandalized by his brother-in-law’s cowardice, called upon him +to go upon the prairie and fight it out in the white man’s manner; and +Bordeaux’s own squaw, equally incensed, screamed to her lord and master +that he was a dog and an old woman. It all availed nothing. Bordeaux’s +prudence got the better of his valor, and he would not stir. Perrault +stood showering approbrious epithets at the recent bourgeois. Growing +tired of this, he made up a pack of dried meat, and slinging it at his +back, set out alone for Fort Pierre on the Missouri, a distance of three +hundred miles, over a desert country full of hostile Indians. + +I remained in the fort that night. In the morning, as I was coming +out from breakfast, conversing with a trader named McCluskey, I saw +a strange Indian leaning against the side of the gate. He was a tall, +strong man, with heavy features. + +“Who is he?” I asked. “That’s The Whirlwind,” said McCluskey. “He is the +fellow that made all this stir about the war. It’s always the way with +the Sioux; they never stop cutting each other’s throats; it’s all they +are fit for; instead of sitting in their lodges, and getting robes to +trade with us in the winter. If this war goes on, we’ll make a poor +trade of it next season, I reckon.” + +And this was the opinion of all the traders, who were vehemently opposed +to the war, from the serious injury that it must occasion to their +interests. The Whirlwind left his village the day before to make a visit +to the fort. His warlike ardor had abated not a little since he +first conceived the design of avenging his son’s death. The long and +complicated preparations for the expedition were too much for his +fickle, inconstant disposition. That morning Bordeaux fastened upon him, +made him presents and told him that if he went to war he would destroy +his horses and kill no buffalo to trade with the white men; in short, +that he was a fool to think of such a thing, and had better make up his +mind to sit quietly in his lodge and smoke his pipe, like a wise man. +The Whirlwind’s purpose was evidently shaken; he had become tired, like +a child, of his favorite plan. Bordeaux exultingly predicted that he +would not go to war. My philanthropy at that time was no match for my +curiosity, and I was vexed at the possibility that after all I might +lose the rare opportunity of seeing the formidable ceremonies of +war. The Whirlwind, however, had merely thrown the firebrand; the +conflagration was become general. All the western bands of the Dakota +were bent on war; and as I heard from McCluskey, six large villages +already gathered on a little stream, forty miles distant, were daily +calling to the Great Spirit to aid them in their enterprise. McCluskey +had just left and represented them as on their way to La Bonte’s Camp, +which they would reach in a week, UNLESS THEY SHOULD LEARN THAT THERE +WERE NO BUFFALO THERE. I did not like this condition, for buffalo +this season were rare in the neighborhood. There were also the two +Minnicongew villages that I mentioned before; but about noon, an Indian +came from Richard’s Fort with the news that they were quarreling, +breaking up, and dispersing. So much for the whisky of the emigrants! +Finding themselves unable to drink the whole, they had sold the residue +to these Indians, and it needed no prophet to foretell the results; a +spark dropped into a powder magazine would not have produced a quicker +effect. Instantly the old jealousies and rivalries and smothered feuds +that exist in an Indian village broke out into furious quarrels. They +forgot the warlike enterprise that had already brought them three +hundred miles. They seemed like ungoverned children inflamed with the +fiercest passions of men. Several of them were stabbed in the drunken +tumult; and in the morning they scattered and moved back toward the +Missouri in small parties. I feared that, after all, the long-projected +meeting and the ceremonies that were to attend it might never take +place, and I should lose so admirable an opportunity of seeing the +Indian under his most fearful and characteristic aspect; however, +in foregoing this, I should avoid a very fair probability of being +plundered and stripped, and, it might be, stabbed or shot into the +bargain. Consoling myself with this reflection, I prepared to carry the +news, such as it was, to the camp. + +I caught my horse, and to my vexation found he had lost a shoe and +broken his tender white hoof against the rocks. Horses are shod at Fort +Laramie at the moderate rate of three dollars a foot; so I tied +Hendrick to a beam in the corral, and summoned Roubidou, the blacksmith. +Roubidou, with the hoof between his knees, was at work with hammer and +file, and I was inspecting the process, when a strange voice addressed +me. + +“Two more gone under! Well, there is more of us left yet. Here’s Jean +Gars and me off to the mountains to-morrow. Our turn will come next, I +suppose. It’s a hard life, anyhow!” + +I looked up and saw a little man, not much more than five feet high, but +of very square and strong proportions. In appearance he was particularly +dingy; for his old buckskin frock was black and polished with time and +grease, and his belt, knife, pouch, and powder-horn appeared to have +seen the roughest service. The first joint of each foot was entirely +gone, having been frozen off several winters before, and his moccasins +were curtailed in proportion. His whole appearance and equipment bespoke +the “free trapper.” He had a round ruddy face, animated with a spirit of +carelessness and gayety not at all in accordance with the words he had +just spoken. + +“Two more gone,” said I; “what do you mean by that?” + +“Oh,” said he, “the Arapahoes have just killed two of us in the +mountains. Old Bull-Tail has come to tell us. They stabbed one behind +his back, and shot the other with his own rifle. That’s the way we live +here! I mean to give up trapping after this year. My squaw says she +wants a pacing horse and some red ribbons; I’ll make enough beaver to +get them for her, and then I’m done! I’ll go below and live on a farm.” + +“Your bones will dry on the prairie, Rouleau!” said another trapper, who +was standing by; a strong, brutal-looking fellow, with a face as surly +as a bull-dog’s. + +Rouleau only laughed, and began to hum a tune and shuffle a dance on his +stumps of feet. + +“You’ll see us, before long, passing up our way,” said the other man. +“Well,” said I, “stop and take a cup of coffee with us”; and as it was +quite late in the afternoon, I prepared to leave the fort at once. + +As I rode out, a train of emigrant wagons was passing across the stream. +“Whar are ye goin’ stranger?” Thus I was saluted by two or three voices +at once. + +“About eighteen miles up the creek.” + +“It’s mighty late to be going that far! Make haste, ye’d better, and +keep a bright lookout for Indians!” + +I thought the advice too good to be neglected. Fording the stream, I +passed at a round trot over the plains beyond. But “the more haste, the +worse speed.” I proved the truth in the proverb by the time I reached +the hills three miles from the fort. The trail was faintly marked, and +riding forward with more rapidity than caution, I lost sight of it. I +kept on in a direct line, guided by Laramie Creek, which I could see +at intervals darkly glistening in the evening sun, at the bottom of +the woody gulf on my right. Half an hour before sunset I came upon its +banks. There was something exciting in the wild solitude of the place. +An antelope sprang suddenly from the sagebushes before me. As he leaped +gracefully not thirty yards before my horse, I fired, and instantly he +spun round and fell. Quite sure of him, I walked my horse toward him, +leisurely reloading my rifle, when to my surprise he sprang up and +trotted rapidly away on three legs into the dark recesses of the hills, +whither I had no time to follow. Ten minutes after, I was passing along +the bottom of a deep valley, and chancing to look behind me, I saw in +the dim light that something was following. Supposing it to be wolf, I +slid from my seat and sat down behind my horse to shoot it; but as +it came up, I saw by its motions that it was another antelope. It +approached within a hundred yards, arched its graceful neck, and gazed +intently. I leveled at the white spot on its chest, and was about to +fire when it started off, ran first to one side and then to the other, +like a vessel tacking against a wind, and at last stretched away at full +speed. Then it stopped again, looked curiously behind it, and trotted up +as before; but not so boldly, for it soon paused and stood gazing at +me. I fired; it leaped upward and fell upon its tracks. Measuring the +distance, I found it 204 paces. When I stood by his side, the antelope +turned his expiring eye upward. It was like a beautiful woman’s, dark +and rich. “Fortunate that I am in a hurry,” thought I; “I might be +troubled with remorse, if I had time for it.” + +Cutting the animal up, not in the most skilled manner, I hung the meat +at the back of my saddle, and rode on again. The hills (I could not +remember one of them) closed around me. “It is too late,” thought I, +“to go forward. I will stay here to-night, and look for the path in the +morning.” As a last effort, however, I ascended a high hill, from which, +to my great satisfaction, I could see Laramie Creek stretching before +me, twisting from side to side amid ragged patches of timber; and +far off, close beneath the shadows of the trees, the ruins of the old +trading fort were visible. I reached them at twilight. It was far from +pleasant, in that uncertain light, to be pushing through the dense trees +and shrubbery of the grove beyond. I listened anxiously for the footfall +of man or beast. Nothing was stirring but one harmless brown bird, +chirping among the branches. I was glad when I gained the open prairie +once more, where I could see if anything approached. When I came to the +mouth of Chugwater, it was totally dark. Slackening the reins, I let my +horse take his own course. He trotted on with unerring instinct, and by +nine o’clock was scrambling down the steep ascent into the meadows where +we were encamped. While I was looking in vain for the light of the +fire, Hendrick, with keener perceptions, gave a loud neigh, which was +immediately answered in a shrill note from the distance. In a moment I +was hailed from the darkness by the voice of Reynal, who had come out, +rifle in hand, to see who was approaching. + +He, with his squaw, the two Canadians and the Indian boys, were the sole +inmates of the camp, Shaw and Henry Chatillon being still absent. At +noon of the following day they came back, their horses looking none the +better for the journey. Henry seemed dejected. The woman was dead, and +his children must henceforward be exposed, without a protector, to the +hardships and vicissitudes of Indian life. Even in the midst of his +grief he had not forgotten his attachment to his bourgeois, for he had +procured among his Indian relatives two beautifully ornamented buffalo +robes, which he spread on the ground as a present to us. + +Shaw lighted his pipe, and told me in a few words the history of his +journey. When I went to the fort they left me, as I mentioned, at the +mouth of Chugwater. They followed the course of the little stream all +day, traversing a desolate and barren country. Several times they came +upon the fresh traces of a large war party--the same, no doubt, from +whom we had so narrowly escaped an attack. At an hour before sunset, +without encountering a human being by the way, they came upon the lodges +of the squaw and her brothers, who, in compliance with Henry’s message, +had left the Indian village in order to join us at our camp. The lodges +were already pitched, five in number, by the side of the stream. The +woman lay in one of them, reduced to a mere skeleton. For some time she +had been unable to move or speak. Indeed, nothing had kept her alive +but the hope of seeing Henry, to whom she was strongly and faithfully +attached. No sooner did he enter the lodge than she revived, and +conversed with him the greater part of the night. Early in the morning +she was lifted into a travail, and the whole party set out toward our +camp. There were but five warriors; the rest were women and children. +The whole were in great alarm at the proximity of the Crow war party, +who would certainly have destroyed them without mercy had they met. They +had advanced only a mile or two, when they discerned a horseman, far +off, on the edge of the horizon. They all stopped, gathering together in +the greatest anxiety, from which they did not recover until long after +the horseman disappeared; then they set out again. Henry was riding with +Shaw a few rods in advance of the Indians, when Mahto-Tatonka, a younger +brother of the woman, hastily called after them. Turning back, they +found all the Indians crowded around the travail in which the woman was +lying. They reached her just in time to hear the death-rattle in +her throat. In a moment she lay dead in the basket of the vehicle. A +complete stillness succeeded; then the Indians raised in concert their +cries of lamentation over the corpse, and among them Shaw clearly +distinguished those strange sounds resembling the word “Halleluyah,” + which together with some other accidental coincidences has given rise +to the absurd theory that the Indians are descended from the ten lost +tribes of Israel. + +The Indian usage required that Henry, as well as the other relatives of +the woman, should make valuable presents, to be placed by the side of +the body at its last resting place. Leaving the Indians, he and Shaw set +out for the camp and reached it, as we have seen, by hard pushing, at +about noon. Having obtained the necessary articles, they immediately +returned. It was very late and quite dark when they again reached the +lodges. They were all placed in a deep hollow among the dreary hills. +Four of them were just visible through the gloom, but the fifth and +largest was illuminated by the ruddy blaze of a fire within, glowing +through the half-transparent covering of raw hides. There was a perfect +stillness as they approached. The lodges seemed without a tenant. Not a +living thing was stirring--there was something awful in the scene. They +rode up to the entrance of the lodge, and there was no sound but the +tramp of their horses. A squaw came out and took charge of the animals, +without speaking a word. Entering, they found the lodge crowded with +Indians; a fire was burning in the midst, and the mourners encircled +it in a triple row. Room was made for the newcomers at the head of the +lodge, a robe spread for them to sit upon, and a pipe lighted and handed +to them in perfect silence. Thus they passed the greater part of the +night. At times the fire would subside into a heap of embers, until the +dark figures seated around it were scarcely visible; then a squaw would +drop upon it a piece of buffalo-fat, and a bright flame, instantly +springing up, would reveal of a sudden the crowd of wild faces, +motionless as bronze. The silence continued unbroken. It was a relief +to Shaw when daylight returned and he could escape from this house of +mourning. He and Henry prepared to return homeward; first, however, they +placed the presents they had brought near the body of the squaw, which, +most gaudily attired, remained in a sitting posture in one of the +lodges. A fine horse was picketed not far off, destined to be killed +that morning for the service of her spirit, for the woman was lame, and +could not travel on foot over the dismal prairies to the villages of +the dead. Food, too, was provided, and household implements, for her use +upon this last journey. + +Henry left her to the care of her relatives, and came immediately with +Shaw to the camp. It was some time before he entirely recovered from his +dejection. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +SCENES AT THE CAMP + + +Reynal heard guns fired one day, at the distance of a mile or two from +the camp. He grew nervous instantly. Visions of Crow war parties began +to haunt his imagination; and when we returned (for we were all absent), +he renewed his complaints about being left alone with the Canadians +and the squaw. The day after, the cause of the alarm appeared. Four +trappers, one called Moran, another Saraphin, and the others nicknamed +“Rouleau” and “Jean Gras,” came to our camp and joined us. They it was +who fired the guns and disturbed the dreams of our confederate Reynal. +They soon encamped by our side. Their rifles, dingy and battered with +hard service, rested with ours against the old tree; their strong rude +saddles, their buffalo robes, their traps, and the few rough and simple +articles of their traveling equipment, were piled near our tent. Their +mountain horses were turned to graze in the meadow among our own; and +the men themselves, no less rough and hardy, used to lie half the day in +the shade of our tree lolling on the grass, lazily smoking, and telling +stories of their adventures; and I defy the annals of chivalry to +furnish the record of a life more wild and perilous than that of a Rocky +Mountain trapper. + +With this efficient re-enforcement the agitation of Reynal’s nerves +subsided. He began to conceive a sort of attachment to our old camping +ground; yet it was time to change our quarters, since remaining too long +on one spot must lead to certain unpleasant results not to be borne +with unless in a case of dire necessity. The grass no longer presented a +smooth surface of turf; it was trampled into mud and clay. So we removed +to another old tree, larger yet, that grew by the river side at a +furlong’s distance. Its trunk was full six feet in diameter; on one +side it was marked by a party of Indians with various inexplicable +hieroglyphics, commemorating some warlike enterprise, and aloft among +the branches were the remains of a scaffolding, where dead bodies had +once been deposited, after the Indian manner. + +“There comes Bull-Bear,” said Henry Chatillon, as we sat on the grass at +dinner. Looking up, we saw several horsemen coming over the neighboring +hill, and in a moment four stately young men rode up and dismounted. +One of them was Bull-Bear, or Mahto-Tatonka, a compound name which he +inherited from his father, the most powerful chief in the Ogallalla +band. One of his brothers and two other young men accompanied him. We +shook hands with the visitors, and when we had finished our meal--for +this is the orthodox manner of entertaining Indians, even the best of +them--we handed to each a tin cup of coffee and a biscuit, at which they +ejaculated from the bottom of their throats, “How! how!” a monosyllable +by which an Indian contrives to express half the emotions that he is +susceptible of. Then we lighted the pipe, and passed it to them as they +squatted on the ground. + +“Where is the village?” + +“There,” said Mahto-Tatonka, pointing southward; “it will come in two +days.” + +“Will they go to the war?” + +“Yes.” + +No man is a philanthropist on the prairie. We welcomed this news most +cordially, and congratulated ourselves that Bordeaux’s interested +efforts to divert The Whirlwind from his congenial vocation of bloodshed +had failed of success, and that no additional obstacles would interpose +between us and our plan of repairing to the rendezvous at La Bonte’s +Camp. + +For that and several succeeding days, Mahto-Tatonka and his friends +remained our guests. They devoured the relics of our meals; they filled +the pipe for us and also helped us to smoke it. Sometimes they stretched +themselves side by side in the shade, indulging in raillery and +practical jokes ill becoming the dignity of brave and aspiring warriors, +such as two of them in reality were. + +Two days dragged away, and on the morning of the third we hoped +confidently to see the Indian village. It did not come; so we rode out +to look for it. In place of the eight hundred Indians we expected, we +met one solitary savage riding toward us over the prairie, who told +us that the Indians had changed their plans, and would not come within +three days; still he persisted that they were going to the war. Taking +along with us this messenger of evil tidings, we retraced our footsteps +to the camp, amusing ourselves by the way with execrating Indian +inconstancy. When we came in sight of our little white tent under the +big tree, we saw that it no longer stood alone. A huge old lodge was +erected close by its side, discolored by rain and storms, rotted with +age, with the uncouth figures of horses and men, and outstretched hands +that were painted upon it, well-nigh obliterated. The long poles which +supported this squalid habitation thrust themselves rakishly out from +its pointed top, and over its entrance were suspended a “medicine-pipe” + and various other implements of the magic art. While we were yet at a +distance, we observed a greatly increased population of various colors +and dimensions, swarming around our quiet encampment. Moran, the +trapper, having been absent for a day or two, had returned, it seemed, +bringing all his family with him. He had taken to himself a wife for +whom he had paid the established price of one horse. This looks cheap at +first sight, but in truth the purchase of a squaw is a transaction which +no man should enter into without mature deliberation, since it involves +not only the payment of the first price, but the formidable burden of +feeding and supporting a rapacious horde of the bride’s relatives, who +hold themselves entitled to feed upon the indiscreet white man. They +gather round like leeches, and drain him of all he has. + +Moran, like Reynal, had not allied himself to an aristocratic circle. +His relatives occupied but a contemptible position in Ogallalla society; +for among those wild democrats of the prairie, as among us, there are +virtual distinctions of rank and place; though this great advantage they +have over us, that wealth has no part in determining such distinctions. +Moran’s partner was not the most beautiful of her sex, and he had the +exceedingly bad taste to array her in an old calico gown bought from +an emigrant woman, instead of the neat and graceful tunic of whitened +deerskin worn ordinarily by the squaws. The moving spirit of the +establishment, in more senses than one, was a hideous old hag of eighty. +Human imagination never conceived hobgoblin or witch more ugly than she. +You could count all her ribs through the wrinkles of the leathery skin +that covered them. Her withered face more resembled an old skull than +the countenance of a living being, even to the hollow, darkened sockets, +at the bottom of which glittered her little black eyes. Her arms had +dwindled away into nothing but whipcord and wire. Her hair, half black, +half gray, hung in total neglect nearly to the ground, and her sole +garment consisted of the remnant of a discarded buffalo robe tied round +her waist with a string of hide. Yet the old squaw’s meager anatomy was +wonderfully strong. She pitched the lodge, packed the horses, and did +the hardest labor of the camp. From morning till night she bustled about +the lodge, screaming like a screech-owl when anything displeased her. +Then there was her brother, a “medicine-man,” or magician, equally +gaunt and sinewy with herself. His mouth spread from ear to ear, and his +appetite, as we had full occasion to learn, was ravenous in proportion. +The other inmates of the lodge were a young bride and bridegroom; the +latter one of those idle, good-for nothing fellows who infest an Indian +village as well as more civilized communities. He was fit neither +for hunting nor for war; and one might infer as much from the stolid +unmeaning expression of his face. The happy pair had just entered upon +the honeymoon. They would stretch a buffalo robe upon poles, so as to +protect them from the fierce rays of the sun, and spreading beneath this +rough canopy a luxuriant couch of furs, would sit affectionately side +by side for half the day, though I could not discover that much +conversation passed between them. Probably they had nothing to say; for +an Indian’s supply of topics for conversation is far from being copious. +There were half a dozen children, too, playing and whooping about the +camp, shooting birds with little bows and arrows, or making miniature +lodges of sticks, as children of a different complexion build houses of +blocks. + +A day passed, and Indians began rapidly to come in. Parties of two or +three or more would ride up and silently seat themselves on the grass. +The fourth day came at last, when about noon horsemen suddenly appeared +into view on the summit of the neighboring ridge. They descended, and +behind them followed a wild procession, hurrying in haste and disorder +down the hill and over the plain below; horses, mules, and dogs, heavily +burdened travaux, mounted warriors, squaws walking amid the throng, and +a host of children. For a full half-hour they continued to pour down; +and keeping directly to the bend of the stream, within a furlong of us, +they soon assembled there, a dark and confused throng, until, as if +by magic, 150 tall lodges sprung up. On a sudden the lonely plain was +transformed into the site of a miniature city. Countless horses were +soon grazing over the meadows around us, and the whole prairie was +animated by restless figures careening on horseback, or sedately +stalking in their long white robes. The Whirlwind was come at last! One +question yet remained to be answered: “Will he go to the war, in order +that we, with so respectable an escort, may pass over to the somewhat +perilous rendezvous at La Bonte’s Camp?” + +Still this remained in doubt. Characteristic indecision perplexed their +councils. Indians cannot act in large bodies. Though their object be of +the highest importance, they cannot combine to attain it by a series of +connected efforts. King Philip, Pontiac, and Tecumseh all felt this to +their cost. The Ogallalla once had a war chief who could control +them; but he was dead, and now they were left to the sway of their own +unsteady impulses. + +This Indian village and its inhabitants will hold a prominent place in +the rest of the narrative, and perhaps it may not be amiss to glance for +an instant at the savage people of which they form a part. The Dakota +(I prefer this national designation to the unmeaning French name, Sioux) +range over a vast territory, from the river St. Peter’s to the Rocky +Mountains themselves. They are divided into several independent bands, +united under no central government, and acknowledge no common head. +The same language, usages, and superstitions form the sole bond between +them. They do not unite even in their wars. The bands of the east fight +the Ojibwas on the Upper Lakes; those of the west make incessant war +upon the Snake Indians in the Rocky Mountains. As the whole people is +divided into bands, so each band is divided into villages. Each village +has a chief, who is honored and obeyed only so far as his personal +qualities may command respect and fear. Sometimes he is a mere nominal +chief; sometimes his authority is little short of absolute, and his fame +and influence reach even beyond his own village; so that the whole band +to which he belongs is ready to acknowledge him as their head. This was, +a few years since, the case with the Ogallalla. Courage, address, and +enterprise may raise any warrior to the highest honor, especially if +he be the son of a former chief, or a member of a numerous family, to +support him and avenge his quarrels; but when he has reached the dignity +of chief, and the old men and warriors, by a peculiar ceremony, have +formally installed him, let it not be imagined that he assumes any of +the outward semblances of rank and honor. He knows too well on how +frail a tenure he holds his station. He must conciliate his uncertain +subjects. Many a man in the village lives better, owns more squaws and +more horses, and goes better clad than he. Like the Teutonic chiefs of +old, he ingratiates himself with his young men by making them presents, +thereby often impoverishing himself. Does he fail in gaining their +favor, they will set his authority at naught, and may desert him at any +moment; for the usages of his people have provided no sanctions by which +he may enforce his authority. Very seldom does it happen, at least among +these western bands, that a chief attains to much power, unless he is +the head of a numerous family. Frequently the village is principally +made up of his relatives and descendants, and the wandering community +assumes much of the patriarchal character. A people so loosely united, +torn, too, with ranking feuds and jealousies, can have little power or +efficiency. + +The western Dakota have no fixed habitations. Hunting and fighting, they +wander incessantly through summer and winter. Some are following the +herds of buffalo over the waste of prairie; others are traversing the +Black Hills, thronging on horseback and on foot through the dark gulfs +and somber gorges beneath the vast splintering precipices, and emerging +at last upon the “Parks,” those beautiful but most perilous hunting +grounds. The buffalo supplies them with almost all the necessaries of +life; with habitations, food, clothing, and fuel; with strings for +their bows, with thread, cordage, and trail-ropes for their horses, with +coverings for their saddles, with vessels to hold water, with boats to +cross streams, with glue, and with the means of purchasing all that they +desire from the traders. When the buffalo are extinct, they too must +dwindle away. + +War is the breath of their nostrils. Against most of the neighboring +tribes they cherish a deadly, rancorous hatred, transmitted from father +to son, and inflamed by constant aggression and retaliation. Many times +a year, in every village, the Great Spirit is called upon, fasts are +made, the war parade is celebrated, and the warriors go out by handfuls +at a time against the enemy. This fierce and evil spirit awakens their +most eager aspirations, and calls forth their greatest energies. It is +chiefly this that saves them from lethargy and utter abasement. Without +its powerful stimulus they would be like the unwarlike tribes beyond +the mountains, who are scattered among the caves and rocks like beasts, +living on roots and reptiles. These latter have little of humanity +except the form; but the proud and ambitious Dakota warrior can +sometimes boast of heroic virtues. It is very seldom that distinction +and influence are attained among them by any other course than that of +arms. Their superstition, however, sometimes gives great power, to those +among them who pretend to the character of magicians. Their wild hearts, +too, can feel the power of oratory, and yield deference to the masters +of it. + +But to return. Look into our tent, or enter, if you can bear the +stifling smoke and the close atmosphere. There, wedged close together, +you will see a circle of stout warriors, passing the pipe around, +joking, telling stories, and making themselves merry, after their +fashion. We were also infested by little copper-colored naked boys and +snake-eyed girls. They would come up to us, muttering certain words, +which being interpreted conveyed the concise invitation, “Come and eat.” + Then we would rise, cursing the pertinacity of Dakota hospitality, which +allowed scarcely an hour of rest between sun and sun, and to which we +were bound to do honor, unless we would offend our entertainers. This +necessity was particularly burdensome to me, as I was scarcely able to +walk, from the effects of illness, and was of course poorly qualified +to dispose of twenty meals a day. Of these sumptuous banquets I gave a +specimen in a former chapter, where the tragical fate of the little dog +was chronicled. So bounteous an entertainment looks like an outgushing +of good will; but doubtless one-half at least of our kind hosts, had +they met us alone and unarmed on the prairie, would have robbed us of +our horses, and perchance have bestowed an arrow upon us beside. Trust +not an Indian. Let your rifle be ever in your hand. Wear next your heart +the old chivalric motto SEMPER PARATUS. + +One morning we were summoned to the lodge of an old man, in good truth +the Nestor of his tribe. We found him half sitting, half reclining on a +pile of buffalo robes; his long hair, jet-black even now, though he +had seen some eighty winters, hung on either side of his thin features. +Those most conversant with Indians in their homes will scarcely believe +me when I affirm that there was dignity in his countenance and mien. His +gaunt but symmetrical frame, did not more clearly exhibit the wreck of +bygone strength, than did his dark, wasted features, still prominent and +commanding, bear the stamp of mental energies. I recalled, as I saw him, +the eloquent metaphor of the Iroquois sachem: “I am an aged hemlock; the +winds of a hundred winters have whistled through my branches, and I +am dead at the top!” Opposite the patriarch was his nephew, the young +aspirant Mahto-Tatonka; and besides these, there were one or two women +in the lodge. + +The old man’s story is peculiar, and singularly illustrative of a +superstitious custom that prevails in full force among many of the +Indian tribes. He was one of a powerful family, renowned for their +warlike exploits. When a very young man, he submitted to the singular +rite to which most of the tribe subject themselves before entering +upon life. He painted his face black; then seeking out a cavern in a +sequestered part of the Black Hills, he lay for several days, fasting +and praying to the Great Spirit. In the dreams and visions produced by +his weakened and excited state, he fancied like all Indians, that he +saw supernatural revelations. Again and again the form of an antelope +appeared before him. The antelope is the graceful peace spirit of the +Ogallalla; but seldom is it that such a gentle visitor presents itself +during the initiatory fasts of their young men. The terrible grizzly +bear, the divinity of war, usually appears to fire them with martial +ardor and thirst for renown. At length the antelope spoke. He told the +young dreamer that he was not to follow the path of war; that a life of +peace and tranquillity was marked out for him; that henceforward he was +to guide the people by his counsels and protect them from the evils of +their own feuds and dissensions. Others were to gain renown by fighting +the enemy; but greatness of a different kind was in store for him. + +The visions beheld during the period of this fast usually determine +the whole course of the dreamer’s life, for an Indian is bound by iron +superstitions. From that time, Le Borgne, which was the only name by +which we knew him, abandoned all thoughts of war and devoted himself to +the labors of peace. He told his vision to the people. They honored his +commission and respected him in his novel capacity. + +A far different man was his brother, Mahto-Tatonka, who had transmitted +his names, his features, and many of his characteristic qualities to his +son. He was the father of Henry Chatillon’s squaw, a circumstance which +proved of some advantage to us, as securing for us the friendship of +a family perhaps the most distinguished and powerful in the whole +Ogallalla band. Mahto-Tatonka, in his rude way, was a hero. No chief +could vie with him in warlike renown, or in power over his people. He +had a fearless spirit, and a most impetuous and inflexible resolution. +His will was law. He was politic and sagacious, and with true Indian +craft he always befriended the whites, well knowing that he might +thus reap great advantages for himself and his adherents. When he had +resolved on any course of conduct, he would pay to the warriors the +empty compliment of calling them together to deliberate upon it, and +when their debates were over, he would quietly state his own opinion, +which no one ever disputed. The consequences of thwarting his imperious +will were too formidable to be encountered. Woe to those who incurred +his displeasure! He would strike them or stab them on the spot; and this +act, which, if attempted by any other chief, would instantly have cost +him his life, the awe inspired by his name enabled him to repeat again +and again with impunity. In a community where, from immemorial time, +no man has acknowledged any law but his own will, Mahto-Tatonka, by the +force of his dauntless resolution, raised himself to power little short +of despotic. His haughty career came at last to an end. He had a host +of enemies only waiting for their opportunity of revenge, and our old +friend Smoke, in particular, together with all his kinsmen, hated him +most cordially. Smoke sat one day in his lodge in the midst of his +own village, when Mahto-Tatonka entered it alone, and approaching the +dwelling of his enemy, called on him in a loud voice to come out, if +he were a man, and fight. Smoke would not move. At this, Mahto-Tatonka +proclaimed him a coward and an old woman, and striding close to the +entrance of the lodge, stabbed the chief’s best horse, which was +picketed there. Smoke was daunted, and even this insult failed to call +him forth. Mahto-Tatonka moved haughtily away; all made way for him, but +his hour of reckoning was near. + +One hot day, five or six years ago, numerous lodges of Smoke’s kinsmen +were gathered around some of the Fur Company’s men, who were trading +in various articles with them, whisky among the rest. Mahto-Tatonka was +also there with a few of his people. As he lay in his own lodge, a fray +arose between his adherents and the kinsmen of his enemy. The war-whoop +was raised, bullets and arrows began to fly, and the camp was in +confusion. The chief sprang up, and rushing in a fury from the lodge +shouted to the combatants on both sides to cease. Instantly--for the +attack was preconcerted--came the reports of two or three guns, and the +twanging of a dozen bows, and the savage hero, mortally wounded, pitched +forward headlong to the ground. Rouleau was present, and told me the +particulars. The tumult became general, and was not quelled until +several had fallen on both sides. When we were in the country the feud +between the two families was still rankling, and not likely soon to +cease. + +Thus died Mahto-Tatonka, but he left behind him a goodly army of +descendants, to perpetuate his renown and avenge his fate. Besides +daughters he had thirty sons, a number which need not stagger the +credulity of those who are best acquainted with Indian usages and +practices. We saw many of them, all marked by the same dark complexion +and the same peculiar cast of features. Of these our visitor, young +Mahto-Tatonka, was the eldest, and some reported him as likely to +succeed to his father’s honors. Though he appeared not more than +twenty-one years old, he had oftener struck the enemy, and stolen more +horses and more squaws than any young man in the village. We of the +civilized world are not apt to attach much credit to the latter +species of exploits; but horse-stealing is well known as an avenue +to distinction on the prairies, and the other kind of depredation is +esteemed equally meritorious. Not that the act can confer fame from +its own intrinsic merits. Any one can steal a squaw, and if he chooses +afterward to make an adequate present to her rightful proprietor, +the easy husband for the most part rests content, his vengeance falls +asleep, and all danger from that quarter is averted. Yet this is +esteemed but a pitiful and mean-spirited transaction. The danger is +averted, but the glory of the achievement also is lost. Mahto-Tatonka +proceeded after a more gallant and dashing fashion. Out of several dozen +squaws whom he had stolen, he could boast that he had never paid for +one, but snapping his fingers in the face of the injured husband, had +defied the extremity of his indignation, and no one yet had dared to lay +the finger of violence upon him. He was following close in the footsteps +of his father. The young men and the young squaws, each in their way, +admired him. The one would always follow him to war, and he was esteemed +to have unrivaled charm in the eyes of the other. Perhaps his impunity +may excite some wonder. An arrow shot from a ravine, a stab given in the +dark, require no great valor, and are especially suited to the Indian +genius; but Mahto-Tatonka had a strong protection. It was not alone his +courage and audacious will that enabled him to career so dashingly +among his compeers. His enemies did not forget that he was one of thirty +warlike brethren, all growing up to manhood. Should they wreak their +anger upon him, many keen eyes would be ever upon them, many fierce +hearts would thirst for their blood. The avenger would dog their +footsteps everywhere. To kill Mahto-Tatonka would be no better than an +act of suicide. + +Though he found such favor in the eyes of the fair, he was no dandy. As +among us those of highest worth and breeding are most simple in manner +and attire, so our aspiring young friend was indifferent to the gaudy +trappings and ornaments of his companions. He was content to rest his +chances of success upon his own warlike merits. He never arrayed himself +in gaudy blanket and glittering necklaces, but left his statue-like +form, limbed like an Apollo of bronze, to win its way to favor. His +voice was singularly deep and strong. It sounded from his chest like the +deep notes of an organ. Yet after all, he was but an Indian. See him as +he lies there in the sun before our tent, kicking his heels in the air +and cracking jokes with his brother. Does he look like a hero? See him +now in the hour of his glory, when at sunset the whole village empties +itself to behold him, for to-morrow their favorite young partisan goes +out against the enemy. His superb headdress is adorned with a crest of +the war eagle’s feathers, rising in a waving ridge above his brow, and +sweeping far behind him. His round white shield hangs at his breast, +with feathers radiating from the center like a star. His quiver is at +his back; his tall lance in his hand, the iron point flashing against +the declining sun, while the long scalp-locks of his enemies flutter +from the shaft. Thus, gorgeous as a champion in his panoply, he rides +round and round within the great circle of lodges, balancing with a +graceful buoyancy to the free movements of his war horse, while with a +sedate brow he sings his song to the Great Spirit. Young rival warriors +look askance at him; vermilion-cheeked girls gaze in admiration, boys +whoop and scream in a thrill of delight, and old women yell forth his +name and proclaim his praises from lodge to lodge. + +Mahto-Tatonka, to come back to him, was the best of all our Indian +friends. Hour after hour and day after day, when swarms of savages of +every age, sex, and degree beset our camp, he would lie in our tent, his +lynx eye ever open to guard our property from pillage. + +The Whirlwind invited us one day to his lodge. The feast was finished, +and the pipe began to circulate. It was a remarkably large and fine one, +and I expressed my admiration of its form and dimensions. + +“If the Meneaska likes the pipe,” asked The Whirlwind, “why does he not +keep it?” + +Such a pipe among the Ogallalla is valued at the price of a horse. +A princely gift, thinks the reader, and worthy of a chieftain and a +warrior. The Whirlwind’s generosity rose to no such pitch. He gave +me the pipe, confidently expecting that I in return should make him a +present of equal or superior value. This is the implied condition of +every gift among the Indians as among the Orientals, and should it not +be complied with the present is usually reclaimed by the giver. So I +arranged upon a gaudy calico handkerchief, an assortment of vermilion, +tobacco, knives, and gunpowder, and summoning the chief to camp, assured +him of my friendship and begged his acceptance of a slight token of it. +Ejaculating HOW! HOW! he folded up the offerings and withdrew to his +lodge. + +Several days passed and we and the Indians remained encamped side by +side. They could not decide whether or not to go to war. Toward evening, +scores of them would surround our tent, a picturesque group. Late one +afternoon a party of them mounted on horseback came suddenly in sight +from behind some clumps of bushes that lined the bank of the stream, +leading with them a mule, on whose back was a wretched negro, only +sustained in his seat by the high pommel and cantle of the Indian +saddle. His cheeks were withered and shrunken in the hollow of his jaws; +his eyes were unnaturally dilated, and his lips seemed shriveled and +drawn back from his teeth like those of a corpse. When they brought him +up before our tent, and lifted him from the saddle, he could not walk or +stand, but he crawled a short distance, and with a look of utter misery +sat down on the grass. All the children and women came pouring out of +the lodges round us, and with screams and cries made a close circle +about him, while he sat supporting himself with his hands, and looking +from side to side with a vacant stare. The wretch was starving to death! +For thirty-three days he had wandered alone on the prairie, without +weapon of any kind; without shoes, moccasins, or any other clothing than +an old jacket and pantaloons; without intelligence and skill to guide +his course, or any knowledge of the productions of the prairie. All this +time he had subsisted on crickets and lizards, wild onions, and three +eggs which he found in the nest of a prairie dove. He had not seen a +human being. Utterly bewildered in the boundless, hopeless desert that +stretched around him, offering to his inexperienced eye no mark by which +to direct his course, he had walked on in despair till he could walk no +longer, and then crawled on his knees until the bone was laid bare. He +chose the night for his traveling, lying down by day to sleep in the +glaring sun, always dreaming, as he said, of the broth and corn cake he +used to eat under his old master’s shed in Missouri. Every man in the +camp, both white and red, was astonished at his wonderful escape not +only from starvation but from the grizzly bears which abound in that +neighborhood, and the wolves which howled around him every night. + +Reynal recognized him the moment the Indians brought him in. He had +run away from his master about a year before and joined the party of +M. Richard, who was then leaving the frontier for the mountains. He had +lived with Richard ever since, until in the end of May he with Reynal +and several other men went out in search of some stray horses, when he +got separated from the rest in a storm, and had never been heard of up +to this time. Knowing his inexperience and helplessness, no one dreamed +that he could still be living. The Indians had found him lying exhausted +on the ground. + +As he sat there with the Indians gazing silently on him, his haggard +face and glazed eye were disgusting to look upon. Delorier made him +a bowl of gruel, but he suffered it to remain untasted before him. At +length he languidly raised the spoon to his lips; again he did so, and +again; and then his appetite seemed suddenly inflamed into madness, for +he seized the bowl, swallowed all its contents in a few seconds, and +eagerly demanded meat. This we refused, telling him to wait until +morning, but he begged so eagerly that we gave him a small piece, which +he devoured, tearing it like a dog. He said he must have more. We told +him that his life was in danger if he ate so immoderately at first. +He assented, and said he knew he was a fool to do so, but he must +have meat. This we absolutely refused, to the great indignation of the +senseless squaws, who, when we were not watching him, would slyly bring +dried meat and POMMES BLANCHES, and place them on the ground by his +side. Still this was not enough for him. When it grew dark he contrived +to creep away between the legs of the horses and crawl over to the +Indian village, about a furlong down the stream. Here he fed to his +heart’s content, and was brought back again in the morning, when Jean +Gras, the trapper, put him on horseback and carried him to the fort. +He managed to survive the effects of his insane greediness, and +though slightly deranged when we left this part of the country, he was +otherwise in tolerable health, and expressed his firm conviction that +nothing could ever kill him. + +When the sun was yet an hour high, it was a gay scene in the village. +The warriors stalked sedately among the lodges, or along the margin +of the streams, or walked out to visit the bands of horses that were +feeding over the prairie. Half the village population deserted the close +and heated lodges and betook themselves to the water; and here you might +see boys and girls and young squaws splashing, swimming, and diving +beneath the afternoon sun, with merry laughter and screaming. But +when the sun was just resting above the broken peaks, and the purple +mountains threw their prolonged shadows for miles over the prairie; when +our grim old tree, lighted by the horizontal rays, assumed an aspect +of peaceful repose, such as one loves after scenes of tumult and +excitement; and when the whole landscape of swelling plains and +scattered groves was softened into a tranquil beauty, then our +encampment presented a striking spectacle. Could Salvator Rosa have +transferred it to his canvas, it would have added new renown to his +pencil. Savage figures surrounded our tent, with quivers at their backs, +and guns, lances, or tomahawks in their hands. Some sat on horseback, +motionless as equestrian statues, their arms crossed on their breasts, +their eyes fixed in a steady unwavering gaze upon us. Some stood erect, +wrapped from head to foot in their long white robes of buffalo hide. +Some sat together on the grass, holding their shaggy horses by a rope, +with their broad dark busts exposed to view as they suffered their robes +to fall from their shoulders. Others again stood carelessly among the +throng, with nothing to conceal the matchless symmetry of their forms; +and I do not exaggerate when I say that only on the prairie and in the +Vatican have I seen such faultless models of the human figure. See that +warrior standing by the tree, towering six feet and a half in stature. +Your eyes may trace the whole of his graceful and majestic height, and +discover no defect or blemish. With his free and noble attitude, with +the bow in his hand, and the quiver at his back, he might seem, but +for his face, the Pythian Apollo himself. Such a figure rose before the +imagination of West, when on first seeing the Belvidere in the Vatican, +he exclaimed, “By God, a Mohawk!” + +When the sky darkened and the stars began to appear; when the prairie +was involved in gloom and the horses were driven in and secured around +the camp, the crowd began to melt away. Fires gleamed around, duskily +revealing the rough trappers and the graceful Indians. One of the +families near us would always be gathered about a bright blaze, that +displayed the shadowy dimensions of their lodge, and sent its lights +far up among the masses of foliage above, gilding the dead and ragged +branches. Withered witchlike hags flitted around the blaze, and here for +hour after hour sat a circle of children and young girls, laughing and +talking, their round merry faces glowing in the ruddy light. We could +hear the monotonous notes of the drum from the Indian village, with the +chant of the war song, deadened in the distance, and the long chorus of +quavering yells, where the war dance was going on in the largest lodge. +For several nights, too, we could hear wild and mournful cries, rising +and dying away like the melancholy voice of a wolf. They came from the +sisters and female relatives of Mahto-Tatonka, who were gashing their +limbs with knives, and bewailing the death of Henry Chatillon’s squaw. +The hour would grow late before all retired to rest in the camp. +Then the embers of the fires would be glowing dimly, the men would be +stretched in their blankets on the ground, and nothing could be heard +but the restless motions of the crowded horses. + +I recall these scenes with a mixed feeling of pleasure and pain. At +this time I was so reduced by illness that I could seldom walk without +reeling like a drunken man, and when I rose from my seat upon the ground +the landscape suddenly grew dim before my eyes, the trees and lodges +seemed to sway to and fro, and the prairie to rise and fall like the +swells of the ocean. Such a state of things is by no means enviable +anywhere. In a country where a man’s life may at any moment depend on +the strength of his arm, or it may be on the activity of his legs, it is +more particularly inconvenient. Medical assistance of course there was +none; neither had I the means of pursuing a system of diet; and sleeping +on a damp ground, with an occasional drenching from a shower, would +hardly be recommended as beneficial. I sometimes suffered the +extremity of languor and exhaustion, and though at the time I felt +no apprehensions of the final result, I have since learned that my +situation was a critical one. + +Besides other formidable inconveniences I owe it in a great measure to +the remote effects of that unlucky disorder that from deficient +eyesight I am compelled to employ the pen of another in taking down +this narrative from my lips; and I have learned very effectually that a +violent attack of dysentery on the prairie is a thing too serious for +a joke. I tried repose and a very sparing diet. For a long time, with +exemplary patience, I lounged about the camp, or at the utmost staggered +over to the Indian village, and walked faint and dizzy among the lodges. +It would not do, and I bethought me of starvation. During five days I +sustained life on one small biscuit a day. At the end of that time I was +weaker than before, but the disorder seemed shaken in its stronghold and +very gradually I began to resume a less rigid diet. No sooner had I done +so than the same detested symptoms revisited me; my old enemy resumed +his pertinacious assaults, yet not with his former violence or +constancy, and though before I regained any fair portion of my ordinary +strength weeks had elapsed, and months passed before the disorder left +me, yet thanks to old habits of activity, and a merciful Providence, I +was able to sustain myself against it. + +I used to lie languid and dreamy before our tent and muse on the past +and the future, and when most overcome with lassitude, my eyes turned +always toward the distant Black Hills. There is a spirit of energy +and vigor in mountains, and they impart it to all who approach their +presence. At that time I did not know how many dark superstitions and +gloomy legends are associated with those mountains in the minds of the +Indians, but I felt an eager desire to penetrate their hidden recesses, +to explore the awful chasms and precipices, the black torrents, the +silent forests, that I fancied were concealed there. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +ILL LUCK + + +A Canadian came from Fort Laramie, and brought a curious piece of +intelligence. A trapper, fresh from the mountains, had become enamored +of a Missouri damsel belonging to a family who with other emigrants had +been for some days encamped in the neighborhood of the fort. If bravery +be the most potent charm to win the favor of the fair, then no wooer +could be more irresistible than a Rocky Mountain trapper. In the present +instance, the suit was not urged in vain. The lovers concerted a scheme, +which they proceeded to carry into effect with all possible dispatch. +The emigrant party left the fort, and on the next succeeding night but +one encamped as usual, and placed a guard. A little after midnight +the enamored trapper drew near, mounted on a strong horse and leading +another by the bridle. Fastening both animals to a tree, he stealthily +moved toward the wagons, as if he were approaching a band of buffalo. +Eluding the vigilance of the guard, who was probably half asleep, he met +his mistress by appointment at the outskirts of the camp, mounted her on +his spare horse, and made off with her through the darkness. The sequel +of the adventure did not reach our ears, and we never learned how the +imprudent fair one liked an Indian lodge for a dwelling, and a reckless +trapper for a bridegroom. + +At length The Whirlwind and his warriors determined to move. They had +resolved after all their preparations not to go to the rendezvous at La +Bonte’s Camp, but to pass through the Black Hills and spend a few weeks +in hunting the buffalo on the other side, until they had killed enough +to furnish them with a stock of provisions and with hides to make their +lodges for the next season. This done, they were to send out a small +independent war party against the enemy. Their final determination left +us in some embarrassment. Should we go to La Bonte’s Camp, it was +not impossible that the other villages would prove as vacillating and +indecisive as The Whirlwinds, and that no assembly whatever would take +place. Our old companion Reynal had conceived a liking for us, or rather +for our biscuit and coffee, and for the occasional small presents which +we made him. He was very anxious that we should go with the village +which he himself intended to accompany. He declared he was certain that +no Indians would meet at the rendezvous, and said moreover that it +would be easy to convey our cart and baggage through the Black Hills. In +saying this, he told as usual an egregious falsehood. Neither he nor +any white man with us had ever seen the difficult and obscure defiles +through which the Indians intended to make their way. I passed them +afterward, and had much ado to force my distressed horse along the +narrow ravines, and through chasms where daylight could scarcely +penetrate. Our cart might as easily have been conveyed over the summit +of Pike’s Peak. Anticipating the difficulties and uncertainties of an +attempt to visit the rendezvous, we recalled the old proverb about “A +bird in the hand,” and decided to follow the village. + +Both camps, the Indians’ and our own, broke up on the morning of the 1st +of July. I was so weak that the aid of a potent auxiliary, a spoonful of +whisky swallowed at short intervals, alone enabled me to sit on my hardy +little mare Pauline through the short journey of that day. For half a +mile before us and half a mile behind, the prairie was covered far +and wide with the moving throng of savages. The barren, broken plain +stretched away to the right and left, and far in front rose the gloomy +precipitous ridge of the Black Hills. We pushed forward to the head of +the scattered column, passing the burdened travaux, the heavily laden +pack horses, the gaunt old women on foot, the gay young squaws on +horseback, the restless children running among the crowd, old men +striding along in their white buffalo robes, and groups of young +warriors mounted on their best horses. Henry Chatillon, looking backward +over the distant prairie, exclaimed suddenly that a horseman was +approaching, and in truth we could just discern a small black speck +slowly moving over the face of a distant swell, like a fly creeping on a +wall. It rapidly grew larger as it approached. + +“White man, I b’lieve,” said Henry; “look how he ride! Indian never ride +that way. Yes; he got rifle on the saddle before him.” + +The horseman disappeared in a hollow of the prairie, but we soon saw him +again, and as he came riding at a gallop toward us through the crowd of +Indians, his long hair streaming in the wind behind him, we recognized +the ruddy face and old buckskin frock of Jean Gras the trapper. He was +just arrived from Fort Laramie, where he had been on a visit, and +said he had a message for us. A trader named Bisonette, one of Henry’s +friends, was lately come from the settlements, and intended to go with a +party of men to La Bonte’s Camp, where, as Jean Gras assured us, ten or +twelve villages of Indians would certainly assemble. Bisonette desired +that we would cross over and meet him there, and promised that his men +should protect our horses and baggage while we went among the Indians. +Shaw and I stopped our horses and held a council, and in an evil hour +resolved to go. + +For the rest of that day’s journey our course and that of the Indians +was the same. In less than an hour we came to where the high barren +prairie terminated, sinking down abruptly in steep descent; and standing +on these heights, we saw below us a great level meadow. Laramie Creek +bounded it on the left, sweeping along in the shadow of the declivities, +and passing with its shallow and rapid current just below us. We sat +on horseback, waiting and looking on, while the whole savage array went +pouring past us, hurrying down the descent and spreading themselves +over the meadow below. In a few moments the plain was swarming with the +moving multitude, some just visible, like specks in the distance, others +still passing on, pressing down, and fording the stream with bustle +and confusion. On the edge of the heights sat half a dozen of the elder +warriors, gravely smoking and looking down with unmoved faces on the +wild and striking spectacle. + +Up went the lodges in a circle on the margin of the stream. For the sake +of quiet we pitched our tent among some trees at half a mile’s distance. +In the afternoon we were in the village. The day was a glorious one, +and the whole camp seemed lively and animated in sympathy. Groups of +children and young girls were laughing gayly on the outside of the +lodges. The shields, the lances, and the bows were removed from the tall +tripods on which they usually hung before the dwellings of their owners. +The warriors were mounting their horses, and one by one riding away over +the prairie toward the neighboring hills. + +Shaw and I sat on the grass near the lodge of Reynal. An old woman, with +true Indian hospitality, brought a bowl of boiled venison and placed it +before us. We amused ourselves with watching half a dozen young squaws +who were playing together and chasing each other in and out of one of +the lodges. Suddenly the wild yell of the war-whoop came pealing from +the hills. A crowd of horsemen appeared, rushing down their sides and +riding at full speed toward the village, each warrior’s long hair flying +behind him in the wind like a ship’s streamer. As they approached, the +confused throng assumed a regular order, and entering two by two, they +circled round the area at full gallop, each warrior singing his war song +as he rode. Some of their dresses were splendid. They wore superb +crests of feathers and close tunics of antelope skins, fringed with the +scalp-locks of their enemies; their shields too were often fluttering +with the war eagle’s feathers. All had bows and arrows at their back; +some carried long lances, and a few were armed with guns. The White +Shield, their partisan, rode in gorgeous attire at their head, mounted +on a black-and-white horse. Mahto-Tatonka and his brothers took no part +in this parade, for they were in mourning for their sister, and were all +sitting in their lodges, their bodies bedaubed from head to foot with +white clay, and a lock of hair cut from each of their foreheads. + +The warriors circled three times round the village; and as each +distinguished champion passed, the old women would scream out his name +in honor of his bravery, and to incite the emulation of the younger +warriors. Little urchins, not two years old, followed the warlike +pageant with glittering eyes, and looked with eager wonder and +admiration at those whose honors were proclaimed by the public voice of +the village. Thus early is the lesson of war instilled into the mind +of an Indian, and such are the stimulants which incite his thirst for +martial renown. + +The procession rode out of the village as it had entered it, and in half +an hour all the warriors had returned again, dropping quietly in, singly +or in parties of two or three. + +As the sun rose next morning we looked across the meadow, and could see +the lodges leveled and the Indians gathering together in preparation to +leave the camp. Their course lay to the westward. We turned toward the +north with our men, the four trappers following us, with the Indian +family of Moran. We traveled until night. I suffered not a little from +pain and weakness. We encamped among some trees by the side of a little +brook, and here during the whole of the next day we lay waiting for +Bisonette, but no Bisonette appeared. Here also two of our trapper +friends left us, and set out for the Rocky Mountains. On the second +morning, despairing of Bisonette’s arrival we resumed our journey, +traversing a forlorn and dreary monotony of sun-scorched plains, where +no living thing appeared save here and there an antelope flying before +us like the wind. When noon came we saw an unwonted and most welcome +sight; a rich and luxuriant growth of trees, marking the course of a +little stream called Horseshoe Creek. We turned gladly toward it. There +were lofty and spreading trees, standing widely asunder, and supporting +a thick canopy of leaves, above a surface of rich, tall grass. The +stream ran swiftly, as clear as crystal, through the bosom of the wood, +sparkling over its bed of white sand and darkening again as it entered a +deep cavern of leaves and boughs. I was thoroughly exhausted, and flung +myself on the ground, scarcely able to move. All that afternoon I lay +in the shade by the side of the stream, and those bright woods and +sparkling waters are associated in my mind with recollections of +lassitude and utter prostration. When night came I sat down by the +fire, longing, with an intensity of which at this moment I can hardly +conceive, for some powerful stimulant. + +In the morning as glorious a sun rose upon us as ever animated that +desolate wilderness. We advanced and soon were surrounded by tall bare +hills, overspread from top to bottom with prickly-pears and other cacti, +that seemed like clinging reptiles. A plain, flat and hard, and with +scarcely the vestige of grass, lay before us, and a line of tall +misshapen trees bounded the onward view. There was no sight or sound of +man or beast, or any living thing, although behind those trees was the +long-looked-for place of rendezvous, where we fondly hoped to have found +the Indians congregated by thousands. We looked and listened anxiously. +We pushed forward with our best speed, and forced our horses through +the trees. There were copses of some extent beyond, with a scanty stream +creeping through their midst; and as we pressed through the yielding +branches, deer sprang up to the right and left. At length we caught a +glimpse of the prairie beyond. Soon we emerged upon it, and saw, not +a plain covered with encampments and swarming with life, but a vast +unbroken desert stretching away before us league upon league, without a +bush or a tree or anything that had life. We drew rein and gave to the +winds our sentiments concerning the whole aboriginal race of America. +Our journey was in vain and much worse than in vain. For myself, I was +vexed and disappointed beyond measure; as I well knew that a slight +aggravation of my disorder would render this false step irrevocable, and +make it quite impossible to accomplish effectively the design which had +led me an arduous journey of between three and four thousand miles. To +fortify myself as well as I could against such a contingency, I resolved +that I would not under any circumstances attempt to leave the country +until my object was completely gained. + +And where were the Indians? They were assembled in great numbers at a +spot about twenty miles distant, and there at that very moment they +were engaged in their warlike ceremonies. The scarcity of buffalo in +the vicinity of La Bonte’s Camp, which would render their supply of +provisions scanty and precarious, had probably prevented them from +assembling there; but of all this we knew nothing until some weeks +after. + +Shaw lashed his horse and galloped forward, I, though much more vexed +than he, was not strong enough to adopt this convenient vent to my +feelings; so I followed at a quiet pace, but in no quiet mood. We +rode up to a solitary old tree, which seemed the only place fit for +encampment. Half its branches were dead, and the rest were so scantily +furnished with leaves that they cast but a meager and wretched shade, +and the old twisted trunk alone furnished sufficient protection from the +sun. We threw down our saddles in the strip of shadow that it cast, and +sat down upon them. In silent indignation we remained smoking for an +hour or more, shifting our saddles with the shifting shadow, for the sun +was intolerably hot. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +HUNTING INDIANS + + +At last we had reached La Bonte’s Camp, toward which our eyes had turned +so long. Of all weary hours, those that passed between noon and sunset +of the day when we arrived there may bear away the palm of exquisite +discomfort. I lay under the tree reflecting on what course to pursue, +watching the shadows which seemed never to move, and the sun which +remained fixed in the sky, and hoping every moment to see the men and +horses of Bisonette emerging from the woods. Shaw and Henry had ridden +out on a scouting expedition, and did not return until the sun was +setting. There was nothing very cheering in their faces nor in the news +they brought. + +“We have been ten miles from here,” said Shaw. “We climbed the highest +butte we could find, and could not see a buffalo or Indian; nothing but +prairie for twenty miles around us.” + +Henry’s horse was quite disabled by clambering up and down the sides of +ravines, and Shaw’s was severely fatigued. + +After supper that evening, as we sat around the fire, I proposed to Shaw +to wait one day longer in hopes of Bisonette’s arrival, and if he +should not come to send Delorier with the cart and baggage back to +Fort Laramie, while we ourselves followed The Whirlwind’s village and +attempted to overtake it as it passed the mountains. Shaw, not having +the same motive for hunting Indians that I had, was averse to the +plan; I therefore resolved to go alone. This design I adopted very +unwillingly, for I knew that in the present state of my health the +attempt would be extremely unpleasant, and, as I considered, hazardous. +I hoped that Bisonette would appear in the course of the following day, +and bring us some information by which to direct our course, and enable +me to accomplish my purpose by means less objectionable. + +The rifle of Henry Chatillon was necessary for the subsistence of the +party in my absence; so I called Raymond, and ordered him to prepare to +set out with me. Raymond rolled his eyes vacantly about, but at length, +having succeeded in grappling with the idea, he withdrew to his bed +under the cart. He was a heavy-molded fellow, with a broad face exactly +like an owl’s, expressing the most impenetrable stupidity and entire +self-confidence. As for his good qualities, he had a sort of stubborn +fidelity, an insensibility to danger, and a kind of instinct or +sagacity, which sometimes led him right, where better heads than his +were at a loss. Besides this, he knew very well how to handle a rifle +and picket a horse. + +Through the following day the sun glared down upon us with a pitiless, +penetrating heat. The distant blue prairie seemed quivering under it. +The lodge of our Indian associates was baking in the rays, and our +rifles, as they leaned against the tree, were too hot for the touch. +There was a dead silence through our camp and all around it, unbroken +except by the hum of gnats and mosquitoes. The men, resting their +foreheads on their arms, were sleeping under the cart. The Indians kept +close within their lodge except the newly married pair, who were seated +together under an awning of buffalo robes, and the old conjurer, who, +with his hard, emaciated face and gaunt ribs, was perched aloft like a +turkey-buzzard among the dead branches of an old tree, constantly on the +lookout for enemies. He would have made a capital shot. A rifle bullet, +skillfully planted, would have brought him tumbling to the ground. +Surely, I thought, there could be no more harm in shooting such a +hideous old villain, to see how ugly he would look when he was dead, +than in shooting the detestable vulture which he resembled. We dined, +and then Shaw saddled his horse. + +“I will ride back,” said he, “to Horseshoe Creek, and see if Bisonette +is there.” + +“I would go with you,” I answered, “but I must reserve all the strength +I have.” + +The afternoon dragged away at last. I occupied myself in cleaning my +rifle and pistols, and making other preparations for the journey. After +supper, Henry Chatillon and I lay by the fire, discussing the properties +of that admirable weapon, the rifle, in the use of which he could fairly +outrival Leatherstocking himself. + +It was late before I wrapped myself in my blanket and lay down for the +night, with my head on my saddle. Shaw had not returned, but this gave +no uneasiness, for we presumed that he had fallen in with Bisonette, and +was spending the night with him. For a day or two past I had gained in +strength and health, but about midnight an attack of pain awoke me, and +for some hours I felt no inclination to sleep. The moon was quivering on +the broad breast of the Platte; nothing could be heard except those low +inexplicable sounds, like whisperings and footsteps, which no one who +has spent the night alone amid deserts and forests will be at a loss to +understand. As I was falling asleep, a familiar voice, shouting from the +distance, awoke me again. A rapid step approached the camp, and Shaw on +foot, with his gun in his hand, hastily entered. + +“Where’s your horse?” said I, raising myself on my elbow. + +“Lost!” said Shaw. “Where’s Delorier?” + +“There,” I replied, pointing to a confused mass of blankets and buffalo +robes. + +Shaw touched them with the butt of his gun, and up sprang our faithful +Canadian. + +“Come, Delorier; stir up the fire, and get me something to eat.” + +“Where’s Bisonette?” asked I. + +“The Lord knows; there’s nobody at Horseshoe Creek.” + +Shaw had gone back to the spot where we had encamped two days before, +and finding nothing there but the ashes of our fires, he had tied his +horse to the tree while he bathed in the stream. Something startled his +horse, who broke loose, and for two hours Shaw tried in vain to catch +him. Sunset approached, and it was twelve miles to camp. So he abandoned +the attempt, and set out on foot to join us. The greater part of his +perilous and solitary work was performed in darkness. His moccasins were +worn to tatters and his feet severely lacerated. He sat down to eat, +however, with the usual equanimity of his temper not at all disturbed +by his misfortune, and my last recollection before falling asleep was of +Shaw, seated cross-legged before the fire, smoking his pipe. The +horse, I may as well mention here, was found the next morning by Henry +Chatillon. + +When I awoke again there was a fresh damp smell in the air, a gray +twilight involved the prairie, and above its eastern verge was a streak +of cold red sky. I called to the men, and in a moment a fire was blazing +brightly in the dim morning light, and breakfast was getting ready. We +sat down together on the grass, to the last civilized meal which Raymond +and I were destined to enjoy for some time. + +“Now, bring in the horses.” + +My little mare Pauline was soon standing by the fire. She was a fleet, +hardy, and gentle animal, christened after Paul Dorion, from whom I had +procured her in exchange for Pontiac. She did not look as if equipped +for a morning pleasure ride. In front of the black, high-bowed mountain +saddle, holsters, with heavy pistols, were fastened. A pair of saddle +bags, a blanket tightly rolled, a small parcel of Indian presents tied +up in a buffalo skin, a leather bag of flour, and a smaller one of tea +were all secured behind, and a long trail-rope was wound round her +neck. Raymond had a strong black mule, equipped in a similar manner. We +crammed our powder-horns to the throat, and mounted. + +“I will meet you at Fort Laramie on the 1st of August,” said I to Shaw. + +“That is,” replied he, “if we don’t meet before that. I think I shall +follow after you in a day or two.” + +This in fact he attempted, and he would have succeeded if he had not +encountered obstacles against which his resolute spirit was of no avail. +Two days after I left him he sent Delorier to the fort with the cart +and baggage, and set out for the mountains with Henry Chatillon; but a +tremendous thunderstorm had deluged the prairie, and nearly obliterated +not only our trail but that of the Indians themselves. They followed +along the base of the mountains, at a loss in which direction to go. +They encamped there, and in the morning Shaw found himself poisoned by +ivy in such a manner that it was impossible for him to travel. So they +turned back reluctantly toward Fort Laramie. Shaw’s limbs were swollen +to double their usual size, and he rode in great pain. They encamped +again within twenty miles of the fort, and reached it early on the +following morning. Shaw lay seriously ill for a week, and remained at +the fort till I rejoined him some time after. + +To return to my own story. We shook hands with our friends, rode out +upon the prairie, and clambering the sandy hollows that were channeled +in the sides of the hills gained the high plains above. If a curse had +been pronounced upon the land it could not have worn an aspect of more +dreary and forlorn barrenness. There were abrupt broken hills, deep +hollows, and wide plains; but all alike glared with an insupportable +whiteness under the burning sun. The country, as if parched by the heat, +had cracked into innumerable fissures and ravines, that not a little +impeded our progress. Their steep sides were white and raw, and along +the bottom we several times discovered the broad tracks of the terrific +grizzly bear, nowhere more abundant than in this region. The ridges of +the hills were hard as rock, and strewn with pebbles of flint and coarse +red jasper; looking from them, there was nothing to relieve the desert +uniformity of the prospect, save here and there a pine-tree clinging at +the edge of a ravine, and stretching out its rough, shaggy arms. Under +the scorching heat these melancholy trees diffused their peculiar +resinous odor through the sultry air. There was something in it, as I +approached them, that recalled old associations; the pine-clad mountains +of New England, traversed in days of health and buoyancy, rose like a +reality before my fancy. In passing that arid waste I was goaded with +a morbid thirst produced by my disorder, and I thought with a longing +desire on the crystal treasure poured in such wasteful profusion from +our thousand hills. Shutting my eyes, I more than half believed that +I heard the deep plunging and gurgling of waters in the bowels of the +shaded rocks. I could see their dark ice glittering far down amid the +crevices, and the cold drops trickling from the long green mosses. + +When noon came, we found a little stream, with a few trees and bushes; +and here we rested for an hour. Then we traveled on, guided by the sun, +until, just before sunset, we reached another stream, called Bitter +Cotton-wood Creek. A thick growth of bushes and old storm-beaten trees +grew at intervals along its bank. Near the foot of one of the trees we +flung down our saddles, and hobbling our horses turned them loose to +feed. The little stream was clear and swift, and ran musically on its +white sands. Small water birds were splashing in the shallows, and +filling the air with their cries and flutterings. The sun was just +sinking among gold and crimson clouds behind Mount Laramie. I well +remember how I lay upon a log by the margin of the water, and watched +the restless motions of the little fish in a deep still nook below. +Strange to say, I seemed to have gained strength since the morning, and +almost felt a sense of returning health. + +We built our fire. Night came, and the wolves began to howl. One deep +voice commenced, and it was answered in awful responses from the hills, +the plains, and the woods along the stream above and below us. Such +sounds need not and do not disturb one’s sleep upon the prairie. We +picketed the mare and the mule close at our feet, and did not wake until +daylight. Then we turned them loose, still hobbled, to feed for an hour +before starting. We were getting ready our morning’s meal, when Raymond +saw an antelope at half a mile’s distance, and said he would go and +shoot it. + +“Your business,” said. I, “is to look after the animals. I am too weak +to do much, if anything happens to them, and you must keep within sight +of the camp.” + +Raymond promised, and set out with his rifle in his hand. The animals +had passed across the stream, and were feeding among the long grass +on the other side, much tormented by the attacks of the numerous large +green-headed flies. As I watched them, I saw them go down into a hollow, +and as several minutes elapsed without their reappearing, I waded +through the stream to look after them. To my vexation and alarm I +discovered them at a great distance, galloping away at full speed, +Pauline in advance, with her hobbles broken, and the mule, still +fettered, following with awkward leaps. I fired my rifle and shouted to +recall Raymond. In a moment he came running through the stream, with a +red handkerchief bound round his head. I pointed to the fugitives, and +ordered him to pursue them. Muttering a “Sacre!” between his teeth, he +set out at full speed, still swinging his rifle in his hand. I walked +up to the top of a hill, and looking away over the prairie, could just +distinguish the runaways, still at full gallop. Returning to the fire, +I sat down at the foot of a tree. Wearily and anxiously hour after +hour passed away. The old loose bark dangling from the trunk behind +me flapped to and fro in the wind, and the mosquitoes kept up their +incessant drowsy humming; but other than this, there was no sight nor +sound of life throughout the burning landscape. The sun rose higher and +higher, until the shadows fell almost perpendicularly, and I knew that +it must be noon. It seemed scarcely possible that the animals could be +recovered. If they were not, my situation was one of serious difficulty. +Shaw, when I left him had decided to move that morning, but whither +he had not determined. To look for him would be a vain attempt. Fort +Laramie was forty miles distant, and I could not walk a mile without +great effort. Not then having learned the sound philosophy of yielding +to disproportionate obstacles, I resolved to continue in any event the +pursuit of the Indians. Only one plan occurred to me; this was to send +Raymond to the fort with an order for more horses, while I remained on +the spot, awaiting his return, which might take place within three days. +But the adoption of this resolution did not wholly allay my anxiety, for +it involved both uncertainty and danger. To remain stationary and alone +for three days, in a country full of dangerous Indians, was not the most +flattering of prospects; and protracted as my Indian hunt must be by +such delay, it was not easy to foretell its ultimate result. Revolving +these matters, I grew hungry; and as our stock of provisions, except +four or five pounds of flour, was by this time exhausted, I left the +camp to see what game I could find. Nothing could be seen except four or +five large curlew, which, with their loud screaming, were wheeling over +my head, and now and then alighting upon the prairie. I shot two of +them, and was about returning, when a startling sight caught my eye. A +small, dark object, like a human head, suddenly appeared, and vanished +among the thick hushes along the stream below. In that country every +stranger is a suspected enemy. Instinctively I threw forward the muzzle +of my rifle. In a moment the bushes were violently shaken, two heads, +but not human heads, protruded, and to my great joy I recognized the +downcast, disconsolate countenance of the black mule and the yellow +visage of Pauline. Raymond came upon the mule, pale and haggard, +complaining of a fiery pain in his chest. I took charge of the animals +while he kneeled down by the side of the stream to drink. He had kept +the runaways in sight as far as the Side Fork of Laramie Creek, a +distance of more than ten miles; and here with great difficulty he had +succeeded in catching them. I saw that he was unarmed, and asked him +what he had done with his rifle. It had encumbered him in his pursuit, +and he had dropped it on the prairie, thinking that he could find it +on his return; but in this he had failed. The loss might prove a very +formidable one. I was too much rejoiced however at the recovery of the +animals to think much about it; and having made some tea for Raymond in +a tin vessel which we had brought with us, I told him that I would give +him two hours for resting before we set out again. He had eaten nothing +that day; but having no appetite, he lay down immediately to sleep. I +picketed the animals among the richest grass that I could find, and made +fires of green wood to protect them from the flies; then sitting down +again by the tree, I watched the slow movements of the sun, begrudging +every moment that passed. + +The time I had mentioned expired, and I awoke Raymond. We saddled and +set out again, but first we went in search of the lost rifle, and in +the course of an hour Raymond was fortunate enough to find it. Then we +turned westward, and moved over the hills and hollows at a slow pace +toward the Black Hills. The heat no longer tormented us, for a cloud +was before the sun. Yet that day shall never be marked with white in my +calendar. The air began to grow fresh and cool, the distant mountains +frowned more gloomily, there was a low muttering of thunder, and dense +black masses of cloud rose heavily behind the broken peaks. At first +they were gayly fringed with silver by the afternoon sun, but soon the +thick blackness overspread the whole sky, and the desert around us +was wrapped in deep gloom. I scarcely heeded it at the time, but now +I cannot but feel that there was an awful sublimity in the hoarse +murmuring of the thunder, in the somber shadows that involved the +mountains and the plain. The storm broke. It came upon us with a zigzag +blinding flash, with a terrific crash of thunder, and with a hurricane +that howled over the prairie, dashing floods of water against us. +Raymond looked round, and cursed the merciless elements. There seemed +no shelter near, but we discerned at length a deep ravine gashed in the +level prairie, and saw half way down its side an old pine tree, whose +rough horizontal boughs formed a sort of penthouse against the tempest. +We found a practicable passage, and hastily descending, fastened our +animals to some large loose stones at the bottom; then climbing up, we +drew our blankets over our heads, and seated ourselves close beneath the +old tree. Perhaps I was no competent judge of time, but it seemed to me +that we were sitting there a full hour, while around us poured a deluge +of rain, through which the rocks on the opposite side of the gulf were +barely visible. The first burst of the tempest soon subsided, but the +rain poured steadily. At length Raymond grew impatient, and scrambling +out of the ravine, he gained the level prairie above. + +“What does the weather look like?” asked I, from my seat under the tree. + +“It looks bad,” he answered; “dark all around,” and again he descended +and sat down by my side. Some ten minutes elapsed. + +“Go up again,” said I, “and take another look;” and he clambered up the +precipice. “Well, how is it?” + +“Just the same, only I see one little bright spot over the top of the +mountain.” + +The rain by this time had begun to abate; and going down to the bottom +of the ravine, we loosened the animals, who were standing up to their +knees in water. Leading them up the rocky throat of the ravine, we +reached the plain above. “Am I,” I thought to myself, “the same man who +a few months since, was seated, a quiet student of BELLES-LETTRES, in a +cushioned arm-chair by a sea-coal fire?” + +All around us was obscurity; but the bright spot above the mountaintops +grew wider and ruddier, until at length the clouds drew apart, and +a flood of sunbeams poured down from heaven, streaming along the +precipices, and involving them in a thin blue haze, as soft and lovely +as that which wraps the Apennines on an evening in spring. Rapidly the +clouds were broken and scattered, like routed legions of evil spirits. +The plain lay basking in sunbeams around us; a rainbow arched the desert +from north to south, and far in front a line of woods seemed inviting +us to refreshment and repose. When we reached them, they were glistening +with prismatic dewdrops, and enlivened by the song and flutterings of +a hundred birds. Strange winged insects, benumbed by the rain, were +clinging to the leaves and the bark of the trees. + +Raymond kindled a fire with great difficulty. The animals turned eagerly +to feed on the soft rich grass, while I, wrapping myself in my blanket, +lay down and gazed on the evening landscape. The mountains, whose stern +features had lowered upon us with so gloomy and awful a frown, now +seemed lighted up with a serene, benignant smile, and the green waving +undulations of the plain were gladdened with the rich sunshine. Wet, +ill, and wearied as I was, my spirit grew lighter at the view, and I +drew from it an augury of good for my future prospects. + +When morning came, Raymond awoke, coughing violently, though I had +apparently received no injury. We mounted, crossed the little stream, +pushed through the trees, and began our journey over the plain beyond. +And now, as we rode slowly along, we looked anxiously on every hand +for traces of the Indians, not doubting that the village had passed +somewhere in that vicinity; but the scanty shriveled grass was not more +than three or four inches high, and the ground was of such unyielding +hardness that a host might have marched over it and left scarcely a +trace of its passage. Up hill and down hill, and clambering through +ravines, we continued our journey. As we were skirting the foot of a +hill I saw Raymond, who was some rods in advance, suddenly jerking the +reins of his mule. Sliding from his seat, and running in a crouching +posture up a hollow, he disappeared; and then in an instant I heard the +sharp quick crack of his rifle. A wounded antelope came running on three +legs over the hill. I lashed Pauline and made after him. My fleet little +mare soon brought me by his side, and after leaping and bounding for +a few moments in vain, he stood still, as if despairing of escape. His +glistening eyes turned up toward my face with so piteous a look that it +was with feelings of infinite compunction that I shot him through the +head with a pistol. Raymond skinned and cut him up, and we hung the +forequarters to our saddles, much rejoiced that our exhausted stock of +provisions was renewed in such good time. + +Gaining the top of a hill, we could see along the cloudy verge of the +prairie before us lines of trees and shadowy groves that marked the +course of Laramie Creek. Some time before noon we reached its banks +and began anxiously to search them for footprints of the Indians. We +followed the stream for several miles, now on the shore and now wading +in the water, scrutinizing every sand-bar and every muddy bank. So +long was the search that we began to fear that we had left the trail +undiscovered behind us. At length I heard Raymond shouting, and saw him +jump from his mule to examine some object under the shelving bank. I +rode up to his side. It was the clear and palpable impression of an +Indian moccasin. Encouraged by this we continued our search, and at +last some appearances on a soft surface of earth not far from the shore +attracted my eye; and going to examine them I found half a dozen tracks, +some made by men and some by children. Just then Raymond observed across +the stream the mouth of a small branch entering it from the south. He +forded the water, rode in at the opening, and in a moment I heard him +shouting again, so I passed over and joined him. The little branch had a +broad sandy bed, along which the water trickled in a scanty stream; and +on either bank the bushes were so close that the view was completely +intercepted. I found Raymond stooping over the footprints of three or +four horses. Proceeding we found those of a man, then those of a child, +then those of more horses; and at last the bushes on each bank were +beaten down and broken, and the sand plowed up with a multitude of +footsteps, and scored across with the furrows made by the lodge-poles +that had been dragged through. It was now certain that we had found +the trail. I pushed through the bushes, and at a little distance on the +prairie beyond found the ashes of a hundred and fifty lodge fires, with +bones and pieces of buffalo robes scattered around them, and in some +instances the pickets to which horses had been secured still standing +in the ground. Elated by our success we selected a convenient tree, and +turning the animals loose, prepared to make a meal from the fat haunch +of our victim. + +Hardship and exposure had thriven with me wonderfully. I had gained both +health and strength since leaving La Bonte’s Camp. Raymond and I made a +hearty meal together in high spirits, for we rashly presumed that having +found one end of the trail we should have little difficulty in reaching +the other. But when the animals were led in we found that our old ill +luck had not ceased to follow us close. As I was saddling Pauline I saw +that her eye was as dull as lead, and the hue of her yellow coat visibly +darkened. I placed my foot in the stirrup to mount, when instantly she +staggered and fell flat on her side. Gaining her feet with an effort she +stood by the fire with a drooping head. Whether she had been bitten by +a snake or poisoned by some noxious plant or attacked by a sudden +disorder, it was hard to say; but at all events her sickness was +sufficiently ill-timed and unfortunate. I succeeded in a second attempt +to mount her, and with a slow pace we moved forward on the trail of the +Indians. It led us up a hill and over a dreary plain; and here, to our +great mortification, the traces almost disappeared, for the ground was +hard as adamant; and if its flinty surface had ever retained the print +of a hoof, the marks had been washed away by the deluge of yesterday. An +Indian village, in its disorderly march, is scattered over the prairie, +often to the width of full half a mile; so that its trail is nowhere +clearly marked, and the task of following it is made doubly wearisome +and difficult. By good fortune plenty of large ant-hills, a yard or more +in diameter, were scattered over the plain, and these were frequently +broken by the footprints of men and horses, and marked by traces of the +lodge-poles. The succulent leaves of the prickly-pear, also bruised from +the same causes, helped a little to guide us; so inch by inch we moved +along. Often we lost the trail altogether, and then would recover it +again, but late in the afternoon we found ourselves totally at fault. +We stood alone without clew to guide us. The broken plain expanded +for league after league around us, and in front the long dark ridge of +mountains was stretching from north to south. Mount Laramie, a little +on our right, towered high above the rest and from a dark valley just +beyond one of its lower declivities, we discerned volumes of white smoke +slowly rolling up into the clear air. + +“I think,” said Raymond, “some Indians must be there. Perhaps we +had better go.” But this plan was not rashly to be adopted, and we +determined still to continue our search after the lost trail. Our good +stars prompted us to this decision, for we afterward had reason to +believe, from information given us by the Indians, that the smoke was +raised as a decoy by a Crow war party. + +Evening was coming on, and there was no wood or water nearer than the +foot of the mountains. So thither we turned, directing our course toward +the point where Laramie Creek issues forth upon the prairie. When we +reached it the bare tops of the mountains were still brightened with +sunshine. The little river was breaking with a vehement and angry +current from its dark prison. There was something in the near vicinity +of the mountains, in the loud surging of the rapids, wonderfully +cheering and exhilarating; for although once as familiar as home itself, +they had been for months strangers to my experience. There was a rich +grass-plot by the river’s bank, surrounded by low ridges, which would +effectually screen ourselves and our fire from the sight of wandering +Indians. Here among the grass I observed numerous circles of large +stones, which, as Raymond said, were traces of a Dakota winter +encampment. We lay down and did not awake till the sun was up. A large +rock projected from the shore, and behind it the deep water was slowly +eddying round and round. The temptation was irresistible. I threw off +my clothes, leaped in, suffered myself to be borne once round with the +current, and then, seizing the strong root of a water plant, drew myself +to the shore. The effect was so invigorating and refreshing that I +mistook it for returning health. “Pauline,” thought I, as I led the +little mare up to be saddled, “only thrive as I do, and you and I will +have sport yet among the buffalo beyond these mountains.” But scarcely +were we mounted and on our way before the momentary glow passed. Again I +hung as usual in my seat, scarcely able to hold myself erect. + +“Look yonder,” said Raymond; “you see that big hollow there; the Indians +must have gone that way, if they went anywhere about here.” + +We reached the gap, which was like a deep notch cut into the mountain +ridge, and here we soon discerned an ant-hill furrowed with the mark of +a lodge-pole. This was quite enough; there could be no doubt now. As we +rode on, the opening growing narrower, the Indians had been compelled to +march in closer order, and the traces became numerous and distinct. The +gap terminated in a rocky gateway, leading into a rough passage upward, +between two precipitous mountains. Here grass and weeds were bruised to +fragments by the throng that had passed through. We moved slowly over +the rocks, up the passage; and in this toilsome manner we advanced for +an hour or two, bare precipices, hundreds of feet high, shooting up on +either hand. Raymond, with his hardy mule, was a few rods before me, +when we came to the foot of an ascent steeper than the rest, and which +I trusted might prove the highest point of the defile. Pauline strained +upward for a few yards, moaning and stumbling, and then came to a dead +stop, unable to proceed further. I dismounted, and attempted to lead +her; but my own exhausted strength soon gave out; so I loosened the +trail-rope from her neck, and tying it round my arm, crawled up on my +hands and knees. I gained the top, totally exhausted, the sweat drops +trickling from my forehead. Pauline stood like a statue by my side, her +shadow falling upon the scorching rock; and in this shade, for there was +no other, I lay for some time, scarcely able to move a limb. All around +the black crags, sharp as needles at the top, stood glowing in the +sun, without a tree, or a bush, or a blade of grass, to cover their +precipitous sides. The whole scene seemed parched with a pitiless, +insufferable heat. + +After a while I could mount again, and we moved on, descending the rocky +defile on its western side. Thinking of that morning’s journey, it +has sometimes seemed to me that there was something ridiculous in my +position; a man, armed to the teeth, but wholly unable to fight, and +equally so to run away, traversing a dangerous wilderness, on a sick +horse. But these thoughts were retrospective, for at the time I was in +too grave a mood to entertain a very lively sense of the ludicrous. + +Raymond’s saddle-girth slipped; and while I proceeded he was stopping +behind to repair the mischief. I came to the top of a little declivity, +where a most welcome sight greeted my eye; a nook of fresh green grass +nestled among the cliffs, sunny clumps of bushes on one side, and shaggy +old pine trees leaning forward from the rocks on the other. A shrill, +familiar voice saluted me, and recalled me to days of boyhood; that of +the insect called the “locust” by New England schoolboys, which was fast +clinging among the heated boughs of the old pine trees. Then, too, as +I passed the bushes, the low sound of falling water reached my ear. +Pauline turned of her own accord, and pushing through the boughs we +found a black rock, over-arched by the cool green canopy. An icy stream +was pouring from its side into a wide basin of white sand, from whence +it had no visible outlet, but filtered through into the soil below. +While I filled a tin cup at the spring, Pauline was eagerly plunging +her head deep in the pool. Other visitors had been there before us. All +around in the soft soil were the footprints of elk, deer, and the Rocky +Mountain sheep; and the grizzly bear too had left the recent prints of +his broad foot, with its frightful array of claws. Among these mountains +was his home. + +Soon after leaving the spring we found a little grassy plain, encircled +by the mountains, and marked, to our great joy, with all the traces of +an Indian camp. Raymond’s practiced eye detected certain signs by which +he recognized the spot where Reynal’s lodge had been pitched and his +horses picketed. I approached, and stood looking at the place. Reynal +and I had, I believe, hardly a feeling in common. I disliked the fellow, +and it perplexed me a good deal to understand why I should look with so +much interest on the ashes of his fire, when between him and me there +seemed no other bond of sympathy than the slender and precarious one of +a kindred race. + +In half an hour from this we were clear of the mountains. There was a +plain before us, totally barren and thickly peopled in many parts with +the little prairie dogs, who sat at the mouths of their burrows and +yelped at us as we passed. The plain, as we thought, was about six miles +wide; but it cost us two hours to cross it. Then another mountain range +rose before us, grander and more wild than the last had been. Far out of +the dense shrubbery that clothed the steeps for a thousand feet shot up +black crags, all leaning one way, and shattered by storms and thunder +into grim and threatening shapes. As we entered a narrow passage on the +trail of the Indians, they impended frightfully on one side, above our +heads. + +Our course was through dense woods, in the shade and twinkling sunlight +of overhanging boughs. I would I could recall to mind all the startling +combinations that presented themselves, as winding from side to side +of the passage, to avoid its obstructions, we could see, glancing at +intervals through the foliage, the awful forms of the gigantic cliffs, +that seemed at times to hem us in on the right and on the left, before +us and behind! Another scene in a few moments greeted us; a tract of +gray and sunny woods, broken into knolls and hollows, enlivened by birds +and interspersed with flowers. Among the rest I recognized the mellow +whistle of the robin, an old familiar friend whom I had scarce expected +to meet in such a place. Humble-bees too were buzzing heavily about +the flowers; and of these a species of larkspur caught my eye, more +appropriate, it should seem, to cultivated gardens than to a remote +wilderness. Instantly it recalled a multitude of dormant and delightful +recollections. + +Leaving behind us this spot and its associations, a sight soon presented +itself, characteristic of that warlike region. In an open space, fenced +in by high rocks, stood two Indian forts, of a square form, rudely built +of sticks and logs. They were somewhat ruinous, having probably been +constructed the year before. Each might have contained about twenty men. +Perhaps in this gloomy spot some party had been beset by their enemies, +and those scowling rocks and blasted trees might not long since have +looked down on a conflict unchronicled and unknown. Yet if any traces +of bloodshed remained they were completely hidden by the bushes and tall +rank weeds. + +Gradually the mountains drew apart, and the passage expanded into a +plain, where again we found traces of an Indian encampment. There were +trees and bushes just before us, and we stopped here for an hour’s rest +and refreshment. When we had finished our meal Raymond struck fire, and +lighting his pipe, sat down at the foot of a tree to smoke. For some +time I observed him puffing away with a face of unusual solemnity. Then +slowly taking the pipe from his lips, he looked up and remarked that we +had better not go any farther. + +“Why not?” asked I. + +He said that the country was becoming very dangerous, that we were +entering the range of the Snakes, Arapahoes and Grosventre Blackfeet, +and that if any of their wandering parties should meet us, it would cost +us our lives; but he added, with a blunt fidelity that nearly reconciled +me to his stupidity, that he would go anywhere I wished. I told him to +bring up the animals, and mounting them we proceeded again. I confess +that, as we moved forward, the prospect seemed but a dreary and doubtful +one. I would have given the world for my ordinary elasticity of body +and mind, and for a horse of such strength and spirit as the journey +required. + +Closer and closer the rocks gathered round us, growing taller and +steeper, and pressing more and more upon our path. We entered at length +a defile which I never had seen rivaled. The mountain was cracked from +top to bottom, and we were creeping along the bottom of the fissure, in +dampness and gloom, with the clink of hoofs on the loose shingly rocks, +and the hoarse murmuring of a petulant brook which kept us company. +Sometimes the water, foaming among the stones, overspread the whole +narrow passage; sometimes, withdrawing to one side, it gave us room to +pass dry-shod. Looking up, we could see a narrow ribbon of bright blue +sky between the dark edges of the opposing cliffs. This did not last +long. The passage soon widened, and sunbeams found their way down, +flashing upon the black waters. The defile would spread out to many rods +in width; bushes, trees, and flowers would spring by the side of the +brook; the cliffs would be feathered with shrubbery, that clung in every +crevice, and fringed with trees, that grew along their sunny edges. Then +we would be moving again in the darkness. The passage seemed about four +miles long, and before we reached the end of it, the unshod hoofs of our +animals were lamentably broken, and their legs cut by the sharp stones. +Issuing from the mountain we found another plain. All around it stood a +circle of lofty precipices, that seemed the impersonation of silence and +solitude. Here again the Indians had encamped, as well they might, after +passing with their women, children and horses through the gulf behind +us. In one day we had made a journey which had cost them three to +accomplish. + +The only outlet to this amphitheater lay over a hill some two hundred +feet high, up which we moved with difficulty. Looking from the top, +we saw that at last we were free of the mountains. The prairie +spread before us, but so wild and broken that the view was everywhere +obstructed. Far on our left one tall hill swelled up against the sky, on +the smooth, pale green surface of which four slowly moving black specks +were discernible. They were evidently buffalo, and we hailed the sight +as a good augury; for where the buffalo were, there too the Indians +would probably be found. We hoped on that very night to reach the +village. We were anxious to do so for a double reason, wishing to bring +our wearisome journey to an end, and knowing, moreover, that though +to enter the village in broad daylight would be a perfectly safe +experiment, yet to encamp in its vicinity would be dangerous. But as we +rode on, the sun was sinking, and soon was within half an hour of the +horizon. We ascended a hill and looked round us for a spot for our +encampment. The prairie was like a turbulent ocean, suddenly congealed +when its waves were at the highest, and it lay half in light and half in +shadow, as the rich sunshine, yellow as gold, was pouring over it. The +rough bushes of the wild sage were growing everywhere, its dull pale +green overspreading hill and hollow. Yet a little way before us, a +bright verdant line of grass was winding along the plain, and here and +there throughout its course water was glistening darkly. We went down to +it, kindled a fire, and turned our horses loose to feed. It was a little +trickling brook, that for some yards on either bank turned the barren +prairie into fertility, and here and there it spread into deep pools, +where the beaver had dammed it up. + +We placed our last remaining piece of the antelope before a scanty fire, +mournfully reflecting on our exhausted stock of provisions. Just then an +enormous gray hare, peculiar to these prairies, came jumping along, and +seated himself within fifty yards to look at us. I thoughtlessly raised +my rifle to shoot him, but Raymond called out to me not to fire for +fear the report should reach the ears of the Indians. That night for the +first time we considered that the danger to which we were exposed was +of a somewhat serious character; and to those who are unacquainted with +Indians, it may seem strange that our chief apprehensions arose from +the supposed proximity of the people whom we intended to visit. Had any +straggling party of these faithful friends caught sight of us from the +hill-top, they would probably have returned in the night to plunder us +of our horses and perhaps of our scalps. But we were on the prairie, +where the GENIUS LOCI is at war with all nervous apprehensions; and +I presume that neither Raymond nor I thought twice of the matter that +evening. + +While he was looking after the animals, I sat by the fire engaged in +the novel task of baking bread. The utensils were of the most simple +and primitive kind, consisting of two sticks inclining over the bed of +coals, one end thrust into the ground while the dough was twisted in a +spiral form round the other. Under such circumstances all the epicurean +in a man’s nature is apt to awaken within him. I revisited in fancy the +far distant abodes of good fare, not indeed Frascati’s, or the Trois +Freres Provencaux, for that were too extreme a flight; but no other than +the homely table of my old friend and host, Tom Crawford, of the White +Mountains. By a singular revulsion, Tom himself, whom I well remember +to have looked upon as the impersonation of all that is wild and +backwoodsman-like, now appeared before me as the ministering angel of +comfort and good living. Being fatigued and drowsy I began to doze, and +my thoughts, following the same train of association, assumed another +form. Half-dreaming, I saw myself surrounded with the mountains of +New England, alive with water-falls, their black crags tinctured with +milk-white mists. For this reverie I paid a speedy penalty; for the +bread was black on one side and soft on the other. + +For eight hours Raymond and I, pillowed on our saddles, lay insensible +as logs. Pauline’s yellow head was stretched over me when I awoke. I +got up and examined her. Her feet indeed were bruised and swollen by the +accidents of yesterday, but her eye was brighter, her motions livelier, +and her mysterious malady had visibly abated. We moved on, hoping within +an hour to come in sight of the Indian village; but again disappointment +awaited us. The trail disappeared, melting away upon a hard and stony +plain. Raymond and I separating, rode from side to side, scrutinizing +every yard of ground, until at length I discerned traces of the +lodge-poles passing by the side of a ridge of rocks. We began again to +follow them. + +“What is that black spot out there on the prairie?” + +“It looks like a dead buffalo,” answered Raymond. + +We rode out to it, and found it to be the huge carcass of a bull killed +by the Indians as they had passed. Tangled hair and scraps of hide were +scattered all around, for the wolves had been making merry over it, +and had hollowed out the entire carcass. It was covered with myriads of +large black crickets, and from its appearance must certainly have lain +there for four or five days. The sight was a most disheartening one, +and I observed to Raymond that the Indians might still be fifty or sixty +miles before us. But he shook his head, and replied that they dared not +go so far for fear of their enemies, the Snakes. + +Soon after this we lost the trail again, and ascended a neighboring +ridge, totally at a loss. Before us lay a plain perfectly flat, +spreading on the right and left, without apparent limit, and bounded in +front by a long broken line of hills, ten or twelve miles distant. +All was open and exposed to view, yet not a buffalo nor an Indian was +visible. + +“Do you see that?” said Raymond; “Now we had better turn round.” + +But as Raymond’s bourgeois thought otherwise, we descended the hill and +began to cross the plain. We had come so far that I knew perfectly well +neither Pauline’s limbs nor my own could carry me back to Fort Laramie. +I considered that the lines of expediency and inclination tallied +exactly, and that the most prudent course was to keep forward. The +ground immediately around us was thickly strewn with the skulls and +bones of buffalo, for here a year or two before the Indians had made a +“surround”; yet no living game presented itself. At length, however, an +antelope sprang up and gazed at us. We fired together, and by a singular +fatality we both missed, although the animal stood, a fair mark, within +eighty yards. This ill success might perhaps be charged to our own +eagerness, for by this time we had no provision left except a little +flour. We could discern several small lakes, or rather extensive pools +of water, glistening in the distance. As we approached them, wolves +and antelopes bounded away through the tall grass that grew in their +vicinity, and flocks of large white plover flew screaming over their +surface. Having failed of the antelope, Raymond tried his hand at the +birds with the same ill success. The water also disappointed us. Its +muddy margin was so beaten up by the crowd of buffalo that our timorous +animals were afraid to approach. So we turned away and moved toward the +hills. The rank grass, where it was not trampled down by the buffalo, +fairly swept our horses’ necks. + +Again we found the same execrable barren prairie offering no clew by +which to guide our way. As we drew near the hills an opening appeared, +through which the Indians must have gone if they had passed that way at +all. Slowly we began to ascend it. I felt the most dreary forebodings +of ill success, when on looking round I could discover neither dent of +hoof, nor footprint, nor trace of lodge-pole, though the passage was +encumbered by the ghastly skulls of buffalo. We heard thunder muttering; +a storm was coming on. + +As we gained the top of the gap, the prospect beyond began to disclose +itself. First, we saw a long dark line of ragged clouds upon the +horizon, while above them rose the peak of the Medicine-Bow, the +vanguard of the Rocky Mountains; then little by little the plain came +into view, a vast green uniformity, forlorn and tenantless, though +Laramie Creek glistened in a waving line over its surface, without a +bush or a tree upon its banks. As yet, the round projecting shoulder of +a hill intercepted a part of the view. I rode in advance, when suddenly +I could distinguish a few dark spots on the prairie, along the bank of +the stream. + +“Buffalo!” said I. Then a sudden hope flashed upon me, and eagerly and +anxiously I looked again. + +“Horses!” exclaimed Raymond, with a tremendous oath, lashing his mule +forward as he spoke. More and more of the plain disclosed itself, and +in rapid succession more and more horses appeared, scattered along +the river bank, or feeding in bands over the prairie. Then, suddenly, +standing in a circle by the stream, swarming with their savage +inhabitants, we saw rising before us the tall lodges of the Ogallalla. +Never did the heart of wanderer more gladden at the sight of home than +did mine at the sight of those wild habitations! + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE OGALLALLA VILLAGE + + +Such a narrative as this is hardly the place for portraying the mental +features of the Indians. The same picture, slightly changed in shade and +coloring, would serve with very few exceptions for all the tribes that +lie north of the Mexican territories. But with this striking similarity +in their modes of thought, the tribes of the lake and ocean shores, of +the forests and of the plains, differ greatly in their manner of life. +Having been domesticated for several weeks among one of the wildest of +the wild hordes that roam over the remote prairies, I had extraordinary +opportunities of observing them, and I flatter myself that a faithful +picture of the scenes that passed daily before my eyes may not be devoid +of interest and value. These men were thorough savages. Neither their +manners nor their ideas were in the slightest degree modified by contact +with civilization. They knew nothing of the power and real character of +the white men, and their children would scream in terror at the sight of +me. Their religion, their superstitions, and their prejudices were the +same that had been handed down to them from immemorial time. They fought +with the same weapons that their fathers fought with and wore the same +rude garments of skins. + +Great changes are at hand in that region. With the stream of emigration +to Oregon and California, the buffalo will dwindle away, and the large +wandering communities who depend on them for support must be broken +and scattered. The Indians will soon be corrupted by the example of the +whites, abased by whisky, and overawed by military posts; so that within +a few years the traveler may pass in tolerable security through their +country. Its danger and its charm will have disappeared together. + +As soon as Raymond and I discovered the village from the gap in the +hills, we were seen in our turn; keen eyes were constantly on the watch. +As we rode down upon the plain the side of the village nearest us was +darkened with a crowd of naked figures gathering around the lodges. +Several men came forward to meet us. I could distinguish among them the +green blanket of the Frenchman Reynal. When we came up the ceremony of +shaking hands had to be gone through with in due form, and then all were +eager to know what had become of the rest of my party. I satisfied them +on this point, and we all moved forward together toward the village. + +“You’ve missed it,” said Reynal; “if you’d been here day before +yesterday, you’d have found the whole prairie over yonder black with +buffalo as far as you could see. There were no cows, though; nothing but +bulls. We made a ‘surround’ every day till yesterday. See the village +there; don’t that look like good living?” + +In fact I could see, even at that distance, that long cords were +stretched from lodge to lodge, over which the meat, cut by the squaws +into thin sheets, was hanging to dry in the sun. I noticed too that the +village was somewhat smaller than when I had last seen it, and I asked +Reynal the cause. He said that the old Le Borgne had felt too weak +to pass over the mountains, and so had remained behind with all his +relations, including Mahto-Tatonka and his brothers. The Whirlwind +too had been unwilling to come so far, because, as Reynal said, he was +afraid. Only half a dozen lodges had adhered to him, the main body of +the village setting their chief’s authority at naught, and taking the +course most agreeable to their inclinations. + +“What chiefs are there in the village now?” said I. + +“Well,” said Reynal, “there’s old Red-Water, and the Eagle-Feather, and +the Big Crow, and the Mad Wolf and the Panther, and the White Shield, +and--what’s his name?--the half-breed Cheyenne.” + +By this time we were close to the village, and I observed that while the +greater part of the lodges were very large and neat in their appearance, +there was at one side a cluster of squalid, miserable huts. I looked +toward them, and made some remark about their wretched appearance. But I +was touching upon delicate ground. + +“My squaw’s relations live in those lodges,” said Reynal very warmly, +“and there isn’t a better set in the whole village.” + +“Are there any chiefs among them?” asked I. + +“Chiefs?” said Reynal; “yes, plenty!” + +“What are their names?” I inquired. + +“Their names? Why, there’s the Arrow-Head. If he isn’t a chief he ought +to be one. And there’s the Hail-Storm. He’s nothing but a boy, to be +sure; but he’s bound to be a chief one of these days!” + +Just then we passed between two of the lodges, and entered the great +area of the village. Superb naked figures stood silently gazing on us. + +“Where’s the Bad Wound’s lodge?” said I to Reynal. + +“There, you’ve missed it again! The Bad Wound is away with The +Whirlwind. If you could have found him here, and gone to live in his +lodge, he would have treated you better than any man in the village. +But there’s the Big Crow’s lodge yonder, next to old Red-Water’s. He’s a +good Indian for the whites, and I advise you to go and live with him.” + +“Are there many squaws and children in his lodge?” said I. + +“No; only one squaw and two or three children. He keeps the rest in a +separate lodge by themselves.” + +So, still followed by a crowd of Indians, Raymond and I rode up to the +entrance of the Big Crow’s lodge. A squaw came out immediately and took +our horses. I put aside the leather nap that covered the low opening, +and stooping, entered the Big Crow’s dwelling. There I could see the +chief in the dim light, seated at one side, on a pile of buffalo robes. +He greeted me with a guttural “How, cola!” I requested Reynal to tell +him that Raymond and I were come to live with him. The Big Crow gave +another low exclamation. If the reader thinks that we were intruding +somewhat cavalierly, I beg him to observe that every Indian in the +village would have deemed himself honored that white men should give +such preference to his hospitality. + +The squaw spread a buffalo robe for us in the guest’s place at the head +of the lodge. Our saddles were brought in, and scarcely were we seated +upon them before the place was thronged with Indians, who came crowding +in to see us. The Big Crow produced his pipe and filled it with the +mixture of tobacco and shongsasha, or red willow bark. Round and round +it passed, and a lively conversation went forward. Meanwhile a squaw +placed before the two guests a wooden bowl of boiled buffalo meat, but +unhappily this was not the only banquet destined to be inflicted on us. +Rapidly, one after another, boys and young squaws thrust their heads in +at the opening, to invite us to various feasts in different parts of the +village. For half an hour or more we were actively engaged in passing +from lodge to lodge, tasting in each of the bowl of meat set before us, +and inhaling a whiff or two from our entertainer’s pipe. A thunderstorm +that had been threatening for some time now began in good earnest. We +crossed over to Reynal’s lodge, though it hardly deserved this name, for +it consisted only of a few old buffalo robes, supported on poles, and +was quite open on one side. Here we sat down, and the Indians gathered +round us. + +“What is it,” said I, “that makes the thunder?” + +“It’s my belief,” said Reynal, “that it is a big stone rolling over the +sky.” + +“Very likely,” I replied; “but I want to know what the Indians think +about it.” + +So he interpreted my question, which seemed to produce some doubt +and debate. There was evidently a difference of opinion. At last old +Mene-Seela, or Red-Water, who sat by himself at one side, looked up with +his withered face, and said he had always known what the thunder was. +It was a great black bird; and once he had seen it, in a dream, swooping +down from the Black Hills, with its loud roaring wings; and when it +flapped them over a lake, they struck lightning from the water. + +“The thunder is bad,” said another old man, who sat muffled in his +buffalo robe; “he killed my brother last summer.” + +Reynal, at my request, asked for an explanation; but the old man +remained doggedly silent, and would not look up. Some time after I +learned how the accident occurred. The man who was killed belonged to an +association which, among other mystic functions, claimed the exclusive +power and privilege of fighting the thunder. Whenever a storm which they +wished to avert was threatening, the thunder-fighters would take their +bows and arrows, their guns, their magic drum, and a sort of whistle, +made out of the wingbone of the war eagle. Thus equipped, they would +run out and fire at the rising cloud, whooping, yelling, whistling, and +beating their drum, to frighten it down again. One afternoon a heavy +black cloud was coming up, and they repaired to the top of a hill, where +they brought all their magic artillery into play against it. But the +undaunted thunder, refusing to be terrified, kept moving straight +onward, and darted out a bright flash which struck one of the party +dead, as he was in the very act of shaking his long iron-pointed +lance against it. The rest scattered and ran yelling in an ecstasy of +superstitious terror back to their lodges. + +The lodge of my host Kongra-Tonga, or the Big Crow, presented a +picturesque spectacle that evening. A score or more of Indians were +seated around in a circle, their dark naked forms just visible by +the dull light of the smoldering fire in the center, the pipe glowing +brightly in the gloom as it passed from hand to hand round the lodge. +Then a squaw would drop a piece of buffalo-fat on the dull embers. +Instantly a bright glancing flame would leap up, darting its clear light +to the very apex of the tall conical structure, where the tops of the +slender poles that supported its covering of leather were gathered +together. It gilded the features of the Indians, as with animated +gestures they sat around it, telling their endless stories of war and +hunting. It displayed rude garments of skins that hung around the lodge; +the bow, quiver, and lance suspended over the resting-place of the +chief, and the rifles and powder-horns of the two white guests. For a +moment all would be bright as day; then the flames would die away, and +fitful flashes from the embers would illumine the lodge, and then leave +it in darkness. Then all the light would wholly fade, and the lodge and +all within it be involved again in obscurity. + +As I left the lodge next morning, I was saluted by howling and yelling +from all around the village, and half its canine population rushed +forth to the attack. Being as cowardly as they were clamorous, they kept +jumping around me at the distance of a few yards, only one little cur, +about ten inches long, having spirit enough to make a direct assault. He +dashed valiantly at the leather tassel which in the Dakota fashion was +trailing behind the heel of my moccasin, and kept his hold, growling and +snarling all the while, though every step I made almost jerked him over +on his back. As I knew that the eyes of the whole village were on the +watch to see if I showed any sign of apprehension, I walked forward +without looking to the right or left, surrounded wherever I went by this +magic circle of dogs. When I came to Reynal’s lodge I sat down by it, on +which the dogs dispersed growling to their respective quarters. Only one +large white one remained, who kept running about before me and showing +his teeth. I called him, but he only growled the more. I looked at him +well. He was fat and sleek; just such a dog as I wanted. “My friend,” + thought I, “you shall pay for this! I will have you eaten this very +morning!” + +I intended that day to give the Indians a feast, by way of conveying a +favorable impression of my character and dignity; and a white dog is +the dish which the customs of the Dakota prescribe for all occasions of +formality and importance. I consulted Reynal; he soon discovered that an +old woman in the next lodge was owner of the white dog. I took a +gaudy cotton handkerchief, and laying it on the ground, arranged some +vermilion, beads, and other trinkets upon it. Then the old squaw was +summoned. I pointed to the dog and to the handkerchief. She gave a +scream of delight, snatched up the prize, and vanished with it into +her lodge. For a few more trifles I engaged the services of two other +squaws, each of whom took the white dog by one of his paws, and led him +away behind the lodges, while he kept looking up at them with a face +of innocent surprise. Having killed him they threw him into a fire to +singe; then chopped him up and put him into two large kettles to boil. +Meanwhile I told Raymond to fry in buffalo-fat what little flour we +had left, and also to make a kettle of tea as an additional item of the +repast. + +The Big Crow’s squaw was set briskly at work sweeping out the lodge for +the approaching festivity. I confided to my host himself the task of +inviting the guests, thinking that I might thereby shift from my own +shoulders the odium of fancied neglect and oversight. + +When feasting is in question, one hour of the day serves an Indian as +well as another. My entertainment came off about eleven o’clock. At that +hour, Reynal and Raymond walked across the area of the village, to the +admiration of the inhabitants, carrying the two kettles of dog-meat +slung on a pole between them. These they placed in the center of the +lodge, and then went back for the bread and the tea. Meanwhile I had put +on a pair of brilliant moccasins, and substituted for my old buckskin +frock a coat which I had brought with me in view of such public +occasions. I also made careful use of the razor, an operation which no +man will neglect who desires to gain the good opinion of Indians. Thus +attired, I seated myself between Reynal and Raymond at the head of the +lodge. Only a few minutes elapsed before all the guests had come in and +were seated on the ground, wedged together in a close circle around +the lodge. Each brought with him a wooden bowl to hold his share of the +repast. When all were assembled, two of the officials called “soldiers” + by the white men, came forward with ladles made of the horn of the Rocky +Mountain sheep, and began to distribute the feast, always assigning +a double share to the old men and chiefs. The dog vanished with +astonishing celerity, and each guest turned his dish bottom upward to +show that all was gone. Then the bread was distributed in its turn, +and finally the tea. As the soldiers poured it out into the same wooden +bowls that had served for the substantial part of the meal, I thought it +had a particularly curious and uninviting color. + +“Oh!” said Reynal, “there was not tea enough, so I stirred some soot in +the kettle, to make it look strong.” + +Fortunately an Indian’s palate is not very discriminating. The tea was +well sweetened, and that was all they cared for. + +Now the former part of the entertainment being concluded, the time for +speech-making was come. The Big Crow produced a flat piece of wood +on which he cut up tobacco and shongsasha, and mixed them in due +proportions. The pipes were filled and passed from hand to hand around +the company. Then I began my speech, each sentence being interpreted +by Reynal as I went on, and echoed by the whole audience with the usual +exclamations of assent and approval. As nearly as I can recollect, it +was as follows: + +I had come, I told them, from a country so far distant, that at the rate +they travel, they could not reach it in a year. + +“Howo how!” + +“There the Meneaska were more numerous than the blades of grass on the +prairie. The squaws were far more beautiful than any they had ever seen, +and all the men were brave warriors.” + +“How! how! how!” + +Here I was assailed by sharp twinges of conscience, for I fancied I +could perceive a fragrance of perfumery in the air, and a vision rose +before me of white kid gloves and silken mustaches with the mild and +gentle countenances of numerous fair-haired young men. But I recovered +myself and began again. + +“While I was living in the Meneaska lodges, I had heard of the +Ogallalla, how great and brave a nation they were, how they loved +the whites, and how well they could hunt the buffalo and strike their +enemies. I resolved to come and see if all that I heard was true.” + +“How! how! how! how!” + +“As I had come on horseback through the mountains, I had been able to +bring them only a very few presents.” + +“How!” + +“But I had enough tobacco to give them all a small piece. They might +smoke it, and see how much better it was than the tobacco which they got +from the traders.” + +“How! how! how!” + +“I had plenty of powder, lead, knives, and tobacco at Fort Laramie. +These I was anxious to give them, and if any of them should come to the +fort before I went away, I would make them handsome presents.” + +“How! howo how! how!” + +Raymond then cut up and distributed among them two or three pounds of +tobacco, and old Mene-Seela began to make a reply. It was quite long, +but the following was the pith of it: + +“He had always loved the whites. They were the wisest people on earth. +He believed they could do everything, and he was always glad when any +of them came to live in the Ogallalla lodges. It was true I had not made +them many presents, but the reason of it was plain. It was clear that I +liked them, or I never should have come so far to find their village.” + +Several other speeches of similar import followed, and then this more +serious matter being disposed of, there was an interval of smoking, +laughing, and conversation; but old Mene-Seela suddenly interrupted it +with a loud voice: + +“Now is a good time,” he said, “when all the old men and chiefs are here +together, to decide what the people shall do. We came over the mountain +to make our lodges for next year. Our old ones are good for nothing; +they are rotten and worn out. But we have been disappointed. We have +killed buffalo bulls enough, but we have found no herds of cows, and the +skins of bulls are too thick and heavy for our squaws to make lodges of. +There must be plenty of cows about the Medicine-Bow Mountain. We ought +to go there. To be sure it is farther westward than we have ever been +before, and perhaps the Snakes will attack us, for those hunting-grounds +belong to them. But we must have new lodges at any rate; our old ones +will not serve for another year. We ought not to be afraid of the +Snakes. Our warriors are brave, and they are all ready for war. Besides, +we have three white men with their rifles to help us.” + +I could not help thinking that the old man relied a little too much on +the aid of allies, one of whom was a coward, another a blockhead, and +the third an invalid. This speech produced a good deal of debate. +As Reynal did not interpret what was said, I could only judge of the +meaning by the features and gestures of the speakers. At the end of it, +however, the greater number seemed to have fallen in with Mene-Seela’s +opinion. A short silence followed, and then the old man struck up +a discordant chant, which I was told was a song of thanks for the +entertainment I had given them. + +“Now,” said he, “let us go and give the white men a chance to breathe.” + +So the company all dispersed into the open air, and for some time the +old chief was walking round the village, singing his song in praise of +the feast, after the usual custom of the nation. + +At last the day drew to a close, and as the sun went down the horses +came trooping from the surrounding plains to be picketed before the +dwellings of their respective masters. Soon within the great circle of +lodges appeared another concentric circle of restless horses; and here +and there fires were glowing and flickering amid the gloom of the dusky +figures around them. I went over and sat by the lodge of Reynal. The +Eagle-Feather, who was a son of Mene-Seela, and brother of my host the +Big Crow, was seated there already, and I asked him if the village would +move in the morning. He shook his head, and said that nobody could tell, +for since old Mahto-Tatonka had died, the people had been like children +that did not know their own minds. They were no better than a body +without a head. So I, as well as the Indians themselves, fell asleep +that night without knowing whether we should set out in the morning +toward the country of the Snakes. + +At daybreak, however, as I was coming up from the river after my +morning’s ablutions, I saw that a movement was contemplated. Some of the +lodges were reduced to nothing but bare skeletons of poles; the leather +covering of others was flapping in the wind as the squaws were pulling +it off. One or two chiefs of note had resolved, it seemed, on moving; +and so having set their squaws at work, the example was tacitly followed +by the rest of the village. One by one the lodges were sinking down in +rapid succession, and where the great circle of the village had been +only a moment before, nothing now remained but a ring of horses and +Indians, crowded in confusion together. The ruins of the lodges were +spread over the ground, together with kettles, stone mallets, great +ladles of horn, buffalo robes, and cases of painted hide, filled with +dried meat. Squaws bustled about in their busy preparations, the old +hags screaming to one another at the stretch of their leathern lungs. +The shaggy horses were patiently standing while the lodge-poles were +lashed to their sides, and the baggage piled upon their backs. The dogs, +with their tongues lolling out, lay lazily panting, and waiting for the +time of departure. Each warrior sat on the ground by the decaying embers +of his fire, unmoved amid all the confusion, while he held in his hand +the long trail-rope of his horse. + +As their preparations were completed, each family moved off the ground. +The crowd was rapidly melting away. I could see them crossing the river, +and passing in quick succession along the profile of the hill on the +farther bank. When all were gone, I mounted and set out after them, +followed by Raymond, and as we gained the summit, the whole village +came in view at once, straggling away for a mile or more over the barren +plains before us. Everywhere the iron points of lances were glittering. +The sun never shone upon a more strange array. Here were the heavy-laden +pack horses, some wretched old women leading them, and two or three +children clinging to their backs. Here were mules or ponies covered from +head to tail with gaudy trappings, and mounted by some gay young squaw, +grinning bashfulness and pleasure as the Meneaska looked at her. Boys +with miniature bows and arrows were wandering over the plains, little +naked children were running along on foot, and numberless dogs were +scampering among the feet of the horses. The young braves, gaudy with +paint and feathers, were riding in groups among the crowd, and often +galloping, two or three at once along the line, to try the speed of +their horses. Here and there you might see a rank of sturdy pedestrians +stalking along in their white buffalo robes. These were the dignitaries +of the village, the old men and warriors, to whose age and experience +that wandering democracy yielded a silent deference. With the rough +prairie and the broken hills for its background, the restless scene +was striking and picturesque beyond description. Days and weeks made me +familiar with it, but never impaired its effect upon my fancy. + +As we moved on the broken column grew yet more scattered and disorderly, +until, as we approached the foot of a hill, I saw the old men before +mentioned seating themselves in a line upon the ground, in advance of +the whole. They lighted a pipe and sat smoking, laughing, and telling +stories, while the people, stopping as they successively came up, were +soon gathered in a crowd behind them. Then the old men rose, drew their +buffalo robes over their shoulders, and strode on as before. Gaining the +top of the hill, we found a very steep declivity before us. There was +not a minute’s pause. The whole descended in a mass, amid dust and +confusion. The horses braced their feet as they slid down, women and +children were screaming, dogs yelping as they were trodden upon, while +stones and earth went rolling to the bottom. In a few moments I could +see the village from the summit, spreading again far and wide over the +plain below. + +At our encampment that afternoon I was attacked anew by my old disorder. +In half an hour the strength that I had been gaining for a week past had +vanished again, and I became like a man in a dream. But at sunset I lay +down in the Big Crow’s lodge and slept, totally unconscious till the +morning. The first thing that awakened me was a hoarse flapping over my +head, and a sudden light that poured in upon me. The camp was breaking +up, and the squaws were moving the covering from the lodge. I arose and +shook off my blanket with the feeling of perfect health; but scarcely +had I gained my feet when a sense of my helpless condition was once more +forced upon me, and I found myself scarcely able to stand. Raymond had +brought up Pauline and the mule, and I stooped to raise my saddle from +the ground. My strength was quite inadequate to the task. “You must +saddle her,” said I to Raymond, as I sat down again on a pile of buffalo +robes: + + +“Et hoec etiam fortasse meminisse juvabit.” + + +I thought, while with a painful effort I raised myself into the saddle. +Half an hour after, even the expectation that Virgil’s line expressed +seemed destined to disappointment. As we were passing over a great +plain, surrounded by long broken ridges, I rode slowly in advance of +the Indians, with thoughts that wandered far from the time and from the +place. Suddenly the sky darkened, and thunder began to mutter. Clouds +were rising over the hills, as dreary and dull as the first forebodings +of an approaching calamity; and in a moment all around was wrapped in +shadow. I looked behind. The Indians had stopped to prepare for the +approaching storm, and the dark, dense mass of savages stretched far to +the right and left. Since the first attack of my disorder the effects +of rain upon me had usually been injurious in the extreme. I had no +strength to spare, having at that moment scarcely enough to keep my seat +on horseback. Then, for the first time, it pressed upon me as a strong +probability that I might never leave those deserts. “Well,” thought I +to myself, “a prairie makes quick and sharp work. Better to die here, in +the saddle to the last, than to stifle in the hot air of a sick chamber, +and a thousand times better than to drag out life, as many have done, +in the helpless inaction of lingering disease.” So, drawing the buffalo +robe on which I sat over my head, I waited till the storm should come. +It broke at last with a sudden burst of fury, and passing away as +rapidly as it came, left the sky clear again. My reflections served +me no other purpose than to look back upon as a piece of curious +experience; for the rain did not produce the ill effects that I had +expected. We encamped within an hour. Having no change of clothes, I +contrived to borrow a curious kind of substitute from Reynal: and this +done, I went home, that is, to the Big Crow’s lodge to make the entire +transfer that was necessary. Half a dozen squaws were in the lodge, and +one of them taking my arm held it against her own, while a general laugh +and scream of admiration were raised at the contrast in the color of the +skin. + +Our encampment that afternoon was not far distant from a spur of the +Black Hills, whose ridges, bristling with fir trees, rose from the +plains a mile or two on our right. That they might move more rapidly +toward their proposed hunting-grounds, the Indians determined to leave +at this place their stock of dried meat and other superfluous articles. +Some left even their lodges, and contented themselves with carrying a +few hides to make a shelter from the sun and rain. Half the inhabitants +set out in the afternoon, with loaded pack horses, toward the mountains. +Here they suspended the dried meat upon trees, where the wolves and +grizzly bears could not get at it. All returned at evening. Some of the +young men declared that they had heard the reports of guns among the +mountains to the eastward, and many surmises were thrown out as to the +origin of these sounds. For my part, I was in hopes that Shaw and Henry +Chatillon were coming to join us. I would have welcomed them cordially, +for I had no other companions than two brutish white men and five +hundred savages. I little suspected that at that very moment my unlucky +comrade was lying on a buffalo robe at Fort Laramie, fevered with ivy +poison, and solacing his woes with tobacco and Shakespeare. + +As we moved over the plains on the next morning, several young men were +riding about the country as scouts; and at length we began to see them +occasionally on the tops of the hills, shaking their robes as a signal +that they saw buffalo. Soon after, some bulls came in sight. Horsemen +darted away in pursuit, and we could see from the distance that one +or two of the buffalo were killed. Raymond suddenly became inspired. +I looked at him as he rode by my side; his face had actually grown +intelligent! + +“This is the country for me!” he said; “if I could only carry the +buffalo that are killed here every month down to St. Louis I’d make +my fortune in one winter. I’d grow as rich as old Papin, or Mackenzie +either. I call this the poor man’s market. When I’m hungry I have only +got to take my rifle and go out and get better meat than the rich folks +down below can get with all their money. You won’t catch me living in +St. Louis another winter.” + +“No,” said Reynal, “you had better say that after you and your Spanish +woman almost starved to death there. What a fool you were ever to take +her to the settlements.” + +“Your Spanish woman?” said I; “I never heard of her before. Are you +married to her?” + +“No,” answered Raymond, again looking intelligent; “the priests don’t +marry their women, and why should I marry mine?” + +This honorable mention of the Mexican clergy introduced the subject of +religion, and I found that my two associates, in common with other white +men in the country, were as indifferent to their future welfare as men +whose lives are in constant peril are apt to be. Raymond had never +heard of the Pope. A certain bishop, who lived at Taos or at Santa +Fe, embodied his loftiest idea of an ecclesiastical dignitary. Reynal +observed that a priest had been at Fort Laramie two years ago, on his +way to the Nez Perce mission, and that he had confessed all the men +there and given them absolution. “I got a good clearing out myself that +time,” said Reynal, “and I reckon that will do for me till I go down to +the settlements again.” + +Here he interrupted himself with an oath and exclaimed: “Look! look! The +Panther is running an antelope!” + +The Panther, on his black and white horse, one of the best in the +village, came at full speed over the hill in hot pursuit of an antelope +that darted away like lightning before him. The attempt was made in mere +sport and bravado, for very few are the horses that can for a moment +compete in swiftness with this little animal. The antelope ran down the +hill toward the main body of the Indians who were moving over the plain +below. Sharp yells were given and horsemen galloped out to intercept his +flight. At this he turned sharply to the left and scoured away with such +incredible speed that he distanced all his pursuers and even the vaunted +horse of the Panther himself. A few moments after we witnessed a more +serious sport. A shaggy buffalo bull bounded out from a neighboring +hollow, and close behind him came a slender Indian boy, riding without +stirrups or saddle and lashing his eager little horse to full speed. +Yard after yard he drew closer to his gigantic victim, though the bull, +with his short tail erect and his tongue lolling out a foot from his +foaming jaws, was straining his unwieldy strength to the utmost. A +moment more and the boy was close alongside of him. It was our friend +the Hail-Storm. He dropped the rein on his horse’s neck and jerked an +arrow like lightning from the quiver at his shoulder. + +“I tell you,” said Reynal, “that in a year’s time that boy will match +the best hunter in the village. There he has given it to him! and there +goes another! You feel well, now, old bull, don’t you, with two arrows +stuck in your lights? There, he has given him another! Hear how the +Hail-Storm yells when he shoots! Yes, jump at him; try it again, old +fellow! You may jump all day before you get your horns into that pony!” + +The bull sprang again and again at his assailant, but the horse kept +dodging with wonderful celerity. At length the bull followed up his +attack with a furious rush, and the Hail-Storm was put to flight, the +shaggy monster following close behind. The boy clung in his seat like a +leech, and secure in the speed of his little pony, looked round toward +us and laughed. In a moment he was again alongside of the bull, who +was now driven to complete desperation. His eyeballs glared through +his tangled mane, and the blood flew from his mouth and nostrils. Thus, +still battling with each other, the two enemies disappeared over the +hill. + +Many of the Indians rode at full gallop toward the spot. We followed at +a more moderate pace, and soon saw the bull lying dead on the side of +the hill. The Indians were gathered around him, and several knives were +already at work. These little instruments were plied with such wonderful +address that the twisted sinews were cut apart, the ponderous bones fell +asunder as if by magic, and in a moment the vast carcass was reduced to +a heap of bloody ruins. The surrounding group of savages offered no very +attractive spectacle to a civilized eye. Some were cracking the huge +thigh-bones and devouring the marrow within; others were cutting away +pieces of the liver and other approved morsels, and swallowing them +on the spot with the appetite of wolves. The faces of most of them, +besmeared with blood from ear to ear, looked grim and horrible enough. +My friend the White Shield proffered me a marrowbone, so skillfully laid +open that all the rich substance within was exposed to view at once. +Another Indian held out a large piece of the delicate lining of the +paunch; but these courteous offerings I begged leave to decline. I +noticed one little boy who was very busy with his knife about the +jaws and throat of the buffalo, from which he extracted some morsel of +peculiar delicacy. It is but fair to say that only certain parts of the +animal are considered eligible in these extempore banquets. The Indians +would look with abhorrence on anyone who should partake indiscriminately +of the newly killed carcass. + +We encamped that night, and marched westward through the greater part of +the following day. On the next morning we again resumed our journey. It +was the 17th of July, unless my notebook misleads me. At noon we stopped +by some pools of rain-water, and in the afternoon again set forward. +This double movement was contrary to the usual practice of the Indians, +but all were very anxious to reach the hunting ground, kill the +necessary number of buffalo, and retreat as soon as possible from the +dangerous neighborhood. I pass by for the present some curious incidents +that occurred during these marches and encampments. Late in the +afternoon of the last-mentioned day we came upon the banks of a little +sandy stream, of which the Indians could not tell the name; for they +were very ill acquainted with that part of the country. So parched and +arid were the prairies around that they could not supply grass enough +for the horses to feed upon, and we were compelled to move farther and +farther up the stream in search of ground for encampment. The country +was much wilder than before. The plains were gashed with ravines and +broken into hollows and steep declivities, which flanked our course, as, +in long-scattered array, the Indians advanced up the side of the stream. +Mene-Seela consulted an extraordinary oracle to instruct him where the +buffalo were to be found. When he with the other chiefs sat down on the +grass to smoke and converse, as they often did during the march, the old +man picked up one of those enormous black-and-green crickets, which the +Dakota call by a name that signifies “They who point out the buffalo.” + The Root-Diggers, a wretched tribe beyond the mountains, turn them to +good account by making them into a sort of soup, pronounced by certain +unscrupulous trappers to be extremely rich. Holding the bloated insect +respectfully between his fingers and thumb, the old Indian looked +attentively at him and inquired, “Tell me, my father, where must we go +to-morrow to find the buffalo?” The cricket twisted about his long horns +in evident embarrassment. At last he pointed, or seemed to point, them +westward. Mene-Seela, dropping him gently on the grass, laughed with +great glee, and said that if we went that way in the morning we should +be sure to kill plenty of game. + +Toward evening we came upon a fresh green meadow, traversed by the +stream, and deep-set among tall sterile bluffs. The Indians descended +its steep bank; and as I was at the rear, I was one of the last to reach +this point. Lances were glittering, feathers fluttering, and the water +below me was crowded with men and horses passing through, while the +meadow beyond was swarming with the restless crowd of Indians. The sun +was just setting, and poured its softened light upon them through an +opening in the hills. + +I remarked to Reynal that at last we had found a good camping-ground. + +“Oh, it is very good,” replied he ironically; “especially if there is a +Snake war party about, and they take it into their heads to shoot down +at us from the top of these hills. It is no plan of mine, camping in +such a hole as this!” + +The Indians also seemed apprehensive. High up on the top of the tallest +bluff, conspicuous in the bright evening sunlight, sat a naked warrior +on horseback, looking around, as it seemed, over the neighboring +country; and Raymond told me that many of the young men had gone out in +different directions as scouts. + +The shadows had reached to the very summit of the bluffs before the +lodges were erected and the village reduced again to quiet and order. A +cry was suddenly raised, and men, women, and children came running out +with animated faces, and looked eagerly through the opening on the hills +by which the stream entered from the westward. I could discern afar +off some dark, heavy masses, passing over the sides of a low hill. They +disappeared, and then others followed. These were bands of buffalo cows. +The hunting-ground was reached at last, and everything promised well for +the morrow’s sport. Being fatigued and exhausted, I went and lay down in +Kongra-Tonga’s lodge, when Raymond thrust in his head, and called +upon me to come and see some sport. A number of Indians were gathered, +laughing, along the line of lodges on the western side of the village, +and at some distance, I could plainly see in the twilight two huge black +monsters stalking, heavily and solemnly, directly toward us. They were +buffalo bulls. The wind blew from them to the village, and such was +their blindness and stupidity that they were advancing upon the enemy +without the least consciousness of his presence. Raymond told me that +two men had hidden themselves with guns in a ravine about twenty yards +in front of us. The two bulls walked slowly on, heavily swinging from +side to side in their peculiar gait of stupid dignity. They approached +within four or five rods of the ravine where the Indians lay in ambush. +Here at last they seemed conscious that something was wrong, for they +both stopped and stood perfectly still, without looking either to the +right or to the left. Nothing of them was to be seen but two huge black +masses of shaggy mane, with horns, eyes, and nose in the center, and +a pair of hoofs visible at the bottom. At last the more intelligent of +them seemed to have concluded that it was time to retire. Very slowly, +and with an air of the gravest and most majestic deliberation, he began +to turn round, as if he were revolving on a pivot. Little by little his +ugly brown side was exposed to view. A white smoke sprang out, as it +were from the ground; a sharp report came with it. The old bull gave +a very undignified jump and galloped off. At this his comrade wheeled +about with considerable expedition. The other Indian shot at him from +the ravine, and then both the bulls were running away at full speed, +while half the juvenile population of the village raised a yell and ran +after them. The first bull was soon stopped, and while the crowd stood +looking at him at a respectable distance, he reeled and rolled over on +his side. The other, wounded in a less vital part, galloped away to the +hills and escaped. + +In half an hour it was totally dark. I lay down to sleep, and ill as I +was, there was something very animating in the prospect of the general +hunt that was to take place on the morrow. + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE HUNTING CAMP + + +Long before daybreak the Indians broke up their camp. The women of +Mene-Seela’s lodge were as usual among the first that were ready for +departure, and I found the old man himself sitting by the embers of the +decayed fire, over which he was warming his withered fingers, as the +morning was very chilly and damp. The preparations for moving were +even more confused and disorderly than usual. While some families were +leaving the ground the lodges of others were still standing untouched. +At this old Mene-Seela grew impatient, and walking out to the middle of +the village stood with his robe wrapped close around him, and harangued +the people in a loud, sharp voice. Now, he said, when they were on an +enemy’s hunting-grounds, was not the time to behave like children; +they ought to be more active and united than ever. His speech had some +effect. The delinquents took down their lodges and loaded their pack +horses; and when the sun rose, the last of the men, women, and children +had left the deserted camp. + +This movement was made merely for the purpose of finding a better and +safer position. So we advanced only three or four miles up the little +stream, before each family assumed its relative place in the great +ring of the village, and all around the squaws were actively at work in +preparing the camp. But not a single warrior dismounted from his horse. +All the men that morning were mounted on inferior animals, leading their +best horses by a cord, or confiding them to the care of boys. In small +parties they began to leave the ground and ride rapidly away over the +plains to the westward. I had taken no food that morning, and not being +at all ambitious of further abstinence, I went into my host’s lodge, +which his squaws had erected with wonderful celerity, and sat down in +the center, as a gentle hint that I was hungry. A wooden bowl was soon +set before me, filled with the nutritious preparation of dried meat +called pemmican by the northern voyagers and wasna by the Dakota. Taking +a handful to break my fast upon, I left the lodge just in time to see +the last band of hunters disappear over the ridge of the neighboring +hill. I mounted Pauline and galloped in pursuit, riding rather by the +balance than by any muscular strength that remained to me. From the +top of the hill I could overlook a wide extent of desolate and unbroken +prairie, over which, far and near, little parties of naked horsemen were +rapidly passing. I soon came up to the nearest, and we had not ridden +a mile before all were united into one large and compact body. All +was haste and eagerness. Each hunter was whipping on his horse, as if +anxious to be the first to reach the game. In such movements among the +Indians this is always more or less the case; but it was especially +so in the present instance, because the head chief of the village was +absent, and there were but few “soldiers,” a sort of Indian police, who +among their other functions usually assumed the direction of a buffalo +hunt. No man turned to the right hand or to the left. We rode at a swift +canter straight forward, uphill and downhill, and through the stiff, +obstinate growth of the endless wild-sage bushes. For an hour and a half +the same red shoulders, the same long black hair rose and fell with +the motion of the horses before me. Very little was said, though once I +observed an old man severely reproving Raymond for having left his rifle +behind him, when there was some probability of encountering an enemy +before the day was over. As we galloped across a plain thickly set with +sagebushes, the foremost riders vanished suddenly from sight, as if +diving into the earth. The arid soil was cracked into a deep ravine. +Down we all went in succession and galloped in a line along the bottom, +until we found a point where, one by one, the horses could scramble out. +Soon after we came upon a wide shallow stream, and as we rode swiftly +over the hard sand-beds and through the thin sheets of rippling water, +many of the savage horsemen threw themselves to the ground, knelt on the +sand, snatched a hasty draught, and leaping back again to their seats, +galloped on again as before. + +Meanwhile scouts kept in advance of the party; and now we began to see +them on the ridge of the hills, waving their robes in token that +buffalo were visible. These however proved to be nothing more than old +straggling bulls, feeding upon the neighboring plains, who would stare +for a moment at the hostile array and then gallop clumsily off. At +length we could discern several of these scouts making their signals +to us at once; no longer waving their robes boldly from the top of the +hill, but standing lower down, so that they could not be seen from the +plains beyond. Game worth pursuing had evidently been discovered. The +excited Indians now urged forward their tired horses even more rapidly +than before. Pauline, who was still sick and jaded, began to groan +heavily; and her yellow sides were darkened with sweat. As we were +crowding together over a lower intervening hill, I heard Reynal and +Raymond shouting to me from the left; and looking in that direction, +I saw them riding away behind a party of about twenty mean-looking +Indians. These were the relatives of Reynal’s squaw Margot, who, not +wishing to take part in the general hunt, were riding toward a distant +hollow, where they could discern a small band of buffalo which they +meant to appropriate to themselves. I answered to the call by ordering +Raymond to turn back and follow me. He reluctantly obeyed, though +Reynal, who had relied on his assistance in skinning, cutting up, and +carrying to camp the buffalo that he and his party should kill, loudly +protested and declared that we should see no sport if we went with the +rest of the Indians. Followed by Raymond I pursued the main body of +hunters, while Reynal in a great rage whipped his horse over the hill +after his ragamuffin relatives. The Indians, still about a hundred in +number, rode in a dense body at some distance in advance. They galloped +forward, and a cloud of dust was flying in the wind behind them. I could +not overtake them until they had stopped on the side of the hill where +the scouts were standing. Here, each hunter sprang in haste from the +tired animal which he had ridden, and leaped upon the fresh horse that +he had brought with him. There was not a saddle or a bridle in the whole +party. A piece of buffalo robe girthed over the horse’s back served in +the place of the one, and a cord of twisted hair lashed firmly round +his lower jaw answered for the other. Eagle feathers were dangling from +every mane and tail, as insignia of courage and speed. As for the rider, +he wore no other clothing than a light cincture at his waist, and a pair +of moccasins. He had a heavy whip, with a handle of solid elk-horn, +and a lash of knotted bull-hide, fastened to his wrist by an ornamental +band. His bow was in his hand, and his quiver of otter or panther skin +hung at his shoulder. Thus equipped, some thirty of the hunters galloped +away toward the left, in order to make a circuit under cover of the +hills, that the buffalo might be assailed on both sides at once. +The rest impatiently waited until time enough had elapsed for their +companions to reach the required position. Then riding upward in a body, +we gained the ridge of the hill, and for the first time came in sight of +the buffalo on the plain beyond. + +They were a band of cows, four or five hundred in number, who were +crowded together near the bank of a wide stream that was soaking +across the sand-beds of the valley. This was a large circular basin, +sun-scorched and broken, scantily covered with herbage and encompassed +with high barren hills, from an opening in which we could see our allies +galloping out upon the plain. The wind blew from that direction. The +buffalo were aware of their approach, and had begun to move, though very +slowly and in a compact mass. I have no further recollection of seeing +the game until we were in the midst of them, for as we descended the +hill other objects engrossed my attention. Numerous old bulls were +scattered over the plain, and ungallantly deserting their charge at our +approach, began to wade and plunge through the treacherous quick-sands +or the stream, and gallop away toward the hills. One old veteran was +struggling behind all the rest with one of his forelegs, which had +been broken by some accident, dangling about uselessly at his side. His +appearance, as he went shambling along on three legs, was so ludicrous +that I could not help pausing for a moment to look at him. As I came +near, he would try to rush upon me, nearly throwing himself down at +every awkward attempt. Looking up, I saw the whole body of Indians full +a hundred yards in advance. I lashed Pauline in pursuit and reached +them just in time, for as we mingled among them, each hunter, as if by +a common impulse, violently struck his horse, each horse sprang forward +convulsively, and scattering in the charge in order to assail the entire +herd at once, we all rushed headlong upon the buffalo. We were among +them in an instant. Amid the trampling and the yells I could see their +dark figures running hither and thither through clouds of dust, and the +horsemen darting in pursuit. While we were charging on one side, our +companions had attacked the bewildered and panic-stricken herd on +the other. The uproar and confusion lasted but for a moment. The dust +cleared away, and the buffalo could be seen scattering as from a common +center, flying over the plain singly, or in long files and small compact +bodies, while behind each followed the Indians, lashing their horses to +furious speed, forcing them close upon their prey, and yelling as they +launched arrow after arrow into their sides. The large black carcasses +were strewn thickly over the ground. Here and there wounded buffalo were +standing, their bleeding sides feathered with arrows; and as I rode past +them their eyes would glare, they would bristle like gigantic cats, and +feebly attempt to rush up and gore my horse. + +I left camp that morning with a philosophic resolution. Neither I nor +my horse were at that time fit for such sport, and I had determined to +remain a quiet spectator; but amid the rush of horses and buffalo, the +uproar and the dust, I found it impossible to sit still; and as four or +five buffalo ran past me in a line, I drove Pauline in pursuit. We went +plunging close at their heels through the water and the quick-sands, +and clambering the bank, chased them through the wild-sage bushes that +covered the rising ground beyond. But neither her native spirit nor the +blows of the knotted bull-hide could supply the place of poor Pauline’s +exhausted strength. We could not gain an inch upon the poor fugitives. +At last, however, they came full upon a ravine too wide to leap over; +and as this compelled them to turn abruptly to the left, I contrived to +get within ten or twelve yards of the hindmost. At this she faced about, +bristled angrily, and made a show of charging. I shot at her with +a large holster pistol, and hit her somewhere in the neck. Down she +tumbled into the ravine, whither her companions had descended before +her. I saw their dark backs appearing and disappearing as they galloped +along the bottom; then, one by one, they came scrambling out on the +other side and ran off as before, the wounded animal following with +unabated speed. + +Turning back, I saw Raymond coming on his black mule to meet me; and as +we rode over the field together, we counted dozens of carcasses lying on +the plain, in the ravines and on the sandy bed of the stream. Far away +in the distance, horses and buffalo were still scouring along, with +little clouds of dust rising behind them; and over the sides of +the hills we could see long files of the frightened animals rapidly +ascending. The hunters began to return. The boys, who had held the +horses behind the hill, made their appearance, and the work of flaying +and cutting up began in earnest all over the field. I noticed my host +Kongra-Tonga beyond the stream, just alighting by the side of a cow +which he had killed. Riding up to him I found him in the act of drawing +out an arrow, which, with the exception of the notch at the end, had +entirely disappeared in the animal. I asked him to give it to me, and +I still retain it as a proof, though by no means the most striking one +that could be offered, of the force and dexterity with which the Indians +discharge their arrows. + +The hides and meat were piled upon the horses, and the hunters began to +leave the ground. Raymond and I, too, getting tired of the scene, set +out for the village, riding straight across the intervening desert. +There was no path, and as far as I could see, no landmarks sufficient +to guide us; but Raymond seemed to have an instinctive perception of +the point on the horizon toward which we ought to direct our course. +Antelope were bounding on all sides, and as is always the case in the +presence of buffalo, they seemed to have lost their natural shyness and +timidity. Bands of them would run lightly up the rocky declivities, +and stand gazing down upon us from the summit. At length we could +distinguish the tall white rocks and the old pine trees that, as we well +remembered, were just above the site of the encampment. Still, we could +see nothing of the village itself until, ascending a grassy hill, we +found the circle of lodges, dingy with storms and smoke, standing on the +plain at our very feet. + +I entered the lodge of my host. His squaw instantly brought me food +and water, and spread a buffalo robe for me to lie upon; and being much +fatigued, I lay down and fell asleep. In about an hour the entrance of +Kongra-Tonga, with his arms smeared with blood to the elbows, awoke me. +He sat down in his usual seat on the left side of the lodge. His squaw +gave him a vessel of water for washing, set before him a bowl of boiled +meat, and as he was eating pulled off his bloody moccasins and placed +fresh ones on his feet; then outstretching his limbs, my host composed +himself to sleep. + +And now the hunters, two or three at a time, began to come rapidly in, +and each, consigning his horses to the squaws, entered his lodge with +the air of a man whose day’s work was done. The squaws flung down the +load from the burdened horses, and vast piles of meat and hides were +soon accumulated before every lodge. By this time it was darkening fast, +and the whole village was illumined by the glare of fires blazing all +around. All the squaws and children were gathered about the piles of +meat, exploring them in search of the daintiest portions. Some of these +they roasted on sticks before the fires, but often they dispensed with +this superfluous operation. Late into the night the fires were still +glowing upon the groups of feasters engaged in this savage banquet +around them. + +Several hunters sat down by the fire in Kongra-Tonga’s lodge to talk +over the day’s exploits. Among the rest, Mene-Seela came in. Though he +must have seen full eighty winters, he had taken an active share in the +day’s sport. He boasted that he had killed two cows that morning, and +would have killed a third if the dust had not blinded him so that he had +to drop his bow and arrows and press both hands against his eyes to stop +the pain. The firelight fell upon his wrinkled face and shriveled figure +as he sat telling his story with such inimitable gesticulation that +every man in the lodge broke into a laugh. + +Old Mene-Seela was one of the few Indians in the village with whom I +would have trusted myself alone without suspicion, and the only one from +whom I would have received a gift or a service without the certainty +that it proceeded from an interested motive. He was a great friend to +the whites. He liked to be in their society, and was very vain of the +favors he had received from them. He told me one afternoon, as we were +sitting together in his son’s lodge, that he considered the beaver and +the whites the wisest people on earth; indeed, he was convinced they +were the same; and an incident which had happened to him long before had +assured him of this. So he began the following story, and as the pipe +passed in turn to him, Reynal availed himself of these interruptions to +translate what had preceded. But the old man accompanied his words with +such admirable pantomime that translation was hardly necessary. + +He said that when he was very young, and had never yet seen a white man, +he and three or four of his companions were out on a beaver hunt, and he +crawled into a large beaver lodge, to examine what was there. Sometimes +he was creeping on his hands and knees, sometimes he was obliged to +swim, and sometimes to lie flat on his face and drag himself along. In +this way he crawled a great distance underground. It was very dark, cold +and close, so that at last he was almost suffocated, and fell into a +swoon. When he began to recover, he could just distinguish the voices of +his companions outside, who had given him up for lost, and were singing +his death song. At first he could see nothing, but soon he discerned +something white before him, and at length plainly distinguished three +people, entirely white; one man and two women, sitting at the edge of +a black pool of water. He became alarmed and thought it high time to +retreat. Having succeeded, after great trouble, in reaching daylight +again, he went straight to the spot directly above the pool of water +where he had seen the three mysterious beings. Here he beat a hole with +his war club in the ground, and sat down to watch. In a moment the nose +of an old male beaver appeared at the opening. Mene-Seela instantly +seized him and dragged him up, when two other beavers, both females, +thrust out their heads, and these he served in the same way. “These,” + continued the old man, “must have been the three white people whom I saw +sitting at the edge of the water.” + +Mene-Seela was the grand depository of the legends and traditions of the +village. I succeeded, however, in getting from him only a few fragments. +Like all Indians, he was excessively superstitious, and continually saw +some reason for withholding his stories. “It is a bad thing,” he would +say, “to tell the tales in summer. Stay with us till next winter, and I +will tell you everything I know; but now our war parties are going out, +and our young men will be killed if I sit down to tell stories before +the frost begins.” + +But to leave this digression. We remained encamped on this spot five +days, during three of which the hunters were at work incessantly, and +immense quantities of meat and hides were brought in. Great alarm, +however, prevailed in the village. All were on the alert. The young men +were ranging through the country as scouts, and the old men paid careful +attention to omens and prodigies, and especially to their dreams. In +order to convey to the enemy (who, if they were in the neighborhood, +must inevitably have known of our presence) the impression that we were +constantly on the watch, piles of sticks and stones were erected on all +the surrounding hills, in such a manner as to appear at a distance like +sentinels. Often, even to this hour, that scene will rise before my +mind like a visible reality: the tall white rocks; the old pine trees +on their summits; the sandy stream that ran along their bases and half +encircled the village; and the wild-sage bushes, with their dull +green hue and their medicinal odor, that covered all the neighboring +declivities. Hour after hour the squaws would pass and repass with their +vessels of water between the stream and the lodges. For the most part +no one was to be seen in the camp but women and children, two or three +super-annuated old men, and a few lazy and worthless young ones. +These, together with the dogs, now grown fat and good-natured with the +abundance in the camp, were its only tenants. Still it presented a busy +and bustling scene. In all quarters the meat, hung on cords of hide, was +drying in the sun, and around the lodges the squaws, young and old, +were laboring on the fresh hides that were stretched upon the ground, +scraping the hair from one side and the still adhering flesh from the +other, and rubbing into them the brains of the buffalo, in order to +render them soft and pliant. + +In mercy to myself and my horse, I never went out with the hunters after +the first day. Of late, however, I had been gaining strength rapidly, as +was always the case upon every respite of my disorder. I was soon able +to walk with ease. Raymond and I would go out upon the neighboring +prairies to shoot antelope, or sometimes to assail straggling buffalo, +on foot, an attempt in which we met with rather indifferent success. To +kill a bull with a rifle-ball is a difficult art, in the secret of which +I was as yet very imperfectly initiated. As I came out of Kongra-Tonga’s +lodge one morning, Reynal called to me from the opposite side of the +village, and asked me over to breakfast. The breakfast was a substantial +one. It consisted of the rich, juicy hump-ribs of a fat cow; a repast +absolutely unrivaled. It was roasting before the fire, impaled upon a +stout stick, which Reynal took up and planted in the ground before his +lodge; when he, with Raymond and myself, taking our seats around it, +unsheathed our knives and assailed it with good will. It spite of all +medical experience, this solid fare, without bread or salt, seemed to +agree with me admirably. + +“We shall have strangers here before night,” said Reynal. + +“How do you know that?” I asked. + +“I dreamed so. I am as good at dreaming as an Indian. There is the +Hail-Storm; he dreamed the same thing, and he and his crony, the Rabbit, +have gone out on discovery.” + +I laughed at Reynal for his credulity, went over to my host’s lodge, +took down my rifle, walked out a mile or two on the prairie, saw an old +bull standing alone, crawled up a ravine, shot him and saw him escape. +Then, quite exhausted and rather ill-humored, I walked back to the +village. By a strange coincidence, Reynal’s prediction had been +verified; for the first persons whom I saw were the two trappers, +Rouleau and Saraphin, coming to meet me. These men, as the reader may +possibly recollect, had left our party about a fortnight before. They +had been trapping for a while among the Black Hills, and were now on +their way to the Rocky Mountains, intending in a day or two to set out +for the neighboring Medicine Bow. They were not the most elegant or +refined of companions, yet they made a very welcome addition to the +limited society of the village. For the rest of that day we lay smoking +and talking in Reynal’s lodge. This indeed was no better than a little +hut, made of hides stretched on poles, and entirely open in front. +It was well carpeted with soft buffalo robes, and here we remained, +sheltered from the sun, surrounded by various domestic utensils of +Madame Margot’s household. All was quiet in the village. Though the +hunters had not gone out that day, they lay sleeping in their lodges, +and most of the women were silently engaged in their heavy tasks. A few +young men were playing a lazy game of ball in the center of the village; +and when they became tired, some girls supplied their place with a more +boisterous sport. At a little distance, among the lodges, some children +and half-grown squaws were playfully tossing up one of their number in +a buffalo robe, an exact counterpart of the ancient pastime from which +Sancho Panza suffered so much. Farther out on the prairie, a host of +little naked boys were roaming about, engaged in various rough games, or +pursuing birds and ground-squirrels with their bows and arrows; and +woe to the unhappy little animals that fell into their merciless, +torture-loving hands! A squaw from the next lodge, a notable active +housewife named Weah Washtay, or the Good Woman, brought us a large bowl +of wasna, and went into an ecstasy of delight when I presented her +with a green glass ring, such as I usually wore with a view to similar +occasions. + +The sun went down and half the sky was growing fiery red, reflected on +the little stream as it wound away among the sagebushes. Some young +men left the village, and soon returned, driving in before them all +the horses, hundreds in number, and of every size, age, and color. The +hunters came out, and each securing those that belonged to him, examined +their condition, and tied them fast by long cords to stakes driven in +front of his lodge. It was half an hour before the bustle subsided +and tranquillity was restored again. By this time it was nearly dark. +Kettles were hung over the blazing fires, around which the squaws were +gathered with their children, laughing and talking merrily. A circle +of a different kind was formed in the center of the village. This was +composed of the old men and warriors of repute, who with their white +buffalo robes drawn close around their shoulders, sat together, and as +the pipe passed from hand to hand, their conversation had not a particle +of the gravity and reserve usually ascribed to Indians. I sat down with +them as usual. I had in my hand half a dozen squibs and serpents, which +I had made one day when encamped upon Laramie Creek, out of gunpowder +and charcoal, and the leaves of “Fremont’s Expedition,” rolled round a +stout lead pencil. I waited till I contrived to get hold of the large +piece of burning BOIS DE VACHE which the Indians kept by them on the +ground for lighting their pipes. With this I lighted all the fireworks +at once, and tossed them whizzing and sputtering into the air, over +the heads of the company. They all jumped up and ran off with yelps of +astonishment and consternation. After a moment or two, they ventured to +come back one by one, and some of the boldest, picking up the cases +of burnt paper that were scattered about, examined them with eager +curiosity to discover their mysterious secret. From that time forward I +enjoyed great repute as a “fire-medicine.” + +The camp was filled with the low hum of cheerful voices. There were +other sounds, however, of a very different kind, for from a large lodge, +lighted up like a gigantic lantern by the blazing fire within, came a +chorus of dismal cries and wailings, long drawn out, like the howling of +wolves, and a woman, almost naked, was crouching close outside, crying +violently, and gashing her legs with a knife till they were covered with +blood. Just a year before, a young man belonging to this family had gone +out with a war party and had been slain by the enemy, and his relatives +were thus lamenting his loss. Still other sounds might be heard; loud +earnest cries often repeated from amid the gloom, at a distance beyond +the village. They proceeded from some young men who, being about to set +out in a few days on a warlike expedition, were standing at the top of a +hill, calling on the Great Spirit to aid them in their enterprise. While +I was listening, Rouleau, with a laugh on his careless face, called to +me and directed my attention to another quarter. In front of the lodge +where Weah Washtay lived another squaw was standing, angrily scolding an +old yellow dog, who lay on the ground with his nose resting between +his paws, and his eyes turned sleepily up to her face, as if he were +pretending to give respectful attention, but resolved to fall asleep as +soon as it was all over. + +“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” said the old woman. “I have fed +you well, and taken care of you ever since you were small and blind, and +could only crawl about and squeal a little, instead of howling as you do +now. When you grew old, I said you were a good dog. You were strong and +gentle when the load was put on your back, and you never ran among the +feet of the horses when we were all traveling together over the prairie. +But you had a bad heart! Whenever a rabbit jumped out of the bushes, you +were always the first to run after him and lead away all the other dogs +behind you. You ought to have known that it was very dangerous to act +so. When you had got far out on the prairie, and no one was near to help +you, perhaps a wolf would jump out of the ravine; and then what could +you do? You would certainly have been killed, for no dog can fight well +with a load on his back. Only three days ago you ran off in that way, +and turned over the bag of wooden pins with which I used to fasten up +the front of the lodge. Look up there, and you will see that it is all +flapping open. And now to-night you have stolen a great piece of fat +meat which was roasting before the fire for my children. I tell you, you +have a bad heart, and you must die!” + +So saying, the squaw went into the lodge, and coming out with a large +stone mallet, killed the unfortunate dog at one blow. This speech +is worthy of notice as illustrating a curious characteristic of the +Indians: the ascribing intelligence and a power of understanding speech +to the inferior animals, to whom, indeed, according to many of their +traditions, they are linked in close affinity, and they even claim the +honor of a lineal descent from bears, wolves, deer, or tortoises. + +As it grew late, and the crowded population began to disappear, I too +walked across the village to the lodge of my host, Kongra-Tonga. As I +entered I saw him, by the flickering blaze of the fire in the center, +reclining half asleep in his usual place. His couch was by no means an +uncomfortable one. It consisted of soft buffalo robes laid together on +the ground, and a pillow made of whitened deerskin stuffed with feathers +and ornamented with beads. At his back was a light framework of poles +and slender reeds, against which he could lean with ease when in a +sitting posture; and at the top of it, just above his head, his bow +and quiver were hanging. His squaw, a laughing, broad-faced woman, +apparently had not yet completed her domestic arrangements, for she was +bustling about the lodge, pulling over the utensils and the bales of +dried meats that were ranged carefully round it. Unhappily, she and +her partner were not the only tenants of the dwelling, for half a dozen +children were scattered about, sleeping in every imaginable posture. My +saddle was in its place at the head of the lodge and a buffalo robe +was spread on the ground before it. Wrapping myself in my blanket I lay +down, but had I not been extremely fatigued the noise in the next lodge +would have prevented my sleeping. There was the monotonous thumping of +the Indian drum, mixed with occasional sharp yells, and a chorus chanted +by twenty voices. A grand scene of gambling was going forward with all +the appropriate formalities. The players were staking on the chance +issue of the game their ornaments, their horses, and as the excitement +rose, their garments, and even their weapons, for desperate gambling +is not confined to the hells of Paris. The men of the plains and the +forests no less resort to it as a violent but grateful relief to +the tedious monotony of their lives, which alternate between fierce +excitement and listless inaction. I fell asleep with the dull notes +of the drum still sounding on my ear, but these furious orgies lasted +without intermission till daylight. I was soon awakened by one of the +children crawling over me, while another larger one was tugging at +my blanket and nestling himself in a very disagreeable proximity. I +immediately repelled these advances by punching the heads of these +miniature savages with a short stick which I always kept by me for the +purpose; and as sleeping half the day and eating much more than is good +for them makes them extremely restless, this operation usually had to be +repeated four or five times in the course of the night. My host himself +was the author of another most formidable annoyance. All these +Indians, and he among the rest, think themselves bound to the constant +performance of certain acts as the condition on which their success in +life depends, whether in war, love, hunting, or any other employment. +These “medicines,” as they are called in that country, which are usually +communicated in dreams, are often absurd enough. Some Indians will +strike the butt of the pipe against the ground every time they smoke; +others will insist that everything they say shall be interpreted by +contraries; and Shaw once met an old man who conceived that all would be +lost unless he compelled every white man he met to drink a bowl of cold +water. My host was particularly unfortunate in his allotment. The Great +Spirit had told him in a dream that he must sing a certain song in the +middle of every night; and regularly at about twelve o’clock his dismal +monotonous chanting would awaken me, and I would see him seated bolt +upright on his couch, going through his dolorous performances with a +most business-like air. There were other voices of the night still more +inharmonious. Twice or thrice, between sunset and dawn, all the dogs +in the village, and there were hundreds of them, would bay and yelp in +chorus; a most horrible clamor, resembling no sound that I have ever +heard, except perhaps the frightful howling of wolves that we used +sometimes to hear long afterward when descending the Arkansas on the +trail of General Kearny’s army. The canine uproar is, if possible, more +discordant than that of the wolves. Heard at a distance, slowly rising +on the night, it has a strange unearthly effect, and would fearfully +haunt the dreams of a nervous man; but when you are sleeping in the +midst of it the din is outrageous. One long loud howl from the next +lodge perhaps begins it, and voice after voice takes up the sound till +it passes around the whole circumference of the village, and the air is +filled with confused and discordant cries, at once fierce and mournful. +It lasts but for a moment and then dies away into silence. + +Morning came, and Kongra-Tonga, mounting his horse, rode out with the +hunters. It may not be amiss to glance at him for an instant in his +domestic character of husband and father. Both he and his squaw, like +most other Indians, were very fond of their children, whom they indulged +to excess, and never punished, except in extreme cases when they +would throw a bowl of cold water over them. Their offspring became +sufficiently undutiful and disobedient under this system of education, +which tends not a little to foster that wild idea of liberty and utter +intolerance of restraint which lie at the very foundation of the Indian +character. It would be hard to find a fonder father than Kongra-Tonga. +There was one urchin in particular, rather less than two feet high, to +whom he was exceedingly attached; and sometimes spreading a buffalo robe +in the lodge, he would seat himself upon it, place his small favorite +upright before him, and chant in a low tone some of the words used as an +accompaniment to the war dance. The little fellow, who could just manage +to balance himself by stretching out both arms, would lift his feet and +turn slowly round and round in time to his father’s music, while my host +would laugh with delight, and look smiling up into my face to see if +I were admiring this precocious performance of his offspring. In his +capacity of husband he was somewhat less exemplary. The squaw who lived +in the lodge with him had been his partner for many years. She took +good care of his children and his household concerns. He liked her well +enough, and as far as I could see they never quarreled; but all his +warmer affections were reserved for younger and more recent favorites. +Of these he had at present only one, who lived in a lodge apart from his +own. One day while in his camp he became displeased with her, pushed her +out, threw after her her ornaments, dresses, and everything she had, +and told her to go home to her father. Having consummated this summary +divorce, for which he could show good reasons, he came back, seated +himself in his usual place, and began to smoke with an air of utmost +tranquillity and self-satisfaction. + +I was sitting in the lodge with him on that very afternoon, when I felt +some curiosity to learn the history of the numerous scars that appeared +on his naked body. Of some of them, however, I did not venture to +inquire, for I already understood their origin. Each of his arms was +marked as if deeply gashed with a knife at regular intervals, and there +were other scars also, of a different character, on his back and on +either breast. They were the traces of those formidable tortures +which these Indians, in common with a few other tribes, inflict upon +themselves at certain seasons; in part, it may be, to gain the glory of +courage and endurance, but chiefly as an act of self-sacrifice to secure +the favor of the Great Spirit. The scars upon the breast and back were +produced by running through the flesh strong splints of wood, to which +ponderous buffalo-skulls are fastened by cords of hide, and the wretch +runs forward with all his strength, assisted by two companions, who take +hold of each arm, until the flesh tears apart and the heavy loads +are left behind. Others of Kongra-Tonga’s scars were the result of +accidents; but he had many which he received in war. He was one of the +most noted warriors in the village. In the course of his life he had +slain as he boasted to me, fourteen men, and though, like other Indians, +he was a great braggart and utterly regardless of truth, yet in this +statement common report bore him out. Being much flattered by my +inquiries he told me tale after tale, true or false, of his warlike +exploits; and there was one among the rest illustrating the worst +features of the Indian character too well for me to omit. Pointing out +of the opening of the lodge toward the Medicine-Bow Mountain, not many +miles distant he said that he was there a few summers ago with a war +party of his young men. Here they found two Snake Indians, hunting. They +shot one of them with arrows and chased the other up the side of the +mountain till they surrounded him on a level place, and Kongra-Tonga +himself, jumping forward among the trees, seized him by the arm. Two of +his young men then ran up and held him fast while he scalped him alive. +Then they built a great fire, and cutting the tendons of their captive’s +wrists and feet, threw him in, and held him down with long poles +until he was burnt to death. He garnished his story with a great many +descriptive particulars much too revolting to mention. His features were +remarkably mild and open, without the fierceness of expression common +among these Indians; and as he detailed these devilish cruelties, he +looked up into my face with the same air of earnest simplicity which a +little child would wear in relating to its mother some anecdote of its +youthful experience. + +Old Mene-Seela’s lodge could offer another illustration of the ferocity +of Indian warfare. A bright-eyed, active little boy was living there. +He had belonged to a village of the Gros-Ventre Blackfeet, a small but +bloody and treacherous band, in close alliance with the Arapahoes. About +a year before, Kongra-Tonga and a party of warriors had found about +twenty lodges of these Indians upon the plains a little to the eastward +of our present camp; and surrounding them in the night, they butchered +men, women, and children without mercy, preserving only this little +boy alive. He was adopted into the old man’s family, and was now fast +becoming identified with the Ogallalla children, among whom he mingled +on equal terms. There was also a Crow warrior in the village, a man of +gigantic stature and most symmetrical proportions. Having been taken +prisoner many years before and adopted by a squaw in place of a son whom +she had lost, he had forgotten his old national antipathies, and was now +both in act and inclination an Ogallalla. + +It will be remembered that the scheme of the grand warlike combination +against the Snake and Crow Indians originated in this village; and +though this plan had fallen to the ground, the embers of the martial +ardor continued to glow brightly. Eleven young men had prepared +themselves to go out against the enemy. The fourth day of our stay in +this camp was fixed upon for their departure. At the head of this party +was a well-built active little Indian, called the White Shield, whom I +had always noticed for the great neatness of his dress and appearance. +His lodge too, though not a large one, was the best in the village, +his squaw was one of the prettiest girls, and altogether his dwelling +presented a complete model of an Ogallalla domestic establishment. I +was often a visitor there, for the White Shield being rather partial +to white men, used to invite me to continual feasts at all hours of the +day. Once when the substantial part of the entertainment was concluded, +and he and I were seated cross-legged on a buffalo robe smoking together +very amicably, he took down his warlike equipments, which were +hanging around the lodge, and displayed them with great pride and +self-importance. Among the rest was a most superb headdress of feathers. +Taking this from its case, he put it on and stood before me, as if +conscious of the gallant air which it gave to his dark face and his +vigorous, graceful figure. He told me that upon it were the feathers of +three war-eagles, equal in value to the same number of good horses. He +took up also a shield gayly painted and hung with feathers. The effect +of these barbaric ornaments was admirable, for they were arranged with +no little skill and taste. His quiver was made of the spotted skin of a +small panther, such as are common among the Black Hills, from which the +tail and distended claws were still allowed to hang. The White Shield +concluded his entertainment in a manner characteristic of an Indian. He +begged of me a little powder and ball, for he had a gun as well as bow +and arrows; but this I was obliged to refuse, because I had scarcely +enough for my own use. Making him, however, a parting present of a paper +of vermilion, I left him apparently quite contented. + +Unhappily on the next morning the White Shield took cold and was +attacked with a violent inflammation of the throat. Immediately he +seemed to lose all spirit, and though before no warrior in the village +had borne himself more proudly, he now moped about from lodge to lodge +with a forlorn and dejected air. At length he came and sat down, close +wrapped in his robe, before the lodge of Reynal, but when he found that +neither he nor I knew how to relieve him, he arose and stalked over to +one of the medicine-men of the village. This old imposter thumped him +for some time with both fists, howled and yelped over him, and beat a +drum close to his ear to expel the evil spirit that had taken possession +of him. This vigorous treatment failing of the desired effect, the White +Shield withdrew to his own lodge, where he lay disconsolate for some +hours. Making his appearance once more in the afternoon, he again took +his seat on the ground before Reynal’s lodge, holding his throat with +his hand. For some time he sat perfectly silent with his eyes fixed +mournfully on the ground. At last he began to speak in a low tone: + +“I am a brave man,” he said; “all the young men think me a great +warrior, and ten of them are ready to go with me to the war. I will go +and show them the enemy. Last summer the Snakes killed my brother. I +cannot live unless I revenge his death. To-morrow we will set out and I +will take their scalps.” + +The White Shield, as he expressed this resolution, seemed to have lost +all the accustomed fire and spirit of his look, and hung his head as if +in a fit of despondency. + +As I was sitting that evening at one of the fires, I saw him arrayed in +his splendid war dress, his cheeks painted with vermilion, leading his +favorite war horse to the front of his lodge. He mounted and rode round +the village, singing his war song in a loud hoarse voice amid the +shrill acclamations of the women. Then dismounting, he remained for some +minutes prostrate upon the ground, as if in an act of supplication. +On the following morning I looked in vain for the departure of the +warriors. All was quiet in the village until late in the forenoon, when +the White Shield, issuing from his lodge, came and seated himself in his +old place before us. Reynal asked him why he had not gone out to find +the enemy. + +“I cannot go,” answered the White Shield in a dejected voice. “I have +given my war arrows to the Meneaska.” + +“You have only given him two of your arrows,” said Reynal. “If you ask +him, he will give them back again.” + +For some time the White Shield said nothing. At last he spoke in a +gloomy tone: + +“One of my young men has had bad dreams. The spirits of the dead came +and threw stones at him in his sleep.” + +If such a dream had actually taken place it might have broken up this +or any other war party, but both Reynal and I were convinced at the time +that it was a mere fabrication to excuse his remaining at home. + +The White Shield was a warrior of noted prowess. Very probably, he would +have received a mortal wound without a show of pain, and endured without +flinching the worst tortures that an enemy could inflict upon him. The +whole power of an Indian’s nature would be summoned to encounter such +a trial; every influence of his education from childhood would have +prepared him for it; the cause of his suffering would have been visibly +and palpably before him, and his spirit would rise to set his enemy at +defiance, and gain the highest glory of a warrior by meeting death with +fortitude. But when he feels himself attacked by a mysterious evil, +before whose insidious assaults his manhood is wasted, and his strength +drained away, when he can see no enemy to resist and defy, the boldest +warrior falls prostrate at once. He believes that a bad spirit has +taken possession of him, or that he is the victim of some charm. When +suffering from a protracted disorder, an Indian will often abandon +himself to his supposed destiny, pine away and die, the victim of his +own imagination. The same effect will often follow from a series of +calamities, or a long run of ill success, and the sufferer has been +known to ride into the midst of an enemy’s camp, or attack a grizzly +bear single-handed, to get rid of a life which he supposed to lie under +the doom of misfortune. + +Thus after all his fasting, dreaming, and calling upon the Great Spirit, +the White Shield’s war party was pitifully broken up. + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE TRAPPERS + + +In speaking of the Indians, I have almost forgotten two bold adventurers +of another race, the trappers Rouleau and Saraphin. These men were bent +on a most hazardous enterprise. A day’s journey to the westward was the +country over which the Arapahoes are accustomed to range, and for which +the two trappers were on the point of setting out. These Arapahoes, of +whom Shaw and I afterward fell in with a large village, are ferocious +barbarians, of a most brutal and wolfish aspect, and of late they had +declared themselves enemies to the whites, and threatened death to the +first who should venture within their territory. The occasion of the +declaration was as follows: + +In the previous spring, 1845, Colonel Kearny left Fort Leavenworth with +several companies of dragoons, and marching with extraordinary celerity +reached Fort Laramie, whence he passed along the foot of the mountains +to Bent’s Fort and then, turning eastward again, returned to the point +from whence he set out. While at Fort Larantie, he sent a part of his +command as far westward as Sweetwater, while he himself remained at the +fort, and dispatched messages to the surrounding Indians to meet him +there in council. Then for the first time the tribes of that vicinity +saw the white warriors, and, as might have been expected, they were +lost in astonishment at their regular order, their gay attire, the +completeness of their martial equipment, and the great size and power of +their horses. Among the rest, the Arapahoes came in considerable numbers +to the fort. They had lately committed numerous acts of outrage, and +Colonel Kearny threatened that if they killed any more white men he +would turn loose his dragoons upon them, and annihilate their whole +nation. In the evening, to add effect to his speech, he ordered a +howitzer to be fired and a rocket to be thrown up. Many of the Arapahoes +fell prostrate on the ground, while others ran screaming with amazement +and terror. On the following day they withdrew to their mountains, +confounded with awe at the appearance of the dragoons, at their big gun +which went off twice at one shot, and the fiery messenger which they had +sent up to the Great Spirit. For many months they remained quiet, +and did no further mischief. At length, just before we came into the +country, one of them, by an act of the basest treachery, killed two +white men, Boot and May, who were trapping among the mountains. For this +act it was impossible to discover a motive. It seemed to spring from one +of those inexplicable impulses which often actuate Indians and appear +no better than the mere outbreaks of native ferocity. No sooner was the +murder committed than the whole tribe were in extreme consternation. +They expected every day that the avenging dragoons would arrive, little +thinking that a desert of nine hundred miles in extent lay between the +latter and their mountain fastnesses. A large deputation of them came to +Fort Laramie, bringing a valuable present of horses, in compensation for +the lives of the murdered men. These Bordeaux refused to accept. They +then asked him if he would be satisfied with their delivering up the +murderer himself; but he declined this offer also. The Arapahoes went +back more terrified than ever. Weeks passed away, and still no dragoons +appeared. A result followed which all those best acquainted with Indians +had predicted. They conceived that fear had prevented Bordeaux from +accepting their gifts, and that they had nothing to apprehend from +the vengeance of the whites. From terror they rose to the height of +insolence and presumption. They called the white men cowards and old +women; and a friendly Dakota came to Fort Laramie and reported that they +were determined to kill the first of the white dogs whom they could lay +hands on. + +Had a military officer, intrusted with suitable powers, been stationed +at Fort Laramie, and having accepted the offer of the Arapahoes to +deliver up the murderer, had ordered him to be immediately led out +and shot, in presence of his tribe, they would have been awed into +tranquillity, and much danger and calamity averted; but now the +neighborhood of the Medicine-Bow Mountain and the region beyond it was a +scene of extreme peril. Old Mene-Seela, a true friend of the whites, and +many other of the Indians gathered about the two trappers, and vainly +endeavored to turn them from their purpose; but Rouleau and Saraphin +only laughed at the danger. On the morning preceding that on which they +were to leave the camp, we could all discern faint white columns of +smoke rising against the dark base of the Medicine-Bow. Scouts were out +immediately, and reported that these proceeded from an Arapahoe camp, +abandoned only a few hours before. Still the two trappers continued +their preparations for departure. + +Saraphin was a tall, powerful fellow, with a sullen and sinister +countenance. His rifle had very probably drawn other blood than that of +buffalo or even Indians. Rouleau had a broad ruddy face marked with as +few traces of thought or care as a child’s. His figure was remarkably +square and strong, but the first joints of both his feet were frozen +off, and his horse had lately thrown and trampled upon him, by which +he had been severely injured in the chest. But nothing could check his +inveterate propensity for laughter and gayety. He went all day rolling +about the camp on his stumps of feet, talking and singing and frolicking +with the Indian women, as they were engaged at their work. In fact +Rouleau had an unlucky partiality for squaws. He always had one whom he +must needs bedizen with beads, ribbons, and all the finery of an Indian +wardrobe; and though he was of course obliged to leave her behind him +during his expeditions, yet this hazardous necessity did not at all +trouble him, for his disposition was the very reverse of jealous. If at +any time he had not lavished the whole of the precarious profits of his +vocation upon his dark favorite, he always devoted the rest to feasting +his comrades. If liquor was not to be had--and this was usually the +case--strong coffee was substituted. As the men of that region are by +no means remarkable for providence or self-restraint, whatever was +set before them on these occasions, however extravagant in price, or +enormous in quantity, was sure to be disposed of at one sitting. Like +other trappers, Rouleau’s life was one of contrast and variety. It was +only at certain seasons, and for a limited time, that he was absent on +his expeditions. For the rest of the year he would be lounging about the +fort, or encamped with his friends in its vicinity, lazily hunting or +enjoying all the luxury of inaction; but when once in pursuit of beaver, +he was involved in extreme privations and desperate perils. When in +the midst of his game and his enemies, hand and foot, eye and ear, are +incessantly active. Frequently he must content himself with devouring +his evening meal uncooked, lest the light of his fire should attract +the eyes of some wandering Indian; and sometimes having made his rude +repast, he must leave his fire still blazing, and withdraw to a distance +under cover of the darkness, that his disappointed enemy, drawn thither +by the light, may find his victim gone, and be unable to trace his +footsteps in the gloom. This is the life led by scores of men in the +Rocky Mountains and their vicinity. I once met a trapper whose breast +was marked with the scars of six bullets and arrows, one of his arms +broken by a shot and one of his knees shattered; yet still, with the +undaunted mettle of New England, from which part of the country he had +come, he continued to follow his perilous occupation. To some of the +children of cities it may seem strange that men with no object in +view should continue to follow a life of such hardship and desperate +adventure; yet there is a mysterious, restless charm in the basilisk eye +of danger, and few men perhaps remain long in that wild region without +learning to love peril for its own sake, and to laugh carelessly in the +face of death. + +On the last day of our stay in this camp, the trappers were ready for +departure. When in the Black Hills they had caught seven beaver, and +they now left their skins in charge of Reynal, to be kept until their +return. Their strong, gaunt horses were equipped with rusty Spanish bits +and rude Mexican saddles, to which wooden stirrups were attached, while +a buffalo robe was rolled up behind them, and a bundle of beaver traps +slung at the pommel. These, together with their rifles, their knives, +their powder-horns and bullet-pouches, flint and steel and a tincup, +composed their whole traveling equipment. They shook hands with us and +rode away; Saraphin with his grim countenance, like a surly bulldog’s, +was in advance; but Rouleau, clambering gayly into his seat, kicked his +horse’s sides, flourished his whip in the air, and trotted briskly over +the prairie, trolling forth a Canadian song at the top of his lungs. +Reynal looked after them with his face of brutal selfishness. + +“Well,” he said, “if they are killed, I shall have the beaver. They’ll +fetch me fifty dollars at the fort, anyhow.” + +This was the last I saw of them. + +We had been for five days in the hunting camp, and the meat, which all +this time had hung drying in the sun, was now fit for transportation. +Buffalo hides also had been procured in sufficient quantities for making +the next season’s lodges; but it remained to provide the long slender +poles on which they were to be supported. These were only to be had +among the tall pine woods of the Black Hills, and in that direction +therefore our next move was to be made. It is worthy of notice that amid +the general abundance which during this time had prevailed in the camp +there were no instances of individual privation; for although the hide +and the tongue of the buffalo belong by exclusive right to the hunter +who has killed it, yet anyone else is equally entitled to help himself +from the rest of the carcass. Thus, the weak, the aged, and even the +indolent come in for a share of the spoils, and many a helpless old +woman, who would otherwise perish from starvation, is sustained in +profuse abundance. + +On the 25th of July, late in the afternoon, the camp broke up, with +the usual tumult and confusion, and we were all moving once more, on +horseback and on foot, over the plains. We advanced, however, but a few +miles. The old men, who during the whole march had been stoutly striding +along on foot in front of the people, now seated themselves in a circle +on the ground, while all the families, erecting their lodges in the +prescribed order around them, formed the usual great circle of the camp; +meanwhile these village patriarchs sat smoking and talking. I threw my +bridle to Raymond, and sat down as usual along with them. There was none +of that reserve and apparent dignity which an Indian always assumes +when in council, or in the presence of white men whom he distrusts. The +party, on the contrary, was an extremely merry one; and as in a social +circle of a quite different character, “if there was not much wit, there +was at least a great deal of laughter.” + +When the first pipe was smoked out, I rose and withdrew to the lodge of +my host. Here I was stooping, in the act of taking off my powder-horn +and bullet-pouch, when suddenly, and close at hand, pealing loud +and shrill, and in right good earnest, came the terrific yell of the +war-whoop. Kongra-Tonga’s squaw snatched up her youngest child, and ran +out of the lodge. I followed, and found the whole village in confusion, +resounding with cries and yells. The circle of old men in the center had +vanished. The warriors with glittering eyes came darting, their weapons +in their hands, out of the low opening of the lodges, and running with +wild yells toward the farther end of the village. Advancing a few rods +in that direction, I saw a crowd in furious agitation, while others ran +up on every side to add to the confusion. Just then I distinguished +the voices of Raymond and Reynal, shouting to me from a distance, and +looking back, I saw the latter with his rifle in his hand, standing on +the farther bank of a little stream that ran along the outskirts of the +camp. He was calling to Raymond and myself to come over and join him, +and Raymond, with his usual deliberate gait and stolid countenance, was +already moving in that direction. + +This was clearly the wisest course, unless we wished to involve +ourselves in the fray; so I turned to go, but just then a pair of eyes, +gleaming like a snake’s, and an aged familiar countenance was thrust +from the opening of a neighboring lodge, and out bolted old Mene-Seela, +full of fight, clutching his bow and arrows in one hand and his knife +in the other. At that instant he tripped and fell sprawling on his face, +while his weapons flew scattering away in every direction. The women +with loud screams were hurrying with their children in their arms to +place them out of danger, and I observed some hastening to prevent +mischief, by carrying away all the weapons they could lay hands on. On +a rising ground close to the camp stood a line of old women singing a +medicine song to allay the tumult. As I approached the side of the brook +I heard gun-shots behind me, and turning back, I saw that the crowd had +separated into two lines of naked warriors confronting each other at a +respectful distance, and yelling and jumping about to dodge the shot of +their adversaries, while they discharged bullets and arrows against each +other. At the same time certain sharp, humming sounds in the air over my +head, like the flight of beetles on a summer evening, warned me that the +danger was not wholly confined to the immediate scene of the fray. So +wading through the brook, I joined Reynal and Raymond, and we sat +down on the grass, in the posture of an armed neutrality, to watch the +result. + +Happily it may be for ourselves, though quite contrary to our +expectation, the disturbance was quelled almost as soon as it had +commenced. When I looked again, the combatants were once more mingled +together in a mass. Though yells sounded, occasionally from the throng, +the firing had entirely ceased, and I observed five or six persons +moving busily about, as if acting the part of peacemakers. One of the +village heralds or criers proclaimed in a loud voice something which +my two companions were too much engrossed in their own observations to +translate for me. The crowd began to disperse, though many a deep-set +black eye still glittered with an unnatural luster, as the warriors +slowly withdrew to their lodges. This fortunate suppression of the +disturbance was owing to a few of the old men, less pugnacious than +Mene-Seela, who boldly ran in between the combatants and aided by +some of the “soldiers,” or Indian police, succeeded in effecting their +object. + +It seemed very strange to me that although many arrows and bullets were +discharged, no one was mortally hurt, and I could only account for +this by the fact that both the marksman and the object of his aim were +leaping about incessantly during the whole time. By far the greater part +of the villagers had joined in the fray, for although there were not +more than a dozen guns in the whole camp, I heard at least eight or ten +shots fired. + +In a quarter of an hour all was comparatively quiet. A large circle of +warriors were again seated in the center of the village, but this time +I did not venture to join them, because I could see that the pipe, +contrary to the usual order, was passing from the left hand to the right +around the circle, a sure sign that a “medicine-smoke” of reconciliation +was going forward, and that a white man would be an unwelcome intruder. +When I again entered the still agitated camp it was nearly dark, and +mournful cries, howls and wailings resounded from many female voices. +Whether these had any connection with the late disturbance, or were +merely lamentations for relatives slain in some former war expeditions, +I could not distinctly ascertain. + +To inquire too closely into the cause of the quarrel was by no means +prudent, and it was not until some time after that I discovered what +had given rise to it. Among the Dakota there are many associations, or +fraternities, connected with the purposes of their superstitions, +their warfare, or their social life. There was one called “The +Arrow-Breakers,” now in a great measure disbanded and dispersed. In the +village there were, however, four men belonging to it, distinguished by +the peculiar arrangement of their hair, which rose in a high bristling +mass above their foreheads, adding greatly to their apparent height, and +giving them a most ferocious appearance. The principal among them was +the Mad Wolf, a warrior of remarkable size and strength, great courage, +and the fierceness of a demon. I had always looked upon him as the most +dangerous man in the village; and though he often invited me to feasts, +I never entered his lodge unarmed. The Mad Wolf had taken a fancy to a +fine horse belonging to another Indian, who was called the Tall Bear; +and anxious to get the animal into his possession, he made the owner a +present of another horse nearly equal in value. According to the customs +of the Dakota, the acceptance of this gift involved a sort of obligation +to make an equitable return; and the Tall Bear well understood that +the other had in view the obtaining of his favorite buffalo horse. +He however accepted the present without a word of thanks, and having +picketed the horse before his lodge, he suffered day after day to pass +without making the expected return. The Mad Wolf grew impatient and +angry; and at last, seeing that his bounty was not likely to produce the +desired return, he resolved to reclaim it. So this evening, as soon as +the village was encamped, he went to the lodge of the Tall Bear, seized +upon the horse that he had given him, and led him away. At this the Tall +Bear broke into one of those fits of sullen rage not uncommon among the +Indians. He ran up to the unfortunate horse, and gave him three mortals +stabs with his knife. Quick as lightning the Mad Wolf drew his bow to +its utmost tension, and held the arrow quivering close to the breast +of his adversary. The Tall Bear, as the Indians who were near him said, +stood with his bloody knife in his hand, facing the assailant with the +utmost calmness. Some of his friends and relatives, seeing his danger, +ran hastily to his assistance. The remaining three Arrow-Breakers, +on the other hand, came to the aid of their associate. Many of their +friends joined them, the war-cry was raised on a sudden, and the tumult +became general. + +The “soldiers,” who lent their timely aid in putting it down, are by +far the most important executive functionaries in an Indian village. +The office is one of considerable honor, being confided only to men of +courage and repute. They derive their authority from the old men and +chief warriors of the village, who elect them in councils occasionally +convened for the purpose, and thus can exercise a degree of authority +which no one else in the village would dare to assume. While very few +Ogallalla chiefs could venture without instant jeopardy of their lives +to strike or lay hands upon the meanest of their people, the “soldiers” + in the discharge of their appropriate functions, have full license to +make use of these and similar acts of coercion. + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE BLACK HILLS + + +We traveled eastward for two days, and then the gloomy ridges of the +Black Hills rose up before us. The village passed along for some miles +beneath their declivities, trailing out to a great length over the arid +prairie, or winding at times among small detached hills or distorted +shapes. Turning sharply to the left, we entered a wide defile of the +mountains, down the bottom of which a brook came winding, lined with +tall grass and dense copses, amid which were hidden many beaver dams and +lodges. We passed along between two lines of high precipices and rocks, +piled in utter disorder one upon another, and with scarcely a tree, a +bush, or a clump of grass to veil their nakedness. The restless Indian +boys were wandering along their edges and clambering up and down their +rugged sides, and sometimes a group of them would stand on the verge of +a cliff and look down on the array as it passed in review beneath them. +As we advanced, the passage grew more narrow; then it suddenly expanded +into a round grassy meadow, completely encompassed by mountains; and +here the families stopped as they came up in turn, and the camp rose +like magic. + +The lodges were hardly erected when, with their usual precipitation, the +Indians set about accomplishing the object that had brought them there; +that is, the obtaining poles for supporting their new lodges. Half the +population, men, women and boys, mounted their horses and set out for +the interior of the mountains. As they rode at full gallop over the +shingly rocks and into the dark opening of the defile beyond, I thought +I had never read or dreamed of a more strange or picturesque cavalcade. +We passed between precipices more than a thousand feet high, sharp +and splintering at the tops, their sides beetling over the defile or +descending in abrupt declivities, bristling with black fir trees. On our +left they rose close to us like a wall, but on the right a winding brook +with a narrow strip of marshy soil intervened. The stream was clogged +with old beaver dams, and spread frequently into wide pools. There were +thick bushes and many dead and blasted trees along its course, though +frequently nothing remained but stumps cut close to the ground by +the beaver, and marked with the sharp chisel-like teeth of those +indefatigable laborers. Sometimes we were driving among trees, and then +emerging upon open spots, over which, Indian-like, all galloped at +full speed. As Pauline bounded over the rocks I felt her saddle-girth +slipping, and alighted to draw it tighter; when the whole array swept +past me in a moment, the women with their gaudy ornaments tinkling as +they rode, the men whooping, and laughing, and lashing forward their +horses. Two black-tailed deer bounded away among the rocks; Raymond shot +at them from horseback; the sharp report of his rifle was answered by +another equally sharp from the opposing cliffs, and then the echoes, +leaping in rapid succession from side to side, died away rattling far +amid the mountains. + +After having ridden in this manner for six or eight miles, the +appearance of the scene began to change, and all the declivities around +us were covered with forests of tall, slender pine trees. The Indians +began to fall off to the right and left, and dispersed with their +hatchets and knives among these woods, to cut the poles which they had +come to seek. Soon I was left almost alone; but in the deep stillness of +those lonely mountains, the stroke of hatchets and the sound of voices +might be heard from far and near. + +Reynal, who imitated the Indians in their habits as well as the worst +features of their character, had killed buffalo enough to make a +lodge for himself and his squaw, and now he was eager to get the poles +necessary to complete it. He asked me to let Raymond go with him and +assist in the work. I assented, and the two men immediately entered the +thickest part of the wood. Having left my horse in Raymond’s keeping, +I began to climb the mountain. I was weak and weary and made slow +progress, often pausing to rest, but after an hour had elapsed, I gained +a height, whence the little valley out of which I had climbed seemed +like a deep, dark gulf, though the inaccessible peak of the mountain was +still towering to a much greater distance above. Objects familiar from +childhood surrounded me; crags and rocks, a black and sullen brook that +gurgled with a hollow voice deep among the crevices, a wood of mossy +distorted trees and prostrate trunks flung down by age and storms, +scattered among the rocks, or damming the foaming waters of the little +brook. The objects were the same, yet they were thrown into a wilder and +more startling scene, for the black crags and the savage trees assumed +a grim and threatening aspect, and close across the valley the opposing +mountain confronted me, rising from the gulf for thousands of feet, with +its bare pinnacles and its ragged covering of pines. Yet the scene was +not without its milder features. As I ascended, I found frequent little +grassy terraces, and there was one of these close at hand, across which +the brook was stealing, beneath the shade of scattered trees that seemed +artificially planted. Here I made a welcome discovery, no other than a +bed of strawberries, with their white flowers and their red fruit, close +nestled among the grass by the side of the brook, and I sat down by +them, hailing them as old acquaintances; for among those lonely and +perilous mountains they awakened delicious associations of the gardens +and peaceful homes of far-distant New England. + +Yet wild as they were, these mountains were thickly peopled. As I +climbed farther, I found the broad dusty paths made by the elk, as +they filed across the mountainside. The grass on all the terraces was +trampled down by deer; there were numerous tracks of wolves, and in +some of the rougher and more precipitous parts of the ascent, I found +foot-prints different from any that I had ever seen, and which I took to +be those of the Rocky Mountain sheep. I sat down upon a rock; there was +a perfect stillness. No wind was stirring, and not even an insect could +be heard. I recollected the danger of becoming lost in such a place, +and therefore I fixed my eye upon one of the tallest pinnacles of the +opposite mountain. It rose sheer upright from the woods below, and by an +extraordinary freak of nature sustained aloft on its very summit a large +loose rock. Such a landmark could never be mistaken, and feeling once +more secure, I began again to move forward. A white wolf jumped up +from among some bushes, and leaped clumsily away; but he stopped for a +moment, and turned back his keen eye and his grim bristling muzzle. I +longed to take his scalp and carry it back with me, as an appropriate +trophy of the Black Hills, but before I could fire, he was gone among +the rocks. Soon I heard a rustling sound, with a cracking of twigs at +a little distance, and saw moving above the tall bushes the branching +antlers of an elk. I was in the midst of a hunter’s paradise. + +Such are the Black Hills, as I found them in July; but they wear a +different garb when winter sets in, when the broad boughs of the fir +tree are bent to the ground by the load of snow, and the dark mountains +are whitened with it. At that season the mountain-trappers, returned +from their autumn expeditions, often build their rude cabins in the +midst of these solitudes, and live in abundance and luxury on the game +that harbors there. I have heard them relate, how with their tawny +mistresses, and perhaps a few young Indian companions, they have spent +months in total seclusion. They would dig pitfalls, and set traps for +the white wolves, the sables, and the martens, and though through the +whole night the awful chorus of the wolves would resound from the frozen +mountains around them, yet within their massive walls of logs they would +lie in careless ease and comfort before the blazing fire, and in the +morning shoot the elk and the deer from their very door. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +A MOUNTAIN HUNT + + +The camp was full of the newly-cut lodge-poles; some, already prepared, +were stacked together, white and glistening, to dry and harden in the +sun; others were lying on the ground, and the squaws, the boys, and even +some of the warriors were busily at work peeling off the bark and paring +them with their knives to the proper dimensions. Most of the hides +obtained at the last camp were dressed and scraped thin enough for use, +and many of the squaws were engaged in fitting them together and +sewing them with sinews, to form the coverings for the lodges. Men were +wandering among the bushes that lined the brook along the margin of the +camp, cutting sticks of red willow, or shongsasha, the bark of which, +mixed with tobacco, they use for smoking. Reynal’s squaw was hard +at work with her awl and buffalo sinews upon her lodge, while her +proprietor, having just finished an enormous breakfast of meat, was +smoking a social pipe along with Raymond and myself. He proposed at +length that we should go out on a hunt. “Go to the Big Crow’s lodge,” + said he, “and get your rifle. I’ll bet the gray Wyandotte pony against +your mare that we start an elk or a black-tailed deer, or likely as not, +a bighorn, before we are two miles out of camp. I’ll take my squaw’s old +yellow horse; you can’t whip her more than four miles an hour, but she +is as good for the mountains as a mule.” + +I mounted the black mule which Raymond usually rode. She was a very fine +and powerful animal, gentle and manageable enough by nature; but of +late her temper had been soured by misfortune. About a week before I +had chanced to offend some one of the Indians, who out of revenge went +secretly into the meadow and gave her a severe stab in the haunch +with his knife. The wound, though partially healed, still galled her +extremely, and made her even more perverse and obstinate than the rest +of her species. + +The morning was a glorious one, and I was in better health than I had +been at any time for the last two months. Though a strong frame and well +compacted sinews had borne me through hitherto, it was long since I had +been in a condition to feel the exhilaration of the fresh mountain wind +and the gay sunshine that brightened the crags and trees. We left the +little valley and ascended a rocky hollow in the mountain. Very soon we +were out of sight of the camp, and of every living thing, man, beast, +bird, or insect. I had never before, except on foot, passed over such +execrable ground, and I desire never to repeat the experiment. The black +mule grew indignant, and even the redoubtable yellow horse stumbled +every moment, and kept groaning to himself as he cut his feet and legs +among the sharp rocks. + +It was a scene of silence and desolation. Little was visible except +beetling crags and the bare shingly sides of the mountains, relieved +by scarcely a trace of vegetation. At length, however, we came upon +a forest tract, and had no sooner done so than we heartily wished +ourselves back among the rocks again; for we were on a steep descent, +among trees so thick that we could see scarcely a rod in any direction. + +If one is anxious to place himself in a situation where the hazardous +and the ludicrous are combined in about equal proportions, let him get +upon a vicious mule, with a snaffle bit, and try to drive her through +the woods down a slope of 45 degrees. Let him have on a long rifle, a +buckskin frock with long fringes, and a head of long hair. These latter +appendages will be caught every moment and twitched away in small +portions by the twigs, which will also whip him smartly across the face, +while the large branches above thump him on the head. His mule, if she +be a true one, will alternately stop short and dive violently forward, +and his position upon her back will be somewhat diversified and +extraordinary. At one time he will clasp her affectionately, to avoid +the blow of a bough overhead; at another, he will throw himself back +and fling his knee forward against the side of her neck, to keep it +from being crushed between the rough bark of a tree and the equally +unyielding ribs of the animal herself. Reynal was cursing incessantly +during the whole way down. Neither of us had the remotest idea where we +were going; and though I have seen rough riding, I shall always retain +an evil recollection of that five minutes’ scramble. + +At last we left our troubles behind us, emerging into the channel of +a brook that circled along the foot of the descent; and here, turning +joyfully to the left, we rode in luxury and ease over the white pebbles +and the rippling water, shaded from the glaring sun by an overarching +green transparency. These halcyon moments were of short duration. The +friendly brook, turning sharply to one side, went brawling and foaming +down the rocky hill into an abyss, which, as far as we could discern, +had no bottom; so once more we betook ourselves to the detested woods. +When next we came forth from their dancing shadow and sunlight, we found +ourselves standing in the broad glare of day, on a high jutting point of +the mountain. Before us stretched a long, wide, desert valley, winding +away far amid the mountains. No civilized eye but mine had ever looked +upon that virgin waste. Reynal was gazing intently; he began to speak at +last: + +“Many a time, when I was with the Indians, I have been hunting for +gold all through the Black Hills. There’s plenty of it here; you may +be certain of that. I have dreamed about it fifty times, and I never +dreamed yet but what it came true. Look over yonder at those black rocks +piled up against that other big rock. Don’t it look as if there might +be something there? It won’t do for a white man to be rummaging too much +about these mountains; the Indians say they are full of bad spirits; and +I believe myself that it’s no good luck to be hunting about here after +gold. Well, for all that, I would like to have one of these fellows up +here, from down below, to go about with his witch-hazel rod, and I’ll +guarantee that it would not be long before he would light on a gold +mine. Never mind; we’ll let the gold alone for to-day. Look at those +trees down below us in the hollow; we’ll go down there, and I reckon +we’ll get a black-tailed deer.” + +But Reynal’s predictions were not verified. We passed mountain after +mountain, and valley after valley; we explored deep ravines; yet still +to my companion’s vexation and evident surprise, no game could be found. +So, in the absence of better, we resolved to go out on the plains and +look for an antelope. With this view we began to pass down a narrow +valley, the bottom of which was covered with the stiff wild-sage +bushes and marked with deep paths, made by the buffalo, who, for some +inexplicable reason, are accustomed to penetrate, in their long grave +processions, deep among the gorges of these sterile mountains. + +Reynal’s eye was ranging incessantly among the rocks and along the edges +of the black precipices, in hopes of discovering the mountain sheep +peering down upon us in fancied security from that giddy elevation. +Nothing was visible for some time. At length we both detected something +in motion near the foot of one of the mountains, and in a moment +afterward a black-tailed deer, with his spreading antlers, stood gazing +at us from the top of a rock, and then, slowly turning away, disappeared +behind it. In an instant Reynal was out of his saddle, and running +toward the spot. I, being too weak to follow, sat holding his horse and +waiting the result. I lost sight of him, then heard the report of his +rifle, deadened among the rocks, and finally saw him reappear, with a +surly look that plainly betrayed his ill success. Again we moved forward +down the long valley, when soon after we came full upon what seemed a +wide and very shallow ditch, incrusted at the bottom with white clay, +dried and cracked in the sun. Under this fair outside, Reynal’s eye +detected the signs of lurking mischief. He called me to stop, and then +alighting, picked up a stone and threw it into the ditch. To my utter +amazement it fell with a dull splash, breaking at once through the thin +crust, and spattering round the hole a yellowish creamy fluid, into +which it sank and disappeared. A stick, five or six feet long lay on the +ground, and with this we sounded the insidious abyss close to its edge. +It was just possible to touch the bottom. Places like this are numerous +among the Rocky Mountains. The buffalo, in his blind and heedless walk, +often plunges into them unawares. Down he sinks; one snort of terror, +one convulsive struggle, and the slime calmly flows above his shaggy +head, the languid undulations of its sleek and placid surface alone +betraying how the powerful monster writhes in his death-throes below. + +We found after some trouble a point where we could pass the abyss, and +now the valley began to open upon the plains which spread to the horizon +before us. On one of their distant swells we discerned three or four +black specks, which Reynal pronounced to be buffalo. + +“Come,” said he, “we must get one of them. My squaw wants more sinews to +finish her lodge with, and I want some glue myself.” + +He immediately put the yellow horse at such a gallop as he was capable +of executing, while I set spurs to the mule, who soon far outran her +plebeian rival. When we had galloped a mile or more, a large rabbit, +by ill luck, sprang up just under the feet of the mule, who bounded +violently aside in full career. Weakened as I was, I was flung forcibly +to the ground, and my rifle, falling close to my head, went off with a +shock. Its sharp spiteful report rang for some moments in my ear. Being +slightly stunned, I lay for an instant motionless, and Reynal, supposing +me to be shot, rode up and began to curse the mule. Soon recovering +myself, I rose, picked up the rifle and anxiously examined it. It was +badly injured. The stock was cracked, and the main screw broken, so that +the lock had to be tied in its place with a string; yet happily it was +not rendered totally unserviceable. I wiped it out, reloaded it, and +handing it to Reynal, who meanwhile had caught the mule and led her up +to me, I mounted again. No sooner had I done so, than the brute began to +rear and plunge with extreme violence; but being now well prepared for +her, and free from incumbrance, I soon reduced her to submission. Then +taking the rifle again from Reynal, we galloped forward as before. + +We were now free of the mountain and riding far out on the broad +prairie. The buffalo were still some two miles in advance of us. When we +came near them, we stopped where a gentle swell of the plain concealed +us from their view, and while I held his horse Reynal ran forward with +his rifle, till I lost sight of him beyond the rising ground. A few +minutes elapsed; I heard the report of his piece, and saw the buffalo +running away at full speed on the right, and immediately after, the +hunter himself unsuccessful as before, came up and mounted his horse in +excessive ill-humor. He cursed the Black Hills and the buffalo, swore +that he was a good hunter, which indeed was true, and that he had never +been out before among those mountains without killing two or three deer +at least. + +We now turned toward the distant encampment. As we rode along, antelope +in considerable numbers were flying lightly in all directions over the +plain, but not one of them would stand and be shot at. When we reached +the foot of the mountain ridge that lay between us and the village, we +were too impatient to take the smooth and circuitous route; so turning +short to the left, we drove our wearied animals directly upward among +the rocks. Still more antelope were leaping about among these flinty +hillsides. Each of us shot at one, though from a great distance, and +each missed his mark. At length we reached the summit of the last ridge. +Looking down, we saw the bustling camp in the valley at our feet, and +ingloriously descended to it. As we rode among the lodges, the Indians +looked in vain for the fresh meat that should have hung behind our +saddles, and the squaws uttered various suppressed ejaculations, to the +great indignation of Reynal. Our mortification was increased when +we rode up to his lodge. Here we saw his young Indian relative, the +Hail-Storm, his light graceful figure on the ground in an easy attitude, +while with his friend the Rabbit, who sat by his side, he was making an +abundant meal from a wooden bowl of wasna, which the squaw had placed +between them. Near him lay the fresh skin of a female elk, which he had +just killed among the mountains, only a mile or two from the camp. No +doubt the boy’s heart was elated with triumph, but he betrayed no sign +of it. He even seemed totally unconscious of our approach, and his +handsome face had all the tranquillity of Indian self-control; +a self-control which prevents the exhibition of emotion, without +restraining the emotion itself. It was about two months since I had +known the Hail-Storm, and within that time his character had remarkably +developed. When I first saw him, he was just emerging from the habits +and feelings of the boy into the ambition of the hunter and warrior. He +had lately killed his first deer, and this had excited his aspirations +after distinction. Since that time he had been continually in search +of game, and no young hunter in the village had been so active or +so fortunate as he. It will perhaps be remembered how fearlessly he +attacked the buffalo bull, as we were moving toward our camp at the +Medicine-Bow Mountain. All this success had produced a marked change in +his character. As I first remembered him he always shunned the society +of the young squaws, and was extremely bashful and sheepish in their +presence; but now, in the confidence of his own reputation, he began +to assume the airs and the arts of a man of gallantry. He wore his red +blanket dashingly over his left shoulder, painted his cheeks every day +with vermilion, and hung pendants of shells in his ears. If I observed +aright, he met with very good success in his new pursuits; still the +Hail-Storm had much to accomplish before he attained the full standing +of a warrior. Gallantly as he began to bear himself among the women and +girls, he still was timid and abashed in the presence of the chiefs and +old men; for he had never yet killed a man, or stricken the dead body of +an enemy in battle. I have no doubt that the handsome smooth-faced boy +burned with keen desire to flash his maiden scalping-knife, and I would +not have encamped alone with him without watching his movements with a +distrustful eye. + +His elder brother, the Horse, was of a different character. He was +nothing but a lazy dandy. He knew very well how to hunt, but preferred +to live by the hunting of others. He had no appetite for distinction, +and the Hail-Storm, though a few years younger than he, already +surpassed him in reputation. He had a dark and ugly face, and he +passed a great part of his time in adorning it with vermilion, and +contemplating it by means of a little pocket looking-glass which I +gave him. As for the rest of the day, he divided it between eating and +sleeping, and sitting in the sun on the outside of a lodge. Here he +would remain for hour after hour, arrayed in all his finery, with an old +dragoon’s sword in his hand, and evidently flattering himself that he +was the center of attraction to the eyes of the surrounding squaws. Yet +he sat looking straight forward with a face of the utmost gravity, as +if wrapped in profound meditation, and it was only by the occasional +sidelong glances which he shot at his supposed admirers that one could +detect the true course of his thoughts. + +Both he and his brother may represent a class in the Indian community; +neither should the Hail-Storm’s friend, the Rabbit, be passed by without +notice. The Hail-Storm and he were inseparable; they ate, slept, and +hunted together, and shared with one another almost all that they +possessed. If there be anything that deserves to be called romantic +in the Indian character, it is to be sought for in friendships such as +this, which are quite common among many of the prairie tribes. + +Slowly, hour after hour, that weary afternoon dragged away. I lay in +Reynal’s lodge, overcome by the listless torpor that pervaded the +whole encampment. The day’s work was finished, or if it were not, the +inhabitants had resolved not to finish it at all, and all were dozing +quietly within the shelter of the lodges. A profound lethargy, the very +spirit of indolence, seemed to have sunk upon the village. Now and then +I could hear the low laughter of some girl from within a neighboring +lodge, or the small shrill voices of a few restless children, who alone +were moving in the deserted area. The spirit of the place infected me; +I could not even think consecutively; I was fit only for musing and +reverie, when at last, like the rest, I fell asleep. + +When evening came and the fires were lighted round the lodges, a select +family circle convened in the neighborhood of Reynal’s domicile. It was +composed entirely of his squaw’s relatives, a mean and ignoble clan, +among whom none but the Hail-Storm held forth any promise of future +distinction. Even his protests were rendered not a little dubious by the +character of the family, less however from any principle of aristocratic +distinction than from the want of powerful supporters to assist him in +his undertakings, and help to avenge his quarrels. Raymond and I sat +down along with them. There were eight or ten men gathered around the +fire, together with about as many women, old and young, some of whom +were tolerably good-looking. As the pipe passed round among the men, +a lively conversation went forward, more merry than delicate, and at +length two or three of the elder women (for the girls were somewhat +diffident and bashful) began to assail Raymond with various pungent +witticisms. Some of the men took part and an old squaw concluded +by bestowing on him a ludicrous nick name, at which a general laugh +followed at his expense. Raymond grinned and giggled, and made several +futile attempts at repartee. Knowing the impolicy and even danger of +suffering myself to be placed in a ludicrous light among the Indians, +I maintained a rigid inflexible countenance, and wholly escaped their +sallies. + +In the morning I found, to my great disgust, that the camp was to retain +its position for another day. I dreaded its languor and monotony, and +to escape it, I set out to explore the surrounding mountains. I was +accompanied by a faithful friend, my rifle, the only friend indeed on +whose prompt assistance in time of trouble I could implicitly rely. Most +of the Indians in the village, it is true, professed good-will toward +the whites, but the experience of others and my own observation had +taught me the extreme folly of confidence, and the utter impossibility +of foreseeing to what sudden acts the strange unbridled impulses of an +Indian may urge him. When among this people danger is never so near as +when you are unprepared for it, never so remote as when you are armed +and on the alert to meet it any moment. Nothing offers so strong a +temptation to their ferocious instincts as the appearance of timidity, +weakness, or security. + +Many deep and gloomy gorges, choked with trees and bushes, opened from +the sides of the hills, which were shaggy with forests wherever the +rocks permitted vegetation to spring. A great number of Indians were +stalking along the edges of the woods, and boys were whooping and +laughing on the mountain-sides, practicing eye and hand, and indulging +their destructive propensities by following birds and small animals +and killing them with their little bows and arrows. There was one glen, +stretching up between steep cliffs far into the bosom of the mountain. I +began to ascend along its bottom, pushing my way onward among the rocks, +trees, and bushes that obstructed it. A slender thread of water trickled +along its center, which since issuing from the heart of its native rock +could scarcely have been warmed or gladdened by a ray of sunshine. After +advancing for some time, I conceived myself to be entirely alone; +but coming to a part of the glen in a great measure free of trees and +undergrowth, I saw at some distance the black head and red shoulders of +an Indian among the bushes above. The reader need not prepare himself +for a startling adventure, for I have none to relate. The head and +shoulders belonged to Mene-Seela, my best friend in the village. As +I had approached noiselessly with my moccasined feet, the old man was +quite unconscious of my presence; and turning to a point where I could +gain an unobstructed view of him, I saw him seated alone, immovable as +a statue, among the rocks and trees. His face was turned upward, and +his eyes seemed riveted on a pine tree springing from a cleft in the +precipice above. The crest of the pine was swaying to and fro in the +wind, and its long limbs waved slowly up and down, as if the tree had +life. Looking for a while at the old man, I was satisfied that he was +engaged in an act of worship or prayer, or communion of some kind with +a supernatural being. I longed to penetrate his thoughts, but I could +do nothing more than conjecture and speculate. I knew that though the +intellect of an Indian can embrace the idea of an all-wise, all-powerful +Spirit, the supreme Ruler of the universe, yet his mind will not always +ascend into communion with a being that seems to him so vast, remote, +and incomprehensible; and when danger threatens, when his hopes are +broken, when the black wing of sorrow overshadows him, he is prone to +turn for relief to some inferior agency, less removed from the ordinary +scope of his faculties. He has a guardian spirit, on whom he relies +for succor and guidance. To him all nature is instinct with mystic +influence. Among those mountains not a wild beast was prowling, a bird +singing, or a leaf fluttering, that might not tend to direct his destiny +or give warning of what was in store for him; and he watches the world +of nature around him as the astrologer watches the stars. So closely is +he linked with it that his guardian spirit, no unsubstantial creation of +the fancy, is usually embodied in the form of some living thing--a bear, +a wolf, an eagle, or a serpent; and Mene-Seela, as he gazed intently on +the old pine tree, might believe it to inshrine the fancied guide and +protector of his life. + +Whatever was passing in the mind of the old man, it was no part of +sense or of delicacy to disturb him. Silently retracing my footsteps, I +descended the glen until I came to a point where I could climb the steep +precipices that shut it in, and gain the side of the mountain. Looking +up, I saw a tall peak rising among the woods. Something impelled me to +climb; I had not felt for many a day such strength and elasticity of +limb. An hour and a half of slow and often intermittent labor brought me +to the very summit; and emerging from the dark shadows of the rocks and +pines, I stepped forth into the light, and walking along the sunny verge +of a precipice, seated myself on its extreme point. Looking between the +mountain peaks to the westward, the pale blue prairie was stretching to +the farthest horizon like a serene and tranquil ocean. The surrounding +mountains were in themselves sufficiently striking and impressive, but +this contrast gave redoubled effect to their stern features. + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +PASSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS + + +When I took leave of Shaw at La Bonte’s Camp, I promised that I would +meet him at Fort Laramie on the 1st of August. That day, according to my +reckoning, was now close at hand. It was impossible, at best, to fulfill +my engagement exactly, and my meeting with him must have been postponed +until many days after the appointed time, had not the plans of the +Indians very well coincided with my own. They too, intended to pass +the mountains and move toward the fort. To do so at this point was +impossible, because there was no opening; and in order to find a passage +we were obliged to go twelve or fourteen miles southward. Late in the +afternoon the camp got in motion, defiling back through the mountains +along the same narrow passage by which they had entered. I rode in +company with three or four young Indians at the rear, and the moving +swarm stretched before me, in the ruddy light of sunset, or in the deep +shadow of the mountains far beyond my sight. It was an ill-omened spot +they chose to encamp upon. When they were there just a year before, a +war party of ten men, led by The Whirlwind’s son, had gone out against +the enemy, and not one had ever returned. This was the immediate cause +of this season’s warlike preparations. I was not a little astonished +when I came to the camp, at the confusion of horrible sounds with which +it was filled; howls, shrieks, and wailings were heard from all the +women present, many of whom not content with this exhibition of grief +for the loss of their friends and relatives, were gashing their legs +deeply with knives. A warrior in the village, who had lost a brother +in the expedition; chose another mode of displaying his sorrow. The +Indians, who, though often rapacious, are utterly devoid of avarice, are +accustomed in times of mourning, or on other solemn occasions, to give +away the whole of their possessions, and reduce themselves to nakedness +and want. The warrior in question led his two best horses into the +center of the village, and gave them away to his friends; upon which +songs and acclamations in praise of his generosity mingled with the +cries of the women. + +On the next morning we entered once more among the mountains. There was +nothing in their appearance either grand or picturesque, though they +were desolate to the last degree, being mere piles of black and broken +rocks, without trees or vegetation of any kind. As we passed among them +along a wide valley, I noticed Raymond riding by the side of a younger +squaw, to whom he was addressing various insinuating compliments. All +the old squaws in the neighborhood watched his proceedings in great +admiration, and the girl herself would turn aside her head and laugh. +Just then the old mule thought proper to display her vicious pranks; she +began to rear and plunge most furiously. Raymond was an excellent rider, +and at first he stuck fast in his seat; but the moment after, I saw +the mule’s hind-legs flourishing in the air, and my unlucky follower +pitching head foremost over her ears. There was a burst of screams and +laughter from all the women, in which his mistress herself took part, +and Raymond was instantly assailed by such a shower of witticisms, that +he was glad to ride forward out of hearing. + +Not long after, as I rode near him, I heard him shouting to me. He was +pointing toward a detached rocky hill that stood in the middle of the +valley before us, and from behind it a long file of elk came out at +full speed and entered an opening in the side of the mountain. They had +scarcely disappeared when whoops and exclamations came from fifty voices +around me. The young men leaped from their horses, flung down their +heavy buffalo robes, and ran at full speed toward the foot of the +nearest mountain. Reynal also broke away at a gallop in the same +direction, “Come on! come on!” he called to us. “Do you see that band of +bighorn up yonder? If there’s one of them, there’s a hundred!” + +In fact, near the summit of the mountain, I could see a large number of +small white objects, moving rapidly upward among the precipices, while +others were filing along its rocky profile. Anxious to see the sport, +I galloped forward, and entering a passage in the side of the mountain, +ascended the loose rocks as far as my horse could carry me. Here I +fastened her to an old pine tree that stood alone, scorching in the sun. +At that moment Raymond called to me from the right that another band of +sheep was close at hand in that direction. I ran up to the top of the +opening, which gave me a full view into the rocky gorge beyond; and +here I plainly saw some fifty or sixty sheep, almost within rifle-shot, +clattering upward among the rocks, and endeavoring, after their usual +custom, to reach the highest point. The naked Indians bounded up lightly +in pursuit. In a moment the game and hunters disappeared. Nothing could +be seen or heard but the occasional report of a gun, more and more +distant, reverberating among the rocks. + +I turned to descend, and as I did so I could see the valley below alive +with Indians passing rapidly through it, on horseback and on foot. +A little farther on, all were stopping as they came up; the camp was +preparing, and the lodges rising. I descended to this spot, and soon +after Reynal and Raymond returned. They bore between them a sheep which +they had pelted to death with stones from the edge of a ravine, along +the bottom of which it was attempting to escape. One by one the hunters +came dropping in; yet such is the activity of the Rocky Mountain sheep +that, although sixty or seventy men were out in pursuit, not more than +half a dozen animals were killed. Of these only one was a full-grown +male. He had a pair of horns twisted like a ram’s, the dimensions of +which were almost beyond belief. I have seen among the Indians ladles +with long handles, capable of containing more than a quart, cut from +such horns. + +There is something peculiarly interesting in the character and habits +of the mountain sheep, whose chosen retreats are above the region of +vegetation and storms, and who leap among the giddy precipices of their +aerial home as actively as the antelope skims over the prairies below. + +Through the whole of the next morning we were moving forward, among +the hills. On the following day the heights gathered around us, and the +passage of the mountains began in earnest. Before the village left its +camping ground, I set forward in company with the Eagle-Feather, a man +of powerful frame, but of bad and sinister face. His son, a light-limbed +boy, rode with us, and another Indian, named the Panther, was also of +the party. Leaving the village out of sight behind us, we rode together +up a rocky defile. After a while, however, the Eagle-Feather discovered +in the distance some appearance of game, and set off with his son in +pursuit of it, while I went forward with the Panther. This was a mere +NOM DE GUERRE; for, like many Indians, he concealed his real name out +of some superstitious notion. He was a very noble looking fellow. As he +suffered his ornamented buffalo robe to fall into folds about his loins, +his stately and graceful figure was fully displayed; and while he sat +his horse in an easy attitude, the long feathers of the prairie cock +fluttering from the crown of his head, he seemed the very model of +a wild prairie-rider. He had not the same features as those of other +Indians. Unless his handsome face greatly belied him, he was free from +the jealousy, suspicion, and malignant cunning of his people. For the +most part, a civilized white man can discover but very few points +of sympathy between his own nature and that of an Indian. With every +disposition to do justice to their good qualities, he must be conscious +that an impassable gulf lies between him and his red brethren of the +prairie. Nay, so alien to himself do they appear that, having breathed +for a few months or a few weeks the air of this region, he begins to +look upon them as a troublesome and dangerous species of wild beast, +and, if expedient, he could shoot them with as little compunction as +they themselves would experience after performing the same office upon +him. Yet, in the countenance of the Panther, I gladly read that there +were at least some points of sympathy between him and me. We were +excellent friends, and as we rode forward together through rocky +passages, deep dells, and little barren plains, he occupied himself very +zealously in teaching me the Dakota language. After a while, we came to +a little grassy recess, where some gooseberry bushes were growing at the +foot of a rock; and these offered such temptation to my companion, that +he gave over his instruction, and stopped so long to gather the fruit +that before we were in motion again the van of the village came in +view. An old woman appeared, leading down her pack horse among the +rocks above. Savage after savage followed, and the little dell was soon +crowded with the throng. + +That morning’s march was one not easily to be forgotten. It led us +through a sublime waste, a wilderness of mountains and pine forests, +over which the spirit of loneliness and silence seemed brooding. Above +and below little could be seen but the same dark green foliage. It +overspread the valleys, and the mountains were clothed with it from the +black rocks that crowned their summits to the impetuous streams that +circled round their base. Scenery like this, it might seem, could have +no very cheering effect on the mind of a sick man (for to-day my disease +had again assailed me) in the midst of a horde of savages; but if the +reader has ever wandered, with a true hunter’s spirit, among the forests +of Maine, or the more picturesque solitudes of the Adirondack Mountains, +he will understand how the somber woods and mountains around me might +have awakened any other feelings than those of gloom. In truth they +recalled gladdening recollections of similar scenes in a distant and far +different land. After we had been advancing for several hours through +passages always narrow, often obstructed and difficult, I saw at a +little distance on our right a narrow opening between two high wooded +precipices. All within seemed darkness and mystery. In the mood in which +I found myself something strongly impelled me to enter. Passing over the +intervening space I guided my horse through the rocky portal, and as +I did so instinctively drew the covering from my rifle, half expecting +that some unknown evil lay in ambush within those dreary recesses. The +place was shut in among tall cliffs, and so deeply shadowed by a host +of old pine trees that, though the sun shone bright on the side of the +mountain, nothing but a dim twilight could penetrate within. As far as +I could see it had no tenants except a few hawks and owls, who, dismayed +at my intrusion, flapped hoarsely away among the shaggy branches. I +moved forward, determined to explore the mystery to the bottom, and soon +became involved among the pines. The genius of the place exercised +a strange influence upon my mind. Its faculties were stimulated into +extraordinary activity, and as I passed along many half-forgotten +incidents, and the images of persons and things far distant, rose +rapidly before me with surprising distinctness. In that perilous +wilderness, eight hundred miles removed beyond the faintest vestige +of civilization, the scenes of another hemisphere, the seat of ancient +refinement, passed before me more like a succession of vivid paintings +than any mere dreams of the fancy. I saw the church of St. Peter’s +illumined on the evening of Easter Day, the whole majestic pile, from +the cross to the foundation stone, penciled in fire and shedding a +radiance, like the serene light of the moon, on the sea of upturned +faces below. I saw the peak of Mount Etna towering above its inky mantle +of clouds and lightly curling its wreaths of milk-white smoke against +the soft sky flushed with the Sicilian sunset. I saw also the gloomy +vaulted passages and the narrow cells of the Passionist convent where +I once had sojourned for a few days with the fanatical monks, its pale, +stern inmates in their robes of black, and the grated window from whence +I could look out, a forbidden indulgence, upon the melancholy Coliseum +and the crumbling ruins of the Eternal City. The mighty glaciers of the +Splugen too rose before me, gleaming in the sun like polished silver, +and those terrible solitudes, the birthplace of the Rhine, where +bursting from the bowels of its native mountains, it lashes and +foams down the rocky abyss into the little valley of Andeer. These +recollections, and many more, crowded upon me, until remembering that +it was hardly wise to remain long in such a place, I mounted again +and retraced my steps. Issuing from between the rocks I saw a few rods +before me the men, women, and children, dogs and horses, still filing +slowly across the little glen. A bare round hill rose directly above +them. I rode to the top, and from this point I could look down on the +savage procession as it passed just beneath my feet, and far on the +left I could see its thin and broken line, visible only at intervals, +stretching away for miles among the mountains. On the farthest ridge +horsemen were still descending like mere specks in the distance. + +I remained on the hill until all had passed, and then, descending, +followed after them. A little farther on I found a very small meadow, +set deeply among steep mountains; and here the whole village had +encamped. The little spot was crowded with the confused and disorderly +host. Some of the lodges were already completely prepared, or the squaws +perhaps were busy in drawing the heavy coverings of skin over the bare +poles. Others were as yet mere skeletons, while others still--poles, +covering, and all--lay scattered in complete disorder on the ground +among buffalo robes, bales of meat, domestic utensils, harness, and +weapons. Squaws were screaming to one another, horses rearing and +plunging dogs yelping, eager to be disburdened of their loads, while +the fluttering of feathers and the gleam of barbaric ornaments added +liveliness to the scene. The small children ran about amid the crowd, +while many of the boys were scrambling among the overhanging rocks, and +standing, with their little bows in their hands, looking down upon a +restless throng. In contrast with the general confusion, a circle of old +men and warriors sat in the midst, smoking in profound indifference and +tranquillity. The disorder at length subsided. The horses were driven +away to feed along the adjacent valley, and the camp assumed an air of +listless repose. It was scarcely past noon; a vast white canopy of smoke +from a burning forest to the eastward overhung the place, and partially +obscured the sun; yet the heat was almost insupportable. The lodges +stood crowded together without order in the narrow space. Each was a +perfect hothouse, within which the lazy proprietor lay sleeping. The +camp was silent as death. Nothing stirred except now and then an old +woman passing from lodge to lodge. The girls and young men sat together +in groups under the pine trees upon the surrounding heights. The dogs +lay panting on the ground, too lazy even to growl at the white man. +At the entrance of the meadow there was a cold spring among the rocks, +completely overshadowed by tall trees and dense undergrowth. In this +cold and shady retreat a number of girls were assembled, sitting +together on rocks and fallen logs, discussing the latest gossip of +the village, or laughing and throwing water with their hands at the +intruding Meneaska. The minutes seemed lengthened into hours. I lay +for a long time under a tree, studying the Ogallalla tongue, with the +zealous instructions of my friend the Panther. When we were both tired +of this I went and lay down by the side of a deep, clear pool formed +by the water of the spring. A shoal of little fishes of about a pin’s +length were playing in it, sporting together, as it seemed, very +amicably; but on closer observation, I saw that they were engaged in a +cannibal warfare among themselves. Now and then a small one would fall +a victim, and immediately disappear down the maw of his voracious +conqueror. Every moment, however, the tyrant of the pool, a monster +about three inches long, with staring goggle eyes, would slowly issue +forth with quivering fins and tail from under the shelving bank. The +small fry at this would suspend their hostilities, and scatter in a +panic at the appearance of overwhelming force. + +“Soft-hearted philanthropists,” thought I, “may sigh long for their +peaceful millennium; for from minnows up to men, life is an incessant +battle.” + +Evening approached at last, the tall mountain-tops around were still gay +and bright in sunshine, while our deep glen was completely shadowed. +I left the camp and ascended a neighboring hill, whose rocky summit +commanded a wide view over the surrounding wilderness. The sun was still +glaring through the stiff pines on the ridge of the western mountain. +In a moment he was gone, and as the landscape rapidly darkened, I turned +again toward the village. As I descended the hill, the howling of wolves +and the barking of foxes came up out of the dim woods from far and near. +The camp was glowing with a multitude of fires, and alive with dusky +naked figures, whose tall shadows flitted among the surroundings crags. + +I found a circle of smokers seated in their usual place; that is, on the +ground before the lodge of a certain warrior, who seemed to be generally +known for his social qualities. I sat down to smoke a parting pipe +with my savage friends. That day was the 1st of August, on which I had +promised to meet Shaw at Fort Laramie. The Fort was less than two +days’ journey distant, and that my friend need not suffer anxiety on my +account, I resolved to push forward as rapidly as possible to the place +of meeting. I went to look after the Hail-Storm, and having found him, +I offered him a handful of hawks’-bells and a paper of vermilion, on +condition that he would guide me in the morning through the mountains +within sight of Laramie Creek. + +The Hail-Storm ejaculated “How!” and accepted the gift. Nothing more was +said on either side; the matter was settled, and I lay down to sleep in +Kongra-Tonga’s lodge. + +Long before daylight Raymond shook me by the shoulder. + +“Everything is ready,” he said. + +I went out. The morning was chill, damp, and dark; and the whole camp +seemed asleep. The Hail-Storm sat on horseback before the lodge, and my +mare Pauline and the mule which Raymond rode were picketed near it. +We saddled and made our other arrangements for the journey, but before +these were completed the camp began to stir, and the lodge-coverings +fluttered and rustled as the squaws pulled them down in preparation for +departure. Just as the light began to appear we left the ground, passing +up through a narrow opening among the rocks which led eastward out of +the meadow. Gaining the top of this passage, I turned round and sat +looking back upon the camp, dimly visible in the gray light of the +morning. All was alive with the bustle of preparation. I turned away, +half unwilling to take a final leave of my savage associates. We turned +to the right, passing among the rocks and pine trees so dark that for a +while we could scarcely see our way. The country in front was wild and +broken, half hill, half plain, partly open and partly covered with woods +of pine and oak. Barriers of lofty mountains encompassed it; the woods +were fresh and cool in the early morning; the peaks of the mountains +were wreathed with mist, and sluggish vapors were entangled among the +forests upon their sides. At length the black pinnacle of the tallest +mountain was tipped with gold by the rising sun. About that time the +Hail-Storm, who rode in front gave a low exclamation. Some large animal +leaped up from among the bushes, and an elk, as I thought, his horns +thrown back over his neck, darted past us across the open space, and +bounded like a mad thing away among the adjoining pines. Raymond was +soon out of his saddle, but before he could fire, the animal was full +two hundred yards distant. The ball struck its mark, though much too low +for mortal effect. The elk, however, wheeled in its flight, and ran at +full speed among the trees, nearly at right angles to his former course. +I fired and broke his shoulder; still he moved on, limping down into the +neighboring woody hollow, whither the young Indian followed and killed +him. When we reached the spot we discovered him to be no elk, but a +black-tailed deer, an animal nearly twice the size of the common deer, +and quite unknown to the East. We began to cut him up; the reports of +the rifles had reached the ears of the Indians, and before our task was +finished several of them came to the spot. Leaving the hide of the deer +to the Hail-Storm, we hung as much of the meat as we wanted behind +our saddles, left the rest to the Indians, and resumed our journey. +Meanwhile the village was on its way, and had gone so far that to get in +advance of it was impossible. Therefore we directed our course so as to +strike its line of march at the nearest point. In a short time, through +the dark trunks of the pines, we could see the figures of the Indians +as they passed. Once more we were among them. They were moving with even +more than their usual precipitation, crowded close together in a narrow +pass between rocks and old pine trees. We were on the eastern descent +of the mountain, and soon came to a rough and difficult defile, leading +down a very steep declivity. The whole swarm poured down together, +filling the rocky passageway like some turbulent mountain stream. The +mountains before us were on fire, and had been so for weeks. The view in +front was obscured by a vast dim sea of smoke and vapor, while on either +hand the tall cliffs, bearing aloft their crest of pines, thrust their +heads boldly through it, and the sharp pinnacles and broken ridges of +the mountains beyond them were faintly traceable as through a veil. +The scene in itself was most grand and imposing, but with the savage +multitude, the armed warriors, the naked children, the gayly appareled +girls, pouring impetuously down the heights, it would have formed a +noble subject for a painter, and only the pen of a Scott could have done +it justice in description. + +We passed over a burnt tract where the ground was hot beneath the +horses’ feet, and between the blazing sides of two mountains. Before +long we had descended to a softer region, where we found a succession +of little valleys watered by a stream, along the borders of which grew +abundance of wild gooseberries and currants, and the children and many +of the men straggled from the line of march to gather them as we passed +along. Descending still farther, the view changed rapidly. The burning +mountains were behind us, and through the open valleys in front we could +see the ocean-like prairie, stretching beyond the sight. After passing +through a line of trees that skirted the brook, the Indians filed out +upon the plains. I was thirsty and knelt down by the little stream to +drink. As I mounted again I very carelessly left my rifle among the +grass, and my thoughts being otherwise absorbed, I rode for some +distance before discovering its absence. As the reader may conceive, +I lost no time in turning about and galloping back in search of it. +Passing the line of Indians, I watched every warrior as he rode by me at +a canter, and at length discovered my rifle in the hands of one of them, +who, on my approaching to claim it, immediately gave it up. Having no +other means of acknowledging the obligation, I took off one of my spurs +and gave it to him. He was greatly delighted, looking upon it as a +distinguished mark of favor, and immediately held out his foot for me to +buckle it on. As soon as I had done so, he struck it with force into +the side of his horse, who gave a violent leap. The Indian laughed and +spurred harder than before. At this the horse shot away like an arrow, +amid the screams and laughter of the squaws, and the ejaculations of the +men, who exclaimed: “Washtay!--Good!” at the potent effect of my gift. +The Indian had no saddle, and nothing in place of a bridle except a +leather string tied round the horse’s jaw. The animal was of course +wholly uncontrollable, and stretched away at full speed over the +prairie, till he and his rider vanished behind a distant swell. I never +saw the man again, but I presume no harm came to him. An Indian on +horseback has more lives than a cat. + +The village encamped on a scorching prairie, close to the foot of the +mountains. The beat was most intense and penetrating. The coverings +of the lodges were raised a foot or more from the ground, in order to +procure some circulation of air; and Reynal thought proper to lay aside +his trapper’s dress of buckskin and assume the very scanty costume of an +Indian. Thus elegantly attired, he stretched himself in his lodge on a +buffalo robe, alternately cursing the heat and puffing at the pipe which +he and I passed between us. There was present also a select circle of +Indian friends and relatives. A small boiled puppy was served up as a +parting feast, to which was added, by way of dessert, a wooden bowl of +gooseberries, from the mountains. + +“Look there,” said Reynal, pointing out of the opening of his lodge; “do +you see that line of buttes about fifteen miles off? Well, now, do you +see that farthest one, with the white speck on the face of it? Do you +think you ever saw it before?” + +“It looks to me,” said I, “like the hill that we were camped under when +we were on Laramie Creek, six or eight weeks ago.” + +“You’ve hit it,” answered Reynal. + +“Go and bring in the animals, Raymond,” said I: “we’ll camp there +to-night, and start for the Fort in the morning.” + +The mare and the mule were soon before the lodge. We saddled them, and +in the meantime a number of Indians collected about us. The virtues of +Pauline, my strong, fleet, and hardy little mare, were well known in +camp, and several of the visitors were mounted upon good horses which +they had brought me as presents. I promptly declined their offers, since +accepting them would have involved the necessity of transferring poor +Pauline into their barbarous hands. We took leave of Reynal, but not +of the Indians, who are accustomed to dispense with such superfluous +ceremonies. Leaving the camp we rode straight over the prairie toward +the white-faced bluff, whose pale ridges swelled gently against the +horizon, like a cloud. An Indian went with us, whose name I forget, +though the ugliness of his face and the ghastly width of his mouth dwell +vividly in my recollection. The antelope were numerous, but we did not +heed them. We rode directly toward our destination, over the arid plains +and barren hills, until, late in the afternoon, half spent with heat, +thirst, and fatigue, we saw a gladdening sight; the long line of trees +and the deep gulf that mark the course of Laramie Creek. Passing through +the growth of huge dilapidated old cottonwood trees that bordered the +creek, we rode across to the other side. + +The rapid and foaming waters were filled with fish playing and splashing +in the shallows. As we gained the farther bank, our horses turned +eagerly to drink, and we, kneeling on the sand, followed their example. +We had not gone far before the scene began to grow familiar. + +“We are getting near home, Raymond,” said I. + +There stood the Big Tree under which we had encamped so long; there were +the white cliffs that used to look down upon our tent when it stood +at the bend of the creek; there was the meadow in which our horses had +grazed for weeks, and a little farther on, the prairie-dog village +where I had beguiled many a languid hour in persecuting the unfortunate +inhabitants. + +“We are going to catch it now,” said Raymond, turning his broad, vacant +face up toward the sky. + +In truth, the landscape, the cliffs and the meadow, the stream and the +groves were darkening fast. Black masses of cloud were swelling up in +the south, and the thunder was growling ominously. + +“We will camp here,” I said, pointing to a dense grove of trees lower +down the stream. Raymond and I turned toward it, but the Indian stopped +and called earnestly after us. When we demanded what was the matter, he +said that the ghosts of two warriors were always among those trees, and +that if we slept there, they would scream and throw stones at us all +night, and perhaps steal our horses before morning. Thinking it as well +to humor him, we left behind us the haunt of these extraordinary ghosts, +and passed on toward Chugwater, riding at full gallop, for the big drops +began to patter down. Soon we came in sight of the poplar saplings that +grew about the mouth of the little stream. We leaped to the ground, +threw off our saddles, turned our horses loose, and drawing our knives, +began to slash among the bushes to cut twigs and branches for making a +shelter against the rain. Bending down the taller saplings as they +grew, we piled the young shoots upon them; and thus made a convenient +penthouse, but all our labor was useless. The storm scarcely touched us. +Half a mile on our right the rain was pouring down like a cataract, and +the thunder roared over the prairie like a battery of cannon; while we +by good fortune received only a few heavy drops from the skirt of the +passing cloud. The weather cleared and the sun set gloriously. Sitting +close under our leafy canopy, we proceeded to discuss a substantial meal +of wasna which Weah-Washtay had given me. The Indian had brought with +him his pipe and a bag of shongsasha; so before lying down to sleep, +we sat for some time smoking together. Previously, however, our +wide-mouthed friend had taken the precaution of carefully examining the +neighborhood. He reported that eight men, counting them on his fingers, +had been encamped there not long before. Bisonette, Paul Dorion, Antoine +Le Rouge, Richardson, and four others, whose names he could not tell. +All this proved strictly correct. By what instinct he had arrived at +such accurate conclusions, I am utterly at a loss to divine. + +It was still quite dark when I awoke and called Raymond. The Indian was +already gone, having chosen to go on before us to the Fort. Setting out +after him, we rode for some time in complete darkness, and when the sun +at length rose, glowing like a fiery ball of copper, we were ten miles +distant from the Fort. At length, from the broken summit of a tall sandy +bluff we could see Fort Laramie, miles before us, standing by the side +of the stream like a little gray speck in the midst of the bounding +desolation. I stopped my horse, and sat for a moment looking down upon +it. It seemed to me the very center of comfort and civilization. We were +not long in approaching it, for we rode at speed the greater part of the +way. Laramie Creek still intervened between us and the friendly walls. +Entering the water at the point where we had struck upon the bank, we +raised our feet to the saddle behind us, and thus, kneeling as it were +on horseback, passed dry-shod through the swift current. As we rode up +the bank, a number of men appeared in the gateway. Three of them came +forward to meet us. In a moment I distinguished Shaw; Henry Chatillon +followed with his face of manly simplicity and frankness, and Delorier +came last, with a broad grin of welcome. The meeting was not on either +side one of mere ceremony. For my own part, the change was a most +agreeable one from the society of savages and men little better than +savages, to that of my gallant and high-minded companion and our +noble-hearted guide. My appearance was equally gratifying to Shaw, who +was beginning to entertain some very uncomfortable surmises concerning +me. + +Bordeaux greeted me very cordially, and shouted to the cook. This +functionary was a new acquisition, having lately come from Fort Pierre +with the trading wagons. Whatever skill he might have boasted, he had +not the most promising materials to exercise it upon. He set before me, +however, a breakfast of biscuit, coffee, and salt pork. It seemed like a +new phase of existence, to be seated once more on a bench, with a knife +and fork, a plate and teacup, and something resembling a table before +me. The coffee seemed delicious, and the bread was a most welcome +novelty, since for three weeks I had eaten scarcely anything but meat, +and that for the most part without salt. The meal also had the relish of +good company, for opposite to me sat Shaw in elegant dishabille. If one +is anxious thoroughly to appreciate the value of a congenial companion, +he has only to spend a few weeks by himself in an Ogallalla village. And +if he can contrive to add to his seclusion a debilitating and somewhat +critical illness, his perceptions upon this subject will be rendered +considerably more vivid. + +Shaw had been upward of two weeks at the Fort. I found him established +in his old quarters, a large apartment usually occupied by the absent +bourgeois. In one corner was a soft and luxuriant pile of excellent +buffalo robes, and here I lay down. Shaw brought me three books. + +“Here,” said he, “is your Shakespeare and Byron, and here is the +Old Testament, which has as much poetry in it as the other two put +together.” + +I chose the worst of the three, and for the greater part of that day +lay on the buffalo robes, fairly reveling in the creations of that +resplendent genius which has achieved no more signal triumph than that +of half beguiling us to forget the pitiful and unmanly character of its +possessor. + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE LONELY JOURNEY + + +On the day of my arrival at Fort Laramie, Shaw and I were lounging on +two buffalo robes in the large apartment hospitably assigned to us; +Henry Chatillon also was present, busy about the harness and weapons, +which had been brought into the room, and two or three Indians were +crouching on the floor, eyeing us with their fixed, unwavering gaze. + +“I have been well off here,” said Shaw, “in all respects but one; there +is no good shongsasha to be had for love or money.” + +I gave him a small leather bag containing some of excellent quality, +which I had brought from the Black Hills. + +“Now, Henry,” said he, “hand me Papin’s chopping-board, or give it to +that Indian, and let him cut the mixture; they understand it better than +any white man.” + +The Indian, without saying a word, mixed the bark and the tobacco in due +proportions, filled the pipe and lighted it. This done, my companion +and I proceeded to deliberate on our future course of proceeding; first, +however, Shaw acquainted me with some incidents which had occurred at +the fort during my absence. + +About a week previous four men had arrived from beyond the mountains; +Sublette, Reddick, and two others. Just before reaching the Fort +they had met a large party of Indians, chiefly young men. All of them +belonged to the village of our old friend Smoke, who, with his whole +band of adherents, professed the greatest friendship for the whites. The +travelers therefore approached, and began to converse without the least +suspicion. Suddenly, however, their bridles were violently seized and +they were ordered to dismount. Instead of complying, they struck +their horses with full force, and broke away from the Indians. As +they galloped off they heard a yell behind them, mixed with a burst of +derisive laughter, and the reports of several guns. None of them were +hurt though Reddick’s bridle rein was cut by a bullet within an inch of +his hand. After this taste of Indian hostility they felt for the moment +no disposition to encounter further risks. They intended to pursue the +route southward along the foot of the mountains to Bent’s Fort; and as +our plans coincided with theirs, they proposed to join forces. Finding, +however, that I did not return, they grew impatient of inaction, forgot +their late escape, and set out without us, promising to wait our arrival +at Bent’s Fort. From thence we were to make the long journey to the +settlements in company, as the path was not a little dangerous, being +infested by hostile Pawnees and Comanches. + +We expected, on reaching Bent’s Fort, to find there still another +re-enforcement. A young Kentuckian of the true Kentucky blood, generous, +impetuous, and a gentleman withal, had come out to the mountains with +Russel’s party of California emigrants. One of his chief objects, as +he gave out, was to kill an Indian; an exploit which he afterwards +succeeded in achieving, much to the jeopardy of ourselves and others who +had to pass through the country of the dead Pawnee’s enraged relatives. +Having become disgusted with his emigrant associates he left them, and +had some time before set out with a party of companions for the head of +the Arkansas. He sent us previously a letter, intimating that he would +wait until we arrived at Bent’s Fort, and accompany us thence to the +settlements. When, however, he came to the Fort, he found there a party +of forty men about to make the homeward journey. He wisely preferred to +avail himself of so strong an escort. Mr. Sublette and his companions +also set out, in order to overtake this company; so that on reaching +Bent’s Fort, some six weeks after, we found ourselves deserted by our +allies and thrown once more upon our own resources. + +But I am anticipating. When, before leaving the settlement we had made +inquiries concerning this part of the country of General Kearny, Mr. +Mackenzie, Captain Wyeth, and others well acquainted with it, they had +all advised us by no means to attempt this southward journey with +fewer than fifteen or twenty men. The danger consists in the chance of +encountering Indian war parties. Sometimes throughout the whole length +of the journey (a distance of 350 miles) one does not meet a single +human being; frequently, however, the route is beset by Arapahoes and +other unfriendly tribes; in which case the scalp of the adventurer is in +imminent peril. As to the escort of fifteen or twenty men, such a force +of whites could at that time scarcely be collected by the whole country; +and had the case been otherwise, the expense of securing them, together +with the necessary number of horses, would have been extremely heavy. We +had resolved, however, upon pursuing this southward course. There were, +indeed, two other routes from Fort Laramie; but both of these were less +interesting, and neither was free from danger. Being unable therefore to +procure the fifteen or twenty men recommended, we determined to set out +with those we had already in our employ, Henry Chatillon, Delorier, and +Raymond. The men themselves made no objection, nor would they have made +any had the journey been more dangerous; for Henry was without fear, and +the other two without thought. + +Shaw and I were much better fitted for this mode of traveling than we +had been on betaking ourselves to the prairies for the first time a few +months before. The daily routine had ceased to be a novelty. All the +details of the journey and the camp had become familiar to us. We had +seen life under a new aspect; the human biped had been reduced to his +primitive condition. We had lived without law to protect, a roof to +shelter, or garment of cloth to cover us. One of us at least had been +without bread, and without salt to season his food. Our idea of what +is indispensable to human existence and enjoyment had been wonderfully +curtailed, and a horse, a rifle, and a knife seemed to make up the whole +of life’s necessaries. For these once obtained, together with the skill +to use them, all else that is essential would follow in their train, +and a host of luxuries besides. One other lesson our short prairie +experience had taught us; that of profound contentment in the present, +and utter contempt for what the future might bring forth. + +These principles established, we prepared to leave Fort Laramie. On the +fourth day of August, early in the afternoon, we bade a final adieu to +its hospitable gateway. Again Shaw and I were riding side by side on the +prairie. For the first fifty miles we had companions with us; Troche, +a little trapper, and Rouville, a nondescript in the employ of the Fur +Company, who were going to join the trader Bisonette at his encampment +near the head of Horse Creek. We rode only six or eight miles that +afternoon before we came to a little brook traversing the barren +prairie. All along its course grew copses of young wild-cherry trees, +loaded with ripe fruit, and almost concealing the gliding thread of +water with their dense growth, while on each side rose swells of rich +green grass. Here we encamped; and being much too indolent to pitch +our tent, we flung our saddles on the ground, spread a pair of buffalo +robes, lay down upon them, and began to smoke. Meanwhile, Delorier +busied himself with his hissing frying-pan, and Raymond stood guard +over the band of grazing horses. Delorier had an active assistant in +Rouville, who professed great skill in the culinary art, and seizing +upon a fork, began to lend his zealous aid in making ready supper. +Indeed, according to his own belief, Rouville was a man of universal +knowledge, and he lost no opportunity to display his manifold +accomplishments. He had been a circus-rider at St. Louis, and once he +rode round Fort Laramie on his head, to the utter bewilderment of all +the Indians. He was also noted as the wit of the Fort; and as he had +considerable humor and abundant vivacity, he contributed more that +night to the liveliness of the camp than all the rest of the party put +together. At one instant he would be kneeling by Delorier, instructing +him in the true method of frying antelope steaks, then he would come and +seat himself at our side, dilating upon the orthodox fashion of braiding +up a horse’s tail, telling apocryphal stories how he had killed a +buffalo bull with a knife, having first cut off his tail when at full +speed, or relating whimsical anecdotes of the bourgeois Papin. At last +he snatched up a volume of Shakespeare that was lying on the grass, and +halted and stumbled through a line or two to prove that he could read. +He went gamboling about the camp, chattering like some frolicsome ape; +and whatever he was doing at one moment, the presumption was a sure +one that he would not be doing it the next. His companion Troche sat +silently on the grass, not speaking a word, but keeping a vigilant eye +on a very ugly little Utah squaw, of whom he was extremely jealous. + +On the next day we traveled farther, crossing the wide sterile basin +called Goche’s Hole. Toward night we became involved among deep ravines; +and being also unable to find water, our journey was protracted to +a very late hour. On the next morning we had to pass a long line of +bluffs, whose raw sides, wrought upon by rains and storms, were of a +ghastly whiteness most oppressive to the sight. As we ascended a gap +in these hills, the way was marked by huge foot-prints, like those of +a human giant. They were the track of the grizzly bear; and on the +previous day also we had seen abundance of them along the dry channels +of the streams we had passed. Immediately after this we were crossing a +barren plain, spreading in long and gentle undulations to the horizon. +Though the sun was bright, there was a light haze in the atmosphere. +The distant hills assumed strange, distorted forms, and the edge of +the horizon was continually changing its aspect. Shaw and I were riding +together, and Henry Chatillon was alone, a few rods before us; he +stopped his horse suddenly, and turning round with the peculiar eager +and earnest expression which he always wore when excited, he called +to us to come forward. We galloped to his side. Henry pointed toward a +black speck on the gray swell of the prairie, apparently about a mile +off. “It must be a bear,” said he; “come, now, we shall all have some +sport. Better fun to fight him than to fight an old buffalo bull; +grizzly bear so strong and smart.” + +So we all galloped forward together, prepared for a hard fight; for +these bears, though clumsy in appearance and extremely large, are +incredibly fierce and active. The swell of the prairie concealed the +black object from our view. Immediately after it appeared again. But now +it seemed quite near to us; and as we looked at it in astonishment, +it suddenly separated into two parts, each of which took wing and +flew away. We stopped our horses and looked round at Henry, whose face +exhibited a curious mixture of mirth and mortification. His hawk’s eye +had been so completely deceived by the peculiar atmosphere that he had +mistaken two large crows at the distance of fifty rods for a grizzly +bear a mile off. To the journey’s end Henry never heard the last of the +grizzly bear with wings. + +In the afternoon we came to the foot of a considerable hill. As we +ascended it Rouville began to ask questions concerning our conditions +and prospects at home, and Shaw was edifying him with a minute account +of an imaginary wife and child, to which he listened with implicit +faith. Reaching the top of the hill we saw the windings of Horse Creek +on the plains below us, and a little on the left we could distinguish +the camp of Bisonette among the trees and copses along the course of +the stream. Rouville’s face assumed just then a most ludicrously blank +expression. We inquired what was the matter, when it appeared that +Bisonette had sent him from this place to Fort Laramie with the sole +object of bringing back a supply of tobacco. Our rattle-brain friend, +from the time of his reaching the Fort up to the present moment, had +entirely forgotten the object of his journey, and had ridden a dangerous +hundred miles for nothing. Descending to Horse Creek we forded it, and +on the opposite bank a solitary Indian sat on horseback under a tree. He +said nothing, but turned and led the way toward the camp. Bisonette had +made choice of an admirable position. The stream, with its thick growth +of trees, inclosed on three sides a wide green meadow, where about forty +Dakota lodges were pitched in a circle, and beyond them half a dozen +lodges of the friendly Cheyenne. Bisonette himself lived in the Indian +manner. Riding up to his lodge, we found him seated at the head of it, +surrounded by various appliances of comfort not common on the prairie. +His squaw was near him, and rosy children were scrambling about in +printed-calico gowns; Paul Dorion also, with his leathery face and old +white capote, was seated in the lodge, together with Antoine Le Rouge, a +half-breed Pawnee, Sibille, a trader, and several other white men. + +“It will do you no harm,” said Bisonette, “to stay here with us for a +day or two, before you start for the Pueblo.” + +We accepted the invitation, and pitched our tent on a rising ground +above the camp and close to the edge of the trees. Bisonette soon +invited us to a feast, and we suffered abundance of the same sort of +attention from his Indian associates. The reader may possibly recollect +that when I joined the Indian village, beyond the Black Hills, I found +that a few families were absent, having declined to pass the mountains +along with the rest. The Indians in Bisonette’s camp consisted of these +very families, and many of them came to me that evening to inquire after +their relatives and friends. They were not a little mortified to learn +that while they, from their own timidity and indolence, were almost in +a starving condition, the rest of the village had provided their lodges +for the next season, laid in a great stock of provisions, and were +living in abundance and luxury. Bisonette’s companions had been +sustaining themselves for some time on wild cherries, which the squaws +pounded up, stones and all, and spread on buffalo robes, to dry in the +sun; they were then eaten without further preparation, or used as an +ingredient in various delectable compounds. + +On the next day the camp was in commotion with a new arrival. A single +Indian had come with his family the whole way from the Arkansas. As he +passed among the lodges he put on an expression of unusual dignity and +importance, and gave out that he had brought great news to tell the +whites. Soon after the squaws had erected his lodge, he sent his little +son to invite all the white men, and all the most distinguished Indians, +to a feast. The guests arrived and sat wedged together, shoulder to +shoulder, within the hot and suffocating lodge. The Stabber, for that +was our entertainer’s name, had killed an old buffalo bull on his way. +This veteran’s boiled tripe, tougher than leather, formed the main item +of the repast. For the rest, it consisted of wild cherries and grease +boiled together in a large copper kettle. The feast was distributed, and +for a moment all was silent, strenuous exertion; then each guest, with +one or two exceptions, however, turned his wooden dish bottom upward to +prove that he had done full justice to his entertainer’s hospitality. +The Stabber next produced his chopping board, on which he prepared the +mixture for smoking, and filled several pipes, which circulated among +the company. This done, he seated himself upright on his couch, and +began with much gesticulation to tell his story. I will not repeat +his childish jargon. It was so entangled, like the greater part of an +Indian’s stories, with absurd and contradictory details, that it was +almost impossible to disengage from it a single particle of truth. All +that we could gather was the following: + +He had been on the Arkansas, and there he had seen six great war parties +of whites. He had never believed before that the whole world contained +half so many white men. They all had large horses, long knives, and +short rifles, and some of them were attired alike in the most splendid +war dresses he had ever seen. From this account it was clear that bodies +of dragoons and perhaps also of volunteer cavalry had been passing up +the Arkansas. The Stabber had also seen a great many of the white lodges +of the Meneaska, drawn by their long-horned buffalo. These could be +nothing else than covered ox-wagons used no doubt in transporting stores +for the troops. Soon after seeing this, our host had met an Indian who +had lately come from among the Comanches. The latter had told him +that all the Mexicans had gone out to a great buffalo hunt. That the +Americans had hid themselves in a ravine. When the Mexicans had shot +away all their arrows, the Americans had fired their guns, raised their +war-whoop, rushed out, and killed them all. We could only infer from +this that war had been declared with Mexico, and a battle fought in +which the Americans were victorious. When, some weeks after, we arrived +at the Pueblo, we heard of General Kearny’s march up the Arkansas and of +General Taylor’s victories at Matamoras. + +As the sun was setting that evening a great crowd gathered on the plain +by the side of our tent, to try the speed of their horses. These were of +every shape, size, and color. Some came from California, some from the +States, some from among the mountains, and some from the wild bands of +the prairie. They were of every hue--white, black, red, and gray, or +mottled and clouded with a strange variety of colors. They all had a +wild and startled look, very different from the staid and sober aspect +of a well-bred city steed. Those most noted for swiftness and spirit +were decorated with eagle-feathers dangling from their manes and tails. +Fifty or sixty Dakotas were present, wrapped from head to foot in their +heavy robes of whitened hide. There were also a considerable number of +the Cheyenne, many of whom wore gaudy Mexican ponchos swathed around +their shoulders, but leaving the right arm bare. Mingled among the +crowd of Indians were a number of Canadians, chiefly in the employ of +Bisonette; men, whose home is in the wilderness, and who love the camp +fire better than the domestic hearth. They are contented and happy in +the midst of hardship, privation, and danger. Their cheerfulness and +gayety is irrepressible, and no people on earth understand better how +“to daff the world aside and bid it pass.” Besides these, were two or +three half-breeds, a race of rather extraordinary composition, being +according to the common saying half Indian, half white man, and half +devil. Antoine Le Rouge was the most conspicuous among them, with his +loose pantaloons and his fluttering calico skirt. A handkerchief was +bound round his head to confine his black snaky hair, and his small +eyes twinkled beneath it, with a mischievous luster. He had a fine +cream-colored horse whose speed he must needs try along with the rest. +So he threw off the rude high-peaked saddle, and substituting a piece of +buffalo robe, leaped lightly into his seat. The space was cleared, the +word was given, and he and his Indian rival darted out like lightning +from among the crowd, each stretching forward over his horse’s neck and +plying his heavy Indian whip with might and main. A moment, and both +were lost in the gloom; but Antoine soon came riding back victorious, +exultingly patting the neck of his quivering and panting horse. + +About midnight, as I lay asleep, wrapped in a buffalo robe on the ground +by the side of our cart, Raymond came up and woke me. Something he said, +was going forward which I would like to see. Looking down into camp +I saw, on the farther side of it, a great number of Indians gathered +around a fire, the bright glare of which made them visible through the +thick darkness; while from the midst of them proceeded a loud, measured +chant which would have killed Paganini outright, broken occasionally by +a burst of sharp yells. I gathered the robe around me, for the night +was cold, and walked down to the spot. The dark throng of Indians was +so dense that they almost intercepted the light of the flame. As I was +pushing among them with but little ceremony, a chief interposed himself, +and I was given to understand that a white man must not approach the +scene of their solemnities too closely. By passing round to the other +side, where there was a little opening in the crowd, I could see clearly +what was going forward, without intruding my unhallowed presence into +the inner circle. The society of the “Strong Hearts” were engaged in one +of their dances. The Strong Hearts are a warlike association, comprising +men of both the Dakota and Cheyenne nations, and entirely composed, +or supposed to be so, of young braves of the highest mettle. Its +fundamental principle is the admirable one of never retreating from any +enterprise once commenced. All these Indian associations have a tutelary +spirit. That of the Strong Hearts is embodied in the fox, an animal +which a white man would hardly have selected for a similar purpose, +though his subtle and cautious character agrees well enough with an +Indian’s notions of what is honorable in warfare. The dancers were +circling round and round the fire, each figure brightly illumined at one +moment by the yellow light, and at the next drawn in blackest shadow as +it passed between the flame and the spectator. They would imitate with +the most ludicrous exactness the motions and the voice of their sly +patron the fox. Then a startling yell would be given. Many other +warriors would leap into the ring, and with faces upturned toward +the starless sky, they would all stamp, and whoop, and brandish their +weapons like so many frantic devils. + +Until the next afternoon we were still remaining with Bisonette. My +companion and I with our three attendants then left his camp for the +Pueblo, a distance of three hundred miles, and we supposed the journey +would occupy about a fortnight. During this time we all earnestly hoped +that we might not meet a single human being, for should we encounter +any, they would in all probability be enemies, ferocious robbers and +murderers, in whose eyes our rifles would be our only passports. For +the first two days nothing worth mentioning took place. On the third +morning, however, an untoward incident occurred. We were encamped by the +side of a little brook in an extensive hollow of the plain. Delorier +was up long before daylight, and before he began to prepare breakfast +he turned loose all the horses, as in duty bound. There was a cold mist +clinging close to the ground, and by the time the rest of us were awake +the animals were invisible. It was only after a long and anxious search +that we could discover by their tracks the direction they had taken. +They had all set off for Fort Laramie, following the guidance of a +mutinous old mule, and though many of them were hobbled they had driven +three miles before they could be overtaken and driven back. + +For the following two or three days we were passing over an arid desert. +The only vegetation was a few tufts of short grass, dried and shriveled +by the heat. There was an abundance of strange insects and reptiles. +Huge crickets, black and bottle green, and wingless grasshoppers of the +most extravagant dimensions, were tumbling about our horses’ feet, and +lizards without numbers were darting like lightning among the tufts of +grass. The most curious animal, however, was that commonly called the +horned frog. I caught one of them and consigned him to the care of +Delorier, who tied him up in a moccasin. About a month after this I +examined the prisoner’s condition, and finding him still lively and +active, I provided him with a cage of buffalo hide, which was hung up +in the cart. In this manner he arrived safely at the settlements. From +thence he traveled the whole way to Boston packed closely in a trunk, +being regaled with fresh air regularly every night. When he reached his +destination he was deposited under a glass case, where he sat for some +months in great tranquillity and composure, alternately dilating and +contracting his white throat to the admiration of his visitors. At +length, one morning, about the middle of winter, he gave up the ghost. +His death was attributed to starvation, a very probable conclusion, +since for six months he had taken no food whatever, though the sympathy +of his juvenile admirers had tempted his palate with a great variety +of delicacies. We found also animals of a somewhat larger growth. The +number of prairie dogs was absolutely astounding. Frequently the hard +and dry prairie would be thickly covered, for many miles together, with +the little mounds which they make around the mouth of their burrows, and +small squeaking voices yelping at us as we passed along. The noses of +the inhabitants would be just visible at the mouth of their holes, +but no sooner was their curiosity satisfied than they would instantly +vanish. Some of the bolder dogs--though in fact they are no dogs at all, +but little marmots rather smaller than a rabbit--would sit yelping at us +on the top of their mounds, jerking their tails emphatically with every +shrill cry they uttered. As the danger grew nearer they would wheel +about, toss their heels into the air, and dive in a twinkling down into +their burrows. Toward sunset, and especially if rain were threatening, +the whole community would make their appearance above ground. We would +see them gathered in large knots around the burrow of some favorite +citizen. There they would all sit erect, their tails spread out on +the ground, and their paws hanging down before their white breasts, +chattering and squeaking with the utmost vivacity upon some topic of +common interest, while the proprietor of the burrow, with his head +just visible on the top of his mound, would sit looking down with a +complacent countenance on the enjoyment of his guests. Meanwhile, others +would be running about from burrow to burrow, as if on some errand of +the last importance to their subterranean commonwealth. The snakes were +apparently the prairie dog’s worst enemies, at least I think too well of +the latter to suppose that they associate on friendly terms with these +slimy intruders, who may be seen at all times basking among their holes, +into which they always retreat when disturbed. Small owls, with wise and +grave countenances, also make their abode with the prairie dogs, though +on what terms they live together I could never ascertain. The manners +and customs, the political and domestic economy of these little marmots +is worthy of closer attention than one is able to give when pushing by +forced marches through their country, with his thoughts engrossed by +objects of greater moment. + +On the fifth day after leaving Bisonette’s camp we saw late in the +afternoon what we supposed to be a considerable stream, but on our +approaching it we found to our mortification nothing but a dry bed of +sand into which all the water had sunk and disappeared. We separated, +some riding in one direction and some in another along its course. Still +we found no traces of water, not even so much as a wet spot in the sand. +The old cotton-wood trees that grew along the bank, lamentably abused by +lightning and tempest, were withering with the drought, and on the dead +limbs, at the summit of the tallest, half a dozen crows were hoarsely +cawing like birds of evil omen as they were. We had no alternative but +to keep on. There was no water nearer than the South Fork of the Platte, +about ten miles distant. We moved forward, angry and silent, over a +desert as flat as the outspread ocean. + +The sky had been obscured since the morning by thin mists and vapors, +but now vast piles of clouds were gathered together in the west. They +rose to a great height above the horizon, and looking up toward them I +distinguished one mass darker than the rest and of a peculiar conical +form. I happened to look again and still could see it as before. At some +moments it was dimly seen, at others its outline was sharp and distinct; +but while the clouds around it were shifting, changing, and dissolving +away, it still towered aloft in the midst of them, fixed and immovable. +It must, thought I, be the summit of a mountain, and yet its heights +staggered me. My conclusion was right, however. It was Long’s Peak, once +believed to be one of the highest of the Rocky Mountain chain, though +more recent discoveries have proved the contrary. The thickening gloom +soon hid it from view and we never saw it again, for on the following +day and for some time after, the air was so full of mist that the view +of distant objects was entirely intercepted. + +It grew very late. Turning from our direct course we made for the river +at its nearest point, though in the utter darkness it was not easy to +direct our way with much precision. Raymond rode on one side and Henry +on the other. We could hear each of them shouting that he had come upon +a deep ravine. We steered at random between Scylla and Charybdis, and +soon after became, as it seemed, inextricably involved with deep chasms +all around us, while the darkness was such that we could not see a rod +in any direction. We partially extricated ourselves by scrambling, cart +and all, through a shallow ravine. We came next to a steep descent down +which we plunged without well knowing what was at the bottom. There was +a great crackling of sticks and dry twigs. Over our heads were certain +large shadowy objects, and in front something like the faint gleaming +of a dark sheet of water. Raymond ran his horse against a tree; Henry +alighted, and feeling on the ground declared that there was grass enough +for the horses. Before taking off his saddle each man led his own horses +down to the water in the best way he could. Then picketing two or three +of the evil-disposed we turned the rest loose and lay down among the dry +sticks to sleep. In the morning we found ourselves close to the South +Fork of the Platte on a spot surrounded by bushes and rank grass. +Compensating ourselves with a hearty breakfast for the ill fare of the +previous night, we set forward again on our journey. When only two or +three rods from the camp I saw Shaw stop his mule, level his gun, and +after a long aim fire at some object in the grass. Delorier next jumped +forward and began to dance about, belaboring the unseen enemy with a +whip. Then he stooped down and drew out of the grass by the neck an +enormous rattlesnake, with his head completely shattered by Shaw’s +bullet. As Delorier held him out at arm’s length with an exulting grin +his tail, which still kept slowly writhing about, almost touched the +ground, and the body in the largest part was as thick as a stout man’s +arm. He had fourteen rattles, but the end of his tail was blunted, as if +he could once have boasted of many more. From this time till we reached +the Pueblo we killed at least four or five of these snakes every day as +they lay coiled and rattling on the hot sand. Shaw was the St. Patrick +of the party, and whenever he or any one else killed a snake he always +pulled off his tail and stored it away in his bullet-pouch, which was +soon crammed with an edifying collection of rattles, great and small. +Delorier, with his whip, also came in for a share of the praise. A day +or two after this he triumphantly produced a small snake about a span +and a half long, with one infant rattle at the end of his tail. + +We forded the South Fork of the Platte. On its farther bank were the +traces of a very large camp of Arapahoes. The ashes of some three +hundred fires were visible among the scattered trees, together with +the remains of sweating lodges, and all the other appurtenances of a +permanent camp. The place however had been for some months deserted. A +few miles farther on we found more recent signs of Indians; the trail +of two or three lodges, which had evidently passed the day before, +where every foot-print was perfectly distinct in the dry, dusty soil. We +noticed in particular the track of one moccasin, upon the sole of which +its economical proprietor had placed a large patch. These signs gave us +but little uneasiness, as the number of the warriors scarcely exceeded +that of our own party. At noon we rested under the walls of a large +fort, built in these solitudes some years since by M. St. Vrain. It was +now abandoned and fast falling into ruin. The walls of unbaked bricks +were cracked from top to bottom. Our horses recoiled in terror from the +neglected entrance, where the heavy gates were torn from their hinges +and flung down. The area within was overgrown with weeds, and the long +ranges of apartments, once occupied by the motley concourse of traders, +Canadians, and squaws, were now miserably dilapidated. Twelve miles +further on, near the spot where we encamped, were the remains of still +another fort, standing in melancholy desertion and neglect. + +Early on the following morning we made a startling discovery. We passed +close by a large deserted encampment of Arapahoes. There were about +fifty fires still smouldering on the ground, and it was evident from +numerous signs that the Indians must have left the place within two +hours of our reaching it. Their trail crossed our own at right angles, +and led in the direction of a line of hills half a mile on our left. +There were women and children in the party, which would have greatly +diminished the danger of encountering them. Henry Chatillon examined the +encampment and the trail with a very professional and businesslike air. + +“Supposing we had met them, Henry?” said I. + +“Why,” said he, “we hold out our hands to them, and give them all we’ve +got; they take away everything, and then I believe they no kill us. +Perhaps,” added he, looking up with a quiet, unchanged face, “perhaps we +no let them rob us. Maybe before they come near, we have a chance to get +into a ravine, or under the bank of the river; then, you know, we fight +them.” + +About noon on that day we reached Cherry Creek. Here was a great +abundance of wild cherries, plums, gooseberries, and currants. The +stream, however, like most of the others which we passed, was dried up +with the heat, and we had to dig holes in the sand to find water for +ourselves and our horses. Two days after, we left the banks of the creek +which we had been following for some time, and began to cross the high +dividing ridge which separates the waters of the Platte from those +of the Arkansas. The scenery was altogether changed. In place of the +burning plains we were passing now through rough and savage glens and +among hills crowned with a dreary growth of pines. We encamped among +these solitudes on the night of the 16th of August. A tempest was +threatening. The sun went down among volumes of jet-black cloud, edged +with a bloody red. But in spite of these portentous signs, we neglected +to put up the tent, and being extremely fatigued, lay down on the ground +and fell asleep. The storm broke about midnight, and we erected the +tent amid darkness and confusion. In the morning all was fair again, +and Pike’s Peak, white with snow, was towering above the wilderness afar +off. + +We pushed through an extensive tract of pine woods. Large black +squirrels were leaping among the branches. From the farther edge of +this forest we saw the prairie again, hollowed out before us into a vast +basin, and about a mile in front we could discern a little black speck +moving upon its surface. It could be nothing but a buffalo. Henry primed +his rifle afresh and galloped forward. To the left of the animal was a +low rocky mound, of which Henry availed himself in making his approach. +After a short time we heard the faint report of the rifle. The bull, +mortally wounded from a distance of nearly three hundred yards, ran +wildly round and round in a circle. Shaw and I then galloped forward, +and passing him as he ran, foaming with rage and pain, we discharged our +pistols into his side. Once or twice he rushed furiously upon us, but +his strength was rapidly exhausted. Down he fell on his knees. For one +instant he glared up at his enemies with burning eyes through his black +tangled mane, and then rolled over on his side. Though gaunt and thin, +he was larger and heavier than the largest ox. Foam and blood flew +together from his nostrils as he lay bellowing and pawing the ground, +tearing up grass and earth with his hoofs. His sides rose and fell +like a vast pair of bellows, the blood spouting up in jets from the +bullet-holes. Suddenly his glaring eyes became like a lifeless jelly. +He lay motionless on the ground. Henry stooped over him, and making an +incision with his knife, pronounced the meat too rank and tough for use; +so, disappointed in our hopes of an addition to our stock of provisions, +we rode away and left the carcass to the wolves. + +In the afternoon we saw the mountains rising like a gigantic wall at +no great distance on our right. “Des sauvages! des sauvages!” exclaimed +Delorier, looking round with a frightened face, and pointing with +his whip toward the foot of the mountains. In fact, we could see at a +distance a number of little black specks, like horsemen in rapid +motion. Henry Chatillon, with Shaw and myself, galloped toward them +to reconnoiter, when to our amusement we saw the supposed Arapahoes +resolved into the black tops of some pine trees which grew along a +ravine. The summits of these pines, just visible above the verge of +the prairie, and seeming to move as we ourselves were advancing, looked +exactly like a line of horsemen. + +We encamped among ravines and hollows, through which a little brook +was foaming angrily. Before sunrise in the morning the snow-covered +mountains were beautifully tinged with a delicate rose color. A noble +spectacle awaited us as we moved forward. Six or eight miles on our +right, Pike’s Peak and his giant brethren rose out of the level prairie, +as if springing from the bed of the ocean. From their summits down to +the plain below they were involved in a mantle of clouds, in restless +motion, as if urged by strong winds. For one instant some snowy peak, +towering in awful solitude, would be disclosed to view. As the +clouds broke along the mountain, we could see the dreary forests, the +tremendous precipices, the white patches of snow, the gulfs and chasms +as black as night, all revealed for an instant, and then disappearing +from the view. One could not but recall the stanza of “Childe Harold”: + + Morn dawns, and with it stern Albania’s hills, + Dark Suli’s rocks, and Pindus’ inland peak, + Robed half in mist, bedewed with snowy rills, + Array’d in many a dun and purple streak, + Arise; and, as the clouds along them break, + Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer: + Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak, + Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear, + And gathering storms around convulse the closing year. + +Every line save one of this description was more than verified here. +There were no “dwellings of the mountaineer” among these heights. Fierce +savages, restlessly wandering through summer and winter, alone invade +them. “Their hand is against every man, and every man’s hand against +them.” + +On the day after, we had left the mountains at some distance. A black +cloud descended upon them, and a tremendous explosion of thunder +followed, reverberating among the precipices. In a few moments +everything grew black and the rain poured down like a cataract. We got +under an old cotton-wood tree which stood by the side of a stream, and +waited there till the rage of the torrent had passed. + +The clouds opened at the point where they first had gathered, and the +whole sublime congregation of mountains was bathed at once in warm +sunshine. They seemed more like some luxurious vision of Eastern romance +than like a reality of that wilderness; all were melted together into +a soft delicious blue, as voluptuous as the sky of Naples or the +transparent sea that washes the sunny cliffs of Capri. On the left the +whole sky was still of an inky blackness; but two concentric rainbows +stood in brilliant relief against it, while far in front the ragged +cloud still streamed before the wind, and the retreating thunder +muttered angrily. + +Through that afternoon and the next morning we were passing down the +banks of the stream called La Fontaine qui Bouille, from the boiling +spring whose waters flow into it. When we stopped at noon, we were +within six or eight miles of the Pueblo. Setting out again, we found by +the fresh tracks that a horseman had just been out to reconnoiter us; he +had circled half round the camp, and then galloped back full speed for +the Pueblo. What made him so shy of us we could not conceive. After an +hour’s ride we reached the edge of a hill, from which a welcome sight +greeted us. The Arkansas ran along the valley below, among woods and +groves, and closely nestled in the midst of wide cornfields and green +meadows where cattle were grazing rose the low mud walls of the Pueblo. + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE PUEBLO AND BENT’S FORT + + +We approached the gate of the Pueblo. It was a wretched species of fort +of most primitive construction, being nothing more than a large +square inclosure, surrounded by a wall of mud, miserably cracked and +dilapidated. The slender pickets that surmounted it were half broken +down, and the gate dangled on its wooden hinges so loosely, that to +open or shut it seemed likely to fling it down altogether. Two or three +squalid Mexicans, with their broad hats, and their vile faces overgrown +with hair, were lounging about the bank of the river in front of it. +They disappeared as they saw us approach; and as we rode up to the gate +a light active little figure came out to meet us. It was our old friend +Richard. He had come from Fort Laramie on a trading expedition to Taos; +but finding, when he reached the Pueblo, that the war would prevent his +going farther, he was quietly waiting till the conquest of the country +should allow him to proceed. He seemed to consider himself bound to do +the honors of the place. Shaking us warmly by the hands, he led the way +into the area. + +Here we saw his large Santa Fe wagons standing together. A few squaws +and Spanish women, and a few Mexicans, as mean and miserable as the +place itself, were lazily sauntering about. Richard conducted us to the +state apartment of the Pueblo, a small mud room, very neatly +finished, considering the material, and garnished with a crucifix, a +looking-glass, a picture of the Virgin, and a rusty horse pistol. There +were no chairs, but instead of them a number of chests and boxes +ranged about the room. There was another room beyond, less sumptuously +decorated, and here three or four Spanish girls, one of them very +pretty, were baking cakes at a mud fireplace in the corner. They brought +out a poncho, which they spread upon the floor by way of table-cloth. +A supper, which seemed to us luxurious, was soon laid out upon it, and +folded buffalo robes were placed around it to receive the guests. Two +or three Americans, besides ourselves, were present. We sat down Turkish +fashion, and began to inquire the news. Richard told us that, about +three weeks before, General Kearny’s army had left Bent’s Fort to march +against Santa Fe; that when last heard from they were approaching the +mountainous defiles that led to the city. One of the Americans produced +a dingy newspaper, containing an account of the battles of Palo Alto and +Resaca de la Palma. While we were discussing these matters, the doorway +was darkened by a tall, shambling fellow, who stood with his hands in +his pockets taking a leisurely survey of the premises before he entered. +He wore brown homespun pantaloons, much too short for his legs, and +a pistol and bowie knife stuck in his belt. His head and one eye +were enveloped in a huge bandage of white linen. Having completed his +observations, he came slouching in and sat down on a chest. Eight or ten +more of the same stamp followed, and very coolly arranging themselves +about the room, began to stare at the company. Shaw and I looked at each +other. We were forcibly reminded of the Oregon emigrants, though these +unwelcome visitors had a certain glitter of the eye, and a compression +of the lips, which distinguished them from our old acquaintances of the +prairie. They began to catechise us at once, inquiring whence we had +come, what we meant to do next, and what were our future prospects in +life. + +The man with the bandaged head had met with an untoward accident a few +days before. He was going down to the river to bring water, and was +pushing through the young willows which covered the low ground, when he +came unawares upon a grizzly bear, which, having just eaten a buffalo +bull, had lain down to sleep off the meal. The bear rose on his hind +legs, and gave the intruder such a blow with his paw that he laid his +forehead entirely bare, clawed off the front of his scalp, and narrowly +missed one of his eyes. Fortunately he was not in a very pugnacious +mood, being surfeited with his late meal. The man’s companions, who were +close behind, raised a shout and the bear walked away, crushing down the +willows in his leisurely retreat. + +These men belonged to a party of Mormons, who, out of a well-grounded +fear of the other emigrants, had postponed leaving the settlements until +all the rest were gone. On account of this delay they did not reach Fort +Laramie until it was too late to continue their journey to California. +Hearing that there was good land at the head of the Arkansas, they +crossed over under the guidance of Richard, and were now preparing to +spend the winter at a spot about half a mile from the Pueblo. + +When we took leave of Richard, it was near sunset. Passing out of the +gate, we could look down the little valley of the Arkansas; a beautiful +scene, and doubly so to our eyes, so long accustomed to deserts and +mountains. Tall woods lined the river, with green meadows on either +hand; and high bluffs, quietly basking in the sunlight, flanked the +narrow valley. A Mexican on horseback was driving a herd of cattle +toward the gate, and our little white tent, which the men had pitched +under a large tree in the meadow, made a very pleasing feature in the +scene. When we reached it, we found that Richard had sent a Mexican to +bring us an abundant supply of green corn and vegetables, and invite +us to help ourselves to whatever we wished from the fields around the +Pueblo. + +The inhabitants were in daily apprehensions of an inroad from more +formidable consumers than ourselves. Every year at the time when the +corn begins to ripen, the Arapahoes, to the number of several thousands, +come and encamp around the Pueblo. The handful of white men, who are +entirely at the mercy of this swarm of barbarians, choose to make a +merit of necessity; they come forward very cordially, shake them by the +hand, and intimate that the harvest is entirely at their disposal. The +Arapahoes take them at their word, help themselves most liberally, and +usually turn their horses into the cornfields afterward. They have the +foresight, however, to leave enough of the crops untouched to serve as +an inducement for planting the fields again for their benefit in the +next spring. + +The human race in this part of the world is separated into three +divisions, arranged in the order of their merits; white men, Indians, +and Mexicans; to the latter of whom the honorable title of “whites” is +by no means conceded. + +In spite of the warm sunset of that evening the next morning was a +dreary and cheerless one. It rained steadily, clouds resting upon the +very treetops. We crossed the river to visit the Mormon settlement. As +we passed through the water, several trappers on horseback entered it +from the other side. Their buckskin frocks were soaked through by the +rain, and clung fast to their limbs with a most clammy and uncomfortable +look. The water was trickling down their faces, and dropping from the +ends of their rifles, and from the traps which each carried at the +pommel of his saddle. Horses and all, they had a most disconsolate and +woebegone appearance, which we could not help laughing at, forgetting +how often we ourselves had been in a similar plight. + +After half an hour’s riding we saw the white wagons of the Mormons drawn +up among the trees. Axes were sounding, trees were falling, and log-huts +going up along the edge of the woods and upon the adjoining meadow. +As we came up the Mormons left their work and seated themselves on +the timber around us, when they began earnestly to discuss points +of theology, complain of the ill-usage they had received from the +“Gentiles,” and sound a lamentation over the loss of their great temple +at Nauvoo. After remaining with them an hour we rode back to our camp, +happy that the settlements had been delivered from the presence of such +blind and desperate fanatics. + +On the morning after this we left the Pueblo for Bent’s Fort. The +conduct of Raymond had lately been less satisfactory than before, and +we had discharged him as soon as we arrived at the former place; so that +the party, ourselves included, was now reduced to four. There was some +uncertainty as to our future course. The trail between Bent’s Fort and +the settlements, a distance computed at six hundred miles, was at this +time in a dangerous state; for since the passage of General Kearny’s +army, great numbers of hostile Indians, chiefly Pawnees and Comanches, +had gathered about some parts of it. A little after this time they +became so numerous and audacious, that scarcely a single party, however +large, passed between the fort and the frontier without some token of +their hostility. The newspapers of the time sufficiently display this +state of things. Many men were killed, and great numbers of horses and +mules carried off. Not long since I met with the gentleman, who, during +the autumn, came from Santa Fe to Bent’s Fort, when he found a party +of seventy men, who thought themselves too weak to go down to the +settlements alone, and were waiting there for a re-enforcement. Though +this excessive timidity fully proves the ignorance and credulity of +the men, it may also evince the state of alarm which prevailed in the +country. When we were there in the month of August, the danger had not +become so great. There was nothing very attractive in the neighborhood. +We supposed, moreover, that we might wait there half the winter without +finding any party to go down with us; for Mr. Sublette and the others +whom we had relied upon had, as Richard told us, already left Bent’s +Fort. Thus far on our journey Fortune had kindly befriended us. We +resolved therefore to take advantage of her gracious mood and trusting +for a continuance of her favors, to set out with Henry and Delorier, and +run the gauntlet of the Indians in the best way we could. + +Bent’s Fort stands on the river, about seventy-five miles below the +Pueblo. At noon of the third day we arrived within three or four miles +of it, pitched our tent under a tree, hung our looking-glasses against +its trunk and having made our primitive toilet, rode toward the fort. +We soon came in sight of it, for it is visible from a considerable +distance, standing with its high clay walls in the midst of the +scorching plains. It seemed as if a swarm of locusts had invaded the +country. The grass for miles around was cropped close by the horses of +General Kearny’s soldiery. When we came to the fort, we found that not +only had the horses eaten up the grass, but their owners had made +away with the stores of the little trading post; so that we had great +difficulty in procuring the few articles which we required for our +homeward journey. The army was gone, the life and bustle passed away, +and the fort was a scene of dull and lazy tranquillity. A few invalid +officers and soldiers sauntered about the area, which was oppressively +hot; for the glaring sun was reflected down upon it from the high white +walls around. The proprietors were absent, and we were received by Mr. +Holt, who had been left in charge of the fort. He invited us to dinner, +where, to our admiration, we found a table laid with a white cloth, with +castors in the center and chairs placed around it. This unwonted repast +concluded, we rode back to our camp. + +Here, as we lay smoking round the fire after supper, we saw through the +dusk three men approaching from the direction of the fort. They rode up +and seated themselves near us on the ground. The foremost was a tall, +well-formed man, with a face and manner such as inspire confidence at +once. He wore a broad hat of felt, slouching and tattered, and the rest +of his attire consisted of a frock and leggings of buckskin, rubbed with +the yellow clay found among the mountains. At the heel of one of his +moccasins was buckled a huge iron spur, with a rowel five or six inches +in diameter. His horse, who stood quietly looking over his head, had a +rude Mexican saddle, covered with a shaggy bearskin, and furnished with +a pair of wooden stirrups of most preposterous size. The next man was a +sprightly, active little fellow, about five feet and a quarter high, but +very strong and compact. His face was swarthy as a Mexican’s and covered +with a close, curly black beard. An old greasy calico handkerchief was +tied round his head, and his close buckskin dress was blackened and +polished by grease and hard service. The last who came up was a large +strong man, dressed in the coarse homespun of the frontiers, who dragged +his long limbs over the ground as if he were too lazy for the effort. He +had a sleepy gray eye, a retreating chin, an open mouth and a +protruding upper lip, which gave him an air of exquisite indolence +and helplessness. He was armed with an old United States yager, which +redoubtable weapon, though he could never hit his mark with it, he was +accustomed to cherish as the very sovereign of firearms. + +The first two men belonged to a party who had just come from California +with a large band of horses, which they had disposed of at Bent’s +Fort. Munroe, the taller of the two, was from Iowa. He was an excellent +fellow, open, warm-hearted and intelligent. Jim Gurney, the short man, +was a Boston sailor, who had come in a trading vessel to California, and +taken the fancy to return across the continent. The journey had already +made him an expert “mountain man,” and he presented the extraordinary +phenomenon of a sailor who understood how to manage a horse. The third +of our visitors named Ellis, was a Missourian, who had come out with a +party of Oregon emigrants, but having got as far as Bridge’s Fort, he +had fallen home-sick, or as Jim averred, love-sick--and Ellis was just +the man to be balked in a love adventure. He thought proper to join the +California men and return homeward in their company. + +They now requested that they might unite with our party, and make the +journey to the settlements in company with us. We readily assented, for +we liked the appearance of the first two men, and were very glad to +gain so efficient a re-enforcement. We told them to meet us on the next +evening at a spot on the river side, about six miles below the fort. +Having smoked a pipe together, our new allies left us, and we lay down +to sleep. + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +TETE ROUGE, THE VOLUNTEER + + +The next morning, having directed Delorier to repair with his cart +to the place of meeting, we came again to the fort to make some +arrangements for the journey. After completing these we sat down under a +sort of perch, to smoke with some Cheyenne Indians whom we found there. +In a few minutes we saw an extraordinary little figure approach us in a +military dress. He had a small, round countenance, garnished about +the eyes with the kind of wrinkles commonly known as crow’s feet and +surrounded by an abundant crop of red curls, with a little cap resting +on the top of them. Altogether, he had the look of a man more conversant +with mint juleps and oyster suppers than with the hardships of prairie +service. He came up to us and entreated that we would take him home to +the settlements, saying that unless he went with us he should have to +stay all winter at the fort. We liked our petitioner’s appearance so +little that we excused ourselves from complying with his request. At +this he begged us so hard to take pity on him, looked so disconsolate, +and told so lamentable a story that at last we consented, though not +without many misgivings. + +The rugged Anglo-Saxon of our new recruit’s real name proved utterly +unmanageable on the lips of our French attendants, and Henry Chatillon, +after various abortive attempts to pronounce it, one day coolly +christened him Tete Rouge, in honor of his red curls. He had at +different times been clerk of a Mississippi steamboat, and agent in +a trading establishment at Nauvoo, besides filling various other +capacities, in all of which he had seen much more of “life” than was +good for him. In the spring, thinking that a summer’s campaign would +be an agreeable recreation, he had joined a company of St. Louis +volunteers. + +“There were three of us,” said Tete Rouge, “me and Bill Stevens and John +Hopkins. We thought we would just go out with the army, and when we had +conquered the country, we would get discharged and take our pay, you +know, and go down to Mexico. They say there is plenty of fun going on +there. Then we could go back to New Orleans by way of Vera Cruz.” + +But Tete Rouge, like many a stouter volunteer, had reckoned without +his host. Fighting Mexicans was a less amusing occupation than he had +supposed, and his pleasure trip was disagreeably interrupted by brain +fever, which attacked him when about halfway to Bent’s Fort. He jolted +along through the rest of the journey in a baggage wagon. When they came +to the fort he was taken out and left there, together with the rest of +the sick. Bent’s Fort does not supply the best accommodations for an +invalid. Tete Rouge’s sick chamber was a little mud room, where he and a +companion attacked by the same disease were laid together, with nothing +but a buffalo robe between them and the ground. The assistant surgeon’s +deputy visited them once a day and brought them each a huge dose of +calomel, the only medicine, according to his surviving victim, which he +was acquainted with. + +Tete Rouge woke one morning, and turning to his companion, saw his eyes +fixed upon the beams above with the glassy stare of a dead man. At this +the unfortunate volunteer lost his senses outright. In spite of the +doctor, however, he eventually recovered; though between the brain fever +and the calomel, his mind, originally none of the strongest, was so much +shaken that it had not quite recovered its balance when we came to the +fort. In spite of the poor fellow’s tragic story, there was something +so ludicrous in his appearance, and the whimsical contrast between his +military dress and his most unmilitary demeanor, that we could not help +smiling at them. We asked him if he had a gun. He said they had taken +it from him during his illness, and he had not seen it since; “but +perhaps,” he observed, looking at me with a beseeching air, “you will +lend me one of your big pistols if we should meet with any Indians.” I +next inquired if he had a horse; he declared he had a magnificent one, +and at Shaw’s request a Mexican led him in for inspection. He exhibited +the outline of a good horse, but his eyes were sunk in the sockets, and +every one of his ribs could be counted. There were certain marks too +about his shoulders, which could be accounted for by the circumstance, +that during Tete Rouge’s illness, his companions had seized upon the +insulted charger, and harnessed him to a cannon along with the draft +horses. To Tete Rouge’s astonishment we recommended him by all means to +exchange the horse, if he could, for a mule. Fortunately the people at +the fort were so anxious to get rid of him that they were willing to +make some sacrifice to effect the object, and he succeeded in getting a +tolerable mule in exchange for the broken-down steed. + +A man soon appeared at the gate, leading in the mule by a cord which he +placed in the hands of Tete Rouge, who, being somewhat afraid of his new +acquisition, tried various flatteries and blandishments to induce her +to come forward. The mule, knowing that she was expected to advance, +stopped short in consequence, and stood fast as a rock, looking straight +forward with immovable composure. Being stimulated by a blow from behind +she consented to move, and walked nearly to the other side of the fort +before she stopped again. Hearing the by-standers laugh, Tete Rouge +plucked up spirit and tugged hard at the rope. The mule jerked backward, +spun herself round, and made a dash for the gate. Tete Rouge, who clung +manfully to the rope, went whisking through the air for a few rods, when +he let go and stood with his mouth open, staring after the mule, who +galloped away over the prairie. She was soon caught and brought back +by a Mexican, who mounted a horse and went in pursuit of her with his +lasso. + +Having thus displayed his capacity for prairie travel, Tete Rouge +proceeded to supply himself with provisions for the journey, and with +this view he applied to a quartermaster’s assistant who was in the fort. +This official had a face as sour as vinegar, being in a state of chronic +indignation because he had been left behind the army. He was as anxious +as the rest to get rid of Tete Rouge. So, producing a rusty key, he +opened a low door which led to a half-subterranean apartment, into which +the two disappeared together. After some time they came out again, Tete +Rouge greatly embarrassed by a multiplicity of paper parcels containing +the different articles of his forty days’ rations. They were consigned +to the care of Delorier, who about that time passed by with the cart +on his way to the appointed place of meeting with Munroe and his +companions. + +We next urged Tete Rouge to provide himself, if he could, with a gun. +He accordingly made earnest appeals to the charity of various persons +in the fort, but totally without success, a circumstance which did not +greatly disturb us, since in the event of a skirmish he would be much +more apt to do mischief to himself or his friends than to the enemy. +When all these arrangements were completed we saddled our horses and +were preparing to leave the fort, when looking round we discovered that +our new associate was in fresh trouble. A man was holding the mule for +him in the middle of the fort, while he tried to put the saddle on her +back, but she kept stepping sideways and moving round and round in +a circle until he was almost in despair. It required some assistance +before all his difficulties could be overcome. At length he clambered +into the black war saddle on which he was to have carried terror into +the ranks of the Mexicans. + +“Get up,” said Tete Rouge, “come now, go along, will you.” + +The mule walked deliberately forward out of the gate. Her recent conduct +had inspired him with so much awe that he never dared to touch her with +his whip. We trotted forward toward the place of meeting, but before he +had gone far we saw that Tete Rouge’s mule, who perfectly understood +her rider, had stopped and was quietly grazing, in spite of his +protestations, at some distance behind. So getting behind him, we drove +him and the contumacious mule before us, until we could see through the +twilight the gleaming of a distant fire. Munroe, Jim, and Ellis were +lying around it; their saddles, packs, and weapons were scattered about +and their horses picketed near them. Delorier was there too with our +little cart. Another fire was soon blazing high. We invited our new +allies to take a cup of coffee with us. When both the others had gone +over to their side of the camp, Jim Gurney still stood by the blaze, +puffing hard at his little black pipe, as short and weather-beaten as +himself. + +“Well!” he said, “here are eight of us; we’ll call it six--for them two +boobies, Ellis over yonder, and that new man of yours, won’t count for +anything. We’ll get through well enough, never fear for that, unless the +Comanches happen to get foul of us.” + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +INDIAN ALARMS + + +We began our journey for the frontier settlements on the 27th of August, +and certainly a more ragamuffin cavalcade never was seen on the banks of +the Upper Arkansas. Of the large and fine horses with which we had left +the frontier in the spring, not one remained; we had supplied their +place with the rough breed of the prairie, as hardy as mules and almost +as ugly; we had also with us a number of the latter detestable animals. +In spite of their strength and hardihood, several of the band were +already worn down by hard service and hard fare, and as none of them +were shod, they were fast becoming foot-sore. Every horse and mule had +a cord of twisted bull-hide coiled around his neck, which by no +means added to the beauty of his appearance. Our saddles and all our +equipments were by this time lamentably worn and battered, and our +weapons had become dull and rusty. The dress of the riders fully +corresponded with the dilapidated furniture of our horses, and of the +whole party none made a more disreputable appearance than my friend and +I. Shaw had for an upper garment an old red flannel shirt, flying open +in front and belted around him like a frock; while I, in absence of +other clothing, was attired in a time-worn suit of leather. + +Thus, happy and careless as so many beggars, we crept slowly from day to +day along the monotonous banks of the Arkansas. Tete Rouge gave constant +trouble, for he could never catch his mule, saddle her, or indeed do +anything else without assistance. Every day he had some new ailment, +real or imaginary, to complain of. At one moment he would be woebegone +and disconsolate, and the next he would be visited with a violent flow +of spirits, to which he could only give vent by incessant laughing, +whistling, and telling stories. When other resources failed, we used to +amuse ourselves by tormenting him; a fair compensation for the trouble +he cost us. Tete Rouge rather enjoyed being laughed at, for he was +an odd compound of weakness, eccentricity, and good-nature. He made a +figure worthy of a painter as he paced along before us, perched on the +back of his mule, and enveloped in a huge buffalo-robe coat, which some +charitable person had given him at the fort. This extraordinary garment, +which would have contained two men of his size, he chose, for some +reason best known to himself, to wear inside out, and he never took it +off, even in the hottest weather. It was fluttering all over with seams +and tatters, and the hide was so old and rotten that it broke out every +day in a new place. Just at the top of it a large pile of red curls was +visible, with his little cap set jauntily upon one side, to give him +a military air. His seat in the saddle was no less remarkable than his +person and equipment. He pressed one leg close against his mule’s side, +and thrust the other out at an angle of 45 degrees. His pantaloons were +decorated with a military red stripe, of which he was extremely vain; +but being much too short, the whole length of his boots was usually +visible below them. His blanket, loosely rolled up into a large bundle, +dangled at the back of his saddle, where he carried it tied with a +string. Four or five times a day it would fall to the ground. Every few +minutes he would drop his pipe, his knife, his flint and steel, or a +piece of tobacco, and have to scramble down to pick them up. In doing +this he would contrive to get in everybody’s way; and as the most of the +party were by no means remarkable for a fastidious choice of language, a +storm of anathemas would be showered upon him, half in earnest and half +in jest, until Tete Rouge would declare that there was no comfort in +life, and that he never saw such fellows before. + +Only a day or two after leaving Bent’s Fort Henry Chatillon rode forward +to hunt, and took Ellis along with him. After they had been some time +absent we saw them coming down the hill, driving three dragoon-horses, +which had escaped from their owners on the march, or perhaps had given +out and been abandoned. One of them was in tolerable condition, but the +others were much emaciated and severely bitten by the wolves. Reduced as +they were we carried two of them to the settlements, and Henry exchanged +the third with the Arapahoes for an excellent mule. + +On the day after, when we had stopped to rest at noon, a long train of +Santa Fe wagons came up and trailed slowly past us in their picturesque +procession. They belonged to a trader named Magoffin, whose brother, +with a number of other men, came over and sat down around us on the +grass. The news they brought was not of the most pleasing complexion. +According to their accounts, the trail below was in a very dangerous +state. They had repeatedly detected Indians prowling at night around +their camps; and the large party which had left Bent’s Fort a few weeks +previous to our own departure had been attacked, and a man named Swan, +from Massachusetts, had been killed. His companions had buried the body; +but when Magoffin found his grave, which was near a place called the +Caches, the Indians had dug up and scalped him, and the wolves had +shockingly mangled his remains. As an offset to this intelligence, they +gave us the welcome information that the buffalo were numerous at a few +days’ journey below. + +On the next afternoon, as we moved along the bank of the river, we saw +the white tops of wagons on the horizon. It was some hours before we +met them, when they proved to be a train of clumsy ox-wagons, quite +different from the rakish vehicles of the Santa Fe traders, and loaded +with government stores for the troops. They all stopped, and the drivers +gathered around us in a crowd. I thought that the whole frontier might +have been ransacked in vain to furnish men worse fitted to meet the +dangers of the prairie. Many of them were mere boys, fresh from the +plow, and devoid of knowledge and experience. In respect to the state +of the trail, they confirmed all that the Santa Fe men had told us. +In passing between the Pawnee Fork and the Caches, their sentinels had +fired every night at real or imaginary Indians. They said also that +Ewing, a young Kentuckian in the party that had gone down before us, had +shot an Indian who was prowling at evening about the camp. Some of them +advised us to turn back, and others to hasten forward as fast as we +could; but they all seemed in such a state of feverish anxiety, and so +little capable of cool judgment, that we attached slight weight to what +they said. They next gave us a more definite piece of intelligence; +a large village of Arapahoes was encamped on the river below. They +represented them to be quite friendly; but some distinction was to be +made between a party of thirty men, traveling with oxen, which are of +no value in an Indian’s eyes and a mere handful like ourselves, with a +tempting band of mules and horses. This story of the Arapahoes therefore +caused us some anxiety. + +Just after leaving the government wagons, as Shaw and I were riding +along a narrow passage between the river bank and a rough hill that +pressed close upon it, we heard Tete Rouge’s voice behind us. “Hallo!” + he called out; “I say, stop the cart just for a minute, will you?” + +“What’s the matter, Tete?” asked Shaw, as he came riding up to us with a +grin of exultation. He had a bottle of molasses in one hand, and a large +bundle of hides on the saddle before him, containing, as he triumphantly +informed us, sugar, biscuits, coffee, and rice. These supplies he had +obtained by a stratagem on which he greatly plumed himself, and he was +extremely vexed and astonished that we did not fall in with his views of +the matter. He had told Coates, the master-wagoner, that the commissary +at the fort had given him an order for sick-rations, directed to the +master of any government train which he might meet upon the road. This +order he had unfortunately lost, but he hoped that the rations would +not be refused on that account, as he was suffering from coarse fare and +needed them very much. As soon as he came to camp that night Tete Rouge +repaired to the box at the back of the cart, where Delorier used to +keep his culinary apparatus, took possession of a saucepan, and after +building a little fire of his own, set to work preparing a meal out of +his ill-gotten booty. This done, he seized on a tin plate and spoon, and +sat down under the cart to regale himself. His preliminary repast did +not at all prejudice his subsequent exertions at supper; where, in spite +of his miniature dimensions, he made a better figure than any of us. +Indeed, about this time his appetite grew quite voracious. He began to +thrive wonderfully. His small body visibly expanded, and his cheeks, +which when we first took him were rather yellow and cadaverous, now +dilated in a wonderful manner, and became ruddy in proportion. Tete +Rouge, in short, began to appear like another man. + +Early in the afternoon of the next day, looking along the edge of the +horizon in front, we saw that at one point it was faintly marked with +pale indentations, like the teeth of a saw. The lodges of the Arapahoes, +rising between us and the sky, caused this singular appearance. It +wanted still two or three hours of sunset when we came opposite their +camp. There were full two hundred lodges standing in the midst of a +grassy meadow at some distance beyond the river, while for a mile around +and on either bank of the Arkansas were scattered some fifteen hundred +horses and mules grazing together in bands, or wandering singly about +the prairie. The whole were visible at once, for the vast expanse was +unbroken by hills, and there was not a tree or a bush to intercept the +view. + +Here and there walked an Indian, engaged in watching the horses. No +sooner did we see them than Tete Rouge begged Delorier to stop the cart +and hand him his little military jacket, which was stowed away there. In +this he instantly invested himself, having for once laid the old buffalo +coat aside, assumed a most martial posture in the saddle, set his cap +over his left eye with an air of defiance, and earnestly entreated that +somebody would lend him a gun or a pistol only for half an hour. Being +called upon to explain these remarkable proceedings, Tete Rouge observed +that he knew from experience what effect the presence of a military man +in his uniform always had upon the mind of an Indian, and he thought the +Arapahoes ought to know that there was a soldier in the party. + +Meeting Arapahoes here on the Arkansas was a very different thing from +meeting the same Indians among their native mountains. There was another +circumstance in our favor. General Kearny had seen them a few weeks +before, as he came up the river with his army, and renewing his threats +of the previous year, he told them that if they ever again touched +the hair of a white man’s head he would exterminate their nation. This +placed them for the time in an admirable frame of mind, and the effect +of his menaces had not yet disappeared. I was anxious to see the village +and its inhabitants. We thought it also our best policy to visit them +openly, as if unsuspicious of any hostile design; and Shaw and I, with +Henry Chatillon, prepared to cross the river. The rest of the party +meanwhile moved forward as fast as they could, in order to get as far as +possible from our suspicious neighbors before night came on. + +The Arkansas at this point, and for several hundred miles below, is +nothing but a broad sand-bed, over which a few scanty threads of water +are swiftly gliding, now and then expanding into wide shallows. At +several places, during the autumn, the water sinks into the sand and +disappears altogether. At this season, were it not for the numerous +quicksands, the river might be forded almost anywhere without +difficulty, though its channel is often a quarter of a mile wide. Our +horses jumped down the bank, and wading through the water, or galloping +freely over the hard sand-beds, soon reached the other side. Here, as we +were pushing through the tall grass, we saw several Indians not far +off; one of them waited until we came up, and stood for some moments +in perfect silence before us, looking at us askance with his little +snakelike eyes. Henry explained by signs what we wanted, and the Indian, +gathering his buffalo robe about his shoulders, led the way toward the +village without speaking a word. + +The language of the Arapahoes is so difficult, and its pronunciations so +harsh and guttural, that no white man, it is said, has ever been able +to master it. Even Maxwell the trader, who has been most among them, is +compelled to resort to the curious sign language common to most of the +prairie tribes. With this Henry Chatillon was perfectly acquainted. + +Approaching the village, we found the ground all around it strewn with +great piles of waste buffalo meat in incredible quantities. The lodges +were pitched in a very wide circle. They resembled those of the Dakota +in everything but cleanliness and neatness. Passing between two of them, +we entered the great circular area of the camp, and instantly hundreds +of Indians, men, women and children, came flocking out of their +habitations to look at us; at the same time, the dogs all around the +village set up a fearful baying. Our Indian guide walked toward the +lodge of the chief. Here we dismounted; and loosening the trail-ropes +from our horses’ necks, held them securely, and sat down before the +entrance, with our rifles laid across our laps. The chief came out +and shook us by the hand. He was a mean-looking fellow, very tall, +thin-visaged, and sinewy, like the rest of the nation, and with scarcely +a vestige of clothing. We had not been seated half a minute before a +multitude of Indians came crowding around us from every part of the +village, and we were shut in by a dense wall of savage faces. Some of +the Indians crouched around us on the ground; others again sat behind +them; others, stooping, looked over their heads; while many more stood +crowded behind, stretching themselves upward, and peering over each +other’s shoulders, to get a view of us. I looked in vain among this +multitude of faces to discover one manly or generous expression; all +were wolfish, sinister, and malignant, and their complexions, as well +as their features, unlike those of the Dakota, were exceedingly bad. +The chief, who sat close to the entrance, called to a squaw within the +lodge, who soon came out and placed a wooden bowl of meat before us. To +our surprise, however, no pipe was offered. Having tasted of the meat as +a matter of form, I began to open a bundle of presents--tobacco, knives, +vermilion, and other articles which I had brought with me. At this there +was a grin on every countenance in the rapacious crowd; their eyes began +to glitter, and long thin arms were eagerly stretched toward us on all +sides to receive the gifts. + +The Arapahoes set great value upon their shields, which they transmit +carefully from father to son. I wished to get one of them; and +displaying a large piece of scarlet cloth, together with some tobacco +and a knife, I offered them to any one who would bring me what I wanted. +After some delay a tolerable shield was produced. They were very anxious +to know what we meant to do with it, and Henry told them that we were +going to fight their enemies, the Pawnees. This instantly produced a +visible impression in our favor, which was increased by the distribution +of the presents. Among these was a large paper of awls, a gift +appropriate to the women; and as we were anxious to see the beauties +of the Arapahoe village Henry requested that they might be called to +receive them. A warrior gave a shout as if he were calling a pack of +dogs together. The squaws, young and old, hags of eighty and girls of +sixteen, came running with screams and laughter out of the lodges; and +as the men gave way for them they gathered round us and stretched out +their arms, grinning with delight, their native ugliness considerably +enhanced by the excitement of the moment. + +Mounting our horses, which during the whole interview we had held close +to us, we prepared to leave the Arapahoes. The crowd fell back on each +side and stood looking on. When we were half across the camp an idea +occurred to us. The Pawnees were probably in the neighborhood of the +Caches; we might tell the Arapahoes of this and instigate them to send +down a war party and cut them off, while we ourselves could remain +behind for a while and hunt the buffalo. At first thought this plan of +setting our enemies to destroy one another seemed to us a masterpiece of +policy; but we immediately recollected that should we meet the Arapahoe +warriors on the river below they might prove quite as dangerous as +the Pawnees themselves. So rejecting our plan as soon as it presented +itself, we passed out of the village on the farther side. We urged our +horses rapidly through the tall grass which rose to their necks. Several +Indians were walking through it at a distance, their heads just visible +above its waving surface. It bore a kind of seed as sweet and nutritious +as oats; and our hungry horses, in spite of whip and rein, could not +resist the temptation of snatching at this unwonted luxury as we passed +along. When about a mile from the village I turned and looked back over +the undulating ocean of grass. The sun was just set; the western sky was +all in a glow, and sharply defined against it, on the extreme verge of +the plain, stood the numerous lodges of the Arapahoe camp. + +Reaching the bank of the river, we followed it for some distance +farther, until we discerned through the twilight the white covering +of our little cart on the opposite bank. When we reached it we found +a considerable number of Indians there before us. Four or five of them +were seated in a row upon the ground, looking like so many half-starved +vultures. Tete Rouge, in his uniform, was holding a close colloquy with +another by the side of the cart. His gesticulations, his attempts +at sign-making, and the contortions of his countenance, were most +ludicrous; and finding all these of no avail, he tried to make the +Indian understand him by repeating English words very loudly and +distinctly again and again. The Indian sat with his eye fixed steadily +upon him, and in spite of the rigid immobility of his features, it was +clear at a glance that he perfectly understood his military companion’s +character and thoroughly despised him. The exhibition was more amusing +than politic, and Tete Rouge was directed to finish what he had to say +as soon as possible. Thus rebuked, he crept under the cart and sat down +there; Henry Chatillon stopped to look at him in his retirement, and +remarked in his quiet manner that an Indian would kill ten such men and +laugh all the time. + +One by one our visitors rose and stalked away. As the darkness thickened +we were saluted by dismal sounds. The wolves are incredibly numerous +in this part of the country, and the offal around the Arapahoe camp had +drawn such multitudes of them together that several hundred were howling +in concert in our immediate neighborhood. There was an island in +the river, or rather an oasis in the midst of the sands at about the +distance of a gunshot, and here they seemed gathered in the greatest +numbers. A horrible discord of low mournful wailings, mingled with +ferocious howls, arose from it incessantly for several hours after +sunset. We could distinctly see the wolves running about the prairie +within a few rods of our fire, or bounding over the sand-beds of the +river and splashing through the water. There was not the slightest +danger to be feared from them, for they are the greatest cowards on the +prairie. + +In respect to the human wolves in our neighborhood, we felt much less +at our ease. We seldom erected our tent except in bad weather, and that +night each man spread his buffalo robe upon the ground with his loaded +rifle laid at his side or clasped in his arms. Our horses were picketed +so close around us that one of them repeatedly stepped over me as I lay. +We were not in the habit of placing a guard, but every man that night +was anxious and watchful; there was little sound sleeping in camp, and +some one of the party was on his feet during the greater part of the +time. For myself, I lay alternately waking and dozing until midnight. +Tete Rouge was reposing close to the river bank, and about this time, +when half asleep and half awake, I was conscious that he shifted his +position and crept on all-fours under the cart. Soon after I fell into +a sound sleep from which I was aroused by a hand shaking me by the +shoulder. Looking up, I saw Tete Rouge stooping over me with his face +quite pale and his eyes dilated to their utmost expansion. + +“What’s the matter?” said I. + +Tete Rouge declared that as he lay on the river bank, something caught +his eye which excited his suspicions. So creeping under the cart for +safety’s sake he sat there and watched, when he saw two Indians, wrapped +in white robes, creep up the bank, seize upon two horses and lead them +off. He looked so frightened, and told his story in such a disconnected +manner, that I did not believe him, and was unwilling to alarm the +party. Still it might be true, and in that case the matter required +instant attention. There would be no time for examination, and so +directing Tete Rouge to show me which way the Indians had gone, I took +my rifle, in obedience to a thoughtless impulse, and left the camp. I +followed the river back for two or three hundred yards, listening and +looking anxiously on every side. In the dark prairie on the right I +could discern nothing to excite alarm; and in the dusky bed of the +river, a wolf was bounding along in a manner which no Indian could +imitate. I returned to the camp, and when within sight of it, saw that +the whole party was aroused. Shaw called out to me that he had counted +the horses, and that every one of them was in his place. Tete Rouge, +being examined as to what he had seen, only repeated his former story +with many asseverations, and insisted that two horses were certainly +carried off. At this Jim Gurney declared that he was crazy; Tete Rouge +indignantly denied the charge, on which Jim appealed to us. As we +declined to give our judgment on so delicate a matter, the dispute grew +hot between Tete Rouge and his accuser, until he was directed to go to +bed and not alarm the camp again if he saw the whole Arapahoe village +coming. + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE CHASE + + +The country before us was now thronged with buffalo, and a sketch of the +manner of hunting them will not be out of place. There are two methods +commonly practiced, “running” and “approaching.” The chase on horseback, +which goes by the name of “running,” is the more violent and dashing +mode of the two. Indeed, of all American wild sports, this is the +wildest. Once among the buffalo, the hunter, unless long use has made +him familiar with the situation, dashes forward in utter recklessness +and self-abandonment. He thinks of nothing, cares for nothing but +the game; his mind is stimulated to the highest pitch, yet intensely +concentrated on one object. In the midst of the flying herd, where the +uproar and the dust are thickest, it never wavers for a moment; he drops +the rein and abandons his horse to his furious career; he levels his +gun, the report sounds faint amid the thunder of the buffalo; and when +his wounded enemy leaps in vain fury upon him, his heart thrills with +a feeling like the fierce delight of the battlefield. A practiced and +skillful hunter, well mounted, will sometimes kill five or six cows in +a single chase, loading his gun again and again as his horse rushes +through the tumult. An exploit like this is quite beyond the capacities +of a novice. In attacking a small band of buffalo, or in separating a +single animal from the herd and assailing it apart from the rest, there +is less excitement and less danger. With a bold and well trained horse +the hunter may ride so close to the buffalo that as they gallop side by +side he may reach over and touch him with his hand; nor is there much +danger in this as long as the buffalo’s strength and breath continue +unabated; but when he becomes tired and can no longer run at ease, when +his tongue lolls out and foam flies from his jaws, then the hunter had +better keep at a more respectful distance; the distressed brute may turn +upon him at any instant; and especially at the moment when he fires his +gun. The wounded buffalo springs at his enemy; the horse leaps violently +aside; and then the hunter has need of a tenacious seat in the saddle, +for if he is thrown to the ground there is no hope for him. When he sees +his attack defeated the buffalo resumes his flight, but if the shot be +well directed he soon stops; for a few moments he stands still, then +totters and falls heavily upon the prairie. + +The chief difficulty in running buffalo, as it seems to me, is that of +loading the gun or pistol at full gallop. Many hunters for convenience’ +sake carry three or four bullets in the mouth; the powder is poured +down the muzzle of the piece, the bullet dropped in after it, the stock +struck hard upon the pommel of the saddle, and the work is done. The +danger of this method is obvious. Should the blow on the pommel fail to +send the bullet home, or should the latter, in the act of aiming, start +from its place and roll toward the muzzle, the gun would probably burst +in discharging. Many a shattered hand and worse casualties besides have +been the result of such an accident. To obviate it, some hunters make +use of a ramrod, usually hung by a string from the neck, but this +materially increases the difficulty of loading. The bows and arrows +which the Indians use in running buffalo have many advantages over fire +arms, and even white men occasionally employ them. + +The danger of the chase arises not so much from the onset of the wounded +animal as from the nature of the ground which the hunter must ride +over. The prairie does not always present a smooth, level, and uniform +surface; very often it is broken with hills and hollows, intersected by +ravines, and in the remoter parts studded by the stiff wild-sage bushes. +The most formidable obstructions, however, are the burrows of wild +animals, wolves, badgers, and particularly prairie dogs, with whose +holes the ground for a very great extent is frequently honeycombed. +In the blindness of the chase the hunter rushes over it unconscious of +danger; his horse, at full career, thrusts his leg deep into one of the +burrows; the bone snaps, the rider is hurled forward to the ground and +probably killed. Yet accidents in buffalo running happen less frequently +than one would suppose; in the recklessness of the chase, the hunter +enjoys all the impunity of a drunken man, and may ride in safety over +the gullies and declivities where, should he attempt to pass in his +sober senses, he would infallibly break his neck. + +The method of “approaching,” being practiced on foot, has many +advantages over that of “running”; in the former, one neither breaks +down his horse nor endangers his own life; instead of yielding to +excitement he must be cool, collected, and watchful; he must understand +the buffalo, observe the features of the country and the course of the +wind, and be well skilled, moreover, in using the rifle. The buffalo are +strange animals; sometimes they are so stupid and infatuated that a man +may walk up to them in full sight on the open prairie, and even shoot +several of their number before the rest will think it necessary to +retreat. Again at another moment they will be so shy and wary, that in +order to approach them the utmost skill, experience, and judgment are +necessary. Kit Carson, I believe, stands pre-eminent in running +buffalo; in approaching, no man living can bear away the palm from Henry +Chatillon. + +To resume the story: After Tete Rouge had alarmed the camp, no further +disturbance occurred during the night. The Arapahoes did not attempt +mischief, or if they did the wakefulness of the party deterred them +from effecting their purpose. The next day was one of activity and +excitement, for about ten o’clock the men in advance shouted the +gladdening cry of “Buffalo, buffalo!” and in the hollow of the prairie +just below us, a band of bulls were grazing. The temptation was +irresistible, and Shaw and I rode down upon them. We were badly mounted +on our traveling horses, but by hard lashing we overtook them, and +Shaw, running alongside of a bull, shot into him both balls of his +double-barreled gun. Looking round as I galloped past, I saw the bull in +his mortal fury rushing again and again upon his antagonist, whose +horse constantly leaped aside, and avoided the onset. My chase was more +protracted, but at length I ran close to the bull and killed him with +my pistols. Cutting off the tails of our victims by way of trophy, we +rejoined the party in about a quarter of an hour after we left it. +Again and again that morning rang out the same welcome cry of “Buffalo, +buffalo!” Every few moments in the broad meadows along the river, we +would see bands of bulls, who, raising their shaggy heads, would gaze in +stupid amazement at the approaching horsemen, and then breaking into a +clumsy gallop, would file off in a long line across the trail in front, +toward the rising prairie on the left. At noon, the whole plain before +us was alive with thousands of buffalo--bulls, cows, and calves--all +moving rapidly as we drew near; and far-off beyond the river the +swelling prairie was darkened with them to the very horizon. The party +was in gayer spirits than ever. We stopped for a nooning near a grove of +trees by the river side. + +“Tongues and hump ribs to-morrow,” said Shaw, looking with contempt at +the venison steaks which Delorier placed before us. Our meal finished, +we lay down under a temporary awning to sleep. A shout from Henry +Chatillon aroused us, and we saw him standing on the cartwheel +stretching his tall figure to its full height while he looked toward the +prairie beyond the river. Following the direction of his eyes we could +clearly distinguish a large dark object, like the black shadow of a +cloud, passing rapidly over swell after swell of the distant plain; +behind it followed another of similar appearance though smaller. Its +motion was more rapid, and it drew closer and closer to the first. It +was the hunters of the Arapahoe camp pursuing a band of buffalo. Shaw +and I hastily sought and saddled our best horses, and went plunging +through sand and water to the farther bank. We were too late. The +hunters had already mingled with the herd, and the work of slaughter was +nearly over. When we reached the ground we found it strewn far and +near with numberless black carcasses, while the remnants of the herd, +scattered in all directions, were flying away in terror, and the Indians +still rushing in pursuit. Many of the hunters, however, remained upon +the spot, and among the rest was our yesterday’s acquaintance, the chief +of the village. He had alighted by the side of a cow, into which he +had shot five or six arrows, and his squaw, who had followed him on +horseback to the hunt, was giving him a draught of water out of a +canteen, purchased or plundered from some volunteer soldier. Recrossing +the river we overtook the party, who were already on their way. + +We had scarcely gone a mile when an imposing spectacle presented itself. +From the river bank on the right, away over the swelling prairie on the +left, and in front as far as we could see, extended one vast host of +buffalo. The outskirts of the herd were within a quarter of a mile. In +many parts they were crowded so densely together that in the distance +their rounded backs presented a surface of uniform blackness; but +elsewhere they were more scattered, and from amid the multitude rose +little columns of dust where the buffalo were rolling on the ground. +Here and there a great confusion was perceptible, where a battle was +going forward among the bulls. We could distinctly see them rushing +against each other, and hear the clattering of their horns and their +hoarse bellowing. Shaw was riding at some distance in advance, with +Henry Chatillon; I saw him stop and draw the leather covering from his +gun. Indeed, with such a sight before us, but one thing could be thought +of. That morning I had used pistols in the chase. I had now a mind to +try the virtue of a gun. Delorier had one, and I rode up to the side of +the cart; there he sat under the white covering, biting his pipe between +his teeth and grinning with excitement. + +“Lend me your gun, Delorier,” said I. + +“Oui, monsieur, oui,” said Delorier, tugging with might and main to +stop the mule, which seemed obstinately bent on going forward. Then +everything but his moccasins disappeared as he crawled into the cart and +pulled at the gun to extricate it. + +“Is it loaded?” I asked. + +“Oui, bien charge; you’ll kill, mon bourgeois; yes, you’ll kill--c’est +un bon fusil.” + +I handed him my rifle and rode forward to Shaw. + +“Are you ready?” he asked. + +“Come on,” said I. + +“Keep down that hollow,” said Henry, “and then they won’t see you till +you get close to them.” + +The hollow was a kind of ravine very wide and shallow; it ran obliquely +toward the buffalo, and we rode at a canter along the bottom until it +became too shallow, when we bent close to our horses’ necks, and then +finding that it could no longer conceal us, came out of it and rode +directly toward the herd. It was within gunshot; before its outskirts, +numerous grizzly old bulls were scattered, holding guard over their +females. They glared at us in anger and astonishment, walked toward us +a few yards, and then turning slowly round retreated at a trot which +afterward broke into a clumsy gallop. In an instant the main body caught +the alarm. The buffalo began to crowd away from the point toward which +we were approaching, and a gap was opened in the side of the herd. We +entered it, still restraining our excited horses. Every instant the +tumult was thickening. The buffalo, pressing together in large bodies, +crowded away from us on every hand. In front and on either side we could +see dark columns and masses, half hidden by clouds of dust, rushing +along in terror and confusion, and hear the tramp and clattering of ten +thousand hoofs. That countless multitude of powerful brutes, ignorant +of their own strength, were flying in a panic from the approach of two +feeble horsemen. To remain quiet longer was impossible. + +“Take that band on the left,” said Shaw; “I’ll take these in front.” + +He sprang off, and I saw no more of him. A heavy Indian whip was +fastened by a band to my wrist; I swung it into the air and lashed +my horse’s flank with all the strength of my arm. Away she darted, +stretching close to the ground. I could see nothing but a cloud of +dust before me, but I knew that it concealed a band of many hundreds of +buffalo. In a moment I was in the midst of the cloud, half suffocated +by the dust and stunned by the trampling of the flying herd; but I was +drunk with the chase and cared for nothing but the buffalo. Very soon +a long dark mass became visible, looming through the dust; then I could +distinguish each bulky carcass, the hoofs flying out beneath, the short +tails held rigidly erect. In a moment I was so close that I could have +touched them with my gun. Suddenly, to my utter amazement, the hoofs +were jerked upward, the tails flourished in the air, and amid a cloud +of dust the buffalo seemed to sink into the earth before me. One vivid +impression of that instant remains upon my mind. I remember looking down +upon the backs of several buffalo dimly visible through the dust. We had +run unawares upon a ravine. At that moment I was not the most accurate +judge of depth and width, but when I passed it on my return, I found it +about twelve feet deep and not quite twice as wide at the bottom. It +was impossible to stop; I would have done so gladly if I could; so, half +sliding, half plunging, down went the little mare. I believe she came +down on her knees in the loose sand at the bottom; I was pitched forward +violently against her neck and nearly thrown over her head among the +buffalo, who amid dust and confusion came tumbling in all around. The +mare was on her feet in an instant and scrambling like a cat up the +opposite side. I thought for a moment that she would have fallen back +and crushed me, but with a violent effort she clambered out and gained +the hard prairie above. Glancing back I saw the huge head of a bull +clinging as it were by the forefeet at the edge of the dusty gulf. At +length I was fairly among the buffalo. They were less densely crowded +than before, and I could see nothing but bulls, who always run at the +rear of the herd. As I passed amid them they would lower their heads, +and turning as they ran, attempt to gore my horse; but as they were +already at full speed there was no force in their onset, and as Pauline +ran faster than they, they were always thrown behind her in the effort. +I soon began to distinguish cows amid the throng. One just in front of +me seemed to my liking, and I pushed close to her side. Dropping the +reins I fired, holding the muzzle of the gun within a foot of her +shoulder. Quick as lightning she sprang at Pauline; the little mare +dodged the attack, and I lost sight of the wounded animal amid the +tumultuous crowd. Immediately after I selected another, and urging +forward Pauline, shot into her both pistols in succession. For a while +I kept her in view, but in attempting to load my gun, lost sight of her +also in the confusion. Believing her to be mortally wounded and unable +to keep up with the herd, I checked my horse. The crowd rushed onward. +The dust and tumult passed away, and on the prairie, far behind the +rest, I saw a solitary buffalo galloping heavily. In a moment I and my +victim were running side by side. My firearms were all empty, and I had +in my pouch nothing but rifle bullets, too large for the pistols and +too small for the gun. I loaded the latter, however, but as often as I +leveled it to fire, the little bullets would roll out of the muzzle +and the gun returned only a faint report like a squib, as the powder +harmlessly exploded. I galloped in front of the buffalo and attempted to +turn her back; but her eyes glared, her mane bristled, and lowering her +head, she rushed at me with astonishing fierceness and activity. Again +and again I rode before her, and again and again she repeated her +furious charge. But little Pauline was in her element. She dodged her +enemy at every rush, until at length the buffalo stood still, exhausted +with her own efforts; she panted, and her tongue hung lolling from her +jaws. + +Riding to a little distance I alighted, thinking to gather a handful +of dry grass to serve the purpose of wadding, and load the gun at my +leisure. No sooner were my feet on the ground than the buffalo came +bounding in such a rage toward me that I jumped back again into the +saddle with all possible dispatch. After waiting a few minutes more, +I made an attempt to ride up and stab her with my knife; but the +experiment proved such as no wise man would repeat. At length, +bethinking me of the fringes at the seams of my buckskin pantaloons, +I jerked off a few of them, and reloading my gun, forced them down the +barrel to keep the bullet in its place; then approaching, I shot the +wounded buffalo through the heart. Sinking to her knees, she rolled over +lifeless on the prairie. To my astonishment, I found that instead of +a fat cow I had been slaughtering a stout yearling bull. No longer +wondering at the fierceness he had shown, I opened his throat and +cutting out his tongue, tied it at the back of my saddle. My mistake was +one which a more experienced eye than mine might easily make in the dust +and confusion of such a chase. + +Then for the first time I had leisure to look at the scene around me. +The prairie in front was darkened with the retreating multitude, and on +the other hand the buffalo came filing up in endless unbroken columns +from the low plains upon the river. The Arkansas was three or four miles +distant. I turned and moved slowly toward it. A long time passed before, +far down in the distance, I distinguished the white covering of the cart +and the little black specks of horsemen before and behind it. Drawing +near, I recognized Shaw’s elegant tunic, the red flannel shirt, +conspicuous far off. I overtook the party, and asked him what success he +had met with. He had assailed a fat cow, shot her with two bullets, and +mortally wounded her. But neither of us were prepared for the chase that +afternoon, and Shaw, like myself, had no spare bullets in his pouch; +so he abandoned the disabled animal to Henry Chatillon, who followed, +dispatched her with his rifle, and loaded his horse with her meat. + +We encamped close to the river. The night was dark, and as we lay down +we could hear mingled with the howling of wolves the hoarse bellowing of +the buffalo, like the ocean beating upon a distant coast. + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +THE BUFFALO CAMP + + +No one in the camp was more active than Jim Gurney, and no one half +so lazy as Ellis. Between these two there was a great antipathy. Ellis +never stirred in the morning until he was compelled to, but Jim was +always on his feet before daybreak; and this morning as usual the sound +of his voice awakened the party. + +“Get up, you booby! up with you now, you’re fit for nothing but eating +and sleeping. Stop your grumbling and come out of that buffalo robe or +I’ll pull it off for you.” + +Jim’s words were interspersed with numerous expletives, which gave them +great additional effect. Ellis drawled out something in a nasal tone +from among the folds of his buffalo robe; then slowly disengaged +himself, rose into sitting posture, stretched his long arms, yawned +hideously, and finally, raising his tall person erect, stood staring +round him to all the four quarters of the horizon. Delorier’s fire was +soon blazing, and the horses and mules, loosened from their pickets, +were feeding in the neighboring meadow. When we sat down to breakfast +the prairie was still in the dusky light of morning; and as the sun rose +we were mounted and on our way again. + +“A white buffalo!” exclaimed Munroe. + +“I’ll have that fellow,” said Shaw, “if I run my horse to death after +him.” + +He threw the cover of his gun to Delorier and galloped out upon the +prairie. + +“Stop, Mr. Shaw, stop!” called out Henry Chatillon, “you’ll run down +your horse for nothing; it’s only a white ox.” + +But Shaw was already out of hearing. The ox, who had no doubt strayed +away from some of the government wagon trains, was standing beneath some +low hills which bounded the plain in the distance. Not far from him a +band of veritable buffalo bulls were grazing; and startled at Shaw’s +approach, they all broke into a run, and went scrambling up the +hillsides to gain the high prairie above. One of them in his haste and +terror involved himself in a fatal catastrophe. Along the foot of +the hills was a narrow strip of deep marshy soil, into which the bull +plunged and hopelessly entangled himself. We all rode up to the spot. +The huge carcass was half sunk in the mud, which flowed to his very +chin, and his shaggy mane was outspread upon the surface. As we came +near the bull began to struggle with convulsive strength; he writhed +to and fro, and in the energy of his fright and desperation would lift +himself for a moment half out of the slough, while the reluctant mire +returned a sucking sound as he strained to drag his limbs from its +tenacious depths. We stimulated his exertions by getting behind him and +twisting his tail; nothing would do. There was clearly no hope for him. +After every effort his heaving sides were more deeply imbedded and the +mire almost overflowed his nostrils; he lay still at length, and looking +round at us with a furious eye, seemed to resign himself to his fate. +Ellis slowly dismounted, and deliberately leveling his boasted yager, +shot the old bull through the heart; then he lazily climbed back again +to his seat, pluming himself no doubt on having actually killed a +buffalo. That day the invincible yager drew blood for the first and last +time during the whole journey. + +The morning was a bright and gay one, and the air so clear that on the +farthest horizon the outline of the pale blue prairie was sharply drawn +against the sky. Shaw felt in the mood for hunting; he rode in advance +of the party, and before long we saw a file of bulls galloping at full +speed upon a vast green swell of the prairie at some distance in front. +Shaw came scouring along behind them, arrayed in his red shirt, which +looked very well in the distance; he gained fast on the fugitives, and +as the foremost bull was disappearing behind the summit of the swell, +we saw him in the act of assailing the hindmost; a smoke sprang from the +muzzle of his gun, and floated away before the wind like a little +white cloud; the bull turned upon him, and just then the rising ground +concealed them both from view. + +We were moving forward until about noon, when we stopped by the side of +the Arkansas. At that moment Shaw appeared riding slowly down the side +of a distant hill; his horse was tired and jaded, and when he threw +his saddle upon the ground, I observed that the tails of two bulls were +dangling behind it. No sooner were the horses turned loose to feed than +Henry, asking Munroe to go with him, took his rifle and walked quietly +away. Shaw, Tete Rouge, and I sat down by the side of the cart to +discuss the dinner which Delorier placed before us; we had scarcely +finished when we saw Munroe walking toward us along the river bank. +Henry, he said, had killed four fat cows, and had sent him back for +horses to bring in the meat. Shaw took a horse for himself and another +for Henry, and he and Munroe left the camp together. After a short +absence all three of them came back, their horses loaded with the +choicest parts of the meat; we kept two of the cows for ourselves and +gave the others to Munroe and his companions. Delorier seated himself +on the grass before the pile of meat, and worked industriously for +some time to cut it into thin broad sheets for drying. This is no easy +matter, but Delorier had all the skill of an Indian squaw. Long before +night cords of raw hide were stretched around the camp, and the meat was +hung upon them to dry in the sunshine and pure air of the prairie. +Our California companions were less successful at the work; but they +accomplished it after their own fashion, and their side of the camp was +soon garnished in the same manner as our own. + +We meant to remain at this place long enough to prepare provisions for +our journey to the frontier, which as we supposed might occupy about a +month. Had the distance been twice as great and the party ten times as +large, the unerring rifle of Henry Chatillon would have supplied +meat enough for the whole within two days; we were obliged to remain, +however, until it should be dry enough for transportation; so we erected +our tent and made the other arrangements for a permanent camp. The +California men, who had no such shelter, contented themselves with +arranging their packs on the grass around their fire. In the meantime we +had nothing to do but amuse ourselves. Our tent was within a rod of the +river, if the broad sand-beds, with a scanty stream of water coursing +here and there along their surface, deserve to be dignified with the +name of river. The vast flat plains on either side were almost on a +level with the sand-beds, and they were bounded in the distance by low, +monotonous hills, parallel to the course of the Arkansas. All was one +expanse of grass; there was no wood in view, except some trees and +stunted bushes upon two islands which rose from amid the wet sands of +the river. Yet far from being dull and tame this boundless scene was +often a wild and animated one; for twice a day, at sunrise and at noon, +the buffalo came issuing from the hills, slowly advancing in their grave +processions to drink at the river. All our amusements were too at their +expense. Except an elephant, I have seen no animal that can surpass a +buffalo bull in size and strength, and the world may be searched in vain +to find anything of a more ugly and ferocious aspect. At first sight of +him every feeling of sympathy vanishes; no man who has not experienced +it can understand with what keen relish one inflicts his death wound, +with what profound contentment of mind he beholds him fall. The cows are +much smaller and of a gentler appearance, as becomes their sex. While +in this camp we forebore to attack them, leaving to Henry Chatillon, who +could better judge their fatness and good quality, the task of killing +such as we wanted for use; but against the bulls we waged an unrelenting +war. Thousands of them might be slaughtered without causing any +detriment to the species, for their numbers greatly exceed those of the +cows; it is the hides of the latter alone which are used for purpose of +commerce and for making the lodges of the Indians; and the destruction +among them is therefore altogether disproportioned. + +Our horses were tired, and we now usually hunted on foot. The wide, flat +sand-beds of the Arkansas, as the reader will remember, lay close by +the side of our camp. While we were lying on the grass after dinner, +smoking, conversing, or laughing at Tete Rouge, one of us would look +up and observe, far out on the plains beyond the river, certain black +objects slowly approaching. He would inhale a parting whiff from the +pipe, then rising lazily, take his rifle, which leaned against the cart, +throw over his shoulder the strap of his pouch and powder-horn, and +with his moccasins in his hand walk quietly across the sand toward the +opposite side of the river. This was very easy; for though the sands +were about a quarter of a mile wide, the water was nowhere more than two +feet deep. The farther bank was about four or five feet high, and quite +perpendicular, being cut away by the water in spring. Tall grass grew +along its edge. Putting it aside with his hand, and cautiously looking +through it, the hunter can discern the huge shaggy back of the buffalo +slowly swaying to and fro, as with his clumsy swinging gait he advances +toward the water. The buffalo have regular paths by which they come down +to drink. Seeing at a glance along which of these his intended victim +is moving, the hunter crouches under the bank within fifteen or twenty +yards, it may be, of the point where the path enters the river. Here he +sits down quietly on the sand. Listening intently, he hears the heavy +monotonous tread of the approaching bull. The moment after he sees a +motion among the long weeds and grass just at the spot where the path +is channeled through the bank. An enormous black head is thrust out, +the horns just visible amid the mass of tangled mane. Half sliding, half +plunging, down comes the buffalo upon the river-bed below. He steps +out in full sight upon the sands. Just before him a runnel of water is +gliding, and he bends his head to drink. You may hear the water as it +gurgles down his capacious throat. He raises his head, and the drops +trickle from his wet beard. He stands with an air of stupid abstraction, +unconscious of the lurking danger. Noiselessly the hunter cocks his +rifle. As he sits upon the sand, his knee is raised, and his elbow rests +upon it, that he may level his heavy weapon with a steadier aim. The +stock is at his shoulder; his eye ranges along the barrel. Still he is +in no haste to fire. The bull, with slow deliberation, begins his march +over the sands to the other side. He advances his foreleg, and exposes +to view a small spot, denuded of hair, just behind the point of his +shoulder; upon this the hunter brings the sight of his rifle to bear; +lightly and delicately his finger presses upon the hair-trigger. Quick +as thought the spiteful crack of the rifle responds to his slight touch, +and instantly in the middle of the bare spot appears a small red dot. +The buffalo shivers; death has overtaken him, he cannot tell from +whence; still he does not fall, but walks heavily forward, as if nothing +had happened. Yet before he has advanced far out upon the sand, you +see him stop; he totters; his knees bend under him, and his head sinks +forward to the ground. Then his whole vast bulk sways to one side; he +rolls over on the sand, and dies with a scarcely perceptible struggle. + +Waylaying the buffalo in this manner, and shooting them as they come to +water, is the easiest and laziest method of hunting them. They may also +be approached by crawling up ravines, or behind hills, or even over the +open prairie. This is often surprisingly easy; but at other times +it requires the utmost skill of the most experienced hunter. Henry +Chatillon was a man of extraordinary strength and hardihood; but I have +seen him return to camp quite exhausted with his efforts, his limbs +scratched and wounded, and his buckskin dress stuck full of the thorns +of the prickly-pear among which he had been crawling. Sometimes he would +lay flat upon his face, and drag himself along in this position for many +rods together. + +On the second day of our stay at this place, Henry went out for an +afternoon hunt. Shaw and I remained in camp until, observing some bulls +approaching the water upon the other side of the river, we crossed over +to attack them. They were so near, however, that before we could get +under cover of the bank our appearance as we walked over the sands +alarmed them. Turning round before coming within gunshot, they began to +move off to the right in a direction parallel to the river. I climbed +up the bank and ran after them. They were walking swiftly, and before I +could come within gunshot distance they slowly wheeled about and faced +toward me. Before they had turned far enough to see me I had fallen flat +on my face. For a moment they stood and stared at the strange object +upon the grass; then turning away, again they walked on as before; and +I, rising immediately, ran once more in pursuit. Again they wheeled +about, and again I fell prostrate. Repeating this three or four times, +I came at length within a hundred yards of the fugitives, and as I +saw them turning again I sat down and leveled my rifle. The one in the +center was the largest I had ever seen. I shot him behind the shoulder. +His two companions ran off. He attempted to follow, but soon came to +a stand, and at length lay down as quietly as an ox chewing the cud. +Cautiously approaching him, I saw by his dull and jellylike eye that he +was dead. + +When I began the chase, the prairie was almost tenantless; but a great +multitude of buffalo had suddenly thronged upon it, and looking up, I +saw within fifty rods a heavy, dark column stretching to the right and +left as far as I could see. I walked toward them. My approach did not +alarm them in the least. The column itself consisted entirely of cows +and calves, but a great many old bulls were ranging about the prairie +on its flank, and as I drew near they faced toward me with such a shaggy +and ferocious look that I thought it best to proceed no farther. Indeed +I was already within close rifle-shot of the column, and I sat down on +the ground to watch their movements. Sometimes the whole would stand +still, their heads all facing one way; then they would trot forward, +as if by a common impulse, their hoofs and horns clattering together +as they moved. I soon began to hear at a distance on the left the sharp +reports of a rifle, again and again repeated; and not long after, dull +and heavy sounds succeeded, which I recognized as the familiar voice +of Shaw’s double-barreled gun. When Henry’s rifle was at work there was +always meat to be brought in. I went back across the river for a horse, +and returning, reached the spot where the hunters were standing. The +buffalo were visible on the distant prairie. The living had retreated +from the ground, but ten or twelve carcasses were scattered in various +directions. Henry, knife in hand, was stooping over a dead cow, cutting +away the best and fattest of the meat. + +When Shaw left me he had walked down for some distance under the river +bank to find another bull. At length he saw the plains covered with +the host of buffalo, and soon after heard the crack of Henry’s rifle. +Ascending the bank, he crawled through the grass, which for a rod or two +from the river was very high and rank. He had not crawled far before to +his astonishment he saw Henry standing erect upon the prairie, almost +surrounded by the buffalo. Henry was in his appropriate element. Nelson, +on the deck of the Victory, hardly felt a prouder sense of mastery than +he. Quite unconscious that any one was looking at him, he stood at the +full height of his tall, strong figure, one hand resting upon his side, +and the other arm leaning carelessly on the muzzle of his rifle. His +eyes were ranging over the singular assemblage around him. Now and then +he would select such a cow as suited him, level his rifle, and shoot her +dead; then quietly reloading, he would resume his former position. The +buffalo seemed no more to regard his presence than if he were one of +themselves; the bulls were bellowing and butting at each other, or else +rolling about in the dust. A group of buffalo would gather about the +carcass of a dead cow, snuffing at her wounds; and sometimes they would +come behind those that had not yet fallen, and endeavor to push them +from the spot. Now and then some old bull would face toward Henry with +an air of stupid amazement, but none seemed inclined to attack or fly +from him. For some time Shaw lay among the grass, looking in surprise at +this extraordinary sight; at length he crawled cautiously forward, and +spoke in a low voice to Henry, who told him to rise and come on. Still +the buffalo showed no sign of fear; they remained gathered about their +dead companions. Henry had already killed as many cows as we wanted for +use, and Shaw, kneeling behind one of the carcasses, shot five bulls +before the rest thought it necessary to disperse. + +The frequent stupidity and infatuation of the buffalo seems the more +remarkable from the contrast it offers to their wildness and wariness at +other times. Henry knew all their peculiarities; he had studied them as +a scholar studies his books, and he derived quite as much pleasure from +the occupation. The buffalo were a kind of companions to him, and, as he +said, he never felt alone when they were about him. He took great pride +in his skill in hunting. Henry was one of the most modest of men; yet, +in the simplicity and frankness of his character, it was quite clear +that he looked upon his pre-eminence in this respect as a thing too +palpable and well established ever to be disputed. But whatever may have +been his estimate of his own skill, it was rather below than above that +which others placed upon it. The only time that I ever saw a shade of +scorn darken his face was when two volunteer soldiers, who had just +killed a buffalo for the first time, undertook to instruct him as to the +best method of “approaching.” To borrow an illustration from an opposite +side of life, an Eton boy might as well have sought to enlighten Porson +on the formation of a Greek verb, or a Fleet Street shopkeeper to +instruct Chesterfield concerning a point of etiquette. Henry always +seemed to think that he had a sort of prescriptive right to the buffalo, +and to look upon them as something belonging peculiarly to himself. +Nothing excited his indignation so much as any wanton destruction +committed among the cows, and in his view shooting a calf was a cardinal +sin. + +Henry Chatillon and Tete Rouge were of the same age; that is, about +thirty. Henry was twice as large, and fully six times as strong as Tete +Rouge. Henry’s face was roughened by winds and storms; Tete Rouge’s was +bloated by sherry cobblers and brandy toddy. Henry talked of Indians and +buffalo; Tete Rouge of theaters and oyster cellars. Henry had led a life +of hardship and privation; Tete Rouge never had a whim which he would +not gratify at the first moment he was able. Henry moreover was the +most disinterested man I ever saw; while Tete Rouge, though equally +good-natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would +not have lost him on any account; he admirably served the purpose of +a jester in a feudal castle; our camp would have been lifeless without +him. For the past week he had fattened in a most amazing manner; and +indeed this was not at all surprising, since his appetite was most +inordinate. He was eating from morning till night; half the time he +would be at work cooking some private repast for himself, and he paid +a visit to the coffee-pot eight or ten times a day. His rueful and +disconsolate face became jovial and rubicund, his eyes stood out like +a lobster’s, and his spirits, which before were sunk to the depths of +despondency, were now elated in proportion; all day he was singing, +whistling, laughing, and telling stories. Being mortally afraid of Jim +Gurney, he kept close in the neighborhood of our tent. As he had seen an +abundance of low dissipated life, and had a considerable fund of +humor, his anecdotes were extremely amusing, especially since he never +hesitated to place himself in a ludicrous point of view, provided he +could raise a laugh by doing so. Tete Rouge, however, was sometimes +rather troublesome; he had an inveterate habit of pilfering provisions +at all times of the day. He set ridicule at utter defiance; and being +without a particle of self-respect, he would never have given over his +tricks, even if they had drawn upon him the scorn of the whole party. +Now and then, indeed, something worse than laughter fell to his share; +on these occasions he would exhibit much contrition, but half an hour +after we would generally observe him stealing round to the box at the +back of the cart and slyly making off with the provisions which Delorier +had laid by for supper. He was very fond of smoking; but having no +tobacco of his own, we used to provide him with as much as he wanted, a +small piece at a time. At first we gave him half a pound together, but +this experiment proved an entire failure, for he invariably lost not +only the tobacco, but the knife intrusted to him for cutting it, and a +few minutes after he would come to us with many apologies and beg for +more. + +We had been two days at this camp, and some of the meat was nearly fit +for transportation, when a storm came suddenly upon us. About sunset the +whole sky grew as black as ink, and the long grass at the river’s +edge bent and rose mournfully with the first gusts of the approaching +hurricane. Munroe and his two companions brought their guns and placed +them under cover of our tent. Having no shelter for themselves, they +built a fire of driftwood that might have defied a cataract, and wrapped +in their buffalo robes, sat on the ground around it to bide the fury of +the storm. Delorier ensconced himself under the cover of the cart. Shaw +and I, together with Henry and Tete Rouge, crowded into the little tent; +but first of all the dried meat was piled together, and well protected +by buffalo robes pinned firmly to the ground. About nine o’clock the +storm broke, amid absolute darkness; it blew a gale, and torrents of +rain roared over the boundless expanse of open prairie. Our tent was +filled with mist and spray beating through the canvas, and saturating +everything within. We could only distinguish each other at short +intervals by the dazzling flash of lightning, which displayed the whole +waste around us with its momentary glare. We had our fears for the tent; +but for an hour or two it stood fast, until at length the cap gave way +before a furious blast; the pole tore through the top, and in an instant +we were half suffocated by the cold and dripping folds of the canvas, +which fell down upon us. Seizing upon our guns, we placed them erect, in +order to lift the saturated cloth above our heads. In this disagreeable +situation, involved among wet blankets and buffalo robes, we spent +several hours of the night during which the storm would not abate for a +moment, but pelted down above our heads with merciless fury. Before +long the ground beneath us became soaked with moisture, and the water +gathered there in a pool two or three inches deep; so that for a +considerable part of the night we were partially immersed in a cold +bath. In spite of all this, Tete Rouge’s flow of spirits did not desert +him for an instant, he laughed, whistled, and sung in defiance of the +storm, and that night he paid off the long arrears of ridicule which +he owed us. While we lay in silence, enduring the infliction with what +philosophy we could muster, Tete Rouge, who was intoxicated with animal +spirits, was cracking jokes at our expense by the hour together. At +about three o’clock in the morning, “preferring the tyranny of the +open night” to such a wretched shelter, we crawled out from beneath the +fallen canvas. The wind had abated, but the rain fell steadily. The fire +of the California men still blazed amid the darkness, and we joined +them as they sat around it. We made ready some hot coffee by way of +refreshment; but when some of the party sought to replenish their cups, +it was found that Tete Rouge, having disposed of his own share, had +privately abstracted the coffee-pot and drank up the rest of the +contents out of the spout. + +In the morning, to our great joy, an unclouded sun rose upon the +prairie. We presented rather a laughable appearance, for the cold and +clammy buckskin, saturated with water, clung fast to our limbs; the +light wind and warm sunshine soon dried them again, and then we were +all incased in armor of intolerable rigidity. Roaming all day over the +prairie and shooting two or three bulls, were scarcely enough to restore +the stiffened leather to its usual pliancy. + +Besides Henry Chatillon, Shaw and I were the only hunters in the party. +Munroe this morning made an attempt to run a buffalo, but his horse +could not come up to the game. Shaw went out with him, and being better +mounted soon found himself in the midst of the herd. Seeing nothing +but cows and calves around him, he checked his horse. An old bull came +galloping on the open prairie at some distance behind, and turning, Shaw +rode across his path, leveling his gun as he passed, and shooting +him through the shoulder into the heart. The heavy bullets of Shaw’s +double-barreled gun made wild work wherever they struck. + +A great flock of buzzards were usually soaring about a few trees +that stood on the island just below our camp. Throughout the whole of +yesterday we had noticed an eagle among them; to-day he was still +there; and Tete Rouge, declaring that he would kill the bird of America, +borrowed Delorier’s gun and set out on his unpatriotic mission. As might +have been expected, the eagle suffered no great harm at his hands. He +soon returned, saying that he could not find him, but had shot a buzzard +instead. Being required to produce the bird in proof of his assertion +he said he believed he was not quite dead, but he must be hurt, from the +swiftness with which he flew off. + +“If you want,” said Tete Rouge, “I’ll go and get one of his feathers; I +knocked off plenty of them when I shot him.” + +Just opposite our camp was another island covered with bushes, and +behind it was a deep pool of water, while two or three considerable +streams course’d over the sand not far off. I was bathing at this place +in the afternoon when a white wolf, larger than the largest Newfoundland +dog, ran out from behind the point of the island, and galloped leisurely +over the sand not half a stone’s throw distant. I could plainly see his +red eyes and the bristles about his snout; he was an ugly scoundrel, +with a bushy tail, large head, and a most repulsive countenance. Having +neither rifle to shoot nor stone to pelt him with, I was looking eagerly +after some missile for his benefit, when the report of a gun came from +the camp, and the ball threw up the sand just beyond him; at this he +gave a slight jump, and stretched away so swiftly that he soon dwindled +into a mere speck on the distant sand-beds. The number of carcasses that +by this time were lying about the prairie all around us summoned the +wolves from every quarter; the spot where Shaw and Henry had hunted +together soon became their favorite resort, for here about a dozen dead +buffalo were fermenting under the hot sun. I used often to go over the +river and watch them at their meal; by lying under the bank it was easy +to get a full view of them. Three different kinds were present; there +were the white wolves and the gray wolves, both extremely large, and +besides these the small prairie wolves, not much bigger than spaniels. +They would howl and fight in a crowd around a single carcass, yet they +were so watchful, and their senses so acute, that I never was able to +crawl within a fair shooting distance; whenever I attempted it, they +would all scatter at once and glide silently away through the tall +grass. The air above this spot was always full of buzzards or black +vultures; whenever the wolves left a carcass they would descend upon +it, and cover it so densely that a rifle-bullet shot at random among +the gormandizing crowd would generally strike down two or three of them. +These birds would now be sailing by scores just about our camp, their +broad black wings seeming half transparent as they expanded them against +the bright sky. The wolves and the buzzards thickened about us with +every hour, and two or three eagles also came into the feast. I killed a +bull within rifle-shot of the camp; that night the wolves made a fearful +howling close at hand, and in the morning the carcass was completely +hollowed out by these voracious feeders. + +After we had remained four days at this camp we prepared to leave it. +We had for our own part about five hundred pounds of dried meat, and the +California men had prepared some three hundred more; this consisted +of the fattest and choicest parts of eight or nine cows, a very small +quantity only being taken from each, and the rest abandoned to the +wolves. The pack animals were laden, the horses were saddled, and the +mules harnessed to the cart. Even Tete Rouge was ready at last, and +slowly moving from the ground, we resumed our journey eastward. When +we had advanced about a mile, Shaw missed a valuable hunting knife and +turned back in search of it, thinking that he had left it at the camp. +He approached the place cautiously, fearful that Indians might be +lurking about, for a deserted camp is dangerous to return to. He saw +no enemy, but the scene was a wild and dreary one; the prairie was +overshadowed by dull, leaden clouds, for the day was dark and gloomy. +The ashes of the fires were still smoking by the river side; the grass +around them was trampled down by men and horses, and strewn with all the +litter of a camp. Our departure had been a gathering signal to the birds +and beasts of prey; Shaw assured me that literally dozens of wolves were +prowling about the smoldering fires, while multitudes were roaming over +the prairie around; they all fled as he approached, some running over +the sand-beds and some over the grassy plains. The vultures in great +clouds were soaring overhead, and the dead bull near the camp was +completely blackened by the flock that had alighted upon it; they +flapped their broad wings, and stretched upward their crested heads +and long skinny necks, fearing to remain, yet reluctant to leave their +disgusting feast. As he searched about the fires he saw the wolves +seated on the distant hills waiting for his departure. Having looked +in vain for his knife, he mounted again, and left the wolves and the +vultures to banquet freely upon the carrion of the camp. + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +DOWN THE ARKANSAS + + +In the summer of 1846 the wild and lonely banks of the Upper Arkansas +beheld for the first time the passage of an army. General Kearny, on his +march to Santa Fe, adopted this route in preference to the old trail of +the Cimarron. When we came down the main body of the troops had already +passed on; Price’s Missouri regiment, however, was still on the way, +having left the frontier much later than the rest; and about this time +we began to meet them moving along the trail, one or two companies at +a time. No men ever embarked upon a military expedition with a greater +love for the work before them than the Missourians; but if discipline +and subordination be the criterion of merit, these soldiers were +worthless indeed. Yet when their exploits have rung through all America, +it would be absurd to deny that they were excellent irregular troops. +Their victories were gained in the teeth of every established precedent +of warfare; they were owing to a singular combination of military +qualities in the men themselves. Without discipline or a spirit of +subordination, they knew how to keep their ranks and act as one man. +Doniphan’s regiment marched through New Mexico more like a band of free +companions than like the paid soldiers of a modern government. When +General Taylor complimented Doniphan on his success at Sacramento and +elsewhere, the colonel’s reply very well illustrates the relations which +subsisted between the officers and men of his command: + +“I don’t know anything of the maneuvers. The boys kept coming to me, +to let them charge; and when I saw a good opportunity, I told them they +might go. They were off like a shot, and that’s all I know about it.” + +The backwoods lawyer was better fitted to conciliate the good-will than +to command the obedience of his men. There were many serving under him, +who both from character and education could better have held command +than he. + +At the battle of Sacramento his frontiersmen fought under every possible +disadvantage. The Mexicans had chosen their own position; they were +drawn up across the valley that led to their native city of Chihuahua; +their whole front was covered by intrenchments and defended by batteries +of heavy cannon; they outnumbered the invaders five to one. An eagle +flew over the Americans, and a deep murmur rose along their lines. The +enemy’s batteries opened; long they remained under fire, but when at +length the word was given, they shouted and ran forward. In one of the +divisions, when midway to the enemy, a drunken officer ordered a halt; +the exasperated men hesitated to obey. + +“Forward, boys!” cried a private from the ranks; and the Americans, +rushing like tigers upon the enemy, bounded over the breastwork. Four +hundred Mexicans were slain upon the spot and the rest fled, scattering +over the plain like sheep. The standards, cannon, and baggage were +taken, and among the rest a wagon laden with cords, which the Mexicans, +in the fullness of their confidence, had made ready for tying the +American prisoners. + +Doniphan’s volunteers, who gained this victory, passed up with the main +army; but Price’s soldiers, whom we now met, were men from the same +neighborhood, precisely similar in character, manner, and appearance. +One forenoon, as we were descending upon a very wide meadow, where +we meant to rest for an hour or two, we saw a dark body of horsemen +approaching at a distance. In order to find water, we were obliged to +turn aside to the river bank, a full half mile from the trail. Here we +put up a kind of awning, and spreading buffalo robes on the ground, Shaw +and I sat down to smoke beneath it. + +“We are going to catch it now,” said Shaw; “look at those fellows, +there’ll be no peace for us here.” + +And in good truth about half the volunteers had straggled away from the +line of march, and were riding over the meadow toward us. + +“How are you?” said the first who came up, alighting from his horse and +throwing himself upon the ground. The rest followed close, and a score +of them soon gathered about us, some lying at full length and some +sitting on horseback. They all belonged to a company raised in St. +Louis. There were some ruffian faces among them, and some haggard with +debauchery; but on the whole they were extremely good-looking men, +superior beyond measure to the ordinary rank and file of an army. Except +that they were booted to the knees, they wore their belts and military +trappings over the ordinary dress of citizens. Besides their swords and +holster pistols, they carried slung from their saddles the excellent +Springfield carbines, loaded at the breech. They inquired the character +of our party, and were anxious to know the prospect of killing buffalo, +and the chance that their horses would stand the journey to Santa Fe. +All this was well enough, but a moment after a worse visitation came +upon us. + +“How are you, strangers? whar are you going and whar are you from?” said +a fellow, who came trotting up with an old straw hat on his head. He was +dressed in the coarsest brown homespun cloth. His face was rather sallow +from fever-and-ague, and his tall figure, though strong and sinewy was +quite thin, and had besides an angular look, which, together with his +boorish seat on horseback, gave him an appearance anything but graceful. +Plenty more of the same stamp were close behind him. Their company +was raised in one of the frontier counties, and we soon had abundant +evidence of their rustic breeding; dozens of them came crowding round, +pushing between our first visitors and staring at us with unabashed +faces. + +“Are you the captain?” asked one fellow. + +“What’s your business out here?” asked another. + +“Whar do you live when you’re at home?” said a third. + +“I reckon you’re traders,” surmised a fourth; and to crown the whole, +one of them came confidentially to my side and inquired in a low voice, +“What’s your partner’s name?” + +As each newcomer repeated the same questions, the nuisance became +intolerable. Our military visitors were soon disgusted at the concise +nature of our replies, and we could overhear them muttering curses +against us. While we sat smoking, not in the best imaginable humor, Tete +Rouge’s tongue was never idle. He never forgot his military character, +and during the whole interview he was incessantly busy among his +fellow-soldiers. At length we placed him on the ground before us, and +told him that he might play the part of spokesman for the whole. Tete +Rouge was delighted, and we soon had the satisfaction of seeing him talk +and gabble at such a rate that the torrent of questions was in a great +measure diverted from us. A little while after, to our amazement, we saw +a large cannon with four horses come lumbering up behind the crowd; and +the driver, who was perched on one of the animals, stretching his neck +so as to look over the rest of the men, called out: + +“Whar are you from, and what’s your business?” + +The captain of one of the companies was among our visitors, drawn by +the same curiosity that had attracted his men. Unless their faces belied +them, not a few in the crowd might with great advantage have changed +places with their commander. + +“Well, men,” said he, lazily rising from the ground where he had been +lounging, “it’s getting late, I reckon we had better be moving.” + +“I shan’t start yet anyhow,” said one fellow, who was lying half asleep +with his head resting on his arm. + +“Don’t be in a hurry, captain,” added the lieutenant. + +“Well, have it your own way, we’ll wait a while longer,” replied the +obsequious commander. + +At length however our visitors went straggling away as they had come, +and we, to our great relief, were left alone again. + +No one can deny the intrepid bravery of these men, their intelligence +and the bold frankness of their character, free from all that is mean +and sordid. Yet for the moment the extreme roughness of their manners +half inclines one to forget their heroic qualities. Most of them seem +without the least perception of delicacy or propriety, though among them +individuals may be found in whose manners there is a plain courtesy, +while their features bespeak a gallant spirit equal to any enterprise. + +No one was more relieved than Delorier by the departure of the +volunteers; for dinner was getting colder every moment. He spread a +well-whitened buffalo hide upon the grass, placed in the middle the +juicy hump of a fat cow, ranged around it the tin plates and cups, +and then acquainted us that all was ready. Tete Rouge, with his usual +alacrity on such occasions, was the first to take his seat. In his +former capacity of steamboat clerk, he had learned to prefix the +honorary MISTER to everybody’s name, whether of high or low degree; so +Jim Gurney was Mr. Gurney, Henry was Mr. Henry, and even Delorier, for +the first time in his life, heard himself addressed as Mr. Delorier. +This did not prevent his conceiving a violent enmity against Tete Rouge, +who, in his futile though praiseworthy attempts to make himself +useful used always to intermeddle with cooking the dinners. Delorier’s +disposition knew no medium between smiles and sunshine and a downright +tornado of wrath; he said nothing to Tete Rouge, but his wrongs rankled +in his breast. Tete Rouge had taken his place at dinner; it was his +happiest moment; he sat enveloped in the old buffalo coat, sleeves +turned up in preparation for the work, and his short legs crossed on the +grass before him; he had a cup of coffee by his side and his knife ready +in his hand and while he looked upon the fat hump ribs, his eyes dilated +with anticipation. Delorier sat just opposite to him, and the rest of us +by this time had taken our seats. + +“How is this, Delorier? You haven’t given us bread enough.” + +At this Delorier’s placid face flew instantly into a paroxysm of +contortions. He grinned with wrath, chattered, gesticulated, and hurled +forth a volley of incoherent words in broken English at the astonished +Tete Rouge. It was just possible to make out that he was accusing him +of having stolen and eaten four large cakes which had been laid by for +dinner. Tete Rouge, utterly confounded at this sudden attack, stared at +Delorier for a moment in dumb amazement, with mouth and eyes wide open. +At last he found speech, and protested that the accusation was false; +and that he could not conceive how he had offended Mr. Delorier, or +provoked him to use such ungentlemanly expressions. The tempest of words +raged with such fury that nothing else could be heard. But Tete Rouge, +from his greater command of English, had a manifest advantage over +Delorier, who after sputtering and grimacing for a while, found his +words quite inadequate to the expression of his wrath. He jumped up +and vanished, jerking out between his teeth one furious sacre enfant de +grace, a Canadian title of honor, made doubly emphatic by being usually +applied together with a cut of the whip to refractory mules and horses. + +The next morning we saw an old buffalo escorting his cow with two small +calves over the prairie. Close behind came four or five large white +wolves, sneaking stealthily through the long meadow-grass, and watching +for the moment when one of the children should chance to lag behind his +parents. The old bull kept well on his guard, and faced about now and +then to keep the prowling ruffians at a distance. + +As we approached our nooning place, we saw five or six buffalo standing +at the very summit of a tall bluff. Trotting forward to the spot where +we meant to stop, I flung off my saddle and turned my horse loose. By +making a circuit under cover of some rising ground, I reached the foot +of the bluff unnoticed, and climbed up its steep side. Lying under the +brow of the declivity, I prepared to fire at the buffalo, who stood on +the flat surface about not five yards distant. Perhaps I was too hasty, +for the gleaming rifle-barrel leveled over the edge caught their notice; +they turned and ran. Close as they were, it was impossible to kill them +when in that position, and stepping upon the summit I pursued them over +the high arid tableland. It was extremely rugged and broken; a great +sandy ravine was channeled through it, with smaller ravines entering on +each side like tributary streams. The buffalo scattered, and I soon lost +sight of most of them as they scuttled away through the sandy chasms; a +bull and a cow alone kept in view. For a while they ran along the edge +of the great ravine, appearing and disappearing as they dived into some +chasm and again emerged from it. At last they stretched out upon the +broad prairie, a plain nearly flat and almost devoid of verdure, for +every short grass-blade was dried and shriveled by the glaring sun. Now +and then the old bull would face toward me; whenever he did so I fell +to the ground and lay motionless. In this manner I chased them for about +two miles, until at length I heard in front a deep hoarse bellowing. A +moment after a band of about a hundred bulls, before hidden by a slight +swell of the plain, came at once into view. The fugitives ran toward +them. Instead of mingling with the band, as I expected, they passed +directly through, and continued their flight. At this I gave up the +chase, and kneeling down, crawled to within gunshot of the bulls, and +with panting breath and trickling brow sat down on the ground to watch +them; my presence did not disturb them in the least. They were not +feeding, for, indeed, there was nothing to eat; but they seemed to +have chosen the parched and scorching desert as the scene of their +amusements. Some were rolling on the ground amid a cloud of dust; +others, with a hoarse rumbling bellow, were butting their large heads +together, while many stood motionless, as if quite inanimate. Except +their monstrous growth of tangled grizzly mane, they had no hair; for +their old coat had fallen off in the spring, and their new one had not +as yet appeared. Sometimes an old bull would step forward, and gaze at +me with a grim and stupid countenance; then he would turn and butt his +next neighbor; then he would lie down and roll over in the dirt, kicking +his hoofs in the air. When satisfied with this amusement he would jerk +his head and shoulders upward, and resting on his forelegs stare at me +in this position, half blinded by his mane, and his face covered with +dirt; then up he would spring upon all-fours, and shake his dusty sides; +turning half round, he would stand with his beard touching the ground, +in an attitude of profound abstraction, as if reflecting on his puerile +conduct. “You are too ugly to live,” thought I; and aiming at the +ugliest, I shot three of them in succession. The rest were not at all +discomposed at this; they kept on bellowing and butting and rolling +on the ground as before. Henry Chatillon always cautioned us to keep +perfectly quiet in the presence of a wounded buffalo, for any movement +is apt to excite him to make an attack; so I sat still upon the ground, +loading and firing with as little motion as possible. While I was +thus employed, a spectator made his appearance; a little antelope came +running up with remarkable gentleness to within fifty yards; and there +it stood, its slender neck arched, its small horns thrown back, and its +large dark eyes gazing on me with a look of eager curiosity. By the side +of the shaggy and brutish monsters before me, it seemed like some lovely +young girl wandering near a den of robbers or a nest of bearded pirates. +The buffalo looked uglier than ever. “Here goes for another of you,” + thought I, feeling in my pouch for a percussion cap. Not a percussion +cap was there. My good rifle was useless as an old iron bar. One of the +wounded bulls had not yet fallen, and I waited for some time, hoping +every moment that his strength would fail him. He still stood firm, +looking grimly at me, and disregarding Henry’s advice I rose and walked +away. Many of the bulls turned and looked at me, but the wounded brute +made no attack. I soon came upon a deep ravine which would give me +shelter in case of emergency; so I turned round and threw a stone at +the bulls. They received it with the utmost indifference. Feeling myself +insulted at their refusal to be frightened, I swung my hat, shouted, and +made a show of running toward them; at this they crowded together and +galloped off, leaving their dead and wounded upon the field. As I moved +toward the camp I saw the last survivor totter and fall dead. My speed +in returning was wonderfully quickened by the reflection that the +Pawnees were abroad, and that I was defenseless in case of meeting with +an enemy. I saw no living thing, however, except two or three squalid +old bulls scrambling among the sand-hills that flanked the great ravine. +When I reached camp the party was nearly ready for the afternoon move. + +We encamped that evening at a short distance from the river bank. About +midnight, as we all lay asleep on the ground, the man nearest to me +gently reaching out his hand, touched my shoulder, and cautioned me at +the same time not to move. It was bright starlight. Opening my eyes and +slightly turning I saw a large white wolf moving stealthily around the +embers of our fire, with his nose close to the ground. Disengaging my +hand from the blanket, I drew the cover from my rifle, which lay close +at my side; the motion alarmed the wolf, and with long leaps he bounded +out of the camp. Jumping up, I fired after him when he was about thirty +yards distant; the melancholy hum of the bullet sounded far away through +the night. At the sharp report, so suddenly breaking upon the stillness, +all the men sprang up. + +“You’ve killed him,” said one of them. + +“No, I haven’t,” said I; “there he goes, running along the river. + +“Then there’s two of them. Don’t you see that one lying out yonder?” + +We went to it, and instead of a dead white wolf found the bleached skull +of a buffalo. I had missed my mark, and what was worse, had grossly +violated a standing law of the prairie. When in a dangerous part of +the country, it is considered highly imprudent to fire a gun after +encamping, lest the report should reach the ears of the Indians. + +The horses were saddled in the morning, and the last man had lighted his +pipe at the dying ashes of the fire. The beauty of the day enlivened us +all. Even Ellis felt its influence, and occasionally made a remark as we +rode along, and Jim Gurney told endless stories of his cruisings in the +United States service. The buffalo were abundant, and at length a large +band of them went running up the hills on the left. + +“Do you see them buffalo?” said Ellis, “now I’ll bet any man I’ll go and +kill one with my yager.” + +And leaving his horse to follow on with the party, he strode up the hill +after them. Henry looked at us with his peculiar humorous expression, +and proposed that we should follow Ellis to see how he would kill a fat +cow. As soon as he was out of sight we rode up the hill after him, and +waited behind a little ridge till we heard the report of the unfailing +yager. Mounting to the top, we saw Ellis clutching his favorite weapon +with both hands, and staring after the buffalo, who one and all were +galloping off at full speed. As we descended the hill we saw the party +straggling along the trail below. When we joined them, another scene +of amateur hunting awaited us. I forgot to say that when we met the +volunteers Tete Rouge had obtained a horse from one of them, in exchange +for his mule, whom he feared and detested. The horse he christened +James. James, though not worth so much as the mule, was a large and +strong animal. Tete Rouge was very proud of his new acquisition, and +suddenly became ambitious to run a buffalo with him. At his request, +I lent him my pistols, though not without great misgivings, since +when Tete Rouge hunted buffalo the pursuer was in more danger than the +pursued. He hung the holsters at his saddle bow; and now, as we passed +along, a band of bulls left their grazing in the meadow and galloped in +a long file across the trail in front. + +“Now’s your chance, Tete; come, let’s see you kill a bull.” Thus urged, +the hunter cried, “Get up!” and James, obedient to the signal, cantered +deliberately forward at an abominably uneasy gait. Tete Rouge, as we +contemplated him from behind; made a most remarkable figure. He still +wore the old buffalo coat; his blanket, which was tied in a loose bundle +behind his saddle, went jolting from one side to the other, and a large +tin canteen half full of water, which hung from his pommel, was jerked +about his leg in a manner which greatly embarrassed him. + +“Let out your horse, man; lay on your whip!” we called out to him. +The buffalo were getting farther off at every instant. James, being +ambitious to mend his pace, tugged hard at the rein, and one of his +rider’s boots escaped from the stirrup. + +“Woa! I say, woa!” cried Tete Rouge, in great perturbation, and after +much effort James’ progress was arrested. The hunter came trotting back +to the party, disgusted with buffalo running, and he was received with +overwhelming congratulations. + +“Too good a chance to lose,” said Shaw, pointing to another band of +bulls on the left. We lashed our horses and galloped upon them. Shaw +killed one with each barrel of his gun. I separated another from the +herd and shot him. The small bullet of the rifled pistol, striking too +far back, did not immediately take effect, and the bull ran on with +unabated speed. Again and again I snapped the remaining pistol at him. I +primed it afresh three or four times, and each time it missed fire, for +the touch-hole was clogged up. Returning it to the holster, I began to +load the empty pistol, still galloping by the side of the bull. By this +time he was grown desperate. The foam flew from his jaws and his tongue +lolled out. Before the pistol was loaded he sprang upon me, and followed +up his attack with a furious rush. The only alternative was to run +away or be killed. I took to flight, and the bull, bristling with fury, +pursued me closely. The pistol was soon ready, and then looking back, +I saw his head five or six yards behind my horse’s tail. To fire at it +would be useless, for a bullet flattens against the adamantine skull of +a buffalo bull. Inclining my body to the left, I turned my horse in +that direction as sharply as his speed would permit. The bull, rushing +blindly on with great force and weight, did not turn so quickly. As I +looked back, his neck and shoulders were exposed to view; turning in the +saddle, I shot a bullet through them obliquely into his vitals. He +gave over the chase and soon fell to the ground. An English tourist +represents a situation like this as one of imminent danger; this is +a great mistake; the bull never pursues long, and the horse must +be wretched indeed that cannot keep out of his way for two or three +minutes. + +We were now come to a part of the country where we were bound in common +prudence to use every possible precaution. We mounted guard at night, +each man standing in his turn; and no one ever slept without drawing +his rifle close to his side or folding it with him in his blanket. One +morning our vigilance was stimulated by our finding traces of a large +Comanche encampment. Fortunately for us, however, it had been abandoned +nearly a week. On the next evening we found the ashes of a recent fire, +which gave us at the time some uneasiness. At length we reached the +Caches, a place of dangerous repute; and it had a most dangerous +appearance, consisting of sand-hills everywhere broken by ravines and +deep chasms. Here we found the grave of Swan, killed at this place, +probably by the Pawnees, two or three weeks before. His remains, more +than once violated by the Indians and the wolves, were suffered at +length to remain undisturbed in their wild burial place. + +For several days we met detached companies of Price’s regiment. Horses +would often break loose at night from their camps. One afternoon we +picked up three of these stragglers quietly grazing along the river. +After we came to camp that evening, Jim Gurney brought news that more of +them were in sight. It was nearly dark, and a cold, drizzling rain had +set in; but we all turned out, and after an hour’s chase nine horses +were caught and brought in. One of them was equipped with saddle and +bridle; pistols were hanging at the pommel of the saddle, a carbine was +slung at its side, and a blanket rolled up behind it. In the morning, +glorying in our valuable prize, we resumed our journey, and our +cavalcade presented a much more imposing appearance than ever before. We +kept on till the afternoon, when, far behind, three horsemen appeared +on the horizon. Coming on at a hand-gallop, they soon overtook us, and +claimed all the horses as belonging to themselves and others of their +company. They were of course given up, very much to the mortification of +Ellis and Jim Gurney. + +Our own horses now showed signs of fatigue, and we resolved to give them +half a day’s rest. We stopped at noon at a grassy spot by the river. +After dinner Shaw and Henry went out to hunt; and while the men lounged +about the camp, I lay down to read in the shadow of the cart. Looking +up, I saw a bull grazing alone on the prairie more than a mile distant. +I was tired of reading, and taking my rifle I walked toward him. As +I came near, I crawled upon the ground until I approached to within a +hundred yards; here I sat down upon the grass and waited till he should +turn himself into a proper position to receive his death-wound. He was +a grim old veteran. His loves and his battles were over for that season, +and now, gaunt and war-worn, he had withdrawn from the herd to graze by +himself and recruit his exhausted strength. He was miserably emaciated; +his mane was all in tatters; his hide was bare and rough as an +elephant’s, and covered with dried patches of the mud in which he had +been wallowing. He showed all his ribs whenever he moved. He looked like +some grizzly old ruffian grown gray in blood and violence, and scowling +on all the world from his misanthropic seclusion. The old savage looked +up when I first approached, and gave me a fierce stare; then he fell +to grazing again with an air of contemptuous indifference. The moment +after, as if suddenly recollecting himself, he threw up his head, faced +quickly about, and to my amazement came at a rapid trot directly toward +me. I was strongly impelled to get up and run, but this would have been +very dangerous. Sitting quite still I aimed, as he came on, at the +thin part of the skull above the nose. After he had passed over about +three-quarters of the distance between us, I was on the point of firing, +when, to my great satisfaction, he stopped short. I had full opportunity +of studying his countenance; his whole front was covered with a huge +mass of coarse matted hair, which hung so low that nothing but his two +forefeet were visible beneath it; his short thick horns were blunted and +split to the very roots in his various battles, and across his nose and +forehead were two or three large white scars, which gave him a grim and +at the same time a whimsical appearance. It seemed to me that he stood +there motionless for a full quarter of an hour, looking at me through +the tangled locks of his mane. For my part, I remained as quiet as he, +and looked quite as hard; I felt greatly inclined to come to term with +him. “My friend,” thought I, “if you’ll let me off, I’ll let you off.” + At length he seemed to have abandoned any hostile design. Very slowly +and deliberately he began to turn about; little by little his side came +into view, all be-plastered with mud. It was a tempting sight. I forgot +my prudent intentions, and fired my rifle; a pistol would have served at +that distance. Round spun old bull like a top, and away he galloped +over the prairie. He ran some distance, and even ascended a considerable +hill, before he lay down and died. After shooting another bull among the +hills, I went back to camp. + +At noon, on the 14th of September, a very large Santa Fe caravan came +up. The plain was covered with the long files of their white-topped +wagons, the close black carriages in which the traders travel and sleep, +large droves of animals, and men on horseback and on foot. They all +stopped on the meadow near us. Our diminutive cart and handful of men +made but an insignificant figure by the side of their wide and bustling +camp. Tete Rouge went over to visit them, and soon came back with half +a dozen biscuits in one hand and a bottle of brandy in the other. I +inquired where he got them. “Oh,” said Tete Rouge, “I know some of the +traders. Dr. Dobbs is there besides.” I asked who Dr. Dobbs might be. +“One of our St. Louis doctors,” replied Tete Rouge. For two days past +I had been severely attacked by the same disorder which had so greatly +reduced my strength when at the mountains; at this time I was suffering +not a little from the sudden pain and weakness which it occasioned. +Tete Rouge, in answer to my inquiries, declared that Dr. Dobbs was +a physician of the first standing. Without at all believing him, I +resolved to consult this eminent practitioner. Walking over to the camp, +I found him lying sound asleep under one of the wagons. He offered in +his own person but an indifferent specimen of his skill, for it was five +months since I had seen so cadaverous a face. + +His hat had fallen off, and his yellow hair was all in disorder; one of +his arms supplied the place of a pillow; his pantaloons were wrinkled +halfway up to his knees, and he was covered with little bits of grass +and straw, upon which he had rolled in his uneasy slumber. A Mexican +stood near, and I made him a sign that he should touch the doctor. Up +sprang the learned Dobbs, and, sitting upright, rubbed his eyes and +looked about him in great bewilderment. I regretted the necessity of +disturbing him, and said I had come to ask professional advice. “Your +system, sir, is in a disordered state,” said he solemnly, after a short +examination. + +I inquired what might be the particular species of disorder. + +“Evidently a morbid action of the liver,” replied the medical man; “I +will give you a prescription.” + +Repairing to the back of one of the covered wagons, he scrambled in; for +a moment I could see nothing of him but his boots. At length he produced +a box which he had extracted from some dark recess within, and opening +it, he presented me with a folded paper of some size. “What is it?” said +I. “Calomel,” said the doctor. + +Under the circumstances I would have taken almost anything. There was +not enough to do me much harm, and it might possibly do good; so at camp +that night I took the poison instead of supper. + +That camp is worthy of notice. The traders warned us not to follow the +main trail along the river, “unless,” as one of them observed, “you want +to have your throats cut!” The river at this place makes a bend; and +a smaller trail, known as the Ridge-path, leads directly across the +prairie from point to point, a distance of sixty or seventy miles. + +We followed this trail, and after traveling seven or eight miles, we +came to a small stream, where we encamped. Our position was not chosen +with much forethought or military skill. The water was in a deep hollow, +with steep, high banks; on the grassy bottom of this hollow we picketed +our horses, while we ourselves encamped upon the barren prairie just +above. The opportunity was admirable either for driving off our horses +or attacking us. After dark, as Tete Rouge was sitting at supper, we +observed him pointing with a face of speechless horror over the shoulder +of Henry, who was opposite to him. Aloof amid the darkness appeared +a gigantic black apparition; solemnly swaying to and fro, it advanced +steadily upon us. Henry, half vexed and half amused, jumped up, spread +out his arms, and shouted. The invader was an old buffalo bull, who with +characteristic stupidity, was walking directly into camp. It cost some +shouting and swinging of hats before we could bring him first to a halt +and then to a rapid retreat. + +That night the moon was full and bright; but as the black clouds chased +rapidly over it, we were at one moment in light and at the next in +darkness. As the evening advanced, a thunderstorm came up; it struck us +with such violence that the tent would have been blown over if we had +not interposed the cart to break the force of the wind. At length it +subsided to a steady rain. I lay awake through nearly the whole night, +listening to its dull patter upon the canvas above. The moisture, which +filled the tent and trickled from everything in it, did not add to the +comfort of the situation. About twelve o’clock Shaw went out to stand +guard amid the rain and pitch darkness. Munroe, the most vigilant as +well as one of the bravest among us, was also on the alert. When about +two hours had passed, Shaw came silently in, and touching Henry, called +him in a low quick voice to come out. “What is it?” I asked. “Indians, +I believe,” whispered Shaw; “but lie still; I’ll call you if there’s a +fight.” + +He and Henry went out together. I took the cover from my rifle, put a +fresh percussion cap upon it, and then, being in much pain, lay down +again. In about five minutes Shaw came in again. “All right,” he said, +as he lay down to sleep. Henry was now standing guard in his place. He +told me in the morning the particulars of the alarm. Munroe’ s watchful +eye discovered some dark objects down in the hollow, among the horses, +like men creeping on all fours. Lying flat on their faces, he and Shaw +crawled to the edge of the bank, and were soon convinced that what they +saw were Indians. Shaw silently withdrew to call Henry, and they all +lay watching in the same position. Henry’s eye is of the best on +the prairie. He detected after a while the true nature of the moving +objects; they were nothing but wolves creeping among the horses. + +It is very singular that when picketed near a camp horses seldom show +any fear of such an intrusion. The wolves appear to have no other object +than that of gnawing the trail-ropes of raw hide by which the animals +are secured. Several times in the course of the journey my horse’s +trail-rope was bitten in two by these nocturnal visitors. + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +THE SETTLEMENTS + + +The next day was extremely hot, and we rode from morning till night +without seeing a tree or a bush or a drop of water. Our horses and mules +suffered much more than we, but as sunset approached they pricked up +their ears and mended their pace. Water was not far off. When we came to +the descent of the broad shallowy valley where it lay, an unlooked-for +sight awaited us. The stream glistened at the bottom, and along its +banks were pitched a multitude of tents, while hundreds of cattle were +feeding over the meadows. Bodies of troops, both horse and foot, and +long trains of wagons with men, women, and children, were moving over +the opposite ridge and descending the broad declivity in front. These +were the Mormon battalion in the service of government, together with a +considerable number of Missouri volunteers. The Mormons were to be +paid off in California, and they were allowed to bring with them +their families and property. There was something very striking in the +half-military, half-patriarchal appearance of these armed fanatics, thus +on their way with their wives and children, to found, if might be, a +Mormon empire in California. We were much more astonished than pleased +at the sight before us. In order to find an unoccupied camping ground, +we were obliged to pass a quarter of a mile up the stream, and here we +were soon beset by a swarm of Mormons and Missourians. The United States +officer in command of the whole came also to visit us, and remained some +time at our camp. + +In the morning the country was covered with mist. We were always early +risers, but before we were ready the voices of men driving in the cattle +sounded all around us. As we passed above their camp, we saw through the +obscurity that the tents were falling and the ranks rapidly forming; and +mingled with the cries of women and children, the rolling of the Mormon +drums and the clear blast of their trumpets sounded through the mist. + +From that time to the journey’s end, we met almost every day long trains +of government wagons, laden with stores for the troops and crawling at a +snail’s pace toward Santa Fe. + +Tete Rouge had a mortal antipathy to danger, but on a foraging +expedition one evening, he achieved an adventure more perilous than +had yet befallen any man in the party. The night after we left the +Ridge-path we encamped close to the river. At sunset we saw a train of +wagons encamping on the trail about three miles off; and though we +saw them distinctly, our little cart, as it afterward proved, entirely +escaped their view. For some days Tete Rouge had been longing +eagerly after a dram of whisky. So, resolving to improve the present +opportunity, he mounted his horse James, slung his canteen over his +shoulder, and set forth in search of his favorite liquor. Some hours +passed without his returning. We thought that he was lost, or perhaps +that some stray Indian had snapped him up. While the rest fell asleep I +remained on guard. Late at night a tremulous voice saluted me from the +darkness, and Tete Rouge and James soon became visible, advancing toward +the camp. Tete Rouge was in much agitation and big with some important +tidings. Sitting down on the shaft of the cart, he told the following +story: + +When he left the camp he had no idea, he said, how late it was. By the +time he approached the wagoners it was perfectly dark; and as he saw +them all sitting around their fires within the circle of wagons, their +guns laid by their sides, he thought he might as well give warning of +his approach, in order to prevent a disagreeable mistake. Raising his +voice to the highest pitch, he screamed out in prolonged accents, “Camp, +ahoy!” This eccentric salutation produced anything but the desired +result. Hearing such hideous sounds proceeding from the outer darkness, +the wagoners thought that the whole Pawnee nation were about to break +in and take their scalps. Up they sprang staring with terror. Each man +snatched his gun; some stood behind the wagons; some threw themselves +flat on the ground, and in an instant twenty cocked muskets were leveled +full at the horrified Tete Rouge, who just then began to be visible +through the darkness. + +“Thar they come,” cried the master wagoner, “fire, fire! shoot that +feller.” + +“No, no!” screamed Tete Rouge, in an ecstasy of fright; “don’t fire, +don’t! I’m a friend, I’m an American citizen!” + +“You’re a friend, be you?” cried a gruff voice from the wagons; “then +what are you yelling out thar for, like a wild Injun. Come along up here +if you’re a man.” + +“Keep your guns p’inted at him,” added the master wagoner, “maybe he’s a +decoy, like.” + +Tete Rouge in utter bewilderment made his approach, with the gaping +muzzles of the muskets still before his eyes. He succeeded at last in +explaining his character and situation, and the Missourians admitted him +into camp. He got no whisky; but as he represented himself as a +great invalid, and suffering much from coarse fare, they made up a +contribution for him of rice, biscuit, and sugar from their own rations. + +In the morning at breakfast, Tete Rouge once more related this story. +We hardly knew how much of it to believe, though after some +cross-questioning we failed to discover any flaw in the narrative. +Passing by the wagoner’s camp, they confirmed Tete Rouge’s account in +every particular. + +“I wouldn’t have been in that feller’s place,” said one of them, “for +the biggest heap of money in Missouri.” + +To Tete Rouge’s great wrath they expressed a firm conviction that he +was crazy. We left them after giving them the advice not to trouble +themselves about war-whoops in future, since they would be apt to feel +an Indian’s arrow before they heard his voice. + +A day or two after, we had an adventure of another sort with a party of +wagoners. Henry and I rode forward to hunt. After that day there was +no probability that we should meet with buffalo, and we were anxious to +kill one for the sake of fresh meat. They were so wild that we hunted +all the morning in vain, but at noon as we approached Cow Creek we saw +a large band feeding near its margin. Cow Creek is densely lined with +trees which intercept the view beyond, and it runs, as we afterward +found, at the bottom of a deep trench. We approached by riding along the +bottom of a ravine. When we were near enough, I held the horses while +Henry crept toward the buffalo. I saw him take his seat within shooting +distance, prepare his rifle, and look about to select his victim. The +death of a fat cow was certain, when suddenly a great smoke arose from +the bed of the Creek with a rattling volley of musketry. A score of +long-legged Missourians leaped out from among the trees and ran after +the buffalo, who one and all took to their heels and vanished. These +fellows had crawled up the bed of the Creek to within a hundred yards of +the buffalo. Never was there a fairer chance for a shot. They were good +marksmen; all cracked away at once, and yet not a buffalo fell. In fact, +the animal is so tenacious of life that it requires no little knowledge +of anatomy to kill it, and it is very seldom that a novice succeeds +in his first attempt at approaching. The balked Missourians were +excessively mortified, especially when Henry told them if they had kept +quiet he would have killed meat enough in ten minutes to feed their +whole party. Our friends, who were at no great distance, hearing such a +formidable fusillade, thought the Indians had fired the volley for our +benefit. Shaw came galloping on to reconnoiter and learn if we were yet +in the land of the living. + +At Cow Creek we found the very welcome novelty of ripe grapes and plums, +which grew there in abundance. At the Little Arkansas, not much farther +on, we saw the last buffalo, a miserable old bull, roaming over the +prairie alone and melancholy. + +From this time forward the character of the country was changing every +day. We had left behind us the great arid deserts, meagerly covered +by the tufted buffalo grass, with its pale green hue, and its short +shriveled blades. The plains before us were carpeted with rich and +verdant herbage sprinkled with flowers. In place of buffalo we found +plenty of prairie hens, and we bagged them by dozens without leaving the +trail. In three or four days we saw before us the broad woods and the +emerald meadows of Council Grove, a scene of striking luxuriance and +beauty. It seemed like a new sensation as we rode beneath the resounding +archs of these noble woods. The trees were ash, oak, elm, maple, +and hickory, their mighty limbs deeply overshadowing the path, while +enormous grape vines were entwined among them, purple with fruit. The +shouts of our scattered party, and now and then a report of a rifle, +rang amid the breathing stillness of the forest. We rode forth again +with regret into the broad light of the open prairie. Little more than a +hundred miles now separated us from the frontier settlements. The whole +intervening country was a succession of verdant prairies, rising in +broad swells and relieved by trees clustering like an oasis around some +spring, or following the course of a stream along some fertile hollow. +These are the prairies of the poet and the novelist. We had left danger +behind us. Nothing was to be feared from the Indians of this region, the +Sacs and Foxes, the Kansas and the Osages. We had met with signal +good fortune. Although for five months we had been traveling with an +insufficient force through a country where we were at any moment liable +to depredation, not a single animal had been stolen from us, and our +only loss had been one old mule bitten to death by a rattlesnake. Three +weeks after we reached the frontier the Pawnees and the Comanches began +a regular series of hostilities on the Arkansas trail, killing men and +driving off horses. They attacked, without exception, every party, large +or small, that passed during the next six months. + +Diamond Spring, Rock Creek, Elder Grove, and other camping places +besides, were passed all in quick succession. At Rock Creek we found a +train of government provision wagons, under the charge of an emaciated +old man in his seventy-first year. Some restless American devil had +driven him into the wilderness at a time when he should have been seated +at his fireside with his grandchildren on his knees. I am convinced +that he never returned; he was complaining that night of a disease, the +wasting effects of which upon a younger and stronger man, I myself had +proved from severe experience. Long ere this no doubt the wolves have +howled their moonlight carnival over the old man’s attenuated remains. + +Not long after we came to a small trail leading to Fort Leavenworth, +distant but one day’s journey. Tete Rouge here took leave of us. He was +anxious to go to the fort in order to receive payment for his valuable +military services. So he and his horse James, after bidding an +affectionate farewell, set out together, taking with them as much +provision as they could conveniently carry, including a large quantity +of brown sugar. On a cheerless rainy evening we came to our last +encamping ground. Some pigs belonging to a Shawnee farmer were grunting +and rooting at the edge of the grove. + +“I wonder how fresh pork tastes,” murmured one of the party, and more +than one voice murmured in response. The fiat went forth, “That pig +must die,” and a rifle was leveled forthwith at the countenance of the +plumpest porker. Just then a wagon train, with some twenty Missourians, +came out from among the trees. The marksman suspended his aim, deeming +it inexpedient under the circumstances to consummate the deed of blood. + +In the morning we made our toilet as well as circumstances would permit, +and that is saying but very little. In spite of the dreary rain of +yesterday, there never was a brighter and gayer autumnal morning than +that on which we returned to the settlements. We were passing through +the country of the half-civilized Shawanoes. It was a beautiful +alternation of fertile plains and groves, whose foliage was just tinged +with the hues of autumn, while close beneath them rested the neat +log-houses of the Indian farmers. Every field and meadow bespoke the +exuberant fertility of the soil. The maize stood rustling in the wind, +matured and dry, its shining yellow ears thrust out between the gaping +husks. Squashes and enormous yellow pumpkins lay basking in the sun in +the midst of their brown and shriveled leaves. Robins and blackbirds +flew about the fences; and everything in short betokened our near +approach to home and civilization. The forests that border on the +Missouri soon rose before us, and we entered the wide tract of shrubbery +which forms their outskirts. We had passed the same road on our outward +journey in the spring, but its aspect was totally changed. The young +wild apple trees, then flushed with their fragrant blossoms, were now +hung thickly with ruddy fruit. Tall grass flourished by the roadside in +place of the tender shoots just peeping from the warm and oozy soil. The +vines were laden with dark purple grapes, and the slender twigs of the +maple, then tasseled with their clusters of small red flowers, now +hung out a gorgeous display of leaves stained by the frost with burning +crimson. On every side we saw the tokens of maturity and decay where +all had before been fresh and beautiful. We entered the forest, and +ourselves and our horses were checkered, as we passed along, by the +bright spots of sunlight that fell between the opening boughs. On either +side the dark rich masses of foliage almost excluded the sun, though +here and there its rays could find their way down, striking through the +broad leaves and lighting them with a pure transparent green. Squirrels +barked at us from the trees; coveys of young partridges ran rustling +over the leaves below, and the golden oriole, the blue jay, and the +flaming red-bird darted among the shadowy branches. We hailed these +sights and sounds of beauty by no means with an unmingled pleasure. +Many and powerful as were the attractions which drew us toward the +settlements, we looked back even at that moment with an eager longing +toward the wilderness of prairies and mountains behind us. For myself I +had suffered more that summer from illness than ever before in my life, +and yet to this hour I cannot recall those savage scenes and savage men +without a strong desire again to visit them. + +At length, for the first time during about half a year, we saw the roof +of a white man’s dwelling between the opening trees. A few moments after +we were riding over the miserable log bridge that leads into the center +of Westport. Westport had beheld strange scenes, but a rougher looking +troop than ours, with our worn equipments and broken-down horses, was +never seen even there. We passed the well-remembered tavern, Boone’s +grocery and old Vogel’s dram shop, and encamped on a meadow beyond. +Here we were soon visited by a number of people who came to purchase our +horses and equipage. This matter disposed of, we hired a wagon and drove +on to Kansas Landing. Here we were again received under the hospitable +roof of our old friend Colonel Chick, and seated on his porch we looked +down once more on the eddies of the Missouri. + +Delorier made his appearance in the morning, strangely transformed by +the assistance of a hat, a coat, and a razor. His little log-house was +among the woods not far off. It seemed he had meditated giving a ball +on the occasion of his return, and had consulted Henry Chatillon as to +whether it would do to invite his bourgeois. Henry expressed his entire +conviction that we would not take it amiss, and the invitation was now +proffered, accordingly, Delorier adding as a special inducement +that Antoine Lejeunesse was to play the fiddle. We told him we would +certainly come, but before the evening arrived a steamboat, which came +down from Fort Leavenworth, prevented our being present at the expected +festivities. Delorier was on the rock at the landing place, waiting to +take leave of us. + +“Adieu! mes bourgeois; adieu! adieu!” he cried out as the boat pulled +off; “when you go another time to de Rocky Montagnes I will go with you; +yes, I will go!” + +He accompanied this patronizing assurance by jumping about swinging his +hat, and grinning from ear to ear. As the boat rounded a distant point, +the last object that met our eyes was Delorier still lifting his hat and +skipping about the rock. We had taken leave of Munroe and Jim Gurney at +Westport, and Henry Chatillon went down in the boat with us. + +The passage to St. Louis occupied eight days, during about a third of +which we were fast aground on sand-bars. We passed the steamer Amelia +crowded with a roaring crew of disbanded volunteers, swearing, drinking, +gambling, and fighting. At length one evening we reached the crowded +levee of St. Louis. Repairing to the Planters’ House, we caused diligent +search to be made for our trunks, which after some time were discovered +stowed away in the farthest corner of the storeroom. In the morning we +hardly recognized each other; a frock of broadcloth had supplanted the +frock of buckskin; well-fitted pantaloons took the place of the Indian +leggings, and polished boots were substituted for the gaudy moccasins. + +After we had been several days at St. Louis we heard news of Tete Rouge. +He had contrived to reach Fort Leavenworth, where he had found the +paymaster and received his money. As a boat was just ready to start +for St. Louis, he went on board and engaged his passage. This done, he +immediately got drunk on shore, and the boat went off without him. It +was some days before another opportunity occurred, and meanwhile the +sutler’s stores furnished him with abundant means of keeping up his +spirits. Another steamboat came at last, the clerk of which happened to +be a friend of his, and by the advice of some charitable person on shore +he persuaded Tete Rouge to remain on board, intending to detain him +there until the boat should leave the fort. At first Tete Rouge was +well contented with this arrangement, but on applying for a dram, the +barkeeper, at the clerk’s instigation, refused to let him have it. +Finding them both inflexible in spite of his entreaties, he became +desperate and made his escape from the boat. The clerk found him after +a long search in one of the barracks; a circle of dragoons stood +contemplating him as he lay on the floor, maudlin drunk and crying +dismally. With the help of one of them the clerk pushed him on board, +and our informant, who came down in the same boat, declares that he +remained in great despondency during the whole passage. As we left St. +Louis soon after his arrival, we did not see the worthless, good-natured +little vagabond again. + +On the evening before our departure Henry Chatillon came to our rooms +at the Planters’ House to take leave of us. No one who met him in the +streets of St. Louis would have taken him for a hunter fresh from the +Rocky Mountains. He was very neatly and simply dressed in a suit of dark +cloth; for although, since his sixteenth year, he had scarcely been for +a month together among the abodes of men, he had a native good taste and +a sense of propriety which always led him to pay great attention to his +personal appearance. His tall athletic figure, with its easy flexible +motions, appeared to advantage in his present dress; and his fine face, +though roughened by a thousand storms, was not at all out of keeping +with it. We took leave of him with much regret; and unless his changing +features, as he shook us by the hand, belied him, the feeling on his +part was no less than on ours. Shaw had given him a horse at Westport. +My rifle, which he had always been fond of using, as it was an excellent +piece, much better than his own, is now in his hands, and perhaps +at this moment its sharp voice is startling the echoes of the Rocky +Mountains. On the next morning we left town, and after a fortnight of +railroads and steamboat we saw once more the familiar features of home. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg’s The Oregon Trail, by Francis Parkman, Jr. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1015 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1016-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1016-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..281e9d2b --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1016-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1774 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1016 *** + +On the Improvement of the Understanding + +(Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect) + + +by + +Baruch Spinoza + +[Benedict de Spinoza] + + +Translated by R. H. M. Elwes + + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS: + + + 1 On the Improvement of the Understanding + 3 Of the ordinary objects of men's desires + 12 Of the true and final good + 17 Certain rules of life + 19 Of the four modes of perception + 25 Of the best mode of perception + 33 Of the instruments of the intellect, or true ideas + 43 Answers to objections + + +First part of method: + + 50 Distinction of true ideas from fictitious ideas + 64 And from false ideas + 77 Of doubt + 81 Of memory and forgetfulness + 86 Mental hindrances from words--and from the popular confusion + of ready imagination with distinct understanding. + + +Second part of method: + + 91 Its object, the acquisition of clear and distinct ideas + 94 Its means, good definitions + Conditions of definition + 107 How to define understanding + + +---------------------------------------------------------------------- + +[Notice to the Reader.] + +(This notice to the reader was written by the editors of the +Opera Postuma in 1677. Taken from Curley, Note 3, at end) + + +*This Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect etc., which we +give you here, kind reader, in its unfinished [that is, defective] +state, was written by the author many years ago now. He always +intended to finish it. But hindered by other occupations, and +finally snatched away by death, he was unable to bring it to the +desired conclusion. But since it contains many excellent and useful +things, which--we have no doubt--will be of great benefit to +anyone sincerely seeking the truth, we did not wish to deprive you +of them. And so that you would be aware of, and find less difficult +to excuse, the many things that are still obscure, rough, and +unpolished, we wished to warn you of them. Farewell.* + + + + + +[1] (1) After experience had taught me that all the usual +surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none +of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either +good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, +I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real +good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the +mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there +might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would +enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. + +[2] (1) I say "I finally resolved," for at first sight it seemed +unwise willingly to lose hold on what was sure for the sake of +something then uncertain. (2) I could see the benefits which are +acquired through fame and riches, and that I should be obliged to +abandon the quest of such objects, if I seriously devoted myself +to the search for something different and new. (3) I perceived +that if true happiness chanced to be placed in the former I should +necessarily miss it; while if, on the other hand, it were not so +placed, and I gave them my whole attention, I should equally fail. + +[3] (1) I therefore debated whether it would not be possible to +arrive at the new principle, or at any rate at a certainty +concerning its existence, without changing the conduct and usual +plan of my life; with this end in view I made many efforts, +in vain. (2) For the ordinary surroundings of life which are +esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest +good, may be classed under the three heads--Riches, Fame, and +the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed +that it has little power to reflect on any different good. + +[4] (1) By sensual pleasure the mind is enthralled to the extent +of quiescence, as if the supreme good were actually attained, so +that it is quite incapable of thinking of any other object; when +such pleasure has been gratified it is followed by extreme +melancholy, whereby the mind, though not enthralled, is disturbed +and dulled. (2) The pursuit of honors and riches is likewise very +absorbing, especially if such objects be sought simply for their +own sake, [a] inasmuch as they are then supposed to constitute the +highest good. + +[5] (1) In the case of fame the mind is still more absorbed, for fame +is conceived as always good for its own sake, and as the ultimate end +to which all actions are directed. (2) Further, the attainment of +riches and fame is not followed as in the case of sensual pleasures by +repentance, but, the more we acquire, the greater is our delight, and, +consequently, the more are we incited to increase both the one and the +other; on the other hand, if our hopes happen to be frustrated we are +plunged into the deepest sadness. (3) Fame has the further drawback +that it compels its votaries to order their lives according to the +opinions of their fellow-men, shunning what they usually shun, and +seeking what they usually seek. + +[6] (1) When I saw that all these ordinary objects of desire would +be obstacles in the way of a search for something different and new--nay, +that they were so opposed thereto, that either they or it would +have to be abandoned, I was forced to inquire which would prove the +most useful to me: for, as I say, I seemed to be willingly losing +hold on a sure good for the sake of something uncertain. (6:2) However, +after I had reflected on the matter, I came in the first place to the +conclusion that by abandoning the ordinary objects of pursuit, and +betaking myself to a new quest, I should be leaving a good, uncertain +by reason of its own nature, as may be gathered from what has been +said, for the sake of a good not uncertain in its nature (for I sought +for a fixed good), but only in the possibility of its attainment. + +[7] (1) Further reflection convinced me that if I could really get +to the root of the matter I should be leaving certain evils for a +certain good. (2) I thus perceived that I was in a state of great +peril, and I compelled myself to seek with all my strength for a +remedy, however uncertain it might be; as a sick man struggling with +a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be upon him +unless a remedy be found, is compelled to seek a remedy with all his +strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein. (7:3) All the +objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends +to preserve our being, but even act as hindrances, causing the death +not seldom of those who possess them, [b] and always of those who +are possessed by them. + +[8] (1) There are many examples of men who have suffered persecution +even to death for the sake of their riches, and of men who in pursuit +of wealth have exposed themselves to so many dangers, that they have +paid away their life as a penalty for their folly. (2) Examples are +no less numerous of men, who have endured the utmost wretchedness for +the sake of gaining or preserving their reputation. (3) Lastly, +are innumerable cases of men, who have hastened their death through +over-indulgence in sensual pleasure. + +[9] (1) All these evils seem to have arisen from the fact, that +happiness or unhappiness is made wholly dependent on the quality of the +object which we love. (2) When a thing is not loved, no quarrels will +arise concerning it--no sadness will be felt if it perishes--no envy if +it is possessed by another--no fear, no hatred, in short no disturbances +of the mind. (3) All these arise from the love of what is perishable, +such as the objects already mentioned. + +[10] (1) But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the +mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness, +wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all our +strength. (2) Yet it was not at random that I used the words, +"If I could go to the root of the matter," for, though what I have +urged was perfectly clear to my mind, I could not forthwith lay +aside all love of riches, sensual enjoyment, and fame. + +[11] (1) One thing was evident, namely, that while my mind was +employed with these thoughts it turned away from its former objects +of desire, and seriously considered the search for a new principle; +this state of things was a great comfort to me, for I perceived +that the evils were not such as to resist all remedies. (11:2) Although +these intervals were at first rare, and of very short duration, yet +afterwards, as the true good became more and more discernible to me, +they became more frequent and more lasting; especially after I had +recognized that the acquisition of wealth, sensual pleasure, or fame, +is only a hindrance, so long as they are sought as ends not as means; +if they be sought as means, they will be under restraint, and, far +from being hindrances, will further not a little the end for which +they are sought, as I will show in due time. + +[12] (1) I will here only briefly state what I mean by true good, +and also what is the nature of the highest good. (2) In order that +this may be rightly understood, we must bear in mind that the terms +good and evil are only applied relatively, so that the same thing +may be called both good and bad according to the relations in view, +in the same way as it may be called perfect or imperfect. +(3) Nothing regarded in its own nature can be called perfect or +imperfect; especially when we are aware that all things which come +to pass, come to pass according to the eternal order and fixed +laws of nature. + +[13] (1) However, human weakness cannot attain to this order in its +own thoughts, but meanwhile man conceives a human character much more +stable than his own, and sees that there is no reason why he should +not himself acquire such a character. (2) Thus he is led to seek +for means which will bring him to this pitch of perfection, and +calls everything which will serve as such means a true good. +(13:3) The chief good is that he should arrive, together with other +individuals if possible, at the possession of the aforesaid +character. (4) What that character is we shall show in due time, +namely, that it is the knowledge of the union existing being +the mind and the whole of nature. [c] + +[14] (1) This, then, is the end for which I strive, to attain to +such a character myself, and to endeavor that many should attain to +it with me. (2) In other words, it is part of my happiness to lend +a helping hand, that many others may understand even as I do, so +that their understanding and desire may entirely agree with my own. +(3) In order to bring this about, it is necessary to understand as +much of nature as will enable us to attain to the aforesaid character, +and also to form a social order such as is most conducive to the +attainment of this character by the greatest number with the least +difficulty and danger. + +[15] (1) We must seek the assistance of Moral Philosophy [d] and +the Theory of Education; further, as health is no insignificant means +for attaining our end, we must also include the whole science of +Medicine, and, as many difficult things are by contrivance rendered +easy, and we can in this way gain much time and convenience, the +science of Mechanics must in no way be despised. + +[16] (1) But before all things, a means must be devised for +improving the understanding and purifying it, as far as may be at +the outset, so that it may apprehend things without error, and in +the best possible way. (2) Thus it is apparent to everyone that I +wish to direct all science to one end [e] and aim, so that we may +attain to the supreme human perfection which we have named; and, +therefore, whatsoever in the sciences does not serve to promote +our object will have to be rejected as useless. (3) To sum up the +matter in a word, all our actions and thoughts must be directed to +this one end. + +[17] (1) Yet, as it is necessary that while we are endeavoring to +attain our purpose, and bring the understanding into the right path +we should carry on our life, we are compelled first of all to lay +down certain rules of life as provisionally good, to wit the +following:-- + +I. (2) To speak in a manner intelligible to the multitude, and to + comply with every general custom that does not hinder the + attainment of our purpose. (3) For we can gain from the multitude + no small advantages, provided that we strive to accommodate + ourselves to its understanding as far as possible: moreover, + we shall in this way gain a friendly audience for the reception + of the truth. + +II. (17:4) To indulge ourselves with pleasures only in so far as they + are necessary for preserving health. + +III. (5) Lastly, to endeavor to obtain only sufficient money or other + commodities to enable us to preserve our life and health, and to + follow such general customs as are consistent with our purpose. + +[18] (1) Having laid down these preliminary rules, I will betake +myself to the first and most important task, namely, the amendment +of the understanding, and the rendering it capable of understanding +things in the manner necessary for attaining our end. (2) In order +to bring this about, the natural order demands that I should here +recapitulate all the modes of perception, which I have hitherto +employed for affirming or denying anything with certainty, so that +I may choose the best, and at the same time begin to know my own +powers and the nature which I wish to perfect. + +[19] (1) Reflection shows that all modes of perception or knowledge +may be reduced to four:-- + +I. (2) Perception arising from hearsay or from some sign which + everyone may name as he please. + +II. (3) Perception arising from mere experience--that is, form + experience not yet classified by the intellect, and only so called + because the given event has happened to take place, and we have no + contradictory fact to set against it, so that it therefore remains + unassailed in our minds. + +III. (19:4) Perception arising when the essence of one thing is inferred + from another thing, but not adequately; this comes when [f] from some + effect we gather its cause, or when it is inferred from some general + proposition that some property is always present. + +IV. (5) Lastly, there is the perception arising when a thing is + perceived solely through its essence, or through the knowledge + of its proximate cause. + +[20] (1) All these kinds of perception I will illustrate by examples. +(2) By hearsay I know the day of my birth, my parentage, and other +matters about which I have never felt any doubt. (3) By mere +experience I know that I shall die, for this I can affirm from +having seen that others like myself have died, though all did not +live for the same period, or die by the same disease. (4) I know +by mere experience that oil has the property of feeding fire, and +water of extinguishing it. (5) In the same way I know that a dog +is a barking animal, man a rational animal, and in fact nearly all +the practical knowledge of life. + +[21] (1) We deduce one thing from another as follows: when we +clearly perceive that we feel a certain body and no other, we +thence clearly infer that the mind is united [g] to the body, +and that their union is the cause of the given sensation; but +we cannot thence absolutely understand [h] the nature of the +sensation and the union. (2) Or, after I have become acquainted +with the nature of vision, and know that it has the property of +making one and the same thing appear smaller when far off than +when near, I can infer that the sun is larger than it appears, +and can draw other conclusions of the same kind. + +[22] (1) Lastly, a thing may be perceived solely through its essence; +when, from the fact of knowing something, I know what it is to know +that thing, or when, from knowing the essence of the mind, I know +that it is united to the body. (2) By the same kind of knowledge +we know that two and three make five, or that two lines each parallel +to a third, are parallel to one another, &c. (3) The things which I +have been able to know by this kind of knowledge are as yet very few. + +[23] (1) In order that the whole matter may be put in a clearer +light, I will make use of a single illustration as follows. +(2) Three numbers are given--it is required to find a fourth, +which shall be to the third as the second is to the first. +(23:3) Tradesmen will at once tell us that they know what is required +to find the fourth number, for they have not yet forgotten the rule +which was given to them arbitrarily without proof by their masters; +others construct a universal axiom from their experience with simple +numbers, where the fourth number is self-evident, as in the case of +2, 4, 3, 6; here it is evident that if the second number be +multiplied by the third, and the product divided by the first, +the quotient is 6; when they see that by this process the number +is produced which they knew beforehand to be the proportional, +they infer that the process always holds good for finding a fourth +number proportional. + +[24] (1) Mathematicians, however, know by the proof of the nineteenth +proposition of the seventh book of Euclid, what numbers are +proportionals, namely, from the nature and property of proportion +it follows that the product of the first and fourth will be equal +to the product of the second and third: still they do not see the +adequate proportionality of the given numbers, or, if they do see it, +they see it not by virtue of Euclid's proposition, but intuitively, +without going through any process. + +[25] (1) In order that from these modes of perception the best may +be selected, it is well that we should briefly enumerate the means +necessary for attaining our end. + +I. (2) To have an exact knowledge of our nature which we desire to + perfect, and to know as much as is needful of nature in general. + +II. To collect in this way the differences, the agreements, and the + oppositions of things. + +III. To learn thus exactly how far they can or cannot be modified. + +IV. To compare this result with the nature and power of man. + (4) We shall thus discern the highest degree of perfection + to which man is capable of attaining. + +[26] (1) We shall then be in a position to see which mode of +perception we ought to choose. (2) As to the first mode, it is +evident that from hearsay our knowledge must always be uncertain, +and, moreover, can give us no insight into the essence of a thing, +as is manifest in our illustration; now one can only arrive at +knowledge of a thing through knowledge of its essence, as will +hereafter appear. (3) We may, therefore clearly conclude that +the certainty arising from hearsay cannot be scientific in its +character. (4) For simple hearsay cannot affect anyone whose +understanding does not, so to speak, meet it half way. + +[27] (1) The second mode of perception [i] cannot be said to +give us the idea of the proportion of which we are in search. +(2) Moreover its results are very uncertain and indefinite, +for we shall never discover anything in natural phenomena by its +means, except accidental properties, which are never clearly +understood, unless the essence of the things in question be +known first. (3) Wherefore this mode also must be rejected. + +[28] (1) Of the third mode of perception we may say in a manner +that it gives us the idea of the thing sought, and that it +us to draw conclusions without risk of error; yet it is not by +itself sufficient to put us in possession of the perfection we +aim at. + +[29] (1) The fourth mode alone apprehends the adequate essence of +a thing without danger of error. (2) This mode, therefore, must be +the one which we chiefly employ. (3) How, then, should we avail +ourselves of it so as to gain the fourth kind of knowledge with +the least delay concerning things previously unknown? (4) I will +proceed to explain. + +[30] (1) Now that we know what kind of knowledge is necessary for +us, we must indicate the way and the method whereby we may gain +the said knowledge concerning the things needful to be known. +(2) In order to accomplish this, we must first take care not to +commit ourselves to a search, going back to infinity--that is, +in order to discover the best method of finding truth, there is +no need of another method to discover such method; nor of a third +method for discovering the second, and so on to infinity. (3) By +such proceedings, we should never arrive at the knowledge of the +truth, or, indeed, at any knowledge at all. (30:4) The matter stands +on the same footing as the making of material tools, which might +be argued about in a similar way. (5) For, in order to work iron, +a hammer is needed, and the hammer cannot be forthcoming unless +it has been made; but, in order to make it, there was need +of another hammer and other tools, and so on to infinity. +(6) We might thus vainly endeavor to prove that men have no +power of working iron. + +[31] (1) But as men at first made use of the instruments supplied +by nature to accomplish very easy pieces of workmanship, laboriously +and imperfectly, and then, when these were finished, wrought other +things more difficult with less labour and greater perfection; +and so gradually mounted from the simplest operations to the making +of tools, and from the making of tools to the making of more complex +tools, and fresh feats of workmanship, till they arrived at making, +complicated mechanisms which they now possess. (31:2) So, in like +manner, the intellect, by its native strength, [k], makes for itself +intellectual instruments, whereby it acquires strength for performing +other intellectual operations, [l], and from these operations +again fresh instruments, or the power of pushing its investigations +further, and thus gradually proceeds till it reaches the summit +of wisdom. + +[32] (1) That this is the path pursued by the understanding may be +readily seen, when we understand the nature of the method for +finding out the truth, and of the natural instruments so necessary +complex instruments, and for the progress of investigation. I thus +proceed with my demonstration. + +[33] (1) A true idea, [m], (for we possess a true idea) is something +different from its correlate (ideatum); thus a circle is different +from the idea of a circle. (2) The idea of a circle is not something +having a circumference and a center, as a circle has; nor is the idea +of a body that body itself. (3) Now, as it is something different +from its correlate, it is capable of being understood through itself; +in other words, the idea, in so far as its actual essence (essentia +formalis) is concerned, may be the subject of another subjective +essence (essentia objectiva). [33note1] (4) And, again, this second +subjective essence will, regarded in itself, be something real, +capable of being understood; and so on, indefinitely. + +[34] (1) For instance, the man Peter is something real; the true +idea of Peter is the reality of Peter represented subjectively, +and is in itself something real, and quite distinct from the +actual Peter. (2) Now, as this true idea of Peter is in itself +something real, and has its own individual existence, it will +also be capable of being understood--that is, of being the +subject of another idea, which will contain by representation +(objective) all that the idea of Peter contains actually +(formaliter). (3) And, again, this idea of the idea of Peter +has its own individuality, which may become the subject of yet +another idea; and so on, indefinitely. (4) This everyone may +make trial of for himself, by reflecting that he knows what +Peter is, and also knows that he knows, and further knows that +he knows that he knows, &c. (34:5) Hence it is plain that, in +order to understand the actual Peter, it is not necessary first +to understand the idea of Peter, and still less the idea of +the idea of Peter. (6) This is the same as saying that, in order +to know, there is no need to know that we know, much less to +know that we know that we know. (7) This is no more necessary +than to know the nature of a circle before knowing the nature of +a triangle. [n]. (8) But, with these ideas, the contrary is the +case: for, in order to know that I know, I must first know. + +[35] (1) Hence it is clear that certainty is nothing else than +the subjective essence of a thing: in other words, the mode in +which we perceive an actual reality is certainty. (2) Further, +it is also evident that, for the certitude of truth, no further +sign is necessary beyond the possession of a true idea: for, +as I have shown, it is not necessary to know that we know that +we know. (3) Hence, again, it is clear that no one can know +the nature of the highest certainty, unless he possesses an +adequate idea, or the subjective essence of a thing: +certainty is identical with such subjective essence. + +[36] (1) Thus, as the truth needs no sign--it being to possess +the subjective essence of things, or, in other words, the ideas +of them, in order that all doubts may be removed--it follows +that the true method does not consist in seeking for the signs +of truth after the acquisition of the idea, but that the true +method teaches us the order in which we should seek for truth +itself, [o] or the subjective essences of things, or ideas, +for all these expressions are synonymous. + +[37] (1) Again, method must necessarily be concerned with +reasoning or understanding--I mean, method is not identical +with reasoning in the search for causes, still less is it +the comprehension of the causes of things: it is the +discernment of a true idea, by distinguishing it from other +perceptions, and by investigating its nature, in order that +we may so train our mind that it may, by a given standard, +comprehend whatsoever is intelligible, by laying down +certain rules as aids, and by avoiding useless mental +exertion. + +[38] (1) Whence we may gather that method is nothing else +than reflective knowledge, or the idea of an idea; and that +as there can be no idea of an idea--unless an idea exists +previously,--there can be no method without a pre-existent +idea. (2) Therefore, that will be a good method which +shows us how the mind should be directed, according to the +standard of the given true idea. + +(38:3) Again, seeing that the ratio existing between two +ideas the same as the ratio between the actual realities +corresponding to those ideas, it follows that the reflective +knowledge which has for its object the most perfect being is +more excellent than reflective knowledge concerning other +objects--in other words, that method will be most perfect +which affords the standard of the given idea of the most +perfect being whereby we may direct our mind. + +[39] (1) We thus easily understand how, in proportion as it +acquires new ideas, the mind simultaneously acquires fresh +instruments for pursuing its inquiries further. (2) For we +may gather from what has been said, that a true idea must +necessarily first of all exist in us as a natural instrument; +and that when this idea is apprehended by the mind, it enables +us to understand the difference existing between itself and +all other perceptions. (3) In this, one part of the method +consists. + +(39:4) Now it is clear that the mind apprehends itself better +in proportion as it understands a greater number of natural +objects; it follows, therefore, that this portion of the method +will be more perfect in proportion as the mind attains to the +comprehension of a greater number of objects, and that it will +be absolutely perfect when the mind gains a knowledge of the +absolutely perfect being, or becomes conscious thereof. + +[40] (1) Again, the more things the mind knows, the better does +it understand its own strength and the order of nature; by +increased self-knowledge, it can direct itself more easily, and +lay down rules for its own guidance; and, by increased knowledge +of nature, it can more easily avoid what is useless. (2) And +this is the sum total of method, as we have already stated. + +[41] (1) We may add that the idea in the world of thought is in +the same case as its correlate in the world of reality. (2) If, +therefore, there be anything in nature which is without connection +with any other thing, and if we assign to it a subjective essence, +which would in every way correspond to the objective reality, +the subjective essence would have no connection, [p] with any +other ideas--in other words, we could not draw any conclusions +with regard to it. (41:3) On the other hand, those things which are +connected with others--as all things that exist in nature--will +be understood by the mind, and their subjective essences will +maintain the same mutual relations as their objective realities--that +is to say, we shall infer from these ideas other ideas, which +will in turn be connected with others, and thus our instruments +for proceeding with our investigation will increase. (4) This is +what we were endeavoring to prove. + +[42] (1) Further, from what has just been said--namely, that an +idea must, in all respects, correspond to its correlate in the +world of reality,--it is evident that, in order to reproduce in +every respect the faithful image of nature, our mind must deduce +all its ideas from the idea which represents the origin and source +of the whole of nature, so that it may itself become the source +of other ideas. + +[43] (1) It may, perhaps, provoke astonishment that, after having +said that the good method is that which teaches us to direct our +mind according to the standard of the given true idea, we should +prove our point by reasoning, which would seem to indicate that it +is not self-evident. (2) We may, therefore, be questioned as to +the validity of our reasoning. (3) If our reasoning be sound, we +must take as a starting-point a true idea. (4) Now, to be certain +that our starting-point is really a true idea, we need proof. +(5) This first course of reasoning must be supported by a second, +the second by a third, and so on to infinity. + +[44] (1) To this I make answer that, if by some happy chance anyone +had adopted this method in his investigations of nature--that is, +if he had acquired new ideas in the proper order, according to the +standard of the original true idea, he would never have doubted [q] +of the truth of his knowledge, inasmuch as truth, as we have shown, +makes itself manifest, and all things would flow, as it were, +spontaneously towards him. (44:2) But as this never, or rarely, +happens, I have been forced so to arrange my proceedings, that we +may acquire by reflection and forethought what we cannot acquire +by chance, and that it may at the same time appear that, for +proving the truth, and for valid reasoning, we need no other means +than the truth and valid reasoning themselves: for by valid +reasoning I have established valid reasoning, and, in like measure, +I seek still to establish it. + +[45] (1) Moreover, this is the order of thinking adopted by men +in their inward meditations. (2) The reasons for its rare employment +in investigations of nature are to be found in current misconceptions, +whereof we shall examine the causes hereafter in our philosophy. +(3) Moreover, it demands, as we shall show, a keen and accurate +discernment. (4) Lastly, it is hindered by the conditions of human +life, which are, as we have already pointed out, extremely changeable. +(5) There are also other obstacles, which we will not here inquire into. + + +[46] (1) If anyone asks why I have not at the starting-point set forth +all the truths of nature in their due order, inasmuch as truth is +self-evident, I reply by warning him not to reject as false any +paradoxes he may find here, but to take the trouble to reflect on +the chain of reasoning by which they are supported; he will then +be no longer in doubt that we have attained to the truth. +(2) This is why I have as above. + +[47] (1) If there yet remains some sceptic, who doubts of our +primary truth, and of all deductions we make, taking such truth +as our standard, he must either be arguing in bad faith, or we +must confess that there are men in complete mental blindness +either innate or due to misconceptions--that is, to some external +influence. (2) Such persons are not conscious of themselves. +(3) If they affirm or doubt anything, they know not that they +affirm or doubt: they say that they know nothing, and they say +that they are ignorant of the very fact of their knowing nothing. +(4) Even this they do not affirm absolutely, they are afraid of +confessing that they exist, so long as they know nothing; +in fact, they ought to remain dumb, for fear of haply supposing +which should smack of truth. + +[48] (1) Lastly, with such persons, one should not speak of +sciences: for, in what relates to life and conduct, they are +compelled by necessity to suppose that they exist, and seek +their own advantage, and often affirm and deny, even with an +oath. (2) If they deny, grant, or gainsay, they know not that +they deny, grant, or gainsay, so that they ought to be +regarded as automata, utterly devoid of intelligence. + +[49] (1) Let us now return to our proposition. (2) Up to the present, +we have, first, defined the end to which we desire to direct all our +thoughts; secondly, we have determined the mode of perception best +adapted to aid us in attaining our perfection; thirdly, we have +discovered the way which our mind should take, in order to make a good +beginning--namely, that it should use every true idea as a standard in +pursuing its inquiries according to fixed rules. (49:3) Now, in order +that it may thus proceed, our method must furnish us, first, with a +means of distinguishing a true idea from all other perceptions, and +enabling the mind to avoid the latter; secondly, with rules for +perceiving unknown things according to the standard of the true idea; +thirdly, with an order which enables us to avoid useless labor. +(49:4) When we became acquainted with this method, we saw that, +fourthly, it would be perfect when we had attained to the idea of the +absolutely perfect Being. (5) This is an observation which should be +made at the outset, in order that we may arrive at the knowledge of +such a being more quickly. + +[50] (1) Let us then make a beginning with the first part of the method, +which is, as we have said, to distinguish and separate the true idea +from other perceptions, and to keep the mind from confusing with true +ideas those which are false, fictitious, and doubtful. (2) I intend to +dwell on this point at length, partly to keep a distinction so necessary +before the reader's mind, and also because there are some who doubt of +true ideas, through not having attended to the distinction between a true +perception and all others. (3) Such persons are like men who, while they +are awake, doubt not that they are awake, but afterwards in a dream, as +often happens, thinking that they are surely awake, and then finding that +they were in error, become doubtful even of being awake. (4) This state +of mind arises through neglect of the distinction between sleeping and +waking. + +[51] (1) Meanwhile, I give warning that I shall not here give +essence of every perception, and explain it through its proximate +cause. (2) Such work lies in the province of philosophy. (3) I shall +confine myself to what concerns method--that is, to the character of +fictitious, false and doubtful perceptions, and the means of freeing +ourselves therefrom. (4) Let us then first inquire into the nature of +a fictitious idea. + +[52] (1) Every perception has for its object either a thing considered +as existing, or solely the essence of a thing. (2) Now "fiction" is +chiefly occupied with things considered as existing. (3) I will, +therefore, consider these first--I mean cases where only the existence +of an object is feigned, and the thing thus feigned is understood, or +assumed to be understood. (4) For instance, I feign that Peter, whom +I know to have gone home, is gone to see me, [r] or something of that +kind. (5) With what is such an idea concerned? (6) It is concerned +with things possible, and not with things necessary or impossible. + +[53] (1) I call a thing impossible when its existence would imply a +contradiction; necessary, when its non-existence would imply a +contradiction; possible, when neither its existence nor its +non-existence imply a contradiction, but when the necessity or +impossibility of its nature depends on causes unknown to us, while +we feign that it exists. (2) If the necessity or impossibility of +its existence depending on external causes were known to us, we +could not form any fictitious hypotheses about it; + +[54] (1) Whence it follows that if there be a God, or omniscient +Being, such an one cannot form fictitious hypotheses. (2) For, +as regards ourselves, when I know that I exist, [s] I cannot +hypothesize that I exist or do not exist, any more than I can +hypothesize an elephant that can go through the eye of a needle; +nor when I know the nature of God, can I hypothesize that He +or does not exist. [t] (54:3) The same thing must be said of the +Chimaera, whereof the nature implies a contradiction. (4) From +these considerations, it is plain, as I have already stated, that +fiction cannot be concerned with eternal truths. [u] + +[55] (1) But before proceeding further, I must remark, in passing, +that the difference between the essence of one thing and the essence +of another thing is the same as that which exists between the reality +or existence of one thing and the reality or existence of another; +therefore, if we wished to conceive the existence, for example, +of Adam, simply by means of existence in general, it would be the +same as if, in order to conceive his existence, we went back to the +nature of being, so as to define Adam as a being. (2) Thus, the more +existence is conceived generally, the more is it conceived confusedly +and the more easily can it be ascribed to a given object. +(55:3) Contrariwise, the more it is conceived particularly, the more +is it understood clearly, and the less liable is it to be ascribed, +through negligence of Nature's order, to anything save its proper +object. (4) This is worthy of remark. + +[56] (1) We now proceed to consider those cases which are commonly +called fictions, though we clearly understood that the thing is not +as we imagine it. (2) For instance, I know that the earth is round, +but nothing prevents my telling people that it is a hemisphere, +and that it is like a half apple carved in relief on a dish; or, +that the sun moves round the earth, and so on. (56:3) However, +examination will show us that there is nothing here inconsistent +with what has been said, provided we first admit that we may have +made mistakes, and be now conscious of them; and, further, that we +can hypothesize, or at least suppose, that others are under the +same mistake as ourselves, or can, like us, fall under it. (4) We can, +I repeat, thus hypothesize so long as we see no impossibility. +(56:5) Thus, when I tell anyone that the earth is not round, &c., +I merely recall the error which I perhaps made myself, or which I +might have fallen into, and afterwards I hypothesize that the person +to whom I tell it, is still, or may still fall under the same mistake. +(6) This I say, I can feign so long as I do not perceive any +impossibility or necessity; if I truly understood either one or the +other I should not be able to feign, and I should be reduced to saying +that I had made the attempt. + +[57] (1) It remains for us to consider hypotheses made in problems, +which sometimes involve impossibilities. (2) For instance, when we +say--let us assume that this burning candle is not burning, or, +let us assume that it burns in some imaginary space, or where there +are no physical objects. (3) Such assumptions are freely made, +though the last is clearly seen to be impossible. (4) But, though +this be so, there is no fiction in the case. (57:5) For, in the first +case, I have merely recalled to memory, [x] another candle not +burning, or conceived the candle before me as without a flame, and +then I understand as applying to the latter, leaving its flame out +of the question, all that I think of the former. (6) In the second +case, I have merely to abstract my thoughts from the objects +surrounding the candle, for the mind to devote itself to the +contemplation of the candle singly looked at in itself only; I can +then draw the conclusion that the candle contains in itself no +causes for its own destruction, so that if there were no physical +objects the candle, and even the flame, would remain unchangeable, +and so on. (7) Thus there is here no fiction, but, [y] true and +bare assertions. + +[58] (1) Let us now pass on to the fictions concerned with essences +only, or with some reality or existence simultaneously. (2) Of +these we must specially observe that in proportion as the mind's +understanding is smaller, and its experience multiplex, so will its +power of coining fictions be larger, whereas as its understanding +increases, its capacity for entertaining fictitious ideas becomes +less. (58:3) For instance, in the same way as we are unable, while +we are thinking, to feign that we are thinking or not thinking, so, +also, when we know the nature of body we cannot imagine an infinite +fly; or, when we know the nature of the soul, [z] we cannot imagine +it as square, though anything may be expressed verbally. (4) But, +as we said above, the less men know of nature the more easily can +they coin fictitious ideas, such as trees speaking, men instantly +changed into stones, or into fountains, ghosts appearing in mirrors, +something issuing from nothing, even gods changed into beasts and men +and infinite other absurdities of the same kind. + +[59] (1) Some persons think, perhaps, that fiction is limited by +fiction, and not by understanding; in other words, after I have +formed some fictitious idea, and have affirmed of my own free will +that it exists under a certain form in nature, I am thereby +precluded from thinking of it under any other form. (2) For +instance, when I have feigned (to repeat their argument) that the +nature of body is of a certain kind, and have of my own free will +desired to convince myself that it actually exists under this +form, I am no longer able to hypothesize that a fly, for example, +is infinite; so, when I have hypothesized the essence of the soul, +I am not able to think of it as square, &c. + +[60] (1) But these arguments demand further inquiry. (2) First, +their upholders must either grant or deny that we can understand +anything. If they grant it, then necessarily the same must be +said of understanding, as is said of fiction. (3) If they deny +it, let us, who know that we do know something, see what they +mean. (4) They assert that the soul can be conscious of, and +perceive in a variety of ways, not itself nor things which +exist, but only things which are neither in itself nor anywhere +else, in other words, that the soul can, by its unaided power, +create sensations or ideas unconnected with things. (5) In fact, +they regard the soul as a sort of god. (60:6) Further, they assert +that we or our soul have such freedom that we can constrain +ourselves, or our soul, or even our soul's freedom. (7) For, +after it has formed a fictitious idea, and has given its assent +thereto, it cannot think or feign it in any other manner, but is +constrained by the first fictitious idea to keep all its other +thoughts in harmony therewith. (8) Our opponents are thus driven +to admit, in support of their fiction, the absurdities which I +have just enumerated; and which are not worthy of rational +refutation. + +[61] (1) While leaving such persons in their error, we will take +care to derive from our argument with them a truth serviceable for +our purpose, namely, [61a] that the mind, in paying attention to +a thing hypothetical or false, so as to meditate upon it and +understand it, and derive the proper conclusions in due order +therefrom, will readily discover its falsity; and if the thing +hypothetical be in its nature true, and the mind pays attention +to it, so as to understand it, and deduce the truths which are +derivable from it, the mind will proceed with an uninterrupted +series of apt conclusions; in the same way as it would at once +discover (as we showed just now) the absurdity of a false +hypothesis, and of the conclusions drawn from it. + +[62] (1) We need, therefore, be in no fear of forming hypotheses, +so long as we have a clear and distinct perception of what is +involved. (2) For, if we were to assert, haply, that men are +suddenly turned into beasts, the statement would be extremely +general, so general that there would be no conception, that is, +no idea or connection of subject and predicate, in our mind. +(3) If there were such a conception we should at the same time +be aware of the means and the causes whereby the event took place. +(4) Moreover, we pay no attention to the nature of the subject +and the predicate. + +[63] (1) Now, if the first idea be not fictitious, and if all the +other ideas be deduced therefrom, our hurry to form fictitious ideas +will gradually subside. (2) Further, as a fictitious idea cannot be +clear and distinct, but is necessarily confused, and as all confusion +arises from the fact that the mind has only partial knowledge of a +thing either simple or complex, and does not distinguish between the +known and the unknown, and, again, that it directs its attention +promiscuously to all parts of an object at once without making +distinctions, it follows, first, that if the idea be of something +very simple, it must necessarily be clear and distinct. (3) For +a very simple object cannot be known in part, it must either be +known altogether or not at all. + +[64] (1) Secondly, it follows that if a complex object be divided by +thought into a number of simple component parts, and if each be +regarded separately, all confusion will disappear. (2) Thirdly, it +follows that fiction cannot be simple, but is made up of the blending +of several confused ideas of diverse objects or actions existent in +nature, or rather is composed of attention directed to all such ideas +at once, [64b] and unaccompanied by any mental assent. + +(64:3) Now a fiction that was simple would be clear and distinct, +and therefore true, also a fiction composed only of distinct ideas +would be clear and distinct, and therefore true. (4) For instance, +when we know the nature of the circle and the square, it is +impossible for us to blend together these two figures, and to +hypothesize a square circle, any more than a square soul, or things +of that kind. + +[65] (1) Let us shortly come to our conclusion, and again repeat +that we need have no fear of confusing with true ideas that which +is only a fiction. (2) As for the first sort of fiction of which +we have already spoken, when a thing is clearly conceived, we saw +that if the existence of a that thing is in itself an eternal truth +fiction can have no part in it; but if the existence of the +conceived be not an eternal truth, we have only to be careful +such existence be compared to the thing's essence, and to +consider the order of nature. (64:3) As for the second sort of +fiction, which we stated to be the result of simultaneously +directing the attention, without the assent of the intellect, +to different confused ideas representing different things and +actions existing in nature, we have seen that an absolutely +simple thing cannot be feigned, but must be understood, and that +a complex thing is in the same case if we regard separately the +simple parts whereof it is composed; we shall not even be able +to hypothesize any untrue action concerning such objects, for we +shall be obliged to consider at the same time the causes and manner +of such action. + +[66] (1) These matters being thus understood, let us pass on to +consider the false idea, observing the objects with which it is +concerned, and the means of guarding ourselves from falling into +false perceptions. (2) Neither of these tasks will present much +difficulty, after our inquiry concerning fictitious ideas. +(3) The false idea only differs from the fictitious idea in the +fact of implying a mental assent--that is, as we have already +remarked, while the representations are occurring, there are no +causes present to us, wherefrom, as in fiction, we can conclude +that such representations do not arise from external objects: +in fact, it is much the same as dreaming with our eyes open, +or while awake. (67:4) Thus, a false idea is concerned with, or +(to speak more correctly) is attributable to, the existence of +a thing whereof the essence is known, or the essence itself, in +the same way as a fictitious idea. + +[67] (1) If attributable to the existence of the thing, it is +corrected in the same way as a fictitious idea under similar +circumstances. (2) If attributable to the essence, it is +likewise corrected in the same way as a fictitious idea. +(67:3) For if the nature of the thing known implies necessary +existence, we cannot possible be in error with regard to its +existence; but if the nature of the thing be not an eternal +truth, like its essence, but contrariwise the necessity or +impossibility of its existence depends on external causes, +then we must follow the same course as we adopted in the +of fiction, for it is corrected in the same manner. + +[68] (1) As for false ideas concerned with essences, or even +with actions, such perceptions are necessarily always confused, +being compounded of different confused perceptions of things +existing in nature, as, for instance, when men are persuaded +that deities are present in woods, in statues, in brute beasts, +and the like; that there are bodies which, by their composition +alone, give rise to intellect; that corpses reason, walk about, +and speak; that God is deceived, and so on. (68:2) But ideas which +are clear and distinct can never be false: for ideas of things +clearly and distinctly conceived are either very simple +themselves, or are compounded from very simple ideas, that is, +are deduced therefrom. (3) The impossibility of a very simple +idea being false is evident to everyone who understands the nature +of truth or understanding and of falsehood. + +[69] (1) As regards that which constitutes the reality of truth, +it is certain that a true idea is distinguished from a false one, +not so much by its extrinsic object as by its intrinsic nature. +(2) If an architect conceives a building properly constructed, +though such a building may never have existed, and amy never exist, +nevertheless the idea is true; and the idea remains the same, +whether it be put into execution or not. (69:3) On the other hand, +if anyone asserts, for instance, that Peter exists, without +knowing whether Peter really exists or not, the assertion, as far +as its asserter is concerned, is false, or not true, even though +Peter actually does exist. (4) The assertion that Peter exists is +true only with regard to him who knows for certain that Peter does +exist. + +[70] (1) Whence it follows that there is in ideas something real, +whereby the true are distinguished from the false. (2) This reality +must be inquired into, if we are to find the best standard of truth +(we have said that we ought to determine our thoughts by the given +standard of a true idea, and that method is reflective knowledge), +and to know the properties of our understanding. (70:3) Neither must +we say that the difference between true and false arises from the +fact, that true knowledge consists in knowing things through their +primary causes, wherein it is totally different from false knowledge, +as I have just explained it: for thought is said to be true, if +it involves subjectively the essence of any principle which has no +cause, and is known through itself and in itself. + +[71] (1) Wherefore the reality (forma) of true thought must exist +in the thought itself, without reference to other thoughts; it does +not acknowledge the object as its cause, but must depend on the +actual power and nature of the understanding. (2) For, if we +suppose that the understanding has perceived some new entity which +has never existed, as some conceive the understanding of God before +He created thing (a perception which certainly could not arise +any object), and has legitimately deduced other thoughts from said +perception, all such thoughts would be true, without being +determined by any external object; they would depend solely on the +power and nature of the understanding. (71:3) Thus, that which +constitutes the reality of a true thought must be sought in the +thought itself, and deduced from the nature of the understanding. + +[72] (1) In order to pursue our investigation, let us confront +ourselves with some true idea, whose object we know for +certain to be dependent on our power of thinking, and to have +nothing corresponding to it in nature. (2) With an idea of this +kind before us, we shall, as appears from what has just been said, +be more easily able to carry on the research we have in view. +(72:3) For instance, in order to form the conception of a sphere, +I invent a cause at my pleasure--namely, a semicircle revolving +round its center, and thus producing a sphere. (4) This is +indisputably a true idea; and, although we know that no sphere in +nature has ever actually been so formed, the perception remains +true, and is the easiest manner of conceiving a sphere. +(72:5) We must observe that this perception asserts the rotation +of a semicircle--which assertion would be false, if it were not +associated with the conception of a sphere, or of a cause +determining a motion of the kind, or absolutely, if the assertion +were isolated. (6) The mind would then only tend to the +affirmation of the sole motion of a semicircle, which is not +contained in the conception of a semicircle, and does not arise +from the conception of any cause capable of producing such motion. + +(72:7) Thus falsity consists only in this, that something is +affirmed of a thing, which is not contained in the conception +we have formed of that thing, as motion or rest of a semicircle. +(8) Whence it follows that simple ideas cannot be other than +true--e.g., the simple idea of a semicircle, of motion, of rest, +of quantity, &c. + +(72:9) Whatsoever affirmation such ideas contain is equal to the +concept formed, and does not extend further. (10) Wherefore we +form as many simple ideas as we please, without any fear of error. + +[73] (1) It only remains for us to inquire by what power our mind +can form true ideas, and how far such power extends. (2) It is +certain that such power cannot extend itself infinitely. (3) For +when we affirm somewhat of a thing, which is not contained in the +concept we have formed of that thing, such an affirmation shows a +defect of our perception, or that we have formed fragmentary or +mutilated ideas. (4) Thus we have seen that the notion of a +semicircle is false when it is isolated in the mind, but true when +it is associated with the concept of a sphere, or of some cause +determining such a motion. (73:5) But if it be the nature of a +thinking being, as seems, prima facie, to be the case, to form true +or adequate thoughts, it is plain that inadequate ideas arise in us +only because we are parts of a thinking being, whose thoughts--some +in their entirety, others in fragments only--constitute our mind. + +[74] (1) But there is another point to be considered, which was not +worth raising in the case of fiction, but which give rise to complete +deception--namely, that certain things presented to the imagination +also exist in the understanding--in other words, are conceived +clearly and distinctly. (2) Hence, so long as we do not separate that +which is distinct from that which is confused, certainty, or the true +idea, becomes mixed with indistinct ideas. (3) For instance, certain +Stoics heard, perhaps, the term "soul," and also that the soul is +immortal, yet imagined it only confusedly; they imaged, also, and +understood that very subtle bodies penetrate all others, and are +penetrated by none. (74:4) By combining these ideas, and being at the +same time certain of the truth of the axiom, they forthwith became +convinced that the mind consists of very subtle bodies; that these +very subtle bodies cannot be divided &c. + +[75] (1) But we are freed from mistakes of this kind, so long as we +endeavor to examine all our perceptions by the standard of the given +true idea. (2) We must take care, as has been said, to separate such +perceptions from all those which arise from hearsay or unclassified +experience. (3) Moreover, such mistakes arise from things being +conceived too much in the abstract; for it is sufficiently self-evident +that what I conceive as in its true object I cannot apply to anything +else. (75:4) Lastly, they arise from a want of understanding of the +primary elements of nature as a whole; whence we proceed without due +order, and confound nature with abstract rules, which, although they +be true enough in their sphere, yet, when misapplied, confound +themselves, and pervert the order of nature. (5) However, if we +proceed with as little abstraction as possible, and begin from primary +elements--that is, from the source and origin of nature, as far back +as we can reach,--we need not fear any deceptions of this kind. + +[76] (1) As far as the knowledge of the origin of nature is concerned, +there is no danger of our confounding it with abstractions. (2) For +when a thing is conceived in the abstract, as are all universal +notions, the said universal notions are always more extensive in the +mind than the number of individuals forming their contents really +existing in nature. (3) Again, there are many things in nature, the +difference between which is so slight as to be hardly perceptible to +the understanding; so that it may readily happen that such things are +confounded together, if they be conceived abstractedly. (4) But since +the first principle of nature cannot (as we shall see hereafter) be +conceived abstractedly or universally, and cannot extend further in +the understanding than it does in reality, and has no likeness to +mutable things, no confusion need be feared in respect to the idea of +it, provided (as before shown) that we possess a standard of truth. +(5) This is, in fact, a being single and infinite [76z]; in other +words, it is the sum total of being, beyond which there is no being +found. [76a] + +[77] (1) Thus far we have treated of the false idea. We have now +to investigate the doubtful idea--that is, to inquire what can +cause us to doubt, and how doubt may be removed. (2) I speak of +real doubt existing in the mind, not of such doubt as we see +exemplified when a man says that he doubts, though his mind does +not really hesitate. (77:3) The cure of the latter does not fall +within the province of method, it belongs rather to inquiries +concerning obstinacy and its cure. + +[78] (1) Real doubt is never produced in the mind by the thing +doubted of. (2) In other words, if there were only one idea in +the mind, whether that idea were true or false, there would be no +doubt or certainty present, only a certain sensation. (3) For an +idea is in itself nothing else than a certain sensation. (4) But +doubt will arise through another idea, not clear and distinct +enough for us to be able to draw any certain conclusions with +regard to the matter under consideration; that is, the idea which +causes us to doubt is not clear and distinct. (5) To take an example. +(78:6) Supposing that a man has never reflected, taught by experience +or by any other means, that our senses sometimes deceive us, he will +never doubt whether the sun be greater or less than it appears. +(7) Thus rustics are generally astonished when they hear that the +sun is much larger than the earth. (8) But from reflection on the +deceitfulness of the senses [78a] doubt arises, and if, after +doubting, we acquire a true knowledge of the senses, and how things +at a distance are represented through their instrumentality, doubt +is again removed. + +[79] (1) Hence we cannot cast doubt on true ideas by the supposition +that there is a deceitful Deity, who leads us astray even in what is +most certain. (2) We can only hold such an hypothesis so long as we +have no clear and distinct idea--in other words, until we reflect +the knowledge which we have of the first principle of all things, and +find that which teaches us that God is not a deceiver, and until we +know this with the same certainty as we know from reflecting on the +are equal to two right angles. (3) But if we have a knowledge of God +equal to that which we have of a triangle, all doubt is removed. +(79:4) In the same way as we can arrive at the said knowledge of a +triangle, though not absolutely sure that there is not some +arch-deceiver leading us astray, so can we come to a like knowledge +of God under the like condition, and when we have attained to it, +it is sufficient, as I said before, to remove every doubt which we can +possess concerning clear and distinct ideas. + +[80] (1) Thus, if a man proceeded with our investigations in due +order, inquiring first into those things which should first be +inquired into, never passing over a link in the chain of association, +and with knowledge how to define his questions before seeking to +answer them, he will never have any ideas save such as are very +certain, or, in other words, clear and distinct; for doubt is only a +suspension of the spirit concerning some affirmation or negation +which it would pronounce upon unhesitatingly if it were not in +ignorance of something, without which the knowledge of the matter in +hand must needs be imperfect. (2) We may, therefore, conclude that +doubt always proceeds from want of due order in investigation. + +[81] (1) These are the points I promised to discuss in the first part +of my treatise on method. (2) However, in order not to omit anything +which can conduce to the knowledge of the understanding and its +faculties, I will add a few words on the subject of memory and +forgetfulness. + +(81:3) The point most worthy of attention is, that memory is +strengthened both with and without the aid of the understanding. +(4) For the more intelligible a thing is, the more easily is it +remembered, and the less intelligible it is, the more easily do we +forget it. (5) For instance, a number of unconnected words is much +more difficult to remember than the same number in the form of a +narration. + +[82] (1) The memory is also strengthened without the aid of the +understanding by means of the power wherewith the imagination or +the sense called common, is affected by some particular physical +object. (2) I say particular, for the imagination is only affected +by particular objects. (3) If we read, for instance, a single romantic +comedy, we shall remember it very well, so long as we do not read +many others of the same kind, for it will reign alone in the memory +(4) If, however, we read several others of the same kind, we shall +think of them altogether, and easily confuse one with another. +(82:5) I say also, physical. (6) For the imagination is only +affected by physical objects. (7) As, then, the memory is +strengthened both with and without the aid of the understanding, +we may conclude that it is different from the understanding, +and that in the latter considered in itself there is neither +memory nor forgetfulness. + +[83] (1) What, then, is memory? (2) It is nothing else than the +actual sensation of impressions on the brain, accompanied with the +thought of a definite duration, [83d] of the sensation. (3) This +is also shown by reminiscence. (4) For then we think of the +sensation, but without the notion of continuous duration; thus the +idea of that sensation is not the actual duration of the sensation +or actual memory. (83:5) Whether ideas are or are not subject to +corruption will be seen in philosophy. (6) If this seems too +absurd to anyone, it will be sufficient for our purpose, if he +reflect on the fact that a thing is more easily remembered in +proportion to its singularity, as appears from the example of +the comedy just cited. (83:7) Further, a thing is remembered more +easily in proportion to its intelligibility; therefore we cannot +help remember that which is extremely singular and sufficiently +intelligible. + + +[84] (1) Thus, then, we have distinguished between a true idea and +other perceptions, and shown that ideas fictitious, false, and the +rest, originate in the imagination--that is, in certain sensations +fortuitous (so to speak) and disconnected, arising not from the power +of the mind, but from external causes, according as the body, +sleeping or waking, receives various motions. + +(2) But one may take any view one likes of the imagination so long +as one acknowledges that it is different from the understanding, and +that the soul is passive with regard to it. (3) The view taken is +immaterial, if we know that the imagination is something indefinite, +with regard to which the soul is passive, and that we can by some +means or other free ourselves therefrom with the help of the +understanding. (4) Let no one then be astonished that before proving +the existence of body, and other necessary things, I speak of +imagination of body, and of its composition. (5) The view taken is, +I repeat, immaterial, so long as we know that imagination is something +indefinite, &c. + +[85] (1) As regards as a true idea, we have shown that it is simple +or compounded of simple ideas; that it shows how and why something +is or has been made; and that its subjective effects in the soul +correspond to the actual reality of its object. (2) This conclusion +is identical with the saying of the ancients, that true proceeds +from cause to effect; though the ancients, so far as I know, +never formed the conception put forward here that the soul acts +according to fixed laws, and is as it were an immaterial automaton. + +[86] (1) Hence, as far as is possible at the outset, we have +acquired a knowledge of our understanding, and such a standard of +a true idea that we need no longer fear confounding truth with +falsehood and fiction. (2) Neither shall we wonder why we +understand some things which in nowise fall within the scope of +the imagination, while other things are in the imagination but +wholly opposed to the understanding, or others, again, which +agree therewith. (3) We now know that the operations, whereby the +effects of imagination are produced, take place under other laws +quite different from the laws of the understanding, and that the +mind is entirely passive with regard to them. + +[87] (1) Whence we may also see how easily men may fall into grave +errors through not distinguishing accurately between the imagination +and the understanding; such as believing that extension must be +localized, that it must be finite, that its parts are really distinct +one from the other, that it is the primary and single foundation of +all things, that it occupies more space at one time than at another +and other similar doctrines, all entirely opposed to truth, as we +shall duly show. + +[88] (1) Again, since words are a part of the imagination--that is, +since we form many conceptions in accordance with confused +arrangements of words in the memory, dependent on particular bodily +conditions,--there is no doubt that words may, equally with the +imagination, be the cause of many and great errors, unless we +strictly on our guard. + +[89] (1) Moreover, words are formed according to popular fancy and +intelligence, and are, therefore, signs of things as existing in the +imagination, not as existing in the understanding. (2) This is +evident from the fact that to all such things as exist only in the +understanding, not in the imagination, negative names are often +given, such as incorporeal, infinite, &c. (3) So, also, many +conceptions really affirmative are expressed negatively, and vice +versa, such as uncreate, independent, infinite, immortal, &c., +inasmuch as their contraries are much more easily imagined, and, +therefore, occurred first to men, and usurped positive names. +(89:4) Many things we affirm and deny, because the nature of words +allows us to do so, though the nature of things does not. (5) While +we remain unaware of this fact, we may easily mistake falsehood for +truth. + +[90] (1) Let us also beware of another great cause of confusion, +which prevents the understanding from reflecting on itself. +(2) Sometimes, while making no distinction between the imagination +and the intellect, we think that what we more readily imagine is +clearer to us; and also we think that what we imagine we understand. +(3) Thus, we put first that which should be last: the true order of +progression is reversed, and no legitimate conclusion is drawn. + +[91] [91e] (1) Now, in order at length to pass on to the second +part of this method, I shall first set forth the object aimed at, +and next the means for its attainment. (2) The object aimed at +is the acquisition of clear and distinct ideas, such as are +produced by the pure intellect, and not by chance physical motions. +(3) In order that all ideas may be reduced to unity, we shall +endeavor so to associate and arrange them that our mind may, as far +as possible, reflect subjectively the reality of nature, both as +a whole and as parts. + +[92] (1) As for the first point, it is necessary (as we have said) +for our purpose that everything should be conceived, either solely +through its essence, or through its proximate cause. (2) If the +thing be self-existent, or, as is commonly said, the cause of +itself, it must be understood through its essence only; if it be +not self-existent, but requires a cause for its existence, it must +be understood through its proximate cause. (3) For, in reality, +the knowledge, [92f] of an effect is nothing else than the +acquisition of more perfect knowledge of its cause. + +[93] (1) Therefore, we may never, while we are concerned with +inquiries into actual things, draw any conclusion from +abstractions; we shall be extremely careful not to confound that +which is only in the understanding with that which is in the +thing itself. (2) The best basis for drawing a conclusion will +be either some particular affirmative essence, or a true and +legitimate definition. (93:3) For the understanding cannot descend +from universal axioms by themselves to particular things, since +axioms are of infinite extent, and do not determine the +understanding to contemplate one particular thing more than +another. + +[94] (1) Thus the true method of discovery is to form thoughts +from some given definition. (2) This process will be the +more fruitful and easy in proportion as the thing given be +better defined. (3) Wherefore, the cardinal point of all this +second part of method consists in the knowledge of the conditions +of good definition, and the means of finding them. (4) I will +first treat of the conditions of definition. + +[95] (1) A definition, if it is to be called perfect, must +explain the inmost essence of a thing, and must take care not +to substitute for this any of its properties. (2) In order +to illustrate my meaning, without taking an example which +would seem to show a desire to expose other people's errors, +I will choose the case of something abstract, the definition +of which is of little moment. (95:3) Such is a circle. (4) If +a circle be defined as a figure, such that all straight lines +drawn from the center to the circumference are equal, every +one can see that such a definition does not in the least +explain the essence of a circle, but solely one of its +properties. (5) Though, as I have said, this is of no +importance in the case of figures and other abstractions, +it is of great importance in the case of physical beings +and realities: for the properties of things are not understood +so long as their essences are unknown. (6) If the latter be +passed over, there is necessarily a perversion of the +succession of ideas which should reflect the succession of +nature, and we go far astray from our object. + +[96] In order to be free from this fault, the following rules +should be observed in definition:-- + +I. (1) If the thing in question be created, the definition + must (as we have said) comprehend the proximate cause. + (2) For instance, a circle should, according to this rule, + be defined as follows: the figure described by any line + whereof one end is fixed and the other free. (3) This + definition clearly comprehends the proximate cause. + +II. (4) A conception or definition of a thing should be such + that all the properties of that thing, in so far as it is + considered by itself, and not in conjunction with other + things, can be deduced from it, as may be seen in the + definition given of a circle: for from that it clearly follows + that all straight lines drawn from the center to the + circumference are equal. (5) That this is a necessary + characteristic of a definition is so clear to anyone, who + reflects on the matter, that there is no need to spend time + in proving it, or in showing that, owing to this second + condition, every definition should be affirmative. (6) I + speak of intellectual affirmation, giving little thought to + verbal affirmations which, owing to the poverty of language, + must sometimes, perhaps, be expressed negatively, though + the idea contained is affirmative. + +[97] The rules for the definition of an uncreated thing +are as follows:-- + +I. The exclusion of all idea of cause--that is, the thing + must not need explanation by Anything outside itself. + +II. When the definition of the thing has been given, there must + be no room for doubt as to whether the thing exists or not. + +III. It must contain, as far as the mind is concerned, no + substantives which could be put into an adjectival form; + in other words, the object defined must not be explained + through abstractions. + +IV. Lastly, though this is not absolutely necessary, it should + be possible to deduce from the definition all the properties + of the thing defined. + +All these rules become obvious to anyone giving strict +attention to the matter. + +[98] (1) I have also stated that the best basis for drawing a +conclusion is a particular affirmative essence. (2) The more +specialized the idea is, the more it is distinct, and therefore +clear. (3) Wherefore a knowledge of particular things should +be sought for as diligently as possible. + +[99] (1) As regards the order of our perceptions, and the manner +in which they should be arranged and united, it is necessary that, +as soon as is possible and rational, we should inquire whether +there be any being (and, if so, what being), that is the cause +of all things, so that its essence, represented in thought, may +be the cause of all our ideas, and then our mind will to the +utmost possible extent reflect nature. (2) For it will possess, +subjectively, nature's essence, order, and union. (3) Thus we +can see that it is before all things necessary for us to deduce +all our ideas from physical things--that is, from real entities, +proceeding, as far as may be, according to the series of causes, +from one real entity to another real entity, never passing to +universals and abstractions, either for the purpose of deducing +some real entity from them, or deducing them from some real +entity. (4) Either of these processes interrupts the true +progress of the understanding. + +[100] (1) But it must be observed that, by the series of causes +and real entities, I do not here mean the series of particular +and mutable things, but only the series of fixed and eternal +things. (2) It would be impossible for human infirmity to follow +up the series of particular mutable things, both on account +their multitude, surpassing all calculation, and on account of +the infinitely diverse circumstances surrounding one and the same +thing, any one of which may be the cause of its existence or +non-existence. (3) Indeed, their existence has no connection +with their essence, or (as we have said already) is not an +eternal truth. + +[101] (1) Neither is there any need that we should understand +their series, for the essences of particular mutable things are +not to be gathered from their series or order of existence, +which would furnish us with nothing beyond their extrinsic +denominations, their relations, or, at most, their circumstances, +all of which are very different from their inmost essence. +(101:2) This inmost essence must be sought solely from fixed and +eternal things, and from the laws, inscribed (so to speak) in +those things as in their true codes, according to which all +particular things take place and are arranged; nay, these mutable +particular things depend so intimately and essentially (so to +phrase it) upon the fixed things, that they cannot either be +conceived without them. + +[102] (1) But, though this be so, there seems to be no small +difficulty in arriving at the knowledge of these particular things, +for to conceive them all at once would far surpass the powers of +the human understanding. (2) The arrangement whereby one thing is +understood, before another, as we have stated, should not be sought +from their series of existence, nor from eternal things. (3) For +the latter are all by nature simultaneous. (4) Other aids are +therefore needed besides those employed for understanding eternal +things and their laws. (5) However, this is not the place to recount +such aids, nor is there any need to do so, until we have acquired a +sufficient knowledge of eternal things and their infallible laws, +and until the nature of our senses has become plain to us. + +[103] (1) Before betaking ourselves to seek knowledge of particular +things, it will be seasonable to speak of such aids, as all tend to +teach us the mode of employing our senses, and to make certain +experiments under fixed rules and arrangements which may suffice to +determine the object of our inquiry, so that we may therefrom infer +what laws of eternal things it has been produced under, and may gain +an insight into its inmost nature, as I will duly show. (2) Here, +to return to my purpose, I will only endeavor to set forth what seems +necessary for enabling us to attain to knowledge of eternal things, +and to define them under the conditions laid down above. + +[104] (1) With this end, we must bear in mind what has already been +stated, namely, that when the mind devotes itself to any thought, so +as to examine it, and to deduce therefrom in due order all the +legitimate conclusions possible, any falsehood which may lurk in the +thought will be detected; but if the thought be true, the mind will +readily proceed without interruption to deduce truths from it. +(104:2) This, I say, is necessary for our purpose, for our thoughts +may be brought to a close by the absence of a foundation. + +[105] (1) If, therefore, we wish to investigate the first thing of +all, it will be necessary to supply some foundation which may direct +our thoughts thither. (2) Further, since method is reflective +knowledge, the foundation which must direct our thoughts can be +nothing else than the knowledge of that which constitutes the reality +of truth, and the knowledge of the understanding, its properties, and +powers. (3) When this has been acquired we shall possess a foundation +wherefrom we can deduce our thoughts, and a path whereby the intellect, +according to its capacity, may attain the knowledge of eternal things, +allowance being made for the extent of the intellectual powers. + +[106] (1) If, as I stated in the first part, it belongs to the nature +of thought to form true ideas, we must here inquire what is meant by +the faculties and power of the understanding. (2) The chief part of +our method is to understand as well as possible the powers of the +intellect, and its nature; we are, therefore, compelled (by the +considerations advanced in the second part of the method) necessarily +to draw these conclusions from the definition itself of thought and +understanding. + +[107] (1) But, so far as we have not got any rules for finding +definitions, and, as we cannot set forth such rules without a +previous knowledge of nature, that is without a definition of the +understanding and its power, it follows either that the definition +of the understanding must be clear in itself, or that we can +understand nothing. (2) Nevertheless this definition is not +absolutely clear in itself; however, since its properties, like +all things that we possess through the understanding, cannot be +known clearly and distinctly, unless its nature be known previously, +understanding makes itself manifest, if we pay attention to its +properties, which we know clearly and distinctly. (3) Let us, +then, enumerate here the properties of the understanding, let us +examine them, and begin by discussing the instruments for research +which we find innate in us. See [31] + +[108] (1) The properties of the understanding which I have chiefly +remarked, and which I clearly understand, are the following:-- + +I. (2) It involves certainty--in other words, it knows that a thing + exists in reality as it is reflected subjectively. + +II. (108:3) That it perceives certain things, or forms some ideas + absolutely, some ideas from others. (4) Thus it forms the + idea of quantity absolutely, without reference to any other + thoughts; but ideas of motion it only forms after taking into + consideration the idea of quantity. + +III. (108:5) Those ideas which the understanding forms absolutely + express infinity; determinate ideas are derived from other + ideas. (6) Thus in the idea of quantity, perceived by means + of a cause, the quantity is determined, as when a body is + perceived to be formed by the motion of a plane, a plane by + the motion of a line, or, again, a line by the motion of a + point. (7) All these are perceptions which do not serve + towards understanding quantity, but only towards determining + it. (108:8) This is proved by the fact that we conceive them + as formed as it were by motion, yet this motion is not perceived + unless the quantity be perceived also; we can even prolong the + motion to form an infinite line, which we certainly could not do + unless we had an idea of infinite quantity. + +IV. (9) The understanding forms positive ideas before forming + negative ideas. + +V. (108:10) It perceives things not so much under the condition + of duration as under a certain form of eternity, and in an + infinite number; or rather in perceiving things it does not + consider either their number or duration, whereas, in imagining + them, it perceives them in a determinate number, duration, and + quantity. + +VI. (108:11) The ideas which we form as clear and distinct, seem + to follow from the sole necessity of our nature, that they + appear to depend absolutely on our sole power; with confused + ideas the contrary is the case. (12) They are often formed + against our will. + +VII. (108:13) The mind can determine in many ways the ideas of things, +which the understanding forms from other ideas: thus, for instance, +in order to define the plane of an ellipse, it supposes a point +adhering to a cord to be moved around two centers, or, again, it +conceives an infinity of points, always in the same fixed relation +to a given straight line, angle of the vertex of the cone, or in an +infinity of other ways. + +VIII. (108:14) The more ideas express perfection of any object, +the more perfect are they themselves; for we do not admire the +architect who has planned a chapel so much as the architect who +has planned a splendid temple. + +[109] (1) I do not stop to consider the rest of what is referred +to thought, such as love, joy, &c. (2) They are nothing to our +present purpose, and cannot even be conceived unless the +understanding be perceived previously. (3) When perception is +removed, all these go with it. + +[110] (1) False and fictitious ideas have nothing positive about +them (as we have abundantly shown), which causes them to be called +false or fictitious; they are only considered as such through the +defectiveness of knowledge. (2) Therefore, false and fictitious +ideas as such can teach us nothing concerning the essence of thought; +this must be sought from the positive properties just enumerated; +in other words, we must lay down some common basis from which these +properties necessarily follow, so that when this is given, the +properties are necessarily given also, and when it is removed, +they too vanish with it. + +The rest of the treatise is wanting. + +---------------------------------------------------------------------- + +Spinoza's Endnotes: Marks as per Curley, see Note 5 above. + +[a] (1) This might be explained more at large and more clearly: + I mean by distinguishing riches according as they are pursued for + their own sake, in or furtherance of fame, or sensual pleasure, + or the advancement of science and art. (2) But this subject is + reserved to its own place, for it is not here proper to + investigate the matter more accurately. + +[b] These considerations should be set forth more precisely. + +[c] These matters are explained more at length elsewhere. + +[d] N.B. I do no more here than enumerate the sciences necessary + for our purpose; I lay no stress on their order. + +[e] There is for the sciences but one end, to which they should + all be directed. + +[f] (1) In this case we do not understand anything of the cause + from the consideration of it in the effect. (2) This is + sufficiently evident from the fact that the cause is only + spoken of in very general terms, such as--there exists then + something; there exists then some power, &c.; or from the + that we only express it in a negative manner--it is not + or that, &c. (3) In the second case something is ascribed + to the cause because of the effect, as we shall show in an + example, but only a property, never an essence. + +[g] (1) From this example may be clearly seen what I have just + drawn attention to. (2) For through this union we understand + nothing beyond the sensation, the effect, to wit, from which + we inferred the cause of which we understand nothing. + +[h] (1) A conclusion of this sort, though it be certain, is yet + not to be relied on without great caution; for unless we are + exceedingly careful we shall forthwith fall into error. + (2) When things are conceived thus abstractedly, and not + through their true essence, they are apt to be confused by the + imagination. (3) For that which is in itself one, men imagine + to be multiplex. (4) To those things which are conceived + abstractedly, apart, and confusedly, terms are applied which are + apt to become wrested from their strict meaning, and bestowed on + things more familiar; whence it results that these latter are + imagined in the same way as the former to which the terms were + originally given. + +[i] I shall here treat a little more in detail of experience, + and shall examine the method adopted by the Empirics, + and by recent philosophers. + +[k] By native strength, I mean that not bestowed on us by external + causes, as I shall afterwards explain in my philosophy. + +[l] Here I term them operations: I shall explain their nature + in my philosophy. + +[m] I shall take care not only to demonstrate what I have just + advanced, but also that we have hitherto proceeded rightly, + and other things needful to be known. + +[33note1] (1) In modern language, "the idea may become the + subject of another presentation." (2) Objectivus generally + corresponds to the modern "subjective," formalis to the + modern "objective." [Trans.- Note 1] + +[n] (1) Observe that we are not here inquiring how the first + subjective essence is innate in us. (2) This belongs to an + investigation into nature, where all these matters are amply + explained, and it is shown that without ideas neither + affirmation, nor negation, nor volition are possible. + +[o] The nature of mental search is explained in my philosophy. + +[p] To be connected with other things is to be produced by them, + or to produce them. + +[q] In the same way as we have here no doubt of the truth of + our knowledge. + +[r] See below the note on hypotheses, whereof we have a clear + understanding; the fiction consists in saying that such + hypotheses exist in heavenly bodies. + +[s] (1) As a thing, when once it is understood, manifests itself, + we have need only of an example without further proof. + (2) In the same way the contrary has only to be presented to + our minds to be recognized as false, as will forthwith appear + when we come to discuss fiction concerning essences. + +[t] Observe, that although many assert that they doubt whether God + exists, they have nought but his name in their minds, or else + some fiction which they call God: this fiction is not in + harmony with God's real nature, as we will duly show. + +[u] (1) I shall presently show that no fiction can concern eternal + truths. By an eternal truth, I mean that which being positive + could never become negative. (2) Thus it is a primary and + eternal truth that God exists, but it is not an eternal truth + that Adam thinks. (3) That the Chimaera does not exist is an + eternal truth, that Adam does not think is not so. + +[x] (1) Afterwards, when we come to speak of fiction that is + concerned with essences, it will be evident that fiction never + creates or furnishes the mind with anything new; only such things + as are already in the brain or imagination are recalled to the + memory, when the attention is directed to them confusedly and all + at once. (2) For instance, we have remembrance of spoken words + and of a tree; when the mind directs itself to them confusedly, + it forms the notion of a tree speaking. (3) The same may be said + of existence, especially when it is conceived quite generally as + an entity; it is then readily applied to all things together in + the memory. (4) This is specially worthy of remark. + +[y] We must understand as much in the case of hypotheses put forward + to explain certain movements accompanying celestial phenomena; + but from these, when applied to the celestial motions, we any + draw conclusions as to the nature of the heavens, whereas this + last may be quite different, especially as many other causes are + conceivable which would account for such motions. + +[z] (1) It often happens that a man recalls to mind this word soul, + and forms at the same time some corporeal image: as the two + representations are simultaneous, he easily thinks that he + imagines and feigns a corporeal soul: thus confusing the name + with the thing itself. (2) I here beg that my readers will not + be in a hurry to refute this proposition; they will, I hope, + have no mind to do so, if they pay close attention to the + examples given and to what follows. + +[61a] (1) Though I seem to deduce this from experience, some + may deny its cogency because I have given no formal proof. + (2) I therefore append the following for those who may + desire it. (3) As there can be nothing in nature contrary + to nature's laws, since all things come to pass by fixed + laws, so that each thing must irrefragably produce its own + proper effect, it follows that the soul, as soon as it + possesses the true conception of a thing, proceeds to + reproduce in thought that thing's effects. (4) See below, + where I speak of the false idea. + +[64b] (1) Observe that fiction regarded in itself, only differs + from dreams in that in the latter we do not perceive the + external causes which we perceive through the senses while + awake. (2) It has hence been inferred that representations + occurring in sleep have no connection with objects external + to us. (3) We shall presently see that error is the dreaming + of a waking man: if it reaches a certain pitch it becomes delirium. + +[76z] These are not attributes of God displaying His essence, + as I will show in my philosophy. + +[76a] (1) This has been shown already. (2) For if such a being + did not exist it would never be produced; therefore the mind + would be able to understand more than nature could furnish; + and this has been shown above to be false. + +[78a] (1) That is, it is known that the senses sometimes deceive us. + (2) But it is only known confusedly, for it is not known how + they deceive us. + +[83d] (1) If the duration be indefinite, the recollection is + imperfect; this everyone seems to have learnt from nature. + (2) For we often ask, to strengthen our belief in something + we hear of, when and where it happened; though ideas + themselves have their own duration in the mind, yet, as we + are wont to determine duration by the aid of some measure + of motion which, again, takes place by aid of imagination, + we preserve no memory connected with pure intellect. + +[91e] The chief rule of this part is, as appears from the first + part, to review all the ideas coming to us through pure + intellect, so as to distinguish them from such as we imagine: + the distinction will be shown through the properties of each, + namely, of the imagination and of the understanding. + +[92f] Observe that it is thereby manifest that we cannot understand + anything of nature without at the same time increasing our + knowledge of the first cause, or God. + + + + + +End of "On the Improvement of the Understanding." + + + +Notes by Volunteer. + +1. Used, in part, with kind permission from: + http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/Spinoza/TIE/ + +2. The text is that of the translation of the Tractatus de Intellectus + Emendatione by R. H. M. Elwes, as printed by Dover Publications + (NY):1955), ISBN 0-486-20250-X. This text is "an unabridged and + unaltered republication of the Bohn Library edition originally + published by George Bell and Sons in 1883." + +3. Paragraph Numbers, shown thus [1], are from Edwin Curley's + translation in his "The Collected Works of Spinoza", Volume 1, 1985, + Princeton University Press; ISBN 0-691-07222-1. + +4. Sentence Numbers, shown thus (1), have been added by volunteer. + +5. Spinoza's endnotes are shown thus [a]. The letter is taken from + Curley, see Note 3. + +6. Search strings are enclosed in square brackets; include brackets. + +7. HTML versions of "On the Improvement of the Understanding" are + published in the Books On-Line Web Pages; + ttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/books.html and they include: + http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/Spinoza/TIE/ + http://www.erols.com/jyselman/teielwes.htm + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Improvement of the Understanding, by +Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza] + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1016 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1017-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1017-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..857c7f95 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1017-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1653 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Soul of Man, by Oscar Wilde + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: The Soul of Man + + +Author: Oscar Wilde + + + +Release Date: September 26, 2014 [eBook #1017] +[This file was first posted on August 10, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL OF MAN*** + + +Transcribed from the 1909 Arthur L. Humphreys edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + +THE +SOUL OF MAN + + + * * * * * + + LONDON + ARTHUR L. HUMPREYS + 1900 + + * * * * * + + _Second Impression_ + + + + +THE SOUL OF MAN + + +THE chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism +is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that +sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of +things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely +anyone at all escapes. + +Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like +Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; +a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to +keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand +‘under the shelter of the wall,’ as Plato puts it, and so to realise the +perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the +incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are +exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and +exaggerated altruism—are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find +themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous +starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all +this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s +intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the +function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with +suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with +admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very +sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they +see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. +Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. + +They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the +poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the +poor. + +But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The +proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty +will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the +carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who +were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system +being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who +contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the +people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at +last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem +and know the life—educated men who live in the East End—coming forward +and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of +charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such +charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity +creates a multitude of sins. + +There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in +order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of +private property. It is both immoral and unfair. + +Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no +people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, +hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely +repulsive surroundings. The security of society will not depend, as it +does now, on the state of the weather. If a frost comes we shall not +have a hundred thousand men out of work, tramping about the streets in a +state of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours for alms, or +crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch +of bread and a night’s unclean lodging. Each member of the society will +share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a +frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse. + +Upon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply because it +will lead to Individualism. + +Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting +private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for +competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly +healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of +the community. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its +proper environment. But for the full development of Life to its highest +mode of perfection, something more is needed. What is needed is +Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are +Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political +power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last +state of man will be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of +the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to +develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either +under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the +sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them +pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the +men of culture—in a word, the real men, the men who have realised +themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon +the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private +property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, +are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is +quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the +peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, +and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or +civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. +From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. +But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor +is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the +infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes +him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more +obedient. + +Of course, it might be said that the Individualism generated under +conditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule, of a +fine or wonderful type, and that the poor, if they have not culture and +charm, have still many virtues. Both these statements would be quite +true. The possession of private property is very often extremely +demoralising, and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism +wants to get rid of the institution. In fact, property is really a +nuisance. Some years ago people went about the country saying that +property has duties. They said it so often and so tediously that, at +last, the Church has begun to say it. One hears it now from every +pulpit. It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has +so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. It +involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless +bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its +duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid +of it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to +be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. +Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never +grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and +rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a +ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental +dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the +sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be +grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should +be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being +discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings +and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in +the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is +through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience +and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. +But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It +is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or +country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man +should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He +should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the +rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for +begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to +beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and +rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is +at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity +them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made +private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad +pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite +understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit +of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions +to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is +almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous +by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance. + +However, the explanation is not really difficult to find. It is simply +this. Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such +a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really +conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other +people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great +employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators +are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some +perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of +discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so +absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would +be no advance towards civilisation. Slavery was put down in America, not +in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves, or even any +express desire on their part that they should be free. It was put down +entirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in +Boston and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of +slaves, nor had anything to do with the question really. It was, +undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the +whole thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves +they received, not merely very little assistance, but hardly any sympathy +even; and when at the close of the war the slaves found themselves free, +found themselves indeed so absolutely free that they were free to starve, +many of them bitterly regretted the new state of things. To the thinker, +the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that +Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved +peasant of the Vendée voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause +of feudalism. + +It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For while +under the present system a very large number of people can lead lives of +a certain amount of freedom and expression and happiness, under an +industrial-barrack system, or a system of economic tyranny, nobody would +be able to have any such freedom at all. It is to be regretted that a +portion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to propose +to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is childish. +Every man must be left quite free to choose his own work. No form of +compulsion must be exercised over him. If there is, his work will not be +good for him, will not be good in itself, and will not be good for +others. And by work I simply mean activity of any kind. + +I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that +an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each +citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours. Humanity has got +beyond that stage, and reserves such a form of life for the people whom, +in a very arbitrary manner, it chooses to call criminals. But I confess +that many of the socialistic views that I have come across seem to me to +be tainted with ideas of authority, if not of actual compulsion. Of +course, authority and compulsion are out of the question. All +association must be quite voluntary. It is only in voluntary +associations that man is fine. + +But it may be asked how Individualism, which is now more or less +dependent on the existence of private property for its development, will +benefit by the abolition of such private property. The answer is very +simple. It is true that, under existing conditions, a few men who have +had private means of their own, such as Byron, Shelley, Browning, Victor +Hugo, Baudelaire, and others, have been able to realise their personality +more or less completely. Not one of these men ever did a single day’s +work for hire. They were relieved from poverty. They had an immense +advantage. The question is whether it would be for the good of +Individualism that such an advantage should be taken away. Let us +suppose that it is taken away. What happens then to Individualism? How +will it benefit? + +It will benefit in this way. Under the new conditions Individualism will +be far freer, far finer, and far more intensified than it is now. I am +not talking of the great imaginatively-realised Individualism of such +poets as I have mentioned, but of the great actual Individualism latent +and potential in mankind generally. For the recognition of private +property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a +man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. +It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the +important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is +to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what +man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an +Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community +from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part +of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road, +and encumbering them. Indeed, so completely has man’s personality been +absorbed by his possessions that the English law has always treated +offences against a man’s property with far more severity than offences +against his person, and property is still the test of complete +citizenship. The industry necessary for the making money is also very +demoralising. In a community like ours, where property confers immense +distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles, and other pleasant +things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes it his aim to +accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and tediously accumulating +it long after he has got far more than he wants, or can use, or enjoy, or +perhaps even know of. Man will kill himself by overwork in order to +secure property, and really, considering the enormous advantages that +property brings, one is hardly surprised. One’s regret is that society +should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a +groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and +fascinating, and delightful in him—in which, in fact, he misses the true +pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under existing conditions, very +insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be—often is—at every moment +of his life at the mercy of things that are not under his control. If +the wind blows an extra point or so, or the weather suddenly changes, or +some trivial thing happens, his ship may go down, his speculations may go +wrong, and he finds himself a poor man, with his social position quite +gone. Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing +should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in +him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance. + +With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, +beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in +accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live +is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. + +It is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a +personality, except on the imaginative plane of art. In action, we never +have. Cæsar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect man. But how +tragically insecure was Cæsar! Wherever there is a man who exercises +authority, there is a man who resists authority. Cæsar was very perfect, +but his perfection travelled by too dangerous a road. Marcus Aurelius +was the perfect man, says Renan. Yes; the great emperor was a perfect +man. But how intolerable were the endless claims upon him! He staggered +under the burden of the empire. He was conscious how inadequate one man +was to bear the weight of that Titan and too vast orb. What I mean by a +perfect man is one who develops under perfect conditions; one who is not +wounded, or worried or maimed, or in danger. Most personalities have +been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in +friction. Byron’s personality, for instance, was terribly wasted in its +battle with the stupidity, and hypocrisy, and Philistinism of the +English. Such battles do not always intensify strength: they often +exaggerate weakness. Byron was never able to give us what he might have +given us. Shelley escaped better. Like Byron, he got out of England as +soon as possible. But he was not so well known. If the English had had +any idea of what a great poet he really was, they would have fallen on +him with tooth and nail, and made his life as unbearable to him as they +possibly could. But he was not a remarkable figure in society, and +consequently he escaped, to a certain degree. Still, even in Shelley the +note of rebellion is sometimes too strong. The note of the perfect +personality is not rebellion, but peace. + +It will be a marvellous thing—the true personality of man—when we see it. +It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It +will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not +prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself +about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by +material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, +and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. +It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like +itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while +it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing +helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very +wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child. + +In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire +that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none the less +surely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether +things happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws but its +own laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love +those who sought to intensify it, and speak often of them. And of these +Christ was one. + +‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over +the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written. And the +message of Christ to man was simply ‘Be thyself.’ That is the secret of +Christ. + +When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as +when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not +developed their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that allowed +the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel +that he preached was not that in such a community it is an advantage for +a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome +clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage +for a man to live under healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a +view would have been wrong there and then, and would, of course, be still +more wrong now and in England; for as man moves northward the material +necessities of life become of more vital importance, and our society is +infinitely more complex, and displays far greater extremes of luxury and +pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus meant, was +this. He said to man, ‘You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. +Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or +possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only +you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches +can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of +your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken +from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will +not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property. It involves +sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal +property hinders Individualism at every step.’ It is to be noted that +Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily good, or +wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true. Wealthy +people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more moral, more +intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in the +community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the +poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being +poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not +through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through +what he is. And so the wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is +represented as a thoroughly good citizen, who has broken none of the laws +of his state, none of the commandments of his religion. He is quite +respectable, in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus +says to him, ‘You should give up private property. It hinders you from +realising your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your +personality does not need it. It is within you, and not outside of you, +that you will find what you really are, and what you really want.’ To +his own friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be themselves, +and not to be always worrying about other things. What do other things +matter? Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the +world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates +Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and +self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their +coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people +abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The +things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public +opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual +violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to +the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. +His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at +peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other +people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. +A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, +and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be +bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against +society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection. + +There was a woman who was taken in adultery. We are not told the history +of her love, but that love must have been very great; for Jesus said that +her sins were forgiven her, not because she repented, but because her +love was so intense and wonderful. Later on, a short time before his +death, as he sat at a feast, the woman came in and poured costly perfumes +on his hair. His friends tried to interfere with her, and said that it +was an extravagance, and that the money that the perfume cost should have +been expended on charitable relief of people in want, or something of +that kind. Jesus did not accept that view. He pointed out that the +material needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that the +spiritual needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine moment, +and by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might make +itself perfect. The world worships the woman, even now, as a saint. + +Yes; there are suggestive things in Individualism. Socialism annihilates +family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property, +marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the +programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts +the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help +the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman +more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He +rejected the claims of family life, although they existed in his day and +community in a very marked form. ‘Who is my mother? Who are my +brothers?’ he said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him. +When one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, ‘Let the +dead bury the dead,’ was his terrible answer. He would allow no claim +whatsoever to be made on personality. + +And so he who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and +absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of science; +or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep upon a moor; +or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like +Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who throws his +net into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises +the perfection of the soul that is within him. All imitation in morals +and in life is wrong. Through the streets of Jerusalem at the present +day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders. +He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation. Father Damien +was Christlike when he went out to live with the lepers, because in such +service he realised fully what was best in him. But he was not more +Christlike than Wagner when he realised his soul in music; or than +Shelley, when he realised his soul in song. There is no one type for +man. There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And +while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the +claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all. + +Individualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to attain to. As a +natural result the State must give up all idea of government. It must +give it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries before Christ, +there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such thing as +governing mankind. All modes of government are failures. Despotism is +unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for +better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are +unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but +democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for +the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, +for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, +and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, +grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by creating, or at +any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to +kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and +accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. +People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is +being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse +comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are +probably thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s +standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s +second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. ‘He +who would be free,’ says a fine thinker, ‘must not conform.’ And +authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of +over-fed barbarism amongst us. + +With authority, punishment will pass away. This will be a great gain—a +gain, in fact, of incalculable value. As one reads history, not in the +expurgated editions written for school-boys and passmen, but in the +original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the +crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the +good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the +habitual employment of punishment, than it is by the occurrence of crime. +It obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the more crime +is produced, and most modern legislation has clearly recognised this, and +has made it its task to diminish punishment as far as it thinks it can. +Wherever it has really diminished it, the results have always been +extremely good. The less punishment, the less crime. When there is no +punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist, or, if it occurs, +will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to +be cured by care and kindness. For what are called criminals nowadays +are not criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of +modern crime. That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a +class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view. +They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins. They are merely +what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be if they had not +got enough to eat. When private property is abolished there will be no +necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist. Of +course, all crimes are not crimes against property, though such are the +crimes that the English law, valuing what a man has more than what a man +is, punishes with the harshest and most horrible severity, if we except +the crime of murder, and regard death as worse than penal servitude, a +point on which our criminals, I believe, disagree. But though a crime +may not be against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and +depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and so, when +that system is abolished, will disappear. When each member of the +community has sufficient for his wants, and is not interfered with by his +neighbour, it will not be an object of any interest to him to interfere +with anyone else. Jealousy, which is an extraordinary source of crime in +modern life, is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of +property, and under Socialism and Individualism will die out. It is +remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown. + +Now as the State is not to govern, it may be asked what the State is to +do. The State is to be a voluntary association that will organise +labour, and be the manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities. +The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is +beautiful. And as I have mentioned the word labour, I cannot help saying +that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about +the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing necessarily dignified +about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It +is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does +not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless +activities, and should be regarded as such. To sweep a slushy crossing +for eight hours, on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting +occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to +me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is +made for something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind +should be done by a machine. + +And I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, man has been, +to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something +tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his +work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our +property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine +which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in +consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become +hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the +machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should +have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more +than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one +would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. +All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that +deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be +done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all +sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, +and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or +distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper +conditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this +is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country +gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or +enjoying cultivated leisure—which, and not labour, is the aim of man—or +making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply +contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be +doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that +civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless +there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture +and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, +insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the +machine, the future of the world depends. And when scientific men are no +longer called upon to go down to a depressing East End and distribute bad +cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they will have delightful +leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvellous things for their own +joy and the joy of everyone else. There will be great storages of force +for every city, and for every house if required, and this force man will +convert into heat, light, or motion, according to his needs. Is this +Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth +even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is +always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing +a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias. + +Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery +will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made +by the individual. This is not merely necessary, but it is the only +possible way by which we can get either the one or the other. An +individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with +reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, +and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the +other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or +a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to +do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates +into a low and ignoble form of craft. A work of art is the unique result +of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author +is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want +what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what +other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an +artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a +dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an +artist. Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has +known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of +Individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under certain +conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take cognisance +of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the sphere of +action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any +interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does +not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all. + +And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form +of Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it in an +authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it +is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public has always, +and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art +to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd +vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what +they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy +after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are +wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. +The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide +difference. If a man of science were told that the results of his +experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a +character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the +subject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of +people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that he +had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought, +provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those +who had never thought in any sphere at all—well, nowadays the man of +science and the philosopher would be considerably amused. Yet it is +really a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected +to brutal popular control, to authority in fact—the authority of either +the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed for power +of an ecclesiastical or governmental class. Of course, we have to a very +great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the community, or the +Church, or the Government, to interfere with the individualism of +speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with the individualism +of imaginative art still lingers. In fact, it does more than linger; it +is aggressive, offensive, and brutalising. + +In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the +public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have +been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read +it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult +poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they +leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which +the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular +authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces such +badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form, such +silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The popular +standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It is at +once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too +easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style, +psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned +are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most +uncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet such +requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament, +would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the +amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his +individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender +everything that is valuable in him. In the case of the drama, things are +a little better: the theatre-going public like the obvious, it is true, +but they do not like the tedious; and burlesque and farcical comedy, the +two most popular forms, are distinct forms of art. Delightful work may +be produced under burlesque and farcical conditions, and in work of this +kind the artist in England is allowed very great freedom. It is when one +comes to the higher forms of the drama that the result of popular control +is seen. The one thing that the public dislike is novelty. Any attempt +to extend the subject-matter of art is extremely distasteful to the +public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large +measure on the continual extension of subject-matter. The public dislike +novelty because they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of +Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his +own subject, and treats it as he chooses. The public are quite right in +their attitude. Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing +and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it +seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of +habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. In Art, the +public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because +they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste +them. They endure them as the inevitable, and as they cannot mar them, +they mouth about them. Strangely enough, or not strangely, according to +one’s own views, this acceptance of the classics does a great deal of +harm. The uncritical admiration of the Bible and Shakespeare in England +is an instance of what I mean. With regard to the Bible, considerations +of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter, so that I need not +dwell upon the point. + +But in the case of Shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public really +see neither the beauties nor the defects of his plays. If they saw the +beauties, they would not object to the development of the drama; and if +they saw the defects, they would not object to the development of the +drama either. The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a +country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the +classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the +free expression of Beauty in new forms. They are always asking a writer +why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not +paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of +them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh +mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears +they get so angry, and bewildered that they always use two stupid +expressions—one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the +other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these +words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly +unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful +thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they +mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. +The former expression has reference to style; the latter to +subject-matter. But they probably use the words very vaguely, as an +ordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones. There is not a single +real poet or prose-writer of this century, for instance, on whom the +British public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and +these diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in France, is +the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and fortunately make the +establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in England. Of +course, the public are very reckless in their use of the word. That they +should have called Wordsworth an immoral poet, was only to be expected. +Wordsworth was a poet. But that they should have called Charles Kingsley +an immoral novelist is extraordinary. Kingsley’s prose was not of a very +fine quality. Still, there is the word, and they use it as best they +can. An artist is, of course, not disturbed by it. The true artist is a +man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. +But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of art in England that +immediately on its appearance was recognised by the public, through their +medium, which is the public press, as a work that was quite intelligible +and highly moral, he would begin to seriously question whether in its +creation he had really been himself at all, and consequently whether the +work was not quite unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly +second-rate order, or of no artistic value whatsoever. + +Perhaps, however, I have wronged the public in limiting them to such +words as ‘immoral,’ ‘unintelligible,’ ‘exotic,’ and ‘unhealthy.’ There +is one other word that they use. That word is ‘morbid.’ They do not use +it often. The meaning of the word is so simple that they are afraid of +using it. Still, they use it sometimes, and, now and then, one comes +across it in popular newspapers. It is, of course, a ridiculous word to +apply to a work of art. For what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a +mode of thought that one cannot express? The public are all morbid, +because the public can never find expression for anything. The artist is +never morbid. He expresses everything. He stands outside his subject, +and through its medium produces incomparable and artistic effects. To +call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his +subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he +wrote ‘King Lear.’ + +On the whole, an artist in England gains something by being attacked. +His individuality is intensified. He becomes more completely himself. +Of course, the attacks are very gross, very impertinent, and very +contemptible. But then no artist expects grace from the vulgar mind, or +style from the suburban intellect. Vulgarity and stupidity are two very +vivid facts in modern life. One regrets them, naturally. But there they +are. They are subjects for study, like everything else. And it is only +fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always +apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in +public. + +Within the last few years two other adjectives, it may be mentioned, have +been added to the very limited vocabulary of art-abuse that is at the +disposal of the public. One is the word ‘unhealthy,’ the other is the +word ‘exotic.’ The latter merely expresses the rage of the momentary +mushroom against the immortal, entrancing, and exquisitely lovely orchid. +It is a tribute, but a tribute of no importance. The word ‘unhealthy,’ +however, admits of analysis. It is a rather interesting word. In fact, +it is so interesting that the people who use it do not know what it +means. + +What does it mean? What is a healthy, or an unhealthy work of art? All +terms that one applies to a work of art, provided that one applies them +rationally, have reference to either its style or its subject, or to both +together. From the point of view of style, a healthy work of art is one +whose style recognises the beauty of the material it employs, be that +material one of words or of bronze, of colour or of ivory, and uses that +beauty as a factor in producing the æsthetic effect. From the point of +view of subject, a healthy work of art is one the choice of whose subject +is conditioned by the temperament of the artist, and comes directly out +of it. In fine, a healthy work of art is one that has both perfection +and personality. Of course, form and substance cannot be separated in a +work of art; they are always one. But for purposes of analysis, and +setting the wholeness of æsthetic impression aside for a moment, we can +intellectually so separate them. An unhealthy work of art, on the other +hand, is a work whose style is obvious, old-fashioned, and common, and +whose subject is deliberately chosen, not because the artist has any +pleasure in it, but because he thinks that the public will pay him for +it. In fact, the popular novel that the public calls healthy is always a +thoroughly unhealthy production; and what the public call an unhealthy +novel is always a beautiful and healthy work of art. + +I need hardly say that I am not, for a single moment, complaining that +the public and the public press misuse these words. I do not see how, +with their lack of comprehension of what Art is, they could possibly use +them in the proper sense. I am merely pointing out the misuse; and as +for the origin of the misuse and the meaning that lies behind it all, the +explanation is very simple. It comes from the barbarous conception of +authority. It comes from the natural inability of a community corrupted +by authority to understand or appreciate Individualism. In a word, it +comes from that monstrous and ignorant thing that is called Public +Opinion, which, bad and well-meaning as it is when it tries to control +action, is infamous and of evil meaning when it tries to control Thought +or Art. + +Indeed, there is much more to be said in favour of the physical force of +the public than there is in favour of the public’s opinion. The former +may be fine. The latter must be foolish. It is often said that force is +no argument. That, however, entirely depends on what one wants to prove. +Many of the most important problems of the last few centuries, such as +the continuance of personal government in England, or of feudalism in +France, have been solved entirely by means of physical force. The very +violence of a revolution may make the public grand and splendid for a +moment. It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is +mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the +brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed +him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly +to be regretted, for both their sakes. Behind the barricade there may be +much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the +leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle? And when +these four are joined together they make a terrible force, and constitute +the new authority. + +In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an +improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and +demoralising. Somebody—was it Burke?—called journalism the fourth +estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment +it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The +Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and +the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by +Journalism. In America the President reigns for four years, and +Journalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately in America Journalism +has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a +natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt. People +are amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments. +But it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously treated. +In England, Journalism, not, except in a few well-known instances, having +been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a +really remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over +people’s private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary. The fact +is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, +except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having +tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. In centuries before ours +the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump. That was quite +hideous. In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the +keyhole. That is much worse. And what aggravates the mischief is that +the journalists who are most to blame are not the amusing journalists who +write for what are called Society papers. The harm is done by the +serious, thoughtful, earnest journalists, who solemnly, as they are doing +at present, will drag before the eyes of the public some incident in the +private life of a great statesman, of a man who is a leader of political +thought as he is a creator of political force, and invite the public to +discuss the incident, to exercise authority in the matter, to give their +views, and not merely to give their views, but to carry them into action, +to dictate to the man upon all other points, to dictate to his party, to +dictate to his country; in fact, to make themselves ridiculous, +offensive, and harmful. The private lives of men and women should not be +told to the public. The public have nothing to do with them at all. In +France they manage these things better. There they do not allow the +details of the trials that take place in the divorce courts to be +published for the amusement or criticism of the public. All that the +public are allowed to know is that the divorce has taken place and was +granted on petition of one or other or both of the married parties +concerned. In France, in fact, they limit the journalist, and allow the +artist almost perfect freedom. Here we allow absolute freedom to the +journalist, and entirely limit the artist. English public opinion, that +is to say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes +things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to retail +things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we +have the most serious journalists in the world, and the most indecent +newspapers. It is no exaggeration to talk of compulsion. There are +possibly some journalists who take a real pleasure in publishing horrible +things, or who, being poor, look to scandals as forming a sort of +permanent basis for an income. But there are other journalists, I feel +certain, men of education and cultivation, who really dislike publishing +these things, who know that it is wrong to do so, and only do it because +the unhealthy conditions under which their occupation is carried on +oblige them to supply the public with what the public wants, and to +compete with other journalists in making that supply as full and +satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible. It is a very +degrading position for any body of educated men to be placed in, and I +have no doubt that most of them feel it acutely. + +However, let us leave what is really a very sordid side of the subject, +and return to the question of popular control in the matter of Art, by +which I mean Public Opinion dictating to the artist the form which he is +to use, the mode in which he is to use it, and the materials with which +he is to work. I have pointed out that the arts which have escaped best +in England are the arts in which the public have not been interested. +They are, however, interested in the drama, and as a certain advance has +been made in the drama within the last ten or fifteen years, it is +important to point out that this advance is entirely due to a few +individual artists refusing to accept the popular want of taste as their +standard, and refusing to regard Art as a mere matter of demand and +supply. With his marvellous and vivid personality, with a style that has +really a true colour-element in it, with his extraordinary power, not +over mere mimicry but over imaginative and intellectual creation, Mr +Irving, had his sole object been to give the public what they wanted, +could have produced the commonest plays in the commonest manner, and made +as much success and money as a man could possibly desire. But his object +was not that. His object was to realise his own perfection as an artist, +under certain conditions, and in certain forms of Art. At first he +appealed to the few: now he has educated the many. He has created in the +public both taste and temperament. The public appreciate his artistic +success immensely. I often wonder, however, whether the public +understand that that success is entirely due to the fact that he did not +accept their standard, but realised his own. With their standard the +Lyceum would have been a sort of second-rate booth, as some of the +popular theatres in London are at present. Whether they understand it or +not the fact however remains, that taste and temperament have, to a +certain extent been created in the public, and that the public is capable +of developing these qualities. The problem then is, why do not the +public become more civilised? They have the capacity. What stops them? + +The thing that stops them, it must be said again, is their desire to +exercise authority over the artist and over works of art. To certain +theatres, such as the Lyceum and the Haymarket, the public seem to come +in a proper mood. In both of these theatres there have been individual +artists, who have succeeded in creating in their audiences—and every +theatre in London has its own audience—the temperament to which Art +appeals. And what is that temperament? It is the temperament of +receptivity. That is all. + +If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority +over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot +receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to +dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. +The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the +master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly +views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art +should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and +appreciate the work of art in question. This is, of course, quite +obvious in the case of the vulgar theatre-going public of English men and +women. But it is equally true of what are called educated people. For +an educated person’s ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art has +been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has +never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure +it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends. +A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and +under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only +temperament that can appreciate a work of art. And true as this is in +the case of the appreciation of sculpture and painting, it is still more +true of the appreciation of such arts as the drama. For a picture and a +statue are not at war with Time. They take no count of its succession. +In one moment their unity may be apprehended. In the case of literature +it is different. Time must be traversed before the unity of effect is +realised. And so, in the drama, there may occur in the first act of the +play something whose real artistic value may not be evident to the +spectator till the third or fourth act is reached. Is the silly fellow +to get angry and call out, and disturb the play, and annoy the artists? +No. The honest man is to sit quietly, and know the delightful emotions +of wonder, curiosity, and suspense. He is not to go to the play to lose +a vulgar temper. He is to go to the play to realise an artistic +temperament. He is to go to the play to gain an artistic temperament. +He is not the arbiter of the work of art. He is one who is admitted to +contemplate the work of art, and, if the work be fine, to forget in its +contemplation and the egotism that mars him—the egotism of his ignorance, +or the egotism of his information. This point about the drama is hardly, +I think, sufficiently recognised. I can quite understand that were +‘Macbeth’ produced for the first time before a modern London audience, +many of the people present would strongly and vigorously object to the +introduction of the witches in the first act, with their grotesque +phrases and their ridiculous words. But when the play is over one +realises that the laughter of the witches in ‘Macbeth’ is as terrible as +the laughter of madness in ‘Lear,’ more terrible than the laughter of +Iago in the tragedy of the Moor. No spectator of art needs a more +perfect mood of receptivity than the spectator of a play. The moment he +seeks to exercise authority he becomes the avowed enemy of Art and of +himself. Art does not mind. It is he who suffers. + +With the novel it is the same thing. Popular authority and the +recognition of popular authority are fatal. Thackeray’s ‘Esmond’ is a +beautiful work of art because he wrote it to please himself. In his +other novels, in ‘Pendennis,’ in ‘Philip,’ in ‘Vanity Fair’ even, at +times, he is too conscious of the public, and spoils his work by +appealing directly to the sympathies of the public, or by directly +mocking at them. A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. +The public are to him non-existent. He has no poppied or honeyed cakes +through which to give the monster sleep or sustenance. He leaves that to +the popular novelist. One incomparable novelist we have now in England, +Mr George Meredith. There are better artists in France, but France has +no one whose view of life is so large, so varied, so imaginatively true. +There are tellers of stories in Russia who have a more vivid sense of +what pain in fiction may be. But to him belongs philosophy in fiction. +His people not merely live, but they live in thought. One can see them +from myriad points of view. They are suggestive. There is soul in them +and around them. They are interpretative and symbolic. And he who made +them, those wonderful quickly-moving figures, made them for his own +pleasure, and has never asked the public what they wanted, has never +cared to know what they wanted, has never allowed the public to dictate +to him or influence him in any way but has gone on intensifying his own +personality, and producing his own individual work. At first none came +to him. That did not matter. Then the few came to him. That did not +change him. The many have come now. He is still the same. He is an +incomparable novelist. + +With the decorative arts it is not different. The public clung with +really pathetic tenacity to what I believe were the direct traditions of +the Great Exhibition of international vulgarity, traditions that were so +appalling that the houses in which people lived were only fit for blind +people to live in. Beautiful things began to be made, beautiful colours +came from the dyer’s hand, beautiful patterns from the artist’s brain, +and the use of beautiful things and their value and importance were set +forth. The public were really very indignant. They lost their temper. +They said silly things. No one minded. No one was a whit the worse. No +one accepted the authority of public opinion. And now it is almost +impossible to enter any modern house without seeing some recognition of +good taste, some recognition of the value of lovely surroundings, some +sign of appreciation of beauty. In fact, people’s houses are, as a rule, +quite charming nowadays. People have been to a very great extent +civilised. It is only fair to state, however, that the extraordinary +success of the revolution in house-decoration and furniture and the like +has not really been due to the majority of the public developing a very +fine taste in such matters. It has been chiefly due to the fact that the +craftsmen of things so appreciated the pleasure of making what was +beautiful, and woke to such a vivid consciousness of the hideousness and +vulgarity of what the public had previously wanted, that they simply +starved the public out. It would be quite impossible at the present +moment to furnish a room as rooms were furnished a few years ago, without +going for everything to an auction of second-hand furniture from some +third-rate lodging-house. The things are no longer made. However they +may object to it, people must nowadays have something charming in their +surroundings. Fortunately for them, their assumption of authority in +these art-matters came to entire grief. + +It is evident, then, that all authority in such things is bad. People +sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist +to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of +government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. +Authority over him and his art is ridiculous. It has been stated that +under despotisms artists have produced lovely work. This is not quite +so. Artists have visited despots, not as subjects to be tyrannised over, +but as wandering wonder-makers, as fascinating vagrant personalities, to +be entertained and charmed and suffered to be at peace, and allowed to +create. There is this to be said in favour of the despot, that he, being +an individual, may have culture, while the mob, being a monster, has +none. One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down to pick up a brush +for a painter, but when the democracy stoops down it is merely to throw +mud. And yet the democracy have not so far to stoop as the emperor. In +fact, when they want to throw mud they have not to stoop at all. But +there is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority +is equally bad. + +There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises +over the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There +is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike. The first is +called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called +the People. The Prince may be cultivated. Many Princes have been. Yet +in the Prince there is danger. One thinks of Dante at the bitter feast +in Verona, of Tasso in Ferrara’s madman’s cell. It is better for the +artist not to live with Princes. The Pope may be cultivated. Many Popes +have been; the bad Popes have been. The bad Popes loved Beauty, almost +as passionately, nay, with as much passion as the good Popes hated +Thought. To the wickedness of the Papacy humanity owes much. The +goodness of the Papacy owes a terrible debt to humanity. Yet, though the +Vatican has kept the rhetoric of its thunders, and lost the rod of its +lightning, it is better for the artist not to live with Popes. It was a +Pope who said of Cellini to a conclave of Cardinals that common laws and +common authority were not made for men such as he; but it was a Pope who +thrust Cellini into prison, and kept him there till he sickened with +rage, and created unreal visions for himself, and saw the gilded sun +enter his room, and grew so enamoured of it that he sought to escape, and +crept out from tower to tower, and falling through dizzy air at dawn, +maimed himself, and was by a vine-dresser covered with vine leaves, and +carried in a cart to one who, loving beautiful things, had care of him. +There is danger in Popes. And as for the People, what of them and their +authority? Perhaps of them and their authority one has spoken enough. +Their authority is a thing blind, deaf, hideous, grotesque, tragic, +amusing, serious, and obscene. It is impossible for the artist to live +with the People. All despots bribe. The people bribe and brutalise. +Who told them to exercise authority? They were made to live, to listen, +and to love. Someone has done them a great wrong. They have marred +themselves by imitation of their inferiors. They have taken the sceptre +of the Prince. How should they use it? They have taken the triple tiara +of the Pope. How should they carry its burden? They are as a clown +whose heart is broken. They are as a priest whose soul is not yet born. +Let all who love Beauty pity them. Though they themselves love not +Beauty, yet let them pity themselves. Who taught them the trick of +tyranny? + +There are many other things that one might point out. One might point +out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social +problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the +individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had +great and individual artists, and great and individual men. One might +point out how Louis XIV., by creating the modern state, destroyed the +individualism of the artist, and made things monstrous in their monotony +of repetition, and contemptible in their conformity to rule, and +destroyed throughout all France all those fine freedoms of expression +that had made tradition new in beauty, and new modes one with antique +form. But the past is of no importance. The present is of no +importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is +what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. +The future is what artists are. + +It will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here is +quite unpractical, and goes against human nature. This is perfectly +true. It is unpractical, and it goes against human nature. This is why +it is worth carrying out, and that is why one proposes it. For what is a +practical scheme? A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already +in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing +conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects +to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and +foolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will +change. The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that +it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The +systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, +and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV. was that +he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his +error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result. All the +results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable. + +It is to be noted also that Individualism does not come to man with any +sickly cant about duty, which merely means doing what other people want +because they want it; or any hideous cant about self-sacrifice, which is +merely a survival of savage mutilation. In fact, it does not come to man +with any claims upon him at all. It comes naturally and inevitably out +of man. It is the point to which all development tends. It is the +differentiation to which all organisms grow. It is the perfection that +is inherent in every mode of life, and towards which every mode of life +quickens. And so Individualism exercises no compulsion over man. On the +contrary, it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion to be +exercised over him. It does not try to force people to be good. It +knows that people are good when they are let alone. Man will develop +Individualism out of himself. Man is now so developing Individualism. +To ask whether Individualism is practical is like asking whether +Evolution is practical. Evolution is the law of life, and there is no +evolution except towards Individualism. Where this tendency is not +expressed, it is a case of artificially-arrested growth, or of disease, +or of death. + +Individualism will also be unselfish and unaffected. It has been pointed +out that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is +that words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple meaning, +and are used to express the obverse of their right signification. What +is true about Art is true about Life. A man is called affected, +nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in doing that he is +acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in such matters, +consists in dressing according to the views of one’s neighbour, whose +views, as they are the views of the majority, will probably be extremely +stupid. Or a man is called selfish if he lives in the manner that seems +to him most suitable for the full realisation of his own personality; if, +in fact, the primary aim of his life is self-development. But this is +the way in which everyone should live. Selfishness is not living as one +wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And +unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with +them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute +uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as +a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not +selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does +not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of ones neighbour +that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why +should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he +cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A +red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be +horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be +both red and roses. Under Individualism people will be quite natural and +absolutely unselfish, and will know the meanings of the words, and +realise them in their free, beautiful lives. Nor will men be egotistic +as they are now. For the egotist is he who makes claims upon others, and +the Individualist will not desire to do that. It will not give him +pleasure. When man has realised Individualism, he will also realise +sympathy and exercise it freely and spontaneously. Up to the present man +has hardly cultivated sympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, +and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy +is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is +tainted with egotism. It is apt to become morbid. There is in it a +certain element of terror for our own safety. We become afraid that we +ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would +have care of us. It is curiously limiting, too. One should sympathise +with the entirety of life, not with life’s sores and maladies merely, but +with life’s joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom. The wider +sympathy is, of course, the more difficult. It requires more +unselfishness. Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, +but it requires a very fine nature—it requires, in fact, the nature of a +true Individualist—to sympathise with a friend’s success. + +In the modern stress of competition and struggle for place, such sympathy +is naturally rare, and is also very much stifled by the immoral ideal of +uniformity of type and conformity to rule which is so prevalent +everywhere, and is perhaps most obnoxious in England. + +Sympathy with pain there will, of course, always be. It is one of the +first instincts of man. The animals which are individual, the higher +animals, that is to say, share it with us. But it must be remembered +that while sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of joy in the world, +sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain. It may +make man better able to endure evil, but the evil remains. Sympathy with +consumption does not cure consumption; that is what Science does. And +when Socialism has solved the problem of poverty, and Science solved the +problem of disease, the area of the sentimentalists will be lessened, and +the sympathy of man will be large, healthy, and spontaneous. Man will +have joy in the contemplation of the joyous life of others. + +For it is through joy that the Individualism of the future will develop +itself. Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently +the Individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through +pain or in solitude. The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of +the man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society +absolutely. But man is naturally social. Even the Thebaid became +peopled at last. And though the cenobite realises his personality, it is +often an impoverished personality that he so realises. Upon the other +hand, the terrible truth that pain is a mode through which man may +realise himself exercises a wonderful fascination over the world. +Shallow speakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often +talk about the world’s worship of pleasure, and whine against it. But it +is rarely in the world’s history that its ideal has been one of joy and +beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world. +Mediævalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its +wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its +whipping with rods—Mediævalism is real Christianity, and the mediæval +Christ is the real Christ. When the Renaissance dawned upon the world, +and brought with it the new ideals of the beauty of life and the joy of +living, men could not understand Christ. Even Art shows us that. The +painters of the Renaissance drew Christ as a little boy playing with +another boy in a palace or a garden, or lying back in his mother’s arms, +smiling at her, or at a flower, or at a bright bird; or as a noble, +stately figure moving nobly through the world; or as a wonderful figure +rising in a sort of ecstasy from death to life. Even when they drew him +crucified they drew him as a beautiful God on whom evil men had inflicted +suffering. But he did not preoccupy them much. What delighted them was +to paint the men and women whom they admired, and to show the loveliness +of this lovely earth. They painted many religious pictures—in fact, they +painted far too many, and the monotony of type and motive is wearisome, +and was bad for art. It was the result of the authority of the public in +art-matters, and is to be deplored. But their soul was not in the +subject. Raphael was a great artist when he painted his portrait of the +Pope. When he painted his Madonnas and infant Christs, he is not a great +artist at all. Christ had no message for the Renaissance, which was +wonderful because it brought an ideal at variance with his, and to find +the presentation of the real Christ we must go to mediæval art. There he +is one maimed and marred; one who is not comely to look on, because +Beauty is a joy; one who is not in fair raiment, because that may be a +joy also: he is a beggar who has a marvellous soul; he is a leper whose +soul is divine; he needs neither property nor health; he is a God +realising his perfection through pain. + +The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great. It was +necessary that pain should be put forward as a mode of self-realisation. +Even now, in some places in the world, the message of Christ is +necessary. No one who lived in modern Russia could possibly realise his +perfection except by pain. A few Russian artists have realised +themselves in Art; in a fiction that is mediæval in character, because +its dominant note is the realisation of men through suffering. But for +those who are not artists, and to whom there is no mode of life but the +actual life of fact, pain is the only door to perfection. A Russian who +lives happily under the present system of government in Russia must +either believe that man has no soul, or that, if he has, it is not worth +developing. A Nihilist who rejects all authority, because he knows +authority to be evil, and welcomes all pain, because through that he +realises his personality, is a real Christian. To him the Christian +ideal is a true thing. + +And yet, Christ did not revolt against authority. He accepted the +imperial authority of the Roman Empire and paid tribute. He endured the +ecclesiastical authority of the Jewish Church, and would not repel its +violence by any violence of his own. He had, as I said before, no scheme +for the reconstruction of society. But the modern world has schemes. It +proposes to do away with poverty and the suffering that it entails. It +desires to get rid of pain, and the suffering that pain entails. It +trusts to Socialism and to Science as its methods. What it aims at is an +Individualism expressing itself through joy. This Individualism will be +larger, fuller, lovelier than any Individualism has ever been. Pain is +not the ultimate mode of perfection. It is merely provisional and a +protest. It has reference to wrong, unhealthy, unjust surroundings. +When the wrong, and the disease, and the injustice are removed, it will +have no further place. It will have done its work. It was a great work, +but it is almost over. Its sphere lessens every day. + +Nor will man miss it. For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither +pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, +fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on +others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to +him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure +is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in +harmony with himself and his environment. The new Individualism, for +whose service Socialism, whether it wills it or not, is working, will be +perfect harmony. It will be what the Greeks sought for, but could not, +except in Thought, realise completely, because they had slaves, and fed +them; it will be what the Renaissance sought for, but could not realise +completely except in Art, because they had slaves, and starved them. It +will be complete, and through it each man will attain to his perfection. +The new Individualism is the new Hellenism. + + * * * * * + + _Reprinted from the_ ‘_Fortnightly Review_,’ + _by permission of Messrs Chapman and Hall_. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL OF MAN*** + + +******* This file should be named 1017-0.txt or 1017-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/1/1017 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1018-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1018-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e8785431 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1018-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7445 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1018 *** + +Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + THE + WATER BABIES + + + A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby + + * * * * * + + BY + CHARLES KINGSLEY + + * * * * * + + _NEW EDITION_ + WITH ONE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS BY LINLEY SAMBOURNE + + * * * * * + + London + MACMILLAN AND CO. + AND NEW YORK + 1889 + + _All rights reserved_ + + * * * * * + + _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_ + + * * * * * + + TO + + MY YOUNGEST SON + + GRENVILLE ARTHUR + + AND + + TO ALL OTHER GOOD LITTLE BOYS + + * * * * * + + COME READ ME MY RIDDLE, EACH GOOD LITTLE MAN; + IF YOU CANNOT READ IT, NO GROWN-UP FOLK CAN. + + [Picture: Water babies and frogs playing leap-frog] + + “I heard a thousand blended notes, + While in a grove I sate reclined; + In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts + Being sad thoughts to the mind. + + “To her fair works did Nature link + The human soul that through me ran; + And much it grieved my heart to think, + What man has made of man.” + + WORDSWORTH. + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + “I heard a thousand blended notes, + While in a grove I sate reclined; + In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts + Bring sad thoughts to the mind. + + “To her fair works did Nature link + The human soul that through me ran; + And much it grieved my heart to think, + What man has made of man.” + + WORDSWORTH. + + [Picture: Little chimney-sweep] + +ONCE upon a time there was a little chimney-sweep, and his name was Tom. +That is a short name, and you have heard it before, so you will not have +much trouble in remembering it. He lived in a great town in the North +country, where there were plenty of chimneys to sweep, and plenty of +money for Tom to earn and his master to spend. He could not read nor +write, and did not care to do either; and he never washed himself, for +there was no water up the court where he lived. He had never been taught +to say his prayers. He never had heard of God, or of Christ, except in +words which you never have heard, and which it would have been well if he +had never heard. He cried half his time, and laughed the other half. He +cried when he had to climb the dark flues, rubbing his poor knees and +elbows raw; and when the soot got into his eyes, which it did every day +in the week; and when his master beat him, which he did every day in the +week; and when he had not enough to eat, which happened every day in the +week likewise. And he laughed the other half of the day, when he was +tossing halfpennies with the other boys, or playing leap-frog over the +posts, or bowling stones at the horses’ legs as they trotted by, which +last was excellent fun, when there was a wall at hand behind which to +hide. [Picture: Dogs] As for chimney-sweeping, and being hungry, and +being beaten, he took all that for the way of the world, like the rain +and snow and thunder, and stood manfully with his back to it till it was +over, as his old donkey did to a hail-storm; and then shook his ears and +was as jolly as ever; and thought of the fine times coming, when he would +be a man, and a master sweep, and sit in the public-house with a quart of +beer and a long pipe, and play cards for silver money, and wear +velveteens and ankle-jacks, and keep a white bull-dog with one gray ear, +and carry her puppies in his pocket, just like a man. And he would have +apprentices, one, two, three, if he could. How he would bully them, and +knock them about, just as his master did to him; and make them carry home +the soot sacks, while he rode before them on his donkey, with a pipe in +his mouth and a flower in his button-hole, like a king at the head of his +army. Yes, there were good times coming; and, when his master let him +have a pull at the leavings of his beer, Tom was the jolliest boy in the +whole town. + + [Picture: Smart groom and Tom] + +One day a smart little groom rode into the court where Tom lived. Tom +was just hiding behind a wall, to heave half a brick at his horse’s legs, +as is the custom of that country when they welcome strangers; but the +groom saw him, and halloed to him to know where Mr. Grimes, the +chimney-sweep, lived. Now, Mr. Grimes was Tom’s own master, and Tom was +a good man of business, and always civil to customers, so he put the +half-brick down quietly behind the wall, and proceeded to take orders. + +Mr. Grimes was to come up next morning to Sir John Harthover’s, at the +Place, for his old chimney-sweep was gone to prison, and the chimneys +wanted sweeping. And so he rode away, not giving Tom time to ask what +the sweep had gone to prison for, which was a matter of interest to Tom, +as he had been in prison once or twice himself. Moreover, the groom +looked so very neat and clean, with his drab gaiters, drab breeches, drab +jacket, snow-white tie with a smart pin in it, and clean round ruddy +face, that Tom was offended and disgusted at his appearance, and +considered him a stuck-up fellow, who gave himself airs because he wore +smart clothes, and other people paid for them; and went behind the wall +to fetch the half-brick after all; but did not, remembering that he had +come in the way of business, and was, as it were, under a flag of truce. + +His master was so delighted at his new customer that he knocked Tom down +out of hand, and drank more beer that night than he usually did in two, +in order to be sure of getting up in time next morning; for the more a +man’s head aches when he wakes, the more glad he is to turn out, and have +a breath of fresh air. And, when he did get up at four the next morning, +he knocked Tom down again, in order to teach him (as young gentlemen used +to be taught at public schools) that he must be an extra good boy that +day, as they were going to a very great house, and might make a very good +thing of it, if they could but give satisfaction. + +And Tom thought so likewise, and, indeed, would have done and behaved his +best, even without being knocked down. For, of all places upon earth, +Harthover Place (which he had never seen) was the most wonderful, and, of +all men on earth, Sir John (whom he had seen, having been sent to gaol by +him twice) was the most awful. + + [Picture: Sir John Harthover] + +Harthover Place was really a grand place, even for the rich North +country; with a house so large that in the frame-breaking riots, which +Tom could just remember, the Duke of Wellington, and ten thousand +soldiers to match, were easily housed therein; at least, so Tom believed; +with a park full of deer, which Tom believed to be monsters who were in +the habit of eating children; with miles of game-preserves, in which Mr. +Grimes and the collier lads poached at times, on which occasions Tom saw +pheasants, and wondered what they tasted like; with a noble salmon-river, +in which Mr. Grimes and his friends would have liked to poach; but then +they must have got into cold water, and that they did not like at all. +In short, Harthover was a grand place, and Sir John a grand old man, whom +even Mr. Grimes respected; for not only could he send Mr. Grimes to +prison when he deserved it, as he did once or twice a week; not only did +he own all the land about for miles; not only was he a jolly, honest, +sensible squire, as ever kept a pack of hounds, who would do what he +thought right by his neighbours, as well as get what he thought right for +himself; but, what was more, he weighed full fifteen stone, was nobody +knew how many inches round the chest, and could have thrashed Mr. Grimes +himself in fair fight, which very few folk round there could do, and +which, my dear little boy, would not have been right for him to do, as a +great many things are not which one both can do, and would like very much +to do. So Mr. Grimes touched his hat to him when he rode through the +town, and called him a “buirdly awd chap,” and his young ladies “gradely +lasses,” which are two high compliments in the North country; and thought +that that made up for his poaching Sir John’s pheasants; whereby you may +perceive that Mr. Grimes had not been to a properly-inspected Government +National School. + +Now, I dare say, you never got up at three o’clock on a midsummer +morning. Some people get up then because they want to catch salmon; and +some because they want to climb Alps; and a great many more because they +must, like Tom. But, I assure you, that three o’clock on a midsummer +morning is the pleasantest time of all the twenty-four hours, and all the +three hundred and sixty-five days; and why every one does not get up +then, I never could tell, save that they are all determined to spoil +their nerves and their complexions by doing all night what they might +just as well do all day. But Tom, instead of going out to dinner at +half-past eight at night, and to a ball at ten, and finishing off +somewhere between twelve and four, went to bed at seven, when his master +went to the public-house, and slept like a dead pig; for which reason he +was as piert as a game-cock (who always gets up early to wake the maids), +and just ready to get up when the fine gentlemen and ladies were just +ready to go to bed. + +[Picture: Grimes and Tom] So he and his master set out; Grimes rode the +donkey in front, and Tom and the brushes walked behind; out of the court, +and up the street, past the closed window-shutters, and the winking weary +policemen, and the roofs all shining gray in the gray dawn. + +They passed through the pitmen’s village, all shut up and silent now, and +through the turnpike; and then the were out in the real country, and +plodding along the black dusty road, between black slag walls, with no +sound but the groaning and thumping of the pit-engine in the next field. +But soon the road grew white, and the walls likewise; and at the wall’s +foot grew long grass and gay flowers, all drenched with dew; and instead +of the groaning of the pit-engine, they heard the skylark saying his +matins high up in the air, and the pit-bird warbling in the sedges, as he +had warbled all night long. + +All else was silent. For old Mrs. Earth was still fast asleep; and, like +many pretty people, she looked still prettier asleep than awake. The +great elm-trees in the gold-green meadows were fast asleep above, and the +cows fast asleep beneath them; nay, the few clouds which were about were +fast asleep likewise, and so tired that they had lain down on the earth +to rest, in long white flakes and bars, among the stems of the elm-trees, +and along the tops of the alders by the stream, waiting for the sun to +bid them rise and go about their day’s business in the clear blue +overhead. + +On they went; and Tom looked, and looked, for he never had been so far +into the country before; and longed to get over a gate, and pick +buttercups, and look for birds’ nests in the hedge; but Mr. Grimes was a +man of business, and would not have heard of that. + +Soon they came up with a poor Irishwoman, trudging along with a bundle at +her back. She had a gray shawl over her head, and a crimson madder +petticoat; so you may be sure she came from Galway. She had neither +shoes nor stockings, and limped along as if she were tired and footsore; +but she was a very tall handsome woman, with bright gray eyes, and heavy +black hair hanging about her cheeks. And she took Mr. Grimes’ fancy so +much, that when he came alongside he called out to her: + +[Picture: The poor Irishwomen] “This is a hard road for a gradely foot +like that. Will ye up, lass, and ride behind me?” + +But, perhaps, she did not admire Mr. Grimes’ look and voice; for she +answered quietly: + +“No, thank you: I’d sooner walk with your little lad here.” + +“You may please yourself,” growled Grimes, and went on smoking. + +So she walked beside Tom, and talked to him, and asked him where he +lived, and what he knew, and all about himself, till Tom thought he had +never met such a pleasant-spoken woman. And she asked him, at last, +whether he said his prayers! and seemed sad when he told her that he knew +no prayers to say. + +Then he asked her where she lived, and she said far away by the sea. And +Tom asked her about the sea; and she told him how it rolled and roared +over the rocks in winter nights, and lay still in the bright summer days, +for the children to bathe and play in it; and many a story more, till Tom +longed to go and see the sea, and bathe in it likewise. + +At last, at the bottom of a hill, they came to a spring; not such a +spring as you see here, which soaks up out of a white gravel in the bog, +among red fly-catchers, and pink bottle-heath, and sweet white orchis; +nor such a one as you may see, too, here, which bubbles up under the warm +sandbank in the hollow lane by the great tuft of lady ferns, and makes +the sand dance reels at the bottom, day and night, all the year round; +not such a spring as either of those; but a real North country limestone +fountain, like one of those in Sicily or Greece, where the old heathen +fancied the nymphs sat cooling themselves the hot summer’s day, while the +shepherds peeped at them from behind the bushes. Out of a low cave of +rock, at the foot of a limestone crag, the great fountain rose, quelling, +and bubbling, and gurgling, so clear that you could not tell where the +water ended and the air began; and ran away under the road, a stream +large enough to turn a mill; among blue geranium, and golden +globe-flower, and wild raspberry, and the bird-cherry with its tassels of +snow. + +And there Grimes stopped, and looked; and Tom looked too. Tom was +wondering whether anything lived in that dark cave, and came out at night +to fly in the meadows. But Grimes was not wondering at all. Without a +word, he got off his donkey, and clambered over the low road wall, and +knelt down, and began dipping his ugly head into the spring—and very +dirty he made it. + +Tom was picking the flowers as fast as he could. The Irishwoman helped +him, and showed him how to tie them up; and a very pretty nosegay they +had made between them. But when he saw Grimes actually wash, he stopped, +quite astonished; and when Grimes had finished, and began shaking his +ears to dry them, he said: + +“Why, master, I never saw you do that before.” + +“Nor will again, most likely. ’Twasn’t for cleanliness I did it, but for +coolness. I’d be ashamed to want washing every week or so, like any +smutty collier lad.” + +“I wish I might go and dip my head in,” said poor little Tom. “It must +be as good as putting it under the town-pump; and there is no beadle here +to drive a chap away.” + +“Thou come along,” said Grimes; “what dost want with washing thyself? +Thou did not drink half a gallon of beer last night, like me.” + +“I don’t care for you,” said naughty Tom, and ran down to the stream, and +began washing his face. + +Grimes was very sulky, because the woman preferred Tom’s company to his; +so he dashed at him with horrid words, and tore him up from his knees, +and began beating him. But Tom was accustomed to that, and got his head +safe between Mr. Grimes’ legs, and kicked his shins with all his might. + +“Are you not ashamed of yourself, Thomas Grimes?” cried the Irishwoman +over the wall. + +Grimes looked up, startled at her knowing his name; but all he answered +was, “No, nor never was yet;” and went on beating Tom. + +“True for you. If you ever had been ashamed of yourself, you would have +gone over into Vendale long ago.” + +“What do you know about Vendale?” shouted Grimes; but he left off beating +Tom. + +“I know about Vendale, and about you, too. I know, for instance, what +happened in Aldermire Copse, by night, two years ago come Martinmas.” + +“You do?” shouted Grimes; and leaving Tom, he climbed up over the wall, +and faced the woman. Tom thought he was going to strike her; but she +looked him too full and fierce in the face for that. + +“Yes; I was there,” said the Irishwoman quietly. + +“You are no Irishwoman, by your speech,” said Grimes, after many bad +words. + +“Never mind who I am. I saw what I saw; and if you strike that boy +again, I can tell what I know.” + +Grimes seemed quite cowed, and got on his donkey without another word. + +“Stop!” said the Irishwoman. “I have one more word for you both; for you +will both see me again before all is over. Those that wish to be clean, +clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul, foul they will be. +Remember.” + + [Picture: Griffin status with shield saying “Salvtem”] + +And she turned away, and through a gate into the meadow. Grimes stood +still a moment, like a man who had been stunned. Then he rushed after +her, shouting, “You come back.” But when he got into the meadow, the +woman was not there. + +Had she hidden away? There was no place to hide in. But Grimes looked +about, and Tom also, for he was as puzzled as Grimes himself at her +disappearing so suddenly; but look where they would, she was not there. + +Grimes came back again, as silent as a post, for he was a little +frightened; and, getting on his donkey, filled a fresh pipe, and smoked +away, leaving Tom in peace. + + [Picture: Griffin status with shield saying “Amicis”] + +And now they had gone three miles and more, and came to Sir John’s +lodge-gates. + +Very grand lodges they were, with very grand iron gates and stone +gate-posts, and on the top of each a most dreadful bogy, all teeth, +horns, and tail, which was the crest which Sir John’s ancestors wore in +the Wars of the Roses; and very prudent men they were to wear it, for all +their enemies must have run for their lives at the very first sight of +them. + +Grimes rang at the gate, and out came a keeper on the spot, and opened. + +“I was told to expect thee,” he said. “Now thou’lt be so good as to keep +to the main avenue, and not let me find a hare or a rabbit on thee when +thou comest back. I shall look sharp for one, I tell thee.” + +“Not if it’s in the bottom of the soot-bag,” quoth Grimes, and at that he +laughed; and the keeper laughed and said: + +“If that’s thy sort, I may as well walk up with thee to the hall.” + +“I think thou best had. It’s thy business to see after thy game, man, +and not mine.” + +So the keeper went with them; and, to Tom’s surprise, he and Grimes +chatted together all the way quite pleasantly. He did not know that a +keeper is only a poacher turned outside in, and a poacher a keeper turned +inside out. + +They walked up a great lime avenue, a full mile long, and between their +stems Tom peeped trembling at the horns of the sleeping deer, which stood +up among the ferns. Tom had never seen such enormous trees, and as he +looked up he fancied that the blue sky rested on their heads. But he was +puzzled very much by a strange murmuring noise, which followed them all +the way. So much puzzled, that at last he took courage to ask the keeper +what it was. + + [Picture: The keeper and Grimes] + +He spoke very civilly, and called him Sir, for he was horribly afraid of +him, which pleased the keeper, and he told him that they were the bees +about the lime flowers. + +“What are bees?” asked Tom. + +“What make honey.” + +“What is honey?” asked Tom. + +“Thou hold thy noise,” said Grimes. + +“Let the boy be,” said the keeper. “He’s a civil young chap now, and +that’s more than he’ll be long if he bides with thee.” + +Grimes laughed, for he took that for a compliment. + +“I wish I were a keeper,” said Tom, “to live in such a beautiful place, +and wear green velveteens, and have a real dog-whistle at my button, like +you.” + +The keeper laughed; he was a kind-hearted fellow enough. + +“Let well alone, lad, and ill too at times. Thy life’s safer than mine +at all events, eh, Mr. Grimes?” + +And Grimes laughed again, and then the two men began talking, quite low. +Tom could hear, though, that it was about some poaching fight; and at +last Grimes said surlily, “Hast thou anything against me?” + +“Not now.” + +“Then don’t ask me any questions till thou hast, for I am a man of +honour.” + +And at that they both laughed again, and thought it a very good joke. + +And by this time they were come up to the great iron gates in front of +the house; and Tom stared through them at the rhododendrons and azaleas, +which were all in flower; and then at the house itself, and wondered how +many chimneys there were in it, and how long ago it was built, and what +was the man’s name that built it, and whether he got much money for his +job? + +These last were very difficult questions to answer. For Harthover had +been built at ninety different times, and in nineteen different styles, +and looked as if somebody had built a whole street of houses of every +imaginable shape, and then stirred them together with a spoon. + + _For the attics were Anglo-Saxon_. + + _The third door Norman_. + + _The second Cinque-cento_. + + _The first-floor Elizabethan_. + + _The right wing Pure Doric_. + + _The centre Early English_, _with a huge portico copied from the + Parthenon_. + + _The left wing pure Bœotian_, _which the country folk admired most of + all_, _became it was just like the new barracks in the town_, _only + three times as big_. + + _The grand staircase was copied from the Catacombs at Rome_. + + _The back staircase from the Tajmahal at Agra_. _This was built by + Sir John’s great-great-great-uncle_, _who won_, _in Lord Clive’s + Indian Wars_, _plenty of money_, _plenty of wounds_, _and no more + taste than his betters_. + + _The cellars were copied from the caves of Elephanta_. + + _The offices from the Pavilion at Brighton_. + +And the rest from nothing in heaven, or earth, or under the earth. + +So that Harthover House was a great puzzle to antiquarians, and a +thorough Naboth’s vineyard to critics, and architects, and all persons +who like meddling with other men’s business, and spending other men’s +money. So they were all setting upon poor Sir John, year after year, and +trying to talk him into spending a hundred thousand pounds or so, in +building, to please them and not himself. But he always put them off, +like a canny North-countryman as he was. One wanted him to build a +Gothic house, but he said he was no Goth; and another to build an +Elizabethan, but he said he lived under good Queen Victoria, and not good +Queen Bess; and another was bold enough to tell him that his house was +ugly, but he said he lived inside it, and not outside; and another, that +there was no unity in it, but he said that that was just why he liked the +old place. For he liked to see how each Sir John, and Sir Hugh, and Sir +Ralph, and Sir Randal, had left his mark upon the place, each after his +own taste; and he had no more notion of disturbing his ancestors’ work +than of disturbing their graves. For now the house looked like a real +live house, that had a history, and had grown and grown as the world +grew; and that it was only an upstart fellow who did not know who his own +grandfather was, who would change it for some spick and span new Gothic +or Elizabethan thing, which looked as if it bad been all spawned in a +night, as mushrooms are. From which you may collect (if you have wit +enough) that Sir John was a very sound-headed, sound-hearted squire, and +just the man to keep the country side in order, and show good sport with +his hounds. + +[Picture: The housekeeper] But Tom and his master did not go in through +the great iron gates, as if they had been Dukes or Bishops, but round the +back way, and a very long way round it was; and into a little back-door, +where the ash-boy let them in, yawning horribly; and then in a passage +the housekeeper met them, in such a flowered chintz dressing-gown, that +Tom mistook her for My Lady herself, and she gave Grimes solemn orders +about “You will take care of this, and take care of that,” as if he was +going up the chimneys, and not Tom. And Grimes listened, and said every +now and then, under his voice, “You’ll mind that, you little beggar?” and +Tom did mind, all at least that he could. And then the housekeeper +turned them into a grand room, all covered up in sheets of brown paper, +and bade them begin, in a lofty and tremendous voice; and so after a +whimper or two, and a kick from his master, into the grate Tom went, and +up the chimney, while a housemaid stayed in the room to watch the +furniture; to whom Mr. Grimes paid many playful and chivalrous +compliments, but met with very slight encouragement in return. + + [Picture: Grimes paying complements] + +How many chimneys Tom swept I cannot say; but he swept so many that he +got quite tired, and puzzled too, for they were not like the town flues +to which he was accustomed, but such as you would find—if you would only +get up them and look, which perhaps you would not like to do—in old +country-houses, large and crooked chimneys, which had been altered again +and again, till they ran one into another, anastomosing (as Professor +Owen would say) considerably. So Tom fairly lost his way in them; not +that he cared much for that, though he was in pitchy darkness, for he was +as much at home in a chimney as a mole is underground; but at last, +coming down as he thought the right chimney, he came down the wrong one, +and found himself standing on the hearthrug in a room the like of which +he had never seen before. + +Tom had never seen the like. He had never been in gentlefolks’ rooms but +when the carpets were all up, and the curtains down, and the furniture +huddled together under a cloth, and the pictures covered with aprons and +dusters; and he had often enough wondered what the rooms were like when +they were all ready for the quality to sit in. And now he saw, and he +thought the sight very pretty. + +The room was all dressed in white,—white window-curtains, white +bed-curtains, white furniture, and white walls, with just a few lines of +pink here and there. The carpet was all over gay little flowers; and the +walls were hung with pictures in gilt frames, which amused Tom very much. +There were pictures of ladies and gentlemen, and pictures of horses and +dogs. The horses he liked; but the dogs he did not care for much, for +there were no bull-dogs among them, not even a terrier. But the two +pictures which took his fancy most were, one a man in long garments, with +little children and their mothers round him, who was laying his hand upon +the children’s heads. That was a very pretty picture, Tom thought, to +hang in a lady’s room. For he could see that it was a lady’s room by the +dresses which lay about. + +The other picture was that of a man nailed to a cross, which surprised +Tom much. He fancied that he had seen something like it in a +shop-window. But why was it there? “Poor man,” thought Tom, “and he +looks so kind and quiet. But why should the lady have such a sad picture +as that in her room? Perhaps it was some kinsman of hers, who had been +murdered by the savages in foreign parts, and she kept it there for a +remembrance.” And Tom felt sad, and awed, and turned to look at +something else. + +The next thing he saw, and that too puzzled him, was a washing-stand, +with ewers and basins, and soap and brushes, and towels, and a large bath +full of clean water—what a heap of things all for washing! “She must be +a very dirty lady,” thought Tom, “by my master’s rule, to want as much +scrubbing as all that. But she must be very cunning to put the dirt out +of the way so well afterwards, for I don’t see a speck about the room, +not even on the very towels.” + +And then, looking toward the bed, he saw that dirty lady, and held his +breath with astonishment. + +Under the snow-white coverlet, upon the snow-white pillow, lay the most +beautiful little girl that Tom had ever seen. Her cheeks were almost as +white as the pillow, and her hair was like threads of gold spread all +about over the bed. She might have been as old as Tom, or maybe a year +or two older; but Tom did not think of that. He thought only of her +delicate skin and golden hair, and wondered whether she was a real live +person, or one of the wax dolls he had seen in the shops. But when he +saw her breathe, he made up his mind that she was alive, and stood +staring at her, as if she had been an angel out of heaven. + + [Picture: The girl asleep] + +No. She cannot be dirty. She never could have been dirty, thought Tom +to himself. And then he thought, “And are all people like that when they +are washed?” And he looked at his own wrist, and tried to rub the soot +off, and wondered whether it ever would come off. “Certainly I should +look much prettier then, if I grew at all like her.” + +And looking round, he suddenly saw, standing close to him, a little ugly, +black, ragged figure, with bleared eyes and grinning white teeth. He +turned on it angrily. What did such a little black ape want in that +sweet young lady’s room? And behold, it was himself, reflected in a +great mirror, the like of which Tom had never seen before. + +And Tom, for the first time in his life, found out that he was dirty; and +burst into tears with shame and anger; and turned to sneak up the chimney +again and hide; and upset the fender and threw the fire-irons down, with +a noise as of ten thousand tin kettles tied to ten thousand mad dogs’ +tails. + +Up jumped the little white lady in her bed, and, seeing Tom, screamed as +shrill as any peacock. In rushed a stout old nurse from the next room, +and seeing Tom likewise, made up her mind that he had come to rob, +plunder, destroy, and burn; and dashed at him, as he lay over the fender, +so fast that she caught him by the jacket. + +But she did not hold him. Tom had been in a policeman’s hands many a +time, and out of them too, what is more; and he would have been ashamed +to face his friends for ever if he had been stupid enough to be caught by +an old woman; so he doubled under the good lady’s arm, across the room, +and out of the window in a moment. + +He did not need to drop out, though he would have done so bravely enough. +Nor even to let himself down a spout, which would have been an old game +to him; for once he got up by a spout to the church roof, he said to take +jackdaws’ eggs, but the policeman said to steal lead; and, when he was +seen on high, sat there till the sun got too hot, and came down by +another spout, leaving the policemen to go back to the stationhouse and +eat their dinners. + +But all under the window spread a tree, with great leaves and sweet white +flowers, almost as big as his head. It was magnolia, I suppose; but Tom +knew nothing about that, and cared less; for down the tree he went, like +a cat, and across the garden lawn, and over the iron railings and up the +park towards the wood, leaving the old nurse to scream murder and fire at +the window. + + [Picture: The under gardener] + +The under gardener, mowing, saw Tom, and threw down his scythe; caught +his leg in it, and cut his shin open, whereby he kept his bed for a week; +but in his hurry he never knew it, and gave chase to poor Tom. The +dairymaid heard the noise, got the churn between her knees, and tumbled +over it, spilling all the cream; and yet she jumped up, and gave chase to +Tom. [Picture: The diarymaid] A groom cleaning Sir John’s hack at the +stables let him go loose, whereby he kicked himself lame in five minutes; +but he ran out and gave chase to Tom. Grimes upset the soot-sack in the +new-gravelled yard, and spoilt it all utterly; but he ran out and gave +chase to Tom. The old steward opened the park-gate in such a hurry, that +he hung up his pony’s chin upon the spikes, and, for aught I know, it +hangs there still; but he jumped off, and gave chase to Tom. The +ploughman left his horses at the headland, and one jumped over the fence, +and pulled the other into the ditch, plough and all; but he ran on, and +gave chase to Tom. The keeper, who was taking a stoat out of a trap, let +the stoat go, and caught his own finger; but he jumped up, and ran after +Tom; and considering what he said, and how he looked, I should have been +sorry for Tom if he had caught him. Sir John looked out of his study +window (for he was an early old gentleman) and up at the nurse, and a +marten dropped mud in his eye, so that he had at last to send for the +doctor; and yet he ran out, and gave chase to Tom. The Irishwoman, too, +was walking up to the house to beg,—she must have got round by some +byway—but she threw away her bundle, and gave chase to Tom likewise. +Only my Lady did not give chase; for when she had put her head out of the +window, her night-wig fell into the garden, and she had to ring up her +lady’s-maid, and send her down for it privately, which quite put her out +of the running, so that she came in nowhere, and is consequently not +placed. + + [Picture: The old steward] + +In a word, never was there heard at Hall Place—not even when the fox was +killed in the conservatory, among acres of broken glass, and tons of +smashed flower-pots—such a noise, row, hubbub, babel, shindy, hullabaloo, +stramash, charivari, and total contempt of dignity, repose, and order, as +that day, when Grimes, gardener, the groom, the dairymaid, Sir John, the +steward, the ploughman, the keeper, and the Irishwoman, all ran up the +park, shouting, “Stop thief,” in the belief that Tom had at least a +thousand pounds’ worth of jewels in his empty pockets; and the very +magpies and jays followed Tom up, screaking and screaming, as if he were +a hunted fox, beginning to droop his brush. + + [Picture: Grimes] + +And all the while poor Tom paddled up the park with his little bare feet, +like a small black gorilla fleeing to the forest. Alas for him! there +was no big father gorilla therein to take his part—to scratch out the +gardener’s inside with one paw, toss the dairymaid into a tree with +another, and wrench off Sir John’s head with a third, while he cracked +the keeper’s skull with his teeth as easily as if it had been a cocoa-nut +or a paving-stone. + + [Picture: Man on horse] + +However, Tom did not remember ever having had a father; so he did not +look for one, and expected to have to take care of himself; while as for +running, he could keep up for a couple of miles with any stage-coach, if +there was the chance of a copper or a cigar-end, and turn coach-wheels on +his hands and feet ten times following, which is more than you can do. +Wherefore his pursuers found it very difficult to catch him; and we will +hope that they did not catch him at all. + + [Picture: Man chasing] + +Tom, of course, made for the woods. He had never been in a wood in his +life; but he was sharp enough to know that he might hide in a bush, or +swarm up a tree, and, altogether, had more chance there than in the open. +If he had not known that, he would have been foolisher than a mouse or a +minnow. + + [Picture: Man on knees] + +But when he got into the wood, he found it a very different sort of place +from what he had fancied. He pushed into a thick cover of rhododendrons, +and found himself at once caught in a trap. The boughs laid hold of his +legs and arms, poked him in his face and his stomach, made him shut his +eyes tight (though that was no great loss, for he could not see at best a +yard before his nose); and when he got through the rhododendrons, the +hassock-grass and sedges tumbled him over, and cut his poor little +fingers afterwards most spitefully; the birches birched him as soundly as +if he had been a nobleman at Eton, and over the face too (which is not +fair swishing as all brave boys will agree); and the lawyers tripped him +up, and tore his shins as if they had sharks’ teeth—which lawyers are +likely enough to have. + +“I must get out of this,” thought Tom, “or I shall stay here till +somebody comes to help me—which is just what I don’t want.” + +But how to get out was the difficult matter. And indeed I don’t think he +would ever have got out at all, but have stayed there till the +cock-robins covered him with leaves, if he had not suddenly run his head +against a wall. + + [Picture: Man looking out of window] + +Now running your head against a wall is not pleasant, especially if it is +a loose wall, with the stones all set on edge, and a sharp cornered one +hits you between the eyes and makes you see all manner of beautiful +stars. The stars are very beautiful, certainly; but unfortunately they +go in the twenty-thousandth part of a split second, and the pain which +comes after them does not. And so Tom hurt his head; but he was a brave +boy, and did not mind that a penny. He guessed that over the wall the +cover would end; and up it he went, and over like a squirrel. + +And there he was, out on the great grouse-moors, which the country folk +called Harthover Fell—heather and bog and rock, stretching away and up, +up to the very sky. + +Now, Tom was a cunning little fellow—as cunning as an old Exmoor stag. +Why not? Though he was but ten years old, he had lived longer than most +stags, and had more wits to start with into the bargain. + +He knew as well as a stag, that if he backed he might throw the hounds +out. So the first thing he did when he was over the wall was to make the +neatest double sharp to his right, and run along under the wall for +nearly half a mile. + +Whereby Sir John, and the keeper, and the steward, and the gardener, and +the ploughman, and the dairymaid, and all the hue-and-cry together, went +on ahead half a mile in the very opposite direction, and inside the wall, +leaving him a mile off on the outside; while Tom heard their shouts die +away in the woods and chuckled to himself merrily. + +At last he came to a dip in the land, and went to the bottom of it, and +then he turned bravely away from the wall and up the moor; for he knew +that he had put a hill between him and his enemies, and could go on +without their seeing him. + +But the Irishwoman, alone of them all, had seen which way Tom went. She +had kept ahead of every one the whole time; and yet she neither walked +nor ran. She went along quite smoothly and gracefully, while her feet +twinkled past each other so fast that you could not see which was +foremost; till every one asked the other who the strange woman was; and +all agreed, for want of anything better to say, that she must be in +league with Tom. + +But when she came to the plantation, they lost sight of her; and they +could do no less. For she went quietly over the wall after Tom, and +followed him wherever he went. Sir John and the rest saw no more of her; +and out of sight was out of mind. + +And now Tom was right away into the heather, over just such a moor as +those in which you have been bred, except that there were rocks and +stones lying about everywhere, and that, instead of the moor growing flat +as he went upwards, it grew more and more broken and hilly, but not so +rough but that little Tom could jog along well enough, and find time, +too, to stare about at the strange place, which was like a new world to +him. + +He saw great spiders there, with crowns and crosses marked on their +backs, who sat in the middle of their webs, and when they saw Tom coming, +shook them so fast that they became invisible. Then he saw lizards, +brown and gray and green, and thought they were snakes, and would sting +him; but they were as much frightened as he, and shot away into the +heath. And then, under a rock, he saw a pretty sight—a great brown, +sharp-nosed creature, with a white tag to her brush, and round her four +or five smutty little cubs, the funniest fellows Tom ever saw. She lay +on her back, rolling about, and stretching out her legs and head and tail +in the bright sunshine; and the cubs jumped over her, and ran round her, +and nibbled her paws, and lugged her about by the tail; and she seemed to +enjoy it mightily. But one selfish little fellow stole away from the +rest to a dead crow close by, and dragged it off to hide it, though it +was nearly as big as he was. Whereat all his little brothers set off +after him in full cry, and saw Tom; and then all ran back, and up jumped +Mrs. Vixen, and caught one up in her mouth, and the rest toddled after +her, and into a dark crack in the rocks; and there was an end of the +show. + + [Picture: Fox with cubs] + +And next he had a fright; for, as he scrambled up a sandy +brow—whirr-poof-poof-cock-cock-kick—something went off in his face, with +a most horrid noise. He thought the ground had blown up, and the end of +the world come. + +And when he opened his eyes (for he shut them very tight) it was only an +old cock-grouse, who had been washing himself in sand, like an Arab, for +want of water; and who, when Tom had all but trodden on him, jumped up +with a noise like the express train, leaving his wife and children to +shift for themselves, like an old coward, and went off, screaming +“Cur-ru-u-uck, cur-ru-u-uck—murder, thieves, fire—cur-u-uck-cock-kick—the +end of the world is come—kick-kick-cock-kick.” He was always fancying +that the end of the world was come, when anything happened which was +farther off than the end of his own nose. But the end of the world was +not come, any more than the twelfth of August was; though the old +grouse-cock was quite certain of it. + + [Picture: The grouse] + +So the old grouse came back to his wife and family an hour afterwards, +and said solemnly, “Cock-cock-kick; my dears, the end of the world is not +quite come; but I assure you it is coming the day after to-morrow—cock.” +But his wife had heard that so often that she knew all about it, and a +little more. And, besides, she was the mother of a family, and had seven +little poults to wash and feed every day; and that made her very +practical, and a little sharp-tempered; so all she answered was: +“Kick-kick-kick—go and catch spiders, go and catch spiders—kick.” + +So Tom went on and on, he hardly knew why; but he liked the great wide +strange place, and the cool fresh bracing air. But he went more and more +slowly as he got higher up the hill; for now the ground grew very bad +indeed. Instead of soft turf and springy heather, he met great patches +of flat limestone rock, just like ill-made pavements, with deep cracks +between the stones and ledges, filled with ferns; so he had to hop from +stone to stone, and now and then he slipped in between, and hurt his +little bare toes, though they were tolerably tough ones; but still he +would go on and up, he could not tell why. + +What would Tom have said if he had seen, walking over the moor behind +him, the very same Irishwoman who had taken his part upon the road? But +whether it was that he looked too little behind him, or whether it was +that she kept out of sight behind the rocks and knolls, he never saw her, +though she saw him. + +And now he began to get a little hungry, and very thirsty; for he had run +a long way, and the sun had risen high in heaven, and the rock was as hot +as an oven, and the air danced reels over it, as it does over a limekiln, +till everything round seemed quivering and melting in the glare. + +But he could see nothing to eat anywhere, and still less to drink. + +The heath was full of bilberries and whimberries; but they were only in +flower yet, for it was June. And as for water; who can find that on the +top of a limestone rock? Now and then he passed by a deep dark +swallow-hole, going down into the earth, as if it was the chimney of some +dwarfs house underground; and more than once, as he passed, he could hear +water falling, trickling, tinkling, many many feet below. How he longed +to get down to it, and cool his poor baked lips! But, brave little +chimney-sweep as he was, he dared not climb down such chimneys as those. + +So he went on and on, till his head spun round with the heat, and he +thought he heard church-bells ringing a long way off. + +“Ah!” he thought, “where there is a church there will be houses and +people; and, perhaps, some one will give me a bit and a sup.” So he set +off again, to look for the church; for he was sure that he heard the +bells quite plain. + +And in a minute more, when he looked round, he stopped again, and said, +“Why, what a big place the world is!” + +And so it was; for, from the top of the mountain he could see—what could +he not see? + +Behind him, far below, was Harthover, and the dark woods, and the shining +salmon river; and on his left, far below, was the town, and the smoking +chimneys of the collieries; and far, far away, the river widened to the +shining sea; and little white specks, which were ships, lay on its bosom. +Before him lay, spread out like a map, great plains, and farms, and +villages, amid dark knots of trees. They all seemed at his very feet; +but he had sense to see that they were long miles away. + +And to his right rose moor after moor, hill after hill, till they faded +away, blue into blue sky. But between him and those moors, and really at +his very feet, lay something, to which, as soon as Tom saw it, he +determined to go, for that was the place for him. + +A deep, deep green and rocky valley, very narrow, and filled with wood; +but through the wood, hundreds of feet below him, he could see a clear +stream glance. Oh, if he could but get down to that stream! Then, by +the stream, he saw the roof of a little cottage, and a little garden set +out in squares and beds. And there was a tiny little red thing moving in +the garden, no bigger than a fly. As Tom looked down, he saw that it was +a woman in a red petticoat. Ah! perhaps she would give him something to +eat. And there were the church-bells ringing again. Surely there must +be a village down there. Well, nobody would know him, or what had +happened at the Place. The news could not have got there yet, even if +Sir John had set all the policemen in the county after him; and he could +get down there in five minutes. + +Tom was quite right about the hue-and-cry not having got thither; for he +had come without knowing it, the best part of ten miles from Harthover; +but he was wrong about getting down in five minutes, for the cottage was +more than a mile off, and a good thousand feet below. + + [Picture: Youth reclining near stream] + +However, down he went; like a brave little man as he was, though he was +very footsore, and tired, and hungry, and thirsty; while the church-bells +rang so loud, he began to think that they must be inside his own head, +and the river chimed and tinkled far below; and this was the song which +it sang:— + + _Clear and cool_, _clear and cool_, + _By laughing shallow_, _and dreaming pool_; + _Cool and clear_, _cool and clear_, + _By shining shingle_, _and foaming wear_; + _Under the crag where the ouzel sings_, + _And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings_, + _Undefiled_, _for the undefiled_; + _Play by me_, _bathe in me_, _mother and child_. + + _Dank and foul_, _dank and foul_, + _By the smoky town in its murky cowl_; + _Foul and dank_, _foul and dank_, + _By wharf and sewer and slimy bank_; + _Darker and darker the farther I go_, + _Baser and baser the richer I grow_; + _Who dares sport with the sin-defiled_? + _Shrink from me_, _turn from me_, _mother and child_. + + _Strong and free_, _strong and free_, + _The floodgates are open_, _away to the sea_, + _Free and strong_, _free and strong_, + _Cleansing my streams as I hurry along_, + _To the golden sands_, _and the leaping bar_, + _And the taintless tide that awaits me afar_. + _As I lose myself in the infinite main_, + _Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again_. + _Undefiled_, _for the undefiled_; + _Play by me_, _bathe in me_, _mother and child_. + +So Tom went down; and all the while he never saw the Irishwoman going +down behind him. + + [Picture: Girl and woman walking on beech] + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + “And is there care in heaven? and is there love + In heavenly spirits to these creatures base + That may compassion of their evils move? + There is:—else much more wretched were the case + Of men than beasts: But oh! the exceeding grace + Of Highest God that loves His creatures so, + And all His works with mercy doth embrace, + That blessed Angels He sends to and fro, + To serve to wicked man, to serve His wicked foe!” + + SPENSER. + +[Picture: Tom at the old dame’s house] A MILE off, and a thousand feet +down. + +So Tom found it; though it seemed as if he could have chucked a pebble on +to the back of the woman in the red petticoat who was weeding in the +garden, or even across the dale to the rocks beyond. For the bottom of +the valley was just one field broad, and on the other side ran the +stream; and above it, gray crag, gray down, gray stair, gray moor walled +up to heaven. + +A quiet, silent, rich, happy place; a narrow crack cut deep into the +earth; so deep, and so out of the way, that the bad bogies can hardly +find it out. The name of the place is Vendale; and if you want to see it +for yourself, you must go up into the High Craven, and search from +Bolland Forest north by Ingleborough, to the Nine Standards and Cross +Fell; and if you have not found it, you must turn south, and search the +Lake Mountains, down to Scaw Fell and the sea; and then, if you have not +found it, you must go northward again by merry Carlisle, and search the +Cheviots all across, from Annan Water to Berwick Law; and then, whether +you have found Vendale or not, you will have found such a country, and +such a people, as ought to make you proud of being a British boy. + +So Tom went to go down; and first he went down three hundred feet of +steep heather, mixed up with loose brown gritstone, as rough as a file; +which was not pleasant to his poor little heels, as he came bump, stump, +jump, down the steep. And still he thought he could throw a stone into +the garden. + +Then he went down three hundred feet of lime-stone terraces, one below +the other, as straight as if a carpenter had ruled them with his ruler +and then cut them out with his chisel. There was no heath there, but— + +First, a little grass slope, covered with the prettiest flowers, rockrose +and saxifrage, and thyme and basil, and all sorts of sweet herbs. + +Then bump down a two-foot step of limestone. + +Then another bit of grass and flowers. + +Then bump down a one-foot step. + +Then another bit of grass and flowers for fifty yards, as steep as the +house-roof, where he had to slide down on his dear little tail. + +Then another step of stone, ten feet high; and there he had to stop +himself, and crawl along the edge to find a crack; for if he had rolled +over, he would have rolled right into the old woman’s garden, and +frightened her out of her wits. + +Then, when he had found a dark narrow crack, full of green-stalked fern, +such as hangs in the basket in the drawing-room, and had crawled down +through it, with knees and elbows, as he would down a chimney, there was +another grass slope, and another step, and so on, till—oh, dear me! I +wish it was all over; and so did he. And yet he thought he could throw a +stone into the old woman’s garden. + +At last he came to a bank of beautiful shrubs; white-beam with its great +silver-backed leaves, and mountain-ash, and oak; and below them cliff and +crag, cliff and crag, with great beds of crown-ferns and wood-sedge; +while through the shrubs he could see the stream sparkling, and hear it +murmur on the white pebbles. He did not know that it was three hundred +feet below. + +You would have been giddy, perhaps, at looking down: but Tom was not. He +was a brave little chimney-sweep; and when he found himself on the top of +a high cliff, instead of sitting down and crying for his baba (though he +never had had any baba to cry for), he said, “Ah, this will just suit +me!” though he was very tired; and down he went, by stock and stone, +sedge and ledge, bush and rush, as if he had been born a jolly little +black ape, with four hands instead of two. + +And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman coming down behind him. + +But he was getting terribly tired now. The burning sun on the fells had +sucked him up; but the damp heat of the woody crag sucked him up still +more; and the perspiration ran out of the ends of his fingers and toes, +and washed him cleaner than he had been for a whole year. But, of +course, he dirtied everything, terribly as he went. There has been a +great black smudge all down the crag ever since. And there have been +more black beetles in Vendale since than ever were known before; all, of +course, owing to Tom’s having blacked the original papa of them all, just +as he was setting off to be married, with a sky-blue coat and scarlet +leggins, as smart as a gardener’s dog with a polyanthus in his mouth. + +At last he got to the bottom. But, behold, it was not the bottom—as +people usually find when they are coming down a mountain. For at the +foot of the crag were heaps and heaps of fallen limestone of every size +from that of your head to that of a stage-waggon, with holes between them +full of sweet heath-fern; and before Tom got through them, he was out in +the bright sunshine again; and then he felt, once for all and suddenly, +as people generally do, that he was b-e-a-t, beat. + +You must expect to be beat a few times in your life, little man, if you +live such a life as a man ought to live, let you be as strong and healthy +as you may: and when you are, you will find it a very ugly feeling. I +hope that that day you may have a stout staunch friend by you who is not +beat; for, if you have not, you had best lie where you are, and wait for +better times, as poor Tom did. + +He could not get on. The sun was burning, and yet he felt chill all +over. He was quite empty, and yet he felt quite sick. There was but two +hundred yards of smooth pasture between him and the cottage, and yet he +could not walk down it. He could hear the stream murmuring only one +field beyond it, and yet it seemed to him as if it was a hundred miles +off. + +He lay down on the grass till the beetles ran over him, and the flies +settled on his nose. I don’t know when he would have got up again, if +the gnats and the midges had not taken compassion on him. But the gnats +blew their trumpets so loud in his ear, and the midges nibbled so at his +hands and face wherever they could find a place free from soot, that at +last he woke up, and stumbled away, down over a low wall, and into a +narrow road, and up to the cottage-door. + +And a neat pretty cottage it was, with clipped yew hedges all round the +garden, and yews inside too, cut into peacocks and trumpets and teapots +and all kinds of queer shapes. And out of the open door came a noise +like that of the frogs on the Great-A, when they know that it is going to +be scorching hot to-morrow—and how they know that I don’t know, and you +don’t know, and nobody knows. + +He came slowly up to the open door, which was all hung round with +clematis and roses; and then peeped in, half afraid. + +And there sat by the empty fireplace, which was filled with a pot of +sweet herbs, the nicest old woman that ever was seen, in her red +petticoat, and short dimity bedgown, and clean white cap, with a black +silk handkerchief over it, tied under her chin. At her feet sat the +grandfather of all the cats; and opposite her sat, on two benches, twelve +or fourteen neat, rosy, chubby little children, learning their +Chris-cross-row; and gabble enough they made about it. + +Such a pleasant cottage it was, with a shiny clean stone floor, and +curious old prints on the walls, and an old black oak sideboard full of +bright pewter and brass dishes, and a cuckoo clock in the corner, which +began shouting as soon as Tom appeared: not that it was frightened at +Tom, but that it was just eleven o’clock. + +All the children started at Tom’s dirty black figure,—the girls began to +cry, and the boys began to laugh, and all pointed at him rudely enough; +but Tom was too tired to care for that. + +“What art thou, and what dost want?” cried the old dame. “A +chimney-sweep! Away with thee! I’ll have no sweeps here.” + +“Water,” said poor little Tom, quite faint. + +“Water? There’s plenty i’ the beck,” she said, quite sharply. + +“But I can’t get there; I’m most clemmed with hunger and drought.” And +Tom sank down upon the door-step, and laid his head against the post. + +And the old dame looked at him through her spectacles one minute, and +two, and three; and then she said, “He’s sick; and a bairn’s a bairn, +sweep or none.” + +“Water,” said Tom. + +“God forgive me!” and she put by her spectacles, and rose, and came to +Tom. “Water’s bad for thee; I’ll give thee milk.” And she toddled off +into the next room, and brought a cup of milk and a bit of bread. + +Tom drank the milk off at one draught, and then looked up, revived. + +“Where didst come from?” said the dame. + +“Over Fell, there,” said Tom, and pointed up into the sky. + +“Over Harthover? and down Lewthwaite Crag? Art sure thou art not lying?” + +“Why should I?” said Tom, and leant his head against the post. + +“And how got ye up there?” + +“I came over from the Place;” and Tom was so tired and desperate he had +no heart or time to think of a story, so he told all the truth in a few +words. + +“Bless thy little heart! And thou hast not been stealing, then?” + +“No.” + +“Bless thy little heart! and I’ll warrant not. Why, God’s guided the +bairn, because he was innocent! Away from the Place, and over Harthover +Fell, and down Lewthwaite Crag! Who ever heard the like, if God hadn’t +led him? Why dost not eat thy bread?” + +“I can’t.” + +“It’s good enough, for I made it myself.” + +“I can’t,” said Tom, and he laid his head on his knees, and then asked— + +“Is it Sunday?” + +“No, then; why should it be?” + +“Because I hear the church-bells ringing so.” + +“Bless thy pretty heart! The bairn’s sick. Come wi’ me, and I’ll hap +thee up somewhere. If thou wert a bit cleaner I’d put thee in my own +bed, for the Lord’s sake. But come along here.” + +But when Tom tried to get up, he was so tired and giddy that she had to +help him and lead him. + +She put him in an outhouse upon soft sweet hay and an old rug, and bade +him sleep off his walk, and she would come to him when school was over, +in an hour’s time. + +And so she went in again, expecting Tom to fall fast asleep at once. + +But Tom did not fall asleep. + +Instead of it he turned and tossed and kicked about in the strangest way, +and felt so hot all over that he longed to get into the river and cool +himself; and then he fell half asleep, and dreamt that he heard the +little white lady crying to him, “Oh, you’re so dirty; go and be washed;” +and then that he heard the Irishwoman saying, “Those that wish to be +clean, clean they will be.” And then he heard the church-bells ring so +loud, close to him too, that he was sure it must be Sunday, in spite of +what the old dame had said; and he would go to church, and see what a +church was like inside, for he had never been in one, poor little fellow, +in all his life. But the people would never let him come in, all over +soot and dirt like that. He must go to the river and wash first. And he +said out loud again and again, though being half asleep he did not know +it, “I must be clean, I must be clean.” + +And all of a sudden he found himself, not in the outhouse on the hay, but +in the middle of a meadow, over the road, with the stream just before +him, saying continually, “I must be clean, I must be clean.” He had got +there on his own legs, between sleep and awake, as children will often +get out of bed, and go about the room, when they are not quite well. But +he was not a bit surprised, and went on to the bank of the brook, and lay +down on the grass, and looked into the clear, clear limestone water, with +every pebble at the bottom bright and clean, while the little silver +trout dashed about in fright at the sight of his black face; and he +dipped his hand in and found it so cool, cool, cool; and he said, “I will +be a fish; I will swim in the water; I must be clean, I must be clean.” + +So he pulled off all his clothes in such haste that he tore some of them, +which was easy enough with such ragged old things. And he put his poor +hot sore feet into the water; and then his legs; and the farther he went +in, the more the church-bells rang in his head. + +“Ah,” said Tom, “I must be quick and wash myself; the bells are ringing +quite loud now; and they will stop soon, and then the door will be shut, +and I shall never be able to get in at all.” + +Tom was mistaken: for in England the church doors are left open all +service time, for everybody who likes to come in, Churchman or Dissenter; +ay, even if he were a Turk or a Heathen; and if any man dared to turn him +out, as long as he behaved quietly, the good old English law would punish +that man, as he deserved, for ordering any peaceable person out of God’s +house, which belongs to all alike. But Tom did not know that, any more +than he knew a great deal more which people ought to know. + +And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman, not behind him this time, +but before. + + [Picture: The Queen of them all] + +For just before he came to the river side, she had stept down into the +cool clear water; and her shawl and her petticoat floated off her, and +the green water-weeds floated round her sides, and the white water-lilies +floated round her head, and the fairies of the stream came up from the +bottom and bore her away and down upon their arms; for she was the Queen +of them all; and perhaps of more besides. + +“Where have you been?” they asked her. + +“I have been smoothing sick folks’ pillows, and whispering sweet dreams +into their ears; opening cottage casements, to let out the stifling air; +coaxing little children away from gutters, and foul pools where fever +breeds; turning women from the gin-shop door, and staying men’s hands as +they were going to strike their wives; doing all I can to help those who +will not help themselves: and little enough that is, and weary work for +me. But I have brought you a new little brother, and watched him safe +all the way here.” + +Then all the fairies laughed for joy at the thought that they had a +little brother coming. + +“But mind, maidens, he must not see you, or know that you are here. He +is but a savage now, and like the beasts which perish; and from the +beasts which perish he must learn. So you must not play with him, or +speak to him, or let him see you: but only keep him from being harmed.” + +Then the fairies were sad, because they could not play with their new +brother, but they always did what they were told. + +And their Queen floated away down the river; and whither she went, +thither she came. But all this Tom, of course, never saw or heard: and +perhaps if he had it would have made little difference in the story; for +was so hot and thirsty, and longed so to be clean for once, that he +tumbled himself as quick as he could into the clear cool stream. + +And he had not been in it two minutes before he fell fast asleep, into +the quietest, sunniest, cosiest sleep that ever he had in his life; and +he dreamt about the green meadows by which he had walked that morning, +and the tall elm-trees, and the sleeping cows; and after that he dreamt +of nothing at all. + +The reason of his falling into such a delightful sleep is very simple; +and yet hardly any one has found it out. It was merely that the fairies +took him. + +Some people think that there are no fairies. Cousin Cramchild tells +little folks so in his Conversations. Well, perhaps there are none—in +Boston, U.S., where he was raised. There are only a clumsy lot of +spirits there, who can’t make people hear without thumping on the table: +but they get their living thereby, and I suppose that is all they want. +And Aunt Agitate, in her Arguments on political economy, says there are +none. Well, perhaps there are none—in her political economy. But it is +a wide world, my little man—and thank Heaven for it, for else, between +crinolines and theories, some of us would get squashed—and plenty of room +in it for fairies, without people seeing them; unless, of course, they +look in the right place. The most wonderful and the strongest things in +the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see. There is +life in you; and it is the life in you which makes you grow, and move, +and think: and yet you can’t see it. And there is steam in a +steam-engine; and that is what makes it move: and yet you can’t see it; +and so there may be fairies in the world, and they may be just what makes +the world go round to the old tune of + + “_C’est l’amour_, _l’amour_, _l’amour_ + _Qui fait la monde à la ronde_:” + +[Picture: Fairy cherub with arrow] and yet no one may be able to see them +except those whose hearts are going round to that same tune. At all +events, we will make believe that there are fairies in the world. It +will not be the last time by many a one that we shall have to make +believe. And yet, after all, there is no need for that. There must be +fairies; for this is a fairy tale: and how can one have a fairy tale if +there are no fairies? + +You don’t see the logic of that? Perhaps not. Then please not to see +the logic of a great many arguments exactly like it, which you will hear +before your beard is gray. + +The kind old dame came back at twelve, when school was over, to look at +Tom: but there was no Tom there. She looked about for his footprints; +but the ground was so hard that there was no slot, as they say in dear +old North Devon. And if you grow up to be a brave healthy man, you may +know some day what no slot means, and know too, I hope, what a slot does +mean—a broad slot, with blunt claws, which makes a man put out his cigar, +and set his teeth, and tighten his girths, when he sees it; and what his +rights mean, if he has them, brow, bay, tray, and points; and see +something worth seeing between Haddon Wood and Countisbury Cliff, with +good Mr. Palk Collyns to show you the way, and mend your bones as fast as +you smash them. Only when that jolly day comes, please don’t break your +neck; stogged in a mire you never will be, I trust; for you are a +heath-cropper bred and born. + +So the old dame went in again quite sulky, thinking that little Tom had +tricked her with a false story, and shammed ill, and then run away again. + +But she altered her mind the next day. For, when Sir John and the rest +of them had run themselves out of breath, and lost Tom, they went back +again, looking very foolish. + +And they looked more foolish still when Sir John heard more of the story +from the nurse; and more foolish still, again, when they heard the whole +story from Miss Ellie, the little lady in white. All she had seen was a +poor little black chimney-sweep, crying and sobbing, and going to get up +the chimney again. Of course, she was very much frightened: and no +wonder. But that was all. The boy had taken nothing in the room; by the +mark of his little sooty feet, they could see that he had never been off +the hearthrug till the nurse caught hold of him. It was all a mistake. + +So Sir John told Grimes to go home, and promised him five shillings if he +would bring the boy quietly up to him, without beating him, that he might +be sure of the truth. For he took for granted, and Grimes too, that Tom +had made his way home. + +But no Tom came back to Mr. Grimes that evening; and he went to the +police-office, to tell them to look out for the boy. But no Tom was +heard of. As for his having gone over those great fells to Vendale, they +no more dreamed of that than of his having gone to the moon. + +So Mr. Grimes came up to Harthover next day with a very sour face; but +when he got there, Sir John was over the hills and far away; and Mr. +Grimes had to sit in the outer servants’ hall all day, and drink strong +ale to wash away his sorrows; and they were washed away long before Sir +John came back. + +For good Sir John had slept very badly that night; and he said to his +lady, “My dear, the boy must have got over into the grouse-moors, and +lost himself; and he lies very heavily on my conscience, poor little lad. +But I know what I will do.” + + [Picture: Sir John] + +So, at five the next morning up he got, and into his bath, and into his +shooting-jacket and gaiters, and into the stableyard, like a fine old +English gentleman, with a face as red as a rose, and a hand as hard as a +table, and a back as broad as a bullock’s; and bade them bring his +shooting pony, and the keeper to come on his pony, and the huntsman, and +the first whip, and the second whip, and the under-keeper with the +bloodhound in a leash—a great dog as tall as a calf, of the colour of a +gravel-walk, with mahogany ears and nose, and a throat like a +church-bell. They took him up to the place where Tom had gone into the +wood; and there the hound lifted up his mighty voice, and told them all +he knew. + +Then he took them to the place where Tom had climbed the wall; and they +shoved it down, and all got through. + +And then the wise dog took them over the moor, and over the fells, step +by step, very slowly; for the scent was a day old, you know, and very +light from the heat and drought. But that was why cunning old Sir John +started at five in the morning. + +And at last he came to the top of Lewthwaite Crag, and there he bayed, +and looked up in their faces, as much as to say, “I tell you he is gone +down here!” + +They could hardly believe that Tom would have gone so far; and when they +looked at that awful cliff, they could never believe that he would have +dared to face it. But if the dog said so, it must be true. + +“Heaven forgive us!” said Sir John. “If we find him at all, we shall +find him lying at the bottom.” And he slapped his great hand upon his +great thigh, and said— + +“Who will go down over Lewthwaite Crag, and see if that boy is alive? Oh +that I were twenty years younger, and I would go down myself!” And so he +would have done, as well as any sweep in the county. Then he said— + +“Twenty pounds to the man who brings me that boy alive!” and as was his +way, what he said he meant. + +Now among the lot was a little groom-boy, a very little groom indeed; and +he was the same who had ridden up the court, and told Tom to come to the +Hall; and he said— + +“Twenty pounds or none, I will go down over Lewthwaite Crag, if it’s only +for the poor boy’s sake. For he was as civil a spoken little chap as +ever climbed a flue.” + +So down over Lewthwaite Crag he went: a very smart groom he was at the +top, and a very shabby one at the bottom; for he tore his gaiters, and he +tore his breeches, and he tore his jacket, and he burst his braces, and +he burst his boots, and he lost his hat, and what was worst of all, he +lost his shirt pin, which he prized very much, for it was gold, and he +had won it in a raffle at Malton, and there was a figure at the top of +it, of t’ould mare, noble old Beeswing herself, as natural as life; so it +was a really severe loss: but he never saw anything of Tom. + +And all the while Sir John and the rest were riding round, full three +miles to the right, and back again, to get into Vendale, and to the foot +of the crag. + +When they came to the old dame’s school, all the children came out to +see. And the old dame came out too; and when she saw Sir John, she +curtsied very low, for she was a tenant of his. + +“Well, dame, and how are you?” said Sir John. + +“Blessings on you as broad as your back, Harthover,” says she—she didn’t +call him Sir John, but only Harthover, for that is the fashion in the +North country—“and welcome into Vendale: but you’re no hunting the fox +this time of the year?” + +“I am hunting, and strange game too,” said he. + +“Blessings on your heart, and what makes you look so sad the morn?” + +“I’m looking for a lost child, a chimney-sweep, that is run away.” + +“Oh, Harthover, Harthover,” says she, “ye were always a just man and a +merciful; and ye’ll no harm the poor little lad if I give you tidings of +him?” + +“Not I, not I, dame. I’m afraid we hunted him out of the house all on a +miserable mistake, and the hound has brought him to the top of Lewthwaite +Crag, and—” + +Whereat the old dame broke out crying, without letting him finish his +story. + +“So he told me the truth after all, poor little dear! Ah, first thoughts +are best, and a body’s heart’ll guide them right, if they will but +hearken to it.” And then she told Sir John all. + +“Bring the dog here, and lay him on,” said Sir John, without another +word, and he set his teeth very hard. + +And the dog opened at once; and went away at the back of the cottage, +over the road, and over the meadow, and through a bit of alder copse; and +there, upon an alder stump, they saw Tom’s clothes lying. And then they +knew as much about it all as there was any need to know. + +And Tom? + +Ah, now comes the most wonderful part of this wonderful story. Tom, when +he woke, for of course he woke—children always wake after they have slept +exactly as long as is good for them—found himself swimming about in the +stream, being about four inches, or—that I may be accurate—3.87902 inches +long and having round the parotid region of his fauces a set of external +gills (I hope you understand all the big words) just like those of a +sucking eft, which he mistook for a lace frill, till he pulled at them, +found he hurt himself, and made up his mind that they were part of +himself, and best left alone. + +In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water-baby. + +A water-baby? You never heard of a water-baby. Perhaps not. That is +the very reason why this story was written. There are a great many +things in the world which you never heard of; and a great many more which +nobody ever heard of; and a great many things, too, which nobody will +ever hear of, at least until the coming of the Cocqcigrues, when man +shall be the measure of all things. + +“But there are no such things as water-babies.” + +How do you know that? Have you been there to see? And if you had been +there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were +none. If Mr. Garth does not find a fox in Eversley Wood—as folks +sometimes fear he never will—that does not prove that there are no such +things as foxes. And as is Eversley Wood to all the woods in England, so +are the waters we know to all the waters in the world. And no one has a +right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no +water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not +seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever +will do. + + [Picture: Water baby] + +“But surely if there were water-babies, somebody would have caught one at +least?” + +Well. How do you know that somebody has not? + +“But they would have put it into spirits, or into the _Illustrated News_, +or perhaps cut it into two halves, poor dear little thing, and sent one +to Professor Owen, and one to Professor Huxley, to see what they would +each say about it.” + +Ah, my dear little man! that does not follow at all, as you will see +before the end of the story. + +“But a water-baby is contrary to nature.” + +Well, but, my dear little man, you must learn to talk about such things, +when you grow older, in a very different way from that. You must not +talk about “ain’t” and “can’t” when you speak of this great wonderful +world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest +corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking +up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean. + + [Picture: Examining a water baby in a jar] + +You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. +You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows; not +even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Owen, or Professor Sedgwick, or +Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or +any other of the great men whom good boys are taught to respect. They +are very wise men; and you must listen respectfully to all they say: but +even if they should say, which I am sure they never would, “That cannot +exist. That is contrary to nature,” you must wait a little, and see; for +perhaps even they may be wrong. It is only children who read Aunt +Agitate’s Arguments, or Cousin Cramchild’s Conversations; or lads who go +to popular lectures, and see a man pointing at a few big ugly pictures on +the wall, or making nasty smells with bottles and squirts, for an hour or +two, and calling that anatomy or chemistry—who talk about “cannot exist,” +and “contrary to nature.” Wise men are afraid to say that there is +anything contrary to nature, except what is contrary to mathematical +truth; for two and two cannot make five, and two straight lines cannot +join twice, and a part cannot be as great as the whole, and so on (at +least, so it seems at present): but the wiser men are, the less they talk +about “cannot.” That is a very rash, dangerous word, that “cannot”; and +if people use it too often, the Queen of all the Fairies, who makes the +clouds thunder and the fleas bite, and takes just as much trouble about +one as about the other, is apt to astonish them suddenly by showing them, +that though they say she cannot, yet she can, and what is more, will, +whether they approve or not. + +And therefore it is, that there are dozens and hundreds of things in the +world which we should certainly have said were contrary to nature, if we +did not see them going on under our eyes all day long. If people had +never seen little seeds grow into great plants and trees, of quite +different shape from themselves, and these trees again produce fresh +seeds, to grow into fresh trees, they would have said, “The thing cannot +be; it is contrary to nature.” And they would have been quite as right +in saying so, as in saying that most other things cannot be. + +Or suppose again, that you had come, like M. Du Chaillu, a traveller from +unknown parts; and that no human being had ever seen or heard of an +elephant. And suppose that you described him to people, and said, “This +is the shape, and plan, and anatomy of the beast, and of his feet, and of +his trunk, and of his grinders, and of his tusks, though they are not +tusks at all, but two fore teeth run mad; and this is the section of his +skull, more like a mushroom than a reasonable skull of a reasonable or +unreasonable beast; and so forth, and so forth; and though the beast +(which I assure you I have seen and shot) is first cousin to the little +hairy coney of Scripture, second cousin to a pig, and (I suspect) +thirteenth or fourteenth cousin to a rabbit, yet he is the wisest of all +beasts, and can do everything save read, write, and cast accounts.” +People would surely have said, “Nonsense; your elephant is contrary to +nature;” and have thought you were telling stories—as the French thought +of Le Vaillant when he came back to Paris and said that he had shot a +giraffe; and as the king of the Cannibal Islands thought of the English +sailor, when he said that in his country water turned to marble, and rain +fell as feathers. They would tell you, the more they knew of science, +“Your elephant is an impossible monster, contrary to the laws of +comparative anatomy, as far as yet known.” To which you would answer the +less, the more you thought. + +Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years, +that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know +that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? +People call them Pterodactyles: but that is only because they are ashamed +to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons +could exist. + +The truth is, that folks’ fancy that such and such things cannot be, +simply because they have not seen them, is worth no more than a savage’s +fancy that there cannot be such a thing as a locomotive, because he never +saw one running wild in the forest. Wise men know that their business is +to examine what is, and not to settle what is not. They know that there +are elephants; they know that there have been flying dragons; and the +wiser they are, the less inclined they will be to say positively that +there are no water-babies. + +No water-babies, indeed? Why, wise men of old said that everything on +earth had its double in the water; and you may see that that is, if not +quite true, still quite as true as most other theories which you are +likely to hear for many a day. There are land-babies—then why not +water-babies? _Are there not water-rats_, _water-flies_, +_water-crickets_, _water-crabs_, _water-tortoises_, _water-scorpions_, +_water-tigers and water-hogs_, _water-cats and water-dogs_, _sea-lions +and sea-bears_, _sea-horses and sea-elephants_, _sea-mice and +sea-urchins_, _sea-razors and sea-pens_, _sea-combs and sea-fans_; _and +of plants_, _are there not water-grass_, _and water-crowfoot_, +_water-milfoil_, _and so on_, _without end_? + +“But all these things are only nicknames; the water things are not really +akin to the land things.” + +That’s not always true. They are, in millions of cases, not only of the +same family, but actually the same individual creatures. Do not even you +know that a green drake, and an alder-fly, and a dragon-fly, live under +water till they change their skins, just as Tom changed his? And if a +water animal can continually change into a land animal, why should not a +land animal sometimes change into a water animal? Don’t be put down by +any of Cousin Cramchild’s arguments, but stand up to him like a man, and +answer him (quite respectfully, of course) thus:— + +If Cousin Cramchild says, that if there are water-babies, they must grow +into water-men, ask him how he knows that they do not? and then, how he +knows that they must, any more than the Proteus of the Adelsberg caverns +grows into a perfect newt. + +If he says that it is too strange a transformation for a land-baby to +turn into a water-baby, ask him if he ever heard of the transformation of +Syllis, or the Distomas, or the common jelly-fish, of which M. +Quatrefages says excellently well—“Who would not exclaim that a miracle +had come to pass, if he saw a reptile come out of the egg dropped by the +hen in his poultry-yard, and the reptile give birth at once to an +indefinite number of fishes and birds? Yet the history of the jelly-fish +is quite as wonderful as that would be.” Ask him if he knows about all +this; and if he does not, tell him to go and look for himself; and advise +him (very respectfully, of course) to settle no more what strange things +cannot happen, till he has seen what strange things do happen every day. + +If he says that things cannot degrade, that is, change downwards into +lower forms, ask him, who told him that water-babies were lower than +land-babies? But even if they were, does he know about the strange +degradation of the common goose-barnacles, which one finds sticking on +ships’ bottoms; or the still stranger degradation of some cousins of +theirs, of which one hardly likes to talk, so shocking and ugly it is? + +And, lastly, if he says (as he most certainly will) that these +transformations only take place in the lower animals, and not in the +higher, say that that seems to little boys, and to some grown people, a +very strange fancy. For if the changes of the lower animals are so +wonderful, and so difficult to discover, why should not there be changes +in the higher animals far more wonderful, and far more difficult to +discover? And may not man, the crown and flower of all things, undergo +some change as much more wonderful than all the rest, as the Great +Exhibition is more wonderful than a rabbit-burrow? Let him answer that. +And if he says (as he will) that not having seen such a change in his +experience, he is not bound to believe it, ask him respectfully, where +his microscope has been? Does not each of us, in coming into this world, +go through a transformation just as wonderful as that of a sea-egg, or a +butterfly? and do not reason and analogy, as well as Scripture, tell us +that that transformation is not the last? and that, though what we shall +be, we know not, yet we are here but as the crawling caterpillar, and +shall be hereafter as the perfect fly. The old Greeks, heathens as they +were, saw as much as that two thousand years ago; and I care very little +for Cousin Cramchild, if he sees even less than they. And so forth, and +so forth, till he is quite cross. And then tell him that if there are no +water-babies, at least there ought to be; and that, at least, he cannot +answer. + +And meanwhile, my dear little man, till you know a great deal more about +nature than Professor Owen and Professor Huxley put together, don’t tell +me about what cannot be, or fancy that anything is too wonderful to be +true. “We are fearfully and wonderfully made,” said old David; and so we +are; and so is everything around us, down to the very deal table. Yes; +much more fearfully and wonderfully made, already, is the table, as it +stands now, nothing but a piece of dead deal wood, than if, as foxes say, +and geese believe, spirits could make it dance, or talk to you by rapping +on it. + +Am I in earnest? Oh dear no! Don’t you know that this is a fairy tale, +and all fun and pretence; and that you are not to believe one word of it, +even if it is true? + +But at all events, so it happened to Tom. And, therefore, the keeper, +and the groom, and Sir John made a great mistake, and were very unhappy +(Sir John at least) without any reason, when they found a black thing in +the water, and said it was Tom’s body, and that he had been drowned. +They were utterly mistaken. Tom was quite alive; and cleaner, and +merrier, than he ever had been. The fairies had washed him, you see, in +the swift river, so thoroughly, that not only his dirt, but his whole +husk and shell had been washed quite off him, and the pretty little real +Tom was washed out of the inside of it, and swam away, as a caddis does +when its case of stones and silk is bored through, and away it goes on +its back, paddling to the shore, there to split its skin, and fly away as +a caperer, on four fawn-coloured wings, with long legs and horns. They +are foolish fellows, the caperers, and fly into the candle at night, if +you leave the door open. We will hope Tom will be wiser, now he has got +safe out of his sooty old shell. + + [Picture: Collage of events] + +But good Sir John did not understand all this, not being a fellow of the +Linnæan Society; and he took it into his head that Tom was drowned. When +they looked into the empty pockets of his shell, and found no jewels +there, nor money—nothing but three marbles, and a brass button with a +string to it—then Sir John did something as like crying as ever he did in +his life, and blamed himself more bitterly than he need have done. So he +cried, and the groom-boy cried, and the huntsman cried, and the dame +cried, and the little girl cried, and the dairymaid cried, and the old +nurse cried (for it was somewhat her fault), and my lady cried, for +though people have wigs, that is no reason why they should not have +hearts; but the keeper did not cry, though he had been so good-natured to +Tom the morning before; for he was so dried up with running after +poachers, that you could no more get tears out of him than milk out of +leather: and Grimes did not cry, for Sir John gave him ten pounds, and he +drank it all in a week. Sir John sent, far and wide, to find Tom’s +father and mother: but he might have looked till Doomsday for them, for +one was dead, and the other was in Botany Bay. And the little girl would +not play with her dolls for a whole week, and never forgot poor little +Tom. And soon my lady put a pretty little tombstone over Tom’s shell in +the little churchyard in Vendale, where the old dalesmen all sleep side +by side between the lime-stone crags. And the dame decked it with +garlands every Sunday, till she grew so old that she could not stir +abroad; then the little children decked it, for her. And always she sang +an old old song, as she sat spinning what she called her wedding-dress. +The children could not understand it, but they liked it none the less for +that; for it was very sweet, and very sad; and that was enough for them. +And these are the words of it:— + + _When all the world is young_, _lad_, + _And all the trees are green_; + _And every goose a swan_, _lad_, + _And every lass a queen_; + _Then hey for boot and horse_, _lad_, + _And round the world away_; + _Young blood must have its course_, _lad_, + _And every dog his day_. + + _When all the world is old_, _lad_, + _And all the trees are brown_; + _And all the sport is stale_, _lad_, + _And all the wheels run down_; + _Creep home_, _and take your place there_, + _The spent and maimed among_: + _God grant you find one face there_, + _You loved when all was young_. + + [Picture: Time and the old man] + +Those are the words: but they are only the body of it: the soul of the +song was the dear old woman’s sweet face, and sweet voice, and the sweet +old air to which she sang; and that, alas! one cannot put on paper. And +at last she grew so stiff and lame, that the angels were forced to carry +her; and they helped her on with her wedding-dress, and carried her up +over Harthover Fells, and a long way beyond that too; and there was a new +schoolmistress in Vendale, and we will hope that she was not +certificated. + +And all the while Tom was swimming about in the river, with a pretty +little lace-collar of gills about his neck, as lively as a grig, and as +clean as a fresh-run salmon. + +Now if you don’t like my story, then go to the schoolroom and learn your +multiplication-table, and see if you like that better. Some people, no +doubt, would do so. So much the better for us, if not for them. It +takes all sorts, they say, to make a world. + + [Picture: Water baby and sums] + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + “He prayeth well who loveth well + Both men and bird and beast; + He prayeth best who loveth best + All things both great and small: + For the dear God who loveth us, + He made and loveth all.” + + COLERIDGE. + +[Picture: Mermaid] TOM was now quite amphibious. You do not know what +that means? You had better, then, ask the nearest Government +pupil-teacher, who may possibly answer you smartly enough, thus— + +“Amphibious. Adjective, derived from two Greek words, _amphi_, a fish, +and _bios_, a beast. An animal supposed by our ignorant ancestors to be +compounded of a fish and a beast; which therefore, like the hippopotamus, +can’t live on the land, and dies in the water.” + +However that may be, Tom was amphibious: and what is better still, he was +clean. For the first time in his life, he felt how comfortable it was to +have nothing on him but himself. But he only enjoyed it: he did not know +it, or think about it; just as you enjoy life and health, and yet never +think about being alive and healthy; and may it be long before you have +to think about it! + +He did not remember having ever been dirty. Indeed, he did not remember +any of his old troubles, being tired, or hungry, or beaten, or sent up +dark chimneys. Since that sweet sleep, he had forgotten all about his +master, and Harthover Place, and the little white girl, and in a word, +all that had happened to him when he lived before; and what was best of +all, he had forgotten all the bad words which he had learned from Grimes, +and the rude boys with whom he used to play. + +That is not strange: for you know, when you came into this world, and +became a land-baby, you remembered nothing. So why should he, when he +became a water-baby? + +Then have you lived before? + +My dear child, who can tell? One can only tell that, by remembering +something which happened where we lived before; and as we remember +nothing, we know nothing about it; and no book, and no man, can ever tell +us certainly. + +There was a wise man once, a very wise man, and a very good man, who +wrote a poem about the feelings which some children have about having +lived before; and this is what he said— + + “_Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting_; + _The soul that rises with us_, _our life’s star_, + _Hath elsewhere had its setting_, + _And cometh from afar_: + _Not in entire forgetfulness_, + _And not in utter nakedness_, + _But trailing clouds of glory_, _do we come_ + _From God_, _who is our home_.” + + [Picture: Woman teacher] + +There, you can know no more than that. But if I was you, I would believe +that. For then the great fairy Science, who is likely to be queen of all +the fairies for many a year to come, can only do you good, and never do +you harm; and instead of fancying with some people, that your body makes +your soul, as if a steam-engine could make its own coke; or, with some +people, that your soul has nothing to do with your body, but is only +stuck into it like a pin into a pincushion, to fall out with the first +shake;—you will believe the one true, + +_orthodox_, _inductive_, +_rational_, _deductive_, +_philosophical_, _seductive_, +_logical_, _productive_, +_irrefragable_, _salutary_, +_nominalistic_, _comfortable_, +_realistic_, +_and +on-all-accounts-to-be-received_ + +doctrine of this wonderful fairy tale; which is, that your soul makes +your body, just as a snail makes his shell. For the rest, it is enough +for us to be sure that whether or not we lived before, we shall live +again; though not, I hope, as poor little heathen Tom did. For he went +downward into the water: but we, I hope, shall go upward to a very +different place. + + [Picture: Tom in the stream] + +But Tom was very happy in the water. He had been sadly overworked in the +land-world; and so now, to make up for that, he had nothing but holidays +in the water-world for a long, long time to come. He had nothing to do +now but enjoy himself, and look at all the pretty things which are to be +seen in the cool clear water-world, where the sun is never too hot, and +the frost is never too cold. + +[Picture: Insect] And what did he live on? Water-cresses, perhaps; or +perhaps water-gruel, and water-milk; too many land-babies do so likewise. +But we do not know what one-tenth of the water-things eat; so we are not +answerable for the water-babies. + +Sometimes he went along the smooth gravel water-ways, looking at the +crickets which ran in and out among the stones, as rabbits do on land; or +he climbed over the ledges of rock, and saw the sand-pipes hanging in +thousands, with every one of them a pretty little head and legs peeping +out; or he went into a still corner, and watched the caddises eating dead +sticks as greedily as you would eat plum-pudding, and building their +houses with silk and glue. Very fanciful ladies they were; none of them +would keep to the same materials for a day. One would begin with some +pebbles; then she would stick on a piece of green wood; then she found a +shell, and stuck it on too; and the poor shell was alive, and did not +like at all being taken to build houses with: but the caddis did not let +him have any voice in the matter, being rude and selfish, as vain people +are apt to be; then she stuck on a piece of rotten wood, then a very +smart pink stone, and so on, till she was patched all over like an +Irishman’s coat. Then she found a long straw, five times as long as +herself, and said, “Hurrah! my sister has a tail, and I’ll have one too;” +and she stuck it on her back, and marched about with it quite proud, +though it was very inconvenient indeed. And, at that, tails became all +the fashion among the caddis-baits in that pool, as they were at the end +of the Long Pond last May, and they all toddled about with long straws +sticking out behind, getting between each other’s legs, and tumbling over +each other, and looking so ridiculous, that Tom laughed at them till he +cried, as we did. But they were quite right, you know; for people must +always follow the fashion, even if it be spoon-bonnets. + +[Picture: Lady in 1862 bonnet] Then sometimes he came to a deep still +reach; and there he saw the water-forests. They would have looked to you +only little weeds: but Tom, you must remember, was so little that +everything looked a hundred times as big to him as it does to you, just +as things do to a minnow, who sees and catches the little water-creatures +which you can only see in a microscope. + +And in the water-forest he saw the water-monkeys and water-squirrels +(they had all six legs, though; everything almost has six legs in the +water, except efts and water-babies); and nimbly enough they ran among +the branches. There were water-flowers there too, in thousands; and Tom +tried to pick them: but as soon as he touched them, they drew themselves +in and turned into knots of jelly; and then Tom saw that they were all +alive—bells, and stars, and wheels, and flowers, of all beautiful shapes +and colours; and all alive and busy, just as Tom was. So now he found +that there was a great deal more in the world than he had fancied at +first sight. + +There was one wonderful little fellow, too, who peeped out of the top of +a house built of round bricks. He had two big wheels, and one little +one, all over teeth, spinning round and round like the wheels in a +thrashing-machine; and Tom stood and stared at him, to see what he was +going to make with his machinery. And what do you think he was doing? +Brick-making. With his two big wheels he swept together all the mud +which floated in the water: all that was nice in it he put into his +stomach and ate; and all the mud he put into the little wheel on his +breast, which really was a round hole set with teeth; and there he spun +it into a neat hard round brick; and then he took it and stuck it on the +top of his house-wall, and set to work to make another. Now was not he a +clever little fellow? + +Tom thought so: but when he wanted to talk to him the brick-maker was +much too busy and proud of his work to take notice of him. + +Now you must know that all the things under the water talk; only not such +a language as ours; but such as horses, and dogs, and cows, and birds +talk to each other; and Tom soon learned to understand them and talk to +them; so that he might have had very pleasant company if he had only been +a good boy. But I am sorry to say, he was too like some other little +boys, very fond of hunting and tormenting creatures for mere sport. Some +people say that boys cannot help it; that it is nature, and only a proof +that we are all originally descended from beasts of prey. But whether it +is nature or not, little boys can help it, and must help it. For if they +have naughty, low, mischievous tricks in their nature, as monkeys have, +that is no reason why they should give way to those tricks like monkeys, +who know no better. And therefore they must not torment dumb creatures; +for if they do, a certain old lady who is coming will surely give them +exactly what they deserve. + +But Tom did not know that; and he pecked and howked the poor water-things +about sadly, till they were all afraid of him, and got out of his way, or +crept into their shells; so he had no one to speak to or play with. + +The water-fairies, of course, were very sorry to see him so unhappy, and +longed to take him, and tell him how naughty he was, and teach him to be +good, and to play and romp with him too: but they had been forbidden to +do that. Tom had to learn his lesson for himself by sound and sharp +experience, as many another foolish person has to do, though there may be +many a kind heart yearning over them all the while, and longing to teach +them what they can only teach themselves. + +At last one day he found a caddis, and wanted it to peep out of its +house: but its house-door was shut. He had never seen a caddis with a +house-door before: so what must he do, the meddlesome little fellow, but +pull it open, to see what the poor lady was doing inside. What a shame! +How should you like to have any one breaking your bedroom-door in, to see +how you looked when you where in bed? So Tom broke to pieces the door, +which was the prettiest little grating of silk, stuck all over with +shining bits of crystal; and when he looked in, the caddis poked out her +head, and it had turned into just the shape of a bird’s. But when Tom +spoke to her she could not answer; for her mouth and face were tight tied +up in a new night-cap of neat pink skin. However, if she didn’t answer, +all the other caddises did; for they held up their hands and shrieked +like the cats in Struwelpeter: “_Oh_, _you nasty horrid boy_; _there you +are at it again_! _And she had just laid herself up for a fortnight’s +sleep_, _and then she would have come out with such beautiful wings_, +_and flown about_, _and laid such lots of eggs_: _and now you have broken +her door_, _and she can’t mend it because her mouth is tied up for a +fortnight_, _and she will die_. _Who sent you here to worry us out of +our lives_?” + + [Picture: Tom and a fish] + +So Tom swam away. He was very much ashamed of himself, and felt all the +naughtier; as little boys do when they have done wrong and won’t say so. + +Then he came to a pool full of little trout, and began tormenting them, +and trying to catch them: but they slipped through his fingers, and +jumped clean out of water in their fright. But as Tom chased them, he +came close to a great dark hover under an alder root, and out floushed a +huge old brown trout ten times as big as he was, and ran right against +him, and knocked all the breath out of his body; and I don’t know which +was the more frightened of the two. + +Then he went on sulky and lonely, as he deserved to be; and under a bank +he saw a very ugly dirty creature sitting, about half as big as himself; +which had six legs, and a big stomach, and a most ridiculous head with +two great eyes and a face just like a donkey’s. + +“Oh,” said Tom, “you are an ugly fellow to be sure!” and he began making +faces at him; and put his nose close to him, and halloed at him, like a +very rude boy. + +When, hey presto; all the thing’s donkey-face came off in a moment, and +out popped a long arm with a pair of pincers at the end of it, and caught +Tom by the nose. It did not hurt him much; but it held him quite tight. + +“Yah, ah! Oh, let me go!” cried Tom. + +“Then let me go,” said the creature. “I want to be quiet. I want to +split.” + +Tom promised to let him alone, and he let go. + +“Why do you want to split?” said Tom. + +“Because my brothers and sisters have all split, and turned into +beautiful creatures with wings; and I want to split too. Don’t speak to +me. I am sure I shall split. I will split!” + +Tom stood still, and watched him. And he swelled himself, and puffed, +and stretched himself out stiff, and at last—crack, puff, bang—he opened +all down his back, and then up to the top of his head. + +And out of his inside came the most slender, elegant, soft creature, as +soft and smooth as Tom: but very pale and weak, like a little child who +has been ill a long time in a dark room. It moved its legs very feebly; +and looked about it half ashamed, like a girl when she goes for the first +time into a ballroom; and then it began walking slowly up a grass stem to +the top of the water. + +Tom was so astonished that he never said a word but he stared with all +his eyes. And he went up to the top of the water too, and peeped out to +see what would happen. + +And as the creature sat in the warm bright sun, a wonderful change came +over it. It grew strong and firm; the most lovely colours began to show +on its body, blue and yellow and black, spots and bars and rings; out of +its back rose four great wings of bright brown gauze; and its eyes grew +so large that they filled all its head, and shone like ten thousand +diamonds. + +“Oh, you beautiful creature!” said Tom; and he put out his hand to catch +it. + +But the thing whirred up into the air, and hung poised on its wings a +moment, and then settled down again by Tom quite fearless. + + [Picture: Tom and the dragon-fly] + +“No!” it said, “you cannot catch me. I am a dragon-fly now, the king of +all the flies; and I shall dance in the sunshine, and hawk over the +river, and catch gnats, and have a beautiful wife like myself. I know +what I shall do. Hurrah!” And he flew away into the air, and began +catching gnats. + +“Oh! come back, come back,” cried Tom, “you beautiful creature. I have +no one to play with, and I am so lonely here. If you will but come back +I will never try to catch you.” + +“I don’t care whether you do or not,” said the dragon-fly; “for you +can’t. But when I have had my dinner, and looked a little about this +pretty place, I will come back, and have a little chat about all I have +seen in my travels. Why, what a huge tree this is! and what huge leaves +on it!” + +It was only a big dock: but you know the dragon-fly had never seen any +but little water-trees; starwort, and milfoil, and water-crowfoot, and +such like; so it did look very big to him. Besides, he was very +short-sighted, as all dragon-flies are; and never could see a yard before +his nose; any more than a great many other folks, who are not half as +handsome as he. + +The dragon-fly did come back, and chatted away with Tom. He was a little +conceited about his fine colours and his large wings; but you know, he +had been a poor dirty ugly creature all his life before; so there were +great excuses for him. He was very fond of talking about all the +wonderful things he saw in the trees and the meadows; and Tom liked to +listen to him, for he had forgotten all about them. So in a little while +they became great friends. + +And I am very glad to say, that Tom learned such a lesson that day, that +he did not torment creatures for a long time after. And then the +caddises grew quite tame, and used to tell him strange stories about the +way they built their houses, and changed their skins, and turned at last +into winged flies; till Tom began to long to change his skin, and have +wings like them some day. + +[Picture: Acrobat] And the trout and he made it up (for trout very soon +forget if they have been frightened and hurt). So Tom used to play with +them at hare and hounds, and great fun they had; and he used to try to +leap out of the water, head over heels, as they did before a shower came +on; but somehow he never could manage it. He liked most, though, to see +them rising at the flies, as they sailed round and round under the shadow +of the great oak, where the beetles fell flop into the water, and the +green caterpillars let themselves down from the boughs by silk ropes for +no reason at all; and then changed their foolish minds for no reason at +all either; and hauled themselves up again into the tree, rolling up the +rope in a ball between their paws; which is a very clever rope-dancer’s +trick, and neither Blondin nor Leotard could do it: but why they should +take so much trouble about it no one can tell; for they cannot get their +living, as Blondin and Leotard do, by trying to break their necks on a +string. + +And very often Tom caught them just as they touched the water; and caught +the alder-flies, and the caperers, and the cock-tailed duns and spinners, +yellow, and brown, and claret, and gray, and gave them to his friends the +trout. Perhaps he was not quite kind to the flies; but one must do a +good turn to one’s friends when one can. + +And at last he gave up catching even the flies; for he made acquaintance +with one by accident and found him a very merry little fellow. And this +was the way it happened; and it is all quite true. + +He was basking at the top of the water one hot day in July, catching duns +and feeding the trout, when he saw a new sort, a dark gray little fellow +with a brown head. He was a very little fellow indeed: but he made the +most of himself, as people ought to do. He cocked up his head, and he +cocked up his wings, and he cocked up his tail, and he cocked up the two +whisks at his tail-end, and, in short, he looked the cockiest little man +of all little men. And so he proved to be; for instead of getting away, +he hopped upon Tom’s finger, and sat there as bold as nine tailors; and +he cried out in the tiniest, shrillest, squeakiest little voice you ever +heard, + +“Much obliged to you, indeed; but I don’t want it yet.” + +“Want what?” said Tom, quite taken aback by his impudence. + +“Your leg, which you are kind enough to hold out for me to sit on. I +must just go and see after my wife for a few minutes. Dear me! what a +troublesome business a family is!” (though the idle little rogue did +nothing at all, but left his poor wife to lay all the eggs by herself). +“When I come back, I shall be glad of it, if you’ll be so good as to keep +it sticking out just so;” and off he flew. + +Tom thought him a very cool sort of personage; and still more so, when, +in five minutes he came back, and said—“Ah, you were tired waiting? +Well, your other leg will do as well.” + +And he popped himself down on Tom’s knee, and began chatting away in his +squeaking voice. + +“So you live under the water? It’s a low place. I lived there for some +time; and was very shabby and dirty. But I didn’t choose that that +should last. So I turned respectable, and came up to the top, and put on +this gray suit. It’s a very business-like suit, you think, don’t you?” + +“Very neat and quiet indeed,” said Tom. + +“Yes, one must be quiet and neat and respectable, and all that sort of +thing for a little, when one becomes a family man. But I’m tired of it, +that’s the truth. I’ve done quite enough business, I consider, in the +last week, to last me my life. So I shall put on a ball dress, and go +out and be a smart man, and see the gay world, and have a dance or two. +Why shouldn’t one be jolly if one can?” + +“And what will become of your wife?” + +“Oh! she is a very plain stupid creature, and that’s the truth; and +thinks about nothing but eggs. If she chooses to come, why she may; and +if not, why I go without her;—and here I go.” + +And, as he spoke, he turned quite pale, and then quite white. + +“Why, you’re ill!” said Tom. But he did not answer. + +“You’re dead,” said Tom, looking at him as he stood on his knee as white +as a ghost. + +“No, I ain’t!” answered a little squeaking voice over his head. “This is +me up here, in my ball-dress; and that’s my skin. Ha, ha! you could not +do such a trick as that!” + +And no more Tom could, nor Houdin, nor Robin, nor Frikell, nor all the +conjurors in the world. For the little rogue had jumped clean out of his +own skin, and left it standing on Tom’s knee, eyes, wings, legs, tail, +exactly as if it had been alive. + +“Ha, ha!” he said, and he jerked and skipped up and down, never stopping +an instant, just as if he had St. Vitus’s dance. “Ain’t I a pretty +fellow now?” + +And so he was; for his body was white, and his tail orange, and his eyes +all the colours of a peacock’s tail. And what was the oddest of all, the +whisks at the end of his tail had grown five times as long as they were +before. + +“Ah!” said he, “now I will see the gay world. My living, won’t cost me +much, for I have no mouth, you see, and no inside; so I can never be +hungry nor have the stomach-ache neither.” + +No more he had. He had grown as dry and hard and empty as a quill, as +such silly shallow-hearted fellows deserve to grow. + +But, instead of being ashamed of his emptiness, he was quite proud of it, +as a good many fine gentlemen are, and began flirting and flipping up and +down, and singing— + + “_My wife shall dance_, _and I shall sing_, + _So merrily pass the day_; + _For I hold it for quite the wisest thing_, + _To drive dull care away_.” + +And he danced up and down for three days and three nights, till he grew +so tired, that he tumbled into the water, and floated down. But what +became of him Tom never knew, and he himself never minded; for Tom heard +him singing to the last, as he floated down— + + “_To drive dull care away-ay-ay_!” + +And if he did not care, why nobody else cared either. + +But one day Tom had a new adventure. He was sitting on a water-lily +leaf, he and his friend the dragon-fly, watching the gnats dance. The +dragon-fly had eaten as many as he wanted, and was sitting quite still +and sleepy, for it was very hot and bright. The gnats (who did not care +the least for their poor brothers’ death) danced a foot over his head +quite happily, and a large black fly settled within an inch of his nose, +and began washing his own face and combing his hair with his paws: but +the dragon-fly never stirred, and kept on chatting to Tom about the times +when he lived under the water. + +Suddenly, Tom heard the strangest noise up the stream; cooing, and +grunting, and whining, and squeaking, as if you had put into a bag two +stock-doves, nine mice, three guinea-pigs, and a blind puppy, and left +them there to settle themselves and make music. + +He looked up the water, and there he saw a sight as strange as the noise; +a great ball rolling over and over down the stream, seeming one moment of +soft brown fur, and the next of shining glass: and yet it was not a ball; +for sometimes it broke up and streamed away in pieces, and then it joined +again; and all the while the noise came out of it louder and louder. + +Tom asked the dragon-fly what it could be: but, of course, with his short +sight, he could not even see it, though it was not ten yards away. So he +took the neatest little header into the water, and started off to see for +himself; and, when he came near, the ball turned out to be four or five +beautiful creatures, many times larger than Tom, who were swimming about, +and rolling, and diving, and twisting, and wrestling, and cuddling, and +kissing and biting, and scratching, in the most charming fashion that +ever was seen. And if you don’t believe me, you may go to the Zoological +Gardens (for I am afraid that you won’t see it nearer, unless, perhaps, +you get up at five in the morning, and go down to Cordery’s Moor, and +watch by the great withy pollard which hangs over the backwater, where +the otters breed sometimes), and then say, if otters at play in the water +are not the merriest, lithest, gracefullest creatures you ever saw. + +But, when the biggest of them saw Tom, she darted out from the rest, and +cried in the water-language sharply enough, “Quick, children, here is +something to eat, indeed!” and came at poor Tom, showing such a wicked +pair of eyes, and such a set of sharp teeth in a grinning mouth, that +Tom, who had thought her very handsome, said to himself, _Handsome is +that handsome does_, and slipped in between the water-lily roots as fast +as he could, and then turned round and made faces at her. + +“Come out,” said the wicked old otter, “or it will be worse for you.” + +But Tom looked at her from between two thick roots, and shook them with +all his might, making horrible faces all the while, just as he used to +grin through the railings at the old women, when he lived before. It was +not quite well bred, no doubt; but you know, Tom had not finished his +education yet. + + [Picture: The otter] + +“Come, away, children,” said the otter in disgust, “it is not worth +eating, after all. It is only a nasty eft, which nothing eats, not even +those vulgar pike in the pond.” + +“I am not an eft!” said Tom; “efts have tails.” + +“You are an eft,” said the otter, very positively; “I see your two hands +quite plain, and I know you have a tail.” + +“I tell you I have not,” said Tom. “Look here!” and he turned his pretty +little self quite round; and, sure enough, he had no more tail than you. + +The otter might have got out of it by saying that Tom was a frog: but, +like a great many other people, when she had once said a thing, she stood +to it, right or wrong; so she answered: + +“I say you are an eft, and therefore you are, and not fit food for +gentlefolk like me and my children. You may stay there till the salmon +eat you (she knew the salmon would not, but she wanted to frighten poor +Tom). Ha! ha! they will eat you, and we will eat them;” and the otter +laughed such a wicked cruel laugh—as you may hear them do sometimes; and +the first time that you hear it you will probably think it is bogies. + +“What are salmon?” asked Tom. + +“Fish, you eft, great fish, nice fish to eat. They are the lords of the +fish, and we are lords of the salmon;” and she laughed again. “We hunt +them up and down the pools, and drive them up into a corner, the silly +things; they are so proud, and bully the little trout, and the minnows, +till they see us coming, and then they are so meek all at once, and we +catch them, but we disdain to eat them all; we just bite out their soft +throats and suck their sweet juice—Oh, so good!”—(and she licked her +wicked lips)—“and then throw them away, and go and catch another. They +are coming soon, children, coming soon; I can smell the rain coming up +off the sea, and then hurrah for a fresh, and salmon, and plenty of +eating all day long.” + + [Picture: Tom and the otter] + +And the otter grew so proud that she turned head over heels twice, and +then stood upright half out of the water, grinning like a Cheshire cat. + +“And where do they come from?” asked Tom, who kept himself very close, +for he was considerably frightened. + +“Out of the sea, eft, the great wide sea, where they might stay and be +safe if they liked. But out of the sea the silly things come, into the +great river down below, and we come up to watch for them; and when they +go down again we go down and follow them. And there we fish for the bass +and the pollock, and have jolly days along the shore, and toss and roll +in the breakers, and sleep snug in the warm dry crags. Ah, that is a +merry life too, children, if it were not for those horrid men.” + +“What are men?” asked Tom; but somehow he seemed to know before he asked. + +“Two-legged things, eft: and, now I come to look at you, they are +actually something like you, if you had not a tail” (she was determined +that Tom should have a tail), “only a great deal bigger, worse luck for +us; and they catch the fish with hooks and lines, which get into our feet +sometimes, and set pots along the rocks to catch lobsters. They speared +my poor dear husband as he went out to find something for me to eat. I +was laid up among the crags then, and we were very low in the world, for +the sea was so rough that no fish would come in shore. But they speared +him, poor fellow, and I saw them carrying him away upon a pole. All, he +lost his life for your sakes, my children, poor dear obedient creature +that he was.” + +And the otter grew so sentimental (for otters can be very sentimental +when they choose, like a good many people who are both cruel and greedy, +and no good to anybody at all) that she sailed solemnly away down the +burn, and Tom saw her no more for that time. And lucky it was for her +that she did so; for no sooner was she gone, than down the bank came +seven little rough terrier doors, snuffing and yapping, and grubbing and +splashing, in full cry after the otter. Tom hid among the water-lilies +till they were gone; for he could not guess that they were the +water-fairies come to help him. + +But he could not help thinking of what the otter had said about the great +river and the broad sea. And, as he thought, he longed to go and see +them. He could not tell why; but the more he thought, the more he grew +discontented with the narrow little stream in which he lived, and all his +companions there; and wanted to get out into the wide wide world, and +enjoy all the wonderful sights of which he was sure it was full. + +And once he set off to go down the stream. But the stream was very low; +and when he came to the shallows he could not keep under water, for there +was no water left to keep under. So the sun burned his back and made him +sick; and he went back again and lay quiet in the pool for a whole week +more. + +And then, on the evening of a very hot day, he saw a sight. + +He had been very stupid all day, and so had the trout; for they would not +move an inch to take a fly, though there were thousands on the water, but +lay dozing at the bottom under the shade of the stones; and Tom lay +dozing too, and was glad to cuddle their smooth cool sides, for the water +was quite warm and unpleasant. + +But toward evening it grew suddenly dark, and Tom looked up and saw a +blanket of black clouds lying right across the valley above his head, +resting on the crags right and left. He felt not quite frightened, but +very still; for everything was still. There was not a whisper of wind, +nor a chirp of a bird to be heard; and next a few great drops of rain +fell plop into the water, and one hit Tom on the nose, and made him pop +his head down quickly enough. + +And then the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed, and leapt across +Vendale and back again, from cloud to cloud, and cliff to cliff, till the +very rocks in the stream seemed to shake: and Tom looked up at it through +the water, and thought it the finest thing he ever saw in his life. + +But out of the water he dared not put his head; for the rain came down by +bucketsful, and the hail hammered like shot on the stream, and churned it +into foam; and soon the stream rose, and rushed down, higher and higher, +and fouler and fouler, full of beetles, and sticks; and straws, and +worms, and addle-eggs, and wood-lice, and leeches, and odds and ends, and +omnium-gatherums, and this, that, and the other, enough to fill nine +museums. + +Tom could hardly stand against the stream, and hid behind a rock. But +the trout did not; for out they rushed from among the stones, and began +gobbling the beetles and leeches in the most greedy and quarrelsome way, +and swimming about with great worms hanging out of their mouths, tugging +and kicking to get them away from each other. + +And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom saw a new sight—all the +bottom of the stream alive with great eels, turning and twisting along, +all down stream and away. They had been hiding for weeks past in the +cracks of the rocks, and in burrows in the mud; and Tom had hardly ever +seen them, except now and then at night: but now they were all out, and +went hurrying past him so fiercely and wildly that he was quite +frightened. And as they hurried past he could hear them say to each +other, “We must run, we must run. What a jolly thunderstorm! Down to +the sea, down to the sea!” + +And then the otter came by with all her brood, twining and sweeping along +as fast as the eels themselves; and she spied Tom as she came by, and +said “Now is your time, eft, if you want to see the world. Come along, +children, never mind those nasty eels: we shall breakfast on salmon +to-morrow. Down to the sea, down to the sea!” + + [Picture: Tom with the eels] + +Then came a flash brighter than all the rest, and by the light of it—in +the thousandth part of a second they were gone again—but he had seen +them, he was certain of it—Three beautiful little white girls, with their +arms twined round each other’s necks, floating down the torrent, as they +sang, “Down to the sea, down to the sea!” + +“Oh stay! Wait for me!” cried Tom; but they were gone: yet he could hear +their voices clear and sweet through the roar of thunder and water and +wind, singing as they died away, “Down to the sea!” + +“Down to the sea?” said Tom; “everything is going to the sea, and I will +go too. Good-bye, trout.” But the trout were so busy gobbling worms +that they never turned to answer him; so that Tom was spared the pain of +bidding them farewell. + +And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the bright flashes of the +storm; past tall birch-fringed rocks, which shone out one moment as clear +as day, and the next were dark as night; past dark hovers under swirling +banks, from which great trout rushed out on Tom, thinking him to be good +to eat, and turned back sulkily, for the fairies sent them home again +with a tremendous scolding, for daring to meddle with a water-baby; on +through narrow strids and roaring cataracts, where Tom was deafened and +blinded for a moment by the rushing waters; along deep reaches, where the +white water-lilies tossed and flapped beneath the wind and hail; past +sleeping villages; under dark bridge-arches, and away and away to the +sea. And Tom could not stop, and did not care to stop; he would see the +great world below, and the salmon, and the breakers, and the wide wide +sea. + +And when the daylight came, Tom found himself out in the salmon river. + +And what sort of a river was it? Was it like an Irish stream, winding +through the brown bogs, where the wild ducks squatter up from among the +white water-lilies, and the curlews flit to and fro, crying +“Tullie-wheep, mind your sheep;” and Dennis tells you strange stories of +the Peishtamore, the great bogy-snake which lies in the black peat pools, +among the old pine-stems, and puts his head out at night to snap at the +cattle as they come down to drink?—But you must not believe all that +Dennis tells you, mind; for if you ask him: + +“Is there a salmon here, do you think, Dennis?” + +“Is it salmon, thin, your honour manes? Salmon? Cartloads it is of +thim, thin, an’ ridgmens, shouldthering ache out of water, av’ ye’d but +the luck to see thim.” + +Then you fish the pool all over, and never get a rise. + +“But there can’t be a salmon here, Dennis! and, if you’ll but think, if +one had come up last tide, he’d be gone to the higher pools by now.” + + [Picture: Dennis with pigs] + +“Shure thin, and your honour’s the thrue fisherman, and understands it +all like a book. Why, ye spake as if ye’d known the wather a thousand +years! As I said, how could there be a fish here at all, just now?” + +“But you said just now they were shouldering each other out of water?” + +And then Dennis will look up at you with his handsome, sly, soft, sleepy, +good-natured, untrustable, Irish gray eye, and answer with the prettiest +smile: + +“Shure, and didn’t I think your honour would like a pleasant answer?” + +So you must not trust Dennis, because he is in the habit of giving +pleasant answers: but, instead of being angry with him, you must remember +that he is a poor Paddy, and knows no better; so you must just burst out +laughing; and then he will burst out laughing too, and slave for you, and +trot about after you, and show you good sport if he can—for he is an +affectionate fellow, and as fond of sport as you are—and if he can’t, +tell you fibs instead, a hundred an hour; and wonder all the while why +poor ould Ireland does not prosper like England and Scotland, and some +other places, where folk have taken up a ridiculous fancy that honesty is +the best policy. + +Or was it like a Welsh salmon river, which is remarkable chiefly (at +least, till this last year) for containing no salmon, as they have been +all poached out by the enlightened peasantry, to prevent the _Cythrawl +Sassenach_ (which means you, my little dear, your kith and kin, and +signifies much the same as the Chinese _Fan Quei_) from coming bothering +into Wales, with good tackle, and ready money, and civilisation, and +common honesty, and other like things of which the Cymry stand in no need +whatsoever? + +Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you will see among the +Hampshire water-meadows before your hairs are gray, under the wise new +fishing-laws?—when Winchester apprentices shall covenant, as they did +three hundred years ago, not to be made to eat salmon more than three +days a week; and fresh-run fish shall be as plentiful under Salisbury +spire as they are in Holly-hole at Christchurch; in the good time coming, +when folks shall see that, of all Heaven’s gifts of food, the one to be +protected most carefully is that worthy gentleman salmon, who is generous +enough to go down to the sea weighing five ounces, and to come back next +year weighing five pounds, without having cost the soil or the state one +farthing? + +Or was it like a Scotch stream, such as Arthur Clough drew in his +“Bothie”:— + + “_Where over a ledge of granite_ + _Into a granite bason the amber torrent descended_. . . . . + _Beautiful there for the colour derived from green rocks under_; + _Beautiful most of all_, _where beads of foam uprising_ + _Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the + stillness_. . . . + _Cliff over cliff for its sides_, _with rowan and pendant birch + boughs_.” . . . + +Ah, my little man, when you are a big man, and fish such a stream as +that, you will hardly care, I think, whether she be roaring down in full +spate, like coffee covered with scald cream, while the fish are swirling +at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a boat-race, or flashing up the +cataract like silver arrows, out of the fiercest of the foam; or whether +the fall be dwindled to a single thread, and the shingle below be as +white and dusty as a turnpike road, while the salmon huddle together in +one dark cloud in the clear amber pool, sleeping away their time till the +rain creeps back again off the sea. You will not care much, if you have +eyes and brains; for you will lay down your rod contentedly, and drink in +at your eyes the beauty of that glorious place; and listen to the +water-ouzel piping on the stones, and watch the yellow roes come down to +drink and look up at you with their great soft trustful eyes, as much as +to say, “You could not have the heart to shoot at us?” And then, if you +have sense, you will turn and talk to the great giant of a gilly who lies +basking on the stone beside you. He will tell you no fibs, my little +man; for he is a Scotchman, and fears God, and not the priest; and, as +you talk with him, you will be surprised more and more at his knowledge, +his sense, his humour, his courtesy; and you will find out—unless you +have found it out before—that a man may learn from his Bible to be a more +thorough gentleman than if he had been brought up in all the +drawing-rooms in London. + + [Picture: Scotsman] + +No. It was none of these, the salmon stream at Harthover. It was such a +stream as you see in dear old Bewick; Bewick, who was born and bred upon +them. A full hundred yards broad it was, sliding on from broad pool to +broad shallow, and broad shallow to broad pool, over great fields of +shingle, under oak and ash coverts, past low cliffs of sandstone, past +green meadows, and fair parks, and a great house of gray stone, and brown +moors above, and here and there against the sky the smoking chimney of a +colliery. You must look at Bewick to see just what it was like, for he +has drawn it a hundred times with the care and the love of a true north +countryman; and, even if you do not care about the salmon river, you +ought, like all good boys, to know your Bewick. + +At least, so old Sir John used to say, and very sensibly he put it too, +as he was wont to do: + +“If they want to describe a finished young gentleman in France, I hear, +they say of him, ‘_Il sait son Rabelais_.’ But if I want to describe one +in England, I say, ‘_He knows his Bewick_.’ And I think that is the +higher compliment.” + +But Tom thought nothing about what the river was like. All his fancy +was, to get down to the wide wide sea. + +And after a while he came to a place where the river spread out into +broad still shallow reaches, so wide that little Tom, as he put his head +out of the water, could hardly see across. + +And there he stopped. He got a little frightened. “This must be the +sea,” he thought. “What a wide place it is! If I go on into it I shall +surely lose my way, or some strange thing will bite me. I will stop here +and look out for the otter, or the eels, or some one to tell me where I +shall go.” + +So he went back a little way, and crept into a crack of the rock, just +where the river opened out into the wide shallows, and watched for some +one to tell him his way: but the otter and the eels were gone on miles +and miles down the stream. + +There he waited, and slept too, for he was quite tired with his night’s +journey; and, when he woke, the stream was clearing to a beautiful amber +hue, though it was still very high. And after a while he saw a sight +which made him jump up; for he knew in a moment it was one of the things +which he had come to look for. + +Such a fish! ten times as big as the biggest trout, and a hundred times +as big as Tom, sculling up the stream past him, as easily as Tom had +sculled down. + +Such a fish! shining silver from head to tail, and here and there a +crimson dot; with a grand hooked nose and grand curling lip, and a grand +bright eye, looking round him as proudly as a king, and surveying the +water right and left as if all belonged to him. Surely he must be the +salmon, the king of all the fish. + + [Picture: Tom and the salmon] + +Tom was so frightened that he longed to creep into a hole; but he need +not have been; for salmon are all true gentlemen, and, like true +gentlemen, they look noble and proud enough, and yet, like true +gentlemen, they never harm or quarrel with any one, but go about their +own business, and leave rude fellows to themselves. + +The salmon looked at him full in the face, and then went on without +minding him, with a swish or two of his tail which made the stream boil +again. And in a few minutes came another, and then four or five, and so +on; and all passed Tom, rushing and plunging up the cataract with strong +strokes of their silver tails, now and then leaping clean out of water +and up over a rock, shining gloriously for a moment in the bright sun; +while Tom was so delighted that he could have watched them all day long. + +And at last one came up bigger than all the rest; but he came slowly, and +stopped, and looked back, and seemed very anxious and busy. And Tom saw +that he was helping another salmon, an especially handsome one, who had +not a single spot upon it, but was clothed in pure silver from nose to +tail. + +“My dear,” said the great fish to his companion, “you really look +dreadfully tired, and you must not over-exert yourself at first. Do rest +yourself behind this rock;” and he shoved her gently with his nose, to +the rock where Tom sat. + +You must know that this was the salmon’s wife. For salmon, like other +true gentlemen, always choose their lady, and love her, and are true to +her, and take care of her and work for her, and fight for her, as every +true gentleman ought; and are not like vulgar chub and roach and pike, +who have no high feelings, and take no care of their wives. + +Then he saw Tom, and looked at him very fiercely one moment, as if he was +going to bite him. + +“What do you want here?” he said, very fiercely. + +“Oh, don’t hurt me!” cried Tom. “I only want to look at you; you are so +handsome.” + +“Ah?” said the salmon, very stately but very civilly. “I really beg your +pardon; I see what you are, my little dear. I have met one or two +creatures like you before, and found them very agreeable and +well-behaved. Indeed, one of them showed me a great kindness lately, +which I hope to be able to repay. I hope we shall not be in your way +here. As soon as this lady is rested, we shall proceed on our journey.” + +What a well-bred old salmon he was! + +“So you have seen things like me before?” asked Tom. + +“Several times, my dear. Indeed, it was only last night that one at the +river’s mouth came and warned me and my wife of some new stake-nets which +had got into the stream, I cannot tell how, since last winter, and showed +us the way round them, in the most charmingly obliging way.” + +“So there are babies in the sea?” cried Tom, and clapped his little +hands. “Then I shall have some one to play with there? How delightful!” + +“Were there no babies up this stream?” asked the lady salmon. + +“No! and I grew so lonely. I thought I saw three last night; but they +were gone in an instant, down to the sea. So I went too; for I had +nothing to play with but caddises and dragon-flies and trout.” + +“Ugh!” cried the lady, “what low company!” + +“My dear, if he has been in low company, he has certainly not learnt +their low manners,” said the salmon. + +“No, indeed, poor little dear: but how sad for him to live among such +people as caddises, who have actually six legs, the nasty things; and +dragon-flies, too! why they are not even good to eat; for I tried them +once, and they are all hard and empty; and, as for trout, every one knows +what they are.” Whereon she curled up her lip, and looked dreadfully +scornful, while her husband curled up his too, till he looked as proud as +Alcibiades. + +“Why do you dislike the trout so?” asked Tom. + +“My dear, we do not even mention them, if we can help it; for I am sorry +to say they are relations of ours who do us no credit. A great many +years ago they were just like us: but they were so lazy, and cowardly, +and greedy, that instead of going down to the sea every year to see the +world and grow strong and fat, they chose to stay and poke about in the +little streams and eat worms and grubs; and they are very properly +punished for it; for they have grown ugly and brown and spotted and +small; and are actually so degraded in their tastes, that they will eat +our children.” + +“And then they pretend to scrape acquaintance with us again,” said the +lady. “Why, I have actually known one of them propose to a lady salmon, +the little impudent little creature.” + + [Picture: Trout and salmon] + +“I should hope,” said the gentleman, “that there are very few ladies of +our race who would degrade themselves by listening to such a creature for +an instant. If I saw such a thing happen, I should consider it my duty +to put them both to death upon the spot.” So the old salmon said, like +an old blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain; and what is more, he would have +done it too. For you must know, no enemies are so bitter against each +other as those who are of the same race; and a salmon looks on a trout, +as some great folks look on some little folks, as something just too much +like himself to be tolerated. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + “Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; + Our meddling intellect + Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things + We murder to dissect. + + Enough of science and of art: + Close up these barren leaves; + Come forth, and bring with you a heart + That watches and receives.” + + WORDSWORTH. + +[Picture: Tom on rock] SO the salmon went up, after Tom had warned them +of the wicked old otter; and Tom went down, but slowly and cautiously, +coasting along shore. He was many days about it, for it was many miles +down to the sea; and perhaps he would never have found his way, if the +fairies had not guided him, without his seeing their fair faces, or +feeling their gentle hands. + +And, as he went, he had a very strange adventure. It was a clear still +September night, and the moon shone so brightly down through the water, +that he could not sleep, though he shut his eyes as tight as possible. +So at last he came up to the top, and sat upon a little point of rock, +and looked up at the broad yellow moon, and wondered what she was, and +thought that she looked at him. And he watched the moonlight on the +rippling river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-frosted +lawns, and listened to the owl’s hoot, and the snipe’s bleat, and the +fox’s bark, and the otter’s laugh; and smelt the soft perfume of the +birches, and the wafts of heather honey off the grouse moor far above; +and felt very happy, though he could not well tell why. You, of course, +would have been very cold sitting there on a September night, without the +least bit of clothes on your wet back; but Tom was a water-baby, and +therefore felt cold no more than a fish. + +Suddenly, he saw a beautiful sight. A bright red light moved along the +river-side, and threw down into the water a long tap-root of flame. Tom, +curious little rogue that he was, must needs go and see what it was; so +he swam to the shore, and met the light as it stopped over a shallow run +at the edge of a low rock. + +And there, underneath the light, lay five or six great salmon, looking up +at the flame with their great goggle eyes, and wagging their tails, as if +they were very much pleased at it. + +Tom came to the top, to look at this wonderful light nearer, and made a +splash. + +And he heard a voice say: + +“There was a fish rose.” + +He did not know what the words meant: but he seemed to know the sound of +them, and to know the voice which spoke them; and he saw on the bank +three great two-legged creatures, one of whom held the light, flaring and +sputtering, and another a long pole. And he knew that they were men, and +was frightened, and crept into a hole in the rock, from which he could +see what went on. + +The man with the torch bent down over the water, and looked earnestly in; +and then he said: + +“Tak’ that muckle fellow, lad; he’s ower fifteen punds; and haud your +hand steady.” + +Tom felt that there was some danger coming, and longed to warn the +foolish salmon, who kept staring up at the light as if he was bewitched. +But before he could make up his mind, down came the pole through the +water; there was a fearful splash and struggle, and Tom saw that the poor +salmon was speared right through, and was lifted out of the water. + +And then, from behind, there sprang on these three men three other men; +and there were shouts, and blows, and words which Tom recollected to have +heard before; and he shuddered and turned sick at them now, for he felt +somehow that they were strange, and ugly, and wrong, and horrible. And +it all began to come back to him. They were men; and they were fighting; +savage, desperate, up-and-down fighting, such as Tom had seen too many +times before. + +And he stopped his little ears, and longed to swim away; and was very +glad that he was a water-baby, and had nothing to do any more with horrid +dirty men, with foul clothes on their backs, and foul words on their +lips; but he dared not stir out of his hole: while the rock shook over +his head with the trampling and struggling of the keepers and the +poachers. + +All of a sudden there was a tremendous splash, and a frightful flash, and +a hissing, and all was still. + +For into the water, close to Tom, fell one of the men; he who held the +light in his hand. Into the swift river he sank, and rolled over and +over in the current. Tom heard the men above run along seemingly looking +for him; but he drifted down into the deep hole below, and there lay +quite still, and they could not find him. + +Tom waited a long time, till all was quiet; and then he peeped out, and +saw the man lying. At last he screwed up his courage and swam down to +him. “Perhaps,” he thought, “the water has made him fall asleep, as it +did me.” + +Then he went nearer. He grew more and more curious, he could not tell +why. He must go and look at him. He would go very quietly, of course; +so he swam round and round him, closer and closer; and, as he did not +stir, at last he came quite close and looked him in the face. + +The moon shone so bright that Tom could see every feature; and, as he +saw, he recollected, bit by bit, it was his old master, Grimes. + +Tom turned tail, and swam away as fast as he could. + +“Oh dear me!” he thought, “now he will turn into a water-baby. What a +nasty troublesome one he will be! And perhaps he will find me out, and +beat me again.” + +So he went up the river again a little way, and lay there the rest of the +night under an alder root; but, when morning came, he longed to go down +again to the big pool, and see whether Mr. Grimes had turned into a +water-baby yet. + +So he went very carefully, peeping round all the rocks, and hiding under +all the roots. Mr. Grimes lay there still; he had not turned into a +water-baby. In the afternoon Tom went back again. He could not rest +till he had found out what had become of Mr. Grimes. But this time Mr. +Grimes was gone; and Tom made up his mind that he was turned into a +water-baby. + +He might have made himself easy, poor little man; Mr. Grimes did not turn +into a water-baby, or anything like one at all. But he did not make +himself easy; and a long time he was fearful lest he should meet Grimes +suddenly in some deep pool. He could not know that the fairies had +carried him away, and put him, where they put everything which falls into +the water, exactly where it ought to be. But, do you know, what had +happened to Mr. Grimes had such an effect on him that he never poached +salmon any more. And it is quite certain that, when a man becomes a +confirmed poacher, the only way to cure him is to put him under water for +twenty-four hours, like Grimes. So when you grow to be a big man, do you +behave as all honest fellows should; and never touch a fish or a head of +game which belongs to another man without his express leave; and then +people will call you a gentleman, and treat you like one; and perhaps +give you good sport: instead of hitting you into the river, or calling +you a poaching snob. + +Then Tom went on down, for he was afraid of staying near Grimes: and as +he went, all the vale looked sad. The red and yellow leaves showered +down into the river; the flies and beetles were all dead and gone; the +chill autumn fog lay low upon the hills, and sometimes spread itself so +thickly on the river that he could not see his way. But he felt his way +instead, following the flow of the stream, day after day, past great +bridges, past boats and barges, past the great town, with its wharfs, and +mills, and tall smoking chimneys, and ships which rode at anchor in the +stream; and now and then he ran against their hawsers, and wondered what +they were, and peeped out, and saw the sailors lounging on board smoking +their pipes; and ducked under again, for he was terribly afraid of being +caught by man and turned into a chimney-sweep once more. He did not know +that the fairies were close to him always, shutting the sailors’ eyes +lest they should see him, and turning him aside from millraces, and +sewer-mouths, and all foul and dangerous things. Poor little fellow, it +was a dreary journey for him; and more than once he longed to be back in +Vendale, playing with the trout in the bright summer sun. But it could +not be. What has been once can never come over again. And people can be +little babies, even water-babies, only once in their lives. + +Besides, people who make up their minds to go and see the world, as Tom +did, must needs find it a weary journey. Lucky for them if they do not +lose heart and stop half-way, instead of going on bravely to the end as +Tom did. For then they will remain neither boys nor men, neither fish, +flesh, nor good red-herring: having learnt a great deal too much, and yet +not enough; and sown their wild oats, without having the advantage of +reaping them. + +But Tom was always a brave, determined, little English bull-dog, who +never knew when he was beaten; and on and on he held, till he saw a long +way off the red buoy through the fog. And then he found to his surprise, +the stream turned round, and running up inland. + +It was the tide, of course: but Tom knew nothing of the tide. He only +knew that in a minute more the water, which had been fresh, turned salt +all round him. And then there came a change over him. He felt as +strong, and light, and fresh, as if his veins had run champagne; and +gave, he did not know why, three skips out of the water, a yard high, and +head over heels, just as the salmon do when they first touch the noble +rich salt water, which, as some wise men tell us, is the mother of all +living things. + + [Picture: Seal] + +He did not care now for the tide being against him. The red buoy was in +sight, dancing in the open sea; and to the buoy he would go, and to it he +went. He passed great shoals of bass and mullet, leaping and rushing in +after the shrimps, but he never heeded them, or they him; and once he +passed a great black shining seal, who was coming in after the mullet. +The seal put his head and shoulders out of water, and stared at him, +looking exactly like a fat old greasy negro with a gray pate. And Tom, +instead of being frightened, said, “How d’ye do, sir; what a beautiful +place the sea is!” And the old seal, instead of trying to bite him, +looked at him with his soft sleepy winking eyes, and said, “Good tide to +you, my little man; are you looking for your brothers and sisters? I +passed them all at play outside.” + +“Oh, then,” said Tom, “I shall have playfellows at last,” and he swam on +to the buoy, and got upon it (for he was quite out of breath) and sat +there, and looked round for water-babies: but there were none to be seen. + +[Picture: The old bouy] The sea-breeze came in freshly with the tide and +blew the fog away; and the little waves danced for joy around the buoy, +and the old buoy danced with them. The shadows of the clouds ran races +over the bright blue bay, and yet never caught each other up; and the +breakers plunged merrily upon the wide white sands, and jumped up over +the rocks, to see what the green fields inside were like, and tumbled +down and broke themselves all to pieces, and never minded it a bit, but +mended themselves and jumped up again. And the terns hovered over Tom +like huge white dragon-flies with black heads, and the gulls laughed like +girls at play, and the sea-pies, with their red bills and legs, flew to +and fro from shore to shore, and whistled sweet and wild. And Tom looked +and looked, and listened; and he would have been very happy, if he could +only have seen the water-babies. Then when the tide turned, he left the +buoy, and swam round and round in search of them: but in vain. Sometimes +he thought he heard them laughing: but it was only the laughter of the +ripples. And sometimes he thought he saw them at the bottom: but it was +only white and pink shells. And once he was sure he had found one, for +he saw two bright eyes peeping out of the sand. So he dived down, and +began scraping the sand away, and cried, “Don’t hide; I do want some one +to play with so much!” And out jumped a great turbot with his ugly eyes +and mouth all awry, and flopped away along the bottom, knocking poor Tom +over. And he sat down at the bottom of the sea, and cried salt tears +from sheer disappointment. + +To have come all this way, and faced so many dangers, and yet to find no +water-babies! How hard! Well, it did seem hard: but people, even little +babies, cannot have all they want without waiting for it, and working for +it too, my little man, as you will find out some day. + +And Tom sat upon the buoy long days, long weeks, looking out to sea, and +wondering when the water-babies would come back; and yet they never came. + + [Picture: Tom and a flat-fish] + +Then he began to ask all the strange things which came in out of the sea +if they had seen any; and some said “Yes,” and some said nothing at all. + +He asked the bass and the pollock; but they were so greedy after the +shrimps that they did not care to answer him a word. + +Then there came in a whole fleet of purple sea-snails, floating along, +each on a sponge full of foam, and Tom said, “Where do you come from, you +pretty creatures? and have you seen the water-babies?” + +And the sea-snails answered, “Whence we come we know not; and whither we +are going, who can tell? We float out our life in the mid-ocean, with +the warm sunshine above our heads, and the warm gulf-stream below; and +that is enough for us. Yes; perhaps we have seen the water-babies. We +have seen many strange things as we sailed along.” And they floated +away, the happy stupid things, and all went ashore upon the sands. + +Then there came in a great lazy sunfish, as big as a fat pig cut in half; +and he seemed to have been cut in half too, and squeezed in a +clothes-press till he was flat; but to all his big body and big fins he +had only a little rabbit’s mouth, no bigger than Tom’s; and, when Tom +questioned him, he answered in a little squeaky feeble voice: + +“I’m sure I don’t know; I’ve lost my way. I meant to go to the +Chesapeake, and I’m afraid I’ve got wrong somehow. Dear me! it was all +by following that pleasant warm water. I’m sure I’ve lost my way.” + +[Picture: Sunfish] And, when Tom asked him again, he could only answer, +“I’ve lost my way. Don’t talk to me; I want to think.” + +But, like a good many other people, the more he tried to think the less +he could think; and Tom saw him blundering about all day, till the +coast-guardsmen saw his big fin above the water, and rowed out, and +struck a boat-hook into him, and took him away. They took him up to the +town and showed him for a penny a head, and made a good day’s work of it. +But of course Tom did not know that. + +Then there came by a shoal of porpoises, rolling as they went—papas, and +mammas, and little children—and all quite smooth and shiny, because the +fairies French-polish them every morning; and they sighed so softly as +they came by, that Tom took courage to speak to them: but all they +answered was, “Hush, hush, hush;” for that was all they had learnt to +say. + +And then there came a shoal of basking sharks’ some of them as long as a +boat, and Tom was frightened at them. But they were very lazy +good-natured fellows, not greedy tyrants, like white sharks and blue +sharks and ground sharks and hammer-heads, who eat men, or saw-fish and +threshers and ice-sharks, who hunt the poor old whales. They came and +rubbed their great sides against the buoy, and lay basking in the sun +with their backfins out of water; and winked at Tom: but he never could +get them to speak. They had eaten so many herrings that they were quite +stupid; and Tom was glad when a collier brig came by and frightened them +all away; for they did smell most horribly, certainly, and he had to hold +his nose tight as long as they were there. + +And then there came by a beautiful creature, like a ribbon of pure silver +with a sharp head and very long teeth; but it seemed very sick and sad. +Sometimes it rolled helpless on its side; and then it dashed away +glittering like white fire; and then it lay sick again and motionless. + +“Where do you come from?” asked Tom. “And why are _you_ so sick and +sad?” + +“I come from the warm Carolinas, and the sandbanks fringed with pines; +where the great owl-rays leap and flap, like giant bats, upon the tide. +But I wandered north and north, upon the treacherous warm gulf-stream, +till I met with the cold icebergs, afloat in the mid ocean. So I got +tangled among the icebergs, and chilled with their frozen breath. But +the water-babies helped me from among them, and set me free again. And +now I am mending every day; but I am very sick and sad; and perhaps I +shall never get home again to play with the owl-rays any more.” + +“Oh!” cried Tom. “And you have seen water-babies? Have you seen any +near here?” + +“Yes; they helped me again last night, or I should have been eaten by a +great black porpoise.” + +How vexatious! The water-babies close to him, and yet he could not find +one. + +And then he left the buoy, and used to go along the sands and round the +rocks, and come out in the night—like the forsaken Merman in Mr. Arnold’s +beautiful, beautiful poem, which you must learn by heart some day—and sit +upon a point of rock, among the shining sea-weeds, in the low October +tides, and cry and call for the water-babies; but he never heard a voice +call in return. And at last, with his fretting and crying, he grew quite +lean and thin. + +But one day among the rocks he found a playfellow. It was not a +water-baby, alas! but it was a lobster; and a very distinguished lobster +he was; for he had live barnacles on his claws, which is a great mark of +distinction in lobsterdom, and no more to be bought for money than a good +conscience or the Victoria Cross. + + [Picture: Tom and the lobster] + +Tom had never seen a lobster before; and he was mightily taken with this +one; for he thought him the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he had +ever seen; and there he was not far wrong; for all the ingenious men, and +all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men, in the world, with all +the old German bogy-painters into the bargain, could never invent, if all +their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious, and so ridiculous, +as a lobster. + +He had one claw knobbed and the other jagged; and Tom delighted in +watching him hold on to the seaweed with his knobbed claw, while he cut +up salads with his jagged one, and then put them into his mouth, after +smelling at them, like a monkey. And always the little barnacles threw +out their casting-nets and swept the water, and came in for their share +of whatever there was for dinner. + +But Tom was most astonished to see how he fired himself off—snap! like +the leap-frogs which you make out of a goose’s breast-bone. Certainly he +took the most wonderful shots, and backwards, too. For, if he wanted to +go into a narrow crack ten yards off, what do you think he did? If he +had gone in head foremost, of course he could not have turned round. So +he used to turn his tail to it, and lay his long horns, which carry his +sixth sense in their tips (and nobody knows what that sixth sense is), +straight down his back to guide him, and twist his eyes back till they +almost came out of their sockets, and then made ready, present, fire, +snap!—and away he went, pop into the hole; and peeped out and twiddled +his whiskers, as much as to say, “You couldn’t do that.” + +Tom asked him about water-babies. “Yes,” he said. He had seen them +often. But he did not think much of them. They were meddlesome little +creatures, that went about helping fish and shells which got into +scrapes. Well, for his part, he should be ashamed to be helped by little +soft creatures that had not even a shell on their backs. He had lived +quite long enough in the world to take care of himself. + +He was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, and not very civil to Tom; +and you will hear how he had to alter his mind before he was done, as +conceited people generally have. But he was so funny, and Tom so lonely, +that he could not quarrel with him; and they used to sit in holes in the +rocks, and chat for hours. + +And about this time there happened to Tom a very strange and important +adventure—so important, indeed, that he was very near never finding the +water-babies at all; and I am sure you would have been sorry for that. + +I hope that you have not forgotten the little white lady all this while. +At least, here she comes, looking like a clean white good little darling, +as she always was, and always will be. For it befell in the pleasant +short December days, when the wind always blows from the south-west, till +Old Father Christmas comes and spreads the great white table-cloth, ready +for little boys and girls to give the birds their Christmas dinner of +crumbs—it befell (to go on) in the pleasant December days, that Sir John +was so busy hunting that nobody at home could get a word out of him. +Four days a week he hunted, and very good sport he had; and the other two +he went to the bench and the board of guardians, and very good justice he +did; and, when he got home in time, he dined at five; for he hated this +absurd new fashion of dining at eight in the hunting season, which forces +a man to make interest with the footman for cold beef and beer as soon as +he comes in, and so spoil his appetite, and then sleep in an arm-chair in +his bedroom, all stiff and tired, for two or three hours before he can +get his dinner like a gentleman. And do you be like Sir John, my dear +little man, when you are your own master; and, if you want either to read +hard or ride hard, stick to the good old Cambridge hours of breakfast at +eight and dinner at five; by which you may get two days’ work out of one. +But, of course, if you find a fox at three in the afternoon and run him +till dark, and leave off twenty miles from home, why you must wait for +your dinner till you can get it, as better men than you have done. Only +see that, if you go hungry, your horse does not; but give him his warm +gruel and beer, and take him gently home, remembering that good horses +don’t grow on the hedge like blackberries. + +It befell (to go on a second time) that Sir John, hunting all day, and +dining at five, fell asleep every evening, and snored so terribly that +all the windows in Harthover shook, and the soot fell down the chimneys. +Whereon My Lady, being no more able to get conversation out of him than a +song out of a dead nightingale, determined to go off and leave him, and +the doctor, and Captain Swinger the agent, to snore in concert every +evening to their hearts’ content. So she started for the seaside with +all the children, in order to put herself and them into condition by mild +applications of iodine. She might as well have stayed at home and used +Parry’s liquid horse-blister, for there was plenty of it in the stables; +and then she would have saved her money, and saved the chance, also, of +making all the children ill instead of well (as hundreds are made), by +taking them to some nasty smelling undrained lodging, and then wondering +how they caught scarlatina and diphtheria: but people won’t be wise +enough to understand that till they are dead of bad smells, and then it +will be too late; besides you see, Sir John did certainly snore very +loud. + + [Picture: Sir John with horse and groom] + +But where she went to nobody must know, for fear young ladies should +begin to fancy that there are water-babies there! and so hunt and howk +after them (besides raising the price of lodgings), and keep them in +aquariums, as the ladies at Pompeii (as you may see by the paintings) +used to keep Cupids in cages. But nobody ever heard that they starved +the Cupids, or let them die of dirt and neglect, as English young ladies +do by the poor sea-beasts. So nobody must know where My Lady went. +Letting water-babies die is as bad as taking singing birds’ eggs; for, +though there are thousands, ay, millions, of both of them in the world, +yet there is not one too many. + +Now it befell that, on the very shore, and over the very rocks, where Tom +was sitting with his friend the lobster, there walked one day the little +white lady, Ellie herself, and with her a very wise man indeed—Professor +Ptthmllnsprts. + +His mother was a Dutchwoman, and therefore he was born at Curaçao (of +course you have learnt your geography, and therefore know why); and his +father a Pole, and therefore he was brought up at Petropaulowski (of +course you have learnt your modern politics, and therefore know why): but +for all that he was as thorough an Englishman as ever coveted his +neighbour’s goods. And his name, as I said, was Professor Ptthmllnsprts, +which is a very ancient and noble Polish name. + +He was, as I said, a very great naturalist, and chief professor of +_Necrobioneopalæonthydrochthonanthropopithekology_ in the new university +which the king of the Cannibal Islands had founded; and, being a member +of the Acclimatisation Society, he had come here to collect all the nasty +things which he could find on the coast of England, and turn them loose +round the Cannibal Islands, because they had not nasty things enough +there to eat what they left. + +[Picture: The Professor] + +But he was a very worthy kind good-natured little old gentleman; and very +fond of children (for he was not the least a cannibal himself); and very +good to all the world as long as it was good to him. Only one fault he +had, which cock-robins have likewise, as you may see if you look out of +the nursery window—that, when any one else found a curious worm, he would +hop round them, and peck them, and set up his tail, and bristle up his +feathers, just as a cock-robin would; and declare that he found the worm +first; and that it was his worm; and, if not, that then it was not a worm +at all. + +He had met Sir John at Scarborough, or Fleetwood, or somewhere or other +(if you don’t care where, nobody else does), and had made acquaintance +with him, and become very fond of his children. Now, Sir John knew +nothing about sea-cockyolybirds, and cared less, provided the fishmonger +sent him good fish for dinner; and My Lady knew as little: but she +thought it proper that the children should know something. For in the +stupid old times, you must understand, children were taught to know one +thing, and to know it well; but in these enlightened new times they are +taught to know a little about everything, and to know it all ill; which +is a great deal pleasanter and easier, and therefore quite right. + +So Ellie and he were walking on the rocks, and he was showing her about +one in ten thousand of all the beautiful and curious things which are to +be seen there. But little Ellie was not satisfied with them at all. She +liked much better to play with live children, or even with dolls, which +she could pretend were alive; and at last she said honestly, “I don’t +care about all these things, because they can’t play with me, or talk to +me. If there were little children now in the water, as there used to be, +and I could see them, I should like that.” + + [Picture: Ellie] + +“Children in the water, you strange little duck?” said the professor. + +“Yes,” said Ellie. “I know there used to be children in the water, and +mermaids too, and mermen. I saw them all in a picture at home, of a +beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies flying +round her, and one sitting in her lap; and the mermaids swimming and +playing, and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells; and it is called ‘The +Triumph of Galatea;’ and there is a burning mountain in the picture +behind. It hangs on the great staircase, and I have looked at it ever +since I was a baby, and dreamt about it a hundred times; and it is so +beautiful, that it must be true.” + +But the professor had not the least notion of allowing that things were +true, merely because people thought them beautiful. For at that rate, he +said, the Baltas would be quite right in thinking it a fine thing to eat +their grandpapas, because they thought it an ugly thing to put them +underground. The professor, indeed, went further, and held that no man +was forced to believe anything to be true, but what he could see, hear, +taste, or handle. + +He held very strange theories about a good many things. He had even got +up once at the British Association, and declared that apes had +hippopotamus majors in their brains just as men have. Which was a +shocking thing to say; for, if it were so, what would become of the +faith, hope, and charity of immortal millions? You may think that there +are other more important differences between you and an ape, such as +being able to speak, and make machines, and know right from wrong, and +say your prayers, and other little matters of that kind; but that is a +child’s fancy, my dear. Nothing is to be depended on but the great +hippopotamus test. If you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, you +are no ape, though you had four hands, no feet, and were more apish than +the apes of all aperies. But if a hippopotamus major is ever discovered +in one single ape’s brain, nothing will save your +great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- +greater-greatest-grandmother from having been an ape too. No, my dear +little man; always remember that the one true, certain, final, and +all-important difference between you and an ape is, that you have a +hippopotamus major in your brain, and it has none; and that, therefore, +to discover one in its brain will be a very wrong and dangerous thing, at +which every one will be very much shocked, as we may suppose they were at +the professor.—Though really, after all, it don’t much matter; because—as +Lord Dundreary and others would put it—nobody but men have hippopotamuses +in their brains; so, if a hippopotamus was discovered in an ape’s brain, +why it would not be one, you know, but something else. + +But the professor had gone, I am sorry to say, even further than that; +for he had read at the British Association at Melbourne, Australia, in +the year 1999, a paper which assured every one who found himself the +better or wiser for the news, that there were not, never had been, and +could not be, any rational or half-rational beings except men, anywhere, +anywhen, or anyhow; that _nymphs_, _satyrs_, _fauns_, _inui_, _dwarfs_, +_trolls_, _elves_, _gnomes_, _fairies_, _brownies_, _nixes_, _wills_, +_kobolds_, _leprechaunes_, _cluricaunes_, _banshees_, +_will-o’-the-wisps_, _follets_, _lutins_, _magots_, _goblins_, _afrits_, +_marids_, _jinns_, _ghouls_, _peris_, _deevs_, _angels_, _archangels_, +_imps_, _bogies_, or worse, were nothing at all, and pure bosh and wind. +And he had to get up very early in the morning to prove that, and to eat +his breakfast overnight; but he did it, at least to his own satisfaction. +Whereon a certain great divine, and a very clever divine was he, called +him a regular Sadducee; and probably he was quite right. Whereon the +professor, in return, called him a regular Pharisee; and probably he was +quite right too. But they did not quarrel in the least; for, when men +are men of the world, hard words run off them like water off a duck’s +back. So the professor and the divine met at dinner that evening, and +sat together on the sofa afterwards for an hour, and talked over the +state of female labour on the antarctic continent (for nobody talks shop +after his claret), and each vowed that the other was the best company he +ever met in his life. What an advantage it is to be men of the world! + +From all which you may guess that the professor was not the least of +little Ellie’s opinion. So he gave her a succinct compendium of his +famous paper at the British Association, in a form suited for the +youthful mind. But, as we have gone over his arguments against +water-babies once already, which is once too often, we will not repeat +them here. + +Now little Ellie was, I suppose, a stupid little girl; for, instead of +being convinced by Professor Ptthmllnsprts’ arguments, she only asked the +same question over again. + +“But why are there not water-babies?” + +I trust and hope that it was because the professor trod at that moment on +the edge of a very sharp mussel, and hurt one of his corns sadly, that he +answered quite sharply, forgetting that he was a scientific man, and +therefore ought to have known that he couldn’t know; and that he was a +logician, and therefore ought to have known that he could not prove a +universal negative—I say, I trust and hope it was because the mussel hurt +his corn, that the professor answered quite sharply: + +“Because there ain’t.” + +Which was not even good English, my dear little boy; for, as you must +know from Aunt Agitate’s Arguments, the professor ought to have said, if +he was so angry as to say anything of the kind—Because there are not: or +are none: or are none of them; or (if he had been reading Aunt Agitate +too) because they do not exist. + +And he groped with his net under the weeds so violently, that, as it +befell, he caught poor little Tom. + +He felt the net very heavy; and lifted it out quickly, with Tom all +entangled in the meshes. + +“Dear me!” he cried. “What a large pink Holothurian; with hands, too! +It must be connected with Synapta.” + +And he took him out. + +“It has actually eyes!” he cried. “Why, it must be a Cephalopod! This +is most extraordinary!” + +“No, I ain’t!” cried Tom, as loud as he could; for he did not like to be +called bad names. + +“It is a water-baby!” cried Ellie; and of course it was. + +“Water-fiddlesticks, my dear!” said the professor; and he turned away +sharply. + +There was no denying it. It was a water-baby: and he had said a moment +ago that there were none. What was he to do? + +He would have liked, of course, to have taken Tom home in a bucket. He +would not have put him in spirits. Of course not. He would have kept +him alive, and petted him (for he was a very kind old gentleman), and +written a book about him, and given him two long names, of which the +first would have said a little about Tom, and the second all about +himself; for of course he would have called him Hydrotecnon +Ptthmllnsprtsianum, or some other long name like that; for they are +forced to call everything by long names now, because they have used up +all the short ones, ever since they took to making nine species out of +one. But—what would all the learned men say to him after his speech at +the British Association? And what would Ellie say, after what he had +just told her? + +There was a wise old heathen once, who said, “Maxima debetur pueris +reverentia”—The greatest reverence is due to children; that is, that +grown people should never say or do anything wrong before children, lest +they should set them a bad example.—Cousin Cramchild says it means, “The +greatest respectfulness is expected from little boys.” But he was raised +in a country where little boys are not expected to be respectful, because +all of them are as good as the President:—Well, every one knows his own +concerns best; so perhaps they are. But poor Cousin Cramchild, to do him +justice, not being of that opinion, and having a moral mission, and being +no scholar to speak of, and hard up for an authority—why, it was a very +great temptation for him. But some people, and I am afraid the professor +was one of them, interpret that in a more strange, curious, one-sided, +left-handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-before fashion than even +Cousin Cramchild; for they make it mean, that you must show your respect +for children, by never confessing yourself in the wrong to them, even if +you know that you are so, lest they should lose confidence in their +elders. + +Now, if the professor had said to Ellie, “Yes, my darling, it is a +water-baby, and a very wonderful thing it is; and it shows how little I +know of the wonders of nature, in spite of forty years’ honest labour. I +was just telling you that there could be no such creatures; and, behold! +here is one come to confound my conceit and show me that Nature can do, +and has done, beyond all that man’s poor fancy can imagine. So, let us +thank the Maker, and Inspirer, and Lord of Nature for all His wonderful +and glorious works, and try and find out something about this one;”—I +think that, if the professor had said that, little Ellie would have +believed him more firmly, and respected him more deeply, and loved him +better, than ever she had done before. But he was of a different +opinion. He hesitated a moment. He longed to keep Tom, and yet he half +wished he never had caught him; and at last he quite longed to get rid of +him. So he turned away and poked Tom with his finger, for want of +anything better to do; and said carelessly, “My dear little maid, you +must have dreamt of water-babies last night, your head is so full of +them.” + +Now Tom had been in the most horrible and unspeakable fright all the +while; and had kept as quiet as he could, though he was called a +Holothurian and a Cephalopod; for it was fixed in his little head that if +a man with clothes on caught him, he might put clothes on him too, and +make a dirty black chimney-sweep of him again. But, when the professor +poked him, it was more than he could bear; and, between fright and rage, +he turned to bay as valiantly as a mouse in a corner, and bit the +professor’s finger till it bled. + +“Oh! ah! yah!” cried he; and glad of an excuse to be rid of Tom, dropped +him on to the seaweed, and thence he dived into the water and was gone in +a moment. + +“But it was a water-baby, and I heard it speak!” cried Ellie. “Ah, it is +gone!” And she jumped down off the rock, to try and catch Tom before he +slipped into the sea. + + [Picture: Ellie, the professor and Tom] + +Too late! and what was worse, as she sprang down, she slipped, and fell +some six feet, with her head on a sharp rock, and lay quite still. + +The professor picked her up, and tried to waken her, and called to her, +and cried over her, for he loved her very much: but she would not waken +at all. So he took her up in his arms and carried her to her governess, +and they all went home; and little Ellie was put to bed, and lay there +quite still; only now and then she woke up and called out about the +water-baby: but no one knew what she meant, and the professor did not +tell, for he was ashamed to tell. + +And, after a week, one moonlight night, the fairies came flying in at the +window and brought her such a pretty pair of wings that she could not +help putting them on; and she flew with them out of the window, and over +the land, and over the sea, and up through the clouds, and nobody heard +or saw anything of her for a very long while. + +And this is why they say that no one has ever yet seen a water-baby. For +my part, I believe that the naturalists get dozens of them when they are +out dredging; but they say nothing about them, and throw them overboard +again, for fear of spoiling their theories. But, you see the professor +was found out, as every one is in due time. A very terrible old fairy +found the professor out; she felt his bumps, and cast his nativity, and +took the lunars of him carefully inside and out; and so she knew what he +would do as well as if she had seen it in a print book, as they say in +the dear old west country; and he did it; and so he was found out +beforehand, as everybody always is; and the old fairy will find out the +naturalists some day, and put them in the _Times_, and then on whose side +will the laugh be? + +So the old fairy took him in hand very severely there and then. But she +says she is always most severe with the best people, because there is +most chance of curing them, and therefore they are the patients who pay +her best; for she has to work on the same salary as the Emperor of +China’s physicians (it is a pity that all do not), no cure, no pay. + +So she took the poor professor in hand: and because he was not content +with things as they are, she filled his head with things as they are not, +to try if he would like them better; and because he did not choose to +believe in a water-baby when he saw it, she made him believe in worse +things than water-babies—in _unicorns_, _fire-drakes_, _manticoras_, +_basilisks_, _amphisbænas_, _griffins_, _phoenixes_, _rocs_, _orcs_, +_dog-headed men_, _three-headed dogs_, _three-bodied geryons_, and other +pleasant creatures, which folks think never existed yet, and which folks +hope never will exist, though they know nothing about the matter, and +never will; and these creatures so upset, terrified, flustered, +aggravated, confused, astounded, horrified, and totally flabbergasted the +poor professor that the doctors said that he was out of his wits for +three months; and perhaps they were right, as they are now and then. + +So all the doctors in the county were called in to make a report on his +case; and of course every one of them flatly contradicted the other: else +what use is there in being men of science? But at last the majority +agreed on a report in the true medical language, one half bad Latin, the +other half worse Greek, and the rest what might have been English, if +they had only learnt to write it. And this is the beginning thereof— + + “_The subanhypaposupernal anastomoses of peritomic diacellurite in + the encephalo digital region of the distinguished individual of whose + symptomatic phœnomena we had the melancholy honour_ (_subsequently to + a preliminary diagnostic inspection_) _of making an inspectorial + diagnosis_, _presenting the interexclusively quadrilateral and + antinomian diathesis known as Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles_, _we + proceeded_”— + +But what they proceeded to do My Lady never knew; for she was so +frightened at the long words that she ran for her life, and locked +herself into her bedroom, for fear of being squashed by the words and +strangled by the sentence. A boa constrictor, she said, was bad company +enough: but what was a boa constrictor made of paving stones? + +“It was quite shocking! What can they think is the matter with him?” +said she to the old nurse. + +“That his wit’s just addled; may be wi’ unbelief and heathenry,” quoth +she. + +“Then why can’t they say so?” + +And the heaven, and the sea, and the rocks, and the vales re-echoed—“Why +indeed?” But the doctors never heard them. + +So she made Sir John write to the _Times_ to command the Chancellor of +the Exchequer for the time being to put a tax on long words;— + +A light tax on words over three syllables, which are necessary evils, +like rats: but, like them, must be kept down judiciously. + +A heavy tax on words over four syllables, as _heterodoxy_, _spontaneity_, +_spiritualism_, _spuriosity_, _etc._ + +And on words over five syllables (of which I hope no one will wish to see +any examples), a totally prohibitory tax. + +And a similar prohibitory tax on words derived from three or more +languages at once; words derived from two languages having become so +common that there was no more hope of rooting out them than of rooting +out peth-winds. + +The Chancellor of the Exchequer, being a scholar and a man of sense, +jumped at the notion; for he saw in it the one and only plan for +abolishing Schedule D: but when he brought in his bill, most of the Irish +members, and (I am sorry to say) some of the Scotch likewise, opposed it +most strongly, on the ground that in a free country no man was bound +either to understand himself or to let others understand him. So the +bill fell through on the first reading; and the Chancellor, being a +philosopher, comforted himself with the thought that it was not the first +time that a woman had hit off a grand idea and the men turned up their +stupid noses thereat. + +Now the doctors had it all their own way; and to work they went in +earnest, and they gave the poor professor divers and sundry medicines, as +prescribed by the ancients and moderns, from Hippocrates to +Feuchtersleben, as below, viz.— + +1. _Hellebore_, _to wit_— + + _Hellebore of Æta_. + + _Hellebore of Galatia_. + + _Hellebore of Sicily_. + + _And all other Hellebores_, _after the method of the Helleborising + Helleborists of the Helleboric era_. _But that would not do_. + _Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles would not stir an inch out of his + encephalo digital region_. + +2. _Trying to find out what was the matter with him_, _after the method +of Hippocrates_, + + _Aretæus_, + + _Celsus_, + + _Coelius Aurelianus_, + + _And Galen_. + +But they found that a great deal too much trouble, as most people have +since; and so had recourse to— + +3. _Borage_. + + _Cauteries_. + +Boring a hole in his head to let out fumes, which (says Gordonius) “will, +without doubt, do much good.” But it didn’t. + + _Bezoar stone_. + + _Diamargaritum_. + + _A ram’s brain boiled in spice_. + + _Oil of wormwood_. + + _Water of Nile_. + + _Capers_. + + _Good wine_ (_but there was none to be got_). + + _The water of a smith’s forge_. + + _Ambergris_. + + _Mandrake pillows_. + + _Dormouse fat_. + + _Hares’ ears_. + + _Starvation_. + + _Camphor_. + + _Salts and senna_. + + _Musk_. + + _Opium_. + + _Strait-waistcoats_. + + _Bullyings_. + + _Bumpings_. + + _Bleedings_. + + _Bucketings with cold water_. + + _Knockings down_. + + _Kneeling on his chest till they broke it in_, _etc. etc._; _after the + mediæval or monkish method_: _but that would not do_. + _Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles stuck there still_. + +Then— + +4. _Coaxing_. + + _Kissing_. + + _Champagne and turtle_. + + _Red herrings and soda water_. + + _Good advice_. + + _Gardening_. + + _Croquet_. + + _Musical soirées_. + + _Aunt Salty_. + + _Mild tobacco_. + + _The Saturday Review_. + + _A carriage with outriders_, _etc. etc._ + +After the modern method. But that would not do. + +And if he had but been a convict lunatic, and had shot at the Queen, +killed all his creditors to avoid paying them, or indulged in any other +little amiable eccentricity of that kind, they would have given him in +addition— + +The healthiest situation in England, on Easthampstead Plain. + +Free run of Windsor Forest. + +The _Times_ every morning. + +A double-barrelled gun and pointers, and leave to shoot three Wellington +College boys a week (not more) in case black game was scarce. + +But as he was neither mad enough nor bad enough to be allowed such +luxuries, they grew desperate, and fell into bad ways, viz.— + +5. _Suffumigations of sulphur_. + + _Herrwiggius his_ “_Incomparable drink for madmen_:” + +Only they could not find out what it was. + + _Suffumigation of the liver of the fish_ * * * + +Only they had forgotten its name, so Dr. Gray could not well procure them +a specimen. + + _Metallic tractors_. + + _Holloway’s Ointment_. + + _Electro-biology_. + + _Valentine Greatrakes his Stroking Cure_. + + _Spirit-rapping_. + + _Holloway’s Pills_. + + _Table-turning_. + + _Morison’s Pills_. + + _Homœopathy_. + + _Parr’s Life Pills_. + + _Mesmerism_. + + _Pure Bosh_. + + _Exorcisms_, _for which the read Maleus Maleficarum_, _Nideri + Formicarium_, _Delrio_, _Wierus_, _etc._ + +But could not get one that mentioned water-babies. + + _Hydropathy_. + + _Madame Rachel’s Elixir of Youth_. + + _The Poughkeepsie Seer his Prophecies_. + + _The distilled liquor of addle eggs_. + + _Pyropathy_. + +As successfully employed by the old inquisitors to cure the malady of +thought, and now by the Persian Mollahs to cure that of rheumatism. + + _Geopathy_, _or burying him_. + + _Atmopathy_, _or steaming him_. + + _Sympathy_, _after the method of Basil Valentine his Triumph of + Antimony_, _and Kenelm Digby his Weapon-salve_, _which some call a hair + of the dog that bit him_. + + _Hermopathy_, _or pouring mercury down his throat to move the animal + spirits_. + + _Meteoropathy_, _or going up to the moon to look for his lost wits_, + _as Ruggiero did for Orlando Furioso’s_: _only_, _having no + hippogriff_, _they were forced to use a balloon_; _and_, _falling into + the North Sea_, _were picked up by a Yarmouth herring-boat_, _and came + home much the wiser_, _and all over scales_. + + _Antipathy_, _or using him like_ “_a man and a brother_.” + + _Apathy_, _or doing nothing at all_. + + _With all other ipathies and opathies which Noodle has invented_, _and + Foodle tried_, _since black-fellows chipped flints at Abbéville_—_which + is a considerable time ago_, _to judge by the Great Exhibition_. + +But nothing would do; for he screamed and cried all day for a water-baby, +to come and drive away the monsters; and of course they did not try to +find one, because they did not believe in them, and were thinking of +nothing but Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles; having, as usual, set the +cart before the horse, and taken the effect for the cause. + +So they were forced at last to let the poor professor ease his mind by +writing a great book, exactly contrary to all his old opinions; in which +he proved that the moon was made of green cheese, and that all the mites +in it (which you may see sometimes quite plain through a telescope, if +you will only keep the lens dirty enough, as Mr. Weekes kept his voltaic +battery) are nothing in the world but little babies, who are hatching and +swarming up there in millions, ready to come down into this world +whenever children want a new little brother or sister. + +Which must be a mistake, for this one reason: that, there being no +atmosphere round the moon (though some one or other says there is, at +least on the other side, and that he has been round at the back of it to +see, and found that the moon was just the shape of a Bath bun, and so wet +that the man in the moon went about on Midsummer-day in Macintoshes and +Cording’s boots, spearing eels and sneezing); that, therefore, I say, +there being no atmosphere, there can be no evaporation; and therefore the +dew-point can never fall below 71.5° below zero of Fahrenheit: and, +therefore, it cannot be cold enough there about four o’clock in the +morning to condense the babies’ mesenteric apophthegms into their left +ventricles; and, therefore, they can never catch the hooping-cough; and +if they do not have hooping-cough, they cannot be babies at all; and, +therefore, there are no babies in the moon.—Q.E.D. + + [Picture: Man in rain] + +Which may seem a roundabout reason; and so, perhaps, it is: but you will +have heard worse ones in your time, and from better men than you are. + +But one thing is certain; that, when the good old doctor got his book +written, he felt considerably relieved from Bumpsterhausen’s blue +follicles, and a few things infinitely worse; to wit, from pride and +vain-glory, and from blindness and hardness of heart; which are the true +causes of Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles, and of a good many other ugly +things besides. Whereon the foul flood-water in his brains ran down, and +cleared to a fine coffee colour, such as fish like to rise in, till very +fine clean fresh-run fish did begin to rise in his brains; and he caught +two or three of them (which is exceedingly fine sport, for brain rivers), +and anatomised them carefully, and never mentioned what he found out from +them, except to little children; and became ever after a sadder and a +wiser man; which is a very good thing to become, my dear little boy, even +though one has to pay a heavy price for the blessing. + + [Picture: Bat with man’s face] + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + “Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear + The Godhead’s most benignant grace; + Nor know we anything so fair + As is the smile upon thy face: + Flowers laugh before thee on their beds + And fragrance in thy footing treads; + Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; + And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.” + + WORDSWORTH, _Ode to Duty_. + +[Picture: Dog and cat] BUT what became of little Tom? + +He slipped away off the rocks into the water, as I said before. But he +could not help thinking of little Ellie. He did not remember who she +was; but he knew that she was a little girl, though she was a hundred +times as big as he. That is not surprising: size has nothing to do with +kindred. A tiny weed may be first cousin to a great tree; and a little +dog like Vick knows that Lioness is a dog too, though she is twenty times +larger than herself. So Tom knew that Ellie was a little girl, and +thought about her all that day, and longed to have had her to play with; +but he had very soon to think of something else. And here is the account +of what happened to him, as it was published next morning, in the +Water-proof Gazette, on the finest watered paper, for the use of the +great fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, who reads the news very carefully +every morning, and especially the police cases, as you will hear very +soon. + +He was going along the rocks in three-fathom water, watching the pollock +catch prawns, and the wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and +all, when he saw a round cage of green withes; and inside it, looking +very much ashamed of himself, sat his friend the lobster, twiddling his +horns, instead of thumbs. + + [Picture: Tom, the lobster and otter] + +“What, have you been naughty, and have they put you in the lock-up?” +asked Tom. + +The lobster felt a little indignant at such a notion, but he was too much +depressed in spirits to argue; so he only said, “I can’t get out.” + +“Why did you get in?” + +“After that nasty piece of dead fish.” He had thought it looked and +smelt very nice when he was outside, and so it did, for a lobster: but +now he turned round and abused it because he was angry with himself. + +“Where did you get in?” + +“Through that round hole at the top.” + +“Then why don’t you get out through it?” + +“Because I can’t:” and the lobster twiddled his horns more fiercely than +ever, but he was forced to confess. + +“I have jumped upwards, downwards, backwards, and sideways, at least four +thousand times; and I can’t get out: I always get up underneath there, +and can’t find the hole.” + +Tom looked at the trap, and having more wit than the lobster, he saw +plainly enough what was the matter; as you may if you will look at a +lobster-pot. + +“Stop a bit,” said Tom. “Turn your tail up to me, and I’ll pull you +through hindforemost, and then you won’t stick in the spikes.” + +But the lobster was so stupid and clumsy that he couldn’t hit the hole. +Like a great many fox-hunters, he was very sharp as long as he was in his +own country; but as soon as they get out of it they lose their heads; and +so the lobster, so to speak, lost his tail. + +Tom reached and clawed down the hole after him, till he caught hold of +him; and then, as was to be expected, the clumsy lobster pulled him in +head foremost. + +“Hullo! here is a pretty business,” said Tom. “Now take your great +claws, and break the points off those spikes, and then we shall both get +out easily.” + +“Dear me, I never thought of that,” said the lobster; “and after all the +experience of life that I have had!” + +You see, experience is of very little good unless a man, or a lobster, +has wit enough to make use of it. For a good many people, like old +Polonius, have seen all the world, and yet remain little better than +children after all. + +But they had not got half the spikes away when they saw a great dark +cloud over them: and lo, and behold, it was the otter. + +How she did grin and grin when she saw Tom. “Yar!” said she, “you little +meddlesome wretch, I have you now! I will serve you out for telling the +salmon where I was!” And she crawled all over the pot to get in. + +Tom was horribly frightened, and still more frightened when she found the +hole in the top, and squeezed herself right down through it, all eyes and +teeth. But no sooner was her head inside than valiant Mr. Lobster caught +her by the nose and held on. + +And there they were all three in the pot, rolling over and over, and very +tight packing it was. And the lobster tore at the otter, and the otter +tore at the lobster, and both squeezed and thumped poor Tom till he had +no breath left in his body; and I don’t know what would have happened to +him if he had not at last got on the otter’s back, and safe out of the +hole. + +He was right glad when he got out: but he would not desert his friend who +had saved him; and the first time he saw his tail uppermost he caught +hold of it, and pulled with all his might. + +But the lobster would not let go. + +“Come along,” said Tom; “don’t you see she is dead?” And so she was, +quite drowned and dead. + +And that was the end of the wicked otter. + +But the lobster would not let go. + +“Come along, you stupid old stick-in-the-mud,” cried Tom, “or the +fisherman will catch you!” And that was true, for Tom felt some one +above beginning to haul up the pot. + + [Picture: Tom and the lobster] + +But the lobster would not let go. Tom saw the fisherman haul him up to +the boat-side, and thought it was all up with him. But when Mr. Lobster +saw the fisherman, he gave such a furious and tremendous snap, that he +snapped out of his hand, and out of the pot, and safe into the sea. But +he left his knobbed claw behind him; for it never came into his stupid +head to let go after all, so he just shook his claw off as the easier +method. It was something of a bull, that; but you must know the lobster +was an Irish lobster, and was hatched off Island Magee at the mouth of +Belfast Lough. + +Tom asked the lobster why he never thought of letting go. He said very +determinedly that it was a point of honour among lobsters. And so it is, +as the Mayor of Plymouth found out once to his cost—eight or nine hundred +years ago, of course; for if it had happened lately it would be personal +to mention it. + +For one day he was so tired with sitting on a hard chair, in a grand +furred gown, with a gold chain round his neck, hearing one policeman +after another come in and sing, “What shall we do with the drunken +sailor, so early in the morning?” and answering them each exactly alike: + +“Put him in the round house till he gets sober, so early in the morning”— + +That, when it was over, he jumped up, and played leap-frog with the +town-clerk till he burst his buttons, and then had his luncheon, and +burst some more buttons, and then said: “It is a low spring-tide; I shall +go out this afternoon and cut my capers.” + +Now he did not mean to cut such capers as you eat with boiled mutton. It +was the commandant of artillery at Valetta who used to amuse himself with +cutting them, and who stuck upon one of the bastions a notice, “No one +allowed to cut capers here but me,” which greatly edified the midshipmen +in port, and the Maltese on the Nix Mangiare stairs. But all that the +mayor meant was that he would go and have an afternoon’s fun, like any +schoolboy, and catch lobsters with an iron hook. + +So to the Mewstone he went, and for lobsters he looked. And when he came +to a certain crack in the rocks he was so excited that, instead of +putting in his hook, he put in his hand; and Mr. Lobster was at home, and +caught him by the finger, and held on. + +“Yah!” said the mayor, and pulled as hard as he dared: but the more he +pulled, the more the lobster pinched, till he was forced to be quiet. + +Then he tried to get his hook in with his other hand; but the hole was +too narrow. + +Then he pulled again; but he could not stand the pain. + +Then he shouted and bawled for help: but there was no one nearer him than +the men-of-war inside the breakwater. + +Then he began to turn a little pale; for the tide flowed, and still the +lobster held on. + +Then he turned quite white; for the tide was up to his knees, and still +the lobster held on. + +Then he thought of cutting off his finger; but he wanted two things to do +it with—courage and a knife; and he had got neither. + +Then he turned quite yellow; for the tide was up to his waist, and still +the lobster held on. + +Then he thought over all the naughty things he ever had done; all the +sand which he had put in the sugar, and the sloe-leaves in the tea, and +the water in the treacle, and the salt in the tobacco (because his +brother was a brewer, and a man must help his own kin). + +Then he turned quite blue; for the tide was up to his breast, and still +the lobster held on. + +Then, I have no doubt, he repented fully of all the said naughty things +which he had done, and promised to mend his life, as too many do when +they think they have no life left to mend. Whereby, as they fancy, they +make a very cheap bargain. But the old fairy with the birch rod soon +undeceives them. + +And then he grew all colours at once, and turned up his eyes like a duck +in thunder; for the water was up to his chin, and still the lobster held +on. + +And then came a man-of-war’s boat round the Mewstone, and saw his head +sticking up out of the water. One said it was a keg of brandy, and +another that it was a cocoa-nut, and another that it was a buoy loose, +and another that it was a black diver, and wanted to fire at it, which +would not have been pleasant for the mayor: but just then such a yell +came out of a great hole in the middle of it that the midshipman in +charge guessed what it was, and bade pull up to it as fast as they could. +So somehow or other the Jack-tars got the lobster out, and set the mayor +free, and put him ashore at the Barbican. He never went lobster-catching +again; and we will hope he put no more salt in the tobacco, not even to +sell his brother’s beer. + +[Picture: The Mayor of Plymouth] And that is the story of the Mayor of +Plymouth, which has two advantages—first, that of being quite true; and +second, that of having (as folks say all good stories ought to have) no +moral whatsoever: no more, indeed, has any part of this book, because it +is a fairy tale, you know. + +And now happened to Tom a most wonderful thing; for he had not left the +lobster five minutes before he came upon a water-baby. + +A real live water-baby, sitting on the white sand, very busy about a +little point of rock. And when it saw Tom it looked up for a moment, and +then cried, “Why, you are not one of us. You are a new baby! Oh, how +delightful!” + +And it ran to Tom, and Tom ran to it, and they hugged and kissed each +other for ever so long, they did not know why. But they did not want any +introductions there under the water. + +At last Tom said, “Oh, where have you been all this while? I have been +looking for you so long, and I have been so lonely.” + +“We have been here for days and days. There are hundreds of us about the +rocks. How was it you did not see us, or hear us when we sing and romp +every evening before we go home?” + +Tom looked at the baby again, and then he said: + +“Well, this is wonderful! I have seen things just like you again and +again, but I thought you were shells, or sea-creatures. I never took you +for water-babies like myself.” + +Now, was not that very odd? So odd, indeed, that you will, no doubt, +want to know how it happened, and why Tom could never find a water-baby +till after he had got the lobster out of the pot. And, if you will read +this story nine times over, and then think for yourself, you will find +out why. It is not good for little boys to be told everything, and never +to be forced to use their own wits. They would learn, then, no more than +they do at Dr. Dulcimer’s famous suburban establishment for the idler +members of the youthful aristocracy, where the masters learn the lessons +and the boys hear them—which saves a great deal of trouble—for the time +being. + +“Now,” said the baby, “come and help me, or I shall not have finished +before my brothers and sisters come, and it is time to go home.” + +“What shall I help you at?” + +“At this poor dear little rock; a great clumsy boulder came rolling by in +the last storm, and knocked all its head off, and rubbed off all its +flowers. And now I must plant it again with seaweeds, and coralline, and +anemones, and I will make it the prettiest little rock-garden on all the +shore.” + +So they worked away at the rock, and planted it, and smoothed the sand +down round, it, and capital fun they had till the tide began to turn. +And then Tom heard all the other babies coming, laughing and singing and +shouting and romping; and the noise they made was just like the noise of +the ripple. So he knew that he had been hearing and seeing the +water-babies all along; only he did not know them, because his eyes and +ears were not opened. + +And in they came, dozens and dozens of them, some bigger than Tom and +some smaller, all in the neatest little white bathing dresses; and when +they found that he was a new baby, they hugged him and kissed him, and +then put him in the middle and danced round him on the sand, and there +was no one ever so happy as poor little Tom. + +“Now then,” they cried all at once, “we must come away home, we must come +away home, or the tide will leave us dry. We have mended all the broken +sea-weed, and put all the rock-pools in order, and planted all the shells +again in the sand, and nobody will see where the ugly storm swept in last +week.” + +And this is the reason why the rock-pools are always so neat and clean; +because the water-babies come inshore after every storm to sweep them +out, and comb them down, and put them all to rights again. + +Only where men are wasteful and dirty, and let sewers run into the sea +instead of putting the stuff upon the fields like thrifty reasonable +souls; or throw herrings’ heads and dead dog-fish, or any other refuse, +into the water; or in any way make a mess upon the clean shore—there the +water-babies will not come, sometimes not for hundreds of years (for they +cannot abide anything smelly or foul), but leave the sea-anemones and the +crabs to clear away everything, till the good tidy sea has covered up all +the dirt in soft mud and clean sand, where the water-babies can plant +live cockles and whelks and razor-shells and sea-cucumbers and +golden-combs, and make a pretty live garden again, after man’s dirt is +cleared away. And that, I suppose, is the reason why there are no +water-babies at any watering-place which I have ever seen. + +And where is the home of the water-babies? In St. Brandan’s fairy isle. + +Did you never hear of the blessed St. Brandan, how he preached to the +wild Irish on the wild, wild Kerry coast, he and five other hermits, till +they were weary and longed to rest? For the wild Irish would not listen +to them, or come to confession and to mass, but liked better to brew +potheen, and dance the pater o’pee, and knock each other over the head +with shillelaghs, and shoot each other from behind turf-dykes, and steal +each other’s cattle, and burn each other’s homes; till St. Brandan and +his friends were weary of them, for they would not learn to be peaceable +Christians at all. + +So St. Brandan went out to the point of Old Dunmore, and looked over the +tide-way roaring round the Blasquets, at the end of all the world, and +away into the ocean, and sighed—“Ah that I had wings as a dove!” And far +away, before the setting sun, he saw a blue fairy sea, and golden fairy +islands, and he said, “Those are the islands of the blest.” Then he and +his friends got into a hooker, and sailed away and away to the westward, +and were never heard of more. But the people who would not hear him were +changed into gorillas, and gorillas they are until this day. + +And when St. Brandan and the hermits came to that fairy isle they found +it overgrown with cedars and full of beautiful birds; and he sat down +under the cedars and preached to all the birds in the air. And they +liked his sermons so well that they told the fishes in the sea; and they +came, and St. Brandan preached to them; and the fishes told the +water-babies, who live in the caves under the isle; and they came up by +hundreds every Sunday, and St. Brandan got quite a neat little +Sunday-school. And there he taught the water-babies for a great many +hundred years, till his eyes grew too dim to see, and his beard grew so +long that he dared not walk for fear of treading on it, and then he might +have tumbled down. And at last he and the five hermits fell fast asleep +under the cedar-shades, and there they sleep unto this day. But the +fairies took to the water-babies, and taught them their lessons +themselves. + +And some say that St. Brandan will awake and begin to teach the babies +once more: but some think that he will sleep on, for better for worse, +till the coming of the Cocqcigrues. But, on still clear summer evenings, +when the sun sinks down into the sea, among golden cloud-capes and +cloud-islands, and locks and friths of azure sky, the sailors fancy that +they see, away to westward, St. Brandan’s fairy isle. + +But whether men can see it or not, St. Brandan’s Isle once actually stood +there; a great land out in the ocean, which has sunk and sunk beneath the +waves. Old Plato called it Atlantis, and told strange tales of the wise +men who lived therein, and of the wars they fought in the old times. And +from off that island came strange flowers, which linger still about this +land:—the Cornish heath, and Cornish moneywort, and the delicate Venus’s +hair, and the London-pride which covers the Kerry mountains, and the +little pink butterwort of Devon, and the great blue butterwort of +Ireland, and the Connemara heath, and the bristle-fern of the Turk +waterfall, and many a strange plant more; all fairy tokens left for wise +men and good children from off St. Brandan’s Isle. + +Now when Tom got there, he found that the isle stood all on pillars, and +that its roots were full of caves. There were pillars of black basalt, +like Staffa; and pillars of green and crimson serpentine, like Kynance; +and pillars ribboned with red and white and yellow sandstone, like +Livermead; and there were blue grottoes like Capri, and white grottoes +like Adelsberg; all curtained and draped with seaweeds, purple and +crimson, green and brown; and strewn with soft white sand, on which the +water-babies sleep every night. But, to keep the place clean and sweet, +the crabs picked up all the scraps off the floor and ate them like so +many monkeys; while the rocks were covered with ten thousand +sea-anemones, and corals and madrepores, who scavenged the water all day +long, and kept it nice and pure. But, to make up to them for having to +do such nasty work, they were not left black and dirty, as poor +chimney-sweeps and dustmen are. No; the fairies are more considerate and +just than that, and have dressed them all in the most beautiful colours +and patterns, till they look like vast flower-beds of gay blossoms. If +you think I am talking nonsense, I can only say that it is true; and that +an old gentleman named Fourier used to say that we ought to do the same +by chimney-sweeps and dustmen, and honour them instead of despising them; +and he was a very clever old gentleman: but, unfortunately for him and +the world, as mad as a March hare. + +And, instead of watchmen and policemen to keep out nasty things at night, +there were thousands and thousands of water-snakes, and most wonderful +creatures they were. They were all named after the Nereids, the +sea-fairies who took care of them, Eunice and Polynoe, Phyllodoce and +Psamathe, and all the rest of the pretty darlings who swim round their +Queen Amphitrite, and her car of cameo shell. They were dressed in green +velvet, and black velvet, and purple velvet; and were all jointed in +rings; and some of them had three hundred brains apiece, so that they +must have been uncommonly shrewd detectives; and some had eyes in their +tails; and some had eyes in every joint, so that they kept a very sharp +look-out; and when they wanted a baby-snake, they just grew one at the +end of their own tails, and when it was able to take care of itself it +dropped off; so that they brought up their families very cheaply. But if +any nasty thing came by, out they rushed upon it; and then out of each of +their hundreds of feet there sprang a whole cutler’s shop of + +_Scythes_, _Javelins_, +_Billhooks_, _Lances_, +_Pickaxes_, _Halberts_, +_Forks_, _Gisarines_, +_Penknives_, _Poleaxes_, +_Rapiers_, _Fishhooks_, +_Sabres_, _Bradawls_, +_Yataghans_, _Gimblets_, +_Creeses_, _Corkscrews_, +_Ghoorka swords_, _Pins_, +_Tucks_, _Needles_, + _And so forth_, + +which stabbed, shot, poked, pricked, scratched, ripped, pinked, and +crimped those naughty beasts so terribly, that they had to run for their +lives, or else be chopped into small pieces and be eaten afterwards. +And, if that is not all, every word, true, then there is no faith in +microscopes, and all is over with the Linnæan Society. + +And there were the water-babies in thousands, more than Tom, or you +either, could count.—All the little children whom the good fairies take +to, because their cruel mothers and fathers will not; all who are +untaught and brought up heathens, and all who come to grief by ill-usage +or ignorance or neglect; all the little children who are overlaid, or +given gin when they are young, or are let to drink out of hot kettles, or +to fall into the fire; all the little children in alleys and courts, and +tumble-down cottages, who die by fever, and cholera, and measles, and +scarlatina, and nasty complaints which no one has any business to have, +and which no one will have some day, when folks have common sense; and +all the little children who have been killed by cruel masters and wicked +soldiers; they were all there, except, of course, the babes of Bethlehem +who were killed by wicked King Herod; for they were taken straight to +heaven long ago, as everybody knows, and we call them the Holy Innocents. + +But I wish Tom had given up all his naughty tricks, and left off +tormenting dumb animals now that he had plenty of playfellows to amuse +him. Instead of that, I am sorry to say, he would meddle with the +creatures, all but the water-snakes, for they would stand no nonsense. +So he tickled the madrepores, to make them shut up; and frightened the +crabs, to make them hide in the sand and peep out at him with the tips of +their eyes; and put stones into the anemones’ mouths, to make them fancy +that their dinner was coming. + +The other children warned him, and said, “Take care what you are at. +Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid is coming.” But Tom never heeded them, being quite +riotous with high spirits and good luck, till, one Friday morning early, +Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid came indeed. + +A very tremendous lady she was; and when the children saw her they all +stood in a row, very upright indeed, and smoothed down their bathing +dresses, and put their hands behind them, just as if they were going to +be examined by the inspector. + +And she had on a black bonnet, and a black shawl, and no crinoline at +all; and a pair of large green spectacles, and a great hooked nose, +hooked so much that the bridge of it stood quite up above her eyebrows; +and under her arm she carried a great birch-rod. Indeed, she was so ugly +that Tom was tempted to make faces at her: but did not; for he did not +admire the look of the birch-rod under her arm. + +And she looked at the children one by one, and seemed very much pleased +with them, though she never asked them one question about how they were +behaving; and then began giving them all sorts of nice +sea-things—sea-cakes, sea-apples, sea-oranges, sea-bullseyes, sea-toffee; +and to the very best of all she gave sea-ices, made out of sea-cows’ +cream, which never melt under water. + +And, if you don’t quite believe me, then just think—What is more cheap +and plentiful than sea-rock? Then why should there not be sea-toffee as +well? And every one can find sea-lemons (ready quartered too) if they +will look for them at low tide; and sea-grapes too sometimes, hanging in +bunches; and, if you will go to Nice, you will find the fish-market full +of sea-fruit, which they call “frutta di mare:” though I suppose they +call them “fruits de mer” now, out of compliment to that most successful, +and therefore most immaculate, potentate who is seemingly desirous of +inheriting the blessing pronounced on those who remove their neighbours’ +land-mark. And, perhaps, that is the very reason why the place is called +Nice, because there are so many nice things in the sea there: at least, +if it is not, it ought to be. + +[Picture: Tom] Now little Tom watched all these sweet things given away, +till his mouth watered, and his eyes grew as round as an owl’s. For he +hoped that his turn would come at last; and so it did. For the lady +called him up, and held out her fingers with something in them, and +popped it into his mouth; and, lo and behold, it was a nasty cold hard +pebble. + +“You are a very cruel woman,” said he, and began to whimper. + +“And you are a very cruel boy; who puts pebbles into the sea-anemones’ +mouths, to take them in, and make them fancy that they had caught a good +dinner! As you did to them, so I must do to you.” + +“Who told you that?” said Tom. + +“You did yourself, this very minute.” + +Tom had never opened his lips; so he was very much taken aback indeed. + +“Yes; every one tells me exactly what they have done wrong; and that +without knowing it themselves. So there is no use trying to hide +anything from me. Now go, and be a good boy, and I will put no more +pebbles in your mouth, if you put none in other creatures’.” + +“I did not know there was any harm in it,” said Tom. + +“Then you know now. People continually say that to me: but I tell them, +if you don’t know that fire burns, that is no reason that it should not +burn you; and if you don’t know that dirt breeds fever, that is no reason +why the fevers should not kill you. The lobster did not know that there +was any harm in getting into the lobster-pot; but it caught him all the +same.” + +“Dear me,” thought Tom, “she knows everything!” And so she did, indeed. + +“And so, if you do not know that things are wrong that is no reason why +you should not be punished for them; though not as much, not as much, my +little man” (and the lady looked very kindly, after all), “as if you did +know.” + +“Well, you are a little hard on a poor lad,” said Tom. + +“Not at all; I am the best friend you ever had in all your life. But I +will tell you; I cannot help punishing people when they do wrong. I like +it no more than they do; I am often very, very sorry for them, poor +things: but I cannot help it. If I tried not to do it, I should do it +all the same. For I work by machinery, just like an engine; and am full +of wheels and springs inside; and am wound up very carefully, so that I +cannot help going.” + +“Was it long ago since they wound you up?” asked Tom. For he thought, +the cunning little fellow, “She will run down some day: or they may +forget to wind her up, as old Grimes used to forget to wind up his watch +when he came in from the public-house; and then I shall be safe.” + +“I was wound up once and for all, so long ago, that I forget all about +it.” + +“Dear me,” said Tom, “you must have been made a long time!” + +“I never was made, my child; and I shall go for ever and ever; for I am +as old as Eternity, and yet as young as Time.” + +And there came over the lady’s face a very curious expression—very +solemn, and very sad; and yet very, very sweet. And she looked up and +away, as if she were gazing through the sea, and through the sky, at +something far, far off; and as she did so, there came such a quiet, +tender, patient, hopeful smile over her face that Tom thought for the +moment that she did not look ugly at all. And no more she did; for she +was like a great many people who have not a pretty feature in their +faces, and yet are lovely to behold, and draw little children’s hearts to +them at once because though the house is plain enough, yet from the +windows a beautiful and good spirit is looking forth. + +And Tom smiled in her face, she looked so pleasant for the moment. And +the strange fairy smiled too, and said: + +“Yes. You thought me very ugly just now, did you not?” + +Tom hung down his head, and got very red about the ears. + +“And I am very ugly. I am the ugliest fairy in the world; and I shall +be, till people behave themselves as they ought to do. And then I shall +grow as handsome as my sister, who is the loveliest fairy in the world; +and her name is Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby. So she begins where I end, +and I begin where she ends; and those who will not listen to her must +listen to me, as you will see. Now, all of you run away, except Tom; and +he may stay and see what I am going to do. It will be a very good +warning for him to begin with, before he goes to school. + +“Now, Tom, every Friday I come down here and call up all who have +ill-used little children and serve them as they served the children.” + +And at that Tom was frightened, and crept under a stone; which made the +two crabs who lived there very angry, and frightened their friend the +butter-fish into flapping hysterics: but he would not move for them. + +And first she called up all the doctors who give little children so much +physic (they were most of them old ones; for the young ones have learnt +better, all but a few army surgeons, who still fancy that a baby’s inside +is much like a Scotch grenadier’s), and she set them all in a row; and +very rueful they looked; for they knew what was coming. + +And first she pulled all their teeth out; and then she bled them all +round: and then she dosed them with calomel, and jalap, and salts and +senna, and brimstone and treacle; and horrible faces they made; and then +she gave them a great emetic of mustard and water, and no basons; and +began all over again; and that was the way she spent the morning. + +And then she called up a whole troop of foolish ladies, who pinch up +their children’s waists and toes; and she laced them all up in tight +stays, so that they were choked and sick, and their noses grew red, and +their hands and feet swelled; and then she crammed their poor feet into +the most dreadfully tight boots, and made them all dance, which they did +most clumsily indeed; and then she asked them how they liked it; and when +they said not at all, she let them go: because they had only done it out +of foolish fashion, fancying it was for their children’s good, as if +wasps’ waists and pigs’ toes could be pretty, or wholesome, or of any use +to anybody. + +Then she called up all the careless nurserymaids, and stuck pins into +them all over, and wheeled them about in perambulators with tight straps +across their stomachs and their heads and arms hanging over the side, +till they were quite sick and stupid, and would have had sun-strokes: +but, being under the water, they could only have water-strokes; which, I +assure you, are nearly as bad, as you will find if you try to sit under a +mill-wheel. And mind—when you hear a rumbling at the bottom of the sea, +sailors will tell you that it is a ground-swell: but now you know better. +It is the old lady wheeling the maids about in perambulators. + +And by that time she was so tired, she had to go to luncheon. + +And after luncheon she set to work again, and called up all the cruel +schoolmasters—whole regiments and brigades of them; and when she saw +them, she frowned most terribly, and set to work in earnest, as if the +best part of the day’s work was to come. More than half of them were +nasty, dirty, frowzy, grubby, smelly old monks, who, because they dare +not hit a man of their own size, amused themselves with beating little +children instead; as you may see in the picture of old Pope Gregory (good +man and true though he was, when he meddled with things which he did +understand), teaching children to sing their fa-fa-mi-fa with a +cat-o’-nine tails under his chair: but, because they never had any +children of their own, they took into their heads (as some folks do +still) that they were the only people in the world who knew how to manage +children: and they first brought into England, in the old Anglo-Saxon +times, the fashion of treating free boys, and girls too, worse than you +would treat a dog or a horse: but Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid has caught them +all long ago; and given them many a taste of their own rods; and much +good may it do them. + +And she boxed their ears, and thumped them over the head with rulers, and +pandied their hands with canes, and told them that they told stories, and +were this and that bad sort of people; and the more they were very +indignant, and stood upon their honour, and declared they told the truth, +the more she declared they were not, and that they were only telling +lies; and at last she birched them all round soundly with her great +birch-rod and set them each an imposition of three hundred thousand lines +of Hebrew to learn by heart before she came back next Friday. And at +that they all cried and howled so, that their breaths came all up through +the sea like bubbles out of soda-water; and that is one reason of the +bubbles in the sea. There are others: but that is the one which +principally concerns little boys. And by that time she was so tired that +she was glad to stop; and, indeed, she had done a very good day’s work. + +Tom did not quite dislike the old lady: but he could not help thinking +her a little spiteful—and no wonder if she was, poor old soul; for if she +has to wait to grow handsome till people do as they would be done by, she +will have to wait a very long time. + +Poor old Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid! she has a great deal of hard work before +her, and had better have been born a washerwoman, and stood over a tub +all day: but, you see, people cannot always choose their own profession. + +But Tom longed to ask her one question; and after all, whenever she +looked at him, she did not look cross at all; and now and then there was +a funny smile in her face, and she chuckled to herself in a way which +gave Tom courage, and at last he said: + +“Pray, ma’am, may I ask you a question?” + +“Certainly, my little dear.” + +“Why don’t you bring all the bad masters here and serve them out too? +The butties that knock about the poor collier-boys; and the nailers that +file off their lads’ noses and hammer their fingers; and all the master +sweeps, like my master Grimes? I saw him fall into the water long ago; +so I surely expected he would have been here. I’m sure he was bad enough +to me.” + +Then the old lady looked so very stern that Tom was quite frightened, and +sorry that he had been so bold. But she was not angry with him. She +only answered, “I look after them all the week round; and they are in a +very different place from this, because they knew that they were doing +wrong.” + +She spoke very quietly; but there was something in her voice which made +Tom tingle from head to foot, as if he had got into a shoal of +sea-nettles. + +“But these people,” she went on, “did not know that they were doing +wrong: they were only stupid and impatient; and therefore I only punish +them till they become patient, and learn to use their common sense like +reasonable beings. But as for chimney-sweeps, and collier-boys, and +nailer lads, my sister has set good people to stop all that sort of +thing; and very much obliged to her I am; for if she could only stop the +cruel masters from ill-using poor children, I should grow handsome at +least a thousand years sooner. And now do you be a good boy, and do as +you would be done by, which they did not; and then, when my sister, +MADAME DOASYOUWOULDBEDONEBY, comes on Sunday, perhaps she will take +notice of you, and teach you how to behave. She understands that better +than I do.” And so she went. + +Tom was very glad to hear that there was no chance of meeting Grimes +again, though he was a little sorry for him, considering that he used +sometimes to give him the leavings of the beer: but he determined to be a +very good boy all Saturday; and he was; for he never frightened one crab, +nor tickled any live corals, nor put stones into the sea anemones’ +mouths, to make them fancy they had got a dinner; and when Sunday morning +came, sure enough, MRS. DOASYOUWOULDBEDONEBY came too. Whereat all the +little children began dancing and clapping their hands, and Tom danced +too with all his might. + +And as for the pretty lady, I cannot tell you what the colour of her hair +was, or, of her eyes: no more could Tom; for, when any one looks at her, +all they can think of is, that she has the sweetest, kindest, tenderest, +funniest, merriest face they ever saw, or want to see. But Tom saw that +she was a very tall woman, as tall as her sister: but instead of being +gnarly and horny, and scaly, and prickly, like her, she was the most +nice, soft, fat, smooth, pussy, cuddly, delicious creature who ever +nursed a baby; and she understood babies thoroughly, for she had plenty +of her own, whole rows and regiments of them, and has to this day. And +all her delight was, whenever she had a spare moment, to play with +babies, in which she showed herself a woman of sense; for babies are the +best company, and the pleasantest playfellows, in the world; at least, so +all the wise people in the world think. And therefore when the children +saw her, they naturally all caught hold of her, and pulled her till she +sat down on a stone, and climbed into her lap, and clung round her neck, +and caught hold of her hands; and then they all put their thumbs into +their mouths, and began cuddling and purring like so many kittens, as +they ought to have done. While those who could get nowhere else sat down +on the sand, and cuddled her feet—for no one, you know, wear shoes in the +water, except horrid old bathing-women, who are afraid of the +water-babies pinching their horny toes. And Tom stood staring at them; +for he could not understand what it was all about. + +“And who are you, you little darling?” she said. + +“Oh, that is the new baby!” they all cried, pulling their thumbs out of +their mouths; “and he never had any mother,” and they all put their +thumbs back again, for they did not wish to lose any time. + +“Then I will be his mother, and he shall have the very best place; so get +out, all of you, this moment.” + +And she took up two great armfuls of babies—nine hundred under one arm, +and thirteen hundred under the other—and threw them away, right and left, +into the water. But they minded it no more than the naughty boys in +Struwelpeter minded when St. Nicholas dipped them in his inkstand; and +did not even take their thumbs out of their mouths, but came paddling and +wriggling back to her like so many tadpoles, till you could see nothing +of her from head to foot for the swarm of little babies. + +But she took Tom in her arms, and laid him in the softest place of all, +and kissed him, and patted him, and talked to him, tenderly and low, such +things as he had never heard before in his life; and Tom looked up into +her eyes, and loved her, and loved, till he fell fast asleep from pure +love. + +And when he woke she was telling the children a story. And what story +did she tell them? One story she told them, which begins every Christmas +Eve, and yet never ends at all for ever and ever; and, as she went on, +the children took their thumbs out of their mouths and listened quite +seriously; but not sadly at all; for she never told them anything sad; +and Tom listened too, and never grew tired of listening. And he listened +so long that he fell fast asleep again, and, when he woke, the lady was +nursing him still. + +“Don’t go away,” said little Tom. “This is so nice. I never had any one +to cuddle me before.” + +“Don’t go away,” said all the children; “you have not sung us one song.” + +“Well, I have time for only one. So what shall it be?” + +“The doll you lost! The doll you lost!” cried all the babies at once. + + [Picture: The doll] + +So the strange fairy sang:— + + _I once had a sweet little doll_, _dears_, + _The prettiest doll in the world_; + _Her cheeks were so red and so white_, _dears_, + _And her hair was so charmingly curled_. + _But I lost my poor little doll_, _dears_, + _As I played in the heath one day_; + _And I cried for her more than a week_, _dears_, + _But I never could find where she lay_. + + [Picture: The broken doll] + + _I found my poor little doll_, _dears_, + _As I played in the heath one day_: + _Folks say she is terribly changed_, _dears_, + _For her paint is all washed away_, + _And her arm trodden off by the cows_, _dears_, + _And her hair not the least bit curled_: + _Yet_, _for old sakes’ sake she is still_, _dears_, + _The prettiest doll in the world_. + +What a silly song for a fairy to sing! + +And what silly water-babies to be quite delighted at it! + +Well, but you see they have not the advantage of Aunt Agitate’s Arguments +in the sea-land down below. + +“Now,” said the fairy to Tom, “will you be a good boy for my sake, and +torment no more sea-beasts till I come back?” + +“And you will cuddle me again?” said poor little Tom. + +“Of course I will, you little duck. I should like to take you with me +and cuddle you all the way, only I must not;” and away she went. + +So Tom really tried to be a good boy, and tormented no sea-beasts after +that as long as he lived; and he is quite alive, I assure you, still. + +Oh, how good little boys ought to be who have kind pussy mammas to cuddle +them and tell them stories; and how afraid they ought to be of growing +naughty, and bringing tears into their mammas’ pretty eyes! + + [Picture: Little both with mother] + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + “Thou little child, yet glorious in the night + Of heaven-born freedom on thy Being’s height, + Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke + The Years to bring the inevitable yoke— + Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? + Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, + And custom lie upon thee with a weight + Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.” + + WORDSWORTH. + +[Picture: The Officer and a crying child] HERE I come to the very saddest +part of all my story. I know some people will only laugh at it, and call +it much ado about nothing. But I know one man who would not; and he was +an officer with a pair of gray moustaches as long as your arm, who said +once in company that two of the most heart-rending sights in the world, +which moved him most to tears, which he would do anything to prevent or +remedy, were a child over a broken toy and a child stealing sweets. + +The company did not laugh at him; his moustaches were too long and too +gray for that: but, after he was gone, they called him sentimental and so +forth, all but one dear little old Quaker lady with a soul as white as +her cap, who was not, of course, generally partial to soldiers; and she +said very quietly, like a Quaker: + +“Friends, it is borne upon my mind that that is a truly brave man.” + +Now you may fancy that Tom was quite good, when he had everything that he +could want or wish: but you would be very much mistaken. Being quite +comfortable is a very good thing; but it does not make people good. +Indeed, it sometimes makes them naughty, as it has made the people in +America; and as it made the people in the Bible, who waxed fat and +kicked, like horses overfed and underworked. And I am very sorry to say +that this happened to little Tom. For he grew so fond of the +sea-bullseyes and sea-lollipops that his foolish little head could think +of nothing else: and he was always longing for more, and wondering when +the strange lady would come again and give him some, and what she would +give him, and how much, and whether she would give him more than the +others. And he thought of nothing but lollipops by day, and dreamt of +nothing else by night—and what happened then? + +That he began to watch the lady to see where she kept the sweet things: +and began hiding, and sneaking, and following her about, and pretending +to be looking the other way, or going after something else, till he found +out that she kept them in a beautiful mother-of-pearl cabinet away in a +deep crack of the rocks. + +And he longed to go to the cabinet, and yet he was afraid; and then he +longed again, and was less afraid; and at last, by continual thinking +about it, he longed so violently that he was not afraid at all. And one +night, when all the other children were asleep, and he could not sleep +for thinking of lollipops, he crept away among the rocks, and got to the +cabinet, and behold! it was open. + +But, when he saw all the nice things inside, instead of being delighted, +he was quite frightened, and wished he had never come there. And then he +would only touch them, and he did; and then he would only taste one, and +he did; and then he would only eat one, and he did; and then he would +only eat two, and then three, and so on; and then he was terrified lest +she should come and catch him, and began gobbling them down so fast that +he did not taste them, or have any pleasure in them; and then he felt +sick, and would have only one more; and then only one more again; and so +on till he had eaten them all up. + +And all the while, close behind him, stood Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. + +Some people may say, But why did she not keep her cupboard locked? Well, +I know.—It may seem a very strange thing, but she never does keep her +cupboard locked; every one may go and taste for themselves, and fare +accordingly. It is very odd, but so it is; and I am quite sure that she +knows best. Perhaps she wishes people to keep their fingers out of the +fire, by having them burned. + +She took off her spectacles, because she did not like to see too much; +and in her pity she arched up her eyebrows into her very hair, and her +eyes grew so wide that they would have taken in all the sorrows of the +world, and filled with great big tears, as they too often do. + +But all she said was: + +“Ah, you poor little dear! you are just like all the rest.” + +But she said it to herself, and Tom neither heard nor saw her. Now, you +must not fancy that she was sentimental at all. If you do, and think +that she is going to let off you, or me, or any human being when we do +wrong, because she is too tender-hearted to punish us, then you will find +yourself very much mistaken, as many a man does every year and every day. + +But what did the strange fairy do when she saw all her lollipops eaten? + +Did she fly at Tom, catch him by the scruff of the neck, hold him, howk +him, hump him, hurry him, hit him, poke him, pull him, pinch him, pound +him, put him in the corner, shake him, slap him, set him on a cold stone +to reconsider himself, and so forth? + +Not a bit. You may watch her at work if you know where to find her. But +you will never see her do that. For, if she had, she knew quite well Tom +would have fought, and kicked, and bit, and said bad words, and turned +again that moment into a naughty little heathen chimney-sweep, with his +hand, like Ishmael’s of old, against every man, and every man’s hand +against him. + +Did she question him, hurry him, frighten him, threaten him, to make him +confess? Not a bit. You may see her, as I said, at her work often +enough if you know where to look for her: but you will never see her do +that. For, if she had, she would have tempted him to tell lies in his +fright; and that would have been worse for him, if possible, than even +becoming a heathen chimney-sweep again. + +No. She leaves that for anxious parents and teachers (lazy ones, some +call them), who, instead of giving children a fair trial, such as they +would expect and demand for themselves, force them by fright to confess +their own faults—which is so cruel and unfair that no judge on the bench +dare do it to the wickedest thief or murderer, for the good British law +forbids it—ay, and even punish them to make them confess, which is so +detestable a crime that it is never committed now, save by Inquisitors, +and Kings of Naples, and a few other wretched people of whom the world is +weary. And then they say, “We have trained up the child in the way he +should go, and when he grew up he has departed from it. Why then did +Solomon say that he would not depart from it?” But perhaps the way of +beating, and hurrying and frightening, and questioning, was not the way +that the child should go; for it is not even the way in which a colt +should go if you want to break it in and make it a quiet serviceable +horse. + +Some folks may say, “Ah! but the Fairy does not need to do that if she +knows everything already.” True. But, if she did not know, she would +not surely behave worse than a British judge and jury; and no more should +parents and teachers either. + +So she just said nothing at all about the matter, not even when Tom came +next day with the rest for sweet things. He was horribly afraid of +coming: but he was still more afraid of staying away, lest any one should +suspect him. He was dreadfully afraid, too, lest there should be no +sweets—as was to be expected, he having eaten them all—and lest then the +fairy should inquire who had taken them. But, behold! she pulled out +just as many as ever, which astonished Tom, and frightened him still +more. + +And, when the fairy looked him full in the face, he shook from head to +foot: however she gave him his share like the rest, and he thought within +himself that she could not have found him out. + +But, when he put the sweets into his mouth, he hated the taste of them; +and they made him so sick that he had to get away as fast as he could; +and terribly sick he was, and very cross and unhappy, all the week after. + +Then, when next week came, he had his share again; and again the fairy +looked him full in the face; but more sadly than she had ever looked. +And he could not bear the sweets: but took them again in spite of +himself. + +[Picture: Prickly Tom] And when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came, he wanted +to be cuddled like the rest; but she said very seriously: + +“I should like to cuddle you; but I cannot, you are so horny and +prickly.” + +And Tom looked at himself: and he was all over prickles, just like a +sea-egg. + +Which was quite natural; for you must know and believe that people’s +souls make their bodies just as a snail makes its shell (I am not joking, +my little man; I am in serious, solemn earnest). And therefore, when +Tom’s soul grew all prickly with naughty tempers, his body could not help +growing prickly, too, so that nobody would cuddle him, or play with him, +or even like to look at him. + +What could Tom do now but go away and hide in a corner and cry? For +nobody would play with him, and he knew full well why. + +And he was so miserable all that week that when the ugly fairy came and +looked at him once more full in the face, more seriously and sadly than +ever, he could stand it no longer, and thrust the sweetmeats away, +saying, “No, I don’t want any: I can’t bear them now,” and then burst out +crying, poor little man, and told Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid every word as it +happened. + +He was horribly frightened when he had done so; for he expected her to +punish him very severely. But, instead, she only took him up and kissed +him, which was not quite pleasant, for her chin was very bristly indeed; +but he was so lonely-hearted, he thought that rough kissing was better +than none. + +“I will forgive you, little man,” she said. “I always forgive every one +the moment they tell me the truth of their own accord.” + +“Then you will take away all these nasty prickles?” + +“That is a very different matter. You put them there yourself, and only +you can take them away.” + +“But how can I do that?” asked Tom, crying afresh. + +“Well, I think it is time for you to go to school; so I shall fetch you a +schoolmistress, who will teach you how to get rid of your prickles.” And +so she went away. + +Tom was frightened at the notion of a school-mistress; for he thought she +would certainly come with a birch-rod or a cane; but he comforted +himself, at last, that she might be something like the old woman in +Vendale—which she was not in the least; for, when the fairy brought her, +she was the most beautiful little girl that ever was seen, with long +curls floating behind her like a golden cloud, and long robes floating +all round her like a silver one. + + [Picture: Tom and the little girl] + +“There he is,” said the fairy; “and you must teach him to be good, +whether you like or not.” + +“I know,” said the little girl; but she did not seem quite to like, for +she put her finger in her mouth, and looked at Tom under her brows; and +Tom put his finger in his mouth, and looked at her under his brows, for +he was horribly ashamed of himself. + +The little girl seemed hardly to know how to begin; and perhaps she would +never have begun at all if poor Tom had not burst out crying, and begged +her to teach him to be good and help him to cure his prickles; and at +that she grew so tender-hearted that she began teaching him as prettily +as ever child was taught in the world. + +And what did the little girl teach Tom? She taught him, first, what you +have been taught ever since you said your first prayers at your mother’s +knees; but she taught him much more simply. For the lessons in that +world, my child, have no such hard words in them as the lessons in this, +and therefore the water-babies like them better than you like your +lessons, and long to learn them more and more; and grown men cannot +puzzle nor quarrel over their meaning, as they do here on land; for those +lessons all rise clear and pure, like the Test out of Overton Pool, out +of the everlasting ground of all life and truth. + +So she taught Tom every day in the week; only on Sundays she always went +away home, and the kind fairy took her place. And before she had taught +Tom many Sundays, his prickles had vanished quite away, and his skin was +smooth and clean again. + +“Dear me!” said the little girl; “why, I know you now. You are the very +same little chimney-sweep who came into my bedroom.” + +“Dear me!” cried Tom. “And I know you, too, now. You are the very +little white lady whom I saw in bed.” And he jumped at her, and longed +to hug and kiss her; but did not, remembering that she was a lady born; +so he only jumped round and round her till he was quite tired. + +And then they began telling each other all their story—how he had got +into the water, and she had fallen over the rock; and how he had swum +down to the sea, and how she had flown out of the window; and how this, +that, and the other, till it was all talked out: and then they both began +over again, and I can’t say which of the two talked fastest. + +And then they set to work at their lessons again, and both liked them so +well that they went on well till seven full years were past and gone. + +You may fancy that Tom was quite content and happy all those seven years; +but the truth is, he was not. He had always one thing on his mind, and +that was—where little Ellie went, when she went home on Sundays. + +To a very beautiful place, she said. + +But what was the beautiful place like, and where was it? + +Ah! that is just what she could not say. And it is strange, but true, +that no one can say; and that those who have been oftenest in it, or even +nearest to it, can say least about it, and make people understand least +what it is like. There are a good many folks about the +Other-end-of-Nowhere (where Tom went afterwards), who pretend to know it +from north to south as well as if they had been penny postmen there; but, +as they are safe at the Other-end-of-Nowhere, nine hundred and +ninety-nine million miles away, what they say cannot concern us. + +But the dear, sweet, loving, wise, good, self-sacrificing people, who +really go there, can never tell you anything about it, save that it is +the most beautiful place in all the world; and, if you ask them more, +they grow modest, and hold their peace, for fear of being laughed at; and +quite right they are. + +So all that good little Ellie could say was, that it was worth all the +rest of the world put together. And of course that only made Tom the +more anxious to go likewise. + +“Miss Ellie,” he said at last, “I will know why I cannot go with you when +you go home on Sundays, or I shall have no peace, and give you none +either.” + +“You must ask the fairies that.” + +So when the fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, came next, Tom asked her. + +“Little boys who are only fit to play with sea-beasts cannot go there,” +she said. “Those who go there must go first where they do not like, and +do what they do not like, and help somebody they do not like.” + +“Why, did Ellie do that?” + +“Ask her.” + +And Ellie blushed, and said, “Yes, Tom; I did not like coming here at +first; I was so much happier at home, where it is always Sunday. And I +was afraid of you, Tom, at first, because—because—” + +“Because I was all over prickles? But I am not prickly now, am I, Miss +Ellie?” + +“No,” said Ellie. “I like you very much now; and I like coming here, +too.” + +“And perhaps,” said the fairy, “you will learn to like going where you +don’t like, and helping some one that you don’t like, as Ellie has.” + +But Tom put his finger in his mouth, and hung his head down; for he did +not see that at all. + +So when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came, Tom asked her; for he thought in +his little head, She is not so strict as her sister, and perhaps she may +let me off more easily. + +Ah, Tom, Tom, silly fellow! and yet I don’t know why I should blame you, +while so many grown people have got the very same notion in their heads. + +But, when they try it, they get just the same answer as Tom did. For, +when he asked the second fairy, she told him just what the first did, and +in the very same words. + +Tom was very unhappy at that. And, when Ellie went home on Sunday, he +fretted and cried all day, and did not care to listen to the fairy’s +stories about good children, though they were prettier than ever. +Indeed, the more he overheard of them, the less he liked to listen, +because they were all about children who did what they did not like, and +took trouble for other people, and worked to feed their little brothers +and sisters instead of caring only for their play. And, when she began +to tell a story about a holy child in old times, who was martyred by the +heathen because it would not worship idols, Tom could bear no more, and +ran away and hid among the rocks. + +And, when Ellie came back, he was shy with her, because he fancied she +looked down on him, and thought him a coward. And then he grew quite +cross with her, because she was superior to him, and did what he could +not do. And poor Ellie was quite surprised and sad; and at last Tom +burst out crying; but he would not tell her what was really in his mind. + +And all the while he was eaten up with curiosity to know where Ellie went +to; so that he began not to care for his playmates, or for the sea-palace +or anything else. But perhaps that made matters all the easier for him; +for he grew so discontented with everything round him that he did not +care to stay, and did not care where he went. + +“Well,” he said, at last, “I am so miserable here, I’ll go; if only you +will go with me?” + +“Ah!” said Ellie, “I wish I might; but the worst of it is, that the fairy +says that you must go alone if you go at all. Now don’t poke that poor +crab about, Tom” (for he was feeling very naughty and mischievous), “or +the fairy will have to punish you.” + +Tom was very nearly saying, “I don’t care if she does;” but he stopped +himself in time. + +“I know what she wants me to do,” he said, whining most dolefully. “She +wants me to go after that horrid old Grimes. I don’t like him, that’s +certain. And if I find him, he will turn me into a chimney-sweep again, +I know. That’s what I have been afraid of all along.” + +“No, he won’t—I know as much as that. Nobody can turn water-babies into +sweeps, or hurt them at all, as long as they are good.” + +“Ah,” said naughty Tom, “I see what you want; you are persuading me all +along to go, because you are tired of me, and want to get rid of me.” + +Little Ellie opened her eyes very wide at that, and they were all +brimming over with tears. + +“Oh, Tom, Tom!” she said, very mournfully—and then she cried, “Oh, Tom! +where are you?” + +And Tom cried, “Oh, Ellie, where are you?” + +For neither of them could see each other—not the least. Little Ellie +vanished quite away, and Tom heard her voice calling him, and growing +smaller and smaller, and fainter and fainter, till all was silent. + +Who was frightened then but Tom? He swam up and down among the rocks, +into all the halls and chambers, faster than ever he swam before, but +could not find her. He shouted after her, but she did not answer; he +asked all the other children, but they had not seen her; and at last he +went up to the top of the water and began crying and screaming for Mrs. +Bedonebyasyoudid—which perhaps was the best thing to do—for she came in a +moment. + +[Picture: Tom crying] “Oh!” said Tom. “Oh dear, oh dear! I have been +naughty to Ellie, and I have killed her—I know I have killed her.” + +“Not quite that,” said the fairy; “but I have sent her away home, and she +will not come back again for I do not know how long.” + +And at that Tom cried so bitterly that the salt sea was swelled with his +tears, and the tide was .3,954,620,819 of an inch higher than it had been +the day before: but perhaps that was owing to the waxing of the moon. It +may have been so; but it is considered right in the new philosophy, you +know, to give spiritual causes for physical phenomena—especially in +parlour-tables; and, of course, physical causes for spiritual ones, like +thinking, and praying, and knowing right from wrong. And so they odds it +till it comes even, as folks say down in Berkshire. + +“How cruel of you to send Ellie away!” sobbed Tom. “However, I will find +her again, if I go to the world’s end to look for her.” + +The fairy did not slap Tom, and tell him to hold his tongue: but she took +him on her lap very kindly, just as her sister would have done; and put +him in mind how it was not her fault, because she was wound up inside, +like watches, and could not help doing things whether she liked or not. +And then she told him how he had been in the nursery long enough, and +must go out now and see the world, if he intended ever to be a man; and +how he must go all alone by himself, as every one else that ever was born +has to go, and see with his own eyes, and smell with his own nose, and +make his own bed and lie on it, and burn his own fingers if he put them +into the fire. And then she told him how many fine things there were to +be seen in the world, and what an odd, curious, pleasant, orderly, +respectable, well-managed, and, on the whole, successful (as, indeed, +might have been expected) sort of a place it was, if people would only be +tolerably brave and honest and good in it; and then she told him not to +be afraid of anything he met, for nothing would harm him if he remembered +all his lessons, and did what he knew was right. And at last she +comforted poor little Tom so much that he was quite eager to go, and +wanted to set out that minute. “Only,” he said, “if I might see Ellie +once before I went!” + +“Why do you want that?” + +“Because—because I should be so much happier if I thought she had +forgiven me.” + +And in the twinkling of an eye there stood Ellie, smiling, and looking so +happy that Tom longed to kiss her; but was still afraid it would not be +respectful, because she was a lady born. + +“I am going, Ellie!” said Tom. “I am going, if it is to the world’s end. +But I don’t like going at all, and that’s the truth.” + +“Pooh! pooh! pooh!” said the fairy. “You will like it very well indeed, +you little rogue, and you know that at the bottom of your heart. But if +you don’t, I will make you like it. Come here, and see what happens to +people who do only what is pleasant.” + +And she took out of one of her cupboards (she had all sorts of mysterious +cupboards in the cracks of the rocks) the most wonderful waterproof book, +full of such photographs as never were seen. For she had found out +photography (and this is a fact) more than 13,598,000 years before +anybody was born; and, what is more, her photographs did not merely +represent light and shade, as ours do, but colour also, and all colours, +as you may see if you look at a black-cock’s tail, or a butterfly’s wing, +or indeed most things that are or can be, so to speak. And therefore her +photographs were very curious and famous, and the children looked with +great delight for the opening of the book. + +And on the title-page was written, “The History of the great and famous +nation of the Doasyoulikes, who came away from the country of Hardwork, +because they wanted to play on the Jews’ harp all day long.” + +In the first picture they saw these Doasyoulikes living in the land of +Readymade, at the foot of the Happy-go-lucky Mountains, where flapdoodle +grows wild; and if you want to know what that is, you must read Peter +Simple. + +They lived very much such a life as those jolly old Greeks in Sicily, +whom you may see painted on the ancient vases, and really there seemed to +be great excuses for them, for they had no need to work. + +Instead of houses they lived in the beautiful caves of tufa, and bathed +in the warm springs three times a day; and, as for clothes, it was so +warm there that the gentlemen walked about in little beside a cocked hat +and a pair of straps, or some light summer tackle of that kind; and the +ladies all gathered gossamer in autumn (when they were not too lazy) to +make their winter dresses. + +They were very fond of music, but it was too much trouble to learn the +piano or the violin; and as for dancing, that would have been too great +an exertion. So they sat on ant-hills all day long, and played on the +Jews’ harp; and, if the ants bit them, why they just got up and went to +the next ant-hill, till they were bitten there likewise. + + [Picture: Woman surrounded by fairies] + +And they sat under the flapdoodle-trees, and let the flapdoodle drop into +their mouths; and under the vines, and squeezed the grape-juice down +their throats; and, if any little pigs ran about ready roasted, crying, +“Come and eat me,” as was their fashion in that country, they waited till +the pigs ran against their mouths, and then took a bite, and were +content, just as so many oysters would have been. + +They needed no weapons, for no enemies ever came near their land; and no +tools, for everything was readymade to their hand; and the stern old +fairy Necessity never came near them to hunt them up, and make them use +their wits, or die. + +And so on, and so on, and so on, till there were never such comfortable, +easy-going, happy-go-lucky people in the world. + +“Well, that is a jolly life,” said Tom. + +“You think so?” said the fairy. “Do you see that great peaked mountain +there behind,” said the fairy, “with smoke coming out of its top?” + +“Yes.” + +“And do you see all those ashes, and slag, and cinders lying about?” + +“Yes.” + +“Then turn over the next five hundred years, and you will see what +happens next.” + +And behold the mountain had blown up like a barrel of gunpowder, and then +boiled over like a kettle; whereby one-third of the Doasyoulikes were +blown into the air, and another third were smothered in ashes; so that +there was only one-third left. + +“You see,” said the fairy, “what comes of living on a burning mountain.” + +“Oh, why did you not warn them?” said little Ellie. + +“I did warn them all that I could. I let the smoke come out of the +mountain; and wherever there is smoke there is fire. And I laid the +ashes and cinders all about; and wherever there are cinders, cinders may +be again. But they did not like to face facts, my dears, as very few +people do; and so they invented a cock-and-bull story, which, I am sure, +I never told them, that the smoke was the breath of a giant, whom some +gods or other had buried under the mountain; and that the cinders were +what the dwarfs roasted the little pigs whole with; and other nonsense of +that kind. And, when folks are in that humour, I cannot teach them, save +by the good old birch-rod.” + +And then she turned over the next five hundred years: and there were the +remnant of the Doasyoulikes, doing as they liked, as before. They were +too lazy to move away from the mountain; so they said, If it has blown up +once, that is all the more reason that it should not blow up again. And +they were few in number: but they only said, The more the merrier, but +the fewer the better fare. However, that was not quite true; for all the +flapdoodle-trees were killed by the volcano, and they had eaten all the +roast pigs, who, of course, could not be expected to have little ones. +So they had to live very hard, on nuts and roots which they scratched out +of the ground with sticks. Some of them talked of sowing corn, as their +ancestors used to do, before they came into the land of Readymade; but +they had forgotten how to make ploughs (they had forgotten even how to +make Jews’ harps by this time), and had eaten all the seed-corn which +they brought out of the land of Hardwork years since; and of course it +was too much trouble to go away and find more. So they lived miserably +on roots and nuts, and all the weakly little children had great stomachs, +and then died. + +“Why,” said Tom, “they are growing no better than savages.” + +“And look how ugly they are all getting,” said Ellie. + +“Yes; when people live on poor vegetables instead of roast beef and +plum-pudding, their jaws grow large, and their lips grow coarse, like the +poor Paddies who eat potatoes.” + +And she turned over the next five hundred years. And there they were all +living up in trees, and making nests to keep off the rain. And +underneath the trees lions were prowling about. + +“Why,” said Ellie, “the lions seem to have eaten a good many of them, for +there are very few left now.” + +“Yes,” said the fairy; “you see it was only the strongest and most active +ones who could climb the trees, and so escape.” + +“But what great, hulking, broad-shouldered chaps they are,” said Tom; +“they are a rough lot as ever I saw.” + +“Yes, they are getting very strong now; for the ladies will not marry any +but the very strongest and fiercest gentlemen, who can help them up the +trees out of the lions’ way.” + +And she turned over the next five hundred years. And in that they were +fewer still, and stronger, and fiercer; but their feet had changed shape +very oddly, for they laid hold of the branches with their great toes, as +if they had been thumbs, just as a Hindoo tailor uses his toes to thread +his needle. + +The children were very much surprised, and asked the fairy whether that +was her doing. + +“Yes, and no,” she said, smiling. “It was only those who could use their +feet as well as their hands who could get a good living: or, indeed, get +married; so that they got the best of everything, and starved out all the +rest; and those who are left keep up a regular breed of toe-thumb-men, as +a breed of short-horns, or are skye-terriers, or fancy pigeons is kept +up.” + +“But there is a hairy one among them,” said Ellie. + +“Ah!” said the fairy, “that will be a great man in his time, and chief of +all the tribe.” + +And, when she turned over the next five hundred years, it was true. + +For this hairy chief had had hairy children, and they hairier children +still; and every one wished to marry hairy husbands, and have hairy +children too; for the climate was growing so damp that none but the hairy +ones could live: all the rest coughed and sneezed, and had sore throats, +and went into consumptions, before they could grow up to be men and +women. + +Then the fairy turned over the next five hundred years. And they were +fewer still. + +“Why, there is one on the ground picking up roots,” said Ellie, “and he +cannot walk upright.” + +No more he could; for in the same way that the shape of their feet had +altered, the shape of their backs had altered also. + +“Why,” cried Tom, “I declare they are all apes.” + +“Something fearfully like it, poor foolish creatures,” said the fairy. +“They are grown so stupid now, that they can hardly think: for none of +them have used their wits for many hundred years. They have almost +forgotten, too, how to talk. For each stupid child forgot some of the +words it heard from its stupid parents, and had not wits enough to make +fresh words for itself. Beside, they are grown so fierce and suspicious +and brutal that they keep out of each other’s way, and mope and sulk in +the dark forests, never hearing each other’s voice, till they have +forgotten almost what speech is like. I am afraid they will all be apes +very soon, and all by doing only what they liked.” + +And in the next five hundred years they were all dead and gone, by bad +food and wild beasts and hunters; all except one tremendous old fellow +with jaws like a jack, who stood full seven feet high; and M. Du Chaillu +came up to him, and shot him, as he stood roaring and thumping his +breast. And he remembered that his ancestors had once been men, and +tried to say, “Am I not a man and a brother?” but had forgotten how to +use his tongue; and then he had tried to call for a doctor, but he had +forgotten the word for one. So all he said was “Ubboboo!” and died. + + [Picture: Ape] + +And that was the end of the great and jolly nation of the Doasyoulikes. +And, when Tom and Ellie came to the end of the book, they looked very sad +and solemn; and they had good reason so to do, for they really fancied +that the men were apes, and never thought, in their simplicity, of asking +whether the creatures had hippopotamus majors in their brains or not; in +which case, as you have been told already, they could not possibly have +been apes, though they were more apish than the apes of all aperies. + +“But could you not have saved them from becoming apes?” said little +Ellie, at last. + +“At first, my dear; if only they would have behaved like men, and set to +work to do what they did not like. But the longer they waited, and +behaved like the dumb beasts, who only do what they like, the stupider +and clumsier they grew; till at last they were past all cure, for they +had thrown their own wits away. It is such things as this that help to +make me so ugly, that I know not when I shall grow fair.” + +“And where are they all now?” asked Ellie. + +“Exactly where they ought to be, my dear.” + +“Yes!” said the fairy, solemnly, half to herself, as she closed the +wonderful book. “Folks say now that I can make beasts into men, by +circumstance, and selection, and competition, and so forth. Well, +perhaps they are right; and perhaps, again, they are wrong. That is one +of the seven things which I am forbidden to tell, till the coming of the +Cocqcigrues; and, at all events, it is no concern of theirs. Whatever +their ancestors were, men they are; and I advise them to behave as such, +and act accordingly. But let them recollect this, that there are two +sides to every question, and a downhill as well as an uphill road; and, +if I can turn beasts into men, I can, by the same laws of circumstance, +and selection, and competition, turn men into beasts. You were very near +being turned into a beast once or twice, little Tom. Indeed, if you had +not made up your mind to go on this journey, and see the world, like an +Englishman, I am not sure but that you would have ended as an eft in a +pond.” + +“Oh, dear me!” said Tom; “sooner than that, and be all over slime, I’ll +go this minute, if it is to the world’s end.” + + [Picture: Newt] + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + “And Nature, the old Nurse, took + The child upon her knee, + Saying, ‘Here is a story book + Thy father hath written for thee. + + “‘Come wander with me,’ she said, + ‘Into regions yet untrod, + And read what is still unread + In the Manuscripts of God.’ + + “And he wandered away and away + With Nature, the dear old Nurse, + Who sang to him night and day + The rhymes of the universe.” + + LONGFELLOW. + +[Picture: Tom about to dive] “NOW,” said Tom, “I am ready be off, if it’s +to the world’s end.” + +“Ah!” said the fairy, “that is a brave, good boy. But you must go +farther than the world’s end, if you want to find Mr. Grimes; for he is +at the Other-end-of-Nowhere. You must go to Shiny Wall, and through the +white gate that never was opened; and then you will come to Peacepool, +and Mother Carey’s Haven, where the good whales go when they die. And +there Mother Carey will tell you the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere, and +there you will find Mr. Grimes.” + +“Oh, dear!” said Tom. “But I do not know my way to Shiny Wall, or where +it is at all.” + +“Little boys must take the trouble to find out things for themselves, or +they will never grow to be men; so that you must ask all the beasts in +the sea and the birds in the air, and if you have been good to them, some +of them will tell you the way to Shiny Wall.” + +“Well,” said Tom, “it will be a long journey, so I had better start at +once. Good-bye, Miss Ellie; you know I am getting a big boy, and I must +go out and see the world.” + +“I know you must,” said Ellie; “but you will not forget me, Tom. I shall +wait here till you come.” + +And she shook hands with him, and bade him good-bye. Tom longed very +much again to kiss her; but he thought it would not be respectful, +considering she was a lady born; so he promised not to forget her: but +his little whirl-about of a head was so full of the notion of going out +to see the world, that it forgot her in five minutes: however, though his +head forgot her, I am glad to say his heart did not. + +So he asked all the beasts in the sea, and all the birds in the air, but +none of them knew the way to Shiny Wall. For why? He was still too far +down south. + +Then he met a ship, far larger than he had ever seen—a gallant +ocean-steamer, with a long cloud of smoke trailing behind; and he +wondered how she went on without sails, and swam up to her to see. A +school of dolphins were running races round and round her, going three +feet for her one, and Tom asked them the way to Shiny Wall: but they did +not know. Then he tried to find out how she moved, and at last he saw +her screw, and was so delighted with it that he played under her quarter +all day, till he nearly had his nose knocked off by the fans, and thought +it time to move. Then he watched the sailors upon deck, and the ladies, +with their bonnets and parasols: but none of them could see him, because +their eyes were not opened,—as, indeed, most people’s eyes are not. + +At last there came out into the quarter-gallery a very pretty lady, in +deep black widow’s weeds, and in her arms a baby. She leaned over the +quarter-gallery, and looked back and back toward England far away; and as +she looked she sang: + + I. + + “_Soft soft wind_, _from out the sweet south sliding_, + _Waft thy silver cloud-webs athwart the summer sea_; + _Thin thin threads of mist on dewy fingers twining_ + _Weave a veil of dappled gauze to shade my babe and me_. + + II. + + “_Deep deep Love_, _within thine own abyss abiding_, + _Pour Thyself abroad_, _O Lord_, _on earth and air and sea_; + _Worn weary hearts within Thy holy temple hiding_, + _Shield from sorrow_, _sin_, _and shame my helpless babe and me_.” + +Her voice was so soft and low, and the music of the air so sweet, that +Tom could have listened to it all day. But as she held the baby over the +gallery rail, to show it the dolphins leaping and the water gurgling in +the ship’s wake, lo! and behold, the baby saw Tom. + + [Picture: The lady] + +He was quite sure of that for when their eyes met, the baby smiled and +held out his hands; and Tom smiled and held out his hands too; and the +baby kicked and leaped, as if it wanted to jump overboard to him. + +“What do you see, my darling?” said the lady; and her eyes followed the +baby’s till she too caught sight of Tom, swimming about among the +foam-beads below. + +She gave a little shriek and start; and then she said, quite quietly, +“Babies in the sea? Well, perhaps it is the happiest place for them;” +and waved her hand to Tom, and cried, “Wait a little, darling, only a +little: and perhaps we shall go with you and be at rest.” + +And at that an old nurse, all in black, came out and talked to her, and +drew her in. And Tom turned away northward, sad and wondering; and +watched the great steamer slide away into the dusk, and the lights on +board peep out one by one, and die out again, and the long bar of smoke +fade away into the evening mist, till all was out of sight. + +And he swam northward again, day after day, till at last he met the King +of the Herrings, with a curry-comb growing out of his nose, and a sprat +in his mouth for a cigar, and asked him the way to Shiny Wall; so he +bolted his sprat head foremost, and said: + +“If I were you, young Gentleman, I should go to the Allalonestone, and +ask the last of the Gairfowl. She is of a very ancient clan, very nearly +as ancient as my own; and knows a good deal which these modern upstarts +don’t, as ladies of old houses are likely to do.” + + [Picture: The King of the Herrings] + +Tom asked his way to her, and the King of the Herrings told him very +kindly, for he was a courteous old gentleman of the old school, though he +was horribly ugly, and strangely bedizened too, like the old dandies who +lounge in the club-house windows. + +But just as Tom had thanked him and set off, he called after him: “Hi! I +say, can you fly?” + +“I never tried,” says Tom. “Why?” + +“Because, if you can, I should advise you to say nothing to the old lady +about it. There; take a hint. Good-bye.” + +And away Tom went for seven days and seven nights due north-west, till he +came to a great codbank, the like of which he never saw before. The +great cod lay below in tens of thousands, and gobbled shell-fish all day +long; and the blue sharks roved above in hundreds, and gobbled them when +they came up. So they ate, and ate, and ate each other, as they had done +since the making of the world; for no man had come here yet to catch +them, and find out how rich old Mother Carey is. + + [Picture: The Gairfowl] + +And there he saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing up on the +Allalonestones all alone. And a very grand old lady she was, full three +feet high, and bolt upright, like some old Highland chieftainess. She +had on a black velvet gown, and a white pinner and apron, and a very high +bridge to her nose (which is a sure mark of high breeding), and a large +pair of white spectacles on it, which made her look rather odd: but it +was the ancient fashion of her house. + +And instead of wings, she had two little feathery arms, with which she +fanned herself, and complained of the dreadful heat; and she kept on +crooning an old song to herself, which she learnt when she was a little +baby-bird, long ago— + + “_Two little birds they sat on a stone_, + _One swam away_, _and then there was one_, + _With a fal-lal-la-lady_. + + “_The other swam after_, _and then there was none_, + _And so the poor stone was left all alone_; + _With a fal-lal-la-lady_.” + +It was “flew” away, properly, and not “swam” away: but, as she could not +fly, she had a right to alter it. However, it was a very fit song for +her to sing, because she was a lady herself. + +Tom came up to her very humbly, and made his bow; and the first thing she +said was— + +“Have you wings? Can you fly?” + +“Oh dear, no, ma’am; I should not think of such thing,” said cunning +little Tom. + +“Then I shall have great pleasure in talking to you, my dear. It is +quite refreshing nowadays to see anything without wings. They must all +have wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart sort of bird, and fly. What +can they want with flying, and raising themselves above their proper +station in life? In the days of my ancestors no birds ever thought of +having wings, and did very well without; and now they all laugh at me +because I keep to the good old fashion. Why, the very marrocks and +dovekies have got wings, the vulgar creatures, and poor little ones +enough they are; and my own cousins too, the razor-bills, who are +gentlefolk born, and ought to know better than to ape their inferiors.” + +And so she was running on, while Tom tried to get in a word edgeways; and +at last he did, when the old lady got out of breath, and began fanning +herself again; and then he asked if she knew the way to Shiny Wall. + +“Shiny Wall? Who should know better than I? We all came from Shiny +Wall, thousands of years ago, when it was decently cold, and the climate +was fit for gentlefolk; but now, what with the heat, and what with these +vulgar-winged things who fly up and down and eat everything, so that +gentlepeople’s hunting is all spoilt, and one really cannot get one’s +living, or hardly venture off the rock for fear of being flown against by +some creature that would not have dared to come within a mile of one a +thousand years ago—what was I saying? Why, we have quite gone down in +the world, my dear, and have nothing left but our honour. And I am the +last of my family. A friend of mine and I came and settled on this rock +when we were young, to be out of the way of low people. Once we were a +great nation, and spread over all the Northern Isles. But men shot us +so, and knocked us on the head, and took our eggs—why, if you will +believe it, they say that on the coast of Labrador the sailors used to +lay a plank from the rock on board the thing called their ship, and drive +us along the plank by hundreds, till we tumbled down into the ship’s +waist in heaps; and then, I suppose, they ate us, the nasty fellows! +Well—but—what was I saying? At last, there were none of us left, except +on the old Gairfowlskerry, just off the Iceland coast, up which no man +could climb. Even there we had no peace; for one day, when I was quite a +young girl, the land rocked, and the sea boiled, and the sky grew dark, +and all the air was filled with smoke and dust, and down tumbled the old +Gairfowlskerry into the sea. The dovekies and marrocks, of course, all +flew away; but we were too proud to do that. Some of us were dashed to +pieces, and some drowned; and those who were left got away to Eldey, and +the dovekies tell me they are all dead now, and that another +Gairfowlskerry has risen out of the sea close to the old one, but that it +is such a poor flat place that it is not safe to live on: and so here I +am left alone.” + +This was the Gairfowl’s story, and, strange as it may seem, it is every +word of it true. + +“If you only had had wings!” said Tom; “then you might all have flown +away too.” + +“Yes, young gentleman: and if people are not gentleman and ladies, and +forget that _noblesse oblige_, they will find it as easy to get on in the +world as other people who don’t care what they do. Why, if I had not +recollected that _noblesse oblige_, I should not have been all alone +now.” And the poor old lady sighed. + +“How was that, ma’am?” + +“Why, my dear, a gentleman came hither with me, and after we had been +here some time, he wanted to marry—in fact, he actually proposed to me. +Well, I can’t blame him; I was young, and very handsome then, I don’t +deny: but you see, I could not hear of such a thing, because he was my +deceased sister’s husband, you see?” + +“Of course not, ma’am,” said Tom; though, of course, he knew nothing +about it. “She was very much diseased, I suppose?” + +“You do not understand me, my dear. I mean, that being a lady, and with +right and honourable feelings, as our house always has had, I felt it my +duty to snub him, and howk him, and peck him continually, to keep him at +his proper distance; and, to tell the truth, I once pecked him a little +too hard, poor fellow, and he tumbled backwards off the rock, and—really, +it was very unfortunate, but it was not my fault—a shark coming by saw +him flapping, and snapped him up. And since then I have lived all alone— + + ‘_With a fal-lal-la-lady_.’ + +And soon I shall be gone, my little dear, and nobody will miss me; and +then the poor stone will be left all alone.” + +“But, please, which is the way to Shiny Wall?” said Tom. + +“Oh, you must go, my little dear—you must go. Let me see—I am sure—that +is—really, my poor old brains are getting quite puzzled. Do you know, my +little dear, I am afraid, if you want to know, you must ask some of these +vulgar birds about, for I have quite forgotten.” + +And the poor old Gairfowl began to cry tears of pure oil; and Tom was +quite sorry for her; and for himself too, for he was at his wit’s end +whom to ask. + +But by there came a flock of petrels, who are Mother Carey’s own +chickens; and Tom thought them much prettier than Lady Gairfowl, and so +perhaps they were; for Mother Carey had had a great deal of fresh +experience between the time that she invented the Gairfowl and the time +that she invented them. They flitted along like a flock of black +swallows, and hopped and skipped from wave to wave, lifting up their +little feet behind them so daintily, and whistling to each other so +tenderly, that Tom fell in love with them at once, and called them to +know the way to Shiny Wall. + +“Shiny Wall? Do you want Shiny Wall? Then come with us, and we will +show you. We are Mother Carey’s own chickens, and she sends us out over +all the seas, to show the good birds the way home.” + +Tom was delighted, and swam off to them, after he had made his bow to the +Gairfowl. But she would not return his bow: but held herself bolt +upright, and wept tears of oil as she sang: + + “_And so the poor stone was left all alone_; + _With a fal-lal-la-lady_.” + +But she was wrong there; for the stone was not left all alone: and the +next time that Tom goes by it, he will see a sight worth seeing. + +The old Gairfowl is gone already: but there are better things come in her +place; and when Tom comes he will see the fishing-smacks anchored there +in hundreds, from Scotland, and from Ireland, and from the Orkneys, and +the Shetlands, and from all the Northern ports, full of the children of +the old Norse Vikings, the masters of the sea. And the men will be +hauling in the great cod by thousands, till their hands are sore from the +lines; and they will be making cod-liver oil and guano, and salting down +the fish; and there will be a man-of-war steamer there to protect them, +and a lighthouse to show them the way; and you and I, perhaps, shall go +some day to the Allalonestone to the great summer sea-fair, and dredge +strange creatures such as man never saw before; and we shall hear the +sailors boast that it is not the worst jewel in Queen Victoria’s crown, +for there are eighty miles of codbank, and food for all the poor folk in +the land. That is what Tom will see, and perhaps you and I shall see it +too. And then we shall not be sorry because we cannot get a Gairfowl to +stuff, much less find gairfowl enough to drive them into stone pens and +slaughter them, as the old Norsemen did, or drive them on board along a +plank till the ship was victualled with them, as the old English and +French rovers used to do, of whom dear old Hakluyt tells: but we shall +remember what Mr. Tennyson says: how + + “_The old order changeth_, _giving place to the new_, + _And God fulfils himself in many ways_.” + +And now Tom was all agog to start for Shiny Wall; but the petrels said +no. They must go first to Allfowlsness, and wait there for the great +gathering of all the sea-birds, before they start for their summer +breeding-places far away in the Northern Isles; and there they would be +sure to find some birds which were going to Shiny Wall: but where +Allfowlsness was, he must promise never to tell, lest men should go there +and shoot the birds, and stuff them, and put them into stupid museums, +instead of leaving them to play and breed and work in Mother Carey’s +water-garden, where they ought to be. + +So where Allfowlsness is nobody must know; and all that is to be said +about it is, that Tom waited there many days; and as he waited, he saw a +very curious sight. On the rabbit burrows on the shore there gathered +hundreds and hundreds of hoodie-crows, such as you see in Cambridgeshire. +And they made such a noise, that Tom came on shore and went up to see +what was the matter. + + [Picture: Crows] + +And there he found them holding their great caucus, which they hold every +year in the North; and all their stump-orators were speechifying; and for +a tribune, the speaker stood on an old sheep’s skull. + +And they cawed and cawed, and boasted of all the clever things they had +done; how many lambs’ eyes they had picked out, and how many dead +bullocks they had eaten, and how many young grouse they had swallowed +whole, and how many grouse-eggs they had flown away with, stuck on the +point of their bills, which is the hoodie-crow’s particularly clever +feat, of which he is as proud as a gipsy is of doing the hokany-baro; and +what that is, I won’t tell you. + +And at last they brought out the prettiest, neatest young lady-crow that +ever was seen, and set her in the middle, and all began abusing and +vilifying, and rating, and bullyragging at her, because she had stolen no +grouse-eggs, and had actually dared to say that she would not steal any. +So she was to be tried publicly by their laws (for the hoodies always try +some offenders in their great yearly parliament). And there she stood in +the middle, in her black gown and gray hood, looking as meek and as neat +as a Quakeress, and they all bawled at her at once— + +And it was in vain that she pleaded— + + _That she did not like grouse-eggs_; + + _That she could get her living very well without them_; + + _That she was afraid to eat them_, _for fear of the gamekeepers_; + + _That she had not the heart to eat them_, _because the grouse were + such pretty_, _kind_, _jolly birds_; + + _And a dozen reasons more_. + +For all the other scaul-crows set upon her, and pecked her to death there +and then, before Tom could come to help her; and then flew away, very +proud of what they had done. + +Now, was not this a scandalous transaction? + +But they are true republicans, these hoodies, who do every one just what +he likes, and make other people do so too; so that, for any freedom of +speech, thought, or action, which is allowed among them, they might as +well be American citizens of the new school. + +But the fairies took the good crow, and gave her nine new sets of +feathers running, and turned her at last into the most beautiful bird of +paradise with a green velvet suit and a long tail, and sent her to eat +fruit in the Spice Islands, where cloves and nutmegs grow. + +And Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid settled her account with the wicked hoodies. +For, as they flew away, what should they find but a nasty dead dog?—on +which they all set to work, peeking and gobbling and cawing and +quarrelling to their hearts’ content. But the moment afterwards, they +all threw up their bills into the air, and gave one screech; and then +turned head over heels backward, and fell down dead, one hundred and +twenty-three of them at once. For why? The fairy had told the +gamekeeper in a dream, to fill the dead dog full of strychnine; and so he +did. + +And after a while the birds began to gather at Allfowlsness, in thousands +and tens of thousands, blackening all the air; swans and brant geese, +harlequins and eiders, harolds and garganeys, smews and goosanders, +divers and loons, grebes and dovekies, auks and razor-bills, gannets and +petrels, skuas and terns, with gulls beyond all naming or numbering; and +they paddled and washed and splashed and combed and brushed themselves on +the sand, till the shore was white with feathers; and they quacked and +clucked and gabbled and chattered and screamed and whooped as they talked +over matters with their friends, and settled where they were to go and +breed that summer, till you might have heard them ten miles off; and +lucky it was for them that there was no one to hear them but the old +keeper, who lived all alone upon the Ness, in a turf hut thatched with +heather and fringed round with great stones slung across the roof by +bent-ropes, lest the winter gales should blow the hut right away. But he +never minded the birds nor hurt them, because they were not in season; +indeed, he minded but two things in the whole world, and those were, his +Bible and his grouse; for he was as good an old Scotchman as ever knit +stockings on a winter’s night: only, when all the birds were going, he +toddled out, and took off his cap to them, and wished them a merry +journey and a safe return; and then gathered up all the feathers which +they had left, and cleaned them to sell down south, and make feather-beds +for stuffy people to lie on. + + [Picture: The Scotchman] + +Then the petrels asked this bird and that whether they would take Tom to +Shiny Wall: but one set was going to Sutherland, and one to the +Shetlands, and one to Norway, and one to Spitzbergen, and one to Iceland, +and one to Greenland: but none would go to Shiny Wall. So the +good-natured petrels said that they would show him part of the way +themselves, but they were only going as far as Jan Mayen’s Land; and +after that he must shift for himself. + +And then all the birds rose up, and streamed away in long black lines, +north, and north-east, and north-west, across the bright blue summer sky; +and their cry was like ten thousand packs of hounds, and ten thousand +peals of bells. Only the puffins stayed behind, and killed the young +rabbits, and laid their eggs in the rabbit-burrows; which was rough +practice, certainly; but a man must see to his own family. + +And, as Tom and the petrels went north-eastward, it began to blow right +hard; for the old gentleman in the gray great-coat, who looks after the +big copper boiler, in the gulf of Mexico, had got behindhand with his +work; so Mother Carey had sent an electric message to him for more steam; +and now the steam was coming, as much in an hour as ought to have come in +a week, puffing and roaring and swishing and swirling, till you could not +see where the sky ended and the sea began. But Tom and the petrels never +cared, for the gale was right abaft, and away they went over the crests +of the billows, as merry as so many flying-fish. + +And at last they saw an ugly sight—the black side of a great ship, +waterlogged in the trough of the sea. Her funnel and her masts were +overboard, and swayed and surged under her lee; her decks were swept as +clean as a barn floor, and there was no living soul on board. + +The petrels flew up to her, and wailed round her; for they were very +sorry indeed, and also they expected to find some salt pork; and Tom +scrambled on board of her and looked round, frightened and sad. + +And there, in a little cot, lashed tight under the bulwark, lay a baby +fast asleep; the very same baby, Tom saw at once, which he had seen in +the singing lady’s arms. + +He went up to it, and wanted to wake it; but behold, from under the cot +out jumped a little black and tan terrier dog, and began barking and +snapping at Tom, and would not let him touch the cot. + +Tom knew the dog’s teeth could not hurt him: but at least it could shove +him away, and did; and he and the dog fought and struggled, for he wanted +to help the baby, and did not want to throw the poor dog overboard: but +as they were struggling there came a tall green sea, and walked in over +the weather side of the ship, and swept them all into the waves. + +“Oh, the baby, the baby!” screamed Tom: but the next moment he did not +scream at all; for he saw the cot settling down through the green water, +with the baby, smiling in it, fast asleep; and he saw the fairies come up +from below, and carry baby and cradle gently down in their soft arms; and +then he knew it was all right, and that there would be a new water-baby +in St. Brandan’s Isle. + +And the poor little dog? + + [Picture: The dog] + +Why, after he had kicked and coughed a little, he sneezed so hard, that +he sneezed himself clean out of his skin, and turned into a water-dog, +and jumped and danced round Tom, and ran over the crests of the waves, +and snapped at the jelly-fish and the mackerel, and followed Tom the +whole way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere. + +Then they went on again, till they began to see the peak of Jan Mayen’s +Land, standing-up like a white sugar-loaf, two miles above the clouds. + +And there they fell in with a whole flock of molly-mocks, who were +feeding on a dead whale. + +“These are the fellows to show you the way,” said Mother Carey’s +chickens; “we cannot help you farther north. We don’t like to get among +the ice pack, for fear it should nip our toes: but the mollys dare fly +anywhere.” + + [Picture: Mother Carey’s chickens] + +So the petrels called to the mollys: but they were so busy and greedy, +gobbling and peeking and spluttering and fighting over the blubber, that +they did not take the least notice. + +“Come, come,” said the petrels, “you lazy greedy lubbers, this young +gentleman is going to Mother Carey, and if you don’t attend on him, you +won’t earn your discharge from her, you know.” + +“Greedy we are,” says a great fat old molly, “but lazy we ain’t; and, as +for lubbers, we’re no more lubbers than you. Let’s have a look at the +lad.” + +And he flapped right into Tom’s face, and stared at him in the most +impudent way (for the mollys are audacious fellows, as all whalers know), +and then asked him where he hailed from, and what land he sighted last. + +And, when Tom told him, he seemed pleased, and said he was a good plucked +one to have got so far. + +“Come along, lads,” he said to the rest, “and give this little chap a +cast over the pack, for Mother Carey’s sake. We’ve eaten blubber enough +for to-day, and we’ll e’en work out a bit of our time by helping the +lad.” + +So the mollys took Tom up on their backs, and flew off with him, laughing +and joking—and oh, how they did smell of train oil! + +“Who are you, you jolly birds?” asked Tom. + +“We are the spirits of the old Greenland skippers (as every sailor +knows), who hunted here, right whales and horse-whales, full hundreds of +years agone. But, because we were saucy and greedy, we were all turned +into mollys, to eat whale’s blubber all our days. But lubbers we are +none, and could sail a ship now against any man in the North seas, though +we don’t hold with this new-fangled steam. And it’s a shame of those +black imps of petrels to call us so; but because they’re her grace’s +pets, they think they may say anything they like.” + +“And who are you?” asked Tom of him, for he saw that he was the king of +all the birds. + +“My name is Hendrick Hudson, and a right good skipper was I; and my name +will last to the world’s end, in spite of all the wrong I did. For I +discovered Hudson River, and I named Hudson’s Bay; and many have come in +my wake that dared not have shown me the way. But I was a hard man in my +time, that’s truth, and stole the poor Indians off the coast of Maine, +and sold them for slaves down in Virginia; and at last I was so cruel to +my sailors, here in these very seas, that they set me adrift in an open +boat, and I never was heard of more. So now I’m the king of all mollys, +till I’ve worked out my time.” + +And now they came to the edge of the pack, and beyond it they could see +Shiny Wall looming, through mist, and snow, and storm. But the pack +rolled horribly upon the swell, and the ice giants fought and roared, and +leapt upon each other’s backs, and ground each other to powder, so that +Tom was afraid to venture among them, lest he should be ground to powder +too. And he was the more afraid, when he saw lying among the ice pack +the wrecks of many a gallant ship; some with masts and yards all +standing, some with the seamen frozen fast on board. Alas, alas, for +them! They were all true English hearts; and they came to their end like +good knights-errant, in searching for the white gate that never was +opened yet. + +But the good mollys took Tom and his dog up, and flew with them safe over +the pack and the roaring ice giants, and set them down at the foot of +Shiny Wall. + +“And where is the gate?” asked Tom. + +“There is no gate,” said the mollys. + +“No gate?” cried Tom, aghast. + +“None; never a crack of one, and that’s the whole of the secret, as +better fellows, lad, than you have found to their cost; and if there had +been, they’d have killed by now every right whale that swims the sea.” + +“What am I to do, then?” + +“Dive under the floe, to be sure, if you have pluck.” + +“I’ve not come so far to turn now,” said Tom; “so here goes for a +header.” + +“A lucky voyage to you, lad,” said the mollys; “we knew you were one of +the right sort. So good-bye.” + +“Why don’t you come too?” asked Tom. + +But the mollys only wailed sadly, “We can’t go yet, we can’t go yet,” and +flew away over the pack. + +So Tom dived under the great white gate which never was opened yet, and +went on in black darkness, at the bottom of the sea, for seven days and +seven nights. And yet he was not a bit frightened. Why should he be? +He was a brave English lad, whose business is to go out and see all the +world. + +And at last he saw the light, and clear clear water overhead; and up he +came a thousand fathoms, among clouds of sea-moths, which fluttered round +his head. There were moths with pink heads and wings and opal bodies, +that flapped about slowly; moths with brown wings that flapped about +quickly; yellow shrimps that hopped and skipped most quickly of all; and +jellies of all the colours in the world, that neither hopped nor skipped, +but only dawdled and yawned, and would not get out of his way. The dog +snapped at them till his jaws were tired; but Tom hardly minded them at +all, he was so eager to get to the top of the water, and see the pool +where the good whales go. + +And a very large pool it was, miles and miles across, though the air was +so clear that the ice cliffs on the opposite side looked as if they were +close at hand. All round it the ice cliffs rose, in walls and spires and +battlements, and caves and bridges, and stories and galleries, in which +the ice-fairies live, and drive away the storms and clouds, that Mother +Carey’s pool may lie calm from year’s end to year’s end. And the sun +acted policeman, and walked round outside every day, peeping just over +the top of the ice wall, to see that all went right; and now and then he +played conjuring tricks, or had an exhibition of fireworks, to amuse the +ice-fairies. For he would make himself into four or five suns at once, +or paint the sky with rings and crosses and crescents of white fire, and +stick himself in the middle of them, and wink at the fairies; and I +daresay they were very much amused; for anything’s fun in the country. + +And there the good whales lay, the happy sleepy beasts, upon the still +oily sea. They were all right whales, you must know, and finners, and +razor-backs, and bottle-noses, and spotted sea-unicorns with long ivory +horns. But the sperm whales are such raging, ramping, roaring, +rumbustious fellows, that, if Mother Carey let them in, there would be no +more peace in Peacepool. So she packs them away in a great pond by +themselves at the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three miles +south-south-east of Mount Erebus, the great volcano in the ice; and there +they butt each other with their ugly noses, day and night from year’s end +to year’s end. + + [Picture: Mother Carey] + +But here there were only good quiet beasts, lying about like the black +hulls of sloops, and blowing every now and then jets of white steam, or +sculling round with their huge mouths open, for the sea-moths to swim +down their throats. There were no threshers there to thresh their poor +old backs, or sword-fish to stab their stomachs, or saw-fish to rip them +up, or ice-sharks to bite lumps out of their sides, or whalers to harpoon +and lance them. They were quite safe and happy there; and all they had +to do was to wait quietly in Peacepool, till Mother Carey sent for them +to make them out of old beasts into new. + +Tom swam up to the nearest whale, and asked the way to Mother Carey. + +“There she sits in the middle,” said the whale. + +Tom looked; but he could see nothing in the middle of the pool, but one +peaked iceberg: and he said so. + +“That’s Mother Carey,” said the whale, “as you will find when you get to +her. There she sits making old beasts into new all the year round.” + +“How does she do that?” + +“That’s her concern, not mine,” said the old whale; and yawned so wide +(for he was very large) that there swam into his mouth 943 sea-moths, +13,846 jelly-fish no bigger than pins’ heads, a string of salpæ nine +yards long, and forty-three little ice-crabs, who gave each other a +parting pinch all round, tucked their legs under their stomachs, and +determined to die decently, like Julius Cæsar. + +“I suppose,” said Tom, “she cuts up a great whale like you into a whole +shoal of porpoises?” + +At which the old whale laughed so violently that he coughed up all the +creatures; who swam away again very thankful at having escaped out of +that terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourne no traveller +returns; and Tom went on to the iceberg, wondering. + +And, when he came near it, it took the form of the grandest old lady he +had ever seen—a white marble lady, sitting on a white marble throne. And +from the foot of the throne there swum away, out and out into the sea, +millions of new-born creatures, of more shapes and colours than man ever +dreamed. And they were Mother Carey’s children, whom she makes out of +the sea-water all day long. + + [Picture: Mother Carey] + +He expected, of course—like some grown people who ought to know better—to +find her snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching, cobbling, basting, +filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing, moulding, measuring, +chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men do when they go to work to +make anything. + +But, instead of that, she sat quite still with her chin upon her hand, +looking down into the sea with two great grand blue eyes, as blue as the +sea itself. Her hair was as white as the snow—for she was very very +old—in fact, as old as anything which you are likely to come across, +except the difference between right and wrong. + +And, when she saw Tom, she looked at him very kindly. + +“What do you want, my little man? It is long since I have seen a +water-baby here.” + +Tom told her his errand, and asked the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere. + +“You ought to know yourself, for you have been there already.” + +“Have I, ma’am? I’m sure I forget all about it.” + +“Then look at me.” + +And, as Tom looked into her great blue eyes, he recollected the way +perfectly. + +Now, was not that strange? + +“Thank you, ma’am,” said Tom. “Then I won’t trouble your ladyship any +more; I hear you are very busy.” + +“I am never more busy than I am now,” she said, without stirring a +finger. + +“I heard, ma’am, that you were always making new beasts out of old.” + +“So people fancy. But I am not going to trouble myself to make things, +my little dear. I sit here and make them make themselves.” + +“You are a clever fairy, indeed,” thought Tom. And he was quite right. + +That is a grand trick of good old Mother Carey’s, and a grand answer, +which she has had occasion to make several times to impertinent people. + +There was once, for instance, a fairy who was so clever that she found +out how to make butterflies. I don’t mean sham ones; no: but real live +ones, which would fly, and eat, and lay eggs, and do everything that they +ought; and she was so proud of her skill that she went flying straight +off to the North Pole, to boast to Mother Carey how she could make +butterflies. + +But Mother Carey laughed. + +“Know, silly child,” she said, “that any one can make things, if they +will take time and trouble enough: but it is not every one who, like me, +can make things make themselves.” + +But people do not yet believe that Mother Carey is as clever as all that +comes to; and they will not till they, too, go the journey to the +Other-end-of-Nowhere. + +“And now, my pretty little man,” said Mother Carey, “you are sure you +know the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere?” + +Tom thought; and behold, he had forgotten it utterly. + +“That is because you took your eyes off me.” + +Tom looked at her again, and recollected; and then looked away, and +forgot in an instant. + +“But what am I to do, ma’am? For I can’t keep looking at you when I am +somewhere else.” + +“You must do without me, as most people have to do, for nine hundred and +ninety-nine thousandths of their lives; and look at the dog instead; for +he knows the way well enough, and will not forget it. Besides, you may +meet some very queer-tempered people there, who will not let you pass +without this passport of mine, which you must hang round your neck and +take care of; and, of course, as the dog will always go behind you, you +must go the whole way backward.” + +“Backward!” cried Tom. “Then I shall not be able to see my way.” + +“On the contrary, if you look forward, you will not see a step before +you, and be certain to go wrong; but, if you look behind you, and watch +carefully whatever you have passed, and especially keep your eye on the +dog, who goes by instinct, and therefore can’t go wrong, then you will +know what is coming next, as plainly as if you saw it in a +looking-glass.” + +Tom was very much astonished: but he obeyed her, for he had learnt always +to believe what the fairies told him. + +“So it is, my dear child,” said Mother Carey; “and I will tell you a +story, which will show you that I am perfectly right, as it is my custom +to be. + +“Once on a time, there were two brothers. One was called Prometheus, +because he always looked before him, and boasted that he was wise +beforehand. The other was called Epimetheus, because he always looked +behind him, and did not boast at all; but said humbly, like the Irishman, +that he had sooner prophesy after the event. + +“Well, Prometheus was a very clever fellow, of course, and invented all +sorts of wonderful things. But, unfortunately, when they were set to +work, to work was just what they would not do: wherefore very little has +come of them, and very little is left of them; and now nobody knows what +they were, save a few archæological old gentlemen who scratch in queer +corners, and find little there save Ptinum Furem, Blaptem Mortisagam, +Acarum Horridum, and Tineam Laciniarum. + +“But Epimetheus was a very slow fellow, certainly, and went among men for +a clod, and a muff, and a milksop, and a slowcoach, and a bloke, and a +boodle, and so forth. And very little he did, for many years: but what +he did, he never had to do over again. + +“And what happened at last? There came to the two brothers the most +beautiful creature that ever was seen, Pandora by name; which means, All +the gifts of the Gods. But because she had a strange box in her hand, +this fanciful, forecasting, suspicious, prudential, theoretical, +deductive, prophesying Prometheus, who was always settling what was going +to happen, would have nothing to do with pretty Pandora and her box. + +“But Epimetheus took her and it, as he took everything that came; and +married her for better for worse, as every man ought, whenever he has +even the chance of a good wife. And they opened the box between them, of +course, to see what was inside: for, else, of what possible use could it +have been to them? + +“And out flew all the ills which flesh is heir to; all the children of +the four great bogies, Self-will, Ignorance, Fear, and Dirt—for instance: + +_Measles_, _Famines_, +_Monks_, _Quacks_, +_Scarlatina_, _Unpaid bills_, +_Idols_, _Tight stays_, +_Hooping-coughs_, _Potatoes_, +_Popes_, _Bad Wine_, +_Wars_, _Despots_, +_Peacemongers_, _Demagogues_, +_And_, _worst of all_, _Naughty Boys +and Girls_. + +But one thing remained at the bottom of the box, and that was, Hope. + +“So Epimetheus got a great deal of trouble, as most men do in this world: +but he got the three best things in the world into the bargain—a good +wife, and experience, and hope: while Prometheus had just as much +trouble, and a great deal more (as you will hear), of his own making; +with nothing beside, save fancies spun out of his own brain, as a spider +spins her web out of her stomach. + +“And Prometheus kept on looking before him so far ahead, that as he was +running about with a box of lucifers (which were the only useful things +he ever invented, and do as much harm as good), he trod on his own nose, +and tumbled down (as most deductive philosophers do), whereby he set the +Thames on fire; and they have hardly put it out again yet. So he had to +be chained to the top of a mountain, with a vulture by him to give him a +peck whenever he stirred, lest he should turn the whole world upside down +with his prophecies and his theories. + +“But stupid old Epimetheus went working and grubbing on, with the help of +his wife Pandora, always looking behind him to see what had happened, +till he really learnt to know now and then what would happen next; and +understood so well which side his bread was buttered, and which way the +cat jumped, that he began to make things which would work, and go on +working, too; to till and drain the ground, and to make looms, and ships, +and railroads, and steam ploughs, and electric telegraphs, and all the +things which you see in the Great Exhibition; and to foretell famine, and +bad weather, and the price of stocks and (what is hardest of all) the +next vagary of the great idol Whirligig, which some call Public Opinion; +till at last he grew as rich as a Jew, and as fat as a farmer, and people +thought twice before they meddled with him, but only once before they +asked him to help them; for, because he earned his money well, he could +afford to spend it well likewise. + +“And his children are the men of science, who get good lasting work done +in the world; but the children of Prometheus are the fanatics, and the +theorists, and the bigots, and the bores, and the noisy windy people, who +go telling silly folk what will happen, instead of looking to see what +has happened already.” + +Now, was not Mother Carey’s a wonderful story? And, I am happy to say, +Tom believed it every word. + + [Picture: Old Mother Shipton] + +For so it happened to Tom likewise. He was very sorely tried; for +though, by keeping the dog to heels (or rather to toes, for he had to +walk backward), he could see pretty well which way the dog was hunting, +yet it was much slower work to go backwards than to go forwards. But, +what was more trying still, no sooner had he got out of Peacepool, than +there came running to him all the conjurors, fortune-tellers, +astrologers, prophesiers, projectors, prestigiators, as many as were in +those parts (and there are too many of them everywhere), Old Mother +Shipton on her broomstick, with Merlin, Thomas the Rhymer, Gerbertus, +Rabanus Maurus, Nostradamus, Zadkiel, Raphael, Moore, Old Nixon, and a +good many in black coats and white ties who might have known better, +considering in what century they were born, all bawling and screaming at +him, “Look a-head, only look a-head; and we will show you what man never +saw before, and right away to the end of the world!” + +But I am proud to say that, though Tom had not been to Cambridge—for, if +he had, he would have certainly been senior wrangler—he was such a little +dogged, hard, gnarly, foursquare brick of an English boy, that he never +turned his head round once all the way from Peacepool to the +Other-end-of-Nowhere: but kept his eye on the dog, and let him pick out +the scent, hot or cold, straight or crooked, wet or dry, up hill or down +dale; by which means he never made a single mistake, and saw all the +wonderful and hitherto by-no-mortal-man-imagined things, which it is my +duty to relate to you in the next chapter. + + [Picture: Tom and dog] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII AND LAST + + + “Come to me, O ye children! + For I hear you at your play; + And the questions that perplexed me + Have vanished quite away. + + “Ye open the Eastern windows, + That look towards the sun, + Where thoughts are singing swallows, + And the brooks of morning run. + + [Picture: Two young girls] + + “For what are all our contrivings + And the wisdom of our books, + When compared with your caresses, + And the gladness of your looks? + + “Ye are better than all the ballads + That ever were sung or said; + For ye are living poems, + And all the rest are dead.” + + LONGFELLOW. + +[Picture: Tom and dog] HERE begins the never-to-be-too-much-studied +account of the nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth part of the wonderful things +which Tom saw on his journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere; which all good +little children are requested to read; that, if ever they get to the +Other-end-of-Nowhere, as they may very probably do, they may not burst +out laughing, or try to run away, or do any other silly vulgar thing +which may offend Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. + +Now, as soon as Tom had left Peacepool, he came to the white lap of the +great sea-mother, ten thousand fathoms deep; where she makes world-pap +all day long, for the steam-giants to knead, and the fire-giants to bake, +till it has risen and hardened into mountain-loaves and island-cakes. + +And there Tom was very near being kneaded up in the world-pap, and turned +into a fossil water-baby; which would have astonished the Geological +Society of New Zealand some hundreds of thousands of years hence. + +For, as he walked along in the silence of the sea-twilight, on the soft +white ocean floor, he was aware of a hissing, and a roaring, and a +thumping, and a pumping, as of all the steam-engines in the world at +once. And, when he came near, the water grew boiling-hot; not that that +hurt him in the least: but it also grew as foul as gruel; and every +moment he stumbled over dead shells, and fish, and sharks, and seals, and +whales, which had been killed by the hot water. + +And at last he came to the great sea-serpent himself, lying dead at the +bottom; and as he was too thick to scramble over, Tom had to walk round +him three-quarters of a mile and more, which put him out of his path +sadly; and, when he had got round, he came to the place called Stop. And +there he stopped, and just in time. + +For he was on the edge of a vast hole in the bottom of the sea, up which +was rushing and roaring clear steam enough to work all the engines in the +world at once; so clear, indeed, that it was quite light at moments; and +Tom could see almost up to the top of the water above, and down below +into the pit for nobody knows how far. + +But, as soon as he bent his head over the edge, he got such a rap on the +nose from pebbles, that he jumped back again; for the steam, as it rushed +up, rasped away the sides of the hole, and hurled it up into the sea in a +shower of mud and gravel and ashes; and then it spread all around, and +sank again, and covered in the dead fish so fast, that before Tom had +stood there five minutes he was buried in silt up to his ankles, and +began to be afraid that he should have been buried alive. + +And perhaps he would have been, but that while he was thinking, the whole +piece of ground on which he stood was torn off and blown upwards, and +away flew Tom a mile up through the sea, wondering what was coming next. + +At last he stopped—thump! and found himself tight in the legs of the most +wonderful bogy which he had ever seen. + +It had I don’t know how many wings, as big as the sails of a windmill, +and spread out in a ring like them; and with them it hovered over the +steam which rushed up, as a ball hovers over the top of a fountain. And +for every wing above it had a leg below, with a claw like a comb at the +tip, and a nostril at the root; and in the middle it had no stomach and +one eye; and as for its mouth, that was all on one side, as the +madreporiform tubercle in a star-fish is. Well, it was a very strange +beast; but no stranger than some dozens which you may see. + +“What do you want here,” it cried quite peevishly, “getting in my way?” +and it tried to drop Tom: but he held on tight to its claws, thinking +himself safer where he was. + +So Tom told him who he was, and what his errand was. And the thing +winked its one eye, and sneered: + +“I am too old to be taken in in that way. You are come after gold—I know +you are.” + +“Gold! What is gold?” And really Tom did not know; but the suspicious +old bogy would not believe him. + +But after a while Tom began to understand a little. For, as the vapours +came up out of the hole, the bogy smelt them with his nostrils, and +combed them and sorted them with his combs; and then, when they steamed +up through them against his wings, they were changed into showers and +streams of metal. From one wing fell gold-dust, and from another silver, +and from another copper, and from another tin, and from another lead, and +so on, and sank into the soft mud, into veins and cracks, and hardened +there. Whereby it comes to pass that the rocks are full of metal. + +But, all of a sudden, somebody shut off the steam below, and the hole was +left empty in an instant: and then down rushed the water into the hole, +in such a whirlpool that the bogy spun round and round as fast as a +teetotum. But that was all in his day’s work, like a fair fall with the +hounds; so all he did was to say to Tom— + +“Now is your time, youngster, to get down, if you are in earnest, which I +don’t believe.” + +“You’ll soon see,” said Tom; and away he went, as bold as Baron +Munchausen, and shot down the rushing cataract like a salmon at +Ballisodare. + +And, when he got to the bottom, he swam till he was washed on shore safe +upon the Other-end-of-Nowhere; and he found it, to his surprise, as most +other people do, much more like This-End-of-Somewhere than he had been in +the habit of expecting. + +And first he went through Waste-paper-land, where all the stupid books +lie in heaps, up hill and down dale, like leaves in a winter wood; and +there he saw people digging and grubbing among them, to make worse books +out of bad ones, and thrashing chaff to save the dust of it; and a very +good trade they drove thereby, especially among children. + +Then he went by the sea of slops, to the mountain of messes, and the +territory of tuck, where the ground was very sticky, for it was all made +of bad toffee (not Everton toffee, of course), and full of deep cracks +and holes choked with wind-fallen fruit, and green goose-berries, and +sloes, and crabs, and whinberries, and hips and haws, and all the nasty +things which little children will eat, if they can get them. But the +fairies hide them out of the way in that country as fast as they can, and +very hard work they have, and of very little use it is. For as fast as +they hide away the old trash, foolish and wicked people make fresh trash +full of lime and poisonous paints, and actually go and steal receipts out +of old Madame Science’s big book to invent poisons for little children, +and sell them at wakes and fairs and tuck-shops. Very well. Let them go +on. Dr. Letheby and Dr. Hassall cannot catch them, though they are +setting traps for them all day long. But the Fairy with the birch-rod +will catch them all in time, and make them begin at one corner of their +shops, and eat their way out at the other: by which time they will have +got such stomach-aches as will cure them of poisoning little children. + +Next he saw all the little people in the world, writing all the little +books in the world, about all the other little people in the world; +probably because they had no great people to write about: and if the +names of the books were not Squeeky, nor the Pump-lighter, nor the Narrow +Narrow World, nor the Hills of the Chattermuch, nor the Children’s +Twaddeday, why then they were something else. And, all the rest of the +little people in the world read the books, and thought themselves each as +good as the President; and perhaps they were right, for every one knows +his own business best. But Tom thought he would sooner have a jolly good +fairy tale, about Jack the Giant-killer or Beauty and the Beast, which +taught him something that he didn’t know already. + +And next he came to the centre of Creation (the hub, they call it there), +which lies in latitude 42.21° south, and longitude 108.56° east. + +And there he found all the wise people instructing mankind in the science +of spirit-rapping, while their house was burning over their heads: and +when Tom told them of the fire, they held an indignation meeting +forthwith, and unanimously determined to hang Tom’s dog for coming into +their country with gunpowder in his mouth. Tom couldn’t help saying that +though they did fancy they had carried all the wit away with them out of +Lincolnshire two hundred years ago, yet if they had had one such +Lincolnshire nobleman among them as good old Lord Yarborough, he would +have called for the fire-engines before he hanged other people’s dogs. +But it was of no use, and the dog was hanged: and Tom couldn’t even have +his carcase; for they had abolished the have-his-carcase act in that +country, for fear lest when rogues fell out, honest men should come by +their own. And so they would have succeeded perfectly, as they always +do, only that (as they also always do) they failed in one little +particular, viz. that the dog would not die, being a water-dog, but bit +their fingers so abominably that they were forced to let him go, and Tom +likewise, as British subjects. Whereon they recommenced rapping for the +spirits of their fathers; and very much astonished the poor old spirits +were when they came, and saw how, according to the laws of Mrs. +Bedonebyasyoudid, their descendants had weakened their constitution by +hard living. + +Then came Tom to the Island of Polupragmosyne (which some call Rogues’ +Harbour; but they are wrong; for that is in the middle of Bramshill +Bushes, and the county police have cleared it out long ago). There every +one knows his neighbour’s business better than his own; and a very noisy +place it is, as might be expected, considering that all the inhabitants +are _ex officio_ on the wrong side of the house in the “Parliament of +Man, and the Federation of the World;” and are always making wry mouths, +and crying that the fairies’ grapes were sour. + +There Tom saw ploughs drawing horses, nails driving hammers, birds’ nests +taking boys, books making authors, bulls keeping china-shops, monkeys +shaving cats, dead dogs drilling live lions, blind brigadiers shelfed as +principals of colleges, play-actors not in the least shelfed as popular +preachers; and, in short, every one set to do something which he had not +learnt, because in what he had learnt, or pretended to learn, he had +failed. + +There stands the Pantheon of the Great Unsuccessful, from the builders of +the Tower of Babel to those of the Trafalgar Fountains; in which +politicians lecture on the constitutions which ought to have marched, +conspirators on the revolutions which ought to have succeeded, economists +on the schemes which ought to have made every one’s fortune, and +projectors on the discoveries which ought to have set the Thames on fire. +There cobblers lecture on orthopedy (whatsoever that may be) because they +cannot sell their shoes; and poets on Æsthetics (whatsoever that may be) +because they cannot sell their poetry. There philosophers demonstrate +that England would be the freest and richest country in the world, if she +would only turn Papist again; penny-a-liners abuse the Times, because +they have not wit enough to get on its staff; and young ladies walk about +with lockets of Charles the First’s hair (or of somebody else’s, when the +Jews’ genuine stock is used up), inscribed with the neat and appropriate +legend—which indeed is popular through all that land, and which, I hope, +you will learn to translate in due time and to perpend likewise:— + + “_Victrix causa diis placuit_, _sed victa puellis_.” + +When he got into the middle of the town, they all set on him at once, to +show him his way; or rather, to show him that he did not know his way; +for as for asking him what way he wanted to go, no one ever thought of +that. + +But one pulled him hither, and another poked him thither, and a third +cried— + +“You mustn’t go west, I tell you; it is destruction to go west.” + +“But I am not going west, as you may see,” said Tom. + +And another, “The east lies here, my dear; I assure you this is the +east.” + +“But I don’t want to go east,” said Tom. + +“Well, then, at all events, whichever way you are going, you are going +wrong,” cried they all with one voice—which was the only thing which they +ever agreed about; and all pointed at once to all the thirty-and-two +points of the compass, till Tom thought all the sign-posts in England had +got together, and fallen fighting. + +And whether he would have ever escaped out of the town, it is hard to +say, if the dog had not taken it into his head that they were going to +pull his master in pieces, and tackled them so sharply about the +gastrocnemius muscle, that he gave them some business of their own to +think of at last; and while they were rubbing their bitten calves, Tom +and the dog got safe away. + +On the borders of that island he found Gotham, where the wise men live; +the same who dragged the pond because the moon had fallen into it, and +planted a hedge round the cuckoo, to keep spring all the year. And he +found them bricking up the town gate, because it was so wide that little +folks could not get through. And, when he asked why, they told him they +were expanding their liturgy. So he went on; for it was no business of +his: only he could not help saying that in his country, if the kitten +could not get in at the same hole as the cat, she might stay outside and +mew. + +But he saw the end of such fellows, when he came to the island of the +Golden Asses, where nothing but thistles grow. For there they were all +turned into mokes with ears a yard long, for meddling with matters which +they do not understand, as Lucius did in the story. And like him, mokes +they must remain, till, by the laws of development, the thistles develop +into roses. Till then, they must comfort themselves with the thought, +that the longer their ears are, the thicker their hides; and so a good +beating don’t hurt them. + +Then came Tom to the great land of Hearsay, in which are no less than +thirty and odd kings, beside half a dozen Republics, and perhaps more by +next mail. + +And there he fell in with a deep, dark, deadly, and destructive war, +waged by the princes and potentates of those parts, both spiritual and +temporal, against what do you think? One thing I am sure of. That +unless I told you, you would never know; nor how they waged that war +either; for all their strategy and art military consisted in the safe and +easy process of stopping their ears and screaming, “Oh, don’t tell us!” +and then running away. + +So when Tom came into that land, he found them all, high and low, man, +woman, and child, running for their lives day and night continually, and +entreating not to be told they didn’t know what: only the land being an +island, and they having a dislike to the water (being a musty lot for the +most part), they ran round and round the shore for ever, which (as the +island was exactly of the same circumference as the planet on which we +have the honour of living) was hard work, especially to those who had +business to look after. But before them, as bandmaster and fugleman, ran +a gentleman shearing a pig; the melodious strains of which animal led +them for ever, if not to conquest, still to flight; and kept up their +spirits mightily with the thought that they would at least have the pig’s +wool for their pains. + +And running after them, day and night, came such a poor, lean, seedy, +hard-worked old giant, as ought to have been cockered up, and had a good +dinner given him, and a good wife found him, and been set to play with +little children; and then he would have been a very presentable old +fellow after all; for he had a heart, though it was considerably +overgrown with brains. + +He was made up principally of fish bones and parchment, put together with +wire and Canada balsam; and smelt strongly of spirits, though he never +drank anything but water: but spirits he used somehow, there was no +denying. He had a great pair of spectacles on his nose, and a +butterfly-net in one hand, and a geological hammer in the other; and was +hung all over with pockets, full of collecting boxes, bottles, +microscopes, telescopes, barometers, ordnance maps, scalpels, forceps, +photographic apparatus, and all other tackle for finding out everything +about everything, and a little more too. And, most strange of all, he +was running not forwards but backwards, as fast as he could. + +Away all the good folks ran from him, except Tom, who stood his ground +and dodged between his legs; and the giant, when he had passed him, +looked down, and cried, as if he was quite pleased and comforted,— + +“What? who are you? And you actually don’t run away, like all the rest?” +But he had to take his spectacles off, Tom remarked, in order to see him +plainly. + +Tom told him who he was; and the giant pulled out a bottle and a cork +instantly, to collect him with. + +But Tom was too sharp for that, and dodged between his legs and in front +of him; and then the giant could not see him at all. + +“No, no, no!” said Tom, “I’ve not been round the world, and through the +world, and up to Mother Carey’s haven, beside being caught in a net and +called a Holothurian and a Cephalopod, to be bottled up by any old giant +like you.” + +And when the giant understood what a great traveller Tom had been, he +made a truce with him at once, and would have kept him there to this day +to pick his brains, so delighted was he at finding any one to tell him +what he did not know before. + +“Ah, you lucky little dog!” said he at last, quite simply—for he was the +simplest, pleasantest, honestest, kindliest old Dominie Sampson of a +giant that ever turned the world upside down without intending it—“ah, +you lucky little dog! If I had only been where you have been, to see +what you have seen!” + +“Well,” said Tom, “if you want to do that, you had best put your head +under water for a few hours, as I did, and turn into a water-baby, or +some other baby, and then you might have a chance.” + +“Turn into a baby, eh? If I could do that, and know what was happening +to me for but one hour, I should know everything then, and be at rest. +But I can’t; I can’t be a little child again; and I suppose if I could, +it would be no use, because then I should then know nothing about what +was happening to me. Ah, you lucky little dog!” said the poor old giant. + +“But why do you run after all these poor people?” said Tom, who liked the +giant very much. + +“My dear, it’s they that have been running after me, father and son, for +hundreds and hundreds of years, throwing stones at me till they have +knocked off my spectacles fifty times, and calling me a malignant and a +turbaned Turk, who beat a Venetian and traduced the State—goodness only +knows what they mean, for I never read poetry—and hunting me round and +round—though catch me they can’t, for every time I go over the same +ground, I go the faster, and grow the bigger. While all I want is to be +friends with them, and to tell them something to their advantage, like +Mr. Joseph Ady: only somehow they are so strangely afraid of hearing it. +But, I suppose I am not a man of the world, and have no tact.” + +“But why don’t you turn round and tell them so?” + +“Because I can’t. You see, I am one of the sons of Epimetheus, and must +go backwards, if I am to go at all.” + +“But why don’t you stop, and let them come up to you?” + +“Why, my dear, only think. If I did, all the butterflies and +cockyolybirds would fly past me, and then I should catch no more new +species, and should grow rusty and mouldy, and die. And I don’t intend +to do that, my dear; for I have a destiny before me, they say: though +what it is I don’t know, and don’t care.” + +“Don’t care?” said Tom. + +“No. Do the duty which lies nearest you, and catch the first beetle you +come across, is my motto; and I have thriven by it for some hundred +years. Now I must go on. Dear me, while I have been talking to you, at +least nine new species have escaped me.” + +And on went the giant, behind before, like a bull in a china-shop, till +he ran into the steeple of the great idol temple (for they are all +idolaters in those parts, of course, else they would never be afraid of +giants), and knocked the upper half clean off, hurting himself horribly +about the small of the back. + +But little he cared; for as soon as the ruins of the steeple were well +between his legs, he poked and peered among the falling stones, and +shifted his spectacles, and pulled out his pocket-magnifier, and cried— + +“An entirely new Oniscus, and three obscure Podurellæ! Besides a moth +which M. le Roi des Papillons (though he, like all Frenchmen, is given to +hasty inductions) says is confined to the limits of the Glacial Drift. +This is most important!” + +And down he sat on the nave of the temple (not being a man of the world) +to examine his Podurellæ. Whereon (as was to be expected) the roof caved +in bodily, smashing the idols, and sending the priests flying out of +doors and windows, like rabbits out of a burrow when a ferret goes in. + +But he never heeded; for out of the dust flew a bat, and the giant had +him in a moment. + +“Dear me! This is even more important! Here is a cognate species to +that which Macgilliwaukie Brown insists is confined to the Buddhist +temples of Little Thibet; and now when I look at it, it may be only a +variety produced by difference of climate!” + +And having bagged his bat, up he got, and on he went; while all the +people ran, being in none the better humour for having their temple +smashed for the sake of three obscure species of Podurella, and a +Buddhist bat. + +“Well,” thought Tom, “this is a very pretty quarrel, with a good deal to +be said on both sides. But it is no business of mine.” + +And no more it was, because he was a water-baby, and had the original sow +by the right ear; which you will never have, unless you be a baby, +whether of the water, the land, or the air, matters not, provided you can +only keep on continually being a baby. + +So the giant ran round after the people, and the people ran round after +the giant, and they are running, unto this day for aught I know, or do +not know; and will run till either he, or they, or both, turn into little +children. And then, as Shakespeare says (and therefore it must be true)— + + “_Jack shall have Gill_ + _Nought shall go ill_ + _The man shall have his mare again_, _and all go well_.” + +Then Tom came to a very famous island, which was called, in the days of +the great traveller Captain Gulliver, the Isle of Laputa. But Mrs. +Bedonebyasyoudid has named it over again the Isle of Tomtoddies, all +heads and no bodies. + +And when Tom came near it, he heard such a grumbling and grunting and +growling and wailing and weeping and whining that he thought people must +be ringing little pigs, or cropping puppies’ ears, or drowning kittens: +but when he came nearer still, he began to hear words among the noise; +which was the Tomtoddies’ song which they sing morning and evening, and +all night too, to their great idol Examination— + + “_I can’t learn my lesson_: _the examiner’s coming_!” + +And that was the only song which they knew. + +And when Tom got on shore the first thing he saw was a great pillar, on +one side of which was inscribed, “Playthings not allowed here;” at which +he was so shocked that he would not stay to see what was written on the +other side. Then he looked round for the people of the island: but +instead of men, women, and children, he found nothing but turnips and +radishes, beet and mangold wurzel, without a single green leaf among +them, and half of them burst and decayed, with toad-stools growing out of +them. Those which were left began crying to Tom, in half a dozen +different languages at once, and all of them badly spoken, “I can’t learn +my lesson; do come and help me!” And one cried, “Can you show me how to +extract this square root?” + +And another, “Can you tell me the distance between α Lyræ and β +Camelopardis?” + +And another, “What is the latitude and longitude of Snooksville, in +Noman’s County, Oregon, U.S.?” + +And another, “What was the name of Mutius Scævola’s thirteenth cousin’s +grandmother’s maid’s cat?” + +And another, “How long would it take a school-inspector of average +activity to tumble head over heels from London to York?” + +And another, “Can you tell me the name of a place that nobody ever heard +of, where nothing ever happened, in a country which has not been +discovered yet?” + +And another, “Can you show me how to correct this hopelessly corrupt +passage of Graidiocolosyrtus Tabenniticus, on the cause why crocodiles +have no tongues?” + +And so on, and so on, and so on, till one would have thought they were +all trying for tide-waiters’ places, or cornetcies in the heavy dragoons. + +“And what good on earth will it do you if I did tell you?” quoth Tom. + +Well, they didn’t know that: all they knew was the examiner was coming. + +Then Tom stumbled on the hugest and softest nimblecomequick turnip you +ever saw filling a hole in a crop of swedes, and it cried to him, “Can +you tell me anything at all about anything you like?” + +“About what?” says Tom. + +“About anything you like; for as fast as I learn things I forget them +again. So my mamma says that my intellect is not adapted for methodic +science, and says that I must go in for general information.” + +Tom told him that he did not know general information, nor any officers +in the army; only he had a friend once that went for a drummer: but he +could tell him a great many strange things which he had seen in his +travels. + +So he told him prettily enough, while the poor turnip listened very +carefully; and the more he listened, the more he forgot, and the more +water ran out of him. + +Tom thought he was crying: but it was only his poor brains running away, +from being worked so hard; and as Tom talked, the unhappy turnip streamed +down all over with juice, and split and shrank till nothing was left of +him but rind and water; whereat Tom ran away in a fright, for he thought +he might be taken up for killing the turnip. + +[Picture: The turnip] But, on the contrary, the turnip’s parents were +highly delighted, and considered him a saint and a martyr, and put up a +long inscription over his tomb about his wonderful talents, early +development, and unparalleled precocity. Were they not a foolish couple? +But there was a still more foolish couple next to them, who were beating +a wretched little radish, no bigger than my thumb, for sullenness and +obstinacy and wilful stupidity, and never knew that the reason why it +couldn’t learn or hardly even speak was, that there was a great worm +inside it eating out all its brains. But even they are no foolisher than +some hundred score of papas and mammas, who fetch the rod when they ought +to fetch a new toy, and send to the dark cupboard instead of to the +doctor. + +Tom was so puzzled and frightened with all he saw, that he was longing to +ask the meaning of it; and at last he stumbled over a respectable old +stick lying half covered with earth. But a very stout and worthy stick +it was, for it belonged to good Roger Ascham in old time, and had carved +on its head King Edward the Sixth, with the Bible in his hand. + +“You see,” said the stick, “there were as pretty little children once as +you could wish to see, and might have been so still if they had been only +left to grow up like human beings, and then handed over to me; but their +foolish fathers and mothers, instead of letting them pick flowers, and +make dirt-pies, and get birds’ nests, and dance round the gooseberry +bush, as little children should, kept them always at lessons, working, +working, working, learning week-day lessons all week-days, and Sunday +lessons all Sunday, and weekly examinations every Saturday, and monthly +examinations every month, and yearly examinations every year, everything +seven times over, as if once was not enough, and enough as good as a +feast—till their brains grew big, and their bodies grew small, and they +were all changed into turnips, with little but water inside; and still +their foolish parents actually pick the leaves off them as fast as they +grow, lest they should have anything green about them.” + +“Ah!” said Tom, “if dear Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby knew of it she would +send them a lot of tops, and balls, and marbles, and ninepins, and make +them all as jolly as sand-boys.” + +“It would be no use,” said the stick. “They can’t play now, if they +tried. Don’t you see how their legs have turned to roots and grown into +the ground, by never taking any exercise, but sapping and moping always +in the same place? But here comes the Examiner-of-all-Examiners. So you +had better get away, I warn you, or he will examine you and your dog into +the bargain, and set him to examine all the other dogs, and you to +examine all the other water-babies. There is no escaping out of his +hands, for his nose is nine thousand miles long, and can go down +chimneys, and through keyholes, upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s +chamber, examining all little boys, and the little boys’ tutors likewise. +But when he is thrashed—so Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid has promised me—I shall +have the thrashing of him: and if I don’t lay it on with a will it’s a +pity.” + +Tom went off: but rather slowly and surlily; for he was somewhat minded +to face this same Examiner-of-all-Examiners, who came striding among the +poor turnips, binding heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and laying +them on little children’s shoulders, like the Scribes and Pharisees of +old, and not touching the same with one of his fingers; for he had plenty +of money, and a fine house to live in, and so forth; which was more than +the poor little turnips had. + +But when he got near, he looked so big and burly and dictatorial, and +shouted so loud to Tom, to come and be examined, that Tom ran for his +life, and the dog too. And really it was time; for the poor turnips, in +their hurry and fright, crammed themselves so fast to be ready for the +Examiner, that they burst and popped by dozens all round him, till the +place sounded like Aldershot on a field-day, and Tom thought he should be +blown into the air, dog and all. + +As he went down to the shore he passed the poor turnip’s new tomb. But +Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid had taken away the epitaph about talents and +precocity and development, and put up one of her own instead which Tom +thought much more sensible:— + + “_Instruction sore long time I bore_, + _And cramming was in vain_; + _Till heaven did please my woes to ease_ + _With water on the brain_.” + +So Tom jumped into the sea, and swam on his way, singing:— + + “_Farewell_, _Tomtoddies all_; _I thank my stars_ + _That nought I know save those three royal r’s_: + _Reading and riting sure_, _with rithmetick_, + _Will help a lad of sense through thin and thick_.” + +Whereby you may see that Tom was no poet: but no more was John Bunyan, +though he was as wise a man as you will meet in a month of Sundays. + +And next he came to Oldwivesfabledom, where the folks were all heathens, +and worshipped a howling ape. And there he found a little boy sitting in +the middle of the road, and crying bitterly. + +“What are you crying for?” said Tom. + +“Because I am not as frightened as I could wish to be.” + +“Not frightened? You are a queer little chap: but, if you want to be +frightened, here goes—Boo!” + +“Ah,” said the little boy, “that is very kind of you; but I don’t feel +that it has made any impression.” + +Tom offered to upset him, punch him, stamp on him, fettle him over the +head with a brick, or anything else whatsoever which would give him the +slightest comfort. + +But he only thanked Tom very civilly, in fine long words which he had +heard other folk use, and which therefore, he thought were fit and proper +to use himself; and cried on till his papa and mamma came, and sent off +for the Powwow man immediately. And a very good-natured gentleman and +lady they were, though they were heathens; and talked quite pleasantly to +Tom about his travels, till the Powwow man arrived, with his thunderbox +under his arm. + +And a well-fed, ill-favoured gentleman he was, as ever served Her Majesty +at Portland. Tom was a little frightened at first; for he thought it was +Grimes. But he soon saw his mistake: for Grimes always looked a man in +the face; and this fellow never did. And when he spoke, it was fire and +smoke; and when he sneezed, it was squibs and crackers; and when he cried +(which he did whenever it paid him), it was boiling pitch; and some of it +was sure to stick. + +“Here we are again!” cried he, like the clown in a pantomime. “So you +can’t feel frightened, my little dear—eh? I’ll do that for you. I’ll +make an impression on you! Yah! Boo! Whirroo! Hullabaloo!” + +And he rattled, thumped, brandished his thunderbox, yelled, shouted, +raved, roared, stamped, and danced corrobory like any black fellow; and +then he touched a spring in the thunderbox, and out popped turnip-ghosts +and magic-lanthorns and pasteboard bogies and spring-heeled Jacks, and +sallaballas, with such a horrid din, clatter, clank, roll, rattle, and +roar, that the little boy turned up the whites of his eyes, and fainted +right away. + +And at that his poor heathen papa and mamma were as much delighted as if +they had found a gold mine; and fell down upon their knees before the +Powwow man, and gave him a palanquin with a pole of solid silver and +curtains of cloth of gold; and carried him about in it on their own +backs: but as soon as they had taken him up, the pole stuck to their +shoulders, and they could not set him down any more, but carried him on +willynilly, as Sinbad carried the old man of the sea: which was a +pitiable sight to see; for the father was a very brave officer, and wore +two swords and a blue button; and the mother was as pretty a lady as ever +had pinched feet like a Chinese. But you see, they had chosen to do a +foolish thing just once too often; so, by the laws of Mrs. +Bedonebyasyoudid, they had to go on doing it whether they chose or not, +till the coming of the Cocqcigrues. + +Ah! don’t you wish that some one would go and convert those poor +heathens, and teach them not to frighten their little children into fits? + +“Now, then,” said the Powwow man to Tom, “wouldn’t you like to be +frightened, my little dear? For I can see plainly that you are a very +wicked, naughty, graceless, reprobate boy.” + +“You’re another,” quoth Tom, very sturdily. And when the man ran at him, +and cried “Boo!” Tom ran at him in return, and cried “Boo!” likewise, +right in his face, and set the little dog upon him; and at his legs the +dog went. + +At which, if you will believe it, the fellow turned tail, thunderbox and +all, with a “Woof!” like an old sow on the common; and ran for his life, +screaming, “Help! thieves! murder! fire! He is going to kill me! I am a +ruined man! He will murder me; and break, burn, and destroy my precious +and invaluable thunderbox; and then you will have no more thunder-showers +in the land. Help! help! help!” + +At which the papa and mamma and all the people of Oldwivesfabledom flew +at Tom, shouting, “Oh, the wicked, impudent, hard-hearted, graceless boy! +Beat him, kick him, shoot him, drown him, hang him, burn him!” and so +forth: but luckily they had nothing to shoot, hang, or burn him with, for +the fairies had hid all the killing-tackle out of the way a little while +before; so they could only pelt him with stones; and some of the stones +went clean through him, and came out the other side. But he did not mind +that a bit; for the holes closed up again as fast as they were made, +because he was a water-baby. However, he was very glad when he was safe +out of the country, for the noise there made him all but deaf. + +Then he came to a very quiet place, called Leaveheavenalone. And there +the sun was drawing water out of the sea to make steam-threads, and the +wind was twisting them up to make cloud-patterns, till they had worked +between them the loveliest wedding veil of Chantilly lace, and hung it up +in their own Crystal Palace for any one to buy who could afford it; while +the good old sea never grudged, for she knew they would pay her back +honestly. So the sun span, and the wind wove, and all went well with the +great steam-loom; as is likely, considering—and considering—and +considering— + +And at last, after innumerable adventures, each more wonderful than the +last, he saw before him a huge building, much bigger, and—what is most +surprising—a little uglier than a certain new lunatic asylum, but not +built quite of the same materials. None of it, at least—or, indeed, for +aught that I ever saw, any part of any other building whatsoever—is cased +with nine-inch brick inside and out, and filled up with rubble between +the walls, in order that any gentleman who has been confined during Her +Majesty’s pleasure may be unconfined during his own pleasure, and take a +walk in the neighbouring park to improve his spirits, after an hour’s +light and wholesome labour with his dinner-fork or one of the legs of his +iron bedstead. No. The walls of this building were built on an entirely +different principle, which need not be described, as it has not yet been +discovered. + +[Picture: Truncheon] Tom walked towards this great building, wondering +what it was, and having a strange fancy that he might find Mr. Grimes +inside it, till he saw running toward him, and shouting “Stop!” three or +four people, who, when they came nearer, were nothing else than +policemen’s truncheons, running along without legs or arms. + +Tom was not astonished. He was long past that. Besides, he had seen the +naviculæ in the water move nobody knows how, a hundred times, without +arms, or legs, or anything to stand in their stead. Neither was he +frightened for he had been doing no harm. + +So he stopped; and, when the foremost truncheon came up and asked his +business, he showed Mother Carey’s pass; and the truncheon looked at it +in the oddest fashion; for he had one eye in the middle of his upper end, +so that when he looked at anything, being quite stiff, he had to slope +himself, and poke himself, till it was a wonder why he did not tumble +over; but, being quite full of the spirit of justice (as all policemen, +and their truncheons, ought to be), he was always in a position of stable +equilibrium, whichever way he put himself. + +“All right—pass on,” said he at last. And then he added: “I had better +go with you, young man.” And Tom had no objection, for such company was +both respectable and safe; so the truncheon coiled its thong neatly round +its handle, to prevent tripping itself up—for the thong had got loose in +running—and marched on by Tom’s side. + +“Why have you no policeman to carry you?” asked Tom, after a while. + +“Because we are not like those clumsy-made truncheons in the land-world, +which cannot go without having a whole man to carry them about. We do +our own work for ourselves; and do it very well, though I say it who +should not.” + +“Then why have you a thong to your handle?” asked Tom. + +“To hang ourselves up by, of course, when we are off duty.” + +Tom had got his answer, and had no more to say, till they came up to the +great iron door of the prison. And there the truncheon knocked twice, +with its own head. + +A wicket in the door opened, and out looked a tremendous old brass +blunderbuss charged up to the muzzle with slugs, who was the porter; and +Tom started back a little at the sight of him. + + [Picture: The blunderbuss] + +“What case is this?” he asked in a deep voice, out of his broad bell +mouth. + +“If you please, sir, it is no case; only a young gentleman from her +ladyship, who wants to see Grimes, the master-sweep.” + +“Grimes?” said the blunderbuss. And he pulled in his muzzle, perhaps to +look over his prison-lists. + +“Grimes is up chimney No. 345,” he said from inside. “So the young +gentleman had better go on to the roof.” + +Tom looked up at the enormous wall, which seemed at least ninety miles +high, and wondered how he should ever get up: but, when he hinted that to +the truncheon, it settled the matter in a moment. For it whisked round, +and gave him such a shove behind as sent him up to the roof in no time, +with his little dog under his arm. + +And there he walked along the leads, till he met another truncheon, and +told him his errand. + +“Very good,” it said. “Come along: but it will be of no use. He is the +most unremorseful, hard-hearted, foul-mouthed fellow I have in charge; +and thinks about nothing but beer and pipes, which are not allowed here, +of course.” + +So they walked along over the leads, and very sooty they were, and Tom +thought the chimneys must want sweeping very much. But he was surprised +to see that the soot did not stick to his feet, or dirty them in the +least. Neither did the live coals, which were lying about in plenty, +burn him; for, being a water-baby, his radical humours were of a moist +and cold nature, as you may read at large in Lemnius, Cardan, Van +Helmont, and other gentlemen, who knew as much as they could, and no man +can know more. + +And at last they came to chimney No. 345. Out of the top of it, his head +and shoulders just showing, stuck poor Mr. Grimes, so sooty, and bleared, +and ugly, that Tom could hardly bear to look at him. And in his mouth +was a pipe; but it was not a-light; though he was pulling at it with all +his might. + + [Picture: Tom and Grimes] + +“Attention, Mr. Grimes,” said the truncheon; “here is a gentleman come to +see you.” + +But Mr. Grimes only said bad words; and kept grumbling, “My pipe won’t +draw. My pipe won’t draw.” + +“Keep a civil tongue, and attend!” said the truncheon; and popped up just +like Punch, hitting Grimes such a crack over the head with itself, that +his brains rattled inside like a dried walnut in its shell. He tried to +get his hands out, and rub the place: but he could not, for they were +stuck fast in the chimney. Now he was forced to attend. + +“Hey!” he said, “why, it’s Tom! I suppose you have come here to laugh at +me, you spiteful little atomy?” + +Tom assured him he had not, but only wanted to help him. + +“I don’t want anything except beer, and that I can’t get; and a light to +this bothering pipe, and that I can’t get either.” + +“I’ll get you one,” said Tom; and he took up a live coal (there were +plenty lying about) and put it to Grimes’ pipe: but it went out +instantly. + +“It’s no use,” said the truncheon, leaning itself up against the chimney +and looking on. “I tell you, it is no use. His heart is so cold that it +freezes everything that comes near him. You will see that presently, +plain enough.” + +“Oh, of course, it’s my fault. Everything’s always my fault,” said +Grimes. “Now don’t go to hit me again” (for the truncheon started +upright, and looked very wicked); “you know, if my arms were only free, +you daren’t hit me then.” + +The truncheon leant back against the chimney, and took no notice of the +personal insult, like a well-trained policeman as it was, though he was +ready enough to avenge any transgression against morality or order. + +“But can’t I help you in any other way? Can’t I help you to get out of +this chimney?” said Tom. + +“No,” interposed the truncheon; “he has come to the place where everybody +must help themselves; and he will find it out, I hope, before he has done +with me.” + +“Oh, yes,” said Grimes, “of course it’s me. Did I ask to be brought here +into the prison? Did I ask to be set to sweep your foul chimneys? Did I +ask to have lighted straw put under me to make me go up? Did I ask to +stick fast in the very first chimney of all, because it was so shamefully +clogged up with soot? Did I ask to stay here—I don’t know how long—a +hundred years, I do believe, and never get my pipe, nor my beer, nor +nothing fit for a beast, let alone a man?” + +“No,” answered a solemn voice behind. “No more did Tom, when you behaved +to him in the very same way.” + +It was Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. And, when the truncheon saw her, it +started bolt upright—Attention!—and made such a low bow, that if it had +not been full of the spirit of justice, it must have tumbled on its end, +and probably hurt its one eye. And Tom made his bow too. + +“Oh, ma’am,” he said, “don’t think about me; that’s all past and gone, +and good times and bad times and all times pass over. But may not I help +poor Mr. Grimes? Mayn’t I try and get some of these bricks away, that he +may move his arms?” + +“You may try, of course,” she said. + +So Tom pulled and tugged at the bricks: but he could not move one. And +then he tried to wipe Mr. Grimes’ face: but the soot would not come off. + +“Oh, dear!” he said. “I have come all this way, through all these +terrible places, to help you, and now I am of no use at all.” + +“You had best leave me alone,” said Grimes; “you are a good-natured +forgiving little chap, and that’s truth; but you’d best be off. The +hail’s coming on soon, and it will beat the eyes out of your little +head.” + +“What hail?” + +“Why, hail that falls every evening here; and, till it comes close to me, +it’s like so much warm rain: but then it turns to hail over my head, and +knocks me about like small shot.” + +“That hail will never come any more,” said the strange lady. “I have +told you before what it was. It was your mother’s tears, those which she +shed when she prayed for you by her bedside; but your cold heart froze it +into hail. But she is gone to heaven now, and will weep no more for her +graceless son.” + +Then Grimes was silent awhile; and then he looked very sad. + +“So my old mother’s gone, and I never there to speak to her! Ah! a good +woman she was, and might have been a happy one, in her little school +there in Vendale, if it hadn’t been for me and my bad ways.” + +“Did she keep the school in Vendale?” asked Tom. And then he told Grimes +all the story of his going to her house, and how she could not abide the +sight of a chimney-sweep, and then how kind she was, and how he turned +into a water-baby. + +“Ah!” said Grimes, “good reason she had to hate the sight of a +chimney-sweep. I ran away from her and took up with the sweeps, and +never let her know where I was, nor sent her a penny to help her, and now +it’s too late—too late!” said Mr. Grimes. + +And he began crying and blubbering like a great baby, till his pipe +dropped out of his mouth, and broke all to bits. + +“Oh, dear, if I was but a little chap in Vendale again, to see the clear +beck, and the apple-orchard, and the yew-hedge, how different I would go +on! But it’s too late now. So you go along, you kind little chap, and +don’t stand to look at a man crying, that’s old enough to be your father, +and never feared the face of man, nor of worse neither. But I’m beat +now, and beat I must be. I’ve made my bed, and I must lie on it. Foul I +would be, and foul I am, as an Irishwoman said to me once; and little I +heeded it. It’s all my own fault: but it’s too late.” And he cried so +bitterly that Tom began crying too. + +“Never too late,” said the fairy, in such a strange soft new voice that +Tom looked up at her; and she was so beautiful for the moment, that Tom +half fancied she was her sister. + +No more was it too late. For, as poor Grimes cried and blubbered on, his +own tears did what his mother’s could not do, and Tom’s could not do, and +nobody’s on earth could do for him; for they washed the soot off his face +and off his clothes; and then they washed the mortar away from between +the bricks; and the chimney crumbled down; and Grimes began to get out of +it. + +Up jumped the truncheon, and was going to hit him on the crown a +tremendous thump, and drive him down again like a cork into a bottle. +But the strange lady put it aside. + +“Will you obey me if I give you a chance?” + +“As you please, ma’am. You’re stronger than me—that I know too well, and +wiser than me, I know too well also. And, as for being my own master, +I’ve fared ill enough with that as yet. So whatever your ladyship +pleases to order me; for I’m beat, and that’s the truth.” + +“Be it so then—you may come out. But remember, disobey me again, and +into a worse place still you go.” + +“I beg pardon ma’am, but I never disobeyed you that I know of. I never +had the honour of setting eyes upon you till I came to these ugly +quarters.” + +“Never saw me? Who said to you, Those that will be foul, foul they will +be?” + +Grimes looked up; and Tom looked up too; for the voice was that of the +Irishwoman who met them the day that they went out together to Harthover. +“I gave you your warning then: but you gave it yourself a thousand times +before and since. Every bad word that you said—every cruel and mean +thing that you did—every time that you got tipsy—every day that you went +dirty—you were disobeying me, whether you knew it or not.” + +“If I’d only known, ma’am—” + +“You knew well enough that you were disobeying something, though you did +not know it was me. But come out and take your chance. Perhaps it may +be your last.” + +So Grimes stepped out of the chimney, and really, if it had not been for +the scars on his face, he looked as clean and respectable as a +master-sweep need look. + +“Take him away,” said she to the truncheon, “and give him his +ticket-of-leave.” + +“And what is he to do, ma’am?” + +“Get him to sweep out the crater of Etna; he will find some very steady +men working out their time there, who will teach him his business: but +mind, if that crater gets choked again, and there is an earthquake in +consequence, bring them all to me, and I shall investigate the case very +severely.” + +So the truncheon marched off Mr. Grimes, looking as meek as a drowned +worm. + +And for aught I know, or do not know, he is sweeping the crater of Etna +to this very day. + +“And now,” said the fairy to Tom, “your work here is done. You may as +well go back again.” + +“I should be glad enough to go,” said Tom, “but how am I to get up that +great hole again, now the steam has stopped blowing?” + +“I will take you up the backstairs: but I must bandage your eyes first; +for I never allow anybody to see those backstairs of mine.” + +“I am sure I shall not tell anybody about them, ma’am, if you bid me +not.” + +“Aha! So you think, my little man. But you would soon forget your +promise if you got back into the land-world. For, if people only once +found out that you had been up my backstairs, you would have all the fine +ladies kneeling to you, and the rich men emptying their purses before +you, and statesmen offering you place and power; and young and old, rich +and poor, crying to you, ‘Only tell us the great backstairs secret, and +we will be your slaves; we will make you lord, king, emperor, bishop, +archbishop, pope, if you like—only tell us the secret of the backstairs. +For thousands of years we have been paying, and petting, and obeying, and +worshipping quacks who told us they had the key of the backstairs, and +could smuggle us up them; and in spite of all our disappointments, we +will honour, and glorify, and adore, and beatify, and translate, and +apotheotise you likewise, on the chance of your knowing something about +the backstairs, that we may all go on pilgrimage to it; and, even if we +cannot get up it, lie at the foot of it, and cry— + + ‘_Oh_, _backstairs_, + _precious backstairs_, + _invaluable backstairs_, + _requisite backstairs_, + _necessary backstairs_, + _good-natured backstairs_, + _cosmopolitan backstairs_, + _comprehensive backstairs_, + _accommodating backstairs_, + _well-bred backstairs_, + _commercial backstairs_, + _economical backstairs_, + _practical backstairs_, + _logical backstairs_, + _deductive backstairs_, + _comfortable backstairs_, + _humane backstairs_, + _reasonable backstairs_, + _long-sought backstairs_, + _coveted backstairs_, + _aristocratic backstairs_, + _respectable backstairs_, + _gentlenmanlike backstairs_, + _ladylike backstairs_, + _orthodox backstairs_, + _probable backstairs_, + _credible backstairs_, + _demonstrable backstairs_, + _irrefragable backstairs_, + _potent backstairs_, + _all-but-omnipotent backstairs_, + &c. + +Save us from the consequences of our own actions, and from the cruel +fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid!’ Do not you think that you would be a +little tempted then to tell what you know, laddie?” + +Tom thought so certainly. “But why do they want so to know about the +backstairs?” asked he, being a little frightened at the long words, and +not understanding them the least; as, indeed, he was not meant to do, or +you either. + +“That I shall not tell you. I never put things into little folks’ heads +which are but too likely to come there of themselves. So come—now I must +bandage your eyes.” So she tied the bandage on his eyes with one hand, +and with the other she took it off. + +“Now,” she said, “you are safe up the stairs.” Tom opened his eyes very +wide, and his mouth too; for he had not, as he thought, moved a single +step. But, when he looked round him, there could be no doubt that he was +safe up the backstairs, whatsoever they may be, which no man is going to +tell you, for the plain reason that no man knows. + +The first thing which Tom saw was the black cedars, high and sharp +against the rosy dawn; and St. Brandan’s Isle reflected double in the +still broad silver sea. The wind sang softly in the cedars, and the +water sang among the eaves: the sea-birds sang as they streamed out into +the ocean, and the land-birds as they built among the boughs; and the air +was so full of song that it stirred St. Brandan and his hermits, as they +slumbered in the shade; and they moved their good old lips, and sang +their morning hymn amid their dreams. But among all the songs one came +across the water more sweet and clear than all; for it was the song of a +young girl’s voice. + +And what was the song which she sang? Ah, my little man, I am too old to +sing that song, and you too young to understand it. But have patience, +and keep your eye single, and your hands clean, and you will learn some +day to sing it yourself, without needing any man to teach you. + +And as Tom neared the island, there sat upon a rock the most graceful +creature that ever was seen, looking down, with her chin upon her hand, +and paddling with her feet in the water. And when they came to her she +looked up, and behold it was Ellie. + +“Oh, Miss Ellie,” said he, “how you are grown!” + +“Oh, Tom,” said she, “how you are grown too!” + + [Picture: Ellie] + +And no wonder; they were both quite grown up—he into a tall man, and she +into a beautiful woman. + +“Perhaps I may be grown,” she said. “I have had time enough; for I have +been sitting here waiting for you many a hundred years, till I thought +you were never coming.” + +“Many a hundred years?” thought Tom; but he had seen so much in his +travels that he had quite given up being astonished; and, indeed, he +could think of nothing but Ellie. So he stood and looked at Ellie, and +Ellie looked at him; and they liked the employment so much that they +stood and looked for seven years more, and neither spoke nor stirred. + +At last they heard the fairy say: “Attention, children. Are you never +going to look at me again?” + +“We have been looking at you all this while,” they said. And so they +thought they had been. + +“Then look at me once more,” said she. + +They looked—and both of them cried out at once, “Oh, who are you, after +all?” + +“You are our dear Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby.” + +“No, you are good Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid; but you are grown quite +beautiful now!” + +“To you,” said the fairy. “But look again.” + +“You are Mother Carey,” said Tom, in a very low, solemn voice; for he had +found out something which made him very happy, and yet frightened him +more than all that he had ever seen. + +“But you are grown quite young again.” + +“To you,” said the fairy. “Look again.” + +“You are the Irishwoman who met me the day I went to Harthover!” + +And when they looked she was neither of them, and yet all of them at +once. + +“My name is written in my eyes, if you have eyes to see it there.” + +And they looked into her great, deep, soft eyes, and they changed again +and again into every hue, as the light changes in a diamond. + +“Now read my name,” said she, at last. + +And her eyes flashed, for one moment, clear, white, blazing light: but +the children could not read her name; for they were dazzled, and hid +their faces in their hands. + +“Not yet, young things, not yet,” said she, smiling; and then she turned +to Ellie. + +“You may take him home with you now on Sundays, Ellie. He has won his +spurs in the great battle, and become fit to go with you and be a man; +because he has done the thing he did not like.” + +So Tom went home with Ellie on Sundays, and sometimes on week-days, too; +and he is now a great man of science, and can plan railroads, and +steam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth; +and knows everything about everything, except why a hen’s egg don’t turn +into a crocodile, and two or three other little things which no one will +know till the coming of the Cocqcigrues. And all this from what he +learnt when he was a water-baby, underneath the sea. + +“And of course Tom married Ellie?” + +My dear child, what a silly notion! Don’t you know that no one ever +marries in a fairy tale, under the rank of a prince or a princess? + +“And Tom’s dog?” + +Oh, you may see him any clear night in July; for the old dog-star was so +worn out by the last three hot summers that there have been no dog-days +since; so that they had to take him down and put Tom’s dog up in his +place. Therefore, as new brooms sweep clean, we may hope for some warm +weather this year. And that is the end of my story. + + + + +MORAL. + + +_And now_, _my dear little man_, _what should we learn from this +parable_? + +_We should learn thirty-seven or thirty-nine things_, _I am not exactly +sure which_: _but one thing_, _at least_, _we may learn_, _and that is +this—when we see efts in the pond_, _never to throw stones at them_, _or +catch them with crooked pins_, _or put them into vivariums with +sticklebacks_, _that the sticklebacks may prick them in their poor little +stomachs_, _and make them jump out of the glass into somebody’s +work-box_, _and so come to a bad end_. _For these efts are nothing else +but the water-babies who are stupid and dirty_, _and will not learn their +lessons and keep themselves clean_; _and_, _therefore_ (_as comparative +anatomists will tell you fifty years hence_, _though they are not learned +enough to tell you now_), _their skulls grow flat_, _their jaws grow +out_, _and their brains grow small_, _and their tails grow long_, _and +they lose all their ribs_ (_which I am sure you would not like to do_), +_and their skins grow dirty and spotted_, _and they never get into the +clear rivers_, _much less into the great wide sea_, _but hang about in +dirty ponds_, _and live in the mud_, _and eat worms_, _as they deserve to +do_. + +_But that is no reason why you should ill-use them_: _but only why you +should pity them_, _and be kind to them_, _and hope that some day they +will wake up_, _and be ashamed of their nasty_, _dirty_, _lazy_, _stupid +life_, _and try to amend_, _and become something better once more_. +_For_, _perhaps_, _if they do so_, _then after_ 379,423 _years_, _nine +months_, _thirteen days_, _two hours_, _and twenty-one minutes_ (_for +aught that appears to the contrary_), _if they work very hard and wash +very hard all that time_, _their brains may grow bigger_, _and their jaws +grow smaller_, _and their ribs come back_, _and their tails wither off_, +_and they will turn into water-babies again_, _and perhaps after that +into land-babies_; _and after that perhaps into grown men_. + +_You know they won’t_? _Very well_, _I daresay you know best_. _But you +see_, _some folks have a great liking for those poor little efts_. _They +never did anybody any harm_, _or could if they tried_; _and their only +fault is_, _that they do no good—any more than some thousands of their +betters_. _But what with ducks_, _and what with pike_, _and what with +sticklebacks_, _and what with water-beetles_, _and what with naughty +boys_, _they are_ “_sae sair hadden doun_,” _as the Scotsmen say_, _that +it is a wonder how they live_; _and some folks can’t help hoping_, _with +good Bishop Butler_, _that they may have another chance_, _to make things +fair and even_, _somewhere_, _somewhen_, _somehow_. + +_Meanwhile_, _do you learn your lessons_, _and thank God that you have +plenty of cold water to wash in_; _and wash in it too_, _like a true +Englishman_. _And then_, _if my story is not true_, _something better +is_; _and if I am not quite right_, _still you will be_, _as long as you +stick to hard work and cold water_. + +_But remember always_, _as I told you at first_, _that this is all a +fairy tale_, _and only fun and pretence_: _and_, _therefore_, _you are +not to believe a word of it_, _even if it is true_. + + [Picture: Water baby riding fish] + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1018 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1019-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1019-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1b2ecebe --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1019-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6291 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1019 *** + +POEMS + +by Currer, Ellis, And Acton Bell + +(Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë) + + + + +POEMS BY CURRER BELL + + + + +PILATE'S WIFE'S DREAM. + + I've quench'd my lamp, I struck it in that start + Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall-- + The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart + Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall; + Over against my bed, there shone a gleam + Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream. + + It sank, and I am wrapt in utter gloom; + How far is night advanced, and when will day + Retinge the dusk and livid air with bloom, + And fill this void with warm, creative ray? + Would I could sleep again till, clear and red, + Morning shall on the mountain-tops be spread! + + I'd call my women, but to break their sleep, + Because my own is broken, were unjust; + They've wrought all day, and well-earn'd slumbers steep + Their labours in forgetfulness, I trust; + Let me my feverish watch with patience bear, + Thankful that none with me its sufferings share. + + Yet, oh, for light! one ray would tranquillize + My nerves, my pulses, more than effort can; + I'll draw my curtain and consult the skies: + These trembling stars at dead of night look wan, + Wild, restless, strange, yet cannot be more drear + Than this my couch, shared by a nameless fear. + + All black--one great cloud, drawn from east to west, + Conceals the heavens, but there are lights below; + Torches burn in Jerusalem, and cast + On yonder stony mount a lurid glow. + I see men station'd there, and gleaming spears; + A sound, too, from afar, invades my ears. + + Dull, measured strokes of axe and hammer ring + From street to street, not loud, but through the night + Distinctly heard--and some strange spectral thing + Is now uprear'd--and, fix'd against the light + Of the pale lamps, defined upon that sky, + It stands up like a column, straight and high. + + I see it all--I know the dusky sign-- + A cross on Calvary, which Jews uprear + While Romans watch; and when the dawn shall shine + Pilate, to judge the victim, will appear-- + Pass sentence-yield Him up to crucify; + And on that cross the spotless Christ must die. + + Dreams, then, are true--for thus my vision ran; + Surely some oracle has been with me, + The gods have chosen me to reveal their plan, + To warn an unjust judge of destiny: + I, slumbering, heard and saw; awake I know, + Christ's coming death, and Pilate's life of woe. + + I do not weep for Pilate--who could prove + Regret for him whose cold and crushing sway + No prayer can soften, no appeal can move: + Who tramples hearts as others trample clay, + Yet with a faltering, an uncertain tread, + That might stir up reprisal in the dead. + + Forced to sit by his side and see his deeds; + Forced to behold that visage, hour by hour, + In whose gaunt lines the abhorrent gazer reads + A triple lust of gold, and blood, and power; + A soul whom motives fierce, yet abject, urge-- + Rome's servile slave, and Judah's tyrant scourge. + + How can I love, or mourn, or pity him? + I, who so long my fetter'd hands have wrung; + I, who for grief have wept my eyesight dim; + Because, while life for me was bright and young, + He robb'd my youth--he quench'd my life's fair ray-- + He crush'd my mind, and did my freedom slay. + + And at this hour-although I be his wife-- + He has no more of tenderness from me + Than any other wretch of guilty life; + Less, for I know his household privacy-- + I see him as he is--without a screen; + And, by the gods, my soul abhors his mien! + + Has he not sought my presence, dyed in blood-- + Innocent, righteous blood, shed shamelessly? + And have I not his red salute withstood? + Ay, when, as erst, he plunged all Galilee + In dark bereavement--in affliction sore, + Mingling their very offerings with their gore. + + Then came he--in his eyes a serpent-smile, + Upon his lips some false, endearing word, + And through the streets of Salem clang'd the while + His slaughtering, hacking, sacrilegious sword-- + And I, to see a man cause men such woe, + Trembled with ire--I did not fear to show. + + And now, the envious Jewish priests have brought + Jesus--whom they in mock'ry call their king-- + To have, by this grim power, their vengeance wrought; + By this mean reptile, innocence to sting. + Oh! could I but the purposed doom avert, + And shield the blameless head from cruel hurt! + + Accessible is Pilate's heart to fear, + Omens will shake his soul, like autumn leaf; + Could he this night's appalling vision hear, + This just man's bonds were loosed, his life were safe, + Unless that bitter priesthood should prevail, + And make even terror to their malice quail. + + Yet if I tell the dream--but let me pause. + What dream? Erewhile the characters were clear, + Graved on my brain--at once some unknown cause + Has dimm'd and razed the thoughts, which now appear, + Like a vague remnant of some by-past scene;-- + Not what will be, but what, long since, has been. + + I suffer'd many things--I heard foretold + A dreadful doom for Pilate,--lingering woes, + In far, barbarian climes, where mountains cold + Built up a solitude of trackless snows, + There he and grisly wolves prowl'd side by side, + There he lived famish'd--there, methought, he died; + + But not of hunger, nor by malady; + I saw the snow around him, stain'd with gore; + I said I had no tears for such as he, + And, lo! my cheek is wet--mine eyes run o'er; + I weep for mortal suffering, mortal guilt, + I weep the impious deed, the blood self-spilt. + + More I recall not, yet the vision spread + Into a world remote, an age to come-- + And still the illumined name of Jesus shed + A light, a clearness, through the unfolding gloom-- + And still I saw that sign, which now I see, + That cross on yonder brow of Calvary. + + What is this Hebrew Christ?-to me unknown + His lineage--doctrine--mission; yet how clear + Is God-like goodness in his actions shown, + How straight and stainless is his life's career! + The ray of Deity that rests on him, + In my eyes makes Olympian glory dim. + + The world advances; Greek or Roman rite + Suffices not the inquiring mind to stay; + The searching soul demands a purer light + To guide it on its upward, onward way; + Ashamed of sculptured gods, Religion turns + To where the unseen Jehovah's altar burns. + + Our faith is rotten, all our rites defiled, + Our temples sullied, and, methinks, this man, + With his new ordinance, so wise and mild, + Is come, even as He says, the chaff to fan + And sever from the wheat; but will his faith + Survive the terrors of to-morrow's death? + + * * * * * * * + + I feel a firmer trust--a higher hope + Rise in my soul--it dawns with dawning day; + Lo! on the Temple's roof--on Moriah's slope + Appears at length that clear and crimson ray + Which I so wished for when shut in by night; + Oh, opening skies, I hail, I bless pour light! + + Part, clouds and shadows! Glorious Sun appear! + Part, mental gloom! Come insight from on high! + Dusk dawn in heaven still strives with daylight clear + The longing soul doth still uncertain sigh. + Oh! to behold the truth--that sun divine, + How doth my bosom pant, my spirit pine! + + This day, Time travails with a mighty birth; + This day, Truth stoops from heaven and visits earth; + Ere night descends I shall more surely know + What guide to follow, in what path to go; + I wait in hope--I wait in solemn fear, + The oracle of God--the sole--true God--to hear. + + + + +MEMENTOS. + + Arranging long-locked drawers and shelves + Of cabinets, shut up for years, + What a strange task we've set ourselves! + How still the lonely room appears! + How strange this mass of ancient treasures, + Mementos of past pains and pleasures; + These volumes, clasped with costly stone, + With print all faded, gilding gone; + + These fans of leaves from Indian trees-- + These crimson shells, from Indian seas-- + These tiny portraits, set in rings-- + Once, doubtless, deemed such precious things; + Keepsakes bestowed by Love on Faith, + And worn till the receiver's death, + Now stored with cameos, china, shells, + In this old closet's dusty cells. + + I scarcely think, for ten long years, + A hand has touched these relics old; + And, coating each, slow-formed, appears + The growth of green and antique mould. + + All in this house is mossing over; + All is unused, and dim, and damp; + Nor light, nor warmth, the rooms discover-- + Bereft for years of fire and lamp. + + The sun, sometimes in summer, enters + The casements, with reviving ray; + But the long rains of many winters + Moulder the very walls away. + + And outside all is ivy, clinging + To chimney, lattice, gable grey; + Scarcely one little red rose springing + Through the green moss can force its way. + + Unscared, the daw and starling nestle, + Where the tall turret rises high, + And winds alone come near to rustle + The thick leaves where their cradles lie, + + I sometimes think, when late at even + I climb the stair reluctantly, + Some shape that should be well in heaven, + Or ill elsewhere, will pass by me. + + I fear to see the very faces, + Familiar thirty years ago, + Even in the old accustomed places + Which look so cold and gloomy now, + + I've come, to close the window, hither, + At twilight, when the sun was down, + And Fear my very soul would wither, + Lest something should be dimly shown, + + Too much the buried form resembling, + Of her who once was mistress here; + Lest doubtful shade, or moonbeam trembling, + Might take her aspect, once so dear. + + Hers was this chamber; in her time + It seemed to me a pleasant room, + For then no cloud of grief or crime + Had cursed it with a settled gloom; + + I had not seen death's image laid + In shroud and sheet, on yonder bed. + Before she married, she was blest-- + Blest in her youth, blest in her worth; + Her mind was calm, its sunny rest + Shone in her eyes more clear than mirth. + + And when attired in rich array, + Light, lustrous hair about her brow, + She yonder sat, a kind of day + Lit up what seems so gloomy now. + These grim oak walls even then were grim; + That old carved chair was then antique; + But what around looked dusk and dim + Served as a foil to her fresh cheek; + Her neck and arms, of hue so fair, + Eyes of unclouded, smiling light; + Her soft, and curled, and floating hair, + Gems and attire, as rainbow bright. + + Reclined in yonder deep recess, + Ofttimes she would, at evening, lie + Watching the sun; she seemed to bless + With happy glance the glorious sky. + She loved such scenes, and as she gazed, + Her face evinced her spirit's mood; + Beauty or grandeur ever raised + In her, a deep-felt gratitude. + But of all lovely things, she loved + A cloudless moon, on summer night, + Full oft have I impatience proved + To see how long her still delight + Would find a theme in reverie, + Out on the lawn, or where the trees + Let in the lustre fitfully, + As their boughs parted momently, + To the soft, languid, summer breeze. + Alas! that she should e'er have flung + Those pure, though lonely joys away-- + Deceived by false and guileful tongue, + She gave her hand, then suffered wrong; + Oppressed, ill-used, she faded young, + And died of grief by slow decay. + + Open that casket-look how bright + Those jewels flash upon the sight; + The brilliants have not lost a ray + Of lustre, since her wedding day. + But see--upon that pearly chain-- + How dim lies Time's discolouring stain! + I've seen that by her daughter worn: + For, ere she died, a child was born;-- + A child that ne'er its mother knew, + That lone, and almost friendless grew; + For, ever, when its step drew nigh, + Averted was the father's eye; + And then, a life impure and wild + Made him a stranger to his child: + Absorbed in vice, he little cared + On what she did, or how she fared. + The love withheld she never sought, + She grew uncherished--learnt untaught; + To her the inward life of thought + Full soon was open laid. + I know not if her friendlessness + Did sometimes on her spirit press, + But plaint she never made. + The book-shelves were her darling treasure, + She rarely seemed the time to measure + While she could read alone. + And she too loved the twilight wood + And often, in her mother's mood, + Away to yonder hill would hie, + Like her, to watch the setting sun, + Or see the stars born, one by one, + Out of the darkening sky. + Nor would she leave that hill till night + Trembled from pole to pole with light; + Even then, upon her homeward way, + Long--long her wandering steps delayed + To quit the sombre forest shade, + Through which her eerie pathway lay. + You ask if she had beauty's grace? + I know not--but a nobler face + My eyes have seldom seen; + A keen and fine intelligence, + And, better still, the truest sense + Were in her speaking mien. + But bloom or lustre was there none, + Only at moments, fitful shone + An ardour in her eye, + That kindled on her cheek a flush, + Warm as a red sky's passing blush + And quick with energy. + Her speech, too, was not common speech, + No wish to shine, or aim to teach, + Was in her words displayed: + She still began with quiet sense, + But oft the force of eloquence + Came to her lips in aid; + Language and voice unconscious changed, + And thoughts, in other words arranged, + Her fervid soul transfused + Into the hearts of those who heard, + And transient strength and ardour stirred, + In minds to strength unused, + Yet in gay crowd or festal glare, + Grave and retiring was her air; + 'Twas seldom, save with me alone, + That fire of feeling freely shone; + She loved not awe's nor wonder's gaze, + Nor even exaggerated praise, + Nor even notice, if too keen + The curious gazer searched her mien. + Nature's own green expanse revealed + The world, the pleasures, she could prize; + On free hill-side, in sunny field, + In quiet spots by woods concealed, + Grew wild and fresh her chosen joys, + Yet Nature's feelings deeply lay + In that endowed and youthful frame; + Shrined in her heart and hid from day, + They burned unseen with silent flame. + In youth's first search for mental light, + She lived but to reflect and learn, + But soon her mind's maturer might + For stronger task did pant and yearn; + And stronger task did fate assign, + Task that a giant's strength might strain; + To suffer long and ne'er repine, + Be calm in frenzy, smile at pain. + + Pale with the secret war of feeling, + Sustained with courage, mute, yet high; + The wounds at which she bled, revealing + Only by altered cheek and eye; + + She bore in silence--but when passion + Surged in her soul with ceaseless foam, + The storm at last brought desolation, + And drove her exiled from her home. + + And silent still, she straight assembled + The wrecks of strength her soul retained; + For though the wasted body trembled, + The unconquered mind, to quail, disdained. + + She crossed the sea--now lone she wanders + By Seine's, or Rhine's, or Arno's flow; + Fain would I know if distance renders + Relief or comfort to her woe. + + Fain would I know if, henceforth, ever, + These eyes shall read in hers again, + That light of love which faded never, + Though dimmed so long with secret pain. + + She will return, but cold and altered, + Like all whose hopes too soon depart; + Like all on whom have beat, unsheltered, + The bitter blasts that blight the heart. + + No more shall I behold her lying + Calm on a pillow, smoothed by me; + No more that spirit, worn with sighing, + Will know the rest of infancy. + + If still the paths of lore she follow, + 'Twill be with tired and goaded will; + She'll only toil, the aching hollow, + The joyless blank of life to fill. + + And oh! full oft, quite spent and weary, + Her hand will pause, her head decline; + That labour seems so hard and dreary, + On which no ray of hope may shine. + + Thus the pale blight of time and sorrow + Will shade with grey her soft, dark hair; + Then comes the day that knows no morrow, + And death succeeds to long despair. + + So speaks experience, sage and hoary; + I see it plainly, know it well, + Like one who, having read a story, + Each incident therein can tell. + + Touch not that ring; 'twas his, the sire + Of that forsaken child; + And nought his relics can inspire + Save memories, sin-defiled. + + I, who sat by his wife's death-bed, + I, who his daughter loved, + Could almost curse the guilty dead, + For woes the guiltless proved. + + And heaven did curse--they found him laid, + When crime for wrath was rife, + Cold--with the suicidal blade + Clutched in his desperate gripe. + + 'Twas near that long deserted hut, + Which in the wood decays, + Death's axe, self-wielded, struck his root, + And lopped his desperate days. + + You know the spot, where three black trees, + Lift up their branches fell, + And moaning, ceaseless as the seas, + Still seem, in every passing breeze, + The deed of blood to tell. + + They named him mad, and laid his bones + Where holier ashes lie; + Yet doubt not that his spirit groans + In hell's eternity. + + But, lo! night, closing o'er the earth, + Infects our thoughts with gloom; + Come, let us strive to rally mirth + Where glows a clear and tranquil hearth + In some more cheerful room. + + + + +THE WIFE'S WILL. + + Sit still--a word--a breath may break + (As light airs stir a sleeping lake) + The glassy calm that soothes my woes-- + The sweet, the deep, the full repose. + O leave me not! for ever be + Thus, more than life itself to me! + + Yes, close beside thee let me kneel-- + Give me thy hand, that I may feel + The friend so true--so tried--so dear, + My heart's own chosen--indeed is near; + And check me not--this hour divine + Belongs to me--is fully mine. + + 'Tis thy own hearth thou sitt'st beside, + After long absence--wandering wide; + 'Tis thy own wife reads in thine eyes + A promise clear of stormless skies; + For faith and true love light the rays + Which shine responsive to her gaze. + + Ay,--well that single tear may fall; + Ten thousand might mine eyes recall, + Which from their lids ran blinding fast, + In hours of grief, yet scarcely past; + Well mayst thou speak of love to me, + For, oh! most truly--I love thee! + + Yet smile--for we are happy now. + Whence, then, that sadness on thy brow? + What sayst thou?" We muse once again, + Ere long, be severed by the main!" + I knew not this--I deemed no more + Thy step would err from Britain's shore. + + "Duty commands!" 'Tis true--'tis just; + Thy slightest word I wholly trust, + Nor by request, nor faintest sigh, + Would I to turn thy purpose try; + But, William, hear my solemn vow-- + Hear and confirm!--with thee I go. + + "Distance and suffering," didst thou say? + "Danger by night, and toil by day?" + Oh, idle words and vain are these; + Hear me! I cross with thee the seas. + Such risk as thou must meet and dare, + I--thy true wife--will duly share. + + Passive, at home, I will not pine; + Thy toils, thy perils shall be mine; + Grant this--and be hereafter paid + By a warm heart's devoted aid: + 'Tis granted--with that yielding kiss, + Entered my soul unmingled bliss. + + Thanks, William, thanks! thy love has joy, + Pure, undefiled with base alloy; + 'Tis not a passion, false and blind, + Inspires, enchains, absorbs my mind; + Worthy, I feel, art thou to be + Loved with my perfect energy. + + This evening now shall sweetly flow, + Lit by our clear fire's happy glow; + And parting's peace-embittering fear, + Is warned our hearts to come not near; + For fate admits my soul's decree, + In bliss or bale--to go with thee! + + + THE WOOD. + + But two miles more, and then we rest! + Well, there is still an hour of day, + And long the brightness of the West + Will light us on our devious way; + Sit then, awhile, here in this wood-- + So total is the solitude, + We safely may delay. + + These massive roots afford a seat, + Which seems for weary travellers made. + There rest. The air is soft and sweet + In this sequestered forest glade, + And there are scents of flowers around, + The evening dew draws from the ground; + How soothingly they spread! + + Yes; I was tired, but not at heart; + No--that beats full of sweet content, + For now I have my natural part + Of action with adventure blent; + Cast forth on the wide world with thee, + And all my once waste energy + To weighty purpose bent. + + Yet--sayst thou, spies around us roam, + Our aims are termed conspiracy? + Haply, no more our English home + An anchorage for us may be? + That there is risk our mutual blood + May redden in some lonely wood + The knife of treachery? + + Sayst thou, that where we lodge each night, + In each lone farm, or lonelier hall + Of Norman Peer--ere morning light + Suspicion must as duly fall, + As day returns--such vigilance + Presides and watches over France, + Such rigour governs all? + + I fear not, William; dost thou fear? + So that the knife does not divide, + It may be ever hovering near: + I could not tremble at thy side, + And strenuous love--like mine for thee-- + Is buckler strong 'gainst treachery, + And turns its stab aside. + + I am resolved that thou shalt learn + To trust my strength as I trust thine; + I am resolved our souls shall burn + With equal, steady, mingling shine; + Part of the field is conquered now, + Our lives in the same channel flow, + Along the self-same line; + + And while no groaning storm is heard, + Thou seem'st content it should be so, + But soon as comes a warning word + Of danger--straight thine anxious brow + Bends over me a mournful shade, + As doubting if my powers are made + To ford the floods of woe. + + Know, then it is my spirit swells, + And drinks, with eager joy, the air + Of freedom--where at last it dwells, + Chartered, a common task to share + With thee, and then it stirs alert, + And pants to learn what menaced hurt + Demands for thee its care. + + Remember, I have crossed the deep, + And stood with thee on deck, to gaze + On waves that rose in threatening heap, + While stagnant lay a heavy haze, + Dimly confusing sea with sky, + And baffling, even, the pilot's eye, + Intent to thread the maze-- + + Of rocks, on Bretagne's dangerous coast, + And find a way to steer our band + To the one point obscure, which lost, + Flung us, as victims, on the strand;-- + All, elsewhere, gleamed the Gallic sword, + And not a wherry could be moored + Along the guarded land. + + I feared not then--I fear not now; + The interest of each stirring scene + Wakes a new sense, a welcome glow, + In every nerve and bounding vein; + Alike on turbid Channel sea, + Or in still wood of Normandy, + I feel as born again. + + The rain descended that wild morn + When, anchoring in the cove at last, + Our band, all weary and forlorn + Ashore, like wave-worn sailors, cast-- + Sought for a sheltering roof in vain, + And scarce could scanty food obtain + To break their morning fast. + + Thou didst thy crust with me divide, + Thou didst thy cloak around me fold; + And, sitting silent by thy side, + I ate the bread in peace untold: + Given kindly from thy hand, 'twas sweet + As costly fare or princely treat + On royal plate of gold. + + Sharp blew the sleet upon my face, + And, rising wild, the gusty wind + Drove on those thundering waves apace, + Our crew so late had left behind; + But, spite of frozen shower and storm, + So close to thee, my heart beat warm, + And tranquil slept my mind. + + So now--nor foot-sore nor opprest + With walking all this August day, + I taste a heaven in this brief rest, + This gipsy-halt beside the way. + England's wild flowers are fair to view, + Like balm is England's summer dew + Like gold her sunset ray. + + But the white violets, growing here, + Are sweeter than I yet have seen, + And ne'er did dew so pure and clear + Distil on forest mosses green, + As now, called forth by summer heat, + Perfumes our cool and fresh retreat-- + These fragrant limes between. + + That sunset! Look beneath the boughs, + Over the copse--beyond the hills; + How soft, yet deep and warm it glows, + And heaven with rich suffusion fills; + With hues where still the opal's tint, + Its gleam of prisoned fire is blent, + Where flame through azure thrills! + + Depart we now--for fast will fade + That solemn splendour of decline, + And deep must be the after-shade + As stars alone to-night will shine; + No moon is destined--pale--to gaze + On such a day's vast Phoenix blaze, + A day in fires decayed! + + There--hand-in-hand we tread again + The mazes of this varying wood, + And soon, amid a cultured plain, + Girt in with fertile solitude, + We shall our resting-place descry, + Marked by one roof-tree, towering high + Above a farmstead rude. + + Refreshed, erelong, with rustic fare, + We'll seek a couch of dreamless ease; + Courage will guard thy heart from fear, + And Love give mine divinest peace: + To-morrow brings more dangerous toil, + And through its conflict and turmoil + We'll pass, as God shall please. + + [The preceding composition refers, doubtless, to the scenes + acted in France during the last year of the Consulate.] + + + + +FRANCES. + + She will not sleep, for fear of dreams, + But, rising, quits her restless bed, + And walks where some beclouded beams + Of moonlight through the hall are shed. + + Obedient to the goad of grief, + Her steps, now fast, now lingering slow, + In varying motion seek relief + From the Eumenides of woe. + + Wringing her hands, at intervals-- + But long as mute as phantom dim-- + She glides along the dusky walls, + Under the black oak rafters grim. + + The close air of the grated tower + Stifles a heart that scarce can beat, + And, though so late and lone the hour, + Forth pass her wandering, faltering feet; + + And on the pavement spread before + The long front of the mansion grey, + Her steps imprint the night-frost hoar, + Which pale on grass and granite lay. + + Not long she stayed where misty moon + And shimmering stars could on her look, + But through the garden archway soon + Her strange and gloomy path she took. + + Some firs, coeval with the tower, + Their straight black boughs stretched o'er her head; + Unseen, beneath this sable bower, + Rustled her dress and rapid tread. + + There was an alcove in that shade, + Screening a rustic seat and stand; + Weary she sat her down, and laid + Her hot brow on her burning hand. + + To solitude and to the night, + Some words she now, in murmurs, said; + And trickling through her fingers white, + Some tears of misery she shed. + + "God help me in my grievous need, + God help me in my inward pain; + Which cannot ask for pity's meed, + Which has no licence to complain, + + "Which must be borne; yet who can bear, + Hours long, days long, a constant weight-- + The yoke of absolute despair, + A suffering wholly desolate? + + "Who can for ever crush the heart, + Restrain its throbbing, curb its life? + Dissemble truth with ceaseless art, + With outward calm mask inward strife?" + + She waited--as for some reply; + The still and cloudy night gave none; + Ere long, with deep-drawn, trembling sigh, + Her heavy plaint again begun. + + "Unloved--I love; unwept--I weep; + Grief I restrain--hope I repress: + Vain is this anguish--fixed and deep; + Vainer, desires and dreams of bliss. + + "My love awakes no love again, + My tears collect, and fall unfelt; + My sorrow touches none with pain, + My humble hopes to nothing melt. + + "For me the universe is dumb, + Stone-deaf, and blank, and wholly blind; + Life I must bound, existence sum + In the strait limits of one mind; + + "That mind my own. Oh! narrow cell; + Dark--imageless--a living tomb! + There must I sleep, there wake and dwell + Content, with palsy, pain, and gloom." + + Again she paused; a moan of pain, + A stifled sob, alone was heard; + Long silence followed--then again + Her voice the stagnant midnight stirred. + + "Must it be so? Is this my fate? + Can I nor struggle, nor contend? + And am I doomed for years to wait, + Watching death's lingering axe descend? + + "And when it falls, and when I die, + What follows? Vacant nothingness? + The blank of lost identity? + Erasure both of pain and bliss? + + "I've heard of heaven--I would believe; + For if this earth indeed be all, + Who longest lives may deepest grieve; + Most blest, whom sorrows soonest call. + + "Oh! leaving disappointment here, + Will man find hope on yonder coast? + Hope, which, on earth, shines never clear, + And oft in clouds is wholly lost. + + "Will he hope's source of light behold, + Fruition's spring, where doubts expire, + And drink, in waves of living gold, + Contentment, full, for long desire? + + "Will he find bliss, which here he dreamed? + Rest, which was weariness on earth? + Knowledge, which, if o'er life it beamed, + Served but to prove it void of worth? + + "Will he find love without lust's leaven, + Love fearless, tearless, perfect, pure, + To all with equal bounty given; + In all, unfeigned, unfailing, sure? + + "Will he, from penal sufferings free, + Released from shroud and wormy clod, + All calm and glorious, rise and see + Creation's Sire--Existence' God? + + "Then, glancing back on Time's brief woes, + Will he behold them, fading, fly; + Swept from Eternity's repose, + Like sullying cloud from pure blue sky? + + "If so, endure, my weary frame; + And when thy anguish strikes too deep, + And when all troubled burns life's flame, + Think of the quiet, final sleep; + + "Think of the glorious waking-hour, + Which will not dawn on grief and tears, + But on a ransomed spirit's power, + Certain, and free from mortal fears. + + "Seek now thy couch, and lie till morn, + Then from thy chamber, calm, descend, + With mind nor tossed, nor anguish-torn, + But tranquil, fixed, to wait the end. + + "And when thy opening eyes shall see + Mementos, on the chamber wall, + Of one who has forgotten thee, + Shed not the tear of acrid gall. + + "The tear which, welling from the heart, + Burns where its drop corrosive falls, + And makes each nerve, in torture, start, + At feelings it too well recalls: + + "When the sweet hope of being loved + Threw Eden sunshine on life's way: + When every sense and feeling proved + Expectancy of brightest day. + + "When the hand trembled to receive + A thrilling clasp, which seemed so near, + And the heart ventured to believe + Another heart esteemed it dear. + + "When words, half love, all tenderness, + Were hourly heard, as hourly spoken, + When the long, sunny days of bliss + Only by moonlight nights were broken. + + "Till, drop by drop, the cup of joy + Filled full, with purple light was glowing, + And Faith, which watched it, sparkling high + Still never dreamt the overflowing. + + "It fell not with a sudden crashing, + It poured not out like open sluice; + No, sparkling still, and redly flashing, + Drained, drop by drop, the generous juice. + + "I saw it sink, and strove to taste it, + My eager lips approached the brim; + The movement only seemed to waste it; + It sank to dregs, all harsh and dim. + + "These I have drunk, and they for ever + Have poisoned life and love for me; + A draught from Sodom's lake could never + More fiery, salt, and bitter, be. + + "Oh! Love was all a thin illusion + Joy, but the desert's flying stream; + And glancing back on long delusion, + My memory grasps a hollow dream. + + "Yet whence that wondrous change of feeling, + I never knew, and cannot learn; + Nor why my lover's eye, congealing, + Grew cold and clouded, proud and stern. + + "Nor wherefore, friendship's forms forgetting, + He careless left, and cool withdrew; + Nor spoke of grief, nor fond regretting, + Nor ev'n one glance of comfort threw. + + "And neither word nor token sending, + Of kindness, since the parting day, + His course, for distant regions bending, + Went, self-contained and calm, away. + + "Oh, bitter, blighting, keen sensation, + Which will not weaken, cannot die, + Hasten thy work of desolation, + And let my tortured spirit fly! + + "Vain as the passing gale, my crying; + Though lightning-struck, I must live on; + I know, at heart, there is no dying + Of love, and ruined hope, alone. + + "Still strong and young, and warm with vigour, + Though scathed, I long shall greenly grow; + And many a storm of wildest rigour + Shall yet break o'er my shivered bough. + + "Rebellious now to blank inertion, + My unused strength demands a task; + Travel, and toil, and full exertion, + Are the last, only boon I ask. + + "Whence, then, this vain and barren dreaming + Of death, and dubious life to come? + I see a nearer beacon gleaming + Over dejection's sea of gloom. + + "The very wildness of my sorrow + Tells me I yet have innate force; + My track of life has been too narrow, + Effort shall trace a broader course. + + "The world is not in yonder tower, + Earth is not prisoned in that room, + 'Mid whose dark panels, hour by hour, + I've sat, the slave and prey of gloom. + + "One feeling--turned to utter anguish, + Is not my being's only aim; + When, lorn and loveless, life will languish, + But courage can revive the flame. + + "He, when he left me, went a roving + To sunny climes, beyond the sea; + And I, the weight of woe removing, + Am free and fetterless as he. + + "New scenes, new language, skies less clouded, + May once more wake the wish to live; + Strange, foreign towns, astir, and crowded, + New pictures to the mind may give. + + "New forms and faces, passing ever, + May hide the one I still retain, + Defined, and fixed, and fading never, + Stamped deep on vision, heart, and brain. + + "And we might meet--time may have changed him; + Chance may reveal the mystery, + The secret influence which estranged him; + Love may restore him yet to me. + + "False thought--false hope--in scorn be banished! + I am not loved--nor loved have been; + Recall not, then, the dreams scarce vanished; + Traitors! mislead me not again! + + "To words like yours I bid defiance, + 'Tis such my mental wreck have made; + Of God alone, and self-reliance, + I ask for solace--hope for aid. + + "Morn comes--and ere meridian glory + O'er these, my natal woods, shall smile, + Both lonely wood and mansion hoary + I'll leave behind, full many a mile." + + + + +GILBERT. + + I. THE GARDEN. + + Above the city hung the moon, + Right o'er a plot of ground + Where flowers and orchard-trees were fenced + With lofty walls around: + 'Twas Gilbert's garden--there to-night + Awhile he walked alone; + And, tired with sedentary toil, + Mused where the moonlight shone. + + This garden, in a city-heart, + Lay still as houseless wild, + Though many-windowed mansion fronts + Were round it; closely piled; + But thick their walls, and those within + Lived lives by noise unstirred; + Like wafting of an angel's wing, + Time's flight by them was heard. + + Some soft piano-notes alone + Were sweet as faintly given, + Where ladies, doubtless, cheered the hearth + With song that winter-even. + The city's many-mingled sounds + Rose like the hum of ocean; + They rather lulled the heart than roused + Its pulse to faster motion. + + Gilbert has paced the single walk + An hour, yet is not weary; + And, though it be a winter night + He feels nor cold nor dreary. + The prime of life is in his veins, + And sends his blood fast flowing, + And Fancy's fervour warms the thoughts + Now in his bosom glowing. + + Those thoughts recur to early love, + Or what he love would name, + Though haply Gilbert's secret deeds + Might other title claim. + Such theme not oft his mind absorbs, + He to the world clings fast, + And too much for the present lives, + To linger o'er the past. + + But now the evening's deep repose + Has glided to his soul; + That moonlight falls on Memory, + And shows her fading scroll. + One name appears in every line + The gentle rays shine o'er, + And still he smiles and still repeats + That one name--Elinor. + + There is no sorrow in his smile, + No kindness in his tone; + The triumph of a selfish heart + Speaks coldly there alone; + He says: "She loved me more than life; + And truly it was sweet + To see so fair a woman kneel, + In bondage, at my feet. + + "There was a sort of quiet bliss + To be so deeply loved, + To gaze on trembling eagerness + And sit myself unmoved. + And when it pleased my pride to grant + At last some rare caress, + To feel the fever of that hand + My fingers deigned to press. + + "'Twas sweet to see her strive to hide + What every glance revealed; + Endowed, the while, with despot-might + Her destiny to wield. + I knew myself no perfect man, + Nor, as she deemed, divine; + I knew that I was glorious--but + By her reflected shine; + + "Her youth, her native energy, + Her powers new-born and fresh, + 'Twas these with Godhead sanctified + My sensual frame of flesh. + Yet, like a god did I descend + At last, to meet her love; + And, like a god, I then withdrew + To my own heaven above. + + "And never more could she invoke + My presence to her sphere; + No prayer, no plaint, no cry of hers + Could win my awful ear. + I knew her blinded constancy + Would ne'er my deeds betray, + And, calm in conscience, whole in heart. + I went my tranquil way. + + "Yet, sometimes, I still feel a wish, + The fond and flattering pain + Of passion's anguish to create + In her young breast again. + Bright was the lustre of her eyes, + When they caught fire from mine; + If I had power--this very hour, + Again I'd light their shine. + + "But where she is, or how she lives, + I have no clue to know; + I've heard she long my absence pined, + And left her home in woe. + But busied, then, in gathering gold, + As I am busied now, + I could not turn from such pursuit, + To weep a broken vow. + + "Nor could I give to fatal risk + The fame I ever prized; + Even now, I fear, that precious fame + Is too much compromised." + An inward trouble dims his eye, + Some riddle he would solve; + Some method to unloose a knot, + His anxious thoughts revolve. + + He, pensive, leans against a tree, + A leafy evergreen, + The boughs, the moonlight, intercept, + And hide him like a screen + He starts--the tree shakes with his tremor, + Yet nothing near him pass'd; + He hurries up the garden alley, + In strangely sudden haste. + + With shaking hand, he lifts the latchet, + Steps o'er the threshold stone; + The heavy door slips from his fingers-- + It shuts, and he is gone. + What touched, transfixed, appalled, his soul?-- + A nervous thought, no more; + 'Twill sink like stone in placid pool, + And calm close smoothly o'er. + + + II. THE PARLOUR. + + Warm is the parlour atmosphere, + Serene the lamp's soft light; + The vivid embers, red and clear, + Proclaim a frosty night. + Books, varied, on the table lie, + Three children o'er them bend, + And all, with curious, eager eye, + The turning leaf attend. + + Picture and tale alternately + Their simple hearts delight, + And interest deep, and tempered glee, + Illume their aspects bright. + The parents, from their fireside place, + Behold that pleasant scene, + And joy is on the mother's face, + Pride in the father's mien. + + As Gilbert sees his blooming wife, + Beholds his children fair, + No thought has he of transient strife, + Or past, though piercing fear. + The voice of happy infancy + Lisps sweetly in his ear, + His wife, with pleased and peaceful eye, + Sits, kindly smiling, near. + + The fire glows on her silken dress, + And shows its ample grace, + And warmly tints each hazel tress, + Curled soft around her face. + The beauty that in youth he wooed, + Is beauty still, unfaded; + The brow of ever placid mood + No churlish grief has shaded. + + Prosperity, in Gilbert's home, + Abides the guest of years; + There Want or Discord never come, + And seldom Toil or Tears. + The carpets bear the peaceful print + Of comfort's velvet tread, + And golden gleams, from plenty sent, + In every nook are shed. + + The very silken spaniel seems + Of quiet ease to tell, + As near its mistress' feet it dreams, + Sunk in a cushion's swell + And smiles seem native to the eyes + Of those sweet children, three; + They have but looked on tranquil skies, + And know not misery. + + Alas! that Misery should come + In such an hour as this; + Why could she not so calm a home + A little longer miss? + But she is now within the door, + Her steps advancing glide; + Her sullen shade has crossed the floor, + She stands at Gilbert's side. + + She lays her hand upon his heart, + It bounds with agony; + His fireside chair shakes with the start + That shook the garden tree. + His wife towards the children looks, + She does not mark his mien; + The children, bending o'er their books, + His terror have not seen. + + In his own home, by his own hearth, + He sits in solitude, + And circled round with light and mirth, + Cold horror chills his blood. + His mind would hold with desperate clutch + The scene that round him lies; + No--changed, as by some wizard's touch, + The present prospect flies. + + A tumult vague--a viewless strife + His futile struggles crush; + 'Twixt him and his an unknown life + And unknown feelings rush. + He sees--but scarce can language paint + The tissue fancy weaves; + For words oft give but echo faint + Of thoughts the mind conceives. + + Noise, tumult strange, and darkness dim, + Efface both light and quiet; + No shape is in those shadows grim, + No voice in that wild riot. + Sustain'd and strong, a wondrous blast + Above and round him blows; + A greenish gloom, dense overcast, + Each moment denser grows. + + He nothing knows--nor clearly sees, + Resistance checks his breath, + The high, impetuous, ceaseless breeze + Blows on him cold as death. + And still the undulating gloom + Mocks sight with formless motion: + Was such sensation Jonah's doom, + Gulphed in the depths of ocean? + + Streaking the air, the nameless vision, + Fast-driven, deep-sounding, flows; + Oh! whence its source, and what its mission? + How will its terrors close? + Long-sweeping, rushing, vast and void, + The universe it swallows; + And still the dark, devouring tide + A typhoon tempest follows. + + More slow it rolls; its furious race + Sinks to its solemn gliding; + The stunning roar, the wind's wild chase, + To stillness are subsiding. + And, slowly borne along, a form + The shapeless chaos varies; + Poised in the eddy to the storm, + Before the eye it tarries. + + A woman drowned--sunk in the deep, + On a long wave reclining; + The circling waters' crystal sweep, + Like glass, her shape enshrining. + Her pale dead face, to Gilbert turned, + Seems as in sleep reposing; + A feeble light, now first discerned, + The features well disclosing. + + No effort from the haunted air + The ghastly scene could banish, + That hovering wave, arrested there, + Rolled--throbbed--but did not vanish. + If Gilbert upward turned his gaze, + He saw the ocean-shadow; + If he looked down, the endless seas + Lay green as summer meadow. + + And straight before, the pale corpse lay, + Upborne by air or billow, + So near, he could have touched the spray + That churned around its pillow. + The hollow anguish of the face + Had moved a fiend to sorrow; + Not death's fixed calm could rase the trace + Of suffering's deep-worn furrow. + + All moved; a strong returning blast, + The mass of waters raising, + Bore wave and passive carcase past, + While Gilbert yet was gazing. + Deep in her isle-conceiving womb, + It seemed the ocean thundered, + And soon, by realms of rushing gloom, + Were seer and phantom sundered. + + Then swept some timbers from a wreck. + On following surges riding; + Then sea-weed, in the turbid rack + Uptorn, went slowly gliding. + The horrid shade, by slow degrees, + A beam of light defeated, + And then the roar of raving seas, + Fast, far, and faint, retreated. + + And all was gone--gone like a mist, + Corse, billows, tempest, wreck; + Three children close to Gilbert prest + And clung around his neck. + Good night! good night! the prattlers said, + And kissed their father's cheek; + 'Twas now the hour their quiet bed + And placid rest to seek. + + The mother with her offspring goes + To hear their evening prayer; + She nought of Gilbert's vision knows, + And nought of his despair. + Yet, pitying God, abridge the time + Of anguish, now his fate! + Though, haply, great has been his crime: + Thy mercy, too, is great. + + Gilbert, at length, uplifts his head, + Bent for some moments low, + And there is neither grief nor dread + Upon his subtle brow. + For well can he his feelings task, + And well his looks command; + His features well his heart can mask, + With smiles and smoothness bland. + + Gilbert has reasoned with his mind-- + He says 'twas all a dream; + He strives his inward sight to blind + Against truth's inward beam. + He pitied not that shadowy thing, + When it was flesh and blood; + Nor now can pity's balmy spring + Refresh his arid mood. + + "And if that dream has spoken truth," + Thus musingly he says; + "If Elinor be dead, in sooth, + Such chance the shock repays: + A net was woven round my feet, + I scarce could further go; + Ere shame had forced a fast retreat, + Dishonour brought me low. + + "Conceal her, then, deep, silent sea, + Give her a secret grave! + She sleeps in peace, and I am free, + No longer terror's slave: + And homage still, from all the world, + Shall greet my spotless name, + Since surges break and waves are curled + Above its threatened shame." + + + III. THE WELCOME HOME. + + Above the city hangs the moon, + Some clouds are boding rain; + Gilbert, erewhile on journey gone, + To-night comes home again. + Ten years have passed above his head, + Each year has brought him gain; + His prosperous life has smoothly sped, + Without or tear or stain. + + 'Tis somewhat late--the city clocks + Twelve deep vibrations toll, + As Gilbert at the portal knocks, + Which is his journey's goal. + The street is still and desolate, + The moon hid by a cloud; + Gilbert, impatient, will not wait,-- + His second knock peals loud. + + The clocks are hushed--there's not a light + In any window nigh, + And not a single planet bright + Looks from the clouded sky; + The air is raw, the rain descends, + A bitter north-wind blows; + His cloak the traveller scarce defends-- + Will not the door unclose? + + He knocks the third time, and the last + His summons now they hear, + Within, a footstep, hurrying fast, + Is heard approaching near. + The bolt is drawn, the clanking chain + Falls to the floor of stone; + And Gilbert to his heart will strain + His wife and children soon. + + The hand that lifts the latchet, holds + A candle to his sight, + And Gilbert, on the step, beholds + A woman, clad in white. + Lo! water from her dripping dress + Runs on the streaming floor; + From every dark and clinging tress + The drops incessant pour. + + There's none but her to welcome him; + She holds the candle high, + And, motionless in form and limb, + Stands cold and silent nigh; + There's sand and sea-weed on her robe, + Her hollow eyes are blind; + No pulse in such a frame can throb, + No life is there defined. + + Gilbert turned ashy-white, but still + His lips vouchsafed no cry; + He spurred his strength and master-will + To pass the figure by,-- + But, moving slow, it faced him straight, + It would not flinch nor quail: + Then first did Gilbert's strength abate, + His stony firmness quail. + + He sank upon his knees and prayed + The shape stood rigid there; + He called aloud for human aid, + No human aid was near. + An accent strange did thus repeat + Heaven's stern but just decree: + "The measure thou to her didst mete, + To thee shall measured be!" + + Gilbert sprang from his bended knees, + By the pale spectre pushed, + And, wild as one whom demons seize, + Up the hall-staircase rushed; + Entered his chamber--near the bed + Sheathed steel and fire-arms hung-- + Impelled by maniac purpose dread + He chose those stores among. + + Across his throat a keen-edged knife + With vigorous hand he drew; + The wound was wide--his outraged life + Rushed rash and redly through. + And thus died, by a shameful death, + A wise and worldly man, + Who never drew but selfish breath + Since first his life began. + + + + +LIFE. + + Life, believe, is not a dream + So dark as sages say; + Oft a little morning rain + Foretells a pleasant day. + Sometimes there are clouds of gloom, + But these are transient all; + If the shower will make the roses bloom, + O why lament its fall? + Rapidly, merrily, + Life's sunny hours flit by, + Gratefully, cheerily + Enjoy them as they fly! + What though Death at times steps in, + And calls our Best away? + What though sorrow seems to win, + O'er hope, a heavy sway? + Yet Hope again elastic springs, + Unconquered, though she fell; + Still buoyant are her golden wings, + Still strong to bear us well. + Manfully, fearlessly, + The day of trial bear, + For gloriously, victoriously, + Can courage quell despair! + + + + +THE LETTER. + + What is she writing? Watch her now, + How fast her fingers move! + How eagerly her youthful brow + Is bent in thought above! + Her long curls, drooping, shade the light, + She puts them quick aside, + Nor knows that band of crystals bright, + Her hasty touch untied. + It slips adown her silken dress, + Falls glittering at her feet; + Unmarked it falls, for she no less + Pursues her labour sweet. + + The very loveliest hour that shines, + Is in that deep blue sky; + The golden sun of June declines, + It has not caught her eye. + The cheerful lawn, and unclosed gate, + The white road, far away, + In vain for her light footsteps wait, + She comes not forth to-day. + There is an open door of glass + Close by that lady's chair, + From thence, to slopes of messy grass, + Descends a marble stair. + + Tall plants of bright and spicy bloom + Around the threshold grow; + Their leaves and blossoms shade the room + From that sun's deepening glow. + Why does she not a moment glance + Between the clustering flowers, + And mark in heaven the radiant dance + Of evening's rosy hours? + O look again! Still fixed her eye, + Unsmiling, earnest, still, + And fast her pen and fingers fly, + Urged by her eager will. + + Her soul is in th'absorbing task; + To whom, then, doth she write? + Nay, watch her still more closely, ask + Her own eyes' serious light; + Where do they turn, as now her pen + Hangs o'er th'unfinished line? + Whence fell the tearful gleam that then + Did in their dark spheres shine? + The summer-parlour looks so dark, + When from that sky you turn, + And from th'expanse of that green park, + You scarce may aught discern. + + Yet, o'er the piles of porcelain rare, + O'er flower-stand, couch, and vase, + Sloped, as if leaning on the air, + One picture meets the gaze. + 'Tis there she turns; you may not see + Distinct, what form defines + The clouded mass of mystery + Yon broad gold frame confines. + But look again; inured to shade + Your eyes now faintly trace + A stalwart form, a massive head, + A firm, determined face. + + Black Spanish locks, a sunburnt cheek + A brow high, broad, and white, + Where every furrow seems to speak + Of mind and moral might. + Is that her god? I cannot tell; + Her eye a moment met + Th'impending picture, then it fell + Darkened and dimmed and wet. + A moment more, her task is done, + And sealed the letter lies; + And now, towards the setting sun + She turns her tearful eyes. + + Those tears flow over, wonder not, + For by the inscription see + In what a strange and distant spot + Her heart of hearts must be! + Three seas and many a league of land + That letter must pass o'er, + Ere read by him to whose loved hand + 'Tis sent from England's shore. + Remote colonial wilds detain + Her husband, loved though stern; + She, 'mid that smiling English scene, + Weeps for his wished return. + + + + +REGRET. + + Long ago I wished to leave + "The house where I was born;" + Long ago I used to grieve, + My home seemed so forlorn. + In other years, its silent rooms + Were filled with haunting fears; + Now, their very memory comes + O'ercharged with tender tears. + + Life and marriage I have known. + Things once deemed so bright; + Now, how utterly is flown + Every ray of light! + 'Mid the unknown sea, of life + I no blest isle have found; + At last, through all its wild wave's strife, + My bark is homeward bound. + + Farewell, dark and rolling deep! + Farewell, foreign shore! + Open, in unclouded sweep, + Thou glorious realm before! + Yet, though I had safely pass'd + That weary, vexed main, + One loved voice, through surge and blast + Could call me back again. + + Though the soul's bright morning rose + O'er Paradise for me, + William! even from Heaven's repose + I'd turn, invoked by thee! + Storm nor surge should e'er arrest + My soul, exalting then: + All my heaven was once thy breast, + Would it were mine again! + + + + +PRESENTIMENT. + + "Sister, you've sat there all the day, + Come to the hearth awhile; + The wind so wildly sweeps away, + The clouds so darkly pile. + That open book has lain, unread, + For hours upon your knee; + You've never smiled nor turned your head; + What can you, sister, see?" + + "Come hither, Jane, look down the field; + How dense a mist creeps on! + The path, the hedge, are both concealed, + Ev'n the white gate is gone + No landscape through the fog I trace, + No hill with pastures green; + All featureless is Nature's face. + All masked in clouds her mien. + + "Scarce is the rustle of a leaf + Heard in our garden now; + The year grows old, its days wax brief, + The tresses leave its brow. + The rain drives fast before the wind, + The sky is blank and grey; + O Jane, what sadness fills the mind + On such a dreary day!" + + "You think too much, my sister dear; + You sit too long alone; + What though November days be drear? + Full soon will they be gone. + I've swept the hearth, and placed your chair. + Come, Emma, sit by me; + Our own fireside is never drear, + Though late and wintry wane the year, + Though rough the night may be." + + "The peaceful glow of our fireside + Imparts no peace to me: + My thoughts would rather wander wide + Than rest, dear Jane, with thee. + I'm on a distant journey bound, + And if, about my heart, + Too closely kindred ties were bound, + 'Twould break when forced to part. + + "'Soon will November days be o'er:' + Well have you spoken, Jane: + My own forebodings tell me more-- + For me, I know by presage sure, + They'll ne'er return again. + Ere long, nor sun nor storm to me + Will bring or joy or gloom; + They reach not that Eternity + Which soon will be my home." + + Eight months are gone, the summer sun + Sets in a glorious sky; + A quiet field, all green and lone, + Receives its rosy dye. + Jane sits upon a shaded stile, + Alone she sits there now; + Her head rests on her hand the while, + And thought o'ercasts her brow. + + She's thinking of one winter's day, + A few short months ago, + Then Emma's bier was borne away + O'er wastes of frozen snow. + She's thinking how that drifted snow + Dissolved in spring's first gleam, + And how her sister's memory now + Fades, even as fades a dream. + + The snow will whiten earth again, + But Emma comes no more; + She left, 'mid winter's sleet and rain, + This world for Heaven's far shore. + On Beulah's hills she wanders now, + On Eden's tranquil plain; + To her shall Jane hereafter go, + She ne'er shall come to Jane! + + + + +THE TEACHER'S MONOLOGUE. + + The room is quiet, thoughts alone + People its mute tranquillity; + The yoke put off, the long task done,-- + I am, as it is bliss to be, + Still and untroubled. Now, I see, + For the first time, how soft the day + O'er waveless water, stirless tree, + Silent and sunny, wings its way. + Now, as I watch that distant hill, + So faint, so blue, so far removed, + Sweet dreams of home my heart may fill, + That home where I am known and loved: + It lies beyond; yon azure brow + Parts me from all Earth holds for me; + And, morn and eve, my yearnings flow + Thitherward tending, changelessly. + My happiest hours, aye! all the time, + I love to keep in memory, + Lapsed among moors, ere life's first prime + Decayed to dark anxiety. + + Sometimes, I think a narrow heart + Makes me thus mourn those far away, + And keeps my love so far apart + From friends and friendships of to-day; + Sometimes, I think 'tis but a dream + I treasure up so jealously, + All the sweet thoughts I live on seem + To vanish into vacancy: + And then, this strange, coarse world around + Seems all that's palpable and true; + And every sight, and every sound, + Combines my spirit to subdue + To aching grief, so void and lone + Is Life and Earth--so worse than vain, + The hopes that, in my own heart sown, + And cherished by such sun and rain + As Joy and transient Sorrow shed, + Have ripened to a harvest there: + Alas! methinks I hear it said, + "Thy golden sheaves are empty air." + + All fades away; my very home + I think will soon be desolate; + I hear, at times, a warning come + Of bitter partings at its gate; + And, if I should return and see + The hearth-fire quenched, the vacant chair; + And hear it whispered mournfully, + That farewells have been spoken there, + What shall I do, and whither turn? + Where look for peace? When cease to mourn? + + + 'Tis not the air I wished to play, + The strain I wished to sing; + My wilful spirit slipped away + And struck another string. + I neither wanted smile nor tear, + Bright joy nor bitter woe, + But just a song that sweet and clear, + Though haply sad, might flow. + + A quiet song, to solace me + When sleep refused to come; + A strain to chase despondency, + When sorrowful for home. + In vain I try; I cannot sing; + All feels so cold and dead; + No wild distress, no gushing spring + Of tears in anguish shed; + + But all the impatient gloom of one + Who waits a distant day, + When, some great task of suffering done, + Repose shall toil repay. + For youth departs, and pleasure flies, + And life consumes away, + And youth's rejoicing ardour dies + Beneath this drear delay; + + And Patience, weary with her yoke, + Is yielding to despair, + And Health's elastic spring is broke + Beneath the strain of care. + Life will be gone ere I have lived; + Where now is Life's first prime? + I've worked and studied, longed and grieved, + Through all that rosy time. + + To toil, to think, to long, to grieve,-- + Is such my future fate? + The morn was dreary, must the eve + Be also desolate? + Well, such a life at least makes Death + A welcome, wished-for friend; + Then, aid me, Reason, Patience, Faith, + To suffer to the end! + + + + +PASSION. + + Some have won a wild delight, + By daring wilder sorrow; + Could I gain thy love to-night, + I'd hazard death to-morrow. + + Could the battle-struggle earn + One kind glance from thine eye, + How this withering heart would burn, + The heady fight to try! + + Welcome nights of broken sleep, + And days of carnage cold, + Could I deem that thou wouldst weep + To hear my perils told. + + Tell me, if with wandering bands + I roam full far away, + Wilt thou to those distant lands + In spirit ever stray? + + Wild, long, a trumpet sounds afar; + Bid me--bid me go + Where Seik and Briton meet in war, + On Indian Sutlej's flow. + + Blood has dyed the Sutlej's waves + With scarlet stain, I know; + Indus' borders yawn with graves, + Yet, command me go! + + Though rank and high the holocaust + Of nations steams to heaven, + Glad I'd join the death-doomed host, + Were but the mandate given. + + Passion's strength should nerve my arm, + Its ardour stir my life, + Till human force to that dread charm + Should yield and sink in wild alarm, + Like trees to tempest-strife. + + If, hot from war, I seek thy love, + Darest thou turn aside? + Darest thou then my fire reprove, + By scorn, and maddening pride? + + No--my will shall yet control + Thy will, so high and free, + And love shall tame that haughty soul-- + Yes--tenderest love for me. + + I'll read my triumph in thine eyes, + Behold, and prove the change; + Then leave, perchance, my noble prize, + Once more in arms to range. + + I'd die when all the foam is up, + The bright wine sparkling high; + Nor wait till in the exhausted cup + Life's dull dregs only lie. + + Then Love thus crowned with sweet reward, + Hope blest with fulness large, + I'd mount the saddle, draw the sword, + And perish in the charge! + + + + +PREFERENCE. + + Not in scorn do I reprove thee, + Not in pride thy vows I waive, + But, believe, I could not love thee, + Wert thou prince, and I a slave. + These, then, are thine oaths of passion? + This, thy tenderness for me? + Judged, even, by thine own confession, + Thou art steeped in perfidy. + Having vanquished, thou wouldst leave me! + Thus I read thee long ago; + Therefore, dared I not deceive thee, + Even with friendship's gentle show. + Therefore, with impassive coldness + Have I ever met thy gaze; + Though, full oft, with daring boldness, + Thou thine eyes to mine didst raise. + Why that smile? Thou now art deeming + This my coldness all untrue,-- + But a mask of frozen seeming, + Hiding secret fires from view. + Touch my hand, thou self-deceiver; + Nay-be calm, for I am so: + Does it burn? Does my lip quiver? + Has mine eye a troubled glow? + Canst thou call a moment's colour + To my forehead--to my cheek? + Canst thou tinge their tranquil pallor + With one flattering, feverish streak? + Am I marble? What! no woman + Could so calm before thee stand? + Nothing living, sentient, human, + Could so coldly take thy hand? + Yes--a sister might, a mother: + My good-will is sisterly: + Dream not, then, I strive to smother + Fires that inly burn for thee. + Rave not, rage not, wrath is fruitless, + Fury cannot change my mind; + I but deem the feeling rootless + Which so whirls in passion's wind. + Can I love? Oh, deeply--truly-- + Warmly--fondly--but not thee; + And my love is answered duly, + With an equal energy. + Wouldst thou see thy rival? Hasten, + Draw that curtain soft aside, + Look where yon thick branches chasten + Noon, with shades of eventide. + In that glade, where foliage blending + Forms a green arch overhead, + Sits thy rival, thoughtful bending + O'er a stand with papers spread-- + Motionless, his fingers plying + That untired, unresting pen; + Time and tide unnoticed flying, + There he sits--the first of men! + Man of conscience--man of reason; + Stern, perchance, but ever just; + Foe to falsehood, wrong, and treason, + Honour's shield, and virtue's trust! + Worker, thinker, firm defender + Of Heaven's truth--man's liberty; + Soul of iron--proof to slander, + Rock where founders tyranny. + Fame he seeks not--but full surely + She will seek him, in his home; + This I know, and wait securely + For the atoning hour to come. + To that man my faith is given, + Therefore, soldier, cease to sue; + While God reigns in earth and heaven, + I to him will still be true! + + + + +EVENING SOLACE. + + The human heart has hidden treasures, + In secret kept, in silence sealed;-- + The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, + Whose charms were broken if revealed. + And days may pass in gay confusion, + And nights in rosy riot fly, + While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion, + The memory of the Past may die. + + But there are hours of lonely musing, + Such as in evening silence come, + When, soft as birds their pinions closing, + The heart's best feelings gather home. + Then in our souls there seems to languish + A tender grief that is not woe; + And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish + Now cause but some mild tears to flow. + + And feelings, once as strong as passions, + Float softly back--a faded dream; + Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations, + The tale of others' sufferings seem. + Oh! when the heart is freshly bleeding, + How longs it for that time to be, + When, through the mist of years receding, + Its woes but live in reverie! + + And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer, + On evening shade and loneliness; + And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer, + Feel no untold and strange distress-- + Only a deeper impulse given + By lonely hour and darkened room, + To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven + Seeking a life and world to come. + + + + +STANZAS. + + If thou be in a lonely place, + If one hour's calm be thine, + As Evening bends her placid face + O'er this sweet day's decline; + If all the earth and all the heaven + Now look serene to thee, + As o'er them shuts the summer even, + One moment--think of me! + + Pause, in the lane, returning home; + 'Tis dusk, it will be still: + Pause near the elm, a sacred gloom + Its breezeless boughs will fill. + Look at that soft and golden light, + High in the unclouded sky; + Watch the last bird's belated flight, + As it flits silent by. + + Hark! for a sound upon the wind, + A step, a voice, a sigh; + If all be still, then yield thy mind, + Unchecked, to memory. + If thy love were like mine, how blest + That twilight hour would seem, + When, back from the regretted Past, + Returned our early dream! + + If thy love were like mine, how wild + Thy longings, even to pain, + For sunset soft, and moonlight mild, + To bring that hour again! + But oft, when in thine arms I lay, + I've seen thy dark eyes shine, + And deeply felt their changeful ray + Spoke other love than mine. + + My love is almost anguish now, + It beats so strong and true; + 'Twere rapture, could I deem that thou + Such anguish ever knew. + I have been but thy transient flower, + Thou wert my god divine; + Till checked by death's congealing power, + This heart must throb for thine. + + And well my dying hour were blest, + If life's expiring breath + Should pass, as thy lips gently prest + My forehead cold in death; + And sound my sleep would be, and sweet, + Beneath the churchyard tree, + If sometimes in thy heart should beat + One pulse, still true to me. + + + + +PARTING. + + There's no use in weeping, + Though we are condemned to part: + There's such a thing as keeping + A remembrance in one's heart: + + There's such a thing as dwelling + On the thought ourselves have nursed, + And with scorn and courage telling + The world to do its worst. + + We'll not let its follies grieve us, + We'll just take them as they come; + And then every day will leave us + A merry laugh for home. + + When we've left each friend and brother, + When we're parted wide and far, + We will think of one another, + As even better than we are. + + Every glorious sight above us, + Every pleasant sight beneath, + We'll connect with those that love us, + Whom we truly love till death! + + In the evening, when we're sitting + By the fire, perchance alone, + Then shall heart with warm heart meeting, + Give responsive tone for tone. + + We can burst the bonds which chain us, + Which cold human hands have wrought, + And where none shall dare restrain us + We can meet again, in thought. + + So there's no use in weeping, + Bear a cheerful spirit still; + Never doubt that Fate is keeping + Future good for present ill! + + + + +APOSTASY. + + This last denial of my faith, + Thou, solemn Priest, hast heard; + And, though upon my bed of death, + I call not back a word. + Point not to thy Madonna, Priest,-- + Thy sightless saint of stone; + She cannot, from this burning breast, + Wring one repentant moan. + + Thou say'st, that when a sinless child, + I duly bent the knee, + And prayed to what in marble smiled + Cold, lifeless, mute, on me. + I did. But listen! Children spring + Full soon to riper youth; + And, for Love's vow and Wedlock's ring, + I sold my early truth. + + 'Twas not a grey, bare head, like thine, + Bent o'er me, when I said, + "That land and God and Faith are mine, + For which thy fathers bled." + I see thee not, my eyes are dim; + But well I hear thee say, + "O daughter cease to think of him + Who led thy soul astray. + + "Between you lies both space and time; + Let leagues and years prevail + To turn thee from the path of crime, + Back to the Church's pale." + And, did I need that, thou shouldst tell + What mighty barriers rise + To part me from that dungeon-cell, + Where my loved Walter lies? + + And, did I need that thou shouldst taunt + My dying hour at last, + By bidding this worn spirit pant + No more for what is past? + Priest--MUST I cease to think of him? + How hollow rings that word! + Can time, can tears, can distance dim + The memory of my lord? + + I said before, I saw not thee, + Because, an hour agone, + Over my eyeballs, heavily, + The lids fell down like stone. + But still my spirit's inward sight + Beholds his image beam + As fixed, as clear, as burning bright, + As some red planet's gleam. + + Talk not of thy Last Sacrament, + Tell not thy beads for me; + Both rite and prayer are vainly spent, + As dews upon the sea. + Speak not one word of Heaven above, + Rave not of Hell's alarms; + Give me but back my Walter's love, + Restore me to his arms! + + Then will the bliss of Heaven be won; + Then will Hell shrink away, + As I have seen night's terrors shun + The conquering steps of day. + 'Tis my religion thus to love, + My creed thus fixed to be; + Not Death shall shake, nor Priestcraft break + My rock-like constancy! + + Now go; for at the door there waits + Another stranger guest; + He calls--I come--my pulse scarce beats, + My heart fails in my breast. + Again that voice--how far away, + How dreary sounds that tone! + And I, methinks, am gone astray + In trackless wastes and lone. + + I fain would rest a little while: + Where can I find a stay, + Till dawn upon the hills shall smile, + And show some trodden way? + "I come! I come!" in haste she said, + "'Twas Walter's voice I heard!" + Then up she sprang--but fell back, dead, + His name her latest word. + + + + +WINTER STORES. + + We take from life one little share, + And say that this shall be + A space, redeemed from toil and care, + From tears and sadness free. + + And, haply, Death unstrings his bow, + And Sorrow stands apart, + And, for a little while, we know + The sunshine of the heart. + + Existence seems a summer eve, + Warm, soft, and full of peace, + Our free, unfettered feelings give + The soul its full release. + + A moment, then, it takes the power + To call up thoughts that throw + Around that charmed and hallowed hour, + This life's divinest glow. + + But Time, though viewlessly it flies, + And slowly, will not stay; + Alike, through clear and clouded skies, + It cleaves its silent way. + + Alike the bitter cup of grief, + Alike the draught of bliss, + Its progress leaves but moment brief + For baffled lips to kiss + + The sparkling draught is dried away, + The hour of rest is gone, + And urgent voices, round us, say, + "Ho, lingerer, hasten on!" + + And has the soul, then, only gained, + From this brief time of ease, + A moment's rest, when overstrained, + One hurried glimpse of peace? + + No; while the sun shone kindly o'er us, + And flowers bloomed round our feet,-- + While many a bud of joy before us + Unclosed its petals sweet,-- + + An unseen work within was plying; + Like honey-seeking bee, + From flower to flower, unwearied, flying, + Laboured one faculty,-- + + Thoughtful for Winter's future sorrow, + Its gloom and scarcity; + Prescient to-day, of want to-morrow, + Toiled quiet Memory. + + 'Tis she that from each transient pleasure + Extracts a lasting good; + 'Tis she that finds, in summer, treasure + To serve for winter's food. + + And when Youth's summer day is vanished, + And Age brings Winter's stress, + Her stores, with hoarded sweets replenished, + Life's evening hours will bless. + + + + +THE MISSIONARY. + + Plough, vessel, plough the British main, + Seek the free ocean's wider plain; + Leave English scenes and English skies, + Unbind, dissever English ties; + Bear me to climes remote and strange, + Where altered life, fast-following change, + Hot action, never-ceasing toil, + Shall stir, turn, dig, the spirit's soil; + Fresh roots shall plant, fresh seed shall sow, + Till a new garden there shall grow, + Cleared of the weeds that fill it now,-- + Mere human love, mere selfish yearning, + Which, cherished, would arrest me yet. + I grasp the plough, there's no returning, + Let me, then, struggle to forget. + + But England's shores are yet in view, + And England's skies of tender blue + Are arched above her guardian sea. + I cannot yet Remembrance flee; + I must again, then, firmly face + That task of anguish, to retrace. + Wedded to home--I home forsake; + Fearful of change--I changes make; + Too fond of ease--I plunge in toil; + Lover of calm--I seek turmoil: + Nature and hostile Destiny + Stir in my heart a conflict wild; + And long and fierce the war will be + Ere duty both has reconciled. + + What other tie yet holds me fast + To the divorced, abandoned past? + Smouldering, on my heart's altar lies + The fire of some great sacrifice, + Not yet half quenched. The sacred steel + But lately struck my carnal will, + My life-long hope, first joy and last, + What I loved well, and clung to fast; + What I wished wildly to retain, + What I renounced with soul-felt pain; + What--when I saw it, axe-struck, perish-- + Left me no joy on earth to cherish; + A man bereft--yet sternly now + I do confirm that Jephtha vow: + Shall I retract, or fear, or flee? + Did Christ, when rose the fatal tree + Before him, on Mount Calvary? + 'Twas a long fight, hard fought, but won, + And what I did was justly done. + + Yet, Helen! from thy love I turned, + When my heart most for thy heart burned; + I dared thy tears, I dared thy scorn-- + Easier the death-pang had been borne. + Helen, thou mightst not go with me, + I could not--dared not stay for thee! + I heard, afar, in bonds complain + The savage from beyond the main; + And that wild sound rose o'er the cry + Wrung out by passion's agony; + And even when, with the bitterest tear + I ever shed, mine eyes were dim, + Still, with the spirit's vision clear, + I saw Hell's empire, vast and grim, + Spread on each Indian river's shore, + Each realm of Asia covering o'er. + There, the weak, trampled by the strong, + Live but to suffer--hopeless die; + There pagan-priests, whose creed is Wrong, + Extortion, Lust, and Cruelty, + Crush our lost race--and brimming fill + The bitter cup of human ill; + And I--who have the healing creed, + The faith benign of Mary's Son, + Shall I behold my brother's need, + And, selfishly, to aid him shun? + I--who upon my mother's knees, + In childhood, read Christ's written word, + Received his legacy of peace, + His holy rule of action heard; + I--in whose heart the sacred sense + Of Jesus' love was early felt; + Of his pure, full benevolence, + His pitying tenderness for guilt; + His shepherd-care for wandering sheep, + For all weak, sorrowing, trembling things, + His mercy vast, his passion deep + Of anguish for man's sufferings; + I--schooled from childhood in such lore-- + Dared I draw back or hesitate, + When called to heal the sickness sore + Of those far off and desolate? + Dark, in the realm and shades of Death, + Nations, and tribes, and empires lie, + But even to them the light of Faith + Is breaking on their sombre sky: + And be it mine to bid them raise + Their drooped heads to the kindling scene, + And know and hail the sunrise blaze + Which heralds Christ the Nazarene. + I know how Hell the veil will spread + Over their brows and filmy eyes, + And earthward crush the lifted head + That would look up and seek the skies; + I know what war the fiend will wage + Against that soldier of the Cross, + Who comes to dare his demon rage, + And work his kingdom shame and loss. + Yes, hard and terrible the toil + Of him who steps on foreign soil, + Resolved to plant the gospel vine, + Where tyrants rule and slaves repine; + Eager to lift Religion's light + Where thickest shades of mental night + Screen the false god and fiendish rite; + Reckless that missionary blood, + Shed in wild wilderness and wood, + Has left, upon the unblest air, + The man's deep moan--the martyr's prayer. + I know my lot--I only ask + Power to fulfil the glorious task; + Willing the spirit, may the flesh + Strength for the day receive afresh. + May burning sun or deadly wind + Prevail not o'er an earnest mind; + May torments strange or direst death + Nor trample truth, nor baffle faith. + Though such blood-drops should fall from me + As fell in old Gethsemane, + Welcome the anguish, so it gave + More strength to work--more skill to save. + And, oh! if brief must be my time, + If hostile hand or fatal clime + Cut short my course--still o'er my grave, + Lord, may thy harvest whitening wave. + So I the culture may begin, + Let others thrust the sickle in; + If but the seed will faster grow, + May my blood water what I sow! + + What! have I ever trembling stood, + And feared to give to God that blood? + What! has the coward love of life + Made me shrink from the righteous strife? + Have human passions, human fears + Severed me from those Pioneers + Whose task is to march first, and trace + Paths for the progress of our race? + It has been so; but grant me, Lord, + Now to stand steadfast by Thy word! + Protected by salvation's helm, + Shielded by faith, with truth begirt, + To smile when trials seek to whelm + And stand mid testing fires unhurt! + Hurling hell's strongest bulwarks down, + Even when the last pang thrills my breast, + When death bestows the martyr's crown, + And calls me into Jesus' rest. + Then for my ultimate reward-- + Then for the world-rejoicing word-- + The voice from Father--Spirit--Son: + "Servant of God, well hast thou done!" + + + ***** + + + + +POEMS BY ELLIS BELL + + + + +FAITH AND DESPONDENCY. + + "The winter wind is loud and wild, + Come close to me, my darling child; + Forsake thy books, and mateless play; + And, while the night is gathering gray, + We'll talk its pensive hours away;-- + + "Ierne, round our sheltered hall + November's gusts unheeded call; + Not one faint breath can enter here + Enough to wave my daughter's hair, + And I am glad to watch the blaze + Glance from her eyes, with mimic rays; + To feel her cheek, so softly pressed, + In happy quiet on my breast, + + "But, yet, even this tranquillity + Brings bitter, restless thoughts to me; + And, in the red fire's cheerful glow, + I think of deep glens, blocked with snow; + I dream of moor, and misty hill, + Where evening closes dark and chill; + For, lone, among the mountains cold, + Lie those that I have loved of old. + And my heart aches, in hopeless pain, + Exhausted with repinings vain, + That I shall greet them ne'er again!" + + "Father, in early infancy, + When you were far beyond the sea, + Such thoughts were tyrants over me! + I often sat, for hours together, + Through the long nights of angry weather, + Raised on my pillow, to descry + The dim moon struggling in the sky; + Or, with strained ear, to catch the shock, + Of rock with wave, and wave with rock; + So would I fearful vigil keep, + And, all for listening, never sleep. + But this world's life has much to dread, + Not so, my Father, with the dead. + + "Oh! not for them, should we despair, + The grave is drear, but they are not there; + Their dust is mingled with the sod, + Their happy souls are gone to God! + You told me this, and yet you sigh, + And murmur that your friends must die. + Ah! my dear father, tell me why? + For, if your former words were true, + How useless would such sorrow be; + As wise, to mourn the seed which grew + Unnoticed on its parent tree, + Because it fell in fertile earth, + And sprang up to a glorious birth-- + Struck deep its root, and lifted high + Its green boughs in the breezy sky. + + "But, I'll not fear, I will not weep + For those whose bodies rest in sleep,-- + I know there is a blessed shore, + Opening its ports for me and mine; + And, gazing Time's wide waters o'er, + I weary for that land divine, + Where we were born, where you and I + Shall meet our dearest, when we die; + From suffering and corruption free, + Restored into the Deity." + + "Well hast thou spoken, sweet, trustful child! + And wiser than thy sire; + And worldly tempests, raging wild, + Shall strengthen thy desire-- + Thy fervent hope, through storm and foam, + Through wind and ocean's roar, + To reach, at last, the eternal home, + The steadfast, changeless shore!" + + + + +STARS. + + Ah! why, because the dazzling sun + Restored our Earth to joy, + Have you departed, every one, + And left a desert sky? + + All through the night, your glorious eyes + Were gazing down in mine, + And, with a full heart's thankful sighs, + I blessed that watch divine. + + I was at peace, and drank your beams + As they were life to me; + And revelled in my changeful dreams, + Like petrel on the sea. + + Thought followed thought, star followed star, + Through boundless regions, on; + While one sweet influence, near and far, + Thrilled through, and proved us one! + + Why did the morning dawn to break + So great, so pure, a spell; + And scorch with fire the tranquil cheek, + Where your cool radiance fell? + + Blood-red, he rose, and, arrow-straight, + His fierce beams struck my brow; + The soul of nature sprang, elate, + But mine sank sad and low! + + My lids closed down, yet through their veil + I saw him, blazing, still, + And steep in gold the misty dale, + And flash upon the hill. + + I turned me to the pillow, then, + To call back night, and see + Your worlds of solemn light, again, + Throb with my heart, and me! + + It would not do--the pillow glowed, + And glowed both roof and floor; + And birds sang loudly in the wood, + And fresh winds shook the door; + + The curtains waved, the wakened flies + Were murmuring round my room, + Imprisoned there, till I should rise, + And give them leave to roam. + + Oh, stars, and dreams, and gentle night; + Oh, night and stars, return! + And hide me from the hostile light + That does not warm, but burn; + + That drains the blood of suffering men; + Drinks tears, instead of dew; + Let me sleep through his blinding reign, + And only wake with you! + + + + +THE PHILOSOPHER. + + Enough of thought, philosopher! + Too long hast thou been dreaming + Unlightened, in this chamber drear, + While summer's sun is beaming! + Space-sweeping soul, what sad refrain + Concludes thy musings once again? + + "Oh, for the time when I shall sleep + Without identity. + And never care how rain may steep, + Or snow may cover me! + No promised heaven, these wild desires + Could all, or half fulfil; + No threatened hell, with quenchless fires, + Subdue this quenchless will!" + + "So said I, and still say the same; + Still, to my death, will say-- + Three gods, within this little frame, + Are warring night; and day; + Heaven could not hold them all, and yet + They all are held in me; + And must be mine till I forget + My present entity! + Oh, for the time, when in my breast + Their struggles will be o'er! + Oh, for the day, when I shall rest, + And never suffer more!" + + "I saw a spirit, standing, man, + Where thou dost stand--an hour ago, + And round his feet three rivers ran, + Of equal depth, and equal flow-- + A golden stream--and one like blood; + And one like sapphire seemed to be; + But, where they joined their triple flood + It tumbled in an inky sea + The spirit sent his dazzling gaze + Down through that ocean's gloomy night; + Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze, + The glad deep sparkled wide and bright-- + White as the sun, far, far more fair + Than its divided sources were!" + + "And even for that spirit, seer, + I've watched and sought my life-time long; + Sought him in heaven, hell, earth, and air, + An endless search, and always wrong. + Had I but seen his glorious eye + ONCE light the clouds that wilder me; + I ne'er had raised this coward cry + To cease to think, and cease to be; + + I ne'er had called oblivion blest, + Nor stretching eager hands to death, + Implored to change for senseless rest + This sentient soul, this living breath-- + Oh, let me die--that power and will + Their cruel strife may close; + And conquered good, and conquering ill + Be lost in one repose!" + + + + +REMEMBRANCE. + + Cold in the earth--and the deep snow piled above thee, + Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave! + Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, + Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave? + + Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover + Over the mountains, on that northern shore, + Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover + Thy noble heart for ever, ever more? + + Cold in the earth--and fifteen wild Decembers, + From those brown hills, have melted into spring: + Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers + After such years of change and suffering! + + Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee, + While the world's tide is bearing me along; + Other desires and other hopes beset me, + Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong! + + No later light has lightened up my heaven, + No second morn has ever shone for me; + All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given, + All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee. + + But, when the days of golden dreams had perished, + And even Despair was powerless to destroy; + Then did I learn how existence could be cherished, + Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy. + + Then did I check the tears of useless passion-- + Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine; + Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten + Down to that tomb already more than mine. + + And, even yet, I dare not let it languish, + Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain; + Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, + How could I seek the empty world again? + + + + +A DEATH-SCENE. + + "O day! he cannot die + When thou so fair art shining! + O Sun, in such a glorious sky, + So tranquilly declining; + + He cannot leave thee now, + While fresh west winds are blowing, + And all around his youthful brow + Thy cheerful light is glowing! + + Edward, awake, awake-- + The golden evening gleams + Warm and bright on Arden's lake-- + Arouse thee from thy dreams! + + Beside thee, on my knee, + My dearest friend, I pray + That thou, to cross the eternal sea, + Wouldst yet one hour delay: + + I hear its billows roar-- + I see them foaming high; + But no glimpse of a further shore + Has blest my straining eye. + + Believe not what they urge + Of Eden isles beyond; + Turn back, from that tempestuous surge, + To thy own native land. + + It is not death, but pain + That struggles in thy breast-- + Nay, rally, Edward, rouse again; + I cannot let thee rest!" + + One long look, that sore reproved me + For the woe I could not bear-- + One mute look of suffering moved me + To repent my useless prayer: + + And, with sudden check, the heaving + Of distraction passed away; + Not a sign of further grieving + Stirred my soul that awful day. + + Paled, at length, the sweet sun setting; + Sunk to peace the twilight breeze: + Summer dews fell softly, wetting + Glen, and glade, and silent trees. + + Then his eyes began to weary, + Weighed beneath a mortal sleep; + And their orbs grew strangely dreary, + Clouded, even as they would weep. + + But they wept not, but they changed not, + Never moved, and never closed; + Troubled still, and still they ranged not-- + Wandered not, nor yet reposed! + + So I knew that he was dying-- + Stooped, and raised his languid head; + Felt no breath, and heard no sighing, + So I knew that he was dead. + + + + +SONG. + + The linnet in the rocky dells, + The moor-lark in the air, + The bee among the heather bells + That hide my lady fair: + + The wild deer browse above her breast; + The wild birds raise their brood; + And they, her smiles of love caressed, + Have left her solitude! + + I ween, that when the grave's dark wall + Did first her form retain, + They thought their hearts could ne'er recall + The light of joy again. + + They thought the tide of grief would flow + Unchecked through future years; + But where is all their anguish now, + And where are all their tears? + + Well, let them fight for honour's breath, + Or pleasure's shade pursue-- + The dweller in the land of death + Is changed and careless too. + + And, if their eyes should watch and weep + Till sorrow's source were dry, + She would not, in her tranquil sleep, + Return a single sigh! + + Blow, west-wind, by the lonely mound, + And murmur, summer-streams-- + There is no need of other sound + To soothe my lady's dreams. + + + + +ANTICIPATION. + + How beautiful the earth is still, + To thee--how full of happiness? + How little fraught with real ill, + Or unreal phantoms of distress! + How spring can bring thee glory, yet, + And summer win thee to forget + December's sullen time! + Why dost thou hold the treasure fast, + Of youth's delight, when youth is past, + And thou art near thy prime? + + When those who were thy own compeers, + Equals in fortune and in years, + Have seen their morning melt in tears, + To clouded, smileless day; + Blest, had they died untried and young, + Before their hearts went wandering wrong,-- + Poor slaves, subdued by passions strong, + A weak and helpless prey! + + 'Because, I hoped while they enjoyed, + And by fulfilment, hope destroyed; + As children hope, with trustful breast, + I waited bliss--and cherished rest. + A thoughtful spirit taught me soon, + That we must long till life be done; + That every phase of earthly joy + Must always fade, and always cloy: + + 'This I foresaw--and would not chase + The fleeting treacheries; + But, with firm foot and tranquil face, + Held backward from that tempting race, + Gazed o'er the sands the waves efface, + To the enduring seas-- + There cast my anchor of desire + Deep in unknown eternity; + Nor ever let my spirit tire, + With looking for WHAT IS TO BE! + + "It is hope's spell that glorifies, + Like youth, to my maturer eyes, + All Nature's million mysteries, + The fearful and the fair-- + Hope soothes me in the griefs I know; + She lulls my pain for others' woe, + And makes me strong to undergo + What I am born to bear. + + Glad comforter! will I not brave, + Unawed, the darkness of the grave? + Nay, smile to hear Death's billows rave-- + Sustained, my guide, by thee? + The more unjust seems present fate, + The more my spirit swells elate, + Strong, in thy strength, to anticipate + Rewarding destiny! + + + + +THE PRISONER. + + A FRAGMENT. + + In the dungeon-crypts idly did I stray, + Reckless of the lives wasting there away; + "Draw the ponderous bars! open, Warder stern!" + He dared not say me nay--the hinges harshly turn. + + "Our guests are darkly lodged," I whisper'd, gazing through + The vault, whose grated eye showed heaven more gray than blue; + (This was when glad Spring laughed in awaking pride;) + "Ay, darkly lodged enough!" returned my sullen guide. + + Then, God forgive my youth; forgive my careless tongue; + I scoffed, as the chill chains on the damp flagstones rung: + "Confined in triple walls, art thou so much to fear, + That we must bind thee down and clench thy fetters here?" + + The captive raised her face; it was as soft and mild + As sculptured marble saint, or slumbering unwean'd child; + It was so soft and mild, it was so sweet and fair, + Pain could not trace a line, nor grief a shadow there! + + The captive raised her hand and pressed it to her brow; + "I have been struck," she said, "and I am suffering now; + Yet these are little worth, your bolts and irons strong; + And, were they forged in steel, they could not hold me long." + + Hoarse laughed the jailor grim: "Shall I be won to hear; + Dost think, fond, dreaming wretch, that I shall grant thy prayer? + Or, better still, wilt melt my master's heart with groans? + Ah! sooner might the sun thaw down these granite stones. + + "My master's voice is low, his aspect bland and kind, + But hard as hardest flint the soul that lurks behind; + And I am rough and rude, yet not more rough to see + Than is the hidden ghost that has its home in me." + + About her lips there played a smile of almost scorn, + "My friend," she gently said, "you have not heard me mourn; + When you my kindred's lives, MY lost life, can restore, + Then may I weep and sue,--but never, friend, before! + + "Still, let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear + Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair; + A messenger of Hope comes every night to me, + And offers for short life, eternal liberty. + + "He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, + With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars. + Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, + And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire. + + "Desire for nothing known in my maturer years, + When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears. + When, if my spirit's sky was full of flashes warm, + I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunder-storm. + + "But, first, a hush of peace--a soundless calm descends; + The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends; + Mute music soothes my breast--unuttered harmony, + That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me. + + "Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals; + My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels: + Its wings are almost free--its home, its harbour found, + Measuring the gulph, it stoops and dares the final bound, + + "Oh I dreadful is the check--intense the agony-- + When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see; + When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again; + The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain. + + "Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less; + The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless; + And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine, + If it but herald death, the vision is divine!" + + She ceased to speak, and we, unanswering, turned to go-- + We had no further power to work the captive woe: + Her cheek, her gleaming eye, declared that man had given + A sentence, unapproved, and overruled by Heaven. + + + + +HOPE. + + Hope Was but a timid friend; + She sat without the grated den, + Watching how my fate would tend, + Even as selfish-hearted men. + + She was cruel in her fear; + Through the bars one dreary day, + I looked out to see her there, + And she turned her face away! + + Like a false guard, false watch keeping, + Still, in strife, she whispered peace; + She would sing while I was weeping; + If I listened, she would cease. + + False she was, and unrelenting; + When my last joys strewed the ground, + Even Sorrow saw, repenting, + Those sad relics scattered round; + + Hope, whose whisper would have given + Balm to all my frenzied pain, + Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven, + Went, and ne'er returned again! + + + + +A DAY DREAM. + + On a sunny brae alone I lay + One summer afternoon; + It was the marriage-time of May, + With her young lover, June. + + From her mother's heart seemed loath to part + That queen of bridal charms, + But her father smiled on the fairest child + He ever held in his arms. + + The trees did wave their plumy crests, + The glad birds carolled clear; + And I, of all the wedding guests, + Was only sullen there! + + There was not one, but wished to shun + My aspect void of cheer; + The very gray rocks, looking on, + Asked, "What do you here?" + + And I could utter no reply; + In sooth, I did not know + Why I had brought a clouded eye + To greet the general glow. + + So, resting on a heathy bank, + I took my heart to me; + And we together sadly sank + Into a reverie. + + We thought, "When winter comes again, + Where will these bright things be? + All vanished, like a vision vain, + An unreal mockery! + + "The birds that now so blithely sing, + Through deserts, frozen dry, + Poor spectres of the perished spring, + In famished troops will fly. + + "And why should we be glad at all? + The leaf is hardly green, + Before a token of its fall + Is on the surface seen!" + + Now, whether it were really so, + I never could be sure; + But as in fit of peevish woe, + I stretched me on the moor, + + A thousand thousand gleaming fires + Seemed kindling in the air; + A thousand thousand silvery lyres + Resounded far and near: + + Methought, the very breath I breathed + Was full of sparks divine, + And all my heather-couch was wreathed + By that celestial shine! + + And, while the wide earth echoing rung + To that strange minstrelsy + The little glittering spirits sung, + Or seemed to sing, to me: + + "O mortal! mortal! let them die; + Let time and tears destroy, + That we may overflow the sky + With universal joy! + + "Let grief distract the sufferer's breast, + And night obscure his way; + They hasten him to endless rest, + And everlasting day. + + "To thee the world is like a tomb, + A desert's naked shore; + To us, in unimagined bloom, + It brightens more and more! + + "And, could we lift the veil, and give + One brief glimpse to thine eye, + Thou wouldst rejoice for those that live, + BECAUSE they live to die." + + The music ceased; the noonday dream, + Like dream of night, withdrew; + But Fancy, still, will sometimes deem + Her fond creation true. + + + + +TO IMAGINATION. + + When weary with the long day's care, + And earthly change from pain to pain, + And lost, and ready to despair, + Thy kind voice calls me back again: + Oh, my true friend! I am not lone, + While then canst speak with such a tone! + + So hopeless is the world without; + The world within I doubly prize; + Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt, + And cold suspicion never rise; + Where thou, and I, and Liberty, + Have undisputed sovereignty. + + What matters it, that all around + Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie, + If but within our bosom's bound + We hold a bright, untroubled sky, + Warm with ten thousand mingled rays + Of suns that know no winter days? + + Reason, indeed, may oft complain + For Nature's sad reality, + And tell the suffering heart how vain + Its cherished dreams must always be; + And Truth may rudely trample down + The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown: + + But thou art ever there, to bring + The hovering vision back, and breathe + New glories o'er the blighted spring, + And call a lovelier Life from Death. + And whisper, with a voice divine, + Of real worlds, as bright as thine. + + I trust not to thy phantom bliss, + Yet, still, in evening's quiet hour, + With never-failing thankfulness, + I welcome thee, Benignant Power; + Sure solacer of human cares, + And sweeter hope, when hope despairs! + + + + +HOW CLEAR SHE SHINES. + + How clear she shines! How quietly + I lie beneath her guardian light; + While heaven and earth are whispering me, + "To morrow, wake, but dream to-night." + Yes, Fancy, come, my Fairy love! + These throbbing temples softly kiss; + And bend my lonely couch above, + And bring me rest, and bring me bliss. + + The world is going; dark world, adieu! + Grim world, conceal thee till the day; + The heart thou canst not all subdue + Must still resist, if thou delay! + + Thy love I will not, will not share; + Thy hatred only wakes a smile; + Thy griefs may wound--thy wrongs may tear, + But, oh, thy lies shall ne'er beguile! + While gazing on the stars that glow + Above me, in that stormless sea, + I long to hope that all the woe + Creation knows, is held in thee! + + And this shall be my dream to-night; + I'll think the heaven of glorious spheres + Is rolling on its course of light + In endless bliss, through endless years; + I'll think, there's not one world above, + Far as these straining eyes can see, + Where Wisdom ever laughed at Love, + Or Virtue crouched to Infamy; + + Where, writhing 'neath the strokes of Fate, + The mangled wretch was forced to smile; + To match his patience 'gainst her hate, + His heart rebellious all the while. + Where Pleasure still will lead to wrong, + And helpless Reason warn in vain; + And Truth is weak, and Treachery strong; + And Joy the surest path to Pain; + And Peace, the lethargy of Grief; + And Hope, a phantom of the soul; + And life, a labour, void and brief; + And Death, the despot of the whole! + + + + +SYMPATHY. + + There should be no despair for you + While nightly stars are burning; + While evening pours its silent dew, + And sunshine gilds the morning. + There should be no despair--though tears + May flow down like a river: + Are not the best beloved of years + Around your heart for ever? + + They weep, you weep, it must be so; + Winds sigh as you are sighing, + And winter sheds its grief in snow + Where Autumn's leaves are lying: + Yet, these revive, and from their fate + Your fate cannot be parted: + Then, journey on, if not elate, + Still, NEVER broken-hearted! + + + + +PLEAD FOR ME. + + Oh, thy bright eyes must answer now, + When Reason, with a scornful brow, + Is mocking at my overthrow! + Oh, thy sweet tongue must plead for me + And tell why I have chosen thee! + + Stern Reason is to judgment come, + Arrayed in all her forms of gloom: + Wilt thou, my advocate, be dumb? + No, radiant angel, speak and say, + Why I did cast the world away. + + Why I have persevered to shun + The common paths that others run; + And on a strange road journeyed on, + Heedless, alike of wealth and power-- + Of glory's wreath and pleasure's flower. + + These, once, indeed, seemed Beings Divine; + And they, perchance, heard vows of mine, + And saw my offerings on their shrine; + But careless gifts are seldom prized, + And MINE were worthily despised. + + So, with a ready heart, I swore + To seek their altar-stone no more; + And gave my spirit to adore + Thee, ever-present, phantom thing-- + My slave, my comrade, and my king. + + A slave, because I rule thee still; + Incline thee to my changeful will, + And make thy influence good or ill: + A comrade, for by day and night + Thou art my intimate delight,-- + + My darling pain that wounds and sears, + And wrings a blessing out from tears + By deadening me to earthly cares; + And yet, a king, though Prudence well + Have taught thy subject to rebel + + And am I wrong to worship where + Faith cannot doubt, nor hope despair, + Since my own soul can grant my prayer? + Speak, God of visions, plead for me, + And tell why I have chosen thee! + + + + +SELF-INTEROGATION, + + "The evening passes fast away. + 'Tis almost time to rest; + What thoughts has left the vanished day, + What feelings in thy breast? + + "The vanished day? It leaves a sense + Of labour hardly done; + Of little gained with vast expense-- + A sense of grief alone? + + "Time stands before the door of Death, + Upbraiding bitterly + And Conscience, with exhaustless breath, + Pours black reproach on me: + + "And though I've said that Conscience lies + And Time should Fate condemn; + Still, sad Repentance clouds my eyes, + And makes me yield to them! + + "Then art thou glad to seek repose? + Art glad to leave the sea, + And anchor all thy weary woes + In calm Eternity? + + "Nothing regrets to see thee go-- + Not one voice sobs' farewell;' + And where thy heart has suffered so, + Canst thou desire to dwell?" + + "Alas! the countless links are strong + That bind us to our clay; + The loving spirit lingers long, + And would not pass away! + + "And rest is sweet, when laurelled fame + Will crown the soldier's crest; + But a brave heart, with a tarnished name, + Would rather fight than rest. + + "Well, thou hast fought for many a year, + Hast fought thy whole life through, + Hast humbled Falsehood, trampled Fear; + What is there left to do? + + "'Tis true, this arm has hotly striven, + Has dared what few would dare; + Much have I done, and freely given, + But little learnt to bear! + + "Look on the grave where thou must sleep + Thy last, and strongest foe; + It is endurance not to weep, + If that repose seem woe. + + "The long war closing in defeat-- + Defeat serenely borne,-- + Thy midnight rest may still be sweet, + And break in glorious morn!" + + + + +DEATH. + + Death! that struck when I was most confiding. + In my certain faith of joy to be-- + Strike again, Time's withered branch dividing + From the fresh root of Eternity! + + Leaves, upon Time's branch, were growing brightly, + Full of sap, and full of silver dew; + Birds beneath its shelter gathered nightly; + Daily round its flowers the wild bees flew. + + Sorrow passed, and plucked the golden blossom; + Guilt stripped off the foliage in its pride + But, within its parent's kindly bosom, + Flowed for ever Life's restoring tide. + + Little mourned I for the parted gladness, + For the vacant nest and silent song-- + Hope was there, and laughed me out of sadness; + Whispering, "Winter will not linger long!" + + And, behold! with tenfold increase blessing, + Spring adorned the beauty-burdened spray; + Wind and rain and fervent heat, caressing, + Lavished glory on that second May! + + High it rose--no winged grief could sweep it; + Sin was scared to distance with its shine; + Love, and its own life, had power to keep it + From all wrong--from every blight but thine! + + Cruel Death! The young leaves droop and languish; + Evening's gentle air may still restore-- + No! the morning sunshine mocks my anguish- + Time, for me, must never blossom more! + + Strike it down, that other boughs may flourish + Where that perished sapling used to be; + Thus, at least, its mouldering corpse will nourish + That from which it sprung--Eternity. + + + + +STANZAS TO ---- + + Well, some may hate, and some may scorn, + And some may quite forget thy name; + But my sad heart must ever mourn + Thy ruined hopes, thy blighted fame! + 'Twas thus I thought, an hour ago, + Even weeping o'er that wretch's woe; + One word turned back my gushing tears, + And lit my altered eye with sneers. + Then "Bless the friendly dust," I said, + "That hides thy unlamented head! + Vain as thou wert, and weak as vain, + The slave of Falsehood, Pride, and Pain-- + My heart has nought akin to thine; + Thy soul is powerless over mine." + But these were thoughts that vanished too; + Unwise, unholy, and untrue: + Do I despise the timid deer, + Because his limbs are fleet with fear? + Or, would I mock the wolf's death-howl, + Because his form is gaunt and foul? + Or, hear with joy the leveret's cry, + Because it cannot bravely die? + No! Then above his memory + Let Pity's heart as tender be; + Say, "Earth, lie lightly on that breast, + And, kind Heaven, grant that spirit rest!" + + + + +HONOUR'S MARTYR. + + The moon is full this winter night; + The stars are clear, though few; + And every window glistens bright + With leaves of frozen dew. + + The sweet moon through your lattice gleams, + And lights your room like day; + And there you pass, in happy dreams, + The peaceful hours away! + + While I, with effort hardly quelling + The anguish in my breast, + Wander about the silent dwelling, + And cannot think of rest. + + The old clock in the gloomy hall + Ticks on, from hour to hour; + And every time its measured call + Seems lingering slow and slower: + + And, oh, how slow that keen-eyed star + Has tracked the chilly gray! + What, watching yet! how very far + The morning lies away! + + Without your chamber door I stand; + Love, are you slumbering still? + My cold heart, underneath my hand, + Has almost ceased to thrill. + + Bleak, bleak the east wind sobs and sighs, + And drowns the turret bell, + Whose sad note, undistinguished, dies + Unheard, like my farewell! + + To-morrow, Scorn will blight my name, + And Hate will trample me, + Will load me with a coward's shame-- + A traitor's perjury. + + False friends will launch their covert sneers; + True friends will wish me dead; + And I shall cause the bitterest tears + That you have ever shed. + + The dark deeds of my outlawed race + Will then like virtues shine; + And men will pardon their disgrace, + Beside the guilt of mine. + + For, who forgives the accursed crime + Of dastard treachery? + Rebellion, in its chosen time, + May Freedom's champion be; + + Revenge may stain a righteous sword, + It may be just to slay; + But, traitor, traitor,--from THAT word + All true breasts shrink away! + + Oh, I would give my heart to death, + To keep my honour fair; + Yet, I'll not give my inward faith + My honour's NAME to spare! + + Not even to keep your priceless love, + Dare I, Beloved, deceive; + This treason should the future prove, + Then, only then, believe! + + I know the path I ought to go + I follow fearlessly, + Inquiring not what deeper woe + Stern duty stores for me. + + So foes pursue, and cold allies + Mistrust me, every one: + Let me be false in others' eyes, + If faithful in my own. + + + + +STANZAS. + + I'll not weep that thou art going to leave me, + There's nothing lovely here; + And doubly will the dark world grieve me, + While thy heart suffers there. + + I'll not weep, because the summer's glory + Must always end in gloom; + And, follow out the happiest story-- + It closes with a tomb! + + And I am weary of the anguish + Increasing winters bear; + Weary to watch the spirit languish + Through years of dead despair. + + So, if a tear, when thou art dying, + Should haply fall from me, + It is but that my soul is sighing, + To go and rest with thee. + + + + +MY COMFORTER. + + Well hast thou spoken, and yet not taught + A feeling strange or new; + Thou hast but roused a latent thought, + A cloud-closed beam of sunshine brought + To gleam in open view. + + Deep down, concealed within my soul, + That light lies hid from men; + Yet glows unquenched--though shadows roll, + Its gentle ray cannot control-- + About the sullen den. + + Was I not vexed, in these gloomy ways + To walk alone so long? + Around me, wretches uttering praise, + Or howling o'er their hopeless days, + And each with Frenzy's tongue;-- + + A brotherhood of misery, + Their smiles as sad as sighs; + Whose madness daily maddened me, + Distorting into agony + The bliss before my eyes! + + So stood I, in Heaven's glorious sun, + And in the glare of Hell; + My spirit drank a mingled tone, + Of seraph's song, and demon's moan; + What my soul bore, my soul alone + Within itself may tell! + + Like a soft, air above a sea, + Tossed by the tempest's stir; + A thaw-wind, melting quietly + The snow-drift on some wintry lea; + No: what sweet thing resembles thee, + My thoughtful Comforter? + + And yet a little longer speak, + Calm this resentful mood; + And while the savage heart grows meek, + For other token do not seek, + But let the tear upon my cheek + Evince my gratitude! + + + + +THE OLD STOIC. + + Riches I hold in light esteem, + And Love I laugh to scorn; + And lust of fame was but a dream, + That vanished with the morn: + + And if I pray, the only prayer + That moves my lips for me + Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear, + And give me liberty!" + + Yes, as my swift days near their goal: + 'Tis all that I implore; + In life and death a chainless soul, + With courage to endure. + + + ***** + + + + + +POEMS BY ACTON BELL, + + + + +A REMINISCENCE. + + Yes, thou art gone! and never more + Thy sunny smile shall gladden me; + But I may pass the old church door, + And pace the floor that covers thee, + + May stand upon the cold, damp stone, + And think that, frozen, lies below + The lightest heart that I have known, + The kindest I shall ever know. + + Yet, though I cannot see thee more, + 'Tis still a comfort to have seen; + And though thy transient life is o'er, + 'Tis sweet to think that thou hast been; + + To think a soul so near divine, + Within a form so angel fair, + United to a heart like thine, + Has gladdened once our humble sphere. + + + + +THE ARBOUR. + + I'll rest me in this sheltered bower, + And look upon the clear blue sky + That smiles upon me through the trees, + Which stand so thick clustering by; + + And view their green and glossy leaves, + All glistening in the sunshine fair; + And list the rustling of their boughs, + So softly whispering through the air. + + And while my ear drinks in the sound, + My winged soul shall fly away; + Reviewing lone departed years + As one mild, beaming, autumn day; + + And soaring on to future scenes, + Like hills and woods, and valleys green, + All basking in the summer's sun, + But distant still, and dimly seen. + + Oh, list! 'tis summer's very breath + That gently shakes the rustling trees-- + But look! the snow is on the ground-- + How can I think of scenes like these? + + 'Tis but the FROST that clears the air, + And gives the sky that lovely blue; + They're smiling in a WINTER'S sun, + Those evergreens of sombre hue. + + And winter's chill is on my heart-- + How can I dream of future bliss? + How can my spirit soar away, + Confined by such a chain as this? + + + + +HOME. + + How brightly glistening in the sun + The woodland ivy plays! + While yonder beeches from their barks + Reflect his silver rays. + + That sun surveys a lovely scene + From softly smiling skies; + And wildly through unnumbered trees + The wind of winter sighs: + + Now loud, it thunders o'er my head, + And now in distance dies. + But give me back my barren hills + Where colder breezes rise; + + Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees + Can yield an answering swell, + But where a wilderness of heath + Returns the sound as well. + + For yonder garden, fair and wide, + With groves of evergreen, + Long winding walks, and borders trim, + And velvet lawns between; + + Restore to me that little spot, + With gray walls compassed round, + Where knotted grass neglected lies, + And weeds usurp the ground. + + Though all around this mansion high + Invites the foot to roam, + And though its halls are fair within-- + Oh, give me back my HOME! + + + + +VANITAS VANITATUM, OMNIA VANITAS. + + In all we do, and hear, and see, + Is restless Toil and Vanity. + While yet the rolling earth abides, + Men come and go like ocean tides; + + And ere one generation dies, + Another in its place shall rise; + THAT, sinking soon into the grave, + Others succeed, like wave on wave; + + And as they rise, they pass away. + The sun arises every day, + And hastening onward to the West, + He nightly sinks, but not to rest: + + Returning to the eastern skies, + Again to light us, he must rise. + And still the restless wind comes forth, + Now blowing keenly from the North; + + Now from the South, the East, the West, + For ever changing, ne'er at rest. + The fountains, gushing from the hills, + Supply the ever-running rills; + + The thirsty rivers drink their store, + And bear it rolling to the shore, + But still the ocean craves for more. + 'Tis endless labour everywhere! + Sound cannot satisfy the ear, + + Light cannot fill the craving eye, + Nor riches half our wants supply, + Pleasure but doubles future pain, + And joy brings sorrow in her train; + + Laughter is mad, and reckless mirth-- + What does she in this weary earth? + Should Wealth, or Fame, our Life employ, + Death comes, our labour to destroy; + + To snatch the untasted cup away, + For which we toiled so many a day. + What, then, remains for wretched man? + To use life's comforts while he can, + + Enjoy the blessings Heaven bestows, + Assist his friends, forgive his foes; + Trust God, and keep His statutes still, + Upright and firm, through good and ill; + + Thankful for all that God has given, + Fixing his firmest hopes on Heaven; + Knowing that earthly joys decay, + But hoping through the darkest day. + + + + +THE PENITENT. + + I mourn with thee, and yet rejoice + That thou shouldst sorrow so; + With angel choirs I join my voice + To bless the sinner's woe. + + Though friends and kindred turn away, + And laugh thy grief to scorn; + I hear the great Redeemer say, + "Blessed are ye that mourn." + + Hold on thy course, nor deem it strange + That earthly cords are riven: + Man may lament the wondrous change, + But "there is joy in heaven!" + + + + +MUSIC ON CHRISTMAS MORNING. + + Music I love--but never strain + Could kindle raptures so divine, + So grief assuage, so conquer pain, + And rouse this pensive heart of mine-- + As that we hear on Christmas morn, + Upon the wintry breezes borne. + + Though Darkness still her empire keep, + And hours must pass, ere morning break; + From troubled dreams, or slumbers deep, + That music KINDLY bids us wake: + It calls us, with an angel's voice, + To wake, and worship, and rejoice; + + To greet with joy the glorious morn, + Which angels welcomed long ago, + When our redeeming Lord was born, + To bring the light of Heaven below; + The Powers of Darkness to dispel, + And rescue Earth from Death and Hell. + + While listening to that sacred strain, + My raptured spirit soars on high; + I seem to hear those songs again + Resounding through the open sky, + That kindled such divine delight, + In those who watched their flocks by night. + + With them I celebrate His birth-- + Glory to God, in highest Heaven, + Good-will to men, and peace on earth, + To us a Saviour-king is given; + Our God is come to claim His own, + And Satan's power is overthrown! + + A sinless God, for sinful men, + Descends to suffer and to bleed; + Hell MUST renounce its empire then; + The price is paid, the world is freed, + And Satan's self must now confess + That Christ has earned a RIGHT to bless: + + Now holy Peace may smile from heaven, + And heavenly Truth from earth shall spring: + The captive's galling bonds are riven, + For our Redeemer is our king; + And He that gave his blood for men + Will lead us home to God again. + + + + +STANZAS. + + Oh, weep not, love! each tear that springs + In those dear eyes of thine, + To me a keener suffering brings + Than if they flowed from mine. + + And do not droop! however drear + The fate awaiting thee; + For MY sake combat pain and care, + And cherish life for me! + + I do not fear thy love will fail; + Thy faith is true, I know; + But, oh, my love! thy strength is frail + For such a life of woe. + + Were 't not for this, I well could trace + (Though banished long from thee) + Life's rugged path, and boldly face + The storms that threaten me. + + Fear not for me--I've steeled my mind + Sorrow and strife to greet; + Joy with my love I leave behind, + Care with my friends I meet. + + A mother's sad reproachful eye, + A father's scowling brow-- + But he may frown and she may sigh: + I will not break my vow! + + I love my mother, I revere + My sire, but fear not me-- + Believe that Death alone can tear + This faithful heart from thee. + + + + +IF THIS BE ALL. + + O God! if this indeed be all + That Life can show to me; + If on my aching brow may fall + No freshening dew from Thee; + + If with no brighter light than this + The lamp of hope may glow, + And I may only dream of bliss, + And wake to weary woe; + + If friendship's solace must decay, + When other joys are gone, + And love must keep so far away, + While I go wandering on,-- + + Wandering and toiling without gain, + The slave of others' will, + With constant care, and frequent pain, + Despised, forgotten still; + + Grieving to look on vice and sin, + Yet powerless to quell + The silent current from within, + The outward torrent's swell + + While all the good I would impart, + The feelings I would share, + Are driven backward to my heart, + And turned to wormwood there; + + If clouds must EVER keep from sight + The glories of the Sun, + And I must suffer Winter's blight, + Ere Summer is begun; + + If Life must be so full of care, + Then call me soon to thee; + Or give me strength enough to bear + My load of misery. + + + + +MEMORY. + + Brightly the sun of summer shone + Green fields and waving woods upon, + And soft winds wandered by; + Above, a sky of purest blue, + Around, bright flowers of loveliest hue, + Allured the gazer's eye. + + But what were all these charms to me, + When one sweet breath of memory + Came gently wafting by? + I closed my eyes against the day, + And called my willing soul away, + From earth, and air, and sky; + + That I might simply fancy there + One little flower--a primrose fair, + Just opening into sight; + As in the days of infancy, + An opening primrose seemed to me + A source of strange delight. + + Sweet Memory! ever smile on me; + Nature's chief beauties spring from thee; + Oh, still thy tribute bring + Still make the golden crocus shine + Among the flowers the most divine, + The glory of the spring. + + Still in the wallflower's fragrance dwell; + And hover round the slight bluebell, + My childhood's darling flower. + Smile on the little daisy still, + The buttercup's bright goblet fill + With all thy former power. + + For ever hang thy dreamy spell + Round mountain star and heather bell, + And do not pass away + From sparkling frost, or wreathed snow, + And whisper when the wild winds blow, + Or rippling waters play. + + Is childhood, then, so all divine? + Or Memory, is the glory thine, + That haloes thus the past? + Not ALL divine; its pangs of grief + (Although, perchance, their stay be brief) + Are bitter while they last. + + Nor is the glory all thine own, + For on our earliest joys alone + That holy light is cast. + With such a ray, no spell of thine + Can make our later pleasures shine, + Though long ago they passed. + + + + +TO COWPER. + + Sweet are thy strains, celestial Bard; + And oft, in childhood's years, + I've read them o'er and o'er again, + With floods of silent tears. + + The language of my inmost heart + I traced in every line; + MY sins, MY sorrows, hopes, and fears, + Were there-and only mine. + + All for myself the sigh would swell, + The tear of anguish start; + I little knew what wilder woe + Had filled the Poet's heart. + + I did not know the nights of gloom, + The days of misery; + The long, long years of dark despair, + That crushed and tortured thee. + + But they are gone; from earth at length + Thy gentle soul is pass'd, + And in the bosom of its God + Has found its home at last. + + It must be so, if God is love, + And answers fervent prayer; + Then surely thou shalt dwell on high, + And I may meet thee there. + + Is He the source of every good, + The spring of purity? + Then in thine hours of deepest woe, + Thy God was still with thee. + + How else, when every hope was fled, + Couldst thou so fondly cling + To holy things and help men? + And how so sweetly sing, + + Of things that God alone could teach? + And whence that purity, + That hatred of all sinful ways-- + That gentle charity? + + Are THESE the symptoms of a heart + Of heavenly grace bereft-- + For ever banished from its God, + To Satan's fury left? + + Yet, should thy darkest fears be true, + If Heaven be so severe, + That such a soul as thine is lost,-- + Oh! how shall I appear? + + + + +THE DOUBTER'S PRAYER. + + Eternal Power, of earth and air! + Unseen, yet seen in all around, + Remote, but dwelling everywhere, + Though silent, heard in every sound; + + If e'er thine ear in mercy bent, + When wretched mortals cried to Thee, + And if, indeed, Thy Son was sent, + To save lost sinners such as me: + + Then hear me now, while kneeling here, + I lift to thee my heart and eye, + And all my soul ascends in prayer, + OH, GIVE ME--GIVE ME FAITH! I cry. + + Without some glimmering in my heart, + I could not raise this fervent prayer; + But, oh! a stronger light impart, + And in Thy mercy fix it there. + + While Faith is with me, I am blest; + It turns my darkest night to day; + But while I clasp it to my breast, + I often feel it slide away. + + Then, cold and dark, my spirit sinks, + To see my light of life depart; + And every fiend of Hell, methinks, + Enjoys the anguish of my heart. + + What shall I do, if all my love, + My hopes, my toil, are cast away, + And if there be no God above, + To hear and bless me when I pray? + + If this be vain delusion all, + If death be an eternal sleep, + And none can hear my secret call, + Or see the silent tears I weep! + + Oh, help me, God! For thou alone + Canst my distracted soul relieve; + Forsake it not: it is thine own, + Though weak, yet longing to believe. + + Oh, drive these cruel doubts away; + And make me know, that Thou art God! + A faith, that shines by night and day, + Will lighten every earthly load. + + If I believe that Jesus died, + And waking, rose to reign above; + Then surely Sorrow, Sin, and Pride, + Must yield to Peace, and Hope, and Love. + + And all the blessed words He said + Will strength and holy joy impart: + A shield of safety o'er my head, + A spring of comfort in my heart. + + + + +A WORD TO THE "ELECT." + + You may rejoice to think YOURSELVES secure; + You may be grateful for the gift divine-- + That grace unsought, which made your black hearts pure, + And fits your earth-born souls in Heaven to shine. + + But, is it sweet to look around, and view + Thousands excluded from that happiness + Which they deserved, at least, as much as you.-- + Their faults not greater, nor their virtues less? + + And wherefore should you love your God the more, + Because to you alone his smiles are given; + Because He chose to pass the MANY o'er, + And only bring the favoured FEW to Heaven? + + And, wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove, + Because for ALL the Saviour did not die? + Is yours the God of justice and of love? + And are your bosoms warm with charity? + + Say, does your heart expand to all mankind? + And, would you ever to your neighbour do-- + The weak, the strong, the enlightened, and the blind-- + As you would have your neighbour do to you? + + And when you, looking on your fellow-men, + Behold them doomed to endless misery, + How can you talk of joy and rapture then?-- + May God withhold such cruel joy from me! + + That none deserve eternal bliss I know; + Unmerited the grace in mercy given: + But, none shall sink to everlasting woe, + That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven. + + And, oh! there lives within my heart + A hope, long nursed by me; + (And should its cheering ray depart, + How dark my soul would be!) + + That as in Adam all have died, + In Christ shall all men live; + And ever round his throne abide, + Eternal praise to give. + + That even the wicked shall at last + Be fitted for the skies; + And when their dreadful doom is past, + To life and light arise. + + I ask not, how remote the day, + Nor what the sinners' woe, + Before their dross is purged away; + Enough for me to know-- + + That when the cup of wrath is drained, + The metal purified, + They'll cling to what they once disdained, + And live by Him that died. + + + + +PAST DAYS. + + 'Tis strange to think there WAS a time + When mirth was not an empty name, + When laughter really cheered the heart, + And frequent smiles unbidden came, + And tears of grief would only flow + In sympathy for others' woe; + + When speech expressed the inward thought, + And heart to kindred heart was bare, + And summer days were far too short + For all the pleasures crowded there; + And silence, solitude, and rest, + Now welcome to the weary breast-- + + Were all unprized, uncourted then-- + And all the joy one spirit showed, + The other deeply felt again; + And friendship like a river flowed, + Constant and strong its silent course, + For nought withstood its gentle force: + + When night, the holy time of peace, + Was dreaded as the parting hour; + When speech and mirth at once must cease, + And silence must resume her power; + Though ever free from pains and woes, + She only brought us calm repose. + + And when the blessed dawn again + Brought daylight to the blushing skies, + We woke, and not RELUCTANT then, + To joyless LABOUR did we rise; + But full of hope, and glad and gay, + We welcomed the returning day. + + + + +THE CONSOLATION. + + Though bleak these woods, and damp the ground + With fallen leaves so thickly strown, + And cold the wind that wanders round + With wild and melancholy moan; + + There IS a friendly roof, I know, + Might shield me from the wintry blast; + There is a fire, whose ruddy glow + Will cheer me for my wanderings past. + + And so, though still, where'er I go, + Cold stranger-glances meet my eye; + Though, when my spirit sinks in woe, + Unheeded swells the unbidden sigh; + + Though solitude, endured too long, + Bids youthful joys too soon decay, + Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue, + And overclouds my noon of day; + + When kindly thoughts that would have way, + Flow back discouraged to my breast; + I know there is, though far away, + A home where heart and soul may rest. + + Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine, + The warmer heart will not belie; + While mirth, and truth, and friendship shine + In smiling lip and earnest eye. + + The ice that gathers round my heart + May there be thawed; and sweetly, then, + The joys of youth, that now depart, + Will come to cheer my soul again. + + Though far I roam, that thought shall be + My hope, my comfort, everywhere; + While such a home remains to me, + My heart shall never know despair! + + + + +LINES COMPOSED IN A WOOD ON A WINDY DAY. + + My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring + And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze; + For above and around me the wild wind is roaring, + Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas. + + The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing, + The bare trees are tossing their branches on high; + The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing, + The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky + + I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing + The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray; + I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing, + And hear the wild roar of their thunder to-day! + + + + +VIEWS OF LIFE. + + When sinks my heart in hopeless gloom, + And life can show no joy for me; + And I behold a yawning tomb, + Where bowers and palaces should be; + + In vain you talk of morbid dreams; + In vain you gaily smiling say, + That what to me so dreary seems, + The healthy mind deems bright and gay. + + I too have smiled, and thought like you, + But madly smiled, and falsely deemed: + TRUTH led me to the present view,-- + I'm waking now--'twas THEN I dreamed. + + I lately saw a sunset sky, + And stood enraptured to behold + Its varied hues of glorious dye: + First, fleecy clouds of shining gold; + + These blushing took a rosy hue; + Beneath them shone a flood of green; + Nor less divine, the glorious blue + That smiled above them and between. + + I cannot name each lovely shade; + I cannot say how bright they shone; + But one by one, I saw them fade; + And what remained when they were gone? + + Dull clouds remained, of sombre hue, + And when their borrowed charm was o'er, + The azure sky had faded too, + That smiled so softly bright before. + + So, gilded by the glow of youth, + Our varied life looks fair and gay; + And so remains the naked truth, + When that false light is past away. + + Why blame ye, then, my keener sight, + That clearly sees a world of woes + Through all the haze of golden light + That flattering Falsehood round it throws? + + When the young mother smiles above + The first-born darling of her heart, + Her bosom glows with earnest love, + While tears of silent transport start. + + Fond dreamer! little does she know + The anxious toil, the suffering, + The blasted hopes, the burning woe, + The object of her joy will bring. + + Her blinded eyes behold not now + What, soon or late, must be his doom; + The anguish that will cloud his brow, + The bed of death, the dreary tomb. + + As little know the youthful pair, + In mutual love supremely blest, + What weariness, and cold despair, + Ere long, will seize the aching breast. + + And even should Love and Faith remain, + (The greatest blessings life can show,) + Amid adversity and pain, + To shine throughout with cheering glow; + + They do not see how cruel Death + Comes on, their loving hearts to part: + One feels not now the gasping breath, + The rending of the earth-bound heart,-- + + The soul's and body's agony, + Ere she may sink to her repose. + The sad survivor cannot see + The grave above his darling close; + + Nor how, despairing and alone, + He then must wear his life away; + And linger, feebly toiling on, + And fainting, sink into decay. + + * * * * + + Oh, Youth may listen patiently, + While sad Experience tells her tale, + But Doubt sits smiling in his eye, + For ardent Hope will still prevail! + + He hears how feeble Pleasure dies, + By guilt destroyed, and pain and woe; + He turns to Hope--and she replies, + "Believe it not-it is not so!" + + "Oh, heed her not!" Experience says; + "For thus she whispered once to me; + She told me, in my youthful days, + How glorious manhood's prime would be. + + "When, in the time of early Spring, + Too chill the winds that o'er me pass'd, + She said, each coming day would bring + a fairer heaven, a gentler blast. + + "And when the sun too seldom beamed, + The sky, o'ercast, too darkly frowned, + The soaking rain too constant streamed, + And mists too dreary gathered round; + + "She told me, Summer's glorious ray + Would chase those vapours all away, + And scatter glories round; + With sweetest music fill the trees, + Load with rich scent the gentle breeze, + And strew with flowers the ground + + "But when, beneath that scorching ray, + I languished, weary through the day, + While birds refused to sing, + Verdure decayed from field and tree, + And panting Nature mourned with me + The freshness of the Spring. + + "'Wait but a little while,' she said, + 'Till Summer's burning days are fled; + And Autumn shall restore, + With golden riches of her own, + And Summer's glories mellowed down, + The freshness you deplore.' + + And long I waited, but in vain: + That freshness never came again, + Though Summer passed away, + Though Autumn's mists hung cold and chill. + And drooping nature languished still, + And sank into decay. + + "Till wintry blasts foreboding blew + Through leafless trees--and then I knew + That Hope was all a dream. + But thus, fond youth, she cheated me; + And she will prove as false to thee, + Though sweet her words may seem. + + Stern prophet! Cease thy bodings dire-- + Thou canst not quench the ardent fire + That warms the breast of youth. + Oh, let it cheer him while it may, + And gently, gently die away-- + Chilled by the damps of truth! + + Tell him, that earth is not our rest; + Its joys are empty--frail at best; + And point beyond the sky. + But gleams of light may reach us here; + And hope the ROUGHEST path can cheer: + Then do not bid it fly! + + Though hope may promise joys, that still + Unkindly time will ne'er fulfil; + Or, if they come at all, + We never find them unalloyed,-- + Hurtful perchance, or soon destroyed, + They vanish or they pall; + + Yet hope ITSELF a brightness throws + O'er all our labours and our woes; + While dark foreboding Care + A thousand ills will oft portend, + That Providence may ne'er intend + The trembling heart to bear. + + Or if they come, it oft appears, + Our woes are lighter than our fears, + And far more bravely borne. + Then let us not enhance our doom + But e'en in midnight's blackest gloom + Expect the rising morn. + + Because the road is rough and long, + Shall we despise the skylark's song, + That cheers the wanderer's way? + Or trample down, with reckless feet, + The smiling flowerets, bright and sweet, + Because they soon decay? + + Pass pleasant scenes unnoticed by, + Because the next is bleak and drear; + Or not enjoy a smiling sky, + Because a tempest may be near? + + No! while we journey on our way, + We'll smile on every lovely thing; + And ever, as they pass away, + To memory and hope we'll cling. + + And though that awful river flows + Before us, when the journey's past, + Perchance of all the pilgrim's woes + Most dreadful--shrink not--'tis the last! + + Though icy cold, and dark, and deep; + Beyond it smiles that blessed shore, + Where none shall suffer, none shall weep, + And bliss shall reign for evermore! + + + + +APPEAL. + + Oh, I am very weary, + Though tears no longer flow; + My eyes are tired of weeping, + My heart is sick of woe; + + My life is very lonely + My days pass heavily, + I'm weary of repining; + Wilt thou not come to me? + + Oh, didst thou know my longings + For thee, from day to day, + My hopes, so often blighted, + Thou wouldst not thus delay! + + + + +THE STUDENT'S SERENADE. + + I have slept upon my couch, + But my spirit did not rest, + For the labours of the day + Yet my weary soul opprest; + + And before my dreaming eyes + Still the learned volumes lay, + And I could not close their leaves, + And I could not turn away. + + But I oped my eyes at last, + And I heard a muffled sound; + 'Twas the night-breeze, come to say + That the snow was on the ground. + + Then I knew that there was rest + On the mountain's bosom free; + So I left my fevered couch, + And I flew to waken thee! + + I have flown to waken thee-- + For, if thou wilt not arise, + Then my soul can drink no peace + From these holy moonlight skies. + + And this waste of virgin snow + To my sight will not be fair, + Unless thou wilt smiling come, + Love, to wander with me there. + + Then, awake! Maria, wake! + For, if thou couldst only know + How the quiet moonlight sleeps + On this wilderness of snow, + + And the groves of ancient trees, + In their snowy garb arrayed, + Till they stretch into the gloom + Of the distant valley's shade; + + I know thou wouldst rejoice + To inhale this bracing air; + Thou wouldst break thy sweetest sleep + To behold a scene so fair. + + O'er these wintry wilds, ALONE, + Thou wouldst joy to wander free; + And it will not please thee less, + Though that bliss be shared with me. + + + + +THE CAPTIVE DOVE. + + Poor restless dove, I pity thee; + And when I hear thy plaintive moan, + I mourn for thy captivity, + And in thy woes forget mine own. + + To see thee stand prepared to fly, + And flap those useless wings of thine, + And gaze into the distant sky, + Would melt a harder heart than mine. + + In vain--in vain! Thou canst not rise: + Thy prison roof confines thee there; + Its slender wires delude thine eyes, + And quench thy longings with despair. + + Oh, thou wert made to wander free + In sunny mead and shady grove, + And far beyond the rolling sea, + In distant climes, at will to rove! + + Yet, hadst thou but one gentle mate + Thy little drooping heart to cheer, + And share with thee thy captive state, + Thou couldst be happy even there. + + Yes, even there, if, listening by, + One faithful dear companion stood, + While gazing on her full bright eye, + Thou mightst forget thy native wood + + But thou, poor solitary dove, + Must make, unheard, thy joyless moan; + The heart that Nature formed to love + Must pine, neglected, and alone. + + + + +SELF-CONGRATULATION. + + Ellen, you were thoughtless once + Of beauty or of grace, + Simple and homely in attire, + Careless of form and face; + Then whence this change? and wherefore now + So often smoothe your hair? + And wherefore deck your youthful form + With such unwearied care? + + Tell us, and cease to tire our ears + With that familiar strain; + Why will you play those simple tunes + So often o'er again? + "Indeed, dear friends, I can but say + That childhood's thoughts are gone; + Each year its own new feelings brings, + And years move swiftly on: + + "And for these little simple airs-- + I love to play them o'er + So much--I dare not promise, now, + To play them never more." + I answered--and it was enough; + They turned them to depart; + They could not read my secret thoughts, + Nor see my throbbing heart. + + I've noticed many a youthful form, + Upon whose changeful face + The inmost workings of the soul + The gazer well might trace; + The speaking eye, the changing lip, + The ready blushing cheek, + The smiling, or beclouded brow, + Their different feelings speak. + + But, thank God! you might gaze on mine + For hours, and never know + The secret changes of my soul + From joy to keenest woe. + Last night, as we sat round the fire + Conversing merrily, + We heard, without, approaching steps + Of one well known to me! + + There was no trembling in my voice, + No blush upon my cheek, + No lustrous sparkle in my eyes, + Of hope, or joy, to speak; + But, oh! my spirit burned within, + My heart beat full and fast! + He came not nigh--he went away-- + And then my joy was past. + + And yet my comrades marked it not: + My voice was still the same; + They saw me smile, and o'er my face + No signs of sadness came. + They little knew my hidden thoughts; + And they will NEVER know + The aching anguish of my heart, + The bitter burning woe! + + + + +FLUCTUATIONS, + + What though the Sun had left my sky; + To save me from despair + The blessed Moon arose on high, + And shone serenely there. + + I watched her, with a tearful gaze, + Rise slowly o'er the hill, + While through the dim horizon's haze + Her light gleamed faint and chill. + + I thought such wan and lifeless beams + Could ne'er my heart repay + For the bright sun's most transient gleams + That cheered me through the day: + + But, as above that mist's control + She rose, and brighter shone, + I felt her light upon my soul; + But now--that light is gone! + + Thick vapours snatched her from my sight, + And I was darkling left, + All in the cold and gloomy night, + Of light and hope bereft: + + Until, methought, a little star + Shone forth with trembling ray, + To cheer me with its light afar-- + But that, too, passed away. + + Anon, an earthly meteor blazed + The gloomy darkness through; + I smiled, yet trembled while I gazed-- + But that soon vanished too! + + And darker, drearier fell the night + Upon my spirit then;-- + But what is that faint struggling light? + Is it the Moon again? + + Kind Heaven! increase that silvery gleam + And bid these clouds depart, + And let her soft celestial beam + Restore my fainting heart! + + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM THE LITERARY REMAINS OF ELLIS AND ACTON BELL. + +By Currer Bell + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM POEMS BY ELLIS BELL. + +It would not have been difficult to compile a volume out of the papers +left by my sisters, had I, in making the selection, dismissed from my +consideration the scruples and the wishes of those whose written +thoughts these papers held. But this was impossible: an influence, +stronger than could be exercised by any motive of expediency, +necessarily regulated the selection. I have, then, culled from the mass +only a little poem here and there. The whole makes but a tiny nosegay, +and the colour and perfume of the flowers are not such as fit them for +festal uses. + +It has been already said that my sisters wrote much in childhood and +girlhood. Usually, it seems a sort of injustice to expose in print the +crude thoughts of the unripe mind, the rude efforts of the unpractised +hand; yet I venture to give three little poems of my sister Emily's, +written in her sixteenth year, because they illustrate a point in her +character. + +At that period she was sent to school. Her previous life, with the +exception of a single half-year, had been passed in the absolute +retirement of a village parsonage, amongst the hills bordering Yorkshire +and Lancashire. The scenery of these hills is not grand--it is not +romantic it is scarcely striking. Long low moors, dark with heath, shut +in little valleys, where a stream waters, here and there, a fringe of +stunted copse. Mills and scattered cottages chase romance from these +valleys; it is only higher up, deep in amongst the ridges of the moors, +that Imagination can find rest for the sole of her foot: and even if she +finds it there, she must be a solitude-loving raven--no gentle dove. If +she demand beauty to inspire her, she must bring it inborn: these moors +are too stern to yield any product so delicate. The eye of the gazer +must ITSELF brim with a "purple light," intense enough to perpetuate the +brief flower-flush of August on the heather, or the rare sunset-smile of +June; out of his heart must well the freshness, that in latter spring +and early summer brightens the bracken, nurtures the moss, and cherishes +the starry flowers that spangle for a few weeks the pasture of the +moor-sheep. Unless that light and freshness are innate and self-sustained, +the drear prospect of a Yorkshire moor will be found as barren of poetic +as of agricultural interest: where the love of wild nature is strong, +the locality will perhaps be clung to with the more passionate +constancy, because from the hill-lover's self comes half its charm. + +My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed +in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid +hill-side her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude +many and dear delights; and not the least and best loved was--liberty. + +Liberty was the breath of Emily's nostrils; without it, she perished. +The change from her own home to a school, and from her own very +noiseless, very secluded, but unrestricted and inartificial mode of +life, to one of disciplined routine (though under the kindliest +auspices), was what she failed in enduring. Her nature proved here too +strong for her fortitude. Every morning when she woke, the vision of +home and the moors rushed on her, and darkened and saddened the day that +lay before her. Nobody knew what ailed her but me--I knew only too well. +In this struggle her health was quickly broken: her white face, +attenuated form, and failing strength, threatened rapid decline. I felt +in my heart she would die, if she did not go home, and with this +conviction obtained her recall. She had only been three months at +school; and it was some years before the experiment of sending her from +home was again ventured on. After the age of twenty, having meantime +studied alone with diligence and perseverance, she went with me to an +establishment on the Continent: the same suffering and conflict ensued, +heightened by the strong recoil of her upright, heretic and English +spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the foreign and Romish system. Once +more she seemed sinking, but this time she rallied through the mere +force of resolution: with inward remorse and shame she looked back on +her former failure, and resolved to conquer in this second ordeal. She +did conquer: but the victory cost her dear. She was never happy till she +carried her hard-won knowledge back to the remote English village, the +old parsonage-house, and desolate Yorkshire hills. A very few years +more, and she looked her last on those hills, and breathed her last in +that house, and under the aisle of that obscure village church found her +last lowly resting-place. Merciful was the decree that spared her when +she was a stranger in a strange land, and guarded her dying bed with +kindred love and congenial constancy. + +The following pieces were composed at twilight, in the school-room, when +the leisure of the evening play-hour brought back in full tide the +thoughts of home. + + + + +I. + + A LITTLE while, a little while, + The weary task is put away, + And I can sing and I can smile, + Alike, while I have holiday. + + Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart-- + What thought, what scene invites thee now + What spot, or near or far apart, + Has rest for thee, my weary brow? + + There is a spot, 'mid barren hills, + Where winter howls, and driving rain; + But, if the dreary tempest chills, + There is a light that warms again. + + The house is old, the trees are bare, + Moonless above bends twilight's dome; + But what on earth is half so dear-- + So longed for--as the hearth of home? + + The mute bird sitting on the stone, + The dank moss dripping from the wall, + The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown, + I love them--how I love them all! + + Still, as I mused, the naked room, + The alien firelight died away; + And from the midst of cheerless gloom, + I passed to bright, unclouded day. + + A little and a lone green lane + That opened on a common wide; + A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain + Of mountains circling every side. + + A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, + So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; + And, deepening still the dream-like charm, + Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. + + THAT was the scene, I knew it well; + I knew the turfy pathway's sweep, + That, winding o'er each billowy swell, + Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep. + + Could I have lingered but an hour, + It well had paid a week of toil; + But Truth has banished Fancy's power: + Restraint and heavy task recoil. + + Even as I stood with raptured eye, + Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear, + My hour of rest had fleeted by, + And back came labour, bondage, care. + + + + +II. THE BLUEBELL. + + The Bluebell is the sweetest flower + That waves in summer air: + Its blossoms have the mightiest power + To soothe my spirit's care. + + There is a spell in purple heath + Too wildly, sadly dear; + The violet has a fragrant breath, + But fragrance will not cheer, + + The trees are bare, the sun is cold, + And seldom, seldom seen; + The heavens have lost their zone of gold, + And earth her robe of green. + + And ice upon the glancing stream + Has cast its sombre shade; + And distant hills and valleys seem + In frozen mist arrayed. + + The Bluebell cannot charm me now, + The heath has lost its bloom; + The violets in the glen below, + They yield no sweet perfume. + + But, though I mourn the sweet Bluebell, + 'Tis better far away; + I know how fast my tears would swell + To see it smile to-day. + + For, oh! when chill the sunbeams fall + Adown that dreary sky, + And gild yon dank and darkened wall + With transient brilliancy; + + How do I weep, how do I pine + For the time of flowers to come, + And turn me from that fading shine, + To mourn the fields of home! + + + + +III. + + Loud without the wind was roaring + Through th'autumnal sky; + Drenching wet, the cold rain pouring, + Spoke of winter nigh. + All too like that dreary eve, + Did my exiled spirit grieve. + Grieved at first, but grieved not long, + Sweet--how softly sweet!--it came; + Wild words of an ancient song, + Undefined, without a name. + + "It was spring, and the skylark was singing:" + Those words they awakened a spell; + They unlocked a deep fountain, whose springing, + Nor absence, nor distance can quell. + + In the gloom of a cloudy November + They uttered the music of May; + They kindled the perishing ember + Into fervour that could not decay. + + Awaken, o'er all my dear moorland, + West-wind, in thy glory and pride! + Oh! call me from valley and lowland, + To walk by the hill-torrent's side! + + It is swelled with the first snowy weather; + The rocks they are icy and hoar, + And sullenly waves the long heather, + And the fern leaves are sunny no more. + + There are no yellow stars on the mountain + The bluebells have long died away + From the brink of the moss-bedded fountain-- + From the side of the wintry brae. + + But lovelier than corn-fields all waving + In emerald, and vermeil, and gold, + Are the heights where the north-wind is raving, + And the crags where I wandered of old. + + It was morning: the bright sun was beaming; + How sweetly it brought back to me + The time when nor labour nor dreaming + Broke the sleep of the happy and free! + + But blithely we rose as the dawn-heaven + Was melting to amber and blue, + And swift were the wings to our feet given, + As we traversed the meadows of dew. + + For the moors! For the moors, where the short grass + Like velvet beneath us should lie! + For the moors! For the moors, where each high pass + Rose sunny against the clear sky! + + For the moors, where the linnet was trilling + Its song on the old granite stone; + Where the lark, the wild sky-lark, was filling + Every breast with delight like its own! + + What language can utter the feeling + Which rose, when in exile afar, + On the brow of a lonely hill kneeling, + I saw the brown heath growing there? + + It was scattered and stunted, and told me + That soon even that would be gone: + It whispered, "The grim walls enfold me, + I have bloomed in my last summer's sun." + + But not the loved music, whose waking + Makes the soul of the Swiss die away, + Has a spell more adored and heartbreaking + Than, for me, in that blighted heath lay. + + The spirit which bent 'neath its power, + How it longed--how it burned to be free! + If I could have wept in that hour, + Those tears had been heaven to me. + + Well--well; the sad minutes are moving, + Though loaded with trouble and pain; + And some time the loved and the loving + Shall meet on the mountains again! + + +The following little piece has no title; but in it the Genius of a +solitary region seems to address his wandering and wayward votary, and +to recall within his influence the proud mind which rebelled at times +even against what it most loved. + + + Shall earth no more inspire thee, + Thou lonely dreamer now? + Since passion may not fire thee, + Shall nature cease to bow? + + Thy mind is ever moving, + In regions dark to thee; + Recall its useless roving, + Come back, and dwell with me. + + I know my mountain breezes + Enchant and soothe thee still, + I know my sunshine pleases, + Despite thy wayward will. + + When day with evening blending, + Sinks from the summer sky, + I've seen thy spirit bending + In fond idolatry. + + I've watched thee every hour; + I know my mighty sway: + I know my magic power + To drive thy griefs away. + + Few hearts to mortals given, + On earth so wildly pine; + Yet few would ask a heaven + More like this earth than thine. + + Then let my winds caress thee + Thy comrade let me be: + Since nought beside can bless thee, + Return--and dwell with me. + + +Here again is the same mind in converse with a like abstraction. "The +Night-Wind," breathing through an open window, has visited an ear which +discerned language in its whispers. + + + + +THE NIGHT-WIND. + + In summer's mellow midnight, + A cloudless moon shone through + Our open parlour window, + And rose-trees wet with dew. + + I sat in silent musing; + The soft wind waved my hair; + It told me heaven was glorious, + And sleeping earth was fair. + + I needed not its breathing + To bring such thoughts to me; + But still it whispered lowly, + How dark the woods will be! + + "The thick leaves in my murmur + Are rustling like a dream, + And all their myriad voices + Instinct with spirit seem." + + I said, "Go, gentle singer, + Thy wooing voice is kind: + But do not think its music + Has power to reach my mind. + + "Play with the scented flower, + The young tree's supple bough, + And leave my human feelings + In their own course to flow." + + The wanderer would not heed me; + Its kiss grew warmer still. + "O come!" it sighed so sweetly; + "I'll win thee 'gainst thy will. + + "Were we not friends from childhood? + Have I not loved thee long? + As long as thou, the solemn night, + Whose silence wakes my song. + + "And when thy heart is resting + Beneath the church-aisle stone, + I shall have time for mourning, + And THOU for being alone." + + +In these stanzas a louder gale has roused the sleeper on her pillow: the +wakened soul struggles to blend with the storm by which it is swayed:-- + + + Ay--there it is! it wakes to-night + Deep feelings I thought dead; + Strong in the blast--quick gathering light-- + The heart's flame kindles red. + + "Now I can tell by thine altered cheek, + And by thine eyes' full gaze, + And by the words thou scarce dost speak, + How wildly fancy plays. + + "Yes--I could swear that glorious wind + Has swept the world aside, + Has dashed its memory from thy mind + Like foam-bells from the tide: + + "And thou art now a spirit pouring + Thy presence into all: + The thunder of the tempest's roaring, + The whisper of its fall: + + "An universal influence, + From thine own influence free; + A principle of life--intense-- + Lost to mortality. + + "Thus truly, when that breast is cold, + Thy prisoned soul shall rise; + The dungeon mingle with the mould-- + The captive with the skies. + Nature's deep being, thine shall hold, + Her spirit all thy spirit fold, + Her breath absorb thy sighs. + Mortal! though soon life's tale is told; + Who once lives, never dies!" + + + + +LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. + + Love is like the wild rose-briar; + Friendship like the holly-tree. + The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, + But which will bloom most constantly? + + The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring, + Its summer blossoms scent the air; + Yet wait till winter comes again, + And who will call the wild-briar fair? + + Then, scorn the silly rose-wreath now, + And deck thee with the holly's sheen, + That, when December blights thy brow, + He still may leave thy garland green. + + + + +THE ELDER'S REBUKE. + + "Listen! When your hair, like mine, + Takes a tint of silver gray; + When your eyes, with dimmer shine, + Watch life's bubbles float away: + + When you, young man, have borne like me + The weary weight of sixty-three, + Then shall penance sore be paid + For those hours so wildly squandered; + And the words that now fall dead + On your ear, be deeply pondered-- + Pondered and approved at last: + But their virtue will be past! + + "Glorious is the prize of Duty, + Though she be 'a serious power'; + Treacherous all the lures of Beauty, + Thorny bud and poisonous flower! + + "Mirth is but a mad beguiling + Of the golden-gifted time; + Love--a demon-meteor, wiling + Heedless feet to gulfs of crime. + + "Those who follow earthly pleasure, + Heavenly knowledge will not lead; + Wisdom hides from them her treasure, + Virtue bids them evil-speed! + + "Vainly may their hearts repenting. + Seek for aid in future years; + Wisdom, scorned, knows no relenting; + Virtue is not won by fears." + + Thus spake the ice-blooded elder gray; + The young man scoffed as he turned away, + Turned to the call of a sweet lute's measure, + Waked by the lightsome touch of pleasure: + Had he ne'er met a gentler teacher, + Woe had been wrought by that pitiless preacher. + + + + +THE WANDERER FROM THE FOLD. + + How few, of all the hearts that loved, + Are grieving for thee now; + And why should mine to-night be moved + With such a sense of woe? + + Too often thus, when left alone, + Where none my thoughts can see, + Comes back a word, a passing tone + From thy strange history. + + Sometimes I seem to see thee rise, + A glorious child again; + All virtues beaming from thine eyes + That ever honoured men: + + Courage and truth, a generous breast + Where sinless sunshine lay: + A being whose very presence blest + Like gladsome summer-day. + + O, fairly spread thy early sail, + And fresh, and pure, and free, + Was the first impulse of the gale + Which urged life's wave for thee! + + Why did the pilot, too confiding, + Dream o'er that ocean's foam, + And trust in Pleasure's careless guiding + To bring his vessel home? + + For well he knew what dangers frowned, + What mists would gather, dim; + What rocks and shelves, and sands lay round + Between his port and him. + + The very brightness of the sun + The splendour of the main, + The wind which bore him wildly on + Should not have warned in vain. + + An anxious gazer from the shore-- + I marked the whitening wave, + And wept above thy fate the more + Because--I could not save. + + It recks not now, when all is over: + But yet my heart will be + A mourner still, though friend and lover + Have both forgotten thee! + + + + +WARNING AND REPLY. + + In the earth--the earth--thou shalt be laid, + A grey stone standing over thee; + Black mould beneath thee spread, + And black mould to cover thee. + + "Well--there is rest there, + So fast come thy prophecy; + The time when my sunny hair + Shall with grass roots entwined be." + + But cold--cold is that resting-place, + Shut out from joy and liberty, + And all who loved thy living face + Will shrink from it shudderingly, + + "Not so. HERE the world is chill, + And sworn friends fall from me: + But THERE--they will own me still, + And prize my memory." + + Farewell, then, all that love, + All that deep sympathy: + Sleep on: Heaven laughs above, + Earth never misses thee. + + Turf-sod and tombstone drear + Part human company; + One heart breaks only--here, + But that heart was worthy thee! + + + + +LAST WORDS. + + I knew not 'twas so dire a crime + To say the word, "Adieu;" + But this shall be the only time + My lips or heart shall sue. + + That wild hill-side, the winter morn, + The gnarled and ancient tree, + If in your breast they waken scorn, + Shall wake the same in me. + + I can forget black eyes and brows, + And lips of falsest charm, + If you forget the sacred vows + Those faithless lips could form. + + If hard commands can tame your love, + Or strongest walls can hold, + I would not wish to grieve above + A thing so false and cold. + + And there are bosoms bound to mine + With links both tried and strong: + And there are eyes whose lightning shine + Has warmed and blest me long: + + Those eyes shall make my only day, + Shall set my spirit free, + And chase the foolish thoughts away + That mourn your memory. + + + + +THE LADY TO HER GUITAR. + + For him who struck thy foreign string, + I ween this heart has ceased to care; + Then why dost thou such feelings bring + To my sad spirit--old Guitar? + + It is as if the warm sunlight + In some deep glen should lingering stay, + When clouds of storm, or shades of night, + Have wrapt the parent orb away. + + It is as if the glassy brook + Should image still its willows fair, + Though years ago the woodman's stroke + Laid low in dust their Dryad-hair. + + Even so, Guitar, thy magic tone + Hath moved the tear and waked the sigh: + Hath bid the ancient torrent moan, + Although its very source is dry. + + + + +THE TWO CHILDREN. + + Heavy hangs the rain-drop + From the burdened spray; + Heavy broods the damp mist + On uplands far away. + + Heavy looms the dull sky, + Heavy rolls the sea; + And heavy throbs the young heart + Beneath that lonely tree. + + Never has a blue streak + Cleft the clouds since morn; + Never has his grim fate + Smiled since he was born. + + Frowning on the infant, + Shadowing childhood's joy + Guardian-angel knows not + That melancholy boy. + + Day is passing swiftly + Its sad and sombre prime; + Boyhood sad is merging + In sadder manhood's time: + + All the flowers are praying + For sun, before they close, + And he prays too--unconscious-- + That sunless human rose. + + Blossom--that the west-wind + Has never wooed to blow, + Scentless are thy petals, + Thy dew is cold as snow! + + Soul--where kindred kindness, + No early promise woke, + Barren is thy beauty, + As weed upon a rock. + + Wither--soul and blossom! + You both were vainly given; + Earth reserves no blessing + For the unblest of heaven! + + Child of delight, with sun-bright hair, + And sea-blue, sea-deep eyes! + Spirit of bliss! What brings thee here + Beneath these sullen skies? + + Thou shouldst live in eternal spring, + Where endless day is never dim; + Why, Seraph, has thine erring wing + Wafted thee down to weep with him? + + "Ah! not from heaven am I descended, + Nor do I come to mingle tears; + But sweet is day, though with shadows blended; + And, though clouded, sweet are youthful years. + + "I--the image of light and gladness-- + Saw and pitied that mournful boy, + And I vowed--if need were--to share his sadness, + And give to him my sunny joy. + + "Heavy and dark the night is closing; + Heavy and dark may its biding be: + Better for all from grief reposing, + And better for all who watch like me-- + + "Watch in love by a fevered pillow, + Cooling the fever with pity's balm + Safe as the petrel on tossing billow, + Safe in mine own soul's golden calm! + + "Guardian-angel he lacks no longer; + Evil fortune he need not fear: + Fate is strong, but love is stronger; + And MY love is truer than angel-care." + + + + +THE VISIONARY. + + Silent is the house: all are laid asleep: + One alone looks out o'er the snow-wreaths deep, + Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze + That whirls the wildering drift, and bends the groaning trees. + + Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor; + Not one shivering gust creeps through pane or door; + The little lamp burns straight, its rays shoot strong and far: + I trim it well, to be the wanderer's guiding-star. + + Frown, my haughty sire! chide, my angry dame! + Set your slaves to spy; threaten me with shame: + But neither sire nor dame, nor prying serf shall know, + What angel nightly tracks that waste of frozen snow. + + What I love shall come like visitant of air, + Safe in secret power from lurking human snare; + What loves me, no word of mine shall e'er betray, + Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay + + Burn, then, little lamp; glimmer straight and clear-- + Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air: + He for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me; + Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my constancy. + + + + +ENCOURAGEMENT. + + I do not weep; I would not weep; + Our mother needs no tears: + Dry thine eyes, too; 'tis vain to keep + This causeless grief for years. + + What though her brow be changed and cold, + Her sweet eyes closed for ever? + What though the stone--the darksome mould + Our mortal bodies sever? + + What though her hand smooth ne'er again + Those silken locks of thine? + Nor, through long hours of future pain, + Her kind face o'er thee shine? + + Remember still, she is not dead; + She sees us, sister, now; + Laid, where her angel spirit fled, + 'Mid heath and frozen snow. + + And from that world of heavenly light + Will she not always bend + To guide us in our lifetime's night, + And guard us to the end? + + Thou knowest she will; and thou mayst mourn + That WE are left below: + But not that she can ne'er return + To share our earthly woe. + + + + +STANZAS. + + Often rebuked, yet always back returning + To those first feelings that were born with me, + And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning + For idle dreams of things which cannot be: + + To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region; + Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear; + And visions rising, legion after legion, + Bring the unreal world too strangely near. + + I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces, + And not in paths of high morality, + And not among the half-distinguished faces, + The clouded forms of long-past history. + + I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: + It vexes me to choose another guide: + Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding; + Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side. + + What have those lonely mountains worth revealing? + More glory and more grief than I can tell: + The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling + Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell. + + + + +The following are the last lines my sister Emily ever wrote:-- + + + No coward soul is mine, + No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: + I see Heaven's glories shine, + And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. + + O God within my breast, + Almighty, ever-present Deity! + Life--that in me has rest, + As I--undying Life--have power in thee! + + Vain are the thousand creeds + That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; + Worthless as withered weeds, + Or idlest froth amid the boundless main, + + To waken doubt in one + Holding so fast by thine infinity; + So surely anchored on + The stedfast rock of immortality. + + With wide-embracing love + Thy spirit animates eternal years, + Pervades and broods above, + Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. + + Though earth and man were gone, + And suns and universes ceased to be, + And Thou were left alone, + Every existence would exist in Thee. + + There is not room for Death, + Nor atom that his might could render void: + Thou--THOU art Being and Breath, + And what THOU art may never be destroyed. + + +***** + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM POEMS BY ACTON BELL. + +In looking over my sister Anne's papers, I find mournful evidence that +religious feeling had been to her but too much like what it was to +Cowper; I mean, of course, in a far milder form. Without rendering her a +prey to those horrors that defy concealment, it subdued her mood and +bearing to a perpetual pensiveness; the pillar of a cloud glided +constantly before her eyes; she ever waited at the foot of a secret +Sinai, listening in her heart to the voice of a trumpet sounding long +and waxing louder. Some, perhaps, would rejoice over these tokens of +sincere though sorrowing piety in a deceased relative: I own, to me they +seem sad, as if her whole innocent life had been passed under the +martyrdom of an unconfessed physical pain: their effect, indeed, would +be too distressing, were it not combated by the certain knowledge that +in her last moments this tyranny of a too tender conscience was +overcome; this pomp of terrors broke up, and passing away, left her +dying hour unclouded. Her belief in God did not then bring to her dread, +as of a stern Judge,--but hope, as in a Creator and Saviour: and no +faltering hope was it, but a sure and stedfast conviction, on which, in +the rude passage from Time to Eternity, she threw the weight of her +human weakness, and by which she was enabled to bear what was to be +borne, patiently--serenely--victoriously. + + + + +DESPONDENCY. + + I have gone backward in the work; + The labour has not sped; + Drowsy and dark my spirit lies, + Heavy and dull as lead. + + How can I rouse my sinking soul + From such a lethargy? + How can I break these iron chains + And set my spirit free? + + There have been times when I have mourned! + In anguish o'er the past, + And raised my suppliant hands on high, + While tears fell thick and fast; + + And prayed to have my sins forgiven, + With such a fervent zeal, + An earnest grief, a strong desire + As now I cannot feel. + + And I have felt so full of love, + So strong in spirit then, + As if my heart would never cool, + Or wander back again. + + And yet, alas! how many times + My feet have gone astray! + How oft have I forgot my God! + How greatly fallen away! + + My sins increase--my love grows cold, + And Hope within me dies: + Even Faith itself is wavering now; + Oh, how shall I arise? + + I cannot weep, but I can pray, + Then let me not despair: + Lord Jesus, save me, lest I die! + Christ, hear my humble prayer! + + + + +A PRAYER. + + My God (oh, let me call Thee mine, + Weak, wretched sinner though I be), + My trembling soul would fain be Thine; + My feeble faith still clings to Thee. + + Not only for the Past I grieve, + The Future fills me with dismay; + Unless Thou hasten to relieve, + Thy suppliant is a castaway. + + I cannot say my faith is strong, + I dare not hope my love is great; + But strength and love to Thee belong; + Oh, do not leave me desolate! + + I know I owe my all to Thee; + Oh, TAKE the heart I cannot give! + Do Thou my strength--my Saviour be, + And MAKE me to Thy glory live. + + + + +IN MEMORY OF A HAPPY DAY IN FEBRUARY. + + Blessed be Thou for all the joy + My soul has felt to-day! + Oh, let its memory stay with me, + And never pass away! + + I was alone, for those I loved + Were far away from me; + The sun shone on the withered grass, + The wind blew fresh and free. + + Was it the smile of early spring + That made my bosom glow? + 'Twas sweet; but neither sun nor wind + Could cheer my spirit so. + + Was it some feeling of delight + All vague and undefined? + No; 'twas a rapture deep and strong, + Expanding in the mind. + + Was it a sanguine view of life, + And all its transient bliss, + A hope of bright prosperity? + Oh, no! it was not this. + + It was a glimpse of truth divine + Unto my spirit given, + Illumined by a ray of light + That shone direct from heaven. + + I felt there was a God on high, + By whom all things were made; + I saw His wisdom and His power + In all his works displayed. + + But most throughout the moral world, + I saw his glory shine; + I saw His wisdom infinite, + His mercy all divine. + + Deep secrets of His providence, + In darkness long concealed, + Unto the vision of my soul + Were graciously revealed. + + But while I wondered and adored + His Majesty divine, + I did not tremble at His power: + I felt that God was mine; + + I knew that my Redeemer lived; + I did not fear to die; + Full sure that I should rise again + To immortality. + + I longed to view that bliss divine, + Which eye hath never seen; + Like Moses, I would see His face + Without the veil between. + + + + +CONFIDENCE. + + Oppressed with sin and woe, + A burdened heart I bear, + Opposed by many a mighty foe; + But I will not despair. + + With this polluted heart, + I dare to come to Thee, + Holy and mighty as Thou art, + For Thou wilt pardon me. + + I feel that I am weak, + And prone to every sin; + But Thou who giv'st to those who seek, + Wilt give me strength within. + + Far as this earth may be + From yonder starry skies; + Remoter still am I from Thee: + Yet Thou wilt not despise. + + I need not fear my foes, + I deed not yield to care; + I need not sink beneath my woes, + For Thou wilt answer prayer. + + In my Redeemer's name, + I give myself to Thee; + And, all unworthy as I am, + My God will cherish me. + + +My sister Anne had to taste the cup of life as it is mixed for the class +termed "Governesses." + +The following are some of the thoughts that now and then solace a +governess:-- + + + + +LINES WRITTEN FROM HOME. + + Though bleak these woods, and damp the ground, + With fallen leaves so thickly strewn, + And cold the wind that wanders round + With wild and melancholy moan; + + There is a friendly roof I know, + Might shield me from the wintry blast; + There is a fire whose ruddy glow + Will cheer me for my wanderings past. + + And so, though still where'er I go + Cold stranger glances meet my eye; + Though, when my spirit sinks in woe, + Unheeded swells the unbidden sigh; + + Though solitude, endured too long, + Bids youthful joys too soon decay, + Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue, + And overclouds my noon of day; + + When kindly thoughts that would have way + Flow back, discouraged, to my breast, + I know there is, though far away, + A home where heart and soul may rest. + + Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine, + The warmer heart will not belie; + While mirth and truth, and friendship shine + In smiling lip and earnest eye. + + The ice that gathers round my heart + May there be thawed; and sweetly, then, + The joys of youth, that now depart, + Will come to cheer my soul again. + + Though far I roam, that thought shall be + My hope, my comfort everywhere; + While such a home remains to me, + My heart shall never know despair. + + + + +THE NARROW WAY. + + Believe not those who say + The upward path is smooth, + Lest thou shouldst stumble in the way, + And faint before the truth. + + It is the only road + Unto the realms of joy; + But he who seeks that blest abode + Must all his powers employ. + + Bright hopes and pure delight + Upon his course may beam, + And there, amid the sternest heights, + The sweetest flowerets gleam. + + On all her breezes borne, + Earth yields no scents like those; + But he that dares not gasp the thorn + Should never crave the rose. + + Arm--arm thee for the fight! + Cast useless loads away; + Watch through the darkest hours of night; + Toil through the hottest day. + + Crush pride into the dust, + Or thou must needs be slack; + And trample down rebellious lust, + Or it will hold thee back. + + Seek not thy honour here; + Waive pleasure and renown; + The world's dread scoff undaunted bear, + And face its deadliest frown. + + To labour and to love, + To pardon and endure, + To lift thy heart to God above, + And keep thy conscience pure; + + Be this thy constant aim, + Thy hope, thy chief delight; + What matter who should whisper blame + Or who should scorn or slight? + + What matter, if thy God approve, + And if, within thy breast, + Thou feel the comfort of His love, + The earnest of His rest? + + + + +DOMESTIC PEACE. + + Why should such gloomy silence reign, + And why is all the house so drear, + When neither danger, sickness, pain, + Nor death, nor want, have entered here? + + We are as many as we were + That other night, when all were gay + And full of hope, and free from care; + Yet is there something gone away. + + The moon without, as pure and calm, + Is shining as that night she shone; + But now, to us, she brings no balm, + For something from our hearts is gone. + + Something whose absence leaves a void-- + A cheerless want in every heart; + Each feels the bliss of all destroyed, + And mourns the change--but each apart. + + The fire is burning in the grate + As redly as it used to burn; + But still the hearth is desolate, + Till mirth, and love, and PEACE return. + + 'Twas PEACE that flowed from heart to heart, + With looks and smiles that spoke of heaven, + And gave us language to impart + The blissful thoughts itself had given. + + Domestic peace! best joy of earth, + When shall we all thy value learn? + White angel, to our sorrowing hearth, + Return--oh, graciously return! + + + + +THE THREE GUIDES. [First published in FRASER'S MAGAZINE.] + + Spirit of Earth! thy hand is chill: + I've felt its icy clasp; + And, shuddering, I remember still + That stony-hearted grasp. + Thine eye bids love and joy depart: + Oh, turn its gaze from me! + It presses down my shrinking heart; + I will not walk with thee! + + "Wisdom is mine," I've heard thee say: + "Beneath my searching eye + All mist and darkness melt away, + Phantoms and fables fly. + Before me truth can stand alone, + The naked, solid truth; + And man matured by worth will own, + If I am shunned by youth. + + "Firm is my tread, and sure though slow; + My footsteps never slide; + And he that follows me shall know + I am the surest guide." + Thy boast is vain; but were it true + That thou couldst safely steer + Life's rough and devious pathway through, + Such guidance I should fear. + + How could I bear to walk for aye, + With eyes to earthward prone, + O'er trampled weeds and miry clay, + And sand and flinty stone; + Never the glorious view to greet + Of hill and dale, and sky; + To see that Nature's charms are sweet, + Or feel that Heaven is nigh? + + If in my heart arose a spring, + A gush of thought divine, + At once stagnation thou wouldst bring + With that cold touch of thine. + If, glancing up, I sought to snatch + But one glimpse of the sky, + My baffled gaze would only catch + Thy heartless, cold grey eye. + + If to the breezes wandering near, + I listened eagerly, + And deemed an angel's tongue to hear + That whispered hope to me, + That heavenly music would be drowned + In thy harsh, droning voice; + Nor inward thought, nor sight, nor sound, + Might my sad soul rejoice. + + Dull is thine ear, unheard by thee + The still, small voice of Heaven; + Thine eyes are dim and cannot see + The helps that God has given. + There is a bridge o'er every flood + Which thou canst not perceive; + A path through every tangled wood, + But thou wilt not believe. + + Striving to make thy way by force, + Toil-spent and bramble-torn, + Thou'lt fell the tree that checks thy course, + And burst through brier and thorn: + And, pausing by the river's side, + Poor reasoner! thou wilt deem, + By casting pebbles in its tide, + To cross the swelling stream. + + Right through the flinty rock thou'lt try + Thy toilsome way to bore, + Regardless of the pathway nigh + That would conduct thee o'er + Not only art thou, then, unkind, + And freezing cold to me, + But unbelieving, deaf, and blind: + I will not walk with thee! + + Spirit of Pride! thy wings are strong, + Thine eyes like lightning shine; + Ecstatic joys to thee belong, + And powers almost divine. + But 'tis a false, destructive blaze + Within those eyes I see; + Turn hence their fascinating gaze; + I will not follow thee. + + "Coward and fool!" thou mayst reply, + Walk on the common sod; + Go, trace with timid foot and eye + The steps by others trod. + 'Tis best the beaten path to keep, + The ancient faith to hold; + To pasture with thy fellow-sheep, + And lie within the fold. + + "Cling to the earth, poor grovelling worm; + 'Tis not for thee to soar + Against the fury of the storm, + Amid the thunder's roar! + There's glory in that daring strife + Unknown, undreamt by thee; + There's speechless rapture in the life + Of those who follow me. + + Yes, I have seen thy votaries oft, + Upheld by thee their guide, + In strength and courage mount aloft + The steepy mountain-side; + I've seen them stand against the sky, + And gazing from below, + Beheld thy lightning in their eye + Thy triumph on their brow. + + Oh, I have felt what glory then, + What transport must be theirs! + So far above their fellow-men, + Above their toils and cares; + Inhaling Nature's purest breath, + Her riches round them spread, + The wide expanse of earth beneath, + Heaven's glories overhead! + + But I have seen them helpless, dash'd + Down to a bloody grave, + And still thy ruthless eye has flash'd, + Thy strong hand did not save; + I've seen some o'er the mountain's brow + Sustain'd awhile by thee, + O'er rocks of ice and hills of snow + Bound fearless, wild, and free. + + Bold and exultant was their mien, + While thou didst cheer them on; + But evening fell,--and then, I ween, + Their faithless guide was gone. + Alas! how fared thy favourites then,-- + Lone, helpless, weary, cold? + Did ever wanderer find again + The path he left of old? + + Where is their glory, where the pride + That swelled their hearts before? + Where now the courage that defied + The mightiest tempest's roar? + What shall they do when night grows black, + When angry storms arise? + Who now will lead them to the track + Thou taught'st them to despise? + + Spirit of Pride, it needs not this + To make me shun thy wiles, + Renounce thy triumph and thy bliss, + Thy honours and thy smiles! + Bright as thou art, and bold, and strong, + That fierce glance wins not me, + And I abhor thy scoffing tongue-- + I will not follow thee! + + Spirit of Faith! be thou my guide, + O clasp my hand in thine, + And let me never quit thy side; + Thy comforts are divine! + Earth calls thee blind, misguided one,-- + But who can shew like thee + Forgotten things that have been done, + And things that are to be? + + Secrets conceal'd from Nature's ken, + Who like thee can declare? + Or who like thee to erring men + God's holy will can bear? + Pride scorns thee for thy lowly mien,-- + But who like thee can rise + Above this toilsome, sordid scene, + Beyond the holy skies? + + Meek is thine eye and soft thy voice, + But wondrous is thy might, + To make the wretched soul rejoice, + To give the simple light! + And still to all that seek thy way + This magic power is given,-- + E'en while their footsteps press the clay, + Their souls ascend to heaven. + + Danger surrounds them,--pain and woe + Their portion here must be, + But only they that trust thee know + What comfort dwells with thee; + Strength to sustain their drooping pow'rs, + And vigour to defend,-- + Thou pole-star of my darkest hours + Affliction's firmest friend! + + Day does not always mark our way, + Night's shadows oft appal, + But lead me, and I cannot stray,-- + Hold me, I shall not fall; + Sustain me, I shall never faint, + How rough soe'er may be + My upward road,--nor moan, nor plaint + Shall mar my trust in thee. + + Narrow the path by which we go, + And oft it turns aside + From pleasant meads where roses blow, + And peaceful waters glide; + Where flowery turf lies green and soft, + And gentle gales are sweet, + To where dark mountains frown aloft, + Hard rocks distress the feet,-- + + Deserts beyond lie bleak and bare, + And keen winds round us blow; + But if thy hand conducts me there, + The way is right, I know. + I have no wish to turn away; + My spirit does not quail,-- + How can it while I hear thee say, + "Press forward and prevail!" + + Even above the tempest's swell + I hear thy voice of love,-- + Of hope and peace, I hear thee tell, + And that blest home above; + Through pain and death I can rejoice. + If but thy strength be mine,-- + Earth hath no music like thy voice, + Life owns no joy like thine! + + Spirit of Faith, I'll go with thee! + Thou, if I hold thee fast, + Wilt guide, defend, and strengthen me, + And bear me home at last; + By thy help all things I can do, + In thy strength all things bear,-- + Teach me, for thou art just and true, + Smile on me, thou art fair! + + +I have given the last memento of my sister Emily; this is the last of my +sister Anne:-- + + + I hoped, that with the brave and strong, + My portioned task might lie; + To toil amid the busy throng, + With purpose pure and high. + + But God has fixed another part, + And He has fixed it well; + I said so with my bleeding heart, + When first the anguish fell. + + Thou, God, hast taken our delight, + Our treasured hope away: + Thou bid'st us now weep through the night + And sorrow through the day. + + These weary hours will not be lost, + These days of misery, + These nights of darkness, anguish-tost, + Can I but turn to Thee. + + With secret labour to sustain + In humble patience every blow; + To gather fortitude from pain, + And hope and holiness from woe. + + Thus let me serve Thee from my heart, + Whate'er may be my written fate: + Whether thus early to depart, + Or yet a while to wait. + + If Thou shouldst bring me back to life, + More humbled I should be; + More wise--more strengthened for the strife-- + More apt to lean on Thee. + + Should death be standing at the gate, + Thus should I keep my vow: + But, Lord! whatever be my fate, + Oh, let me serve Thee now! + + +These lines written, the desk was closed, the pen laid aside--for ever. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1019 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1020-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1020-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d6fe4ced --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1020-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4821 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1020 *** + +SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED + +by Amy Lowell + +[American (Massachusetts) poet, 1874-1925.] + + +[Note on text: Lines longer than 78 characters have been cut and +continued on the next line, which is indented 2 spaces unless in a prose +poem.] + + + + +SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED + + + _"Face invisible! je t'ai gravée en médailles + D'argent doux comme l'aube pâle, + D'or ardent comme le soleil, + D'airain sombre comme la nuit; + Il y en a de tout métal, + Qui tintent clair comme la joie, + Qui sonnent lourd comme la gloire, + Comme l'amour, comme la mort; + Et j'ai fait les plus belles de belle argile + Sèche et fragile. + + "Une à une, vous les comptiez en souriant, + Et vous disiez: Il est habile; + Et vous passiez en souriant. + + "Aucun de vous n'a donc vu + Que mes mains tremblaient de tendresse, + Que tout le grand songe terrestre + Vivait en moi pour vivre en eux + Que je gravais aux métaux pieux, + Mes Dieux."_ + + Henri de Régnier, "Les Médailles d'Argile". + + + + + +Preface + + + +No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how, but +there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made, and that +his verses burst from his overflowing heart of themselves. As a matter +of fact, the poet must learn his trade in the same manner, and with the +same painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker. His heart may overflow with +high thoughts and sparkling fancies, but if he cannot convey them to his +reader by means of the written word he has no claim to be considered a +poet. A workman may be pardoned, therefore, for spending a few moments +to explain and describe the technique of his trade. A work of beauty +which cannot stand an intimate examination is a poor and jerry-built +thing. + +In the first place, I wish to state my firm belief that poetry should +not try to teach, that it should exist simply because it is a created +beauty, even if sometimes the beauty of a gothic grotesque. We do not +ask the trees to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army +feels it necessary to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are +ridiculous, but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral +all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only +ridiculous, but timid and vulgar. We distrust a beauty we only half +understand, and rush in with our impertinent suggestions. How far we +are from "admitting the Universe"! The Universe, which flings down its +continents and seas, and leaves them without comment. Art is as much a +function of the Universe as an Equinoctial gale, or the Law of +Gravitation; and we insist upon considering it merely a little +scroll-work, of no great importance unless it be studded with nails +from which pretty and uplifting sentiments may be hung! + +For the purely technical side I must state my immense debt to the +French, and perhaps above all to the, so-called, Parnassian School, +although some of the writers who have influenced me most do not belong +to it. High-minded and untiring workmen, they have spared no pains to +produce a poetry finer than that of any other country in our time. +Poetry so full of beauty and feeling, that the study of it is at once an +inspiration and a despair to the artist. The Anglo-Saxon of our day has +a tendency to think that a fine idea excuses slovenly workmanship. These +clear-eyed Frenchmen are a reproof to our self-satisfied laziness. +Before the works of Parnassians like Leconte de Lisle, and José-Maria de +Heredia, or those of Henri de Régnier, Albert Samain, Francis Jammes, +Remy de Gourmont, and Paul Fort, of the more modern school, we stand +rebuked. Indeed--"They order this matter better in France." + +It is because in France, to-day, poetry is so living and vigorous a +thing, that so many metrical experiments come from there. Only a +vigorous tree has the vitality to put forth new branches. The poet with +originality and power is always seeking to give his readers the same +poignant feeling which he has himself. To do this he must constantly +find new and striking images, delightful and unexpected forms. Take the +word "daybreak", for instance. What a remarkable picture it must once +have conjured up! The great, round sun, like the yolk of some mighty +egg, BREAKING through cracked and splintered clouds. But we have said +"daybreak" so often that we do not see the picture any more, it has +become only another word for dawn. The poet must be constantly seeking +new pictures to make his readers feel the vitality of his thought. + +Many of the poems in this volume are written in what the French call +"Vers Libre", a nomenclature more suited to French use and to French +versification than to ours. I prefer to call them poems in "unrhymed +cadence", for that conveys their exact meaning to an English ear. They +are built upon "organic rhythm", or the rhythm of the speaking voice +with its necessity for breathing, rather than upon a strict metrical +system. They differ from ordinary prose rhythms by being more curved, +and containing more stress. The stress, and exceedingly marked curve, of +any regular metre is easily perceived. These poems, built upon cadence, +are more subtle, but the laws they follow are not less fixed. Merely +chopping prose lines into lengths does not produce cadence, it is +constructed upon mathematical and absolute laws of balance and time. In +the preface to his "Poems", Henley speaks of "those unrhyming rhythms in +which I had tried to quintessentialize, as (I believe) one scarce can do +in rhyme." The desire to "quintessentialize", to head-up an emotion +until it burns white-hot, seems to be an integral part of the modern +temper, and certainly "unrhymed cadence" is unique in its power of +expressing this. + +Three of these poems are written in a form which, so far as I know, has +never before been attempted in English. M. Paul Fort is its inventor, +and the results it has yielded to him are most beautiful and +satisfactory. Perhaps it is more suited to the French language than to +English. But I found it the only medium in which these particular poems +could be written. It is a fluid and changing form, now prose, now +verse, and permitting a great variety of treatment. + +But the reader will see that I have not entirely abandoned the more +classic English metres. I cannot see why, because certain manners suit +certain emotions and subjects, it should be considered imperative for an +author to employ no others. Schools are for those who can confine +themselves within them. Perhaps it is a weakness in me that I cannot. + +In conclusion, I would say that these remarks are in answer to many +questions asked me by people who have happened to read some of these +poems in periodicals. They are not for the purpose of forestalling +criticism, nor of courting it; and they deal, as I said in the +beginning, solely with the question of technique. For the more +important part of the book, the poems must speak for themselves. + + Amy Lowell. +May 19, 1914. + + + + + +Contents + + + + Sword Blades and Poppy Seed + + + Sword Blades + + The Captured Goddess + The Precinct. Rochester + The Cyclists + Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window + A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M. + Astigmatism + The Coal Picker + Storm-Racked + Convalescence + Patience + Apology + A Petition + A Blockhead + Stupidity + Irony + Happiness + The Last Quarter of the Moon + A Tale of Starvation + The Foreigner + Absence + A Gift + The Bungler + Fool's Money Bags + Miscast I + Miscast II + Anticipation + Vintage + The Tree of Scarlet Berries + Obligation + The Taxi + The Giver of Stars + The Temple + Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success + In Answer to a Request + + + Poppy Seed + + The Great Adventure of Max Breuck + Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris + After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok + Clear, with Light, Variable Winds + The Basket + In a Castle + The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde + The Exeter Road + The Shadow + The Forsaken + Late September + The Pike + The Blue Scarf + White and Green + Aubade + Music + A Lady + In a Garden + A Tulip Garden + + + + + +Sword Blades And Poppy Seed + + + A drifting, April, twilight sky, + A wind which blew the puddles dry, + And slapped the river into waves + That ran and hid among the staves + Of an old wharf. A watery light + Touched bleak the granite bridge, and white + Without the slightest tinge of gold, + The city shivered in the cold. + All day my thoughts had lain as dead, + Unborn and bursting in my head. + From time to time I wrote a word + Which lines and circles overscored. + My table seemed a graveyard, full + Of coffins waiting burial. + I seized these vile abortions, tore + Them into jagged bits, and swore + To be the dupe of hope no more. + Into the evening straight I went, + Starved of a day's accomplishment. + Unnoticing, I wandered where + The city gave a space for air, + And on the bridge's parapet + I leant, while pallidly there set + A dim, discouraged, worn-out sun. + Behind me, where the tramways run, + Blossomed bright lights, I turned to leave, + When someone plucked me by the sleeve. + "Your pardon, Sir, but I should be + Most grateful could you lend to me + A carfare, I have lost my purse." + The voice was clear, concise, and terse. + I turned and met the quiet gaze + Of strange eyes flashing through the haze. + + The man was old and slightly bent, + Under his cloak some instrument + Disarranged its stately line, + He rested on his cane a fine + And nervous hand, an almandine + Smouldered with dull-red flames, sanguine + It burned in twisted gold, upon + His finger. Like some Spanish don, + Conferring favours even when + Asking an alms, he bowed again + And waited. But my pockets proved + Empty, in vain I poked and shoved, + No hidden penny lurking there + Greeted my search. "Sir, I declare + I have no money, pray forgive, + But let me take you where you live." + And so we plodded through the mire + Where street lamps cast a wavering fire. + I took no note of where we went, + His talk became the element + Wherein my being swam, content. + It flashed like rapiers in the night + Lit by uncertain candle-light, + When on some moon-forsaken sward + A quarrel dies upon a sword. + It hacked and carved like a cutlass blade, + And the noise in the air the broad words made + Was the cry of the wind at a window-pane + On an Autumn night of sobbing rain. + Then it would run like a steady stream + Under pinnacled bridges where minarets gleam, + Or lap the air like the lapping tide + Where a marble staircase lifts its wide + Green-spotted steps to a garden gate, + And a waning moon is sinking straight + Down to a black and ominous sea, + While a nightingale sings in a lemon tree. + + I walked as though some opiate + Had stung and dulled my brain, a state + Acute and slumbrous. It grew late. + We stopped, a house stood silent, dark. + The old man scratched a match, the spark + Lit up the keyhole of a door, + We entered straight upon a floor + White with finest powdered sand + Carefully sifted, one might stand + Muddy and dripping, and yet no trace + Would stain the boards of this kitchen-place. + From the chimney, red eyes sparked the gloom, + And a cricket's chirp filled all the room. + My host threw pine-cones on the fire + And crimson and scarlet glowed the pyre + Wrapped in the golden flame's desire. + The chamber opened like an eye, + As a half-melted cloud in a Summer sky + The soul of the house stood guessed, and shy + It peered at the stranger warily. + A little shop with its various ware + Spread on shelves with nicest care. + Pitchers, and jars, and jugs, and pots, + Pipkins, and mugs, and many lots + Of lacquered canisters, black and gold, + Like those in which Chinese tea is sold. + Chests, and puncheons, kegs, and flasks, + Goblets, chalices, firkins, and casks. + In a corner three ancient amphorae leaned + Against the wall, like ships careened. + There was dusky blue of Wedgewood ware, + The carved, white figures fluttering there + Like leaves adrift upon the air. + Classic in touch, but emasculate, + The Greek soul grown effeminate. + The factory of Sevres had lent + Elegant boxes with ornament + Culled from gardens where fountains splashed + And golden carp in the shadows flashed, + Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads, + Which ladies threw as the last of fads. + Eggshell trays where gay beaux knelt, + Hand on heart, and daintily spelt + Their love in flowers, brittle and bright, + Artificial and fragile, which told aright + The vows of an eighteenth-century knight. + The cruder tones of old Dutch jugs + Glared from one shelf, where Toby mugs + Endlessly drank the foaming ale, + Its froth grown dusty, awaiting sale. + The glancing light of the burning wood + Played over a group of jars which stood + On a distant shelf, it seemed the sky + Had lent the half-tones of his blazonry + To paint these porcelains with unknown hues + Of reds dyed purple and greens turned blues, + Of lustres with so evanescent a sheen + Their colours are felt, but never seen. + Strange winged dragons writhe about + These vases, poisoned venoms spout, + Impregnate with old Chinese charms; + Sealed urns containing mortal harms, + They fill the mind with thoughts impure, + Pestilent drippings from the ure + Of vicious thinkings. "Ah, I see," + Said I, "you deal in pottery." + The old man turned and looked at me. + Shook his head gently. "No," said he. + + Then from under his cloak he took the thing + Which I had wondered to see him bring + Guarded so carefully from sight. + As he laid it down it flashed in the light, + A Toledo blade, with basket hilt, + Damascened with arabesques of gilt, + Or rather gold, and tempered so + It could cut a floating thread at a blow. + The old man smiled, "It has no sheath, + 'Twas a little careless to have it beneath + My cloak, for a jostle to my arm + Would have resulted in serious harm. + But it was so fine, I could not wait, + So I brought it with me despite its state." + "An amateur of arms," I thought, + "Bringing home a prize which he has bought." + "You care for this sort of thing, Dear Sir?" + "Not in the way which you infer. + I need them in business, that is all." + And he pointed his finger at the wall. + Then I saw what I had not noticed before. + The walls were hung with at least five score + Of swords and daggers of every size + Which nations of militant men could devise. + Poisoned spears from tropic seas, + That natives, under banana trees, + Smear with the juice of some deadly snake. + Blood-dipped arrows, which savages make + And tip with feathers, orange and green, + A quivering death, in harlequin sheen. + High up, a fan of glancing steel + Was formed of claymores in a wheel. + Jewelled swords worn at kings' levees + Were suspended next midshipmen's dirks, and these + Elbowed stilettos come from Spain, + Chased with some splendid Hidalgo's name. + There were Samurai swords from old Japan, + And scimitars from Hindoostan, + While the blade of a Turkish yataghan + Made a waving streak of vitreous white + Upon the wall, in the firelight. + Foils with buttons broken or lost + Lay heaped on a chair, among them tossed + The boarding-pike of a privateer. + Against the chimney leaned a queer + Two-handed weapon, with edges dull + As though from hacking on a skull. + The rusted blood corroded it still. + My host took up a paper spill + From a heap which lay in an earthen bowl, + And lighted it at a burning coal. + At either end of the table, tall + Wax candles were placed, each in a small, + And slim, and burnished candlestick + Of pewter. The old man lit each wick, + And the room leapt more obviously + Upon my mind, and I could see + What the flickering fire had hid from me. + Above the chimney's yawning throat, + Shoulder high, like the dark wainscote, + Was a mantelshelf of polished oak + Blackened with the pungent smoke + Of firelit nights; a Cromwell clock + Of tarnished brass stood like a rock + In the midst of a heaving, turbulent sea + Of every sort of cutlery. + There lay knives sharpened to any use, + The keenest lancet, and the obtuse + And blunted pruning bill-hook; blades + Of razors, scalpels, shears; cascades + Of penknives, with handles of mother-of-pearl, + And scythes, and sickles, and scissors; a whirl + Of points and edges, and underneath + Shot the gleam of a saw with bristling teeth. + My head grew dizzy, I seemed to hear + A battle-cry from somewhere near, + The clash of arms, and the squeal of balls, + And the echoless thud when a dead man falls. + A smoky cloud had veiled the room, + Shot through with lurid glares; the gloom + Pounded with shouts and dying groans, + With the drip of blood on cold, hard stones. + Sabres and lances in streaks of light + Gleamed through the smoke, and at my right + A creese, like a licking serpent's tongue, + Glittered an instant, while it stung. + Streams, and points, and lines of fire! + The livid steel, which man's desire + Had forged and welded, burned white and cold. + Every blade which man could mould, + Which could cut, or slash, or cleave, or rip, + Or pierce, or thrust, or carve, or strip, + Or gash, or chop, or puncture, or tear, + Or slice, or hack, they all were there. + Nerveless and shaking, round and round, + I stared at the walls and at the ground, + Till the room spun like a whipping top, + And a stern voice in my ear said, "Stop! + I sell no tools for murderers here. + Of what are you thinking! Please clear + Your mind of such imaginings. + Sit down. I will tell you of these things." + + He pushed me into a great chair + Of russet leather, poked a flare + Of tumbling flame, with the old long sword, + Up the chimney; but said no word. + Slowly he walked to a distant shelf, + And brought back a crock of finest delf. + He rested a moment a blue-veined hand + Upon the cover, then cut a band + Of paper, pasted neatly round, + Opened and poured. A sliding sound + Came from beneath his old white hands, + And I saw a little heap of sands, + Black and smooth. What could they be: + "Pepper," I thought. He looked at me. + "What you see is poppy seed. + Lethean dreams for those in need." + He took up the grains with a gentle hand + And sifted them slowly like hour-glass sand. + On his old white finger the almandine + Shot out its rays, incarnadine. + "Visions for those too tired to sleep. + These seeds cast a film over eyes which weep. + No single soul in the world could dwell, + Without these poppy-seeds I sell." + For a moment he played with the shining stuff, + Passing it through his fingers. Enough + At last, he poured it back into + The china jar of Holland blue, + Which he carefully carried to its place. + Then, with a smile on his aged face, + He drew up a chair to the open space + 'Twixt table and chimney. "Without preface, + Young man, I will say that what you see + Is not the puzzle you take it to be." + "But surely, Sir, there is something strange + In a shop with goods at so wide a range + Each from the other, as swords and seeds. + Your neighbours must have greatly differing needs." + "My neighbours," he said, and he stroked his chin, + "Live everywhere from here to Pekin. + But you are wrong, my sort of goods + Is but one thing in all its moods." + He took a shagreen letter case + From his pocket, and with charming grace + Offered me a printed card. + I read the legend, "Ephraim Bard. + Dealer in Words." And that was all. + I stared at the letters, whimsical + Indeed, or was it merely a jest. + He answered my unasked request: + "All books are either dreams or swords, + You can cut, or you can drug, with words. + My firm is a very ancient house, + The entries on my books would rouse + Your wonder, perhaps incredulity. + I inherited from an ancestry + Stretching remotely back and far, + This business, and my clients are + As were those of my grandfather's days, + Writers of books, and poems, and plays. + My swords are tempered for every speech, + For fencing wit, or to carve a breach + Through old abuses the world condones. + In another room are my grindstones and hones, + For whetting razors and putting a point + On daggers, sometimes I even anoint + The blades with a subtle poison, so + A twofold result may follow the blow. + These are purchased by men who feel + The need of stabbing society's heel, + Which egotism has brought them to think + Is set on their necks. I have foils to pink + An adversary to quaint reply, + And I have customers who buy + Scalpels with which to dissect the brains + And hearts of men. Ultramundanes + Even demand some finer kinds + To open their own souls and minds. + But the other half of my business deals + With visions and fancies. Under seals, + Sorted, and placed in vessels here, + I keep the seeds of an atmosphere. + Each jar contains a different kind + Of poppy seed. From farthest Ind + Come the purple flowers, opium filled, + From which the weirdest myths are distilled; + My orient porcelains contain them all. + Those Lowestoft pitchers against the wall + Hold a lighter kind of bright conceit; + And those old Saxe vases, out of the heat + On that lowest shelf beside the door, + Have a sort of Ideal, "couleur d'or". + Every castle of the air + Sleeps in the fine black grains, and there + Are seeds for every romance, or light + Whiff of a dream for a summer night. + I supply to every want and taste." + 'Twas slowly said, in no great haste + He seemed to push his wares, but I + Dumfounded listened. By and by + A log on the fire broke in two. + He looked up quickly, "Sir, and you?" + I groped for something I should say; + Amazement held me numb. "To-day + You sweated at a fruitless task." + He spoke for me, "What do you ask? + How can I serve you?" "My kind host, + My penniless state was not a boast; + I have no money with me." He smiled. + "Not for that money I beguiled + You here; you paid me in advance." + Again I felt as though a trance + Had dimmed my faculties. Again + He spoke, and this time to explain. + "The money I demand is Life, + Your nervous force, your joy, your strife!" + What infamous proposal now + Was made me with so calm a brow? + Bursting through my lethargy, + Indignantly I hurled the cry: + "Is this a nightmare, or am I + Drunk with some infernal wine? + I am no Faust, and what is mine + Is what I call my soul! Old Man! + Devil or Ghost! Your hellish plan + Revolts me. Let me go." "My child," + And the old tones were very mild, + "I have no wish to barter souls; + My traffic does not ask such tolls. + I am no devil; is there one? + Surely the age of fear is gone. + We live within a daylight world + Lit by the sun, where winds unfurled + Sweep clouds to scatter pattering rain, + And then blow back the sun again. + I sell my fancies, or my swords, + To those who care far more for words, + Ideas, of which they are the sign, + Than any other life-design. + Who buy of me must simply pay + Their whole existence quite away: + Their strength, their manhood, and their prime, + Their hours from morning till the time + When evening comes on tiptoe feet, + And losing life, think it complete; + Must miss what other men count being, + To gain the gift of deeper seeing; + Must spurn all ease, all hindering love, + All which could hold or bind; must prove + The farthest boundaries of thought, + And shun no end which these have brought; + Then die in satisfaction, knowing + That what was sown was worth the sowing. + I claim for all the goods I sell + That they will serve their purpose well, + And though you perish, they will live. + Full measure for your pay I give. + To-day you worked, you thought, in vain. + What since has happened is the train + Your toiling brought. I spoke to you + For my share of the bargain, due." + "My life! And is that all you crave + In pay? What even childhood gave! + I have been dedicate from youth. + Before my God I speak the truth!" + Fatigue, excitement of the past + Few hours broke me down at last. + All day I had forgot to eat, + My nerves betrayed me, lacking meat. + I bowed my head and felt the storm + Plough shattering through my prostrate form. + The tearless sobs tore at my heart. + My host withdrew himself apart; + Busied among his crockery, + He paid no farther heed to me. + Exhausted, spent, I huddled there, + Within the arms of the old carved chair. + + A long half-hour dragged away, + And then I heard a kind voice say, + "The day will soon be dawning, when + You must begin to work again. + Here are the things which you require." + By the fading light of the dying fire, + And by the guttering candle's flare, + I saw the old man standing there. + He handed me a packet, tied + With crimson tape, and sealed. "Inside + Are seeds of many differing flowers, + To occupy your utmost powers + Of storied vision, and these swords + Are the finest which my shop affords. + Go home and use them; do not spare + Yourself; let that be all your care. + Whatever you have means to buy + Be very sure I can supply." + He slowly walked to the window, flung + It open, and in the grey air rung + The sound of distant matin bells. + I took my parcels. Then, as tells + An ancient mumbling monk his beads, + I tried to thank for his courteous deeds + My strange old friend. "Nay, do not talk," + He urged me, "you have a long walk + Before you. Good-by and Good-day!" + And gently sped upon my way + I stumbled out in the morning hush, + As down the empty street a flush + Ran level from the rising sun. + Another day was just begun. + + + + + +SWORD BLADES + + + + +The Captured Goddess + + + + Over the housetops, + Above the rotating chimney-pots, + I have seen a shiver of amethyst, + And blue and cinnamon have flickered + A moment, + At the far end of a dusty street. + + Through sheeted rain + Has come a lustre of crimson, + And I have watched moonbeams + Hushed by a film of palest green. + + It was her wings, + Goddess! + Who stepped over the clouds, + And laid her rainbow feathers + Aslant on the currents of the air. + + I followed her for long, + With gazing eyes and stumbling feet. + I cared not where she led me, + My eyes were full of colours: + Saffrons, rubies, the yellows of beryls, + And the indigo-blue of quartz; + Flights of rose, layers of chrysoprase, + Points of orange, spirals of vermilion, + The spotted gold of tiger-lily petals, + The loud pink of bursting hydrangeas. + I followed, + And watched for the flashing of her wings. + + In the city I found her, + The narrow-streeted city. + In the market-place I came upon her, + Bound and trembling. + Her fluted wings were fastened to her sides with cords, + She was naked and cold, + For that day the wind blew + Without sunshine. + + Men chaffered for her, + They bargained in silver and gold, + In copper, in wheat, + And called their bids across the market-place. + + The Goddess wept. + + Hiding my face I fled, + And the grey wind hissed behind me, + Along the narrow streets. + + + + +The Precinct. Rochester + + + + The tall yellow hollyhocks stand, + Still and straight, + With their round blossoms spread open, + In the quiet sunshine. + And still is the old Roman wall, + Rough with jagged bits of flint, + And jutting stones, + Old and cragged, + Quite still in its antiquity. + The pear-trees press their branches against it, + And feeling it warm and kindly, + The little pears ripen to yellow and red. + They hang heavy, bursting with juice, + Against the wall. + So old, so still! + + The sky is still. + The clouds make no sound + As they slide away + Beyond the Cathedral Tower, + To the river, + And the sea. + It is very quiet, + Very sunny. + The myrtle flowers stretch themselves in the sunshine, + But make no sound. + The roses push their little tendrils up, + And climb higher and higher. + In spots they have climbed over the wall. + But they are very still, + They do not seem to move. + And the old wall carries them + Without effort, and quietly + Ripens and shields the vines and blossoms. + + A bird in a plane-tree + Sings a few notes, + Cadenced and perfect + They weave into the silence. + The Cathedral bell knocks, + One, two, three, and again, + And then again. + It is a quiet sound, + Calling to prayer, + Hardly scattering the stillness, + Only making it close in more densely. + The gardener picks ripe gooseberries + For the Dean's supper to-night. + It is very quiet, + Very regulated and mellow. + But the wall is old, + It has known many days. + It is a Roman wall, + Left-over and forgotten. + + Beyond the Cathedral Close + Yelp and mutter the discontents of people not mellow, + Not well-regulated. + People who care more for bread than for beauty, + Who would break the tombs of saints, + And give the painted windows of churches + To their children for toys. + People who say: + "They are dead, we live! + The world is for the living." + + Fools! It is always the dead who breed. + Crush the ripe fruit, and cast it aside, + Yet its seeds shall fructify, + And trees rise where your huts were standing. + But the little people are ignorant, + They chaffer, and swarm. + They gnaw like rats, + And the foundations of the Cathedral are honeycombed. + + The Dean is in the Chapter House; + He is reading the architect's bill + For the completed restoration of the Cathedral. + He will have ripe gooseberries for supper, + And then he will walk up and down the path + By the wall, + And admire the snapdragons and dahlias, + Thinking how quiet and peaceful + The garden is. + The old wall will watch him, + Very quietly and patiently it will watch. + For the wall is old, + It is a Roman wall. + + + + +The Cyclists + + + + Spread on the roadway, + With open-blown jackets, + Like black, soaring pinions, + They swoop down the hillside, + The Cyclists. + + Seeming dark-plumaged + Birds, after carrion, + Careening and circling, + Over the dying + Of England. + + She lies with her bosom + Beneath them, no longer + The Dominant Mother, + The Virile--but rotting + Before time. + + The smell of her, tainted, + Has bitten their nostrils. + Exultant they hover, + And shadow the sun with + Foreboding. + + + + +Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window + + + + What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries, + Of outworn, childish mysteries, + Vague pageants woven on a web of dream! + And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream + Of modern life, find solace in your tarnished broideries. + + Old lichened halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees, + The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese + Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky + Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly + And sway like masts, against a shifting breeze. + + Worm-eaten pages, clasped in old brown vellum, shrunk + From over-handling, by some anxious monk. + Or Virgin's Hours, bright with gold and graven + With flowers, and rare birds, and all the Saints of Heaven, + And Noah's ark stuck on Ararat, when all the world had sunk. + + They soothe us like a song, heard in a garden, sung + By youthful minstrels, on the moonlight flung + In cadences and falls, to ease a queen, + Widowed and childless, cowering in a screen + Of myrtles, whose life hangs with all its threads unstrung. + + + + +A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M. + + + + They have watered the street, + It shines in the glare of lamps, + Cold, white lamps, + And lies + Like a slow-moving river, + Barred with silver and black. + Cabs go down it, + One, + And then another. + Between them I hear the shuffling of feet. + Tramps doze on the window-ledges, + Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks. + The city is squalid and sinister, + With the silver-barred street in the midst, + Slow-moving, + A river leading nowhere. + + Opposite my window, + The moon cuts, + Clear and round, + Through the plum-coloured night. + She cannot light the city; + It is too bright. + It has white lamps, + And glitters coldly. + + I stand in the window and watch the moon. + She is thin and lustreless, + But I love her. + I know the moon, + And this is an alien city. + + + + +Astigmatism + + To Ezra Pound + + With much friendship and admiration and some differences of opinion + + + + The Poet took his walking-stick + Of fine and polished ebony. + Set in the close-grained wood + Were quaint devices; + Patterns in ambers, + And in the clouded green of jades. + The top was of smooth, yellow ivory, + And a tassel of tarnished gold + Hung by a faded cord from a hole + Pierced in the hard wood, + Circled with silver. + For years the Poet had wrought upon this cane. + His wealth had gone to enrich it, + His experiences to pattern it, + His labour to fashion and burnish it. + To him it was perfect, + A work of art and a weapon, + A delight and a defence. + The Poet took his walking-stick + And walked abroad. + + Peace be with you, Brother. + + + The Poet came to a meadow. + Sifted through the grass were daisies, + Open-mouthed, wondering, they gazed at the sun. + The Poet struck them with his cane. + The little heads flew off, and they lay + Dying, open-mouthed and wondering, + On the hard ground. + "They are useless. They are not roses," said the Poet. + + Peace be with you, Brother. Go your ways. + + + The Poet came to a stream. + Purple and blue flags waded in the water; + In among them hopped the speckled frogs; + The wind slid through them, rustling. + The Poet lifted his cane, + And the iris heads fell into the water. + They floated away, torn and drowning. + "Wretched flowers," said the Poet, + "They are not roses." + + Peace be with you, Brother. It is your affair. + + + The Poet came to a garden. + Dahlias ripened against a wall, + Gillyflowers stood up bravely for all their short stature, + And a trumpet-vine covered an arbour + With the red and gold of its blossoms. + Red and gold like the brass notes of trumpets. + The Poet knocked off the stiff heads of the dahlias, + And his cane lopped the gillyflowers at the ground. + Then he severed the trumpet-blossoms from their stems. + Red and gold they lay scattered, + Red and gold, as on a battle field; + Red and gold, prone and dying. + "They were not roses," said the Poet. + + Peace be with you, Brother. + But behind you is destruction, and waste places. + + + The Poet came home at evening, + And in the candle-light + He wiped and polished his cane. + The orange candle flame leaped in the yellow ambers, + And made the jades undulate like green pools. + It played along the bright ebony, + And glowed in the top of cream-coloured ivory. + But these things were dead, + Only the candle-light made them seem to move. + "It is a pity there were no roses," said the Poet. + + Peace be with you, Brother. You have chosen your part. + + + + +The Coal Picker + + + + He perches in the slime, inert, + Bedaubed with iridescent dirt. + The oil upon the puddles dries + To colours like a peacock's eyes, + And half-submerged tomato-cans + Shine scaly, as leviathans + Oozily crawling through the mud. + The ground is here and there bestud + With lumps of only part-burned coal. + His duty is to glean the whole, + To pick them from the filth, each one, + To hoard them for the hidden sun + Which glows within each fiery core + And waits to be made free once more. + Their sharp and glistening edges cut + His stiffened fingers. Through the smut + Gleam red the wounds which will not shut. + Wet through and shivering he kneels + And digs the slippery coals; like eels + They slide about. His force all spent, + He counts his small accomplishment. + A half-a-dozen clinker-coals + Which still have fire in their souls. + Fire! And in his thought there burns + The topaz fire of votive urns. + He sees it fling from hill to hill, + And still consumed, is burning still. + Higher and higher leaps the flame, + The smoke an ever-shifting frame. + He sees a Spanish Castle old, + With silver steps and paths of gold. + From myrtle bowers comes the plash + Of fountains, and the emerald flash + Of parrots in the orange trees, + Whose blossoms pasture humming bees. + He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke + Bears visions, that his master-stroke + Is out of dirt and misery + To light the fire of poesy. + He sees the glory, yet he knows + That others cannot see his shows. + To them his smoke is sightless, black, + His votive vessels but a pack + Of old discarded shards, his fire + A peddler's; still to him the pyre + Is incensed, an enduring goal! + He sighs and grubs another coal. + + + + +Storm-Racked + + + + How should I sing when buffeting salt waves + And stung with bitter surges, in whose might + I toss, a cockleshell? The dreadful night + Marshals its undefeated dark and raves + In brutal madness, reeling over graves + Of vanquished men, long-sunken out of sight, + Sent wailing down to glut the ghoulish sprite + Who haunts foul seaweed forests and their caves. + No parting cloud reveals a watery star, + My cries are washed away upon the wind, + My cramped and blistering hands can find no spar, + My eyes with hope o'erstrained, are growing blind. + But painted on the sky great visions burn, + My voice, oblation from a shattered urn! + + + + +Convalescence + + + + From out the dragging vastness of the sea, + Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous, seaweed strands, + He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands + One moment, white and dripping, silently, + Cut like a cameo in lazuli, + Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands + Prone in the jeering water, and his hands + Clutch for support where no support can be. + So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch, + He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow + And sandflies dance their little lives away. + The sucking waves retard, and tighter clinch + The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow, + And in the sky there blooms the sun of May. + + + + +Patience + + + + Be patient with you? + When the stooping sky + Leans down upon the hills + And tenderly, as one who soothing stills + An anguish, gathers earth to lie + Embraced and girdled. Do the sun-filled men + Feel patience then? + + Be patient with you? + When the snow-girt earth + Cracks to let through a spurt + Of sudden green, and from the muddy dirt + A snowdrop leaps, how mark its worth + To eyes frost-hardened, and do weary men + Feel patience then? + + Be patient with you? + When pain's iron bars + Their rivets tighten, stern + To bend and break their victims; as they turn, + Hopeless, there stand the purple jars + Of night to spill oblivion. Do these men + Feel patience then? + + Be patient with you? + You! My sun and moon! + My basketful of flowers! + My money-bag of shining dreams! My hours, + Windless and still, of afternoon! + You are my world and I your citizen. + What meaning can have patience then? + + + + +Apology + + + + Be not angry with me that I bear + Your colours everywhere, + All through each crowded street, + And meet + The wonder-light in every eye, + As I go by. + + Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze, + Blinded by rainbow haze, + The stuff of happiness, + No less, + Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds + Of peacock golds. + + Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way + Flushes beneath its gray. + My steps fall ringed with light, + So bright, + It seems a myriad suns are strown + About the town. + + Around me is the sound of steepled bells, + And rich perfumed smells + Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud, + And shroud + Me from close contact with the world. + I dwell impearled. + + You blazon me with jewelled insignia. + A flaming nebula + Rims in my life. And yet + You set + The word upon me, unconfessed + To go unguessed. + + + + +A Petition + + + + I pray to be the tool which to your hand + Long use has shaped and moulded till it be + Apt for your need, and, unconsideringly, + You take it for its service. I demand + To be forgotten in the woven strand + Which grows the multi-coloured tapestry + Of your bright life, and through its tissues lie + A hidden, strong, sustaining, grey-toned band. + I wish to dwell around your daylight dreams, + The railing to the stairway of the clouds, + To guard your steps securely up, where streams + A faery moonshine washing pale the crowds + Of pointed stars. Remember not whereby + You mount, protected, to the far-flung sky. + + + + +A Blockhead + + + + Before me lies a mass of shapeless days, + Unseparated atoms, and I must + Sort them apart and live them. Sifted dust + Covers the formless heap. Reprieves, delays, + There are none, ever. As a monk who prays + The sliding beads asunder, so I thrust + Each tasteless particle aside, and just + Begin again the task which never stays. + And I have known a glory of great suns, + When days flashed by, pulsing with joy and fire! + Drunk bubbled wine in goblets of desire, + And felt the whipped blood laughing as it runs! + Spilt is that liquor, my too hasty hand + Threw down the cup, and did not understand. + + + + +Stupidity + + + + Dearest, forgive that with my clumsy touch + I broke and bruised your rose. + I hardly could suppose + It were a thing so fragile that my clutch + Could kill it, thus. + + It stood so proudly up upon its stem, + I knew no thought of fear, + And coming very near + Fell, overbalanced, to your garment's hem, + Tearing it down. + + Now, stooping, I upgather, one by one, + The crimson petals, all + Outspread about my fall. + They hold their fragrance still, a blood-red cone + Of memory. + + And with my words I carve a little jar + To keep their scented dust, + Which, opening, you must + Breathe to your soul, and, breathing, know me far + More grieved than you. + + + + +Irony + + + + An arid daylight shines along the beach + Dried to a grey monotony of tone, + And stranded jelly-fish melt soft upon + The sun-baked pebbles, far beyond their reach + Sparkles a wet, reviving sea. Here bleach + The skeletons of fishes, every bone + Polished and stark, like traceries of stone, + The joints and knuckles hardened each to each. + And they are dead while waiting for the sea, + The moon-pursuing sea, to come again. + Their hearts are blown away on the hot breeze. + Only the shells and stones can wait to be + Washed bright. For living things, who suffer pain, + May not endure till time can bring them ease. + + + + +Happiness + + + + Happiness, to some, elation; + Is, to others, mere stagnation. + Days of passive somnolence, + At its wildest, indolence. + Hours of empty quietness, + No delight, and no distress. + + Happiness to me is wine, + Effervescent, superfine. + Full of tang and fiery pleasure, + Far too hot to leave me leisure + For a single thought beyond it. + Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it + Means to give one's soul to gain + Life's quintessence. Even pain + Pricks to livelier living, then + Wakes the nerves to laugh again, + Rapture's self is three parts sorrow. + Although we must die to-morrow, + Losing every thought but this; + Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss. + + Happiness: We rarely feel it. + I would buy it, beg it, steal it, + Pay in coins of dripping blood + For this one transcendent good. + + + + +The Last Quarter of the Moon + + + + How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life, + A spatter of rust on its polished steel! + The seasons reel + Like a goaded wheel. + Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife. + + The night is sliding towards the dawn, + And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees. + A torn moon flees + Through the hemlock trees, + The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn. + + Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing + A rabble of clouds flares out of the east. + Like dogs unleashed + After a beast, + They stream on the sky, an outflung string. + + A desolate wind, through the unpeopled dark, + Shakes the bushes and whistles through empty nests, + And the fierce unrests + I keep as guests + Crowd my brain with corpses, pallid and stark. + + Leave me in peace, O Spectres, who haunt + My labouring mind, I have fought and failed. + I have not quailed, + I was all unmailed + And naked I strove, 'tis my only vaunt. + + The moon drops into the silver day + As waking out of her swoon she comes. + I hear the drums + Of millenniums + Beating the mornings I still must stay. + + The years I must watch go in and out, + While I build with water, and dig in air, + And the trumpets blare + Hollow despair, + The shuddering trumpets of utter rout. + + An atom tossed in a chaos made + Of yeasting worlds, which bubble and foam. + Whence have I come? + What would be home? + I hear no answer. I am afraid! + + I crave to be lost like a wind-blown flame. + Pushed into nothingness by a breath, + And quench in a wreath + Of engulfing death + This fight for a God, or this devil's game. + + + + +A Tale of Starvation + + + + There once was a man whom the gods didn't love, + And a disagreeable man was he. + He loathed his neighbours, and his neighbours hated him, + And he cursed eternally. + + He damned the sun, and he damned the stars, + And he blasted the winds in the sky. + He sent to Hell every green, growing thing, + And he raved at the birds as they fly. + + His oaths were many, and his range was wide, + He swore in fancy ways; + But his meaning was plain: that no created thing + Was other than a hurt to his gaze. + + He dwelt all alone, underneath a leaning hill, + And windows toward the hill there were none, + And on the other side they were white-washed thick, + To keep out every spark of the sun. + + When he went to market he walked all the way + Blaspheming at the path he trod. + He cursed at those he bought of, and swore at those he sold to, + By all the names he knew of God. + + For his heart was soured in his weary old hide, + And his hopes had curdled in his breast. + His friend had been untrue, and his love had thrown him over + For the chinking money-bags she liked best. + + The rats had devoured the contents of his grain-bin, + The deer had trampled on his corn, + His brook had shrivelled in a summer drought, + And his sheep had died unshorn. + + His hens wouldn't lay, and his cow broke loose, + And his old horse perished of a colic. + In the loft his wheat-bags were nibbled into holes + By little, glutton mice on a frolic. + + So he slowly lost all he ever had, + And the blood in his body dried. + Shrunken and mean he still lived on, + And cursed that future which had lied. + + One day he was digging, a spade or two, + As his aching back could lift, + When he saw something glisten at the bottom of the trench, + And to get it out he made great shift. + + So he dug, and he delved, with care and pain, + And the veins in his forehead stood taut. + At the end of an hour, when every bone cracked, + He gathered up what he had sought. + + A dim old vase of crusted glass, + Prismed while it lay buried deep. + Shifting reds and greens, like a pigeon's neck, + At the touch of the sun began to leap. + + It was dull in the tree-shade, but glowing in the light; + Flashing like an opal-stone, + Carved into a flagon; and the colours glanced and ran, + Where at first there had seemed to be none. + + It had handles on each side to bear it up, + And a belly for the gurgling wine. + Its neck was slender, and its mouth was wide, + And its lip was curled and fine. + + The old man saw it in the sun's bright stare + And the colours started up through the crust, + And he who had cursed at the yellow sun + Held the flask to it and wiped away the dust. + + And he bore the flask to the brightest spot, + Where the shadow of the hill fell clear; + And he turned the flask, and he looked at the flask, + And the sun shone without his sneer. + + Then he carried it home, and put it on a shelf, + But it was only grey in the gloom. + So he fetched a pail, and a bit of cloth, + And he went outside with a broom. + + And he washed his windows just to let the sun + Lie upon his new-found vase; + And when evening came, he moved it down + And put it on a table near the place + + Where a candle fluttered in a draught from the door. + The old man forgot to swear, + Watching its shadow grown a mammoth size, + Dancing in the kitchen there. + + He forgot to revile the sun next morning + When he found his vase afire in its light. + And he carried it out of the house that day, + And kept it close beside him until night. + + And so it happened from day to day. + The old man fed his life + On the beauty of his vase, on its perfect shape. + And his soul forgot its former strife. + + And the village-folk came and begged to see + The flagon which was dug from the ground. + And the old man never thought of an oath, in his joy + At showing what he had found. + + One day the master of the village school + Passed him as he stooped at toil, + Hoeing for a bean-row, and at his side + Was the vase, on the turned-up soil. + + "My friend," said the schoolmaster, pompous and kind, + "That's a valuable thing you have there, + But it might get broken out of doors, + It should meet with the utmost care. + + What are you doing with it out here?" + "Why, Sir," said the poor old man, + "I like to have it about, do you see? + To be with it all I can." + + "You will smash it," said the schoolmaster, sternly right, + "Mark my words and see!" + And he walked away, while the old man looked + At his treasure despondingly. + + Then he smiled to himself, for it was his! + He had toiled for it, and now he cared. + Yes! loved its shape, and its subtle, swift hues, + Which his own hard work had bared. + + He would carry it round with him everywhere, + As it gave him joy to do. + A fragile vase should not stand in a bean-row! + Who would dare to say so? Who? + + Then his heart was rested, and his fears gave way, + And he bent to his hoe again.... + A clod rolled down, and his foot slipped back, + And he lurched with a cry of pain. + + For the blade of the hoe crashed into glass, + And the vase fell to iridescent sherds. + The old man's body heaved with slow, dry sobs. + He did not curse, he had no words. + + He gathered the fragments, one by one, + And his fingers were cut and torn. + Then he made a hole in the very place + Whence the beautiful vase had been borne. + + He covered the hole, and he patted it down, + Then he hobbled to his house and shut the door. + He tore up his coat and nailed it at the windows + That no beam of light should cross the floor. + + He sat down in front of the empty hearth, + And he neither ate nor drank. + In three days they found him, dead and cold, + And they said: "What a queer old crank!" + + + + +The Foreigner + + + + Have at you, you Devils! + My back's to this tree, + For you're nothing so nice + That the hind-side of me + Would escape your assault. + Come on now, all three! + + Here's a dandified gentleman, + Rapier at point, + And a wrist which whirls round + Like a circular joint. + A spatter of blood, man! + That's just to anoint + + And make supple your limbs. + 'Tis a pity the silk + Of your waistcoat is stained. + Why! Your heart's full of milk, + And so full, it spills over! + I'm not of your ilk. + + You said so, and laughed + At my old-fashioned hose, + At the cut of my hair, + At the length of my nose. + To carve it to pattern + I think you propose. + + Your pardon, young Sir, + But my nose and my sword + Are proving themselves + In quite perfect accord. + I grieve to have spotted + Your shirt. On my word! + + And hullo! You Bully! + That blade's not a stick + To slash right and left, + And my skull is too thick + To be cleft with such cuffs + Of a sword. Now a lick + + Down the side of your face. + What a pretty, red line! + Tell the taverns that scar + Was an honour. Don't whine + That a stranger has marked you. + * * * * * + The tree's there, You Swine! + + Did you think to get in + At the back, while your friends + Made a little diversion + In front? So it ends, + With your sword clattering down + On the ground. 'Tis amends + + I make for your courteous + Reception of me, + A foreigner, landed + From over the sea. + Your welcome was fervent + I think you'll agree. + + My shoes are not buckled + With gold, nor my hair + Oiled and scented, my jacket's + Not satin, I wear + Corded breeches, wide hats, + And I make people stare! + + So I do, but my heart + Is the heart of a man, + And my thoughts cannot twirl + In the limited span + 'Twixt my head and my heels, + As some other men's can. + + I have business more strange + Than the shape of my boots, + And my interests range + From the sky, to the roots + Of this dung-hill you live in, + You half-rotted shoots + + Of a mouldering tree! + Here's at you, once more. + You Apes! You Jack-fools! + You can show me the door, + And jeer at my ways, + But you're pinked to the core. + + And before I have done, + I will prick my name in + With the front of my steel, + And your lily-white skin + Shall be printed with me. + For I've come here to win! + + + + +Absence + + + + My cup is empty to-night, + Cold and dry are its sides, + Chilled by the wind from the open window. + Empty and void, it sparkles white in the moonlight. + The room is filled with the strange scent + Of wistaria blossoms. + They sway in the moon's radiance + And tap against the wall. + But the cup of my heart is still, + And cold, and empty. + + When you come, it brims + Red and trembling with blood, + Heart's blood for your drinking; + To fill your mouth with love + And the bitter-sweet taste of a soul. + + + + +A Gift + + + + See! I give myself to you, Beloved! + My words are little jars + For you to take and put upon a shelf. + Their shapes are quaint and beautiful, + And they have many pleasant colours and lustres + To recommend them. + Also the scent from them fills the room + With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses. + + When I shall have given you the last one, + You will have the whole of me, + But I shall be dead. + + + + +The Bungler + + + + You glow in my heart + Like the flames of uncounted candles. + But when I go to warm my hands, + My clumsiness overturns the light, + And then I stumble + Against the tables and chairs. + + + + +Fool's Money Bags + + + + Outside the long window, + With his head on the stone sill, + The dog is lying, + Gazing at his Beloved. + His eyes are wet and urgent, + And his body is taut and shaking. + It is cold on the terrace; + A pale wind licks along the stone slabs, + But the dog gazes through the glass + And is content. + + The Beloved is writing a letter. + Occasionally she speaks to the dog, + But she is thinking of her writing. + Does she, too, give her devotion to one + Not worthy? + + + + +Miscast I + + + + I have whetted my brain until it is like a Damascus blade, + So keen that it nicks off the floating fringes of passers-by, + So sharp that the air would turn its edge + Were it to be twisted in flight. + Licking passions have bitten their arabesques into it, + And the mark of them lies, in and out, + Worm-like, + With the beauty of corroded copper patterning white steel. + My brain is curved like a scimitar, + And sighs at its cutting + Like a sickle mowing grass. + + But of what use is all this to me! + I, who am set to crack stones + In a country lane! + + + + +Miscast II + + + + My heart is like a cleft pomegranate + Bleeding crimson seeds + And dripping them on the ground. + My heart gapes because it is ripe and over-full, + And its seeds are bursting from it. + + But how is this other than a torment to me! + I, who am shut up, with broken crockery, + In a dark closet! + + + + +Anticipation + + + + I have been temperate always, + But I am like to be very drunk + With your coming. + There have been times + I feared to walk down the street + Lest I should reel with the wine of you, + And jerk against my neighbours + As they go by. + I am parched now, and my tongue is horrible in my mouth, + But my brain is noisy + With the clash and gurgle of filling wine-cups. + + + + +Vintage + + + + I will mix me a drink of stars,-- + Large stars with polychrome needles, + Small stars jetting maroon and crimson, + Cool, quiet, green stars. + I will tear them out of the sky, + And squeeze them over an old silver cup, + And I will pour the cold scorn of my Beloved into it, + So that my drink shall be bubbled with ice. + + It will lap and scratch + As I swallow it down; + And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire, + Coiling and twisting in my belly. + His snortings will rise to my head, + And I shall be hot, and laugh, + Forgetting that I have ever known a woman. + + + + +The Tree of Scarlet Berries + + + + The rain gullies the garden paths + And tinkles on the broad sides of grass blades. + A tree, at the end of my arm, is hazy with mist. + Even so, I can see that it has red berries, + A scarlet fruit, + Filmed over with moisture. + It seems as though the rain, + Dripping from it, + Should be tinged with colour. + I desire the berries, + But, in the mist, I only scratch my hand on the thorns. + Probably, too, they are bitter. + + + + +Obligation + + + + Hold your apron wide + That I may pour my gifts into it, + So that scarcely shall your two arms hinder them + From falling to the ground. + + I would pour them upon you + And cover you, + For greatly do I feel this need + Of giving you something, + Even these poor things. + + Dearest of my Heart! + + + + +The Taxi + + + + When I go away from you + The world beats dead + Like a slackened drum. + I call out for you against the jutted stars + And shout into the ridges of the wind. + Streets coming fast, + One after the other, + Wedge you away from me, + And the lamps of the city prick my eyes + So that I can no longer see your face. + Why should I leave you, + To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night? + + + + +The Giver of Stars + + + + Hold your soul open for my welcoming. + Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me + With its clear and rippled coolness, + That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest, + Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory. + + Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me, + That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire, + The life and joy of tongues of flame, + And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune, + I may rouse the blear-eyed world, + And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten. + + + + +The Temple + + + + Between us leapt a gold and scarlet flame. + Into the hollow of the cupped, arched blue + Of Heaven it rose. Its flickering tongues up-drew + And vanished in the sunshine. How it came + We guessed not, nor what thing could be its name. + From each to each had sprung those sparks which flew + Together into fire. But we knew + The winds would slap and quench it in their game. + And so we graved and fashioned marble blocks + To treasure it, and placed them round about. + With pillared porticos we wreathed the whole, + And roofed it with bright bronze. Behind carved locks + Flowered the tall and sheltered flame. Without, + The baffled winds thrust at a column's bole. + + + + +Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success + + + + Beneath this sod lie the remains + Of one who died of growing pains. + + + + +In Answer to a Request + + + + You ask me for a sonnet. Ah, my Dear, + Can clocks tick back to yesterday at noon? + Can cracked and fallen leaves recall last June + And leap up on the boughs, now stiff and sere? + For your sake, I would go and seek the year, + Faded beyond the purple ranks of dune, + Blown sands of drifted hours, which the moon + Streaks with a ghostly finger, and her sneer + Pulls at my lengthening shadow. Yes, 'tis that! + My shadow stretches forward, and the ground + Is dark in front because the light's behind. + It is grotesque, with such a funny hat, + In watching it and walking I have found + More than enough to occupy my mind. + + I cannot turn, the light would make me blind. + + + + +POPPY SEED + + + + +The Great Adventure of Max Breuck + + + + 1 + + A yellow band of light upon the street + Pours from an open door, and makes a wide + Pathway of bright gold across a sheet + Of calm and liquid moonshine. From inside + Come shouts and streams of laughter, and a snatch + Of song, soon drowned and lost again in mirth, + The clip of tankards on a table top, + And stir of booted heels. Against the patch + Of candle-light a shadow falls, its girth + Proclaims the host himself, and master of his shop. + + + 2 + + This is the tavern of one Hilverdink, + Jan Hilverdink, whose wines are much esteemed. + Within his cellar men can have to drink + The rarest cordials old monks ever schemed + To coax from pulpy grapes, and with nice art + Improve and spice their virgin juiciness. + Here froths the amber beer of many a brew, + Crowning each pewter tankard with as smart + A cap as ever in his wantonness + Winter set glittering on top of an old yew. + + + 3 + + Tall candles stand upon the table, where + Are twisted glasses, ruby-sparked with wine, + Clarets and ports. Those topaz bumpers were + Drained from slim, long-necked bottles of the Rhine. + The centre of the board is piled with pipes, + Slender and clean, the still unbaptized clay + Awaits its burning fate. Behind, the vault + Stretches from dim to dark, a groping way + Bordered by casks and puncheons, whose brass stripes + And bands gleam dully still, beyond the gay tumult. + + + 4 + + "For good old Master Hilverdink, a toast!" + Clamoured a youth with tassels on his boots. + "Bring out your oldest brandy for a boast, + From that small barrel in the very roots + Of your deep cellar, man. Why here is Max! + Ho! Welcome, Max, you're scarcely here in time. + We want to drink to old Jan's luck, and smoke + His best tobacco for a grand climax. + Here, Jan, a paper, fragrant as crushed thyme, + We'll have the best to wish you luck, or may we choke!" + + + 5 + + Max Breuck unclasped his broadcloth cloak, and sat. + "Well thought of, Franz; here's luck to Mynheer Jan." + The host set down a jar; then to a vat + Lost in the distance of his cellar, ran. + Max took a pipe as graceful as the stem + Of some long tulip, crammed it full, and drew + The pungent smoke deep to his grateful lung. + It curled all blue throughout the cave and flew + Into the silver night. At once there flung + Into the crowded shop a boy, who cried to them: + + + 6 + + "Oh, sirs, is there some learned lawyer here, + Some advocate, or all-wise counsellor? + My master sent me to inquire where + Such men do mostly be, but every door + Was shut and barred, for late has grown the hour. + I pray you tell me where I may now find + One versed in law, the matter will not wait." + "I am a lawyer, boy," said Max, "my mind + Is not locked to my business, though 'tis late. + I shall be glad to serve what way is in my power. + + + 7 + + Then once more, cloaked and ready, he set out, + Tripping the footsteps of the eager boy + Along the dappled cobbles, while the rout + Within the tavern jeered at his employ. + Through new-burst elm leaves filtered the white moon, + Who peered and splashed between the twinkling boughs, + Flooded the open spaces, and took flight + Before tall, serried houses in platoon, + Guarded by shadows. Past the Custom House + They took their hurried way in the Spring-scented night. + + + 8 + + Before a door which fronted a canal + The boy halted. A dim tree-shaded spot. + The water lapped the stones in musical + And rhythmic tappings, and a galliot + Slumbered at anchor with no light aboard. + The boy knocked twice, and steps approached. A flame + Winked through the keyhole, then a key was turned, + And through the open door Max went toward + Another door, whence sound of voices came. + He entered a large room where candelabra burned. + + + 9 + + An aged man in quilted dressing gown + Rose up to greet him. "Sir," said Max, "you sent + Your messenger to seek throughout the town + A lawyer. I have small accomplishment, + But I am at your service, and my name + Is Max Breuck, Counsellor, at your command." + "Mynheer," replied the aged man, "obliged + Am I, and count myself much privileged. + I am Cornelius Kurler, and my fame + Is better known on distant oceans than on land. + + + 10 + + My ship has tasted water in strange seas, + And bartered goods at still uncharted isles. + She's oft coquetted with a tropic breeze, + And sheered off hurricanes with jaunty smiles." + "Tush, Kurler," here broke in the other man, + "Enough of poetry, draw the deed and sign." + The old man seemed to wizen at the voice, + "My good friend, Grootver,--" he at once began. + "No introductions, let us have some wine, + And business, now that you at last have made your choice." + + + 11 + + A harsh and disagreeable man he proved to be, + This Grootver, with no single kindly thought. + Kurler explained, his old hands nervously + Twisting his beard. His vessel he had bought + From Grootver. He had thought to soon repay + The ducats borrowed, but an adverse wind + Had so delayed him that his cargo brought + But half its proper price, the very day + He came to port he stepped ashore to find + The market glutted and his counted profits naught. + + + 12 + + Little by little Max made out the way + That Grootver pressed that poor harassed old man. + His money he must have, too long delay + Had turned the usurer to a ruffian. + "But let me take my ship, with many bales + Of cotton stuffs dyed crimson, green, and blue, + Cunningly patterned, made to suit the taste + Of mandarin's ladies; when my battered sails + Open for home, such stores will I bring you + That all your former ventures will be counted waste. + + + 13 + + Such light and foamy silks, like crinkled cream, + And indigo more blue than sun-whipped seas, + Spices and fragrant trees, a massive beam + Of sandalwood, and pungent China teas, + Tobacco, coffee!" Grootver only laughed. + Max heard it all, and worse than all he heard + The deed to which the sailor gave his word. + He shivered, 'twas as if the villain gaffed + The old man with a boat-hook; bleeding, spent, + He begged for life nor knew at all the road he went. + + + 14 + + For Kurler had a daughter, young and gay, + Carefully reared and shielded, rarely seen. + But on one black and most unfriendly day + Grootver had caught her as she passed between + The kitchen and the garden. She had run + In fear of him, his evil leering eye, + And when he came she, bolted in her room, + Refused to show, though gave no reason why. + The spinning of her future had begun, + On quiet nights she heard the whirring of her doom. + + + 15 + + Max mended an old goosequill by the fire, + Loathing his work, but seeing no thing to do. + He felt his hands were building up the pyre + To burn two souls, and seized with vertigo + He staggered to his chair. Before him lay + White paper still unspotted by a crime. + "Now, young man, write," said Grootver in his ear. + "`If in two years my vessel should yet stay + From Amsterdam, I give Grootver, sometime + A friend, my daughter for his lawful wife.' Now swear." + + + 16 + + And Kurler swore, a palsied, tottering sound, + And traced his name, a shaking, wandering line. + Then dazed he sat there, speechless from his wound. + Grootver got up: "Fair voyage, the brigantine!" + He shuffled from the room, and left the house. + His footsteps wore to silence down the street. + At last the aged man began to rouse. + With help he once more gained his trembling feet. + "My daughter, Mynheer Breuck, is friendless now. + Will you watch over her? I ask a solemn vow." + + + 17 + + Max laid his hand upon the old man's arm, + "Before God, sir, I vow, when you are gone, + So to protect your daughter from all harm + As one man may." Thus sorrowful, forlorn, + The situation to Max Breuck appeared, + He gave his promise almost without thought, + Nor looked to see a difficulty. "Bred + Gently to watch a mother left alone; + Bound by a dying father's wish, who feared + The world's accustomed harshness when he should be dead; + + + 18 + + Such was my case from youth, Mynheer Kurler. + Last Winter she died also, and my days + Are passed in work, lest I should grieve for her, + And undo habits used to earn her praise. + My leisure I will gladly give to see + Your household and your daughter prosperous." + The sailor said his thanks, but turned away. + He could not brook that his humility, + So little wonted, and so tremulous, + Should first before a stranger make such great display. + + + 19 + + "Come here to-morrow as the bells ring noon, + I sail at the full sea, my daughter then + I will make known to you. 'Twill be a boon + If after I have bid good-by, and when + Her eyeballs scorch with watching me depart, + You bring her home again. She lives with one + Old serving-woman, who has brought her up. + But that is no friend for so free a heart. + No head to match her questions. It is done. + And I must sail away to come and brim her cup. + + + 20 + + My ship's the fastest that owns Amsterdam + As home, so not a letter can you send. + I shall be back, before to where I am + Another ship could reach. Now your stipend--" + Quickly Breuck interposed. "When you once more + Tread on the stones which pave our streets.--Good night! + To-morrow I will be, at stroke of noon, + At the great wharf." Then hurrying, in spite + Of cake and wine the old man pressed upon + Him ere he went, he took his leave and shut the door. + + + 21 + + 'Twas noon in Amsterdam, the day was clear, + And sunshine tipped the pointed roofs with gold. + The brown canals ran liquid bronze, for here + The sun sank deep into the waters cold. + And every clock and belfry in the town + Hammered, and struck, and rang. Such peals of bells, + To shake the sunny morning into life, + And to proclaim the middle, and the crown, + Of this most sparkling daytime! The crowd swells, + Laughing and pushing toward the quays in friendly strife. + + + 22 + + The "Horn of Fortune" sails away to-day. + At highest tide she lets her anchor go, + And starts for China. Saucy popinjay! + Giddy in freshest paint she curtseys low, + And beckons to her boats to let her start. + Blue is the ocean, with a flashing breeze. + The shining waves are quick to take her part. + They push and spatter her. Her sails are loose, + Her tackles hanging, waiting men to seize + And haul them taut, with chanty-singing, as they choose. + + + 23 + + At the great wharf's edge Mynheer Kurler stands, + And by his side, his daughter, young Christine. + Max Breuck is there, his hat held in his hands, + Bowing before them both. The brigantine + Bounces impatient at the long delay, + Curvets and jumps, a cable's length from shore. + A heavy galliot unloads on the walls + Round, yellow cheeses, like gold cannon balls + Stacked on the stones in pyramids. Once more + Kurler has kissed Christine, and now he is away. + + + 24 + + Christine stood rigid like a frozen stone, + Her hands wrung pale in effort at control. + Max moved aside and let her be alone, + For grief exacts each penny of its toll. + The dancing boat tossed on the glinting sea. + A sun-path swallowed it in flaming light, + Then, shrunk a cockleshell, it came again + Upon the other side. Now on the lee + It took the "Horn of Fortune". Straining sight + Could see it hauled aboard, men pulling on the crane. + + + 25 + + Then up above the eager brigantine, + Along her slender masts, the sails took flight, + Were sheeted home, and ropes were coiled. The shine + Of the wet anchor, when its heavy weight + Rose splashing to the deck. These things they saw, + Christine and Max, upon the crowded quay. + They saw the sails grow white, then blue in shade, + The ship had turned, caught in a windy flaw + She glided imperceptibly away, + Drew farther off and in the bright sky seemed to fade. + + + 26 + + Home, through the emptying streets, Max took Christine, + Who would have hid her sorrow from his gaze. + Before the iron gateway, clasped between + Each garden wall, he stopped. She, in amaze, + Asked, "Do you enter not then, Mynheer Breuck? + My father told me of your courtesy. + Since I am now your charge, 'tis meet for me + To show such hospitality as maiden may, + Without disdaining rules must not be broke. + Katrina will have coffee, and she bakes today." + + + 27 + + She straight unhasped the tall, beflowered gate. + Curled into tendrils, twisted into cones + Of leaves and roses, iron infoliate, + It guards the pleasance, and its stiffened bones + Are budded with much peering at the rows, + And beds, and arbours, which it keeps inside. + Max started at the beauty, at the glare + Of tints. At either end was set a wide + Path strewn with fine, red gravel, and such shows + Of tulips in their splendour flaunted everywhere! + + + 28 + + From side to side, midway each path, there ran + A longer one which cut the space in two. + And, like a tunnel some magician + Has wrought in twinkling green, an alley grew, + Pleached thick and walled with apple trees; their flowers + Incensed the garden, and when Autumn came + The plump and heavy apples crowding stood + And tapped against the arbour. Then the dame + Katrina shook them down, in pelting showers + They plunged to earth, and died transformed to sugared food. + + + 29 + + Against the high, encircling walls were grapes, + Nailed close to feel the baking of the sun + From glowing bricks. Their microscopic shapes + Half hidden by serrated leaves. And one + Old cherry tossed its branches near the door. + Bordered along the wall, in beds between, + Flickering, streaming, nodding in the air, + The pride of all the garden, there were more + Tulips than Max had ever dreamed or seen. + They jostled, mobbed, and danced. Max stood at helpless stare. + + + 30 + + "Within the arbour, Mynheer Breuck, I'll bring + Coffee and cakes, a pipe, and Father's best + Tobacco, brought from countries harbouring + Dawn's earliest footstep. Wait." With girlish zest + To please her guest she flew. A moment more + She came again, with her old nurse behind. + Then, sitting on the bench and knitting fast, + She talked as someone with a noble store + Of hidden fancies, blown upon the wind, + Eager to flutter forth and leave their silent past. + + + 31 + + The little apple leaves above their heads + Let fall a quivering sunshine. Quiet, cool, + In blossomed boughs they sat. Beyond, the beds + Of tulips blazed, a proper vestibule + And antechamber to the rainbow. Dyes + Of prismed richness: Carmine. Madder. Blues + Tinging dark browns to purple. Silvers flushed + To amethyst and tinct with gold. Round eyes + Of scarlet, spotting tender saffron hues. + Violets sunk to blacks, and reds in orange crushed. + + + 32 + + Of every pattern and in every shade. + Nacreous, iridescent, mottled, checked. + Some purest sulphur-yellow, others made + An ivory-white with disks of copper flecked. + Sprinkled and striped, tasselled, or keenest edged. + Striated, powdered, freckled, long or short. + They bloomed, and seemed strange wonder-moths new-fledged, + Born of the spectrum wedded to a flame. + The shade within the arbour made a port + To o'ertaxed eyes, its still, green twilight rest became. + + + 33 + + Her knitting-needles clicked and Christine talked, + This child matured to woman unaware, + The first time left alone. Now dreams once balked + Found utterance. Max thought her very fair. + Beneath her cap her ornaments shone gold, + And purest gold they were. Kurler was rich + And heedful. Her old maiden aunt had died + Whose darling care she was. Now, growing bold, + She asked, had Max a sister? Dropped a stitch + At her own candour. Then she paused and softly sighed. + + + 34 + + Two years was long! She loved her father well, + But fears she had not. He had always been + Just sailed or sailing. And she must not dwell + On sad thoughts, he had told her so, and seen + Her smile at parting. But she sighed once more. + Two years was long; 'twas not one hour yet! + Mynheer Grootver she would not see at all. + Yes, yes, she knew, but ere the date so set, + The "Horn of Fortune" would be at the wall. + When Max had bid farewell, she watched him from the door. + + + 35 + + The next day, and the next, Max went to ask + The health of Jufvrouw Kurler, and the news: + Another tulip blown, or the great task + Of gathering petals which the high wind strews; + The polishing of floors, the pictured tiles + Well scrubbed, and oaken chairs most deftly oiled. + Such things were Christine's world, and his was she + Winter drew near, his sun was in her smiles. + Another Spring, and at his law he toiled, + Unspoken hope counselled a wise efficiency. + + + 36 + + Max Breuck was honour's soul, he knew himself + The guardian of this girl; no more, no less. + As one in charge of guineas on a shelf + Loose in a china teapot, may confess + His need, but may not borrow till his friend + Comes back to give. So Max, in honour, said + No word of love or marriage; but the days + He clipped off on his almanac. The end + Must come! The second year, with feet of lead, + Lagged slowly by till Spring had plumped the willow sprays. + + + 37 + + Two years had made Christine a woman grown, + With dignity and gently certain pride. + But all her childhood fancies had not flown, + Her thoughts in lovely dreamings seemed to glide. + Max was her trusted friend, did she confess + A closer happiness? Max could not tell. + Two years were over and his life he found + Sphered and complete. In restless eagerness + He waited for the "Horn of Fortune". Well + Had he his promise kept, abating not one pound. + + + 38 + + Spring slipped away to Summer. Still no glass + Sighted the brigantine. Then Grootver came + Demanding Jufvrouw Kurler. His trespass + Was justified, for he had won the game. + Christine begged time, more time! Midsummer went, + And Grootver waxed impatient. Still the ship + Tarried. Christine, betrayed and weary, sank + To dreadful terrors. One day, crazed, she sent + For Max. "Come quickly," said her note, "I skip + The worst distress until we meet. The world is blank." + + + 39 + + Through the long sunshine of late afternoon + Max went to her. In the pleached alley, lost + In bitter reverie, he found her soon. + And sitting down beside her, at the cost + Of all his secret, "Dear," said he, "what thing + So suddenly has happened?" Then, in tears, + She told that Grootver, on the following morn, + Would come to marry her, and shuddering: + "I will die rather, death has lesser fears." + Max felt the shackles drop from the oath which he had sworn. + + + 40 + + "My Dearest One, the hid joy of my heart! + I love you, oh! you must indeed have known. + In strictest honour I have played my part; + But all this misery has overthrown + My scruples. If you love me, marry me + Before the sun has dipped behind those trees. + You cannot be wed twice, and Grootver, foiled, + Can eat his anger. My care it shall be + To pay your father's debt, by such degrees + As I can compass, and for years I've greatly toiled. + + + 41 + + This is not haste, Christine, for long I've known + My love, and silence forced upon my lips. + I worship you with all the strength I've shown + In keeping faith." With pleading finger tips + He touched her arm. "Christine! Beloved! Think. + Let us not tempt the future. Dearest, speak, + I love you. Do my words fall too swift now? + They've been in leash so long upon the brink." + She sat quite still, her body loose and weak. + Then into him she melted, all her soul at flow. + + + 42 + + And they were married ere the westering sun + Had disappeared behind the garden trees. + The evening poured on them its benison, + And flower-scents, that only night-time frees, + Rose up around them from the beamy ground, + Silvered and shadowed by a tranquil moon. + Within the arbour, long they lay embraced, + In such enraptured sweetness as they found + Close-partnered each to each, and thinking soon + To be enwoven, long ere night to morning faced. + + + 43 + + At last Max spoke, "Dear Heart, this night is ours, + To watch it pale, together, into dawn, + Pressing our souls apart like opening flowers + Until our lives, through quivering bodies drawn, + Are mingled and confounded. Then, far spent, + Our eyes will close to undisturbed rest. + For that desired thing I leave you now. + To pinnacle this day's accomplishment, + By telling Grootver that a bootless quest + Is his, and that his schemes have met a knock-down blow." + + + 44 + + But Christine clung to him with sobbing cries, + Pleading for love's sake that he leave her not. + And wound her arms about his knees and thighs + As he stood over her. With dread, begot + Of Grootver's name, and silence, and the night, + She shook and trembled. Words in moaning plaint + Wooed him to stay. She feared, she knew not why, + Yet greatly feared. She seemed some anguished saint + Martyred by visions. Max Breuck soothed her fright + With wisdom, then stepped out under the cooling sky. + + + 45 + + But at the gate once more she held him close + And quenched her heart again upon his lips. + "My Sweetheart, why this terror? I propose + But to be gone one hour! Evening slips + Away, this errand must be done." "Max! Max! + First goes my father, if I lose you now!" + She grasped him as in panic lest she drown. + Softly he laughed, "One hour through the town + By moonlight! That's no place for foul attacks. + Dearest, be comforted, and clear that troubled brow. + + + 46 + + One hour, Dear, and then, no more alone. + We front another day as man and wife. + I shall be back almost before I'm gone, + And midnight shall anoint and crown our life." + Then through the gate he passed. Along the street + She watched his buttons gleaming in the moon. + He stopped to wave and turned the garden wall. + Straight she sank down upon a mossy seat. + Her senses, mist-encircled by a swoon, + Swayed to unconsciousness beneath its wreathing pall. + + + 47 + + Briskly Max walked beside the still canal. + His step was firm with purpose. Not a jot + He feared this meeting, nor the rancorous gall + Grootver would spit on him who marred his plot. + He dreaded no man, since he could protect + Christine. His wife! He stopped and laughed aloud. + His starved life had not fitted him for joy. + It strained him to the utmost to reject + Even this hour with her. His heart beat loud. + "Damn Grootver, who can force my time to this employ!" + + + 48 + + He laughed again. What boyish uncontrol + To be so racked. Then felt his ticking watch. + In half an hour Grootver would know the whole. + And he would be returned, lifting the latch + Of his own gate, eager to take Christine + And crush her to his lips. How bear delay? + He broke into a run. In front, a line + Of candle-light banded the cobbled street. + Hilverdink's tavern! Not for many a day + Had he been there to take his old, accustomed seat. + + + 49 + + "Why, Max! Stop, Max!" And out they came pell-mell, + His old companions. "Max, where have you been? + Not drink with us? Indeed you serve us well! + How many months is it since we have seen + You here? Jan, Jan, you slow, old doddering goat! + Here's Mynheer Breuck come back again at last, + Stir your old bones to welcome him. Fie, Max. + Business! And after hours! Fill your throat; + Here's beer or brandy. Now, boys, hold him fast. + Put down your cane, dear man. What really vicious whacks!" + + + 50 + + They forced him to a seat, and held him there, + Despite his anger, while the hideous joke + Was tossed from hand to hand. Franz poured with care + A brimming glass of whiskey. "Here, we've broke + Into a virgin barrel for you, drink! + Tut! Tut! Just hear him! Married! Who, and when? + Married, and out on business. Clever Spark! + Which lie's the likeliest? Come, Max, do think." + Swollen with fury, struggling with these men, + Max cursed hilarity which must needs have a mark. + + + 51 + + Forcing himself to steadiness, he tried + To quell the uproar, told them what he dared + Of his own life and circumstance. Implied + Most urgent matters, time could ill be spared. + In jesting mood his comrades heard his tale, + And scoffed at it. He felt his anger more + Goaded and bursting;--"Cowards! Is no one loth + To mock at duty--" Here they called for ale, + And forced a pipe upon him. With an oath + He shivered it to fragments on the earthen floor. + + + 52 + + Sobered a little by his violence, + And by the host who begged them to be still, + Nor injure his good name, "Max, no offence," + They blurted, "you may leave now if you will." + "One moment, Max," said Franz. "We've gone too far. + I ask your pardon for our foolish joke. + It started in a wager ere you came. + The talk somehow had fall'n on drugs, a jar + I brought from China, herbs the natives smoke, + Was with me, and I thought merely to play a game. + + + 53 + + Its properties are to induce a sleep + Fraught with adventure, and the flight of time + Is inconceivable in swiftness. Deep + Sunken in slumber, imageries sublime + Flatter the senses, or some fearful dream + Holds them enmeshed. Years pass which on the clock + Are but so many seconds. We agreed + That the next man who came should prove the scheme; + And you were he. Jan handed you the crock. + Two whiffs! And then the pipe was broke, and you were freed." + + + 54 + + "It is a lie, a damned, infernal lie!" + Max Breuck was maddened now. "Another jest + Of your befuddled wits. I know not why + I am to be your butt. At my request + You'll choose among you one who'll answer for + Your most unseasonable mirth. Good-night + And good-by,--gentlemen. You'll hear from me." + But Franz had caught him at the very door, + "It is no lie, Max Breuck, and for your plight + I am to blame. Come back, and we'll talk quietly. + + + 55 + + You have no business, that is why we laughed, + Since you had none a few minutes ago. + As to your wedding, naturally we chaffed, + Knowing the length of time it takes to do + A simple thing like that in this slow world. + Indeed, Max, 'twas a dream. Forgive me then. + I'll burn the drug if you prefer." But Breuck + Muttered and stared,--"A lie." And then he hurled, + Distraught, this word at Franz: "Prove it. And when + It's proven, I'll believe. That thing shall be your work. + + + 56 + + I'll give you just one week to make your case. + On August thirty-first, eighteen-fourteen, + I shall require your proof." With wondering face + Franz cried, "A week to August, and fourteen + The year! You're mad, 'tis April now. + April, and eighteen-twelve." Max staggered, caught + A chair,--"April two years ago! Indeed, + Or you, or I, are mad. I know not how + Either could blunder so." Hilverdink brought + "The Amsterdam Gazette", and Max was forced to read. + + + 57 + + "Eighteen hundred and twelve," in largest print; + And next to it, "April the twenty-first." + The letters smeared and jumbled, but by dint + Of straining every nerve to meet the worst, + He read it, and into his pounding brain + Tumbled a horror. Like a roaring sea + Foreboding shipwreck, came the message plain: + "This is two years ago! What of Christine?" + He fled the cellar, in his agony + Running to outstrip Fate, and save his holy shrine. + + + 58 + + The darkened buildings echoed to his feet + Clap-clapping on the pavement as he ran. + Across moon-misted squares clamoured his fleet + And terror-winged steps. His heart began + To labour at the speed. And still no sign, + No flutter of a leaf against the sky. + And this should be the garden wall, and round + The corner, the old gate. No even line + Was this! No wall! And then a fearful cry + Shattered the stillness. Two stiff houses filled the ground. + + + 59 + + Shoulder to shoulder, like dragoons in line, + They stood, and Max knew them to be the ones + To right and left of Kurler's garden. Spine + Rigid next frozen spine. No mellow tones + Of ancient gilded iron, undulate, + Expanding in wide circles and broad curves, + The twisted iron of the garden gate, + Was there. The houses touched and left no space + Between. With glassy eyes and shaking nerves + Max gazed. Then mad with fear, fled still, and left that place. + + + 60 + + Stumbling and panting, on he ran, and on. + His slobbering lips could only cry, "Christine! + My Dearest Love! My Wife! Where are you gone? + What future is our past? What saturnine, + Sardonic devil's jest has bid us live + Two years together in a puff of smoke? + It was no dream, I swear it! In some star, + Or still imprisoned in Time's egg, you give + Me love. I feel it. Dearest Dear, this stroke + Shall never part us, I will reach to where you are." + + + 61 + + His burning eyeballs stared into the dark. + The moon had long been set. And still he cried: + "Christine! My Love! Christine!" A sudden spark + Pricked through the gloom, and shortly Max espied + With his uncertain vision, so within + Distracted he could scarcely trust its truth, + A latticed window where a crimson gleam + Spangled the blackness, and hung from a pin, + An iron crane, were three gilt balls. His youth + Had taught their meaning, now they closed upon his dream. + + + 62 + + Softly he knocked against the casement, wide + It flew, and a cracked voice his business there + Demanded. The door opened, and inside + Max stepped. He saw a candle held in air + Above the head of a gray-bearded Jew. + "Simeon Isaacs, Mynheer, can I serve + You?" "Yes, I think you can. Do you keep arms? + I want a pistol." Quick the old man grew + Livid. "Mynheer, a pistol! Let me swerve + You from your purpose. Life brings often false alarms--" + + + 63 + + "Peace, good old Isaacs, why should you suppose + My purpose deadly. In good truth I've been + Blest above others. You have many rows + Of pistols it would seem. Here, this shagreen + Case holds one that I fancy. Silvered mounts + Are to my taste. These letters `C. D. L.' + Its former owner? Dead, you say. Poor Ghost! + 'Twill serve my turn though--" Hastily he counts + The florins down upon the table. "Well, + Good-night, and wish me luck for your to-morrow's toast." + + + 64 + + Into the night again he hurried, now + Pale and in haste; and far beyond the town + He set his goal. And then he wondered how + Poor C. D. L. had come to die. "It's grown + Handy in killing, maybe, this I've bought, + And will work punctually." His sorrow fell + Upon his senses, shutting out all else. + Again he wept, and called, and blindly fought + The heavy miles away. "Christine. I'm well. + I'm coming. My Own Wife!" He lurched with failing pulse. + + + 65 + + Along the dyke the keen air blew in gusts, + And grasses bent and wailed before the wind. + The Zuider Zee, which croons all night and thrusts + Long stealthy fingers up some way to find + And crumble down the stones, moaned baffled. Here + The wide-armed windmills looked like gallows-trees. + No lights were burning in the distant thorps. + Max laid aside his coat. His mind, half-clear, + Babbled "Christine!" A shot split through the breeze. + The cold stars winked and glittered at his chilling corpse. + + + + +Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris + + + + Dear Virgin Mary, far away, + Look down from Heaven while I pray. + Open your golden casement high, + And lean way out beyond the sky. + I am so little, it may be + A task for you to harken me. + + O Lady Mary, I have bought + A candle, as the good priest taught. + I only had one penny, so + Old Goody Jenkins let it go. + It is a little bent, you see. + But Oh, be merciful to me! + + I have not anything to give, + Yet I so long for him to live. + A year ago he sailed away + And not a word unto today. + I've strained my eyes from the sea-wall + But never does he come at all. + + Other ships have entered port + Their voyages finished, long or short, + And other sailors have received + Their welcomes, while I sat and grieved. + My heart is bursting for his hail, + O Virgin, let me spy his sail. + + _Hull down on the edge of a sun-soaked sea + Sparkle the bellying sails for me. + Taut to the push of a rousing wind + Shaking the sea till it foams behind, + The tightened rigging is shrill with the song: + "We are back again who were gone so long."_ + + One afternoon I bumped my head. + I sat on a post and wished I were dead + Like father and mother, for no one cared + Whither I went or how I fared. + A man's voice said, "My little lad, + Here's a bit of a toy to make you glad." + + Then I opened my eyes and saw him plain, + With his sleeves rolled up, and the dark blue stain + Of tattooed skin, where a flock of quail + Flew up to his shoulder and met the tail + Of a dragon curled, all pink and green, + Which sprawled on his back, when it was seen. + + He held out his hand and gave to me + The most marvellous top which could ever be. + It had ivory eyes, and jet-black rings, + And a red stone carved into little wings, + All joined by a twisted golden line, + And set in the brown wood, even and fine. + + Forgive me, Lady, I have not brought + My treasure to you as I ought, + But he said to keep it for his sake + And comfort myself with it, and take + Joy in its spinning, and so I do. + It couldn't mean quite the same to you. + + Every day I met him there, + Where the fisher-nets dry in the sunny air. + He told me stories of courts and kings, + Of storms at sea, of lots of things. + The top he said was a sort of sign + That something in the big world was mine. + + _Blue and white on a sun-shot ocean. + Against the horizon a glint in motion. + Full in the grasp of a shoving wind, + Trailing her bubbles of foam behind, + Singing and shouting to port she races, + A flying harp, with her sheets and braces._ + + O Queen of Heaven, give me heed, + I am in very utmost need. + He loved me, he was all I had, + And when he came it made the sad + Thoughts disappear. This very day + Send his ship home to me I pray. + + I'll be a priest, if you want it so, + I'll work till I have enough to go + And study Latin to say the prayers + On the rosary our old priest wears. + I wished to be a sailor too, + But I will give myself to you. + + I'll never even spin my top, + But put it away in a box. I'll stop + Whistling the sailor-songs he taught. + I'll save my pennies till I have bought + A silver heart in the market square, + I've seen some beautiful, white ones there. + + I'll give up all I want to do + And do whatever you tell me to. + Heavenly Lady, take away + All the games I like to play, + Take my life to fill the score, + Only bring him back once more! + + _The poplars shiver and turn their leaves, + And the wind through the belfry moans and grieves. + The gray dust whirls in the market square, + And the silver hearts are covered with care + By thick tarpaulins. Once again + The bay is black under heavy rain._ + + The Queen of Heaven has shut her door. + A little boy weeps and prays no more. + + + + +After Hearing a Waltz by Bartók + + + + But why did I kill him? Why? Why? + In the small, gilded room, near the stair? + My ears rack and throb with his cry, + And his eyes goggle under his hair, + As my fingers sink into the fair + White skin of his throat. It was I! + + I killed him! My God! Don't you hear? + I shook him until his red tongue + Hung flapping out through the black, queer, + Swollen lines of his lips. And I clung + With my nails drawing blood, while I flung + The loose, heavy body in fear. + + Fear lest he should still not be dead. + I was drunk with the lust of his life. + The blood-drops oozed slow from his head + And dabbled a chair. And our strife + Lasted one reeling second, his knife + Lay and winked in the lights overhead. + + And the waltz from the ballroom I heard, + When I called him a low, sneaking cur. + And the wail of the violins stirred + My brute anger with visions of her. + As I throttled his windpipe, the purr + Of his breath with the waltz became blurred. + + I have ridden ten miles through the dark, + With that music, an infernal din, + Pounding rhythmic inside me. Just Hark! + One! Two! Three! And my fingers sink in + To his flesh when the violins, thin + And straining with passion, grow stark. + + One! Two! Three! Oh, the horror of sound! + While she danced I was crushing his throat. + He had tasted the joy of her, wound + Round her body, and I heard him gloat + On the favour. That instant I smote. + One! Two! Three! How the dancers swirl round! + + He is here in the room, in my arm, + His limp body hangs on the spin + Of the waltz we are dancing, a swarm + Of blood-drops is hemming us in! + Round and round! One! Two! Three! And his sin + Is red like his tongue lolling warm. + + One! Two! Three! And the drums are his knell. + He is heavy, his feet beat the floor + As I drag him about in the swell + Of the waltz. With a menacing roar, + The trumpets crash in through the door. + One! Two! Three! clangs his funeral bell. + + One! Two! Three! In the chaos of space + Rolls the earth to the hideous glee + Of death! And so cramped is this place, + I stifle and pant. One! Two! Three! + Round and round! God! 'Tis he throttles me! + He has covered my mouth with his face! + + And his blood has dripped into my heart! + And my heart beats and labours. One! Two! + Three! His dead limbs have coiled every part + Of my body in tentacles. Through + My ears the waltz jangles. Like glue + His dead body holds me athwart. + + One! Two! Three! Give me air! Oh! My God! + One! Two! Three! I am drowning in slime! + One! Two! Three! And his corpse, like a clod, + Beats me into a jelly! The chime, + One! Two! Three! And his dead legs keep time. + Air! Give me air! Air! My God! + + + + +Clear, with Light, Variable Winds + + + + The fountain bent and straightened itself + In the night wind, + Blowing like a flower. + It gleamed and glittered, + A tall white lily, + Under the eye of the golden moon. + From a stone seat, + Beneath a blossoming lime, + The man watched it. + And the spray pattered + On the dim grass at his feet. + + The fountain tossed its water, + Up and up, like silver marbles. + Is that an arm he sees? + And for one moment + Does he catch the moving curve + Of a thigh? + The fountain gurgled and splashed, + And the man's face was wet. + + Is it singing that he hears? + A song of playing at ball? + The moonlight shines on the straight column of water, + And through it he sees a woman, + Tossing the water-balls. + Her breasts point outwards, + And the nipples are like buds of peonies. + Her flanks ripple as she plays, + And the water is not more undulating + Than the lines of her body. + + "Come," she sings, "Poet! + Am I not more worth than your day ladies, + Covered with awkward stuffs, + Unreal, unbeautiful? + What do you fear in taking me? + Is not the night for poets? + I am your dream, + Recurrent as water, + Gemmed with the moon!" + + She steps to the edge of the pool + And the water runs, rustling, down her sides. + She stretches out her arms, + And the fountain streams behind her + Like an opened veil. + + * * * * * + + In the morning the gardeners came to their work. + "There is something in the fountain," said one. + They shuddered as they laid their dead master + On the grass. + "I will close his eyes," said the head gardener, + "It is uncanny to see a dead man staring at the sun." + + + + +The Basket + + + + I + + The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted, + in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness sweep into + the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The air + is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight. + + See how the roof glitters, like ice! + + Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue, and beside it stand + two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night. + + + See! She is coming, the young woman with the bright hair. + She swings a basket as she walks, which she places on the sill, + between the geranium stalks. He laughs, and crumples his paper + as he leans forward to look. "The Basket Filled with Moonlight", + what a title for a book! + + The bellying clouds swing over the housetops. + + + He has forgotten the woman in the room with the geraniums. He is beating + his brain, and in his eardrums hammers his heavy pulse. She sits + on the window-sill, with the basket in her lap. And tap! She cracks a nut. + And tap! Another. Tap! Tap! Tap! The shells ricochet upon the roof, + and get into the gutters, and bounce over the edge and disappear. + + "It is very queer," thinks Peter, "the basket was empty, I'm sure. + How could nuts appear from the atmosphere?" + + The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, and the roof glitters + like ice. + + + II + + Five o'clock. The geraniums are very gay in their crimson array. + The bellying clouds swing over the housetops, and over the roofs goes Peter + to pay his morning's work with a holiday. + + "Annette, it is I. Have you finished? Can I come?" + + Peter jumps through the window. + + "Dear, are you alone?" + + "Look, Peter, the dome of the tabernacle is done. This gold thread + is so very high, I am glad it is morning, a starry sky would have + seen me bankrupt. Sit down, now tell me, is your story going well?" + + The golden dome glittered in the orange of the setting sun. On the walls, + at intervals, hung altar-cloths and chasubles, and copes, and stoles, + and coffin palls. All stiff with rich embroidery, and stitched with + so much artistry, they seemed like spun and woven gems, or flower-buds + new-opened on their stems. + + + Annette looked at the geraniums, very red against the blue sky. + + "No matter how I try, I cannot find any thread of such a red. + My bleeding hearts drip stuff muddy in comparison. Heigh-ho! See my little + pecking dove? I'm in love with my own temple. Only that halo's wrong. + The colour's too strong, or not strong enough. I don't know. My eyes + are tired. Oh, Peter, don't be so rough; it is valuable. I won't do + any more. I promise. You tyrannise, Dear, that's enough. Now sit down + and amuse me while I rest." + + The shadows of the geraniums creep over the floor, and begin to climb + the opposite wall. + + + Peter watches her, fluid with fatigue, floating, and drifting, + and undulant in the orange glow. His senses flow towards her, + where she lies supine and dreaming. Seeming drowned in a golden halo. + + The pungent smell of the geraniums is hard to bear. + + + He pushes against her knees, and brushes his lips across her languid hands. + His lips are hot and speechless. He woos her, quivering, and the room + is filled with shadows, for the sun has set. But she only understands + the ways of a needle through delicate stuffs, and the shock of one colour + on another. She does not see that this is the same, and querulously murmurs + his name. + + "Peter, I don't want it. I am tired." + + And he, the undesired, burns and is consumed. + + There is a crescent moon on the rim of the sky. + + + III + + "Go home, now, Peter. To-night is full moon. I must be alone." + + "How soon the moon is full again! Annette, let me stay. Indeed, Dear Love, + I shall not go away. My God, but you keep me starved! You write + `No Entrance Here', over all the doors. Is it not strange, my Dear, + that loving, yet you deny me entrance everywhere. Would marriage + strike you blind, or, hating bonds as you do, why should I be denied + the rights of loving if I leave you free? You want the whole of me, + you pick my brains to rest you, but you give me not one heart-beat. + Oh, forgive me, Sweet! I suffer in my loving, and you know it. I cannot + feed my life on being a poet. Let me stay." + + "As you please, poor Peter, but it will hurt me if you do. It will + crush your heart and squeeze the love out." + + He answered gruffly, "I know what I'm about." + + "Only remember one thing from to-night. My work is taxing and I must + have sight! I _must_!" + + The clear moon looks in between the geraniums. On the wall, + the shadow of the man is divided from the shadow of the woman + by a silver thread. + + + They are eyes, hundreds of eyes, round like marbles! Unwinking, for there + are no lids. Blue, black, gray, and hazel, and the irises are cased + in the whites, and they glitter and spark under the moon. The basket + is heaped with human eyes. She cracks off the whites and throws them away. + They ricochet upon the roof, and get into the gutters, and bounce + over the edge and disappear. But she is here, quietly sitting + on the window-sill, eating human eyes. + + The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, and the roof shines + like ice. + + + IV + + How hot the sheets are! His skin is tormented with pricks, + and over him sticks, and never moves, an eye. It lights the sky with blood, + and drips blood. And the drops sizzle on his bare skin, and he smells them + burning in, and branding his body with the name "Annette". + + The blood-red sky is outside his window now. Is it blood or fire? + Merciful God! Fire! And his heart wrenches and pounds "Annette!" + + The lead of the roof is scorching, he ricochets, gets to the edge, + bounces over and disappears. + + The bellying clouds are red as they swing over the housetops. + + + V + + The air is of silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight. + How the ruin glistens, like a palace of ice! Only two black holes swallow + the brilliance of the moon. Deflowered windows, sockets without sight. + + A man stands before the house. He sees the silver-blue moonlight, + and set in it, over his head, staring and flickering, eyes of geranium red. + + + Annette! + + + + +In a Castle + + + + I + + Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip--hiss--drip--hiss-- + fall the raindrops on the oaken log which burns, and steams, + and smokes the ceiling beams. Drip--hiss--the rain never stops. + + + The wide, state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above, dim, + in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead hammers and chinks + the rain. Fearfully wails the wind down distant corridors, and there comes + the swish and sigh of rushes lifted off the floors. The arras blows sidewise + out from the wall, and then falls back again. + + + It is my lady's key, confided with much nice cunning, whisperingly. + He enters on a sob of wind, which gutters the candles almost to swaling. + The fire flutters and drops. Drip--hiss--the rain never stops. + He shuts the door. The rushes fall again to stillness along the floor. + Outside, the wind goes wailing. + + + The velvet coverlet of the wide bed is smooth and cold. Above, + in the firelight, winks the coronet of tarnished gold. The knight shivers + in his coat of fur, and holds out his hands to the withering flame. + She is always the same, a sweet coquette. He will wait for her. + + How the log hisses and drips! How warm and satisfying will be her lips! + + + It is wide and cold, the state bed; but when her head lies under the coronet, + and her eyes are full and wet with love, and when she holds out her arms, + and the velvet counterpane half slips from her, and alarms + her trembling modesty, how eagerly he will leap to cover her, and blot himself + beneath the quilt, making her laugh and tremble. + + Is it guilt to free a lady from her palsied lord, absent and fighting, + terribly abhorred? + + + He stirs a booted heel and kicks a rolling coal. His spur clinks + on the hearth. Overhead, the rain hammers and chinks. She is so pure + and whole. Only because he has her soul will she resign herself to him, + for where the soul has gone, the body must be given as a sign. He takes her + by the divine right of the only lover. He has sworn to fight her lord, + and wed her after. Should he be overborne, she will die adoring him, forlorn, + shriven by her great love. + + Above, the coronet winks in the darkness. Drip--hiss--fall the raindrops. + The arras blows out from the wall, and a door bangs in a far-off hall. + + + The candles swale. In the gale the moat below plunges and spatters. + Will the lady lose courage and not come? + + The rain claps on a loosened rafter. + + Is that laughter? + + + The room is filled with lisps and whispers. Something mutters. + One candle drowns and the other gutters. Is that the rain + which pads and patters, is it the wind through the winding entries + which chatters? + + The state bed is very cold and he is alone. How far from the wall + the arras is blown! + + + Christ's Death! It is no storm which makes these little chuckling sounds. + By the Great Wounds of Holy Jesus, it is his dear lady, kissing and + clasping someone! Through the sobbing storm he hears her love take form + and flutter out in words. They prick into his ears and stun his desire, + which lies within him, hard and dead, like frozen fire. And the little noise + never stops. + + Drip--hiss--the rain drops. + + + He tears down the arras from before an inner chamber's bolted door. + + + II + + The state bed shivers in the watery dawn. Drip--hiss--fall the raindrops. + For the storm never stops. + + On the velvet coverlet lie two bodies, stripped and fair in the cold, + grey air. Drip--hiss--fall the blood-drops, for the bleeding never stops. + The bodies lie quietly. At each side of the bed, on the floor, is a head. + A man's on this side, a woman's on that, and the red blood oozes along + the rush mat. + + A wisp of paper is twisted carefully into the strands of the dead man's hair. + It says, "My Lord: Your wife's paramour has paid with his life + for the high favour." + + Through the lady's silver fillet is wound another paper. It reads, + "Most noble Lord: Your wife's misdeeds are as a double-stranded + necklace of beads. But I have engaged that, on your return, + she shall welcome you here. She will not spurn your love as before, + you have still the best part of her. Her blood was red, her body white, + they will both be here for your delight. The soul inside was a lump of dirt, + I have rid you of that with a spurt of my sword point. Good luck + to your pleasure. She will be quite complaisant, my friend, I wager." + The end was a splashed flourish of ink. + + Hark! In the passage is heard the clink of armour, the tread of a heavy man. + The door bursts open and standing there, his thin hair wavering + in the glare of steely daylight, is my Lord of Clair. + + + Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip--hiss--drip--hiss-- + fall the raindrops. Overhead hammers and chinks the rain which never stops. + + The velvet coverlet is sodden and wet, yet the roof beams are tight. + Overhead, the coronet gleams with its blackened gold, winking and blinking. + Among the rushes three corpses are growing cold. + + + III + + In the castle church you may see them stand, + Two sumptuous tombs on either hand + Of the choir, my Lord's and my Lady's, grand + In sculptured filigrees. And where the transepts of the church expand, + A crusader, come from the Holy Land, + Lies with crossed legs and embroidered band. + The page's name became a brand + For shame. He was buried in crawling sand, + After having been burnt by royal command. + + + + +The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde + + + + The Bell in the convent tower swung. + High overhead the great sun hung, + A navel for the curving sky. + The air was a blue clarity. + Swallows flew, + And a cock crew. + + The iron clanging sank through the light air, + Rustled over with blowing branches. A flare + Of spotted green, and a snake had gone + Into the bed where the snowdrops shone + In green new-started, + Their white bells parted. + + Two by two, in a long brown line, + The nuns were walking to breathe the fine + Bright April air. They must go in soon + And work at their tasks all the afternoon. + But this time is theirs! + They walk in pairs. + + First comes the Abbess, preoccupied + And slow, as a woman often tried, + With her temper in bond. Then the oldest nun. + Then younger and younger, until the last one + Has a laugh on her lips, + And fairly skips. + + They wind about the gravel walks + And all the long line buzzes and talks. + They step in time to the ringing bell, + With scarcely a shadow. The sun is well + In the core of a sky + Domed silverly. + + Sister Marguerite said: "The pears will soon bud." + Sister Angelique said she must get her spud + And free the earth round the jasmine roots. + Sister Veronique said: "Oh, look at those shoots! + There's a crocus up, + With a purple cup." + + But Sister Clotilde said nothing at all, + She looked up and down the old grey wall + To see if a lizard were basking there. + She looked across the garden to where + A sycamore + Flanked the garden door. + + She was restless, although her little feet danced, + And quite unsatisfied, for it chanced + Her morning's work had hung in her mind + And would not take form. She could not find + The beautifulness + For the Virgin's dress. + + Should it be of pink, or damasked blue? + Or perhaps lilac with gold shotted through? + Should it be banded with yellow and white + Roses, or sparked like a frosty night? + Or a crimson sheen + Over some sort of green? + + But Clotilde's eyes saw nothing new + In all the garden, no single hue + So lovely or so marvellous + That its use would not seem impious. + So on she walked, + And the others talked. + + Sister Elisabeth edged away + From what her companion had to say, + For Sister Marthe saw the world in little, + She weighed every grain and recorded each tittle. + She did plain stitching + And worked in the kitchen. + + "Sister Radegonde knows the apples won't last, + I told her so this Friday past. + I must speak to her before Compline." + Her words were like dust motes in slanting sunshine. + The other nun sighed, + With her pleasure quite dried. + + Suddenly Sister Berthe cried out: + "The snowdrops are blooming!" They turned about. + The little white cups bent over the ground, + And in among the light stems wound + A crested snake, + With his eyes awake. + + His body was green with a metal brightness + Like an emerald set in a kind of whiteness, + And all down his curling length were disks, + Evil vermilion asterisks, + They paled and flooded + As wounds fresh-blooded. + + His crest was amber glittered with blue, + And opaque so the sun came shining through. + It seemed a crown with fiery points. + When he quivered all down his scaly joints, + From every slot + The sparkles shot. + + The nuns huddled tightly together, fear + Catching their senses. But Clotilde must peer + More closely at the beautiful snake, + She seemed entranced and eased. Could she make + Colours so rare, + The dress were there. + + The Abbess shook off her lethargy. + "Sisters, we will walk on," said she. + Sidling away from the snowdrop bed, + The line curved forwards, the Abbess ahead. + Only Clotilde + Was the last to yield. + + When the recreation hour was done + Each went in to her task. Alone + In the library, with its great north light, + Clotilde wrought at an exquisite + Wreath of flowers + For her Book of Hours. + + She twined the little crocus blooms + With snowdrops and daffodils, the glooms + Of laurel leaves were interwoven + With Stars-of-Bethlehem, and cloven + Fritillaries, + Whose colour varies. + + They framed the picture she had made, + Half-delighted and half-afraid. + In a courtyard with a lozenged floor + The Virgin watched, and through the arched door + The angel came + Like a springing flame. + + His wings were dipped in violet fire, + His limbs were strung to holy desire. + He lowered his head and passed under the arch, + And the air seemed beating a solemn march. + The Virgin waited + With eyes dilated. + + Her face was quiet and innocent, + And beautiful with her strange assent. + A silver thread about her head + Her halo was poised. But in the stead + Of her gown, there remained + The vellum, unstained. + + Clotilde painted the flowers patiently, + Lingering over each tint and dye. + She could spend great pains, now she had seen + That curious, unimagined green. + A colour so strange + It had seemed to change. + + She thought it had altered while she gazed. + At first it had been simple green; then glazed + All over with twisting flames, each spot + A molten colour, trembling and hot, + And every eye + Seemed to liquefy. + + She had made a plan, and her spirits danced. + After all, she had only glanced + At that wonderful snake, and she must know + Just what hues made the creature throw + Those splashes and sprays + Of prismed rays. + + When evening prayers were sung and said, + The nuns lit their tapers and went to bed. + And soon in the convent there was no light, + For the moon did not rise until late that night, + Only the shine + Of the lamp at the shrine. + + Clotilde lay still in her trembling sheets. + Her heart shook her body with its beats. + She could not see till the moon should rise, + So she whispered prayers and kept her eyes + On the window-square + Till light should be there. + + The faintest shadow of a branch + Fell on the floor. Clotilde, grown staunch + With solemn purpose, softly rose + And fluttered down between the rows + Of sleeping nuns. + She almost runs. + + She must go out through the little side door + Lest the nuns who were always praying before + The Virgin's altar should hear her pass. + She pushed the bolts, and over the grass + The red moon's brim + Mounted its rim. + + Her shadow crept up the convent wall + As she swiftly left it, over all + The garden lay the level glow + Of a moon coming up, very big and slow. + The gravel glistened. + She stopped and listened. + + It was still, and the moonlight was getting clearer. + She laughed a little, but she felt queerer + Than ever before. The snowdrop bed + Was reached and she bent down her head. + On the striped ground + The snake was wound. + + For a moment Clotilde paused in alarm, + Then she rolled up her sleeve and stretched out her arm. + She thought she heard steps, she must be quick. + She darted her hand out, and seized the thick + Wriggling slime, + Only just in time. + + The old gardener came muttering down the path, + And his shadow fell like a broad, black swath, + And covered Clotilde and the angry snake. + He bit her, but what difference did that make! + The Virgin should dress + In his loveliness. + + The gardener was covering his new-set plants + For the night was chilly, and nothing daunts + Your lover of growing things. He spied + Something to do and turned aside, + And the moonlight streamed + On Clotilde, and gleamed. + + His business finished the gardener rose. + He shook and swore, for the moonlight shows + A girl with a fire-tongued serpent, she + Grasping him, laughing, while quietly + Her eyes are weeping. + Is he sleeping? + + He thinks it is some holy vision, + Brushes that aside and with decision + Jumps--and hits the snake with his stick, + Crushes his spine, and then with quick, + Urgent command + Takes her hand. + + The gardener sucks the poison and spits, + Cursing and praying as befits + A poor old man half out of his wits. + "Whatever possessed you, Sister, it's + Hatched of a devil + And very evil. + + It's one of them horrid basilisks + You read about. They say a man risks + His life to touch it, but I guess I've sucked it + Out by now. Lucky I chucked it + Away from you. + I guess you'll do." + + "Oh, no, Francois, this beautiful beast + Was sent to me, to me the least + Worthy in all our convent, so I + Could finish my picture of the Most High + And Holy Queen, + In her dress of green. + + He is dead now, but his colours won't fade + At once, and by noon I shall have made + The Virgin's robe. Oh, Francois, see + How kindly the moon shines down on me! + I can't die yet, + For the task was set." + + "You won't die now, for I've sucked it away," + Grumbled old Francois, "so have your play. + If the Virgin is set on snake's colours so strong,--" + "Francois, don't say things like that, it is wrong." + So Clotilde vented + Her creed. He repented. + + "He can't do no more harm, Sister," said he. + "Paint as much as you like." And gingerly + He picked up the snake with his stick. Clotilde + Thanked him, and begged that he would shield + Her secret, though itching + To talk in the kitchen. + + The gardener promised, not very pleased, + And Clotilde, with the strain of adventure eased, + Walked quickly home, while the half-high moon + Made her beautiful snake-skin sparkle, and soon + In her bed she lay + And waited for day. + + At dawn's first saffron-spired warning + Clotilde was up. And all that morning, + Except when she went to the chapel to pray, + She painted, and when the April day + Was hot with sun, + Clotilde had done. + + Done! She drooped, though her heart beat loud + At the beauty before her, and her spirit bowed + To the Virgin her finely-touched thought had made. + A lady, in excellence arrayed, + And wonder-souled. + Christ's Blessed Mould! + + From long fasting Clotilde felt weary and faint, + But her eyes were starred like those of a saint + Enmeshed in Heaven's beatitude. + A sudden clamour hurled its rude + Force to break + Her vision awake. + + The door nearly leapt from its hinges, pushed + By the multitude of nuns. They hushed + When they saw Clotilde, in perfect quiet, + Smiling, a little perplexed at the riot. + And all the hive + Buzzed "She's alive!" + + Old Francois had told. He had found the strain + Of silence too great, and preferred the pain + Of a conscience outraged. The news had spread, + And all were convinced Clotilde must be dead. + For Francois, to spite them, + Had not seen fit to right them. + + The Abbess, unwontedly trembling and mild, + Put her arms round Clotilde and wept, "My child, + Has the Holy Mother showed you this grace, + To spare you while you imaged her face? + How could we have guessed + Our convent so blessed! + + A miracle! But Oh! My Lamb! + To have you die! And I, who am + A hollow, living shell, the grave + Is empty of me. Holy Mary, I crave + To be taken, Dear Mother, + Instead of this other." + + She dropped on her knees and silently prayed, + With anguished hands and tears delayed + To a painful slowness. The minutes drew + To fractions. Then the west wind blew + The sound of a bell, + On a gusty swell. + + It came skipping over the slates of the roof, + And the bright bell-notes seemed a reproof + To grief, in the eye of so fair a day. + The Abbess, comforted, ceased to pray. + And the sun lit the flowers + In Clotilde's Book of Hours. + + It glistened the green of the Virgin's dress + And made the red spots, in a flushed excess, + Pulse and start; and the violet wings + Of the angel were colour which shines and sings. + The book seemed a choir + Of rainbow fire. + + The Abbess crossed herself, and each nun + Did the same, then one by one, + They filed to the chapel, that incensed prayers + Might plead for the life of this sister of theirs. + Clotilde, the Inspired! + + She only felt tired. + + * * * * * + + The old chronicles say she did not die + Until heavy with years. And that is why + There hangs in the convent church a basket + Of osiered silver, a holy casket, + And treasured therein + A dried snake-skin. + + + + +The Exeter Road + + + + Panels of claret and blue which shine + Under the moon like lees of wine. + A coronet done in a golden scroll, + And wheels which blunder and creak as they roll + Through the muddy ruts of a moorland track. + They daren't look back! + + They are whipping and cursing the horses. Lord! + What brutes men are when they think they're scored. + Behind, my bay gelding gallops with me, + In a steaming sweat, it is fine to see + That coach, all claret, and gold, and blue, + Hop about and slue. + + They are scared half out of their wits, poor souls. + For my lord has a casket full of rolls + Of minted sovereigns, and silver bars. + I laugh to think how he'll show his scars + In London to-morrow. He whines with rage + In his varnished cage. + + My lady has shoved her rings over her toes. + 'Tis an ancient trick every night-rider knows. + But I shall relieve her of them yet, + When I see she limps in the minuet + I must beg to celebrate this night, + And the green moonlight. + + There's nothing to hurry about, the plain + Is hours long, and the mud's a strain. + My gelding's uncommonly strong in the loins, + In half an hour I'll bag the coins. + 'Tis a clear, sweet night on the turn of Spring. + The chase is the thing! + + How the coach flashes and wobbles, the moon + Dripping down so quietly on it. A tune + Is beating out of the curses and screams, + And the cracking all through the painted seams. + Steady, old horse, we'll keep it in sight. + 'Tis a rare fine night! + + There's a clump of trees on the dip of the down, + And the sky shimmers where it hangs over the town. + It seems a shame to break the air + In two with this pistol, but I've my share + Of drudgery like other men. + His hat? Amen! + + Hold up, you beast, now what the devil! + Confound this moor for a pockholed, evil, + Rotten marsh. My right leg's snapped. + 'Tis a mercy he's rolled, but I'm nicely capped. + A broken-legged man and a broken-legged horse! + They'll get me, of course. + + The cursed coach will reach the town + And they'll all come out, every loafer grown + A lion to handcuff a man that's down. + What's that? Oh, the coachman's bulleted hat! + I'll give it a head to fit it pat. + Thank you! No cravat. + + + _They handcuffed the body just for style, + And they hung him in chains for the volatile + Wind to scour him flesh from bones. + Way out on the moor you can hear the groans + His gibbet makes when it blows a gale. + 'Tis a common tale._ + + + + +The Shadow + + + + Paul Jannes was working very late, + For this watch must be done by eight + To-morrow or the Cardinal + Would certainly be vexed. Of all + His customers the old prelate + Was the most important, for his state + Descended to his watches and rings, + And he gave his mistresses many things + To make them forget his age and smile + When he paid visits, and they could while + The time away with a diamond locket + Exceedingly well. So they picked his pocket, + And he paid in jewels for his slobbering kisses. + This watch was made to buy him blisses + From an Austrian countess on her way + Home, and she meant to start next day. + + + Paul worked by the pointed, tulip-flame + Of a tallow candle, and became + So absorbed, that his old clock made him wince + Striking the hour a moment since. + Its echo, only half apprehended, + Lingered about the room. He ended + Screwing the little rubies in, + Setting the wheels to lock and spin, + Curling the infinitesimal springs, + Fixing the filigree hands. Chippings + Of precious stones lay strewn about. + The table before him was a rout + Of splashes and sparks of coloured light. + There was yellow gold in sheets, and quite + A heap of emeralds, and steel. + Here was a gem, there was a wheel. + And glasses lay like limpid lakes + Shining and still, and there were flakes + Of silver, and shavings of pearl, + And little wires all awhirl + With the light of the candle. He took the watch + And wound its hands about to match + The time, then glanced up to take the hour + From the hanging clock. + Good, Merciful Power! + How came that shadow on the wall, + No woman was in the room! His tall + Chiffonier stood gaunt behind + His chair. His old cloak, rabbit-lined, + Hung from a peg. The door was closed. + Just for a moment he must have dozed. + He looked again, and saw it plain. + The silhouette made a blue-black stain + On the opposite wall, and it never wavered + Even when the candle quavered + Under his panting breath. What made + That beautiful, dreadful thing, that shade + Of something so lovely, so exquisite, + Cast from a substance which the sight + Had not been tutored to perceive? + Paul brushed his eyes across his sleeve. + + Clear-cut, the Shadow on the wall + Gleamed black, and never moved at all. + + + Paul's watches were like amulets, + Wrought into patterns and rosettes; + The cases were all set with stones, + And wreathing lines, and shining zones. + He knew the beauty in a curve, + And the Shadow tortured every nerve + With its perfect rhythm of outline + Cutting the whitewashed wall. So fine + Was the neck he knew he could have spanned + It about with the fingers of one hand. + The chin rose to a mouth he guessed, + But could not see, the lips were pressed + Loosely together, the edges close, + And the proud and delicate line of the nose + Melted into a brow, and there + Broke into undulant waves of hair. + The lady was edged with the stamp of race. + A singular vision in such a place. + + + He moved the candle to the tall + Chiffonier; the Shadow stayed on the wall. + He threw his cloak upon a chair, + And still the lady's face was there. + From every corner of the room + He saw, in the patch of light, the gloom + That was the lady. Her violet bloom + Was almost brighter than that which came + From his candle's tulip-flame. + He set the filigree hands; he laid + The watch in the case which he had made; + He put on his rabbit cloak, and snuffed + His candle out. The room seemed stuffed + With darkness. Softly he crossed the floor, + And let himself out through the door. + + + The sun was flashing from every pin + And wheel, when Paul let himself in. + The whitewashed walls were hot with light. + The room was the core of a chrysolite, + Burning and shimmering with fiery might. + The sun was so bright that no shadow could fall + From the furniture upon the wall. + Paul sighed as he looked at the empty space + Where a glare usurped the lady's place. + He settled himself to his work, but his mind + Wandered, and he would wake to find + His hand suspended, his eyes grown dim, + And nothing advanced beyond the rim + Of his dreaming. The Cardinal sent to pay + For his watch, which had purchased so fine a day. + But Paul could hardly touch the gold, + It seemed the price of his Shadow, sold. + With the first twilight he struck a match + And watched the little blue stars hatch + Into an egg of perfect flame. + He lit his candle, and almost in shame + At his eagerness, lifted his eyes. + The Shadow was there, and its precise + Outline etched the cold, white wall. + The young man swore, "By God! You, Paul, + There's something the matter with your brain. + Go home now and sleep off the strain." + + + The next day was a storm, the rain + Whispered and scratched at the window-pane. + A grey and shadowless morning filled + The little shop. The watches, chilled, + Were dead and sparkless as burnt-out coals. + The gems lay on the table like shoals + Of stranded shells, their colours faded, + Mere heaps of stone, dull and degraded. + Paul's head was heavy, his hands obeyed + No orders, for his fancy strayed. + His work became a simple round + Of watches repaired and watches wound. + The slanting ribbons of the rain + Broke themselves on the window-pane, + But Paul saw the silver lines in vain. + Only when the candle was lit + And on the wall just opposite + He watched again the coming of _it_, + Could he trace a line for the joy of his soul + And over his hands regain control. + + + Paul lingered late in his shop that night + And the designs which his delight + Sketched on paper seemed to be + A tribute offered wistfully + To the beautiful shadow of her who came + And hovered over his candle flame. + In the morning he selected all + His perfect jacinths. One large opal + Hung like a milky, rainbow moon + In the centre, and blown in loose festoon + The red stones quivered on silver threads + To the outer edge, where a single, fine + Band of mother-of-pearl the line + Completed. On the other side, + The creamy porcelain of the face + Bore diamond hours, and no lace + Of cotton or silk could ever be + Tossed into being more airily + Than the filmy golden hands; the time + Seemed to tick away in rhyme. + When, at dusk, the Shadow grew + Upon the wall, Paul's work was through. + Holding the watch, he spoke to her: + "Lady, Beautiful Shadow, stir + Into one brief sign of being. + Turn your eyes this way, and seeing + This watch, made from those sweet curves + Where your hair from your forehead swerves, + Accept the gift which I have wrought + With your fairness in my thought. + Grant me this, and I shall be + Honoured overwhelmingly." + + The Shadow rested black and still, + And the wind sighed over the window-sill. + + + Paul put the despised watch away + And laid out before him his array + Of stones and metals, and when the morning + Struck the stones to their best adorning, + He chose the brightest, and this new watch + Was so light and thin it seemed to catch + The sunlight's nothingness, and its gleam. + Topazes ran in a foamy stream + Over the cover, the hands were studded + With garnets, and seemed red roses, budded. + The face was of crystal, and engraved + Upon it the figures flashed and waved + With zircons, and beryls, and amethysts. + It took a week to make, and his trysts + At night with the Shadow were his alone. + Paul swore not to speak till his task was done. + The night that the jewel was worthy to give. + Paul watched the long hours of daylight live + To the faintest streak; then lit his light, + And sharp against the wall's pure white + The outline of the Shadow started + Into form. His burning-hearted + Words so long imprisoned swelled + To tumbling speech. Like one compelled, + He told the lady all his love, + And holding out the watch above + His head, he knelt, imploring some + Littlest sign. + The Shadow was dumb. + + + Weeks passed, Paul worked in fevered haste, + And everything he made he placed + Before his lady. The Shadow kept + Its perfect passiveness. Paul wept. + He wooed her with the work of his hands, + He waited for those dear commands + She never gave. No word, no motion, + Eased the ache of his devotion. + His days passed in a strain of toil, + His nights burnt up in a seething coil. + Seasons shot by, uncognisant + He worked. The Shadow came to haunt + Even his days. Sometimes quite plain + He saw on the wall the blackberry stain + Of his lady's picture. No sun was bright + Enough to dazzle that from his sight. + + + There were moments when he groaned to see + His life spilled out so uselessly, + Begging for boons the Shade refused, + His finest workmanship abused, + The iridescent bubbles he blew + Into lovely existence, poor and few + In the shadowed eyes. Then he would curse + Himself and her! The Universe! + And more, the beauty he could not make, + And give her, for her comfort's sake! + He would beat his weary, empty hands + Upon the table, would hold up strands + Of silver and gold, and ask her why + She scorned the best which he could buy. + He would pray as to some high-niched saint, + That she would cure him of the taint + Of failure. He would clutch the wall + With his bleeding fingers, if she should fall + He could catch, and hold her, and make her live! + With sobs he would ask her to forgive + All he had done. And broken, spent, + He would call himself impertinent; + Presumptuous; a tradesman; a nothing; driven + To madness by the sight of Heaven. + At other times he would take the things + He had made, and winding them on strings, + Hang garlands before her, and burn perfumes, + Chanting strangely, while the fumes + Wreathed and blotted the shadow face, + As with a cloudy, nacreous lace. + There were days when he wooed as a lover, sighed + In tenderness, spoke to his bride, + Urged her to patience, said his skill + Should break the spell. A man's sworn will + Could compass life, even that, he knew. + By Christ's Blood! He would prove it true! + + The edge of the Shadow never blurred. + The lips of the Shadow never stirred. + + + He would climb on chairs to reach her lips, + And pat her hair with his finger-tips. + But instead of young, warm flesh returning + His warmth, the wall was cold and burning + Like stinging ice, and his passion, chilled, + Lay in his heart like some dead thing killed + At the moment of birth. Then, deadly sick, + He would lie in a swoon for hours, while thick + Phantasmagoria crowded his brain, + And his body shrieked in the clutch of pain. + The crisis passed, he would wake and smile + With a vacant joy, half-imbecile + And quite confused, not being certain + Why he was suffering; a curtain + Fallen over the tortured mind beguiled + His sorrow. Like a little child + He would play with his watches and gems, with glee + Calling the Shadow to look and see + How the spots on the ceiling danced prettily + When he flashed his stones. "Mother, the green + Has slid so cunningly in between + The blue and the yellow. Oh, please look down!" + Then, with a pitiful, puzzled frown, + He would get up slowly from his play + And walk round the room, feeling his way + From table to chair, from chair to door, + Stepping over the cracks in the floor, + Till reaching the table again, her face + Would bring recollection, and no solace + Could balm his hurt till unconsciousness + Stifled him and his great distress. + + + One morning he threw the street door wide + On coming in, and his vigorous stride + Made the tools on his table rattle and jump. + In his hands he carried a new-burst clump + Of laurel blossoms, whose smooth-barked stalks + Were pliant with sap. As a husband talks + To the wife he left an hour ago, + Paul spoke to the Shadow. "Dear, you know + To-day the calendar calls it Spring, + And I woke this morning gathering + Asphodels, in my dreams, for you. + So I rushed out to see what flowers blew + Their pink-and-purple-scented souls + Across the town-wind's dusty scrolls, + And made the approach to the Market Square + A garden with smells and sunny air. + I feel so well and happy to-day, + I think I shall take a Holiday. + And to-night we will have a little treat. + I am going to bring you something to eat!" + He looked at the Shadow anxiously. + It was quite grave and silent. He + Shut the outer door and came + And leant against the window-frame. + "Dearest," he said, "we live apart + Although I bear you in my heart. + We look out each from a different world. + At any moment we may be hurled + Asunder. They follow their orbits, we + Obey their laws entirely. + Now you must come, or I go there, + Unless we are willing to live the flare + Of a lighted instant and have it gone." + + A bee in the laurels began to drone. + A loosened petal fluttered prone. + + "Man grows by eating, if you eat + You will be filled with our life, sweet + Will be our planet in your mouth. + If not, I must parch in death's wide drouth + Until I gain to where you are, + And give you myself in whatever star + May happen. O You Beloved of Me! + Is it not ordered cleverly?" + + The Shadow, bloomed like a plum, and clear, + Hung in the sunlight. It did not hear. + + + Paul slipped away as the dusk began + To dim the little shop. He ran + To the nearest inn, and chose with care + As much as his thin purse could bear. + As rapt-souled monks watch over the baking + Of the sacred wafer, and through the making + Of the holy wine whisper secret prayers + That God will bless this labour of theirs; + So Paul, in a sober ecstasy, + Purchased the best which he could buy. + Returning, he brushed his tools aside, + And laid across the table a wide + Napkin. He put a glass and plate + On either side, in duplicate. + Over the lady's, excellent + With loveliness, the laurels bent. + In the centre the white-flaked pastry stood, + And beside it the wine flask. Red as blood + Was the wine which should bring the lustihood + Of human life to his lady's veins. + When all was ready, all which pertains + To a simple meal was there, with eyes + Lit by the joy of his great emprise, + He reverently bade her come, + And forsake for him her distant home. + He put meat on her plate and filled her glass, + And waited what should come to pass. + + The Shadow lay quietly on the wall. + From the street outside came a watchman's call + "A cloudy night. Rain beginning to fall." + + And still he waited. The clock's slow tick + Knocked on the silence. Paul turned sick. + + He filled his own glass full of wine; + From his pocket he took a paper. The twine + Was knotted, and he searched a knife + From his jumbled tools. The cord of life + Snapped as he cut the little string. + He knew that he must do the thing + He feared. He shook powder into the wine, + And holding it up so the candle's shine + Sparked a ruby through its heart, + He drank it. "Dear, never apart + Again! You have said it was mine to do. + It is done, and I am come to you!" + + + Paul Jannes let the empty wine-glass fall, + And held out his arms. The insentient wall + Stared down at him with its cold, white glare + Unstained! The Shadow was not there! + Paul clutched and tore at his tightening throat. + He felt the veins in his body bloat, + And the hot blood run like fire and stones + Along the sides of his cracking bones. + But he laughed as he staggered towards the door, + And he laughed aloud as he sank on the floor. + + + + The Coroner took the body away, + And the watches were sold that Saturday. + The Auctioneer said one could seldom buy + Such watches, and the prices were high. + + + + +The Forsaken + + + + Holy Mother of God, Merciful Mary. Hear me! I am very weary. I have come + from a village miles away, all day I have been coming, and I ache for such + far roaming. I cannot walk as light as I used, and my thoughts grow confused. + I am heavier than I was. Mary Mother, you know the cause! + + + Beautiful Holy Lady, take my shame away from me! Let this fear + be only seeming, let it be that I am dreaming. For months I have hoped + it was so, now I am afraid I know. Lady, why should this be shame, + just because I haven't got his name. He loved me, yes, Lady, he did, + and he couldn't keep it hid. We meant to marry. Why did he die? + + + That day when they told me he had gone down in the avalanche, and could not + be found until the snow melted in Spring, I did nothing. I could not cry. + Why should he die? Why should he die and his child live? His little child + alive in me, for my comfort. No, Good God, for my misery! I cannot face + the shame, to be a mother, and not married, and the poor child to be reviled + for having no father. Merciful Mother, Holy Virgin, take away this sin I did. + Let the baby not be. Only take the stigma off of me! + + + I have told no one but you, Holy Mary. My mother would call me "whore", + and spit upon me; the priest would have me repent, and have + the rest of my life spent in a convent. I am no whore, no bad woman, + he loved me, and we were to be married. I carried him always in my heart, + what did it matter if I gave him the least part of me too? You were a virgin, + Holy Mother, but you had a son, you know there are times when a woman + must give all. There is some call to give and hold back nothing. + I swear I obeyed God then, and this child who lives in me is the sign. + What am I saying? He is dead, my beautiful, strong man! I shall never + feel him caress me again. This is the only baby I shall have. + Oh, Holy Virgin, protect my baby! My little, helpless baby! + + + He will look like his father, and he will be as fast a runner and as good + a shot. Not that he shall be no scholar neither. He shall go to school + in winter, and learn to read and write, and my father will teach him to carve, + so that he can make the little horses, and cows, and chamois, + out of white wood. Oh, No! No! No! How can I think such things, + I am not good. My father will have nothing to do with my boy, + I shall be an outcast thing. Oh, Mother of our Lord God, be merciful, + take away my shame! Let my body be as it was before he came. + No little baby for me to keep underneath my heart for those long months. + To live for and to get comfort from. I cannot go home and tell my mother. + She is so hard and righteous. She never loved my father, and we were born + for duty, not for love. I cannot face it. Holy Mother, take my baby away! + Take away my little baby! I don't want it, I can't bear it! + + + And I shall have nothing, nothing! Just be known as a good girl. + Have other men want to marry me, whom I could not touch, after having known + my man. Known the length and breadth of his beautiful white body, + and the depth of his love, on the high Summer Alp, with the moon above, + and the pine-needles all shiny in the light of it. He is gone, my man, + I shall never hear him or feel him again, but I could not touch another. + I would rather lie under the snow with my own man in my arms! + + + So I shall live on and on. Just a good woman. With nothing to warm my heart + where he lay, and where he left his baby for me to care for. I shall not be + quite human, I think. Merely a stone-dead creature. They will respect me. + What do I care for respect! You didn't care for people's tongues + when you were carrying our Lord Jesus. God had my man give me my baby, + when He knew that He was going to take him away. His lips will comfort me, + his hands will soothe me. All day I will work at my lace-making, + and all night I will keep him warm by my side and pray the blessed Angels + to cover him with their wings. Dear Mother, what is it that sings? + I hear voices singing, and lovely silver trumpets through it all. They seem + just on the other side of the wall. Let me keep my baby, Holy Mother. + He is only a poor lace-maker's baby, with a stain upon him, + but give me strength to bring him up to be a man. + + + + +Late September + + + + Tang of fruitage in the air; + Red boughs bursting everywhere; + Shimmering of seeded grass; + Hooded gentians all a'mass. + + Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind + Tearing off the husky rind, + Blowing feathered seeds to fall + By the sun-baked, sheltering wall. + + Beech trees in a golden haze; + Hardy sumachs all ablaze, + Glowing through the silver birches. + How that pine tree shouts and lurches! + + From the sunny door-jamb high, + Swings the shell of a butterfly. + Scrape of insect violins + Through the stubble shrilly dins. + + Every blade's a minaret + Where a small muezzin's set, + Loudly calling us to pray + At the miracle of day. + + Then the purple-lidded night + Westering comes, her footsteps light + Guided by the radiant boon + Of a sickle-shaped new moon. + + + + +The Pike + + + + In the brown water, + Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine, + Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds, + A pike dozed. + Lost among the shadows of stems + He lay unnoticed. + Suddenly he flicked his tail, + And a green-and-copper brightness + Ran under the water. + + Out from under the reeds + Came the olive-green light, + And orange flashed up + Through the sun-thickened water. + So the fish passed across the pool, + Green and copper, + A darkness and a gleam, + And the blurred reflections of the willows on the opposite bank + Received it. + + + + +The Blue Scarf + + + + Pale, with the blue of high zeniths, shimmered over with silver, brocaded + In smooth, running patterns, a soft stuff, with dark knotted fringes, + it lies there, + Warm from a woman's soft shoulders, and my fingers close on it, caressing. + Where is she, the woman who wore it? The scent of her lingers and drugs me! + A languor, fire-shotted, runs through me, and I crush the scarf down + on my face, + And gulp in the warmth and the blueness, and my eyes swim + in cool-tinted heavens. + Around me are columns of marble, and a diapered, sun-flickered pavement. + Rose-leaves blow and patter against it. Below the stone steps a lute tinkles. + A jar of green jade throws its shadow half over the floor. A big-bellied + Frog hops through the sunlight and plops in the gold-bubbled water of a basin, + Sunk in the black and white marble. The west wind has lifted a scarf + On the seat close beside me, the blue of it is a violent outrage of colour. + She draws it more closely about her, and it ripples beneath + her slight stirring. + Her kisses are sharp buds of fire; and I burn back against her, a jewel + Hard and white; a stalked, flaming flower; till I break to + a handful of cinders, + And open my eyes to the scarf, shining blue in the afternoon sunshine. + + How loud clocks can tick when a room is empty, and one is alone! + + + + +White and Green + + + + Hey! My daffodil-crowned, + Slim and without sandals! + As the sudden spurt of flame upon darkness + So my eyeballs are startled with you, + Supple-limbed youth among the fruit-trees, + Light runner through tasselled orchards. + You are an almond flower unsheathed + Leaping and flickering between the budded branches. + + + + +Aubade + + + + As I would free the white almond from the green husk + So would I strip your trappings off, + Beloved. + And fingering the smooth and polished kernel + I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond counting. + + + + +Music + + + + The neighbour sits in his window and plays the flute. + From my bed I can hear him, + And the round notes flutter and tap about the room, + And hit against each other, + Blurring to unexpected chords. + It is very beautiful, + With the little flute-notes all about me, + In the darkness. + + In the daytime, + The neighbour eats bread and onions with one hand + And copies music with the other. + He is fat and has a bald head, + So I do not look at him, + But run quickly past his window. + There is always the sky to look at, + Or the water in the well! + + But when night comes and he plays his flute, + I think of him as a young man, + With gold seals hanging from his watch, + And a blue coat with silver buttons. + As I lie in my bed + The flute-notes push against my ears and lips, + And I go to sleep, dreaming. + + + + +A Lady + + + + You are beautiful and faded + Like an old opera tune + Played upon a harpsichord; + Or like the sun-flooded silks + Of an eighteenth-century boudoir. + In your eyes + Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes, + And the perfume of your soul + Is vague and suffusing, + With the pungence of sealed spice-jars. + Your half-tones delight me, + And I grow mad with gazing + At your blent colours. + + My vigour is a new-minted penny, + Which I cast at your feet. + Gather it up from the dust, + That its sparkle may amuse you. + + + + +In a Garden + + + + Gushing from the mouths of stone men + To spread at ease under the sky + In granite-lipped basins, + Where iris dabble their feet + And rustle to a passing wind, + The water fills the garden with its rushing, + In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns. + + Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone, + Where trickle and plash the fountains, + Marble fountains, yellowed with much water. + + Splashing down moss-tarnished steps + It falls, the water; + And the air is throbbing with it. + With its gurgling and running. + With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur. + + And I wished for night and you. + I wanted to see you in the swimming-pool, + White and shining in the silver-flecked water. + While the moon rode over the garden, + High in the arch of night, + And the scent of the lilacs was heavy with stillness. + + Night, and the water, and you in your whiteness, bathing! + + + + +A Tulip Garden + + + + Guarded within the old red wall's embrace, + Marshalled like soldiers in gay company, + The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry + Wheels out into the sunlight. What bold grace + Sets off their tunics, white with crimson lace! + Here are platoons of gold-frocked cavalry, + With scarlet sabres tossing in the eye + Of purple batteries, every gun in place. + Forward they come, with flaunting colours spread, + With torches burning, stepping out in time + To some quick, unheard march. Our ears are dead, + We cannot catch the tune. In pantomime + Parades that army. With our utmost powers + We hear the wind stream through a bed of flowers. + + +[End of original text.] + + + + +Notes: + + + After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok: + Originally: After Hearing a Waltz by Bartók: + + A Blockhead: + "There are non, ever. As a monk who prays" + changed to: + "There are none, ever. As a monk who prays" + + A Tale of Starvation: + "And he neither eat nor drank." + changed to: + "And he neither ate nor drank." + + The Great Adventure of Max Breuck: + Stanza headings were originally Roman Numerals. + + The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde: + The following names are presented in this etext sans accents: + Marguérite, Angélique, Véronique, Franc,ois. + +The following unconnected lines in the etext are presented sans accents: + + The factory of Sèvres had lent + Strange wingéd dragons writhe about + And rich perfuméd smells + A faëry moonshine washing pale the crowds + Our eyes will close to undisturbéd rest. + And terror-wingéd steps. His heart began + On the stripéd ground + + +Some books by Amy Lowell: + + + Poetry: + A Critical Fable + * A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912) + * Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) + * Men, Women and Ghosts (1916) + Can Grande's Castle (1918) + Pictures of the Floating World (1919) + Legends (1921) + What's O'Clock (1925) + East Wind + Ballads For Sale + + (In collaboration with Florence Ayscough) + Fir-Flower Tablets: Poems Translated from the Chinese (1921) + + + Prose: + John Keats + Six French Poets: Studies in Contemporary Literature (1915) + Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917) + +* Now available online from Project Gutenberg. + + + + +About the author: + +From the notes to "The Second Book of Modern Verse" (1919, 1920), +edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse. + + +Lowell, Amy. Born in Brookline, Mass., Feb. 9, 1874. Educated at +private schools. Author of "A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass", 1912; +"Sword Blades and Poppy Seed", 1914; "Men, Women and Ghosts", 1916; "Can +Grande's Castle", 1918; "Pictures of the Floating World", 1919. Editor +of the three successive collections of "Some Imagist Poets", 1915, '16, +and '17, containing the early work of the "Imagist School" of which Miss +Lowell became the leader. This movement,... originated in England, +the idea have been first conceived by a young poet named T. E. Hulme, +but developed and put forth by Ezra Pound in an article called "Don'ts +by an Imagist", which appeared in `Poetry; A Magazine of Verse'. ... +A small group of poets gathered about Mr. Pound, experimenting along the +technical lines suggested, and a cult of "Imagism" was formed, whose +first group-expression was in the little volume, "Des Imagistes", +published in New York in April, 1914. Miss Lowell did not come actively +into the movement until after that time, but once she had entered it, +she became its leader, and it was chiefly through her effort in America +that the movement attained so much prominence and so influenced the +trend of poetry for the years immediately succeeding. Miss Lowell many +times, in admirable articles, stated the principles upon which Imagism +is based, notably in the Preface to "Some Imagist Poets" and in the +Preface to the second series, in 1916. She also elaborated it much more +fully in her volume, "Tendencies in Modern American Poetry", 1917, in +the articles pertaining to the work of "H.D." and John Gould Fletcher. +In her own creative work, however, Miss Lowell did most to establish the +possibilities of the Imagistic idea and of its modes of presentation, +and opened up many interesting avenues of poetic form. Her volume, "Can +Grande's Castle", is devoted to work in the medium which she styled +"Polyphonic Prose" and contains some of her finest work, particularly +"The Bronze Horses". + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, by Amy Lowell + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1020 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1021-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1021-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..737b06d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1021-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3729 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1021 *** + +THE CONGO AND OTHER POEMS + +By Vachel Lindsay + +[Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Illinois Artist. 1879-1931.] + + +With an introduction by Harriet Monroe Editor of "Poetry" + +[Notes: The 'stage-directions' given in "The Congo" and those +poems which are meant to be read aloud, are traditionally printed to the +right side of the first line it refers to. This is possible, but +impracticable, to imitate in a simple ASCII text. Therefore these +'stage-directions' are given on the line BEFORE the first line they +refer to, and are furthermore indented 20 spaces and enclosed by #s to +keep it clear to the reader which parts are text and which parts +directions.] + +[This electronic text was transcribed from a reprint of the original +edition, which was first published in New York, in September, 1914. Due +to a great deal of irregularity between titles in the table of contents +and in the text of the original, there are some slight differences from +the original in these matters--with the more complete titles replacing +cropped ones. In one case they are different enough that both are +given, and "Twenty Poems in which...." was originally "Twenty Moon +Poems" in the table of contents--the odd thing about both these titles +is that there are actually twenty-TWO moon poems.] + + + + + +THE CONGO AND OTHER POEMS + + + + +Introduction. By Harriet Monroe + + + +When 'Poetry, A Magazine of Verse', was first published in Chicago in +the autumn of 1912, an Illinois poet, Vachel Lindsay, was, quite +appropriately, one of its first discoveries. It may be not quite without +significance that the issue of January, 1913, which led off with +'General William Booth Enters into Heaven', immediately followed the +number in which the great poet of Bengal, Rabindra Nath Tagore, was +first presented to the American public, and that these two antipodal +poets soon appeared in person among the earliest visitors to the editor. +For the coming together of East and West may prove to be the great event +of the approaching era, and if the poetry of the now famous Bengali +laureate garners the richest wisdom and highest spirituality of his +ancient race, so one may venture to believe that the young Illinois +troubadour brings from Lincoln's city an authentic strain of the lyric +message of this newer world. + +It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to mention Mr. Lindsay's loyalty to the +people of his place and hour, or the training in sympathy with their +aims and ideals which he has achieved through vagabondish wanderings in +the Middle West. And we may permit time to decide how far he expresses +their emotion. But it may be opportune to emphasize his plea for poetry +as a song art, an art appealing to the ear rather than the eye. The +first section of this volume is especially an effort to restore poetry +to its proper place--the audience-chamber, and take it out of the +library, the closet. In the library it has become, so far as the people +are concerned, almost a lost art, and perhaps it can be restored to the +people only through a renewal of its appeal to the ear. + +I am tempted to quote from Mr. Lindsay's explanatory note which +accompanied three of these poems when they were first printed in +'Poetry'. He said: + +"Mr. Yeats asked me recently in Chicago, 'What are we going to do to +restore the primitive singing of poetry?' I find what Mr. Yeats means +by 'the primitive singing of poetry' in Professor Edward Bliss Reed's +new volume on 'The English Lyric'. He says in his chapter on the +definition of the lyric: 'With the Greeks "song" was an all-embracing +term. It included the crooning of the nurse to the child... the +half-sung chant of the mower or sailor... the formal ode sung by the poet. +In all Greek lyrics, even in the choral odes, music was the handmaid of +verse.... The poet himself composed the accompaniment. Euripides was +censured because Iophon had assisted him in the musical setting of some +of his dramas.' Here is pictured a type of Greek work which survives in +American vaudeville, where every line may be two-thirds spoken and +one-third sung, the entire rendering, musical and elocutionary, depending +upon the improvising power and sure instinct of the performer. + +"I respectfully submit these poems as experiments in which I endeavor to +carry this vaudeville form back towards the old Greek precedent of the +half-chanted lyric. In this case the one-third of music must be added +by the instinct of the reader. He must be Iophon. And he can easily be +Iophon if he brings to bear upon the piece what might be called the +Higher Vaudeville imagination.... + +"Big general contrasts between the main sections should be the rule of +the first attempts at improvising. It is the hope of the writer that +after two or three readings each line will suggest its own separate +touch of melody to the reader who has become accustomed to the cadences. +Let him read what he likes read, and sing what he likes sung." + +It was during this same visit in Chicago, at 'Poetry's' banquet on the +evening of March first, 1914, that Mr. Yeats honored Mr. Lindsay by +addressing his after-dinner talk primarily to him as "a fellow +craftsman", and by saying of 'General Booth': + +"This poem is stripped bare of ornament; it has an earnest simplicity, a +strange beauty, and you know Bacon said, 'There is no excellent beauty +without strangeness.'" + +This recognition from the distinguished Irish poet tempts me to hint at +the cosmopolitan aspects of such racily local art as Mr. Lindsay's. The +subject is too large for a merely introductory word, but the reader may +be invited to reflect upon it. If Mr. Lindsay's poetry should cross the +ocean, it would not be the first time that our most indigenous art has +reacted upon the art of older nations. Besides Poe--who, though +indigenous in ways too subtle for brief analysis, yet passed all +frontiers in his swift, sad flight--the two American artists of widest +influence, Whitman and Whistler, have been intensely American in +temperament and in the special spiritual quality of their art. + +If Whistler was the first great artist to accept the modern message in +Oriental art, if Whitman was the first great modern poet to discard the +limitations of conventional form: if both were more free, more +individual, than their contemporaries, this was the expression of their +Americanism, which may perhaps be defined as a spiritual independence +and love of adventure inherited from the pioneers. Foreign artists are +usually the first to recognize this new tang; one detects the influence +of the great dead poet and dead painter in all modern art which looks +forward instead of back; and their countrymen, our own contemporary +poets and painters, often express indirectly, through French influences, +a reaction which they are reluctant to confess directly. + +A lighter phase of this foreign enthusiasm for the American tang is +confessed by Signor Marinetti, the Italian "futurist", when in his +article on 'Futurism and the Theatre', in 'The Mask', he urges the +revolutionary value of "American eccentrics", citing the fundamental +primitive quality in their vaudeville art. This may be another statement +of Mr. Lindsay's plea for a closer relation between the poet and his +audience, for a return to the healthier open-air conditions, and +immediate personal contacts, in the art of the Greeks and of primitive +nations. Such conditions and contacts may still be found, if the world +only knew it, in the wonderful song-dances of the Hopis and others of +our aboriginal tribes. They may be found, also, in a measure, in the +quick response between artist and audience in modern vaudeville. They +are destined to a wider and higher influence; in fact, the development +of that influence, the return to primitive sympathies between artist and +audience, which may make possible once more the assertion of primitive +creative power, is recognized as the immediate movement in modern art. +It is a movement strong enough to persist in spite of extravagances and +absurdities; strong enough, it may be hoped, to fulfil its purpose and +revitalize the world. + +It is because Mr. Lindsay's poetry seems to be definitely in that +movement that it is, I think, important. + +Harriet Monroe. + + + + + +Table of Contents + + + + Introduction. By Harriet Monroe + + + First Section + + Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted. + + The Congo + The Santa Fe Trail + The Firemen's Ball + The Master of the Dance + The Mysterious Cat + A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten + Yankee Doodle + The Black Hawk War of the Artists + The Jingo and the Minstrel + I Heard Immanuel Singing + + + Second Section + + Incense + + An Argument + A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign + In Memory of a Child + Galahad, Knight Who Perished + The Leaden-eyed + An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie + The Hearth Eternal + The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit + By the Spring, at Sunset + I Went down into the Desert + Love and Law + The Perfect Marriage + Darling Daughter of Babylon + The Amaranth + The Alchemist's Petition + Two Easter Stanzas + The Traveller-heart + The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son + + + Third Section + + A Miscellany called "the Christmas Tree" + + This Section is a Christmas Tree + The Sun Says his Prayers + Popcorn, Glass Balls, and Cranberries (As it were) + I. The Lion + II. An Explanation of the Grasshopper + III. The Dangerous Little Boy Fairies + IV. The Mouse that gnawed the Oak-tree Down + V. Parvenu + VI. The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly + VII. Crickets on a Strike + How a Little Girl Danced + In Praise of Songs that Die + Factory Windows are always Broken + To Mary Pickford + Blanche Sweet + Sunshine + An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic + When Gassy Thompson Struck it Rich + Rhymes for Gloriana + I. The Doll upon the Topmost Bough + II. On Suddenly Receiving a Curl Long Refused + III. On Receiving One of Gloriana's Letters + IV. In Praise of Gloriana's Remarkable Golden Hair + + + Fourth Section + + Twenty Poems in which the Moon is the Principal Figure of Speech + + Once More--To Gloriana + + First Section: Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children + I. Euclid + II. The Haughty Snail-king + III. What the Rattlesnake Said + IV. The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky + V. Drying their Wings + VI. What the Gray-winged Fairy Said + VII. Yet Gentle will the Griffin Be + + Second Section: The Moon is a Mirror + I. Prologue. A Sense of Humor + II. On the Garden-wall + III. Written for a Musician + IV. The Moon is a Painter + V. The Encyclopaedia + VI. What the Miner in the Desert Said + VII. What the Coal-heaver Said + VIII. What the Moon Saw + IX. What Semiramis Said + X. What the Ghost of the Gambler Said + XI. The Spice-tree + XII. The Scissors-grinder + XIII. My Lady in her White Silk Shawl + XIV. Aladdin and the Jinn + XV. The Strength of the Lonely + + + Fifth Section + War. September 1, 1914 + Intended to be Read Aloud + + I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight + II. A Curse for Kings + III. Who Knows? + IV. To Buddha + V. The Unpardonable Sin + VI. Above the Battle's Front + VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your Psyche Wings + + + + + +First Section ~~ Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted. + + + + + +The Congo + +A Study of the Negro Race + + + + I. Their Basic Savagery + + Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, + Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, + # A deep rolling bass. # + Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, + Pounded on the table, + Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, + Hard as they were able, + Boom, boom, BOOM, + With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, + Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM. + THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision. + I could not turn from their revel in derision. + # More deliberate. Solemnly chanted. # + THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, + CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. + Then along that riverbank + A thousand miles + Tattooed cannibals danced in files; + Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song + # A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket. # + And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong. + And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors, + "BLOOD" screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors, + "Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, + Harry the uplands, + Steal all the cattle, + Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, + Bing. + Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM," + # With a philosophic pause. # + A roaring, epic, rag-time tune + From the mouth of the Congo + To the Mountains of the Moon. + Death is an Elephant, + # Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre. # + Torch-eyed and horrible, + Foam-flanked and terrible. + BOOM, steal the pygmies, + BOOM, kill the Arabs, + BOOM, kill the white men, + HOO, HOO, HOO. + # Like the wind in the chimney. # + Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost + Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host. + Hear how the demons chuckle and yell + Cutting his hands off, down in Hell. + Listen to the creepy proclamation, + Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation, + Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay, + Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play:-- + "Be careful what you do, + # All the o sounds very golden. Heavy accents very heavy. + Light accents very light. Last line whispered. # + Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, + And all of the other + Gods of the Congo, + Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, + Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, + Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you." + + + II. Their Irrepressible High Spirits + + # Rather shrill and high. # + Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call + Danced the juba in their gambling-hall + And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town, + And guyed the policemen and laughed them down + With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM. + # Read exactly as in first section. # + THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, + CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. + # Lay emphasis on the delicate ideas. + Keep as light-footed as possible. # + A negro fairyland swung into view, + A minstrel river + Where dreams come true. + The ebony palace soared on high + Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky. + The inlaid porches and casements shone + With gold and ivory and elephant-bone. + And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore + At the baboon butler in the agate door, + And the well-known tunes of the parrot band + That trilled on the bushes of that magic land. + + # With pomposity. # + A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came + Through the agate doorway in suits of flame, + Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust + And hats that were covered with diamond-dust. + And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call + And danced the juba from wall to wall. + # With a great deliberation and ghostliness. # + But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng + With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song:-- + "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."... + # With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp. # + Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes, + Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, + Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine, + And tall silk hats that were red as wine. + # With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm. # + And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, + Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, + Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet, + And bells on their ankles and little black feet. + And the couples railed at the chant and the frown + Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down. + (O rare was the revel, and well worth while + That made those glowering witch-men smile.) + + The cake-walk royalty then began + To walk for a cake that was tall as a man + To the tune of "Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM," + # With a touch of negro dialect, + and as rapidly as possible toward the end. # + While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air, + And sang with the scalawags prancing there:-- + "Walk with care, walk with care, + Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, + And all of the other + Gods of the Congo, + Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. + Beware, beware, walk with care, + Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom. + Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, + Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, + Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, + BOOM." + # Slow philosophic calm. # + Oh rare was the revel, and well worth while + That made those glowering witch-men smile. + + + III. The Hope of their Religion + + # Heavy bass. With a literal imitation + of camp-meeting racket, and trance. # + A good old negro in the slums of the town + Preached at a sister for her velvet gown. + Howled at a brother for his low-down ways, + His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days. + Beat on the Bible till he wore it out + Starting the jubilee revival shout. + And some had visions, as they stood on chairs, + And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs, + And they all repented, a thousand strong + From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong + And slammed with their hymn books till they shook the room + With "glory, glory, glory," + And "Boom, boom, BOOM." + # Exactly as in the first section. + Begin with terror and power, end with joy. # + THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK + CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. + And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil + And showed the apostles with their coats of mail. + In bright white steele they were seated round + And their fire-eyes watched where the Congo wound. + And the twelve Apostles, from their thrones on high + Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly cry:-- + # Sung to the tune of "Hark, ten thousand + harps and voices". # + "Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle; + Never again will he hoo-doo you, + Never again will he hoo-doo you." + + # With growing deliberation and joy. # + Then along that river, a thousand miles + The vine-snared trees fell down in files. + Pioneer angels cleared the way + For a Congo paradise, for babes at play, + For sacred capitals, for temples clean. + Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean. + # In a rather high key--as delicately as possible. # + There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed + A million boats of the angels sailed + With oars of silver, and prows of blue + And silken pennants that the sun shone through. + 'Twas a land transfigured, 'twas a new creation. + Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation + And on through the backwoods clearing flew:-- + # To the tune of "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices". # + "Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle. + Never again will he hoo-doo you. + Never again will he hoo-doo you." + + Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men, + And only the vulture dared again + By the far, lone mountains of the moon + To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune:-- + # Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper. # + "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, + Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. + Mumbo... Jumbo... will... hoo-doo... you." + + + +This poem, particularly the third section, was suggested by an allusion +in a sermon by my pastor, F. W. Burnham, to the heroic life and death of +Ray Eldred. Eldred was a missionary of the Disciples of Christ who +perished while swimming a treacherous branch of the Congo. See "A Master +Builder on the Congo", by Andrew F. Hensey, published by Fleming H. +Revell. + + + + +The Santa Fe Trail + + (A Humoresque) + + +I asked the old Negro, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He +answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark, or +thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane." + + + I. In which a Racing Auto comes from the East + + # To be sung delicately, to an improvised tune. # + This is the order of the music of the morning:-- + First, from the far East comes but a crooning. + The crooning turns to a sunrise singing. + Hark to the _calm_-horn, _balm_-horn, _psalm_-horn. + Hark to the _faint_-horn, _quaint_-horn, _saint_-horn.... + + # To be sung or read with great speed. # + Hark to the _pace_-horn, _chase_-horn, _race_-horn. + And the holy veil of the dawn has gone. + Swiftly the brazen car comes on. + It burns in the East as the sunrise burns. + I see great flashes where the far trail turns. + Its eyes are lamps like the eyes of dragons. + It drinks gasoline from big red flagons. + Butting through the delicate mists of the morning, + It comes like lightning, goes past roaring. + It will hail all the wind-mills, taunting, ringing, + Dodge the cyclones, + Count the milestones, + On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills-- + Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hills.... + # To be read or sung in a rolling bass, + with some deliberation. # + Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn, + Ho for the _gay_-horn, _bark_-horn, _bay_-horn. + _Ho for Kansas, land that restores us + When houses choke us, and great books bore us! + Sunrise Kansas, harvester's Kansas, + A million men have found you before us._ + + + II. In which Many Autos pass Westward + + # In an even, deliberate, narrative manner. # + I want live things in their pride to remain. + I will not kill one grasshopper vain + Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door. + I let him out, give him one chance more. + Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim, + Grasshopper lyrics occur to him. + + I am a tramp by the long trail's border, + Given to squalor, rags and disorder. + I nap and amble and yawn and look, + Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book, + Recite to the children, explore at my ease, + Work when I work, beg when I please, + Give crank-drawings, that make folks stare + To the half-grown boys in the sunset glare, + And get me a place to sleep in the hay + At the end of a live-and-let-live day. + + I find in the stubble of the new-cut weeds + A whisper and a feasting, all one needs: + The whisper of the strawberries, white and red + Here where the new-cut weeds lie dead. + + But I would not walk all alone till I die + Without some life-drunk horns going by. + Up round this apple-earth they come + Blasting the whispers of the morning dumb:-- + Cars in a plain realistic row. + And fair dreams fade + When the raw horns blow. + + On each snapping pennant + A big black name:-- + The careering city + Whence each car came. + # Like a train-caller in a Union Depot. # + They tour from Memphis, Atlanta, Savannah, + Tallahassee and Texarkana. + They tour from St. Louis, Columbus, Manistee, + They tour from Peoria, Davenport, Kankakee. + Cars from Concord, Niagara, Boston, + Cars from Topeka, Emporia, and Austin. + Cars from Chicago, Hannibal, Cairo. + Cars from Alton, Oswego, Toledo. + Cars from Buffalo, Kokomo, Delphi, + Cars from Lodi, Carmi, Loami. + Ho for Kansas, land that restores us + When houses choke us, and great books bore us! + While I watch the highroad + And look at the sky, + While I watch the clouds in amazing grandeur + Roll their legions without rain + Over the blistering Kansas plain-- + While I sit by the milestone + And watch the sky, + The United States + Goes by. + + # To be given very harshly, + with a snapping explosiveness. # + Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking. + Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking. + Way down the road, trilling like a toad, + Here comes the _dice_-horn, here comes the _vice_-horn, + Here comes the _snarl_-horn, _brawl_-horn, _lewd_-horn, + Followed by the _prude_-horn, bleak and squeaking:-- + (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.) + Here comes the _hod_-horn, _plod_-horn, _sod_-horn, + Nevermore-to-_roam_-horn, _loam_-horn, _home_-horn. + (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.) + # To be read or sung, well-nigh in a whisper. # + Far away the Rachel-Jane + Not defeated by the horns + Sings amid a hedge of thorns:-- + "Love and life, + Eternal youth-- + Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, + Dew and glory, + Love and truth, + Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet." + # Louder and louder, faster and faster. # + WHILE SMOKE-BLACK FREIGHTS ON THE DOUBLE-TRACKED RAILROAD, + DRIVEN AS THOUGH BY THE FOUL-FIEND'S OX-GOAD, + SCREAMING TO THE WEST COAST, SCREAMING TO THE EAST, + CARRY OFF A HARVEST, BRING BACK A FEAST, + HARVESTING MACHINERY AND HARNESS FOR THE BEAST. + THE HAND-CARS WHIZ, AND RATTLE ON THE RAILS, + THE SUNLIGHT FLASHES ON THE TIN DINNER-PAILS. + # In a rolling bass, with increasing deliberation. # + And then, in an instant, + Ye modern men, + Behold the procession once again, + # With a snapping explosiveness. # + Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking, + Listen to the _wise_-horn, desperate-to-_advise_-horn, + Listen to the _fast_-horn, _kill_-horn, _blast_-horn.... + # To be sung or read well-nigh in a whisper. # + Far away the Rachel-Jane + Not defeated by the horns + Sings amid a hedge of thorns:-- + Love and life, + Eternal youth, + Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, + Dew and glory, + Love and truth. + Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. + # To be brawled in the beginning with a + snapping explosiveness, ending in a languorous chant. # + The mufflers open on a score of cars + With wonderful thunder, + CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, + CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK, + CRACK-CRACK-CRACK,... + Listen to the gold-horn... + Old-horn... + Cold-horn... + And all of the tunes, till the night comes down + On hay-stack, and ant-hill, and wind-bitten town. + # To be sung to exactly the same whispered tune + as the first five lines. # + Then far in the west, as in the beginning, + Dim in the distance, sweet in retreating, + Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn, + Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn.... + + # This section beginning sonorously, + ending in a languorous whisper. # + They are hunting the goals that they understand:-- + San Francisco and the brown sea-sand. + My goal is the mystery the beggars win. + I am caught in the web the night-winds spin. + The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me. + I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree. + And now I hear, as I sit all alone + In the dusk, by another big Santa Fe stone, + The souls of the tall corn gathering round + And the gay little souls of the grass in the ground. + Listen to the tale the cotton-wood tells. + Listen to the wind-mills, singing o'er the wells. + Listen to the whistling flutes without price + Of myriad prophets out of paradise. + Harken to the wonder + That the night-air carries.... + Listen... to... the... whisper... + Of... the... prairie... fairies + Singing o'er the fairy plain:-- + # To the same whispered tune as the Rachel-Jane song-- + but very slowly. # + "Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. + Love and glory, + Stars and rain, + Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet...." + + + + +The Firemen's Ball + + + + Section One + + "Give the engines room, + Give the engines room." + Louder, faster + The little band-master + Whips up the fluting, + Hurries up the tooting. + He thinks that he stands, + # To be read, or chanted, with the heavy buzzing bass + of fire-engines pumping. # + The reins in his hands, + In the fire-chief's place + In the night alarm chase. + The cymbals whang, + The kettledrums bang:-- + # In this passage the reading or chanting + is shriller and higher. # + "Clear the street, + Clear the street, + Clear the street--Boom, boom. + In the evening gloom, + In the evening gloom, + Give the engines room, + Give the engines room, + Lest souls be trapped + In a terrible tomb." + The sparks and the pine-brands + Whirl on high + From the black and reeking alleys + To the wide red sky. + Hear the hot glass crashing, + Hear the stone steps hissing. + Coal black streams + Down the gutters pour. + There are cries for help + From a far fifth floor. + For a longer ladder + Hear the fire-chief call. + Listen to the music + Of the firemen's ball. + Listen to the music + Of the firemen's ball. + # To be read or chanted in a heavy bass. # + "'Tis the + NIGHT + Of doom," + Say the ding-dong doom-bells. + "NIGHT + Of doom," + Say the ding-dong doom-bells. + Faster, faster + The red flames come. + "Hum grum," say the engines, + "Hum grum grum." + # Shriller and higher. # + "Buzz, buzz," + Says the crowd. + "See, see," + Calls the crowd. + "Look out," + Yelps the crowd + And the high walls fall:-- + Listen to the music + Of the firemen's ball. + Listen to the music + Of the firemen's ball. + # Heavy bass. # + "'Tis the + NIGHT + Of doom," + Say the ding-dong doom-bells. + "NIGHT + Of doom," + Say the ding-dong doom-bells. + Whangaranga, whangaranga, + Whang, whang, whang, + Clang, clang, clangaranga, + # Bass, much slower. # + Clang, clang, clang. + Clang--a--ranga-- + Clang--a--ranga-- + Clang, + Clang, + Clang. + Listen--to--the--music-- + Of the firemen's ball-- + + + Section Two + + "Many's the heart that's breaking + If we could read them all + After the ball is over." (An old song.) + + + # To be read or sung slowly and softly, + in the manner of lustful, insinuating music. # + Scornfully, gaily + The bandmaster sways, + Changing the strain + That the wild band plays. + With a red and royal intoxication, + A tangle of sounds + And a syncopation, + Sweeping and bending + From side to side, + Master of dreams, + With a peacock pride. + A lord of the delicate flowers of delight + He drives compunction + Back through the night. + Dreams he's a soldier + Plumed and spurred, + And valiant lads + Arise at his word, + Flaying the sober + Thoughts he hates, + Driving them back + From the dream-town gates. + How can the languorous + Dancers know + The red dreams come + # To be read or chanted slowly and softly + in the manner of lustful insinuating music. # + When the good dreams go? + "'Tis the + NIGHT + Of love," + Call the silver joy-bells, + "NIGHT + Of love," + Call the silver joy-bells. + "Honey and wine, + Honey and wine. + Sing low, now, violins, + Sing, sing low, + Blow gently, wood-wind, + Mellow and slow. + Like midnight poppies + The sweethearts bloom. + Their eyes flash power, + Their lips are dumb. + Faster and faster + Their pulses come, + Though softer now + The drum-beats fall. + Honey and wine, + Honey and wine. + 'Tis the firemen's ball, + 'Tis the firemen's ball. + + # With a climax of whispered mourning. # + "I am slain," + Cries true-love + There in the shadow. + "And I die," + Cries true-love, + There laid low. + "When the fire-dreams come, + The wise dreams go." + # Suddenly interrupting. To be read or sung in + a heavy bass. First eight lines as harsh as possible. + Then gradually musical and sonorous. # + BUT HIS CRY IS DROWNED + BY THE PROUD BAND-MASTER. + And now great gongs whang, + Sharper, faster, + And kettledrums rattle + And hide the shame + With a swish and a swirk + In dead love's name. + Red and crimson + And scarlet and rose + Magical poppies + The sweethearts bloom. + The scarlet stays + When the rose-flush goes, + And love lies low + In a marble tomb. + "'Tis the + NIGHT + Of doom," + Call the ding-dong doom-bells. + "NIGHT + Of Doom," + Call the ding-dong doom-bells. + # Sharply interrupting in a very high key. # + Hark how the piccolos still make cheer. + "'Tis a moonlight night in the spring of the year." + # Heavy bass. # + CLANGARANGA, CLANGARANGA, + CLANG... CLANG... CLANG. + CLANG... A... RANGA... + CLANG... A... RANGA... + CLANG... CLANG... CLANG... + LISTEN... TO... THE... MUSIC... + OF... THE... FIREMEN'S BALL... + LISTEN... TO... THE... MUSIC... + OF... THE... FIREMEN'S... BALL.... + + + Section Three + +In Which, contrary to Artistic Custom, the moral of the piece is placed +before the reader. + +(From the first Khandaka of the Mahavagga: "There Buddha thus addressed +his disciples: 'Everything, O mendicants, is burning. With what fire is +it burning? I declare unto you it is burning with the fire of passion, +with the fire of anger, with the fire of ignorance. It is burning with +the anxieties of birth, decay and death, grief, lamentation, suffering +and despair.... A disciple,... becoming weary of all that, +divests himself of passion. By absence of passion, he is made free.'") + + + # To be intoned after the manner of a priestly service. # + I once knew a teacher, + Who turned from desire, + Who said to the young men + "Wine is a fire." + Who said to the merchants:-- + "Gold is a flame + That sears and tortures + If you play at the game." + I once knew a teacher + Who turned from desire + Who said to the soldiers, + "Hate is a fire." + Who said to the statesmen:-- + "Power is a flame + That flays and blisters + If you play at the game." + I once knew a teacher + Who turned from desire, + Who said to the lordly, + + "Pride is a fire." + Who thus warned the revellers:-- + "Life is a flame. + Be cold as the dew + Would you win at the game + With hearts like the stars, + With hearts like the stars." + # Interrupting very loudly for the last time. # + SO BEWARE, + SO BEWARE, + SO BEWARE OF THE FIRE. + Clear the streets, + BOOM, BOOM, + Clear the streets, + BOOM, BOOM, + GIVE THE ENGINES ROOM, + GIVE THE ENGINES ROOM, + LEST SOULS BE TRAPPED + IN A TERRIBLE TOMB. + SAYS THE SWIFT WHITE HORSE + TO THE SWIFT BLACK HORSE:-- + "THERE GOES THE ALARM, + THERE GOES THE ALARM. + THEY ARE HITCHED, THEY ARE OFF, + THEY ARE GONE IN A FLASH, + AND THEY STRAIN AT THE DRIVER'S IRON ARM." + CLANG... A... RANGA.... CLANG... A... RANGA.... + CLANG... CLANG... CLANG.... + CLANG... A... RANGA.... CLANG... A... RANGA.... + CLANG... CLANG... CLANG.... + CLANG... A... RANGA.... CLANG... A... RANGA.... + CLANG... CLANG... _CLANG_.... + + + + +The Master of the Dance + + + +A chant to which it is intended a group of children shall dance and +improvise pantomime led by their dancing-teacher. + + + I + + A master deep-eyed + Ere his manhood was ripe, + He sang like a thrush, + He could play any pipe. + So dull in the school + That he scarcely could spell, + He read but a bit, + And he figured not well. + A bare-footed fool, + Shod only with grace; + Long hair streaming down + Round a wind-hardened face; + He smiled like a girl, + Or like clear winter skies, + A virginal light + Making stars of his eyes. + In swiftness and poise, + A proud child of the deer, + A white fawn he was, + Yet a fawn without fear. + No youth thought him vain, + Or made mock of his hair, + Or laughed when his ways + Were most curiously fair. + A mastiff at fight, + He could strike to the earth + The envious one + Who would challenge his worth. + However we bowed + To the schoolmaster mild, + Our spirits went out + To the fawn-footed child. + His beckoning led + Our troop to the brush. + We found nothing there + But a wind and a hush. + He sat by a stone + And he looked on the ground, + As if in the weeds + There was something profound. + His pipe seemed to neigh, + Then to bleat like a sheep, + Then sound like a stream + Or a waterfall deep. + It whispered strange tales, + Human words it spoke not. + Told fair things to come, + And our marvellous lot + If now with fawn-steps + Unshod we advanced + To the midst of the grove + And in reverence danced. + We obeyed as he piped + Soft grass to young feet, + Was a medicine mighty, + A remedy meet. + Our thin blood awoke, + It grew dizzy and wild, + Though scarcely a word + Moved the lips of a child. + Our dance gave allegiance, + It set us apart, + We tripped a strange measure, + Uplifted of heart. + + + II + + We thought to be proud + Of our fawn everywhere. + We could hardly see how + Simple books were a care. + No rule of the school + This strange student could tame. + He was banished one day, + While we quivered with shame. + He piped back our love + On a moon-silvered night, + Enticed us once more + To the place of delight. + A greeting he sang + And it made our blood beat, + It tramped upon custom + And mocked at defeat. + He builded a fire + And we tripped in a ring, + The embers our books + And the fawn our good king. + And now we approached + All the mysteries rare + That shadowed his eyelids + And blew through his hair. + That spell now was peace + The deep strength of the trees, + The children of nature + We clambered her knees. + Our breath and our moods + Were in tune with her own, + Tremendous her presence, + Eternal her throne. + The ostracized child + Our white foreheads kissed, + Our bodies and souls + Became lighter than mist. + Sweet dresses like snow + Our small lady-loves wore, + Like moonlight the thoughts + That our bosoms upbore. + Like a lily the touch + Of each cold little hand. + The loves of the stars + We could now understand. + O quivering air! + O the crystalline night! + O pauses of awe + And the faces swan-white! + O ferns in the dusk! + O forest-shrined hour! + O earth that sent upward + The thrill and the power, + To lift us like leaves, + A delirious whirl, + The masterful boy + And the delicate girl! + What child that strange night-time + Can ever forget? + His fealty due + And his infinite debt + To the folly divine, + To the exquisite rule + Of the perilous master, + The fawn-footed fool? + + + III + + Now soldiers we seem, + And night brings a new thing, + A terrible ire, + As of thunder awing. + A warrior power, + That old chivalry stirred, + When knights took up arms, + As the maidens gave word. + THE END OF OUR WAR, + WILL BE GLORY UNTOLD. + WHEN THE TOWN LIKE A GREAT + BUDDING ROSE SHALL UNFOLD! + _Near, nearer that war, + And that ecstasy comes, + We hear the trees beating + Invisible drums. + The fields of the night + Are starlit above, + Our girls are white torches + Of conquest and love. + No nerve without will, + And no breast without breath, + We whirl with the planets + That never know death!_ + + + + +The Mysterious Cat + + + +A chant for a children's pantomime dance, suggested by a picture painted +by George Mather Richards. + + + I saw a proud, mysterious cat, + I saw a proud, mysterious cat + Too proud to catch a mouse or rat-- + Mew, mew, mew. + + But catnip she would eat, and purr, + But catnip she would eat, and purr. + And goldfish she did much prefer-- + Mew, mew, mew. + + I saw a cat--'twas but a dream, + I saw a cat--'twas but a dream + Who scorned the slave that brought her cream-- + Mew, mew, mew. + + Unless the slave were dressed in style, + Unless the slave were dressed in style + And knelt before her all the while-- + Mew, mew, mew. + + Did you ever hear of a thing like that? + Did you ever hear of a thing like that? + Did you ever hear of a thing like that? + Oh, what a proud mysterious cat. + Oh, what a proud mysterious cat. + Oh, what a proud mysterious cat. + Mew... mew... mew. + + + + +A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten + + + +To be intoned, all but the two italicized lines, which are to be spoken +in a snappy, matter-of-fact way. + + + Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. + Here lies a kitten good, who kept + A kitten's proper place. + He stole no pantry eatables, + Nor scratched the baby's face. + _He let the alley-cats alone_. + He had no yowling vice. + His shirt was always laundried well, + He freed the house of mice. + Until his death he had not caused + His little mistress tears, + He wore his ribbon prettily, + _He washed behind his ears_. + Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. + + + + +Yankee Doodle + + + +This poem is intended as a description of a sort of Blashfield mural +painting on the sky. To be sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle, yet in a +slower, more orotund fashion. It is presumably an exercise for an +entertainment on the evening of Washington's Birthday. + + + Dawn this morning burned all red + Watching them in wonder. + There I saw our spangled flag + Divide the clouds asunder. + Then there followed Washington. + Ah, he rode from glory, + Cold and mighty as his name + And stern as Freedom's story. + Unsubdued by burning dawn + Led his continentals. + Vast they were, and strange to see + In gray old regimentals:-- + Marching still with bleeding feet, + Bleeding feet and jesting-- + Marching from the judgment throne + With energy unresting. + How their merry quickstep played-- + Silver, sharp, sonorous, + Piercing through with prophecy + The demons' rumbling chorus-- + Behold the ancient powers of sin + And slavery before them!-- + Sworn to stop the glorious dawn, + The pit-black clouds hung o'er them. + Plagues that rose to blast the day + Fiend and tiger faces, + Monsters plotting bloodshed for + The patient toiling races. + Round the dawn their cannon raged, + Hurling bolts of thunder, + Yet before our spangled flag + Their host was cut asunder. + Like a mist they fled away.... + Ended wrath and roaring. + Still our restless soldier-host + From East to West went pouring. + + High beside the sun of noon + They bore our banner splendid. + All its days of stain and shame + And heaviness were ended. + Men were swelling now the throng + From great and lowly station-- + Valiant citizens to-day + Of every tribe and nation. + Not till night their rear-guard came, + Down the west went marching, + And left behind the sunset-rays + In beauty overarching. + War-god banners lead us still, + Rob, enslave and harry + Let us rather choose to-day + The flag the angels carry-- + Flag we love, but brighter far-- + Soul of it made splendid: + Let its days of stain and shame + And heaviness be ended. + Let its fifes fill all the sky, + Redeemed souls marching after, + Hills and mountains shake with song, + While seas roll on in laughter. + + + + +The Black Hawk War of the Artists + +Written for Lorado Taft's Statue of Black Hawk at Oregon, Illinois + + + +To be given in the manner of the Indian Oration and the Indian War-Cry. + + + Hawk of the Rocks, + Yours is our cause to-day. + Watching your foes + Here in our war array, + Young men we stand, + Wolves of the West at bay. + _Power, power for war + Comes from these trees divine; + Power from the boughs, + Boughs where the dew-beads shine, + Power from the cones-- + Yea, from the breath of the pine!_ + + Power to restore + All that the white hand mars. + See the dead east + Crushed with the iron cars-- + Chimneys black + Blinding the sun and stars! + + Hawk of the pines, + Hawk of the plain-winds fleet, + You shall be king + There in the iron street, + Factory and forge + Trodden beneath your feet. + + There will proud trees + Grow as they grow by streams. + There will proud thoughts + Walk as in warrior dreams. + There will proud deeds + Bloom as when battle gleams! + + Warriors of Art, + We will hold council there, + Hewing in stone + Things to the trapper fair, + Painting the gray + Veils that the spring moons wear, + This our revenge, + This one tremendous change: + Making new towns, + Lit with a star-fire strange, + Wild as the dawn + Gilding the bison-range. + + All the young men + Chanting your cause that day, + Red-men, new-made + Out of the Saxon clay, + Strong and redeemed, + Bold in your war-array! + + + + +The Jingo and the Minstrel + +An Argument for the Maintenance of Peace and Goodwill with the Japanese +People + + + +Glossary for the uninstructed and the hasty: Jimmu Tenno, ancestor of +all the Japanese Emperors; Nikko, Japan's loveliest shrine; Iyeyasu, her +greatest statesman; Bushido, her code of knighthood; The Forty-seven +Ronins, her classic heroes; Nogi, her latest hero; Fuji, her most +beautiful mountain. + + + # The minstrel speaks. # + "Now do you know of Avalon + That sailors call Japan? + She holds as rare a chivalry + As ever bled for man. + King Arthur sleeps at Nikko hill + Where Iyeyasu lies, + And there the broad Pendragon flag + In deathless splendor flies." + + # The jingo answers. # + _"Nay, minstrel, but the great ships come + From out the sunset sea. + We cannot greet the souls they bring + With welcome high and free. + How can the Nippon nondescripts + That weird and dreadful band + Be aught but what we find them here:-- + The blasters of the land?"_ + + # The minstrel replies. # + "First race, first men from anywhere + To face you, eye to eye. + For _that_ do you curse Avalon + And raise a hue and cry? + These toilers cannot kiss your hand, + Or fawn with hearts bowed down. + Be glad for them, and Avalon, + And Arthur's ghostly crown. + + "No doubt your guests, with sage debate + In grave things gentlemen + Will let your trade and farms alone + And turn them back again. + But why should brawling braggarts rise + With hasty words of shame + To drive them back like dogs and swine + Who in due honor came?" + + # The jingo answers. # + _"We cannot give them honor, sir. + We give them scorn for scorn. + And Rumor steals around the world + All white-skinned men to warn + Against this sleek silk-merchant here + And viler coolie-man + And wrath within the courts of war + Brews on against Japan!"_ + + # The minstrel replies. # + "Must Avalon, with hope forlorn, + Her back against the wall, + Have lived her brilliant life in vain + While ruder tribes take all? + Must Arthur stand with Asian Celts, + A ghost with spear and crown, + Behind the great Pendragon flag + And be again cut down? + + "Tho Europe's self shall move against + High Jimmu Tenno's throne + The Forty-seven Ronin Men + Will not be found alone. + For Percival and Bedivere + And Nogi side by side + Will stand,--with mourning Merlin there, + Tho all go down in pride. + + "But has the world the envious dream-- + Ah, such things cannot be,-- + To tear their fairy-land like silk + And toss it in the sea? + Must venom rob the future day + The ultimate world-man + Of rare Bushido, code of codes, + The fair heart of Japan? + + "Go, be the guest of Avalon. + Believe me, it lies there + Behind the mighty gray sea-wall + Where heathen bend in prayer: + Where peasants lift adoring eyes + To Fuji's crown of snow. + King Arthur's knights will be your hosts, + So cleanse your heart, and go. + + "And you will find but gardens sweet + Prepared beyond the seas, + And you will find but gentlefolk + Beneath the cherry-trees. + So walk you worthy of your Christ + Tho church bells do not sound, + And weave the bands of brotherhood + On Jimmu Tenno's ground." + + + + +I Heard Immanuel Singing + + + +(The poem shows the Master, with his work done, singing to free his +heart in Heaven.) + +This poem is intended to be half said, half sung, very softly, to the +well-known tune:-- + + "Last night I lay a-sleeping, + There came a dream so fair, + I stood in Old Jerusalem + Beside the temple there,--" etc. + +Yet this tune is not to be fitted on, arbitrarily. It is here given to +suggest the manner of handling rather than determine it. + + + # To be sung. # + I heard Immanuel singing + Within his own good lands, + I saw him bend above his harp. + I watched his wandering hands + Lost amid the harp-strings; + Sweet, sweet I heard him play. + His wounds were altogether healed. + Old things had passed away. + + All things were new, but music. + The blood of David ran + Within the Son of David, + Our God, the Son of Man. + He was ruddy like a shepherd. + His bold young face, how fair. + Apollo of the silver bow + Had not such flowing hair. + + # To be read very softly, but in spirited response. # + I saw Immanuel singing + On a tree-girdled hill. + The glad remembering branches + Dimly echoed still + The grand new song proclaiming + The Lamb that had been slain. + New-built, the Holy City + Gleamed in the murmuring plain. + + The crowning hours were over. + The pageants all were past. + Within the many mansions + The hosts, grown still at last, + In homes of holy mystery + Slept long by crooning springs + Or waked to peaceful glory, + A universe of Kings. + + # To be sung. # + He left his people happy. + He wandered free to sigh + Alone in lowly friendship + With the green grass and the sky. + He murmured ancient music + His red heart burned to sing + Because his perfect conquest + Had grown a weary thing. + + No chant of gilded triumph-- + His lonely song was made + Of Art's deliberate freedom; + Of minor chords arrayed + In soft and shadowy colors + That once were radiant flowers:-- + The Rose of Sharon, bleeding + In Olive-shadowed bowers:-- + + And all the other roses + In the songs of East and West + Of love and war and worshipping, + And every shield and crest + Of thistle or of lotus + Or sacred lily wrought + In creeds and psalms and palaces + And temples of white thought:-- + + # To be read very softly, yet in spirited response. # + All these he sang, half-smiling + And weeping as he smiled, + Laughing, talking to his harp + As to a new-born child:-- + As though the arts forgotten + But bloomed to prophecy + These careless, fearless harp-strings, + New-crying in the sky. + # To be sung. # + "When this his hour of sorrow + For flowers and Arts of men + Has passed in ghostly music," + I asked my wild heart then-- + What will he sing to-morrow, + What wonder, all his own + Alone, set free, rejoicing, + With a green hill for his throne? + What will he sing to-morrow + What wonder all his own + Alone, set free, rejoicing, + With a green hill for his throne? + + + + + +Second Section ~~ Incense + + + + + +An Argument + + + + I. The Voice of the Man Impatient with Visions and Utopias + + We find your soft Utopias as white + As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells, + O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are + How human breasts adore alarum bells. + You house us in a hive of prigs and saints + Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law. + I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore + Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw. + Promise us all our share in Agincourt + Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death, + That future ant-hills will not be too good + For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth. + Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war + Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way, + Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his fate + Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday. + Never a shallow jester any more! + Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain. + Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise + And Ariel wreak his fancies through the rain. + + + II. The Rhymer's Reply. Incense and Splendor + + Incense and Splendor haunt me as I go. + Though my good works have been, alas, too few, + Though I do naught, High Heaven comes down to me, + And future ages pass in tall review. + I see the years to come as armies vast, + Stalking tremendous through the fields of time. + MAN is unborn. To-morrow he is born, + Flame-like to hover o'er the moil and grime, + Striving, aspiring till the shame is gone, + Sowing a million flowers, where now we mourn-- + Laying new, precious pavements with a song, + Founding new shrines, the good streets to adorn. + I have seen lovers by those new-built walls + Clothed like the dawn in orange, gold and red. + Eyes flashing forth the glory-light of love + Under the wreaths that crowned each royal head. + Life was made greater by their sweetheart prayers. + Passion was turned to civic strength that day-- + Piling the marbles, making fairer domes + With zeal that else had burned bright youth away. + I have seen priestesses of life go by + Gliding in samite through the incense-sea-- + Innocent children marching with them there, + Singing in flowered robes, "THE EARTH IS FREE": + While on the fair, deep-carved unfinished towers + Sentinels watched in armor, night and day-- + Guarding the brazier-fires of hope and dream-- + Wild was their peace, and dawn-bright their array! + + + + +A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign + + + + I look on the specious electrical light + Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white, + Wickedly red or malignantly green + Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen. + Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, + The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, + By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl, + Starting new fads for the shame-weary girl, + By maggoty motions in sickening line + Proclaiming a hat or a soup or a wine, + While there far above the steep cliffs of the street + The stars sing a message elusive and sweet. + + Now man cannot rest in his pleasure and toil + His clumsy contraptions of coil upon coil + Till the thing he invents, in its use and its range, + Leads on to the marvellous CHANGE BEYOND CHANGE. + Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies, + As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise. + And we shall be lifted, rejoicing by night, + Till we join with the planets who choir their delight. + The signs in the street and the signs in the skies + Shall make a new Zodiac, guiding the wise, + And Broadway make one with that marvellous stair + That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer. + + + + +In Memory of a Child + + + + The angels guide him now, + And watch his curly head, + And lead him in their games, + The little boy we led. + + He cannot come to harm, + He knows more than we know, + His light is brighter far + Than daytime here below. + + His path leads on and on, + Through pleasant lawns and flowers, + His brown eyes open wide + At grass more green than ours. + + With playmates like himself, + The shining boy will sing, + Exploring wondrous woods, + Sweet with eternal spring. + + + + +Galahad, Knight Who Perished + + A Poem Dedicated to All Crusaders against the International and Interstate + Traffic in Young Girls + + + + Galahad... soldier that perished... ages ago, + Our hearts are breaking with shame, our tears overflow. + Galahad... knight who perished... awaken again, + Teach us to fight for immaculate ways among men. + Soldiers fantastic, we pray to the star of the sea, + We pray to the mother of God that the bound may be free. + Rose-crowned lady from heaven, give us thy grace, + Help us the intricate, desperate battle to face + Till the leer of the trader is seen nevermore in the land, + Till we bring every maid of the age to one sheltering hand. + Ah, they are priceless, the pale and the ivory and red! + Breathless we gaze on the curls of each glorious head! + Arm them with strength mediaeval, thy marvellous dower, + Blast now their tempters, shelter their steps with thy power. + Leave not life's fairest to perish--strangers to thee, + Let not the weakest be shipwrecked, oh, star of the sea! + + + + +The Leaden-eyed + + + + Let not young souls be smothered out before + They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. + It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull, + Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed. + Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, + Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap, + Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve, + Not that they die, but that they die like sheep. + + + + +An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie + + + + (In the Beginning) + + The sun is a huntress young, + The sun is a red, red joy, + The sun is an Indian girl, + Of the tribe of the Illinois. + + + (Mid-morning) + + The sun is a smouldering fire, + That creeps through the high gray plain, + And leaves not a bush of cloud + To blossom with flowers of rain. + + + (Noon) + + The sun is a wounded deer, + That treads pale grass in the skies, + Shaking his golden horns, + Flashing his baleful eyes. + + + (Sunset) + + The sun is an eagle old, + There in the windless west. + Atop of the spirit-cliffs + He builds him a crimson nest. + + + + +The Hearth Eternal + + + + There dwelt a widow learned and devout, + Behind our hamlet on the eastern hill. + Three sons she had, who went to find the world. + They promised to return, but wandered still. + The cities used them well, they won their way, + Rich gifts they sent, to still their mother's sighs. + Worn out with honors, and apart from her, + They died as many a self-made exile dies. + The mother had a hearth that would not quench, + The deathless embers fought the creeping gloom. + She said to us who came with wondering eyes-- + "This is a magic fire, a magic room." + The pine burned out, but still the coals glowed on, + Her grave grew old beneath the pear-tree shade, + And yet her crumbling home enshrined the light. + The neighbors peering in were half afraid. + Then sturdy beggars, needing fagots, came, + One at a time, and stole the walls, and floor. + They left a naked stone, but how it blazed! + And in the thunderstorm it flared the more. + And now it was that men were heard to say, + "This light should be beloved by all the town." + At last they made the slope a place of prayer, + Where marvellous thoughts from God came sweeping down. + They left their churches crumbling in the sun, + They met on that soft hill, one brotherhood; + One strength and valor only, one delight, + One laughing, brooding genius, great and good. + Now many gray-haired prodigals come home, + The place out-flames the cities of the land, + And twice-born Brahmans reach us from afar, + With subtle eyes prepared to understand. + Higher and higher burns the eastern steep, + Showing the roads that march from every place, + A steady beacon o'er the weary leagues, + At dead of night it lights the traveller's face! + Thus has the widow conquered half the earth, + She who increased in faith, though all alone, + Who kept her empty house a magic place, + Has made the town a holy angel's throne. + + + + +The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit + + A Broadside distributed in Springfield, Illinois + + + + Censers are swinging + Over the town; + Censers are swinging, + Look overhead! + Censers are swinging, + Heaven comes down. + City, dead city, + Awake from the dead! + + Censers, tremendous, + Gleam overhead. + Wind-harps are ringing, + Wind-harps unseen-- + Calling and calling:-- + "Wake from the dead. + Rise, little city, + Shine like a queen." + + Soldiers of Christ + For battle grow keen. + Heaven-sent winds + Haunt alley and lane. + Singing of life + In town-meadows green + After the toil + And battle and pain. + + Incense is pouring + Like the spring rain + Down on the mob + That moil through the street. + Blessed are they + Who behold it and gain + Power made more mighty + Thro' every defeat. + + Builders, toil on. + Make all complete. + Make Springfield wonderful. + Make her renown + Worthy this day, + Till, at God's feet, + Tranced, saved forever, + Waits the white town. + + Censers are swinging + Over the town, + Censers gigantic! + Look overhead! + Hear the winds singing:-- + "Heaven comes down. + City, dead city, + Awake from the dead." + + + + +By the Spring, at Sunset + + + + Sometimes we remember kisses, + Remember the dear heart-leap when they came: + Not always, but sometimes we remember + The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame + Of laughter and farewell. + + Beside the road + Afar from those who said "Good-by" I write, + Far from my city task, my lawful load. + + Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder, + Streaming clouds, banners of new-born night + Enchant me now. The splendors growing bolder + Make bold my soul for some new wise delight. + + I write the day's event, and quench my drouth, + Pausing beside the spring with happy mind. + And now I feel those kisses on my mouth, + Hers most of all, one little friend most kind. + + + + +I Went down into the Desert + + + + I went down into the desert + To meet Elijah-- + Arisen from the dead. + I thought to find him in an echoing cave; + _For so my dream had said_. + + I went down into the desert + To meet John the Baptist. + I walked with feet that bled, + Seeking that prophet lean and brown and bold. + _I spied foul fiends instead_. + + I went down into the desert + To meet my God. + By him be comforted. + I went down into the desert + To meet my God. + _And I met the devil in red_. + + I went down into the desert + To meet my God. + O, Lord my God, awaken from the dead! + I see you there, your thorn-crown on the ground, + I see you there, half-buried in the sand. + I see you there, your white bones glistening, bare, + _The carrion-birds a-wheeling round your head_. + + + + +Love and Law + + + + True Love is founded in rocks of Remembrance + In stones of Forbearance and mortar of Pain. + The workman lays wearily granite on granite, + And bleeds for his castle 'mid sunshine and rain. + + Love is not velvet, not all of it velvet, + Not all of it banners, not gold-leaf alone. + 'Tis stern as the ages and old as Religion. + With Patience its watchword, and Law for its throne. + + + + +The Perfect Marriage + + + + I + + I hate this yoke; for the world's sake here put it on: + Knowing 'twill weigh as much on you till life is gone. + Knowing you love your freedom dear, as I love mine-- + Knowing that love unchained has been our life's great wine: + Our one great wine (yet spent too soon, and serving none; + Of the two cups free love at last the deadly one). + + + II + + We grant our meetings will be tame, not honey-sweet + No longer turning to the tryst with flying feet. + We know the toil that now must come will spoil the bloom + And tenderness of passion's touch, and in its room + Will come tame habit, deadly calm, sorrow and gloom. + Oh, how the battle scars the best who enter life! + Each soldier comes out blind or lame from the black strife. + Mad or diseased or damned of soul the best may come-- + It matters not how merrily now rolls the drum, + The fife shrills high, the horn sings loud, till no steps lag-- + And all adore that silken flame, Desire's great flag. + + + III + + We will build strong our tiny fort, strong as we can-- + Holding one inner room beyond the sword of man. + Love is too wide, it seems to-day, to hide it there. + It seems to flood the fields of corn, and gild the air-- + It seems to breathe from every brook, from flowers to sigh-- + It seems a cataract poured down from the great sky; + It seems a tenderness so vast no bush but shows + Its haunting and transfiguring light where wonder glows. + It wraps us in a silken snare by shadowy streams, + And wildering sweet and stung with joy your white soul seems + A flame, a flame, conquering day, conquering night, + Brought from our God, a holy thing, a mad delight. + But love, when all things beat it down, leaves the wide air, + The heavens are gray, and men turn wolves, lean with despair. + Ah, when we need love most, and weep, when all is dark, + Love is a pinch of ashes gray, with one live spark-- + Yet on the hope to keep alive that treasure strange + Hangs all earth's struggle, strife and scorn, and desperate change. + + + IV + + Love?... we will scarcely love our babes full many a time-- + Knowing their souls and ours too well, and all our grime-- + And there beside our holy hearth we'll hide our eyes-- + Lest we should flash what seems disdain without disguise. + Yet there shall be no wavering there in that deep trial-- + And no false fire or stranger hand or traitor vile-- + We'll fight the gloom and fight the world with strong sword-play, + Entrenched within our block-house small, ever at bay-- + As fellow-warriors, underpaid, wounded and wild, + True to their battered flag, their faith still undefiled! + + + + +Darling Daughter of Babylon + + + + Too soon you wearied of our tears. + And then you danced with spangled feet, + Leading Belshazzar's chattering court + A-tinkling through the shadowy street. + With mead they came, with chants of shame. + DESIRE'S red flag before them flew. + And Istar's music moved your mouth + And Baal's deep shames rewoke in you. + + Now you could drive the royal car; + Forget our Nation's breaking load: + Now you could sleep on silver beds-- + (Bitter and dark was our abode.) + And so, for many a night you laughed, + And knew not of my hopeless prayer, + Till God's own spirit whipped you forth + From Istar's shrine, from Istar's stair. + + Darling daughter of Babylon-- + Rose by the black Euphrates flood-- + Again your beauty grew more dear + Than my slave's bread, than my heart's blood. + We sang of Zion, good to know, + Where righteousness and peace abide.... + What of your second sacrilege + Carousing at Belshazzar's side? + + Once, by a stream, we clasped tired hands-- + Your paint and henna washed away. + Your place, you said, was with the slaves + Who sewed the thick cloth, night and day. + You were a pale and holy maid + Toil-bound with us. One night you said:-- + "Your God shall be my God until + I slumber with the patriarch dead." + + Pardon, daughter of Babylon, + If, on this night remembering + Our lover walks under the walls + Of hanging gardens in the spring, + A venom comes from broken hope, + From memories of your comrade-song + Until I curse your painted eyes + And do your flower-mouth too much wrong. + + + + +The Amaranth + + + + Ah, in the night, all music haunts me here.... + Is it for naught high Heaven cracks and yawns + And the tremendous Amaranth descends + Sweet with the glory of ten thousand dawns? + + Does it not mean my God would have me say:-- + "Whether you will or no, O city young, + Heaven will bloom like one great flower for you, + Flash and loom greatly all your marts among?" + + Friends, I will not cease hoping though you weep. + Such things I see, and some of them shall come + Though now our streets are harsh and ashen-gray, + Though our strong youths are strident now, or dumb. + Friends, that sweet town, that wonder-town, shall rise. + Naught can delay it. Though it may not be + Just as I dream, it comes at last I know + With streets like channels of an incense-sea. + + + + +The Alchemist's Petition + + + + Thou wilt not sentence to eternal life + My soul that prays that it may sleep and sleep + Like a white statue dropped into the deep, + Covered with sand, covered with chests of gold, + And slave-bones, tossed from many a pirate hold. + + But for this prayer thou wilt not bind in Hell + My soul, that shook with love for Fame and Truth-- + In such unquenched desires consumed his youth-- + Let me turn dust, like dead leaves in the Fall, + Or wood that lights an hour your knightly hall-- + Amen. + + + + +Two Easter Stanzas + + + + I + + The Hope of the Resurrection + + + Though I have watched so many mourners weep + O'er the real dead, in dull earth laid asleep-- + Those dead seemed but the shadows of my days + That passed and left me in the sun's bright rays. + Now though you go on smiling in the sun + Our love is slain, and love and you were one. + You are the first, you I have known so long, + Whose death was deadly, a tremendous wrong. + Therefore I seek the faith that sets it right + Amid the lilies and the candle-light. + I think on Heaven, for in that air so clear + We two may meet, confused and parted here. + Ah, when man's dearest dies, 'tis then he goes + To that old balm that heals the centuries' woes. + Then Christ's wild cry in all the streets is rife:-- + "I am the Resurrection and the Life." + + + + II + + We meet at the Judgment and I fear it Not + + + Though better men may fear that trumpet's warning, + I meet you, lady, on the Judgment morning, + With golden hope my spirit still adorning. + + Our God who made you all so fair and sweet + Is three times gentle, and before his feet + Rejoicing I shall say:--"The girl you gave + Was my first Heaven, an angel bent to save. + Oh, God, her maker, if my ingrate breath + Is worth this rescue from the Second Death, + Perhaps her dear proud eyes grow gentler too + That scorned my graceless years and trophies few. + Gone are those years, and gone ill-deeds that turned + Her sacred beauty from my songs that burned. + We now as comrades through the stars may take + The rich and arduous quests I did forsake. + Grant me a seraph-guide to thread the throng + And quickly find that woman-soul so strong. + I dream that in her deeply-hidden heart + Hurt love lived on, though we were far apart, + A brooding secret mercy like your own + That blooms to-day to vindicate your throne. + + + + +The Traveller-heart + +(To a Man who maintained that the Mausoleum is the Stateliest Possible +Manner of Interment) + + + + I would be one with the dark, dark earth:-- + Follow the plough with a yokel tread. + I would be part of the Indian corn, + Walking the rows with the plumes o'erhead. + + I would be one with the lavish earth, + Eating the bee-stung apples red: + Walking where lambs walk on the hills; + By oak-grove paths to the pools be led. + + I would be one with the dark-bright night + When sparkling skies and the lightning wed-- + Walking on with the vicious wind + By roads whence even the dogs have fled. + + I would be one with the sacred earth + On to the end, till I sleep with the dead. + Terror shall put no spears through me. + Peace shall jewel my shroud instead. + + I shall be one with all pit-black things + Finding their lowering threat unsaid: + Stars for my pillow there in the gloom,-- + Oak-roots arching about my head! + + Stars, like daisies, shall rise through the earth, + Acorns fall round my breast that bled. + Children shall weave there a flowery chain, + Squirrels on acorn-hearts be fed:-- + + Fruit of the traveller-heart of me, + Fruit of my harvest-songs long sped: + Sweet with the life of my sunburned days + When the sheaves were ripe, and the apples red. + + + + +The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son + + + + The North Star whispers: "You are one + Of those whose course no chance can change. + You blunder, but are not undone, + Your spirit-task is fixed and strange. + + "When here you walk, a bloodless shade, + A singer all men else forget. + Your chants of hammer, forge and spade + Will move the prairie-village yet. + + "That young, stiff-necked, reviling town + Beholds your fancies on her walls, + And paints them out or tears them down, + Or bars them from her feasting-halls. + + "Yet shall the fragments still remain; + Yet shall remain some watch-tower strong + That ivy-vines will not disdain, + Haunted and trembling with your song. + + "Your flambeau in the dusk shall burn, + Flame high in storms, flame white and clear; + Your ghost in gleaming robes return + And burn a deathless incense here." + + + + +Third Section ~~ A Miscellany called "the Christmas Tree" + + + + + +This Section is a Christmas Tree + + + + This section is a Christmas tree: + Loaded with pretty toys for you. + Behold the blocks, the Noah's arks, + The popguns painted red and blue. + No solemn pine-cone forest-fruit, + But silver horns and candy sacks + And many little tinsel hearts + And cherubs pink, and jumping-jacks. + For every child a gift, I hope. + The doll upon the topmost bough + Is mine. But all the rest are yours. + And I will light the candles now. + + + + +The Sun Says his Prayers + + + + "The sun says his prayers," said the fairy, + Or else he would wither and die. + "The sun says his prayers," said the fairy, + "For strength to climb up through the sky. + He leans on invisible angels, + And Faith is his prop and his rod. + The sky is his crystal cathedral. + And dawn is his altar to God." + + + + +Popcorn, Glass Balls, and Cranberries (As it were) + + + + I. The Lion + + + The Lion is a kingly beast. + He likes a Hindu for a feast. + And if no Hindu he can get, + The lion-family is upset. + + He cuffs his wife and bites her ears + Till she is nearly moved to tears. + Then some explorer finds the den + And all is family peace again. + + + + II. An Explanation of the Grasshopper + + + The Grasshopper, the grasshopper, + I will explain to you:-- + He is the Brownies' racehorse, + The fairies' Kangaroo. + + + + III. The Dangerous Little Boy Fairies + + + In fairyland the little boys + Would rather fight than eat their meals. + They like to chase a gauze-winged fly + And catch and beat him till he squeals. + Sometimes they come to sleeping men + Armed with the deadly red-rose thorn, + And those that feel its fearful wound + Repent the day that they were born. + + + + IV. The Mouse that gnawed the Oak-tree Down + + + The mouse that gnawed the oak-tree down + Began his task in early life. + He kept so busy with his teeth + He had no time to take a wife. + + He gnawed and gnawed through sun and rain + When the ambitious fit was on, + Then rested in the sawdust till + A month of idleness had gone. + + He did not move about to hunt + The coteries of mousie-men. + He was a snail-paced, stupid thing + Until he cared to gnaw again. + + The mouse that gnawed the oak-tree down, + When that tough foe was at his feet-- + Found in the stump no angel-cake + Nor buttered bread, nor cheese, nor meat-- + The forest-roof let in the sky. + "This light is worth the work," said he. + "I'll make this ancient swamp more light," + And started on another tree. + + + + V. Parvenu + + + Where does Cinderella sleep? + By far-off day-dream river. + A secret place her burning Prince + Decks, while his heart-strings quiver. + + Homesick for our cinder world, + Her low-born shoulders shiver; + She longs for sleep in cinders curled-- + We, for the day-dream river. + + + + VI. The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly + + + Once I loved a spider + When I was born a fly, + A velvet-footed spider + With a gown of rainbow-dye. + She ate my wings and gloated. + She bound me with a hair. + She drove me to her parlor + Above her winding stair. + To educate young spiders + She took me all apart. + My ghost came back to haunt her. + I saw her eat my heart. + + + + VII. Crickets on a Strike + + + The foolish queen of fairyland + From her milk-white throne in a lily-bell, + Gave command to her cricket-band + To play for her when the dew-drops fell. + + But the cold dew spoiled their instruments + And they play for the foolish queen no more. + Instead those sturdy malcontents + Play sharps and flats in my kitchen floor. + + + + +How a Little Girl Danced + +Dedicated to Lucy Bates + +(Being a reminiscence of certain private theatricals.) + + + + Oh, cabaret dancer, _I_ know a dancer, + Whose eyes have not looked on the feasts that are vain. + _I_ know a dancer, _I_ know a dancer, + Whose soul has no bond with the beasts of the plain: + Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer, + With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain. + + Oh, thrice-painted dancer, vaudeville dancer, + Sad in your spangles, with soul all astrain, + _I_ know a dancer, _I_ know a dancer, + Whose laughter and weeping are spiritual gain, + A pure-hearted, high-hearted maiden evangel, + With strength the dark cynical earth to disdain. + + Flowers of bright Broadway, you of the chorus, + Who sing in the hope of forgetting your pain: + I turn to a sister of Sainted Cecilia, + A white bird escaping the earth's tangled skein:-- + The music of God is her innermost brooding, + The whispering angels her footsteps sustain. + + Oh, proud Russian dancer: praise for your dancing. + No clean human passion my rhyme would arraign. + You dance for Apollo with noble devotion, + A high cleansing revel to make the heart sane. + But Judith the dancer prays to a spirit + More white than Apollo and all of his train. + + I know a dancer who finds the true Godhead, + Who bends o'er a brazier in Heaven's clear plain. + I know a dancer, I know a dancer, + Who lifts us toward peace, from this earth that is vain: + Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer, + With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain. + + + + +In Praise of Songs that Die + +After having read a Great Deal of Good Current Poetry in the Magazines +and Newspapers + + + + Ah, they are passing, passing by, + Wonderful songs, but born to die! + Cries from the infinite human seas, + Waves thrice-winged with harmonies. + Here I stand on a pier in the foam + Seeing the songs to the beach go home, + Dying in sand while the tide flows back, + As it flowed of old in its fated track. + Oh, hurrying tide that will not hear + Your own foam-children dying near: + Is there no refuge-house of song, + No home, no haven where songs belong? + Oh, precious hymns that come and go! + You perish, and I love you so! + + + + +Factory Windows are always Broken + + + + Factory windows are always broken. + Somebody's always throwing bricks, + Somebody's always heaving cinders, + Playing ugly Yahoo tricks. + + Factory windows are always broken. + Other windows are let alone. + No one throws through the chapel-window + The bitter, snarling, derisive stone. + + Factory windows are always broken. + Something or other is going wrong. + Something is rotten--I think, in Denmark. + _End of the factory-window song_. + + + + +To Mary Pickford + + Moving-picture Actress + +(On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.) + + + + Mary Pickford, doll divine, + Year by year, and every day + At the moving-picture play, + You have been my valentine. + + Once a free-limbed page in hose, + Baby-Rosalind in flower, + Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour + How our reverent passion rose, + How our fine desire you won. + Kitchen-wench another day, + Shapeless, wooden every way. + Next, a fairy from the sun. + + Once you walked a grown-up strand + Fish-wife siren, full of lure, + Snaring with devices sure + Lads who murdered on the sand. + But on most days just a child + Dimpled as no grown-folk are, + Cold of kiss as some north star, + Violet from the valleys wild. + Snared as innocence must be, + Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead-- + At the end of tortures dread + Roaring cowboys set you free. + + Fly, O song, to her to-day, + Like a cowboy cross the land. + Snatch her from Belasco's hand + And that prison called Broadway. + + All the village swains await + One dear lily-girl demure, + Saucy, dancing, cold and pure, + Elf who must return in state. + + + + +Blanche Sweet + + Moving-picture Actress + +(After seeing the reel called "Oil and Water".) + + + + Beauty has a throne-room + In our humorous town, + Spoiling its hob-goblins, + Laughing shadows down. + Rank musicians torture + Ragtime ballads vile, + But we walk serenely + Down the odorous aisle. + We forgive the squalor + And the boom and squeal + For the Great Queen flashes + From the moving reel. + + Just a prim blonde stranger + In her early day, + Hiding brilliant weapons, + Too averse to play, + Then she burst upon us + Dancing through the night. + Oh, her maiden radiance, + Veils and roses white. + With new powers, yet cautious, + Not too smart or skilled, + That first flash of dancing + Wrought the thing she willed:-- + Mobs of us made noble + By her strong desire, + By her white, uplifting, + Royal romance-fire. + + Though the tin piano + Snarls its tango rude, + Though the chairs are shaky + And the dramas crude, + Solemn are her motions, + Stately are her wiles, + Filling oafs with wisdom, + Saving souls with smiles; + 'Mid the restless actors + She is rich and slow. + She will stand like marble, + She will pause and glow, + Though the film is twitching, + Keep a peaceful reign, + Ruler of her passion, + Ruler of our pain! + + + + +Sunshine + +For a Very Little Girl, Not a Year Old. Catharine Frazee Wakefield. + + + + The sun gives not directly + The coal, the diamond crown; + Not in a special basket + Are these from Heaven let down. + + The sun gives not directly + The plough, man's iron friend; + Not by a path or stairway + Do tools from Heaven descend. + + Yet sunshine fashions all things + That cut or burn or fly; + And corn that seems upon the earth + Is made in the hot sky. + + The gravel of the roadbed, + The metal of the gun, + The engine of the airship + Trace somehow from the sun. + + And so your soul, my lady-- + (Mere sunshine, nothing more)-- + Prepares me the contraptions + I work with or adore. + + Within me cornfields rustle, + Niagaras roar their way, + Vast thunderstorms and rainbows + Are in my thought to-day. + + Ten thousand anvils sound there + By forges flaming white, + And many books I read there, + And many books I write; + + And freedom's bells are ringing, + And bird-choirs chant and fly-- + The whole world works in me to-day + And all the shining sky, + + Because of one small lady + Whose smile is my chief sun. + She gives not any gift to me + Yet all gifts, giving one.... + Amen. + + + + +An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic + + + + Sometimes I dip my pen and find the bottle full of fire, + The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire. + It's Etna, or Vesuvius, if those big things were small, + And then 'tis but itself again, and does not smoke at all. + And so my blood grows cold. I say, "The bottle held but ink, + And, if you thought it otherwise, the worser for your think." + And then, just as I throw my scribbled paper on the floor, + The bottle says, "Fe, fi, fo, fum," and steams and shouts some more. + O sad deceiving ink, as bad as liquor in its way-- + All demons of a bottle size have pranced from you to-day, + And seized my pen for hobby-horse as witches ride a broom, + And left a trail of brimstone words and blots and gobs of gloom. + And yet when I am extra good and say my prayers at night, + And mind my ma, and do the chores, and speak to folks polite, + My bottle spreads a rainbow-mist, and from the vapor fine + Ten thousand troops from fairyland come riding in a line. + I've seen them on their chargers race around my study chair, + They opened wide the window and rode forth upon the air. + The army widened as it went, and into myriads grew, + O how the lances shimmered, how the silvery trumpets blew! + + + + +When Gassy Thompson Struck it Rich + + + + He paid a Swede twelve bits an hour + Just to invent a fancy style + To spread the celebration paint + So it would show at least a mile. + + Some things they did I will not tell. + They're not quite proper for a rhyme. + But I WILL say Yim Yonson Swede + Did sure invent a sunflower time. + + One thing they did that I can tell + And not offend the ladies here:-- + They took a goat to Simp's Saloon + And made it take a bath in beer. + + That ENTERprise took MANagement. + They broke a wash-tub in the fray. + But mister goat was bathed all right + And bar-keep Simp was, too, they say. + + They wore girls' pink straw hats to church + And clucked like hens. They surely did. + They bought two HOtel frying pans + And in them down the mountain slid. + + They went to Denver in good clothes, + And kept Burt's grill-room wide awake, + And cut about like jumping-jacks, + And ordered seven-dollar steak. + + They had the waiters whirling round + Just sweeping up the smear and smash. + They tried to buy the State-house flag. + They showed the Janitor the cash. + + And old Dan Tucker on a toot, + Or John Paul Jones before the breeze, + Or Indians eating fat fried dog, + Were not as happy babes as these. + + One morn, in hills near Cripple-creek + With cheerful swears the two awoke. + The Swede had twenty cents, all right. + But Gassy Thompson was clean broke. + + + + +Rhymes for Gloriana + + + + I. The Doll upon the Topmost Bough + + + This doll upon the topmost bough, + This playmate-gift, in Christmas dress, + Was taken down and brought to me + One sleety night most comfortless. + + Her hair was gold, her dolly-sash + Was gray brocade, most good to see. + The dear toy laughed, and I forgot + The ill the new year promised me. + + + + II. On Suddenly Receiving a Curl Long Refused + + + Oh, saucy gold circle of fairyland silk-- + Impudent, intimate, delicate treasure: + A noose for my heart and a ring for my finger:-- + Here in my study you sing me a measure. + + Whimsy and song in my little gray study! + Words out of wonderland, praising her fineness, + Touched with her pulsating, delicate laughter, + Saying, "The girl is all daring and kindness!" + + Saying, "Her soul is all feminine gameness, + Trusting her insights, ardent for living; + She would be weeping with me and be laughing, + A thoroughbred, joyous receiving and giving!" + + + + III. On Receiving One of Gloriana's Letters + + + Your pen needs but a ruffle + To be Pavlova whirling. + It surely is a scalawag + A-scamping down the page. + A pretty little May-wind + The morning buds uncurling. + And then the white sweet Russian, + The dancer of the age. + + Your pen's the Queen of Sheba, + Such serious questions bringing, + That merry rascal Solomon + Would show a sober face:-- + And then again Pavlova + To set our spirits singing, + The snowy-swan bacchante + All glamour, glee and grace. + + + + IV. In Praise of Gloriana's Remarkable Golden Hair + + + The gleaming head of one fine friend + Is bent above my little song, + So through the treasure-pits of Heaven + In fancy's shoes, I march along. + + I wander, seek and peer and ponder + In Splendor's last ensnaring lair-- + 'Mid burnished harps and burnished crowns + Where noble chariots gleam and flare: + + Amid the spirit-coins and gems, + The plates and cups and helms of fire-- + The gorgeous-treasure-pits of Heaven-- + Where angel-misers slake desire! + + O endless treasure-pits of gold + Where silly angel-men make mirth-- + I think that I am there this hour, + Though walking in the ways of earth! + + + + + +Fourth Section ~~ Twenty Poems in which the Moon is the Principal Figure of Speech + + + + + +Once More--To Gloriana + + + + Girl with the burning golden eyes, + And red-bird song, and snowy throat: + I bring you gold and silver moons + And diamond stars, and mists that float. + I bring you moons and snowy clouds, + I bring you prairie skies to-night + To feebly praise your golden eyes + And red-bird song, and throat so white. + + + + +First Section: Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children + + + + I. Euclid + + + Old Euclid drew a circle + On a sand-beach long ago. + He bounded and enclosed it + With angles thus and so. + His set of solemn greybeards + Nodded and argued much + Of arc and of circumference, + Diameter and such. + A silent child stood by them + From morning until noon + Because they drew such charming + Round pictures of the moon. + + + + II. The Haughty Snail-king + + (What Uncle William told the Children) + + + Twelve snails went walking after night. + They'd creep an inch or so, + Then stop and bug their eyes + And blow. + Some folks... are... deadly... slow. + Twelve snails went walking yestereve, + Led by their fat old king. + They were so dull their princeling had + No sceptre, robe or ring-- + Only a paper cap to wear + When nightly journeying. + + This king-snail said: "I feel a thought + Within.... It blossoms soon.... + O little courtiers of mine,... + I crave a pretty boon.... + Oh, yes... (High thoughts with effort come + And well-bred snails are ALMOST dumb.) + "I wish I had a yellow crown + As glistering... as... the moon." + + + + III. What the Rattlesnake Said + + + The moon's a little prairie-dog. + He shivers through the night. + He sits upon his hill and cries + For fear that _I_ will bite. + + The sun's a broncho. He's afraid + Like every other thing, + And trembles, morning, noon and night, + Lest _I_ should spring, and sting. + + + + IV. The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky + + (What the Little Girl Said) + + + The Moon's the North Wind's cooky. + He bites it, day by day, + Until there's but a rim of scraps + That crumble all away. + + The South Wind is a baker. + He kneads clouds in his den, + And bakes a crisp new moon _that... greedy + North... Wind... eats... again!_ + + + + V. Drying their Wings + + (What the Carpenter Said) + + + The moon's a cottage with a door. + Some folks can see it plain. + Look, you may catch a glint of light, + A sparkle through the pane, + Showing the place is brighter still + Within, though bright without. + There, at a cosy open fire + Strange babes are grouped about. + The children of the wind and tide-- + The urchins of the sky, + Drying their wings from storms and things + So they again can fly. + + + + VI. What the Gray-winged Fairy Said + + + The moon's a gong, hung in the wild, + Whose song the fays hold dear. + Of course you do not hear it, child. + It takes a FAIRY ear. + + The full moon is a splendid gong + That beats as night grows still. + It sounds above the evening song + Of dove or whippoorwill. + + + + VII. Yet Gentle will the Griffin Be + + (What Grandpa told the Children) + + + The moon? It is a griffin's egg, + Hatching to-morrow night. + And how the little boys will watch + With shouting and delight + To see him break the shell and stretch + And creep across the sky. + The boys will laugh. The little girls, + I fear, may hide and cry. + Yet gentle will the griffin be, + Most decorous and fat, + And walk up to the milky way + And lap it like a cat. + + + + +Second Section: The Moon is a Mirror + + + + I. Prologue. A Sense of Humor + + + No man should stand before the moon + To make sweet song thereon, + With dandified importance, + His sense of humor gone. + + Nay, let us don the motley cap, + The jester's chastened mien, + If we would woo that looking-glass + And see what should be seen. + + O mirror on fair Heaven's wall, + We find there what we bring. + So, let us smile in honest part + And deck our souls and sing. + + Yea, by the chastened jest alone + Will ghosts and terrors pass, + And fays, or suchlike friendly things, + Throw kisses through the glass. + + + + II. On the Garden-wall + + + Oh, once I walked a garden + In dreams. 'Twas yellow grass. + And many orange-trees grew there + In sand as white as glass. + The curving, wide wall-border + Was marble, like the snow. + I walked that wall a fairy-prince + And, pacing quaint and slow, + Beside me were my pages, + Two giant, friendly birds. + Half-swan they were, half peacock. + They spake in courtier-words. + Their inner wings a chariot, + Their outer wings for flight, + They lifted me from dreamland. + We bade those trees good-night. + Swiftly above the stars we rode. + I looked below me soon. + The white-walled garden I had ruled + Was one lone flower--the moon. + + + + III. Written for a Musician + + + Hungry for music with a desperate hunger + I prowled abroad, I threaded through the town; + The evening crowd was clamoring and drinking, + Vulgar and pitiful--my heart bowed down-- + Till I remembered duller hours made noble + By strangers clad in some surprising grace. + Wait, wait, my soul, your music comes ere midnight + Appearing in some unexpected place + With quivering lips, and gleaming, moonlit face. + + + + IV. The Moon is a Painter + + + He coveted her portrait. + He toiled as she grew gay. + She loved to see him labor + In that devoted way. + + And in the end it pleased her, + But bowed him more with care. + Her rose-smile showed so plainly, + Her soul-smile was not there. + + That night he groped without a lamp + To find a cloak, a book, + And on the vexing portrait + By moonrise chanced to look. + + The color-scheme was out of key, + The maiden rose-smile faint, + But through the blessed darkness + She gleamed, his friendly saint. + + The comrade, white, immortal, + His bride, and more than bride-- + The citizen, the sage of mind, + For whom he lived and died. + + + + V. The Encyclopaedia + + + "If I could set the moon upon + This table," said my friend, + "Among the standard poets + And brochures without end, + And noble prints of old Japan, + How empty they would seem, + By that encyclopaedia + Of whim and glittering dream." + + + + VI. What the Miner in the Desert Said + + + The moon's a brass-hooped water-keg, + A wondrous water-feast. + If I could climb the ridge and drink + And give drink to my beast; + If I could drain that keg, the flies + Would not be biting so, + My burning feet be spry again, + My mule no longer slow. + And I could rise and dig for ore, + And reach my fatherland, + And not be food for ants and hawks + And perish in the sand. + + + + VII. What the Coal-heaver Said + + + The moon's an open furnace door + Where all can see the blast, + We shovel in our blackest griefs, + Upon that grate are cast + Our aching burdens, loves and fears + And underneath them wait + Paper and tar and pitch and pine + Called strife and blood and hate. + + Out of it all there comes a flame, + A splendid widening light. + Sorrow is turned to mystery + And Death into delight. + + + + VIII. What the Moon Saw + + + Two statesmen met by moonlight. + Their ease was partly feigned. + They glanced about the prairie. + Their faces were constrained. + In various ways aforetime + They had misled the state, + Yet did it so politely + Their henchmen thought them great. + They sat beneath a hedge and spake + No word, but had a smoke. + A satchel passed from hand to hand. + Next day, the deadlock broke. + + + + IX. What Semiramis Said + + + The moon's a steaming chalice + Of honey and venom-wine. + A little of it sipped by night + Makes the long hours divine. + But oh, my reckless lovers, + They drain the cup and wail, + Die at my feet with shaking limbs + And tender lips all pale. + Above them in the sky it bends + Empty and gray and dread. + To-morrow night 'tis full again, + Golden, and foaming red. + + + + X. What the Ghost of the Gambler Said + + + Where now the huts are empty, + Where never a camp-fire glows, + In an abandoned canyon, + A Gambler's Ghost arose. + He muttered there, "The moon's a sack + Of dust." His voice rose thin: + "I wish I knew the miner-man. + I'd play, and play to win. + In every game in Cripple-creek + Of old, when stakes were high, + I held my own. Now I would play + For that sack in the sky. + The sport would not be ended there. + 'Twould rather be begun. + I'd bet my moon against his stars, + And gamble for the sun." + + + + XI. The Spice-tree + + + This is the song + The spice-tree sings: + "Hunger and fire, + Hunger and fire, + Sky-born Beauty-- + Spice of desire," + Under the spice-tree + Watch and wait, + Burning maidens + And lads that mate. + + The spice-tree spreads + And its boughs come down + Shadowing village and farm and town. + And none can see + But the pure of heart + The great green leaves + And the boughs descending, + And hear the song that is never ending. + + The deep roots whisper, + The branches say:-- + "Love to-morrow, + And love to-day, + And till Heaven's day, + And till Heaven's day." + + The moon is a bird's nest in its branches, + The moon is hung in its topmost spaces. + And there, to-night, two doves play house + While lovers watch with uplifted faces. + Two doves go home + To their nest, the moon. + It is woven of twigs of broken light, + With threads of scarlet and threads of gray + And a lining of down for silk delight. + To their Eden, the moon, fly home our doves, + Up through the boughs of the great spice-tree;-- + And one is the kiss I took from you, + And one is the kiss you gave to me. + + + + XII. The Scissors-grinder + + (What the Tramp Said) + + + The old man had his box and wheel + For grinding knives and shears. + No doubt his bell in village streets + Was joy to children's ears. + And I bethought me of my youth + When such men came around, + And times I asked them in, quite sure + The scissors should be ground. + The old man turned and spoke to me, + His face at last in view. + And then I thought those curious eyes + Were eyes that once I knew. + + "The moon is but an emery-wheel + To whet the sword of God," + He said. "And here beside my fire + I stretch upon the sod + Each night, and dream, and watch the stars + And watch the ghost-clouds go. + And see that sword of God in Heaven + A-waving to and fro. + I see that sword each century, friend. + It means the world-war comes + With all its bloody, wicked chiefs + And hate-inflaming drums. + Men talk of peace, but I have seen + That emery-wheel turn round. + The voice of Abel cries again + To God from out the ground. + The ditches must flow red, the plague + Go stark and screaming by + Each time that sword of God takes edge + Within the midnight sky. + And those that scorned their brothers here + And sowed a wind of shame + Will reap the whirlwind as of old + And face relentless flame." + + And thus the scissors-grinder spoke, + His face at last in view. + _And there beside the railroad bridge + I saw the wandering Jew_. + + + + XIII. My Lady in her White Silk Shawl + + + My lady in her white silk shawl + Is like a lily dim, + Within the twilight of the room + Enthroned and kind and prim. + + My lady! Pale gold is her hair. + Until she smiles her face + Is pale with far Hellenic moods, + With thoughts that find no place + + In our harsh village of the West + Wherein she lives of late, + She's distant as far-hidden stars, + And cold--(almost!)--as fate. + + But when she smiles she's here again + Rosy with comrade-cheer, + A Puritan Bacchante made + To laugh around the year. + + The merry gentle moon herself, + Heart-stirring too, like her, + Wakening wild and innocent love + In every worshipper. + + + + XIV. Aladdin and the Jinn + + + "Bring me soft song," said Aladdin. + "This tailor-shop sings not at all. + Chant me a word of the twilight, + Of roses that mourn in the fall. + Bring me a song like hashish + That will comfort the stale and the sad, + For I would be mending my spirit, + Forgetting these days that are bad, + Forgetting companions too shallow, + Their quarrels and arguments thin, + Forgetting the shouting Muezzin:"-- + "I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn. + + "Bring me old wines," said Aladdin. + "I have been a starved pauper too long. + Serve them in vessels of jade and of shell, + Serve them with fruit and with song:-- + Wines of pre-Adamite Sultans + Digged from beneath the black seas:-- + New-gathered dew from the heavens + Dripped down from Heaven's sweet trees, + Cups from the angels' pale tables + That will make me both handsome and wise, + For I have beheld her, the princess, + Firelight and starlight her eyes. + Pauper I am, I would woo her. + And--let me drink wine, to begin, + Though the Koran expressly forbids it." + "I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn. + + "Plan me a dome," said Aladdin, + "That is drawn like the dawn of the MOON, + When the sphere seems to rest on the mountains, + Half-hidden, yet full-risen soon." + "Build me a dome," said Aladdin, + "That shall cause all young lovers to sigh, + The fullness of life and of beauty, + Peace beyond peace to the eye-- + A palace of foam and of opal, + Pure moonlight without and within, + Where I may enthrone my sweet lady." + "I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn. + + + + XV. The Strength of the Lonely + + (What the Mendicant Said) + + + The moon's a monk, unmated, + Who walks his cell, the sky. + His strength is that of heaven-vowed men + Who all life's flames defy. + + They turn to stars or shadows, + They go like snow or dew-- + Leaving behind no sorrow-- + Only the arching blue. + + + + +Fifth Section + +War. September 1, 1914 Intended to be Read Aloud + + + + + +I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight + + (In Springfield, Illinois) + + + + It is portentous, and a thing of state + That here at midnight, in our little town + A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, + Near the old court-house pacing up and down, + + Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards + He lingers where his children used to play, + Or through the market, on the well-worn stones + He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away. + + A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black, + A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl + Make him the quaint great figure that men love, + The prairie-lawyer, master of us all. + + He cannot sleep upon his hillside now. + He is among us:--as in times before! + And we who toss and lie awake for long + Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door. + + His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings. + Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep? + Too many peasants fight, they know not why, + Too many homesteads in black terror weep. + + The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. + He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main. + He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now + The bitterness, the folly and the pain. + + He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn + Shall come;--the shining hope of Europe free: + The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth, + Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea. + + It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, + That all his hours of travail here for men + Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace + That he may sleep upon his hill again? + + + + +II. A Curse for Kings + + + + A curse upon each king who leads his state, + No matter what his plea, to this foul game, + And may it end his wicked dynasty, + And may he die in exile and black shame. + + If there is vengeance in the Heaven of Heavens, + What punishment could Heaven devise for these + Who fill the rivers of the world with dead, + And turn their murderers loose on all the seas! + + Put back the clock of time a thousand years, + And make our Europe, once the world's proud Queen, + A shrieking strumpet, furious fratricide, + Eater of entrails, wallowing obscene + + In pits where millions foam and rave and bark, + Mad dogs and idiots, thrice drunk with strife; + While Science towers above;--a witch, red-winged: + Science we looked to for the light of life. + + Curse me the men who make and sell iron ships, + Who walk the floor in thought, that they may find + Each powder prompt, each steel with fearful edge, + Each deadliest device against mankind. + + Curse me the sleek lords with their plumes and spurs, + May Heaven give their land to peasant spades, + Give them the brand of Cain, for their pride's sake, + And felon's stripes for medals and for braids. + + Curse me the fiddling, twiddling diplomats, + Haggling here, plotting and hatching there, + Who make the kind world but their game of cards, + Till millions die at turning of a hair. + + What punishment will Heaven devise for these + Who win by others' sweat and hardihood, + Who make men into stinking vultures' meat, + Saying to evil still "Be thou my good"? + + Ah, he who starts a million souls toward death + Should burn in utmost hell a million years! + --Mothers of men go on the destined wrack + To give them life, with anguish and with tears:-- + + Are all those childbed sorrows sneered away? + Yea, fools laugh at the humble christenings, + And cradle-joys are mocked of the fat lords: + These mothers' sons made dead men for the Kings! + + All in the name of this or that grim flag, + No angel-flags in all the rag-array-- + Banners the demons love, and all Hell sings + And plays wild harps. Those flags march forth to-day! + + + + +III. Who Knows? + + + + They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows? + They say one king is doddering and grey. + They say one king is slack and sick of mind, + A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play. + + Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place? + Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane? + Their place of maudlin, slavering conference + Till every far-off farmstead goes insane? + + + + +IV. To Buddha + + + + Awake again in Asia, Lord of Peace, + Awake and preach, for her far swordsmen rise. + And would they sheathe the sword before you, friend, + Or scorn your way, while looking in your eyes? + + Good comrade and philosopher and prince, + Thoughtful and thoroughbred and strong and kind, + Dare they to move against your pride benign, + Lord of the Law, high chieftain of the mind? + + ***** + + But what can Europe say, when in your name + The throats are cut, the lotus-ponds turn red? + And what can Europe say, when with a laugh + Old Asia heaps her hecatombs of dead? + + + + +V. The Unpardonable Sin + + + + This is the sin against the Holy Ghost:-- + To speak of bloody power as right divine, + And call on God to guard each vile chief's house, + And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine:-- + + To go forth killing in White Mercy's name, + Making the trenches stink with spattered brains, + Tearing the nerves and arteries apart, + Sowing with flesh the unreaped golden plains. + + In any Church's name, to sack fair towns, + And turn each home into a screaming sty, + To make the little children fugitive, + And have their mothers for a quick death cry,-- + + This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: + This is the sin no purging can atone:-- + To send forth rapine in the name of Christ:-- + To set the face, and make the heart a stone. + + + + +VI. Above the Battle's Front + + + + St. Francis, Buddha, Tolstoi, and St. John-- + Friends, if you four, as pilgrims, hand in hand, + Returned, the hate of earth once more to dare, + And walked upon the water and the land, + + If you, with words celestial, stopped these kings + For sober conclave, ere their battle great, + Would they for one deep instant then discern + Their crime, their heart-rot, and their fiend's estate? + + If you should float above the battle's front, + Pillars of cloud, of fire that does not slay, + Bearing a fifth within your regal train, + The Son of David in his strange array-- + + If, in his majesty, he towered toward Heaven, + Would they have hearts to see or understand? + ... Nay, for he hovers there to-night we know, + Thorn-crowned above the water and the land. + + + + +VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your Psyche Wings + + + + Though I have found you like a snow-drop pale, + On sunny days have found you weak and still, + Though I have often held your girlish head + Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill:-- + + Under the blessing of your Psyche-wings + I hide to-night like one small broken bird, + So soothed I half-forget the world gone mad:-- + And all the winds of war are now unheard. + + My heaven-doubting pennons feel your hands + With touch most delicate so circling round, + That for an hour I dream that God is good. + And in your shadow, Mercy's ways abound. + + I thought myself the guard of your frail state, + And yet I come to-night a helpless guest, + Hiding beneath your giant Psyche-wings, + Against the pallor of your wondrous breast. + + +[End of original text.] + + + + +Biographical Note: + +Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931): + +(Vachel is pronounced Vay-chul, that is, it rhymes with 'Rachel'). + +"The Eagle that is Forgotten" and "The Congo" are two of his best-known +poems, and appear in his first two volumes of verse, "General William +Booth Enters into Heaven" (1913) and "The Congo" (1914). + +Lindsay himself considered his drawings and his prose writings to be as +important as his verse, all coming together to form a whole. His +"Collected Poems" (1925) gives a good selection. + +***** + +From an anthology of verse by Jessie B. Rittenhouse (1913, 1917): + +"Lindsay, Vachel. Born November 10, 1879. Educated at Hiram College, +Ohio. He took up the study of art and studied at the Art Institute, +Chicago, 1900-03 and at the New York School of Art, 1904-05. For a time +after his technical study, he lectured upon art in its practical +relation to the community, and returning to his home in Springfield, +Illinois, issued what one might term his manifesto in the shape of "The +Village Magazine", divided about equally between prose articles, +pertaining to beautifying his native city, and poems, illustrated by his +own drawings. Soon after this, Mr. Lindsay, taking as scrip for the +journey, "Rhymes to be Traded for Bread", made a pilgrimage on foot +through several Western States going as far afield as New Mexico. The +story of this journey is given in his volume, "Adventures while +Preaching the Gospel of Beauty". Mr. Lindsay first attracted attention +in poetry by "General William Booth Enters into Heaven", a poem which +became the title of his first volume, in 1913. His second volume was +"The Congo", published in 1914. He is attempting to restore to poetry +its early appeal as a spoken art, and his later work differs greatly +from the selections contained in this anthology." + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Congo and Other Poems, by Vachel Lindsay + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1021 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1022-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1022-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..40d7eb9d --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1022-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1153 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1022 *** + +WALKING + +by Henry David Thoreau + + + + +I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as +contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as +an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member +of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make +an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the +minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of +that. + +I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who +understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a +genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived +“from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and +asked charity, under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy +Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a +Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their +walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they +who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, +however, would derive the word from sans terre without land or a home, +which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular +home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of +successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be +the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is +no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while +sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the +first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is +a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth +and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels. + +It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, +nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our +expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old +hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our +steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the +spirit of undying adventure, never to return,—prepared to send back +our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are +ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife +and child and friends, and never see them again,—if you have paid your +debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free +man; then you are ready for a walk. + +To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes +have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, +or rather an old, order—not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or +Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. +The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems +now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker—not +the Knight, but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of +Church and State and People. + +We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art; +though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be +received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but +they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and +independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only +by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven +to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers. +Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can +remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten years +ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half +an hour in the woods; but I know very well that they have confined +themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they may make +to belong to this select class. No doubt they were elevated for a moment +as by the reminiscence of a previous state of existence, when even they +were foresters and outlaws. + + “When he came to grene wode, + In a mery mornynge, + There he herde the notes small + Of byrdes mery syngynge. + + “It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn, + That I was last here; + Me lyste a lytell for to shote + At the donne dere.” + +I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend +four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering +through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from +all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, +or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics +and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all +the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them—as if the +legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon—I think that +they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago. + +I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some +rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh +hour, or four o’clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, +when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the +daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for,—I +confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing +of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to +shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years +almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of—sitting +there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock +in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the three-o’clock-in-the-morning +courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully +at this hour in the afternoon over against one’s self whom you have +known all the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound +by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say +between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning +papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general +explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a legion of +antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an +airing—and so the evil cure itself. + +How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand +it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not +stand it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking +the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste +past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such +an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about +these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I +appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never +turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch over the +slumberers. + +No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with +it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor +occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the +evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before +sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour. + +But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking +exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours—as +the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and +adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the +springs of life. Think of a man’s swinging dumb-bells for his health, +when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him! + +Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast +which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth’s servant +to show him her master’s study, she answered, “Here is his library, but +his study is out of doors.” + +Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a +certain roughness of character—will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over +some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, +or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy +of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a +softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an +increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more +susceptible to some influences important to our intellectual and moral +growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and +no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin +skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will fall off fast enough—that +the natural remedy is to be found in the proportion which the night +bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There +will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous +palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect +and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of +idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks +itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience. + +When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become +of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects +of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to +themselves, since they did not go to the woods. “They planted groves and +walks of Platanes,” where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos +open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the +woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens +that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there +in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning +occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that +I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run +in my head and I am not where my body is—I am out of my senses. In my +walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the +woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, +and cannot help a shudder when I find myself so implicated even in what +are called good works—for this may sometimes happen. + +My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have +walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have +not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, +and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours’ walking +will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single +farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the +dominions of the king of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony +discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle +of ten miles’ radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the +threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite +familiar to you. + +Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of +houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply +deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A people +who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand! I saw +the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, +and some worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while +heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the angels +going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of +paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy +Stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without +a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been driven, and looking +nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor. + +I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing +at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road +except where the fox and the mink do: first along by the river, and then +the brook, and then the meadow and the wood-side. There are square miles +in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see +civilization and the abodes of man afar. The farmers and their works +are scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and +his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and +manufactures and agriculture even politics, the most alarming of them +all,—I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape. +Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder +leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveler thither. If you would go to +the political world, follow the great road,—follow that market-man, keep +his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you straight to it; for it, too, +has its place merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as +from a bean field into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half hour +I can walk off to some portion of the earth’s surface where a man does +not stand from one year’s end to another, and there, consequently, +politics are not, for they are but as the cigar smoke of a man. + +The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of +the highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are +the arms and legs—a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and +ordinary of travelers. The word is from the Latin villa which together +with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from +veho, to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which things +are carried. They who got their living by teaming were said vellaturam +facere. Hence, too, the Latin word _vilis_ and our _vile_; also _villain_. +This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They +are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them, without traveling +themselves. + +Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across +lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel +in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any +tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead. I am +a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The +landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not +make that use of my figure. I walk out into a nature such as the old +prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may +name it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Vespucius, +nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer +amount of it in mythology than in any history of America, so called, +that I have seen. + +However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden with profit, as +if they led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There +is the Old Marlborough Road, which does not go to Marlborough now, +methinks, unless that is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the +bolder to speak of it here, because I presume that there are one or two +such roads in every town. + + THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD. + + Where they once dug for money, + But never found any; + Where sometimes Martial Miles + Singly files, + And Elijah Wood, + I fear for no good: + No other man, + Save Elisha Dugan— + O man of wild habits, + Partridges and rabbits, + Who hast no cares + Only to set snares, + Who liv’st all alone, + Close to the bone; + And where life is sweetest + Constantly eatest. + When the spring stirs my blood + With the instinct to travel, + I can get enough gravel + On the Old Marlborough Road. + Nobody repairs it, + For nobody wears it; + It is a living way, + As the Christians say. + Not many there be + Who enter therein, + Only the guests of the + Irishman Quin. + What is it, what is it + But a direction out there, + And the bare possibility + Of going somewhere? + Great guide boards of stone, + But travelers none; + Cenotaphs of the towns + Named on their crowns. + It is worth going to see + Where you might be. + What king + Did the thing, + I am still wondering; + Set up how or when, + By what selectmen, + Gourgas or Lee, + Clark or Darby? + They’re a great endeavor + To be something forever; + Blank tablets of stone, + Where a traveler might groan, + And in one sentence + Grave all that is known + Which another might read, + In his extreme need. + I know one or two + Lines that would do, + Literature that might stand + All over the land, + Which a man could remember + Till next December, + And read again in the spring, + After the thawing. + If with fancy unfurled + You leave your abode, + You may go round the world + By the Old Marlborough Road. + +At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private +property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative +freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off +into so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and +exclusive pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man +traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, +and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean +trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively +is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us +improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come. + +What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will +walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we +unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent +to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable +from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain +take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which +is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the +interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult +to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our +idea. + +When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will +bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, +I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and +inevitably settle southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow +or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to +settle—varies a few degrees, and does not always point due southwest, +it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always +settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to +me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. +The outline which would bound my walks would be, not a circle, but a +parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits which have been +thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in +which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round +irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a +thousandth time, that I will walk into the southwest or west. Eastward I +go only by force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads +me. It is hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or +sufficient wildness and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not +excited by the prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest +which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward +the setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in it of enough +consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I will, on this side is the +city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and +more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. I should not lay so much +stress on this fact, if I did not believe that something like this is +the prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward Oregon, and +not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that +mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed +the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the settlement of +Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging +from the moral and physical character of the first generation of +Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern +Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. “The world ends +there,” say they; “beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea.” It is +unmitigated East where they live. + +We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and +literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the +future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a +Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity +to forget the Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed +this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before +it arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the +Pacific, which is three times as wide. + +I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of +singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk +with the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin +to the migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds,—which, in some +instances, is known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them +to a general and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some, +crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail +raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their dead,—that +something like the furor which affects the domestic cattle in the +spring, and which is referred to a worm in their tails,—affects both +nations and individuals, either perennially or from time to time. Not +a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some extent +unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I +should probably take that disturbance into account. + + “Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, + And palmeres for to seken strange strondes.” + +Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West +as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears +to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great +Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those +mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which +were last gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis, and the islands +and gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear +to have been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and +poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset +sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those +fables? + +Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He +obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. The herd of men +in those days scented fresh pastures from afar. + + “And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, + And now was dropped into the western bay; + At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue; + To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.” + +Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that +occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich and varied in +its productions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as +this is? Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that “the species of +large trees are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in +the United States there are more than one hundred and forty species that +exceed thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain +this size.” Later botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt +came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, +and he beheld it in its greatest perfection in the primitive forests of +the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness on the earth, which he has so +eloquently described. The geographer Guyot, himself a European, goes +further—further than I am ready to follow him; yet not when he says: “As +the plant is made for the animal, as the vegetable world is made for the +animal world, America is made for the man of the Old World.... The man +of the Old World sets out upon his way. Leaving the highlands of Asia, +he descends from station to station towards Europe. Each of his steps +is marked by a new civilization superior to the preceding, by a greater +power of development. Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of +this unknown ocean, the bounds of which he knows not, and turns upon +his footprints for an instant.” When he has exhausted the rich soil of +Europe, and reinvigorated himself, “then recommences his adventurous +career westward as in the earliest ages.” So far Guyot. + +From this western impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the +Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The younger +Michaux, in his Travels West of the Alleghanies in 1802, says that the +common inquiry in the newly settled West was, “‘From what part of +the world have you come?’ As if these vast and fertile regions would +naturally be the place of meeting and common country of all the +inhabitants of the globe.” + +To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, Ex oriente lux; ex occidente +FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit. + +Sir Francis Head, an English traveler and a Governor-General of Canada, +tells us that “in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New +World, Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has +painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she +used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World.... The heavens of +America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, +the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter the +thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, +the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the +forests bigger, the plains broader.” This statement will do at least +to set against Buffon’s account of this part of the world and its +productions. + +Linnæus said long ago, “Nescio quæ facies læta, glabra plantis +Americanis” (I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect +of American plants); and I think that in this country there are no, or +at most very few, Africanæ bestiæ, African beasts, as the Romans called +them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the +habitation of man. We are told that within three miles of the center of +the East Indian city of Singapore, some of the inhabitants are annually +carried off by tigers; but the traveler can lie down in the woods at +night almost anywhere in North America without fear of wild beasts. + +These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than +in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America +appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these +facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry +and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, +the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, +and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that +climate does thus react on man—as there is something in the mountain +air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater +perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences? +Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I trust +that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, +fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky—our understanding more +comprehensive and broader, like our plains—our intellect generally on a +grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains +and forests,—and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth +and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear to the +traveler something, he knows not what, of læta and glabra, of joyous and +serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does the world go on, and +why was America discovered? + +To Americans I hardly need to say— + + “Westward the star of empire takes its way.” +As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise +was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this +country. + +Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England; though +we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West. There +is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to +the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it +is more important to understand even the slang of today. + +Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like +a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in +something more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and +repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were +music to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. There +were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I knew only in +history. They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There seemed to +come up from its waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed +music as of crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated along under +the spell of enchantment, as if I had been transported to an heroic age, +and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry. + +Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked +my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats +wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of +Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before +I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri and +heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona’s Cliff—still thinking more +of the future than of the past or present—I saw that this was a Rhine +stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to +be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the river; +and I felt that this was the heroic age itself, though we know it not, +for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men. + +The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I +have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of +the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The +cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the +forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our +ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by +a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has +risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar +wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled +by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of +the northern forests who were. + +I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which +the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock spruce or arbor +vitæ in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking +for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the +marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of course. +Some of our northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer, +as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers, as +long as they are soft. And herein, perchance, they have stolen a march +on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This +is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughterhouse pork to make +a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure,—as +if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw. + +There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, +to which I would migrate—wild lands where no settler has squatted; to +which, methinks, I am already acclimated. + +The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland, as well +as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious +perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild +antelope, so much a part and parcel of Nature, that his very person +should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us +of those parts of nature which he most haunts. I feel no disposition to +be satirical, when the trapper’s coat emits the odor of musquash even; +it is a sweeter scent to me than that which commonly exhales from the +merchant’s or the scholar’s garments. When I go into their wardrobes and +handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy plains and flowery +meads which they have frequented, but of dusty merchants’ exchanges and +libraries rather. + +A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is +a fitter color than white for a man—a denizen of the woods. “The pale +white man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the +naturalist says, “A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like +a plant bleached by the gardener’s art, compared with a fine, dark green +one, growing vigorously in the open fields.” + +Ben Jonson exclaims,— + + “How near to good is what is fair!” +So I would say,— + + “How near to good is what is wild!” + +Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet +subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward +incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made +infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country +or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be +climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees. + +Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not +in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When, +formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had +contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted +solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog—a +natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. +I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native +town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no +richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda +(Cassandra calyculata) which cover these tender places on the earth’s +surface. Botany cannot go farther than tell me the names of the shrubs +which grow there—the high-blueberry, panicled andromeda, lamb-kill, +azalea, and rhodora—all standing in the quaking sphagnum. I often think +that I should like to have my house front on this mass of dull red +bushes, omitting other flower plots and borders, transplanted spruce +and trim box, even graveled walks—to have this fertile spot under my +windows, not a few imported barrow-fuls of soil only to cover the sand +which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my +parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meager assemblage of +curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and art, which I call my +front yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance +when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the +passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was +never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments, +acorn tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills +up to the very edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be the best +place for a dry cellar,) so that there be no access on that side to +citizens. Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, +and you could go in the back way. + +Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to +dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human +art contrived, or else of a dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for +the swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens, for me! + +My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give +me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air +and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveler +Burton says of it—“Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, +hospitable and single-minded.... In the desert, spirituous liquors +excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal +existence.” They who have been traveling long on the steppes of Tartary +say, “On reentering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and +turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to +fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia.” When +I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most +interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as +a sacred place,—a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, +of Nature. The wild wood covers the virgin mould,—and the same soil is +good for men and for trees. A man’s health requires as many acres of +meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck. There are +the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more by the +righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. A +township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive +forest rots below—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and +potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a +soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness +comes the reformer eating locusts and wild honey. + +To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for +them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago +they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very +aspect of those primitive and rugged trees there was, methinks, a +tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibers of men’s +thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days +of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good +thickness, and we no longer produce tar and turpentine. + +The civilized nations—Greece, Rome, England—have been sustained by the +primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive +as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is +to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and +it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There +the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the +philosopher comes down on his marrow bones. + +It is said to be the task of the American “to work the virgin soil,” and +that “agriculture here already assumes proportions unknown everywhere +else.” I think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he +redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects +more natural. I was surveying for a man the other day a single straight +line one hundred and thirty-two rods long, through a swamp at whose +entrance might have been written the words which Dante read over the +entrance to the infernal regions,—“Leave all hope, ye that enter”—that +is, of ever getting out again; where at one time I saw my employer +actually up to his neck and swimming for his life in his property, +though it was still winter. He had another similar swamp which I +could not survey at all, because it was completely under water, and +nevertheless, with regard to a third swamp, which I did survey from a +distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts, that he would not +part with it for any consideration, on account of the mud which it +contained. And that man intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole +in the course of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his +spade. I refer to him only as the type of a class. + +The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories, +which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the +sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and +the bog hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with +the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian’s +cornfield into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not +the skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench +himself in the land than a clam-shell. But the farmer is armed with plow +and spade. + +In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but +another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking +in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not +learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift +and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which +’mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is +something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and +perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the west or +in the jungles of the east. Genius is a light which makes the darkness +visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple +of knowledge itself—and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the +race, which pales before the light of common day. + +English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake +Poets—Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare +included—breathes no quite fresh and in this sense wild strain. It is an +essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. +Her wilderness is a green wood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There is +plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her +chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild man in +her, became extinct. + +The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The +poet today, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the +accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer. + +Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a +poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak +for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive +down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his +words as often as he used them—transplanted them to his page with earth +adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural +that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of +spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a +library,—aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, +for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature. + +I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this +yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is +tame. I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, +any account which contents me of that Nature with which even I am +acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan +nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, in short, can give. Mythology +comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a Nature, +at least, has Grecian mythology its root in than English literature! +Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was +exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; +and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All +other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses; +but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as +mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the +decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives. + +The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The +valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their +crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, +the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. +Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become +a fiction of the past,—as it is to some extent a fiction of the +present,—the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology. + +The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they +may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among +Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends +itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis +as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are +reminiscent,—others merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic. +Some forms of disease, even, may prophesy forms of health. The geologist +has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, +and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in +the forms of fossil species which were extinct before man was created, +and hence “indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state +of organic existence.” The Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an +elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; +and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of +place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered +in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am +partial to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of time and +development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. The +partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot. + +In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in +a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human +voice—take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance,—which +by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries +emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their +wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild +men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of +the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet. + +I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights—any +evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and +vigor; as when my neighbor’s cow breaks out of her pasture early in the +spring and boldly swims the river, a cold, gray tide, twenty-five or +thirty rods wide, swollen by the melted snow. It is the buffalo crossing +the Mississippi. This exploit confers some dignity on the herd in my +eyes—already dignified. The seeds of instinct are preserved under the +thick hides of cattle and horses, like seeds in the bowels of the earth, +an indefinite period. + +Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a +dozen bullocks and cows running about and frisking in unwieldy sport, +like huge rats, even like kittens. They shook their heads, raised their +tails, and rushed up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as +well as by their activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas! +a sudden loud Whoa! would have damped their ardor at once, reduced them +from venison to beef, and stiffened their sides and sinews like the +locomotive. Who but the Evil One has cried “Whoa!” to mankind? +Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of +locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, +is meeting the horse and the ox half way. Whatever part the whip has +touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a side of any of +the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a side of beef? + +I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be +made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats +still left to sow before they become submissive members of society. +Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; +and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited +disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their natures +broken that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are in the main +alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. +If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as well as +another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any man +can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve so +rare a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius says,—“The +skins of the tiger and the leopard, when they are tanned, are as the +skins of the dog and the sheep tanned.” But it is not the part of a true +culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious; and +tanning their skins for shoes is not the best use to which they can be +put. + +When looking over a list of men’s names in a foreign language, as +of military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular +subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The +name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human +than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles +and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been +named by the child’s rigmarole—Iery-wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan. I +see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to +each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own dialect. +The names of men are, of course, as cheap and meaningless as Bose and +Tray, the names of dogs. + +Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named +merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to +know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. +We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman +army had a name of his own—because we have not supposed that he had a +character of his own. At present our only true names are nicknames. I +knew a boy who, from his peculiar energy, was called “Buster” by +his playmates, and this rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some +travellers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but +earned it, and his name was his fame; and among some tribes he acquired +a new name with every new exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name +for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame. + +I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still +see men in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less +strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his +own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and +a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my +neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William or Edwin, takes it off +with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when asleep or in anger, or +aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some +of his kin at such a time his original wild name in some jaw-breaking or +else melodious tongue. + +Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother of ours, Nature, lying all +around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the +leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to +that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort +of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, +a civilization destined to have a speedy limit. + +In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a +certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are +already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the +meadows, and deepens the soil—not that which trusts to heating manures, +and improved implements and modes of culture only! + +Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, +both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very +late, he honestly slumbered a fool’s allowance. + +There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, a Frenchman, +discovered “actinism,” that power in the sun’s rays which produces a +chemical effect; that granite rocks, and stone structures, and statues +of metal “are all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of +sunshine, and, but for provisions of Nature no less wonderful, would +soon perish under the delicate touch of the most subtle of the agencies +of the universe.” But he observed that “those bodies which underwent +this change during the daylight possessed the power of restoring +themselves to their original conditions during the hours of night, +when this excitement was no longer influencing them.” Hence it has been +inferred that “the hours of darkness are as necessary to the inorganic +creation as we know night and sleep are to the organic kingdom.” Not +even does the moon shine every night, but gives place to darkness. + +I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more +than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, +but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an +immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the +annual decay of the vegetation which it supports. + +There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus +invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky +knowledge—Gramatica parda—tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived +from that same leopard to which I have referred. + +We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is +said that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need +of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call +Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what +is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know +something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? +What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our +negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of +the newspapers—for what are the libraries of science but files of +newspapers—a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory, +and then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad into the +Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a horse and +leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the Society +for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,—Go to grass. You have +eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop. The very +cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of May; though +I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the barn and +fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society for the +Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle. + +A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his +knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being +ugly. Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a +subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he +who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all? + +My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head +in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest +that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. +I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more +definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the +insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that +there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our +philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot +know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely +and with impunity in the face of the sun: ?? t? ????, ?? ?e???? +???se??,—“You will not perceive that, as perceiving a particular thing,” +say the Chaldean Oracles. + +There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we +may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, +but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery +certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before +that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist—and with respect to +knowledge we are all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty +to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the +law-maker. “That is active duty,” says the Vishnu Purana, “which is +not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all +other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the +cleverness of an artist.” + +It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories, +how little exercised we have been in our minds, how few experiences we +have had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, +though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity—though it be with +struggle through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would +be well if all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this +trivial comedy or farce. Dante, Bunyan, and others appear to have been +exercised in their minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of +culture such as our district schools and colleges do not contemplate. +Even Mahomet, though many may scream at his name, had a good deal more +to live for, aye, and to die for, than they have commonly. + +When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is +walking on a railroad, then, indeed, the cars go by without his hearing +them. But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars +return. + + “Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen, + And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms, + Traveler of the windy glens, + Why hast thou left my ear so soon?” + +While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are +attracted strongly to Nature. In their relation to Nature men appear +to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the +animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the +animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there +is among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Κόσμος +Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we +esteem it at best only a curious philological fact. + +For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border +life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and +transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state +into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. +Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a +will-o’-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor +firefly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature is a personality so vast +and universal that we have never seen one of her features. The walker in +the familiar fields which stretch around my native town sometimes finds +himself in another land than is described in their owners’ deeds, as it +were in some faraway field on the confines of the actual Concord, where +her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests +ceases to be suggested. These farms which I have myself surveyed, these +bounds which I have set up, appear dimly still as through a mist; but +they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade from the surface of the +glass, and the picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from +beneath. The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no +trace, and it will have no anniversary. + +I took a walk on Spaulding’s Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting +sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden +rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I +was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining +family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, +unknown to me—to whom the sun was servant—who had not gone into society +in the village—who had not been called on. I saw their park, +their pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding’s +cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew. +Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do +not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. +They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. +They are quite well. The farmer’s cart-path, which leads directly +through their hall, does not in the least put them out, as the muddy +bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. +They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their +neighbor,—notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team +through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their +coat-of-arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. +Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. +There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving +or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done +away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in +May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle +thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry +was not as in knots and excrescences embayed. + +But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out +of my mind even now while I speak and endeavor to recall them, and +recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to +recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their +cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I think I should +move out of Concord. + +We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit +us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, +few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for +the grove in our minds is laid waste,—sold to feed unnecessary fires of +ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them +to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial +season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the +mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal +migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of +the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They +no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin China +grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those gra-a-ate men you hear of! + +We hug the earth—how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate +ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found my +account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top +of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for +I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen +before,—so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked +about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I +certainly should never have seen them. But, above all, I discovered +around me,—it was near the end of June,—on the ends of the topmost +branches only, a few minute and delicate red conelike blossoms, +the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried +straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger +jurymen who walked the streets,—for it was court week—and to farmers and +lumber-dealers and wood-choppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen +the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell +of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns as +perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has from +the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the +heavens, above men’s heads and unobserved by them. We see only the +flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed +their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer +for ages, as well over the heads of Nature’s red children as of her +white ones; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen +them. + +Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed +over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering +the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard +within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us +that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of +thoughts. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. +There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,—the gospel +according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early +and kept up early, and to be where he is, is to be in season, in the +foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and soundness +of Nature, a brag for all the world,—healthiness as of a spring burst +forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last instant of +time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who has not +betrayed his master many times since last he heard that note? + +The merit of this bird’s strain is in its freedom from all +plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, +but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in +doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on +a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a +cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, “There is one of us well, +at any rate,”—and with a sudden gush return to my senses. + +We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a +meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before +setting, after a cold grey day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, +and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on +the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the +shrub-oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the +meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such +a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also +was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of +that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, +never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an +infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child +that walked there, it was more glorious still. + +The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all +the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance as it +has never set before,—where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have +his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and +there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just +beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked +in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, +so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a +golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every +wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun +on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening. + +So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine +more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our +minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening +light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in Autumn. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1022 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1023-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1023-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..543b54cc --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1023-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39844 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1023 *** + + + + +BLEAK HOUSE + +by + +CHARLES DICKENS + + + + +CONTENTS + + Preface + I. In Chancery + II. In Fashion + III. A Progress + IV. Telescopic Philanthropy + V. A Morning Adventure + VI. Quite at Home + VII. The Ghost’s Walk + VIII. Covering a Multitude of Sins + IX. Signs and Tokens + X. The Law-Writer + XI. Our Dear Brother + XII. On the Watch + XIII. Esther’s Narrative + XIV. Deportment + XV. Bell Yard + XVI. Tom-all-Alone’s + XVII. Esther’s Narrative + XVIII. Lady Dedlock + XIX. Moving On + XX. A New Lodger + XXI. The Smallweed Family + XXII. Mr. Bucket + XXIII. Esther’s Narrative + XXIV. An Appeal Case + XXV. Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All + XXVI. Sharpshooters + XXVII. More Old Soldiers Than One + XXVIII. The Ironmaster + XXIX. The Young Man + XXX. Esther’s Narrative + XXXI. Nurse and Patient + XXXII. The Appointed Time + XXXIII. Interlopers + XXXIV. A Turn of the Screw + XXXV. Esther’s Narrative + XXXVI. Chesney Wold + XXXVII. Jarndyce and Jarndyce + XXXVIII. A Struggle + XXXIX. Attorney and Client + XL. National and Domestic + XLI. In Mr. Tulkinghorn’s Room + XLII. In Mr. Tulkinghorn’s Chambers + XLIII. Esther’s Narrative + XLIV. The Letter and the Answer + XLV. In Trust + XLVI. Stop Him! + XLVII. Jo’s Will + XLVIII. Closing In + XLIX. Dutiful Friendship + L. Esther’s Narrative + LI. Enlightened + LII. Obstinacy + LIII. The Track + LIV. Springing a Mine + LV. Flight + LVI. Pursuit + LVII. Esther’s Narrative + LVIII. A Wintry Day and Night + LIX. Esther’s Narrative + LX. Perspective + LXI. A Discovery + LXII. Another Discovery + LXIII. Steel and Iron + LXIV. Esther’s Narrative + LXV. Beginning the World + LXVI. Down in Lincolnshire + LXVII. The Close of Esther’s Narrative + + + + +PREFACE + + +A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a +company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under +any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the +shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought +the judge’s eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. +There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of +progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the +“parsimony of the public,” which guilty public, it appeared, had been +until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means +enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed—I believe by +Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well. + +This seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of +this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to +Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have +originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt +quotation from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets: + + “My nature is subdued + To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand: + Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed!” + +But as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what +has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here +that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of +Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of +Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence, +made public by a disinterested person who was professionally +acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to +end. At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the +court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from +thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in +which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand +pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no +nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is +another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was +commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than +double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in +costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I +could rain them on these pages, to the shame of—a parsimonious +public. + +There is only one other point on which I offer a word of remark. The +possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied +since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite +mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been +abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me +at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous +combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do +not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I +wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There +are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of +the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was minutely investigated +and described by Giuseppe Bianchini, a prebendary of Verona, +otherwise distinguished in letters, who published an account of it at +Verona in 1731, which he afterwards republished at Rome. The +appearances, beyond all rational doubt, observed in that case are the +appearances observed in Mr. Krook’s case. The next most famous +instance happened at Rheims six years earlier, and the historian in +that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produced by +France. The subject was a woman, whose husband was ignorantly +convicted of having murdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher +court, he was acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that +she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous combustion +is given. I do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts, +and that general reference to the authorities which will be found at +page 30, vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of +distinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, in +more modern days, contenting myself with observing that I shall not +abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable +spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences +are usually received.** + +In Bleak House I have purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of +familiar things. + + +1853 + + + *Transcriber’s note. This referred to a specific page in + the printed book. In this Project Gutenberg edition the + pertinent information is in Chapter XXX, paragraph 90. + + ** Another case, very clearly described by a dentist, + occurred at the town of Columbus, in the United States + of America, quite recently. The subject was a German who + kept a liquor-shop and was an inveterate drunkard. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +In Chancery + + +London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting +in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in +the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of +the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, +forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn +Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black +drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown +snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of +the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; +splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one +another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing +their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other +foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke +(if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust +of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and +accumulating at compound interest. + +Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and +meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers +of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. +Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping +into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and +hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales +of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient +Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog +in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, +down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of +his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the +bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog +all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the +misty clouds. + +Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as +the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman +and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their +time—as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling +look. + +The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the +muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, +appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old +corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn +Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in +his High Court of Chancery. + +Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire +too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which +this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds +this day in the sight of heaven and earth. + +On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be +sitting here—as here he is—with a foggy glory round his head, +softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a +large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an +interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the +lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an +afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar +ought to be—as here they are—mistily engaged in one of the ten +thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on +slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running +their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and +making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On +such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or +three of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a +fortune by it, ought to be—as are they not?—ranged in a line, in a +long matted well (but you might look in vain for truth at the bottom +of it) between the registrar’s red table and the silk gowns, with +bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits, +issues, references to masters, masters’ reports, mountains of costly +nonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting +candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it +would never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their +colour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the +uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in +the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the +drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the +Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it +and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the +Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted +lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every +madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined +suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and +begging through the round of every man’s acquaintance, which gives to +monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so +exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain +and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its +practitioners who would not give—who does not often give—the +warning, “Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come +here!” + +Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor’s court this murky afternoon +besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three +counsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors before +mentioned? There is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown; +and there are two or three maces, or petty-bags, or privy purses, or +whatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning, +for no crumb of amusement ever falls from Jarndyce and Jarndyce (the +cause in hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The +short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of +the newspapers invariably decamp with the rest of the regulars when +Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes on. Their places are a blank. Standing on +a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained +sanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet who is +always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting +some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favour. Some say +she really is, or was, a party to a suit, but no one knows for +certain because no one cares. She carries some small litter in a +reticule which she calls her documents, principally consisting of +paper matches and dry lavender. A sallow prisoner has come up, in +custody, for the half-dozenth time to make a personal application “to +purge himself of his contempt,” which, being a solitary surviving +executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts +of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is +not at all likely ever to do. In the meantime his prospects in life +are ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from +Shropshire and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor at +the close of the day’s business and who can by no means be made to +understand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence +after making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself +in a good place and keeps an eye on the judge, ready to call out “My +Lord!” in a voice of sonorous complaint on the instant of his rising. +A few lawyers’ clerks and others who know this suitor by sight linger +on the chance of his furnishing some fun and enlivening the dismal +weather a little. + +Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in +course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it +means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been +observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five +minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the +premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; +innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people +have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found +themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how +or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the +suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new +rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown +up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the +other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and +grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone +out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere +bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth +perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a +coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags +its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless. + +Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good +that has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke +in the profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out +of it. Every Chancellor was “in it,” for somebody or other, when he +was counsel at the bar. Good things have been said about it by +blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers in select port-wine committee +after dinner in hall. Articled clerks have been in the habit of +fleshing their legal wit upon it. The last Lord Chancellor handled it +neatly, when, correcting Mr. Blowers, the eminent silk gown who said +that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes, he +observed, “or when we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr. +Blowers”—a pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and +purses. + +How many people out of the suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched +forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide +question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty +warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many +shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the Six Clerks’ Office who has +copied his tens of thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that +eternal heading, no man’s nature has been made better by it. In +trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under +false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never +come to good. The very solicitors’ boys who have kept the wretched +suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr. Chizzle, +Mizzle, or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments +until dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into +themselves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The receiver in the cause +has acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a +distrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle, +Mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising +themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter +and see what can be done for Drizzle—who was not well used—when +Jarndyce and Jarndyce shall be got out of the office. Shirking and +sharking in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the +ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history +from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted +into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad +course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some +off-hand manner never meant to go right. + +Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the +Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. + +“Mr. Tangle,” says the Lord High Chancellor, latterly something +restless under the eloquence of that learned gentleman. + +“Mlud,” says Mr. Tangle. Mr. Tangle knows more of Jarndyce and +Jarndyce than anybody. He is famous for it—supposed never to have +read anything else since he left school. + +“Have you nearly concluded your argument?” + +“Mlud, no—variety of points—feel it my duty tsubmit—ludship,” is +the reply that slides out of Mr. Tangle. + +“Several members of the bar are still to be heard, I believe?” says +the Chancellor with a slight smile. + +Eighteen of Mr. Tangle’s learned friends, each armed with a little +summary of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a +pianoforte, make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen places +of obscurity. + +“We will proceed with the hearing on Wednesday fortnight,” says the +Chancellor. For the question at issue is only a question of costs, a +mere bud on the forest tree of the parent suit, and really will come +to a settlement one of these days. + +The Chancellor rises; the bar rises; the prisoner is brought forward +in a hurry; the man from Shropshire cries, “My lord!” Maces, bags, +and purses indignantly proclaim silence and frown at the man from +Shropshire. + +“In reference,” proceeds the Chancellor, still on Jarndyce and +Jarndyce, “to the young girl—” + +“Begludship’s pardon—boy,” says Mr. Tangle prematurely. “In +reference,” proceeds the Chancellor with extra distinctness, “to the +young girl and boy, the two young people”—Mr. Tangle crushed—“whom +I directed to be in attendance to-day and who are now in my private +room, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the expediency of +making the order for their residing with their uncle.” + +Mr. Tangle on his legs again. “Begludship’s pardon—dead.” + +“With their”—Chancellor looking through his double eye-glass at the +papers on his desk—“grandfather.” + +“Begludship’s pardon—victim of rash action—brains.” + +Suddenly a very little counsel with a terrific bass voice arises, +fully inflated, in the back settlements of the fog, and says, “Will +your lordship allow me? I appear for him. He is a cousin, several +times removed. I am not at the moment prepared to inform the court in +what exact remove he is a cousin, but he IS a cousin.” + +Leaving this address (delivered like a sepulchral message) ringing in +the rafters of the roof, the very little counsel drops, and the fog +knows him no more. Everybody looks for him. Nobody can see him. + +“I will speak with both the young people,” says the Chancellor anew, +“and satisfy myself on the subject of their residing with their +cousin. I will mention the matter to-morrow morning when I take my +seat.” + +The Chancellor is about to bow to the bar when the prisoner is +presented. Nothing can possibly come of the prisoner’s conglomeration +but his being sent back to prison, which is soon done. The man from +Shropshire ventures another remonstrative “My lord!” but the +Chancellor, being aware of him, has dexterously vanished. Everybody +else quickly vanishes too. A battery of blue bags is loaded with +heavy charges of papers and carried off by clerks; the little mad old +woman marches off with her documents; the empty court is locked up. +If all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has +caused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a +great funeral pyre—why so much the better for other parties than the +parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce! + + + + +CHAPTER II + +In Fashion + + +It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on this same +miry afternoon. It is not so unlike the Court of Chancery but that we +may pass from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies. Both the +world of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent +and usage: oversleeping Rip Van Winkles who have played at strange +games through a deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties whom the +knight will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen +shall begin to turn prodigiously! + +It is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours, which +has its limits too (as your Highness shall find when you have made +the tour of it and are come to the brink of the void beyond), it is a +very little speck. There is much good in it; there are many good and +true people in it; it has its appointed place. But the evil of it is +that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller’s cotton and fine +wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot +see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and +its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air. + +My Lady Dedlock has returned to her house in town for a few days +previous to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to +stay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain. The +fashionable intelligence says so for the comfort of the Parisians, +and it knows all fashionable things. To know things otherwise were to +be unfashionable. My Lady Dedlock has been down at what she calls, in +familiar conversation, her “place” in Lincolnshire. The waters are +out in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge in the park has been +sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground for half a mile +in breadth is a stagnant river with melancholy trees for islands in +it and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain. +My Lady Dedlock’s place has been extremely dreary. The weather for +many a day and night has been so wet that the trees seem wet through, +and the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman’s axe can make no +crash or crackle as they fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave +quagmires where they pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in +the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards +the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for the +falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock’s own windows is +alternately a lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink. The vases +on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day; and +the heavy drops fall—drip, drip, drip—upon the broad flagged +pavement, called from old time the Ghost’s Walk, all night. On +Sundays the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit +breaks out into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste +as of the ancient Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is +childless), looking out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a +keeper’s lodge and seeing the light of a fire upon the latticed +panes, and smoke rising from the chimney, and a child, chased by a +woman, running out into the rain to meet the shining figure of a +wrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of +temper. My Lady Dedlock says she has been “bored to death.” + +Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in +Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the +rabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures +of the Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp +walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along +the old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come +forth again, the fashionable intelligence—which, like the fiend, is +omniscient of the past and present, but not the future—cannot yet +undertake to say. + +Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier +baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely +more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get +on without hills but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on +the whole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when +not enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its +execution on your great county families. He is a gentleman of strict +conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on +the shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather +than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is +an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely +prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man. + +Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, older than my Lady. He +will never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet +sixty-seven. He has a twist of the gout now and then and walks a +little stiffly. He is of a worthy presence, with his light-grey hair +and whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure-white waistcoat, and his +blue coat with bright buttons always buttoned. He is ceremonious, +stately, most polite on every occasion to my Lady, and holds her +personal attractions in the highest estimation. His gallantry to my +Lady, which has never changed since he courted her, is the one little +touch of romantic fancy in him. + +Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she +had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that +perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. But she had +beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to +portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to +these, soon floated her upward, and for years now my Lady Dedlock has +been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence and at the top of +the fashionable tree. + +How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, everybody +knows—or has some reason to know by this time, the matter having +been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having conquered +HER world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the freezing, +mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of +fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the +trophies of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be +translated to heaven to-morrow, she might be expected to ascend +without any rapture. + +She has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet +in its autumn. She has a fine face—originally of a character that +would be rather called very pretty than handsome, but improved into +classicality by the acquired expression of her fashionable state. Her +figure is elegant and has the effect of being tall. Not that she is +so, but that “the most is made,” as the Honourable Bob Stables has +frequently asserted upon oath, “of all her points.” The same +authority observes that she is perfectly got up and remarks in +commendation of her hair especially that she is the best-groomed +woman in the whole stud. + +With all her perfections on her head, my Lady Dedlock has come up +from her place in Lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the fashionable +intelligence) to pass a few days at her house in town previous to her +departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks, +after which her movements are uncertain. And at her house in town, +upon this muddy, murky afternoon, presents himself an old-fashioned +old gentleman, attorney-at-law and eke solicitor of the High Court of +Chancery, who has the honour of acting as legal adviser of the +Dedlocks and has as many cast-iron boxes in his office with that name +outside as if the present baronet were the coin of the conjuror’s +trick and were constantly being juggled through the whole set. Across +the hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and through the +rooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal out of +it—fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in—the old gentleman +is conducted by a Mercury in powder to my Lady’s presence. + +The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made +good thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements and aristocratic +wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mysterious halo of +family confidences, of which he is known to be the silent depository. +There are noble mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of +parks among the growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer +noble secrets than walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of +Mr. Tulkinghorn. He is of what is called the old school—a phrase +generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young—and +wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One +peculiarity of his black clothes and of his black stockings, be they +silk or worsted, is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive +to any glancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses +when not professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless +but quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country +houses and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the +fashionable intelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and +where half the Peerage stops to say “How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?” +He receives these salutations with gravity and buries them along with +the rest of his knowledge. + +Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady and is happy to see Mr. +Tulkinghorn. There is an air of prescription about him which is +always agreeable to Sir Leicester; he receives it as a kind of +tribute. He likes Mr. Tulkinghorn’s dress; there is a kind of tribute +in that too. It is eminently respectable, and likewise, in a general +way, retainer-like. It expresses, as it were, the steward of the +legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cellar, of the Dedlocks. + +Has Mr. Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It may be so, or it may +not, but there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted in +everything associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class—as one +of the leaders and representatives of her little world. She supposes +herself to be an inscrutable Being, quite out of the reach and ken of +ordinary mortals—seeing herself in her glass, where indeed she looks +so. Yet every dim little star revolving about her, from her maid to +the manager of the Italian Opera, knows her weaknesses, prejudices, +follies, haughtinesses, and caprices and lives upon as accurate a +calculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature as her +dressmaker takes of her physical proportions. Is a new dress, a new +custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new +dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? There are +deferential people in a dozen callings whom my Lady Dedlock suspects +of nothing but prostration before her, who can tell you how to manage +her as if she were a baby, who do nothing but nurse her all their +lives, who, humbly affecting to follow with profound subservience, +lead her and her whole troop after them; who, in hooking one, hook +all and bear them off as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet +of the majestic Lilliput. “If you want to address our people, sir,” +say Blaze and Sparkle, the jewellers—meaning by our people Lady +Dedlock and the rest—“you must remember that you are not dealing +with the general public; you must hit our people in their weakest +place, and their weakest place is such a place.” “To make this +article go down, gentlemen,” say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to +their friends the manufacturers, “you must come to us, because we +know where to have the fashionable people, and we can make it +fashionable.” “If you want to get this print upon the tables of my +high connexion, sir,” says Mr. Sladdery, the librarian, “or if you +want to get this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high connexion, +sir, or if you want to secure to this entertainment the patronage of +my high connexion, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to me, for +I have been accustomed to study the leaders of my high connexion, +sir, and I may tell you without vanity that I can turn them round my +finger”—in which Mr. Sladdery, who is an honest man, does not +exaggerate at all. + +Therefore, while Mr. Tulkinghorn may not know what is passing in the +Dedlock mind at present, it is very possible that he may. + +“My Lady’s cause has been again before the Chancellor, has it, Mr. +Tulkinghorn?” says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand. + +“Yes. It has been on again to-day,” Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, making +one of his quiet bows to my Lady, who is on a sofa near the fire, +shading her face with a hand-screen. + +“It would be useless to ask,” says my Lady with the dreariness of the +place in Lincolnshire still upon her, “whether anything has been +done.” + +“Nothing that YOU would call anything has been done to-day,” replies +Mr. Tulkinghorn. + +“Nor ever will be,” says my Lady. + +Sir Leicester has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit. It +is a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing. To be +sure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part +in which was the only property my Lady brought him; and he has a +shadowy impression that for his name—the name of Dedlock—to be in a +cause, and not in the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous +accident. But he regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should +involve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of +confusion, as a something devised in conjunction with a variety of +other somethings by the perfection of human wisdom for the eternal +settlement (humanly speaking) of everything. And he is upon the whole +of a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to +any complaints respecting it would be to encourage some person in the +lower classes to rise up somewhere—like Wat Tyler. + +“As a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file,” says Mr. +Tulkinghorn, “and as they are short, and as I proceed upon the +troublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients with any +new proceedings in a cause”—cautious man Mr. Tulkinghorn, taking no +more responsibility than necessary—“and further, as I see you are +going to Paris, I have brought them in my pocket.” + +(Sir Leicester was going to Paris too, by the by, but the delight of +the fashionable intelligence was in his Lady.) + +Mr. Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them +on a golden talisman of a table at my Lady’s elbow, puts on his +spectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp. + +“‘In Chancery. Between John Jarndyce—’” + +My Lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formal +horrors as he can. + +Mr. Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles and begins again lower +down. My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir +Leicester in a great chair looks at the file and appears to have a +stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities as ranging +among the national bulwarks. It happens that the fire is hot where my +Lady sits and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful, +being priceless but small. My Lady, changing her position, sees the +papers on the table—looks at them nearer—looks at them nearer +still—asks impulsively, “Who copied that?” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady’s animation and her +unusual tone. + +“Is it what you people call law-hand?” she asks, looking full at him +in her careless way again and toying with her screen. + +“Not quite. Probably”—Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks—“the +legal character which it has was acquired after the original hand was +formed. Why do you ask?” + +“Anything to vary this detestable monotony. Oh, go on, do!” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater; my Lady screens her +face. Sir Leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries, “Eh? What +do you say?” + +“I say I am afraid,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who had risen hastily, +“that Lady Dedlock is ill.” + +“Faint,” my Lady murmurs with white lips, “only that; but it is like +the faintness of death. Don’t speak to me. Ring, and take me to my +room!” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feet +shuffle and patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr. +Tulkinghorn to return. + +“Better now,” quoth Sir Leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit down +and read to him alone. “I have been quite alarmed. I never knew my +Lady swoon before. But the weather is extremely trying, and she +really has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire.” + + + + +CHAPTER III + +A Progress + + +I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of +these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. I can +remember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say to my +doll when we were alone together, “Now, Dolly, I am not clever, you +know very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!” And so +she used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful +complexion and rosy lips, staring at me—or not so much at me, I +think, as at nothing—while I busily stitched away and told her every +one of my secrets. + +My dear old doll! I was such a shy little thing that I seldom dared +to open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody else. +It almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be to me +when I came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my room and +say, “Oh, you dear faithful Dolly, I knew you would be expecting me!” +and then to sit down on the floor, leaning on the elbow of her great +chair, and tell her all I had noticed since we parted. I had always +rather a noticing way—not a quick way, oh, no!—a silent way of +noticing what passed before me and thinking I should like to +understand it better. I have not by any means a quick understanding. +When I love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to brighten. But +even that may be my vanity. + +I was brought up, from my earliest remembrance—like some of the +princesses in the fairy stories, only I was not charming—by my +godmother. At least, I only knew her as such. She was a good, good +woman! She went to church three times every Sunday, and to morning +prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures whenever there +were lectures; and never missed. She was handsome; and if she had +ever smiled, would have been (I used to think) like an angel—but she +never smiled. She was always grave and strict. She was so very good +herself, I thought, that the badness of other people made her frown +all her life. I felt so different from her, even making every +allowance for the differences between a child and a woman; I felt so +poor, so trifling, and so far off that I never could be unrestrained +with her—no, could never even love her as I wished. It made me very +sorry to consider how good she was and how unworthy of her I was, and +I used ardently to hope that I might have a better heart; and I +talked it over very often with the dear old doll, but I never loved +my godmother as I ought to have loved her and as I felt I must have +loved her if I had been a better girl. + +This made me, I dare say, more timid and retiring than I naturally +was and cast me upon Dolly as the only friend with whom I felt at +ease. But something happened when I was still quite a little thing +that helped it very much. + +I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa +either, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn a +black frock, that I could recollect. I had never been shown my mama’s +grave. I had never been told where it was. Yet I had never been +taught to pray for any relation but my godmother. I had more than +once approached this subject of my thoughts with Mrs. Rachael, our +only servant, who took my light away when I was in bed (another very +good woman, but austere to me), and she had only said, “Esther, good +night!” and gone away and left me. + +Although there were seven girls at the neighbouring school where I +was a day boarder, and although they called me little Esther +Summerson, I knew none of them at home. All of them were older than +I, to be sure (I was the youngest there by a good deal), but there +seemed to be some other separation between us besides that, and +besides their being far more clever than I was and knowing much more +than I did. One of them in the first week of my going to the school +(I remember it very well) invited me home to a little party, to my +great joy. But my godmother wrote a stiff letter declining for me, +and I never went. I never went out at all. + +It was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other +birthdays—none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other +birthdays, as I knew from what I heard the girls relate to one +another—there were none on mine. My birthday was the most melancholy +day at home in the whole year. + +I have mentioned that unless my vanity should deceive me (as I know +it may, for I may be very vain without suspecting it, though indeed I +don’t), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is. My +disposition is very affectionate, and perhaps I might still feel such +a wound if such a wound could be received more than once with the +quickness of that birthday. + +Dinner was over, and my godmother and I were sitting at the table +before the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked; not another +sound had been heard in the room or in the house for I don’t know how +long. I happened to look timidly up from my stitching, across the +table at my godmother, and I saw in her face, looking gloomily at me, +“It would have been far better, little Esther, that you had had no +birthday, that you had never been born!” + +I broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, “Oh, dear godmother, tell +me, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my birthday?” + +“No,” she returned. “Ask me no more, child!” + +“Oh, do pray tell me something of her. Do now, at last, dear +godmother, if you please! What did I do to her? How did I lose her? +Why am I so different from other children, and why is it my fault, +dear godmother? No, no, no, don’t go away. Oh, speak to me!” + +I was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and I caught hold of her +dress and was kneeling to her. She had been saying all the while, +“Let me go!” But now she stood still. + +Her darkened face had such power over me that it stopped me in the +midst of my vehemence. I put up my trembling little hand to clasp +hers or to beg her pardon with what earnestness I might, but withdrew +it as she looked at me, and laid it on my fluttering heart. She +raised me, sat in her chair, and standing me before her, said slowly +in a cold, low voice—I see her knitted brow and pointed +finger—“Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. +The time will come—and soon enough—when you will understand this +better and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can. I have +forgiven her”—but her face did not relent—“the wrong she did to me, +and I say no more of it, though it was greater than you will ever +know—than any one will ever know but I, the sufferer. For yourself, +unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from the first of these evil +anniversaries, pray daily that the sins of others be not visited upon +your head, according to what is written. Forget your mother and leave +all other people to forget her who will do her unhappy child that +greatest kindness. Now, go!” + +She checked me, however, as I was about to depart from her—so frozen +as I was!—and added this, “Submission, self-denial, diligent work, +are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. You +are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born, +like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart.” + +I went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll’s cheek +against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon my +bosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my +sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy at any time to anybody’s +heart and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly was to me. + +Dear, dear, to think how much time we passed alone together +afterwards, and how often I repeated to the doll the story of my +birthday and confided to her that I would try as hard as ever I could +to repair the fault I had been born with (of which I confessedly felt +guilty and yet innocent) and would strive as I grew up to be +industrious, contented, and kind-hearted and to do some good to some +one, and win some love to myself if I could. I hope it is not +self-indulgent to shed these tears as I think of it. I am very +thankful, I am very cheerful, but I cannot quite help their coming to +my eyes. + +There! I have wiped them away now and can go on again properly. + +I felt the distance between my godmother and myself so much more +after the birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a place in her +house which ought to have been empty, that I found her more difficult +of approach, though I was fervently grateful to her in my heart, than +ever. I felt in the same way towards my school companions; I felt in +the same way towards Mrs. Rachael, who was a widow; and oh, towards +her daughter, of whom she was proud, who came to see her once a +fortnight! I was very retired and quiet, and tried to be very +diligent. + +One sunny afternoon when I had come home from school with my books +and portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I was +gliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the +parlour-door and called me back. Sitting with her, I found—which was +very unusual indeed—a stranger. A portly, important-looking +gentleman, dressed all in black, with a white cravat, large gold +watch seals, a pair of gold eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring upon +his little finger. + +“This,” said my godmother in an undertone, “is the child.” Then she +said in her naturally stern way of speaking, “This is Esther, sir.” + +The gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look at me and said, “Come +here, my dear!” He shook hands with me and asked me to take off my +bonnet, looking at me all the while. When I had complied, he said, +“Ah!” and afterwards “Yes!” And then, taking off his eye-glasses and +folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair, +turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a nod. +Upon that, my godmother said, “You may go upstairs, Esther!” And I +made him my curtsy and left him. + +It must have been two years afterwards, and I was almost fourteen, +when one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I was +reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine o’clock +as I always did to read the Bible to her, and was reading from St. +John how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the +dust, when they brought the sinful woman to him. + +“So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said +unto them, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a +stone at her!’” + +I was stopped by my godmother’s rising, putting her hand to her head, +and crying out in an awful voice from quite another part of the book, +“‘Watch ye, therefore, lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And +what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!’” + +In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she +fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had +sounded through the house and been heard in the street. + +She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little +altered outwardly, with her old handsome resolute frown that I so +well knew carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and +in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers +might be plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her, +asked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me +the least sign that she knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was +immovable. To the very last, and even afterwards, her frown remained +unsoftened. + +On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in +black with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs. +Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone +away. + +“My name is Kenge,” he said; “you may remember it, my child; Kenge +and Carboy, Lincoln’s Inn.” + +I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before. + +“Pray be seated—here near me. Don’t distress yourself; it’s of no +use. Mrs. Rachael, I needn’t inform you who were acquainted with the +late Miss Barbary’s affairs, that her means die with her and that +this young lady, now her aunt is dead—” + +“My aunt, sir!” + +“It is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to +be gained by it,” said Mr. Kenge smoothly, “Aunt in fact, though not +in law. Don’t distress yourself! Don’t weep! Don’t tremble! Mrs. +Rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of—the—a—Jarndyce and +Jarndyce.” + +“Never,” said Mrs. Rachael. + +“Is it possible,” pursued Mr. Kenge, putting up his eye-glasses, +“that our young friend—I BEG you won’t distress yourself!—never +heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce!” + +I shook my head, wondering even what it was. + +“Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?” said Mr. Kenge, looking over his +glasses at me and softly turning the case about and about as if he +were petting something. “Not of one of the greatest Chancery suits +known? Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce—the—a—in itself a monument of +Chancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty, every +contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known +in that court, is represented over and over again? It is a cause +that could not exist out of this free and great country. I should +say that the aggregate of costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mrs. +Rachael”—I was afraid he addressed himself to her because I appeared +inattentive—“amounts at the present hour to from SIX-ty to SEVEN-ty +THOUSAND POUNDS!” said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his chair. + +I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely +unacquainted with the subject that I understood nothing about it even +then. + +“And she really never heard of the cause!” said Mr. Kenge. +“Surprising!” + +“Miss Barbary, sir,” returned Mrs. Rachael, “who is now among the +Seraphim—” + +“I hope so, I am sure,” said Mr. Kenge politely. + +“—Wished Esther only to know what would be serviceable to her. And +she knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more.” + +“Well!” said Mr. Kenge. “Upon the whole, very proper. Now to the +point,” addressing me. “Miss Barbary, your sole relation (in fact +that is, for I am bound to observe that in law you had none) being +deceased and it naturally not being to be expected that Mrs. +Rachael—” + +“Oh, dear no!” said Mrs. Rachael quickly. + +“Quite so,” assented Mr. Kenge; “—that Mrs. Rachael should charge +herself with your maintenance and support (I beg you won’t distress +yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer +which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago and +which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the +lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now, if I avow +that I represent, in Jarndyce and Jarndyce and otherwise, a highly +humane, but at the same time singular, man, shall I compromise myself +by any stretch of my professional caution?” said Mr. Kenge, leaning +back in his chair again and looking calmly at us both. + +He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. I +couldn’t wonder at that, for it was mellow and full and gave great +importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with +obvious satisfaction and sometimes gently beat time to his own music +with his head or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was very much +impressed by him—even then, before I knew that he formed himself on +the model of a great lord who was his client and that he was +generally called Conversation Kenge. + +“Mr. Jarndyce,” he pursued, “being aware of the—I would say, +desolate—position of our young friend, offers to place her at a +first-rate establishment where her education shall be completed, +where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall +be anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge +her duty in that station of life unto which it has pleased—shall I +say Providence?—to call her.” + +My heart was filled so full, both by what he said and by his +affecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though I +tried. + +“Mr. Jarndyce,” he went on, “makes no condition beyond expressing his +expectation that our young friend will not at any time remove herself +from the establishment in question without his knowledge and +concurrence. That she will faithfully apply herself to the +acquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she +will be ultimately dependent. That she will tread in the paths of +virtue and honour, and—the—a——so forth.” + +I was still less able to speak than before. + +“Now, what does our young friend say?” proceeded Mr. Kenge. “Take +time, take time! I pause for her reply. But take time!” + +What the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, I need not +repeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it were worth +the telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, I could +never relate. + +This interview took place at Windsor, where I had passed (as far as I +knew) my whole life. On that day week, amply provided with all +necessaries, I left it, inside the stagecoach, for Reading. + +Mrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was +not so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have known +her better after so many years and ought to have made myself enough +of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one +cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone +porch—it was a very frosty day—I felt so miserable and +self-reproachful that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I +knew, that she could say good-bye so easily! + +“No, Esther!” she returned. “It is your misfortune!” + +The coach was at the little lawn-gate—we had not come out until we +heard the wheels—and thus I left her, with a sorrowful heart. She +went in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof and shut the +door. As long as I could see the house, I looked back at it from the +window through my tears. My godmother had left Mrs. Rachael all the +little property she possessed; and there was to be a sale; and an old +hearth-rug with roses on it, which always seemed to me the first +thing in the world I had ever seen, was hanging outside in the frost +and snow. A day or two before, I had wrapped the dear old doll in her +own shawl and quietly laid her—I am half ashamed to tell it—in the +garden-earth under the tree that shaded my old window. I had no +companion left but my bird, and him I carried with me in his cage. + +When the house was out of sight, I sat, with my bird-cage in the +straw at my feet, forward on the low seat to look out of the high +window, watching the frosty trees, that were like beautiful pieces of +spar, and the fields all smooth and white with last night’s snow, and +the sun, so red but yielding so little heat, and the ice, dark like +metal where the skaters and sliders had brushed the snow away. There +was a gentleman in the coach who sat on the opposite seat and looked +very large in a quantity of wrappings, but he sat gazing out of the +other window and took no notice of me. + +I thought of my dead godmother, of the night when I read to her, of +her frowning so fixedly and sternly in her bed, of the strange place +I was going to, of the people I should find there, and what they +would be like, and what they would say to me, when a voice in the +coach gave me a terrible start. + +It said, “What the de-vil are you crying for?” + +I was so frightened that I lost my voice and could only answer in a +whisper, “Me, sir?” For of course I knew it must have been the +gentleman in the quantity of wrappings, though he was still looking +out of his window. + +“Yes, you,” he said, turning round. + +“I didn’t know I was crying, sir,” I faltered. + +“But you are!” said the gentleman. “Look here!” He came quite +opposite to me from the other corner of the coach, brushed one of his +large furry cuffs across my eyes (but without hurting me), and showed +me that it was wet. + +“There! Now you know you are,” he said. “Don’t you?” + +“Yes, sir,” I said. + +“And what are you crying for?” said the gentleman, “Don’t you want to +go there?” + +“Where, sir?” + +“Where? Why, wherever you are going,” said the gentleman. + +“I am very glad to go there, sir,” I answered. + +“Well, then! Look glad!” said the gentleman. + +I thought he was very strange, or at least that what I could see of +him was very strange, for he was wrapped up to the chin, and his face +was almost hidden in a fur cap with broad fur straps at the side of +his head fastened under his chin; but I was composed again, and not +afraid of him. So I told him that I thought I must have been crying +because of my godmother’s death and because of Mrs. Rachael’s not +being sorry to part with me. + +“Confound Mrs. Rachael!” said the gentleman. “Let her fly away in a +high wind on a broomstick!” + +I began to be really afraid of him now and looked at him with the +greatest astonishment. But I thought that he had pleasant eyes, +although he kept on muttering to himself in an angry manner and +calling Mrs. Rachael names. + +After a little while he opened his outer wrapper, which appeared to +me large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his arm down into +a deep pocket in the side. + +“Now, look here!” he said. “In this paper,” which was nicely folded, +“is a piece of the best plum-cake that can be got for money—sugar on +the outside an inch thick, like fat on mutton chops. Here’s a little +pie (a gem this is, both for size and quality), made in France. And +what do you suppose it’s made of? Livers of fat geese. There’s a pie! +Now let’s see you eat ’em.” + +“Thank you, sir,” I replied; “thank you very much indeed, but I hope +you won’t be offended—they are too rich for me.” + +“Floored again!” said the gentleman, which I didn’t at all +understand, and threw them both out of window. + +He did not speak to me any more until he got out of the coach a +little way short of Reading, when he advised me to be a good girl and +to be studious, and shook hands with me. I must say I was relieved by +his departure. We left him at a milestone. I often walked past it +afterwards, and never for a long time without thinking of him and +half expecting to meet him. But I never did; and so, as time went on, +he passed out of my mind. + +When the coach stopped, a very neat lady looked up at the window and +said, “Miss Donny.” + +“No, ma’am, Esther Summerson.” + +“That is quite right,” said the lady, “Miss Donny.” + +I now understood that she introduced herself by that name, and begged +Miss Donny’s pardon for my mistake, and pointed out my boxes at her +request. Under the direction of a very neat maid, they were put +outside a very small green carriage; and then Miss Donny, the maid, +and I got inside and were driven away. + +“Everything is ready for you, Esther,” said Miss Donny, “and the +scheme of your pursuits has been arranged in exact accordance with +the wishes of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce.” + +“Of—did you say, ma’am?” + +“Of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce,” said Miss Donny. + +I was so bewildered that Miss Donny thought the cold had been too +severe for me and lent me her smelling-bottle. + +“Do you know my—guardian, Mr. Jarndyce, ma’am?” I asked after a good +deal of hesitation. + +“Not personally, Esther,” said Miss Donny; “merely through his +solicitors, Messrs. Kenge and Carboy, of London. A very superior +gentleman, Mr. Kenge. Truly eloquent indeed. Some of his periods +quite majestic!” + +I felt this to be very true but was too confused to attend to it. Our +speedy arrival at our destination, before I had time to recover +myself, increased my confusion, and I never shall forget the +uncertain and the unreal air of everything at Greenleaf (Miss Donny’s +house) that afternoon! + +But I soon became used to it. I was so adapted to the routine of +Greenleaf before long that I seemed to have been there a great while +and almost to have dreamed rather than really lived my old life at my +godmother’s. Nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly than +Greenleaf. There was a time for everything all round the dial of the +clock, and everything was done at its appointed moment. + +We were twelve boarders, and there were two Miss Donnys, twins. It +was understood that I would have to depend, by and by, on my +qualifications as a governess, and I was not only instructed in +everything that was taught at Greenleaf, but was very soon engaged in +helping to instruct others. Although I was treated in every other +respect like the rest of the school, this single difference was made +in my case from the first. As I began to know more, I taught more, +and so in course of time I had plenty to do, which I was very fond of +doing because it made the dear girls fond of me. At last, whenever a +new pupil came who was a little downcast and unhappy, she was so +sure—indeed I don’t know why—to make a friend of me that all +new-comers were confided to my care. They said I was so gentle, but I +am sure THEY were! I often thought of the resolution I had made on my +birthday to try to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to +do some good to some one and win some love if I could; and indeed, +indeed, I felt almost ashamed to have done so little and have won so +much. + +I passed at Greenleaf six happy, quiet years. I never saw in any face +there, thank heaven, on my birthday, that it would have been better +if I had never been born. When the day came round, it brought me so +many tokens of affectionate remembrance that my room was beautiful +with them from New Year’s Day to Christmas. + +In those six years I had never been away except on visits at holiday +time in the neighbourhood. After the first six months or so I had +taken Miss Donny’s advice in reference to the propriety of writing to +Mr. Kenge to say that I was happy and grateful, and with her approval +I had written such a letter. I had received a formal answer +acknowledging its receipt and saying, “We note the contents thereof, +which shall be duly communicated to our client.” After that I +sometimes heard Miss Donny and her sister mention how regular my +accounts were paid, and about twice a year I ventured to write a +similar letter. I always received by return of post exactly the same +answer in the same round hand, with the signature of Kenge and Carboy +in another writing, which I supposed to be Mr. Kenge’s. + +It seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about +myself! As if this narrative were the narrative of MY life! But my +little body will soon fall into the background now. + +Six quiet years (I find I am saying it for the second time) I had +passed at Greenleaf, seeing in those around me, as it might be in a +looking-glass, every stage of my own growth and change there, when, +one November morning, I received this letter. I omit the date. + + + Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn + + Madam, + + Jarndyce and Jarndyce + + Our clt Mr. Jarndyce being abt to rece into his house, + under an Order of the Ct of Chy, a Ward of the Ct in this + cause, for whom he wishes to secure an elgble compn, + directs us to inform you that he will be glad of your + serces in the afsd capacity. + + We have arrngd for your being forded, carriage free, pr + eight o’clock coach from Reading, on Monday morning next, + to White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, London, where one of + our clks will be in waiting to convey you to our offe as + above. + + We are, Madam, Your obedt Servts, + + Kenge and Carboy + + Miss Esther Summerson + + +Oh, never, never, never shall I forget the emotion this letter caused +in the house! It was so tender in them to care so much for me, it was +so gracious in that father who had not forgotten me to have made my +orphan way so smooth and easy and to have inclined so many youthful +natures towards me, that I could hardly bear it. Not that I would +have had them less sorry—I am afraid not; but the pleasure of it, +and the pain of it, and the pride and joy of it, and the humble +regret of it were so blended that my heart seemed almost breaking +while it was full of rapture. + +The letter gave me only five days’ notice of my removal. When every +minute added to the proofs of love and kindness that were given me in +those five days, and when at last the morning came and when they took +me through all the rooms that I might see them for the last time, and +when some cried, “Esther, dear, say good-bye to me here at my +bedside, where you first spoke so kindly to me!” and when others +asked me only to write their names, “With Esther’s love,” and when +they all surrounded me with their parting presents and clung to me +weeping and cried, “What shall we do when dear, dear Esther’s gone!” +and when I tried to tell them how forbearing and how good they had +all been to me and how I blessed and thanked them every one, what a +heart I had! + +And when the two Miss Donnys grieved as much to part with me as the +least among them, and when the maids said, “Bless you, miss, wherever +you go!” and when the ugly lame old gardener, who I thought had +hardly noticed me in all those years, came panting after the coach to +give me a little nosegay of geraniums and told me I had been the +light of his eyes—indeed the old man said so!—what a heart I had +then! + +And could I help it if with all this, and the coming to the little +school, and the unexpected sight of the poor children outside waving +their hats and bonnets to me, and of a grey-haired gentleman and lady +whose daughter I had helped to teach and at whose house I had visited +(who were said to be the proudest people in all that country), caring +for nothing but calling out, “Good-bye, Esther. May you be very +happy!”—could I help it if I was quite bowed down in the coach by +myself and said “Oh, I am so thankful, I am so thankful!” many times +over! + +But of course I soon considered that I must not take tears where I +was going after all that had been done for me. Therefore, of course, +I made myself sob less and persuaded myself to be quiet by saying +very often, “Esther, now you really must! This WILL NOT do!” I +cheered myself up pretty well at last, though I am afraid I was +longer about it than I ought to have been; and when I had cooled my +eyes with lavender water, it was time to watch for London. + +I was quite persuaded that we were there when we were ten miles off, +and when we really were there, that we should never get there. +However, when we began to jolt upon a stone pavement, and +particularly when every other conveyance seemed to be running into +us, and we seemed to be running into every other conveyance, I began +to believe that we really were approaching the end of our journey. +Very soon afterwards we stopped. + +A young gentleman who had inked himself by accident addressed me from +the pavement and said, “I am from Kenge and Carboy’s, miss, of +Lincoln’s Inn.” + +“If you please, sir,” said I. + +He was very obliging, and as he handed me into a fly after +superintending the removal of my boxes, I asked him whether there was +a great fire anywhere? For the streets were so full of dense brown +smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen. + +“Oh, dear no, miss,” he said. “This is a London particular.” + +I had never heard of such a thing. + +“A fog, miss,” said the young gentleman. + +“Oh, indeed!” said I. + +We drove slowly through the dirtiest and darkest streets that ever +were seen in the world (I thought) and in such a distracting state of +confusion that I wondered how the people kept their senses, until we +passed into sudden quietude under an old gateway and drove on through +a silent square until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where there +was an entrance up a steep, broad flight of stairs, like an entrance +to a church. And there really was a churchyard outside under some +cloisters, for I saw the gravestones from the staircase window. + +This was Kenge and Carboy’s. The young gentleman showed me through an +outer office into Mr. Kenge’s room—there was no one in it—and +politely put an arm-chair for me by the fire. He then called my +attention to a little looking-glass hanging from a nail on one side +of the chimney-piece. + +“In case you should wish to look at yourself, miss, after the +journey, as you’re going before the Chancellor. Not that it’s +requisite, I am sure,” said the young gentleman civilly. + +“Going before the Chancellor?” I said, startled for a moment. + +“Only a matter of form, miss,” returned the young gentleman. “Mr. +Kenge is in court now. He left his compliments, and would you partake +of some refreshment”—there were biscuits and a decanter of wine on a +small table—“and look over the paper,” which the young gentleman +gave me as he spoke. He then stirred the fire and left me. + +Everything was so strange—the stranger from its being night in the +day-time, the candles burning with a white flame, and looking raw and +cold—that I read the words in the newspaper without knowing what +they meant and found myself reading the same words repeatedly. As it +was of no use going on in that way, I put the paper down, took a peep +at my bonnet in the glass to see if it was neat, and looked at the +room, which was not half lighted, and at the shabby, dusty tables, +and at the piles of writings, and at a bookcase full of the most +inexpressive-looking books that ever had anything to say for +themselves. Then I went on, thinking, thinking, thinking; and the +fire went on, burning, burning, burning; and the candles went on +flickering and guttering, and there were no snuffers—until the young +gentleman by and by brought a very dirty pair—for two hours. + +At last Mr. Kenge came. HE was not altered, but he was surprised to +see how altered I was and appeared quite pleased. “As you are going +to be the companion of the young lady who is now in the Chancellor’s +private room, Miss Summerson,” he said, “we thought it well that you +should be in attendance also. You will not be discomposed by the Lord +Chancellor, I dare say?” + +“No, sir,” I said, “I don’t think I shall,” really not seeing on +consideration why I should be. + +So Mr. Kenge gave me his arm and we went round the corner, under a +colonnade, and in at a side door. And so we came, along a passage, +into a comfortable sort of room where a young lady and a young +gentleman were standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. A screen was +interposed between them and it, and they were leaning on the screen, +talking. + +They both looked up when I came in, and I saw in the young lady, with +the fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! With such rich +golden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent, +trusting face! + +“Miss Ada,” said Mr. Kenge, “this is Miss Summerson.” + +She came to meet me with a smile of welcome and her hand extended, +but seemed to change her mind in a moment and kissed me. In short, +she had such a natural, captivating, winning manner that in a few +minutes we were sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the +fire upon us, talking together as free and happy as could be. + +What a load off my mind! It was so delightful to know that she could +confide in me and like me! It was so good of her, and so encouraging +to me! + +The young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name +Richard Carstone. He was a handsome youth with an ingenuous face and +a most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to where we +sat, he stood by us, in the light of the fire, talking gaily, like a +light-hearted boy. He was very young, not more than nineteen then, if +quite so much, but nearly two years older than she was. They were +both orphans and (what was very unexpected and curious to me) had +never met before that day. Our all three coming together for the +first time in such an unusual place was a thing to talk about, and we +talked about it; and the fire, which had left off roaring, winked its +red eyes at us—as Richard said—like a drowsy old Chancery lion. + +We conversed in a low tone because a full-dressed gentleman in a bag +wig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could hear a +drawling sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel +in our case addressing the Lord Chancellor. He told Mr. Kenge that +the Chancellor would be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a +bustle and a tread of feet, and Mr. Kenge said that the Court had +risen and his lordship was in the next room. + +The gentleman in the bag wig opened the door almost directly and +requested Mr. Kenge to come in. Upon that, we all went into the next +room, Mr. Kenge first, with my darling—it is so natural to me now +that I can’t help writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black and +sitting in an arm-chair at a table near the fire, was his lordship, +whose robe, trimmed with beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another +chair. He gave us a searching look as we entered, but his manner was +both courtly and kind. + +The gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of papers on his lordship’s +table, and his lordship silently selected one and turned over the +leaves. + +“Miss Clare,” said the Lord Chancellor. “Miss Ada Clare?” + +Mr. Kenge presented her, and his lordship begged her to sit down near +him. That he admired her and was interested by her even I could see +in a moment. It touched me that the home of such a beautiful young +creature should be represented by that dry, official place. The Lord +High Chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the +love and pride of parents. + +“The Jarndyce in question,” said the Lord Chancellor, still turning +over leaves, “is Jarndyce of Bleak House.” + +“Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord,” said Mr. Kenge. + +“A dreary name,” said the Lord Chancellor. + +“But not a dreary place at present, my lord,” said Mr. Kenge. + +“And Bleak House,” said his lordship, “is in—” + +“Hertfordshire, my lord.” + +“Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House is not married?” said his lordship. + +“He is not, my lord,” said Mr. Kenge. + +A pause. + +“Young Mr. Richard Carstone is present?” said the Lord Chancellor, +glancing towards him. + +Richard bowed and stepped forward. + +“Hum!” said the Lord Chancellor, turning over more leaves. + +“Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord,” Mr. Kenge observed in a low +voice, “if I may venture to remind your lordship, provides a suitable +companion for—” + +“For Mr. Richard Carstone?” I thought (but I am not quite sure) I +heard his lordship say in an equally low voice and with a smile. + +“For Miss Ada Clare. This is the young lady. Miss Summerson.” + +His lordship gave me an indulgent look and acknowledged my curtsy +very graciously. + +“Miss Summerson is not related to any party in the cause, I think?” + +“No, my lord.” + +Mr. Kenge leant over before it was quite said and whispered. His +lordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice or +thrice, turned over more leaves, and did not look towards me again +until we were going away. + +Mr. Kenge now retired, and Richard with him, to where I was, near the +door, leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that again I can’t help +it!) sitting near the Lord Chancellor, with whom his lordship spoke a +little part, asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had +well reflected on the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she +would be happy under the roof of Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, and why +she thought so? Presently he rose courteously and released her, and +then he spoke for a minute or two with Richard Carstone, not seated, +but standing, and altogether with more ease and less ceremony, as if +he still knew, though he WAS Lord Chancellor, how to go straight to +the candour of a boy. + +“Very well!” said his lordship aloud. “I shall make the order. Mr. +Jarndyce of Bleak House has chosen, so far as I may judge,” and this +was when he looked at me, “a very good companion for the young lady, +and the arrangement altogether seems the best of which the +circumstances admit.” + +He dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, very much obliged to +him for being so affable and polite, by which he had certainly lost +no dignity but seemed to us to have gained some. + +When we got under the colonnade, Mr. Kenge remembered that he must go +back for a moment to ask a question and left us in the fog, with the +Lord Chancellor’s carriage and servants waiting for him to come out. + +“Well!” said Richard Carstone. “THAT’S over! And where do we go next, +Miss Summerson?” + +“Don’t you know?” I said. + +“Not in the least,” said he. + +“And don’t YOU know, my love?” I asked Ada. + +“No!” said she. “Don’t you?” + +“Not at all!” said I. + +We looked at one another, half laughing at our being like the +children in the wood, when a curious little old woman in a squeezed +bonnet and carrying a reticule came curtsying and smiling up to us +with an air of great ceremony. + +“Oh!” said she. “The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to +have the honour! It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty +when they find themselves in this place, and don’t know what’s to +come of it.” + +“Mad!” whispered Richard, not thinking she could hear him. + +“Right! Mad, young gentleman,” she returned so quickly that he was +quite abashed. “I was a ward myself. I was not mad at that time,” +curtsying low and smiling between every little sentence. “I had youth +and hope. I believe, beauty. It matters very little now. Neither of +the three served or saved me. I have the honour to attend court +regularly. With my documents. I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the +Day of Judgment. I have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in +the Revelations is the Great Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray +accept my blessing.” + +As Ada was a little frightened, I said, to humour the poor old lady, +that we were much obliged to her. + +“Ye-es!” she said mincingly. “I imagine so. And here is Conversation +Kenge. With HIS documents! How does your honourable worship do?” + +“Quite well, quite well! Now don’t be troublesome, that’s a good +soul!” said Mr. Kenge, leading the way back. + +“By no means,” said the poor old lady, keeping up with Ada and me. +“Anything but troublesome. I shall confer estates on both—which is +not being troublesome, I trust? I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the +Day of Judgment. This is a good omen for you. Accept my blessing!” + +She stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but +we looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still +with a curtsy and a smile between every little sentence, “Youth. And +hope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray +accept my blessing!” + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Telescopic Philanthropy + + +We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us when we arrived in his +room, at Mrs. Jellyby’s; and then he turned to me and said he took it +for granted I knew who Mrs. Jellyby was. + +“I really don’t, sir,” I returned. “Perhaps Mr. Carstone—or Miss +Clare—” + +But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs. Jellyby. “In-deed! Mrs. +Jellyby,” said Mr. Kenge, standing with his back to the fire and +casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs. +Jellyby’s biography, “is a lady of very remarkable strength of +character who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted +herself to an extensive variety of public subjects at various times +and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the +subject of Africa, with a view to the general cultivation of the +coffee berry—AND the natives—and the happy settlement, on the banks +of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population. Mr. +Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely +to be a good work and who is much sought after by philanthropists, +has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Jellyby.” + +Mr. Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us. + +“And Mr. Jellyby, sir?” suggested Richard. + +“Ah! Mr. Jellyby,” said Mr. Kenge, “is—a—I don’t know that I can +describe him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of +Mrs. Jellyby.” + +“A nonentity, sir?” said Richard with a droll look. + +“I don’t say that,” returned Mr. Kenge gravely. “I can’t say that, +indeed, for I know nothing whatever OF Mr. Jellyby. I never, to my +knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jellyby. He may be a very +superior man, but he is, so to speak, merged—merged—in the more +shining qualities of his wife.” Mr. Kenge proceeded to tell us that +as the road to Bleak House would have been very long, dark, and +tedious on such an evening, and as we had been travelling already, +Mr. Jarndyce had himself proposed this arrangement. A carriage would +be at Mrs. Jellyby’s to convey us out of town early in the forenoon +of to-morrow. + +He then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in. +Addressing him by the name of Guppy, Mr. Kenge inquired whether Miss +Summerson’s boxes and the rest of the baggage had been “sent round.” +Mr. Guppy said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach was waiting +to take us round too as soon as we pleased. + +“Then it only remains,” said Mr. Kenge, shaking hands with us, “for +me to express my lively satisfaction in (good day, Miss Clare!) the +arrangement this day concluded and my (GOOD-bye to you, Miss +Summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the +(glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr. +Carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all +concerned! Guppy, see the party safely there.” + +“Where IS ‘there,’ Mr. Guppy?” said Richard as we went downstairs. + +“No distance,” said Mr. Guppy; “round in Thavies Inn, you know.” + +“I can’t say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester and am +strange in London.” + +“Only round the corner,” said Mr. Guppy. “We just twist up Chancery +Lane, and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four minutes’ time, +as near as a toucher. This is about a London particular NOW, ain’t +it, miss?” He seemed quite delighted with it on my account. + +“The fog is very dense indeed!” said I. + +“Not that it affects you, though, I’m sure,” said Mr. Guppy, putting +up the steps. “On the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss, +judging from your appearance.” + +I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at +myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the +box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and +the strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our +destination—a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to +hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people, +principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped, +which had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the inscription +JELLYBY. + +“Don’t be frightened!” said Mr. Guppy, looking in at the +coach-window. “One of the young Jellybys been and got his head +through the area railings!” + +“Oh, poor child,” said I; “let me out, if you please!” + +“Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Jellybys are always up +to something,” said Mr. Guppy. + +I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little +unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and +crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a +milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were +endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression +that his skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after +pacifying him) that he was a little boy with a naturally large head, +I thought that perhaps where his head could go, his body could +follow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to +push him forward. This was so favourably received by the milkman and +beadle that he would immediately have been pushed into the area if I +had not held his pinafore while Richard and Mr. Guppy ran down +through the kitchen to catch him when he should be released. At last +he was happily got down without any accident, and then he began to +beat Mr. Guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner. + +Nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in +pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I +don’t know with what object, and I don’t think she did. I therefore +supposed that Mrs. Jellyby was not at home, and was quite surprised +when the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and +going up to the back room on the first floor before Ada and me, +announced us as, “Them two young ladies, Missis Jellyby!” We passed +several more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid +treading on in the dark; and as we came into Mrs. Jellyby’s presence, +one of the poor little things fell downstairs—down a whole flight +(as it sounded to me), with a great noise. + +Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we +could not help showing in our own faces as the dear child’s head +recorded its passage with a bump on every stair—Richard afterwards +said he counted seven, besides one for the landing—received us with +perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of +from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious +habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if—I am quoting Richard +again—they could see nothing nearer than Africa! + +“I am very glad indeed,” said Mrs. Jellyby in an agreeable voice, “to +have the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr. +Jarndyce, and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of +indifference to me.” + +We expressed our acknowledgments and sat down behind the door, where +there was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good hair +but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The +shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped onto her chair +when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we +could not help noticing that her dress didn’t nearly meet up the back +and that the open space was railed across with a lattice-work of +stay-lace—like a summer-house. + +The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great +writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only +very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that +with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we +followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the +back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him. + +But what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking +though by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who sat biting +the feather of her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was +in such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet, +which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden +down at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her, +from a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right +place. + +“You find me, my dears,” said Mrs. Jellyby, snuffing the two great +office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste +strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing +in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), “you find me, +my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African +project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in +correspondence with public bodies and with private individuals +anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am +happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have +from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating +coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank +of the Niger.” + +As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very +gratifying. + +“It IS gratifying,” said Mrs. Jellyby. “It involves the devotion of +all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it +succeeds; and I am more confident of success every day. Do you know, +Miss Summerson, I almost wonder that YOU never turned your thoughts +to Africa.” + +This application of the subject was really so unexpected to me that I +was quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that the climate— + +“The finest climate in the world!” said Mrs. Jellyby. + +“Indeed, ma’am?” + +“Certainly. With precaution,” said Mrs. Jellyby. “You may go into +Holborn, without precaution, and be run over. You may go into +Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with +Africa.” + +I said, “No doubt.” I meant as to Holborn. + +“If you would like,” said Mrs. Jellyby, putting a number of papers +towards us, “to look over some remarks on that head, and on the +general subject, which have been extensively circulated, while I +finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my +amanuensis—” + +The girl at the table left off biting her pen and made a return to +our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky. + +“—I shall then have finished for the present,” proceeded Mrs. +Jellyby with a sweet smile, “though my work is never done. Where are +you, Caddy?” + +“‘Presents her compliments to Mr. Swallow, and begs—’” said Caddy. + +“‘And begs,’” said Mrs. Jellyby, dictating, “‘to inform him, in +reference to his letter of inquiry on the African project—’ No, +Peepy! Not on my account!” + +Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen +downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting +himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his +wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity +most—the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the +serene composure with which she said everything, “Go along, you +naughty Peepy!” and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again. + +However, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I +interrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor +Peepy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. He looked very +much astonished at it and at Ada’s kissing him, but soon fell fast +asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he +was quiet. I was so occupied with Peepy that I lost the letter in +detail, though I derived such a general impression from it of the +momentous importance of Africa, and the utter insignificance of all +other places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to have thought so +little about it. + +“Six o’clock!” said Mrs. Jellyby. “And our dinner hour is nominally +(for we dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show Miss Clare and Miss +Summerson their rooms. You will like to make some change, perhaps? +You will excuse me, I know, being so much occupied. Oh, that very bad +child! Pray put him down, Miss Summerson!” + +I begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at +all troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. Ada +and I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between. They +were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window +was fastened up with a fork. + +“You would like some hot water, wouldn’t you?” said Miss Jellyby, +looking round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain. + +“If it is not being troublesome,” said we. + +“Oh, it’s not the trouble,” returned Miss Jellyby; “the question is, +if there IS any.” + +The evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell +that I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada was half +crying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when Miss +Jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water, +but they couldn’t find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order. + +We begged her not to mention it and made all the haste we could to +get down to the fire again. But all the little children had come up +to the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of Peepy lying on my +bed, and our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of +noses and fingers in situations of danger between the hinges of the +doors. It was impossible to shut the door of either room, for my +lock, with no knob to it, looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and +though the handle of Ada’s went round and round with the greatest +smoothness, it was attended with no effect whatever on the door. +Therefore I proposed to the children that they should come in and be +very good at my table, and I would tell them the story of Little Red +Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as +mice, including Peepy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of +the wolf. + +When we went downstairs we found a mug with “A Present from Tunbridge +Wells” on it lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick, +and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage +blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an open door +with Mrs. Jellyby’s room) and choking dreadfully. It smoked to that +degree, in short, that we all sat coughing and crying with the +windows open for half an hour, during which Mrs. Jellyby, with the +same sweetness of temper, directed letters about Africa. Her being so +employed was, I must say, a great relief to me, for Richard told us +that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish and that they had found +the kettle on his dressing-table, and he made Ada laugh so that they +made me laugh in the most ridiculous manner. + +Soon after seven o’clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs. +Jellyby’s advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very deficient +in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We had a fine +cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an +excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was +almost raw. The young woman with the flannel bandage waited, and +dropped everything on the table wherever it happened to go, and never +moved it again until she put it on the stairs. The person I had seen +in pattens, who I suppose to have been the cook, frequently came and +skirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to be ill will +between them. + +All through dinner—which was long, in consequence of such accidents +as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle and the +handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young woman in +the chin—Mrs. Jellyby preserved the evenness of her disposition. She +told us a great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and +the natives, and received so many letters that Richard, who sat by +her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once. Some of the letters +were proceedings of ladies’ committees or resolutions of ladies’ +meetings, which she read to us; others were applications from people +excited in various ways about the cultivation of coffee, and natives; +others required answers, and these she sent her eldest daughter from +the table three or four times to write. She was full of business and +undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause. + +I was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in +spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top or +bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed +passively to submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be actively +interested in that settlement. As he never spoke a word, he might +have been a native but for his complexion. It was not until we left +the table and he remained alone with Richard that the possibility of +his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my head. But he WAS Mr. Jellyby; +and a loquacious young man called Mr. Quale, with large shining knobs +for temples and his hair all brushed to the back of his head, who +came in the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthropist, also +informed her that he called the matrimonial alliance of Mrs. Jellyby +with Mr. Jellyby the union of mind and matter. + +This young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself about +Africa and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists to +teach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export +trade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby out by saying, “I believe +now, Mrs. Jellyby, you have received as many as from one hundred and +fifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa in a single day, have +you not?” or, “If my memory does not deceive me, Mrs. Jellyby, you +once mentioned that you had sent off five thousand circulars from one +post-office at one time?”—always repeating Mrs. Jellyby’s answer to +us like an interpreter. During the whole evening, Mr. Jellyby sat in +a corner with his head against the wall as if he were subject to low +spirits. It seemed that he had several times opened his mouth when +alone with Richard after dinner, as if he had something on his mind, +but had always shut it again, to Richard’s extreme confusion, without +saying anything. + +Mrs. Jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee +all the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter. She +also held a discussion with Mr. Quale, of which the subject seemed to +be—if I understood it—the brotherhood of humanity, and gave +utterance to some beautiful sentiments. I was not so attentive an +auditor as I might have wished to be, however, for Peepy and the +other children came flocking about Ada and me in a corner of the +drawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down among them and +told them in whispers “Puss in Boots” and I don’t know what else +until Mrs. Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed. +As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs, +where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst +of the little family like a dragon and overturned them into cribs. + +After that I occupied myself in making our room a little tidy and in +coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn, which at +last it did, quite brightly. On my return downstairs, I felt that +Mrs. Jellyby looked down upon me rather for being so frivolous, and I +was sorry for it, though at the same time I knew that I had no higher +pretensions. + +It was nearly midnight before we found an opportunity of going to +bed, and even then we left Mrs. Jellyby among her papers drinking +coffee and Miss Jellyby biting the feather of her pen. + +“What a strange house!” said Ada when we got upstairs. “How curious +of my cousin Jarndyce to send us here!” + +“My love,” said I, “it quite confuses me. I want to understand it, +and I can’t understand it at all.” + +“What?” asked Ada with her pretty smile. + +“All this, my dear,” said I. “It MUST be very good of Mrs. Jellyby to +take such pains about a scheme for the benefit of natives—and +yet—Peepy and the housekeeping!” + +Ada laughed and put her arm about my neck as I stood looking at the +fire, and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature and had won her +heart. “You are so thoughtful, Esther,” she said, “and yet so +cheerful! And you do so much, so unpretendingly! You would make a +home out of even this house.” + +My simple darling! She was quite unconscious that she only praised +herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she +made so much of me! + +“May I ask you a question?” said I when we had sat before the fire a +little while. + +“Five hundred,” said Ada. + +“Your cousin, Mr. Jarndyce. I owe so much to him. Would you mind +describing him to me?” + +Shaking her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes upon me with such +laughing wonder that I was full of wonder too, partly at her beauty, +partly at her surprise. + +“Esther!” she cried. + +“My dear!” + +“You want a description of my cousin Jarndyce?” + +“My dear, I never saw him.” + +“And I never saw him!” returned Ada. + +Well, to be sure! + +No, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died, she +remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she spoke of +him and of the noble generosity of his character, which she had said +was to be trusted above all earthly things; and Ada trusted it. Her +cousin Jarndyce had written to her a few months ago—“a plain, honest +letter,” Ada said—proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on +and telling her that “in time it might heal some of the wounds made +by the miserable Chancery suit.” She had replied, gratefully +accepting his proposal. Richard had received a similar letter and had +made a similar response. He HAD seen Mr. Jarndyce once, but only +once, five years ago, at Winchester school. He had told Ada, when +they were leaning on the screen before the fire where I found them, +that he recollected him as “a bluff, rosy fellow.” This was the +utmost description Ada could give me. + +It set me thinking so that when Ada was asleep, I still remained +before the fire, wondering and wondering about Bleak House, and +wondering and wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long +ago. I don’t know where my thoughts had wandered when they were +recalled by a tap at the door. + +I opened it softly and found Miss Jellyby shivering there with a +broken candle in a broken candlestick in one hand and an egg-cup in +the other. + +“Good night!” she said very sulkily. + +“Good night!” said I. + +“May I come in?” she shortly and unexpectedly asked me in the same +sulky way. + +“Certainly,” said I. “Don’t wake Miss Clare.” + +She would not sit down, but stood by the fire dipping her inky middle +finger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and smearing it over +the ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and looking very +gloomy. + +“I wish Africa was dead!” she said on a sudden. + +I was going to remonstrate. + +“I do!” she said “Don’t talk to me, Miss Summerson. I hate it and +detest it. It’s a beast!” + +I told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I put my hand upon her +head, and touched her forehead, and said it was hot now but would be +cool to-morrow. She still stood pouting and frowning at me, but +presently put down her egg-cup and turned softly towards the bed +where Ada lay. + +“She is very pretty!” she said with the same knitted brow and in the +same uncivil manner. + +I assented with a smile. + +“An orphan. Ain’t she?” + +“Yes.” + +“But knows a quantity, I suppose? Can dance, and play music, and +sing? She can talk French, I suppose, and do geography, and globes, +and needlework, and everything?” + +“No doubt,” said I. + +“I can’t,” she returned. “I can’t do anything hardly, except write. +I’m always writing for Ma. I wonder you two were not ashamed of +yourselves to come in this afternoon and see me able to do nothing +else. It was like your ill nature. Yet you think yourselves very +fine, I dare say!” + +I could see that the poor girl was near crying, and I resumed my +chair without speaking and looked at her (I hope) as mildly as I felt +towards her. + +“It’s disgraceful,” she said. “You know it is. The whole house is +disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I’M disgraceful. Pa’s +miserable, and no wonder! Priscilla drinks—she’s always drinking. +It’s a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn’t +smell her to-day. It was as bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner; +you know it was!” + +“My dear, I don’t know it,” said I. + +“You do,” she said very shortly. “You shan’t say you don’t. You do!” + +“Oh, my dear!” said I. “If you won’t let me speak—” + +“You’re speaking now. You know you are. Don’t tell stories, Miss +Summerson.” + +“My dear,” said I, “as long as you won’t hear me out—” + +“I don’t want to hear you out.” + +“Oh, yes, I think you do,” said I, “because that would be so very +unreasonable. I did not know what you tell me because the servant did +not come near me at dinner; but I don’t doubt what you tell me, and I +am sorry to hear it.” + +“You needn’t make a merit of that,” said she. + +“No, my dear,” said I. “That would be very foolish.” + +She was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (but still +with the same discontented face) and kissed Ada. That done, she came +softly back and stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was heaving +in a distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I thought it +better not to speak. + +“I wish I was dead!” she broke out. “I wish we were all dead. It +would be a great deal better for us.” + +In a moment afterwards, she knelt on the ground at my side, hid her +face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I +comforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she +wanted to stay there! + +“You used to teach girls,” she said, “If you could only have taught +me, I could have learnt from you! I am so very miserable, and I like +you so much!” + +I could not persuade her to sit by me or to do anything but move a +ragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still hold +my dress in the same manner. By degrees the poor tired girl fell +asleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it should rest +on my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire went out, and +all night long she slumbered thus before the ashy grate. At first I +was painfully awake and vainly tried to lose myself, with my eyes +closed, among the scenes of the day. At length, by slow degrees, they +became indistinct and mingled. I began to lose the identity of the +sleeper resting on me. Now it was Ada, now one of my old Reading +friends from whom I could not believe I had so recently parted. Now +it was the little mad woman worn out with curtsying and smiling, now +some one in authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I +was no one. + +The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened my +eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon +me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and +cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut +them all. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +A Morning Adventure + + +Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed +heavy—I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt that +they would have made midsummer sunshine dim—I was sufficiently +forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that early hour and +sufficiently curious about London to think it a good idea on the part +of Miss Jellyby when she proposed that we should go out for a walk. + +“Ma won’t be down for ever so long,” she said, “and then it’s a +chance if breakfast’s ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so. +As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office. He never has +what you would call a regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out the +loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes there +isn’t any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. But I’m afraid you +must be tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would rather go to +bed.” + +“I am not at all tired, my dear,” said I, “and would much prefer to +go out.” + +“If you’re sure you would,” returned Miss Jellyby, “I’ll get my +things on.” + +Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal to +Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him, that +he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my bed +again. To this he submitted with the best grace possible, staring at +me during the whole operation as if he never had been, and never +could again be, so astonished in his life—looking very miserable +also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going snugly to sleep +as soon as it was over. At first I was in two minds about taking such +a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody in the house was likely +to notice it. + +What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and the bustle of getting +myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found +Miss Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-room, +which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick, +throwing the candle in to make it burn better. Everything was just as +we had left it last night and was evidently intended to remain so. +Below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been +left ready for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and waste-paper were all over +the house. Some pewter pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings; +the door stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out +of a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as she passed us, +that she had been to see what o’clock it was. + +But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and +down Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see +us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk. So he +took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention +that Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and that I +really should not have thought she liked me much unless she had told +me so. + +“Where would you wish to go?” she asked. + +“Anywhere, my dear,” I replied. + +“Anywhere’s nowhere,” said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely. + +“Let us go somewhere at any rate,” said I. + +She then walked me on very fast. + +“I don’t care!” she said. “Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I +say I don’t care—but if he was to come to our house with his great, +shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he was as old as +Methuselah, I wouldn’t have anything to say to him. Such ASSES as he +and Ma make of themselves!” + +“My dear!” I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the +vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. “Your duty as a child—” + +“Oh! Don’t talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where’s Ma’s duty +as a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then +let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it’s much more their +affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I +shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there’s an end of it!” + +She walked me on faster yet. + +“But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and +I won’t have anything to say to him. I can’t bear him. If there’s any +stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it’s the stuff he and Ma +talk. I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the +patience to stay there and be a witness of such inconsistencies and +contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma’s management!” + +I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young +gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the +disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada +coming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to run +a race. Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent and walked +moodily on at my side while I admired the long successions and +varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and +fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy +preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping +out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly +groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse. + +“So, cousin,” said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada behind me. +“We are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to +our place of meeting yesterday, and—by the Great Seal, here’s the +old lady again!” + +Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and +smiling, and saying with her yesterday’s air of patronage, “The wards +in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!” + +“You are out early, ma’am,” said I as she curtsied to me. + +“Ye-es! I usually walk here early. Before the court sits. It’s +retired. I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,” +said the old lady mincingly. “The business of the day requires a +great deal of thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to +follow.” + +“Who’s this, Miss Summerson?” whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm +tighter through her own. + +The little old lady’s hearing was remarkably quick. She answered for +herself directly. + +“A suitor, my child. At your service. I have the honour to attend +court regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasure of addressing +another of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?” said the old lady, +recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a very low +curtsy. + +Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday, +good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with the +suit. + +“Ha!” said the old lady. “She does not expect a judgment? She will +still grow old. But not so old. Oh, dear, no! This is the garden of +Lincoln’s Inn. I call it my garden. It is quite a bower in the +summer-time. Where the birds sing melodiously. I pass the greater +part of the long vacation here. In contemplation. You find the long +vacation exceedingly long, don’t you?” + +We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so. + +“When the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more +flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor’s +court,” said the old lady, “the vacation is fulfilled and the sixth +seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come and see +my lodging. It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and +beauty are very seldom there. It is a long, long time since I had a +visit from either.” + +She had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss Jellyby away, beckoned +Richard and Ada to come too. I did not know how to excuse myself and +looked to Richard for aid. As he was half amused and half curious and +all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she +continued to lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow, our +strange conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling +condescension, that she lived close by. + +It was quite true, as it soon appeared. She lived so close by that we +had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before she +was at home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady +stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some +courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said, +“This is my lodging. Pray walk up!” + +She had stopped at a shop over which was written KROOK, RAG AND +BOTTLE WAREHOUSE. Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN MARINE +STORES. In one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill +at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. In +another was the inscription BONES BOUGHT. In another, KITCHEN-STUFF +BOUGHT. In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT. In another, WASTE-PAPER BOUGHT. +In another, LADIES’ AND GENTLEMEN’S WARDROBES BOUGHT. Everything +seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold there. In all parts of the +window were quantities of dirty bottles—blacking bottles, medicine +bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine +bottles, ink bottles; I am reminded by mentioning the latter that the +shop had in several little particulars the air of being in a legal +neighbourhood and of being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and +disowned relation of the law. There were a great many ink bottles. +There was a little tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the +door, labelled “Law Books, all at 9d.” Some of the inscriptions I +have enumerated were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen +in Kenge and Carboy’s office and the letters I had so long received +from the firm. Among them was one, in the same writing, having +nothing to do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a +respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to +execute with neatness and dispatch: Address to Nemo, care of Mr. +Krook, within. There were several second-hand bags, blue and red, +hanging up. A little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old +crackled parchment scrolls and discoloured and dog’s-eared +law-papers. I could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which +there must have been hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once +belonged to doors of rooms or strong chests in lawyers’ offices. The +litter of rags tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged +wooden scale, hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might +have been counsellors’ bands and gowns torn up. One had only to +fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking +in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very +clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete. + +As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides +by the wall of Lincoln’s Inn, intercepting the light within a couple +of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern +that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in +the shop. Turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us. He was +short, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk sideways between +his shoulders and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth +as if he were on fire within. His throat, chin, and eyebrows were so +frosted with white hairs and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin +that he looked from his breast upward like some old root in a fall of +snow. + +“Hi, hi!” said the old man, coming to the door. “Have you anything to +sell?” + +We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been +trying to open the house-door with a key she had taken from her +pocket, and to whom Richard now said that as we had had the pleasure +of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for +time. But she was not to be so easily left. She became so +fantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties that we would +walk up and see her apartment for an instant, and was so bent, in her +harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good omen she desired, +that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to +comply. I suppose we were all more or less curious; at any rate, when +the old man added his persuasions to hers and said, “Aye, aye! Please +her! It won’t take a minute! Come in, come in! Come in through the +shop if t’other door’s out of order!” we all went in, stimulated by +Richard’s laughing encouragement and relying on his protection. + +“My landlord, Krook,” said the little old lady, condescending to him +from her lofty station as she presented him to us. “He is called +among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the +Court of Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd. Oh, +I assure you he is very odd!” + +She shook her head a great many times and tapped her forehead with +her finger to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse +him, “For he is a little—you know—M!” said the old lady with great +stateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed. + +“It’s true enough,” he said, going before us with the lantern, “that +they call me the Lord Chancellor and call my shop Chancery. And why +do you think they call me the Lord Chancellor and my shop Chancery?” + +“I don’t know, I am sure!” said Richard rather carelessly. + +“You see,” said the old man, stopping and turning round, “they—Hi! +Here’s lovely hair! I have got three sacks of ladies’ hair below, but +none so beautiful and fine as this. What colour, and what texture!” + +“That’ll do, my good friend!” said Richard, strongly disapproving of +his having drawn one of Ada’s tresses through his yellow hand. “You +can admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty.” + +The old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my +attention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably +beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the +little old lady herself. But as Ada interposed and laughingly said +she could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook +shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it. + +“You see, I have so many things here,” he resumed, holding up the +lantern, “of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but THEY +know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that’s +why they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many +old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust +and must and cobwebs. And all’s fish that comes to my net. And I +can’t abear to part with anything I once lay hold of (or so my +neighbours think, but what do THEY know?) or to alter anything, or to +have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor repairing going on +about me. That’s the way I’ve got the ill name of Chancery. I don’t +mind. I go to see my noble and learned brother pretty well every day, +when he sits in the Inn. He don’t notice me, but I notice him. +There’s no great odds betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle. Hi, +Lady Jane!” + +A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his shoulder +and startled us all. + +“Hi! Show ’em how you scratch. Hi! Tear, my lady!” said her master. + +The cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her tigerish +claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear. + +“She’d do as much for any one I was to set her on,” said the old man. +“I deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers was +offered to me. It’s a very fine skin, as you may see, but I didn’t +have it stripped off! THAT warn’t like Chancery practice though, says +you!” + +He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in +the back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his +hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him +before passing out, “That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are +tiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I have none to spare +myself, having to attend court very soon. My young friends are the +wards in Jarndyce.” + +“Jarndyce!” said the old man with a start. + +“Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit, Krook,” returned his lodger. + +“Hi!” exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and +with a wider stare than before. “Think of it!” + +He seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us that +Richard said, “Why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about +the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other +Chancellor!” + +“Yes,” said the old man abstractedly. “Sure! YOUR name now will be—” + +“Richard Carstone.” + +“Carstone,” he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his +forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a +separate finger. “Yes. There was the name of Barbary, and the name of +Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think.” + +“He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!” said +Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me. + +“Aye!” said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. “Yes! +Tom Jarndyce—you’ll excuse me, being related; but he was never known +about court by any other name, and was as well known there as—she is +now,” nodding slightly at his lodger. “Tom Jarndyce was often in +here. He got into a restless habit of strolling about when the cause +was on, or expected, talking to the little shopkeepers and telling +’em to keep out of Chancery, whatever they did. ‘For,’ says he, ‘it’s +being ground to bits in a slow mill; it’s being roasted at a slow +fire; it’s being stung to death by single bees; it’s being drowned by +drops; it’s going mad by grains.’ He was as near making away with +himself, just where the young lady stands, as near could be.” + +We listened with horror. + +“He come in at the door,” said the old man, slowly pointing an +imaginary track along the shop, “on the day he did it—the whole +neighbourhood had said for months before that he would do it, of a +certainty sooner or later—he come in at the door that day, and +walked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there, and +asked me (you’ll judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to fetch +him a pint of wine. ‘For,’ says he, ‘Krook, I am much depressed; my +cause is on again, and I think I’m nearer judgment than I ever was.’ +I hadn’t a mind to leave him alone; and I persuaded him to go to the +tavern over the way there, t’other side my lane (I mean Chancery +Lane); and I followed and looked in at the window, and saw him, +comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by the fire, and company +with him. I hadn’t hardly got back here when I heard a shot go +echoing and rattling right away into the inn. I ran out—neighbours +ran out—twenty of us cried at once, ‘Tom Jarndyce!’” + +The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the lantern, +blew the light out, and shut the lantern up. + +“We were right, I needn’t tell the present hearers. Hi! To be sure, +how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the +cause was on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of +’em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as if they +hadn’t heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if they +had—Oh, dear me!—nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of +it by any chance!” + +Ada’s colour had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less +pale. Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was no +party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a shock +to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the +minds of many people with such dreadful recollections. I had another +uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to the poor +half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my surprise, +she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the way +upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior +creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord was +“a little—M—, you know!” + +She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which +she had a glimpse of Lincoln’s Inn Hall. This seemed to have been her +principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there. +She could look at it, she said, in the night, especially in the +moonshine. Her room was clean, but very, very bare. I noticed the +scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from +books, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and +some half-dozen reticles and work-bags, “containing documents,” as +she informed us. There were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and +I saw no articles of clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food. Upon a +shelf in an open cupboard were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so +forth, but all dry and empty. There was a more affecting meaning in +her pinched appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had +understood before. + +“Extremely honoured, I am sure,” said our poor hostess with the +greatest suavity, “by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce. And very +much indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation. Considering. I +am limited as to situation. In consequence of the necessity of +attending on the Chancellor. I have lived here many years. I pass my +days in court, my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights +long, for I sleep but little and think much. That is, of course, +unavoidable, being in Chancery. I am sorry I cannot offer chocolate. +I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place my establishment on +a superior footing. At present, I don’t mind confessing to the wards +in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I sometimes find it difficult +to keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold here. I have +felt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse +the introduction of such mean topics.” + +She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and +called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some +containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and +goldfinches—I should think at least twenty. + +“I began to keep the little creatures,” she said, “with an object +that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of +restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es! +They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so +short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the +whole collection has died over and over again. I doubt, do you know, +whether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be +free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?” + +Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a +reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so when no +one but herself was present. + +“Indeed,” she pursued, “I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure +you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or +Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark and +senseless here, as I have found so many birds!” + +Richard, answering what he saw in Ada’s compassionate eyes, took the +opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the +chimney-piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to examine +the birds. + +“I can’t allow them to sing much,” said the little old lady, “for +(you’ll think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea that +they are singing while I am following the arguments in court. And my +mind requires to be so very clear, you know! Another time, I’ll tell +you their names. Not at present. On a day of such good omen, they +shall sing as much as they like. In honour of youth,” a smile and +curtsy, “hope,” a smile and curtsy, “and beauty,” a smile and curtsy. +“There! We’ll let in the full light.” + +The birds began to stir and chirp. + +“I cannot admit the air freely,” said the little old lady—the room +was close, and would have been the better for it—“because the cat +you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy for their lives. She +crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have +discovered,” whispering mysteriously, “that her natural cruelty is +sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In +consequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given. She is sly +and full of malice. I half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat, +but the wolf of the old saying. It is so very difficult to keep her +from the door.” + +Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was +half-past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to +an end than we could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly +took up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the +table on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court. On +our answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she +opened the door to attend us downstairs. + +“With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I +should be there before the Chancellor comes in,” said she, “for he +might mention my case the first thing. I have a presentiment that he +WILL mention it the first thing this morning.” + +She stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the +whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had +bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a +little M. This was on the first floor. But she had made a previous +stoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a dark door +there. + +“The only other lodger,” she now whispered in explanation, “a +law-writer. The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to +the devil. I don’t know what he can have done with the money. Hush!” + +She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there, +and repeating “Hush!” went before us on tiptoe as though even the +sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said. + +Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through it +on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of packets of +waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed to be working +hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece +of chalk by him, with which, as he put each separate package or +bundle down, he made a crooked mark on the panelling of the wall. + +Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady had gone +by him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me, and +chalked the letter J upon the wall—in a very curious manner, +beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. It was +a capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as any +clerk in Messrs. Kenge and Carboy’s office would have made. + +“Can you read it?” he asked me with a keen glance. + +“Surely,” said I. “It’s very plain.” + +“What is it?” + +“J.” + +With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it out +and turned an “a” in its place (not a capital letter this time), and +said, “What’s that?” + +I told him. He then rubbed that out and turned the letter “r,” and +asked me the same question. He went on quickly until he had formed in +the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of the +letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving two letters on the +wall together. + +“What does that spell?” he asked me. + +When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, yet with the same +rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the letters +forming the words Bleak House. These, in some astonishment, I also +read; and he laughed again. + +“Hi!” said the old man, laying aside the chalk. “I have a turn for +copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor +write.” + +He looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as if +I were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite +relieved by Richard’s appearing at the door and saying, “Miss +Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair. +Don’t be tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr. Krook!” + +I lost no time in wishing Mr. Krook good morning and joining my +friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave +us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of +yesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada +and me. Before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked back +and saw Mr. Krook standing at his shop-door, in his spectacles, +looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and her tail +sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall feather. + +“Quite an adventure for a morning in London!” said Richard with a +sigh. “Ah, cousin, cousin, it’s a weary word this Chancery!” + +“It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember,” returned Ada. +“I am grieved that I should be the enemy—as I suppose I am—of a +great number of relations and others, and that they should be my +enemies—as I suppose they are—and that we should all be ruining one +another without knowing how or why and be in constant doubt and +discord all our lives. It seems very strange, as there must be right +somewhere, that an honest judge in real earnest has not been able to +find out through all these years where it is.” + +“Ah, cousin!” said Richard. “Strange, indeed! All this wasteful, +wanton chess-playing IS very strange. To see that composed court +yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness of +the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache both +together. My head ached with wondering how it happened, if men were +neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think they could +possibly be either. But at all events, Ada—I may call you Ada?” + +“Of course you may, cousin Richard.” + +“At all events, Chancery will work none of its bad influences on US. +We have happily been brought together, thanks to our good kinsman, +and it can’t divide us now!” + +“Never, I hope, cousin Richard!” said Ada gently. + +Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a very significant look. I +smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very +pleasantly. + +In half an hour after our arrival, Mrs. Jellyby appeared; and in the +course of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast +straggled one by one into the dining-room. I do not doubt that Mrs. +Jellyby had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but she +presented no appearance of having changed her dress. She was greatly +occupied during breakfast, for the morning’s post brought a heavy +correspondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would occasion her +(she said) to pass a busy day. The children tumbled about, and +notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs, which were +perfect little calendars of distress; and Peepy was lost for an hour +and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a policeman. The +equable manner in which Mrs. Jellyby sustained both his absence and +his restoration to the family circle surprised us all. + +She was by that time perseveringly dictating to Caddy, and Caddy was +fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found her. At +one o’clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart for our +luggage. Mrs. Jellyby charged us with many remembrances to her good +friend Mr. Jarndyce; Caddy left her desk to see us depart, kissed me +in the passage, and stood biting her pen and sobbing on the steps; +Peepy, I am happy to say, was asleep and spared the pain of +separation (I was not without misgivings that he had gone to Newgate +market in search of me); and all the other children got up behind the +barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great concern, scattered +over the surface of Thavies Inn as we rolled out of its precincts. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Quite at Home + + +The day had brightened very much, and still brightened as we went +westward. We went our way through the sunshine and the fresh air, +wondering more and more at the extent of the streets, the brilliancy +of the shops, the great traffic, and the crowds of people whom the +pleasanter weather seemed to have brought out like many-coloured +flowers. By and by we began to leave the wonderful city and to +proceed through suburbs which, of themselves, would have made a +pretty large town in my eyes; and at last we got into a real country +road again, with windmills, rick-yards, milestones, farmers’ waggons, +scents of old hay, swinging signs, and horse troughs: trees, fields, +and hedge-rows. It was delightful to see the green landscape before +us and the immense metropolis behind; and when a waggon with a train +of beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding +bells, came by us with its music, I believe we could all three have +sung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around. + +“The whole road has been reminding me of my namesake Whittington,” +said Richard, “and that waggon is the finishing touch. Halloa! What’s +the matter?” + +We had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too. Its music changed as +the horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except +when a horse tossed his head or shook himself and sprinkled off a +little shower of bell-ringing. + +“Our postilion is looking after the waggoner,” said Richard, “and the +waggoner is coming back after us. Good day, friend!” The waggoner was +at our coach-door. “Why, here’s an extraordinary thing!” added +Richard, looking closely at the man. “He has got your name, Ada, in +his hat!” + +He had all our names in his hat. Tucked within the band were three +small notes—one addressed to Ada, one to Richard, one to me. These +the waggoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name +aloud first. In answer to Richard’s inquiry from whom they came, he +briefly answered, “Master, sir, if you please”; and putting on his +hat again (which was like a soft bowl), cracked his whip, re-awakened +his music, and went melodiously away. + +“Is that Mr. Jarndyce’s waggon?” said Richard, calling to our +post-boy. + +“Yes, sir,” he replied. “Going to London.” + +We opened the notes. Each was a counterpart of the other and +contained these words in a solid, plain hand. + + + I look forward, my dear, to our meeting easily and + without constraint on either side. I therefore have to + propose that we meet as old friends and take the past for + granted. It will be a relief to you possibly, and to me + certainly, and so my love to you. + + John Jarndyce + + +I had perhaps less reason to be surprised than either of my +companions, having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking one +who had been my benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so +many years. I had not considered how I could thank him, my gratitude +lying too deep in my heart for that; but I now began to consider how +I could meet him without thanking him, and felt it would be very +difficult indeed. + +The notes revived in Richard and Ada a general impression that they +both had, without quite knowing how they came by it, that their +cousin Jarndyce could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he +performed and that sooner than receive any he would resort to the +most singular expedients and evasions or would even run away. Ada +dimly remembered to have heard her mother tell, when she was a very +little child, that he had once done her an act of uncommon generosity +and that on her going to his house to thank him, he happened to see +her through a window coming to the door, and immediately escaped by +the back gate, and was not heard of for three months. This discourse +led to a great deal more on the same theme, and indeed it lasted us +all day, and we talked of scarcely anything else. If we did by any +chance diverge into another subject, we soon returned to this, and +wondered what the house would be like, and when we should get there, +and whether we should see Mr. Jarndyce as soon as we arrived or after +a delay, and what he would say to us, and what we should say to him. +All of which we wondered about, over and over again. + +The roads were very heavy for the horses, but the pathway was +generally good, so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and liked +it so well that we prolonged our walk on the level ground when we got +to the top. At Barnet there were other horses waiting for us, but as +they had only just been fed, we had to wait for them too, and got a +long fresh walk over a common and an old battle-field before the +carriage came up. These delays so protracted the journey that the +short day was spent and the long night had closed in before we came +to St. Albans, near to which town Bleak House was, we knew. + +By that time we were so anxious and nervous that even Richard +confessed, as we rattled over the stones of the old street, to +feeling an irrational desire to drive back again. As to Ada and me, +whom he had wrapped up with great care, the night being sharp and +frosty, we trembled from head to foot. When we turned out of the +town, round a corner, and Richard told us that the post-boy, who had +for a long time sympathized with our heightened expectation, was +looking back and nodding, we both stood up in the carriage (Richard +holding Ada lest she should be jolted down) and gazed round upon the +open country and the starlight night for our destination. There was a +light sparkling on the top of a hill before us, and the driver, +pointing to it with his whip and crying, “That’s Bleak House!” put +his horses into a canter and took us forward at such a rate, uphill +though it was, that the wheels sent the road drift flying about our +heads like spray from a water-mill. Presently we lost the light, +presently saw it, presently lost it, presently saw it, and turned +into an avenue of trees and cantered up towards where it was beaming +brightly. It was in a window of what seemed to be an old-fashioned +house with three peaks in the roof in front and a circular sweep +leading to the porch. A bell was rung as we drew up, and amidst the +sound of its deep voice in the still air, and the distant barking of +some dogs, and a gush of light from the opened door, and the smoking +and steaming of the heated horses, and the quickened beating of our +own hearts, we alighted in no inconsiderable confusion. + +“Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are welcome. I rejoice to see +you! Rick, if I had a hand to spare at present, I would give it you!” + +The gentleman who said these words in a clear, bright, hospitable +voice had one of his arms round Ada’s waist and the other round mine, +and kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall +into a ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire. Here he +kissed us again, and opening his arms, made us sit down side by side +on a sofa ready drawn out near the hearth. I felt that if we had been +at all demonstrative, he would have run away in a moment. + +“Now, Rick!” said he. “I have a hand at liberty. A word in earnest is +as good as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you. You are at home. +Warm yourself!” + +Richard shook him by both hands with an intuitive mixture of respect +and frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness that +rather alarmed me, I was so afraid of Mr. Jarndyce’s suddenly +disappearing), “You are very kind, sir! We are very much obliged to +you!” laid aside his hat and coat and came up to the fire. + +“And how did you like the ride? And how did you like Mrs. Jellyby, my +dear?” said Mr. Jarndyce to Ada. + +While Ada was speaking to him in reply, I glanced (I need not say +with how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively, quick +face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered +iron-grey. I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was +upright, hearty, and robust. From the moment of his first speaking to +us his voice had connected itself with an association in my mind that +I could not define; but now, all at once, a something sudden in his +manner and a pleasant expression in his eyes recalled the gentleman +in the stagecoach six years ago on the memorable day of my journey to +Reading. I was certain it was he. I never was so frightened in my +life as when I made the discovery, for he caught my glance, and +appearing to read my thoughts, gave such a look at the door that I +thought we had lost him. + +However, I am happy to say he remained where he was, and asked me +what I thought of Mrs. Jellyby. + +“She exerts herself very much for Africa, sir,” I said. + +“Nobly!” returned Mr. Jarndyce. “But you answer like Ada.” Whom I had +not heard. “You all think something else, I see.” + +“We rather thought,” said I, glancing at Richard and Ada, who +entreated me with their eyes to speak, “that perhaps she was a little +unmindful of her home.” + +“Floored!” cried Mr. Jarndyce. + +I was rather alarmed again. + +“Well! I want to know your real thoughts, my dear. I may have sent +you there on purpose.” + +“We thought that, perhaps,” said I, hesitating, “it is right to begin +with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are +overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted +for them.” + +“The little Jellybys,” said Richard, coming to my relief, “are +really—I can’t help expressing myself strongly, sir—in a devil of a +state.” + +“She means well,” said Mr. Jarndyce hastily. “The wind’s in the +east.” + +“It was in the north, sir, as we came down,” observed Richard. + +“My dear Rick,” said Mr. Jarndyce, poking the fire, “I’ll take an +oath it’s either in the east or going to be. I am always conscious of +an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in +the east.” + +“Rheumatism, sir?” said Richard. + +“I dare say it is, Rick. I believe it is. And so the little Jell—I +had my doubts about ’em—are in a—oh, Lord, yes, it’s easterly!” +said Mr. Jarndyce. + +He had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering +these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing +his hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation at once so +whimsical and so lovable that I am sure we were more delighted with +him than we could possibly have expressed in any words. He gave an +arm to Ada and an arm to me, and bidding Richard bring a candle, was +leading the way out when he suddenly turned us all back again. + +“Those little Jellybys. Couldn’t you—didn’t you—now, if it had +rained sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or anything of +that sort!” said Mr. Jarndyce. + +“Oh, cousin—” Ada hastily began. + +“Good, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cousin John, perhaps, is +better.” + +“Then, cousin John—” Ada laughingly began again. + +“Ha, ha! Very good indeed!” said Mr. Jarndyce with great enjoyment. +“Sounds uncommonly natural. Yes, my dear?” + +“It did better than that. It rained Esther.” + +“Aye?” said Mr. Jarndyce. “What did Esther do?” + +“Why, cousin John,” said Ada, clasping her hands upon his arm and +shaking her head at me across him—for I wanted her to be +quiet—“Esther was their friend directly. Esther nursed them, coaxed +them to sleep, washed and dressed them, told them stories, kept them +quiet, bought them keepsakes”—My dear girl! I had only gone out with +Peepy after he was found and given him a little, tiny horse!—“and, +cousin John, she softened poor Caroline, the eldest one, so much and +was so thoughtful for me and so amiable! No, no, I won’t be +contradicted, Esther dear! You know, you know, it’s true!” + +The warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin John and kissed me, +and then looking up in his face, boldly said, “At all events, cousin +John, I WILL thank you for the companion you have given me.” I felt +as if she challenged him to run away. But he didn’t. + +“Where did you say the wind was, Rick?” asked Mr. Jarndyce. + +“In the north as we came down, sir.” + +“You are right. There’s no east in it. A mistake of mine. Come, +girls, come and see your home!” + +It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and +down steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more +rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is +a bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you +find still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places with lattice +windows and green growth pressing through them. Mine, which we +entered first, was of this kind, with an up-and-down roof that had +more corners in it than I ever counted afterwards and a chimney +(there was a wood fire on the hearth) paved all around with pure +white tiles, in every one of which a bright miniature of the fire was +blazing. Out of this room, you went down two steps into a charming +little sitting-room looking down upon a flower-garden, which room was +henceforth to belong to Ada and me. Out of this you went up three +steps into Ada’s bedroom, which had a fine broad window commanding a +beautiful view (we saw a great expanse of darkness lying underneath +the stars), to which there was a hollow window-seat, in which, with a +spring-lock, three dear Adas might have been lost at once. Out of +this room you passed into a little gallery, with which the other best +rooms (only two) communicated, and so, by a little staircase of +shallow steps with a number of corner stairs in it, considering its +length, down into the hall. But if instead of going out at Ada’s door +you came back into my room, and went out at the door by which you had +entered it, and turned up a few crooked steps that branched off in an +unexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in passages, +with mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a native Hindu +chair, which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in +every form something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage, +and had been brought from India nobody knew by whom or when. From +these you came on Richard’s room, which was part library, part +sitting-room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound +of many rooms. Out of that you went straight, with a little interval +of passage, to the plain room where Mr. Jarndyce slept, all the year +round, with his window open, his bedstead without any furniture +standing in the middle of the floor for more air, and his cold bath +gaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that you came into +another passage, where there were back-stairs and where you could +hear the horses being rubbed down outside the stable and being told +to “Hold up” and “Get over,” as they slipped about very much on the +uneven stones. Or you might, if you came out at another door (every +room had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall again by +half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back +there or had ever got out of it. + +The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as +pleasantly irregular. Ada’s sleeping-room was all flowers—in chintz +and paper, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two stiff +courtly chairs which stood, each attended by a little page of a stool +for greater state, on either side of the fire-place. Our sitting-room +was green and had framed and glazed upon the walls numbers of +surprising and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a real +trout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been served with +gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the whole process of +preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists. In my room +there were oval engravings of the months—ladies haymaking in short +waists and large hats tied under the chin, for June; smooth-legged +noblemen pointing with cocked-hats to village steeples, for October. +Half-length portraits in crayons abounded all through the house, but +were so dispersed that I found the brother of a youthful officer of +mine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my pretty young +bride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. As +substitutes, I had four angels, of Queen Anne’s reign, taking a +complacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty; +and a composition in needlework representing fruit, a kettle, and an +alphabet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to the chairs and +tables, hangings, glasses, even to the pincushions and scent-bottles +on the dressing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety. They +agreed in nothing but their perfect neatness, their display of the +whitest linen, and their storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a +drawer, small or large, rendered it possible, of quantities of +rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such, with its illuminated windows, +softened here and there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon the +starlight night; with its light, and warmth, and comfort; with its +hospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparations for dinner; with +the face of its generous master brightening everything we saw; and +just wind enough without to sound a low accompaniment to everything +we heard, were our first impressions of Bleak House. + +“I am glad you like it,” said Mr. Jarndyce when he had brought us +round again to Ada’s sitting-room. “It makes no pretensions, but it +is a comfortable little place, I hope, and will be more so with such +bright young looks in it. You have barely half an hour before dinner. +There’s no one here but the finest creature upon earth—a child.” + +“More children, Esther!” said Ada. + +“I don’t mean literally a child,” pursued Mr. Jarndyce; “not a child +in years. He is grown up—he is at least as old as I am—but in +simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless +inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child.” + +We felt that he must be very interesting. + +“He knows Mrs. Jellyby,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “He is a musical man, an +amateur, but might have been a professional. He is an artist too, an +amateur, but might have been a professional. He is a man of +attainments and of captivating manners. He has been unfortunate in +his affairs, and unfortunate in his pursuits, and unfortunate in his +family; but he don’t care—he’s a child!” + +“Did you imply that he has children of his own, sir?” inquired +Richard. + +“Yes, Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But +he has never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to +look after HIM. He is a child, you know!” said Mr. Jarndyce. + +“And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?” inquired +Richard. + +“Why, just as you may suppose,” said Mr. Jarndyce, his countenance +suddenly falling. “It is said that the children of the very poor are +not brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole’s children have +tumbled up somehow or other. The wind’s getting round again, I am +afraid. I feel it rather!” + +Richard observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night. + +“It IS exposed,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “No doubt that’s the cause. Bleak +House has an exposed sound. But you are coming my way. Come along!” + +Our luggage having arrived and being all at hand, I was dressed in a +few minutes and engaged in putting my worldly goods away when a maid +(not the one in attendance upon Ada, but another, whom I had not +seen) brought a basket into my room with two bunches of keys in it, +all labelled. + +“For you, miss, if you please,” said she. + +“For me?” said I. + +“The housekeeping keys, miss.” + +I showed my surprise, for she added with some little surprise on her +own part, “I was told to bring them as soon as you was alone, miss. +Miss Summerson, if I don’t deceive myself?” + +“Yes,” said I. “That is my name.” + +“The large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the +cellars, miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint to-morrow morning, +I was to show you the presses and things they belong to.” + +I said I would be ready at half-past six, and after she was gone, +stood looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my trust. +Ada found me thus and had such a delightful confidence in me when I +showed her the keys and told her about them that it would have been +insensibility and ingratitude not to feel encouraged. I knew, to be +sure, that it was the dear girl’s kindness, but I liked to be so +pleasantly cheated. + +When we went downstairs, we were presented to Mr. Skimpole, who was +standing before the fire telling Richard how fond he used to be, in +his school-time, of football. He was a little bright creature with a +rather large head, but a delicate face and a sweet voice, and there +was a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and +spontaneous and was said with such a captivating gaiety that it was +fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more slender figure than Mr. +Jarndyce and having a richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked +younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance in all respects of a +damaged young man than a well-preserved elderly one. There was an +easy negligence in his manner and even in his dress (his hair +carelessly disposed, and his neck-kerchief loose and flowing, as I +have seen artists paint their own portraits) which I could not +separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some +unique process of depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like +the manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life by the +usual road of years, cares, and experiences. + +I gathered from the conversation that Mr. Skimpole had been educated +for the medical profession and had once lived, in his professional +capacity, in the household of a German prince. He told us, however, +that as he had always been a mere child in point of weights and +measures and had never known anything about them (except that they +disgusted him), he had never been able to prescribe with the +requisite accuracy of detail. In fact, he said, he had no head for +detail. And he told us, with great humour, that when he was wanted to +bleed the prince or physic any of his people, he was generally found +lying on his back in bed, reading the newspapers or making +fancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn’t come. The prince, at last, +objecting to this, “in which,” said Mr. Skimpole, in the frankest +manner, “he was perfectly right,” the engagement terminated, and Mr. +Skimpole having (as he added with delightful gaiety) “nothing to live +upon but love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with +rosy cheeks.” His good friend Jarndyce and some other of his good +friends then helped him, in quicker or slower succession, to several +openings in life, but to no purpose, for he must confess to two of +the oldest infirmities in the world: one was that he had no idea of +time, the other that he had no idea of money. In consequence of which +he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and +never knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on in life, and +here he was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of +making fancy-sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond +of art. All he asked of society was to let him live. THAT wasn’t +much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music, +mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of +Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a +mere child in the world, but he didn’t cry for the moon. He said to +the world, “Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue +coats, lawn sleeves; put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after +glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only—let +Harold Skimpole live!” + +All this and a great deal more he told us, not only with the +utmost brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious +candour—speaking of himself as if he were not at all his own affair, +as if Skimpole were a third person, as if he knew that Skimpole had +his singularities but still had his claims too, which were the +general business of the community and must not be slighted. He was +quite enchanting. If I felt at all confused at that early time in +endeavouring to reconcile anything he said with anything I had +thought about the duties and accountabilities of life (which I am far +from sure of), I was confused by not exactly understanding why he was +free of them. That he WAS free of them, I scarcely doubted; he was so +very clear about it himself. + +“I covet nothing,” said Mr. Skimpole in the same light way. +“Possession is nothing to me. Here is my friend Jarndyce’s excellent +house. I feel obliged to him for possessing it. I can sketch it and +alter it. I can set it to music. When I am here, I have sufficient +possession of it and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsibility. +My steward’s name, in short, is Jarndyce, and he can’t cheat me. We +have been mentioning Mrs. Jellyby. There is a bright-eyed woman, of a +strong will and immense power of business detail, who throws herself +into objects with surprising ardour! I don’t regret that I have not a +strong will and an immense power of business detail to throw myself +into objects with surprising ardour. I can admire her without envy. I +can sympathize with the objects. I can dream of them. I can lie down +on the grass—in fine weather—and float along an African river, +embracing all the natives I meet, as sensible of the deep silence and +sketching the dense overhanging tropical growth as accurately as if I +were there. I don’t know that it’s of any direct use my doing so, but +it’s all I can do, and I do it thoroughly. Then, for heaven’s sake, +having Harold Skimpole, a confiding child, petitioning you, the +world, an agglomeration of practical people of business habits, to +let him live and admire the human family, do it somehow or other, +like good souls, and suffer him to ride his rocking-horse!” + +It was plain enough that Mr. Jarndyce had not been neglectful of the +adjuration. Mr. Skimpole’s general position there would have rendered +it so without the addition of what he presently said. + +“It’s only you, the generous creatures, whom I envy,” said Mr. +Skimpole, addressing us, his new friends, in an impersonal manner. “I +envy you your power of doing what you do. It is what I should revel +in myself. I don’t feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as +if YOU ought to be grateful to ME for giving you the opportunity of +enjoying the luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For anything I +can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of +increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a +benefactor to you by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting +me in my little perplexities. Why should I regret my incapacity for +details and worldly affairs when it leads to such pleasant +consequences? I don’t regret it therefore.” + +Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what +they expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr. Jarndyce +than this. I had often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whether +it was really singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was +probably the most grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should +so desire to escape the gratitude of others. + +We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging +qualities of Ada and Richard that Mr. Skimpole, seeing them for the +first time, should be so unreserved and should lay himself out to be +so exquisitely agreeable. They (and especially Richard) were +naturally pleased, for similar reasons, and considered it no common +privilege to be so freely confided in by such an attractive man. The +more we listened, the more gaily Mr. Skimpole talked. And what with +his fine hilarious manner and his engaging candour and his genial way +of lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as if he had said, “I am +a child, you know! You are designing people compared with me” (he +really made me consider myself in that light) “but I am gay and +innocent; forget your worldly arts and play with me!” the effect was +absolutely dazzling. + +He was so full of feeling too and had such a delicate sentiment for +what was beautiful or tender that he could have won a heart by that +alone. In the evening, when I was preparing to make tea and Ada was +touching the piano in the adjoining room and softly humming a tune to +her cousin Richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and +sat down on the sofa near me and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved +him. + +“She is like the morning,” he said. “With that golden hair, those +blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer +morning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call +such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an +orphan. She is the child of the universe.” + +Mr. Jarndyce, I found, was standing near us with his hands behind him +and an attentive smile upon his face. + +“The universe,” he observed, “makes rather an indifferent parent, I +am afraid.” + +“Oh! I don’t know!” cried Mr. Skimpole buoyantly. + +“I think I do know,” said Mr. Jarndyce. + +“Well!” cried Mr. Skimpole. “You know the world (which in your sense +is the universe), and I know nothing of it, so you shall have your +way. But if I had mine,” glancing at the cousins, “there should be no +brambles of sordid realities in such a path as that. It should be +strewn with roses; it should lie through bowers, where there was no +spring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. Age or change +should never wither it. The base word money should never be breathed +near it!” + +Mr. Jarndyce patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been +really a child, and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment, +glanced at the young cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a +benignant expression in it which I often (how often!) saw again, +which has long been engraven on my heart. The room in which they +were, communicating with that in which he stood, was only lighted by +the fire. Ada sat at the piano; Richard stood beside her, bending +down. Upon the wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by +strange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught from the unsteady +fire, though reflecting from motionless objects. Ada touched the +notes so softly and sang so low that the wind, sighing away to the +distant hills, was as audible as the music. The mystery of the future +and the little clue afforded to it by the voice of the present seemed +expressed in the whole picture. + +But it is not to recall this fancy, well as I remember it, that I +recall the scene. First, I was not quite unconscious of the contrast +in respect of meaning and intention between the silent look directed +that way and the flow of words that had preceded it. Secondly, though +Mr. Jarndyce’s glance as he withdrew it rested for but a moment on +me, I felt as if in that moment he confided to me—and knew that he +confided to me and that I received the confidence—his hope that Ada +and Richard might one day enter on a dearer relationship. + +Mr. Skimpole could play on the piano and the violoncello, and he was +a composer—had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it—and +played what he composed with taste. After tea we had quite a little +concert, in which Richard—who was enthralled by Ada’s singing and +told me that she seemed to know all the songs that ever were +written—and Mr. Jarndyce, and I were the audience. After a little +while I missed first Mr. Skimpole and afterwards Richard, and while I +was thinking how could Richard stay away so long and lose so much, +the maid who had given me the keys looked in at the door, saying, “If +you please, miss, could you spare a minute?” + +When I was shut out with her in the hall, she said, holding up her +hands, “Oh, if you please, miss, Mr. Carstone says would you come +upstairs to Mr. Skimpole’s room. He has been took, miss!” + +“Took?” said I. + +“Took, miss. Sudden,” said the maid. + +I was apprehensive that his illness might be of a dangerous kind, but +of course I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one and +collected myself, as I followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to +consider what were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove +to be a fit. She threw open a door and I went into a chamber, where, +to my unspeakable surprise, instead of finding Mr. Skimpole stretched +upon the bed or prostrate on the floor, I found him standing before +the fire smiling at Richard, while Richard, with a face of great +embarrassment, looked at a person on the sofa, in a white great-coat, +with smooth hair upon his head and not much of it, which he was +wiping smoother and making less of with a pocket-handkerchief. + +“Miss Summerson,” said Richard hurriedly, “I am glad you are come. +You will be able to advise us. Our friend Mr. Skimpole—don’t be +alarmed!—is arrested for debt.” + +“And really, my dear Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Skimpole with his +agreeable candour, “I never was in a situation in which that +excellent sense and quiet habit of method and usefulness, which +anybody must observe in you who has the happiness of being a quarter +of an hour in your society, was more needed.” + +The person on the sofa, who appeared to have a cold in his head, gave +such a very loud snort that he startled me. + +“Are you arrested for much, sir?” I inquired of Mr. Skimpole. + +“My dear Miss Summerson,” said he, shaking his head pleasantly, “I +don’t know. Some pounds, odd shillings, and halfpence, I think, were +mentioned.” + +“It’s twenty-four pound, sixteen, and sevenpence ha’penny,” observed +the stranger. “That’s wot it is.” + +“And it sounds—somehow it sounds,” said Mr. Skimpole, “like a small +sum?” + +The strange man said nothing but made another snort. It was such a +powerful one that it seemed quite to lift him out of his seat. + +“Mr. Skimpole,” said Richard to me, “has a delicacy in applying to my +cousin Jarndyce because he has lately—I think, sir, I understood you +that you had lately—” + +“Oh, yes!” returned Mr. Skimpole, smiling. “Though I forgot how much +it was and when it was. Jarndyce would readily do it again, but I +have the epicure-like feeling that I would prefer a novelty in help, +that I would rather,” and he looked at Richard and me, “develop +generosity in a new soil and in a new form of flower.” + +“What do you think will be best, Miss Summerson?” said Richard, +aside. + +I ventured to inquire, generally, before replying, what would happen +if the money were not produced. + +“Jail,” said the strange man, coolly putting his handkerchief into +his hat, which was on the floor at his feet. “Or Coavinses.” + +“May I ask, sir, what is—” + +“Coavinses?” said the strange man. “A ’ouse.” + +Richard and I looked at one another again. It was a most singular +thing that the arrest was our embarrassment and not Mr. Skimpole’s. +He observed us with a genial interest, but there seemed, if I may +venture on such a contradiction, nothing selfish in it. He had +entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours. + +“I thought,” he suggested, as if good-naturedly to help us out, “that +being parties in a Chancery suit concerning (as people say) a large +amount of property, Mr. Richard or his beautiful cousin, or both, +could sign something, or make over something, or give some sort of +undertaking, or pledge, or bond? I don’t know what the business name +of it may be, but I suppose there is some instrument within their +power that would settle this?” + +“Not a bit on it,” said the strange man. + +“Really?” returned Mr. Skimpole. “That seems odd, now, to one who is +no judge of these things!” + +“Odd or even,” said the stranger gruffly, “I tell you, not a bit on +it!” + +“Keep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!” Mr. Skimpole +gently reasoned with him as he made a little drawing of his head on +the fly-leaf of a book. “Don’t be ruffled by your occupation. We can +separate you from your office; we can separate the individual from +the pursuit. We are not so prejudiced as to suppose that in private +life you are otherwise than a very estimable man, with a great deal +of poetry in your nature, of which you may not be conscious.” + +The stranger only answered with another violent snort, whether in +acceptance of the poetry-tribute or in disdainful rejection of it, he +did not express to me. + +“Now, my dear Miss Summerson, and my dear Mr. Richard,” said Mr. +Skimpole gaily, innocently, and confidingly as he looked at his +drawing with his head on one side, “here you see me utterly incapable +of helping myself, and entirely in your hands! I only ask to be free. +The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold +Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!” + +“My dear Miss Summerson,” said Richard in a whisper, “I have ten +pounds that I received from Mr. Kenge. I must try what that will do.” + +I possessed fifteen pounds, odd shillings, which I had saved from my +quarterly allowance during several years. I had always thought that +some accident might happen which would throw me suddenly, without any +relation or any property, on the world and had always tried to keep +some little money by me that I might not be quite penniless. I told +Richard of my having this little store and having no present need of +it, and I asked him delicately to inform Mr. Skimpole, while I should +be gone to fetch it, that we would have the pleasure of paying his +debt. + +When I came back, Mr. Skimpole kissed my hand and seemed quite +touched. Not on his own account (I was again aware of that perplexing +and extraordinary contradiction), but on ours, as if personal +considerations were impossible with him and the contemplation of our +happiness alone affected him. Richard, begging me, for the greater +grace of the transaction, as he said, to settle with Coavinses (as +Mr. Skimpole now jocularly called him), I counted out the money and +received the necessary acknowledgment. This, too, delighted Mr. +Skimpole. + +His compliments were so delicately administered that I blushed less +than I might have done and settled with the stranger in the white +coat without making any mistakes. He put the money in his pocket and +shortly said, “Well, then, I’ll wish you a good evening, miss.” + +“My friend,” said Mr. Skimpole, standing with his back to the fire +after giving up the sketch when it was half finished, “I should like +to ask you something, without offence.” + +I think the reply was, “Cut away, then!” + +“Did you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this +errand?” said Mr. Skimpole. + +“Know’d it yes’day aft’noon at tea-time,” said Coavinses. + +“It didn’t affect your appetite? Didn’t make you at all uneasy?” + +“Not a bit,” said Coavinses. “I know’d if you wos missed to-day, you +wouldn’t be missed to-morrow. A day makes no such odds.” + +“But when you came down here,” proceeded Mr. Skimpole, “it was a fine +day. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the lights and +shadows were passing across the fields, the birds were singing.” + +“Nobody said they warn’t, in MY hearing,” returned Coavinses. + +“No,” observed Mr. Skimpole. “But what did you think upon the road?” + +“Wot do you mean?” growled Coavinses with an appearance of strong +resentment. “Think! I’ve got enough to do, and little enough to get +for it without thinking. Thinking!” (with profound contempt). + +“Then you didn’t think, at all events,” proceeded Mr. Skimpole, “to +this effect: ‘Harold Skimpole loves to see the sun shine, loves to +hear the wind blow, loves to watch the changing lights and shadows, +loves to hear the birds, those choristers in Nature’s great +cathedral. And does it seem to me that I am about to deprive Harold +Skimpole of his share in such possessions, which are his only +birthright!’ You thought nothing to that effect?” + +“I—certainly—did—NOT,” said Coavinses, whose doggedness in utterly +renouncing the idea was of that intense kind that he could only give +adequate expression to it by putting a long interval between each +word, and accompanying the last with a jerk that might have +dislocated his neck. + +“Very odd and very curious, the mental process is, in you men of +business!” said Mr. Skimpole thoughtfully. “Thank you, my friend. +Good night.” + +As our absence had been long enough already to seem strange +downstairs, I returned at once and found Ada sitting at work by the +fireside talking to her cousin John. Mr. Skimpole presently appeared, +and Richard shortly after him. I was sufficiently engaged during the +remainder of the evening in taking my first lesson in backgammon from +Mr. Jarndyce, who was very fond of the game and from whom I wished of +course to learn it as quickly as I could in order that I might be of +the very small use of being able to play when he had no better +adversary. But I thought, occasionally, when Mr. Skimpole played some +fragments of his own compositions or when, both at the piano and the +violoncello, and at our table, he preserved with an absence of all +effort his delightful spirits and his easy flow of conversation, that +Richard and I seemed to retain the transferred impression of having +been arrested since dinner and that it was very curious altogether. + +It was late before we separated, for when Ada was going at eleven +o’clock, Mr. Skimpole went to the piano and rattled hilariously that +the best of all ways to lengthen our days was to steal a few hours +from night, my dear! It was past twelve before he took his candle and +his radiant face out of the room, and I think he might have kept us +there, if he had seen fit, until daybreak. Ada and Richard were +lingering for a few moments by the fire, wondering whether Mrs. +Jellyby had yet finished her dictation for the day, when Mr. +Jarndyce, who had been out of the room, returned. + +“Oh, dear me, what’s this, what’s this!” he said, rubbing his head +and walking about with his good-humoured vexation. “What’s this they +tell me? Rick, my boy, Esther, my dear, what have you been doing? Why +did you do it? How could you do it? How much apiece was it? The +wind’s round again. I feel it all over me!” + +We neither of us quite knew what to answer. + +“Come, Rick, come! I must settle this before I sleep. How much are +you out of pocket? You two made the money up, you know! Why did you? +How could you? Oh, Lord, yes, it’s due east—must be!” + +“Really, sir,” said Richard, “I don’t think it would be honourable in +me to tell you. Mr. Skimpole relied upon us—” + +“Lord bless you, my dear boy! He relies upon everybody!” said Mr. +Jarndyce, giving his head a great rub and stopping short. + +“Indeed, sir?” + +“Everybody! And he’ll be in the same scrape again next week!” said +Mr. Jarndyce, walking again at a great pace, with a candle in his +hand that had gone out. “He’s always in the same scrape. He was born +in the same scrape. I verily believe that the announcement in the +newspapers when his mother was confined was ‘On Tuesday last, at her +residence in Botheration Buildings, Mrs. Skimpole of a son in +difficulties.’” + +Richard laughed heartily but added, “Still, sir, I don’t want to +shake his confidence or to break his confidence, and if I submit to +your better knowledge again, that I ought to keep his secret, I hope +you will consider before you press me any more. Of course, if you do +press me, sir, I shall know I am wrong and will tell you.” + +“Well!” cried Mr. Jarndyce, stopping again, and making several absent +endeavours to put his candlestick in his pocket. “I—here! Take it +away, my dear. I don’t know what I am about with it; it’s all the +wind—invariably has that effect—I won’t press you, Rick; you may be +right. But really—to get hold of you and Esther—and to squeeze you +like a couple of tender young Saint Michael’s oranges! It’ll blow a +gale in the course of the night!” + +He was now alternately putting his hands into his pockets as if he +were going to keep them there a long time, and taking them out again +and vehemently rubbing them all over his head. + +I ventured to take this opportunity of hinting that Mr. Skimpole, +being in all such matters quite a child— + +“Eh, my dear?” said Mr. Jarndyce, catching at the word. + +“Being quite a child, sir,” said I, “and so different from other +people—” + +“You are right!” said Mr. Jarndyce, brightening. “Your woman’s wit +hits the mark. He is a child—an absolute child. I told you he was a +child, you know, when I first mentioned him.” + +Certainly! Certainly! we said. + +“And he IS a child. Now, isn’t he?” asked Mr. Jarndyce, brightening +more and more. + +He was indeed, we said. + +“When you come to think of it, it’s the height of childishness in +you—I mean me—” said Mr. Jarndyce, “to regard him for a moment as a +man. You can’t make HIM responsible. The idea of Harold Skimpole with +designs or plans, or knowledge of consequences! Ha, ha, ha!” + +It was so delicious to see the clouds about his bright face clearing, +and to see him so heartily pleased, and to know, as it was impossible +not to know, that the source of his pleasure was the goodness which +was tortured by condemning, or mistrusting, or secretly accusing any +one, that I saw the tears in Ada’s eyes, while she echoed his laugh, +and felt them in my own. + +“Why, what a cod’s head and shoulders I am,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “to +require reminding of it! The whole business shows the child from +beginning to end. Nobody but a child would have thought of singling +YOU two out for parties in the affair! Nobody but a child would have +thought of YOUR having the money! If it had been a thousand pounds, +it would have been just the same!” said Mr. Jarndyce with his whole +face in a glow. + +We all confirmed it from our night’s experience. + +“To be sure, to be sure!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “However, Rick, Esther, +and you too, Ada, for I don’t know that even your little purse is +safe from his inexperience—I must have a promise all round that +nothing of this sort shall ever be done any more. No advances! Not +even sixpences.” + +We all promised faithfully, Richard with a merry glance at me +touching his pocket as if to remind me that there was no danger of +OUR transgressing. + +“As to Skimpole,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “a habitable doll’s house with +good board and a few tin people to get into debt with and borrow +money of would set the boy up in life. He is in a child’s sleep by +this time, I suppose; it’s time I should take my craftier head to my +more worldly pillow. Good night, my dears. God bless you!” + +He peeped in again, with a smiling face, before we had lighted our +candles, and said, “Oh! I have been looking at the weather-cock. I +find it was a false alarm about the wind. It’s in the south!” And +went away singing to himself. + +Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs, +that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the +pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal, +rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or +depreciate any one. We thought this very characteristic of his +eccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those +petulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that +unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the +stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours. + +Indeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one evening +to my gratitude that I hoped I already began to understand him +through that mingled feeling. Any seeming inconsistencies in Mr. +Skimpole or in Mrs. Jellyby I could not expect to be able to +reconcile, having so little experience or practical knowledge. +Neither did I try, for my thoughts were busy when I was alone, with +Ada and Richard and with the confidence I had seemed to receive +concerning them. My fancy, made a little wild by the wind perhaps, +would not consent to be all unselfish, either, though I would have +persuaded it to be so if I could. It wandered back to my godmother’s +house and came along the intervening track, raising up shadowy +speculations which had sometimes trembled there in the dark as to +what knowledge Mr. Jarndyce had of my earliest history—even as to +the possibility of his being my father, though that idle dream was +quite gone now. + +It was all gone now, I remembered, getting up from the fire. It was +not for me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful spirit +and a grateful heart. So I said to myself, “Esther, Esther, Esther! +Duty, my dear!” and gave my little basket of housekeeping keys such a +shake that they sounded like little bells and rang me hopefully to +bed. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +The Ghost’s Walk + + +While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, it is still wet weather +down at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever falling—drip, +drip, drip—by day and night upon the broad flagged terrace-pavement, +the Ghost’s Walk. The weather is so very bad down in Lincolnshire +that the liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being +fine again. Not that there is any superabundant life of imagination +on the spot, for Sir Leicester is not here (and, truly, even if he +were, would not do much for it in that particular), but is in Paris +with my Lady; and solitude, with dusky wings, sits brooding upon +Chesney Wold. + +There may be some motions of fancy among the lower animals at Chesney +Wold. The horses in the stables—the long stables in a barren, +red-brick court-yard, where there is a great bell in a turret, and a +clock with a large face, which the pigeons who live near it and who +love to perch upon its shoulders seem to be always consulting—THEY +may contemplate some mental pictures of fine weather on occasions, +and may be better artists at them than the grooms. The old roan, so +famous for cross-country work, turning his large eyeball to the +grated window near his rack, may remember the fresh leaves that +glisten there at other times and the scents that stream in, and may +have a fine run with the hounds, while the human helper, clearing out +the next stall, never stirs beyond his pitchfork and birch-broom. The +grey, whose place is opposite the door and who with an impatient +rattle of his halter pricks his ears and turns his head so wistfully +when it is opened, and to whom the opener says, “Woa grey, then, +steady! Noabody wants you to-day!” may know it quite as well as the +man. The whole seemingly monotonous and uncompanionable half-dozen, +stabled together, may pass the long wet hours when the door is shut +in livelier communication than is held in the servants’ hall or at +the Dedlock Arms, or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps +corrupting) the pony in the loose-box in the corner. + +So the mastiff, dozing in his kennel in the court-yard with his large +head on his paws, may think of the hot sunshine when the shadows of +the stable-buildings tire his patience out by changing and leave him +at one time of the day no broader refuge than the shadow of his own +house, where he sits on end, panting and growling short, and very +much wanting something to worry besides himself and his chain. So +now, half-waking and all-winking, he may recall the house full of +company, the coach-houses full of vehicles, the stables full of +horses, and the out-buildings full of attendants upon horses, until +he is undecided about the present and comes forth to see how it is. +Then, with that impatient shake of himself, he may growl in the +spirit, “Rain, rain, rain! Nothing but rain—and no family here!” as +he goes in again and lies down with a gloomy yawn. + +So with the dogs in the kennel-buildings across the park, who have +their restless fits and whose doleful voices when the wind has been +very obstinate have even made it known in the house itself—upstairs, +downstairs, and in my Lady’s chamber. They may hunt the whole +country-side, while the raindrops are pattering round their +inactivity. So the rabbits with their self-betraying tails, frisking +in and out of holes at roots of trees, may be lively with ideas of +the breezy days when their ears are blown about or of those seasons +of interest when there are sweet young plants to gnaw. The turkey in +the poultry-yard, always troubled with a class-grievance (probably +Christmas), may be reminiscent of that summer morning wrongfully +taken from him when he got into the lane among the felled trees, +where there was a barn and barley. The discontented goose, who stoops +to pass under the old gateway, twenty feet high, may gabble out, if +we only knew it, a waddling preference for weather when the gateway +casts its shadow on the ground. + +Be this as it may, there is not much fancy otherwise stirring at +Chesney Wold. If there be a little at any odd moment, it goes, like a +little noise in that old echoing place, a long way and usually leads +off to ghosts and mystery. + +It has rained so hard and rained so long down in Lincolnshire that +Mrs. Rouncewell, the old housekeeper at Chesney Wold, has several +times taken off her spectacles and cleaned them to make certain that +the drops were not upon the glasses. Mrs. Rouncewell might have been +sufficiently assured by hearing the rain, but that she is rather +deaf, which nothing will induce her to believe. She is a fine old +lady, handsome, stately, wonderfully neat, and has such a back and +such a stomacher that if her stays should turn out when she dies to +have been a broad old-fashioned family fire-grate, nobody who knows +her would have cause to be surprised. Weather affects Mrs. Rouncewell +little. The house is there in all weathers, and the house, as she +expresses it, “is what she looks at.” She sits in her room (in a side +passage on the ground floor, with an arched window commanding a +smooth quadrangle, adorned at regular intervals with smooth round +trees and smooth round blocks of stone, as if the trees were going to +play at bowls with the stones), and the whole house reposes on her +mind. She can open it on occasion and be busy and fluttered, but it +is shut up now and lies on the breadth of Mrs. Rouncewell’s +iron-bound bosom in a majestic sleep. + +It is the next difficult thing to an impossibility to imagine Chesney +Wold without Mrs. Rouncewell, but she has only been here fifty years. +Ask her how long, this rainy day, and she shall answer “fifty year, +three months, and a fortnight, by the blessing of heaven, if I live +till Tuesday.” Mr. Rouncewell died some time before the decease of +the pretty fashion of pig-tails, and modestly hid his own (if he took +it with him) in a corner of the churchyard in the park near the +mouldy porch. He was born in the market-town, and so was his young +widow. Her progress in the family began in the time of the last Sir +Leicester and originated in the still-room. + +The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He +supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual +characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was +born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to +make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned—would +never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die. But he is +an excellent master still, holding it a part of his state to be so. +He has a great liking for Mrs. Rouncewell; he says she is a most +respectable, creditable woman. He always shakes hands with her when +he comes down to Chesney Wold and when he goes away; and if he were +very ill, or if he were knocked down by accident, or run over, or +placed in any situation expressive of a Dedlock at a disadvantage, he +would say if he could speak, “Leave me, and send Mrs. Rouncewell +here!” feeling his dignity, at such a pass, safer with her than with +anybody else. + +Mrs. Rouncewell has known trouble. She has had two sons, of whom the +younger ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came back. Even +to this hour, Mrs. Rouncewell’s calm hands lose their composure when +she speaks of him, and unfolding themselves from her stomacher, hover +about her in an agitated manner as she says what a likely lad, what a +fine lad, what a gay, good-humoured, clever lad he was! Her second +son would have been provided for at Chesney Wold and would have been +made steward in due season, but he took, when he was a schoolboy, to +constructing steam-engines out of saucepans and setting birds to draw +their own water with the least possible amount of labour, so +assisting them with artful contrivance of hydraulic pressure that a +thirsty canary had only, in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to +the wheel and the job was done. This propensity gave Mrs. Rouncewell +great uneasiness. She felt it with a mother’s anguish to be a move in +the Wat Tyler direction, well knowing that Sir Leicester had that +general impression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a +tall chimney might be considered essential. But the doomed young +rebel (otherwise a mild youth, and very persevering), showing no sign +of grace as he got older but, on the contrary, constructing a model +of a power-loom, she was fain, with many tears, to mention his +backslidings to the baronet. “Mrs. Rouncewell,” said Sir Leicester, +“I can never consent to argue, as you know, with any one on any +subject. You had better get rid of your boy; you had better get him +into some Works. The iron country farther north is, I suppose, the +congenial direction for a boy with these tendencies.” Farther north +he went, and farther north he grew up; and if Sir Leicester Dedlock +ever saw him when he came to Chesney Wold to visit his mother, or +ever thought of him afterwards, it is certain that he only regarded +him as one of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy and +grim, who were in the habit of turning out by torchlight two or three +nights in the week for unlawful purposes. + +Nevertheless, Mrs. Rouncewell’s son has, in the course of nature and +art, grown up, and established himself, and married, and called unto +him Mrs. Rouncewell’s grandson, who, being out of his apprenticeship, +and home from a journey in far countries, whither he was sent to +enlarge his knowledge and complete his preparations for the venture +of this life, stands leaning against the chimney-piece this very day +in Mrs. Rouncewell’s room at Chesney Wold. + +“And, again and again, I am glad to see you, Watt! And, once again, I +am glad to see you, Watt!” says Mrs. Rouncewell. “You are a fine +young fellow. You are like your poor uncle George. Ah!” Mrs. +Rouncewell’s hands unquiet, as usual, on this reference. + +“They say I am like my father, grandmother.” + +“Like him, also, my dear—but most like your poor uncle George! And +your dear father.” Mrs. Rouncewell folds her hands again. “He is +well?” + +“Thriving, grandmother, in every way.” + +“I am thankful!” Mrs. Rouncewell is fond of her son but has a +plaintive feeling towards him, much as if he were a very honourable +soldier who had gone over to the enemy. + +“He is quite happy?” says she. + +“Quite.” + +“I am thankful! So he has brought you up to follow in his ways and +has sent you into foreign countries and the like? Well, he knows +best. There may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don’t +understand. Though I am not young, either. And I have seen a quantity +of good company too!” + +“Grandmother,” says the young man, changing the subject, “what a very +pretty girl that was I found with you just now. You called her Rosa?” + +“Yes, child. She is daughter of a widow in the village. Maids are so +hard to teach, now-a-days, that I have put her about me young. She’s +an apt scholar and will do well. She shows the house already, very +pretty. She lives with me at my table here.” + +“I hope I have not driven her away?” + +“She supposes we have family affairs to speak about, I dare say. She +is very modest. It is a fine quality in a young woman. And scarcer,” +says Mrs. Rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to its utmost limits, +“than it formerly was!” + +The young man inclines his head in acknowledgment of the precepts of +experience. Mrs. Rouncewell listens. + +“Wheels!” says she. They have long been audible to the younger ears +of her companion. “What wheels on such a day as this, for gracious +sake?” + +After a short interval, a tap at the door. “Come in!” A dark-eyed, +dark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in—so fresh in her rosy and +yet delicate bloom that the drops of rain which have beaten on her +hair look like the dew upon a flower fresh gathered. + +“What company is this, Rosa?” says Mrs. Rouncewell. + +“It’s two young men in a gig, ma’am, who want to see the house—yes, +and if you please, I told them so!” in quick reply to a gesture of +dissent from the housekeeper. “I went to the hall-door and told them +it was the wrong day and the wrong hour, but the young man who was +driving took off his hat in the wet and begged me to bring this card +to you.” + +“Read it, my dear Watt,” says the housekeeper. + +Rosa is so shy as she gives it to him that they drop it between them +and almost knock their foreheads together as they pick it up. Rosa is +shyer than before. + +“Mr. Guppy” is all the information the card yields. + +“Guppy!” repeats Mrs. Rouncewell, “MR. Guppy! Nonsense, I never heard +of him!” + +“If you please, he told ME that!” says Rosa. “But he said that he and +the other young gentleman came from London only last night by the +mail, on business at the magistrates’ meeting, ten miles off, this +morning, and that as their business was soon over, and they had heard +a great deal said of Chesney Wold, and really didn’t know what to do +with themselves, they had come through the wet to see it. They are +lawyers. He says he is not in Mr. Tulkinghorn’s office, but he is +sure he may make use of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s name if necessary.” +Finding, now she leaves off, that she has been making quite a long +speech, Rosa is shyer than ever. + +Now, Mr. Tulkinghorn is, in a manner, part and parcel of the place, +and besides, is supposed to have made Mrs. Rouncewell’s will. The old +lady relaxes, consents to the admission of the visitors as a favour, +and dismisses Rosa. The grandson, however, being smitten by a sudden +wish to see the house himself, proposes to join the party. The +grandmother, who is pleased that he should have that interest, +accompanies him—though to do him justice, he is exceedingly +unwilling to trouble her. + +“Much obliged to you, ma’am!” says Mr. Guppy, divesting himself of +his wet dreadnought in the hall. “Us London lawyers don’t often get +an out, and when we do, we like to make the most of it, you know.” + +The old housekeeper, with a gracious severity of deportment, waves +her hand towards the great staircase. Mr. Guppy and his friend follow +Rosa; Mrs. Rouncewell and her grandson follow them; a young gardener +goes before to open the shutters. + +As is usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and +his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle +about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don’t care for the right +things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression +of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber +that they enter, Mrs. Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house +itself, rests apart in a window-seat or other such nook and listens +with stately approval to Rosa’s exposition. Her grandson is so +attentive to it that Rosa is shyer than ever—and prettier. Thus they +pass on from room to room, raising the pictured Dedlocks for a few +brief minutes as the young gardener admits the light, and +reconsigning them to their graves as he shuts it out again. It +appears to the afflicted Mr. Guppy and his inconsolable friend that +there is no end to the Dedlocks, whose family greatness seems to +consist in their never having done anything to distinguish themselves +for seven hundred years. + +Even the long drawing-room of Chesney Wold cannot revive Mr. Guppy’s +spirits. He is so low that he droops on the threshold and has hardly +strength of mind to enter. But a portrait over the chimney-piece, +painted by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a +charm. He recovers in a moment. He stares at it with uncommon +interest; he seems to be fixed and fascinated by it. + +“Dear me!” says Mr. Guppy. “Who’s that?” + +“The picture over the fire-place,” says Rosa, “is the portrait of the +present Lady Dedlock. It is considered a perfect likeness, and the +best work of the master.” + +“Blest,” says Mr. Guppy, staring in a kind of dismay at his friend, +“if I can ever have seen her. Yet I know her! Has the picture been +engraved, miss?” + +“The picture has never been engraved. Sir Leicester has always +refused permission.” + +“Well!” says Mr. Guppy in a low voice. “I’ll be shot if it ain’t very +curious how well I know that picture! So that’s Lady Dedlock, is it!” + +“The picture on the right is the present Sir Leicester Dedlock. The +picture on the left is his father, the late Sir Leicester.” + +Mr. Guppy has no eyes for either of these magnates. “It’s +unaccountable to me,” he says, still staring at the portrait, “how +well I know that picture! I’m dashed,” adds Mr. Guppy, looking round, +“if I don’t think I must have had a dream of that picture, you know!” + +As no one present takes any especial interest in Mr. Guppy’s dreams, +the probability is not pursued. But he still remains so absorbed by +the portrait that he stands immovable before it until the young +gardener has closed the shutters, when he comes out of the room in a +dazed state that is an odd though a sufficient substitute for +interest and follows into the succeeding rooms with a confused stare, +as if he were looking everywhere for Lady Dedlock again. + +He sees no more of her. He sees her rooms, which are the last shown, +as being very elegant, and he looks out of the windows from which she +looked out, not long ago, upon the weather that bored her to death. +All things have an end, even houses that people take infinite pains +to see and are tired of before they begin to see them. He has come to +the end of the sight, and the fresh village beauty to the end of her +description; which is always this: “The terrace below is much +admired. It is called, from an old story in the family, the Ghost’s +Walk.” + +“No?” says Mr. Guppy, greedily curious. “What’s the story, miss? Is +it anything about a picture?” + +“Pray tell us the story,” says Watt in a half whisper. + +“I don’t know it, sir.” Rosa is shyer than ever. + +“It is not related to visitors; it is almost forgotten,” says the +housekeeper, advancing. “It has never been more than a family +anecdote.” + +“You’ll excuse my asking again if it has anything to do with a +picture, ma’am,” observes Mr. Guppy, “because I do assure you that +the more I think of that picture the better I know it, without +knowing how I know it!” + +The story has nothing to do with a picture; the housekeeper can +guarantee that. Mr. Guppy is obliged to her for the information and +is, moreover, generally obliged. He retires with his friend, guided +down another staircase by the young gardener, and presently is heard +to drive away. It is now dusk. Mrs. Rouncewell can trust to the +discretion of her two young hearers and may tell THEM how the terrace +came to have that ghostly name. + +She seats herself in a large chair by the fast-darkening window and +tells them: “In the wicked days, my dears, of King Charles the +First—I mean, of course, in the wicked days of the rebels who +leagued themselves against that excellent king—Sir Morbury Dedlock +was the owner of Chesney Wold. Whether there was any account of a +ghost in the family before those days, I can’t say. I should think it +very likely indeed.” + +Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion because she considers that a +family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She +regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a +genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim. + +“Sir Morbury Dedlock,” says Mrs. Rouncewell, “was, I have no occasion +to say, on the side of the blessed martyr. But it IS supposed that +his Lady, who had none of the family blood in her veins, favoured the +bad cause. It is said that she had relations among King Charles’s +enemies, that she was in correspondence with them, and that she gave +them information. When any of the country gentlemen who followed his +Majesty’s cause met here, it is said that my Lady was always nearer +to the door of their council-room than they supposed. Do you hear a +sound like a footstep passing along the terrace, Watt?” + +Rosa draws nearer to the housekeeper. + +“I hear the rain-drip on the stones,” replies the young man, “and I +hear a curious echo—I suppose an echo—which is very like a halting +step.” + +The housekeeper gravely nods and continues: “Partly on account of +this division between them, and partly on other accounts, Sir Morbury +and his Lady led a troubled life. She was a lady of a haughty temper. +They were not well suited to each other in age or character, and they +had no children to moderate between them. After her favourite +brother, a young gentleman, was killed in the civil wars (by Sir +Morbury’s near kinsman), her feeling was so violent that she hated +the race into which she had married. When the Dedlocks were about to +ride out from Chesney Wold in the king’s cause, she is supposed to +have more than once stolen down into the stables in the dead of night +and lamed their horses; and the story is that once at such an hour, +her husband saw her gliding down the stairs and followed her into the +stall where his own favourite horse stood. There he seized her by the +wrist, and in a struggle or in a fall or through the horse being +frightened and lashing out, she was lamed in the hip and from that +hour began to pine away.” + +The housekeeper has dropped her voice to a little more than a +whisper. + +“She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She +never complained of the change; she never spoke to any one of being +crippled or of being in pain, but day by day she tried to walk upon +the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and +down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater +difficulty every day. At last, one afternoon her husband (to whom she +had never, on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night), +standing at the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement. +He hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over +her, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said, ‘I will die here +where I have walked. And I will walk here, though I am in my grave. I +will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when +calamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the Dedlocks listen +for my step!’” + +Watt looks at Rosa. Rosa in the deepening gloom looks down upon the +ground, half frightened and half shy. + +“There and then she died. And from those days,” says Mrs. Rouncewell, +“the name has come down—the Ghost’s Walk. If the tread is an echo, +it is an echo that is only heard after dark, and is often unheard for +a long while together. But it comes back from time to time; and so +sure as there is sickness or death in the family, it will be heard +then.” + +“And disgrace, grandmother—” says Watt. + +“Disgrace never comes to Chesney Wold,” returns the housekeeper. + +Her grandson apologizes with “True. True.” + +“That is the story. Whatever the sound is, it is a worrying sound,” +says Mrs. Rouncewell, getting up from her chair; “and what is to be +noticed in it is that it MUST BE HEARD. My Lady, who is afraid of +nothing, admits that when it is there, it must be heard. You cannot +shut it out. Watt, there is a tall French clock behind you (placed +there, ’a purpose) that has a loud beat when it is in motion and can +play music. You understand how those things are managed?” + +“Pretty well, grandmother, I think.” + +“Set it a-going.” + +Watt sets it a-going—music and all. + +“Now, come hither,” says the housekeeper. “Hither, child, towards my +Lady’s pillow. I am not sure that it is dark enough yet, but listen! +Can you hear the sound upon the terrace, through the music, and the +beat, and everything?” + +“I certainly can!” + +“So my Lady says.” + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +Covering a Multitude of Sins + + +It was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out of +window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like +two beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the +indistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the day +came on. As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the +scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory +over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects +that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly +discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still +glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and +fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough +to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only +incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all +melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, +prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, +threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible +with its rugged character. But so from rough outsides (I hope I have +learnt), serene and gentle influences often proceed. + +Every part of the house was in such order, and every one was so +attentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys, +though what with trying to remember the contents of each little +store-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on a slate +about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and +china, and a great many other things; and what with being generally a +methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little person, I was so busy +that I could not believe it was breakfast-time when I heard the bell +ring. Away I ran, however, and made tea, as I had already been +installed into the responsibility of the tea-pot; and then, as they +were all rather late and nobody was down yet, I thought I would take +a peep at the garden and get some knowledge of that too. I found it +quite a delightful place—in front, the pretty avenue and drive by +which we had approached (and where, by the by, we had cut up the +gravel so terribly with our wheels that I asked the gardener to roll +it); at the back, the flower-garden, with my darling at her window up +there, throwing it open to smile out at me, as if she would have +kissed me from that distance. Beyond the flower-garden was a +kitchen-garden, and then a paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard, +and then a dear little farm-yard. As to the house itself, with its +three peaks in the roof; its various-shaped windows, some so large, +some so small, and all so pretty; its trellis-work, against the +south-front for roses and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable, +welcoming look—it was, as Ada said when she came out to meet me with +her arm through that of its master, worthy of her cousin John, a bold +thing to say, though he only pinched her dear cheek for it. + +Mr. Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast as he had been overnight. +There was honey on the table, and it led him into a discourse about +bees. He had no objection to honey, he said (and I should think he +had not, for he seemed to like it), but he protested against the +overweening assumptions of bees. He didn’t at all see why the busy +bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the bee liked +to make honey, or he wouldn’t do it—nobody asked him. It was not +necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes. If every +confectioner went buzzing about the world banging against everything +that came in his way and egotistically calling upon everybody to take +notice that he was going to his work and must not be interrupted, the +world would be quite an unsupportable place. Then, after all, it was +a ridiculous position to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone +as soon as you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion of a +Manchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He must say he +thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The +drone said unaffectedly, “You will excuse me; I really cannot attend +to the shop! I find myself in a world in which there is so much to +see and so short a time to see it in that I must take the liberty of +looking about me and begging to be provided for by somebody who +doesn’t want to look about him.” This appeared to Mr. Skimpole to be +the drone philosophy, and he thought it a very good philosophy, +always supposing the drone to be willing to be on good terms with the +bee, which, so far as he knew, the easy fellow always was, if the +consequential creature would only let him, and not be so conceited +about his honey! + +He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of ground +and made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as serious a +meaning in what he said as he was capable of having. I left them +still listening to him when I withdrew to attend to my new duties. +They had occupied me for some time, and I was passing through the +passages on my return with my basket of keys on my arm when Mr. +Jarndyce called me into a small room next his bed-chamber, which I +found to be in part a little library of books and papers and in part +quite a little museum of his boots and shoes and hat-boxes. + +“Sit down, my dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “This, you must know, is the +growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.” + +“You must be here very seldom, sir,” said I. + +“Oh, you don’t know me!” he returned. “When I am deceived or +disappointed in—the wind, and it’s easterly, I take refuge here. The +growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware of +half my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!” + +I could not help it; I tried very hard, but being alone with that +benevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so happy +and so honoured there, and my heart so full—I kissed his hand. I +don’t know what I said, or even that I spoke. He was disconcerted and +walked to the window; I almost believed with an intention of jumping +out, until he turned and I was reassured by seeing in his eyes what +he had gone there to hide. He gently patted me on the head, and I sat +down. + +“There! There!” he said. “That’s over. Pooh! Don’t be foolish.” + +“It shall not happen again, sir,” I returned, “but at first it is +difficult—” + +“Nonsense!” he said. “It’s easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a good +little orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my head to +be that protector. She grows up, and more than justifies my good +opinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend. What is there in +all this? So, so! Now, we have cleared off old scores, and I have +before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again.” + +I said to myself, “Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really is +not what I expected of you!” And it had such a good effect that I +folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself. Mr. +Jarndyce, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to me as +confidentially as if I had been in the habit of conversing with him +every morning for I don’t know how long. I almost felt as if I had. + +“Of course, Esther,” he said, “you don’t understand this Chancery +business?” + +And of course I shook my head. + +“I don’t know who does,” he returned. “The lawyers have twisted it +into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case +have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It’s about a will +and the trusts under a will—or it was once. It’s about nothing but +costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, +and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and +sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving +about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably +waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs. That’s the great +question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted +away.” + +“But it was, sir,” said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub his +head, “about a will?” + +“Why, yes, it was about a will when it was about anything,” he +returned. “A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune, +and made a great will. In the question how the trusts under that will +are to be administered, the fortune left by the will is squandered +away; the legatees under the will are reduced to such a miserable +condition that they would be sufficiently punished if they had +committed an enormous crime in having money left them, and the will +itself is made a dead letter. All through the deplorable cause, +everything that everybody in it, except one man, knows already is +referred to that only one man who don’t know, it to find out—all +through the deplorable cause, everybody must have copies, over and +over again, of everything that has accumulated about it in the way of +cartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which +is the usual course, for nobody wants them) and must go down the +middle and up again through such an infernal country-dance of costs +and fees and nonsense and corruption as was never dreamed of in the +wildest visions of a witch’s Sabbath. Equity sends questions to law, +law sends questions back to equity; law finds it can’t do this, +equity finds it can’t do that; neither can so much as say it can’t +do anything, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel +appearing for A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel +appearing for B; and so on through the whole alphabet, like the +history of the apple pie. And thus, through years and years, and +lives and lives, everything goes on, constantly beginning over and +over again, and nothing ever ends. And we can’t get out of the suit +on any terms, for we are made parties to it, and MUST BE parties to +it, whether we like it or not. But it won’t do to think of it! When +my great uncle, poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the +beginning of the end!” + +“The Mr. Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have heard?” + +He nodded gravely. “I was his heir, and this was his house, Esther. +When I came here, it was bleak indeed. He had left the signs of his +misery upon it.” + +“How changed it must be now!” I said. + +“It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its +present name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the +wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to +disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the +meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the +cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds +choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained +of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of +the house too, it was so shattered and ruined.” + +He walked a little to and fro after saying this to himself with a +shudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat down +again with his hands in his pockets. + +“I told you this was the growlery, my dear. Where was I?” + +I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House. + +“Bleak House; true. There is, in that city of London there, some +property of ours which is much at this day what Bleak House was then; +I say property of ours, meaning of the suit’s, but I ought to call it +the property of costs, for costs is the only power on earth that will +ever get anything out of it now or will ever know it for anything but +an eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street of perishing blind houses, +with their eyes stoned out, without a pane of glass, without so much +as a window-frame, with the bare blank shutters tumbling from their +hinges and falling asunder, the iron rails peeling away in flakes of +rust, the chimneys sinking in, the stone steps to every door (and +every door might be death’s door) turning stagnant green, the very +crutches on which the ruins are propped decaying. Although Bleak +House was not in Chancery, its master was, and it was stamped with +the same seal. These are the Great Seal’s impressions, my dear, all +over England—the children know them!” + +“How changed it is!” I said again. + +“Why, so it is,” he answered much more cheerfully; “and it is wisdom +in you to keep me to the bright side of the picture.” (The idea of my +wisdom!) “These are things I never talk about or even think about, +excepting in the growlery here. If you consider it right to mention +them to Rick and Ada,” looking seriously at me, “you can. I leave it +to your discretion, Esther.” + +“I hope, sir—” said I. + +“I think you had better call me guardian, my dear.” + +I felt that I was choking again—I taxed myself with it, “Esther, +now, you know you are!”—when he feigned to say this slightly, as if +it were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But I gave the +housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to +myself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on the +basket, looked at him quietly. + +“I hope, guardian,” said I, “that you may not trust too much to my +discretion. I hope you may not mistake me. I am afraid it will be a +disappointment to you to know that I am not clever, but it really is +the truth, and you would soon find it out if I had not the honesty to +confess it.” + +He did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary. He told me, +with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very well indeed and +that I was quite clever enough for him. + +“I hope I may turn out so,” said I, “but I am much afraid of it, +guardian.” + +“You are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives here, +my dear,” he returned playfully; “the little old woman of the child’s +(I don’t mean Skimpole’s) rhyme: + + + “‘Little old woman, and whither so high?’ + ‘To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.’” + + +“You will sweep them so neatly out of OUR sky in the course of your +housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days we shall have to abandon +the growlery and nail up the door.” + +This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old +Woman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame +Durden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became +quite lost among them. + +“However,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “to return to our gossip. Here’s Rick, +a fine young fellow full of promise. What’s to be done with him?” + +Oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point! + +“Here he is, Esther,” said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting his +hands into his pockets and stretching out his legs. “He must have a +profession; he must make some choice for himself. There will be a +world more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be done.” + +“More what, guardian?” said I. + +“More wiglomeration,” said he. “It’s the only name I know for the +thing. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will have +something to say about it; Master Somebody—a sort of ridiculous +sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a back room at the +end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane—will have something to say about +it; counsel will have something to say about it; the Chancellor will +have something to say about it; the satellites will have something to +say about it; they will all have to be handsomely fee’d, all round, +about it; the whole thing will be vastly ceremonious, wordy, +unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I call it, in general, +wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be afflicted with +Wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell into a +pit of it, I don’t know; so it is.” + +He began to rub his head again and to hint that he felt the wind. But +it was a delightful instance of his kindness towards me that whether +he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face was sure +to recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine; and he was +sure to turn comfortable again and put his hands in his pockets and +stretch out his legs. + +“Perhaps it would be best, first of all,” said I, “to ask Mr. Richard +what he inclines to himself.” + +“Exactly so,” he returned. “That’s what I mean! You know, just +accustom yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet +way, with him and Ada, and see what you all make of it. We are sure +to come at the heart of the matter by your means, little woman.” + +I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was +attaining and the number of things that were being confided to me. I +had not meant this at all; I had meant that he should speak to +Richard. But of course I said nothing in reply except that I would do +my best, though I feared (I really felt it necessary to repeat this) +that he thought me much more sagacious than I was. At which my +guardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh I ever heard. + +“Come!” he said, rising and pushing back his chair. “I think we may +have done with the growlery for one day! Only a concluding word. +Esther, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?” + +He looked so attentively at me that I looked attentively at him and +felt sure I understood him. + +“About myself, sir?” said I. + +“Yes.” + +“Guardian,” said I, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenly +colder than I could have wished, in his, “nothing! I am quite sure +that if there were anything I ought to know or had any need to know, +I should not have to ask you to tell it to me. If my whole reliance +and confidence were not placed in you, I must have a hard heart +indeed. I have nothing to ask you, nothing in the world.” + +He drew my hand through his arm and we went away to look for Ada. +From that hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, quite +content to know no more, quite happy. + +We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House, for we had to +become acquainted with many residents in and out of the neighbourhood +who knew Mr. Jarndyce. It seemed to Ada and me that everybody knew +him who wanted to do anything with anybody else’s money. It amazed us +when we began to sort his letters and to answer some of them for him +in the growlery of a morning to find how the great object of the +lives of nearly all his correspondents appeared to be to form +themselves into committees for getting in and laying out money. The +ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed, I think they were +even more so. They threw themselves into committees in the most +impassioned manner and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite +extraordinary. It appeared to us that some of them must pass their +whole lives in dealing out subscription-cards to the whole +post-office directory—shilling cards, half-crown cards, +half-sovereign cards, penny cards. They wanted everything. They +wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money, +they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they +wanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr. +Jarndyce had—or had not. Their objects were as various as their +demands. They were going to raise new buildings, they were going to +pay off debts on old buildings, they were going to establish in a +picturesque building (engraving of proposed west elevation attached) +the Sisterhood of Mediaeval Marys, they were going to give a +testimonial to Mrs. Jellyby, they were going to have their +secretary’s portrait painted and presented to his mother-in-law, +whose deep devotion to him was well known, they were going to get up +everything, I really believe, from five hundred thousand tracts to an +annuity and from a marble monument to a silver tea-pot. They took a +multitude of titles. They were the Women of England, the Daughters of +Britain, the Sisters of all the cardinal virtues separately, the +Females of America, the Ladies of a hundred denominations. They +appeared to be always excited about canvassing and electing. They +seemed to our poor wits, and according to their own accounts, to be +constantly polling people by tens of thousands, yet never bringing +their candidates in for anything. It made our heads ache to think, on +the whole, what feverish lives they must lead. + +Among the ladies who were most distinguished for this rapacious +benevolence (if I may use the expression) was a Mrs. Pardiggle, who +seemed, as I judged from the number of her letters to Mr. Jarndyce, +to be almost as powerful a correspondent as Mrs. Jellyby herself. We +observed that the wind always changed when Mrs. Pardiggle became the +subject of conversation and that it invariably interrupted Mr. +Jarndyce and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked +that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who +did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people +who did a great deal and made no noise at all. We were therefore +curious to see Mrs. Pardiggle, suspecting her to be a type of the +former class, and were glad when she called one day with her five +young sons. + +She was a formidable style of lady with spectacles, a prominent nose, +and a loud voice, who had the effect of wanting a great deal of room. +And she really did, for she knocked down little chairs with her +skirts that were quite a great way off. As only Ada and I were at +home, we received her timidly, for she seemed to come in like cold +weather and to make the little Pardiggles blue as they followed. + +“These, young ladies,” said Mrs. Pardiggle with great volubility +after the first salutations, “are my five boys. You may have seen +their names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one) in +the possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert, my eldest +(twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of +five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second +(ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to +the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine), +one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to +the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily +enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never, +through life, to use tobacco in any form.” + +We had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merely that +they were weazened and shrivelled—though they were certainly that +too—but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the +mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed +Egbert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave +me such a savage frown. The face of each child, as the amount of his +contribution was mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly vindictive +manner, but his was by far the worst. I must except, however, the +little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and +evenly miserable. + +“You have been visiting, I understand,” said Mrs. Pardiggle, “at Mrs. +Jellyby’s?” + +We said yes, we had passed one night there. + +“Mrs. Jellyby,” pursued the lady, always speaking in the same +demonstrative, loud, hard tone, so that her voice impressed my fancy +as if it had a sort of spectacles on too—and I may take the +opportunity of remarking that her spectacles were made the less +engaging by her eyes being what Ada called “choking eyes,” meaning +very prominent—“Mrs. Jellyby is a benefactor to society and deserves +a helping hand. My boys have contributed to the African +project—Egbert, one and six, being the entire allowance of nine +weeks; Oswald, one and a penny halfpenny, being the same; the rest, +according to their little means. Nevertheless, I do not go with Mrs. +Jellyby in all things. I do not go with Mrs. Jellyby in her treatment +of her young family. It has been noticed. It has been observed that +her young family are excluded from participation in the objects to +which she is devoted. She may be right, she may be wrong; but, right +or wrong, this is not my course with MY young family. I take them +everywhere.” + +I was afterwards convinced (and so was Ada) that from the +ill-conditioned eldest child, these words extorted a sharp yell. He +turned it off into a yawn, but it began as a yell. + +“They attend matins with me (very prettily done) at half-past six +o’clock in the morning all the year round, including of course the +depth of winter,” said Mrs. Pardiggle rapidly, “and they are with me +during the revolving duties of the day. I am a School lady, I am a +Visiting lady, I am a Reading lady, I am a Distributing lady; I am on +the local Linen Box Committee and many general committees; and my +canvassing alone is very extensive—perhaps no one’s more so. But +they are my companions everywhere; and by these means they acquire +that knowledge of the poor, and that capacity of doing charitable +business in general—in short, that taste for the sort of +thing—which will render them in after life a service to their +neighbours and a satisfaction to themselves. My young family are not +frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance in +subscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many +public meetings and listened to as many lectures, orations, and +discussions as generally fall to the lot of few grown people. Alfred +(five), who, as I mentioned, has of his own election joined the +Infant Bonds of Joy, was one of the very few children who manifested +consciousness on that occasion after a fervid address of two hours +from the chairman of the evening.” + +Alfred glowered at us as if he never could, or would, forgive the +injury of that night. + +“You may have observed, Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Pardiggle, “in +some of the lists to which I have referred, in the possession of our +esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce, that the names of my young family are +concluded with the name of O. A. Pardiggle, F.R.S., one pound. That +is their father. We usually observe the same routine. I put down my +mite first; then my young family enrol their contributions, according +to their ages and their little means; and then Mr. Pardiggle brings +up the rear. Mr. Pardiggle is happy to throw in his limited donation, +under my direction; and thus things are made not only pleasant to +ourselves, but, we trust, improving to others.” + +Suppose Mr. Pardiggle were to dine with Mr. Jellyby, and suppose Mr. +Jellyby were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr. Pardiggle, would +Mr. Pardiggle, in return, make any confidential communication to Mr. +Jellyby? I was quite confused to find myself thinking this, but it +came into my head. + +“You are very pleasantly situated here!” said Mrs. Pardiggle. + +We were glad to change the subject, and going to the window, pointed +out the beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacles appeared to +me to rest with curious indifference. + +“You know Mr. Gusher?” said our visitor. + +We were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of Mr. Gusher’s +acquaintance. + +“The loss is yours, I assure you,” said Mrs. Pardiggle with her +commanding deportment. “He is a very fervid, impassioned +speaker—full of fire! Stationed in a waggon on this lawn, now, +which, from the shape of the land, is naturally adapted to a public +meeting, he would improve almost any occasion you could mention for +hours and hours! By this time, young ladies,” said Mrs. Pardiggle, +moving back to her chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency, +a little round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket +on it, “by this time you have found me out, I dare say?” + +This was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in +perfect dismay. As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness after +what I had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour +of my cheeks. + +“Found out, I mean,” said Mrs. Pardiggle, “the prominent point in my +character. I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable +immediately. I lay myself open to detection, I know. Well! I freely +admit, I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work. +The excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to hard +work that I don’t know what fatigue is.” + +We murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying, or +something to that effect. I don’t think we knew what it was either, +but this is what our politeness expressed. + +“I do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if +you try!” said Mrs. Pardiggle. “The quantity of exertion (which is no +exertion to me), the amount of business (which I regard as nothing), +that I go through sometimes astonishes myself. I have seen my young +family, and Mr. Pardiggle, quite worn out with witnessing it, when I +may truly say I have been as fresh as a lark!” + +If that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he had +already looked, this was the time when he did it. I observed that he +doubled his right fist and delivered a secret blow into the crown of +his cap, which was under his left arm. + +“This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds,” said +Mrs. Pardiggle. “If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to +say, I tell that person directly, ‘I am incapable of fatigue, my good +friend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on until I have done.’ It +answers admirably! Miss Summerson, I hope I shall have your +assistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and Miss Clare’s very +soon.” + +At first I tried to excuse myself for the present on the general +ground of having occupations to attend to which I must not neglect. +But as this was an ineffectual protest, I then said, more +particularly, that I was not sure of my qualifications. That I was +inexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds very +differently situated, and addressing them from suitable points of +view. That I had not that delicate knowledge of the heart which must +be essential to such a work. That I had much to learn, myself, before +I could teach others, and that I could not confide in my good +intentions alone. For these reasons I thought it best to be as useful +as I could, and to render what kind services I could to those +immediately about me, and to try to let that circle of duty gradually +and naturally expand itself. All this I said with anything but +confidence, because Mrs. Pardiggle was much older than I, and had +great experience, and was so very military in her manners. + +“You are wrong, Miss Summerson,” said she, “but perhaps you are not +equal to hard work or the excitement of it, and that makes a vast +difference. If you would like to see how I go through my work, I am +now about—with my young family—to visit a brickmaker in the +neighbourhood (a very bad character) and shall be glad to take you +with me. Miss Clare also, if she will do me the favour.” + +Ada and I interchanged looks, and as we were going out in any case, +accepted the offer. When we hastily returned from putting on our +bonnets, we found the young family languishing in a corner and Mrs. +Pardiggle sweeping about the room, knocking down nearly all the light +objects it contained. Mrs. Pardiggle took possession of Ada, and I +followed with the family. + +Ada told me afterwards that Mrs. Pardiggle talked in the same loud +tone (that, indeed, I overheard) all the way to the brickmaker’s +about an exciting contest which she had for two or three years waged +against another lady relative to the bringing in of their rival +candidates for a pension somewhere. There had been a quantity of +printing, and promising, and proxying, and polling, and it appeared +to have imparted great liveliness to all concerned, except the +pensioners—who were not elected yet. + +I am very fond of being confided in by children and am happy in being +usually favoured in that respect, but on this occasion it gave me +great uneasiness. As soon as we were out of doors, Egbert, with the +manner of a little footpad, demanded a shilling of me on the ground +that his pocket-money was “boned” from him. On my pointing out the +great impropriety of the word, especially in connexion with his +parent (for he added sulkily “By her!”), he pinched me and said, “Oh, +then! Now! Who are you! YOU wouldn’t like it, I think? What does she +make a sham for, and pretend to give me money, and take it away +again? Why do you call it my allowance, and never let me spend it?” +These exasperating questions so inflamed his mind and the minds of +Oswald and Francis that they all pinched me at once, and in a +dreadfully expert way—screwing up such little pieces of my arms that +I could hardly forbear crying out. Felix, at the same time, stamped +upon my toes. And the Bond of Joy, who on account of always having +the whole of his little income anticipated stood in fact pledged to +abstain from cakes as well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage +when we passed a pastry-cook’s shop that he terrified me by becoming +purple. I never underwent so much, both in body and mind, in the +course of a walk with young people as from these unnaturally +constrained children when they paid me the compliment of being +natural. + +I was glad when we came to the brickmaker’s house, though it was one +of a cluster of wretched hovels in a brick-field, with pigsties close +to the broken windows and miserable little gardens before the doors +growing nothing but stagnant pools. Here and there an old tub was put +to catch the droppings of rain-water from a roof, or they were banked +up with mud into a little pond like a large dirt-pie. At the doors +and windows some men and women lounged or prowled about, and took +little notice of us except to laugh to one another or to say +something as we passed about gentlefolks minding their own business +and not troubling their heads and muddying their shoes with coming to +look after other people’s. + +Mrs. Pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of moral +determination and talking with much volubility about the untidy +habits of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have +been tidy in such a place), conducted us into a cottage at the +farthest corner, the ground-floor room of which we nearly filled. +Besides ourselves, there were in this damp, offensive room a woman +with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby by the fire; a +man, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated, lying +at full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful young man +fastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl doing some kind of +washing in very dirty water. They all looked up at us as we came in, +and the woman seemed to turn her face towards the fire as if to hide +her bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome. + +“Well, my friends,” said Mrs. Pardiggle, but her voice had not a +friendly sound, I thought; it was much too business-like and +systematic. “How do you do, all of you? I am here again. I told you, +you couldn’t tire me, you know. I am fond of hard work, and am true +to my word.” + +“There an’t,” growled the man on the floor, whose head rested on his +hand as he stared at us, “any more on you to come in, is there?” + +“No, my friend,” said Mrs. Pardiggle, seating herself on one stool +and knocking down another. “We are all here.” + +“Because I thought there warn’t enough of you, perhaps?” said the +man, with his pipe between his lips as he looked round upon us. + +The young man and the girl both laughed. Two friends of the young +man, whom we had attracted to the doorway and who stood there with +their hands in their pockets, echoed the laugh noisily. + +“You can’t tire me, good people,” said Mrs. Pardiggle to these +latter. “I enjoy hard work, and the harder you make mine, the better +I like it.” + +“Then make it easy for her!” growled the man upon the floor. “I wants +it done, and over. I wants a end of these liberties took with my +place. I wants an end of being drawed like a badger. Now you’re +a-going to poll-pry and question according to custom—I know what +you’re a-going to be up to. Well! You haven’t got no occasion to be +up to it. I’ll save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? Yes, +she IS a-washin. Look at the water. Smell it! That’s wot we drinks. +How do you like it, and what do you think of gin instead! An’t my +place dirty? Yes, it is dirty—it’s nat’rally dirty, and it’s +nat’rally onwholesome; and we’ve had five dirty and onwholesome +children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for them, +and for us besides. Have I read the little book wot you left? No, I +an’t read the little book wot you left. There an’t nobody here as +knows how to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn’t be suitable to +me. It’s a book fit for a babby, and I’m not a babby. If you was to +leave me a doll, I shouldn’t nuss it. How have I been conducting of +myself? Why, I’ve been drunk for three days; and I’da been drunk four +if I’da had the money. Don’t I never mean for to go to church? No, I +don’t never mean for to go to church. I shouldn’t be expected there, +if I did; the beadle’s too gen-teel for me. And how did my wife get +that black eye? Why, I give it her; and if she says I didn’t, she’s a +Lie!” + +He had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to say all this, and he now +turned over on his other side and smoked again. Mrs. Pardiggle, who +had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible +composure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his +antagonism, pulled out a good book as if it were a constable’s staff +and took the whole family into custody. I mean into religious +custody, of course; but she really did it as if she were an +inexorable moral policeman carrying them all off to a station-house. + +Ada and I were very uncomfortable. We both felt intrusive and out of +place, and we both thought that Mrs. Pardiggle would have got on +infinitely better if she had not had such a mechanical way of taking +possession of people. The children sulked and stared; the family took +no notice of us whatever, except when the young man made the dog +bark, which he usually did when Mrs. Pardiggle was most emphatic. We +both felt painfully sensible that between us and these people there +was an iron barrier which could not be removed by our new friend. By +whom or how it could be removed, we did not know, but we knew that. +Even what she read and said seemed to us to be ill-chosen for such +auditors, if it had been imparted ever so modestly and with ever so +much tact. As to the little book to which the man on the floor had +referred, we acquired a knowledge of it afterwards, and Mr. Jarndyce +said he doubted if Robinson Crusoe could have read it, though he had +had no other on his desolate island. + +We were much relieved, under these circumstances, when Mrs. Pardiggle +left off. + +The man on the floor, then turning his head round again, said +morosely, “Well! You’ve done, have you?” + +“For to-day, I have, my friend. But I am never fatigued. I shall come +to you again in your regular order,” returned Mrs. Pardiggle with +demonstrative cheerfulness. + +“So long as you goes now,” said he, folding his arms and shutting his +eyes with an oath, “you may do wot you like!” + +Mrs. Pardiggle accordingly rose and made a little vortex in the +confined room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped. +Taking one of her young family in each hand, and telling the others +to follow closely, and expressing her hope that the brickmaker and +all his house would be improved when she saw them next, she then +proceeded to another cottage. I hope it is not unkind in me to say +that she certainly did make, in this as in everything else, a show +that was not conciliatory of doing charity by wholesale and of +dealing in it to a large extent. + +She supposed that we were following her, but as soon as the space was +left clear, we approached the woman sitting by the fire to ask if the +baby were ill. + +She only looked at it as it lay on her lap. We had observed before +that when she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye with her +hand, as though she wished to separate any association with noise and +violence and ill treatment from the poor little child. + +Ada, whose gentle heart was moved by its appearance, bent down to +touch its little face. As she did so, I saw what happened and drew +her back. The child died. + +“Oh, Esther!” cried Ada, sinking on her knees beside it. “Look here! +Oh, Esther, my love, the little thing! The suffering, quiet, pretty +little thing! I am so sorry for it. I am so sorry for the mother. I +never saw a sight so pitiful as this before! Oh, baby, baby!” + +Such compassion, such gentleness, as that with which she bent down +weeping and put her hand upon the mother’s might have softened any +mother’s heart that ever beat. The woman at first gazed at her in +astonishment and then burst into tears. + +Presently I took the light burden from her lap, did what I could to +make the baby’s rest the prettier and gentler, laid it on a shelf, +and covered it with my own handkerchief. We tried to comfort the +mother, and we whispered to her what Our Saviour said of children. +She answered nothing, but sat weeping—weeping very much. + +When I turned, I found that the young man had taken out the dog and +was standing at the door looking in upon us with dry eyes, but quiet. +The girl was quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the ground. The +man had risen. He still smoked his pipe with an air of defiance, but +he was silent. + +An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing +at them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, “Jenny! Jenny!” +The mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the woman’s neck. + +She also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage. She had +no kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when she +condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no +beauty. I say condoled, but her only words were “Jenny! Jenny!” All +the rest was in the tone in which she said them. + +I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby +and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to +see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was +softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of +such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor +is little known, excepting to themselves and God. + +We felt it better to withdraw and leave them uninterrupted. We stole +out quietly and without notice from any one except the man. He was +leaning against the wall near the door, and finding that there was +scarcely room for us to pass, went out before us. He seemed to want +to hide that he did this on our account, but we perceived that he +did, and thanked him. He made no answer. + +Ada was so full of grief all the way home, and Richard, whom we found +at home, was so distressed to see her in tears (though he said to me, +when she was not present, how beautiful it was too!), that we +arranged to return at night with some little comforts and repeat our +visit at the brick-maker’s house. We said as little as we could to +Mr. Jarndyce, but the wind changed directly. + +Richard accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning +expedition. On our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking-house, +where a number of men were flocking about the door. Among them, and +prominent in some dispute, was the father of the little child. At a +short distance, we passed the young man and the dog, in congenial +company. The sister was standing laughing and talking with some other +young women at the corner of the row of cottages, but she seemed +ashamed and turned away as we went by. + +We left our escort within sight of the brickmaker’s dwelling and +proceeded by ourselves. When we came to the door, we found the woman +who had brought such consolation with her standing there looking +anxiously out. + +“It’s you, young ladies, is it?” she said in a whisper. “I’m +a-watching for my master. My heart’s in my mouth. If he was to catch +me away from home, he’d pretty near murder me.” + +“Do you mean your husband?” said I. + +“Yes, miss, my master. Jenny’s asleep, quite worn out. She’s scarcely +had the child off her lap, poor thing, these seven days and nights, +except when I’ve been able to take it for a minute or two.” + +As she gave way for us, she went softly in and put what we had +brought near the miserable bed on which the mother slept. No effort +had been made to clean the room—it seemed in its nature almost +hopeless of being clean; but the small waxen form from which so much +solemnity diffused itself had been composed afresh, and washed, and +neatly dressed in some fragments of white linen; and on my +handkerchief, which still covered the poor baby, a little bunch of +sweet herbs had been laid by the same rough, scarred hands, so +lightly, so tenderly! + +“May heaven reward you!” we said to her. “You are a good woman.” + +“Me, young ladies?” she returned with surprise. “Hush! Jenny, Jenny!” + +The mother had moaned in her sleep and moved. The sound of the +familiar voice seemed to calm her again. She was quiet once more. + +How little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief to look upon the +tiny sleeper underneath and seemed to see a halo shine around the +child through Ada’s drooping hair as her pity bent her head—how +little I thought in whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief would come +to lie after covering the motionless and peaceful breast! I only +thought that perhaps the Angel of the child might not be all +unconscious of the woman who replaced it with so compassionate a +hand; not all unconscious of her presently, when we had taken leave, +and left her at the door, by turns looking, and listening in terror +for herself, and saying in her old soothing manner, “Jenny, Jenny!” + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +Signs and Tokens + + +I don’t know how it is I seem to be always writing about myself. I +mean all the time to write about other people, and I try to think +about myself as little as possible, and I am sure, when I find myself +coming into the story again, I am really vexed and say, “Dear, dear, +you tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn’t!” but it is all of +no use. I hope any one who may read what I write will understand that +if these pages contain a great deal about me, I can only suppose it +must be because I have really something to do with them and can’t be +kept out. + +My darling and I read together, and worked, and practised, and found +so much employment for our time that the winter days flew by us like +bright-winged birds. Generally in the afternoons, and always in the +evenings, Richard gave us his company. Although he was one of the +most restless creatures in the world, he certainly was very fond of +our society. + +He was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean it, and I had better say +it at once. I had never seen any young people falling in love before, +but I found them out quite soon. I could not say so, of course, or +show that I knew anything about it. On the contrary, I was so demure +and used to seem so unconscious that sometimes I considered within +myself while I was sitting at work whether I was not growing quite +deceitful. + +But there was no help for it. All I had to do was to be quiet, and I +was as quiet as a mouse. They were as quiet as mice too, so far as +any words were concerned, but the innocent manner in which they +relied more and more upon me as they took more and more to one +another was so charming that I had great difficulty in not showing +how it interested me. + +“Our dear little old woman is such a capital old woman,” Richard +would say, coming up to meet me in the garden early, with his +pleasant laugh and perhaps the least tinge of a blush, “that I can’t +get on without her. Before I begin my harum-scarum day—grinding away +at those books and instruments and then galloping up hill and down +dale, all the country round, like a highwayman—it does me so much +good to come and have a steady walk with our comfortable friend, that +here I am again!” + +“You know, Dame Durden, dear,” Ada would say at night, with her head +upon my shoulder and the firelight shining in her thoughtful eyes, “I +don’t want to talk when we come upstairs here. Only to sit a little +while thinking, with your dear face for company, and to hear the wind +and remember the poor sailors at sea—” + +Ah! Perhaps Richard was going to be a sailor. We had talked it over +very often now, and there was some talk of gratifying the inclination +of his childhood for the sea. Mr. Jarndyce had written to a relation +of the family, a great Sir Leicester Dedlock, for his interest in +Richard’s favour, generally; and Sir Leicester had replied in a +gracious manner that he would be happy to advance the prospects of +the young gentleman if it should ever prove to be within his power, +which was not at all probable, and that my Lady sent her compliments +to the young gentleman (to whom she perfectly remembered that she was +allied by remote consanguinity) and trusted that he would ever do his +duty in any honourable profession to which he might devote himself. + +“So I apprehend it’s pretty clear,” said Richard to me, “that I shall +have to work my own way. Never mind! Plenty of people have had to do +that before now, and have done it. I only wish I had the command of a +clipping privateer to begin with and could carry off the Chancellor +and keep him on short allowance until he gave judgment in our cause. +He’d find himself growing thin, if he didn’t look sharp!” + +With a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that hardly ever +flagged, Richard had a carelessness in his character that quite +perplexed me, principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd +way, for prudence. It entered into all his calculations about money +in a singular manner which I don’t think I can better explain than by +reverting for a moment to our loan to Mr. Skimpole. + +Mr. Jarndyce had ascertained the amount, either from Mr. Skimpole +himself or from Coavinses, and had placed the money in my hands with +instructions to me to retain my own part of it and hand the rest to +Richard. The number of little acts of thoughtless expenditure which +Richard justified by the recovery of his ten pounds, and the number +of times he talked to me as if he had saved or realized that amount, +would form a sum in simple addition. + +“My prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?” he said to me when he wanted, +without the least consideration, to bestow five pounds on the +brickmaker. “I made ten pounds, clear, out of Coavinses’ business.” + +“How was that?” said I. + +“Why, I got rid of ten pounds which I was quite content to get rid of +and never expected to see any more. You don’t deny that?” + +“No,” said I. + +“Very well! Then I came into possession of ten pounds—” + +“The same ten pounds,” I hinted. + +“That has nothing to do with it!” returned Richard. “I have got ten +pounds more than I expected to have, and consequently I can afford to +spend it without being particular.” + +In exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the sacrifice +of these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no good, he +carried that sum to his credit and drew upon it. + +“Let me see!” he would say. “I saved five pounds out of the +brickmaker’s affair, so if I have a good rattle to London and back in +a post-chaise and put that down at four pounds, I shall have saved +one. And it’s a very good thing to save one, let me tell you: a penny +saved is a penny got!” + +I believe Richard’s was as frank and generous a nature as there +possibly can be. He was ardent and brave, and in the midst of all his +wild restlessness, was so gentle that I knew him like a brother in a +few weeks. His gentleness was natural to him and would have shown +itself abundantly even without Ada’s influence; but with it, he +became one of the most winning of companions, always so ready to be +interested and always so happy, sanguine, and light-hearted. I am +sure that I, sitting with them, and walking with them, and talking +with them, and noticing from day to day how they went on, falling +deeper and deeper in love, and saying nothing about it, and each +shyly thinking that this love was the greatest of secrets, perhaps +not yet suspected even by the other—I am sure that I was scarcely +less enchanted than they were and scarcely less pleased with the +pretty dream. + +We were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast Mr. +Jarndyce received a letter, and looking at the superscription, said, +“From Boythorn? Aye, aye!” and opened and read it with evident +pleasure, announcing to us in a parenthesis when he was about +half-way through, that Boythorn was “coming down” on a visit. Now who +was Boythorn, we all thought. And I dare say we all thought too—I am +sure I did, for one—would Boythorn at all interfere with what was +going forward? + +“I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Boythorn,” said Mr. +Jarndyce, tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, “more than +five and forty years ago. He was then the most impetuous boy in the +world, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was then the loudest +boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He was then the +heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest +and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow.” + +“In stature, sir?” asked Richard. + +“Pretty well, Rick, in that respect,” said Mr. Jarndyce; “being some +ten years older than I and a couple of inches taller, with his head +thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared, his +hands like a clean blacksmith’s, and his lungs! There’s no simile for +his lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the +house shake.” + +As Mr. Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his friend Boythorn, we +observed the favourable omen that there was not the least indication +of any change in the wind. + +“But it’s the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the +passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick—and Ada, and +little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor—that I +speak of,” he pursued. “His language is as sounding as his voice. He +is always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree. In his +condemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to be an ogre +from what he says, and I believe he has the reputation of one with +some people. There! I tell you no more of him beforehand. You must +not be surprised to see him take me under his protection, for he has +never forgotten that I was a low boy at school and that our +friendship began in his knocking two of my head tyrant’s teeth out +(he says six) before breakfast. Boythorn and his man,” to me, “will +be here this afternoon, my dear.” + +I took care that the necessary preparations were made for Mr. +Boythorn’s reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with some +curiosity. The afternoon wore away, however, and he did not appear. +The dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. The dinner was +put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light +but the blaze when the hall-door suddenly burst open and the hall +resounded with these words, uttered with the greatest vehemence and +in a stentorian tone: “We have been misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most +abandoned ruffian, who told us to take the turning to the right +instead of to the left. He is the most intolerable scoundrel on the +face of the earth. His father must have been a most consummate +villain, ever to have such a son. I would have had that fellow shot +without the least remorse!” + +“Did he do it on purpose?” Mr. Jarndyce inquired. + +“I have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his +whole existence in misdirecting travellers!” returned the other. “By +my soul, I thought him the worst-looking dog I had ever beheld when +he was telling me to take the turning to the right. And yet I stood +before that fellow face to face and didn’t knock his brains out!” + +“Teeth, you mean?” said Mr. Jarndyce. + +“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, really making the whole +house vibrate. “What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha! And +that was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the +countenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the blackest image +of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a +field of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most unparalleled despot +in the streets to-morrow, I would fell him like a rotten tree!” + +“I have no doubt of it,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “Now, will you come +upstairs?” + +“By my soul, Jarndyce,” returned his guest, who seemed to refer to +his watch, “if you had been married, I would have turned back at the +garden-gate and gone away to the remotest summits of the Himalaya +Mountains sooner than I would have presented myself at this +unseasonable hour.” + +“Not quite so far, I hope?” said Mr. Jarndyce. + +“By my life and honour, yes!” cried the visitor. “I wouldn’t be +guilty of the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house +waiting all this time for any earthly consideration. I would +infinitely rather destroy myself—infinitely rather!” + +Talking thus, they went upstairs, and presently we heard him in his +bedroom thundering “Ha, ha, ha!” and again “Ha, ha, ha!” until the +flattest echo in the neighbourhood seemed to catch the contagion and +to laugh as enjoyingly as he did or as we did when we heard him +laugh. + +We all conceived a prepossession in his favour, for there was a +sterling quality in this laugh, and in his vigorous, healthy voice, +and in the roundness and fullness with which he uttered every word he +spoke, and in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go +off like blank cannons and hurt nothing. But we were hardly prepared +to have it so confirmed by his appearance when Mr. Jarndyce presented +him. He was not only a very handsome old gentleman—upright and +stalwart as he had been described to us—with a massive grey head, a +fine composure of face when silent, a figure that might have become +corpulent but for his being so continually in earnest that he gave it +no rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a double chin but +for the vehement emphasis in which it was constantly required to +assist; but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, so +chivalrously polite, his face was lighted by a smile of so much +sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain that he had nothing +to hide, but showed himself exactly as he was—incapable, as Richard +said, of anything on a limited scale, and firing away with those +blank great guns because he carried no small arms whatever—that +really I could not help looking at him with equal pleasure as he sat +at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed with Ada and me, or was led +by Mr. Jarndyce into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up +his head like a bloodhound and gave out that tremendous “Ha, ha, ha!” + +“You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?” said Mr. Jarndyce. + +“By heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!” replied the +other. “He IS the most wonderful creature! I wouldn’t take ten +thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole +support in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment, +a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most +astonishing birds that ever lived!” + +The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so +tame that he was brought down by Mr. Boythorn’s man, on his +forefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted +on his master’s head. To hear Mr. Boythorn presently expressing the +most implacable and passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of +a creature quietly perched on his forehead, was to have a good +illustration of his character, I thought. + +“By my soul, Jarndyce,” he said, very gently holding up a bit of +bread to the canary to peck at, “if I were in your place I would +seize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and +shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones +rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by +fair means or by foul. If you would empower me to do it, I would do +it for you with the greatest satisfaction!” (All this time the very +small canary was eating out of his hand.) + +“I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at +present,” returned Mr. Jarndyce, laughing, “that it would be greatly +advanced even by the legal process of shaking the bench and the whole +bar.” + +“There never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery on the +face of the earth!” said Mr. Boythorn. “Nothing but a mine below it +on a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and +precedents collected in it and every functionary belonging to it +also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the +Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to +atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it +in the least!” + +It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which he +recommended this strong measure of reform. When we laughed, he threw +up his head and shook his broad chest, and again the whole country +seemed to echo to his “Ha, ha, ha!” It had not the least effect in +disturbing the bird, whose sense of security was complete and who +hopped about the table with its quick head now on this side and now +on that, turning its bright sudden eye on its master as if he were no +more than another bird. + +“But how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed right of +way?” said Mr. Jarndyce. “You are not free from the toils of the law +yourself!” + +“The fellow has brought actions against ME for trespass, and I have +brought actions against HIM for trespass,” returned Mr. Boythorn. “By +heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. It is morally impossible +that his name can be Sir Leicester. It must be Sir Lucifer.” + +“Complimentary to our distant relation!” said my guardian laughingly +to Ada and Richard. + +“I would beg Miss Clare’s pardon and Mr. Carstone’s pardon,” resumed +our visitor, “if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of +the lady and the smile of the gentleman that it is quite unnecessary +and that they keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance.” + +“Or he keeps us,” suggested Richard. + +“By my soul,” exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley, +“that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the +most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by +some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but +a walking-stick’s! The whole of that family are the most solemnly +conceited and consummate blockheads! But it’s no matter; he should +not shut up my path if he were fifty baronets melted into one and +living in a hundred Chesney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory +balls in a Chinese carving. The fellow, by his agent, or secretary, +or somebody, writes to me ‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, presents +his compliments to Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, and has to call his +attention to the fact that the green pathway by the old +parsonage-house, now the property of Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, is Sir +Leicester’s right of way, being in fact a portion of the park of +Chesney Wold, and that Sir Leicester finds it convenient to close up +the same.’ I write to the fellow, ‘Mr. Lawrence Boythorn presents his +compliments to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and has to call HIS +attention to the fact that he totally denies the whole of Sir +Leicester Dedlock’s positions on every possible subject and has to +add, in reference to closing up the pathway, that he will be glad to +see the man who may undertake to do it.’ The fellow sends a most +abandoned villain with one eye to construct a gateway. I play upon +that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine until the breath is +nearly driven out of his body. The fellow erects a gate in the night. +I chop it down and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidons to +come over the fence and pass and repass. I catch them in humane man +traps, fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the +engine—resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the +existence of those lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass; +I bring actions for trespass. He brings actions for assault and +battery; I defend them and continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha, +ha!” + +To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have +thought him the angriest of mankind. To see him at the very same +time, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb and softly +smoothing its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought +him the gentlest. To hear him laugh and see the broad good nature of +his face then, one might have supposed that he had not a care in the +world, or a dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole existence was a +summer joke. + +“No, no,” he said, “no closing up of my paths by any Dedlock! Though +I willingly confess,” here he softened in a moment, “that Lady +Dedlock is the most accomplished lady in the world, to whom I would +do any homage that a plain gentleman, and no baronet with a head +seven hundred years thick, may. A man who joined his regiment at +twenty and within a week challenged the most imperious and +presumptuous coxcomb of a commanding officer that ever drew the +breath of life through a tight waist—and got broke for it—is not +the man to be walked over by all the Sir Lucifers, dead or alive, +locked or unlocked. Ha, ha, ha!” + +“Nor the man to allow his junior to be walked over either?” said my +guardian. + +“Most assuredly not!” said Mr. Boythorn, clapping him on the shoulder +with an air of protection that had something serious in it, though he +laughed. “He will stand by the low boy, always. Jarndyce, you may +rely upon him! But speaking of this trespass—with apologies to Miss +Clare and Miss Summerson for the length at which I have pursued so +dry a subject—is there nothing for me from your men Kenge and +Carboy?” + +“I think not, Esther?” said Mr. Jarndyce. + +“Nothing, guardian.” + +“Much obliged!” said Mr. Boythorn. “Had no need to ask, after even my +slight experience of Miss Summerson’s forethought for every one about +her.” (They all encouraged me; they were determined to do it.) “I +inquired because, coming from Lincolnshire, I of course have not yet +been in town, and I thought some letters might have been sent down +here. I dare say they will report progress to-morrow morning.” + +I saw him so often in the course of the evening, which passed very +pleasantly, contemplate Richard and Ada with an interest and a +satisfaction that made his fine face remarkably agreeable as he sat +at a little distance from the piano listening to the music—and he +had small occasion to tell us that he was passionately fond of music, +for his face showed it—that I asked my guardian as we sat at the +backgammon board whether Mr. Boythorn had ever been married. + +“No,” said he. “No.” + +“But he meant to be!” said I. + +“How did you find out that?” he returned with a smile. “Why, +guardian,” I explained, not without reddening a little at hazarding +what was in my thoughts, “there is something so tender in his manner, +after all, and he is so very courtly and gentle to us, and—” + +Mr. Jarndyce directed his eyes to where he was sitting as I have just +described him. + +I said no more. + +“You are right, little woman,” he answered. “He was all but married +once. Long ago. And once.” + +“Did the lady die?” + +“No—but she died to him. That time has had its influence on all his +later life. Would you suppose him to have a head and a heart full of +romance yet?” + +“I think, guardian, I might have supposed so. But it is easy to say +that when you have told me so.” + +“He has never since been what he might have been,” said Mr. Jarndyce, +“and now you see him in his age with no one near him but his servant +and his little yellow friend. It’s your throw, my dear!” + +I felt, from my guardian’s manner, that beyond this point I could not +pursue the subject without changing the wind. I therefore forbore to +ask any further questions. I was interested, but not curious. I +thought a little while about this old love story in the night, when I +was awakened by Mr. Boythorn’s lusty snoring; and I tried to do that +very difficult thing, imagine old people young again and invested +with the graces of youth. But I fell asleep before I had succeeded, +and dreamed of the days when I lived in my godmother’s house. I am +not sufficiently acquainted with such subjects to know whether it is +at all remarkable that I almost always dreamed of that period of my +life. + +With the morning there came a letter from Messrs. Kenge and Carboy to +Mr. Boythorn informing him that one of their clerks would wait upon +him at noon. As it was the day of the week on which I paid the bills, +and added up my books, and made all the household affairs as compact +as possible, I remained at home while Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and Richard +took advantage of a very fine day to make a little excursion, Mr. +Boythorn was to wait for Kenge and Carboy’s clerk and then was to go +on foot to meet them on their return. + +Well! I was full of business, examining tradesmen’s books, adding up +columns, paying money, filing receipts, and I dare say making a great +bustle about it when Mr. Guppy was announced and shown in. I had had +some idea that the clerk who was to be sent down might be the young +gentleman who had met me at the coach-office, and I was glad to see +him, because he was associated with my present happiness. + +I scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. He had an +entirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilac-kid +gloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house +flower in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little +finger. Besides which, he quite scented the dining-room with +bear’s-grease and other perfumery. He looked at me with an attention +that quite confused me when I begged him to take a seat until the +servant should return; and as he sat there crossing and uncrossing +his legs in a corner, and I asked him if he had had a pleasant ride, +and hoped that Mr. Kenge was well, I never looked at him, but I found +him looking at me in the same scrutinizing and curious way. + +When the request was brought to him that he would go upstairs to Mr. +Boythorn’s room, I mentioned that he would find lunch prepared for +him when he came down, of which Mr. Jarndyce hoped he would partake. +He said with some embarrassment, holding the handle of the door, +“Shall I have the honour of finding you here, miss?” I replied yes, I +should be there; and he went out with a bow and another look. + +I thought him only awkward and shy, for he was evidently much +embarrassed; and I fancied that the best thing I could do would be to +wait until I saw that he had everything he wanted and then to leave +him to himself. The lunch was soon brought, but it remained for some +time on the table. The interview with Mr. Boythorn was a long one, +and a stormy one too, I should think, for although his room was at +some distance I heard his loud voice rising every now and then like a +high wind, and evidently blowing perfect broadsides of denunciation. + +At last Mr. Guppy came back, looking something the worse for the +conference. “My eye, miss,” he said in a low voice, “he’s a Tartar!” + +“Pray take some refreshment, sir,” said I. + +Mr. Guppy sat down at the table and began nervously sharpening the +carving-knife on the carving-fork, still looking at me (as I felt +quite sure without looking at him) in the same unusual manner. The +sharpening lasted so long that at last I felt a kind of obligation on +me to raise my eyes in order that I might break the spell under which +he seemed to labour, of not being able to leave off. + +He immediately looked at the dish and began to carve. + +“What will you take yourself, miss? You’ll take a morsel of +something?” + +“No, thank you,” said I. + +“Shan’t I give you a piece of anything at all, miss?” said Mr. Guppy, +hurriedly drinking off a glass of wine. + +“Nothing, thank you,” said I. “I have only waited to see that you +have everything you want. Is there anything I can order for you?” + +“No, I am much obliged to you, miss, I’m sure. I’ve everything that I +can require to make me comfortable—at least I—not comfortable—I’m +never that.” He drank off two more glasses of wine, one after +another. + +I thought I had better go. + +“I beg your pardon, miss!” said Mr. Guppy, rising when he saw me +rise. “But would you allow me the favour of a minute’s private +conversation?” + +Not knowing what to say, I sat down again. + +“What follows is without prejudice, miss?” said Mr. Guppy, anxiously +bringing a chair towards my table. + +“I don’t understand what you mean,” said I, wondering. + +“It’s one of our law terms, miss. You won’t make any use of it to my +detriment at Kenge and Carboy’s or elsewhere. If our conversation +shouldn’t lead to anything, I am to be as I was and am not to be +prejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. In short, it’s in +total confidence.” + +“I am at a loss, sir,” said I, “to imagine what you can have to +communicate in total confidence to me, whom you have never seen but +once; but I should be very sorry to do you any injury.” + +“Thank you, miss. I’m sure of it—that’s quite sufficient.” All this +time Mr. Guppy was either planing his forehead with his handkerchief +or tightly rubbing the palm of his left hand with the palm of his +right. “If you would excuse my taking another glass of wine, miss, I +think it might assist me in getting on without a continual choke that +cannot fail to be mutually unpleasant.” + +He did so, and came back again. I took the opportunity of moving well +behind my table. + +“You wouldn’t allow me to offer you one, would you miss?” said Mr. +Guppy, apparently refreshed. + +“Not any,” said I. + +“Not half a glass?” said Mr. Guppy. “Quarter? No! Then, to proceed. +My present salary, Miss Summerson, at Kenge and Carboy’s, is two +pound a week. When I first had the happiness of looking upon you, it +was one fifteen, and had stood at that figure for a lengthened +period. A rise of five has since taken place, and a further rise of +five is guaranteed at the expiration of a term not exceeding twelve +months from the present date. My mother has a little property, which +takes the form of a small life annuity, upon which she lives in an +independent though unassuming manner in the Old Street Road. She is +eminently calculated for a mother-in-law. She never interferes, is +all for peace, and her disposition easy. She has her failings—as who +has not?—but I never knew her do it when company was present, at +which time you may freely trust her with wines, spirits, or malt +liquors. My own abode is lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is +lowly, but airy, open at the back, and considered one of the +’ealthiest outlets. Miss Summerson! In the mildest language, I adore +you. Would you be so kind as to allow me (as I may say) to file a +declaration—to make an offer!” + +Mr. Guppy went down on his knees. I was well behind my table and not +much frightened. I said, “Get up from that ridiculous position +immediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise +and ring the bell!” + +“Hear me out, miss!” said Mr. Guppy, folding his hands. + +“I cannot consent to hear another word, sir,” I returned, “Unless you +get up from the carpet directly and go and sit down at the table as +you ought to do if you have any sense at all.” + +He looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so. + +“Yet what a mockery it is, miss,” he said with his hand upon his +heart and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over the +tray, “to be stationed behind food at such a moment. The soul recoils +from food at such a moment, miss.” + +“I beg you to conclude,” said I; “you have asked me to hear you out, +and I beg you to conclude.” + +“I will, miss,” said Mr. Guppy. “As I love and honour, so likewise I +obey. Would that I could make thee the subject of that vow before the +shrine!” + +“That is quite impossible,” said I, “and entirely out of the +question.” + +“I am aware,” said Mr. Guppy, leaning forward over the tray and +regarding me, as I again strangely felt, though my eyes were not +directed to him, with his late intent look, “I am aware that in a +worldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a +poor one. But, Miss Summerson! Angel! No, don’t ring—I have been +brought up in a sharp school and am accustomed to a variety of +general practice. Though a young man, I have ferreted out evidence, +got up cases, and seen lots of life. Blest with your hand, what means +might I not find of advancing your interests and pushing your +fortunes! What might I not get to know, nearly concerning you? I know +nothing now, certainly; but what MIGHT I not if I had your +confidence, and you set me on?” + +I told him that he addressed my interest or what he supposed to be my +interest quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination, and +he would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to go +away immediately. + +“Cruel miss,” said Mr. Guppy, “hear but another word! I think you +must have seen that I was struck with those charms on the day when I +waited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have remarked that I +could not forbear a tribute to those charms when I put up the steps +of the ’ackney-coach. It was a feeble tribute to thee, but it was +well meant. Thy image has ever since been fixed in my breast. I have +walked up and down of an evening opposite Jellyby’s house only to +look upon the bricks that once contained thee. This out of to-day, +quite an unnecessary out so far as the attendance, which was its +pretended object, went, was planned by me alone for thee alone. If I +speak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and my respectful +wretchedness. Love was before it, and is before it.” + +“I should be pained, Mr. Guppy,” said I, rising and putting my hand +upon the bell-rope, “to do you or any one who was sincere the +injustice of slighting any honest feeling, however disagreeably +expressed. If you have really meant to give me a proof of your good +opinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, I feel that I ought to thank +you. I have very little reason to be proud, and I am not proud. I +hope,” I think I added, without very well knowing what I said, “that +you will now go away as if you had never been so exceedingly foolish +and attend to Messrs. Kenge and Carboy’s business.” + +“Half a minute, miss!” cried Mr. Guppy, checking me as I was about to +ring. “This has been without prejudice?” + +“I will never mention it,” said I, “unless you should give me future +occasion to do so.” + +“A quarter of a minute, miss! In case you should think better at any +time, however distant—THAT’S no consequence, for my feelings can +never alter—of anything I have said, particularly what might I not +do, Mr. William Guppy, eighty-seven, Penton Place, or if removed, or +dead (of blighted hopes or anything of that sort), care of Mrs. +Guppy, three hundred and two, Old Street Road, will be sufficient.” + +I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr. Guppy, laying his written +card upon the table and making a dejected bow, departed. Raising my +eyes as he went out, I once more saw him looking at me after he had +passed the door. + +I sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and payments +and getting through plenty of business. Then I arranged my desk, and +put everything away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thought +I had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went +upstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh +about it and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry +about it. In short, I was in a flutter for a little while and felt as +if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been +since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the garden. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +The Law-Writer + + +On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, more +particularly in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby, +law-stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook’s +Court, at most times a shady place, Mr. Snagsby has dealt in +all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls +of parchment; in paper—foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, +whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, +ink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and +wafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs, +diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands—glass +and leaden—pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small +office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, ever +since he was out of his time and went into partnership with Peffer. +On that occasion, Cook’s Court was in a manner revolutionized by the +new inscription in fresh paint, PEFFER AND SNAGSBY, displacing the +time-honoured and not easily to be deciphered legend PEFFER only. For +smoke, which is the London ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer’s +name and clung to his dwelling-place that the affectionate parasite +quite overpowered the parent tree. + +Peffer is never seen in Cook’s Court now. He is not expected there, +for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the churchyard +of St. Andrews, Holborn, with the waggons and hackney-coaches roaring +past him all the day and half the night like one great dragon. If he +ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest to air himself again in +Cook’s Court until admonished to return by the crowing of the +sanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street, +whose ideas of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he +knows from his personal observation next to nothing about it—if +Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of Cook’s Court, which no +law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly, +and no one is the worse or wiser. + +In his lifetime, and likewise in the period of Snagsby’s “time” +of seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer in the same +law-stationering premises a niece—a short, shrewd niece, something +too violently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like +a sharp autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. The +Cook’s Courtiers had a rumour flying among them that the mother of +this niece did, in her daughter’s childhood, moved by too jealous a +solicitude that her figure should approach perfection, lace her +up every morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for +a stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited +internally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice, which acids, they held, +had mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoever +of the many tongues of Rumour this frothy report originated, it +either never reached or never influenced the ears of young Snagsby, +who, having wooed and won its fair subject on his arrival at man’s +estate, entered into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook’s +Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece are one; and the +niece still cherishes her figure, which, however tastes may differ, +is unquestionably so far precious that there is mighty little of it. + +Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the +neighbours’ thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed +from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook’s Court very often. Mr. +Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet +tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining +head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He +tends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his door in Cook’s +Court in his grey shop-coat and black calico sleeves, looking up at +the clouds, or stands behind a desk in his dark shop with a heavy +flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin in company with his two +’prentices, he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. From +beneath his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in +its grave, there frequently arise complainings and lamentations in +the voice already mentioned; and haply, on some occasions when these +reach a sharper pitch than usual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the +’prentices, “I think my little woman is a-giving it to Guster!” + +This proper name, so used by Mr. Snagsby, has before now sharpened +the wit of the Cook’s Courtiers to remark that it ought to be the +name of Mrs. Snagsby, seeing that she might with great force and +expression be termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormy character. +It is, however, the possession, and the only possession except fifty +shillings per annum and a very small box indifferently filled with +clothing, of a lean young woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to +have been christened Augusta) who, although she was farmed or +contracted for during her growing time by an amiable benefactor of +his species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to have been +developed under the most favourable circumstances, “has fits,” which +the parish can’t account for. + +Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten +years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits, and +is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron saint +that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink, +or the copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be +near her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a +satisfaction to the parents and guardians of the ’prentices, who feel +that there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the +breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can +always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr. Snagsby, who +thinks it a charity to keep her. The law-stationer’s establishment +is, in Guster’s eyes, a temple of plenty and splendour. She believes +the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with +its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant +apartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cook’s Court at one +end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street) and of Coavinses’ +the sheriff’s officer’s backyard at the other she regards as a +prospect of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil—and +plenty of it too—of Mr. Snagsby looking at Mrs. Snagsby and of Mrs. +Snagsby looking at Mr. Snagsby are in her eyes as achievements of +Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many +privations. + +Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the +business to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the +tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays, +licenses Mr. Snagsby’s entertainments, and acknowledges no +responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner, +insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the +neighbouring wives a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and +even out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitually +call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the +wives’) position and Mrs. Snagsby’s, and their (the husbands’) +behaviour and Mr. Snagsby’s. Rumour, always flying bat-like about +Cook’s Court and skimming in and out at everybody’s windows, does say +that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive and that Mr. Snagsby is +sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the +spirit of a mouse he wouldn’t stand it. It is even observed that the +wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining +example in reality look down upon him and that nobody does so with +greater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more +than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of +correction. But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby’s +being in his way rather a meditative and poetical man, loving to walk +in Staple Inn in the summer-time and to observe how countrified the +sparrows and the leaves are, also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a +Sunday afternoon and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were +old times once and that you’d find a stone coffin or two now under +that chapel, he’ll be bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his +imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and +Masters of the Rolls who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of +the country out of telling the two ’prentices how he HAS heard say +that a brook “as clear as crystal” once ran right down the middle of +Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap away +into the meadows—gets such a flavour of the country out of this that +he never wants to go there. + +The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully +effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Snagsby standing at his +shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim +westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook’s Court. The crow +flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Garden into +Lincoln’s Inn Fields. + +Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr. +Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in those +shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in +nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still +remain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman +helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars, +flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache—as +would seem to be Allegory’s object always, more or less. Here, among +his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr. +Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where +the great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day, +quiet at his table. An oyster of the old school whom nobody can open. + +Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of +the present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from +attention, able to afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned, +mahogany-and-horsehair chairs, not easily lifted; obsolete tables +with spindle-legs and dusty baize covers; presentation prints of the +holders of great titles in the last generation or the last but one, +environ him. A thick and dingy Turkey-carpet muffles the floor where +he sits, attended by two candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks +that give a very insufficient light to his large room. The titles on +the backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything that +can have a lock has got one; no key is visible. Very few loose papers +are about. He has some manuscript near him, but is not referring +to it. With the round top of an inkstand and two broken bits of +sealing-wax he is silently and slowly working out whatever train of +indecision is in his mind. Now the inkstand top is in the middle, now +the red bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. That’s not it. Mr. +Tulkinghorn must gather them all up and begin again. + +Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory +staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and +he cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office. +He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at +elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened +with business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no +clerks. He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped. +His clients want HIM; he is all in all. Drafts that he requires to be +drawn are drawn by special-pleaders in the temple on mysterious +instructions; fair copies that he requires to be made are made at the +stationers’, expense being no consideration. The middle-aged man in +the pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage than any +crossing-sweeper in Holborn. + +The red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstand top, +the little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the right, you to +the left. This train of indecision must surely be worked out now or +never. Now! Mr. Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts on +his hat, puts the manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the +middle-aged man out at elbows, “I shall be back presently.” Very +rarely tells him anything more explicit. + +Mr. Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came—not quite so straight, but +nearly—to Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. To Snagsby’s, +Law-Stationer’s, Deeds engrossed and copied, Law-Writing executed in +all its branches, &c., &c., &c. + +It is somewhere about five or six o’clock in the afternoon, and a +balmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook’s Court. It hovers about +Snagsby’s door. The hours are early there: dinner at half-past one +and supper at half-past nine. Mr. Snagsby was about to descend into +the subterranean regions to take tea when he looked out of his door +just now and saw the crow who was out late. + +“Master at home?” + +Guster is minding the shop, for the ’prentices take tea in the +kitchen with Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby; consequently, the robe-maker’s two +daughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in the two +second-floor windows of the opposite house, are not driving the two +’prentices to distraction as they fondly suppose, but are merely +awakening the unprofitable admiration of Guster, whose hair won’t +grow, and never would, and it is confidently thought, never will. + +“Master at home?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. + +Master is at home, and Guster will fetch him. Guster disappears, glad +to get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread and +veneration as a storehouse of awful implements of the great torture +of the law—a place not to be entered after the gas is turned off. + +Mr. Snagsby appears, greasy, warm, herbaceous, and chewing. Bolts a +bit of bread and butter. Says, “Bless my soul, sir! Mr. Tulkinghorn!” + +“I want half a word with you, Snagsby.” + +“Certainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn’t you send your young man +round for me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir.” Snagsby has +brightened in a moment. + +The confined room, strong of parchment-grease, is warehouse, +counting-house, and copying-office. Mr. Tulkinghorn sits, facing +round, on a stool at the desk. + +“Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Snagsby.” + +“Yes, sir.” Mr. Snagsby turns up the gas and coughs behind his hand, +modestly anticipating profit. Mr. Snagsby, as a timid man, is +accustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save +words. + +“You copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately.” + +“Yes, sir, we did.” + +“There was one of them,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, carelessly +feeling—tight, unopenable oyster of the old school!—in the wrong +coat-pocket, “the handwriting of which is peculiar, and I rather +like. As I happened to be passing, and thought I had it about me, I +looked in to ask you—but I haven’t got it. No matter, any other time +will do. Ah! here it is! I looked in to ask you who copied this.” + +“Who copied this, sir?” says Mr. Snagsby, taking it, laying it flat +on the desk, and separating all the sheets at once with a twirl and a +twist of the left hand peculiar to lawstationers. “We gave this out, +sir. We were giving out rather a large quantity of work just at that +time. I can tell you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to +my book.” + +Mr. Snagsby takes his book down from the safe, makes another bolt of +the bit of bread and butter which seemed to have stopped short, eyes +the affidavit aside, and brings his right forefinger travelling down +a page of the book, “Jewby—Packer—Jarndyce.” + +“Jarndyce! Here we are, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby. “To be sure! I might +have remembered it. This was given out, sir, to a writer who lodges +just over on the opposite side of the lane.” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the +law-stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill. + +“WHAT do you call him? Nemo?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “Nemo, sir. Here +it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night at eight +o’clock, brought in on the Thursday morning at half after nine.” + +“Nemo!” repeats Mr. Tulkinghorn. “Nemo is Latin for no one.” + +“It must be English for some one, sir, I think,” Mr. Snagsby submits +with his deferential cough. “It is a person’s name. Here it is, you +see, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesday night, eight o’clock; +brought in Thursday morning, half after nine.” + +The tail of Mr. Snagsby’s eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs. +Snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by +deserting his tea. Mr. Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs. +Snagsby, as who should say, “My dear, a customer!” + +“Half after nine, sir,” repeats Mr. Snagsby. “Our law-writers, who +live by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but +it’s the name he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in a +written advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and the +King’s Bench Office, and the Judges’ Chambers, and so forth. You know +the kind of document, sir—wanting employ?” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of +Coavinses’, the sheriff’s officer’s, where lights shine in Coavinses’ +windows. Coavinses’ coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of +several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr. +Snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head to glance +over his shoulder at his little woman and to make apologetic motions +with his mouth to this effect: “Tul-king-horn—rich—in-flu-en-tial!” + +“Have you given this man work before?” asks Mr. Tulkinghorn. + +“Oh, dear, yes, sir! Work of yours.” + +“Thinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he +lived?” + +“Across the lane, sir. In fact, he lodges at a—” Mr. Snagsby makes +another bolt, as if the bit of bread and butter were insurmountable +“—at a rag and bottle shop.” + +“Can you show me the place as I go back?” + +“With the greatest pleasure, sir!” + +Mr. Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his +black coat, takes his hat from its peg. “Oh! Here is my little +woman!” he says aloud. “My dear, will you be so kind as to tell one +of the lads to look after the shop while I step across the lane with +Mr. Tulkinghorn? Mrs. Snagsby, sir—I shan’t be two minutes, my +love!” + +Mrs. Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps +at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office, +refers to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently +curious. + +“You will find that the place is rough, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, +walking deferentially in the road and leaving the narrow pavement to +the lawyer; “and the party is very rough. But they’re a wild lot in +general, sir. The advantage of this particular man is that he never +wants sleep. He’ll go at it right on end if you want him to, as long +as ever you like.” + +It is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full +effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day’s letters, and +against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against +plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the +general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has +interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest +business of life; diving through law and equity, and through that +kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what +and collects about us nobody knows whence or how—we only knowing in +general that when there is too much of it we find it necessary to +shovel it away—the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a rag and +bottle shop and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise, +lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln’s Inn, and kept, +as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook. + +“This is where he lives, sir,” says the law-stationer. + +“This is where he lives, is it?” says the lawyer unconcernedly. +“Thank you.” + +“Are you not going in, sir?” + +“No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good +evening. Thank you!” Mr. Snagsby lifts his hat and returns to his +little woman and his tea. + +But Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes +a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and +enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so +in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by +a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed +candle in his hand. + +“Pray is your lodger within?” + +“Male or female, sir?” says Mr. Krook. + +“Male. The person who does copying.” + +Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an +indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute. + +“Did you wish to see him, sir?” + +“Yes.” + +“It’s what I seldom do myself,” says Mr. Krook with a grin. “Shall I +call him down? But it’s a weak chance if he’d come, sir!” + +“I’ll go up to him, then,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. + +“Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!” Mr. Krook, with his +cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after +Mr. Tulkinghorn. “Hi-hi!” he says when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly +disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat +expands her wicked mouth and snarls at him. + +“Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know +what they say of my lodger?” whispers Krook, going up a step or two. + +“What do they say of him?” + +“They say he has sold himself to the enemy, but you and I know +better—he don’t buy. I’ll tell you what, though; my lodger is so +black-humoured and gloomy that I believe he’d as soon make that +bargain as any other. Don’t put him out, sir. That’s my advice!” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door +on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and +accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so. + +The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it if +he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease, +and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as +if poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner +by the chimney stand a deal table and a broken desk, a wilderness +marked with a rain of ink. In another corner a ragged old portmanteau +on one of the two chairs serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger +one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The +floor is bare, except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of +rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the +darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn +together, and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine +might be staring in—the banshee of the man upon the bed. + +For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork, +lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just +within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and +trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral +darkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of +its wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of +winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his +whiskers and his beard—the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the +scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, +foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes +those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the +general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco, +there comes into the lawyer’s mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium. + +“Hallo, my friend!” he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick +against the door. + +He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away, +but his eyes are surely open. + +“Hallo, my friend!” he cries again. “Hallo! Hallo!” + +As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long goes +out and leaves him in the dark, with the gaunt eyes in the shutters +staring down upon the bed. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Our Dear Brother + + +A touch on the lawyer’s wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room, +irresolute, makes him start and say, “What’s that?” + +“It’s me,” returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his +ear. “Can’t you wake him?” + +“No.” + +“What have you done with your candle?” + +“It’s gone out. Here it is.” + +Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and +tries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his +endeavours are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his +lodger, that he will go downstairs and bring a lighted candle from +the shop, the old man departs. Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason +that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs +outside. + +The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up +with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. “Does the man +generally sleep like this?” inquired the lawyer in a low voice. “Hi! +I don’t know,” says Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows. +“I know next to nothing of his habits except that he keeps himself +very close.” + +Thus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the +great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes +upon the bed. + +“God save us!” exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. “He is dead!” Krook drops +the heavy hand he has taken up so suddenly that the arm swings over +the bedside. + +They look at one another for a moment. + +“Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here’s +poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?” says Krook, with +his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire’s wings. + +Mr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and calls, “Miss Flite! Flite! +Make haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!” Krook follows him with his +eyes, and while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old +portmanteau and steal back again. + +“Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Run!” So Mr. Krook addresses a +crazy little woman who is his female lodger, who appears and vanishes +in a breath, who soon returns accompanied by a testy medical man +brought from his dinner, with a broad, snuffy upper lip and a broad +Scotch tongue. + +“Ey! Bless the hearts o’ ye,” says the medical man, looking up at +them after a moment’s examination. “He’s just as dead as Phairy!” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has +been dead any time. + +“Any time, sir?” says the medical gentleman. “It’s probable he wull +have been dead aboot three hours.” + +“About that time, I should say,” observes a dark young man on the +other side of the bed. + +“Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?” inquires the +first. + +The dark young man says yes. + +“Then I’ll just tak’ my depairture,” replies the other, “for I’m nae +gude here!” With which remark he finishes his brief attendance and +returns to finish his dinner. + +The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face +and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his +pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one. + +“I knew this person by sight very well,” says he. “He has purchased +opium of me for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related +to him?” glancing round upon the three bystanders. + +“I was his landlord,” grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from +the surgeon’s outstretched hand. “He told me once I was the nearest +relation he had.” + +“He has died,” says the surgeon, “of an over-dose of opium, there is +no doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough +here now,” taking an old tea-pot from Mr. Krook, “to kill a dozen +people.” + +“Do you think he did it on purpose?” asks Krook. + +“Took the over-dose?” + +“Yes!” Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible +interest. + +“I can’t say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit +of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?” + +“I suppose he was. His room—don’t look rich,” says Krook, who might +have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around. +“But I have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to +name his circumstances to me.” + +“Did he owe you any rent?” + +“Six weeks.” + +“He will never pay it!” says the young man, resuming his examination. +“It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to +judge from his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy +release. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare +say, good-looking.” He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on +the bedstead’s edge with his face towards that other face and his +hand upon the region of the heart. “I recollect once thinking there +was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall +in life. Was that so?” he continues, looking round. + +Krook replies, “You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose +heads of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he was my +lodger for a year and a half and lived—or didn’t live—by +law-writing, I know no more of him.” + +During this dialogue Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old +portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all +appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the +bed—from the young surgeon’s professional interest in death, +noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as +an individual; from the old man’s unction; and the little crazy +woman’s awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his +rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this +while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention +nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might +the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case, +as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case. + +He now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved, +professional way. + +“I looked in here,” he observes, “just before you, with the +intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some +employment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my +stationer—Snagsby of Cook’s Court. Since no one here knows anything +about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!” to the +little crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and whom he has +often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the +law-stationer. “Suppose you do!” + +While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation +and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook and +he interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, but +stands, ever, near the old portmanteau. + +Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves. +“Dear me, dear me,” he says; “and it has come to this, has it! Bless +my soul!” + +“Can you give the person of the house any information about this +unfortunate creature, Snagsby?” inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. “He was in +arrears with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you know.” + +“Well, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind +his hand, “I really don’t know what advice I could offer, except +sending for the beadle.” + +“I don’t speak of advice,” returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. “I could +advise—” + +“No one better, sir, I am sure,” says Mr. Snagsby, with his +deferential cough. + +“I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he +came from, or to anything concerning him.” + +“I assure you, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby after prefacing his reply with +his cough of general propitiation, “that I no more know where he came +from than I know—” + +“Where he has gone to, perhaps,” suggests the surgeon to help him +out. + +A pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Krook, +with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next. + +“As to his connexions, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, “if a person was to +say to me, ‘Snagsby, here’s twenty thousand pound down, ready for you +in the Bank of England if you’ll only name one of ’em,’ I couldn’t do +it, sir! About a year and a half ago—to the best of my belief, at +the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bottle +shop—” + +“That was the time!” says Krook with a nod. + +“About a year and a half ago,” says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, “he +came into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my +little woman (which I name Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation) +in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave her to +understand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to +put too fine a point upon it,” a favourite apology for plain speaking +with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative +frankness, “hard up! My little woman is not in general partial to +strangers, particular—not to put too fine a point upon it—when they +want anything. But she was rather took by something about this +person, whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want +of attention, or by what other ladies’ reasons, I leave you to judge; +and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My +little woman hasn’t a good ear for names,” proceeds Mr. Snagsby after +consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, “and she +considered Nemo equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which, +she got into a habit of saying to me at meals, ‘Mr. Snagsby, you +haven’t found Nimrod any work yet!’ or ‘Mr. Snagsby, why didn’t you +give that eight and thirty Chancery folio in Jarndyce to Nimrod?’ or +such like. And that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our +place; and that is the most I know of him except that he was a quick +hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him +out, say, five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have +it brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which—” Mr. Snagsby +concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much +as to add, “I have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he +were in a condition to do it.” + +“Hadn’t you better see,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, “whether he +had any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an inquest, and +you will be asked the question. You can read?” + +“No, I can’t,” returns the old man with a sudden grin. + +“Snagsby,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “look over the room for him. He will +get into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here, I’ll wait +if you make haste, and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should +ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will hold the +candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he’ll soon see whether there is +anything to help you.” + +“In the first place, here’s an old portmanteau, sir,” says Snagsby. + +Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have +seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though +there is very little else, heaven knows. + +The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer +conducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the +chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door. +The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches +tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his +long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied +in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same +place and attitude. + +There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau; +there is a bundle of pawnbrokers’ duplicates, those turnpike tickets +on the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium, +on which are scrawled rough memoranda—as, took, such a day, so many +grains; took, such another day, so many more—begun some time ago, as +if with the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left +off. There are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to +coroners’ inquests; there is nothing else. They search the cupboard +and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. There is not a morsel of an +old letter or of any other writing in either. The young surgeon +examines the dress on the law-writer. A knife and some odd halfpence +are all he finds. Mr. Snagsby’s suggestion is the practical +suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in. + +So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out +of the room. “Don’t leave the cat there!” says the surgeon; “that +won’t do!” Mr. Krook therefore drives her out before him, and she +goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her +lips. + +“Good night!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and +meditation. + +By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its +inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the +army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr. +Krook’s window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already +walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he +stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base +occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall +back. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms +with Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in +young Perkins’ having “fetched” young Piper “a crack,” renews her +friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the +corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge +of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges +confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance +of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable +in station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and +bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what’s +the matter. The general feeling seems to be that it’s a blessing Mr. +Krook warn’t made away with first, mingled with a little natural +disappointment that he was not. In the midst of this sensation, the +beadle arrives. + +The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a +ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the +moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The +policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the +barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that +must be borne with until government shall abolish him. The sensation +is heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the +beadle is on the ground and has gone in. + +By and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation, +which has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be +in want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the +coroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is +immediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing +whatever. Is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that +Mrs. Green’s son “was a law-writer his-self and knowed him better +than anybody,” which son of Mrs. Green’s appears, on inquiry, to be +at the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months +out, but considered accessible by telegraph on application to the +Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops and parlours, +examining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by +exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public. +Policeman seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest and +undergoes reaction. Taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with +having boiled a boy, choruses fragments of a popular song to that +effect and importing that the boy was made into soup for the +workhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law +and seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the rest on +condition of his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it—a +condition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies off for the +time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or +less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible +great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues +his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white +gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a +street-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost +child and a murder. + +Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting +about Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every juror’s name +is wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle’s own +name, which nobody can read or wants to know. The summonses served +and his witnesses forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr. Krook’s to keep +a small appointment he has made with certain paupers, who, presently +arriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the great eyes in +the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which +earthly lodgings take for No one—and for Every one. + +And all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau; +and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through +five and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that +any one can trace than a deserted infant. + +Next day the court is all alive—is like a fair, as Mrs. Perkins, +more than reconciled to Mrs. Piper, says in amicable conversation +with that excellent woman. The coroner is to sit in the first-floor +room at the Sol’s Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings take place twice +a week and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional +celebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes +(according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally +round him and support first-rate talent. The Sol’s Arms does a brisk +stroke of business all the morning. Even children so require +sustaining under the general excitement that a pieman who has +established himself for the occasion at the corner of the court says +his brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the beadle, hovering +between the door of Mr. Krook’s establishment and the door of the +Sol’s Arms, shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet +spirits and accepts the compliment of a glass of ale or so in return. + +At the appointed hour arrives the coroner, for whom the jurymen are +waiting and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good +dry skittle-ground attached to the Sol’s Arms. The coroner frequents +more public-houses than any man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer, +tobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable in his vocation from death +in its most awful shapes. He is conducted by the beadle and the +landlord to the Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on the +piano and takes a Windsor-chair at the head of a long table formed of +several short tables put together and ornamented with glutinous rings +in endless involutions, made by pots and glasses. As many of the jury +as can crowd together at the table sit there. The rest get among the +spittoons and pipes or lean against the piano. Over the coroner’s +head is a small iron garland, the pendant handle of a bell, which +rather gives the majesty of the court the appearance of going to be +hanged presently. + +Call over and swear the jury! While the ceremony is in progress, +sensation is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a +large shirt-collar, with a moist eye and an inflamed nose, who +modestly takes a position near the door as one of the general public, +but seems familiar with the room too. A whisper circulates that this +is Little Swills. It is considered not unlikely that he will get up +an imitation of the coroner and make it the principal feature of the +Harmonic Meeting in the evening. + +“Well, gentlemen—” the coroner begins. + +“Silence there, will you!” says the beadle. Not to the coroner, +though it might appear so. + +“Well, gentlemen,” resumes the coroner. “You are impanelled here to +inquire into the death of a certain man. Evidence will be given +before you as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will +give your verdict according to the—skittles; they must be stopped, +you know, beadle!—evidence, and not according to anything else. The +first thing to be done is to view the body.” + +“Make way there!” cries the beadle. + +So they go out in a loose procession, something after the manner of a +straggling funeral, and make their inspection in Mr. Krook’s back +second floor, from which a few of the jurymen retire pale and +precipitately. The beadle is very careful that two gentlemen not very +neat about the cuffs and buttons (for whose accommodation he has +provided a special little table near the coroner in the Harmonic +Meeting Room) should see all that is to be seen. For they are the +public chroniclers of such inquiries by the line; and he is not +superior to the universal human infirmity, but hopes to read in print +what “Mooney, the active and intelligent beadle of the district,” +said and did and even aspires to see the name of Mooney as familiarly +and patronizingly mentioned as the name of the hangman is, according +to the latest examples. + +Little Swills is waiting for the coroner and jury on their return. +Mr. Tulkinghorn, also. Mr. Tulkinghorn is received with distinction +and seated near the coroner between that high judicial officer, a +bagatelle-board, and the coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The jury +learn how the subject of their inquiry died, and learn no more about +him. “A very eminent solicitor is in attendance, gentlemen,” says the +coroner, “who, I am informed, was accidentally present when discovery +of the death was made, but he could only repeat the evidence you have +already heard from the surgeon, the landlord, the lodger, and the +law-stationer, and it is not necessary to trouble him. Is anybody in +attendance who knows anything more?” + +Mrs. Piper pushed forward by Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Piper sworn. + +Anastasia Piper, gentlemen. Married woman. Now, Mrs. Piper, what have +you got to say about this? + +Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and +without punctuation, but not much to tell. Mrs. Piper lives in the +court (which her husband is a cabinet-maker), and it has long been +well beknown among the neighbours (counting from the day next but one +before the half-baptizing of Alexander James Piper aged eighteen +months and four days old on accounts of not being expected to live +such was the sufferings gentlemen of that child in his gums) as the +plaintive—so Mrs. Piper insists on calling the deceased—was +reported to have sold himself. Thinks it was the plaintive’s air in +which that report originatinin. See the plaintive often and +considered as his air was feariocious and not to be allowed to go +about some children being timid (and if doubted hoping Mrs. Perkins +may be brought forard for she is here and will do credit to her +husband and herself and family). Has seen the plaintive wexed and +worrited by the children (for children they will ever be and you +cannot expect them specially if of playful dispositions to be +Methoozellers which you was not yourself). On accounts of this and +his dark looks has often dreamed as she see him take a pick-axe from +his pocket and split Johnny’s head (which the child knows not fear +and has repeatually called after him close at his eels). Never +however see the plaintive take a pick-axe or any other wepping far +from it. Has seen him hurry away when run and called after as if not +partial to children and never see him speak to neither child nor +grown person at any time (excepting the boy that sweeps the crossing +down the lane over the way round the corner which if he was here +would tell you that he has been seen a-speaking to him frequent). + +Says the coroner, is that boy here? Says the beadle, no, sir, he is +not here. Says the coroner, go and fetch him then. In the absence of +the active and intelligent, the coroner converses with Mr. +Tulkinghorn. + +Oh! Here’s the boy, gentlemen! + +Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy! But stop +a minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary +paces. + +Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don’t know that everybody +has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don’t know that Jo is +short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for HIM. HE don’t find +no fault with it. Spell it? No. HE can’t spell it. No father, no +mother, no friends. Never been to school. What’s home? Knows a +broom’s a broom, and knows it’s wicked to tell a lie. Don’t recollect +who told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both. Can’t +exactly say what’ll be done to him arter he’s dead if he tells a lie +to the gentlemen here, but believes it’ll be something wery bad to +punish him, and serve him right—and so he’ll tell the truth. + +“This won’t do, gentlemen!” says the coroner with a melancholy shake +of the head. + +“Don’t you think you can receive his evidence, sir?” asks an +attentive juryman. + +“Out of the question,” says the coroner. “You have heard the boy. +‘Can’t exactly say’ won’t do, you know. We can’t take THAT in a court +of justice, gentlemen. It’s terrible depravity. Put the boy aside.” + +Boy put aside, to the great edification of the audience, especially +of Little Swills, the comic vocalist. + +Now. Is there any other witness? No other witness. + +Very well, gentlemen! Here’s a man unknown, proved to have been in +the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half, +found dead of too much opium. If you think you have any evidence to +lead you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come +to that conclusion. If you think it is a case of accidental death, +you will find a verdict accordingly. + +Verdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doubt. Gentlemen, you are +discharged. Good afternoon. + +While the coroner buttons his great-coat, Mr. Tulkinghorn and he give +private audience to the rejected witness in a corner. + +That graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he +recognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes +hooted and pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night when +he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man +turned to look at him, and came back, and having questioned him and +found that he had not a friend in the world, said, “Neither have I. +Not one!” and gave him the price of a supper and a night’s lodging. +That the man had often spoken to him since and asked him whether he +slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he +ever wished to die, and similar strange questions. That when the man +had no money, he would say in passing, “I am as poor as you to-day, +Jo,” but that when he had any, he had always (as the boy most +heartily believes) been glad to give him some. + +“He was wery good to me,” says the boy, wiping his eyes with his +wretched sleeve. “Wen I see him a-layin’ so stritched out just now, I +wished he could have heerd me tell him so. He wos wery good to me, he +wos!” + +As he shuffles downstairs, Mr. Snagsby, lying in wait for him, puts a +half-crown in his hand. “If you ever see me coming past your crossing +with my little woman—I mean a lady—” says Mr. Snagsby with his +finger on his nose, “don’t allude to it!” + +For some little time the jurymen hang about the Sol’s Arms +colloquially. In the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a cloud of +pipe-smoke that pervades the parlour of the Sol’s Arms; two stroll to +Hampstead; and four engage to go half-price to the play at night, and +top up with oysters. Little Swills is treated on several hands. Being +asked what he thinks of the proceedings, characterizes them (his +strength lying in a slangular direction) as “a rummy start.” The +landlord of the Sol’s Arms, finding Little Swills so popular, +commends him highly to the jurymen and public, observing that for a +song in character he don’t know his equal and that that man’s +character-wardrobe would fill a cart. + +Thus, gradually the Sol’s Arms melts into the shadowy night and then +flares out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting hour arriving, +the gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair, is faced +(red-faced) by Little Swills; their friends rally round them and +support first-rate talent. In the zenith of the evening, Little +Swills says, “Gentlemen, if you’ll permit me, I’ll attempt a short +description of a scene of real life that came off here to-day.” Is +much applauded and encouraged; goes out of the room as Swills; comes +in as the coroner (not the least in the world like him); describes +the inquest, with recreative intervals of piano-forte accompaniment, +to the refrain: With his (the coroner’s) tippy tol li doll, tippy tol +lo doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee! + +The jingling piano at last is silent, and the Harmonic friends rally +round their pillows. Then there is rest around the lonely figure, now +laid in its last earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt +eyes in the shutters through some quiet hours of night. If this +forlorn man could have been prophetically seen lying here by the +mother at whose breast he nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised +to her loving face, and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close upon +the neck to which it crept, what an impossibility the vision would +have seemed! Oh, if in brighter days the now-extinguished fire within +him ever burned for one woman who held him in her heart, where is +she, while these ashes are above the ground! + +It is anything but a night of rest at Mr. Snagsby’s, in Cook’s Court, +where Guster murders sleep by going, as Mr. Snagsby himself +allows—not to put too fine a point upon it—out of one fit into +twenty. The occasion of this seizure is that Guster has a tender +heart and a susceptible something that possibly might have been +imagination, but for Tooting and her patron saint. Be it what it may, +now, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by Mr. Snagsby’s +account of the inquiry at which he had assisted that at supper-time +she projected herself into the kitchen, preceded by a flying Dutch +cheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration, which she only came +out of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain of +fits, with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically +availed herself by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs. Snagsby not +to give her warning “when she quite comes to,” and also in appeals to +the whole establishment to lay her down on the stones and go to bed. +Hence, Mr. Snagsby, at last hearing the cock at the little dairy in +Cursitor Street go into that disinterested ecstasy of his on the +subject of daylight, says, drawing a long breath, though the most +patient of men, “I thought you was dead, I am sure!” + +What question this enthusiastic fowl supposes he settles when he +strains himself to such an extent, or why he should thus crow (so men +crow on various triumphant public occasions, however) about what +cannot be of any moment to him, is his affair. It is enough that +daylight comes, morning comes, noon comes. + +Then the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers +as such, comes with his pauper company to Mr. Krook’s and bears off +the body of our dear brother here departed to a hemmed-in churchyard, +pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated +to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed, +while our dear brothers and sisters who hang about official +back-stairs—would to heaven they HAD departed!—are very complacent +and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would +reject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would shudder at, they +bring our dear brother here departed to receive Christian burial. + +With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little +tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate—with every villainy +of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of +death in action close on life—here they lower our dear brother down +a foot or two, here sow him in corruption, to be raised in +corruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside, a shameful +testimony to future ages how civilization and barbarism walked this +boastful island together. + +Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too +long by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the +windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at +least with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so +sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its +witch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that you should call to +every passerby, “Look here!” + +With the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court to +the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands and +looks in between the bars, stands looking in for a little while. + +It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step and +makes the archway clean. It does so very busily and trimly, looks in +again a little while, and so departs. + +Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who “can’t +exactly say” what will be done to him in greater hands than men’s, +thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a +distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this: “He wos wery +good to me, he wos!” + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +On the Watch + + +It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire at last, and Chesney +Wold has taken heart. Mrs. Rouncewell is full of hospitable cares, +for Sir Leicester and my Lady are coming home from Paris. The +fashionable intelligence has found it out and communicates the glad +tidings to benighted England. It has also found out that they will +entertain a brilliant and distinguished circle of the ELITE of the +BEAU MONDE (the fashionable intelligence is weak in English, but a +giant refreshed in French) at the ancient and hospitable family seat +in Lincolnshire. + +For the greater honour of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and +of Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in +the park is mended; and the water, now retired within its proper +limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect +from the house. The clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle +woods and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves +and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows +of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. It +looks in at the windows and touches the ancestral portraits with bars +and patches of brightness never contemplated by the painters. Athwart +the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a +broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the +hearth and seems to rend it. + +Through the same cold sunshine and the same sharp wind, my Lady and +Sir Leicester, in their travelling chariot (my Lady’s woman and Sir +Leicester’s man affectionate in the rumble), start for home. With a +considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging +demonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses and two centaurs +with glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they +rattle out of the yard of the Hôtel Bristol in the Place Vendôme and +canter between the sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de +Rivoli and the garden of the ill-fated palace of a headless king and +queen, off by the Place of Concord, and the Elysian Fields, and the +Gate of the Star, out of Paris. + +Sooth to say, they cannot go away too fast, for even here my Lady +Dedlock has been bored to death. Concert, assembly, opera, theatre, +drive, nothing is new to my Lady under the worn-out heavens. Only +last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay—within the walls playing +with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace +Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more +Elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles +filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady to say a +word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little +gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing +Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking, +tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and +much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate—only last Sunday, my +Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, +almost hated her own maid for being in spirits. + +She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies +before her, as it lies behind—her Ariel has put a girdle of it round +the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped—but the imperfect remedy +is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced. +Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless +avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let +it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck +glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain—two dark +square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it +aslant, like the angels in Jacob’s dream! + +Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. +When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own +greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so +inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in +his corner of the carriage and generally reviews his importance to +society. + +“You have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?” says my +Lady after a long time. She is fatigued with reading. Has almost read +a page in twenty miles. + +“Nothing in it, though. Nothing whatever.” + +“I saw one of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s long effusions, I think?” + +“You see everything,” says Sir Leicester with admiration. + +“Ha!” sighs my Lady. “He is the most tiresome of men!” + +“He sends—I really beg your pardon—he sends,” says Sir Leicester, +selecting the letter and unfolding it, “a message to you. Our +stopping to change horses as I came to his postscript drove it out of +my memory. I beg you’ll excuse me. He says—” Sir Leicester is so +long in taking out his eye-glass and adjusting it that my Lady looks +a little irritated. “He says ‘In the matter of the right of way—’ I +beg your pardon, that’s not the place. He says—yes! Here I have it! +He says, ‘I beg my respectful compliments to my Lady, who, I hope, +has benefited by the change. Will you do me the favour to mention (as +it may interest her) that I have something to tell her on her return +in reference to the person who copied the affidavit in the Chancery +suit, which so powerfully stimulated her curiosity. I have seen +him.’” + +My Lady, leaning forward, looks out of her window. + +“That’s the message,” observes Sir Leicester. + +“I should like to walk a little,” says my Lady, still looking out of +her window. + +“Walk?” repeats Sir Leicester in a tone of surprise. + +“I should like to walk a little,” says my Lady with unmistakable +distinctness. “Please to stop the carriage.” + +The carriage is stopped, the affectionate man alights from the +rumble, opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient to an +impatient motion of my Lady’s hand. My Lady alights so quickly and +walks away so quickly that Sir Leicester, for all his scrupulous +politeness, is unable to assist her, and is left behind. A space of a +minute or two has elapsed before he comes up with her. She smiles, +looks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with him for a quarter of +a mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in the carriage. + +The rattle and clatter continue through the greater part of three +days, with more or less of bell-jingling and whip-cracking, and more +or less plunging of centaurs and bare-backed horses. Their courtly +politeness to each other at the hotels where they tarry is the theme +of general admiration. Though my Lord IS a little aged for my Lady, +says Madame, the hostess of the Golden Ape, and though he might be +her amiable father, one can see at a glance that they love each +other. One observes my Lord with his white hair, standing, hat in +hand, to help my Lady to and from the carriage. One observes my Lady, +how recognisant of my Lord’s politeness, with an inclination of her +gracious head and the concession of her so-genteel fingers! It is +ravishing! + +The sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like +the small fry. It is habitually hard upon Sir Leicester, whose +countenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-cheese and in +whose aristocratic system it effects a dismal revolution. It is the +Radical of Nature to him. Nevertheless, his dignity gets over it +after stopping to refit, and he goes on with my Lady for Chesney +Wold, lying only one night in London on the way to Lincolnshire. + +Through the same cold sunlight, colder as the day declines, and +through the same sharp wind, sharper as the separate shadows of bare +trees gloom together in the woods, and as the Ghost’s Walk, touched +at the western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to +coming night, they drive into the park. The rooks, swinging in their +lofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of +the occupancy of the carriage as it passes underneath, some agreeing +that Sir Leicester and my Lady are come down, some arguing with +malcontents who won’t admit it, now all consenting to consider the +question disposed of, now all breaking out again in violent debate, +incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird who will persist in putting +in a last contradictory croak. Leaving them to swing and caw, the +travelling chariot rolls on to the house, where fires gleam warmly +through some of the windows, though not through so many as to give an +inhabited expression to the darkening mass of front. But the +brilliant and distinguished circle will soon do that. + +Mrs. Rouncewell is in attendance and receives Sir Leicester’s +customary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy. + +“How do you do, Mrs. Rouncewell? I am glad to see you.” + +“I hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir +Leicester?” + +“In excellent health, Mrs. Rouncewell.” + +“My Lady is looking charmingly well,” says Mrs. Rouncewell with +another curtsy. + +My Lady signifies, without profuse expenditure of words, that she is +as wearily well as she can hope to be. + +But Rosa is in the distance, behind the housekeeper; and my Lady, who +has not subdued the quickness of her observation, whatever else she +may have conquered, asks, “Who is that girl?” + +“A young scholar of mine, my Lady. Rosa.” + +“Come here, Rosa!” Lady Dedlock beckons her, with even an appearance +of interest. “Why, do you know how pretty you are, child?” she says, +touching her shoulder with her two forefingers. + +Rosa, very much abashed, says, “No, if you please, my Lady!” and +glances up, and glances down, and don’t know where to look, but looks +all the prettier. + +“How old are you?” + +“Nineteen, my Lady.” + +“Nineteen,” repeats my Lady thoughtfully. “Take care they don’t spoil +you by flattery.” + +“Yes, my Lady.” + +My Lady taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers +and goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where Sir Leicester +pauses for her as her knightly escort. A staring old Dedlock in a +panel, as large as life and as dull, looks as if he didn’t know what +to make of it, which was probably his general state of mind in the +days of Queen Elizabeth. + +That evening, in the housekeeper’s room, Rosa can do nothing but +murmur Lady Dedlock’s praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so +beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling +touch that Rosa can feel it yet! Mrs. Rouncewell confirms all this, +not without personal pride, reserving only the one point of +affability. Mrs. Rouncewell is not quite sure as to that. Heaven +forbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise of any member of +that excellent family, above all, of my Lady, whom the whole world +admires; but if my Lady would only be “a little more free,” not quite +so cold and distant, Mrs. Rouncewell thinks she would be more +affable. + +“’Tis almost a pity,” Mrs. Rouncewell adds—only “almost” because it +borders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it +is, in such an express dispensation as the Dedlock affairs—“that my +Lady has no family. If she had had a daughter now, a grown young +lady, to interest her, I think she would have had the only kind of +excellence she wants.” + +“Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?” says +Watt, who has been home and come back again, he is such a good +grandson. + +“More and most, my dear,” returns the housekeeper with dignity, “are +words it’s not my place to use—nor so much as to hear—applied to +any drawback on my Lady.” + +“I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?” + +“If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always +reason to be.” + +“Well,” says Watt, “it’s to be hoped they line out of their +prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and +vainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!” + +“Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for +joking.” + +“Sir Leicester is no joke by any means,” says Watt, “and I humbly ask +his pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that even with the family and +their guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my +stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller +might?” + +“Surely, none in the world, child.” + +“I am glad of that,” says Watt, “because I have an inexpressible +desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood.” + +He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed. +But according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa’s ears that +burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Lady’s maid is holding +forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy. + +My Lady’s maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in +the southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a large-eyed brown +woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain feline +mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws +too eager and the skull too prominent. There is something indefinably +keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking +out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could +be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour +and near knives. Through all the good taste of her dress and little +adornments, these objections so express themselves that she seems to +go about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed. Besides being +accomplished in all the knowledge appertaining to her post, she is +almost an Englishwoman in her acquaintance with the language; +consequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon Rosa for +having attracted my Lady’s attention, and she pours them out with +such grim ridicule as she sits at dinner that her companion, the +affectionate man, is rather relieved when she arrives at the spoon +stage of that performance. + +Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, been in my Lady’s service since five years +and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet, +caressed—absolutely caressed—by my Lady on the moment of her +arriving at the house! Ha, ha, ha! “And do you know how pretty you +are, child?” “No, my Lady.” You are right there! “And how old are +you, child! And take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child!” +Oh, how droll! It is the BEST thing altogether. + +In short, it is such an admirable thing that Mademoiselle Hortense +can’t forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her +countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of +visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke—an enjoyment +expressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness of +face, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look, which +intense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my Lady’s +mirrors when my Lady is not among them. + +All the mirrors in the house are brought into action now, many of +them after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces, simpering +faces, youthful faces, faces of threescore and ten that will not +submit to be old; the entire collection of faces that have come to +pass a January week or two at Chesney Wold, and which the fashionable +intelligence, a mighty hunter before the Lord, hunts with a keen +scent, from their breaking cover at the Court of St. James’s to their +being run down to death. The place in Lincolnshire is all alive. By +day guns and voices are heard ringing in the woods, horsemen and +carriages enliven the park roads, servants and hangers-on pervade the +village and the Dedlock Arms. Seen by night from distant openings in +the trees, the row of windows in the long drawing-room, where my +Lady’s picture hangs over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of +jewels set in a black frame. On Sunday the chill little church is +almost warmed by so much gallant company, and the general flavour of +the Dedlock dust is quenched in delicate perfumes. + +The brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it no +contracted amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and +virtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it in despite of +its immense advantages. What can it be? + +Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth now (more the pity) to +set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel +neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There +are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed, +swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by +other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their +noses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into +his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is +troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But is +there dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle +notwithstanding, dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got +below the surface and is doing less harmless things than +jack-towelling itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no +rational person need particularly object? + +Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There ARE at Chesney Wold this +January week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who +have set up a dandyism—in religion, for instance. Who in mere +lackadaisical want of an emotion have agreed upon a little dandy talk +about the vulgar wanting faith in things in general, meaning in the +things that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low fellow +should unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling after finding it +out! Who would make the vulgar very picturesque and faithful by +putting back the hands upon the clock of time and cancelling a few +hundred years of history. + +There are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new, +but very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world +and to keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be +languid and pretty. Who have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who +are to rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to be +disturbed by ideas. On whom even the fine arts, attending in powder +and walking backward like the Lord Chamberlain, must array themselves +in the milliners’ and tailors’ patterns of past generations and be +particularly careful not to be in earnest or to receive any impress +from the moving age. + +Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his +party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester +Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see +to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate +used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a +Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment +that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited +choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie +between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle—supposing it to be +impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be +assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of +that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the +leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to +Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, +what are you to do with Noodle? You can’t offer him the Presidency of +the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can’t put him in the +Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What +follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces +(as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock) +because you can’t provide for Noodle! + +On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends +across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the +country—about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it +that is in question—is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with +Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament, +and had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you would have got +him into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight +attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have brought to bear +upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would have got in for +three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have +strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the +business habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as you now are, +dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy! + +As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences +of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and +distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but +Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue. These are the +great actors for whom the stage is reserved. A People there are, no +doubt—a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be +occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as +on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their followers and +families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are +the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can +appear upon the scene for ever and ever. + +In this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at Chesney Wold than the +brilliant and distinguished circle will find good for itself in the +long run. For it is, even with the stillest and politest circles, as +with the circle the necromancer draws around him—very strange +appearances may be seen in active motion outside. With this +difference, that being realities and not phantoms, there is the +greater danger of their breaking in. + +Chesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of +injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies’-maids, and is not +to be extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber of +the third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and +having an old-fashioned business air. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn’s room, +and is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time. +He is not come yet. It is his quiet habit to walk across the park +from the village in fine weather, to drop into this room as if he had +never been out of it since he was last seen there, to request a +servant to inform Sir Leicester that he is arrived in case he should +be wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of +the library-door. He sleeps in his turret with a complaining +flag-staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any +fine morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen +walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook. + +Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him in the dusk of the +library, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady glances +down the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive +him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every night +my Lady casually asks her maid, “Is Mr. Tulkinghorn come?” + +Every night the answer is, “No, my Lady, not yet.” + +One night, while having her hair undressed, my Lady loses herself in +deep thought after this reply until she sees her own brooding face in +the opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously observing her. + +“Be so good as to attend,” says my Lady then, addressing the +reflection of Hortense, “to your business. You can contemplate your +beauty at another time.” + +“Pardon! It was your Ladyship’s beauty.” + +“That,” says my Lady, “you needn’t contemplate at all.” + +At length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright +groups of figures which have for the last hour or two enlivened the +Ghost’s Walk are all dispersed and only Sir Leicester and my Lady +remain upon the terrace, Mr. Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards +them at his usual methodical pace, which is never quickened, never +slackened. He wears his usual expressionless mask—if it be a +mask—and carries family secrets in every limb of his body and every +crease of his dress. Whether his whole soul is devoted to the great +or whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells is his +personal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients; +he is his own client in that matter, and will never betray himself. + +“How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?” says Sir Leicester, giving him his +hand. + +Mr. Tulkinghorn is quite well. Sir Leicester is quite well. My Lady +is quite well. All highly satisfactory. The lawyer, with his hands +behind him, walks at Sir Leicester’s side along the terrace. My Lady +walks upon the other side. + +“We expected you before,” says Sir Leicester. A gracious observation. +As much as to say, “Mr. Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when +you are not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a +fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his head and says he is +much obliged. + +“I should have come down sooner,” he explains, “but that I have been +much engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself +and Boythorn.” + +“A man of a very ill-regulated mind,” observes Sir Leicester with +severity. “An extremely dangerous person in any community. A man of a +very low character of mind.” + +“He is obstinate,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. + +“It is natural to such a man to be so,” says Sir Leicester, looking +most profoundly obstinate himself. “I am not at all surprised to hear +it.” + +“The only question is,” pursues the lawyer, “whether you will give up +anything.” + +“No, sir,” replies Sir Leicester. “Nothing. I give up?” + +“I don’t mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you +would not abandon. I mean any minor point.” + +“Mr. Tulkinghorn,” returns Sir Leicester, “there can be no minor +point between myself and Mr. Boythorn. If I go farther, and observe +that I cannot readily conceive how ANY right of mine can be a minor +point, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual as +in reference to the family position I have it in charge to maintain.” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head again. “I have now my +instructions,” he says. “Mr. Boythorn will give us a good deal of +trouble—” + +“It is the character of such a mind, Mr. Tulkinghorn,” Sir Leicester +interrupts him, “TO give trouble. An exceedingly ill-conditioned, +levelling person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have +been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and +severely punished—if not,” adds Sir Leicester after a moment’s +pause, “if not hanged, drawn, and quartered.” + +Sir Leicester appears to discharge his stately breast of a burden in +passing this capital sentence, as if it were the next satisfactory +thing to having the sentence executed. + +“But night is coming on,” says he, “and my Lady will take cold. My +dear, let us go in.” + +As they turn towards the hall-door, Lady Dedlock addresses Mr. +Tulkinghorn for the first time. + +“You sent me a message respecting the person whose writing I happened +to inquire about. It was like you to remember the circumstance; I had +quite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can’t +imagine what association I had with a hand like that, but I surely +had some.” + +“You had some?” Mr. Tulkinghorn repeats. + +“Oh, yes!” returns my Lady carelessly. “I think I must have had some. +And did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that +actual thing—what is it!—affidavit?” + +“Yes.” + +“How very odd!” + +They pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground floor, lighted +in the day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. The fire glows +brightly on the panelled wall and palely on the window-glass, where, +through the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape +shudders in the wind and a grey mist creeps along, the only traveller +besides the waste of clouds. + +My Lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir +Leicester takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands +before the fire with his hand out at arm’s length, shading his face. +He looks across his arm at my Lady. + +“Yes,” he says, “I inquired about the man, and found him. And, what +is very strange, I found him—” + +“Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid!” Lady Dedlock +languidly anticipates. + +“I found him dead.” + +“Oh, dear me!” remonstrated Sir Leicester. Not so much shocked by the +fact as by the fact of the fact being mentioned. + +“I was directed to his lodging—a miserable, poverty-stricken +place—and I found him dead.” + +“You will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn,” observes Sir Leicester. “I +think the less said—” + +“Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out” (it is my Lady +speaking). “It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking! +Dead?” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another inclination of his head. +“Whether by his own hand—” + +“Upon my honour!” cries Sir Leicester. “Really!” + +“Do let me hear the story!” says my Lady. + +“Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say—” + +“No, you mustn’t say! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn.” + +Sir Leicester’s gallantry concedes the point, though he still feels +that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is +really—really— + +“I was about to say,” resumes the lawyer with undisturbed calmness, +“that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my +power to tell you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying +that he had unquestionably died of his own act, though whether by his +own deliberate intention or by mischance can never certainly be +known. The coroner’s jury found that he took the poison +accidentally.” + +“And what kind of man,” my Lady asks, “was this deplorable creature?” + +“Very difficult to say,” returns the lawyer, shaking his head. “He +had lived so wretchedly and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour +and his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him +the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had +once been something better, both in appearance and condition.” + +“What did they call the wretched being?” + +“They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his +name.” + +“Not even any one who had attended on him?” + +“No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found +him.” + +“Without any clue to anything more?” + +“Without any; there was,” says the lawyer meditatively, “an old +portmanteau, but—No, there were no papers.” + +During the utterance of every word of this short dialogue, Lady +Dedlock and Mr. Tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in their +customary deportment, have looked very steadily at one another—as +was natural, perhaps, in the discussion of so unusual a subject. Sir +Leicester has looked at the fire, with the general expression of the +Dedlock on the staircase. The story being told, he renews his stately +protest, saying that as it is quite clear that no association in my +Lady’s mind can possibly be traceable to this poor wretch (unless he +was a begging-letter writer), he trusts to hear no more about a +subject so far removed from my Lady’s station. + +“Certainly, a collection of horrors,” says my Lady, gathering up her +mantles and furs, “but they interest one for the moment! Have the +kindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me.” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn does so with deference and holds it open while she +passes out. She passes close to him, with her usual fatigued manner +and insolent grace. They meet again at dinner—again, next +day—again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the +same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable +to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. Mr. +Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of noble +confidences, so oddly out of place and yet so perfectly at home. They +appear to take as little note of one another as any two people +enclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore +watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great +reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the +other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know +how much the other knows—all this is hidden, for the time, in their +own hearts. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +Esther’s Narrative + + +We held many consultations about what Richard was to be, first +without Mr. Jarndyce, as he had requested, and afterwards with him, +but it was a long time before we seemed to make progress. Richard +said he was ready for anything. When Mr. Jarndyce doubted whether he +might not already be too old to enter the Navy, Richard said he had +thought of that, and perhaps he was. When Mr. Jarndyce asked him what +he thought of the Army, Richard said he had thought of that, too, and +it wasn’t a bad idea. When Mr. Jarndyce advised him to try and decide +within himself whether his old preference for the sea was an ordinary +boyish inclination or a strong impulse, Richard answered, Well he +really HAD tried very often, and he couldn’t make out. + +“How much of this indecision of character,” Mr. Jarndyce said to me, +“is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and +procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth, I don’t +pretend to say; but that Chancery, among its other sins, is +responsible for some of it, I can plainly see. It has engendered or +confirmed in him a habit of putting off—and trusting to this, that, +and the other chance, without knowing what chance—and dismissing +everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. The character of +much older and steadier people may be even changed by the +circumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a +boy’s, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences and +escape them.” + +I felt this to be true; though if I may venture to mention what I +thought besides, I thought it much to be regretted that Richard’s +education had not counteracted those influences or directed his +character. He had been eight years at a public school and had learnt, +I understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts in the most +admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody’s +business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings +lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to HIM. HE had been adapted to +the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection +that if he had remained at school until he was of age, I suppose he +could only have gone on making them over and over again unless he had +enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I +had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and +very sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always +remembered all through life, I did doubt whether Richard would not +have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his +studying them quite so much. + +To be sure, I knew nothing of the subject and do not even now know +whether the young gentlemen of classic Rome or Greece made verses to +the same extent—or whether the young gentlemen of any country ever +did. + +“I haven’t the least idea,” said Richard, musing, “what I had better +be. Except that I am quite sure I don’t want to go into the Church, +it’s a toss-up.” + +“You have no inclination in Mr. Kenge’s way?” suggested Mr. Jarndyce. + +“I don’t know that, sir!” replied Richard. “I am fond of boating. +Articled clerks go a good deal on the water. It’s a capital +profession!” + +“Surgeon—” suggested Mr. Jarndyce. + +“That’s the thing, sir!” cried Richard. + +I doubt if he had ever once thought of it before. + +“That’s the thing, sir,” repeated Richard with the greatest +enthusiasm. “We have got it at last. M.R.C.S.!” + +He was not to be laughed out of it, though he laughed at it heartily. +He said he had chosen his profession, and the more he thought of it, +the more he felt that his destiny was clear; the art of healing was +the art of all others for him. Mistrusting that he only came to this +conclusion because, having never had much chance of finding out for +himself what he was fitted for and having never been guided to the +discovery, he was taken by the newest idea and was glad to get rid of +the trouble of consideration, I wondered whether the Latin verses +often ended in this or whether Richard’s was a solitary case. + +Mr. Jarndyce took great pains to talk with him seriously and to put +it to his good sense not to deceive himself in so important a matter. +Richard was a little grave after these interviews, but invariably +told Ada and me that it was all right, and then began to talk about +something else. + +“By heaven!” cried Mr. Boythorn, who interested himself strongly in +the subject—though I need not say that, for he could do nothing +weakly; “I rejoice to find a young gentleman of spirit and gallantry +devoting himself to that noble profession! The more spirit there is +in it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary +task-masters and low tricksters who delight in putting that +illustrious art at a disadvantage in the world. By all that is base +and despicable,” cried Mr. Boythorn, “the treatment of surgeons +aboard ship is such that I would submit the legs—both legs—of every +member of the Admiralty Board to a compound fracture and render it a +transportable offence in any qualified practitioner to set them if +the system were not wholly changed in eight and forty hours!” + +“Wouldn’t you give them a week?” asked Mr. Jarndyce. + +“No!” cried Mr. Boythorn firmly. “Not on any consideration! Eight and +forty hours! As to corporations, parishes, vestry-boards, and similar +gatherings of jolter-headed clods who assemble to exchange such +speeches that, by heaven, they ought to be worked in quicksilver +mines for the short remainder of their miserable existence, if it +were only to prevent their detestable English from contaminating a +language spoken in the presence of the sun—as to those fellows, who +meanly take advantage of the ardour of gentlemen in the pursuit of +knowledge to recompense the inestimable services of the best years of +their lives, their long study, and their expensive education with +pittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I would have the +necks of every one of them wrung and their skulls arranged in +Surgeons’ Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession in order +that its younger members might understand from actual measurement, in +early life, HOW thick skulls may become!” + +He wound up this vehement declaration by looking round upon us with a +most agreeable smile and suddenly thundering, “Ha, ha, ha!” over and +over again, until anybody else might have been expected to be quite +subdued by the exertion. + +As Richard still continued to say that he was fixed in his choice +after repeated periods for consideration had been recommended by Mr. +Jarndyce and had expired, and he still continued to assure Ada and me +in the same final manner that it was “all right,” it became advisable +to take Mr. Kenge into council. Mr. Kenge, therefore, came down to +dinner one day, and leaned back in his chair, and turned his +eye-glasses over and over, and spoke in a sonorous voice, and did +exactly what I remembered to have seen him do when I was a little +girl. + +“Ah!” said Mr. Kenge. “Yes. Well! A very good profession, Mr. +Jarndyce, a very good profession.” + +“The course of study and preparation requires to be diligently +pursued,” observed my guardian with a glance at Richard. + +“Oh, no doubt,” said Mr. Kenge. “Diligently.” + +“But that being the case, more or less, with all pursuits that are +worth much,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “it is not a special consideration +which another choice would be likely to escape.” + +“Truly,” said Mr. Kenge. “And Mr. Richard Carstone, who has so +meritoriously acquitted himself in the—shall I say the classic +shades?—in which his youth had been passed, will, no doubt, apply +the habits, if not the principles and practice, of versification in +that tongue in which a poet was said (unless I mistake) to be born, +not made, to the more eminently practical field of action on which he +enters.” + +“You may rely upon it,” said Richard in his off-hand manner, “that I +shall go at it and do my best.” + +“Very well, Mr. Jarndyce!” said Mr. Kenge, gently nodding his head. +“Really, when we are assured by Mr. Richard that he means to go at it +and to do his best,” nodding feelingly and smoothly over those +expressions, “I would submit to you that we have only to inquire into +the best mode of carrying out the object of his ambition. Now, with +reference to placing Mr. Richard with some sufficiently eminent +practitioner. Is there any one in view at present?” + +“No one, Rick, I think?” said my guardian. + +“No one, sir,” said Richard. + +“Quite so!” observed Mr. Kenge. “As to situation, now. Is there any +particular feeling on that head?” + +“N—no,” said Richard. + +“Quite so!” observed Mr. Kenge again. + +“I should like a little variety,” said Richard; “I mean a good range +of experience.” + +“Very requisite, no doubt,” returned Mr. Kenge. “I think this may be +easily arranged, Mr. Jarndyce? We have only, in the first place, to +discover a sufficiently eligible practitioner; and as soon as we make +our want—and shall I add, our ability to pay a premium?—known, our +only difficulty will be in the selection of one from a large number. +We have only, in the second place, to observe those little +formalities which are rendered necessary by our time of life and our +being under the guardianship of the court. We shall soon be—shall I +say, in Mr. Richard’s own light-hearted manner, ‘going at it’—to our +heart’s content. It is a coincidence,” said Mr. Kenge with a tinge of +melancholy in his smile, “one of those coincidences which may or may +not require an explanation beyond our present limited faculties, that +I have a cousin in the medical profession. He might be deemed +eligible by you and might be disposed to respond to this proposal. I +can answer for him as little as for you, but he MIGHT!” + +As this was an opening in the prospect, it was arranged that Mr. +Kenge should see his cousin. And as Mr. Jarndyce had before proposed +to take us to London for a few weeks, it was settled next day that we +should make our visit at once and combine Richard’s business with it. + +Mr. Boythorn leaving us within a week, we took up our abode at a +cheerful lodging near Oxford Street over an upholsterer’s shop. +London was a great wonder to us, and we were out for hours and hours +at a time, seeing the sights, which appeared to be less capable of +exhaustion than we were. We made the round of the principal theatres, +too, with great delight, and saw all the plays that were worth +seeing. I mention this because it was at the theatre that I began to +be made uncomfortable again by Mr. Guppy. + +I was sitting in front of the box one night with Ada, and Richard was +in the place he liked best, behind Ada’s chair, when, happening to +look down into the pit, I saw Mr. Guppy, with his hair flattened down +upon his head and woe depicted in his face, looking up at me. I felt +all through the performance that he never looked at the actors but +constantly looked at me, and always with a carefully prepared +expression of the deepest misery and the profoundest dejection. + +It quite spoiled my pleasure for that night because it was so very +embarrassing and so very ridiculous. But from that time forth, we +never went to the play without my seeing Mr. Guppy in the pit, always +with his hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned down, and a +general feebleness about him. If he were not there when we went in, +and I began to hope he would not come and yielded myself for a little +while to the interest of the scene, I was certain to encounter his +languishing eyes when I least expected it and, from that time, to be +quite sure that they were fixed upon me all the evening. + +I really cannot express how uneasy this made me. If he would only +have brushed up his hair or turned up his collar, it would have been +bad enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing at +me, and always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such a +constraint upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or to +cry at it, or to move, or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing +naturally. As to escaping Mr. Guppy by going to the back of the box, +I could not bear to do that because I knew Richard and Ada relied on +having me next them and that they could never have talked together so +happily if anybody else had been in my place. So there I sat, not +knowing where to look—for wherever I looked, I knew Mr. Guppy’s eyes +were following me—and thinking of the dreadful expense to which this +young man was putting himself on my account. + +Sometimes I thought of telling Mr. Jarndyce. Then I feared that the +young man would lose his situation and that I might ruin him. +Sometimes I thought of confiding in Richard, but was deterred by the +possibility of his fighting Mr. Guppy and giving him black eyes. +Sometimes I thought, should I frown at him or shake my head. Then I +felt I could not do it. Sometimes I considered whether I should write +to his mother, but that ended in my being convinced that to open a +correspondence would be to make the matter worse. I always came to +the conclusion, finally, that I could do nothing. Mr. Guppy’s +perseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly at any +theatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the crowd as we +were coming out, and even to get up behind our fly—where I am sure I +saw him, two or three times, struggling among the most dreadful +spikes. After we got home, he haunted a post opposite our house. The +upholsterer’s where we lodged being at the corner of two streets, and +my bedroom window being opposite the post, I was afraid to go near +the window when I went upstairs, lest I should see him (as I did one +moonlight night) leaning against the post and evidently catching +cold. If Mr. Guppy had not been, fortunately for me, engaged in the +daytime, I really should have had no rest from him. + +While we were making this round of gaieties, in which Mr. Guppy so +extraordinarily participated, the business which had helped to bring +us to town was not neglected. Mr. Kenge’s cousin was a Mr. Bayham +Badger, who had a good practice at Chelsea and attended a large +public institution besides. He was quite willing to receive Richard +into his house and to superintend his studies, and as it seemed that +those could be pursued advantageously under Mr. Badger’s roof, and +Mr. Badger liked Richard, and as Richard said he liked Mr. Badger +“well enough,” an agreement was made, the Lord Chancellor’s consent +was obtained, and it was all settled. + +On the day when matters were concluded between Richard and Mr. +Badger, we were all under engagement to dine at Mr. Badger’s house. +We were to be “merely a family party,” Mrs. Badger’s note said; and +we found no lady there but Mrs. Badger herself. She was surrounded in +the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a +little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, +playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, +reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. +She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed, +and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her +accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there +was any harm in it. + +Mr. Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking +gentleman with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised +eyes, some years younger, I should say, than Mrs. Bayham Badger. He +admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the +curious ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three husbands. +We had barely taken our seats when he said to Mr. Jarndyce quite +triumphantly, “You would hardly suppose that I am Mrs. Bayham +Badger’s third!” + +“Indeed?” said Mr. Jarndyce. + +“Her third!” said Mr. Badger. “Mrs. Bayham Badger has not the +appearance, Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former +husbands?” + +I said “Not at all!” + +“And most remarkable men!” said Mr. Badger in a tone of confidence. +“Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs. Badger’s first +husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of +Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European +reputation.” + +Mrs. Badger overheard him and smiled. + +“Yes, my dear!” Mr. Badger replied to the smile, “I was observing to +Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson that you had had two former +husbands—both very distinguished men. And they found it, as people +generally do, difficult to believe.” + +“I was barely twenty,” said Mrs. Badger, “when I married Captain +Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I am +quite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I +became the wife of Professor Dingo.” + +“Of European reputation,” added Mr. Badger in an undertone. + +“And when Mr. Badger and myself were married,” pursued Mrs. Badger, +“we were married on the same day of the year. I had become attached +to the day.” + +“So that Mrs. Badger has been married to three husbands—two of them +highly distinguished men,” said Mr. Badger, summing up the facts, +“and each time upon the twenty-first of March at eleven in the +forenoon!” + +We all expressed our admiration. + +“But for Mr. Badger’s modesty,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I would take +leave to correct him and say three distinguished men.” + +“Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce! What I always tell him!” observed Mrs. +Badger. + +“And, my dear,” said Mr. Badger, “what do I always tell you? That +without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction +as I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Carstone will have many +opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak—no, really,” said Mr. +Badger to us generally, “so unreasonable—as to put my reputation on +the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and +Professor Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr. Jarndyce,” +continued Mr. Bayham Badger, leading the way into the next +drawing-room, “in this portrait of Captain Swosser. It was taken on +his return home from the African station, where he had suffered from +the fever of the country. Mrs. Badger considers it too yellow. But +it’s a very fine head. A very fine head!” + +We all echoed, “A very fine head!” + +“I feel when I look at it,” said Mr. Badger, “‘that’s a man I should +like to have seen!’ It strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that +Captain Swosser pre-eminently was. On the other side, Professor +Dingo. I knew him well—attended him in his last illness—a speaking +likeness! Over the piano, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Swosser. Over +the sofa, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Dingo. Of Mrs. Bayham Badger +IN ESSE, I possess the original and have no copy.” + +Dinner was now announced, and we went downstairs. It was a very +genteel entertainment, very handsomely served. But the captain and +the professor still ran in Mr. Badger’s head, and as Ada and I had +the honour of being under his particular care, we had the full +benefit of them. + +“Water, Miss Summerson? Allow me! Not in that tumbler, pray. Bring me +the professor’s goblet, James!” + +Ada very much admired some artificial flowers under a glass. + +“Astonishing how they keep!” said Mr. Badger. “They were presented to +Mrs. Bayham Badger when she was in the Mediterranean.” + +He invited Mr. Jarndyce to take a glass of claret. + +“Not that claret!” he said. “Excuse me! This is an occasion, and ON +an occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have. +(James, Captain Swosser’s wine!) Mr. Jarndyce, this is a wine that +was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago. You +will find it very curious. My dear, I shall be happy to take some of +this wine with you. (Captain Swosser’s claret to your mistress, +James!) My love, your health!” + +After dinner, when we ladies retired, we took Mrs. Badger’s first and +second husband with us. Mrs. Badger gave us in the drawing-room a +biographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser +before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the +time when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler, +given to the officers of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour. + +“The dear old Crippler!” said Mrs. Badger, shaking her head. “She was +a noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain Swosser +used to say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a +nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved +that craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission, he +frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he +would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter-deck +where we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where he +fell—raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the fire +from my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes.” + +Mrs. Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass. + +“It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo,” she +resumed with a plaintive smile. “I felt it a good deal at first. Such +an entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined with +science—particularly science—inured me to it. Being the professor’s +sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost forgot that I +had ever been afloat, and became quite learned. It is singular that +the professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and that Mr. +Badger is not in the least like either!” + +We then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and +Professor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints. +In the course of it, Mrs. Badger signified to us that she had never +madly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection, +never to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser. +The professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and +Mrs. Badger was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with great +difficulty, “Where is Laura? Let Laura give me my toast and water!” +when the entrance of the gentlemen consigned him to the tomb. + +Now, I observed that evening, as I had observed for some days past, +that Ada and Richard were more than ever attached to each other’s +society, which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be +separated so soon. I was therefore not very much surprised when we +got home, and Ada and I retired upstairs, to find Ada more silent +than usual, though I was not quite prepared for her coming into my +arms and beginning to speak to me, with her face hidden. + +“My darling Esther!” murmured Ada. “I have a great secret to tell +you!” + +A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt! + +“What is it, Ada?” + +“Oh, Esther, you would never guess!” + +“Shall I try to guess?” said I. + +“Oh, no! Don’t! Pray don’t!” cried Ada, very much startled by the +idea of my doing so. + +“Now, I wonder who it can be about?” said I, pretending to consider. + +“It’s about—” said Ada in a whisper. “It’s about—my cousin +Richard!” + +“Well, my own!” said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I +could see. “And what about him?” + +“Oh, Esther, you would never guess!” + +It was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her +face, and to know that she was not crying in sorrow but in a little +glow of joy, and pride, and hope, that I would not help her just yet. + +“He says—I know it’s very foolish, we are both so young—but he +says,” with a burst of tears, “that he loves me dearly, Esther.” + +“Does he indeed?” said I. “I never heard of such a thing! Why, my pet +of pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!” + +To see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me +round the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, was so pleasant! + +“Why, my darling,” said I, “what a goose you must take me for! Your +cousin Richard has been loving you as plainly as he could for I don’t +know how long!” + +“And yet you never said a word about it!” cried Ada, kissing me. + +“No, my love,” said I. “I waited to be told.” + +“But now I have told you, you don’t think it wrong of me, do you?” +returned Ada. She might have coaxed me to say no if I had been the +hardest-hearted duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I said no +very freely. + +“And now,” said I, “I know the worst of it.” + +“Oh, that’s not quite the worst of it, Esther dear!” cried Ada, +holding me tighter and laying down her face again upon my breast. + +“No?” said I. “Not even that?” + +“No, not even that!” said Ada, shaking her head. + +“Why, you never mean to say—” I was beginning in joke. + +But Ada, looking up and smiling through her tears, cried, “Yes, I do! +You know, you know I do!” And then sobbed out, “With all my heart I +do! With all my whole heart, Esther!” + +I told her, laughing, why I had known that, too, just as well as I +had known the other! And we sat before the fire, and I had all the +talking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of +it); and Ada was soon quiet and happy. + +“Do you think my cousin John knows, dear Dame Durden?” she asked. + +“Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet,” said I, “I should think my +cousin John knows pretty well as much as we know.” + +“We want to speak to him before Richard goes,” said Ada timidly, “and +we wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. Perhaps you wouldn’t +mind Richard’s coming in, Dame Durden?” + +“Oh! Richard is outside, is he, my dear?” said I. + +“I am not quite certain,” returned Ada with a bashful simplicity that +would have won my heart if she had not won it long before, “but I +think he’s waiting at the door.” + +There he was, of course. They brought a chair on either side of me, +and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love +with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so +trustful, and so fond of me. They went on in their own wild way for a +little while—I never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself—and +then we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and how +there must be a lapse of several years before this early love could +come to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if it were +real and lasting and inspired them with a steady resolution to do +their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and +perseverance, each always for the other’s sake. Well! Richard said +that he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said that +she would work her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they called +me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat there, +advising and talking, half the night. Finally, before we parted, I +gave them my promise to speak to their cousin John to-morrow. + +So, when to-morrow came, I went to my guardian after breakfast, in +the room that was our town-substitute for the growlery, and told him +that I had it in trust to tell him something. + +“Well, little woman,” said he, shutting up his book, “if you have +accepted the trust, there can be no harm in it.” + +“I hope not, guardian,” said I. “I can guarantee that there is no +secrecy in it. For it only happened yesterday.” + +“Aye? And what is it, Esther?” + +“Guardian,” said I, “you remember the happy night when first we came +down to Bleak House? When Ada was singing in the dark room?” + +I wished to call to his remembrance the look he had given me then. +Unless I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so. + +“Because—” said I with a little hesitation. + +“Yes, my dear!” said he. “Don’t hurry.” + +“Because,” said I, “Ada and Richard have fallen in love. And have +told each other so.” + +“Already!” cried my guardian, quite astonished. + +“Yes!” said I. “And to tell you the truth, guardian, I rather +expected it.” + +“The deuce you did!” said he. + +He sat considering for a minute or two, with his smile, at once so +handsome and so kind, upon his changing face, and then requested me +to let them know that he wished to see them. When they came, he +encircled Ada with one arm in his fatherly way and addressed himself +to Richard with a cheerful gravity. + +“Rick,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I am glad to have won your confidence. I +hope to preserve it. When I contemplated these relations between us +four which have so brightened my life and so invested it with new +interests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the +possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don’t be shy, Ada, +don’t be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together. +I saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable. But that was +afar off, Rick, afar off!” + +“We look afar off, sir,” returned Richard. + +“Well!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “That’s rational. Now, hear me, my dears! +I might tell you that you don’t know your own minds yet, that a +thousand things may happen to divert you from one another, that it is +well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily broken, +or it might become a chain of lead. But I will not do that. Such +wisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all. I +will assume that a few years hence you will be in your hearts to one +another what you are to-day. All I say before speaking to you +according to that assumption is, if you DO change—if you DO come to +find that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and +woman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me, +Rick!)—don’t be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be +nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and +distant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But I wish and +hope to retain your confidence if I do nothing to forfeit it.” + +“I am very sure, sir,” returned Richard, “that I speak for Ada too +when I say that you have the strongest power over us both—rooted in +respect, gratitude, and affection—strengthening every day.” + +“Dear cousin John,” said Ada, on his shoulder, “my father’s place can +never be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have +rendered to him is transferred to you.” + +“Come!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “Now for our assumption. Now we lift our +eyes up and look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the world is before +you; and it is most probable that as you enter it, so it will receive +you. Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own efforts. Never +separate the two, like the heathen waggoner. Constancy in love is a +good thing, but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy +in every kind of effort. If you had the abilities of all the great +men, past and present, you could do nothing well without sincerely +meaning it and setting about it. If you entertain the supposition +that any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could +be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and starts, +leave that wrong idea here or leave your cousin Ada here.” + +“I will leave IT here, sir,” replied Richard smiling, “if I brought +it here just now (but I hope I did not), and will work my way on to +my cousin Ada in the hopeful distance.” + +“Right!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “If you are not to make her happy, why +should you pursue her?” + +“I wouldn’t make her unhappy—no, not even for her love,” retorted +Richard proudly. + +“Well said!” cried Mr. Jarndyce. “That’s well said! She remains here, +in her home with me. Love her, Rick, in your active life, no less +than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well. +Otherwise, all will go ill. That’s the end of my preaching. I think +you and Ada had better take a walk.” + +Ada tenderly embraced him, and Richard heartily shook hands with him, +and then the cousins went out of the room, looking back again +directly, though, to say that they would wait for me. + +The door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes as they +passed down the adjoining room, on which the sun was shining, and out +at its farther end. Richard with his head bent, and her hand drawn +through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up +in his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so +beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through +the sunlight as their own happy thoughts might then be traversing the +years to come and making them all years of brightness. So they passed +away into the shadow and were gone. It was only a burst of light that +had been so radiant. The room darkened as they went out, and the sun +was clouded over. + +“Am I right, Esther?” said my guardian when they were gone. + +He was so good and wise to ask ME whether he was right! + +“Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core +of so much that is good!” said Mr. Jarndyce, shaking his head. “I +have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor +always near.” And he laid his hand lovingly upon my head. + +I could not help showing that I was a little moved, though I did all +I could to conceal it. + +“Tut tut!” said he. “But we must take care, too, that our little +woman’s life is not all consumed in care for others.” + +“Care? My dear guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in the +world!” + +“I believe so, too,” said he. “But some one may find out what Esther +never will—that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above +all other people!” + +I have omitted to mention in its place that there was some one else +at the family dinner party. It was not a lady. It was a gentleman. It +was a gentleman of a dark complexion—a young surgeon. He was rather +reserved, but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least, +Ada asked me if I did not, and I said yes. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +Deportment + + +Richard left us on the very next evening to begin his new career, and +committed Ada to my charge with great love for her and great trust in +me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more +nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both +thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all +their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write Richard +once a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to +him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of +all his labours and successes; I was to observe how resolute and +persevering he would be; I was to be Ada’s bridesmaid when they were +married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the +keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day. + +“And if the suit SHOULD make us rich, Esther—which it may, you +know!” said Richard to crown all. + +A shade crossed Ada’s face. + +“My dearest Ada,” asked Richard, “why not?” + +“It had better declare us poor at once,” said Ada. + +“Oh! I don’t know about that,” returned Richard, “but at all events, +it won’t declare anything at once. It hasn’t declared anything in +heaven knows how many years.” + +“Too true,” said Ada. + +“Yes, but,” urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather +than her words, “the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it +must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that +reasonable?” + +“You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will +make us unhappy.” + +“But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!” cried Richard gaily. +“We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it SHOULD +make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The +court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we +are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is +our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right.” + +“No,” said Ada, “but it may be better to forget all about it.” + +“Well, well,” cried Richard, “then we will forget all about it! We +consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her +approving face, and it’s done!” + +“Dame Durden’s approving face,” said I, looking out of the box in +which I was packing his books, “was not very visible when you called +it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can’t do +better.” + +So, Richard said there was an end of it, and immediately began, on no +other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man +the Great Wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I, +prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career. + +On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs. +Jellyby’s but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It +appeared that she had gone somewhere to a tea-drinking and had taken +Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some +considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits +of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the +Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this involved, no doubt, +sufficient active exercise of pen and ink to make her daughter’s part +in the proceedings anything but a holiday. + +It being now beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby’s return, we +called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile +End directly after breakfast on some Borrioboolan business, arising +out of a society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I +had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not +to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have +strolled away with the dustman’s cart), I now inquired for him again. +The oyster shells he had been building a house with were still in the +passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that +he had “gone after the sheep.” When we repeated, with some surprise, +“The sheep?” she said, Oh, yes, on market days he sometimes followed +them quite out of town and came back in such a state as never was! + +I was sitting at the window with my guardian on the following +morning, and Ada was busy writing—of course to Richard—when Miss +Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom +she had made some endeavours to render presentable by wiping the dirt +into corners of his face and hands and making his hair very wet and +then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear +child wore was either too large for him or too small. Among his other +contradictory decorations he had the hat of a bishop and the little +gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a +ploughman, while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches +that they looked like maps, were bare below a very short pair of +plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different +patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been +supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby’s coats, they were so extremely +brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of +needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been +hastily mended, and I recognized the same hand on Miss Jellyby’s. She +was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance and looked +very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a +failure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in by +the way in which she glanced first at him and then at us. + +“Oh, dear me!” said my guardian. “Due east!” + +Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome and presented her to Mr. +Jarndyce, to whom she said as she sat down, “Ma’s compliments, and +she hopes you’ll excuse her, because she’s correcting proofs of the +plan. She’s going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she +knows you’ll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them +with me. Ma’s compliments.” With which she presented it sulkily +enough. + +“Thank you,” said my guardian. “I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby. +Oh, dear me! This is a very trying wind!” + +We were busy with Peepy, taking off his clerical hat, asking him if +he remembered us, and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first, +but relented at the sight of sponge-cake and allowed me to take him +on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then +withdrawing into the temporary growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a +conversation with her usual abruptness. + +“We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn,” said she. “I +have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn’t be worse off if +I was a what’s-his-name—man and a brother!” + +I tried to say something soothing. + +“Oh, it’s of no use, Miss Summerson,” exclaimed Miss Jellyby, “though +I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am +used, and I am not to be talked over. YOU wouldn’t be talked over if +you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!” + +“I shan’t!” said Peepy. + +“Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!” returned Miss +Jellyby with tears in her eyes. “I’ll never take pains to dress you +any more.” + +“Yes, I will go, Caddy!” cried Peepy, who was really a good child and +who was so moved by his sister’s vexation that he went at once. + +“It seems a little thing to cry about,” said poor Miss Jellyby +apologetically, “but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new +circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so that +that alone makes my head ache till I can’t see out of my eyes. And +look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as +he is!” + +Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on +the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of +his den at us while he ate his cake. + +“I have sent him to the other end of the room,” observed Miss +Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, “because I don’t want him to +hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going +to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt +before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There’ll be nobody +but Ma to thank for it.” + +We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby’s affairs were not in so bad a state as +that. + +“It’s of no use hoping, though it’s very kind of you,” returned Miss +Jellyby, shaking her head. “Pa told me only yesterday morning (and +dreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn’t weather the storm. I +should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our +house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with +it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don’t +care about anything, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather +the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I’d run away.” + +“My dear!” said I, smiling. “Your papa, no doubt, considers his +family.” + +“Oh, yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson,” replied Miss +Jellyby; “but what comfort is his family to him? His family is +nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion, +and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week’s end to week’s end, +is like one great washing-day—only nothing’s washed!” + +Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor and wiped her eyes. + +“I am sure I pity Pa to that degree,” she said, “and am so angry with +Ma that I can’t find words to express myself! However, I am not going +to bear it, I am determined. I won’t be a slave all my life, and I +won’t submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed, +to marry a philanthropist. As if I hadn’t had enough of THAT!” said +poor Miss Jellyby. + +I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs. +Jellyby myself, seeing and hearing this neglected girl and knowing +how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said. + +“If it wasn’t that we had been intimate when you stopped at our +house,” pursued Miss Jellyby, “I should have been ashamed to come +here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But as +it is, I made up my mind to call, especially as I am not likely to +see you again the next time you come to town.” + +She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at +one another, foreseeing something more. + +“No!” said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. “Not at all likely! I know +I may trust you two. I am sure you won’t betray me. I am engaged.” + +“Without their knowledge at home?” said I. + +“Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson,” she returned, justifying +herself in a fretful but not angry manner, “how can it be otherwise? +You know what Ma is—and I needn’t make poor Pa more miserable by +telling HIM.” + +“But would it not be adding to his unhappiness to marry without his +knowledge or consent, my dear?” said I. + +“No,” said Miss Jellyby, softening. “I hope not. I should try to make +him happy and comfortable when he came to see me, and Peepy and the +others should take it in turns to come and stay with me, and they +should have some care taken of them then.” + +There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more +and more while saying this and cried so much over the unwonted little +home-picture she had raised in her mind that Peepy, in his cave under +the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud +lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister, +and had restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that +Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we +could recall his peace of mind; even then it was for some time +conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin and smoothing our +faces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not equal +to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss +Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence. + +“It began in your coming to our house,” she said. + +We naturally asked how. + +“I felt I was so awkward,” she replied, “that I made up my mind to be +improved in that respect at all events and to learn to dance. I told +Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked +at me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn’t in sight, but I +was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr. +Turveydrop’s Academy in Newman Street.” + +“And was it there, my dear—” I began. + +“Yes, it was there,” said Caddy, “and I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop. +There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop is +the son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought up and was +likely to make him a better wife, for I am very fond of him.” + +“I am sorry to hear this,” said I, “I must confess.” + +“I don’t know why you should be sorry,” she retorted a little +anxiously, “but I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and he +is very fond of me. It’s a secret as yet, even on his side, because +old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in the connexion and it might break +his heart or give him some other shock if he was told of it abruptly. +Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man indeed—very +gentlemanly.” + +“Does his wife know of it?” asked Ada. + +“Old Mr. Turveydrop’s wife, Miss Clare?” returned Miss Jellyby, +opening her eyes. “There’s no such person. He is a widower.” + +We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had undergone so much on +account of his sister’s unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope +whenever she was emphatic that the afflicted child now bemoaned his +sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for +compassion, and as I was only a listener, I undertook to hold him. +Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging Peepy’s pardon with a kiss and +assuring him that she hadn’t meant to do it. + +“That’s the state of the case,” said Caddy. “If I ever blame myself, +I still think it’s Ma’s fault. We are to be married whenever we can, +and then I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won’t +much agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER. One great comfort is,” +said Caddy with a sob, “that I shall never hear of Africa after I am +married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it for my sake, and if old Mr. +Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it’s as much as he does.” + +“It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think!” said I. + +“Very gentlemanly indeed,” said Caddy. “He is celebrated almost +everywhere for his deportment.” + +“Does he teach?” asked Ada. + +“No, he don’t teach anything in particular,” replied Caddy. “But his +deportment is beautiful.” + +Caddy went on to say with considerable hesitation and reluctance that +there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we ought to +know, and which she hoped would not offend us. It was that she had +improved her acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady, +and that she frequently went there early in the morning and met her +lover for a few minutes before breakfast—only for a few minutes. “I +go there at other times,” said Caddy, “but Prince does not come then. +Young Mr. Turveydrop’s name is Prince; I wish it wasn’t, because it +sounds like a dog, but of course he didn’t christen himself. Old Mr. +Turveydrop had him christened Prince in remembrance of the Prince +Regent. Old Mr. Turveydrop adored the Prince Regent on account of his +deportment. I hope you won’t think the worse of me for having made +these little appointments at Miss Flite’s, where I first went with +you, because I like the poor thing for her own sake and I believe she +likes me. If you could see young Mr. Turveydrop, I am sure you would +think well of him—at least, I am sure you couldn’t possibly think +any ill of him. I am going there now for my lesson. I couldn’t ask +you to go with me, Miss Summerson; but if you would,” said Caddy, who +had said all this earnestly and tremblingly, “I should be very +glad—very glad.” + +It happened that we had arranged with my guardian to go to Miss +Flite’s that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our +account had interested him; but something had always happened to +prevent our going there again. As I trusted that I might have +sufficient influence with Miss Jellyby to prevent her taking any very +rash step if I fully accepted the confidence she was so willing to +place in me, poor girl, I proposed that she and I and Peepy should go +to the academy and afterwards meet my guardian and Ada at Miss +Flite’s, whose name I now learnt for the first time. This was on +condition that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back with us to +dinner. The last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to +by both, we smartened Peepy up a little with the assistance of a few +pins, some soap and water, and a hair-brush, and went out, bending +our steps towards Newman Street, which was very near. + +I found the academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the +corner of an archway, with busts in all the staircase windows. In the +same house there were also established, as I gathered from the plates +on the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly, +no room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate +which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I +read, MR. TURVEYDROP. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up +by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in +cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the +daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent, +last night, for a concert. + +We went upstairs—it had been quite a fine house once, when it was +anybody’s business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody’s business +to smoke in it all day—and into Mr. Turveydrop’s great room, which +was built out into a mews at the back and was lighted by a skylight. +It was a bare, resounding room smelling of stables, with cane forms +along the walls, and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with +painted lyres and little cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed +to be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed +autumn leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or +fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and +I was looking among them for their instructor when Caddy, pinching my +arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. “Miss Summerson, Mr. +Prince Turveydrop!” + +I curtsied to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance with +flaxen hair parted in the middle and curling at the ends all round +his head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a +kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. His +little dancing-shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a +little innocent, feminine manner which not only appealed to me in an +amiable way, but made this singular effect upon me, that I received +the impression that he was like his mother and that his mother had +not been much considered or well used. + +“I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby’s friend,” he said, bowing low +to me. “I began to fear,” with timid tenderness, “as it was past the +usual time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming.” + +“I beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have +detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir,” said I. + +“Oh, dear!” said he. + +“And pray,” I entreated, “do not allow me to be the cause of any more +delay.” + +With that apology I withdrew to a seat between Peepy (who, being well +used to it, had already climbed into a corner place) and an old lady +of a censorious countenance whose two nieces were in the class and +who was very indignant with Peepy’s boots. Prince Turveydrop then +tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies +stood up to dance. Just then there appeared from a side-door old Mr. +Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his deportment. + +He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, +false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded +breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon +to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and +strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a +neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and +his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though +he must inevitably double up if it were cast loose. He had under his +arm a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown +to the brim, and in his hand a pair of white gloves with which he +flapped it as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered, +round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane, +he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had +wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not +like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the +world but a model of deportment. + +“Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby’s friend, Miss Summerson.” + +“Distinguished,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “by Miss Summerson’s presence.” +As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw creases +come into the whites of his eyes. + +“My father,” said the son, aside, to me with quite an affecting +belief in him, “is a celebrated character. My father is greatly +admired.” + +“Go on, Prince! Go on!” said Mr. Turveydrop, standing with his back +to the fire and waving his gloves condescendingly. “Go on, my son!” + +At this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on. +Prince Turveydrop sometimes played the kit, dancing; sometimes played +the piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what little +breath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always +conscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step +and every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. His +distinguished father did nothing whatever but stand before the fire, +a model of deportment. + +“And he never does anything else,” said the old lady of the +censorious countenance. “Yet would you believe that it’s HIS name on +the door-plate?” + +“His son’s name is the same, you know,” said I. + +“He wouldn’t let his son have any name if he could take it from him,” +returned the old lady. “Look at the son’s dress!” It certainly was +plain—threadbare—almost shabby. “Yet the father must be garnished +and tricked out,” said the old lady, “because of his deportment. I’d +deport him! Transport him would be better!” + +I felt curious to know more concerning this person. I asked, “Does he +give lessons in deportment now?” + +“Now!” returned the old lady shortly. “Never did.” + +After a moment’s consideration, I suggested that perhaps fencing had +been his accomplishment. + +“I don’t believe he can fence at all, ma’am,” said the old lady. + +I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old lady, becoming more and +more incensed against the master of deportment as she dwelt upon the +subject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong +assurances that they were mildly stated. + +He had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable +connexion (having never in his life before done anything but deport +himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered +her to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which +were indispensable to his position. At once to exhibit his deportment +to the best models and to keep the best models constantly before +himself, he had found it necessary to frequent all public places of +fashionable and lounging resort, to be seen at Brighton and elsewhere +at fashionable times, and to lead an idle life in the very best +clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little +dancing-mistress had toiled and laboured and would have toiled and +laboured to that hour if her strength had lasted so long. For the +mainspring of the story was that in spite of the man’s absorbing +selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his deportment) had, to the +last, believed in him and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving +terms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable +claim upon him and whom he could never regard with too much pride and +deference. The son, inheriting his mother’s belief, and having the +deportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith, +and now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a +day and looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary +pinnacle. + +“The airs the fellow gives himself!” said my informant, shaking her +head at old Mr. Turveydrop with speechless indignation as he drew on +his tight gloves, of course unconscious of the homage she was +rendering. “He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is +so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes that you might +suppose him the most virtuous of parents. Oh!” said the old lady, +apostrophizing him with infinite vehemence. “I could bite you!” + +I could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with +feelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her with the +father and son before me. What I might have thought of them without +the old lady’s account, or what I might have thought of the old +lady’s account without them, I cannot say. There was a fitness of +things in the whole that carried conviction with it. + +My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr. Turveydrop working so +hard, to old Mr. Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when +the latter came ambling up to me and entered into conversation. + +He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a +distinction on London by residing in it? I did not think it necessary +to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any +case, but merely told him where I did reside. + +“A lady so graceful and accomplished,” he said, kissing his +right glove and afterwards extending it towards the pupils, +“will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to +polish—polish—polish!” + +He sat down beside me, taking some pains to sit on the form, I +thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the +sofa. And really he did look very like it. + +“To polish—polish—polish!” he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and +gently fluttering his fingers. “But we are not, if I may say so to +one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art—” with the +high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make +without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes “—we are not +what we used to be in point of deportment.” + +“Are we not, sir?” said I. + +“We have degenerated,” he returned, shaking his head, which he could +do to a very limited extent in his cravat. “A levelling age is not +favourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with +some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been +called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop, or that his Royal +Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my +removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that +fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don’t I know +him? Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’ But these are little +matters of anecdote—the general property, ma’am—still repeated +occasionally among the upper classes.” + +“Indeed?” said I. + +He replied with the high-shouldered bow. “Where what is left among us +of deportment,” he added, “still lingers. England—alas, my +country!—has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day. +She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed +us but a race of weavers.” + +“One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated +here,” said I. + +“You are very good.” He smiled with a high-shouldered bow again. “You +flatter me. But, no—no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy +with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my +dear child, but he has—no deportment.” + +“He appears to be an excellent master,” I observed. + +“Understand me, my dear madam, he IS an excellent master. All that +can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can +impart. But there ARE things—” He took another pinch of snuff and +made the bow again, as if to add, “This kind of thing, for instance.” + +I glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby’s lover, +now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than +ever. + +“My amiable child,” murmured Mr. Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat. + +“Your son is indefatigable,” said I. + +“It is my reward,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “to hear you say so. In some +respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a +devoted creature. But wooman, lovely wooman,” said Mr. Turveydrop +with very disagreeable gallantry, “what a sex you are!” + +I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was by this time putting on her +bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was +a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the +unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don’t +know, but they certainly found none on this occasion to exchange a +dozen words. + +“My dear,” said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to his son, “do you know the +hour?” + +“No, father.” The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold +one, which he pulled out with an air that was an example to mankind. + +“My son,” said he, “it’s two o’clock. Recollect your school at +Kensington at three.” + +“That’s time enough for me, father,” said Prince. “I can take a +morsel of dinner standing and be off.” + +“My dear boy,” returned his father, “you must be very quick. You will +find the cold mutton on the table.” + +“Thank you, father. Are YOU off now, father?” + +“Yes, my dear. I suppose,” said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and +lifting up his shoulders with modest consciousness, “that I must show +myself, as usual, about town.” + +“You had better dine out comfortably somewhere,” said his son. + +“My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at +the French house, in the Opera Colonnade.” + +“That’s right. Good-bye, father!” said Prince, shaking hands. + +“Good-bye, my son. Bless you!” + +Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do +his son good, who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so +dutiful to him, and so proud of him that I almost felt as if it were +an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly +in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking +leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the +secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish +character. I felt a liking for him and a compassion for him as he put +his little kit in his pocket—and with it his desire to stay a little +while with Caddy—and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton +and his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with +his father than the censorious old lady. + +The father opened the room door for us and bowed us out in a manner, +I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style +he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to +the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself +among the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost +in reconsidering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street that I +was quite unable to talk to Caddy or even to fix my attention on what +she said to me, especially when I began to inquire in my mind whether +there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing +profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their +deportment. This became so bewildering and suggested the possibility +of so many Mr. Turveydrops that I said, “Esther, you must make up +your mind to abandon this subject altogether and attend to Caddy.” I +accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to +Lincoln’s Inn. + +Caddy told me that her lover’s education had been so neglected that +it was not always easy to read his notes. She said if he were not so +anxious about his spelling and took less pains to make it clear, he +would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short +words that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. “He +does it with the best intention,” observed Caddy, “but it hasn’t the +effect he means, poor fellow!” Caddy then went on to reason, how +could he be expected to be a scholar when he had passed his whole +life in the dancing-school and had done nothing but teach and fag, +fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She +could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it +was far better for him to be amiable than learned. “Besides, it’s not +as if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself +airs,” said Caddy. “I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!” + +“There’s another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,” +continued Caddy, “which I should not have liked to mention unless you +had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It’s +of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for +Prince’s wife to know in OUR house. We live in such a state of muddle +that it’s impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever +I have tried. So I get a little practice with—who do you think? Poor +Miss Flite! Early in the morning I help her to tidy her room and +clean her birds, and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she +taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says +it’s the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old +Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can +make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and +tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am +not clever at my needle, yet,” said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on +Peepy’s frock, “but perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been +engaged to Prince and have been doing all this, I have felt +better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me +out at first this morning to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat +and pretty and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too, but on the +whole I hope I am better-tempered than I was and more forgiving to +Ma.” + +The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched +mine. “Caddy, my love,” I replied, “I begin to have a great affection +for you, and I hope we shall become friends.” + +“Oh, do you?” cried Caddy. “How happy that would make me!” + +“My dear Caddy,” said I, “let us be friends from this time, and let +us often have a chat about these matters and try to find the right +way through them.” Caddy was overjoyed. I said everything I could in +my old-fashioned way to comfort and encourage her, and I would not +have objected to old Mr. Turveydrop that day for any smaller +consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law. + +By this time we were come to Mr. Krook’s, whose private door stood +open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to +let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proceeded +upstairs that there had been a sudden death there and an inquest and +that our little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and +window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It was the room +with the dark door to which Miss Flite had secretly directed my +attention when I was last in the house. A sad and desolate place it +was, a gloomy, sorrowful place that gave me a strange sensation of +mournfulness and even dread. “You look pale,” said Caddy when we came +out, “and cold!” I felt as if the room had chilled me. + +We had walked slowly while we were talking, and my guardian and Ada +were here before us. We found them in Miss Flite’s garret. They were +looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to +attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion spoke with her +cheerfully by the fire. + +“I have finished my professional visit,” he said, coming forward. +“Miss Flite is much better and may appear in court (as her mind is +set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I +understand.” + +Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency and dropped a +general curtsy to us. + +“Honoured, indeed,” said she, “by another visit from the wards in +Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath my +humble roof!” with a special curtsy. “Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear”—she +had bestowed that name on Caddy, it appeared, and always called her +by it—“a double welcome!” + +“Has she been very ill?” asked Mr. Jarndyce of the gentleman whom we +had found in attendance on her. She answered for herself directly, +though he had put the question in a whisper. + +“Oh, decidedly unwell! Oh, very unwell indeed,” she said +confidentially. “Not pain, you know—trouble. Not bodily so much as +nervous, nervous! The truth is,” in a subdued voice and trembling, +“we have had death here. There was poison in the house. I am very +susceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr. +Woodcourt knows how much. My physician, Mr. Woodcourt!” with +great stateliness. “The wards in Jarndyce—Jarndyce of Bleak +House—Fitz-Jarndyce!” + +“Miss Flite,” said Mr. Woodcourt in a grave kind of voice, as if he +were appealing to her while speaking to us, and laying his hand +gently on her arm, “Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual +accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might +have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and +agitation. She brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery, +though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I +have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since +and being of some small use to her.” + +“The kindest physician in the college,” whispered Miss Flite to me. +“I expect a judgment. On the day of judgment. And shall then confer +estates.” + +“She will be as well in a day or two,” said Mr. Woodcourt, looking at +her with an observant smile, “as she ever will be. In other words, +quite well of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?” + +“Most extraordinary!” said Miss Flite, smiling brightly. “You never +heard of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge or +Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.) places in my hand a paper of +shillings. Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the +paper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So +well-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you +say? That is the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I +think? I think,” said Miss Flite, drawing herself back with a very +shrewd look and shaking her right forefinger in a most significant +manner, “that the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time during +which the Great Seal has been open (for it has been open a long +time!), forwards them. Until the judgment I expect is given. Now +that’s very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he IS a +little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending court the other +day—I attend it regularly, with my documents—I taxed him with it, +and he almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and +HE smiled at me from his bench. But it’s great good fortune, is it +not? And Fitz-Jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage. +Oh, I assure you to the greatest advantage!” + +I congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this +fortunate addition to her income and wished her a long continuance of +it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder +whose humanity was so considerate. My guardian stood before me, +contemplating the birds, and I had no need to look beyond him. + +“And what do you call these little fellows, ma’am?” said he in his +pleasant voice. “Have they any names?” + +“I can answer for Miss Flite that they have,” said I, “for she +promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?” + +Ada remembered very well. + +“Did I?” said Miss Flite. “Who’s that at my door? What are you +listening at my door for, Krook?” + +The old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there +with his fur cap in his hand and his cat at his heels. + +“I warn’t listening, Miss Flite,” he said, “I was going to give a rap +with my knuckles, only you’re so quick!” + +“Make your cat go down. Drive her away!” the old lady angrily +exclaimed. + +“Bah, bah! There ain’t no danger, gentlefolks,” said Mr. Krook, +looking slowly and sharply from one to another until he had looked at +all of us; “she’d never offer at the birds when I was here unless I +told her to it.” + +“You will excuse my landlord,” said the old lady with a dignified +air. “M, quite M! What do you want, Krook, when I have company?” + +“Hi!” said the old man. “You know I am the Chancellor.” + +“Well?” returned Miss Flite. “What of that?” + +“For the Chancellor,” said the old man with a chuckle, “not to be +acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain’t it, Miss Flite? Mightn’t I +take the liberty? Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce and Jarndyce +a’most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never +to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go +there a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one +day with another.” + +“I never go there,” said Mr. Jarndyce (which he never did on any +consideration). “I would sooner go—somewhere else.” + +“Would you though?” returned Krook, grinning. “You’re bearing hard +upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir, though +perhaps it is but nat’ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, sir! What, +you’re looking at my lodger’s birds, Mr. Jarndyce?” The old man had +come by little and little into the room until he now touched my +guardian with his elbow and looked close up into his face with his +spectacled eyes. “It’s one of her strange ways that she’ll never tell +the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named ’em +all.” This was in a whisper. “Shall I run ’em over, Flite?” he asked +aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away, +affecting to sweep the grate. + +“If you like,” she answered hurriedly. + +The old man, looking up at the cages after another look at us, went +through the list. + +“Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, +Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, +Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That’s +the whole collection,” said the old man, “all cooped up together, by +my noble and learned brother.” + +“This is a bitter wind!” muttered my guardian. + +“When my noble and learned brother gives his judgment, they’re to be +let go free,” said Krook, winking at us again. “And then,” he added, +whispering and grinning, “if that ever was to happen—which it +won’t—the birds that have never been caged would kill ’em.” + +“If ever the wind was in the east,” said my guardian, pretending to +look out of the window for a weathercock, “I think it’s there +to-day!” + +We found it very difficult to get away from the house. It was not +Miss Flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature +in consulting the convenience of others as there possibly could be. +It was Mr. Krook. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr. +Jarndyce. If he had been linked to him, he could hardly have attended +him more closely. He proposed to show us his Court of Chancery and +all the strange medley it contained; during the whole of our +inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to Mr. Jarndyce and +sometimes detained him under one pretence or other until we had +passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon +some secret subject which he could not make up his mind to approach. +I cannot imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive +of caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he +could not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Krook’s was that day. His +watchfulness of my guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes +from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed him with the +slyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back. When +we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across +and across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of +power, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his grey eyebrows until +they appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face. + +At last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house +and having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was +certainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here on +the head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old +stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were +pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands. + +“What are you doing here?” asked my guardian. + +“Trying to learn myself to read and write,” said Krook. + +“And how do you get on?” + +“Slow. Bad,” returned the old man impatiently. “It’s hard at my time +of life.” + +“It would be easier to be taught by some one,” said my guardian. + +“Aye, but they might teach me wrong!” returned the old man with a +wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. “I don’t know what I may +have lost by not being learned afore. I wouldn’t like to lose +anything by being learned wrong now.” + +“Wrong?” said my guardian with his good-humoured smile. “Who do you +suppose would teach you wrong?” + +“I don’t know, Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House!” replied the old man, +turning up his spectacles on his forehead and rubbing his hands. “I +don’t suppose as anybody would, but I’d rather trust my own self than +another!” + +These answers and his manner were strange enough to cause my guardian +to inquire of Mr. Woodcourt, as we all walked across Lincoln’s Inn +together, whether Mr. Krook were really, as his lodger represented +him, deranged. The young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason +to think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually +was, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin, +of which he drank great quantities and of which he and his back-shop, +as we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him +mad as yet. + +On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy’s affections by buying him a +windmill and two flour-sacks that he would suffer nobody else to take +off his hat and gloves and would sit nowhere at dinner but at my +side. Caddy sat upon the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we +imparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back. +We made much of Caddy, and Peepy too; and Caddy brightened +exceedingly; and my guardian was as merry as we were; and we were all +very happy indeed until Caddy went home at night in a hackney-coach, +with Peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill. + +I have forgotten to mention—at least I have not mentioned—that Mr. +Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr. +Badger’s. Or that Mr. Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or +that he came. Or that when they were all gone and I said to Ada, +“Now, my darling, let us have a little talk about Richard!” Ada +laughed and said— + +But I don’t think it matters what my darling said. She was always +merry. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +Bell Yard + + +While we were in London Mr. Jarndyce was constantly beset by the +crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much +astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after our +arrival, was in all such excitements. He seemed to project those two +shining knobs of temples of his into everything that went on and to +brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very roots were +almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. All +objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly ready for +anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His great power +seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would sit for +any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in +the light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly +swallowed up in admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I had supposed her to be +the absorbing object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake +and found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole +procession of people. + +Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something, and with +her, Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale repeated to +us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew Mrs. Pardiggle +out. Mrs. Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction to my guardian in +behalf of her eloquent friend Mr. Gusher. With Mr. Gusher appeared +Mr. Quale again. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist +surface and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they +seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at +first sight prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before Mr. +Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great +creature—which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale +meant in intellectual beauty—and whether we were not struck by his +massive configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many +missions of various sorts among this set of people, but nothing +respecting them was half so clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale’s +mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else’s mission and that it +was the most popular mission of all. + +Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his +heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but +that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where +benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a +regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap +notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, +servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one +another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help +the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and +self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down, he +plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr. Quale by +Mr. Gusher (who had already got one, originated by Mr. Quale), and +when Mr. Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a +meeting, including two charity schools of small boys and girls, who +were specially reminded of the widow’s mite, and requested to come +forward with halfpence and be acceptable sacrifices, I think the wind +was in the east for three whole weeks. + +I mention this because I am coming to Mr. Skimpole again. It seemed +to me that his off-hand professions of childishness and carelessness +were a great relief to my guardian, by contrast with such things, and +were the more readily believed in since to find one perfectly +undesigning and candid man among many opposites could not fail to +give him pleasure. I should be sorry to imply that Mr. Skimpole +divined this and was politic; I really never understood him well +enough to know. What he was to my guardian, he certainly was to the +rest of the world. + +He had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we +had seen nothing of him until now. He appeared one morning in his +usual agreeable way and as full of pleasant spirits as ever. + +Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were +often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he +was a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view—in his +expansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in +the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes +quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, “Now, my dear +doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you +attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money—in my +expansive intentions—if you only knew it!” And really (he said) he +meant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as doing it. +If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind +attached so much importance to put in the doctor’s hand, he would +have put them in the doctor’s hand. Not having them, he substituted +the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it—if his will +were genuine and real, which it was—it appeared to him that it was +the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation. + +“It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,” +said Mr. Skimpole, “but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My +butcher says to me he wants that little bill. It’s a part of the +pleasant unconscious poetry of the man’s nature that he always calls +it a ‘little’ bill—to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I +reply to the butcher, ‘My good friend, if you knew it, you are paid. +You haven’t had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You +are paid. I mean it.’” + +“But, suppose,” said my guardian, laughing, “he had meant the meat in +the bill, instead of providing it?” + +“My dear Jarndyce,” he returned, “you surprise me. You take the +butcher’s position. A butcher I once dealt with occupied that very +ground. Says he, ‘Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence +a pound?’ ‘Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my +honest friend?’ said I, naturally amazed by the question. ‘I like +spring lamb!’ This was so far convincing. ‘Well, sir,’ says he, ‘I +wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!’ ‘My good fellow,’ +said I, ‘pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that +be? It was impossible. You HAD got the lamb, and I have NOT got the +money. You couldn’t really mean the lamb without sending it in, +whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!’ He +had not a word. There was an end of the subject.” + +“Did he take no legal proceedings?” inquired my guardian. + +“Yes, he took legal proceedings,” said Mr. Skimpole. “But in that he +was influenced by passion, not by reason. Passion reminds me of +Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a +short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire.” + +“He is a great favourite with my girls,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “and I +have promised for them.” + +“Nature forgot to shade him off, I think,” observed Mr. Skimpole to +Ada and me. “A little too boisterous—like the sea. A little too +vehement—like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every +colour scarlet. But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!” + +I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very +highly of one another, Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to +many things and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for anything. Besides +which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn more than once on the point of +breaking out into some strong opinion when Mr. Skimpole was referred +to. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we had been greatly +pleased with him. + +“He has invited me,” said Mr. Skimpole; “and if a child may trust +himself in such hands—which the present child is encouraged to do, +with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him—I shall go. He +proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will cost +money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By +the by, Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss +Summerson?” + +He asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful, +light-hearted manner and without the least embarrassment. + +“Oh, yes!” said I. + +“Coavinses has been arrested by the Great Bailiff,” said Mr. +Skimpole. “He will never do violence to the sunshine any more.” + +It quite shocked me to hear it, for I had already recalled with +anything but a serious association the image of the man sitting on +the sofa that night wiping his head. + +“His successor informed me of it yesterday,” said Mr. Skimpole. “His +successor is in my house now—in possession, I think he calls it. He +came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter’s birthday. I put it to him, +‘This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed +daughter you wouldn’t like ME to come, uninvited, on HER birthday?’ +But he stayed.” + +Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched +the piano by which he was seated. + +“And he told me,” he said, playing little chords where I shall put +full stops, “The Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And +that Coavinses’ profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses. +Were at a considerable disadvantage.” + +Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr. +Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada’s favourite songs. Ada and I +both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing +in his mind. + +After walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his +head, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the keys and +stopped Mr. Skimpole’s playing. “I don’t like this, Skimpole,” he +said thoughtfully. + +Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up +surprised. + +“The man was necessary,” pursued my guardian, walking backward and +forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of the +room and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high +east wind had blown it into that form. “If we make such men necessary +by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by +our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was +no harm in his trade. He maintained his children. One would like to +know more about this.” + +“Oh! Coavinses?” cried Mr. Skimpole, at length perceiving what he +meant. “Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses’ headquarters, and you +can know what you will.” + +Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal. +“Come! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way as soon as +another!” We were quickly ready and went out. Mr. Skimpole went with +us and quite enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing, +he said, for him to want Coavinses instead of Coavinses wanting him! + +He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there was +a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses’ Castle. On +our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came +out of a sort of office and looked at us over a spiked wicket. + +“Who did you want?” said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his +chin. + +“There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here,” said Mr. +Jarndyce, “who is dead.” + +“Yes?” said the boy. “Well?” + +“I want to know his name, if you please?” + +“Name of Neckett,” said the boy. + +“And his address?” + +“Bell Yard,” said the boy. “Chandler’s shop, left hand side, name of +Blinder.” + +“Was he—I don’t know how to shape the question—” murmured my +guardian, “industrious?” + +“Was Neckett?” said the boy. “Yes, wery much so. He was never tired +of watching. He’d set upon a post at a street corner eight or ten +hours at a stretch if he undertook to do it.” + +“He might have done worse,” I heard my guardian soliloquize. “He +might have undertaken to do it and not done it. Thank you. That’s all +I want.” + +We left the boy, with his head on one side and his arms on the gate, +fondling and sucking the spikes, and went back to Lincoln’s Inn, +where Mr. Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer Coavinses, +awaited us. Then we all went to Bell Yard, a narrow alley at a very +short distance. We soon found the chandler’s shop. In it was a +good-natured-looking old woman with a dropsy, or an asthma, or +perhaps both. + +“Neckett’s children?” said she in reply to my inquiry. “Yes, Surely, +miss. Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the stairs.” And +she handed me the key across the counter. + +I glanced at the key and glanced at her, but she took it for granted +that I knew what to do with it. As it could only be intended for the +children’s door, I came out without asking any more questions and led +the way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly as we could, but four +of us made some noise on the aged boards, and when we came to the +second story we found we had disturbed a man who was standing there +looking out of his room. + +“Is it Gridley that’s wanted?” he said, fixing his eyes on me with an +angry stare. + +“No, sir,” said I; “I am going higher up.” + +He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and at Mr. Skimpole, fixing +the same angry stare on each in succession as they passed and +followed me. Mr. Jarndyce gave him good day. “Good day!” he said +abruptly and fiercely. He was a tall, sallow man with a careworn head +on which but little hair remained, a deeply lined face, and prominent +eyes. He had a combative look and a chafing, irritable manner which, +associated with his figure—still large and powerful, though +evidently in its decline—rather alarmed me. He had a pen in his +hand, and in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I saw that +it was covered with a litter of papers. + +Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at +the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, “We are locked in. +Mrs. Blinder’s got the key!” + +I applied the key on hearing this and opened the door. In a poor room +with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture was a +mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a +heavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather +was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets +as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that +their noses looked red and pinched and their small figures shrunken +as the boy walked up and down nursing and hushing the child with its +head on his shoulder. + +“Who has locked you up here alone?” we naturally asked. + +“Charley,” said the boy, standing still to gaze at us. + +“Is Charley your brother?” + +“No. She’s my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley.” + +“Are there any more of you besides Charley?” + +“Me,” said the boy, “and Emma,” patting the limp bonnet of the child +he was nursing. “And Charley.” + +“Where is Charley now?” + +“Out a-washing,” said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again +and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying to +gaze at us at the same time. + +We were looking at one another and at these two children when there +came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd +and older-looking in the face—pretty-faced too—wearing a womanly +sort of bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare arms on a +womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with +washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her +arms. But for this, she might have been a child playing at washing +and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the +truth. + +She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had +made all the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very +light, she was out of breath and could not speak at first, as she +stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us. + +“Oh, here’s Charley!” said the boy. + +The child he was nursing stretched forth its arms and cried out to be +taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of +manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us +over the burden that clung to her most affectionately. + +“Is it possible,” whispered my guardian as we put a chair for the +little creature and got her to sit down with her load, the boy +keeping close to her, holding to her apron, “that this child works +for the rest? Look at this! For God’s sake, look at this!” + +It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two +of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet +with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the +childish figure. + +“Charley, Charley!” said my guardian. “How old are you?” + +“Over thirteen, sir,” replied the child. + +“Oh! What a great age,” said my guardian. “What a great age, +Charley!” + +I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half +playfully yet all the more compassionately and mournfully. + +“And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?” said my +guardian. + +“Yes, sir,” returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect +confidence, “since father died.” + +“And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charley,” said my guardian, +turning his face away for a moment, “how do you live?” + +“Since father died, sir, I’ve gone out to work. I’m out washing +to-day.” + +“God help you, Charley!” said my guardian. “You’re not tall enough to +reach the tub!” + +“In pattens I am, sir,” she said quickly. “I’ve got a high pair as +belonged to mother.” + +“And when did mother die? Poor mother!” + +“Mother died just after Emma was born,” said the child, glancing at +the face upon her bosom. “Then father said I was to be as good a +mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home and +did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I began +to go out. And that’s how I know how; don’t you see, sir?” + +“And do you often go out?” + +“As often as I can,” said Charley, opening her eyes and smiling, +“because of earning sixpences and shillings!” + +“And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?” + +“To keep ’em safe, sir, don’t you see?” said Charley. “Mrs. Blinder +comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and +perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and Tom +an’t afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?” + +“No-o!” said Tom stoutly. + +“When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and +they show up here quite bright—almost quite bright. Don’t they, +Tom?” + +“Yes, Charley,” said Tom, “almost quite bright.” + +“Then he’s as good as gold,” said the little creature—Oh, in such a +motherly, womanly way! “And when Emma’s tired, he puts her to bed. +And when he’s tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and +light the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it +with me. Don’t you, Tom?” + +“Oh, yes, Charley!” said Tom. “That I do!” And either in this glimpse +of the great pleasure of his life or in gratitude and love for +Charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the scanty +folds of her frock and passed from laughing into crying. + +It was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed among +these children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their father and +their mother as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of +taking courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work, +and by her bustling busy way. But now, when Tom cried, although she +sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any +movement disturb a hair of the head of either of her little charges, +I saw two silent tears fall down her face. + +I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the housetops, +and the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the +birds in little cages belonging to the neighbours, when I found that +Mrs. Blinder, from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken +her all this time to get upstairs) and was talking to my guardian. + +“It’s not much to forgive ’em the rent, sir,” she said; “who could +take it from them!” + +“Well, well!” said my guardian to us two. “It is enough that the time +will come when this good woman will find that it WAS much, and that +forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these—This child,” he +added after a few moments, “could she possibly continue this?” + +“Really, sir, I think she might,” said Mrs. Blinder, getting her +heavy breath by painful degrees. “She’s as handy as it’s possible to +be. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children after the +mother died was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see her +with him after he was took ill, it really was! ‘Mrs. Blinder,’ he +said to me the very last he spoke—he was lying there—‘Mrs. +Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a angel sitting in +this room last night along with my child, and I trust her to Our +Father!’” + +“He had no other calling?” said my guardian. + +“No, sir,” returned Mrs. Blinder, “he was nothing but a follerers. +When he first came to lodge here, I didn’t know what he was, and I +confess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn’t liked in +the yard. It wasn’t approved by the other lodgers. It is NOT a +genteel calling,” said Mrs. Blinder, “and most people do object to +it. Mr. Gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good lodger, +though his temper has been hard tried.” + +“So you gave him notice?” said my guardian. + +“So I gave him notice,” said Mrs. Blinder. “But really when the time +came, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was +punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir,” said Mrs. +Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Skimpole with her eye, “and it’s +something in this world even to do that.” + +“So you kept him after all?” + +“Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Gridley, I could +arrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much mind its +being liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave his consent +gruff—but gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been +kind to the children since. A person is never known till a person is +proved.” + +“Have many people been kind to the children?” asked Mr. Jarndyce. + +“Upon the whole, not so bad, sir,” said Mrs. Blinder; “but certainly +not so many as would have been if their father’s calling had been +different. Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a +little purse. Some neighbours in the yard that had always joked and +tapped their shoulders when he went by came forward with a little +subscription, and—in general—not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte. +Some people won’t employ her because she was a follerer’s child; some +people that do employ her cast it at her; some make a merit of having +her to work for them, with that and all her draw-backs upon her, and +perhaps pay her less and put upon her more. But she’s patienter than +others would be, and is clever too, and always willing, up to the +full mark of her strength and over. So I should say, in general, not +so bad, sir, but might be better.” + +Mrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more favourable opportunity +of recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it +was fully restored. Mr. Jarndyce was turning to speak to us when his +attention was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of the +Mr. Gridley who had been mentioned and whom we had seen on our way +up. + +“I don’t know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen,” he +said, as if he resented our presence, “but you’ll excuse my coming +in. I don’t come in to stare about me. Well, Charley! Well, Tom! +Well, little one! How is it with us all to-day?” + +He bent over the group in a caressing way and clearly was regarded as +a friend by the children, though his face retained its stern +character and his manner to us was as rude as it could be. My +guardian noticed it and respected it. + +“No one, surely, would come here to stare about him,” he said mildly. + +“May be so, sir, may be so,” returned the other, taking Tom upon his +knee and waving him off impatiently. “I don’t want to argue with +ladies and gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing to last one man +his life.” + +“You have sufficient reason, I dare say,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “for +being chafed and irritated—” + +“There again!” exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. “I am of +a quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!” + +“Not very, I think.” + +“Sir,” said Gridley, putting down the child and going up to him as if +he meant to strike him, “do you know anything of Courts of Equity?” + +“Perhaps I do, to my sorrow.” + +“To your sorrow?” said the man, pausing in his wrath, “if so, I beg +your pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir,” with +renewed violence, “I have been dragged for five and twenty years over +burning iron, and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go +into the Court of Chancery yonder and ask what is one of the standing +jokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and they will tell +you that the best joke they have is the man from Shropshire. I,” he +said, beating one hand on the other passionately, “am the man from +Shropshire.” + +“I believe I and my family have also had the honour of furnishing +some entertainment in the same grave place,” said my guardian +composedly. “You may have heard my name—Jarndyce.” + +“Mr. Jarndyce,” said Gridley with a rough sort of salutation, “you +bear your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I +tell you—and I tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they +are friends of yours—that if I took my wrongs in any other way, I +should be driven mad! It is only by resenting them, and by revenging +them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I never get, +that I am able to keep my wits together. It is only that!” he said, +speaking in a homely, rustic way and with great vehemence. “You may +tell me that I over-excite myself. I answer that it’s in my nature to +do it, under wrong, and I must do it. There’s nothing between doing +it, and sinking into the smiling state of the poor little mad woman +that haunts the court. If I was once to sit down under it, I should +become imbecile.” + +The passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his +face worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied what +he said, were most painful to see. + +“Mr. Jarndyce,” he said, “consider my case. As true as there is a +heaven above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father +(a farmer) made a will and left his farm and stock and so forth to my +mother for her life. After my mother’s death, all was to come to me +except a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was then to pay my +brother. My mother died. My brother some time afterwards claimed his +legacy. I and some of my relations said that he had had a part of it +already in board and lodging and some other things. Now mind! That +was the question, and nothing else. No one disputed the will; no one +disputed anything but whether part of that three hundred pounds had +been already paid or not. To settle that question, my brother filing +a bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed Chancery; I was forced +there because the law forced me and would let me go nowhere else. +Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first +came on after two years. It was then stopped for another two years +while the master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my +father’s son, about which there was no dispute at all with any mortal +creature. He then found out that there were not defendants +enough—remember, there were only seventeen as yet!—but that we must +have another who had been left out and must begin all over again. The +costs at that time—before the thing was begun!—were three times the +legacy. My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to +escape more costs. My whole estate, left to me in that will of my +father’s, has gone in costs. The suit, still undecided, has fallen +into rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else—and here I +stand, this day! Now, Mr. Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands +and thousands involved, where in mine there are hundreds. Is mine +less hard to bear or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was +in it and has been thus shamefully sucked away?” + +Mr. Jarndyce said that he condoled with him with all his heart and +that he set up no monopoly himself in being unjustly treated by this +monstrous system. + +“There again!” said Mr. Gridley with no diminution of his rage. “The +system! I am told on all hands, it’s the system. I mustn’t look to +individuals. It’s the system. I mustn’t go into court and say, ‘My +Lord, I beg to know this from you—is this right or wrong? Have you +the face to tell me I have received justice and therefore am +dismissed?’ My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer +the system. I mustn’t go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in +Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious by +being so cool and satisfied—as they all do, for I know they gain by +it while I lose, don’t I?—I mustn’t say to him, ‘I will have +something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul!’ HE is +not responsible. It’s the system. But, if I do no violence to any of +them, here—I may! I don’t know what may happen if I am carried +beyond myself at last! I will accuse the individual workers of that +system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar!” + +His passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage +without seeing it. + +“I have done!” he said, sitting down and wiping his face. “Mr. +Jarndyce, I have done! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I +have been in prison for contempt of court. I have been in prison for +threatening the solicitor. I have been in this trouble, and that +trouble, and shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire, and I +sometimes go beyond amusing them, though they have found it amusing, +too, to see me committed into custody and brought up in custody and +all that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I restrained +myself. I tell them that if I did restrain myself I should become +imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People in +my part of the country say they remember me so, but now I must have +this vent under my sense of injury or nothing could hold my wits +together. It would be far better for you, Mr. Gridley,’ the Lord +Chancellor told me last week, ‘not to waste your time here, and to +stay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.’ ‘My Lord, my Lord, I +know it would,’ said I to him, ‘and it would have been far better for +me never to have heard the name of your high office, but unhappily +for me, I can’t undo the past, and the past drives me here!’ +Besides,” he added, breaking fiercely out, “I’ll shame them. To the +last, I’ll show myself in that court to its shame. If I knew when I +was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to +speak with, I would die there, saying, ‘You have brought me here and +sent me from here many and many a time. Now send me out feet +foremost!’” + +His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its +contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was +quiet. + +“I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour,” he said, +going to them again, “and let them play about. I didn’t mean to say +all this, but it don’t much signify. You’re not afraid of me, Tom, +are you?” + +“No!” said Tom. “You ain’t angry with ME.” + +“You are right, my child. You’re going back, Charley? Aye? Come then, +little one!” He took the youngest child on his arm, where she was +willing enough to be carried. “I shouldn’t wonder if we found a +ginger-bread soldier downstairs. Let’s go and look for him!” + +He made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a +certain respect, to Mr. Jarndyce, and bowing slightly to us, went +downstairs to his room. + +Upon that, Mr. Skimpole began to talk, for the first time since our +arrival, in his usual gay strain. He said, Well, it was really very +pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes. +Here was this Mr. Gridley, a man of a robust will and surprising +energy—intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious +blacksmith—and he could easily imagine that there Gridley was, years +ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous +combativeness upon—a sort of Young Love among the thorns—when the +Court of Chancery came in his way and accommodated him with the exact +thing he wanted. There they were, matched, ever afterwards! Otherwise +he might have been a great general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or +he might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of +parliamentary rhetoric; but as it was, he and the Court of Chancery +had fallen upon each other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was +much the worse, and Gridley was, so to speak, from that hour provided +for. Then look at Coavinses! How delightfully poor Coavinses (father +of these charming children) illustrated the same principle! He, Mr. +Skimpole, himself, had sometimes repined at the existence of +Coavinses. He had found Coavinses in his way. He could had dispensed +with Coavinses. There had been times when, if he had been a sultan, +and his grand vizier had said one morning, “What does the Commander +of the Faithful require at the hands of his slave?” he might have +even gone so far as to reply, “The head of Coavinses!” But what +turned out to be the case? That, all that time, he had been giving +employment to a most deserving man, that he had been a benefactor to +Coavinses, that he had actually been enabling Coavinses to bring up +these charming children in this agreeable way, developing these +social virtues! Insomuch that his heart had just now swelled and the +tears had come into his eyes when he had looked round the room and +thought, “I was the great patron of Coavinses, and his little +comforts were MY work!” + +There was something so captivating in his light way of touching these +fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of +the graver childhood we had seen, that he made my guardian smile even +as he turned towards us from a little private talk with Mrs. Blinder. +We kissed Charley, and took her downstairs with us, and stopped +outside the house to see her run away to her work. I don’t know where +she was going, but we saw her run, such a little, little creature in +her womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered way at the bottom of +the court and melt into the city’s strife and sound like a dewdrop in +an ocean. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +Tom-all-Alone’s + + +My Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless. The astonished +fashionable intelligence hardly knows where to have her. To-day she +is at Chesney Wold; yesterday she was at her house in town; to-morrow +she may be abroad, for anything the fashionable intelligence can with +confidence predict. Even Sir Leicester’s gallantry has some trouble +to keep pace with her. It would have more but that his other faithful +ally, for better and for worse—the gout—darts into the old oak +bed-chamber at Chesney Wold and grips him by both legs. + +Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but still a +demon of the patrician order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male +line, through a course of time during and beyond which the memory of +man goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. It can be proved, +sir. Other men’s fathers may have died of the rheumatism or may have +taken base contagion from the tainted blood of the sick vulgar, but +the Dedlock family have communicated something exclusive even to the +levelling process of dying by dying of their own family gout. It has +come down through the illustrious line like the plate, or the +pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It is among their dignities. +Sir Leicester is perhaps not wholly without an impression, though he +has never resolved it into words, that the angel of death in the +discharge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of the +aristocracy, “My lords and gentlemen, I have the honour to present to +you another Dedlock certified to have arrived per the family gout.” + +Hence Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder +as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels +that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically +twitched and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere, +but he thinks, “We have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has +for some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make +the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I +submit myself to the compromise.” + +And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold in +the midst of the great drawing-room before his favourite picture of +my Lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long +perspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating with +soft reliefs of shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in +the green ground which has never known ploughshare, but was still a +chase when kings rode to battle with sword and shield and rode +a-hunting with bow and arrow, bear witness to his greatness. Inside, +his forefathers, looking on him from the walls, say, “Each of us was +a passing reality here and left this coloured shadow of himself and +melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voices of the rooks +now lulling you to rest,” and hear their testimony to his greatness +too. And he is very great this day. And woe to Boythorn or other +daring wight who shall presumptuously contest an inch with him! + +My Lady is at present represented, near Sir Leicester, by her +portrait. She has flitted away to town, with no intention of +remaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of +the fashionable intelligence. The house in town is not prepared for +her reception. It is muffled and dreary. Only one Mercury in powder +gapes disconsolate at the hall-window; and he mentioned last night to +another Mercury of his acquaintance, also accustomed to good society, +that if that sort of thing was to last—which it couldn’t, for a man +of his spirits couldn’t bear it, and a man of his figure couldn’t be +expected to bear it—there would be no resource for him, upon his +honour, but to cut his throat! + +What connexion can there be between the place in Lincolnshire, the +house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the +outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him +when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been +between many people in the innumerable histories of this world who +from opposite sides of great gulfs have, nevertheless, been very +curiously brought together! + +Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any +link there be. He sums up his mental condition when asked a question +by replying that he “don’t know nothink.” He knows that it’s hard to +keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to +live by doing it. Nobody taught him even that much; he found it out. + +Jo lives—that is to say, Jo has not yet died—in a ruinous place +known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone’s. It is a +black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people, where the +crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by +some bold vagrants who after establishing their own possession took +to letting them out in lodgings. Now, these tumbling tenements +contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As on the ruined human wretch +vermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters have bred a crowd +of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; +and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips +in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever and sowing more +evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle, +and the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to +Zoodle, shall set right in five hundred years—though born expressly +to do it. + +Twice lately there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the +springing of a mine, in Tom-all-Alone’s; and each time a house has +fallen. These accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapers and +have filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. The gaps remain, +and there are not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. As several +more houses are nearly ready to go, the next crash in Tom-all-Alone’s +may be expected to be a good one. + +This desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be an +insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye to tell him so. +Whether “Tom” is the popular representative of the original plaintiff +or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, or whether Tom lived here when +the suit had laid the street waste, all alone, until other settlers +came to join him, or whether the traditional title is a comprehensive +name for a retreat cut off from honest company and put out of the +pale of hope, perhaps nobody knows. Certainly Jo don’t know. + +“For I don’t,” says Jo, “I don’t know nothink.” + +It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the +streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the +meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and +at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To +see people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen +deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that +language—to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! It must +be very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on +Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps +Jo DOES think at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means +anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be +hustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would +appear to be perfectly true that I have no business here, or there, +or anywhere; and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that I AM +here somehow, too, and everybody overlooked me until I became the +creature that I am! It must be a strange state, not merely to be told +that I am scarcely human (as in the case of my offering myself for a +witness), but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To see the +horses, dogs, and cattle go by me and to know that in ignorance I +belong to them and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose +delicacy I offend! Jo’s ideas of a criminal trial, or a judge, or a +bishop, or a government, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only +knew it) the Constitution, should be strange! His whole material and +immaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest +thing of all. + +Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone’s, meeting the tardy morning which is +always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread +as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and the houses +not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the door-step of the +Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and gives +it a brush when he has finished as an acknowledgment of the +accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice and wonders what +it’s all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual +destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific or what it costs to look +up the precious souls among the coco-nuts and bread-fruit. + +He goes to his crossing and begins to lay it out for the day. The +town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and +whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been +suspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo and the other lower +animals get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It is +market-day. The blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven, never guided, +run into wrong places and are beaten out, and plunge red-eyed and +foaming at stone walls, and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often +sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order; very, very like! + +A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens to it. So does a dog—a +drover’s dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher’s shop, and +evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for +some hours and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three +or four, can’t remember where he left them, looks up and down the +street as half expecting to see them astray, suddenly pricks up his +ears and remembers all about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog, +accustomed to low company and public-houses; a terrific dog to sheep, +ready at a whistle to scamper over their backs and tear out mouthfuls +of their wool; but an educated, improved, developed dog who has been +taught his duties and knows how to discharge them. He and Jo listen +to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal +satisfaction; likewise as to awakened association, aspiration, or +regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses, +they are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human +listener is the brute! + +Turn that dog’s descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years +they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark—but not +their bite. + +The day changes as it wears itself away and becomes dark and drizzly. +Jo fights it out at his crossing among the mud and wheels, the +horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum to pay for +the unsavoury shelter of Tom-all-Alone’s. Twilight comes on; gas +begins to start up in the shops; the lamplighter, with his ladder, +runs along the margin of the pavement. A wretched evening is +beginning to close in. + +In his chambers Mr. Tulkinghorn sits meditating an application to the +nearest magistrate to-morrow morning for a warrant. Gridley, a +disappointed suitor, has been here to-day and has been alarming. We +are not to be put in bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow +shall be held to bail again. From the ceiling, foreshortened +Allegory, in the person of one impossible Roman upside down, points +with the arm of Samson (out of joint, and an odd one) obtrusively +toward the window. Why should Mr. Tulkinghorn, for such no reason, +look out of window? Is the hand not always pointing there? So he does +not look out of window. + +And if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? There are +women enough in the world, Mr. Tulkinghorn thinks—too many; they are +at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the matter of +that, they create business for lawyers. What would it be to see a +woman going by, even though she were going secretly? They are all +secret. Mr. Tulkinghorn knows that very well. + +But they are not all like the woman who now leaves him and his house +behind, between whose plain dress and her refined manner there is +something exceedingly inconsistent. She should be an upper servant by +her attire, yet in her air and step, though both are hurried and +assumed—as far as she can assume in the muddy streets, which she +treads with an unaccustomed foot—she is a lady. Her face is veiled, +and still she sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of +those who pass her look round sharply. + +She never turns her head. Lady or servant, she has a purpose in her +and can follow it. She never turns her head until she comes to the +crossing where Jo plies with his broom. He crosses with her and begs. +Still, she does not turn her head until she has landed on the other +side. Then she slightly beckons to him and says, “Come here!” + +Jo follows her a pace or two into a quiet court. + +“Are you the boy I’ve read of in the papers?” she asked behind her +veil. + +“I don’t know,” says Jo, staring moodily at the veil, “nothink about +no papers. I don’t know nothink about nothink at all.” + +“Were you examined at an inquest?” + +“I don’t know nothink about no—where I was took by the beadle, do +you mean?” says Jo. “Was the boy’s name at the inkwhich Jo?” + +“Yes.” + +“That’s me!” says Jo. + +“Come farther up.” + +“You mean about the man?” says Jo, following. “Him as wos dead?” + +“Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he look, when he was living, so +very ill and poor?” + +“Oh, jist!” says Jo. + +“Did he look like—not like YOU?” says the woman with abhorrence. + +“Oh, not so bad as me,” says Jo. “I’m a reg’lar one I am! You didn’t +know him, did you?” + +“How dare you ask me if I knew him?” + +“No offence, my lady,” says Jo with much humility, for even he has +got at the suspicion of her being a lady. + +“I am not a lady. I am a servant.” + +“You are a jolly servant!” says Jo without the least idea of saying +anything offensive, merely as a tribute of admiration. + +“Listen and be silent. Don’t talk to me, and stand farther from me! +Can you show me all those places that were spoken of in the account I +read? The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where +you were taken to, and the place where he was buried? Do you know the +place where he was buried?” + +Jo answers with a nod, having also nodded as each other place was +mentioned. + +“Go before me and show me all those dreadful places. Stop opposite to +each, and don’t speak to me unless I speak to you. Don’t look back. +Do what I want, and I will pay you well.” + +Jo attends closely while the words are being spoken; tells them off +on his broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pauses to consider +their meaning; considers it satisfactory; and nods his ragged head. + +“I’m fly,” says Jo. “But fen larks, you know. Stow hooking it!” + +“What does the horrible creature mean?” exclaims the servant, +recoiling from him. + +“Stow cutting away, you know!” says Jo. + +“I don’t understand you. Go on before! I will give you more money +than you ever had in your life.” + +Jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives his ragged head a rub, +takes his broom under his arm, and leads the way, passing deftly with +his bare feet over the hard stones and through the mud and mire. + +Cook’s Court. Jo stops. A pause. + +“Who lives here?” + +“Him wot give him his writing and give me half a bull,” says Jo in a +whisper without looking over his shoulder. + +“Go on to the next.” + +Krook’s house. Jo stops again. A longer pause. + +“Who lives here?” + +“HE lived here,” Jo answers as before. + +After a silence he is asked, “In which room?” + +“In the back room up there. You can see the winder from this corner. +Up there! That’s where I see him stritched out. This is the +public-ouse where I was took to.” + +“Go on to the next!” + +It is a longer walk to the next, but Jo, relieved of his first +suspicions, sticks to the forms imposed upon him and does not look +round. By many devious ways, reeking with offence of many kinds, they +come to the little tunnel of a court, and to the gas-lamp (lighted +now), and to the iron gate. + +“He was put there,” says Jo, holding to the bars and looking in. + +“Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!” + +“There!” says Jo, pointing. “Over yinder. Among them piles of bones, +and close to that there kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh the +top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver +it for you with my broom if the gate was open. That’s why they locks +it, I s’pose,” giving it a shake. “It’s always locked. Look at the +rat!” cries Jo, excited. “Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! Into the +ground!” + +The servant shrinks into a corner, into a corner of that hideous +archway, with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and putting +out her two hands and passionately telling him to keep away from her, +for he is loathsome to her, so remains for some moments. Jo stands +staring and is still staring when she recovers herself. + +“Is this place of abomination consecrated ground?” + +“I don’t know nothink of consequential ground,” says Jo, still +staring. + +“Is it blessed?” + +“Which?” says Jo, in the last degree amazed. + +“Is it blessed?” + +“I’m blest if I know,” says Jo, staring more than ever; “but I +shouldn’t think it warn’t. Blest?” repeats Jo, something troubled in +his mind. “It an’t done it much good if it is. Blest? I should think +it was t’othered myself. But I don’t know nothink!” + +The servant takes as little heed of what he says as she seems to take +of what she has said herself. She draws off her glove to get some +money from her purse. Jo silently notices how white and small her +hand is and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling +rings. + +She drops a piece of money in his hand without touching it, and +shuddering as their hands approach. “Now,” she adds, “show me the +spot again!” + +Jo thrusts the handle of his broom between the bars of the gate, and +with his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. At length, +looking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds +that he is alone. + +His first proceeding is to hold the piece of money to the gas-light +and to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow—gold. His next is +to give it a one-sided bite at the edge as a test of its quality. +His next, to put it in his mouth for safety and to sweep the +step and passage with great care. His job done, he sets off for +Tom-all-Alone’s, stopping in the light of innumerable gas-lamps to +produce the piece of gold and give it another one-sided bite as a +reassurance of its being genuine. + +The Mercury in powder is in no want of society to-night, for my Lady +goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. Sir Leicester is +fidgety down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the gout; +he complains to Mrs. Rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous +pattering on the terrace that he can’t read the paper even by the +fireside in his own snug dressing-room. + +“Sir Leicester would have done better to try the other side of the +house, my dear,” says Mrs. Rouncewell to Rosa. “His dressing-room is +on my Lady’s side. And in all these years I never heard the step upon +the Ghost’s Walk more distinct than it is to-night!” + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +Esther’s Narrative + + +Richard very often came to see us while we remained in London (though +he soon failed in his letter-writing), and with his quick abilities, +his good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshness, was +always delightful. But though I liked him more and more the better I +knew him, I still felt more and more how much it was to be regretted +that he had been educated in no habits of application and +concentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same +manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in +character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks, +always with fair credit and often with distinction, but in a fitful, +dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities +in himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They +were good qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously +won, but like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were +very bad masters. If they had been under Richard’s direction, they +would have been his friends; but Richard being under their direction, +they became his enemies. + +I write down these opinions not because I believe that this or any +other thing was so because I thought so, but only because I did think +so and I want to be quite candid about all I thought and did. These +were my thoughts about Richard. I thought I often observed besides +how right my guardian was in what he had said, and that the +uncertainties and delays of the Chancery suit had imparted to his +nature something of the careless spirit of a gamester who felt that +he was part of a great gaming system. + +Mr. and Mrs. Bayham Badger coming one afternoon when my guardian was +not at home, in the course of conversation I naturally inquired after +Richard. + +“Why, Mr. Carstone,” said Mrs. Badger, “is very well and is, I assure +you, a great acquisition to our society. Captain Swosser used to say +of me that I was always better than land a-head and a breeze a-starn +to the midshipmen’s mess when the purser’s junk had become as tough as +the fore-topsel weather earrings. It was his naval way of mentioning +generally that I was an acquisition to any society. I may render the +same tribute, I am sure, to Mr. Carstone. But I—you won’t think me +premature if I mention it?” + +I said no, as Mrs. Badger’s insinuating tone seemed to require such +an answer. + +“Nor Miss Clare?” said Mrs. Bayham Badger sweetly. + +Ada said no, too, and looked uneasy. + +“Why, you see, my dears,” said Mrs. Badger, “—you’ll excuse me +calling you my dears?” + +We entreated Mrs. Badger not to mention it. + +“Because you really are, if I may take the liberty of saying so,” +pursued Mrs. Badger, “so perfectly charming. You see, my dears, that +although I am still young—or Mr. Bayham Badger pays me the +compliment of saying so—” + +“No,” Mr. Badger called out like some one contradicting at a public +meeting. “Not at all!” + +“Very well,” smiled Mrs. Badger, “we will say still young.” + +“Undoubtedly,” said Mr. Badger. + +“My dears, though still young, I have had many opportunities of +observing young men. There were many such on board the dear old +Crippler, I assure you. After that, when I was with Captain Swosser +in the Mediterranean, I embraced every opportunity of knowing and +befriending the midshipmen under Captain Swosser’s command. YOU never +heard them called the young gentlemen, my dears, and probably would +not understand allusions to their pipe-claying their weekly accounts, +but it is otherwise with me, for blue water has been a second home to +me, and I have been quite a sailor. Again, with Professor Dingo.” + +“A man of European reputation,” murmured Mr. Badger. + +“When I lost my dear first and became the wife of my dear second,” +said Mrs. Badger, speaking of her former husbands as if they were +parts of a charade, “I still enjoyed opportunities of observing +youth. The class attendant on Professor Dingo’s lectures was a large +one, and it became my pride, as the wife of an eminent scientific man +seeking herself in science the utmost consolation it could impart, to +throw our house open to the students as a kind of Scientific +Exchange. Every Tuesday evening there was lemonade and a mixed +biscuit for all who chose to partake of those refreshments. And there +was science to an unlimited extent.” + +“Remarkable assemblies those, Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Badger +reverentially. “There must have been great intellectual friction +going on there under the auspices of such a man!” + +“And now,” pursued Mrs. Badger, “now that I am the wife of my dear +third, Mr. Badger, I still pursue those habits of observation which +were formed during the lifetime of Captain Swosser and adapted to new +and unexpected purposes during the lifetime of Professor Dingo. I +therefore have not come to the consideration of Mr. Carstone as a +neophyte. And yet I am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he +has not chosen his profession advisedly.” + +Ada looked so very anxious now that I asked Mrs. Badger on what she +founded her supposition. + +“My dear Miss Summerson,” she replied, “on Mr. Carstone’s character +and conduct. He is of such a very easy disposition that probably he +would never think it worth while to mention how he really feels, but +he feels languid about the profession. He has not that positive +interest in it which makes it his vocation. If he has any decided +impression in reference to it, I should say it was that it is a +tiresome pursuit. Now, this is not promising. Young men like Mr. +Allan Woodcourt who take it from a strong interest in all that it can +do will find some reward in it through a great deal of work for a +very little money and through years of considerable endurance and +disappointment. But I am quite convinced that this would never be the +case with Mr. Carstone.” + +“Does Mr. Badger think so too?” asked Ada timidly. + +“Why,” said Mr. Badger, “to tell the truth, Miss Clare, this view of +the matter had not occurred to me until Mrs. Badger mentioned it. But +when Mrs. Badger put it in that light, I naturally gave great +consideration to it, knowing that Mrs. Badger’s mind, in addition to +its natural advantages, has had the rare advantage of being formed by +two such very distinguished (I will even say illustrious) public men +as Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy and Professor Dingo. The +conclusion at which I have arrived is—in short, is Mrs. Badger’s +conclusion.” + +“It was a maxim of Captain Swosser’s,” said Mrs. Badger, “speaking in +his figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot +make it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you +should swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me that +this maxim is applicable to the medical as well as to the nautical +profession.” + +“To all professions,” observed Mr. Badger. “It was admirably said by +Captain Swosser. Beautifully said.” + +“People objected to Professor Dingo when we were staying in the north +of Devon after our marriage,” said Mrs. Badger, “that he disfigured +some of the houses and other buildings by chipping off fragments of +those edifices with his little geological hammer. But the professor +replied that he knew of no building save the Temple of Science. The +principle is the same, I think?” + +“Precisely the same,” said Mr. Badger. “Finely expressed! The +professor made the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last illness, +when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer +under the pillow and chipping at the countenances of the attendants. +The ruling passion!” + +Although we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr. and +Mrs. Badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was +disinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated to +us and that there was a great probability of its being sound. We +agreed to say nothing to Mr. Jarndyce until we had spoken to Richard; +and as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a very serious +talk with him. + +So after he had been a little while with Ada, I went in and found my +darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly +right in whatever he said. + +“And how do you get on, Richard?” said I. I always sat down on the +other side of him. He made quite a sister of me. + +“Oh! Well enough!” said Richard. + +“He can’t say better than that, Esther, can he?” cried my pet +triumphantly. + +I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I +couldn’t. + +“Well enough?” I repeated. + +“Yes,” said Richard, “well enough. It’s rather jog-trotty and +humdrum. But it’ll do as well as anything else!” + +“Oh! My dear Richard!” I remonstrated. + +“What’s the matter?” said Richard. + +“Do as well as anything else!” + +“I don’t think there’s any harm in that, Dame Durden,” said Ada, +looking so confidingly at me across him; “because if it will do as +well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope.” + +“Oh, yes, I hope so,” returned Richard, carelessly tossing his hair +from his forehead. “After all, it may be only a kind of probation +till our suit is—I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit. +Forbidden ground! Oh, yes, it’s all right enough. Let us talk about +something else.” + +Ada would have done so willingly, and with a full persuasion that we +had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But I thought +it would be useless to stop there, so I began again. + +“No, but Richard,” said I, “and my dear Ada! Consider how important +it is to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your +cousin, that you, Richard, should be quite in earnest without any +reservation. I think we had better talk about this, really, Ada. It +will be too late very soon.” + +“Oh, yes! We must talk about it!” said Ada. “But I think Richard is +right.” + +What was the use of my trying to look wise when she was so pretty, +and so engaging, and so fond of him! + +“Mr. and Mrs. Badger were here yesterday, Richard,” said I, “and they +seemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the +profession.” + +“Did they though?” said Richard. “Oh! Well, that rather alters the +case, because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not +have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I don’t +care much about it. But, oh, it don’t matter! It’ll do as well as +anything else!” + +“You hear him, Ada!” said I. + +“The fact is,” Richard proceeded, half thoughtfully and half +jocosely, “it is not quite in my way. I don’t take to it. And I get +too much of Mrs. Bayham Badger’s first and second.” + +“I am sure THAT’S very natural!” cried Ada, quite delighted. “The +very thing we both said yesterday, Esther!” + +“Then,” pursued Richard, “it’s monotonous, and to-day is too like +yesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-day.” + +“But I am afraid,” said I, “this is an objection to all kinds of +application—to life itself, except under some very uncommon +circumstances.” + +“Do you think so?” returned Richard, still considering. “Perhaps! Ha! +Why, then, you know,” he added, suddenly becoming gay again, “we +travel outside a circle to what I said just now. It’ll do as well as +anything else. Oh, it’s all right enough! Let us talk about something +else.” + +But even Ada, with her loving face—and if it had seemed innocent and +trusting when I first saw it in that memorable November fog, how much +more did it seem now when I knew her innocent and trusting +heart—even Ada shook her head at this and looked serious. So I +thought it a good opportunity to hint to Richard that if he were +sometimes a little careless of himself, I was very sure he never +meant to be careless of Ada, and that it was a part of his +affectionate consideration for her not to slight the importance of a +step that might influence both their lives. This made him almost +grave. + +“My dear Mother Hubbard,” he said, “that’s the very thing! I have +thought of that several times and have been quite angry with myself +for meaning to be so much in earnest and—somehow—not exactly being +so. I don’t know how it is; I seem to want something or other to +stand by. Even you have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my darling +cousin, I love you, so much!), but I don’t settle down to constancy +in other things. It’s such uphill work, and it takes such a time!” +said Richard with an air of vexation. + +“That may be,” I suggested, “because you don’t like what you have +chosen.” + +“Poor fellow!” said Ada. “I am sure I don’t wonder at it!” + +No. It was not of the least use my trying to look wise. I tried +again, but how could I do it, or how could it have any effect if I +could, while Ada rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder and while +he looked at her tender blue eyes, and while they looked at him! + +“You see, my precious girl,” said Richard, passing her golden curls +through and through his hand, “I was a little hasty perhaps; or I +misunderstood my own inclinations perhaps. They don’t seem to lie in +that direction. I couldn’t tell till I tried. Now the question is +whether it’s worth-while to undo all that has been done. It seems +like making a great disturbance about nothing particular.” + +“My dear Richard,” said I, “how CAN you say about nothing +particular?” + +“I don’t mean absolutely that,” he returned. “I mean that it MAY be +nothing particular because I may never want it.” + +Both Ada and I urged, in reply, not only that it was decidedly +worth-while to undo what had been done, but that it must be undone. I +then asked Richard whether he had thought of any more congenial +pursuit. + +“There, my dear Mrs. Shipton,” said Richard, “you touch me home. Yes, +I have. I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me.” + +“The law!” repeated Ada as if she were afraid of the name. + +“If I went into Kenge’s office,” said Richard, “and if I were placed +under articles to Kenge, I should have my eye on the—hum!—the +forbidden ground—and should be able to study it, and master it, and +to satisfy myself that it was not neglected and was being properly +conducted. I should be able to look after Ada’s interests and my own +interests (the same thing!); and I should peg away at Blackstone and +all those fellows with the most tremendous ardour.” + +I was not by any means so sure of that, and I saw how his hankering +after the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred hopes cast +a shade on Ada’s face. But I thought it best to encourage him in any +project of continuous exertion, and only advised him to be quite sure +that his mind was made up now. + +“My dear Minerva,” said Richard, “I am as steady as you are. I made a +mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I won’t do so any more, and +I’ll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. That is, you know,” +said Richard, relapsing into doubt, “if it really is worth-while, +after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing particular!” + +This led to our saying again, with a great deal of gravity, all that +we had said already and to our coming to much the same conclusion +afterwards. But we so strongly advised Richard to be frank and open +with Mr. Jarndyce, without a moment’s delay, and his disposition was +naturally so opposed to concealment that he sought him out at once +(taking us with him) and made a full avowal. “Rick,” said my +guardian, after hearing him attentively, “we can retreat with honour, +and we will. But we must be careful—for our cousin’s sake, Rick, for +our cousin’s sake—that we make no more such mistakes. Therefore, in +the matter of the law, we will have a good trial before we decide. We +will look before we leap, and take plenty of time about it.” + +Richard’s energy was of such an impatient and fitful kind that he +would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Mr. Kenge’s +office in that hour and to have entered into articles with him on the +spot. Submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution that we +had shown to be so necessary, he contented himself with sitting down +among us in his lightest spirits and talking as if his one unvarying +purpose in life from childhood had been that one which now held +possession of him. My guardian was very kind and cordial with him, +but rather grave, enough so to cause Ada, when he had departed and we +were going upstairs to bed, to say, “Cousin John, I hope you don’t +think the worse of Richard?” + +“No, my love,” said he. + +“Because it was very natural that Richard should be mistaken in such +a difficult case. It is not uncommon.” + +“No, no, my love,” said he. “Don’t look unhappy.” + +“Oh, I am not unhappy, cousin John!” said Ada, smiling cheerfully, +with her hand upon his shoulder, where she had put it in bidding him +good night. “But I should be a little so if you thought at all the +worse of Richard.” + +“My dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I should think the worse of him only +if you were ever in the least unhappy through his means. I should be +more disposed to quarrel with myself even then, than with poor Rick, +for I brought you together. But, tut, all this is nothing! He has +time before him, and the race to run. I think the worse of him? Not +I, my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!” + +“No, indeed, cousin John,” said Ada, “I am sure I could not—I am +sure I would not—think any ill of Richard if the whole world did. I +could, and I would, think better of him then than at any other time!” + +So quietly and honestly she said it, with her hands upon his +shoulders—both hands now—and looking up into his face, like the +picture of truth! + +“I think,” said my guardian, thoughtfully regarding her, “I think it +must be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall +occasionally be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the +father. Good night, my rosebud. Good night, little woman. Pleasant +slumbers! Happy dreams!” + +This was the first time I ever saw him follow Ada with his eyes with +something of a shadow on their benevolent expression. I well +remembered the look with which he had contemplated her and Richard +when she was singing in the firelight; it was but a very little while +since he had watched them passing down the room in which the sun was +shining, and away into the shade; but his glance was changed, and +even the silent look of confidence in me which now followed it once +more was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as it had originally +been. + +Ada praised Richard more to me that night than ever she had praised +him yet. She went to sleep with a little bracelet he had given her +clasped upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I kissed +her cheek after she had slept an hour and saw how tranquil and happy +she looked. + +For I was so little inclined to sleep myself that night that I sat up +working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but I was +wakeful and rather low-spirited. I don’t know why. At least I don’t +think I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don’t think it +matters. + +At any rate, I made up my mind to be so dreadfully industrious that I +would leave myself not a moment’s leisure to be low-spirited. For I +naturally said, “Esther! You to be low-spirited. YOU!” And it really +was time to say so, for I—yes, I really did see myself in the glass, +almost crying. “As if you had anything to make you unhappy, instead +of everything to make you happy, you ungrateful heart!” said I. + +If I could have made myself go to sleep, I would have done it +directly, but not being able to do that, I took out of my basket some +ornamental work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was busy +with at that time and sat down to it with great determination. It was +necessary to count all the stitches in that work, and I resolved to +go on with it until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and then to go to +bed. + +I soon found myself very busy. But I had left some silk downstairs in +a work-table drawer in the temporary growlery, and coming to a stop +for want of it, I took my candle and went softly down to get it. To +my great surprise, on going in I found my guardian still there, and +sitting looking at the ashes. He was lost in thought, his book lay +unheeded by his side, his silvered iron-grey hair was scattered +confusedly upon his forehead as though his hand had been wandering +among it while his thoughts were elsewhere, and his face looked worn. +Almost frightened by coming upon him so unexpectedly, I stood still +for a moment and should have retired without speaking had he not, in +again passing his hand abstractedly through his hair, seen me and +started. + +“Esther!” + +I told him what I had come for. + +“At work so late, my dear?” + +“I am working late to-night,” said I, “because I couldn’t sleep and +wished to tire myself. But, dear guardian, you are late too, and look +weary. You have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?” + +“None, little woman, that YOU would readily understand,” said he. + +He spoke in a regretful tone so new to me that I inwardly repeated, +as if that would help me to his meaning, “That I could readily +understand!” + +“Remain a moment, Esther,” said he, “You were in my thoughts.” + +“I hope I was not the trouble, guardian?” + +He slightly waved his hand and fell into his usual manner. The change +was so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of so much +self-command, that I found myself again inwardly repeating, “None +that I could understand!” + +“Little woman,” said my guardian, “I was thinking—that is, I have +been thinking since I have been sitting here—that you ought to know +of your own history all I know. It is very little. Next to nothing.” + +“Dear guardian,” I replied, “when you spoke to me before on that +subject—” + +“But since then,” he gravely interposed, anticipating what I meant to +say, “I have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and my +having anything to tell you, are different considerations, Esther. It +is perhaps my duty to impart to you the little I know.” + +“If you think so, guardian, it is right.” + +“I think so,” he returned very gently, and kindly, and very +distinctly. “My dear, I think so now. If any real disadvantage can +attach to your position in the mind of any man or woman worth a +thought, it is right that you at least of all the world should not +magnify it to yourself by having vague impressions of its nature.” + +I sat down and said after a little effort to be as calm as I ought to +be, “One of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is of these words: +‘Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time +will come, and soon enough, when you will understand this better, and +will feel it too, as no one save a woman can.’” I had covered my face +with my hands in repeating the words, but I took them away now with a +better kind of shame, I hope, and told him that to him I owed the +blessing that I had from my childhood to that hour never, never, +never felt it. He put up his hand as if to stop me. I well knew that +he was never to be thanked, and said no more. + +“Nine years, my dear,” he said after thinking for a little while, +“have passed since I received a letter from a lady living in +seclusion, written with a stern passion and power that rendered it +unlike all other letters I have ever read. It was written to me (as +it told me in so many words), perhaps because it was the writer’s +idiosyncrasy to put that trust in me, perhaps because it was mine to +justify it. It told me of a child, an orphan girl then twelve years +old, in some such cruel words as those which live in your +remembrance. It told me that the writer had bred her in secrecy from +her birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence, and that if +the writer were to die before the child became a woman, she would be +left entirely friendless, nameless, and unknown. It asked me to +consider if I would, in that case, finish what the writer had begun.” + +I listened in silence and looked attentively at him. + +“Your early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium +through which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and the +distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the +need there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she was +quite innocent. I felt concerned for the little creature, in her +darkened life, and replied to the letter.” + +I took his hand and kissed it. + +“It laid the injunction on me that I should never propose to see the +writer, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with the +world, but who would see a confidential agent if I would appoint one. +I accredited Mr. Kenge. The lady said, of her own accord and not of +his seeking, that her name was an assumed one. That she was, if there +were any ties of blood in such a case, the child’s aunt. That more +than this she would never (and he was well persuaded of the +steadfastness of her resolution) for any human consideration +disclose. My dear, I have told you all.” + +I held his hand for a little while in mine. + +“I saw my ward oftener than she saw me,” he added, cheerily making +light of it, “and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy. +She repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every +hour in every day!” + +“And oftener still,” said I, “she blesses the guardian who is a +father to her!” + +At the word father, I saw his former trouble come into his face. He +subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but it had been +there and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if they +had given him a shock. I again inwardly repeated, wondering, “That I +could readily understand. None that I could readily understand!” No, +it was true. I did not understand it. Not for many and many a day. + +“Take a fatherly good night, my dear,” said he, kissing me on the +forehead, “and so to rest. These are late hours for working and +thinking. You do that for all of us, all day long, little +housekeeper!” + +I neither worked nor thought any more that night. I opened my +grateful heart to heaven in thankfulness for its providence to me and +its care of me, and fell asleep. + +We had a visitor next day. Mr. Allan Woodcourt came. He came to take +leave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. He was going to +China and to India as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be away a +long, long time. + +I believe—at least I know—that he was not rich. All his widowed +mother could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his +profession. It was not lucrative to a young practitioner, with very +little influence in London; and although he was, night and day, at +the service of numbers of poor people and did wonders of gentleness +and skill for them, he gained very little by it in money. He was +seven years older than I. Not that I need mention it, for it hardly +seems to belong to anything. + +I think—I mean, he told us—that he had been in practice three or +four years and that if he could have hoped to contend through three +or four more, he would not have made the voyage on which he was +bound. But he had no fortune or private means, and so he was going +away. He had been to see us several times altogether. We thought it a +pity he should go away. Because he was distinguished in his art among +those who knew it best, and some of the greatest men belonging to it +had a high opinion of him. + +When he came to bid us good-bye, he brought his mother with him for +the first time. She was a pretty old lady, with bright black eyes, +but she seemed proud. She came from Wales and had had, a long time +ago, an eminent person for an ancestor, of the name of Morgan +ap-Kerrig—of some place that sounded like Gimlet—who was the most +illustrious person that ever was known and all of whose relations +were a sort of royal family. He appeared to have passed his life +in always getting up into mountains and fighting somebody; and +a bard whose name sounded like Crumlinwallinwer had sung his +praises in a piece which was called, as nearly as I could catch it, +Mewlinnwillinwodd. + +Mrs. Woodcourt, after expatiating to us on the fame of her great +kinsman, said that no doubt wherever her son Allan went he would +remember his pedigree and would on no account form an alliance below +it. She told him that there were many handsome English ladies in +India who went out on speculation, and that there were some to be +picked up with property, but that neither charms nor wealth would +suffice for the descendant from such a line without birth, which must +ever be the first consideration. She talked so much about birth that +for a moment I half fancied, and with pain—But what an idle fancy to +suppose that she could think or care what MINE was! + +Mr. Woodcourt seemed a little distressed by her prolixity, but he was +too considerate to let her see it and contrived delicately to bring +the conversation round to making his acknowledgments to my guardian +for his hospitality and for the very happy hours—he called them the +very happy hours—he had passed with us. The recollection of them, he +said, would go with him wherever he went and would be always +treasured. And so we gave him our hands, one after another—at least, +they did—and I did; and so he put his lips to Ada’s hand—and to +mine; and so he went away upon his long, long voyage! + +I was very busy indeed all day and wrote directions home to the +servants, and wrote notes for my guardian, and dusted his books and +papers, and jingled my housekeeping keys a good deal, one way and +another. I was still busy between the lights, singing and working by +the window, when who should come in but Caddy, whom I had no +expectation of seeing! + +“Why, Caddy, my dear,” said I, “what beautiful flowers!” + +She had such an exquisite little nosegay in her hand. + +“Indeed, I think so, Esther,” replied Caddy. “They are the loveliest +I ever saw.” + +“Prince, my dear?” said I in a whisper. + +“No,” answered Caddy, shaking her head and holding them to me to +smell. “Not Prince.” + +“Well, to be sure, Caddy!” said I. “You must have two lovers!” + +“What? Do they look like that sort of thing?” said Caddy. + +“Do they look like that sort of thing?” I repeated, pinching her +cheek. + +Caddy only laughed in return, and telling me that she had come for +half an hour, at the expiration of which time Prince would be waiting +for her at the corner, sat chatting with me and Ada in the window, +every now and then handing me the flowers again or trying how they +looked against my hair. At last, when she was going, she took me into +my room and put them in my dress. + +“For me?” said I, surprised. + +“For you,” said Caddy with a kiss. “They were left behind by +somebody.” + +“Left behind?” + +“At poor Miss Flite’s,” said Caddy. “Somebody who has been very good +to her was hurrying away an hour ago to join a ship and left these +flowers behind. No, no! Don’t take them out. Let the pretty little +things lie here,” said Caddy, adjusting them with a careful hand, +“because I was present myself, and I shouldn’t wonder if somebody +left them on purpose!” + +“Do they look like that sort of thing?” said Ada, coming laughingly +behind me and clasping me merrily round the waist. “Oh, yes, indeed +they do, Dame Durden! They look very, very like that sort of thing. +Oh, very like it indeed, my dear!” + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +Lady Dedlock + + +It was not so easy as it had appeared at first to arrange for +Richard’s making a trial of Mr. Kenge’s office. Richard himself was +the chief impediment. As soon as he had it in his power to leave Mr. +Badger at any moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted to leave +him at all. He didn’t know, he said, really. It wasn’t a bad +profession; he couldn’t assert that he disliked it; perhaps he liked +it as well as he liked any other—suppose he gave it one more chance! +Upon that, he shut himself up for a few weeks with some books and +some bones and seemed to acquire a considerable fund of information +with great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about a month, began +to cool, and when it was quite cooled, began to grow warm again. His +vacillations between law and medicine lasted so long that midsummer +arrived before he finally separated from Mr. Badger and entered on an +experimental course of Messrs. Kenge and Carboy. For all his +waywardness, he took great credit to himself as being determined to +be in earnest “this time.” And he was so good-natured throughout, and +in such high spirits, and so fond of Ada, that it was very difficult +indeed to be otherwise than pleased with him. + +“As to Mr. Jarndyce,” who, I may mention, found the wind much given, +during this period, to stick in the east; “As to Mr. Jarndyce,” +Richard would say to me, “he is the finest fellow in the world, +Esther! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for his +satisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular wind-up +of this business now.” + +The idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing face +and heedless manner and with a fancy that everything could catch and +nothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However, he told us +between-whiles that he was doing it to such an extent that he +wondered his hair didn’t turn grey. His regular wind-up of the +business was (as I have said) that he went to Mr. Kenge’s about +midsummer to try how he liked it. + +All this time he was, in money affairs, what I have described him in +a former illustration—generous, profuse, wildly careless, but fully +persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I happened to +say to Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half seriously, about +the time of his going to Mr. Kenge’s, that he needed to have +Fortunatus’ purse, he made so light of money, which he answered in +this way, “My jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this old woman! Why +does she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it +was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. Now, if +I had stayed at Badger’s I should have been obliged to spend twelve +pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. So I make four +pounds—in a lump—by the transaction!” + +It was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what +arrangements should be made for his living in London while he +experimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to Bleak +House, and it was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener +than once a week. My guardian told me that if Richard were to settle +down at Mr. Kenge’s he would take some apartments or chambers where +we too could occasionally stay for a few days at a time; “but, little +woman,” he added, rubbing his head very significantly, “he hasn’t +settled down there yet!” The discussions ended in our hiring for him, +by the month, a neat little furnished lodging in a quiet old house +near Queen Square. He immediately began to spend all the money he had +in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this lodging; +and so often as Ada and I dissuaded him from making any purchase that +he had in contemplation which was particularly unnecessary and +expensive, he took credit for what it would have cost and made out +that to spend anything less on something else was to save the +difference. + +While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Boythorn’s was +postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of his lodging, +there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with +us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty +of his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel +the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him, +and my darling was delighted to praise him for being so busy. + +We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach and +had an entertaining companion in Mr. Skimpole. His furniture had been +all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took possession of it +on his blue-eyed daughter’s birthday, but he seemed quite relieved to +think that it was gone. Chairs and table, he said, were wearisome +objects; they were monotonous ideas, they had no variety of +expression, they looked you out of countenance, and you looked them +out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to be bound to no particular +chairs and tables, but to sport like a butterfly among all the +furniture on hire, and to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from +mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to that, as the humour took +one! + +“The oddity of the thing is,” said Mr. Skimpole with a quickened +sense of the ludicrous, “that my chairs and tables were not paid for, +and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as possible. +Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in it. The chair +and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why +should my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a pimple on my nose +which is disagreeable to my landlord’s peculiar ideas of beauty, my +landlord has no business to scratch my chair and table merchant’s +nose, which has no pimple on it. His reasoning seems defective!” + +“Well,” said my guardian good-humouredly, “it’s pretty clear that +whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to pay +for them.” + +“Exactly!” returned Mr. Skimpole. “That’s the crowning point of +unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, ‘My good man, you +are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay for +those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate manner. +Have you no consideration for HIS property?’ He hadn’t the least.” + +“And refused all proposals,” said my guardian. + +“Refused all proposals,” returned Mr. Skimpole. “I made him business +proposals. I had him into my room. I said, ‘You are a man of +business, I believe?’ He replied, ‘I am.’ ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘now +let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here are pens and +paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have occupied your house +for a considerable period, I believe to our mutual satisfaction until +this unpleasant misunderstanding arose; let us be at once friendly +and business-like. What do you want?’ In reply to this, he made use +of the figurative expression—which has something Eastern about +it—that he had never seen the colour of my money. ‘My amiable +friend,’ said I, ‘I never have any money. I never know anything about +money.’ ‘Well, sir,’ said he, ‘what do you offer if I give you time?’ +‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘I have no idea of time; but you say you +are a man of business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a +business-like way with pen, and ink, and paper—and wafers—I am +ready to do. Don’t pay yourself at another man’s expense (which is +foolish), but be business-like!’ However, he wouldn’t be, and there +was an end of it.” + +If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr. Skimpole’s childhood, +it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the journey he had a +very good appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (including +a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never thought of paying for +anything. So when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly +asked him what he considered a very good fee indeed, now—a liberal +one—and on his replying half a crown for a single passenger, said it +was little enough too, all things considered, and left Mr. Jarndyce +to give it him. + +It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the +larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the +trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind +blowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance! +Late in the afternoon we came to the market-town where we were to +alight from the coach—a dull little town with a church-spire, and a +marketplace, and a market-cross, and one intensely sunny street, and +a pond with an old horse cooling his legs in it, and a very few men +sleepily lying and standing about in narrow little bits of shade. +After the rustling of the leaves and the waving of the corn all along +the road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a little town as +England could produce. + +At the inn we found Mr. Boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open +carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He was +overjoyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity. + +“By heaven!” said he after giving us a courteous greeting. “This a +most infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an abominable +public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the earth. It is +twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon. The coachman ought +to be put to death!” + +“IS he after his time?” said Mr. Skimpole, to whom he happened to +address himself. “You know my infirmity.” + +“Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes!” replied Mr. Boythorn, +referring to his watch. “With two ladies in the coach, this scoundrel +has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty minutes. +Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be accidental! But his +father—and his uncle—were the most profligate coachmen that ever +sat upon a box.” + +While he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed us +into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness and was all smiles +and pleasure. + +“I am sorry, ladies,” he said, standing bare-headed at the +carriage-door when all was ready, “that I am obliged to conduct you +nearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road lies through Sir +Leicester Dedlock’s park, and in that fellow’s property I have sworn +never to set foot of mine, or horse’s foot of mine, pending the +present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of life!” +And here, catching my guardian’s eye, he broke into one of his +tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless little +market-town. + +“Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?” said my guardian as we drove +along and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the roadside. + +“Sir Arrogant Numskull is here,” replied Mr. Boythorn. “Ha ha ha! Sir +Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the heels +here. My Lady,” in naming whom he always made a courtly gesture as if +particularly to exclude her from any part in the quarrel, “is +expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least surprised that she +postpones her appearance as long as possible. Whatever can have +induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head +of a baronet is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever +baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!” + +“I suppose,” said my guardian, laughing, “WE may set foot in the park +while we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us, does it?” + +“I can lay no prohibition on my guests,” he said, bending his head to +Ada and me with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully upon +him, “except in the matter of their departure. I am only sorry that I +cannot have the happiness of being their escort about Chesney Wold, +which is a very fine place! But by the light of this summer day, +Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay with me, you are +likely to have but a cool reception. He carries himself like an +eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks +in gorgeous cases that never go and never went—Ha ha ha!—but he +will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you, for the friends of +his friend and neighbour Boythorn!” + +“I shall not put him to the proof,” said my guardian. “He is as +indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the +honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a view +of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough for +me.” + +“Well!” said Mr. Boythorn. “I am glad of it on the whole. It’s in +better keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax defying +the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a +Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect +to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the +Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised +that I don’t. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the +shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!” + +Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending enabled our +friend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us and diverted his +attention from its master. + +It was a picturesque old house in a fine park richly wooded. Among +the trees and not far from the residence he pointed out the spire of +the little church of which he had spoken. Oh, the solemn woods over +which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly wings +were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth +green slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the flowers were +so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how +beautiful they looked! The house, with gable and chimney, and tower, +and turret, and dark doorway, and broad terrace-walk, twining among +the balustrades of which, and lying heaped upon the vases, there was +one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in its light solidity +and in the serene and peaceful hush that rested on all around it. To +Ada and to me, that above all appeared the pervading influence. On +everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks, +fern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the +prospect to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom +upon it, there seemed to be such undisturbed repose. + +When we came into the little village and passed a small inn with the +sign of the Dedlock Arms swinging over the road in front, Mr. +Boythorn interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a +bench outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside +him. + +“That’s the housekeeper’s grandson, Mr. Rouncewell by name,” said, +he, “and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Lady +Dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep her +about her own fair person—an honour which my young friend himself +does not at all appreciate. However, he can’t marry just yet, even if +his Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. In +the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day or two at a time +to—fish. Ha ha ha ha!” + +“Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Boythorn?” asked Ada. + +“Why, my dear Miss Clare,” he returned, “I think they may perhaps +understand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and I +must learn from you on such a point—not you from me.” + +Ada blushed, and Mr. Boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey +horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm +and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived. + +He lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage house, with a lawn +in front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-stocked +orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable +wall that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. But, indeed, everything +about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old +lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the +cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the +gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested +on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like +profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled +about among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and +winking in the sun there were such heaps of drooping pods, and +marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground appeared a +vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all kinds of +wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring meadows where +the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. Such +stillness and composure reigned within the orderly precincts of the +old red wall that even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the +birds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a ripening influence that +where, here and there high up, a disused nail and scrap of list still +clung to it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed with the +changing seasons and that they had rusted and decayed according to +the common fate. + +The house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the garden, +was a real old house with settles in the chimney of the brick-floored +kitchen and great beams across the ceilings. On one side of it was +the terrible piece of ground in dispute, where Mr. Boythorn +maintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose duty was +supposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to ring a large +bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great bull-dog +established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal +destruction on the enemy. Not content with these precautions, Mr. +Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards to +which his name was attached in large letters, the following solemn +warnings: “Beware of the bull-dog. He is most ferocious. Lawrence +Boythorn.” “The blunderbus is loaded with slugs. Lawrence Boythorn.” +“Man-traps and spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and +night. Lawrence Boythorn.” “Take notice. That any person or persons +audaciously presuming to trespass on this property will be punished +with the utmost severity of private chastisement and prosecuted with +the utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence Boythorn.” These he showed us +from the drawing-room window, while his bird was hopping about his +head, and he laughed, “Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!” to that extent as +he pointed them out that I really thought he would have hurt himself. + +“But this is taking a good deal of trouble,” said Mr. Skimpole in his +light way, “when you are not in earnest after all.” + +“Not in earnest!” returned Mr. Boythorn with unspeakable warmth. “Not +in earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have bought a +lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose upon the +first intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroachment on +my rights. Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to come out and decide +this question by single combat, and I will meet him with any weapon +known to mankind in any age or country. I am that much in earnest. +Not more!” + +We arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the Sunday morning we all +set forth to walk to the little church in the park. Entering the +park, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a +pleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful +trees until it brought us to the church-porch. + +The congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one with the +exception of a large muster of servants from the house, some of whom +were already in their seats, while others were yet dropping in. There +were some stately footmen, and there was a perfect picture of an old +coachman, who looked as if he were the official representative of all +the pomps and vanities that had ever been put into his coach. There +was a very pretty show of young women, and above them, the handsome +old face and fine responsible portly figure of the housekeeper +towered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of whom Mr. Boythorn had told us +was close by her. She was so very pretty that I might have known her +by her beauty even if I had not seen how blushingly conscious she was +of the eyes of the young fisherman, whom I discovered not far off. +One face, and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed +maliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and +everything there. It was a Frenchwoman’s. + +As the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come, I +had leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthy as a +grave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it +was. The windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued light +that made the faces around me pale, and darkened the old brasses in +the pavement and the time and damp-worn monuments, and rendered the +sunshine in the little porch, where a monotonous ringer was working +at the bell, inestimably bright. But a stir in that direction, a +gathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces, and a blandly +ferocious assumption on the part of Mr. Boythorn of being resolutely +unconscious of somebody’s existence forewarned me that the great +people were come and that the service was going to begin. + +“‘Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy +sight—’” + +Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by the +look I met as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in which +those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and +to hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine down—released +again, if I may say so—on my book; but I knew the beautiful face +quite well in that short space of time. + +And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me, +associated with the lonely days at my godmother’s; yes, away even to +the days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little +glass after dressing my doll. And this, although I had never seen +this lady’s face before in all my life—I was quite sure of +it—absolutely certain. + +It was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired +gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir +Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her +face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in +which I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so +fluttered and troubled (for I was still) by having casually met her +eyes, I could not think. + +I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome it +by attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I seemed to +hear them, not in the reader’s voice, but in the well-remembered +voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady Dedlock’s face +accidentally resemble my godmother’s? It might be that it did, a +little; but the expression was so different, and the stern decision +which had worn into my godmother’s face, like weather into rocks, was +so completely wanting in the face before me that it could not be that +resemblance which had struck me. Neither did I know the loftiness and +haughtiness of Lady Dedlock’s face, at all, in any one. And yet I—I, +little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart and on +whose birthday there was no rejoicing—seemed to arise before my own +eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady, +whom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I +perfectly well knew I had never seen until that hour. + +It made me tremble so to be thrown into this unaccountable agitation +that I was conscious of being distressed even by the observation of +the French maid, though I knew she had been looking watchfully here, +and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her coming into the +church. By degrees, though very slowly, I at last overcame my strange +emotion. After a long time, I looked towards Lady Dedlock again. It +was while they were preparing to sing, before the sermon. She took no +heed of me, and the beating at my heart was gone. Neither did it +revive for more than a few moments when she once or twice afterwards +glanced at Ada or at me through her glass. + +The service being concluded, Sir Leicester gave his arm with much +taste and gallantry to Lady Dedlock—though he was obliged to walk by +the help of a thick stick—and escorted her out of church to the pony +carriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed, and so +did the congregation, whom Sir Leicester had contemplated all along +(Mr. Skimpole said to Mr. Boythorn’s infinite delight) as if he were +a considerable landed proprietor in heaven. + +“He believes he is!” said Mr. Boythorn. “He firmly believes it. So +did his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!” + +“Do you know,” pursued Mr. Skimpole very unexpectedly to Mr. +Boythorn, “it’s agreeable to me to see a man of that sort.” + +“IS it!” said Mr. Boythorn. + +“Say that he wants to patronize me,” pursued Mr. Skimpole. “Very +well! I don’t object.” + +“I do,” said Mr. Boythorn with great vigour. + +“Do you really?” returned Mr. Skimpole in his easy light vein. “But +that’s taking trouble, surely. And why should you take trouble? Here +am I, content to receive things childishly as they fall out, and I +never take trouble! I come down here, for instance, and I find a +mighty potentate exacting homage. Very well! I say ‘Mighty potentate, +here IS my homage! It’s easier to give it than to withhold it. Here +it is. If you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, I +shall be happy to see it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature +to give me, I shall be happy to accept it.’ Mighty potentate replies +in effect, ‘This is a sensible fellow. I find him accord with my +digestion and my bilious system. He doesn’t impose upon me the +necessity of rolling myself up like a hedgehog with my points +outward. I expand, I open, I turn my silver lining outward like +Milton’s cloud, and it’s more agreeable to both of us.’ That’s my +view of such things, speaking as a child!” + +“But suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow,” said Mr. +Boythorn, “where there was the opposite of that fellow—or of this +fellow. How then?” + +“How then?” said Mr. Skimpole with an appearance of the utmost +simplicity and candour. “Just the same then! I should say, ‘My +esteemed Boythorn’—to make you the personification of our imaginary +friend—‘my esteemed Boythorn, you object to the mighty potentate? +Very good. So do I. I take it that my business in the social system +is to be agreeable; I take it that everybody’s business in the social +system is to be agreeable. It’s a system of harmony, in short. +Therefore if you object, I object. Now, excellent Boythorn, let us go +to dinner!’” + +“But excellent Boythorn might say,” returned our host, swelling and +growing very red, “I’ll be—” + +“I understand,” said Mr. Skimpole. “Very likely he would.” + +“—if I WILL go to dinner!” cried Mr. Boythorn in a violent burst and +stopping to strike his stick upon the ground. “And he would probably +add, ‘Is there such a thing as principle, Mr. Harold Skimpole?’” + +“To which Harold Skimpole would reply, you know,” he returned in his +gayest manner and with his most ingenuous smile, “‘Upon my life I +have not the least idea! I don’t know what it is you call by that +name, or where it is, or who possesses it. If you possess it and find +it comfortable, I am quite delighted and congratulate you heartily. +But I know nothing about it, I assure you; for I am a mere child, and +I lay no claim to it, and I don’t want it!’ So, you see, excellent +Boythorn and I would go to dinner after all!” + +This was one of many little dialogues between them which I always +expected to end, and which I dare say would have ended under other +circumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host. But +he had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible position as +our entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely at and with Mr. +Skimpole, as a child who blew bubbles and broke them all day long, +that matters never went beyond this point. Mr. Skimpole, who always +seemed quite unconscious of having been on delicate ground, then +betook himself to beginning some sketch in the park which he never +finished, or to playing fragments of airs on the piano, or to singing +scraps of songs, or to lying down on his back under a tree and +looking at the sky—which he couldn’t help thinking, he said, was +what he was meant for; it suited him so exactly. + +“Enterprise and effort,” he would say to us (on his back), “are +delightful to me. I believe I am truly cosmopolitan. I have the +deepest sympathy with them. I lie in a shady place like this and +think of adventurous spirits going to the North Pole or penetrating +to the heart of the Torrid Zone with admiration. Mercenary creatures +ask, ‘What is the use of a man’s going to the North Pole? What good +does it do?’ I can’t say; but, for anything I CAN say, he may go for +the purpose—though he don’t know it—of employing my thoughts as I +lie here. Take an extreme case. Take the case of the slaves on +American plantations. I dare say they are worked hard, I dare say +they don’t altogether like it. I dare say theirs is an unpleasant +experience on the whole; but they people the landscape for me, they +give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter +objects of their existence. I am very sensible of it, if it be, and I +shouldn’t wonder if it were!” + +I always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of Mrs. +Skimpole and the children, and in what point of view they presented +themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could understand, +they rarely presented themselves at all. + +The week had gone round to the Saturday following that beating of my +heart in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue that +to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among the +transparent leaves and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the +shadows of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs and the +air was drowsy with the hum of insects, had been most delightful. We +had one favourite spot, deep in moss and last year’s leaves, where +there were some felled trees from which the bark was all stripped +off. Seated among these, we looked through a green vista supported by +thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of trees, upon a +distant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the shade in +which we sat and made so precious by the arched perspective through +which we saw it that it was like a glimpse of the better land. Upon +the Saturday we sat here, Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard +thunder muttering in the distance and felt the large raindrops rattle +through the leaves. + +The weather had been all the week extremely sultry, but the storm +broke so suddenly—upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot—that +before we reached the outskirts of the wood the thunder and lightning +were frequent and the rain came plunging through the leaves as if +every drop were a great leaden bead. As it was not a time for +standing among trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and down the +moss-grown steps which crossed the plantation-fence like two +broad-staved ladders placed back to back, and made for a keeper’s +lodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed the dark beauty +of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the ivy +clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we +had once seen the keeper’s dog dive down into the fern as if it were +water. + +The lodge was so dark within, now the sky was overcast, that we only +clearly saw the man who came to the door when we took shelter there +and put two chairs for Ada and me. The lattice-windows were all +thrown open, and we sat just within the doorway watching the storm. +It was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove +the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn +thunder and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the +tremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to +consider how beneficent they are and how upon the smallest flower and +leaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage +which seemed to make creation new again. + +“Is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?” + +“Oh, no, Esther dear!” said Ada quietly. + +Ada said it to me, but I had not spoken. + +The beating of my heart came back again. I had never heard the voice, +as I had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange +way. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable +pictures of myself. + +Lady Dedlock had taken shelter in the lodge before our arrival there +and had come out of the gloom within. She stood behind my chair with +her hand upon it. I saw her with her hand close to my shoulder when I +turned my head. + +“I have frightened you?” she said. + +No. It was not fright. Why should I be frightened! + +“I believe,” said Lady Dedlock to my guardian, “I have the pleasure +of speaking to Mr. Jarndyce.” + +“Your remembrance does me more honour than I had supposed it would, +Lady Dedlock,” he returned. + +“I recognized you in church on Sunday. I am sorry that any local +disputes of Sir Leicester’s—they are not of his seeking, however, I +believe—should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to show +you any attention here.” + +“I am aware of the circumstances,” returned my guardian with a smile, +“and am sufficiently obliged.” + +She had given him her hand in an indifferent way that seemed habitual +to her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner, though in a +very pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was beautiful, +perfectly self-possessed, and had the air, I thought, of being able +to attract and interest any one if she had thought it worth her +while. The keeper had brought her a chair on which she sat in the +middle of the porch between us. + +“Is the young gentleman disposed of whom you wrote to Sir Leicester +about and whose wishes Sir Leicester was sorry not to have it in his +power to advance in any way?” she said over her shoulder to my +guardian. + +“I hope so,” said he. + +She seemed to respect him and even to wish to conciliate him. There +was something very winning in her haughty manner, and it became more +familiar—I was going to say more easy, but that could hardly be—as +she spoke to him over her shoulder. + +“I presume this is your other ward, Miss Clare?” + +He presented Ada, in form. + +“You will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote character,” +said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce over her shoulder again, “if you +only redress the wrongs of beauty like this. But present me,” and she +turned full upon me, “to this young lady too!” + +“Miss Summerson really is my ward,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “I am +responsible to no Lord Chancellor in her case.” + +“Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?” said my Lady. + +“Yes.” + +“She is very fortunate in her guardian.” + +Lady Dedlock looked at me, and I looked at her and said I was indeed. +All at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost expressive of +displeasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her shoulder again. + +“Ages have passed since we were in the habit of meeting, Mr. +Jarndyce.” + +“A long time. At least I thought it was a long time, until I saw you +last Sunday,” he returned. + +“What! Even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become one +to me!” she said with some disdain. “I have achieved that reputation, +I suppose.” + +“You have achieved so much, Lady Dedlock,” said my guardian, “that +you pay some little penalty, I dare say. But none to me.” + +“So much!” she repeated, slightly laughing. “Yes!” + +With her air of superiority, and power, and fascination, and I know +not what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little more than +children. So, as she slightly laughed and afterwards sat looking at +the rain, she was as self-possessed and as free to occupy herself +with her own thoughts as if she had been alone. + +“I think you knew my sister when we were abroad together better than +you know me?” she said, looking at him again. + +“Yes, we happened to meet oftener,” he returned. + +“We went our several ways,” said Lady Dedlock, “and had little in +common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I +suppose, but it could not be helped.” + +Lady Dedlock again sat looking at the rain. The storm soon began to +pass upon its way. The shower greatly abated, the lightning ceased, +the thunder rolled among the distant hills, and the sun began to +glisten on the wet leaves and the falling rain. As we sat there, +silently, we saw a little pony phaeton coming towards us at a merry +pace. + +“The messenger is coming back, my Lady,” said the keeper, “with the +carriage.” + +As it drove up, we saw that there were two people inside. There +alighted from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the +Frenchwoman whom I had seen in church, and secondly the pretty girl, +the Frenchwoman with a defiant confidence, the pretty girl confused +and hesitating. + +“What now?” said Lady Dedlock. “Two!” + +“I am your maid, my Lady, at the present,” said the Frenchwoman. “The +message was for the attendant.” + +“I was afraid you might mean me, my Lady,” said the pretty girl. + +“I did mean you, child,” replied her mistress calmly. “Put that shawl +on me.” + +She slightly stooped her shoulders to receive it, and the pretty girl +lightly dropped it in its place. The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed, +looking on with her lips very tightly set. + +“I am sorry,” said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce, “that we are not +likely to renew our former acquaintance. You will allow me to send +the carriage back for your two wards. It shall be here directly.” + +But as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a graceful +leave of Ada—none of me—and put her hand upon his proffered arm, +and got into the carriage, which was a little, low, park carriage +with a hood. + +“Come in, child,” she said to the pretty girl; “I shall want you. Go +on!” + +The carriage rolled away, and the Frenchwoman, with the wrappers she +had brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where she had +alighted. + +I suppose there is nothing pride can so little bear with as pride +itself, and that she was punished for her imperious manner. Her +retaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She remained +perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and +then, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her +shoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same +direction through the wettest of the wet grass. + +“Is that young woman mad?” said my guardian. + +“Oh, no, sir!” said the keeper, who, with his wife, was looking after +her. “Hortense is not one of that sort. She has as good a head-piece +as the best. But she’s mortal high and passionate—powerful high and +passionate; and what with having notice to leave, and having others +put above her, she don’t take kindly to it.” + +“But why should she walk shoeless through all that water?” said my +guardian. + +“Why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!” said the man. + +“Or unless she fancies it’s blood,” said the woman. “She’d as soon +walk through that as anything else, I think, when her own’s up!” + +We passed not far from the house a few minutes afterwards. Peaceful +as it had looked when we first saw it, it looked even more so now, +with a diamond spray glittering all about it, a light wind blowing, +the birds no longer hushed but singing strongly, everything refreshed +by the late rain, and the little carriage shining at the doorway like +a fairy carriage made of silver. Still, very steadfastly and quietly +walking towards it, a peaceful figure too in the landscape, went +Mademoiselle Hortense, shoeless, through the wet grass. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +Moving On + + +It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good +ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, +iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing +clippers are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of +ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse their +papers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where. The +courts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep. +Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales might +sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found there, +walk. + +The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants’ Inn, and Lincoln’s Inn even +unto the Fields are like tidal harbours at low water, where stranded +proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lop-sided +stools that will not recover their perpendicular until the current of +Term sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vacation. +Outer doors of chambers are shut up by the score, messages and +parcels are to be left at the Porter’s Lodge by the bushel. A crop of +grass would grow in the chinks of the stone pavement outside +Lincoln’s Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters, who have nothing to +do beyond sitting in the shade there, with their white aprons over +their heads to keep the flies off, grub it up and eat it +thoughtfully. + +There is only one judge in town. Even he only comes twice a week to +sit in chambers. If the country folks of those assize towns on his +circuit could see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red petticoats, +no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. Merely a close-shaved +gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea-bronze on the +judicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by the solar rays +from the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop as he +comes along and drinks iced ginger-beer! + +The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How +England can get on through four long summer months without its +bar—which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only +legitimate triumph in prosperity—is beside the question; assuredly +that shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear. The +learned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the +unprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by the +opposite party that he never seems likely to recover it is doing +infinitely better than might be expected in Switzerland. The learned +gentleman who does the withering business and who blights all +opponents with his gloomy sarcasm is as merry as a grig at a French +watering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the +smallest provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks. The very +learned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery +complexion in pools and fountains of law until he has become great in +knotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the drowsy bench with +legal “chaff,” inexplicable to the uninitiated and to most of the +initiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic delight in aridity +and dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed fragments of the same +great palladium are to be found on the canals of Venice, at the +second cataract of the Nile, in the baths of Germany, and sprinkled +on the sea-sand all over the English coast. Scarcely one is to be +encountered in the deserted region of Chancery Lane. If such a lonely +member of the bar do flit across the waste, and come upon a prowling +suitor who is unable to leave off haunting the scenes of his anxiety, +they frighten one another and retreat into opposite shades. + +It is the hottest long vacation known for many years. All the young +clerks are madly in love, and according to their various degrees, +pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Margate, Ramsgate, or +Gravesend. All the middle-aged clerks think their families too large. +All the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns of Court and pant about +staircases and other dry places seeking water give short howls of +aggravation. All the blind men’s dogs in the streets draw their +masters against pumps or trip them over buckets. A shop with a +sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of gold and silver fish +in the window, is a sanctuary. Temple Bar gets so hot that it is, to +the adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater is in an urn, and +keeps them simmering all night. + +There are offices about the Inns of Court in which a man might be +cool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in +dullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those +retirements seem to blaze. In Mr. Krook’s court, it is so hot that +the people turn their houses inside out and sit in chairs upon the +pavement—Mr. Krook included, who there pursues his studies, with his +cat (who never is too hot) by his side. The Sol’s Arms has +discontinued the Harmonic Meetings for the season, and Little Swills +is engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he comes out +in quite an innocent manner and sings comic ditties of a juvenile +complexion calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the feelings of +the most fastidious mind. + +Over all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil of +rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long +vacation. Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer of Cook’s Court, Cursitor +Street, is sensible of the influence not only in his mind as a +sympathetic and contemplative man, but also in his business as a +law-stationer aforesaid. He has more leisure for musing in Staple Inn +and in the Rolls Yard during the long vacation than at other seasons, +and he says to the two ’prentices, what a thing it is in such hot +weather to think that you live in an island with the sea a-rolling +and a-bowling right round you. + +Guster is busy in the little drawing-room on this present afternoon +in the long vacation, when Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby have it in +contemplation to receive company. The expected guests are rather +select than numerous, being Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and no more. From +Mr. Chadband’s being much given to describe himself, both verbally +and in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken by strangers +for a gentleman connected with navigation, but he is, as he expresses +it, “in the ministry.” Mr. Chadband is attached to no particular +denomination and is considered by his persecutors to have nothing so +very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects as to render his +volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent on his conscience; +but he has his followers, and Mrs. Snagsby is of the number. Mrs. +Snagsby has but recently taken a passage upward by the vessel, +Chadband; and her attention was attracted to that Bark A 1, when she +was something flushed by the hot weather. + +“My little woman,” says Mr. Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn, +“likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!” + +So Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the +handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of +holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little +drawing-room for tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the +portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth, +the best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision +made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin +slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows +of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to be +brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For Chadband is +rather a consuming vessel—the persecutors say a gorging vessel—and +can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork remarkably +well. + +Mr. Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when +they are completed and coughing his cough of deference behind his +hand, says to Mrs. Snagsby, “At what time did you expect Mr. and Mrs. +Chadband, my love?” + +“At six,” says Mrs. Snagsby. + +Mr. Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way that “it’s gone that.” + +“Perhaps you’d like to begin without them,” is Mrs. Snagsby’s +reproachful remark. + +Mr. Snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he says, +with his cough of mildness, “No, my dear, no. I merely named the +time.” + +“What’s time,” says Mrs. Snagsby, “to eternity?” + +“Very true, my dear,” says Mr. Snagsby. “Only when a person lays in +victuals for tea, a person does it with a view—perhaps—more to +time. And when a time is named for having tea, it’s better to come up +to it.” + +“To come up to it!” Mrs. Snagsby repeats with severity. “Up to it! As +if Mr. Chadband was a fighter!” + +“Not at all, my dear,” says Mr. Snagsby. + +Here, Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes +rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular +ghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that Mr. +and Mrs. Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the inner +door in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is +admonished by Mrs. Snagsby, on pain of instant reconsignment to her +patron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement. Much +discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order) +by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as to +announce “Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay, +whatsername!” and retires conscience-stricken from the presence. + +Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general +appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs. +Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband moves +softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk +upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were +inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much in a +perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first putting +up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is +going to edify them. + +“My friends,” says Mr. Chadband, “peace be on this house! On the +master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on +the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is +it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and +beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore, +my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours.” + +In consequence of Mrs. Snagsby looking deeply edified, Mr. Snagsby +thinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is well received. + +“Now, my friends,” proceeds Mr. Chadband, “since I am upon this +theme—” + +Guster presents herself. Mrs. Snagsby, in a spectral bass voice and +without removing her eyes from Chadband, says with dreadful +distinctness, “Go away!” + +“Now, my friends,” says Chadband, “since I am upon this theme, and in +my lowly path improving it—” + +Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur “one thousing seven hundred +and eighty-two.” The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, “Go away!” + +“Now, my friends,” says Mr. Chadband, “we will inquire in a spirit of +love—” + +Still Guster reiterates “one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two.” + +Mr. Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to be +persecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile, +says, “Let us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!” + +“One thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir. Which +he wish to know what the shilling ware for,” says Guster, breathless. + +“For?” returns Mrs. Chadband. “For his fare!” + +Guster replied that “he insistes on one and eightpence or on +summonsizzing the party.” Mrs. Snagsby and Mrs. Chadband are +proceeding to grow shrill in indignation when Mr. Chadband quiets the +tumult by lifting up his hand. + +“My friends,” says he, “I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday. It +is right that I should be chastened in some penalty. I ought not to +murmur. Rachael, pay the eightpence!” + +While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby, as +who should say, “You hear this apostle!” and while Mr. Chadband glows +with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money. It is Mr. +Chadband’s habit—it is the head and front of his pretensions +indeed—to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the +smallest items and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions. + +“My friends,” says Chadband, “eightpence is not much; it might justly +have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a crown. +O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!” + +With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in +verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair, +lifts up his admonitory hand. + +“My friends,” says he, “what is this which we now behold as being +spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my +friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because +we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of +the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We +cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?” + +Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to +observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, “No wings.” But is +immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby. + +“I say, my friends,” pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and +obliterating Mr. Snagsby’s suggestion, “why can we not fly? Is it +because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends, +without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength, +my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double +up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground. +Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive +the strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it,” says Chadband, +glancing over the table, “from bread in various forms, from butter +which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow, +from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from +sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good +things which are set before us!” + +The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr. +Chadband’s piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after +this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their +determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody’s +experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and +much admired. + +Mr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at +Mr. Snagsby’s table and lays about him prodigiously. The conversion +of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned +appears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this +exemplary vessel that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be +described as always becoming a kind of considerable oil mills or +other large factory for the production of that article on a wholesale +scale. On the present evening of the long vacation, in Cook’s Court, +Cursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke of business that the +warehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease. + +At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never recovered +her first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means +of bringing the establishment and herself into contempt—among which +may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing +military music on Mr. Chadband’s head with plates, and afterwards +crowning that gentleman with muffins—at which period of the +entertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Snagsby that he is wanted. + +“And being wanted in the—not to put too fine a point upon it—in the +shop,” says Mr. Snagsby, rising, “perhaps this good company will +excuse me for half a minute.” + +Mr. Snagsby descends and finds the two ’prentices intently +contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm. + +“Why, bless my heart,” says Mr. Snagsby, “what’s the matter!” + +“This boy,” says the constable, “although he’s repeatedly told to, +won’t move on—” + +“I’m always a-moving on, sar,” cries the boy, wiping away his grimy +tears with his arm. “I’ve always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever +since I was born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor I do +move!” + +“He won’t move on,” says the constable calmly, with a slight +professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his +stiff stock, “although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and +therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He’s as obstinate a +young gonoph as I know. He WON’T move on.” + +“Oh, my eye! Where can I move to!” cries the boy, clutching quite +desperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor of +Mr. Snagsby’s passage. + +“Don’t you come none of that or I shall make blessed short work of +you!” says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. “My +instructions are that you are to move on. I have told you so five +hundred times.” + +“But where?” cries the boy. + +“Well! Really, constable, you know,” says Mr. Snagsby wistfully, and +coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt, +“really, that does seem a question. Where, you know?” + +“My instructions don’t go to that,” replies the constable. “My +instructions are that this boy is to move on.” + +Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else that the +great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few years +in this business to set you the example of moving on. The one grand +recipe remains for you—the profound philosophical prescription—the +be-all and the end-all of your strange existence upon earth. Move on! +You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the great lights can’t at +all agree about that. Move on! + +Mr. Snagsby says nothing to this effect, says nothing at all indeed, +but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no thoroughfare in any +direction. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and Mrs. Snagsby, +hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. Guster having +never left the end of the passage, the whole household are assembled. + +“The simple question is, sir,” says the constable, “whether you know +this boy. He says you do.” + +Mrs. Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, “No he don’t!” + +“My lit-tle woman!” says Mr. Snagsby, looking up the staircase. “My +love, permit me! Pray have a moment’s patience, my dear. I do know +something of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can’t say that +there’s any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable.” To whom the +law-stationer relates his Joful and woeful experience, suppressing +the half-crown fact. + +“Well!” says the constable, “so far, it seems, he had grounds for +what he said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said you +knew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he was +acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, and if +I’d call and make the inquiry, he’d appear. The young man don’t seem +inclined to keep his word, but—Oh! Here IS the young man!” + +Enter Mr. Guppy, who nods to Mr. Snagsby and touches his hat with the +chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs. + +“I was strolling away from the office just now when I found this row +going on,” says Mr. Guppy to the law-stationer, “and as your name was +mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be looked into.” + +“It was very good-natured of you, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, “and I am +obliged to you.” And Mr. Snagsby again relates his experience, again +suppressing the half-crown fact. + +“Now, I know where you live,” says the constable, then, to Jo. “You +live down in Tom-all-Alone’s. That’s a nice innocent place to live +in, ain’t it?” + +“I can’t go and live in no nicer place, sir,” replies Jo. “They +wouldn’t have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice innocent +place fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging to such +a reg’lar one as me!” + +“You are very poor, ain’t you?” says the constable. + +“Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin’ral,” replies Jo. “I leave +you to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him,” says the +constable, producing them to the company, “in only putting my hand +upon him!” + +“They’re wot’s left, Mr. Snagsby,” says Jo, “out of a sov-ring as wos +give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as come to +my crossin one night and asked to be showd this ’ere ouse and the +ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the berrin-ground +wot he’s berrid in. She ses to me she ses ‘are you the boy at the +inkwhich?’ she ses. I ses ‘yes’ I ses. She ses to me she ses ‘can you +show me all them places?’ I ses ‘yes I can’ I ses. And she ses to me +‘do it’ and I dun it and she giv me a sov’ring and hooked it. And I +an’t had much of the sov’ring neither,” says Jo, with dirty tears, +“fur I had to pay five bob, down in Tom-all-Alone’s, afore they’d +square it fur to give me change, and then a young man he thieved +another five while I was asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence +and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it.” + +“You don’t expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the +sovereign, do you?” says the constable, eyeing him aside with +ineffable disdain. + +“I don’t know as I do, sir,” replies Jo. “I don’t expect nothink at +all, sir, much, but that’s the true hist’ry on it.” + +“You see what he is!” the constable observes to the audience. “Well, +Mr. Snagsby, if I don’t lock him up this time, will you engage for +his moving on?” + +“No!” cries Mrs. Snagsby from the stairs. + +“My little woman!” pleads her husband. “Constable, I have no doubt +he’ll move on. You know you really must do it,” says Mr. Snagsby. + +“I’m everyways agreeable, sir,” says the hapless Jo. + +“Do it, then,” observes the constable. “You know what you have got to +do. Do it! And recollect you won’t get off so easy next time. Catch +hold of your money. Now, the sooner you’re five mile off, the better +for all parties.” + +With this farewell hint and pointing generally to the setting sun as +a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors good +afternoon and makes the echoes of Cook’s Court perform slow music for +him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his iron-bound hat +in his hand for a little ventilation. + +Now, Jo’s improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign has +awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr. Guppy, +who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has +been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation, +takes that interest in the case that he enters on a regular +cross-examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by +the ladies that Mrs. Snagsby politely invites him to step upstairs +and drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of +the tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr. Guppy +yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow into +the drawing-room doorway, where Mr. Guppy takes him in hand as a +witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape +like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying him +according to the best models. Nor is the examination unlike many such +model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing and of its +being lengthy, for Mr. Guppy is sensible of his talent, and Mrs. +Snagsby feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive disposition, +but that it lifts her husband’s establishment higher up in the law. +During the progress of this keen encounter, the vessel Chadband, +being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets aground and waits to be +floated off. + +“Well!” says Mr. Guppy. “Either this boy sticks to it like +cobbler’s-wax or there is something out of the common here that beats +anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy’s.” + +Mrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Snagsby, who exclaims, “You don’t say +so!” + +“For years!” replied Mrs. Chadband. + +“Has known Kenge and Carboy’s office for years,” Mrs. Snagsby +triumphantly explains to Mr. Guppy. “Mrs. Chadband—this gentleman’s +wife—Reverend Mr. Chadband.” + +“Oh, indeed!” says Mr. Guppy. + +“Before I married my present husband,” says Mrs. Chadband. + +“Was you a party in anything, ma’am?” says Mr. Guppy, transferring +his cross-examination. + +“No.” + +“NOT a party in anything, ma’am?” says Mr. Guppy. + +Mrs. Chadband shakes her head. + +“Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in +something, ma’am?” says Mr. Guppy, who likes nothing better than to +model his conversation on forensic principles. + +“Not exactly that, either,” replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the joke +with a hard-favoured smile. + +“Not exactly that, either!” repeats Mr. Guppy. “Very good. Pray, +ma’am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions +(we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and +Carboy’s office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take +time, ma’am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma’am?” + +“Neither,” says Mrs. Chadband as before. + +“Oh! A child!” says Mr. Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs. Snagsby +the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on British +jurymen. “Now, ma’am, perhaps you’ll have the kindness to tell us +WHAT child.” + +“You have got it at last, sir,” says Mrs. Chadband with another +hard-favoured smile. “Well, sir, it was before your time, most +likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a child +named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs. Kenge and +Carboy.” + +“Miss Summerson, ma’am!” cries Mr. Guppy, excited. + +“I call her Esther Summerson,” says Mrs. Chadband with austerity. +“There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther. +‘Esther, do this! Esther, do that!’ and she was made to do it.” + +“My dear ma’am,” returns Mr. Guppy, moving across the small +apartment, “the humble individual who now addresses you received that +young lady in London when she first came here from the establishment +to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the pleasure of taking +you by the hand.” + +Mr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed +signal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his +pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Snagsby whispers “Hush!” + +“My friends,” says Chadband, “we have partaken in moderation” (which +was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned) “of the +comforts which have been provided for us. May this house live upon +the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may +it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it +proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends, have we partaken of +anything else? We have. My friends, of what else have we partaken? Of +spiritual profit? Yes. From whence have we derived that spiritual +profit? My young friend, stand forth!” + +Jo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch +forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the eloquent +Chadband with evident doubts of his intentions. + +“My young friend,” says Chadband, “you are to us a pearl, you are to +us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And why, my +young friend?” + +“I don’t know,” replies Jo. “I don’t know nothink.” + +“My young friend,” says Chadband, “it is because you know nothing +that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young +friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A +fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A +human boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young +friend? Because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom, +because you are capable of profiting by this discourse which I now +deliver for your good, because you are not a stick, or a staff, or a +stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar. + + O running stream of sparkling joy + To be a soaring human boy! + +And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No. +Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are in a +state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because +you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of +bondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a spirit of +love, inquire.” + +At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have +been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his +face and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs. Snagsby indignantly expresses +her belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend. + +“My friends,” says Mr. Chadband with his persecuted chin folding +itself into its fat smile again as he looks round, “it is right that +I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is right +that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I +stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride of my three +hours’ improving. The account is now favourably balanced: my creditor +has accepted a composition. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be +joyful!” + +Great sensation on the part of Mrs. Snagsby. + +“My friends,” says Chadband, looking round him in conclusion, “I will +not proceed with my young friend now. Will you come to-morrow, my +young friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am to be found to +deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like the thirsty +swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the +day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?” +(This with a cow-like lightness.) + +Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms, +gives a shuffling nod. Mr. Guppy then throws him a penny, and Mrs. +Snagsby calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house. But +before he goes downstairs, Mr. Snagsby loads him with some broken +meats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms. + +So, Mr. Chadband—of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he +should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable +nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave +off, having once the audacity to begin—retires into private life +until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo +moves on, through the long vacation, down to Blackfriars Bridge, +where he finds a baking stony corner wherein to settle to his repast. + +And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the great +cross on the summit of St. Paul’s Cathedral, glittering above a +red-and-violet-tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy’s face one might +suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion +of the great, confused city—so golden, so high up, so far out of his +reach. There he sits, the sun going down, the river running fast, the +crowd flowing by him in two streams—everything moving on to some +purpose and to one end—until he is stirred up and told to “move on” +too. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +A New Lodger + + +The long vacation saunters on towards term-time like an idle river +very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. Mr. Guppy +saunters along with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of his +penknife and broken the point off by sticking that instrument into +his desk in every direction. Not that he bears the desk any ill will, +but he must do something, and it must be something of an unexciting +nature, which will lay neither his physical nor his intellectual +energies under too heavy contribution. He finds that nothing agrees +with him so well as to make little gyrations on one leg of his stool, +and stab his desk, and gape. + +Kenge and Carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken +out a shooting license and gone down to his father’s, and Mr. Guppy’s +two fellow-stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Richard +Carstone divide the dignity of the office. But Mr. Carstone is for +the time being established in Kenge’s room, whereat Mr. Guppy chafes. +So exceedingly that he with biting sarcasm informs his mother, in the +confidential moments when he sups with her off a lobster and lettuce +in the Old Street Road, that he is afraid the office is hardly good +enough for swells, and that if he had known there was a swell coming, +he would have got it painted. + +Mr. Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool +in Kenge and Carboy’s office of entertaining, as a matter of course, +sinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such person wants +to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he +shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these +profound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains +to counterplot when there is no plot, and plays the deepest games of +chess without any adversary. + +It is a source of much gratification to Mr. Guppy, therefore, to find +the new-comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce and +Jarndyce, for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure +can come of that. His satisfaction communicates itself to a third +saunterer through the long vacation in Kenge and Carboy’s office, to +wit, Young Smallweed. + +Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called Small and eke Chick +Weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling) was ever a boy is +much doubted in Lincoln’s Inn. He is now something under fifteen and +an old limb of the law. He is facetiously understood to entertain a +passion for a lady at a cigar-shop in the neighbourhood of Chancery +Lane and for her sake to have broken off a contract with another +lady, to whom he had been engaged some years. He is a town-made +article, of small stature and weazen features, but may be perceived +from a considerable distance by means of his very tall hat. To become +a Guppy is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that gentleman +(by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds +himself entirely on him. He is honoured with Mr. Guppy’s particular +confidence and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his +experience, on difficult points in private life. + +Mr. Guppy has been lolling out of window all the morning after trying +all the stools in succession and finding none of them easy, and after +several times putting his head into the iron safe with a notion of +cooling it. Mr. Smallweed has been twice dispatched for effervescent +drinks, and has twice mixed them in the two official tumblers and +stirred them up with the ruler. Mr. Guppy propounds for Mr. +Smallweed’s consideration the paradox that the more you drink the +thirstier you are and reclines his head upon the window-sill in a +state of hopeless languor. + +While thus looking out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn, +surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr. Guppy becomes +conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below +and turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time, +a low whistle is wafted through the Inn and a suppressed voice cries, +“Hip! Gup-py!” + +“Why, you don’t mean it!” says Mr. Guppy, aroused. “Small! Here’s +Jobling!” Small’s head looks out of window too and nods to Jobling. + +“Where have you sprung up from?” inquires Mr. Guppy. + +“From the market-gardens down by Deptford. I can’t stand it any +longer. I must enlist. I say! I wish you’d lend me half a crown. Upon +my soul, I’m hungry.” + +Jobling looks hungry and also has the appearance of having run to +seed in the market-gardens down by Deptford. + +“I say! Just throw out half a crown if you have got one to spare. I +want to get some dinner.” + +“Will you come and dine with me?” says Mr. Guppy, throwing out the +coin, which Mr. Jobling catches neatly. + +“How long should I have to hold out?” says Jobling. + +“Not half an hour. I am only waiting here till the enemy goes,” +returns Mr. Guppy, butting inward with his head. + +“What enemy?” + +“A new one. Going to be articled. Will you wait?” + +“Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?” says Mr. +Jobling. + +Smallweed suggests the law list. But Mr. Jobling declares with much +earnestness that he “can’t stand it.” + +“You shall have the paper,” says Mr. Guppy. “He shall bring it down. +But you had better not be seen about here. Sit on our staircase and +read. It’s a quiet place.” + +Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious Smallweed +supplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops his eye upon +him from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted +with waiting and making an untimely departure. At last the enemy +retreats, and then Smallweed fetches Mr. Jobling up. + +“Well, and how are you?” says Mr. Guppy, shaking hands with him. + +“So, so. How are you?” + +Mr. Guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr. Jobling +ventures on the question, “How is SHE?” This Mr. Guppy resents as a +liberty, retorting, “Jobling, there ARE chords in the human mind—” +Jobling begs pardon. + +“Any subject but that!” says Mr. Guppy with a gloomy enjoyment of his +injury. “For there ARE chords, Jobling—” + +Mr. Jobling begs pardon again. + +During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the +dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper, +“Return immediately.” This notification to all whom it may concern, +he inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall hat at the +angle of inclination at which Mr. Guppy wears his, informs his patron +that they may now make themselves scarce. + +Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of +the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap-bang, +where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to +have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed, of whom it +may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are +nothing. He stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish +wisdom. If he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain +there in a tail-coat. He has an old, old eye, has Smallweed; and he +drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his neck is stiff in his +collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows all about it, +whatever it is. In short, in his bringing up he has been so nursed by +Law and Equity that he has become a kind of fossil imp, to account +for whose terrestrial existence it is reported at the public offices +that his father was John Doe and his mother the only female member of +the Roe family, also that his first long-clothes were made from a +blue bag. + +Into the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the window +of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of +peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, Mr. +Smallweed leads the way. They know him there and defer to him. He has +his favourite box, he bespeaks all the papers, he is down upon bald +patriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of +no use trying him with anything less than a full-sized “bread” or +proposing to him any joint in cut unless it is in the very best cut. +In the matter of gravy he is adamant. + +Conscious of his elfin power and submitting to his dread experience, +Mr. Guppy consults him in the choice of that day’s banquet, turning +an appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue +of viands and saying “What do YOU take, Chick?” Chick, out of the +profundity of his artfulness, preferring “veal and ham and French +beans—and don’t you forget the stuffing, Polly” (with an unearthly +cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling give the like +order. Three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the +waitress returns bearing what is apparently a model of the Tower of +Babel but what is really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers. +Mr. Smallweed, approving of what is set before him, conveys +intelligent benignity into his ancient eye and winks upon her. Then, +amid a constant coming in, and going out, and running about, and a +clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the machine which +brings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more +nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost +of nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and +steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated +atmosphere in which the soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break +out spontaneously into eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the +legal triumvirate appease their appetites. + +Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might require. +His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening +nature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade. The same +phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and particularly at +the seams. He has the faded appearance of a gentleman in embarrassed +circumstances; even his light whiskers droop with something of a +shabby air. + +His appetite is so vigorous that it suggests spare living for some +little time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal and +ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway in +theirs, that Mr. Guppy proposes another. “Thank you, Guppy,” says Mr. +Jobling, “I really don’t know but what I WILL take another.” + +Another being brought, he falls to with great goodwill. + +Mr. Guppy takes silent notice of him at intervals until he is half +way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at +his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his +legs and rubs his hands. Beholding him in which glow of contentment, +Mr. Guppy says, “You are a man again, Tony!” + +“Well, not quite yet,” says Mr. Jobling. “Say, just born.” + +“Will you take any other vegetables? Grass? Peas? Summer cabbage?” + +“Thank you, Guppy,” says Mr. Jobling. “I really don’t know but what I +WILL take summer cabbage.” + +Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from Mr. Smallweed) of +“Without slugs, Polly!” And cabbage produced. + +“I am growing up, Guppy,” says Mr. Jobling, plying his knife and fork +with a relishing steadiness. + +“Glad to hear it.” + +“In fact, I have just turned into my teens,” says Mr. Jobling. + +He says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves as +Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs, thus getting over the +ground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily by a +veal and ham and a cabbage. + +“Now, Small,” says Mr. Guppy, “what would you recommend about +pastry?” + +“Marrow puddings,” says Mr. Smallweed instantly. + +“Aye, aye!” cries Mr. Jobling with an arch look. “You’re there, are +you? Thank you, Mr. Guppy, I don’t know but what I WILL take a marrow +pudding.” + +Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr. Jobling adds in a pleasant +humour that he is coming of age fast. To these succeed, by command of +Mr. Smallweed, “three Cheshires,” and to those “three small rums.” +This apex of the entertainment happily reached, Mr. Jobling puts up +his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side of the box to +himself), leans against the wall, and says, “I am grown up now, +Guppy. I have arrived at maturity.” + +“What do you think, now,” says Mr. Guppy, “about—you don’t mind +Smallweed?” + +“Not the least in the world. I have the pleasure of drinking his good +health.” + +“Sir, to you!” says Mr. Smallweed. + +“I was saying, what do you think NOW,” pursues Mr. Guppy, “of +enlisting?” + +“Why, what I may think after dinner,” returns Mr. Jobling, “is one +thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another +thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What am I +to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know,” says Mr. Jobling, +pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture in an +English stable. “Ill fo manger. That’s the French saying, and +mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or more so.” + +Mr. Smallweed is decidedly of opinion “much more so.” + +“If any man had told me,” pursues Jobling, “even so lately as when +you and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over +to see that house at Castle Wold—” + +Mr. Smallweed corrects him—Chesney Wold. + +“Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If any +man had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present time +as I literally find myself, I should have—well, I should have +pitched into him,” says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water +with an air of desperate resignation; “I should have let fly at his +head.” + +“Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,” +remonstrates Mr. Guppy. “You were talking about nothing else in the +gig.” + +“Guppy,” says Mr. Jobling, “I will not deny it. I was on the wrong +side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round.” + +That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their +being beaten round, or worked round, but in their “coming” round! As +though a lunatic should trust in the world’s “coming” triangular! + +“I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all +square,” says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and +perhaps of meaning too. “But I was disappointed. They never did. And +when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to people +that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty trifles of +borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion. And of any +new professional connexion too, for if I was to give a reference +to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up. Then what’s a +fellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way and living cheap +down about the market-gardens, but what’s the use of living cheap +when you have got no money? You might as well live dear.” + +“Better,” Mr. Smallweed thinks. + +“Certainly. It’s the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have +been my weaknesses, and I don’t care who knows it,” says Mr. Jobling. +“They are great weaknesses—Damme, sir, they are great. Well,” +proceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-water, +“what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?” + +Mr. Guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in +his opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive +manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise than +as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart. + +“Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy, “myself and our mutual friend Smallweed—” + +Mr. Smallweed modestly observes, “Gentlemen both!” and drinks. + +“—Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once since +you—” + +“Say, got the sack!” cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. “Say it, Guppy. You +mean it.” + +“No-o-o! Left the Inn,” Mr. Smallweed delicately suggests. + +“Since you left the Inn, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy; “and I have +mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a plan I have lately thought +of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?” + +“I know there is such a stationer,” returns Mr. Jobling. “He was not +ours, and I am not acquainted with him.” + +“He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him,” Mr. Guppy +retorts. “Well, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with him +through some accidental circumstances that have made me a visitor of +his in private life. Those circumstances it is not necessary to offer +in argument. They may—or they may not—have some reference to a +subject which may—or may not—have cast its shadow on my existence.” + +As it is Mr. Guppy’s perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt his +particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it, +to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the +human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the pitfall by +remaining silent. + +“Such things may be,” repeats Mr. Guppy, “or they may not be. They +are no part of the case. It is enough to mention that both Mr. and +Mrs. Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that Snagsby has, in +busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has all +Tulkinghorn’s, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our +mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove this?” + +Mr. Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn. + +“Now, gentlemen of the jury,” says Mr. Guppy, “—I mean, now, +Jobling—you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted. +But it’s better than nothing, and better than enlistment. You want +time. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You +might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for +Snagsby.” + +Mr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Smallweed checks +him with a dry cough and the words, “Hem! Shakspeare!” + +“There are two branches to this subject, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy. +“That is the first. I come to the second. You know Krook, the +Chancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy in his +encouraging cross-examination-tone, “I think you know Krook, the +Chancellor, across the lane?” + +“I know him by sight,” says Mr. Jobling. + +“You know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Flite?” + +“Everybody knows her,” says Mr. Jobling. + +“Everybody knows her. VERY well. Now it has been one of my duties of +late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it the +amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of +instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in her +presence. This has brought me into communication with Krook and into +a knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room to let. +You may live there at a very low charge under any name you like, as +quietly as if you were a hundred miles off. He’ll ask no questions +and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me—before the clock +strikes, if you chose. And I tell you another thing, Jobling,” says +Mr. Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice and become familiar +again, “he’s an extraordinary old chap—always rummaging among a +litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching himself to read and +write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to me. He is a most +extraordinary old chap, sir. I don’t know but what it might be worth +a fellow’s while to look him up a bit.” + +“You don’t mean—” Mr. Jobling begins. + +“I mean,” returns Mr. Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming +modesty, “that I can’t make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend +Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can’t make +him out.” + +Mr. Smallweed bears the concise testimony, “A few!” + +“I have seen something of the profession and something of life, +Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, “and it’s seldom I can’t make a man out, more +or less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and secret +(though I don’t believe he is ever sober), I never came across. Now, +he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him, +and he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a +smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a +money-lender—all of which I have thought likely at different +times—it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him. I +don’t see why you shouldn’t go in for it, when everything else +suits.” + +Mr. Jobling, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Smallweed all lean their elbows on +the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the ceiling. +After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their hands in +their pockets, and look at one another. + +“If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!” says Mr. Guppy with a +sigh. “But there are chords in the human mind—” + +Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-water, +Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony Jobling and +informing him that during the vacation and while things are slack, +his purse, “as far as three or four or even five pound goes,” will be +at his disposal. “For never shall it be said,” Mr. Guppy adds with +emphasis, “that William Guppy turned his back upon his friend!” + +The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that +Mr. Jobling says with emotion, “Guppy, my trump, your fist!” Mr. +Guppy presents it, saying, “Jobling, my boy, there it is!” Mr. +Jobling returns, “Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!” Mr. +Guppy replies, “Jobling, we have.” + +They then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner, +“Thank you, Guppy, I don’t know but what I WILL take another glass +for old acquaintance sake.” + +“Krook’s last lodger died there,” observes Mr. Guppy in an incidental +way. + +“Did he though!” says Mr. Jobling. + +“There was a verdict. Accidental death. You don’t mind that?” + +“No,” says Mr. Jobling, “I don’t mind it; but he might as well have +died somewhere else. It’s devilish odd that he need go and die at MY +place!” Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times +returning to it with such remarks as, “There are places enough to die +in, I should think!” or, “He wouldn’t have liked my dying at HIS +place, I dare say!” + +However, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Guppy proposes to +dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr. Krook is at home, +as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay. Mr. +Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat and +conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner. He soon +returns with the intelligence that Mr. Krook is at home and that he +has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back premises, +sleeping “like one o’clock.” + +“Then I’ll pay,” says Mr. Guppy, “and we’ll go and see him. Small, +what will it be?” + +Mr. Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one +hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: “Four veals and +hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer +cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and six +breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four +half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums is +eight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six. Eight and six in +half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!” + +Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed +dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a +little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to +read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to +himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run his +eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night and to +have disappeared under the bedclothes. + +Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where +they find Krook still sleeping like one o’clock, that is to say, +breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite +insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On the +table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-bottle +and a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this liquor that +even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they open and shut +and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk. + +“Hold up here!” says Mr. Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the old +man another shake. “Mr. Krook! Halloa, sir!” + +But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a +spirituous heat smouldering in it. “Did you ever see such a stupor as +he falls into, between drink and sleep?” says Mr. Guppy. + +“If this is his regular sleep,” returns Jobling, rather alarmed, +“it’ll last a long time one of these days, I am thinking.” + +“It’s always more like a fit than a nap,” says Mr. Guppy, shaking him +again. “Halloa, your lordship! Why, he might be robbed fifty times +over! Open your eyes!” + +After much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his +visitors or any other objects. Though he crosses one leg on another, +and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens his parched +lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as insensible as before. + +“He is alive, at any rate,” says Mr. Guppy. “How are you, my Lord +Chancellor. I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little matter +of business.” + +The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the least +consciousness. After some minutes he makes an attempt to rise. They +help him up, and he staggers against the wall and stares at them. + +“How do you do, Mr. Krook?” says Mr. Guppy in some discomfiture. “How +do you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr. Krook. I hope you are +pretty well?” + +The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Guppy, or at +nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face against +the wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up against it, +and then staggers down the shop to the front door. The air, the +movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the combination of these +things recovers him. He comes back pretty steadily, adjusting his fur +cap on his head and looking keenly at them. + +“Your servant, gentlemen; I’ve been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake, +odd times.” + +“Rather so, indeed, sir,” responds Mr. Guppy. + +“What? You’ve been a-trying to do it, have you?” says the suspicious +Krook. + +“Only a little,” Mr. Guppy explains. + +The old man’s eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up, +examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down. + +“I say!” he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. “Somebody’s been +making free here!” + +“I assure you we found it so,” says Mr. Guppy. “Would you allow me to +get it filled for you?” + +“Yes, certainly I would!” cries Krook in high glee. “Certainly I +would! Don’t mention it! Get it filled next door—Sol’s Arms—the +Lord Chancellor’s fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know ME!” + +He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Guppy that that gentleman, +with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and +hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it in +his arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly. + +“But, I say,” he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting +it, “this ain’t the Lord Chancellor’s fourteenpenny. This is +eighteenpenny!” + +“I thought you might like that better,” says Mr. Guppy. + +“You’re a nobleman, sir,” returns Krook with another taste, and his +hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. “You’re a baron +of the land.” + +Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his +friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object +of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never gets +beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time +to survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of him. “You’d +like to see the room, young man?” he says. “Ah! It’s a good room! +Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down with soft soap and soda. Hi! It’s +worth twice the rent, letting alone my company when you want it and +such a cat to keep the mice away.” + +Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them +upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be and +also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug up +from his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded—for +the Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr. Guppy, associated as he is +with Kenge and Carboy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and other famous claims +on his professional consideration—and it is agreed that Mr. Weevle +shall take possession on the morrow. Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy then +repair to Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, where the personal +introduction of the former to Mr. Snagsby is effected and (more +important) the vote and interest of Mrs. Snagsby are secured. They +then report progress to the eminent Smallweed, waiting at the office +in his tall hat for that purpose, and separate, Mr. Guppy explaining +that he would terminate his little entertainment by standing treat at +the play but that there are chords in the human mind which would +render it a hollow mockery. + +On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr. Weevle modestly appears at +Krook’s, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes himself +in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters stare at him +in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the following day +Mr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow, +borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a hammer of his +landlord and goes to work devising apologies for window-curtains, and +knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging up his two teacups, +milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth of little hooks, like +a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it. + +But what Mr. Weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next +after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only +whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of +copper-plate impressions from that truly national work The Divinities +of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, representing ladies +of title and fashion in every variety of smirk that art, combined +with capital, is capable of producing. With these magnificent +portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box during his seclusion +among the market-gardens, he decorates his apartment; and as the +Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every variety of fancy dress, +plays every variety of musical instrument, fondles every variety of +dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and is backed up by every +variety of flower-pot and balustrade, the result is very imposing. + +But fashion is Mr. Weevle’s, as it was Tony Jobling’s, weakness. To +borrow yesterday’s paper from the Sol’s Arms of an evening and read +about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are shooting +across the fashionable sky in every direction is unspeakable +consolation to him. To know what member of what brilliant and +distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and distinguished +feat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no less brilliant +and distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives him a thrill of +joy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty is +about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy marriages are on the +tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in circulation, is to become +acquainted with the most glorious destinies of mankind. Mr. Weevle +reverts from this intelligence to the Galaxy portraits implicated, +and seems to know the originals, and to be known of them. + +For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices +as before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself as well as to +carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades of +evening have fallen on the court. At those times, when he is not +visited by Mr. Guppy or by a small light in his likeness quenched in +a dark hat, he comes out of his dull room—where he has inherited the +deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of ink—and talks to +Krook or is “very free,” as they call it in the court, commendingly, +with any one disposed for conversation. Wherefore, Mrs. Piper, who +leads the court, is impelled to offer two remarks to Mrs. Perkins: +firstly, that if her Johnny was to have whiskers, she could wish ’em +to be identically like that young man’s; and secondly, “Mark my +words, Mrs. Perkins, ma’am, and don’t you be surprised, Lord bless +you, if that young man comes in at last for old Krook’s money!” + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +The Smallweed Family + + +In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one +of its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin +Smallweed, christened Bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth as +Bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and +its contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little narrow street, +always solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like +a tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest tree +whose flavour is about as fresh and natural as the Smallweed smack of +youth. + +There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several +generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no child, +until Mr. Smallweed’s grandmother, now living, became weak in her +intellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With +such infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory, +understanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall +asleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Smallweed’s grandmother has +undoubtedly brightened the family. + +Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather is likewise of the party. He is in a +helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper, +limbs, but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held, +the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small collection of +the hardest facts. In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and +other such phrenological attributes, it is no worse off than it used +to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather ever put away in +his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life +he has never bred a single butterfly. + +The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of +Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting +species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired +into holes until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan’s +god was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of it. +Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in which all +the loss was intended to have been on the other side, he broke +something—something necessary to his existence, therefore it +couldn’t have been his heart—and made an end of his career. As his +character was not good, and he had been bred at a charity school in a +complete course, according to question and answer, of those ancient +people the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently quoted as an +example of the failure of education. + +His spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of +“going out” early in life and whom he made a clerk in a sharp +scrivener’s office at twelve years old. There the young gentleman +improved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and +developing the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the +discounting profession. Going out early in life and marrying late, as +his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and +anxious-minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and +marrying late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed, +twins. During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this +family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late +to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has +discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, +fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities +whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born +to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced +have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something +depressing on their minds. + +At the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below +the level of the street—a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only +ornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest +of sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character no +bad allegorical representation of Grandfather Smallweed’s +mind—seated in two black horsehair porter’s chairs, one on each side +of the fire-place, the superannuated Mr. and Mrs. Smallweed while +away the rosy hours. On the stove are a couple of trivets for the +pots and kettles which it is Grandfather Smallweed’s usual occupation +to watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece between them is a +sort of brass gallows for roasting, which he also superintends when +it is in action. Under the venerable Mr. Smallweed’s seat and guarded +by his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain +property to a fabulous amount. Beside him is a spare cushion with +which he is always provided in order that he may have something to +throw at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she +makes an allusion to money—a subject on which he is particularly +sensitive. + +“And where’s Bart?” Grandfather Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart’s +twin sister. + +“He an’t come in yet,” says Judy. + +“It’s his tea-time, isn’t it?” + +“No.” + +“How much do you mean to say it wants then?” + +“Ten minutes.” + +“Hey?” + +“Ten minutes.” (Loud on the part of Judy.) + +“Ho!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “Ten minutes.” + +Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head at +the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money and +screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, “Ten +ten-pound notes!” + +Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her. + +“Drat you, be quiet!” says the good old man. + +The effect of this act of jaculation is twofold. It not only doubles +up Mrs. Smallweed’s head against the side of her porter’s chair and +causes her to present, when extricated by her granddaughter, a highly +unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr. +Smallweed himself, whom it throws back into HIS porter’s chair like a +broken puppet. The excellent old gentleman being at these times a +mere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not +present a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two +operations at the hands of his granddaughter of being shaken up like +a great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster. Some +indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and +the sharer of his life’s evening again sit fronting one another in +their two porter’s chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten +on their post by the Black Serjeant, Death. + +Judy the twin is worthy company for these associates. She is so +indubitably sister to Mr. Smallweed the younger that the two kneaded +into one would hardly make a young person of average proportions, +while she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness +to the monkey tribe that attired in a spangled robe and cap she might +walk about the table-land on the top of a barrel-organ without +exciting much remark as an unusual specimen. Under existing +circumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, spare gown of +brown stuff. + +Judy never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at +any game. She once or twice fell into children’s company when she was +about ten years old, but the children couldn’t get on with Judy, and +Judy couldn’t get on with them. She seemed like an animal of another +species, and there was instinctive repugnance on both sides. It is +very doubtful whether Judy knows how to laugh. She has so rarely seen +the thing done that the probabilities are strong the other way. Of +anything like a youthful laugh, she certainly can have no conception. +If she were to try one, she would find her teeth in her way, +modelling that action of her face, as she has unconsciously modelled +all its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid age. Such is +Judy. + +And her twin brother couldn’t wind up a top for his life. He knows no +more of Jack the Giant Killer or of Sinbad the Sailor than he knows +of the people in the stars. He could as soon play at leap-frog or at +cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But he is so much +the better off than his sister that on his narrow world of fact an +opening has dawned into such broader regions as lie within the ken of +Mr. Guppy. Hence his admiration and his emulation of that shining +enchanter. + +Judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-iron +tea-trays on the table and arranges cups and saucers. The bread she +puts on in an iron basket, and the butter (and not much of it) in a +small pewter plate. Grandfather Smallweed looks hard after the tea as +it is served out and asks Judy where the girl is. + +“Charley, do you mean?” says Judy. + +“Hey?” from Grandfather Smallweed. + +“Charley, do you mean?” + +This touches a spring in Grandmother Smallweed, who, chuckling as +usual at the trivets, cries, “Over the water! Charley over the water, +Charley over the water, over the water to Charley, Charley over the +water, over the water to Charley!” and becomes quite energetic about +it. Grandfather looks at the cushion but has not sufficiently +recovered his late exertion. + +“Ha!” he says when there is silence. “If that’s her name. She eats a +deal. It would be better to allow her for her keep.” + +Judy, with her brother’s wink, shakes her head and purses up her +mouth into no without saying it. + +“No?” returns the old man. “Why not?” + +“She’d want sixpence a day, and we can do it for less,” says Judy. + +“Sure?” + +Judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning and calls, as she scrapes +the butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste and cuts +it into slices, “You, Charley, where are you?” Timidly obedient to +the summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large bonnet, with +her hands covered with soap and water and a scrubbing brush in one of +them, appears, and curtsys. + +“What work are you about now?” says Judy, making an ancient snap at +her like a very sharp old beldame. + +“I’m a-cleaning the upstairs back room, miss,” replies Charley. + +“Mind you do it thoroughly, and don’t loiter. Shirking won’t do for +me. Make haste! Go along!” cries Judy with a stamp upon the ground. +“You girls are more trouble than you’re worth, by half.” + +On this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the +butter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother, +looking in at the window. For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens +the street-door. + +“Aye, aye, Bart!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “Here you are, hey?” + +“Here I am,” says Bart. + +“Been along with your friend again, Bart?” + +Small nods. + +“Dining at his expense, Bart?” + +Small nods again. + +“That’s right. Live at his expense as much as you can, and take +warning by his foolish example. That’s the use of such a friend. The +only use you can put him to,” says the venerable sage. + +His grandson, without receiving this good counsel as dutifully as he +might, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a slight +wink and a nod and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four old faces +then hover over teacups like a company of ghastly cherubim, Mrs. +Smallweed perpetually twitching her head and chattering at the +trivets and Mr. Smallweed requiring to be repeatedly shaken up like a +large black draught. + +“Yes, yes,” says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of +wisdom. “That’s such advice as your father would have given you, +Bart. You never saw your father. More’s the pity. He was my true +son.” Whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was particularly +pleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear. + +“He was my true son,” repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread +and butter on his knee, “a good accountant, and died fifteen years +ago.” + +Mrs. Smallweed, following her usual instinct, breaks out with +“Fifteen hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a black box, fifteen +hundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and hid!” Her +worthy husband, setting aside his bread and butter, immediately +discharges the cushion at her, crushes her against the side of her +chair, and falls back in his own, overpowered. His appearance, after +visiting Mrs. Smallweed with one of these admonitions, is +particularly impressive and not wholly prepossessing, firstly because +the exertion generally twists his black skull-cap over one eye and +gives him an air of goblin rakishness, secondly because he mutters +violent imprecations against Mrs. Smallweed, and thirdly because the +contrast between those powerful expressions and his powerless figure +is suggestive of a baleful old malignant who would be very wicked if +he could. All this, however, is so common in the Smallweed family +circle that it produces no impression. The old gentleman is merely +shaken and has his internal feathers beaten up, the cushion is +restored to its usual place beside him, and the old lady, perhaps +with her cap adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again, +ready to be bowled down like a ninepin. + +Some time elapses in the present instance before the old gentleman is +sufficiently cool to resume his discourse, and even then he mixes it +up with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious +partner of his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth +but the trivets. As thus: “If your father, Bart, had lived longer, he +might have been worth a deal of money—you brimstone chatterer!—but +just as he was beginning to build up the house that he had been +making the foundations for, through many a year—you jade of a +magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you mean!—he took ill and +died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of +business care—I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a +cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of +yourself!—and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip, +just dwindled away like touchwood after you and Judy were born—you +are an old pig. You are a brimstone pig. You’re a head of swine!” + +Judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect +in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of cups +and saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot for the little +charwoman’s evening meal. In like manner she gets together, in the +iron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of +loaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence. + +“But your father and me were partners, Bart,” says the old gentleman, +“and when I am gone, you and Judy will have all there is. It’s rare +for you both that you went out early in life—Judy to the flower +business, and you to the law. You won’t want to spend it. You’ll get +your living without it, and put more to it. When I am gone, Judy will +go back to the flower business and you’ll still stick to the law.” + +One might infer from Judy’s appearance that her business rather lay +with the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her time been +apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A +close observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her +brother’s, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being gone, +some little impatience to know when he may be going, and some +resentful opinion that it is time he went. + +“Now, if everybody has done,” says Judy, completing her preparations, +“I’ll have that girl in to her tea. She would never leave off if she +took it by herself in the kitchen.” + +Charley is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes, +sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter. In +the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed +appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the +remotest periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing +on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful, +evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving seldom reached +by the oldest practitioners. + +“Now, don’t stare about you all the afternoon,” cries Judy, shaking +her head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance +which has been previously sounding the basin of tea, “but take your +victuals and get back to your work.” + +“Yes, miss,” says Charley. + +“Don’t say yes,” returns Miss Smallweed, “for I know what you girls +are. Do it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe you.” + +Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission and so +disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not to +gormandize, which “in you girls,” she observes, is disgusting. +Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the +general subject of girls but for a knock at the door. + +“See who it is, and don’t chew when you open it!” cries Judy. + +The object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, Miss +Smallweed takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the +bread and butter together and launching two or three dirty tea-cups +into the ebb-tide of the basin of tea as a hint that she considers +the eating and drinking terminated. + +“Now! Who is it, and what’s wanted?” says the snappish Judy. + +It is one Mr. George, it appears. Without other announcement or +ceremony, Mr. George walks in. + +“Whew!” says Mr. George. “You are hot here. Always a fire, eh? Well! +Perhaps you do right to get used to one.” Mr. George makes the latter +remark to himself as he nods to Grandfather Smallweed. + +“Ho! It’s you!” cries the old gentleman. “How de do? How de do?” + +“Middling,” replies Mr. George, taking a chair. “Your granddaughter I +have had the honour of seeing before; my service to you, miss.” + +“This is my grandson,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “You ha’n’t seen +him before. He is in the law and not much at home.” + +“My service to him, too! He is like his sister. He is very like his +sister. He is devilish like his sister,” says Mr. George, laying a +great and not altogether complimentary stress on his last adjective. + +“And how does the world use you, Mr. George?” Grandfather Smallweed +inquires, slowly rubbing his legs. + +“Pretty much as usual. Like a football.” + +He is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made, and good looking, with +crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and +powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to +a pretty rough life. What is curious about him is that he sits +forward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing space +for some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid aside. +His step too is measured and heavy and would go well with a weighty +clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his mouth is +set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a great +moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm of his +broad brown hand upon it is to the same effect. Altogether one might +guess Mr. George to have been a trooper once upon a time. + +A special contrast Mr. George makes to the Smallweed family. Trooper +was never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him. It is a +broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed figure and their stunted +forms, his large manner filling any amount of room and their little +narrow pinched ways, his sounding voice and their sharp spare tones, +are in the strongest and the strangest opposition. As he sits in the +middle of the grim parlour, leaning a little forward, with his hands +upon his thighs and his elbows squared, he looks as though, if he +remained there long, he would absorb into himself the whole family +and the whole four-roomed house, extra little back-kitchen and all. + +“Do you rub your legs to rub life into ’em?” he asks of Grandfather +Smallweed after looking round the room. + +“Why, it’s partly a habit, Mr. George, and—yes—it partly helps the +circulation,” he replies. + +“The cir-cu-la-tion!” repeats Mr. George, folding his arms upon his +chest and seeming to become two sizes larger. “Not much of that, I +should think.” + +“Truly I’m old, Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “But I can +carry my years. I’m older than HER,” nodding at his wife, “and see +what she is? You’re a brimstone chatterer!” with a sudden revival of +his late hostility. + +“Unlucky old soul!” says Mr. George, turning his head in that +direction. “Don’t scold the old lady. Look at her here, with her poor +cap half off her head and her poor hair all in a muddle. Hold up, +ma’am. That’s better. There we are! Think of your mother, Mr. +Smallweed,” says Mr. George, coming back to his seat from assisting +her, “if your wife an’t enough.” + +“I suppose you were an excellent son, Mr. George?” the old man hints +with a leer. + +The colour of Mr. George’s face rather deepens as he replies, “Why +no. I wasn’t.” + +“I am astonished at it.” + +“So am I. I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to +have been one. But I wasn’t. I was a thundering bad son, that’s the +long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody.” + +“Surprising!” cries the old man. + +“However,” Mr. George resumes, “the less said about it, the better +now. Come! You know the agreement. Always a pipe out of the two +months’ interest! (Bosh! It’s all correct. You needn’t be afraid to +order the pipe. Here’s the new bill, and here’s the two months’ +interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it +together in my business.)” + +Mr. George sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the +parlour while Grandfather Smallweed is assisted by Judy to two black +leathern cases out of a locked bureau, in one of which he secures the +document he has just received, and from the other takes another +similar document which he hands to Mr. George, who twists it up for a +pipelight. As the old man inspects, through his glasses, every +up-stroke and down-stroke of both documents before he releases them +from their leathern prison, and as he counts the money three times +over and requires Judy to say every word she utters at least twice, +and is as tremulously slow of speech and action as it is possible to +be, this business is a long time in progress. When it is quite +concluded, and not before, he disengages his ravenous eyes and +fingers from it and answers Mr. George’s last remark by saying, +“Afraid to order the pipe? We are not so mercenary as that, sir. +Judy, see directly to the pipe and the glass of cold brandy-and-water +for Mr. George.” + +The sportive twins, who have been looking straight before them all +this time except when they have been engrossed by the black leathern +cases, retire together, generally disdainful of the visitor, but +leaving him to the old man as two young cubs might leave a traveller +to the parental bear. + +“And there you sit, I suppose, all the day long, eh?” says Mr. George +with folded arms. + +“Just so, just so,” the old man nods. + +“And don’t you occupy yourself at all?” + +“I watch the fire—and the boiling and the roasting—” + +“When there is any,” says Mr. George with great expression. + +“Just so. When there is any.” + +“Don’t you read or get read to?” + +The old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. “No, no. We have +never been readers in our family. It don’t pay. Stuff. Idleness. +Folly. No, no!” + +“There’s not much to choose between your two states,” says the +visitor in a key too low for the old man’s dull hearing as he looks +from him to the old woman and back again. “I say!” in a louder voice. + +“I hear you.” + +“You’ll sell me up at last, I suppose, when I am a day in arrear.” + +“My dear friend!” cries Grandfather Smallweed, stretching out both +hands to embrace him. “Never! Never, my dear friend! But my friend in +the city that I got to lend you the money—HE might!” + +“Oh! You can’t answer for him?” says Mr. George, finishing the +inquiry in his lower key with the words “You lying old rascal!” + +“My dear friend, he is not to be depended on. I wouldn’t trust him. +He will have his bond, my dear friend.” + +“Devil doubt him,” says Mr. George. Charley appearing with a +tray, on which are the pipe, a small paper of tobacco, and the +brandy-and-water, he asks her, “How do you come here! You haven’t got +the family face.” + +“I goes out to work, sir,” returns Charley. + +The trooper (if trooper he be or have been) takes her bonnet off, +with a light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the head. +“You give the house almost a wholesome look. It wants a bit of youth +as much as it wants fresh air.” Then he dismisses her, lights his +pipe, and drinks to Mr. Smallweed’s friend in the city—the one +solitary flight of that esteemed old gentleman’s imagination. + +“So you think he might be hard upon me, eh?” + +“I think he might—I am afraid he would. I have known him do it,” +says Grandfather Smallweed incautiously, “twenty times.” + +Incautiously, because his stricken better-half, who has been dozing +over the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and jabbers “Twenty +thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a money-box, twenty +guineas, twenty million twenty per cent, twenty—” and is then cut +short by the flying cushion, which the visitor, to whom this singular +experiment appears to be a novelty, snatches from her face as it +crushes her in the usual manner. + +“You’re a brimstone idiot. You’re a scorpion—a brimstone scorpion! +You’re a sweltering toad. You’re a chattering clattering broomstick +witch that ought to be burnt!” gasps the old man, prostrate in his +chair. “My dear friend, will you shake me up a little?” + +Mr. George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the +other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by +the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his +chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or +no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him +into his grave. Resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently +enough to make his head roll like a harlequin’s, he puts him smartly +down in his chair again and adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub +that the old man winks with both eyes for a minute afterwards. + +“O Lord!” gasps Mr. Smallweed. “That’ll do. Thank you, my dear +friend, that’ll do. Oh, dear me, I’m out of breath. O Lord!” And Mr. +Smallweed says it not without evident apprehensions of his dear +friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever. + +The alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair and +falls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the +philosophical reflection, “The name of your friend in the city begins +with a D, comrade, and you’re about right respecting the bond.” + +“Did you speak, Mr. George?” inquires the old man. + +The trooper shakes his head, and leaning forward with his right elbow +on his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while his +other hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a +martial manner, continues to smoke. Meanwhile he looks at Mr. +Smallweed with grave attention and now and then fans the cloud of +smoke away in order that he may see him the more clearly. + +“I take it,” he says, making just as much and as little change in his +position as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips with a +round, full action, “that I am the only man alive (or dead either) +that gets the value of a pipe out of YOU?” + +“Well,” returns the old man, “it’s true that I don’t see company, Mr. +George, and that I don’t treat. I can’t afford to it. But as you, in +your pleasant way, made your pipe a condition—” + +“Why, it’s not for the value of it; that’s no great thing. It was a +fancy to get it out of you. To have something in for my money.” + +“Ha! You’re prudent, prudent, sir!” cries Grandfather Smallweed, +rubbing his legs. + +“Very. I always was.” Puff. “It’s a sure sign of my prudence that I +ever found the way here.” Puff. “Also, that I am what I am.” Puff. “I +am well known to be prudent,” says Mr. George, composedly smoking. “I +rose in life that way.” + +“Don’t be down-hearted, sir. You may rise yet.” + +Mr. George laughs and drinks. + +“Ha’n’t you no relations, now,” asks Grandfather Smallweed with a +twinkle in his eyes, “who would pay off this little principal or who +would lend you a good name or two that I could persuade my friend in +the city to make you a further advance upon? Two good names would be +sufficient for my friend in the city. Ha’n’t you no such relations, +Mr. George?” + +Mr. George, still composedly smoking, replies, “If I had, I shouldn’t +trouble them. I have been trouble enough to my belongings in my day. +It MAY be a very good sort of penitence in a vagabond, who has wasted +the best time of his life, to go back then to decent people that he +never was a credit to and live upon them, but it’s not my sort. The +best kind of amends then for having gone away is to keep away, in my +opinion.” + +“But natural affection, Mr. George,” hints Grandfather Smallweed. + +“For two good names, hey?” says Mr. George, shaking his head and +still composedly smoking. “No. That’s not my sort either.” + +Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually sliding down in his chair +since his last adjustment and is now a bundle of clothes with a voice +in it calling for Judy. That houri, appearing, shakes him up in the +usual manner and is charged by the old gentleman to remain near him. +For he seems chary of putting his visitor to the trouble of repeating +his late attentions. + +“Ha!” he observes when he is in trim again. “If you could have traced +out the captain, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you. If +when you first came here, in consequence of our advertisement in the +newspapers—when I say ‘our,’ I’m alluding to the advertisements of +my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital +in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give +me a lift with my little pittance—if at that time you could have +helped us, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you.” + +“I was willing enough to be ‘made,’ as you call it,” says Mr. George, +smoking not quite so placidly as before, for since the entrance of +Judy he has been in some measure disturbed by a fascination, not of +the admiring kind, which obliges him to look at her as she stands by +her grandfather’s chair, “but on the whole, I am glad I wasn’t now.” + +“Why, Mr. George? In the name of—of brimstone, why?” says +Grandfather Smallweed with a plain appearance of exasperation. +(Brimstone apparently suggested by his eye lighting on Mrs. Smallweed +in her slumber.) + +“For two reasons, comrade.” + +“And what two reasons, Mr. George? In the name of the—” + +“Of our friend in the city?” suggests Mr. George, composedly +drinking. + +“Aye, if you like. What two reasons?” + +“In the first place,” returns Mr. George, but still looking at Judy +as if she being so old and so like her grandfather it is indifferent +which of the two he addresses, “you gentlemen took me in. You +advertised that Mr. Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you hold to the saying +‘Once a captain, always a captain’) was to hear of something to his +advantage.” + +“Well?” returns the old man shrilly and sharply. + +“Well!” says Mr. George, smoking on. “It wouldn’t have been much to +his advantage to have been clapped into prison by the whole bill and +judgment trade of London.” + +“How do you know that? Some of his rich relations might have paid his +debts or compounded for ’em. Besides, he had taken US in. He owed us +immense sums all round. I would sooner have strangled him than had no +return. If I sit here thinking of him,” snarls the old man, holding +up his impotent ten fingers, “I want to strangle him now.” And in a +sudden access of fury, he throws the cushion at the unoffending Mrs. +Smallweed, but it passes harmlessly on one side of her chair. + +“I don’t need to be told,” returns the trooper, taking his pipe from +his lips for a moment and carrying his eyes back from following the +progress of the cushion to the pipe-bowl which is burning low, “that +he carried on heavily and went to ruin. I have been at his right hand +many a day when he was charging upon ruin full-gallop. I was with him +when he was sick and well, rich and poor. I laid this hand upon him +after he had run through everything and broken down everything +beneath him—when he held a pistol to his head.” + +“I wish he had let it off,” says the benevolent old man, “and blown +his head into as many pieces as he owed pounds!” + +“That would have been a smash indeed,” returns the trooper coolly; +“any way, he had been young, hopeful, and handsome in the days gone +by, and I am glad I never found him, when he was neither, to lead to +a result so much to his advantage. That’s reason number one.” + +“I hope number two’s as good?” snarls the old man. + +“Why, no. It’s more of a selfish reason. If I had found him, I must +have gone to the other world to look. He was there.” + +“How do you know he was there?” + +“He wasn’t here.” + +“How do you know he wasn’t here?” + +“Don’t lose your temper as well as your money,” says Mr. George, +calmly knocking the ashes out of his pipe. “He was drowned long +before. I am convinced of it. He went over a ship’s side. Whether +intentionally or accidentally, I don’t know. Perhaps your friend in +the city does. Do you know what that tune is, Mr. Smallweed?” he adds +after breaking off to whistle one, accompanied on the table with the +empty pipe. + +“Tune!” replied the old man. “No. We never have tunes here.” + +“That’s the Dead March in Saul. They bury soldiers to it, +so it’s the natural end of the subject. Now, if your pretty +granddaughter—excuse me, miss—will condescend to take care of this +pipe for two months, we shall save the cost of one next time. Good +evening, Mr. Smallweed!” + +“My dear friend!” the old man gives him both his hands. + +“So you think your friend in the city will be hard upon me if I fall +in a payment?” says the trooper, looking down upon him like a giant. + +“My dear friend, I am afraid he will,” returns the old man, looking +up at him like a pygmy. + +Mr. George laughs, and with a glance at Mr. Smallweed and a parting +salutation to the scornful Judy, strides out of the parlour, clashing +imaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he goes. + +“You’re a damned rogue,” says the old gentleman, making a hideous +grimace at the door as he shuts it. “But I’ll lime you, you dog, I’ll +lime you!” + +After this amiable remark, his spirit soars into those enchanting +regions of reflection which its education and pursuits have opened to +it, and again he and Mrs. Smallweed while away the rosy hours, two +unrelieved sentinels forgotten as aforesaid by the Black Serjeant. + +While the twain are faithful to their post, Mr. George strides +through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave-enough +face. It is eight o’clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He +stops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to +Astley’s Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses and +the feats of strength; looks at the weapons with a critical eye; +disapproves of the combats as giving evidences of unskilful +swordsmanship; but is touched home by the sentiments. In the last +scene, when the Emperor of Tartary gets up into a cart and +condescends to bless the united lovers by hovering over them with the +Union Jack, his eyelashes are moistened with emotion. + +The theatre over, Mr. George comes across the water again and makes +his way to that curious region lying about the Haymarket and +Leicester Square which is a centre of attraction to indifferent +foreign hotels and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts, +fighting-men, swordsmen, footguards, old china, gaming-houses, +exhibitions, and a large medley of shabbiness and shrinking out of +sight. Penetrating to the heart of this region, he arrives by a court +and a long whitewashed passage at a great brick building composed of +bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights, on the front of +which, if it can be said to have any front, is painted GEORGE’S +SHOOTING GALLERY, &c. + +Into George’s Shooting Gallery, &c., he goes; and in it there are +gaslights (partly turned off now), and two whitened targets for +rifle-shooting, and archery accommodation, and fencing appliances, +and all necessaries for the British art of boxing. None of these +sports or exercises being pursued in George’s Shooting Gallery +to-night, which is so devoid of company that a little grotesque man +with a large head has it all to himself and lies asleep upon the +floor. + +The little man is dressed something like a gunsmith, in a green-baize +apron and cap; and his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder and +begrimed with the loading of guns. As he lies in the light before a +glaring white target, the black upon him shines again. Not far off is +the strong, rough, primitive table with a vice upon it at which he +has been working. He is a little man with a face all crushed +together, who appears, from a certain blue and speckled appearance +that one of his cheeks presents, to have been blown up, in the way of +business, at some odd time or times. + +“Phil!” says the trooper in a quiet voice. + +“All right!” cries Phil, scrambling to his feet. + +“Anything been doing?” + +“Flat as ever so much swipes,” says Phil. “Five dozen rifle and a +dozen pistol. As to aim!” Phil gives a howl at the recollection. + +“Shut up shop, Phil!” + +As Phil moves about to execute this order, it appears that he is +lame, though able to move very quickly. On the speckled side of his +face he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has a bushy black +one, which want of uniformity gives him a very singular and rather +sinister appearance. Everything seems to have happened to his hands +that could possibly take place consistently with the retention of all +the fingers, for they are notched, and seamed, and crumpled all over. +He appears to be very strong and lifts heavy benches about as if he +had no idea what weight was. He has a curious way of limping round +the gallery with his shoulder against the wall and tacking off at +objects he wants to lay hold of instead of going straight to them, +which has left a smear all round the four walls, conventionally +called “Phil’s mark.” + +This custodian of George’s Gallery in George’s absence concludes his +proceedings, when he has locked the great doors and turned out all +the lights but one, which he leaves to glimmer, by dragging out from +a wooden cabin in a corner two mattresses and bedding. These being +drawn to opposite ends of the gallery, the trooper makes his own bed +and Phil makes his. + +“Phil!” says the master, walking towards him without his coat and +waistcoat, and looking more soldierly than ever in his braces. “You +were found in a doorway, weren’t you?” + +“Gutter,” says Phil. “Watchman tumbled over me.” + +“Then vagabondizing came natural to YOU from the beginning.” + +“As nat’ral as possible,” says Phil. + +“Good night!” + +“Good night, guv’ner.” + +Phil cannot even go straight to bed, but finds it necessary to +shoulder round two sides of the gallery and then tack off at his +mattress. The trooper, after taking a turn or two in the +rifle-distance and looking up at the moon now shining through the +skylights, strides to his own mattress by a shorter route and goes to +bed too. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +Mr. Bucket + + +Allegory looks pretty cool in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, though the +evening is hot, for both Mr. Tulkinghorn’s windows are wide open, and +the room is lofty, gusty, and gloomy. These may not be desirable +characteristics when November comes with fog and sleet or January +with ice and snow, but they have their merits in the sultry long +vacation weather. They enable Allegory, though it has cheeks like +peaches, and knees like bunches of blossoms, and rosy swellings for +calves to its legs and muscles to its arms, to look tolerably cool +to-night. + +Plenty of dust comes in at Mr. Tulkinghorn’s windows, and plenty more +has generated among his furniture and papers. It lies thick +everywhere. When a breeze from the country that has lost its way +takes fright and makes a blind hurry to rush out again, it flings as +much dust in the eyes of Allegory as the law—or Mr. Tulkinghorn, one +of its trustiest representatives—may scatter, on occasion, in the +eyes of the laity. + +In his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which +his papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of earth, +animate and inanimate, are resolving, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of +the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained +man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He +has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, +which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as +he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken +brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the +echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and heralded by a remote +reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back encircled by an +earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant +nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to +find itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of +southern grapes. + +Mr. Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys +his wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence and +seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than ever, +he sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy, pondering at +that twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows, associated with +darkening woods in the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in +town, and perhaps sparing a thought or two for himself, and his +family history, and his money, and his will—all a mystery to every +one—and that one bachelor friend of his, a man of the same mould and +a lawyer too, who lived the same kind of life until he was +seventy-five years old, and then suddenly conceiving (as it is +supposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, gave his gold +watch to his hair-dresser one summer evening and walked leisurely +home to the Temple and hanged himself. + +But Mr. Tulkinghorn is not alone to-night to ponder at his usual +length. Seated at the same table, though with his chair modestly and +uncomfortably drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild, shining +man who coughs respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer bids him +fill his glass. + +“Now, Snagsby,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “to go over this odd story +again.” + +“If you please, sir.” + +“You told me when you were so good as to step round here last +night—” + +“For which I must ask you to excuse me if it was a liberty, sir; but +I remember that you had taken a sort of an interest in that person, +and I thought it possible that you might—just—wish—to—” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion or to +admit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. So Mr. +Snagsby trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, “I must ask +you to excuse the liberty, sir, I am sure.” + +“Not at all,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “You told me, Snagsby, that you +put on your hat and came round without mentioning your intention to +your wife. That was prudent I think, because it’s not a matter of +such importance that it requires to be mentioned.” + +“Well, sir,” returns Mr. Snagsby, “you see, my little woman is—not +to put too fine a point upon it—inquisitive. She’s inquisitive. Poor +little thing, she’s liable to spasms, and it’s good for her to have +her mind employed. In consequence of which she employs it—I should +say upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether it +concerns her or not—especially not. My little woman has a very +active mind, sir.” + +Mr. Snagsby drinks and murmurs with an admiring cough behind his +hand, “Dear me, very fine wine indeed!” + +“Therefore you kept your visit to yourself last night?” says Mr. +Tulkinghorn. “And to-night too?” + +“Yes, sir, and to-night, too. My little woman is at present in—not +to put too fine a point on it—in a pious state, or in what she +considers such, and attends the Evening Exertions (which is the name +they go by) of a reverend party of the name of Chadband. He has a +great deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but I am not +quite favourable to his style myself. That’s neither here nor there. +My little woman being engaged in that way made it easier for me to +step round in a quiet manner.” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn assents. “Fill your glass, Snagsby.” + +“Thank you, sir, I am sure,” returns the stationer with his cough of +deference. “This is wonderfully fine wine, sir!” + +“It is a rare wine now,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “It is fifty years +old.” + +“Is it indeed, sir? But I am not surprised to hear it, I am sure. It +might be—any age almost.” After rendering this general tribute to +the port, Mr. Snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology behind his +hand for drinking anything so precious. + +“Will you run over, once again, what the boy said?” asks Mr. +Tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty +smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair. + +“With pleasure, sir.” + +Then, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the law-stationer +repeats Jo’s statement made to the assembled guests at his house. On +coming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and breaks +off with, “Dear me, sir, I wasn’t aware there was any other gentleman +present!” + +Mr. Snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face +between himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the table, a +person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he +himself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either of +the windows. There is a press in the room, but its hinges have not +creaked, nor has a step been audible upon the floor. Yet this third +person stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in +his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener. +He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of +about the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr. Snagsby as if he +were going to take his portrait, there is nothing remarkable about +him at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing. + +“Don’t mind this gentleman,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his quiet way. +“This is only Mr. Bucket.” + +“Oh, indeed, sir?” returns the stationer, expressing by a cough that +he is quite in the dark as to who Mr. Bucket may be. + +“I wanted him to hear this story,” says the lawyer, “because I have +half a mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very +intelligent in such things. What do you say to this, Bucket?” + +“It’s very plain, sir. Since our people have moved this boy on, and +he’s not to be found on his old lay, if Mr. Snagsby don’t object to +go down with me to Tom-all-Alone’s and point him out, we can have him +here in less than a couple of hours’ time. I can do it without Mr. +Snagsby, of course, but this is the shortest way.” + +“Mr. Bucket is a detective officer, Snagsby,” says the lawyer in +explanation. + +“Is he indeed, sir?” says Mr. Snagsby with a strong tendency in his +clump of hair to stand on end. + +“And if you have no real objection to accompany Mr. Bucket to the +place in question,” pursues the lawyer, “I shall feel obliged to you +if you will do so.” + +In a moment’s hesitation on the part of Mr. Snagsby, Bucket dips down +to the bottom of his mind. + +“Don’t you be afraid of hurting the boy,” he says. “You won’t do +that. It’s all right as far as the boy’s concerned. We shall only +bring him here to ask him a question or so I want to put to him, and +he’ll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. It’ll be a good +job for him. I promise you, as a man, that you shall see the boy sent +away all right. Don’t you be afraid of hurting him; you an’t going to +do that.” + +“Very well, Mr. Tulkinghorn!” cries Mr. Snagsby cheerfully. And +reassured, “Since that’s the case—” + +“Yes! And lookee here, Mr. Snagsby,” resumes Bucket, taking him aside +by the arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and speaking in a +confidential tone. “You’re a man of the world, you know, and a man of +business, and a man of sense. That’s what YOU are.” + +“I am sure I am much obliged to you for your good opinion,” returns +the stationer with his cough of modesty, “but—” + +“That’s what YOU are, you know,” says Bucket. “Now, it an’t necessary +to say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which is a +business of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and have his +senses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an uncle in +your business once)—it an’t necessary to say to a man like you that +it’s the best and wisest way to keep little matters like this quiet. +Don’t you see? Quiet!” + +“Certainly, certainly,” returns the other. + +“I don’t mind telling YOU,” says Bucket with an engaging appearance +of frankness, “that as far as I can understand it, there seems to be +a doubt whether this dead person wasn’t entitled to a little +property, and whether this female hasn’t been up to some games +respecting that property, don’t you see?” + +“Oh!” says Mr. Snagsby, but not appearing to see quite distinctly. + +“Now, what YOU want,” pursues Bucket, again tapping Mr. Snagsby on +the breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, “is that every +person should have their rights according to justice. That’s what YOU +want.” + +“To be sure,” returns Mr. Snagsby with a nod. + +“On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a—do you call +it, in your business, customer or client? I forget how my uncle used +to call it.” + +“Why, I generally say customer myself,” replies Mr. Snagsby. + +“You’re right!” returns Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him quite +affectionately. “—On account of which, and at the same time to +oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in +confidence, to Tom-all-Alone’s and to keep the whole thing quiet ever +afterwards and never mention it to any one. That’s about your +intentions, if I understand you?” + +“You are right, sir. You are right,” says Mr. Snagsby. + +“Then here’s your hat,” returns his new friend, quite as intimate +with it as if he had made it; “and if you’re ready, I am.” + +They leave Mr. Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his +unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the +streets. + +“You don’t happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of +Gridley, do you?” says Bucket in friendly converse as they descend +the stairs. + +“No,” says Mr. Snagsby, considering, “I don’t know anybody of that +name. Why?” + +“Nothing particular,” says Bucket; “only having allowed his temper to +get a little the better of him and having been threatening some +respectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant I have +got against him—which it’s a pity that a man of sense should do.” + +As they walk along, Mr. Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that however +quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some +undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is +going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed +purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply, +at the very last moment. Now and then, when they pass a +police-constable on his beat, Mr. Snagsby notices that both the +constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come +towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and +to gaze into space. In a few instances, Mr. Bucket, coming behind +some under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair +twisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost without +glancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the young man, +looking round, instantly evaporates. For the most part Mr. Bucket +notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great +mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch, composed of not +much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt. + +When they come at last to Tom-all-Alone’s, Mr. Bucket stops for a +moment at the corner and takes a lighted bull’s-eye from the +constable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own +particular bull’s-eye at his waist. Between his two conductors, Mr. +Snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous street, undrained, +unventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt water—though the roads +are dry elsewhere—and reeking with such smells and sights that he, +who has lived in London all his life, can scarce believe his senses. +Branching from this street and its heaps of ruins are other streets +and courts so infamous that Mr. Snagsby sickens in body and mind and +feels as if he were going every moment deeper down into the infernal +gulf. + +“Draw off a bit here, Mr. Snagsby,” says Bucket as a kind of shabby +palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. “Here’s +the fever coming up the street!” + +As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of +attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of horrible +faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls, and +with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth +flits about them until they leave the place. + +“Are those the fever-houses, Darby?” Mr. Bucket coolly asks as he +turns his bull’s-eye on a line of stinking ruins. + +Darby replies that “all them are,” and further that in all, for +months and months, the people “have been down by dozens” and have +been carried out dead and dying “like sheep with the rot.” Bucket +observing to Mr. Snagsby as they go on again that he looks a little +poorly, Mr. Snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn’t breathe +the dreadful air. + +There is inquiry made at various houses for a boy named Jo. As few +people are known in Tom-all-Alone’s by any Christian sign, there is +much reference to Mr. Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the +Colonel, or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or +the Brick. Mr. Snagsby describes over and over again. There are +conflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. Some +think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is +produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby and +his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its +squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever +they move, and the angry bull’s-eyes glare, it fades away and flits +about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as +before. + +At last there is a lair found out where Toughy, or the Tough Subject, +lays him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough Subject may +be Jo. Comparison of notes between Mr. Snagsby and the proprietress +of the house—a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring +out of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog-hutch which is her +private apartment—leads to the establishment of this conclusion. +Toughy has gone to the doctor’s to get a bottle of stuff for a sick +woman but will be here anon. + +“And who have we got here to-night?” says Mr. Bucket, opening another +door and glaring in with his bull’s-eye. “Two drunken men, eh? And +two women? The men are sound enough,” turning back each sleeper’s arm +from his face to look at him. “Are these your good men, my dears?” + +“Yes, sir,” returns one of the women. “They are our husbands.” + +“Brickmakers, eh?” + +“Yes, sir.” + +“What are you doing here? You don’t belong to London.” + +“No, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire.” + +“Whereabouts in Hertfordshire?” + +“Saint Albans.” + +“Come up on the tramp?” + +“We walked up yesterday. There’s no work down with us at present, but +we have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, I expect.” + +“That’s not the way to do much good,” says Mr. Bucket, turning his +head in the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground. + +“It an’t indeed,” replies the woman with a sigh. “Jenny and me knows +it full well.” + +The room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low +that the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the +blackened ceiling if he stood upright. It is offensive to every +sense; even the gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted +air. There are a couple of benches and a higher bench by way of +table. The men lie asleep where they stumbled down, but the women sit +by the candle. Lying in the arms of the woman who has spoken is a +very young child. + +“Why, what age do you call that little creature?” says Bucket. “It +looks as if it was born yesterday.” He is not at all rough about it; +and as he turns his light gently on the infant, Mr. Snagsby is +strangely reminded of another infant, encircled with light, that he +has seen in pictures. + +“He is not three weeks old yet, sir,” says the woman. + +“Is he your child?” + +“Mine.” + +The other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops +down again and kisses it as it lies asleep. + +“You seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself,” says Mr. +Bucket. + +“I was the mother of one like it, master, and it died.” + +“Ah, Jenny, Jenny!” says the other woman to her. “Better so. Much +better to think of dead than alive, Jenny! Much better!” + +“Why, you an’t such an unnatural woman, I hope,” returns Bucket +sternly, “as to wish your own child dead?” + +“God knows you are right, master,” she returns. “I am not. I’d stand +between it and death with my own life if I could, as true as any +pretty lady.” + +“Then don’t talk in that wrong manner,” says Mr. Bucket, mollified +again. “Why do you do it?” + +“It’s brought into my head, master,” returns the woman, her eyes +filling with tears, “when I look down at the child lying so. If it +was never to wake no more, you’d think me mad, I should take on so. I +know that very well. I was with Jenny when she lost hers—warn’t I, +Jenny?—and I know how she grieved. But look around you at this +place. Look at them,” glancing at the sleepers on the ground. “Look +at the boy you’re waiting for, who’s gone out to do me a good turn. +Think of the children that your business lays with often and often, +and that YOU see grow up!” + +“Well, well,” says Mr. Bucket, “you train him respectable, and he’ll +be a comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you know.” + +“I mean to try hard,” she answers, wiping her eyes. “But I have been +a-thinking, being over-tired to-night and not well with the ague, of +all the many things that’ll come in his way. My master will be +against it, and he’ll be beat, and see me beat, and made to fear his +home, and perhaps to stray wild. If I work for him ever so much, and +ever so hard, there’s no one to help me; and if he should be turned +bad ‘spite of all I could do, and the time should come when I should +sit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed, an’t it likely I +should think of him as he lies in my lap now and wish he had died as +Jenny’s child died!” + +“There, there!” says Jenny. “Liz, you’re tired and ill. Let me take +him.” + +In doing so, she displaces the mother’s dress, but quickly readjusts +it over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has been lying. + +“It’s my dead child,” says Jenny, walking up and down as she nurses, +“that makes me love this child so dear, and it’s my dead child that +makes her love it so dear too, as even to think of its being taken +away from her now. While she thinks that, I think what fortune would +I give to have my darling back. But we mean the same thing, if we +knew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor hearts!” + +As Mr. Snagsby blows his nose and coughs his cough of sympathy, a +step is heard without. Mr. Bucket throws his light into the doorway +and says to Mr. Snagsby, “Now, what do you say to Toughy? Will HE +do?” + +“That’s Jo,” says Mr. Snagsby. + +Jo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a ragged figure in a +magic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended against the +law in not having moved on far enough. Mr. Snagsby, however, giving +him the consolatory assurance, “It’s only a job you will be paid for, +Jo,” he recovers; and on being taken outside by Mr. Bucket for a +little private confabulation, tells his tale satisfactorily, though +out of breath. + +“I have squared it with the lad,” says Mr. Bucket, returning, “and +it’s all right. Now, Mr. Snagsby, we’re ready for you.” + +First, Jo has to complete his errand of good nature by handing over +the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic +verbal direction that “it’s to be all took d’rectly.” Secondly, Mr. +Snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual panacea for +an immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr. Bucket has to take Jo +by the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on before him, +without which observance neither the Tough Subject nor any other +Subject could be professionally conducted to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. +These arrangements completed, they give the women good night and come +out once more into black and foul Tom-all-Alone’s. + +By the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit, they +gradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and whistling, and +skulking about them until they come to the verge, where restoration +of the bull’s-eyes is made to Darby. Here the crowd, like a concourse +of imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is seen no more. +Through the clearer and fresher streets, never so clear and fresh to +Mr. Snagsby’s mind as now, they walk and ride until they come to Mr. +Tulkinghorn’s gate. + +As they ascend the dim stairs (Mr. Tulkinghorn’s chambers being on +the first floor), Mr. Bucket mentions that he has the key of the +outer door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. For a man +so expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to open the +door and makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a note of +preparation. + +Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning, +and so into Mr. Tulkinghorn’s usual room—the room where he drank his +old wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned +candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light. + +Mr. Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo and appearing to +Mr. Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a little +way into this room, when Jo starts and stops. + +“What’s the matter?” says Bucket in a whisper. + +“There she is!” cries Jo. + +“Who!” + +“The lady!” + +A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room, +where the light falls upon it. It is quite still and silent. The +front of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of their +entrance and remains like a statue. + +“Now, tell me,” says Bucket aloud, “how you know that to be the +lady.” + +“I know the wale,” replies Jo, staring, “and the bonnet, and the +gownd.” + +“Be quite sure of what you say, Tough,” returns Bucket, narrowly +observant of him. “Look again.” + +“I am a-looking as hard as ever I can look,” says Jo with starting +eyes, “and that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd.” + +“What about those rings you told me of?” asks Bucket. + +“A-sparkling all over here,” says Jo, rubbing the fingers of his left +hand on the knuckles of his right without taking his eyes from the +figure. + +The figure removes the right-hand glove and shows the hand. + +“Now, what do you say to that?” asks Bucket. + +Jo shakes his head. “Not rings a bit like them. Not a hand like +that.” + +“What are you talking of?” says Bucket, evidently pleased though, and +well pleased too. + +“Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater, and a deal smaller,” +returns Jo. + +“Why, you’ll tell me I’m my own mother next,” says Mr. Bucket. “Do +you recollect the lady’s voice?” + +“I think I does,” says Jo. + +The figure speaks. “Was it at all like this? I will speak as long as +you like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like this +voice?” + +Jo looks aghast at Mr. Bucket. “Not a bit!” + +“Then, what,” retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, “did you +say it was the lady for?” + +“Cos,” says Jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all shaken +in his certainty, “cos that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and the +gownd. It is her and it an’t her. It an’t her hand, nor yet her +rings, nor yet her woice. But that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and +the gownd, and they’re wore the same way wot she wore ’em, and it’s +her height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov’ring and hooked it.” + +“Well!” says Mr. Bucket slightly, “we haven’t got much good out of +YOU. But, however, here’s five shillings for you. Take care how you +spend it, and don’t get yourself into trouble.” Bucket stealthily +tells the coins from one hand into the other like counters—which is +a way he has, his principal use of them being in these games of +skill—and then puts them, in a little pile, into the boy’s hand and +takes him out to the door, leaving Mr. Snagsby, not by any means +comfortable under these mysterious circumstances, alone with the +veiled figure. But on Mr. Tulkinghorn’s coming into the room, the +veil is raised and a sufficiently good-looking Frenchwoman is +revealed, though her expression is something of the intensest. + +“Thank you, Mademoiselle Hortense,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn with his +usual equanimity. “I will give you no further trouble about this +little wager.” + +“You will do me the kindness to remember, sir, that I am not at +present placed?” says mademoiselle. + +“Certainly, certainly!” + +“And to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished +recommendation?” + +“By all means, Mademoiselle Hortense.” + +“A word from Mr. Tulkinghorn is so powerful.” + +“It shall not be wanting, mademoiselle.” + +“Receive the assurance of my devoted gratitude, dear sir.” + +“Good night.” + +Mademoiselle goes out with an air of native gentility; and Mr. +Bucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be groom of the +ceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs, not +without gallantry. + +“Well, Bucket?” quoth Mr. Tulkinghorn on his return. + +“It’s all squared, you see, as I squared it myself, sir. There an’t a +doubt that it was the other one with this one’s dress on. The boy was +exact respecting colours and everything. Mr. Snagsby, I promised you +as a man that he should be sent away all right. Don’t say it wasn’t +done!” + +“You have kept your word, sir,” returns the stationer; “and if I can +be of no further use, Mr. Tulkinghorn, I think, as my little woman +will be getting anxious—” + +“Thank you, Snagsby, no further use,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “I am +quite indebted to you for the trouble you have taken already.” + +“Not at all, sir. I wish you good night.” + +“You see, Mr. Snagsby,” says Mr. Bucket, accompanying him to the door +and shaking hands with him over and over again, “what I like in you +is that you’re a man it’s of no use pumping; that’s what YOU are. +When you know you have done a right thing, you put it away, and it’s +done with and gone, and there’s an end of it. That’s what YOU do.” + +“That is certainly what I endeavour to do, sir,” returns Mr. Snagsby. + +“No, you don’t do yourself justice. It an’t what you endeavour to +do,” says Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in the +tenderest manner, “it’s what you DO. That’s what I estimate in a man +in your way of business.” + +Mr. Snagsby makes a suitable response and goes homeward so confused +by the events of the evening that he is doubtful of his being awake +and out—doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he +goes—doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him. He +is presently reassured on these subjects by the unchallengeable +reality of Mrs. Snagsby, sitting up with her head in a perfect +beehive of curl-papers and night-cap, who has dispatched Guster to +the police-station with official intelligence of her husband’s being +made away with, and who within the last two hours has passed through +every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. But as the little +woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it! + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +Esther’s Narrative + + +We came home from Mr. Boythorn’s after six pleasant weeks. We were +often in the park and in the woods and seldom passed the lodge where +we had taken shelter without looking in to speak to the keeper’s +wife; but we saw no more of Lady Dedlock, except at church on +Sundays. There was company at Chesney Wold; and although several +beautiful faces surrounded her, her face retained the same influence +on me as at first. I do not quite know even now whether it was +painful or pleasurable, whether it drew me towards her or made me +shrink from her. I think I admired her with a kind of fear, and I +know that in her presence my thoughts always wandered back, as they +had done at first, to that old time of my life. + +I had a fancy, on more than one of these Sundays, that what this lady +so curiously was to me, I was to her—I mean that I disturbed her +thoughts as she influenced mine, though in some different way. But +when I stole a glance at her and saw her so composed and distant and +unapproachable, I felt this to be a foolish weakness. Indeed, I felt +the whole state of my mind in reference to her to be weak and +unreasonable, and I remonstrated with myself about it as much as I +could. + +One incident that occurred before we quitted Mr. Boythorn’s house, I +had better mention in this place. + +I was walking in the garden with Ada when I was told that some one +wished to see me. Going into the breakfast-room where this person was +waiting, I found it to be the French maid who had cast off her shoes +and walked through the wet grass on the day when it thundered and +lightened. + +“Mademoiselle,” she began, looking fixedly at me with her too-eager +eyes, though otherwise presenting an agreeable appearance and +speaking neither with boldness nor servility, “I have taken a great +liberty in coming here, but you know how to excuse it, being so +amiable, mademoiselle.” + +“No excuse is necessary,” I returned, “if you wish to speak to me.” + +“That is my desire, mademoiselle. A thousand thanks for the +permission. I have your leave to speak. Is it not?” she said in a +quick, natural way. + +“Certainly,” said I. + +“Mademoiselle, you are so amiable! Listen then, if you please. I have +left my Lady. We could not agree. My Lady is so high, so very high. +Pardon! Mademoiselle, you are right!” Her quickness anticipated what +I might have said presently but as yet had only thought. “It is not +for me to come here to complain of my Lady. But I say she is so high, +so very high. I will not say a word more. All the world knows that.” + +“Go on, if you please,” said I. + +“Assuredly; mademoiselle, I am thankful for your politeness. +Mademoiselle, I have an inexpressible desire to find service with a +young lady who is good, accomplished, beautiful. You are good, +accomplished, and beautiful as an angel. Ah, could I have the honour +of being your domestic!” + +“I am sorry—” I began. + +“Do not dismiss me so soon, mademoiselle!” she said with an +involuntary contraction of her fine black eyebrows. “Let me hope a +moment! Mademoiselle, I know this service would be more retired than +that which I have quitted. Well! I wish that. I know this service +would be less distinguished than that which I have quitted. Well! I +wish that, I know that I should win less, as to wages here. Good. I +am content.” + +“I assure you,” said I, quite embarrassed by the mere idea of having +such an attendant, “that I keep no maid—” + +“Ah, mademoiselle, but why not? Why not, when you can have one so +devoted to you! Who would be enchanted to serve you; who would be so +true, so zealous, and so faithful every day! Mademoiselle, I wish +with all my heart to serve you. Do not speak of money at present. +Take me as I am. For nothing!” + +She was so singularly earnest that I drew back, almost afraid of her. +Without appearing to notice it, in her ardour she still pressed +herself upon me, speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though always +with a certain grace and propriety. + +“Mademoiselle, I come from the South country where we are quick and +where we like and dislike very strong. My Lady was too high for me; I +was too high for her. It is done—past—finished! Receive me as your +domestic, and I will serve you well. I will do more for you than you +figure to yourself now. Chut! Mademoiselle, I will—no matter, I will +do my utmost possible in all things. If you accept my service, you +will not repent it. Mademoiselle, you will not repent it, and I will +serve you well. You don’t know how well!” + +There was a lowering energy in her face as she stood looking at me +while I explained the impossibility of my engaging her (without +thinking it necessary to say how very little I desired to do so), +which seemed to bring visibly before me some woman from the streets +of Paris in the reign of terror. + +She heard me out without interruption and then said with her pretty +accent and in her mildest voice, “Hey, mademoiselle, I have received +my answer! I am sorry of it. But I must go elsewhere and seek what I +have not found here. Will you graciously let me kiss your hand?” + +She looked at me more intently as she took it, and seemed to take +note, with her momentary touch, of every vein in it. “I fear I +surprised you, mademoiselle, on the day of the storm?” she said with +a parting curtsy. + +I confessed that she had surprised us all. + +“I took an oath, mademoiselle,” she said, smiling, “and I wanted to +stamp it on my mind so that I might keep it faithfully. And I will! +Adieu, mademoiselle!” + +So ended our conference, which I was very glad to bring to a close. I +supposed she went away from the village, for I saw her no more; and +nothing else occurred to disturb our tranquil summer pleasures until +six weeks were out and we returned home as I began just now by +saying. + +At that time, and for a good many weeks after that time, Richard was +constant in his visits. Besides coming every Saturday or Sunday and +remaining with us until Monday morning, he sometimes rode out on +horseback unexpectedly and passed the evening with us and rode back +again early next day. He was as vivacious as ever and told us he was +very industrious, but I was not easy in my mind about him. It +appeared to me that his industry was all misdirected. I could not +find that it led to anything but the formation of delusive hopes in +connexion with the suit already the pernicious cause of so much +sorrow and ruin. He had got at the core of that mystery now, he told +us, and nothing could be plainer than that the will under which he +and Ada were to take I don’t know how many thousands of pounds must +be finally established if there were any sense or justice in the +Court of Chancery—but oh, what a great IF that sounded in my +ears—and that this happy conclusion could not be much longer +delayed. He proved this to himself by all the weary arguments on that +side he had read, and every one of them sunk him deeper in the +infatuation. He had even begun to haunt the court. He told us how he +saw Miss Flite there daily, how they talked together, and how he did +her little kindnesses, and how, while he laughed at her, he pitied +her from his heart. But he never thought—never, my poor, dear, +sanguine Richard, capable of so much happiness then, and with such +better things before him—what a fatal link was riveting between his +fresh youth and her faded age, between his free hopes and her caged +birds, and her hungry garret, and her wandering mind. + +Ada loved him too well to mistrust him much in anything he said or +did, and my guardian, though he frequently complained of the east +wind and read more than usual in the growlery, preserved a strict +silence on the subject. So I thought one day when I went to London to +meet Caddy Jellyby, at her solicitation, I would ask Richard to be in +waiting for me at the coach-office, that we might have a little talk +together. I found him there when I arrived, and we walked away arm in +arm. + +“Well, Richard,” said I as soon as I could begin to be grave with +him, “are you beginning to feel more settled now?” + +“Oh, yes, my dear!” returned Richard. “I’m all right enough.” + +“But settled?” said I. + +“How do you mean, settled?” returned Richard with his gay laugh. + +“Settled in the law,” said I. + +“Oh, aye,” replied Richard, “I’m all right enough.” + +“You said that before, my dear Richard.” + +“And you don’t think it’s an answer, eh? Well! Perhaps it’s not. +Settled? You mean, do I feel as if I were settling down?” + +“Yes.” + +“Why, no, I can’t say I am settling down,” said Richard, strongly +emphasizing “down,” as if that expressed the difficulty, “because one +can’t settle down while this business remains in such an unsettled +state. When I say this business, of course I mean the—forbidden +subject.” + +“Do you think it will ever be in a settled state?” said I. + +“Not the least doubt of it,” answered Richard. + +We walked a little way without speaking, and presently Richard +addressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus: “My dear +Esther, I understand you, and I wish to heaven I were a more constant +sort of fellow. I don’t mean constant to Ada, for I love her +dearly—better and better every day—but constant to myself. +(Somehow, I mean something that I can’t very well express, but you’ll +make it out.) If I were a more constant sort of fellow, I should have +held on either to Badger or to Kenge and Carboy like grim death, and +should have begun to be steady and systematic by this time, and +shouldn’t be in debt, and—” + +“ARE you in debt, Richard?” + +“Yes,” said Richard, “I am a little so, my dear. Also, I have taken +rather too much to billiards and that sort of thing. Now the murder’s +out; you despise me, Esther, don’t you?” + +“You know I don’t,” said I. + +“You are kinder to me than I often am to myself,” he returned. “My +dear Esther, I am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled, but +how CAN I be more settled? If you lived in an unfinished house, you +couldn’t settle down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything +you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to +anything; and yet that’s my unhappy case. I was born into this +unfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began +to unsettle me before I quite knew the difference between a suit at +law and a suit of clothes; and it has gone on unsettling me ever +since; and here I am now, conscious sometimes that I am but a +worthless fellow to love my confiding cousin Ada.” + +We were in a solitary place, and he put his hands before his eyes and +sobbed as he said the words. + +“Oh, Richard!” said I. “Do not be so moved. You have a noble nature, +and Ada’s love may make you worthier every day.” + +“I know, my dear,” he replied, pressing my arm, “I know all that. You +mustn’t mind my being a little soft now, for I have had all this upon +my mind for a long time, and have often meant to speak to you, and +have sometimes wanted opportunity and sometimes courage. I know what +the thought of Ada ought to do for me, but it doesn’t do it. I am too +unsettled even for that. I love her most devotedly, and yet I do her +wrong, in doing myself wrong, every day and hour. But it can’t last +for ever. We shall come on for a final hearing and get judgment in +our favour, and then you and Ada shall see what I can really be!” + +It had given me a pang to hear him sob and see the tears start out +between his fingers, but that was infinitely less affecting to me +than the hopeful animation with which he said these words. + +“I have looked well into the papers, Esther. I have been deep in them +for months,” he continued, recovering his cheerfulness in a moment, +“and you may rely upon it that we shall come out triumphant. As to +years of delay, there has been no want of them, heaven knows! And +there is the greater probability of our bringing the matter to a +speedy close; in fact, it’s on the paper now. It will be all right at +last, and then you shall see!” + +Recalling how he had just now placed Messrs. Kenge and Carboy in the +same category with Mr. Badger, I asked him when he intended to be +articled in Lincoln’s Inn. + +“There again! I think not at all, Esther,” he returned with an +effort. “I fancy I have had enough of it. Having worked at Jarndyce +and Jarndyce like a galley slave, I have slaked my thirst for the law +and satisfied myself that I shouldn’t like it. Besides, I find it +unsettles me more and more to be so constantly upon the scene of +action. So what,” continued Richard, confident again by this time, +“do I naturally turn my thoughts to?” + +“I can’t imagine,” said I. + +“Don’t look so serious,” returned Richard, “because it’s the best +thing I can do, my dear Esther, I am certain. It’s not as if I wanted +a profession for life. These proceedings will come to a termination, +and then I am provided for. No. I look upon it as a pursuit which is +in its nature more or less unsettled, and therefore suited to my +temporary condition—I may say, precisely suited. What is it that I +naturally turn my thoughts to?” + +I looked at him and shook my head. + +“What,” said Richard, in a tone of perfect conviction, “but the +army!” + +“The army?” said I. + +“The army, of course. What I have to do is to get a commission; +and—there I am, you know!” said Richard. + +And then he showed me, proved by elaborate calculations in his +pocket-book, that supposing he had contracted, say, two hundred +pounds of debt in six months out of the army; and that he contracted +no debt at all within a corresponding period in the army—as to which +he had quite made up his mind; this step must involve a saving of +four hundred pounds in a year, or two thousand pounds in five years, +which was a considerable sum. And then he spoke so ingenuously and +sincerely of the sacrifice he made in withdrawing himself for a time +from Ada, and of the earnestness with which he aspired—as in thought +he always did, I know full well—to repay her love, and to ensure her +happiness, and to conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire +the very soul of decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely. +For, I thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon +and so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal +blight that ruined everything it rested on! + +I spoke to Richard with all the earnestness I felt, and all the hope +I could not quite feel then, and implored him for Ada’s sake not to +put any trust in Chancery. To all I said, Richard readily assented, +riding over the court and everything else in his easy way and drawing +the brightest pictures of the character he was to settle into—alas, +when the grievous suit should loose its hold upon him! We had a long +talk, but it always came back to that, in substance. + +At last we came to Soho Square, where Caddy Jellyby had appointed to +wait for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood of Newman Street. +Caddy was in the garden in the centre and hurried out as soon as I +appeared. After a few cheerful words, Richard left us together. + +“Prince has a pupil over the way, Esther,” said Caddy, “and got the +key for us. So if you will walk round and round here with me, we can +lock ourselves in and I can tell you comfortably what I wanted to see +your dear good face about.” + +“Very well, my dear,” said I. “Nothing could be better.” So Caddy, +after affectionately squeezing the dear good face as she called it, +locked the gate, and took my arm, and we began to walk round the +garden very cosily. + +“You see, Esther,” said Caddy, who thoroughly enjoyed a little +confidence, “after you spoke to me about its being wrong to marry +without Ma’s knowledge, or even to keep Ma long in the dark +respecting our engagement—though I don’t believe Ma cares much for +me, I must say—I thought it right to mention your opinions to +Prince. In the first place because I want to profit by everything you +tell me, and in the second place because I have no secrets from +Prince.” + +“I hope he approved, Caddy?” + +“Oh, my dear! I assure you he would approve of anything you could +say. You have no idea what an opinion he has of you!” + +“Indeed!” + +“Esther, it’s enough to make anybody but me jealous,” said Caddy, +laughing and shaking her head; “but it only makes me joyful, for you +are the first friend I ever had, and the best friend I ever can have, +and nobody can respect and love you too much to please me.” + +“Upon my word, Caddy,” said I, “you are in the general conspiracy to +keep me in a good humour. Well, my dear?” + +“Well! I am going to tell you,” replied Caddy, crossing her hands +confidentially upon my arm. “So we talked a good deal about it, and +so I said to Prince, ‘Prince, as Miss Summerson—’” + +“I hope you didn’t say ‘Miss Summerson’?” + +“No. I didn’t!” cried Caddy, greatly pleased and with the brightest +of faces. “I said, ‘Esther.’ I said to Prince, ‘As Esther is +decidedly of that opinion, Prince, and has expressed it to me, and +always hints it when she writes those kind notes, which you are so +fond of hearing me read to you, I am prepared to disclose the truth +to Ma whenever you think proper. And I think, Prince,’ said I, ‘that +Esther thinks that I should be in a better, and truer, and more +honourable position altogether if you did the same to your papa.’” + +“Yes, my dear,” said I. “Esther certainly does think so.” + +“So I was right, you see!” exclaimed Caddy. “Well! This troubled +Prince a good deal, not because he had the least doubt about it, but +because he is so considerate of the feelings of old Mr. Turveydrop; +and he had his apprehensions that old Mr. Turveydrop might break his +heart, or faint away, or be very much overcome in some affecting +manner or other if he made such an announcement. He feared old Mr. +Turveydrop might consider it undutiful and might receive too great a +shock. For old Mr. Turveydrop’s deportment is very beautiful, you +know, Esther,” said Caddy, “and his feelings are extremely +sensitive.” + +“Are they, my dear?” + +“Oh, extremely sensitive. Prince says so. Now, this has caused my +darling child—I didn’t mean to use the expression to you, Esther,” +Caddy apologized, her face suffused with blushes, “but I generally +call Prince my darling child.” + +I laughed; and Caddy laughed and blushed, and went on. + +“This has caused him, Esther—” + +“Caused whom, my dear?” + +“Oh, you tiresome thing!” said Caddy, laughing, with her pretty face +on fire. “My darling child, if you insist upon it! This has caused +him weeks of uneasiness and has made him delay, from day to day, in a +very anxious manner. At last he said to me, ‘Caddy, if Miss +Summerson, who is a great favourite with my father, could be +prevailed upon to be present when I broke the subject, I think I +could do it.’ So I promised I would ask you. And I made up my mind, +besides,” said Caddy, looking at me hopefully but timidly, “that if +you consented, I would ask you afterwards to come with me to Ma. This +is what I meant when I said in my note that I had a great favour and +a great assistance to beg of you. And if you thought you could grant +it, Esther, we should both be very grateful.” + +“Let me see, Caddy,” said I, pretending to consider. “Really, I think +I could do a greater thing than that if the need were pressing. I am +at your service and the darling child’s, my dear, whenever you like.” + +Caddy was quite transported by this reply of mine, being, I believe, +as susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as any tender +heart that ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two +round the garden, during which she put on an entirely new pair of +gloves and made herself as resplendent as possible that she might do +no avoidable discredit to the Master of Deportment, we went to Newman +Street direct. + +Prince was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not very +hopeful pupil—a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a deep +voice, and an inanimate, dissatisfied mama—whose case was certainly +not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her +preceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after proceeding as +discordantly as possible; and when the little girl had changed her +shoes and had had her white muslin extinguished in shawls, she was +taken away. After a few words of preparation, we then went in search +of Mr. Turveydrop, whom we found, grouped with his hat and gloves, as +a model of deportment, on the sofa in his private apartment—the only +comfortable room in the house. He appeared to have dressed at his +leisure in the intervals of a light collation, and his dressing-case, +brushes, and so forth, all of quite an elegant kind, lay about. + +“Father, Miss Summerson; Miss Jellyby.” + +“Charmed! Enchanted!” said Mr. Turveydrop, rising with his +high-shouldered bow. “Permit me!” Handing chairs. “Be seated!” +Kissing the tips of his left fingers. “Overjoyed!” Shutting his eyes +and rolling. “My little retreat is made a paradise.” Recomposing +himself on the sofa like the second gentleman in Europe. + +“Again you find us, Miss Summerson,” said he, “using our little arts +to polish, polish! Again the sex stimulates us and rewards us by the +condescension of its lovely presence. It is much in these times (and +we have made an awfully degenerating business of it since the days of +his Royal Highness the Prince Regent—my patron, if I may presume to +say so) to experience that deportment is not wholly trodden under +foot by mechanics. That it can yet bask in the smile of beauty, my +dear madam.” + +I said nothing, which I thought a suitable reply; and he took a pinch +of snuff. + +“My dear son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “you have four schools this +afternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich.” + +“Thank you, father,” returned Prince, “I will be sure to be punctual. +My dear father, may I beg you to prepare your mind for what I am +going to say?” + +“Good heaven!” exclaimed the model, pale and aghast as Prince and +Caddy, hand in hand, bent down before him. “What is this? Is this +lunacy! Or what is this?” + +“Father,” returned Prince with great submission, “I love this young +lady, and we are engaged.” + +“Engaged!” cried Mr. Turveydrop, reclining on the sofa and shutting +out the sight with his hand. “An arrow launched at my brain by my own +child!” + +“We have been engaged for some time, father,” faltered Prince, “and +Miss Summerson, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the +fact to you and was so very kind as to attend on the present +occasion. Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you, +father.” + +Mr. Turveydrop uttered a groan. + +“No, pray don’t! Pray don’t, father,” urged his son. “Miss Jellyby is +a young lady who deeply respects you, and our first desire is to +consider your comfort.” + +Mr. Turveydrop sobbed. + +“No, pray don’t, father!” cried his son. + +“Boy,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “it is well that your sainted mother is +spared this pang. Strike deep, and spare not. Strike home, sir, +strike home!” + +“Pray don’t say so, father,” implored Prince, in tears. “It goes to +my heart. I do assure you, father, that our first wish and intention +is to consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not forget our +duty—what is my duty is Caroline’s, as we have often said +together—and with your approval and consent, father, we will devote +ourselves to making your life agreeable.” + +“Strike home,” murmured Mr. Turveydrop. “Strike home!” But he seemed +to listen, I thought, too. + +“My dear father,” returned Prince, “we well know what little comforts +you are accustomed to and have a right to, and it will always be our +study and our pride to provide those before anything. If you will +bless us with your approval and consent, father, we shall not think +of being married until it is quite agreeable to you; and when we ARE +married, we shall always make you—of course—our first +consideration. You must ever be the head and master here, father; and +we feel how truly unnatural it would be in us if we failed to know it +or if we failed to exert ourselves in every possible way to please +you.” + +Mr. Turveydrop underwent a severe internal struggle and came upright +on the sofa again with his cheeks puffing over his stiff cravat, a +perfect model of parental deportment. + +“My son!” said Mr. Turveydrop. “My children! I cannot resist your +prayer. Be happy!” + +His benignity as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched +out his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect and +gratitude) was the most confusing sight I ever saw. + +“My children,” said Mr. Turveydrop, paternally encircling Caddy with +his left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand +gracefully on his hip. “My son and daughter, your happiness shall be +my care. I will watch over you. You shall always live with +me”—meaning, of course, I will always live with you—“this house is +henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May you long +live to share it with me!” + +The power of his deportment was such that they really were as much +overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon +them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent +sacrifice in their favour. + +“For myself, my children,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “I am falling into +the sear and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the +last feeble traces of gentlemanly deportment may linger in this +weaving and spinning age. But, so long, I will do my duty to society +and will show myself, as usual, about town. My wants are few and +simple. My little apartment here, my few essentials for the toilet, +my frugal morning meal, and my little dinner will suffice. I charge +your dutiful affection with the supply of these requirements, and I +charge myself with all the rest.” + +They were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity. + +“My son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “for those little points in which you +are deficient—points of deportment, which are born with a man, which +may be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated—you may +still rely on me. I have been faithful to my post since the days of +his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and I will not desert it now. +No, my son. If you have ever contemplated your father’s poor position +with a feeling of pride, you may rest assured that he will do nothing +to tarnish it. For yourself, Prince, whose character is different (we +cannot be all alike, nor is it advisable that we should), work, be +industrious, earn money, and extend the connexion as much as +possible.” + +“That you may depend I will do, dear father, with all my heart,” +replied Prince. + +“I have no doubt of it,” said Mr. Turveydrop. “Your qualities are not +shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. And to both +of you, my children, I would merely observe, in the spirit of a +sainted wooman on whose path I had the happiness of casting, I +believe, SOME ray of light, take care of the establishment, take care +of my simple wants, and bless you both!” + +Old Mr. Turveydrop then became so very gallant, in honour of the +occasion, that I told Caddy we must really go to Thavies Inn at once +if we were to go at all that day. So we took our departure after a +very loving farewell between Caddy and her betrothed, and during our +walk she was so happy and so full of old Mr. Turveydrop’s praises +that I would not have said a word in his disparagement for any +consideration. + +The house in Thavies Inn had bills in the windows announcing that it +was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than +ever. The name of poor Mr. Jellyby had appeared in the list of +bankrupts but a day or two before, and he was shut up in the +dining-room with two gentlemen and a heap of blue bags, +account-books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to +understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite beyond his +comprehension, for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by mistake +and we came upon Mr. Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly fenced into +a corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed +to have given up the whole thing and to be speechless and insensible. + +Going upstairs to Mrs. Jellyby’s room (the children were all +screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we +found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening, +reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn +covers on the floor. She was so preoccupied that at first she did not +know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious, bright-eyed, +far-off look of hers. + +“Ah! Miss Summerson!” she said at last. “I was thinking of something +so different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see you. Mr. +Jarndyce and Miss Clare quite well?” + +I hoped in return that Mr. Jellyby was quite well. + +“Why, not quite, my dear,” said Mrs. Jellyby in the calmest manner. +“He has been unfortunate in his affairs and is a little out of +spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time to +think about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred and +seventy families, Miss Summerson, averaging five persons in each, +either gone or going to the left bank of the Niger.” + +I thought of the one family so near us who were neither gone nor +going to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be so +placid. + +“You have brought Caddy back, I see,” observed Mrs. Jellyby with a +glance at her daughter. “It has become quite a novelty to see her +here. She has almost deserted her old employment and in fact obliges +me to employ a boy.” + +“I am sure, Ma—” began Caddy. + +“Now you know, Caddy,” her mother mildly interposed, “that I DO +employ a boy, who is now at his dinner. What is the use of your +contradicting?” + +“I was not going to contradict, Ma,” returned Caddy. “I was only +going to say that surely you wouldn’t have me be a mere drudge all my +life.” + +“I believe, my dear,” said Mrs. Jellyby, still opening her letters, +casting her bright eyes smilingly over them, and sorting them as she +spoke, “that you have a business example before you in your mother. +Besides. A mere drudge? If you had any sympathy with the destinies of +the human race, it would raise you high above any such idea. But you +have none. I have often told you, Caddy, you have no such sympathy.” + +“Not if it’s Africa, Ma, I have not.” + +“Of course you have not. Now, if I were not happily so much engaged, +Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Jellyby, sweetly casting her eyes for a +moment on me and considering where to put the particular letter she +had just opened, “this would distress and disappoint me. But I have +so much to think of, in connexion with Borrioboola-Gha and it is so +necessary I should concentrate myself that there is my remedy, you +see.” + +As Caddy gave me a glance of entreaty, and as Mrs. Jellyby was +looking far away into Africa straight through my bonnet and head, I +thought it a good opportunity to come to the subject of my visit and +to attract Mrs. Jellyby’s attention. + +“Perhaps,” I began, “you will wonder what has brought me here to +interrupt you.” + +“I am always delighted to see Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Jellyby, +pursuing her employment with a placid smile. “Though I wish,” and she +shook her head, “she was more interested in the Borrioboolan +project.” + +“I have come with Caddy,” said I, “because Caddy justly thinks she +ought not to have a secret from her mother and fancies I shall +encourage and aid her (though I am sure I don’t know how) in +imparting one.” + +“Caddy,” said Mrs. Jellyby, pausing for a moment in her occupation +and then serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, “you are going +to tell me some nonsense.” + +Caddy untied the strings of her bonnet, took her bonnet off, and +letting it dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying heartily, +said, “Ma, I am engaged.” + +“Oh, you ridiculous child!” observed Mrs. Jellyby with an abstracted +air as she looked over the dispatch last opened; “what a goose you +are!” + +“I am engaged, Ma,” sobbed Caddy, “to young Mr. Turveydrop, at the +academy; and old Mr. Turveydrop (who is a very gentlemanly man +indeed) has given his consent, and I beg and pray you’ll give us +yours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never, never +could!” sobbed Caddy, quite forgetful of her general complainings and +of everything but her natural affection. + +“You see again, Miss Summerson,” observed Mrs. Jellyby serenely, +“what a happiness it is to be so much occupied as I am and to have +this necessity for self-concentration that I have. Here is Caddy +engaged to a dancing-master’s son—mixed up with people who have no +more sympathy with the destinies of the human race than she has +herself! This, too, when Mr. Quale, one of the first philanthropists +of our time, has mentioned to me that he was really disposed to be +interested in her!” + +“Ma, I always hated and detested Mr. Quale!” sobbed Caddy. + +“Caddy, Caddy!” returned Mrs. Jellyby, opening another letter with +the greatest complacency. “I have no doubt you did. How could you do +otherwise, being totally destitute of the sympathies with which he +overflows! Now, if my public duties were not a favourite child to me, +if I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these +petty details might grieve me very much, Miss Summerson. But can I +permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom +I expect nothing else) to interpose between me and the great African +continent? No. No,” repeated Mrs. Jellyby in a calm clear voice, and +with an agreeable smile, as she opened more letters and sorted them. +“No, indeed.” + +I was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of this reception, +though I might have expected it, that I did not know what to say. +Caddy seemed equally at a loss. Mrs. Jellyby continued to open and +sort letters and to repeat occasionally in quite a charming tone of +voice and with a smile of perfect composure, “No, indeed.” + +“I hope, Ma,” sobbed poor Caddy at last, “you are not angry?” + +“Oh, Caddy, you really are an absurd girl,” returned Mrs. Jellyby, +“to ask such questions after what I have said of the preoccupation of +my mind.” + +“And I hope, Ma, you give us your consent and wish us well?” said +Caddy. + +“You are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind,” +said Mrs. Jellyby; “and a degenerate child, when you might have +devoted yourself to the great public measure. But the step is taken, +and I have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said. Now, pray, +Caddy,” said Mrs. Jellyby, for Caddy was kissing her, “don’t delay me +in my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch of papers before +the afternoon post comes in!” + +I thought I could not do better than take my leave; I was detained +for a moment by Caddy’s saying, “You won’t object to my bringing him +to see you, Ma?” + +“Oh, dear me, Caddy,” cried Mrs. Jellyby, who had relapsed into that +distant contemplation, “have you begun again? Bring whom?” + +“Him, Ma.” + +“Caddy, Caddy!” said Mrs. Jellyby, quite weary of such little +matters. “Then you must bring him some evening which is not a Parent +Society night, or a Branch night, or a Ramification night. You must +accommodate the visit to the demands upon my time. My dear Miss +Summerson, it was very kind of you to come here to help out this +silly chit. Good-bye! When I tell you that I have fifty-eight new +letters from manufacturing families anxious to understand the details +of the native and coffee-cultivation question this morning, I need +not apologize for having very little leisure.” + +I was not surprised by Caddy’s being in low spirits when we went +downstairs, or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by her saying she +would far rather have been scolded than treated with such +indifference, or by her confiding to me that she was so poor in +clothes that how she was ever to be married creditably she didn’t +know. I gradually cheered her up by dwelling on the many things she +would do for her unfortunate father and for Peepy when she had a home +of her own; and finally we went downstairs into the damp dark +kitchen, where Peepy and his little brothers and sisters were +grovelling on the stone floor and where we had such a game of play +with them that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces I +was obliged to fall back on my fairy-tales. From time to time I heard +loud voices in the parlour overhead, and occasionally a violent +tumbling about of the furniture. The last effect I am afraid was +caused by poor Mr. Jellyby’s breaking away from the dining-table and +making rushes at the window with the intention of throwing himself +into the area whenever he made any new attempt to understand his +affairs. + +As I rode quietly home at night after the day’s bustle, I thought a +good deal of Caddy’s engagement and felt confirmed in my hopes (in +spite of the elder Mr. Turveydrop) that she would be the happier and +better for it. And if there seemed to be but a slender chance of her +and her husband ever finding out what the model of deportment really +was, why that was all for the best too, and who would wish them to be +wiser? I did not wish them to be any wiser and indeed was half +ashamed of not entirely believing in him myself. And I looked up at +the stars, and thought about travellers in distant countries and the +stars THEY saw, and hoped I might always be so blest and happy as to +be useful to some one in my small way. + +They were so glad to see me when I got home, as they always were, +that I could have sat down and cried for joy if that had not been a +method of making myself disagreeable. Everybody in the house, from +the lowest to the highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome, +and spoke so cheerily, and was so happy to do anything for me, that I +suppose there never was such a fortunate little creature in the +world. + +We got into such a chatty state that night, through Ada and my +guardian drawing me out to tell them all about Caddy, that I went on +prose, prose, prosing for a length of time. At last I got up to my +own room, quite red to think how I had been holding forth, and then I +heard a soft tap at my door. So I said, “Come in!” and there came in +a pretty little girl, neatly dressed in mourning, who dropped a +curtsy. + +“If you please, miss,” said the little girl in a soft voice, “I am +Charley.” + +“Why, so you are,” said I, stooping down in astonishment and giving +her a kiss. “How glad am I to see you, Charley!” + +“If you please, miss,” pursued Charley in the same soft voice, “I’m +your maid.” + +“Charley?” + +“If you please, miss, I’m a present to you, with Mr. Jarndyce’s +love.” + +I sat down with my hand on Charley’s neck and looked at Charley. + +“And oh, miss,” says Charley, clapping her hands, with the tears +starting down her dimpled cheeks, “Tom’s at school, if you please, +and learning so good! And little Emma, she’s with Mrs. Blinder, miss, +a-being took such care of! And Tom, he would have been at school—and +Emma, she would have been left with Mrs. Blinder—and me, I should +have been here—all a deal sooner, miss; only Mr. Jarndyce thought +that Tom and Emma and me had better get a little used to parting +first, we was so small. Don’t cry, if you please, miss!” + +“I can’t help it, Charley.” + +“No, miss, nor I can’t help it,” says Charley. “And if you please, +miss, Mr. Jarndyce’s love, and he thinks you’ll like to teach me now +and then. And if you please, Tom and Emma and me is to see each other +once a month. And I’m so happy and so thankful, miss,” cried Charley +with a heaving heart, “and I’ll try to be such a good maid!” + +“Oh, Charley dear, never forget who did all this!” + +“No, miss, I never will. Nor Tom won’t. Nor yet Emma. It was all you, +miss.” + +“I have known nothing of it. It was Mr. Jarndyce, Charley.” + +“Yes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you and that you +might be my mistress. If you please, miss, I am a little present with +his love, and it was all done for the love of you. Me and Tom was to +be sure to remember it.” + +Charley dried her eyes and entered on her functions, going in her +matronly little way about and about the room and folding up +everything she could lay her hands upon. Presently Charley came +creeping back to my side and said, “Oh, don’t cry, if you please, +miss.” + +And I said again, “I can’t help it, Charley.” + +And Charley said again, “No, miss, nor I can’t help it.” And so, +after all, I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +An Appeal Case + + +As soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have +given an account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr. +Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise +when he received the representation, though it caused him much +uneasiness and disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted +together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole +days in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Kenge, and +laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While they were +thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent considerable +inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed his head so +constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right +place, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other time, but +maintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our utmost +endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself sweeping assurances +that everything was going on capitally and that it really was all +right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by him. + +We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was +made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard’s behalf as an infant and a +ward, and I don’t know what, and that there was a quantity of +talking, and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court as +a vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was adjourned +and readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and petitioned about +until Richard began to doubt (as he told us) whether, if he entered +the army at all, it would not be as a veteran of seventy or eighty +years of age. At last an appointment was made for him to see the Lord +Chancellor again in his private room, and there the Lord Chancellor +very seriously reproved him for trifling with time and not knowing +his mind—“a pretty good joke, I think,” said Richard, “from that +quarter!”—and at last it was settled that his application should be +granted. His name was entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for +an ensign’s commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an +agent’s; and Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a +violent course of military study and got up at five o’clock every +morning to practise the broadsword exercise. + +Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We +sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as being in the paper or out +of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken +to; and it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now in a +professor’s house in London, was able to be with us less frequently +than before; my guardian still maintained the same reserve; and so +time passed until the commission was obtained and Richard received +directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland. + +He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a +long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed before +my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were sitting +and said, “Come in, my dears!” We went in and found Richard, whom we +had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece looking +mortified and angry. + +“Rick and I, Ada,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “are not quite of one mind. +Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!” + +“You are very hard with me, sir,” said Richard. “The harder because +you have been so considerate to me in all other respects and have +done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never could have +been set right without you, sir.” + +“Well, well!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “I want to set you more right yet. I +want to set you more right with yourself.” + +“I hope you will excuse my saying, sir,” returned Richard in a fiery +way, but yet respectfully, “that I think I am the best judge about +myself.” + +“I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick,” observed Mr. +Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, “that it’s +quite natural in you to think so, but I don’t think so. I must do my +duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool blood; and I hope +you will always care for me, cool and hot.” + +Ada had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading-chair +and sat beside her. + +“It’s nothing, my dear,” he said, “it’s nothing. Rick and I have only +had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you are +the theme. Now you are afraid of what’s coming.” + +“I am not indeed, cousin John,” replied Ada with a smile, “if it is +to come from you.” + +“Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute’s calm attention, +without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My dear +girl,” putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the +easy-chair, “you recollect the talk we had, we four when the little +woman told me of a little love affair?” + +“It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your +kindness that day, cousin John.” + +“I can never forget it,” said Richard. + +“And I can never forget it,” said Ada. + +“So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for us +to agree,” returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the +gentleness and honour of his heart. “Ada, my bird, you should know +that Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All that +he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. He +has exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward to the tree he +has planted.” + +“Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am +quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir,” said +Richard, “is not all I have.” + +“Rick, Rick!” cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner, +and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would have +stopped his ears. “For the love of God, don’t found a hope or +expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the +grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom +that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg, +better to die!” + +We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit his +lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and knew +that I felt too, how much he needed it. + +“Ada, my dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness, +“these are strong words of advice, but I live in Bleak House and have +seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard had to start him in +the race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you, for his +sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the +understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I must +go further. I will be plain with you both. You were to confide freely +in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you wholly to +relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship.” + +“Better to say at once, sir,” returned Richard, “that you renounce +all confidence in me and that you advise Ada to do the same.” + +“Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don’t mean it.” + +“You think I have begun ill, sir,” retorted Richard. “I HAVE, I +know.” + +“How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we spoke +of these things last,” said Mr. Jarndyce in a cordial and encouraging +manner. “You have not made that beginning yet, but there is a time +for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather, it is just now +fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You two (very young, +my dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing more. What more may +come must come of being worked out, Rick, and no sooner.” + +“You are very hard with me, sir,” said Richard. “Harder than I could +have supposed you would be.” + +“My dear boy,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I am harder with myself when I do +anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own hands. +Ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that there +should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for +her, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you will do what +is best for the other, if not what is best for yourselves.” + +“Why is it best, sir?” returned Richard hastily. “It was not when we +opened our hearts to you. You did not say so then.” + +“I have had experience since. I don’t blame you, Rick, but I have had +experience since.” + +“You mean of me, sir.” + +“Well! Yes, of both of you,” said Mr. Jarndyce kindly. “The time is +not come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not right, +and I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins, begin +afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for you to +write your lives in.” + +Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada but said nothing. + +“I have avoided saying one word to either of you or to Esther,” said +Mr. Jarndyce, “until now, in order that we might be open as the day, +and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I now most +earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here. Leave all else +to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do otherwise, you will do +wrong, and you will have made me do wrong in ever bringing you +together.” + +A long silence succeeded. + +“Cousin Richard,” said Ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to +his face, “after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice is +left us. Your mind may be quite at ease about me, for you will leave +me here under his care and will be sure that I can have nothing to +wish for—quite sure if I guide myself by his advice. I—I don’t +doubt, cousin Richard,” said Ada, a little confused, “that you are +very fond of me, and I—I don’t think you will fall in love with +anybody else. But I should like you to consider well about it too, as +I should like you to be in all things very happy. You may trust in +me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable; but I am not +unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even cousins may be sorry +to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry, Richard, though I know +it’s for your welfare. I shall always think of you affectionately, +and often talk of you with Esther, and—and perhaps you will +sometimes think a little of me, cousin Richard. So now,” said Ada, +going up to him and giving him her trembling hand, “we are only +cousins again, Richard—for the time perhaps—and I pray for a +blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!” + +It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my +guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he +himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But it +was certainly the case. I observed with great regret that from this +hour he never was as free and open with Mr. Jarndyce as he had been +before. He had every reason given him to be so, but he was not; and +solely on his side, an estrangement began to arise between them. + +In the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself, +and even his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in Hertfordshire +while he, Mr. Jarndyce, and I went up to London for a week. He +remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of tears, and at +such times would confide to me the heaviest self-reproaches. But in a +few minutes he would recklessly conjure up some undefinable means by +which they were both to be made rich and happy for ever, and would +become as gay as possible. + +It was a busy time, and I trotted about with him all day long, buying +a variety of things of which he stood in need. Of the things he would +have bought if he had been left to his own ways I say nothing. He was +perfectly confidential with me, and often talked so sensibly and +feelingly about his faults and his vigorous resolutions, and dwelt so +much upon the encouragement he derived from these conversations that +I could never have been tired if I had tried. + +There used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our lodging +to fence with Richard a person who had formerly been a cavalry +soldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free bearing, +with whom Richard had practised for some months. I heard so much +about him, not only from Richard, but from my guardian too, that I +was purposely in the room with my work one morning after breakfast +when he came. + +“Good morning, Mr. George,” said my guardian, who happened to be +alone with me. “Mr. Carstone will be here directly. Meanwhile, Miss +Summerson is very happy to see you, I know. Sit down.” + +He sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, I thought, and +without looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and across +his upper lip. + +“You are as punctual as the sun,” said Mr. Jarndyce. + +“Military time, sir,” he replied. “Force of habit. A mere habit in +me, sir. I am not at all business-like.” + +“Yet you have a large establishment, too, I am told?” said Mr. +Jarndyce. + +“Not much of a one, sir. I keep a shooting gallery, but not much of a +one.” + +“And what kind of a shot and what kind of a swordsman do you make of +Mr. Carstone?” said my guardian. + +“Pretty good, sir,” he replied, folding his arms upon his broad chest +and looking very large. “If Mr. Carstone was to give his full mind to +it, he would come out very good.” + +“But he don’t, I suppose?” said my guardian. + +“He did at first, sir, but not afterwards. Not his full mind. Perhaps +he has something else upon it—some young lady, perhaps.” His bright +dark eyes glanced at me for the first time. + +“He has not me upon his mind, I assure you, Mr. George,” said I, +laughing, “though you seem to suspect me.” + +He reddened a little through his brown and made me a trooper’s bow. +“No offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the roughs.” + +“Not at all,” said I. “I take it as a compliment.” + +If he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now in three or +four quick successive glances. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said to +my guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, “but you did me the +honour to mention the young lady’s name—” + +“Miss Summerson.” + +“Miss Summerson,” he repeated, and looked at me again. + +“Do you know the name?” I asked. + +“No, miss. To my knowledge I never heard it. I thought I had seen you +somewhere.” + +“I think not,” I returned, raising my head from my work to look at +him; and there was something so genuine in his speech and manner that +I was glad of the opportunity. “I remember faces very well.” + +“So do I, miss!” he returned, meeting my look with the fullness of +his dark eyes and broad forehead. “Humph! What set me off, now, upon +that!” + +His once more reddening through his brown and being disconcerted by +his efforts to remember the association brought my guardian to his +relief. + +“Have you many pupils, Mr. George?” + +“They vary in their number, sir. Mostly they’re but a small lot to +live by.” + +“And what classes of chance people come to practise at your gallery?” + +“All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to +’prentices. I have had Frenchwomen come, before now, and show +themselves dabs at pistol-shooting. Mad people out of number, of +course, but THEY go everywhere where the doors stand open.” + +“People don’t come with grudges and schemes of finishing their +practice with live targets, I hope?” said my guardian, smiling. + +“Not much of that, sir, though that HAS happened. Mostly they come +for skill—or idleness. Six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. I +beg your pardon,” said Mr. George, sitting stiffly upright and +squaring an elbow on each knee, “but I believe you’re a Chancery +suitor, if I have heard correct?” + +“I am sorry to say I am.” + +“I have had one of YOUR compatriots in my time, sir.” + +“A Chancery suitor?” returned my guardian. “How was that?” + +“Why, the man was so badgered and worried and tortured by being +knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post,” said Mr. +George, “that he got out of sorts. I don’t believe he had any idea of +taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of resentment and +violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire away +till he was red hot. One day I said to him when there was nobody by +and he had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, ‘If this +practice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but I don’t +altogether like your being so bent upon it in your present state of +mind; I’d rather you took to something else.’ I was on my guard for a +blow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very good part +and left off directly. We shook hands and struck up a sort of +friendship.” + +“What was that man?” asked my guardian in a new tone of interest. + +“Why, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer before they made a +baited bull of him,” said Mr. George. + +“Was his name Gridley?” + +“It was, sir.” + +Mr. George directed another succession of quick bright glances at me +as my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the +coincidence, and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name. +He made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what he +called my condescension. + +“I don’t know,” he said as he looked at me, “what it is that sets me +off again—but—bosh! What’s my head running against!” He passed one +of his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair as if to sweep the broken +thoughts out of his mind and sat a little forward, with one arm +akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at +the ground. + +“I am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this Gridley +into new troubles and that he is in hiding,” said my guardian. + +“So I am told, sir,” returned Mr. George, still musing and looking on +the ground. “So I am told.” + +“You don’t know where?” + +“No, sir,” returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out +of his reverie. “I can’t say anything about him. He will be worn out +soon, I expect. You may file a strong man’s heart away for a good +many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last.” + +Richard’s entrance stopped the conversation. Mr. George rose, made me +another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day, and +strode heavily out of the room. + +This was the morning of the day appointed for Richard’s departure. We +had no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his packing +early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when +he was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and Jarndyce being +again expected to come on that day, Richard proposed to me that we +should go down to the court and hear what passed. As it was his last +day, and he was eager to go, and I had never been there, I gave my +consent and we walked down to Westminster, where the court was then +sitting. We beguiled the way with arrangements concerning the letters +that Richard was to write to me and the letters that I was to write +to him and with a great many hopeful projects. My guardian knew where +we were going and therefore was not with us. + +When we came to the court, there was the Lord Chancellor—the same +whom I had seen in his private room in Lincoln’s Inn—sitting in +great state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and seals on a +red table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little +garden, which scented the whole court. Below the table, again, was a +long row of solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at +their feet; and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs and +gowns—some awake and some asleep, and one talking, and nobody paying +much attention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor leaned back in +his very easy chair with his elbow on the cushioned arm and his +forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present dozed; +some read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in groups: +all seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very +unconcerned, and extremely comfortable. + +To see everything going on so smoothly and to think of the roughness +of the suitors’ lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and +ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it +represented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was +raging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to +day, and year to year, in such good order and composure; to behold +the Lord Chancellor and the whole array of practitioners under him +looking at one another and at the spectators as if nobody had ever +heard that all over England the name in which they were assembled was +a bitter jest, was held in universal horror, contempt, and +indignation, was known for something so flagrant and bad that little +short of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one—this +was so curious and self-contradictory to me, who had no experience of +it, that it was at first incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I +sat where Richard put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me; +but there seemed to be no reality in the whole scene except poor +little Miss Flite, the madwoman, standing on a bench and nodding at +it. + +Miss Flite soon espied us and came to where we sat. She gave me a +gracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much gratification +and pride, its principal attractions. Mr. Kenge also came to speak to +us and did the honours of the place in much the same way, with the +bland modesty of a proprietor. It was not a very good day for a +visit, he said; he would have preferred the first day of term; but it +was imposing, it was imposing. + +When we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress—if I +may use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connexion—seemed to die out +of its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to +come, to any result. The Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of +papers from his desk to the gentlemen below him, and somebody said, +“Jarndyce and Jarndyce.” Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and +a general withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great +heaps, and piles, and bags and bags full of papers. + +I think it came on “for further directions”—about some bill of +costs, to the best of my understanding, which was confused enough. +But I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were “in +it,” and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I. +They chatted about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and +explained among themselves, and some of them said it was this way, +and some of them said it was that way, and some of them jocosely +proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was more +buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state of idle +entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody. After an +hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun and cut +short, it was “referred back for the present,” as Mr. Kenge said, and +the papers were bundled up again before the clerks had finished +bringing them in. + +I glanced at Richard on the termination of these hopeless proceedings +and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome young face. “It +can’t last for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck next time!” was all he +said. + +I had seen Mr. Guppy bringing in papers and arranging them for Mr. +Kenge; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered +me desirous to get out of the court. Richard had given me his arm and +was taking me away when Mr. Guppy came up. + +“I beg your pardon, Mr. Carstone,” said he in a whisper, “and Miss +Summerson’s also, but there’s a lady here, a friend of mine, who +knows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands.” As he +spoke, I saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from +my remembrance, Mrs. Rachael of my godmother’s house. + +“How do you do, Esther?” said she. “Do you recollect me?” + +I gave her my hand and told her yes and that she was very little +altered. + +“I wonder you remember those times, Esther,” she returned with her +old asperity. “They are changed now. Well! I am glad to see you, and +glad you are not too proud to know me.” But indeed she seemed +disappointed that I was not. + +“Proud, Mrs. Rachael!” I remonstrated. + +“I am married, Esther,” she returned, coldly correcting me, “and am +Mrs. Chadband. Well! I wish you good day, and I hope you’ll do well.” + +Mr. Guppy, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a +sigh in my ear and elbowed his own and Mrs. Rachael’s way through the +confused little crowd of people coming in and going out, which we +were in the midst of and which the change in the business had brought +together. Richard and I were making our way through it, and I was yet +in the first chill of the late unexpected recognition when I saw, +coming towards us, but not seeing us, no less a person than Mr. +George. He made nothing of the people about him as he tramped on, +staring over their heads into the body of the court. + +“George!” said Richard as I called his attention to him. + +“You are well met, sir,” he returned. “And you, miss. Could you point +a person out for me, I want? I don’t understand these places.” + +Turning as he spoke and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we +were out of the press in a corner behind a great red curtain. + +“There’s a little cracked old woman,” he began, “that—” + +I put up my finger, for Miss Flite was close by me, having kept +beside me all the time and having called the attention of several of +her legal acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my confusion) by +whispering in their ears, “Hush! Fitz Jarndyce on my left!” + +“Hem!” said Mr. George. “You remember, miss, that we passed some +conversation on a certain man this morning? Gridley,” in a low +whisper behind his hand. + +“Yes,” said I. + +“He is hiding at my place. I couldn’t mention it. Hadn’t his +authority. He is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see her. +He says they can feel for one another, and she has been almost as +good as a friend to him here. I came down to look for her, for when I +sat by Gridley this afternoon, I seemed to hear the roll of the +muffled drums.” + +“Shall I tell her?” said I. + +“Would you be so good?” he returned with a glance of something like +apprehension at Miss Flite. “It’s a providence I met you, miss; I +doubt if I should have known how to get on with that lady.” And he +put one hand in his breast and stood upright in a martial attitude as +I informed little Miss Flite, in her ear, of the purport of his kind +errand. + +“My angry friend from Shropshire! Almost as celebrated as myself!” +she exclaimed. “Now really! My dear, I will wait upon him with the +greatest pleasure.” + +“He is living concealed at Mr. George’s,” said I. “Hush! This is Mr. +George.” + +“In—deed!” returned Miss Flite. “Very proud to have the honour! A +military man, my dear. You know, a perfect general!” she whispered to +me. + +Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as a +mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so very often that it +was no easy matter to get her out of the court. When this was at last +done, and addressing Mr. George as “General,” she gave him her arm, +to the great entertainment of some idlers who were looking on, he was +so discomposed and begged me so respectfully “not to desert him” that +I could not make up my mind to do it, especially as Miss Flite was +always tractable with me and as she too said, “Fitz Jarndyce, my +dear, you will accompany us, of course.” As Richard seemed quite +willing, and even anxious, that we should see them safely to their +destination, we agreed to do so. And as Mr. George informed us that +Gridley’s mind had run on Mr. Jarndyce all the afternoon after +hearing of their interview in the morning, I wrote a hasty note in +pencil to my guardian to say where we were gone and why. Mr. George +sealed it at a coffee-house, that it might lead to no discovery, and +we sent it off by a ticket-porter. + +We then took a hackney-coach and drove away to the neighbourhood of +Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which Mr. +George apologized, and soon came to the shooting gallery, the door of +which was closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by a chain to +the door-post, a very respectable old gentleman with grey hair, +wearing spectacles, and dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a +broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-beaded cane, addressed +him. + +“I ask your pardon, my good friend,” said he, “but is this George’s +Shooting Gallery?” + +“It is, sir,” returned Mr. George, glancing up at the great letters +in which that inscription was painted on the whitewashed wall. + +“Oh! To be sure!” said the old gentleman, following his eyes. “Thank +you. Have you rung the bell?” + +“My name is George, sir, and I have rung the bell.” + +“Oh, indeed?” said the old gentleman. “Your name is George? Then I am +here as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no doubt?” + +“No, sir. You have the advantage of me.” + +“Oh, indeed?” said the old gentleman. “Then it was your young man who +came for me. I am a physician and was requested—five minutes ago—to +come and visit a sick man at George’s Shooting Gallery.” + +“The muffled drums,” said Mr. George, turning to Richard and me and +gravely shaking his head. “It’s quite correct, sir. Will you please +to walk in.” + +The door being at that moment opened by a very singular-looking +little man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face and hands and +dress were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage into +a large building with bare brick walls where there were targets, and +guns, and swords, and other things of that kind. When we had all +arrived here, the physician stopped, and taking off his hat, appeared +to vanish by magic and to leave another and quite a different man in +his place. + +“Now lookee here, George,” said the man, turning quickly round upon +him and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. “You know +me, and I know you. You’re a man of the world, and I’m a man of the +world. My name’s Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a +peace-warrant against Gridley. You have kept him out of the way a +long time, and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit.” + +Mr. George, looking hard at him, bit his lip and shook his head. + +“Now, George,” said the other, keeping close to him, “you’re a +sensible man and a well-conducted man; that’s what YOU are, beyond a +doubt. And mind you, I don’t talk to you as a common character, +because you have served your country and you know that when duty +calls we must obey. Consequently you’re very far from wanting to give +trouble. If I required assistance, you’d assist me; that’s what YOU’D +do. Phil Squod, don’t you go a-sidling round the gallery like +that”—the dirty little man was shuffling about with his shoulder +against the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in a manner that +looked threatening—“because I know you and won’t have it.” + +“Phil!” said Mr. George. + +“Yes, guv’ner.” + +“Be quiet.” + +The little man, with a low growl, stood still. + +“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr. Bucket, “you’ll excuse anything that +may appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name’s Inspector Bucket +of the Detective, and I have a duty to perform. George, I know where +my man is because I was on the roof last night and saw him through +the skylight, and you along with him. He is in there, you know,” +pointing; “that’s where HE is—on a sofy. Now I must see my man, and +I must tell my man to consider himself in custody; but you know me, +and you know I don’t want to take any uncomfortable measures. You +give me your word, as from one man to another (and an old soldier, +mind you, likewise), that it’s honourable between us two, and I’ll +accommodate you to the utmost of my power.” + +“I give it,” was the reply. “But it wasn’t handsome in you, Mr. +Bucket.” + +“Gammon, George! Not handsome?” said Mr. Bucket, tapping him on his +broad breast again and shaking hands with him. “I don’t say it wasn’t +handsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally +good-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life +Guardsman! Why, he’s a model of the whole British army in himself, +ladies and gentlemen. I’d give a fifty-pun’ note to be such a figure +of a man!” + +The affair being brought to this head, Mr. George, after a little +consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called +him), taking Miss Flite with him. Mr. Bucket agreeing, they went away +to the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and standing by +a table covered with guns. Mr. Bucket took this opportunity of +entering into a little light conversation, asking me if I were afraid +of fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking Richard if he were a +good shot; asking Phil Squod which he considered the best of those +rifles and what it might be worth first-hand, telling him in return +that it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, for he was +naturally so amiable that he might have been a young woman, and +making himself generally agreeable. + +After a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and +Richard and I were going quietly away when Mr. George came after us. +He said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he would take +a visit from us very kindly. The words had hardly passed his lips +when the bell was rung and my guardian appeared, “on the chance,” he +slightly observed, “of being able to do any little thing for a poor +fellow involved in the same misfortune as himself.” We all four went +back together and went into the place where Gridley was. + +It was a bare room, partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted +wood. As the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high and +only enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high gallery +roof were overhead, and the skylight through which Mr. Bucket had +looked down. The sun was low—near setting—and its light came redly +in above, without descending to the ground. Upon a plain +canvas-covered sofa lay the man from Shropshire, dressed much as we +had seen him last, but so changed that at first I recognized no +likeness in his colourless face to what I recollected. + +He had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling on +his grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves were +covered with manuscript papers and with worn pens and a medley of +such tokens. Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the little +mad woman were side by side and, as it were, alone. She sat on a +chair holding his hand, and none of us went close to them. + +His voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his +strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that had +at last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of form +and colour is such a picture of it as he was of the man from +Shropshire whom we had spoken with before. + +He inclined his head to Richard and me and spoke to my guardian. + +“Mr. Jarndyce, it is very kind of you to come to see me. I am not +long to be seen, I think. I am very glad to take your hand, sir. You +are a good man, superior to injustice, and God knows I honour you.” + +They shook hands earnestly, and my guardian said some words of +comfort to him. + +“It may seem strange to you, sir,” returned Gridley; “I should not +have liked to see you if this had been the first time of our meeting. +But you know I made a fight for it, you know I stood up with my +single hand against them all, you know I told them the truth to the +last, and told them what they were, and what they had done to me; so +I don’t mind your seeing me, this wreck.” + +“You have been courageous with them many and many a time,” returned +my guardian. + +“Sir, I have been,” with a faint smile. “I told you what would come +of it when I ceased to be so, and see here! Look at us—look at us!” +He drew the hand Miss Flite held through her arm and brought her +something nearer to him. + +“This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and +hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone +comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many +suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on +earth that Chancery has not broken.” + +“Accept my blessing, Gridley,” said Miss Flite in tears. “Accept my +blessing!” + +“I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr. +Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that I +could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were until +I died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long I have +been wearing out, I don’t know; I seemed to break down in an hour. I +hope they may never come to hear of it. I hope everybody here will +lead them to believe that I died defying them, consistently and +perseveringly, as I did through so many years.” + +Here Mr. Bucket, who was sitting in a corner by the door, +good-naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer. + +“Come, come!” he said from his corner. “Don’t go on in that way, Mr. +Gridley. You are only a little low. We are all of us a little low +sometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You’ll lose your temper with the +whole round of ’em, again and again; and I shall take you on a score +of warrants yet, if I have luck.” + +He only shook his head. + +“Don’t shake your head,” said Mr. Bucket. “Nod it; that’s what I want +to see you do. Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have had +together! Haven’t I seen you in the Fleet over and over again for +contempt? Haven’t I come into court, twenty afternoons for no other +purpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bull-dog? Don’t you +remember when you first began to threaten the lawyers, and the peace +was sworn against you two or three times a week? Ask the little old +lady there; she has been always present. Hold up, Mr. Gridley, hold +up, sir!” + +“What are you going to do about him?” asked George in a low voice. + +“I don’t know yet,” said Bucket in the same tone. Then resuming his +encouragement, he pursued aloud: “Worn out, Mr. Gridley? After +dodging me for all these weeks and forcing me to climb the roof here +like a tom cat and to come to see you as a doctor? That ain’t like +being worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you want. You +want excitement, you know, to keep YOU up; that’s what YOU want. +You’re used to it, and you can’t do without it. I couldn’t myself. +Very well, then; here’s this warrant got by Mr. Tulkinghorn of +Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and backed into half-a-dozen counties since. +What do you say to coming along with me, upon this warrant, and +having a good angry argument before the magistrates? It’ll do you +good; it’ll freshen you up and get you into training for another turn +at the Chancellor. Give in? Why, I am surprised to hear a man of your +energy talk of giving in. You mustn’t do that. You’re half the fun of +the fair in the Court of Chancery. George, you lend Mr. Gridley a +hand, and let’s see now whether he won’t be better up than down.” + +“He is very weak,” said the trooper in a low voice. + +“Is he?” returned Bucket anxiously. “I only want to rouse him. I +don’t like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. It would +cheer him up more than anything if I could make him a little waxy +with me. He’s welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he likes. I +shall never take advantage of it.” + +The roof rang with a scream from Miss Flite, which still rings in my +ears. + +“Oh, no, Gridley!” she cried as he fell heavily and calmly back from +before her. “Not without my blessing. After so many years!” + +The sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and +the shadow had crept upward. But to me the shadow of that pair, one +living and one dead, fell heavier on Richard’s departure than the +darkness of the darkest night. And through Richard’s farewell words I +heard it echoed: “Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits +and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul +alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many +suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on +earth that Chancery has not broken!” + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All + + +There is disquietude in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. Black +suspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook’s Courtiers +are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but Mr. +Snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it. + +For Tom-all-Alone’s and Lincoln’s Inn Fields persist in harnessing +themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr. +Snagsby’s imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are +Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the +law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. Even in +the little front kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles +away at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when Mr. Snagsby pauses +in carving the first slice of the leg of mutton baked with potatoes +and stares at the kitchen wall. + +Mr. Snagsby cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with. +Something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of +it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter +is the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and +coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the +surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s chambers; his veneration for the +mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers, +whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal +neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective Mr. +Bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner, impossible to +be evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a party to some +dangerous secret without knowing what it is. And it is the fearful +peculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of his daily life, at +any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the bell, at any +entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the secret may +take air and fire, explode, and blow up—Mr. Bucket only knows whom. + +For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many +men unknown do) and says, “Is Mr. Snagsby in?” or words to that +innocent effect, Mr. Snagsby’s heart knocks hard at his guilty +breast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they are +made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over the +counter and asking the young dogs what they mean by it and why they +can’t speak out at once? More impracticable men and boys persist in +walking into Mr. Snagsby’s sleep and terrifying him with +unaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at the little +dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about the +morning, Mr. Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with his +little woman shaking him and saying “What’s the matter with the man!” + +The little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty. To +know that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he has under +all circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth, +which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head, gives Mr. +Snagsby, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who +has a reservation from his master and will look anywhere rather than +meet his eye. + +These various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not +lost upon her. They impel her to say, “Snagsby has something on his +mind!” And thus suspicion gets into Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. +From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as natural +and short as from Cook’s Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy +gets into Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was +always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs. +Snagsby’s breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr. +Snagsby’s pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby’s letters; to +private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and +iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a +general putting of this and that together by the wrong end. + +Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert that the house becomes +ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The ’prentices +think somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times. Guster +holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, where +they were found floating among the orphans) that there is buried +money underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white +beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years because he said +the Lord’s Prayer backwards. + +“Who was Nimrod?” Mrs. Snagsby repeatedly inquires of herself. “Who +was that lady—that creature? And who is that boy?” Now, Nimrod being +as dead as the mighty hunter whose name Mrs. Snagsby has +appropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she directs her mental +eye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy. “And who,” +quoth Mrs. Snagsby for the thousand and first time, “is that boy? Who +is that—!” And there Mrs. Snagsby is seized with an inspiration. + +He has no respect for Mr. Chadband. No, to be sure, and he wouldn’t +have, of course. Naturally he wouldn’t, under those contagious +circumstances. He was invited and appointed by Mr. Chadband—why, +Mrs. Snagsby heard it herself with her own ears!—to come back, and +be told where he was to go, to be addressed by Mr. Chadband; and he +never came! Why did he never come? Because he was told not to come. +Who told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha! Mrs. Snagsby sees it all. + +But happily (and Mrs. Snagsby tightly shakes her head and tightly +smiles) that boy was met by Mr. Chadband yesterday in the streets; +and that boy, as affording a subject which Mr. Chadband desires to +improve for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was +seized by Mr. Chadband and threatened with being delivered over to +the police unless he showed the reverend gentleman where he lived and +unless he entered into, and fulfilled, an undertaking to appear in +Cook’s Court to-morrow night, “to—mor—row—night,” Mrs. Snagsby +repeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and another tight +shake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will be here, and +to-morrow night Mrs. Snagsby will have her eye upon him and upon some +one else; and oh, you may walk a long while in your secret ways (says +Mrs. Snagsby with haughtiness and scorn), but you can’t blind ME! + +Mrs. Snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody’s ears, but holds her +purpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. To-morrow comes, the savoury +preparations for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes. Comes Mr. +Snagsby in his black coat; come the Chadbands; come (when the gorging +vessel is replete) the ’prentices and Guster, to be edified; comes at +last, with his slouching head, and his shuffle backward, and his +shuffle forward, and his shuffle to the right, and his shuffle to the +left, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy hand, which he picks as if +it were some mangy bird he had caught and was plucking before eating +raw, Jo, the very, very tough subject Mr. Chadband is to improve. + +Mrs. Snagsby screws a watchful glance on Jo as he is brought into the +little drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr. Snagsby the moment he +comes in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr. Snagsby? Mr. Snagsby looks at +him. Why should he do that, but that Mrs. Snagsby sees it all? Why +else should that look pass between them, why else should Mr. Snagsby +be confused and cough a signal cough behind his hand? It is as clear +as crystal that Mr. Snagsby is that boy’s father. + +“Peace, my friends,” says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily +exudations from his reverend visage. “Peace be with us! My friends, +why with us? Because,” with his fat smile, “it cannot be against us, +because it must be for us; because it is not hardening, because it is +softening; because it does not make war like the hawk, but comes home +unto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My +human boy, come forward!” + +Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband lays the same on Jo’s +arm and considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his +reverend friend’s intentions and not at all clear but that something +practical and painful is going to be done to him, mutters, “You let +me alone. I never said nothink to you. You let me alone.” + +“No, my young friend,” says Chadband smoothly, “I will not let you +alone. And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a +toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are +become as a precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so +employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your +profit, to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! My young +friend, sit upon this stool.” + +Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend gentleman +wants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms and is got +into the required position with great difficulty and every possible +manifestation of reluctance. + +When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr. Chadband, retiring +behind the table, holds up his bear’s-paw and says, “My friends!” +This is the signal for a general settlement of the audience. The +’prentices giggle internally and nudge each other. Guster falls into +a staring and vacant state, compounded of a stunned admiration of Mr. +Chadband and pity for the friendless outcast whose condition touches +her nearly. Mrs. Snagsby silently lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs. +Chadband composes herself grimly by the fire and warms her knees, +finding that sensation favourable to the reception of eloquence. + +It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member +of his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his points with +that particular person, who is understood to be expected to be moved +to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of +inward working, which expression of inward working, being echoed by +some elderly lady in the next pew and so communicated like a game of +forfeits through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present, +serves the purpose of parliamentary cheering and gets Mr. Chadband’s +steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chadband in saying “My +friends!” has rested his eye on Mr. Snagsby and proceeds to make that +ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate +recipient of his discourse. + +“We have here among us, my friends,” says Chadband, “a Gentile and a +heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone’s and a mover-on +upon the surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends,” +and Mr. Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail, +bestows an oily smile on Mr. Snagsby, signifying that he will throw +him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down, +“a brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid +of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of precious +stones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of these +possessions? Why? Why is he?” Mr. Chadband states the question as if +he were propounding an entirely new riddle of much ingenuity and +merit to Mr. Snagsby and entreating him not to give it up. + +Mr. Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received +just now from his little woman—at about the period when Mr. Chadband +mentioned the word parents—is tempted into modestly remarking, “I +don’t know, I’m sure, sir.” On which interruption Mrs. Chadband +glares and Mrs. Snagsby says, “For shame!” + +“I hear a voice,” says Chadband; “is it a still small voice, my +friends? I fear not, though I fain would hope so—” + +“Ah—h!” from Mrs. Snagsby. + +“Which says, ‘I don’t know.’ Then I will tell you why. I say this +brother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of +relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and +of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that shines in +upon some of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask you, what is +that light?” + +Mr. Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr. Snagsby is not +to be lured on to his destruction again. Mr. Chadband, leaning +forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly +into Mr. Snagsby with the thumb-nail already mentioned. + +“It is,” says Chadband, “the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon +of moons, the star of stars. It is the light of Terewth.” + +Mr. Chadband draws himself up again and looks triumphantly at Mr. +Snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that. + +“Of Terewth,” says Mr. Chadband, hitting him again. “Say not to me +that it is NOT the lamp of lamps. I say to you it is. I say to you, a +million of times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I will +proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the less +you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you. With a +speaking-trumpet! I say to you that if you rear yourself against it, +you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered, you +shall be flawed, you shall be smashed.” + +The present effect of this flight of oratory—much admired for its +general power by Mr. Chadband’s followers—being not only to make Mr. +Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr. Snagsby +in the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of +brass and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate tradesman becomes yet +more disconcerted and is in a very advanced state of low spirits and +false position when Mr. Chadband accidentally finishes him. + +“My friends,” he resumes after dabbing his fat head for some +time—and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his +pocket-handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab—“to +pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to +improve, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to +which I have alluded. For, my young friends,” suddenly addressing the +’prentices and Guster, to their consternation, “if I am told by the +doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally ask +what is calomel, and what is castor-oil. I may wish to be informed of +that before I dose myself with either or with both. Now, my young +friends, what is this Terewth then? Firstly (in a spirit of love), +what is the common sort of Terewth—the working clothes—the +every-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?” + +“Ah—h!” from Mrs. Snagsby. + +“Is it suppression?” + +A shiver in the negative from Mrs. Snagsby. + +“Is it reservation?” + +A shake of the head from Mrs. Snagsby—very long and very tight. + +“No, my friends, it is neither of these. Neither of these names +belongs to it. When this young heathen now among us—who is now, my +friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set +upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I should +have to wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to conquer, for +his sake—when this young hardened heathen told us a story of a cock, +and of a bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign, was THAT the +Terewth? No. Or if it was partly, was it wholly and entirely? No, my +friends, no!” + +If Mr. Snagsby could withstand his little woman’s look as it enters +at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole +tenement, he were other than the man he is. He cowers and droops. + +“Or, my juvenile friends,” says Chadband, descending to the level of +their comprehension with a very obtrusive demonstration in his +greasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for the purpose, +“if the master of this house was to go forth into the city and there +see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto him the +mistress of this house, and was to say, ‘Sarah, rejoice with me, for +I have seen an elephant!’ would THAT be Terewth?” + +Mrs. Snagsby in tears. + +“Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and +returning said ‘Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,’ +would THAT be Terewth?” + +Mrs. Snagsby sobbing loudly. + +“Or put it, my juvenile friends,” said Chadband, stimulated by the +sound, “that the unnatural parents of this slumbering heathen—for +parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt—after casting +him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the +young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and +had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their +dancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher’s meat and +poultry, would THAT be Terewth?” + +Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an +unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook’s +Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she +has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. After +unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is +pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though +much exhausted, in which state of affairs Mr. Snagsby, trampled and +crushed in the piano-forte removal, and extremely timid and feeble, +ventures to come out from behind the door in the drawing-room. + +All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever +picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He spits them +out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to +be an unimprovable reprobate and that it’s no good HIS trying to keep +awake, for HE won’t never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that +there is a history so interesting and affecting even to minds as near +the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on this earth for common +men, that if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the +light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it +unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without +their modest aid—it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from +it yet! + +Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers and the Reverend +Chadband are all one to him, except that he knows the Reverend +Chadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him +talk for five minutes. “It an’t no good my waiting here no longer,” +thinks Jo. “Mr. Snagsby an’t a-going to say nothink to me to-night.” +And downstairs he shuffles. + +But downstairs is the charitable Guster, holding by the handrail of +the kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the same +having been induced by Mrs. Snagsby’s screaming. She has her own +supper of bread and cheese to hand to Jo, with whom she ventures to +interchange a word or so for the first time. + +“Here’s something to eat, poor boy,” says Guster. + +“Thank’ee, mum,” says Jo. + +“Are you hungry?” + +“Jist!” says Jo. + +“What’s gone of your father and your mother, eh?” + +Jo stops in the middle of a bite and looks petrified. For this orphan +charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting has patted +him on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his life that any +decent hand has been so laid upon him. + +“I never know’d nothink about ’em,” says Jo. + +“No more didn’t I of mine,” cries Guster. She is repressing symptoms +favourable to the fit when she seems to take alarm at something and +vanishes down the stairs. + +“Jo,” whispers the law-stationer softly as the boy lingers on the +step. + +“Here I am, Mr. Snagsby!” + +“I didn’t know you were gone—there’s another half-crown, Jo. It was +quite right of you to say nothing about the lady the other night when +we were out together. It would breed trouble. You can’t be too quiet, +Jo.” + +“I am fly, master!” + +And so, good night. + +A ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law-stationer +to the room he came from and glides higher up. And henceforth he +begins, go where he will, to be attended by another shadow than his +own, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less quiet than his +own. And into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may +pass, let all concerned in the secrecy beware! For the watchful Mrs. +Snagsby is there too—bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of +his shadow. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +Sharpshooters + + +Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the +neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to +get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of +times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are +wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy +blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less +under false names, false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and +false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their first sleep. +Gentlemen of the green-baize road who could discourse from personal +experience of foreign galleys and home treadmills; spies of strong +governments that eternally quake with weakness and miserable fear, +broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers, +and false witnesses; some not unmarked by the branding-iron beneath +their dirty braid; all with more cruelty in them than was in Nero, +and more crime than is in Newgate. For howsoever bad the devil can be +in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a +more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin +in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or +colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about +bills and promissory notes, than in any other form he wears. And in +such form Mr. Bucket shall find him, when he will, still pervading +the tributary channels of Leicester Square. + +But the wintry morning wants him not and wakes him not. It wakes Mr. +George of the shooting gallery and his familiar. They arise, roll up +and stow away their mattresses. Mr. George, having shaved himself +before a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches out, +bare-headed and bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and anon +comes back shining with yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and +exceedingly cold water. As he rubs himself upon a large jack-towel, +blowing like a military sort of diver just come up, his hair curling +tighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the more he rubs it so +that it looks as if it never could be loosened by any less coercive +instrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb—as he rubs, and puffs, +and polishes, and blows, turning his head from side to side the more +conveniently to excoriate his throat, and standing with his body well +bent forward to keep the wet from his martial legs, Phil, on his +knees lighting a fire, looks round as if it were enough washing for +him to see all that done, and sufficient renovation for one day to +take in the superfluous health his master throws off. + +When Mr. George is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two +hard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Phil, +shouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it, +winks with sympathy. This chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr. +George’s toilet is soon performed. He fills his pipe, lights it, and +marches up and down smoking, as his custom is, while Phil, raising a +powerful odour of hot rolls and coffee, prepares breakfast. He smokes +gravely and marches in slow time. Perhaps this morning’s pipe is +devoted to the memory of Gridley in his grave. + +“And so, Phil,” says George of the shooting gallery after several +turns in silence, “you were dreaming of the country last night?” + +Phil, by the by, said as much in a tone of surprise as he scrambled +out of bed. + +“Yes, guv’ner.” + +“What was it like?” + +“I hardly know what it was like, guv’ner,” said Phil, considering. + +“How did you know it was the country?” + +“On account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it,” says Phil +after further consideration. + +“What were the swans doing on the grass?” + +“They was a-eating of it, I expect,” says Phil. + +The master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation of +breakfast. It is not necessarily a lengthened preparation, being +limited to the setting forth of very simple breakfast requisites for +two and the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty +grate; but as Phil has to sidle round a considerable part of the +gallery for every object he wants, and never brings two objects at +once, it takes time under the circumstances. At length the breakfast +is ready. Phil announcing it, Mr. George knocks the ashes out of his +pipe on the hob, stands his pipe itself in the chimney corner, and +sits down to the meal. When he has helped himself, Phil follows suit, +sitting at the extreme end of the little oblong table and taking his +plate on his knees. Either in humility, or to hide his blackened +hands, or because it is his natural manner of eating. + +“The country,” says Mr. George, plying his knife and fork; “why, I +suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?” + +“I see the marshes once,” says Phil, contentedly eating his +breakfast. + +“What marshes?” + +“THE marshes, commander,” returns Phil. + +“Where are they?” + +“I don’t know where they are,” says Phil; “but I see ’em, guv’ner. +They was flat. And miste.” + +Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil, +expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to nobody +but Mr. George. + +“I was born in the country, Phil.” + +“Was you indeed, commander?” + +“Yes. And bred there.” + +Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his +master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still +staring at him. + +“There’s not a bird’s note that I don’t know,” says Mr. George. “Not +many an English leaf or berry that I couldn’t name. Not many a tree +that I couldn’t climb yet if I was put to it. I was a real country +boy, once. My good mother lived in the country.” + +“She must have been a fine old lady, guv’ner,” Phil observes. + +“Aye! And not so old either, five and thirty years ago,” says Mr. +George. “But I’ll wager that at ninety she would be near as upright +as me, and near as broad across the shoulders.” + +“Did she die at ninety, guv’ner?” inquires Phil. + +“No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!” says the +trooper. “What set me on about country boys, and runaways, and +good-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your eyes +upon the country—marshes and dreams excepted. Eh?” + +Phil shakes his head. + +“Do you want to see it?” + +“N-no, I don’t know as I do, particular,” says Phil. + +“The town’s enough for you, eh?” + +“Why, you see, commander,” says Phil, “I ain’t acquainted with +anythink else, and I doubt if I ain’t a-getting too old to take to +novelties.” + +“How old ARE you, Phil?” asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys his +smoking saucer to his lips. + +“I’m something with a eight in it,” says Phil. “It can’t be eighty. +Nor yet eighteen. It’s betwixt ’em, somewheres.” + +Mr. George, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its +contents, is laughingly beginning, “Why, what the deuce, Phil—” when +he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on his dirty fingers. + +“I was just eight,” says Phil, “agreeable to the parish calculation, +when I went with the tinker. I was sent on a errand, and I see him +a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to himself wery +comfortable, and he says, ‘Would you like to come along a me, my +man?’ I says ‘Yes,’ and him and me and the fire goes home to +Clerkenwell together. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up +to ten; and when April Fool Day come round again, I says to myself, +‘Now, old chap, you’re one and a eight in it.’ April Fool Day after +that, I says, ‘Now, old chap, you’re two and a eight in it.’ In +course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight +in it. When it got so high, it got the upper hand of me, but this is +how I always know there’s a eight in it.” + +“Ah!” says Mr. George, resuming his breakfast. “And where’s the +tinker?” + +“Drink put him in the hospital, guv’ner, and the hospital put him—in +a glass-case, I HAVE heerd,” Phil replies mysteriously. + +“By that means you got promotion? Took the business, Phil?” + +“Yes, commander, I took the business. Such as it was. It wasn’t much +of a beat—round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, Smiffeld, +and there—poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the kettles till +they’re past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers used to come and +lodge at our place; that was the best part of my master’s earnings. +But they didn’t come to me. I warn’t like him. He could sing ’em a +good song. I couldn’t! He could play ’em a tune on any sort of pot +you please, so as it was iron or block tin. I never could do nothing +with a pot but mend it or bile it—never had a note of music in me. +Besides, I was too ill-looking, and their wives complained of me.” + +“They were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd, +Phil!” says the trooper with a pleasant smile. + +“No, guv’ner,” returns Phil, shaking his head. “No, I shouldn’t. I +was passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing to +boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when I +was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and +swallering the smoke, and what with being nat’rally unfort’nate in +the way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich +means, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older, +almost whenever he was too far gone in drink—which was almost +always—my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time. As to +since, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the men was +given to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at a +gas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling at +the firework business, I am ugly enough to be made a show on!” + +Resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied +manner, Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While drinking +it, he says, “It was after the case-filling blow-up when I first see +you, commander. You remember?” + +“I remember, Phil. You were walking along in the sun.” + +“Crawling, guv’ner, again a wall—” + +“True, Phil—shouldering your way on—” + +“In a night-cap!” exclaims Phil, excited. + +“In a night-cap—” + +“And hobbling with a couple of sticks!” cries Phil, still more +excited. + +“With a couple of sticks. When—” + +“When you stops, you know,” cries Phil, putting down his cup and +saucer and hastily removing his plate from his knees, “and says to +me, ‘What, comrade! You have been in the wars!’ I didn’t say much to +you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person so +strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to such a +limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you, +delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was +like a glass of something hot, ‘What accident have you met with? You +have been badly hurt. What’s amiss, old boy? Cheer up, and tell us +about it!’ Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you, +you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more to me, and +here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!” cries Phil, who has +started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. “If a +mark’s wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers +take aim at me. They can’t spoil MY beauty. I’M all right. Come on! +If they want a man to box at, let ’em box at me. Let ’em knock me +well about the head. I don’t mind. If they want a light-weight to be +throwed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let ’em +throw me. They won’t hurt ME. I have been throwed, all sorts of +styles, all my life!” + +With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered and accompanied +by action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Phil +Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and +abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his +head, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to +clear away the breakfast. + +Mr. George, after laughing cheerfully and clapping him on the +shoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the gallery +into business order. That done, he takes a turn at the dumb-bells, +and afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is getting “too +fleshy,” engages with great gravity in solitary broadsword practice. +Meanwhile Phil has fallen to work at his usual table, where he screws +and unscrews, and cleans, and files, and whistles into small +apertures, and blackens himself more and more, and seems to do and +undo everything that can be done and undone about a gun. + +Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage, +where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual +company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery, +bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any +day in the year but the fifth of November. + +It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two +bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched +mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses +commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old England +up alive but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as +the chair is put down. At which point the figure in it gasping, “O +Lord! Oh, dear me! I am shaken!” adds, “How de do, my dear friend, +how de do?” Mr. George then descries, in the procession, the +venerable Mr. Smallweed out for an airing, attended by his +granddaughter Judy as body-guard. + +“Mr. George, my dear friend,” says Grandfather Smallweed, removing +his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has nearly +throttled coming along, “how de do? You’re surprised to see me, my +dear friend.” + +“I should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend in +the city,” returns Mr. George. + +“I am very seldom out,” pants Mr. Smallweed. “I haven’t been out for +many months. It’s inconvenient—and it comes expensive. But I longed +so much to see you, my dear Mr. George. How de do, sir?” + +“I am well enough,” says Mr. George. “I hope you are the same.” + +“You can’t be too well, my dear friend.” Mr. Smallweed takes him by +both hands. “I have brought my granddaughter Judy. I couldn’t keep +her away. She longed so much to see you.” + +“Hum! She bears it calmly!” mutters Mr. George. + +“So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the +corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and carried +me here that I might see my dear friend in his own establishment! +This,” says Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the bearer, who has +been in danger of strangulation and who withdraws adjusting his +windpipe, “is the driver of the cab. He has nothing extra. It is by +agreement included in his fare. This person,” the other bearer, “we +engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer. Which is twopence. +Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure you had a workman of +your own here, my dear friend, or we needn’t have employed this +person.” + +Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil with a glance of considerable +terror and a half-subdued “O Lord! Oh, dear me!” Nor in his +apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for +Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap +before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the air +of a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off as an ugly old +bird of the crow species. + +“Judy, my child,” says Grandfather Smallweed, “give the person his +twopence. It’s a great deal for what he has done.” + +The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human +fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of London, +ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a “mission” for holding +horses and calling coaches, received his twopence with anything but +transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it over-handed, and +retires. + +“My dear Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed, “would you be so +kind as help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire, and +I am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!” + +His closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by +the suddenness with which Mr. Squod, like a genie, catches him up, +chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone. + +“O Lord!” says Mr. Smallweed, panting. “Oh, dear me! Oh, my stars! My +dear friend, your workman is very strong—and very prompt. O Lord, he +is very prompt! Judy, draw me back a little. I’m being scorched in +the legs,” which indeed is testified to the noses of all present by +the smell of his worsted stockings. + +The gentle Judy, having backed her grandfather a little way from the +fire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having released his +overshadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, Mr. Smallweed +again says, “Oh, dear me! O Lord!” and looking about and meeting Mr. +George’s glance, again stretches out both hands. + +“My dear friend! So happy in this meeting! And this is your +establishment? It’s a delightful place. It’s a picture! You never +find that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my dear +friend?” adds Grandfather Smallweed, very ill at ease. + +“No, no. No fear of that.” + +“And your workman. He—Oh, dear me!—he never lets anything off +without meaning it, does he, my dear friend?” + +“He has never hurt anybody but himself,” says Mr. George, smiling. + +“But he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good deal, +and he might hurt somebody else,” the old gentleman returns. “He +mightn’t mean it—or he even might. Mr. George, will you order him to +leave his infernal fire-arms alone and go away?” + +Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retires, empty-handed, to +the other end of the gallery. Mr. Smallweed, reassured, falls to +rubbing his legs. + +“And you’re doing well, Mr. George?” he says to the trooper, squarely +standing faced about towards him with his broadsword in his hand. +“You are prospering, please the Powers?” + +Mr. George answers with a cool nod, adding, “Go on. You have not come +to say that, I know.” + +“You are so sprightly, Mr. George,” returns the venerable +grandfather. “You are such good company.” + +“Ha ha! Go on!” says Mr. George. + +“My dear friend! But that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp. It +might cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr. George. +Curse him!” says the excellent old gentleman apart to Judy as the +trooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. “He owes me money, +and might think of paying off old scores in this murdering place. I +wish your brimstone grandmother was here, and he’d shave her head +off.” + +Mr. George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old +man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says quietly, +“Now for it!” + +“Ho!” cries Mr. Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle. +“Yes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?” + +“For a pipe,” says Mr. George, who with great composure sets his +chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it +and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully. + +This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Smallweed, who finds it so +difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes +exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent +vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the +visage of Mr. George. As the excellent old gentleman’s nails are long +and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and +watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he claws, to +slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle, he +becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of +Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than +the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and pokes him +in divers parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the +science of self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous +distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour’s rammer. + +When Judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a +white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out +her weazen forefinger and gives Mr. George one poke in the back. The +trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed +grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares rigidly at +the fire. + +“Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U—u—u—ugh!” chatters Grandfather Smallweed, +swallowing his rage. “My dear friend!” (still clawing). + +“I tell you what,” says Mr. George. “If you want to converse with me, +you must speak out. I am one of the roughs, and I can’t go about and +about. I haven’t the art to do it. I am not clever enough. It don’t +suit me. When you go winding round and round me,” says the trooper, +putting his pipe between his lips again, “damme, if I don’t feel as +if I was being smothered!” + +And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to assure +himself that he is not smothered yet. + +“If you have come to give me a friendly call,” continues Mr. George, +“I am obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see whether +there’s any property on the premises, look about you; you are +welcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!” + +The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives her +grandfather one ghostly poke. + +“You see! It’s her opinion too. And why the devil that young woman +won’t sit down like a Christian,” says Mr. George with his eyes +musingly fixed on Judy, “I can’t comprehend.” + +“She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir,” says Grandfather +Smallweed. “I am an old man, my dear Mr. George, and I need some +attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot” +(snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), “but I need +attention, my dear friend.” + +“Well!” returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man. +“Now then?” + +“My friend in the city, Mr. George, has done a little business with a +pupil of yours.” + +“Has he?” says Mr. George. “I am sorry to hear it.” + +“Yes, sir.” Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. “He is a fine young +soldier now, Mr. George, by the name of Carstone. Friends came +forward and paid it all up, honourable.” + +“Did they?” returns Mr. George. “Do you think your friend in the city +would like a piece of advice?” + +“I think he would, my dear friend. From you.” + +“I advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter. There’s +no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my knowledge, is +brought to a dead halt.” + +“No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr. George. No, no, no, sir,” +remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare legs. +“Not quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends, and he is good +for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission, +and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his +chance in a wife, and—oh, do you know, Mr. George, I think my friend +would consider the young gentleman good for something yet?” says +Grandfather Smallweed, turning up his velvet cap and scratching his +ear like a monkey. + +Mr. George, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his +chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if he +were not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has +taken. + +“But to pass from one subject to another,” resumes Mr. Smallweed. +“‘To promote the conversation,’ as a joker might say. To pass, Mr. +George, from the ensign to the captain.” + +“What are you up to, now?” asks Mr. George, pausing with a frown in +stroking the recollection of his moustache. “What captain?” + +“Our captain. The captain we know of. Captain Hawdon.” + +“Oh! That’s it, is it?” says Mr. George with a low whistle as he sees +both grandfather and granddaughter looking hard at him. “You are +there! Well? What about it? Come, I won’t be smothered any more. +Speak!” + +“My dear friend,” returns the old man, “I was applied—Judy, shake me +up a little!—I was applied to yesterday about the captain, and my +opinion still is that the captain is not dead.” + +“Bosh!” observes Mr. George. + +“What was your remark, my dear friend?” inquires the old man with his +hand to his ear. + +“Bosh!” + +“Ho!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “Mr. George, of my opinion you can +judge for yourself according to the questions asked of me and the +reasons given for asking ’em. Now, what do you think the lawyer +making the inquiries wants?” + +“A job,” says Mr. George. + +“Nothing of the kind!” + +“Can’t be a lawyer, then,” says Mr. George, folding his arms with an +air of confirmed resolution. + +“My dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. He wants to see +some fragment in Captain Hawdon’s writing. He don’t want to keep it. +He only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in his +possession.” + +“Well?” + +“Well, Mr. George. Happening to remember the advertisement concerning +Captain Hawdon and any information that could be given respecting +him, he looked it up and came to me—just as you did, my dear friend. +WILL you shake hands? So glad you came that day! I should have missed +forming such a friendship if you hadn’t come!” + +“Well, Mr. Smallweed?” says Mr. George again after going through the +ceremony with some stiffness. + +“I had no such thing. I have nothing but his signature. Plague +pestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him,” says +the old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembrances of a +prayer and squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry hands, “I +have half a million of his signatures, I think! But you,” +breathlessly recovering his mildness of speech as Judy re-adjusts the +cap on his skittle-ball of a head, “you, my dear Mr. George, are +likely to have some letter or paper that would suit the purpose. +Anything would suit the purpose, written in the hand.” + +“Some writing in that hand,” says the trooper, pondering; “may be, I +have.” + +“My dearest friend!” + +“May be, I have not.” + +“Ho!” says Grandfather Smallweed, crest-fallen. + +“But if I had bushels of it, I would not show as much as would make a +cartridge without knowing why.” + +“Sir, I have told you why. My dear Mr. George, I have told you why.” + +“Not enough,” says the trooper, shaking his head. “I must know more, +and approve it.” + +“Then, will you come to the lawyer? My dear friend, will you come and +see the gentleman?” urges Grandfather Smallweed, pulling out a lean +old silver watch with hands like the leg of a skeleton. “I told him +it was probable I might call upon him between ten and eleven this +forenoon, and it’s now half after ten. Will you come and see the +gentleman, Mr. George?” + +“Hum!” says he gravely. “I don’t mind that. Though why this should +concern you so much, I don’t know.” + +“Everything concerns me that has a chance in it of bringing anything +to light about him. Didn’t he take us all in? Didn’t he owe us +immense sums, all round? Concern me? Who can anything about him +concern more than me? Not, my dear friend,” says Grandfather +Smallweed, lowering his tone, “that I want YOU to betray anything. +Far from it. Are you ready to come, my dear friend?” + +“Aye! I’ll come in a moment. I promise nothing, you know.” + +“No, my dear Mr. George; no.” + +“And you mean to say you’re going to give me a lift to this place, +wherever it is, without charging for it?” Mr. George inquires, +getting his hat and thick wash-leather gloves. + +This pleasantry so tickles Mr. Smallweed that he laughs, long and +low, before the fire. But ever while he laughs, he glances over his +paralytic shoulder at Mr. George and eagerly watches him as he +unlocks the padlock of a homely cupboard at the distant end of the +gallery, looks here and there upon the higher shelves, and ultimately +takes something out with a rustling of paper, folds it, and puts it +in his breast. Then Judy pokes Mr. Smallweed once, and Mr. Smallweed +pokes Judy once. + +“I am ready,” says the trooper, coming back. “Phil, you can carry +this old gentleman to his coach, and make nothing of him.” + +“Oh, dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!” says Mr. Smallweed. “He’s so +very prompt! Are you sure you can do it carefully, my worthy man?” + +Phil makes no reply, but seizing the chair and its load, sidles away, +tightly hugged by the now speechless Mr. Smallweed, and bolts along +the passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry the old +gentleman to the nearest volcano. His shorter trust, however, +terminating at the cab, he deposits him there; and the fair Judy +takes her place beside him, and the chair embellishes the roof, and +Mr. George takes the vacant place upon the box. + +Mr. George is quite confounded by the spectacle he beholds from time +to time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind him, where +the grim Judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his +cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and +looking upward at him out of his other eye with a helpless expression +of being jolted in the back. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +More Old Soldiers Than One + + +Mr. George has not far to ride with folded arms upon the box, for +their destination is Lincoln’s Inn Fields. When the driver stops his +horses, Mr. George alights, and looking in at the window, says, +“What, Mr. Tulkinghorn’s your man, is he?” + +“Yes, my dear friend. Do you know him, Mr. George?” + +“Why, I have heard of him—seen him too, I think. But I don’t know +him, and he don’t know me.” + +There ensues the carrying of Mr. Smallweed upstairs, which is done to +perfection with the trooper’s help. He is borne into Mr. +Tulkinghorn’s great room and deposited on the Turkey rug before the +fire. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not within at the present moment but will be +back directly. The occupant of the pew in the hall, having said thus +much, stirs the fire and leaves the triumvirate to warm themselves. + +Mr. George is mightily curious in respect of the room. He looks up at +the painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books, contemplates +the portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the names on the +boxes. + +“‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,’” Mr. George reads thoughtfully. +“Ha! ‘Manor of Chesney Wold.’ Humph!” Mr. George stands looking at +these boxes a long while—as if they were pictures—and comes back to +the fire repeating, “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and Manor of +Chesney Wold, hey?” + +“Worth a mint of money, Mr. George!” whispers Grandfather Smallweed, +rubbing his legs. “Powerfully rich!” + +“Who do you mean? This old gentleman, or the Baronet?” + +“This gentleman, this gentleman.” + +“So I have heard; and knows a thing or two, I’ll hold a wager. Not +bad quarters, either,” says Mr. George, looking round again. “See the +strong-box yonder!” + +This reply is cut short by Mr. Tulkinghorn’s arrival. There is no +change in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his spectacles in his +hand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, close and dry. +In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitually +not uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. The peerage may have +warmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than Mr. Tulkinghorn, +after all, if everything were known. + +“Good morning, Mr. Smallweed, good morning!” he says as he comes in. +“You have brought the sergeant, I see. Sit down, sergeant.” + +As Mr. Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he +looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper +stands and says within himself perchance, “You’ll do, my friend!” + +“Sit down, sergeant,” he repeats as he comes to his table, which is +set on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. “Cold and raw +this morning, cold and raw!” Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the bars, +alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks (from +behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a +little semicircle before him. + +“Now, I can feel what I am about” (as perhaps he can in two senses), +“Mr. Smallweed.” The old gentleman is newly shaken up by Judy to bear +his part in the conversation. “You have brought our good friend the +sergeant, I see.” + +“Yes, sir,” returns Mr. Smallweed, very servile to the lawyer’s +wealth and influence. + +“And what does the sergeant say about this business?” + +“Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed with a tremulous wave of his +shrivelled hand, “this is the gentleman, sir.” + +Mr. George salutes the gentleman but otherwise sits bolt upright and +profoundly silent—very forward in his chair, as if the full +complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him. + +Mr. Tulkinghorn proceeds, “Well, George—I believe your name is +George?” + +“It is so, Sir.” + +“What do you say, George?” + +“I ask your pardon, sir,” returns the trooper, “but I should wish to +know what YOU say?” + +“Do you mean in point of reward?” + +“I mean in point of everything, sir.” + +This is so very trying to Mr. Smallweed’s temper that he suddenly +breaks out with “You’re a brimstone beast!” and as suddenly asks +pardon of Mr. Tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of the +tongue by saying to Judy, “I was thinking of your grandmother, my +dear.” + +“I supposed, sergeant,” Mr. Tulkinghorn resumes as he leans on one +side of his chair and crosses his legs, “that Mr. Smallweed might +have sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smallest +compass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and +were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services, +and were rather in his confidence, I am told. That is so, is it not?” + +“Yes, sir, that is so,” says Mr. George with military brevity. + +“Therefore you may happen to have in your possession +something—anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions, orders, +a letter, anything—in Captain Hawdon’s writing. I wish to compare +his writing with some that I have. If you can give me the +opportunity, you shall be rewarded for your trouble. Three, four, +five, guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare say.” + +“Noble, my dear friend!” cries Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up his +eyes. + +“If not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can +demand. There is no need for you to part with the writing, against +your inclination—though I should prefer to have it.” + +Mr. George sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the +painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr. Smallweed +scratches the air. + +“The question is,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued, +uninterested way, “first, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon’s +writing?” + +“First, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon’s writing, sir,” repeats +Mr. George. + +“Secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?” + +“Secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it, +sir,” repeats Mr. George. + +“Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that,” +says Mr. Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written +paper tied together. + +“Whether it is at all like that, sir. Just so,” repeats Mr. George. + +All three repetitions Mr. George pronounces in a mechanical manner, +looking straight at Mr. Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at +the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to him +for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but +continues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation. + +“Well?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “What do you say?” + +“Well, sir,” replies Mr. George, rising erect and looking immense, “I +would rather, if you’ll excuse me, have nothing to do with this.” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, “Why not?” + +“Why, sir,” returns the trooper. “Except on military compulsion, I am +not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in +Scotland a ne’er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand +any fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr. +Smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into things of +this kind I feel as if I was being smothered. And that is my +sensation,” says Mr. George, looking round upon the company, “at the +present moment.” + +With that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on +the lawyer’s table and three strides backward to resume his former +station, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground +and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to +prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever. + +Under this provocation, Mr. Smallweed’s favourite adjective of +disparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the words “my +dear friend” with the monosyllable “brim,” thus converting the +possessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment in +his speech. Once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear +friend in the tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what so +eminent a gentleman requires, and to do it with a good grace, +confident that it must be unobjectionable as well as profitable. Mr. +Tulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as, “You are the +best judge of your own interest, sergeant.” “Take care you do no harm +by this.” “Please yourself, please yourself.” “If you know what you +mean, that’s quite enough.” These he utters with an appearance of +perfect indifference as he looks over the papers on his table and +prepares to write a letter. + +Mr. George looks distrustfully from the painted ceiling to the +ground, from the ground to Mr. Smallweed, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. +Tulkinghorn, and from Mr. Tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again, +often in his perplexity changing the leg on which he rests. + +“I do assure you, sir,” says Mr. George, “not to say it offensively, +that between you and Mr. Smallweed here, I really am being smothered +fifty times over. I really am, sir. I am not a match for you +gentlemen. Will you allow me to ask why you want to see the captain’s +hand, in the case that I could find any specimen of it?” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. “No. If you were a man of +business, sergeant, you would not need to be informed that there are +confidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such +wants in the profession to which I belong. But if you are afraid of +doing any injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest +about that.” + +“Aye! He is dead, sir.” + +“IS he?” Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write. + +“Well, sir,” says the trooper, looking into his hat after another +disconcerted pause, “I am sorry not to have given you more +satisfaction. If it would be any satisfaction to any one that I +should be confirmed in my judgment that I would rather have nothing +to do with this by a friend of mine who has a better head for +business than I have, and who is an old soldier, I am willing to +consult with him. I—I really am so completely smothered myself at +present,” says Mr. George, passing his hand hopelessly across his +brow, “that I don’t know but what it might be a satisfaction to me.” + +Mr. Smallweed, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so +strongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper’s taking counsel +with him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of +five guineas or more, that Mr. George engages to go and see him. Mr. +Tulkinghorn says nothing either way. + +“I’ll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir,” says the trooper, +“and I’ll take the liberty of looking in again with the final answer +in the course of the day. Mr. Smallweed, if you wish to be carried +downstairs—” + +“In a moment, my dear friend, in a moment. Will you first let me +speak half a word with this gentleman in private?” + +“Certainly, sir. Don’t hurry yourself on my account.” The trooper +retires to a distant part of the room and resumes his curious +inspection of the boxes, strong and otherwise. + +“If I wasn’t as weak as a brimstone baby, sir,” whispers Grandfather +Smallweed, drawing the lawyer down to his level by the lapel of his +coat and flashing some half-quenched green fire out of his angry +eyes, “I’d tear the writing away from him. He’s got it buttoned in +his breast. I saw him put it there. Judy saw him put it there. Speak +up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say +you saw him put it there!” + +This vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a +thrust at his granddaughter that it is too much for his strength, and +he slips away out of his chair, drawing Mr. Tulkinghorn with him, +until he is arrested by Judy, and well shaken. + +“Violence will not do for me, my friend,” Mr. Tulkinghorn then +remarks coolly. + +“No, no, I know, I know, sir. But it’s chafing and +galling—it’s—it’s worse than your smattering chattering magpie of a +grandmother,” to the imperturbable Judy, who only looks at the fire, +“to know he has got what’s wanted and won’t give it up. He, not to +give it up! HE! A vagabond! But never mind, sir, never mind. At the +most, he has only his own way for a little while. I have him +periodically in a vice. I’ll twist him, sir. I’ll screw him, sir. If +he won’t do it with a good grace, I’ll make him do it with a bad one, +sir! Now, my dear Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed, winking at +the lawyer hideously as he releases him, “I am ready for your kind +assistance, my excellent friend!” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn, with some shadowy sign of amusement manifesting +itself through his self-possession, stands on the hearth-rug with his +back to the fire, watching the disappearance of Mr. Smallweed and +acknowledging the trooper’s parting salute with one slight nod. + +It is more difficult to get rid of the old gentleman, Mr. George +finds, than to bear a hand in carrying him downstairs, for when he is +replaced in his conveyance, he is so loquacious on the subject of the +guineas and retains such an affectionate hold of his button—having, +in truth, a secret longing to rip his coat open and rob him—that +some degree of force is necessary on the trooper’s part to effect a +separation. It is accomplished at last, and he proceeds alone in +quest of his adviser. + +By the cloisterly Temple, and by Whitefriars (there, not without a +glance at Hanging-Sword Alley, which would seem to be something in +his way), and by Blackfriars Bridge, and Blackfriars Road, Mr. George +sedately marches to a street of little shops lying somewhere in that +ganglion of roads from Kent and Surrey, and of streets from the +bridges of London, centring in the far-famed elephant who has lost +his castle formed of a thousand four-horse coaches to a stronger iron +monster than he, ready to chop him into mince-meat any day he dares. +To one of the little shops in this street, which is a musician’s +shop, having a few fiddles in the window, and some Pan’s pipes and a +tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated scraps of music, +Mr. George directs his massive tread. And halting at a few paces from +it, as he sees a soldierly looking woman, with her outer skirts +tucked up, come forth with a small wooden tub, and in that tub +commence a-whisking and a-splashing on the margin of the pavement, +Mr. George says to himself, “She’s as usual, washing greens. I never +saw her, except upon a baggage-waggon, when she wasn’t washing +greens!” + +The subject of this reflection is at all events so occupied in +washing greens at present that she remains unsuspicious of Mr. +George’s approach until, lifting up herself and her tub together when +she has poured the water off into the gutter, she finds him standing +near her. Her reception of him is not flattering. + +“George, I never see you but I wish you was a hundred mile away!” + +The trooper, without remarking on this welcome, follows into the +musical-instrument shop, where the lady places her tub of greens upon +the counter, and having shaken hands with him, rests her arms upon +it. + +“I never,” she says, “George, consider Matthew Bagnet safe a minute +when you’re near him. You are that restless and that roving—” + +“Yes! I know I am, Mrs. Bagnet. I know I am.” + +“You know you are!” says Mrs. Bagnet. “What’s the use of that? WHY +are you?” + +“The nature of the animal, I suppose,” returns the trooper +good-humouredly. + +“Ah!” cries Mrs. Bagnet, something shrilly. “But what satisfaction +will the nature of the animal be to me when the animal shall have +tempted my Mat away from the musical business to New Zealand or +Australey?” + +Mrs. Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. Rather large-boned, a +little coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and wind which +have tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy, wholesome, and +bright-eyed. A strong, busy, active, honest-faced woman of from +forty-five to fifty. Clean, hardy, and so economically dressed +(though substantially) that the only article of ornament of which she +stands possessed appear’s to be her wedding-ring, around which her +finger has grown to be so large since it was put on that it will +never come off again until it shall mingle with Mrs. Bagnet’s dust. + +“Mrs. Bagnet,” says the trooper, “I am on my parole with you. Mat +will get no harm from me. You may trust me so far.” + +“Well, I think I may. But the very looks of you are unsettling,” Mrs. +Bagnet rejoins. “Ah, George, George! If you had only settled down and +married Joe Pouch’s widow when he died in North America, SHE’D have +combed your hair for you.” + +“It was a chance for me, certainly,” returns the trooper half +laughingly, half seriously, “but I shall never settle down into a +respectable man now. Joe Pouch’s widow might have done me good—there +was something in her, and something of her—but I couldn’t make up my +mind to it. If I had had the luck to meet with such a wife as Mat +found!” + +Mrs. Bagnet, who seems in a virtuous way to be under little reserve +with a good sort of fellow, but to be another good sort of fellow +herself for that matter, receives this compliment by flicking Mr. +George in the face with a head of greens and taking her tub into the +little room behind the shop. + +“Why, Quebec, my poppet,” says George, following, on invitation, into +that department. “And little Malta, too! Come and kiss your Bluffy!” + +These young ladies—not supposed to have been actually christened by +the names applied to them, though always so called in the family from +the places of their birth in barracks—are respectively employed on +three-legged stools, the younger (some five or six years old) in +learning her letters out of a penny primer, the elder (eight or nine +perhaps) in teaching her and sewing with great assiduity. Both hail +Mr. George with acclamations as an old friend and after some kissing +and romping plant their stools beside him. + +“And how’s young Woolwich?” says Mr. George. + +“Ah! There now!” cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning about from her saucepans +(for she is cooking dinner) with a bright flush on her face. “Would +you believe it? Got an engagement at the theayter, with his father, +to play the fife in a military piece.” + +“Well done, my godson!” cries Mr. George, slapping his thigh. + +“I believe you!” says Mrs. Bagnet. “He’s a Briton. That’s what +Woolwich is. A Briton!” + +“And Mat blows away at his bassoon, and you’re respectable civilians +one and all,” says Mr. George. “Family people. Children growing up. +Mat’s old mother in Scotland, and your old father somewhere else, +corresponded with, and helped a little, and—well, well! To be sure, +I don’t know why I shouldn’t be wished a hundred mile away, for I +have not much to do with all this!” + +Mr. George is becoming thoughtful, sitting before the fire in the +whitewashed room, which has a sanded floor and a barrack smell and +contains nothing superfluous and has not a visible speck of dirt or +dust in it, from the faces of Quebec and Malta to the bright tin pots +and pannikins upon the dresser shelves—Mr. George is becoming +thoughtful, sitting here while Mrs. Bagnet is busy, when Mr. Bagnet +and young Woolwich opportunely come home. Mr. Bagnet is an +ex-artilleryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows and whiskers +like the fibres of a coco-nut, not a hair upon his head, and a torrid +complexion. His voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at all +unlike the tones of the instrument to which he is devoted. Indeed +there may be generally observed in him an unbending, unyielding, +brass-bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of the human +orchestra. Young Woolwich is the type and model of a young drummer. + +Both father and son salute the trooper heartily. He saying, in due +season, that he has come to advise with Mr. Bagnet, Mr. Bagnet +hospitably declares that he will hear of no business until after +dinner and that his friend shall not partake of his counsel without +first partaking of boiled pork and greens. The trooper yielding to +this invitation, he and Mr. Bagnet, not to embarrass the domestic +preparations, go forth to take a turn up and down the little street, +which they promenade with measured tread and folded arms, as if it +were a rampart. + +“George,” says Mr. Bagnet. “You know me. It’s my old girl that +advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. +Discipline must be maintained. Wait till the greens is off her mind. +Then we’ll consult. Whatever the old girl says, do—do it!” + +“I intend to, Mat,” replies the other. “I would sooner take her +opinion than that of a college.” + +“College,” returns Mr. Bagnet in short sentences, bassoon-like. “What +college could you leave—in another quarter of the world—with +nothing but a grey cloak and an umbrella—to make its way home to +Europe? The old girl would do it to-morrow. Did it once!” + +“You are right,” says Mr. George. + +“What college,” pursues Bagnet, “could you set up in life—with two +penn’orth of white lime—a penn’orth of fuller’s earth—a ha’porth of +sand—and the rest of the change out of sixpence in money? That’s +what the old girl started on. In the present business.” + +“I am rejoiced to hear it’s thriving, Mat.” + +“The old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, acquiescing, “saves. Has a stocking +somewhere. With money in it. I never saw it. But I know she’s got it. +Wait till the greens is off her mind. Then she’ll set you up.” + +“She is a treasure!” exclaims Mr. George. + +“She’s more. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be +maintained. It was the old girl that brought out my musical +abilities. I should have been in the artillery now but for the old +girl. Six years I hammered at the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The old +girl said it wouldn’t do; intention good, but want of flexibility; +try the bassoon. The old girl borrowed a bassoon from the bandmaster +of the Rifle Regiment. I practised in the trenches. Got on, got +another, get a living by it!” + +George remarks that she looks as fresh as a rose and as sound as an +apple. + +“The old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet in reply, “is a thoroughly fine +woman. Consequently she is like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer as +she gets on. I never saw the old girl’s equal. But I never own to it +before her. Discipline must be maintained!” + +Proceeding to converse on indifferent matters, they walk up and down +the little street, keeping step and time, until summoned by Quebec +and Malta to do justice to the pork and greens, over which Mrs. +Bagnet, like a military chaplain, says a short grace. In the +distribution of these comestibles, as in every other household duty, +Mrs. Bagnet develops an exact system, sitting with every dish before +her, allotting to every portion of pork its own portion of +pot-liquor, greens, potatoes, and even mustard, and serving it out +complete. Having likewise served out the beer from a can and thus +supplied the mess with all things necessary, Mrs. Bagnet proceeds to +satisfy her own hunger, which is in a healthy state. The kit of the +mess, if the table furniture may be so denominated, is chiefly +composed of utensils of horn and tin that have done duty in several +parts of the world. Young Woolwich’s knife, in particular, which is +of the oyster kind, with the additional feature of a strong +shutting-up movement which frequently balks the appetite of that +young musician, is mentioned as having gone in various hands the +complete round of foreign service. + +The dinner done, Mrs. Bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who +polish their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all the +dinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all away, +first sweeping the hearth, to the end that Mr. Bagnet and the visitor +may not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes. These household +cares involve much pattening and counter-pattening in the backyard +and considerable use of a pail, which is finally so happy as to +assist in the ablutions of Mrs. Bagnet herself. That old girl +reappearing by and by, quite fresh, and sitting down to her +needlework, then and only then—the greens being only then to be +considered as entirely off her mind—Mr. Bagnet requests the trooper +to state his case. + +This Mr. George does with great discretion, appearing to address +himself to Mr. Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all +the time, as Bagnet has himself. She, equally discreet, busies +herself with her needlework. The case fully stated, Mr. Bagnet +resorts to his standard artifice for the maintenance of discipline. + +“That’s the whole of it, is it, George?” says he. + +“That’s the whole of it.” + +“You act according to my opinion?” + +“I shall be guided,” replies George, “entirely by it.” + +“Old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, “give him my opinion. You know it. Tell +him what it is.” + +It is that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too +deep for him and cannot be too careful of interference with matters +he does not understand—that the plain rule is to do nothing in the +dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never +to put his foot where he cannot see the ground. This, in effect, is +Mr. Bagnet’s opinion, as delivered through the old girl, and it so +relieves Mr. George’s mind by confirming his own opinion and +banishing his doubts that he composes himself to smoke another pipe +on that exceptional occasion and to have a talk over old times with +the whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of +experience. + +Through these means it comes to pass that Mr. George does not again +rise to his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on +when the bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at the +theatre; and as it takes time even then for Mr. George, in his +domestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta and +insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with +felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr. George +again turns his face towards Lincoln’s Inn Fields. + +“A family home,” he ruminates as he marches along, “however small it +is, makes a man like me look lonely. But it’s well I never made that +evolution of matrimony. I shouldn’t have been fit for it. I am such a +vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I couldn’t hold +to the gallery a month together if it was a regular pursuit or if I +didn’t camp there, gipsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber +nobody; that’s something. I have not done that for many a long year!” + +So he whistles it off and marches on. + +Arrived in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and mounting Mr. Tulkinghorn’s stair, +he finds the outer door closed and the chambers shut, but the trooper +not knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase being dark +besides, he is yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to discover a +bell-handle or to open the door for himself, when Mr. Tulkinghorn +comes up the stairs (quietly, of course) and angrily asks, “Who is +that? What are you doing there?” + +“I ask your pardon, sir. It’s George. The sergeant.” + +“And couldn’t George, the sergeant, see that my door was locked?” + +“Why, no, sir, I couldn’t. At any rate, I didn’t,” says the trooper, +rather nettled. + +“Have you changed your mind? Or are you in the same mind?” Mr. +Tulkinghorn demands. But he knows well enough at a glance. + +“In the same mind, sir.” + +“I thought so. That’s sufficient. You can go. So you are the man,” +says Mr. Tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, “in whose +hiding-place Mr. Gridley was found?” + +“Yes, I AM the man,” says the trooper, stopping two or three stairs +down. “What then, sir?” + +“What then? I don’t like your associates. You should not have seen +the inside of my door this morning if I had thought of your being +that man. Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow.” + +With these words, spoken in an unusually high tone for him, the +lawyer goes into his rooms and shuts the door with a thundering +noise. + +Mr. George takes his dismissal in great dudgeon, the greater because +a clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of all and +evidently applies them to him. “A pretty character to bear,” the +trooper growls with a hasty oath as he strides downstairs. “A +threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow!” And looking up, he sees +the clerk looking down at him and marking him as he passes a lamp. +This so intensifies his dudgeon that for five minutes he is in an ill +humour. But he whistles that off like the rest of it and marches home +to the shooting gallery. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +The Ironmaster + + +Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better, for the time being, of the +family gout and is once more, in a literal no less than in a +figurative point of view, upon his legs. He is at his place in +Lincolnshire; but the waters are out again on the low-lying grounds, +and the cold and damp steal into Chesney Wold, though well defended, +and eke into Sir Leicester’s bones. The blazing fires of faggot and +coal—Dedlock timber and antediluvian forest—that blaze upon the +broad wide hearths and wink in the twilight on the frowning woods, +sullen to see how trees are sacrificed, do not exclude the enemy. The +hot-water pipes that trail themselves all over the house, the +cushioned doors and windows, and the screens and curtains fail to +supply the fires’ deficiencies and to satisfy Sir Leicester’s need. +Hence the fashionable intelligence proclaims one morning to the +listening earth that Lady Dedlock is expected shortly to return to +town for a few weeks. + +It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor +relations. Indeed great men have often more than their fair share of +poor relations, inasmuch as very red blood of the superior quality, +like inferior blood unlawfully shed, WILL cry aloud and WILL be +heard. Sir Leicester’s cousins, in the remotest degree, are so many +Murders in the respect that they “will out.” Among whom there are +cousins who are so poor that one might almost dare to think it would +have been the happier for them never to have been plated links upon +the Dedlock chain of gold, but to have been made of common iron at +first and done base service. + +Service, however (with a few limited reservations, genteel but not +profitable), they may not do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So they +visit their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live +but shabbily when they can’t, and find—the women no husbands, and +the men no wives—and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts +that are never of their own making, and so go through high life. The +rich family sum has been divided by so many figures, and they are the +something over that nobody knows what to do with. + +Everybody on Sir Leicester Dedlock’s side of the question and of his +way of thinking would appear to be his cousin more or less. From my +Lord Boodle, through the Duke of Foodle, down to Noodle, Sir +Leicester, like a glorious spider, stretches his threads of +relationship. But while he is stately in the cousinship of the +Everybodys, he is a kind and generous man, according to his dignified +way, in the cousinship of the Nobodys; and at the present time, in +despite of the damp, he stays out the visit of several such cousins +at Chesney Wold with the constancy of a martyr. + +Of these, foremost in the front rank stands Volumnia Dedlock, a young +lady (of sixty) who is doubly highly related, having the honour to be +a poor relation, by the mother’s side, to another great family. Miss +Volumnia, displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting +ornaments out of coloured paper, and also for singing to the guitar +in the Spanish tongue, and propounding French conundrums in country +houses, passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and +forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date +and being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the +Spanish language, she retired to Bath, where she lives slenderly on +an annual present from Sir Leicester and whence she makes occasional +resurrections in the country houses of her cousins. She has an +extensive acquaintance at Bath among appalling old gentlemen with +thin legs and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that +dreary city. But she is a little dreaded elsewhere in consequence of +an indiscreet profusion in the article of rouge and persistency in an +obsolete pearl necklace like a rosary of little bird’s-eggs. + +In any country in a wholesome state, Volumnia would be a clear case +for the pension list. Efforts have been made to get her on it, and +when William Buffy came in, it was fully expected that her name would +be put down for a couple of hundred a year. But William Buffy somehow +discovered, contrary to all expectation, that these were not the +times when it could be done, and this was the first clear indication +Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him that the country was going +to pieces. + +There is likewise the Honourable Bob Stables, who can make warm +mashes with the skill of a veterinary surgeon and is a better shot +than most gamekeepers. He has been for some time particularly +desirous to serve his country in a post of good emoluments, +unaccompanied by any trouble or responsibility. In a well-regulated +body politic this natural desire on the part of a spirited young +gentleman so highly connected would be speedily recognized, but +somehow William Buffy found when he came in that these were not times +in which he could manage that little matter either, and this was the +second indication Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him that the +country was going to pieces. + +The rest of the cousins are ladies and gentlemen of various ages and +capacities, the major part amiable and sensible and likely to have +done well enough in life if they could have overcome their +cousinship; as it is, they are almost all a little worsted by it, and +lounge in purposeless and listless paths, and seem to be quite as +much at a loss how to dispose of themselves as anybody else can be +how to dispose of them. + +In this society, and where not, my Lady Dedlock reigns supreme. +Beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little world +(for the world of fashion does not stretch ALL the way from pole to +pole), her influence in Sir Leicester’s house, however haughty and +indifferent her manner, is greatly to improve it and refine it. The +cousins, even those older cousins who were paralysed when Sir +Leicester married her, do her feudal homage; and the Honourable Bob +Stables daily repeats to some chosen person between breakfast and +lunch his favourite original remark, that she is the best-groomed +woman in the whole stud. + +Such the guests in the long drawing-room at Chesney Wold this dismal +night when the step on the Ghost’s Walk (inaudible here, however) +might be the step of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold. It is +near bed-time. Bedroom fires blaze brightly all over the house, +raising ghosts of grim furniture on wall and ceiling. Bedroom +candlesticks bristle on the distant table by the door, and cousins +yawn on ottomans. Cousins at the piano, cousins at the soda-water +tray, cousins rising from the card-table, cousins gathered round the +fire. Standing on one side of his own peculiar fire (for there are +two), Sir Leicester. On the opposite side of the broad hearth, my +Lady at her table. Volumnia, as one of the more privileged cousins, +in a luxurious chair between them. Sir Leicester glancing, with +magnificent displeasure, at the rouge and the pearl necklace. + +“I occasionally meet on my staircase here,” drawls Volumnia, whose +thoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long +evening of very desultory talk, “one of the prettiest girls, I think, +that I ever saw in my life.” + +“A _protégée_ of my Lady’s,” observes Sir Leicester. + +“I thought so. I felt sure that some uncommon eye must have picked +that girl out. She really is a marvel. A dolly sort of beauty +perhaps,” says Miss Volumnia, reserving her own sort, “but in its +way, perfect; such bloom I never saw!” + +Sir Leicester, with his magnificent glance of displeasure at the +rouge, appears to say so too. + +“Indeed,” remarks my Lady languidly, “if there is any uncommon eye in +the case, it is Mrs. Rouncewell’s, and not mine. Rosa is her +discovery.” + +“Your maid, I suppose?” + +“No. My anything; pet—secretary—messenger—I don’t know what.” + +“You like to have her about you, as you would like to have a flower, +or a bird, or a picture, or a poodle—no, not a poodle, though—or +anything else that was equally pretty?” says Volumnia, sympathizing. +“Yes, how charming now! And how well that delightful old soul Mrs. +Rouncewell is looking. She must be an immense age, and yet she is as +active and handsome! She is the dearest friend I have, positively!” + +Sir Leicester feels it to be right and fitting that the housekeeper +of Chesney Wold should be a remarkable person. Apart from that, he +has a real regard for Mrs. Rouncewell and likes to hear her praised. +So he says, “You are right, Volumnia,” which Volumnia is extremely +glad to hear. + +“She has no daughter of her own, has she?” + +“Mrs. Rouncewell? No, Volumnia. She has a son. Indeed, she had two.” + +My Lady, whose chronic malady of boredom has been sadly aggravated by +Volumnia this evening, glances wearily towards the candlesticks and +heaves a noiseless sigh. + +“And it is a remarkable example of the confusion into which the +present age has fallen; of the obliteration of landmarks, the opening +of floodgates, and the uprooting of distinctions,” says Sir Leicester +with stately gloom, “that I have been informed by Mr. Tulkinghorn +that Mrs. Rouncewell’s son has been invited to go into Parliament.” + +Miss Volumnia utters a little sharp scream. + +“Yes, indeed,” repeats Sir Leicester. “Into Parliament.” + +“I never heard of such a thing! Good gracious, what is the man?” +exclaims Volumnia. + +“He is called, I believe—an—ironmaster.” Sir Leicester says it +slowly and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure but that he is +called a lead-mistress or that the right word may be some other word +expressive of some other relationship to some other metal. + +Volumnia utters another little scream. + +“He has declined the proposal, if my information from Mr. Tulkinghorn +be correct, as I have no doubt it is. Mr. Tulkinghorn being always +correct and exact; still that does not,” says Sir Leicester, “that +does not lessen the anomaly, which is fraught with strange +considerations—startling considerations, as it appears to me.” + +Miss Volumnia rising with a look candlestick-wards, Sir Leicester +politely performs the grand tour of the drawing-room, brings one, and +lights it at my Lady’s shaded lamp. + +“I must beg you, my Lady,” he says while doing so, “to remain a few +moments, for this individual of whom I speak arrived this evening +shortly before dinner and requested in a very becoming note”—Sir +Leicester, with his habitual regard to truth, dwells upon it—“I am +bound to say, in a very becoming and well-expressed note, the favour +of a short interview with yourself and MYself on the subject of this +young girl. As it appeared that he wished to depart to-night, I +replied that we would see him before retiring.” + +Miss Volumnia with a third little scream takes flight, wishing her +hosts—O Lud!—well rid of the—what is it?—ironmaster! + +The other cousins soon disperse, to the last cousin there. Sir +Leicester rings the bell, “Make my compliments to Mr. Rouncewell, in +the housekeeper’s apartments, and say I can receive him now.” + +My Lady, who has heard all this with slight attention outwardly, +looks towards Mr. Rouncewell as he comes in. He is a little over +fifty perhaps, of a good figure, like his mother, and has a clear +voice, a broad forehead from which his dark hair has retired, and a +shrewd though open face. He is a responsible-looking gentleman +dressed in black, portly enough, but strong and active. Has a +perfectly natural and easy air and is not in the least embarrassed by +the great presence into which he comes. + +“Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, as I have already apologized for +intruding on you, I cannot do better than be very brief. I thank you, +Sir Leicester.” + +The head of the Dedlocks has motioned towards a sofa between himself +and my Lady. Mr. Rouncewell quietly takes his seat there. + +“In these busy times, when so many great undertakings are in +progress, people like myself have so many workmen in so many places +that we are always on the flight.” + +Sir Leicester is content enough that the ironmaster should feel that +there is no hurry there; there, in that ancient house, rooted in that +quiet park, where the ivy and the moss have had time to mature, and +the gnarled and warted elms and the umbrageous oaks stand deep in the +fern and leaves of a hundred years; and where the sun-dial on the +terrace has dumbly recorded for centuries that time which was as much +the property of every Dedlock—while he lasted—as the house and +lands. Sir Leicester sits down in an easy-chair, opposing his repose +and that of Chesney Wold to the restless flights of ironmasters. + +“Lady Dedlock has been so kind,” proceeds Mr. Rouncewell with a +respectful glance and a bow that way, “as to place near her a young +beauty of the name of Rosa. Now, my son has fallen in love with Rosa +and has asked my consent to his proposing marriage to her and to +their becoming engaged if she will take him—which I suppose she +will. I have never seen Rosa until to-day, but I have some confidence +in my son’s good sense—even in love. I find her what he represents +her, to the best of my judgment; and my mother speaks of her with +great commendation.” + +“She in all respects deserves it,” says my Lady. + +“I am happy, Lady Dedlock, that you say so, and I need not comment on +the value to me of your kind opinion of her.” + +“That,” observes Sir Leicester with unspeakable grandeur, for he +thinks the ironmaster a little too glib, “must be quite unnecessary.” + +“Quite unnecessary, Sir Leicester. Now, my son is a very young man, +and Rosa is a very young woman. As I made my way, so my son must make +his; and his being married at present is out of the question. But +supposing I gave my consent to his engaging himself to this pretty +girl, if this pretty girl will engage herself to him, I think it a +piece of candour to say at once—I am sure, Sir Leicester and Lady +Dedlock, you will understand and excuse me—I should make it a +condition that she did not remain at Chesney Wold. Therefore, before +communicating further with my son, I take the liberty of saying that +if her removal would be in any way inconvenient or objectionable, I +will hold the matter over with him for any reasonable time and leave +it precisely where it is.” + +Not remain at Chesney Wold! Make it a condition! All Sir Leicester’s +old misgivings relative to Wat Tyler and the people in the iron +districts who do nothing but turn out by torchlight come in a shower +upon his head, the fine grey hair of which, as well as of his +whiskers, actually stirs with indignation. + +“Am I to understand, sir,” says Sir Leicester, “and is my Lady to +understand”—he brings her in thus specially, first as a point of +gallantry, and next as a point of prudence, having great reliance on +her sense—“am I to understand, Mr. Rouncewell, and is my Lady to +understand, sir, that you consider this young woman too good for +Chesney Wold or likely to be injured by remaining here?” + +“Certainly not, Sir Leicester,” + +“I am glad to hear it.” Sir Leicester very lofty indeed. + +“Pray, Mr. Rouncewell,” says my Lady, warning Sir Leicester off with +the slightest gesture of her pretty hand, as if he were a fly, +“explain to me what you mean.” + +“Willingly, Lady Dedlock. There is nothing I could desire more.” + +Addressing her composed face, whose intelligence, however, is too +quick and active to be concealed by any studied impassiveness, +however habitual, to the strong Saxon face of the visitor, a picture +of resolution and perseverance, my Lady listens with attention, +occasionally slightly bending her head. + +“I am the son of your housekeeper, Lady Dedlock, and passed my +childhood about this house. My mother has lived here half a +century and will die here I have no doubt. She is one of those +examples—perhaps as good a one as there is—of love, and attachment, +and fidelity in such a nation, which England may well be proud of, +but of which no order can appropriate the whole pride or the whole +merit, because such an instance bespeaks high worth on two sides—on +the great side assuredly, on the small one no less assuredly.” + +Sir Leicester snorts a little to hear the law laid down in this way, +but in his honour and his love of truth, he freely, though silently, +admits the justice of the ironmaster’s proposition. + +“Pardon me for saying what is so obvious, but I wouldn’t have it +hastily supposed,” with the least turn of his eyes towards Sir +Leicester, “that I am ashamed of my mother’s position here, or +wanting in all just respect for Chesney Wold and the family. +I certainly may have desired—I certainly have desired, Lady +Dedlock—that my mother should retire after so many years and end +her days with me. But as I have found that to sever this strong bond +would be to break her heart, I have long abandoned that idea.” + +Sir Leicester very magnificent again at the notion of Mrs. Rouncewell +being spirited off from her natural home to end her days with an +ironmaster. + +“I have been,” proceeds the visitor in a modest, clear way, “an +apprentice and a workman. I have lived on workman’s wages, years and +years, and beyond a certain point have had to educate myself. My wife +was a foreman’s daughter, and plainly brought up. We have three +daughters besides this son of whom I have spoken, and being +fortunately able to give them greater advantages than we have had +ourselves, we have educated them well, very well. It has been one of +our great cares and pleasures to make them worthy of any station.” + +A little boastfulness in his fatherly tone here, as if he added in +his heart, “even of the Chesney Wold station.” Not a little more +magnificence, therefore, on the part of Sir Leicester. + +“All this is so frequent, Lady Dedlock, where I live, and among the +class to which I belong, that what would be generally called unequal +marriages are not of such rare occurrence with us as elsewhere. A son +will sometimes make it known to his father that he has fallen in +love, say, with a young woman in the factory. The father, who once +worked in a factory himself, will be a little disappointed at first +very possibly. It may be that he had other views for his son. +However, the chances are that having ascertained the young woman to +be of unblemished character, he will say to his son, ‘I must be quite +sure you are in earnest here. This is a serious matter for both of +you. Therefore I shall have this girl educated for two years,’ or it +may be, ‘I shall place this girl at the same school with your sisters +for such a time, during which you will give me your word and honour +to see her only so often. If at the expiration of that time, when she +has so far profited by her advantages as that you may be upon a fair +equality, you are both in the same mind, I will do my part to make +you happy.’ I know of several cases such as I describe, my Lady, and +I think they indicate to me my own course now.” + +Sir Leicester’s magnificence explodes. Calmly, but terribly. + +“Mr. Rouncewell,” says Sir Leicester with his right hand in the +breast of his blue coat, the attitude of state in which he is painted +in the gallery, “do you draw a parallel between Chesney Wold and a—” +Here he resists a disposition to choke, “a factory?” + +“I need not reply, Sir Leicester, that the two places are very +different; but for the purposes of this case, I think a parallel may +be justly drawn between them.” + +Sir Leicester directs his majestic glance down one side of the long +drawing-room and up the other before he can believe that he is awake. + +“Are you aware, sir, that this young woman whom my Lady—my Lady—has +placed near her person was brought up at the village school outside +the gates?” + +“Sir Leicester, I am quite aware of it. A very good school it is, and +handsomely supported by this family.” + +“Then, Mr. Rouncewell,” returns Sir Leicester, “the application of +what you have said is, to me, incomprehensible.” + +“Will it be more comprehensible, Sir Leicester, if I say,” the +ironmaster is reddening a little, “that I do not regard the village +school as teaching everything desirable to be known by my son’s +wife?” + +From the village school of Chesney Wold, intact as it is this minute, +to the whole framework of society; from the whole framework of +society, to the aforesaid framework receiving tremendous cracks in +consequence of people (iron-masters, lead-mistresses, and what not) +not minding their catechism, and getting out of the station unto +which they are called—necessarily and for ever, according to Sir +Leicester’s rapid logic, the first station in which they happen to +find themselves; and from that, to their educating other people out +of THEIR stations, and so obliterating the landmarks, and opening the +floodgates, and all the rest of it; this is the swift progress of the +Dedlock mind. + +“My Lady, I beg your pardon. Permit me, for one moment!” She has +given a faint indication of intending to speak. “Mr. Rouncewell, our +views of duty, and our views of station, and our views of education, +and our views of—in short, ALL our views—are so diametrically +opposed, that to prolong this discussion must be repellent to your +feelings and repellent to my own. This young woman is honoured with +my Lady’s notice and favour. If she wishes to withdraw herself from +that notice and favour or if she chooses to place herself under the +influence of any one who may in his peculiar opinions—you will allow +me to say, in his peculiar opinions, though I readily admit that he +is not accountable for them to me—who may, in his peculiar opinions, +withdraw her from that notice and favour, she is at any time at +liberty to do so. We are obliged to you for the plainness with which +you have spoken. It will have no effect of itself, one way or other, +on the young woman’s position here. Beyond this, we can make no +terms; and here we beg—if you will be so good—to leave the +subject.” + +The visitor pauses a moment to give my Lady an opportunity, but she +says nothing. He then rises and replies, “Sir Leicester and Lady +Dedlock, allow me to thank you for your attention and only to observe +that I shall very seriously recommend my son to conquer his present +inclinations. Good night!” + +“Mr. Rouncewell,” says Sir Leicester with all the nature of a +gentleman shining in him, “it is late, and the roads are dark. I hope +your time is not so precious but that you will allow my Lady and +myself to offer you the hospitality of Chesney Wold, for to-night at +least.” + +“I hope so,” adds my Lady. + +“I am much obliged to you, but I have to travel all night in order to +reach a distant part of the country punctually at an appointed time +in the morning.” + +Therewith the ironmaster takes his departure, Sir Leicester ringing +the bell and my Lady rising as he leaves the room. + +When my Lady goes to her boudoir, she sits down thoughtfully by the +fire, and inattentive to the Ghost’s Walk, looks at Rosa, writing in +an inner room. Presently my Lady calls her. + +“Come to me, child. Tell me the truth. Are you in love?” + +“Oh! My Lady!” + +My Lady, looking at the downcast and blushing face, says smiling, +“Who is it? Is it Mrs. Rouncewell’s grandson?” + +“Yes, if you please, my Lady. But I don’t know that I am in love with +him—yet.” + +“Yet, you silly little thing! Do you know that he loves YOU, yet?” + +“I think he likes me a little, my Lady.” And Rosa bursts into tears. + +Is this Lady Dedlock standing beside the village beauty, smoothing +her dark hair with that motherly touch, and watching her with eyes so +full of musing interest? Aye, indeed it is! + +“Listen to me, child. You are young and true, and I believe you are +attached to me.” + +“Indeed I am, my Lady. Indeed there is nothing in the world I +wouldn’t do to show how much.” + +“And I don’t think you would wish to leave me just yet, Rosa, even +for a lover?” + +“No, my Lady! Oh, no!” Rosa looks up for the first time, quite +frightened at the thought. + +“Confide in me, my child. Don’t fear me. I wish you to be happy, and +will make you so—if I can make anybody happy on this earth.” + +Rosa, with fresh tears, kneels at her feet and kisses her hand. My +Lady takes the hand with which she has caught it, and standing with +her eyes fixed on the fire, puts it about and about between her own +two hands, and gradually lets it fall. Seeing her so absorbed, Rosa +softly withdraws; but still my Lady’s eyes are on the fire. + +In search of what? Of any hand that is no more, of any hand that +never was, of any touch that might have magically changed her life? +Or does she listen to the Ghost’s Walk and think what step does it +most resemble? A man’s? A woman’s? The pattering of a little child’s +feet, ever coming on—on—on? Some melancholy influence is upon her, +or why should so proud a lady close the doors and sit alone upon the +hearth so desolate? + +Volumnia is away next day, and all the cousins are scattered before +dinner. Not a cousin of the batch but is amazed to hear from Sir +Leicester at breakfast-time of the obliteration of landmarks, and +opening of floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society, +manifested through Mrs. Rouncewell’s son. Not a cousin of the batch +but is really indignant, and connects it with the feebleness of +William Buffy when in office, and really does feel deprived of a +stake in the country—or the pension list—or something—by fraud and +wrong. As to Volumnia, she is handed down the great staircase by Sir +Leicester, as eloquent upon the theme as if there were a general +rising in the north of England to obtain her rouge-pot and pearl +necklace. And thus, with a clatter of maids and valets—for it is one +appurtenance of their cousinship that however difficult they may find +it to keep themselves, they MUST keep maids and valets—the cousins +disperse to the four winds of heaven; and the one wintry wind that +blows to-day shakes a shower from the trees near the deserted house, +as if all the cousins had been changed into leaves. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +The Young Man + + +Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled into great scrolls in +corners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in brown +holland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the Dedlock +ancestors retire from the light of day again. Around and around the +house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling +down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow. Let the gardener +sweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the leaves into full +barrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-deep. Howls the +shrill wind round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain beats, the windows +rattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists hide in the avenues, veil the +points of view, and move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds. +On all the house there is a cold, blank smell like the smell of a +little church, though something dryer, suggesting that the dead and +buried Dedlocks walk there in the long nights and leave the flavour +of their graves behind them. + +But the house in town, which is rarely in the same mind as Chesney +Wold at the same time, seldom rejoicing when it rejoices or mourning +when it mourns, excepting when a Dedlock dies—the house in town +shines out awakened. As warm and bright as so much state may be, as +delicately redolent of pleasant scents that bear no trace of winter +as hothouse flowers can make it, soft and hushed so that the ticking +of the clocks and the crisp burning of the fires alone disturb the +stillness in the rooms, it seems to wrap those chilled bones of Sir +Leicester’s in rainbow-coloured wool. And Sir Leicester is glad to +repose in dignified contentment before the great fire in the library, +condescendingly perusing the backs of his books or honouring the fine +arts with a glance of approbation. For he has his pictures, ancient +and modern. Some of the Fancy Ball School in which art occasionally +condescends to become a master, which would be best catalogued like +the miscellaneous articles in a sale. As “Three high-backed chairs, a +table and cover, long-necked bottle (containing wine), one flask, one +Spanish female’s costume, three-quarter face portrait of Miss Jogg +the model, and a suit of armour containing Don Quixote.” Or “One +stone terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one Venetian +senator’s dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with +profile portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimitar superbly +mounted in gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very +rare), and Othello.” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, there being estate +business to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. He sees my Lady +pretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as +indifferent, and take as little heed of one another, as ever. Yet it +may be that my Lady fears this Mr. Tulkinghorn and that he knows it. +It may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no touch of +compunction, remorse, or pity. It may be that her beauty and all the +state and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the greater zest +for what he is set upon and makes him the more inflexible in it. +Whether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable in what he has made +his duty, whether absorbed in love of power, whether determined +to have nothing hidden from him in ground where he has burrowed +among secrets all his life, whether he in his heart despises the +splendour of which he is a distant beam, whether he is always +treasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his gorgeous +clients—whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that my +Lady had better have five thousand pairs of fashionable eyes upon +her, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer +with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches tied with +ribbons at the knees. + +Sir Leicester sits in my Lady’s room—that room in which Mr. +Tulkinghorn read the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce—particularly +complacent. My Lady, as on that day, sits before the fire with her +screen in her hand. Sir Leicester is particularly complacent because +he has found in his newspaper some congenial remarks bearing directly +on the floodgates and the framework of society. They apply so happily +to the late case that Sir Leicester has come from the library to my +Lady’s room expressly to read them aloud. “The man who wrote this +article,” he observes by way of preface, nodding at the fire as if he +were nodding down at the man from a mount, “has a well-balanced +mind.” + +The man’s mind is not so well balanced but that he bores my Lady, +who, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid +resignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught and +falls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire at +Chesney Wold, and she had never left it. Sir Leicester, quite +unconscious, reads on through his double eye-glass, occasionally +stopping to remove his glass and express approval, as “Very true +indeed,” “Very properly put,” “I have frequently made the same remark +myself,” invariably losing his place after each observation, and +going up and down the column to find it again. + +Sir Leicester is reading with infinite gravity and state when the +door opens, and the Mercury in powder makes this strange +announcement, “The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy.” + +Sir Leicester pauses, stares, repeats in a killing voice, “The young +man of the name of Guppy?” + +Looking round, he beholds the young man of the name of Guppy, much +discomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter of +introduction in his manner and appearance. + +“Pray,” says Sir Leicester to Mercury, “what do you mean by +announcing with this abruptness a young man of the name of Guppy?” + +“I beg your pardon, Sir Leicester, but my Lady said she would see the +young man whenever he called. I was not aware that you were here, Sir +Leicester.” + +With this apology, Mercury directs a scornful and indignant look at +the young man of the name of Guppy which plainly says, “What do you +come calling here for and getting ME into a row?” + +“It’s quite right. I gave him those directions,” says my Lady. “Let +the young man wait.” + +“By no means, my Lady. Since he has your orders to come, I will not +interrupt you.” Sir Leicester in his gallantry retires, rather +declining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out and +majestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive +appearance. + +Lady Dedlock looks imperiously at her visitor when the servant has +left the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot. She +suffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants. + +“That your ladyship would have the kindness to oblige me with a +little conversation,” returns Mr. Guppy, embarrassed. + +“You are, of course, the person who has written me so many letters?” + +“Several, your ladyship. Several before your ladyship condescended to +favour me with an answer.” + +“And could you not take the same means of rendering a Conversation +unnecessary? Can you not still?” + +Mr. Guppy screws his mouth into a silent “No!” and shakes his head. + +“You have been strangely importunate. If it should appear, after all, +that what you have to say does not concern me—and I don’t know how +it can, and don’t expect that it will—you will allow me to cut you +short with but little ceremony. Say what you have to say, if you +please.” + +My Lady, with a careless toss of her screen, turns herself towards +the fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young man of the +name of Guppy. + +“With your ladyship’s permission, then,” says the young man, “I will +now enter on my business. Hem! I am, as I told your ladyship in my +first letter, in the law. Being in the law, I have learnt the habit +of not committing myself in writing, and therefore I did not mention +to your ladyship the name of the firm with which I am connected and +in which my standing—and I may add income—is tolerably good. I may +now state to your ladyship, in confidence, that the name of that firm +is Kenge and Carboy, of Lincoln’s Inn, which may not be altogether +unknown to your ladyship in connexion with the case in Chancery of +Jarndyce and Jarndyce.” + +My Lady’s figure begins to be expressive of some attention. She has +ceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were listening. + +“Now, I may say to your ladyship at once,” says Mr. Guppy, a little +emboldened, “it is no matter arising out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce +that made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, which conduct I +have no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive—in fact, almost +blackguardly.” + +After waiting for a moment to receive some assurance to the contrary, +and not receiving any, Mr. Guppy proceeds, “If it had been Jarndyce +and Jarndyce, I should have gone at once to your ladyship’s +solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, of the Fields. I have the pleasure of +being acquainted with Mr. Tulkinghorn—at least we move when we meet +one another—and if it had been any business of that sort, I should +have gone to him.” + +My Lady turns a little round and says, “You had better sit down.” + +“Thank your ladyship.” Mr. Guppy does so. “Now, your ladyship”—Mr. +Guppy refers to a little slip of paper on which he has made small +notes of his line of argument and which seems to involve him in the +densest obscurity whenever he looks at it—“I—Oh, yes!—I place +myself entirely in your ladyship’s hands. If your ladyship was to +make any complaint to Kenge and Carboy or to Mr. Tulkinghorn of the +present visit, I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation. +That, I openly admit. Consequently, I rely upon your ladyship’s +honour.” + +My Lady, with a disdainful gesture of the hand that holds the screen, +assures him of his being worth no complaint from her. + +“Thank your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy; “quite satisfactory. +Now—I—dash it!—The fact is that I put down a head or two here of +the order of the points I thought of touching upon, and they’re +written short, and I can’t quite make out what they mean. If your +ladyship will excuse me taking it to the window half a moment, I—” + +Mr. Guppy, going to the window, tumbles into a pair of love-birds, to +whom he says in his confusion, “I beg your pardon, I am sure.” This +does not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. He murmurs, +growing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now close to his +eyes, now a long way off, “C.S. What’s C.S. for? Oh! C.S.! Oh, I +know! Yes, to be sure!” And comes back enlightened. + +“I am not aware,” says Mr. Guppy, standing midway between my Lady and +his chair, “whether your ladyship ever happened to hear of, or to +see, a young lady of the name of Miss Esther Summerson.” + +My Lady’s eyes look at him full. “I saw a young lady of that name not +long ago. This past autumn.” + +“Now, did it strike your ladyship that she was like anybody?” asks +Mr. Guppy, crossing his arms, holding his head on one side, and +scratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda. + +My Lady removes her eyes from him no more. + +“No.” + +“Not like your ladyship’s family?” + +“No.” + +“I think your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “can hardly remember Miss +Summerson’s face?” + +“I remember the young lady very well. What has this to do with me?” + +“Your ladyship, I do assure you that having Miss Summerson’s image +imprinted on my ’eart—which I mention in confidence—I found, when I +had the honour of going over your ladyship’s mansion of Chesney Wold +while on a short out in the county of Lincolnshire with a friend, +such a resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your ladyship’s +own portrait that it completely knocked me over, so much so that I +didn’t at the moment even know what it WAS that knocked me over. And +now I have the honour of beholding your ladyship near (I have often, +since that, taken the liberty of looking at your ladyship in your +carriage in the park, when I dare say you was not aware of me, but I +never saw your ladyship so near), it’s really more surprising than I +thought it.” + +Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been times, when ladies +lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call, +when that poor life of yours would NOT have been worth a minute’s +purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at +this moment. + +My Lady, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him again +what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with her. + +“Your ladyship,” replies Mr. Guppy, again referring to his paper, “I +am coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! ‘Mrs. Chadband.’ Yes.” Mr. +Guppy draws his chair a little forward and seats himself again. My +Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trifle less of +graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters in her steady +gaze. “A—stop a minute, though!” Mr. Guppy refers again. “E.S. +twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on.” + +Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech +with, Mr. Guppy proceeds. + +“Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson’s +birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact because—which I +mention in confidence—I know it in the way of my profession at Kenge +and Carboy’s. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss +Summerson’s image is imprinted on my ’eart. If I could clear this +mystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having +the honour to be a remote branch of your ladyship’s family she had a +right to be made a party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, why, I might make +a sort of a claim upon Miss Summerson to look with an eye of more +dedicated favour on my proposals than she has exactly done as yet. In +fact, as yet she hasn’t favoured them at all.” + +A kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Lady’s face. + +“Now, it’s a very singular circumstance, your ladyship,” says Mr. +Guppy, “though one of those circumstances that do fall in the way of +us professional men—which I may call myself, for though not +admitted, yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by Kenge +and Carboy, on my mother’s advancing from the principal of her little +income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy—that I have +encountered the person who lived as servant with the lady who brought +Miss Summerson up before Mr. Jarndyce took charge of her. That lady +was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship.” + +Is the dead colour on my Lady’s face reflected from the screen which +has a green silk ground and which she holds in her raised hand as if +she had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that has fallen on +her? + +“Did your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “ever happen to hear of Miss +Barbary?” + +“I don’t know. I think so. Yes.” + +“Was Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship’s family?” + +My Lady’s lips move, but they utter nothing. She shakes her head. + +“NOT connected?” says Mr. Guppy. “Oh! Not to your ladyship’s +knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes.” After each of these +interrogatories, she has inclined her head. “Very good! Now, this +Miss Barbary was extremely close—seems to have been extraordinarily +close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least) +rather given to conversation—and my witness never had an idea +whether she possessed a single relative. On one occasion, and only +one, she seems to have been confidential to my witness on a single +point, and she then told her that the little girl’s real name was not +Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon.” + +“My God!” + +Mr. Guppy stares. Lady Dedlock sits before him looking him through, +with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to +the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a +little contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness +return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, +sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees +her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what +he has said. All this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead +condition seem to have passed away like the features of those +long-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in tombs, which, +struck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath. + +“Your ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?” + +“I have heard it before.” + +“Name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship’s family?” + +“No.” + +“Now, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “I come to the last point of +the case, so far as I have got it up. It’s going on, and I shall +gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must +know—if your ladyship don’t happen, by any chance, to know +already—that there was found dead at the house of a person named +Krook, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great +distress. Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which +law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown. But, +your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-writer’s +name was Hawdon.” + +“And what is THAT to me?” + +“Aye, your ladyship, that’s the question! Now, your ladyship, a queer +thing happened after that man’s death. A lady started up, a disguised +lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of action and went +to look at his grave. She hired a crossing-sweeping boy to show it +her. If your ladyship would wish to have the boy produced in +corroboration of this statement, I can lay my hand upon him at any +time.” + +The wretched boy is nothing to my Lady, and she does NOT wish to have +him produced. + +“Oh, I assure your ladyship it’s a very queer start indeed,” says Mr. +Guppy. “If you was to hear him tell about the rings that sparkled on +her fingers when she took her glove off, you’d think it quite +romantic.” + +There are diamonds glittering on the hand that holds the screen. My +Lady trifles with the screen and makes them glitter more, again with +that expression which in other times might have been so dangerous to +the young man of the name of Guppy. + +“It was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap behind +him by which he could be possibly identified. But he did. He left a +bundle of old letters.” + +The screen still goes, as before. All this time her eyes never once +release him. + +“They were taken and secreted. And to-morrow night, your ladyship, +they will come into my possession.” + +“Still I ask you, what is this to me?” + +“Your ladyship, I conclude with that.” Mr. Guppy rises. “If you think +there’s enough in this chain of circumstances put together—in the +undoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your ladyship, which +is a positive fact for a jury; in her having been brought up by Miss +Barbary; in Miss Barbary stating Miss Summerson’s real name to be +Hawdon; in your ladyship’s knowing both these names VERY WELL; and in +Hawdon’s dying as he did—to give your ladyship a family interest in +going further into the case, I will bring these papers here. I don’t +know what they are, except that they are old letters: I have never +had them in my possession yet. I will bring those papers here as soon +as I get them and go over them for the first time with your ladyship. +I have told your ladyship my object. I have told your ladyship that I +should be placed in a very disagreeable situation if any complaint +was made, and all is in strict confidence.” + +Is this the full purpose of the young man of the name of Guppy, or +has he any other? Do his words disclose the length, breadth, depth, +of his object and suspicion in coming here; or if not, what do they +hide? He is a match for my Lady there. She may look at him, but he +can look at the table and keep that witness-box face of his from +telling anything. + +“You may bring the letters,” says my Lady, “if you choose.” + +“Your ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour,” +says Mr. Guppy, a little injured. + +“You may bring the letters,” she repeats in the same tone, “if +you—please.” + +“It shall be done. I wish your ladyship good day.” + +On a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and clasped +like an old strong-chest. She, looking at him still, takes it to her +and unlocks it. + +“Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of that +sort,” says Mr. Guppy, “and I couldn’t accept anything of the kind. I +wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you all the +same.” + +So the young man makes his bow and goes downstairs, where the +supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave +his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out. + +As Sir Leicester basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper, +is there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to make +the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms, the very +portraits frown, the very armour stir? + +No. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and +shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered +trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint +vibration to Sir Leicester’s ears; and yet this cry is in the house, +going upward from a wild figure on its knees. + +“O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my +cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had +renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!” + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +Esther’s Narrative + + +Richard had been gone away some time when a visitor came to pass a +few days with us. It was an elderly lady. It was Mrs. Woodcourt, who, +having come from Wales to stay with Mrs. Bayham Badger and having +written to my guardian, “by her son Allan’s desire,” to report that +she had heard from him and that he was well “and sent his kind +remembrances to all of us,” had been invited by my guardian to make a +visit to Bleak House. She stayed with us nearly three weeks. She took +very kindly to me and was extremely confidential, so much so that +sometimes she almost made me uncomfortable. I had no right, I knew +very well, to be uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt +it was unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite +help it. + +She was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands +folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to me +that perhaps I found that rather irksome. Or perhaps it was her being +so upright and trim, though I don’t think it was that, because I +thought that quaintly pleasant. Nor can it have been the general +expression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty for an +old lady. I don’t know what it was. Or at least if I do now, I +thought I did not then. Or at least—but it don’t matter. + +Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me +into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair; +and, dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I +was quite low-spirited! Sometimes she recited a few verses from +Crumlinwallinwer and the Mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right +names, which I dare say they are not), and would become quite fiery +with the sentiments they expressed. Though I never knew what they +were (being in Welsh), further than that they were highly eulogistic +of the lineage of Morgan ap-Kerrig. + +“So, Miss Summerson,” she would say to me with stately triumph, +“this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. Wherever my son +goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not have money, but +he always has what is much better—family, my dear.” + +I had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig in +India and China, but of course I never expressed them. I used to say +it was a great thing to be so highly connected. + +“It IS, my dear, a great thing,” Mrs. Woodcourt would reply. “It has +its disadvantages; my son’s choice of a wife, for instance, is +limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is +limited in much the same manner.” + +Then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to +assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between us +notwithstanding. + +“Poor Mr. Woodcourt, my dear,” she would say, and always with some +emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate +heart, “was descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts of +MacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the Royal +Highlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the last +representatives of two old families. With the blessing of heaven he +will set them up again and unite them with another old family.” + +It was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as I used to try, +only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because—but I need not be so +particular. Mrs. Woodcourt never would let me change it. + +“My dear,” she said one night, “you have so much sense and you look +at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life that +it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family matters of +mine. You don’t know much of my son, my dear; but you know enough of +him, I dare say, to recollect him?” + +“Yes, ma’am. I recollect him.” + +“Yes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character, +and I should like to have your opinion of him.” + +“Oh, Mrs. Woodcourt,” said I, “that is so difficult!” + +“Why is it so difficult, my dear?” she returned. “I don’t see it +myself.” + +“To give an opinion—” + +“On so slight an acquaintance, my dear. THAT’S true.” + +I didn’t mean that, because Mr. Woodcourt had been at our house a +good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my guardian. +I said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in his +profession—we thought—and that his kindness and gentleness to Miss +Flite were above all praise. + +“You do him justice!” said Mrs. Woodcourt, pressing my hand. “You +define him exactly. Allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession +faultless. I say it, though I am his mother. Still, I must confess he +is not without faults, love.” + +“None of us are,” said I. + +“Ah! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to +correct,” returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head. “I +am so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear, as a +third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness itself.” + +I said I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have +been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the +pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned. + +“You are right again, my dear,” the old lady retorted, “but I don’t +refer to his profession, look you.” + +“Oh!” said I. + +“No,” said she. “I refer, my dear, to his social conduct. He is +always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has +been, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he has never really +cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to do any +harm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. Still, +it’s not right, you know; is it?” + +“No,” said I, as she seemed to wait for me. + +“And it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear.” + +I supposed it might. + +“Therefore, I have told him many times that he really should be more +careful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others. And he +has always said, ‘Mother, I will be; but you know me better than +anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm—in short, mean +nothing.’ All of which is very true, my dear, but is no +justification. However, as he is now gone so far away and for an +indefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and +introductions, we may consider this past and gone. And you, my dear,” +said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles, “regarding your +dear self, my love?” + +“Me, Mrs. Woodcourt?” + +“Not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek +his fortune and to find a wife—when do you mean to seek YOUR fortune +and to find a husband, Miss Summerson? Hey, look you! Now you blush!” + +I don’t think I did blush—at all events, it was not important if I +did—and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had +no wish to change it. + +“Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to +come for you, my love?” said Mrs. Woodcourt. + +“If you believe you are a good prophet,” said I. + +“Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very +worthy, much older—five and twenty years, perhaps—than yourself. +And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy.” + +“That is a good fortune,” said I. “But why is it to be mine?” + +“My dear,” she returned, “there’s suitability in it—you are so busy, +and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there’s +suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody, my love, +will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than I +shall.” + +It was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it +did. I know it did. It made me for some part of that night +uncomfortable. I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like to +confess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still. I +would have given anything not to have been so much in the bright old +lady’s confidence if I could have possibly declined it. It gave me +the most inconsistent opinions of her. At one time I thought she was +a story-teller, and at another time that she was the pink of truth. +Now I suspected that she was very cunning, next moment I believed her +honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple. And after +all, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? Why could +not I, going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by +her fire and accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least +as well as to anybody else, and not trouble myself about the harmless +things she said to me? Impelled towards her, as I certainly was, for +I was very anxious that she should like me and was very glad indeed +that she did, why should I harp afterwards, with actual distress and +pain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over again in +twenty scales? Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house, +and confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was +better and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else? +These were perplexities and contradictions that I could not account +for. At least, if I could—but I shall come to all that by and by, +and it is mere idleness to go on about it now. + +So when Mrs. Woodcourt went away, I was sorry to lose her but was +relieved too. And then Caddy Jellyby came down, and Caddy brought +such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation. + +First Caddy declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that I +was the best adviser that ever was known. This, my pet said, was no +news at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense. Then Caddy +told us that she was going to be married in a month and that if Ada +and I would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in the +world. To be sure, this was news indeed; and I thought we never +should have done talking about it, we had so much to say to Caddy, +and Caddy had so much to say to us. + +It seemed that Caddy’s unfortunate papa had got over his +bankruptcy—“gone through the Gazette,” was the expression Caddy +used, as if it were a tunnel—with the general clemency and +commiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in +some blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and had +given up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, I should +think, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had satisfied +every one concerned that he could do no more, poor man. So, he had +been honourably dismissed to “the office” to begin the world again. +What he did at the office, I never knew; Caddy said he was a +“custom-house and general agent,” and the only thing I ever +understood about that business was that when he wanted money more +than usual he went to the docks to look for it, and hardly ever found +it. + +As soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this shorn +lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden +(where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting +the horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking themselves +with it), Caddy had brought about a meeting between him and old Mr. +Turveydrop; and poor Mr. Jellyby, being very humble and meek, had +deferred to Mr. Turveydrop’s deportment so submissively that they had +become excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr. Turveydrop, thus +familiarized with the idea of his son’s marriage, had worked up his +parental feelings to the height of contemplating that event as being +near at hand and had given his gracious consent to the young couple +commencing housekeeping at the academy in Newman Street when they +would. + +“And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?” + +“Oh! Poor Pa,” said Caddy, “only cried and said he hoped we might get +on better than he and Ma had got on. He didn’t say so before Prince, +he only said so to me. And he said, ‘My poor girl, you have not been +very well taught how to make a home for your husband, but unless you +mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder +him than marry him—if you really love him.’” + +“And how did you reassure him, Caddy?” + +“Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and +hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn’t help crying myself. +But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that I hoped +our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in +of an evening and that I hoped and thought I could be a better +daughter to him there than at home. Then I mentioned Peepy’s coming +to stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and said the children +were Indians.” + +“Indians, Caddy?” + +“Yes,” said Caddy, “wild Indians. And Pa said”—here she began to +sob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world—“that +he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was their +being all tomahawked together.” + +Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr. Jellyby did +not mean these destructive sentiments. + +“No, of course I know Pa wouldn’t like his family to be weltering in +their blood,” said Caddy, “but he means that they are very +unfortunate in being Ma’s children and that he is very unfortunate in +being Ma’s husband; and I am sure that’s true, though it seems +unnatural to say so.” + +I asked Caddy if Mrs. Jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed. + +“Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther,” she returned. “It’s impossible to +say whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough; +and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was +I don’t know what—a steeple in the distance,” said Caddy with a +sudden idea; “and then she shakes her head and says ‘Oh, Caddy, +Caddy, what a tease you are!’ and goes on with the Borrioboola +letters.” + +“And about your wardrobe, Caddy?” said I. For she was under no +restraint with us. + +“Well, my dear Esther,” she returned, drying her eyes, “I must do the +best I can and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind +remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the question +concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and +would be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor +cares.” + +Caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother, +but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which I am +afraid it was. We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so much +to admire in the good disposition which had survived under such +discouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I) proposed a +little scheme that made her perfectly joyful. This was her staying +with us for three weeks, my staying with her for one, and our all +three contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and sewing, and +saving, and doing the very best we could think of to make the most of +her stock. My guardian being as pleased with the idea as Caddy was, +we took her home next day to arrange the matter and brought her out +again in triumph with her boxes and all the purchases that could be +squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr. Jellyby had found in the +docks I suppose, but which he at all events gave her. What my +guardian would not have given her if we had encouraged him, it would +be difficult to say, but we thought it right to compound for no more +than her wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this compromise, and +if Caddy had ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat +down to work. + +She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her +fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not help +reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and partly +with vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon got over +that and began to improve rapidly. So day after day she, and my +darling, and my little maid Charley, and a milliner out of the town, +and I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible. + +Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious “to learn housekeeping,” +as she said. Now, mercy upon us! The idea of her learning +housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke that I +laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she +proposed it. However, I said, “Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome +to learn anything that you can learn of ME, my dear,” and I showed +her all my books and methods and all my fidgety ways. You would have +supposed that I was showing her some wonderful inventions, by her +study of them; and if you had seen her, whenever I jingled my +housekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might have +thought that there never was a greater imposter than I with a blinder +follower than Caddy Jellyby. + +So what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and +backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the +three weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Caddy to see +what could be done there, and Ada and Charley remained behind to take +care of my guardian. + +When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging in +Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times, where +preparations were in progress too—a good many, I observed, for +enhancing the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop, and a few for putting +the newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the house—but +our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent for the +wedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs. Jellyby beforehand with some +faint sense of the occasion. + +The latter was the more difficult thing of the two because Mrs. +Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the +back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with +waste-paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be +littered with straw. Mrs. Jellyby sat there all day drinking strong +coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by +appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going into a +decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr. Jellyby came home, +he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There he got +something to eat if the servant would give him anything, and then, +feeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton +Garden in the wet. The poor children scrambled up and tumbled down +the house as they had always been accustomed to do. + +The production of these devoted little sacrifices in any presentable +condition being quite out of the question at a week’s notice, I +proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we could on +her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept, and should +confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama’s room, and a +clean breakfast. In truth Mrs. Jellyby required a good deal of +attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened considerably +since I first knew her and her hair looking like the mane of a +dustman’s horse. + +Thinking that the display of Caddy’s wardrobe would be the best means +of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs. Jellyby to come and look +at it spread out on Caddy’s bed in the evening after the unwholesome +boy was gone. + +“My dear Miss Summerson,” said she, rising from her desk with her +usual sweetness of temper, “these are really ridiculous preparations, +though your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is +something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of Caddy being +married! Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss!” + +She came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes +in her customary far-off manner. They suggested one distinct idea to +her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head, “My +good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might have +been equipped for Africa!” + +On our going downstairs again, Mrs. Jellyby asked me whether this +troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday. And on +my replying yes, she said, “Will my room be required, my dear Miss +Summerson? For it’s quite impossible that I can put my papers away.” + +I took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be wanted +and that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere. “Well, my +dear Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Jellyby, “you know best, I dare say. +But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has embarrassed me to that +extent, overwhelmed as I am with public business, that I don’t know +which way to turn. We have a Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday +afternoon, and the inconvenience is very serious.” + +“It is not likely to occur again,” said I, smiling. “Caddy will be +married but once, probably.” + +“That’s true,” Mrs. Jellyby replied; “that’s true, my dear. I suppose +we must make the best of it!” + +The next question was how Mrs. Jellyby should be dressed on the +occasion. I thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely +from her writing-table while Caddy and I discussed it, occasionally +shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a superior +spirit who could just bear with our trifling. + +The state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary confusion +in which she kept them, added not a little to our difficulty; but at +length we devised something not very unlike what a common-place +mother might wear on such an occasion. The abstracted manner in which +Mrs. Jellyby would deliver herself up to having this attire tried on +by the dressmaker, and the sweetness with which she would then +observe to me how sorry she was that I had not turned my thoughts to +Africa, were consistent with the rest of her behaviour. + +The lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if +Mrs. Jellyby’s household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul’s or +Saint Peter’s, the sole advantage they would have found in the size +of the building would have been its affording a great deal of room to +be dirty in. I believe that nothing belonging to the family which it +had been possible to break was unbroken at the time of those +preparations for Caddy’s marriage, that nothing which it had been +possible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, and that no domestic +object which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear child’s knee +to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could well accumulate +upon it. + +Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he +was at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he +saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some order among +all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such +wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were +opened—bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Jellyby’s caps, +letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood, +wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags, +footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Jellyby’s bonnets, books +with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out +by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells, +heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds, +umbrellas—that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came +regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head +against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known +how. + +“Poor Pa!” said Caddy to me on the night before the great day, when +we really had got things a little to rights. “It seems unkind to +leave him, Esther. But what could I do if I stayed! Since I first +knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it’s +useless. Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We +never have a servant who don’t drink. Ma’s ruinous to everything.” + +Mr. Jellyby could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low +indeed and shed tears, I thought. + +“My heart aches for him; that it does!” sobbed Caddy. “I can’t help +thinking to-night, Esther, how dearly I hope to be happy with Prince, +and how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma. What a +disappointed life!” + +“My dear Caddy!” said Mr. Jellyby, looking slowly round from the +wail. It was the first time, I think, I ever heard him say three +words together. + +“Yes, Pa!” cried Caddy, going to him and embracing him +affectionately. + +“My dear Caddy,” said Mr. Jellyby. “Never have—” + +“Not Prince, Pa?” faltered Caddy. “Not have Prince?” + +“Yes, my dear,” said Mr. Jellyby. “Have him, certainly. But, never +have—” + +I mentioned in my account of our first visit in Thavies Inn that +Richard described Mr. Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after +dinner without saying anything. It was a habit of his. He opened his +mouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy +manner. + +“What do you wish me not to have? Don’t have what, dear Pa?” asked +Caddy, coaxing him, with her arms round his neck. + +“Never have a mission, my dear child.” + +Mr. Jellyby groaned and laid his head against the wall again, and +this was the only time I ever heard him make any approach to +expressing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. I suppose he +had been more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have been +completely exhausted long before I knew him. + +I thought Mrs. Jellyby never would have left off serenely looking +over her papers and drinking coffee that night. It was twelve o’clock +before we could obtain possession of the room, and the clearance it +required then was so discouraging that Caddy, who was almost tired +out, sat down in the middle of the dust and cried. But she soon +cheered up, and we did wonders with it before we went to bed. + +In the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a quantity +of soap and water and a little arrangement, quite gay. The plain +breakfast made a cheerful show, and Caddy was perfectly charming. But +when my darling came, I thought—and I think now—that I never had +seen such a dear face as my beautiful pet’s. + +We made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put Peepy at +the head of the table, and we showed them Caddy in her bridal dress, +and they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Caddy cried to think +that she was going away from them and hugged them over and over again +until we brought Prince up to fetch her away—when, I am sorry to +say, Peepy bit him. Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop downstairs, in +a state of deportment not to be expressed, benignly blessing Caddy +and giving my guardian to understand that his son’s happiness was his +own parental work and that he sacrificed personal considerations to +ensure it. “My dear sir,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “these young people +will live with me; my house is large enough for their accommodation, +and they shall not want the shelter of my roof. I could have +wished—you will understand the allusion, Mr. Jarndyce, for you +remember my illustrious patron the Prince Regent—I could have +wished that my son had married into a family where there was more +deportment, but the will of heaven be done!” + +Mr. and Mrs. Pardiggle were of the party—Mr. Pardiggle, an +obstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who +was always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs. +Pardiggle’s mite, or their five boys’ mites. Mr. Quale, with his hair +brushed back as usual and his knobs of temples shining very much, was +also there, not in the character of a disappointed lover, but as the +accepted of a young—at least, an unmarried—lady, a Miss Wisk, who +was also there. Miss Wisk’s mission, my guardian said, was to show +the world that woman’s mission was man’s mission and that the only +genuine mission of both man and woman was to be always moving +declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings. +The guests were few, but were, as one might expect at Mrs. Jellyby’s, +all devoted to public objects only. Besides those I have mentioned, +there was an extremely dirty lady with her bonnet all awry and the +ticketed price of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected +home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but whose church +was like a fancy fair. A very contentious gentleman, who said it was +his mission to be everybody’s brother but who appeared to be on terms +of coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party. + +A party, having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly +have been got together by any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the +domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among them; +indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat +down to breakfast, that the idea of woman’s mission lying chiefly in +the narrow sphere of home was an outrageous slander on the part of +her tyrant, man. One other singularity was that nobody with a +mission—except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I think I have formerly +said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody’s mission—cared at all +for anybody’s mission. Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear that the only +one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor and +applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss Wisk +was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation +of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man. Mrs. Jellyby, all the +while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but +Borrioboola-Gha. + +But I am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride +home instead of first marrying Caddy. We all went to church, and Mr. +Jellyby gave her away. Of the air with which old Mr. Turveydrop, with +his hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman +like a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig, +stood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the +ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I could never say enough to do +it justice. Miss Wisk, whom I cannot report as prepossessing in +appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to the proceedings, +as part of woman’s wrongs, with a disdainful face. Mrs. Jellyby, with +her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least concerned of all +the company. + +We duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs. Jellyby sat at the head of +the table and Mr. Jellyby at the foot. Caddy had previously stolen +upstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was +Turveydrop. But this piece of information, instead of being an +agreeable surprise to Peepy, threw him on his back in such transports +of kicking grief that I could do nothing on being sent for but accede +to the proposal that he should be admitted to the breakfast table. So +he came down and sat in my lap; and Mrs. Jellyby, after saying, in +reference to the state of his pinafore, “Oh, you naughty Peepy, what +a shocking little pig you are!” was not at all discomposed. He was +very good except that he brought down Noah with him (out of an ark I +had given him before we went to church) and WOULD dip him head first +into the wine-glasses and then put him in his mouth. + +My guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his +amiable face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial +company. None of them seemed able to talk about anything but his, or +her, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about even +that as part of a world in which there was anything else; but my +guardian turned it all to the merry encouragement of Caddy and the +honour of the occasion, and brought us through the breakfast nobly. +What we should have done without him, I am afraid to think, for all +the company despising the bride and bridegroom and old Mr. +Turveydrop—and old Mr. Thurveydrop, in virtue of his deportment, +considering himself vastly superior to all the company—it was a very +unpromising case. + +At last the time came when poor Caddy was to go and when all her +property was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take her +and her husband to Gravesend. It affected us to see Caddy clinging, +then, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother’s neck with +the greatest tenderness. + +“I am very sorry I couldn’t go on writing from dictation, Ma,” sobbed +Caddy. “I hope you forgive me now.” + +“Oh, Caddy, Caddy!” said Mrs. Jellyby. “I have told you over and over +again that I have engaged a boy, and there’s an end of it.” + +“You are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma? Say you are +sure before I go away, Ma?” + +“You foolish Caddy,” returned Mrs. Jellyby, “do I look angry, or have +I inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? How CAN you?” + +“Take a little care of Pa while I am gone, Mama!” + +Mrs. Jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. “You romantic child,” +said she, lightly patting Caddy’s back. “Go along. I am excellent +friends with you. Now, good-bye, Caddy, and be very happy!” + +Then Caddy hung upon her father and nursed his cheek against hers as +if he were some poor dull child in pain. All this took place in the +hall. Her father released her, took out his pocket handkerchief, and +sat down on the stairs with his head against the wall. I hope he +found some consolation in walls. I almost think he did. + +And then Prince took her arm in his and turned with great emotion and +respect to his father, whose deportment at that moment was +overwhelming. + +“Thank you over and over again, father!” said Prince, kissing his +hand. “I am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration +regarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Caddy.” + +“Very,” sobbed Caddy. “Ve-ry!” + +“My dear son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “and dear daughter, I have done +my duty. If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and looks +down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my +recompense. You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter, I +believe?” + +“Dear father, never!” cried Prince. + +“Never, never, dear Mr. Turveydrop!” said Caddy. + +“This,” returned Mr. Turveydrop, “is as it should be. My children, my +home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. I will never leave +you; nothing but death shall part us. My dear son, you contemplate an +absence of a week, I think?” + +“A week, dear father. We shall return home this day week.” + +“My dear child,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “let me, even under the present +exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. It is highly +important to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all +neglected, are apt to take offence.” + +“This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner.” + +“Good!” said Mr. Turveydrop. “You will find fires, my dear Caroline, +in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. Yes, yes, +Prince!” anticipating some self-denying objection on his son’s part +with a great air. “You and our Caroline will be strange in the upper +part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my +apartment. Now, bless ye!” + +They drove away, and whether I wondered most at Mrs. Jellyby or at +Mr. Turveydrop, I did not know. Ada and my guardian were in the same +condition when we came to talk it over. But before we drove away too, +I received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr. +Jellyby. He came up to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed +them earnestly, and opened his mouth twice. I was so sure of his +meaning that I said, quite flurried, “You are very welcome, sir. Pray +don’t mention it!” + +“I hope this marriage is for the best, guardian,” said I when we +three were on our road home. + +“I hope it is, little woman. Patience. We shall see.” + +“Is the wind in the east to-day?” I ventured to ask him. + +He laughed heartily and answered, “No.” + +“But it must have been this morning, I think,” said I. + +He answered “No” again, and this time my dear girl confidently +answered “No” too and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming +flowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring. “Much YOU +know of east winds, my ugly darling,” said I, kissing her in my +admiration—I couldn’t help it. + +Well! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a +long time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it +gives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind +where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there +was sunshine and summer air. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +Nurse and Patient + + +I had not been at home again many days when one evening I went +upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley’s shoulder and +see how she was getting on with her copy-book. Writing was a trying +business to Charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen, +but in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated, +and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into +corners like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters +Charley’s young hand had made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and +tottering, it so plump and round. Yet Charley was uncommonly expert +at other things and had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched. + +“Well, Charley,” said I, looking over a copy of the letter O in which +it was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed +in all kinds of ways, “we are improving. If we only get to make it +round, we shall be perfect, Charley.” + +Then I made one, and Charley made one, and the pen wouldn’t join +Charley’s neatly, but twisted it up into a knot. + +“Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in time.” + +Charley laid down her pen, the copy being finished, opened and shut +her cramped little hand, looked gravely at the page, half in pride +and half in doubt, and got up, and dropped me a curtsy. + +“Thank you, miss. If you please, miss, did you know a poor person of +the name of Jenny?” + +“A brickmaker’s wife, Charley? Yes.” + +“She came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago, and said +you knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn’t the young lady’s little +maid—meaning you for the young lady, miss—and I said yes, miss.” + +“I thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, Charley.” + +“So she had, miss, but she’s come back again to where she used to +live—she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of the name of +Liz, miss?” + +“I think I do, Charley, though not by name.” + +“That’s what she said!” returned Charley. “They have both come back, +miss, and have been tramping high and low.” + +“Tramping high and low, have they, Charley?” + +“Yes, miss.” If Charley could only have made the letters in her copy +as round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they would +have been excellent. “And this poor person came about the house three +or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss—all she wanted, +she said—but you were away. That was when she saw me. She saw me +a-going about, miss,” said Charley with a short laugh of the greatest +delight and pride, “and she thought I looked like your maid!” + +“Did she though, really, Charley?” + +“Yes, miss!” said Charley. “Really and truly.” And Charley, with +another short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round +again and looked as serious as became my maid. I was never tired of +seeing Charley in the full enjoyment of that great dignity, standing +before me with her youthful face and figure, and her steady manner, +and her childish exultation breaking through it now and then in the +pleasantest way. + +“And where did you see her, Charley?” said I. + +My little maid’s countenance fell as she replied, “By the doctor’s +shop, miss.” For Charley wore her black frock yet. + +I asked if the brickmaker’s wife were ill, but Charley said no. It +was some one else. Some one in her cottage who had tramped down to +Saint Albans and was tramping he didn’t know where. A poor boy, +Charley said. No father, no mother, no any one. “Like as Tom might +have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father,” said Charley, +her round eyes filling with tears. + +“And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?” + +“She said, miss,” returned Charley, “how that he had once done as +much for her.” + +My little maid’s face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so +closely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no great +difficulty in reading her thoughts. “Well, Charley,” said I, “it +appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to +Jenny’s and see what’s the matter.” + +The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and +having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and +made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her +readiness. So Charley and I, without saying anything to any one, went +out. + +It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind. The +rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission +for many days. None was falling just then, however. The sky had +partly cleared, but was very gloomy—even above us, where a few stars +were shining. In the north and north-west, where the sun had set +three hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and +awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea +stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards London a lurid glare +overhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between these two +lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an +unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and +on all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was +as solemn as might be. + +I had no thought that night—none, I am quite sure—of what was soon +to happen to me. But I have always remembered since that when we had +stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we went +upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself +as being something different from what I then was. I know it was then +and there that I had it. I have ever since connected the feeling with +that spot and time and with everything associated with that spot and +time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and +the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill. + +It was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place +where we were going were drinking elsewhere. We found it quieter than +I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable. The kilns were +burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare. + +We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the +patched window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother of the +little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the +poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported +by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He held under his +arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried +to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook. The +place was closer than before and had an unhealthy and a very peculiar +smell. + +I had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to the woman, which was +at the moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instantly and +stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror. + +His action was so quick and my being the cause of it was so evident +that I stood still instead of advancing nearer. + +“I won’t go no more to the berryin ground,” muttered the boy; “I +ain’t a-going there, so I tell you!” + +I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She said to me in a low +voice, “Don’t mind him, ma’am. He’ll soon come back to his head,” and +said to him, “Jo, Jo, what’s the matter?” + +“I know wot she’s come for!” cried the boy. + +“Who?” + +“The lady there. She’s come to get me to go along with her to the +berryin ground. I won’t go to the berryin ground. I don’t like the +name on it. She might go a-berryin ME.” His shivering came on again, +and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel. + +“He has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma’am,” said +Jenny softly. “Why, how you stare! This is MY lady, Jo.” + +“Is it?” returned the boy doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm +held out above his burning eyes. “She looks to me the t’other one. It +ain’t the bonnet, nor yet it ain’t the gownd, but she looks to me the +t’other one.” + +My little Charley, with her premature experience of illness and +trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went quietly up +to him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick nurse. +Except that no such attendant could have shown him Charley’s youthful +face, which seemed to engage his confidence. + +“I say!” said the boy. “YOU tell me. Ain’t the lady the t’other +lady?” + +Charley shook her head as she methodically drew his rags about him +and made him as warm as she could. + +“Oh!” the boy muttered. “Then I s’pose she ain’t.” + +“I came to see if I could do you any good,” said I. “What is the +matter with you?” + +“I’m a-being froze,” returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze +wandering about me, “and then burnt up, and then froze, and then +burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my head’s all sleepy, and +all a-going mad-like—and I’m so dry—and my bones isn’t half so much +bones as pain.” + +“When did he come here?” I asked the woman. + +“This morning, ma’am, I found him at the corner of the town. I had +known him up in London yonder. Hadn’t I, Jo?” + +“Tom-all-Alone’s,” the boy replied. + +Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very +little while. He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it +heavily, and speak as if he were half awake. + +“When did he come from London?” I asked. + +“I come from London yes’day,” said the boy himself, now flushed and +hot. “I’m a-going somewheres.” + +“Where is he going?” I asked. + +“Somewheres,” repeated the boy in a louder tone. “I have been moved +on, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the t’other one +give me the sov’ring. Mrs. Snagsby, she’s always a-watching, and +a-driving of me—what have I done to her?—and they’re all a-watching +and a-driving of me. Every one of ’em’s doing of it, from the time +when I don’t get up, to the time when I don’t go to bed. And I’m +a-going somewheres. That’s where I’m a-going. She told me, down in +Tom-all-Alone’s, as she came from Stolbuns, and so I took the +Stolbuns Road. It’s as good as another.” + +He always concluded by addressing Charley. + +“What is to be done with him?” said I, taking the woman aside. “He +could not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew +where he was going!” + +“I know no more, ma’am, than the dead,” she replied, glancing +compassionately at him. “Perhaps the dead know better, if they could +only tell us. I’ve kept him here all day for pity’s sake, and I’ve +given him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any one will +take him in (here’s my pretty in the bed—her child, but I call it +mine); but I can’t keep him long, for if my husband was to come home +and find him here, he’d be rough in putting him out and might do him +a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz back!” + +The other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up +with a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be going. When the +little child awoke, and when and how Charley got at it, took it out +of bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don’t know. There she +was, doing all this in a quiet motherly manner as if she were living +in Mrs. Blinder’s attic with Tom and Emma again. + +The friend had been here and there, and had been played about from +hand to hand, and had come back as she went. At first it was too +early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at last +it was too late. One official sent her to another, and the other sent +her back again to the first, and so backward and forward, until it +appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in +evading their duties instead of performing them. And now, after all, +she said, breathing quickly, for she had been running and was +frightened too, “Jenny, your master’s on the road home, and mine’s +not far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do no more for +him!” They put a few halfpence together and hurried them into his +hand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he +shuffled out of the house. + +“Give me the child, my dear,” said its mother to Charley, “and thank +you kindly too! Jenny, woman dear, good night! Young lady, if my +master don’t fall out with me, I’ll look down by the kiln by and by, +where the boy will be most like, and again in the morning!” She +hurried off, and presently we passed her hushing and singing to her +child at her own door and looking anxiously along the road for her +drunken husband. + +I was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I should +bring her into trouble. But I said to Charley that we must not leave +the boy to die. Charley, who knew what to do much better than I did, +and whose quickness equalled her presence of mind, glided on before +me, and presently we came up with Jo, just short of the brick-kiln. + +I think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle under +his arm and must have had it stolen or lost it. For he still carried +his wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he went +bare-headed through the rain, which now fell fast. He stopped when we +called to him and again showed a dread of me when I came up, standing +with his lustrous eyes fixed upon me, and even arrested in his +shivering fit. + +I asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had some +shelter for the night. + +“I don’t want no shelter,” he said; “I can lay amongst the warm +bricks.” + +“But don’t you know that people die there?” replied Charley. + +“They dies everywheres,” said the boy. “They dies in their +lodgings—she knows where; I showed her—and they dies down in +Tom-all-Alone’s in heaps. They dies more than they lives, according +to what I see.” Then he hoarsely whispered Charley, “If she ain’t the +t’other one, she ain’t the forrenner. Is there THREE of ’em then?” + +Charley looked at me a little frightened. I felt half frightened at +myself when the boy glared on me so. + +But he turned and followed when I beckoned to him, and finding that +he acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straight home. It +was not far, only at the summit of the hill. We passed but one man. I +doubted if we should have got home without assistance, the boy’s +steps were so uncertain and tremulous. He made no complaint, however, +and was strangely unconcerned about himself, if I may say so strange +a thing. + +Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into the corner of the +window-seat and staring with an indifference that scarcely could be +called wonder at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into +the drawing-room to speak to my guardian. There I found Mr. Skimpole, +who had come down by the coach, as he frequently did without notice, +and never bringing any clothes with him, but always borrowing +everything he wanted. + +They came out with me directly to look at the boy. The servants had +gathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-seat with +Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found +in a ditch. + +“This is a sorrowful case,” said my guardian after asking him a +question or two and touching him and examining his eyes. “What do you +say, Harold?” + +“You had better turn him out,” said Mr. Skimpole. + +“What do you mean?” inquired my guardian, almost sternly. + +“My dear Jarndyce,” said Mr. Skimpole, “you know what I am: I am a +child. Be cross to me if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional +objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical +man. He’s not safe, you know. There’s a very bad sort of fever about +him.” + +Mr. Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again +and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood +by. + +“You’ll say it’s childish,” observed Mr. Skimpole, looking gaily at +us. “Well, I dare say it may be; but I AM a child, and I never +pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only +put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you +know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or +five shillings, or five pound ten—you are arithmeticians, and I am +not—and get rid of him!” + +“And what is he to do then?” asked my guardian. + +“Upon my life,” said Mr. Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his +engaging smile, “I have not the least idea what he is to do then. But +I have no doubt he’ll do it.” + +“Now, is it not a horrible reflection,” said my guardian, to whom I +had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, “is it +not a horrible reflection,” walking up and down and rumpling his +hair, “that if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his +hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well taken +care of as any sick boy in the kingdom?” + +“My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “you’ll pardon the +simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is +perfectly simple in worldly matters, but why ISN’T he a prisoner +then?” + +My guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of +amusement and indignation in his face. + +“Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should +imagine,” said Mr. Skimpole, unabashed and candid. “It seems to me +that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more +respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into +prison. There would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and +consequently more of a certain sort of poetry.” + +“I believe,” returned my guardian, resuming his uneasy walk, “that +there is not such another child on earth as yourself.” + +“Do you really?” said Mr. Skimpole. “I dare say! But I confess I +don’t see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to +invest himself with such poetry as is open to him. He is no doubt +born with an appetite—probably, when he is in a safer state of +health, he has an excellent appetite. Very well. At our young +friend’s natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young +friend says in effect to society, ‘I am hungry; will you have the +goodness to produce your spoon and feed me?’ Society, which has taken +upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of spoons and +professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT produce that +spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says ‘You really must excuse +me if I seize it.’ Now, this appears to me a case of misdirected +energy, which has a certain amount of reason in it and a certain +amount of romance; and I don’t know but what I should be more +interested in our young friend, as an illustration of such a case, +than merely as a poor vagabond—which any one can be.” + +“In the meantime,” I ventured to observe, “he is getting worse.” + +“In the meantime,” said Mr. Skimpole cheerfully, “as Miss Summerson, +with her practical good sense, observes, he is getting worse. +Therefore I recommend your turning him out before he gets still +worse.” + +The amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never forget. + +“Of course, little woman,” observed my guardian, turning to me, “I +can ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going there +to enforce it, though it’s a bad state of things when, in his +condition, that is necessary. But it’s growing late, and is a very +bad night, and the boy is worn out already. There is a bed in the +wholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there till +morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed. We’ll do that.” + +“Oh!” said Mr. Skimpole, with his hands upon the keys of the piano as +we moved away. “Are you going back to our young friend?” + +“Yes,” said my guardian. + +“How I envy you your constitution, Jarndyce!” returned Mr. Skimpole +with playful admiration. “You don’t mind these things; neither does +Miss Summerson. You are ready at all times to go anywhere, and do +anything. Such is will! I have no will at all—and no won’t—simply +can’t.” + +“You can’t recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?” said my +guardian, looking back over his shoulder half angrily; only half +angrily, for he never seemed to consider Mr. Skimpole an accountable +being. + +“My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his +pocket, and it’s impossible for him to do better than take it. You +can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he +sleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. But it +is mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. Miss +Summerson has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for the +administration of detail that she knows all about it.” + +We went back into the hall and explained to Jo what we proposed to +do, which Charley explained to him again and which he received with +the languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking on at +what was done as if it were for somebody else. The servants +compassionating his miserable state and being very anxious to help, +we soon got the loft-room ready; and some of the men about the house +carried him across the wet yard, well wrapped up. It was pleasant to +observe how kind they were to him and how there appeared to be a +general impression among them that frequently calling him “Old Chap” +was likely to revive his spirits. Charley directed the operations and +went to and fro between the loft-room and the house with such little +stimulants and comforts as we thought it safe to give him. My +guardian himself saw him before he was left for the night and +reported to me when he returned to the growlery to write a letter on +the boy’s behalf, which a messenger was charged to deliver at +day-light in the morning, that he seemed easier and inclined to +sleep. They had fastened his door on the outside, he said, in case of +his being delirious, but had so arranged that he could not make any +noise without being heard. + +Ada being in our room with a cold, Mr. Skimpole was left alone all +this time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic +airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with +great expression and feeling. When we rejoined him in the +drawing-room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come +into his head “apropos of our young friend,” and he sang one about a +peasant boy, + + “Thrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam, + Bereft of his parents, bereft of a home.” + +quite exquisitely. It was a song that always made him cry, he told +us. + +He was extremely gay all the rest of the evening, for he absolutely +chirped—those were his delighted words—when he thought by what a +happy talent for business he was surrounded. He gave us, in his glass +of negus, “Better health to our young friend!” and supposed and gaily +pursued the case of his being reserved like Whittington to become +Lord Mayor of London. In that event, no doubt, he would establish the +Jarndyce Institution and the Summerson Almshouses, and a little +annual Corporation Pilgrimage to St. Albans. He had no doubt, he +said, that our young friend was an excellent boy in his way, but his +way was not the Harold Skimpole way; what Harold Skimpole was, Harold +Skimpole had found himself, to his considerable surprise, when he +first made his own acquaintance; he had accepted himself with all his +failings and had thought it sound philosophy to make the best of the +bargain; and he hoped we would do the same. + +Charley’s last report was that the boy was quiet. I could see, from +my window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and I went +to bed very happy to think that he was sheltered. + +There was more movement and more talking than usual a little before +daybreak, and it awoke me. As I was dressing, I looked out of my +window and asked one of our men who had been among the active +sympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the +house. The lantern was still burning in the loft-window. + +“It’s the boy, miss,” said he. + +“Is he worse?” I inquired. + +“Gone, miss.” + +“Dead!” + +“Dead, miss? No. Gone clean off.” + +At what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed +hopeless ever to divine. The door remaining as it had been left, and +the lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed that he +had got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with an empty +cart-house below. But he had shut it down again, if that were so; and +it looked as if it had not been raised. Nothing of any kind was +missing. On this fact being clearly ascertained, we all yielded to +the painful belief that delirium had come upon him in the night and +that, allured by some imaginary object or pursued by some imaginary +horror, he had strayed away in that worse than helpless state; all of +us, that is to say, but Mr. Skimpole, who repeatedly suggested, in +his usual easy light style, that it had occurred to our young friend +that he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him, +and that he had with great natural politeness taken himself off. + +Every possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched. The +brick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women +were particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and +nobody could doubt that their wonder was genuine. The weather had for +some time been too wet and the night itself had been too wet to admit +of any tracing by footsteps. Hedge and ditch, and wall, and rick and +stack, were examined by our men for a long distance round, lest the +boy should be lying in such a place insensible or dead; but nothing +was seen to indicate that he had ever been near. From the time when +he was left in the loft-room, he vanished. + +The search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased even +then, but that my attention was then diverted into a current very +memorable to me. + +As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and as +I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble. Looking up, +I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot. + +“Charley,” said I, “are you so cold?” + +“I think I am, miss,” she replied. “I don’t know what it is. I can’t +hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same time, miss. +Don’t be uneasy, I think I’m ill.” + +I heard Ada’s voice outside, and I hurried to the door of +communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked +it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the +key. + +Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, “Not now, my dearest. Go +away. There’s nothing the matter; I will come to you presently.” Ah! +It was a long, long time before my darling girl and I were companions +again. + +Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her to my +room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse her. I +told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was necessary that I +should seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above +all. At first she came very often to the door, and called to me, and +even reproached me with sobs and tears; but I wrote her a long letter +saying that she made me anxious and unhappy and imploring her, as she +loved me and wished my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than +the garden. After that she came beneath the window even oftener than +she had come to the door, and if I had learnt to love her dear sweet +voice before when we were hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love +it then, when I stood behind the window-curtain listening and +replying, but not so much as looking out! How did I learn to love it +afterwards, when the harder time came! + +They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door +wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had vacated +that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. There +was not a servant in or about the house but was so good that they +would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of the day or night +without the least fear or unwillingness, but I thought it best to +choose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada and whom I could +trust to come and go with all precaution. Through her means I got out +to take the air with my guardian when there was no fear of meeting +Ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of attendance, any more than +in any other respect. + +And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy +danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day +and night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such +a gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Charley holding her +head in my arms—repose would come to her, so, when it would come to +her in no other attitude—I silently prayed to our Father in heaven +that I might not forget the lesson which this little sister taught +me. + +I was very sorrowful to think that Charley’s pretty looks would +change and be disfigured, even if she recovered—she was such a child +with her dimpled face—but that thought was, for the greater part, +lost in her greater peril. When she was at the worst, and her mind +rambled again to the cares of her father’s sick bed and the little +children, she still knew me so far as that she would be quiet in my +arms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur out the +wanderings of her mind less restlessly. At those times I used to +think, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies that the baby +who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them in their +need was dead! + +There were other times when Charley knew me well and talked to me, +telling me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma and that she was +sure Tom would grow up to be a good man. At those times Charley would +speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she could +to comfort him, of that young man carried out to be buried who was +the only son of his mother and she was a widow, of the ruler’s +daughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of death. And +Charley told me that when her father died she had kneeled down and +prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be raised up and +given back to his poor children, and that if she should never get +better and should die too, she thought it likely that it might come +into Tom’s mind to offer the same prayer for her. Then would I show +Tom how these people of old days had been brought back to life on +earth, only that we might know our hope to be restored to heaven! + +But of all the various times there were in Charley’s illness, there +was not one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of. And +there were many, many when I thought in the night of the last high +belief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in God, on +the part of her poor despised father. + +And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the +dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend. +The hope that never had been given, from the first, of Charley being +in outward appearance Charley any more soon began to be encouraged; +and even that prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish +likeness again. + +It was a great morning when I could tell Ada all this as she stood +out in the garden; and it was a great evening when Charley and I at +last took tea together in the next room. But on that same evening, I +felt that I was stricken cold. + +Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed +again and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagion of her +illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at +tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was +rapidly following in Charley’s steps. + +I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to +return my darling’s cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk +with her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression that +I had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside +myself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at +times—with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too +large altogether. + +In the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare +Charley, with which view I said, “You’re getting quite strong, +Charley, are you not?” + +“Oh, quite!” said Charley. + +“Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?” + +“Quite strong enough for that, miss!” cried Charley. But Charley’s +face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in MY +face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom, +and said “Oh, miss, it’s my doing! It’s my doing!” and a great deal +more out of the fullness of her grateful heart. + +“Now, Charley,” said I after letting her go on for a little while, +“if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And +unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were for +yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley.” + +“If you’ll let me cry a little longer, miss,” said Charley. “Oh, my +dear, my dear! If you’ll only let me cry a little longer. Oh, my +dear!”—how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out as she +clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears—“I’ll be good.” + +So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good. + +“Trust in me now, if you please, miss,” said Charley quietly. “I am +listening to everything you say.” + +“It’s very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor +to-night that I don’t think I am well and that you are going to nurse +me.” + +For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart. “And in the +morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not be +quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Charley, +and say I am asleep—that I have rather tired myself, and am asleep. +At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one +come.” + +Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the +doctor that night and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask +relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I +have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day, +and of day melting into night again; but I was just able on the first +morning to get to the window and speak to my darling. + +On the second morning I heard her dear voice—Oh, how dear +now!—outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech +being painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer +softly, “Don’t disturb her, Charley, for the world!” + +“How does my own Pride look, Charley?” I inquired. + +“Disappointed, miss,” said Charley, peeping through the curtain. + +“But I know she is very beautiful this morning.” + +“She is indeed, miss,” answered Charley, peeping. “Still looking up +at the window.” + +With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when +raised like that! + +I called Charley to me and gave her her last charge. + +“Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way +into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the +last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for +one moment as I lie here, I shall die.” + +“I never will! I never will!” she promised me. + +“I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for a +little while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you, +Charley; I am blind.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +The Appointed Time + + +It is night in Lincoln’s Inn—perplexed and troublous valley of the +shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day—and +fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down +the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine +o’clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are +shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of +sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows +clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a +fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at +the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little +patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and +conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes +of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an +acre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their +species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give, +for every day, some good account at last. + +In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and +bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and +supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged +with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been +lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and +scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of +passengers—Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged +congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on +a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and +the fact of Mr. Krook’s being “continually in liquor,” and the +testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of +their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the +Harmonic Meeting at the Sol’s Arms, where the sound of the piano +through the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and +where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar +like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a +concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to +“Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!” Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. +Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of +professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who +has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window, +Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year +and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren, +and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol’s Arms every +night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments. +“Sooner than which, myself,” says Mrs. Perkins, “I would get my +living by selling lucifers.” Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the +same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public +applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs. +Perkins’) respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol’s Arms +appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that +tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs. +Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was +fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to +bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court +and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen +in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too, +the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be +suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis +that every one is either robbing or being robbed. + +It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there +is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming +night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the +sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the +registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the +air—there is plenty in it—or it may be something in himself that is +in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He +comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty +times an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since +the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night, +Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight +velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all +proportion), oftener than before. + +It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for +he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the +secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a +partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what +seems to be its fountain-head—the rag and bottle shop in the court. +It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by +the Sol’s Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out +at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated +after-supper stroll of ten minutes’ long from his own door and back +again, Mr. Snagsby approaches. + +“What, Mr. Weevle?” says the stationer, stopping to speak. “Are YOU +there?” + +“Aye!” says Weevle, “Here I am, Mr. Snagsby.” + +“Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?” the stationer +inquires. + +“Why, there’s not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not +very freshening,” Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court. + +“Very true, sir. Don’t you observe,” says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to +sniff and taste the air a little, “don’t you observe, Mr. Weevle, +that you’re—not to put too fine a point upon it—that you’re rather +greasy here, sir?” + +“Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in +the place to-night,” Mr. Weevle rejoins. “I suppose it’s chops at the +Sol’s Arms.” + +“Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?” Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes +again. “Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at +the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning ’em, sir! +And I don’t think”—Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then +spits and wipes his mouth—“I don’t think—not to put too fine a +point upon it—that they were quite fresh when they were shown the +gridiron.” + +“That’s very likely. It’s a tainting sort of weather.” + +“It IS a tainting sort of weather,” says Mr. Snagsby, “and I find it +sinking to the spirits.” + +“By George! I find it gives me the horrors,” returns Mr. Weevle. + +“Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room, +with a black circumstance hanging over it,” says Mr. Snagsby, looking +in past the other’s shoulder along the dark passage and then falling +back a step to look up at the house. “I couldn’t live in that room +alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an +evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and +stand here sooner than sit there. But then it’s very true that you +didn’t see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference.” + +“I know quite enough about it,” returns Tony. + +“It’s not agreeable, is it?” pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough +of mild persuasion behind his hand. “Mr. Krook ought to consider it +in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure.” + +“I hope he does,” says Tony. “But I doubt it.” + +“You find the rent too high, do you, sir?” returns the stationer. +“Rents ARE high about here. I don’t know how it is exactly, but the +law seems to put things up in price. Not,” adds Mr. Snagsby with his +apologetic cough, “that I mean to say a word against the profession I +get my living by.” + +Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the +stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a +star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his +way out of this conversation. + +“It’s a curious fact, sir,” he observes, slowly rubbing his hands, +“that he should have been—” + +“Who’s he?” interrupts Mr. Weevle. + +“The deceased, you know,” says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and +right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on +the button. + +“Ah, to be sure!” returns the other as if he were not over-fond of +the subject. “I thought we had done with him.” + +“I was only going to say it’s a curious fact, sir, that he should +have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that +you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which +there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,” +says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have +unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, “because +I have known writers that have gone into brewers’ houses and done +really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir,” adds Mr. +Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter. + +“It’s a curious coincidence, as you say,” answers Weevle, once more +glancing up and down the court. + +“Seems a fate in it, don’t there?” suggests the stationer. + +“There does.” + +“Just so,” observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. “Quite +a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid +you good night”—Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go, +though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since +he stopped to speak—“my little woman will be looking for me else. +Good night, sir!” + +If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of +looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His +little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol’s Arms all this +time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over +her head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching +glance as she goes past. + +“You’ll know me again, ma’am, at all events,” says Mr. Weevle to +himself; “and I can’t compliment you on your appearance, whoever you +are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER +coming!” + +This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his +finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door. +Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is +he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they +speak low. + +“I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here,” +says Tony. + +“Why, I said about ten.” + +“You said about ten,” Tony repeats. “Yes, so you did say about ten. +But according to my count, it’s ten times ten—it’s a hundred +o’clock. I never had such a night in my life!” + +“What has been the matter?” + +“That’s it!” says Tony. “Nothing has been the matter. But here have I +been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the +horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE’S a blessed-looking +candle!” says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his +table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet. + +“That’s easily improved,” Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the snuffers +in hand. + +“IS it?” returns his friend. “Not so easily as you think. It has been +smouldering like that ever since it was lighted.” + +“Why, what’s the matter with you, Tony?” inquires Mr. Guppy, looking +at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the +table. + +“William Guppy,” replies the other, “I am in the downs. It’s this +unbearably dull, suicidal room—and old Boguey downstairs, I +suppose.” Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with +his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender, +and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his +head and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy +attitude. + +“Wasn’t that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?” + +“Yes, and he—yes, it was Snagsby,” said Mr. Weevle, altering the +construction of his sentence. + +“On business?” + +“No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose.” + +“I thought it was Snagsby,” says Mr. Guppy, “and thought it as well +that he shouldn’t see me, so I waited till he was gone.” + +“There we go again, William G.!” cried Tony, looking up for an +instant. “So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to +commit a murder, we couldn’t have more mystery about it!” + +Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the +conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the +room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey +with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she +is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a +vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious +piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of +fur, and a bracelet on her arm. + +“That’s very like Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Guppy. “It’s a speaking +likeness.” + +“I wish it was,” growls Tony, without changing his position. “I +should have some fashionable conversation, here, then.” + +Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a +more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and +remonstrates with him. + +“Tony,” says he, “I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for +no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I +do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who +has an unrequited image imprinted on his ’eart. But there are bounds +to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will +acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don’t think your manner on the +present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.” + +“This is strong language, William Guppy,” returns Mr. Weevle. + +“Sir, it may be,” retorts Mr. William Guppy, “but I feel strongly +when I use it.” + +Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy +to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the +advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured +remonstrance. + +“No! Dash it, Tony,” says that gentleman, “you really ought to be +careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited +image imprinted on his ’eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those +chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in +yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the +taste. It is not—happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I +could say the same—it is not your character to hover around one +flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry +you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound +even your feelings without a cause!” + +Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying +emphatically, “William Guppy, drop it!” Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with +the reply, “I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord.” + +“And now,” says Tony, stirring the fire, “touching this same bundle +of letters. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have +appointed twelve o’clock to-night to hand ’em over to me?” + +“Very. What did he do it for?” + +“What does he do anything for? HE don’t know. Said to-day was his +birthday and he’d hand ’em over to-night at twelve o’clock. He’ll +have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day.” + +“He hasn’t forgotten the appointment, I hope?” + +“Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him +to-night, about eight—helped him to shut up his shop—and he had got +the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed ’em +me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his +cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I +heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming +like the wind, the only song he knows—about Bibo, and old Charon, +and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been +as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole.” + +“And you are to go down at twelve?” + +“At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a +hundred.” + +“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs +crossed, “he can’t read yet, can he?” + +“Read! He’ll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and +he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on +that much, under me; but he can’t put them together. He’s too old to +acquire the knack of it now—and too drunk.” + +“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, “how do +you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?” + +“He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has +and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye +alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and +asked me what it meant.” + +“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again, +“should you say that the original was a man’s writing or a woman’s?” + +“A woman’s. Fifty to one a lady’s—slopes a good deal, and the end of +the letter ‘n,’ long and hasty.” + +Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue, +generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he +is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It +takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast. + +“Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is +there a chimney on fire?” + +“Chimney on fire!” + +“Ah!” returns Mr. Guppy. “See how the soot’s falling. See here, on my +arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won’t blow +off—smears like black fat!” + +They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a +little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says +it’s all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to +Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol’s Arms. + +“And it was then,” resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable +aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before +the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads +very near together, “that he told you of his having taken the bundle +of letters from his lodger’s portmanteau?” + +“That was the time, sir,” answers Tony, faintly adjusting his +whiskers. “Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable +William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and +advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots.” + +The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed +by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and +his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears +to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again. + +“You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and +to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That’s +the arrangement, isn’t it, Tony?” asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting +his thumb-nail. + +“You can’t speak too low. Yes. That’s what he and I agreed.” + +“I tell you what, Tony—” + +“You can’t speak too low,” says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his +sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper. + +“I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another +packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one +while it’s in my possession, you can show him the dummy.” + +“And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with +his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely +than not,” suggests Tony. + +“Then we’ll face it out. They don’t belong to him, and they never +did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands—a legal friend +of yours—for security. If he forces us to it, they’ll be producible, +won’t they?” + +“Ye-es,” is Mr. Weevle’s reluctant admission. + +“Why, Tony,” remonstrates his friend, “how you look! You don’t doubt +William Guppy? You don’t suspect any harm?” + +“I don’t suspect anything more than I know, William,” returns the +other gravely. + +“And what do you know?” urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little; +but on his friend’s once more warning him, “I tell you, you can’t +speak too low,” he repeats his question without any sound at all, +forming with his lips only the words, “What do you know?” + +“I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in +secrecy, a pair of conspirators.” + +“Well!” says Mr. Guppy. “And we had better be that than a pair of +noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it’s +the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?” + +“Secondly, it’s not made out to me how it’s likely to be profitable, +after all.” + +Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the +mantelshelf and replies, “Tony, you are asked to leave that to the +honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that +friend in those chords of the human mind which—which need not be +called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion—your friend +is no fool. What’s that?” + +“It’s eleven o’clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul’s. Listen and +you’ll hear all the bells in the city jangling.” + +Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant, +resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than +their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more +mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of +whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, +haunted by the ghosts of sound—strange cracks and tickings, the +rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of +dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter +snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the air is full +of these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by one +consent to see that the door is shut. + +“Yes, Tony?” says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting +his unsteady thumb-nail. “You were going to say, thirdly?” + +“It’s far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in +the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it.” + +“But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony.” + +“May be not, still I don’t like it. Live here by yourself and see how +YOU like it.” + +“As to dead men, Tony,” proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal, +“there have been dead men in most rooms.” + +“I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and—and +they let you alone,” Tony answers. + +The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark to +the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that he +hopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by stirring +the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart had been +stirred instead. + +“Fah! Here’s more of this hateful soot hanging about,” says he. “Let +us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It’s too close.” + +He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in +and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to +admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking +up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of +distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir +of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping +on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy +tone. + +“By the by, Tony, don’t forget old Smallweed,” meaning the younger of +that name. “I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather +of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family.” + +“I remember,” says Tony. “I am up to all that.” + +“And as to Krook,” resumes Mr. Guppy. “Now, do you suppose he really +has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to +you, since you have been such allies?” + +Tony shakes his head. “I don’t know. Can’t imagine. If we get through +this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better +informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don’t +know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking +them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and +what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be +the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It’s a +monomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. He has been +going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should +judge, from what he tells me.” + +“How did he first come by that idea, though? That’s the question,” +Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic +meditation. “He may have found papers in something he bought, where +papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd +head from the manner and place of their concealment that they are +worth something.” + +“Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may +have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS got, +and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor’s Court and +hearing of documents for ever,” returns Mr. Weevle. + +Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing +all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap +it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily +draws his hand away. + +“What, in the devil’s name,” he says, “is this! Look at my fingers!” + +A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch +and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil +with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder. + +“What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of +window?” + +“I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been +here!” cries the lodger. + +And yet look here—and look here! When he brings the candle here, +from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away +down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool. + +“This is a horrible house,” says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the window. +“Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off.” + +He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he +has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood +silently before the fire when Saint Paul’s bell strikes twelve and +all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various +heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet +again, the lodger says, “It’s the appointed time at last. Shall I +go?” + +Mr. Guppy nods and gives him a “lucky touch” on the back, but not +with the washed hand, though it is his right hand. + +He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before the +fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the +stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back. + +“Have you got them?” + +“Got them! No. The old man’s not there.” + +He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his +terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly, +“What’s the matter?” + +“I couldn’t make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked +in. And the burning smell is there—and the soot is there, and the +oil is there—and he is not there!” Tony ends this with a groan. + +Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and +holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has +retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something +on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in +the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room +and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and +table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as +usual. On one chair-back hang the old man’s hairy cap and coat. + +“Look!” whispers the lodger, pointing his friend’s attention to these +objects with a trembling finger. “I told you so. When I saw him last, +he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung +his cap on the back of the chair—his coat was there already, for he +had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up—and I left +him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that +crumbled black thing is upon the floor.” + +Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No. + +“See!” whispers Tony. “At the foot of the same chair there lies a +dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went +round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me, +before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it +fall.” + +“What’s the matter with the cat?” says Mr. Guppy. “Look at her!” + +“Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place.” + +They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains +where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground +before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the +light. + +Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a +little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to +be steeped in something; and here is—is it the cinder of a small +charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it +coal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away, +striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, +is all that represents him. + +Help, help, help! Come into this house for heaven’s sake! Plenty will +come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that court, true +to his title in his last act, has died the death of all lord +chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under +all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice +is done. Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute +it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you +will, it is the same death eternally—inborn, inbred, engendered +in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that +only—spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that +can be died. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +Interlopers + + +Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons +who attended the last coroner’s inquest at the Sol’s Arms reappear in +the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly +fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute +perquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol’s parlour, and +write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note +down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery +Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the +most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and +horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be +remembered that some time back a painful sensation was created in the +public mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the +first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general +marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits, +far advanced in life, named Krook; and how, by a remarkable +coincidence, Krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be +recollected was held on that occasion at the Sol’s Arms, a +well-conducted tavern immediately adjoining the premises in question +on the west side and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr. +James George Bogsby. Now do they show (in as many words as possible) +how during some hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was +observed by the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical +occurrence which forms the subject of that present account +transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful that Mr. +Swills, a comic vocalist professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby, +has himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M. +Melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise +engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called +Harmonic Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would appear are held at +the Sol’s Arms under Mr. Bogsby’s direction pursuant to the Act of +George the Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously +affected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression +at the time being that he was like an empty post-office, for he +hadn’t a single note in him. How this account of Mr. Swills is +entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females residing in +the same court and known respectively by the names of Mrs. Piper and +Mrs. Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded +them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Krook, +the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more the two +gentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy +catastrophe write down on the spot; and the boy population of the +court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol’s +Arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are about +it. + +The whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night, +and can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the +ill-fated house, and look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued +from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a +bed at the Sol’s Arms. The Sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts +its door all night, for any kind of public excitement makes good for +the Sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. The house +has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in +brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. The moment the pot-boy heard +what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to his +shoulders and said, “There’ll be a run upon us!” In the first outcry, +young Piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in triumph +at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the Phoenix and holding on to +that fabulous creature with all his might in the midst of helmets and +torches. One helmet remains behind after careful investigation of all +chinks and crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in +company with one of the two policemen who have likewise been left in +charge thereof. To this trio everybody in the court possessed of +sixpence has an insatiate desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid +form. + +Mr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Guppy are within the bar at the Sol and +are worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if they will only +stay there. “This is not a time,” says Mr. Bogsby, “to haggle about +money,” though he looks something sharply after it, over the counter; +“give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you’re welcome to whatever +you put a name to.” + +Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names +to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to +put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to +all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of +what they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile, +one or other of the policemen often flits about the door, and pushing +it open a little way at the full length of his arm, looks in from +outer gloom. Not that he has any suspicions, but that he may as well +know what they are up to in there. + +Thus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out of +bed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated, +still conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little +money left it unexpectedly. Thus night at length with slow-retreating +steps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an +executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire +that have aspired to lessen the darkness. Thus the day cometh, +whether or no. + +And the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court +has been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen +drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors +instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court +itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and +beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half +dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the helmet (who +are far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to do +to keep the door. + +“Good gracious, gentlemen!” says Mr. Snagsby, coming up. “What’s this +I hear!” + +“Why, it’s true,” returns one of the policemen. “That’s what it is. +Now move on here, come!” + +“Why, good gracious, gentlemen,” says Mr. Snagsby, somewhat promptly +backed away, “I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven +o’clock in conversation with the young man who lodges here.” + +“Indeed?” returns the policeman. “You will find the young man next +door then. Now move on here, some of you.” + +“Not hurt, I hope?” says Mr. Snagsby. + +“Hurt? No. What’s to hurt him!” + +Mr. Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his +troubled mind, repairs to the Sol’s Arms and finds Mr. Weevle +languishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on him +of exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke. + +“And Mr. Guppy likewise!” quoth Mr. Snagsby. “Dear, dear, dear! What +a fate there seems in all this! And my lit—” + +Mr. Snagsby’s power of speech deserts him in the formation of the +words “my little woman.” For to see that injured female walk into the +Sol’s Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the +beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit, +strikes him dumb. + +“My dear,” says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, “will you +take anything? A little—not to put too fine a point upon it—drop of +shrub?” + +“No,” says Mrs. Snagsby. + +“My love, you know these two gentlemen?” + +“Yes!” says Mrs. Snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their +presence, still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye. + +The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs. +Snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask. + +“My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don’t do +it.” + +“I can’t help my looks,” says Mrs. Snagsby, “and if I could I +wouldn’t.” + +Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, “Wouldn’t you +really, my dear?” and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble and +says, “This is a dreadful mystery, my love!” still fearfully +disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby’s eye. + +“It IS,” returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, “a dreadful +mystery.” + +“My little woman,” urges Mr. Snagsby in a piteous manner, “don’t for +goodness’ sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me +in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good +Lord, you don’t suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any +person, my dear?” + +“I can’t say,” returns Mrs. Snagsby. + +On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby “can’t +say” either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have +had something to do with it. He has had something—he don’t know +what—to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it +is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the +present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his +handkerchief and gasps. + +“My life,” says the unhappy stationer, “would you have any objections +to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your +conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?” + +“Why do YOU come here?” inquires Mrs. Snagsby. + +“My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has +happened to the venerable party who has been—combusted.” Mr. Snagsby +has made a pause to suppress a groan. “I should then have related +them to you, my love, over your French roll.” + +“I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby.” + +“Every—my lit—” + +“I should be glad,” says Mrs. Snagsby after contemplating his +increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, “if you would +come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby, than +anywhere else.” + +“My love, I don’t know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to +go.” + +Mr. Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs. +Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with +which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby from the +Sol’s Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible +for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of +the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs. +Snagsby’s pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are +so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up +to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with +the utmost rigour of the law if guilty. + +Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into +Lincoln’s Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as +many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may. + +“There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony,” says +Mr. Guppy after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the +square, “for a word or two between us upon a point on which we must, +with very little delay, come to an understanding.” + +“Now, I tell you what, William G.!” returns the other, eyeing his +companion with a bloodshot eye. “If it’s a point of conspiracy, you +needn’t take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that, +and I ain’t going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking fire +next or blowing up with a bang.” + +This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Guppy +that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, “Tony, I should have +thought that what we went through last night would have been a lesson +to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived.” To which +Mr. Weevle returns, “William, I should have thought it would have +been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long as you +lived.” To which Mr. Guppy says, “Who’s conspiring?” To which Mr. +Jobling replies, “Why, YOU are!” To which Mr. Guppy retorts, “No, I +am not.” To which Mr. Jobling retorts again, “Yes, you are!” To which +Mr. Guppy retorts, “Who says so?” To which Mr. Jobling retorts, “I +say so!” To which Mr. Guppy retorts, “Oh, indeed?” To which Mr. +Jobling retorts, “Yes, indeed!” And both being now in a heated state, +they walk on silently for a while to cool down again. + +“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy then, “if you heard your friend out instead of +flying at him, you wouldn’t fall into mistakes. But your temper is +hasty and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself, Tony, all +that is calculated to charm the eye—” + +“Oh! Blow the eye!” cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. “Say what +you have got to say!” + +Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy +only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of +injury in which he recommences, “Tony, when I say there is a point on +which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so quite +apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You know it is +professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what +facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not desirable that +we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the +death of this unfortunate old mo—gentleman?” (Mr. Guppy was going to +say “mogul,” but thinks “gentleman” better suited to the +circumstances.) + +“What facts? THE facts.” + +“The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are”—Mr. Guppy tells them +off on his fingers—“what we knew of his habits, when you saw him +last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and +how we made it.” + +“Yes,” says Mr. Weevle. “Those are about the facts.” + +“We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric +way, an appointment with you at twelve o’clock at night, when you +were to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on +account of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with +you, was called down—and so forth. The inquiry being only into the +circumstances touching the death of the deceased, it’s not necessary +to go beyond these facts, I suppose you’ll agree?” + +“No!” returns Mr. Weevle. “I suppose not.” + +“And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?” says the injured Guppy. + +“No,” returns his friend; “if it’s nothing worse than this, I +withdraw the observation.” + +“Now, Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm again and walking him +slowly on, “I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you +have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live +at that place?” + +“What do you mean?” says Tony, stopping. + +“Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your +continuing to live at that place?” repeats Mr. Guppy, walking him on +again. + +“At what place? THAT place?” pointing in the direction of the rag and +bottle shop. + +Mr. Guppy nods. + +“Why, I wouldn’t pass another night there for any consideration that +you could offer me,” says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring. + +“Do you mean it though, Tony?” + +“Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that,” +says Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder. + +“Then the possibility or probability—for such it must be +considered—of your never being disturbed in possession of those +effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no +relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find +out what he really had got stored up there, don’t weigh with you at +all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?” says Mr. Guppy, +biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation. + +“Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow’s living there?” +cries Mr. Weevle indignantly. “Go and live there yourself.” + +“Oh! I, Tony!” says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. “I have never lived +there and couldn’t get a lodging there now, whereas you have got +one.” + +“You are welcome to it,” rejoins his friend, “and—ugh!—you may make +yourself at home in it.” + +“Then you really and truly at this point,” says Mr. Guppy, “give up +the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?” + +“You never,” returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness, “said +a truer word in all your life. I do!” + +While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square, +on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to +the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the +multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach +stops almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs. +Smallweed, accompanied by their granddaughter Judy. + +An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall +hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed +the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, “How +de do, sir! How de do!” + +“What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning, +I wonder!” says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar. + +“My dear sir,” cries Grandfather Smallweed, “would you do me a +favour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me +into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring +their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn, +sir?” + +Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, “The +public-house in the court?” And they prepare to bear the venerable +burden to the Sol’s Arms. + +“There’s your fare!” says the patriarch to the coachman with a fierce +grin and shaking his incapable fist at him. “Ask me for a penny more, +and I’ll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy +with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won’t +squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my +bones!” + +It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an +apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With +no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of +divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed respiration, he +fulfils his share of the porterage and the benevolent old gentleman +is deposited by his own desire in the parlour of the Sol’s Arms. + +“Oh, Lord!” gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from +an arm-chair. “Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my aches and +pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling +poll-parrot! Sit down!” + +This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a +propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds +herself on her feet to amble about and “set” to inanimate objects, +accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A +nervous affection has probably as much to do with these +demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but +on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion +with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr. Smallweed is +seated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held +her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with +great volubility, the endearing epithet of “a pig-headed jackdaw,” +repeated a surprising number of times. + +“My dear sir,” Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr. +Guppy, “there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either +of you?” + +“Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it.” + +“You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered it!” + +The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the +compliment. + +“My dear friends,” whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both his +hands, “I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy +office of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed’s brother.” + +“Eh?” says Mr. Guppy. + +“Mrs. Smallweed’s brother, my dear friend—her only relation. We were +not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD be on +terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric—he was very +eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I +shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to look +after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. I +have come down,” repeats Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air +towards him with all his ten fingers at once, “to look after the +property.” + +“I think, Small,” says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, “you might have +mentioned that the old man was your uncle.” + +“You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to +be the same,” returns that old bird with a secretly glistening eye. +“Besides, I wasn’t proud of him.” + +“Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or +not,” says Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye. + +“He never saw me in his life to know me,” observed Small; “I don’t +know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!” + +“No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored,” the old +gentleman strikes in, “but I have come to look after the property—to +look over the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make +good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn, +of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as +my solicitor; and grass don’t grow under HIS feet, I can tell ye. +Krook was Mrs. Smallweed’s only brother; she had no relation but +Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs. Smallweed. I am speaking of +your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years +of age.” + +Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up, +“Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of +money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of +bank-notes!” + +“Will somebody give me a quart pot?” exclaims her exasperated +husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within +his reach. “Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody +hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat, +you dog, you brimstone barker!” Here Mr. Smallweed, wrought up to the +highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws Judy at her +grandmother in default of anything else, by butting that young virgin +at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping +into his chair in a heap. + +“Shake me up, somebody, if you’ll be so good,” says the voice from +within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. “I +have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in the +police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the +property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the +property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch +the property!” As his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and +putting him through the usual restorative process of shaking and +punching, he still repeats like an echo, “The—the property! The +property! Property!” + +Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other, the former as having +relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited +countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet. +But there is nothing to be done in opposition to the Smallweed +interest. Mr. Tulkinghorn’s clerk comes down from his official pew in +the chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn is +answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that +the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due +time and course. Mr. Smallweed is at once permitted so far to assert +his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next +house and upstairs into Miss Flite’s deserted room, where he looks +like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary. + +The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court +still makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle. +Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there +really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be +made him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins, as members +of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of the +foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the pump +and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings +take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. Melvilleson +enter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that +these unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals +and non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts up “The popular song of King +Death, with chorus by the whole strength of the company,” as the +great Harmonic feature of the week and announces in the bill that “J. +G. B. is induced to do so at a considerable extra expense in +consequence of a wish which has been very generally expressed at the +bar by a large body of respectable individuals and in homage to a +late melancholy event which has aroused so much sensation.” There is +one point connected with the deceased upon which the court is +particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized coffin +should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon the +undertaker’s stating in the Sol’s bar in the course of the day that +he has received orders to construct “a six-footer,” the general +solicitude is much relieved, and it is considered that Mr. +Smallweed’s conduct does him great honour. + +Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable +excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and +carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same +intent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and +phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of +these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that +the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and being +reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence +for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the Philosophical +Transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on English medical +jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of the Countess +Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianchini, prebendary of +Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard +of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of the +testimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who +WOULD investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative +testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once +upon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a +case occurred and even to write an account of it—still they regard +the late Mr. Krook’s obstinacy in going out of the world by any such +by-way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the +court understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the +greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol’s Arms. +Then there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground +and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the Cornish +coast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester, and in +Mrs. Perkins’ own room, memorable evermore, he then and there throws +in upon the block Mr. Krook’s house, as large as life; in fact, +considerably larger, making a very temple of it. Similarly, being +permitted to look in at the door of the fatal chamber, he depicts +that apartment as three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high, +at which the court is particularly charmed. All this time the two +gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house and assist +at the philosophical disputations—go everywhere and listen to +everybody—and yet are always diving into the Sol’s parlour and +writing with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper. + +At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that +the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way and +tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that “that +would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined +house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can’t +account for!” After which the six-footer comes into action and is +much admired. + +In all these proceedings Mr. Guppy has so slight a part, except when +he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual +and can only haunt the secret house on the outside, where he has the +mortification of seeing Mr. Smallweed padlocking the door, and of +bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But before these proceedings +draw to a close, that is to say, on the night next after the +catastrophe, Mr. Guppy has a thing to say that must be said to Lady +Dedlock. + +For which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense +of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol’s Arms +have produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents himself at +the town mansion at about seven o’clock in the evening and requests +to see her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is going out to dinner; +don’t he see the carriage at the door? Yes, he does see the carriage +at the door; but he wants to see my Lady too. + +Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a +fellow-gentleman in waiting, “to pitch into the young man”; but his +instructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the +young man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young +man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him. + +Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering +everywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or +wood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it—? No, it’s no ghost, but +fair flesh and blood, most brilliantly dressed. + +“I have to beg your ladyship’s pardon,” Mr. Guppy stammers, very +downcast. “This is an inconvenient time—” + +“I told you, you could come at any time.” She takes a chair, looking +straight at him as on the last occasion. + +“Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable.” + +“You can sit down.” There is not much affability in her tone. + +“I don’t know, your ladyship, that it’s worth while my sitting down +and detaining you, for I—I have not got the letters that I mentioned +when I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship.” + +“Have you come merely to say so?” + +“Merely to say so, your ladyship.” Mr. Guppy besides being depressed, +disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the +splendour and beauty of her appearance. + +She knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a +grain of its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily and +coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the least +perception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts, but also +that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and +further from her. + +She will not speak, it is plain. So he must. + +“In short, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy like a meanly penitent +thief, “the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a +sudden end, and—” He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the +sentence. + +“And the letters are destroyed with the person?” + +Mr. Guppy would say no if he could—as he is unable to hide. + +“I believe so, your ladyship.” + +If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he +could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly +put him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about it. + +He falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure. + +“Is this all you have to say?” inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard +him out—or as nearly out as he can stumble. + +Mr. Guppy thinks that’s all. + +“You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this +being the last time you will have the opportunity.” + +Mr. Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at present, +by any means. + +“That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!” +And she rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name of Guppy +out. + +But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old +man of the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his +quiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the +handle of the door—comes in—and comes face to face with the young +man as he is leaving the room. + +One glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the +blind that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks +out. Another instant, close again. + +“I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand times. +It is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the +room was empty. I beg your pardon!” + +“Stay!” She negligently calls him back. “Remain here, I beg. I am +going out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!” + +The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes +that Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well. + +“Aye, aye?” says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent +brows, though he has no need to look again—not he. “From Kenge and +Carboy’s, surely?” + +“Kenge and Carboy’s, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir.” + +“To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!” + +“Happy to hear it, sir. You can’t be too well, sir, for the credit of +the profession.” + +“Thank you, Mr. Guppy!” + +Mr. Guppy sneaks away. Mr. Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his +old-fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock’s brightness, hands her +down the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and +rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +A Turn of the Screw + + +“Now, what,” says Mr. George, “may this be? Is it blank cartridge or +ball? A flash in the pan or a shot?” + +An open letter is the subject of the trooper’s speculations, and it +seems to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm’s length, brings +it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his left +hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on that +side, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot satisfy +himself. He smooths it out upon the table with his heavy palm, and +thoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a halt before it +every now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye. Even that won’t +do. “Is it,” Mr. George still muses, “blank cartridge or ball?” + +Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in the +distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march time +and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back again to +the girl he left behind him. + +“Phil!” The trooper beckons as he calls him. + +Phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he were +going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander like a +bayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high relief upon +his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of the +brush. + +“Attention, Phil! Listen to this.” + +“Steady, commander, steady.” + +“‘Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for +my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months’ date +drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, for the +sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become +due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same +on presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed.’ What do you make of that, +Phil?” + +“Mischief, guv’ner.” + +“Why?” + +“I think,” replies Phil after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle +in his forehead with the brush-handle, “that mischeevious +consequences is always meant when money’s asked for.” + +“Lookye, Phil,” says the trooper, sitting on the table. “First and +last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal in +interest and one thing and another.” + +Phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very +unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the +transaction as being made more promising by this incident. + +“And lookye further, Phil,” says the trooper, staying his premature +conclusions with a wave of his hand. “There has always been an +understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. And it +has been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?” + +“I say that I think the times is come to a end at last.” + +“You do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself.” + +“Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?” + +“The same.” + +“Guv’ner,” says Phil with exceeding gravity, “he’s a leech in his +dispositions, he’s a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his +twistings, and a lobster in his claws.” + +Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Squod, after +waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of +him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he has +in hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical medium +that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady. George, +having folded the letter, walks in that direction. + +“There IS a way, commander,” says Phil, looking cunningly at him, “of +settling this.” + +“Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could.” + +Phil shakes his head. “No, guv’ner, no; not so bad as that. There IS +a way,” says Phil with a highly artistic turn of his brush; “what I’m +a-doing at present.” + +“Whitewashing.” + +Phil nods. + +“A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the +Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off my +old scores? YOU’RE a moral character,” says the trooper, eyeing him +in his large way with no small indignation; “upon my life you are, +Phil!” + +Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting +earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush +and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb, +that he had forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so much +as injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy family when +steps are audible in the long passage without, and a cheerful voice +is heard to wonder whether George is at home. Phil, with a look at +his master, hobbles up, saying, “Here’s the guv’ner, Mrs. Bagnet! +Here he is!” and the old girl herself, accompanied by Mr. Bagnet, +appears. + +The old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the +year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very +clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so +interesting to Mr. Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe from +another quarter of the globe in company with Mrs. Bagnet and an +umbrella. The latter faithful appendage is also invariably a part of +the old girl’s presence out of doors. It is of no colour known in +this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle, with a +metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a little model +of a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval glasses out of a +pair of spectacles, which ornamental object has not that tenacious +capacity of sticking to its post that might be desired in an article +long associated with the British army. The old girl’s umbrella is of +a flabby habit of waist and seems to be in need of stays—an +appearance that is possibly referable to its having served through a +series of years at home as a cupboard and on journeys as a carpet +bag. She never puts it up, having the greatest reliance on her +well-proved cloak with its capacious hood, but generally uses the +instrument as a wand with which to point out joints of meat or +bunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the attention of +tradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her market-basket, which is a +sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she never stirs abroad. +Attended by these her trusty companions, therefore, her honest +sunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough straw bonnet, Mrs. +Bagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright, in George’s Shooting +Gallery. + +“Well, George, old fellow,” says she, “and how do YOU do, this +sunshiny morning?” + +Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs. Bagnet draws a long +breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a +faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such +positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough bench, +unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses her arms, +and looks perfectly comfortable. + +Mr. Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his old comrade and +with Phil, on whom Mrs. Bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured nod +and smile. + +“Now, George,” said Mrs. Bagnet briskly, “here we are, Lignum and +myself”—she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on +account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old +regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment +to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy—“just +looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that +security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he’ll sign it +like a man.” + +“I was coming to you this morning,” observes the trooper reluctantly. + +“Yes, we thought you’d come to us this morning, but we turned out +early and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and +came to you instead—as you see! For Lignum, he’s tied so close now, +and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But what’s +the matter, George?” asks Mrs. Bagnet, stopping in her cheerful talk. +“You don’t look yourself.” + +“I am not quite myself,” returns the trooper; “I have been a little +put out, Mrs. Bagnet.” + +Her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. “George!” holding up +her forefinger. “Don’t tell me there’s anything wrong about that +security of Lignum’s! Don’t do it, George, on account of the +children!” + +The trooper looks at her with a troubled visage. + +“George,” says Mrs. Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis and +occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. “If you +have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum’s, and +if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger of +being sold up—and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain as +print—you have done a shameful action and have deceived us cruelly. +I tell you, cruelly, George. There!” + +Mr. Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts his +large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it from +a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs. Bagnet. + +“George,” says that old girl, “I wonder at you! George, I am ashamed +of you! George, I couldn’t have believed you would have done it! I +always knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss, but I +never thought you would have taken away what little moss there was +for Bagnet and the children to lie upon. You know what a +hard-working, steady-going chap he is. You know what Quebec and Malta +and Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or could, have had +the heart to serve us so. Oh, George!” Mrs. Bagnet gathers up her +cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine manner, “How could you do +it?” + +Mrs. Bagnet ceasing, Mr. Bagnet removes his hand from his head as if +the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr. George, who +has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the grey cloak and +straw bonnet. + +“Mat,” says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but still +looking at his wife, “I am sorry you take it so much to heart, +because I do hope it’s not so bad as that comes to. I certainly have, +this morning, received this letter”—which he reads aloud—“but I +hope it may be set right yet. As to a rolling stone, why, what you +say is true. I AM a rolling stone, and I never rolled in anybody’s +way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least good to. But it’s +impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like your wife and family +better than I like ’em, Mat, and I trust you’ll look upon me as +forgivingly as you can. Don’t think I’ve kept anything from you. I +haven’t had the letter more than a quarter of an hour.” + +“Old girl,” murmurs Mr. Bagnet after a short silence, “will you tell +him my opinion?” + +“Oh! Why didn’t he marry,” Mrs. Bagnet answers, half laughing and +half crying, “Joe Pouch’s widder in North America? Then he wouldn’t +have got himself into these troubles.” + +“The old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, “puts it correct—why didn’t you?” + +“Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope,” returns the +trooper. “Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, NOT married to Joe +Pouch’s widder. What shall I do? You see all I have got about me. +It’s not mine; it’s yours. Give the word, and I’ll sell off every +morsel. If I could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum +wanted, I’d have sold all long ago. Don’t believe that I’ll leave you +or yours in the lurch, Mat. I’d sell myself first. I only wish,” says +the trooper, giving himself a disparaging blow in the chest, “that I +knew of any one who’d buy such a second-hand piece of old stores.” + +“Old girl,” murmurs Mr. Bagnet, “give him another bit of my mind.” + +“George,” says the old girl, “you are not so much to be blamed, on +full consideration, except for ever taking this business without the +means.” + +“And that was like me!” observes the penitent trooper, shaking his +head. “Like me, I know.” + +“Silence! The old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, “is correct—in her way of +giving my opinions—hear me out!” + +“That was when you never ought to have asked for the security, +George, and when you never ought to have got it, all things +considered. But what’s done can’t be undone. You are always an +honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your power, +though a little flighty. On the other hand, you can’t admit but what +it’s natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging over our +heads. So forget and forgive all round, George. Come! Forget and +forgive all round!” + +Mrs. Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her +husband the other, Mr. George gives each of them one of his and holds +them while he speaks. + +“I do assure you both, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to discharge +this obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together has +gone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly enough +here, Phil and I. But the gallery don’t quite do what was expected of +it, and it’s not—in short, it’s not the mint. It was wrong in me to +take it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner drawn into that step, +and I thought it might steady me, and set me up, and you’ll try to +overlook my having such expectations, and upon my soul, I am very +much obliged to you, and very much ashamed of myself.” With these +concluding words, Mr. George gives a shake to each of the hands he +holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace or two in a +broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a final confession +and were immediately going to be shot with all military honours. + +“George, hear me out!” says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. “Old +girl, go on!” + +Mr. Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to +observe that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that +it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr. +Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and hold +harmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money. Mr. George, entirely +assenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with Mr. Bagnet to +the enemy’s camp. + +“Don’t you mind a woman’s hasty word, George,” says Mrs. Bagnet, +patting him on the shoulder. “I trust my old Lignum to you, and I am +sure you’ll bring him through it.” + +The trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he WILL bring +Lignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs. Bagnet, with her cloak, +basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of +her family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of +mollifying Mr. Smallweed. + +Whether there are two people in England less likely to come +satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr. Smallweed than Mr. +George and Mr. Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned. +Also, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square +shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same limits +two more simple and unaccustomed children in all the Smallweedy +affairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity through the +streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr. Bagnet, observing +his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a friendly part to refer +to Mrs. Bagnet’s late sally. + +“George, you know the old girl—she’s as sweet and as mild as milk. +But touch her on the children—or myself—and she’s off like +gunpowder.” + +“It does her credit, Mat!” + +“George,” says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight before him, “the old +girl—can’t do anything—that don’t do her credit. More or less. I +never say so. Discipline must be maintained.” + +“She’s worth her weight in gold,” says the trooper. + +“In gold?” says Mr. Bagnet. “I’ll tell you what. The old girl’s +weight—is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight—in any +metal—for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl’s metal is +far more precious—than the preciousest metal. And she’s ALL metal!” + +“You are right, Mat!” + +“When she took me—and accepted of the ring—she ’listed under me and +the children—heart and head; for life. She’s that earnest,” says Mr. +Bagnet, “and true to her colours—that, touch us with a finger—and +she turns out—and stands to her arms. If the old girl fires +wide—once in a way—at the call of duty—look over it, George. For +she’s loyal!” + +“Why, bless her, Mat,” returns the trooper, “I think the higher of +her for it!” + +“You are right!” says Mr. Bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm, though +without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. “Think as high of +the old girl—as the rock of Gibraltar—and still you’ll be thinking +low—of such merits. But I never own to it before her. Discipline +must be maintained.” + +These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant and to Grandfather +Smallweed’s house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who, +having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but +indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she +consults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred +to give consent from the circumstance of her returning with the words +on her honey lips that they can come in if they want to it. Thus +privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with his feet in the +drawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath and Mrs. +Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is not to sing. + +“My dear friend,” says Grandfather Smallweed with those two lean +affectionate arms of his stretched forth. “How de do? How de do? Who +is our friend, my dear friend?” + +“Why this,” returns George, not able to be very conciliatory at +first, “is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of ours, +you know.” + +“Oh! Mr. Bagnet? Surely!” The old man looks at him under his hand. + +“Hope you’re well, Mr. Bagnet? Fine man, Mr. George! Military air, +sir!” + +No chairs being offered, Mr. George brings one forward for Bagnet and +one for himself. They sit down, Mr. Bagnet as if he had no power of +bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose. + +“Judy,” says Mr. Smallweed, “bring the pipe.” + +“Why, I don’t know,” Mr. George interposes, “that the young woman +need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not +inclined to smoke it to-day.” + +“Ain’t you?” returns the old man. “Judy, bring the pipe.” + +“The fact is, Mr. Smallweed,” proceeds George, “that I find myself in +rather an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that your +friend in the city has been playing tricks.” + +“Oh, dear no!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “He never does that!” + +“Don’t he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might be +HIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter.” + +Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of the +letter. + +“What does it mean?” asks Mr. George. + +“Judy,” says the old man. “Have you got the pipe? Give it to me. Did +you say what does it mean, my good friend?” + +“Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Smallweed,” urges the trooper, +constraining himself to speak as smoothly and confidentially as he +can, holding the open letter in one hand and resting the broad +knuckles of the other on his thigh, “a good lot of money has passed +between us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are +both well aware of the understanding there has always been. I am +prepared to do the usual thing which I have done regularly and to +keep this matter going. I never got a letter like this from you +before, and I have been a little put about by it this morning, +because here’s my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had none of +the money—” + +“I DON’T know it, you know,” says the old man quietly. + +“Why, con-found you—it, I mean—I tell you so, don’t I?” + +“Oh, yes, you tell me so,” returns Grandfather Smallweed. “But I +don’t know it.” + +“Well!” says the trooper, swallowing his fire. “I know it.” + +Mr. Smallweed replies with excellent temper, “Ah! That’s quite +another thing!” And adds, “But it don’t matter. Mr. Bagnet’s +situation is all one, whether or no.” + +The unfortunate George makes a great effort to arrange the affair +comfortably and to propitiate Mr. Smallweed by taking him upon his +own terms. + +“That’s just what I mean. As you say, Mr. Smallweed, here’s Matthew +Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see, that makes his +good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for whereas I’m a +harum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more kicks than halfpence +come natural to, why he’s a steady family man, don’t you see? Now, +Mr. Smallweed,” says the trooper, gaining confidence as he proceeds +in his soldierly mode of doing business, “although you and I are good +friends enough in a certain sort of a way, I am well aware that I +can’t ask you to let my friend Bagnet off entirely.” + +“Oh, dear, you are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr. George.” +(There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Smallweed +to-day.) + +“And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as +your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!” + +“Ha ha ha!” echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard manner +and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet’s natural gravity +is much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man. + +“Come!” says the sanguine George. “I am glad to find we can be +pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here’s my friend +Bagnet, and here am I. We’ll settle the matter on the spot, if you +please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you’ll ease my friend +Bagnet’s mind, and his family’s mind, a good deal if you’ll just +mention to him what our understanding is.” + +Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, “Oh, good +gracious! Oh!” Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is found +to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin +has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt. Mr. +Bagnet’s gravity becomes yet more profound. + +“But I think you asked me, Mr. George”—old Smallweed, who all this +time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now—“I think you +asked me, what did the letter mean?” + +“Why, yes, I did,” returns the trooper in his off-hand way, “but I +don’t care to know particularly, if it’s all correct and pleasant.” + +Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper’s +head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces. + +“That’s what it means, my dear friend. I’ll smash you. I’ll crumble +you. I’ll powder you. Go to the devil!” + +The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet’s gravity +has now attained its profoundest point. + +“Go to the devil!” repeats the old man. “I’ll have no more of your +pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You’re an independent dragoon, +too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before) +and show your independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend, +there’s a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy; put these +blusterers out! Call in help if they don’t go. Put ’em out!” + +He vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on +the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his +amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is +instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr. +George awhile stands looking at the knocker. Mr. Bagnet, in a perfect +abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little parlour window +like a sentry and looks in every time he passes, apparently revolving +something in his mind. + +“Come, Mat,” says Mr. George when he has recovered himself, “we must +try the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?” + +Mr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour, +replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, “If my +old girl had been here—I’d have told him!” Having so discharged +himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and +marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder. + +When they present themselves in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Mr. Tulkinghorn +is engaged and not to be seen. He is not at all willing to see them, +for when they have waited a full hour, and the clerk, on his bell +being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning as much, he brings +forth no more encouraging message than that Mr. Tulkinghorn has +nothing to say to them and they had better not wait. They do wait, +however, with the perseverance of military tactics, and at last the +bell rings again and the client in possession comes out of Mr. +Tulkinghorn’s room. + +The client is a handsome old lady, no other than Mrs. Rouncewell, +housekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary with a +fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door. She is treated +with some distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his pew to +show her through the outer office and to let her out. The old lady is +thanking him for his attention when she observes the comrades in +waiting. + +“I beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?” + +The clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and Mr. George +not turning round from the almanac over the fire-place. Mr. Bagnet +takes upon himself to reply, “Yes, ma’am. Formerly.” + +“I thought so. I was sure of it. My heart warms, gentlemen, at the +sight of you. It always does at the sight of such. God bless you, +gentlemen! You’ll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once who went +for a soldier. A fine handsome youth he was, and good in his bold +way, though some people did disparage him to his poor mother. I ask +your pardon for troubling you, sir. God bless you, gentlemen!” + +“Same to you, ma’am!” returns Mr. Bagnet with right good will. + +There is something very touching in the earnestness of the old lady’s +voice and in the tremble that goes through her quaint old figure. But +Mr. George is so occupied with the almanac over the fire-place +(calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he does not look +round until she has gone away and the door is closed upon her. + +“George,” Mr. Bagnet gruffly whispers when he does turn from the +almanac at last. “Don’t be cast down! ‘Why, soldiers, why—should we +be melancholy, boys?’ Cheer up, my hearty!” + +The clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there +and Mr. Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility, +“Let ’em come in then!” they pass into the great room with the +painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire. + +“Now, you men, what do you want? Sergeant, I told you the last time I +saw you that I don’t desire your company here.” + +Sergeant replies—dashed within the last few minutes as to his usual +manner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage—that he has +received this letter, has been to Mr. Smallweed about it, and has +been referred there. + +“I have nothing to say to you,” rejoins Mr. Tulkinghorn. “If you get +into debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences. You have +no occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose?” + +Sergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money. + +“Very well! Then the other man—this man, if this is he—must pay it +for you.” + +Sergeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with the +money either. + +“Very well! Then you must pay it between you or you must both be sued +for it and both suffer. You have had the money and must refund it. +You are not to pocket other people’s pounds, shillings, and pence and +escape scot-free.” + +The lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and stirs the fire. Mr. George +hopes he will have the goodness to—“I tell you, sergeant, I have +nothing to say to you. I don’t like your associates and don’t want +you here. This matter is not at all in my course of practice and is +not in my office. Mr. Smallweed is good enough to offer these affairs +to me, but they are not in my way. You must go to Melchisedech’s in +Clifford’s Inn.” + +“I must make an apology to you, sir,” says Mr. George, “for pressing +myself upon you with so little encouragement—which is almost as +unpleasant to me as it can be to you—but would you let me say a +private word to you?” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into +one of the window recesses. “Now! I have no time to waste.” In the +midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a sharp +look at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back to the +light and to have the other with his face towards it. + +“Well, sir,” says Mr. George, “this man with me is the other party +implicated in this unfortunate affair—nominally, only nominally—and +my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my account. +He is a most respectable man with a wife and family, formerly in the +Royal Artillery—” + +“My friend, I don’t care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal +Artillery establishment—officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses, +guns, and ammunition.” + +“’Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife and +family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them through +this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any +other consideration what you wanted of me the other day.” + +“Have you got it here?” + +“I have got it here, sir.” + +“Sergeant,” the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far +more hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence, “make +up your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. After I have +finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won’t re-open it. +Understand that. You can leave here, for a few days, what you say you +have brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you +choose. In case you choose to leave it here, I can do this for you—I +can replace this matter on its old footing, and I can go so far +besides as to give you a written undertaking that this man Bagnet +shall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded +against to the utmost, that your means shall be exhausted before the +creditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have you +decided?” + +The trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long +breath, “I must do it, sir.” + +So Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes +the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who +has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand +on his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems +exceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express his +sentiments. The trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a folded +paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer’s elbow. +“’Tis only a letter of instructions, sir. The last I ever had from +him.” + +Look at a millstone, Mr. George, for some change in its expression, +and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr. Tulkinghorn +when he opens and reads the letter! He refolds it and lays it in his +desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death. + +Nor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same +frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, “You can go. Show +these men out, there!” Being shown out, they repair to Mr. Bagnet’s +residence to dine. + +Boiled beef and greens constitute the day’s variety on the former +repast of boiled pork and greens, and Mrs. Bagnet serves out the meal +in the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being that +rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a +hint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot +of darkness near her. The spot on this occasion is the darkened brow +of Mr. George; he is unusually thoughtful and depressed. At first +Mrs. Bagnet trusts to the combined endearments of Quebec and Malta to +restore him, but finding those young ladies sensible that their +existing Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their usual frolicsome +acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and leaves him to +deploy at leisure on the open ground of the domestic hearth. + +But he does not. He remains in close order, clouded and depressed. +During the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and Mr. +Bagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he was at +dinner. He forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders, lets his +pipe out, fills the breast of Mr. Bagnet with perturbation and dismay +by showing that he has no enjoyment of tobacco. + +Therefore when Mrs. Bagnet at last appears, rosy from the +invigorating pail, and sits down to her work, Mr. Bagnet growls, “Old +girl!” and winks monitions to her to find out what’s the matter. + +“Why, George!” says Mrs. Bagnet, quietly threading her needle. “How +low you are!” + +“Am I? Not good company? Well, I am afraid I am not.” + +“He ain’t at all like Bluffy, mother!” cries little Malta. + +“Because he ain’t well, I think, mother,” adds Quebec. + +“Sure that’s a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too!” returns the +trooper, kissing the young damsels. “But it’s true,” with a sigh, +“true, I am afraid. These little ones are always right!” + +“George,” says Mrs. Bagnet, working busily, “if I thought you cross +enough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier’s wife—who +could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done it +almost—said this morning, I don’t know what I shouldn’t say to you +now.” + +“My kind soul of a darling,” returns the trooper. “Not a morsel of +it.” + +“Because really and truly, George, what I said and meant to say was +that I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you’d bring him through it. +And you HAVE brought him through it, noble!” + +“Thankee, my dear!” says George. “I am glad of your good opinion.” + +In giving Mrs. Bagnet’s hand, with her work in it, a friendly +shake—for she took her seat beside him—the trooper’s attention is +attracted to her face. After looking at it for a little while as she +plies her needle, he looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his stool in +the corner, and beckons that fifer to him. + +“See there, my boy,” says George, very gently smoothing the mother’s +hair with his hand, “there’s a good loving forehead for you! All +bright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by the sun and the +weather through following your father about and taking care of you, +but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree.” + +Mr. Bagnet’s face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies, +the highest approbation and acquiescence. + +“The time will come, my boy,” pursues the trooper, “when this hair of +your mother’s will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and +re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she’ll be then. Take +care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, ‘I never +whitened a hair of her dear head—I never marked a sorrowful line in +her face!’ For of all the many things that you can think of when you +are a man, you had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!” + +Mr. George concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy beside +his mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry about him, +that he’ll smoke his pipe in the street a bit. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +Esther’s Narrative + + +I lay ill through several weeks, and the usual tenor of my life +became like an old remembrance. But this was not the effect of time +so much as of the change in all my habits made by the helplessness +and inaction of a sick-room. Before I had been confined to it many +days, everything else seemed to have retired into a remote distance +where there was little or no separation between the various stages of +my life which had been really divided by years. In falling ill, I +seemed to have crossed a dark lake and to have left all my +experiences, mingled together by the great distance, on the healthy +shore. + +My housekeeping duties, though at first it caused me great anxiety to +think that they were unperformed, were soon as far off as the oldest +of the old duties at Greenleaf or the summer afternoons when I went +home from school with my portfolio under my arm, and my childish +shadow at my side, to my godmother’s house. I had never known before +how short life really was and into how small a space the mind could +put it. + +While I was very ill, the way in which these divisions of time became +confused with one another distressed my mind exceedingly. At once a +child, an elder girl, and the little woman I had been so happy as, I +was not only oppressed by cares and difficulties adapted to each +station, but by the great perplexity of endlessly trying to reconcile +them. I suppose that few who have not been in such a condition can +quite understand what I mean or what painful unrest arose from this +source. + +For the same reason I am almost afraid to hint at that time in my +disorder—it seemed one long night, but I believe there were both +nights and days in it—when I laboured up colossal staircases, ever +striving to reach the top, and ever turned, as I have seen a worm in +a garden path, by some obstruction, and labouring again. I knew +perfectly at intervals, and I think vaguely at most times, that I was +in my bed; and I talked with Charley, and felt her touch, and knew +her very well; yet I would find myself complaining, “Oh, more of +these never-ending stairs, Charley—more and more—piled up to the +sky’, I think!” and labouring on again. + +Dare I hint at that worse time when, strung together somewhere in +great black space, there was a flaming necklace, or ring, or starry +circle of some kind, of which I was one of the beads! And when my +only prayer was to be taken off from the rest and when it was such +inexplicable agony and misery to be a part of the dreadful thing? + +Perhaps the less I say of these sick experiences, the less tedious +and the more intelligible I shall be. I do not recall them to make +others unhappy or because I am now the least unhappy in remembering +them. It may be that if we knew more of such strange afflictions we +might be the better able to alleviate their intensity. + +The repose that succeeded, the long delicious sleep, the blissful +rest, when in my weakness I was too calm to have any care for myself +and could have heard (or so I think now) that I was dying, with no +other emotion than with a pitying love for those I left behind—this +state can be perhaps more widely understood. I was in this state when +I first shrunk from the light as it twinkled on me once more, and +knew with a boundless joy for which no words are rapturous enough +that I should see again. + +I had heard my Ada crying at the door, day and night; I had heard her +calling to me that I was cruel and did not love her; I had heard her +praying and imploring to be let in to nurse and comfort me and to +leave my bedside no more; but I had only said, when I could speak, +“Never, my sweet girl, never!” and I had over and over again reminded +Charley that she was to keep my darling from the room whether I lived +or died. Charley had been true to me in that time of need, and with +her little hand and her great heart had kept the door fast. + +But now, my sight strengthening and the glorious light coming every +day more fully and brightly on me, I could read the letters that my +dear wrote to me every morning and evening and could put them to my +lips and lay my cheek upon them with no fear of hurting her. I could +see my little maid, so tender and so careful, going about the two +rooms setting everything in order and speaking cheerfully to Ada from +the open window again. I could understand the stillness in the house +and the thoughtfulness it expressed on the part of all those who had +always been so good to me. I could weep in the exquisite felicity of +my heart and be as happy in my weakness as ever I had been in my +strength. + +By and by my strength began to be restored. Instead of lying, with so +strange a calmness, watching what was done for me, as if it were done +for some one else whom I was quietly sorry for, I helped it a little, +and so on to a little more and much more, until I became useful to +myself, and interested, and attached to life again. + +How well I remember the pleasant afternoon when I was raised in bed +with pillows for the first time to enjoy a great tea-drinking with +Charley! The little creature—sent into the world, surely, to +minister to the weak and sick—was so happy, and so busy, and stopped +so often in her preparations to lay her head upon my bosom, and +fondle me, and cry with joyful tears she was so glad, she was so +glad, that I was obliged to say, “Charley, if you go on in this way, +I must lie down again, my darling, for I am weaker than I thought I +was!” So Charley became as quiet as a mouse and took her bright face +here and there across and across the two rooms, out of the shade into +the divine sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shade, while I +watched her peacefully. When all her preparations were concluded and +the pretty tea-table with its little delicacies to tempt me, and its +white cloth, and its flowers, and everything so lovingly and +beautifully arranged for me by Ada downstairs, was ready at the +bedside, I felt sure I was steady enough to say something to Charley +that was not new to my thoughts. + +First I complimented Charley on the room, and indeed it was so fresh +and airy, so spotless and neat, that I could scarce believe I had +been lying there so long. This delighted Charley, and her face was +brighter than before. + +“Yet, Charley,” said I, looking round, “I miss something, surely, +that I am accustomed to?” + +Poor little Charley looked round too and pretended to shake her head +as if there were nothing absent. + +“Are the pictures all as they used to be?” I asked her. + +“Every one of them, miss,” said Charley. + +“And the furniture, Charley?” + +“Except where I have moved it about to make more room, miss.” + +“And yet,” said I, “I miss some familiar object. Ah, I know what it +is, Charley! It’s the looking-glass.” + +Charley got up from the table, making as if she had forgotten +something, and went into the next room; and I heard her sob there. + +I had thought of this very often. I was now certain of it. I could +thank God that it was not a shock to me now. I called Charley back, +and when she came—at first pretending to smile, but as she drew +nearer to me, looking grieved—I took her in my arms and said, “It +matters very little, Charley. I hope I can do without my old face +very well.” + +I was presently so far advanced as to be able to sit up in a great +chair and even giddily to walk into the adjoining room, leaning on +Charley. The mirror was gone from its usual place in that room too, +but what I had to bear was none the harder to bear for that. + +My guardian had throughout been earnest to visit me, and there was +now no good reason why I should deny myself that happiness. He came +one morning, and when he first came in, could only hold me in his +embrace and say, “My dear, dear girl!” I had long known—who could +know better?—what a deep fountain of affection and generosity his +heart was; and was it not worth my trivial suffering and change to +fill such a place in it? “Oh, yes!” I thought. “He has seen me, and +he loves me better than he did; he has seen me and is even fonder of +me than he was before; and what have I to mourn for!” + +He sat down by me on the sofa, supporting me with his arm. For a +little while he sat with his hand over his face, but when he removed +it, fell into his usual manner. There never can have been, there +never can be, a pleasanter manner. + +“My little woman,” said he, “what a sad time this has been. Such an +inflexible little woman, too, through all!” + +“Only for the best, guardian,” said I. + +“For the best?” he repeated tenderly. “Of course, for the best. But +here have Ada and I been perfectly forlorn and miserable; here has +your friend Caddy been coming and going late and early; here has +every one about the house been utterly lost and dejected; here has +even poor Rick been writing—to ME too—in his anxiety for you!” + +I had read of Caddy in Ada’s letters, but not of Richard. I told him +so. + +“Why, no, my dear,” he replied. “I have thought it better not to +mention it to her.” + +“And you speak of his writing to YOU,” said I, repeating his +emphasis. “As if it were not natural for him to do so, guardian; as +if he could write to a better friend!” + +“He thinks he could, my love,” returned my guardian, “and to many a +better. The truth is, he wrote to me under a sort of protest while +unable to write to you with any hope of an answer—wrote coldly, +haughtily, distantly, resentfully. Well, dearest little woman, we +must look forbearingly on it. He is not to blame. Jarndyce and +Jarndyce has warped him out of himself and perverted me in his eyes. +I have known it do as bad deeds, and worse, many a time. If two +angels could be concerned in it, I believe it would change their +nature.” + +“It has not changed yours, guardian.” + +“Oh, yes, it has, my dear,” he said laughingly. “It has made the +south wind easterly, I don’t know how often. Rick mistrusts and +suspects me—goes to lawyers, and is taught to mistrust and suspect +me. Hears I have conflicting interests, claims clashing against his +and what not. Whereas, heaven knows that if I could get out of the +mountains of Wiglomeration on which my unfortunate name has been so +long bestowed (which I can’t) or could level them by the extinction +of my own original right (which I can’t either, and no human power +ever can, anyhow, I believe, to such a pass have we got), I would do +it this hour. I would rather restore to poor Rick his proper nature +than be endowed with all the money that dead suitors, broken, heart +and soul, upon the wheel of Chancery, have left unclaimed with the +Accountant-General—and that’s money enough, my dear, to be cast into +a pyramid, in memory of Chancery’s transcendent wickedness.” + +“IS it possible, guardian,” I asked, amazed, “that Richard can be +suspicious of you?” + +“Ah, my love, my love,” he said, “it is in the subtle poison of such +abuses to breed such diseases. His blood is infected, and objects +lose their natural aspects in his sight. It is not HIS fault.” + +“But it is a terrible misfortune, guardian.” + +“It is a terrible misfortune, little woman, to be ever drawn within +the influences of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. I know none greater. By +little and little he has been induced to trust in that rotten reed, +and it communicates some portion of its rottenness to everything +around him. But again I say with all my soul, we must be patient with +poor Rick and not blame him. What a troop of fine fresh hearts like +his have I seen in my time turned by the same means!” + +I could not help expressing something of my wonder and regret that +his benevolent, disinterested intentions had prospered so little. + +“We must not say so, Dame Durden,” he cheerfully replied; “Ada is the +happier, I hope, and that is much. I did think that I and both these +young creatures might be friends instead of distrustful foes and that +we might so far counter-act the suit and prove too strong for it. But +it was too much to expect. Jarndyce and Jarndyce was the curtain of +Rick’s cradle.” + +“But, guardian, may we not hope that a little experience will teach +him what a false and wretched thing it is?” + +“We WILL hope so, my Esther,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “and that it may not +teach him so too late. In any case we must not be hard on him. There +are not many grown and matured men living while we speak, good men +too, who if they were thrown into this same court as suitors would +not be vitally changed and depreciated within three years—within +two—within one. How can we stand amazed at poor Rick? A young man so +unfortunate,” here he fell into a lower tone, as if he were thinking +aloud, “cannot at first believe (who could?) that Chancery is what it +is. He looks to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his +interests and bring them to some settlement. It procrastinates, +disappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine hopes and +patience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers +after it, and finds his whole world treacherous and hollow. Well, +well, well! Enough of this, my dear!” + +He had supported me, as at first, all this time, and his tenderness +was so precious to me that I leaned my head upon his shoulder and +loved him as if he had been my father. I resolved in my own mind in +this little pause, by some means, to see Richard when I grew strong +and try to set him right. + +“There are better subjects than these,” said my guardian, “for such a +joyful time as the time of our dear girl’s recovery. And I had a +commission to broach one of them as soon as I should begin to talk. +When shall Ada come to see you, my love?” + +I had been thinking of that too. A little in connexion with the +absent mirrors, but not much, for I knew my loving girl would be +changed by no change in my looks. + +“Dear guardian,” said I, “as I have shut her out so long—though +indeed, indeed, she is like the light to me—” + +“I know it well, Dame Durden, well.” + +He was so good, his touch expressed such endearing compassion and +affection, and the tone of his voice carried such comfort into my +heart that I stopped for a little while, quite unable to go on. “Yes, +yes, you are tired,” said he. “Rest a little.” + +“As I have kept Ada out so long,” I began afresh after a short while, +“I think I should like to have my own way a little longer, guardian. +It would be best to be away from here before I see her. If Charley +and I were to go to some country lodging as soon as I can move, and +if I had a week there in which to grow stronger and to be revived by +the sweet air and to look forward to the happiness of having Ada with +me again, I think it would be better for us.” + +I hope it was not a poor thing in me to wish to be a little more used +to my altered self before I met the eyes of the dear girl I longed so +ardently to see, but it is the truth. I did. He understood me, I was +sure; but I was not afraid of that. If it were a poor thing, I knew +he would pass it over. + +“Our spoilt little woman,” said my guardian, “shall have her own way +even in her inflexibility, though at the price, I know, of tears +downstairs. And see here! Here is Boythorn, heart of chivalry, +breathing such ferocious vows as never were breathed on paper before, +that if you don’t go and occupy his whole house, he having already +turned out of it expressly for that purpose, by heaven and by earth +he’ll pull it down and not leave one brick standing on another!” + +And my guardian put a letter in my hand, without any ordinary +beginning such as “My dear Jarndyce,” but rushing at once into the +words, “I swear if Miss Summerson do not come down and take +possession of my house, which I vacate for her this day at one +o’clock, P.M.,” and then with the utmost seriousness, and in the most +emphatic terms, going on to make the extraordinary declaration he had +quoted. We did not appreciate the writer the less for laughing +heartily over it, and we settled that I should send him a letter of +thanks on the morrow and accept his offer. It was a most agreeable +one to me, for all the places I could have thought of, I should have +liked to go to none so well as Chesney Wold. + +“Now, little housewife,” said my guardian, looking at his watch, “I +was strictly timed before I came upstairs, for you must not be tired +too soon; and my time has waned away to the last minute. I have one +other petition. Little Miss Flite, hearing a rumour that you were +ill, made nothing of walking down here—twenty miles, poor soul, in a +pair of dancing shoes—to inquire. It was heaven’s mercy we were at +home, or she would have walked back again.” + +The old conspiracy to make me happy! Everybody seemed to be in it! + +“Now, pet,” said my guardian, “if it would not be irksome to you to +admit the harmless little creature one afternoon before you save +Boythorn’s otherwise devoted house from demolition, I believe you +would make her prouder and better pleased with herself than I—though +my eminent name is Jarndyce—could do in a lifetime.” + +I have no doubt he knew there would be something in the simple image +of the poor afflicted creature that would fall like a gentle lesson +on my mind at that time. I felt it as he spoke to me. I could not +tell him heartily enough how ready I was to receive her. I had always +pitied her, never so much as now. I had always been glad of my little +power to soothe her under her calamity, but never, never, half so +glad before. + +We arranged a time for Miss Flite to come out by the coach and share +my early dinner. When my guardian left me, I turned my face away upon +my couch and prayed to be forgiven if I, surrounded by such +blessings, had magnified to myself the little trial that I had to +undergo. The childish prayer of that old birthday when I had aspired +to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do good to some +one and win some love to myself if I could came back into my mind +with a reproachful sense of all the happiness I had since enjoyed and +all the affectionate hearts that had been turned towards me. If I +were weak now, what had I profited by those mercies? I repeated the +old childish prayer in its old childish words and found that its old +peace had not departed from it. + +My guardian now came every day. In a week or so more I could walk +about our rooms and hold long talks with Ada from behind the +window-curtain. Yet I never saw her, for I had not as yet the courage +to look at the dear face, though I could have done so easily without +her seeing me. + +On the appointed day Miss Flite arrived. The poor little creature ran +into my room quite forgetful of her usual dignity, and crying from +her very heart of hearts, “My dear Fitz Jarndyce!” fell upon my neck +and kissed me twenty times. + +“Dear me!” said she, putting her hand into her reticule, “I have +nothing here but documents, my dear Fitz Jarndyce; I must borrow a +pocket handkerchief.” + +Charley gave her one, and the good creature certainly made use of it, +for she held it to her eyes with both hands and sat so, shedding +tears for the next ten minutes. + +“With pleasure, my dear Fitz Jarndyce,” she was careful to explain. +“Not the least pain. Pleasure to see you well again. Pleasure at +having the honour of being admitted to see you. I am so much fonder +of you, my love, than of the Chancellor. Though I DO attend court +regularly. By the by, my dear, mentioning pocket handkerchiefs—” + +Miss Flite here looked at Charley, who had been to meet her at the +place where the coach stopped. Charley glanced at me and looked +unwilling to pursue the suggestion. + +“Ve-ry right!” said Miss Flite, “Ve-ry correct. Truly! Highly +indiscreet of me to mention it; but my dear Miss Fitz Jarndyce, I am +afraid I am at times (between ourselves, you wouldn’t think it) a +little—rambling you know,” said Miss Flite, touching her forehead. +“Nothing more.” + +“What were you going to tell me?” said I, smiling, for I saw she +wanted to go on. “You have roused my curiosity, and now you must +gratify it.” + +Miss Flite looked at Charley for advice in this important crisis, who +said, “If you please, ma’am, you had better tell then,” and therein +gratified Miss Flite beyond measure. + +“So sagacious, our young friend,” said she to me in her mysterious +way. “Diminutive. But ve-ry sagacious! Well, my dear, it’s a pretty +anecdote. Nothing more. Still I think it charming. Who should follow +us down the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor person in a very +ungenteel bonnet—” + +“Jenny, if you please, miss,” said Charley. + +“Just so!” Miss Flite acquiesced with the greatest suavity. “Jenny. +Ye-es! And what does she tell our young friend but that there has +been a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my dear Fitz +Jarndyce’s health and taking a handkerchief away with her as a little +keepsake merely because it was my amiable Fitz Jarndyce’s! Now, you +know, so very prepossessing in the lady with the veil!” + +“If you please, miss,” said Charley, to whom I looked in some +astonishment, “Jenny says that when her baby died, you left a +handkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it with the +baby’s little things. I think, if you please, partly because it was +yours, miss, and partly because it had covered the baby.” + +“Diminutive,” whispered Miss Flite, making a variety of motions about +her own forehead to express intellect in Charley. “But exceedingly +sagacious! And so dear! My love, she’s clearer than any counsel I +ever heard!” + +“Yes, Charley,” I returned. “I remember it. Well?” + +“Well, miss,” said Charley, “and that’s the handkerchief the lady +took. And Jenny wants you to know that she wouldn’t have made away +with it herself for a heap of money but that the lady took it and +left some money instead. Jenny don’t know her at all, if you please, +miss!” + +“Why, who can she be?” said I. + +“My love,” Miss Flite suggested, advancing her lips to my ear with +her most mysterious look, “in MY opinion—don’t mention this to our +diminutive friend—she’s the Lord Chancellor’s wife. He’s married, +you know. And I understand she leads him a terrible life. Throws his +lordship’s papers into the fire, my dear, if he won’t pay the +jeweller!” + +I did not think very much about this lady then, for I had an +impression that it might be Caddy. Besides, my attention was diverted +by my visitor, who was cold after her ride and looked hungry and who, +our dinner being brought in, required some little assistance in +arraying herself with great satisfaction in a pitiable old scarf and +a much-worn and often-mended pair of gloves, which she had brought +down in a paper parcel. I had to preside, too, over the +entertainment, consisting of a dish of fish, a roast fowl, a +sweetbread, vegetables, pudding, and Madeira; and it was so pleasant +to see how she enjoyed it, and with what state and ceremony she did +honour to it, that I was soon thinking of nothing else. + +When we had finished and had our little dessert before us, +embellished by the hands of my dear, who would yield the +superintendence of everything prepared for me to no one, Miss Flite +was so very chatty and happy that I thought I would lead her to her +own history, as she was always pleased to talk about herself. I began +by saying “You have attended on the Lord Chancellor many years, Miss +Flite?” + +“Oh, many, many, many years, my dear. But I expect a judgment. +Shortly.” + +There was an anxiety even in her hopefulness that made me doubtful if +I had done right in approaching the subject. I thought I would say no +more about it. + +“My father expected a judgment,” said Miss Flite. “My brother. My +sister. They all expected a judgment. The same that I expect.” + +“They are all—” + +“Ye-es. Dead of course, my dear,” said she. + +As I saw she would go on, I thought it best to try to be serviceable +to her by meeting the theme rather than avoiding it. + +“Would it not be wiser,” said I, “to expect this judgment no more?” + +“Why, my dear,” she answered promptly, “of course it would!” + +“And to attend the court no more?” + +“Equally of course,” said she. “Very wearing to be always in +expectation of what never comes, my dear Fitz Jarndyce! Wearing, I +assure you, to the bone!” + +She slightly showed me her arm, and it was fearfully thin indeed. + +“But, my dear,” she went on in her mysterious way, “there’s a +dreadful attraction in the place. Hush! Don’t mention it to our +diminutive friend when she comes in. Or it may frighten her. With +good reason. There’s a cruel attraction in the place. You CAN’T leave +it. And you MUST expect.” + +I tried to assure her that this was not so. She heard me patiently +and smilingly, but was ready with her own answer. + +“Aye, aye, aye! You think so because I am a little rambling. Ve-ry +absurd, to be a little rambling, is it not? Ve-ry confusing, too. To +the head. I find it so. But, my dear, I have been there many years, +and I have noticed. It’s the mace and seal upon the table.” + +What could they do, did she think? I mildly asked her. + +“Draw,” returned Miss Flite. “Draw people on, my dear. Draw peace out +of them. Sense out of them. Good looks out of them. Good qualities +out of them. I have felt them even drawing my rest away in the night. +Cold and glittering devils!” + +She tapped me several times upon the arm and nodded good-humouredly +as if she were anxious I should understand that I had no cause to +fear her, though she spoke so gloomily, and confided these awful +secrets to me. + +“Let me see,” said she. “I’ll tell you my own case. Before they ever +drew me—before I had ever seen them—what was it I used to do? +Tambourine playing? No. Tambour work. I and my sister worked at +tambour work. Our father and our brother had a builder’s business. +We all lived together. Ve-ry respectably, my dear! First, our father +was drawn—slowly. Home was drawn with him. In a few years he +was a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt without a kind word or a kind +look for any one. He had been so different, Fitz Jarndyce. He was +drawn to a debtors’ prison. There he died. Then our brother was +drawn—swiftly—to drunkenness. And rags. And death. Then my sister +was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what! Then I was ill and in misery, and +heard, as I had often heard before, that this was all the work of +Chancery. When I got better, I went to look at the monster. And then +I found out how it was, and I was drawn to stay there.” + +Having got over her own short narrative, in the delivery of which she +had spoken in a low, strained voice, as if the shock were fresh upon +her, she gradually resumed her usual air of amiable importance. + +“You don’t quite credit me, my dear! Well, well! You will, some day. +I am a little rambling. But I have noticed. I have seen many new +faces come, unsuspicious, within the influence of the mace and seal +in these many years. As my father’s came there. As my brother’s. As +my sister’s. As my own. I hear Conversation Kenge and the rest of +them say to the new faces, ‘Here’s little Miss Flite. Oh, you are new +here; and you must come and be presented to little Miss Flite!’ Ve-ry +good. Proud I am sure to have the honour! And we all laugh. But, Fitz +Jarndyce, I know what will happen. I know, far better than they do, +when the attraction has begun. I know the signs, my dear. I saw them +begin in Gridley. And I saw them end. Fitz Jarndyce, my love,” +speaking low again, “I saw them beginning in our friend the ward in +Jarndyce. Let some one hold him back. Or he’ll be drawn to ruin.” + +She looked at me in silence for some moments, with her face gradually +softening into a smile. Seeming to fear that she had been too gloomy, +and seeming also to lose the connexion in her mind, she said politely +as she sipped her glass of wine, “Yes, my dear, as I was saying, I +expect a judgment shortly. Then I shall release my birds, you know, +and confer estates.” + +I was much impressed by her allusion to Richard and by the sad +meaning, so sadly illustrated in her poor pinched form, that made its +way through all her incoherence. But happily for her, she was quite +complacent again now and beamed with nods and smiles. + +“But, my dear,” she said, gaily, reaching another hand to put it upon +mine. “You have not congratulated me on my physician. Positively not +once, yet!” + +I was obliged to confess that I did not quite know what she meant. + +“My physician, Mr. Woodcourt, my dear, who was so exceedingly +attentive to me. Though his services were rendered quite +gratuitously. Until the Day of Judgment. I mean THE judgment that +will dissolve the spell upon me of the mace and seal.” + +“Mr. Woodcourt is so far away, now,” said I, “that I thought the time +for such congratulation was past, Miss Flite.” + +“But, my child,” she returned, “is it possible that you don’t know +what has happened?” + +“No,” said I. + +“Not what everybody has been talking of, my beloved Fitz Jarndyce!” + +“No,” said I. “You forget how long I have been here.” + +“True! My dear, for the moment—true. I blame myself. But my memory +has been drawn out of me, with everything else, by what I mentioned. +Ve-ry strong influence, is it not? Well, my dear, there has been a +terrible shipwreck over in those East Indian seas.” + +“Mr. Woodcourt shipwrecked!” + +“Don’t be agitated, my dear. He is safe. An awful scene. Death in all +shapes. Hundreds of dead and dying. Fire, storm, and darkness. +Numbers of the drowning thrown upon a rock. There, and through it +all, my dear physician was a hero. Calm and brave through everything. +Saved many lives, never complained in hunger and thirst, wrapped +naked people in his spare clothes, took the lead, showed them what to +do, governed them, tended the sick, buried the dead, and brought the +poor survivors safely off at last! My dear, the poor emaciated +creatures all but worshipped him. They fell down at his feet when +they got to the land and blessed him. The whole country rings with +it. Stay! Where’s my bag of documents? I have got it there, and you +shall read it, you shall read it!” + +And I DID read all the noble history, though very slowly and +imperfectly then, for my eyes were so dimmed that I could not see the +words, and I cried so much that I was many times obliged to lay down +the long account she had cut out of the newspaper. I felt so +triumphant ever to have known the man who had done such generous and +gallant deeds, I felt such glowing exultation in his renown, I so +admired and loved what he had done, that I envied the storm-worn +people who had fallen at his feet and blessed him as their preserver. +I could myself have kneeled down then, so far away, and blessed him +in my rapture that he should be so truly good and brave. I felt that +no one—mother, sister, wife—could honour him more than I. I did, +indeed! + +My poor little visitor made me a present of the account, and when as +the evening began to close in she rose to take her leave, lest she +should miss the coach by which she was to return, she was still full +of the shipwreck, which I had not yet sufficiently composed myself to +understand in all its details. + +“My dear,” said she as she carefully folded up her scarf and gloves, +“my brave physician ought to have a title bestowed upon him. And no +doubt he will. You are of that opinion?” + +That he well deserved one, yes. That he would ever have one, no. + +“Why not, Fitz Jarndyce?” she asked rather sharply. + +I said it was not the custom in England to confer titles on men +distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great, unless +occasionally when they consisted of the accumulation of some very +large amount of money. + +“Why, good gracious,” said Miss Flite, “how can you say that? Surely +you know, my dear, that all the greatest ornaments of England in +knowledge, imagination, active humanity, and improvement of every +sort are added to its nobility! Look round you, my dear, and +consider. YOU must be rambling a little now, I think, if you don’t +know that this is the great reason why titles will always last in the +land!” + +I am afraid she believed what she said, for there were moments when +she was very mad indeed. + +And now I must part with the little secret I have thus far tried to +keep. I had thought, sometimes, that Mr. Woodcourt loved me and that +if he had been richer he would perhaps have told me that he loved me +before he went away. I had thought, sometimes, that if he had done +so, I should have been glad of it. But how much better it was now +that this had never happened! What should I have suffered if I had +had to write to him and tell him that the poor face he had known as +mine was quite gone from me and that I freely released him from his +bondage to one whom he had never seen! + +Oh, it was so much better as it was! With a great pang mercifully +spared me, I could take back to my heart my childish prayer to be all +he had so brightly shown himself; and there was nothing to be undone: +no chain for me to break or for him to drag; and I could go, please +God, my lowly way along the path of duty, and he could go his nobler +way upon its broader road; and though we were apart upon the journey, +I might aspire to meet him, unselfishly, innocently, better far than +he had thought me when I found some favour in his eyes, at the +journey’s end. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +Chesney Wold + + +Charley and I did not set off alone upon our expedition into +Lincolnshire. My guardian had made up his mind not to lose sight of +me until I was safe in Mr. Boythorn’s house, so he accompanied us, +and we were two days upon the road. I found every breath of air, and +every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every +passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful +to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my +illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of +delight for me. + +My guardian intending to go back immediately, we appointed, on our +way down, a day when my dear girl should come. I wrote her a letter, +of which he took charge, and he left us within half an hour of our +arrival at our destination, on a delightful evening in the early +summer-time. + +If a good fairy had built the house for me with a wave of her wand, +and I had been a princess and her favoured god-child, I could not +have been more considered in it. So many preparations were made for +me and such an endearing remembrance was shown of all my little +tastes and likings that I could have sat down, overcome, a dozen +times before I had revisited half the rooms. I did better than that, +however, by showing them all to Charley instead. Charley’s delight +calmed mine; and after we had had a walk in the garden, and Charley +had exhausted her whole vocabulary of admiring expressions, I was as +tranquilly happy as I ought to have been. It was a great comfort to +be able to say to myself after tea, “Esther, my dear, I think you are +quite sensible enough to sit down now and write a note of thanks to +your host.” He had left a note of welcome for me, as sunny as his own +face, and had confided his bird to my care, which I knew to be his +highest mark of confidence. Accordingly I wrote a little note to him +in London, telling him how all his favourite plants and trees were +looking, and how the most astonishing of birds had chirped the +honours of the house to me in the most hospitable manner, and how, +after singing on my shoulder, to the inconceivable rapture of my +little maid, he was then at roost in the usual corner of his cage, +but whether dreaming or no I could not report. My note finished and +sent off to the post, I made myself very busy in unpacking and +arranging; and I sent Charley to bed in good time and told her I +should want her no more that night. + +For I had not yet looked in the glass and had never asked to have my +own restored to me. I knew this to be a weakness which must be +overcome, but I had always said to myself that I would begin afresh +when I got to where I now was. Therefore I had wanted to be alone, +and therefore I said, now alone, in my own room, “Esther, if you are +to be happy, if you are to have any right to pray to be true-hearted, +you must keep your word, my dear.” I was quite resolved to keep it, +but I sat down for a little while first to reflect upon all my +blessings. And then I said my prayers and thought a little more. + +My hair had not been cut off, though it had been in danger more than +once. It was long and thick. I let it down, and shook it out, and +went up to the glass upon the dressing-table. There was a little +muslin curtain drawn across it. I drew it back and stood for a moment +looking through such a veil of my own hair that I could see nothing +else. Then I put my hair aside and looked at the reflection in the +mirror, encouraged by seeing how placidly it looked at me. I was very +much changed—oh, very, very much. At first my face was so strange to +me that I think I should have put my hands before it and started back +but for the encouragement I have mentioned. Very soon it became more +familiar, and then I knew the extent of the alteration in it better +than I had done at first. It was not like what I had expected, but I +had expected nothing definite, and I dare say anything definite would +have surprised me. + +I had never been a beauty and had never thought myself one, but I had +been very different from this. It was all gone now. Heaven was so +good to me that I could let it go with a few not bitter tears and +could stand there arranging my hair for the night quite thankfully. + +One thing troubled me, and I considered it for a long time before I +went to sleep. I had kept Mr. Woodcourt’s flowers. When they were +withered I had dried them and put them in a book that I was fond of. +Nobody knew this, not even Ada. I was doubtful whether I had a right +to preserve what he had sent to one so different—whether it was +generous towards him to do it. I wished to be generous to him, even +in the secret depths of my heart, which he would never know, because +I could have loved him—could have been devoted to him. At last I +came to the conclusion that I might keep them if I treasured them +only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and gone, never to +be looked back on any more, in any other light. I hope this may not +seem trivial. I was very much in earnest. + +I took care to be up early in the morning and to be before the glass +when Charley came in on tiptoe. + +“Dear, dear, miss!” cried Charley, starting. “Is that you?” + +“Yes, Charley,” said I, quietly putting up my hair. “And I am very +well indeed, and very happy.” + +I saw it was a weight off Charley’s mind, but it was a greater weight +off mine. I knew the worst now and was composed to it. I shall not +conceal, as I go on, the weaknesses I could not quite conquer, but +they always passed from me soon and the happier frame of mind stayed +by me faithfully. + +Wishing to be fully re-established in my strength and my good spirits +before Ada came, I now laid down a little series of plans with +Charley for being in the fresh air all day long. We were to be out +before breakfast, and were to dine early, and were to be out again +before and after dinner, and were to talk in the garden after tea, +and were to go to rest betimes, and were to climb every hill and +explore every road, lane, and field in the neighbourhood. As to +restoratives and strengthening delicacies, Mr. Boythorn’s good +housekeeper was for ever trotting about with something to eat or +drink in her hand; I could not even be heard of as resting in the +park but she would come trotting after me with a basket, her cheerful +face shining with a lecture on the importance of frequent +nourishment. Then there was a pony expressly for my riding, a chubby +pony with a short neck and a mane all over his eyes who could +canter—when he would—so easily and quietly that he was a treasure. +In a very few days he would come to me in the paddock when I called +him, and eat out of my hand, and follow me about. We arrived at such +a capital understanding that when he was jogging with me lazily, and +rather obstinately, down some shady lane, if I patted his neck and +said, “Stubbs, I am surprised you don’t canter when you know how much +I like it; and I think you might oblige me, for you are only getting +stupid and going to sleep,” he would give his head a comical shake or +two and set off directly, while Charley would stand still and laugh +with such enjoyment that her laughter was like music. I don’t know +who had given Stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong to him as +naturally as his rough coat. Once we put him in a little chaise and +drove him triumphantly through the green lanes for five miles; but +all at once, as we were extolling him to the skies, he seemed to take +it ill that he should have been accompanied so far by the circle of +tantalizing little gnats that had been hovering round and round his +ears the whole way without appearing to advance an inch, and stopped +to think about it. I suppose he came to the decision that it was not +to be borne, for he steadily refused to move until I gave the reins +to Charley and got out and walked, when he followed me with a sturdy +sort of good humour, putting his head under my arm and rubbing his +ear against my sleeve. It was in vain for me to say, “Now, Stubbs, I +feel quite sure from what I know of you that you will go on if I ride +a little while,” for the moment I left him, he stood stock still +again. Consequently I was obliged to lead the way, as before; and in +this order we returned home, to the great delight of the village. + +Charley and I had reason to call it the most friendly of villages, I +am sure, for in a week’s time the people were so glad to see us go +by, though ever so frequently in the course of a day, that there were +faces of greeting in every cottage. I had known many of the grown +people before and almost all the children, but now the very steeple +began to wear a familiar and affectionate look. Among my new friends +was an old old woman who lived in such a little thatched and +whitewashed dwelling that when the outside shutter was turned up on +its hinges, it shut up the whole house-front. This old lady had a +grandson who was a sailor, and I wrote a letter to him for her and +drew at the top of it the chimney-corner in which she had brought him +up and where his old stool yet occupied its old place. This was +considered by the whole village the most wonderful achievement in the +world, but when an answer came back all the way from Plymouth, in +which he mentioned that he was going to take the picture all the way +to America, and from America would write again, I got all the credit +that ought to have been given to the post-office and was invested +with the merit of the whole system. + +Thus, what with being so much in the air, playing with so many +children, gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation in so +many cottages, going on with Charley’s education, and writing long +letters to Ada every day, I had scarcely any time to think about that +little loss of mine and was almost always cheerful. If I did think of +it at odd moments now and then, I had only to be busy and forget it. +I felt it more than I had hoped I should once when a child said, +“Mother, why is the lady not a pretty lady now like she used to be?” +But when I found the child was not less fond of me, and drew its soft +hand over my face with a kind of pitying protection in its touch, +that soon set me up again. There were many little occurrences which +suggested to me, with great consolation, how natural it is to gentle +hearts to be considerate and delicate towards any inferiority. One of +these particularly touched me. I happened to stroll into the little +church when a marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had +to sign the register. + +The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross +for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had +known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl +in the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the +school, and I could not help looking at her with some surprise. She +came aside and whispered to me, while tears of honest love and +admiration stood in her bright eyes, “He’s a dear good fellow, miss; +but he can’t write yet—he’s going to learn of me—and I wouldn’t +shame him for the world!” Why, what had I to fear, I thought, when +there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man’s daughter! + +The air blew as freshly and revivingly upon me as it had ever blown, +and the healthy colour came into my new face as it had come into my +old one. Charley was wonderful to see, she was so radiant and so +rosy; and we both enjoyed the whole day and slept soundly the whole +night. + +There was a favourite spot of mine in the park-woods of Chesney Wold +where a seat had been erected commanding a lovely view. The wood had +been cleared and opened to improve this point of sight, and the +bright sunny landscape beyond was so beautiful that I rested there at +least once every day. A picturesque part of the Hall, called the +Ghost’s Walk, was seen to advantage from this higher ground; and the +startling name, and the old legend in the Dedlock family which I had +heard from Mr. Boythorn accounting for it, mingled with the view and +gave it something of a mysterious interest in addition to its real +charms. There was a bank here, too, which was a famous one for +violets; and as it was a daily delight of Charley’s to gather wild +flowers, she took as much to the spot as I did. + +It would be idle to inquire now why I never went close to the house +or never went inside it. The family were not there, I had heard on my +arrival, and were not expected. I was far from being incurious or +uninterested about the building; on the contrary, I often sat in this +place wondering how the rooms ranged and whether any echo like a +footstep really did resound at times, as the story said, upon the +lonely Ghost’s Walk. The indefinable feeling with which Lady Dedlock +had impressed me may have had some influence in keeping me from the +house even when she was absent. I am not sure. Her face and figure +were associated with it, naturally; but I cannot say that they +repelled me from it, though something did. For whatever reason or no +reason, I had never once gone near it, down to the day at which my +story now arrives. + +I was resting at my favourite point after a long ramble, and Charley +was gathering violets at a little distance from me. I had been +looking at the Ghost’s Walk lying in a deep shade of masonry afar off +and picturing to myself the female shape that was said to haunt it +when I became aware of a figure approaching through the wood. The +perspective was so long and so darkened by leaves, and the shadows of +the branches on the ground made it so much more intricate to the eye, +that at first I could not discern what figure it was. By little and +little it revealed itself to be a woman’s—a lady’s—Lady Dedlock’s. +She was alone and coming to where I sat with a much quicker step, I +observed to my surprise, than was usual with her. + +I was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so near (she was almost +within speaking distance before I knew her) and would have risen to +continue my walk. But I could not. I was rendered motionless. Not so +much by her hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her quick +advance and outstretched hands, not so much by the great change in +her manner and the absence of her haughty self-restraint, as by a +something in her face that I had pined for and dreamed of when I was +a little child, something I had never seen in any face, something I +had never seen in hers before. + +A dread and faintness fell upon me, and I called to Charley. Lady +Dedlock stopped upon the instant and changed back almost to what I +had known her. + +“Miss Summerson, I am afraid I have startled you,” she said, now +advancing slowly. “You can scarcely be strong yet. You have been very +ill, I know. I have been much concerned to hear it.” + +I could no more have removed my eyes from her pale face than I could +have stirred from the bench on which I sat. She gave me her hand, and +its deadly coldness, so at variance with the enforced composure of +her features, deepened the fascination that overpowered me. I cannot +say what was in my whirling thoughts. + +“You are recovering again?” she asked kindly. + +“I was quite well but a moment ago, Lady Dedlock.” + +“Is this your young attendant?” + +“Yes.” + +“Will you send her on before and walk towards your house with me?” + +“Charley,” said I, “take your flowers home, and I will follow you +directly.” + +Charley, with her best curtsy, blushingly tied on her bonnet and went +her way. When she was gone, Lady Dedlock sat down on the seat beside +me. + +I cannot tell in any words what the state of my mind was when I saw +in her hand my handkerchief with which I had covered the dead baby. + +I looked at her, but I could not see her, I could not hear her, I +could not draw my breath. The beating of my heart was so violent and +wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me. But when she +caught me to her breast, kissed me, wept over me, compassionated me, +and called me back to myself; when she fell down on her knees and +cried to me, “Oh, my child, my child, I am your wicked and unhappy +mother! Oh, try to forgive me!”—when I saw her at my feet on the +bare earth in her great agony of mind, I felt, through all my tumult +of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of God that I was +so changed as that I never could disgrace her by any trace of +likeness, as that nobody could ever now look at me and look at her +and remotely think of any near tie between us. + +I raised my mother up, praying and beseeching her not to stoop before +me in such affliction and humiliation. I did so in broken, incoherent +words, for besides the trouble I was in, it frightened me to see her +at MY feet. I told her—or I tried to tell her—that if it were for +me, her child, under any circumstances to take upon me to forgive +her, I did it, and had done it, many, many years. I told her that my +heart overflowed with love for her, that it was natural love which +nothing in the past had changed or could change. That it was not for +me, then resting for the first time on my mother’s bosom, to take her +to account for having given me life, but that my duty was to bless +her and receive her, though the whole world turned from her, and that +I only asked her leave to do it. I held my mother in my embrace, and +she held me in hers, and among the still woods in the silence of the +summer day there seemed to be nothing but our two troubled minds that +was not at peace. + +“To bless and receive me,” groaned my mother, “it is far too late. I +must travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it will. +From day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see the way +before my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I have brought +upon myself. I bear it, and I hide it.” + +Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of +proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off +again. + +“I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly +for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that +I am!” + +These words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more +terrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her +hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that I +should touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any +endearments I could use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no, no, +no, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and disdainful +everywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there, in the only +natural moments of her life. + +My unhappy mother told me that in my illness she had been nearly +frantic. She had but then known that her child was living. She could +not have suspected me to be that child before. She had followed me +down here to speak to me but once in all her life. We never could +associate, never could communicate, never probably from that time +forth could interchange another word on earth. She put into my hands +a letter she had written for my reading only and said when I had read +it and destroyed it—but not so much for her sake, since she asked +nothing, as for her husband’s and my own—I must evermore consider +her as dead. If I could believe that she loved me, in this agony in +which I saw her, with a mother’s love, she asked me to do that, for +then I might think of her with a greater pity, imagining what she +suffered. She had put herself beyond all hope and beyond all help. +Whether she preserved her secret until death or it came to be +discovered and she brought dishonour and disgrace upon the name she +had taken, it was her solitary struggle always; and no affection +could come near her, and no human creature could render her any aid. + +“But is the secret safe so far?” I asked. “Is it safe now, dearest +mother?” + +“No,” replied my mother. “It has been very near discovery. It was +saved by an accident. It may be lost by another accident—to-morrow, +any day.” + +“Do you dread a particular person?” + +“Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me. I am not worthy of +these tears,” said my mother, kissing my hands. “I dread one person +very much.” + +“An enemy?” + +“Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir +Leicester Dedlock’s lawyer, mechanically faithful without attachment, +and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being +master of the mysteries of great houses.” + +“Has he any suspicions?” + +“Many.” + +“Not of you?” I said alarmed. + +“Yes! He is always vigilant and always near me. I may keep him at a +standstill, but I can never shake him off.” + +“Has he so little pity or compunction?” + +“He has none, and no anger. He is indifferent to everything but his +calling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets and the holding +possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer or opponent +in it.” + +“Could you trust in him?” + +“I shall never try. The dark road I have trodden for so many years +will end where it will. I follow it alone to the end, whatever the +end be. It may be near, it may be distant; while the road lasts, +nothing turns me.” + +“Dear mother, are you so resolved?” + +“I AM resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with +pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived +many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie +it, if I can. It has closed around me almost as awfully as if these +woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house, but my course +through it is the same. I have but one; I can have but one.” + +“Mr. Jarndyce—” I was beginning when my mother hurriedly inquired, +“Does HE suspect?” + +“No,” said I. “No, indeed! Be assured that he does not!” And I told +her what he had related to me as his knowledge of my story. “But he +is so good and sensible,” said I, “that perhaps if he knew—” + +My mother, who until this time had made no change in her position, +raised her hand up to my lips and stopped me. + +“Confide fully in him,” she said after a little while. “You have my +free consent—a small gift from such a mother to her injured +child!—but do not tell me of it. Some pride is left in me even yet.” + +I explained, as nearly as I could then, or can recall now—for my +agitation and distress throughout were so great that I scarcely +understood myself, though every word that was uttered in the mother’s +voice, so unfamiliar and so melancholy to me, which in my childhood I +had never learned to love and recognize, had never been sung to sleep +with, had never heard a blessing from, had never had a hope inspired +by, made an enduring impression on my memory—I say I explained, or +tried to do it, how I had only hoped that Mr. Jarndyce, who had been +the best of fathers to me, might be able to afford some counsel and +support to her. But my mother answered no, it was impossible; no one +could help her. Through the desert that lay before her, she must go +alone. + +“My child, my child!” she said. “For the last time! These kisses for +the last time! These arms upon my neck for the last time! We shall +meet no more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be what I have +been so long. Such is my reward and doom. If you hear of Lady +Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched +mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the +reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering +within her breast the only love and truth of which it is capable! And +then forgive her if you can, and cry to heaven to forgive her, which +it never can!” + +We held one another for a little space yet, but she was so firm that +she took my hands away, and put them back against my breast, and with +a last kiss as she held them there, released them, and went from me +into the wood. I was alone, and calm and quiet below me in the sun +and shade lay the old house, with its terraces and turrets, on which +there had seemed to me to be such complete repose when I first saw +it, but which now looked like the obdurate and unpitying watcher of +my mother’s misery. + +Stunned as I was, as weak and helpless at first as I had ever been in +my sick chamber, the necessity of guarding against the danger of +discovery, or even of the remotest suspicion, did me service. I took +such precautions as I could to hide from Charley that I had been +crying, and I constrained myself to think of every sacred obligation +that there was upon me to be careful and collected. It was not a +little while before I could succeed or could even restrain bursts of +grief, but after an hour or so I was better and felt that I might +return. I went home very slowly and told Charley, whom I found at the +gate looking for me, that I had been tempted to extend my walk after +Lady Dedlock had left me and that I was over-tired and would lie +down. Safe in my own room, I read the letter. I clearly derived from +it—and that was much then—that I had not been abandoned by my +mother. Her elder and only sister, the godmother of my childhood, +discovering signs of life in me when I had been laid aside as dead, +had in her stern sense of duty, with no desire or willingness that I +should live, reared me in rigid secrecy and had never again beheld my +mother’s face from within a few hours of my birth. So strangely did I +hold my place in this world that until within a short time back I had +never, to my own mother’s knowledge, breathed—had been buried—had +never been endowed with life—had never borne a name. When she had +first seen me in the church she had been startled and had thought of +what would have been like me if it had ever lived, and had lived on, +but that was all then. + +What more the letter told me needs not to be repeated here. It has +its own times and places in my story. + +My first care was to burn what my mother had written and to consume +even its ashes. I hope it may not appear very unnatural or bad in me +that I then became heavily sorrowful to think I had ever been reared. +That I felt as if I knew it would have been better and happier for +many people if indeed I had never breathed. That I had a terror of +myself as the danger and the possible disgrace of my own mother and +of a proud family name. That I was so confused and shaken as to be +possessed by a belief that it was right and had been intended that I +should die in my birth, and that it was wrong and not intended that I +should be then alive. + +These are the real feelings that I had. I fell asleep worn out, and +when I awoke I cried afresh to think that I was back in the world +with my load of trouble for others. I was more than ever frightened +of myself, thinking anew of her against whom I was a witness, of the +owner of Chesney Wold, of the new and terrible meaning of the old +words now moaning in my ear like a surge upon the shore, “Your +mother, Esther, was your disgrace, and you are hers. The time will +come—and soon enough—when you will understand this better, and will +feel it too, as no one save a woman can.” With them, those other +words returned, “Pray daily that the sins of others be not visited +upon your head.” I could not disentangle all that was about me, and I +felt as if the blame and the shame were all in me, and the visitation +had come down. + +The day waned into a gloomy evening, overcast and sad, and I still +contended with the same distress. I went out alone, and after walking +a little in the park, watching the dark shades falling on the trees +and the fitful flight of the bats, which sometimes almost touched me, +was attracted to the house for the first time. Perhaps I might not +have gone near it if I had been in a stronger frame of mind. As it +was, I took the path that led close by it. + +I did not dare to linger or to look up, but I passed before the +terrace garden with its fragrant odours, and its broad walks, and its +well-kept beds and smooth turf; and I saw how beautiful and grave it +was, and how the old stone balustrades and parapets, and wide flights +of shallow steps, were seamed by time and weather; and how the +trained moss and ivy grew about them, and around the old stone +pedestal of the sun-dial; and I heard the fountain falling. Then the +way went by long lines of dark windows diversified by turreted towers +and porches of eccentric shapes, where old stone lions and grotesque +monsters bristled outside dens of shadow and snarled at the evening +gloom over the escutcheons they held in their grip. Thence the path +wound underneath a gateway, and through a court-yard where the +principal entrance was (I hurried quickly on), and by the stables +where none but deep voices seemed to be, whether in the murmuring of +the wind through the strong mass of ivy holding to a high red wall, +or in the low complaining of the weathercock, or in the barking of +the dogs, or in the slow striking of a clock. So, encountering +presently a sweet smell of limes, whose rustling I could hear, I +turned with the turning of the path to the south front, and there +above me were the balustrades of the Ghost’s Walk and one lighted +window that might be my mother’s. + +The way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps +from being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags. Stopping +to look at nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I was passing +quickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the lighted +window, when my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind +that there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the Ghost’s Walk, +that it was I who was to bring calamity upon the stately house and +that my warning feet were haunting it even then. Seized with an +augmented terror of myself which turned me cold, I ran from myself +and everything, retraced the way by which I had come, and never +paused until I had gained the lodge-gate, and the park lay sullen and +black behind me. + +Not before I was alone in my own room for the night and had again +been dejected and unhappy there did I begin to know how wrong and +thankless this state was. But from my darling who was coming on the +morrow, I found a joyful letter, full of such loving anticipation +that I must have been of marble if it had not moved me; from my +guardian, too, I found another letter, asking me to tell Dame Durden, +if I should see that little woman anywhere, that they had moped most +pitiably without her, that the housekeeping was going to rack and +ruin, that nobody else could manage the keys, and that everybody in +and about the house declared it was not the same house and was +becoming rebellious for her return. Two such letters together made me +think how far beyond my deserts I was beloved and how happy I ought +to be. That made me think of all my past life; and that brought me, +as it ought to have done before, into a better condition. + +For I saw very well that I could not have been intended to die, or I +should never have lived; not to say should never have been reserved +for such a happy life. I saw very well how many things had worked +together for my welfare, and that if the sins of the fathers were +sometimes visited upon the children, the phrase did not mean what I +had in the morning feared it meant. I knew I was as innocent of my +birth as a queen of hers and that before my Heavenly Father I should +not be punished for birth nor a queen rewarded for it. I had had +experience, in the shock of that very day, that I could, even thus +soon, find comforting reconcilements to the change that had fallen on +me. I renewed my resolutions and prayed to be strengthened in them, +pouring out my heart for myself and for my unhappy mother and feeling +that the darkness of the morning was passing away. It was not upon my +sleep; and when the next day’s light awoke me, it was gone. + +My dear girl was to arrive at five o’clock in the afternoon. How to +help myself through the intermediate time better than by taking a +long walk along the road by which she was to come, I did not know; so +Charley and I and Stubbs—Stubbs saddled, for we never drove him +after the one great occasion—made a long expedition along that road +and back. On our return, we held a great review of the house and +garden and saw that everything was in its prettiest condition, and +had the bird out ready as an important part of the establishment. + +There were more than two full hours yet to elapse before she could +come, and in that interval, which seemed a long one, I must confess I +was nervously anxious about my altered looks. I loved my darling so +well that I was more concerned for their effect on her than on any +one. I was not in this slight distress because I at all repined—I am +quite certain I did not, that day—but, I thought, would she be +wholly prepared? When she first saw me, might she not be a little +shocked and disappointed? Might it not prove a little worse than she +expected? Might she not look for her old Esther and not find her? +Might she not have to grow used to me and to begin all over again? + +I knew the various expressions of my sweet girl’s face so well, and +it was such an honest face in its loveliness, that I was sure +beforehand she could not hide that first look from me. And I +considered whether, if it should signify any one of these meanings, +which was so very likely, could I quite answer for myself? + +Well, I thought I could. After last night, I thought I could. But to +wait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was such +bad preparation that I resolved to go along the road again and meet +her. + +So I said to Charley, “Charley, I will go by myself and walk along +the road until she comes.” Charley highly approving of anything that +pleased me, I went and left her at home. + +But before I got to the second milestone, I had been in so many +palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I knew it was +not, and could not, be the coach yet) that I resolved to turn back +and go home again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of the +coach coming up behind me (though I still knew that it neither would, +nor could, do any such thing) that I ran the greater part of the way +to avoid being overtaken. + +Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice +thing to have done! Now I was hot and had made the worst of it +instead of the best. + +At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour more +yet, Charley all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in the +garden, “Here she comes, miss! Here she is!” + +I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room and hid +myself behind the door. There I stood trembling, even when I heard my +darling calling as she came upstairs, “Esther, my dear, my love, +where are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!” + +She ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. Ah, my angel +girl! The old dear look, all love, all fondness, all affection. +Nothing else in it—no, nothing, nothing! + +Oh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful +girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely +cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a +child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of, and +pressing me to her faithful heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +Jarndyce and Jarndyce + + +If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it to +Ada before we had been long together. But it was not mine, and I did +not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian, unless +some great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone; still my +present duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the attachment of my +dear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement to do it. Though +often when she was asleep and all was quiet, the remembrance of my +mother kept me waking and made the night sorrowful, I did not yield +to it at another time; and Ada found me what I used to be—except, of +course, in that particular of which I have said enough and which I +have no intention of mentioning any more just now, if I can help it. + +The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first evening +when Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the house, +and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for Lady Dedlock +had spoken to me in the woods the day before yesterday, was great. +Greater still when Ada asked me what she had said, and when I replied +that she had been kind and interested, and when Ada, while admitting +her beauty and elegance, remarked upon her proud manner and her +imperious chilling air. But Charley helped me through, unconsciously, +by telling us that Lady Dedlock had only stayed at the house two +nights on her way from London to visit at some other great house in +the next county and that she had left early on the morning after we +had seen her at our view, as we called it. Charley verified the adage +about little pitchers, I am sure, for she heard of more sayings and +doings in a day than would have come to my ears in a month. + +We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn’s. My pet had scarcely been +there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening after +we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers, and +just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a very +important air behind Ada’s chair, beckoned me mysteriously out of the +room. + +“Oh! If you please, miss,” said Charley in a whisper, with her eyes +at their roundest and largest. “You’re wanted at the Dedlock Arms.” + +“Why, Charley,” said I, “who can possibly want me at the +public-house?” + +“I don’t know, miss,” returned Charley, putting her head forward and +folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron, which she +always did in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or confidential, +“but it’s a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and will you please +to come without saying anything about it.” + +“Whose compliments, Charley?” + +“His’n, miss,” returned Charley, whose grammatical education was +advancing, but not very rapidly. + +“And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?” + +“I am not the messenger, if you please, miss,” returned my little +maid. “It was W. Grubble, miss.” + +“And who is W. Grubble, Charley?” + +“Mister Grubble, miss,” returned Charley. “Don’t you know, miss? The +Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble,” which Charley delivered as if she were +slowly spelling out the sign. + +“Aye? The landlord, Charley?” + +“Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman, but +she broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her brother’s the +sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he’ll drink +himself to death entirely on beer,” said Charley. + +Not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive +now, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. I bade Charley +be quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having put them +on, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as much at +home as in Mr. Boythorn’s garden. + +Mr. Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his very +clean little tavern waiting for me. He lifted off his hat with both +hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it were an +iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the sanded +passage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more plants in +it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen Caroline, +several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and dried fish in +glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious pumpkin (but I +don’t know which, and I doubt if many people did) hanging from his +ceiling. I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight, from his often +standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish, middle-aged man +who never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed for his own +fire-side without his hat and top-boots, but who never wore a coat +except at church. + +He snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it +looked, backed out of the room—unexpectedly to me, for I was going +to ask him by whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite parlour +being then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears I +thought, which stopped. A quick light step approached the room in +which I was, and who should stand before me but Richard! + +“My dear Esther!” he said. “My best friend!” And he really was so +warm-hearted and earnest that in the first surprise and pleasure of +his brotherly greeting I could scarcely find breath to tell him that +Ada was well. + +“Answering my very thoughts—always the same dear girl!” said +Richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me. + +I put my veil up, but not quite. + +“Always the same dear girl!” said Richard just as heartily as before. + +I put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Richard’s sleeve +and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his kind +welcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so because of +the determination I had made in my illness, which I now conveyed to +him. + +“My love,” said Richard, “there is no one with whom I have a greater +wish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me.” + +“And I want you, Richard,” said I, shaking my head, “to understand +some one else.” + +“Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce,” said Richard, “—I +suppose you mean him?” + +“Of course I do.” + +“Then I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that +subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind—you, my +dear! I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce or Mr. Anybody.” + +I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it. + +“Well, well, my dear,” said Richard, “we won’t go into that now. I +want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under my +arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your loyalty +to John Jarndyce will allow that?” + +“My dear Richard,” I returned, “you know you would be heartily +welcome at his house—your home, if you will but consider it so; and +you are as heartily welcome here!” + +“Spoken like the best of little women!” cried Richard gaily. + +I asked him how he liked his profession. + +“Oh, I like it well enough!” said Richard. “It’s all right. It does +as well as anything else, for a time. I don’t know that I shall care +about it when I come to be settled, but I can sell out then +and—however, never mind all that botheration at present.” + +So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the opposite +of Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking look that +passed over him, so dreadfully like her! + +“I am in town on leave just now,” said Richard. + +“Indeed?” + +“Yes. I have run over to look after my—my Chancery interests before +the long vacation,” said Richard, forcing a careless laugh. “We are +beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I promise you.” + +No wonder that I shook my head! + +“As you say, it’s not a pleasant subject.” Richard spoke with the +same shade crossing his face as before. “Let it go to the four winds +for to-night. Puff! Gone! Who do you suppose is with me?” + +“Was it Mr. Skimpole’s voice I heard?” + +“That’s the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a +fascinating child it is!” + +I asked Richard if any one knew of their coming down together. He +answered, no, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear old +infant—so he called Mr. Skimpole—and the dear old infant had told +him where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent on +coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to come +too; and so he had brought him. “And he is worth—not to say his +sordid expenses—but thrice his weight in gold,” said Richard. “He is +such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh and +green-hearted!” + +I certainly did not see the proof of Mr. Skimpole’s worldliness in +his having his expenses paid by Richard, but I made no remark about +that. Indeed, he came in and turned our conversation. He was charmed +to see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy and +sympathy at intervals for six weeks on my account, had never been so +happy as in hearing of my progress, began to understand the mixture +of good and evil in the world now, felt that he appreciated health +the more when somebody else was ill, didn’t know but what it might be +in the scheme of things that A should squint to make B happier in +looking straight or that C should carry a wooden leg to make D better +satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk stocking. + +“My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard,” said Mr. +Skimpole, “full of the brightest visions of the future, which he +evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that’s delightful, that’s +inspiriting, that’s full of poetry! In old times the woods and +solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary piping +and dancing of Pan and the nymphs. This present shepherd, our +pastoral Richard, brightens the dull Inns of Court by making Fortune +and her train sport through them to the melodious notes of a judgment +from the bench. That’s very pleasant, you know! Some ill-conditioned +growling fellow may say to me, ‘What’s the use of these legal and +equitable abuses? How do you defend them?’ I reply, ‘My growling +friend, I DON’T defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. There +is a shepherd—youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into +something highly fascinating to my simplicity. I don’t say it is for +this that they exist—for I am a child among you worldly grumblers, +and not called upon to account to you or myself for anything—but it +may be so.’” + +I began seriously to think that Richard could scarcely have found a +worse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time when he +most required some right principle and purpose he should have this +captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy +dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I +could understand how such a nature as my guardian’s, experienced in +the world and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and +contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in Mr. +Skimpole’s avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless candour; +but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as it seemed or +that it did not serve Mr. Skimpole’s idle turn quite as well as any +other part, and with less trouble. + +They both walked back with me, and Mr. Skimpole leaving us at the +gate, I walked softly in with Richard and said, “Ada, my love, I have +brought a gentleman to visit you.” It was not difficult to read the +blushing, startled face. She loved him dearly, and he knew it, and I +knew it. It was a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins +only. + +I almost mistrusted myself as growing quite wicked in my suspicions, +but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly. He admired her +very much—any one must have done that—and I dare say would have +renewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour but +that he knew how she would respect her promise to my guardian. Still +I had a tormenting idea that the influence upon him extended even +here, that he was postponing his best truth and earnestness in this +as in all things until Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be off his mind. +Ah me! What Richard would have been without that blight, I never +shall know now! + +He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make +any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too +implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr. Jarndyce, that he +had come openly to see her and to see me and to justify himself for +the present terms on which he stood with Mr. Jarndyce. As the dear +old infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make an +appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right through +the means of an unreserved conversation with me. I proposed to walk +with him in the park at seven o’clock, and this was arranged. Mr. +Skimpole soon afterwards appeared and made us merry for an hour. He +particularly requested to see little Coavinses (meaning Charley) and +told her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father +all the business in his power and that if one of her little brothers +would make haste to get set up in the same profession, he hoped he +should still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way. + +“For I am constantly being taken in these nets,” said Mr. Skimpole, +looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, “and am +constantly being bailed out—like a boat. Or paid off—like a ship’s +company. Somebody always does it for me. I can’t do it, you know, for +I never have any money. But somebody does it. I get out by somebody’s +means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me +who somebody is, upon my word I couldn’t tell you. Let us drink to +somebody. God bless him!” + +Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for +him long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy +and the sky without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the +sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see; +the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since +yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so +massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the minute details of +every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the glory +of that day. + +“This is a lovely place,” said Richard, looking round. “None of the +jar and discord of law-suits here!” + +But there was other trouble. + +“I tell you what, my dear girl,” said Richard, “when I get affairs in +general settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest.” + +“Would it not be better to rest now?” I asked. + +“Oh, as to resting NOW,” said Richard, “or as to doing anything very +definite NOW, that’s not easy. In short, it can’t be done; I can’t do +it at least.” + +“Why not?” said I. + +“You know why not, Esther. If you were living in an unfinished house, +liable to have the roof put on or taken off—to be from top to bottom +pulled down or built up—to-morrow, next day, next week, next month, +next year—you would find it hard to rest or settle. So do I. Now? +There’s no now for us suitors.” + +I could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor +little wandering friend had expatiated when I saw again the darkened +look of last night. Terrible to think it had in it also a shade of +that unfortunate man who had died. + +“My dear Richard,” said I, “this is a bad beginning of our +conversation.” + +“I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden.” + +“And not I alone, dear Richard. It was not I who cautioned you once +never to found a hope or expectation on the family curse.” + +“There you come back to John Jarndyce!” said Richard impatiently. +“Well! We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple of +what I have to say, and it’s as well at once. My dear Esther, how can +you be so blind? Don’t you see that he is an interested party and +that it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the +suit, and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well +for me?” + +“Oh, Richard,” I remonstrated, “is it possible that you can ever have +seen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his roof +and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this solitary place +where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy suspicions?” + +He reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of +reproach. He was silent for a little while before he replied in a +subdued voice, “Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean +fellow and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being +poor qualities in one of my years.” + +“I know it very well,” said I. “I am not more sure of anything.” + +“That’s a dear girl,” retorted Richard, “and like you, because it +gives me comfort. I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all +this business, for it’s a bad one at the best, as I have no occasion +to tell you.” + +“I know perfectly,” said I. “I know as well, Richard—what shall I +say? as well as you do—that such misconstructions are foreign to +your nature. And I know, as well as you know, what so changes it.” + +“Come, sister, come,” said Richard a little more gaily, “you will be +fair with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be under that +influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a +little twisted him too. I don’t say that he is not an honourable man, +out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it +taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him +say so fifty times. Then why should HE escape?” + +“Because,” said I, “his is an uncommon character, and he has +resolutely kept himself outside the circle, Richard.” + +“Oh, because and because!” replied Richard in his vivacious way. “I +am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to +preserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties +interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die +off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things +may smoothly happen that are convenient enough.” + +I was so touched with pity for Richard that I could not reproach him +any more, even by a look. I remembered my guardian’s gentleness +towards his errors and with what perfect freedom from resentment he +had spoken of them. + +“Esther,” Richard resumed, “you are not to suppose that I have come +here to make underhanded charges against John Jarndyce. I have only +come to justify myself. What I say is, it was all very well and we +got on very well while I was a boy, utterly regardless of this same +suit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it and to look +into it, then it was quite another thing. Then John Jarndyce +discovers that Ada and I must break off and that if I don’t amend +that very objectionable course, I am not fit for her. Now, Esther, I +don’t mean to amend that very objectionable course: I will not hold +John Jarndyce’s favour on those unfair terms of compromise, which he +has no right to dictate. Whether it pleases him or displeases him, I +must maintain my rights and Ada’s. I have been thinking about it a +good deal, and this is the conclusion I have come to.” + +Poor dear Richard! He had indeed been thinking about it a good deal. +His face, his voice, his manner, all showed that too plainly. + +“So I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him +about all this) that we are at issue and that we had better be at +issue openly than covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his +protection, and he goes his road, and I go mine. The fact is, our +roads are not the same. Under one of the wills in dispute, I should +take much more than he. I don’t mean to say that it is the one to be +established, but there it is, and it has its chance.” + +“I have not to learn from you, my dear Richard,” said I, “of your +letter. I had heard of it already without an offended or angry word.” + +“Indeed?” replied Richard, softening. “I am glad I said he was an +honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. But I always say +that and have never doubted it. Now, my dear Esther, I know these +views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when you +tell her what has passed between us. But if you had gone into the +case as I have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers as I +did when I was at Kenge’s, if you only knew what an accumulation of +charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and cross-suspicions, +they involve, you would think me moderate in comparison.” + +“Perhaps so,” said I. “But do you think that, among those many +papers, there is much truth and justice, Richard?” + +“There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther—” + +“Or was once, long ago,” said I. + +“Is—is—must be somewhere,” pursued Richard impetuously, “and must +be brought out. To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of is +not the way to bring it out. You say the suit is changing me; John +Jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change everybody who +has any share in it. Then the greater right I have on my side when I +resolve to do all I can to bring it to an end.” + +“All you can, Richard! Do you think that in these many years no +others have done all they could? Has the difficulty grown easier +because of so many failures?” + +“It can’t last for ever,” returned Richard with a fierceness kindling +in him which again presented to me that last sad reminder. “I am +young and earnest, and energy and determination have done wonders +many a time. Others have only half thrown themselves into it. I +devote myself to it. I make it the object of my life.” + +“Oh, Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!” + +“No, no, no, don’t you be afraid for me,” he returned affectionately. +“You’re a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl; but you have your +prepossessions. So I come round to John Jarndyce. I tell you, my good +Esther, when he and I were on those terms which he found so +convenient, we were not on natural terms.” + +“Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?” + +“No, I don’t say that. I mean that all this business puts us on +unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible. See +another reason for urging it on! I may find out when it’s over that I +have been mistaken in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer when I am +free of it, and I may then agree with what you say to-day. Very well. +Then I shall acknowledge it and make him reparation.” + +Everything postponed to that imaginary time! Everything held in +confusion and indecision until then! + +“Now, my best of confidantes,” said Richard, “I want my cousin Ada to +understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John +Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish +to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great +esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften +the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and—and in +short,” said Richard, who had been hesitating through these words, +“I—I don’t like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious, +doubting character to a confiding girl like Ada.” + +I told him that he was more like himself in those latter words than +in anything he had said yet. + +“Why,” acknowledged Richard, “that may be true enough, my love. I +rather feel it to be so. But I shall be able to give myself fair-play +by and by. I shall come all right again, then, don’t you be afraid.” + +I asked him if this were all he wished me to tell Ada. + +“Not quite,” said Richard. “I am bound not to withhold from her that +John Jarndyce answered my letter in his usual manner, addressing me +as ‘My dear Rick,’ trying to argue me out of my opinions, and telling +me that they should make no difference in him. (All very well of +course, but not altering the case.) I also want Ada to know that if I +see her seldom just now, I am looking after her interests as well as +my own—we two being in the same boat exactly—and that I hope she +will not suppose from any flying rumours she may hear that I am at +all light-headed or imprudent; on the contrary, I am always looking +forward to the termination of the suit, and always planning in that +direction. Being of age now and having taken the step I have taken, I +consider myself free from any accountability to John Jarndyce; but +Ada being still a ward of the court, I don’t yet ask her to renew our +engagement. When she is free to act for herself, I shall be myself +once more and we shall both be in very different worldly +circumstances, I believe. If you tell her all this with the advantage +of your considerate way, you will do me a very great and a very kind +service, my dear Esther; and I shall knock Jarndyce and Jarndyce on +the head with greater vigour. Of course I ask for no secrecy at Bleak +House.” + +“Richard,” said I, “you place great confidence in me, but I fear you +will not take advice from me?” + +“It’s impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl. On any +other, readily.” + +As if there were any other in his life! As if his whole career and +character were not being dyed one colour! + +“But I may ask you a question, Richard?” + +“I think so,” said he, laughing. “I don’t know who may not, if you +may not.” + +“You say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life.” + +“How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing settled!” + +“Are you in debt again?” + +“Why, of course I am,” said Richard, astonished at my simplicity. + +“Is it of course?” + +“My dear child, certainly. I can’t throw myself into an object so +completely without expense. You forget, or perhaps you don’t know, +that under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It’s only a +question between the larger sum and the smaller. I shall be within +the mark any way. Bless your heart, my excellent girl,” said Richard, +quite amused with me, “I shall be all right! I shall pull through, my +dear!” + +I felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood that I +tried, in Ada’s name, in my guardian’s, in my own, by every fervent +means that I could think of, to warn him of it and to show him some +of his mistakes. He received everything I said with patience and +gentleness, but it all rebounded from him without taking the least +effect. I could not wonder at this after the reception his +preoccupied mind had given to my guardian’s letter, but I determined +to try Ada’s influence yet. + +So when our walk brought us round to the village again, and I went +home to breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was going to give +her and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that Richard was +losing himself and scattering his whole life to the winds. It made +her very unhappy, of course, though she had a far, far greater +reliance on his correcting his errors than I could have—which was so +natural and loving in my dear!—and she presently wrote him this +little letter: + + + My dearest cousin, + + Esther has told me all you said to her this morning. I + write this to repeat most earnestly for myself all that + she said to you and to let you know how sure I am that + you will sooner or later find our cousin John a pattern + of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you will deeply, + deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it) so + much wrong. + + I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next, + but I trust you will understand it as I mean it. I have + some fears, my dearest cousin, that it may be partly for + my sake you are now laying up so much unhappiness for + yourself—and if for yourself, for me. In case this should + be so, or in case you should entertain much thought of me + in what you are doing, I most earnestly entreat and beg + you to desist. You can do nothing for my sake that will + make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon + the shadow in which we both were born. Do not be angry + with me for saying this. Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my + sake, and for your own, and in a natural repugnance for + that source of trouble which had its share in making us + both orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it + go for ever. We have reason to know by this time that + there is no good in it and no hope, that there is nothing + to be got from it but sorrow. + + My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you + are quite free and that it is very likely you may find + some one whom you will love much better than your first + fancy. I am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that + the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow + your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and + see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen + way, than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very + rich with you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost + of dragging years of procrastination and anxiety and of + your indifference to other aims. You may wonder at my + saying this so confidently with so little knowledge or + experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own + heart. + + Ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionate + + Ada + + +This note brought Richard to us very soon, but it made little change +in him if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was right and who +was wrong—he would show us—we should see! He was animated and +glowing, as if Ada’s tenderness had gratified him; but I could only +hope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some stronger effect +upon his mind on re-perusal than it assuredly had then. + +As they were to remain with us that day and had taken their places to +return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of speaking +to Mr. Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way, and +I delicately said that there was a responsibility in encouraging +Richard. + +“Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?” he repeated, catching at +the word with the pleasantest smile. “I am the last man in the world +for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life—I can’t be.” + +“I am afraid everybody is obliged to be,” said I timidly enough, he +being so much older and more clever than I. + +“No, really?” said Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most +agreeable jocularity of surprise. “But every man’s not obliged to be +solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson,” he took +a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, “there’s so +much money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of +counting. Call it four and ninepence—call it four pound nine. They +tell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as +much as good-natured people will let me owe. If they don’t stop, why +should I? There you have Harold Skimpole in little. If that’s +responsibility, I am responsible.” + +The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again and +looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been +mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me +feel as if he really had nothing to do with it. + +“Now, when you mention responsibility,” he resumed, “I am disposed to +say that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I should +consider so refreshingly responsible as yourself. You appear to me +to be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I see you, my +dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of the whole +little orderly system of which you are the centre, I feel inclined +to say to myself—in fact I do say to myself very often—THAT’S +responsibility!” + +It was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I +persisted so far as to say that we all hoped he would check and not +confirm Richard in the sanguine views he entertained just then. + +“Most willingly,” he retorted, “if I could. But, my dear Miss +Summerson, I have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand and +leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after +fortune, I must go. If he says, ‘Skimpole, join the dance!’ I must +join it. Common sense wouldn’t, I know, but I have NO common sense.” + +It was very unfortunate for Richard, I said. + +“Do you think so!” returned Mr. Skimpole. “Don’t say that, don’t say +that. Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense—an +excellent man—a good deal wrinkled—dreadfully practical—change for +a ten-pound note in every pocket—ruled account-book in his +hand—say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear +Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with +poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion, +‘I see a golden prospect before me; it’s very bright, it’s very +beautiful, it’s very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape +to come at it!’ The respectable companion instantly knocks him down +with the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic way that +he sees no such thing; shows him it’s nothing but fees, fraud, +horsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now you know that’s a painful +change—sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt, but +disagreeable. I can’t do it. I haven’t got the ruled account-book, I +have none of the tax-gathering elements in my composition, I am not +at all respectable, and I don’t want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it +is!” + +It was idle to say more, so I proposed that we should join Ada and +Richard, who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr. Skimpole in +despair. He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning and +whimsically described the family pictures as we walked. There were +such portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Dedlock dead and gone, +he told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of assault in their +hands. They tended their flocks severely in buckram and powder and +put their sticking-plaster patches on to terrify commoners as the +chiefs of some other tribes put on their war-paint. There was a Sir +Somebody Dedlock, with a battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke, +flashes of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed fort, all in full +action between his horse’s two hind legs, showing, he supposed, how +little a Dedlock made of such trifles. The whole race he represented +as having evidently been, in life, what he called “stuffed people”—a +large collection, glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on +their various twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from +animation, and always in glass cases. + +I was not so easy now during any reference to the name but that I +felt it a relief when Richard, with an exclamation of surprise, +hurried away to meet a stranger whom he first descried coming slowly +towards us. + +“Dear me!” said Mr. Skimpole. “Vholes!” + +We asked if that were a friend of Richard’s. + +“Friend and legal adviser,” said Mr. Skimpole. “Now, my dear Miss +Summerson, if you want common sense, responsibility, and +respectability, all united—if you want an exemplary man—Vholes is +THE man.” + +We had not known, we said, that Richard was assisted by any gentleman +of that name. + +“When he emerged from legal infancy,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “he +parted from our conversational friend Kenge and took up, I believe, +with Vholes. Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to +Vholes.” + +“Had you known him long?” asked Ada. + +“Vholes? My dear Miss Clare, I had had that kind of acquaintance with +him which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession. He had +done something or other in a very agreeable, civil manner—taken +proceedings, I think, is the expression—which ended in the +proceeding of his taking ME. Somebody was so good as to step in and +pay the money—something and fourpence was the amount; I forget the +pounds and shillings, but I know it ended with fourpence, because it +struck me at the time as being so odd that I could owe anybody +fourpence—and after that I brought them together. Vholes asked me +for the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think of it,” he +looked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he made the +discovery, “Vholes bribed me, perhaps? He gave me something and +called it commission. Was it a five-pound note? Do you know, I think +it MUST have been a five-pound note!” + +His further consideration of the point was prevented by Richard’s +coming back to us in an excited state and hastily representing Mr. +Vholes—a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were +cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin, +about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in +black, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so +remarkable in him as a lifeless manner and a slow, fixed way he had +of looking at Richard. + +“I hope I don’t disturb you, ladies,” said Mr. Vholes, and now I +observed that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of +speaking. “I arranged with Mr. Carstone that he should always know +when his cause was in the Chancellor’s paper, and being informed by +one of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather +unexpectedly, in the paper for to-morrow, I put myself into the coach +early this morning and came down to confer with him.” + +“Yes,” said Richard, flushed, and looking triumphantly at Ada and me, +“we don’t do these things in the old slow way now. We spin along now! +Mr. Vholes, we must hire something to get over to the post town in, +and catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!” + +“Anything you please, sir,” returned Mr. Vholes. “I am quite at your +service.” + +“Let me see,” said Richard, looking at his watch. “If I run down to +the Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a gig, or +a chaise, or whatever’s to be got, we shall have an hour then before +starting. I’ll come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you and Esther take +care of Mr. Vholes when I am gone?” + +He was away directly, in his heat and hurry, and was soon lost in the +dusk of evening. We who were left walked on towards the house. + +“Is Mr. Carstone’s presence necessary to-morrow, Sir?” said I. “Can +it do any good?” + +“No, miss,” Mr. Vholes replied. “I am not aware that it can.” + +Both Ada and I expressed our regret that he should go, then, only to +be disappointed. + +“Mr. Carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own +interests,” said Mr. Vholes, “and when a client lays down his own +principle, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it +out. I wish in business to be exact and open. I am a widower with +three daughters—Emma, Jane, and Caroline—and my desire is so to +discharge the duties of life as to leave them a good name. This +appears to be a pleasant spot, miss.” + +The remark being made to me in consequence of my being next him as we +walked, I assented and enumerated its chief attractions. + +“Indeed?” said Mr. Vholes. “I have the privilege of supporting an +aged father in the Vale of Taunton—his native place—and I admire +that country very much. I had no idea there was anything so +attractive here.” + +To keep up the conversation, I asked Mr. Vholes if he would like to +live altogether in the country. + +“There, miss,” said he, “you touch me on a tender string. My health +is not good (my digestion being much impaired), and if I had only +myself to consider, I should take refuge in rural habits, especially +as the cares of business have prevented me from ever coming much into +contact with general society, and particularly with ladies’ society, +which I have most wished to mix in. But with my three daughters, +Emma, Jane, and Caroline—and my aged father—I cannot afford to be +selfish. It is true I have no longer to maintain a dear grandmother +who died in her hundred and second year, but enough remains to render +it indispensable that the mill should be always going.” + +It required some attention to hear him on account of his inward +speaking and his lifeless manner. + +“You will excuse my having mentioned my daughters,” he said. “They +are my weak point. I wish to leave the poor girls some little +independence, as well as a good name.” + +We now arrived at Mr. Boythorn’s house, where the tea-table, all +prepared, was awaiting us. Richard came in restless and hurried +shortly afterwards, and leaning over Mr. Vholes’s chair, whispered +something in his ear. Mr. Vholes replied aloud—or as nearly aloud I +suppose as he had ever replied to anything—“You will drive me, will +you, sir? It is all the same to me, sir. Anything you please. I am +quite at your service.” + +We understood from what followed that Mr. Skimpole was to be left +until the morning to occupy the two places which had been already +paid for. As Ada and I were both in low spirits concerning Richard +and very sorry so to part with him, we made it as plain as we +politely could that we should leave Mr. Skimpole to the Dedlock Arms +and retire when the night-travellers were gone. + +Richard’s high spirits carrying everything before them, we all went +out together to the top of the hill above the village, where he had +ordered a gig to wait and where we found a man with a lantern +standing at the head of the gaunt pale horse that had been harnessed +to it. + +I never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern’s +light, Richard all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in his +hand; Mr. Vholes quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up, looking +at him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it. I have +before me the whole picture of the warm dark night, the summer +lightning, the dusty track of road closed in by hedgerows and high +trees, the gaunt pale horse with his ears pricked up, and the driving +away at speed to Jarndyce and Jarndyce. + +My dear girl told me that night how Richard’s being thereafter +prosperous or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only make this +difference to her, that the more he needed love from one unchanging +heart, the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him; +how he thought of her through his present errors, and she would think +of him at all times—never of herself if she could devote herself to +him, never of her own delights if she could minister to his. + +And she kept her word? + +I look along the road before me, where the distance already shortens +and the journey’s end is growing visible; and true and good above the +dead sea of the Chancery suit and all the ashy fruit it cast ashore, +I think I see my darling. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +A Struggle + + +When our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we were +punctual to the day and were received with an overpowering welcome. I +was perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding my +housekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in as if +I had been a new year, with a merry little peal. “Once more, duty, +duty, Esther,” said I; “and if you are not overjoyed to do it, more +than cheerfully and contentedly, through anything and everything, you +ought to be. That’s all I have to say to you, my dear!” + +The first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle and business, +devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated journeys to +and fro between the growlery and all other parts of the house, so +many rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a general new +beginning altogether, that I had not a moment’s leisure. But when +these arrangements were completed and everything was in order, I paid +a visit of a few hours to London, which something in the letter I had +destroyed at Chesney Wold had induced me to decide upon in my own +mind. + +I made Caddy Jellyby—her maiden name was so natural to me that I +always called her by it—the pretext for this visit and wrote her a +note previously asking the favour of her company on a little business +expedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I got to London +by stage-coach in such good time that I got to Newman Street with the +day before me. + +Caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding-day, was so glad and so +affectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should make her +husband jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad—I mean as good; +and in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave me any +possibility of doing anything meritorious. + +The elder Mr. Turveydrop was in bed, I found, and Caddy was +milling his chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an +apprentice—it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the +trade of dancing—was waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law +was extremely kind and considerate, Caddy told me, and they lived +most happily together. (When she spoke of their living together, she +meant that the old gentleman had all the good things and all the good +lodging, while she and her husband had what they could get, and were +poked into two corner rooms over the Mews.) + +“And how is your mama, Caddy?” said I. + +“Why, I hear of her, Esther,” replied Caddy, “through Pa, but I see +very little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say, but Ma +thinks there is something absurd in my having married a +dancing-master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her.” + +It struck me that if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own natural +duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope +in search of others, she would have taken the best precautions +against becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observe that I kept this +to myself. + +“And your papa, Caddy?” + +“He comes here every evening,” returned Caddy, “and is so fond of +sitting in the corner there that it’s a treat to see him.” + +Looking at the corner, I plainly perceived the mark of Mr. Jellyby’s +head against the wall. It was consolatory to know that he had found +such a resting-place for it. + +“And you, Caddy,” said I, “you are always busy, I’ll be bound?” + +“Well, my dear,” returned Caddy, “I am indeed, for to tell you a +grand secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Prince’s health +is not strong, and I want to be able to assist him. What with +schools, and classes here, and private pupils, AND the apprentices, +he really has too much to do, poor fellow!” + +The notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me that I asked +Caddy if there were many of them. + +“Four,” said Caddy. “One in-door, and three out. They are +very good children; only when they get together they WILL +play—children-like—instead of attending to their work. So the +little boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen, +and we distribute the others over the house as well as we can.” + +“That is only for their steps, of course?” said I. + +“Only for their steps,” said Caddy. “In that way they practise, so +many hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. They +dance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures at five +every morning.” + +“Why, what a laborious life!” I exclaimed. + +“I assure you, my dear,” returned Caddy, smiling, “when the out-door +apprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into our room, +not to disturb old Mr. Turveydrop), and when I put up the window and +see them standing on the door-step with their little pumps under +their arms, I am actually reminded of the Sweeps.” + +All this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure. +Caddy enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerfully +recounted the particulars of her own studies. + +“You see, my dear, to save expense I ought to know something of the +piano, and I ought to know something of the kit too, and consequently +I have to practise those two instruments as well as the details of +our profession. If Ma had been like anybody else, I might have had +some little musical knowledge to begin upon. However, I hadn’t any; +and that part of the work is, at first, a little discouraging, I must +allow. But I have a very good ear, and I am used to drudgery—I have +to thank Ma for that, at all events—and where there’s a will there’s +a way, you know, Esther, the world over.” Saying these words, Caddy +laughingly sat down at a little jingling square piano and really +rattled off a quadrille with great spirit. Then she good-humouredly +and blushingly got up again, and while she still laughed herself, +said, “Don’t laugh at me, please; that’s a dear girl!” + +I would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her and +praised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed, +dancing-master’s wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in +her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural, +wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that was quite +as good as a mission. + +“My dear,” said Caddy, delighted, “you can’t think how you cheer me. +I shall owe you, you don’t know how much. What changes, Esther, even +in my small world! You recollect that first night, when I was so +unpolite and inky? Who would have thought, then, of my ever teaching +people to dance, of all other possibilities and impossibilities!” + +Her husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now coming back, +preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room, Caddy +informed me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not my time yet, +I was glad to tell her, for I should have been vexed to take her away +then. Therefore we three adjourned to the apprentices together, and I +made one in the dance. + +The apprentices were the queerest little people. Besides the +melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone +in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little +limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such +a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her +sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean +little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles, +and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legs and +feet—and heels particularly. + +I asked Caddy what had made their parents choose this profession for +them. Caddy said she didn’t know; perhaps they were designed for +teachers, perhaps for the stage. They were all people in humble +circumstances, and the melancholy boy’s mother kept a ginger-beer +shop. + +We danced for an hour with great gravity, the melancholy child doing +wonders with his lower extremities, in which there appeared to be +some sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist. Caddy, +while she was observant of her husband and was evidently founded upon +him, had acquired a grace and self-possession of her own, which, +united to her pretty face and figure, was uncommonly agreeable. She +already relieved him of much of the instruction of these young +people, and he seldom interfered except to walk his part in the +figure if he had anything to do in it. He always played the tune. The +affectation of the gauzy child, and her condescension to the boys, +was a sight. And thus we danced an hour by the clock. + +When the practice was concluded, Caddy’s husband made himself ready +to go out of town to a school, and Caddy ran away to get ready to go +out with me. I sat in the ball-room in the interval, contemplating +the apprentices. The two out-door boys went upon the staircase to put +on their half-boots and pull the in-door boy’s hair, as I judged from +the nature of his objections. Returning with their jackets buttoned +and their pumps stuck in them, they then produced packets of cold +bread and meat and bivouacked under a painted lyre on the wall. The +little gauzy child, having whisked her sandals into the reticule and +put on a trodden-down pair of shoes, shook her head into the dowdy +bonnet at one shake, and answering my inquiry whether she liked +dancing by replying, “Not with boys,” tied it across her chin, and +went home contemptuous. + +“Old Mr. Turveydrop is so sorry,” said Caddy, “that he has not +finished dressing yet and cannot have the pleasure of seeing you +before you go. You are such a favourite of his, Esther.” + +I expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think it +necessary to add that I readily dispensed with this attention. + +“It takes him a long time to dress,” said Caddy, “because he is very +much looked up to in such things, you know, and has a reputation to +support. You can’t think how kind he is to Pa. He talks to Pa of an +evening about the Prince Regent, and I never saw Pa so interested.” + +There was something in the picture of Mr. Turveydrop bestowing his +deportment on Mr. Jellyby that quite took my fancy. I asked Caddy if +he brought her papa out much. + +“No,” said Caddy, “I don’t know that he does that, but he talks to +Pa, and Pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. Of course +I am aware that Pa has hardly any claims to deportment, but they get +on together delightfully. You can’t think what good companions they +make. I never saw Pa take snuff before in my life, but he takes one +pinch out of Mr. Turveydrop’s box regularly and keeps putting it to +his nose and taking it away again all the evening.” + +That old Mr. Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of +life, have come to the rescue of Mr. Jellyby from Borrioboola-Gha +appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities. + +“As to Peepy,” said Caddy with a little hesitation, “whom I was most +afraid of—next to having any family of my own, Esther—as an +inconvenience to Mr. Turveydrop, the kindness of the old gentleman to +that child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my dear! He lets +him take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the crusts of +his toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he +tells him to come to me for sixpences. In short,” said Caddy +cheerily, “and not to prose, I am a very fortunate girl and ought to +be very grateful. Where are we going, Esther?” + +“To the Old Street Road,” said I, “where I have a few words to say to +the solicitor’s clerk who was sent to meet me at the coach-office on +the very day when I came to London and first saw you, my dear. Now I +think of it, the gentleman who brought us to your house.” + +“Then, indeed, I seem to be naturally the person to go with you,” +returned Caddy. + +To the Old Street Road we went and there inquired at Mrs. Guppy’s +residence for Mrs. Guppy. Mrs. Guppy, occupying the parlours and +having indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut +in the front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for, +immediately presented herself and requested us to walk in. She was an +old lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose and rather an +unsteady eye, but smiling all over. Her close little sitting-room was +prepared for a visit, and there was a portrait of her son in it +which, I had almost written here, was more like than life: it +insisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to +let him off. + +Not only was the portrait there, but we found the original there too. +He was dressed in a great many colours and was discovered at a table +reading law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead. + +“Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Guppy, rising, “this is indeed an oasis. +Mother, will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady and +get out of the gangway.” + +Mrs. Guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish +appearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner, +holding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation, +with both hands. + +I presented Caddy, and Mr. Guppy said that any friend of mine was +more than welcome. I then proceeded to the object of my visit. + +“I took the liberty of sending you a note, sir,” said I. + +Mr. Guppy acknowledged the receipt by taking it out of his +breast-pocket, putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pocket +with a bow. Mr. Guppy’s mother was so diverted that she rolled her +head as she smiled and made a silent appeal to Caddy with her elbow. + +“Could I speak to you alone for a moment?” said I. + +Anything like the jocoseness of Mr. Guppy’s mother just now, I think +I never saw. She made no sound of laughter, but she rolled her head, +and shook it, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appealed to +Caddy with her elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder, and was so +unspeakably entertained altogether that it was with some difficulty +she could marshal Caddy through the little folding-door into her +bedroom adjoining. + +“Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Guppy, “you will excuse the waywardness of +a parent ever mindful of a son’s appiness. My mother, though highly +exasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal dictates.” + +I could hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have +turned so red or changed so much as Mr. Guppy did when I now put up +my veil. + +“I asked the favour of seeing you for a few moments here,” said I, +“in preference to calling at Mr. Kenge’s because, remembering what +you said on an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence, I feared +I might otherwise cause you some embarrassment, Mr. Guppy.” + +I caused him embarrassment enough as it was, I am sure. I never saw +such faltering, such confusion, such amazement and apprehension. + +“Miss Summerson,” stammered Mr. Guppy, “I—I—beg your pardon, but in +our profession—we—we—find it necessary to be explicit. You have +referred to an occasion, miss, when I—when I did myself the honour +of making a declaration which—” + +Something seemed to rise in his throat that he could not possibly +swallow. He put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tried again to +swallow it, coughed again, made faces again, looked all round the +room, and fluttered his papers. + +“A kind of giddy sensation has come upon me, miss,” he explained, +“which rather knocks me over. I—er—a little subject to this sort of +thing—er—by George!” + +I gave him a little time to recover. He consumed it in putting his +hand to his forehead and taking it away again, and in backing his +chair into the corner behind him. + +“My intention was to remark, miss,” said Mr. Guppy, “dear +me—something bronchial, I think—hem!—to remark that you was so +good on that occasion as to repel and repudiate that declaration. +You—you wouldn’t perhaps object to admit that? Though no witnesses +are present, it might be a satisfaction to—to your mind—if you was +to put in that admission.” + +“There can be no doubt,” said I, “that I declined your proposal +without any reservation or qualification whatever, Mr. Guppy.” + +“Thank you, miss,” he returned, measuring the table with his troubled +hands. “So far that’s satisfactory, and it does you credit. Er—this +is certainly bronchial!—must be in the tubes—er—you wouldn’t +perhaps be offended if I was to mention—not that it’s necessary, for +your own good sense or any person’s sense must show ’em that—if I +was to mention that such declaration on my part was final, and there +terminated?” + +“I quite understand that,” said I. + +“Perhaps—er—it may not be worth the form, but it might be a +satisfaction to your mind—perhaps you wouldn’t object to admit that, +miss?” said Mr. Guppy. + +“I admit it most fully and freely,” said I. + +“Thank you,” returned Mr. Guppy. “Very honourable, I am sure. I +regret that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over +which I have no control, will put it out of my power ever to fall +back upon that offer or to renew it in any shape or form whatever, +but it will ever be a retrospect entwined—er—with friendship’s +bowers.” Mr. Guppy’s bronchitis came to his relief and stopped his +measurement of the table. + +“I may now perhaps mention what I wished to say to you?” I began. + +“I shall be honoured, I am sure,” said Mr. Guppy. “I am so persuaded +that your own good sense and right feeling, miss, will—will keep you +as square as possible—that I can have nothing but pleasure, I am +sure, in hearing any observations you may wish to offer.” + +“You were so good as to imply, on that occasion—” + +“Excuse me, miss,” said Mr. Guppy, “but we had better not travel out +of the record into implication. I cannot admit that I implied +anything.” + +“You said on that occasion,” I recommenced, “that you might possibly +have the means of advancing my interests and promoting my fortunes by +making discoveries of which I should be the subject. I presume that +you founded that belief upon your general knowledge of my being an +orphan girl, indebted for everything to the benevolence of Mr. +Jarndyce. Now, the beginning and the end of what I have come to beg +of you is, Mr. Guppy, that you will have the kindness to relinquish +all idea of so serving me. I have thought of this sometimes, and I +have thought of it most lately—since I have been ill. At length I +have decided, in case you should at any time recall that purpose and +act upon it in any way, to come to you and assure you that you are +altogether mistaken. You could make no discovery in reference to me +that would do me the least service or give me the least pleasure. I +am acquainted with my personal history, and I have it in my power to +assure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means. You +may, perhaps, have abandoned this project a long time. If so, excuse +my giving you unnecessary trouble. If not, I entreat you, on the +assurance I have given you, henceforth to lay it aside. I beg you to +do this, for my peace.” + +“I am bound to confess,” said Mr. Guppy, “that you express yourself, +miss, with that good sense and right feeling for which I gave you +credit. Nothing can be more satisfactory than such right feeling, and +if I mistook any intentions on your part just now, I am prepared to +tender a full apology. I should wish to be understood, miss, as +hereby offering that apology—limiting it, as your own good sense and +right feeling will point out the necessity of, to the present +proceedings.” + +I must say for Mr. Guppy that the snuffling manner he had had upon +him improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to do +something I asked, and he looked ashamed. + +“If you will allow me to finish what I have to say at once so that I +may have no occasion to resume,” I went on, seeing him about to +speak, “you will do me a kindness, sir. I come to you as privately as +possible because you announced this impression of yours to me in a +confidence which I have really wished to respect—and which I always +have respected, as you remember. I have mentioned my illness. There +really is no reason why I should hesitate to say that I know very +well that any little delicacy I might have had in making a request to +you is quite removed. Therefore I make the entreaty I have now +preferred, and I hope you will have sufficient consideration for me +to accede to it.” + +I must do Mr. Guppy the further justice of saying that he had looked +more and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and very +earnest when he now replied with a burning face, “Upon my word and +honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I am a living +man, I’ll act according to your wish! I’ll never go another step in +opposition to it. I’ll take my oath to it if it will be any +satisfaction to you. In what I promise at this present time touching +the matters now in question,” continued Mr. Guppy rapidly, as if he +were repeating a familiar form of words, “I speak the truth, the +whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so—” + +“I am quite satisfied,” said I, rising at this point, “and I thank +you very much. Caddy, my dear, I am ready!” + +Mr. Guppy’s mother returned with Caddy (now making me the recipient +of her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our leave. Mr. +Guppy saw us to the door with the air of one who was either +imperfectly awake or walking in his sleep; and we left him there, +staring. + +But in a minute he came after us down the street without any hat, and +with his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, saying fervently, +“Miss Summerson, upon my honour and soul, you may depend upon me!” + +“I do,” said I, “quite confidently.” + +“I beg your pardon, miss,” said Mr. Guppy, going with one leg and +staying with the other, “but this lady being present—your own +witness—it might be a satisfaction to your mind (which I should wish +to set at rest) if you was to repeat those admissions.” + +“Well, Caddy,” said I, turning to her, “perhaps you will not be +surprised when I tell you, my dear, that there never has been any +engagement—” + +“No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever,” suggested Mr. Guppy. + +“No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever,” said I, “between +this gentleman—” + +“William Guppy, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of +Middlesex,” he murmured. + +“Between this gentleman, Mr. William Guppy, of Penton Place, +Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex, and myself.” + +“Thank you, miss,” said Mr. Guppy. “Very full—er—excuse me—lady’s +name, Christian and surname both?” + +I gave them. + +“Married woman, I believe?” said Mr. Guppy. “Married woman. Thank +you. Formerly Caroline Jellyby, spinster, then of Thavies Inn, within +the city of London, but extra-parochial; now of Newman Street, Oxford +Street. Much obliged.” + +He ran home and came running back again. + +“Touching that matter, you know, I really and truly am very sorry +that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which +I have no control, should prevent a renewal of what was wholly +terminated some time back,” said Mr. Guppy to me forlornly and +despondently, “but it couldn’t be. Now COULD it, you know! I only put +it to you.” + +I replied it certainly could not. The subject did not admit of a +doubt. He thanked me and ran to his mother’s again—and back again. + +“It’s very honourable of you, miss, I am sure,” said Mr. Guppy. “If +an altar could be erected in the bowers of friendship—but, upon my +soul, you may rely upon me in every respect save and except the +tender passion only!” + +The struggle in Mr. Guppy’s breast and the numerous oscillations it +occasioned him between his mother’s door and us were sufficiently +conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted +cutting) to make us hurry away. I did so with a lightened heart; but +when we last looked back, Mr. Guppy was still oscillating in the same +troubled state of mind. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +Attorney and Client + + +The name of Mr. Vholes, preceded by the legend Ground-Floor, is +inscribed upon a door-post in Symond’s Inn, Chancery Lane—a little, +pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn like a large dust-binn of two +compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man +in his way and constructed his inn of old building materials which +took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and +dismal, and perpetuated Symond’s memory with congenial shabbiness. +Quartered in this dingy hatchment commemorative of Symond are the +legal bearings of Mr. Vholes. + +Mr. Vholes’s office, in disposition retiring and in situation +retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall. Three +feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr. Vholes’s +jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest +midsummer morning and encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage +staircase against which belated civilians generally strike their +brows. Mr. Vholes’s chambers are on so small a scale that one clerk +can open the door without getting off his stool, while the other who +elbows him at the same desk has equal facilities for poking the fire. +A smell as of unwholesome sheep blending with the smell of must and +dust is referable to the nightly (and often daily) consumption of +mutton fat in candles and to the fretting of parchment forms and +skins in greasy drawers. The atmosphere is otherwise stale and close. +The place was last painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of man, +and the two chimneys smoke, and there is a loose outer surface of +soot everywhere, and the dull cracked windows in their heavy frames +have but one piece of character in them, which is a determination to +be always dirty and always shut unless coerced. This accounts for the +phenomenon of the weaker of the two usually having a bundle of +firewood thrust between its jaws in hot weather. + +Mr. Vholes is a very respectable man. He has not a large business, +but he is a very respectable man. He is allowed by the greater +attorneys who have made good fortunes or are making them to be a most +respectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice, which is a +mark of respectability. He never takes any pleasure, which is another +mark of respectability. He is reserved and serious, which is another +mark of respectability. His digestion is impaired, which is highly +respectable. And he is making hay of the grass which is flesh, for +his three daughters. And his father is dependent on him in the Vale +of Taunton. + +The one great principle of the English law is to make business for +itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and +consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by +this light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze +the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive +that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their +expense, and surely they will cease to grumble. + +But not perceiving this quite plainly—only seeing it by halves in a +confused way—the laity sometimes suffer in peace and pocket, with a +bad grace, and DO grumble very much. Then this respectability of Mr. +Vholes is brought into powerful play against them. “Repeal this +statute, my good sir?” says Mr. Kenge to a smarting client. “Repeal +it, my dear sir? Never, with my consent. Alter this law, sir, and +what will be the effect of your rash proceeding on a class of +practitioners very worthily represented, allow me to say to you, by +the opposite attorney in the case, Mr. Vholes? Sir, that class of +practitioners would be swept from the face of the earth. Now you +cannot afford—I will say, the social system cannot afford—to lose +an order of men like Mr. Vholes. Diligent, persevering, steady, acute +in business. My dear sir, I understand your present feelings against +the existing state of things, which I grant to be a little hard in +your case; but I can never raise my voice for the demolition of a +class of men like Mr. Vholes.” The respectability of Mr. Vholes has +even been cited with crushing effect before Parliamentary committees, +as in the following blue minutes of a distinguished attorney’s +evidence. “Question (number five hundred and seventeen thousand eight +hundred and sixty-nine): If I understand you, these forms of practice +indisputably occasion delay? Answer: Yes, some delay. Question: And +great expense? Answer: Most assuredly they cannot be gone through for +nothing. Question: And unspeakable vexation? Answer: I am not +prepared to say that. They have never given ME any vexation; quite +the contrary. Question: But you think that their abolition would +damage a class of practitioners? Answer: I have no doubt of it. +Question: Can you instance any type of that class? Answer: Yes. I +would unhesitatingly mention Mr. Vholes. He would be ruined. +Question: Mr. Vholes is considered, in the profession, a respectable +man? Answer:”—which proved fatal to the inquiry for ten years—“Mr. +Vholes is considered, in the profession, a MOST respectable man.” + +So in familiar conversation, private authorities no less +disinterested will remark that they don’t know what this age is +coming to, that we are plunging down precipices, that now here is +something else gone, that these changes are death to people like +Vholes—a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the Vale +of Taunton, and three daughters at home. Take a few steps more in +this direction, say they, and what is to become of Vholes’s father? +Is he to perish? And of Vholes’s daughters? Are they to be +shirt-makers, or governesses? As though, Mr. Vholes and his relations +being minor cannibal chiefs and it being proposed to abolish +cannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus: Make +man-eating unlawful, and you starve the Vholeses! + +In a word, Mr. Vholes, with his three daughters and his father in the +Vale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of timber, +to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a +nuisance. And with a great many people in a great many instances, the +question is never one of a change from wrong to right (which is quite +an extraneous consideration), but is always one of injury or +advantage to that eminently respectable legion, Vholes. + +The Chancellor is, within these ten minutes, “up” for the long +vacation. Mr. Vholes, and his young client, and several blue bags +hastily stuffed out of all regularity of form, as the larger sort of +serpents are in their first gorged state, have returned to the +official den. Mr. Vholes, quiet and unmoved, as a man of so much +respectability ought to be, takes off his close black gloves as if he +were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight hat as if he were +scalping himself, and sits down at his desk. The client throws his +hat and gloves upon the ground—tosses them anywhere, without looking +after them or caring where they go; flings himself into a chair, half +sighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon his hand and +looks the portrait of young despair. + +“Again nothing done!” says Richard. “Nothing, nothing done!” + +“Don’t say nothing done, sir,” returns the placid Vholes. “That is +scarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!” + +“Why, what IS done?” says Richard, turning gloomily upon him. + +“That may not be the whole question,” returns Vholes, “The question +may branch off into what is doing, what is doing?” + +“And what is doing?” asks the moody client. + +Vholes, sitting with his arms on the desk, quietly bringing the tips +of his five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left fingers, +and quietly separating them again, and fixedly and slowly looking at +his client, replies, “A good deal is doing, sir. We have put our +shoulders to the wheel, Mr. Carstone, and the wheel is going round.” + +“Yes, with Ixion on it. How am I to get through the next four or five +accursed months?” exclaims the young man, rising from his chair and +walking about the room. + +“Mr. C.,” returns Vholes, following him close with his eyes wherever +he goes, “your spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on your +account. Excuse me if I recommend you not to chafe so much, not to be +so impetuous, not to wear yourself out so. You should have more +patience. You should sustain yourself better.” + +“I ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr. Vholes?” says Richard, sitting +down again with an impatient laugh and beating the devil’s tattoo +with his boot on the patternless carpet. + +“Sir,” returns Vholes, always looking at the client as if he were +making a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his +professional appetite. “Sir,” returns Vholes with his inward manner +of speech and his bloodless quietude, “I should not have had the +presumption to propose myself as a model for your imitation or any +man’s. Let me but leave the good name to my three daughters, and that +is enough for me; I am not a self-seeker. But since you mention me so +pointedly, I will acknowledge that I should like to impart to you a +little of my—come, sir, you are disposed to call it insensibility, +and I am sure I have no objection—say insensibility—a little of my +insensibility.” + +“Mr. Vholes,” explains the client, somewhat abashed, “I had no +intention to accuse you of insensibility.” + +“I think you had, sir, without knowing it,” returns the equable +Vholes. “Very naturally. It is my duty to attend to your interests +with a cool head, and I can quite understand that to your excited +feelings I may appear, at such times as the present, insensible. My +daughters may know me better; my aged father may know me better. But +they have known me much longer than you have, and the confiding eye +of affection is not the distrustful eye of business. Not that I +complain, sir, of the eye of business being distrustful; quite the +contrary. In attending to your interests, I wish to have all possible +checks upon me; it is right that I should have them; I court inquiry. +But your interests demand that I should be cool and methodical, Mr. +Carstone; and I cannot be otherwise—no, sir, not even to please +you.” + +Mr. Vholes, after glancing at the official cat who is patiently +watching a mouse’s hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his young +client and proceeds in his buttoned-up, half-audible voice as if +there were an unclean spirit in him that will neither come out nor +speak out, “What are you to do, sir, you inquire, during the +vacation. I should hope you gentlemen of the army may find many means +of amusing yourselves if you give your minds to it. If you had asked +me what I was to do during the vacation, I could have answered you +more readily. I am to attend to your interests. I am to be found +here, day by day, attending to your interests. That is my duty, Mr. +C., and term-time or vacation makes no difference to me. If you wish +to consult me as to your interests, you will find me here at all +times alike. Other professional men go out of town. I don’t. Not that +I blame them for going; I merely say I don’t go. This desk is your +rock, sir!” + +Mr. Vholes gives it a rap, and it sounds as hollow as a coffin. Not +to Richard, though. There is encouragement in the sound to him. +Perhaps Mr. Vholes knows there is. + +“I am perfectly aware, Mr. Vholes,” says Richard, more familiarly and +good-humouredly, “that you are the most reliable fellow in the world +and that to have to do with you is to have to do with a man of +business who is not to be hoodwinked. But put yourself in my case, +dragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper into +difficulty every day, continually hoping and continually +disappointed, conscious of change upon change for the worse in +myself, and of no change for the better in anything else, and you +will find it a dark-looking case sometimes, as I do.” + +“You know,” says Mr. Vholes, “that I never give hopes, sir. I told +you from the first, Mr. C., that I never give hopes. Particularly in +a case like this, where the greater part of the costs comes out of +the estate, I should not be considerate of my good name if I gave +hopes. It might seem as if costs were my object. Still, when you say +there is no change for the better, I must, as a bare matter of fact, +deny that.” + +“Aye?” returns Richard, brightening. “But how do you make it out?” + +“Mr. Carstone, you are represented by—” + +“You said just now—a rock.” + +“Yes, sir,” says Mr. Vholes, gently shaking his head and rapping the +hollow desk, with a sound as if ashes were falling on ashes, and dust +on dust, “a rock. That’s something. You are separately represented, +and no longer hidden and lost in the interests of others. THAT’S +something. The suit does not sleep; we wake it up, we air it, we walk +it about. THAT’S something. It’s not all Jarndyce, in fact as well as +in name. THAT’S something. Nobody has it all his own way now, sir. +And THAT’S something, surely.” + +Richard, his face flushing suddenly, strikes the desk with his +clenched hand. + +“Mr. Vholes! If any man had told me when I first went to John +Jarndyce’s house that he was anything but the disinterested friend he +seemed—that he was what he has gradually turned out to be—I could +have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I could not +have defended him too ardently. So little did I know of the world! +Whereas now I do declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment +of the suit; that in place of its being an abstraction, it is John +Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more indignant I am with him; +that every new delay and every new disappointment is only a new +injury from John Jarndyce’s hand.” + +“No, no,” says Vholes. “Don’t say so. We ought to have patience, all +of us. Besides, I never disparage, sir. I never disparage.” + +“Mr. Vholes,” returns the angry client. “You know as well as I that +he would have strangled the suit if he could.” + +“He was not active in it,” Mr. Vholes admits with an appearance of +reluctance. “He certainly was not active in it. But however, but +however, he might have had amiable intentions. Who can read the +heart, Mr. C.!” + +“You can,” returns Richard. + +“I, Mr. C.?” + +“Well enough to know what his intentions were. Are or are not our +interests conflicting? Tell—me—that!” says Richard, accompanying +his last three words with three raps on his rock of trust. + +“Mr. C.,” returns Vholes, immovable in attitude and never winking his +hungry eyes, “I should be wanting in my duty as your professional +adviser, I should be departing from my fidelity to your interests, if +I represented those interests as identical with the interests of Mr. +Jarndyce. They are no such thing, sir. I never impute motives; I both +have and am a father, and I never impute motives. But I must not +shrink from a professional duty, even if it sows dissensions in +families. I understand you to be now consulting me professionally as +to your interests? You are so? I reply, then, they are not identical +with those of Mr. Jarndyce.” + +“Of course they are not!” cries Richard. “You found that out long +ago.” + +“Mr. C.,” returns Vholes, “I wish to say no more of any third party +than is necessary. I wish to leave my good name unsullied, together +with any little property of which I may become possessed through +industry and perseverance, to my daughters Emma, Jane, and Caroline. +I also desire to live in amity with my professional brethren. When +Mr. Skimpole did me the honour, sir—I will not say the very high +honour, for I never stoop to flattery—of bringing us together in +this room, I mentioned to you that I could offer no opinion or advice +as to your interests while those interests were entrusted to another +member of the profession. And I spoke in such terms as I was bound to +speak of Kenge and Carboy’s office, which stands high. You, sir, +thought fit to withdraw your interests from that keeping nevertheless +and to offer them to me. You brought them with clean hands, sir, and +I accepted them with clean hands. Those interests are now paramount +in this office. My digestive functions, as you may have heard me +mention, are not in a good state, and rest might improve them; but I +shall not rest, sir, while I am your representative. Whenever you +want me, you will find me here. Summon me anywhere, and I will come. +During the long vacation, sir, I shall devote my leisure to studying +your interests more and more closely and to making arrangements for +moving heaven and earth (including, of course, the Chancellor) after +Michaelmas term; and when I ultimately congratulate you, sir,” says +Mr. Vholes with the severity of a determined man, “when I ultimately +congratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your accession to +fortune—which, but that I never give hopes, I might say something +further about—you will owe me nothing beyond whatever little balance +may be then outstanding of the costs as between solicitor and client +not included in the taxed costs allowed out of the estate. I pretend +to no claim upon you, Mr. C., but for the zealous and active +discharge—not the languid and routine discharge, sir: that much +credit I stipulate for—of my professional duty. My duty prosperously +ended, all between us is ended.” + +Vholes finally adds, by way of rider to this declaration of his +principles, that as Mr. Carstone is about to rejoin his regiment, +perhaps Mr. C. will favour him with an order on his agent for twenty +pounds on account. + +“For there have been many little consultations and attendances of +late, sir,” observes Vholes, turning over the leaves of his diary, +“and these things mount up, and I don’t profess to be a man of +capital. When we first entered on our present relations I stated to +you openly—it is a principle of mine that there never can be too +much openness between solicitor and client—that I was not a man of +capital and that if capital was your object you had better leave your +papers in Kenge’s office. No, Mr. C., you will find none of the +advantages or disadvantages of capital here, sir. This,” Vholes gives +the desk one hollow blow again, “is your rock; it pretends to be +nothing more.” + +The client, with his dejection insensibly relieved and his vague +hopes rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft, not without +perplexed consideration and calculation of the date it may bear, +implying scant effects in the agent’s hands. All the while, Vholes, +buttoned up in body and mind, looks at him attentively. All the +while, Vholes’s official cat watches the mouse’s hole. + +Lastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches Mr. Vholes, for heaven’s +sake and earth’s sake, to do his utmost to “pull him through” the +Court of Chancery. Mr. Vholes, who never gives hopes, lays his palm +upon the client’s shoulder and answers with a smile, “Always here, +sir. Personally, or by letter, you will always find me here, sir, +with my shoulder to the wheel.” Thus they part, and Vholes, left +alone, employs himself in carrying sundry little matters out of his +diary into his draft bill book for the ultimate behoof of his three +daughters. So might an industrious fox or bear make up his account of +chickens or stray travellers with an eye to his cubs, not to +disparage by that word the three raw-visaged, lank, and buttoned-up +maidens who dwell with the parent Vholes in an earthy cottage +situated in a damp garden at Kennington. + +Richard, emerging from the heavy shade of Symond’s Inn into the +sunshine of Chancery Lane—for there happens to be sunshine there +to-day—walks thoughtfully on, and turns into Lincoln’s Inn, and +passes under the shadow of the Lincoln’s Inn trees. On many such +loungers have the speckled shadows of those trees often fallen; on +the like bent head, the bitten nail, the lowering eye, the lingering +step, the purposeless and dreamy air, the good consuming and +consumed, the life turned sour. This lounger is not shabby yet, but +that may come. Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in precedent, is +very rich in such precedents; and why should one be different from +ten thousand? + +Yet the time is so short since his depreciation began that as he +saunters away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long months +together, though he hates it, Richard himself may feel his own case +as if it were a startling one. While his heart is heavy with +corroding care, suspense, distrust, and doubt, it may have room for +some sorrowful wonder when he recalls how different his first visit +there, how different he, how different all the colours of his mind. +But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being +defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat; +from the impalpable suit which no man alive can understand, the time +for that being long gone by, it has become a gloomy relief to turn to +the palpable figure of the friend who would have saved him from this +ruin and make HIM his enemy. Richard has told Vholes the truth. Is he +in a hardened or a softened mood, he still lays his injuries equally +at that door; he was thwarted, in that quarter, of a set purpose, and +that purpose could only originate in the one subject that is +resolving his existence into itself; besides, it is a justification +to him in his own eyes to have an embodied antagonist and oppressor. + +Is Richard a monster in all this, or would Chancery be found rich in +such precedents too if they could be got for citation from the +Recording Angel? + +Two pairs of eyes not unused to such people look after him, as, +biting his nails and brooding, he crosses the square and is swallowed +up by the shadow of the southern gateway. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Weevle +are the possessors of those eyes, and they have been leaning in +conversation against the low stone parapet under the trees. He passes +close by them, seeing nothing but the ground. + +“William,” says Mr. Weevle, adjusting his whiskers, “there’s +combustion going on there! It’s not a case of spontaneous, but it’s +smouldering combustion it is.” + +“Ah!” says Mr. Guppy. “He wouldn’t keep out of Jarndyce, and I +suppose he’s over head and ears in debt. I never knew much of him. He +was as high as the monument when he was on trial at our place. A good +riddance to me, whether as clerk or client! Well, Tony, that as I was +mentioning is what they’re up to.” + +Mr. Guppy, refolding his arms, resettles himself against the parapet, +as resuming a conversation of interest. + +“They are still up to it, sir,” says Mr. Guppy, “still taking stock, +still examining papers, still going over the heaps and heaps of +rubbish. At this rate they’ll be at it these seven years.” + +“And Small is helping?” + +“Small left us at a week’s notice. Told Kenge his grandfather’s +business was too much for the old gentleman and he could better +himself by undertaking it. There had been a coolness between myself +and Small on account of his being so close. But he said you and I +began it, and as he had me there—for we did—I put our acquaintance +on the old footing. That’s how I come to know what they’re up to.” + +“You haven’t looked in at all?” + +“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, a little disconcerted, “to be unreserved with +you, I don’t greatly relish the house, except in your company, and +therefore I have not; and therefore I proposed this little +appointment for our fetching away your things. There goes the hour by +the clock! Tony”—Mr. Guppy becomes mysteriously and tenderly +eloquent—“it is necessary that I should impress upon your mind once +more that circumstances over which I have no control have made a +melancholy alteration in my most cherished plans and in that +unrequited image which I formerly mentioned to you as a friend. That +image is shattered, and that idol is laid low. My only wish now in +connexion with the objects which I had an idea of carrying out in the +court with your aid as a friend is to let ’em alone and bury ’em in +oblivion. Do you think it possible, do you think it at all likely (I +put it to you, Tony, as a friend), from your knowledge of that +capricious and deep old character who fell a prey to the—spontaneous +element, do you, Tony, think it at all likely that on second thoughts +he put those letters away anywhere, after you saw him alive, and that +they were not destroyed that night?” + +Mr. Weevle reflects for some time. Shakes his head. Decidedly thinks +not. + +“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy as they walk towards the court, “once again +understand me, as a friend. Without entering into further +explanations, I may repeat that the idol is down. I have no purpose +to serve now but burial in oblivion. To that I have pledged myself. I +owe it to myself, and I owe it to the shattered image, as also to the +circumstances over which I have no control. If you was to express to +me by a gesture, by a wink, that you saw lying anywhere in your late +lodgings any papers that so much as looked like the papers in +question, I would pitch them into the fire, sir, on my own +responsibility.” + +Mr. Weevle nods. Mr. Guppy, much elevated in his own opinion by +having delivered these observations, with an air in part forensic and +in part romantic—this gentleman having a passion for conducting +anything in the form of an examination, or delivering anything in the +form of a summing up or a speech—accompanies his friend with dignity +to the court. + +Never since it has been a court has it had such a Fortunatus’ purse +of gossip as in the proceedings at the rag and bottle shop. +Regularly, every morning at eight, is the elder Mr. Smallweed brought +down to the corner and carried in, accompanied by Mrs. Smallweed, +Judy, and Bart; and regularly, all day, do they all remain there +until nine at night, solaced by gipsy dinners, not abundant in +quantity, from the cook’s shop, rummaging and searching, digging, +delving, and diving among the treasures of the late lamented. What +those treasures are they keep so secret that the court is maddened. +In its delirium it imagines guineas pouring out of tea-pots, +crown-pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs and mattresses +stuffed with Bank of England notes. It possesses itself of the +sixpenny history (with highly coloured folding frontispiece) of Mr. +Daniel Dancer and his sister, and also of Mr. Elwes, of Suffolk, and +transfers all the facts from those authentic narratives to Mr. Krook. +Twice when the dustman is called in to carry off a cartload of old +paper, ashes, and broken bottles, the whole court assembles and pries +into the baskets as they come forth. Many times the two gentlemen who +write with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper are seen +prowling in the neighbourhood—shy of each other, their late +partnership being dissolved. The Sol skilfully carries a vein of the +prevailing interest through the Harmonic nights. Little Swills, in +what are professionally known as “patter” allusions to the subject, +is received with loud applause; and the same vocalist “gags” in the +regular business like a man inspired. Even Miss M. Melvilleson, in +the revived Caledonian melody of “We’re a-Nodding,” points the +sentiment that “the dogs love broo” (whatever the nature of that +refreshment may be) with such archness and such a turn of the head +towards next door that she is immediately understood to mean Mr. +Smallweed loves to find money, and is nightly honoured with a double +encore. For all this, the court discovers nothing; and as Mrs. Piper +and Mrs. Perkins now communicate to the late lodger whose appearance +is the signal for a general rally, it is in one continual ferment to +discover everything, and more. + +Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, with every eye in the court’s head upon +them, knock at the closed door of the late lamented’s house, in a +high state of popularity. But being contrary to the court’s +expectation admitted, they immediately become unpopular and are +considered to mean no good. + +The shutters are more or less closed all over the house, and the +ground-floor is sufficiently dark to require candles. Introduced into +the back shop by Mr. Smallweed the younger, they, fresh from the +sunlight, can at first see nothing save darkness and shadows; but +they gradually discern the elder Mr. Smallweed seated in his chair +upon the brink of a well or grave of waste-paper, the virtuous Judy +groping therein like a female sexton, and Mrs. Smallweed on the level +ground in the vicinity snowed up in a heap of paper fragments, print, +and manuscript which would appear to be the accumulated compliments +that have been sent flying at her in the course of the day. The whole +party, Small included, are blackened with dust and dirt and present a +fiendish appearance not relieved by the general aspect of the room. +There is more litter and lumber in it than of old, and it is dirtier +if possible; likewise, it is ghostly with traces of its dead +inhabitant and even with his chalked writing on the wall. + +On the entrance of visitors, Mr. Smallweed and Judy simultaneously +fold their arms and stop in their researches. + +“Aha!” croaks the old gentleman. “How de do, gentlemen, how de do! +Come to fetch your property, Mr. Weevle? That’s well, that’s well. +Ha! Ha! We should have been forced to sell you up, sir, to pay your +warehouse room if you had left it here much longer. You feel quite at +home here again, I dare say? Glad to see you, glad to see you!” + +Mr. Weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about. Mr. Guppy’s eye follows +Mr. Weevle’s eye. Mr. Weevle’s eye comes back without any new +intelligence in it. Mr. Guppy’s eye comes back and meets Mr. +Smallweed’s eye. That engaging old gentleman is still murmuring, like +some wound-up instrument running down, “How de do, sir—how +de—how—” And then having run down, he lapses into grinning silence, +as Mr. Guppy starts at seeing Mr. Tulkinghorn standing in the +darkness opposite with his hands behind him. + +“Gentleman so kind as to act as my solicitor,” says Grandfather +Smallweed. “I am not the sort of client for a gentleman of such note, +but he is so good!” + +Mr. Guppy, slightly nudging his friend to take another look, makes a +shuffling bow to Mr. Tulkinghorn, who returns it with an easy nod. +Mr. Tulkinghorn is looking on as if he had nothing else to do and +were rather amused by the novelty. + +“A good deal of property here, sir, I should say,” Mr. Guppy observes +to Mr. Smallweed. + +“Principally rags and rubbish, my dear friend! Rags and rubbish! Me +and Bart and my granddaughter Judy are endeavouring to make out an +inventory of what’s worth anything to sell. But we haven’t come to +much as yet; we—haven’t—come—to—hah!” + +Mr. Smallweed has run down again, while Mr. Weevle’s eye, attended by +Mr. Guppy’s eye, has again gone round the room and come back. + +“Well, sir,” says Mr. Weevle. “We won’t intrude any longer if you’ll +allow us to go upstairs.” + +“Anywhere, my dear sir, anywhere! You’re at home. Make yourself so, +pray!” + +As they go upstairs, Mr. Guppy lifts his eyebrows inquiringly and +looks at Tony. Tony shakes his head. They find the old room very dull +and dismal, with the ashes of the fire that was burning on that +memorable night yet in the discoloured grate. They have a great +disinclination to touch any object, and carefully blow the dust from +it first. Nor are they desirous to prolong their visit, packing the +few movables with all possible speed and never speaking above a +whisper. + +“Look here,” says Tony, recoiling. “Here’s that horrible cat coming +in!” + +Mr. Guppy retreats behind a chair. “Small told me of her. She went +leaping and bounding and tearing about that night like a dragon, and +got out on the house-top, and roamed about up there for a fortnight, +and then came tumbling down the chimney very thin. Did you ever see +such a brute? Looks as if she knew all about it, don’t she? Almost +looks as if she was Krook. Shoohoo! Get out, you goblin!” + +Lady Jane, in the doorway, with her tiger snarl from ear to ear and +her club of a tail, shows no intention of obeying; but Mr. +Tulkinghorn stumbling over her, she spits at his rusty legs, and +swearing wrathfully, takes her arched back upstairs. Possibly to roam +the house-tops again and return by the chimney. + +“Mr. Guppy,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “could I have a word with you?” + +Mr. Guppy is engaged in collecting the Galaxy Gallery of British +Beauty from the wall and depositing those works of art in their old +ignoble band-box. “Sir,” he returns, reddening, “I wish to act with +courtesy towards every member of the profession, and especially, I am +sure, towards a member of it so well known as yourself—I will truly +add, sir, so distinguished as yourself. Still, Mr. Tulkinghorn, sir, +I must stipulate that if you have any word with me, that word is +spoken in the presence of my friend.” + +“Oh, indeed?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. + +“Yes, sir. My reasons are not of a personal nature at all, but they +are amply sufficient for myself.” + +“No doubt, no doubt.” Mr. Tulkinghorn is as imperturbable as the +hearthstone to which he has quietly walked. “The matter is not of +that consequence that I need put you to the trouble of making any +conditions, Mr. Guppy.” He pauses here to smile, and his smile is as +dull and rusty as his pantaloons. “You are to be congratulated, Mr. +Guppy; you are a fortunate young man, sir.” + +“Pretty well so, Mr. Tulkinghorn; I don’t complain.” + +“Complain? High friends, free admission to great houses, and access +to elegant ladies! Why, Mr. Guppy, there are people in London who +would give their ears to be you.” + +Mr. Guppy, looking as if he would give his own reddening and still +reddening ears to be one of those people at present instead of +himself, replies, “Sir, if I attend to my profession and do what is +right by Kenge and Carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no +consequence to them nor to any member of the profession, not +excepting Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields. I am not under any +obligation to explain myself further; and with all respect for you, +sir, and without offence—I repeat, without offence—” + +“Oh, certainly!” + +“—I don’t intend to do it.” + +“Quite so,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a calm nod. “Very good; I see +by these portraits that you take a strong interest in the fashionable +great, sir?” + +He addresses this to the astounded Tony, who admits the soft +impeachment. + +“A virtue in which few Englishmen are deficient,” observes Mr. +Tulkinghorn. He has been standing on the hearthstone with his back to +the smoked chimney-piece, and now turns round with his glasses to his +eyes. “Who is this? ‘Lady Dedlock.’ Ha! A very good likeness in its +way, but it wants force of character. Good day to you, gentlemen; +good day!” + +When he has walked out, Mr. Guppy, in a great perspiration, nerves +himself to the hasty completion of the taking down of the Galaxy +Gallery, concluding with Lady Dedlock. + +“Tony,” he says hurriedly to his astonished companion, “let us be +quick in putting the things together and in getting out of this +place. It were in vain longer to conceal from you, Tony, that between +myself and one of the members of a swan-like aristocracy whom I now +hold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication and +association. The time might have been when I might have revealed it +to you. It never will be more. It is due alike to the oath I have +taken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to circumstances over +which I have no control, that the whole should be buried in oblivion. +I charge you as a friend, by the interest you have ever testified in +the fashionable intelligence, and by any little advances with which I +may have been able to accommodate you, so to bury it without a word +of inquiry!” + +This charge Mr. Guppy delivers in a state little short of forensic +lunacy, while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole head of hair +and even in his cultivated whiskers. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + +National and Domestic + + +England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle +would go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn’t come in, and there being +nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there +has been no government. It is a mercy that the hostile meeting +between those two great men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did +not come off, because if both pistols had taken effect, and Coodle +and Doodle had killed each other, it is to be presumed that England +must have waited to be governed until young Coodle and young Doodle, +now in frocks and long stockings, were grown up. This stupendous +national calamity, however, was averted by Lord Coodle’s making the +timely discovery that if in the heat of debate he had said that he +scorned and despised the whole ignoble career of Sir Thomas Doodle, +he had merely meant to say that party differences should never induce +him to withhold from it the tribute of his warmest admiration; while +it as opportunely turned out, on the other hand, that Sir Thomas +Doodle had in his own bosom expressly booked Lord Coodle to go down +to posterity as the mirror of virtue and honour. Still England has +been some weeks in the dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well +observed by Sir Leicester Dedlock) to weather the storm; and the +marvellous part of the matter is that England has not appeared to +care very much about it, but has gone on eating and drinking and +marrying and giving in marriage as the old world did in the days +before the flood. But Coodle knew the danger, and Doodle knew the +danger, and all their followers and hangers-on had the clearest +possible perception of the danger. At last Sir Thomas Doodle has not +only condescended to come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in +with him all his nephews, all his male cousins, and all his +brothers-in-law. So there is hope for the old ship yet. + +Doodle has found that he must throw himself upon the country, chiefly +in the form of sovereigns and beer. In this metamorphosed state he is +available in a good many places simultaneously and can throw himself +upon a considerable portion of the country at one time. Britannia +being much occupied in pocketing Doodle in the form of sovereigns, +and swallowing Doodle in the form of beer, and in swearing herself +black in the face that she does neither—plainly to the advancement +of her glory and morality—the London season comes to a sudden end, +through all the Doodleites and Coodleites dispersing to assist +Britannia in those religious exercises. + +Hence Mrs. Rouncewell, housekeeper at Chesney Wold, foresees, though +no instructions have yet come down, that the family may shortly be +expected, together with a pretty large accession of cousins and +others who can in any way assist the great Constitutional work. And +hence the stately old dame, taking Time by the forelock, leads him up +and down the staircases, and along the galleries and passages, and +through the rooms, to witness before he grows any older that +everything is ready, that floors are rubbed bright, carpets spread, +curtains shaken out, beds puffed and patted, still-room and kitchen +cleared for action—all things prepared as beseems the Dedlock +dignity. + +This present summer evening, as the sun goes down, the preparations +are complete. Dreary and solemn the old house looks, with so many +appliances of habitation and with no inhabitants except the pictured +forms upon the walls. So did these come and go, a Dedlock in +possession might have ruminated passing along; so did they see this +gallery hushed and quiet, as I see it now; so think, as I think, of +the gap that they would make in this domain when they were gone; so +find it, as I find it, difficult to believe that it could be without +them; so pass from my world, as I pass from theirs, now closing the +reverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, and so die. + +Through some of the fiery windows beautiful from without, and set, at +this sunset hour, not in dull-grey stone but in a glorious house of +gold, the light excluded at other windows pours in rich, lavish, +overflowing like the summer plenty in the land. Then do the frozen +Dedlocks thaw. Strange movements come upon their features as the +shadows of leaves play there. A dense justice in a corner is beguiled +into a wink. A staring baronet, with a truncheon, gets a dimple in +his chin. Down into the bosom of a stony shepherdess there steals a +fleck of light and warmth that would have done it good a hundred +years ago. One ancestress of Volumnia, in high-heeled shoes, very +like her—casting the shadow of that virgin event before her full two +centuries—shoots out into a halo and becomes a saint. A maid of +honour of the court of Charles the Second, with large round eyes (and +other charms to correspond), seems to bathe in glowing water, and it +ripples as it glows. + +But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and +shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age +and death. And now, upon my Lady’s picture over the great +chimney-piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it +pale, and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or +hood, watching an opportunity to draw it over her. Higher and darker +rises shadow on the wall—now a red gloom on the ceiling—now the +fire is out. + +All that prospect, which from the terrace looked so near, has moved +solemnly away and changed—not the first nor the last of beautiful +things that look so near and will so change—into a distant phantom. +Light mists arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the +garden are heavy in the air. Now the woods settle into great masses +as if they were each one profound tree. And now the moon rises to +separate them, and to glimmer here and there in horizontal lines +behind their stems, and to make the avenue a pavement of light among +high cathedral arches fantastically broken. + +Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more +than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful, +stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in +the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time +for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a +pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon +the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy +staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour +has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy +movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads +inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the +long drawing-room upon my Lady’s picture is the first to come, the +last to be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into +threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every +breath that stirs. + +“She is not well, ma’am,” says a groom in Mrs. Rouncewell’s +audience-chamber. + +“My Lady not well! What’s the matter?” + +“Why, my Lady has been but poorly, ma’am, since she was last here—I +don’t mean with the family, ma’am, but when she was here as a bird of +passage like. My Lady has not been out much, for her, and has kept +her room a good deal.” + +“Chesney Wold, Thomas,” rejoins the housekeeper with proud +complacency, “will set my Lady up! There is no finer air and no +healthier soil in the world!” + +Thomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject, probably +hints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape of +his neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further and +retires to the servants’ hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale. + +This groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler shark. Next evening, +down come Sir Leicester and my Lady with their largest retinue, and +down come the cousins and others from all the points of the compass. +Thenceforth for some weeks backward and forward rush mysterious men +with no names, who fly about all those particular parts of the +country on which Doodle is at present throwing himself in an +auriferous and malty shower, but who are merely persons of a restless +disposition and never do anything anywhere. + +On these national occasions Sir Leicester finds the cousins useful. A +better man than the Honourable Bob Stables to meet the Hunt at +dinner, there could not possibly be. Better got up gentlemen than the +other cousins to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here and +there, and show themselves on the side of England, it would be hard +to find. Volumnia is a little dim, but she is of the true descent; +and there are many who appreciate her sprightly conversation, her +French conundrums so old as to have become in the cycles of time +almost new again, the honour of taking the fair Dedlock in to dinner, +or even the privilege of her hand in the dance. On these national +occasions dancing may be a patriotic service, and Volumnia is +constantly seen hopping about for the good of an ungrateful and +unpensioning country. + +My Lady takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and +being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. But at all +the dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other +melancholy pageants, her mere appearance is a relief. As to Sir +Leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be +wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be +received under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he +moves among the company, a magnificent refrigerator. + +Daily the cousins trot through dust and canter over roadside turf, +away to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and +hunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for +the boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which Sir Leicester +holds forth after dinner. Daily the restless men who have no +occupation in life present the appearance of being rather busy. Daily +Volumnia has a little cousinly talk with Sir Leicester on the state +of the nation, from which Sir Leicester is disposed to conclude that +Volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought her. + +“How are we getting on?” says Miss Volumnia, clasping her hands. “ARE +we safe?” + +The mighty business is nearly over by this time, and Doodle will +throw himself off the country in a few days more. Sir Leicester has +just appeared in the long drawing-room after dinner, a bright +particular star surrounded by clouds of cousins. + +“Volumnia,” replies Sir Leicester, who has a list in his hand, “we +are doing tolerably.” + +“Only tolerably!” + +Although it is summer weather, Sir Leicester always has his own +particular fire in the evening. He takes his usual screened seat near +it and repeats with much firmness and a little displeasure, as who +should say, I am not a common man, and when I say tolerably, it must +not be understood as a common expression, “Volumnia, we are doing +tolerably.” + +“At least there is no opposition to YOU,” Volumnia asserts with +confidence. + +“No, Volumnia. This distracted country has lost its senses in many +respects, I grieve to say, but—” + +“It is not so mad as that. I am glad to hear it!” + +Volumnia’s finishing the sentence restores her to favour. Sir +Leicester, with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to say to +himself, “A sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally +precipitate.” + +In fact, as to this question of opposition, the fair Dedlock’s +observation was superfluous, Sir Leicester on these occasions always +delivering in his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome wholesale +order to be promptly executed. Two other little seats that belong to +him he treats as retail orders of less importance, merely sending +down the men and signifying to the tradespeople, “You will have the +goodness to make these materials into two members of Parliament and +to send them home when done.” + +“I regret to say, Volumnia, that in many places the people have shown +a bad spirit, and that this opposition to the government has been of +a most determined and most implacable description.” + +“W-r-retches!” says Volumnia. + +“Even,” proceeds Sir Leicester, glancing at the circumjacent cousins +on sofas and ottomans, “even in many—in fact, in most—of those +places in which the government has carried it against a faction—” + +(Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are always a faction with the +Doodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy exactly the same position +towards the Coodleites.) + +“—Even in them I am shocked, for the credit of Englishmen, to be +constrained to inform you that the party has not triumphed without +being put to an enormous expense. Hundreds,” says Sir Leicester, +eyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation, +“hundreds of thousands of pounds!” + +If Volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of being a trifle too +innocent, seeing that the innocence which would go extremely well +with a sash and tucker is a little out of keeping with the rouge and +pearl necklace. Howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks, “What for?” + +“Volumnia,” remonstrates Sir Leicester with his utmost severity. +“Volumnia!” + +“No, no, I don’t mean what for,” cries Volumnia with her favourite +little scream. “How stupid I am! I mean what a pity!” + +“I am glad,” returns Sir Leicester, “that you do mean what a pity.” + +Volumnia hastens to express her opinion that the shocking people +ought to be tried as traitors and made to support the party. + +“I am glad, Volumnia,” repeats Sir Leicester, unmindful of these +mollifying sentiments, “that you do mean what a pity. It is +disgraceful to the electors. But as you, though inadvertently and +without intending so unreasonable a question, asked me ‘what for?’ +let me reply to you. For necessary expenses. And I trust to your good +sense, Volumnia, not to pursue the subject, here or elsewhere.” + +Sir Leicester feels it incumbent on him to observe a crushing aspect +towards Volumnia because it is whispered abroad that these necessary +expenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be +unpleasantly connected with the word bribery, and because some +graceless jokers have consequently suggested the omission from the +Church service of the ordinary supplication in behalf of the High +Court of Parliament and have recommended instead that the prayers of +the congregation be requested for six hundred and fifty-eight +gentlemen in a very unhealthy state. + +“I suppose,” observes Volumnia, having taken a little time to recover +her spirits after her late castigation, “I suppose Mr. Tulkinghorn +has been worked to death.” + +“I don’t know,” says Sir Leicester, opening his eyes, “why Mr. +Tulkinghorn should be worked to death. I don’t know what Mr. +Tulkinghorn’s engagements may be. He is not a candidate.” + +Volumnia had thought he might have been employed. Sir Leicester could +desire to know by whom, and what for. Volumnia, abashed again, +suggests, by somebody—to advise and make arrangements. Sir Leicester +is not aware that any client of Mr. Tulkinghorn has been in need of +his assistance. + +Lady Dedlock, seated at an open window with her arm upon its +cushioned ledge and looking out at the evening shadows falling on the +park, has seemed to attend since the lawyer’s name was mentioned. + +A languid cousin with a moustache in a state of extreme debility now +observes from his couch that man told him ya’as’dy that Tulkinghorn +had gone down t’ that iron place t’ give legal ’pinion ’bout +something, and that contest being over t’ day, ’twould be highly +jawlly thing if Tulkinghorn should ’pear with news that Coodle man +was floored. + +Mercury in attendance with coffee informs Sir Leicester, hereupon, +that Mr. Tulkinghorn has arrived and is taking dinner. My Lady turns +her head inward for the moment, then looks out again as before. + +Volumnia is charmed to hear that her delight is come. He is so +original, such a stolid creature, such an immense being for knowing +all sorts of things and never telling them! Volumnia is persuaded +that he must be a Freemason. Is sure he is at the head of a lodge, +and wears short aprons, and is made a perfect idol of with +candlesticks and trowels. These lively remarks the fair Dedlock +delivers in her youthful manner, while making a purse. + +“He has not been here once,” she adds, “since I came. I really had +some thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. I had +almost made up my mind that he was dead.” + +It may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it may be the darker +gloom within herself, but a shade is on my Lady’s face, as if she +thought, “I would he were!” + +“Mr. Tulkinghorn,” says Sir Leicester, “is always welcome here and +always discreet wheresoever he is. A very valuable person, and +deservedly respected.” + +The debilitated cousin supposes he is “’normously rich fler.” + +“He has a stake in the country,” says Sir Leicester, “I have no +doubt. He is, of course, handsomely paid, and he associates almost on +a footing of equality with the highest society.” + +Everybody starts. For a gun is fired close by. + +“Good gracious, what’s that?” cries Volumnia with her little withered +scream. + +“A rat,” says my Lady. “And they have shot him.” + +Enter Mr. Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries with lamps and candles. + +“No, no,” says Sir Leicester, “I think not. My Lady, do you object to +the twilight?” + +On the contrary, my Lady prefers it. + +“Volumnia?” + +Oh! Nothing is so delicious to Volumnia as to sit and talk in the +dark. + +“Then take them away,” says Sir Leicester. “Tulkinghorn, I beg your +pardon. How do you do?” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his +passing homage to my Lady, shakes Sir Leicester’s hand, and subsides +into the chair proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on +the opposite side of the Baronet’s little newspaper-table. Sir +Leicester is apprehensive that my Lady, not being very well, will +take cold at that open window. My Lady is obliged to him, but would +rather sit there for the air. Sir Leicester rises, adjusts her scarf +about her, and returns to his seat. Mr. Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile +takes a pinch of snuff. + +“Now,” says Sir Leicester. “How has that contest gone?” + +“Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought in +both their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to one.” + +It is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s policy and mastery to have no +political opinions; indeed, NO opinions. Therefore he says “you” are +beaten, and not “we.” + +Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a +thing. ‘The debilitated cousin holds that it’s sort of thing that’s +sure tapn slongs votes—giv’n—Mob. + +“It’s the place, you know,” Mr. Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the +fast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, “where they +wanted to put up Mrs. Rouncewell’s son.” + +“A proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had +the becoming taste and perception,” observes Sir Leicester, “to +decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments +expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in +this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I +am glad to acknowledge.” + +“Ha!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “It did not prevent him from being very +active in this election, though.” + +Sir Leicester is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. “Did I +understand you? Did you say that Mr. Rouncewell had been very active +in this election?” + +“Uncommonly active.” + +“Against—” + +“Oh, dear yes, against you. He is a very good speaker. Plain and +emphatic. He made a damaging effect, and has great influence. In the +business part of the proceedings he carried all before him.” + +It is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that +Sir Leicester is staring majestically. + +“And he was much assisted,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn as a wind-up, “by +his son.” + +“By his son, sir?” repeats Sir Leicester with awful politeness. + +“By his son.” + +“The son who wished to marry the young woman in my Lady’s service?” + +“That son. He has but one.” + +“Then upon my honour,” says Sir Leicester after a terrific pause +during which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare, “then +upon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation and principles, +the floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters +have—a—obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion +by which things are held together!” + +General burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia thinks it is +really high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in +and do something strong. Debilitated cousin thinks—country’s +going—Dayvle—steeple-chase pace. + +“I beg,” says Sir Leicester in a breathless condition, “that we may +not comment further on this circumstance. Comment is superfluous. My +Lady, let me suggest in reference to that young woman—” + +“I have no intention,” observes my Lady from her window in a low but +decided tone, “of parting with her.” + +“That was not my meaning,” returns Sir Leicester. “I am glad to hear +you say so. I would suggest that as you think her worthy of your +patronage, you should exert your influence to keep her from these +dangerous hands. You might show her what violence would be done in +such association to her duties and principles, and you might preserve +her for a better fate. You might point out to her that she probably +would, in good time, find a husband at Chesney Wold by whom she would +not be—” Sir Leicester adds, after a moment’s consideration, +“dragged from the altars of her forefathers.” + +These remarks he offers with his unvarying politeness and deference +when he addresses himself to his wife. She merely moves her head in +reply. The moon is rising, and where she sits there is a little +stream of cold pale light, in which her head is seen. + +“It is worthy of remark,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “however, that these +people are, in their way, very proud.” + +“Proud?” Sir Leicester doubts his hearing. + +“I should not be surprised if they all voluntarily abandoned the +girl—yes, lover and all—instead of her abandoning them, supposing +she remained at Chesney Wold under such circumstances.” + +“Well!” says Sir Leicester tremulously. “Well! You should know, Mr. +Tulkinghorn. You have been among them.” + +“Really, Sir Leicester,” returns the lawyer, “I state the fact. Why, +I could tell you a story—with Lady Dedlock’s permission.” + +Her head concedes it, and Volumnia is enchanted. A story! Oh, he is +going to tell something at last! A ghost in it, Volumnia hopes? + +“No. Real flesh and blood.” Mr. Tulkinghorn stops for an instant and +repeats with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual monotony, +“Real flesh and blood, Miss Dedlock. Sir Leicester, these particulars +have only lately become known to me. They are very brief. They +exemplify what I have said. I suppress names for the present. Lady +Dedlock will not think me ill-bred, I hope?” + +By the light of the fire, which is low, he can be seen looking +towards the moonlight. By the light of the moon Lady Dedlock can be +seen, perfectly still. + +“A townsman of this Mr. Rouncewell, a man in exactly parallel +circumstances as I am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter +who attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a great +lady, not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your +condition, Sir Leicester.” + +Sir Leicester condescendingly says, “Yes, Mr. Tulkinghorn,” implying +that then she must have appeared of very considerable moral +dimensions indeed in the eyes of an iron-master. + +“The lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl, +and treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her. +Now this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she +had preserved for many years. In fact, she had in early life been +engaged to marry a young rake—he was a captain in the army—nothing +connected with whom came to any good. She never did marry him, but +she gave birth to a child of which he was the father.” + +By the light of the fire he can be seen looking towards the +moonlight. By the moonlight, Lady Dedlock can be seen in profile, +perfectly still. + +“The captain in the army being dead, she believed herself safe; but a +train of circumstances with which I need not trouble you led to +discovery. As I received the story, they began in an imprudence on +her own part one day when she was taken by surprise, which shows how +difficult it is for the firmest of us (she was very firm) to be +always guarded. There was great domestic trouble and amazement, you +may suppose; I leave you to imagine, Sir Leicester, the husband’s +grief. But that is not the present point. When Mr. Rouncewell’s +townsman heard of the disclosure, he no more allowed the girl to be +patronized and honoured than he would have suffered her to be trodden +underfoot before his eyes. Such was his pride, that he indignantly +took her away, as if from reproach and disgrace. He had no sense of +the honour done him and his daughter by the lady’s condescension; not +the least. He resented the girl’s position, as if the lady had been +the commonest of commoners. That is the story. I hope Lady Dedlock +will excuse its painful nature.” + +There are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting +with Volumnia’s. That fair young creature cannot believe there ever +was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold. The +majority incline to the debilitated cousin’s sentiment, which is in +few words—“no business—Rouncewell’s fernal townsman.” Sir Leicester +generally refers back in his mind to Wat Tyler and arranges a +sequence of events on a plan of his own. + +There is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been kept +at Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began, and +this is the first night in many on which the family have been alone. +It is past ten when Sir Leicester begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to ring for +candles. Then the stream of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and +then Lady Dedlock for the first time moves, and rises, and comes +forward to a table for a glass of water. Winking cousins, bat-like in +the candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volumnia (always ready for +something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of +which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked +after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective +by the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as a question of +contrast. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + +In Mr. Tulkinghorn’s Room + + +Mr. Tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room a little breathed by the +journey up, though leisurely performed. There is an expression on his +face as if he had discharged his mind of some grave matter and were, +in his close way, satisfied. To say of a man so severely and strictly +self-repressed that he is triumphant would be to do him as great an +injustice as to suppose him troubled with love or sentiment or any +romantic weakness. He is sedately satisfied. Perhaps there is a +rather increased sense of power upon him as he loosely grasps one of +his veinous wrists with his other hand and holding it behind his back +walks noiselessly up and down. + +There is a capacious writing-table in the room on which is a pretty +large accumulation of papers. The green lamp is lighted, his +reading-glasses lie upon the desk, the easy-chair is wheeled up to +it, and it would seem as though he had intended to bestow an hour or +so upon these claims on his attention before going to bed. But he +happens not to be in a business mind. After a glance at the documents +awaiting his notice—with his head bent low over the table, the old +man’s sight for print or writing being defective at night—he opens +the French window and steps out upon the leads. There he again walks +slowly up and down in the same attitude, subsiding, if a man so cool +may have any need to subside, from the story he has related +downstairs. + +The time was once when men as knowing as Mr. Tulkinghorn would walk +on turret-tops in the starlight and look up into the sky to read +their fortunes there. Hosts of stars are visible to-night, though +their brilliancy is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon. If he be +seeking his own star as he methodically turns and turns upon the +leads, it should be but a pale one to be so rustily represented +below. If he be tracing out his destiny, that may be written in other +characters nearer to his hand. + +As he paces the leads with his eyes most probably as high above his +thoughts as they are high above the earth, he is suddenly stopped in +passing the window by two eyes that meet his own. The ceiling of his +room is rather low; and the upper part of the door, which is opposite +the window, is of glass. There is an inner baize door, too, but the +night being warm he did not close it when he came upstairs. These +eyes that meet his own are looking in through the glass from the +corridor outside. He knows them well. The blood has not flushed into +his face so suddenly and redly for many a long year as when he +recognizes Lady Dedlock. + +He steps into the room, and she comes in too, closing both the doors +behind her. There is a wild disturbance—is it fear or anger?—in her +eyes. In her carriage and all else she looks as she looked downstairs +two hours ago. + +Is it fear or is it anger now? He cannot be sure. Both might be as +pale, both as intent. + +“Lady Dedlock?” + +She does not speak at first, nor even when she has slowly dropped +into the easy-chair by the table. They look at each other, like two +pictures. + +“Why have you told my story to so many persons?” + +“Lady Dedlock, it was necessary for me to inform you that I knew it.” + +“How long have you known it?” + +“I have suspected it a long while—fully known it a little while.” + +“Months?” + +“Days.” + +He stands before her with one hand on a chair-back and the other in +his old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, exactly as he has stood +before her at any time since her marriage. The same formal +politeness, the same composed deference that might as well be +defiance; the whole man the same dark, cold object, at the same +distance, which nothing has ever diminished. + +“Is this true concerning the poor girl?” + +He slightly inclines and advances his head as not quite understanding +the question. + +“You know what you related. Is it true? Do her friends know my story +also? Is it the town-talk yet? Is it chalked upon the walls and cried +in the streets?” + +So! Anger, and fear, and shame. All three contending. What power this +woman has to keep these raging passions down! Mr. Tulkinghorn’s +thoughts take such form as he looks at her, with his ragged grey +eyebrows a hair’s breadth more contracted than usual under her gaze. + +“No, Lady Dedlock. That was a hypothetical case, arising out of Sir +Leicester’s unconsciously carrying the matter with so high a hand. +But it would be a real case if they knew—what we know.” + +“Then they do not know it yet?” + +“No.” + +“Can I save the poor girl from injury before they know it?” + +“Really, Lady Dedlock,” Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, “I cannot give a +satisfactory opinion on that point.” + +And he thinks, with the interest of attentive curiosity, as he +watches the struggle in her breast, “The power and force of this +woman are astonishing!” + +“Sir,” she says, for the moment obliged to set her lips with all the +energy she has, that she may speak distinctly, “I will make it +plainer. I do not dispute your hypothetical case. I anticipated it, +and felt its truth as strongly as you can do, when I saw Mr. +Rouncewell here. I knew very well that if he could have had the power +of seeing me as I was, he would consider the poor girl tarnished by +having for a moment been, although most innocently, the subject of my +great and distinguished patronage. But I have an interest in her, or +I should rather say—no longer belonging to this place—I had, and if +you can find so much consideration for the woman under your foot as +to remember that, she will be very sensible of your mercy.” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws this off with a shrug +of self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a little more. + +“You have prepared me for my exposure, and I thank you for that too. +Is there anything that you require of me? Is there any claim that I +can release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husband in +obtaining HIS release by certifying to the exactness of your +discovery? I will write anything, here and now, that you will +dictate. I am ready to do it.” + +And she would do it, thinks the lawyer, watchful of the firm hand +with which she takes the pen! + +“I will not trouble you, Lady Dedlock. Pray spare yourself.” + +“I have long expected this, as you know. I neither wish to spare +myself nor to be spared. You can do nothing worse to me than you have +done. Do what remains now.” + +“Lady Dedlock, there is nothing to be done. I will take leave to say +a few words when you have finished.” + +Their need for watching one another should be over now, but they do +it all this time, and the stars watch them both through the opened +window. Away in the moonlight lie the woodland fields at rest, and +the wide house is as quiet as the narrow one. The narrow one! Where +are the digger and the spade, this peaceful night, destined to add +the last great secret to the many secrets of the Tulkinghorn +existence? Is the man born yet, is the spade wrought yet? Curious +questions to consider, more curious perhaps not to consider, under +the watching stars upon a summer night. + +“Of repentance or remorse or any feeling of mine,” Lady Dedlock +presently proceeds, “I say not a word. If I were not dumb, you would +be deaf. Let that go by. It is not for your ears.” + +He makes a feint of offering a protest, but she sweeps it away with +her disdainful hand. + +“Of other and very different things I come to speak to you. My jewels +are all in their proper places of keeping. They will be found there. +So, my dresses. So, all the valuables I have. Some ready money I had +with me, please to say, but no large amount. I did not wear my own +dress, in order that I might avoid observation. I went to be +henceforward lost. Make this known. I leave no other charge with +you.” + +“Excuse me, Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, quite unmoved. “I am +not sure that I understand you. You want—” + +“To be lost to all here. I leave Chesney Wold to-night. I go this +hour.” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn shakes his head. She rises, but he, without moving +hand from chair-back or from old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, +shakes his head. + +“What? Not go as I have said?” + +“No, Lady Dedlock,” he very calmly replies. + +“Do you know the relief that my disappearance will be? Have you +forgotten the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and +who it is?” + +“No, Lady Dedlock, not by any means.” + +Without deigning to rejoin, she moves to the inner door and has it in +her hand when he says to her, without himself stirring hand or foot +or raising his voice, “Lady Dedlock, have the goodness to stop and +hear me, or before you reach the staircase I shall ring the +alarm-bell and rouse the house. And then I must speak out before +every guest and servant, every man and woman, in it.” + +He has conquered her. She falters, trembles, and puts her hand +confusedly to her head. Slight tokens these in any one else, but when +so practised an eye as Mr. Tulkinghorn’s sees indecision for a moment +in such a subject, he thoroughly knows its value. + +He promptly says again, “Have the goodness to hear me, Lady Dedlock,” +and motions to the chair from which she has risen. She hesitates, but +he motions again, and she sits down. + +“The relations between us are of an unfortunate description, Lady +Dedlock; but as they are not of my making, I will not apologize for +them. The position I hold in reference to Sir Leicester is so well +known to you that I can hardly imagine but that I must long have +appeared in your eyes the natural person to make this discovery.” + +“Sir,” she returns without looking up from the ground on which her +eyes are now fixed, “I had better have gone. It would have been far +better not to have detained me. I have no more to say.” + +“Excuse me, Lady Dedlock, if I add a little more to hear.” + +“I wish to hear it at the window, then. I can’t breathe where I am.” + +His jealous glance as she walks that way betrays an instant’s +misgiving that she may have it in her thoughts to leap over, and +dashing against ledge and cornice, strike her life out upon the +terrace below. But a moment’s observation of her figure as she stands +in the window without any support, looking out at the stars—not +up—gloomily out at those stars which are low in the heavens, +reassures him. By facing round as she has moved, he stands a little +behind her. + +“Lady Dedlock, I have not yet been able to come to a decision +satisfactory to myself on the course before me. I am not clear what +to do or how to act next. I must request you, in the meantime, to +keep your secret as you have kept it so long and not to wonder that I +keep it too.” + +He pauses, but she makes no reply. + +“Pardon me, Lady Dedlock. This is an important subject. You are +honouring me with your attention?” + +“I am.” + +“Thank you. I might have known it from what I have seen of your +strength of character. I ought not to have asked the question, but I +have the habit of making sure of my ground, step by step, as I go on. +The sole consideration in this unhappy case is Sir Leicester.” + +“Then why,” she asks in a low voice and without removing her gloomy +look from those distant stars, “do you detain me in his house?” + +“Because he IS the consideration. Lady Dedlock, I have no occasion to +tell you that Sir Leicester is a very proud man, that his reliance +upon you is implicit, that the fall of that moon out of the sky would +not amaze him more than your fall from your high position as his +wife.” + +She breathes quickly and heavily, but she stands as unflinchingly as +ever he has seen her in the midst of her grandest company. + +“I declare to you, Lady Dedlock, that with anything short of this +case that I have, I would as soon have hoped to root up by means of +my own strength and my own hands the oldest tree on this estate as to +shake your hold upon Sir Leicester and Sir Leicester’s trust and +confidence in you. And even now, with this case, I hesitate. Not that +he could doubt (that, even with him, is impossible), but that nothing +can prepare him for the blow.” + +“Not my flight?” she returned. “Think of it again.” + +“Your flight, Lady Dedlock, would spread the whole truth, and a +hundred times the whole truth, far and wide. It would be impossible +to save the family credit for a day. It is not to be thought of.” + +There is a quiet decision in his reply which admits of no +remonstrance. + +“When I speak of Sir Leicester being the sole consideration, he and +the family credit are one. Sir Leicester and the baronetcy, Sir +Leicester and Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester and his ancestors and his +patrimony”—Mr. Tulkinghorn very dry here—“are, I need not say to +you, Lady Dedlock, inseparable.” + +“Go on!” + +“Therefore,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, pursuing his case in his jog-trot +style, “I have much to consider. This is to be hushed up if it can +be. How can it be, if Sir Leicester is driven out of his wits or laid +upon a death-bed? If I inflicted this shock upon him to-morrow +morning, how could the immediate change in him be accounted for? What +could have caused it? What could have divided you? Lady Dedlock, the +wall-chalking and the street-crying would come on directly, and you +are to remember that it would not affect you merely (whom I cannot at +all consider in this business) but your husband, Lady Dedlock, your +husband.” + +He gets plainer as he gets on, but not an atom more emphatic or +animated. + +“There is another point of view,” he continues, “in which the case +presents itself. Sir Leicester is devoted to you almost to +infatuation. He might not be able to overcome that infatuation, even +knowing what we know. I am putting an extreme case, but it might be +so. If so, it were better that he knew nothing. Better for common +sense, better for him, better for me. I must take all this into +account, and it combines to render a decision very difficult.” + +She stands looking out at the same stars without a word. They are +beginning to pale, and she looks as if their coldness froze her. + +“My experience teaches me,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who has by this +time got his hands in his pockets and is going on in his business +consideration of the matter like a machine. “My experience teaches +me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I know would do far better +to leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three fourths of +their troubles. So I thought when Sir Leicester married, and so I +always have thought since. No more about that. I must now be guided +by circumstances. In the meanwhile I must beg you to keep your own +counsel, and I will keep mine.” + +“I am to drag my present life on, holding its pains at your pleasure, +day by day?” she asks, still looking at the distant sky. + +“Yes, I am afraid so, Lady Dedlock.” + +“It is necessary, you think, that I should be so tied to the stake?” + +“I am sure that what I recommend is necessary.” + +“I am to remain on this gaudy platform on which my miserable +deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when +you give the signal?” she said slowly. + +“Not without notice, Lady Dedlock. I shall take no step without +forewarning you.” + +She asks all her questions as if she were repeating them from memory +or calling them over in her sleep. + +“We are to meet as usual?” + +“Precisely as usual, if you please.” + +“And I am to hide my guilt, as I have done so many years?” + +“As you have done so many years. I should not have made that +reference myself, Lady Dedlock, but I may now remind you that your +secret can be no heavier to you than it was, and is no worse and no +better than it was. I know it certainly, but I believe we have never +wholly trusted each other.” + +She stands absorbed in the same frozen way for some little time +before asking, “Is there anything more to be said to-night?” + +“Why,” Mr. Tulkinghorn returns methodically as he softly rubs his +hands, “I should like to be assured of your acquiescence in my +arrangements, Lady Dedlock.” + +“You may be assured of it.” + +“Good. And I would wish in conclusion to remind you, as a business +precaution, in case it should be necessary to recall the fact in any +communication with Sir Leicester, that throughout our interview I +have expressly stated my sole consideration to be Sir Leicester’s +feelings and honour and the family reputation. I should have been +happy to have made Lady Dedlock a prominent consideration, too, if +the case had admitted of it; but unfortunately it does not.” + +“I can attest your fidelity, sir.” + +Both before and after saying it she remains absorbed, but at length +moves, and turns, unshaken in her natural and acquired presence, +towards the door. Mr. Tulkinghorn opens both the doors exactly as he +would have done yesterday, or as he would have done ten years ago, +and makes his old-fashioned bow as she passes out. It is not an +ordinary look that he receives from the handsome face as it goes into +the darkness, and it is not an ordinary movement, though a very +slight one, that acknowledges his courtesy. But as he reflects when +he is left alone, the woman has been putting no common constraint +upon herself. + +He would know it all the better if he saw the woman pacing her own +rooms with her hair wildly thrown from her flung-back face, her hands +clasped behind her head, her figure twisted as if by pain. He would +think so all the more if he saw the woman thus hurrying up and down +for hours, without fatigue, without intermission, followed by the +faithful step upon the Ghost’s Walk. But he shuts out the now chilled +air, draws the window-curtain, goes to bed, and falls asleep. And +truly when the stars go out and the wan day peeps into the +turret-chamber, finding him at his oldest, he looks as if the digger +and the spade were both commissioned and would soon be digging. + +The same wan day peeps in at Sir Leicester pardoning the repentant +country in a majestically condescending dream; and at the cousins +entering on various public employments, principally receipt of +salary; and at the chaste Volumnia, bestowing a dower of fifty +thousand pounds upon a hideous old general with a mouth of false +teeth like a pianoforte too full of keys, long the admiration of Bath +and the terror of every other community. Also into rooms high in the +roof, and into offices in court-yards, and over stables, where +humbler ambition dreams of bliss, in keepers’ lodges, and in holy +matrimony with Will or Sally. Up comes the bright sun, drawing +everything up with it—the Wills and Sallys, the latent vapour in the +earth, the drooping leaves and flowers, the birds and beasts and +creeping things, the gardeners to sweep the dewy turf and unfold +emerald velvet where the roller passes, the smoke of the great +kitchen fire wreathing itself straight and high into the lightsome +air. Lastly, up comes the flag over Mr. Tulkinghorn’s unconscious +head cheerfully proclaiming that Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock are +in their happy home and that there is hospitality at the place in +Lincolnshire. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + +In Mr. Tulkinghorn’s Chambers + + +From the verdant undulations and the spreading oaks of the Dedlock +property, Mr. Tulkinghorn transfers himself to the stale heat and +dust of London. His manner of coming and going between the two places +is one of his impenetrabilities. He walks into Chesney Wold as if it +were next door to his chambers and returns to his chambers as if he +had never been out of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He neither changes his +dress before the journey nor talks of it afterwards. He melted out of +his turret-room this morning, just as now, in the late twilight, he +melts into his own square. + +Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant +fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into +wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded, +dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without +experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest +in holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its +broader and better range, comes sauntering home. In the oven made by +the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than +usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a +century old. + +The lamplighter is skipping up and down his ladder on Mr. +Tulkinghorn’s side of the Fields when that high-priest of noble +mysteries arrives at his own dull court-yard. He ascends the +door-steps and is gliding into the dusky hall when he encounters, on +the top step, a bowing and propitiatory little man. + +“Is that Snagsby?” + +“Yes, sir. I hope you are well, sir. I was just giving you up, sir, +and going home.” + +“Aye? What is it? What do you want with me?” + +“Well, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, holding his hat at the side of his +head in his deference towards his best customer, “I was wishful to +say a word to you, sir.” + +“Can you say it here?” + +“Perfectly, sir.” + +“Say it then.” The lawyer turns, leans his arms on the iron railing +at the top of the steps, and looks at the lamplighter lighting the +court-yard. + +“It is relating,” says Mr. Snagsby in a mysterious low voice, “it is +relating—not to put too fine a point upon it—to the foreigner, +sir!” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. “What foreigner?” + +“The foreign female, sir. French, if I don’t mistake? I am not +acquainted with that language myself, but I should judge from her +manners and appearance that she was French; anyways, certainly +foreign. Her that was upstairs, sir, when Mr. Bucket and me had the +honour of waiting upon you with the sweeping-boy that night.” + +“Oh! Yes, yes. Mademoiselle Hortense.” + +“Indeed, sir?” Mr. Snagsby coughs his cough of submission behind his +hat. “I am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners in +general, but I have no doubt it WOULD be that.” Mr. Snagsby appears +to have set out in this reply with some desperate design of repeating +the name, but on reflection coughs again to excuse himself. + +“And what can you have to say, Snagsby,” demands Mr. Tulkinghorn, +“about her?” + +“Well, sir,” returns the stationer, shading his communication with +his hat, “it falls a little hard upon me. My domestic happiness is +very great—at least, it’s as great as can be expected, I’m sure—but +my little woman is rather given to jealousy. Not to put too fine a +point upon it, she is very much given to jealousy. And you see, a +foreign female of that genteel appearance coming into the shop, and +hovering—I should be the last to make use of a strong expression if +I could avoid it, but hovering, sir—in the court—you know it +is—now ain’t it? I only put it to yourself, sir.” + +Mr. Snagsby, having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in a +cough of general application to fill up all the blanks. + +“Why, what do you mean?” asks Mr. Tulkinghorn. + +“Just so, sir,” returns Mr. Snagsby; “I was sure you would feel it +yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of MY feelings when +coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the +foreign female—which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a +native sound I am sure—caught up the word Snagsby that night, being +uncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the direction and come at +dinner-time. Now Guster, our young woman, is timid and has fits, and +she, taking fright at the foreigner’s looks—which are fierce—and at +a grinding manner that she has of speaking—which is calculated to +alarm a weak mind—gave way to it, instead of bearing up against it, +and tumbled down the kitchen stairs out of one into another, such +fits as I do sometimes think are never gone into, or come out of, in +any house but ours. Consequently there was by good fortune ample +occupation for my little woman, and only me to answer the shop. When +she DID say that Mr. Tulkinghorn, being always denied to her by his +employer (which I had no doubt at the time was a foreign mode of +viewing a clerk), she would do herself the pleasure of continually +calling at my place until she was let in here. Since then she has +been, as I began by saying, hovering, hovering, sir”—Mr. Snagsby +repeats the word with pathetic emphasis—“in the court. The effects +of which movement it is impossible to calculate. I shouldn’t wonder +if it might have already given rise to the painfullest mistakes even +in the neighbours’ minds, not mentioning (if such a thing was +possible) my little woman. Whereas, goodness knows,” says Mr. +Snagsby, shaking his head, “I never had an idea of a foreign female, +except as being formerly connected with a bunch of brooms and a baby, +or at the present time with a tambourine and earrings. I never had, I +do assure you, sir!” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn had listened gravely to this complaint and inquires +when the stationer has finished, “And that’s all, is it, Snagsby?” + +“Why yes, sir, that’s all,” says Mr. Snagsby, ending with a cough +that plainly adds, “and it’s enough too—for me.” + +“I don’t know what Mademoiselle Hortense may want or mean, unless she +is mad,” says the lawyer. + +“Even if she was, you know, sir,” Mr. Snagsby pleads, “it wouldn’t be +a consolation to have some weapon or another in the form of a foreign +dagger planted in the family.” + +“No,” says the other. “Well, well! This shall be stopped. I am sorry +you have been inconvenienced. If she comes again, send her here.” + +Mr. Snagsby, with much bowing and short apologetic coughing, takes +his leave, lightened in heart. Mr. Tulkinghorn goes upstairs, saying +to himself, “These women were created to give trouble the whole earth +over. The mistress not being enough to deal with, here’s the maid +now! But I will be short with THIS jade at least!” + +So saying, he unlocks his door, gropes his way into his murky rooms, +lights his candles, and looks about him. It is too dark to see much +of the Allegory overhead there, but that importunate Roman, who is +for ever toppling out of the clouds and pointing, is at his old work +pretty distinctly. Not honouring him with much attention, Mr. +Tulkinghorn takes a small key from his pocket, unlocks a drawer in +which there is another key, which unlocks a chest in which there is +another, and so comes to the cellar-key, with which he prepares to +descend to the regions of old wine. He is going towards the door with +a candle in his hand when a knock comes. + +“Who’s this? Aye, aye, mistress, it’s you, is it? You appear at a +good time. I have just been hearing of you. Now! What do you want?” + +He stands the candle on the chimney-piece in the clerk’s hall and +taps his dry cheek with the key as he addresses these words of +welcome to Mademoiselle Hortense. That feline personage, with her +lips tightly shut and her eyes looking out at him sideways, softly +closes the door before replying. + +“I have had great deal of trouble to find you, sir.” + +“HAVE you!” + +“I have been here very often, sir. It has always been said to me, he +is not at home, he is engage, he is this and that, he is not for +you.” + +“Quite right, and quite true.” + +“Not true. Lies!” + +At times there is a suddenness in the manner of Mademoiselle Hortense +so like a bodily spring upon the subject of it that such subject +involuntarily starts and fails back. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn’s case at +present, though Mademoiselle Hortense, with her eyes almost shut up +(but still looking out sideways), is only smiling contemptuously and +shaking her head. + +“Now, mistress,” says the lawyer, tapping the key hastily upon the +chimney-piece. “If you have anything to say, say it, say it.” + +“Sir, you have not use me well. You have been mean and shabby.” + +“Mean and shabby, eh?” returns the lawyer, rubbing his nose with the +key. + +“Yes. What is it that I tell you? You know you have. You have +attrapped me—catched me—to give you information; you have asked me +to show you the dress of mine my Lady must have wore that night, you +have prayed me to come in it here to meet that boy. Say! Is it not?” +Mademoiselle Hortense makes another spring. + +“You are a vixen, a vixen!” Mr. Tulkinghorn seems to meditate as he +looks distrustfully at her, then he replies, “Well, wench, well. I +paid you.” + +“You paid me!” she repeats with fierce disdain. “Two sovereign! I +have not change them, I re-fuse them, I des-pise them, I throw them +from me!” Which she literally does, taking them out of her bosom as +she speaks and flinging them with such violence on the floor that +they jerk up again into the light before they roll away into corners +and slowly settle down there after spinning vehemently. + +“Now!” says Mademoiselle Hortense, darkening her large eyes again. +“You have paid me? Eh, my God, oh yes!” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn rubs his head with the key while she entertains +herself with a sarcastic laugh. + +“You must be rich, my fair friend,” he composedly observes, “to throw +money about in that way!” + +“I AM rich,” she returns. “I am very rich in hate. I hate my Lady, of +all my heart. You know that.” + +“Know it? How should I know it?” + +“Because you have known it perfectly before you prayed me to give you +that information. Because you have known perfectly that I was +en-r-r-r-raged!” It appears impossible for mademoiselle to roll the +letter “r” sufficiently in this word, notwithstanding that she +assists her energetic delivery by clenching both her hands and +setting all her teeth. + +“Oh! I knew that, did I?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, examining the wards +of the key. + +“Yes, without doubt. I am not blind. You have made sure of me because +you knew that. You had reason! I det-est her.” Mademoiselle Hortense folds her +arms and throws this last remark at him over one of her shoulders. + +“Having said this, have you anything else to say, mademoiselle?” + +“I am not yet placed. Place me well. Find me a good condition! If you +cannot, or do not choose to do that, employ me to pursue her, to +chase her, to disgrace and to dishonour her. I will help you well, +and with a good will. It is what YOU do. Do I not know that?” + +“You appear to know a good deal,” Mr. Tulkinghorn retorts. + +“Do I not? Is it that I am so weak as to believe, like a child, that +I come here in that dress to rec-eive that boy only to decide a +little bet, a wager? Eh, my God, oh yes!” In this reply, down to the +word “wager” inclusive, mademoiselle has been ironically polite and +tender, then as suddenly dashed into the bitterest and most defiant +scorn, with her black eyes in one and the same moment very nearly +shut and staringly wide open. + +“Now, let us see,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, tapping his chin with the +key and looking imperturbably at her, “how this matter stands.” + +“Ah! Let us see,” mademoiselle assents, with many angry and tight +nods of her head. + +“You come here to make a remarkably modest demand, which you have +just stated, and it not being conceded, you will come again.” + +“And again,” says mademoiselle with more tight and angry nods. “And +yet again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for ever!” + +“And not only here, but you will go to Mr. Snagsby’s too, perhaps? +That visit not succeeding either, you will go again perhaps?” + +“And again,” repeats mademoiselle, cataleptic with determination. +“And yet again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for +ever!” + +“Very well. Now, Mademoiselle Hortense, let me recommend you to take +the candle and pick up that money of yours. I think you will find it +behind the clerk’s partition in the corner yonder.” + +She merely throws a laugh over her shoulder and stands her ground +with folded arms. + +“You will not, eh?” + +“No, I will not!” + +“So much the poorer you; so much the richer I! Look, mistress, this +is the key of my wine-cellar. It is a large key, but the keys of +prisons are larger. In this city there are houses of correction +(where the treadmills are, for women), the gates of which are very +strong and heavy, and no doubt the keys too. I am afraid a lady of +your spirit and activity would find it an inconvenience to have one +of those keys turned upon her for any length of time. What do you +think?” + +“I think,” mademoiselle replies without any action and in a clear, +obliging voice, “that you are a miserable wretch.” + +“Probably,” returns Mr. Tulkinghorn, quietly blowing his nose. “But I +don’t ask what you think of myself; I ask what you think of the +prison.” + +“Nothing. What does it matter to me?” + +“Why, it matters this much, mistress,” says the lawyer, deliberately +putting away his handkerchief and adjusting his frill; “the law is so +despotic here that it interferes to prevent any of our good English +citizens from being troubled, even by a lady’s visits against his +desire. And on his complaining that he is so troubled, it takes hold +of the troublesome lady and shuts her up in prison under hard +discipline. Turns the key upon her, mistress.” Illustrating with the +cellar-key. + +“Truly?” returns mademoiselle in the same pleasant voice. “That is +droll! But—my faith!—still what does it matter to me?” + +“My fair friend,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “make another visit here, or +at Mr. Snagsby’s, and you shall learn.” + +“In that case you will send me to the prison, perhaps?” + +“Perhaps.” + +It would be contradictory for one in mademoiselle’s state of +agreeable jocularity to foam at the mouth, otherwise a tigerish +expansion thereabouts might look as if a very little more would make +her do it. + +“In a word, mistress,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “I am sorry to be +unpolite, but if you ever present yourself uninvited here—or +there—again, I will give you over to the police. Their gallantry is +great, but they carry troublesome people through the streets in an +ignominious manner, strapped down on a board, my good wench.” + +“I will prove you,” whispers mademoiselle, stretching out her hand, +“I will try if you dare to do it!” + +“And if,” pursues the lawyer without minding her, “I place you in +that good condition of being locked up in jail, it will be some time +before you find yourself at liberty again.” + +“I will prove you,” repeats mademoiselle in her former whisper. + +“And now,” proceeds the lawyer, still without minding her, “you had +better go. Think twice before you come here again.” + +“Think you,” she answers, “twice two hundred times!” + +“You were dismissed by your lady, you know,” Mr. Tulkinghorn +observes, following her out upon the staircase, “as the most +implacable and unmanageable of women. Now turn over a new leaf and +take warning by what I say to you. For what I say, I mean; and what I +threaten, I will do, mistress.” + +She goes down without answering or looking behind her. When she is +gone, he goes down too, and returning with his cobweb-covered bottle, +devotes himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents, now and +then, as he throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the +pertinacious Roman pointing from the ceiling. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + +Esther’s Narrative + + +It matters little now how much I thought of my living mother who had +told me evermore to consider her dead. I could not venture to +approach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of +the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my +fears of increasing it. Knowing that my mere existence as a living +creature was an unforeseen danger in her way, I could not always +conquer that terror of myself which had seized me when I first knew +the secret. At no time did I dare to utter her name. I felt as if I +did not even dare to hear it. If the conversation anywhere, when I +was present, took that direction, as it sometimes naturally did, I +tried not to hear: I mentally counted, repeated something that I +knew, or went out of the room. I am conscious now that I often did +these things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken +of, but I did them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might +lead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal through me. + +It matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother’s +voice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed to +do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so +new to me. It matters little that I watched for every public mention +of my mother’s name; that I passed and repassed the door of her house +in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the +theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we were so wide +asunder before the great company of all degrees that any link or +confidence between us seemed a dream. It is all, all over. My lot has +been so blest that I can relate little of myself which is not a story +of goodness and generosity in others. I may well pass that little and +go on. + +When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many conversations +with my guardian of which Richard was the theme. My dear girl was +deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong, but +she was so faithful to Richard that she could not bear to blame him +even for that. My guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his +name with a word of reproof. “Rick is mistaken, my dear,” he would +say to her. “Well, well! We have all been mistaken over and over +again. We must trust to you and time to set him right.” + +We knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to +time until he had often tried to open Richard’s eyes. That he had +written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and +persuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Richard +was deaf and blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make amends +when the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the dark, +he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those +clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. Suspicion and +misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him work the +suit out and come through it to his right mind. This was his +unvarying reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such possession +of his whole nature that it was impossible to place any consideration +before him which he did not, with a distorted kind of reason, make a +new argument in favour of his doing what he did. “So that it is even +more mischievous,” said my guardian once to me, “to remonstrate with +the poor dear fellow than to leave him alone.” + +I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr. +Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard. + +“Adviser!” returned my guardian, laughing, “My dear, who would advise +with Skimpole?” + +“Encourager would perhaps have been a better word,” said I. + +“Encourager!” returned my guardian again. “Who could be encouraged by +Skimpole?” + +“Not Richard?” I asked. + +“No,” he replied. “Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer +creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or +encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or +anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as +Skimpole.” + +“Pray, cousin John,” said Ada, who had just joined us and now looked +over my shoulder, “what made him such a child?” + +“What made him such a child?” inquired my guardian, rubbing his head, +a little at a loss. + +“Yes, cousin John.” + +“Why,” he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, “he is +all sentiment, and—and susceptibility, and—and sensibility, +and—and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him, +somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth +attached too much importance to them and too little to any training +that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he +is. Hey?” said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us +hopefully. “What do you think, you two?” + +Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an +expense to Richard. + +“So it is, so it is,” returned my guardian hurriedly. “That must not +be. We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never do.” + +And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever +introduced Richard to Mr. Vholes for a present of five pounds. + +“Did he?” said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his +face. “But there you have the man. There you have the man! There is +nothing mercenary in that with him. He has no idea of the value of +money. He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with Mr. +Vholes and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it and +thinks nothing of it. He told you himself, I’ll be bound, my dear?” + +“Oh, yes!” said I. + +“Exactly!” cried my guardian, quite triumphant. “There you have the +man! If he had meant any harm by it or was conscious of any harm in +it, he wouldn’t tell it. He tells it as he does it in mere +simplicity. But you shall see him in his own home, and then you’ll +understand him better. We must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole and +caution him on these points. Lord bless you, my dears, an infant, an +infant!” + +In pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day and +presented ourselves at Mr. Skimpole’s door. + +He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there +were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about in +cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better tenant +than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend Somebody +always paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude for +business rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, I don’t +know; but he had occupied the same house some years. It was in a +state of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation. Two or three of +the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken, the knocker +was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long time to judge +from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints on the steps +were the only signs of its being inhabited. + +A slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the +rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe berry +answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping +up the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr. Jarndyce (indeed Ada and +I both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of +her wages), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. The +lock of the door being in a disabled condition, she then applied +herself to securing it with the chain, which was not in good action +either, and said would we go upstairs? + +We went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other furniture +than the dirty footprints. Mr. Jarndyce without further ceremony +entered a room there, and we followed. It was dingy enough and not at +all clean, but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a +large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and +plenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music, +newspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. A broken pane of glass +in one of the dirty windows was papered and wafered over, but there +was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was +another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a +bottle of light wine. Mr. Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa in +a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china +cup—it was then about mid-day—and looking at a collection of +wallflowers in the balcony. + +He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and +received us in his usual airy manner. + +“Here I am, you see!” he said when we were seated, not without some +little difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. “Here +I am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of beef and +mutton for breakfast; I don’t. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee, +and my claret; I am content. I don’t want them for themselves, but +they remind me of the sun. There’s nothing solar about legs of beef +and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!” + +“This is our friend’s consulting-room (or would be, if he ever +prescribed), his sanctum, his studio,” said my guardian to us. + +“Yes,” said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, “this is the +bird’s cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his +feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings, he sings!” + +He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, “He sings! Not +an ambitious note, but still he sings.” + +“These are very fine,” said my guardian. “A present?” + +“No,” he answered. “No! Some amiable gardener sells them. His man +wanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he should +wait for the money. ‘Really, my friend,’ I said, ‘I think not—if +your time is of any value to you.’ I suppose it was, for he went +away.” + +My guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, “Is it +possible to be worldly with this baby?” + +“This is a day,” said Mr. Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in a +tumbler, “that will ever be remembered here. We shall call it Saint +Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my daughters. I have a +blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a Sentiment +daughter, and I have a Comedy daughter. You must see them all. +They’ll be enchanted.” + +He was going to summon them when my guardian interposed and asked him +to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first. “My dear +Jarndyce,” he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa, “as many +moments as you please. Time is no object here. We never know what +o’clock it is, and we never care. Not the way to get on in life, +you’ll tell me? Certainly. But we DON’T get on in life. We don’t +pretend to do it.” + +My guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, “You hear him?” + +“Now, Harold,” he began, “the word I have to say relates to Rick.” + +“The dearest friend I have!” returned Mr. Skimpole cordially. “I +suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms +with you. But he is, I can’t help it; he is full of youthful poetry, +and I love him. If you don’t like it, I can’t help it. I love him.” + +The engaging frankness with which he made this declaration really had +a disinterested appearance and captivated my guardian, if not, for +the moment, Ada too. + +“You are welcome to love him as much as you like,” returned Mr. +Jarndyce, “but we must save his pocket, Harold.” + +“Oh!” said Mr. Skimpole. “His pocket? Now you are coming to what I +don’t understand.” Taking a little more claret and dipping one of the +cakes in it, he shook his head and smiled at Ada and me with an +ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand. + +“If you go with him here or there,” said my guardian plainly, “you +must not let him pay for both.” + +“My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr. Skimpole, his genial face irradiated +by the comicality of this idea, “what am I to do? If he takes me +anywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never have any money. If I +had any money, I don’t know anything about it. Suppose I say to a +man, how much? Suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? I know +nothing about seven and sixpence. It is impossible for me to pursue +the subject with any consideration for the man. I don’t go about +asking busy people what seven and sixpence is in Moorish—which I +don’t understand. Why should I go about asking them what seven and +sixpence is in Money—which I don’t understand?” + +“Well,” said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless +reply, “if you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must +borrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that +circumstance), and leave the calculation to him.” + +“My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “I will do anything to +give you pleasure, but it seems an idle form—a superstition. +Besides, I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson, I +thought Mr. Carstone was immensely rich. I thought he had only to +make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a +bill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower +of money.” + +“Indeed it is not so, sir,” said Ada. “He is poor.” + +“No, really?” returned Mr. Skimpole with his bright smile. “You +surprise me.” + +“And not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed,” said my +guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr. +Skimpole’s dressing-gown, “be you very careful not to encourage him +in that reliance, Harold.” + +“My dear good friend,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “and my dear Miss +Simmerson, and my dear Miss Clare, how can I do that? It’s business, +and I don’t know business. It is he who encourages me. He emerges +from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before +me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire +them—as bright prospects. But I know no more about them, and I tell +him so.” + +The helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before us, +the light-hearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the +fantastic way in which he took himself under his own protection and +argued about that curious person, combined with the delightful ease +of everything he said exactly to make out my guardian’s case. The +more I saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was +present, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and +yet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the +less agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with any +one for whom I cared. + +Hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr. +Skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters +(his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite +delighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish +character. He soon came back, bringing with him the three young +ladies and Mrs. Skimpole, who had once been a beauty but was now a +delicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of +disorders. + +“This,” said Mr. Skimpole, “is my Beauty daughter, Arethusa—plays +and sings odds and ends like her father. This is my Sentiment +daughter, Laura—plays a little but don’t sing. This is my Comedy +daughter, Kitty—sings a little but don’t play. We all draw a little +and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money.” + +Mrs. Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to +strike out this item in the family attainments. I also thought that +she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she took +every opportunity of throwing in another. + +“It is pleasant,” said Mr. Skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes from +one to the other of us, “and it is whimsically interesting to trace +peculiarities in families. In this family we are all children, and I +am the youngest.” + +The daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by +this droll fact, particularly the Comedy daughter. + +“My dears, it is true,” said Mr. Skimpole, “is it not? So it is, and +so it must be, because like the dogs in the hymn, ‘it is our nature +to.’ Now, here is Miss Summerson with a fine administrative capacity +and a knowledge of details perfectly surprising. It will sound very +strange in Miss Summerson’s ears, I dare say, that we know nothing +about chops in this house. But we don’t, not the least. We can’t cook +anything whatever. A needle and thread we don’t know how to use. We +admire the people who possess the practical wisdom we want, but we +don’t quarrel with them. Then why should they quarrel with us? Live +and let live, we say to them. Live upon your practical wisdom, and +let us live upon you!” + +He laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid and really to mean what +he said. + +“We have sympathy, my roses,” said Mr. Skimpole, “sympathy for +everything. Have we not?” + +“Oh, yes, papa!” cried the three daughters. + +“In fact, that is our family department,” said Mr. Skimpole, “in this +hurly-burly of life. We are capable of looking on and of being +interested, and we DO look on, and we ARE interested. What more can +we do? Here is my Beauty daughter, married these three years. Now I +dare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all +wrong in point of political economy, but it was very agreeable. We +had our little festivities on those occasions and exchanged social +ideas. She brought her young husband home one day, and they and their +young fledglings have their nest upstairs. I dare say at some time or +other Sentiment and Comedy will bring THEIR husbands home and have +THEIR nests upstairs too. So we get on, we don’t know how, but +somehow.” + +She looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and I +could not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the +three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as little +haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father’s +playthings in his idlest hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted, +I observed, in their respective styles of wearing their hair, the +Beauty daughter being in the classic manner, the Sentiment daughter +luxuriant and flowing, and the Comedy daughter in the arch style, +with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and vivacious little curls +dotted about the corners of her eyes. They were dressed to +correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way. + +Ada and I conversed with these young ladies and found them +wonderfully like their father. In the meanwhile Mr. Jarndyce (who had +been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change in +the wind) talked with Mrs. Skimpole in a corner, where we could not +help hearing the chink of money. Mr. Skimpole had previously +volunteered to go home with us and had withdrawn to dress himself for +the purpose. + +“My roses,” he said when he came back, “take care of mama. She is +poorly to-day. By going home with Mr. Jarndyce for a day or two, I +shall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability. It has been +tried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home.” + +“That bad man!” said the Comedy daughter. + +“At the very time when he knew papa was lying ill by his wallflowers, +looking at the blue sky,” Laura complained. + +“And when the smell of hay was in the air!” said Arethusa. + +“It showed a want of poetry in the man,” Mr. Skimpole assented, but +with perfect good humour. “It was coarse. There was an absence of the +finer touches of humanity in it! My daughters have taken great +offence,” he explained to us, “at an honest man—” + +“Not honest, papa. Impossible!” they all three protested. + +“At a rough kind of fellow—a sort of human hedgehog rolled up,” said +Mr. Skimpole, “who is a baker in this neighbourhood and from whom we +borrowed a couple of arm-chairs. We wanted a couple of arm-chairs, +and we hadn’t got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man +who HAD got them, to lend them. Well! This morose person lent them, +and we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back. +He had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He +objected to their being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out +his mistake. I said, ‘Can you, at your time of life, be so +headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an arm-chair is a thing to +put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object to contemplate, to +survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? Don’t you +KNOW that these arm-chairs were borrowed to be sat upon?’ He was +unreasonable and unpersuadable and used intemperate language. Being +as patient as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him. +I said, ‘Now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary, +we are all children of one great mother, Nature. On this blooming +summer morning here you see me’ (I was on the sofa) ‘with flowers +before me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air +full of fragrance, contemplating Nature. I entreat you, by our common +brotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime, +the absurd figure of an angry baker!’ But he did,” said Mr. Skimpole, +raising his laughing eyes in playful astonishment; “he did interpose +that ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. And therefore +I am very glad to get out of his way and to go home with my friend +Jarndyce.” + +It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Skimpole and the +daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so old +a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course. He took +leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any +other aspect in which he showed himself and rode away with us in +perfect harmony of mind. We had an opportunity of seeing through some +open doors, as we went downstairs, that his own apartment was a +palace to the rest of the house. + +I could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very +startling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what +ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out. Our guest was +in such spirits on the way home that I could do nothing but listen to +him and wonder at him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada yielded to +the same fascination. As to my guardian, the wind, which had +threatened to become fixed in the east when we left Somers Town, +veered completely round before we were a couple of miles from it. + +Whether of questionable childishness or not in any other matters, Mr. +Skimpole had a child’s enjoyment of change and bright weather. In no +way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room +before any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet +looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and +drinking songs, Italian and German, by the score. + +We were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the +piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music, +and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined +old Verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and +had got tired of, when a card was brought in and my guardian read +aloud in a surprised voice, “Sir Leicester Dedlock!” + +The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me +and before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have +hurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness, +to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know +where it was. I heard my name and found that my guardian was +presenting me before I could move to a chair. + +“Pray be seated, Sir Leicester.” + +“Mr. Jarndyce,” said Sir Leicester in reply as he bowed and seated +himself, “I do myself the honour of calling here—” + +“You do ME the honour, Sir Leicester.” + +“Thank you—of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire to express +my regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may +have against a gentleman who—who is known to you and has been your +host, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference, should +have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge, +from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and +refined taste at my house, Chesney Wold.” + +“You are exceedingly obliging, Sir Leicester, and on behalf of those +ladies (who are present) and for myself, I thank you very much.” + +“It is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the +reasons I have mentioned, I refrain from making further allusion—it +is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that that gentleman may have done me the +honour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to +believe that you would not have been received by my local +establishment in Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy, +which its members are instructed to show to all ladies and gentlemen +who present themselves at that house. I merely beg to observe, sir, +that the fact is the reverse.” + +My guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any +verbal answer. + +“It has given me pain, Mr. Jarndyce,” Sir Leicester weightily +proceeded. “I assure you, sir, it has given—me—pain—to learn from +the housekeeper at Chesney Wold that a gentleman who was in your +company in that part of the county, and who would appear to possess a +cultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred by some +such cause from examining the family pictures with that leisure, that +attention, that care, which he might have desired to bestow upon them +and which some of them might possibly have repaid.” Here he produced +a card and read, with much gravity and a little trouble, through his +eye-glass, “Mr. Hirrold—Herald—Harold—Skampling—Skumpling—I beg +your pardon—Skimpole.” + +“This is Mr. Harold Skimpole,” said my guardian, evidently surprised. + +“Oh!” exclaimed Sir Leicester, “I am happy to meet Mr. Skimpole and +to have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. I hope, +sir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county, you +will be under no similar sense of restraint.” + +“You are very obliging, Sir Leicester Dedlock. So encouraged, I shall +certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another visit to +your beautiful house. The owners of such places as Chesney Wold,” +said Mr. Skimpole with his usual happy and easy air, “are public +benefactors. They are good enough to maintain a number of delightful +objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to +reap all the admiration and pleasure that they yield is to be +ungrateful to our benefactors.” + +Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. “An artist, +sir?” + +“No,” returned Mr. Skimpole. “A perfectly idle man. A mere amateur.” + +Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this even more. He hoped he might +have the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr. Skimpole next +came down into Lincolnshire. Mr. Skimpole professed himself much +flattered and honoured. + +“Mr. Skimpole mentioned,” pursued Sir Leicester, addressing himself +again to my guardian, “mentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he may +have observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family—” + +(“That is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the +occasion of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and Miss Clare,” +Mr. Skimpole airily explained to us.) + +“—That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there was +Mr. Jarndyce.” Sir Leicester bowed to the bearer of that name. “And +hence I became aware of the circumstance for which I have professed +my regret. That this should have occurred to any gentleman, Mr. +Jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known to Lady Dedlock, +and indeed claiming some distant connexion with her, and for whom (as +I learn from my Lady herself) she entertains a high respect, does, I +assure you, give—me—pain.” + +“Pray say no more about it, Sir Leicester,” returned my guardian. “I +am very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your consideration. +Indeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to apologize for it.” + +I had not once looked up. I had not seen the visitor and had not even +appeared to myself to hear the conversation. It surprises me to find +that I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression on me as it +passed. I heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused and my +instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so +distressing to me that I thought I understood nothing, through the +rushing in my head and the beating of my heart. + +“I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock,” said Sir Leicester, +rising, “and my Lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of +exchanging a few words with Mr. Jarndyce and his wards on the +occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the +vicinity. Permit me, Mr. Jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to +these ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr. Skimpole. +Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it would afford me +any gratification to hear that Mr. Boythorn had favoured my house +with his presence, but those circumstances are confined to that +gentleman himself and do not extend beyond him.” + +“You know my old opinion of him,” said Mr. Skimpole, lightly +appealing to us. “An amiable bull who is determined to make every +colour scarlet!” + +Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed as if he could not possibly hear +another word in reference to such an individual and took his leave +with great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all +possible speed and remained there until I had recovered my +self-command. It had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to +find when I went downstairs again that they only rallied me for +having been shy and mute before the great Lincolnshire baronet. + +By that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I +must tell my guardian what I knew. The possibility of my being +brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house, +even of Mr. Skimpole’s, however distantly associated with me, +receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband, was so painful +that I felt I could no longer guide myself without his assistance. + +When we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual +talk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again and sought my +guardian among his books. I knew he always read at that hour, and as +I drew near I saw the light shining out into the passage from his +reading-lamp. + +“May I come in, guardian?” + +“Surely, little woman. What’s the matter?” + +“Nothing is the matter. I thought I would like to take this quiet +time of saying a word to you about myself.” + +He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his +kind attentive face towards me. I could not help observing that it +wore that curious expression I had observed in it once before—on +that night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could +readily understand. + +“What concerns you, my dear Esther,” said he, “concerns us all. You +cannot be more ready to speak than I am to hear.” + +“I know that, guardian. But I have such need of your advice and +support. Oh! You don’t know how much need I have to-night.” + +He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little +alarmed. + +“Or how anxious I have been to speak to you,” said I, “ever since the +visitor was here to-day.” + +“The visitor, my dear! Sir Leicester Dedlock?” + +“Yes.” + +He folded his arms and sat looking at me with an air of the +profoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did not +know how to prepare him. + +“Why, Esther,” said he, breaking into a smile, “our visitor and you +are the two last persons on earth I should have thought of connecting +together!” + +“Oh, yes, guardian, I know it. And I too, but a little while ago.” + +The smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before. He +crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to that) +and resumed his seat before me. + +“Guardian,” said I, “do you remember, when we were overtaken by the +thunder-storm, Lady Dedlock’s speaking to you of her sister?” + +“Of course. Of course I do.” + +“And reminding you that she and her sister had differed, had gone +their several ways?” + +“Of course.” + +“Why did they separate, guardian?” + +His face quite altered as he looked at me. “My child, what questions +are these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever did know, I +believe. Who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and +proud women were! You have seen Lady Dedlock. If you had ever seen +her sister, you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty +as she.” + +“Oh, guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!” + +“Seen her?” + +He paused a little, biting his lip. “Then, Esther, when you spoke to +me long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that he was all but +married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and +that that time had had its influence on his later life—did you know +it all, and know who the lady was?” + +“No, guardian,” I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke +upon me. “Nor do I know yet.” + +“Lady Dedlock’s sister.” + +“And why,” I could scarcely ask him, “why, guardian, pray tell me why +were THEY parted?” + +“It was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart. He +afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some +injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quarrel +with her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she wrote him +that from the date of that letter she died to him—as in literal +truth she did—and that the resolution was exacted from her by her +knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of honour, which +were both her nature too. In consideration for those master points in +him, and even in consideration for them in herself, she made the +sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and die in it. She did +both, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never heard of her from +that hour. Nor did any one.” + +“Oh, guardian, what have I done!” I cried, giving way to my grief; +“what sorrow have I innocently caused!” + +“You caused, Esther?” + +“Yes, guardian. Innocently, but most surely. That secluded sister is +my first remembrance.” + +“No, no!” he cried, starting. + +“Yes, guardian, yes! And HER sister is my mother!” + +I would have told him all my mother’s letter, but he would not hear +it then. He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so plainly +before me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my better +state of mind, that, penetrated as I had been with fervent gratitude +towards him through so many years, I believed I had never loved him +so dearly, never thanked him in my heart so fully, as I did that +night. And when he had taken me to my room and kissed me at the door, +and when at last I lay down to sleep, my thought was how could I ever +be busy enough, how could I ever be good enough, how in my little way +could I ever hope to be forgetful enough of myself, devoted enough to +him, and useful enough to others, to show him how I blessed and +honoured him. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + +The Letter and the Answer + + +My guardian called me into his room next morning, and then I told him +what had been left untold on the previous night. There was nothing to +be done, he said, but to keep the secret and to avoid another such +encounter as that of yesterday. He understood my feeling and entirely +shared it. He charged himself even with restraining Mr. Skimpole from +improving his opportunity. One person whom he need not name to me, it +was not now possible for him to advise or help. He wished it were, +but no such thing could be. If her mistrust of the lawyer whom she +had mentioned were well-founded, which he scarcely doubted, he +dreaded discovery. He knew something of him, both by sight and by +reputation, and it was certain that he was a dangerous man. Whatever +happened, he repeatedly impressed upon me with anxious affection and +kindness, I was as innocent of as himself and as unable to influence. + +“Nor do I understand,” said he, “that any doubts tend towards you, my +dear. Much suspicion may exist without that connexion.” + +“With the lawyer,” I returned. “But two other persons have come into +my mind since I have been anxious. Then I told him all about Mr. +Guppy, who I feared might have had his vague surmises when I little +understood his meaning, but in whose silence after our last interview +I expressed perfect confidence.” + +“Well,” said my guardian. “Then we may dismiss him for the present. +Who is the other?” + +I called to his recollection the French maid and the eager offer of +herself she had made to me. + +“Ha!” he returned thoughtfully. “That is a more alarming person than +the clerk. But after all, my dear, it was but seeking for a new +service. She had seen you and Ada a little while before, and it was +natural that you should come into her head. She merely proposed +herself for your maid, you know. She did nothing more.” + +“Her manner was strange,” said I. + +“Yes, and her manner was strange when she took her shoes off and +showed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her +death-bed,” said my guardian. “It would be useless self-distress and +torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There are very +few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous +meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You can be nothing +better than yourself; be that, through this knowledge, as you were +before you had it. It is the best you can do for everybody’s sake. I, +sharing the secret with you—” + +“And lightening it, guardian, so much,” said I. + +“—will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as I can +observe it from my distance. And if the time should come when I can +stretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom it is +better not to name even here, I will not fail to do it for her dear +daughter’s sake.” + +I thanked him with my whole heart. What could I ever do but thank +him! I was going out at the door when he asked me to stay a moment. +Quickly turning round, I saw that same expression on his face again; +and all at once, I don’t know how, it flashed upon me as a new and +far-off possibility that I understood it. + +“My dear Esther,” said my guardian, “I have long had something in my +thoughts that I have wished to say to you.” + +“Indeed?” + +“I have had some difficulty in approaching it, and I still have. I +should wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately +considered. Would you object to my writing it?” + +“Dear guardian, how could I object to your writing anything for ME to +read?” + +“Then see, my love,” said he with his cheery smile, “am I at this +moment quite as plain and easy—do I seem as open, as honest and +old-fashioned—as I am at any time?” + +I answered in all earnestness, “Quite.” With the strictest truth, for +his momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute), and +his fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored. + +“Do I look as if I suppressed anything, meant anything but what I +said, had any reservation at all, no matter what?” said he with his +bright clear eyes on mine. + +I answered, most assuredly he did not. + +“Can you fully trust me, and thoroughly rely on what I profess, +Esther?” + +“Most thoroughly,” said I with my whole heart. + +“My dear girl,” returned my guardian, “give me your hand.” + +He took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and looking down +into my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness of +manner—the old protecting manner which had made that house my home +in a moment—said, “You have wrought changes in me, little woman, +since the winter day in the stage-coach. First and last you have done +me a world of good since that time.” + +“Ah, guardian, what have you done for me since that time!” + +“But,” said he, “that is not to be remembered now.” + +“It never can be forgotten.” + +“Yes, Esther,” said he with a gentle seriousness, “it is to be +forgotten now, to be forgotten for a while. You are only to remember +now that nothing can change me as you know me. Can you feel quite +assured of that, my dear?” + +“I can, and I do,” I said. + +“That’s much,” he answered. “That’s everything. But I must not take +that at a word. I will not write this something in my thoughts until +you have quite resolved within yourself that nothing can change me as +you know me. If you doubt that in the least degree, I will never +write it. If you are sure of that, on good consideration, send +Charley to me this night week—‘for the letter.’ But if you are not +quite certain, never send. Mind, I trust to your truth, in this thing +as in everything. If you are not quite certain on that one point, +never send!” + +“Guardian,” said I, “I am already certain, I can no more be changed +in that conviction than you can be changed towards me. I shall send +Charley for the letter.” + +He shook my hand and said no more. Nor was any more said in reference +to this conversation, either by him or me, through the whole week. +When the appointed night came, I said to Charley as soon as I was +alone, “Go and knock at Mr. Jarndyce’s door, Charley, and say you +have come from me—‘for the letter.’” Charley went up the stairs, and +down the stairs, and along the passages—the zig-zag way about the +old-fashioned house seemed very long in my listening ears that +night—and so came back, along the passages, and down the stairs, and +up the stairs, and brought the letter. “Lay it on the table, +Charley,” said I. So Charley laid it on the table and went to bed, +and I sat looking at it without taking it up, thinking of many +things. + +I began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those +timid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her resolute +face so cold and set, and when I was more solitary with Mrs. Rachael +than if I had had no one in the world to speak to or to look at. I +passed to the altered days when I was so blest as to find friends in +all around me, and to be beloved. I came to the time when I first saw +my dear girl and was received into that sisterly affection which was +the grace and beauty of my life. I recalled the first bright gleam of +welcome which had shone out of those very windows upon our expectant +faces on that cold bright night, and which had never paled. I lived +my happy life there over again, I went through my illness and +recovery, I thought of myself so altered and of those around me so +unchanged; and all this happiness shone like a light from one central +figure, represented before me by the letter on the table. + +I opened it and read it. It was so impressive in its love for me, and +in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it showed +for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read +much at a time. But I read it through three times before I laid it +down. I had thought beforehand that I knew its purport, and I did. It +asked me, would I be the mistress of Bleak House. + +It was not a love letter, though it expressed so much love, but was +written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his +face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind +protecting manner in every line. It addressed me as if our places +were reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the +feelings they had awakened his. It dwelt on my being young, and he +past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I +was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing +all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature +deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage +and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance +the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he +was certain it would be right. But he had considered this step anew +since our late confidence and had decided on taking it, if it only +served to show me through one poor instance that the whole world +would readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of my childhood. +I was the last to know what happiness I could bestow upon him, but of +that he said no more, for I was always to remember that I owed him +nothing and that he was my debtor, and for very much. He had often +thought of our future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and +fearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age) +would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up, +had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made it. +If I felt that I could ever give him the best right he could have to +be my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become +the dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter +chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind +myself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even +then I must have ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or in +the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in his +old manner, in the old name by which I called him. And as to his +bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be the +same, he knew. + +This was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a +justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian +impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his +integrity he stated the full case. + +But he did not hint to me that when I had been better looking he had +had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from it. +That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he +could love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery +of my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my +disfigurement and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in +need of such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to the +last. + +But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of +the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had but +one thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him +poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but some new means +of thanking him? + +Still I cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after +reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect—for +it was strange though I had expected the contents—but as if +something for which there was no name or distinct idea were +indefinitely lost to me. I was very happy, very thankful, very +hopeful; but I cried very much. + +By and by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen, and I +said, “Oh, Esther, Esther, can that be you!” I am afraid the face in +the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my +finger at it, and it stopped. + +“That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear, +when you showed me such a change!” said I, beginning to let down my +hair. “When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as +cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us +begin for once and for all.” + +I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little +still, but that was because I had been crying, not because I was +crying then. + +“And so Esther, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your best +friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great +deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men.” + +I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else, how +should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been +a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form +that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid +them down in their basket again. + +Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how +often had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my +illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why I +should be busy, busy, busy—useful, amiable, serviceable, in all +honest, unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit +down morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at +first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that I +was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it seem +strange? Other people had thought of such things, if I had not. +“Don’t you remember, my plain dear,” I asked myself, looking at the +glass, “what Mrs. Woodcourt said before those scars were there about +your marrying—” + +Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains of +the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only +been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it +would be better not to keep them now. + +They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room—our +sitting-room, dividing Ada’s chamber from mine. I took a candle and +went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand, +I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and +I stole in to kiss her. + +It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying; but +I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. Weaker +than that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for a moment +to her lips. I thought about her love for Richard, though, indeed, +the flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own +room and burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant. + +On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian just +as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not the +least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was +none) in mine. I was with him several times in the course of the +morning, in and out, when there was no one there, and I thought it +not unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter, but he did +not say a word. + +So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week, over +which time Mr. Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, every day, +that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he never +did. + +I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I +tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not +write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought +each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days, +and he never said a word. + +At last, Mr. Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon +going out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and going down, +came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the +drawing-room window looking out. + +He turned on my coming in and said, smiling, “Aye, it’s you, little +woman, is it?” and looked out again. + +I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down +on purpose. “Guardian,” I said, rather hesitating and trembling, +“when would you like to have the answer to the letter Charley came +for?” + +“When it’s ready, my dear,” he replied. + +“I think it is ready,” said I. + +“Is Charley to bring it?” he asked pleasantly. + +“No. I have brought it myself, guardian,” I returned. + +I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was this +the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no +difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said +nothing to my precious pet about it. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV + +In Trust + + +One morning when I had done jingling about with my baskets of keys, +as my beauty and I were walking round and round the garden I happened +to turn my eyes towards the house and saw a long thin shadow going in +which looked like Mr. Vholes. Ada had been telling me only that +morning of her hopes that Richard might exhaust his ardour in the +Chancery suit by being so very earnest in it; and therefore, not to +damp my dear girl’s spirits, I said nothing about Mr. Vholes’s +shadow. + +Presently came Charley, lightly winding among the bushes and tripping +along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora’s attendants +instead of my maid, saying, “Oh, if you please, miss, would you step +and speak to Mr. Jarndyce!” + +It was one of Charley’s peculiarities that whenever she was charged +with a message she always began to deliver it as soon as she beheld, +at any distance, the person for whom it was intended. Therefore I saw +Charley asking me in her usual form of words to “step and speak” to +Mr. Jarndyce long before I heard her. And when I did hear her, she +had said it so often that she was out of breath. + +I told Ada I would make haste back and inquired of Charley as we went +in whether there was not a gentleman with Mr. Jarndyce. To which +Charley, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit +to my educational powers, replied, “Yes, miss. Him as come down in +the country with Mr. Richard.” + +A more complete contrast than my guardian and Mr. Vholes I suppose +there could not be. I found them looking at one another across a +table, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and +upright and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out what +he had to say in such a rich ringing voice and the other keeping it +in in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner that I thought I +never had seen two people so unmatched. + +“You know Mr. Vholes, my dear,” said my guardian. Not with the +greatest urbanity, I must say. + +Mr. Vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated himself +again, just as he had seated himself beside Richard in the gig. Not +having Richard to look at, he looked straight before him. + +“Mr. Vholes,” said my guardian, eyeing his black figure as if he were +a bird of ill omen, “has brought an ugly report of our most +unfortunate Rick.” Laying a marked emphasis on “most unfortunate” as +if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion with Mr. +Vholes. + +I sat down between them; Mr. Vholes remained immovable, except that +he secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face with +his black glove. + +“And as Rick and you are happily good friends, I should like to +know,” said my guardian, “what you think, my dear. Would you be so +good as to—as to speak up, Mr. Vholes?” + +Doing anything but that, Mr. Vholes observed, “I have been saying +that I have reason to know, Miss Summerson, as Mr. C.’s professional +adviser, that Mr. C.’s circumstances are at the present moment in an +embarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount as owing to the +peculiar and pressing nature of liabilities Mr. C. has incurred and +the means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved +off many little matters for Mr. C., but there is a limit to staving +off, and we have reached it. I have made some advances out of pocket +to accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but I necessarily look to +being repaid, for I do not pretend to be a man of capital, and I have +a father to support in the Vale of Taunton, besides striving to +realize some little independence for three dear girls at home. My +apprehension is, Mr. C.’s circumstances being such, lest it should +end in his obtaining leave to part with his commission, which at all +events is desirable to be made known to his connexions.” + +Mr. Vholes, who had looked at me while speaking, here emerged into +the silence he could hardly be said to have broken, so stifled was +his tone, and looked before him again. + +“Imagine the poor fellow without even his present resource,” said my +guardian to me. “Yet what can I do? You know him, Esther. He would +never accept of help from me now. To offer it or hint at it would be +to drive him to an extremity, if nothing else did.” + +Mr. Vholes hereupon addressed me again. + +“What Mr. Jarndyce remarks, miss, is no doubt the case, and is the +difficulty. I do not see that anything is to be done. I do not say +that anything is to be done. Far from it. I merely come down here +under the seal of confidence and mention it in order that everything +may be openly carried on and that it may not be said afterwards that +everything was not openly carried on. My wish is that everything +should be openly carried on. I desire to leave a good name behind me. +If I consulted merely my own interests with Mr. C., I should not be +here. So insurmountable, as you must well know, would be his +objections. This is not a professional attendance. This can he +charged to nobody. I have no interest in it except as a member of +society and a father—AND a son,” said Mr. Vholes, who had nearly +forgotten that point. + +It appeared to us that Mr. Vholes said neither more nor less than the +truth in intimating that he sought to divide the responsibility, such +as it was, of knowing Richard’s situation. I could only suggest that +I should go down to Deal, where Richard was then stationed, and see +him, and try if it were possible to avert the worst. Without +consulting Mr. Vholes on this point, I took my guardian aside to +propose it, while Mr. Vholes gauntly stalked to the fire and warmed +his funeral gloves. + +The fatigue of the journey formed an immediate objection on my +guardian’s part, but as I saw he had no other, and as I was only too +happy to go, I got his consent. We had then merely to dispose of Mr. +Vholes. + +“Well, sir,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “Miss Summerson will communicate with +Mr. Carstone, and you can only hope that his position may be yet +retrievable. You will allow me to order you lunch after your journey, +sir.” + +“I thank you, Mr. Jarndyce,” said Mr. Vholes, putting out his long +black sleeve to check the ringing of the bell, “not any. I thank you, +no, not a morsel. My digestion is much impaired, and I am but a poor +knife and fork at any time. If I was to partake of solid food at this +period of the day, I don’t know what the consequences might be. +Everything having been openly carried on, sir, I will now with your +permission take my leave.” + +“And I would that you could take your leave, and we could all take +our leave, Mr. Vholes,” returned my guardian bitterly, “of a cause +you know of.” + +Mr. Vholes, whose black dye was so deep from head to foot that it had +quite steamed before the fire, diffusing a very unpleasant perfume, +made a short one-sided inclination of his head from the neck and +slowly shook it. + +“We whose ambition it is to be looked upon in the light of +respectable practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to the +wheel. We do it, sir. At least, I do it myself; and I wish to think +well of my professional brethren, one and all. You are sensible of an +obligation not to refer to me, miss, in communicating with Mr. C.?” + +I said I would be careful not to do it. + +“Just so, miss. Good morning. Mr. Jarndyce, good morning, sir.” Mr. +Vholes put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in +it, on my fingers, and then on my guardian’s fingers, and took his +long thin shadow away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach, +passing over all the sunny landscape between us and London, chilling +the seed in the ground as it glided along. + +Of course it became necessary to tell Ada where I was going and why I +was going, and of course she was anxious and distressed. But she was +too true to Richard to say anything but words of pity and words of +excuse, and in a more loving spirit still—my dear devoted girl!—she +wrote him a long letter, of which I took charge. + +Charley was to be my travelling companion, though I am sure I wanted +none and would willingly have left her at home. We all went to London +that afternoon, and finding two places in the mail, secured them. At +our usual bed-time, Charley and I were rolling away seaward with the +Kentish letters. + +It was a night’s journey in those coach times, but we had the mail to +ourselves and did not find the night very tedious. It passed with me +as I suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. At +one while my journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now I +thought I should do some good, and now I wondered how I could ever +have supposed so. Now it seemed one of the most reasonable things in +the world that I should have come, and now one of the most +unreasonable. In what state I should find Richard, what I should say +to him, and what he would say to me occupied my mind by turns with +these two states of feeling; and the wheels seemed to play one tune +(to which the burden of my guardian’s letter set itself) over and +over again all night. + +At last we came into the narrow streets of Deal, and very gloomy they +were upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its little +irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and +great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and +blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and +weeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place I ever saw. The sea +was heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else was moving but +a few early ropemakers, who, with the yarn twisted round their +bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they +were spinning themselves into cordage. + +But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel and sat down, +comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too +late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful. Our +little room was like a ship’s cabin, and that delighted Charley very +much. Then the fog began to rise like a curtain, and numbers of ships +that we had had no idea were near appeared. I don’t know how many +sail the waiter told us were then lying in the downs. Some of these +vessels were of grand size—one was a large Indiaman just come home; +and when the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in +the dark sea, the way in which these ships brightened, and shadowed, +and changed, amid a bustle of boats pulling off from the shore to +them and from them to the shore, and a general life and motion in +themselves and everything around them, was most beautiful. + +The large Indiaman was our great attraction because she had come into +the downs in the night. She was surrounded by boats, and we said how +glad the people on board of her must be to come ashore. Charley was +curious, too, about the voyage, and about the heat in India, and the +serpents and the tigers; and as she picked up such information much +faster than grammar, I told her what I knew on those points. I told +her, too, how people in such voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast +on rocks, where they were saved by the intrepidity and humanity of +one man. And Charley asking how that could be, I told her how we knew +at home of such a case. + +I had thought of sending Richard a note saying I was there, but it +seemed so much better to go to him without preparation. As he lived +in barracks I was a little doubtful whether this was feasible, but we +went out to reconnoitre. Peeping in at the gate of the barrack-yard, +we found everything very quiet at that time in the morning, and I +asked a sergeant standing on the guardhouse-steps where he lived. He +sent a man before to show me, who went up some bare stairs, and +knocked with his knuckles at a door, and left us. + +“Now then!” cried Richard from within. So I left Charley in the +little passage, and going on to the half-open door, said, “Can I come +in, Richard? It’s only Dame Durden.” + +He was writing at a table, with a great confusion of clothes, tin +cases, books, boots, brushes, and portmanteaus strewn all about the +floor. He was only half dressed—in plain clothes, I observed, not in +uniform—and his hair was unbrushed, and he looked as wild as his +room. All this I saw after he had heartily welcomed me and I was +seated near him, for he started upon hearing my voice and caught me +in his arms in a moment. Dear Richard! He was ever the same to me. +Down to—ah, poor poor fellow!—to the end, he never received me but +with something of his old merry boyish manner. + +“Good heaven, my dear little woman,” said he, “how do you come here? +Who could have thought of seeing you! Nothing the matter? Ada is +well?” + +“Quite well. Lovelier than ever, Richard!” + +“Ah!” he said, leaning back in his chair. “My poor cousin! I was +writing to you, Esther.” + +So worn and haggard as he looked, even in the fullness of his +handsome youth, leaning back in his chair and crushing the closely +written sheet of paper in his hand! + +“Have you been at the trouble of writing all that, and am I not to +read it after all?” I asked. + +“Oh, my dear,” he returned with a hopeless gesture. “You may read it +in the whole room. It is all over here.” + +I mildly entreated him not to be despondent. I told him that I had +heard by chance of his being in difficulty and had come to consult +with him what could best be done. + +“Like you, Esther, but useless, and so NOT like you!” said he with a +melancholy smile. “I am away on leave this day—should have been gone +in another hour—and that is to smooth it over, for my selling out. +Well! Let bygones be bygones. So this calling follows the rest. I +only want to have been in the church to have made the round of all +the professions.” + +“Richard,” I urged, “it is not so hopeless as that?” + +“Esther,” he returned, “it is indeed. I am just so near disgrace as +that those who are put in authority over me (as the catechism goes) +would far rather be without me than with me. And they are right. +Apart from debts and duns and all such drawbacks, I am not fit even +for this employment. I have no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but +for one thing. Why, if this bubble hadn’t broken now,” he said, +tearing the letter he had written into fragments and moodily casting +them away, by driblets, “how could I have gone abroad? I must have +been ordered abroad, but how could I have gone? How could I, with my +experience of that thing, trust even Vholes unless I was at his +back!” + +I suppose he knew by my face what I was about to say, but he caught +the hand I had laid upon his arm and touched my own lips with it to +prevent me from going on. + +“No, Dame Durden! Two subjects I forbid—must forbid. The first is +John Jarndyce. The second, you know what. Call it madness, and I tell +you I can’t help it now, and can’t be sane. But it is no such thing; +it is the one object I have to pursue. It is a pity I ever was +prevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. It would be +wisdom to abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains I +have bestowed upon it! Oh, yes, true wisdom. It would be very +agreeable, too, to some people; but I never will.” + +He was in that mood in which I thought it best not to increase his +determination (if anything could increase it) by opposing him. I took +out Ada’s letter and put it in his hand. + +“Am I to read it now?” he asked. + +As I told him yes, he laid it on the table, and resting his head upon +his hand, began. He had not read far when he rested his head upon his +two hands—to hide his face from me. In a little while he rose as if +the light were bad and went to the window. He finished reading it +there, with his back towards me, and after he had finished and had +folded it up, stood there for some minutes with the letter in his +hand. When he came back to his chair, I saw tears in his eyes. + +“Of course, Esther, you know what she says here?” He spoke in a +softened voice and kissed the letter as he asked me. + +“Yes, Richard.” + +“Offers me,” he went on, tapping his foot upon the floor, “the little +inheritance she is certain of so soon—just as little and as much as +I have wasted—and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right +with it, and remain in the service.” + +“I know your welfare to be the dearest wish of her heart,” said I. +“And, oh, my dear Richard, Ada’s is a noble heart.” + +“I am sure it is. I—I wish I was dead!” + +He went back to the window, and laying his arm across it, leaned his +head down on his arm. It greatly affected me to see him so, but I +hoped he might become more yielding, and I remained silent. My +experience was very limited; I was not at all prepared for his +rousing himself out of this emotion to a new sense of injury. + +“And this is the heart that the same John Jarndyce, who is not +otherwise to be mentioned between us, stepped in to estrange from +me,” said he indignantly. “And the dear girl makes me this generous +offer from under the same John Jarndyce’s roof, and with the same +John Jarndyce’s gracious consent and connivance, I dare say, as a new +means of buying me off.” + +“Richard!” I cried out, rising hastily. “I will not hear you say such +shameful words!” I was very angry with him indeed, for the first time +in my life, but it only lasted a moment. When I saw his worn young +face looking at me as if he were sorry, I put my hand on his shoulder +and said, “If you please, my dear Richard, do not speak in such a +tone to me. Consider!” + +He blamed himself exceedingly and told me in the most generous manner +that he had been very wrong and that he begged my pardon a thousand +times. At that I laughed, but trembled a little too, for I was rather +fluttered after being so fiery. + +“To accept this offer, my dear Esther,” said he, sitting down beside +me and resuming our conversation, “—once more, pray, pray forgive +me; I am deeply grieved—to accept my dearest cousin’s offer is, I +need not say, impossible. Besides, I have letters and papers that I +could show you which would convince you it is all over here. I have +done with the red coat, believe me. But it is some satisfaction, in +the midst of my troubles and perplexities, to know that I am pressing +Ada’s interests in pressing my own. Vholes has his shoulder to the +wheel, and he cannot help urging it on as much for her as for me, +thank God!” + +His sanguine hopes were rising within him and lighting up his +features, but they made his face more sad to me than it had been +before. + +“No, no!” cried Richard exultingly. “If every farthing of Ada’s +little fortune were mine, no part of it should be spent in retaining +me in what I am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am weary +of. It should be devoted to what promises a better return, and should +be used where she has a larger stake. Don’t be uneasy for me! I shall +now have only one thing on my mind, and Vholes and I will work it. I +shall not be without means. Free of my commission, I shall be able to +compound with some small usurers who will hear of nothing but their +bond now—Vholes says so. I should have a balance in my favour +anyway, but that would swell it. Come, come! You shall carry a letter +to Ada from me, Esther, and you must both of you be more hopeful of +me and not believe that I am quite cast away just yet, my dear.” + +I will not repeat what I said to Richard. I know it was tiresome, and +nobody is to suppose for a moment that it was at all wise. It only +came from my heart. He heard it patiently and feelingly, but I saw +that on the two subjects he had reserved it was at present hopeless +to make any representation to him. I saw too, and had experienced in +this very interview, the sense of my guardian’s remark that it was +even more mischievous to use persuasion with him than to leave him as +he was. + +Therefore I was driven at last to asking Richard if he would mind +convincing me that it really was all over there, as he had said, and +that it was not his mere impression. He showed me without hesitation +a correspondence making it quite plain that his retirement was +arranged. I found, from what he told me, that Mr. Vholes had copies +of these papers and had been in consultation with him throughout. +Beyond ascertaining this, and having been the bearer of Ada’s letter, +and being (as I was going to be) Richard’s companion back to London, +I had done no good by coming down. Admitting this to myself with a +reluctant heart, I said I would return to the hotel and wait until he +joined me there, so he threw a cloak over his shoulders and saw me to +the gate, and Charley and I went back along the beach. + +There was a concourse of people in one spot, surrounding some naval +officers who were landing from a boat, and pressing about them with +unusual interest. I said to Charley this would be one of the great +Indiaman’s boats now, and we stopped to look. + +The gentlemen came slowly up from the waterside, speaking +good-humouredly to each other and to the people around and glancing +about them as if they were glad to be in England again. “Charley, +Charley,” said I, “come away!” And I hurried on so swiftly that my +little maid was surprised. + +It was not until we were shut up in our cabin-room and I had had time +to take breath that I began to think why I had made such haste. In +one of the sunburnt faces I had recognized Mr. Allan Woodcourt, and I +had been afraid of his recognizing me. I had been unwilling that he +should see my altered looks. I had been taken by surprise, and my +courage had quite failed me. + +But I knew this would not do, and I now said to myself, “My dear, +there is no reason—there is and there can be no reason at all—why +it should be worse for you now than it ever has been. What you were +last month, you are to-day; you are no worse, you are no better. This +is not your resolution; call it up, Esther, call it up!” I was in a +great tremble—with running—and at first was quite unable to calm +myself; but I got better, and I was very glad to know it. + +The party came to the hotel. I heard them speaking on the staircase. +I was sure it was the same gentlemen because I knew their voices +again—I mean I knew Mr. Woodcourt’s. It would still have been a +great relief to me to have gone away without making myself known, but +I was determined not to do so. “No, my dear, no. No, no, no!” + +I untied my bonnet and put my veil half up—I think I mean half down, +but it matters very little—and wrote on one of my cards that I +happened to be there with Mr. Richard Carstone, and I sent it in to +Mr. Woodcourt. He came immediately. I told him I was rejoiced to be +by chance among the first to welcome him home to England. And I saw +that he was very sorry for me. + +“You have been in shipwreck and peril since you left us, Mr. +Woodcourt,” said I, “but we can hardly call that a misfortune which +enabled you to be so useful and so brave. We read of it with the +truest interest. It first came to my knowledge through your old +patient, poor Miss Flite, when I was recovering from my severe +illness.” + +“Ah! Little Miss Flite!” he said. “She lives the same life yet?” + +“Just the same.” + +I was so comfortable with myself now as not to mind the veil and to +be able to put it aside. + +“Her gratitude to you, Mr. Woodcourt, is delightful. She is a most +affectionate creature, as I have reason to say.” + +“You—you have found her so?” he returned. “I—I am glad of that.” He +was so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak. + +“I assure you,” said I, “that I was deeply touched by her sympathy +and pleasure at the time I have referred to.” + +“I was grieved to hear that you had been very ill.” + +“I was very ill.” + +“But you have quite recovered?” + +“I have quite recovered my health and my cheerfulness,” said I. “You +know how good my guardian is and what a happy life we lead, and I +have everything to be thankful for and nothing in the world to +desire.” + +I felt as if he had greater commiseration for me than I had ever had +for myself. It inspired me with new fortitude and new calmness to +find that it was I who was under the necessity of reassuring him. I +spoke to him of his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and +of his probable return to India. He said that was very doubtful. He +had not found himself more favoured by fortune there than here. He +had gone out a poor ship’s surgeon and had come home nothing better. +While we were talking, and when I was glad to believe that I had +alleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock he had had in seeing +me, Richard came in. He had heard downstairs who was with me, and +they met with cordial pleasure. + +I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke +of Richard’s career, Mr. Woodcourt had a perception that all was not +going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face as if there +were something in it that gave him pain, and more than once he looked +towards me as though he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the +truth was. Yet Richard was in one of his sanguine states and in good +spirits and was thoroughly pleased to see Mr. Woodcourt again, whom +he had always liked. + +Richard proposed that we all should go to London together; but Mr. +Woodcourt, having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not +join us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became so +much more like what he used to be that I was still more at peace to +think I had been able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was not +relieved of Richard. When the coach was almost ready and Richard ran +down to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about him. + +I was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open, but I +referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr Jarndyce and to +his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr. Woodcourt +listened with interest and expressed his regret. + +“I saw you observe him rather closely,” said I, “Do you think him so +changed?” + +“He is changed,” he returned, shaking his head. + +I felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was +only an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was +gone. + +“It is not,” said Mr. Woodcourt, “his being so much younger or older, +or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being upon his +face such a singular expression. I never saw so remarkable a look in +a young person. One cannot say that it is all anxiety or all +weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair.” + +“You do not think he is ill?” said I. + +No. He looked robust in body. + +“That he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to +know,” I proceeded. “Mr. Woodcourt, you are going to London?” + +“To-morrow or the next day.” + +“There is nothing Richard wants so much as a friend. He always liked +you. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him sometimes with +your companionship if you can. You do not know of what service it +might be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr. Jarndyce, and even I—how +we should all thank you, Mr. Woodcourt!” + +“Miss Summerson,” he said, more moved than he had been from the +first, “before heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will accept +him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!” + +“God bless you!” said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought +they might, when it was not for myself. “Ada loves him—we all love +him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you say. +Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!” + +Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and +gave me his arm to take me to the coach. + +“Woodcourt,” he said, unconscious with what application, “pray let us +meet in London!” + +“Meet?” returned the other. “I have scarcely a friend there now but +you. Where shall I find you?” + +“Why, I must get a lodging of some sort,” said Richard, pondering. +“Say at Vholes’s, Symond’s Inn.” + +“Good! Without loss of time.” + +They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach and Richard +was yet standing in the street, Mr. Woodcourt laid his friendly hand +on Richard’s shoulder and looked at me. I understood him and waved +mine in thanks. + +And in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry +for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead may +feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly +remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI + +Stop Him! + + +Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone’s. Dilating and dilating since the +sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills +every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights +burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone’s, heavily, +heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking—as that lamp, too, winks +in Tom-all-Alone’s—at many horrible things. But they are blotted +out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as admitting some +puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and +blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is gone. The +blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-all-Alone’s, +and Tom is fast asleep. + +Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of +Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom +shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by +constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of +figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by +low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting +trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or +whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of +which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, +that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according +to somebody’s theory but nobody’s practice. And in the hopeful +meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined +spirit. + +But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they +serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom’s +corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It +shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists +on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and +his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance. +There is not an atom of Tom’s slime, not a cubic inch of any +pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation +about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his +committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of +society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the +high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has +his revenge. + +It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone’s be uglier by day or by +night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more +shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination +is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it. +The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the +national glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the +British dominions than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder +as Tom. + +A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep +to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless +pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by +curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the +miserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark +eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there, +he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied it +before. + +On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street +of Tom-all-Alone’s, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut +up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in one +direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a +door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has +journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. She +sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is waiting, with her +elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas +bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is dozing probably, for she +gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her. + +The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan Woodcourt comes to +where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her. +Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops. + +“What is the matter?” + +“Nothing, sir.” + +“Can’t you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?” + +“I’m waiting till they get up at another house—a lodging-house—not +here,” the woman patiently returns. “I’m waiting here because there +will be sun here presently to warm me.” + +“I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the +street.” + +“Thank you, sir. It don’t matter.” + +A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or +condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many +people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little +spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily. + +“Let me look at your forehead,” he says, bending down. “I am a +doctor. Don’t be afraid. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.” + +He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand he +can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection, +saying, “It’s nothing”; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the +wounded place when she lifts it up to the light. + +“Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very +sore.” + +“It do ache a little, sir,” returns the woman with a started tear +upon her cheek. + +“Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won’t hurt +you.” + +“Oh, dear no, sir, I’m sure of that!” + +He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully +examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a +small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is +thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery +in the street, “And so your husband is a brickmaker?” + +“How do you know that, sir?” asks the woman, astonished. + +“Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on +your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in +different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to +their wives too.” + +The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her +injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her +forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops +them again. + +“Where is he now?” asks the surgeon. + +“He got into trouble last night, sir; but he’ll look for me at the +lodging-house.” + +“He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and +heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as +he is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it. +You have no young child?” + +The woman shakes her head. “One as I calls mine, sir, but it’s +Liz’s.” + +“Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!” + +By this time he has finished and is putting up his case. “I suppose +you have some settled home. Is it far from here?” he asks, +good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and +curtsys. + +“It’s a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint +Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like, +as if you did.” + +“Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in +return. Have you money for your lodging?” + +“Yes, sir,” she says, “really and truly.” And she shows it. He tells +her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very +welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all-Alone’s is still +asleep, and nothing is astir. + +Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he +descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a +ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the +soiled walls—which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid—and +furtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth +whose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so +intent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a stranger +in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He shades his face +with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and +goes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand before him and +his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for what +purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They +look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of +swampy growth that rotted long ago. + +Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a +shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall how +or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a form. +He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge, +still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his +remembrance. + +He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone’s in the morning light, +thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and looking +round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by +the woman. + +“Stop him, stop him!” cries the woman, almost breathless. “Stop him, +sir!” + +He darts across the road into the boy’s path, but the boy is quicker +than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up +half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman +follows, crying, “Stop him, sir, pray stop him!” Allan, not knowing +but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and +runs so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time +he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To +strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable +him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly +ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed, +takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare. +Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and +tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at +him until the woman comes up. + +“Oh, you, Jo!” cries the woman. “What? I have found you at last!” + +“Jo,” repeats Allan, looking at him with attention, “Jo! Stay. To be +sure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the +coroner.” + +“Yes, I see you once afore at the inkwhich,” whimpers Jo. “What of +that? Can’t you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An’t I +unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to be? +I’ve been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by +another on you, till I’m worritted to skins and bones. The inkwhich +warn’t MY fault. I done nothink. He wos wery good to me, he wos; he +wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my +crossing. It ain’t wery likely I should want him to be inkwhiched. I +only wish I wos, myself. I don’t know why I don’t go and make a hole +in the water, I’m sure I don’t.” + +He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so +real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a +growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in +neglect and impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him. +He says to the woman, “Miserable creature, what has he done?” + +To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure +more amazedly than angrily, “Oh, you Jo, you Jo. I have found you at +last!” + +“What has he done?” says Allan. “Has he robbed you?” + +“No, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by +me, and that’s the wonder of it.” + +Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting +for one of them to unravel the riddle. + +“But he was along with me, sir,” says the woman. “Oh, you Jo! He was +along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady, Lord +bless her for a good friend to me, took pity on him when I durstn’t, +and took him home—” + +Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror. + +“Yes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a +thankless monster he ran away in the night and never has been seen or +heard of since till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady +that was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her beautiful +looks, and wouldn’t hardly be known for the same young lady now if it +wasn’t for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet +voice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this +is all along of you and of her goodness to you?” demands the woman, +beginning to rage at him as she recalls it and breaking into +passionate tears. + +The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing +his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground, +and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against +which he leans rattles. + +Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but +effectually. + +“Richard told me—” He falters. “I mean, I have heard of this—don’t +mind me for a moment, I will speak presently.” + +He turns away and stands for a while looking out at the covered +passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure, except +that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very +remarkable that it absorbs the woman’s attention. + +“You hear what she says. But get up, get up!” + +Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and stands, after the manner +of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting +one of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing his right +hand over his left and his left foot over his right. + +“You hear what she says, and I know it’s true. Have you been here +ever since?” + +“Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone’s till this blessed morning,” +replies Jo hoarsely. + +“Why have you come here now?” + +Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no +higher than the knees, and finally answers, “I don’t know how to do +nothink, and I can’t get nothink to do. I’m wery poor and ill, and I +thought I’d come back here when there warn’t nobody about, and lay +down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go +and beg a trifle of Mr. Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me +somethink he wos, though Mrs. Snagsby she was allus a-chivying on +me—like everybody everywheres.” + +“Where have you come from?” + +Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner’s knees +again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a +sort of resignation. + +“Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?” + +“Tramp then,” says Jo. + +“Now tell me,” proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome his +repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an +expression of confidence, “tell me how it came about that you left +that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to +pity you and take you home.” + +Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation and excitedly declares, +addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that +he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he +would sooner have hurt his own self, that he’d sooner have had his +unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos +wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his +poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very +miserable sobs. + +Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself +to touch him. “Come, Jo. Tell me.” + +“No. I dustn’t,” says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. “I +dustn’t, or I would.” + +“But I must know,” returns the other, “all the same. Come, Jo.” + +After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again, +looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, “Well, I’ll +tell you something. I was took away. There!” + +“Took away? In the night?” + +“Ah!” Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him and +even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding and through +the cracks in it lest the object of his distrust should be looking +over or hidden on the other side. + +“Who took you away?” + +“I dustn’t name him,” says Jo. “I dustn’t do it, sir. + +“But I want, in the young lady’s name, to know. You may trust me. No +one else shall hear.” + +“Ah, but I don’t know,” replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, “as +he DON’T hear.” + +“Why, he is not in this place.” + +“Oh, ain’t he though?” says Jo. “He’s in all manner of places, all at +wanst.” + +Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and +good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently +awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than +by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear. + +“Aye!” says Allan. “Why, what had you been doing?” + +“Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble, +’sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. But I’m a-moving on now. I’m +a-moving on to the berryin ground—that’s the move as I’m up to.” + +“No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?” + +“Put me in a horsepittle,” replied Jo, whispering, “till I was +discharged, then giv me a little money—four half-bulls, wot you may +call half-crowns—and ses ‘Hook it! Nobody wants you here,’ he ses. +‘You hook it. You go and tramp,’ he ses. ‘You move on,’ he ses. +‘Don’t let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or +you’ll repent it.’ So I shall, if ever he doos see me, and he’ll see +me if I’m above ground,” concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his +former precautions and investigations. + +Allan considers a little, then remarks, turning to the woman but +keeping an encouraging eye on Jo, “He is not so ungrateful as you +supposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an +insufficient one.” + +“Thankee, sir, thankee!” exclaims Jo. “There now! See how hard you +wos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and +it’s all right. For YOU wos wery good to me too, and I knows it.” + +“Now, Jo,” says Allan, keeping his eye upon him, “come with me and I +will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I +take one side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you +will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise.” + +“I won’t, not unless I wos to see HIM a-coming, sir.” + +“Very well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this +time, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come +along. Good day again, my good woman.” + +“Good day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again.” + +She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and +takes it up. Jo, repeating, “Ony you tell the young lady as I never +went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!” nods and shambles and +shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a +farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan +Woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In +this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-Alone’s into the broad +rays of the sunlight and the purer air. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII + +Jo’s Will + + +As Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along the streets where the high +church spires and the distances are so near and clear in the morning +light that the city itself seems renewed by rest, Allan revolves in +his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. “It surely is a +strange fact,” he considers, “that in the heart of a civilized world +this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of +than an unowned dog.” But it is none the less a fact because of its +strangeness, and the difficulty remains. + +At first he looks behind him often to assure himself that Jo is still +really following. But look where he will, he still beholds him close +to the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand from brick +to brick and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along, +glancing over at him watchfully. Soon satisfied that the last thing +in his thoughts is to give him the slip, Allan goes on, considering +with a less divided attention what he shall do. + +A breakfast-stall at a street-corner suggests the first thing to be +done. He stops there, looks round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses and +comes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his +right hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading +dirt with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo +is then set before him, and he begins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw +the bread and butter, looking anxiously about him in all directions +as he eats and drinks, like a scared animal. + +But he is so sick and miserable that even hunger has abandoned him. +“I thought I was amost a-starvin, sir,” says Jo, soon putting down +his food, “but I don’t know nothink—not even that. I don’t care for +eating wittles nor yet for drinking on ’em.” And Jo stands shivering +and looking at the breakfast wonderingly. + +Allan Woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse and on his chest. “Draw +breath, Jo!” “It draws,” says Jo, “as heavy as a cart.” He might add, +“And rattles like it,” but he only mutters, “I’m a-moving on, sir.” + +Allan looks about for an apothecary’s shop. There is none at hand, +but a tavern does as well or better. He obtains a little measure of +wine and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. He begins to +revive almost as soon as it passes his lips. “We may repeat that +dose, Jo,” observes Allan after watching him with his attentive face. +“So! Now we will take five minutes’ rest, and then go on again.” + +Leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the breakfast-stall, with his +back against an iron railing, Allan Woodcourt paces up and down in +the early sunshine, casting an occasional look towards him without +appearing to watch him. It requires no discernment to perceive that +he is warmed and refreshed. If a face so shaded can brighten, his +face brightens somewhat; and by little and little he eats the slice +of bread he had so hopelessly laid down. Observant of these signs of +improvement, Allan engages him in conversation and elicits to his no +small wonder the adventure of the lady in the veil, with all its +consequences. Jo slowly munches as he slowly tells it. When he has +finished his story and his bread, they go on again. + +Intending to refer his difficulty in finding a temporary place of +refuge for the boy to his old patient, zealous little Miss Flite, +Allan leads the way to the court where he and Jo first foregathered. +But all is changed at the rag and bottle shop; Miss Flite no longer +lodges there; it is shut up; and a hard-featured female, much +obscured by dust, whose age is a problem, but who is indeed no other +than the interesting Judy, is tart and spare in her replies. These +sufficing, however, to inform the visitor that Miss Flite and her +birds are domiciled with a Mrs. Blinder, in Bell Yard, he repairs to +that neighbouring place, where Miss Flite (who rises early that she +may be punctual at the divan of justice held by her excellent friend +the Chancellor) comes running downstairs with tears of welcome and +with open arms. + +“My dear physician!” cries Miss Flite. “My meritorious, +distinguished, honourable officer!” She uses some odd expressions, +but is as cordial and full of heart as sanity itself can be—more so +than it often is. Allan, very patient with her, waits until she has +no more raptures to express, then points out Jo, trembling in a +doorway, and tells her how he comes there. + +“Where can I lodge him hereabouts for the present? Now, you have a +fund of knowledge and good sense and can advise me.” + +Miss Flite, mighty proud of the compliment, sets herself to consider; +but it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. Mrs. Blinder is +entirely let, and she herself occupies poor Gridley’s room. +“Gridley!” exclaims Miss Flite, clapping her hands after a twentieth +repetition of this remark. “Gridley! To be sure! Of course! My dear +physician! General George will help us out.” + +It is hopeless to ask for any information about General George, and +would be, though Miss Flite had not already run upstairs to put on +her pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with +her reticule of documents. But as she informs her physician in her +disjointed manner on coming down in full array that General George, +whom she often calls upon, knows her dear Fitz Jarndyce and takes a +great interest in all connected with her, Allan is induced to think +that they may be in the right way. So he tells Jo, for his +encouragement, that this walking about will soon be over now; and +they repair to the general’s. Fortunately it is not far. + +From the exterior of George’s Shooting Gallery, and the long entry, +and the bare perspective beyond it, Allan Woodcourt augurs well. He +also descries promise in the figure of Mr. George himself, striding +towards them in his morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no +stock on, and his muscular arms, developed by broadsword and +dumbbell, weightily asserting themselves through his light +shirt-sleeves. + +“Your servant, sir,” says Mr. George with a military salute. +Good-humouredly smiling all over his broad forehead up into his crisp +hair, he then defers to Miss Flite, as, with great stateliness, and +at some length, she performs the courtly ceremony of presentation. He +winds it up with another “Your servant, sir!” and another salute. + +“Excuse me, sir. A sailor, I believe?” says Mr. George. + +“I am proud to find I have the air of one,” returns Allan; “but I am +only a sea-going doctor.” + +“Indeed, sir! I should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket +myself.” + +Allan hopes Mr. George will forgive his intrusion the more readily on +that account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe, +which, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing. +“You are very good, sir,” returns the trooper. “As I know by +experience that it’s not disagreeable to Miss Flite, and since it’s +equally agreeable to yourself—” and finishes the sentence by putting +it between his lips again. Allan proceeds to tell him all he knows +about Jo, unto which the trooper listens with a grave face. + +“And that’s the lad, sir, is it?” he inquires, looking along the +entry to where Jo stands staring up at the great letters on the +whitewashed front, which have no meaning in his eyes. + +“That’s he,” says Allan. “And, Mr. George, I am in this difficulty +about him. I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could +procure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not +stay there many hours if he could be so much as got there. The same +objection applies to a workhouse, supposing I had the patience to be +evaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to +get him into one, which is a system that I don’t take kindly to.” + +“No man does, sir,” returns Mr. George. + +“I am convinced that he would not remain in either place, because he +is possessed by an extraordinary terror of this person who ordered +him to keep out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this person +to be everywhere, and cognizant of everything.” + +“I ask your pardon, sir,” says Mr. George. “But you have not +mentioned that party’s name. Is it a secret, sir?” + +“The boy makes it one. But his name is Bucket.” + +“Bucket the detective, sir?” + +“The same man.” + +“The man is known to me, sir,” returns the trooper after blowing out +a cloud of smoke and squaring his chest, “and the boy is so far +correct that he undoubtedly is a—rum customer.” Mr. George smokes +with a profound meaning after this and surveys Miss Flite in silence. + +“Now, I wish Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson at least to know that +this Jo, who tells so strange a story, has reappeared, and to have it +in their power to speak with him if they should desire to do so. +Therefore I want to get him, for the present moment, into any poor +lodging kept by decent people where he would be admitted. Decent +people and Jo, Mr. George,” says Allan, following the direction of +the trooper’s eyes along the entry, “have not been much acquainted, +as you see. Hence the difficulty. Do you happen to know any one in +this neighbourhood who would receive him for a while on my paying for +him beforehand?” + +As he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man +standing at the trooper’s elbow and looking up, with an oddly twisted +figure and countenance, into the trooper’s face. After a few more +puffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man, +and the little man winks up at the trooper. + +“Well, sir,” says Mr. George, “I can assure you that I would +willingly be knocked on the head at any time if it would be at all +agreeable to Miss Summerson, and consequently I esteem it a privilege +to do that young lady any service, however small. We are naturally in +the vagabond way here, sir, both myself and Phil. You see what the +place is. You are welcome to a quiet corner of it for the boy if the +same would meet your views. No charge made, except for rations. We +are not in a flourishing state of circumstances here, sir. We are +liable to be tumbled out neck and crop at a moment’s notice. However, +sir, such as the place is, and so long as it lasts, here it is at +your service.” + +With a comprehensive wave of his pipe, Mr. George places the whole +building at his visitor’s disposal. + +“I take it for granted, sir,” he adds, “you being one of the medical +staff, that there is no present infection about this unfortunate +subject?” + +Allan is quite sure of it. + +“Because, sir,” says Mr. George, shaking his head sorrowfully, “we +have had enough of that.” + +His tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance. +“Still I am bound to tell you,” observes Allan after repeating his +former assurance, “that the boy is deplorably low and reduced and +that he may be—I do not say that he is—too far gone to recover.” + +“Do you consider him in present danger, sir?” inquires the trooper. + +“Yes, I fear so.” + +“Then, sir,” returns the trooper in a decisive manner, “it appears to +me—being naturally in the vagabond way myself—that the sooner he +comes out of the street, the better. You, Phil! Bring him in!” + +Mr. Squod tacks out, all on one side, to execute the word of command; +and the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought +in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle’s Tockahoopo Indians; he is not +one of Mrs. Jellyby’s lambs, being wholly unconnected with +Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he +is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made +article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a +common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely +filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in +him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English +soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts +that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the +sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing +interesting about thee. + +He shuffles slowly into Mr. George’s gallery and stands huddled +together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know +that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he +is and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He +is not of the same order of things, not of the same place in +creation. He is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor +of humanity. + +“Look here, Jo!” says Allan. “This is Mr. George.” + +Jo searches the floor for some time longer, then looks up for a +moment, and then down again. + +“He is a kind friend to you, for he is going to give you lodging room +here.” + +Jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is supposed to be a bow. After +a little more consideration and some backing and changing of the foot +on which he rests, he mutters that he is “wery thankful.” + +“You are quite safe here. All you have to do at present is to be +obedient and to get strong. And mind you tell us the truth here, +whatever you do, Jo.” + +“Wishermaydie if I don’t, sir,” says Jo, reverting to his favourite +declaration. “I never done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get +myself into no trouble. I never was in no other trouble at all, sir, +’sept not knowin’ nothink and starwation.” + +“I believe it, now attend to Mr. George. I see he is going to speak +to you.” + +“My intention merely was, sir,” observes Mr. George, amazingly broad +and upright, “to point out to him where he can lie down and get a +thorough good dose of sleep. Now, look here.” As the trooper speaks, +he conducts them to the other end of the gallery and opens one of the +little cabins. “There you are, you see! Here is a mattress, and here +you may rest, on good behaviour, as long as Mr., I ask your pardon, +sir”—he refers apologetically to the card Allan has given him—“Mr. +Woodcourt pleases. Don’t you be alarmed if you hear shots; they’ll be +aimed at the target, and not you. Now, there’s another thing I would +recommend, sir,” says the trooper, turning to his visitor. “Phil, +come here!” + +Phil bears down upon them according to his usual tactics. “Here is a +man, sir, who was found, when a baby, in the gutter. Consequently, it +is to be expected that he takes a natural interest in this poor +creature. You do, don’t you, Phil?” + +“Certainly and surely I do, guv’ner,” is Phil’s reply. + +“Now I was thinking, sir,” says Mr. George in a martial sort of +confidence, as if he were giving his opinion in a council of war at a +drum-head, “that if this man was to take him to a bath and was to lay +out a few shillings in getting him one or two coarse articles—” + +“Mr. George, my considerate friend,” returns Allan, taking out his +purse, “it is the very favour I would have asked.” + +Phil Squod and Jo are sent out immediately on this work of +improvement. Miss Flite, quite enraptured by her success, makes the +best of her way to court, having great fears that otherwise her +friend the Chancellor may be uneasy about her or may give the +judgment she has so long expected in her absence, and observing +“which you know, my dear physician, and general, after so many years, +would be too absurdly unfortunate!” Allan takes the opportunity of +going out to procure some restorative medicines, and obtaining them +near at hand, soon returns to find the trooper walking up and down +the gallery, and to fall into step and walk with him. + +“I take it, sir,” says Mr. George, “that you know Miss Summerson +pretty well?” + +Yes, it appears. + +“Not related to her, sir?” + +No, it appears. + +“Excuse the apparent curiosity,” says Mr. George. “It seemed to me +probable that you might take more than a common interest in this poor +creature because Miss Summerson had taken that unfortunate interest +in him. ’Tis MY case, sir, I assure you.” + +“And mine, Mr. George.” + +The trooper looks sideways at Allan’s sunburnt cheek and bright dark +eye, rapidly measures his height and build, and seems to approve of +him. + +“Since you have been out, sir, I have been thinking that I +unquestionably know the rooms in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where Bucket +took the lad, according to his account. Though he is not acquainted +with the name, I can help you to it. It’s Tulkinghorn. That’s what it +is.” + +Allan looks at him inquiringly, repeating the name. + +“Tulkinghorn. That’s the name, sir. I know the man, and know him to +have been in communication with Bucket before, respecting a deceased +person who had given him offence. I know the man, sir. To my sorrow.” + +Allan naturally asks what kind of man he is. + +“What kind of man! Do you mean to look at?” + +“I think I know that much of him. I mean to deal with. Generally, +what kind of man?” + +“Why, then I’ll tell you, sir,” returns the trooper, stopping short +and folding his arms on his square chest so angrily that his face +fires and flushes all over; “he is a confoundedly bad kind of man. He +is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood +than a rusty old carbine is. He is a kind of man—by George!—that +has caused me more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more +dissatisfaction with myself than all other men put together. That’s +the kind of man Mr. Tulkinghorn is!” + +“I am sorry,” says Allan, “to have touched so sore a place.” + +“Sore?” The trooper plants his legs wider apart, wets the palm of his +broad right hand, and lays it on the imaginary moustache. “It’s no +fault of yours, sir; but you shall judge. He has got a power over me. +He is the man I spoke of just now as being able to tumble me out of +this place neck and crop. He keeps me on a constant see-saw. He won’t +hold off, and he won’t come on. If I have a payment to make him, or +time to ask him for, or anything to go to him about, he don’t see me, +don’t hear me—passes me on to Melchisedech’s in Clifford’s Inn, +Melchisedech’s in Clifford’s Inn passes me back again to him—he +keeps me prowling and dangling about him as if I was made of the same +stone as himself. Why, I spend half my life now, pretty well, +loitering and dodging about his door. What does he care? Nothing. +Just as much as the rusty old carbine I have compared him to. He +chafes and goads me till—Bah! Nonsense! I am forgetting myself. Mr. +Woodcourt,” the trooper resumes his march, “all I say is, he is an +old man; but I am glad I shall never have the chance of setting spurs +to my horse and riding at him in a fair field. For if I had that +chance, in one of the humours he drives me into—he’d go down, sir!” + +Mr. George has been so excited that he finds it necessary to wipe his +forehead on his shirt-sleeve. Even while he whistles his impetuosity +away with the national anthem, some involuntary shakings of his head +and heavings of his chest still linger behind, not to mention an +occasional hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar, +as if it were scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a +choking sensation. In short, Allan Woodcourt has not much doubt about +the going down of Mr. Tulkinghorn on the field referred to. + +Jo and his conductor presently return, and Jo is assisted to his +mattress by the careful Phil, to whom, after due administration of +medicine by his own hands, Allan confides all needful means and +instructions. The morning is by this time getting on apace. He +repairs to his lodgings to dress and breakfast, and then, without +seeking rest, goes away to Mr. Jarndyce to communicate his discovery. + +With him Mr. Jarndyce returns alone, confidentially telling him that +there are reasons for keeping this matter very quiet indeed and +showing a serious interest in it. To Mr. Jarndyce, Jo repeats in +substance what he said in the morning, without any material +variation. Only that cart of his is heavier to draw, and draws with a +hollower sound. + +“Let me lay here quiet and not be chivied no more,” falters Jo, “and +be so kind any person as is a-passin nigh where I used fur to sleep, +as jist to say to Mr. Sangsby that Jo, wot he known once, is a-moving +on right forards with his duty, and I’ll be wery thankful. I’d be +more thankful than I am aready if it wos any ways possible for an +unfortnet to be it.” + +He makes so many of these references to the law-stationer in the +course of a day or two that Allan, after conferring with Mr. +Jarndyce, good-naturedly resolves to call in Cook’s Court, the +rather, as the cart seems to be breaking down. + +To Cook’s Court, therefore, he repairs. Mr. Snagsby is behind his +counter in his grey coat and sleeves, inspecting an indenture of +several skins which has just come in from the engrosser’s, an immense +desert of law-hand and parchment, with here and there a resting-place +of a few large letters to break the awful monotony and save the +traveller from despair. Mr Snagsby puts up at one of these inky wells +and greets the stranger with his cough of general preparation for +business. + +“You don’t remember me, Mr. Snagsby?” + +The stationer’s heart begins to thump heavily, for his old +apprehensions have never abated. It is as much as he can do to +answer, “No, sir, I can’t say I do. I should have considered—not to +put too fine a point upon it—that I never saw you before, sir.” + +“Twice before,” says Allan Woodcourt. “Once at a poor bedside, and +once—” + +“It’s come at last!” thinks the afflicted stationer, as recollection +breaks upon him. “It’s got to a head now and is going to burst!” But +he has sufficient presence of mind to conduct his visitor into the +little counting-house and to shut the door. + +“Are you a married man, sir?” + +“No, I am not.” + +“Would you make the attempt, though single,” says Mr. Snagsby in a +melancholy whisper, “to speak as low as you can? For my little woman +is a-listening somewheres, or I’ll forfeit the business and five +hundred pound!” + +In deep dejection Mr. Snagsby sits down on his stool, with his back +against his desk, protesting, “I never had a secret of my own, sir. I +can’t charge my memory with ever having once attempted to deceive my +little woman on my own account since she named the day. I wouldn’t +have done it, sir. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I couldn’t +have done it, I dursn’t have done it. Whereas, and nevertheless, I +find myself wrapped round with secrecy and mystery, till my life is a +burden to me.” + +His visitor professes his regret to hear it and asks him does he +remember Jo. Mr. Snagsby answers with a suppressed groan, oh, don’t +he! + +“You couldn’t name an individual human being—except myself—that my +little woman is more set and determined against than Jo,” says Mr. +Snagsby. + +Allan asks why. + +“Why?” repeats Mr. Snagsby, in his desperation clutching at the clump +of hair at the back of his bald head. “How should I know why? But you +are a single person, sir, and may you long be spared to ask a married +person such a question!” + +With this beneficent wish, Mr. Snagsby coughs a cough of dismal +resignation and submits himself to hear what the visitor has to +communicate. + +“There again!” says Mr. Snagsby, who, between the earnestness of his +feelings and the suppressed tones of his voice is discoloured in the +face. “At it again, in a new direction! A certain person charges me, +in the solemnest way, not to talk of Jo to any one, even my little +woman. Then comes another certain person, in the person of yourself, +and charges me, in an equally solemn way, not to mention Jo to that +other certain person above all other persons. Why, this is a private +asylum! Why, not to put too fine a point upon it, this is Bedlam, +sir!” says Mr. Snagsby. + +But it is better than he expected after all, being no explosion of +the mine below him or deepening of the pit into which he has fallen. +And being tender-hearted and affected by the account he hears of Jo’s +condition, he readily engages to “look round” as early in the evening +as he can manage it quietly. He looks round very quietly when the +evening comes, but it may turn out that Mrs. Snagsby is as quiet a +manager as he. + +Jo is very glad to see his old friend and says, when they are left +alone, that he takes it uncommon kind as Mr. Sangsby should come so +far out of his way on accounts of sich as him. Mr. Snagsby, touched +by the spectacle before him, immediately lays upon the table half a +crown, that magic balsam of his for all kinds of wounds. + +“And how do you find yourself, my poor lad?” inquires the stationer +with his cough of sympathy. + +“I am in luck, Mr. Sangsby, I am,” returns Jo, “and don’t want for +nothink. I’m more cumfbler nor you can’t think. Mr. Sangsby! I’m wery +sorry that I done it, but I didn’t go fur to do it, sir.” + +The stationer softly lays down another half-crown and asks him what +it is that he is sorry for having done. + +“Mr. Sangsby,” says Jo, “I went and giv a illness to the lady as wos +and yit as warn’t the t’other lady, and none of ’em never says +nothink to me for having done it, on accounts of their being ser good +and my having been s’unfortnet. The lady come herself and see me +yesday, and she ses, ‘Ah, Jo!’ she ses. ‘We thought we’d lost you, +Jo!’ she ses. And she sits down a-smilin so quiet, and don’t pass a +word nor yit a look upon me for having done it, she don’t, and I +turns agin the wall, I doos, Mr. Sangsby. And Mr. Jarnders, I see him +a-forced to turn away his own self. And Mr. Woodcot, he come fur to +giv me somethink fur to ease me, wot he’s allus a-doin’ on day and +night, and wen he come a-bending over me and a-speakin up so bold, I +see his tears a-fallin, Mr. Sangsby.” + +The softened stationer deposits another half-crown on the table. +Nothing less than a repetition of that infallible remedy will relieve +his feelings. + +“Wot I was a-thinkin on, Mr. Sangsby,” proceeds Jo, “wos, as you wos +able to write wery large, p’raps?” + +“Yes, Jo, please God,” returns the stationer. + +“Uncommon precious large, p’raps?” says Jo with eagerness. + +“Yes, my poor boy.” + +Jo laughs with pleasure. “Wot I wos a-thinking on then, Mr. Sangsby, +wos, that when I wos moved on as fur as ever I could go and couldn’t +be moved no furder, whether you might be so good p’raps as to write +out, wery large so that any one could see it anywheres, as that I wos +wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and that I never went fur to +do it, and that though I didn’t know nothink at all, I knowd as Mr. +Woodcot once cried over it and wos allus grieved over it, and that I +hoped as he’d be able to forgive me in his mind. If the writin could +be made to say it wery large, he might.” + +“It shall say it, Jo. Very large.” + +Jo laughs again. “Thankee, Mr. Sangsby. It’s wery kind of you, sir, +and it makes me more cumfbler nor I was afore.” + +The meek little stationer, with a broken and unfinished cough, slips +down his fourth half-crown—he has never been so close to a case +requiring so many—and is fain to depart. And Jo and he, upon this +little earth, shall meet no more. No more. + +For the cart so hard to draw is near its journey’s end and drags over +stony ground. All round the clock it labours up the broken steps, +shattered and worn. Not many times can the sun rise and behold it +still upon its weary road. + +Phil Squod, with his smoky gunpowder visage, at once acts as nurse +and works as armourer at his little table in a corner, often looking +round and saying with a nod of his green-baize cap and an encouraging +elevation of his one eyebrow, “Hold up, my boy! Hold up!” There, too, +is Mr. Jarndyce many a time, and Allan Woodcourt almost always, both +thinking, much, how strangely fate has entangled this rough outcast +in the web of very different lives. There, too, the trooper is a +frequent visitor, filling the doorway with his athletic figure and, +from his superfluity of life and strength, seeming to shed down +temporary vigour upon Jo, who never fails to speak more robustly in +answer to his cheerful words. + +Jo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and Allan Woodcourt, newly +arrived, stands by him, looking down upon his wasted form. After a +while he softly seats himself upon the bedside with his face towards +him—just as he sat in the law-writer’s room—and touches his chest +and heart. The cart had very nearly given up, but labours on a little +more. + +The trooper stands in the doorway, still and silent. Phil has stopped +in a low clinking noise, with his little hammer in his hand. Mr. +Woodcourt looks round with that grave professional interest and +attention on his face, and glancing significantly at the trooper, +signs to Phil to carry his table out. When the little hammer is next +used, there will be a speck of rust upon it. + +“Well, Jo! What is the matter? Don’t be frightened.” + +“I thought,” says Jo, who has started and is looking round, “I +thought I was in Tom-all-Alone’s agin. Ain’t there nobody here but +you, Mr. Woodcot?” + +“Nobody.” + +“And I ain’t took back to Tom-all-Alone’s. Am I, sir?” + +“No.” Jo closes his eyes, muttering, “I’m wery thankful.” + +After watching him closely a little while, Allan puts his mouth very +near his ear and says to him in a low, distinct voice, “Jo! Did you +ever know a prayer?” + +“Never knowd nothink, sir.” + +“Not so much as one short prayer?” + +“No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr. Chadbands he wos a-prayin wunst at Mr. +Sangsby’s and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a-speakin’ to +hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, but I couldn’t make out +nothink on it. Different times there was other genlmen come down +Tom-all-Alone’s a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t’other +’wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talking to +theirselves, or a-passing blame on the t’others, and not a-talkin to +us. WE never knowd nothink. I never knowd what it wos all about.” + +It takes him a long time to say this, and few but an experienced and +attentive listener could hear, or, hearing, understand him. After a +short relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong +effort to get out of bed. + +“Stay, Jo! What now?” + +“It’s time for me to go to that there berryin ground, sir,” he +returns with a wild look. + +“Lie down, and tell me. What burying ground, Jo?” + +“Where they laid him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed, +he wos. It’s time fur me to go down to that there berryin ground, +sir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants to go there and be +berried. He used fur to say to me, ‘I am as poor as you to-day, Jo,’ +he ses. I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him now and have +come there to be laid along with him.” + +“By and by, Jo. By and by.” + +“Ah! P’raps they wouldn’t do it if I wos to go myself. But will you +promise to have me took there, sir, and laid along with him?” + +“I will, indeed.” + +“Thankee, sir. Thankee, sir. They’ll have to get the key of the gate +afore they can take me in, for it’s allus locked. And there’s a step +there, as I used for to clean with my broom. It’s turned wery dark, +sir. Is there any light a-comin?” + +“It is coming fast, Jo.” + +Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is very +near its end. + +“Jo, my poor fellow!” + +“I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I’m a-gropin—a-gropin—let me +catch hold of your hand.” + +“Jo, can you say what I say?” + +“I’ll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it’s good.” + +“Our Father.” + +“Our Father! Yes, that’s wery good, sir.” + +“Which art in heaven.” + +“Art in heaven—is the light a-comin, sir?” + +“It is close at hand. Hallowed be thy name!” + +“Hallowed be—thy—” + +The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead! + +Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right +reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, +born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around +us every day. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + +Closing In + + +The place in Lincolnshire has shut its many eyes again, and the house +in town is awake. In Lincolnshire the Dedlocks of the past doze in +their picture-frames, and the low wind murmurs through the long +drawing-room as if they were breathing pretty regularly. In town the +Dedlocks of the present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through +the darkness of the night, and the Dedlock Mercuries, with ashes (or +hair-powder) on their heads, symptomatic of their great humility, +loll away the drowsy mornings in the little windows of the hall. The +fashionable world—tremendous orb, nearly five miles round—is in +full swing, and the solar system works respectfully at its appointed +distances. + +Where the throng is thickest, where the lights are brightest, where +all the senses are ministered to with the greatest delicacy and +refinement, Lady Dedlock is. From the shining heights she has scaled +and taken, she is never absent. Though the belief she of old reposed +in herself as one able to reserve whatsoever she would under +her mantle of pride is beaten down, though she has no assurance +that what she is to those around her she will remain another day, +it is not in her nature when envious eyes are looking on to +yield or to droop. They say of her that she has lately grown +more handsome and more haughty. The debilitated cousin says of +her that she’s beauty nough—tsetup shopofwomen—but rather +larming kind—remindingmanfact—inconvenient woman—who WILL +getoutofbedandbawthstahlishment—Shakespeare. + +Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, looks nothing. Now, as heretofore, he +is to be found in doorways of rooms, with his limp white cravat +loosely twisted into its old-fashioned tie, receiving patronage from +the peerage and making no sign. Of all men he is still the last who +might be supposed to have any influence upon my Lady. Of all women +she is still the last who might be supposed to have any dread of him. + +One thing has been much on her mind since their late interview in his +turret-room at Chesney Wold. She is now decided, and prepared to +throw it off. + +It is morning in the great world, afternoon according to the little +sun. The Mercuries, exhausted by looking out of window, are reposing +in the hall and hang their heavy heads, the gorgeous creatures, like +overblown sunflowers. Like them, too, they seem to run to a deal of +seed in their tags and trimmings. Sir Leicester, in the library, has +fallen asleep for the good of the country over the report of a +Parliamentary committee. My Lady sits in the room in which she gave +audience to the young man of the name of Guppy. Rosa is with her and +has been writing for her and reading to her. Rosa is now at work upon +embroidery or some such pretty thing, and as she bends her head over +it, my Lady watches her in silence. Not for the first time to-day. + +“Rosa.” + +The pretty village face looks brightly up. Then, seeing how serious +my Lady is, looks puzzled and surprised. + +“See to the door. Is it shut?” + +Yes. She goes to it and returns, and looks yet more surprised. + +“I am about to place confidence in you, child, for I know I may trust +your attachment, if not your judgment. In what I am going to do, I +will not disguise myself to you at least. But I confide in you. Say +nothing to any one of what passes between us.” + +The timid little beauty promises in all earnestness to be +trustworthy. + +“Do you know,” Lady Dedlock asks her, signing to her to bring her +chair nearer, “do you know, Rosa, that I am different to you from +what I am to any one?” + +“Yes, my Lady. Much kinder. But then I often think I know you as you +really are.” + +“You often think you know me as I really am? Poor child, poor child!” + +She says it with a kind of scorn—though not of Rosa—and sits +brooding, looking dreamily at her. + +“Do you think, Rosa, you are any relief or comfort to me? Do you +suppose your being young and natural, and fond of me and grateful to +me, makes it any pleasure to me to have you near me?” + +“I don’t know, my Lady; I can scarcely hope so. But with all my +heart, I wish it was so.” + +“It is so, little one.” + +The pretty face is checked in its flush of pleasure by the dark +expression on the handsome face before it. It looks timidly for an +explanation. + +“And if I were to say to-day, ‘Go! Leave me!’ I should say what would +give me great pain and disquiet, child, and what would leave me very +solitary.” + +“My Lady! Have I offended you?” + +“In nothing. Come here.” + +Rosa bends down on the footstool at my Lady’s feet. My Lady, with +that motherly touch of the famous ironmaster night, lays her hand +upon her dark hair and gently keeps it there. + +“I told you, Rosa, that I wished you to be happy and that I would +make you so if I could make anybody happy on this earth. I cannot. +There are reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no part, +rendering it far better for you that you should not remain here. You +must not remain here. I have determined that you shall not. I have +written to the father of your lover, and he will be here to-day. All +this I have done for your sake.” + +The weeping girl covers her hand with kisses and says what shall she +do, what shall she do, when they are separated! Her mistress kisses +her on the cheek and makes no other answer. + +“Now, be happy, child, under better circumstances. Be beloved and +happy!” + +“Ah, my Lady, I have sometimes thought—forgive my being so +free—that YOU are not happy.” + +“I!” + +“Will you be more so when you have sent me away? Pray, pray, think +again. Let me stay a little while!” + +“I have said, my child, that what I do, I do for your sake, not my +own. It is done. What I am towards you, Rosa, is what I am now—not +what I shall be a little while hence. Remember this, and keep my +confidence. Do so much for my sake, and thus all ends between us!” + +She detaches herself from her simple-hearted companion and leaves the +room. Late in the afternoon, when she next appears upon the +staircase, she is in her haughtiest and coldest state. As indifferent +as if all passion, feeling, and interest had been worn out in the +earlier ages of the world and had perished from its surface with its +other departed monsters. + +Mercury has announced Mr. Rouncewell, which is the cause of her +appearance. Mr. Rouncewell is not in the library, but she repairs to +the library. Sir Leicester is there, and she wishes to speak to him +first. + +“Sir Leicester, I am desirous—but you are engaged.” + +Oh, dear no! Not at all. Only Mr. Tulkinghorn. + +Always at hand. Haunting every place. No relief or security from him +for a moment. + +“I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. Will you allow me to retire?” + +With a look that plainly says, “You know you have the power to remain +if you will,” she tells him it is not necessary and moves towards a +chair. Mr. Tulkinghorn brings it a little forward for her with his +clumsy bow and retires into a window opposite. Interposed between her +and the fading light of day in the now quiet street, his shadow falls +upon her, and he darkens all before her. Even so does he darken her +life. + +It is a dull street under the best conditions, where the two long +rows of houses stare at each other with that severity that +half-a-dozen of its greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared +into stone rather than originally built in that material. It is a +street of such dismal grandeur, so determined not to condescend to +liveliness, that the doors and windows hold a gloomy state of their +own in black paint and dust, and the echoing mews behind have a dry +and massive appearance, as if they were reserved to stable the stone +chargers of noble statues. Complicated garnish of iron-work entwines +itself over the flights of steps in this awful street, and from these +petrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the +upstart gas. Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through which +bold boys aspire to throw their friends’ caps (its only present use), +retains its place among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory of +departed oil. Nay, even oil itself, yet lingering at long intervals +in a little absurd glass pot, with a knob in the bottom like an +oyster, blinks and sulks at newer lights every night, like its high +and dry master in the House of Lords. + +Therefore there is not much that Lady Dedlock, seated in her chair, +could wish to see through the window in which Mr. Tulkinghorn stands. +And yet—and yet—she sends a look in that direction as if it were +her heart’s desire to have that figure moved out of the way. + +Sir Leicester begs his Lady’s pardon. She was about to say? + +“Only that Mr. Rouncewell is here (he has called by my appointment) +and that we had better make an end of the question of that girl. I am +tired to death of the matter.” + +“What can I do—to—assist?” demands Sir Leicester in some +considerable doubt. + +“Let us see him here and have done with it. Will you tell them to +send him up?” + +“Mr. Tulkinghorn, be so good as to ring. Thank you. Request,” says +Sir Leicester to Mercury, not immediately remembering the business +term, “request the iron gentleman to walk this way.” + +Mercury departs in search of the iron gentleman, finds, and produces +him. Sir Leicester receives that ferruginous person graciously. + +“I hope you are well, Mr. Rouncewell. Be seated. (My solicitor, Mr. +Tulkinghorn.) My Lady was desirous, Mr. Rouncewell,” Sir Leicester +skilfully transfers him with a solemn wave of his hand, “was desirous +to speak with you. Hem!” + +“I shall be very happy,” returns the iron gentleman, “to give my best +attention to anything Lady Dedlock does me the honour to say.” + +As he turns towards her, he finds that the impression she makes upon +him is less agreeable than on the former occasion. A distant +supercilious air makes a cold atmosphere about her, and there is +nothing in her bearing, as there was before, to encourage openness. + +“Pray, sir,” says Lady Dedlock listlessly, “may I be allowed to +inquire whether anything has passed between you and your son +respecting your son’s fancy?” + +It is almost too troublesome to her languid eyes to bestow a look +upon him as she asks this question. + +“If my memory serves me, Lady Dedlock, I said, when I had the +pleasure of seeing you before, that I should seriously advise my son +to conquer that—fancy.” The ironmaster repeats her expression with a +little emphasis. + +“And did you?” + +“Oh! Of course I did.” + +Sir Leicester gives a nod, approving and confirmatory. Very proper. +The iron gentleman, having said that he would do it, was bound to do +it. No difference in this respect between the base metals and the +precious. Highly proper. + +“And pray has he done so?” + +“Really, Lady Dedlock, I cannot make you a definite reply. I fear +not. Probably not yet. In our condition of life, we sometimes couple +an intention with our—our fancies which renders them not altogether +easy to throw off. I think it is rather our way to be in earnest.” + +Sir Leicester has a misgiving that there may be a hidden Wat Tylerish +meaning in this expression, and fumes a little. Mr. Rouncewell is +perfectly good-humoured and polite, but within such limits, evidently +adapts his tone to his reception. + +“Because,” proceeds my Lady, “I have been thinking of the subject, +which is tiresome to me.” + +“I am very sorry, I am sure.” + +“And also of what Sir Leicester said upon it, in which I quite +concur”—Sir Leicester flattered—“and if you cannot give us the +assurance that this fancy is at an end, I have come to the conclusion +that the girl had better leave me.” + +“I can give no such assurance, Lady Dedlock. Nothing of the kind.” + +“Then she had better go.” + +“Excuse me, my Lady,” Sir Leicester considerately interposes, “but +perhaps this may be doing an injury to the young woman which she has +not merited. Here is a young woman,” says Sir Leicester, +magnificently laying out the matter with his right hand like a +service of plate, “whose good fortune it is to have attracted the +notice and favour of an eminent lady and to live, under the +protection of that eminent lady, surrounded by the various advantages +which such a position confers, and which are unquestionably very +great—I believe unquestionably very great, sir—for a young woman in +that station of life. The question then arises, should that young +woman be deprived of these many advantages and that good fortune +simply because she has”—Sir Leicester, with an apologetic but +dignified inclination of his head towards the ironmaster, winds up +his sentence—“has attracted the notice of Mr Rouncewell’s son? Now, +has she deserved this punishment? Is this just towards her? Is this +our previous understanding?” + +“I beg your pardon,” interposes Mr. Rouncewell’s son’s father. “Sir +Leicester, will you allow me? I think I may shorten the subject. Pray +dismiss that from your consideration. If you remember anything so +unimportant—which is not to be expected—you would recollect that my +first thought in the affair was directly opposed to her remaining +here.” + +Dismiss the Dedlock patronage from consideration? Oh! Sir Leicester +is bound to believe a pair of ears that have been handed down to him +through such a family, or he really might have mistrusted their +report of the iron gentleman’s observations. + +“It is not necessary,” observes my Lady in her coldest manner before +he can do anything but breathe amazedly, “to enter into these matters +on either side. The girl is a very good girl; I have nothing whatever +to say against her, but she is so far insensible to her many +advantages and her good fortune that she is in love—or supposes she +is, poor little fool—and unable to appreciate them.” + +Sir Leicester begs to observe that wholly alters the case. He might +have been sure that my Lady had the best grounds and reasons in +support of her view. He entirely agrees with my Lady. The young woman +had better go. + +“As Sir Leicester observed, Mr. Rouncewell, on the last occasion when +we were fatigued by this business,” Lady Dedlock languidly proceeds, +“we cannot make conditions with you. Without conditions, and under +present circumstances, the girl is quite misplaced here and had +better go. I have told her so. Would you wish to have her sent back +to the village, or would you like to take her with you, or what would +you prefer?” + +“Lady Dedlock, if I may speak plainly—” + +“By all means.” + +“—I should prefer the course which will the soonest relieve you of +the incumbrance and remove her from her present position.” + +“And to speak as plainly,” she returns with the same studied +carelessness, “so should I. Do I understand that you will take her +with you?” + +The iron gentleman makes an iron bow. + +“Sir Leicester, will you ring?” Mr. Tulkinghorn steps forward from +his window and pulls the bell. “I had forgotten you. Thank you.” He +makes his usual bow and goes quietly back again. Mercury, +swift-responsive, appears, receives instructions whom to produce, +skims away, produces the aforesaid, and departs. + +Rosa has been crying and is yet in distress. On her coming in, the +ironmaster leaves his chair, takes her arm in his, and remains with +her near the door ready to depart. + +“You are taken charge of, you see,” says my Lady in her weary manner, +“and are going away well protected. I have mentioned that you are a +very good girl, and you have nothing to cry for.” + +“She seems after all,” observes Mr. Tulkinghorn, loitering a little +forward with his hands behind him, “as if she were crying at going +away.” + +“Why, she is not well-bred, you see,” returns Mr. Rouncewell with +some quickness in his manner, as if he were glad to have the lawyer +to retort upon, “and she is an inexperienced little thing and knows +no better. If she had remained here, sir, she would have improved, no +doubt.” + +“No doubt,” is Mr. Tulkinghorn’s composed reply. + +Rosa sobs out that she is very sorry to leave my Lady, and that she +was happy at Chesney Wold, and has been happy with my Lady, and that +she thanks my Lady over and over again. “Out, you silly little puss!” +says the ironmaster, checking her in a low voice, though not angrily. +“Have a spirit, if you’re fond of Watt!” My Lady merely waves her off +with indifference, saying, “There, there, child! You are a good girl. +Go away!” Sir Leicester has magnificently disengaged himself from the +subject and retired into the sanctuary of his blue coat. Mr. +Tulkinghorn, an indistinct form against the dark street now dotted +with lamps, looms in my Lady’s view, bigger and blacker than before. + +“Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Rouncewell after a pause +of a few moments, “I beg to take my leave, with an apology for having +again troubled you, though not of my own act, on this tiresome +subject. I can very well understand, I assure you, how tiresome so +small a matter must have become to Lady Dedlock. If I am doubtful of +my dealing with it, it is only because I did not at first quietly +exert my influence to take my young friend here away without +troubling you at all. But it appeared to me—I dare say magnifying +the importance of the thing—that it was respectful to explain to you +how the matter stood and candid to consult your wishes and +convenience. I hope you will excuse my want of acquaintance with the +polite world.” + +Sir Leicester considers himself evoked out of the sanctuary by these +remarks. “Mr. Rouncewell,” he returns, “do not mention it. +Justifications are unnecessary, I hope, on either side.” + +“I am glad to hear it, Sir Leicester; and if I may, by way of a last +word, revert to what I said before of my mother’s long connexion with +the family and the worth it bespeaks on both sides, I would point out +this little instance here on my arm who shows herself so affectionate +and faithful in parting and in whom my mother, I dare say, has done +something to awaken such feelings—though of course Lady Dedlock, by +her heartfelt interest and her genial condescension, has done much +more.” + +If he mean this ironically, it may be truer than he thinks. He points +it, however, by no deviation from his straightforward manner of +speech, though in saying it he turns towards that part of the dim +room where my Lady sits. Sir Leicester stands to return his parting +salutation, Mr. Tulkinghorn again rings, Mercury takes another +flight, and Mr. Rouncewell and Rosa leave the house. + +Then lights are brought in, discovering Mr. Tulkinghorn still +standing in his window with his hands behind him and my Lady still +sitting with his figure before her, closing up her view of the night +as well as of the day. She is very pale. Mr. Tulkinghorn, observing +it as she rises to retire, thinks, “Well she may be! The power of +this woman is astonishing. She has been acting a part the whole +time.” But he can act a part too—his one unchanging character—and +as he holds the door open for this woman, fifty pairs of eyes, each +fifty times sharper than Sir Leicester’s pair, should find no flaw in +him. + +Lady Dedlock dines alone in her own room to-day. Sir Leicester is +whipped in to the rescue of the Doodle Party and the discomfiture of +the Coodle Faction. Lady Dedlock asks on sitting down to dinner, +still deadly pale (and quite an illustration of the debilitated +cousin’s text), whether he is gone out? Yes. Whether Mr. Tulkinghorn +is gone yet? No. Presently she asks again, is he gone YET? No. What +is he doing? Mercury thinks he is writing letters in the library. +Would my Lady wish to see him? Anything but that. + +But he wishes to see my Lady. Within a few more minutes he is +reported as sending his respects, and could my Lady please to receive +him for a word or two after her dinner? My Lady will receive him now. +He comes now, apologizing for intruding, even by her permission, +while she is at table. When they are alone, my Lady waves her hand to +dispense with such mockeries. + +“What do you want, sir?” + +“Why, Lady Dedlock,” says the lawyer, taking a chair at a little +distance from her and slowly rubbing his rusty legs up and down, up +and down, up and down, “I am rather surprised by the course you have +taken.” + +“Indeed?” + +“Yes, decidedly. I was not prepared for it. I consider it a departure +from our agreement and your promise. It puts us in a new position, +Lady Dedlock. I feel myself under the necessity of saying that I +don’t approve of it.” + +He stops in his rubbing and looks at her, with his hands on his +knees. Imperturbable and unchangeable as he is, there is still an +indefinable freedom in his manner which is new and which does not +escape this woman’s observation. + +“I do not quite understand you.” + +“Oh, yes you do, I think. I think you do. Come, come, Lady Dedlock, +we must not fence and parry now. You know you like this girl.” + +“Well, sir?” + +“And you know—and I know—that you have not sent her away for the +reasons you have assigned, but for the purpose of separating her as +much as possible from—excuse my mentioning it as a matter of +business—any reproach and exposure that impend over yourself.” + +“Well, sir?” + +“Well, Lady Dedlock,” returns the lawyer, crossing his legs and +nursing the uppermost knee. “I object to that. I consider that a +dangerous proceeding. I know it to be unnecessary and calculated to +awaken speculation, doubt, rumour, I don’t know what, in the house. +Besides, it is a violation of our agreement. You were to be exactly +what you were before. Whereas, it must be evident to yourself, as it +is to me, that you have been this evening very different from what +you were before. Why, bless my soul, Lady Dedlock, transparently so!” + +“If, sir,” she begins, “in my knowledge of my secret—” But he +interrupts her. + +“Now, Lady Dedlock, this is a matter of business, and in a matter of +business the ground cannot be kept too clear. It is no longer your +secret. Excuse me. That is just the mistake. It is my secret, in +trust for Sir Leicester and the family. If it were your secret, Lady +Dedlock, we should not be here holding this conversation.” + +“That is very true. If in my knowledge of THE secret I do what I can +to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference +to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney +Wold) from the taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution I +have taken. Nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could +shake it or could move me.” This she says with great deliberation and +distinctness and with no more outward passion than himself. As for +him, he methodically discusses his matter of business as if she were +any insensible instrument used in business. + +“Really? Then you see, Lady Dedlock,” he returns, “you are not to be +trusted. You have put the case in a perfectly plain way, and +according to the literal fact; and that being the case, you are not +to be trusted.” + +“Perhaps you may remember that I expressed some anxiety on this same +point when we spoke at night at Chesney Wold?” + +“Yes,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, coolly getting up and standing on the +hearth. “Yes. I recollect, Lady Dedlock, that you certainly referred +to the girl, but that was before we came to our arrangement, and both +the letter and the spirit of our arrangement altogether precluded any +action on your part founded upon my discovery. There can be no doubt +about that. As to sparing the girl, of what importance or value is +she? Spare! Lady Dedlock, here is a family name compromised. One +might have supposed that the course was straight on—over everything, +neither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all +considerations in the way, sparing nothing, treading everything under +foot.” + +She has been looking at the table. She lifts up her eyes and looks at +him. There is a stern expression on her face and a part of her lower +lip is compressed under her teeth. “This woman understands me,” Mr. +Tulkinghorn thinks as she lets her glance fall again. “SHE cannot be +spared. Why should she spare others?” + +For a little while they are silent. Lady Dedlock has eaten no dinner, +but has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady hand and drunk +it. She rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclines in it, +shading her face. There is nothing in her manner to express weakness +or excite compassion. It is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. “This +woman,” thinks Mr. Tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark +object closing up her view, “is a study.” + +He studies her at his leisure, not speaking for a time. She too +studies something at her leisure. She is not the first to speak, +appearing indeed so unlikely to be so, though he stood there until +midnight, that even he is driven upon breaking silence. + +“Lady Dedlock, the most disagreeable part of this business interview +remains, but it is business. Our agreement is broken. A lady of your +sense and strength of character will be prepared for my now declaring +it void and taking my own course.” + +“I am quite prepared.” + +Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head. “That is all I have to trouble you +with, Lady Dedlock.” + +She stops him as he is moving out of the room by asking, “This is the +notice I was to receive? I wish not to misapprehend you.” + +“Not exactly the notice you were to receive, Lady Dedlock, because +the contemplated notice supposed the agreement to have been observed. +But virtually the same, virtually the same. The difference is merely +in a lawyer’s mind.” + +“You intend to give me no other notice?” + +“You are right. No.” + +“Do you contemplate undeceiving Sir Leicester to-night?” + +“A home question!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a slight smile and +cautiously shaking his head at the shaded face. “No, not to-night.” + +“To-morrow?” + +“All things considered, I had better decline answering that question, +Lady Dedlock. If I were to say I don’t know when, exactly, you would +not believe me, and it would answer no purpose. It may be to-morrow. +I would rather say no more. You are prepared, and I hold out no +expectations which circumstances might fail to justify. I wish you +good evening.” + +She removes her hand, turns her pale face towards him as he walks +silently to the door, and stops him once again as he is about to open +it. + +“Do you intend to remain in the house any time? I heard you were +writing in the library. Are you going to return there?” + +“Only for my hat. I am going home.” + +She bows her eyes rather than her head, the movement is so slight and +curious, and he withdraws. Clear of the room he looks at his watch +but is inclined to doubt it by a minute or thereabouts. There is a +splendid clock upon the staircase, famous, as splendid clocks not +often are, for its accuracy. “And what do YOU say,” Mr. Tulkinghorn +inquires, referring to it. “What do you say?” + +If it said now, “Don’t go home!” What a famous clock, hereafter, if +it said to-night of all the nights that it has counted off, to this +old man of all the young and old men who have ever stood before it, +“Don’t go home!” With its sharp clear bell it strikes three quarters +after seven and ticks on again. “Why, you are worse than I thought +you,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, muttering reproof to his watch. “Two +minutes wrong? At this rate you won’t last my time.” What a watch to +return good for evil if it ticked in answer, “Don’t go home!” + +He passes out into the streets and walks on, with his hands behind +him, under the shadow of the lofty houses, many of whose mysteries, +difficulties, mortgages, delicate affairs of all kinds, are treasured +up within his old black satin waistcoat. He is in the confidence of +the very bricks and mortar. The high chimney-stacks telegraph family +secrets to him. Yet there is not a voice in a mile of them to +whisper, “Don’t go home!” + +Through the stir and motion of the commoner streets; through the roar +and jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing +shop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the +crowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and +nothing meets him murmuring, “Don’t go home!” Arrived at last in his +dull room to light his candles, and look round and up, and see the +Roman pointing from the ceiling, there is no new significance in the +Roman’s hand to-night or in the flutter of the attendant groups to +give him the late warning, “Don’t come here!” + +It is a moonlight night, but the moon, being past the full, is only +now rising over the great wilderness of London. The stars are shining +as they shone above the turret-leads at Chesney Wold. This woman, as +he has of late been so accustomed to call her, looks out upon them. +Her soul is turbulent within her; she is sick at heart and restless. +The large rooms are too cramped and close. She cannot endure their +restraint and will walk alone in a neighbouring garden. + +Too capricious and imperious in all she does to be the cause of much +surprise in those about her as to anything she does, this woman, +loosely muffled, goes out into the moonlight. Mercury attends with +the key. Having opened the garden-gate, he delivers the key into his +Lady’s hands at her request and is bidden to go back. She will walk +there some time to ease her aching head. She may be an hour, she may +be more. She needs no further escort. The gate shuts upon its spring +with a clash, and he leaves her passing on into the dark shade of +some trees. + +A fine night, and a bright large moon, and multitudes of stars. Mr. +Tulkinghorn, in repairing to his cellar and in opening and shutting +those resounding doors, has to cross a little prison-like yard. He +looks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large +moon, what multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too. + +A very quiet night. When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude +and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded +places full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads +and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in +repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees +against the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is +it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the +water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among +pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only +does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick, +where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping +make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements +through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed +ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds, +rich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with +the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and +on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread +wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only +him; but even on this stranger’s wilderness of London there is some +rest. Its steeples and towers and its one great dome grow more +ethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness in the pale +effulgence; the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are +softened, and the footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly +away. In these fields of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s inhabiting, where the +shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their +sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them +exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a +distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating. + +What’s that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where was it? + +The few foot-passengers start, stop, and stare about them. Some +windows and doors are opened, and people come out to look. It was a +loud report and echoed and rattled heavily. It shook one house, or so +a man says who was passing. It has aroused all the dogs in the +neighbourhood, who bark vehemently. Terrified cats scamper across the +road. While the dogs are yet barking and howling—there is one dog +howling like a demon—the church-clocks, as if they were startled +too, begin to strike. The hum from the streets, likewise, seems to +swell into a shout. But it is soon over. Before the last clock begins +to strike ten, there is a lull. When it has ceased, the fine night, +the bright large moon, and multitudes of stars, are left at peace +again. + +Has Mr. Tulkinghorn been disturbed? His windows are dark and quiet, +and his door is shut. It must be something unusual indeed to bring +him out of his shell. Nothing is heard of him, nothing is seen of +him. What power of cannon might it take to shake that rusty old man +out of his immovable composure? + +For many years the persistent Roman has been pointing, with no +particular meaning, from that ceiling. It is not likely that he has +any new meaning in him to-night. Once pointing, always pointing—like +any Roman, or even Briton, with a single idea. There he is, no doubt, +in his impossible attitude, pointing, unavailingly, all night long. +Moonlight, darkness, dawn, sunrise, day. There he is still, eagerly +pointing, and no one minds him. + +But a little after the coming of the day come people to clean the +rooms. And either the Roman has some new meaning in him, not +expressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild, for looking up +at his outstretched hand and looking down at what is below it, that +person shrieks and flies. The others, looking in as the first one +looked, shriek and fly too, and there is an alarm in the street. + +What does it mean? No light is admitted into the darkened chamber, +and people unaccustomed to it enter, and treading softly but heavily, +carry a weight into the bedroom and lay it down. There is whispering +and wondering all day, strict search of every corner, careful tracing +of steps, and careful noting of the disposition of every article of +furniture. All eyes look up at the Roman, and all voices murmur, “If +he could only tell what he saw!” + +He is pointing at a table with a bottle (nearly full of wine) and a +glass upon it and two candles that were blown out suddenly soon after +being lighted. He is pointing at an empty chair and at a stain upon +the ground before it that might be almost covered with a hand. These +objects lie directly within his range. An excited imagination might +suppose that there was something in them so terrific as to drive the +rest of the composition, not only the attendant big-legged boys, but +the clouds and flowers and pillars too—in short, the very body and +soul of Allegory, and all the brains it has—stark mad. It happens +surely that every one who comes into the darkened room and looks at +these things looks up at the Roman and that he is invested in all +eyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a paralysed dumb witness. + +So it shall happen surely, through many years to come, that ghostly +stories shall be told of the stain upon the floor, so easy to be +covered, so hard to be got out, and that the Roman, pointing from the +ceiling shall point, so long as dust and damp and spiders spare him, +with far greater significance than he ever had in Mr. Tulkinghorn’s +time, and with a deadly meaning. For Mr. Tulkinghorn’s time is over +for evermore, and the Roman pointed at the murderous hand uplifted +against his life, and pointed helplessly at him, from night to +morning, lying face downward on the floor, shot through the heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX + +Dutiful Friendship + + +A great annual occasion has come round in the establishment of Mr. +Matthew Bagnet, otherwise Lignum Vitae, ex-artilleryman and present +bassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and festival. The celebration +of a birthday in the family. + +It is not Mr. Bagnet’s birthday. Mr. Bagnet merely distinguishes that +epoch in the musical instrument business by kissing the children with +an extra smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe after +dinner, and wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is +thinking about it—a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so +by his mother having departed this life twenty years. Some men rarely +revert to their father, but seem, in the bank-books of their +remembrance, to have transferred all the stock of filial affection +into their mother’s name. Mr. Bagnet is one of these. Perhaps his +exalted appreciation of the merits of the old girl causes him usually +to make the noun-substantive “goodness” of the feminine gender. + +It is not the birthday of one of the three children. Those occasions +are kept with some marks of distinction, but they rarely overleap the +bounds of happy returns and a pudding. On young Woolwich’s last +birthday, Mr. Bagnet certainly did, after observing on his growth and +general advancement, proceed, in a moment of profound reflection on +the changes wrought by time, to examine him in the catechism, +accomplishing with extreme accuracy the questions number one and two, +“What is your name?” and “Who gave you that name?” but there failing +in the exact precision of his memory and substituting for number +three the question “And how do you like that name?” which he +propounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying and +improving as to give it quite an orthodox air. This, however, was a +speciality on that particular birthday, and not a general solemnity. + +It is the old girl’s birthday, and that is the greatest holiday and +reddest-letter day in Mr. Bagnet’s calendar. The auspicious event is +always commemorated according to certain forms settled and prescribed +by Mr. Bagnet some years since. Mr. Bagnet, being deeply convinced +that to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to attain the highest +pitch of imperial luxury, invariably goes forth himself very early in +the morning of this day to buy a pair; he is, as invariably, taken in +by the vendor and installed in the possession of the oldest +inhabitants of any coop in Europe. Returning with these triumphs of +toughness tied up in a clean blue and white cotton handkerchief +(essential to the arrangements), he in a casual manner invites Mrs. +Bagnet to declare at breakfast what she would like for dinner. Mrs. +Bagnet, by a coincidence never known to fail, replying fowls, Mr. +Bagnet instantly produces his bundle from a place of concealment +amidst general amazement and rejoicing. He further requires that the +old girl shall do nothing all day long but sit in her very best gown +and be served by himself and the young people. As he is not +illustrious for his cookery, this may be supposed to be a matter of +state rather than enjoyment on the old girl’s part, but she keeps her +state with all imaginable cheerfulness. + +On this present birthday, Mr. Bagnet has accomplished the usual +preliminaries. He has bought two specimens of poultry, which, if +there be any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaff, +to be prepared for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family by +their unlooked-for production; he is himself directing the roasting +of the poultry; and Mrs. Bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers +itching to prevent what she sees going wrong, sits in her gown of +ceremony, an honoured guest. + +Quebec and Malta lay the cloth for dinner, while Woolwich, serving, +as beseems him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolving. To these +young scullions Mrs. Bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a shake +of the head, or a crooked face, as they made mistakes. + +“At half after one.” Says Mr. Bagnet. “To the minute. They’ll be +done.” + +Mrs. Bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them at a standstill before +the fire and beginning to burn. + +“You shall have a dinner, old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet. “Fit for a +queen.” + +Mrs. Bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, but to the perception +of her son, betrays so much uneasiness of spirit that he is impelled +by the dictates of affection to ask her, with his eyes, what is the +matter, thus standing, with his eyes wide open, more oblivious of the +fowls than before, and not affording the least hope of a return to +consciousness. Fortunately his elder sister perceives the cause of +the agitation in Mrs. Bagnet’s breast and with an admonitory poke +recalls him. The stopped fowls going round again, Mrs. Bagnet closes +her eyes in the intensity of her relief. + +“George will look us up,” says Mr. Bagnet. “At half after four. To +the moment. How many years, old girl. Has George looked us up. This +afternoon?” + +“Ah, Lignum, Lignum, as many as make an old woman of a young one, I +begin to think. Just about that, and no less,” returns Mrs. Bagnet, +laughing and shaking her head. + +“Old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, “never mind. You’d be as young as ever +you was. If you wasn’t younger. Which you are. As everybody knows.” + +Quebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that Bluffy is +sure to bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what it +will be. + +“Do you know, Lignum,” says Mrs. Bagnet, casting a glance on the +table-cloth, and winking “salt!” at Malta with her right eye, and +shaking the pepper away from Quebec with her head, “I begin to think +George is in the roving way again.” + +“George,” returns Mr. Bagnet, “will never desert. And leave his old +comrade. In the lurch. Don’t be afraid of it.” + +“No, Lignum. No. I don’t say he will. I don’t think he will. But if +he could get over this money trouble of his, I believe he would be +off.” + +Mr. Bagnet asks why. + +“Well,” returns his wife, considering, “George seems to me to be +getting not a little impatient and restless. I don’t say but what +he’s as free as ever. Of course he must be free or he wouldn’t be +George, but he smarts and seems put out.” + +“He’s extra-drilled,” says Mr. Bagnet. “By a lawyer. Who would put +the devil out.” + +“There’s something in that,” his wife assents; “but so it is, +Lignum.” + +Further conversation is prevented, for the time, by the necessity +under which Mr. Bagnet finds himself of directing the whole force of +his mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered by the dry +humour of the fowls in not yielding any gravy, and also by the made +gravy acquiring no flavour and turning out of a flaxen complexion. +With a similar perverseness, the potatoes crumble off forks in the +process of peeling, upheaving from their centres in every direction, +as if they were subject to earthquakes. The legs of the fowls, too, +are longer than could be desired, and extremely scaly. Overcoming +these disadvantages to the best of his ability, Mr. Bagnet at last +dishes and they sit down at table, Mrs. Bagnet occupying the guest’s +place at his right hand. + +It is well for the old girl that she has but one birthday in a year, +for two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious. Every kind of +finer tendon and ligament that is in the nature of poultry to possess +is developed in these specimens in the singular form of +guitar-strings. Their limbs appear to have struck roots into their +breasts and bodies, as aged trees strike roots into the earth. Their +legs are so hard as to encourage the idea that they must have devoted +the greater part of their long and arduous lives to pedestrian +exercises and the walking of matches. But Mr. Bagnet, unconscious of +these little defects, sets his heart on Mrs. Bagnet eating a most +severe quantity of the delicacies before her; and as that good old +girl would not cause him a moment’s disappointment on any day, least +of all on such a day, for any consideration, she imperils her +digestion fearfully. How young Woolwich cleans the drum-sticks +without being of ostrich descent, his anxious mother is at a loss to +understand. + +The old girl has another trial to undergo after the conclusion of the +repast in sitting in state to see the room cleared, the hearth swept, +and the dinner-service washed up and polished in the backyard. The +great delight and energy with which the two young ladies apply +themselves to these duties, turning up their skirts in imitation of +their mother and skating in and out on little scaffolds of pattens, +inspire the highest hopes for the future, but some anxiety for the +present. The same causes lead to confusion of tongues, a clattering +of crockery, a rattling of tin mugs, a whisking of brooms, and an +expenditure of water, all in excess, while the saturation of the +young ladies themselves is almost too moving a spectacle for Mrs. +Bagnet to look upon with the calmness proper to her position. At last +the various cleansing processes are triumphantly completed; Quebec +and Malta appear in fresh attire, smiling and dry; pipes, tobacco, +and something to drink are placed upon the table; and the old girl +enjoys the first peace of mind she ever knows on the day of this +delightful entertainment. + +When Mr. Bagnet takes his usual seat, the hands of the clock are very +near to half-past four; as they mark it accurately, Mr. Bagnet +announces, “George! Military time.” + +It is George, and he has hearty congratulations for the old girl +(whom he kisses on the great occasion), and for the children, and for +Mr. Bagnet. “Happy returns to all!” says Mr. George. + +“But, George, old man!” cries Mrs. Bagnet, looking at him curiously. +“What’s come to you?” + +“Come to me?” + +“Ah! You are so white, George—for you—and look so shocked. Now +don’t he, Lignum?” + +“George,” says Mr. Bagnet, “tell the old girl. What’s the matter.” + +“I didn’t know I looked white,” says the trooper, passing his hand +over his brow, “and I didn’t know I looked shocked, and I’m sorry I +do. But the truth is, that boy who was taken in at my place died +yesterday afternoon, and it has rather knocked me over.” + +“Poor creetur!” says Mrs. Bagnet with a mother’s pity. “Is he gone? +Dear, dear!” + +“I didn’t mean to say anything about it, for it’s not birthday talk, +but you have got it out of me, you see, before I sit down. I should +have roused up in a minute,” says the trooper, making himself speak +more gaily, “but you’re so quick, Mrs. Bagnet.” + +“You’re right. The old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet. “Is as quick. As +powder.” + +“And what’s more, she’s the subject of the day, and we’ll stick to +her,” cries Mr. George. “See here, I have brought a little brooch +along with me. It’s a poor thing, you know, but it’s a keepsake. +That’s all the good it is, Mrs. Bagnet.” + +Mr. George produces his present, which is greeted with admiring +leapings and clappings by the young family, and with a species of +reverential admiration by Mr. Bagnet. “Old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet. +“Tell him my opinion of it.” + +“Why, it’s a wonder, George!” Mrs. Bagnet exclaims. “It’s the +beautifullest thing that ever was seen!” + +“Good!” says Mr. Bagnet. “My opinion.” + +“It’s so pretty, George,” cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning it on all sides +and holding it out at arm’s length, “that it seems too choice for +me.” + +“Bad!” says Mr. Bagnet. “Not my opinion.” + +“But whatever it is, a hundred thousand thanks, old fellow,” says +Mrs. Bagnet, her eyes sparkling with pleasure and her hand stretched +out to him; “and though I have been a crossgrained soldier’s wife to +you sometimes, George, we are as strong friends, I am sure, in +reality, as ever can be. Now you shall fasten it on yourself, for +good luck, if you will, George.” + +The children close up to see it done, and Mr. Bagnet looks over young +Woolwich’s head to see it done with an interest so maturely wooden, +yet pleasantly childish, that Mrs. Bagnet cannot help laughing in her +airy way and saying, “Oh, Lignum, Lignum, what a precious old chap +you are!” But the trooper fails to fasten the brooch. His hand +shakes, he is nervous, and it falls off. “Would any one believe +this?” says he, catching it as it drops and looking round. “I am so +out of sorts that I bungle at an easy job like this!” + +Mrs. Bagnet concludes that for such a case there is no remedy like a +pipe, and fastening the brooch herself in a twinkling, causes the +trooper to be inducted into his usual snug place and the pipes to be +got into action. “If that don’t bring you round, George,” says she, +“just throw your eye across here at your present now and then, and +the two together MUST do it.” + +“You ought to do it of yourself,” George answers; “I know that very +well, Mrs. Bagnet. I’ll tell you how, one way and another, the blues +have got to be too many for me. Here was this poor lad. ’Twas dull +work to see him dying as he did, and not be able to help him.” + +“What do you mean, George? You did help him. You took him under your +roof.” + +“I helped him so far, but that’s little. I mean, Mrs. Bagnet, there +he was, dying without ever having been taught much more than to know +his right hand from his left. And he was too far gone to be helped +out of that.” + +“Ah, poor creetur!” says Mrs. Bagnet. + +“Then,” says the trooper, not yet lighting his pipe, and passing his +heavy hand over his hair, “that brought up Gridley in a man’s mind. +His was a bad case too, in a different way. Then the two got mixed up +in a man’s mind with a flinty old rascal who had to do with both. And +to think of that rusty carbine, stock and barrel, standing up on end +in his corner, hard, indifferent, taking everything so evenly—it +made flesh and blood tingle, I do assure you.” + +“My advice to you,” returns Mrs. Bagnet, “is to light your pipe and +tingle that way. It’s wholesomer and comfortabler, and better for the +health altogether.” + +“You’re right,” says the trooper, “and I’ll do it.” + +So he does it, though still with an indignant gravity that impresses +the young Bagnets, and even causes Mr. Bagnet to defer the ceremony +of drinking Mrs. Bagnet’s health, always given by himself on these +occasions in a speech of exemplary terseness. But the young ladies +having composed what Mr. Bagnet is in the habit of calling “the +mixtur,” and George’s pipe being now in a glow, Mr. Bagnet considers +it his duty to proceed to the toast of the evening. He addresses the +assembled company in the following terms. + +“George. Woolwich. Quebec. Malta. This is her birthday. Take a day’s +march. And you won’t find such another. Here’s towards her!” + +The toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, Mrs. Bagnet returns +thanks in a neat address of corresponding brevity. This model +composition is limited to the three words “And wishing yours!” which +the old girl follows up with a nod at everybody in succession and a +well-regulated swig of the mixture. This she again follows up, on the +present occasion, by the wholly unexpected exclamation, “Here’s a +man!” + +Here IS a man, much to the astonishment of the little company, +looking in at the parlour-door. He is a sharp-eyed man—a quick keen +man—and he takes in everybody’s look at him, all at once, +individually and collectively, in a manner that stamps him a +remarkable man. + +“George,” says the man, nodding, “how do you find yourself?” + +“Why, it’s Bucket!” cries Mr. George. + +“Yes,” says the man, coming in and closing the door. “I was going +down the street here when I happened to stop and look in at the +musical instruments in the shop-window—a friend of mine is in want +of a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone—and I saw a party +enjoying themselves, and I thought it was you in the corner; I +thought I couldn’t be mistaken. How goes the world with you, George, +at the present moment? Pretty smooth? And with you, ma’am? And with +you, governor? And Lord,” says Mr. Bucket, opening his arms, “here’s +children too! You may do anything with me if you only show me +children. Give us a kiss, my pets. No occasion to inquire who YOUR +father and mother is. Never saw such a likeness in my life!” + +Mr. Bucket, not unwelcome, has sat himself down next to Mr. George +and taken Quebec and Malta on his knees. “You pretty dears,” says Mr. +Bucket, “give us another kiss; it’s the only thing I’m greedy in. +Lord bless you, how healthy you look! And what may be the ages of +these two, ma’am? I should put ’em down at the figures of about eight +and ten.” + +“You’re very near, sir,” says Mrs. Bagnet. + +“I generally am near,” returns Mr. Bucket, “being so fond of +children. A friend of mine has had nineteen of ’em, ma’am, all by one +mother, and she’s still as fresh and rosy as the morning. Not so much +so as yourself, but, upon my soul, she comes near you! And what do +you call these, my darling?” pursues Mr. Bucket, pinching Malta’s +cheeks. “These are peaches, these are. Bless your heart! And what do +you think about father? Do you think father could recommend a +second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone for Mr. Bucket’s friend, my +dear? My name’s Bucket. Ain’t that a funny name?” + +These blandishments have entirely won the family heart. Mrs. Bagnet +forgets the day to the extent of filling a pipe and a glass for Mr. +Bucket and waiting upon him hospitably. She would be glad to receive +so pleasant a character under any circumstances, but she tells him +that as a friend of George’s she is particularly glad to see him this +evening, for George has not been in his usual spirits. + +“Not in his usual spirits?” exclaims Mr. Bucket. “Why, I never heard +of such a thing! What’s the matter, George? You don’t intend to tell +me you’ve been out of spirits. What should you be out of spirits for? +You haven’t got anything on your mind, you know.” + +“Nothing particular,” returns the trooper. + +“I should think not,” rejoins Mr. Bucket. “What could you have on +your mind, you know! And have these pets got anything on THEIR minds, +eh? Not they, but they’ll be upon the minds of some of the young +fellows, some of these days, and make ’em precious low-spirited. I +ain’t much of a prophet, but I can tell you that, ma’am.” + +Mrs. Bagnet, quite charmed, hopes Mr. Bucket has a family of his own. + +“There, ma’am!” says Mr. Bucket. “Would you believe it? No, I +haven’t. My wife and a lodger constitute my family. Mrs. Bucket is as +fond of children as myself and as wishful to have ’em, but no. So it +is. Worldly goods are divided unequally, and man must not repine. +What a very nice backyard, ma’am! Any way out of that yard, now?” + +There is no way out of that yard. + +“Ain’t there really?” says Mr. Bucket. “I should have thought there +might have been. Well, I don’t know as I ever saw a backyard that +took my fancy more. Would you allow me to look at it? Thank you. No, +I see there’s no way out. But what a very good-proportioned yard it +is!” + +Having cast his sharp eye all about it, Mr. Bucket returns to his +chair next his friend Mr. George and pats Mr. George affectionately +on the shoulder. + +“How are your spirits now, George?” + +“All right now,” returns the trooper. + +“That’s your sort!” says Mr. Bucket. “Why should you ever have been +otherwise? A man of your fine figure and constitution has no right to +be out of spirits. That ain’t a chest to be out of spirits, is it, +ma’am? And you haven’t got anything on your mind, you know, George; +what could you have on your mind!” + +Somewhat harping on this phrase, considering the extent and variety +of his conversational powers, Mr. Bucket twice or thrice repeats it +to the pipe he lights, and with a listening face that is particularly +his own. But the sun of his sociality soon recovers from this brief +eclipse and shines again. + +“And this is brother, is it, my dears?” says Mr. Bucket, referring to +Quebec and Malta for information on the subject of young Woolwich. +“And a nice brother he is—half-brother I mean to say. For he’s too +old to be your boy, ma’am.” + +“I can certify at all events that he is not anybody else’s,” returns +Mrs. Bagnet, laughing. + +“Well, you do surprise me! Yet he’s like you, there’s no denying. +Lord, he’s wonderfully like you! But about what you may call the +brow, you know, THERE his father comes out!” Mr. Bucket compares the +faces with one eye shut up, while Mr. Bagnet smokes in stolid +satisfaction. + +This is an opportunity for Mrs. Bagnet to inform him that the boy is +George’s godson. + +“George’s godson, is he?” rejoins Mr. Bucket with extreme cordiality. +“I must shake hands over again with George’s godson. Godfather and +godson do credit to one another. And what do you intend to make of +him, ma’am? Does he show any turn for any musical instrument?” + +Mr. Bagnet suddenly interposes, “Plays the fife. Beautiful.” + +“Would you believe it, governor,” says Mr. Bucket, struck by the +coincidence, “that when I was a boy I played the fife myself? Not in +a scientific way, as I expect he does, but by ear. Lord bless you! +‘British Grenadiers’—there’s a tune to warm an Englishman up! COULD +you give us ‘British Grenadiers,’ my fine fellow?” + +Nothing could be more acceptable to the little circle than this call +upon young Woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife and performs +the stirring melody, during which performance Mr. Bucket, much +enlivened, beats time and never fails to come in sharp with the +burden, “British Gra-a-anadeers!” In short, he shows so much musical +taste that Mr. Bagnet actually takes his pipe from his lips to +express his conviction that he is a singer. Mr. Bucket receives the +harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once +chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom, +and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is +asked to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening, +he complies and gives them “Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young +Charms.” This ballad, he informs Mrs. Bagnet, he considers to have +been his most powerful ally in moving the heart of Mrs. Bucket when a +maiden, and inducing her to approach the altar—Mr. Bucket’s own +words are “to come up to the scratch.” + +This sparkling stranger is such a new and agreeable feature in the +evening that Mr. George, who testified no great emotions of pleasure +on his entrance, begins, in spite of himself, to be rather proud of +him. He is so friendly, is a man of so many resources, and so easy to +get on with, that it is something to have made him known there. Mr. +Bagnet becomes, after another pipe, so sensible of the value of his +acquaintance that he solicits the honour of his company on the old +girl’s next birthday. If anything can more closely cement and +consolidate the esteem which Mr. Bucket has formed for the family, it +is the discovery of the nature of the occasion. He drinks to Mrs. +Bagnet with a warmth approaching to rapture, engages himself for that +day twelvemonth more than thankfully, makes a memorandum of the day +in a large black pocket-book with a girdle to it, and breathes a hope +that Mrs. Bucket and Mrs. Bagnet may before then become, in a manner, +sisters. As he says himself, what is public life without private +ties? He is in his humble way a public man, but it is not in that +sphere that he finds happiness. No, it must be sought within the +confines of domestic bliss. + +It is natural, under these circumstances, that he, in his turn, +should remember the friend to whom he is indebted for so promising an +acquaintance. And he does. He keeps very close to him. Whatever the +subject of the conversation, he keeps a tender eye upon him. He waits +to walk home with him. He is interested in his very boots and +observes even them attentively as Mr. George sits smoking +cross-legged in the chimney-corner. + +At length Mr. George rises to depart. At the same moment Mr. Bucket, +with the secret sympathy of friendship, also rises. He dotes upon the +children to the last and remembers the commission he has undertaken +for an absent friend. + +“Respecting that second-hand wiolinceller, governor—could you +recommend me such a thing?” + +“Scores,” says Mr. Bagnet. + +“I am obliged to you,” returns Mr. Bucket, squeezing his hand. +“You’re a friend in need. A good tone, mind you! My friend is a +regular dab at it. Ecod, he saws away at Mozart and Handel and the +rest of the big-wigs like a thorough workman. And you needn’t,” says +Mr. Bucket in a considerate and private voice, “you needn’t commit +yourself to too low a figure, governor. I don’t want to pay too large +a price for my friend, but I want you to have your proper percentage +and be remunerated for your loss of time. That is but fair. Every man +must live, and ought to it.” + +Mr. Bagnet shakes his head at the old girl to the effect that they +have found a jewel of price. + +“Suppose I was to give you a look in, say, at half arter ten +to-morrow morning. Perhaps you could name the figures of a few +wiolincellers of a good tone?” says Mr. Bucket. + +Nothing easier. Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet both engage to have the requisite +information ready and even hint to each other at the practicability +of having a small stock collected there for approval. + +“Thank you,” says Mr. Bucket, “thank you. Good night, ma’am. Good +night, governor. Good night, darlings. I am much obliged to you for +one of the pleasantest evenings I ever spent in my life.” + +They, on the contrary, are much obliged to him for the pleasure he +has given them in his company; and so they part with many expressions +of goodwill on both sides. “Now George, old boy,” says Mr. Bucket, +taking his arm at the shop-door, “come along!” As they go down the +little street and the Bagnets pause for a minute looking after them, +Mrs. Bagnet remarks to the worthy Lignum that Mr. Bucket “almost +clings to George like, and seems to be really fond of him.” + +The neighbouring streets being narrow and ill-paved, it is a little +inconvenient to walk there two abreast and arm in arm. Mr. George +therefore soon proposes to walk singly. But Mr. Bucket, who cannot +make up his mind to relinquish his friendly hold, replies, “Wait half +a minute, George. I should wish to speak to you first.” Immediately +afterwards, he twists him into a public-house and into a parlour, +where he confronts him and claps his own back against the door. + +“Now, George,” says Mr. Bucket, “duty is duty, and friendship is +friendship. I never want the two to clash if I can help it. I have +endeavoured to make things pleasant to-night, and I put it to you +whether I have done it or not. You must consider yourself in custody, +George.” + +“Custody? What for?” returns the trooper, thunderstruck. + +“Now, George,” says Mr. Bucket, urging a sensible view of the case +upon him with his fat forefinger, “duty, as you know very well, is +one thing, and conversation is another. It’s my duty to inform you +that any observations you may make will be liable to be used against +you. Therefore, George, be careful what you say. You don’t happen to +have heard of a murder?” + +“Murder!” + +“Now, George,” says Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger in an +impressive state of action, “bear in mind what I’ve said to you. I +ask you nothing. You’ve been in low spirits this afternoon. I say, +you don’t happen to have heard of a murder?” + +“No. Where has there been a murder?” + +“Now, George,” says Mr. Bucket, “don’t you go and commit yourself. +I’m a-going to tell you what I want you for. There has been a murder +in Lincoln’s Inn Fields—gentleman of the name of Tulkinghorn. He was +shot last night. I want you for that.” + +The trooper sinks upon a seat behind him, and great drops start out +upon his forehead, and a deadly pallor overspreads his face. + +“Bucket! It’s not possible that Mr. Tulkinghorn has been killed and +that you suspect ME?” + +“George,” returns Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger going, “it is +certainly possible, because it’s the case. This deed was done last +night at ten o’clock. Now, you know where you were last night at ten +o’clock, and you’ll be able to prove it, no doubt.” + +“Last night! Last night?” repeats the trooper thoughtfully. Then it +flashes upon him. “Why, great heaven, I was there last night!” + +“So I have understood, George,” returns Mr. Bucket with great +deliberation. “So I have understood. Likewise you’ve been very often +there. You’ve been seen hanging about the place, and you’ve been +heard more than once in a wrangle with him, and it’s possible—I +don’t say it’s certainly so, mind you, but it’s possible—that he may +have been heard to call you a threatening, murdering, dangerous +fellow.” + +The trooper gasps as if he would admit it all if he could speak. + +“Now, George,” continues Mr. Bucket, putting his hat upon the table +with an air of business rather in the upholstery way than otherwise, +“my wish is, as it has been all the evening, to make things pleasant. +I tell you plainly there’s a reward out, of a hundred guineas, +offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. You and me have always +been pleasant together; but I have got a duty to discharge; and if +that hundred guineas is to be made, it may as well be made by me as +any other man. On all of which accounts, I should hope it was clear +to you that I must have you, and that I’m damned if I don’t have you. +Am I to call in any assistance, or is the trick done?” + +Mr. George has recovered himself and stands up like a soldier. +“Come,” he says; “I am ready.” + +“George,” continues Mr. Bucket, “wait a bit!” With his upholsterer +manner, as if the trooper were a window to be fitted up, he takes +from his pocket a pair of handcuffs. “This is a serious charge, +George, and such is my duty.” + +The trooper flushes angrily and hesitates a moment, but holds out his +two hands, clasped together, and says, “There! Put them on!” + +Mr. Bucket adjusts them in a moment. “How do you find them? Are they +comfortable? If not, say so, for I wish to make things as pleasant as +is consistent with my duty, and I’ve got another pair in my pocket.” +This remark he offers like a most respectable tradesman anxious to +execute an order neatly and to the perfect satisfaction of his +customer. “They’ll do as they are? Very well! Now, you see, +George”—he takes a cloak from a corner and begins adjusting it about +the trooper’s neck—“I was mindful of your feelings when I come out, +and brought this on purpose. There! Who’s the wiser?” + +“Only I,” returns the trooper, “but as I know it, do me one more good +turn and pull my hat over my eyes.” + +“Really, though! Do you mean it? Ain’t it a pity? It looks so.” + +“I can’t look chance men in the face with these things on,” Mr. +George hurriedly replies. “Do, for God’s sake, pull my hat forward.” + +So strongly entreated, Mr. Bucket complies, puts his own hat on, and +conducts his prize into the streets, the trooper marching on as +steadily as usual, though with his head less erect, and Mr. Bucket +steering him with his elbow over the crossings and up the turnings. + + + + +CHAPTER L + +Esther’s Narrative + + +It happened that when I came home from Deal I found a note from Caddy +Jellyby (as we always continued to call her), informing me that her +health, which had been for some time very delicate, was worse and +that she would be more glad than she could tell me if I would go to +see her. It was a note of a few lines, written from the couch on +which she lay and enclosed to me in another from her husband, in +which he seconded her entreaty with much solicitude. Caddy was now +the mother, and I the godmother, of such a poor little baby—such a +tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely +anything but cap-border, and a little lean, long-fingered hand, +always clenched under its chin. It would lie in this attitude all +day, with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering (as I used to +imagine) how it came to be so small and weak. Whenever it was moved +it cried, but at all other times it was so patient that the sole +desire of its life appeared to be to lie quiet and think. It had +curious little dark veins in its face and curious little dark marks +under its eyes like faint remembrances of poor Caddy’s inky days, and +altogether, to those who were not used to it, it was quite a piteous +little sight. + +But it was enough for Caddy that SHE was used to it. The projects +with which she beguiled her illness, for little Esther’s education, +and little Esther’s marriage, and even for her own old age as the +grandmother of little Esther’s little Esthers, was so prettily +expressive of devotion to this pride of her life that I should be +tempted to recall some of them but for the timely remembrance that I +am getting on irregularly as it is. + +To return to the letter. Caddy had a superstition about me which had +been strengthening in her mind ever since that night long ago when +she had lain asleep with her head in my lap. She almost—I think I +must say quite—believed that I did her good whenever I was near her. +Now although this was such a fancy of the affectionate girl’s that I +am almost ashamed to mention it, still it might have all the force of +a fact when she was really ill. Therefore I set off to Caddy, with my +guardian’s consent, post-haste; and she and Prince made so much of me +that there never was anything like it. + +Next day I went again to sit with her, and next day I went again. It +was a very easy journey, for I had only to rise a little earlier in +the morning, and keep my accounts, and attend to housekeeping matters +before leaving home. + +But when I had made these three visits, my guardian said to me, on my +return at night, “Now, little woman, little woman, this will never +do. Constant dropping will wear away a stone, and constant coaching +will wear out a Dame Durden. We will go to London for a while and +take possession of our old lodgings.” + +“Not for me, dear guardian,” said I, “for I never feel tired,” which +was strictly true. I was only too happy to be in such request. + +“For me then,” returned my guardian, “or for Ada, or for both of us. +It is somebody’s birthday to-morrow, I think.” + +“Truly I think it is,” said I, kissing my darling, who would be +twenty-one to-morrow. + +“Well,” observed my guardian, half pleasantly, half seriously, +“that’s a great occasion and will give my fair cousin some necessary +business to transact in assertion of her independence, and will make +London a more convenient place for all of us. So to London we will +go. That being settled, there is another thing—how have you left +Caddy?” + +“Very unwell, guardian. I fear it will be some time before she +regains her health and strength.” + +“What do you call some time, now?” asked my guardian thoughtfully. + +“Some weeks, I am afraid.” + +“Ah!” He began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets, +showing that he had been thinking as much. “Now, what do you say +about her doctor? Is he a good doctor, my love?” + +I felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing to the contrary but +that Prince and I had agreed only that evening that we would like his +opinion to be confirmed by some one. + +“Well, you know,” returned my guardian quickly, “there’s Woodcourt.” + +I had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise. For a moment +all that I had had in my mind in connexion with Mr. Woodcourt seemed +to come back and confuse me. + +“You don’t object to him, little woman?” + +“Object to him, guardian? Oh no!” + +“And you don’t think the patient would object to him?” + +So far from that, I had no doubt of her being prepared to have a +great reliance on him and to like him very much. I said that he was +no stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind +attendance on Miss Flite. + +“Very good,” said my guardian. “He has been here to-day, my dear, and +I will see him about it to-morrow.” + +I felt in this short conversation—though I did not know how, for she +was quiet, and we interchanged no look—that my dear girl well +remembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist when no +other hands than Caddy’s had brought me the little parting token. +This caused me to feel that I ought to tell her, and Caddy too, that +I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House and that if I avoided +that disclosure any longer I might become less worthy in my own eyes +of its master’s love. Therefore, when we went upstairs and had waited +listening until the clock struck twelve in order that only I might be +the first to wish my darling all good wishes on her birthday and to +take her to my heart, I set before her, just as I had set before +myself, the goodness and honour of her cousin John and the happy life +that was in store for me. If ever my darling were fonder of me at +one time than another in all our intercourse, she was surely fondest +of me that night. And I was so rejoiced to know it and so comforted +by the sense of having done right in casting this last idle +reservation away that I was ten times happier than I had been before. +I had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago, but now that +it was gone I felt as if I understood its nature better. + +Next day we went to London. We found our old lodging vacant, and in +half an hour were quietly established there, as if we had never gone +away. Mr. Woodcourt dined with us to celebrate my darling’s birthday, +and we were as pleasant as we could be with the great blank among us +that Richard’s absence naturally made on such an occasion. After that +day I was for some weeks—eight or nine as I remember—very much with +Caddy, and thus it fell out that I saw less of Ada at this time than +any other since we had first come together, except the time of my own +illness. She often came to Caddy’s, but our function there was to +amuse and cheer her, and we did not talk in our usual confidential +manner. Whenever I went home at night we were together, but Caddy’s +rest was broken by pain, and I often remained to nurse her. + +With her husband and her poor little mite of a baby to love and their +home to strive for, what a good creature Caddy was! So self-denying, +so uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account, so afraid +of giving trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted labours of her +husband and the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop; I had never known the +best of her until now. And it seemed so curious that her pale face +and helpless figure should be lying there day after day where dancing +was the business of life, where the kit and the apprentices began +early every morning in the ball-room, and where the untidy little boy +waltzed by himself in the kitchen all the afternoon. + +At Caddy’s request I took the supreme direction of her apartment, +trimmed it up, and pushed her, couch and all, into a lighter and more +airy and more cheerful corner than she had yet occupied; then, every +day, when we were in our neatest array, I used to lay my small small +namesake in her arms and sit down to chat or work or read to her. It +was at one of the first of these quiet times that I told Caddy about +Bleak House. + +We had other visitors besides Ada. First of all we had Prince, who in +his hurried intervals of teaching used to come softly in and sit +softly down, with a face of loving anxiety for Caddy and the very +little child. Whatever Caddy’s condition really was, she never failed +to declare to Prince that she was all but well—which I, heaven +forgive me, never failed to confirm. This would put Prince in such +good spirits that he would sometimes take the kit from his pocket and +play a chord or two to astonish the baby, which I never knew it to do +in the least degree, for my tiny namesake never noticed it at all. + +Then there was Mrs. Jellyby. She would come occasionally, with her +usual distraught manner, and sit calmly looking miles beyond her +grandchild as if her attention were absorbed by a young Borrioboolan +on its native shores. As bright-eyed as ever, as serene, and as +untidy, she would say, “Well, Caddy, child, and how do you do +to-day?” And then would sit amiably smiling and taking no notice of +the reply or would sweetly glide off into a calculation of the number +of letters she had lately received and answered or of the +coffee-bearing power of Borrioboola-Gha. This she would always do +with a serene contempt for our limited sphere of action, not to be +disguised. + +Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop, who was from morning to night and +from night to morning the subject of innumerable precautions. If the +baby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make him +uncomfortable. If the fire wanted stirring in the night, it was +surreptitiously done lest his rest should be broken. If Caddy +required any little comfort that the house contained, she first +carefully discussed whether he was likely to require it too. In +return for this consideration he would come into the room once a day, +all but blessing it—showing a condescension, and a patronage, and a +grace of manner in dispensing the light of his high-shouldered +presence from which I might have supposed him (if I had not known +better) to have been the benefactor of Caddy’s life. + +“My Caroline,” he would say, making the nearest approach that he +could to bending over her. “Tell me that you are better to-day.” + +“Oh, much better, thank you, Mr. Turveydrop,” Caddy would reply. + +“Delighted! Enchanted! And our dear Miss Summerson. She is not quite +prostrated by fatigue?” Here he would crease up his eyelids and kiss +his fingers to me, though I am happy to say he had ceased to be +particular in his attentions since I had been so altered. + +“Not at all,” I would assure him. + +“Charming! We must take care of our dear Caroline, Miss Summerson. We +must spare nothing that will restore her. We must nourish her. My +dear Caroline”—he would turn to his daughter-in-law with infinite +generosity and protection—“want for nothing, my love. Frame a wish +and gratify it, my daughter. Everything this house contains, +everything my room contains, is at your service, my dear. Do not,” he +would sometimes add in a burst of deportment, “even allow my simple +requirements to be considered if they should at any time interfere +with your own, my Caroline. Your necessities are greater than mine.” + +He had established such a long prescriptive right to this deportment +(his son’s inheritance from his mother) that I several times knew +both Caddy and her husband to be melted to tears by these +affectionate self-sacrifices. + +“Nay, my dears,” he would remonstrate; and when I saw Caddy’s thin +arm about his fat neck as he said it, I would be melted too, though +not by the same process. “Nay, nay! I have promised never to leave +ye. Be dutiful and affectionate towards me, and I ask no other +return. Now, bless ye! I am going to the Park.” + +He would take the air there presently and get an appetite for his +hotel dinner. I hope I do old Mr. Turveydrop no wrong, but I never +saw any better traits in him than these I faithfully record, except +that he certainly conceived a liking for Peepy and would take the +child out walking with great pomp, always on those occasions sending +him home before he went to dinner himself, and occasionally with a +halfpenny in his pocket. But even this disinterestedness was attended +with no inconsiderable cost, to my knowledge, for before Peepy was +sufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand with the professor of +deportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the expense of Caddy and +her husband, from top to toe. + +Last of our visitors, there was Mr. Jellyby. Really when he used to +come in of an evening, and ask Caddy in his meek voice how she was, +and then sit down with his head against the wall, and make no attempt +to say anything more, I liked him very much. If he found me bustling +about doing any little thing, he sometimes half took his coat off, as +if with an intention of helping by a great exertion; but he never got +any further. His sole occupation was to sit with his head against the +wall, looking hard at the thoughtful baby; and I could not quite +divest my mind of a fancy that they understood one another. + +I have not counted Mr. Woodcourt among our visitors because he was +now Caddy’s regular attendant. She soon began to improve under his +care, but he was so gentle, so skilful, so unwearying in the pains he +took that it is not to be wondered at, I am sure. I saw a good deal +of Mr. Woodcourt during this time, though not so much as might be +supposed, for knowing Caddy to be safe in his hands, I often slipped +home at about the hours when he was expected. We frequently met, +notwithstanding. I was quite reconciled to myself now, but I still +felt glad to think that he was sorry for me, and he still WAS sorry +for me I believed. He helped Mr. Badger in his professional +engagements, which were numerous, and had as yet no settled projects +for the future. + +It was when Caddy began to recover that I began to notice a change in +my dear girl. I cannot say how it first presented itself to me, +because I observed it in many slight particulars which were nothing +in themselves and only became something when they were pieced +together. But I made it out, by putting them together, that Ada was +not so frankly cheerful with me as she used to be. Her tenderness for +me was as loving and true as ever; I did not for a moment doubt that; +but there was a quiet sorrow about her which she did not confide to +me, and in which I traced some hidden regret. + +Now, I could not understand this, and I was so anxious for the +happiness of my own pet that it caused me some uneasiness and set me +thinking often. At length, feeling sure that Ada suppressed this +something from me lest it should make me unhappy too, it came into my +head that she was a little grieved—for me—by what I had told her +about Bleak House. + +How I persuaded myself that this was likely, I don’t know. I had no +idea that there was any selfish reference in my doing so. I was not +grieved for myself: I was quite contented and quite happy. Still, +that Ada might be thinking—for me, though I had abandoned all such +thoughts—of what once was, but was now all changed, seemed so easy +to believe that I believed it. + +What could I do to reassure my darling (I considered then) and show +her that I had no such feelings? Well! I could only be as brisk and +busy as possible, and that I had tried to be all along. However, as +Caddy’s illness had certainly interfered, more or less, with my home +duties—though I had always been there in the morning to make my +guardian’s breakfast, and he had a hundred times laughed and said +there must be two little women, for his little woman was never +missing—I resolved to be doubly diligent and gay. So I went about +the house humming all the tunes I knew, and I sat working and working +in a desperate manner, and I talked and talked, morning, noon, and +night. + +And still there was the same shade between me and my darling. + +“So, Dame Trot,” observed my guardian, shutting up his book one night +when we were all three together, “so Woodcourt has restored Caddy +Jellyby to the full enjoyment of life again?” + +“Yes,” I said; “and to be repaid by such gratitude as hers is to be +made rich, guardian.” + +“I wish it was,” he returned, “with all my heart.” + +So did I too, for that matter. I said so. + +“Aye! We would make him as rich as a Jew if we knew how. Would we +not, little woman?” + +I laughed as I worked and replied that I was not sure about that, for +it might spoil him, and he might not be so useful, and there might be +many who could ill spare him. As Miss Flite, and Caddy herself, and +many others. + +“True,” said my guardian. “I had forgotten that. But we would agree +to make him rich enough to live, I suppose? Rich enough to work with +tolerable peace of mind? Rich enough to have his own happy home and +his own household gods—and household goddess, too, perhaps?” + +That was quite another thing, I said. We must all agree in that. + +“To be sure,” said my guardian. “All of us. I have a great regard for +Woodcourt, a high esteem for him; and I have been sounding him +delicately about his plans. It is difficult to offer aid to an +independent man with that just kind of pride which he possesses. And +yet I would be glad to do it if I might or if I knew how. He seems +half inclined for another voyage. But that appears like casting such +a man away.” + +“It might open a new world to him,” said I. + +“So it might, little woman,” my guardian assented. “I doubt if he +expects much of the old world. Do you know I have fancied that he +sometimes feels some particular disappointment or misfortune +encountered in it. You never heard of anything of that sort?” + +I shook my head. + +“Humph,” said my guardian. “I am mistaken, I dare say.” As there was +a little pause here, which I thought, for my dear girl’s +satisfaction, had better be filled up, I hummed an air as I worked +which was a favourite with my guardian. + +“And do you think Mr. Woodcourt will make another voyage?” I asked +him when I had hummed it quietly all through. + +“I don’t quite know what to think, my dear, but I should say it was +likely at present that he will give a long trip to another country.” + +“I am sure he will take the best wishes of all our hearts with him +wherever he goes,” said I; “and though they are not riches, he will +never be the poorer for them, guardian, at least.” + +“Never, little woman,” he replied. + +I was sitting in my usual place, which was now beside my guardian’s +chair. That had not been my usual place before the letter, but it was +now. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw, as she +looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears +were falling down her face. I felt that I had only to be placid and +merry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at +rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but to be myself. + +So I made my sweet girl lean upon my shoulder—how little thinking +what was heavy on her mind!—and I said she was not quite well, and +put my arm about her, and took her upstairs. When we were in our own +room, and when she might perhaps have told me what I was so +unprepared to hear, I gave her no encouragement to confide in me; I +never thought she stood in need of it. + +“Oh, my dear good Esther,” said Ada, “if I could only make up my mind +to speak to you and my cousin John when you are together!” + +“Why, my love!” I remonstrated. “Ada, why should you not speak to +us!” + +Ada only dropped her head and pressed me closer to her heart. + +“You surely don’t forget, my beauty,” said I, smiling, “what quiet, +old-fashioned people we are and how I have settled down to be the +discreetest of dames? You don’t forget how happily and peacefully my +life is all marked out for me, and by whom? I am certain that you +don’t forget by what a noble character, Ada. That can never be.” + +“No, never, Esther.” + +“Why then, my dear,” said I, “there can be nothing amiss—and why +should you not speak to us?” + +“Nothing amiss, Esther?” returned Ada. “Oh, when I think of all these +years, and of his fatherly care and kindness, and of the old +relations among us, and of you, what shall I do, what shall I do!” + +I looked at my child in some wonder, but I thought it better not to +answer otherwise than by cheering her, and so I turned off into many +little recollections of our life together and prevented her from +saying more. When she lay down to sleep, and not before, I returned +to my guardian to say good night, and then I came back to Ada and sat +near her for a little while. + +She was asleep, and I thought as I looked at her that she was a +little changed. I had thought so more than once lately. I could not +decide, even looking at her while she was unconscious, how she was +changed, but something in the familiar beauty of her face looked +different to me. My guardian’s old hopes of her and Richard arose +sorrowfully in my mind, and I said to myself, “She has been anxious +about him,” and I wondered how that love would end. + +When I had come home from Caddy’s while she was ill, I had often +found Ada at work, and she had always put her work away, and I had +never known what it was. Some of it now lay in a drawer near her, +which was not quite closed. I did not open the drawer, but I still +rather wondered what the work could be, for it was evidently nothing +for herself. + +And I noticed as I kissed my dear that she lay with one hand under +her pillow so that it was hidden. + +How much less amiable I must have been than they thought me, how much +less amiable than I thought myself, to be so preoccupied with my own +cheerfulness and contentment as to think that it only rested with me +to put my dear girl right and set her mind at peace! + +But I lay down, self-deceived, in that belief. And I awoke in it next +day to find that there was still the same shade between me and my +darling. + + + + +CHAPTER LI + +Enlightened + + +When Mr. Woodcourt arrived in London, he went, that very same day, to +Mr. Vholes’s in Symond’s Inn. For he never once, from the moment when +I entreated him to be a friend to Richard, neglected or forgot his +promise. He had told me that he accepted the charge as a sacred +trust, and he was ever true to it in that spirit. + +He found Mr. Vholes in his office and informed Mr. Vholes of his +agreement with Richard that he should call there to learn his +address. + +“Just so, sir,” said Mr. Vholes. “Mr. C.’s address is not a hundred +miles from here, sir, Mr. C.’s address is not a hundred miles from +here. Would you take a seat, sir?” + +Mr. Woodcourt thanked Mr. Vholes, but he had no business with him +beyond what he had mentioned. + +“Just so, sir. I believe, sir,” said Mr. Vholes, still quietly +insisting on the seat by not giving the address, “that you have +influence with Mr. C. Indeed I am aware that you have.” + +“I was not aware of it myself,” returned Mr. Woodcourt; “but I +suppose you know best.” + +“Sir,” rejoined Mr. Vholes, self-contained as usual, voice and all, +“it is a part of my professional duty to know best. It is a part of +my professional duty to study and to understand a gentleman who +confides his interests to me. In my professional duty I shall not be +wanting, sir, if I know it. I may, with the best intentions, be +wanting in it without knowing it; but not if I know it, sir.” + +Mr. Woodcourt again mentioned the address. + +“Give me leave, sir,” said Mr. Vholes. “Bear with me for a moment. +Sir, Mr. C. is playing for a considerable stake, and cannot play +without—need I say what?” + +“Money, I presume?” + +“Sir,” said Mr. Vholes, “to be honest with you (honesty being my +golden rule, whether I gain by it or lose, and I find that I +generally lose), money is the word. Now, sir, upon the chances of Mr. +C.’s game I express to you no opinion, NO opinion. It might be highly +impolitic in Mr. C., after playing so long and so high, to leave off; +it might be the reverse; I say nothing. No, sir,” said Mr. Vholes, +bringing his hand flat down upon his desk in a positive manner, +“nothing.” + +“You seem to forget,” returned Mr. Woodcourt, “that I ask you to say +nothing and have no interest in anything you say.” + +“Pardon me, sir!” retorted Mr. Vholes. “You do yourself an injustice. +No, sir! Pardon me! You shall not—shall not in my office, if I know +it—do yourself an injustice. You are interested in anything, and in +everything, that relates to your friend. I know human nature much +better, sir, than to admit for an instant that a gentleman of your +appearance is not interested in whatever concerns his friend.” + +“Well,” replied Mr. Woodcourt, “that may be. I am particularly +interested in his address.” + +“The number, sir,” said Mr. Vholes parenthetically, “I believe I have +already mentioned. If Mr. C. is to continue to play for this +considerable stake, sir, he must have funds. Understand me! There are +funds in hand at present. I ask for nothing; there are funds in hand. +But for the onward play, more funds must be provided, unless Mr. C. +is to throw away what he has already ventured, which is wholly and +solely a point for his consideration. This, sir, I take the +opportunity of stating openly to you as the friend of Mr. C. Without +funds I shall always be happy to appear and act for Mr. C. to the +extent of all such costs as are safe to be allowed out of the estate, +not beyond that. I could not go beyond that, sir, without wronging +some one. I must either wrong my three dear girls or my venerable +father, who is entirely dependent on me, in the Vale of Taunton; or +some one. Whereas, sir, my resolution is (call it weakness or folly +if you please) to wrong no one.” + +Mr. Woodcourt rather sternly rejoined that he was glad to hear it. + +“I wish, sir,” said Mr. Vholes, “to leave a good name behind me. +Therefore I take every opportunity of openly stating to a friend of +Mr. C. how Mr. C. is situated. As to myself, sir, the labourer is +worthy of his hire. If I undertake to put my shoulder to the wheel, I +do it, and I earn what I get. I am here for that purpose. My name is +painted on the door outside, with that object.” + +“And Mr. Carstone’s address, Mr. Vholes?” + +“Sir,” returned Mr. Vholes, “as I believe I have already mentioned, +it is next door. On the second story you will find Mr. C.’s +apartments. Mr. C. desires to be near his professional adviser, and I +am far from objecting, for I court inquiry.” + +Upon this Mr. Woodcourt wished Mr. Vholes good day and went in search +of Richard, the change in whose appearance he began to understand now +but too well. + +He found him in a dull room, fadedly furnished, much as I had found +him in his barrack-room but a little while before, except that he was +not writing but was sitting with a book before him, from which his +eyes and thoughts were far astray. As the door chanced to be standing +open, Mr. Woodcourt was in his presence for some moments without +being perceived, and he told me that he never could forget the +haggardness of his face and the dejection of his manner before he was +aroused from his dream. + +“Woodcourt, my dear fellow,” cried Richard, starting up with extended +hands, “you come upon my vision like a ghost.” + +“A friendly one,” he replied, “and only waiting, as they say ghosts +do, to be addressed. How does the mortal world go?” They were seated +now, near together. + +“Badly enough, and slowly enough,” said Richard, “speaking at least +for my part of it.” + +“What part is that?” + +“The Chancery part.” + +“I never heard,” returned Mr. Woodcourt, shaking his head, “of its +going well yet.” + +“Nor I,” said Richard moodily. “Who ever did?” He brightened again in +a moment and said with his natural openness, “Woodcourt, I should be +sorry to be misunderstood by you, even if I gained by it in your +estimation. You must know that I have done no good this long time. I +have not intended to do much harm, but I seem to have been capable of +nothing else. It may be that I should have done better by keeping out +of the net into which my destiny has worked me, but I think not, +though I dare say you will soon hear, if you have not already heard, +a very different opinion. To make short of a long story, I am afraid +I have wanted an object; but I have an object now—or it has me—and +it is too late to discuss it. Take me as I am, and make the best of +me.” + +“A bargain,” said Mr. Woodcourt. “Do as much by me in return.” + +“Oh! You,” returned Richard, “you can pursue your art for its own +sake, and can put your hand upon the plough and never turn, and can +strike a purpose out of anything. You and I are very different +creatures.” + +He spoke regretfully and lapsed for a moment into his weary +condition. + +“Well, well!” he cried, shaking it off. “Everything has an end. We +shall see! So you will take me as I am, and make the best of me?” + +“Aye! Indeed I will.” They shook hands upon it laughingly, but in +deep earnestness. I can answer for one of them with my heart of +hearts. + +“You come as a godsend,” said Richard, “for I have seen nobody here +yet but Vholes. Woodcourt, there is one subject I should like to +mention, for once and for all, in the beginning of our treaty. You +can hardly make the best of me if I don’t. You know, I dare say, that +I have an attachment to my cousin Ada?” + +Mr. Woodcourt replied that I had hinted as much to him. “Now pray,” +returned Richard, “don’t think me a heap of selfishness. Don’t +suppose that I am splitting my head and half breaking my heart over +this miserable Chancery suit for my own rights and interests alone. +Ada’s are bound up with mine; they can’t be separated; Vholes works +for both of us. Do think of that!” + +He was so very solicitous on this head that Mr. Woodcourt gave him +the strongest assurances that he did him no injustice. + +“You see,” said Richard, with something pathetic in his manner of +lingering on the point, though it was off-hand and unstudied, “to an +upright fellow like you, bringing a friendly face like yours here, I +cannot bear the thought of appearing selfish and mean. I want to see +Ada righted, Woodcourt, as well as myself; I want to do my utmost to +right her, as well as myself; I venture what I can scrape together to +extricate her, as well as myself. Do, I beseech you, think of that!” + +Afterwards, when Mr. Woodcourt came to reflect on what had passed, he +was so very much impressed by the strength of Richard’s anxiety on +this point that in telling me generally of his first visit to +Symond’s Inn he particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I had +had before that my dear girl’s little property would be absorbed by +Mr. Vholes and that Richard’s justification to himself would be +sincerely this. It was just as I began to take care of Caddy that the +interview took place, and I now return to the time when Caddy had +recovered and the shade was still between me and my darling. + +I proposed to Ada that morning that we should go and see Richard. It +a little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was not so +radiantly willing as I had expected. + +“My dear,” said I, “you have not had any difference with Richard +since I have been so much away?” + +“No, Esther.” + +“Not heard of him, perhaps?” said I. + +“Yes, I have heard of him,” said Ada. + +Such tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. I could not make +my darling out. Should I go to Richard’s by myself? I said. No, Ada +thought I had better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, Ada +thought she had better go with me. Should we go now? Yes, let us go +now. Well, I could not understand my darling, with the tears in her +eyes and the love in her face! + +We were soon equipped and went out. It was a sombre day, and drops of +chill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those colourless days +when everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at us, the +dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromise +about itself or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my beautiful girl +quite out of place in the rugged streets, and I thought there were +more funerals passing along the dismal pavements than I had ever seen +before. + +We had first to find out Symond’s Inn. We were going to inquire in a +shop when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery Lane. “We are not +likely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction,” said I. +So to Chancery Lane we went, and there, sure enough, we saw it +written up. Symond’s Inn. + +We had next to find out the number. “Or Mr. Vholes’s office will do,” +I recollected, “for Mr. Vholes’s office is next door.” Upon which Ada +said, perhaps that was Mr. Vholes’s office in the corner there. And +it really was. + +Then came the question, which of the two next doors? I was going for +the one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling was +right again. So up we went to the second story, when we came to +Richard’s name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel. + +I should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we had better turn the +handle and go in. Thus we came to Richard, poring over a table +covered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty +mirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked I saw the ominous +words that ran in it repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce. + +He received us very affectionately, and we sat down. “If you had come +a little earlier,” he said, “you would have found Woodcourt here. +There never was such a good fellow as Woodcourt is. He finds time to +look in between-whiles, when anybody else with half his work to do +would be thinking about not being able to come. And he is so cheery, +so fresh, so sensible, so earnest, so—everything that I am not, that +the place brightens whenever he comes, and darkens whenever he goes +again.” + +“God bless him,” I thought, “for his truth to me!” + +“He is not so sanguine, Ada,” continued Richard, casting his dejected +look over the bundles of papers, “as Vholes and I are usually, but he +is only an outsider and is not in the mysteries. We have gone into +them, and he has not. He can’t be expected to know much of such a +labyrinth.” + +As his look wandered over the papers again and he passed his two +hands over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his eyes +appeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all +bitten away. + +“Is this a healthy place to live in, Richard, do you think?” said I. + +“Why, my dear Minerva,” answered Richard with his old gay laugh, “it +is neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun shines +here, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining brightly in +an open spot. But it’s well enough for the time. It’s near the +offices and near Vholes.” + +“Perhaps,” I hinted, “a change from both—” + +“Might do me good?” said Richard, forcing a laugh as he finished the +sentence. “I shouldn’t wonder! But it can only come in one way +now—in one of two ways, I should rather say. Either the suit must be +ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my dear girl, +the suit, my dear girl!” + +These latter words were addressed to Ada, who was sitting nearest to +him. Her face being turned away from me and towards him, I could not +see it. + +“We are doing very well,” pursued Richard. “Vholes will tell you so. +We are really spinning along. Ask Vholes. We are giving them no rest. +Vholes knows all their windings and turnings, and we are upon them +everywhere. We have astonished them already. We shall rouse up that +nest of sleepers, mark my words!” + +His hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his +despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in +its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so +conscious of being forced and unsustainable that it had long touched +me to the heart. But the commentary upon it now indelibly written in +his handsome face made it far more distressing than it used to be. I +say indelibly, for I felt persuaded that if the fatal cause could +have been for ever terminated, according to his brightest visions, in +that same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety, self-reproach, +and disappointment it had occasioned him would have remained upon his +features to the hour of his death. + +“The sight of our dear little woman,” said Richard, Ada still +remaining silent and quiet, “is so natural to me, and her +compassionate face is so like the face of old days—” + +Ah! No, no. I smiled and shook my head. + +“—So exactly like the face of old days,” said Richard in his cordial +voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing +ever changed, “that I can’t make pretences with her. I fluctuate a +little; that’s the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes +I—don’t quite despair, but nearly. I get,” said Richard, +relinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room, “so tired!” + +He took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa. “I get,” he +repeated gloomily, “so tired. It is such weary, weary work!” + +He was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice +and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet, +kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on +his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to +me. Oh, what a loving and devoted face I saw! + +“Esther, dear,” she said very quietly, “I am not going home again.” + +A light shone in upon me all at once. + +“Never any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have +been married above two months. Go home without me, my own Esther; I +shall never go home any more!” With those words my darling drew his +head down on her breast and held it there. And if ever in my life I +saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before +me. + +“Speak to Esther, my dearest,” said Richard, breaking the silence +presently. “Tell her how it was.” + +I met her before she could come to me and folded her in my arms. We +neither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own I wanted to +hear nothing. “My pet,” said I. “My love. My poor, poor girl!” I +pitied her so much. I was very fond of Richard, but the impulse that +I had upon me was to pity her so much. + +“Esther, will you forgive me? Will my cousin John forgive me?” + +“My dear,” said I, “to doubt it for a moment is to do him a great +wrong. And as to me!” Why, as to me, what had I to forgive! + +I dried my sobbing darling’s eyes and sat beside her on the sofa, and +Richard sat on my other side; and while I was reminded of that so +different night when they had first taken me into their confidence +and had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told me between +them how it was. + +“All I had was Richard’s,” Ada said; “and Richard would not take it, +Esther, and what could I do but be his wife when I loved him dearly!” + +“And you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent Dame +Durden,” said Richard, “that how could we speak to you at such a +time! And besides, it was not a long-considered step. We went out one +morning and were married.” + +“And when it was done, Esther,” said my darling, “I was always +thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. And sometimes I +thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes I thought you +ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin John; and I could not +tell what to do, and I fretted very much.” + +How selfish I must have been not to have thought of this before! I +don’t know what I said now. I was so sorry, and yet I was so fond of +them and so glad that they were fond of me; I pitied them so much, +and yet I felt a kind of pride in their loving one another. I never +had experienced such painful and pleasurable emotion at one time, and +in my own heart I did not know which predominated. But I was not +there to darken their way; I did not do that. + +When I was less foolish and more composed, my darling took her +wedding-ring from her bosom, and kissed it, and put it on. Then I +remembered last night and told Richard that ever since her marriage +she had worn it at night when there was no one to see. Then Ada +blushingly asked me how did I know that, my dear. Then I told Ada how +I had seen her hand concealed under her pillow and had little thought +why, my dear. Then they began telling me how it was all over again, +and I began to be sorry and glad again, and foolish again, and to +hide my plain old face as much as I could lest I should put them out +of heart. + +Thus the time went on until it became necessary for me to think of +returning. When that time arrived it was the worst of all, for then +my darling completely broke down. She clung round my neck, calling me +by every dear name she could think of and saying what should she do +without me! Nor was Richard much better; and as for me, I should have +been the worst of the three if I had not severely said to myself, +“Now Esther, if you do, I’ll never speak to you again!” + +“Why, I declare,” said I, “I never saw such a wife. I don’t think she +loves her husband at all. Here, Richard, take my child, for goodness’ +sake.” But I held her tight all the while, and could have wept over +her I don’t know how long. + +“I give this dear young couple notice,” said I, “that I am only going +away to come back to-morrow and that I shall be always coming +backwards and forwards until Symond’s Inn is tired of the sight of +me. So I shall not say good-bye, Richard. For what would be the use +of that, you know, when I am coming back so soon!” + +I had given my darling to him now, and I meant to go; but I lingered +for one more look of the precious face which it seemed to rive my +heart to turn from. + +So I said (in a merry bustling manner) that unless they gave me some +encouragement to come back, I was not sure that I could take that +liberty, upon which my dear girl looked up, faintly smiling through +her tears, and I folded her lovely face between my hands, and gave it +one last kiss, and laughed, and ran away. + +And when I got downstairs, oh, how I cried! It almost seemed to me +that I had lost my Ada for ever. I was so lonely and so blank without +her, and it was so desolate to be going home with no hope of seeing +her there, that I could get no comfort for a little while as I walked +up and down in a dim corner sobbing and crying. + +I came to myself by and by, after a little scolding, and took a coach +home. The poor boy whom I had found at St. Albans had reappeared a +short time before and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was +then dead, though I did not know it. My guardian had gone out to +inquire about him and did not return to dinner. Being quite alone, I +cried a little again, though on the whole I don’t think I behaved so +very, very ill. + +It was only natural that I should not be quite accustomed to the loss +of my darling yet. Three or four hours were not a long time after +years. But my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which +I had left her, and I pictured it as such an overshadowed +stony-hearted one, and I so longed to be near her and taking some +sort of care of her, that I determined to go back in the evening only +to look up at her windows. + +It was foolish, I dare say, but it did not then seem at all so to me, +and it does not seem quite so even now. I took Charley into my +confidence, and we went out at dusk. It was dark when we came to the +new strange home of my dear girl, and there was a light behind the +yellow blinds. We walked past cautiously three or four times, looking +up, and narrowly missed encountering Mr. Vholes, who came out of his +office while we were there and turned his head to look up too before +going home. The sight of his lank black figure and the lonesome air +of that nook in the dark were favourable to the state of my mind. I +thought of the youth and love and beauty of my dear girl, shut up in +such an ill-assorted refuge, almost as if it were a cruel place. + +It was very solitary and very dull, and I did not doubt that I might +safely steal upstairs. I left Charley below and went up with a light +foot, not distressed by any glare from the feeble oil lanterns on the +way. I listened for a few moments, and in the musty rotting silence +of the house believed that I could hear the murmur of their young +voices. I put my lips to the hearse-like panel of the door as a kiss +for my dear and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these +days I would confess to the visit. + +And it really did me good, for though nobody but Charley and I knew +anything about it, I somehow felt as if it had diminished the +separation between Ada and me and had brought us together again for +those moments. I went back, not quite accustomed yet to the change, +but all the better for that hovering about my darling. + +My guardian had come home and was standing thoughtfully by the dark +window. When I went in, his face cleared and he came to his seat, but +he caught the light upon my face as I took mine. + +“Little woman,” said he, “You have been crying.” + +“Why, yes, guardian,” said I, “I am afraid I have been, a little. Ada +has been in such distress, and is so very sorry, guardian.” + +I put my arm on the back of his chair, and I saw in his glance that +my words and my look at her empty place had prepared him. + +“Is she married, my dear?” + +I told him all about it and how her first entreaties had referred to +his forgiveness. + +“She has no need of it,” said he. “Heaven bless her and her husband!” +But just as my first impulse had been to pity her, so was his. “Poor +girl, poor girl! Poor Rick! Poor Ada!” + +Neither of us spoke after that, until he said with a sigh, “Well, +well, my dear! Bleak House is thinning fast.” + +“But its mistress remains, guardian.” Though I was timid about saying +it, I ventured because of the sorrowful tone in which he had spoken. +“She will do all she can to make it happy,” said I. + +“She will succeed, my love!” + +The letter had made no difference between us except that the seat by +his side had come to be mine; it made none now. He turned his old +bright fatherly look upon me, laid his hand on my hand in his old +way, and said again, “She will succeed, my dear. Nevertheless, Bleak +House is thinning fast, O little woman!” + +I was sorry presently that this was all we said about that. I was +rather disappointed. I feared I might not quite have been all I had +meant to be since the letter and the answer. + + + + +CHAPTER LII + +Obstinacy + + +But one other day had intervened when, early in the morning as we +were going to breakfast, Mr. Woodcourt came in haste with the +astounding news that a terrible murder had been committed for which +Mr. George had been apprehended and was in custody. When he told us +that a large reward was offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock for the +murderer’s apprehension, I did not in my first consternation +understand why; but a few more words explained to me that the +murdered person was Sir Leicester’s lawyer, and immediately my +mother’s dread of him rushed into my remembrance. + +This unforeseen and violent removal of one whom she had long watched +and distrusted and who had long watched and distrusted her, one for +whom she could have had few intervals of kindness, always dreading in +him a dangerous and secret enemy, appeared so awful that my first +thoughts were of her. How appalling to hear of such a death and be +able to feel no pity! How dreadful to remember, perhaps, that she had +sometimes even wished the old man away who was so swiftly hurried out +of life! + +Such crowding reflections, increasing the distress and fear I always +felt when the name was mentioned, made me so agitated that I could +scarcely hold my place at the table. I was quite unable to follow the +conversation until I had had a little time to recover. But when I +came to myself and saw how shocked my guardian was and found that +they were earnestly speaking of the suspected man and recalling every +favourable impression we had formed of him out of the good we had +known of him, my interest and my fears were so strongly aroused in +his behalf that I was quite set up again. + +“Guardian, you don’t think it possible that he is justly accused?” + +“My dear, I CAN’T think so. This man whom we have seen so +open-hearted and compassionate, who with the might of a giant has the +gentleness of a child, who looks as brave a fellow as ever lived and +is so simple and quiet with it, this man justly accused of such a +crime? I can’t believe it. It’s not that I don’t or I won’t. I +can’t!” + +“And I can’t,” said Mr. Woodcourt. “Still, whatever we believe or +know of him, we had better not forget that some appearances are +against him. He bore an animosity towards the deceased gentleman. He +has openly mentioned it in many places. He is said to have expressed +himself violently towards him, and he certainly did about him, to my +knowledge. He admits that he was alone on the scene of the murder +within a few minutes of its commission. I sincerely believe him to be +as innocent of any participation in it as I am, but these are all +reasons for suspicion falling upon him.” + +“True,” said my guardian. And he added, turning to me, “It would be +doing him a very bad service, my dear, to shut our eyes to the truth +in any of these respects.” + +I felt, of course, that we must admit, not only to ourselves but to +others, the full force of the circumstances against him. Yet I knew +withal (I could not help saying) that their weight would not induce +us to desert him in his need. + +“Heaven forbid!” returned my guardian. “We will stand by him, as he +himself stood by the two poor creatures who are gone.” He meant Mr. +Gridley and the boy, to both of whom Mr. George had given shelter. + +Mr. Woodcourt then told us that the trooper’s man had been with him +before day, after wandering about the streets all night like a +distracted creature. That one of the trooper’s first anxieties was +that we should not suppose him guilty. That he had charged his +messenger to represent his perfect innocence with every solemn +assurance he could send us. That Mr. Woodcourt had only quieted the +man by undertaking to come to our house very early in the morning +with these representations. He added that he was now upon his way to +see the prisoner himself. + +My guardian said directly he would go too. Now, besides that I liked +the retired soldier very much and that he liked me, I had that secret +interest in what had happened which was only known to my guardian. I +felt as if it came close and near to me. It seemed to become +personally important to myself that the truth should be discovered +and that no innocent people should be suspected, for suspicion, once +run wild, might run wilder. + +In a word, I felt as if it were my duty and obligation to go with +them. My guardian did not seek to dissuade me, and I went. + +It was a large prison with many courts and passages so like one +another and so uniformly paved that I seemed to gain a new +comprehension, as I passed along, of the fondness that solitary +prisoners, shut up among the same staring walls from year to year, +have had—as I have read—for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In an +arched room by himself, like a cellar upstairs, with walls so +glaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and +iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, we found +the trooper standing in a corner. He had been sitting on a bench +there and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn. + +When he saw us, he came forward a step with his usual heavy tread, +and there stopped and made a slight bow. But as I still advanced, +putting out my hand to him, he understood us in a moment. + +“This is a load off my mind, I do assure you, miss and gentlemen,” +said he, saluting us with great heartiness and drawing a long breath. +“And now I don’t so much care how it ends.” + +He scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. What with his coolness and his +soldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison guard. + +“This is even a rougher place than my gallery to receive a lady in,” +said Mr. George, “but I know Miss Summerson will make the best of +it.” As he handed me to the bench on which he had been sitting, I sat +down, which seemed to give him great satisfaction. + +“I thank you, miss,” said he. + +“Now, George,” observed my guardian, “as we require no new assurances +on your part, so I believe we need give you none on ours.” + +“Not at all, sir. I thank you with all my heart. If I was not +innocent of this crime, I couldn’t look at you and keep my secret to +myself under the condescension of the present visit. I feel the +present visit very much. I am not one of the eloquent sort, but I +feel it, Miss Summerson and gentlemen, deeply.” + +He laid his hand for a moment on his broad chest and bent his head to +us. Although he squared himself again directly, he expressed a great +amount of natural emotion by these simple means. + +“First,” said my guardian, “can we do anything for your personal +comfort, George?” + +“For which, sir?” he inquired, clearing his throat. + +“For your personal comfort. Is there anything you want that would +lessen the hardship of this confinement?” + +“Well, sir,” replied George, after a little cogitation, “I am equally +obliged to you, but tobacco being against the rules, I can’t say that +there is.” + +“You will think of many little things perhaps, by and by. Whenever +you do, George, let us know.” + +“Thank you, sir. Howsoever,” observed Mr. George with one of his +sunburnt smiles, “a man who has been knocking about the world in a +vagabond kind of a way as long as I have gets on well enough in a +place like the present, so far as that goes.” + +“Next, as to your case,” observed my guardian. + +“Exactly so, sir,” returned Mr. George, folding his arms upon his +breast with perfect self-possession and a little curiosity. + +“How does it stand now?” + +“Why, sir, it is under remand at present. Bucket gives me to +understand that he will probably apply for a series of remands from +time to time until the case is more complete. How it is to be made +more complete I don’t myself see, but I dare say Bucket will manage +it somehow.” + +“Why, heaven save us, man,” exclaimed my guardian, surprised into his +old oddity and vehemence, “you talk of yourself as if you were +somebody else!” + +“No offence, sir,” said Mr. George. “I am very sensible of your +kindness. But I don’t see how an innocent man is to make up his mind +to this kind of thing without knocking his head against the walls +unless he takes it in that point of view.” + +“That is true enough to a certain extent,” returned my guardian, +softened. “But my good fellow, even an innocent man must take +ordinary precautions to defend himself.” + +“Certainly, sir. And I have done so. I have stated to the +magistrates, ‘Gentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as +yourselves; what has been stated against me in the way of facts is +perfectly true; I know no more about it.’ I intend to continue +stating that, sir. What more can I do? It’s the truth.” + +“But the mere truth won’t do,” rejoined my guardian. + +“Won’t it indeed, sir? Rather a bad look-out for me!” Mr. George +good-humouredly observed. + +“You must have a lawyer,” pursued my guardian. “We must engage a good +one for you.” + +“I ask your pardon, sir,” said Mr. George with a step backward. “I am +equally obliged. But I must decidedly beg to be excused from anything +of that sort.” + +“You won’t have a lawyer?” + +“No, sir.” Mr. George shook his head in the most emphatic manner. “I +thank you all the same, sir, but—no lawyer!” + +“Why not?” + +“I don’t take kindly to the breed,” said Mr. George. “Gridley didn’t. +And—if you’ll excuse my saying so much—I should hardly have thought +you did yourself, sir.” + +“That’s equity,” my guardian explained, a little at a loss; “that’s +equity, George.” + +“Is it, indeed, sir?” returned the trooper in his off-hand manner. “I +am not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a general +way I object to the breed.” + +Unfolding his arms and changing his position, he stood with one +massive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as complete a +picture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as ever +I saw. It was in vain that we all three talked to him and endeavoured +to persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which went so well +with his bluff bearing, but was evidently no more shaken by our +representations that his place of confinement was. + +“Pray think, once more, Mr. George,” said I. “Have you no wish in +reference to your case?” + +“I certainly could wish it to be tried, miss,” he returned, “by +court-martial; but that is out of the question, as I am well aware. +If you will be so good as to favour me with your attention for a +couple of minutes, miss, not more, I’ll endeavour to explain myself +as clearly as I can.” + +He looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he +were adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and +after a moment’s reflection went on. + +“You see, miss, I have been handcuffed and taken into custody and +brought here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and here I am. My +shooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such property +as I have—’tis small—is turned this way and that till it don’t know +itself; and (as aforesaid) here I am! I don’t particular complain of +that. Though I am in these present quarters through no immediately +preceding fault of mine, I can very well understand that if I hadn’t +gone into the vagabond way in my youth, this wouldn’t have happened. +It HAS happened. Then comes the question how to meet it.” + +He rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment with a good-humoured look +and said apologetically, “I am such a short-winded talker that I must +think a bit.” Having thought a bit, he looked up again and resumed. + +“How to meet it. Now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a lawyer +and had a pretty tight hold of me. I don’t wish to rake up his ashes, +but he had, what I should call if he was living, a devil of a tight +hold of me. I don’t like his trade the better for that. If I had kept +clear of his trade, I should have kept outside this place. But that’s +not what I mean. Now, suppose I had killed him. Suppose I really had +discharged into his body any one of those pistols recently fired off +that Bucket has found at my place, and dear me, might have found +there any day since it has been my place. What should I have done as +soon as I was hard and fast here? Got a lawyer.” + +He stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts and did not +resume until the door had been opened and was shut again. For what +purpose opened, I will mention presently. + +“I should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as I have often +read in the newspapers), ‘My client says nothing, my client reserves +his defence’: my client this, that, and t’other. Well, ’tis not the +custom of that breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to +think that other men do. Say I am innocent and I get a lawyer. He +would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What +would he do, whether or not? Act as if I was—shut my mouth up, tell +me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence +small, quibble, and get me off perhaps! But, Miss Summerson, do I +care for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my +own way—if you’ll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to a +lady?” + +He had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further +necessity to wait a bit. + +“I would rather be hanged in my own way. And I mean to be! I don’t +intend to say,” looking round upon us with his powerful arms akimbo +and his dark eyebrows raised, “that I am more partial to being hanged +than another man. What I say is, I must come off clear and full or +not at all. Therefore, when I hear stated against me what is true, I +say it’s true; and when they tell me, ‘whatever you say will be +used,’ I tell them I don’t mind that; I mean it to be used. If they +can’t make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to +do it out of anything less, or anything else. And if they are, it’s +worth nothing to me.” + +Taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table +and finished what he had to say. + +“I thank you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention, +and many times more for your interest. That’s the plain state of the +matter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt +broadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life beyond my +duty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap +pretty much as I have sown. When I got over the first crash of being +seized as a murderer—it don’t take a rover who has knocked about so +much as myself so very long to recover from a crash—I worked my way +round to what you find me now. As such I shall remain. No relations +will be disgraced by me or made unhappy for me, and—and that’s all +I’ve got to say.” + +The door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less +prepossessing appearance at first sight and a weather-tanned, +bright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance, +had been exceedingly attentive to all Mr. George had said. Mr. George +had received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but +without any more particular greeting in the midst of his address. He +now shook them cordially by the hand and said, “Miss Summerson and +gentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, Matthew Bagnet. And this +is his wife, Mrs. Bagnet.” + +Mr. Bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and Mrs. Bagnet dropped us a +curtsy. + +“Real good friends of mine, they are,” sald Mr. George. “It was at +their house I was taken.” + +“With a second-hand wiolinceller,” Mr. Bagnet put in, twitching his +head angrily. “Of a good tone. For a friend. That money was no object +to.” + +“Mat,” said Mr. George, “you have heard pretty well all I have been +saying to this lady and these two gentlemen. I know it meets your +approval?” + +Mr. Bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife. “Old +girl,” said he. “Tell him. Whether or not. It meets my approval.” + +“Why, George,” exclaimed Mrs. Bagnet, who had been unpacking her +basket, in which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea +and sugar, and a brown loaf, “you ought to know it don’t. You ought +to know it’s enough to drive a person wild to hear you. You won’t be +got off this way, and you won’t be got off that way—what do you mean +by such picking and choosing? It’s stuff and nonsense, George.” + +“Don’t be severe upon me in my misfortunes, Mrs. Bagnet,” said the +trooper lightly. + +“Oh! Bother your misfortunes,” cried Mrs. Bagnet, “if they don’t make +you more reasonable than that comes to. I never was so ashamed in my +life to hear a man talk folly as I have been to hear you talk this +day to the present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many cooks +should hinder you from having a dozen lawyers if the gentleman +recommended them to you.” + +“This is a very sensible woman,” said my guardian. “I hope you will +persuade him, Mrs. Bagnet.” + +“Persuade him, sir?” she returned. “Lord bless you, no. You don’t +know George. Now, there!” Mrs. Bagnet left her basket to point him +out with both her bare brown hands. “There he stands! As self-willed +and as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human +creature under heaven out of patience! You could as soon take up and +shoulder an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that +man when he has got a thing into his head and fixed it there. Why, +don’t I know him!” cried Mrs. Bagnet. “Don’t I know you, George! You +don’t mean to set up for a new character with ME after all these +years, I hope?” + +Her friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband, +who shook his head at the trooper several times as a silent +recommendation to him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs. Bagnet looked at +me; and I understood from the play of her eyes that she wished me to +do something, though I did not comprehend what. + +“But I have given up talking to you, old fellow, years and years,” +said Mrs. Bagnet as she blew a little dust off the pickled pork, +looking at me again; “and when ladies and gentlemen know you as well +as I do, they’ll give up talking to you too. If you are not too +headstrong to accept of a bit of dinner, here it is.” + +“I accept it with many thanks,” returned the trooper. + +“Do you though, indeed?” said Mrs. Bagnet, continuing to grumble on +good-humouredly. “I’m sure I’m surprised at that. I wonder you don’t +starve in your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps +you’ll set your mind upon THAT next.” Here she again looked at me, +and I now perceived from her glances at the door and at me, by turns, +that she wished us to retire and to await her following us outside +the prison. Communicating this by similar means to my guardian and +Mr. Woodcourt, I rose. + +“We hope you will think better of it, Mr. George,” said I, “and we +shall come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable.” + +“More grateful, Miss Summerson, you can’t find me,” he returned. + +“But more persuadable we can, I hope,” said I. “And let me entreat +you to consider that the clearing up of this mystery and the +discovery of the real perpetrator of this deed may be of the last +importance to others besides yourself.” + +He heard me respectfully but without much heeding these words, which +I spoke a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he +was observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure, +which seemed to catch his attention all at once. + +“’Tis curious,” said he. “And yet I thought so at the time!” + +My guardian asked him what he meant. + +“Why, sir,” he answered, “when my ill fortune took me to the dead +man’s staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like +Miss Summerson’s go by me in the dark that I had half a mind to speak +to it.” + +For an instant I felt such a shudder as I never felt before or since +and hope I shall never feel again. + +“It came downstairs as I went up,” said the trooper, “and crossed the +moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep +fringe to it. However, it has nothing to do with the present subject, +excepting that Miss Summerson looked so like it at the moment that it +came into my head.” + +I cannot separate and define the feelings that arose in me after +this; it is enough that the vague duty and obligation I had felt upon +me from the first of following the investigation was, without my +distinctly daring to ask myself any question, increased, and that I +was indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my +being afraid. + +We three went out of the prison and walked up and down at some short +distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We had not +waited long when Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet came out too and quickly joined +us. + +There was a tear in each of Mrs. Bagnet’s eyes, and her face was +flushed and hurried. “I didn’t let George see what I thought about +it, you know, miss,” was her first remark when she came up, “but he’s +in a bad way, poor old fellow!” + +“Not with care and prudence and good help,” said my guardian. + +“A gentleman like you ought to know best, sir,” returned Mrs. Bagnet, +hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak, “but I am +uneasy for him. He has been so careless and said so much that he +never meant. The gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as +Lignum and me do. And then such a number of circumstances have +happened bad for him, and such a number of people will be brought +forward to speak against him, and Bucket is so deep.” + +“With a second-hand wiolinceller. And said he played the fife. When a +boy,” Mr. Bagnet added with great solemnity. + +“Now, I tell you, miss,” said Mrs. Bagnet; “and when I say miss, I +mean all! Just come into the corner of the wall and I’ll tell you!” + +Mrs. Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place and was at first +too breathless to proceed, occasioning Mr. Bagnet to say, “Old girl! +Tell ’em!” + +“Why, then, miss,” the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her +bonnet for more air, “you could as soon move Dover Castle as move +George on this point unless you had got a new power to move him with. +And I have got it!” + +“You are a jewel of a woman,” said my guardian. “Go on!” + +“Now, I tell you, miss,” she proceeded, clapping her hands in her +hurry and agitation a dozen times in every sentence, “that what he +says concerning no relations is all bosh. They don’t know of him, but +he does know of them. He has said more to me at odd times than to +anybody else, and it warn’t for nothing that he once spoke to my +Woolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers’ heads. For fifty +pounds he had seen his mother that day. She’s alive and must be +brought here straight!” + +Instantly Mrs. Bagnet put some pins into her mouth and began pinning +up her skirts all round a little higher than the level of her grey +cloak, which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity. + +“Lignum,” said Mrs. Bagnet, “you take care of the children, old man, +and give me the umbrella! I’m away to Lincolnshire to bring that old +lady here.” + +“But, bless the woman,” cried my guardian with his hand in his +pocket, “how is she going? What money has she got?” + +Mrs. Bagnet made another application to her skirts and brought forth +a leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings +and which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction. + +“Never you mind for me, miss. I’m a soldier’s wife and accustomed to +travel my own way. Lignum, old boy,” kissing him, “one for yourself, +three for the children. Now I’m away into Lincolnshire after George’s +mother!” + +And she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another +lost in amazement. She actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a +sturdy pace, and turned the corner, and was gone. + +“Mr. Bagnet,” said my guardian. “Do you mean to let her go in that +way?” + +“Can’t help it,” he returned. “Made her way home once from another +quarter of the world. With the same grey cloak. And same umbrella. +Whatever the old girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old girl says, +I’LL do it. She does it.” + +“Then she is as honest and genuine as she looks,” rejoined my +guardian, “and it is impossible to say more for her.” + +“She’s Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil battalion,” said Mr. Bagnet, +looking at us over his shoulder as he went his way also. “And there’s +not such another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must +be maintained.” + + + + +CHAPTER LIII + +The Track + + +Mr. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together +under existing circumstances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this +pressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems +to rise, to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears, +and it whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins +him to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent; +he shakes it before a guilty man, and it charms him to his +destruction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple invariably predict +that when Mr. Bucket and that finger are in much conference, a +terrible avenger will be heard of before long. + +Otherwise mildly studious in his observation of human nature, on the +whole a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe upon the +follies of mankind, Mr. Bucket pervades a vast number of houses and +strolls about an infinity of streets, to outward appearance rather +languishing for want of an object. He is in the friendliest condition +towards his species and will drink with most of them. He is free with +his money, affable in his manners, innocent in his conversation—but +through the placid stream of his life there glides an under-current +of forefinger. + +Time and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket. Like man in the abstract, he +is here to-day and gone to-morrow—but, very unlike man indeed, he is +here again the next day. This evening he will be casually looking +into the iron extinguishers at the door of Sir Leicester Dedlock’s +house in town; and to-morrow morning he will be walking on the leads +at Chesney Wold, where erst the old man walked whose ghost is +propitiated with a hundred guineas. Drawers, desks, pockets, all +things belonging to him, Mr. Bucket examines. A few hours afterwards, +he and the Roman will be alone together comparing forefingers. + +It is likely that these occupations are irreconcilable with home +enjoyment, but it is certain that Mr. Bucket at present does not go +home. Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs. +Bucket—a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been +improved by professional exercise, might have done great things, but +which has paused at the level of a clever amateur—he holds himself +aloof from that dear solace. Mrs. Bucket is dependent on their lodger +(fortunately an amiable lady in whom she takes an interest) for +companionship and conversation. + +A great crowd assembles in Lincoln’s Inn Fields on the day of the +funeral. Sir Leicester Dedlock attends the ceremony in person; +strictly speaking, there are only three other human followers, that +is to say, Lord Doodle, William Buffy, and the debilitated cousin +(thrown in as a make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable +carriages is immense. The peerage contributes more four-wheeled +affliction than has ever been seen in that neighbourhood. Such is the +assemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels that the Herald’s +College might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a +blow. The Duke of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes, +with silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all the last improvements, and +three bereaved worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a bunch of +woe. All the state coachmen in London seem plunged into mourning; and +if that dead old man of the rusty garb be not beyond a taste in +horseflesh (which appears impossible), it must be highly gratified +this day. + +Quiet among the undertakers and the equipages and the calves of so +many legs all steeped in grief, Mr. Bucket sits concealed in one of +the inconsolable carriages and at his ease surveys the crowd through +the lattice blinds. He has a keen eye for a crowd—as for what +not?—and looking here and there, now from this side of the carriage, +now from the other, now up at the house windows, now along the +people’s heads, nothing escapes him. + +“And there you are, my partner, eh?” says Mr. Bucket to himself, +apostrophizing Mrs. Bucket, stationed, by his favour, on the steps of +the deceased’s house. “And so you are. And so you are! And very well +indeed you are looking, Mrs. Bucket!” + +The procession has not started yet, but is waiting for the cause of +its assemblage to be brought out. Mr. Bucket, in the foremost +emblazoned carriage, uses his two fat forefingers to hold the lattice +a hair’s breadth open while he looks. + +And it says a great deal for his attachment, as a husband, that he is +still occupied with Mrs. B. “There you are, my partner, eh?” he +murmuringly repeats. “And our lodger with you. I’m taking notice of +you, Mrs. Bucket; I hope you’re all right in your health, my dear!” + +Not another word does Mr. Bucket say, but sits with most attentive +eyes until the sacked depository of noble secrets is brought +down—Where are all those secrets now? Does he keep them yet? Did +they fly with him on that sudden journey?—and until the procession +moves, and Mr. Bucket’s view is changed. After which he composes +himself for an easy ride and takes note of the fittings of the +carriage in case he should ever find such knowledge useful. + +Contrast enough between Mr. Tulkinghorn shut up in his dark carriage +and Mr. Bucket shut up in HIS. Between the immeasurable track of +space beyond the little wound that has thrown the one into the fixed +sleep which jolts so heavily over the stones of the streets, and the +narrow track of blood which keeps the other in the watchful state +expressed in every hair of his head! But it is all one to both; +neither is troubled about that. + +Mr. Bucket sits out the procession in his own easy manner and glides +from the carriage when the opportunity he has settled with himself +arrives. He makes for Sir Leicester Dedlock’s, which is at present a +sort of home to him, where he comes and goes as he likes at all +hours, where he is always welcome and made much of, where he knows +the whole establishment, and walks in an atmosphere of mysterious +greatness. + +No knocking or ringing for Mr. Bucket. He has caused himself to be +provided with a key and can pass in at his pleasure. As he is +crossing the hall, Mercury informs him, “Here’s another letter for +you, Mr. Bucket, come by post,” and gives it him. + +“Another one, eh?” says Mr. Bucket. + +If Mercury should chance to be possessed by any lingering curiosity +as to Mr. Bucket’s letters, that wary person is not the man to +gratify it. Mr. Bucket looks at him as if his face were a vista of +some miles in length and he were leisurely contemplating the same. + +“Do you happen to carry a box?” says Mr. Bucket. + +Unfortunately Mercury is no snuff-taker. + +“Could you fetch me a pinch from anywheres?” says Mr. Bucket. +“Thankee. It don’t matter what it is; I’m not particular as to the +kind. Thankee!” + +Having leisurely helped himself from a canister borrowed from +somebody downstairs for the purpose, and having made a considerable +show of tasting it, first with one side of his nose and then with the +other, Mr. Bucket, with much deliberation, pronounces it of the right +sort and goes on, letter in hand. + +Now although Mr. Bucket walks upstairs to the little library within +the larger one with the face of a man who receives some scores of +letters every day, it happens that much correspondence is not +incidental to his life. He is no great scribe, rather handling his +pen like the pocket-staff he carries about with him always convenient +to his grasp, and discourages correspondence with himself in others +as being too artless and direct a way of doing delicate business. +Further, he often sees damaging letters produced in evidence and has +occasion to reflect that it was a green thing to write them. For +these reasons he has very little to do with letters, either as sender +or receiver. And yet he has received a round half-dozen within the +last twenty-four hours. + +“And this,” says Mr. Bucket, spreading it out on the table, “is in +the same hand, and consists of the same two words.” + +What two words? + +He turns the key in the door, ungirdles his black pocket-book (book +of fate to many), lays another letter by it, and reads, boldly +written in each, “Lady Dedlock.” + +“Yes, yes,” says Mr. Bucket. “But I could have made the money without +this anonymous information.” + +Having put the letters in his book of fate and girdled it up again, +he unlocks the door just in time to admit his dinner, which is +brought upon a goodly tray with a decanter of sherry. Mr. Bucket +frequently observes, in friendly circles where there is no restraint, +that he likes a toothful of your fine old brown East Inder sherry +better than anything you can offer him. Consequently he fills and +empties his glass with a smack of his lips and is proceeding with his +refreshment when an idea enters his mind. + +Mr. Bucket softly opens the door of communication between that room +and the next and looks in. The library is deserted, and the fire is +sinking low. Mr. Bucket’s eye, after taking a pigeon-flight round the +room, alights upon a table where letters are usually put as they +arrive. Several letters for Sir Leicester are upon it. Mr. Bucket +draws near and examines the directions. “No,” he says, “there’s none +in that hand. It’s only me as is written to. I can break it to Sir +Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to-morrow.” + +With that he returns to finish his dinner with a good appetite, and +after a light nap, is summoned into the drawing-room. Sir Leicester +has received him there these several evenings past to know whether he +has anything to report. The debilitated cousin (much exhausted by the +funeral) and Volumnia are in attendance. + +Mr. Bucket makes three distinctly different bows to these three +people. A bow of homage to Sir Leicester, a bow of gallantry to +Volumnia, and a bow of recognition to the debilitated Cousin, to whom +it airily says, “You are a swell about town, and you know me, and I +know you.” Having distributed these little specimens of his tact, Mr. +Bucket rubs his hands. + +“Have you anything new to communicate, officer?” inquires Sir +Leicester. “Do you wish to hold any conversation with me in private?” + +“Why—not to-night, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.” + +“Because my time,” pursues Sir Leicester, “is wholly at your disposal +with a view to the vindication of the outraged majesty of the law.” + +Mr. Bucket coughs and glances at Volumnia, rouged and necklaced, as +though he would respectfully observe, “I do assure you, you’re a +pretty creetur. I’ve seen hundreds worse looking at your time of +life, I have indeed.” + +The fair Volumnia, not quite unconscious perhaps of the humanizing +influence of her charms, pauses in the writing of cocked-hat notes +and meditatively adjusts the pearl necklace. Mr. Bucket prices that +decoration in his mind and thinks it as likely as not that Volumnia +is writing poetry. + +“If I have not,” pursues Sir Leicester, “in the most emphatic manner, +adjured you, officer, to exercise your utmost skill in this atrocious +case, I particularly desire to take the present opportunity of +rectifying any omission I may have made. Let no expense be a +consideration. I am prepared to defray all charges. You can incur +none in pursuit of the object you have undertaken that I shall +hesitate for a moment to bear.” + +Mr. Bucket made Sir Leicester’s bow again as a response to this +liberality. + +“My mind,” Sir Leicester adds with a generous warmth, “has not, as +may be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical +occurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full +of indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to +the tomb the remains of a faithful, a zealous, a devoted adherent.” + +Sir Leicester’s voice trembles and his grey hair stirs upon his head. +Tears are in his eyes; the best part of his nature is aroused. + +“I declare,” he says, “I solemnly declare that until this crime is +discovered and, in the course of justice, punished, I almost feel as +if there were a stain upon my name. A gentleman who has devoted a +large portion of his life to me, a gentleman who has devoted the last +day of his life to me, a gentleman who has constantly sat at my table +and slept under my roof, goes from my house to his own, and is struck +down within an hour of his leaving my house. I cannot say but that he +may have been followed from my house, watched at my house, even first +marked because of his association with my house—which may have +suggested his possessing greater wealth and being altogether of +greater importance than his own retiring demeanour would have +indicated. If I cannot with my means and influence and my position +bring all the perpetrators of such a crime to light, I fail in the +assertion of my respect for that gentleman’s memory and of my +fidelity towards one who was ever faithful to me.” + +While he makes this protestation with great emotion and earnestness, +looking round the room as if he were addressing an assembly, Mr. +Bucket glances at him with an observant gravity in which there might +be, but for the audacity of the thought, a touch of compassion. + +“The ceremony of to-day,” continues Sir Leicester, “strikingly +illustrative of the respect in which my deceased friend”—he lays a +stress upon the word, for death levels all distinctions—“was held by +the flower of the land, has, I say, aggravated the shock I have +received from this most horrible and audacious crime. If it were my +brother who had committed it, I would not spare him.” + +Mr. Bucket looks very grave. Volumnia remarks of the deceased that he +was the trustiest and dearest person! + +“You must feel it as a deprivation to you, miss,” replies Mr. Bucket +soothingly, “no doubt. He was calculated to BE a deprivation, I’m +sure he was.” + +Volumnia gives Mr. Bucket to understand, in reply, that her sensitive +mind is fully made up never to get the better of it as long as she +lives, that her nerves are unstrung for ever, and that she has not +the least expectation of ever smiling again. Meanwhile she folds up a +cocked hat for that redoubtable old general at Bath, descriptive of +her melancholy condition. + +“It gives a start to a delicate female,” says Mr. Bucket +sympathetically, “but it’ll wear off.” + +Volumnia wishes of all things to know what is doing? Whether they are +going to convict, or whatever it is, that dreadful soldier? Whether +he had any accomplices, or whatever the thing is called in the law? +And a great deal more to the like artless purpose. + +“Why you see, miss,” returns Mr. Bucket, bringing the finger into +persuasive action—and such is his natural gallantry that he had +almost said “my dear”—“it ain’t easy to answer those questions at +the present moment. Not at the present moment. I’ve kept myself on +this case, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” whom Mr. Bucket takes +into the conversation in right of his importance, “morning, noon, and +night. But for a glass or two of sherry, I don’t think I could have +had my mind so much upon the stretch as it has been. I COULD answer +your questions, miss, but duty forbids it. Sir Leicester Dedlock, +Baronet, will very soon be made acquainted with all that has been +traced. And I hope that he may find it”—Mr. Bucket again looks +grave—“to his satisfaction.” + +The debilitated cousin only hopes some fler’ll be executed—zample. +Thinks more interest’s wanted—get man hanged presentime—than get +man place ten thousand a year. Hasn’t a doubt—zample—far better +hang wrong fler than no fler. + +“YOU know life, you know, sir,” says Mr. Bucket with a complimentary +twinkle of his eye and crook of his finger, “and you can confirm what +I’ve mentioned to this lady. YOU don’t want to be told that from +information I have received I have gone to work. You’re up to what a +lady can’t be expected to be up to. Lord! Especially in your elevated +station of society, miss,” says Mr. Bucket, quite reddening at +another narrow escape from “my dear.” + +“The officer, Volumnia,” observes Sir Leicester, “is faithful to his +duty, and perfectly right.” + +Mr. Bucket murmurs, “Glad to have the honour of your approbation, Sir +Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.” + +“In fact, Volumnia,” proceeds Sir Leicester, “it is not holding up a +good model for imitation to ask the officer any such questions as you +have put to him. He is the best judge of his own responsibility; he +acts upon his responsibility. And it does not become us, who assist +in making the laws, to impede or interfere with those who carry them +into execution. Or,” says Sir Leicester somewhat sternly, for +Volumnia was going to cut in before he had rounded his sentence, “or +who vindicate their outraged majesty.” + +Volumnia with all humility explains that she had not merely the plea +of curiosity to urge (in common with the giddy youth of her sex in +general) but that she is perfectly dying with regret and interest for +the darling man whose loss they all deplore. + +“Very well, Volumnia,” returns Sir Leicester. “Then you cannot be too +discreet.” + +Mr. Bucket takes the opportunity of a pause to be heard again. + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I have no objections to telling this +lady, with your leave and among ourselves, that I look upon the case +as pretty well complete. It is a beautiful case—a beautiful +case—and what little is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able +to supply in a few hours.” + +“I am very glad indeed to hear it,” says Sir Leicester. “Highly +creditable to you.” + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket very seriously, +“I hope it may at one and the same time do me credit and prove +satisfactory to all. When I depict it as a beautiful case, you see, +miss,” Mr. Bucket goes on, glancing gravely at Sir Leicester, “I mean +from my point of view. As considered from other points of view, such +cases will always involve more or less unpleasantness. Very strange +things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, +what you would think to be phenomenons, quite.” + +Volumnia, with her innocent little scream, supposes so. + +“Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great +families,” says Mr. Bucket, again gravely eyeing Sir Leicester aside. +“I have had the honour of being employed in high families before, and +you have no idea—come, I’ll go so far as to say not even YOU have +any idea, sir,” this to the debilitated cousin, “what games goes on!” + +The cousin, who has been casting sofa-pillows on his head, in a +prostration of boredom yawns, “Vayli,” being the used-up for “very +likely.” + +Sir Leicester, deeming it time to dismiss the officer, here +majestically interposes with the words, “Very good. Thank you!” and +also with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there is an end +of the discourse, but that if high families fall into low habits they +must take the consequences. “You will not forget, officer,” he adds +with condescension, “that I am at your disposal when you please.” + +Mr. Bucket (still grave) inquires if to-morrow morning, now, would +suit, in case he should be as for’ard as he expects to be. Sir +Leicester replies, “All times are alike to me.” Mr. Bucket makes his +three bows and is withdrawing when a forgotten point occurs to him. + +“Might I ask, by the by,” he says in a low voice, cautiously +returning, “who posted the reward-bill on the staircase.” + +“I ordered it to be put up there,” replies Sir Leicester. + +“Would it be considered a liberty, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, if +I was to ask you why?” + +“Not at all. I chose it as a conspicuous part of the house. I think +it cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment. I +wish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the +determination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. At the +same time, officer, if you in your better knowledge of the subject +see any objection—” + +Mr. Bucket sees none now; the bill having been put up, had better not +be taken down. Repeating his three bows he withdraws, closing the +door on Volumnia’s little scream, which is a preliminary to her +remarking that that charmingly horrible person is a perfect Blue +Chamber. + +In his fondness for society and his adaptability to all grades, Mr. +Bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire—bright and warm on +the early winter night—admiring Mercury. + +“Why, you’re six foot two, I suppose?” says Mr. Bucket. + +“Three,” says Mercury. + +“Are you so much? But then, you see, you’re broad in proportion and +don’t look it. You’re not one of the weak-legged ones, you ain’t. Was +you ever modelled now?” Mr. Bucket asks, conveying the expression of +an artist into the turn of his eye and head. + +Mercury never was modelled. + +“Then you ought to be, you know,” says Mr. Bucket; “and a friend of +mine that you’ll hear of one day as a Royal Academy sculptor would +stand something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for +the marble. My Lady’s out, ain’t she?” + +“Out to dinner.” + +“Goes out pretty well every day, don’t she?” + +“Yes.” + +“Not to be wondered at!” says Mr. Bucket. “Such a fine woman as her, +so handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon on +a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes. Was your father in the +same way of life as yourself?” + +Answer in the negative. + +“Mine was,” says Mr. Bucket. “My father was first a page, then a +footman, then a butler, then a steward, then an inn-keeper. Lived +universally respected, and died lamented. Said with his last breath +that he considered service the most honourable part of his career, +and so it was. I’ve a brother in service, AND a brother-in-law. My +Lady a good temper?” + +Mercury replies, “As good as you can expect.” + +“Ah!” says Mr. Bucket. “A little spoilt? A little capricious? Lord! +What can you anticipate when they’re so handsome as that? And we like +’em all the better for it, don’t we?” + +Mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom +small-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of a +man of gallantry and can’t deny it. Come the roll of wheels and a +violent ringing at the bell. “Talk of the angels,” says Mr. Bucket. +“Here she is!” + +The doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. Still +very pale, she is dressed in slight mourning and wears two beautiful +bracelets. Either their beauty or the beauty of her arms is +particularly attractive to Mr. Bucket. He looks at them with an eager +eye and rattles something in his pocket—halfpence perhaps. + +Noticing him at his distance, she turns an inquiring look on the +other Mercury who has brought her home. + +“Mr. Bucket, my Lady.” + +Mr. Bucket makes a leg and comes forward, passing his familiar demon +over the region of his mouth. + +“Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?” + +“No, my Lady, I’ve seen him!” + +“Have you anything to say to me?” + +“Not just at present, my Lady.” + +“Have you made any new discoveries?” + +“A few, my Lady.” + +This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps +upstairs alone. Mr. Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot, +watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his +grave, past murderous groups of statuary repeated with their shadowy +weapons on the wall, past the printed bill, which she looks at going +by, out of view. + +“She’s a lovely woman, too, she really is,” says Mr. Bucket, coming +back to Mercury. “Don’t look quite healthy though.” + +Is not quite healthy, Mercury informs him. Suffers much from +headaches. + +Really? That’s a pity! Walking, Mr. Bucket would recommend for that. +Well, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometimes for two +hours when she has them bad. By night, too. + +“Are you sure you’re quite so much as six foot three?” asks Mr. +Bucket. “Begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?” + +Not a doubt about it. + +“You’re so well put together that I shouldn’t have thought it. But +the household troops, though considered fine men, are built so +straggling. Walks by night, does she? When it’s moonlight, though?” + +Oh, yes. When it’s moonlight! Of course. Oh, of course! +Conversational and acquiescent on both sides. + +“I suppose you ain’t in the habit of walking yourself?” says Mr. +Bucket. “Not much time for it, I should say?” + +Besides which, Mercury don’t like it. Prefers carriage exercise. + +“To be sure,” says Mr. Bucket. “That makes a difference. Now I think +of it,” says Mr. Bucket, warming his hands and looking pleasantly at +the blaze, “she went out walking the very night of this business.” + +“To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way.” + +“And left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it.” + +“I didn’t see YOU,” says Mercury. + +“I was rather in a hurry,” returns Mr. Bucket, “for I was going to +visit a aunt of mine that lives at Chelsea—next door but two to the +old original Bun House—ninety year old the old lady is, a single +woman, and got a little property. Yes, I chanced to be passing at the +time. Let’s see. What time might it be? It wasn’t ten.” + +“Half-past nine.” + +“You’re right. So it was. And if I don’t deceive myself, my Lady was +muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?” + +“Of course she was.” + +Of course she was. Mr. Bucket must return to a little work he has to +get on with upstairs, but he must shake hands with Mercury in +acknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he—this is +all he asks—will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of +bestowing it on that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of +both parties? + + + + +CHAPTER LIV + +Springing a Mine + + +Refreshed by sleep, Mr. Bucket rises betimes in the morning and +prepares for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt +and a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony, +he lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his life of +severe study, Mr. Bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a +foundation to work upon, together with tea, eggs, toast, and +marmalade on a corresponding scale. Having much enjoyed these +strengthening matters and having held subtle conference with his +familiar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury “just to mention +quietly to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, that whenever he’s ready +for me, I’m ready for him.” A gracious message being returned that +Sir Leicester will expedite his dressing and join Mr. Bucket in the +library within ten minutes, Mr. Bucket repairs to that apartment and +stands before the fire with his finger on his chin, looking at the +blazing coals. + +Thoughtful Mr. Bucket is, as a man may be with weighty work to do, +but composed, sure, confident. From the expression of his face he +might be a famous whist-player for a large stake—say a hundred +guineas certain—with the game in his hand, but with a high +reputation involved in his playing his hand out to the last card in a +masterly way. Not in the least anxious or disturbed is Mr. Bucket +when Sir Leicester appears, but he eyes the baronet aside as he comes +slowly to his easy-chair with that observant gravity of yesterday in +which there might have been yesterday, but for the audacity of the +idea, a touch of compassion. + +“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but I am rather later +than my usual hour this morning. I am not well. The agitation and the +indignation from which I have recently suffered have been too much +for me. I am subject to—gout”—Sir Leicester was going to say +indisposition and would have said it to anybody else, but Mr. Bucket +palpably knows all about it—“and recent circumstances have brought +it on.” + +As he takes his seat with some difficulty and with an air of pain, +Mr. Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large +hands on the library-table. + +“I am not aware, officer,” Sir Leicester observes; raising his eyes +to his face, “whether you wish us to be alone, but that is entirely +as you please. If you do, well and good. If not, Miss Dedlock would +be interested—” + +“Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket with his +head persuasively on one side and his forefinger pendant at one ear +like an earring, “we can’t be too private just at present. You will +presently see that we can’t be too private. A lady, under the +circumstances, and especially in Miss Dedlock’s elevated station of +society, can’t but be agreeable to me, but speaking without a view to +myself, I will take the liberty of assuring you that I know we can’t +be too private.” + +“That is enough.” + +“So much so, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” Mr. Bucket resumes, +“that I was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key in +the door.” + +“By all means.” Mr. Bucket skilfully and softly takes that +precaution, stooping on his knee for a moment from mere force of +habit so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in +from the outerside. + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I mentioned yesterday evening that I +wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed +it and collected proof against the person who did this crime.” + +“Against the soldier?” + +“No, Sir Leicester Dedlock; not the soldier.” + +Sir Leicester looks astounded and inquires, “Is the man in custody?” + +Mr. Bucket tells him, after a pause, “It was a woman.” + +Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates, +“Good heaven!” + +“Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” Mr. Bucket begins, standing +over him with one hand spread out on the library-table and the +forefinger of the other in impressive use, “it’s my duty to prepare +you for a train of circumstances that may, and I go so far as to say +that will, give you a shock. But Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, you +are a gentleman, and I know what a gentleman is and what a gentleman +is capable of. A gentleman can bear a shock when it must come, boldly +and steadily. A gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against +almost any blow. Why, take yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. +If there’s a blow to be inflicted on you, you naturally think of your +family. You ask yourself, how would all them ancestors of yours, away +to Julius Caesar—not to go beyond him at present—have borne that +blow; you remember scores of them that would have borne it well; and +you bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the family +credit. That’s the way you argue, and that’s the way you act, Sir +Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.” + +Sir Leicester, leaning back in his chair and grasping the elbows, +sits looking at him with a stony face. + +“Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, “thus preparing +you, let me beg of you not to trouble your mind for a moment as to +anything having come to MY knowledge. I know so much about so many +characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less +don’t signify a straw. I don’t suppose there’s a move on the board +that would surprise ME, and as to this or that move having taken +place, why my knowing it is no odds at all, any possible move +whatever (provided it’s in a wrong direction) being a probable move +according to my experience. Therefore, what I say to you, Sir +Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, is, don’t you go and let yourself be put +out of the way because of my knowing anything of your family +affairs.” + +“I thank you for your preparation,” returns Sir Leicester after a +silence, without moving hand, foot, or feature, “which I hope is not +necessary; though I give it credit for being well intended. Be so +good as to go on. Also”—Sir Leicester seems to shrink in the shadow +of his figure—“also, to take a seat, if you have no objection.” + +None at all. Mr. Bucket brings a chair and diminishes his shadow. +“Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with this short preface I come +to the point. Lady Dedlock—” + +Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat and stares at him fiercely. +Mr. Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient. + +“Lady Dedlock, you see she’s universally admired. That’s what her +ladyship is; she’s universally admired,” says Mr. Bucket. + +“I would greatly prefer, officer,” Sir Leicester returns stiffly, “my +Lady’s name being entirely omitted from this discussion.” + +“So would I, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, but—it’s impossible.” + +“Impossible?” + +Mr. Bucket shakes his relentless head. + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it’s altogether impossible. What I +have got to say is about her ladyship. She is the pivot it all turns +on.” + +“Officer,” retorts Sir Leicester with a fiery eye and a quivering +lip, “you know your duty. Do your duty, but be careful not to +overstep it. I would not suffer it. I would not endure it. You bring +my Lady’s name into this communication upon your responsibility—upon +your responsibility. My Lady’s name is not a name for common persons +to trifle with!” + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I say what I must say, and no more.” + +“I hope it may prove so. Very well. Go on. Go on, sir!” Glancing at +the angry eyes which now avoid him and at the angry figure trembling +from head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr. Bucket feels his way +with his forefinger and in a low voice proceeds. + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you that +the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and +suspicions of Lady Dedlock.” + +“If he had dared to breathe them to me, sir—which he never did—I +would have killed him myself!” exclaims Sir Leicester, striking his +hand upon the table. But in the very heat and fury of the act he +stops, fixed by the knowing eyes of Mr. Bucket, whose forefinger is +slowly going and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes +his head. + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was deep and +close, and what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning I +can’t quite take upon myself to say. But I know from his lips that he +long ago suspected Lady Dedlock of having discovered, through the +sight of some handwriting—in this very house, and when you yourself, +Sir Leicester Dedlock, were present—the existence, in great poverty, +of a certain person who had been her lover before you courted her and +who ought to have been her husband.” Mr. Bucket stops and +deliberately repeats, “Ought to have been her husband, not a doubt +about it. I know from his lips that when that person soon afterwards +died, he suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his wretched lodging and +his wretched grave, alone and in secret. I know from my own inquiries +and through my eyes and ears that Lady Dedlock did make such visit in +the dress of her own maid, for the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn employed +me to reckon up her ladyship—if you’ll excuse my making use of the +term we commonly employ—and I reckoned her up, so far, completely. I +confronted the maid in the chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields with a +witness who had been Lady Dedlock’s guide, and there couldn’t be the +shadow of a doubt that she had worn the young woman’s dress, unknown +to her. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I did endeavour to pave the +way a little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday by saying +that very strange things happened even in high families sometimes. +All this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and +through your own Lady. It’s my belief that the deceased Mr. +Tulkinghorn followed up these inquiries to the hour of his death and +that he and Lady Dedlock even had bad blood between them upon the +matter that very night. Now, only you put that to Lady Dedlock, Sir +Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and ask her ladyship whether, even after +he had left here, she didn’t go down to his chambers with the +intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose +black mantle with a deep fringe to it.” + +Sir Leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that is +probing the life-blood of his heart. + +“You put that to her ladyship, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, from +me, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her ladyship makes any +difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it’s no use, that +Inspector Bucket knows it and knows that she passed the soldier as +you called him (though he’s not in the army now) and knows that she +knows she passed him on the staircase. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, +Baronet, why do I relate all this?” + +Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a +single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and by he takes +his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness, +though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair, +that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him. Something frozen and fixed +is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell of haughtiness, +and Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with +now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to +utter inarticulate sounds. With such sounds he now breaks silence, +soon, however, controlling himself to say that he does not comprehend +why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr. Tulkinghorn +should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this +distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible +intelligence. + +“Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket, “put it +to her ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her ladyship, if you +think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You’ll find, +or I’m much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had the +intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he considered +it ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so to +understand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very +morning when I examined the body! You don’t know what I’m going to +say and do five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester +Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you might +wonder why I hadn’t done it, don’t you see?” + +True. Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive +sounds, says, “True.” At this juncture a considerable noise of voices +is heard in the hall. Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to the +library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again. Then he +draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly, “Sir +Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken +air, as I expected it might, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn being cut +down so sudden. The chance to hush it is to let in these people now +in a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind sitting quiet—on the +family account—while I reckon ’em up? And would you just throw in a +nod when I seem to ask you for it?” + +Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, “Officer. The best you can, the +best you can!” and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of +the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly +die away. He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead of Mercury +and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who +bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old man. Another +man and two women come behind. Directing the pitching of the chair in +an affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket dismisses the Mercuries and +locks the door again. Sir Leicester looks on at this invasion of the +sacred precincts with an icy stare. + +“Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen,” says Mr. Bucket +in a confidential voice. “I am Inspector Bucket of the Detective, I +am; and this,” producing the tip of his convenient little staff from +his breast-pocket, “is my authority. Now, you wanted to see Sir +Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Well! You do see him, and mind you, it +ain’t every one as is admitted to that honour. Your name, old +gentleman, is Smallweed; that’s what your name is; I know it well.” + +“Well, and you never heard any harm of it!” cries Mr. Smallweed in a +shrill loud voice. + +“You don’t happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?” retorts +Mr. Bucket with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper. + +“No!” + +“Why, they killed him,” says Mr. Bucket, “on account of his having so +much cheek. Don’t YOU get into the same position, because it isn’t +worthy of you. You ain’t in the habit of conversing with a deaf +person, are you?” + +“Yes,” snarls Mr. Smallweed, “my wife’s deaf.” + +“That accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she ain’t +here; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and I’ll not +only be obliged to you, but it’ll do you more credit,” says Mr. +Bucket. “This other gentleman is in the preaching line, I think?” + +“Name of Chadband,” Mr. Smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a +much lower key. + +“Once had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name,” says Mr. +Bucket, offering his hand, “and consequently feel a liking for it. +Mrs. Chadband, no doubt?” + +“And Mrs. Snagsby,” Mr. Smallweed introduces. + +“Husband a law-stationer and a friend of my own,” says Mr. Bucket. +“Love him like a brother! Now, what’s up?” + +“Do you mean what business have we come upon?” Mr. Smallweed asks, a +little dashed by the suddenness of this turn. + +“Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it’s all about in +presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come.” + +Mr. Smallweed, beckoning Mr. Chadband, takes a moment’s counsel with +him in a whisper. Mr. Chadband, expressing a considerable amount of +oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says +aloud, “Yes. You first!” and retires to his former place. + +“I was the client and friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn,” pipes Grandfather +Smallweed then; “I did business with him. I was useful to him, and he +was useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. He was +own brother to a brimstone magpie—leastways Mrs. Smallweed. I come +into Krook’s property. I examined all his papers and all his effects. +They was all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters +belonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid away at the back of a +shelf in the side of Lady Jane’s bed—his cat’s bed. He hid all +manner of things away, everywheres. Mr. Tulkinghorn wanted ’em and +got ’em, but I looked ’em over first. I’m a man of business, and I +took a squint at ’em. They was letters from the lodger’s sweetheart, +and she signed Honoria. Dear me, that’s not a common name, Honoria, +is it? There’s no lady in this house that signs Honoria is there? Oh, +no, I don’t think so! Oh, no, I don’t think so! And not in the same +hand, perhaps? Oh, no, I don’t think so!” + +Here Mr. Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his +triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, “Oh, dear me! Oh, Lord! I’m shaken +all to pieces!” + +“Now, when you’re ready,” says Mr. Bucket after awaiting his +recovery, “to come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock, +Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know.” + +“Haven’t I come to it, Mr. Bucket?” cries Grandfather Smallweed. +“Isn’t the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon, and his +ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain? Come, +then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns me, if it +don’t concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where they are. I +won’t have ’em disappear so quietly. I handed ’em over to my friend +and solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, not to anybody else.” + +“Why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too,” says Mr. +Bucket. + +“I don’t care for that. I want to know who’s got ’em. And I tell you +what we want—what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more +painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the +interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If George +the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice, +and was set on. You know what I mean as well as any man.” + +“Now I tell you what,” says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering his +manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary +fascination to the forefinger, “I am damned if I am a-going to have +my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half +a second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want more +painstaking and search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand, and do +you think that I don’t know the right time to stretch it out and put +it on the arm that fired that shot?” + +Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is +that he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Smallweed begins to apologize. +Mr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him. + +“The advice I give you is, don’t you trouble your head about the +murder. That’s my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers, and +I shouldn’t wonder if you was to read something about it before long, +if you look sharp. I know my business, and that’s all I’ve got to say +to you on that subject. Now about those letters. You want to know +who’s got ’em. I don’t mind telling you. I have got ’em. Is that the +packet?” + +Mr. Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr. +Bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it +as the same. + +“What have you got to say next?” asks Mr. Bucket. “Now, don’t open +your mouth too wide, because you don’t look handsome when you do it.” + +“I want five hundred pound.” + +“No, you don’t; you mean fifty,” says Mr. Bucket humorously. + +It appears, however, that Mr. Smallweed means five hundred. + +“That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to consider +(without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business,” says +Mr. Bucket—Sir Leicester mechanically bows his head—“and you ask me +to consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. Why, it’s an +unreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better than +that. Hadn’t you better say two fifty?” + +Mr. Smallweed is quite clear that he had better not. + +“Then,” says Mr. Bucket, “let’s hear Mr. Chadband. Lord! Many a time +I’ve heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate man he +was in all respects, as ever I come across!” + +Thus invited, Mr. Chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek +smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands, +delivers himself as follows, “My friends, we are now—Rachael, my +wife, and I—in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in +the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are +invited? Because we are bidden to feast with them, because we are +bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute +with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No. Then why are +we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and do +we require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much the same thing, +money, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends.” + +“You’re a man of business, you are,” returns Mr. Bucket, very +attentive, “and consequently you’re going on to mention what the +nature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn’t do better.” + +“Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love,” says Mr. Chadband +with a cunning eye, “proceed unto it. Rachael, my wife, advance!” + +Mrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband +into the background and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard, frowning +smile. + +“Since you want to know what we know,” says she, “I’ll tell you. I +helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her ladyship’s daughter. I was in the +service of her ladyship’s sister, who was very sensitive to the +disgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her +ladyship, that the child was dead—she WAS very nearly so—when she +was born. But she’s alive, and I know her.” With these words, and a +laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word “ladyship,” Mrs. +Chadband folds her arms and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket. + +“I suppose now,” returns that officer, “YOU will be expecting a +twenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?” + +Mrs. Chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can +“offer” twenty pence. + +“My friend the law-stationer’s good lady, over there,” says Mr. +Bucket, luring Mrs. Snagsby forward with the finger. “What may YOUR +game be, ma’am?” + +Mrs. Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from +stating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes to +light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom +Mr. Snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in +darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been +the sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, who showed so much +commiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in Cook’s Court +in the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late +habitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody it appears, the +present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Snagsby’s peace. +There is Mr. Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as +open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as +midnight, under the influence—no doubt—of Mr. Snagsby’s suborning +and tampering. There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Guppy, who lived +mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There was +Krook, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo, +deceased; and they were “all in it.” In what, Mrs. Snagsby does not +with particularity express, but she knows that Jo was Mr. Snagsby’s +son, “as well as if a trumpet had spoken it,” and she followed Mr. +Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not +his son why did he go? The one occupation of her life has been, for +some time back, to follow Mr. Snagsby to and fro, and up and down, +and to piece suspicious circumstances together—and every +circumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this +way she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false +husband, night and day. Thus did it come to pass that she brought the +Chadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn together, and conferred with Mr. +Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr. Guppy, and helped to turn up the +circumstances in which the present company are interested, casually, +by the wayside, being still and ever on the great high road that is +to terminate in Mr. Snagsby’s full exposure and a matrimonial +separation. All this, Mrs. Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the +friend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the +mourner of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the +seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement +possible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no +scheme or project but the one mentioned, and bringing here, and +taking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the +ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy. + +While this exordium is in hand—and it takes some time—Mr. Bucket, +who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby’s vinegar at a +glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd +attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester Dedlock +remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him, except that he +once or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying on that officer +alone of all mankind. + +“Very good,” says Mr. Bucket. “Now I understand you, you know, and +being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this +little matter,” again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation +of the statement, “can give it my fair and full attention. Now I +won’t allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort, +because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to +make things pleasant. But I tell you what I DO wonder at; I am +surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall. +It was so opposed to your interests. That’s what I look at.” + +“We wanted to get in,” pleads Mr. Smallweed. + +“Why, of course you wanted to get in,” Mr. Bucket asserts with +cheerfulness; “but for a old gentleman at your time of life—what I +call truly venerable, mind you!—with his wits sharpened, as I have +no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which +occasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to +consider that if he don’t keep such a business as the present as +close as possible it can’t be worth a mag to him, is so curious! You +see your temper got the better of you; that’s where you lost ground,” +says Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way. + +“I only said I wouldn’t go without one of the servants came up to Sir +Leicester Dedlock,” returns Mr. Smallweed. + +“That’s it! That’s where your temper got the better of you. Now, you +keep it under another time and you’ll make money by it. Shall I ring +for them to carry you down?” + +“When are we to hear more of this?” Mrs. Chadband sternly demands. + +“Bless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your delightful +sex is!” replies Mr. Bucket with gallantry. “I shall have the +pleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day—not forgetting +Mr. Smallweed and his proposal of two fifty.” + +“Five hundred!” exclaims Mr. Smallweed. + +“All right! Nominally five hundred.” Mr. Bucket has his hand on the +bell-rope. “SHALL I wish you good day for the present on the part of +myself and the gentleman of the house?” he asks in an insinuating +tone. + +Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it, +and the party retire as they came up. Mr. Bucket follows them to the +door, and returning, says with an air of serious business, “Sir +Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it’s for you to consider whether or not +to buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, it’s being bought +up myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You see, that +little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used by all sides +of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and +ends together than if she had meant it. Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, he +held all these horses in his hand and could have drove ’em his own +way, I haven’t a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost, +and now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all +dragging and pulling their own ways. So it is, and such is life. The +cat’s away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the +water runs. Now, with regard to the party to be apprehended.” + +Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open, and +he looks intently at Mr. Bucket as Mr. Bucket refers to his watch. + +“The party to be apprehended is now in this house,” proceeds Mr. +Bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand and with rising +spirits, “and I’m about to take her into custody in your presence. +Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don’t you say a word nor yet stir. +There’ll be no noise and no disturbance at all. I’ll come back in the +course of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet +your wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter and the +nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, +Baronet, don’t you be nervous on account of the apprehension at +present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from first to +last.” + +Mr. Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts +the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a suspense +of a minute or two the door slowly opens and a Frenchwoman enters. +Mademoiselle Hortense. + +The moment she is in the room Mr. Bucket claps the door to and puts +his back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to +turn, and then for the first time she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in +his chair. + +“I ask you pardon,” she mutters hurriedly. “They tell me there was no +one here.” + +Her step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr. Bucket. +Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns deadly pale. + +“This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” says Mr. Bucket, nodding +at her. “This foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks +back.” + +“What do Sir Leicester care for that, you think, my angel?” returns +mademoiselle in a jocular strain. + +“Why, my angel,” returns Mr. Bucket, “we shall see.” + +Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face, +which gradually changes into a smile of scorn, “You are very +mysterieuse. Are you drunk?” + +“Tolerable sober, my angel,” returns Mr. Bucket. + +“I come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife. +Your wife have left me since some minutes. They tell me downstairs +that your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here. What +is the intention of this fool’s play, say then?” mademoiselle +demands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her +dark cheek beating like a clock. + +Mr. Bucket merely shakes the finger at her. + +“Ah, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!” cries mademoiselle with a +toss of her head and a laugh. “Leave me to pass downstairs, great +pig.” With a stamp of her foot and a menace. + +“Now, mademoiselle,” says Mr. Bucket in a cool determined way, “you +go and sit down upon that sofy.” + +“I will not sit down upon nothing,” she replies with a shower of +nods. + +“Now, mademoiselle,” repeats Mr. Bucket, making no demonstration +except with the finger, “you sit down upon that sofy.” + +“Why?” + +“Because I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don’t +need to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your sex and a +foreigner if I can. If I can’t, I must be rough, and there’s rougher +ones outside. What I am to be depends on you. So I recommend you, as +a friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your +head, to go and sit down upon that sofy.” + +Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice while that +something in her cheek beats fast and hard, “You are a devil.” + +“Now, you see,” Mr. Bucket proceeds approvingly, “you’re comfortable +and conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign young woman of +your sense to do. So I’ll give you a piece of advice, and it’s this, +don’t you talk too much. You’re not expected to say anything here, +and you can’t keep too quiet a tongue in your head. In short, the +less you PARLAY, the better, you know.” Mr. Bucket is very complacent +over this French explanation. + +Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth and her black +eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid +state, with her hands clenched—and her feet too, one might +suppose—muttering, “Oh, you Bucket, you are a devil!” + +“Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” says Mr. Bucket, and from this +time forth the finger never rests, “this young woman, my lodger, was +her ladyship’s maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this +young woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate +against her ladyship after being discharged—” + +“Lie!” cries mademoiselle. “I discharge myself.” + +“Now, why don’t you take my advice?” returns Mr. Bucket in an +impressive, almost in an imploring, tone. “I’m surprised at the +indiscreetness you commit. You’ll say something that’ll be used +against you, you know. You’re sure to come to it. Never you mind what +I say till it’s given in evidence. It is not addressed to you.” + +“Discharge, too,” cries mademoiselle furiously, “by her ladyship! Eh, +my faith, a pretty ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by +remaining with a ladyship so infame!” + +“Upon my soul I wonder at you!” Mr. Bucket remonstrates. “I thought +the French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to hear a female +going on like that before Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet!” + +“He is a poor abused!” cries mademoiselle. “I spit upon his house, +upon his name, upon his imbecility,” all of which she makes the +carpet represent. “Oh, that he is a great man! Oh, yes, superb! Oh, +heaven! Bah!” + +“Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, “this intemperate +foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established +a claim upon Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, by attending on the occasion +I told you of at his chambers, though she was liberally paid for her +time and trouble.” + +“Lie!” cries mademoiselle. “I ref-use his money all togezzer.” + +“If you WILL PARLAY, you know,” says Mr. Bucket parenthetically, “you +must take the consequences. Now, whether she became my lodger, Sir +Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this +deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house +in that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers +of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and +likewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an +unfortunate stationer.” + +“Lie!” cries mademoiselle. “All lie!” + +“The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you +know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close +with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case +was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the +papers, and everything. From information I received (from a clerk in +the same house) I took George into custody as having been seen +hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the +murder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased +on former occasions—even threatening him, as the witness made out. +If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the first I +believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly no, but he +might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make +it my duty to take him and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!” + +As Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement—for him—and +inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his +forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes +upon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly +together. + +“I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night and found this +young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket. She had made a +mighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first offering +herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever—in +fact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for +the lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn. By the living +Lord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and +saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!” + +Mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and +lips the words, “You are a devil.” + +“Now where,” pursues Mr. Bucket, “had she been on the night of the +murder? She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have +since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an +artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult; +and I laid a trap for her—such a trap as I never laid yet, and such +a venture as I never made yet. I worked it out in my mind while I was +talking to her at supper. When I went upstairs to bed, our house +being small and this young woman’s ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet +into Mrs. Bucket’s mouth that she shouldn’t say a word of surprise +and told her all about it. My dear, don’t you give your mind to that +again, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles.” Mr. Bucket, +breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon mademoiselle and laid +his heavy hand upon her shoulder. + +“What is the matter with you now?” she asks him. + +“Don’t you think any more,” returns Mr. Bucket with admonitory +finger, “of throwing yourself out of window. That’s what’s the matter +with me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn’t get up; I’ll sit down by +you. Now take my arm, will you? I’m a married man, you know; you’re +acquainted with my wife. Just take my arm.” + +Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound +she struggles with herself and complies. + +“Now we’re all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this case +could never have been the case it is but for Mrs. Bucket, who is a +woman in fifty thousand—in a hundred and fifty thousand! To throw +this young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our house +since, though I’ve communicated with Mrs. Bucket in the baker’s +loaves and in the milk as often as required. My whispered words to +Mrs. Bucket when she had the sheet in her mouth were, ‘My dear, can +you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions +against George, and this, and that, and t’other? Can you do without +rest and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you undertake to say, +‘She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner +without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from +death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I +have got her, if she did this murder?’ Mrs. Bucket says to me, as +well as she could speak on account of the sheet, ‘Bucket, I can!’ And +she has acted up to it glorious!” + +“Lies!” mademoiselle interposes. “All lies, my friend!” + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did my calculations come out +under these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous +young woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or right? +I was right. What does she try to do? Don’t let it give you a turn? +To throw the murder on her ladyship.” + +Sir Leicester rises from his chair and staggers down again. + +“And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always here, +which was done a-purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of mine, Sir +Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards +you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words +‘Lady Dedlock’ in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I +stopped this very morning, and read the three words ‘Lady Dedlock, +Murderess’ in it. These letters have been falling about like a shower +of lady-birds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket, from her spy-place +having seen them all written by this young woman? What do you say to +Mrs. Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding +ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? What do you say to +Mrs. Bucket having watched the posting of ’em every one by this young +woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?” Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant +in his admiration of his lady’s genius. + +Two things are especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a +conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a +dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very +atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if +a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around +her breathless figure. + +“There is no doubt that her ladyship was on the spot at the eventful +period,” says Mr. Bucket, “and my foreign friend here saw her, I +believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her ladyship and +George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another’s +heels. But that don’t signify any more, so I’ll not go into it. I +found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr. +Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your +house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you’ll say, Sir Leicester +Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is so +thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the +rest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces together and +finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street.” + +“These are very long lies,” mademoiselle interposes. “You prose great +deal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking +always?” + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights +in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with +any fragment of it, “the last point in the case which I am now going +to mention shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never +doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday +without her knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in company +with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had so much to +convict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so +rose against her malice towards her ladyship, and the time was +altogether such a time for bringing down what you may call +retribution upon her, that if I had been a younger hand with less +experience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last night, +when her ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come home +looking—why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from the +ocean—it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being +charged with a murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to +want to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester +Dedlock, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here +proposed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that +they should go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at +a very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of +entertainment there’s a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to +fetch her pocket-handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was; +she was rather a long time gone and came back a little out of wind. +As soon as they came home this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket, +along with her observations and suspicions. I had the piece of water +dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the +pocket pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen +hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and +hold it steady, and I shan’t hurt you!” + +In a trice Mr. Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. “That’s one,” +says Mr. Bucket. “Now the other, darling. Two, and all told!” + +He rises; she rises too. “Where,” she asks him, darkening her large +eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them—and yet they +stare, “where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?” + +“She’s gone forrard to the Police Office,” returns Mr. Bucket. +“You’ll see her there, my dear.” + +“I would like to kiss her!” exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting +tigress-like. + +“You’d bite her, I suspect,” says Mr. Bucket. + +“I would!” making her eyes very large. “I would love to tear her limb +from limb.” + +“Bless you, darling,” says Mr. Bucket with the greatest composure, +“I’m fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising +animosity against one another when you do differ. You don’t mind me +half so much, do you?” + +“No. Though you are a devil still.” + +“Angel and devil by turns, eh?” cries Mr. Bucket. “But I am in my +regular employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy. +I’ve been lady’s maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to +the bonnet? There’s a cab at the door.” + +Mademoiselle Hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes +herself perfectly neat in one shake and looks, to do her justice, +uncommonly genteel. + +“Listen then, my angel,” says she after several sarcastic nods. “You +are very spiritual. But can you restore him back to life?” + +Mr. Bucket answers, “Not exactly.” + +“That is droll. Listen yet one time. You are very spiritual. Can you +make a honourable lady of her?” + +“Don’t be so malicious,” says Mr. Bucket. + +“Or a haughty gentleman of HIM?” cries mademoiselle, referring to Sir +Leicester with ineffable disdain. “Eh! Oh, then regard him! The poor +infant! Ha! Ha! Ha!” + +“Come, come, why this is worse PARLAYING than the other,” says Mr. +Bucket. “Come along!” + +“You cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me. +It is but the death, it is all the same. Let us go, my angel. Adieu, +you old man, grey. I pity you, and I despise you!” + +With these last words she snaps her teeth together as if her mouth +closed with a spring. It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket +gets her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a manner so peculiar +to himself, enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering +away with her as if he were a homely Jupiter and she the object of +his affections. + +Sir Leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude, as though he +were still listening and his attention were still occupied. At length +he gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises +unsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps, +supporting himself by the table. Then he stops, and with more of +those inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at +something. + +Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold, +the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing +them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious +heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces +sneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his +bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with +something like distinctness even yet and to which alone he addresses +his tearing of his white hair and his extended arms. + +It is she in association with whom, saving that she has been for +years a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never +had a selfish thought. It is she whom he has loved, admired, +honoured, and set up for the world to respect. It is she who, at the +core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his +life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as +nothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels. He sees her, +almost to the exclusion of himself, and cannot bear to look upon her +cast down from the high place she has graced so well. + +And even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his +suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like +distinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of +mourning and compassion rather than reproach. + + + + +CHAPTER LV + +Flight + + +Inspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet struck his great blow, +as just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself with sleep +preparatory to his field-day, when through the night and along the +freezing wintry roads a chaise and pair comes out of Lincolnshire, +making its way towards London. + +Railroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle and +a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide +night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are +non-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected. +Preparations are afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out. +Bridges are begun, and their not yet united piers desolately look at +one another over roads and streams like brick and mortar couples with +an obstacle to their union; fragments of embankments are thrown up +and left as precipices with torrents of rusty carts and barrows +tumbling over them; tripods of tall poles appear on hilltops, where +there are rumours of tunnels; everything looks chaotic and abandoned +in full hopelessness. Along the freezing roads, and through the +night, the post-chaise makes its way without a railroad on its mind. + +Mrs. Rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at Chesney Wold, sits +within the chaise; and by her side sits Mrs. Bagnet with her grey +cloak and umbrella. The old girl would prefer the bar in front, as +being exposed to the weather and a primitive sort of perch more in +accordance with her usual course of travelling, but Mrs. Rouncewell +is too thoughtful of her comfort to admit of her proposing it. The +old lady cannot make enough of the old girl. She sits, in her stately +manner, holding her hand, and regardless of its roughness, puts it +often to her lips. “You are a mother, my dear soul,” says she many +times, “and you found out my George’s mother!” + +“Why, George,” returns Mrs. Bagnet, “was always free with me, ma’am, +and when he said at our house to my Woolwich that of all the things +my Woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be a man, the +comfortablest would be that he had never brought a sorrowful line +into his mother’s face or turned a hair of her head grey, then I felt +sure, from his way, that something fresh had brought his own mother +into his mind. I had often known him say to me, in past times, that +he had behaved bad to her.” + +“Never, my dear!” returns Mrs. Rouncewell, bursting into tears. “My +blessing on him, never! He was always fond of me, and loving to me, +was my George! But he had a bold spirit, and he ran a little wild and +went for a soldier. And I know he waited at first, in letting us know +about himself, till he should rise to be an officer; and when he +didn’t rise, I know he considered himself beneath us, and wouldn’t be +a disgrace to us. For he had a lion heart, had my George, always from +a baby!” + +The old lady’s hands stray about her as of yore, while she recalls, +all in a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay +good-humoured clever lad he was; how they all took to him down at +Chesney Wold; how Sir Leicester took to him when he was a young +gentleman; how the dogs took to him; how even the people who had been +angry with him forgave him the moment he was gone, poor boy. And now +to see him after all, and in a prison too! And the broad stomacher +heaves, and the quaint upright old-fashioned figure bends under its +load of affectionate distress. + +Mrs. Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart, leaves +the old housekeeper to her emotions for a little while—not without +passing the back of her hand across her own motherly eyes—and +presently chirps up in her cheery manner, “So I says to George when I +goes to call him in to tea (he pretended to be smoking his pipe +outside), ‘What ails you this afternoon, George, for gracious sake? I +have seen all sorts, and I have seen you pretty often in season and +out of season, abroad and at home, and I never see you so melancholy +penitent.’ ‘Why, Mrs. Bagnet,’ says George, ‘it’s because I AM +melancholy and penitent both, this afternoon, that you see me so.’ +‘What have you done, old fellow?’ I says. ‘Why, Mrs. Bagnet,’ says +George, shaking his head, ‘what I have done has been done this many a +long year, and is best not tried to be undone now. If I ever get to +heaven it won’t be for being a good son to a widowed mother; I say no +more.’ Now, ma’am, when George says to me that it’s best not tried to +be undone now, I have my thoughts as I have often had before, and I +draw it out of George how he comes to have such things on him that +afternoon. Then George tells me that he has seen by chance, at the +lawyer’s office, a fine old lady that has brought his mother plain +before him, and he runs on about that old lady till he quite forgets +himself and paints her picture to me as she used to be, years upon +years back. So I says to George when he has done, who is this old +lady he has seen? And George tells me it’s Mrs. Rouncewell, +housekeeper for more than half a century to the Dedlock family down +at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. George has frequently told me before +that he’s a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old Lignum that night, +‘Lignum, that’s his mother for five and for-ty pound!’” + +All this Mrs. Bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least +within the last four hours. Trilling it out like a kind of bird, with +a pretty high note, that it may be audible to the old lady above the +hum of the wheels. + +“Bless you, and thank you,” says Mrs. Rouncewell. “Bless you, and +thank you, my worthy soul!” + +“Dear heart!” cries Mrs. Bagnet in the most natural manner. “No +thanks to me, I am sure. Thanks to yourself, ma’am, for being so +ready to pay ’em! And mind once more, ma’am, what you had best do +on finding George to be your own son is to make him—for your +sake—have every sort of help to put himself in the right and clear +himself of a charge of which he is as innocent as you or me. It won’t +do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and +lawyers,” exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the latter +form a separate establishment and have dissolved partnership with +truth and justice for ever and a day. + +“He shall have,” says Mrs. Rouncewell, “all the help that can be got +for him in the world, my dear. I will spend all I have, and +thankfully, to procure it. Sir Leicester will do his best, the whole +family will do their best. I—I know something, my dear; and will +make my own appeal, as his mother parted from him all these years, +and finding him in a jail at last.” + +The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper’s manner in saying +this, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands make a powerful +impression on Mrs. Bagnet and would astonish her but that she refers +them all to her sorrow for her son’s condition. And yet Mrs. Bagnet +wonders too why Mrs. Rouncewell should murmur so distractedly, “My +Lady, my Lady, my Lady!” over and over again. + +The frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post-chaise +comes rolling on through the early mist like the ghost of a chaise +departed. It has plenty of spectral company in ghosts of trees and +hedges, slowly vanishing and giving place to the realities of day. +London reached, the travellers alight, the old housekeeper in great +tribulation and confusion, Mrs. Bagnet quite fresh and collected—as +she would be if her next point, with no new equipage and outfit, were +the Cape of Good Hope, the Island of Ascension, Hong Kong, or any +other military station. + +But when they set out for the prison where the trooper is +confined, the old lady has managed to draw about her, with her +lavender-coloured dress, much of the staid calmness which is its +usual accompaniment. A wonderfully grave, precise, and handsome piece +of old china she looks, though her heart beats fast and her stomacher +is ruffled more than even the remembrance of this wayward son has +ruffled it these many years. + +Approaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder in the +act of coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of entreaty to +him to say nothing; assenting with a nod, he suffers them to enter as +he shuts the door. + +So George, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be +alone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old +housekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are quite +enough for Mrs. Bagnet’s confirmation, even if she could see the +mother and the son together, knowing what she knows, and doubt their +relationship. + +Not a rustle of the housekeeper’s dress, not a gesture, not a word +betrays her. She stands looking at him as he writes on, all +unconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her +emotions. But they are very eloquent, very, very eloquent. Mrs. +Bagnet understands them. They speak of gratitude, of joy, of grief, +of hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no return +since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son loved less, +and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak in such +touching language that Mrs. Bagnet’s eyes brim up with tears and they +run glistening down her sun-brown face. + +“George Rouncewell! Oh, my dear child, turn and look at me!” + +The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls +down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether +in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands +together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them +towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries. + +“My George, my dearest son! Always my favourite, and my favourite +still, where have you been these cruel years and years? Grown such a +man too, grown such a fine strong man. Grown so like what I knew he +must be, if it pleased God he was alive!” + +She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time. All +that time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the +whitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with +her serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the best of +old girls as she is. + +“Mother,” says the trooper when they are more composed, “forgive me +first of all, for I know my need of it.” + +Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always has +done it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these +many years, that he was her beloved son George. She has never +believed any ill of him, never. If she had died without this +happiness—and she is an old woman now and can’t look to live very +long—she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had +her senses, as her beloved son George. + +“Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my +reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a +purpose in me too. When I left home I didn’t care much, mother—I am +afraid not a great deal—for leaving; and went away and ’listed, +harum-scarum, making believe to think that I cared for nobody, no not +I, and that nobody cared for me.” + +The trooper has dried his eyes and put away his handkerchief, but +there is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of +expressing himself and carrying himself and the softened tone in +which he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a half-stifled sob. + +“So I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I had +’listed under another name, and I went abroad. Abroad, at one time I +thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and +when that year was out, I thought I would write home next year, when +I might be better off; and when that year was out again, perhaps I +didn’t think much about it. So on, from year to year, through a +service of ten years, till I began to get older, and to ask myself +why should I ever write.” + +“I don’t find any fault, child—but not to ease my mind, George? Not +a word to your loving mother, who was growing older too?” + +This almost overturns the trooper afresh, but he sets himself up with +a great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat. + +“Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be small +consolation then in hearing anything about me. There were you, +respected and esteemed. There was my brother, as I read in chance +North Country papers now and then, rising to be prosperous and +famous. There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made like +him, but self-unmade—all my earlier advantages thrown away, all my +little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what unfitted me for +most things that I could think of. What business had I to make myself +known? After letting all that time go by me, what good could come of +it? The worst was past with you, mother. I knew by that time (being a +man) how you had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for me; +and the pain was over, or was softened down, and I was better in your +mind as it was.” + +The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and taking one of his +powerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder. + +“No, I don’t say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to be +so. I said just now, what good could come of it? Well, my dear +mother, some good might have come of it to myself—and there was the +meanness of it. You would have sought me out; you would have +purchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to Chesney Wold; +you would have brought me and my brother and my brother’s family +together; you would all have considered anxiously how to do something +for me and set me up as a respectable civilian. But how could any of +you feel sure of me when I couldn’t so much as feel sure of myself? +How could you help regarding as an incumbrance and a discredit to you +an idle dragooning chap who was an incumbrance and a discredit to +himself, excepting under discipline? How could I look my brother’s +children in the face and pretend to set them an example—I, the +vagabond boy who had run away from home and been the grief and +unhappiness of my mother’s life? ‘No, George.’ Such were my words, +mother, when I passed this in review before me: ‘You have made your +bed. Now, lie upon it.’” + +Mrs. Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at the +old girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, “I told +you so!” The old girl relieves her feelings and testifies her +interest in the conversation by giving the trooper a great poke +between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she afterwards +repeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never +failing, after the administration of each of these remonstrances, to +resort to the whitened wall and the grey cloak again. + +“This was the way I brought myself to think, mother, that my best +amends was to lie upon that bed I had made, and die upon it. And I +should have done it (though I have been to see you more than once +down at Chesney Wold, when you little thought of me) but for my old +comrade’s wife here, who I find has been too many for me. But I thank +her for it. I thank you for it, Mrs. Bagnet, with all my heart and +might.” + +To which Mrs. Bagnet responds with two pokes. + +And now the old lady impresses upon her son George, her own dear +recovered boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy +close of her life, and every fond name she can think of, that he must +be governed by the best advice obtainable by money and influence, +that he must yield up his case to the greatest lawyers that can be +got, that he must act in this serious plight as he shall be advised +to act and must not be self-willed, however right, but must promise +to think only of his poor old mother’s anxiety and suffering until he +is released, or he will break her heart. + +“Mother, ’tis little enough to consent to,” returns the trooper, +stopping her with a kiss; “tell me what I shall do, and I’ll make a +late beginning and do it. Mrs. Bagnet, you’ll take care of my mother, +I know?” + +A very hard poke from the old girl’s umbrella. + +“If you’ll bring her acquainted with Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson, +she will find them of her way of thinking, and they will give her the +best advice and assistance.” + +“And, George,” says the old lady, “we must send with all haste for +your brother. He is a sensible sound man as they tell me—out in the +world beyond Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don’t know much of it +myself—and will be of great service.” + +“Mother,” returns the trooper, “is it too soon to ask a favour?” + +“Surely not, my dear.” + +“Then grant me this one great favour. Don’t let my brother know.” + +“Not know what, my dear?” + +“Not know of me. In fact, mother, I can’t bear it; I can’t make up my +mind to it. He has proved himself so different from me and has done +so much to raise himself while I’ve been soldiering that I haven’t +brass enough in my composition to see him in this place and under +this charge. How could a man like him be expected to have any +pleasure in such a discovery? It’s impossible. No, keep my secret +from him, mother; do me a greater kindness than I deserve and keep my +secret from my brother, of all men.” + +“But not always, dear George?” + +“Why, mother, perhaps not for good and all—though I may come to ask +that too—but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it’s ever broke to +him that his rip of a brother has turned up, I could wish,” says the +trooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, “to break it myself and be +governed as to advancing or retreating by the way in which he seems +to take it.” + +As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth +of it is recognized in Mrs. Bagnet’s face, his mother yields her +implicit assent to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly. + +“In all other respects, my dear mother, I’ll be as tractable and +obedient as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am +ready even for the lawyers. I have been drawing up,” he glances at +his writing on the table, “an exact account of what I knew of the +deceased and how I came to be involved in this unfortunate affair. +It’s entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in +it but what’s wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it, straight +on end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence. I +hope I may be let to do it still; but I have no longer a will of my +own in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not +to have any.” + +Matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time +being on the wane, Mrs. Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again +the old lady hangs upon her son’s neck, and again and again the +trooper holds her to his broad chest. + +“Where are you going to take my mother, Mrs. Bagnet?” + +“I am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some +business there that must be looked to directly,” Mrs. Rouncewell +answers. + +“Will you see my mother safe there in a coach, Mrs. Bagnet? But of +course I know you will. Why should I ask it!” + +Why indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella. + +“Take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you. +Kisses to Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the +hand to Lignum, and this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand +pound in gold, my dear!” So saying, the trooper puts his lips to the +old girl’s tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell. + +No entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce +Mrs. Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping +out cheerfully at the door of the Dedlock mansion and handing Mrs. +Rouncewell up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off, +arriving soon afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family and +falling to washing the greens as if nothing had happened. + +My Lady is in that room in which she held her last conference with +the murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is +looking at the spot where he stood upon the hearth studying her so +leisurely, when a tap comes at the door. Who is it? Mrs. Rouncewell. +What has brought Mrs. Rouncewell to town so unexpectedly? + +“Trouble, my Lady. Sad trouble. Oh, my Lady, may I beg a word with +you?” + +What new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble +so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why +does she falter in this manner and look at her with such strange +mistrust? + +“What is the matter? Sit down and take your breath.” + +“Oh, my Lady, my Lady. I have found my son—my youngest, who went +away for a soldier so long ago. And he is in prison.” + +“For debt?” + +“Oh, no, my Lady; I would have paid any debt, and joyful.” + +“For what is he in prison then?” + +“Charged with a murder, my Lady, of which he is as innocent as—as I +am. Accused of the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn.” + +What does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? Why does +she come so close? What is the letter that she holds? + +“Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lady, my kind Lady! You must +have a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I +was in this family before you were born. I am devoted to it. But +think of my dear son wrongfully accused.” + +“I do not accuse him.” + +“No, my Lady, no. But others do, and he is in prison and in danger. +Oh, Lady Dedlock, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say +it!” + +What delusion can this be? What power does she suppose is in the +person she petitions to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust? +Her Lady’s handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with +fear. + +“My Lady, I came away last night from Chesney Wold to find my son in +my old age, and the step upon the Ghost’s Walk was so constant and so +solemn that I never heard the like in all these years. Night after +night, as it has fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your +rooms, but last night it was awfullest. And as it fell dark last +night, my Lady, I got this letter.” + +“What letter is it?” + +“Hush! Hush!” The housekeeper looks round and answers in a frightened +whisper, “My Lady, I have not breathed a word of it, I don’t believe +what’s written in it, I know it can’t be true, I am sure and certain +that it is not true. But my son is in danger, and you must have a +heart to pity me. If you know of anything that is not known to +others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and +any reason for keeping it in your own breast, oh, my dear Lady, think +of me, and conquer that reason, and let it be known! This is the most +I consider possible. I know you are not a hard lady, but you go your +own way always without help, and you are not familiar with your +friends; and all who admire you—and all do—as a beautiful and +elegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves who can’t +be approached close. My Lady, you may have some proud or angry +reasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray, +oh, pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been +passed in this family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to +clear my son! My Lady, my good Lady,” the old housekeeper pleads with +genuine simplicity, “I am so humble in my place and you are by nature +so high and distant that you may not think what I feel for my child, +but I feel so much that I have come here to make so bold as to beg +and pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any right or +justice at this fearful time!” + +Lady Dedlock raises her without one word, until she takes the letter +from her hand. + +“Am I to read this?” + +“When I am gone, my Lady, if you please, and then remembering the +most that I consider possible.” + +“I know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve that can +affect your son. I have never accused him.” + +“My Lady, you may pity him the more under a false accusation after +reading the letter.” + +The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth +she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the +sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong +earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long +accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long +schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts +up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads +one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and +the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even +her wonder until now. + +She opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account +of the discovery of the body as it lay face downward on the floor, +shot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with +the word “murderess” attached. + +It falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground +she knows not, but it lies where it fell when a servant stands before +her announcing the young man of the name of Guppy. The words have +probably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her +head before she begins to understand them. + +“Let him come in!” + +He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from +the floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr. +Guppy she is the same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud, +chilling state. + +“Your ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from +one who has never been welcome to your ladyship”—which he don’t +complain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any +particular reason on the face of things why he should be—“but I hope +when I mention my motives to your ladyship you will not find fault +with me,” says Mr. Guppy. + +“Do so.” + +“Thank your ladyship. I ought first to explain to your ladyship,” Mr. +Guppy sits on the edge of a chair and puts his hat on the carpet at +his feet, “that Miss Summerson, whose image, as I formerly mentioned +to your ladyship, was at one period of my life imprinted on my ’eart +until erased by circumstances over which I had no control, +communicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting on your +ladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps +whatever in any manner at all relating to her. And Miss Summerson’s +wishes being to me a law (except as connected with circumstances over +which I have no control), I consequently never expected to have the +distinguished honour of waiting on your ladyship again.” + +And yet he is here now, Lady Dedlock moodily reminds him. + +“And yet I am here now,” Mr. Guppy admits. “My object being to +communicate to your ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am +here.” + +He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly. “Nor can +I,” Mr. Guppy returns with a sense of injury upon him, “too +particularly request your ladyship to take particular notice that +it’s no personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no +interested views of my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for +my promise to Miss Summerson and my keeping of it sacred—I, in point +of fact, shouldn’t have darkened these doors again, but should have +seen ’em further first.” + +Mr. Guppy considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair +with both hands. + +“Your ladyship will remember when I mention it that the last time I +was here I run against a party very eminent in our profession and +whose loss we all deplore. That party certainly did from that time +apply himself to cutting in against me in a way that I will call +sharp practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely +difficult for me to be sure that I hadn’t inadvertently led up to +something contrary to Miss Summerson’s wishes. Self-praise is no +recommendation, but I may say for myself that I am not so bad a man +of business neither.” + +Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr. Guppy immediately +withdraws his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else. + +“Indeed, it has been made so hard,” he goes on, “to have any idea +what that party was up to in combination with others that until the +loss which we all deplore I was gravelled—an expression which your +ladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to +consider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise—a name by which +I refer to another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not +acquainted with—got to be so close and double-faced that at times it +wasn’t easy to keep one’s hands off his ’ead. However, what with the +exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual +friend by the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic +turn and has your ladyship’s portrait always hanging up in his room), +I have now reasons for an apprehension as to which I come to put your +ladyship upon your guard. First, will your ladyship allow me to ask +you whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don’t +mean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss +Barbary’s old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower +extremities, carried upstairs similarly to a guy?” + +“No!” + +“Then I assure your ladyship that such visitors have been here and +have been received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited +at the corner of the square till they came out, and took half an +hour’s turn afterwards to avoid them.” + +“What have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand +you. What do you mean?” + +“Your ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no +occasion for it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my +promise to Miss Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Small has +dropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those +letters I was to have brought to your ladyship were not destroyed +when I supposed they were. That if there was anything to be blown +upon, it IS blown upon. That the visitors I have alluded to have been +here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or +making.” + +Mr. Guppy picks up his hat and rises. + +“Your ladyship, you know best whether there’s anything in what I say +or whether there’s nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to +Miss Summerson’s wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what I +had begun to do, as far as possible; that’s sufficient for me. In +case I should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your +guard when there’s no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should +hope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive +your disapprobation. I now take my farewell of your ladyship, and +assure you that there’s no danger of your ever being waited on by me +again.” + +She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look, but when +he has been gone a little while, she rings her bell. + +“Where is Sir Leicester?” + +Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library alone. + +“Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?” + +Several, on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them, +which has been anticipated by Mr. Guppy. Enough; he may go. + +So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband +knows his wrongs, her shame will be published—may be spreading while +she thinks about it—and in addition to the thunderbolt so long +foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an +invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy. + +Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often wished him dead. +Her enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation comes +upon her like a new torment at his lifeless hand. And when she +recalls how she was secretly at his door that night, and how she may +be represented to have sent her favourite girl away so soon before +merely to release herself from observation, she shudders as if the +hangman’s hands were at her neck. + +She has thrown herself upon the floor and lies with her hair all +wildly scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a couch. She +rises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks +and moans. The horror that is upon her is unutterable. If she really +were the murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense. + +For as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the deed, +however subtle the precautions for its commission, would have been +closed up by a gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing +her from seeing any consequences beyond it; and as those consequences +would have rushed in, in an unimagined flood, the moment the figure +was laid low—which always happens when a murder is done; so, now she +sees that when he used to be on the watch before her, and she used to +think, “if some mortal stroke would but fall on this old man and take +him from my way!” it was but wishing that all he held against her in +his hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown in many places. +So, too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What was +his death but the key-stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the +arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and +mangling piecemeal! + +Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her that from +this pursuer, living or dead—obdurate and imperturbable before her +in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable +in his coffin-bed—there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she +flies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery, +overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance +is overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a mighty wind. + +She hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and leaves +them on her table: + + + If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe + that I am wholly innocent. Believe no other good of me, + for I am innocent of nothing else that you have heard, + or will hear, laid to my charge. He prepared me, on that + fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you. After + he had left me, I went out on pretence of walking in the + garden where I sometimes walk, but really to follow him + and make one last petition that he would not protract the + dreadful suspense on which I have been racked by him, you + do not know how long, but would mercifully strike next + morning. + + I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his + door, but there was no reply, and I came home. + + I have no home left. I will encumber you no more. May + you, in your just resentment, be able to forget the + unworthy woman on whom you have wasted a most generous + devotion—who avoids you only with a deeper shame than + that with which she hurries from herself—and who writes + this last adieu. + + +She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money, +listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty, opens +and shuts the great door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind. + + + + +CHAPTER LVI + +Pursuit + + +Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Dedlock town house +stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and gives +no outward sign of anything going wrong within. Carriages rattle, +doors are battered at, the world exchanges calls; ancient charmers +with skeleton throats, and peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly +bloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating +creatures look like Death and the Lady fused together, dazzle the +eyes of men. Forth from the frigid mews come easily swinging +carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs, deep sunk +into downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious Mercuries +bearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats broadwise, a +spectacle for the angels. + +The Dedlock town house changes not externally, and hours pass before +its exalted dullness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the fair, +being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that +disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at +length to repair to the library for change of scene. Her gentle +tapping at the door producing no response, she opens it and peeps in; +seeing no one there, takes possession. + +The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that grass-grown city of the +ancients, Bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curiosity which impels +her on all convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle about with +a golden glass at her eye, peering into objects of every description. +Certain it is that she avails herself of the present opportunity of +hovering over her kinsman’s letters and papers like a bird, taking a +short peck at this document and a blink with her head on one side at +that document, and hopping about from table to table with her glass +at her eye in an inquisitive and restless manner. In the course of +these researches she stumbles over something, and turning her glass +in that direction, sees her kinsman lying on the ground like a felled +tree. + +Volumnia’s pet little scream acquires a considerable augmentation of +reality from this surprise, and the house is quickly in commotion. +Servants tear up and down stairs, bells are violently rung, doctors +are sent for, and Lady Dedlock is sought in all directions, but not +found. Nobody has seen or heard her since she last rang her bell. Her +letter to Sir Leicester is discovered on her table, but it is +doubtful yet whether he has not received another missive from another +world requiring to be personally answered, and all the living +languages, and all the dead, are as one to him. + +They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and rub, and fan, and put +ice to his head, and try every means of restoration. Howbeit, the day +has ebbed away, and it is night in his room before his stertorous +breathing lulls or his fixed eyes show any consciousness of the +candle that is occasionally passed before them. But when this change +begins, it goes on; and by and by he nods or moves his eyes or even +his hand in token that he hears and comprehends. + +He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman, somewhat +infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies +upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of +himself. His voice was rich and mellow and he had so long been +thoroughly persuaded of the weight and import to mankind of any word +he said that his words really had come to sound as if there were +something in them. But now he can only whisper, and what he whispers +sounds like what it is—mere jumble and jargon. + +His favourite and faithful housekeeper stands at his bedside. It is +the first act he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure from it. +After vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he makes +signs for a pencil. So inexpressively that they cannot at first +understand him; it is his old housekeeper who makes out what he wants +and brings in a slate. + +After pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls upon it in a hand that +is not his, “Chesney Wold?” + +No, she tells him; he is in London. He was taken ill in the library +this morning. Right thankful she is that she happened to come to +London and is able to attend upon him. + +“It is not an illness of any serious consequence, Sir Leicester. You +will be much better to-morrow, Sir Leicester. All the gentlemen say +so.” This, with the tears coursing down her fair old face. + +After making a survey of the room and looking with particular +attention all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes, “My +Lady.” + +“My Lady went out, Sir Leicester, before you were taken ill, and +don’t know of your illness yet.” + +He points again, in great agitation, at the two words. They all try +to quiet him, but he points again with increased agitation. On their +looking at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the slate +once more and writes “My Lady. For God’s sake, where?” And makes an +imploring moan. + +It is thought better that his old housekeeper should give him Lady +Dedlock’s letter, the contents of which no one knows or can surmise. +She opens it for him and puts it out for his perusal. Having read it +twice by a great effort, he turns it down so that it shall not be +seen and lies moaning. He passes into a kind of relapse or into a +swoon, and it is an hour before he opens his eyes, reclining on his +faithful and attached old servant’s arm. The doctors know that he is +best with her, and when not actively engaged about him, stand aloof. + +The slate comes into requisition again, but the word he wants to +write he cannot remember. His anxiety, his eagerness, and affliction +at this pass are pitiable to behold. It seems as if he must go mad in +the necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he +labours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom. He has written the +letter B, and there stopped. Of a sudden, in the height of his +misery, he puts Mr. before it. The old housekeeper suggests Bucket. +Thank heaven! That’s his meaning. + +Mr. Bucket is found to be downstairs, by appointment. Shall he come +up? + +There is no possibility of misconstruing Sir Leicester’s burning wish +to see him or the desire he signifies to have the room cleared of +every one but the housekeeper. It is speedily done, and Mr. Bucket +appears. Of all men upon earth, Sir Leicester seems fallen from his +high estate to place his sole trust and reliance upon this man. + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I’m sorry to see you like this. I +hope you’ll cheer up. I’m sure you will, on account of the family +credit.” + +Sir Leicester puts her letter in his hands and looks intently in his +face while he reads it. A new intelligence comes into Mr. Bucket’s +eye as he reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is +still glancing over the words, he indicates, “Sir Leicester Dedlock, +Baronet, I understand you.” + +Sir Leicester writes upon the slate. “Full forgiveness. Find—” Mr. +Bucket stops his hand. + +“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I’ll find her. But my search after +her must be begun out of hand. Not a minute must be lost.” + +With the quickness of thought, he follows Sir Leicester Dedlock’s +look towards a little box upon a table. + +“Bring it here, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet? Certainly. Open it +with one of these here keys? Certainly. The littlest key? TO be sure. +Take the notes out? So I will. Count ’em? That’s soon done. Twenty +and thirty’s fifty, and twenty’s seventy, and fifty’s one twenty, and +forty’s one sixty. Take ’em for expenses? That I’ll do, and render an +account of course. Don’t spare money? No I won’t.” + +The velocity and certainty of Mr. Bucket’s interpretation on all +these heads is little short of miraculous. Mrs. Rouncewell, who holds +the light, is giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and hands as he +starts up, furnished for his journey. + +“You’re George’s mother, old lady; that’s about what you are, I +believe?” says Mr. Bucket aside, with his hat already on and +buttoning his coat. + +“Yes, sir, I am his distressed mother.” + +“So I thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now. Well, +then, I’ll tell you something. You needn’t be distressed no more. +Your son’s all right. Now, don’t you begin a-crying, because what +you’ve got to do is to take care of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, +and you won’t do that by crying. As to your son, he’s all right, I +tell you; and he sends his loving duty, and hoping you’re the same. +He’s discharged honourable; that’s about what HE is; with no more +imputation on his character than there is on yours, and yours is a +tidy one, I’LL bet a pound. You may trust me, for I took your son. He +conducted himself in a game way, too, on that occasion; and he’s a +fine-made man, and you’re a fine-made old lady, and you’re a mother +and son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models in a caravan. +Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, what you’ve trusted to me I’ll go +through with. Don’t you be afraid of my turning out of my way, right +or left, or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave till I have found +what I go in search of. Say everything as is kind and forgiving on +your part? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I will. And I wish you +better, and these family affairs smoothed over—as, Lord, many other +family affairs equally has been, and equally will be, to the end of +time.” + +With this peroration, Mr. Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out, +looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night +in quest of the fugitive. + +His first step is to take himself to Lady Dedlock’s rooms and look +all over them for any trifling indication that may help him. The +rooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr. Bucket with a wax-light in +his hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental +inventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with +himself, would be to see a sight—which nobody DOES see, as he is +particular to lock himself in. + +“A spicy boudoir, this,” says Mr. Bucket, who feels in a manner +furbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. “Must have +cost a sight of money. Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must +have been hard put to it!” + +Opening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and +jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors, +and moralizes thereon. + +“One might suppose I was a-moving in the fashionable circles and +getting myself up for Almac’s,” says Mr. Bucket. “I begin to think I +must be a swell in the Guards without knowing it.” + +Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner +drawer. His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can +scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a +white handkerchief. + +“Hum! Let’s have a look at YOU,” says Mr. Bucket, putting down the +light. “What should YOU be kept by yourself for? What’s YOUR motive? +Are you her ladyship’s property, or somebody else’s? You’ve got a +mark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?” + +He finds it as he speaks, “Esther Summerson.” + +“Oh!” says Mr. Bucket, pausing, with his finger at his ear. “Come, +I’ll take YOU.” + +He completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has +carried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it, +glides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the +street. With a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of Sir +Leicester’s room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest +coach-stand, picks out the horse for his money, and directs to be +driven to the shooting gallery. Mr. Bucket does not claim to be a +scientific judge of horses, but he lays out a little money on the +principal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge of +the subject in the remark that when he sees a horse as can go, he +knows him. + +His knowledge is not at fault in the present instance. Clattering +over the stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully bringing his +keen eyes to bear on every slinking creature whom he passes in the +midnight streets, and even on the lights in upper windows where +people are going or gone to bed, and on all the turnings that he +rattles by, and alike on the heavy sky, and on the earth where the +snow lies thin—for something may present itself to assist him, +anywhere—he dashes to his destination at such a speed that when he +stops the horse half smothers him in a cloud of steam. + +“Unbear him half a moment to freshen him up, and I’ll be back.” + +He runs up the long wooden entry and finds the trooper smoking his +pipe. + +“I thought I should, George, after what you have gone through, my +lad. I haven’t a word to spare. Now, honour! All to save a woman. +Miss Summerson that was here when Gridley died—that was the name, I +know—all right—where does she live?” + +The trooper has just come from there and gives him the address, near +Oxford Street. + +“You won’t repent it, George. Good night!” + +He is off again, with an impression of having seen Phil sitting by +the frosty fire staring at him open-mouthed, and gallops away again, +and gets out in a cloud of steam again. + +Mr. Jarndyce, the only person up in the house, is just going to bed, +rises from his book on hearing the rapid ringing at the bell, and +comes down to the door in his dressing-gown. + +“Don’t be alarmed, sir.” In a moment his visitor is confidential with +him in the hall, has shut the door, and stands with his hand upon the +lock. “I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you before. Inspector Bucket. +Look at that handkerchief, sir, Miss Esther Summerson’s. Found it +myself put away in a drawer of Lady Dedlock’s, quarter of an hour +ago. Not a moment to lose. Matter of life or death. You know Lady +Dedlock?” + +“Yes.” + +“There has been a discovery there to-day. Family affairs have come +out. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has had a fit—apoplexy or +paralysis—and couldn’t be brought to, and precious time has been +lost. Lady Dedlock disappeared this afternoon and left a letter for +him that looks bad. Run your eye over it. Here it is!” + +Mr. Jarndyce, having read it, asks him what he thinks. + +“I don’t know. It looks like suicide. Anyways, there’s more and more +danger, every minute, of its drawing to that. I’d give a hundred +pound an hour to have got the start of the present time. Now, Mr. +Jarndyce, I am employed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to follow +her and find her, to save her and take her his forgiveness. I have +money and full power, but I want something else. I want Miss +Summerson.” + +Mr. Jarndyce in a troubled voice repeats, “Miss Summerson?” + +“Now, Mr. Jarndyce”—Mr. Bucket has read his face with the greatest +attention all along—“I speak to you as a gentleman of a humane +heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don’t often happen. +If ever delay was dangerous, it’s dangerous now; and if ever you +couldn’t afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the +time. Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound +apiece at least, have been lost since Lady Dedlock disappeared. I am +charged to find her. I am Inspector Bucket. Besides all the rest +that’s heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes, suspicion of +murder. If I follow her alone, she, being in ignorance of what Sir +Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated to me, may be driven to +desperation. But if I follow her in company with a young lady, +answering to the description of a young lady that she has a +tenderness for—I ask no question, and I say no more than that—she +will give me credit for being friendly. Let me come up with her and +be able to have the hold upon her of putting that young lady for’ard, +and I’ll save her and prevail with her if she is alive. Let me come +up with her alone—a hard matter—and I’ll do my best, but I don’t +answer for what the best may be. Time flies; it’s getting on for one +o’clock. When one strikes, there’s another hour gone, and it’s worth +a thousand pound now instead of a hundred.” + +This is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be +questioned. Mr. Jarndyce begs him to remain there while he speaks to +Miss Summerson. Mr. Bucket says he will, but acting on his usual +principle, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and keeping +his man in sight. So he remains, dodging and lurking about in the +gloom of the staircase while they confer. In a very little time Mr. +Jarndyce comes down and tells him that Miss Summerson will join him +directly and place herself under his protection to accompany him +where he pleases. Mr. Bucket, satisfied, expresses high approval and +awaits her coming at the door. + +There he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and wide. +Many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the streets; many +solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks. +But the figure that he seeks is not among them. Other solitaries he +perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places +down by the river’s level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object +drifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a +drowning hold on his attention. + +Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the +handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted +power to bring before him the place where she found it and the +night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child, +would he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are +burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched +huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind, +where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the +gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of +human torture—traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a +lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and +driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all +companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably +dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at +the great door of the Dedlock mansion. + + + + +CHAPTER LVII + +Esther’s Narrative + + +I had gone to bed and fallen asleep when my guardian knocked at the +door of my room and begged me to get up directly. On my hurrying to +speak to him and learn what had happened, he told me, after a word or +two of preparation, that there had been a discovery at Sir Leicester +Dedlock’s. That my mother had fled, that a person was now at our door +who was empowered to convey to her the fullest assurances of +affectionate protection and forgiveness if he could possibly find +her, and that I was sought for to accompany him in the hope that my +entreaties might prevail upon her if his failed. Something to this +general purpose I made out, but I was thrown into such a tumult of +alarm, and hurry and distress, that in spite of every effort I could +make to subdue my agitation, I did not seem, to myself, fully to +recover my right mind until hours had passed. + +But I dressed and wrapped up expeditiously without waking Charley or +any one and went down to Mr. Bucket, who was the person entrusted +with the secret. In taking me to him my guardian told me this, and +also explained how it was that he had come to think of me. Mr. +Bucket, in a low voice, by the light of my guardian’s candle, read to +me in the hall a letter that my mother had left upon her table; and I +suppose within ten minutes of my having been aroused I was sitting +beside him, rolling swiftly through the streets. + +His manner was very keen, and yet considerate when he explained to me +that a great deal might depend on my being able to answer, without +confusion, a few questions that he wished to ask me. These were, +chiefly, whether I had had much communication with my mother (to whom +he only referred as Lady Dedlock), when and where I had spoken with +her last, and how she had become possessed of my handkerchief. When I +had satisfied him on these points, he asked me particularly to +consider—taking time to think—whether within my knowledge there was +any one, no matter where, in whom she might be at all likely to +confide under circumstances of the last necessity. I could think of +no one but my guardian. But by and by I mentioned Mr. Boythorn. He +came into my mind as connected with his old chivalrous manner of +mentioning my mother’s name and with what my guardian had informed me +of his engagement to her sister and his unconscious connexion with +her unhappy story. + +My companion had stopped the driver while we held this conversation, +that we might the better hear each other. He now told him to go on +again and said to me, after considering within himself for a few +moments, that he had made up his mind how to proceed. He was quite +willing to tell me what his plan was, but I did not feel clear enough +to understand it. + +We had not driven very far from our lodgings when we stopped in a +by-street at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. Mr. Bucket +took me in and sat me in an arm-chair by a bright fire. It was now +past one, as I saw by the clock against the wall. Two police +officers, looking in their perfectly neat uniform not at all like +people who were up all night, were quietly writing at a desk; and the +place seemed very quiet altogether, except for some beating and +calling out at distant doors underground, to which nobody paid any +attention. + +A third man in uniform, whom Mr. Bucket called and to whom he +whispered his instructions, went out; and then the two others advised +together while one wrote from Mr. Bucket’s subdued dictation. It was +a description of my mother that they were busy with, for Mr. Bucket +brought it to me when it was done and read it in a whisper. It was +very accurate indeed. + +The second officer, who had attended to it closely, then copied it +out and called in another man in uniform (there were several in an +outer room), who took it up and went away with it. All this was done +with the greatest dispatch and without the waste of a moment; yet +nobody was at all hurried. As soon as the paper was sent out upon its +travels, the two officers resumed their former quiet work of writing +with neatness and care. Mr. Bucket thoughtfully came and warmed the +soles of his boots, first one and then the other, at the fire. + +“Are you well wrapped up, Miss Summerson?” he asked me as his eyes +met mine. “It’s a desperate sharp night for a young lady to be out +in.” + +I told him I cared for no weather and was warmly clothed. + +“It may be a long job,” he observed; “but so that it ends well, never +mind, miss.” + +“I pray to heaven it may end well!” said I. + +He nodded comfortingly. “You see, whatever you do, don’t you go and +fret yourself. You keep yourself cool and equal for anything that may +happen, and it’ll be the better for you, the better for me, the +better for Lady Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester Dedlock, +Baronet.” + +He was really very kind and gentle, and as he stood before the fire +warming his boots and rubbing his face with his forefinger, I felt a +confidence in his sagacity which reassured me. It was not yet a +quarter to two when I heard horses’ feet and wheels outside. “Now, +Miss Summerson,” said he, “we are off, if you please!” + +He gave me his arm, and the two officers courteously bowed me out, +and we found at the door a phaeton or barouche with a postilion and +post horses. Mr. Bucket handed me in and took his own seat on the +box. The man in uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage then +handed him up a dark lantern at his request, and when he had given a +few directions to the driver, we rattled away. + +I was far from sure that I was not in a dream. We rattled with great +rapidity through such a labyrinth of streets that I soon lost all +idea where we were, except that we had crossed and re-crossed the +river, and still seemed to be traversing a low-lying, waterside, +dense neighbourhood of narrow thoroughfares chequered by docks and +basins, high piles of warehouses, swing-bridges, and masts of ships. +At length we stopped at the corner of a little slimy turning, which +the wind from the river, rushing up it, did not purify; and I saw my +companion, by the light of his lantern, in conference with several +men who looked like a mixture of police and sailors. Against the +mouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, on which I +could discern the words, “Found Drowned”; and this and an inscription +about drags possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in +our visit to that place. + +I had no need to remind myself that I was not there by the indulgence +of any feeling of mine to increase the difficulties of the search, or +to lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. I remained quiet, but +what I suffered in that dreadful spot I never can forget. And still +it was like the horror of a dream. A man yet dark and muddy, in long +swollen sodden boots and a hat like them, was called out of a boat +and whispered with Mr. Bucket, who went away with him down some +slippery steps—as if to look at something secret that he had to +show. They came back, wiping their hands upon their coats, after +turning over something wet; but thank God it was not what I feared! + +After some further conference, Mr. Bucket (whom everybody seemed to +know and defer to) went in with the others at a door and left me in +the carriage, while the driver walked up and down by his horses to +warm himself. The tide was coming in, as I judged from the sound it +made, and I could hear it break at the end of the alley with a little +rush towards me. It never did so—and I thought it did so, hundreds +of times, in what can have been at the most a quarter of an hour, and +probably was less—but the thought shuddered through me that it would +cast my mother at the horses’ feet. + +Mr. Bucket came out again, exhorting the others to be vigilant, +darkened his lantern, and once more took his seat. “Don’t you be +alarmed, Miss Summerson, on account of our coming down here,” he +said, turning to me. “I only want to have everything in train and to +know that it is in train by looking after it myself. Get on, my lad!” + +We appeared to retrace the way we had come. Not that I had taken note +of any particular objects in my perturbed state of mind, but judging +from the general character of the streets. We called at another +office or station for a minute and crossed the river again. During +the whole of this time, and during the whole search, my companion, +wrapped up on the box, never relaxed in his vigilance a single +moment; but when we crossed the bridge he seemed, if possible, to be +more on the alert than before. He stood up to look over the parapet, +he alighted and went back after a shadowy female figure that flitted +past us, and he gazed into the profound black pit of water with a +face that made my heart die within me. The river had a fearful look, +so overcast and secret, creeping away so fast between the low flat +lines of shore—so heavy with indistinct and awful shapes, both of +substance and shadow; so death-like and mysterious. I have seen it +many times since then, by sunlight and by moonlight, but never free +from the impressions of that journey. In my memory the lights upon +the bridge are always burning dim, the cutting wind is eddying round +the homeless woman whom we pass, the monotonous wheels are whirling +on, and the light of the carriage-lamps reflected back looks palely +in upon me—a face rising out of the dreaded water. + +Clattering and clattering through the empty streets, we came at +length from the pavement on to dark smooth roads and began to leave +the houses behind us. After a while I recognized the familiar way to +Saint Albans. At Barnet fresh horses were ready for us, and we +changed and went on. It was very cold indeed, and the open country +was white with snow, though none was falling then. + +“An old acquaintance of yours, this road, Miss Summerson,” said Mr. +Bucket cheerfully. + +“Yes,” I returned. “Have you gathered any intelligence?” + +“None that can be quite depended on as yet,” he answered, “but it’s +early times as yet.” + +He had gone into every late or early public-house where there +was a light (they were not a few at that time, the road being +then much frequented by drovers) and had got down to talk to the +turnpike-keepers. I had heard him ordering drink, and chinking money, +and making himself agreeable and merry everywhere; but whenever he +took his seat upon the box again, his face resumed its watchful +steady look, and he always said to the driver in the same business +tone, “Get on, my lad!” + +With all these stoppages, it was between five and six o’clock and we +were yet a few miles short of Saint Albans when he came out of one of +these houses and handed me in a cup of tea. + +“Drink it, Miss Summerson, it’ll do you good. You’re beginning to get +more yourself now, ain’t you?” + +I thanked him and said I hoped so. + +“You was what you may call stunned at first,” he returned; “and Lord, +no wonder! Don’t speak loud, my dear. It’s all right. She’s on +ahead.” + +I don’t know what joyful exclamation I made or was going to make, but +he put up his finger and I stopped myself. + +“Passed through here on foot this evening about eight or nine. I +heard of her first at the archway toll, over at Highgate, but +couldn’t make quite sure. Traced her all along, on and off. Picked +her up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she’s before us +now, safe. Take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. Now, if you +wasn’t brought up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can +catch half a crown in your t’other hand. One, two, three, and there +you are! Now, my lad, try a gallop!” + +We were soon in Saint Albans and alighted a little before day, when I +was just beginning to arrange and comprehend the occurrences of the +night and really to believe that they were not a dream. Leaving the +carriage at the posting-house and ordering fresh horses to be ready, +my companion gave me his arm, and we went towards home. + +“As this is your regular abode, Miss Summerson, you see,” he +observed, “I should like to know whether you’ve been asked for by any +stranger answering the description, or whether Mr. Jarndyce has. I +don’t much expect it, but it might be.” + +As we ascended the hill, he looked about him with a sharp eye—the +day was now breaking—and reminded me that I had come down it one +night, as I had reason for remembering, with my little servant and +poor Jo, whom he called Toughey. + +I wondered how he knew that. + +“When you passed a man upon the road, just yonder, you know,” said +Mr. Bucket. + +Yes, I remembered that too, very well. + +“That was me,” said Mr. Bucket. + +Seeing my surprise, he went on, “I drove down in a gig that afternoon +to look after that boy. You might have heard my wheels when you came +out to look after him yourself, for I was aware of you and your +little maid going up when I was walking the horse down. Making an +inquiry or two about him in the town, I soon heard what company he +was in and was coming among the brick-fields to look for him when I +observed you bringing him home here.” + +“Had he committed any crime?” I asked. + +“None was charged against him,” said Mr. Bucket, coolly lifting off +his hat, “but I suppose he wasn’t over-particular. No. What I wanted +him for was in connexion with keeping this very matter of Lady +Dedlock quiet. He had been making his tongue more free than welcome +as to a small accidental service he had been paid for by the deceased +Mr. Tulkinghorn; and it wouldn’t do, at any sort of price, to have +him playing those games. So having warned him out of London, I made +an afternoon of it to warn him to keep out of it now he WAS away, and +go farther from it, and maintain a bright look-out that I didn’t +catch him coming back again.” + +“Poor creature!” said I. + +“Poor enough,” assented Mr. Bucket, “and trouble enough, and well +enough away from London, or anywhere else. I was regularly turned on +my back when I found him taken up by your establishment, I do assure +you.” + +I asked him why. “Why, my dear?” said Mr. Bucket. “Naturally there +was no end to his tongue then. He might as well have been born with a +yard and a half of it, and a remnant over.” + +Although I remember this conversation now, my head was in confusion +at the time, and my power of attention hardly did more than enable me +to understand that he entered into these particulars to divert me. +With the same kind intention, manifestly, he often spoke to me of +indifferent things, while his face was busy with the one object that +we had in view. He still pursued this subject as we turned in at the +garden-gate. + +“Ah!” said Mr. Bucket. “Here we are, and a nice retired place it is. +Puts a man in mind of the country house in the Woodpecker-tapping, +that was known by the smoke which so gracefully curled. They’re early +with the kitchen fire, and that denotes good servants. But what +you’ve always got to be careful of with servants is who comes to see +’em; you never know what they’re up to if you don’t know that. And +another thing, my dear. Whenever you find a young man behind the +kitchen-door, you give that young man in charge on suspicion of being +secreted in a dwelling-house with an unlawful purpose.” + +We were now in front of the house; he looked attentively and closely +at the gravel for footprints before he raised his eyes to the +windows. + +“Do you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room +when he’s on a visit here, Miss Summerson?” he inquired, glancing at +Mr. Skimpole’s usual chamber. + +“You know Mr. Skimpole!” said I. + +“What do you call him again?” returned Mr. Bucket, bending down his +ear. “Skimpole, is it? I’ve often wondered what his name might be. +Skimpole. Not John, I should say, nor yet Jacob?” + +“Harold,” I told him. + +“Harold. Yes. He’s a queer bird is Harold,” said Mr. Bucket, eyeing +me with great expression. + +“He is a singular character,” said I. + +“No idea of money,” observed Mr. Bucket. “He takes it, though!” + +I involuntarily returned for answer that I perceived Mr. Bucket knew +him. + +“Why, now I’ll tell you, Miss Summerson,” he replied. “Your mind will +be all the better for not running on one point too continually, and +I’ll tell you for a change. It was him as pointed out to me where +Toughey was. I made up my mind that night to come to the door and ask +for Toughey, if that was all; but willing to try a move or so first, +if any such was on the board, I just pitched up a morsel of gravel at +that window where I saw a shadow. As soon as Harold opens it and I +have had a look at him, thinks I, you’re the man for me. So I +smoothed him down a bit about not wanting to disturb the family after +they was gone to bed and about its being a thing to be regretted that +charitable young ladies should harbour vagrants; and then, when I +pretty well understood his ways, I said I should consider a fypunnote +well bestowed if I could relieve the premises of Toughey without +causing any noise or trouble. Then says he, lifting up his eyebrows +in the gayest way, ‘It’s no use mentioning a fypunnote to me, my +friend, because I’m a mere child in such matters and have no idea of +money.’ Of course I understood what his taking it so easy meant; and +being now quite sure he was the man for me, I wrapped the note round +a little stone and threw it up to him. Well! He laughs and beams, and +looks as innocent as you like, and says, ‘But I don’t know the value +of these things. What am I to DO with this?’ ‘Spend it, sir,’ says I. +‘But I shall be taken in,’ he says, ‘they won’t give me the right +change, I shall lose it, it’s no use to me.’ Lord, you never saw such +a face as he carried it with! Of course he told me where to find +Toughey, and I found him.” + +I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr. Skimpole +towards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his childish +innocence. + +“Bounds, my dear?” returned Mr. Bucket. “Bounds? Now, Miss Summerson, +I’ll give you a piece of advice that your husband will find useful +when you are happily married and have got a family about you. +Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in +all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are +dead certain to collar it if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to +you ‘In worldly matters I’m a child,’ you consider that that person +is only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have +got that person’s number, and it’s Number One. Now, I am not a +poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a +company, but I’m a practical one, and that’s my experience. So’s this +rule. Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I +never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution +to the unwary, my dear, I take the liberty of pulling this here bell, +and so go back to our business.” + +I believe it had not been for a moment out of his mind, any more than +it had been out of my mind, or out of his face. The whole household +were amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the +morning, and so accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by +my inquiries. No one, however, had been there. It could not be +doubted that this was the truth. + +“Then, Miss Summerson,” said my companion, “we can’t be too soon at +the cottage where those brickmakers are to be found. Most inquiries +there I leave to you, if you’ll be so good as to make ’em. The +naturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is your own +way.” + +We set off again immediately. On arriving at the cottage, we found it +shut up and apparently deserted, but one of the neighbours who knew +me and who came out when I was trying to make some one hear informed +me that the two women and their husbands now lived together in +another house, made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin +of the piece of ground where the kilns were and where the long rows +of bricks were drying. We lost no time in repairing to this place, +which was within a few hundred yards; and as the door stood ajar, I +pushed it open. + +There were only three of them sitting at breakfast, the child lying +asleep on a bed in the corner. It was Jenny, the mother of the dead +child, who was absent. The other woman rose on seeing me; and the +men, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a +morose nod of recognition. A look passed between them when Mr. Bucket +followed me in, and I was surprised to see that the woman evidently +knew him. + +I had asked leave to enter of course. Liz (the only name by which I +knew her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat down on a stool +near the fire, and Mr. Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now that +I had to speak and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I +became conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to +begin, and I could not help bursting into tears. + +“Liz,” said I, “I have come a long way in the night and through the +snow to inquire after a lady—” + +“Who has been here, you know,” Mr. Bucket struck in, addressing the +whole group with a composed propitiatory face; “that’s the lady the +young lady means. The lady that was here last night, you know.” + +“And who told YOU as there was anybody here?” inquired Jenny’s +husband, who had made a surly stop in his eating to listen and now +measured him with his eye. + +“A person of the name of Michael Jackson, with a blue welveteen +waistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl buttons,” Mr. Bucket +immediately answered. + +“He had as good mind his own business, whoever he is,” growled the +man. + +“He’s out of employment, I believe,” said Mr. Bucket apologetically +for Michael Jackson, “and so gets talking.” + +The woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her +hand upon its broken back, looking at me. I thought she would have +spoken to me privately if she had dared. She was still in this +attitude of uncertainty when her husband, who was eating with a lump +of bread and fat in one hand and his clasp-knife in the other, struck +the handle of his knife violently on the table and told her with an +oath to mind HER own business at any rate and sit down. + +“I should like to have seen Jenny very much,” said I, “for I am sure +she would have told me all she could about this lady, whom I am very +anxious indeed—you cannot think how anxious—to overtake. Will Jenny +be here soon? Where is she?” + +The woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another +oath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He left it to +Jenny’s husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the +latter turned his shaggy head towards me. + +“I’m not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you’ve heerd +me say afore now, I think, miss. I let their places be, and it’s +curious they can’t let my place be. There’d be a pretty shine made if +I was to go a-wisitin THEM, I think. Howsoever, I don’t so much +complain of you as of some others, and I’m agreeable to make you a +civil answer, though I give notice that I’m not a-going to be drawed +like a badger. Will Jenny be here soon? No she won’t. Where is she? +She’s gone up to Lunnun.” + +“Did she go last night?” I asked. + +“Did she go last night? Ah! She went last night,” he answered with a +sulky jerk of his head. + +“But was she here when the lady came? And what did the lady say to +her? And where is the lady gone? I beg and pray you to be so kind as +to tell me,” said I, “for I am in great distress to know.” + +“If my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm—” the +woman timidly began. + +“Your master,” said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow +emphasis, “will break your neck if you meddle with wot don’t concern +you.” + +After another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me +again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness. + +“Wos Jenny here when the lady come? Yes, she wos here when the lady +come. Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I’ll tell you wot the lady +said to her. She said, ‘You remember me as come one time to talk to +you about the young lady as had been a-wisiting of you? You remember +me as give you somethink handsome for a handkercher wot she had +left?’ Ah, she remembered. So we all did. Well, then, wos that young +lady up at the house now? No, she warn’t up at the house now. Well, +then, lookee here. The lady was upon a journey all alone, strange as +we might think it, and could she rest herself where you’re a setten +for a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then she went—it +might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty +minutes past twelve; we ain’t got no watches here to know the time +by, nor yet clocks. Where did she go? I don’t know where she go’d. +She went one way, and Jenny went another; one went right to Lunnun, +and t’other went right from it. That’s all about it. Ask this man. He +heerd it all, and see it all. He knows.” + +The other man repeated, “That’s all about it.” + +“Was the lady crying?” I inquired. + +“Devil a bit,” returned the first man. “Her shoes was the worse, and +her clothes was the worse, but she warn’t—not as I see.” + +The woman sat with her arms crossed and her eyes upon the ground. Her +husband had turned his seat a little so as to face her and kept his +hammer-like hand upon the table as if it were in readiness to execute +his threat if she disobeyed him. + +“I hope you will not object to my asking your wife,” said I, “how the +lady looked.” + +“Come, then!” he gruffly cried to her. “You hear what she says. Cut +it short and tell her.” + +“Bad,” replied the woman. “Pale and exhausted. Very bad.” + +“Did she speak much?” + +“Not much, but her voice was hoarse.” + +She answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave. + +“Was she faint?” said I. “Did she eat or drink here?” + +“Go on!” said the husband in answer to her look. “Tell her and cut it +short.” + +“She had a little water, miss, and Jenny fetched her some bread and +tea. But she hardly touched it.” + +“And when she went from here,” I was proceeding, when Jenny’s husband +impatiently took me up. + +“When she went from here, she went right away nor’ard by the high +road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn’t so. Now, +there’s the end. That’s all about it.” + +I glanced at my companion, and finding that he had already risen and +was ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took +my leave. The woman looked full at Mr. Bucket as he went out, and he +looked full at her. + +“Now, Miss Summerson,” he said to me as we walked quickly away. +“They’ve got her ladyship’s watch among ’em. That’s a positive fact.” + +“You saw it?” I exclaimed. + +“Just as good as saw it,” he returned. “Else why should he talk about +his ‘twenty minutes past’ and about his having no watch to tell the +time by? Twenty minutes! He don’t usually cut his time so fine as +that. If he comes to half-hours, it’s as much as HE does. Now, you +see, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it. I think +she gave it him. Now, what should she give it him for? What should +she give it him for?” + +He repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on, +appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his +mind. + +“If time could be spared,” said Mr. Bucket, “which is the only thing +that can’t be spared in this case, I might get it out of that woman; +but it’s too doubtful a chance to trust to under present +circumstances. They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any +fool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and +scarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that +ill uses her through thick and thin. There’s something kept back. +It’s a pity but what we had seen the other woman.” + +I regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and I felt +sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine. + +“It’s possible, Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it, +“that her ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and +it’s possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. It don’t +come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it’s on the cards. +Now, I don’t take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Leicester +Dedlock, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don’t see my way to the +usefulness of it at present. No! So far our road, Miss Summerson, is +for’ard—straight ahead—and keeping everything quiet!” + +We called at home once more that I might send a hasty note to my +guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage. +The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we +were on the road again in a few minutes. + +It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air +was so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall +that we could see but a very little way in any direction. Although it +was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it +churned—with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells—under +the hoofs of the horses into mire and water. They sometimes slipped +and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a +standstill to rest them. One horse fell three times in this first +stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver had to +dismount from his saddle and lead him at last. + +I could eat nothing and could not sleep, and I grew so nervous under +those delays and the slow pace at which we travelled that I had an +unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my +companion’s better sense, however, I remained where I was. All this +time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was +engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to, addressing +people whom he had never beheld before as old acquaintances, running +in to warm himself at every fire he saw, talking and drinking and +shaking hands at every bar and tap, friendly with every waggoner, +wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker, yet never seeming to lose +time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady +face and his business-like “Get on, my lad!” + +When we were changing horses the next time, he came from the +stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping off +him—plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had been +doing frequently since we left Saint Albans—and spoke to me at the +carriage side. + +“Keep up your spirits. It’s certainly true that she came on here, +Miss Summerson. There’s not a doubt of the dress by this time, and +the dress has been seen here.” + +“Still on foot?” said I. + +“Still on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point +she’s aiming at, and yet I don’t like his living down in her own part +of the country neither.” + +“I know so little,” said I. “There may be some one else nearer here, +of whom I never heard.” + +“That’s true. But whatever you do, don’t you fall a-crying, my dear; +and don’t you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my +lad!” + +The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early, +and it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I had never +seen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the +ploughed grounds or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had +been out, it presented itself as an indefinite period of great +duration, and I seemed, in a strange way, never to have been free +from the anxiety under which I then laboured. + +As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost +confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people, +but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his +finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of +one long weary stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of +coaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had +seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their +replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of +his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but +he seemed perplexed now when he said, “Get on, my lad!” + +At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track +of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing, +he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for +another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an +unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This +corroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look at +direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a +quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But I was not to +be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the +next stage might set us right again. + +The next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue. +There was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable +substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before +I knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the +carriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the +horses were making ready, I thought it would be uncharitable to +refuse. They took me upstairs to a warm room and left me there. + +It was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways. On +one side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were +unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage, +and beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was +heavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark pine-trees. +Their branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off +in wet heaps while I stood at the window. Night was setting in, and +its bleakness was enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire +glowing and gleaming in the window-pane. As I looked among the stems +of the trees and followed the discoloured marks in the snow where the +thaw was sinking into it and undermining it, I thought of the +motherly face brightly set off by daughters that had just now +welcomed me and of MY mother lying down in such a wood to die. + +I was frightened when I found them all about me, but I remembered +that before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was +some little comfort. They cushioned me up on a large sofa by the +fire, and then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no +further to-night, but must go to bed. But this put me into such a +tremble lest they should detain me there that she soon recalled her +words and compromised for a rest of half an hour. + +A good endearing creature she was. She and her three fair girls, all +so busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while Mr. +Bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do it when +a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was +very unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could take some toast +and some hot negus; and as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made +some recompense. + +Punctual to the time, at the half-hour’s end the carriage came +rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed, +comforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any +more. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all, +the youngest daughter—a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the +first married, they had told me—got upon the carriage step, reached +in, and kissed me. I have never seen her, from that hour, but I think +of her to this hour as my friend. + +The transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright +and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and +again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with +toil enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had +been, and the stage was only nine miles. My companion smoking on the +box—I had thought at the last inn of begging him to do so when I saw +him standing at a great fire in a comfortable cloud of tobacco—was +as vigilant as ever and as quickly down and up again when we came to +any human abode or any human creature. He had lighted his little dark +lantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, for we had lamps to +the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me to see that +I was doing well. There was a folding-window to the carriage-head, +but I never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope. + +We came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not +recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change, but I +knew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers that he +had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back +in my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an +excited and quite different man. + +“What is it?” said I, starting. “Is she here?” + +“No, no. Don’t deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody’s here. But I’ve got +it!” + +The crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in +ridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face and get his +breath before he spoke to me. + +“Now, Miss Summerson,” said he, beating his finger on the apron, +“don’t you be disappointed at what I’m a-going to do. You know me. +I’m Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We’ve come a long way; +never mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!” + +There was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the +stables to know if he meant up or down. + +“Up, I tell you! Up! Ain’t it English? Up!” + +“Up?” said I, astonished. “To London! Are we going back?” + +“Miss Summerson,” he answered, “back. Straight back as a die. You +know me. Don’t be afraid. I’ll follow the other, by G——” + +“The other?” I repeated. “Who?” + +“You called her Jenny, didn’t you? I’ll follow her. Bring those two +pair out here for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!” + +“You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not +abandon her on such a night and in such a state of mind as I know her +to be in!” said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand. + +“You are right, my dear, I won’t. But I’ll follow the other. Look +alive here with them horses. Send a man for’ard in the saddle to the +next stage, and let him send another for’ard again, and order four +on, up, right through. My darling, don’t you be afraid!” + +These orders and the way in which he ran about the yard urging them +caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me +than the sudden change. But in the height of the confusion, a mounted +man galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to +with great speed. + +“My dear,” said Mr. Bucket, jumping to his seat and looking in again, +“—you’ll excuse me if I’m too familiar—don’t you fret and worry +yourself no more than you can help. I say nothing else at present; +but you know me, my dear; now, don’t you?” + +I endeavoured to say that I knew he was far more capable than I of +deciding what we ought to do, but was he sure that this was right? +Could I not go forward by myself in search of—I grasped his hand +again in my distress and whispered it to him—of my own mother. + +“My dear,” he answered, “I know, I know, and would I put you wrong, +do you think? Inspector Bucket. Now you know me, don’t you?” + +What could I say but yes! + +“Then you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me +for standing by you, no less than by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. +Now, are you right there?” + +“All right, sir!” + +“Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads!” + +We were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come, tearing +up the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn up by a +waterwheel. + + + + +CHAPTER LVIII + +A Wintry Day and Night + + +Still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the Dedlock town house +carries itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur. There +are powdered heads from time to time in the little windows of the +hall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky; +and in the same conservatory there is peach blossom turning itself +exotically to the great hall fire from the nipping weather out of +doors. It is given out that my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire, +but is expected to return presently. + +Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire. +It persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that that +poor unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It hears, +my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world of +five miles round quite merry. Not to know that there is something +wrong at the Dedlocks’ is to augur yourself unknown. One of the +peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats is already apprised +of all the principal circumstances that will come out before the +Lords on Sir Leicester’s application for a bill of divorce. + +At Blaze and Sparkle’s the jewellers and at Sheen and Gloss’s the +mercers, it is and will be for several hours the topic of the age, +the feature of the century. The patronesses of those establishments, +albeit so loftily inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured +there as any other article of the stock-in-trade, are perfectly +understood in this new fashion by the rawest hand behind the counter. +“Our people, Mr. Jones,” said Blaze and Sparkle to the hand in +question on engaging him, “our people, sir, are sheep—mere sheep. +Where two or three marked ones go, all the rest follow. Keep those +two or three in your eye, Mr. Jones, and you have the flock.” So, +likewise, Sheen and Gloss to THEIR Jones, in reference to knowing +where to have the fashionable people and how to bring what they +(Sheen and Gloss) choose into fashion. On similar unerring +principles, Mr. Sladdery the librarian, and indeed the great farmer +of gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, “Why yes, sir, there +certainly ARE reports concerning Lady Dedlock, very current indeed +among my high connexion, sir. You see, my high connexion must talk +about something, sir; and it’s only to get a subject into vogue with +one or two ladies I could name to make it go down with the whole. +Just what I should have done with those ladies, sir, in the case of +any novelty you had left to me to bring in, they have done of +themselves in this case through knowing Lady Dedlock and being +perhaps a little innocently jealous of her too, sir. You’ll find, +sir, that this topic will be very popular among my high connexion. If +it had been a speculation, sir, it would have brought money. And when +I say so, you may trust to my being right, sir, for I have made it my +business to study my high connexion and to be able to wind it up like +a clock, sir.” + +Thus rumour thrives in the capital, and will not go down into +Lincolnshire. By half-past five, post meridian, Horse Guards’ time, +it has even elicited a new remark from the Honourable Mr. Stables, +which bids fair to outshine the old one, on which he has so long +rested his colloquial reputation. This sparkling sally is to the +effect that although he always knew she was the best-groomed woman in +the stud, he had no idea she was a bolter. It is immensely received +in turf-circles. + +At feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she has often graced, and +among constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still the +prevalent subject. What is it? Who is it? When was it? Where was it? +How was it? She is discussed by her dear friends with all the +genteelest slang in vogue, with the last new word, the last new +manner, the last new drawl, and the perfection of polite +indifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is that it is found +to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who never +came out before—positively say things! William Buffy carries one of +these smartnesses from the place where he dines down to the House, +where the Whip for his party hands it about with his snuff-box to +keep men together who want to be off, with such effect that the +Speaker (who has had it privately insinuated into his own ear under +the corner of his wig) cries, “Order at the bar!” three times without +making an impression. + +And not the least amazing circumstance connected with her being +vaguely the town talk is that people hovering on the confines of Mr. +Sladdery’s high connexion, people who know nothing and ever did know +nothing about her, think it essential to their reputation to pretend +that she is their topic too, and to retail her at second-hand with +the last new word and the last new manner, and the last new drawl, +and the last new polite indifference, and all the rest of it, all at +second-hand but considered equal to new in inferior systems and to +fainter stars. If there be any man of letters, art, or science among +these little dealers, how noble in him to support the feeble sisters +on such majestic crutches! + +So goes the wintry day outside the Dedlock mansion. How within it? + +Sir Leicester, lying in his bed, can speak a little, though with +difficulty and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence and to rest, +and they have given him some opiate to lull his pain, for his old +enemy is very hard with him. He is never asleep, though sometimes he +seems to fall into a dull waking doze. He caused his bedstead to be +moved out nearer to the window when he heard it was such inclement +weather, and his head to be so adjusted that he could see the driving +snow and sleet. He watches it as it falls, throughout the whole +wintry day. + +Upon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand is +at the pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what he +would write and whispers, “No, he has not come back yet, Sir +Leicester. It was late last night when he went. He has been but a +little time gone yet.” + +He withdraws his hand and falls to looking at the sleet and snow +again until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so thick and +fast that he is obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the giddy +whirl of white flakes and icy blots. + +He began to look at them as soon as it was light. The day is not yet +far spent when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms should +be prepared for her. It is very cold and wet. Let there be good +fires. Let them know that she is expected. Please see to it yourself. +He writes to this purpose on his slate, and Mrs. Rouncewell with a +heavy heart obeys. + +“For I dread, George,” the old lady says to her son, who waits below +to keep her company when she has a little leisure, “I dread, my dear, +that my Lady will never more set foot within these walls.” + +“That’s a bad presentiment, mother.” + +“Nor yet within the walls of Chesney Wold, my dear.” + +“That’s worse. But why, mother?” + +“When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, she looked to me—and I may +say at me too—as if the step on the Ghost’s Walk had almost walked +her down.” + +“Come, come! You alarm yourself with old-story fears, mother.” + +“No I don’t, my dear. No I don’t. It’s going on for sixty year that I +have been in this family, and I never had any fears for it before. +But it’s breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock family is +breaking up.” + +“I hope not, mother.” + +“I am thankful I have lived long enough to be with Sir Leicester in +this illness and trouble, for I know I am not too old nor too useless +to be a welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place would be. +But the step on the Ghost’s Walk will walk my Lady down, George; it +has been many a day behind her, and now it will pass her and go on.” + +“Well, mother dear, I say again, I hope not.” + +“Ah, so do I, George,” the old lady returns, shaking her head and +parting her folded hands. “But if my fears come true, and he has to +know it, who will tell him!” + +“Are these her rooms?” + +“These are my Lady’s rooms, just as she left them.” + +“Why, now,” says the trooper, glancing round him and speaking in a +lower voice, “I begin to understand how you come to think as you do +think, mother. Rooms get an awful look about them when they are +fitted up, like these, for one person you are used to see in them, +and that person is away under any shadow, let alone being God knows +where.” + +He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow the great final one, +so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper +what your room and what mine must one day be. My Lady’s state has a +hollow look, thus gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment, +where Mr. Bucket last night made his secret perquisition, the traces +of her dresses and her ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to +reflect them when they were a portion of herself, have a desolate and +vacant air. Dark and cold as the wintry day is, it is darker and +colder in these deserted chambers than in many a hut that will barely +exclude the weather; and though the servants heap fires in the grates +and set the couches and the chairs within the warm glass screens that +let their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest corners, there is +a heavy cloud upon the rooms which no light will dispel. + +The old housekeeper and her son remain until the preparations are +complete, and then she returns upstairs. Volumnia has taken Mrs. +Rouncewell’s place in the meantime, though pearl necklaces and rouge +pots, however calculated to embellish Bath, are but indifferent +comforts to the invalid under present circumstances. Volumnia, not +being supposed to know (and indeed not knowing) what is the matter, +has found it a ticklish task to offer appropriate observations and +consequently has supplied their place with distracting smoothings of +the bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe, vigilant peeping at +her kinsman’s eyes, and one exasperating whisper to herself of, “He +is asleep.” In disproof of which superfluous remark Sir Leicester has +indignantly written on the slate, “I am not.” + +Yielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside to the quaint old +housekeeper, Volumnia sits at a table a little removed, +sympathetically sighing. Sir Leicester watches the sleet and snow and +listens for the returning steps that he expects. In the ears of his +old servant, looking as if she had stepped out of an old +picture-frame to attend a summoned Dedlock to another world, the +silence is fraught with echoes of her own words, “Who will tell him!” + +He has been under his valet’s hands this morning to be made +presentable and is as well got up as the circumstances will allow. He +is propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual +manner, his linen is arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a +responsible dressing-gown. His eye-glass and his watch are ready to +his hand. It is necessary—less to his own dignity now perhaps than +for her sake—that he should be seen as little disturbed and as much +himself as may be. Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a Dedlock, +is no exceptional case. He keeps her here, there is little doubt, to +prevent her talking somewhere else. He is very ill, but he makes his +present stand against distress of mind and body most courageously. + +The fair Volumnia, being one of those sprightly girls who cannot long +continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the dragon +Boredom, soon indicates the approach of that monster with a series of +undisguisable yawns. Finding it impossible to suppress those yawns by +any other process than conversation, she compliments Mrs. Rouncewell +on her son, declaring that he positively is one of the finest figures +she ever saw and as soldierly a looking person, she should think, as +what’s his name, her favourite Life Guardsman—the man she dotes on, +the dearest of creatures—who was killed at Waterloo. + +Sir Leicester hears this tribute with so much surprise and stares +about him in such a confused way that Mrs. Rouncewell feels it +necessary to explain. + +“Miss Dedlock don’t speak of my eldest son, Sir Leicester, but my +youngest. I have found him. He has come home.” + +Sir Leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry. “George? Your son +George come home, Mrs. Rouncewell?” + +The old housekeeper wipes her eyes. “Thank God. Yes, Sir Leicester.” + +Does this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so long +gone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes? Does he +think, “Shall I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely after +this, there being fewer hours in her case than there are years in +his?” + +It is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and he +does. In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough to be +understood. + +“Why did you not tell me, Mrs. Rouncewell?” + +“It happened only yesterday, Sir Leicester, and I doubted your being +well enough to be talked to of such things.” + +Besides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with her little scream that +nobody was to have known of his being Mrs. Rouncewell’s son and that +she was not to have told. But Mrs. Rouncewell protests, with warmth +enough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told Sir +Leicester as soon as he got better. + +“Where is your son George, Mrs. Rouncewell?” asks Sir Leicester, + +Mrs. Rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the +doctor’s injunctions, replies, in London. + +“Where in London?” + +Mrs. Rouncewell is constrained to admit that he is in the house. + +“Bring him here to my room. Bring him directly.” + +The old lady can do nothing but go in search of him. Sir Leicester, +with such power of movement as he has, arranges himself a little to +receive him. When he has done so, he looks out again at the falling +sleet and snow and listens again for the returning steps. A quantity +of straw has been tumbled down in the street to deaden the noises +there, and she might be driven to the door perhaps without his +hearing wheels. + +He is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his newer and minor +surprise, when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her trooper +son. Mr. George approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow, +squares his chest, and stands, with his face flushed, very heartily +ashamed of himself. + +“Good heaven, and it is really George Rouncewell!” exclaims Sir +Leicester. “Do you remember me, George?” + +The trooper needs to look at him and to separate this sound from that +sound before he knows what he has said, but doing this and being a +little helped by his mother, he replies, “I must have a very bad +memory, indeed, Sir Leicester, if I failed to remember you.” + +“When I look at you, George Rouncewell,” Sir Leicester observes with +difficulty, “I see something of a boy at Chesney Wold—I remember +well—very well.” + +He looks at the trooper until tears come into his eyes, and then he +looks at the sleet and snow again. + +“I ask your pardon, Sir Leicester,” says the trooper, “but would you +accept of my arms to raise you up? You would lie easier, Sir +Leicester, if you would allow me to move you.” + +“If you please, George Rouncewell; if you will be so good.” + +The trooper takes him in his arms like a child, lightly raises him, +and turns him with his face more towards the window. “Thank you. You +have your mother’s gentleness,” returns Sir Leicester, “and your own +strength. Thank you.” + +He signs to him with his hand not to go away. George quietly remains +at the bedside, waiting to be spoken to. + +“Why did you wish for secrecy?” It takes Sir Leicester some time to +ask this. + +“Truly I am not much to boast of, Sir Leicester, and I—I should +still, Sir Leicester, if you was not so indisposed—which I hope you +will not be long—I should still hope for the favour of being allowed +to remain unknown in general. That involves explanations not very +hard to be guessed at, not very well timed here, and not very +creditable to myself. However opinions may differ on a variety of +subjects, I should think it would be universally agreed, Sir +Leicester, that I am not much to boast of.” + +“You have been a soldier,” observes Sir Leicester, “and a faithful +one.” + +George makes his military bow. “As far as that goes, Sir Leicester, I +have done my duty under discipline, and it was the least I could do.” + +“You find me,” says Sir Leicester, whose eyes are much attracted +towards him, “far from well, George Rouncewell.” + +“I am very sorry both to hear it and to see it, Sir Leicester.” + +“I am sure you are. No. In addition to my older malady, I have had a +sudden and bad attack. Something that deadens,” making an endeavour +to pass one hand down one side, “and confuses,” touching his lips. + +George, with a look of assent and sympathy, makes another bow. The +different times when they were both young men (the trooper much the +younger of the two) and looked at one another down at Chesney Wold +arise before them both and soften both. + +Sir Leicester, evidently with a great determination to say, in his +own manner, something that is on his mind before relapsing into +silence, tries to raise himself among his pillows a little more. +George, observant of the action, takes him in his arms again and +places him as he desires to be. “Thank you, George. You are another +self to me. You have often carried my spare gun at Chesney Wold, +George. You are familiar to me in these strange circumstances, very +familiar.” He has put Sir Leicester’s sounder arm over his shoulder +in lifting him up, and Sir Leicester is slow in drawing it away again +as he says these words. + +“I was about to add,” he presently goes on, “I was about to add, +respecting this attack, that it was unfortunately simultaneous with a +slight misunderstanding between my Lady and myself. I do not mean +that there was any difference between us (for there has been none), +but that there was a misunderstanding of certain circumstances +important only to ourselves, which deprives me, for a little while, +of my Lady’s society. She has found it necessary to make a journey—I +trust will shortly return. Volumnia, do I make myself intelligible? +The words are not quite under my command in the manner of pronouncing +them.” + +Volumnia understands him perfectly, and in truth he delivers himself +with far greater plainness than could have been supposed possible a +minute ago. The effort by which he does so is written in the anxious +and labouring expression of his face. Nothing but the strength of his +purpose enables him to make it. + +“Therefore, Volumnia, I desire to say in your presence—and in the +presence of my old retainer and friend, Mrs. Rouncewell, whose truth +and fidelity no one can question, and in the presence of her son +George, who comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth in +the home of my ancestors at Chesney Wold—in case I should relapse, +in case I should not recover, in case I should lose both my speech +and the power of writing, though I hope for better things—” + +The old housekeeper weeping silently; Volumnia in the greatest +agitation, with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper with +his arms folded and his head a little bent, respectfully attentive. + +“Therefore I desire to say, and to call you all to +witness—beginning, Volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly—that I am +on unaltered terms with Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever +of complaint against her. That I have ever had the strongest +affection for her, and that I retain it undiminished. Say this to +herself, and to every one. If you ever say less than this, you will +be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me.” + +Volumnia tremblingly protests that she will observe his injunctions +to the letter. + +“My Lady is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished, too +superior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is +surrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare say. Let it +be known to them, as I make it known to you, that being of sound +mind, memory, and understanding, I revoke no disposition I have made +in her favour. I abridge nothing I have ever bestowed upon her. I am +on unaltered terms with her, and I recall—having the full power to +do it if I were so disposed, as you see—no act I have done for her +advantage and happiness.” + +His formal array of words might have at any other time, as it has +often had, something ludicrous in it, but at this time it is serious +and affecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his gallant +shielding of her, his generous conquest of his own wrong and his own +pride for her sake, are simply honourable, manly, and true. Nothing +less worthy can be seen through the lustre of such qualities in the +commonest mechanic, nothing less worthy can be seen in the best-born +gentleman. In such a light both aspire alike, both rise alike, both +children of the dust shine equally. + +Overpowered by his exertions, he lays his head back on his pillows +and closes his eyes for not more than a minute, when he again resumes +his watching of the weather and his attention to the muffled sounds. +In the rendering of those little services, and in the manner of their +acceptance, the trooper has become installed as necessary to him. +Nothing has been said, but it is quite understood. He falls a step or +two backward to be out of sight and mounts guard a little behind his +mother’s chair. + +The day is now beginning to decline. The mist and the sleet into +which the snow has all resolved itself are darker, and the blaze +begins to tell more vividly upon the room walls and furniture. The +gloom augments; the bright gas springs up in the streets; and the +pertinacious oil lamps which yet hold their ground there, with their +source of life half frozen and half thawed, twinkle gaspingly like +fiery fish out of water—as they are. The world, which has been +rumbling over the straw and pulling at the bell, “to inquire,” begins +to go home, begins to dress, to dine, to discuss its dear friend with +all the last new modes, as already mentioned. + +Now does Sir Leicester become worse, restless, uneasy, and in great +pain. Volumnia, lighting a candle (with a predestined aptitude for +doing something objectionable), is bidden to put it out again, for it +is not yet dark enough. Yet it is very dark too, as dark as it will +be all night. By and by she tries again. No! Put it out. It is not +dark enough yet. + +His old housekeeper is the first to understand that he is striving to +uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late. + +“Dear Sir Leicester, my honoured master,” she softly whispers, “I +must, for your own good, and my duty, take the freedom of begging and +praying that you will not lie here in the lone darkness watching and +waiting and dragging through the time. Let me draw the curtains, and +light the candles, and make things more comfortable about you. The +church-clocks will strike the hours just the same, Sir Leicester, and +the night will pass away just the same. My Lady will come back, just +the same.” + +“I know it, Mrs. Rouncewell, but I am weak—and she has been so long +gone.” + +“Not so very long, Sir Leicester. Not twenty-four hours yet.” + +“But that is a long time. Oh, it is a long time!” + +He says it with a groan that wrings her heart. + +She knows that this is not a period for bringing the rough light upon +him; she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even by her. +Therefore she sits in the darkness for a while without a word, then +gently begins to move about, now stirring the fire, now standing at +the dark window looking out. Finally he tells her, with recovered +self-command, “As you say, Mrs. Rouncewell, it is no worse for being +confessed. It is getting late, and they are not come. Light the +room!” When it is lighted and the weather shut out, it is only left +to him to listen. + +But they find that however dejected and ill he is, he brightens when +a quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms and +being sure that everything is ready to receive her. Poor pretence as +it is, these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him. + +Midnight comes, and with it the same blank. The carriages in the +streets are few, and other late sounds in that neighbourhood there +are none, unless a man so very nomadically drunk as to stray into the +frigid zone goes brawling and bellowing along the pavement. Upon this +wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is +like looking at intense darkness. If any distant sound be audible in +this case, it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that, +and all is heavier than before. + +The corporation of servants are dismissed to bed (not unwilling to +go, for they were up all last night), and only Mrs. Rouncewell and +George keep watch in Sir Leicester’s room. As the night lags tardily +on—or rather when it seems to stop altogether, at between two and +three o’clock—they find a restless craving on him to know more about +the weather, now he cannot see it. Hence George, patrolling regularly +every half-hour to the rooms so carefully looked after, extends his +march to the hall-door, looks about him, and brings back the best +report he can make of the worst of nights, the sleet still falling +and even the stone footways lying ankle-deep in icy sludge. + +Volumnia, in her room up a retired landing on the staircase—the +second turning past the end of the carving and gilding, a cousinly +room containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of Sir Leicester +banished for its crimes, and commanding in the day a solemn yard +planted with dried-up shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black +tea—is a prey to horrors of many kinds. Not last nor least among +them, possibly, is a horror of what may befall her little income in +the event, as she expresses it, “of anything happening” to Sir +Leicester. Anything, in this sense, meaning one thing only; and that +the last thing that can happen to the consciousness of any baronet in +the known world. + +An effect of these horrors is that Volumnia finds she cannot go to +bed in her own room or sit by the fire in her own room, but must come +forth with her fair head tied up in a profusion of shawl, and her +fair form enrobed in drapery, and parade the mansion like a ghost, +particularly haunting the rooms, warm and luxurious, prepared for one +who still does not return. Solitude under such circumstances being +not to be thought of, Volumnia is attended by her maid, who, +impressed from her own bed for that purpose, extremely cold, very +sleepy, and generally an injured maid as condemned by circumstances +to take office with a cousin, when she had resolved to be maid to +nothing less than ten thousand a year, has not a sweet expression of +countenance. + +The periodical visits of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the +course of his patrolling is an assurance of protection and company +both to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the +small hours of the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both +make some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other +times they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and +dialogues not wholly free from acerbity, as to whether Miss Dedlock, +sitting with her feet upon the fender, was or was not falling into +the fire when rescued (to her great displeasure) by her guardian +genius the maid. + +“How is Sir Leicester now, Mr. George?” inquires Volumnia, adjusting +her cowl over her head. + +“Why, Sir Leicester is much the same, miss. He is very low and ill, +and he even wanders a little sometimes.” + +“Has he asked for me?” inquires Volumnia tenderly. + +“Why, no, I can’t say he has, miss. Not within my hearing, that is to +say.” + +“This is a truly sad time, Mr. George.” + +“It is indeed, miss. Hadn’t you better go to bed?” + +“You had a deal better go to bed, Miss Dedlock,” quoth the maid +sharply. + +But Volumnia answers No! No! She may be asked for, she may be wanted +at a moment’s notice. She never should forgive herself “if anything +was to happen” and she was not on the spot. She declines to enter on +the question, mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, and +not in her room (which is nearer to Sir Leicester’s), but staunchly +declares that on the spot she will remain. Volumnia further makes a +merit of not having “closed an eye”—as if she had twenty or +thirty—though it is hard to reconcile this statement with her having +most indisputably opened two within five minutes. + +But when it comes to four o’clock, and still the same blank, +Volumnia’s constancy begins to fail her, or rather it begins to +strengthen, for she now considers that it is her duty to be ready for +the morrow, when much may be expected of her, that, in fact, +howsoever anxious to remain upon the spot, it may be required of her, +as an act of self-devotion, to desert the spot. So when the trooper +reappears with his, “Hadn’t you better go to bed, miss?” and when the +maid protests, more sharply than before, “You had a deal better go to +bed, Miss Dedlock!” she meekly rises and says, “Do with me what you +think best!” + +Mr. George undoubtedly thinks it best to escort her on his arm to the +door of her cousinly chamber, and the maid as undoubtedly thinks it +best to hustle her into bed with mighty little ceremony. Accordingly, +these steps are taken; and now the trooper, in his rounds, has the +house to himself. + +There is no improvement in the weather. From the portico, from the +eaves, from the parapet, from every ledge and post and pillar, drips +the thawed snow. It has crept, as if for shelter, into the lintels of +the great door—under it, into the corners of the windows, into every +chink and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies. It is +falling still; upon the roof, upon the skylight, even through the +skylight, and drip, drip, drip, with the regularity of the Ghost’s +Walk, on the stone floor below. + +The trooper, his old recollections awakened by the solitary grandeur +of a great house—no novelty to him once at Chesney Wold—goes up the +stairs and through the chief rooms, holding up his light at arm’s +length. Thinking of his varied fortunes within the last few weeks, +and of his rustic boyhood, and of the two periods of his life so +strangely brought together across the wide intermediate space; +thinking of the murdered man whose image is fresh in his mind; +thinking of the lady who has disappeared from these very rooms and +the tokens of whose recent presence are all here; thinking of the +master of the house upstairs and of the foreboding, “Who will tell +him!” he looks here and looks there, and reflects how he MIGHT see +something now, which it would tax his boldness to walk up to, lay his +hand upon, and prove to be a fancy. But it is all blank, blank as the +darkness above and below, while he goes up the great staircase again, +blank as the oppressive silence. + +“All is still in readiness, George Rouncewell?” + +“Quite orderly and right, Sir Leicester.” + +“No word of any kind?” + +The trooper shakes his head. + +“No letter that can possibly have been overlooked?” + +But he knows there is no such hope as that and lays his head down +without looking for an answer. + +Very familiar to him, as he said himself some hours ago, George +Rouncewell lifts him into easier positions through the long remainder +of the blank wintry night, and equally familiar with his unexpressed +wish, extinguishes the light and undraws the curtains at the first +late break of day. The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless, +and vague, it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as +if it cried out, “Look what I am bringing you who watch there! Who +will tell him!” + + + + +CHAPTER LIX + +Esther’s Narrative + + +It was three o’clock in the morning when the houses outside London +did at last begin to exclude the country and to close us in with +streets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition +than when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the +thaw having lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never +slackened. It had only been, as I thought, of less assistance than +the horses in getting us on, and it had often aided them. They had +stopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had been driven through +streams of turbulent water, they had slipped down and become +entangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern had been +always ready, and when the mishap was set right, I had never heard +any variation in his cool, “Get on, my lads!” + +The steadiness and confidence with which he had directed our journey +back I could not account for. Never wavering, he never even stopped +to make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of London. A very +few words, here and there, were then enough for him; and thus we +came, at between three and four o’clock in the morning, into +Islington. + +I will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety with which I reflected +all this time that we were leaving my mother farther and farther +behind every minute. I think I had some strong hope that he must be +right and could not fail to have a satisfactory object in following +this woman, but I tormented myself with questioning it and discussing +it during the whole journey. What was to ensue when we found her and +what could compensate us for this loss of time were questions also +that I could not possibly dismiss; my mind was quite tortured by long +dwelling on such reflections when we stopped. + +We stopped in a high-street where there was a coach-stand. My +companion paid our two drivers, who were as completely covered with +splashes as if they had been dragged along the roads like the +carriage itself, and giving them some brief direction where to take +it, lifted me out of it and into a hackney-coach he had chosen from +the rest. + +“Why, my dear!” he said as he did this. “How wet you are!” + +I had not been conscious of it. But the melted snow had found its way +into the carriage, and I had got out two or three times when a fallen +horse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had penetrated +my dress. I assured him it was no matter, but the driver, who knew +him, would not be dissuaded by me from running down the street to his +stable, whence he brought an armful of clean dry straw. They shook it +out and strewed it well about me, and I found it warm and +comfortable. + +“Now, my dear,” said Mr. Bucket, with his head in at the window after +I was shut up. “We’re a-going to mark this person down. It may take a +little time, but you don’t mind that. You’re pretty sure that I’ve +got a motive. Ain’t you?” + +I little thought what it was, little thought in how short a time I +should understand it better, but I assured him that I had confidence +in him. + +“So you may have, my dear,” he returned. “And I tell you what! If you +only repose half as much confidence in me as I repose in you after +what I’ve experienced of you, that’ll do. Lord! You’re no trouble at +all. I never see a young woman in any station of society—and I’ve +seen many elevated ones too—conduct herself like you have conducted +yourself since you was called out of your bed. You’re a pattern, you +know, that’s what you are,” said Mr. Bucket warmly; “you’re a +pattern.” + +I told him I was very glad, as indeed I was, to have been no +hindrance to him, and that I hoped I should be none now. + +“My dear,” he returned, “when a young lady is as mild as she’s game, +and as game as she’s mild, that’s all I ask, and more than I expect. +She then becomes a queen, and that’s about what you are yourself.” + +With these encouraging words—they really were encouraging to me +under those lonely and anxious circumstances—he got upon the box, +and we once more drove away. Where we drove I neither knew then nor +have ever known since, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and +worst streets in London. Whenever I saw him directing the driver, I +was prepared for our descending into a deeper complication of such +streets, and we never failed to do so. + +Sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare or came to a larger +building than the generality, well lighted. Then we stopped at +offices like those we had visited when we began our journey, and I +saw him in consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by +an archway or at a street corner and mysteriously show the light of +his little lantern. This would attract similar lights from various +dark quarters, like so many insects, and a fresh consultation would +be held. By degrees we appeared to contract our search within +narrower and easier limits. Single police-officers on duty could now +tell Mr. Bucket what he wanted to know and point to him where to go. +At last we stopped for a rather long conversation between him and one +of these men, which I supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of +nodding from time to time. When it was finished he came to me looking +very busy and very attentive. + +“Now, Miss Summerson,” he said to me, “you won’t be alarmed whatever +comes off, I know. It’s not necessary for me to give you any further +caution than to tell you that we have marked this person down and +that you may be of use to me before I know it myself. I don’t like to +ask such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?” + +Of course I got out directly and took his arm. + +“It ain’t so easy to keep your feet,” said Mr. Bucket, “but take +time.” + +Although I looked about me confusedly and hurriedly as we crossed the +street, I thought I knew the place. “Are we in Holborn?” I asked him. + +“Yes,” said Mr. Bucket. “Do you know this turning?” + +“It looks like Chancery Lane.” + +“And was christened so, my dear,” said Mr. Bucket. + +We turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I +heard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on in silence and +as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming +towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and +stood aside to give me room. In the same moment I heard an +exclamation of wonder and my own name from Mr. Woodcourt. I knew his +voice very well. + +It was so unexpected and so—I don’t know what to call it, whether +pleasant or painful—to come upon it after my feverish wandering +journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back +the tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange +country. + +“My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in +such weather!” + +He had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some +uncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation. I +told him that we had but just left a coach and were going—but then I +was obliged to look at my companion. + +“Why, you see, Mr. Woodcourt”—he had caught the name from me—“we +are a-going at present into the next street. Inspector Bucket.” + +Mr. Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off +his cloak and was putting it about me. “That’s a good move, too,” +said Mr. Bucket, assisting, “a very good move.” + +“May I go with you?” said Mr. Woodcourt. I don’t know whether to me +or to my companion. + +“Why, Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Bucket, taking the answer on himself. “Of +course you may.” + +It was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped +in the cloak. + +“I have just left Richard,” said Mr. Woodcourt. “I have been sitting +with him since ten o’clock last night.” + +“Oh, dear me, he is ill!” + +“No, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. He was depressed +and faint—you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes—and Ada +sent to me of course; and when I came home I found her note and came +straight here. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while, +and Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though +God knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him +until he had been fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is +now, I hope!” + +His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected +devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he had +inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate +all this from his promise to me? How thankless I must have been if it +had not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the +change in my appearance: “I will accept him as a trust, and it shall +be a sacred one!” + +We now turned into another narrow street. “Mr. Woodcourt,” said Mr. +Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, “our business +takes us to a law-stationer’s here, a certain Mr. Snagsby’s. What, +you know him, do you?” He was so quick that he saw it in an instant. + +“Yes, I know a little of him and have called upon him at this place.” + +“Indeed, sir?” said Mr. Bucket. “Then you will be so good as to let +me leave Miss Summerson with you for a moment while I go and have +half a word with him?” + +The last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing +silently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in on my +saying I heard some one crying. + +“Don’t be alarmed, miss,” he returned. “It’s Snagsby’s servant.” + +“Why, you see,” said Mr. Bucket, “the girl’s subject to fits, and has +’em bad upon her to-night. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I +want certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to +reason somehow.” + +“At all events, they wouldn’t be up yet if it wasn’t for her, Mr. +Bucket,” said the other man. “She’s been at it pretty well all night, +sir.” + +“Well, that’s true,” he returned. “My light’s burnt out. Show yours a +moment.” + +All this passed in a whisper a door or two from the house in which I +could faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little round of light +produced for the purpose, Mr. Bucket went up to the door and knocked. +The door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in, +leaving us standing in the street. + +“Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Woodcourt, “if without obtruding myself on +your confidence I may remain near you, pray let me do so.” + +“You are truly kind,” I answered. “I need wish to keep no secret of +my own from you; if I keep any, it is another’s.” + +“I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as +I can fully respect it.” + +“I trust implicitly to you,” I said. “I know and deeply feel how +sacredly you keep your promise.” + +After a short time the little round of light shone out again, and Mr. +Bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. “Please to +come in, Miss Summerson,” he said, “and sit down by the fire. Mr. +Woodcourt, from information I have received I understand you are a +medical man. Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be +done to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I +particularly want. It’s not in her box, and I think it must be about +her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to +handle without hurting.” + +We all three went into the house together; although it was cold and +raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage +behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a +grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke +meekly. + +“Downstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket,” said he. “The lady will +excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The +back is Guster’s bedroom, and in it she’s a-carrying on, poor thing, +to a frightful extent!” + +We went downstairs, followed by Mr. Snagsby, as I soon found the +little man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs. +Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face. + +“My little woman,” said Mr. Snagsby, entering behind us, “to +wave—not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear—hostilities for +one single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is +Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady.” + +She looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and +looked particularly hard at me. + +“My little woman,” said Mr. Snagsby, sitting down in the remotest +corner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, “it is not +unlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr. +Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, +at the present hour. I don’t know. I have not the least idea. If I +was to be informed, I should despair of understanding, and I’d rather +not be told.” + +He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I +appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when Mr. +Bucket took the matter on himself. + +“Now, Mr. Snagsby,” said he, “the best thing you can do is to go +along with Mr. Woodcourt to look after your Guster—” + +“My Guster, Mr. Bucket!” cried Mr. Snagsby. “Go on, sir, go on. I +shall be charged with that next.” + +“And to hold the candle,” pursued Mr. Bucket without correcting +himself, “or hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you’re +asked. Which there’s not a man alive more ready to do, for you’re a +man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you’ve got the sort of +heart that can feel for another. Mr. Woodcourt, would you be so good +as see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me +have it as soon as ever you can?” + +As they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire +and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender, +talking all the time. + +“Don’t you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look +from Mrs. Snagsby there, because she’s under a mistake altogether. +She’ll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her +generally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because I’m a-going +to explain it to her.” Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat +and shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs. +Snagsby. “Now, the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman +possessing what you may call charms, you know—‘Believe Me, if All +Those Endearing,’ and cetrer—you’re well acquainted with the song, +because it’s in vain for you to tell me that you and good society are +strangers—charms—attractions, mind you, that ought to give you +confidence in yourself—is, that you’ve done it.” + +Mrs. Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered, +what did Mr. Bucket mean. + +“What does Mr. Bucket mean?” he repeated, and I saw by his face that +all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the +letter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then how important it +must be; “I’ll tell you what he means, ma’am. Go and see Othello +acted. That’s the tragedy for you.” + +Mrs. Snagsby consciously asked why. + +“Why?” said Mr. Bucket. “Because you’ll come to that if you don’t +look out. Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your +mind’s not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall I +tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you’re what I call an +intellectual woman—with your soul too large for your body, if you +come to that, and chafing it—and you know me, and you recollect +where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. Don’t +you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young lady.” + +Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did +at the time. + +“And Toughey—him as you call Jo—was mixed up in the same business, +and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the +same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge +of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn, +deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and +the whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no +other. And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts +her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed +head against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr. +Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)” + +Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes. + +“Is that all?” said Mr. Bucket excitedly. “No. See what happens. +Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a +wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your +maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes +a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do +you do? You hide and you watch ’em, and you pounce upon that +maid-servant—knowing what she’s subject to and what a little thing +will bring ’em on—in that surprising manner and with that severity +that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be +hanging upon that girl’s words!” + +He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily clasped +my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But it stopped. Mr. +Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again. + +“Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make,” said Mr. Bucket, +rapidly glancing at it, “is to let me speak a word to this young lady +in private here. And if you know of any help that you can give to +that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one +thing that’s likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your +swiftest and best!” In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the +door. “Now my dear, you’re steady and quite sure of yourself?” + +“Quite,” said I. + +“Whose writing is that?” + +It was my mother’s. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of +paper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and directed +to me at my guardian’s. + +“You know the hand,” he said, “and if you are firm enough to read it +to me, do! But be particular to a word.” + +It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what +follows: + + + I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the + dear one, if I could, once more—but only to see her—not + to speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other + object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the + mother for her share. The assistance that she rendered me, + she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the + dear one’s good. You remember her dead child. The men’s + consent I bought, but her help was freely given. + + +“‘I came.’ That was written,” said my companion, “when she rested +there. It bears out what I made of it. I was right.” + +The next was written at another time: + + + I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and + I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no + purpose but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am + saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and + fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but + I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was + right that all that had sustained me should give way at + once and that I should die of terror and my conscience. + + +“Take courage,” said Mr. Bucket. “There’s only a few words more.” + +Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost +in the dark: + + + I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon + forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing + about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part + with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get + so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive. + + +Mr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my +chair. “Cheer up! Don’t think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon +as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready.” + +I did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for +my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I +heard Mr. Woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. At +length he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important +to address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for +whatever information we desired to obtain. There was no doubt that +she could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed. +The questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what +passed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where +the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could to these +points, I went into the next room with them. Mr. Woodcourt would have +remained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us. + +The poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down. +They stood around her, though at a little distance, that she might +have air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a +plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I +kneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my +shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into +tears. + +“My poor girl,” said I, laying my face against her forehead, for +indeed I was crying too, and trembling, “it seems cruel to trouble +you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter +than I could tell you in an hour.” + +She began piteously declaring that she didn’t mean any harm, she +didn’t mean any harm, Mrs. Snagsby! + +“We are all sure of that,” said I. “But pray tell me how you got it.” + +“Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I’ll tell true, indeed, +Mrs. Snagsby.” + +“I am sure of that,” said I. “And how was it?” + +“I had been out on an errand, dear lady—long after it was +dark—quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking +person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me +coming in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here. +And I said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about +here, but had lost her way and couldn’t find them. Oh, what shall I +do, what shall I do! They won’t believe me! She didn’t say any harm +to me, and I didn’t say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby!” + +It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her—which she did, I +must say, with a good deal of contrition—before she could be got +beyond this. + +“She could not find those places,” said I. + +“No!” cried the girl, shaking her head. “No! Couldn’t find them. And +she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that if +you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you’d have given her half a crown, I +know!” + +“Well, Guster, my girl,” said he, at first not knowing what to say. +“I hope I should.” + +“And yet she was so well spoken,” said the girl, looking at me with +wide open eyes, “that it made a person’s heart bleed. And so she said +to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her +which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground. And so I +told her I had been a poor child myself, and it was according to +parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far +from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate.” + +As I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket +received this with a look which I could not separate from one of +alarm. + +“Oh, dear, dear!” cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her +hands. “What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying +ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff—that +you came home and told us of, Mr. Snagsby—that frightened me so, +Mrs. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!” + +“You are so much better now,” sald I. “Pray, pray tell me more.” + +“Yes I will, yes I will! But don’t be angry with me, that’s a dear +lady, because I have been so ill.” + +Angry with her, poor soul! + +“There! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to +find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with +eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back. +And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was +to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded +and never sent; and would I take it from her, and send it, and the +messenger would be paid at the house. And so I said yes, if it was no +harm, and she said no—no harm. And so I took it from her, and she +said she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and +consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and +went.” + +“And did she go—” + +“Yes,” cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. “Yes! She went the +way I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Snagsby came behind me +from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was frightened.” + +Mr. Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up, and +immediately we were in the street. Mr. Woodcourt hesitated, but I +said, “Don’t leave me now!” and Mr. Bucket added, “You’ll be better +with us, we may want you; don’t lose time!” + +I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that +it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the +street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling +and that all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled +people passing in the streets. I recollect the wet house-tops, the +clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of +blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the +courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that the poor +girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my +hearing, that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained +house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great +water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the +air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real. + +At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one +lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly +struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground—a +dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where +I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in +by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose +walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the +gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and +splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a +woman lying—Jenny, the mother of the dead child. + +I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt entreated me +with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to +the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did +so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure. + +“Miss Summerson, you’ll understand me, if you think a moment. They +changed clothes at the cottage.” + +They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my +mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no +meaning to them in any other connexion. + +“And one returned,” said Mr. Bucket, “and one went on. And the one +that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and +then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!” + +I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what +it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead +child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron +gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately +spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered, +senseless creature. She who had brought my mother’s letter, who could +give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide +us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to +this condition by some means connected with my mother that I could +not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that +moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not +comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt’s face. +I saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to +keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a +reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone. + +I even heard it said between them, “Shall she go?” + +“She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They +have a higher right than ours.” + +I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head, +put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my +mother, cold and dead. + + + + +CHAPTER LX + +Perspective + + +I proceed to other passages of my narrative. From the goodness of all +about me I derived such consolation as I can never think of unmoved. +I have already said so much of myself, and so much still remains, +that I will not dwell upon my sorrow. I had an illness, but it was +not a long one; and I would avoid even this mention of it if I could +quite keep down the recollection of their sympathy. + +I proceed to other passages of my narrative. + +During the time of my illness, we were still in London, where Mrs. +Woodcourt had come, on my guardian’s invitation, to stay with us. +When my guardian thought me well and cheerful enough to talk with him +in our old way—though I could have done that sooner if he would have +believed me—I resumed my work and my chair beside his. He had +appointed the time himself, and we were alone. + +“Dame Trot,” said he, receiving me with a kiss, “welcome to the +growlery again, my dear. I have a scheme to develop, little woman. I +propose to remain here, perhaps for six months, perhaps for a longer +time—as it may be. Quite to settle here for a while, in short.” + +“And in the meanwhile leave Bleak House?” said I. + +“Aye, my dear? Bleak House,” he returned, “must learn to take care of +itself.” + +I thought his tone sounded sorrowful, but looking at him, I saw his +kind face lighted up by its pleasantest smile. + +“Bleak House,” he repeated—and his tone did NOT sound sorrowful, I +found—“must learn to take care of itself. It is a long way from Ada, +my dear, and Ada stands much in need of you.” + +“It’s like you, guardian,” said I, “to have been taking that into +consideration for a happy surprise to both of us.” + +“Not so disinterested either, my dear, if you mean to extol me for +that virtue, since if you were generally on the road, you could be +seldom with me. And besides, I wish to hear as much and as often of +Ada as I can in this condition of estrangement from poor Rick. Not of +her alone, but of him too, poor fellow.” + +“Have you seen Mr. Woodcourt, this morning, guardian?” + +“I see Mr. Woodcourt every morning, Dame Durden.” + +“Does he still say the same of Richard?” + +“Just the same. He knows of no direct bodily illness that he has; on +the contrary, he believes that he has none. Yet he is not easy about +him; who CAN be?” + +My dear girl had been to see us lately every day, some times twice in +a day. But we had foreseen, all along, that this would only last +until I was quite myself. We knew full well that her fervent heart +was as full of affection and gratitude towards her cousin John as it +had ever been, and we acquitted Richard of laying any injunctions +upon her to stay away; but we knew on the other hand that she felt it +a part of her duty to him to be sparing of her visits at our house. +My guardian’s delicacy had soon perceived this and had tried to +convey to her that he thought she was right. + +“Dear, unfortunate, mistaken Richard,” said I. “When will he awake +from his delusion!” + +“He is not in the way to do so now, my dear,” replied my guardian. +“The more he suffers, the more averse he will be to me, having made +me the principal representative of the great occasion of his +suffering.” + +I could not help adding, “So unreasonably!” + +“Ah, Dame Trot, Dame Trot,” returned my guardian, “what shall we find +reasonable in Jarndyce and Jarndyce! Unreason and injustice at the +top, unreason and injustice at the heart and at the bottom, unreason +and injustice from beginning to end—if it ever has an end—how +should poor Rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it? He +no more gathers grapes from thorns or figs from thistles than older +men did in old times.” + +His gentleness and consideration for Richard whenever we spoke of him +touched me so that I was always silent on this subject very soon. + +“I suppose the Lord Chancellor, and the Vice Chancellors, and the +whole Chancery battery of great guns would be infinitely astonished +by such unreason and injustice in one of their suitors,” pursued my +guardian. “When those learned gentlemen begin to raise moss-roses +from the powder they sow in their wigs, I shall begin to be +astonished too!” + +He checked himself in glancing towards the window to look where the +wind was and leaned on the back of my chair instead. + +“Well, well, little woman! To go on, my dear. This rock we must leave +to time, chance, and hopeful circumstance. We must not shipwreck Ada +upon it. She cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the remotest chance +of another separation from a friend. Therefore I have particularly +begged of Woodcourt, and I now particularly beg of you, my dear, not +to move this subject with Rick. Let it rest. Next week, next month, +next year, sooner or later, he will see me with clearer eyes. I can +wait.” + +But I had already discussed it with him, I confessed; and so, I +thought, had Mr. Woodcourt. + +“So he tells me,” returned my guardian. “Very good. He has made his +protest, and Dame Durden has made hers, and there is nothing more to +be said about it. Now I come to Mrs. Woodcourt. How do you like her, +my dear?” + +In answer to this question, which was oddly abrupt, I said I liked +her very much and thought she was more agreeable than she used to be. + +“I think so too,” said my guardian. “Less pedigree? Not so much of +Morgan ap—what’s his name?” + +That was what I meant, I acknowledged, though he was a very harmless +person, even when we had had more of him. + +“Still, upon the whole, he is as well in his native mountains,” said +my guardian. “I agree with you. Then, little woman, can I do better +for a time than retain Mrs. Woodcourt here?” + +No. And yet— + +My guardian looked at me, waiting for what I had to say. + +I had nothing to say. At least I had nothing in my mind that I could +say. I had an undefined impression that it might have been better if +we had had some other inmate, but I could hardly have explained why +even to myself. Or, if to myself, certainly not to anybody else. + +“You see,” said my guardian, “our neighbourhood is in Woodcourt’s +way, and he can come here to see her as often as he likes, which is +agreeable to them both; and she is familiar to us and fond of you.” + +Yes. That was undeniable. I had nothing to say against it. I could +not have suggested a better arrangement, but I was not quite easy in +my mind. Esther, Esther, why not? Esther, think! + +“It is a very good plan indeed, dear guardian, and we could not do +better.” + +“Sure, little woman?” + +Quite sure. I had had a moment’s time to think, since I had urged +that duty on myself, and I was quite sure. + +“Good,” said my guardian. “It shall be done. Carried unanimously.” + +“Carried unanimously,” I repeated, going on with my work. + +It was a cover for his book-table that I happened to be ornamenting. +It had been laid by on the night preceding my sad journey and never +resumed. I showed it to him now, and he admired it highly. After I +had explained the pattern to him and all the great effects that were +to come out by and by, I thought I would go back to our last theme. + +“You said, dear guardian, when we spoke of Mr. Woodcourt before Ada +left us, that you thought he would give a long trial to another +country. Have you been advising him since?” + +“Yes, little woman, pretty often.” + +“Has he decided to do so?” + +“I rather think not.” + +“Some other prospect has opened to him, perhaps?” said I. + +“Why—yes—perhaps,” returned my guardian, beginning his answer in a +very deliberate manner. “About half a year hence or so, there is a +medical attendant for the poor to be appointed at a certain place in +Yorkshire. It is a thriving place, pleasantly situated—streams and +streets, town and country, mill and moor—and seems to present an +opening for such a man. I mean a man whose hopes and aims may +sometimes lie (as most men’s sometimes do, I dare say) above the +ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough +after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good +service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I +suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, +instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care +for. It is Woodcourt’s kind.” + +“And will he get this appointment?” I asked. + +“Why, little woman,” returned my guardian, smiling, “not being an +oracle, I cannot confidently say, but I think so. His reputation +stands very high; there were people from that part of the country in +the shipwreck; and strange to say, I believe the best man has the +best chance. You must not suppose it to be a fine endowment. It is a +very, very commonplace affair, my dear, an appointment to a great +amount of work and a small amount of pay; but better things will +gather about it, it may be fairly hoped.” + +“The poor of that place will have reason to bless the choice if it +falls on Mr. Woodcourt, guardian.” + +“You are right, little woman; that I am sure they will.” + +We said no more about it, nor did he say a word about the future of +Bleak House. But it was the first time I had taken my seat at his +side in my mourning dress, and that accounted for it, I considered. + +I now began to visit my dear girl every day in the dull dark corner +where she lived. The morning was my usual time, but whenever I found +I had an hour or so to spare, I put on my bonnet and bustled off to +Chancery Lane. They were both so glad to see me at all hours, and +used to brighten up so when they heard me opening the door and coming +in (being quite at home, I never knocked), that I had no fear of +becoming troublesome just yet. + +On these occasions I frequently found Richard absent. At other times +he would be writing or reading papers in the cause at that table of +his, so covered with papers, which was never disturbed. Sometimes I +would come upon him lingering at the door of Mr. Vholes’s office. +Sometimes I would meet him in the neighbourhood lounging about and +biting his nails. I often met him wandering in Lincoln’s Inn, near +the place where I had first seen him, oh how different, how +different! + +That the money Ada brought him was melting away with the candles I +used to see burning after dark in Mr. Vholes’s office I knew very +well. It was not a large amount in the beginning, he had married in +debt, and I could not fail to understand, by this time, what was +meant by Mr. Vholes’s shoulder being at the wheel—as I still heard +it was. My dear made the best of housekeepers and tried hard to save, +but I knew that they were getting poorer and poorer every day. + +She shone in the miserable corner like a beautiful star. She adorned +and graced it so that it became another place. Paler than she had +been at home, and a little quieter than I had thought natural when +she was yet so cheerful and hopeful, her face was so unshadowed that +I half believed she was blinded by her love for Richard to his +ruinous career. + +I went one day to dine with them while I was under this impression. +As I turned into Symond’s Inn, I met little Miss Flite coming out. +She had been to make a stately call upon the wards in Jarndyce, as +she still called them, and had derived the highest gratification from +that ceremony. Ada had already told me that she called every Monday +at five o’clock, with one little extra white bow in her bonnet, which +never appeared there at any other time, and with her largest reticule +of documents on her arm. + +“My dear!” she began. “So delighted! How do you do! So glad to see +you. And you are going to visit our interesting Jarndyce wards? TO be +sure! Our beauty is at home, my dear, and will be charmed to see +you.” + +“Then Richard is not come in yet?” said I. “I am glad of that, for I +was afraid of being a little late.” + +“No, he is not come in,” returned Miss Flite. “He has had a long day +in court. I left him there with Vholes. You don’t like Vholes, I +hope? DON’T like Vholes. Dan-gerous man!” + +“I am afraid you see Richard oftener than ever now,” said I. + +“My dearest,” returned Miss Flite, “daily and hourly. You know what I +told you of the attraction on the Chancellor’s table? My dear, next +to myself he is the most constant suitor in court. He begins quite to +amuse our little party. Ve-ry friendly little party, are we not?” + +It was miserable to hear this from her poor mad lips, though it was +no surprise. + +“In short, my valued friend,” pursued Miss Flite, advancing her lips +to my ear with an air of equal patronage and mystery, “I must tell +you a secret. I have made him my executor. Nominated, constituted, +and appointed him. In my will. Ye-es.” + +“Indeed?” said I. + +“Ye-es,” repeated Miss Flite in her most genteel accents, “my +executor, administrator, and assign. (Our Chancery phrases, my love.) +I have reflected that if I should wear out, he will be able to watch +that judgment. Being so very regular in his attendance.” + +It made me sigh to think of him. + +“I did at one time mean,” said Miss Flite, echoing the sigh, “to +nominate, constitute, and appoint poor Gridley. Also very regular, my +charming girl. I assure you, most exemplary! But he wore out, poor +man, so I have appointed his successor. Don’t mention it. This is in +confidence.” + +She carefully opened her reticule a little way and showed me a folded +piece of paper inside as the appointment of which she spoke. + +“Another secret, my dear. I have added to my collection of birds.” + +“Really, Miss Flite?” said I, knowing how it pleased her to have her +confidence received with an appearance of interest. + +She nodded several times, and her face became overcast and gloomy. +“Two more. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with +all the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, +Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, +Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and +Spinach!” + +The poor soul kissed me with the most troubled look I had ever seen +in her and went her way. Her manner of running over the names of her +birds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips, +quite chilled me. + +This was not a cheering preparation for my visit, and I could have +dispensed with the company of Mr. Vholes, when Richard (who arrived +within a minute or two after me) brought him to share our dinner. +Although it was a very plain one, Ada and Richard were for some +minutes both out of the room together helping to get ready what we +were to eat and drink. Mr. Vholes took that opportunity of holding a +little conversation in a low voice with me. He came to the window +where I was sitting and began upon Symond’s Inn. + +“A dull place, Miss Summerson, for a life that is not an official +one,” said Mr. Vholes, smearing the glass with his black glove to +make it clearer for me. + +“There is not much to see here,” said I. + +“Nor to hear, miss,” returned Mr. Vholes. “A little music does +occasionally stray in, but we are not musical in the law and soon +eject it. I hope Mr. Jarndyce is as well as his friends could wish +him?” + +I thanked Mr. Vholes and said he was quite well. + +“I have not the pleasure to be admitted among the number of his +friends myself,” said Mr. Vholes, “and I am aware that the gentlemen +of our profession are sometimes regarded in such quarters with an +unfavourable eye. Our plain course, however, under good report and +evil report, and all kinds of prejudice (we are the victims of +prejudice), is to have everything openly carried on. How do you find +Mr. C. looking, Miss Summerson?” + +“He looks very ill. Dreadfully anxious.” + +“Just so,” said Mr. Vholes. + +He stood behind me with his long black figure reaching nearly to the +ceiling of those low rooms, feeling the pimples on his face as if +they were ornaments and speaking inwardly and evenly as though there +were not a human passion or emotion in his nature. + +“Mr. Woodcourt is in attendance upon Mr. C., I believe?” he resumed. + +“Mr. Woodcourt is his disinterested friend,” I answered. + +“But I mean in professional attendance, medical attendance.” + +“That can do little for an unhappy mind,” said I. + +“Just so,” said Mr. Vholes. + +So slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Richard were +wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser and there were +something of the vampire in him. + +“Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Vholes, very slowly rubbing his gloved +hands, as if, to his cold sense of touch, they were much the same in +black kid or out of it, “this was an ill-advised marriage of Mr. +C.’s.” + +I begged he would excuse me from discussing it. They had been engaged +when they were both very young, I told him (a little indignantly) and +when the prospect before them was much fairer and brighter. When +Richard had not yielded himself to the unhappy influence which now +darkened his life. + +“Just so,” assented Mr. Vholes again. “Still, with a view to +everything being openly carried on, I will, with your permission, +Miss Summerson, observe to you that I consider this a very +ill-advised marriage indeed. I owe the opinion not only to Mr. C.’s +connexions, against whom I should naturally wish to protect myself, +but also to my own reputation—dear to myself as a professional man +aiming to keep respectable; dear to my three girls at home, for whom +I am striving to realize some little independence; dear, I will even +say, to my aged father, whom it is my privilege to support.” + +“It would become a very different marriage, a much happier and better +marriage, another marriage altogether, Mr. Vholes,” said I, “if +Richard were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which +you are engaged with him.” + +Mr. Vholes, with a noiseless cough—or rather gasp—into one of his +black gloves, inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even +that. + +“Miss Summerson,” he said, “it may be so; and I freely admit that the +young lady who has taken Mr. C.’s name upon herself in so ill-advised +a manner—you will I am sure not quarrel with me for throwing out +that remark again, as a duty I owe to Mr. C.’s connexions—is a +highly genteel young lady. Business has prevented me from mixing much +with general society in any but a professional character; still I +trust I am competent to perceive that she is a highly genteel young +lady. As to beauty, I am not a judge of that myself, and I never did +give much attention to it from a boy, but I dare say the young lady +is equally eligible in that point of view. She is considered so (I +have heard) among the clerks in the Inn, and it is a point more in +their way than in mine. In reference to Mr. C.’s pursuit of his +interests—” + +“Oh! His interests, Mr. Vholes!” + +“Pardon me,” returned Mr. Vholes, going on in exactly the same inward +and dispassionate manner. “Mr. C. takes certain interests under +certain wills disputed in the suit. It is a term we use. In reference +to Mr. C,’s pursuit of his interests, I mentioned to you, Miss +Summerson, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you, in my +desire that everything should be openly carried on—I used those +words, for I happened afterwards to note them in my diary, which is +producible at any time—I mentioned to you that Mr. C. had laid down +the principle of watching his own interests, and that when a client +of mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is to +say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. I HAVE +carried it out; I do carry it out. But I will not smooth things over +to any connexion of Mr. C.’s on any account. As open as I was to Mr. +Jarndyce, I am to you. I regard it in the light of a professional +duty to be so, though it can be charged to no one. I openly say, +unpalatable as it may be, that I consider Mr. C.’s affairs in a very +bad way, that I consider Mr. C. himself in a very bad way, and that I +regard this as an exceedingly ill-advised marriage. Am I here, sir? +Yes, I thank you; I am here, Mr. C., and enjoying the pleasure of +some agreeable conversation with Miss Summerson, for which I have to +thank you very much, sir!” + +He broke off thus in answer to Richard, who addressed him as he came +into the room. By this time I too well understood Mr. Vholes’s +scrupulous way of saving himself and his respectability not to feel +that our worst fears did but keep pace with his client’s progress. + +We sat down to dinner, and I had an opportunity of observing Richard, +anxiously. I was not disturbed by Mr. Vholes (who took off his gloves +to dine), though he sat opposite to me at the small table, for I +doubt if, looking up at all, he once removed his eyes from his host’s +face. I found Richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress, +abstracted in his manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at +other intervals relapsing into a dull thoughtfulness. About his large +bright eyes that used to be so merry there was a wanness and a +restlessness that changed them altogether. I cannot use the +expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not +like age, and into such a ruin Richard’s youth and youthful beauty +had all fallen away. + +He ate little and seemed indifferent what it was, showed himself to +be much more impatient than he used to be, and was quick even with +Ada. I thought at first that his old light-hearted manner was all +gone, but it shone out of him sometimes as I had occasionally known +little momentary glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from +the glass. His laugh had not quite left him either, but it was like +the echo of a joyful sound, and that is always sorrowful. + +Yet he was as glad as ever, in his old affectionate way, to have me +there, and we talked of the old times pleasantly. These did not +appear to be interesting to Mr. Vholes, though he occasionally made a +gasp which I believe was his smile. He rose shortly after dinner and +said that with the permission of the ladies he would retire to his +office. + +“Always devoted to business, Vholes!” cried Richard. + +“Yes, Mr. C.,” he returned, “the interests of clients are never to be +neglected, sir. They are paramount in the thoughts of a professional +man like myself, who wishes to preserve a good name among his +fellow-practitioners and society at large. My denying myself the +pleasure of the present agreeable conversation may not be wholly +irrespective of your own interests, Mr. C.” + +Richard expressed himself quite sure of that and lighted Mr. Vholes +out. On his return he told us, more than once, that Vholes was a good +fellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very +good fellow indeed! He was so defiant about it that it struck me he +had begun to doubt Mr. Vholes. + +Then he threw himself on the sofa, tired out; and Ada and I put +things to rights, for they had no other servant than the woman who +attended to the chambers. My dear girl had a cottage piano there and +quietly sat down to sing some of Richard’s favourites, the lamp being +first removed into the next room, as he complained of its hurting his +eyes. + +I sat between them, at my dear girl’s side, and felt very melancholy +listening to her sweet voice. I think Richard did too; I think he +darkened the room for that reason. She had been singing some time, +rising between whiles to bend over him and speak to him, when Mr. +Woodcourt came in. Then he sat down by Richard and half playfully, +half earnestly, quite naturally and easily, found out how he felt and +where he had been all day. Presently he proposed to accompany him in +a short walk on one of the bridges, as it was a moonlight airy night; +and Richard readily consenting, they went out together. + +They left my dear girl still sitting at the piano and me still +sitting beside her. When they were gone out, I drew my arm round her +waist. She put her left hand in mine (I was sitting on that side), +but kept her right upon the keys, going over and over them without +striking any note. + +“Esther, my dearest,” she said, breaking silence, “Richard is never +so well and I am never so easy about him as when he is with Allan +Woodcourt. We have to thank you for that.” + +I pointed out to my darling how this could scarcely be, because Mr. +Woodcourt had come to her cousin John’s house and had known us all +there, and because he had always liked Richard, and Richard had +always liked him, and—and so forth. + +“All true,” said Ada, “but that he is such a devoted friend to us we +owe to you.” + +I thought it best to let my dear girl have her way and to say no more +about it. So I said as much. I said it lightly, because I felt her +trembling. + +“Esther, my dearest, I want to be a good wife, a very, very good wife +indeed. You shall teach me.” + +I teach! I said no more, for I noticed the hand that was fluttering +over the keys, and I knew that it was not I who ought to speak, that +it was she who had something to say to me. + +“When I married Richard I was not insensible to what was before him. +I had been perfectly happy for a long time with you, and I had never +known any trouble or anxiety, so loved and cared for, but I +understood the danger he was in, dear Esther.” + +“I know, I know, my darling.” + +“When we were married I had some little hope that I might be able to +convince him of his mistake, that he might come to regard it in a new +way as my husband and not pursue it all the more desperately for my +sake—as he does. But if I had not had that hope, I would have +married him just the same, Esther. Just the same!” + +In the momentary firmness of the hand that was never still—a +firmness inspired by the utterance of these last words, and dying +away with them—I saw the confirmation of her earnest tones. + +“You are not to think, my dearest Esther, that I fail to see what you +see and fear what you fear. No one can understand him better than I +do. The greatest wisdom that ever lived in the world could scarcely +know Richard better than my love does.” + +She spoke so modestly and softly and her trembling hand expressed +such agitation as it moved to and fro upon the silent notes! My dear, +dear girl! + +“I see him at his worst every day. I watch him in his sleep. I know +every change of his face. But when I married Richard I was quite +determined, Esther, if heaven would help me, never to show him that I +grieved for what he did and so to make him more unhappy. I want him, +when he comes home, to find no trouble in my face. I want him, when +he looks at me, to see what he loved in me. I married him to do this, +and this supports me.” + +I felt her trembling more. I waited for what was yet to come, and I +now thought I began to know what it was. + +“And something else supports me, Esther.” + +She stopped a minute. Stopped speaking only; her hand was still in +motion. + +“I look forward a little while, and I don’t know what great aid may +come to me. When Richard turns his eyes upon me then, there may be +something lying on my breast more eloquent than I have been, with +greater power than mine to show him his true course and win him +back.” + +Her hand stopped now. She clasped me in her arms, and I clasped her +in mine. + +“If that little creature should fail too, Esther, I still look +forward. I look forward a long while, through years and years, and +think that then, when I am growing old, or when I am dead perhaps, a +beautiful woman, his daughter, happily married, may be proud of him +and a blessing to him. Or that a generous brave man, as handsome as +he used to be, as hopeful, and far more happy, may walk in the +sunshine with him, honouring his grey head and saying to himself, ‘I +thank God this is my father! Ruined by a fatal inheritance, and +restored through me!’” + +Oh, my sweet girl, what a heart was that which beat so fast against +me! + +“These hopes uphold me, my dear Esther, and I know they will. Though +sometimes even they depart from me before a dread that arises when I +look at Richard.” + +I tried to cheer my darling, and asked her what it was. Sobbing and +weeping, she replied, “That he may not live to see his child.” + + + + +CHAPTER LXI + +A Discovery + + +The days when I frequented that miserable corner which my dear girl +brightened can never fade in my remembrance. I never see it, and I +never wish to see it now; I have been there only once since, but in +my memory there is a mournful glory shining on the place which will +shine for ever. + +Not a day passed without my going there, of course. At first I found +Mr. Skimpole there, on two or three occasions, idly playing the piano +and talking in his usual vivacious strain. Now, besides my very much +mistrusting the probability of his being there without making Richard +poorer, I felt as if there were something in his careless gaiety too +inconsistent with what I knew of the depths of Ada’s life. I clearly +perceived, too, that Ada shared my feelings. I therefore resolved, +after much thinking of it, to make a private visit to Mr. Skimpole +and try delicately to explain myself. My dear girl was the great +consideration that made me bold. + +I set off one morning, accompanied by Charley, for Somers Town. As I +approached the house, I was strongly inclined to turn back, for I +felt what a desperate attempt it was to make an impression on Mr. +Skimpole and how extremely likely it was that he would signally +defeat me. However, I thought that being there, I would go through +with it. I knocked with a trembling hand at Mr. Skimpole’s +door—literally with a hand, for the knocker was gone—and after a +long parley gained admission from an Irishwoman, who was in the area +when I knocked, breaking up the lid of a water-butt with a poker to +light the fire with. + +Mr. Skimpole, lying on the sofa in his room, playing the flute a +little, was enchanted to see me. Now, who should receive me, he +asked. Who would I prefer for mistress of the ceremonies? Would I +have his Comedy daughter, his Beauty daughter, or his Sentiment +daughter? Or would I have all the daughters at once in a perfect +nosegay? + +I replied, half defeated already, that I wished to speak to himself +only if he would give me leave. + +“My dear Miss Summerson, most joyfully! Of course,” he said, bringing +his chair nearer mine and breaking into his fascinating smile, “of +course it’s not business. Then it’s pleasure!” + +I said it certainly was not business that I came upon, but it was not +quite a pleasant matter. + +“Then, my dear Miss Summerson,” said he with the frankest gaiety, +“don’t allude to it. Why should you allude to anything that is NOT a +pleasant matter? I never do. And you are a much pleasanter creature, +in every point of view, than I. You are perfectly pleasant; I am +imperfectly pleasant; then, if I never allude to an unpleasant +matter, how much less should you! So that’s disposed of, and we will +talk of something else.” + +Although I was embarrassed, I took courage to intimate that I still +wished to pursue the subject. + +“I should think it a mistake,” said Mr. Skimpole with his airy laugh, +“if I thought Miss Summerson capable of making one. But I don’t!” + +“Mr. Skimpole,” said I, raising my eyes to his, “I have so often +heard you say that you are unacquainted with the common affairs of +life—” + +“Meaning our three banking-house friends, L, S, and who’s the junior +partner? D?” said Mr. Skimpole, brightly. “Not an idea of them!” + +“—That perhaps,” I went on, “you will excuse my boldness on that +account. I think you ought most seriously to know that Richard is +poorer than he was.” + +“Dear me!” said Mr. Skimpole. “So am I, they tell me.” + +“And in very embarrassed circumstances.” + +“Parallel case, exactly!” said Mr. Skimpole with a delighted +countenance. + +“This at present naturally causes Ada much secret anxiety, and as I +think she is less anxious when no claims are made upon her by +visitors, and as Richard has one uneasiness always heavy on his mind, +it has occurred to me to take the liberty of saying that—if you +would—not—” + +I was coming to the point with great difficulty when he took me by +both hands and with a radiant face and in the liveliest way +anticipated it. + +“Not go there? Certainly not, my dear Miss Summerson, most assuredly +not. Why SHOULD I go there? When I go anywhere, I go for pleasure. I +don’t go anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure. Pain +comes to ME when it wants me. Now, I have had very little pleasure at +our dear Richard’s lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates +why. Our young friends, losing the youthful poetry which was once so +captivating in them, begin to think, ‘This is a man who wants +pounds.’ So I am; I always want pounds; not for myself, but because +tradespeople always want them of me. Next, our young friends begin to +think, becoming mercenary, ‘This is the man who HAD pounds, who +borrowed them,’ which I did. I always borrow pounds. So our young +friends, reduced to prose (which is much to be regretted), degenerate +in their power of imparting pleasure to me. Why should I go to see +them, therefore? Absurd!” + +Through the beaming smile with which he regarded me as he reasoned +thus, there now broke forth a look of disinterested benevolence quite +astonishing. + +“Besides,” he said, pursuing his argument in his tone of +light-hearted conviction, “if I don’t go anywhere for pain—which +would be a perversion of the intention of my being, and a monstrous +thing to do—why should I go anywhere to be the cause of pain? If I +went to see our young friends in their present ill-regulated state of +mind, I should give them pain. The associations with me would be +disagreeable. They might say, ‘This is the man who had pounds and who +can’t pay pounds,’ which I can’t, of course; nothing could be more +out of the question! Then kindness requires that I shouldn’t go near +them—and I won’t.” + +He finished by genially kissing my hand and thanking me. Nothing but +Miss Summerson’s fine tact, he said, would have found this out for +him. + +I was much disconcerted, but I reflected that if the main point were +gained, it mattered little how strangely he perverted everything +leading to it. I had determined to mention something else, however, +and I thought I was not to be put off in that. + +“Mr. Skimpole,” said I, “I must take the liberty of saying before I +conclude my visit that I was much surprised to learn, on the best +authority, some little time ago, that you knew with whom that poor +boy left Bleak House and that you accepted a present on that +occasion. I have not mentioned it to my guardian, for I fear it would +hurt him unnecessarily; but I may say to you that I was much +surprised.” + +“No? Really surprised, my dear Miss Summerson?” he returned +inquiringly, raising his pleasant eyebrows. + +“Greatly surprised.” + +He thought about it for a little while with a highly agreeable and +whimsical expression of face, then quite gave it up and said in his +most engaging manner, “You know what a child I am. Why surprised?” + +I was reluctant to enter minutely into that question, but as he +begged I would, for he was really curious to know, I gave him to +understand in the gentlest words I could use that his conduct seemed +to involve a disregard of several moral obligations. He was much +amused and interested when he heard this and said, “No, really?” with +ingenuous simplicity. + +“You know I don’t intend to be responsible. I never could do it. +Responsibility is a thing that has always been above me—or below +me,” said Mr. Skimpole. “I don’t even know which; but as I understand +the way in which my dear Miss Summerson (always remarkable for her +practical good sense and clearness) puts this case, I should imagine +it was chiefly a question of money, do you know?” + +I incautiously gave a qualified assent to this. + +“Ah! Then you see,” said Mr. Skimpole, shaking his head, “I am +hopeless of understanding it.” + +I suggested, as I rose to go, that it was not right to betray my +guardian’s confidence for a bribe. + +“My dear Miss Summerson,” he returned with a candid hilarity that was +all his own, “I can’t be bribed.” + +“Not by Mr. Bucket?” said I. + +“No,” said he. “Not by anybody. I don’t attach any value to money. I +don’t care about it, I don’t know about it, I don’t want it, I don’t +keep it—it goes away from me directly. How can I be bribed?” + +I showed that I was of a different opinion, though I had not the +capacity for arguing the question. + +“On the contrary,” said Mr. Skimpole, “I am exactly the man to be +placed in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above the +rest of mankind in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in +such a case as that. I am not warped by prejudices, as an Italian +baby is by bandages. I am as free as the air. I feel myself as far +above suspicion as Caesar’s wife.” + +Anything to equal the lightness of his manner and the playful +impartiality with which he seemed to convince himself, as he tossed +the matter about like a ball of feathers, was surely never seen in +anybody else! + +“Observe the case, my dear Miss Summerson. Here is a boy received +into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. +The boy being in bed, a man arrives—like the house that Jack built. +Here is the man who demands the boy who is received into the house +and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Here is a +bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received +into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. +Here is the Skimpole who accepts the bank-note produced by the man +who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in +a state that I strongly object to. Those are the facts. Very well. +Should the Skimpole have refused the note? WHY should the Skimpole +have refused the note? Skimpole protests to Bucket, ‘What’s this for? +I don’t understand it, it is of no use to me, take it away.’ Bucket +still entreats Skimpole to accept it. Are there reasons why Skimpole, +not being warped by prejudices, should accept it? Yes. Skimpole +perceives them. What are they? Skimpole reasons with himself, this is +a tamed lynx, an active police-officer, an intelligent man, a person +of a peculiarly directed energy and great subtlety both of conception +and execution, who discovers our friends and enemies for us when they +run away, recovers our property for us when we are robbed, avenges us +comfortably when we are murdered. This active police-officer and +intelligent man has acquired, in the exercise of his art, a strong +faith in money; he finds it very useful to him, and he makes it very +useful to society. Shall I shake that faith in Bucket because I want +it myself; shall I deliberately blunt one of Bucket’s weapons; shall +I positively paralyse Bucket in his next detective operation? And +again. If it is blameable in Skimpole to take the note, it is +blameable in Bucket to offer the note—much more blameable in Bucket, +because he is the knowing man. Now, Skimpole wishes to think well of +Bucket; Skimpole deems it essential, in its little place, to the +general cohesion of things, that he SHOULD think well of Bucket. The +state expressly asks him to trust to Bucket. And he does. And that’s +all he does!” + +I had nothing to offer in reply to this exposition and therefore took +my leave. Mr. Skimpole, however, who was in excellent spirits, would +not hear of my returning home attended only by “Little Coavinses,” +and accompanied me himself. He entertained me on the way with a +variety of delightful conversation and assured me, at parting, that +he should never forget the fine tact with which I had found that out +for him about our young friends. + +As it so happened that I never saw Mr. Skimpole again, I may at once +finish what I know of his history. A coolness arose between him and +my guardian, based principally on the foregoing grounds and on his +having heartlessly disregarded my guardian’s entreaties (as we +afterwards learned from Ada) in reference to Richard. His being +heavily in my guardian’s debt had nothing to do with their +separation. He died some five years afterwards and left a diary +behind him, with letters and other materials towards his life, which +was published and which showed him to have been the victim of a +combination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. It was +considered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it myself +than the sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the book. It +was this: “Jarndyce, in common with most other men I have known, is +the incarnation of selfishness.” + +And now I come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly +indeed, and for which I was quite unprepared when the circumstance +occurred. Whatever little lingerings may have now and then revived in +my mind associated with my poor old face had only revived as +belonging to a part of my life that was gone—gone like my infancy or +my childhood. I have suppressed none of my many weaknesses on that +subject, but have written them as faithfully as my memory has +recalled them. And I hope to do, and mean to do, the same down to the +last words of these pages, which I see now not so very far before me. + +The months were gliding away, and my dear girl, sustained by the +hopes she had confided in me, was the same beautiful star in the +miserable corner. Richard, more worn and haggard, haunted the court +day after day, listlessly sat there the whole day long when he knew +there was no remote chance of the suit being mentioned, and became +one of the stock sights of the place. I wonder whether any of the +gentlemen remembered him as he was when he first went there. + +So completely was he absorbed in his fixed idea that he used to avow +in his cheerful moments that he should never have breathed the fresh +air now “but for Woodcourt.” It was only Mr. Woodcourt who could +occasionally divert his attention for a few hours at a time and rouse +him, even when he sunk into a lethargy of mind and body that alarmed +us greatly, and the returns of which became more frequent as the +months went on. My dear girl was right in saying that he only pursued +his errors the more desperately for her sake. I have no doubt that +his desire to retrieve what he had lost was rendered the more intense +by his grief for his young wife, and became like the madness of a +gamester. + +I was there, as I have mentioned, at all hours. When I was there at +night, I generally went home with Charley in a coach; sometimes my +guardian would meet me in the neighbourhood, and we would walk home +together. One evening he had arranged to meet me at eight o’clock. I +could not leave, as I usually did, quite punctually at the time, for +I was working for my dear girl and had a few stitches more to do to +finish what I was about; but it was within a few minutes of the hour +when I bundled up my little work-basket, gave my darling my last kiss +for the night, and hurried downstairs. Mr. Woodcourt went with me, as +it was dusk. + +When we came to the usual place of meeting—it was close by, and Mr. +Woodcourt had often accompanied me before—my guardian was not there. +We waited half an hour, walking up and down, but there were no signs +of him. We agreed that he was either prevented from coming or that he +had come and gone away, and Mr. Woodcourt proposed to walk home with +me. + +It was the first walk we had ever taken together, except that very +short one to the usual place of meeting. We spoke of Richard and Ada +the whole way. I did not thank him in words for what he had done—my +appreciation of it had risen above all words then—but I hoped he +might not be without some understanding of what I felt so strongly. + +Arriving at home and going upstairs, we found that my guardian was +out and that Mrs. Woodcourt was out too. We were in the very same +room into which I had brought my blushing girl when her youthful +lover, now her so altered husband, was the choice of her young heart, +the very same room from which my guardian and I had watched them +going away through the sunlight in the fresh bloom of their hope and +promise. + +We were standing by the opened window looking down into the street +when Mr. Woodcourt spoke to me. I learned in a moment that he loved +me. I learned in a moment that my scarred face was all unchanged to +him. I learned in a moment that what I had thought was pity and +compassion was devoted, generous, faithful love. Oh, too late to know +it now, too late, too late. That was the first ungrateful thought I +had. Too late. + +“When I returned,” he told me, “when I came back, no richer than when +I went away, and found you newly risen from a sick bed, yet so +inspired by sweet consideration for others and so free from a selfish +thought—” + +“Oh, Mr. Woodcourt, forbear, forbear!” I entreated him. “I do not +deserve your high praise. I had many selfish thoughts at that time, +many!” + +“Heaven knows, beloved of my life,” said he, “that my praise is not a +lover’s praise, but the truth. You do not know what all around you +see in Esther Summerson, how many hearts she touches and awakens, +what sacred admiration and what love she wins.” + +“Oh, Mr. Woodcourt,” cried I, “it is a great thing to win love, it is +a great thing to win love! I am proud of it, and honoured by it; and +the hearing of it causes me to shed these tears of mingled joy and +sorrow—joy that I have won it, sorrow that I have not deserved it +better; but I am not free to think of yours.” + +I said it with a stronger heart, for when he praised me thus and when +I heard his voice thrill with his belief that what he said was true, +I aspired to be more worthy of it. It was not too late for that. +Although I closed this unforeseen page in my life to-night, I could +be worthier of it all through my life. And it was a comfort to me, +and an impulse to me, and I felt a dignity rise up within me that was +derived from him when I thought so. + +He broke the silence. + +“I should poorly show the trust that I have in the dear one who will +evermore be as dear to me as now”—and the deep earnestness with +which he said it at once strengthened me and made me weep—“if, after +her assurance that she is not free to think of my love, I urged it. +Dear Esther, let me only tell you that the fond idea of you which I +took abroad was exalted to the heavens when I came home. I have +always hoped, in the first hour when I seemed to stand in any ray of +good fortune, to tell you this. I have always feared that I should +tell it you in vain. My hopes and fears are both fulfilled to-night. +I distress you. I have said enough.” + +Something seemed to pass into my place that was like the angel he +thought me, and I felt so sorrowful for the loss he had sustained! I +wished to help him in his trouble, as I had wished to do when he +showed that first commiseration for me. + +“Dear Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “before we part to-night, something is +left for me to say. I never could say it as I wish—I never +shall—but—” + +I had to think again of being more deserving of his love and his +affliction before I could go on. + +“—I am deeply sensible of your generosity, and I shall treasure its +remembrance to my dying hour. I know full well how changed I am, I +know you are not unacquainted with my history, and I know what a +noble love that is which is so faithful. What you have said to me +could have affected me so much from no other lips, for there are none +that could give it such a value to me. It shall not be lost. It shall +make me better.” + +He covered his eyes with his hand and turned away his head. How could +I ever be worthy of those tears? + +“If, in the unchanged intercourse we shall have together—in tending +Richard and Ada, and I hope in many happier scenes of life—you ever +find anything in me which you can honestly think is better than it +used to be, believe that it will have sprung up from to-night and +that I shall owe it to you. And never believe, dear dear Mr. +Woodcourt, never believe that I forget this night or that while my +heart beats it can be insensible to the pride and joy of having been +beloved by you.” + +He took my hand and kissed it. He was like himself again, and I felt +still more encouraged. + +“I am induced by what you said just now,” said I, “to hope that you +have succeeded in your endeavour.” + +“I have,” he answered. “With such help from Mr. Jarndyce as you who +know him so well can imagine him to have rendered me, I have +succeeded.” + +“Heaven bless him for it,” said I, giving him my hand; “and heaven +bless you in all you do!” + +“I shall do it better for the wish,” he answered; “it will make me +enter on these new duties as on another sacred trust from you.” + +“Ah! Richard!” I exclaimed involuntarily, “What will he do when you +are gone!” + +“I am not required to go yet; I would not desert him, dear Miss +Summerson, even if I were.” + +One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon before he left me. I +knew that I should not be worthier of the love I could not take if I +reserved it. + +“Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “you will be glad to know from my lips +before I say good night that in the future, which is clear and bright +before me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or +desire.” + +It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied. + +“From my childhood I have been,” said I, “the object of the untiring +goodness of the best of human beings, to whom I am so bound by every +tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing I could do in +the compass of a life could express the feelings of a single day.” + +“I share those feelings,” he returned. “You speak of Mr. Jarndyce.” + +“You know his virtues well,” said I, “but few can know the greatness +of his character as I know it. All its highest and best qualities +have been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in the shaping +out of that future in which I am so happy. And if your highest homage +and respect had not been his already—which I know they are—they +would have been his, I think, on this assurance and in the feeling it +would have awakened in you towards him for my sake.” + +He fervently replied that indeed indeed they would have been. I gave +him my hand again. + +“Good night,” I said, “Good-bye.” + +“The first until we meet to-morrow, the second as a farewell to this +theme between us for ever.” + +“Yes.” + +“Good night; good-bye.” + +He left me, and I stood at the dark window watching the street. His +love, in all its constancy and generosity, had come so suddenly upon +me that he had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again +and the street was blotted out by my rushing tears. + +But they were not tears of regret and sorrow. No. He had called me +the beloved of his life and had said I would be evermore as dear to +him as I was then, and I felt as if my heart would not hold the +triumph of having heard those words. My first wild thought had died +away. It was not too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be +animated by them to be good, true, grateful, and contented. How easy +my path, how much easier than his! + + + + +CHAPTER LXII + +Another Discovery + + +I had not the courage to see any one that night. I had not even the +courage to see myself, for I was afraid that my tears might a little +reproach me. I went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the +dark, and lay down in the dark to sleep. I had no need of any light +to read my guardian’s letter by, for I knew it by heart. I took it +from the place where I kept it, and repeated its contents by its own +clear light of integrity and love, and went to sleep with it on my +pillow. + +I was up very early in the morning and called Charley to come for a +walk. We bought flowers for the breakfast-table, and came back and +arranged them, and were as busy as possible. We were so early that I +had a good time still for Charley’s lesson before breakfast; Charley +(who was not in the least improved in the old defective article of +grammar) came through it with great applause; and we were altogether +very notable. When my guardian appeared he said, “Why, little woman, +you look fresher than your flowers!” And Mrs. Woodcourt repeated and +translated a passage from the Mewlinnwillinwodd expressive of my +being like a mountain with the sun upon it. + +This was all so pleasant that I hope it made me still more like the +mountain than I had been before. After breakfast I waited my +opportunity and peeped about a little until I saw my guardian in his +own room—the room of last night—by himself. Then I made an excuse +to go in with my housekeeping keys, shutting the door after me. + +“Well, Dame Durden?” said my guardian; the post had brought him +several letters, and he was writing. “You want money?” + +“No, indeed, I have plenty in hand.” + +“There never was such a Dame Durden,” said my guardian, “for making +money last.” + +He had laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair looking at me. +I have often spoken of his bright face, but I thought I had never +seen it look so bright and good. There was a high happiness upon it +which made me think, “He has been doing some great kindness this +morning.” + +“There never was,” said my guardian, musing as he smiled upon me, +“such a Dame Durden for making money last.” + +He had never yet altered his old manner. I loved it and him so much +that when I now went up to him and took my usual chair, which was +always put at his side—for sometimes I read to him, and sometimes I +talked to him, and sometimes I silently worked by him—I hardly liked +to disturb it by laying my hand on his breast. But I found I did not +disturb it at all. + +“Dear guardian,” said I, “I want to speak to you. Have I been remiss +in anything?” + +“Remiss in anything, my dear!” + +“Have I not been what I have meant to be since—I brought the answer +to your letter, guardian?” + +“You have been everything I could desire, my love.” + +“I am very glad indeed to hear that,” I returned. “You know, you said +to me, was this the mistress of Bleak House. And I said, yes.” + +“Yes,” said my guardian, nodding his head. He had put his arm about +me as if there were something to protect me from and looked in my +face, smiling. + +“Since then,” said I, “we have never spoken on the subject except +once.” + +“And then I said Bleak House was thinning fast; and so it was, my +dear.” + +“And I said,” I timidly reminded him, “but its mistress remained.” + +He still held me in the same protecting manner and with the same +bright goodness in his face. + +“Dear guardian,” said I, “I know how you have felt all that has +happened, and how considerate you have been. As so much time has +passed, and as you spoke only this morning of my being so well again, +perhaps you expect me to renew the subject. Perhaps I ought to do so. +I will be the mistress of Bleak House when you please.” + +“See,” he returned gaily, “what a sympathy there must be between us! +I have had nothing else, poor Rick excepted—it’s a large +exception—in my mind. When you came in, I was full of it. When shall +we give Bleak House its mistress, little woman?” + +“When you please.” + +“Next month?” + +“Next month, dear guardian.” + +“The day on which I take the happiest and best step of my life—the +day on which I shall be a man more exulting and more enviable than +any other man in the world—the day on which I give Bleak House its +little mistress—shall be next month then,” said my guardian. + +I put my arms round his neck and kissed him just as I had done on the +day when I brought my answer. + +A servant came to the door to announce Mr. Bucket, which was quite +unnecessary, for Mr. Bucket was already looking in over the servant’s +shoulder. “Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson,” said he, rather out of +breath, “with all apologies for intruding, WILL you allow me to order +up a person that’s on the stairs and that objects to being left there +in case of becoming the subject of observations in his absence? Thank +you. Be so good as chair that there member in this direction, will +you?” said Mr. Bucket, beckoning over the banisters. + +This singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap, +unable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers and +deposited in the room near the door. Mr. Bucket immediately got rid +of the bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it. + +“Now you see, Mr. Jarndyce,” he then began, putting down his hat and +opening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered finger, +“you know me, and Miss Summerson knows me. This gentleman likewise +knows me, and his name is Smallweed. The discounting line is his line +principally, and he’s what you may call a dealer in bills. That’s +about what YOU are, you know, ain’t you?” said Mr. Bucket, stopping a +little to address the gentleman in question, who was exceedingly +suspicious of him. + +He seemed about to dispute this designation of himself when he was +seized with a violent fit of coughing. + +“Now, moral, you know!” said Mr. Bucket, improving the accident. +“Don’t you contradict when there ain’t no occasion, and you won’t be +took in that way. Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I address myself to you. I’ve +been negotiating with this gentleman on behalf of Sir Leicester +Dedlock, Baronet, and one way and another I’ve been in and out and +about his premises a deal. His premises are the premises formerly +occupied by Krook, marine store dealer—a relation of this +gentleman’s that you saw in his lifetime if I don’t mistake?” + +My guardian replied, “Yes.” + +“Well! You are to understand,” said Mr. Bucket, “that this gentleman +he come into Krook’s property, and a good deal of magpie property +there was. Vast lots of waste-paper among the rest. Lord bless you, +of no use to nobody!” + +The cunning of Mr. Bucket’s eye and the masterly manner in which he +contrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful +auditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case +according to previous agreement and could say much more of Mr. +Smallweed if he thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in +quite understanding him. His difficulty was increased by Mr. +Smallweed’s being deaf as well as suspicious and watching his face +with the closest attention. + +“Among them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes +into the property, naturally begins to rummage, don’t you see?” said +Mr. Bucket. + +“To which? Say that again,” cried Mr. Smallweed in a shrill, sharp +voice. + +“To rummage,” repeated Mr. Bucket. “Being a prudent man and +accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage +among the papers as you have come into; don’t you?” + +“Of course I do,” cried Mr. Smallweed. + +“Of course you do,” said Mr. Bucket conversationally, “and much to +blame you would be if you didn’t. And so you chance to find, you +know,” Mr. Bucket went on, stooping over him with an air of cheerful +raillery which Mr. Smallweed by no means reciprocated, “and so you +chance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of Jarndyce to +it. Don’t you?” + +Mr. Smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us and grudgingly nodded +assent. + +“And coming to look at that paper at your full leisure and +convenience—all in good time, for you’re not curious to read it, and +why should you be?—what do you find it to be but a will, you see. +That’s the drollery of it,” said Mr. Bucket with the same lively air +of recalling a joke for the enjoyment of Mr. Smallweed, who still had +the same crest-fallen appearance of not enjoying it at all; “what do +you find it to be but a will?” + +“I don’t know that it’s good as a will or as anything else,” snarled +Mr. Smallweed. + +Mr. Bucket eyed the old man for a moment—he had slipped and shrunk +down in his chair into a mere bundle—as if he were much disposed to +pounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him with the +same agreeable air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes upon us. + +“Notwithstanding which,” said Mr. Bucket, “you get a little doubtful +and uncomfortable in your mind about it, having a very tender mind of +your own.” + +“Eh? What do you say I have got of my own?” asked Mr. Smallweed with +his hand to his ear. + +“A very tender mind.” + +“Ho! Well, go on,” said Mr. Smallweed. + +“And as you’ve heard a good deal mentioned regarding a celebrated +Chancery will case of the same name, and as you know what a card +Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and books, +and papers, and what not, and never liking to part with ’em, and +always a-going to teach himself to read, you begin to think—and you +never was more correct in your born days—‘Ecod, if I don’t look +about me, I may get into trouble regarding this will.’” + +“Now, mind how you put it, Bucket,” cried the old man anxiously with +his hand at his ear. “Speak up; none of your brimstone tricks. Pick +me up; I want to hear better. Oh, Lord, I am shaken to bits!” + +Mr. Bucket had certainly picked him up at a dart. However, as soon as +he could be heard through Mr. Smallweed’s coughing and his vicious +ejaculations of “Oh, my bones! Oh, dear! I’ve no breath in my body! +I’m worse than the chattering, clattering, brimstone pig at home!” +Mr. Bucket proceeded in the same convivial manner as before. + +“So, as I happen to be in the habit of coming about your premises, +you take me into your confidence, don’t you?” + +I think it would be impossible to make an admission with more ill +will and a worse grace than Mr. Smallweed displayed when he admitted +this, rendering it perfectly evident that Mr. Bucket was the very +last person he would have thought of taking into his confidence if he +could by any possibility have kept him out of it. + +“And I go into the business with you—very pleasant we are over it; +and I confirm you in your well-founded fears that you will get +yourself into a most precious line if you don’t come out with that +there will,” said Mr. Bucket emphatically; “and accordingly you +arrange with me that it shall be delivered up to this present Mr. +Jarndyce, on no conditions. If it should prove to be valuable, you +trusting yourself to him for your reward; that’s about where it is, +ain’t it?” + +“That’s what was agreed,” Mr. Smallweed assented with the same bad +grace. + +“In consequence of which,” said Mr. Bucket, dismissing his agreeable +manner all at once and becoming strictly business-like, “you’ve got +that will upon your person at the present time, and the only thing +that remains for you to do is just to out with it!” + +Having given us one glance out of the watching corner of his eye, and +having given his nose one triumphant rub with his forefinger, Mr. +Bucket stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential friend and +his hand stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it to my +guardian. It was not produced without much reluctance and many +declarations on the part of Mr. Smallweed that he was a poor +industrious man and that he left it to Mr. Jarndyce’s honour not to +let him lose by his honesty. Little by little he very slowly took +from a breast-pocket a stained, discoloured paper which was much +singed upon the outside and a little burnt at the edges, as if it had +long ago been thrown upon a fire and hastily snatched off again. Mr. +Bucket lost no time in transferring this paper, with the dexterity of +a conjuror, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. Jarndyce. As he gave it to my +guardian, he whispered behind his fingers, “Hadn’t settled how to +make their market of it. Quarrelled and hinted about it. I laid out +twenty pound upon it. First the avaricious grandchildren split upon +him on account of their objections to his living so unreasonably +long, and then they split on one another. Lord! There ain’t one of +the family that wouldn’t sell the other for a pound or two, except +the old lady—and she’s only out of it because she’s too weak in her +mind to drive a bargain.” + +“Mr Bucket,” said my guardian aloud, “whatever the worth of this +paper may be to any one, my obligations are great to you; and if it +be of any worth, I hold myself bound to see Mr. Smallweed remunerated +accordingly.” + +“Not according to your merits, you know,” said Mr. Bucket in friendly +explanation to Mr. Smallweed. “Don’t you be afraid of that. According +to its value.” + +“That is what I mean,” said my guardian. “You may observe, Mr. +Bucket, that I abstain from examining this paper myself. The plain +truth is, I have forsworn and abjured the whole business these many +years, and my soul is sick of it. But Miss Summerson and I will +immediately place the paper in the hands of my solicitor in the +cause, and its existence shall be made known without delay to all +other parties interested.” + +“Mr. Jarndyce can’t say fairer than that, you understand,” observed +Mr. Bucket to his fellow-visitor. “And it being now made clear to you +that nobody’s a-going to be wronged—which must be a great relief to +YOUR mind—we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing you home +again.” + +He unbolted the door, called in the bearers, wished us good morning, +and with a look full of meaning and a crook of his finger at parting +went his way. + +We went our way too, which was to Lincoln’s Inn, as quickly as +possible. Mr. Kenge was disengaged, and we found him at his table in +his dusty room with the inexpressive-looking books and the piles of +papers. Chairs having been placed for us by Mr. Guppy, Mr. Kenge +expressed the surprise and gratification he felt at the unusual sight +of Mr. Jarndyce in his office. He turned over his double eye-glass as +he spoke and was more Conversation Kenge than ever. + +“I hope,” said Mr. Kenge, “that the genial influence of Miss +Summerson,” he bowed to me, “may have induced Mr. Jarndyce,” he bowed +to him, “to forego some little of his animosity towards a cause and +towards a court which are—shall I say, which take their place in the +stately vista of the pillars of our profession?” + +“I am inclined to think,” returned my guardian, “that Miss Summerson +has seen too much of the effects of the court and the cause to exert +any influence in their favour. Nevertheless, they are a part of the +occasion of my being here. Mr. Kenge, before I lay this paper on your +desk and have done with it, let me tell you how it has come into my +hands.” + +He did so shortly and distinctly. + +“It could not, sir,” said Mr. Kenge, “have been stated more plainly +and to the purpose if it had been a case at law.” + +“Did you ever know English law, or equity either, plain and to the +purpose?” said my guardian. + +“Oh, fie!” said Mr. Kenge. + +At first he had not seemed to attach much importance to the paper, +but when he saw it he appeared more interested, and when he had +opened and read a little of it through his eye-glass, he became +amazed. “Mr. Jarndyce,” he said, looking off it, “you have perused +this?” + +“Not I!” returned my guardian. + +“But, my dear sir,” said Mr. Kenge, “it is a will of later date than +any in the suit. It appears to be all in the testator’s handwriting. +It is duly executed and attested. And even if intended to be +cancelled, as might possibly be supposed to be denoted by these marks +of fire, it is NOT cancelled. Here it is, a perfect instrument!” + +“Well!” said my guardian. “What is that to me?” + +“Mr. Guppy!” cried Mr. Kenge, raising his voice. “I beg your pardon, +Mr. Jarndyce.” + +“Sir.” + +“Mr. Vholes of Symond’s Inn. My compliments. Jarndyce and Jarndyce. +Glad to speak with him.” + +Mr. Guppy disappeared. + +“You ask me what is this to you, Mr. Jarndyce. If you had perused +this document, you would have seen that it reduces your interest +considerably, though still leaving it a very handsome one, still +leaving it a very handsome one,” said Mr. Kenge, waving his hand +persuasively and blandly. “You would further have seen that the +interests of Mr. Richard Carstone and of Miss Ada Clare, now Mrs. +Richard Carstone, are very materially advanced by it.” + +“Kenge,” said my guardian, “if all the flourishing wealth that the +suit brought into this vile court of Chancery could fall to my two +young cousins, I should be well contented. But do you ask ME to +believe that any good is to come of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?” + +“Oh, really, Mr. Jarndyce! Prejudice, prejudice. My dear sir, this is +a very great country, a very great country. Its system of equity is a +very great system, a very great system. Really, really!” + +My guardian said no more, and Mr. Vholes arrived. He was modestly +impressed by Mr. Kenge’s professional eminence. + +“How do you do, Mr. Vholes? Will you be so good as to take a chair +here by me and look over this paper?” + +Mr. Vholes did as he was asked and seemed to read it every word. He +was not excited by it, but he was not excited by anything. When he +had well examined it, he retired with Mr. Kenge into a window, and +shading his mouth with his black glove, spoke to him at some length. +I was not surprised to observe Mr. Kenge inclined to dispute what +he said before he had said much, for I knew that no two people ever +did agree about anything in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. But he seemed +to get the better of Mr. Kenge too in a conversation that sounded +as if it were almost composed of the words “Receiver-General,” +“Accountant-General,” “report,” “estate,” and “costs.” When they had +finished, they came back to Mr. Kenge’s table and spoke aloud. + +“Well! But this is a very remarkable document, Mr. Vholes,” said Mr. +Kenge. + +Mr. Vholes said, “Very much so.” + +“And a very important document, Mr. Vholes,” said Mr. Kenge. + +Again Mr. Vholes said, “Very much so.” + +“And as you say, Mr. Vholes, when the cause is in the paper next +term, this document will be an unexpected and interesting feature in +it,” said Mr. Kenge, looking loftily at my guardian. + +Mr. Vholes was gratified, as a smaller practitioner striving to keep +respectable, to be confirmed in any opinion of his own by such an +authority. + +“And when,” asked my guardian, rising after a pause, during which Mr. +Kenge had rattled his money and Mr. Vholes had picked his pimples, +“when is next term?” + +“Next term, Mr. Jarndyce, will be next month,” said Mr. Kenge. “Of +course we shall at once proceed to do what is necessary with this +document and to collect the necessary evidence concerning it; and of +course you will receive our usual notification of the cause being in +the paper.” + +“To which I shall pay, of course, my usual attention.” + +“Still bent, my dear sir,” said Mr. Kenge, showing us through the +outer office to the door, “still bent, even with your enlarged mind, +on echoing a popular prejudice? We are a prosperous community, Mr. +Jarndyce, a very prosperous community. We are a great country, Mr. +Jarndyce, we are a very great country. This is a great system, Mr. +Jarndyce, and would you wish a great country to have a little system? +Now, really, really!” + +He said this at the stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it +were a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of his words on +the structure of the system and consolidate it for a thousand ages. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIII + +Steel and Iron + + +George’s Shooting Gallery is to let, and the stock is sold off, and +George himself is at Chesney Wold attending on Sir Leicester in his +rides and riding very near his bridle-rein because of the uncertain +hand with which he guides his horse. But not to-day is George so +occupied. He is journeying to-day into the iron country farther north +to look about him. + +As he comes into the iron country farther north, such fresh green +woods as those of Chesney Wold are left behind; and coal pits and +ashes, high chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching +fires, and a heavy never-lightening cloud of smoke become the +features of the scenery. Among such objects rides the trooper, +looking about him and always looking for something he has come to +find. + +At last, on the black canal bridge of a busy town, with a clang of +iron in it, and more fires and more smoke than he has seen yet, the +trooper, swart with the dust of the coal roads, checks his horse and +asks a workman does he know the name of Rouncewell thereabouts. + +“Why, master,” quoth the workman, “do I know my own name?” + +“’Tis so well known here, is it, comrade?” asks the trooper. + +“Rouncewell’s? Ah! You’re right.” + +“And where might it be now?” asks the trooper with a glance before +him. + +“The bank, the factory, or the house?” the workman wants to know. + +“Hum! Rouncewell’s is so great apparently,” mutters the trooper, +stroking his chin, “that I have as good as half a mind to go back +again. Why, I don’t know which I want. Should I find Mr. Rouncewell +at the factory, do you think?” + +“Tain’t easy to say where you’d find him—at this time of the day you +might find either him or his son there, if he’s in town; but his +contracts take him away.” + +And which is the factory? Why, he sees those chimneys—the tallest +ones! Yes, he sees THEM. Well! Let him keep his eye on those +chimneys, going on as straight as ever he can, and presently he’ll +see ’em down a turning on the left, shut in by a great brick wall +which forms one side of the street. That’s Rouncewell’s. + +The trooper thanks his informant and rides slowly on, looking about +him. He does not turn back, but puts up his horse (and is much +disposed to groom him too) at a public-house where some of +Rouncewell’s hands are dining, as the ostler tells him. Some of +Rouncewell’s hands have just knocked off for dinner-time and seem to +be invading the whole town. They are very sinewy and strong, are +Rouncewell’s hands—a little sooty too. + +He comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks in, and sees a great +perplexity of iron lying about in every stage and in a vast variety +of shapes—in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks, in boilers, in +axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted and wrenched +into eccentric and perverse forms as separate parts of machinery; +mountains of it broken up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of +it glowing and bubbling in its youth; bright fireworks of it +showering about under the blows of the steam-hammer; red-hot iron, +white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a +Babel of iron sounds. + +“This is a place to make a man’s head ache too!” says the trooper, +looking about him for a counting-house. “Who comes here? This is very +like me before I was set up. This ought to be my nephew, if +likenesses run in families. Your servant, sir.” + +“Yours, sir. Are you looking for any one?” + +“Excuse me. Young Mr. Rouncewell, I believe?” + +“Yes.” + +“I was looking for your father, sir. I wish to have a word with him.” + +The young man, telling him he is fortunate in his choice of a time, +for his father is there, leads the way to the office where he is to +be found. “Very like me before I was set up—devilish like me!” +thinks the trooper as he follows. They come to a building in the yard +with an office on an upper floor. At sight of the gentleman in the +office, Mr. George turns very red. + +“What name shall I say to my father?” asks the young man. + +George, full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers “Steel,” and +is so presented. He is left alone with the gentleman in the office, +who sits at a table with account-books before him and some sheets of +paper blotted with hosts of figures and drawings of cunning shapes. +It is a bare office, with bare windows, looking on the iron view +below. Tumbled together on the table are some pieces of iron, +purposely broken to be tested at various periods of their service, in +various capacities. There is iron-dust on everything; and the smoke +is seen through the windows rolling heavily out of the tall chimneys +to mingle with the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other chimneys. + +“I am at your service, Mr. Steel,” says the gentleman when his +visitor has taken a rusty chair. + +“Well, Mr. Rouncewell,” George replies, leaning forward with his left +arm on his knee and his hat in his hand, and very chary of meeting +his brother’s eye, “I am not without my expectations that in the +present visit I may prove to be more free than welcome. I have served +as a dragoon in my day, and a comrade of mine that I was once rather +partial to was, if I don’t deceive myself, a brother of yours. I +believe you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran +away, and never did any good but in keeping away?” + +“Are you quite sure,” returns the ironmaster in an altered voice, +“that your name is Steel?” + +The trooper falters and looks at him. His brother starts up, calls +him by his name, and grasps him by both hands. + +“You are too quick for me!” cries the trooper with the tears +springing out of his eyes. “How do you do, my dear old fellow? I +never could have thought you would have been half so glad to see me +as all this. How do you do, my dear old fellow, how do you do!” + +They shake hands and embrace each other over and over again, the +trooper still coupling his “How do you do, my dear old fellow!” with +his protestation that he never thought his brother would have been +half so glad to see him as all this! + +“So far from it,” he declares at the end of a full account of what +has preceded his arrival there, “I had very little idea of making +myself known. I thought if you took by any means forgivingly to my +name I might gradually get myself up to the point of writing a +letter. But I should not have been surprised, brother, if you had +considered it anything but welcome news to hear of me.” + +“We will show you at home what kind of news we think it, George,” +returns his brother. “This is a great day at home, and you could not +have arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a better. I make an +agreement with my son Watt to-day that on this day twelvemonth he +shall marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your +travels. She goes to Germany to-morrow with one of your nieces for a +little polishing up in her education. We make a feast of the event, +and you will be made the hero of it.” + +Mr. George is so entirely overcome at first by this prospect that he +resists the proposed honour with great earnestness. Being overborne, +however, by his brother and his nephew—concerning whom he renews his +protestations that he never could have thought they would have been +half so glad to see him—he is taken home to an elegant house in all +the arrangements of which there is to be observed a pleasant mixture +of the originally simple habits of the father and mother with such as +are suited to their altered station and the higher fortunes of their +children. Here Mr. George is much dismayed by the graces and +accomplishments of his nieces that are and by the beauty of Rosa, his +niece that is to be, and by the affectionate salutations of these +young ladies, which he receives in a sort of dream. He is sorely +taken aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his nephew and has a +woeful consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace. However, there +is great rejoicing and a very hearty company and infinite enjoyment, +and Mr. George comes bluff and martial through it all, and his pledge +to be present at the marriage and give away the bride is received +with universal favour. A whirling head has Mr. George that night when +he lies down in the state-bed of his brother’s house to think of all +these things and to see the images of his nieces (awful all the +evening in their floating muslins) waltzing, after the German manner, +over his counterpane. + +The brothers are closeted next morning in the ironmaster’s room, +where the elder is proceeding, in his clear sensible way, to show how +he thinks he may best dispose of George in his business, when George +squeezes his hand and stops him. + +“Brother, I thank you a million times for your more than brotherly +welcome, and a million times more to that for your more than +brotherly intentions. But my plans are made. Before I say a word as +to them, I wish to consult you upon one family point. How,” says the +trooper, folding his arms and looking with indomitable firmness at +his brother, “how is my mother to be got to scratch me?” + +“I am not sure that I understand you, George,” replies the +ironmaster. + +“I say, brother, how is my mother to be got to scratch me? She must +be got to do it somehow.” + +“Scratch you out of her will, I think you mean?” + +“Of course I do. In short,” says the trooper, folding his arms more +resolutely yet, “I mean—TO—scratch me!” + +“My dear George,” returns his brother, “is it so indispensable that +you should undergo that process?” + +“Quite! Absolutely! I couldn’t be guilty of the meanness of coming +back without it. I should never be safe not to be off again. I have +not sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of +your rights. I, who forfeited mine long ago! If I am to remain and +hold up my head, I must be scratched. Come. You are a man of +celebrated penetration and intelligence, and you can tell me how it’s +to be brought about.” + +“I can tell you, George,” replies the ironmaster deliberately, “how +it is not to be brought about, which I hope may answer the purpose as +well. Look at our mother, think of her, recall her emotion when she +recovered you. Do you believe there is a consideration in the world +that would induce her to take such a step against her favourite son? +Do you believe there is any chance of her consent, to balance against +the outrage it would be to her (loving dear old lady!) to propose it? +If you do, you are wrong. No, George! You must make up your mind to +remain UNscratched, I think.” There is an amused smile on the +ironmaster’s face as he watches his brother, who is pondering, deeply +disappointed. “I think you may manage almost as well as if the thing +were done, though.” + +“How, brother?” + +“Being bent upon it, you can dispose by will of anything you have the +misfortune to inherit in any way you like, you know.” + +“That’s true!” says the trooper, pondering again. Then he wistfully +asks, with his hand on his brother’s, “Would you mind mentioning +that, brother, to your wife and family?” + +“Not at all.” + +“Thank you. You wouldn’t object to say, perhaps, that although an +undoubted vagabond, I am a vagabond of the harum-scarum order, and +not of the mean sort?” + +The ironmaster, repressing his amused smile, assents. + +“Thank you. Thank you. It’s a weight off my mind,” says the trooper +with a heave of his chest as he unfolds his arms and puts a hand on +each leg, “though I had set my heart on being scratched, too!” + +The brothers are very like each other, sitting face to face; but a +certain massive simplicity and absence of usage in the ways of the +world is all on the trooper’s side. + +“Well,” he proceeds, throwing off his disappointment, “next and last, +those plans of mine. You have been so brotherly as to propose to me +to fall in here and take my place among the products of your +perseverance and sense. I thank you heartily. It’s more than +brotherly, as I said before, and I thank you heartily for it,” +shaking him a long time by the hand. “But the truth is, brother, I am +a—I am a kind of a weed, and it’s too late to plant me in a regular +garden.” + +“My dear George,” returns the elder, concentrating his strong steady +brow upon him and smiling confidently, “leave that to me, and let me +try.” + +George shakes his head. “You could do it, I have not a doubt, if +anybody could; but it’s not to be done. Not to be done, sir! Whereas +it so falls out, on the other hand, that I am able to be of some +trifle of use to Sir Leicester Dedlock since his illness—brought on +by family sorrows—and that he would rather have that help from our +mother’s son than from anybody else.” + +“Well, my dear George,” returns the other with a very slight shade +upon his open face, “if you prefer to serve in Sir Leicester +Dedlock’s household brigade—” + +“There it is, brother,” cries the trooper, checking him, with his +hand upon his knee again; “there it is! You don’t take kindly to that +idea; I don’t mind it. You are not used to being officered; I am. +Everything about you is in perfect order and discipline; everything +about me requires to be kept so. We are not accustomed to carry +things with the same hand or to look at ’em from the same point. I +don’t say much about my garrison manners because I found myself +pretty well at my ease last night, and they wouldn’t be noticed here, +I dare say, once and away. But I shall get on best at Chesney Wold, +where there’s more room for a weed than there is here; and the dear +old lady will be made happy besides. Therefore I accept of Sir +Leicester Dedlock’s proposals. When I come over next year to give +away the bride, or whenever I come, I shall have the sense to keep +the household brigade in ambuscade and not to manoeuvre it on your +ground. I thank you heartily again and am proud to think of the +Rouncewells as they’ll be founded by you.” + +“You know yourself, George,” says the elder brother, returning the +grip of his hand, “and perhaps you know me better than I know myself. +Take your way. So that we don’t quite lose one another again, take +your way.” + +“No fear of that!” returns the trooper. “Now, before I turn my +horse’s head homewards, brother, I will ask you—if you’ll be so +good—to look over a letter for me. I brought it with me to send from +these parts, as Chesney Wold might be a painful name just now to the +person it’s written to. I am not much accustomed to correspondence +myself, and I am particular respecting this present letter because I +want it to be both straightforward and delicate.” + +Herewith he hands a letter, closely written in somewhat pale ink but +in a neat round hand, to the ironmaster, who reads as follows: + + + Miss Esther Summerson, + + A communication having been made to me by Inspector Bucket + of a letter to myself being found among the papers of a + certain person, I take the liberty to make known to you + that it was but a few lines of instruction from abroad, + when, where, and how to deliver an enclosed letter to a + young and beautiful lady, then unmarried, in England. I + duly observed the same. + + I further take the liberty to make known to you that it + was got from me as a proof of handwriting only and that + otherwise I would not have given it up, as appearing to + be the most harmless in my possession, without being + previously shot through the heart. + + I further take the liberty to mention that if I could have + supposed a certain unfortunate gentleman to have been in + existence, I never could and never would have rested until + I had discovered his retreat and shared my last farthing + with him, as my duty and my inclination would have equally + been. But he was (officially) reported drowned, and + assuredly went over the side of a transport-ship at night + in an Irish harbour within a few hours of her arrival from + the West Indies, as I have myself heard both from officers + and men on board, and know to have been (officially) + confirmed. + + I further take the liberty to state that in my humble + quality as one of the rank and file, I am, and shall ever + continue to be, your thoroughly devoted and admiring + servant and that I esteem the qualities you possess above + all others far beyond the limits of the present dispatch. + + I have the honour to be, + + GEORGE + + +“A little formal,” observes the elder brother, refolding it with a +puzzled face. + +“But nothing that might not be sent to a pattern young lady?” asks +the younger. + +“Nothing at all.” + +Therefore it is sealed and deposited for posting among the iron +correspondence of the day. This done, Mr. George takes a hearty +farewell of the family party and prepares to saddle and mount. His +brother, however, unwilling to part with him so soon, proposes to +ride with him in a light open carriage to the place where he will +bait for the night, and there remain with him until morning, a +servant riding for so much of the journey on the thoroughbred old +grey from Chesney Wold. The offer, being gladly accepted, is followed +by a pleasant ride, a pleasant dinner, and a pleasant breakfast, all +in brotherly communion. Then they once more shake hands long and +heartily and part, the ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and +fires, and the trooper to the green country. Early in the afternoon +the subdued sound of his heavy military trot is heard on the turf in +the avenue as he rides on with imaginary clank and jingle of +accoutrements under the old elm-trees. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIV + +Esther’s Narrative + + +Soon after I had that conversation with my guardian, he put a sealed +paper in my hand one morning and said, “This is for next month, my +dear.” I found in it two hundred pounds. + +I now began very quietly to make such preparations as I thought were +necessary. Regulating my purchases by my guardian’s taste, which I +knew very well of course, I arranged my wardrobe to please him and +hoped I should be highly successful. I did it all so quietly because +I was not quite free from my old apprehension that Ada would be +rather sorry and because my guardian was so quiet himself. I had no +doubt that under all the circumstances we should be married in the +most private and simple manner. Perhaps I should only have to say to +Ada, “Would you like to come and see me married to-morrow, my pet?” +Perhaps our wedding might even be as unpretending as her own, and I +might not find it necessary to say anything about it until it was +over. I thought that if I were to choose, I would like this best. + +The only exception I made was Mrs. Woodcourt. I told her that I was +going to be married to my guardian and that we had been engaged some +time. She highly approved. She could never do enough for me and was +remarkably softened now in comparison with what she had been when we +first knew her. There was no trouble she would not have taken to have +been of use to me, but I need hardly say that I only allowed her to +take as little as gratified her kindness without tasking it. + +Of course this was not a time to neglect my guardian, and of course +it was not a time for neglecting my darling. So I had plenty of +occupation, which I was glad of; and as to Charley, she was +absolutely not to be seen for needlework. To surround herself with +great heaps of it—baskets full and tables full—and do a little, and +spend a great deal of time in staring with her round eyes at what +there was to do, and persuade herself that she was going to do it, +were Charley’s great dignities and delights. + +Meanwhile, I must say, I could not agree with my guardian on the +subject of the will, and I had some sanguine hopes of Jarndyce and +Jarndyce. Which of us was right will soon appear, but I certainly did +encourage expectations. In Richard, the discovery gave occasion for a +burst of business and agitation that buoyed him up for a little time, +but he had lost the elasticity even of hope now and seemed to me to +retain only its feverish anxieties. From something my guardian said +one day when we were talking about this, I understood that my +marriage would not take place until after the term-time we had been +told to look forward to; and I thought the more, for that, how +rejoiced I should be if I could be married when Richard and Ada were +a little more prosperous. + +The term was very near indeed when my guardian was called out of town +and went down into Yorkshire on Mr. Woodcourt’s business. He had told +me beforehand that his presence there would be necessary. I had just +come in one night from my dear girl’s and was sitting in the midst of +all my new clothes, looking at them all around me and thinking, when +a letter from my guardian was brought to me. It asked me to join him +in the country and mentioned by what stage-coach my place was taken +and at what time in the morning I should have to leave town. It added +in a postscript that I would not be many hours from Ada. + +I expected few things less than a journey at that time, but I was +ready for it in half an hour and set off as appointed early next +morning. I travelled all day, wondering all day what I could be +wanted for at such a distance; now I thought it might be for this +purpose, and now I thought it might be for that purpose, but I was +never, never, never near the truth. + +It was night when I came to my journey’s end and found my guardian +waiting for me. This was a great relief, for towards evening I had +begun to fear (the more so as his letter was a very short one) that +he might be ill. However, there he was, as well as it was possible to +be; and when I saw his genial face again at its brightest and best, I +said to myself, he has been doing some other great kindness. Not that +it required much penetration to say that, because I knew that his +being there at all was an act of kindness. + +Supper was ready at the hotel, and when we were alone at table he +said, “Full of curiosity, no doubt, little woman, to know why I have +brought you here?” + +“Well, guardian,” said I, “without thinking myself a Fatima or you a +Blue Beard, I am a little curious about it.” + +“Then to ensure your night’s rest, my love,” he returned gaily, “I +won’t wait until to-morrow to tell you. I have very much wished to +express to Woodcourt, somehow, my sense of his humanity to poor +unfortunate Jo, his inestimable services to my young cousins, and his +value to us all. When it was decided that he should settle here, it +came into my head that I might ask his acceptance of some +unpretending and suitable little place to lay his own head in. I +therefore caused such a place to be looked out for, and such a place +was found on very easy terms, and I have been touching it up for him +and making it habitable. However, when I walked over it the day +before yesterday and it was reported ready, I found that I was not +housekeeper enough to know whether things were all as they ought to +be. So I sent off for the best little housekeeper that could possibly +be got to come and give me her advice and opinion. And here she is,” +said my guardian, “laughing and crying both together!” + +Because he was so dear, so good, so admirable. I tried to tell him +what I thought of him, but I could not articulate a word. + +“Tut, tut!” said my guardian. “You make too much of it, little woman. +Why, how you sob, Dame Durden, how you sob!” + +“It is with exquisite pleasure, guardian—with a heart full of +thanks.” + +“Well, well,” said he. “I am delighted that you approve. I thought +you would. I meant it as a pleasant surprise for the little mistress +of Bleak House.” + +I kissed him and dried my eyes. “I know now!” said I. “I have seen +this in your face a long while.” + +“No; have you really, my dear?” said he. “What a Dame Durden it is to +read a face!” + +He was so quaintly cheerful that I could not long be otherwise, and +was almost ashamed of having been otherwise at all. When I went to +bed, I cried. I am bound to confess that I cried; but I hope it was +with pleasure, though I am not quite sure it was with pleasure. I +repeated every word of the letter twice over. + +A most beautiful summer morning succeeded, and after breakfast we +went out arm in arm to see the house of which I was to give my mighty +housekeeping opinion. We entered a flower-garden by a gate in a side +wall, of which he had the key, and the first thing I saw was that the +beds and flowers were all laid out according to the manner of my beds +and flowers at home. + +“You see, my dear,” observed my guardian, standing still with a +delighted face to watch my looks, “knowing there could be no better +plan, I borrowed yours.” + +We went on by a pretty little orchard, where the cherries were +nestling among the green leaves and the shadows of the apple-trees +were sporting on the grass, to the house itself—a cottage, quite a +rustic cottage of doll’s rooms; but such a lovely place, so tranquil +and so beautiful, with such a rich and smiling country spread around +it; with water sparkling away into the distance, here all overhung +with summer-growth, there turning a humming mill; at its nearest +point glancing through a meadow by the cheerful town, where +cricket-players were assembling in bright groups and a flag was +flying from a white tent that rippled in the sweet west wind. And +still, as we went through the pretty rooms, out at the little rustic +verandah doors, and underneath the tiny wooden colonnades garlanded +with woodbine, jasmine, and honey-suckle, I saw in the papering on +the walls, in the colours of the furniture, in the arrangement of all +the pretty objects, MY little tastes and fancies, MY little methods +and inventions which they used to laugh at while they praised them, +my odd ways everywhere. + +I could not say enough in admiration of what was all so beautiful, +but one secret doubt arose in my mind when I saw this, I thought, oh, +would he be the happier for it! Would it not have been better for his +peace that I should not have been so brought before him? Because +although I was not what he thought me, still he loved me very dearly, +and it might remind him mournfully of what be believed he had lost. I +did not wish him to forget me—perhaps he might not have done so, +without these aids to his memory—but my way was easier than his, and +I could have reconciled myself even to that so that he had been the +happier for it. + +“And now, little woman,” said my guardian, whom I had never seen so +proud and joyful as in showing me these things and watching my +appreciation of them, “now, last of all, for the name of this house.” + +“What is it called, dear guardian?” + +“My child,” said he, “come and see,” + +He took me to the porch, which he had hitherto avoided, and said, +pausing before we went out, “My dear child, don’t you guess the +name?” + +“No!” said I. + +We went out of the porch and he showed me written over it, Bleak +House. + +He led me to a seat among the leaves close by, and sitting down +beside me and taking my hand in his, spoke to me thus, “My darling +girl, in what there has been between us, I have, I hope, been really +solicitous for your happiness. When I wrote you the letter to which +you brought the answer,” smiling as he referred to it, “I had my own +too much in view; but I had yours too. Whether, under different +circumstances, I might ever have renewed the old dream I sometimes +dreamed when you were very young, of making you my wife one day, I +need not ask myself. I did renew it, and I wrote my letter, and you +brought your answer. You are following what I say, my child?” + +I was cold, and I trembled violently, but not a word he uttered was +lost. As I sat looking fixedly at him and the sun’s rays descended, +softly shining through the leaves upon his bare head, I felt as if +the brightness on him must be like the brightness of the angels. + +“Hear me, my love, but do not speak. It is for me to speak now. When +it was that I began to doubt whether what I had done would really +make you happy is no matter. Woodcourt came home, and I soon had no +doubt at all.” + +I clasped him round the neck and hung my head upon his breast and +wept. “Lie lightly, confidently here, my child,” said he, pressing me +gently to him. “I am your guardian and your father now. Rest +confidently here.” + +Soothingly, like the gentle rustling of the leaves; and genially, +like the ripening weather; and radiantly and beneficently, like the +sunshine, he went on. + +“Understand me, my dear girl. I had no doubt of your being contented +and happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted; but I saw with +whom you would be happier. That I penetrated his secret when Dame +Durden was blind to it is no wonder, for I knew the good that could +never change in her better far than she did. Well! I have long been +in Allan Woodcourt’s confidence, although he was not, until +yesterday, a few hours before you came here, in mine. But I would not +have my Esther’s bright example lost; I would not have a jot of my +dear girl’s virtues unobserved and unhonoured; I would not have her +admitted on sufferance into the line of Morgan ap-Kerrig, no, not for +the weight in gold of all the mountains in Wales!” + +He stopped to kiss me on the forehead, and I sobbed and wept afresh. +For I felt as if I could not bear the painful delight of his praise. + +“Hush, little woman! Don’t cry; this is to be a day of joy. I have +looked forward to it,” he said exultingly, “for months on months! A +few words more, Dame Trot, and I have said my say. Determined not to +throw away one atom of my Esther’s worth, I took Mrs. Woodcourt into +a separate confidence. ‘Now, madam,’ said I, ‘I clearly perceive—and +indeed I know, to boot—that your son loves my ward. I am further +very sure that my ward loves your son, but will sacrifice her love to +a sense of duty and affection, and will sacrifice it so completely, +so entirely, so religiously, that you should never suspect it though +you watched her night and day.’ Then I told her all our +story—ours—yours and mine. ‘Now, madam,’ said I, ‘come you, knowing +this, and live with us. Come you, and see my child from hour to hour; +set what you see against her pedigree, which is this, and this’—for +I scorned to mince it—‘and tell me what is the true legitimacy when +you shall have quite made up your mind on that subject.’ Why, honour +to her old Welsh blood, my dear,” cried my guardian with enthusiasm, +“I believe the heart it animates beats no less warmly, no less +admiringly, no less lovingly, towards Dame Durden than my own!” + +He tenderly raised my head, and as I clung to him, kissed me in his +old fatherly way again and again. What a light, now, on the +protecting manner I had thought about! + +“One more last word. When Allan Woodcourt spoke to you, my dear, he +spoke with my knowledge and consent—but I gave him no encouragement, +not I, for these surprises were my great reward, and I was too +miserly to part with a scrap of it. He was to come and tell me all +that passed, and he did. I have no more to say. My dearest, Allan +Woodcourt stood beside your father when he lay dead—stood beside +your mother. This is Bleak House. This day I give this house its +little mistress; and before God, it is the brightest day in all my +life!” + +He rose and raised me with him. We were no longer alone. My +husband—I have called him by that name full seven happy years +now—stood at my side. + +“Allan,” said my guardian, “take from me a willing gift, the best +wife that ever man had. What more can I say for you than that I know +you deserve her! Take with her the little home she brings you. You +know what she will make it, Allan; you know what she has made its +namesake. Let me share its felicity sometimes, and what do I +sacrifice? Nothing, nothing.” + +He kissed me once again, and now the tears were in his eyes as he +said more softly, “Esther, my dearest, after so many years, there is +a kind of parting in this too. I know that my mistake has caused you +some distress. Forgive your old guardian, in restoring him to his old +place in your affections; and blot it out of your memory. Allan, take +my dear.” + +He moved away from under the green roof of leaves, and stopping in +the sunlight outside and turning cheerfully towards us, said, “I +shall be found about here somewhere. It’s a west wind, little woman, +due west! Let no one thank me any more, for I am going to revert to +my bachelor habits, and if anybody disregards this warning, I’ll run +away and never come back!” + +What happiness was ours that day, what joy, what rest, what hope, +what gratitude, what bliss! We were to be married before the month +was out, but when we were to come and take possession of our own +house was to depend on Richard and Ada. + +We all three went home together next day. As soon as we arrived in +town, Allan went straight to see Richard and to carry our joyful news +to him and my darling. Late as it was, I meant to go to her for a few +minutes before lying down to sleep, but I went home with my guardian +first to make his tea for him and to occupy the old chair by his +side, for I did not like to think of its being empty so soon. + +When we came home we found that a young man had called three times in +the course of that one day to see me and that having been told on the +occasion of his third call that I was not expected to return before +ten o’clock at night, he had left word that he would call about then. +He had left his card three times. Mr. Guppy. + +As I naturally speculated on the object of these visits, and as I +always associated something ludicrous with the visitor, it fell out +that in laughing about Mr. Guppy I told my guardian of his old +proposal and his subsequent retraction. “After that,” said my +guardian, “we will certainly receive this hero.” So instructions were +given that Mr. Guppy should be shown in when he came again, and they +were scarcely given when he did come again. + +He was embarrassed when he found my guardian with me, but recovered +himself and said, “How de do, sir?” + +“How do you do, sir?” returned my guardian. + +“Thank you, sir, I am tolerable,” returned Mr. Guppy. “Will you allow +me to introduce my mother, Mrs. Guppy of the Old Street Road, and my +particular friend, Mr. Weevle. That is to say, my friend has gone by +the name of Weevle, but his name is really and truly Jobling.” + +My guardian begged them to be seated, and they all sat down. + +“Tony,” said Mr. Guppy to his friend after an awkward silence. “Will +you open the case?” + +“Do it yourself,” returned the friend rather tartly. + +“Well, Mr. Jarndyce, sir,” Mr. Guppy, after a moment’s consideration, +began, to the great diversion of his mother, which she displayed by +nudging Mr. Jobling with her elbow and winking at me in a most +remarkable manner, “I had an idea that I should see Miss Summerson by +herself and was not quite prepared for your esteemed presence. But +Miss Summerson has mentioned to you, perhaps, that something has +passed between us on former occasions?” + +“Miss Summerson,” returned my guardian, smiling, “has made a +communication to that effect to me.” + +“That,” said Mr. Guppy, “makes matters easier. Sir, I have come out +of my articles at Kenge and Carboy’s, and I believe with satisfaction +to all parties. I am now admitted (after undergoing an examination +that’s enough to badger a man blue, touching a pack of nonsense that +he don’t want to know) on the roll of attorneys and have taken out my +certificate, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see it.” + +“Thank you, Mr. Guppy,” returned my guardian. “I am quite willing—I +believe I use a legal phrase—to admit the certificate.” + +Mr. Guppy therefore desisted from taking something out of his pocket +and proceeded without it. + +“I have no capital myself, but my mother has a little property which +takes the form of an annuity”—here Mr. Guppy’s mother rolled her +head as if she never could sufficiently enjoy the observation, and +put her handkerchief to her mouth, and again winked at me—“and a few +pounds for expenses out of pocket in conducting business will never +be wanting, free of interest, which is an advantage, you know,” said +Mr. Guppy feelingly. + +“Certainly an advantage,” returned my guardian. + +“I HAVE some connexion,” pursued Mr. Guppy, “and it lays in the +direction of Walcot Square, Lambeth. I have therefore taken a ’ouse +in that locality, which, in the opinion of my friends, is a hollow +bargain (taxes ridiculous, and use of fixtures included in the rent), +and intend setting up professionally for myself there forthwith.” + +Here Mr. Guppy’s mother fell into an extraordinary passion of rolling +her head and smiling waggishly at anybody who would look at her. + +“It’s a six-roomer, exclusive of kitchens,” said Mr. Guppy, “and in +the opinion of my friends, a commodious tenement. When I mention my +friends, I refer principally to my friend Jobling, who I believe has +known me,” Mr. Guppy looked at him with a sentimental air, “from +boyhood’s hour.” + +Mr. Jobling confirmed this with a sliding movement of his legs. + +“My friend Jobling will render me his assistance in the capacity of +clerk and will live in the ’ouse,” said Mr. Guppy. “My mother will +likewise live in the ’ouse when her present quarter in the Old Street +Road shall have ceased and expired; and consequently there will be no +want of society. My friend Jobling is naturally aristocratic by +taste, and besides being acquainted with the movements of the upper +circles, fully backs me in the intentions I am now developing.” + +Mr. Jobling said “Certainly” and withdrew a little from the elbow of +Mr Guppy’s mother. + +“Now, I have no occasion to mention to you, sir, you being in the +confidence of Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Guppy, “(mother, I wish you’d +be so good as to keep still), that Miss Summerson’s image was +formerly imprinted on my ’eart and that I made her a proposal of +marriage.” + +“That I have heard,” returned my guardian. + +“Circumstances,” pursued Mr. Guppy, “over which I had no control, but +quite the contrary, weakened the impression of that image for a time. +At which time Miss Summerson’s conduct was highly genteel; I may even +add, magnanimous.” + +My guardian patted me on the shoulder and seemed much amused. + +“Now, sir,” said Mr. Guppy, “I have got into that state of mind +myself that I wish for a reciprocity of magnanimous behaviour. I wish +to prove to Miss Summerson that I can rise to a heighth of which +perhaps she hardly thought me capable. I find that the image which I +did suppose had been eradicated from my ’eart is NOT eradicated. Its +influence over me is still tremenjous, and yielding to it, I am +willing to overlook the circumstances over which none of us have had +any control and to renew those proposals to Miss Summerson which I +had the honour to make at a former period. I beg to lay the ’ouse in +Walcot Square, the business, and myself before Miss Summerson for her +acceptance.” + +“Very magnanimous indeed, sir,” observed my guardian. + +“Well, sir,” replied Mr. Guppy with candour, “my wish is to BE +magnanimous. I do not consider that in making this offer to Miss +Summerson I am by any means throwing myself away; neither is that the +opinion of my friends. Still, there are circumstances which I submit +may be taken into account as a set off against any little drawbacks +of mine, and so a fair and equitable balance arrived at.” + +“I take upon myself, sir,” said my guardian, laughing as he rang the +bell, “to reply to your proposals on behalf of Miss Summerson. She is +very sensible of your handsome intentions, and wishes you good +evening, and wishes you well.” + +“Oh!” said Mr. Guppy with a blank look. “Is that tantamount, sir, to +acceptance, or rejection, or consideration?” + +“To decided rejection, if you please,” returned my guardian. + +Mr. Guppy looked incredulously at his friend, and at his mother, who +suddenly turned very angry, and at the floor, and at the ceiling. + +“Indeed?” said he. “Then, Jobling, if you was the friend you +represent yourself, I should think you might hand my mother out of +the gangway instead of allowing her to remain where she ain’t +wanted.” + +But Mrs. Guppy positively refused to come out of the gangway. She +wouldn’t hear of it. “Why, get along with you,” said she to my +guardian, “what do you mean? Ain’t my son good enough for you? You +ought to be ashamed of yourself. Get out with you!” + +“My good lady,” returned my guardian, “it is hardly reasonable to ask +me to get out of my own room.” + +“I don’t care for that,” said Mrs. Guppy. “Get out with you. If we +ain’t good enough for you, go and procure somebody that is good +enough. Go along and find ’em.” + +I was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in which Mrs. Guppy’s +power of jocularity merged into a power of taking the profoundest +offence. + +“Go along and find somebody that’s good enough for you,” repeated +Mrs. Guppy. “Get out!” Nothing seemed to astonish Mr. Guppy’s mother +so much and to make her so very indignant as our not getting out. +“Why don’t you get out?” said Mrs. Guppy. “What are you stopping here +for?” + +“Mother,” interposed her son, always getting before her and pushing +her back with one shoulder as she sidled at my guardian, “WILL you +hold your tongue?” + +“No, William,” she returned, “I won’t! Not unless he gets out, I +won’t!” + +However, Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling together closed on Mr. Guppy’s +mother (who began to be quite abusive) and took her, very much +against her will, downstairs, her voice rising a stair higher every +time her figure got a stair lower, and insisting that we should +immediately go and find somebody who was good enough for us, and +above all things that we should get out. + + + + +CHAPTER LXV + +Beginning the World + + +The term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation from Mr. +Kenge that the cause would come on in two days. As I had sufficient +hopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agreed to +go down to the court that morning. Richard was extremely agitated and +was so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that +my dear girl indeed had sore occasion to be supported. But she looked +forward—a very little way now—to the help that was to come to her, +and never drooped. + +It was at Westminster that the cause was to come on. It had come on +there, I dare say, a hundred times before, but I could not divest +myself of an idea that it MIGHT lead to some result now. We left home +directly after breakfast to be at Westminster Hall in good time and +walked down there through the lively streets—so happily and +strangely it seemed!—together. + +As we were going along, planning what we should do for Richard and +Ada, I heard somebody calling “Esther! My dear Esther! Esther!” And +there was Caddy Jellyby, with her head out of the window of a little +carriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had so +many), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards’ distance. I +had written her a note to tell her of all that my guardian had done, +but had not had a moment to go and see her. Of course we turned back, +and the affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was so +overjoyed to talk about the night when she brought me the flowers, +and was so determined to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her +hands, and go on in a wild manner altogether, calling me all kinds of +precious names, and telling Allan I had done I don’t know what for +her, that I was just obliged to get into the little carriage and calm +her down by letting her say and do exactly what she liked. Allan, +standing at the window, was as pleased as Caddy; and I was as pleased +as either of them; and I wonder that I got away as I did, rather than +that I came off laughing, and red, and anything but tidy, and looking +after Caddy, who looked after us out of the coach-window as long as +she could see us. + +This made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to +Westminster Hall we found that the day’s business was begun. Worse +than that, we found such an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery +that it was full to the door, and we could neither see nor hear what +was passing within. It appeared to be something droll, for +occasionally there was a laugh and a cry of “Silence!” It appeared to +be something interesting, for every one was pushing and striving to +get nearer. It appeared to be something that made the professional +gentlemen very merry, for there were several young counsellors in +wigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd, and when one of them +told the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, and +quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping about +the pavement of the Hall. + +We asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cause was on. He told us +Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We asked him if he knew what was doing in it. +He said really, no he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as he +could make out, it was over. Over for the day? we asked him. No, he +said, over for good. + +Over for good! + +When we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another +quite lost in amazement. Could it be possible that the will had set +things right at last and that Richard and Ada were going to be rich? +It seemed too good to be true. Alas it was! + +Our suspense was short, for a break-up soon took place in the crowd, +and the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot and +bringing a quantity of bad air with them. Still they were all +exceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce +or a juggler than from a court of justice. We stood aside, watching +for any countenance we knew, and presently great bundles of paper +began to be carried out—bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got +into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes, +which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being, +anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more. +Even these clerks were laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing +Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person +who was standing in the midst of them whether the cause was over. +Yes, he said, it was all up with it at last, and burst out laughing +too. + +At this juncture we perceived Mr. Kenge coming out of court with an +affable dignity upon him, listening to Mr. Vholes, who was +deferential and carried his own bag. Mr. Vholes was the first to see +us. “Here is Miss Summerson, sir,” he said. “And Mr. Woodcourt.” + +“Oh, indeed! Yes. Truly!” said Mr. Kenge, raising his hat to me with +polished politeness. “How do you do? Glad to see you. Mr. Jarndyce is +not here?” + +No. He never came there, I reminded him. + +“Really,” returned Mr. Kenge, “it is as well that he is NOT here +to-day, for his—shall I say, in my good friend’s absence, his +indomitable singularity of opinion?—might have been strengthened, +perhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened.” + +“Pray what has been done to-day?” asked Allan. + +“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Kenge with excessive urbanity. + +“What has been done to-day?” + +“What has been done,” repeated Mr. Kenge. “Quite so. Yes. Why, not +much has been done; not much. We have been checked—brought up +suddenly, I would say—upon the—shall I term it threshold?” + +“Is this will considered a genuine document, sir?” said Allan. “Will +you tell us that?” + +“Most certainly, if I could,” said Mr. Kenge; “but we have not gone +into that, we have not gone into that.” + +“We have not gone into that,” repeated Mr. Vholes as if his low +inward voice were an echo. + +“You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt,” observed Mr. Kenge, using his +silver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, “that this has been a +great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has +been a complex cause. Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not +inaptly, a monument of Chancery practice.” + +“And patience has sat upon it a long time,” said Allan. + +“Very well indeed, sir,” returned Mr. Kenge with a certain +condescending laugh he had. “Very well! You are further to reflect, +Mr. Woodcourt,” becoming dignified almost to severity, “that on the +numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of +procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study, +ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high +intellect. For many years, the—a—I would say the flower of the bar, +and the—a—I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of +the woolsack—have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce. If the +public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of +this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money’s worth, +sir.” + +“Mr. Kenge,” said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment. +“Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate +is found to have been absorbed in costs?” + +“Hem! I believe so,” returned Mr. Kenge. “Mr. Vholes, what do YOU +say?” + +“I believe so,” said Mr. Vholes. + +“And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?” + +“Probably,” returned Mr. Kenge. “Mr. Vholes?” + +“Probably,” said Mr. Vholes. + +“My dearest life,” whispered Allan, “this will break Richard’s +heart!” + +There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew +Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual +decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her +foreboding love sounded like a knell in my ears. + +“In case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir,” said Mr. Vholes, coming +after us, “you’ll find him in court. I left him there resting himself +a little. Good day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson.” As he gave me +that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of +his bag before he hastened with it after Mr. Kenge, the benignant +shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he +gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client, +and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low +door at the end of the Hall. + +“My dear love,” said Allan, “leave to me, for a little while, the +charge you gave me. Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada’s +by and by!” + +I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to +Richard without a moment’s delay and leave me to do as he wished. +Hurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with what +news I had returned. “Little woman,” said he, quite unmoved for +himself, “to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater +blessing than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!” + +We talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was +possible to do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to +Symond’s Inn and left me at the door. I went upstairs. When my +darling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and +threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and +said that Richard had asked for me several times. Allan had found him +sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure. +On being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have +spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth +being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home. + +He was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when I went in. There +were restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as +possible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan +stood behind him watching him gravely. His face appeared to me to be +quite destitute of colour, and now that I saw him without his seeing +me, I fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he was. But he +looked handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day. + +I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by and by, he +said in a weak voice, but with his old smile, “Dame Durden, kiss me, +my dear!” + +It was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low +state cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our +intended marriage than he could find words to tell me. My husband had +been a guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both and +wished us all the joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if +my own heart would have broken when I saw him take my husband’s hand +and hold it to his breast. + +We spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times +that he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his +feet. Ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. “Yes, surely, +dearest Richard!” But as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so +serene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so +near—I knew—I knew! + +It was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we +were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for +my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada +leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed +often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all, +“Where is Woodcourt?” + +Evening had come on when I lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian +standing in the little hall. “Who is that, Dame Durden?” Richard +asked me. The door was behind him, but he had observed in my face +that some one was there. + +I looked to Allan for advice, and as he nodded “Yes,” bent over +Richard and told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by me +in a moment, and laid his hand on Richard’s. “Oh, sir,” said Richard, +“you are a good man, you are a good man!” and burst into tears for +the first time. + +My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping +his hand on Richard’s. + +“My dear Rick,” said he, “the clouds have cleared away, and it is +bright now. We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or +less. What matters! And how are you, my dear boy?” + +“I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin +the world.” + +“Aye, truly; well said!” cried my guardian. + +“I will not begin it in the old way now,” said Richard with a sad +smile. “I have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you +shall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it.” + +“Well, well,” said my guardian, comforting him; “well, well, well, +dear boy!” + +“I was thinking, sir,” resumed Richard, “that there is nothing on +earth I should so much like to see as their house—Dame Durden’s and +Woodcourt’s house. If I could be removed there when I begin to +recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there sooner than +anywhere.” + +“Why, so have I been thinking too, Rick,” said my guardian, “and our +little woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it this very +day. I dare say her husband won’t object. What do you think?” + +Richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind +the head of the couch. + +“I say nothing of Ada,” said Richard, “but I think of her, and have +thought of her very much. Look at her! See her here, sir, bending +over this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it herself, +my dear love, my poor girl!” + +He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually +released her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and +moved her lips. + +“When I get down to Bleak House,” said Richard, “I shall have much to +tell you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won’t +you?” + +“Undoubtedly, dear Rick.” + +“Thank you; like you, like you,” said Richard. “But it’s all like +you. They have been telling me how you planned it and how you +remembered all Esther’s familiar tastes and ways. It will be like +coming to the old Bleak House again.” + +“And you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now, +you know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come +to me, my love!” he repeated to Ada as he gently passed his hand over +her golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed +within himself to cherish her if she were left alone.) + +“It was a troubled dream?” said Richard, clasping both my guardian’s +hands eagerly. + +“Nothing more, Rick; nothing more.” + +“And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity +the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?” + +“Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?” + +“I will begin the world!” said Richard with a light in his eyes. + +My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly +lift up his hand to warn my guardian. + +“When shall I go from this place to that pleasant country where the +old times are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been +to me, where I shall be able to recall my many faults and +blindnesses, where I shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn +child?” said Richard. “When shall I go?” + +“Dear Rick, when you are strong enough,” returned my guardian. + +“Ada, my darling!” + +He sought to raise himself a little. Allan raised him so that she +could hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted. + +“I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray +shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have +scattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my +Ada, before I begin the world?” + +A smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid +his face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck, +and with one parting sob began the world. Not this world, oh, not +this! The world that sets this right. + +When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came +weeping to me and told me she had given her birds their liberty. + + + + +CHAPTER LXVI + +Down in Lincolnshire + + +There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as there is +upon a portion of the family history. The story goes that Sir +Leicester paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace; +but it is a lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, and any +brighter spark of life it shows soon dies away. It is known for +certain that the handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the +park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at +night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be +laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all +mystery. Some of her old friends, principally to be found among the +peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once +occasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large +fans—like charmers reduced to flirting with grim death, after losing +all their other beaux—did once occasionally say, when the world +assembled together, that they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks, +entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the profanation of her +company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks take it very calmly and have +never been known to object. + +Up from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle-road +among the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the sound of +horses’ hoofs. Then may be seen Sir Leicester—invalided, bent, and +almost blind, but of worthy presence yet—riding with a stalwart man +beside him, constant to his bridle-rein. When they come to a certain +spot before the mausoleum-door, Sir Leicester’s accustomed horse +stops of his own accord, and Sir Leicester, pulling off his hat, is +still for a few moments before they ride away. + +War rages yet with the audacious Boythorn, though at uncertain +intervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like an unsteady +fire. The truth is said to be that when Sir Leicester came down to +Lincolnshire for good, Mr. Boythorn showed a manifest desire to +abandon his right of way and do whatever Sir Leicester would, which +Sir Leicester, conceiving to be a condescension to his illness or +misfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and was so magnificently +aggrieved by, that Mr. Boythorn found himself under the necessity of +committing a flagrant trespass to restore his neighbour to himself. +Similarly, Mr. Boythorn continues to post tremendous placards on the +disputed thoroughfare and (with his bird upon his head) to hold forth +vehemently against Sir Leicester in the sanctuary of his own home; +similarly, also, he defies him as of old in the little church by +testifying a bland unconsciousness of his existence. But it is +whispered that when he is most ferocious towards his old foe, he is +really most considerate, and that Sir Leicester, in the dignity of +being implacable, little supposes how much he is humoured. As little +does he think how near together he and his antagonist have suffered +in the fortunes of two sisters, and his antagonist, who knows it now, +is not the man to tell him. So the quarrel goes on to the +satisfaction of both. + +In one of the lodges of the park—that lodge within sight of the +house where, once upon a time, when the waters were out down in +Lincolnshire, my Lady used to see the keeper’s child—the stalwart +man, the trooper formerly, is housed. Some relics of his old calling +hang upon the walls, and these it is the chosen recreation of a +little lame man about the stable-yard to keep gleaming bright. A busy +little man he always is, in the polishing at harness-house doors, of +stirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, harness bosses, anything in the way +of a stable-yard that will take a polish, leading a life of friction. +A shaggy little damaged man, withal, not unlike an old dog of some +mongrel breed, who has been considerably knocked about. He answers to +the name of Phil. + +A goodly sight it is to see the grand old housekeeper (harder of +hearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to +observe—which few do, for the house is scant of company in these +times—the relations of both towards Sir Leicester, and his towards +them. They have visitors in the high summer weather, when a grey +cloak and umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wold at other periods, are +seen among the leaves; when two young ladies are occasionally found +gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park; and +when the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant evening +air from the trooper’s door. Then is a fife heard trolling within the +lodge on the inspiring topic of the “British Grenadiers”; and as the +evening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while +two men pace together up and down, “But I never own to it before the +old girl. Discipline must be maintained.” + +The greater part of the house is shut up, and it is a show-house no +longer; yet Sir Leicester holds his shrunken state in the long +drawing-room for all that, and reposes in his old place before my +Lady’s picture. Closed in by night with broad screens, and illumined +only in that part, the light of the drawing-room seems gradually +contracting and dwindling until it shall be no more. A little more, +in truth, and it will be all extinguished for Sir Leicester; and the +damp door in the mausoleum which shuts so tight, and looks so +obdurate, will have opened and received him. + +Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her +face, and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leicester in the +long evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal her +yawns, of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion of +the pearl necklace between her rosy lips. Long-winded treatises on +the Buffy and Boodle question, showing how Buffy is immaculate and +Boodle villainous, and how the country is lost by being all Boodle +and no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no Boodle (it must be +one of the two, and cannot be anything else), are the staple of her +reading. Sir Leicester is not particular what it is and does not +appear to follow it very closely, further than that he always comes +broad awake the moment Volumnia ventures to leave off, and sonorously +repeating her last words, begs with some displeasure to know if she +finds herself fatigued. However, Volumnia, in the course of her +bird-like hopping about and pecking at papers, has alighted on a +memorandum concerning herself in the event of “anything happening” to +her kinsman, which is handsome compensation for an extensive course +of reading and holds even the dragon Boredom at bay. + +The cousins generally are rather shy of Chesney Wold in its dullness, +but take to it a little in the shooting season, when guns are heard +in the plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait at +the old places of appointment for low-spirited twos and threes of +cousins. The debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the dreariness +of the place, gets into a fearful state of depression, groaning under +penitential sofa-pillows in his gunless hours and protesting that +such fernal old jail’s—nough t’sew fler up—frever. + +The only great occasions for Volumnia in this changed aspect of the +place in Lincolnshire are those occasions, rare and widely separated, +when something is to be done for the county or the country in the way +of gracing a public ball. Then, indeed, does the tuckered sylph come +out in fairy form and proceed with joy under cousinly escort to the +exhausted old assembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off, which, during +three hundred and sixty-four days and nights of every ordinary year, +is a kind of antipodean lumber-room full of old chairs and tables +upside down. Then, indeed, does she captivate all hearts by her +condescension, by her girlish vivacity, and by her skipping about as +in the days when the hideous old general with the mouth too full of +teeth had not cut one of them at two guineas each. Then does she +twirl and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes +of the dance. Then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with +sandwiches, with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, stately and +unassuming, various, beautifully wilful. Then is there a singular +kind of parallel between her and the little glass chandeliers of +another age embellishing that assembly-room, which, with their meagre +stems, their spare little drops, their disappointing knobs where no +drops are, their bare little stalks from which knobs and drops have +both departed, and their little feeble prismatic twinkling, all seem +Volumnias. + +For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is a vast blank of +overgrown house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing their +hands, bowing their heads, and casting their tears upon the +window-panes in monotonous depressions. A labyrinth of grandeur, less +the property of an old family of human beings and their ghostly +likenesses than of an old family of echoings and thunderings which +start out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resounding +through the building. A waste of unused passages and staircases in +which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send a +stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few +people care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops +from the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the +victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and +departs. + +Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself abandoned to darkness and +vacancy; with so little change under the summer shining or the wintry +lowering; so sombre and motionless always—no flag flying now by day, +no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and go, +no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of +life about it—passion and pride, even to the stranger’s eye, have +died away from the place in Lincolnshire and yielded it to dull +repose. + + + + +CHAPTER LXVII + +The Close of Esther’s Narrative + + +Full seven happy years I have been the mistress of Bleak House. The +few words that I have to add to what I have written are soon penned; +then I and the unknown friend to whom I write will part for ever. Not +without much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope, +on his or hers. + +They gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks I never +left her. The little child who was to have done so much was born +before the turf was planted on its father’s grave. It was a boy; and +I, my husband, and my guardian gave him his father’s name. + +The help that my dear counted on did come to her, though it came, in +the eternal wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless and restore +his mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power +was mighty to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand +and how its touch could heal my darling’s heart and raised hope +within her, I felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of +God. + +They throve, and by degrees I saw my dear girl pass into my country +garden and walk there with her infant in her arms. I was married +then. I was the happiest of the happy. + +It was at this time that my guardian joined us and asked Ada when she +would come home. + +“Both houses are your home, my dear,” said he, “but the older Bleak +House claims priority. When you and my boy are strong enough to do +it, come and take possession of your home.” + +Ada called him “her dearest cousin, John.” But he said, no, it must +be guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, and the boy’s; and +he had an old association with the name. So she called him guardian, +and has called him guardian ever since. The children know him by no +other name. I say the children; I have two little daughters. + +It is difficult to believe that Charley (round-eyed still, and not at +all grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so +it is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I write early in the +morning at my summer window, I see the very mill beginning to go +round. I hope the miller will not spoil Charley; but he is very fond +of her, and Charley is rather vain of such a match, for he is well to +do and was in great request. So far as my small maid is concerned, I +might suppose time to have stood for seven years as still as the mill +did half an hour ago, since little Emma, Charley’s sister, is exactly +what Charley used to be. As to Tom, Charley’s brother, I am really +afraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but I think it was +decimals. He is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a +good bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody and being +ashamed of it. + +Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays with us and was a dearer +creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the house with +the children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life. +Caddy keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and +lives full two miles further westward than Newman Street. She works +very hard, her husband (an excellent one) being lame and able to do +very little. Still, she is more than contented and does all she has +to do with all her heart. Mr. Jellyby spends his evenings at her new +house with his head against the wall as he used to do in her old one. +I have heard that Mrs. Jellyby was understood to suffer great +mortification from her daughter’s ignoble marriage and pursuits, but +I hope she got over it in time. She has been disappointed in +Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence of the +king of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody—who survived the +climate—for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to +sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more +correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Caddy’s poor +little girl. She is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I +believe there never was a better mother than Caddy, who learns, in +her scanty intervals of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to +soften the affliction of her child. + +As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of +Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and doing +extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still exhibits +his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is +still believed in in the old way. He is constant in his patronage of +Peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a favourite French +clock in his dressing-room—which is not his property. + +With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house +by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which we +inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see +us. I try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full in +drawing to an end, but when I write of him, my tears will have their +way. + +I never look at him but I hear our poor dear Richard calling him a +good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me +he is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that? He is +my husband’s best and dearest friend, he is our children’s darling, +he is the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel +towards him as if he were a superior being, I am so familiar with him +and so easy with him that I almost wonder at myself. I have never +lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor do I ever, when he is +with us, sit in any other place than in my old chair at his side, +Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman—all just the same as ever; and +I answer, “Yes, dear guardian!” just the same. + +I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment +since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I +remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and +he said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter on that +very day. + +I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow that +has been in her face—for it is not there now—seems to have purified +even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality. +Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that +she still wears, teaching my Richard, I feel—it is difficult to +express—as if it were so good to know that she remembers her dear +Esther in her prayers. + +I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am +one. + +We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we +have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the +people bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear +his praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night +but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and +soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. I know that from +the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have often, often +gone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. Is not this +to be rich? + +The people even praise me as the doctor’s wife. The people even like +me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I +owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I +do everything I do in life for his sake. + +A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and +my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow, I was +sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch, +when Allan came home. So he said, “My precious little woman, what are +you doing here?” And I said, “The moon is shining so brightly, Allan, +and the night is so delicious, that I have been sitting here +thinking.” + +“What have you been thinking about, my dear?” said Allan then. + +“How curious you are!” said I. “I am almost ashamed to tell you, but +I will. I have been thinking about my old looks—such as they were.” + +“And what have you been thinking about THEM, my busy bee?” said +Allan. + +“I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you COULD +have loved me any better, even if I had retained them.” + +“‘Such as they were’?” said Allan, laughing. + +“Such as they were, of course.” + +“My dear Dame Durden,” said Allan, drawing my arm through his, “do +you ever look in the glass?” + +“You know I do; you see me do it.” + +“And don’t you know that you are prettier than you ever were?” + +I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I know +that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is +very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my +guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was +seen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me—even +supposing—. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1023 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1024-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1024-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c31fc80d --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1024-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14372 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1024 *** + +THE WRECKER + +by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne + + + + +PROLOGUE. + + + + +IN THE MARQUESAS. + +It was about three o'clock of a winter's afternoon in Tai-o-hae, the +French capital and port of entry of the Marquesas Islands. The trades +blew strong and squally; the surf roared loud on the shingle beach; and +the fifty-ton schooner of war, that carries the flag and influence of +France about the islands of the cannibal group, rolled at her moorings +under Prison Hill. The clouds hung low and black on the surrounding +amphitheatre of mountains; rain had fallen earlier in the day, real +tropic rain, a waterspout for violence; and the green and gloomy brow of +the mountain was still seamed with many silver threads of torrent. + +In these hot and healthy islands winter is but a name. The rain had not +refreshed, nor could the wind invigorate, the dwellers of Tai-o-hae: +away at one end, indeed, the commandant was directing some changes in +the residency garden beyond Prison Hill; and the gardeners, being +all convicts, had no choice but to continue to obey. All other folks +slumbered and took their rest: Vaekehu, the native queen, in her +trim house under the rustling palms; the Tahitian commissary, in his +beflagged official residence; the merchants, in their deserted stores; +and even the club-servant in the club, his head fallen forward on +the bottle-counter, under the map of the world and the cards of navy +officers. In the whole length of the single shoreside street, with its +scattered board houses looking to the sea, its grateful shade of palms +and green jungle of puraos, no moving figure could be seen. Only, at +the end of the rickety pier, that once (in the prosperous days of the +American rebellion) was used to groan under the cotton of John Hart, +there might have been spied upon a pile of lumber the famous tattooed +white man, the living curiosity of Tai-o-hae. + + +His eyes were open, staring down the bay. He saw the mountains droop, +as they approached the entrance, and break down in cliffs; the surf boil +white round the two sentinel islets; and between, on the narrow bight +of blue horizon, Ua-pu upraise the ghost of her pinnacled mountain tops. +But his mind would take no account of these familiar features; as he +dodged in and out along the frontier line of sleep and waking, memory +would serve him with broken fragments of the past: brown faces and +white, of skipper and shipmate, king and chief, would arise before his +mind and vanish; he would recall old voyages, old landfalls in the hour +of dawn; he would hear again the drums beat for a man-eating festival; +perhaps he would summon up the form of that island princess for the love +of whom he had submitted his body to the cruel hands of the tattooer, +and now sat on the lumber, at the pier-end of Tai-o-hae, so strange +a figure of a European. Or perhaps from yet further back, sounds and +scents of England and his childhood might assail him: the merry clamour +of cathedral bells, the broom upon the foreland, the song of the river +on the weir. + +It is bold water at the mouth of the bay; you can steer a ship about +either sentinel, close enough to toss a biscuit on the rocks. Thus +it chanced that, as the tattooed man sat dozing and dreaming, he was +startled into wakefulness and animation by the appearance of a flying +jib beyond the western islet. Two more headsails followed; and before +the tattooed man had scrambled to his feet, a topsail schooner, of some +hundred tons, had luffed about the sentinel and was standing up the bay, +close-hauled. + +The sleeping city awakened by enchantment. Natives appeared upon all +sides, hailing each other with the magic cry “Ehippy”--ship; the Queen +stepped forth on her verandah, shading her eyes under a hand that was +a miracle of the fine art of tattooing; the commandant broke from his +domestic convicts and ran into the residency for his glass; the harbour +master, who was also the gaoler, came speeding down the Prison Hill; the +seventeen brown Kanakas and the French boatswain's mate, that make up +the complement of the war-schooner, crowded on the forward deck; and the +various English, Americans, Germans, Poles, Corsicans, and Scots--the +merchants and the clerks of Tai-o-hae--deserted their places of +business, and gathered, according to invariable custom, on the road +before the club. + +So quickly did these dozen whites collect, so short are the distances +in Tai-o-hae, that they were already exchanging guesses as to the +nationality and business of the strange vessel, before she had gone +about upon her second board towards the anchorage. A moment after, +English colours were broken out at the main truck. + +“I told you she was a Johnny Bull--knew it by her headsails,” said an +evergreen old salt, still qualified (if he could anywhere have found +an owner unacquainted with his story) to adorn another quarter-deck and +lose another ship. + +“She has American lines, anyway,” said the astute Scots engineer of the +gin-mill; “it's my belief she's a yacht.” + +“That's it,” said the old salt, “a yacht! look at her davits, and the +boat over the stern.” + +“A yacht in your eye!” said a Glasgow voice. “Look at her red ensign! A +yacht! not much she isn't!” + +“You can close the store, anyway, Tom,” observed a gentlemanly German. +“Bon jour, mon Prince!” he added, as a dark, intelligent native cantered +by on a neat chestnut. “Vous allez boire un verre de biere?” + +But Prince Stanilas Moanatini, the only reasonably busy human creature +on the island, was riding hot-spur to view this morning's landslip on +the mountain road: the sun already visibly declined; night was imminent; +and if he would avoid the perils of darkness and precipice, and the +fear of the dead, the haunters of the jungle, he must for once decline +a hospitable invitation. Even had he been minded to alight, it presently +appeared there would be difficulty as to the refreshment offered. + +“Beer!” cried the Glasgow voice. “No such a thing; I tell you there's +only eight bottles in the club! Here's the first time I've seen British +colours in this port! and the man that sails under them has got to drink +that beer.” + +The proposal struck the public mind as fair, though far from cheering; +for some time back, indeed, the very name of beer had been a sound of +sorrow in the club, and the evenings had passed in dolorous computation. + +“Here is Havens,” said one, as if welcoming a fresh topic. “What do you +think of her, Havens?” + +“I don't think,” replied Havens, a tall, bland, cool-looking, leisurely +Englishman, attired in spotless duck, and deliberately dealing with a +cigarette. “I may say I know. She's consigned to me from Auckland by +Donald & Edenborough. I am on my way aboard.” + +“What ship is she?” asked the ancient mariner. + +“Haven't an idea,” returned Havens. “Some tramp they have chartered.” + +With that he placidly resumed his walk, and was soon seated in the +stern-sheets of a whaleboat manned by uproarious Kanakas, himself +daintily perched out of the way of the least maculation, giving his +commands in an unobtrusive, dinner-table tone of voice, and sweeping +neatly enough alongside the schooner. + +A weather-beaten captain received him at the gangway. + +“You are consigned to us, I think,” said he. “I am Mr. Havens.” + +“That is right, sir,” replied the captain, shaking hands. “You will find +the owner, Mr. Dodd, below. Mind the fresh paint on the house.” + +Havens stepped along the alley-way, and descended the ladder into the +main cabin. + +“Mr. Dodd, I believe,” said he, addressing a smallish, bearded +gentleman, who sat writing at the table. “Why,” he cried, “it isn't +Loudon Dodd?” + +“Myself, my dear fellow,” replied Mr. Dodd, springing to his feet with +companionable alacrity. “I had a half-hope it might be you, when I found +your name on the papers. Well, there's no change in you; still the same +placid, fresh-looking Britisher.” + +“I can't return the compliment; for you seem to have become a Britisher +yourself,” said Havens. + +“I promise you, I am quite unchanged,” returned Dodd. “The red +tablecloth at the top of the stick is not my flag; it's my partner's. +He is not dead, but sleepeth. There he is,” he added, pointing to a bust +which formed one of the numerous unexpected ornaments of that unusual +cabin. + +Havens politely studied it. “A fine bust,” said he; “and a very +nice-looking fellow.” + +“Yes; he's a good fellow,” said Dodd. “He runs me now. It's all his +money.” + +“He doesn't seem to be particularly short of it,” added the other, +peering with growing wonder round the cabin. + +“His money, my taste,” said Dodd. “The black-walnut bookshelves are Old +English; the books all mine,--mostly Renaissance French. You should see +how the beach-combers wilt away when they go round them looking for a +change of Seaside Library novels. The mirrors are genuine Venice; that's +a good piece in the corner. The daubs are mine--and his; the mudding +mine.” + +“Mudding? What is that?” asked Havens. + +“These bronzes,” replied Dodd. “I began life as a sculptor.” + +“Yes; I remember something about that,” said the other. “I think, too, +you said you were interested in Californian real estate.” + +“Surely, I never went so far as that,” said Dodd. “Interested? I guess +not. Involved, perhaps. I was born an artist; I never took an interest +in anything but art. If I were to pile up this old schooner to-morrow,” + he added, “I declare I believe I would try the thing again!” + +“Insured?” inquired Havens. + +“Yes,” responded Dodd. “There's some fool in 'Frisco who insures us, and +comes down like a wolf on the fold on the profits; but we'll get even +with him some day.” + +“Well, I suppose it's all right about the cargo,” said Havens. + +“O, I suppose so!” replied Dodd. “Shall we go into the papers?” + +“We'll have all to-morrow, you know,” said Havens; “and they'll be +rather expecting you at the club. C'est l'heure de l'absinthe. Of +course, Loudon, you'll dine with me later on?” + +Mr. Dodd signified his acquiescence; drew on his white coat, not without +a trifling difficulty, for he was a man of middle age, and well-to-do; +arranged his beard and moustaches at one of the Venetian mirrors; and, +taking a broad felt hat, led the way through the trade-room into the +ship's waist. + +The stern boat was waiting alongside,--a boat of an elegant model, with +cushions and polished hard-wood fittings. + +“You steer,” observed Loudon. “You know the best place to land.” + +“I never like to steer another man's boat,” replied Havens. + +“Call it my partner's, and cry quits,” returned Loudon, getting +nonchalantly down the side. + +Havens followed and took the yoke lines without further protest. “I am +sure I don't know how you make this pay,” he said. “To begin with, +she is too big for the trade, to my taste; and then you carry so much +style.” + +“I don't know that she does pay,” returned Loudon. “I never pretend to +be a business man. My partner appears happy; and the money is all his, +as I told you--I only bring the want of business habits.” + +“You rather like the berth, I suppose?” suggested Havens. + +“Yes,” said Loudon; “it seems odd, but I rather do.” + +While they were yet on board, the sun had dipped; the sunset gun (a +rifle) cracked from the war-schooner, and the colours had been +handed down. Dusk was deepening as they came ashore; and the Cercle +Internationale (as the club is officially and significantly named) began +to shine, from under its low verandas, with the light of many lamps. The +good hours of the twenty-four drew on; the hateful, poisonous day-fly +of Nukahiva, was beginning to desist from its activity; the land-breeze +came in refreshing draughts; and the club men gathered together for the +hour of absinthe. To the commandant himself, to the man whom he was then +contending with at billiards--a trader from the next island, honorary +member of the club, and once carpenter's mate on board a Yankee +war-ship--to the doctor of the port, to the Brigadier of Gendarmerie, to +the opium farmer, and to all the white men whom the tide of commerce, +or the chances of shipwreck and desertion, had stranded on the beach of +Tai-o-hae, Mr. Loudon Dodd was formally presented; by all (since he was +a man of pleasing exterior, smooth ways, and an unexceptionable flow of +talk, whether in French or English) he was excellently well received; +and presently, with one of the last eight bottles of beer on a table +at his elbow, found himself the rather silent centre-piece of a voluble +group on the verandah. + +Talk in the South Seas is all upon one pattern; it is a wide ocean, +indeed, but a narrow world: you shall never talk long and not hear the +name of Bully Hayes, a naval hero whose exploits and deserved extinction +left Europe cold; commerce will be touched on, copra, shell, perhaps +cotton or fungus; but in a far-away, dilettante fashion, as by men +not deeply interested; through all, the names of schooners and their +captains, will keep coming and going, thick as may-flies; and news +of the last shipwreck will be placidly exchanged and debated. To a +stranger, this conversation will at first seem scarcely brilliant; but +he will soon catch the tone; and by the time he shall have moved a +year or so in the island world, and come across a good number of the +schooners so that every captain's name calls up a figure in pyjamas or +white duck, and becomes used to a certain laxity of moral tone which +prevails (as in memory of Mr. Hayes) on smuggling, ship-scuttling, +barratry, piracy, the labour trade, and other kindred fields of human +activity, he will find Polynesia no less amusing and no less instructive +than Pall Mall or Paris. + +Mr. Loudon Dodd, though he was new to the group of the Marquesas, was +already an old, salted trader; he knew the ships and the captains; he +had assisted, in other islands, at the first steps of some career of +which he now heard the culmination, or (vice versa) he had brought +with him from further south the end of some story which had begun in +Tai-o-hae. Among other matter of interest, like other arrivals in +the South Seas, he had a wreck to announce. The John T. Richards, it +appeared, had met the fate of other island schooners. + +“Dickinson piled her up on Palmerston Island,” Dodd announced. + +“Who were the owners?” inquired one of the club men. + +“O, the usual parties!” returned Loudon,--“Capsicum & Co.” + +A smile and a glance of intelligence went round the group; and perhaps +Loudon gave voice to the general sentiment by remarking, “Talk of good +business! I know nothing better than a schooner, a competent captain, +and a sound, reliable reef.” + +“Good business! There's no such a thing!” said the Glasgow man. “Nobody +makes anything but the missionaries--dash it!” + +“I don't know,” said another. “There's a good deal in opium.” + +“It's a good job to strike a tabooed pearl-island, say, about the fourth +year,” remarked a third; “skim the whole lagoon on the sly, and up stick +and away before the French get wind of you.” + +“A pig nokket of cold is good,” observed a German. + +“There's something in wrecks, too,” said Havens. “Look at that man in +Honolulu, and the ship that went ashore on Waikiki Reef; it was blowing +a kona, hard; and she began to break up as soon as she touched. Lloyd's +agent had her sold inside an hour; and before dark, when she went to +pieces in earnest, the man that bought her had feathered his nest. Three +more hours of daylight, and he might have retired from business. As it +was, he built a house on Beretania Street, and called it for the ship.” + +“Yes, there's something in wrecks sometimes,” said the Glasgow voice; +“but not often.” + +“As a general rule, there's deuced little in anything,” said Havens. + +“Well, I believe that's a Christian fact,” cried the other. “What I want +is a secret; get hold of a rich man by the right place, and make him +squeal.” + +“I suppose you know it's not thought to be the ticket,” returned Havens. + +“I don't care for that; it's good enough for me,” cried the man from +Glasgow, stoutly. “The only devil of it is, a fellow can never find a +secret in a place like the South Seas: only in London and Paris.” + +“M'Gibbon's been reading some dime-novel, I suppose,” said one club man. + +“He's been reading _Aurora Floyd_,” remarked another. + +“And what if I have?” cried M'Gibbon. “It's all true. Look at +the newspapers! It's just your confounded ignorance that sets you +snickering. I tell you, it's as much a trade as underwriting, and a +dashed sight more honest.” + +The sudden acrimony of these remarks called Loudon (who was a man of +peace) from his reserve. “It's rather singular,” said he, “but I seem to +have practised about all these means of livelihood.” + +“Tit you effer vind a nokket?” inquired the inarticulate German, +eagerly. + +“No. I have been most kinds of fool in my time,” returned Loudon, “but +not the gold-digging variety. Every man has a sane spot somewhere.” + +“Well, then,” suggested some one, “did you ever smuggle opium?” + +“Yes, I did,” said Loudon. + +“Was there money in that?” + +“All the way,” responded Loudon. + +“And perhaps you bought a wreck?” asked another. + +“Yes, sir,” said Loudon. + +“How did that pan out?” pursued the questioner. + +“Well, mine was a peculiar kind of wreck,” replied Loudon. “I don't +know, on the whole, that I can recommend that branch of industry.” + +“Did she break up?” asked some one. + +“I guess it was rather I that broke down,” says Loudon. “Head not big +enough.” + +“Ever try the blackmail?” inquired Havens. + +“Simple as you see me sitting here!” responded Dodd. + +“Good business?” + +“Well, I'm not a lucky man, you see,” returned the stranger. “It ought +to have been good.” + +“You had a secret?” asked the Glasgow man. + +“As big as the State of Texas.” + +“And the other man was rich?” + +“He wasn't exactly Jay Gould, but I guess he could buy these islands if +he wanted.” + +“Why, what was wrong, then? Couldn't you get hands on him?” + +“It took time, but I had him cornered at last; and then----” + +“What then?” + +“The speculation turned bottom up. I became the man's bosom friend.” + +“The deuce you did!” + +“He couldn't have been particular, you mean?” asked Dodd pleasantly. +“Well, no; he's a man of rather large sympathies.” + +“If you're done talking nonsense, Loudon,” said Havens, “let's be +getting to my place for dinner.” + +Outside, the night was full of the roaring of the surf. Scattered lights +glowed in the green thicket. Native women came by twos and threes out of +the darkness, smiled and ogled the two whites, perhaps wooed them with +a strain of laughter, and went by again, bequeathing to the air a +heady perfume of palm-oil and frangipani blossom. From the club to Mr. +Havens's residence was but a step or two, and to any dweller in Europe +they must have seemed steps in fairyland. If such an one could but have +followed our two friends into the wide-verandahed house, sat down +with them in the cool trellised room, where the wine shone on the +lamp-lighted tablecloth; tasted of their exotic food--the raw fish, the +breadfruit, the cooked bananas, the roast pig served with the inimitable +miti, and that king of delicacies, palm-tree salad; seen and heard by +fits and starts, now peering round the corner of the door, now railing +within against invisible assistants, a certain comely young native lady +in a sacque, who seemed too modest to be a member of the family, and too +imperious to be less; and then if such an one were whisked again through +space to Upper Tooting, or wherever else he honored the domestic gods, +“I have had a dream,” I think he would say, as he sat up, rubbing his +eyes, in the familiar chimney-corner chair, “I have had a dream of a +place, and I declare I believe it must be heaven.” But to Dodd and his +entertainer, all this amenity of the tropic night and all these dainties +of the island table, were grown things of custom; and they fell to meat +like men who were hungry, and drifted into idle talk like men who were a +trifle bored. + +The scene in the club was referred to. + +“I never heard you talk so much nonsense, Loudon,” said the host. + +“Well, it seemed to me there was sulphur in the air, so I talked for +talking,” returned the other. “But it was none of it nonsense.” + +“Do you mean to say it was true?” cried Havens,--“that about the opium +and the wreck, and the blackmailing and the man who became your friend?” + +“Every last word of it,” said Loudon. + +“You seem to have been seeing life,” returned the other. + +“Yes, it's a queer yarn,” said his friend; “if you think you would like, +I'll tell it you.” + +Here follows the yarn of Loudon Dodd, not as he told it to his friend, +but as he subsequently wrote it. + + + + +THE YARN. + + + + +CHAPTER I. A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION. + + +The beginning of this yarn is my poor father's character. There +never was a better man, nor a handsomer, nor (in my view) a more +unhappy--unhappy in his business, in his pleasures, in his place of +residence, and (I am sorry to say it) in his son. He had begun life as a +land-surveyor, soon became interested in real estate, branched off into +many other speculations, and had the name of one of the smartest men in +the State of Muskegon. “Dodd has a big head,” people used to say; but I +was never so sure of his capacity. His luck, at least, was beyond doubt +for long; his assiduity, always. He fought in that daily battle of +money-grubbing, with a kind of sad-eyed loyalty like a martyr's; rose +early, ate fast, came home dispirited and over-weary, even from success; +grudged himself all pleasure, if his nature was capable of taking any, +which I sometimes wondered; and laid out, upon some deal in wheat or +corner in aluminium, the essence of which was little better than highway +robbery, treasures of conscientiousness and self-denial. + +Unluckily, I never cared a cent for anything but art, and never shall. +My idea of man's chief end was to enrich the world with things of +beauty, and have a fairly good time myself while doing so. I do not +think I mentioned that second part, which is the only one I have managed +to carry out; but my father must have suspected the suppression, for he +branded the whole affair as self-indulgence. + +“Well,” I remember crying once, “and what is your life? You are only +trying to get money, and to get it from other people at that.” + +He sighed bitterly (which was very much his habit), and shook his poor +head at me. “Ah, Loudon, Loudon!” said he, “you boys think yourselves +very smart. But, struggle as you please, a man has to work in this +world. He must be an honest man or a thief, Loudon.” + +You can see for yourself how vain it was to argue with my father. +The despair that seized upon me after such an interview was, besides, +embittered by remorse; for I was at times petulant, but he invariably +gentle; and I was fighting, after all, for my own liberty and pleasure, +he singly for what he thought to be my good. And all the time he never +despaired. “There is good stuff in you, Loudon,” he would say; “there +is the right stuff in you. Blood will tell, and you will come right in +time. I am not afraid my boy will ever disgrace me; I am only vexed he +should sometimes talk nonsense.” And then he would pat my shoulder or +my hand with a kind of motherly way he had, very affecting in a man so +strong and beautiful. + +As soon as I had graduated from the high school, he packed me off to the +Muskegon Commercial Academy. You are a foreigner, and you will have a +difficulty in accepting the reality of this seat of education. I assure +you before I begin that I am wholly serious. The place really existed, +possibly exists to-day: we were proud of it in the State, as something +exceptionally nineteenth century and civilized; and my father, when he +saw me to the cars, no doubt considered he was putting me in a straight +line for the Presidency and the New Jerusalem. + +“Loudon,” said he, “I am now giving you a chance that Julius Caesar +could not have given to his son--a chance to see life as it is, before +your own turn comes to start in earnest. Avoid rash speculation, try +to behave like a gentleman; and if you will take my advice, confine +yourself to a safe, conservative business in railroads. Breadstuffs are +tempting, but very dangerous; I would not try breadstuffs at your time +of life; but you may feel your way a little in other commodities. Take +a pride to keep your books posted, and never throw good money after bad. +There, my dear boy, kiss me good-by; and never forget that you are an +only chick, and that your dad watches your career with fond suspense.” + +The commercial college was a fine, roomy establishment, pleasantly +situate among woods. The air was healthy, the food excellent, the +premium high. Electric wires connected it (to use the words of the +prospectus) with “the various world centres.” The reading-room was well +supplied with “commercial organs.” The talk was that of Wall Street; and +the pupils (from fifty to a hundred lads) were principally engaged +in rooking or trying to rook one another for nominal sums in what was +called “college paper.” We had class hours, indeed, in the morning, when +we studied German, French, book-keeping, and the like goodly matters; +but the bulk of our day and the gist of the education centred in the +exchange, where we were taught to gamble in produce and securities. +Since not one of the participants possessed a bushel of wheat or a +dollar's worth of stock, legitimate business was of course impossible +from the beginning. It was cold-drawn gambling, without colour or +disguise. Just that which is the impediment and destruction of all +genuine commercial enterprise, just that we were taught with every +luxury of stage effect. Our simulacrum of a market was ruled by the real +markets outside, so that we might experience the course and vicissitude +of prices. We must keep books, and our ledgers were overhauled at +the month's end by the principal or his assistants. To add a spice +of verisimilitude, “college paper” (like poker chips) had an actual +marketable value. It was bought for each pupil by anxious parents and +guardians at the rate of one cent for the dollar. The same pupil, when +his education was complete, resold, at the same figure, so much as was +left him to the college; and even in the midst of his curriculum, a +successful operator would sometimes realize a proportion of his holding, +and stand a supper on the sly in the neighbouring hamlet. In short, +if there was ever a worse education, it must have been in that academy +where Oliver met Charlie Bates. + +When I was first guided into the exchange to have my desk pointed out +by one of the assistant teachers, I was overwhelmed by the clamour and +confusion. Certain blackboards at the other end of the building were +covered with figures continually replaced. As each new set appeared, the +pupils swayed to and fro, and roared out aloud with a formidable and +to me quite meaningless vociferation; leaping at the same time upon +the desks and benches, signalling with arms and heads, and scribbling +briskly in note-books. I thought I had never beheld a scene more +disagreeable; and when I considered that the whole traffic was illusory, +and all the money then upon the market would scarce have sufficed to +buy a pair of skates, I was at first astonished, although not for long. +Indeed, I had no sooner called to mind how grown-up men and women of +considerable estate will lose their temper about half-penny points, than +(making an immediate allowance for my fellow-students) I transferred +the whole of my astonishment to the assistant teacher, who--poor +gentleman--had quite forgot to show me to my desk, and stood in the +midst of this hurly-burly, absorbed and seemingly transported. + +“Look, look,” he shouted in my ear; “a falling market! The bears have +had it all their own way since yesterday.” + +“It can't matter,” I replied, making him hear with difficulty, for I was +unused to speak in such a babel, “since it is all fun.” + +“True,” said he; “and you must always bear in mind that the real profit +is in the book-keeping. I trust, Dodd, to be able to congratulate +you upon your books. You are to start in with ten thousand dollars of +college paper, a very liberal figure, which should see you through the +whole curriculum, if you keep to a safe, conservative business.... Why, +what's that?” he broke off, once more attracted by the changing figures +on the board. “Seven, four, three! Dodd, you are in luck: this is the +most spirited rally we have had this term. And to think that the same +scene is now transpiring in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and rival +business centres! For two cents, I would try a flutter with the +boys myself,” he cried, rubbing his hands; “only it's against the +regulations.” + +“What would you do, sir?” I asked. + +“Do?” he cried, with glittering eyes. “Buy for all I was worth!” + +“Would that be a safe, conservative business?” I inquired, as innocent +as a lamb. + +He looked daggers at me. “See that sandy-haired man in glasses?” he +asked, as if to change the subject. “That's Billson, our most prominent +undergraduate. We build confidently on Billson's future. You could not +do better, Dodd, than follow Billson.” + +Presently after, in the midst of a still growing tumult, the figures +coming and going more busily than ever on the board, and the hall +resounding like Pandemonium with the howls of operators, the assistant +teacher left me to my own resources at my desk. The next boy was posting +up his ledger, figuring his morning's loss, as I discovered later on; +and from this ungenial task he was readily diverted by the sight of a +new face. + +“Say, Freshman,” he said, “what's your name? What? Son of Big Head Dodd? +What's your figure? Ten thousand? O, you're away up! What a soft-headed +clam you must be to touch your books!” + +I asked him what else I could do, since the books were to be examined +once a month. + +“Why, you galoot, you get a clerk!” cries he. “One of our dead +beats--that's all they're here for. If you're a successful operator, you +need never do a stroke of work in this old college.” + +The noise had now become deafening; and my new friend, telling me that +some one had certainly “gone down,” that he must know the news, and +that he would bring me a clerk when he returned, buttoned his coat and +plunged into the tossing throng. It proved that he was right: some one +had gone down; a prince had fallen in Israel; the corner in lard had +proved fatal to the mighty; and the clerk who was brought back to keep +my books, spare me all work, and get all my share of the education, at +a thousand dollars a month, college paper (ten dollars, United States +currency) was no other than the prominent Billson whom I could do no +better than follow. The poor lad was very unhappy. It's the only good +thing I have to say for Muskegon Commercial College, that we were all, +even the small fry, deeply mortified to be posted as defaulters; and the +collapse of a merchant prince like Billson, who had ridden pretty high +in his days of prosperity, was, of course, particularly hard to bear. +But the spirit of make-believe conquered even the bitterness of recent +shame; and my clerk took his orders, and fell to his new duties, with +decorum and civility. + +Such were my first impressions in this absurd place of education; and, +to be frank, they were far from disagreeable. As long as I was rich, my +evenings and afternoons would be my own; the clerk must keep my books, +the clerk could do the jostling and bawling in the exchange; and I could +turn my mind to landscape-painting and Balzac's novels, which were then +my two preoccupations. To remain rich, then, became my problem; or, in +other words, to do a safe, conservative line of business. I am looking +for that line still; and I believe the nearest thing to it in this +imperfect world is the sort of speculation sometimes insidiously +proposed to childhood, in the formula, “Heads, I win; tails, you lose.” + Mindful of my father's parting words, I turned my attention timidly to +railroads; and for a month or so maintained a position of inglorious +security, dealing for small amounts in the most inert stocks, and +bearing (as best I could) the scorn of my hired clerk. One day I +had ventured a little further by way of experiment; and, in the sure +expectation they would continue to go down, sold several thousand +dollars of Pan-Handle Preference (I think it was). I had no sooner +made this venture than some fools in New York began to bull the market; +Pan-Handles rose like a balloon; and in the inside of half an hour I saw +my position compromised. Blood will tell, as my father said; and I stuck +to it gallantly: all afternoon I continued selling that infernal +stock, all afternoon it continued skying. I suppose I had come (a frail +cockle-shell) athwart the hawse of Jay Gould; and, indeed, I think I +remember that this vagary in the market proved subsequently to be the +first move in a considerable deal. That evening, at least, the name of +H. Loudon Dodd held the first rank in our collegiate gazette, and I and +Billson (once more thrown upon the world) were competing for the same +clerkship. The present object takes the present eye. My disaster, +for the moment, was the more conspicuous; and it was I that got the +situation. So you see, even in Muskegon Commercial College, there were +lessons to be learned. + +For my own part, I cared very little whether I lost or won at a game so +random, so complex, and so dull; but it was sorry news to write to my +poor father, and I employed all the resources of my eloquence. I told +him (what was the truth) that the successful boys had none of the +education; so that if he wished me to learn, he should rejoice at my +misfortune. I went on (not very consistently) to beg him to set me up +again, when I would solemnly promise to do a safe business in reliable +railroads. Lastly (becoming somewhat carried away), I assured him I was +totally unfit for business, and implored him to take me away from this +abominable place, and let me go to Paris to study art. He answered +briefly, gently, and sadly, telling me the vacation was near at hand, +when we could talk things over. + +When the time came, he met me at the depot, and I was shocked to see +him looking older. He seemed to have no thought but to console me +and restore (what he supposed I had lost) my courage. I must not be +down-hearted; many of the best men had made a failure in the beginning. +I told him I had no head for business, and his kind face darkened. “You +must not say that, Loudon,” he replied; “I will never believe my son to +be a coward.” + +“But I don't like it,” I pleaded. “It hasn't got any interest for me, +and art has. I know I could do more in art,” and I reminded him that +a successful painter gains large sums; that a picture of Meissonier's +would sell for many thousand dollars. + +“And do you think, Loudon,” he replied, “that a man who can paint a +thousand dollar picture has not grit enough to keep his end up in +the stock market? No, sir; this Mason (of whom you speak) or our +own American Bierstadt--if you were to put them down in a wheat pit +to-morrow, they would show their mettle. Come, Loudon, my dear; heaven +knows I have no thought but your own good, and I will offer you a +bargain. I start you again next term with ten thousand dollars; show +yourself a man, and double it, and then (if you still wish to go to +Paris, which I know you won't) I'll let you go. But to let you run away +as if you were whipped, is what I am too proud to do.” + +My heart leaped at this proposal, and then sank again. It seemed easier +to paint a Meissonier on the spot than to win ten thousand dollars +on that mimic stock exchange. Nor could I help reflecting on the +singularity of such a test for a man's capacity to be a painter. I +ventured even to comment on this. + +He sighed deeply. “You forget, my dear,” said he, “I am a judge of +the one, and not of the other. You might have the genius of Bierstadt +himself, and I would be none the wiser.” + +“And then,” I continued, “it's scarcely fair. The other boys are helped +by their people, who telegraph and give them pointers. There's Jim +Costello, who never budges without a word from his father in New York. +And then, don't you see, if anybody is to win, somebody must lose?” + +“I'll keep you posted,” cried my father, with unusual animation; “I did +not know it was allowed. I'll wire you in the office cipher, and we'll +make it a kind of partnership business, Loudon:--Dodd & Son, eh?” and +he patted my shoulder and repeated, “Dodd & Son, Dodd & Son,” with the +kindliest amusement. + +If my father was to give me pointers, and the commercial college was to +be a stepping-stone to Paris, I could look my future in the face. The +old boy, too, was so pleased at the idea of our association in this +foolery that he immediately plucked up spirit. Thus it befell that those +who had met at the depot like a pair of mutes, sat down to table with +holiday faces. + +And now I have to introduce a new character that never said a word nor +wagged a finger, and yet shaped my whole subsequent career. You have +crossed the States, so that in all likelihood you have seen the head +of it, parcel-gilt and curiously fluted, rising among trees from a wide +plain; for this new character was no other than the State capitol of +Muskegon, then first projected. My father had embraced the idea with a +mixture of patriotism and commercial greed both perfectly genuine. He +was of all the committees, he had subscribed a great deal of money, and +he was making arrangements to have a finger in most of the contracts. +Competitive plans had been sent in; at the time of my return from +college my father was deep in their consideration; and as the idea +entirely occupied his mind, the first evening did not pass away before +he had called me into council. Here was a subject at last into which I +could throw myself with pleasurable zeal. Architecture was new to me, +indeed; but it was at least an art; and for all the arts I had a taste +naturally classical and that capacity to take delighted pains which some +famous idiot has supposed to be synonymous with genius. I threw myself +headlong into my father's work, acquainted myself with all the plans, +their merits and defects, read besides in special books, made myself +a master of the theory of strains, studied the current prices +of materials, and (in one word) “devilled” the whole business so +thoroughly, that when the plans came up for consideration, Big Head Dodd +was supposed to have earned fresh laurels. His arguments carried the +day, his choice was approved by the committee, and I had the anonymous +satisfaction to know that arguments and choice were wholly mine. In the +recasting of the plan which followed, my part was even larger; for I +designed and cast with my own hand a hot-air grating for the offices, +which had the luck or merit to be accepted. The energy and aptitude +which I displayed throughout delighted and surprised my father, and I +believe, although I say it whose tongue should be tied, that they alone +prevented Muskegon capitol from being the eyesore of my native State. + +Altogether, I was in a cheery frame of mind when I returned to the +commercial college; and my earlier operations were crowned with a full +measure of success. My father wrote and wired to me continually. “You +are to exercise your own judgment, Loudon,” he would say. “All that I do +is to give you the figures; but whatever operation you take up must be +upon your own responsibility, and whatever you earn will be entirely +due to your own dash and forethought.” For all that, it was always clear +what he intended me to do, and I was always careful to do it. Inside +of a month I was at the head of seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars, +college paper. And here I fell a victim to one of the vices of the +system. The paper (I have already explained) had a real value of one +per cent; and cost, and could be sold for, currency. Unsuccessful +speculators were thus always selling clothes, books, banjos, and +sleeve-links, in order to pay their differences; the successful, on the +other hand, were often tempted to realise, and enjoy some return upon +their profits. Now I wanted thirty dollars' worth of artist-truck, for +I was always sketching in the woods; my allowance was for the time +exhausted; I had begun to regard the exchange (with my father's help) +as a place where money was to be got for stooping; and in an evil hour +I realised three thousand dollars of the college paper and bought my +easel. + +It was a Wednesday morning when the things arrived, and set me in +the seventh heaven of satisfaction. My father (for I can scarcely say +myself) was trying at this time a “straddle” in wheat between Chicago +and New York; the operation so called is, as you know, one of the +most tempting and least safe upon the chess-board of finance. On the +Thursday, luck began to turn against my father's calculations; and by +the Friday evening, I was posted on the boards as a defaulter for the +second time. Here was a rude blow: my father would have taken it ill +enough in any case; for however much a man may resent the incapacity of +an only son, he will feel his own more sensibly. But it chanced that, in +our bitter cup of failure, there was one ingredient that might truly be +called poisonous. He had been keeping the run of my position; he missed +the three thousand dollars, paper; and in his view, I had stolen thirty +dollars, currency. It was an extreme view perhaps; but in some senses, +it was just: and my father, although (to my judgment) quite reckless of +honesty in the essence of his operations, was the soul of honour as to +their details. I had one grieved letter from him, dignified and tender; +and during the rest of that wretched term, working as a clerk, selling +my clothes and sketches to make futile speculations, my dream of Paris +quite vanished. I was cheered by no word of kindness and helped by no +hint of counsel from my father. + +All the time he was no doubt thinking of little else but his son, and +what to do with him. I believe he had been really appalled by what he +regarded as my laxity of principle, and began to think it might be +well to preserve me from temptation; the architect of the capitol had, +besides, spoken obligingly of my design; and while he was thus hanging +between two minds, Fortune suddenly stepped in, and Muskegon State +capitol reversed my destiny. + +“Loudon,” said my father, as he met me at the depot, with a smiling +countenance, “if you were to go to Paris, how long would it take you to +become an experienced sculptor?” + +“How do you mean, father?” I cried. “Experienced?” + +“A man that could be entrusted with the highest styles,” he answered; +“the nude, for instance; and the patriotic and emblematical styles.” + +“It might take three years,” I replied. + +“You think Paris necessary?” he asked. “There are great advantages +in our own country; and that man Prodgers appears to be a very clever +sculptor, though I suppose he stands too high to go around giving +lessons.” + +“Paris is the only place,” I assured him. + +“Well, I think myself it will sound better,” he admitted. “A Young Man, +a Native of this State, Son of a Leading Citizen, Studies Prosecuted +under the Most Experienced Masters in Paris,” he added, relishingly. + +“But, my dear dad, what is it all about?” I interrupted. “I never even +dreamed of being a sculptor.” + +“Well, here it is,” said he. “I took up the statuary contract on our new +capitol; I took it up at first as a deal; and then it occurred to me it +would be better to keep it in the family. It meets your idea; there's +considerable money in the thing; and it's patriotic. So, if you say the +word, you shall go to Paris, and come back in three years to decorate +the capitol of your native State. It's a big chance for you, Loudon; and +I'll tell you what--every dollar you earn, I'll put another alongside of +it. But the sooner you go, and the harder you work, the better; for +if the first half-dozen statues aren't in a line with public taste in +Muskegon, there will be trouble.” + + + + +CHAPTER II. ROUSSILLON WINE. + + +My mother's family was Scotch, and it was judged fitting I should pay a +visit on my way Paris-ward, to my Uncle Adam Loudon, a wealthy retired +grocer of Edinburgh. He was very stiff and very ironical; he fed me +well, lodged me sumptuously, and seemed to take it out of me all the +time, cent per cent, in secret entertainment which caused his spectacles +to glitter and his mouth to twitch. The ground of this ill-suppressed +mirth (as well as I could make out) was simply the fact that I was an +American. “Well,” he would say, drawing out the word to infinity, “and +I suppose now in your country, things will be so and so.” And the whole +group of my cousins would titter joyously. Repeated receptions of +this sort must be at the root, I suppose, of what they call the Great +American Jest; and I know I was myself goaded into saying that my +friends went naked in the summer months, and that the Second Methodist +Episcopal Church in Muskegon was decorated with scalps. I cannot say +that these flights had any great success; they seemed to awaken little +more surprise than the fact that my father was a Republican or that I +had been taught in school to spell COLOUR without the U. If I had +told them (what was after all the truth) that my father had paid a +considerable annual sum to have me brought up in a gambling hell, the +tittering and grinning of this dreadful family might perhaps have been +excused. + +I cannot deny but I was sometimes tempted to knock my Uncle Adam down; +and indeed I believe it must have come to a rupture at last, if they had +not given a dinner party at which I was the lion. On this occasion, I +learned (to my surprise and relief) that the incivility to which I had +been subjected was a matter for the family circle and might be regarded +almost in the light of an endearment. To strangers I was presented with +consideration; and the account given of “my American brother-in-law, +poor Janie's man, James K. Dodd, the well-known millionnaire of +Muskegon,” was calculated to enlarge the heart of a proud son. + +An aged assistant of my grandfather's, a pleasant, humble creature with +a taste for whiskey, was at first deputed to be my guide about the city. +With this harmless but hardly aristocratic companion, I went to Arthur's +Seat and the Calton Hill, heard the band play in the Princes Street +Gardens, inspected the regalia and the blood of Rizzio, and fell in love +with the great castle on its cliff, the innumerable spires of churches, +the stately buildings, the broad prospects, and those narrow and crowded +lanes of the old town where my ancestors had lived and died in the days +before Columbus. + +But there was another curiosity that interested me more deeply--my +grandfather, Alexander Loudon. In his time, the old gentleman had been a +working mason, and had risen from the ranks more, I think, by shrewdness +than by merit. In his appearance, speech, and manners, he bore broad +marks of his origin, which were gall and wormwood to my Uncle Adam. +His nails, in spite of anxious supervision, were often in conspicuous +mourning; his clothes hung about him in bags and wrinkles like a +ploughman's Sunday coat; his accent was rude, broad, and dragging: take +him at his best, and even when he could be induced to hold his tongue, +his mere presence in a corner of the drawing-room, with his open-air +wrinkles, his scanty hair, his battered hands, and the cheerful +craftiness of his expression, advertised the whole gang of us for a +self-made family. My aunt might mince and my cousins bridle; but there +was no getting over the solid, physical fact of the stonemason in the +chimney-corner. + +That is one advantage of being an American: it never occurred to me to +be ashamed of my grandfather, and the old gentleman was quick to mark +the difference. He held my mother in tender memory, perhaps because +he was in the habit of daily contrasting her with Uncle Adam, whom he +detested to the point of frenzy; and he set down to inheritance from +his favourite my own becoming treatment of himself. On our walks abroad, +which soon became daily, he would sometimes (after duly warning me +to keep the matter dark from “Aadam”) skulk into some old familiar +pot-house; and there (if he had the luck to encounter any of his veteran +cronies) he would present me to the company with manifest pride, casting +at the same time a covert slur on the rest of his descendants. “This is +my Jeannie's yin,” he would say. “He's a fine fallow, him.” The purpose +of our excursions was not to seek antiquities or to enjoy famous +prospects, but to visit one after another a series of doleful suburbs, +for which it was the old gentleman's chief claim to renown that he had +been the sole contractor, and too often the architect besides. I have +rarely seen a more shocking exhibition: the bricks seemed to be blushing +in the walls, and the slates on the roof to have turned pale with shame; +but I was careful not to communicate these impressions to the aged +artificer at my side; and when he would direct my attention to some +fresh monstrosity--perhaps with the comment, “There's an idee of mine's: +it's cheap and tasty, and had a graand run; the idee was soon stole, and +there's whole deestricts near Glesgie with the goathic adeetion and +that plunth,”--I would civilly make haste to admire and (what I found +particularly delighted him) to inquire into the cost of each adornment. +It will be conceived that Muskegon capitol was a frequent and a welcome +ground of talk; I drew him all the plans from memory; and he, with the +aid of a narrow volume full of figures and tables, which answered +(I believe) to the name of Molesworth, and was his constant pocket +companion, would draw up rough estimates and make imaginary offers on +the various contracts. Our Muskegon builders he pronounced a pack of +cormorants; and the congenial subject, together with my knowledge of +architectural terms, the theory of strains, and the prices of materials +in the States, formed a strong bond of union between what might have +been otherwise an ill-assorted pair, and led my grandfather to pronounce +me, with emphasis, “a real intalligent kind of a cheild.” Thus a second +time, as you will presently see, the capitol of my native State had +influentially affected the current of my life. + +I left Edinburgh, however, with not the least idea that I had done a +stroke of excellent business for myself, and singly delighted to escape +out of a somewhat dreary house and plunge instead into the rainbow city +of Paris. Every man has his own romance; mine clustered exclusively +about the practice of the arts, the life of Latin Quarter students, and +the world of Paris as depicted by that grimy wizard, the author of the +_Comedie Humaine_. I was not disappointed--I could not have been; for +I did not see the facts, I brought them with me ready-made. Z. Marcas +lived next door to me in my ungainly, ill-smelling hotel of the Rue +Racine; I dined at my villainous restaurant with Lousteau and with +Rastignac: if a curricle nearly ran me down at a street-crossing, Maxime +de Trailles would be the driver. I dined, I say, at a poor restaurant +and lived in a poor hotel; and this was not from need, but sentiment. +My father gave me a profuse allowance, and I might have lived (had I +chosen) in the Quartier de l'Etoile and driven to my studies daily. +Had I done so, the glamour must have fled: I should still have been +but Loudon Dodd; whereas now I was a Latin Quarter student, Murger's +successor, living in flesh and blood the life of one of those romances +I had loved to read, to re-read, and to dream over, among the woods of +Muskegon. + +At this time we were all a little Murger-mad in the Latin Quarter. +The play of the _Vie de Boheme_ (a dreary, snivelling piece) had been +produced at the Odeon, had run an unconscionable time--for Paris, and +revived the freshness of the legend. The same business, you may say, +or there and thereabout, was being privately enacted in consequence in +every garret of the neighbourhood, and a good third of the students +were consciously impersonating Rodolphe or Schaunard to their own +incommunicable satisfaction. Some of us went far, and some farther. I +always looked with awful envy (for instance) on a certain countryman of +my own who had a studio in the Rue Monsieur le Prince, wore boots, and +long hair in a net, and could be seen tramping off, in this guise, to +the worst eating-house of the quarter, followed by a Corsican model, his +mistress, in the conspicuous costume of her race and calling. It takes +some greatness of soul to carry even folly to such heights as these; and +for my own part, I had to content myself by pretending very arduously +to be poor, by wearing a smoking-cap on the streets, and by pursuing, +through a series of misadventures, that extinct mammal, the grisette. +The most grievous part was the eating and the drinking. I was born with +a dainty tooth and a palate for wine; and only a genuine devotion to +romance could have supported me under the cat-civets that I had to +swallow, and the red ink of Bercy I must wash them down withal. Every +now and again, after a hard day at the studio, where I was steadily and +far from unsuccessfully industrious, a wave of distaste would overbear +me; I would slink away from my haunts and companions, indemnify myself +for weeks of self-denial with fine wines and dainty dishes; seated +perhaps on a terrace, perhaps in an arbour in a garden, with a volume +of one of my favourite authors propped open in front of me, and now +consulted awhile, and now forgotten:--so remain, relishing my situation, +till night fell and the lights of the city kindled; and thence stroll +homeward by the riverside, under the moon or stars, in a heaven of +poetry and digestion. + +One such indulgence led me in the course of my second year into an +adventure which I must relate: indeed, it is the very point I have been +aiming for, since that was what brought me in acquaintance with Jim +Pinkerton. I sat down alone to dinner one October day when the rusty +leaves were falling and scuttling on the boulevard, and the minds of +impressionable men inclined in about an equal degree towards sadness +and conviviality. The restaurant was no great place, but boasted a +considerable cellar and a long printed list of vintages. This I was +perusing with the double zest of a man who is fond of wine and a lover +of beautiful names, when my eye fell (near the end of the card) on that +not very famous or familiar brand, Roussillon. I remembered it was a +wine I had never tasted, ordered a bottle, found it excellent, and when +I had discussed the contents, called (according to my habit) for a final +pint. It appears they did not keep Roussillon in half-bottles. “All +right,” said I. “Another bottle.” The tables at this eating-house are +close together; and the next thing I can remember, I was in somewhat +loud conversation with my nearest neighbours. From these I must have +gradually extended my attentions; for I have a clear recollection of +gazing about a room in which every chair was half turned round and every +face turned smilingly to mine. I can even remember what I was saying at +the moment; but after twenty years, the embers of shame are still alive; +and I prefer to give your imagination the cue, by simply mentioning that +my muse was the patriotic. It had been my design to adjourn for coffee +in the company of some of these new friends; but I was no sooner on +the sidewalk than I found myself unaccountably alone. The circumstance +scarce surprised me at the time, much less now; but I was somewhat +chagrined a little after to find I had walked into a kiosque. I began to +wonder if I were any the worse for my last bottle, and decided to steady +myself with coffee and brandy. In the Cafe de la Source, where I went +for this restorative, the fountain was playing, and (what greatly +surprised me) the mill and the various mechanical figures on the rockery +appeared to have been freshly repaired and performed the most enchanting +antics. The cafe was extraordinarily hot and bright, with every detail +of a conspicuous clearness, from the faces of the guests to the type of +the newspapers on the tables, and the whole apartment swang to and fro +like a hammock, with an exhilarating motion. For some while I was so +extremely pleased with these particulars that I thought I could never +be weary of beholding them: then dropped of a sudden into a causeless +sadness; and then, with the same swiftness and spontaneity, arrived at +the conclusion that I was drunk and had better get to bed. + +It was but a step or two to my hotel, where I got my lighted candle from +the porter and mounted the four flights to my own room. Although I could +not deny that I was drunk, I was at the same time lucidly rational and +practical. I had but one preoccupation--to be up in time on the morrow +for my work; and when I observed the clock on my chimney-piece to have +stopped, I decided to go down stairs again and give directions to the +porter. Leaving the candle burning and my door open, to be a guide to me +on my return, I set forth accordingly. The house was quite dark; but as +there were only the three doors on each landing, it was impossible to +wander, and I had nothing to do but descend the stairs until I saw the +glimmer of the porter's night light. I counted four flights: no porter. +It was possible, of course, that I had reckoned incorrectly; so I went +down another and another, and another, still counting as I went, until +I had reached the preposterous figure of nine flights. It was now quite +clear that I had somehow passed the porter's lodge without remarking +it; indeed, I was, at the lowest figure, five pairs of stairs below +the street, and plunged in the very bowels of the earth. That my hotel +should thus be founded upon catacombs was a discovery of considerable +interest; and if I had not been in a frame of mind entirely +businesslike, I might have continued to explore all night this +subterranean empire. But I was bound I must be up betimes on the next +morning, and for that end it was imperative that I should find the +porter. I faced about accordingly, and counting with painful care, +remounted towards the level of the street. Five, six, and seven flights +I climbed, and still there was no porter. I began to be weary of the +job, and reflecting that I was now close to my own room, decided I +should go to bed. Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen flights +I mounted; and my open door seemed to be as wholly lost to me as the +porter and his floating dip. I remembered that the house stood but +six stories at its highest point, from which it appeared (on the most +moderate computation) I was now three stories higher than the roof. My +original sense of amusement was succeeded by a not unnatural irritation. +“My room has just GOT to be here,” said I, and I stepped towards the +door with outspread arms. There was no door and no wall; in place of +either there yawned before me a dark corridor, in which I continued to +advance for some time without encountering the smallest opposition. And +this in a house whose extreme area scantily contained three small rooms, +a narrow landing, and the stair! The thing was manifestly nonsense; +and you will scarcely be surprised to learn that I now began to lose +my temper. At this juncture I perceived a filtering of light along +the floor, stretched forth my hand which encountered the knob of a +door-handle, and without further ceremony entered a room. A young lady +was within; she was going to bed, and her toilet was far advanced, or +the other way about, if you prefer. + +“I hope you will pardon this intrusion,” said I; “but my room is No. 12, +and something has gone wrong with this blamed house.” + +She looked at me a moment; and then, “If you will step outside for a +moment, I will take you there,” says she. + +Thus, with perfect composure on both sides, the matter was arranged. +I waited a while outside her door. Presently she rejoined me, in a +dressing-gown, took my hand, led me up another flight, which made the +fourth above the level of the roof, and shut me into my own room, where +(being quite weary after these contraordinary explorations) I turned in, +and slumbered like a child. + +I tell you the thing calmly, as it appeared to me to pass; but the next +day, when I awoke and put memory in the witness-box, I could not conceal +from myself that the tale presented a good many improbable features. +I had no mind for the studio, after all, and went instead to the +Luxembourg gardens, there, among the sparrows and the statues and the +falling leaves, to cool and clear my head. It is a garden I have always +loved. You sit there in a public place of history and fiction. Barras +and Fouche have looked from these windows. Lousteau and de Banville (one +as real as the other) have rhymed upon these benches. The city tramples +by without the railings to a lively measure; and within and about you, +trees rustle, children and sparrows utter their small cries, and the +statues look on forever. Here, then, in a seat opposite the gallery +entrance, I set to work on the events of the last night, to disengage +(if it were possible) truth from fiction. + +The house, by daylight, had proved to be six stories high, the same as +ever. I could find, with all my architectural experience, no room in its +altitude for those interminable stairways, no width between its walls +for that long corridor, where I had tramped at night. And there was yet +a greater difficulty. I had read somewhere an aphorism that everything +may be false to itself save human nature. A house might elongate or +enlarge itself--or seem to do so to a gentleman who had been dining. +The ocean might dry up, the rocks melt in the sun, the stars fall from +heaven like autumn apples; and there was nothing in these incidents +to boggle the philosopher. But the case of the young lady stood upon a +different foundation. Girls were not good enough, or not good that way, +or else they were too good. I was ready to accept any of these views: +all pointed to the same conclusion, which I was thus already on the +point of reaching, when a fresh argument occurred, and instantly +confirmed it. I could remember the exact words we had each said; and I +had spoken, and she had replied, in English. Plainly, then, the whole +affair was an illusion: catacombs, and stairs, and charitable lady, all +were equally the stuff of dreams. + +I had just come to this determination, when there blew a flaw of wind +through the autumnal gardens; the dead leaves showered down, and a +flight of sparrows, thick as a snowfall, wheeled above my head with +sudden pipings. This agreeable bustle was the affair of a moment, but it +startled me from the abstraction into which I had fallen like a summons. +I sat briskly up, and as I did so, my eyes rested on the figure of a +lady in a brown jacket and carrying a paint-box. By her side walked a +fellow some years older than myself, with an easel under his arm; and +alike by their course and cargo I might judge they were bound for the +gallery, where the lady was, doubtless, engaged upon some copying. +You can imagine my surprise when I recognized in her the heroine of my +adventure. To put the matter beyond question, our eyes met, and she, +seeing herself remembered and recalling the trim in which I had +last beheld her, looked swiftly on the ground with just a shadow of +confusion. + +I could not tell you to-day if she were plain or pretty; but she had +behaved with so much good sense, and I had cut so poor a figure in +her presence, that I became instantly fired with the desire to display +myself in a more favorable light. The young man besides was possibly her +brother; brothers are apt to be hasty, theirs being a part in which +it is possible, at a comparatively early age, to assume the dignity +of manhood; and it occurred to me it might be wise to forestall all +possible complications by an apology. + +On this reasoning I drew near to the gallery door, and had hardly got in +position before the young man came out. Thus it was that I came face to +face with my third destiny; for my career has been entirely shaped +by these three elements,--my father, the capitol of Muskegon, and my +friend, Jim Pinkerton. As for the young lady with whom my mind was at +the moment chiefly occupied, I was never to hear more of her from that +day forward: an excellent example of the Blind Man's Buff that we call +life. + + + + +CHAPTER III. TO INTRODUCE MR. PINKERTON. + + +The stranger, I have said, was some years older than myself: a man of a +good stature, a very lively face, cordial, agitated manners, and a gray +eye as active as a fowl's. + +“May I have a word with you?” said I. + +“My dear sir,” he replied, “I don't know what it can be about, but you +may have a hundred if you like.” + +“You have just left the side of a young lady,” I continued, “towards +whom I was led (very unintentionally) into the appearance of an offence. +To speak to herself would be only to renew her embarrassment, and I +seize the occasion of making my apology, and declaring my respect, to +one of my own sex who is her friend, and perhaps,” I added, with a bow, +“her natural protector.” + +“You are a countryman of mine; I know it!” he cried: “I am sure of it +by your delicacy to a lady. You do her no more than justice. I was +introduced to her the other night at tea, in the apartment of some +people, friends of mine; and meeting her again this morning, I could not +do less than carry her easel for her. My dear sir, what is your name?” + +I was disappointed to find he had so little bond with my young lady; +and but that it was I who had sought the acquaintance, might have been +tempted to retreat. At the same time, something in the stranger's eye +engaged me. + +“My name,” said I, “is Loudon Dodd; I am a student of sculpture here +from Muskegon.” + +“Of sculpture?” he cried, as though that would have been his last +conjecture. “Mine is James Pinkerton; I am delighted to have the +pleasure of your acquaintance.” + +“Pinkerton!” it was now my turn to exclaim. “Are you Broken-Stool +Pinkerton?” + +He admitted his identity with a laugh of boyish delight; and indeed any +young man in the quarter might have been proud to own a sobriquet thus +gallantly acquired. + +In order to explain the name, I must here digress into a chapter of +the history of manners in the nineteenth century, very well worth +commemoration for its own sake. In some of the studios at that date, +the hazing of new pupils was both barbarous and obscene. Two incidents, +following one on the heels of the other tended to produce an advance in +civilization by the means (as so commonly happens) of a passing appeal +to savage standards. The first was the arrival of a little gentleman +from Armenia. He had a fez upon his head and (what nobody counted on) a +dagger in his pocket. The hazing was set about in the customary style, +and, perhaps in virtue of the victim's head-gear, even more boisterously +than usual. He bore it at first with an inviting patience; but upon one +of the students proceeding to an unpardonable freedom, plucked out +his knife and suddenly plunged it in the belly of the jester. This +gentleman, I am pleased to say, passed months upon a bed of sickness, +before he was in a position to resume his studies. The second incident +was that which had earned Pinkerton his reputation. In a crowded studio, +while some very filthy brutalities were being practised on a trembling +debutant, a tall, pale fellow sprang from his stool and (without the +smallest preface or explanation) sang out, “All English and Americans to +clear the shop!” Our race is brutal, but not filthy; and the summons +was nobly responded to. Every Anglo-Saxon student seized his stool; in +a moment the studio was full of bloody coxcombs, the French fleeing in +disorder for the door, the victim liberated and amazed. In this feat of +arms, both English-speaking nations covered themselves with glory; +but I am proud to claim the author of the whole for an American, and +a patriotic American at that, being the same gentleman who had +subsequently to be held down in the bottom of a box during a performance +of _L'Oncle Sam_, sobbing at intervals, “My country! O my country!” + While yet another (my new acquaintance, Pinkerton) was supposed to have +made the most conspicuous figure in the actual battle. At one blow, he +had broken his own stool, and sent the largest of his opponents back +foremost through what we used to call a “conscientious nude.” It appears +that, in the continuation of his flight, this fallen warrior issued on +the boulevard still framed in the burst canvas. + +It will be understood how much talk the incident aroused in the +students' quarter, and that I was highly gratified to make the +acquaintance of my famous countryman. It chanced I was to see more of +the quixotic side of his character before the morning was done; for as +we continued to stroll together, I found myself near the studio of a +young Frenchman whose work I had promised to examine, and in the fashion +of the quarter carried up Pinkerton along with me. Some of my comrades +of this date were pretty obnoxious fellows. I could almost always admire +and respect the grown-up practitioners of art in Paris; but many of +those who were still in a state of pupilage were sorry specimens, so +much so that I used often to wonder where the painters came from, and +where the brutes of students went to. A similar mystery hangs over the +intermediate stages of the medical profession, and must have perplexed +the least observant. The ruffian, at least, whom I now carried Pinkerton +to visit, was one of the most crapulous in the quarter. He turned +out for our delectation a huge “crust” (as we used to call it) of St. +Stephen, wallowing in red upon his belly in an exhausted receiver, and +a crowd of Hebrews in blue, green, and yellow, pelting him--apparently +with buns; and while we gazed upon this contrivance, regaled us with +a piece of his own recent biography, of which his mind was still very +full, and which he seemed to fancy, represented him in a heroic posture. +I was one of those cosmopolitan Americans, who accept the world (whether +at home or abroad) as they find it, and whose favourite part is that +of the spectator; yet even I was listening with ill-suppressed disgust, +when I was aware of a violent plucking at my sleeve. + +“Is he saying he kicked her down stairs?” asked Pinkerton, white as St. +Stephen. + +“Yes,” said I: “his discarded mistress; and then he pelted her with +stones. I suppose that's what gave him the idea for his picture. He has +just been alleging the pathetic excuse that she was old enough to be his +mother.” + +Something like a sob broke from Pinkerton. “Tell him,” he gasped--“I +can't speak this language, though I understand a little; I never had any +proper education--tell him I'm going to punch his head.” + +“For God's sake, do nothing of the sort!” I cried. “They don't +understand that sort of thing here.” And I tried to bundle him out. + +“Tell him first what we think of him,” he objected. “Let me tell him +what he looks in the eyes of a pure-minded American” + +“Leave that to me,” said I, thrusting Pinkerton clear through the door. + +“Qu'est-ce qu'il a?”[1] inquired the student. + +[1] “What's the matter with him?” + +“Monsieur se sent mal au coeur d'avoir trop regarde votre croute,”[2] +said I, and made my escape, scarce with dignity, at Pinkerton's heels. + +[2] “The gentleman is sick at his stomach from having looked too long at +your daub.” + +“What did you say to him?” he asked. + +“The only thing that he could feel,” was my reply. + +After this scene, the freedom with which I had ejected my new +acquaintance, and the precipitation with which I had followed him, the +least I could do was to propose luncheon. I have forgot the name of the +place to which I led him, nothing loath; it was on the far side of the +Luxembourg at least, with a garden behind, where we were speedily set +face to face at table, and began to dig into each other's history +and character, like terriers after rabbits, according to the approved +fashion of youth. + +Pinkerton's parents were from the old country; there too, I incidentally +gathered, he had himself been born, though it was a circumstance he +seemed prone to forget. Whether he had run away, or his father had +turned him out, I never fathomed; but about the age of twelve, he was +thrown upon his own resources. A travelling tin-type photographer picked +him up, like a haw out of a hedgerow, on a wayside in New Jersey; took +a fancy to the urchin; carried him on with him in his wandering life; +taught him all he knew himself--to take tin-types (as well as I can make +out) and doubt the Scriptures; and died at last in Ohio at the corner +of a road. “He was a grand specimen,” cried Pinkerton; “I wish you could +have seen him, Mr. Dodd. He had an appearance of magnanimity that used +to remind me of the patriarchs.” On the death of this random protector, +the boy inherited the plant and continued the business. “It was a life +I could have chosen, Mr. Dodd!” he cried. “I have been in all the finest +scenes of that magnificent continent that we were born to be the heirs +of. I wish you could see my collection of tin-types; I wish I had them +here. They were taken for my own pleasure and to be a memento; and they +show Nature in her grandest as well as her gentlest moments.” As he +tramped the Western States and Territories, taking tin-types, the boy +was continually getting hold of books, good, bad, and indifferent, +popular and abstruse, from the novels of Sylvanus Cobb to Euclid's +Elements, both of which I found (to my almost equal wonder) he had +managed to peruse: he was taking stock by the way, of the people, the +products, and the country, with an eye unusually observant and a +memory unusually retentive; and he was collecting for himself a body of +magnanimous and semi-intellectual nonsense, which he supposed to be the +natural thoughts and to contain the whole duty of the born American. +To be pure-minded, to be patriotic, to get culture and money with both +hands and with the same irrational fervour--these appeared to be the +chief articles of his creed. In later days (not of course upon this +first occasion) I would sometimes ask him why; and he had his answer +pat. “To build up the type!” he would cry. “We're all committed to that; +we're all under bond to fulfil the American Type! Loudon, the hope of +the world is there. If we fail, like these old feudal monarchies, what +is left?” + +The trade of a tin-typer proved too narrow for the lad's ambition; it +was insusceptible of expansion, he explained, it was not truly modern; +and by a sudden conversion of front, he became a railroad-scalper. The +principles of this trade I never clearly understood; but its essence +appears to be to cheat the railroads out of their due fare. “I threw my +whole soul into it; I grudged myself food and sleep while I was at it; +the most practised hands admitted I had caught on to the idea in a month +and revolutionised the practice inside of a year,” he said. “And there's +interest in it, too. It's amusing to pick out some one going by, make up +your mind about his character and tastes, dash out of the office and hit +him flying with an offer of the very place he wants to go to. I don't +think there was a scalper on the continent made fewer blunders. But I +took it only as a stage. I was saving every dollar; I was looking +ahead. I knew what I wanted--wealth, education, a refined home, and a +conscientious, cultured lady for a wife; for, Mr. Dodd”--this with +a formidable outcry--“every man is bound to marry above him: if the +woman's not the man's superior, I brand it as mere sensuality. There was +my idea, at least. That was what I was saving for; and enough, too! But +it isn't every man, I know that--it's far from every man--could do what +I did: close up the livest agency in Saint Jo, where he was coining +dollars by the pot, set out alone, without a friend or a word of French, +and settle down here to spend his capital learning art.” + +“Was it an old taste?” I asked him, “or a sudden fancy?” + +“Neither, Mr. Dodd,” he admitted. “Of course I had learned in my +tin-typing excursions to glory and exult in the works of God. But it +wasn't that. I just said to myself, What is most wanted in my age and +country? More culture and more art, I said; and I chose the best place, +saved my money, and came here to get them.” + +The whole attitude of this young man warmed and shamed me. He had more +fire in his little toe than I had in my whole carcase; he was stuffed to +bursting with the manly virtues; thrift and courage glowed in him; and +even if his artistic vocation seemed (to one of my exclusive tenets) not +quite clear, who could predict what might be accomplished by a creature +so full-blooded and so inspired with animal and intellectual energy? So, +when he proposed that I should come and see his work (one of the regular +stages of a Latin Quarter friendship), I followed him with interest and +hope. + +He lodged parsimoniously at the top of a tall house near the +Observatory, in a bare room, principally furnished with his own trunks +and papered with his own despicable studies. No man has less taste for +disagreeable duties than myself; perhaps there is only one subject on +which I cannot flatter a man without a blush; but upon that, upon all +that touches art, my sincerity is Roman. Once and twice I made the +circuit of his walls in silence, spying in every corner for some spark +of merit; he, meanwhile, following close at my heels, reading the +verdict in my face with furtive glances, presenting some fresh study for +my inspection with undisguised anxiety, and (after it had been silently +weighed in the balances and found wanting) whisking it away with an open +gesture of despair. By the time the second round was completed, we were +both extremely depressed. + +“O!” he groaned, breaking the long silence, “it's quite unnecessary you +should speak!” + +“Do you want me to be frank with you? I think you are wasting time,” + said I. + +“You don't see any promise?” he inquired, beguiled by some return of +hope, and turning upon me the embarrassing brightness of his eye. “Not +in this still-life here, of the melon? One fellow thought it good.” + +It was the least I could do to give the melon a more particular +examination; which, when I had done, I could but shake my head. “I am +truly sorry, Pinkerton,” said I, “but I can't advise you to persevere.” + +He seemed to recover his fortitude at the moment, rebounding from +disappointment like a man of india-rubber. “Well,” said he stoutly, “I +don't know that I'm surprised. But I'll go on with the course; and throw +my whole soul into it, too. You mustn't think the time is lost. It's all +culture; it will help me to extend my relations when I get back home; +it may fit me for a position on one of the illustrateds; and then I can +always turn dealer,” he said, uttering the monstrous proposition, +which was enough to shake the Latin Quarter to the dust, with entire +simplicity. “It's all experience, besides;” he continued, “and it seems +to me there's a tendency to underrate experience, both as net profit and +investment. Never mind. That's done with. But it took courage for you +to say what you did, and I'll never forget it. Here's my hand, Mr. Dodd. +I'm not your equal in culture or talent--” + +“You know nothing about that,” I interrupted. “I have seen your work, +but you haven't seen mine. + +“No more I have,” he cried; “and let's go see it at once! But I know you +are away up. I can feel it here.” + +To say truth, I was almost ashamed to introduce him to my studio--my +work, whether absolutely good or bad, being so vastly superior to his. +But his spirits were now quite restored; and he amazed me, on the way, +with his light-hearted talk and new projects. So that I began at last +to understand how matters lay: that this was not an artist who had been +deprived of the practice of his single art; but only a business man +of very extended interests, informed (perhaps something of the most +suddenly) that one investment out of twenty had gone wrong. + +As a matter of fact besides (although I never suspected it) he was +already seeking consolation with another of the muses, and pleasing +himself with the notion that he would repay me for my sincerity, cement +our friendship, and (at one and the same blow) restore my estimation of +his talents. Several times already, when I had been speaking of myself, +he had pulled out a writing-pad and scribbled a brief note; and now, +when we entered the studio, I saw it in his hand again, and the +pencil go to his mouth, as he cast a comprehensive glance round the +uncomfortable building. + +“Are you going to make a sketch of it?” I could not help asking, as I +unveiled the Genius of Muskegon. + +“Ah, that's my secret,” said he. “Never you mind. A mouse can help a +lion.” + +He walked round my statue and had the design explained to him. I had +represented Muskegon as a young, almost a stripling, mother, with +something of an Indian type; the babe upon her knees was winged, to +indicate our soaring future; and her seat was a medley of sculptured +fragments, Greek, Roman, and Gothic, to remind us of the older worlds +from which we trace our generation. + +“Now, does this satisfy you, Mr. Dodd?” he inquired, as soon as I had +explained to him the main features of the design. + +“Well,” I said, “the fellows seem to think it's not a bad bonne femme +for a beginner. I don't think it's entirely bad myself. Here is the best +point; it builds up best from here. No, it seems to me it has a kind of +merit,” I admitted; “but I mean to do better.” + +“Ah, that's the word!” cried Pinkerton. “There's the word I love!” and +he scribbled in his pad. + +“What in creation ails you?” I inquired. “It's the most commonplace +expression in the English language.” + +“Better and better!” chuckled Pinkerton. “The unconsciousness of genius. +Lord, but this is coming in beautiful!” and he scribbled again. + +“If you're going to be fulsome,” said I, “I'll close the place of +entertainment.” And I threatened to replace the veil upon the Genius. + +“No, no,” said he. “Don't be in a hurry. Give me a point or two. Show me +what's particularly good.” + +“I would rather you found that out for yourself,” said I. + +“The trouble is,” said he, “that I've never turned my attention to +sculpture, beyond, of course, admiring it, as everybody must who has a +soul. So do just be a good fellow, and explain to me what you like in +it, and what you tried for, and where the merit comes in. It'll be all +education for me.” + +“Well, in sculpture, you see, the first thing you have to consider +is the masses. It's, after all, a kind of architecture,” I began, and +delivered a lecture on that branch of art, with illustrations from +my own masterpiece there present, all of which, if you don't mind, +or whether you mind or not, I mean to conscientiously omit. Pinkerton +listened with a fiery interest, questioned me with a certain +uncultivated shrewdness, and continued to scratch down notes, and tear +fresh sheets from his pad. I found it inspiring to have my words thus +taken down like a professor's lecture; and having had no previous +experience of the press, I was unaware that they were all being taken +down wrong. For the same reason (incredible as it must appear in +an American) I never entertained the least suspicion that they were +destined to be dished up with a sauce of penny-a-lining gossip; and +myself, my person, and my works of art butchered to make a holiday +for the readers of a Sunday paper. Night had fallen over the Genius of +Muskegon before the issue of my theoretic eloquence was stayed, nor did +I separate from my new friend without an appointment for the morrow. + +I was indeed greatly taken with this first view of my countryman, +and continued, on further acquaintance, to be interested, amused, and +attracted by him in about equal proportions. I must not say he had a +fault, not only because my mouth is sealed by gratitude, but because +those he had sprang merely from his education, and you could see he had +cultivated and improved them like virtues. For all that, I can never +deny he was a troublous friend to me, and the trouble began early. + +It may have been a fortnight later that I divined the secret of the +writing-pad. My wretch (it leaked out) wrote letters for a paper in the +West, and had filled a part of one of them with descriptions of myself. +I pointed out to him that he had no right to do so without asking my +permission. + +“Why, this is just what I hoped!” he exclaimed. “I thought you didn't +seem to catch on; only it seemed too good to be true.” + +“But, my good fellow, you were bound to warn me,” I objected. + +“I know it's generally considered etiquette,” he admitted; “but between +friends, and when it was only with a view of serving you, I thought it +wouldn't matter. I wanted it (if possible) to come on you as a surprise; +I wanted you just to waken, like Lord Byron, and find the papers full of +you. You must admit it was a natural thought. And no man likes to boast +of a favour beforehand.” + +“But, heavens and earth! how do you know I think it a favour?” I cried. + +He became immediately plunged in despair. “You think it a liberty,” said +he; “I see that. I would rather have cut off my hand. I would stop it +now, only it's too late; it's published by now. And I wrote it with so +much pride and pleasure!” + +I could think of nothing but how to console him. “O, I daresay it's all +right,” said I. “I know you meant it kindly, and you would be sure to do +it in good taste.” + +“That you may swear to,” he cried. “It's a pure, bright, A number 1 +paper; the St. Jo _Sunday Herald_. The idea of the series was quite my +own; I interviewed the editor, put it to him straight; the freshness of +the idea took him, and I walked out of that office with the contract in +my pocket, and did my first Paris letter that evening in Saint Jo. The +editor did no more than glance his eye down the headlines. 'You're the +man for us,' said he.” + +I was certainly far from reassured by this sketch of the class of +literature in which I was to make my first appearance; but I said no +more, and possessed my soul in patience, until the day came when I +received a copy of a newspaper marked in the corner, “Compliments of +J.P.” I opened it with sensible shrinkings; and there, wedged between an +account of a prize-fight and a skittish article upon chiropody--think of +chiropody treated with a leer!--I came upon a column and a half in which +myself and my poor statue were embalmed. Like the editor with the first +of the series, I did but glance my eye down the head-lines and was more +than satisfied. + + ANOTHER OF PINKERTON'S SPICY CHATS. + + ART PRACTITIONERS IN PARIS. + + MUSKEGON'S COLUMNED CAPITOL. + + SON OF MILLIONAIRE DODD, + + PATRIOT AND ARTIST. + + “HE MEANS TO DO BETTER.” + +In the body of the text, besides, my eye caught, as it passed, some +deadly expressions: “Figure somewhat fleshy,” “bright, intellectual +smile,” “the unconsciousness of genius,” “'Now, Mr. Dodd,' resumed the +reporter, 'what would be your idea of a distinctively American quality +in sculpture?'” It was true the question had been asked; it was true, +alas! that I had answered; and now here was my reply, or some strange +hash of it, gibbeted in the cold publicity of type. I thanked God that +my French fellow-students were ignorant of English; but when I thought +of the British--of Myner (for instance) or the Stennises--I think I +could have fallen on Pinkerton and beat him. + +To divert my thoughts (if it were possible) from this calamity, I turned +to a letter from my father which had arrived by the same post. The +envelope contained a strip of newspaper-cutting; and my eye caught +again, “Son of Millionaire Dodd--Figure somewhat fleshy,” and the rest +of the degrading nonsense. What would my father think of it? I wondered, +and opened his manuscript. “My dearest boy,” it began, “I send you a +cutting which has pleased me very much, from a St. Joseph paper of +high standing. At last you seem to be coming fairly to the front; and +I cannot but reflect with delight and gratitude how very few youths of +your age occupy nearly two columns of press-matter all to themselves. +I only wish your dear mother had been here to read it over my shoulder; +but we will hope she shares my grateful emotion in a better place. Of +course I have sent a copy to your grandfather and uncle in Edinburgh; +so you can keep the one I enclose. This Jim Pinkerton seems a valuable +acquaintance; he has certainly great talent; and it is a good general +rule to keep in with pressmen.” + +I hope it will be set down to the right side of my account, but I had +no sooner read these words, so touchingly silly, than my anger against +Pinkerton was swallowed up in gratitude. Of all the circumstances of my +career, my birth, perhaps, excepted, not one had given my poor father so +profound a pleasure as this article in the _Sunday Herald_. What a fool, +then, was I, to be lamenting! when I had at last, and for once, and +at the cost of only a few blushes, paid back a fraction of my debt +of gratitude. So that, when I next met Pinkerton, I took things very +lightly; my father was pleased, and thought the letter very clever, I +told him; for my own part, I had no taste for publicity: thought the +public had no concern with the artist, only with his art; and though I +owned he had handled it with great consideration, I should take it as a +favour if he never did it again. + +“There it is,” he said despondingly. “I've hurt you. You can't deceive +me, Loudon. It's the want of tact, and it's incurable.” He sat down, and +leaned his head upon his hand. “I had no advantages when I was young, +you see,” he added. + +“Not in the least, my dear fellow,” said I. “Only the next time you wish +to do me a service, just speak about my work; leave my wretched person +out, and my still more wretched conversation; and above all,” I added, +with an irrepressible shudder, “don't tell them how I said it! There's +that phrase, now: 'With a proud, glad smile.' Who cares whether I smiled +or not?” + +“Oh, there now, Loudon, you're entirely wrong,” he broke in. “That's +what the public likes; that's the merit of the thing, the literary +value. It's to call up the scene before them; it's to enable the +humblest citizen to enjoy that afternoon the same as I did. Think what +it would have been to me when I was tramping around with my tin-types to +find a column and a half of real, cultured conversation--an artist, in +his studio abroad, talking of his art--and to know how he looked as he +did it, and what the room was like, and what he had for breakfast; and +to tell myself, eating tinned beans beside a creek, that if all went +well, the same sort of thing would, sooner or later, happen to myself: +why, Loudon, it would have been like a peephole into heaven!” + +“Well, if it gives so much pleasure,” I admitted, “the sufferers +shouldn't complain. Only give the other fellows a turn.” + +The end of the matter was to bring myself and the journalist in a more +close relation. If I know anything at all of human nature--and the IF +is no mere figure of speech, but stands for honest doubt--no series +of benefits conferred, or even dangers shared, would have so rapidly +confirmed our friendship as this quarrel avoided, this fundamental +difference of taste and training accepted and condoned. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH I EXPERIENCE EXTREMES OF FORTUNE. + + +Whether it came from my training and repeated bankruptcy at the +commercial college, or by direct inheritance from old Loudon, the +Edinburgh mason, there can be no doubt about the fact that I was +thrifty. Looking myself impartially over, I believe that is my only +manly virtue. During my first two years in Paris I not only made it a +point to keep well inside of my allowance, but accumulated considerable +savings in the bank. You will say, with my masquerade of living as a +penniless student, it must have been easy to do so: I should have had no +difficulty, however, in doing the reverse. Indeed, it is wonderful I did +not; and early in the third year, or soon after I had known Pinkerton, a +singular incident proved it to have been equally wise. Quarter-day came, +and brought no allowance. A letter of remonstrance was despatched, and +for the first time in my experience, remained unanswered. A cablegram +was more effectual; for it brought me at least a promise of attention. +“Will write at once,” my father telegraphed; but I waited long for his +letter. I was puzzled, angry, and alarmed; but thanks to my previous +thrift, I cannot say that I was ever practically embarrassed. The +embarrassment, the distress, the agony, were all for my unhappy father +at home in Muskegon, struggling for life and fortune against untoward +chances, returning at night from a day of ill-starred shifts and +ventures, to read and perhaps to weep over that last harsh letter from +his only child, to which he lacked the courage to reply. + +Nearly three months after time, and when my economies were beginning +to run low, I received at last a letter with the customary bills of +exchange. + +“My dearest boy,” it ran, “I believe, in the press of anxious business, +your letters and even your allowance have been somewhile neglected. You +must try to forgive your poor old dad, for he has had a trying time; and +now when it is over, the doctor wants me to take my shotgun and go +to the Adirondacks for a change. You must not fancy I am sick, only +over-driven and under the weather. Many of our foremost operators have +gone down: John T. M'Brady skipped to Canada with a trunkful of boodle; +Billy Sandwith, Charlie Downs, Joe Kaiser, and many others of our +leading men in this city bit the dust. But Big-Head Dodd has again +weathered the blizzard, and I think I have fixed things so that we may +be richer than ever before autumn. + +“Now I will tell you, my dear, what I propose. You say you are well +advanced with your first statue; start in manfully and finish it, and if +your teacher--I can never remember how to spell his name--will send me +a certificate that it is up to market standard, you shall have ten +thousand dollars to do what you like with, either at home or in Paris. +I suggest, since you say the facilities for work are so much greater +in that city, you would do well to buy or build a little home; and +the first thing you know, your dad will be dropping in for a luncheon. +Indeed, I would come now, for I am beginning to grow old, and I long to +see my dear boy; but there are still some operations that want watching +and nursing. Tell your friend, Mr. Pinkerton, that I read his letters +every week; and though I have looked in vain lately for my Loudon's +name, still I learn something of the life he is leading in that strange, +old world, depicted by an able pen.” + +Here was a letter that no young man could possibly digest in solitude. +It marked one of those junctures when the confidant is necessary; and +the confidant selected was none other than Jim Pinkerton. My father's +message may have had an influence in this decision; but I scarce suppose +so, for the intimacy was already far advanced. I had a genuine and +lively taste for my compatriot; I laughed at, I scolded, and I loved +him. He, upon his side, paid me a kind of doglike service of admiration, +gazing at me from afar off as at one who had liberally enjoyed those +“advantages” which he envied for himself. He followed at heel; his laugh +was ready chorus; our friends gave him the nickname of “The Henchman.” + It was in this insidious form that servitude approached me. + +Pinkerton and I read and re-read the famous news: he, I can swear, with +an enjoyment as unalloyed and far more vocal than my own. The statue was +nearly done: a few days' work sufficed to prepare it for exhibition; the +master was approached; he gave his consent; and one cloudless morning +of May beheld us gathered in my studio for the hour of trial. The +master wore his many-hued rosette; he came attended by two of my French +fellow-pupils--friends of mine and both considerable sculptors in Paris +at this hour. “Corporal John” (as we used to call him) breaking for once +those habits of study and reserve which have since carried him so +high in the opinion of the world, had left his easel of a morning to +countenance a fellow-countryman in some suspense. My dear old Romney +was there by particular request; for who that knew him would think +a pleasure quite complete unless he shared it, or not support a +mortification more easily if he were present to console? The party +was completed by John Myner, the Englishman; by the brothers +Stennis,--Stennis-aine and Stennis-frere, as they used to figure on +their accounts at Barbizon--a pair of hare-brained Scots; and by the +inevitable Jim, as white as a sheet and bedewed with the sweat of +anxiety. + +I suppose I was little better myself when I unveiled the Genius of +Muskegon. The master walked about it seriously; then he smiled. + +“It is already not so bad,” said he, in that funny English of which he +was so proud. “No, already not so bad.” + +We all drew a deep breath of relief; and Corporal John (as the most +considerable junior present) explained to him it was intended for a +public building, a kind of prefecture-- + +“He! Quoi?” cried he, relapsing into French. “Qu'est-ce que vous me +chantez la? O, in America,” he added, on further information being +hastily furnished. “That is anozer sing. O, very good, very good.” + +The idea of the required certificate had to be introduced to his mind +in the light of a pleasantry--the fancy of a nabob little more advanced +than the red Indians of “Fennimore Cooperr”; and it took all our talents +combined to conceive a form of words that would be acceptable on +both sides. One was found, however: Corporal John engrossed it in his +undecipherable hand, the master lent it the sanction of his name and +flourish, I slipped it into an envelope along with one of the two +letters I had ready prepared in my pocket, and as the rest of us moved +off along the boulevard to breakfast, Pinkerton was detached in a cab +and duly committed it to the post. + +The breakfast was ordered at Lavenue's, where no one need be ashamed +to entertain even the master; the table was laid in the garden; I had +chosen the bill of fare myself; on the wine question we held a council +of war with the most fortunate results; and the talk, as soon as the +master laid aside his painful English, became fast and furious. There +were a few interruptions, indeed, in the way of toasts. The master's +health had to be drunk, and he responded in a little well-turned speech, +full of neat allusions to my future and to the United States; my health +followed; and then my father's must not only be proposed and drunk, +but a full report must be despatched to him at once by cablegram--an +extravagance which was almost the means of the master's dissolution. +Choosing Corporal John to be his confidant (on the ground, I presume, +that he was already too good an artist to be any longer an American +except in name) he summed up his amazement in one oft-repeated +formula--“C'est barbare!” Apart from these genial formalities, we +talked, talked of art, and talked of it as only artists can. Here in the +South Seas we talk schooners most of the time; in the Quarter we talked +art with the like unflagging interest, and perhaps as much result. + +Before very long, the master went away; Corporal John (who was already a +sort of young master) followed on his heels; and the rank and file were +naturally relieved by their departure. We were now among equals; the +bottle passed, the conversation sped. I think I can still hear the +Stennis brothers pour forth their copious tirades; Dijon, my portly +French fellow-student, drop witticisms well-conditioned like himself; +and another (who was weak in foreign languages) dash hotly into the +current of talk with some “Je trove que pore oon sontimong de delicacy, +Corot ...,” or some “Pour moi Corot est le plou ...,” and then, his +little raft of French foundering at once, scramble silently to shore +again. He at least could understand; but to Pinkerton, I think the +noise, the wine, the sun, the shadows of the leaves, and the esoteric +glory of being seated at a foreign festival, made up the whole available +means of entertainment. + +We sat down about half past eleven; I suppose it was two when, +some point arising and some particular picture being instanced, an +adjournment to the Louvre was proposed. I paid the score, and in a +moment we were trooping down the Rue de Renne. It was smoking hot; Paris +glittered with that superficial brilliancy which is so agreeable to the +man in high spirits, and in moods of dejection so depressing; the wine +sang in my ears, it danced and brightened in my eyes. The pictures that +we saw that afternoon, as we sped briskly and loquaciously through the +immortal galleries, appear to me, upon a retrospect, the loveliest +of all; the comments we exchanged to have touched the highest mark of +criticism, grave or gay. + +It was only when we issued again from the museum that a difference of +race broke up the party. Dijon proposed an adjournment to a cafe, there +to finish the afternoon on beer; the elder Stennis, revolted at the +thought, moved for the country, a forest if possible, and a long walk. +At once the English speakers rallied to the name of any exercise: even +to me, who have been often twitted with my sedentary habits, the thought +of country air and stillness proved invincibly attractive. It appeared, +upon investigation, we had just time to hail a cab and catch one of the +fast trains for Fontainebleau. Beyond the clothes we stood in, all were +destitute of what is called (with dainty vagueness) personal effects; +and it was earnestly mooted, on the other side, whether we had not time +to call upon the way and pack a satchel? But the Stennis boys exclaimed +upon our effeminacy. They had come from London, it appeared, a week +before with nothing but greatcoats and tooth-brushes. No baggage--there +was the secret of existence. It was expensive, to be sure; for every +time you had to comb your hair, a barber must be paid, and every time +you changed your linen, one shirt must be bought and another thrown +away; but anything was better (argued these young gentlemen) than to +be the slaves of haversacks. “A fellow has to get rid gradually of all +material attachments; that was manhood” (said they); “and as long as you +were bound down to anything,--house, umbrella, or portmanteau,--you were +still tethered by the umbilical cord.” Something engaging in this +theory carried the most of us away. The two Frenchmen, indeed, retired, +scoffing, to their bock; and Romney, being too poor to join the +excursion on his own resources and too proud to borrow, melted +unobtrusively away. Meanwhile the remainder of the company crowded +the benches of a cab; the horse was urged (as horses have to be) by an +appeal to the pocket of the driver; the train caught by the inside of +a minute; and in less than an hour and a half we were breathing deep +of the sweet air of the forest and stretching our legs up the hill from +Fontainebleau octroi, bound for Barbizon. That the leading members of +our party covered the distance in fifty-one minutes and a half is (I +believe) one of the historic landmarks of the colony; but you will +scarce be surprised to learn that I was somewhat in the rear. Myner, +a comparatively philosophic Briton, kept me company in my deliberate +advance; the glory of the sun's going down, the fall of the long +shadows, the inimitable scent and the inspiration of the woods, attuned +me more and more to walk in a silence which progressively infected my +companion; and I remember that, when at last he spoke, I was startled +from a deep abstraction. + +“Your father seems to be a pretty good kind of a father,” said he. “Why +don't he come to see you?” I was ready with some dozen of reasons, and +had more in stock; but Myner, with that shrewdness which made him feared +and admired, suddenly fixed me with his eye-glass and asked, “Ever press +him?” + +The blood came in my face. No; I had never pressed him; I had never even +encouraged him to come. I was proud of him; proud of his handsome looks, +of his kind, gentle ways, of that bright face he could show when others +were happy; proud, too (meanly proud, if you like) of his great wealth +and startling liberalities. And yet he would have been in the way of my +Paris life, of much of which he would have disapproved. I had feared to +expose to criticism his innocent remarks on art; I had told myself, I +had even partly believed, he did not want to come; I had been (and still +am) convinced that he was sure to be unhappy out of Muskegon; in short, +I had a thousand reasons, good and bad, not all of which could alter one +iota of the fact that I knew he only waited for my invitation. + +“Thank you, Myner,” said I; “you're a much better fellow than ever I +supposed. I'll write to-night.” + +“O, you're a pretty decent sort yourself,” returned Myner, with more +than his usual flippancy of manner, but (as I was gratefully aware) not +a trace of his occasional irony of meaning. + +Well, these were brave days, on which I could dwell forever. Brave, +too, were those that followed, when Pinkerton and I walked Paris and the +suburbs, viewing and pricing houses for my new establishment, or covered +ourselves with dust and returned laden with Chinese gods and brass +warming-pans from the dealers in antiquities. I found Pinkerton well +up in the situation of these establishments as well as in the current +prices, and with quite a smattering of critical judgment; it turned out +he was investing capital in pictures and curiosities for the States, and +the superficial thoroughness of the creature appeared in the fact, that +although he would never be a connoisseur, he was already something of +an expert. The things themselves left him as near as may be cold; but he +had a joy of his own in understanding how to buy and sell them. + +In such engagements the time passed until I might very well expect +an answer from my father. Two mails followed each other, and brought +nothing. By the third I received a long and almost incoherent letter +of remorse, encouragement, consolation, and despair. From this pitiful +document, which (with a movement of piety) I burned as soon as I had +read it, I gathered that the bubble of my father's wealth was burst, +that he was now both penniless and sick; and that I, so far from +expecting ten thousand dollars to throw away in juvenile extravagance, +must look no longer for the quarterly remittances on which I lived. My +case was hard enough; but I had sense enough to perceive, and decency +enough to do my duty. I sold my curiosities, or rather I sent Pinkerton +to sell them; and he had previously bought and now disposed of them so +wisely that the loss was trifling. This, with what remained of my last +allowance, left me at the head of no less than five thousand francs. +Five hundred I reserved for my own immediate necessities; the rest I +mailed inside of the week to my father at Muskegon, where they came in +time to pay his funeral expenses. + +The news of his death was scarcely a surprise and scarce a grief to me. +I could not conceive my father a poor man. He had led too long a life +of thoughtless and generous profusion to endure the change; and though I +grieved for myself, I was able to rejoice that my father had been taken +from the battle. I grieved, I say, for myself; and it is probable there +were at the same date many thousands of persons grieving with less +cause. I had lost my father; I had lost the allowance; my whole fortune +(including what had been returned from Muskegon) scarce amounted to +a thousand francs; and to crown my sorrows, the statuary contract +had changed hands. The new contractor had a son of his own, or else a +nephew; and it was signified to me, with business-like plainness, that I +must find another market for my pigs. In the meanwhile I had given up my +room, and slept on a truckle-bed in the corner of the studio, where as I +read myself to sleep at night, and when I awoke in the morning, that now +useless bulk, the Genius of Muskegon, was ever present to my eyes. Poor +stone lady! born to be enthroned under the gilded, echoing dome of the +new capitol, whither was she now to drift? for what base purposes be +ultimately broken up, like an unseaworthy ship? and what should befall +her ill-starred artificer, standing, with his thousand francs, on the +threshold of a life so hard as that of the unbefriended sculptor? + +It was a subject often and earnestly debated by myself and Pinkerton. +In his opinion, I should instantly discard my profession. “Just drop it, +here and now,” he would say. “Come back home with me, and let's throw +our whole soul into business. I have the capital; you bring the culture. +Dodd & Pinkerton--I never saw a better name for an advertisement; and +you can't think, Loudon, how much depends upon a name.” On my side, I +would admit that a sculptor should possess one of three things--capital, +influence, or an energy only to be qualified as hellish. The first two +I had now lost; to the third I never had the smallest claim; and yet I +wanted the cowardice (or perhaps it was the courage) to turn my back +on my career without a fight. I told him, besides, that however poor +my chances were in sculpture, I was convinced they were yet worse in +business, for which I equally lacked taste and aptitude. But upon this +head, he was my father over again; assured me that I spoke in ignorance; +that any intelligent and cultured person was Bound to succeed; that I +must, besides, have inherited some of my father's fitness; and, at +any rate, that I had been regularly trained for that career in the +commercial college. + + +“Pinkerton,” I said, “can't you understand that, as long as I was there, +I never took the smallest interest in any stricken thing? The whole +affair was poison to me.” + +“It's not possible,” he would cry; “it can't be; you couldn't live in +the midst of it and not feel the charm; with all your poetry of soul, +you couldn't help! Loudon,” he would go on, “you drive me crazy. You +expect a man to be all broken up about the sunset, and not to care a +dime for a place where fortunes are fought for and made and lost all +day; or for a career that consists in studying up life till you have it +at your finger-ends, spying out every cranny where you can get your +hand in and a dollar out, and standing there in the midst--one foot on +bankruptcy, the other on a borrowed dollar, and the whole thing spinning +round you like a mill--raking in the stamps, in spite of fate and +fortune.” + +To this romance of dickering I would reply with the romance (which is +also the virtue) of art: reminding him of those examples of constancy +through many tribulations, with which the role of Apollo is illustrated; +from the case of Millet, to those of many of our friends and comrades, +who had chosen this agreeable mountain path through life, and were now +bravely clambering among rocks and brambles, penniless and hopeful. + +“You will never understand it, Pinkerton,” I would say. “You look to the +result, you want to see some profit of your endeavours: that is why you +could never learn to paint, if you lived to be Methusalem. The result +is always a fizzle: the eyes of the artist are turned in; he lives for +a frame of mind. Look at Romney, now. There is the nature of the artist. +He hasn't a cent; and if you offered him to-morrow the command of an +army, or the presidentship of the United States, he wouldn't take it, +and you know he wouldn't.” + +“I suppose not,” Pinkerton would cry, scouring his hair with both his +hands; “and I can't see why; I can't see what in fits he would be after, +not to; I don't seem to rise to these views. Of course, it's the +fault of not having had advantages in early life; but, Loudon, I'm so +miserably low that it seems to me silly. The fact is,” he might add with +a smile, “I don't seem to have the least use for a frame of mind without +square meals; and you can't get it out of my head that it's a man's duty +to die rich, if he can.” + +“What for?” I asked him once. + +“O, I don't know,” he replied. “Why in snakes should anybody want to be +a sculptor, if you come to that? I would love to sculp myself. But what +I can't see is why you should want to do nothing else. It seems to argue +a poverty of nature.” + +Whether or not he ever came to understand me--and I have been so tossed +about since then that I am not very sure I understand myself--he soon +perceived that I was perfectly in earnest; and after about ten days +of argument, suddenly dropped the subject, and announced that he was +wasting capital, and must go home at once. No doubt he should have gone +long before, and had already lingered over his intended time for the +sake of our companionship and my misfortune; but man is so unjustly +minded that the very fact, which ought to have disarmed, only embittered +my vexation. I resented his departure in the light of a desertion; I +would not say, but doubtless I betrayed it; and something hang-dog in +the man's face and bearing led me to believe he was himself remorseful. +It is certain at least that, during the time of his preparations, we +drew sensibly apart--a circumstance that I recall with shame. On the +last day, he had me to dinner at a restaurant which he knew I had +formerly frequented, and had only forsworn of late from considerations +of economy. He seemed ill at ease; I was myself both sorry and sulky; +and the meal passed with little conversation. + +“Now, Loudon,” said he, with a visible effort, after the coffee was +come and our pipes lighted, “you can never understand the gratitude and +loyalty I bear you. You don't know what a boon it is to be taken up by +a man that stands on the pinnacle of civilization; you can't think how +it's refined and purified me, how it's appealed to my spiritual nature; +and I want to tell you that I would die at your door like a dog.” + +I don't know what answer I tried to make, but he cut me short. + +“Let me say it out!” he cried. “I revere you for your whole-souled +devotion to art; I can't rise to it, but there's a strain of poetry in +my nature, Loudon, that responds to it. I want you to carry it out, and +I mean to help you.” + +“Pinkerton, what nonsense is this?” I interrupted. + +“Now don't get mad, Loudon; this is a plain piece of business,” said he; +“it's done every day; it's even typical. How are all those fellows over +here in Paris, Henderson, Sumner, Long?--it's all the same story: a +young man just plum full of artistic genius on the one side, a man of +business on the other who doesn't know what to do with his dollars--” + +“But, you fool, you're as poor as a rat,” I cried. + +“You wait till I get my irons in the fire!” returned Pinkerton. “I'm +bound to be rich; and I tell you I mean to have some of the fun as I go +along. Here's your first allowance; take it at the hand of a friend; I'm +one that holds friendship sacred as you do yourself. It's only a hundred +francs; you'll get the same every month, and as soon as my business +begins to expand we'll increase it to something fitting. And so far from +it's being a favour, just let me handle your statuary for the American +market, and I'll call it one of the smartest strokes of business in my +life.” + +It took me a long time, and it had cost us both much grateful and +painful emotion, before I had finally managed to refuse his offer and +compounded for a bottle of particular wine. He dropped the subject at +last suddenly with a “Never mind; that's all done with,” nor did he +again refer to the subject, though we passed together the rest of the +afternoon, and I accompanied him, on his departure; to the doors of the +waiting-room at St. Lazare. I felt myself strangely alone; a voice told +me that I had rejected both the counsels of wisdom and the helping +hand of friendship; and as I passed through the great bright city on +my homeward way, I measured it for the first time with the eye of an +adversary. + + + + +CHAPTER V. IN WHICH I AM DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS. + + +In no part of the world is starvation an agreeable business; but I +believe it is admitted there is no worse place to starve in than this +city of Paris. The appearances of life are there so especially gay, +it is so much a magnified beer-garden, the houses are so ornate, the +theatres so numerous, the very pace of the vehicles is so brisk, that a +man in any deep concern of mind or pain of body is constantly driven in +upon himself. In his own eyes, he seems the one serious creature moving +in a world of horrible unreality; voluble people issuing from a +cafe, the queue at theatre doors, Sunday cabfuls of second-rate +pleasure-seekers, the bedizened ladies of the pavement, the show in the +jewellers' windows--all the familiar sights contributing to flout his +own unhappiness, want, and isolation. At the same time, if he be at all +after my pattern, he is perhaps supported by a childish satisfaction: +this is life at last, he may tell himself, this is the real thing; +the bladders on which I was set swimming are now empty, my own weight +depends upon the ocean; by my own exertions I must perish or succeed; +and I am now enduring in the vivid fact, what I so much delighted to +read of in the case of Lonsteau or Lucien, Rodolphe or Schaunard. + +Of the steps of my misery, I cannot tell at length. In ordinary times +what were politically called “loans” (although they were never meant to +be repaid) were matters of constant course among the students, and many +a man has partly lived on them for years. But my misfortune befell me +at an awkward juncture. Many of my friends were gone; others were +themselves in a precarious situation. Romney (for instance) was reduced +to tramping Paris in a pair of country sabots, his only suit of clothes +so imperfect (in spite of cunningly adjusted pins) that the authorities +at the Luxembourg suggested his withdrawal from the gallery. Dijon, too, +was on a leeshore, designing clocks and gas-brackets for a dealer; and +the most he could do was to offer me a corner of his studio where I +might work. My own studio (it will be gathered) I had by that time lost; +and in the course of my expulsion the Genius of Muskegon was finally +separated from her author. To continue to possess a full-sized statue, +a man must have a studio, a gallery, or at least the freedom of a back +garden. He cannot carry it about with him, like a satchel, in the +bottom of a cab, nor can he cohabit in a garret, ten by fifteen, with +so momentous a companion. It was my first idea to leave her behind at +my departure. There, in her birthplace, she might lend an inspiration, +methought, to my successor. But the proprietor, with whom I had +unhappily quarrelled, seized the occasion to be disagreeable, and called +upon me to remove my property. For a man in such straits as I now found +myself, the hire of a lorry was a consideration; and yet even that I +could have faced, if I had had anywhere to drive to after it was hired. +Hysterical laughter seized upon me as I beheld (in imagination) myself, +the waggoner, and the Genius of Muskegon, standing in the public view of +Paris, without the shadow of a destination; perhaps driving at last +to the nearest rubbish heap, and dumping there, among the ordures of a +city, the beloved child of my invention. From these extremities I was +relieved by a seasonable offer, and I parted from the Genius of Muskegon +for thirty francs. Where she now stands, under what name she is admired +or criticised, history does not inform us; but I like to think she +may adorn the shrubbery of some suburban tea-garden, where holiday +shop-girls hang their hats upon the mother, and their swains (by way +of an approach of gallantry) identify the winged infant with the god of +love. + +In a certain cabman's eating-house on the outer boulevard I got credit +for my midday meal. Supper I was supposed not to require, sitting +down nightly to the delicate table of some rich acquaintances. This +arrangement was extremely ill-considered. My fable, credible enough at +first, and so long as my clothes were in good order, must have seemed +worse than doubtful after my coat became frayed about the edges, and +my boots began to squelch and pipe along the restaurant floors. The +allowance of one meal a day besides, though suitable enough to the state +of my finances, agreed poorly with my stomach. The restaurant was a +place I had often visited experimentally, to taste the life of students +then more unfortunate than myself; and I had never in those days entered +it without disgust, or left it without nausea. It was strange to find +myself sitting down with avidity, rising up with satisfaction, and +counting the hours that divided me from my return to such a table. But +hunger is a great magician; and so soon as I had spent my ready cash, +and could no longer fill up on bowls of chocolate or hunks of bread, +I must depend entirely on that cabman's eating-house, and upon certain +rare, long-expected, long-remembered windfalls. Dijon (for instance) +might get paid for some of his pot-boiling work, or else an old friend +would pass through Paris; and then I would be entertained to a meal +after my own soul, and contract a Latin Quarter loan, which would keep +me in tobacco and my morning coffee for a fortnight. It might be thought +the latter would appear the more important. It might be supposed that a +life, led so near the confines of actual famine, should have dulled the +nicety of my palate. On the contrary, the poorer a man's diet, the more +sharply is he set on dainties. The last of my ready cash, about thirty +francs, was deliberately squandered on a single dinner; and a great part +of my time when I was alone was passed upon the details of imaginary +feasts. + +One gleam of hope visited me--an order for a bust from a rich +Southerner. He was free-handed, jolly of speech, merry of countenance; +kept me in good humour through the sittings, and when they were over, +carried me off with him to dinner and the sights of Paris. I ate well; +I laid on flesh; by all accounts, I made a favourable likeness of the +being, and I confess I thought my future was assured. But when the bust +was done, and I had despatched it across the Atlantic, I could never +so much as learn of its arrival. The blow felled me; I should have +lain down and tried no stroke to right myself, had not the honour of +my country been involved. For Dijon improved the opportunity in the +European style; informing me (for the first time) of the manners of +America: how it was a den of banditti without the smallest rudiment of +law or order, and debts could be there only collected with a shotgun. +“The whole world knows it,” he would say; “you are alone, mon petit +Loudon, you are alone to be in ignorance of these facts. The judges of +the Supreme Court fought but the other day with stilettos on the bench +at Cincinnati. You should read the little book of one of my friends: _Le +Touriste dans le Far-West_; you will see it all there in good French.” + At last, incensed by days of such discussion, I undertook to prove to +him the contrary, and put the affair in the hands of my late father's +lawyer. From him I had the gratification of hearing, after a due +interval, that my debtor was dead of the yellow fever in Key West, and +had left his affairs in some confusion. I suppress his name; for though +he treated me with cruel nonchalance, it is probable he meant to deal +fairly in the end. + +Soon after this a shade of change in my reception at the cabman's +eating-house marked the beginning of a new phase in my distress. The +first day, I told myself it was but fancy; the next, I made quite sure +it was a fact; the third, in mere panic I stayed away, and went for +forty-eight hours fasting. This was an act of great unreason; for the +debtor who stays away is but the more remarked, and the boarder who +misses a meal is sure to be accused of infidelity. On the fourth day, +therefore, I returned, inwardly quaking. The proprietor looked askance +upon my entrance; the waitresses (who were his daughters) neglected my +wants and sniffed at the affected joviality of my salutations; last and +most plain, when I called for a suisse (such as was being served to all +the other diners) I was bluntly told there were no more. It was obvious +I was near the end of my tether; one plank divided me from want, and now +I felt it tremble. I passed a sleepless night, and the first thing in +the morning took my way to Myner's studio. It was a step I had long +meditated and long refrained from; for I was scarce intimate with the +Englishman; and though I knew him to possess plenty of money, neither +his manner nor his reputation were the least encouraging to beggars. + + +I found him at work on a picture, which I was able conscientiously +to praise, dressed in his usual tweeds, plain, but pretty fresh, and +standing out in disagreeable contrast to my own withered and degraded +outfit. As we talked, he continued to shift his eyes watchfully between +his handiwork and the fat model, who sat at the far end of the studio +in a state of nature, with one arm gallantly arched above her head. My +errand would have been difficult enough under the best of circumstances: +placed between Myner, immersed in his art, and the white, fat, naked +female in a ridiculous attitude, I found it quite impossible. Again and +again I attempted to approach the point, again and again fell back on +commendations of the picture; and it was not until the model had enjoyed +an interval of repose, during which she took the conversation in her +own hands and regaled us (in a soft, weak voice) with details as to her +husband's prosperity, her sister's lamented decline from the paths +of virtue, and the consequent wrath of her father, a peasant of stern +principles, in the vicinity of Chalons on the Marne;--it was not, I say, +until after this was over, and I had once more cleared my throat for +the attack, and once more dropped aside into some commonplace about the +picture, that Myner himself brought me suddenly and vigorously to the +point. + +“You didn't come here to talk this rot,” said he. + +“No,” I replied sullenly; “I came to borrow money.” + +He painted awhile in silence. + +“I don't think we were ever very intimate?” he asked. + +“Thank you,” said I. “I can take my answer,” and I made as if to go, +rage boiling in my heart. + +“Of course you can go if you like,” said Myner; “but I advise you to +stay and have it out.” + +“What more is there to say?” I cried. “You don't want to keep me here +for a needless humiliation?” + +“Look here, Dodd, you must try and command your temper,” said he. “This +interview is of your own seeking, and not mine; if you suppose it's not +disagreeable to me, you're wrong; and if you think I will give you money +without knowing thoroughly about your prospects, you take me for a fool. +Besides,” he added, “if you come to look at it, you've got over the +worst of it by now: you have done the asking, and you have every reason +to know I mean to refuse. I hold out no false hopes, but it may be worth +your while to let me judge.” + +Thus--I was going to say--encouraged, I stumbled through my story; told +him I had credit at the cabman's eating-house, but began to think it was +drawing to a close; how Dijon lent me a corner of his studio, where I +tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, Time with the scythe, Leda +and the swan, musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which +had never (up to that day) been honoured with the least approval. + +“And your room?” asked Myner. + +“O, my room is all right, I think,” said I. “She is a very good old +lady, and has never even mentioned her bill.” + +“Because she is a very good old lady, I don't see why she should be +fined,” observed Myner. + +“What do you mean by that?” I cried. + +“I mean this,” said he. “The French give a great deal of credit amongst +themselves; they find it pays on the whole, or the system would hardly +be continued; but I can't see where WE come in; I can't see that it's +honest of us Anglo-Saxons to profit by their easy ways, and then skip +over the Channel or (as you Yankees do) across the Atlantic.” + +“But I'm not proposing to skip,” I objected. + +“Exactly,” he replied. “And shouldn't you? There's the problem. You +seem to me to have a lack of sympathy for the proprietors of cabmen's +eating-houses. By your own account you're not getting on: the longer you +stay, it'll only be the more out of the pocket of the dear old lady at +your lodgings. Now, I'll tell you what I'll do: if you consent to go, +I'll pay your passage to New York, and your railway fare and expenses +to Muskegon (if I have the name right) where your father lived, where he +must have left friends, and where, no doubt, you'll find an opening. I +don't seek any gratitude, for of course you'll think me a beast; but I +do ask you to pay it back when you are able. At any rate, that's all +I can do. It might be different if I thought you a genius, Dodd; but I +don't, and I advise you not to.” + + +“I think that was uncalled for, at least,” said I. + +“I daresay it was,” he returned, with the same steadiness. “It seemed to +me pertinent; and, besides, when you ask me for money upon no security, +you treat me with the liberty of a friend, and it's to be presumed that +I can do the like. But the point is, do you accept?” + +“No, thank you,” said I; “I have another string to my bow.” + +“All right,” says Myner. “Be sure it's honest.” + +“Honest? honest?” I cried. “What do you mean by calling my honesty in +question?” + +“I won't, if you don't like it,” he replied. “You seem to think +honesty as easy as Blind Man's Buff: I don't. It's some difference of +definition.” + +I went straight from this irritating interview, during which Myner had +never discontinued painting, to the studio of my old master. Only one +card remained for me to play, and I was now resolved to play it: I +must drop the gentleman and the frock-coat, and approach art in the +workman's tunic. + +“Tiens, this little Dodd!” cried the master; and then, as his eye fell +on my dilapidated clothing, I thought I could perceive his countenance +to darken. + +I made my plea in English; for I knew, if he were vain of anything, it +was of his achievement of the island tongue. “Master,” said I, “will you +take me in your studio again? but this time as a workman.” + +“I sought your fazer was immensely reech,” said he. + +I explained to him that I was now an orphan and penniless. + +He shook his head. “I have betterr workmen waiting at my door,” said he, +“far betterr workmen. + +“You used to think something of my work, sir,” I pleaded. + +“Somesing, somesing--yes!” he cried; “enough for a son of a reech +man--not enough for an orphan. Besides, I sought you might learn to be +an artist; I did not sink you might learn to be a workman.” + +On a certain bench on the outer boulevard, not far from the tomb of +Napoleon, a bench shaded at that date by a shabby tree, and commanding +a view of muddy roadway and blank wall, I sat down to wrestle with my +misery. The weather was cheerless and dark; in three days I had eaten +but once; I had no tobacco; my shoes were soaked, my trousers horrid +with mire; my humour and all the circumstances of the time and place +lugubriously attuned. Here were two men who had both spoken fairly of my +work while I was rich and wanted nothing; now that I was poor and lacked +all: “no genius,” said the one; “not enough for an orphan,” the other; +and the first offered me my passage like a pauper immigrant, and the +second refused me a day's wage as a hewer of stone--plain dealing for +an empty belly. They had not been insincere in the past; they were not +insincere to-day: change of circumstance had introduced a new criterion: +that was all. + +But if I acquitted my two Job's comforters of insincerity, I was yet far +from admitting them infallible. Artists had been contemned before, +and had lived to turn the laugh on their contemners. How old was Corot +before he struck the vein of his own precious metal? When had a young +man been more derided (or more justly so) than the god of my admiration, +Balzac? Or if I required a bolder inspiration, what had I to do but turn +my head to where the gold dome of the Invalides glittered against inky +squalls, and recall the tale of him sleeping there: from the day when a +young artillery-sub could be giggled at and nicknamed Puss-in-Boots by +frisky misses; on to the days of so many crowns and so many victories, +and so many hundred mouths of cannon, and so many thousand war-hoofs +trampling the roadways of astonished Europe eighty miles in front of +the grand army? To go back, to give up, to proclaim myself a failure, an +ambitious failure, first a rocket, then a stick! I, Loudon Dodd, who +had refused all other livelihoods with scorn, and been advertised in the +Saint Joseph _Sunday Herald_ as a patriot and an artist, to be returned +upon my native Muskegon like damaged goods, and go the circuit of my +father's acquaintance, cap in hand, and begging to sweep offices! No, by +Napoleon! I would die at my chosen trade; and the two who had that +day flouted me should live to envy my success, or to weep tears of +unavailing penitence behind my pauper coffin. + +Meantime, if my courage was still undiminished, I was none the nearer to +a meal. At no great distance my cabman's eating-house stood, at the +tail of a muddy cab-rank, on the shores of a wide thoroughfare of mud, +offering (to fancy) a face of ambiguous invitation. I might be received, +I might once more fill my belly there; on the other hand, it was perhaps +this day the bolt was destined to fall, and I might be expelled instead, +with vulgar hubbub. It was policy to make the attempt, and I knew it was +policy; but I had already, in the course of that one morning, endured +too many affronts, and I felt I could rather starve than face another. I +had courage and to spare for the future, none left for that day; courage +for the main campaign, but not a spark of it for that preliminary +skirmish of the cabman's restaurant. I continued accordingly to sit +upon my bench, not far from the ashes of Napoleon, now drowsy, now +light-headed, now in complete mental obstruction, or only conscious +of an animal pleasure in quiescence; and now thinking, planning, and +remembering with unexampled clearness, telling myself tales of sudden +wealth, and gustfully ordering and greedily consuming imaginary meals: +in the course of which I must have dropped asleep. + +It was towards dark that I was suddenly recalled to famine by a cold +souse of rain, and sprang shivering to my feet. For a moment I stood +bewildered: the whole train of my reasoning and dreaming passed afresh +through my mind; I was again tempted, drawn as if with cords, by +the image of the cabman's eating-house, and again recoiled from the +possibility of insult. “Qui dort dine,” thought I to myself; and took my +homeward way with wavering footsteps, through rainy streets in which +the lamps and the shop-windows now began to gleam; still marshalling +imaginary dinners as I went. + +“Ah, Monsieur Dodd,” said the porter, “there has been a registered +letter for you. The facteur will bring it again to-morrow.” + +A registered letter for me, who had been so long without one? Of what +it could possibly contain, I had no vestige of a guess; nor did I delay +myself guessing; far less from any conscious plan of dishonesty: the +lies flowed from me like a natural secretion. + +“O,” said I, “my remittance at last! What a bother I should have missed +it! Can you lend me a hundred francs until to-morrow?” + + +I had never attempted to borrow from the porter till that moment: the +registered letter was, besides, my warranty; and he gave me what he +had--three napoleons and some francs in silver. I pocketed the money +carelessly, lingered a while chaffing, strolled leisurely to the door; +and then (fast as my trembling legs could carry me) round the corner +to the Cafe de Cluny. French waiters are deft and speedy; they were not +deft enough for me; and I had scarce decency to let the man set the wine +upon the table or put the butter alongside the bread, before my glass +and my mouth were filled. Exquisite bread of the Cafe Cluny, exquisite +first glass of old Pomard tingling to my wet feet, indescribable first +olive culled from the hors d'oeuvre--I suppose, when I come to lie +dying, and the lamp begins to grow dim, I shall still recall your +savour. Over the rest of that meal, and the rest of the evening, clouds +lie thick; clouds perhaps of Burgundy; perhaps, more properly, of famine +and repletion. + +I remember clearly, at least, the shame, the despair, of the next +morning, when I reviewed what I had done, and how I had swindled the +poor honest porter; and, as if that were not enough, fairly burnt my +ships, and brought bankruptcy home to that last refuge, my garret. The +porter would expect his money; I could not pay him; here was scandal +in the house; and I knew right well the cause of scandal would have to +pack. “What do you mean by calling my honesty in question?” I had cried +the day before, turning upon Myner. Ah, that day before! the day before +Waterloo, the day before the Flood; the day before I had sold the roof +over my head, my future, and my self-respect, for a dinner at the Cafe +Cluny! + +In the midst of these lamentations the famous registered letter came +to my door, with healing under its seals. It bore the postmark of +San Francisco, where Pinkerton was already struggling to the neck in +multifarious affairs: it renewed the offer of an allowance, which his +improved estate permitted him to announce at the figure of two hundred +francs a month; and in case I was in some immediate pinch, it enclosed +an introductory draft for forty dollars. There are a thousand excellent +reasons why a man, in this self-helpful epoch, should decline to be +dependent on another; but the most numerous and cogent considerations +all bow to a necessity as stern as mine; and the banks were scarce open +ere the draft was cashed. + +It was early in December that I thus sold myself into slavery; and +for six months I dragged a slowly lengthening chain of gratitude and +uneasiness. At the cost of some debt I managed to excel myself and +eclipse the Genius of Muskegon, in a small but highly patriotic Standard +Bearer for the Salon; whither it was duly admitted, where it stood the +proper length of days entirely unremarked, and whence it came back to me +as patriotic as before. I threw my whole soul (as Pinkerton would have +phrased it) into clocks and candlesticks; the devil a candlestick-maker +would have anything to say to my designs. Even when Dijon, with his +infinite good humour and infinite scorn for all such journey-work, +consented to peddle them in indiscriminately with his own, the dealers +still detected and rejected mine. Home they returned to me, true as +the Standard Bearer; who now, at the head of quite a regiment of lesser +idols, began to grow an eyesore in the scanty studio of my friend. Dijon +and I have sat by the hour, and gazed upon that company of images. The +severe, the frisky, the classical, the Louis Quinze, were there--from +Joan of Arc in her soldierly cuirass to Leda with the swan; nay, and +God forgive me for a man that knew better! the humorous was represented +also. We sat and gazed, I say; we criticised, we turned them hither +and thither; even upon the closest inspection they looked quite like +statuettes; and yet nobody would have a gift of them! + +Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man: but +about the sixth month, when I already owed near two hundred dollars +to Pinkerton, and half as much again in debts scattered about Paris, I +awoke one morning with a horrid sentiment of oppression, and found I +was alone: my vanity had breathed her last during the night. I dared +not plunge deeper in the bog; I saw no hope in my poor statuary; I owned +myself beaten at last; and sitting down in my nightshirt beside the +window, whence I had a glimpse of the tree-tops at the corner of the +boulevard, and where the music of its early traffic fell agreeably upon +my ear, I penned my farewell to Paris, to art, to my whole past life, +and my whole former self. “I give in,” I wrote. “When the next allowance +arrives, I shall go straight out West, where you can do what you like +with me.” + +It is to be understood that Pinkerton had been, in a sense, pressing +me to come from the beginning; depicting his isolation among new +acquaintances, “who have none of them your culture,” he wrote; +expressing his friendship in terms so warm that it sometimes embarrassed +me to think how poorly I could echo them; dwelling upon his need for +assistance; and the next moment turning about to commend my resolution +and press me to remain in Paris. “Only remember, Loudon,” he would +write, “if you ever DO tire of it, there's plenty of work here for +you--honest, hard, well-paid work, developing the resources of this +practically virgin State. And of course I needn't say what a pleasure +it would be to me if we were going at it SHOULDER TO SHOULDER.” I marvel +(looking back) that I could so long have resisted these appeals, and +continue to sink my friend's money in a manner that I knew him to +dislike. At least, when I did awake to any sense of my position, I awoke +to it entirely; and determined not only to follow his counsel for the +future, but even as regards the past, to rectify his losses. For in this +juncture of affairs I called to mind that I was not without a possible +resource, and resolved, at whatever cost of mortification, to beard the +Loudon family in their historic city. + +In the excellent Scots' phrase, I made a moonlight flitting, a thing +never dignified, but in my case unusually easy. As I had scarce a pair +of boots worth portage, I deserted the whole of my effects without +a pang. Dijon fell heir to Joan of Arc, the Standard Bearer, and the +Musketeers. He was present when I bought and frugally stocked my new +portmanteau; and it was at the door of the trunk shop that I took my +leave of him, for my last few hours in Paris must be spent alone. It +was alone (and at a far higher figure than my finances warranted) that +I discussed my dinner; alone that I took my ticket at Saint Lazare; +all alone, though in a carriage full of people, that I watched the +moon shine on the Seine flood with its tufted islets, on Rouen with her +spires, and on the shipping in the harbour of Dieppe. When the first +light of the morning called me from troubled slumbers on the deck, I +beheld the dawn at first with pleasure; I watched with pleasure the +green shores of England rising out of rosy haze; I took the salt air +with delight into my nostrils; and then all came back to me; that I was +no longer an artist, no longer myself; that I was leaving all I cared +for, and returning to all that I detested, the slave of debt and +gratitude, a public and a branded failure. + +From this picture of my own disgrace and wretchedness, it is not +wonderful if my mind turned with relief to the thought of Pinkerton, +waiting for me, as I knew, with unwearied affection, and regarding me +with a respect that I had never deserved, and might therefore fairly +hope that I should never forfeit. The inequality of our relation struck +me rudely. I must have been stupid, indeed, if I could have considered +the history of that friendship without shame--I, who had given so +little, who had accepted and profited by so much. I had the whole day +before me in London, and I determined (at least in words) to set the +balance somewhat straighter. Seated in the corner of a public place, and +calling for sheet after sheet of paper, I poured forth the expression of +my gratitude, my penitence for the past, my resolutions for the future. +Till now, I told him, my course had been mere selfishness. I had been +selfish to my father and to my friend, taking their help, and denying +them (which was all they asked) the poor gratification of my company and +countenance. + +Wonderful are the consolations of literature! As soon as that letter was +written and posted, the consciousness of virtue glowed in my veins like +some rare vintage. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH I GO WEST. + + +I reached my uncle's door next morning in time to sit down with the +family to breakfast. More than three years had intervened almost without +mutation in that stationary household, since I had sat there first, a +young American freshman, bewildered among unfamiliar dainties, Finnan +haddock, kippered salmon, baps and mutton ham, and had wearied my mind +in vain to guess what should be under the tea-cosey. If there were +any change at all, it seemed that I had risen in the family esteem. My +father's death once fittingly referred to, with a ceremonial lengthening +of Scotch upper lips and wagging of the female head, the party launched +at once (God help me) into the more cheerful topic of my own successes. +They had been so pleased to hear such good accounts of me; I was quite +a great man now; where was that beautiful statue of the Genius of +Something or other? “You haven't it here? not here? Really?” asks the +sprightliest of my cousins, shaking curls at me; as though it were +likely I had brought it in a cab, or kept it concealed about my person +like a birthday surprise. In the bosom of this family, unaccustomed to +the tropical nonsense of the West, it became plain the _Sunday Herald_ +and poor, blethering Pinkerton had been accepted for their face. It is +not possible to invent a circumstance that could have more depressed +me; and I am conscious that I behaved all through that breakfast like a +whipt schoolboy. + +At length, the meal and family prayers being both happily over, I +requested the favour of an interview with Uncle Adam on “the state of +my affairs.” At sound of this ominous expression, the good man's face +conspicuously lengthened; and when my grandfather, having had the +proposition repeated to him (for he was hard of hearing) announced his +intention of being present at the interview, I could not but think that +Uncle Adam's sorrow kindled into momentary irritation. Nothing, however, +but the usual grim cordiality appeared upon the surface; and we all +three passed ceremoniously to the adjoining library, a gloomy theatre +for a depressing piece of business. My grandfather charged a clay pipe, +and sat tremulously smoking in a corner of the fireless chimney; behind +him, although the morning was both chill and dark, the window was partly +open and the blind partly down: I cannot depict what an air he had of +being out of place, like a man shipwrecked there. Uncle Adam had his +station at the business table in the midst. Valuable rows of books +looked down upon the place of torture; and I could hear sparrows +chirping in the garden, and my sprightly cousin already banging the +piano and pouring forth an acid stream of song from the drawing-room +overhead. + +It was in these circumstances that, with all brevity of speech and a +certain boyish sullenness of manner, looking the while upon the floor, +I informed my relatives of my financial situation: the amount I owed +Pinkerton; the hopelessness of any maintenance from sculpture; the +career offered me in the States; and how, before becoming more beholden +to a stranger, I had judged it right to lay the case before my family. + +“I am only sorry you did not come to me at first,” said Uncle Adam. “I +take the liberty to say it would have been more decent.” + +“I think so too, Uncle Adam,” I replied; “but you must bear in mind I +was ignorant in what light you might regard my application.” + +“I hope I would never turn my back on my own flesh and blood,” he +returned with emphasis; but to my anxious ear, with more of temper than +affection. “I could never forget you were my sister's son. I regard +this as a manifest duty. I have no choice but to accept the entire +responsibility of the position you have made.” + +I did not know what else to do but murmur “thank you.” + + +“Yes,” he pursued, “and there is something providential in the +circumstance that you come at the right time. In my old firm there is a +vacancy; they call themselves Italian Warehousemen now,” he continued, +regarding me with a twinkle of humour; “so you may think yourself +in luck: we were only grocers in my day. I shall place you there +to-morrow.” + +“Stop a moment, Uncle Adam,” I broke in. “This is not at all what I +am asking. I ask you to pay Pinkerton, who is a poor man. I ask you to +clear my feet of debt, not to arrange my life or any part of it.” + +“If I wished to be harsh, I might remind you that beggars cannot be +choosers,” said my uncle; “and as to managing your life, you have tried +your own way already, and you see what you have made of it. You must now +accept the guidance of those older and (whatever you may think of it) +wiser than yourself. All these schemes of your friend (of whom I +know nothing, by the by) and talk of openings in the West, I simply +disregard. I have no idea whatever of your going trekking across +a continent on a wild-goose chase. In this situation, which I +am fortunately able to place at your disposal, and which many a +well-conducted young man would be glad to jump at, you will receive, to +begin with, eighteen shillings a week.” + +“Eighteen shillings a week!” I cried. “Why, my poor friend gave me more +than that for nothing!” + +“And I think it is this very friend you are now trying to repay?” + observed my uncle, with an air of one advancing a strong argument. + +“Aadam!” said my grandfather. + +“I'm vexed you should be present at this business,” quoth Uncle Adam, +swinging rather obsequiously towards the stonemason; “but I must remind +you it is of your own seeking.” + +“Aadam!” repeated the old man. + +“Well, sir, I am listening,” says my uncle. + +My grandfather took a puff or two in silence; and then, “Ye're makin' an +awfu' poor appearance, Aadam,” said he. + +My uncle visibly reared at the affront. “I'm sorry you should think +so,” said he, “and still more sorry you should say so before present +company.” + +“A believe that; A ken that, Aadam,” returned old Loudon, dryly; +“and the curiis thing is, I'm no very carin'. See here, ma man,” he +continued, addressing himself to me. “A'm your grandfaither, amn't I +not? Never you mind what Aadam says. A'll see justice din ye. A'm rich.” + +“Father,” said Uncle Adam, “I would like one word with you in private.” + +I rose to go. + +“Set down upon your hinderlands,” cried my grandfather, almost savagely. +“If Aadam has anything to say, let him say it. It's me that has the +money here; and by Gravy! I'm goin' to be obeyed.” + +Upon this scurvy encouragement, it appeared that my uncle had no remark +to offer: twice challenged to “speak out and be done with it,” he twice +sullenly declined; and I may mention that about this period of the +engagement, I began to be sorry for him. + +“See here, then, Jeannie's yin!” resumed my grandfather. “A'm goin' to +give ye a set-off. Your mither was always my fav'rite, for A never could +agree with Aadam. A like ye fine yoursel'; there's nae noansense aboot +ye; ye've a fine nayteral idee of builder's work; ye've been to France, +where they tell me they're grand at the stuccy. A splendid thing for +ceilin's, the stuccy! and it's a vailyable disguise, too; A don't +believe there's a builder in Scotland has used more stuccy than me. But +as A was sayin', if ye'll follie that trade, with the capital that A'm +goin' to give ye, ye may live yet to be as rich as mysel'. Ye see, ye +would have always had a share of it when A was gone; it appears ye're +needin' it now; well, ye'll get the less, as is only just and proper.” + +Uncle Adam cleared his throat. “This is very handsome, father,” said he; +“and I am sure Loudon feels it so. Very handsome, and as you say, very +just; but will you allow me to say that it had better, perhaps, be put +in black and white?” + +The enmity always smouldering between the two men at this ill-judged +interruption almost burst in flame. The stonemason turned upon his +offspring, his long upper lip pulled down, for all the world, like a +monkey's. He stared a while in virulent silence; and then “Get Gregg!” + said he. + +The effect of these words was very visible. “He will be gone to his +office,” stammered my uncle. + +“Get Gregg!” repeated my grandfather. + +“I tell you, he will be gone to his office,” reiterated Adam. + +“And I tell ye, he's takin' his smoke,” retorted the old man. + +“Very well, then,” cried my uncle, getting to his feet with some +alacrity, as upon a sudden change of thought, “I will get him myself.” + +“Ye will not!” cried my grandfather. “Ye will sit there upon your +hinderland.” + +“Then how the devil am I to get him?” my uncle broke forth, with not +unnatural petulance. + +My grandfather (having no possible answer) grinned at his son with the +malice of a schoolboy; then he rang the bell. + +“Take the garden key,” said Uncle Adam to the servant; “go over to the +garden, and if Mr. Gregg the lawyer is there (he generally sits under +the red hawthorn), give him old Mr. Loudon's compliments, and will he +step in here for a moment?” + +“Mr. Gregg the lawyer!” At once I understood (what had been puzzling me) +the significance of my grandfather and the alarm of my poor uncle: the +stonemason's will, it was supposed, hung trembling in the balance. + +“Look here, grandfather,” I said, “I didn't want any of this. All +I wanted was a loan of (say) two hundred pounds. I can take care +of myself; I have prospects and opportunities, good friends in the +States----” + +The old man waved me down. “It's me that speaks here,” he said curtly; +and we waited the coming of the lawyer in a triple silence. He appeared +at last, the maid ushering him in--a spectacled, dry, but not ungenial +looking man. + + +“Here, Gregg,” cried my grandfather. “Just a question: What has Aadam +got to do with my will?” + +“I'm afraid I don't quite understand,” said the lawyer, staring. + +“What has he got to do with it?” repeated the old man, smiting with his +fist upon the arm of his chair. “Is my money mine's, or is it Aadam's? +Can Aadam interfere?” + +“O, I see,” said Mr. Gregg. “Certainly not. On the marriage of both +of your children a certain sum was paid down and accepted in full of +legitim. You have surely not forgotten the circumstance, Mr. Loudon?” + +“So that, if I like,” concluded my grandfather, hammering out his +words, “I can leave every doit I die possessed of to the Great +Magunn?”--meaning probably the Great Mogul. + +“No doubt of it,” replied Gregg, with a shadow of a smile. + +“Ye hear that, Aadam?” asked my grandfather. + +“I may be allowed to say I had no need to hear it,” said my uncle. + +“Very well,” says my grandfather. “You and Jeannie's yin can go for a +bit walk. Me and Gregg has business.” + +When once I was in the hall alone with Uncle Adam, I turned to him, sick +at heart. “Uncle Adam,” I said, “you can understand, better than I can +say, how very painful all this is to me.” + +“Yes, I am sorry you have seen your grandfather in so unamiable a +light,” replied this extraordinary man. “You shouldn't allow it +to affect your mind though. He has sterling qualities, quite an +extraordinary character; and I have no fear but he means to behave +handsomely to you.” + +His composure was beyond my imitation: the house could not contain +me, nor could I even promise to return to it: in concession to which +weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the +office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should +waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more +topsy-turvy situation: you would have thought it was I who had suffered +some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror who +scorned to take advantage. + +It was plain enough that I was to be endowed: to what extent and upon +what conditions I was now left for an hour to meditate in the wide +and solitary thoroughfares of the new town, taking counsel with +street-corner statues of George IV. and William Pitt, improving my +mind with the pictures in the window of a music-shop, and renewing my +acquaintance with Edinburgh east wind. By the end of the hour I made my +way to Mr. Gregg's office, where I was placed, with a few appropriate +words, in possession of a cheque for two thousand pounds and a small +parcel of architectural works. + +“Mr. Loudon bids me add,” continued the lawyer, consulting a little +sheet of notes, “that although these volumes are very valuable to the +practical builder, you must be careful not to lose originality. He tells +you also not to be 'hadden doun'--his own expression--by the theory of +strains, and that Portland cement, properly sanded, will go a long way.” + +I smiled, and remarked that I supposed it would. + +“I once lived in one of my excellent client's houses,” observed the +lawyer; “and I was tempted, in that case, to think it had gone far +enough.” + +“Under these circumstances, sir,” said I, “you will be rather relieved +to hear that I have no intention of becoming a builder.” + +At this, he fairly laughed; and, the ice being broken, I was able to +consult him as to my conduct. He insisted I must return to the house, +at least, for luncheon, and one of my walks with Mr. Loudon. “For the +evening, I will furnish you with an excuse, if you please,” said he, “by +asking you to a bachelor dinner with myself. But the luncheon and the +walk are unavoidable. He is an old man, and, I believe, really fond of +you; he would naturally feel aggrieved if there were any appearance of +avoiding him; and as for Mr. Adam, do you know, I think your delicacy +out of place.... And now, Mr. Dodd, what are you to do with this money?” + +Ay, there was the question. With two thousand pounds--fifty thousand +francs--I might return to Paris and the arts, and be a prince and +millionaire in that thrifty Latin Quarter. I think I had the grace, with +one corner of my mind, to be glad that I had sent the London letter: I +know very well that with the rest and worst of me, I repented bitterly +of that precipitate act. On one point, however, my whole multiplex +estate of man was unanimous: the letter being gone, there was no help +but I must follow. The money was accordingly divided in two unequal +shares: for the first, Mr. Gregg got me a bill in the name of Dijon to +meet my liabilities in Paris; for the second, as I had already cash in +hand for the expenses of my journey, he supplied me with drafts on San +Francisco. + +The rest of my business in Edinburgh, not to dwell on a very agreeable +dinner with the lawyer or the horrors of the family luncheon, took the +form of an excursion with the stonemason, who led me this time to no +suburb or work of his old hands, but with an impulse both natural and +pretty, to that more enduring home which he had chosen for his clay. It +was in a cemetery, by some strange chance, immured within the bulwarks +of a prison; standing, besides, on the margin of a cliff, crowded with +elderly stone memorials, and green with turf and ivy. The east wind +(which I thought too harsh for the old man) continually shook the +boughs, and the thin sun of a Scottish summer drew their dancing +shadows. + +“I wanted ye to see the place,” said he. “Yon's the stane. Euphemia +Ross: that was my goodwife, your grandmither--hoots! I'm wrong; that was +my first yin; I had no bairns by her;--yours is the second, Mary Murray, +Born 1819, Died 1850: that's her--a fine, plain, decent sort of +a creature, tak' her athegether. Alexander Loudon, Born Seventeen +Ninety-Twa, Died--and then a hole in the ballant: that's me. Alexander's +my name. They ca'd me Ecky when I was a boy. Eh, Ecky! ye're an awfu' +auld man!” + +I had a second and sadder experience of graveyards at my next +alighting-place, the city of Muskegon, now rendered conspicuous by +the dome of the new capitol encaged in scaffolding. It was late in the +afternoon when I arrived, and raining; and as I walked in great streets, +of the very name of which I was quite ignorant--double, treble, and +quadruple lines of horse-cars jingling by--hundred-fold wires of +telegraph and telephone matting heaven above my head--huge, staring +houses, garish and gloomy, flanking me from either hand--the thought of +the Rue Racine, ay, and of the cabman's eating-house, brought tears to +my eyes. The whole monotonous Babel had grown, or I should rather say +swelled, with such a leap since my departure, that I must continually +inquire my way; and the very cemetery was brand new. Death, however, had +been active; the graves were already numerous, and I must pick my way +in the rain, among the tawdry sepulchres of millionnaires, and past the +plain black crosses of Hungarian labourers, till chance or instinct led +me to the place that was my father's. The stone had been erected (I +knew already) “by admiring friends”; I could now judge their taste in +monuments; their taste in literature, methought, I could imagine, and I +refrained from drawing near enough to read the terms of the inscription. +But the name was in larger letters and stared at me--JAMES K. DODD. +What a singular thing is a name, I thought; how it clings to a man, and +continually misrepresents, and then survives him; and it flashed across +my mind, with a mixture of regret and bitter mirth, that I had never +known, and now probably never should know, what the K had represented. +King, Kilter, Kay, Kaiser, I went, running over names at random, and +then stumbled with ludicrous misspelling on Kornelius, and had nearly +laughed aloud. I have never been more childish; I suppose (although the +deeper voices of my nature seemed all dumb) because I have never been +more moved. And at this last incongruous antic of my nerves, I was +seized with a panic of remorse and fled the cemetery. + +Scarce less funereal was the rest of my experience in Muskegon, where, +nevertheless, I lingered, visiting my father's circle, for some days. It +was in piety to him I lingered; and I might have spared myself the pain. +His memory was already quite gone out. For his sake, indeed, I was made +welcome; and for mine the conversation rolled awhile with laborious +effort on the virtues of the deceased. His former comrades dwelt, in +my company, upon his business talents or his generosity for public +purposes; when my back was turned, they remembered him no more. My +father had loved me; I had left him alone to live and die among the +indifferent; now I returned to find him dead and buried and forgotten. +Unavailing penitence translated itself in my thoughts to fresh resolve. +There was another poor soul who loved me: Pinkerton. I must not be +guilty twice of the same error. + +A week perhaps had been thus wasted, nor had I prepared my friend for +the delay. Accordingly, when I had changed trains at Council Bluffs, I +was aware of a man appearing at the end of the car with a telegram in +his hand and inquiring whether there were any one aboard “of the name of +LONDON Dodd?” I thought the name near enough, claimed the despatch, +and found it was from Pinkerton: “What day do you arrive? Awfully +important.” I sent him an answer giving day and hour, and at Ogden found +a fresh despatch awaiting me: “That will do. Unspeakable relief. Meet +you at Sacramento.” In Paris days I had a private name for Pinkerton: +“The Irrepressible” was what I had called him in hours of bitterness, +and the name rose once more on my lips. What mischief was he up to now? +What new bowl was my benignant monster brewing for his Frankenstein? In +what new imbroglio should I alight on the Pacific coast? My trust in +the man was entire, and my distrust perfect. I knew he would never +mean amiss; but I was convinced he would almost never (in my sense) do +aright. + +I suppose these vague anticipations added a shade of gloom to that +already gloomy place of travel: Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, scowled +in my face at least, and seemed to point me back again to that other +native land of mine, the Latin Quarter. But when the Sierras had been +climbed, and the train, after so long beating and panting, stretched +itself upon the downward track--when I beheld that vast extent +of prosperous country rolling seaward from the woods and the blue +mountains, that illimitable spread of rippling corn, the trees growing +and blowing in the merry weather, the country boys thronging aboard +the train with figs and peaches, and the conductors, and the very +darky stewards, visibly exulting in the change--up went my soul like a +balloon; Care fell from his perch upon my shoulders; and when I spied +my Pinkerton among the crowd at Sacramento, I thought of nothing but to +shout and wave for him, and grasp him by the hand, like what he was--my +dearest friend. + +“O Loudon!” he cried. “Man, how I've pined for you! And you haven't come +an hour too soon. You're known here and waited for; I've been booming +you already; you're billed for a lecture to-morrow night: _Student +Life in Paris, Grave and Gay_: twelve hundred places booked at the last +stock! Tut, man, you're looking thin! Here, try a drop of this.” And +he produced a case bottle, staringly labelled PINKERTON'S THIRTEEN STAR +GOLDEN STATE BRANDY, WARRANTED ENTIRE. + +“God bless me!” said I, gasping and winking after my first plunge into +this fiery fluid. “And what does 'Warranted Entire' mean?” + +“Why, Loudon! you ought to know that!” cried Pinkerton. “It's real, +copper-bottomed English; you see it on all the old-time wayside +hostelries over there.” + +“But if I'm not mistaken, it means something Warranted Entirely +different,” said I, “and applies to the public house, and not the +beverages sold.” + +“It's very possible,” said Jim, quite unabashed. “It's effective, +anyway; and I can tell you, sir, it has boomed that spirit: it goes now +by the gross of cases. By the way, I hope you won't mind; I've got your +portrait all over San Francisco for the lecture, enlarged from that +carte de visite: H. Loudon Dodd, the Americo-Parisienne Sculptor. Here's +a proof of the small handbills; the posters are the same, only in red +and blue, and the letters fourteen by one.” + +I looked at the handbill, and my head turned. What was the use of +words? why seek to explain to Pinkerton the knotted horrors of +“Americo-Parisienne”? He took an early occasion to point it out as +“rather a good phrase; gives the two sides at a glance: I wanted the +lecture written up to that.” Even after we had reached San Francisco, +and at the actual physical shock of my own effigy placarded on the +streets I had broken forth in petulant words, he never comprehended in +the least the ground of my aversion. + +“If I had only known you disliked red lettering!” was as high as he +could rise. “You are perfectly right: a clear-cut black is preferable, +and shows a great deal further. The only thing that pains me is the +portrait: I own I thought that a success. I'm dreadfully and truly +sorry, my dear fellow: I see now it's not what you had a right to +expect; but I did it, Loudon, for the best; and the press is all +delighted.” + +At the moment, sweeping through green tule swamps, I fell direct on the +essential. “But, Pinkerton,” I cried, “this lecture is the maddest of +your madnesses. How can I prepare a lecture in thirty hours?” + +“All done, Loudon!” he exclaimed in triumph. “All ready. Trust me to +pull a piece of business through. You'll find it all type-written in my +desk at home. I put the best talent of San Francisco on the job: Harry +Miller, the brightest pressman in the city.” + +And so he rattled on, beyond reach of my modest protestations, blurting +out his complicated interests, crying up his new acquaintances, and ever +and again hungering to introduce me to some “whole-souled, grand fellow, +as sharp as a needle,” from whom, and the very thought of whom, my +spirit shrank instinctively. + +Well, I was in for it: in for Pinkerton, in for the portrait, in for the +type-written lecture. One promise I extorted--that I was never again to +be committed in ignorance; even for that, when I saw how its extortion +puzzled and depressed the Irrepressible, my soul repented me; and in all +else I suffered myself to be led uncomplaining at his chariot wheels. +The Irrepressible, did I say? The Irresistible were nigher truth. + +But the time to have seen me was when I sat down to Harry Miller's +lecture. He was a facetious dog, this Harry Miller; he had a gallant way +of skirting the indecent which (in my case) produced physical nausea; +and he could be sentimental and even melodramatic about grisettes and +starving genius. I found he had enjoyed the benefit of my correspondence +with Pinkerton: adventures of my own were here and there horridly +misrepresented, sentiments of my own echoed and exaggerated till I +blushed to recognise them. I will do Harry Miller justice: he must have +had a kind of talent, almost of genius; all attempts to lower his +tone proving fruitless, and the Harry-Millerism ineradicable. Nay, the +monster had a certain key of style, or want of style, so that certain +milder passages, which I sought to introduce, discorded horribly, and +impoverished (if that were possible) the general effect. + +By an early hour of the numbered evening I might have been observed at +the sign of the Poodle Dog, dining with my agent: so Pinkerton delighted +to describe himself. Thence, like an ox to the slaughter, he led me +to the hall, where I stood presently alone, confronting assembled San +Francisco, with no better allies than a table, a glass of water, and a +mass of manuscript and typework, representing Harry Miller and myself. +I read the lecture; for I had lacked both time and will to get the trash +by heart--read it hurriedly, humbly, and with visible shame. Now and +then I would catch in the auditorium an eye of some intelligence, now +and then, in the manuscript, would stumble on a richer vein of Harry +Miller, and my heart would fail me, and I gabbled. The audience yawned, +it stirred uneasily, it muttered, grumbled, and broke forth at last +in articulate cries of “Speak up!” and “Nobody can hear!” I took to +skipping, and being extremely ill-acquainted with the country, almost +invariably cut in again in the unintelligible midst of some new topic. +What struck me as extremely ominous, these misfortunes were allowed to +pass without a laugh. Indeed, I was beginning to fear the worst, and +even personal indignity, when all at once the humour of the thing broke +upon me strongly. I could have laughed aloud; and being again summoned +to speak up, I faced my patrons for the first time with a smile. “Very +well,” I said, “I will try, though I don't suppose anybody wants to +hear, and I can't see why anybody should.” Audience and lecturer laughed +together till the tears ran down; vociferous and repeated applause +hailed my impromptu sally. Another hit which I made but a little after, +as I turned three pages of the copy: “You see, I am leaving out as much +as I possibly can,” increased the esteem with which my patrons had begun +to regard me; and when I left the stage at last, my departing form was +cheered with laughter, stamping, shouting, and the waving of hats. + +Pinkerton was in the waiting-room, feverishly jotting in his +pocket-book. As he saw me enter, he sprang up, and I declare the tears +were trickling on his cheeks. + +“My dear boy,” he cried, “I can never forgive myself, and you can never +forgive me. Never mind: I did it for the best. And how nobly you clung +on! I dreaded we should have had to return the money at the doors.” + +“It would have been more honest if we had,” said I. + +The pressmen followed me, Harry Miller in the front ranks; and I was +amazed to find them, on the whole, a pleasant set of lads, probably +more sinned against than sinning, and even Harry Miller apparently +a gentleman. I had in oysters and champagne--for the receipts were +excellent--and being in a high state of nervous tension, kept the table +in a roar. Indeed, I was never in my life so well inspired as when I +described my vigil over Harry Miller's literature or the series of my +emotions as I faced the audience. The lads vowed I was the soul of good +company and the prince of lecturers; and--so wonderful an institution +is the popular press--if you had seen the notices next day in all the +papers, you must have supposed my evening's entertainment an unqualified +success. + +I was in excellent spirits when I returned home that night, but the +miserable Pinkerton sorrowed for us both. + +“O, Loudon,” he said, “I shall never forgive myself. When I saw you +didn't catch on to the idea of the lecture, I should have given it +myself!” + + + + +CHAPTER VII. IRONS IN THE FIRE. + + +Opes Strepitumque. + +The food of the body differs not so greatly for the fool or the sage, +the elephant or the cock-sparrow; and similar chemical elements, +variously disguised, support all mortals. A brief study of Pinkerton +in his new setting convinced me of a kindred truth about that other and +mental digestion, by which we extract what is called “fun for our money” + out of life. In the same spirit as a schoolboy, deep in Mayne Reid, +handles a dummy gun and crawls among imaginary forests, Pinkerton sped +through Kearney Street upon his daily business, representing to himself +a highly coloured part in life's performance, and happy for hours if +he should have chanced to brush against a millionnaire. Reality was his +romance; he gloried to be thus engaged; he wallowed in his business. +Suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish +schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by the +blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure ingots by the bucketful +on the uproarious beach: such an one might realise a greater material +spoil; he should have no more profit of romance than Pinkerton when he +cast up his weekly balance-sheet in a bald office. Every dollar gained +was like something brought ashore from a mysterious deep; every venture +made was like a diver's plunge; and as he thrust his bold hand into the +plexus of the money-market, he was delightedly aware of how he shook the +pillars of existence, turned out men (as at a battle-cry) to labour +in far countries, and set the gold twitching in the drawers of +millionnaires. + +I could never fathom the full extent of his speculations; but there were +five separate businesses which he avowed and carried like a banner. The +Thirteen Star Golden State Brandy, Warranted Entire (a very flagrant +distillation) filled a great part of his thoughts, and was kept before +the public in an eloquent but misleading treatise: _Why Drink French +Brandy? A Word to the Wise._ He kept an office for advertisers, +counselling, designing, acting as middleman with printers and +bill-stickers, for the inexperienced or the uninspired: the dull +haberdasher came to him for ideas, the smart theatrical agent for his +local knowledge; and one and all departed with a copy of his pamphlet: +_How, When, and Where; or, the Advertiser's Vade-Mecum._ He had a tug +chartered every Saturday afternoon and night, carried people outside the +Heads, and provided them with lines and bait for six hours' fishing, +at the rate of five dollars a person. I am told that some of +them (doubtless adroit anglers) made a profit on the transaction. +Occasionally he bought wrecks and condemned vessels; these latter (I +cannot tell you how) found their way to sea again under aliases, and +continued to stem the waves triumphantly enough under the colours of +Bolivia or Nicaragua. Lastly, there was a certain agricultural engine, +glorying in a great deal of vermilion and blue paint, and filling (it +appeared) a “long-felt want,” in which his interest was something like a +tenth. + +This for the face or front of his concerns. “On the outside,” as he +phrased it, he was variously and mysteriously engaged. No dollar slept +in his possession; rather he kept all simultaneously flying like a +conjurer with oranges. My own earnings, when I began to have a share, he +would but show me for a moment, and disperse again, like those illusive +money gifts which are flashed in the eyes of childhood only to be +entombed in the missionary box. And he would come down radiant from a +weekly balance-sheet, clap me on the shoulder, declare himself a winner +by Gargantuan figures, and prove destitute of a quarter for a drink. + +“What on earth have you done with it?” I would ask. + +“Into the mill again; all re-invested!” he would cry, with infinite +delight. Investment was ever his word. He could not bear what he called +gambling. “Never touch stocks, Loudon,” he would say; “nothing but +legitimate business.” And yet, Heaven knows, many an indurated gambler +might have drawn back appalled at the first hint of some of Pinkerton's +investments! One, which I succeeded in tracking home, and instance for +a specimen, was a seventh share in the charter of a certain ill-starred +schooner bound for Mexico, to smuggle weapons on the one trip, and +cigars upon the other. The latter end of this enterprise, involving (as +it did) shipwreck, confiscation, and a lawsuit with the underwriters, +was too painful to be dwelt upon at length. “It's proved a +disappointment,” was as far as my friend would go with me in words; but +I knew, from observation, that the fabric of his fortunes tottered. For +the rest, it was only by accident I got wind of the transaction; for +Pinkerton, after a time, was shy of introducing me to his arcana: the +reason you are to hear presently. + +The office which was (or should have been) the point of rest for so many +evolving dollars stood in the heart of the city: a high and spacious +room, with many plate-glass windows. A glazed cabinet of polished +redwood offered to the eye a regiment of some two hundred bottles, +conspicuously labelled. These were all charged with Pinkerton's Thirteen +Star, although from across the room it would have required an expert to +distinguish them from the same number of bottles of Courvoisier. I used +to twit my friend with this resemblance, and propose a new edition of +the pamphlet, with the title thus improved: _Why Drink French Brandy, +when we give you the same labels?_ The doors of the cabinet revolved all +day upon their hinges; and if there entered any one who was a stranger +to the merits of the brand, he departed laden with a bottle. When I used +to protest at this extravagance, “My dear Loudon,” Pinkerton would cry, +“you don't seem to catch on to business principles! The prime cost of +the spirit is literally nothing. I couldn't find a cheaper advertisement +if I tried.” Against the side post of the cabinet there leaned a gaudy +umbrella, preserved there as a relic. It appears that when Pinkerton was +about to place Thirteen Star upon the market, the rainy season was +at hand. He lay dark, almost in penury, awaiting the first shower, at +which, as upon a signal, the main thoroughfares became dotted with his +agents, vendors of advertisements; and the whole world of San Francisco, +from the businessman fleeing for the ferry-boat, to the lady waiting +at the corner for her car, sheltered itself under umbrellas with this +strange device: Are you wet? Try Thirteen Star. “It was a mammoth boom,” + said Pinkerton, with a sigh of delighted recollection. “There wasn't +another umbrella to be seen. I stood at this window, Loudon, feasting +my eyes; and I declare, I felt like Vanderbilt.” And it was to this neat +application of the local climate that he owed, not only much of the sale +of Thirteen Star, but the whole business of his advertising agency. + +The large desk (to resume our survey of the office) stood about the +middle, knee-deep in stacks of handbills and posters, of _Why Drink +French Brandy?_ and _The Advertiser's Vade-Mecum._ It was flanked upon +the one hand by two female type-writers, who rested not between +the hours of nine and four, and upon the other by a model of the +agricultural machine. The walls, where they were not broken by telephone +boxes and a couple of photographs--one representing the wreck of the +James L. Moody on a bold and broken coast, the other the Saturday tug +alive with amateur fishers--almost disappeared under oil-paintings +gaudily framed. Many of these were relics of the Latin Quarter, and I +must do Pinkerton the justice to say that none of them were bad, +and some had remarkable merit. They went off slowly but for handsome +figures; and their places were progressively supplied with the work of +local artists. These last it was one of my first duties to review and +criticise. Some of them were villainous, yet all were saleable. I said +so; and the next moment saw myself, the figure of a miserable renegade, +bearing arms in the wrong camp. I was to look at pictures thenceforward, +not with the eye of the artist, but the dealer; and I saw the stream +widen that divided me from all I loved. + +“Now, Loudon,” Pinkerton had said, the morning after the lecture, “now +Loudon, we can go at it shoulder to shoulder. This is what I have longed +for: I wanted two heads and four arms; and now I have 'em. You'll find +it's just the same as art--all observation and imagination; only more +movement. Just wait till you begin to feel the charm!” + +I might have waited long. Perhaps I lack a sense; for our whole +existence seemed to me one dreary bustle, and the place we bustled in +fitly to be called the Place of Yawning. I slept in a little den behind +the office; Pinkerton, in the office itself, stretched on a patent sofa +which sometimes collapsed, his slumbers still further menaced by an +imminent clock with an alarm. Roused by this diabolical contrivance, we +rose early, went forth early to breakfast, and returned by nine to what +Pinkerton called work, and I distraction. Masses of letters must be +opened, read, and answered; some by me at a subsidiary desk which had +been introduced on the morning of my arrival; others by my bright-eyed +friend, pacing the room like a caged lion as he dictated to the tinkling +type-writers. Masses of wet proof had to be overhauled and scrawled upon +with a blue pencil--“rustic”--“six-inch caps”--“bold spacing here”--or +sometimes terms more fervid, as for instance this, which I remember +Pinkerton to have spirted on the margin of an advertisement of Soothing +Syrup: “Throw this all down. Have you never printed an advertisement? +I'll be round in half an hour.” The ledger and sale-book, besides, +we had always with us. Such was the backbone of our occupation, and +tolerable enough; but the far greater proportion of our time was +consumed by visitors, whole-souled, grand fellows no doubt, and as sharp +as a needle, but to me unfortunately not diverting. Some were apparently +half-witted, and must be talked over by the hour before they could reach +the humblest decision, which they only left the office to return again +(ten minutes later) and rescind. Others came with a vast show of hurry +and despatch, but I observed it to be principally show. The agricultural +model for instance, which was practicable, proved a kind of flypaper for +these busybodies. I have seen them blankly turn the crank of it for five +minutes at a time, simulating (to nobody's deception) business interest: +“Good thing this, Pinkerton? Sell much of it? Ha! Couldn't use it, +I suppose, as a medium of advertisement for my article?”--which was +perhaps toilet soap. Others (a still worse variety) carried us to +neighbouring saloons to dice for cocktails and (after the cocktails were +paid) for dollars on a corner of the counter. The attraction of dice for +all these people was indeed extraordinary: at a certain club, where I +once dined in the character of “my partner, Mr. Dodd,” the dice-box came +on the table with the wine, an artless substitute for after-dinner wit. + +Of all our visitors, I believe I preferred Emperor Norton; the very +mention of whose name reminds me I am doing scanty justice to the +folks of San Francisco. In what other city would a harmless madman who +supposed himself emperor of the two Americas have been so fostered +and encouraged? Where else would even the people of the streets have +respected the poor soul's illusion? Where else would bankers and +merchants have received his visits, cashed his cheques, and submitted to +his small assessments? Where else would he have been suffered to attend +and address the exhibition days of schools and colleges? where else, +in God's green earth, have taken his pick of restaurants, ransacked +the bill of fare, and departed scathless? They tell me he was even an +exacting patron, threatening to withdraw his custom when dissatisfied; +and I can believe it, for his face wore an expression distinctly +gastronomical. Pinkerton had received from this monarch a cabinet +appointment; I have seen the brevet, wondering mainly at the good nature +of the printer who had executed the forms, and I think my friend was at +the head either of foreign affairs or education: it mattered, indeed, +nothing, the presentation being in all offices identical. It was at a +comparatively early date that I saw Jim in the exercise of his public +functions. His Majesty entered the office--a portly, rather flabby man, +with the face of a gentleman, rendered unspeakably pathetic and absurd +by the great sabre at his side and the peacock's feather in his hat. + + +“I have called to remind you, Mr. Pinkerton, that you are somewhat in +arrear of taxes,” he said, with old-fashioned, stately courtesy. + +“Well, your Majesty, what is the amount?” asked Jim; and when the figure +was named (it was generally two or three dollars), paid upon the nail +and offered a bonus in the shape of Thirteen Star. + +“I am always delighted to patronise native industries,” said Norton the +First. “San Francisco is public-spirited in what concerns its Emperor; +and indeed, sir, of all my domains, it is my favourite city.” + +“Come,” said I, when he was gone, “I prefer that customer to the lot.” + +“It's really rather a distinction,” Jim admitted. “I think it must have +been the umbrella racket that attracted him.” + +We were distinguished under the rose by the notice of other and greater +men. There were days when Jim wore an air of unusual capacity and +resolve, spoke with more brevity like one pressed for time, and took +often on his tongue such phrases as “Longhurst told me so this morning,” + or “I had it straight from Longhurst himself.” It was no wonder, I used +to think, that Pinkerton was called to council with such Titans; for the +creature's quickness and resource were beyond praise. In the early +days when he consulted me without reserve, pacing the room, projecting, +ciphering, extending hypothetical interests, trebling imaginary capital, +his “engine” (to renew an excellent old word) labouring full steam +ahead, I could never decide whether my sense of respect or entertainment +were the stronger. But these good hours were destined to curtailment. + +“Yes, it's smart enough,” I once observed. “But, Pinkerton, do you think +it's honest?” + +“You don't think it's honest!” he wailed. “O dear me, that ever I should +have heard such an expression on your lips!” + +At sight of his distress, I plagiarised unblushingly from Myner. “You +seem to think honesty as simple as Blind Man's Buff,” said I. “It's a +more delicate affair than that: delicate as any art.” + +“O well! at that rate!” he exclaimed, with complete relief. “That's +casuistry.” + +“I am perfectly certain of one thing: that what you propose is +dishonest,” I returned. + +“Well, say no more about it. That's settled,” he replied. + +Thus, almost at a word, my point was carried. But the trouble was that +such differences continued to recur, until we began to regard each other +with alarm. If there were one thing Pinkerton valued himself upon, it +was his honesty; if there were one thing he clung to, it was my +good opinion; and when both were involved, as was the case in these +commercial cruces, the man was on the rack. My own position, if you +consider how much I owed him, how hateful is the trade of fault-finder, +and that yet I lived and fattened on these questionable operations, +was perhaps equally distressing. If I had been more sterling or more +combative things might have gone extremely far. But, in truth, I was +just base enough to profit by what was not forced on my attention, +rather than seek scenes: Pinkerton quite cunning enough to avail himself +of my weakness; and it was a relief to both when he began to involve his +proceedings in a decent mystery. + +Our last dispute, which had a most unlooked-for consequence, turned on +the refitting of condemned ships. He had bought a miserable hulk, and +came, rubbing his hands, to inform me she was already on the slip, under +a new name, to be repaired. When first I had heard of this industry I +suppose I scarcely comprehended; but much discussion had sharpened my +faculties, and now my brow became heavy. + +“I can be no party to that, Pinkerton,” said I. + +He leaped like a man shot. “What next?” he cried. “What ails you, +anyway? You seem to me to dislike everything that's profitable.” + +“This ship has been condemned by Lloyd's agent,” said I. + +“But I tell you it's a deal. The ship's in splendid condition; +there's next to nothing wrong with her but the garboard streak and the +sternpost. I tell you Lloyd's is a ring like everybody else; only it's +an English ring, and that's what deceives you. If it was American, you +would be crying it down all day. It's Anglomania, common Anglomania,” he +cried, with growing irritation. + +“I will not make money by risking men's lives,” was my ultimatum. + +“Great Caesar! isn't all speculation a risk? Isn't the fairest kind of +shipowning to risk men's lives? And mining--how's that for risk? And +look at the elevator business--there's danger, if you like! Didn't I +take my risk when I bought her? She might have been too far gone; and +where would I have been? Loudon,” he cried, “I tell you the truth: +you're too full of refinement for this world!” + +“I condemn you out of your own lips,” I replied. “'The fairest kind of +shipowning,' says you. If you please, let us only do the fairest kind of +business.” + +The shot told; the Irrepressible was silenced; and I profited by the +chance to pour in a broadside of another sort. He was all sunk in +money-getting, I pointed out; he never dreamed of anything but dollars. +Where were all his generous, progressive sentiments? Where was his +culture? I asked. And where was the American Type? + +“It's true, Loudon,” he cried, striding up and down the room, and +wildly scouring at his hair. “You're perfectly right. I'm becoming +materialised. O, what a thing to have to say, what a confession to make! +Materialised! Me! Loudon, this must go on no longer. You've been a loyal +friend to me once more; give me your hand!--you've saved me again. I +must do something to rouse the spiritual side; something desperate; +study something, something dry and tough. What shall it be? Theology? +Algebra? What's Algebra?” + +“It's dry and tough enough,” said I; “a squared + 2ab + b squared.” + +“It's stimulating, though?” he inquired. + +I told him I believed so, and that it was considered fortifying to +Types. + +“Then that's the thing for me. I'll study Algebra,” he concluded. + +The next day, by application to one of his type-writing women, he got +word of a young lady, one Miss Mamie McBride, who was willing and able +to conduct him in these bloomless meadows; and, her circumstances +being lean, and terms consequently moderate, he and Mamie were soon +in agreement for two lessons in the week. He took fire with unexampled +rapidity; he seemed unable to tear himself away from the symbolic art; +an hour's lesson occupied the whole evening; and the original two was +soon increased to four, and then to five. I bade him beware of female +blandishments. “The first thing you know, you'll be falling in love with +the algebraist,” said I. + +“Don't say it even in jest,” he cried. “She's a lady I revere. I could +no more lay a hand upon her than I could upon a spirit. Loudon, I don't +believe God ever made a purer-minded woman.” + +Which appeared to me too fervent to be reassuring. + +Meanwhile I had been long expostulating with my friend upon a different +matter. “I'm the fifth wheel,” I kept telling him. “For any use I am, +I might as well be in Senegambia. The letters you give me to attend +to might be answered by a sucking child. And I tell you what it is, +Pinkerton: either you've got to find me some employment, or I'll have to +start in and find it for myself.” + +This I said with a corner of my eye in the usual quarter, toward the +arts, little dreaming what destiny was to provide. + +“I've got it, Loudon,” Pinkerton at last replied. “Got the idea on the +Potrero cars. Found I hadn't a pencil, borrowed one from the conductor, +and figured on it roughly all the way in town. I saw it was the thing at +last; gives you a real show. All your talents and accomplishments come +in. Here's a sketch advertisement. Just run your eye over it. 'Sun, +Ozone, and Music! PINKERTON'S HEBDOMADARY PICNICS!' (That's a good, +catching phrase, 'hebdomadary,' though it's hard to say. I made a note +of it when I was looking in the dictionary how to spell hectagonal. +'Well, you're a boss word,' I said. 'Before you're very much older, I'll +have you in type as long as yourself.' And here it is, you see.) 'Five +dollars a head, and ladies free. MONSTER OLIO OF ATTRACTIONS.' (How does +that strike you?) 'Free luncheon under the greenwood tree. Dance on +the elastic sward. Home again in the Bright Evening Hours. Manager and +Honorary Steward, H. Loudon Dodd, Esq., the well-known connoisseur.'” + + +Singular how a man runs from Scylla to Charybdis! I was so intent on +securing the disappearance of a single epithet that I accepted the rest +of the advertisement and all that it involved without discussion. So it +befell that the words “well-known connoisseur” were deleted; but that +H. Loudon Dodd became manager and honorary steward of Pinkerton's +Hebdomadary Picnics, soon shortened, by popular consent, to the +Dromedary. + +By eight o'clock, any Sunday morning, I was to be observed by an +admiring public on the wharf. The garb and attributes of sacrifice +consisted of a black frock coat, rosetted, its pockets bulging with +sweetmeats and inferior cigars, trousers of light blue, a silk hat +like a reflector, and a varnished wand. A goodly steamer guarded my +one flank, panting and throbbing, flags fluttering fore and aft of her, +illustrative of the Dromedary and patriotism. My other flank was covered +by the ticket-office, strongly held by a trusty character of the Scots +persuasion, rosetted like his superior and smoking a cigar to mark the +occasion festive. At half-past, having assured myself that all was well +with the free luncheons, I lit a cigar myself, and awaited the strains +of the “Pioneer Band.” I had never to wait long--they were German and +punctual--and by a few minutes after the half-hour, I would hear them +booming down street with a long military roll of drums, some score of +gratuitous asses prancing at the head in bearskin hats and buckskin +aprons, and conspicuous with resplendent axes. The band, of course, +we paid for; but so strong is the San Franciscan passion for public +masquerade, that the asses (as I say) were all gratuitous, pranced for +the love of it, and cost us nothing but their luncheon. + +The musicians formed up in the bows of my steamer, and struck into +a skittish polka; the asses mounted guard upon the gangway and the +ticket-office; and presently after, in family parties of father, mother, +and children, in the form of duplicate lovers or in that of solitary +youth, the public began to descend upon us by the carful at a time; four +to six hundred perhaps, with a strong German flavour, and all merry as +children. When these had been shepherded on board, and the inevitable +belated two or three had gained the deck amidst the cheering of the +public, the hawser was cast off, and we plunged into the bay. + +And now behold the honorary steward in hour of duty and glory; see me +circulate amid crowd, radiating affability and laughter, liberal with +my sweetmeats and cigars. I say unblushing things to hobbledehoy girls, +tell shy young persons this is the married people's boat, roguishly +ask the abstracted if they are thinking of their sweethearts, offer +Paterfamilias a cigar, am struck with the beauty and grow curious about +the age of mamma's youngest who (I assure her gaily) will be a man +before his mother; or perhaps it may occur to me, from the sensible +expression of her face, that she is a person of good counsel, and I +ask her earnestly if she knows any particularly pleasant place on the +Saucelito or San Rafael coast, for the scene of our picnic is always +supposed to be uncertain. The next moment I am back at my giddy badinage +with the young ladies, wakening laughter as I go, and leaving in my wake +applausive comments of “Isn't Mr. Dodd a funny gentleman?” and “O, I +think he's just too nice!” + +An hour having passed in this airy manner, I start upon my rounds +afresh, with a bag full of coloured tickets, all with pins attached, and +all with legible inscriptions: “Old Germany,” “California,” “True Love,” + “Old Fogies,” “La Belle France,” “Green Erin,” “The Land of Cakes,” + “Washington,” “Blue Jay,” “Robin Red-Breast,”--twenty of each +denomination; for when it comes to the luncheon, we sit down by +twenties. These are distributed with anxious tact--for, indeed, this +is the most delicate part of my functions--but outwardly with reckless +unconcern, amidst the gayest flutter and confusion; and are immediately +after sported upon hats and bonnets, to the extreme diffusion of +cordiality, total strangers hailing each other by “the number of their +mess”--so we humorously name it--and the deck ringing with cries of, +“Here, all Blue Jays to the rescue!” or, “I say, am I alone in this +blame' ship? Ain't there no more Californians?” + +By this time we are drawing near to the appointed spot. I mount upon the +bridge, the observed of all observers. + +“Captain,” I say, in clear, emphatic tones, heard far and wide, “the +majority of the company appear to be in favour of the little cove beyond +One Tree Point.” + +“All right, Mr. Dodd,” responds the captain, heartily; “all one to me. +I am not exactly sure of the place you mean; but just you stay here and +pilot me.” + +I do, pointing with my wand. I do pilot him, to the inexpressible +entertainment of the picnic; for I am (why should I deny it?) the +popular man. We slow down off the mouth of a grassy valley, watered by +a brook, and set in pines and redwoods. The anchor is let go; the +boats are lowered, two of them already packed with the materials of +an impromptu bar; and the Pioneer Band, accompanied by the resplendent +asses, fill the other, and move shoreward to the inviting strains of +Buffalo Gals, won't you come out to-night? It is a part of our programme +that one of the asses shall, from sheer clumsiness, in the course of +this embarkation, drop a dummy axe into the water, whereupon the mirth +of the picnic can hardly be assuaged. Upon one occasion, the dummy axe +floated, and the laugh turned rather the wrong way. + +In from ten to twenty minutes the boats are along-side again, the messes +are marshalled separately on the deck, and the picnic goes ashore, +to find the band and the impromptu bar awaiting them. Then come the +hampers, which are piled upon the beach, and surrounded by a stern +guard of stalwart asses, axe on shoulder. It is here I take my place, +note-book in hand, under a banner bearing the legend, “Come here for +hampers.” Each hamper contains a complete outfit for a separate twenty, +cold provender, plates, glasses, knives, forks, and spoons: an agonized +printed appeal from the fevered pen of Pinkerton, pasted on the inside +of the lid, beseeches that care be taken of the glass and silver. Beer, +wine, and lemonade are flowing already from the bar, and the various +clans of twenty file away into the woods, with bottles under their arms, +and the hampers strung upon a stick. Till one they feast there, in a +very moderate seclusion, all being within earshot of the band. From one +till four, dancing takes place upon the grass; the bar does a roaring +business; and the honorary steward, who has already exhausted himself to +bring life into the dullest of the messes, must now indefatigably dance +with the plainest of the women. At four a bugle-call is sounded; and by +half-past behold us on board again, pioneers, corrugated iron bar, empty +bottles, and all; while the honorary steward, free at last, subsides +into the captain's cabin over a brandy and soda and a book. Free at +last, I say; yet there remains before him the frantic leave-takings +at the pier, and a sober journey up to Pinkerton's office with two +policemen and the day's takings in a bag. + +What I have here sketched was the routine. But we appealed to the taste +of San Francisco more distinctly in particular fetes. “Ye Olde Time +Pycke-Nycke,” largely advertised in hand-bills beginning “Oyez, Oyez!” + and largely frequented by knights, monks, and cavaliers, was drowned +out by unseasonable rain, and returned to the city one of the saddest +spectacles I ever remember to have witnessed. In pleasing contrast, +and certainly our chief success, was “The Gathering of the Clans,” + or Scottish picnic. So many milk-white knees were never before +simultaneously exhibited in public, and to judge by the prevalence of +“Royal Stewart” and the number of eagle's feathers, we were a high-born +company. I threw forward the Scottish flank of my own ancestry, and +passed muster as a clansman with applause. There was, indeed, but one +small cloud on this red-letter day. I had laid in a large supply of +the national beverage, in the shape of The “Rob Roy MacGregor O” Blend, +Warranted Old and Vatted; and this must certainly have been a generous +spirit, for I had some anxious work between four and half-past, +conveying on board the inanimate forms of chieftains. + +To one of our ordinary festivities, where he was the life and soul of +his own mess, Pinkerton himself came incognito, bringing the algebraist +on his arm. Miss Mamie proved to be a well-enough-looking mouse, with +a large, limpid eye, very good manners, and a flow of the most correct +expressions I have ever heard upon the human lip. As Pinkerton's +incognito was strict, I had little opportunity to cultivate the lady's +acquaintance; but I was informed afterwards that she considered me “the +wittiest gentleman she had ever met.” “The Lord mend your taste in wit!” + thought I; but I cannot conceal that such was the general impression. +One of my pleasantries even went the round of San Francisco, and I have +heard it (myself all unknown) bandied in saloons. To be unknown began at +last to be a rare experience; a bustle woke upon my passage; above all, +in humble neighbourhoods. “Who's that?” one would ask, and the other +would cry, “That! Why, Dromedary Dodd!” or, with withering scorn, “Not +know Mr. Dodd of the Picnics? Well!” and indeed I think it marked a +rather barren destiny; for our picnics, if a trifle vulgar, were as gay +and innocent as the age of gold; I am sure no people divert themselves +so easily and so well: and even with the cares of my stewardship, I was +often happy to be there. + +Indeed, there were but two drawbacks in the least considerable. The +first was my terror of the hobbledehoy girls, to whom (from the demands +of my situation) I was obliged to lay myself so open. The other, if less +momentous, was more mortifying. In early days, at my mother's knee, as a +man may say, I had acquired the unenviable accomplishment (which I have +never since been able to lose) of singing _Just before the Battle._ +I have what the French call a fillet of voice, my best notes scarce +audible about a dinner-table, and the upper register rather to be +regarded as a higher power of silence: experts tell me besides that +I sing flat; nor, if I were the best singer in the world, does _Just +before the Battle_ occur to my mature taste as the song that I would +choose to sing. In spite of all which considerations, at one picnic, +memorably dull, and after I had exhausted every other art of pleasing, +I gave, in desperation, my one song. From that hour my doom was gone +forth. Either we had a chronic passenger (though I could never detect +him), or the very wood and iron of the steamer must have retained the +tradition. At every successive picnic word went round that Mr. Dodd was +a singer; that Mr. Dodd sang _Just before the Battle_, and finally that +now was the time when Mr. Dodd sang _Just before the Battle;_ so that +the thing became a fixture like the dropping of the dummy axe, and you +are to conceive me, Sunday after Sunday, piping up my lamentable +ditty and covered, when it was done, with gratuitous applause. It is a +beautiful trait in human nature that I was invariably offered an encore. + +I was well paid, however, even to sing. Pinkerton and I, after an +average Sunday, had five hundred dollars to divide. Nay, and the picnics +were the means, although indirectly, of bringing me a singular windfall. +This was at the end of the season, after the “Grand Farewell Fancy Dress +Gala.” Many of the hampers had suffered severely; and it was judged +wiser to save storage, dispose of them, and lay in a fresh stock when +the campaign re-opened. Among my purchasers was a workingman of the +name of Speedy, to whose house, after several unavailing letters, I +must proceed in person, wondering to find myself once again on the wrong +side, and playing the creditor to some one else's debtor. Speedy was +in the belligerent stage of fear. He could not pay. It appeared he had +already resold the hampers, and he defied me to do my worst. I did not +like to lose my own money; I hated to lose Pinkerton's; and the bearing +of my creditor incensed me. + +“Do you know, Mr. Speedy, that I can send you to the penitentiary?” said +I, willing to read him a lesson. + +The dire expression was overheard in the next room. A large, fresh, +motherly Irishwoman ran forth upon the instant, and fell to besiege me +with caresses and appeals. “Sure now, and ye couldn't have the heart to +ut, Mr. Dodd, you, that's so well known to be a pleasant gentleman; and +it's a pleasant face ye have, and the picture of me own brother that's +dead and gone. It's a truth that he's been drinking. Ye can smell it off +of him, more blame to him. But, indade, and there's nothing in the +house beyont the furnicher, and Thim Stock. It's the stock that ye'll +be taking, dear. A sore penny it has cost me, first and last, and by +all tales, not worth an owld tobacco pipe.” Thus adjured, and somewhat +embarrassed by the stern attitude I had adopted, I suffered myself to be +invested with a considerable quantity of what is called wild-cat stock, +in which this excellent if illogical female had been squandering her +hard-earned gold. It could scarce be said to better my position, but the +step quieted the woman; and, on the other hand, I could not think I was +taking much risk, for the shares in question (they were those of what I +will call the Catamount Silver Mine) had fallen some time before to the +bed-rock quotation, and now lay perfectly inert, or were only kicked +(like other waste paper) about the kennel of the exchange by bankrupt +speculators. + +A month or two after, I perceived by the stock-list that Catamount +had taken a bound; before afternoon, “thim stock” were worth a quite +considerable pot of money; and I learned, upon inquiry, that a bonanza +had been found in a condemned lead, and the mine was now expected to do +wonders. Remarkable to philosophers how bonanzas are found in condemned +leads, and how the stock is always at freezing-point immediately before! +By some stroke of chance the, Speedys had held on to the right thing; +they had escaped the syndicate; yet a little more, if I had not come to +dun them, and Mrs. Speedy would have been buying a silk dress. I could +not bear, of course, to profit by the accident, and returned to +offer restitution. The house was in a bustle; the neighbours (all +stock-gamblers themselves) had crowded to condole; and Mrs. Speedy sat +with streaming tears, the centre of a sympathetic group. “For fifteen +year I've been at ut,” she was lamenting, as I entered, “and grudging +the babes the very milk, more shame to me! to pay their dhirty +assessments. And now, my dears, I should be a lady, and driving in my +coach, if all had their rights; and a sorrow on that man Dodd! As soon +as I set eyes on him, I seen the divil was in the house.” + +It was upon these words that I made my entrance, which was therefore +dramatic enough, though nothing to what followed. For when it appeared +that I was come to restore the lost fortune, and when Mrs. Speedy (after +copiously weeping on my bosom) had refused the restitution, and when +Mr. Speedy (summoned to that end from a camp of the Grand Army of the +Republic) had added his refusal, and when I had insisted, and they had +insisted, and the neighbours had applauded and supported each of us in +turn; and when at last it was agreed we were to hold the stock together, +and share the proceeds in three parts--one for me, one for Mr. Speedy, +and one for his spouse--I will leave you to conceive the enthusiasm that +reigned in that small, bare apartment, with the sewing-machine in the +one corner, and the babes asleep in the other, and pictures of Garfield +and the Battle of Gettysburg on the yellow walls. Port wine was had in +by a sympathiser, and we drank it mingled with tears. + +“And I dhrink to your health, my dear,” sobbed Mrs. Speedy, especially +affected by my gallantry in the matter of the third share; “and I'm +sure we all dhrink to his health--Mr. Dodd of the picnics, no gentleman +better known than him; and it's my prayer, dear, the good God may be +long spared to see ye in health and happiness!” + +In the end I was the chief gainer; for I sold my third while it was +worth five thousand dollars, but the Speedys more adventurously held on +until the syndicate reversed the process, when they were happy to escape +with perhaps a quarter of that sum. It was just as well; for the bulk +of the money was (in Pinkerton's phrase) reinvested; and when next I saw +Mrs. Speedy, she was still gorgeously dressed from the proceeds of the +late success, but was already moist with tears over the new catastrophe. +“We're froze out, me darlin'! All the money we had, dear, and the +sewing-machine, and Jim's uniform, was in the Golden West; and the +vipers has put on a new assessment.” + +By the end of the year, therefore, this is how I stood. I had made + + By Catamount Silver Mine..................... $5,000 + By the picnics............................... 3,000 + By the lecture............................... 600 + By profit and loss on capital + in Pinkerton's business...................... 1,350 + ------ + $9,950 + + to which must be added + + What remained of my grandfather's + donation..................................... 8,500 + ------ + $18,450 + + It appears, on the other hand, that + + I had spent.......................... 4,000 + ------- + Which thus left me to the good............... $14,450 + +A result on which I am not ashamed to say I looked with gratitude and +pride. Some eight thousand (being late conquest) was liquid and actually +tractile in the bank; the rest whirled beyond reach and even sight (save +in the mirror of a balance-sheet) under the compelling spell of wizard +Pinkerton. Dollars of mine were tacking off the shores of Mexico, in +peril of the deep and the guarda-costas; they rang on saloon-counters +in the city of Tombstone, Arizona; they shone in faro-tents among the +mountain diggings; the imagination flagged in following them, so wide +were they diffused, so briskly they span to the turning of the wizard's +crank. But here, there, or everywhere I could still tell myself it was +all mine, and what was more convincing, draw substantial dividends. My +fortune, I called it; and it represented, when expressed in dollars, or +even British pounds, an honest pot of money; when extended into francs, +a veritable fortune. Perhaps I have let the cat out of the bag; perhaps +you see already where my hopes were pointing, and begin to blame my +inconsistency. But I must first tell you my excuse, and the change that +had befallen Pinkerton. + +About a week after the picnic to which he escorted Mamie, Pinkerton +avowed the state of his affections. From what I had observed on board +the steamer, where methought Mamie waited on him with her limpid eyes, +I encouraged the bashful lover to proceed; and the very next evening he +was carrying me to call on his affianced. + +“You must befriend her, Loudon, as you have always befriended me,” he +said, pathetically. + +“By saying disagreeable things? I doubt if that be the way to a young +lady's favour,” I replied; “and since this picnicking I begin to be a +man of some experience.” + +“Yes, you do nobly there; I can't describe how I admire you,” he cried. +“Not that she will ever need it; she has had every advantage. God knows +what I have done to deserve her. O man, what a responsibility this is +for a rough fellow and not always truthful!” + +“Brace up, old man, brace up!” said I. + +But when we reached Mamie's boarding-house, it was almost with tears +that he presented me. “Here is Loudon, Mamie,” were his words. “I want +you to love him; he has a grand nature.” + +“You are certainly no stranger to me, Mr. Dodd,” was her gracious +expression. “James is never weary of descanting on your goodness.” + +“My dear lady,” said I, “when you know our friend a little better, +you will make a large allowance for his warm heart. My goodness has +consisted in allowing him to feed and clothe and toil for me when he +could ill afford it. If I am now alive, it is to him I owe it; no man +had a kinder friend. You must take good care of him,” I added, laying my +hand on his shoulder, “and keep him in good order, for he needs it.” + +Pinkerton was much affected by this speech, and so, I fear, was Mamie. I +admit it was a tactless performance. “When you know our friend a little +better,” was not happily said; and even “keep him in good order, for he +needs it” might be construed into matter of offence; but I lay it before +you in all confidence of your acquittal: was the general tone of it +“patronising”? Even if such was the verdict of the lady, I cannot but +suppose the blame was neither wholly hers nor wholly mine; I cannot but +suppose that Pinkerton had already sickened the poor woman of my very +name; so that if I had come with the songs of Apollo, she must still +have been disgusted. + +Here, however, were two finger-posts to Paris. Jim was going to be +married, and so had the less need of my society. I had not pleased his +bride, and so was, perhaps, better absent. Late one evening I broached +the idea to my friend. It had been a great day for me; I had just banked +my five thousand catamountain dollars; and as Jim had refused to lay a +finger on the stock, risk and profit were both wholly mine, and I was +celebrating the event with stout and crackers. I began by telling him +that if it caused him any pain or any anxiety about his affairs, he had +but to say the word, and he should hear no more of my proposal. He was +the truest and best friend I ever had or was ever like to have; and +it would be a strange thing if I refused him any favour he was sure +he wanted. At the same time I wished him to be sure; for my life was +wasting in my hands. I was like one from home; all my true interests +summoned me away. I must remind him, besides, that he was now about to +marry and assume new interests, and that our extreme familiarity might +be even painful to his wife.--“O no, Loudon; I feel you are wrong +there,” he interjected warmly; “she DOES appreciate your nature.”--So +much the better, then, I continued; and went on to point out that our +separation need not be for long; that, in the way affairs were going, +he might join me in two years with a fortune, small, indeed, for the +States, but in France almost conspicuous; that we might unite our +resources, and have one house in Paris for the winter and a second near +Fontainebleau for summer, where we could be as happy as the day was +long, and bring up little Pinkertons as practical artistic workmen, far +from the money-hunger of the West. “Let me go then,” I concluded; “not +as a deserter, but as the vanguard, to lead the march of the Pinkerton +men.” + +So I argued and pleaded, not without emotion; my friend sitting +opposite, resting his chin upon his hand and (but for that single +interjection) silent. “I have been looking for this, Loudon,” said he, +when I had done. “It does pain me, and that's the fact--I'm so miserably +selfish. And I believe it's a death blow to the picnics; for it's idle +to deny that you were the heart and soul of them with your wand and your +gallant bearing, and wit and humour and chivalry, and throwing that kind +of society atmosphere about the thing. But for all that, you're right, +and you ought to go. You may count on forty dollars a week; and if Depew +City--one of nature's centres for this State--pan out the least as I +expect, it may be double. But it's forty dollars anyway; and to think +that two years ago you were almost reduced to beggary!” + +“I WAS reduced to it,” said I. + +“Well, the brutes gave you nothing, and I'm glad of it now!” cried Jim. +“It's the triumphant return I glory in! Think of the master, and that +cold-blooded Myner too! Yes, just let the Depew City boom get on its +legs, and you shall go; and two years later, day for day, I'll shake +hands with you in Paris, with Mamie on my arm, God bless her!” + +We talked in this vein far into the night. I was myself so exultant in +my new-found liberty, and Pinkerton so proud of my triumph, so happy in +my happiness, in so warm a glow about the gallant little woman of his +choice, and the very room so filled with castles in the air and cottages +at Fontainebleau, that it was little wonder if sleep fled our eyelids, +and three had followed two upon the office clock before Pinkerton +unfolded the mechanism of his patent sofa. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. FACES ON THE CITY FRONT. + + +It is very much the custom to view life as if it were exactly ruled in +two, like sleep and waking; the provinces of play and business standing +separate. The business side of my career in San Francisco has been now +disposed of; I approach the chapter of diversion; and it will be found +they had about an equal share in building up the story of the Wrecker--a +gentleman whose appearance may be presently expected. + +With all my occupations, some six afternoons and two or three odd +evenings remained at my disposal every week: a circumstance the more +agreeable as I was a stranger in a city singularly picturesque. +From what I had once called myself, The Amateur Parisian, I grew (or +declined) into a waterside prowler, a lingerer on wharves, a frequenter +of shy neighbourhoods, a scraper of acquaintance with eccentric +characters. I visited Chinese and Mexican gambling-hells, German secret +societies, sailors' boarding-houses, and “dives” of every complexion of +the disreputable and dangerous. I have seen greasy Mexican hands pinned +to the table with a knife for cheating, seamen (when blood-money ran +high) knocked down upon the public street and carried insensible on +board short-handed ships, shots exchanged, and the smoke (and the +company) dispersing from the doors of the saloon. I have heard +cold-minded Polacks debate upon the readiest method of burning San +Francisco to the ground, hot-headed working men and women bawl and swear +in the tribune at the Sandlot, and Kearney himself open his subscription +for a gallows, name the manufacturers who were to grace it with their +dangling bodies, and read aloud to the delighted multitude a telegram of +adhesion from a member of the State legislature: all which preparations +of proletarian war were (in a moment) breathed upon and abolished by the +mere name and fame of Mr. Coleman. That lion of the Vigilantes had but +to rouse himself and shake his ears, and the whole brawling mob was +silenced. I could not but reflect what a strange manner of man this was, +to be living unremarked there as a private merchant, and to be so +feared by a whole city; and if I was disappointed, in my character of +looker-on, to have the matter end ingloriously without the firing of a +shot or the hanging of a single millionnaire, philosophy tried to tell +me that this sight was truly the more picturesque. In a thousand towns +and different epochs I might have had occasion to behold the cowardice +and carnage of street fighting; where else, but only there and then, +could I have enjoyed a view of Coleman (the intermittent despot) walking +meditatively up hill in a quiet part of town, with a very rolling gait, +and slapping gently his great thigh? + +Minora Canamus. This historic figure stalks silently through a corner +of the San Francisco of my memory: the rest is bric-a-brac, the +reminiscences of a vagrant sketcher. My delight was much in slums. +Little Italy was a haunt of mine; there I would look in at the windows +of small eating-shops, transported bodily from Genoa or Naples, with +their macaroni, and chianti flasks, and portraits of Garibaldi, and +coloured political caricatures; or (entering in) hold high debate with +some ear-ringed fisher of the bay as to the designs of “Mr. Owstria” and +“Mr. Rooshia.” I was often to be observed (had there been any to observe +me) in that dis-peopled, hill-side solitude of Little Mexico, with its +crazy wooden houses, endless crazy wooden stairs, and perilous mountain +goat-paths in the sand. Chinatown by a thousand eccentricities drew +and held me; I could never have enough of its ambiguous, interracial +atmosphere, as of a vitalised museum; never wonder enough at its +outlandish, necromantic-looking vegetables set forth to sell in +commonplace American shop-windows, its temple doors open and the scent +of the joss-stick streaming forth on the American air, its kites of +Oriental fashion hanging fouled in Western telegraph-wires, its flights +of paper prayers which the trade-wind hunts and dissipates along +Western gutters. I was a frequent wanderer on North Beach, gazing at +the straits, and the huge Cape-Horners creeping out to sea, and imminent +Tamalpais. Thence, on my homeward way, I might visit that strange and +filthy shed, earth-paved and walled with the cages of wild animals and +birds, where at a ramshackle counter, amid the yells of monkeys, and a +poignant atmosphere of menagerie, forty-rod whiskey was administered by +a proprietor as dirty as his beasts. Nor did I even neglect Nob +Hill, which is itself a kind of slum, being the habitat of the mere +millionnaire. There they dwell upon the hill-top, high raised above +man's clamour, and the trade-wind blows between their palaces about +deserted streets. + +But San Francisco is not herself only. She is not only the most +interesting city in the Union, and the hugest smelting-pot of races and +the precious metals. She keeps, besides, the doors of the Pacific, and +is the port of entry to another world and an earlier epoch in man's +history. Nowhere else shall you observe (in the ancient phrase) so many +tall ships as here convene from round the Horn, from China, from Sydney, +and the Indies; but scarce remarked amid that crowd of deep-sea giants, +another class of craft, the Island schooner, circulates: low in the +water, with lofty spars and dainty lines, rigged and fashioned like +a yacht, manned with brown-skinned, soft-spoken, sweet-eyed native +sailors, and equipped with their great double-ender boats that tell a +tale of boisterous sea-beaches. These steal out and in again, unnoted by +the world or even the newspaper press, save for the line in the clearing +column, “Schooner So-and-so for Yap and South Sea Islands”--steal out +with nondescript cargoes of tinned salmon, gin, bolts of gaudy cotton +stuff, women's hats, and Waterbury watches, to return, after a year, +piled as high as to the eaves of the house with copra, or wallowing +deep with the shells of the tortoise or the pearl oyster. To me, in my +character of the Amateur Parisian, this island traffic, and even the +island world, were beyond the bounds of curiosity, and how much more of +knowledge. I stood there on the extreme shore of the West and of to-day. +Seventeen hundred years ago, and seven thousand miles to the east, +a legionary stood, perhaps, upon the wall of Antoninus, and looked +northward toward the mountains of the Picts. For all the interval of +time and space, I, when I looked from the cliff-house on the broad +Pacific, was that man's heir and analogue: each of us standing on the +verge of the Roman Empire (or, as we now call it, Western civilization), +each of us gazing onward into zones unromanised. But I was dull. I +looked rather backward, keeping a kind eye on Paris; and it required a +series of converging incidents to change my attitude of nonchalance for +one of interest, and even longing, which I little dreamed that I should +live to gratify. + +The first of these incidents brought me in acquaintance with a certain +San Francisco character, who had something of a name beyond the limits +of the city, and was known to many lovers of good English. I had +discovered a new slum, a place of precarious, sandy cliffs, deep, sandy +cuttings, solitary, ancient houses, and the butt-ends of streets. It was +already environed. The ranks of the street-lamps threaded it unbroken. +The city, upon all sides of it, was tightly packed, and growled with +traffic. To-day, I do not doubt the very landmarks are all swept away; +but it offered then, within narrow limits, a delightful peace, and (in +the morning, when I chiefly went there) a seclusion almost rural. On a +steep sand-hill, in this neighbourhood, toppled, on the most insecure +foundation, a certain row of houses, each with a bit of garden, and all +(I have to presume) inhabited. Thither I used to mount by a crumbling +footpath, and in front of the last of the houses, would sit down to +sketch. The very first day I saw I was observed, out of the ground-floor +window by a youngish, good-looking fellow, prematurely bald, and with +an expression both lively and engaging. The second, as we were still +the only figures in the landscape, it was no more than natural that +we should nod. The third, he came out fairly from his intrenchments, +praised my sketch, and with the impromptu cordiality of artists carried +me into his apartment; where I sat presently in the midst of a museum of +strange objects,--paddles and battle-clubs and baskets, rough-hewn stone +images, ornaments of threaded shell, cocoanut bowls, snowy cocoanut +plumes--evidences and examples of another earth, another climate, +another race, and another (if a ruder) culture. Nor did these objects +lack a fitting commentary in the conversation of my new acquaintance. +Doubtless you have read his book. You know already how he tramped and +starved, and had so fine a profit of living, in his days among the +islands; and meeting him, as I did, one artist with another, after +months of offices and picnics, you can imagine with what charm he would +speak, and with what pleasure I would hear. It was in such talks, which +we were both eager to repeat, that I first heard the names--first fell +under the spell--of the islands; and it was from one of the first of +them that I returned (a happy man) with _Omoo_ under one arm, and my +friend's own adventures under the other. + +The second incident was more dramatic, and had, besides, a bearing on +my future. I was standing, one day, near a boat-landing under Telegraph +Hill. A large barque, perhaps of eighteen hundred tons, was coming more +than usually close about the point to reach her moorings; and I was +observing her with languid inattention, when I observed two men to +stride across the bulwarks, drop into a shore boat, and, violently +dispossessing the boatman of his oars, pull toward the landing where I +stood. In a surprisingly short time they came tearing up the steps; and +I could see that both were too well dressed to be foremast hands--the +first even with research, and both, and specially the first, appeared +under the empire of some strong emotion. + +“Nearest police office!” cried the leader. + +“This way,” said I, immediately falling in with their precipitate pace. +“What's wrong? What ship is that?” + +“That's the Gleaner,” he replied. “I am chief officer, this gentleman's +third; and we've to get in our depositions before the crew. You see they +might corral us with the captain; and that's no kind of berth for me. +I've sailed with some hard cases in my time, and seen pins flying like +sand on a squally day--but never a match to our old man. It never let +up from the Hook to the Farallones; and the last man was dropped not +sixteen hours ago. Packet rats our men were, and as tough a crowd as +ever sand-bagged a man's head in; but they looked sick enough when the +captain started in with his fancy shooting.” + +“O, he's done up,” observed the other. “He won't go to sea no more.” + +“You make me tired,” retorted his superior. “If he gets ashore in one +piece and isn't lynched in the next ten minutes, he'll do yet. The +owners have a longer memory than the public; they'll stand by him; they +don't find as smart a captain every day in the year.” + +“O, he's a son of a gun of a fine captain; there ain't no doubt of +that,” concurred the other, heartily. “Why, I don't suppose there's been +no wages paid aboard that Gleaner for three trips.” + +“No wages?” I exclaimed, for I was still a novice in maritime affairs. + +“Not to sailor-men before the mast,” agreed the mate. “Men cleared out; +wasn't the soft job they maybe took it for. She isn' the first ship that +never paid wages.” + +I could not but observe that our pace was progressively relaxing; and +indeed I have often wondered since whether the hurry of the start were +not intended for the gallery alone. Certain it is at least, that when we +had reached the police office, and the mates had made their deposition, +and told their horrid tale of five men murdered, some with savage +passion, some with cold brutality, between Sandy Hook and San Francisco, +the police were despatched in time to be too late. Before we arrived, +the ruffian had slipped out upon the dock, had mingled with the crowd, +and found a refuge in the house of an acquaintance; and the ship was +only tenanted by his late victims. Well for him that he had been +thus speedy. For when word began to go abroad among the shore-side +characters, when the last victim was carried by to the hospital, when +those who had escaped (as by miracle) from that floating shambles, +began to circulate and show their wounds in the crowd, it was strange +to witness the agitation that seized and shook that portion of the +city. Men shed tears in public; bosses of lodging-houses, long inured +to brutality, and above all, brutality to sailors, shook their fists at +heaven: if hands could have been laid on the captain of the Gleaner, +his shrift would have been short. That night (so gossip reports) he was +headed up in a barrel and smuggled across the bay: in two ships already +he had braved the penitentiary and the gallows; and yet, by last +accounts, he now commands another on the Western Ocean. + +As I have said, I was never quite certain whether Mr. Nares (the mate) +did not intend that his superior should escape. It would have been like +his preference of loyalty to law; it would have been like his prejudice, +which was all in favour of the after-guard. But it must remain a matter +of conjecture only. Well as I came to know him in the sequel, he was +never communicative on that point, nor indeed on any that concerned the +voyage of the Gleaner. Doubtless he had some reason for his reticence. +Even during our walk to the police office, he debated several times with +Johnson, the third officer, whether he ought not to give up himself, as +well as to denounce the captain. He had decided in the negative, arguing +that “it would probably come to nothing; and even if there was a stink, +he had plenty good friends in San Francisco.” And to nothing it came; +though it must have very nearly come to something, for Mr. Nares +disappeared immediately from view and was scarce less closely hidden +than his captain. + +Johnson, on the other hand, I often met. I could never learn this man's +country; and though he himself claimed to be American, neither his +English nor his education warranted the claim. In all likelihood he +was of Scandinavian birth and blood, long pickled in the forecastles +of English and American ships. It is possible that, like so many of his +race in similar positions, he had already lost his native tongue. In +mind, at least, he was quite denationalised; thought only in English--to +call it so; and though by nature one of the mildest, kindest, and most +feebly playful of mankind, he had been so long accustomed to the cruelty +of sea discipline, that his stories (told perhaps with a giggle) would +sometimes turn me chill. In appearance, he was tall, light of weight, +bold and high-bred of feature, dusky-haired, and with a face of a clean +even brown: the ornament of outdoor men. Seated in a chair, you might +have passed him off for a baronet or a military officer; but let him +rise, and it was Fo'c's'le Jack that came rolling toward you, crab-like; +let him but open his lips, and it was Fo'c's'le Jack that piped and +drawled his ungrammatical gibberish. He had sailed (among other +places) much among the islands; and after a Cape Horn passage with +its snow-squalls and its frozen sheets, he announced his intention of +“taking a turn among them Kanakas.” I thought I should have lost him +soon; but according to the unwritten usage of mariners, he had first to +dissipate his wages. “Guess I'll have to paint this town red,” was his +hyperbolical expression; for sure no man ever embarked upon a milder +course of dissipation, most of his days being passed in the little +parlour behind Black Tom's public house, with a select corps of old +particular acquaintances, all from the South Seas, and all patrons of a +long yarn, a short pipe, and glasses round. + +Black Tom's, to the front, presented the appearance of a fourth-rate +saloon, devoted to Kanaka seamen, dirt, negrohead tobacco, bad cigars, +worse gin, and guitars and banjos in a state of decline. The proprietor, +a powerful coloured man, was at once a publican, a ward politician, +leader of some brigade of “lambs” or “smashers,” at the wind of whose +clubs the party bosses and the mayor were supposed to tremble, and (what +hurt nothing) an active and reliable crimp. His front quarters, +then, were noisy, disreputable, and not even safe. I have seen worse +frequented saloons where there were fewer scandals; for Tom was often +drunk himself; and there is no doubt the Lambs must have been a useful +body, or the place would have been closed. I remember one day, not long +before an election, seeing a blind man, very well dressed, led up to the +counter and remain a long while in consultation with the negro. The pair +looked so ill-assorted, and the awe with which the drinkers fell back +and left them in the midst of an impromptu privacy was so unusual in +such a place, that I turned to my next neighbour with a question. He +told me the blind man was a distinguished party boss, called by some +the King of San Francisco, but perhaps better known by his picturesque +Chinese nickname of the Blind White Devil. “The Lambs must be wanted +pretty bad, I guess,” my informant added. I have here a sketch of the +Blind White Devil leaning on the counter; on the next page, and taken +the same hour, a jotting of Black Tom threatening a whole crowd of +customers with a long Smith and Wesson: to such heights and depths we +rose and fell in the front parts of the saloon. + + +Meanwhile, away in the back quarters, sat the small informal South Sea +club, talking of another world and surely of a different century. Old +schooner captains they were, old South Sea traders, cooks, and mates: +fine creatures, softened by residence among a softer race: full men +besides, though not by reading, but by strange experience; and for days +together I could hear their yarns with an unfading pleasure. All had +indeed some touch of the poetic; for the beach-comber, when not a mere +ruffian, is the poor relation of the artist. Even through Johnson's +inarticulate speech, his “O yes, there ain't no harm in them Kanakas,” + or “O yes, that's a son of a gun of a fine island, mountainious right +down; I didn't never ought to have left that island,” there pierced a +certain gusto of appreciation: and some of the rest were master-talkers. +From their long tales, their traits of character and unpremeditated +landscape, there began to piece itself together in my head some image +of the islands and the island life: precipitous shores, spired mountain +tops, the deep shade of hanging forests, the unresting surf upon the +reef, and the unending peace of the lagoon; sun, moon, and stars of an +imperial brightness; man moving in these scenes scarce fallen, and woman +lovelier than Eve; the primal curse abrogated, the bed made ready for +the stranger, life set to perpetual music, and the guest welcomed, the +boat urged, and the long night beguiled, with poetry and choral song. A +man must have been an unsuccessful artist; he must have starved on the +streets of Paris; he must have been yoked to a commercial force like +Pinkerton, before he can conceive the longings that at times assailed +me. The draughty, rowdy city of San Francisco, the bustling office where +my friend Jim paced like a caged lion daily between ten and four, even +(at times) the retrospect of Paris, faded in comparison. Many a man less +tempted would have thrown up all to realise his visions; but I was by +nature unadventurous and uninitiative: to divert me from all former +paths and send me cruising through the isles of paradise, some force +external to myself must be exerted; Destiny herself must use the fitting +wedge; and little as I deemed it, that tool was already in her hand of +brass. + +I sat, one afternoon, in the corner of a great, glassy, silvered saloon, +a free lunch at my one elbow, at the other a “conscientious nude” from +the brush of local talent; when, with the tramp of feet and a sudden +buzz of voices, the swing-doors were flung broadly open and the place +carried as by storm. The crowd which thus entered (mostly seafaring +men, and all prodigiously excited) contained a sort of kernel or general +centre of interest, which the rest merely surrounded and advertised, as +children in the Old World surround and escort the Punch-and-Judy man; +the word went round the bar like wildfire that these were Captain +Trent and the survivors of the British brig Flying Scud, picked up by a +British war-ship on Midway Island, arrived that morning in San Francisco +Bay, and now fresh from making the necessary declarations. Presently I +had a good sight of them: four brown, seamanlike fellows, standing by +the counter, glass in hand, the centre of a score of questioners. +One was a Kanaka--the cook, I was informed; one carried a cage with a +canary, which occasionally trilled into thin song; one had his left arm +in a sling and looked gentlemanlike, and somewhat sickly, as though +the injury had been severe and he was scarce recovered; and the captain +himself--a red-faced, blue-eyed, thickset man of five and forty--wore +a bandage on his right hand. The incident struck me; I was struck +particularly to see captain, cook, and foremost hands walking the street +and visiting saloons in company; and, as when anything impressed me, +I got my sketch-book out, and began to steal a sketch of the four +castaways. The crowd, sympathising with my design, made a clear lane +across the room; and I was thus enabled, all unobserved myself, to +observe with a still-growing closeness the face and the demeanour of +Captain Trent. + +Warmed by whiskey and encouraged by the eagerness of the bystanders, +that gentleman was now rehearsing the history of his misfortune. It was +but scraps that reached me: how he “filled her on the starboard tack,” + and how “it came up sudden out of the nor'nor'west,” and “there she was, +high and dry.” Sometimes he would appeal to one of the men--“That was +how it was, Jack?”--and the man would reply, “That was the way of it, +Captain Trent.” Lastly, he started a fresh tide of popular sympathy by +enunciating the sentiment, “Damn all these Admirality Charts, and that's +what I say!” From the nodding of heads and the murmurs of assent that +followed, I could see that Captain Trent had established himself in the +public mind as a gentleman and a thorough navigator: about which period, +my sketch of the four men and the canary-bird being finished, and all +(especially the canary-bird) excellent likenesses, I buckled up my book, +and slipped from the saloon. + +Little did I suppose that I was leaving Act I, Scene I, of the drama of +my life; and yet the scene, or rather the captain's face, lingered for +some time in my memory. I was no prophet, as I say; but I was something +else: I was an observer; and one thing I knew, I knew when a man was +terrified. Captain Trent, of the British brig Flying Scud, had been +glib; he had been ready; he had been loud; but in his blue eyes I could +detect the chill, and in the lines of his countenance spy the agitation +of perpetual terror. Was he trembling for his certificate? In my +judgment, it was some livelier kind of fear that thrilled in the man's +marrow as he turned to drink. Was it the result of recent shock, and had +he not yet recovered the disaster to his brig? I remembered how a friend +of mine had been in a railway accident, and shook and started for a +month; and although Captain Trent of the Flying Scud had none of the +appearance of a nervous man, I told myself, with incomplete conviction, +that his must be a similar case. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. THE WRECK OF THE “FLYING SCUD.” + + +The next morning I found Pinkerton, who had risen before me, seated at +our usual table, and deep in the perusal of what I will call the _Daily +Occidental_. This was a paper (I know not if it be so still) that stood +out alone among its brethren in the West; the others, down to their +smallest item, were defaced with capitals, head-lines, alliterations, +swaggering misquotations, and the shoddy picturesque and unpathetic +pathos of the Harry Millers: the _Occidental_ alone appeared to be +written by a dull, sane, Christian gentleman, singly desirous of +communicating knowledge. It had not only this merit, which endeared it +to me, but was admittedly the best informed on business matters, which +attracted Pinkerton. + +“Loudon,” said he, looking up from the journal, “you sometimes think I +have too many irons in the fire. My notion, on the other hand, is, when +you see a dollar lying, pick it up! Well, here I've tumbled over a whole +pile of 'em on a reef in the middle of the Pacific.” + +“Why, Jim, you miserable fellow!” I exclaimed; “haven't we Depew City, +one of God's green centres for this State? haven't we----” + +“Just listen to this,” interrupted Jim. “It's miserable copy; these +_Occidental_ reporter fellows have no fire; but the facts are right +enough, I guess.” And he began to read:-- + +“WRECK OF THE BRITISH BRIG, 'FLYING SCUD.' + +“H.B.M.S. Tempest, which arrived yesterday at this port, brings Captain +Trent and four men of the British brig Flying Scud, cast away February +12th on Midway Island, and most providentially rescued the next day. The +Flying Scud was of 200 tons burthen, owned in London, and has been out +nearly two years tramping. Captain Trent left Hong Kong December 8th, +bound for this port in rice and a small mixed cargo of silks, teas, and +China notions, the whole valued at $10,000, fully covered by insurance. +The log shows plenty of fine weather, with light airs, calms, and +squalls. In lat. 28 N., long. 177 W., his water going rotten, and misled +by Hoyt's _North Pacific Directory_, which informed him there was a +coaling station on the island, Captain Trent put in to Midway Island. +He found it a literal sandbank, surrounded by a coral reef mostly +submerged. Birds were very plenty, there was good fish in the lagoon, +but no firewood; and the water, which could be obtained by digging, +brackish. He found good holding-ground off the north end of the larger +bank in fifteen fathoms water; bottom sandy, with coral patches. Here he +was detained seven days by a calm, the crew suffering severely from the +water, which was gone quite bad; and it was only on the evening of the +12th, that a little wind sprang up, coming puffy out of N.N.E. Late as +it was, Captain Trent immediately weighed anchor and attempted to get +out. While the vessel was beating up to the passage, the wind took a +sudden lull, and then veered squally into N. and even N.N.W., driving +the brig ashore on the sand at about twenty minutes before six o'clock. +John Wallen, a native of Finland, and Charles Holdorsen, a native of +Sweden, were drowned alongside, in attempting to lower a boat, neither +being able to swim, the squall very dark, and the noise of the breakers +drowning everything. At the same time John Brown, another of the crew, +had his arm broken by the falls. Captain Trent further informed the +OCCIDENTAL reporter, that the brig struck heavily at first bows on, he +supposes upon coral; that she then drove over the obstacle, and now +lies in sand, much down by the head and with a list to starboard. In the +first collision she must have sustained some damage, as she was making +water forward. The rice will probably be all destroyed: but the more +valuable part of the cargo is fortunately in the afterhold. Captain +Trent was preparing his long-boat for sea, when the providential arrival +of the Tempest, pursuant to Admiralty orders to call at islands in her +course for castaways, saved the gallant captain from all further danger. +It is scarcely necessary to add that both the officers and men of the +unfortunate vessel speak in high terms of the kindness they received +on board the man-of-war. We print a list of the survivors: Jacob +Trent, master, of Hull, England; Elias Goddedaal, mate, native of +Christiansand, Sweden; Ah Wing, cook, native of Sana, China; John Brown, +native of Glasgow, Scotland; John Hardy, native of London, England. +The Flying Scud is ten years old, and this morning will be sold as she +stands, by order of Lloyd's agent, at public auction for the benefit of +the underwriters. The auction will take place in the Merchants' Exchange +at ten o'clock. + +“Farther Particulars.--Later in the afternoon the OCCIDENTAL reporter +found Lieutenant Sebright, first officer of H.B.M.S. Tempest, at the +Palace Hotel. The gallant officer was somewhat pressed for time, but +confirmed the account given by Captain Trent in all particulars. He +added that the Flying Scud is in an excellent berth, and except in the +highly improbable event of a heavy N.W. gale, might last until next +winter.” + +“You will never know anything of literature,” said I, when Jim had +finished. “That is a good, honest, plain piece of work, and tells the +story clearly. I see only one mistake: the cook is not a Chinaman; he is +a Kanaka, and I think a Hawaiian.” + +“Why, how do you know that?” asked Jim. + +“I saw the whole gang yesterday in a saloon,” said I. “I even heard the +tale, or might have heard it, from Captain Trent himself, who struck me +as thirsty and nervous.” + +“Well, that's neither here nor there,” cried Pinkerton. “The point is, +how about these dollars lying on a reef?” + +“Will it pay?” I asked. + +“Pay like a sugar trust!” exclaimed Pinkerton. “Don't you see what this +British officer says about the safety? Don't you see the cargo's valued +at ten thousand? Schooners are begging just now; I can get my pick of +them at two hundred and fifty a month; and how does that foot up? It +looks like three hundred per cent. to me.” + +“You forget,” I objected, “the captain himself declares the rice is +damaged.” + + +“That's a point, I know,” admitted Jim. “But the rice is the sluggish +article, anyway; it's little more account than ballast; it's the tea +and silks that I look to: all we have to find is the proportion, and one +look at the manifest will settle that. I've rung up Lloyd's on purpose; +the captain is to meet me there in an hour, and then I'll be as posted +on that brig as if I built her. Besides, you've no idea what pickings +there are about a wreck--copper, lead, rigging, anchors, chains, even +the crockery, Loudon!” + +“You seem to me to forget one trifle,” said I. “Before you pick that +wreck, you've got to buy her, and how much will she cost?” + +“One hundred dollars,” replied Jim, with the promptitude of an +automaton. + +“How on earth do you guess that?” I cried. + +“I don't guess; I know it,” answered the Commercial Force. “My dear boy, +I may be a galoot about literature, but you'll always be an outsider in +business. How do you suppose I bought the James L. Moody for two hundred +and fifty, her boats alone worth four times the money? Because my name +stood first in the list. Well it stands there again; I have the naming +of the figure, and I name a small one because of the distance: but it +wouldn't matter what I named; that would be the price.” + +“It sounds mysterious enough,” said I. “Is this public auction +conducted in a subterranean vault? Could a plain citizen--myself, for +instance--come and see?” + +“O, everything's open and above board!” he cried indignantly. “Anybody +can come, only nobody bids against us; and if he did, he would get +frozen out. It's been tried before now, and once was enough. We hold +the plant; we've got the connection; we can afford to go higher than +any outsider; there's two million dollars in the ring; and we stick at +nothing. Or suppose anybody did buy over our head--I tell you, Loudon, +he would think this town gone crazy; he could no more get business +through on the city front than I can dance; schooners, divers, men--all +he wanted--the prices would fly right up and strike him.” + +“But how did you get in?” I asked. “You were once an outsider like your +neighbours, I suppose?” + +“I took hold of that thing, Loudon, and just studied it up,” he replied. +“It took my fancy; it was so romantic, and then I saw there was boodle +in the thing; and I figured on the business till no man alive could give +me points. Nobody knew I had an eye on wrecks till one fine morning I +dropped in upon Douglas B. Longhurst in his den, gave him all the facts +and figures, and put it to him straight: 'Do you want me in this ring? +or shall I start another?' He took half an hour, and when I came back, +'Pink,' says he, 'I've put your name on.' The first time I came to the +top, it was that Moody racket; now it's the Flying Scud.” + +Whereupon Pinkerton, looking at his watch, uttered an exclamation, +made a hasty appointment with myself for the doors of the Merchants' +Exchange, and fled to examine manifests and interview the skipper. I +finished my cigarette with the deliberation of a man at the end of many +picnics; reflecting to myself that of all forms of the dollar hunt, this +wrecking had by far the most address to my imagination. Even as I went +down town, in the brisk bustle and chill of the familiar San Francisco +thoroughfares, I was haunted by a vision of the wreck, baking so far +away in the strong sun, under a cloud of sea-birds; and even then, and +for no better reason, my heart inclined towards the adventure. If not +myself, something that was mine, some one at least in my employment, +should voyage to that ocean-bounded pin-point and descend to that +deserted cabin. + +Pinkerton met me at the appointed moment, pinched of lip and more than +usually erect of bearing, like one conscious of great resolves. + +“Well?” I asked. + +“Well,” said he, “it might be better, and it might be worse. This +Captain Trent is a remarkably honest fellow--one out of a thousand. As +soon as he knew I was in the market, he owned up about the rice in so +many words. By his calculation, if there's thirty mats of it saved, it's +an outside figure. However, the manifest was cheerier. There's about +five thousand dollars of the whole value in silks and teas and nut-oils +and that, all in the lazarette, and as safe as if it was in Kearney +Street. The brig was new coppered a year ago. There's upwards of a +hundred and fifty fathom away-up chain. It's not a bonanza, but there's +boodle in it; and we'll try it on.” + + +It was by that time hard on ten o'clock, and we turned at once into +the place of sale. The Flying Scud, although so important to ourselves, +appeared to attract a very humble share of popular attention. The +auctioneer was surrounded by perhaps a score of lookers-on, big fellows, +for the most part, of the true Western build, long in the leg, broad in +the shoulder, and adorned (to a plain man's taste) with needless finery. +A jaunty, ostentatious comradeship prevailed. Bets were flying, and +nicknames. “The boys” (as they would have called themselves) were very +boyish; and it was plain they were here in mirth, and not on business. +Behind, and certainly in strong contrast to these gentlemen, I could +detect the figure of my friend Captain Trent, come (as I could very well +imagine that a captain would) to hear the last of his old vessel. Since +yesterday, he had rigged himself anew in ready-made black clothes, not +very aptly fitted; the upper left-hand pocket showing a corner of +silk handkerchief, the lower, on the other side, bulging with papers. +Pinkerton had just given this man a high character. Certainly he +seemed to have been very frank, and I looked at him again to trace (if +possible) that virtue in his face. It was red and broad and flustered +and (I thought) false. The whole man looked sick with some unknown +anxiety; and as he stood there, unconscious of my observation, he tore +at his nails, scowled on the floor, or glanced suddenly, sharply, and +fearfully at passers-by. I was still gazing at the man in a kind of +fascination, when the sale began. + +Some preliminaries were rattled through, to the irreverent, +uninterrupted gambolling of the boys; and then, amid a trifle more +attention, the auctioneer sounded for some two or three minutes the pipe +of the charmer. Fine brig--new copper--valuable fittings--three fine +boats--remarkably choice cargo--what the auctioneer would call a +perfectly safe investment; nay, gentlemen, he would go further, he would +put a figure on it: he had no hesitation (had that bold auctioneer) in +putting it in figures; and in his view, what with this and that, and one +thing and another, the purchaser might expect to clear a sum equal to +the entire estimated value of the cargo; or, gentlemen, in other words, +a sum of ten thousand dollars. At this modest computation the +roof immediately above the speaker's head (I suppose, through the +intervention of a spectator of ventriloquial tastes) uttered a clear +“Cock-a-doodle-doo!”--whereat all laughed, the auctioneer himself +obligingly joining. + +“Now, gentlemen, what shall we say?” resumed that gentleman, plainly +ogling Pinkerton,--“what shall we say for this remarkable opportunity?” + +“One hundred dollars,” said Pinkerton. + +“One hundred dollars from Mr. Pinkerton,” went the auctioneer, “one +hundred dollars. No other gentleman inclined to make any advance? One +hundred dollars, only one hundred dollars----” + +The auctioneer was droning on to some such tune as this, and I, on my +part, was watching with something between sympathy and amazement the +undisguised emotion of Captain Trent, when we were all startled by the +interjection of a bid. + +“And fifty,” said a sharp voice. + +Pinkerton, the auctioneer, and the boys, who were all equally in the +open secret of the ring, were now all equally and simultaneously taken +aback. + +“I beg your pardon,” said the auctioneer. “Anybody bid?” + +“And fifty,” reiterated the voice, which I was now able to trace to +its origin, on the lips of a small, unseemly rag of human-kind. The +speaker's skin was gray and blotched; he spoke in a kind of broken song, +with much variety of key; his gestures seemed (as in the disease called +Saint Vitus's dance) to be imperfectly under control; he was badly +dressed; he carried himself with an air of shrinking assumption, as +though he were proud to be where he was and to do what he was doing, +and yet half expected to be called in question and kicked out. I think I +never saw a man more of a piece; and the type was new to me; I had never +before set eyes upon his parallel, and I thought instinctively of Balzac +and the lower regions of the _Comedie Humaine_. + +Pinkerton stared a moment on the intruder with no friendly eye, tore +a leaf from his note-book, and scribbled a line in pencil, turned, +beckoned a messenger boy, and whispered, “To Longhurst.” Next moment +the boy had sped upon his errand, and Pinkerton was again facing the +auctioneer. + +“Two hundred dollars,” said Jim. + +“And fifty,” said the enemy. + + +“This looks lively,” whispered I to Pinkerton. + +“Yes; the little beast means cold drawn biz,” returned my friend. “Well, +he'll have to have a lesson. Wait till I see Longhurst. Three hundred,” + he added aloud. + +“And fifty,” came the echo. + +It was about this moment when my eye fell again on Captain Trent. +A deeper shade had mounted to his crimson face: the new coat was +unbuttoned and all flying open; the new silk handkerchief in busy +requisition; and the man's eye, of a clear sailor blue, shone glassy +with excitement. He was anxious still, but now (if I could read a face) +there was hope in his anxiety. + +“Jim,” I whispered, “look at Trent. Bet you what you please he was +expecting this.” + +“Yes,” was the reply, “there's some blame' thing going on here.” And he +renewed his bid. + +The figure had run up into the neighbourhood of a thousand when I +was aware of a sensation in the faces opposite, and looking over my +shoulder, saw a very large, bland, handsome man come strolling forth and +make a little signal to the auctioneer. + +“One word, Mr. Borden,” said he; and then to Jim, “Well, Pink, where are +we up to now?” + +Pinkerton gave him the figure. “I ran up to that on my own +responsibility, Mr. Longhurst,” he added, with a flush. “I thought it +the square thing.” + +“And so it was,” said Mr. Longhurst, patting him kindly on the shoulder, +like a gratified uncle. “Well, you can drop out now; we take hold +ourselves. You can run it up to five thousand; and if he likes to go +beyond that, he's welcome to the bargain.” + +“By the by, who is he?” asked Pinkerton. “He looks away down.” + +“I've sent Billy to find out.” And at the very moment Mr. Longhurst +received from the hands of one of the expensive young gentlemen a folded +paper. It was passed round from one to another till it came to me, and I +read: “Harry D. Bellairs, Attorney-at-Law; defended Clara Varden; twice +nearly disbarred.” + +“Well, that gets me!” observed Mr. Longhurst. “Who can have put up a +shyster [1] like that? Nobody with money, that's a sure thing. Suppose +you tried a big bluff? I think I would, Pink. Well, ta-ta! Your partner, +Mr. Dodd? Happy to have the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir.” And the +great man withdrew. + +[1] A low lawyer. + +“Well, what do you think of Douglas B.?” whispered Pinkerton, looking +reverently after him as he departed. “Six foot of perfect gentleman and +culture to his boots.” + +During this interview the auction had stood transparently arrested, the +auctioneer, the spectators, and even Bellairs, all well aware that Mr. +Longhurst was the principal, and Jim but a speaking-trumpet. But now +that the Olympian Jupiter was gone, Mr. Borden thought proper to affect +severity. + +“Come, come, Mr. Pinkerton. Any advance?” he snapped. + +And Pinkerton, resolved on the big bluff, replied, “Two thousand +dollars.” + +Bellairs preserved his composure. “And fifty,” said he. But there was a +stir among the onlookers, and what was of more importance, Captain Trent +had turned pale and visibly gulped. + +“Pitch it in again, Jim,” said I. “Trent is weakening.” + +“Three thousand,” said Jim. + +“And fifty,” said Bellairs. + +And then the bidding returned to its original movement by hundreds and +fifties; but I had been able in the meanwhile to draw two conclusions. +In the first place, Bellairs had made his last advance with a smile of +gratified vanity; and I could see the creature was glorying in the kudos +of an unusual position and secure of ultimate success. In the second, +Trent had once more changed colour at the thousand leap, and his relief, +when he heard the answering fifty was manifest and unaffected. Here then +was a problem: both were presumably in the same interest, yet the one +was not in the confidence of the other. Nor was this all. A few bids +later it chanced that my eye encountered that of Captain Trent, and his, +which glittered with excitement, was instantly, and I thought guiltily, +withdrawn. He wished, then, to conceal his interest? As Jim had said, +there was some blamed thing going on. And for certain, here were these +two men, so strangely united, so strangely divided, both sharp-set to +keep the wreck from us, and that at an exorbitant figure. + +Was the wreck worth more than we supposed? A sudden heat was kindled +in my brain; the bids were nearing Longhurst's limit of five thousand; +another minute, and all would be too late. Tearing a leaf from my +sketch-book, and inspired (I suppose) by vanity in my own powers of +inference and observation, I took the one mad decision of my life. “If +you care to go ahead,” I wrote, “I'm in for all I'm worth.” + +Jim read and looked round at me like one bewildered; then his eyes +lightened, and turning again to the auctioneer, he bid, “Five thousand +one hundred dollars.” + +“And fifty,” said monotonous Bellairs. + +Presently Pinkerton scribbled, “What can it be?” and I answered, still +on paper: “I can't imagine; but there's something. Watch Bellairs; he'll +go up to the ten thousand, see if he don't.” + +And he did, and we followed. Long before this, word had gone abroad that +there was battle royal: we were surrounded by a crowd that looked on +wondering; and when Pinkerton had offered ten thousand dollars (the +outside value of the cargo, even were it safe in San Francisco Bay) +and Bellairs, smirking from ear to ear to be the centre of so much +attention, had jerked out his answering, “And fifty,” wonder deepened to +excitement. + +“Ten thousand one hundred,” said Jim; and even as he spoke he made a +sudden gesture with his hand, his face changed, and I could see that he +had guessed, or thought that he had guessed, the mystery. As he +scrawled another memorandum in his note-book, his hand shook like a +telegraph-operator's. + +“Chinese ship,” ran the legend; and then, in big, tremulous half-text, +and with a flourish that overran the margin, “Opium!” + +To be sure! thought I: this must be the secret. I knew that scarce a +ship came in from any Chinese port, but she carried somewhere, behind a +bulkhead, or in some cunning hollow of the beams, a nest of the valuable +poison. Doubtless there was some such treasure on the Flying Scud. How +much was it worth? We knew not, we were gambling in the dark; but Trent +knew, and Bellairs; and we could only watch and judge. + +By this time neither Pinkerton nor I were of sound mind. Pinkerton was +beside himself, his eyes like lamps. I shook in every member. To any +stranger entering (say) in the course of the fifteenth thousand, we +should probably have cut a poorer figure than Bellairs himself. But we +did not pause; and the crowd watched us, now in silence, now with a buzz +of whispers. + +Seventeen thousand had been reached, when Douglas B. Longhurst, forcing +his way into the opposite row of faces, conspicuously and repeatedly +shook his head at Jim. Jim's answer was a note of two words: “My +racket!” which, when the great man had perused, he shook his finger +warningly and departed, I thought, with a sorrowful countenance. + +Although Mr. Longhurst knew nothing of Bellairs, the shady lawyer knew +all about the Wrecker Boss. He had seen him enter the ring with manifest +expectation; he saw him depart, and the bids continue, with manifest +surprise and disappointment. “Hullo,” he plainly thought, “this is not +the ring I'm fighting, then?” And he determined to put on a spurt. + +“Eighteen thousand,” said he. + +“And fifty,” said Jim, taking a leaf out of his adversary's book. + +“Twenty thousand,” from Bellairs. + +“And fifty,” from Jim, with a little nervous titter. + +And with one consent they returned to the old pace, only now it was +Bellairs who took the hundreds, and Jim who did the fifty business. But +by this time our idea had gone abroad. I could hear the word “opium” + pass from mouth to mouth; and by the looks directed at us, I could see +we were supposed to have some private information. And here an incident +occurred highly typical of San Francisco. Close at my back there had +stood for some time a stout, middle-aged gentleman, with pleasant eyes, +hair pleasantly grizzled, and a ruddy, pleasing face. All of a sudden he +appeared as a third competitor, skied the Flying Scud with four fat +bids of a thousand dollars each, and then as suddenly fled the field, +remaining thenceforth (as before) a silent, interested spectator. + +Ever since Mr. Longhurst's useless intervention, Bellairs had seemed +uneasy; and at this new attack, he began (in his turn) to scribble a +note between the bids. I imagined naturally enough that it would go to +Captain Trent; but when it was done, and the writer turned and looked +behind him in the crowd, to my unspeakable amazement, he did not seem to +remark the captain's presence. + +“Messenger boy, messenger boy!” I heard him say. “Somebody call me a +messenger boy.” + +At last somebody did, but it was not the captain. + +“He's sending for instructions,” I wrote to Pinkerton. + +“For money,” he wrote back. “Shall I strike out? I think this is the +time.” + +I nodded. + +“Thirty thousand,” said Pinkerton, making a leap of close upon three +thousand dollars. + +I could see doubt in Bellairs's eye; then, sudden resolution. +“Thirty-five thousand,” said he. + +“Forty thousand,” said Pinkerton. + +There was a long pause, during which Bellairs's countenance was as +a book; and then, not much too soon for the impending hammer, “Forty +thousand and five dollars,” said he. + +Pinkerton and I exchanged eloquent glances. We were of one mind. +Bellairs had tried a bluff; now he perceived his mistake, and was +bidding against time; he was trying to spin out the sale until the +messenger boy returned. + +“Forty-five thousand dollars,” said Pinkerton: his voice was like a +ghost's and tottered with emotion. + +“Forty-five thousand and five dollars,” said Bellairs. + +“Fifty thousand,” said Pinkerton. + +“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pinkerton. Did I hear you make an advance, sir?” + asked the auctioneer. + +“I--I have a difficulty in speaking,” gasped Jim. “It's fifty thousand, +Mr. Borden.” + +Bellairs was on his feet in a moment. “Auctioneer,” he said, “I have to +beg the favour of three moments at the telephone. In this matter, I am +acting on behalf of a certain party to whom I have just written----” + +“I have nothing to do with any of this,” said the auctioneer, brutally. +“I am here to sell this wreck. Do you make any advance on fifty +thousand?” + +“I have the honour to explain to you, sir,” returned Bellairs, with a +miserable assumption of dignity. “Fifty thousand was the figure named by +my principal; but if you will give me the small favour of two moments at +the telephone--” + +“O, nonsense!” said the auctioneer. “If you make no advance, I'll knock +it down to Mr. Pinkerton.” + +“I warn you,” cried the attorney, with sudden shrillness. “Have a care +what you're about. You are here to sell for the underwriters, let me +tell you--not to act for Mr. Douglas Longhurst. This sale has been +already disgracefully interrupted to allow that person to hold a +consultation with his minions. It has been much commented on.” + +“There was no complaint at the time,” said the auctioneer, manifestly +discountenanced. “You should have complained at the time.” + +“I am not here to conduct this sale,” replied Bellairs; “I am not paid +for that.” + +“Well, I am, you see,” retorted the auctioneer, his impudence quite +restored; and he resumed his sing-song. “Any advance on fifty thousand +dollars? No advance on fifty thousand? No advance, gentlemen? Going at +fifty thousand, the wreck of the brig Flying Scud--going--going--gone!” + +“My God, Jim, can we pay the money?” I cried, as the stroke of the +hammer seemed to recall me from a dream. + +“It's got to be raised,” said he, white as a sheet. “It'll be a hell of +a strain, Loudon. The credit's good for it, I think; but I shall have to +get around. Write me a cheque for your stuff. Meet me at the Occidental +in an hour.” + +I wrote my cheque at a desk, and I declare I could never have recognised +my signature. Jim was gone in a moment; Trent had vanished even earlier; +only Bellairs remained exchanging insults with the auctioneer; and, +behold! as I pushed my way out of the exchange, who should run full tilt +into my arms, but the messenger boy? + +It was by so near a margin that we became the owners of the Flying Scud. + + + + +CHAPTER X. IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH. + + +At the door of the exchange I found myself along-side of the short, +middle-aged gentleman who had made an appearance, so vigorous and so +brief, in the great battle. + +“Congratulate you, Mr. Dodd,” he said. “You and your friend stuck to +your guns nobly.” + +“No thanks to you, sir,” I replied, “running us up a thousand at a time, +and tempting all the speculators in San Francisco to come and have a +try.” + +“O, that was temporary insanity,” said he; “and I thank the higher +powers I am still a free man. Walking this way, Mr. Dodd? I'll walk +along with you. It's pleasant for an old fogy like myself to see the +young bloods in the ring; I've done some pretty wild gambles in my time +in this very city, when it was a smaller place and I was a younger man. +Yes, I know you, Mr. Dodd. By sight, I may say I know you extremely +well, you and your followers, the fellows in the kilts, eh? Pardon me. +But I have the misfortune to own a little box on the Saucelito shore. +I'll be glad to see you there any Sunday--without the fellows in kilts, +you know; and I can give you a bottle of wine, and show you the best +collection of Arctic voyages in the States. Morgan is my name--Judge +Morgan--a Welshman and a forty-niner.” + +“O, if you're a pioneer,” cried I, “come to me and I'll provide you with +an axe.” + +“You'll want your axes for yourself, I fancy,” he returned, with one +of his quick looks. “Unless you have private knowledge, there will be a +good deal of rather violent wrecking to do before you find that--opium, +do you call it?” + +“Well, it's either opium, or we are stark, staring mad,” I replied. “But +I assure you we have no private information. We went in (as I suppose +you did yourself) on observation.” + +“An observer, sir?” inquired the judge. + +“I may say it is my trade--or, rather, was,” said I. + +“Well now, and what did you think of Bellairs?” he asked. + +“Very little indeed,” said I. + +“I may tell you,” continued the judge, “that to me, the employment of a +fellow like that appears inexplicable. I knew him; he knows me, too; he +has often heard from me in court; and I assure you the man is utterly +blown upon; it is not safe to trust him with a dollar; and here we find +him dealing up to fifty thousand. I can't think who can have so trusted +him, but I am very sure it was a stranger in San Francisco.” + +“Some one for the owners, I suppose,” said I. + +“Surely not!” exclaimed the judge. “Owners in London can have nothing +to say to opium smuggled between Hong Kong and San Francisco. I should +rather fancy they would be the last to hear of it--until the ship was +seized. No; I was thinking of the captain. But where would he get the +money? above all, after having laid out so much to buy the stuff in +China? Unless, indeed, he were acting for some one in 'Frisco; and in +that case--here we go round again in the vicious circle--Bellairs would +not have been employed.” + +“I think I can assure you it was not the captain,” said I; “for he and +Bellairs are not acquainted.” + +“Wasn't that the captain with the red face and coloured handkerchief? +He seemed to me to follow Bellairs's game with the most thrilling +interest,” objected Mr. Morgan. + +“Perfectly true,” said I; “Trent is deeply interested; he very likely +knew Bellairs, and he certainly knew what he was there for; but I can +put my hand in the fire that Bellairs didn't know Trent.” + +“Another singularity,” observed the judge. “Well, we have had a capital +forenoon. But you take an old lawyer's advice, and get to Midway Island +as fast as you can. There's a pot of money on the table, and Bellairs +and Co. are not the men to stick at trifles.” + +With this parting counsel Judge Morgan shook hands and made off along +Montgomery Street, while I entered the Occidental Hotel, on the steps of +which we had finished our conversation. I was well known to the clerks, +and as soon as it was understood that I was there to wait for Pinkerton +and lunch, I was invited to a seat inside the counter. Here, then, in a +retired corner, I was beginning to come a little to myself after these +so violent experiences, when who should come hurrying in, and (after a +moment with a clerk) fly to one of the telephone boxes but Mr. Henry +D. Bellairs in person? Call it what you will, but the impulse was +irresistible, and I rose and took a place immediately at the man's back. +It may be some excuse that I had often practised this very innocent +form of eavesdropping upon strangers, and for fun. Indeed, I scarce know +anything that gives a lower view of man's intelligence than to overhear +(as you thus do) one side of a communication. + +“Central,” said the attorney, “2241 and 584 B” (or some such +numbers)--“Who's that?--All right--Mr. Bellairs--Occidental; the wires +are fouled in the other place--Yes, about three minutes--Yes--Yes--Your +figure, I am sorry to say--No--I had no authority--Neither more +nor less--I have every reason to suppose so--O, Pinkerton, Montana +Block--Yes--Yes--Very good, sir--As you will, sir--Disconnect 584 B.” + +Bellairs turned to leave; at sight of me behind him, up flew his hands, +and he winced and cringed, as though in fear of bodily attack. “O, it's +you!” he cried; and then, somewhat recovered, “Mr. Pinkerton's partner, +I believe? I am pleased to see you, sir--to congratulate you on your +late success.” And with that he was gone, obsequiously bowing as he +passed. + +And now a madcap humour came upon me. It was plain Bellairs had been +communicating with his principal; I knew the number, if not the name; +should I ring up at once, it was more than likely he would return +in person to the telephone; why should not I dash (vocally) into the +presence of this mysterious person, and have some fun for my money. I +pressed the bell. + +“Central,” said I, “connect again 2241 and 584 B.” + +A phantom central repeated the numbers; there was a pause, and then +“Two two four one,” came in a tiny voice into my ear--a voice with the +English sing-song--the voice plainly of a gentleman. “Is that you again, +Mr. Bellairs?” it trilled. “I tell you it's no use. Is that you, Mr. +Bellairs? Who is that?” + +“I only want to put a single question,” said I, civilly. “Why do you +want to buy the Flying Scud?” + +No answer came. The telephone vibrated and hummed in miniature with all +the numerous talk of a great city; but the voice of 2241 was silent. +Once and twice I put my question; but the tiny, sing-song English voice, +I heard no more. The man, then, had fled? fled from an impertinent +question? It scarce seemed natural to me; unless on the principle that +the wicked fleeth when no man pursueth. I took the telephone list and +turned the number up: “2241, Mrs. Keane, res. 942 Mission Street.” And +that, short of driving to the house and renewing my impertinence in +person, was all that I could do. + +Yet, as I resumed my seat in the corner of the office, I was conscious +of a new element of the uncertain, the underhand, perhaps even the +dangerous, in our adventure; and there was now a new picture in my +mental gallery, to hang beside that of the wreck under its canopy of +sea-birds and of Captain Trent mopping his red brow--the picture of a +man with a telephone dice-box to his ear, and at the small voice of a +single question, struck suddenly as white as ashes. + +From these considerations I was awakened by the striking of the clock. +An hour and nearly twenty minutes had elapsed since Pinkerton departed +for the money: he was twenty minutes behind time; and to me who knew so +well his gluttonous despatch of business and had so frequently admired +his iron punctuality, the fact spoke volumes. The twenty minutes slowly +stretched into an hour; the hour had nearly extended to a second; and +I still sat in my corner of the office, or paced the marble pavement of +the hall, a prey to the most wretched anxiety and penitence. The hour +for lunch was nearly over before I remembered that I had not eaten. +Heaven knows I had no appetite; but there might still be much to do--it +was needful I should keep myself in proper trim, if it were only to +digest the now too probable bad news; and leaving word at the office for +Pinkerton, I sat down to table and called for soup, oysters, and a pint +of champagne. + +I was not long set, before my friend returned. He looked pale and rather +old, refused to hear of food, and called for tea. + +“I suppose all's up?” said I, with an incredible sinking. + +“No,” he replied; “I've pulled it through, Loudon; just pulled it +through. I couldn't have raised another cent in all 'Frisco. People +don't like it; Longhurst even went back on me; said he wasn't a +three-card-monte man.” + +“Well, what's the odds?” said I. “That's all we wanted, isn't it?” + +“Loudon, I tell you I've had to pay blood for that money,” cried my +friend, with almost savage energy and gloom. “It's all on ninety days, +too; I couldn't get another day--not another day. If we go ahead with +this affair, Loudon, you'll have to go yourself and make the fur fly. +I'll stay of course--I've got to stay and face the trouble in this city; +though, I tell you, I just long to go. I would show these fat brutes of +sailors what work was; I would be all through that wreck and out at the +other end, before they had boosted themselves upon the deck! But you'll +do your level best, Loudon; I depend on you for that. You must be all +fire and grit and dash from the word 'go.' That schooner and the boodle +on board of her are bound to be here before three months, or it's B. U. +S. T.--bust.” + +“I'll swear I'll do my best, Jim; I'll work double tides,” said I. “It +is my fault that you are in this thing, and I'll get you out again or +kill myself. But what is that you say? 'If we go ahead?' Have we any +choice, then?” + +“I'm coming to that,” said Jim. “It isn't that I doubt the investment. +Don't blame yourself for that; you showed a fine, sound business +instinct: I always knew it was in you, but then it ripped right out. I +guess that little beast of an attorney knew what he was doing; and he +wanted nothing better than to go beyond. No, there's profit in the deal; +it's not that; it's these ninety-day bills, and the strain I've given +the credit, for I've been up and down, borrowing, and begging and +bribing to borrow. I don't believe there's another man but me in +'Frisco,” he cried, with a sudden fervor of self admiration, “who could +have raised that last ten thousand!--Then there's another thing. I had +hoped you might have peddled that opium through the islands, which is +safer and more profitable. But with this three-month limit, you must +make tracks for Honolulu straight, and communicate by steamer. I'll +try to put up something for you there; I'll have a man spoken to who's +posted on that line of biz. Keep a bright lookout for him as soon's you +make the islands; for it's on the cards he might pick you up at sea in a +whaleboat or a steam-launch, and bring the dollars right on board.” + +It shows how much I had suffered morally during my sojourn in San +Francisco, that even now when our fortunes trembled in the balance, +I should have consented to become a smuggler and (of all things) a +smuggler of opium. Yet I did, and that in silence; without a protest, +not without a twinge. + +“And suppose,” said I, “suppose the opium is so securely hidden that I +can't get hands on it?” + +“Then you will stay there till that brig is kindling-wood, and stay +and split that kindling-wood with your penknife,” cried Pinkerton. “The +stuff is there; we know that; and it must be found. But all this is +only the one string to our bow--though I tell you I've gone into it +head-first, as if it was our bottom dollar. Why, the first thing I +did before I'd raised a cent, and with this other notion in my head +already--the first thing I did was to secure the schooner. The Nora +Creina, she is, sixty-four tons, quite big enough for our purpose since +the rice is spoiled, and the fastest thing of her tonnage out of San +Francisco. For a bonus of two hundred, and a monthly charter of three, I +have her for my own time; wages and provisions, say four hundred more: a +drop in the bucket. They began firing the cargo out of her (she was part +loaded) near two hours ago; and about the same time John Smith got the +order for the stores. That's what I call business.” + +“No doubt of that,” said I. “But the other notion?” + + +“Well, here it is,” said Jim. “You agree with me that Bellairs was ready +to go higher?” + +I saw where he was coming. “Yes--and why shouldn't he?” said I. “Is +that the line?” + +“That's the line, Loudon Dodd,” assented Jim. “If Bellairs and his +principal have any desire to go me better, I'm their man.” + +A sudden thought, a sudden fear, shot into my mind. What if I had been +right? What if my childish pleasantry had frightened the principal +away, and thus destroyed our chance? Shame closed my mouth; I began +instinctively a long course of reticence; and it was without a word +of my meeting with Bellairs, or my discovery of the address in Mission +Street, that I continued the discussion. + +“Doubtless fifty thousand was originally mentioned as a round sum,” said +I, “or at least, so Bellairs supposed. But at the same time it may be an +outside sum; and to cover the expenses we have already incurred for the +money and the schooner--I am far from blaming you; I see how needful +it was to be ready for either event--but to cover them we shall want a +rather large advance.” + +“Bellairs will go to sixty thousand; it's my belief, if he were properly +handled, he would take the hundred,” replied Pinkerton. “Look back on +the way the sale ran at the end.” + +“That is my own impression as regards Bellairs,” I admitted. “The point I +am trying to make is that Bellairs himself may be mistaken; that what he +supposed to be a round sum was really an outside figure.” + +“Well, Loudon, if that is so,” said Jim, with extraordinary gravity of +face and voice, “if that is so, let him take the Flying Scud at fifty +thousand, and joy go with her! I prefer the loss.” + +“Is that so, Jim? Are we dipped as bad as that?” I cried. + +“We've put our hand farther out than we can pull it in again, Loudon,” + he replied. “Why, man, that fifty thousand dollars, before we get clear +again, will cost us nearer seventy. Yes, it figures up overhead to more +than ten per cent a month; and I could do no better, and there isn't +the man breathing could have done as well. It was a miracle, Loudon. I +couldn't but admire myself. O, if we had just the four months! And you +know, Loudon, it may still be done. With your energy and charm, if the +worst comes to the worst, you can run that schooner as you ran one +of your picnics; and we may have luck. And, O, man! if we do pull it +through, what a dashing operation it will be! What an advertisement! +what a thing to talk of, and remember all our lives! However,” he +broke off suddenly, “we must try the safe thing first. Here's for the +shyster!” + +There was another struggle in my mind, whether I should even now admit +my knowledge of the Mission Street address. But I had let the favourable +moment slip. I had now, which made it the more awkward, not merely the +original discovery, but my late suppression to confess. I could not help +reasoning, besides, that the more natural course was to approach the +principal by the road of his agent's office; and there weighed upon my +spirits a conviction that we were already too late, and that the man +was gone two hours ago. Once more, then, I held my peace; and after an +exchange of words at the telephone to assure ourselves he was at home, +we set out for the attorney's office. + +The endless streets of any American city pass, from one end to another, +through strange degrees and vicissitudes of splendour and distress, +running under the same name between monumental warehouses, the dens +and taverns of thieves, and the sward and shrubbery of villas. In San +Francisco, the sharp inequalities of the ground, and the sea bordering +on so many sides, greatly exaggerate these contrasts. The street for +which we were now bound took its rise among blowing sands, somewhere in +view of the Lone Mountain Cemetery; ran for a term across that rather +windy Olympus of Nob Hill, or perhaps just skirted its frontier; passed +almost immediately after through a stage of little houses, rather +impudently painted, and offering to the eye of the observer this +diagnostic peculiarity, that the huge brass plates upon the small and +highly coloured doors bore only the first names of ladies--Norah or Lily +or Florence; traversed China Town, where it was doubtless undermined +with opium cellars, and its blocks pierced, after the similitude of +rabbit-warrens, with a hundred doors and passages and galleries; enjoyed +a glimpse of high publicity at the corner of Kearney; and proceeded, +among dives and warehouses, towards the City Front and the region of the +water-rats. In this last stage of its career, where it was both grimy +and solitary, and alternately quiet and roaring to the wheels of drays, +we found a certain house of some pretension to neatness, and furnished +with a rustic outside stair. On the pillar of the stair a black +plate bore in gilded lettering this device: “Harry D. Bellairs, +Attorney-at-law. Consultations, 9 to 6.” On ascending the stairs, a door +was found to stand open on the balcony, with this further inscription, +“Mr. Bellairs In.” + +“I wonder what we do next,” said I. + +“Guess we sail right in,” returned Jim, and suited the action to the +word. + +The room in which we found ourselves was clean, but extremely bare. A +rather old-fashioned secretaire stood by the wall, with a chair drawn to +the desk; in one corner was a shelf with half-a-dozen law books; and +I can remember literally not another stick of furniture. One inference +imposed itself: Mr. Bellairs was in the habit of sitting down himself +and suffering his clients to stand. At the far end, and veiled by a +curtain of red baize, a second door communicated with the interior of +the house. Hence, after some coughing and stamping, we elicited the +shyster, who came timorously forth, for all the world like a man in fear +of bodily assault, and then, recognising his guests, suffered from what +I can only call a nervous paroxysm of courtesy. + +“Mr. Pinkerton and partner!” said he. “I will go and fetch you seats.” + +“Not the least,” said Jim. “No time. Much rather stand. This is +business, Mr. Bellairs. This morning, as you know, I bought the wreck, +Flying Scud.” + +The lawyer nodded. + +“And bought her,” pursued my friend, “at a figure out of all proportion +to the cargo and the circumstances, as they appeared?” + +“And now you think better of it, and would like to be off with your +bargain? I have been figuring upon this,” returned the lawyer. “My +client, I will not hide from you, was displeased with me for putting her +so high. I think we were both too heated, Mr. Pinkerton: rivalry--the +spirit of competition. But I will be quite frank--I know when I am +dealing with gentlemen--and I am almost certain, if you leave the matter +in my hands, my client would relieve you of the bargain, so as you would +lose”--he consulted our faces with gimlet-eyed calculation--“nothing,” + he added shrilly. + +And here Pinkerton amazed me. + +“That's a little too thin,” said he. “I have the wreck. I know there's +boodle in her, and I mean to keep her. What I want is some points which +may save me needless expense, and which I'm prepared to pay for, money +down. The thing for you to consider is just this: am I to deal with you +or direct with your principal? If you are prepared to give me the facts +right off, why, name your figure. Only one thing!” added Jim, holding a +finger up, “when I say 'money down,' I mean bills payable when the ship +returns, and if the information proves reliable. I don't buy pigs in +pokes.” + +I had seen the lawyer's face light up for a moment, and then, at the +sound of Jim's proviso, miserably fade. “I guess you know more about +this wreck than I do, Mr. Pinkerton,” said he. “I only know that I was +told to buy the thing, and tried, and couldn't.” + +“What I like about you, Mr. Bellairs, is that you waste no time,” said +Jim. “Now then, your client's name and address.” + +“On consideration,” replied the lawyer, with indescribable furtivity, +“I cannot see that I am entitled to communicate my client's name. I +will sound him for you with pleasure, if you care to instruct me; but I +cannot see that I can give you his address.” + +“Very well,” said Jim, and put his hat on. “Rather a strong step, isn't +it?” (Between every sentence was a clear pause.) “Not think better of +it? Well, come--call it a dollar?” + +“Mr. Pinkerton, sir!” exclaimed the offended attorney; and, indeed, I +myself was almost afraid that Jim had mistaken his man and gone too far. + +“No present use for a dollar?” says Jim. “Well, look here, Mr. Bellairs: +we're both busy men, and I'll go to my outside figure with you right +away--” + +“Stop this, Pinkerton,” I broke in. “I know the address: 924 Mission +Street.” + + +I do not know whether Pinkerton or Bellairs was the more taken aback. + +“Why in snakes didn't you say so, Loudon?” cried my friend. + +“You didn't ask for it before,” said I, colouring to my temples under +his troubled eyes. + +It was Bellairs who broke silence, kindly supplying me with all that +I had yet to learn. “Since you know Mr. Dickson's address,” said +he, plainly burning to be rid of us, “I suppose I need detain you no +longer.” + +I do not know how Pinkerton felt, but I had death in my soul as we came +down the outside stair, from the den of this blotched spider. My whole +being was strung, waiting for Jim's first question, and prepared to +blurt out, I believe, almost with tears, a full avowal. But my friend +asked nothing. + +“We must hack it,” said he, tearing off in the direction of the nearest +stand. “No time to be lost. You saw how I changed ground. No use in +paying the shyster's commission.” + +Again I expected a reference to my suppression; again I was +disappointed. It was plain Jim feared the subject, and I felt I almost +hated him for that fear. At last, when we were already in the hack and +driving towards Mission Street, I could bear my suspense no longer. + +“You do not ask me about that address,” said I. + +“No,” said he, quickly and timidly. “What was it? I would like to know.” + +The note of timidity offended me like a buffet; my temper rose as hot as +mustard. “I must request you do not ask me,” said I. “It is a matter I +cannot explain.” + +The moment the foolish words were said, that moment I would have given +worlds to recall them: how much more, when Pinkerton, patting my hand, +replied: “All right, dear boy; not another word; that's all done. I'm +convinced it's perfectly right.” To return upon the subject was beyond +my courage; but I vowed inwardly that I should do my utmost in the +future for this mad speculation, and that I would cut myself in pieces +before Jim should lose one dollar. + +We had no sooner arrived at the address than I had other things to think +of. + +“Mr. Dickson? He's gone,” said the landlady. + +Where had he gone? + +“I'm sure I can't tell you,” she answered. “He was quite a stranger to +me.” + +“Did he express his baggage, ma'am?” asked Pinkerton. + +“Hadn't any,” was the reply. “He came last night and left again to-day +with a satchel.” + +“When did he leave?” I inquired. + +“It was about noon,” replied the landlady. “Some one rang up the +telephone, and asked for him; and I reckon he got some news, for he +left right away, although his rooms were taken by the week. He seemed +considerable put out: I reckon it was a death.” + +My heart sank; perhaps my idiotic jest had indeed driven him away; +and again I asked myself, Why? and whirled for a moment in a vortex of +untenable hypotheses. + +“What was he like, ma'am?” Pinkerton was asking, when I returned to +consciousness of my surroundings. + +“A clean shaved man,” said the woman, and could be led or driven into no +more significant description. + +“Pull up at the nearest drug-store,” said Pinkerton to the driver; and +when there, the telephone was put in operation, and the message sped to +the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's office--this was in the days +before Spreckels had arisen--“When does the next China steamer touch at +Honolulu?” + +“The City of Pekin; she cast off the dock to-day, at half-past one,” + came the reply. + +“It's a clear case of bolt,” said Jim. “He's skipped, or my name's not +Pinkerton. He's gone to head us off at Midway Island.” + +Somehow I was not so sure; there were elements in the case, not known +to Pinkerton--the fears of the captain, for example--that inclined me +otherwise; and the idea that I had terrified Mr. Dickson into flight, +though resting on so slender a foundation, clung obstinately in my mind. +“Shouldn't we see the list of passengers?” I asked. + +“Dickson is such a blamed common name,” returned Jim; “and then, as like +as not, he would change it.” + +At this I had another intuition. A negative of a street scene, taken +unconsciously when I was absorbed in other thought, rose in my memory +with not a feature blurred: a view, from Bellairs's door as we were +coming down, of muddy roadway, passing drays, matted telegraph wires, +a Chinaboy with a basket on his head, and (almost opposite) a corner +grocery with the name of Dickson in great gilt letters. + +“Yes,” said I, “you are right; he would change it. And anyway, I don't +believe it was his name at all; I believe he took it from a corner +grocery beside Bellairs's.” + +“As like as not,” said Jim, still standing on the sidewalk with +contracted brows. + +“Well, what shall we do next?” I asked. + +“The natural thing would be to rush the schooner,” he replied. “But I +don't know. I telephoned the captain to go at it head down and heels in +air; he answered like a little man; and I guess he's getting around. I +believe, Loudon, we'll give Trent a chance. Trent was in it; he was +in it up to the neck; even if he couldn't buy, he could give us the +straight tip.” + +“I think so, too,” said I. “Where shall we find him?” + +“British consulate, of course,” said Jim. “And that's another reason for +taking him first. We can hustle that schooner up all evening; but when +the consulate's shut, it's shut.” + +At the consulate, we learned that Captain Trent had alighted (such is I +believe the classic phrase) at the What Cheer House. To that large and +unaristocratic hostelry we drove, and addressed ourselves to a large +clerk, who was chewing a toothpick and looking straight before him. + +“Captain Jacob Trent?” + +“Gone,” said the clerk. + +“Where has he gone?” asked Pinkerton. + +“Cain't say,” said the clerk. + +“When did he go?” I asked. + +“Don't know,” said the clerk, and with the simplicity of a monarch +offered us the spectacle of his broad back. + +What might have happened next I dread to picture, for Pinkerton's +excitement had been growing steadily, and now burned dangerously high; +but we were spared extremities by the intervention of a second clerk. + +“Why! Mr. Dodd!” he exclaimed, running forward to the counter. “Glad to +see you, sir! Can I do anything in your way?” + +How virtuous actions blossom! Here was a young man to whose pleased ears +I had rehearsed _Just before the battle, mother,_ at some weekly picnic; +and now, in that tense moment of my life, he came (from the machine) to +be my helper. + +“Captain Trent, of the wreck? O yes, Mr. Dodd; he left about twelve; he +and another of the men. The Kanaka went earlier by the City of Pekin; I +know that; I remember expressing his chest. Captain Trent? I'll inquire, +Mr. Dodd. Yes, they were all here. Here are the names on the register; +perhaps you would care to look at them while I go and see about the +baggage?” + +I drew the book toward me, and stood looking at the four names all +written in the same hand, rather a big and rather a bad one: Trent, +Brown, Hardy, and (instead of Ah Sing) Jos. Amalu. + +“Pinkerton,” said I, suddenly, “have you that _Occidental_ in your +pocket?” + +“Never left me,” said Pinkerton, producing the paper. + + +I turned to the account of the wreck. “Here,” said I; “here's the name. +'Elias Goddedaal, mate.' Why do we never come across Elias Goddedaal?” + +“That's so,” said Jim. “Was he with the rest in that saloon when you saw +them?” + +“I don't believe it,” said I. “They were only four, and there was none +that behaved like a mate.” + +At this moment the clerk returned with his report. + +“The captain,” it appeared, “came with some kind of an express waggon, +and he and the man took off three chests and a big satchel. Our porter +helped to put them on, but they drove the cart themselves. The porter +thinks they went down town. It was about one.” + +“Still in time for the City of Pekin,” observed Jim. + +“How many of them were here?” I inquired. + +“Three, sir, and the Kanaka,” replied the clerk. “I can't somehow fin +out about the third, but he's gone too.” + +“Mr. Goddedaal, the mate, wasn't here then?” I asked. + +“No, Mr. Dodd, none but what you see,” says the clerk. + +“Nor you never heard where he was?” + +“No. Any particular reason for finding these men, Mr. Dodd?” inquired +the clerk. + +“This gentleman and I have bought the wreck,” I explained; “we wished to +get some information, and it is very annoying to find the men all gone.” + +A certain group had gradually formed about us, for the wreck was still +a matter of interest; and at this, one of the bystanders, a rough +seafaring man, spoke suddenly. + +“I guess the mate won't be gone,” said he. “He's main sick; never left +the sick-bay aboard the Tempest; so they tell ME.” + +Jim took me by the sleeve. “Back to the consulate,” said he. + +But even at the consulate nothing was known of Mr. Goddedaal. The doctor +of the Tempest had certified him very sick; he had sent his papers in, +but never appeared in person before the authorities. + +“Have you a telephone laid on to the Tempest?” asked Pinkerton. + +“Laid on yesterday,” said the clerk. + +“Do you mind asking, or letting me ask? We are very anxious to get hold +of Mr. Goddedaal.” + +“All right,” said the clerk, and turned to the telephone. “I'm sorry,” + he said presently, “Mr. Goddedaal has left the ship, and no one knows +where he is.” + +“Do you pay the men's passage home?” I inquired, a sudden thought +striking me. + +“If they want it,” said the clerk; “sometimes they don't. But we paid +the Kanaka's passage to Honolulu this morning; and by what Captain Trent +was saying, I understand the rest are going home together.” + +“Then you haven't paid them?” said I. + +“Not yet,” said the clerk. + +“And you would be a good deal surprised, if I were to tell you they were +gone already?” I asked. + +“O, I should think you were mistaken,” said he. + +“Such is the fact, however,” said I. + +“I am sure you must be mistaken,” he repeated. + +“May I use your telephone one moment?” asked Pinkerton; and as soon as +permission had been granted, I heard him ring up the printing-office +where our advertisements were usually handled. More I did not hear; for +suddenly recalling the big, bad hand in the register of the What Cheer +House, I asked the consulate clerk if he had a specimen of Captain +Trent's writing. Whereupon I learned that the captain could not write, +having cut his hand open a little before the loss of the brig; that the +latter part of the log even had been written up by Mr. Goddedaal; and +that Trent had always signed with his left hand. By the time I had +gleaned this information, Pinkerton was ready. + +“That's all that we can do. Now for the schooner,” said he; “and by +to-morrow evening I lay hands on Goddedaal, or my name's not Pinkerton.” + +“How have you managed?” I inquired. + +“You'll see before you get to bed,” said Pinkerton. “And now, after +all this backwarding and forwarding, and that hotel clerk, and that +bug Bellairs, it'll be a change and a kind of consolation to see the +schooner. I guess things are humming there.” + +But on the wharf, when we reached it, there was no sign of bustle, +and, but for the galley smoke, no mark of life on the Norah Creina. +Pinkerton's face grew pale, and his mouth straightened, as he leaped on +board. + +“Where's the captain of this----?” and he left the phrase unfinished, +finding no epithet sufficiently energetic for his thoughts. + +It did not appear whom or what he was addressing; but a head, presumably +the cook's, appeared in answer at the galley door. + +“In the cabin, at dinner,” said the cook deliberately, chewing as he +spoke. + +“Is that cargo out?” + +“No, sir.” + +“None of it?” + +“O, there's some of it out. We'll get at the rest of it livelier +to-morrow, I guess.” + +“I guess there'll be something broken first,” said Pinkerton, and strode +to the cabin. + +Here we found a man, fat, dark, and quiet, seated gravely at what seemed +a liberal meal. He looked up upon our entrance; and seeing Pinkerton +continue to stand facing him in silence, hat on head, arms folded, and +lips compressed, an expression of mingled wonder and annoyance began to +dawn upon his placid face. + +“Well!” said Jim; “and so this is what you call rushing around?” + +“Who are you?” cries the captain. + +“Me! I'm Pinkerton!” retorted Jim, as though the name had been a +talisman. + +“You're not very civil, whoever you are,” was the reply. But still a +certain effect had been produced, for he scrambled to his feet, +and added hastily, “A man must have a bit of dinner, you know, Mr. +Pinkerton.” + +“Where's your mate?” snapped Jim. + +“He's up town,” returned the other. + +“Up town!” sneered Pinkerton. “Now, I'll tell you what you are: you're a +Fraud; and if I wasn't afraid of dirtying my boot, I would kick you and +your dinner into that dock.” + +“I'll tell you something, too,” retorted the captain, duskily flushing. +“I wouldn't sail this ship for the man you are, if you went upon your +knees. I've dealt with gentlemen up to now.” + +“I can tell you the names of a number of gentlemen you'll never deal +with any more, and that's the whole of Longhurst's gang,” said Jim. +“I'll put your pipe out in that quarter, my friend. Here, rout out your +traps as quick as look at it, and take your vermin along with you. I'll +have a captain in, this very night, that's a sailor, and some sailors to +work for him.” + +“I'll go when I please, and that's to-morrow morning,” cried the captain +after us, as we departed for the shore. + +“There's something gone wrong with the world to-day; it must have come +bottom up!” wailed Pinkerton. “Bellairs, and then the hotel clerk, +and now This Fraud! And what am I to do for a captain, Loudon, with +Longhurst gone home an hour ago, and the boys all scattered?” + +“I know,” said I. “Jump in!” And then to the driver: “Do you know Black +Tom's?” + +Thither then we rattled; passed through the bar, and found (as I had +hoped) Johnson in the enjoyment of club life. The table had been +thrust upon one side; a South Sea merchant was discoursing music from a +mouth-organ in one corner; and in the middle of the floor Johnson and +a fellow-seaman, their arms clasped about each other's bodies, somewhat +heavily danced. The room was both cold and close; a jet of gas, +which continually menaced the heads of the performers, shed a coarse +illumination; the mouth-organ sounded shrill and dismal; and the faces +of all concerned were church-like in their gravity. It were, of course, +indelicate to interrupt these solemn frolics; so we edged ourselves to +chairs, for all the world like belated comers in a concert-room, and +patiently waited for the end. At length the organist, having exhausted +his supply of breath, ceased abruptly in the middle of a bar. With +the cessation of the strain, the dancers likewise came to a full stop, +swayed a moment, still embracing, and then separated and looked about +the circle for applause. + +“Very well danced!” said one; but it appears the compliment was not +strong enough for the performers, who (forgetful of the proverb) took up +the tale in person. + +“Well,” said Johnson. “I mayn't be no sailor, but I can dance!” + +And his late partner, with an almost pathetic conviction, added, “My +foot is as light as a feather.” + +Seeing how the wind set, you may be sure I added a few words of +praise before I carried Johnson alone into the passage: to whom, thus +mollified, I told so much as I judged needful of our situation, and +begged him, if he would not take the job himself, to find me a smart +man. + +“Me!” he cried. “I couldn't no more do it than I could try to go to +hell!” + +“I thought you were a mate?” said I. + +“So I am a mate,” giggled Johnson, “and you don't catch me shipping +noways else. But I'll tell you what, I believe I can get you Arty Nares: +you seen Arty; first-rate navigator and a son of a gun for style.” And +he proceeded to explain to me that Mr. Nares, who had the promise of +a fine barque in six months, after things had quieted down, was in the +meantime living very private, and would be pleased to have a change of +air. + +I called out Pinkerton and told him. “Nares!” he cried, as soon as I +had come to the name. “I would jump at the chance of a man that had had +Nares's trousers on! Why, Loudon, he's the smartest deep-water mate out +of San Francisco, and draws his dividends regular in service and out.” + This hearty indorsation clinched the proposal; Johnson agreed to produce +Nares before six the following morning; and Black Tom, being called into +the consultation, promised us four smart hands for the same hour, and +even (what appeared to all of us excessive) promised them sober. + +The streets were fully lighted when we left Black Tom's: street after +street sparkling with gas or electricity, line after line of distant +luminaries climbing the steep sides of hills towards the overvaulting +darkness; and on the other hand, where the waters of the bay invisibly +trembled, a hundred riding lanterns marked the position of a hundred +ships. The sea-fog flew high in heaven; and at the level of man's life +and business it was clear and chill. By silent consent, we paid the hack +off, and proceeded arm in arm towards the Poodle Dog for dinner. + +At one of the first hoardings, I was aware of a bill-sticker at work: it +was a late hour for this employment, and I checked Pinkerton until the +sheet should be unfolded. This is what I read:-- + + TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD. + + OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE + + WRECKED BRIG FLYING SCUD + + APPLYING, + + PERSONALLY OR BY LETTER, + + AT THE OFFICE OF JAMES PINKERTON, MONTANA + BLOCK, + + BEFORE NOON TO-MORROW, TUESDAY, 12TH, + + WILL RECEIVE + + TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD. + +“This is your idea, Pinkerton!” I cried. + +“Yes. They've lost no time; I'll say that for them--not like the Fraud,” + said he. “But mind you, Loudon, that's not half of it. The cream of +the idea's here: we know our man's sick; well, a copy of that has been +mailed to every hospital, every doctor, and every drug-store in San +Francisco.” + +Of course, from the nature of our business, Pinkerton could do a thing +of the kind at a figure extremely reduced; for all that, I was appalled +at the extravagance, and said so. + +“What matter a few dollars now?” he replied sadly. “It's in three months +that the pull comes, Loudon.” + +We walked on again in silence, not without a shiver. Even at the Poodle +Dog, we took our food with small appetite and less speech; and it was +not until he was warmed with a third glass of champagne that Pinkerton +cleared his throat and looked upon me with a deprecating eye. + +“Loudon,” said he, “there was a subject you didn't wish to be referred +to. I only want to do so indirectly. It wasn't”--he faltered--“it wasn't +because you were dissatisfied with me?” he concluded, with a quaver. + +“Pinkerton!” cried I. + +“No, no, not a word just now,” he hastened to proceed. “Let me speak +first. I appreciate, though I can't imitate, the delicacy of your +nature; and I can well understand you would rather die than speak of it, +and yet might feel disappointed. I did think I could have done better +myself. But when I found how tight money was in this city, and a man +like Douglas B. Longhurst--a forty-niner, the man that stood at bay in a +corn patch for five hours against the San Diablo squatters--weakening on +the operation, I tell you, Loudon, I began to despair; and--I may +have made mistakes, no doubt there are thousands who could have done +better--but I give you a loyal hand on it, I did my best.” + +“My poor Jim,” said I, “as if I ever doubted you! as if I didn't +know you had done wonders! All day I've been admiring your energy and +resource. And as for that affair----” + +“No, Loudon, no more, not a word more! I don't want to hear,” cried Jim. + +“Well, to tell you the truth, I don't want to tell you,” said I; “for +it's a thing I'm ashamed of.” + +“Ashamed, Loudon? O, don't say that; don't use such an expression even +in jest!” protested Pinkerton. + +“Do you never do anything you're ashamed of?” I inquired. + +“No,” says he, rolling his eyes. “Why? I'm sometimes sorry afterwards, +when it pans out different from what I figured. But I can't see what I +would want to be ashamed for.” + +I sat a while considering with admiration the simplicity of my friend's +character. Then I sighed. “Do you know, Jim, what I'm sorriest for?” + said I. “At this rate, I can't be best man at your marriage.” + +“My marriage!” he repeated, echoing the sigh. “No marriage for me now. +I'm going right down to-night to break it to her. I think that's what's +shaken me all day. I feel as if I had had no right (after I was engaged) +to operate so widely.” + +“Well, you know, Jim, it was my doing, and you must lay the blame on +me,” said I. + +“Not a cent of it!” he cried. “I was as eager as yourself, only not so +bright at the beginning. No; I've myself to thank for it; but it's a +wrench.” + +While Jim departed on his dolorous mission, I returned alone to the +office, lit the gas, and sat down to reflect on the events of that +momentous day: on the strange features of the tale that had been so far +unfolded, the disappearances, the terrors, the great sums of money; and +on the dangerous and ungrateful task that awaited me in the immediate +future. + +It is difficult, in the retrospect of such affairs, to avoid attributing +to ourselves in the past a measure of the knowledge we possess to-day. +But I may say, and yet be well within the mark, that I was consumed that +night with a fever of suspicion and curiosity; exhausted my fancy in +solutions, which I still dismissed as incommensurable with the facts; +and in the mystery by which I saw myself surrounded, found a precious +stimulus for my courage and a convenient soothing draught for +conscience. Even had all been plain sailing, I do not hint that I should +have drawn back. Smuggling is one of the meanest of crimes, for by that +we rob a whole country pro rata, and are therefore certain to impoverish +the poor: to smuggle opium is an offence particularly dark, since it +stands related not so much to murder, as to massacre. Upon all these +points I was quite clear; my sympathy was all in arms against my +interest; and had not Jim been involved, I could have dwelt almost with +satisfaction on the idea of my failure. But Jim, his whole fortune, and +his marriage, depended upon my success; and I preferred the interests of +my friend before those of all the islanders in the South Seas. This is +a poor, private morality, if you like; but it is mine, and the best I +have; and I am not half so much ashamed of having embarked at all on +this adventure, as I am proud that (while I was in it, and for the +sake of my friend) I was up early and down late, set my own hand to +everything, took dangers as they came, and for once in my life played +the man throughout. At the same time, I could have desired another field +of energy; and I was the more grateful for the redeeming element of +mystery. Without that, though I might have gone ahead and done as well, +it would scarce have been with ardour; and what inspired me that night +with an impatient greed of the sea, the island, and the wreck, was the +hope that I might stumble there upon the answer to a hundred questions, +and learn why Captain Trent fanned his red face in the exchange, and why +Mr. Dickson fled from the telephone in the Mission Street lodging-house. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS. + + +I was unhappy when I closed my eyes; and it was to unhappiness that I +opened them again next morning, to a confused sense of some calamity +still inarticulate, and to the consciousness of jaded limbs and of +a swimming head. I must have lain for some time inert and stupidly +miserable, before I became aware of a reiterated knocking at the +door; with which discovery all my wits flowed back in their accustomed +channels, and I remembered the sale, and the wreck, and Goddedaal, and +Nares, and Johnson, and Black Tom, and the troubles of yesterday, +and the manifold engagements of the day that was to come. The thought +thrilled me like a trumpet in the hour of battle. In a moment, I had +leaped from bed, crossed the office where Pinkerton lay in a deep trance +of sleep on the convertible sofa, and stood in the doorway, in my night +gear, to receive our visitors. + +Johnson was first, by way of usher, smiling. From a little behind, with +his Sunday hat tilted forward over his brow, and a cigar glowing between +his lips, Captain Nares acknowledged our previous acquaintance with a +succinct nod. Behind him again, in the top of the stairway, a knot of +sailors, the new crew of the Norah Creina, stood polishing the wall with +back and elbow. These I left without to their reflections. But our two +officers I carried at once into the office, where (taking Jim by the +shoulder) I shook him slowly into consciousness. He sat up, all abroad +for the moment, and stared on the new captain. + +“Jim,” said I, “this is Captain Nares. Captain, Mr. Pinkerton.” + +Nares repeated his curt nod, still without speech; and I thought he held +us both under a watchful scrutiny. + +“O!” says Jim, “this is Captain Nares, is it? Good morning, Captain +Nares. Happy to have the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir. I know you +well by reputation.” + +Perhaps, under the circumstances of the moment, this was scarce a +welcome speech. At least, Nares received it with a grunt. + +“Well, Captain,” Jim continued, “you know about the size of the +business? You're to take the Nora Creina to Midway Island, break up +a wreck, call at Honolulu, and back to this port? I suppose that's +understood?” + +“Well,” returned Nares, with the same unamiable reserve, “for a reason, +which I guess you know, the cruise may suit me; but there's a point or +two to settle. We shall have to talk, Mr. Pinkerton. But whether I go or +not, somebody will; there's no sense in losing time; and you might give +Mr. Johnson a note, let him take the hands right down, and set to to +overhaul the rigging. The beasts look sober,” he added, with an air of +great disgust, “and need putting to work to keep them so.” + +This being agreed upon, Nares watched his subordinate depart and drew a +visible breath. + +“And now we're alone and can talk,” said he. “What's this thing about? +It's been advertised like Barnum's museum; that poster of yours has +set the Front talking; that's an objection in itself, for I'm laying a +little dark just now; and anyway, before I take the ship, I require to +know what I'm going after.” + +Thereupon Pinkerton gave him the whole tale, beginning with a +businesslike precision, and working himself up, as he went on, to the +boiling-point of narrative enthusiasm. Nares sat and smoked, hat +still on head, and acknowledged each fresh feature of the story with a +frowning nod. But his pale blue eyes betrayed him, and lighted visibly. + +“Now you see for yourself,” Pinkerton concluded: “there's every last +chance that Trent has skipped to Honolulu, and it won't take much of +that fifty thousand dollars to charter a smart schooner down to Midway. +Here's where I want a man!” cried Jim, with contagious energy. “That +wreck's mine; I've paid for it, money down; and if it's got to be fought +for, I want to see it fought for lively. If you're not back in ninety +days, I tell you plainly, I'll make one of the biggest busts ever seen +upon this coast; it's life or death for Mr. Dodd and me. As like as not, +it'll come to grapples on the island; and when I heard your name last +night--and a blame' sight more this morning when I saw the eye you've +got in your head--I said, 'Nares is good enough for me!'” + +“I guess,” observed Nares, studying the ash of his cigar, “the sooner I +get that schooner outside the Farallones, the better you'll be pleased.” + +“You're the man I dreamed of!” cried Jim, bouncing on the bed. “There's +not five per cent of fraud in all your carcase.” + +“Just hold on,” said Nares. “There's another point. I heard some talk +about a supercargo.” + +“That's Mr. Dodd, here, my partner,” said Jim. + +“I don't see it,” returned the captain drily. “One captain's enough for +any ship that ever I was aboard.” + +“Now don't you start disappointing me,” said Pinkerton; “for you're +talking without thought. I'm not going to give you the run of the books +of this firm, am I? I guess not. Well, this is not only a cruise; it's a +business operation; and that's in the hands of my partner. You sail that +ship, you see to breaking up that wreck and keeping the men upon the +jump, and you'll find your hands about full. Only, no mistake about one +thing: it has to be done to Mr. Dodd's satisfaction; for it's Mr. Dodd +that's paying.” + +“I'm accustomed to give satisfaction,” said Mr. Nares, with a dark +flush. + +“And so you will here!” cried Pinkerton. “I understand you. You're +prickly to handle, but you're straight all through.” + +“The position's got to be understood, though,” returned Nares, perhaps +a trifle mollified. “My position, I mean. I'm not going to ship +sailing-master; it's enough out of my way already, to set a foot on this +mosquito schooner.” + +“Well, I'll tell you,” retorted Jim, with an indescribable twinkle: “you +just meet me on the ballast, and we'll make it a barquentine.” + +Nares laughed a little; tactless Pinkerton had once more gained a +victory in tact. “Then there's another point,” resumed the captain, +tacitly relinquishing the last. “How about the owners?” + +“O, you leave that to me; I'm one of Longhurst's crowd, you know,” said +Jim, with sudden bristling vanity. “Any man that's good enough for me, +is good enough for them.” + +“Who are they?” asked Nares. + +“M'Intyre and Spittal,” said Jim. + +“O, well, give me a card of yours,” said the captain: “you needn't +bother to write; I keep M'Intyre and Spittal in my vest-pocket.” + +Boast for boast; it was always thus with Nares and Pinkerton--the two +vainest men of my acquaintance. And having thus reinstated himself in +his own opinion, the captain rose, and, with a couple of his stiff nods, +departed. + +“Jim,” I cried, as the door closed behind him, “I don't like that man.” + +“You've just got to, Loudon,” returned Jim. “He's a typical American +seaman--brave as a lion, full of resource, and stands high with his +owners. He's a man with a record.” + +“For brutality at sea,” said I. + +“Say what you like,” exclaimed Pinkerton, “it was a good hour we got him +in: I'd trust Mamie's life to him to-morrow.” + +“Well, and talking of Mamie?” says I. + +Jim paused with his trousers half on. “She's the gallantest little soul +God ever made!” he cried. “Loudon, I'd meant to knock you up last night, +and I hope you won't take it unfriendly that I didn't. I went in and +looked at you asleep; and I saw you were all broken up, and let you be. +The news would keep, anyway; and even you, Loudon, couldn't feel it the +same way as I did.” + +“What news?” I asked. + +“It's this way,” says Jim. “I told her how we stood, and that I backed +down from marrying. 'Are you tired of me?' says she: God bless her! +Well, I explained the whole thing over again, the chance of smash, your +absence unavoidable, the point I made of having you for the best man, +and that. 'If you're not tired of me, I think I see one way to manage,' +says she. 'Let's get married to-morrow, and Mr. Loudon can be best man +before he goes to sea.' That's how she said it, crisp and bright, like +one of Dickens's characters. It was no good for me to talk about the +smash. 'You'll want me all the more,' she said. Loudon, I only pray I +can make it up to her; I prayed for it last night beside your bed, while +you lay sleeping--for you, and Mamie and myself; and--I don't know if +you quite believe in prayer, I'm a bit Ingersollian myself--but a kind +of sweetness came over me, and I couldn't help but think it was an +answer. Never was a man so lucky! You and me and Mamie; it's a triple +cord, Loudon. If either of you were to die! And she likes you so much, +and thinks you so accomplished and distingue-looking, and was just as +set as I was to have you for best man. 'Mr. Loudon,' she calls you; +seems to me so friendly! And she sat up till three in the morning fixing +up a costume for the marriage; it did me good to see her, Loudon, and to +see that needle going, going, and to say 'All this hurry, Jim, is just +to marry you!' I couldn't believe it; it was so like some blame' fairy +story. To think of those old tin-type times about turned my head; I was +so unrefined then, and so illiterate, and so lonesome; and here I am in +clover, and I'm blamed if I can see what I've done to deserve it.” + +So he poured forth with innocent volubility the fulness of his heart; +and I, from these irregular communications, must pick out, here a little +and there a little, the particulars of his new plan. They were to be +married, sure enough, that day; the wedding breakfast was to be at +Frank's; the evening to be passed in a visit of God-speed aboard the +Norah Creina; and then we were to part, Jim and I, he to his married +life, I on my sea-enterprise. If ever I cherished an ill-feeling +for Miss Mamie, I forgave her now; so brave and kind, so pretty and +venturesome, was her decision. The weather frowned overhead with a +leaden sky, and San Francisco had never (in all my experience) looked so +bleak and gaunt, and shoddy, and crazy, like a city prematurely old; but +through all my wanderings and errands to and fro, by the dock side or in +the jostling street, among rude sounds and ugly sights, there ran in my +mind, like a tiny strain of music, the thought of my friend's happiness. + +For that was indeed a day of many and incongruous occupations. Breakfast +was scarce swallowed before Jim must run to the City Hall and Frank's +about the cares of marriage, and I hurry to John Smith's upon the +account of stores, and thence, on a visit of certification, to the +Norah Creina. Methought she looked smaller than ever, sundry great +ships overspiring her from close without. She was already a nightmare of +disorder; and the wharf alongside was piled with a world of casks, and +cases, and tins, and tools, and coils of rope, and miniature barrels of +giant powder, such as it seemed no human ingenuity could stuff on board +of her. Johnson was in the waist, in a red shirt and dungaree trousers, +his eye kindled with activity. With him I exchanged a word or two; +thence stepped aft along the narrow alleyway between the house and the +rail, and down the companion to the main cabin, where the captain sat +with the commissioner at wine. + +I gazed with disaffection at the little box which for many a day I was +to call home. On the starboard was a stateroom for the captain; on the +port, a pair of frowsy berths, one over the other, and abutting astern +upon the side of an unsavoury cupboard. The walls were yellow and damp, +the floor black and greasy; there was a prodigious litter of straw, old +newspapers, and broken packing-cases; and by way of ornament, only +a glass-rack, a thermometer presented “with compliments” of some +advertising whiskey-dealer, and a swinging lamp. It was hard to foresee +that, before a week was up, I should regard that cabin as cheerful, +lightsome, airy, and even spacious. + +I was presented to the commissioner, and to a young friend of his whom +he had brought with him for the purpose (apparently) of smoking cigars; +and after we had pledged one another in a glass of California port, a +trifle sweet and sticky for a morning beverage, the functionary spread +his papers on the table, and the hands were summoned. Down they trooped, +accordingly, into the cabin; and stood eyeing the ceiling or the floor, +the picture of sheepish embarrassment, and with a common air of wanting +to expectorate and not quite daring. In admirable contrast, stood +the Chinese cook, easy, dignified, set apart by spotless raiment, the +hidalgo of the seas. + +I daresay you never had occasion to assist at the farce which followed. +Our shipping laws in the United States (thanks to the inimitable Dana) +are conceived in a spirit of paternal stringency, and proceed throughout +on the hypothesis that poor Jack is an imbecile, and the other parties +to the contract, rogues and ruffians. A long and wordy paper of +precautions, a fo'c's'le bill of rights, must be read separately to each +man. I had now the benefit of hearing it five times in brisk succession; +and you would suppose I was acquainted with its contents. But the +commissioner (worthy man) spends his days in doing little else; and when +we bear in mind the parallel case of the irreverent curate, we need not +be surprised that he took the passage tempo prestissimo, in one roulade +of gabble--that I, with the trained attention of an educated man, +could gather but a fraction of its import--and the sailors nothing. +No profanity in giving orders, no sheath-knives, Midway Island and any +other port the master may direct, not to exceed six calendar months, +and to this port to be paid off: so it seemed to run, with surprising +verbiage; so ended. And with the end, the commissioner, in each case, +fetched a deep breath, resumed his natural voice, and proceeded to +business. “Now, my man,” he would say, “you ship A. B. at so many +dollars, American gold coin. Sign your name here, if you have one, and +can write.” Whereupon, and the name (with infinite hard breathing) being +signed, the commissioner would proceed to fill in the man's appearance, +height, etc., on the official form. In this task of literary portraiture +he seemed to rely wholly upon temperament; for I could not perceive him +to cast one glance on any of his models. He was assisted, however, by a +running commentary from the captain: “Hair blue and eyes red, nose +five foot seven, and stature broken”--jests as old, presumably, as the +American marine; and, like the similar pleasantries of the billiard +board, perennially relished. The highest note of humour was reached in +the case of the Chinese cook, who was shipped under the name of “One +Lung,” to the sound of his own protests and the self-approving chuckles +of the functionary. + +“Now, captain,” said the latter, when the men were gone, and he had +bundled up his papers, “the law requires you to carry a slop-chest and a +chest of medicines.” + +“I guess I know that,” said Nares. + +“I guess you do,” returned the commissioner, and helped himself to port. + +But when he was gone, I appealed to Nares on the same subject, for I was +well aware we carried none of these provisions. + +“Well,” drawled Nares, “there's sixty pounds of niggerhead on the quay, +isn't there? and twenty pounds of salts; and I never travel without some +painkiller in my gripsack.” + +As a matter of fact, we were richer. The captain had the usual sailor's +provision of quack medicines, with which, in the usual sailor fashion, +he would daily drug himself, displaying an extreme inconstancy, and +flitting from Kennedy's Red Discovery to Kennedy's White, and from +Hood's Sarsaparilla to Mother Seigel's Syrup. And there were, besides, +some mildewed and half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over +which Nares would sometimes sniff and speculate. “Seems to smell like +diarrhoea stuff,” he would remark. “I wish't I knew, and I would +try it.” But the slop-chest was indeed represented by the plugs of +niggerhead, and nothing else. Thus paternal laws are made, thus they +are evaded; and the schooner put to sea, like plenty of her neighbours, +liable to a fine of six hundred dollars. + +This characteristic scene, which has delayed me overlong, was but a +moment in that day of exercise and agitation. To fit out a schooner for +sea, and improvise a marriage between dawn and dusk, involves heroic +effort. All day Jim and I ran, and tramped, and laughed, and came near +crying, and fell in sudden anxious consultations, and were sped (with +a prepared sarcasm on our lips) to some fallacious milliner, and made +dashes to the schooner and John Smith's, and at every second corner +were reminded (by our own huge posters) of our desperate estate. Between +whiles, I had found the time to hover at some half-a-dozen jewellers' +windows; and my present, thus intemperately chosen, was graciously +accepted. I believe, indeed, that was the last (though not the least) of +my concerns, before the old minister, shabby and benign, was routed from +his house and led to the office like a performing poodle; and there, in +the growing dusk, under the cold glitter of Thirteen Star, two hundred +strong, and beside the garish glories of the agricultural engine, Mamie +and Jim were made one. The scene was incongruous, but the business +pretty, whimsical, and affecting: the typewriters with such kindly faces +and fine posies, Mamie so demure, and Jim--how shall I describe that +poor, transfigured Jim? He began by taking the minister aside to the far +end of the office. I knew not what he said, but I have reason to believe +he was protesting his unfitness; for he wept as he said it: and the old +minister, himself genuinely moved, was heard to console and encourage +him, and at one time to use this expression: “I assure you, Mr. +Pinkerton, there are not many who can say so much”--from which I +gathered that my friend had tempered his self-accusations with at least +one legitimate boast. From this ghostly counselling, Jim turned to me; +and though he never got beyond the explosive utterance of my name and +one fierce handgrip, communicated some of his own emotion, like a charge +of electricity, to his best man. We stood up to the ceremony at last, +in a general and kindly discomposure. Jim was all abroad; and the divine +himself betrayed his sympathy in voice and demeanour, and concluded with +a fatherly allocution, in which he congratulated Mamie (calling her “my +dear”) upon the fortune of an excellent husband, and protested he had +rarely married a more interesting couple. At this stage, like a glory +descending, there was handed in, ex machina, the card of Douglas B. +Longhurst, with congratulations and four dozen Perrier-Jouet. A bottle +was opened; and the minister pledged the bride, and the bridesmaids +simpered and tasted, and I made a speech with airy bacchanalianism, +glass in hand. But poor Jim must leave the wine untasted. “Don't touch +it,” I had found the opportunity to whisper; “in your state it will make +you as drunk as a fiddler.” And Jim had wrung my hand with a “God bless +you, Loudon!--saved me again!” + +Hard following upon this, the supper passed off at Frank's with somewhat +tremulous gaiety. And thence, with one half of the Perrier-Jouet--I +would accept no more--we voyaged in a hack to the Norah Creina. + +“What a dear little ship!” cried Mamie, as our miniature craft was +pointed out to her. And then, on second thought, she turned to the best +man. “And how brave you must be, Mr. Dodd,” she cried, “to go in that +tiny thing so far upon the ocean!” And I perceived I had risen in the +lady's estimation. + +The dear little ship presented a horrid picture of confusion, and its +occupants of weariness and ill-humour. From the cabin the cook was +storing tins into the lazarette, and the four hands, sweaty and sullen, +were passing them from one to another from the waist. Johnson was three +parts asleep over the table; and in his bunk, in his own cabin, the +captain sourly chewed and puffed at a cigar. + +“See here,” he said, rising; “you'll be sorry you came. We can't stop +work if we're to get away to-morrow. A ship getting ready for sea is no +place for people, anyway. You'll only interrupt my men.” + +I was on the point of answering something tart; but Jim, who was +acquainted with the breed, as he was with most things that had a bearing +on affairs, made haste to pour in oil. + +“Captain,” he said, “I know we're a nuisance here, and that you've had +a rough time. But all we want is that you should drink one glass of wine +with us, Perrier-Jouet, from Longhurst, on the occasion of my marriage, +and Loudon's--Mr. Dodd's--departure.” + +“Well, it's your lookout,” said Nares. “I don't mind half an hour. +Spell, O!” he added to the men; “go and kick your heels for half an +hour, and then you can turn to again a trifle livelier. Johnson, see if +you can't wipe off a chair for the lady.” + +His tone was no more gracious than his language; but when Mamie had +turned upon him the soft fire of her eyes, and informed him that he was +the first sea-captain she had ever met, “except captains of steamers, +of course”--she so qualified the statement--and had expressed a lively +sense of his courage, and perhaps implied (for I suppose the arts of +ladies are the same as those of men) a modest consciousness of his good +looks, our bear began insensibly to soften; and it was already part +as an apology, though still with unaffected heat of temper, that he +volunteered some sketch of his annoyances. + +“A pretty mess we've had!” said he. “Half the stores were wrong; I'll +wring John Smith's neck for him some of these days. Then two newspaper +beasts came down, and tried to raise copy out of me, till I threatened +them with the first thing handy; and then some kind of missionary bug, +wanting to work his passage to Raiatea or somewhere. I told him I would +take him off the wharf with the butt end of my boot, and he went away +cursing. This vessel's been depreciated by the look of him.” + +While the captain spoke, with his strange, humorous, arrogant +abruptness, I observed Jim to be sizing him up, like a thing at once +quaint and familiar, and with a scrutiny that was both curious and +knowing. + +“One word, dear boy,” he said, turning suddenly to me. And when he had +drawn me on deck, “That man,” says he, “will carry sail till your hair +grows white; but never you let on, never breathe a word. I know his +line: he'll die before he'll take advice; and if you get his back up, +he'll run you right under. I don't often jam in my advice, Loudon; and +when I do, it means I'm thoroughly posted.” + +The little party in the cabin, so disastrously begun, finished, under +the mellowing influence of wine and woman, in excellent feeling and +with some hilarity. Mamie, in a plush Gainsborough hat and a gown of +wine-coloured silk, sat, an apparent queen, among her rude surroundings +and companions. The dusky litter of the cabin set off her radiant +trimness: tarry Johnson was a foil to her fair beauty; she glowed in +that poor place, fair as a star; until even I, who was not usually of +her admirers, caught a spark of admiration; and even the captain, who +was in no courtly humour, proposed that the scene should be commemorated +by my pencil. It was the last act of the evening. Hurriedly as I went +about my task, the half-hour had lengthened out to more than three +before it was completed: Mamie in full value, the rest of the party +figuring in outline only, and the artist himself introduced in a back +view, which was pronounced a likeness. But it was to Mamie that I +devoted the best of my attention; and it was with her I made my chief +success. + +“O!” she cried, “am I really like that? No wonder Jim ...” She paused. +“Why it's just as lovely as he's good!” she cried: an epigram which was +appreciated, and repeated as we made our salutations, and called out +after the retreating couple as they passed away under the lamplight on +the wharf. + +Thus it was that our farewells were smuggled through under an ambuscade +of laughter, and the parting over ere I knew it was begun. The figures +vanished, the steps died away along the silent city front; on board, the +men had returned to their labours, the captain to his solitary cigar; +and after that long and complex day of business and emotion, I was at +last alone and free. It was, perhaps, chiefly fatigue that made my heart +so heavy. I leaned at least upon the house, and stared at the foggy +heaven, or over the rail at the wavering reflection of the lamps, like a +man that was quite done with hope and would have welcomed the asylum of +the grave. And all at once, as I thus stood, the City of Pekin flashed +into my mind, racing her thirteen knots for Honolulu, with the hated +Trent--perhaps with the mysterious Goddedaal--on board; and with the +thought, the blood leaped and careered through all my body. It seemed no +chase at all; it seemed we had no chance, as we lay there bound to iron +pillars, and fooling away the precious moments over tins of beans. “Let +them get there first!” I thought. “Let them! We can't be long behind.” + And from that moment, I date myself a man of a rounded experience: +nothing had lacked but this, that I should entertain and welcome the +grim thought of bloodshed. + +It was long before the toil remitted in the cabin, and it was worth +my while to get to bed; long after that, before sleep favoured me; +and scarce a moment later (or so it seemed) when I was recalled to +consciousness by bawling men and the jar of straining hawsers. + +The schooner was cast off before I got on deck. In the misty obscurity +of the first dawn, I saw the tug heading us with glowing fires and +blowing smoke, and heard her beat the roughened waters of the bay. +Beside us, on her flock of hills, the lighted city towered up and +stood swollen in the raw fog. It was strange to see her burn on thus +wastefully, with half-quenched luminaries, when the dawn was already +grown strong enough to show me, and to suffer me to recognise, a +solitary figure standing by the piles. + +Or was it really the eye, and not rather the heart, that identified that +shadow in the dusk, among the shoreside lamps? I know not. It was Jim, +at least; Jim, come for a last look; and we had but time to wave a +valedictory gesture and exchange a wordless cry. This was our second +parting, and our capacities were now reversed. It was mine to play the +Argonaut, to speed affairs, to plan and to accomplish--if need were, at +the price of life; it was his to sit at home, to study the calendar, and +to wait. I knew besides another thing that gave me joy. I knew that my +friend had succeeded in my education; that the romance of business, +if our fantastic purchase merited the name, had at last stirred my +dilletante nature; and, as we swept under cloudy Tamalpais and through +the roaring narrows of the bay, the Yankee blood sang in my veins with +suspense and exultation. + +Outside the heads, as if to meet my desire, we found it blowing fresh +from the northeast. No time had been lost. The sun was not yet up before +the tug cast off the hawser, gave us a salute of three whistles, and +turned homeward toward the coast, which now began to gleam along its +margin with the earliest rays of day. There was no other ship in view +when the Norah Creina, lying over under all plain sail, began her long +and lonely voyage to the wreck. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. THE “NORAH CREINA.” + + +I love to recall the glad monotony of a Pacific voyage, when the trades +are not stinted, and the ship, day after day, goes free. The mountain +scenery of trade-wind clouds, watched (and in my case painted) under +every vicissitude of light--blotting stars, withering in the moon's +glory, barring the scarlet eve, lying across the dawn collapsed into the +unfeatured morning bank, or at noon raising their snowy summits between +the blue roof of heaven and the blue floor of sea; the small, busy, +and deliberate world of the schooner, with its unfamiliar scenes, the +spearing of dolphin from the bowsprit end, the holy war on sharks, +the cook making bread on the main hatch; reefing down before a violent +squall, with the men hanging out on the foot-ropes; the squall itself, +the catch at the heart, the opened sluices of the sky; and the relief, +the renewed loveliness of life, when all is over, the sun forth again, +and our out-fought enemy only a blot upon the leeward sea. I love to +recall, and would that I could reproduce that life, the unforgettable, +the unrememberable. The memory, which shows so wise a backwardness +in registering pain, is besides an imperfect recorder of extended +pleasures; and a long-continued well-being escapes (as it were, by its +mass) our petty methods of commemoration. On a part of our life's map +there lies a roseate, undecipherable haze, and that is all. + +Of one thing, if I am at all to trust my own annals, I was delightedly +conscious. Day after day, in the sun-gilded cabin, the whiskey-dealer's +thermometer stood at 84. Day after day, the air had the same +indescribable liveliness and sweetness, soft and nimble, and cool as +the cheek of health. Day after day the sun flamed; night after night the +moon beaconed, or the stars paraded their lustrous regiment. I was aware +of a spiritual change, or, perhaps, rather a molecular reconstitution. +My bones were sweeter to me. I had come home to my own climate, and +looked back with pity on those damp and wintry zones, miscalled the +temperate. + +“Two years of this, and comfortable quarters to live in, kind of shake +the grit out of a man,” the captain remarked; “can't make out to be +happy anywhere else. A townie of mine was lost down this way, in a +coalship that took fire at sea. He struck the beach somewhere in the +Navigators; and he wrote to me that when he left the place, it would be +feet first. He's well off, too, and his father owns some coasting +craft Down East; but Billy prefers the beach, and hot rolls off the +bread-fruit trees.” + +A voice told me I was on the same track as Billy. But when was this? Our +outward track in the Norah Creina lay well to the northward; and perhaps +it is but the impression of a few pet days which I have unconsciously +spread longer, or perhaps the feeling grew upon me later, in the run to +Honolulu. One thing I am sure: it was before I had ever seen an island +worthy of the name that I must date my loyalty to the South Seas. The +blank sea itself grew desirable under such skies; and wherever the +trade-wind blows, I know no better country than a schooner's deck. + +But for the tugging anxiety as to the journey's end, the journey itself +must thus have counted for the best of holidays. My physical well-being +was over-proof; effects of sea and sky kept me for ever busy with my +pencil; and I had no lack of intellectual exercise of a different order +in the study of my inconsistent friend, the captain. I call him friend, +here on the threshold; but that is to look well ahead. At first, I +was too much horrified by what I considered his barbarities, too much +puzzled by his shifting humours, and too frequently annoyed by his small +vanities, to regard him otherwise than as the cross of my existence. It +was only by degrees, in his rare hours of pleasantness, when he forgot +(and made me forget) the weaknesses to which he was so prone, that he +won me to a kind of unconsenting fondness. Lastly, the faults were +all embraced in a more generous view: I saw them in their place, like +discords in a musical progression; and accepted them and found them +picturesque, as we accept and admire, in the habitable face of nature, +the smoky head of the volcano or the pernicious thicket of the swamp. + +He was come of good people Down East, and had the beginnings of a +thorough education. His temper had been ungovernable from the first; and +it is likely the defect was inherited, and the blame of the rupture +not entirely his. He ran away at least to sea; suffered horrible +maltreatment, which seemed to have rather hardened than enlightened him; +ran away again to shore in a South American port; proved his capacity +and made money, although still a child; fell among thieves and was +robbed; worked back a passage to the States, and knocked one morning +at the door of an old lady whose orchard he had often robbed. The +introduction appears insufficient; but Nares knew what he was doing. +The sight of her old neighbourly depredator shivering at the door in +tatters, the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the +spinster's heart. “I always had a fancy for the old lady,” Nares said, +“even when she used to stampede me out of the orchard, and shake her +thimble and her old curls at me out of the window as I was going by; I +always thought she was a kind of pleasant old girl. Well, when she came +to the door that morning, I told her so, and that I was stone-broke; and +she took me right in, and fetched out the pie.” She clothed him, taught +him, and had him to sea again in better shape, welcomed him to her +hearth on his return from every cruise, and when she died bequeathed him +her possessions. “She was a good old girl,” he would say. “I tell you, +Mr. Dodd, it was a queer thing to see me and the old lady talking a +pasear in the garden, and the old man scowling at us over the pickets. +She lived right next door to the old man, and I guess that's just what +took me there. I wanted him to know that I was badly beat, you see, and +would rather go to the devil than to him. What made the dig harder, he +had quarrelled with the old lady about me and the orchard: I guess that +made him rage. Yes, I was a beast when I was young. But I was always +pretty good to the old lady.” Since then he had prospered, not +uneventfully, in his profession; the old lady's money had fallen in +during the voyage of the Gleaner, and he was now, as soon as the smoke +of that engagement cleared away, secure of his ship. I suppose he was +about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head +of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; +clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on +that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; +when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the +greatest brute upon the seas. + +His usage of the men, his hazing, his bullying, his perpetual +fault-finding for no cause, his perpetual and brutal sarcasm, might have +raised a mutiny in a slave galley. Suppose the steersman's eye to have +wandered: “You ----, ----, little, mutton-faced Dutchman,” Nares would +bawl; “you want a booting to keep you on your course! I know a little +city-front slush when I see one. Just you glue your eye to that compass, +or I'll show you round the vessel at the butt-end of my boot.” Or +suppose a hand to linger aft, whither he had perhaps been summoned not +a minute before. “Mr. Daniells, will you oblige me by stepping clear +of that main-sheet?” the captain might begin, with truculent courtesy. +“Thank you. And perhaps you'll be so kind as to tell me what the hell +you're doing on my quarter-deck? I want no dirt of your sort here. Is +there nothing for you to do? Where's the mate? Don't you set ME to find +work for you, or I'll find you some that will keep you on your back a +fortnight.” Such allocutions, conceived with a perfect knowledge of his +audience, so that every insult carried home, were delivered with a mien +so menacing, and an eye so fiercely cruel, that his unhappy subordinates +shrank and quailed. Too often violence followed; too often I have heard +and seen and boiled at the cowardly aggression; and the victim, his +hands bound by law, has risen again from deck and crawled forward +stupefied--I know not what passion of revenge in his wronged heart. + +It seems strange I should have grown to like this tyrant. It may even +seem strange that I should have stood by and suffered his excesses to +proceed. But I was not quite such a chicken as to interfere in public; +for I would rather have a man or two mishandled than one half of +us butchered in a mutiny and the rest suffer on the gallows. And in +private, I was unceasing in my protests. + +“Captain,” I once said to him, appealing to his patriotism, which was +of a hardy quality, “this is no way to treat American seamen. You don't +call it American to treat men like dogs?” + +“Americans?” he said grimly. “Do you call these Dutchmen and +Scattermouches [1] Americans? I've been fourteen years to sea, all but +one trip under American colours, and I've never laid eye on an American +foremast hand. There used to be such things in the old days, when +thirty-five dollars were the wages out of Boston; and then you could see +ships handled and run the way they want to be. But that's all past and +gone; and nowadays the only thing that flies in an American ship is a +belaying-pin. You don't know; you haven't a guess. How would you like to +go on deck for your middle watch, fourteen months on end, with all your +duty to do and every one's life depending on you, and expect to get +a knife ripped into you as you come out of your stateroom, or be +sand-bagged as you pass the boat, or get tripped into the hold, if the +hatches are off in fine weather? That kind of shakes the starch out of +the brotherly love and New Jerusalem business. You go through the mill, +and you'll have a bigger grudge against every old shellback that dirties +his plate in the three oceans, than the Bank of California could settle +up. No; it has an ugly look to it, but the only way to run a ship is to +make yourself a terror.” + +[1] In sea-lingo (Pacific) DUTCHMAN includes all Teutons and folk from +the basin of the Baltic; SCATTERMOUCH, all Latins and Levantines. + +“Come, Captain,” said I, “there are degrees in everything. You know +American ships have a bad name; you know perfectly well if it wasn't for +the high wage and the good food, there's not a man would ship in one if +he could help; and even as it is, some prefer a British ship, beastly +food and all.” + +“O, the lime-juicers?” said he. “There's plenty booting in lime-juicers, +I guess; though I don't deny but what some of them are soft.” And with +that he smiled like a man recalling something. “Look here, that brings +a yarn in my head,” he resumed; “and for the sake of the joke, I'll give +myself away. It was in 1874, I shipped mate in the British ship Maria, +from 'Frisco for Melbourne. She was the queerest craft in some ways that +ever I was aboard of. The food was a caution; there was nothing fit +to put your lips to--but the lime-juice, which was from the end bin no +doubt: it used to make me sick to see the men's dinners, and sorry to +see my own. The old man was good enough, I guess; Green was his name; +a mild, fatherly old galoot. But the hands were the lowest gang I ever +handled; and whenever I tried to knock a little spirit into them, the +old man took their part! It was Gilbert and Sullivan on the high seas; +but you bet I wouldn't let any man dictate to me. 'You give me your +orders, Captain Green,' I said, 'and you'll find I'll carry them out; +that's all you've got to say. You'll find I do my duty,' I said; 'how +I do it is my lookout; and there's no man born that's going to give +me lessons.' Well, there was plenty dirt on board that Maria first and +last. Of course, the old man put my back up, and, of course, he put up +the crew's; and I had to regular fight my way through every watch. The +men got to hate me, so's I would hear them grit their teeth when I came +up. At last, one day, I saw a big hulking beast of a Dutchman booting +the ship's boy. I made one shoot of it off the house and laid that +Dutchman out. Up he came, and I laid him out again. 'Now,' I said, 'if +there's a kick left in you, just mention it, and I'll stamp your ribs +in like a packing-case.' He thought better of it, and never let on; +lay there as mild as a deacon at a funeral; and they took him below to +reflect on his native Dutchland. One night we got caught in rather a +dirty thing about 25 south. I guess we were all asleep; for the first +thing I knew there was the fore-royal gone. I ran forward, bawling blue +hell; and just as I came by the foremast, something struck me right +through the forearm and stuck there. I put my other hand up, and by +George! it was the grain; the beasts had speared me like a porpoise. +'Cap'n!' I cried.--'What's wrong?' says he.--'They've grained me,' says +I.--'Grained you?' says he. 'Well, I've been looking for that.'----'And +by God,' I cried, 'I want to have some of these beasts murdered for +it!'--'Now, Mr. Nares,' says he, 'you better go below. If I had been one +of the men, you'd have got more than this. And I want no more of your +language on deck. You've cost me my fore-royal already,' says he; 'and +if you carry on, you'll have the three sticks out of her.' That was old +man Green's idea of supporting officers. But you wait a bit; the cream's +coming. We made Melbourne right enough, and the old man said: 'Mr. +Nares, you and me don't draw together. You're a first-rate seaman, no +mistake of that; but you're the most disagreeable man I ever sailed +with; and your language and your conduct to the crew I cannot stomach. +I guess we'll separate.' I didn't care about the berth, you may be sure; +but I felt kind of mean; and if he made one kind of stink, I thought +I could make another. So I said I would go ashore and see how things +stood; went, found I was all right, and came aboard again on the top +rail.--'Are you getting your traps together, Mr. Nares?' says the old +man.--'No,' says I, 'I don't know as we'll separate much before 'Frisco; +at least,' I said, 'it's a point for your consideration. I'm very +willing to say good-by to the Maria, but I don't know whether you'll +care to start me out with three months' wages.' He got his money-box +right away. 'My son,' says he, 'I think it cheap at the money.' He had +me there.” + + +It was a singular tale for a man to tell of himself; above all, in the +midst of our discussion; but it was quite in character for Nares. I +never made a good hit in our disputes, I never justly resented any act +or speech of his, but what I found it long after carefully posted in his +day-book and reckoned (here was the man's oddity) to my credit. It was +the same with his father, whom he had hated; he would give a sketch of +the old fellow, frank and credible, and yet so honestly touched that +it was charming. I have never met a man so strangely constituted: to +possess a reason of the most equal justice, to have his nerves at the +same time quivering with petty spite, and to act upon the nerves and not +the reason. + +A kindred wonder in my eyes was the nature of his courage. There was +never a braver man: he went out to welcome danger; an emergency (came it +never so sudden) strung him like a tonic. And yet, upon the other hand, +I have known none so nervous, so oppressed with possibilities, looking +upon the world at large, and the life of a sailor in particular, with +so constant and haggard a consideration of the ugly chances. All +his courage was in blood, not merely cold, but icy with reasoned +apprehension. He would lay our little craft rail under, and “hang on” in +a squall, until I gave myself up for lost, and the men were rushing +to their stations of their own accord. “There,” he would say, “I guess +there's not a man on board would have hung on as long as I did that +time; they'll have to give up thinking me no schooner sailor. I guess +I can shave just as near capsizing as any other captain of this vessel, +drunk or sober.” And then he would fall to repining and wishing himself +well out of the enterprise, and dilate on the peril of the seas, the +particular dangers of the schooner rig, which he abhorred, the various +ways in which we might go to the bottom, and the prodigious fleet of +ships that have sailed out in the course of history, dwindled from the +eyes of watchers, and returned no more. “Well,” he would wind up, “I +guess it don't much matter. I can't see what any one wants to live for, +anyway. If I could get into some one else's apple-tree, and be about +twelve years old, and just stick the way I was, eating stolen apples, I +won't say. But there's no sense in this grown-up business--sailorising, +politics, the piety mill, and all the rest of it. Good clean drowning is +good enough for me.” It is hard to imagine any more depressing talk for +a poor landsman on a dirty night; it is hard to imagine anything less +sailor-like (as sailors are supposed to be, and generally are) than this +persistent harping on the minor. + + +But I was to see more of the man's gloomy constancy ere the cruise was +at an end. + +On the morning of the seventeenth day I came on deck, to find the +schooner under double reefs, and flying rather wild before a heavy run +of sea. Snoring trades and humming sails had been our portion hitherto. +We were already nearing the island. My restrained excitement had begun +again to overmaster me; and for some time my only book had been the +patent log that trailed over the taffrail, and my chief interest the +daily observation and our caterpillar progress across the chart. My +first glance, which was at the compass, and my second, which was at the +log, were all that I could wish. We lay our course; we had been doing +over eight since nine the night before; and I drew a heavy breath of +satisfaction. And then I know not what odd and wintry appearance of the +sea and sky knocked suddenly at my heart. I observed the schooner +to look more than usually small, the men silent and studious of the +weather. Nares, in one of his rusty humours, afforded me no shadow of a +morning salutation. He, too, seemed to observe the behaviour of the ship +with an intent and anxious scrutiny. What I liked still less, Johnson +himself was at the wheel, which he span busily, often with a visible +effort; and as the seas ranged up behind us, black and imminent, he kept +casting behind him eyes of animal swiftness, and drawing in his neck +between his shoulders, like a man dodging a blow. From these signs, I +gathered that all was not exactly for the best; and I would have given +a good handful of dollars for a plain answer to the questions which +I dared not put. Had I dared, with the present danger signal in the +captain's face, I should only have been reminded of my position as +supercargo--an office never touched upon in kindness--and advised, in +a very indigestible manner, to go below. There was nothing for it, +therefore, but to entertain my vague apprehensions as best I should be +able, until it pleased the captain to enlighten me of his own accord. +This he did sooner than I had expected; as soon, indeed, as the Chinaman +had summoned us to breakfast, and we sat face to face across the narrow +board. + +“See here, Mr. Dodd,” he began, looking at me rather queerly, “here is a +business point arisen. This sea's been running up for the last two days, +and now it's too high for comfort. The glass is falling, the wind is +breezing up, and I won't say but what there's dirt in it. If I lay her +to, we may have to ride out a gale of wind and drift God knows where--on +these French Frigate Shoals, for instance. If I keep her as she goes, +we'll make that island to-morrow afternoon, and have the lee of it to +lie under, if we can't make out to run in. The point you have to figure +on, is whether you'll take the big chances of that Captain Trent making +the place before you, or take the risk of something happening. I'm +to run this ship to your satisfaction,” he added, with an ugly sneer. +“Well, here's a point for the supercargo.” + +“Captain,” I returned, with my heart in my mouth, “risk is better than +certain failure.” + +“Life is all risk, Mr. Dodd,” he remarked. “But there's one thing: it's +now or never; in half an hour, Archdeacon Gabriel couldn't lay her to, +if he came down stairs on purpose.” + +“All right,” said I. “Let's run.” + +“Run goes,” said he; and with that he fell to breakfast, and passed half +an hour in stowing away pie and devoutly wishing himself back in San +Francisco. + +When we came on deck again, he took the wheel from Johnson--it appears +they could trust none among the hands--and I stood close beside him, +feeling safe in this proximity, and tasting a fearful joy from our +surroundings and the consciousness of my decision. The breeze had +already risen, and as it tore over our heads, it uttered at times a +long hooting note that sent my heart into my boots. The sea pursued +us without remission, leaping to the assault of the low rail. The +quarter-deck was all awash, and we must close the companion doors. + +“And all this, if you please, for Mr. Pinkerton's dollars!” the captain +suddenly exclaimed. “There's many a fine fellow gone under, Mr. Dodd, +because of drivers like your friend. What do they care for a ship or +two? Insured, I guess. What do they care for sailors' lives alongside +of a few thousand dollars? What they want is speed between ports, and +a damned fool of a captain that'll drive a ship under as I'm doing this +one. You can put in the morning, asking why I do it.” + +I sheered off to another part of the vessel as fast as civility +permitted. This was not at all the talk that I desired, nor was the +train of reflection which it started anyway welcome. Here I was, running +some hazard of my life, and perilling the lives of seven others; exactly +for what end, I was now at liberty to ask myself. For a very large +amount of a very deadly poison, was the obvious answer; and I thought +if all tales were true, and I were soon to be subjected to +cross-examination at the bar of Eternal Justice, it was one which would +not increase my popularity with the court. “Well, never mind, Jim,” + thought I. “I'm doing it for you.” + +Before eleven, a third reef was taken in the mainsail; and Johnson +filled the cabin with a storm-sail of No. 1 duck and sat cross-legged +on the streaming floor, vigorously putting it to rights with a couple of +the hands. By dinner I had fled the deck, and sat in the bench corner, +giddy, dumb, and stupefied with terror. The frightened leaps of the +poor Norah Creina, spanking like a stag for bare existence, bruised me +between the table and the berths. Overhead, the wild huntsman of the +storm passed continuously in one blare of mingled noises; screaming +wind, straining timber, lashing rope's end, pounding block and bursting +sea contributed; and I could have thought there was at times another, a +more piercing, a more human note, that dominated all, like the wailing +of an angel; I could have thought I knew the angel's name, and that his +wings were black. It seemed incredible that any creature of man's art +could long endure the barbarous mishandling of the seas, kicked as the +schooner was from mountain side to mountain side, beaten and blown upon +and wrenched in every joint and sinew, like a child upon the rack. There +was not a plank of her that did not cry aloud for mercy; and as she +continued to hold together, I became conscious of a growing sympathy +with her endeavours, a growing admiration for her gallant staunchness, +that amused and at times obliterated my terrors for myself. God bless +every man that swung a mallet on that tiny and strong hull! It was not +for wages only that he laboured, but to save men's lives. + +All the rest of the day, and all the following night, I sat in the +corner or lay wakeful in my bunk; and it was only with the return of +morning that a new phase of my alarms drove me once more on deck. A +gloomier interval I never passed. Johnson and Nares steadily relieved +each other at the wheel and came below. The first glance of each was +at the glass, which he repeatedly knuckled and frowned upon; for it was +sagging lower all the time. Then, if Johnson were the visitor, he would +pick a snack out of the cupboard, and stand, braced against the table, +eating it, and perhaps obliging me with a word or two of his hee-haw +conversation: how it was “a son of a gun of a cold night on deck, Mr. +Dodd” (with a grin); how “it wasn't no night for panjammers, he could +tell me”: having transacted all which, he would throw himself down +in his bunk and sleep his two hours with compunction. But the captain +neither ate nor slept. “You there, Mr. Dodd?” he would say, after the +obligatory visit to the glass. “Well, my son, we're one hundred and four +miles” (or whatever it was) “off the island, and scudding for all we're +worth. We'll make it to-morrow about four, or not, as the case may be. +That's the news. And now, Mr. Dodd, I've stretched a point for you; +you can see I'm dead tired; so just you stretch away back to your bunk +again.” And with this attempt at geniality, his teeth would settle +hard down on his cigar, and he would pass his spell below staring and +blinking at the cabin lamp through a cloud of tobacco smoke. He has +told me since that he was happy, which I should never have divined. “You +see,” he said, “the wind we had was never anything out of the way; but +the sea was really nasty, the schooner wanted a lot of humouring, and +it was clear from the glass that we were close to some dirt. We might +be running out of it, or we might be running right crack into it. Well, +there's always something sublime about a big deal like that; and it kind +of raises a man in his own liking. We're a queer kind of beasts, Mr. +Dodd.” + +The morning broke with sinister brightness; the air alarmingly +transparent, the sky pure, the rim of the horizon clear and strong +against the heavens. The wind and the wild seas, now vastly swollen, +indefatigably hunted us. I stood on deck, choking with fear; I seemed +to lose all power upon my limbs; my knees were as paper when she plunged +into the murderous valleys; my heart collapsed when some black mountain +fell in avalanche beside her counter, and the water, that was more than +spray, swept round my ankles like a torrent. I was conscious of but +one strong desire, to bear myself decently in my terrors, and whatever +should happen to my life, preserve my character: as the captain said, +we are a queer kind of beasts. Breakfast time came, and I made shift +to swallow some hot tea. Then I must stagger below to take the time, +reading the chronometer with dizzy eyes, and marvelling the while what +value there could be in observations taken in a ship launched (as ours +then was) like a missile among flying seas. The forenoon dragged on in +a grinding monotony of peril; every spoke of the wheel a rash, but an +obliged experiment--rash as a forlorn hope, needful as the leap that +lands a fireman from a burning staircase. Noon was made; the captain +dined on his day's work, and I on watching him; and our place was +entered on the chart with a meticulous precision which seemed to me +half pitiful and half absurd, since the next eye to behold that sheet of +paper might be the eye of an exploring fish. One o'clock came, then two; +the captain gloomed and chafed, as he held to the coaming of the house, +and if ever I saw dormant murder in man's eye, it was in his. God help +the hand that should have disobeyed him. + +Of a sudden, he turned towards the mate, who was doing his trick at the +wheel. + +“Two points on the port bow,” I heard him say. And he took the wheel +himself. + +Johnson nodded, wiped his eyes with the back of his wet hand, watched a +chance as the vessel lunged up hill, and got to the main rigging, where +he swarmed aloft. Up and up, I watched him go, hanging on at every +ugly plunge, gaining with every lull of the schooner's movement, until, +clambering into the cross-trees and clinging with one arm around the +masts, I could see him take one comprehensive sweep of the southwesterly +horizon. The next moment, he had slid down the backstay and stood on +deck, with a grin, a nod, and a gesture of the finger that said “yes”; +the next again, and he was back sweating and squirming at the wheel, his +tired face streaming and smiling, and his hair and the rags and corners +of his clothes lashing round him in the wind. + +Nares went below, fetched up his binocular, and fell into a silent +perusal of the sea-line; I also, with my unaided eyesight. Little by +little, in that white waste of water, I began to make out a quarter +where the whiteness appeared more condensed: the sky above was whitish +likewise, and misty like a squall; and little by little there thrilled +upon my ears a note deeper and more terrible than the yelling of the +gale--the long, thundering roll of breakers. Nares wiped his night glass +on his sleeve and passed it to me, motioning, as he did so, with his +hand. An endless wilderness of raging billows came and went and danced +in the circle of the glass; now and then a pale corner of sky, or the +strong line of the horizon rugged with the heads of waves; and then of +a sudden--come and gone ere I could fix it, with a swallow's +swiftness--one glimpse of what we had come so far and paid so dear to +see: the masts and rigging of a brig pencilled on heaven, with an ensign +streaming at the main, and the ragged ribbons of a topsail thrashing +from the yard. Again and again, with toilful searching, I recalled that +apparition. There was no sign of any land; the wreck stood between sea +and sky, a thing the most isolated I had ever viewed; but as we drew +nearer, I perceived her to be defended by a line of breakers which drew +off on either hand, and marked, indeed, the nearest segment of the reef. +Heavy spray hung over them like a smoke, some hundred feet into the air; +and the sound of their consecutive explosions rolled like a cannonade. + +In half an hour we were close in; for perhaps as long again, we skirted +that formidable barrier toward its farther side; and presently the sea +began insensibly to moderate and the ship to go more sweetly. We had +gained the lee of the island as (for form's sake) I may call that ring +of foam and haze and thunder; and shaking out a reef, wore ship and +headed for the passage. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. THE ISLAND AND THE WRECK. + + +All hands were filled with joy. It was betrayed in their alacrity and +easy faces: Johnson smiling broadly at the wheel, Nares studying the +sketch chart of the island with an eye at peace, and the hands clustered +forward, eagerly talking and pointing: so manifest was our escape, so +wonderful the attraction of a single foot of earth after so many suns +had set and risen on an empty sea. To add to the relief, besides, by one +of those malicious coincidences which suggest for fate the image of an +underbred and grinning schoolboy, we had no sooner worn ship than the +wind began to abate. + +For myself, however, I did but exchange anxieties. I was no sooner out +of one fear than I fell upon another; no sooner secure that I should +myself make the intended haven, than I began to be convinced that Trent +was there before me. I climbed into the rigging, stood on the board, and +eagerly scanned that ring of coral reef and bursting breaker, and the +blue lagoon which they enclosed. The two islets within began to show +plainly--Middle Brooks and Lower Brooks Island, the Directory named +them: two low, bush-covered, rolling strips of sand, each with +glittering beaches, each perhaps a mile or a mile and a half in length, +running east and west, and divided by a narrow channel. Over these, +innumerable as maggots, there hovered, chattered, screamed and clanged, +millions of twinkling sea-birds: white and black; the black by far the +largest. With singular scintillations, this vortex of winged life swayed +to and fro in the strong sunshine, whirled continually through itself, +and would now and again burst asunder and scatter as wide as the lagoon: +so that I was irresistibly reminded of what I had read of nebular +convulsions. A thin cloud overspread the area of the reef and the +adjacent sea--the dust, as I could not but fancy, of earlier explosions. +And a little apart, there was yet another focus of centrifugal and +centripetal flight, where, hard by the deafening line of breakers, her +sails (all but the tattered topsail) snugly furled down, and the red rag +that marks Old England on the seas beating, union down, at the main--the +Flying Scud, the fruit of so many toilers, a recollection in so many +lives of men, whose tall spars had been mirrored in the remotest corners +of the sea--lay stationary at last and forever, in the first stage of +naval dissolution. Towards her, the taut Norah Creina, vulture-wise, +wriggled to windward: come from so far to pick her bones. And, look as +I pleased, there was no other presence of man or of man's handiwork; +no Honolulu schooner lay there crowded with armed rivals, no smoke rose +from the fire at which I fancied Trent cooking a meal of sea-birds. It +seemed, after all, we were in time, and I drew a mighty breath. + +I had not arrived at this reviving certainty before the breakers were +already close aboard, the leadsman at his station, and the captain +posted in the fore cross-trees to con us through the coral lumps of the +lagoon. All circumstances were in our favour, the light behind, the sun +low, the wind still fresh and steady, and the tide about the turn. A +moment later we shot at racing speed betwixt two pier heads of broken +water; the lead began to be cast, the captain to bawl down his anxious +directions, the schooner to tack and dodge among the scattered dangers +of the lagoon; and at one bell in the first dog watch, we had come +to our anchor off the north-east end of Middle Brooks Island, in five +fathoms water. The sails were gasketted and covered, the boats emptied +of the miscellaneous stores and odds and ends of sea-furniture, that +accumulate in the course of a voyage, the kedge sent ashore, and the +decks tidied down: a good three-quarters of an hour's work, during +which I raged about the deck like a man with a strong toothache. The +transition from the wild sea to the comparative immobility of the lagoon +had wrought strange distress among my nerves: I could not hold still +whether in hand or foot; the slowness of the men, tired as dogs after +our rough experience outside, irritated me like something personal; and +the irrational screaming of the sea-birds saddened me like a dirge. It +was a relief when, with Nares, and a couple of hands, I might drop into +the boat and move off at last for the Flying Scud. + +“She looks kind of pitiful, don't she?” observed the captain, nodding +towards the wreck, from which we were separated by some half a mile. +“Looks as if she didn't like her berth, and Captain Trent had used her +badly. Give her ginger, boys!” he added to the hands, “and you can all +have shore liberty to-night to see the birds and paint the town red.” + +We all laughed at the pleasantry, and the boat skimmed the faster over +the rippling face of the lagoon. The Flying Scud would have seemed small +enough beside the wharves of San Francisco, but she was some thrice the +size of the Norah Creina, which had been so long our continent; and +as we craned up at her wall-sides, she impressed us with a mountain +magnitude. She lay head to the reef, where the huge blue wall of the +rollers was for ever ranging up and crumbling down; and to gain her +starboard side, we must pass below the stern. The rudder was hard aport, +and we could read the legend: + + FLYING SCUD + + HULL + +On the other side, about the break of the poop, some half a fathom of +rope ladder trailed over the rail, and by this we made our entrance. + +She was a roomy ship inside, with a raised poop standing some three feet +higher than the deck, and a small forward house, for the men's bunks and +the galley, just abaft the foremast. There was one boat on the house, +and another and larger one, in beds on deck, on either hand of it. She +had been painted white, with tropical economy, outside and in; and we +found, later on, that the stanchions of the rail, hoops of the scuttle +but, etc., were picked out with green. At that time, however, when we +first stepped aboard, all was hidden under the droppings of innumerable +sea-birds. + +The birds themselves gyrated and screamed meanwhile among the rigging; +and when we looked into the galley, their outrush drove us back. +Savage-looking fowl they were, savagely beaked, and some of the black +ones great as eagles. Half-buried in the slush, we were aware of a +litter of kegs in the waist; and these, on being somewhat cleaned, +proved to be water beakers and quarter casks of mess beef with some +colonial brand, doubtless collected there before the Tempest hove in +sight, and while Trent and his men had no better expectation than to +strike for Honolulu in the boats. Nothing else was notable on deck, +save where the loose topsail had played some havoc with the rigging, +and there hung, and swayed, and sang in the declining wind, a raffle of +intorted cordage. + +With a shyness that was almost awe, Nares and I descended the companion. +The stair turned upon itself and landed us just forward of a thwart-ship +bulkhead that cut the poop in two. The fore part formed a kind of +miscellaneous store-room, with a double-bunked division for the cook (as +Nares supposed) and second mate. The after part contained, in the midst, +the main cabin, running in a kind of bow into the curvature of the +stern; on the port side, a pantry opening forward and a stateroom for +the mate; and on the starboard, the captain's berth and water-closet. +Into these we did but glance: the main cabin holding us. It was dark, +for the sea-birds had obscured the skylight with their droppings; it +smelt rank and fusty; and it was beset with a loud swarm of flies that +beat continually in our faces. Supposing them close attendants upon man +and his broken meat, I marvelled how they had found their way to Midway +reef; it was sure at least some vessel must have brought them, and that +long ago, for they had multiplied exceedingly. Part of the floor was +strewn with a confusion of clothes, books, nautical instruments, odds +and ends of finery, and such trash as might be expected from the turning +out of several seamen's chests, upon a sudden emergency and after a +long cruise. It was strange in that dim cabin, quivering with the near +thunder of the breakers and pierced with the screaming of the fowls, +to turn over so many things that other men had coveted, and prized, and +worn on their warm bodies--frayed old underclothing, pyjamas of strange +design, duck suits in every stage of rustiness, oil skins, pilot coats, +bottles of scent, embroidered shirts, jackets of Ponjee silk--clothes +for the night watch at sea or the day ashore in the hotel verandah; and +mingled among these, books, cigars, fancy pipes, quantities of +tobacco, many keys, a rusty pistol, and a sprinkling of cheap +curiosities--Benares brass, Chinese jars and pictures, and bottles +of odd shells in cotton, each designed no doubt for somebody at +home--perhaps in Hull, of which Trent had been a native and his ship a +citizen. + +Thence we turned our attention to the table, which stood spread, as if +for a meal, with stout ship's crockery and the remains of food--a pot of +marmalade, dregs of coffee in the mugs, unrecognisable remains of +foods, bread, some toast, and a tin of condensed milk. The table-cloth, +originally of a red colour, was stained a dark brown at the captain's +end, apparently with coffee; at the other end, it had been folded back, +and a pen and ink-pot stood on the bare table. Stools were here and +there about the table, irregularly placed, as though the meal had been +finished and the men smoking and chatting; and one of the stools lay on +the floor, broken. + +“See! they were writing up the log,” said Nares, pointing to the +ink-bottle. “Caught napping, as usual. I wonder if there ever was a +captain yet, that lost a ship with his log-book up to date? He generally +has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles Dickens +and his serial novels.--What a regular, lime-juicer spread!” he added +contemptuously. “Marmalade--and toast for the old man! Nasty, slovenly +pigs!” + +There was something in this criticism of the absent that jarred upon my +feelings. I had no love indeed for Captain Trent or any of his vanished +gang; but the desertion and decay of this once habitable cabin struck me +hard: the death of man's handiwork is melancholy like the death of man +himself; and I was impressed with an involuntary and irrational sense of +tragedy in my surroundings. + +“This sickens me,” I said. “Let's go on deck and breathe.” + +The captain nodded. “It IS kind of lonely, isn't it?” he said. “But I +can't go up till I get the code signals. I want to run up 'Got Left' or +something, just to brighten up this island home. Captain Trent hasn't +been here yet, but he'll drop in before long; and it'll cheer him up to +see a signal on the brig.” + +“Isn't there some official expression we could use?” I asked, vastly +taken by the fancy. “'Sold for the benefit of the underwriters: for +further particulars, apply to J. Pinkerton, Montana Block, S.F.'” + +“Well,” returned Nares, “I won't say but what an old navy quartermaster +might telegraph all that, if you gave him a day to do it in and a pound +of tobacco for himself. But it's above my register. I must try something +short and sweet: KB, urgent signal, 'Heave all aback'; or LM, urgent, +'The berth you're now in is not safe'; or what do you say to PQH?--'Tell +my owners the ship answers remarkably well.'” + +“It's premature,” I replied; “but it seems calculated to give pain to +Trent. PQH for me.” + +The flags were found in Trent's cabin, neatly stored behind a lettered +grating; Nares chose what he required and (I following) returned on +deck, where the sun had already dipped, and the dusk was coming. + +“Here! don't touch that, you fool!” shouted the captain to one of the +hands, who was drinking from the scuttle but. “That water's rotten!” + +“Beg pardon, sir,” replied the man. “Tastes quite sweet.” + +“Let me see,” returned Nares, and he took the dipper and held it to his +lips. “Yes, it's all right,” he said. “Must have rotted and come sweet +again. Queer, isn't it, Mr. Dodd? Though I've known the same on a Cape +Horner.” + +There was something in his intonation that made me look him in the face; +he stood a little on tiptoe to look right and left about the ship, +like a man filled with curiosity, and his whole expression and bearing +testified to some suppressed excitement. + +“You don't believe what you're saying!” I broke out. + +“O, I don't know but what I do!” he replied, laying a hand upon me +soothingly. “The thing's very possible. Only, I'm bothered about +something else.” + +And with that he called a hand, gave him the code flags, and stepped +himself to the main signal halliards, which vibrated under the weight of +the ensign overhead. A minute later, the American colours, which we had +brought in the boat, replaced the English red, and PQH was fluttering at +the fore. + +“Now, then,” said Nares, who had watched the breaking out of his signal +with the old-maidish particularity of an American sailor, “out with +those handspikes, and let's see what water there is in the lagoon.” + +The bars were shoved home; the barbarous cacophony of the clanking pump +rose in the waist; and streams of ill-smelling water gushed on deck and +made valleys in the slab guano. Nares leaned on the rail, watching the +steady stream of bilge as though he found some interest in it. + + +“What is it that bothers you?” I asked. + +“Well, I'll tell you one thing shortly,” he replied. “But here's +another. Do you see those boats there, one on the house and two on the +beds? Well, where is the boat Trent lowered when he lost the hands?” + +“Got it aboard again, I suppose,” said I. + +“Well, if you'll tell me why!” returned the captain. + +“Then it must have been another,” I suggested. + +“She might have carried another on the main hatch, I won't deny,” + admitted Nares; “but I can't see what she wanted with it, unless it +was for the old man to go out and play the accordion in, on moonlight +nights.” + +“It can't much matter, anyway,” I reflected. + +“O, I don't suppose it does,” said he, glancing over his shoulder at the +spouting of the scuppers. + +“And how long are we to keep up this racket?” I asked. “We're simply +pumping up the lagoon. Captain Trent himself said she had settled down +and was full forward.” + +“Did he?” said Nares, with a significant dryness. And almost as he spoke +the pumps sucked, and sucked again, and the men threw down their bars. +“There, what do you make of that?” he asked. “Now, I'll tell, Mr. Dodd,” + he went on, lowering his voice, but not shifting from his easy attitude +against the rail, “this ship is as sound as the Norah Creina. I had a +guess of it before we came aboard, and now I know.” + +“It's not possible!” I cried. “What do you make of Trent?” + +“I don't make anything of Trent; I don't know whether he's a liar or +only an old wife; I simply tell you what's the fact,” said Nares. “And +I'll tell you something more,” he added: “I've taken the ground myself +in deep-water vessels; I know what I'm saying; and I say that, when +she first struck and before she bedded down, seven or eight hours' work +would have got this hooker off, and there's no man that ever went two +years to sea but must have known it.” + + +I could only utter an exclamation. + +Nares raised his finger warningly. “Don't let THEM get hold of it,” said +he. “Think what you like, but say nothing.” + +I glanced round; the dusk was melting into early night; the twinkle of +a lantern marked the schooner's position in the distance; and our men, +free from further labour, stood grouped together in the waist, their +faces illuminated by their glowing pipes. + +“Why didn't Trent get her off?” inquired the captain. “Why did he want +to buy her back in 'Frisco for these fabulous sums, when he might have +sailed her into the bay himself?” + +“Perhaps he never knew her value until then,” I suggested. + +“I wish we knew her value now,” exclaimed Nares. “However, I don't want +to depress you; I'm sorry for you, Mr. Dodd; I know how bothering it +must be to you; and the best I can say's this: I haven't taken much +time getting down, and now I'm here I mean to work this thing in proper +style. I just want to put your mind at rest: you shall have no trouble +with me.” + +There was something trusty and friendly in his voice; and I found myself +gripping hands with him, in that hard, short shake that means so much +with English-speaking people. + +“We'll do, old fellow,” said he. “We've shaken down into pretty good +friends, you and me; and you won't find me working the business any the +less hard for that. And now let's scoot for supper.” + +After supper, with the idle curiosity of the seafarer, we pulled ashore +in a fine moonlight, and landed on Middle Brook's Island. A flat beach +surrounded it upon all sides; and the midst was occupied by a thicket +of bushes, the highest of them scarcely five feet high, in which the +sea-fowl lived. Through this we tried at first to strike; but it were +easier to cross Trafalgar Square on a day of demonstration than to +invade these haunts of sleeping sea-birds. The nests sank, and the eggs +burst under footing; wings beat in our faces, beaks menaced our eyes, +our minds were confounded with the screeching, and the coil spread over +the island and mounted high into the air. + + +“I guess we'll saunter round the beach,” said Nares, when we had made +good our retreat. + +The hands were all busy after sea-birds' eggs, so there were none to +follow us. Our way lay on the crisp sand by the margin of the water: on +one side, the thicket from which we had been dislodged; on the other, +the face of the lagoon, barred with a broad path of moonlight, and +beyond that, the line, alternately dark and shining, alternately hove +high and fallen prone, of the external breakers. The beach was strewn +with bits of wreck and drift: some redwood and spruce logs, no less than +two lower masts of junks, and the stern-post of a European ship; all +of which we looked on with a shade of serious concern, speaking of the +dangers of the sea and the hard case of castaways. In this sober vein we +made the greater part of the circuit of the island; had a near view +of its neighbour from the southern end; walked the whole length of the +westerly side in the shadow of the thicket; and came forth again into +the moonlight at the opposite extremity. + +On our right, at the distance of about half a mile, the schooner lay +faintly heaving at her anchors. About half a mile down the beach, at +a spot still hidden from us by the thicket, an upboiling of the birds +showed where the men were still (with sailor-like insatiability) +collecting eggs. And right before us, in a small indentation of the +sand, we were aware of a boat lying high and dry, and right side up. + +Nares crouched back into the shadow of the bushes. + +“What the devil's this?” he whispered. + +“Trent,” I suggested, with a beating heart. + +“We were damned fools to come ashore unarmed,” said he. “But I've got to +know where I stand.” In the shadow, his face looked conspicuously white, +and his voice betrayed a strong excitement. He took his boat's whistle +from his pocket. “In case I might want to play a tune,” said he, grimly, +and thrusting it between his teeth, advanced into the moonlit open; +which we crossed with rapid steps, looking guiltily about us as we +went. Not a leaf stirred; and the boat, when we came up to it, offered +convincing proof of long desertion. She was an eighteen-foot whaleboat +of the ordinary type, equipped with oars and thole-pins. Two or three +quarter-casks lay on the bilge amidships, one of which must have been +broached, and now stank horribly; and these, upon examination, proved to +bear the same New Zealand brand as the beef on board the wreck. + +“Well, here's the boat,” said I; “here's one of your difficulties +cleared away.” + +“H'm,” said he. There was a little water in the bilge, and here he +stooped and tasted it. + +“Fresh,” he said. “Only rain-water.” + +“You don't object to that?” I asked. + +“No,” said he. + +“Well, then, what ails you?” I cried. + +“In plain United States, Mr. Dodd,” he returned, “a whaleboat, five ash +sweeps, and a barrel of stinking pork.” + +“Or, in other words, the whole thing?” I commented. + +“Well, it's this way,” he condescended to explain. “I've no use for a +fourth boat at all; but a boat of this model tops the business. I don't +say the type's not common in these waters; it's as common as dirt; the +traders carry them for surf-boats. But the Flying Scud? a deep-water +tramp, who was lime-juicing around between big ports, Calcutta and +Rangoon and 'Frisco and the Canton River? No, I don't see it.” + +We were leaning over the gunwale of the boat as we spoke. The captain +stood nearest the bow, and he was idly playing with the trailing +painter, when a thought arrested him. He hauled the line in hand over +hand, and stared, and remained staring, at the end. + +“Anything wrong with it?” I asked. + +“Do you know, Mr. Dodd,” said he, in a queer voice, “this painter's been +cut? A sailor always seizes a rope's end, but this is sliced short off +with the cold steel. This won't do at all for the men,” he added. “Just +stand by till I fix it up more natural.” + +“Any guess what it all means?” I asked. + +“Well, it means one thing,” said he. “It means Trent was a liar. I guess +the story of the Flying Scud was a sight more picturesque than he gave +out.” + +Half an hour later, the whaleboat was lying astern of the Norah Creina; +and Nares and I sought our bunks, silent and half-bewildered by our late +discoveries. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. THE CABIN OF THE “FLYING SCUD.” + + +The sun of the morrow had not cleared the morning bank: the lake of the +lagoon, the islets, and the wall of breakers now beginning to subside, +still lay clearly pictured in the flushed obscurity of early day, when +we stepped again upon the deck of the Flying Scud: Nares, myself, +the mate, two of the hands, and one dozen bright, virgin axes, in war +against that massive structure. I think we all drew pleasurable breath; +so profound in man is the instinct of destruction, so engaging is the +interest of the chase. For we were now about to taste, in a supreme +degree, the double joys of demolishing a toy and playing “Hide the +handkerchief”: sports from which we had all perhaps desisted since the +days of infancy. And the toy we were to burst in pieces was a deep-sea +ship; and the hidden good for which we were to hunt was a prodigious +fortune. + +The decks were washed down, the main hatch removed, and a gun-tackle +purchase rigged before the boat arrived with breakfast. I had grown so +suspicious of the wreck, that it was a positive relief to me to look +down into the hold, and see it full, or nearly full, of undeniable rice +packed in the Chinese fashion in boluses of matting. Breakfast over, +Johnson and the hands turned to upon the cargo; while Nares and I, +having smashed open the skylight and rigged up a windsail on deck, began +the work of rummaging the cabins. + +I must not be expected to describe our first day's work, or (for that +matter) any of the rest, in order and detail as it occurred. Such +particularity might have been possible for several officers and a draft +of men from a ship of war, accompanied by an experienced secretary with +a knowledge of shorthand. For two plain human beings, unaccustomed to +the use of the broad-axe and consumed with an impatient greed of the +result, the whole business melts, in the retrospect, into a nightmare +of exertion, heat, hurry, and bewilderment; sweat pouring from the face +like rain, the scurry of rats, the choking exhalations of the bilge, and +the throbs and splinterings of the toiling axes. I shall content myself +with giving the cream of our discoveries in a logical rather than a +temporal order; though the two indeed practically coincided, and we had +finished our exploration of the cabin, before we could be certain of the +nature of the cargo. + +Nares and I began operations by tossing up pell-mell through the +companion, and piling in a squalid heap about the wheel, all clothes, +personal effects, the crockery, the carpet, stale victuals, tins of +meat, and in a word, all movables from the main cabin. Thence, we +transferred our attention to the captain's quarters on the starboard +side. Using the blankets for a basket, we sent up the books, +instruments, and clothes to swell our growing midden on the deck; and +then Nares, going on hands and knees, began to forage underneath +the bed. Box after box of Manilla cigars rewarded his search. I took +occasion to smash some of these boxes open, and even to guillotine +the bundles of cigars; but quite in vain--no secret cache of opium +encouraged me to continue. + +“I guess I've got hold of the dicky now!” exclaimed Nares, and turning +round from my perquisitions, I found he had drawn forth a heavy iron +box, secured to the bulkhead by chain and padlock. On this he was now +gazing, not with the triumph that instantly inflamed my own bosom, but +with a somewhat foolish appearance of surprise. + +“By George, we have it now!” I cried, and would have shaken hands with +my companion; but he did not see, or would not accept, the salutation. + +“Let's see what's in it first,” he remarked dryly. And he adjusted the +box upon its side, and with some blows of an axe burst the lock open. +I threw myself beside him, as he replaced the box on its bottom and +removed the lid. I cannot tell what I expected; a million's worth of +diamonds might perhaps have pleased me; my cheeks burned, my heart +throbbed to bursting; and lo! there was disclosed but a trayful of +papers, neatly taped, and a cheque-book of the customary pattern. I made +a snatch at the tray to see what was beneath; but the captain's hand +fell on mine, heavy and hard. + +“Now, boss!” he cried, not unkindly, “is this to be run shipshape? or is +it a Dutch grab-racket?” + +And he proceeded to untie and run over the contents of the papers, +with a serious face and what seemed an ostentation of delay. Me and my +impatience it would appear he had forgotten; for when he was quite done, +he sat a while thinking, whistled a bar or two, refolded the papers, +tied them up again; and then, and not before, deliberately raised the +tray. + +I saw a cigar-box, tied with a piece of fishing-line, and four fat +canvas-bags. Nares whipped out his knife, cut the line, and opened the +box. It was about half full of sovereigns. + +“And the bags?” I whispered. + +The captain ripped them open one by one, and a flood of mixed silver +coin burst forth and rattled in the rusty bottom of the box. Without a +word, he set to work to count the gold. + +“What is this?” I asked. + +“It's the ship's money,” he returned, doggedly continuing his work. + +“The ship's money?” I repeated. “That's the money Trent tramped and +traded with? And there's his cheque-book to draw upon his owners? And he +has left it?” + +“I guess he has,” said Nares, austerely, jotting down a note of the +gold; and I was abashed into silence till his task should be completed. + +It came, I think, to three hundred and seventy-eight pounds sterling; +some nineteen pounds of it in silver: all of which we turned again into +the chest. + +“And what do you think of that?” I asked. + +“Mr. Dodd,” he replied, “you see something of the rumness of this job, +but not the whole. The specie bothers you, but what gets me is the +papers. Are you aware that the master of a ship has charge of all the +cash in hand, pays the men advances, receives freight and passage +money, and runs up bills in every port? All this he does as the owner's +confidential agent, and his integrity is proved by his receipted bills. +I tell you, the captain of a ship is more likely to forget his pants +than these bills which guarantee his character. I've known men drown to +save them: bad men, too; but this is the shipmaster's honour. And here +this Captain Trent--not hurried, not threatened with anything but a free +passage in a British man-of-war--has left them all behind! I don't want +to express myself too strongly, because the facts appear against me, but +the thing is impossible.” + +Dinner came to us not long after, and we ate it on deck, in a grim +silence, each privately racking his brain for some solution of the +mysteries. I was indeed so swallowed up in these considerations, that +the wreck, the lagoon, the islets, and the strident sea-fowl, the strong +sun then beating on my head, and even the gloomy countenance of the +captain at my elbow, all vanished from the field of consciousness. My +mind was a blackboard, on which I scrawled and blotted out hypotheses; +comparing each with the pictorial records in my memory: cyphering with +pictures. In the course of this tense mental exercise I recalled and +studied the faces of one memorial masterpiece, the scene of the saloon; +and here I found myself, on a sudden, looking in the eyes of the Kanaka. + +“There's one thing I can put beyond doubt, at all events,” I cried, +relinquishing my dinner and getting briskly afoot. “There was that +Kanaka I saw in the bar with Captain Trent, the fellow the newspapers +and ship's articles made out to be a Chinaman. I mean to rout his +quarters out and settle that.” + +“All right,” said Nares. “I'll lazy off a bit longer, Mr. Dodd; I feel +pretty rocky and mean.” + +We had thoroughly cleared out the three after-compartments of the ship: +all the stuff from the main cabin and the mate's and captain's quarters +lay piled about the wheel; but in the forward stateroom with the two +bunks, where Nares had said the mate and cook most likely berthed, +we had as yet done nothing. Thither I went. It was very bare; a few +photographs were tacked on the bulkhead, one of them indecent; a single +chest stood open, and, like all we had yet found, it had been partly +rifled. An armful of two-shilling novels proved to me beyond a doubt +it was a European's; no Chinaman would have possessed any, and the most +literate Kanaka conceivable in a ship's galley was not likely to have +gone beyond one. It was plain, then, that the cook had not berthed aft, +and I must look elsewhere. + +The men had stamped down the nests and driven the birds from the galley, +so that I could now enter without contest. One door had been already +blocked with rice; the place was in part darkness, full of a foul stale +smell, and a cloud of nasty flies; it had been left, besides, in some +disorder, or else the birds, during their time of tenancy, had knocked +the things about; and the floor, like the deck before we washed it, was +spread with pasty filth. Against the wall, in the far corner, I found +a handsome chest of camphor-wood bound with brass, such as Chinamen and +sailors love, and indeed all of mankind that plies in the Pacific. From +its outside view I could thus make no deduction; and, strange to +say, the interior was concealed. All the other chests, as I have said +already, we had found gaping open, and their contents scattered abroad; +the same remark we found to apply afterwards in the quarters of the +seamen; only this camphor-wood chest, a singular exception, was both +closed and locked. + +I took an axe to it, readily forced the paltry Chinese fastening, and, +like a Custom-House officer, plunged my hands among the contents. For +some while I groped among linen and cotton. Then my teeth were set +on edge with silk, of which I drew forth several strips covered with +mysterious characters. And these settled the business, for I recognised +them as a kind of bed-hanging popular with the commoner class of the +Chinese. Nor were further evidences wanting, such as night-clothes of +an extraordinary design, a three-stringed Chinese fiddle, a silk +handkerchief full of roots and herbs, and a neat apparatus for smoking +opium, with a liberal provision of the drug. Plainly, then, the cook had +been a Chinaman; and, if so, who was Jos. Amalu? Or had Jos. stolen the +chest before he proceeded to ship under a false name and domicile? It +was possible, as anything was possible in such a welter; but, regarded +as a solution, it only led and left me deeper in the bog. For why +should this chest have been deserted and neglected, when the others were +rummaged or removed? and where had Jos. come by that second chest, with +which (according to the clerk at the What Cheer) he had started for +Honolulu? + + +“And how have YOU fared?” inquired the captain, whom I found luxuriously +reclining in our mound of litter. And the accent on the pronoun, the +heightened colour of the speaker's face, and the contained excitement +in his tones, advertised me at once that I had not been alone to make +discoveries. + +“I have found a Chinaman's chest in the galley,” said I, “and John (if +there was any John) was not so much as at the pains to take his opium.” + +Nares seemed to take it mighty quietly. “That so?” said he. “Now, cast +your eyes on that and own you're beaten!” And with a formidable clap +of his open hand he flattened out before me, on the deck, a pair of +newspapers. + +I gazed upon them dully, being in no mood for fresh discoveries. + +“Look at them, Mr. Dodd,” cried the captain sharply. “Can't you look +at them?” And he ran a dirty thumb along the title. “'_Sydney Morning +Herald_, November 26th,' can't you make that out?” he cried, with rising +energy. “And don't you know, sir, that not thirteen days after this +paper appeared in New South Pole, this ship we're standing in heaved her +blessed anchors out of China? How did the _Sydney Morning Herald_ get to +Hong Kong in thirteen days? Trent made no land, he spoke no ship, till +he got here. Then he either got it here or in Hong Kong. I give you your +choice, my son!” he cried, and fell back among the clothes like a man +weary of life. + +“Where did you find them?” I asked. “In that black bag?” + +“Guess so,” he said. “You needn't fool with it. There's nothing else but +a lead-pencil and a kind of worked-out knife.” + +I looked in the bag, however, and was well rewarded. + +“Every man to his trade, captain,” said I. “You're a sailor, and you've +given me plenty of points; but I am an artist, and allow me to +inform you this is quite as strange as all the rest. The knife is a +palette-knife; the pencil a Winsor and Newton, and a B B B at that. +A palette-knife and a B B B on a tramp brig! It's against the laws of +nature.” + +“It would sicken a dog, wouldn't it?” said Nares. + +“Yes,” I continued, “it's been used by an artist, too: see how it's +sharpened--not for writing--no man could write with that. An artist, and +straight from Sydney? How can he come in?” + +“O, that's natural enough,” sneered Nares. “They cabled him to come up +and illustrate this dime novel.” + +We fell a while silent. + +“Captain,” I said at last, “there is something deuced underhand about +this brig. You tell me you've been to sea a good part of your life. You +must have seen shady things done on ships, and heard of more. Well, what +is this? is it insurance? is it piracy? what is it ABOUT? what can it be +for?” + +“Mr. Dodd,” returned Nares, “you're right about me having been to sea +the bigger part of my life. And you're right again when you think I know +a good many ways in which a dishonest captain mayn't be on the square, +nor do exactly the right thing by his owners, and altogether be just a +little too smart by ninety-nine and three-quarters. There's a good many +ways, but not so many as you'd think; and not one that has any mortal +thing to do with Trent. Trent and his whole racket has got to do with +nothing--that's the bed-rock fact; there's no sense to it, and no use +in it, and no story to it: it's a beastly dream. And don't you run away +with that notion that landsmen take about ships. A society actress don't +go around more publicly than what a ship does, nor is more interviewed, +nor more humbugged, nor more run after by all sorts of little +fussinesses in brass buttons. And more than an actress, a ship has a +deal to lose; she's capital, and the actress only character--if she's +that. The ports of the world are thick with people ready to kick a +captain into the penitentiary if he's not as bright as a dollar and as +honest as the morning star; and what with Lloyd keeping watch and watch +in every corner of the three oceans, and the insurance leeches, and the +consuls, and the customs bugs, and the medicos, you can only get +the idea by thinking of a landsman watched by a hundred and fifty +detectives, or a stranger in a village Down East.” + +“Well, but at sea?” I said. + +“You make me tired,” retorted the captain. “What's the use--at sea? +Everything's got to come to bearings at some port, hasn't it? You can't +stop at sea for ever, can you?--No; the Flying Scud is rubbish; if it +meant anything, it would have to mean something so almighty intricate +that James G. Blaine hasn't got the brains to engineer it; and I vote +for more axeing, pioneering, and opening up the resources of this +phenomenal brig, and less general fuss,” he added, arising. “The +dime-museum symptoms will drop in of themselves, I guess, to keep us +cheery.” + +But it appeared we were at the end of discoveries for the day; and we +left the brig about sundown, without being further puzzled or further +enlightened. The best of the cabin spoils--books, instruments, papers, +silks, and curiosities--we carried along with us in a blanket, however, +to divert the evening hours; and when supper was over, and the table +cleared, and Johnson set down to a dreary game of cribbage between his +right hand and his left, the captain and I turned out our blanket on the +floor, and sat side by side to examine and appraise the spoils. + +The books were the first to engage our notice. These were rather +numerous (as Nares contemptuously put it) “for a lime-juicer.” Scorn +of the British mercantile marine glows in the breast of every Yankee +merchant captain; as the scorn is not reciprocated, I can only suppose +it justified in fact; and certainly the old country mariner appears of a +less studious disposition. The more credit to the officers of the Flying +Scud, who had quite a library, both literary and professional. There +were Findlay's five directories of the world--all broken-backed, as is +usual with Findlay, and all marked and scribbled over with corrections +and additions--several books of navigation, a signal code, and an +Admiralty book of a sort of orange hue, called _Islands of the Eastern +Pacific Ocean, Vol. III._, which appeared from its imprint to be the +latest authority, and showed marks of frequent consultation in the +passages about the French Frigate Shoals, the Harman, Cure, Pearl, and +Hermes reefs, Lisiansky Island, Ocean Island, and the place where +we then lay--Brooks or Midway. A volume of Macaulay's _Essays_ and a +shilling Shakespeare led the van of the belles lettres; the rest were +novels: several Miss Braddons--of course, _Aurora Floyd_, which has +penetrated to every isle of the Pacific, a good many cheap detective +books, _Rob Roy_, Auerbach's _Auf der Hohe_ in the German, and a prize +temperance story, pillaged (to judge by the stamp) from an Anglo-Indian +circulating library. + +“The Admiralty man gives a fine picture of our island,” remarked Nares, +who had turned up Midway Island. “He draws the dreariness rather mild, +but you can make out he knows the place.” + +“Captain,” I cried, “you've struck another point in this mad business. +See here,” I went on eagerly, drawing from my pocket a crumpled fragment +of the _Daily Occidental_ which I had inherited from Jim: “'misled by +Hoyt's Pacific Directory'? Where's Hoyt?” + +“Let's look into that,” said Nares. “I got that book on purpose for this +cruise.” Therewith he fetched it from the shelf in his berth, turned to +Midway Island, and read the account aloud. It stated with precision that +the Pacific Mail Company were about to form a depot there, in preference +to Honolulu, and that they had already a station on the island. + +“I wonder who gives these Directory men their information,” Nares +reflected. “Nobody can blame Trent after that. I never got in company +with squarer lying; it reminds a man of a presidential campaign.” + +“All very well,” said I. “That's your Hoyt, and a fine, tall copy. But +what I want to know is, where is Trent's Hoyt?” + +“Took it with him,” chuckled Nares. “He had left everything else, bills +and money and all the rest; he was bound to take something, or it would +have aroused attention on the Tempest: 'Happy thought,' says he, 'let's +take Hoyt.'” + +“And has it not occurred to you,” I went on, “that all the Hoyts in +creation couldn't have misled Trent, since he had in his hand that red +admiralty book, an official publication, later in date, and particularly +full on Midway Island?” + +“That's a fact!” cried Nares; “and I bet the first Hoyt he ever saw +was out of the mercantile library of San Francisco. Looks as if he had +brought her here on purpose, don't it? But then that's inconsistent with +the steam-crusher of the sale. That's the trouble with this brig racket; +any one can make half a dozen theories for sixty or seventy per cent +of it; but when they're made, there's always a fathom or two of slack +hanging out of the other end.” + +I believe our attention fell next on the papers, of which we had +altogether a considerable bulk. I had hoped to find among these matter +for a full-length character of Captain Trent; but here I was doomed, on +the whole, to disappointment. We could make out he was an orderly man, +for all his bills were docketed and preserved. That he was convivial, +and inclined to be frugal even in conviviality, several documents +proclaimed. Such letters as we found were, with one exception, arid +notes from tradesmen. The exception, signed Hannah Trent, was a somewhat +fervid appeal for a loan. “You know what misfortunes I have had to +bear,” wrote Hannah, “and how much I am disappointed in George. The +landlady appeared a true friend when I first came here, and I thought +her a perfect lady. But she has come out since then in her true colours; +and if you will not be softened by this last appeal, I can't think what +is to become of your affectionate----” and then the signature. This +document was without place or date, and a voice told me that it had gone +likewise without answer. On the whole, there were few letters anywhere +in the ship; but we found one before we were finished, in a seaman's +chest, of which I must transcribe some sentences. It was dated from some +place on the Clyde. “My dearist son,” it ran, “this is to tell you your +dearist father passed away, Jan twelft, in the peace of the Lord. He had +your photo and dear David's lade upon his bed, made me sit by him. +Let's be a' thegither, he said, and gave you all his blessing. O my dear +laddie, why were nae you and Davie here? He would have had a happier +passage. He spok of both of ye all night most beautiful, and how ye used +to stravaig on the Saturday afternoons, and of auld Kelvinside. Sooth +the tune to me, he said, though it was the Sabbath, and I had to sooth +him Kelvin Grove, and he looked at his fiddle, the dear man. I cannae +bear the sight of it, he'll never play it mair. O my lamb, come home to +me, I'm all by my lane now.” The rest was in a religious vein and quite +conventional. I have never seen any one more put out than Nares, when I +handed him this letter; he had read but a few words, before he cast +it down; it was perhaps a minute ere he picked it up again, and the +performance was repeated the third time before he reached the end. + +“It's touching, isn't it?” said I. + +For all answer, Nares exploded in a brutal oath; and it was some half an +hour later that he vouchsafed an explanation. “I'll tell you what broke +me up about that letter,” said he. “My old man played the fiddle, played +it all out of tune: one of the things he played was _Martyrdom,_ I +remember--it was all martyrdom to me. He was a pig of a father, and I +was a pig of a son; but it sort of came over me I would like to hear +that fiddle squeak again. Natural,” he added; “I guess we're all +beasts.” + +“All sons are, I guess,” said I. “I have the same trouble on my +conscience: we can shake hands on that.” Which (oddly enough, perhaps) +we did. + +Amongst the papers we found a considerable sprinkling of photographs; +for the most part either of very debonair-looking young ladies or old +women of the lodging-house persuasion. But one among them was the means +of our crowning discovery. + +“They're not pretty, are they, Mr. Dodd?” said Nares, as he passed it +over. + +“Who?” I asked, mechanically taking the card (it was a quarter-plate) +in hand, and smothering a yawn; for the hour was late, the day had been +laborious, and I was wearying for bed. + +“Trent and Company,” said he. “That's a historic picture of the gang.” + +I held it to the light, my curiosity at a low ebb: I had seen Captain +Trent once, and had no delight in viewing him again. It was a photograph +of the deck of the brig, taken from forward: all in apple-pie order; the +hands gathered in the waist, the officers on the poop. At the foot of +the card was written “Brig Flying Scud, Rangoon,” and a date; and above +or below each individual figure the name had been carefully noted. + +As I continued to gaze, a shock went through me; the dimness of sleep +and fatigue lifted from my eyes, as fog lifts in the channel; and I +beheld with startled clearness the photographic presentment of a crowd +of strangers. “J. Trent, Master” at the top of the card directed me to +a smallish, weazened man, with bushy eyebrows and full white beard, +dressed in a frock coat and white trousers; a flower stuck in his +button-hole, his bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched with +habitual determination. There was not much of the sailor in his looks, +but plenty of the martinet: a dry, precise man, who might pass for a +preacher in some rigid sect; and whatever he was, not the Captain +Trent of San Francisco. The men, too, were all new to me: the cook, an +unmistakable Chinaman, in his characteristic dress, standing apart on +the poop steps. But perhaps I turned on the whole with the greatest +curiosity to the figure labelled “E. Goddedaal, 1st off.” He whom I had +never seen, he might be the identical; he might be the clue and spring +of all this mystery; and I scanned his features with the eye of a +detective. He was of great stature, seemingly blonde as a viking, +his hair clustering round his head in frowsy curls, and two enormous +whiskers, like the tusks of some strange animal, jutting from his +cheeks. With these virile appendages and the defiant attitude in which +he stood, the expression of his face only imperfectly harmonised. It was +wild, heroic, and womanish looking; and I felt I was prepared to hear he +was a sentimentalist, and to see him weep. + +For some while I digested my discovery in private, reflecting how best, +and how with most of drama, I might share it with the captain. Then my +sketch-book came in my head; and I fished it out from where it lay, with +other miscellaneous possessions, at the foot of my bunk and turned to +my sketch of Captain Trent and the survivors of the British brig Flying +Scud in the San Francisco bar-room. + +“Nares,” said I, “I've told you how I first saw Captain Trent in that +saloon in 'Frisco? how he came with his men, one of them a Kanaka with +a canary-bird in a cage? and how I saw him afterwards at the auction, +frightened to death, and as much surprised at how the figures skipped up +as anybody there? Well,” said I, “there's the man I saw”--and I laid +the sketch before him--“there's Trent of 'Frisco and there are his three +hands. Find one of them in the photograph, and I'll be obliged.” + +Nares compared the two in silence. “Well,” he said at last, “I call this +rather a relief: seems to clear the horizon. We might have guessed at +something of the kind from the double ration of chests that figured.” + +“Does it explain anything?” I asked. + +“It would explain everything,” Nares replied, “but for the +steam-crusher. It'll all tally as neat as a patent puzzle, if you leave +out the way these people bid the wreck up. And there we come to a stone +wall. But whatever it is, Mr. Dodd, it's on the crook.” + +“And looks like piracy,” I added. + +“Looks like blind hookey!” cried the captain. “No, don't you deceive +yourself; neither your head nor mine is big enough to put a name on this +business.” + + + + +CHAPTER XV. THE CARGO OF THE “FLYING SCUD.” + + +In my early days I was a man, the most wedded to his idols of my +generation. I was a dweller under roofs: the gull of that which we call +civilisation; a superstitious votary of the plastic arts; a cit; and +a prop of restaurants. I had a comrade in those days, somewhat of an +outsider, though he moved in the company of artists, and a man famous +in our small world for gallantry, knee breeches, and dry and pregnant +sayings. He, looking on the long meals and waxing bellies of the French, +whom I confess I somewhat imitated, branded me as “a cultivator of +restaurant fat.” And I believe he had his finger on the dangerous spot; +I believe, if things had gone smooth with me, I should be now swollen +like a prize-ox in body, and fallen in mind to a thing perhaps as low +as many types of bourgeois--the implicit or exclusive artist. That was a +home word of Pinkerton's, deserving to be writ in letters of gold on the +portico of every school of art: “What I can't see is why you should want +to do nothing else.” The dull man is made, not by the nature, but by the +degree of his immersion in a single business. And all the more if that +be sedentary, uneventful, and ingloriously safe. More than one half +of him will then remain unexercised and undeveloped; the rest will be +distended and deformed by over-nutrition, over-cerebration, and the heat +of rooms. And I have often marvelled at the impudence of gentlemen, +who describe and pass judgment on the life of man, in almost perfect +ignorance of all its necessary elements and natural careers. Those +who dwell in clubs and studios may paint excellent pictures or write +enchanting novels. There is one thing that they should not do: they +should pass no judgment on man's destiny, for it is a thing with which +they are unacquainted. Their own life is an excrescence of the moment, +doomed, in the vicissitude of history, to pass and disappear: the +eternal life of man, spent under sun and rain and in rude physical +effort, lies upon one side, scarce changed since the beginning. + +I would I could have carried along with me to Midway Island all the +writers and the prating artists of my time. Day after day of hope +deferred, of heat, of unremitting toil; night after night of aching +limbs, bruised hands, and a mind obscured with the grateful vacancy of +physical fatigue: the scene, the nature of my employment; the rugged +speech and faces of my fellow-toilers, the glare of the day on deck, the +stinking twilight in the bilge, the shrill myriads of the ocean-fowl: +above all, the sense of our immitigable isolation from the world and +from the current epoch;--keeping another time, some eras old; the new +day heralded by no daily paper, only by the rising sun; and the State, +the churches, the peopled empires, war, and the rumours of war, and the +voices of the arts, all gone silent as in the days ere they were yet +invented. Such were the conditions of my new experience in life, +of which (if I had been able) I would have had all my confreres and +contemporaries to partake: forgetting, for that while, the orthodoxies +of the moment, and devoted to a single and material purpose under the +eye of heaven. + +Of the nature of our task, I must continue to give some summary idea. +The forecastle was lumbered with ship's chandlery, the hold nigh full of +rice, the lazarette crowded with the teas and silks. These must all be +dug out; and that made but a fraction of our task. The hold was ceiled +throughout; a part, where perhaps some delicate cargo was once stored, +had been lined, in addition, with inch boards; and between every beam +there was a movable panel into the bilge. Any of these, the bulkheads of +the cabins, the very timbers of the hull itself, might be the place of +hiding. It was therefore necessary to demolish, as we proceeded, a +great part of the ship's inner skin and fittings, and to auscultate what +remained, like a doctor sounding for a lung disease. Upon the return, +from any beam or bulkhead, of a flat or doubtful sound, we must up axe +and hew into the timber: a violent and--from the amount of dry rot in +the wreck--a mortifying exercise. Every night saw a deeper inroad into +the bones of the Flying Scud--more beams tapped and hewn in splinters, +more planking peeled away and tossed aside--and every night saw us as +far as ever from the end and object of our arduous devastation. In this +perpetual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, but my spirits +dwindled; and Nares himself grew silent and morose. At night, when +supper was done, we passed an hour in the cabin, mostly without speech: +I, sometimes dozing over a book; Nares, sullenly but busily drilling +sea-shells with the instrument called a Yankee Fiddle. A stranger might +have supposed we were estranged; as a matter of fact, in this silent +comradeship of labour, our intimacy grew. + +I had been struck, at the first beginning of our enterprise upon the +wreck, to find the men so ready at the captain's lightest word. I +dare not say they liked, but I can never deny that they admired him +thoroughly. A mild word from his mouth was more valued than flattery +and half a dollar from myself; if he relaxed at all from his habitual +attitude of censure, smiling alacrity surrounded him; and I was led to +think his theory of captainship, even if pushed to excess, reposed upon +some ground of reason. But even terror and admiration of the +captain failed us before the end. The men wearied of the hopeless, +unremunerative quest and the long strain of labour. They began to +shirk and grumble. Retribution fell on them at once, and retribution +multiplied the grumblings. With every day it took harder driving to keep +them to the daily drudge; and we, in our narrow boundaries, were kept +conscious every moment of the ill-will of our assistants. + +In spite of the best care, the object of our search was perfectly well +known to all on board; and there had leaked out besides some knowledge +of those inconsistencies that had so greatly amazed the captain and +myself. I could overhear the men debate the character of Captain Trent, +and set forth competing theories of where the opium was stowed; and as +they seemed to have been eavesdropping on ourselves, I thought little +shame to prick up my ears when I had the return chance of spying upon +them, in this way. I could diagnose their temper and judge how far they +were informed upon the mystery of the Flying Scud. It was after having +thus overheard some almost mutinous speeches that a fortunate idea +crossed my mind. At night, I matured it in my bed, and the first thing +the next morning, broached it to the captain. + +“Suppose I spirit up the hands a bit,” I asked, “by the offer of a +reward?” + +“If you think you're getting your month's wages out of them the way it +is, I don't,” was his reply. “However, they are all the men you've got, +and you're the supercargo.” + +This, from a person of the captain's character, might be regarded as +complete adhesion; and the crew were accordingly called aft. Never had +the captain worn a front more menacing. It was supposed by all that some +misdeed had been discovered, and some surprising punishment was to be +announced. + +“See here, you!” he threw at them over his shoulder as he walked the +deck, “Mr. Dodd here is going to offer a reward to the first man who +strikes the opium in that wreck. There's two ways of making a donkey go; +both good, I guess: the one's kicks and the other's carrots. Mr. Dodd's +going to try the carrots. Well, my sons,”--and here he faced the men for +the first time with his hands behind him--“if that opium's not found in +five days, you can come to me for the kicks.” + +He nodded to the present narrator, who took up the tale. “Here is what +I propose, men,” said I: “I put up one hundred and fifty dollars. If +any man can lay hands on the stuff right away, and off his own club, +he shall have the hundred and fifty down. If any one can put us on the +scent of where to look, he shall have a hundred and twenty-five, and the +balance shall be for the lucky one who actually picks it up. We'll call +it the Pinkerton Stakes, captain,” I added, with a smile. + +“Call it the Grand Combination Sweep, then,” cries he. “For I go you +better.--Look here, men, I make up this jack-pot to two hundred and +fifty dollars, American gold coin.” + +“Thank you, Captain Nares,” said I; “that was handsomely done.” + +“It was kindly meant,” he returned. + +The offer was not made in vain; the hands had scarce yet realised the +magnitude of the reward, they had scarce begun to buzz aloud in the +extremity of hope and wonder, ere the Chinese cook stepped forward with +gracious gestures and explanatory smiles. + +“Captain,” he began, “I serv-um two year Melican navy; serv-um six year +mail-boat steward. Savvy plenty.” + +“Oho!” cried Nares, “you savvy plenty, do you? (Beggar's seen this trick +in the mail-boats, I guess.) Well, why you no savvy a little sooner, +sonny?” + +“I think bimeby make-um reward,” replied the cook, with smiling dignity. + +“Well, you can't say fairer than that,” the captain admitted, “and now +the reward's offered, you'll talk? Speak up, then. Suppose you speak +true, you get reward. See?” + +“I think long time,” replied the Chinaman. “See plenty litty mat lice; +too-muchy plenty litty mat lice; sixty ton, litty mat lice. I think +all-e-time: perhaps plenty opium plenty litty mat lice.” + +“Well, Mr. Dodd, how does that strike you?” asked the captain. “He may +be right, he may be wrong. He's likely to be right: for if he isn't, +where can the stuff be? On the other hand, if he's wrong, we destroy +a hundred and fifty tons of good rice for nothing. It's a point to be +considered.” + +“I don't hesitate,” said I. “Let's get to the bottom of the thing. The +rice is nothing; the rice will neither make nor break us.” + +“That's how I expected you to see it,” returned Nares. + +And we called the boat away and set forth on our new quest. + +The hold was now almost entirely emptied; the mats (of which there went +forty to the short ton) had been stacked on deck, and now crowded the +ship's waist and forecastle. It was our task to disembowel and explore +six thousand individual mats, and incidentally to destroy a hundred and +fifty tons of valuable food. Nor were the circumstances of the day's +business less strange than its essential nature. Each man of us, armed +with a great knife, attacked the pile from his own quarter, slashed into +the nearest mat, burrowed in it with his hands, and shed forth the rice +upon the deck, where it heaped up, overflowed, and was trodden down, +poured at last into the scuppers, and occasionally spouted from the +vents. About the wreck, thus transformed into an overflowing granary, +the sea-fowl swarmed in myriads and with surprising insolence. The sight +of so much food confounded them; they deafened us with their shrill +tongues, swooped in our midst, dashed in our faces, and snatched the +grain from between our fingers. The men--their hands bleeding from these +assaults--turned savagely on the offensive, drove their knives into the +birds, drew them out crimsoned, and turned again to dig among the rice, +unmindful of the gawking creatures that struggled and died among their +feet. We made a singular picture: the hovering and diving birds; the +bodies of the dead discolouring the rice with blood; the scuppers +vomiting breadstuff; the men, frenzied by the gold hunt, toiling, +slaying, and shouting aloud: over all, the lofty intricacy of rigging +and the radiant heaven of the Pacific. Every man there toiled in the +immediate hope of fifty dollars; and I, of fifty thousand. Small wonder +if we waded callously in blood and food. + +It was perhaps about ten in the forenoon when the scene was interrupted. +Nares, who had just ripped open a fresh mat, drew forth, and slung at +his feet, among the rice, a papered tin box. + +“How's that?” he shouted. + +A cry broke from all hands: the next moment, forgetting their own +disappointment, in that contagious sentiment of success, they gave three +cheers that scared the sea-birds; and the next, they had crowded round +the captain, and were jostling together and groping with emulous hands +in the new-opened mat. Box after box rewarded them, six in all; wrapped, +as I have said, in a paper envelope, and the paper printed on, in +Chinese characters. + +Nares turned to me and shook my hand. “I began to think we should never +see this day,” said he. “I congratulate you, Mr. Dodd, on having pulled +it through.” + +The captain's tones affected me profoundly; and when Johnson and the +men pressed round me in turn with congratulations, the tears came in my +eyes. + +“These are five-tael boxes, more than two pounds,” said Nares, weighing +one in his hand. “Say two hundred and fifty dollars to the mat. Lay into +it, boys! We'll make Mr. Dodd a millionnaire before dark.” + +It was strange to see with what a fury we fell to. The men had now +nothing to expect; the mere idea of great sums inspired them with +disinterested ardour. Mats were slashed and disembowelled, the rice +flowed to our knees in the ship's waist, the sweat ran in our eyes and +blinded us, our arms ached to agony; and yet our fire abated not. Dinner +came; we were too weary to eat, too hoarse for conversation; and yet +dinner was scarce done, before we were afoot again and delving in the +rice. Before nightfall not a mat was unexplored, and we were face to +face with the astonishing result. + +For of all the inexplicable things in the story of the Flying Scud, here +was the most inexplicable. Out of the six thousand mats, only twenty +were found to have been sugared; in each we found the same amount, about +twelve pounds of drug; making a grand total of two hundred and forty +pounds. By the last San Francisco quotation, opium was selling for a +fraction over twenty dollars a pound; but it had been known not long +before to bring as much as forty in Honolulu, where it was contraband. + +Taking, then, this high Honolulu figure, the value of the opium on board +the Flying Scud fell considerably short of ten thousand dollars, while +at the San Francisco rate it lacked a trifle of five thousand. And fifty +thousand was the price that Jim and I had paid for it. And Bellairs had +been eager to go higher! There is no language to express the stupor with +which I contemplated this result. + +It may be argued we were not yet sure; there might be yet another cache; +and you may be certain in that hour of my distress the argument was not +forgotten. There was never a ship more ardently perquested; no stone +was left unturned, and no expedient untried; day after day of growing +despair, we punched and dug in the brig's vitals, exciting the men with +promises and presents; evening after evening Nares and I sat face +to face in the narrow cabin, racking our minds for some neglected +possibility of search. I could stake my salvation on the certainty of +the result: in all that ship there was nothing left of value but the +timber and the copper nails. So that our case was lamentably plain; we +had paid fifty thousand dollars, borne the charges of the schooner, and +paid fancy interest on money; and if things went well with us, we +might realise fifteen per cent of the first outlay. We were not merely +bankrupt, we were comic bankrupts: a fair butt for jeering in the +streets. I hope I bore the blow with a good countenance; indeed, my mind +had long been quite made up, and since the day we found the opium I had +known the result. But the thought of Jim and Mamie ached in me like a +physical pain, and I shrank from speech and companionship. + +I was in this frame of mind when the captain proposed that we should +land upon the island. I saw he had something to say, and only feared +it might be consolation; for I could just bear my grief, not bungling +sympathy; and yet I had no choice but to accede to his proposal. + +We walked awhile along the beach in silence. The sun overhead +reverberated rays of heat; the staring sand, the glaring lagoon, +tortured our eyes; and the birds and the boom of the far-away breakers +made a savage symphony. + +“I don't require to tell you the game's up?” Nares asked. + +“No,” said I. + +“I was thinking of getting to sea to-morrow,” he pursued. + +“The best thing you can do,” said I. + +“Shall we say Honolulu?” he inquired. + + +“O, yes; let's stick to the programme,” I cried. “Honolulu be it!” + +There was another silence, and then Nares cleared his throat. + +“We've been pretty good friends, you and me, Mr. Dodd,” he resumed. +“We've been going through the kind of thing that tries a man. We've had +the hardest kind of work, we've been badly backed, and now we're badly +beaten. And we've fetched through without a word of disagreement. I +don't say this to praise myself: it's my trade; it's what I'm paid for, +and trained for, and brought up to. But it was another thing for you; it +was all new to you; and it did me good to see you stand right up to it +and swing right into it, day in, day out. And then see how you've taken +this disappointment, when everybody knows you must have been tautened +up to shying-point! I wish you'd let me tell you, Mr. Dodd, that you've +stood out mighty manly and handsomely in all this business, and made +every one like you and admire you. And I wish you'd let me tell you, +besides, that I've taken this wreck business as much to heart as you +have; something kind of rises in my throat when I think we're beaten; +and if I thought waiting would do it, I would stick on this reef until +we starved.” + +I tried in vain to thank him for these generous words, but he was +beforehand with me in a moment. + +“I didn't bring you ashore to sound my praises,” he interrupted. “We +understand one another now, that's all; and I guess you can trust me. +What I wished to speak about is more important, and it's got to be +faced. What are we to do about the Flying Scud and the dime novel?” + +“I really have thought nothing about that,” I replied. “But I expect I +mean to get at the bottom of it; and if the bogus Captain Trent is to be +found on the earth's surface, I guess I mean to find him.” + +“All you've got to do is talk,” said Nares; “you can make the biggest +kind of boom; it isn't often the reporters have a chance at such a yarn +as this; and I can tell you how it will go. It will go by telegraph, Mr. +Dodd; it'll be telegraphed by the column, and head-lined, and frothed +up, and denied by authority, and it'll hit bogus Captain Trent in a +Mexican bar-room, and knock over bogus Goddedaal in a slum somewhere up +the Baltic, and bowl down Hardy and Brown in sailors' music halls round +Greenock. O, there's no doubt you can have a regular domestic Judgment +Day. The only point is whether you deliberately want to.” + +“Well,” said I, “I deliberately don't want one thing: I deliberately +don't want to make a public exhibition of myself and Pinkerton: so +moral--smuggling opium; such damned fools--paying fifty thousand for a +'dead horse'!” + +“No doubt it might damage you in a business sense,” the captain agreed. +“And I'm pleased you take that view; for I've turned kind of soft upon +the job. There's been some crookedness about, no doubt of it; but, Law +bless you! if we dropped upon the troupe, all the premier artists would +slip right out with the boodle in their grip-sacks, and you'd only +collar a lot of old mutton-headed shell-backs that didn't know the back +of the business from the front. I don't take much stock in Mercantile +Jack, you know that; but, poor devil, he's got to go where he's told; +and if you make trouble, ten to one it'll make you sick to see the +innocents who have to stand the racket. It would be different if we +understood the operation; but we don't, you see: there's a lot of queer +corners in life; and my vote is to let the blame' thing lie.” + +“You speak as if we had that in our power,” I objected. + +“And so we have,” said he. + +“What about the men?” I asked. “They know too much by half; and you +can't keep them from talking.” + +“Can't I?” returned Nares. “I bet a boarding-master can! They can be all +half-seas-over, when they get ashore, blind drunk by dark, and cruising +out of the Golden Gate in different deep-sea ships by the next morning. +Can't keep them from talking, can't I? Well, I can make 'em talk +separate, leastways. If a whole crew came talking, parties would listen; +but if it's only one lone old shell-back, it's the usual yarn. And at +least, they needn't talk before six months, or--if we have luck, and +there's a whaler handy--three years. And by that time, Mr. Dodd, it's +ancient history.” + +“That's what they call Shanghaiing, isn't it?” I asked. “I thought it +belonged to the dime novel.” + +“O, dime novels are right enough,” returned the captain. “Nothing wrong +with the dime novel, only that things happen thicker than they do in +life, and the practical seamanship is off-colour.” + +“So we can keep the business to ourselves,” I mused. + +“There's one other person that might blab,” said the captain. “Though I +don't believe she has anything left to tell.” + +“And who is SHE?” I asked. + +“The old girl there,” he answered, pointing to the wreck. “I know +there's nothing in her; but somehow I'm afraid of some one else--it's +the last thing you'd expect, so it's just the first that'll happen--some +one dropping into this God-forgotten island where nobody drops in, +waltzing into that wreck that we've grown old with searching, stooping +straight down, and picking right up the very thing that tells the story. +What's that to me? you may ask, and why am I gone Soft Tommy on this +Museum of Crooks? They've smashed up you and Mr. Pinkerton; they've +turned my hair grey with conundrums; they've been up to larks, no doubt; +and that's all I know of them--you say. Well, and that's just where it +is. I don't know enough; I don't know what's uppermost; it's just such +a lot of miscellaneous eventualities as I don't care to go stirring +up; and I ask you to let me deal with the old girl after a patent of my +own.” + +“Certainly--what you please,” said I, scarce with attention, for a new +thought now occupied my brain. “Captain,” I broke out, “you are wrong: +we cannot hush this up. There is one thing you have forgotten.” + +“What is that?” he asked. + +“A bogus Captain Trent, a bogus Goddedaal, a whole bogus crew, have all +started home,” said I. “If we are right, not one of them will reach his +journey's end. And do you mean to say that such a circumstance as that +can pass without remark?” + +“Sailors,” said the captain, “only sailors! If they were all bound for +one place, in a body, I don't say so; but they're all going separate--to +Hull, to Sweden, to the Clyde, to the Thames. Well, at each place, +what is it? Nothing new. Only one sailor man missing: got drunk, or got +drowned, or got left: the proper sailor's end.” + + +Something bitter in the thought and in the speaker's tones struck me +hard. “Here is one that has got left!” I cried, getting sharply to my +feet; for we had been some time seated. “I wish it were the other. I +don't--don't relish going home to Jim with this!” + +“See here,” said Nares, with ready tact, “I must be getting aboard. +Johnson's in the brig annexing chandlery and canvas, and there's some +things in the Norah that want fixing against we go to sea. Would you +like to be left here in the chicken-ranch? I'll send for you to supper.” + +I embraced the proposal with delight. Solitude, in my frame of mind, was +not too dearly purchased at the risk of sunstroke or sand-blindness; and +soon I was alone on the ill-omened islet. I should find it hard to tell +of what I thought--of Jim, of Mamie, of our lost fortune, of my lost +hopes, of the doom before me: to turn to at some mechanical occupation +in some subaltern rank, and to toil there, unremarked and unamused, +until the hour of the last deliverance. I was, at least, so sunk in +sadness that I scarce remarked where I was going; and chance (or some +finer sense that lives in us, and only guides us when the mind is in +abeyance) conducted my steps into a quarter of the island where the +birds were few. By some devious route, which I was unable to retrace +for my return, I was thus able to mount, without interruption, to the +highest point of land. And here I was recalled to consciousness by a +last discovery. + +The spot on which I stood was level, and commanded a wide view of the +lagoon, the bounding reef, the round horizon. Nearer hand I saw the +sister islet, the wreck, the Norah Creina, and the Norah's boat already +moving shoreward. For the sun was now low, flaming on the sea's verge; +and the galley chimney smoked on board the schooner. + +It thus befell that though my discovery was both affecting and +suggestive, I had no leisure to examine further. What I saw was the +blackened embers of fire of wreck. By all the signs, it must have blazed +to a good height and burned for days; from the scantling of a spar that +lay upon the margin only half consumed, it must have been the work of +more than one; and I received at once the image of a forlorn troop of +castaways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and feeding there +their fire of signal. The next moment a hail reached me from the boat; +and bursting through the bushes and the rising sea-fowl, I said farewell +(I trust for ever) to that desert isle. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. IN WHICH I TURN SMUGGLER, AND THE CAPTAIN CASUIST + + +The last night at Midway, I had little sleep; the next morning, after +the sun was risen, and the clatter of departure had begun to reign on +deck, I lay a long while dozing; and when at last I stepped from the +companion, the schooner was already leaping through the pass into the +open sea. Close on her board, the huge scroll of a breaker unfurled +itself along the reef with a prodigious clamour; and behind I saw the +wreck vomiting into the morning air a coil of smoke. The wreaths already +blew out far to leeward, flames already glittered in the cabin skylight; +and the sea-fowl were scattered in surprise as wide as the lagoon. As +we drew farther off, the conflagration of the Flying Scud flamed higher; +and long after we had dropped all signs of Midway Island, the smoke +still hung in the horizon like that of a distant steamer. With the +fading out of that last vestige, the Norah Creina, passed again into the +empty world of cloud and water by which she had approached; and the next +features that appeared, eleven days later, to break the line of sky, +were the arid mountains of Oahu. + +It has often since been a comfortable thought to me that we had thus +destroyed the tell-tale remnants of the Flying Scud; and often a strange +one that my last sight and reminiscence of that fatal ship should be +a pillar of smoke on the horizon. To so many others besides myself +the same appearance had played a part in the various stages of that +business: luring some to what they little imagined, filling some with +unimaginable terrors. But ours was the last smoke raised in the story; +and with its dying away the secret of the Flying Scud became a private +property. + +It was by the first light of dawn that we saw, close on board, the +metropolitan island of Hawaii. We held along the coast, as near as +we could venture, with a fresh breeze and under an unclouded heaven; +beholding, as we went, the arid mountain sides and scrubby cocoa-palms +of that somewhat melancholy archipelago. About four of the afternoon +we turned Waimanolo Point, the westerly headland of the great bight of +Honolulu; showed ourselves for twenty minutes in full view; and then +fell again to leeward, and put in the rest of daylight, plying under +shortened sail under the lee of Waimanolo. + +A little after dark we beat once more about the point, and crept +cautiously toward the mouth of the Pearl Lochs, where Jim and I had +arranged I was to meet the smugglers. The night was happily obscure, the +water smooth. We showed, according to instructions, no light on deck: +only a red lantern dropped from either cathead to within a couple of +feet of the water. A lookout was stationed on the bowsprit end, another +in the crosstrees; and the whole ship's company crowded forward, +scouting for enemies or friends. It was now the crucial moment of our +enterprise; we were now risking liberty and credit; and that for a sum +so small to a man in my bankrupt situation, that I could have laughed +aloud in bitterness. But the piece had been arranged, and we must play +it to the finish. + +For some while, we saw nothing but the dark mountain outline of the +island, the torches of native fishermen glittering here and there along +the foreshore, and right in the midst that cluster of brave lights with +which the town of Honolulu advertises itself to the seaward. Presently +a ruddy star appeared inshore of us, and seemed to draw near unsteadily. +This was the anticipated signal; and we made haste to show the +countersign, lowering a white light from the quarter, extinguishing +the two others, and laying the schooner incontinently to. The star +approached slowly; the sounds of oars and of men's speech came to us +across the water; and then a voice hailed us. + +“Is that Mr. Dodd?” + +“Yes,” I returned. “Is Jim Pinkerton there?” + +“No, sir,” replied the voice. “But there's one of his crowd here; name +of Speedy.” + +“I'm here, Mr. Dodd,” added Speedy himself. “I have letters for you.” + +“All right,” I replied. “Come aboard, gentlemen, and let me see my +mail.” + +A whaleboat accordingly ranged alongside, and three men boarded us: my +old San Francisco friend, the stock-gambler Speedy, a little wizened +person of the name of Sharpe, and a big, flourishing, dissipated-looking +man called Fowler. The two last (I learned afterward) were frequent +partners; Sharpe supplied the capital, and Fowler, who was quite a +character in the islands and occupied a considerable station, brought +activity, daring, and a private influence, highly necessary in the case. +Both seemed to approach the business with a keen sense of romance; and I +believe this was the chief attraction, at least with Fowler--for whom +I early conceived a sentiment of liking. But in that first moment I +had something else to think of than to judge my new acquaintances; +and before Speedy had fished out the letters, the full extent of our +misfortune was revealed. + +“We've rather bad news for you, Mr. Dodd,” said Fowler. “Your firm's +gone up.” + +“Already!” I exclaimed. + +“Well, it was thought rather a wonder Pinkerton held on as long as he +did,” was the reply. “The wreck deal was too big for your credit; you +were doing a big business, no doubt, but you were doing it on precious +little capital; and when the strain came, you were bound to go. +Pinkerton's through all right: seven cents dividend; some remarks +made, but nothing to hurt; the press let you down easy--I guess Jim had +relations there. The only trouble is, that all this Flying Scud affair +got in the papers with the rest; everybody's wide awake in Honolulu, and +the sooner we get the stuff in and the dollars out, the better for all +concerned.” + +“Gentlemen,” said I, “you must excuse me. My friend, the captain here, +will drink a glass of champagne with you to give you patience; but as +for myself, I am unfit even for ordinary conversation till I have read +these letters.” + +They demurred a little: and indeed the danger of delay seemed obvious; +but the sight of my distress, which I was unable entirely to control, +appealed strongly to their good-nature; and I was suffered at last to +get by myself on deck, where, by the light of a lantern smuggled under +shelter of the low rail, I read the following wretched correspondence. + +“My dear Loudon,” ran the first, “this will be handed you by your friend +Speedy of the Catamount. His sterling character and loyal devotion +to yourself pointed him out as the best man for our purposes in +Honolulu--the parties on the spot being difficult to manipulate. A man +called Billy Fowler (you must have heard of Billy) is the boss; he is in +politics some, and squares the officers. I have hard times before me +in the city, but I feel as bright as a dollar and as strong as John L. +Sullivan. What with Mamie here, and my partner speeding over the seas, +and the bonanza in the wreck, I feel like I could juggle with the +Pyramids of Egypt, same as conjurers do with aluminium balls. My +earnest prayers follow you, Loudon, that you may feel the way I do--just +inspired! My feet don't touch the ground; I kind of swim. Mamie is like +Moses and Aaron that held up the other individual's arms. She carries me +along like a horse and buggy. I am beating the record. + +“Your true partner, + +“J. PINKERTON.” + +Number two was in a different style:-- + +“My dearest Loudon, how am I to prepare you for this dire intelligence? +O dear me, it will strike you to the earth. The Fiat has gone forth; our +firm went bust at a quarter before twelve. It was a bill of Bradley's +(for $200) that brought these vast operations to a close, and evolved +liabilities of upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand. O, the shame +and pity of it! and you but three weeks gone! Loudon, don't blame your +partner: if human hands and brains could have sufficed, I would have +held the thing together. But it just slowly crumbled; Bradley was the +last kick, but the blamed business just MELTED. I give the liabilities; +it's supposed they're all in; for the cowards were waiting, and the +claims were filed like taking tickets to hear Patti. I don't quite have +the hang of the assets yet, our interests were so extended; but I am at +it day and night, and I guess will make a creditable dividend. If the +wreck pans out only half the way it ought, we'll turn the laugh still. I +am as full of grit and work as ever, and just tower above our troubles. +Mamie is a host in herself. Somehow I feel like it was only me that had +gone bust, and you and she soared clear of it. Hurry up. That's all you +have to do. + +“Yours ever, + +“J. PINKERTON.” + +The third was yet more altered:-- + +“My poor Loudon,” it began, “I labour far into the night getting our +affairs in order; you could not believe their vastness and complexity. +Douglas B. Longhurst said humorously that the receiver's work would +be cut out for him. I cannot deny that some of them have a speculative +look. God forbid a sensitive, refined spirit like yours should ever come +face to face with a Commissioner in Bankruptcy; these men get all the +sweetness knocked right out of them. But I could bear up better if it +weren't for press comments. Often and often, Loudon, I recall to mind +your most legitimate critiques of the press system. They published an +interview with me, not the least like what I said, and with JEERING +comments; it would make your blood boil, it was literally INHUMANE; I +wouldn't have written it about a yellow dog that was in trouble like +what I am. Mamie just winced, the first time she has turned a hair right +through the whole catastrophe. How wonderfully true was what you said +long ago in Paris, about touching on people's personal appearance! The +fellow said--” And then these words had been scored through; and my +distressed friend turned to another subject. “I cannot bear to dwell +upon our assets. They simply don't show up. Even Thirteen Star, as sound +a line as can be produced upon this coast, goes begging. The wreck has +thrown a blight on all we ever touched. And where's the use? God never +made a wreck big enough to fill our deficit. I am haunted by the thought +that you may blame me; I know how I despised your remonstrances. O, +Loudon, don't be hard on your miserable partner. The funny-dog business +is what kills. I fear your stern rectitude of mind like the eye of God. +I cannot think but what some of my books seem mixed up; otherwise, I +don't seem to see my way as plain as I could wish to. Or else my brain +is gone soft. Loudon, if there should be any unpleasantness, you can +trust me to do the right thing and keep you clear. I've been telling +them already, how you had no business grip and never saw the books. O, I +trust I have done right in this! I knew it was a liberty; I know you may +justly complain; but it was some things that were said. And mind you, +all legitimate business! Not even your shrinking sensitiveness could +find fault with the first look of one of them, if they had panned out +right. And you know, the Flying Scud was the biggest gamble of the +crowd, and that was your own idea. Mamie says she never could bear +to look you in the face, if that idea had been mine, she is SO +conscientious! + +“Your broken-hearted + +“JIM.” + +The last began without formality:-- + +“This is the end of me commercially. I give up; my nerve is gone. I +suppose I ought to be glad; for we're through the court. I don't know +as ever I knew how, and I'm sure I don't remember. If it pans out--the +wreck, I mean--we'll go to Europe, and live on the interest of our +money. No more work for me. I shake when people speak to me. I have gone +on, hoping and hoping, and working and working, and the lead has pinched +right out. I want to lie on my back in a garden and read Shakespeare and +E. P. Roe. Don't suppose it's cowardice, Loudon. I'm a sick man. Rest is +what I must have. I've worked hard all my life; I never spared myself; +every dollar I ever made, I've coined my brains for it. I've never done +a mean thing; I've lived respectable, and given to the poor. Who has a +better right to a holiday than I have? And I mean to have a year of it +straight out; and if I don't, I shall lie right down here in my tracks, +and die of worry and brain trouble. Don't mistake. That's so. If there +are any pickings at all, TRUST SPEEDY; don't let the creditors get wind +of what there is. I helped you when you were down; help me now. Don't +deceive yourself; you've got to help me right now, or never. I am +clerking, and NOT FIT TO CYPHER. Mamie's typewriting at the Phoenix +Guano Exchange, down town. The light is right out of my life. I know +you'll not like to do what I propose. Think only of this; that it's life +or death for + +“JIM PINKERTON. + +“P.S. Our figure was seven per cent. O, what a fall was there! Well, +well, it's past mending; I don't want to whine. But, Loudon, I do want +to live. No more ambition; all I ask is life. I have so much to make +it sweet to me! I am clerking, and USELESS AT THAT. I know I would have +fired such a clerk inside of forty minutes, in MY time. But my time's +over. I can only cling on to you. Don't fail + +“JIM PINKERTON.” + +There was yet one more postscript, yet one more outburst of self-pity +and pathetic adjuration; and a doctor's opinion, unpromising enough, +was besides enclosed. I pass them both in silence. I think shame to +have shown, at so great length, the half-baked virtues of my friend +dissolving in the crucible of sickness and distress; and the effect upon +my spirits can be judged already. I got to my feet when I had done, drew +a deep breath, and stared hard at Honolulu. One moment the world seemed +at an end; the next, I was conscious of a rush of independent energy. On +Jim I could rely no longer; I must now take hold myself. I must decide +and act on my own better thoughts. + +The word was easy to say; the thing, at the first blush, was +undiscoverable. I was overwhelmed with miserable, womanish pity for +my broken friend; his outcries grieved my spirit; I saw him then and +now--then, so invincible; now, brought so low--and knew neither how +to refuse, nor how to consent to his proposal. The remembrance of my +father, who had fallen in the same field unstained, the image of his +monument incongruously rising, a fear of the law, a chill air that +seemed to blow upon my fancy from the doors of prisons, and the +imaginary clank of fetters, recalled me to a different resolve. And then +again, the wails of my sick partner intervened. So I stood hesitating, +and yet with a strong sense of capacity behind: sure, if I could but +choose my path, that I should walk in it with resolution. + +Then I remembered that I had a friend on board, and stepped to the +companion. + +“Gentlemen,” said I, “only a few moments more: but these, I regret to +say, I must make more tedious still by removing your companion. It is +indispensable that I should have a word or two with Captain Nares.” + +Both the smugglers were afoot at once, protesting. The business, they +declared, must be despatched at once; they had run risk enough, with a +conscience; and they must either finish now, or go. + +“The choice is yours, gentlemen,” said I, “and, I believe, the +eagerness. I am not yet sure that I have anything in your way; even if +I have, there are a hundred things to be considered; and I assure you it +is not at all my habit to do business with a pistol to my head.” + +“That is all very proper, Mr. Dodd; there is no wish to coerce you, +believe me,” said Fowler; “only, please consider our position. It is +really dangerous; we were not the only people to see your schooner off +Waimanolo.” + +“Mr. Fowler,” I replied, “I was not born yesterday. Will you allow me +to express an opinion, in which I may be quite wrong, but to which I +am entirely wedded? If the custom-house officers had been coming, +they would have been here now. In other words, somebody is working the +oracle, and (for a good guess) his name is Fowler.” + +Both men laughed loud and long; and being supplied with another bottle +of Longhurst's champagne, suffered the captain and myself to leave them +without further word. + +I gave Nares the correspondence, and he skimmed it through. + +“Now, captain,” said I, “I want a fresh mind on this. What does it +mean?” + +“It's large enough text,” replied the captain. “It means you're to stake +your pile on Speedy, hand him over all you can, and hold your tongue. +I almost wish you hadn't shown it me,” he added wearily. “What with the +specie from the wreck and the opium money, it comes to a biggish deal.” + +“That's supposing that I do it?” said I. + +“Exactly,” said he, “supposing you do it.” + +“And there are pros and cons to that,” I observed. + +“There's San Quentin, to start in with,” said the captain; “and suppose +you clear the penitentiary, there's the nasty taste in the mouth. The +figure's big enough to make bad trouble, but it's not big enough to be +picturesque; and I should guess a man always feels kind of small who has +sold himself under six cyphers. That would be my way, at least; there's +an excitement about a million that might carry me on; but the other way, +I should feel kind of lonely when I woke in bed. Then there's Speedy. Do +you know him well?” + +“No, I do not,” said I. + +“Well, of course he can vamoose with the entire speculation, if he +chooses,” pursued the captain, “and if he don't I can't see but what +you've got to support and bed and board with him to the end of time. +I guess it would weary me. Then there's Mr. Pinkerton, of course. He's +been a good friend to you, hasn't he? Stood by you, and all that? and +pulled you through for all he was worth?” + + +“That he has,” I cried; “I could never begin telling you my debt to +him!” + +“Well, and that's a consideration,” said the captain. “As a matter of +principle, I wouldn't look at this business at the money. 'Not good +enough,' would be my word. But even principle goes under when it comes +to friends--the right sort, I mean. This Pinkerton is frightened, and +he seems sick; the medico don't seem to care a cent about his state of +health; and you've got to figure how you would like it if he came to +die. Remember, the risk of this little swindle is all yours; it's no +sort of risk to Mr. Pinkerton. Well, you've got to put it that way +plainly, and see how you like the sound of it: my friend Pinkerton is in +danger of the New Jerusalem, I am in danger of San Quentin; which risk +do I propose to run?” + +“That's an ugly way to put it,” I objected, “and perhaps hardly fair. +There's right and wrong to be considered.” + +“Don't know the parties,” replied Nares; “and I'm coming to them, +anyway. For it strikes me, when it came to smuggling opium, you walked +right up?” + +“So I did,” I said; “sick I am to have to say it!” + +“All the same,” continued Nares, “you went into the opium-smuggling with +your head down; and a good deal of fussing I've listened to, that you +hadn't more of it to smuggle. Now, maybe your partner's not quite fixed +the same as you are; maybe he sees precious little difference between +the one thing and the other.” + +“You could not say truer: he sees none, I do believe,” cried I; “and +though I see one, I could never tell you how.” + +“We never can,” said the oracular Nares; “taste is all a matter of +opinion. But the point is, how will your friend take it? You refuse a +favour, and you take the high horse at the same time; you disappoint +him, and you rap him over the knuckles. It won't do, Mr. Dodd; no +friendship can stand that. You must be as good as your friend, or as bad +as your friend, or start on a fresh deal without him.” + +“I don't see it!” said I. “You don't know Jim!” + +“Well, you WILL see,” said Nares. “And now, here's another point. This +bit of money looks mighty big to Mr. Pinkerton; it may spell life or +health to him; but among all your creditors, I don't see that it amounts +to a hill of beans--I don't believe it'll pay their car-fares all round. +And don't you think you'll ever get thanked. You were known to pay a +long price for the chance of rummaging that wreck; you do the rummaging, +you come home, and you hand over ten thousand--or twenty, if you like--a +part of which you'll have to own up you made by smuggling; and, mind! +you'll never get Billy Fowler to stick his name to a receipt. Now just +glance at the transaction from the outside, and see what a clear case it +makes. Your ten thousand is a sop; and people will only wonder you were +so damned impudent as to offer such a small one! Whichever way you take +it, Mr. Dodd, the bottom's out of your character; so there's one thing +less to be considered.” + +“I daresay you'll scarce believe me,” said I, “but I feel that a +positive relief.” + +“You must be made some way different from me, then,” returned Nares. +“And, talking about me, I might just mention how I stand. You'll have +no trouble from me--you've trouble enough of your own; and I'm friend +enough, when a friend's in need, to shut my eyes and go right where he +tells me. All the same, I'm rather queerly fixed. My owners'll have +to rank with the rest on their charter-party. Here am I, their +representative! and I have to look over the ship's side while the +bankrupt walks his assets ashore in Mr. Speedy's hat-box. It's a thing +I wouldn't do for James G. Blaine; but I'll do it for you, Mr. Dodd, and +only sorry I can't do more.” + +“Thank you, captain; my mind is made up,” said I. “I'll go straight, +RUAT COELUM! I never understood that old tag before to-night.” + +“I hope it isn't my business that decides you?” asked the captain. + +“I'll never deny it was an element,” said I. “I hope, I hope I'm not +cowardly; I hope I could steal for Jim myself; but when it comes to +dragging in you and Speedy, and this one and the other, why, Jim has +got to die, and there's an end. I'll try and work for him when I get to +'Frisco, I suppose; and I suppose I'll fail, and look on at his death, +and kick myself: it can't be helped--I'll fight it on this line.” + + +“I don't say as you're wrong,” replied Nares, “and I'll be hanged if +I know if you're right. It suits me anyway. And look here--hadn't you +better just show our friends over the side?” he added; “no good of being +at the risk and worry of smuggling for the benefit of creditors.” + +“I don't think of the creditors,” said I. “But I've kept this pair so +long, I haven't got the brass to fire them now.” + +Indeed, I believe that was my only reason for entering upon a +transaction which was now outside my interest, but which (as it chanced) +repaid me fifty-fold in entertainment. Fowler and Sharpe were both +preternaturally sharp; they did me the honour in the beginning to +attribute to myself their proper vices; and before we were done had +grown to regard me with an esteem akin to worship. This proud position +I attained by no more recondite arts, than telling the mere truth and +unaffectedly displaying my indifference to the result. I have doubtless +stated the essentials of all good diplomacy, which may be rather +regarded, therefore, as a grace of state, than the effect of management. +For to tell the truth is not in itself diplomatic, and to have no care +for the result a thing involuntary. When I mentioned, for instance, that +I had but two hundred and forty pounds of drug, my smugglers exchanged +meaning glances, as who should say, “Here is a foeman worthy of our +steel!” But when I carelessly proposed thirty-five dollars a pound, as +an amendment to their offered twenty, and wound up with the remark: “The +whole thing is a matter of moonshine to me, gentlemen. Take it or want +it, and fill your glasses”--I had the indescribable gratification to +see Sharpe nudge Fowler warningly, and Fowler choke down the jovial +acceptance that stood ready on his lips, and lamely substitute a “No--no +more wine, please, Mr. Dodd!” Nor was this all: for when the affair was +settled at fifty dollars a pound--a shrewd stroke of business for my +creditors--and our friends had got on board their whaleboat and shoved +off, it appeared they were imperfectly acquainted with the conveyance +of sound upon still water, and I had the joy to overhear the following +testimonial. + +“Deep man, that Dodd,” said Sharpe. + +And the bass-toned Fowler echoed, “Damned if I understand his game.” + +Thus we were left once more alone upon the Norah Creina; and the news of +the night, and the lamentations of Pinkerton, and the thought of my own +harsh decision, returned and besieged me in the dark. According to +all the rubbish I had read, I should have been sustained by the warm +consciousness of virtue. Alas, I had but the one feeling: that I +had sacrificed my sick friend to the fear of prison-cells and stupid +starers. And no moralist has yet advanced so far as to number cowardice +amongst the things that are their own reward. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. LIGHT FROM THE MAN OF WAR. + + +In the early sunlight of the next day, we tossed close off the buoy and +saw the city sparkle in its groves about the foot of the Punch-bowl, and +the masts clustering thick in the small harbour. A good breeze, which +had risen with the sea, carried us triumphantly through the +intricacies of the passage; and we had soon brought up not far from the +landing-stairs. I remember to have remarked an ugly horned reptile of a +modern warship in the usual moorings across the port, but my mind was so +profoundly plunged in melancholy that I paid no heed. + +Indeed, I had little time at my disposal. Messieurs Sharpe and Fowler +had left the night before in the persuasion that I was a liar of the +first magnitude; the genial belief brought them aboard again with the +earliest opportunity, proffering help to one who had proved how little +he required it, and hospitality to so respectable a character. I had +business to mind, I had some need both of assistance and diversion; I +liked Fowler--I don't know why; and in short, I let them do with me as +they desired. No creditor intervening, I spent the first half of the +day inquiring into the conditions of the tea and silk market under +the auspices of Sharpe; lunched with him in a private apartment at the +Hawaiian Hotel--for Sharpe was a teetotaler in public; and about four +in the afternoon was delivered into the hands of Fowler. This gentleman +owned a bungalow on the Waikiki beach; and there in company with +certain young bloods of Honolulu, I was entertained to a sea-bathe, +indiscriminate cocktails, a dinner, a hula-hula, and (to round off the +night), poker and assorted liquors. To lose money in the small hours to +pale, intoxicated youth, has always appeared to me a pleasure overrated. +In my then frame of mind, I confess I found it even delightful; put up +my money (or rather my creditors'), and put down Fowler's champagne with +equal avidity and success; and awoke the next morning to a mild headache +and the rather agreeable lees of the last night's excitement. The young +bloods, many of whom were still far from sober, had taken the kitchen +into their own hands, vice the Chinaman deposed; and since each was +engaged upon a dish of his own, and none had the least scruple in +demolishing his neighbour's handiwork, I became early convinced that +many eggs would be broken and few omelets made. The discovery of a jug +of milk and a crust of bread enabled me to stay my appetite; and since +it was Sunday, when no business could be done, and the festivities were +to be renewed that night in the abode of Fowler, it occurred to me to +slip silently away and enjoy some air and solitude. + +I turned seaward under the dead crater known as Diamond Head. My way +was for some time under the shade of certain thickets of green, thorny +trees, dotted with houses. Here I enjoyed some pictures of the native +life: wide-eyed, naked children, mingled with pigs; a youth asleep under +a tree; an old gentleman spelling through glasses his Hawaiian Bible; +the somewhat embarrassing spectacle of a lady at her bath in a spring; +and the glimpse of gaudy-coloured gowns in the deep shade of the houses. +Thence I found a road along the beach itself, wading in sand, opposed +and buffeted by the whole weight of the Trade: on one hand, the +glittering and sounding surf, and the bay lively with many sails; on the +other, precipitous, arid gullies and sheer cliffs, mounting towards the +crater and the blue sky. For all the companionship of skimming vessels, +the place struck me with a sense of solitude. There came in my head +what I had been told the day before at dinner, of a cavern above in +the bowels of the volcano, a place only to be visited with the light +of torches, a treasure-house of the bones of priests and warriors, and +clamorous with the voice of an unseen river pouring seaward through +the crannies of the mountain. At the thought, it was revealed to me +suddenly, how the bungalows, and the Fowlers, and the bright busy town +and crowding ships, were all children of yesterday; and for centuries +before, the obscure life of the natives, with its glories and ambitions, +its joys and crimes and agonies, had rolled unseen, like the mountain +river, in that sea-girt place. Not Chaldea appeared more ancient, nor +the Pyramids of Egypt more abstruse; and I heard time measured by +“the drums and tramplings” of immemorial conquests, and saw myself +the creature of an hour. Over the bankruptcy of Pinkerton and Dodd, +of Montana Block, S. F., and the conscientious troubles of the junior +partner, the spirit of eternity was seen to smile. + +To this mood of philosophic sadness, my excesses of the night before no +doubt contributed; for more things than virtue are at times their own +reward: but I was greatly healed at least of my distresses. And while I +was yet enjoying my abstracted humour, a turn of the beach brought me in +view of the signal-station, with its watch-house and flag-staff, perched +on the immediate margin of a cliff. The house was new and clean and +bald, and stood naked to the Trades. The wind beat about it in loud +squalls; the seaward windows rattled without mercy; the breach of the +surf below contributed its increment of noise; and the fall of my foot +in the narrow verandah passed unheard by those within. + +There were two on whom I thus entered unexpectedly: the look-out +man, with grizzled beard, keen seaman's eyes, and that brand on his +countenance that comes of solitary living; and a visitor, an oldish, +oratorical fellow, in the smart tropical array of the British +man-o'-war's man, perched on a table, and smoking a cigar. I was +made pleasantly welcome, and was soon listening with amusement to the +sea-lawyer. + +“No, if I hadn't have been born an Englishman,” was one of his +sentiments, “damn me! I'd rather 'a been born a Frenchy! I'd like to see +another nation fit to black their boots.” Presently after, he developed +his views on home politics with similar trenchancy. “I'd rather be a +brute beast than what I'd be a liberal,” he said. “Carrying banners and +that! a pig's got more sense. Why, look at our chief engineer--they do +say he carried a banner with his own 'ands: 'Hooroar for Gladstone!' I +suppose, or 'Down with the Aristocracy!' What 'arm does the aristocracy +do? Show me a country any good without one! Not the States; why, it's +the 'ome of corruption! I knew a man--he was a good man, 'ome born--who +was signal quartermaster in the Wyandotte. He told me he could never +have got there if he hadn't have 'run with the boys'--told it me as I'm +telling you. Now, we're all British subjects here----” he was going on. + +“I am afraid I am an American,” I said apologetically. + +He seemed the least bit taken aback, but recovered himself; and with the +ready tact of his betters, paid me the usual British compliment on the +riposte. “You don't say so!” he exclaimed. “Well, I give you my word of +honour, I'd never have guessed it. Nobody could tell it on you,” said +he, as though it were some form of liquor. + +I thanked him, as I always do, at this particular stage, with his +compatriots: not so much perhaps for the compliment to myself and my +poor country, as for the revelation (which is ever fresh to me) of +Britannic self-sufficiency and taste. And he was so far softened by my +gratitude as to add a word of praise on the American method of lacing +sails. “You're ahead of us in lacing sails,” he said. “You can say that +with a clear conscience.” + +“Thank you,” I replied. “I shall certainly do so.” + +At this rate, we got along swimmingly; and when I rose to retrace my +steps to the Fowlery, he at once started to his feet and offered me the +welcome solace of his company for the return. I believe I discovered +much alacrity at the idea, for the creature (who seemed to be unique, +or to represent a type like that of the dodo) entertained me hugely. +But when he had produced his hat, I found I was in the way of more +than entertainment; for on the ribbon I could read the legend: “H.M.S. +Tempest.” + +“I say,” I began, when our adieus were paid, and we were scrambling down +the path from the look-out, “it was your ship that picked up the men on +board the Flying Scud, wasn't it?” + +“You may say so,” said he. “And a blessed good job for the Flying-Scuds. +It's a God-forsaken spot, that Midway Island.” + +“I've just come from there,” said I. “It was I who bought the wreck.” + +“Beg your pardon, sir,” cried the sailor: “gen'lem'n in the white +schooner?” + +“The same,” said I. + +My friend saluted, as though we were now, for the first time, formally +introduced. + +“Of course,” I continued, “I am rather taken up with the whole story; +and I wish you would tell me what you can of how the men were saved.” + +“It was like this,” said he. “We had orders to call at Midway after +castaways, and had our distance pretty nigh run down the day before. +We steamed half-speed all night, looking to make it about noon; for old +Tootles--beg your pardon, sir--the captain--was precious scared of the +place at night. Well, there's nasty, filthy currents round that Midway; +YOU know, as has been there; and one on 'em must have set us down. +Leastways, about six bells, when we had ought to been miles away, some +one sees a sail, and lo and be'old, there was the spars of a full-rigged +brig! We raised her pretty fast, and the island after her; and made out +she was hard aground, canted on her bilge, and had her ens'n flying, +union down. It was breaking 'igh on the reef, and we laid well out, and +sent a couple of boats. I didn't go in neither; only stood and looked +on; but it seems they was all badly scared and muddled, and didn't know +which end was uppermost. One on 'em kep' snivelling and wringing of his +'ands; he come on board all of a sop like a monthly nurse. That Trent, +he come first, with his 'and in a bloody rag. I was near 'em as I am to +you; and I could make out he was all to bits--'eard his breath rattle +in his blooming lungs as he come down the ladder. Yes, they was a scared +lot, small blame to 'em, I say! The next after Trent, come him as was +mate.” + +“Goddedaal!” I exclaimed. + +“And a good name for him too,” chuckled the man-o'-war's man, who +probably confounded the word with a familiar oath. “A good name +too; only it weren't his. He was a gen'lem'n born, sir, as had gone +maskewerading. One of our officers knowed him at 'ome, reckonises him, +steps up, 'olds out his 'and right off, and says he: ''Ullo, Norrie, +old chappie!' he says. The other was coming up, as bold as look at it; +didn't seem put out--that's where blood tells, sir! Well, no sooner does +he 'ear his born name given him, than he turns as white as the Day of +Judgment, stares at Mr. Sebright like he was looking at a ghost, and +then (I give you my word of honour) turned to, and doubled up in a dead +faint. 'Take him down to my berth,' says Mr. Sebright. ''Tis poor old +Norrie Carthew,' he says.” + +“And what--what sort of a gentleman was this Mr. Carthew?” I gasped. + +“The ward-room steward told me he was come of the best blood in +England,” was my friend's reply: “Eton and 'Arrow bred;--and might have +been a bar'net!” + +“No, but to look at?” I corrected him. + + +“The same as you or me,” was the uncompromising answer: “not much to +look at. I didn't know he was a gen'lem'n; but then, I never see him +cleaned up.” + +“How was that?” I cried. “O yes, I remember: he was sick all the way to +'Frisco, was he not?” + +“Sick, or sorry, or something,” returned my informant. “My belief, he +didn't hanker after showing up. He kep' close; the ward-room steward, +what took his meals in, told me he ate nex' to nothing; and he was +fetched ashore at 'Frisco on the quiet. Here was how it was. It seems +his brother had took and died, him as had the estate. This one had gone +in for his beer, by what I could make out; the old folks at 'ome had +turned rusty; no one knew where he had gone to. Here he was, slaving in +a merchant brig, shipwrecked on Midway, and packing up his duds for a +long voyage in a open boat. He comes on board our ship, and by God, here +he is a landed proprietor, and may be in Parliament to-morrow! It's no +less than natural he should keep dark: so would you and me in the same +box.” + +“I daresay,” said I. “But you saw more of the others?” + +“To be sure,” says he: “no 'arm in them from what I see. There was +one 'Ardy there: colonial born he was, and had been through a power of +money. There was no nonsense about 'Ardy; he had been up, and he had +come down, and took it so. His 'eart was in the right place; and he was +well-informed, and knew French; and Latin, I believe, like a native! I +liked that 'Ardy; he was a good-looking boy, too.” + +“Did they say much about the wreck?” I asked. + +“There wasn't much to say, I reckon,” replied the man-o'-war's man. “It +was all in the papers. 'Ardy used to yarn most about the coins he had +gone through; he had lived with book-makers, and jockeys, and pugs, and +actors, and all that: a precious low lot!” added this judicious person. +“But it's about here my 'orse is moored, and by your leave I'll be +getting ahead.” + +“One moment,” said I. “Is Mr. Sebright on board?” + +“No, sir, he's ashore to-day,” said the sailor. “I took up a bag for him +to the 'otel.” + +With that we parted. Presently after my friend overtook and passed me on +a hired steed which seemed to scorn its cavalier; and I was left in the +dust of his passage, a prey to whirling thoughts. For I now stood, or +seemed to stand, on the immediate threshold of these mysteries. I knew +the name of the man Dickson--his name was Carthew; I knew where the +money came from that opposed us at the sale--it was part of Carthew's +inheritance; and in my gallery of illustrations to the history of the +wreck, one more picture hung; perhaps the most dramatic of the series. +It showed me the deck of a warship in that distant part of the great +ocean, the officers and seamen looking curiously on; and a man of birth +and education, who had been sailing under an alias on a trading brig, +and was now rescued from desperate peril, felled like an ox by the +bare sound of his own name. I could not fail to be reminded of my +own experience at the Occidental telephone. The hero of three styles, +Dickson, Goddedaal, or Carthew, must be the owner of a lively--or a +loaded--conscience, and the reflection recalled to me the photograph +found on board the Flying Scud; just such a man, I reasoned, would be +capable of just such starts and crises, and I inclined to think that +Goddedaal (or Carthew) was the mainspring of the mystery. + +One thing was plain: as long as the Tempest was in reach, I must make +the acquaintance of both Sebright and the doctor. To this end, I excused +myself with Mr. Fowler, returned to Honolulu, and passed the remainder +of the day hanging vainly round the cool verandahs of the hotel. It was +near nine o'clock at night before I was rewarded. + +“That is the gentleman you were asking for,” said the clerk. + +I beheld a man in tweeds, of an incomparable languor of demeanour, and +carrying a cane with genteel effort. From the name, I had looked to find +a sort of Viking and young ruler of the battle and the tempest; and I +was the more disappointed, and not a little alarmed, to come face to +face with this impracticable type. + +“I believe I have the pleasure of addressing Lieutenant Sebright,” said +I, stepping forward. + +“Aw, yes,” replied the hero; “but, aw! I dawn't knaw you, do I?” (He +spoke for all the world like Lord Foppington in the old play--a proof of +the perennial nature of man's affectations. But his limping dialect, I +scorn to continue to reproduce.) + + +“It was with the intention of making myself known, that I have taken +this step,” said I, entirely unabashed (for impudence begets in me its +like--perhaps my only martial attribute). “We have a common subject of +interest, to me very lively; and I believe I may be in a position to be +of some service to a friend of yours--to give him, at least, some very +welcome information.” + +The last clause was a sop to my conscience: I could not pretend, even +to myself, either the power or the will to serve Mr. Carthew; but I felt +sure he would like to hear the Flying Scud was burned. + +“I don't know--I--I don't understand you,” stammered my victim. “I don't +have any friends in Honolulu, don't you know?” + +“The friend to whom I refer is English,” I replied. “It is Mr. Carthew, +whom you picked up at Midway. My firm has bought the wreck; I am just +returned from breaking her up; and--to make my business quite clear to +you--I have a communication it is necessary I should make; and have to +trouble you for Mr. Carthew's address.” + +It will be seen how rapidly I had dropped all hope of interesting +the frigid British bear. He, on his side, was plainly on thorns at my +insistence; I judged he was suffering torments of alarm lest I should +prove an undesirable acquaintance; diagnosed him for a shy, dull, vain, +unamiable animal, without adequate defence--a sort of dishoused snail; +and concluded, rightly enough, that he would consent to anything to +bring our interview to a conclusion. A moment later, he had fled, +leaving me with a sheet of paper, thus inscribed:-- + +Norris Carthew, + +Stallbridge-le-Carthew, + +Dorset. + +I might have cried victory, the field of battle and some of the enemy's +baggage remaining in my occupation. As a matter of fact, my moral +sufferings during the engagement had rivalled those of Mr. Sebright; I +was left incapable of fresh hostilities; I owned that the navy of old +England was (for me) invincible as of yore; and giving up all thought of +the doctor, inclined to salute her veteran flag, in the future, from a +prudent distance. Such was my inclination, when I retired to rest; and +my first experience the next morning strengthened it to certainty. For I +had the pleasure of encountering my fair antagonist on his way on board; +and he honoured me with a recognition so disgustingly dry, that my +impatience overflowed, and (recalling the tactics of Nelson) I neglected +to perceive or to return it. + +Judge of my astonishment, some half-hour later, to receive a note of +invitation from the Tempest. + +“Dear Sir,” it began, “we are all naturally very much interested in +the wreck of the Flying Scud, and as soon as I mentioned that I had the +pleasure of making your acquaintance, a very general wish was expressed +that you would come and dine on board. It will give us all the greatest +pleasure to see you to-night, or in case you should be otherwise +engaged, to luncheon either to-morrow or to-day.” A note of the hours +followed, and the document wound up with the name of “J. Lascelles +Sebright,” under an undeniable statement that he was sincerely mine. + +“No, Mr. Lascelles Sebright,” I reflected, “you are not, but I begin +to suspect that (like the lady in the song) you are another's. You have +mentioned your adventure, my friend; you have been blown up; you have +got your orders; this note has been dictated; and I am asked on board +(in spite of your melancholy protests) not to meet the men, and not +to talk about the Flying Scud, but to undergo the scrutiny of some one +interested in Carthew: the doctor, for a wager. And for a second wager, +all this springs from your facility in giving the address.” I lost no +time in answering the billet, electing for the earliest occasion; and at +the appointed hour, a somewhat blackguard-looking boat's crew from the +Norah Creina conveyed me under the guns of the Tempest. + +The ward-room appeared pleased to see me; Sebright's brother officers, +in contrast to himself, took a boyish interest in my cruise; and much +was talked of the Flying Scud; of how she had been lost, of how I had +found her, and of the weather, the anchorage, and the currents +about Midway Island. Carthew was referred to more than once without +embarrassment; the parallel case of a late Earl of Aberdeen, who died +mate on board a Yankee schooner, was adduced. If they told me little +of the man, it was because they had not much to tell, and only felt an +interest in his recognition and pity for his prolonged ill-health. I +could never think the subject was avoided; and it was clear that the +officers, far from practising concealment, had nothing to conceal. + +So far, then, all seemed natural, and yet the doctor troubled me. This +was a tall, rugged, plain man, on the wrong side of fifty, already gray, +and with a restless mouth and bushy eyebrows: he spoke seldom, but then +with gaiety; and his great, quaking, silent laughter was infectious. +I could make out that he was at once the quiz of the ward-room and +perfectly respected; and I made sure that he observed me covertly. It is +certain I returned the compliment. If Carthew had feigned sickness--and +all seemed to point in that direction--here was the man who knew +all--or certainly knew much. His strong, sterling face progressively and +silently persuaded of his full knowledge. That was not the mouth, these +were not the eyes, of one who would act in ignorance, or could be led +at random. Nor again was it the face of a man squeamish in the case of +malefactors; there was even a touch of Brutus there, and something of +the hanging judge. In short, he seemed the last character for the part +assigned him in my theories; and wonder and curiosity contended in my +mind. + +Luncheon was over, and an adjournment to the smoking-room proposed, when +(upon a sudden impulse) I burned my ships, and pleading indisposition, +requested to consult the doctor. + +“There is nothing the matter with my body, Dr. Urquart,” said I, as soon +as we were alone. + +He hummed, his mouth worked, he regarded me steadily with his gray eyes, +but resolutely held his peace. + + +“I want to talk to you about the Flying Scud and Mr. Carthew,” I +resumed. “Come: you must have expected this. I am sure you know all; you +are shrewd, and must have a guess that I know much. How are we to stand +to one another? and how am I to stand to Mr. Carthew?” + +“I do not fully understand you,” he replied, after a pause; and then, +after another: “It is the spirit I refer to, Mr. Dodd.” + +“The spirit of my inquiries?” I asked. + +He nodded. + + +“I think we are at cross-purposes,” said I. “The spirit is precisely +what I came in quest of. I bought the Flying Scud at a ruinous figure, +run up by Mr. Carthew through an agent; and I am, in consequence, a +bankrupt. But if I have found no fortune in the wreck, I have found +unmistakable evidences of foul play. Conceive my position: I am ruined +through this man, whom I never saw; I might very well desire revenge +or compensation; and I think you will admit I have the means to extort +either.” + +He made no sign in answer to this challenge. + +“Can you not understand, then,” I resumed, “the spirit in which I come +to one who is surely in the secret, and ask him, honestly and plainly: +How do I stand to Mr. Carthew?” + +“I must ask you to be more explicit,” said he. + +“You do not help me much,” I retorted. “But see if you can understand: +my conscience is not very fine-spun; still, I have one. Now, there are +degrees of foul play, to some of which I have no particular objection. +I am sure with Mr. Carthew, I am not at all the person to forgo an +advantage; and I have much curiosity. But on the other hand, I have no +taste for persecution; and I ask you to believe that I am not the man to +make bad worse, or heap trouble on the unfortunate.” + +“Yes; I think I understand,” said he. “Suppose I pass you my word that, +whatever may have occurred, there were excuses--great excuses--I may +say, very great?” + +“It would have weight with me, doctor,” I replied. + +“I may go further,” he pursued. “Suppose I had been there, or you had +been there: after a certain event had taken place, it's a grave question +what we might have done--it's even a question what we could have +done--ourselves. Or take me. I will be plain with you, and own that I am +in possession of the facts. You have a shrewd guess how I have acted in +that knowledge. May I ask you to judge from the character of my action, +something of the nature of that knowledge, which I have no call, nor yet +no title, to share with you?” + +I cannot convey a sense of the rugged conviction and judicial emphasis +of Dr. Urquart's speech. To those who did not hear him, it may appear as +if he fed me on enigmas; to myself, who heard, I seemed to have received +a lesson and a compliment. + +“I thank you,” I said. “I feel you have said as much as possible, and +more than I had any right to ask. I take that as a mark of confidence, +which I will try to deserve. I hope, sir, you will let me regard you as +a friend.” + +He evaded my proffered friendship with a blunt proposal to rejoin the +mess; and yet a moment later, contrived to alleviate the snub. For, as +we entered the smoking-room, he laid his hand on my shoulder with a kind +familiarity. + +“I have just prescribed for Mr. Dodd,” says he, “a glass of our +Madeira.” + +I have never again met Dr. Urquart: but he wrote himself so clear +upon my memory that I think I see him still. And indeed I had cause to +remember the man for the sake of his communication. It was hard enough +to make a theory fit the circumstances of the Flying Scud; but one in +which the chief actor should stand the least excused, and might retain +the esteem or at least the pity of a man like Dr. Urquart, failed me +utterly. Here at least was the end of my discoveries; I learned no more, +till I learned all; and my reader has the evidence complete. Is he more +astute than I was? or, like me, does he give it up? + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. CROSS-QUESTIONS AND CROOKED ANSWERS. + + +I have said hard words of San Francisco; they must scarce be literally +understood (one cannot suppose the Israelites did justice to the land of +Pharaoh); and the city took a fine revenge of me on my return. She had +never worn a more becoming guise; the sun shone, the air was lively, the +people had flowers in their button-holes and smiles upon their faces; +and as I made my way towards Jim's place of employment, with some very +black anxieties at heart, I seemed to myself a blot on the surrounding +gaiety. + +My destination was in a by-street in a mean, rickety building; “The +Franklin H. Dodge Steam Printing Company” appeared upon its front, and +in characters of greater freshness, so as to suggest recent conversion, +the watch-cry, “White Labour Only.” In the office, in a dusty pen, +Jim sat alone before a table. A wretched change had overtaken him in +clothes, body, and bearing; he looked sick and shabby; he who had once +rejoiced in his day's employment, like a horse among pastures, now sat +staring on a column of accounts, idly chewing a pen, at times heavily +sighing, the picture of inefficiency and inattention. He was sunk deep +in a painful reverie; he neither saw nor heard me; and I stood and +watched him unobserved. I had a sudden vain relenting. Repentance +bludgeoned me. As I had predicted to Nares, I stood and kicked myself. +Here was I come home again, my honour saved; there was my friend in want +of rest, nursing, and a generous diet; and I asked myself with Falstaff, +“What is in that word honour? what is that honour?” and, like Falstaff, +I told myself that it was air. + +“Jim!” said I. + +“Loudon!” he gasped, and jumped from his chair and stood shaking. + +The next moment I was over the barrier, and we were hand in hand. + +“My poor old man!” I cried. + +“Thank God, you're home at last!” he gulped, and kept patting my +shoulder with his hand. + +“I've no good news for you, Jim!” said I. + +“You've come--that's the good news that I want,” he replied. “O, how +I've longed for you, Loudon!” + +“I couldn't do what you wrote me,” I said, lowering my voice. “The +creditors have it all. I couldn't do it.” + +“Ssh!” returned Jim. “I was crazy when wrote. I could never have looked +Mamie in the face if we had done it. O, Loudon, what a gift that woman +is! You think you know something of life: you just don't know anything. +It's the GOODNESS of the woman, it's a revelation!” + +“That's all right,” said I. “That's how I hoped to hear you, Jim.” + +“And so the Flying Scud was a fraud,” he resumed. “I didn't quite +understand your letter, but I made out that.” + +“Fraud is a mild term for it,” said I. “The creditors will never believe +what fools we were. And that reminds me,” I continued, rejoicing in the +transition, “how about the bankruptcy?” + +“You were lucky to be out of that,” answered Jim, shaking his head; +“you were lucky not to see the papers. The _Occidental_ called me a +fifth-rate Kerbstone broker with water on the brain; another said I was +a tree-frog that had got into the same meadow with Longhurst, and +had blown myself out till I went pop. It was rough on a man in his +honeymoon; so was what they said about my looks, and what I had on, and +the way I perspired. But I braced myself up with the Flying Scud. How +did it exactly figure out anyway? I don't seem to catch on to that +story, Loudon.” + +“The devil you don't!” thinks I to myself; and then aloud: “You see +we had neither one of us good luck. I didn't do much more than cover +current expenses; and you got floored immediately. How did we come to go +so soon?” + +“Well, we'll have to have a talk over all this,” said Jim with a sudden +start. “I should be getting to my books; and I guess you had better +go up right away to Mamie. She's at Speedy's. She expects you with +impatience. She regards you in the light of a favourite brother, +Loudon.” + +Any scheme was welcome which allowed me to postpone the hour of +explanation, and avoid (were it only for a breathing space) the topic +of the Flying Scud. I hastened accordingly to Bush Street. Mrs. Speedy, +already rejoicing in the return of a spouse, hailed me with acclamation. +“And it's beautiful you're looking, Mr. Dodd, my dear,” she was kind +enough to say. “And a miracle they naygur waheenies let ye lave the +oilands. I have my suspicions of Shpeedy,” she added, roguishly. “Did ye +see him after the naygresses now?” + +I gave Speedy an unblemished character. + +“The one of ye will niver bethray the other,” said the playful dame, and +ushered me into a bare room, where Mamie sat working a type-writer. + +I was touched by the cordiality of her greeting. With the prettiest +gesture in the world she gave me both her hands; wheeled forth a chair; +and produced, from a cupboard, a tin of my favourite tobacco, and a book +of my exclusive cigarette papers. + +“There!” she cried; “you see, Mr. Loudon, we were all prepared for you; +the things were bought the very day you sailed.” + +I imagined she had always intended me a pleasant welcome; but the +certain fervour of sincerity, which I could not help remarking, flowed +from an unexpected source. Captain Nares, with a kindness for which +I can never be sufficiently grateful, had stolen a moment from his +occupations, driven to call on Mamie, and drawn her a generous picture +of my prowess at the wreck. She was careful not to breathe a word of +this interview, till she had led me on to tell my adventures for myself. + +“Ah! Captain Nares was better,” she cried, when I had done. “From your +account, I have only learned one new thing, that you are modest as well +as brave.” + +I cannot tell with what sort of disclamation I sought to reply. + +“It is of no use,” said Mamie. “I know a hero. And when I heard of you +working all day like a common labourer, with your hands bleeding and +your nails broken--and how you told the captain to 'crack on' (I think +he said) in the storm, when he was terrified himself--and the danger +of that horrid mutiny”--(Nares had been obligingly dipping his brush in +earthquake and eclipse)--“and how it was all done, in part at least, for +Jim and me--I felt we could never say how we admired and thanked you.” + +“Mamie,” I cried, “don't talk of thanks; it is not a word to be used +between friends. Jim and I have been prosperous together; now we shall +be poor together. We've done our best, and that's all that need be said. +The next thing is for me to find a situation, and send you and Jim up +country for a long holiday in the redwoods--for a holiday Jim has got to +have.” + +“Jim can't take your money, Mr. Loudon,” said Mamie. + +“Jim?” cried I. “He's got to. Didn't I take his?” + +Presently after, Jim himself arrived, and before he had yet done mopping +his brow, he was at me with the accursed subject. “Now, Loudon,” said +he, “here we are all together, the day's work done and the evening +before us; just start in with the whole story.” + +“One word on business first,” said I, speaking from the lips outward, +and meanwhile (in the private apartments of my brain) trying for the +thousandth time to find some plausible arrangement of my story. “I want +to have a notion how we stand about the bankruptcy.” + +“O, that's ancient history,” cried Jim. “We paid seven cents, and a +wonder we did as well. The receiver----” (methought a spasm seized him +at the name of this official, and he broke off). “But it's all past +and done with anyway; and what I want to get at is the facts about the +wreck. I don't seem to understand it; appears to me like as there was +something underneath.” + +“There was nothing IN it, anyway,” I said, with a forced laugh. + +“That's what I want to judge of,” returned Jim. + +“How the mischief is it I can never keep you to that bankruptcy? It +looks as if you avoided it,” said I--for a man in my situation, with +unpardonable folly. + +“Don't it look a little as if you were trying to avoid the wreck?” asked +Jim. + +It was my own doing; there was no retreat. “My dear fellow, if you make +a point of it, here goes!” said I, and launched with spurious gaiety +into the current of my tale. I told it with point and spirit; described +the island and the wreck, mimicked Anderson and the Chinese, maintained +the suspense.... My pen has stumbled on the fatal word. I maintained the +suspense so well that it was never relieved; and when I stopped--I dare +not say concluded, where there was no conclusion--I found Jim and Mamie +regarding me with surprise. + +“Well?” said Jim. + +“Well, that's all,” said I. + +“But how do you explain it?” he asked. + +“I can't explain it,” said I. + + +Mamie wagged her head ominously. + +“But, great Caesar's ghost! the money was offered!” cried Jim. “It won't +do, Loudon; it's nonsense, on the face of it! I don't say but what you +and Nares did your best; I'm sure, of course, you did; but I do say, you +got fooled. I say the stuff is in that ship to-day, and I say I mean to +get it.” + +“There is nothing in the ship, I tell you, but old wood and iron!” said +I. + +“You'll see,” said Jim. “Next time I go myself. I'll take Mamie for the +trip; Longhurst won't refuse me the expense of a schooner. You wait till +I get the searching of her.” + +“But you can't search her!” cried I. “She's burned.” + +“Burned!” cried Mamie, starting a little from the attitude of quiescent +capacity in which she had hitherto sat to hear me, her hands folded in +her lap. + +There was an appreciable pause. + +“I beg your pardon, Loudon,” began Jim at last, “but why in snakes did +you burn her?” + +“It was an idea of Nares's,” said I. + +“This is certainly the strangest circumstance of all,” observed Mamie. + +“I must say, Loudon, it does seem kind of unexpected,” added Jim. “It +seems kind of crazy even. What did you--what did Nares expect to gain by +burning her?” + +“I don't know; it didn't seem to matter; we had got all there was to +get,” said I. + +“That's the very point,” cried Jim. “It was quite plain you hadn't.” + +“What made you so sure?” asked Mamie. + +“How can I tell you?” I cried. “We had been all through her. We WERE +sure; that's all that I can say.” + + +“I begin to think you were,” she returned, with a significant emphasis. + +Jim hurriedly intervened. “What I don't quite make out, Loudon, is that +you don't seem to appreciate the peculiarities of the thing,” said he. +“It doesn't seem to have struck you same as it does me.” + +“Pshaw! why go on with this?” cried Mamie, suddenly rising. “Mr. Dodd is +not telling us either what he thinks or what he knows.” + +“Mamie!” cried Jim. + +“You need not be concerned for his feelings, James; he is not concerned +for yours,” returned the lady. “He dare not deny it, besides. And this +is not the first time he has practised reticence. Have you forgotten +that he knew the address, and did not tell it you until that man had +escaped?” + +Jim turned to me pleadingly--we were all on our feet. “Loudon,” he said, +“you see Mamie has some fancy; and I must say there's just a sort of a +shadow of an excuse; for it IS bewildering--even to me, Loudon, with my +trained business intelligence. For God's sake, clear it up.” + +“This serves me right,” said I. “I should not have tried to keep you in +the dark; I should have told you at first that I was pledged to secrecy; +I should have asked you to trust me in the beginning. It is all I can +do now. There is more of the story, but it concerns none of us, and my +tongue is tied. I have given my word of honour. You must trust me and +try to forgive me.” + +“I daresay I am very stupid, Mr. Dodd,” began Mamie, with an alarming +sweetness, “but I thought you went upon this trip as my husband's +representative and with my husband's money? You tell us now that you +are pledged, but I should have thought you were pledged first of all +to James. You say it does not concern us; we are poor people, and my +husband is sick, and it concerns us a great deal to understand how we +come to have lost our money, and why our representative comes back to +us with nothing. You ask that we should trust you; you do not seem to +understand; the question we are asking ourselves is whether we have not +trusted you too much.” + +“I do not ask you to trust me,” I replied. “I ask Jim. He knows me.” + +“You think you can do what you please with James; you trust to his +affection, do you not? And me, I suppose, you do not consider,” said +Mamie. “But it was perhaps an unfortunate day for you when we were +married, for I at least am not blind. The crew run away, the ship is +sold for a great deal of money, you know that man's address and you +conceal it, you do not find what you were sent to look for, and yet you +burn the ship; and now, when we ask explanations, you are pledged to +secrecy! But I am pledged to no such thing; I will not stand by in +silence and see my sick and ruined husband betrayed by his condescending +friend. I will give you the truth for once. Mr. Dodd, you have been +bought and sold.” + +“Mamie,” cried Jim, “no more of this! It's me you're striking; it's only +me you hurt. You don't know, you cannot understand these things. Why, +to-day, if it hadn't been for Loudon, I couldn't have looked you in the +face. He saved my honesty.” + +“I have heard plenty of this talk before,” she replied. “You are a +sweet-hearted fool, and I love you for it. But I am a clear-headed +woman; my eyes are open, and I understand this man's hypocrisy. Did he +not come here to-day and pretend he would take a situation--pretend he +would share his hard-earned wages with us until you were well? Pretend! +It makes me furious! His wages! a share of his wages! That would have +been your pittance, that would have been your share of the Flying +Scud--you who worked and toiled for him when he was a beggar in the +streets of Paris. But we do not want your charity; thank God, I can work +for my own husband! See what it is to have obliged a gentleman. He would +let you pick him up when he was begging; he would stand and look on, and +let you black his shoes, and sneer at you. For you were always sneering +at my James; you always looked down upon him in your heart, you know +it!” She turned back to Jim. “And now when he is rich,” she began, and +then swooped again on me. “For you are rich, I dare you to deny it; I +defy you to look me in the face and try to deny that you are rich--rich +with our money--my husband's money----” + +Heaven knows to what a height she might have risen, being, by this time, +bodily whirled away in her own hurricane of words. Heart-sickness, +a black depression, a treacherous sympathy with my assailant, pity +unutterable for poor Jim, already filled, divided, and abashed my +spirit. Flight seemed the only remedy; and making a private sign to Jim, +as if to ask permission, I slunk from the unequal field. + +I was but a little way down the street, when I was arrested by the sound +of some one running, and Jim's voice calling me by name. He had followed +me with a letter which had been long awaiting my return. + +I took it in a dream. “This has been a devil of a business,” said I. + +“Don't think hard of Mamie,” he pleaded. “It's the way she's made; it's +her high-toned loyalty. And of course I know it's all right. I know your +sterling character; but you didn't, somehow, make out to give us the +thing straight, Loudon. Anybody might have--I mean it--I mean----” + +“Never mind what you mean, my poor Jim,” said I. “She's a gallant little +woman and a loyal wife: and I thought her splendid. My story was as +fishy as the devil. I'll never think the less of either her or you.” + +“It'll blow over; it must blow over,” said he. + +“It never can,” I returned, sighing: “and don't you try to make it! +Don't name me, unless it's with an oath. And get home to her right away. +Good by, my best of friends. Good by, and God bless you. We shall never +meet again.” + +“O Loudon, that we should live to say such words!” he cried. + +I had no views on life, beyond an occasional impulse to commit suicide, +or to get drunk, and drifted down the street, semi-conscious, walking +apparently on air, in the light-headedness of grief. I had money in my +pocket, whether mine or my creditors' I had no means of guessing; and, +the Poodle Dog lying in my path, I went mechanically in and took +a table. A waiter attended me, and I suppose I gave my orders; for +presently I found myself, with a sudden return of consciousness, +beginning dinner. On the white cloth at my elbow lay the letter, +addressed in a clerk's hand, and bearing an English stamp and the +Edinburgh postmark. A bowl of bouillon and a glass of wine awakened in +one corner of my brain (where all the rest was in mourning, the blinds +down as for a funeral) a faint stir of curiosity; and while I waited the +next course, wondering the while what I had ordered, I opened and began +to read the epoch-making document. + +“DEAR SIR: I am charged with the melancholy duty of announcing to you +the death of your excellent grandfather, Mr. Alexander Loudon, on +the 17th ult. On Sunday the 13th, he went to church as usual in the +forenoon, and stopped on his way home, at the corner of Princes Street, +in one of our seasonable east winds, to talk with an old friend. The +same evening acute bronchitis declared itself; from the first, Dr. +M'Combie anticipated a fatal result, and the old gentleman appeared to +have no illusion as to his own state. He repeatedly assured me it +was 'by' with him now; 'and high time, too,' he once added with +characteristic asperity. He was not in the least changed on the approach +of death: only (what I am sure must be very grateful to your feelings) +he seemed to think and speak even more kindly than usual of yourself: +referring to you as 'Jeannie's yin,' with strong expressions of regard. +'He was the only one I ever liket of the hale jing-bang,' was one of his +expressions; and you will be glad to know that he dwelt particularly +on the dutiful respect you had always displayed in your relations. +The small codicil, by which he bequeaths you his Molesworth and other +professional works, was added (you will observe) on the day before his +death; so that you were in his thoughts until the end. I should say +that, though rather a trying patient, he was most tenderly nursed by +your uncle, and your cousin, Miss Euphemia. I enclose a copy of the +testament, by which you will see that you share equally with Mr. Adam, +and that I hold at your disposal a sum nearly approaching seventeen +thousand pounds. I beg to congratulate you on this considerable +acquisition, and expect your orders, to which I shall hasten to give my +best attention. Thinking that you might desire to return at once to this +country, and not knowing how you may be placed, I enclose a credit for +six hundred pounds. Please sign the accompanying slip, and let me have +it at your earliest convenience. + +“I am, dear sir, yours truly, + +“W. RUTHERFORD GREGG.” + +“God bless the old gentleman!” I thought; “and for that matter God bless +Uncle Adam! and my cousin Euphemia! and Mr. Gregg!” I had a vision of +that grey old life now brought to an end--“and high time too”--a vision +of those Sabbath streets alternately vacant and filled with silent +people; of the babel of the bells, the long-drawn psalmody, the shrewd +sting of the east wind, the hollow, echoing, dreary house to which +“Ecky” had returned with the hand of death already on his shoulder; a +vision, too, of the long, rough country lad, perhaps a serious courtier +of the lasses in the hawthorn den, perhaps a rustic dancer on the green, +who had first earned and answered to that harsh diminutive. And I asked +myself if, on the whole, poor Ecky had succeeded in life; if the last +state of that man were not on the whole worse than the first; and the +house in Randolph Crescent a less admirable dwelling than the hamlet +where he saw the day and grew to manhood. Here was a consolatory thought +for one who was himself a failure. + +Yes, I declare the word came in my mind; and all the while, in another +partition of the brain, I was glowing and singing for my new-found +opulence. The pile of gold--four thousand two hundred and fifty double +eagles, seventeen thousand ugly sovereigns, twenty-one thousand two +hundred and fifty Napoleons--danced, and rang and ran molten, and lit +up life with their effulgence, in the eye of fancy. Here were all things +made plain to me: Paradise--Paris, I mean--Regained, Carthew protected, +Jim restored, the creditors... + +“The creditors!” I repeated, and sank back benumbed. It was all theirs +to the last farthing: my grandfather had died too soon to save me. + +I must have somewhere a rare vein of decision. In that revolutionary +moment, I found myself prepared for all extremes except the one: ready +to do anything, or to go anywhere, so long as I might save my money. +At the worst, there was flight, flight to some of those blest countries +where the serpent, extradition, has not yet entered in. + + On no condition is extradition + Allowed in Callao! + +--the old lawless words haunted me; and I saw myself hugging my gold in +the company of such men as had once made and sung them, in the rude +and bloody wharfside drinking-shops of Chili and Peru. The run of my +ill-luck, the breach of my old friendship, this bubble fortune flaunted +for a moment in my eyes and snatched again, had made me desperate and +(in the expressive vulgarism) ugly. To drink vile spirits among vile +companions by the flare of a pine-torch; to go burthened with my furtive +treasure in a belt; to fight for it knife in hand, rolling on a clay +floor; to flee perpetually in fresh ships and to be chased through +the sea from isle to isle, seemed, in my then frame of mind, a welcome +series of events. + +That was for the worst; but it began to dawn slowly on my mind that +there was yet a possible better. Once escaped, once safe in Callao, I +might approach my creditors with a good grace; and properly handled by +a cunning agent, it was just possible they might accept some easy +composition. The hope recalled me to the bankruptcy. It was strange, I +reflected: often as I had questioned Jim, he had never obliged me +with an answer. In his haste for news about the wreck, my own no less +legitimate curiosity had gone disappointed. Hateful as the thought was +to me, I must return at once and find out where I stood. + +I left my dinner still unfinished, paying for the whole, of course, and +tossing the waiter a gold piece. I was reckless; I knew not what was +mine and cared not: I must take what I could get and give as I was able; +to rob and to squander seemed the complementary parts of my new destiny. +I walked up Bush Street, whistling, brazening myself to confront Mamie +in the first place, and the world at large and a certain visionary judge +upon a bench in the second. Just outside, I stopped and lighted a cigar +to give me greater countenance; and puffing this and wearing what (I +am sure) was a wretched assumption of braggadocio, I reappeared on the +scene of my disgrace. + +My friend and his wife were finishing a poor meal--rags of old mutton, +the remainder cakes from breakfast eaten cold, and a starveling pot of +coffee. + +“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Pinkerton,” said I. “Sorry to inflict my +presence where it cannot be desired; but there is a piece of business +necessary to be discussed.” + +“Pray do not consider me,” said Mamie, rising, and she sailed into the +adjoining bedroom. + +Jim watched her go and shook his head; he looked miserably old and ill. + +“What is it, now?” he asked. + +“Perhaps you remember you answered none of my questions,” said I. + + +“Your questions?” faltered Jim. + +“Even so, Jim. My questions,” I repeated. “I put questions as well as +yourself; and however little I may have satisfied Mamie with my answers, +I beg to remind you that you gave me none at all.” + +“You mean about the bankruptcy?” asked Jim. + +I nodded. + +He writhed in his chair. “The straight truth is, I was ashamed,” he +said. “I was trying to dodge you. I've been playing fast and loose with +you, Loudon; I've deceived you from the first, I blush to own it. And +here you came home and put the very question I was fearing. Why did we +bust so soon? Your keen business eye had not deceived you. That's the +point, that's my shame; that's what killed me this afternoon when Mamie +was treating you so, and my conscience was telling me all the time, Thou +art the man.” + +“What was it, Jim?” I asked. + +“What I had been at all the time, Loudon,” he wailed; “and I don't know +how I'm to look you in the face and say it, after my duplicity. It was +stocks,” he added in a whisper. + +“And you were afraid to tell me that!” I cried. “You poor, old, +cheerless dreamer! what would it matter what you did or didn't? Can't +you see we're doomed? And anyway, that's not my point. It's how I stand +that I want to know. There is a particular reason. Am I clear? Have I a +certificate, or what have I to do to get one? And when will it be dated? +You can't think what hangs by it!” + +“That's the worst of all,” said Jim, like a man in a dream, “I can't see +how to tell him!” + +“What do you mean?” I cried, a small pang of terror at my heart. + +“I'm afraid I sacrificed you, Loudon,” he said, looking at me pitifully. + +“Sacrificed me?” I repeated. “How? What do you mean by sacrifice?” + +“I know it'll shock your delicate self-respect,” he said; “but what was +I to do? Things looked so bad. The receiver----” (as usual, the name +stuck in his throat, and he began afresh). “There was a lot of talk; the +reporters were after me already; there was the trouble and all about +the Mexican business; and I got scared right out, and I guess I lost my +head. You weren't there, you see, and that was my temptation.” + +I did not know how long he might thus beat about the bush with dreadful +hintings, and I was already beside myself with terror. What had he done? +I saw he had been tempted; I knew from his letters that he was in no +condition to resist. How had he sacrificed the absent? + +“Jim,” I said, “you must speak right out. I've got all that I can +carry.” + +“Well,” he said--“I know it was a liberty--I made it out you were no +business man, only a stone-broke painter; that half the time you didn't +know anything anyway, particularly money and accounts. I said you never +could be got to understand whose was whose. I had to say that because of +some entries in the books----” + +“For God's sake,” I cried, “put me out of this agony! What did you +accuse me of?” + +“Accuse you of?” repeated Jim. “Of what I'm telling you. And there being +no deed of partnership, I made out you were only a kind of clerk that +I called a partner just to give you taffy; and so I got you ranked +a creditor on the estate for your wages and the money you had lent. +And----” + +I believe I reeled. “A creditor!” I roared; “a creditor! I'm not in the +bankruptcy at all?” + +“No,” said Jim. “I know it was a liberty----” + +“O, damn your liberty! read that,” I cried, dashing the letter before +him on the table, “and call in your wife, and be done with eating this +truck “--as I spoke, I slung the cold mutton in the empty grate--“and +let's all go and have a champagne supper. I've dined--I'm sure I don't +remember what I had; I'd dine again ten scores of times upon a night +like this. Read it, you blaying ass! I'm not insane. Here, Mamie,” I +continued, opening the bedroom door, “come out and make it up with me, +and go and kiss your husband; and I'll tell you what, after the supper, +let's go to some place where there's a band, and I'll waltz with you +till sunrise.” + +“What does it all mean?” cried Jim. + +“It means we have a champagne supper to-night, and all go to Napa Valley +or to Monterey to-morrow,” said I. “Mamie, go and get your things on; +and you, Jim, sit down right where you are, take a sheet of paper, and +tell Franklin Dodge to go to Texas. Mamie, you were right, my dear; I +was rich all the time, and didn't know it.” + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER. + + +The absorbing and disastrous adventure of the Flying Scud was now quite +ended; we had dashed into these deep waters and we had escaped again to +starve, we had been ruined and were saved, had quarrelled and made up; +there remained nothing but to sing Te Deum, draw a line, and begin on a +fresh page of my unwritten diary. I do not pretend that I recovered all +I had lost with Mamie; it would have been more than I had merited; and +I had certainly been more uncommunicative than became either the partner +or the friend. But she accepted the position handsomely; and during +the week that I now passed with them, both she and Jim had the grace +to spare me questions. It was to Calistoga that we went; there was +some rumour of a Napa land-boom at the moment, the possibility of stir +attracted Jim, and he informed me he would find a certain joy in looking +on, much as Napoleon on St. Helena took a pleasure to read military +works. The field of his ambition was quite closed; he was done with +action; and looked forward to a ranch in a mountain dingle, a patch of +corn, a pair of kine, a leisurely and contemplative age in the green +shade of forests. “Just let me get down on my back in a hayfield,” said +he, “and you'll find there's no more snap to me than that much putty.” + +And for two days the perfervid being actually rested. The third, he was +observed in consultation with the local editor, and owned he was in two +minds about purchasing the press and paper. “It's a kind of a hold for +an idle man,” he said, pleadingly; “and if the section was to open up +the way it ought to, there might be dollars in the thing.” On the fourth +day he was gone till dinner-time alone; on the fifth we made a long +picnic drive to the fresh field of enterprise; and the sixth was passed +entirely in the preparation of prospectuses. The pioneer of McBride City +was already upright and self-reliant as of yore; the fire rekindled in +his eye, the ring restored to his voice; a charger sniffing battle and +saying ha-ha, among the spears. On the seventh morning we signed a deed +of partnership, for Jim would not accept a dollar of my money otherwise; +and having once more engaged myself--or that mortal part of me, my +purse--among the wheels of his machinery, I returned alone to San +Francisco and took quarters in the Palace Hotel. + +The same night I had Nares to dinner. His sunburnt face, his queer and +personal strain of talk, recalled days that were scarce over and that +seemed already distant. Through the music of the band outside, and the +chink and clatter of the dining-room, it seemed to me as if I heard the +foaming of the surf and the voices of the sea-birds about Midway Island. +The bruises on our hands were not yet healed; and there we sat, waited +on by elaborate darkies, eating pompano and drinking iced champagne. + +“Think of our dinners on the Norah, captain, and then oblige me by +looking round the room for contrast.” + +He took the scene in slowly. “Yes, it is like a dream,” he said: “like +as if the darkies were really about as big as dimes; and a great big +scuttle might open up there, and Johnson stick in a great big head and +shoulders, and cry, 'Eight bells!'--and the whole thing vanish.” + +“Well, it's the other thing that has done that,” I replied. “It's all +bygone now, all dead and buried. Amen! say I.” + +“I don't know that, Mr. Dodd; and to tell you the fact, I don't believe +it,” said Nares. “There's more Flying Scud in the oven; and the baker's +name, I take it, is Bellairs. He tackled me the day we came in: sort of +a razee of poor old humanity--jury clothes--full new suit of pimples: +knew him at once from your description. I let him pump me till I saw his +game. He knows a good deal that we don't know, a good deal that we do, +and suspects the balance. There's trouble brewing for somebody.” + +I was surprised I had not thought of this before. Bellairs had been +behind the scenes; he had known Dickson; he knew the flight of the crew; +it was hardly possible but what he should suspect; it was certain if +he suspected, that he would seek to trade on the suspicion. And sure +enough, I was not yet dressed the next morning ere the lawyer was +knocking at my door. I let him in, for I was curious; and he, after some +ambiguous prolegomena, roundly proposed I should go shares with him. + +“Shares in what?” I inquired. + +“If you will allow me to clothe my idea in a somewhat vulgar form,” said +he, “I might ask you, did you go to Midway for your health?” + +“I don't know that I did,” I replied. + +“Similarly, Mr. Dodd, you may be sure I would never have taken +the present step without influential grounds,” pursued the lawyer. +“Intrusion is foreign to my character. But you and I, sir, are engaged +on the same ends. If we can continue to work the thing in company, +I place at your disposal my knowledge of the law and a considerable +practice in delicate negotiations similar to this. Should you refuse to +consent, you might find in me a formidable and”--he hesitated--“and to +my own regret, perhaps a dangerous competitor.” + +“Did you get this by heart?” I asked, genially. + +“I advise YOU to!” he said, with a sudden sparkle of temper and menace, +instantly gone, instantly succeeded by fresh cringing. “I assure +you, sir, I arrive in the character of a friend; and I believe you +underestimate my information. If I may instance an example, I am +acquainted to the last dime with what you made (or rather lost), and I +know you have since cashed a considerable draft on London.” + +“What do you infer?” I asked. + +“I know where that draft came from,” he cried, wincing back like one who +has greatly dared, and instantly regrets the venture. + +“So?” said I. + +“You forget I was Mr. Dickson's confidential agent,” he explained. “You +had his address, Mr. Dodd. We were the only two that he communicated +with in San Francisco. You see my deductions are quite obvious: you +see how open and frank I deal with you, as I should wish to do with +any gentleman with whom I was conjoined in business. You see how much +I know; and it can scarcely escape your strong common-sense, how much +better it would be if I knew all. You cannot hope to get rid of me at +this time of day, I have my place in the affair, I cannot be shaken off; +I am, if you will excuse a rather technical pleasantry, an encumbrance +on the estate. The actual harm I can do, I leave you to valuate for +yourself. But without going so far, Mr. Dodd, and without in any way +inconveniencing myself, I could make things very uncomfortable. For +instance, Mr. Pinkerton's liquidation. You and I know, sir--and you +better than I--on what a large fund you draw. Is Mr. Pinkerton in +the thing at all? It was you only who knew the address, and you were +concealing it. Suppose I should communicate with Mr. Pinkerton----” + +“Look here!” I interrupted, “communicate with him (if you will permit +me to clothe my idea in a vulgar shape) till you are blue in the face. +There is only one person with whom I refuse to allow you to communicate +further, and that is myself. Good morning.” + +He could not conceal his rage, disappointment, and surprise; and in the +passage (I have no doubt) was shaken by St. Vitus. + +I was disgusted by this interview; it struck me hard to be suspected +on all hands, and to hear again from this trafficker what I had heard +already from Jim's wife; and yet my strongest impression was different +and might rather be described as an impersonal fear. There was something +against nature in the man's craven impudence; it was as though a lamb +had butted me; such daring at the hands of such a dastard, implied +unchangeable resolve, a great pressure of necessity, and powerful means. +I thought of the unknown Carthew, and it sickened me to see this ferret +on his trail. + +Upon inquiry I found the lawyer was but just disbarred for some +malpractice; and the discovery added excessively to my disquiet. Here +was a rascal without money or the means of making it, thrust out of the +doors of his own trade, publicly shamed, and doubtless in a deuce of a +bad temper with the universe. Here, on the other hand, was a man with a +secret; rich, terrified, practically in hiding; who had been willing +to pay ten thousand pounds for the bones of the Flying Scud. I slipped +insensibly into a mental alliance with the victim; the business weighed +on me; all day long, I was wondering how much the lawyer knew, how much +he guessed, and when he would open his attack. + +Some of these problems are unsolved to this day; others were soon made +clear. Where he got Carthew's name is still a mystery; perhaps some +sailor on the Tempest, perhaps my own sea-lawyer served him for a tool; +but I was actually at his elbow when he learned the address. It fell +so. One evening, when I had an engagement and was killing time until the +hour, I chanced to walk in the court of the hotel while the band played. +The place was bright as day with the electric light; and I recognised, +at some distance among the loiterers, the person of Bellairs in talk +with a gentleman whose face appeared familiar. It was certainly some one +I had seen, and seen recently; but who or where, I knew not. A porter +standing hard by, gave me the necessary hint. The stranger was an +English navy man, invalided home from Honolulu, where he had left his +ship; indeed, it was only from the change of clothes and the effects +of sickness, that I had not immediately recognised my friend and +correspondent, Lieutenant Sebright. + +The conjunction of these planets seeming ominous, I drew near; but it +seemed Bellairs had done his business; he vanished in the crowd, and I +found my officer alone. + +“Do you know whom you have been talking to, Mr. Sebright?” I began. + +“No,” said he; “I don't know him from Adam. Anything wrong?” + +“He is a disreputable lawyer, recently disbarred,” said I. “I wish I had +seen you in time. I trust you told him nothing about Carthew?” + +He flushed to his ears. “I'm awfully sorry,” he said. “He seemed civil, +and I wanted to get rid of him. It was only the address he asked.” + +“And you gave it?” I cried. + +“I'm really awfully sorry,” said Sebright. “I'm afraid I did.” + +“God forgive you!” was my only comment, and I turned my back upon the +blunderer. + +The fat was in the fire now: Bellairs had the address, and I was the +more deceived or Carthew would have news of him. So strong was this +impression, and so painful, that the next morning I had the curiosity to +pay the lawyer's den a visit. An old woman was scrubbing the stair, and +the board was down. + +“Lawyer Bellairs?” said the old woman. “Gone East this morning. There's +Lawyer Dean next block up.” + +I did not trouble Lawyer Dean, but walked slowly back to my hotel, +ruminating as I went. The image of the old woman washing that desecrated +stair had struck my fancy; it seemed that all the water-supply of the +city and all the soap in the State would scarce suffice to cleanse it, +it had been so long a clearing-house of dingy secrets and a factory +of sordid fraud. And now the corner was untenanted; some judge, like a +careful housewife, had knocked down the web, and the bloated spider was +scuttling elsewhere after new victims. I had of late (as I have said) +insensibly taken sides with Carthew; now when his enemy was at his +heels, my interest grew more warm; and I began to wonder if I could not +help. The drama of the Flying Scud was entering on a new phase. It had +been singular from the first: it promised an extraordinary conclusion; +and I, who had paid so much to learn the beginning, might pay a little +more and see the end. I lingered in San Francisco, indemnifying myself +after the hardships of the cruise, spending money, regretting it, +continually promising departure for the morrow. Why not go indeed, and +keep a watch upon Bellairs? If I missed him, there was no harm done, I +was the nearer Paris. If I found and kept his trail, it was hard if +I could not put some stick in his machinery, and at the worst I could +promise myself interesting scenes and revelations. + +In such a mixed humour, I made up what it pleases me to call my mind, +and once more involved myself in the story of Carthew and the Flying +Scud. The same night I wrote a letter of farewell to Jim, and one of +anxious warning to Dr. Urquart begging him to set Carthew on his guard; +the morrow saw me in the ferry-boat; and ten days later, I was walking +the hurricane deck on the City of Denver. By that time my mind was +pretty much made down again, its natural condition: I told myself that +I was bound for Paris or Fontainebleau to resume the study of the arts; +and I thought no more of Carthew or Bellairs, or only to smile at my own +fondness. The one I could not serve, even if I wanted; the other I had +no means of finding, even if I could have at all influenced him after he +was found. + +And for all that, I was close on the heels of an absurd adventure. My +neighbour at table that evening was a 'Frisco man whom I knew slightly. +I found he had crossed the plains two days in front of me, and this was +the first steamer that had left New York for Europe since his arrival. +Two days before me meant a day before Bellairs; and dinner was scarce +done before I was closeted with the purser. + +“Bellairs?” he repeated. “Not in the saloon, I am sure. He may be in +the second class. The lists are not made out, but--Hullo! 'Harry D. +Bellairs?' That the name? He's there right enough.” + +And the next morning I saw him on the forward deck, sitting in a chair, +a book in his hand, a shabby puma skin rug about his knees: the picture +of respectable decay. Off and on, I kept him in my eye. He read a good +deal, he stood and looked upon the sea, he talked occasionally with his +neighbours, and once when a child fell he picked it up and soothed it. I +damned him in my heart; the book, which I was sure he did not read--the +sea, to which I was ready to take oath he was indifferent--the child, +whom I was certain he would as lieve have tossed overboard--all seemed +to me elements in a theatrical performance; and I made no doubt he was +already nosing after the secrets of his fellow-passengers. I took no +pains to conceal myself, my scorn for the creature being as strong as my +disgust. But he never looked my way, and it was night before I learned +he had observed me. + +I was smoking by the engine-room door, for the air was a little sharp, +when a voice rose close beside me in the darkness. + +“I beg your pardon, Mr. Dodd,” it said. + +“That you, Bellairs?” I replied. + +“A single word, sir. Your presence on this ship has no connection with +our interview?” he asked. “You have no idea, Mr. Dodd, of returning upon +your determination?” + +“None,” said I; and then, seeing he still lingered, I was polite enough +to add “Good evening;” at which he sighed and went away. + + +The next day, he was there again with the chair and the puma skin; read +his book and looked at the sea with the same constancy; and though there +was no child to be picked up, I observed him to attend repeatedly on a +sick woman. Nothing fosters suspicion like the act of watching; a man +spied upon can hardly blow his nose but we accuse him of designs; and +I took an early opportunity to go forward and see the woman for myself. +She was poor, elderly, and painfully plain; I stood abashed at the +sight, felt I owed Bellairs amends for the injustice of my thoughts, and +seeing him standing by the rail in his usual attitude of contemplation, +walked up and addressed him by name. + +“You seem very fond of the sea,” said I. + +“I may really call it a passion, Mr. Dodd,” he replied. “And the tall +cataract haunted me like a passion,” he quoted. “I never weary of +the sea, sir. This is my first ocean voyage. I find it a glorious +experience.” And once more my disbarred lawyer dropped into poetry: +“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!” + +Though I had learned the piece in my reading-book at school, I came into +the world a little too late on the one hand--and I daresay a little +too early on the other--to think much of Byron; and the sonorous verse, +prodigiously well delivered, struck me with surprise. + +“You are fond of poetry, too?” I asked. + +“I am a great reader,” he replied. “At one time I had begun to amass +quite a small but well selected library; and when that was scattered, I +still managed to preserve a few volumes--chiefly of pieces designed for +recitation--which have been my travelling companions.” + +“Is that one of them?” I asked, pointing to the volume in his hand. + +“No, sir,” he replied, showing me a translation of the _Sorrows of +Werther_, “that is a novel I picked up some time ago. It has afforded me +great pleasure, though immoral.” + +“O, immoral!” cried I, indignant as usual at any complication of art and +ethics. + + +“Surely you cannot deny that, sir--if you know the book,” he said. “The +passion is illicit, although certainly drawn with a good deal of pathos. +It is not a work one could possibly put into the hands of a lady; which +is to be regretted on all accounts, for I do not know how it may strike +you; but it seems to me--as a depiction, if I make myself clear--to rise +high above its compeers--even famous compeers. Even in Scott, Dickens, +Thackeray, or Hawthorne, the sentiment of love appears to me to be +frequently done less justice to.” + +“You are expressing a very general opinion,” said I. + +“Is that so, indeed, sir?” he exclaimed, with unmistakable excitement. +“Is the book well known? and who was GO-EATH? I am interested in that, +because upon the title-page the usual initials are omitted, and it runs +simply 'by GO-EATH.' Was he an author of distinction? Has he written +other works?” + +Such was our first interview, the first of many; and in all he showed +the same attractive qualities and defects. His taste for literature +was native and unaffected; his sentimentality, although extreme and a +thought ridiculous, was plainly genuine. I wondered at my own innocent +wonder. I knew that Homer nodded, that Caesar had compiled a jest-book, +that Turner lived by preference the life of Puggy Booth, that Shelley +made paper boats, and Wordsworth wore green spectacles! and with all +this mass of evidence before me, I had expected Bellairs to be entirely +of one piece, subdued to what he worked in, a spy all through. As I +abominated the man's trade, so I had expected to detest the man himself; +and behold, I liked him. Poor devil! he was essentially a man on wires, +all sensibility and tremor, brimful of a cheap poetry, not without +parts, quite without courage. His boldness was despair; the gulf behind +him thrust him on; he was one of those who might commit a murder rather +than confess the theft of a postage-stamp. I was sure that his coming +interview with Carthew rode his imagination like a nightmare; when the +thought crossed his mind, I used to think I knew of it, and that the +qualm appeared in his face visibly. Yet he would never flinch: necessity +stalking at his back, famine (his old pursuer) talking in his ear; and I +used to wonder whether I most admired, or most despised, this quivering +heroism for evil. The image that occurred to me after his visit was +just; I had been butted by a lamb; and the phase of life that I was now +studying might be called the Revolt of a Sheep. + +It could be said of him that he had learned in sorrow what he taught in +song--or wrong; and his life was that of one of his victims. He was born +in the back parts of the State of New York; his father a farmer, who +became subsequently bankrupt and went West. The lawyer and money-lender +who had ruined this poor family seems to have conceived in the end a +feeling of remorse; he turned the father out indeed, but he offered, +in compensation, to charge himself with one of the sons: and Harry, the +fifth child and already sickly, was chosen to be left behind. He made +himself useful in the office; picked up the scattered rudiments of an +education; read right and left; attended and debated at the Young Men's +Christian Association; and in all his early years, was the model for a +good story-book. His landlady's daughter was his bane. He showed me +her photograph; she was a big, handsome, dashing, dressy, vulgar hussy, +without character, without tenderness, without mind, and (as the result +proved) without virtue. The sickly and timid boy was in the house; he +was handy; when she was otherwise unoccupied, she used and played with +him: Romeo and Cressida; till in that dreary life of a poor boy in a +country town, she grew to be the light of his days and the subject of +his dreams. He worked hard, like Jacob, for a wife; he surpassed his +patron in sharp practice; he was made head clerk; and the same night, +encouraged by a hundred freedoms, depressed by the sense of his youth +and his infirmities, he offered marriage and was received with +laughter. Not a year had passed, before his master, conscious of growing +infirmities, took him for a partner; he proposed again; he was accepted; +led two years of troubled married life; and awoke one morning to find +his wife had run away with a dashing drummer, and had left him heavily +in debt. The debt, and not the drummer, was supposed to be the cause of +the hegira; she had concealed her liabilities, they were on the point of +bursting forth, she was weary of Bellairs; and she took the drummer as +she might have taken a cab. The blow disabled her husband, his partner +was dead; he was now alone in the business, for which he was no longer +fit; the debts hampered him; bankruptcy followed; and he fled from city +to city, falling daily into lower practice. It is to be considered that +he had been taught, and had learned as a delightful duty, a kind of +business whose highest merit is to escape the commentaries of the bench: +that of the usurious lawyer in a county town. With this training, he was +now shot, a penniless stranger, into the deeper gulfs of cities; and the +result is scarce a thing to be surprised at. + + +“Have you heard of your wife again?” I asked. + +He displayed a pitiful agitation. “I am afraid you will think ill of +me,” he said. + +“Have you taken her back?” I asked. + +“No, sir. I trust I have too much self-respect,” he answered, “and, at +least, I was never tempted. She won't come, she dislikes, she seems to +have conceived a positive distaste for me, and yet I was considered an +indulgent husband.” + +“You are still in relations, then?” I asked. + +“I place myself in your hands, Mr. Dodd,” he replied. “The world is very +hard; I have found it bitter hard myself--bitter hard to live. How +much worse for a woman, and one who has placed herself (by her own +misconduct, I am far from denying that) in so unfortunate a position!” + +“In short, you support her?” I suggested. + +“I cannot deny it. I practically do,” he admitted. “It has been a +mill-stone round my neck. But I think she is grateful. You can see for +yourself.” + +He handed me a letter in a sprawling, ignorant hand, but written with +violet ink on fine, pink paper with a monogram. It was very foolishly +expressed, and I thought (except for a few obvious cajoleries) very +heartless and greedy in meaning. The writer said she had been sick, +which I disbelieved; declared the last remittance was all gone in +doctor's bills, for which I took the liberty of substituting dress, +drink, and monograms; and prayed for an increase, which I could only +hope had been denied her. + +“I think she is really grateful?” he asked, with some eagerness, as I +returned it. + +“I daresay,” said I. “Has she any claim on you?” + +“O no, sir. I divorced her,” he replied. “I have a very strong sense of +self-respect in such matters, and I divorced her immediately.” + +“What sort of life is she leading now?” I asked. + +“I will not deceive you, Mr. Dodd. I do not know, I make a point of +not knowing; it appears more dignified. I have been very harshly +criticised,” he added, sighing. + +It will be seen that I had fallen into an ignominious intimacy with the +man I had gone out to thwart. My pity for the creature, his admiration +for myself, his pleasure in my society, which was clearly unassumed, +were the bonds with which I was fettered; perhaps I should add, in +honesty, my own ill-regulated interest in the phases of life and human +character. The fact is (at least) that we spent hours together daily, +and that I was nearly as much on the forward deck as in the saloon. Yet +all the while I could never forget he was a shabby trickster, embarked +that very moment in a dirty enterprise. I used to tell myself at first +that our acquaintance was a stroke of art, and that I was somehow +fortifying Carthew. I told myself, I say; but I was no such fool as to +believe it, even then. In these circumstances I displayed the two chief +qualities of my character on the largest scale--my helplessness and my +instinctive love of procrastination--and fell upon a course of action so +ridiculous that I blush when I recall it. + +We reached Liverpool one forenoon, the rain falling thickly and +insidiously on the filthy town. I had no plans, beyond a sensible +unwillingness to let my rascal escape; and I ended by going to the same +inn with him, dining with him, walking with him in the wet streets, +and hearing with him in a penny gaff that venerable piece, _The +Ticket-of-Leave Man_. It was one of his first visits to a theatre, +against which places of entertainment he had a strong prejudice; and his +innocent, pompous talk, innocent old quotations, and innocent reverence +for the character of Hawkshaw delighted me beyond relief. In charity to +myself, I dwell upon and perhaps exaggerate my pleasures. I have need of +all conceivable excuses, when I confess that I went to bed without one +word upon the matter of Carthew, but not without having covenanted with +my rascal for a visit to Chester the next day. At Chester we did the +Cathedral, walked on the walls, discussed Shakespeare and the musical +glasses--and made a fresh engagement for the morrow. I do not know, and +I am glad to have forgotten, how long these travels were continued. We +visited at least, by singular zigzags, Stratford, Warwick, Coventry, +Gloucester, Bristol, Bath, and Wells. At each stage we spoke dutifully +of the scene and its associations; I sketched, the Shyster spouted +poetry and copied epitaphs. Who could doubt we were the usual Americans, +travelling with a design of self-improvement? Who was to guess that one +was a blackmailer, trembling to approach the scene of action--the other +a helpless, amateur detective, waiting on events? + +It is unnecessary to remark that none occurred, or none the least +suitable with my design of protecting Carthew. Two trifles, indeed, +completed though they scarcely changed my conception of the Shyster. The +first was observed in Gloucester, where we spent Sunday, and I proposed +we should hear service in the cathedral. To my surprise, the creature +had an ISM of his own, to which he was loyal; and he left me to go alone +to the cathedral--or perhaps not to go at all--and stole off down a +deserted alley to some Bethel or Ebenezer of the proper shade. When we +met again at lunch, I rallied him, and he grew restive. + +“You need employ no circumlocutions with me, Mr. Dodd,” he said +suddenly. “You regard my behaviour from an unfavourable point of view: +you regard me, I much fear, as hypocritical.” + +I was somewhat confused by the attack. “You know what I think of your +trade,” I replied, lamely and coarsely. + +“Excuse me, if I seem to press the subject,” he continued, “but if you +think my life erroneous, would you have me neglect the means of grace? +Because you consider me in the wrong on one point, would you have me +place myself on the wrong in all? Surely, sir, the church is for the +sinner.” + +“Did you ask a blessing on your present enterprise?” I sneered. + +He had a bad attack of St. Vitus, his face was changed, and his eyes +flashed. “I will tell you what I did!” he cried. “I prayed for an +unfortunate man and a wretched woman whom he tries to support.” + +I cannot pretend that I found any repartee. + +The second incident was at Bristol, where I lost sight of my gentleman +some hours. From this eclipse, he returned to me with thick speech, +wandering footsteps, and a back all whitened with plaster. I had half +expected, yet I could have wept to see it. All disabilities were piled +on that weak back--domestic misfortune, nervous disease, a displeasing +exterior, empty pockets, and the slavery of vice. + +I will never deny that our prolonged conjunction was the result of +double cowardice. Each was afraid to leave the other, each was afraid +to speak, or knew not what to say. Save for my ill-judged allusion at +Gloucester, the subject uppermost in both our minds was buried. Carthew, +Stallbridge-le-Carthew, Stallbridge-Minster--which we had long since +(and severally) identified to be the nearest station--even the name of +Dorsetshire was studiously avoided. And yet we were making progress all +the time, tacking across broad England like an unweatherly vessel on a +wind; approaching our destination, not openly, but by a sort of flying +sap. And at length, I can scarce tell how, we were set down by +a dilatory butt-end of local train on the untenanted platform of +Stallbridge-Minster. + +The town was ancient and compact: a domino of tiled houses and walled +gardens, dwarfed by the disproportionate bigness of the church. From +the midst of the thoroughfare which divided it in half, fields and trees +were visible at either end; and through the sally-port of every street, +there flowed in from the country a silent invasion of green grass. Bees +and birds appeared to make the majority of the inhabitants; every garden +had its row of hives, the eaves of every house were plastered with the +nests of swallows, and the pinnacles of the church were flickered about +all day long by a multitude of wings. The town was of Roman foundation; +and as I looked out that afternoon from the low windows of the inn, +I should scarce have been surprised to see a centurion coming up +the street with a fatigue draft of legionaries. In short, +Stallbridge-Minster was one of those towns which appear to be maintained +by England for the instruction and delight of the American rambler; +to which he seems guided by an instinct not less surprising than the +setter's; and which he visits and quits with equal enthusiasm. + +I was not at all in the humour of the tourist. I had wasted weeks of +time and accomplished nothing; we were on the eve of the engagement, and +I had neither plans nor allies. I had thrust myself into the trade of +private providence and amateur detective; I was spending money and I +was reaping disgrace. All the time, I kept telling myself that I must at +least speak; that this ignominious silence should have been broken +long ago, and must be broken now. I should have broken it when he first +proposed to come to Stallbridge-Minster; I should have broken it in the +train; I should break it there and then, on the inn doorstep, as the +omnibus rolled off. I turned toward him at the thought; he seemed to +wince, the words died on my lips, and I proposed instead that we should +visit the Minster. + +While we were engaged upon this duty, it came on to rain in a manner +worthy of the tropics. The vault reverberated; every gargoyle instantly +poured its full discharge; we waded back to the inn, ankle-deep in +impromptu brooks; and the rest of the afternoon sat weatherbound, +hearkening to the sonorous deluge. For two hours I talked of indifferent +matters, laboriously feeding the conversation; for two hours my mind was +quite made up to do my duty instantly--and at each particular instant I +postponed it till the next. To screw up my faltering courage, I +called at dinner for some sparkling wine. It proved when it came to be +detestable; I could not put it to my lips; and Bellairs, who had as much +palate as a weevil, was left to finish it himself. Doubtless the wine +flushed him; doubtless he may have observed my embarrassment of the +afternoon; doubtless he was conscious that we were approaching a crisis, +and that that evening, if I did not join with him, I must declare myself +an open enemy. At least he fled. Dinner was done; this was the time +when I had bound myself to break my silence; no more delays were to be +allowed, no more excuses received. I went upstairs after some tobacco; +which I felt to be a mere necessity in the circumstances; and when I +returned, the man was gone. The waiter told me he had left the house. + +The rain still plumped, like a vast shower-bath, over the deserted town. +The night was dark and windless: the street lit glimmeringly from end +to end, lamps, house windows, and the reflections in the rain-pools all +contributing. From a public-house on the other side of the way, I heard +a harp twang and a doleful voice upraised in the “Larboard Watch,” + “The Anchor's Weighed,” and other naval ditties. Where had my Shyster +wandered? In all likelihood to that lyrical tavern; there was no choice +of diversion; in comparison with Stallbridge-Minster on a rainy night, a +sheepfold would seem gay. + +Again I passed in review the points of my interview, on which I was +always constantly resolved so long as my adversary was absent from the +scene: and again they struck me as inadequate. From this dispiriting +exercise I turned to the native amusements of the inn coffee-room, and +studied for some time the mezzotints that frowned upon the wall. The +railway guide, after showing me how soon I could leave Stallbridge +and how quickly I could reach Paris, failed to hold my attention. An +illustrated advertisement book of hotels brought me very low indeed; +and when it came to the local paper, I could have wept. At this point, I +found a passing solace in a copy of Whittaker's Almanac, and obtained in +fifty minutes more information than I have yet been able to use. + +Then a fresh apprehension assailed me. Suppose Bellairs had given me the +slip? suppose he was now rolling on the road to Stallbridge-le-Carthew? +or perhaps there already and laying before a very white-faced auditor +his threats and propositions? A hasty person might have instantly +pursued. Whatever I am, I am not hasty, and I was aware of three grave +objections. In the first place, I could not be certain that Bellairs was +gone. In the second, I had no taste whatever for a long drive at that +hour of the night and in so merciless a rain. In the third, I had no +idea how I was to get admitted if I went, and no idea what I should say +if I got admitted. “In short,” I concluded, “the whole situation is the +merest farce. You have thrust yourself in where you had no business +and have no power. You would be quite as useful in San Francisco; +far happier in Paris; and being (by the wrath of God) at +Stallbridge-Minster, the wisest thing is to go quietly to bed.” On the +way to my room, I saw (in a flash) that which I ought to have done long +ago, and which it was now too late to think of--written to Carthew, I +mean, detailing the facts and describing Bellairs, letting him defend +himself if he were able, and giving him time to flee if he were not. +It was the last blow to my self-respect; and I flung myself into my bed +with contumely. + +I have no guess what hour it was, when I was wakened by the entrance of +Bellairs carrying a candle. He had been drunk, for he was bedaubed with +mire from head to foot; but he was now sober and under the empire of +some violent emotion which he controlled with difficulty. He trembled +visibly; and more than once, during the interview which followed, tears +suddenly and silently overflowed his cheeks. + +“I have to ask your pardon, sir, for this untimely visit,” he said. +“I make no defence, I have no excuse, I have disgraced myself, I am +properly punished; I appear before you to appeal to you in mercy for the +most trifling aid or, God help me! I fear I may go mad.” + +“What on earth is wrong?” I asked. + +“I have been robbed,” he said. “I have no defence to offer; it was of my +own fault, I am properly punished.” + +“But, gracious goodness me!” I cried, “who is there to rob you in a +place like this?” + +“I can form no opinion,” he replied. “I have no idea. I was lying in a +ditch inanimate. This is a degrading confession, sir; I can only say in +self-defence that perhaps (in your good nature) you have made yourself +partly responsible for my shame. I am not used to these rich wines.” + +“In what form was your money? Perhaps it may be traced,” I suggested. + +“It was in English sovereigns. I changed it in New York; I got very good +exchange,” he said, and then, with a momentary outbreak, “God in heaven, +how I toiled for it!” he cried. + +“That doesn't sound encouraging,” said I. “It may be worth while to +apply to the police, but it doesn't sound a hopeful case.” + +“And I have no hope in that direction,” said Bellairs. “My hopes, Mr. +Dodd, are all fixed upon yourself. I could easily convince you that +a small, a very small advance, would be in the nature of an excellent +investment; but I prefer to rely on your humanity. Our acquaintance +began on an unusual footing; but you have now known me for some time, +we have been some time--I was going to say we had been almost intimate. +Under the impulse of instinctive sympathy, I have bared my heart to you, +Mr. Dodd, as I have done to few; and I believe--I trust--I may say that +I feel sure--you heard me with a kindly sentiment. This is what brings +me to your side at this most inexcusable hour. But put yourself in +my place--how could I sleep--how could I dream of sleeping, in this +blackness of remorse and despair? There was a friend at hand--so I +ventured to think of you; it was instinctive; I fled to your side, +as the drowning man clutches at a straw. These expressions are not +exaggerated, they scarcely serve to express the agitation of my mind. +And think, sir, how easily you can restore me to hope and, I may say, +to reason. A small loan, which shall be faithfully repaid. Five hundred +dollars would be ample.” He watched me with burning eyes. “Four hundred +would do. I believe, Mr. Dodd, that I could manage with economy on two.” + +“And then you will repay me out of Carthew's pocket?” I said. “I am much +obliged. But I will tell you what I will do: I will see you on board a +steamer, pay your fare through to San Francisco, and place fifty dollars +in the purser's hands, to be given you in New York.” + +He drank in my words; his face represented an ecstasy of cunning +thought. I could read there, plain as print, that he but thought to +overreach me. + +“And what am I to do in 'Frisco?” he asked. “I am disbarred, I have no +trade, I cannot dig, to beg----” he paused in the citation. “And you +know that I am not alone,” he added, “others depend upon me.” + +“I will write to Pinkerton,” I returned. “I feel sure he can help you +to some employment, and in the meantime, and for three months after +your arrival, he shall pay to yourself personally, on the first and the +fifteenth, twenty-five dollars.” + +“Mr. Dodd, I scarce believe you can be serious in this offer,” he +replied. “Have you forgotten the circumstances of the case? Do you +know these people are the magnates of the section? They were spoken of +to-night in the saloon; their wealth must amount to many millions of +dollars in real estate alone; their house is one of the sights of the +locality, and you offer me a bribe of a few hundred!” + +“I offer you no bribe, Mr. Bellairs, I give you alms,” I returned. “I +will do nothing to forward you in your hateful business; yet I would not +willingly have you starve.” + +“Give me a hundred dollars then, and be done with it,” he cried. + +“I will do what I have said, and neither more nor less,” said I. + +“Take care,” he cried. “You are playing a fool's game; you are making an +enemy for nothing; you will gain nothing by this, I warn you of it!” And +then with one of his changes, “Seventy dollars--only seventy--in mercy, +Mr. Dodd, in common charity. Don't dash the bowl from my lips! You have +a kindly heart. Think of my position, remember my unhappy wife.” + +“You should have thought of her before,” said I. “I have made my offer, +and I wish to sleep.” + +“Is that your last word, sir? Pray consider; pray weigh both sides: +my misery, your own danger. I warn you--I beseech you; measure it well +before you answer,” so he half pleaded, half threatened me, with clasped +hands. + +“My first word, and my last,” said I. + +The change upon the man was shocking. In the storm of anger that now +shook him, the lees of his intoxication rose again to the surface; his +face was deformed, his words insane with fury; his pantomime excessive +in itself, was distorted by an access of St. Vitus. + +“You will perhaps allow me to inform you of my cold opinion,” he began, +apparently self-possessed, truly bursting with rage: “when I am a +glorified saint, I shall see you howling for a drop of water and exult +to see you. That your last word! Take it in your face, you spy, you +false friend, you fat hypocrite! I defy, I defy and despise and spit +upon you! I'm on the trail, his trail or yours, I smell blood, I'll +follow it on my hands and knees, I'll starve to follow it! I'll hunt you +down, hunt you, hunt you down! If I were strong, I'd tear your vitals +out, here in this room--tear them out--I'd tear them out! Damn, damn, +damn! You think me weak! I can bite, bite to the blood, bite you, hurt +you, disgrace you ...” + +He was thus incoherently raging, when the scene was interrupted by +the arrival of the landlord and inn servants in various degrees of +deshabille, and to them I gave my temporary lunatic in charge. + +“Take him to his room,” I said, “he's only drunk.” + +These were my words; but I knew better. After all my study of Mr. +Bellairs, one discovery had been reserved for the last moment: that of +his latent and essential madness. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. STALLBRIDGE-LE-CARTHEW. + + +Long before I was awake, the shyster had disappeared, leaving his bill +unpaid. I did not need to inquire where he was gone, I knew too well, +I knew there was nothing left me but to follow; and about ten in the +morning, set forth in a gig for Stallbridge-le-Carthew. + +The road, for the first quarter of the way, deserts the valley of the +river, and crosses the summit of a chalk-down, grazed over by flocks of +sheep and haunted by innumerable larks. It was a pleasant but a vacant +scene, arousing but not holding the attention; and my mind returned to +the violent passage of the night before. My thought of the man I was +pursuing had been greatly changed. I conceived of him, somewhere in +front of me, upon his dangerous errand, not to be turned aside, not +to be stopped, by either fear or reason. I had called him a ferret; +I conceived him now as a mad dog. Methought he would run, not walk; +methought, as he ran, that he would bark and froth at the lips; +methought, if the great wall of China were to rise across his path, he +would attack it with his nails. + +Presently the road left the down, returned by a precipitous descent into +the valley of the Stall, and ran thenceforward among enclosed fields and +under the continuous shade of trees. I was told we had now entered on +the Carthew property. By and by, a battlemented wall appeared on the +left hand, and a little after I had my first glimpse of the mansion. It +stood in a hollow of a bosky park, crowded to a degree that surprised +and even displeased me, with huge timber and dense shrubberies of +laurel and rhododendron. Even from this low station and the thronging +neighbourhood of the trees, the pile rose conspicuous like a cathedral. +Behind, as we continued to skirt the park wall, I began to make out a +straggling town of offices which became conjoined to the rear with those +of the home farm. On the left was an ornamental water sailed in by many +swans. On the right extended a flower garden, laid in the old manner, +and at this season of the year, as brilliant as stained glass. The front +of the house presented a facade of more than sixty windows, surmounted +by a formal pediment and raised upon a terrace. A wide avenue, part in +gravel, part in turf, and bordered by triple alleys, ran to the great +double gateways. It was impossible to look without surprise on a place +that had been prepared through so many generations, had cost so many +tons of minted gold, and was maintained in order by so great a company +of emulous servants. And yet of these there was no sign but the +perfection of their work. The whole domain was drawn to the line and +weeded like the front plot of some suburban amateur; and I looked in +vain for any belated gardener, and listened in vain for any sounds of +labour. Some lowing of cattle and much calling of birds alone disturbed +the stillness, and even the little hamlet, which clustered at the gates, +appeared to hold its breath in awe of its great neighbour, like a troop +of children who should have strayed into a king's anteroom. + +The Carthew Arms, the small but very comfortable inn, was a mere +appendage and outpost of the family whose name it bore. Engraved +portraits of by-gone Carthews adorned the walls; Fielding Carthew, +Recorder of the city of London; Major-General John Carthew in uniform, +commanding some military operations; the Right Honourable Bailley +Carthew, Member of Parliament for Stallbridge, standing by a table and +brandishing a document; Singleton Carthew, Esquire, represented in the +foreground of a herd of cattle--doubtless at the desire of his tenantry, +who had made him a compliment of this work of art; and the Venerable +Archdeacon Carthew, D.D., LL.D., A.M., laying his hand on the head of +a little child in a manner highly frigid and ridiculous. So far as +my memory serves me, there were no other pictures in this exclusive +hostelry; and I was not surprised to learn that the landlord was an +ex-butler, the landlady an ex-lady's-maid, from the great house; and +that the bar-parlour was a sort of perquisite of former servants. + +To an American, the sense of the domination of this family over so +considerable a tract of earth was even oppressive; and as I considered +their simple annals, gathered from the legends of the engravings, +surprise began to mingle with my disgust. “Mr. Recorder” doubtless +occupies an honourable post; but I thought that, in the course of so +many generations, one Carthew might have clambered higher. The soldier +had stuck at Major-General; the churchman bloomed unremarked in an +archidiaconate; and though the Right Honourable Bailley seemed to have +sneaked into the privy council, I have still to learn what he did when +he had got there. Such vast means, so long a start, and such a modest +standard of achievement, struck in me a strong sense of the dulness of +that race. + +I found that to come to the hamlet and not visit the Hall, would be +regarded as a slight. To feed the swans, to see the peacocks and +the Raphaels--for these commonplace people actually possessed two +Raphaels--to risk life and limb among a famous breed of cattle called +the Carthew Chillinghams, and to do homage to the sire (still living) of +Donibristle, a renowned winner of the oaks: these, it seemed, were +the inevitable stations of the pilgrimage. I was not so foolish as to +resist, for I might have need before I was done of general good-will; +and two pieces of news fell in which changed my resignation to +alacrity. It appeared in the first place, that Mr. Norris was from home +“travelling “; in the second, that a visitor had been before me and +already made the tour of the Carthew curiosities. I thought I knew who +this must be; I was anxious to learn what he had done and seen; and +fortune so far favoured me that the under-gardener singled out to be my +guide had already performed the same function for my predecessor. + +“Yes, sir,” he said, “an American gentleman right enough. At least, I +don't think he was quite a gentleman, but a very civil person.” + +The person, it seems, had been civil enough to be delighted with the +Carthew Chillinghams, to perform the whole pilgrimage with rising +admiration, and to have almost prostrated himself before the shrine of +Donibristle's sire. + +“He told me, sir,” continued the gratified under-gardener, “that he had +often read of the 'stately 'omes of England,' but ours was the first he +had the chance to see. When he came to the 'ead of the long alley, he +fetched his breath. 'This is indeed a lordly domain!' he cries. And +it was natural he should be interested in the place, for it seems +Mr. Carthew had been kind to him in the States. In fact, he seemed a +grateful kind of person, and wonderful taken up with flowers.” + +I heard this story with amazement. The phrases quoted told their own +tale; they were plainly from the shyster's mint. A few hours back I +had seen him a mere bedlamite and fit for a strait-waistcoat; he was +penniless in a strange country; it was highly probable he had gone +without breakfast; the absence of Norris must have been a crushing blow; +the man (by all reason) should have been despairing. And now I heard of +him, clothed and in his right mind, deliberate, insinuating, admiring +vistas, smelling flowers, and talking like a book. The strength of +character implied amazed and daunted me. + +“This is curious,” I said to the under-gardener. “I have had the +pleasure of some acquaintance with Mr. Carthew myself; and I believe +none of our western friends ever were in England. Who can this person +be? He couldn't--no, that's impossible, he could never have had the +impudence. His name was not Bellairs?” + +“I didn't 'ear the name, sir. Do you know anything against him?” cried +my guide. + +“Well,” said I, “he is certainly not the person Carthew would like to +have here in his absence.” + +“Good gracious me!” exclaimed the gardener. “He was so pleasant spoken, +too; I thought he was some form of a schoolmaster. Perhaps, sir, you +wouldn't mind going right up to Mr. Denman? I recommended him to Mr. +Denman, when he had done the grounds. Mr. Denman is our butler, sir,” he +added. + +The proposal was welcome, particularly as affording me a graceful +retreat from the neighbourhood of the Carthew Chillinghams; and, giving +up our projected circuit, we took a short cut through the shrubbery and +across the bowling green to the back quarters of the Hall. + +The bowling green was surrounded by a great hedge of yew, and entered +by an archway in the quick. As we were issuing from this passage, my +conductor arrested me. + +“The Honourable Lady Ann Carthew,” he said, in an august whisper. And +looking over his shoulder, I was aware of an old lady with a stick, +hobbling somewhat briskly along the garden path. She must have been +extremely handsome in her youth; and even the limp with which she walked +could not deprive her of an unusual and almost menacing dignity of +bearing. Melancholy was impressed besides on every feature, and +her eyes, as she looked straight before her, seemed to contemplate +misfortune. + +“She seems sad,” said I, when she had hobbled past and we had resumed +our walk. + +“She enjoy rather poor spirits, sir,” responded the under-gardener. +“Mr. Carthew--the old gentleman, I mean--died less than a year ago; Lord +Tillibody, her ladyship's brother, two months after; and then there was +the sad business about the young gentleman. Killed in the 'unting-field, +sir; and her ladyship's favourite. The present Mr. Norris has never been +so equally.” + +“So I have understood,” said I, persistently, and (I think) gracefully +pursuing my inquiries and fortifying my position as a family friend. +“Dear, dear, how sad! And has this change--poor Carthew's return, and +all--has this not mended matters?” + +“Well, no, sir, not a sign of it,” was the reply. “Worse, we think, than +ever.” + +“Dear, dear!” said I again. + +“When Mr. Norris arrived, she DID seem glad to see him,” he pursued; +“and we were all pleased, I'm sure; for no one knows the young gentleman +but what likes him. Ah, sir, it didn't last long! That very night +they had a talk, and fell out or something; her ladyship took on most +painful; it was like old days, but worse. And the next morning Mr. +Norris was off again upon his travels. 'Denman,' he said to Mr. Denman, +'Denman, I'll never come back,' he said, and shook him by the 'and. I +wouldn't be saying all this to a stranger, sir,” added my informant, +overcome with a sudden fear lest he had gone too far. + +He had indeed told me much, and much that was unsuspected by himself. +On that stormy night of his return, Carthew had told his story; the old +lady had more upon her mind than mere bereavements; and among the mental +pictures on which she looked, as she walked staring down the path, was +one of Midway Island and the Flying Scud. + +Mr. Denman heard my inquiries with discomposure, but informed me the +shyster was already gone. + +“Gone?” cried I. “Then what can he have come for? One thing I can tell +you, it was not to see the house.” + +“I don't see it could have been anything else,” replied the butler. + +“You may depend upon it it was,” said I. “And whatever it was, he has +got it. By the way, where is Mr. Carthew at present? I was sorry to find +he was from home.” + +“He is engaged in travelling, sir,” replied the butler, dryly. + +“Ah, bravo!” cried I. “I laid a trap for you there, Mr. Denman. Now I +need not ask you; I am sure you did not tell this prying stranger.” + +“To be sure not, sir,” said the butler. + +I went through the form of “shaking him by the 'and”--like Mr. +Norris--not, however, with genuine enthusiasm. For I had failed +ingloriously to get the address for myself; and I felt a sure conviction +that Bellairs had done better, or he had still been here and still +cultivating Mr. Denman. + +I had escaped the grounds and the cattle; I could not escape the +house. A lady with silver hair, a slender silver voice, and a stream of +insignificant information not to be diverted, led me through the picture +gallery, the music-room, the great dining-room, the long drawing-room, +the Indian room, the theatre, and every corner (as I thought) of that +interminable mansion. There was but one place reserved; the garden-room, +whither Lady Ann had now retired. I paused a moment on the outside of +the door, and smiled to myself. The situation was indeed strange, and +these thin boards divided the secret of the Flying Scud. + +All the while, as I went to and fro, I was considering the visit and +departure of Bellairs. That he had got the address, I was quite certain: +that he had not got it by direct questioning, I was convinced; some +ingenuity, some lucky accident, had served him. A similar chance, an +equal ingenuity, was required; or I was left helpless, the ferret must +run down his prey, the great oaks fall, the Raphaels be scattered, the +house let to some stockbroker suddenly made rich, and the name which now +filled the mouths of five or six parishes dwindle to a memory. Strange +that such great matters, so old a mansion, a family so ancient and so +dull, should come to depend for perpetuity upon the intelligence, the +discretion, and the cunning of a Latin-Quarter student! What Bellairs +had done, I must do likewise. Chance or ingenuity, ingenuity or +chance--so I continued to ring the changes as I walked down the +avenue, casting back occasional glances at the red brick facade and the +twinkling windows of the house. How was I to command chance? where was I +to find the ingenuity? + +These reflections brought me to the door of the inn. And here, pursuant +to my policy of keeping well with all men, I immediately smoothed my +brow, and accepted (being the only guest in the house) an invitation to +dine with the family in the bar-parlour. I sat down accordingly with Mr. +Higgs the ex-butler, Mrs. Higgs the ex-lady's-maid, and Miss Agnes Higgs +their frowsy-headed little girl, the least promising and (as the event +showed) the most useful of the lot. The talk ran endlessly on the great +house and the great family; the roast beef, the Yorkshire pudding, the +jam-roll, and the cheddar cheese came and went, and still the stream +flowed on; near four generations of Carthews were touched upon without +eliciting one point of interest; and we had killed Mr. Henry in “the +'unting-field,” with a vast elaboration of painful circumstance, and +buried him in the midst of a whole sorrowing county, before I could so +much as manage to bring upon the stage my intimate friend, Mr. Norris. +At the name, the ex-butler grew diplomatic, and the ex-lady's-maid +tender. He was the only person of the whole featureless series +who seemed to have accomplished anything worth mention; and his +achievements, poor dog, seemed to have been confined to going to the +devil and leaving some regrets. He had been the image of the Right +Honourable Bailley, one of the lights of that dim house, and a career +of distinction had been predicted of him in consequence almost from the +cradle. But before he was out of long clothes, the cloven foot began to +show; he proved to be no Carthew, developed a taste for low pleasures +and bad company, went birdnesting with a stable-boy before he was +eleven, and when he was near twenty, and might have been expected to +display at least some rudiments of the family gravity, rambled the +country over with a knapsack, making sketches and keeping company in +wayside inns. He had no pride about him, I was told; he would sit down +with any man; and it was somewhat woundingly implied that I was indebted +to this peculiarity for my own acquaintance with the hero. Unhappily, +Mr. Norris was not only eccentric, he was fast. His debts were still +remembered at the University; still more, it appeared, the highly +humorous circumstances attending his expulsion. “He was always fond of +his jest,” commented Mrs. Higgs. + +“That he were!” observed her lord. + +But it was after he went into the diplomatic service that the real +trouble began. + +“It seems, sir, that he went the pace extraordinary,” said the +ex-butler, with a solemn gusto. + +“His debts were somethink awful,” said the lady's-maid. “And as nice a +young gentleman all the time as you would wish to see!” + +“When word came to Mr. Carthew's ears, the turn up was 'orrible,” + continued Mr. Higgs. “I remember it as if it was yesterday. The bell was +rung after her la'ship was gone, which I answered it myself, supposing +it were the coffee. There was Mr. Carthew on his feet. ''Iggs,' he +says, pointing with his stick, for he had a turn of the gout, 'order the +dog-cart instantly for this son of mine which has disgraced hisself.' +Mr. Norris say nothink: he sit there with his 'ead down, making belief +to be looking at a walnut. You might have bowled me over with a straw,” + said Mr. Higgs. + +“Had he done anything very bad?” I asked. + +“Not he, Mr. Dodsley!” cried the lady--it was so she had conceived my +name. “He never did anythink to all really wrong in his poor life. The +'ole affair was a disgrace. It was all rank favouritising.” + +“Mrs. 'Iggs! Mrs. 'Iggs!” cried the butler warningly. + +“Well, what do I care?” retorted the lady, shaking her ringlets. “You +know it was yourself, Mr. 'Iggs, and so did every member of the staff.” + +While I was getting these facts and opinions, I by no means neglected +the child. She was not attractive; but fortunately she had reached the +corrupt age of seven, when half a crown appears about as large as a +saucer and is fully as rare as the dodo. For a shilling down, sixpence +in her money-box, and an American gold dollar which I happened to find +in my pocket, I bought the creature soul and body. She declared her +intention to accompany me to the ends of the earth; and had to be +chidden by her sire for drawing comparisons between myself and her uncle +William, highly damaging to the latter. + +Dinner was scarce done, the cloth was not yet removed, when Miss Agnes +must needs climb into my lap with her stamp album, a relic of the +generosity of Uncle William. There are few things I despise more than +old stamps, unless perhaps it be crests; for cattle (from the Carthew +Chillinghams down to the old gate-keeper's milk-cow in the lane) +contempt is far from being my first sentiment. But it seemed I was +doomed to pass that day in viewing curiosities, and smothering a yawn, +I devoted myself once more to tread the well-known round. I fancy Uncle +William must have begun the collection himself and tired of it, for +the book (to my surprise) was quite respectably filled. There were the +varying shades of the English penny, Russians with the coloured heart, +old undecipherable Thurn-und-Taxis, obsolete triangular Cape of Good +Hopes, Swan Rivers with the Swan, and Guianas with the sailing ship. +Upon all these I looked with the eyes of a fish and the spirit of a +sheep; I think indeed I was at times asleep; and it was probably in one +of these moments that I capsized the album, and there fell from the end +of it, upon the floor, a considerable number of what I believe to be +called “exchanges.” + +Here, against all probability, my chance had come to me; for as I +gallantly picked them up, I was struck with the disproportionate amount +of five-sous French stamps. Some one, I reasoned, must write very +regularly from France to the neighbourhood of Stallbridge-le-Carthew. +Could it be Norris? On one stamp I made out an initial C; upon a second +I got as far as CH; beyond which point, the postmark used was in every +instance undecipherable. CH, when you consider that about a quarter of +the towns in France begin with “chateau,” was an insufficient clue; and +I promptly annexed the plainest of the collection in order to consult +the post-office. + +The wretched infant took me in the fact. “Naughty man, to 'teal my +'tamp!” she cried; and when I would have brazened it off with a denial, +recovered and displayed the stolen article. + +My position was now highly false; and I believe it was in mere pity +that Mrs. Higgs came to my rescue with a welcome proposition. If the +gentleman was really interested in stamps, she said, probably supposing +me a monomaniac on the point, he should see Mr. Denman's album. Mr. +Denman had been collecting forty years, and his collection was said +to be worth a mint of money. “Agnes,” she went on, “if you were a kind +little girl, you would run over to the 'All, tell Mr. Denman there's +a connaisseer in the 'ouse, and ask him if one of the young gentlemen +might bring the album down.” + +“I should like to see his exchanges too,” I cried, rising to the +occasion. “I may have some of mine in my pocket-book and we might +trade.” + +Half an hour later Mr. Denman arrived himself with a most unconscionable +volume under his arm. “Ah, sir,” he cried, “when I 'eard you was a +collector, I dropped all. It's a saying of mine, Mr. Dodsley, that +collecting stamps makes all collectors kin. It's a bond, sir; it creates +a bond.” + +Upon the truth of this, I cannot say; but there is no doubt that +the attempt to pass yourself off for a collector falsely creates a +precarious situation. + +“Ah, here's the second issue!” I would say, after consulting the legend +at the side. “The pink--no, I mean the mauve--yes, that's the beauty of +this lot. Though of course, as you say,” I would hasten to add, “this +yellow on the thin paper is more rare.” + +Indeed I must certainly have been detected, had I not plied Mr. Denman +in self-defence with his favourite liquor--a port so excellent that it +could never have ripened in the cellar of the Carthew Arms, but must +have been transported, under cloud of night, from the neighbouring +vaults of the great house. At each threat of exposure, and in particular +whenever I was directly challenged for an opinion, I made haste to fill +the butler's glass, and by the time we had got to the exchanges, he was +in a condition in which no stamp collector need be seriously feared. +God forbid I should hint that he was drunk; he seemed incapable of the +necessary liveliness; but the man's eyes were set, and so long as he was +suffered to talk without interruption, he seemed careless of my heeding +him. + +In Mr. Denman's exchanges, as in those of little Agnes, the same +peculiarity was to be remarked, an undue preponderance of that +despicably common stamp, the French twenty-five centimes. And here +joining them in stealthy review, I found the C and the CH; then +something of an A just following; and then a terminal Y. Here was also +the whole name spelt out to me; it seemed familiar, too; and yet for +some time I could not bridge the imperfection. Then I came upon another +stamp, in which an L was legible before the Y, and in a moment the word +leaped up complete. Chailly, that was the name; Chailly-en-Biere, the +post town of Barbizon--ah, there was the very place for any man to hide +himself--there was the very place for Mr. Norris, who had rambled over +England making sketches--the very place for Goddedaal, who had left a +palette-knife on board the Flying Scud. Singular, indeed, that while I +was drifting over England with the shyster, the man we were in quest of +awaited me at my own ultimate destination. + +Whether Mr. Denman had shown his album to Bellairs, whether, indeed, +Bellairs could have caught (as I did) this hint from an obliterated +postmark, I shall never know, and it mattered not. We were equal now; +my task at Stallbridge-le-Carthew was accomplished; my interest in +postage-stamps died shamelessly away; the astonished Denman was bowed +out; and ordering the horse to be put in, I plunged into the study of +the time-table. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. FACE TO FACE. + + +I fell from the skies on Barbizon about two o'clock of a September +afternoon. It is the dead hour of the day; all the workers have gone +painting, all the idlers strolling, in the forest or the plain; the +winding causewayed street is solitary, and the inn deserted. I was the +more pleased to find one of my old companions in the dining-room; his +town clothes marked him for a man in the act of departure; and indeed +his portmanteau lay beside him on the floor. + +“Why, Stennis,” I cried, “you're the last man I expected to find here.” + +“You won't find me here long,” he replied. “King Pandion he is dead; all +his friends are lapped in lead. For men of our antiquity, the poor old +shop is played out.” + +“I have had playmates, I have had companions,” I quoted in return. +We were both moved, I think, to meet again in this scene of our old +pleasure parties so unexpectedly, after so long an interval, and both +already so much altered. + +“That is the sentiment,” he replied. “All, all are gone, the old +familiar faces. I have been here a week, and the only living creature +who seemed to recollect me was the Pharaon. Bar the Sirons, of course, +and the perennial Bodmer.” + +“Is there no survivor?” I inquired. + +“Of our geological epoch? not one,” he replied. “This is the city of +Petra in Edom.” + +“And what sort of Bedouins encamp among the ruins?” I asked. + +“Youth, Dodd, youth; blooming, conscious youth,” he returned. “Such a +gang, such reptiles! to think we were like that! I wonder Siron didn't +sweep us from his premises.” + +“Perhaps we weren't so bad,” I suggested. + +“Don't let me depress you,” said he. “We were both Anglo-Saxons, anyway, +and the only redeeming feature to-day is another.” + +The thought of my quest, a moment driven out by this rencounter, revived +in my mind. “Who is he?” I cried. “Tell me about him.” + +“What, the Redeeming Feature?” said he. “Well, he's a very pleasing +creature, rather dim, and dull, and genteel, but really pleasing. He is +very British, though, the artless Briton! Perhaps you'll find him too +much so for the transatlantic nerves. Come to think of it, on the other +hand, you ought to get on famously. He is an admirer of your great +republic in one of its (excuse me) shoddiest features; he takes in and +sedulously reads a lot of American papers. I warned you he was artless.” + +“What papers are they?” cried I. + +“San Francisco papers,” said he. “He gets a bale of them about twice +a week, and studies them like the Bible. That's one of his weaknesses; +another is to be incalculably rich. He has taken Masson's old +studio--you remember?--at the corner of the road; he has furnished it +regardless of expense, and lives there surrounded with vins fins and +works of art. When the youth of to-day goes up to the Caverne des +Brigands to make punch--they do all that we did, like some nauseous form +of ape (I never appreciated before what a creature of tradition mankind +is)--this Madden follows with a basket of champagne. I told him he was +wrong, and the punch tasted better; but he thought the boys liked the +style of the thing, and I suppose they do. He is a very good-natured +soul, and a very melancholy, and rather a helpless. O, and he has a +third weakness which I came near forgetting. He paints. He has never +been taught, and he's past thirty, and he paints.” + +“How?” I asked. + +“Rather well, I think,” was the reply. “That's the annoying part of it. +See for yourself. That panel is his.” + +I stepped toward the window. It was the old familiar room, with the +tables set like a Greek P, and the sideboard, and the aphasiac piano, +and the panels on the wall. There were Romeo and Juliet, Antwerp from +the river, Enfield's ships among the ice, and the huge huntsman winding +a huge horn; mingled with them a few new ones, the thin crop of a +succeeding generation, not better and not worse. It was to one of these +I was directed; a thing coarsely and wittily handled, mostly with the +palette-knife, the colour in some parts excellent, the canvas in others +loaded with mere clay. But it was the scene, and not the art or want +of it, that riveted my notice. The foreground was of sand and scrub and +wreckwood; in the middle distance the many-hued and smooth expanse of a +lagoon, enclosed by a wall of breakers; beyond, a blue strip of ocean. +The sky was cloudless, and I could hear the surf break. For the place +was Midway Island; the point of view the very spot at which I had landed +with the captain for the first time, and from which I had re-embarked +the day before we sailed. I had already been gazing for some seconds, +before my attention was arrested by a blur on the sea-line; and stooping +to look, I recognised the smoke of a steamer. + +“Yes,” said I, turning toward Stennis, “it has merit. What is it?” + +“A fancy piece,” he returned. “That's what pleased me. So few of the +fellows in our time had the imagination of a garden snail.” + +“Madden, you say his name is?” I pursued. + +“Madden,” he repeated. + +“Has he travelled much?” I inquired. + +“I haven't an idea. He is one of the least autobiographical of men. He +sits, and smokes, and giggles, and sometimes he makes small jests; +but his contributions to the art of pleasing are generally confined to +looking like a gentleman and being one. No,” added Stennis, “he'll never +suit you, Dodd; you like more head on your liquor. You'll find him as +dull as ditch water.” + +“Has he big blonde side-whiskers like tusks?” I asked, mindful of the +photograph of Goddedaal. + +“Certainly not: why should he?” was the reply. + +“Does he write many letters?” I continued. + +“God knows,” said Stennis. “What is wrong with you? I never saw you +taken this way before.” + + +“The fact is, I think I know the man,” said I. “I think I'm looking for +him. I rather think he is my long-lost brother.” + +“Not twins, anyway,” returned Stennis. + +And about the same time, a carriage driving up to the inn, he took his +departure. + +I walked till dinner-time in the plain, keeping to the fields; for I +instinctively shunned observation, and was racked by many incongruous +and impatient feelings. Here was a man whose voice I had once heard, +whose doings had filled so many days of my life with interest and +distress, whom I had lain awake to dream of like a lover; and now his +hand was on the door; now we were to meet; now I was to learn at last +the mystery of the substituted crew. The sun went down over the plain of +the Angelus, and as the hour approached, my courage lessened. I let the +laggard peasants pass me on the homeward way. The lamps were lit, the +soup was served, the company were all at table, and the room sounded +already with multitudinous talk before I entered. I took my place and +found I was opposite to Madden. Over six feet high and well set up, the +hair dark and streaked with silver, the eyes dark and kindly, the mouth +very good-natured, the teeth admirable; linen and hands exquisite; +English clothes, an English voice, an English bearing: the man stood +out conspicuous from the company. Yet he had made himself at home, and +seemed to enjoy a certain quiet popularity among the noisy boys of the +table d'hote. He had an odd, silver giggle of a laugh, that sounded +nervous even when he was really amused, and accorded ill with his big +stature and manly, melancholy face. This laugh fell in continually all +through dinner like the note of the triangle in a piece of modern French +music; and he had at times a kind of pleasantry, rather of manner than +of words, with which he started or maintained the merriment. He took his +share in these diversions, not so much like a man in high spirits, +but like one of an approved good nature, habitually self-forgetful, +accustomed to please and to follow others. I have remarked in old +soldiers much the same smiling sadness and sociable self-effacement. + +I feared to look at him, lest my glances should betray my deep +excitement, and chance served me so well that the soup was scarce +removed before we were naturally introduced. My first sip of Chateau +Siron, a vintage from which I had been long estranged, startled me into +speech. + + +“O, this'll never do!” I cried, in English. + +“Dreadful stuff, isn't it?” said Madden, in the same language. “Do let +me ask you to share my bottle. They call it Chambertin, which it isn't; +but it's fairly palatable, and there's nothing in this house that a man +can drink at all.” + +I accepted; anything would do that paved the way to better knowledge. + +“Your name is Madden, I think,” said I. “My old friend Stennis told me +about you when I came.” + +“Yes, I am sorry he went; I feel such a Grandfather William, alone among +all these lads,” he replied. + +“My name is Dodd,” I resumed. + +“Yes,” said he, “so Madame Siron told me.” + +“Dodd, of San Francisco,” I continued. “Late of Pinkerton and Dodd.” + +“Montana Block, I think?” said he. + +“The same,” said I. + +Neither of us looked at each other; but I could see his hand +deliberately making bread pills. + +“That's a nice thing of yours,” I pursued, “that panel. The foreground +is a little clayey, perhaps, but the lagoon is excellent.” + +“You ought to know,” said he. + +“Yes,” returned I, “I'm rather a good judge of--that panel.” + +There was a considerable pause. + +“You know a man by the name of Bellairs, don't you?” he resumed. + +“Ah!” cried I, “you have heard from Doctor Urquart?” + +“This very morning,” he replied. + +“Well, there is no hurry about Bellairs,” said I. “It's rather a long +story and rather a silly one. But I think we have a good deal to tell +each other, and perhaps we had better wait till we are more alone.” + +“I think so,” said he. “Not that any of these fellows know English, but +we'll be more comfortable over at my place. Your health, Dodd.” + +And we took wine together across the table. + +Thus had this singular introduction passed unperceived in the midst of +more than thirty persons, art students, ladies in dressing-gowns and +covered with rice powder, six foot of Siron whisking dishes over our +head, and his noisy sons clattering in and out with fresh relays. + +“One question more,” said I: “Did you recognise my voice?” + +“Your voice?” he repeated. “How should I? I had never heard it--we have +never met.” + +“And yet, we have been in conversation before now,” said I, “and I asked +you a question which you never answered, and which I have since had many +thousand better reasons for putting to myself.” + +He turned suddenly white. “Good God!” he cried, “are you the man in the +telephone?” + +I nodded. + +“Well, well!” said he. “It would take a good deal of magnanimity to +forgive you that. What nights I have passed! That little whisper has +whistled in my ear ever since, like the wind in a keyhole. Who could it +be? What could it mean? I suppose I have had more real, solid misery +out of that ...” He paused, and looked troubled. “Though I had more to +bother me, or ought to have,” he added, and slowly emptied his glass. + +“It seems we were born to drive each other crazy with conundrums,” said +I. “I have often thought my head would split.” + +Carthew burst into his foolish laugh. “And yet neither you nor I had the +worst of the puzzle,” he cried. “There were others deeper in.” + +“And who were they?” I asked. + +“The underwriters,” said he. + +“Why, to be sure!” cried I, “I never thought of that. What could they +make of it?” + +“Nothing,” replied Carthew. “It couldn't be explained. They were a crowd +of small dealers at Lloyd's who took it up in syndicate; one of them has +a carriage now; and people say he is a deuce of a deep fellow, and has +the makings of a great financier. Another furnished a small villa on +the profits. But they're all hopelessly muddled; and when they meet each +other, they don't know where to look, like the Augurs.” + +Dinner was no sooner at an end than he carried me across the road +to Masson's old studio. It was strangely changed. On the walls were +tapestry, a few good etchings, and some amazing pictures--a Rousseau, a +Corot, a really superb old Crome, a Whistler, and a piece which my host +claimed (and I believe) to be a Titian. The room was furnished with +comfortable English smoking-room chairs, some American rockers, and +an elaborate business table; spirits and soda-water (with the mark of +Schweppe, no less) stood ready on a butler's tray, and in one corner, +behind a half-drawn curtain, I spied a camp-bed and a capacious tub. +Such a room in Barbizon astonished the beholder, like the glories of the +cave of Monte Cristo. + +“Now,” said he, “we are quiet. Sit down, if you don't mind, and tell me +your story all through.” + +I did as he asked, beginning with the day when Jim showed me the passage +in the _Daily Occidental_, and winding up with the stamp album and the +Chailly postmark. It was a long business; and Carthew made it longer, +for he was insatiable of details; and it had struck midnight on the old +eight-day clock in the corner, before I had made an end. + +“And now,” said he, “turn about: I must tell you my side, much as I hate +it. Mine is a beastly story. You'll wonder how I can sleep. I've told it +once before, Mr. Dodd.” + +“To Lady Ann?” I asked. + +“As you suppose,” he answered; “and to say the truth, I had sworn never +to tell it again. Only, you seem somehow entitled to the thing; you have +paid dear enough, God knows; and God knows I hope you may like it, now +you've got it!” + +With that he began his yarn. A new day had dawned, the cocks crew in the +village and the early woodmen were afoot, when he concluded. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. THE REMITTANCE MAN. + + +Singleton Carthew, the father of Norris, was heavily built and feebly +vitalised, sensitive as a musician, dull as a sheep, and conscientious +as a dog. He took his position with seriousness, even with pomp; the +long rooms, the silent servants, seemed in his eyes like the observances +of some religion of which he was the mortal god. He had the stupid man's +intolerance of stupidity in others; the vain man's exquisite alarm lest +it should be detected in himself. And on both sides Norris irritated and +offended him. He thought his son a fool, and he suspected that his son +returned the compliment with interest. The history of their relation was +simple; they met seldom, they quarrelled often. To his mother, a fiery, +pungent, practical woman, already disappointed in her husband and her +elder son, Norris was only a fresh disappointment. + +Yet the lad's faults were no great matter; he was diffident, placable, +passive, unambitious, unenterprising; life did not much attract him; he +watched it like a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not +tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously +grinding sand, his mother fierily breaking butterflies, his brother +labouring at the pleasures of the Hawbuck with the ardour of a soldier +in a doubtful battle; and the vital sceptic looked on wondering. They +were careful and troubled about many things; for him there seemed not +even one thing needful. He was born disenchanted, the world's promises +awoke no echo in his bosom, the world's activities and the world's +distinctions seemed to him equally without a base in fact. He liked the +open air; he liked comradeship, it mattered not with whom, his comrades +were only a remedy for solitude. And he had a taste for painted art. An +array of fine pictures looked upon his childhood, and from these roods +of jewelled canvas he received an indelible impression. The gallery at +Stallbridge betokened generations of picture lovers; Norris was perhaps +the first of his race to hold the pencil. The taste was genuine, it +grew and strengthened with his growth; and yet he suffered it to be +suppressed with scarce a struggle. Time came for him to go to Oxford, +and he resisted faintly. He was stupid, he said; it was no good to put +him through the mill; he wished to be a painter. The words fell on his +father like a thunderbolt, and Norris made haste to give way. “It didn't +really matter, don't you know?” said he. “And it seemed an awful shame +to vex the old boy.” + +To Oxford he went obediently, hopelessly; and at Oxford became the +hero of a certain circle. He was active and adroit; when he was in +the humour, he excelled in many sports; and his singular melancholy +detachment gave him a place apart. He set a fashion in his clique. +Envious undergraduates sought to parody his unaffected lack of zeal +and fear; it was a kind of new Byronism more composed and dignified. +“Nothing really mattered”; among other things, this formula embraced the +dons; and though he always meant to be civil, the effect on the college +authorities was one of startling rudeness. His indifference cut like +insolence; and in some outbreak of his constitutional levity (the +complement of his melancholy) he was “sent down” in the middle of the +second year. + +The event was new in the annals of the Carthews, and Singleton was +prepared to make the most of it. It had been long his practice to +prophesy for his second son a career of ruin and disgrace. There is +an advantage in this artless parental habit. Doubtless the father +is interested in his son; but doubtless also the prophet grows to be +interested in his prophecies. If the one goes wrong, the others come +true. Old Carthew drew from this source esoteric consolations; he dwelt +at length on his own foresight; he produced variations hitherto unheard +from the old theme “I told you so,” coupled his son's name with the +gallows and the hulks, and spoke of his small handful of college debts +as though he must raise money on a mortgage to discharge them. + +“I don't think that is fair, sir,” said Norris. “I lived at college +exactly as you told me. I am sorry I was sent down, and you have a +perfect right to blame me for that; but you have no right to pitch into +me about these debts.” + +The effect upon a stupid man not unjustly incensed need scarcely be +described. For a while Singleton raved. + +“I'll tell you what, father,” said Norris at last, “I don't think this +is going to do. I think you had better let me take to painting. It's +the only thing I take a spark of interest in. I shall never be steady as +long as I'm at anything else.” + +“When you stand here, sir, to the neck in disgrace,” said the father, “I +should have hoped you would have had more good taste than to repeat this +levity.” + +The hint was taken; the levity was never more obtruded on the father's +notice, and Norris was inexorably launched upon a backward voyage. He +went abroad to study foreign languages, which he learned, at a very +expensive rate; and a fresh crop of debts fell soon to be paid, with +similar lamentations, which were in this case perfectly justified, and +to which Norris paid no regard. He had been unfairly treated over the +Oxford affair; and with a spice of malice very surprising in one so +placable, and an obstinacy remarkable in one so weak, refused from that +day forward to exercise the least captaincy on his expenses. He wasted +what he would; he allowed his servants to despoil him at their pleasure; +he sowed insolvency; and when the crop was ripe, notified his father +with exasperating calm. His own capital was put in his hands, he was +planted in the diplomatic service and told he must depend upon himself. + +He did so till he was twenty-five; by which time he had spent his money, +laid in a handsome choice of debts, and acquired (like so many other +melancholic and uninterested persons) a habit of gambling. An Austrian +colonel--the same who afterwards hanged himself at Monte Carlo--gave +him a lesson which lasted two-and-twenty hours, and left him wrecked and +helpless. Old Singleton once more repurchased the honour of his name, +this time at a fancy figure; and Norris was set afloat again on stern +conditions. An allowance of three hundred pounds in the year was to be +paid to him quarterly by a lawyer in Sydney, New South Wales. He was not +to write. Should he fail on any quarter-day to be in Sydney, he was to +be held for dead, and the allowance tacitly withdrawn. Should he return +to Europe, an advertisement publicly disowning him was to appear in +every paper of repute. + +It was one of his most annoying features as a son, that he was always +polite, always just, and in whatever whirlwind of domestic anger, always +calm. He expected trouble; when trouble came, he was unmoved: he might +have said with Singleton, “I told you so”; he was content with thinking, +“just as I expected.” On the fall of these last thunderbolts, he bore +himself like a person only distantly interested in the event; pocketed +the money and the reproaches, obeyed orders punctually; took ship and +came to Sydney. Some men are still lads at twenty-five; and so it was +with Norris. Eighteen days after he landed, his quarter's allowance was +all gone, and with the light-hearted hopefulness of strangers in what +is called a new country, he began to besiege offices and apply for all +manner of incongruous situations. Everywhere, and last of all from his +lodgings, he was bowed out; and found himself reduced, in a very elegant +suit of summer tweeds, to herd and camp with the degraded outcasts of +the city. + +In this strait, he had recourse to the lawyer who paid him his +allowance. + +“Try to remember that my time is valuable, Mr. Carthew,” said the +lawyer. “It is quite unnecessary you should enlarge on the peculiar +position in which you stand. Remittance men, as we call them here, are +not so rare in my experience; and in such cases I act upon a system. I +make you a present of a sovereign; here it is. Every day you choose to +call, my clerk will advance you a shilling; on Saturday, since my office +is closed on Sunday, he will advance you half a crown. My conditions are +these: that you do not come to me, but to my clerk; that you do not come +here the worse of liquor; and you go away the moment you are paid and +have signed a receipt. I wish you a good-morning.” + +“I have to thank you, I suppose,” said Carthew. “My position is so +wretched that I cannot even refuse this starvation allowance.” + +“Starvation!” said the lawyer, smiling. “No man will starve here on a +shilling a day. I had on my hands another young gentleman, who remained +continuously intoxicated for six years on the same allowance.” And he +once more busied himself with his papers. + +In the time that followed, the image of the smiling lawyer haunted +Carthew's memory. “That three minutes' talk was all the education I +ever had worth talking of,” says he. “It was all life in a nut-shell. +Confound it! I thought, have I got to the point of envying that ancient +fossil?” + +Every morning for the next two or three weeks, the stroke of ten found +Norris, unkempt and haggard, at the lawyer's door. The long day and +longer night he spent in the Domain, now on a bench, now on the grass +under a Norfolk Island pine, the companion of perhaps the lowest class +on earth, the Larrikins of Sydney. Morning after morning, the dawn +behind the lighthouse recalled him from slumber; and he would stand and +gaze upon the changing east, the fading lenses, the smokeless city, and +the many-armed and many-masted harbour growing slowly clear under his +eyes. His bed-fellows (so to call them) were less active; they lay +sprawled upon the grass and benches, the dingy men, the frowsy women, +prolonging their late repose; and Carthew wandered among the sleeping +bodies alone, and cursed the incurable stupidity of his behaviour. Day +brought a new society of nursery-maids and children, and fresh-dressed +and (I am sorry to say) tight-laced maidens, and gay people in rich +traps; upon the skirts of which Carthew and “the other blackguards”--his +own bitter phrase--skulked, and chewed grass, and looked on. Day passed, +the light died, the green and leafy precinct sparkled with lamps or lay +in shadow, and the round of the night began again, the loitering women, +the lurking men, the sudden outburst of screams, the sound of flying +feet. “You mayn't believe it,” says Carthew, “but I got to that pitch +that I didn't care a hang. I have been wakened out of my sleep to hear a +woman screaming, and I have only turned upon my other side. Yes, it's a +queer place, where the dowagers and the kids walk all day, and at night +you can hear people bawling for help as if it was the Forest of Bondy, +with the lights of a great town all round, and parties spinning through +in cabs from Government House and dinner with my lord!” + +It was Norris's diversion, having none other, to scrape acquaintance, +where, how, and with whom he could. Many a long dull talk he held upon +the benches or the grass; many a strange waif he came to know; many +strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable. It was to +one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the Domain. For some +time the rain had been merciless; one night after another he had been +obliged to squander fourpence on a bed and reduce his board to the +remaining eightpence: and he sat one morning near the Macquarrie Street +entrance, hungry, for he had gone without breakfast, and wet, as he had +already been for several days, when the cries of an animal in distress +attracted his attention. Some fifty yards away, in the extreme angle of +the grass, a party of the chronically unemployed had got hold of a dog, +whom they were torturing in a manner not to be described. The heart +of Norris, which had grown indifferent to the cries of human anger or +distress, woke at the appeal of the dumb creature. He ran amongst the +Larrikins, scattered them, rescued the dog, and stood at bay. They were +six in number, shambling gallowsbirds; but for once the proverb was +right, cruelty was coupled with cowardice, and the wretches cursed +him and made off. It chanced that this act of prowess had not passed +unwitnessed. On a bench near by there was seated a shopkeeper's +assistant out of employ, a diminutive, cheerful, red-headed creature by +the name of Hemstead. He was the last man to have interfered himself, +for his discretion more than equalled his valour; but he made haste +to congratulate Carthew, and to warn him he might not always be so +fortunate. + +“They're a dyngerous lot of people about this park. My word! it doesn't +do to ply with them!” he observed, in that RYCY AUSTRYLIAN English, +which (as it has received the imprimatur of Mr. Froude) we should all +make haste to imitate. + +“Why, I'm one of that lot myself,” returned Carthew. + +Hemstead laughed and remarked that he knew a gentleman when he saw one. + +“For all that, I am simply one of the unemployed,” said Carthew, +seating himself beside his new acquaintance, as he had sat (since this +experience began) beside so many dozen others. + +“I'm out of a plyce myself,” said Hemstead. + +“You beat me all the way and back,” says Carthew. “My trouble is that I +have never been in one.” + +“I suppose you've no tryde?” asked Hemstead. + +“I know how to spend money,” replied Carthew, “and I really do know +something of horses and something of the sea. But the unions head me +off; if it weren't for them, I might have had a dozen berths.” + +“My word!” cried the sympathetic listener. “Ever try the mounted +police?” he inquired. + +“I did, and was bowled out,” was the reply; “couldn't pass the doctors.” + +“Well, what do you think of the ryleways, then?” asked Hemstead. + +“What do YOU think of them, if you come to that?” asked Carthew. + +“O, _I_ don't think of them; I don't go in for manual labour,” said the +little man proudly. “But if a man don't mind that, he's pretty sure of a +job there.” + +“By George, you tell me where to go!” cried Carthew, rising. + +The heavy rains continued, the country was already overrun with floods; +the railway system daily required more hands, daily the superintendent +advertised; but “the unemployed” preferred the resources of charity +and rapine, and a navvy, even an amateur navvy, commanded money in the +market. The same night, after a tedious journey, and a change of trains +to pass a landslip, Norris found himself in a muddy cutting behind South +Clifton, attacking his first shift of manual labour. + +For weeks the rain scarce relented. The whole front of the mountain +slipped seaward from above, avalanches of clay, rock, and uprooted +forest spewed over the cliffs and fell upon the beach or in the +breakers. Houses were carried bodily away and smashed like nuts; others +were menaced and deserted, the door locked, the chimney cold, the +dwellers fled elsewhere for safety. Night and day the fire blazed in +the encampment; night and day hot coffee was served to the overdriven +toilers in the shift; night and day the engineer of the section made his +rounds with words of encouragement, hearty and rough and well suited to +his men. Night and day, too, the telegraph clicked with disastrous news +and anxious inquiry. Along the terraced line of rail, rare trains came +creeping and signalling; and paused at the threatened corner, like +living things conscious of peril. The commandant of the post would +hastily review his labours, make (with a dry throat) the signal to +advance; and the whole squad line the way and look on in a choking +silence, or burst into a brief cheer as the train cleared the point of +danger and shot on, perhaps through the thin sunshine between squalls, +perhaps with blinking lamps into the gathering, rainy twilight. + +One such scene Carthew will remember till he dies. It blew great guns +from the seaward; a huge surf bombarded, five hundred feet below him, +the steep mountain's foot; close in was a vessel in distress, firing +shots from a fowling-piece, if any help might come. So he saw and heard +her the moment before the train appeared and paused, throwing up a +Babylonian tower of smoke into the rain, and oppressing men's hearts +with the scream of her whistle. The engineer was there himself; he paled +as he made the signal: the engine came at a foot's pace; but the whole +bulk of mountain shook and seemed to nod seaward, and the watching +navvies instinctively clutched at shrubs and trees: vain precautions, +vain as the shots from the poor sailors. Once again fear was +disappointed; the train passed unscathed; and Norris, drawing a long +breath, remembered the labouring ship and glanced below. She was gone. + +So the days and the nights passed: Homeric labour in Homeric +circumstance. Carthew was sick with sleeplessness and coffee; his hands, +softened by the wet, were cut to ribbons; yet he enjoyed a peace of +mind and health of body hitherto unknown. Plenty of open air, plenty of +physical exertion, a continual instancy of toil; here was what had been +hitherto lacking in that misdirected life, and the true cure of vital +scepticism. To get the train through: there was the recurrent problem; +no time remained to ask if it were necessary. Carthew, the idler, the +spendthrift, the drifting dilettant, was soon remarked, praised, and +advanced. The engineer swore by him and pointed him out for an example. +“I've a new chum, up here,” Norris overheard him saying, “a young swell. +He's worth any two in the squad.” The words fell on the ears of the +discarded son like music; and from that moment, he not only found an +interest, he took a pride, in his plebeian tasks. + +The press of work was still at its highest when quarter-day approached. +Norris was now raised to a position of some trust; at his discretion, +trains were stopped or forwarded at the dangerous cornice near North +Clifton; and he found in this responsibility both terror and delight. +The thought of the seventy-five pounds that would soon await him at the +lawyer's, and of his own obligation to be present every quarter-day in +Sydney, filled him for a little with divided councils. Then he made +up his mind, walked in a slack moment to the inn at Clifton, ordered a +sheet of paper and a bottle of beer, and wrote, explaining that he held +a good appointment which he would lose if he came to Sydney, and asking +the lawyer to accept this letter as an evidence of his presence in the +colony, and retain the money till next quarter-day. The answer came in +course of post, and was not merely favourable but cordial. “Although +what you propose is contrary to the terms of my instructions,” it ran, +“I willingly accept the responsibility of granting your request. I +should say I am agreeably disappointed in your behaviour. My experience +has not led me to found much expectations on gentlemen in your +position.” + +The rains abated, and the temporary labour was discharged; not Norris, +to whom the engineer clung as to found money; not Norris, who found +himself a ganger on the line in the regular staff of navvies. His camp +was pitched in a grey wilderness of rock and forest, far from any house; +as he sat with his mates about the evening fire, the trains passing on +the track were their next and indeed their only neighbours, except +the wild things of the wood. Lovely weather, light and monotonous +employment, long hours of somnolent camp-fire talk, long sleepless +nights, when he reviewed his foolish and fruitless career as he rose and +walked in the moonlit forest, an occasional paper of which he would read +all, the advertisements with as much relish as the text: such was the +tenor of an existence which soon began to weary and harass him. He +lacked and regretted the fatigue, the furious hurry, the suspense, the +fires, the midnight coffee, the rude and mud-bespattered poetry of the +first toilful weeks. In the quietness of his new surroundings, a voice +summoned him from this exorbital part of life, and about the middle of +October he threw up his situation and bade farewell to the camp of tents +and the shoulder of Bald Mountain. + +Clad in his rough clothes, with a bundle on his shoulder and his +accumulated wages in his pocket, he entered Sydney for the second time, +and walked with pleasure and some bewilderment in the cheerful streets, +like a man landed from a voyage. The sight of the people led him on. He +forgot his necessary errands, he forgot to eat. He wandered in moving +multitudes like a stick upon a river. Last he came to the Domain and +strolled there, and remembered his shame and sufferings, and looked with +poignant curiosity at his successors. Hemstead, not much shabbier and +no less cheerful than before, he recognised and addressed like an old +family friend. + +“That was a good turn you did me,” said he. “That railway was the making +of me. I hope you've had luck yourself.” + + +“My word, no!” replied the little man. “I just sit here and read the +_Dead Bird_. It's the depression in tryde, you see. There's no positions +goin' that a man like me would care to look at.” And he showed +Norris his certificates and written characters, one from a grocer +in Wooloomooloo, one from an ironmonger, and a third from a billiard +saloon. “Yes,” he said, “I tried bein' a billiard marker. It's no +account; these lyte hours are no use for a man's health. I won't be no +man's slyve,” he added firmly. + +On the principle that he who is too proud to be a slave is usually not +too modest to become a pensioner, Carthew gave him half a sovereign, +and departed, being suddenly struck with hunger, in the direction of the +Paris House. When he came to that quarter of the city, the barristers +were trotting in the streets in wig and gown, and he stood to observe +them with his bundle on his shoulder, and his mind full of curious +recollections of the past. + +“By George!” cried a voice, “it's Mr. Carthew!” + +And turning about he found himself face to face with a handsome sunburnt +youth, somewhat fatted, arrayed in the finest of fine raiment, and +sporting about a sovereign's worth of flowers in his buttonhole. Norris +had met him during his first days in Sydney at a farewell supper; had +even escorted him on board a schooner full of cockroaches and black-boy +sailors, in which he was bound for six months among the islands; and had +kept him ever since in entertained remembrance. Tom Hadden (known to the +bulk of Sydney folk as Tommy) was heir to a considerable property, which +a prophetic father had placed in the hands of rigorous trustees. The +income supported Mr. Hadden in splendour for about three months out of +twelve; the rest of the year he passed in retreat among the islands. +He was now about a week returned from his eclipse, pervading Sydney in +hansom cabs and airing the first bloom of six new suits of clothes; and +yet the unaffected creature hailed Carthew in his working jeans and +with the damning bundle on his shoulder, as he might have claimed +acquaintance with a duke. + +“Come and have a drink!” was his cheerful cry. + +“I'm just going to have lunch at the Paris House,” returned Carthew. +“It's a long time since I have had a decent meal.” + +“Splendid scheme!” said Hadden. “I've only had breakfast half an hour +ago; but we'll have a private room, and I'll manage to pick something. +It'll brace me up. I was on an awful tear last night, and I've met no +end of fellows this morning.” To meet a fellow, and to stand and share a +drink, were with Tom synonymous terms. + +They were soon at table in the corner room up-stairs, and paying due +attention to the best fare in Sydney. The odd similarity of their +positions drew them together, and they began soon to exchange +confidences. Carthew related his privations in the Domain and his toils +as a navvy; Hadden gave his experience as an amateur copra merchant in +the South Seas, and drew a humorous picture of life in a coral island. +Of the two plans of retirement, Carthew gathered that his own had been +vastly the more lucrative; but Hadden's trading outfit had consisted +largely of bottled stout and brown sherry for his own consumption. + +“I had champagne too,” said Hadden, “but I kept that in case of +sickness, until I didn't seem to be going to be sick, and then I opened +a pint every Sunday. Used to sleep all morning, then breakfast with my +pint of fizz, and lie in a hammock and read Hallam's _Middle Ages_. Have +you read that? I always take something solid to the islands. There's no +doubt I did the thing in rather a fine style; but if it was gone about a +little cheaper, or there were two of us to bear the expense, it ought +to pay hand over fist. I've got the influence, you see. I'm a chief now, +and sit in the speak-house under my own strip of roof. I'd like to see +them taboo ME! They daren't try it; I've a strong party, I can tell you. +Why, I've had upwards of thirty cowtops sitting in my front verandah +eating tins of salmon.” + +“Cowtops?” asked Carthew, “what are they?” + +“That's what Hallam would call feudal retainers,” explained Hadden, not +without vainglory. “They're My Followers. They belong to My Family. +I tell you, they come expensive, though; you can't fill up all these +retainers on tinned salmon for nothing; but whenever I could get it, I +would give 'em squid. Squid's good for natives, but I don't care for it, +do you?--or shark either. It's like the working classes at home. With +copra at the price it is, they ought to be willing to bear their share +of the loss; and so I've told them again and again. I think it's a man's +duty to open their minds, and I try to, but you can't get political +economy into them; it doesn't seem to reach their intelligence.” + + +There was an expression still sticking in Carthew's memory, and he +returned upon it with a smile. “Talking of political economy,” said he, +“you said if there were two of us to bear the expense, the profits would +increase. How do you make out that?” + +“I'll show you! I'll figure it out for you!” cried Hadden, and with a +pencil on the back of the bill of fare proceeded to perform miracles. He +was a man, or let us rather say a lad, of unusual projective power. Give +him the faintest hint of any speculation, and the figures flowed from +him by the page. A lively imagination and a ready though inaccurate +memory supplied his data; he delivered himself with an inimitable heat +that made him seem the picture of pugnacity; lavished contradiction; +had a form of words, with or without significance, for every form of +criticism; and the looker-on alternately smiled at his simplicity and +fervour, or was amazed by his unexpected shrewdness. He was a kind of +Pinkerton in play. I have called Jim's the romance of business; this was +its Arabian tale. + +“Have you any idea what this would cost?” he asked, pausing at an item. + +“Not I,” said Carthew. + +“Ten pounds ought to be ample,” concluded the projector. + +“O, nonsense!” cried Carthew. “Fifty at the very least.” + +“You told me yourself this moment you knew nothing about it!” cried +Tommy. “How can I make a calculation, if you blow hot and cold? You +don't seem able to be serious!” + +But he consented to raise his estimate to twenty; and a little after, +the calculation coming out with a deficit, cut it down again to five +pounds ten, with the remark, “I told you it was nonsense. This sort of +thing has to be done strictly, or where's the use?” + +Some of these processes struck Carthew as unsound; and he was at times +altogether thrown out by the capricious startings of the prophet's mind. +These plunges seemed to be gone into for exercise and by the way, like +the curvets of a willing horse. Gradually the thing took shape; the +glittering if baseless edifice arose; and the hare still ran on the +mountains, but the soup was already served in silver plate. Carthew in a +few days could command a hundred and fifty pounds; Hadden was ready with +five hundred; why should they not recruit a fellow or two more, charter +an old ship, and go cruising on their own account? Carthew was an +experienced yachtsman; Hadden professed himself able to “work an +approximate sight.” Money was undoubtedly to be made, or why should so +many vessels cruise about the islands? they, who worked their own ship, +were sure of a still higher profit. + +“And whatever else comes of it, you see,” cried Hadden, “we get our keep +for nothing. Come, buy some togs, that's the first thing you have to do +of course; and then we'll take a hansom and go to the Currency Lass.” + +“I'm going to stick to the togs I have,” said Norris. + +“Are you?” cried Hadden. “Well, I must say I admire you. You're a +regular sage. It's what you call Pythagoreanism, isn't it? if I haven't +forgotten my philosophy.” + +“Well, I call it economy,” returned Carthew. “If we are going to try +this thing on, I shall want every sixpence.” + +“You'll see if we're going to try it!” cried Tommy, rising radiant from +table. “Only, mark you, Carthew, it must be all in your name. I have +capital, you see; but you're all right. You can play vacuus viator, if +the thing goes wrong.” + +“I thought we had just proved it was quite safe,” said Carthew. + +“There's nothing safe in business, my boy,” replied the sage; “not even +bookmaking.” + +The public house and tea garden called the Currency Lass represented +a moderate fortune gained by its proprietor, Captain Bostock, during +a long, active, and occasionally historic career among the islands. +Anywhere from Tonga to the Admiralty Isles, he knew the ropes and could +lie in the native dialect. He had seen the end of sandal wood, the end +of oil, and the beginning of copra; and he was himself a commercial +pioneer, the first that ever carried human teeth into the Gilberts. He +was tried for his life in Fiji in Sir Arthur Gordon's time; and if ever +he prayed at all, the name of Sir Arthur was certainly not forgotten. He +was speared in seven places in New Ireland--the same time his mate +was killed--the famous “outrage on the brig Jolly Roger”; but the +treacherous savages made little by their wickedness, and Bostock, in +spite of their teeth, got seventy-five head of volunteer labour on +board, of whom not more than a dozen died of injuries. He had a hand, +besides, in the amiable pleasantry which cost the life of Patteson; and +when the sham bishop landed, prayed, and gave his benediction to the +natives, Bostock, arrayed in a female chemise out of the traderoom, had +stood at his right hand and boomed amens. This, when he was sure he was +among good fellows, was his favourite yarn. “Two hundred head of labour +for a hatful of amens,” he used to name the tale; and its sequel, the +death of the real bishop, struck him as a circumstance of extraordinary +humour. + +Many of these details were communicated in the hansom, to the surprise +of Carthew. + +“Why do we want to visit this old ruffian?” he asked. + +“You wait till you hear him,” replied Tommy. “That man knows +everything.” + +On descending from the hansom at the Currency Lass, Hadden was struck +with the appearance of the cabman, a gross, salt-looking man, red-faced, +blue-eyed, short-handed and short-winded, perhaps nearing forty. + +“Surely I know you?” said he. “Have you driven me before?” + +“Many's the time, Mr. Hadden,” returned the driver. “The last time you +was back from the islands, it was me that drove you to the races, sir.” + +“All right: jump down and have a drink then,” said Tom, and he turned +and led the way into the garden. + +Captain Bostock met the party: he was a slow, sour old man, with +fishy eyes; greeted Tommy offhand, and (as was afterwards remembered) +exchanged winks with the driver. + +“A bottle of beer for the cabman there at that table,” said Tom. +“Whatever you please from shandygaff to champagne at this one here; and +you sit down with us. Let me make you acquainted with my friend, Mr. +Carthew. I've come on business, Billy; I want to consult you as a +friend; I'm going into the island trade upon my own account.” + + +Doubtless the captain was a mine of counsel, but opportunity was denied +him. He could not venture on a statement, he was scarce allowed to +finish a phrase, before Hadden swept him from the field with a volley +of protest and correction. That projector, his face blazing with +inspiration, first laid before him at inordinate length a question, and +as soon as he attempted to reply, leaped at his throat, called his facts +in question, derided his policy, and at times thundered on him from the +heights of moral indignation. + +“I beg your pardon,” he said once. “I am a gentleman, Mr. Carthew here +is a gentleman, and we don't mean to do that class of business. Can't +you see who you are talking to? Can't you talk sense? Can't you give us +'a dead bird' for a good traderoom?” + +“No, I don't suppose I can,” returned old Bostock; “not when I can't +hear my own voice for two seconds together. It was gin and guns I did it +with.” + +“Take your gin and guns to Putney!” cried Hadden. “It was the thing in +your times, that's right enough; but you're old now, and the game's up. +I'll tell you what's wanted now-a-days, Bill Bostock,” said he; and did, +and took ten minutes to it. + +Carthew could not refrain from smiling. He began to think less seriously +of the scheme, Hadden appearing too irresponsible a guide; but on the +other hand, he enjoyed himself amazingly. It was far from being the same +with Captain Bostock. + +“You know a sight, don't you?” remarked that gentleman, bitterly, when +Tommy paused. + +“I know a sight more than you, if that's what you mean,” retorted Tom. +“It stands to reason I do. You're not a man of any education; you've +been all your life at sea or in the islands; you don't suppose you can +give points to a man like me?” + +“Here's your health, Tommy,” returned Bostock. “You'll make an A-one +bake in the New Hebrides.” + +“That's what I call talking,” cried Tom, not perhaps grasping the spirit +of this doubtful compliment. “Now you give me your attention. We have +the money and the enterprise, and I have the experience: what we want is +a cheap, smart boat, a good captain, and an introduction to some house +that will give us credit for the trade.” + +“Well, I'll tell you,” said Captain Bostock. “I have seen men like you +baked and eaten, and complained of afterwards. Some was tough, and some +hadn't no flaviour,” he added grimly. + +“What do you mean by that?” cried Tom. + +“I mean I don't care,” cried Bostock. “It ain't any of my interests. I +haven't underwrote your life. Only I'm blest if I'm not sorry for the +cannibal as tries to eat your head. And what I recommend is a cheap, +smart coffin and a good undertaker. See if you can find a house to give +you credit for a coffin! Look at your friend there; HE'S got some sense; +he's laughing at you so as he can't stand.” + +The exact degree of ill-feeling in Mr. Bostock's mind was difficult to +gauge; perhaps there was not much, perhaps he regarded his remarks as a +form of courtly badinage. But there is little doubt that Hadden resented +them. He had even risen from his place, and the conference was on +the point of breaking up, when a new voice joined suddenly in the +conversation. + +The cabman sat with his back turned upon the party, smoking a meerschaum +pipe. Not a word of Tommy's eloquence had missed him, and he now faced +suddenly about with these amazing words:-- + +“Excuse me, gentlemen; if you'll buy me the ship I want, I'll get you +the trade on credit.” + +There was a pause. + +“Well, what do YOU, mean?” gasped Tommy. + +“Better tell 'em who I am, Billy,” said the cabman. + +“Think it safe, Joe?” inquired Mr. Bostock. + +“I'll take my risk of it,” returned the cabman. + +“Gentlemen,” said Bostock, rising solemnly, “let me make you acquainted +with Captain Wicks of the Grace Darling.” + +“Yes, gentlemen, that is what I am,” said the cabman. “You know I've +been in trouble; and I don't deny but what I struck the blow, and where +was I to get evidence of my provocation? So I turned to and took a cab, +and I've driven one for three year now and nobody the wiser.” + +“I beg your pardon,” said Carthew, joining almost for the first time; +“I'm a new chum. What was the charge?” + +“Murder,” said Captain Wicks, “and I don't deny but what I struck the +blow. And there's no sense in my trying to deny I was afraid to go to +trial, or why would I be here? But it's a fact it was flat mutiny. Ask +Billy here. He knows how it was.” + +Carthew breathed long; he had a strange, half-pleasurable sense of +wading deeper in the tide of life. “Well,” said he, “you were going on +to say?” + +“I was going on to say this,” said the captain sturdily. “I've overheard +what Mr. Hadden has been saying, and I think he talks good sense. I like +some of his ideas first chop. He's sound on traderooms; he's all there +on the traderoom, and I see that he and I would pull together. Then +you're both gentlemen, and I like that,” observed Captain Wicks. “And +then I'll tell you I'm tired of this cabbing cruise, and I want to get +to work again. Now, here's my offer. I've a little money I can stake +up,--all of a hundred anyway. Then my old firm will give me trade, and +jump at the chance; they never lost by me; they know what I'm worth as +supercargo. And, last of all, you want a good captain to sail your ship +for you. Well, here I am. I've sailed schooners for ten years. Ask Billy +if I can handle a schooner.” + +“No man better,” said Billy. + +“And as for my character as a shipmate,” concluded Wicks, “go and ask my +old firm.” + +“But look here!” cried Hadden, “how do you mean to manage? You can whisk +round in a hansom, and no questions asked. But if you try to come on a +quarter-deck, my boy, you'll get nabbed.” + +“I'll have to keep back till the last,” replied Wicks, “and take another +name.” + +“But how about clearing? what other name?” asked Tommy, a little +bewildered. + +“I don't know yet,” returned the captain, with a grin. “I'll see what +the name is on my new certificate, and that'll be good enough for me. +If I can't get one to buy, though I never heard of such a thing, there's +old Kirkup, he's turned some sort of farmer down Bondi way; he'll hire +me his.” + +“You seemed to speak as if you had a ship in view,” said Carthew. + +“So I have, too,” said Captain Wicks, “and a beauty. Schooner yacht +Dream; got lines you never saw the beat of; and a witch to go. She +passed me once off Thursday Island, doing two knots to my one and laying +a point and a half better; and the Grace Darling was a ship that I was +proud of. I took and tore my hair. The Dream's been MY dream ever since. +That was in her old days, when she carried a blue ens'n. Grant Sanderson +was the party as owned her; he was rich and mad, and got a fever at last +somewhere about the Fly River, and took and died. The captain brought +the body back to Sydney, and paid off. Well, it turned out Grant +Sanderson had left any quantity of wills and any quantity of widows, and +no fellow could make out which was the genuine article. All the widows +brought lawsuits against all the rest, and every will had a firm of +lawyers on the quarterdeck as long as your arm. They tell me it was +one of the biggest turns-to that ever was seen, bar Tichborne; the Lord +Chamberlain himself was floored, and so was the Lord Chancellor; and all +that time the Dream lay rotting up by Glebe Point. Well, it's done now; +they've picked out a widow and a will; tossed up for it, as like as not; +and the Dream's for sale. She'll go cheap; she's had a long turn-to at +rotting.” + +“What size is she?” + +“Well, big enough. We don't want her bigger. A hundred and ninety, going +two hundred,” replied the captain. “She's fully big for us three; it +would be all the better if we had another hand, though it's a pity too, +when you can pick up natives for half nothing. Then we must have a cook. +I can fix raw sailor-men, but there's no going to sea with a new-chum +cook. I can lay hands on the man we want for that: a Highway boy, an +old shipmate of mine, of the name of Amalu. Cooks first rate, and it's +always better to have a native; he aint fly, you can turn him to as you +please, and he don't know enough to stand out for his rights.” + +From the moment that Captain Wicks joined in the conversation, Carthew +recovered interest and confidence; the man (whatever he might have done) +was plainly good-natured, and plainly capable; if he thought well of the +enterprise, offered to contribute money, brought experience, and could +thus solve at a word the problem of the trade, Carthew was content to +go ahead. As for Hadden, his cup was full; he and Bostock forgave each +other in champagne; toast followed toast; it was proposed and carried +amid acclamation to change the name of the schooner (when she should +be bought) to the Currency Lass; and the Currency Lass Island Trading +Company was practically founded before dusk. + +Three days later, Carthew stood before the lawyer, still in his jean +suit, received his hundred and fifty pounds, and proceeded rather +timidly to ask for more indulgence. + +“I have a chance to get on in the world,” he said. “By to-morrow evening +I expect to be part owner of a ship.” + +“Dangerous property, Mr. Carthew,” said the lawyer. + +“Not if the partners work her themselves and stand to go down along with +her,” was the reply. + +“I conceive it possible you might make something of it in that way,” + returned the other. “But are you a seaman? I thought you had been in the +diplomatic service.” + +“I am an old yachtsman,” said Norris. “And I must do the best I can. +A fellow can't live in New South Wales upon diplomacy. But the point I +wish to prepare you for is this. It will be impossible I should present +myself here next quarter-day; we expect to make a six months' cruise of +it among the islands.” + +“Sorry, Mr. Carthew: I can't hear of that,” replied the lawyer. + +“I mean upon the same conditions as the last,” said Carthew. + +“The conditions are exactly opposite,” said the lawyer. “Last time I +had reason to know you were in the colony; and even then I stretched a +point. This time, by your own confession, you are contemplating a breach +of the agreement; and I give you warning if you carry it out and I +receive proof of it (for I will agree to regard this conversation as +confidential) I shall have no choice but to do my duty. Be here on +quarter-day, or your allowance ceases.” + +“This is very hard and, I think, rather silly,” returned Carthew. + +“It is not of my doing. I have my instructions,” said the lawyer. + +“And you so read these instructions, that I am to be prohibited from +making an honest livelihood?” asked Carthew. + +“Let us be frank,” said the lawyer. “I find nothing in these +instructions about an honest livelihood. I have no reason to suppose +my clients care anything about that. I have reason to suppose only +one thing,--that they mean you shall stay in this colony, and to guess +another, Mr. Carthew. And to guess another.” + +“What do you mean by that?” asked Norris. + +“I mean that I imagine, on very strong grounds, that your family desire +to see no more of you,” said the lawyer. “O, they may be very wrong; +but that is the impression conveyed, that is what I suppose I am paid to +bring about, and I have no choice but to try and earn my hire.” + +“I would scorn to deceive you,” said Norris, with a strong flush, “you +have guessed rightly. My family refuse to see me; but I am not going to +England, I am going to the islands. How does that affect the islands?” + +“Ah, but I don't know that you are going to the islands,” said the +lawyer, looking down, and spearing the blotting-paper with a pencil. + +“I beg your pardon. I have the pleasure of informing you,” said Norris. + +“I am afraid, Mr. Carthew, that I cannot regard that communication as +official,” was the slow reply. + +“I am not accustomed to have my word doubted!” cried Norris. + +“Hush! I allow no one to raise his voice in my office,” said the +lawyer. “And for that matter--you seem to be a young gentleman of +sense--consider what I know of you. You are a discarded son; your family +pays money to be shut of you. What have you done? I don't know. But do +you not see how foolish I should be, if I exposed my business reputation +on the safeguard of the honour of a gentleman of whom I know just so +much and no more? This interview is very disagreeable. Why prolong it? +Write home, get my instructions changed, and I will change my behaviour. +Not otherwise.” + +“I am very fond of three hundred a year,” said Norris, “but I cannot pay +the price required. I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you again.” + +“You must please yourself,” said the lawyer. “Fail to be here next +quarter-day, and the thing stops. But I warn you, and I mean the warning +in a friendly spirit. Three months later you will be here begging, and I +shall have no choice but to show you in the street.” + +“I wish you a good-evening,” said Norris. + +“The same to you, Mr. Carthew,” retorted the lawyer, and rang for his +clerk. + +So it befell that Norris during what remained to him of arduous days in +Sydney, saw not again the face of his legal adviser; and he was already +at sea, and land was out of sight, when Hadden brought him a Sydney +paper, over which he had been dozing in the shadow of the galley, and +showed him an advertisement. + +“Mr. Norris Carthew is earnestly entreated to call without delay at the +office of Mr. ----, where important intelligence awaits him.” + +“It must manage to wait for me six months,” said Norris, lightly enough, +but yet conscious of a pang of curiosity. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. THE BUDGET OF THE “CURRENCY LASS.” + + +Before noon on the 26th November, there cleared from the port of Sydney +the schooner, Currency Lass. The owner, Norris Carthew, was on board in +the somewhat unusual position of mate; the master's name purported to +be William Kirkup; the cook was a Hawaiian boy, Joseph Amalu; and there +were two hands before the mast, Thomas Hadden and Richard Hemstead, the +latter chosen partly because of his humble character, partly because he +had an odd-job-man's handiness with tools. The Currency Lass was bound +for the South Sea Islands, and first of all for Butaritari in the +Gilberts, on a register; but it was understood about the harbour that +her cruise was more than half a pleasure trip. A friend of the late +Grant Sanderson (of Auchentroon and Kilclarty) might have recognised in +that tall-masted ship, the transformed and rechristened Dream; and +the Lloyd's surveyor, had the services of such a one been called in +requisition, must have found abundant subject of remark. + +For time, during her three years' inaction, had eaten deep into the +Dream and her fittings; she had sold in consequence a shade above her +value as old junk; and the three adventurers had scarce been able to +afford even the most vital repairs. The rigging, indeed, had been partly +renewed, and the rest set up; all Grant Sanderson's old canvas had been +patched together into one decently serviceable suit of sails; Grant +Sanderson's masts still stood, and might have wondered at themselves. +“I haven't the heart to tap them,” Captain Wicks used to observe, as he +squinted up their height or patted their rotundity; and “as rotten as +our foremast” was an accepted metaphor in the ship's company. The sequel +rather suggests it may have been sounder than was thought; but no one +knew for certain, just as no one except the captain appreciated the +dangers of the cruise. The captain, indeed, saw with clear eyes and +spoke his mind aloud; and though a man of an astonishing hot-blooded +courage, following life and taking its dangers in the spirit of a +hound upon the slot, he had made a point of a big whaleboat. “Take your +choice,” he had said; “either new masts and rigging or that boat. I +simply ain't going to sea without the one or the other. Chicken coops +are good enough, no doubt, and so is a dinghy; but they ain't for Joe.” + And his partners had been forced to consent, and saw six and thirty +pounds of their small capital vanish in the turn of a hand. + +All four had toiled the best part of six weeks getting ready; and though +Captain Wicks was of course not seen or heard of, a fifth was there to +help them, a fellow in a bushy red beard, which he would sometimes lay +aside when he was below, and who strikingly resembled Captain Wicks in +voice and character. As for Captain Kirkup, he did not appear till the +last moment, when he proved to be a burly mariner, bearded like Abou +Ben Adhem. All the way down the harbour and through the Heads, his +milk-white whiskers blew in the wind and were conspicuous from shore; +but the Currency Lass had no sooner turned her back upon the lighthouse, +than he went below for the inside of five seconds and reappeared clean +shaven. So many doublings and devices were required to get to sea with +an unseaworthy ship and a captain that was “wanted.” Nor might +even these have sufficed, but for the fact that Hadden was a public +character, and the whole cruise regarded with an eye of indulgence as +one of Tom's engaging eccentricities. The ship, besides, had been a +yacht before; and it came the more natural to allow her still some of +the dangerous liberties of her old employment. + +A strange ship they had made of it, her lofty spars disfigured with +patched canvas, her panelled cabin fitted for a traderoom with rude +shelves. And the life they led in that anomalous schooner was no less +curious than herself. Amalu alone berthed forward; the rest occupied +staterooms, camped upon the satin divans, and sat down in Grant +Sanderson's parquetry smoking-room to meals of junk and potatoes, bad +of their kind and often scant in quantity. Hemstead grumbled; Tommy +had occasional moments of revolt and increased the ordinary by a +few haphazard tins or a bottle of his own brown sherry. But Hemstead +grumbled from habit, Tommy revolted only for the moment, and there +was underneath a real and general acquiescence in these hardships. For +besides onions and potatoes, the Currency Lass may be said to have +gone to sea without stores. She carried two thousand pounds' worth of +assorted trade, advanced on credit, their whole hope and fortune. It +was upon this that they subsisted--mice in their own granary. They dined +upon their future profits; and every scanty meal was so much in the +savings bank. + +Republican as were their manners, there was no practical, at least no +dangerous, lack of discipline. Wicks was the only sailor on board, +there was none to criticise; and besides, he was so easy-going, and so +merry-minded, that none could bear to disappoint him. Carthew did his +best, partly for the love of doing it, partly for love of the captain; +Amalu was a willing drudge, and even Hemstead and Hadden turned to upon +occasion with a will. Tommy's department was the trade and traderoom; he +would work down in the hold or over the shelves of the cabin, till +the Sydney dandy was unrecognizable; come up at last, draw a bucket +of sea-water, bathe, change, and lie down on deck over a big sheaf of +Sydney _Heralds_ and _Dead Birds_, or perhaps with a volume of Buckle's +_History of Civilisation_, the standard work selected for that cruise. +In the latter case, a smile went round the ship, for Buckle almost +invariably laid his student out, and when Tom awoke again he was almost +always in the humour for brown sherry. The connection was so well +established that “a glass of Buckle” or “a bottle of civilisation” + became current pleasantries on board the Currency Lass. + +Hemstead's province was that of the repairs, and he had his hands full. +Nothing on board but was decayed in a proportion; the lamps leaked; so +did the decks; door-knobs came off in the hand, mouldings parted company +with the panels, the pump declined to suck, and the defective bathroom +came near to swamp the ship. Wicks insisted that all the nails were long +ago consumed, and that she was only glued together by the rust. “You +shouldn't make me laugh so much, Tommy,” he would say. “I'm afraid I'll +shake the sternpost out of her.” And, as Hemstead went to and fro +with his tool basket on an endless round of tinkering, Wicks lost +no opportunity of chaffing him upon his duties. “If you'd turn to at +sailoring or washing paint or something useful, now,” he would say, +“I could see the fun of it. But to be mending things that haven't no +insides to them appears to me the height of foolishness.” And doubtless +these continual pleasantries helped to reassure the landsmen, who went +to and fro unmoved, under circumstances that might have daunted Nelson. + +The weather was from the outset splendid, and the wind fair and steady. +The ship sailed like a witch. “This Currency Lass is a powerful old +girl, and has more complaints than I would care to put a name on,” the +captain would say, as he pricked the chart; “but she could show her +blooming heels to anything of her size in the Western Pacific.” To +wash decks, relieve the wheel, do the day's work after dinner on the +smoking-room table, and take in kites at night,--such was the easy +routine of their life. In the evening--above all, if Tommy had produced +some of his civilisation--yarns and music were the rule. Amalu had +a sweet Hawaiian voice; and Hemstead, a great hand upon the banjo, +accompanied his own quavering tenor with effect. There was a sense in +which the little man could sing. It was great to hear him deliver _My +Boy Tammie_ in Austrylian; and the words (some of the worst of the +ruffian Macneil's) were hailed in his version with inextinguishable +mirth. + + Where hye ye been a' dye? + + + he would ask, and answer himself:-- + + I've been by burn and flowery brye, + Meadow green an' mountain grye, + Courtin' o' this young thing, + Just come frye her mammie. + +It was the accepted jest for all hands to greet the conclusion of this +song with the simultaneous cry: “My word!” thus winging the arrow of +ridicule with a feather from the singer's wing. But he had his +revenge with _Home, Sweet Home,_ and _Where is my Wandering Boy +To-night?_--ditties into which he threw the most intolerable pathos. It +appeared he had no home, nor had ever had one, nor yet any vestige of +a family, except a truculent uncle, a baker in Newcastle, N.S.W. His +domestic sentiment was therefore wholly in the air, and expressed +an unrealised ideal. Or perhaps, of all his experiences, this of +the Currency Lass, with its kindly, playful, and tolerant society, +approached it the most nearly. + +It is perhaps because I know the sequel, but I can never think upon this +voyage without a profound sense of pity and mystery; of the ship (once +the whim of a rich blackguard) faring with her battered fineries +and upon her homely errand, across the plains of ocean, and past +the gorgeous scenery of dawn and sunset; and the ship's company, so +strangely assembled, so Britishly chuckle-headed, filling their days +with chaff in place of conversation; no human book on board with them +except Hadden's Buckle, and not a creature fit either to read or to +understand it; and the one mark of any civilised interest, being when +Carthew filled in his spare hours with the pencil and the brush: the +whole unconscious crew of them posting in the meanwhile towards so +tragic a disaster. + +Twenty-eight days out of Sydney, on Christmas eve, they fetched up to +the entrance of the lagoon, and plied all that night outside, keeping +their position by the lights of fishers on the reef and the outlines of +the palms against the cloudy sky. With the break of day, the schooner +was hove to, and the signal for a pilot shown. But it was plain her +lights must have been observed in the darkness by the native fishermen, +and word carried to the settlement, for a boat was already under weigh. +She came towards them across the lagoon under a great press of sail, +lying dangerously down, so that at times, in the heavier puffs, they +thought she would turn turtle; covered the distance in fine style, +luffed up smartly alongside, and emitted a haggard looking white man in +pyjamas. + +“Good-mornin', Cap'n,” said he, when he had made good his entrance. “I +was taking you for a Fiji man-of-war, what with your flush decks and +them spars. Well, gen'lemen all, here's wishing you a Merry Christmas +and a Happy New Year,” he added, and lurched against a stay. + +“Why, you're never the pilot?” exclaimed Wicks, studying him with a +profound disfavour. “You've never taken a ship in--don't tell me!” + +“Well, I should guess I have,” returned the pilot. “I'm Captain Dobbs, +I am; and when I take charge, the captain of that ship can go below and +shave.” + +“But, man alive! you're drunk, man!” cried the captain. + +“Drunk!” repeated Dobbs. “You can't have seen much life if you call me +drunk. I'm only just beginning. Come night, I won't say; I guess I'll be +properly full by then. But now I'm the soberest man in all Big Muggin.” + +“It won't do,” retorted Wicks. “Not for Joseph, sir. I can't have you +piling up my schooner.” + +“All right,” said Dobbs, “lay and rot where you are, or take and go +in and pile her up for yourself like the captain of the Leslie. That's +business, I guess; grudged me twenty dollars' pilotage, and lost twenty +thousand in trade and a brand new schooner; ripped the keel right off of +her, and she went down in the inside of four minutes, and lies in twenty +fathom, trade and all.” + +“What's all this?” cried Wicks. “Trade? What vessel was this Leslie, +anyhow?” + +“Consigned to Cohen and Co., from 'Frisco,” returned the pilot, “and +badly wanted. There's a barque inside filling up for Hamburg--you see +her spars over there; and there's two more ships due, all the way from +Germany, one in two months, they say, and one in three; Cohen and Co.'s +agent (that's Mr. Topelius) has taken and lain down with the jaundice on +the strength of it. I guess most people would, in his shoes; no trade, +no copra, and twenty hundred ton of shipping due. If you've any copra on +board, cap'n, here's your chance. Topelius will buy, gold down, and give +three cents. It's all found money to him, the way it is, whatever he +pays for it. And that's what come of going back on the pilot.” + +“Excuse me one moment, Captain Dobbs. I wish to speak with my mate,” + said the captain, whose face had begun to shine and his eyes to sparkle. + +“Please yourself,” replied the pilot. “You couldn't think of offering +a man a nip, could you? just to brace him up. This kind of thing looks +damned inhospitable, and gives a schooner a bad name.” + +“I'll talk about that after the anchor's down,” returned Wicks, and he +drew Carthew forward. “I say,” he whispered, “here's a fortune.” + +“How much do you call that?” asked Carthew. + +“I can't put a figure on it yet--I daren't!” said the captain. “We might +cruise twenty years and not find the match of it. And suppose another +ship came in to-night? Everything's possible! And the difficulty is +this Dobbs. He's as drunk as a marine. How can we trust him? We ain't +insured--worse luck!” + +“Suppose you took him aloft and got him to point out the channel?” + suggested Carthew. “If he tallied at all with the chart, and didn't fall +out of the rigging, perhaps we might risk it.” + +“Well, all's risk here,” returned the captain. “Take the wheel yourself, +and stand by. Mind, if there's two orders, follow mine, not his. Set the +cook for'ard with the heads'ls, and the two others at the main sheet, +and see they don't sit on it.” With that he called the pilot; they +swarmed aloft in the fore rigging, and presently after there was bawled +down the welcome order to ease sheets and fill away. + +At a quarter before nine o'clock on Christmas morning the anchor was let +go. + +The first cruise of the Currency Lass had thus ended in a stroke of +fortune almost beyond hope. She had brought two thousand pounds' worth +of trade, straight as a homing pigeon, to the place where it was most +required. And Captain Wicks (or, rather, Captain Kirkup) showed himself +the man to make the best of his advantage. For hard upon two days he +walked a verandah with Topelius, for hard upon two days his partners +watched from the neighbouring public house the field of battle; and the +lamps were not yet lighted on the evening of the second before the enemy +surrendered. Wicks came across to the Sans Souci, as the saloon was +called, his face nigh black, his eyes almost closed and all bloodshot, +and yet bright as lighted matches. + +“Come out here, boys,” he said; and when they were some way off +among the palms, “I hold twenty-four,” he added in a voice scarcely +recognizable, and doubtless referring to the venerable game of cribbage. + +“What do you mean?” asked Tommy. + +“I've sold the trade,” answered Wicks; “or, rather, I've sold only +some of it, for I've kept back all the mess beef and half the flour and +biscuit; and, by God, we're still provisioned for four months! By God, +it's as good as stolen!” + +“My word!” cried Hemstead. + +“But what have you sold it for?” gasped Carthew, the captain's almost +insane excitement shaking his nerve. + +“Let me tell it my own way,” cried Wicks, loosening his neck. “Let me +get at it gradual, or I'll explode. I've not only sold it, boys, I've +wrung out a charter on my own terms to 'Frisco and back; on my own +terms. I made a point of it. I fooled him first by making believe I +wanted copra, which of course I knew he wouldn't hear of--couldn't, in +fact; and whenever he showed fight, I trotted out the copra, and that +man dived! I would take nothing but copra, you see; and so I've got the +blooming lot in specie--all but two short bills on 'Frisco. And the sum? +Well, this whole adventure, including two thousand pounds of credit, +cost us two thousand seven hundred and some odd. That's all paid back; +in thirty days' cruise we've paid for the schooner and the trade. Heard +ever any man the match of that? And it's not all! For besides that,” + said the captain, hammering his words, “we've got Thirteen Blooming +Hundred Pounds of profit to divide. I bled him in four Thou.!” he cried, +in a voice that broke like a schoolboy's. + +For a moment the partners looked upon their chief with stupefaction, +incredulous surprise their only feeling. Tommy was the first to grasp +the consequences. + +“Here,” he said, in a hard, business tone. “Come back to that saloon. +I've got to get drunk.” + +“You must please excuse me, boys,” said the captain, earnestly. “I +daren't taste nothing. If I was to drink one glass of beer, it's my +belief I'd have the apoplexy. The last scrimmage, and the blooming +triumph, pretty nigh hand done me.” + +“Well, then, three cheers for the captain,” proposed Tommy. + +But Wicks held up a shaking hand. “Not that either, boys,” he pleaded. +“Think of the other buffer, and let him down easy. If I'm like this, +just fancy what Topelius is! If he heard us singing out, he'd have the +staggers.” + +As a matter of fact, Topelius accepted his defeat with a good grace; +but the crew of the wrecked Leslie, who were in the same employment and +loyal to their firm, took the thing more bitterly. Rough words and ugly +looks were common. Once even they hooted Captain Wicks from the saloon +verandah; the Currency Lasses drew out on the other side; for some +minutes there had like to have been a battle in Butaritari; and though +the occasion passed off without blows, it left on either side an +increase of ill-feeling. + +No such small matter could affect the happiness of the successful +traders. Five days more the ship lay in the lagoon, with little +employment for any one but Tommy and the captain, for Topelius's natives +discharged cargo and brought ballast; the time passed like a pleasant +dream; the adventurers sat up half the night debating and praising their +good fortune, or strayed by day in the narrow isle, gaping like Cockney +tourists; and on the first of the new year, the Currency Lass weighed +anchor for the second time and set sail for 'Frisco, attended by the +same fine weather and good luck. She crossed the doldrums with but +small delay; on a wind and in ballast of broken coral, she outdid +expectations; and, what added to the happiness of the ship's company, +the small amount of work that fell on them to do, was now lessened by +the presence of another hand. This was the boatswain of the Leslie; he +had been on bad terms with his own captain, had already spent his wages +in the saloons of Butaritari, had wearied of the place, and while all +his shipmates coldly refused to set foot on board the Currency Lass, he +had offered to work his passage to the coast. He was a north of Ireland +man, between Scotch and Irish, rough, loud, humorous, and emotional, not +without sterling qualities, and an expert and careful sailor. His frame +of mind was different indeed from that of his new shipmates; instead of +making an unexpected fortune, he had lost a berth; and he was besides +disgusted with the rations, and really appalled at the condition of the +schooner. A stateroom door had stuck, the first day at sea, and Mac (as +they called him) laid his strength to it and plucked it from the hinges. + +“Glory!” said he, “this ship's rotten.” + +“I believe you, my boy,” said Captain Wicks. + +The next day the sailor was observed with his nose aloft. + +“Don't you get looking at these sticks,” the captain said, “or you'll +have a fit and fall overboard.” + +Mac turned towards the speaker with rather a wild eye. “Why, I see what +looks like a patch of dry rot up yonder, that I bet I could stick my +fist into,” said he. + +“Looks as if a fellow could stick his head into it, don't it?” returned +Wicks. “But there's no good prying into things that can't be mended.” + +“I think I was a Currency Ass to come on board of her!” reflected Mac. + +“Well, I never said she was seaworthy,” replied the captain: “I only +said she could show her blooming heels to anything afloat. And besides, +I don't know that it's dry rot; I kind of sometimes hope it isn't. Here; +turn to and heave the log; that'll cheer you up.” + +“Well, there's no denying it, you're a holy captain,” said Mac. + +And from that day on, he made but the one reference to the ship's +condition; and that was whenever Tommy drew upon his cellar. “Here's to +the junk trade!” he would say, as he held out his can of sherry. + +“Why do you always say that?” asked Tommy. + +“I had an uncle in the business,” replied Mac, and launched at once into +a yarn, in which an incredible number of the characters were “laid +out as nice as you would want to see,” and the oaths made up about +two-fifths of every conversation. + +Only once he gave them a taste of his violence; he talked of it, indeed, +often; “I'm rather a voilent man,” he would say, not without pride; but +this was the only specimen. Of a sudden, he turned on Hemstead in the +ship's waist, knocked him against the foresail boom, then knocked him +under it, and had set him up and knocked him down once more, before any +one had drawn a breath. + +“Here! Belay that!” roared Wicks, leaping to his feet. “I won't have +none of this.” + +Mac turned to the captain with ready civility. “I only want to learn him +manners,” said he. “He took and called me Irishman.” + +“Did he?” said Wicks. “O, that's a different story! What made you do it, +you tomfool? You ain't big enough to call any man that.” + +“I didn't call him it,” spluttered Hemstead, through his blood and +tears. “I only mentioned-like he was.” + +“Well, let's have no more of it,” said Wicks. + +“But you ARE Irish, ain't you?” Carthew asked of his new shipmate +shortly after. + +“I may be,” replied Mac, “but I'll allow no Sydney duck to call me so. +No,” he added, with a sudden heated countenance, “nor any Britisher that +walks! Why, look here,” he went on, “you're a young swell, aren't you? +Suppose I called you that! 'I'll show you,' you would say, and turn to +and take it out of me straight.” + +On the 28th of January, when in lat. 27 degrees 20' N., long. 177 +degrees W., the wind chopped suddenly into the west, not very strong, +but puffy and with flaws of rain. The captain, eager for easting, made +a fair wind of it and guyed the booms out wing and wing. It was Tommy's +trick at the wheel, and as it was within half an hour of the relief +(seven thirty in the morning), the captain judged it not worth while to +change him. + +The puffs were heavy but short; there was nothing to be called a squall, +no danger to the ship, and scarce more than usual to the doubtful spars. +All hands were on deck in their oilskins, expecting breakfast; the +galley smoked, the ship smelt of coffee, all were in good humour to be +speeding eastward a full nine; when the rotten foresail tore suddenly +between two cloths and then split to either hand. It was for all the +world as though some archangel with a huge sword had slashed it with the +figure of a cross; all hands ran to secure the slatting canvas; and in +the sudden uproar and alert, Tommy Hadden lost his head. Many of his +days have been passed since then in explaining how the thing happened; +of these explanations it will be sufficient to say that they were all +different and none satisfactory; and the gross fact remains that the +main boom gybed, carried away the tackle, broke the mainmast some three +feet above the deck and whipped it overboard. For near a minute the +suspected foremast gallantly resisted; then followed its companion; and +by the time the wreck was cleared, of the whole beautiful fabric that +enabled them to skim the seas, two ragged stumps remained. + +In these vast and solitary waters, to be dismasted is perhaps the worst +calamity. Let the ship turn turtle and go down, and at least the pang is +over. But men chained on a hulk may pass months scanning the empty sea +line and counting the steps of death's invisible approach. There is +no help but in the boats, and what a help is that! There heaved the +Currency Lass, for instance, a wingless lump, and the nearest human +coast (that of Kauai in the Sandwiches) lay about a thousand miles to +south and east of her. Over the way there, to men contemplating that +passage in an open boat, all kinds of misery, and the fear of death and +of madness, brooded. + +A serious company sat down to breakfast; but the captain helped his +neighbours with a smile. + +“Now, boys,” he said, after a pull at the hot coffee, “we're done with +this Currency Lass, and no mistake. One good job: we made her pay while +she lasted, and she paid first rate; and if we were to try our hand +again, we can try in style. Another good job: we have a fine, stiff, +roomy boat, and you know who you have to thank for that. We've got six +lives to save, and a pot of money; and the point is, where are we to +take 'em?” + +“It's all two thousand miles to the nearest of the Sandwiches, I fancy,” + observed Mac. + +“No, not so bad as that,” returned the captain. “But it's bad enough: +rather better'n a thousand.” + +“I know a man who once did twelve hundred in a boat,” said Mac, “and he +had all he wanted. He fetched ashore in the Marquesas, and never set a +foot on anything floating from that day to this. He said he would rather +put a pistol to his head and knock his brains out.” + +“Ay, ay!” said Wicks. “Well I remember a boat's crew that made this very +island of Kauai, and from just about where we lie, or a bit further. +When they got up with the land, they were clean crazy. There was an +iron-bound coast and an Old Bob Ridley of a surf on. The natives hailed +'em from fishing-boats, and sung out it couldn't be done at the money. +Much they cared! there was the land, that was all they knew; and they +turned to and drove the boat slap ashore in the thick of it, and was +all drowned but one. No; boat trips are my eye,” concluded the captain, +gloomily. + +The tone was surprising in a man of his indomitable temper. “Come, +Captain,” said Carthew, “you have something else up your sleeve; out +with it!” + +“It's a fact,” admitted Wicks. “You see there's a raft of little bally +reefs about here, kind of chicken-pox on the chart. Well, I looked 'em +all up, and there's one--Midway or Brooks they call it, not forty mile +from our assigned position--that I got news of. It turns out it's a +coaling station of the Pacific Mail,” he said, simply. + +“Well, and I know it ain't no such a thing,” said Mac. “I been +quartermaster in that line myself.” + +“All right,” returned Wicks. “There's the book. Read what Hoyt +says--read it aloud and let the others hear.” + +Hoyt's falsehood (as readers know) was explicit; incredulity was +impossible, and the news itself delightful beyond hope. Each saw in his +mind's eye the boat draw in to a trim island with a wharf, coal-sheds, +gardens, the Stars and Stripes and the white cottage of the keeper; +saw themselves idle a few weeks in tolerable quarters, and then step on +board the China mail, romantic waifs, and yet with pocketsful of money, +calling for champagne, and waited on by troops of stewards. Breakfast, +that had begun so dully, ended amid sober jubilation, and all hands +turned immediately to prepare the boat. + +Now that all spars were gone, it was no easy job to get her launched. +Some of the necessary cargo was first stowed on board; the specie, in +particular, being packed in a strong chest and secured with lashings to +the afterthwart in case of a capsize. Then a piece of the bulwark was +razed to the level of the deck, and the boat swung thwart-ship, made +fast with a slack line to either stump, and successfully run out. For a +voyage of forty miles to hospitable quarters, not much food or water +was required; but they took both in superfluity. Amalu and Mac, both +ingrained sailor-men, had chests which were the headquarters of their +lives; two more chests with handbags, oilskins, and blankets supplied +the others; Hadden, amid general applause, added the last case of the +brown sherry; the captain brought the log, instruments, and chronometer; +nor did Hemstead forget the banjo or a pinned handkerchief of Butaritari +shells. + +It was about three P.M. when they pushed off, and (the wind being still +westerly) fell to the oars. “Well, we've got the guts out of YOU!” was +the captain's nodded farewell to the hulk of the Currency Lass, which +presently shrank and faded in the sea. A little after a calm succeeded, +with much rain; and the first meal was eaten, and the watch below lay +down to their uneasy slumber on the bilge under a roaring shower-bath. +The twenty-ninth dawned overhead from out of ragged clouds; there is +no moment when a boat at sea appears so trenchantly black and so +conspicuously little; and the crew looked about them at the sky and +water with a thrill of loneliness and fear. With sunrise the trade set +in, lusty and true to the point; sail was made; the boat flew; and by +about four in the afternoon, they were well up with the closed part of +the reef, and the captain standing on the thwart, and holding by the +mast, was studying the island through the binoculars. + +“Well, and where's your station?” cried Mac. + +“I don't someway pick it up,” replied the captain. + +“No, nor never will!” retorted Mac, with a clang of despair and triumph +in his tones. + +The truth was soon plain to all. No buoys, no beacons, no lights, no +coal, no station; the castaways pulled through a lagoon and landed on +an isle, where was no mark of man but wreckwood, and no sound but of the +sea. For the seafowl that harboured and lived there at the epoch of my +visit were then scattered into the uttermost parts of the ocean, and +had left no traces of their sojourn besides dropped feathers and addled +eggs. It was to this they had been sent, for this they had stooped all +night over the dripping oars, hourly moving further from relief. The +boat, for as small as it was, was yet eloquent of the hands of men, a +thing alone indeed upon the sea but yet in itself all human; and the +isle, for which they had exchanged it, was ingloriously savage, a place +of distress, solitude, and hunger unrelieved. There was a strong glare +and shadow of the evening over all; in which they sat or lay, not +speaking, careless even to eat, men swindled out of life and riches by +a lying book. In the great good nature of the whole party, no word of +reproach had been addressed to Hadden, the author of these disasters. +But the new blow was less magnanimously borne, and many angry glances +rested on the captain. + +Yet it was himself who roused them from their lethargy. Grudgingly they +obeyed, drew the boat beyond tidemark, and followed him to the top of +the miserable islet, whence a view was commanded of the whole wheel of +the horizon, then part darkened under the coming night, part dyed with +the hues of the sunset and populous with the sunset clouds. Here the +camp was pitched and a tent run up with the oars, sails, and mast. And +here Amalu, at no man's bidding, from the mere instinct of habitual +service, built a fire and cooked a meal. Night was come, and the stars +and the silver sickle of new moon beamed overhead, before the meal +was ready. The cold sea shone about them, and the fire glowed in their +faces, as they ate. Tommy had opened his case, and the brown sherry went +the round; but it was long before they came to conversation. + +“Well, is it to be Kauai after all?” asked Mac suddenly. + +“This is bad enough for me,” said Tommy. “Let's stick it out where we +are.” + +“Well, I can tell ye one thing,” said Mac, “if ye care to hear it. When +I was in the China mail, we once made this island. It's in the course +from Honolulu.” + +“Deuce it is!” cried Carthew. “That settles it, then. Let's stay. We +must keep good fires going; and there's plenty wreck.” + +“Lashings of wreck!” said the Irishman. “There's nothing here but wreck +and coffin boards.” + +“But we'll have to make a proper blyze,” objected Hemstead. “You can't +see a fire like this, not any wye awye, I mean.” + +“Can't you?” said Carthew. “Look round.” + +They did, and saw the hollow of the night, the bare, bright face of the +sea, and the stars regarding them; and the voices died in their bosoms +at the spectacle. In that huge isolation, it seemed they must be visible +from China on the one hand and California on the other. + +“My God, it's dreary!” whispered Hemstead. + +“Dreary?” cried Mac, and fell suddenly silent. + +“It's better than a boat, anyway,” said Hadden. “I've had my bellyful of +boat.” + +“What kills me is that specie!” the captain broke out. “Think of all +that riches,--four thousand in gold, bad silver, and short bills--all +found money, too!--and no more use than that much dung!” + +“I'll tell you one thing,” said Tommy. “I don't like it being in the +boat--I don't care to have it so far away.” + +“Why, who's to take it?” cried Mac, with a guffaw of evil laughter. + +But this was not at all the feeling of the partners, who rose, clambered +down the isle, brought back the inestimable treasure-chest slung upon +two oars, and set it conspicuous in the shining of the fire. + +“There's my beauty!” cried Wicks, viewing it with a cocked head. “That's +better than a bonfire. What! we have a chest here, and bills for close +upon two thousand pounds; there's no show to that,--it would go in +your vest-pocket,--but the rest! upwards of forty pounds avoirdupois of +coined gold, and close on two hundredweight of Chile silver! What! ain't +that good enough to fetch a fleet? Do you mean to say that won't affect +a ship's compass? Do you mean to tell me that the lookout won't turn to +and SMELL it?” he cried. + +Mac, who had no part nor lot in the bills, the forty pounds of gold, or +the two hundredweight of silver, heard this with impatience, and fell +into a bitter, choking laughter. “You'll see!” he said harshly. “You'll +be glad to feed them bills into the fire before you're through with ut!” + And he turned, passed by himself out of the ring of the firelight, and +stood gazing seaward. + +His speech and his departure extinguished instantly those sparks of +better humour kindled by the dinner and the chest. The group fell again +to an ill-favoured silence, and Hemstead began to touch the banjo, as +was his habit of an evening. His repertory was small: the chords of +_Home, Sweet Home_ fell under his fingers; and when he had played the +symphony, he instinctively raised up his voice. “Be it never so 'umble, +there's no plyce like 'ome,” he sang. The last word was still upon his +lips, when the instrument was snatched from him and dashed into the +fire; and he turned with a cry to look into the furious countenance of +Mac. + +“I'll be damned if I stand this!” cried the captain, leaping up +belligerent. + +“I told ye I was a voilent man,” said Mac, with a movement of +deprecation very surprising in one of his character. “Why don't he give +me a chance then? Haven't we enough to bear the way we are?” And to the +wonder and dismay of all, the man choked upon a sob. “It's ashamed of +meself I am,” he said presently, his Irish accent twenty-fold increased. +“I ask all your pardons for me voilence; and especially the little +man's, who is a harmless crayture, and here's me hand to'm, if he'll +condescind to take me by 't.” + +So this scene of barbarity and sentimentalism passed off, leaving behind +strange and incongruous impressions. True, every one was perhaps glad +when silence succeeded that all too appropriate music; true, Mac's +apology and subsequent behaviour rather raised him in the opinion of +his fellow-castaways. But the discordant note had been struck, and its +harmonics tingled in the brain. In that savage, houseless isle, the +passions of man had sounded, if only for the moment, and all men +trembled at the possibilities of horror. + +It was determined to stand watch and watch in case of passing vessels; +and Tommy, on fire with an idea, volunteered to stand the first. The +rest crawled under the tent, and were soon enjoying that comfortable +gift of sleep, which comes everywhere and to all men, quenching +anxieties and speeding time. And no sooner were all settled, no sooner +had the drone of many snorers begun to mingle with and overcome the +surf, than Tommy stole from his post with the case of sherry, and +dropped it in a quiet cove in a fathom of water. But the stormy +inconstancy of Mac's behaviour had no connection with a gill or two of +wine; his passions, angry and otherwise, were on a different sail plan +from his neighbours'; and there were possibilities of good and evil in +that hybrid Celt beyond their prophecy. + +About two in the morning, the starry sky--or so it seemed, for the +drowsy watchman had not observed the approach of any cloud--brimmed over +in a deluge; and for three days it rained without remission. The islet +was a sponge, the castaways sops; the view all gone, even the reef +concealed behind the curtain of the falling water. The fire was soon +drowned out; after a couple of boxes of matches had been scratched in +vain, it was decided to wait for better weather; and the party lived in +wretchedness on raw tins and a ration of hard bread. + +By the 2nd February, in the dark hours of the morning watch, the clouds +were all blown by; the sun rose glorious; and once more the castaways +sat by a quick fire, and drank hot coffee with the greed of brutes and +sufferers. Thenceforward their affairs moved in a routine. A fire was +constantly maintained; and this occupied one hand continuously, and the +others for an hour or so in the day. Twice a day, all hands bathed in +the lagoon, their chief, almost their only pleasure. Often they fished +in the lagoon with good success. And the rest was passed in lolling, +strolling, yarns, and disputation. The time of the China steamers +was calculated to a nicety; which done, the thought was rejected and +ignored. It was one that would not bear consideration. The boat voyage +having been tacitly set aside, the desperate part chosen to wait there +for the coming of help or of starvation, no man had courage left to look +his bargain in the face, far less to discuss it with his neighbours. But +the unuttered terror haunted them; in every hour of idleness, at every +moment of silence, it returned, and breathed a chill about the circle, +and carried men's eyes to the horizon. Then, in a panic of self-defence, +they would rally to some other subject. And, in that lone spot, what +else was to be found to speak of but the treasure? + +That was indeed the chief singularity, the one thing conspicuous in +their island life; the presence of that chest of bills and specie +dominated the mind like a cathedral; and there were besides connected +with it, certain irking problems well fitted to occupy the idle. Two +thousand pounds were due to the Sydney firm: two thousand pounds were +clear profit, and fell to be divided in varying proportions among +six. It had been agreed how the partners were to range; every pound of +capital subscribed, every pound that fell due in wages, was to count for +one “lay.” Of these, Tommy could claim five hundred and ten, Carthew one +hundred and seventy, Wicks one hundred and forty, and Hemstead and Amalu +ten apiece: eight hundred and forty “lays” in all. What was the value of +a lay? This was at first debated in the air and chiefly by the strength +of Tommy's lungs. Then followed a series of incorrect calculations; from +which they issued, arithmetically foiled, but agreed from weariness upon +an approximate value of 2 pounds, 7 shillings 7 1/4 pence. The figures +were admittedly incorrect; the sum of the shares came not to 2000 +pounds, but to 1996 pounds, 6 shillings: 3 pounds, 14 shillings being +thus left unclaimed. But it was the nearest they had yet found, and the +highest as well, so that the partners were made the less critical by the +contemplation of their splendid dividends. Wicks put in 100 pounds and +stood to draw captain's wages for two months; his taking was 333 pounds +3 shillings 6 1/2 pence. Carthew had put in 150 pounds: he was to take +out 401 pounds, 18 shillings 6 1/2 pence. Tommy's 500 pounds had grown +to be 1213 pounds 12 shillings 9 3/4 pence; and Amalu and Hemstead, +ranking for wages only, had 22 pounds, 16 shillings 1/2 pence, each. + +From talking and brooding on these figures, it was but a step to +opening the chest; and once the chest open, the glamour of the cash was +irresistible. Each felt that he must see his treasure separate with the +eye of flesh, handle it in the hard coin, mark it for his own, and +stand forth to himself the approved owner. And here an insurmountable +difficulty barred the way. There were some seventeen shillings in +English silver: the rest was Chile; and the Chile dollar, which had been +taken at the rate of six to the pound sterling, was practically their +smallest coin. It was decided, therefore, to divide the pounds only, +and to throw the shillings, pence, and fractions in a common fund. This, +with the three pound fourteen already in the heel, made a total of seven +pounds one shilling. + +“I'll tell you,” said Wicks. “Let Carthew and Tommy and me take one +pound apiece, and Hemstead and Amalu split the other four, and toss up +for the odd bob.” + +“O, rot!” said Carthew. “Tommy and I are bursting already. We can take +half a sov' each, and let the other three have forty shillings.” + +“I'll tell you now--it's not worth splitting,” broke in Mac. “I've cards +in my chest. Why don't you play for the slump sum?” + +In that idle place, the proposal was accepted with delight. Mac, as the +owner of the cards, was given a stake; the sum was played for in five +games of cribbage; and when Amalu, the last survivor in the tournament, +was beaten by Mac, it was found the dinner hour was past. After a hasty +meal, they fell again immediately to cards, this time (on Carthew's +proposal) to Van John. It was then probably two P.M. of the 9th +February; and they played with varying chances for twelve hours, slept +heavily, and rose late on the morrow to resume the game. All day of the +10th, with grudging intervals for food, and with one long absence on the +part of Tommy from which he returned dripping with the case of sherry, +they continued to deal and stake. Night fell: they drew the closer to +the fire. It was maybe two in the morning, and Tommy was selling his +deal by auction, as usual with that timid player; when Carthew, who +didn't intend to bid, had a moment of leisure and looked round him. He +beheld the moonlight on the sea, the money piled and scattered in that +incongruous place, the perturbed faces of the players; he felt in his +own breast the familiar tumult; and it seemed as if there rose in his +ears a sound of music, and the moon seemed still to shine upon a sea, +but the sea was changed, and the Casino towered from among lamplit +gardens, and the money clinked on the green board. “Good God!” he +thought, “am I gambling again?” He looked the more curiously about the +sandy table. He and Mac had played and won like gamblers; the mingled +gold and silver lay by their places in the heap. Amalu and Hemstead had +each more than held their own, but Tommy was cruel far to leeward, and +the captain was reduced to perhaps fifty pounds. + +“I say, let's knock off,” said Carthew. + +“Give that man a glass of Buckle,” said some one, and a fresh bottle was +opened, and the game went inexorably on. + +Carthew was himself too heavy a winner to withdraw or to say more; and +all the rest of the night he must look on at the progress of this folly, +and make gallant attempts to lose with the not uncommon consequence of +winning more. The first dawn of the 11th February found him well-nigh +desperate. It chanced he was then dealer, and still winning. He had just +dealt a round of many tens; every one had staked heavily; the captain +had put up all that remained to him, twelve pounds in gold and a few +dollars; and Carthew, looking privately at his cards before he showed +them, found he held a natural. + +“See here, you fellows,” he broke out, “this is a sickening business, +and I'm done with it for one.” So saying, he showed his cards, tore them +across, and rose from the ground. + +The company stared and murmured in mere amazement; but Mac stepped +gallantly to his support. + +“We've had enough of it, I do believe,” said he. “But of course it was +all fun, and here's my counters back. All counters in, boys!” and he +began to pour his winnings into the chest, which stood fortunately near +him. + +Carthew stepped across and wrung him by the hand. “I'll never forget +this,” he said. + +“And what are ye going to do with the Highway boy and the plumber?” + inquired Mac, in a low tone of voice. “They've both wan, ye see.” + +“That's true!” said Carthew aloud. “Amalu and Hemstead, count your +winnings; Tommy and I pay that.” + +It was carried without speech: the pair glad enough to receive their +winnings, it mattered not from whence; and Tommy, who had lost about +five hundred pounds, delighted with the compromise. + +“And how about Mac?” asked Hemstead. “Is he to lose all?” + +“I beg your pardon, plumber. I'm sure ye mean well,” returned the +Irishman, “but you'd better shut your face, for I'm not that kind of a +man. If I t'ought I had wan that money fair, there's never a soul here +could get it from me. But I t'ought it was in fun; that was my mistake, +ye see; and there's no man big enough upon this island to give a present +to my mother's son. So there's my opinion to ye, plumber, and you can +put it in your pockut till required.” + + +“Well, I will say, Mac, you're a gentleman,” said Carthew, as he helped +him to shovel back his winnings into the treasure chest. + +“Divil a fear of it, sir! a drunken sailor-man,” said Mac. + +The captain had sat somewhile with his face in his hands: now he rose +mechanically, shaking and stumbling like a drunkard after a debauch. But +as he rose, his face was altered, and his voice rang out over the isle, +“Sail, ho!” + +All turned at the cry, and there, in the wild light of the morning, +heading straight for Midway Reef, was the brig Flying Scud of Hull. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. A HARD BARGAIN. + + +The ship which thus appeared before the castaways had long “tramped” the +ocean, wandering from one port to another as freights offered. She was +two years out from London, by the Cape of Good Hope, India, and the +Archipelago; and was now bound for San Francisco in the hope of working +homeward round the Horn. Her captain was one Jacob Trent. He had retired +some five years before to a suburban cottage, a patch of cabbages, a +gig, and the conduct of what he called a Bank. The name appears to have +been misleading. Borrowers were accustomed to choose works of art and +utility in the front shop; loaves of sugar and bolts of broadcloth were +deposited in pledge; and it was a part of the manager's duty to dash in +his gig on Saturday evenings from one small retailer's to another, and +to annex in each the bulk of the week's takings. His was thus an active +life, and to a man of the type of a rat, filled with recondite joys. +An unexpected loss, a law suit, and the unintelligent commentary of the +judge upon the bench, combined to disgust him of the business. I was so +extraordinarily fortunate as to find, in an old newspaper, a report of +the proceedings in Lyall v. The Cardiff Mutual Accommodation Banking Co. +“I confess I fail entirely to understand the nature of the business,” + the judge had remarked, while Trent was being examined in chief; a +little after, on fuller information--“They call it a bank,” he had +opined, “but it seems to me to be an unlicensed pawnshop”; and he wound +up with this appalling allocution: “Mr. Trent, I must put you on your +guard; you must be very careful, or we shall see you here again.” In the +inside of a week the captain disposed of the bank, the cottage, and the +gig and horse; and to sea again in the Flying Scud, where he did well +and gave high satisfaction to his owners. But the glory clung to him; he +was a plain sailor-man, he said, but he could never long allow you to +forget that he had been a banker. + +His mate, Elias Goddedaal, was a huge viking of a man, six feet three +and of proportionate mass, strong, sober, industrious, musical, and +sentimental. He ran continually over into Swedish melodies, chiefly in +the minor. He had paid nine dollars to hear Patti; to hear Nilsson, he +had deserted a ship and two months' wages; and he was ready at any time +to walk ten miles for a good concert, or seven to a reasonable play. +On board he had three treasures: a canary bird, a concertina, and a +blinding copy of the works of Shakespeare. He had a gift, peculiarly +Scandinavian, of making friends at sight: an elemental innocence +commended him; he was without fear, without reproach, and without money +or the hope of making it. + +Holdorsen was second mate, and berthed aft, but messed usually with the +hands. + +Of one more of the crew, some image lives. This was a foremast hand out +of the Clyde, of the name of Brown. A small, dark, thickset creature, +with dog's eyes, of a disposition incomparably mild and harmless, he +knocked about seas and cities, the uncomplaining whiptop of one vice. +“The drink is my trouble, ye see,” he said to Carthew shyly; “and it's +the more shame to me because I'm come of very good people at Bowling, +down the wa'er.” The letter that so much affected Nares, in case the +reader should remember it, was addressed to this man Brown. + +Such was the ship that now carried joy into the bosoms of the castaways. +After the fatigue and the bestial emotions of their night of play, the +approach of salvation shook them from all self-control. Their hands +trembled, their eyes shone, they laughed and shouted like children as +they cleared their camp: and some one beginning to whistle _Marching +Through Georgia,_ the remainder of the packing was conducted, amidst a +thousand interruptions, to these martial strains. But the strong head of +Wicks was only partly turned. + + +“Boys,” he said, “easy all! We're going aboard of a ship of which we +don't know nothing; we've got a chest of specie, and seeing the weight, +we can't turn to and deny it. Now, suppose she was fishy; suppose it was +some kind of a Bully Hayes business! It's my opinion we'd better be on +hand with the pistols.” + +Every man of the party but Hemstead had some kind of a revolver; these +were accordingly loaded and disposed about the persons of the castaways, +and the packing was resumed and finished in the same rapturous spirit as +it was begun. The sun was not yet ten degrees above the eastern sea, but +the brig was already close in and hove to, before they had launched the +boat and sped, shouting at the oars, towards the passage. + +It was blowing fresh outside, with a strong send of sea. The spray flew +in the oarsmen's faces. They saw the Union Jack blow abroad from the +Flying Scud, the men clustered at the rail, the cook in the galley door, +the captain on the quarter-deck with a pith helmet and binoculars. And +the whole familiar business, the comfort, company, and safety of a ship, +heaving nearer at each stroke, maddened them with joy. + +Wicks was the first to catch the line, and swarm on board, helping hands +grabbing him as he came and hauling him across the rail. + +“Captain, sir, I suppose?” he said, turning to the hard old man in the +pith helmet. + +“Captain Trent, sir,” returned the old gentleman. + +“Well, I'm Captain Kirkup, and this is the crew of the Sydney schooner +Currency Lass, dismasted at sea January 28th.” + +“Ay, ay,” said Trent. “Well, you're all right now. Lucky for you I saw +your signal. I didn't know I was so near this beastly island, there must +be a drift to the south'ard here; and when I came on deck this morning +at eight bells, I thought it was a ship afire.” + +It had been agreed that, while Wicks was to board the ship and do the +civil, the rest were to remain in the whaleboat and see the treasure +safe. A tackle was passed down to them; to this they made fast the +invaluable chest, and gave the word to heave. But the unexpected weight +brought the hand at the tackle to a stand; two others ran to tail on and +help him, and the thing caught the eye of Trent. + +“'Vast heaving!” he cried sharply; and then to Wicks: “What's that? I +don't ever remember to have seen a chest weigh like that.” + +“It's money,” said Wicks. + +“It's what?” cried Trent. + +“Specie,” said Wicks; “saved from the wreck.” + +Trent looked at him sharply. “Here, let go that chest again, Mr. +Goddedaal,” he commanded, “shove the boat off, and stream her with a +line astern.” + +“Ay, ay, sir!” from Goddedaal. + +“What the devil's wrong?” asked Wicks. + +“Nothing, I daresay,” returned Trent. “But you'll allow it's a queer +thing when a boat turns up in mid-ocean with half a ton of specie,--and +everybody armed,” he added, pointing to Wicks's pocket. “Your boat +will lay comfortably astern, while you come below and make yourself +satisfactory.” + +“O, if that's all!” said Wicks. “My log and papers are as right as the +mail; nothing fishy about us.” And he hailed his friends in the boat, +bidding them have patience, and turned to follow Captain Trent. + +“This way, Captain Kirkup,” said the latter. “And don't blame a man for +too much caution; no offence intended; and these China rivers shake a +fellow's nerve. All I want is just to see you're what you say you +are; it's only my duty, sir, and what you would do yourself in the +circumstances. I've not always been a ship-captain: I was a banker once, +and I tell you that's the trade to learn caution in. You have to keep +your weather-eye lifting Saturday nights.” And with a dry, business-like +cordiality, he produced a bottle of gin. + +The captains pledged each other; the papers were overhauled; the tale of +Topelius and the trade was told in appreciative ears and cemented +their acquaintance. Trent's suspicions, thus finally disposed of, were +succeeded by a fit of profound thought, during which he sat lethargic +and stern, looking at and drumming on the table. + +“Anything more?” asked Wicks. + +“What sort of a place is it inside?” inquired Trent, sudden as though +Wicks had touched a spring. + +“It's a good enough lagoon--a few horses' heads, but nothing to +mention,” answered Wicks. + +“I've a good mind to go in,” said Trent. “I was new rigged in China; +it's given very bad, and I'm getting frightened for my sticks. We could +set it up as good as new in a day. For I daresay your lot would turn to +and give us a hand?” + +“You see if we don't!” said Wicks. + +“So be it, then,” concluded Trent. “A stitch in time saves nine.” + +They returned on deck; Wicks cried the news to the Currency Lasses; the +foretopsail was filled again, and the brig ran into the lagoon lively, +the whaleboat dancing in her wake, and came to single anchor off Middle +Brooks Island before eight. She was boarded by the castaways, breakfast +was served, the baggage slung on board and piled in the waist, and all +hands turned to upon the rigging. All day the work continued, the two +crews rivalling each other in expense of strength. Dinner was served on +deck, the officers messing aft under the slack of the spanker, the men +fraternising forward. Trent appeared in excellent spirits, served out +grog to all hands, opened a bottle of Cape wine for the after-table, +and obliged his guests with many details of the life of a financier +in Cardiff. He had been forty years at sea, had five times suffered +shipwreck, was once nine months the prisoner of a pepper rajah, and had +seen service under fire in Chinese rivers; but the only thing he cared +to talk of, the only thing of which he was vain, or with which he +thought it possible to interest a stranger, was his career as a +money-lender in the slums of a seaport town. + +The afternoon spell told cruelly on the Currency Lasses. Already +exhausted as they were with sleeplessness and excitement, they did the +last hours of this violent employment on bare nerves; and when Trent was +at last satisfied with the condition of his rigging, expected eagerly +the word to put to sea. But the captain seemed in no hurry. He went and +walked by himself softly, like a man in thought. Presently he hailed +Wicks. + +“You're a kind of company, ain't you, Captain Kirkup?” he inquired. + +“Yes, we're all on board on lays,” was the reply. + +“Well, then, you won't mind if I ask the lot of you down to tea in the +cabin?” asked Trent. + +Wicks was amazed, but he naturally ventured no remark; and a little +after, the six Currency Lasses sat down with Trent and Goddedaal to +a spread of marmalade, butter, toast, sardines, tinned tongue, and +steaming tea. The food was not very good, and I have no doubt Nares +would have reviled it, but it was manna to the castaways. Goddedaal +waited on them with a kindness far before courtesy, a kindness like +that of some old, honest countrywoman in her farm. It was remembered +afterwards that Trent took little share in these attentions, but sat +much absorbed in thought, and seemed to remember and forget the presence +of his guests alternately. + +Presently he addressed the Chinaman. + +“Clear out!” said he, and watched him till he had disappeared in the +stair. “Now, gentlemen,” he went on, “I understand you're a joint-stock +sort of crew, and that's why I've had you all down; for there's a point +I want made clear. You see what sort of a ship this is--a good ship, +though I say it, and you see what the rations are--good enough for +sailor-men.” + +There was a hurried murmur of approval, but curiosity for what was +coming next prevented an articulate reply. + +“Well,” continued Trent, making bread pills and looking hard at the +middle of the table, “I'm glad of course to be able to give you a +passage to 'Frisco; one sailor-man should help another, that's my motto. +But when you want a thing in this world, you generally always have +to pay for it.” He laughed a brief, joyless laugh. “I have no idea of +losing by my kindness.” + +“We have no idea you should, captain,” said Wicks. + +“We are ready to pay anything in reason,” added Carthew. + + +At the words, Goddedaal, who sat next to him, touched him with his +elbow, and the two mates exchanged a significant look. The character of +Captain Trent was given and taken in that silent second. + +“In reason?” repeated the captain of the brig. “I was waiting for that. +Reason's between two people, and there's only one here. I'm the judge; +I'm reason. If you want an advance you have to pay for it”--he hastily +corrected himself--“If you want a passage in my ship, you have to pay my +price,” he substituted. “That's business, I believe. I don't want you; +you want me.” + +“Well, sir,” said Carthew, “and what IS your price?” + +The captain made bread pills. “If I were like you,” he said, “when you +got hold of that merchant in the Gilberts, I might surprise you. You +had your chance then; seems to me it's mine now. Turn about's fair play. +What kind of mercy did you have on that Gilbert merchant?” he cried, +with a sudden stridency. “Not that I blame you. All's fair in love and +business,” and he laughed again, a little frosty giggle. + +“Well, sir?” said Carthew, gravely. + +“Well, this ship's mine, I think?” he asked sharply. + +“Well, I'm of that way of thinking meself,” observed Mac. + +“I say it's mine, sir!” reiterated Trent, like a man trying to be angry. +“And I tell you all, if I was a driver like what you are, I would take +the lot. But there's two thousand pounds there that don't belong to you, +and I'm an honest man. Give me the two thousand that's yours, and I'll +give you a passage to the coast, and land every man-jack of you in +'Frisco with fifteen pounds in his pocket, and the captain here with +twenty-five.” + +Goddedaal laid down his head on the table like a man ashamed. + +“You're joking,” said Wicks, purple in the face. + +“Am I?” said Trent. “Please yourselves. You're under no compulsion. This +ship's mine, but there's that Brooks Island don't belong to me, and you +can lay there till you die for what I care.” + + +“It's more than your blooming brig's worth!” cried Wicks. + +“It's my price anyway,” returned Trent. + +“And do you mean to say you would land us there to starve?” cried Tommy. + +Captain Trent laughed the third time. “Starve? I defy you to,” said he. +“I'll sell you all the provisions you want at a fair profit.” + +“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mac, “but my case is by itself I'm +working me passage; I got no share in that two thousand pounds nor +nothing in my pockut; and I'll be glad to know what you have to say to +me?” + +“I ain't a hard man,” said Trent. “That shall make no difference. I'll +take you with the rest, only of course you get no fifteen pound.” + +The impudence was so extreme and startling, that all breathed deep, and +Goddedaal raised up his face and looked his superior sternly in the eye. + +But Mac was more articulate. “And you're what ye call a British sayman, +I suppose? the sorrow in your guts!” he cried. + +“One more such word, and I clap you in irons!” said Trent, rising +gleefully at the face of opposition. + +“And where would I be the while you were doin' ut?” asked Mac. “After +you and your rigging, too! Ye ould puggy, ye haven't the civility of a +bug, and I'll learn ye some.” + +His voice did not even rise as he uttered the threat; no man present, +Trent least of all, expected that which followed. The Irishman's hand +rose suddenly from below the table, an open clasp-knife balanced on the +palm; there was a movement swift as conjuring; Trent started half to +his feet, turning a little as he rose so as to escape the table, and the +movement was his bane. The missile struck him in the jugular; he fell +forward, and his blood flowed among the dishes on the cloth. + +The suddenness of the attack and the catastrophe, the instant change +from peace to war and from life to death, held all men spellbound. Yet a +moment they sat about the table staring open-mouthed upon the prostrate +captain and the flowing blood. The next, Goddedaal had leaped to his +feet, caught up the stool on which he had been sitting, and swung it +high in air, a man transfigured, roaring (as he stood) so that men's +ears were stunned with it. There was no thought of battle in the +Currency Lasses; none drew his weapon; all huddled helplessly from +before the face of the baresark Scandinavian. His first blow sent Mac to +ground with a broken arm. His second bashed out the brains of Hemstead. +He turned from one to another, menacing and trumpeting like a wounded +elephant, exulting in his rage. But there was no counsel, no light of +reason, in that ecstasy of battle; and he shied from the pursuit of +victory to hail fresh blows upon the supine Hemstead, so that the stool +was shattered and the cabin rang with their violence. The sight of that +post-mortem cruelty recalled Carthew to the life of instinct, and his +revolver was in hand and he had aimed and fired before he knew. The +ear-bursting sound of the report was accompanied by a yell of pain; the +colossus paused, swayed, tottered, and fell headlong on the body of his +victim. + +In the instant silence that succeeded, the sound of feet pounding on the +deck and in the companion leaped into hearing; and a face, that of the +sailor Holdorsen, appeared below the bulkheads in the cabin doorway. +Carthew shattered it with a second shot, for he was a marksman. + +“Pistols!” he cried, and charged at the companion, Wicks at his heels, +Tommy and Amalu following. They trod the body of Holdorsen underfoot, +and flew up-stairs and forth into the dusky blaze of a sunset red as +blood. The numbers were still equal, but the Flying Scuds dreamed not of +defence, and fled with one accord for the forecastle scuttle. Brown was +first in flight; he disappeared below unscathed; the Chinaman followed +head-foremost with a ball in his side; and the others shinned into the +rigging. + +A fierce composure settled upon Wicks and Carthew, their fighting second +wind. They posted Tommy at the fore and Amalu at the main to guard the +masts and shrouds, and going themselves into the waist, poured out a +box of cartridges on deck and filled the chambers. The poor devils aloft +bleated aloud for mercy. But the hour of any mercy was gone by; the cup +was brewed and must be drunken to the dregs; since so many had fallen +all must fall. The light was bad, the cheap revolvers fouled and carried +wild, the screaming wretches were swift to flatten themselves against +the masts and yards or find a momentary refuge in the hanging sails. The +fell business took long, but it was done at last. Hardy the Londoner was +shot on the foreroyal yard, and hung horribly suspended in the brails. +Wallen, the other, had his jaw broken on the maintop-gallant crosstrees, +and exposed himself, shrieking, till a second shot dropped him on the +deck. + +This had been bad enough, but worse remained behind. There was still +Brown in the forepeak. Tommy, with a sudden clamour of weeping, begged +for his life. “One man can't hurt us,” he sobbed. “We can't go on with +this. I spoke to him at dinner. He's an awful decent little cad. It +can't be done. Nobody can go into that place and murder him. It's too +damned wicked.” + +The sound of his supplications was perhaps audible to the unfortunate +below. + +“One left, and we all hang,” said Wicks. “Brown must go the same road.” + The big man was deadly white and trembled like an aspen; and he had no +sooner finished speaking, than he went to the ship's side and vomited. + +“We can never do it if we wait,” said Carthew. “Now or never,” and he +marched towards the scuttle. + +“No, no, no!” wailed Tommy, clutching at his jacket. + +But Carthew flung him off, and stepped down the ladder, his heart rising +with disgust and shame. The Chinaman lay on the floor, still groaning; +the place was pitch dark. + +“Brown!” cried Carthew, “Brown, where are you?” + +His heart smote him for the treacherous apostrophe, but no answer came. + +He groped in the bunks: they were all empty. Then he moved towards the +forepeak, which was hampered with coils of rope and spare chandlery in +general. + +“Brown!” he said again. + +“Here, sir,” answered a shaking voice; and the poor invisible caitiff +called on him by name, and poured forth out of the darkness an endless, +garrulous appeal for mercy. A sense of danger, of daring, had alone +nerved Carthew to enter the forecastle; and here was the enemy crying +and pleading like a frightened child. His obsequious “Here, sir,” his +horrid fluency of obtestation, made the murder tenfold more revolting. +Twice Carthew raised the pistol, once he pressed the trigger (or thought +he did) with all his might, but no explosion followed; and with that the +lees of his courage ran quite out, and he turned and fled from before +his victim. + +Wicks sat on the fore hatch, raised the face of a man of seventy, and +looked a wordless question. Carthew shook his head. With such composure +as a man displays marching towards the gallows, Wicks arose, walked to +the scuttle, and went down. Brown thought it was Carthew returning, +and discovered himself, half crawling from his shelter, with another +incoherent burst of pleading. Wicks emptied his revolver at the voice, +which broke into mouse-like whimperings and groans. Silence succeeded, +and the murderer ran on deck like one possessed. + +The other three were now all gathered on the fore hatch, and Wicks +took his place beside them without question asked or answered. They +sat close, like children in the dark, and shook each other with their +shaking. The dusk continued to fall; and there was no sound but the +beating of the surf and the occasional hiccup of a sob from Tommy +Hadden. + +“God, if there was another ship!” cried Carthew of a sudden. + +Wicks started and looked aloft with the trick of all seamen, and +shuddered as he saw the hanging figure on the royal yard. + +“If I went aloft, I'd fall,” he said simply. “I'm done up.” + +It was Amalu who volunteered, climbed to the very truck, swept the +fading horizon, and announced nothing within sight. + +“No odds,” said Wicks. “We can't sleep ...” + +“Sleep!” echoed Carthew; and it seemed as if the whole of Shakespeare's +_Macbeth_ thundered at the gallop through his mind. + +“Well, then, we can't sit and chitter here,” said Wicks, “till we've +cleaned ship; and I can't turn to till I've had gin, and the gin's in +the cabin, and who's to fetch it?” + + +“I will,” said Carthew, “if any one has matches.” + +Amalu passed him a box, and he went aft and down the companion and into +the cabin, stumbling upon bodies. Then he struck a match, and his looks +fell upon two living eyes. + +“Well?” asked Mac, for it was he who still survived in that shambles of +a cabin. + +“It's done; they're all dead,” answered Carthew. + +“Christ!” said the Irishman, and fainted. + +The gin was found in the dead captain's cabin; it was brought on deck, +and all hands had a dram, and attacked their farther task. The night +was come, the moon would not be up for hours; a lamp was set on the main +hatch to light Amalu as he washed down decks; and the galley lantern +was taken to guide the others in their graveyard business. Holdorsen, +Hemstead, Trent, and Goddedaal were first disposed of, the last still +breathing as he went over the side; Wallen followed; and then Wicks, +steadied by the gin, went aloft with a boathook and succeeded in +dislodging Hardy. The Chinaman was their last task; he seemed to be +light-headed, talked aloud in his unknown language as they brought +him up, and it was only with the splash of his sinking body that the +gibberish ceased. Brown, by common consent, was left alone. Flesh and +blood could go no further. + +All this time they had been drinking undiluted gin like water; three +bottles stood broached in different quarters; and none passed without +a gulp. Tommy collapsed against the mainmast; Wicks fell on his face +on the poop ladder and moved no more; Amalu had vanished unobserved. +Carthew was the last afoot: he stood swaying at the break of the poop, +and the lantern, which he still carried, swung with his movement. His +head hummed; it swarmed with broken thoughts; memory of that day's +abominations flared up and died down within him like the light of a lamp +in a strong draught. And then he had a drunkard's inspiration. + +“There must be no more of this,” he thought, and stumbled once more +below. + +The absence of Holdorsen's body brought him to a stand. He stood and +stared at the empty floor, and then remembered and smiled. From the +captain's room he took the open case with one dozen and three bottles of +gin, put the lantern inside, and walked precariously forth. Mac was once +more conscious, his eyes haggard, his face drawn with pain and flushed +with fever; and Carthew remembered he had never been seen to, had lain +there helpless, and was so to lie all night, injured, perhaps dying. +But it was now too late; reason had now fled from that silent ship. If +Carthew could get on deck again, it was as much as he could hope; +and casting on the unfortunate a glance of pity, the tragic drunkard +shouldered his way up the companion, dropped the case overboard, and +fell in the scuppers helpless. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. A BAD BARGAIN. + + +With the first colour in the east, Carthew awoke and sat up. A while he +gazed at the scroll of the morning bank and the spars and hanging canvas +of the brig, like a man who wakes in a strange bed, with a child's +simplicity of wonder. He wondered above all what ailed him, what he had +lost, what disfavour had been done him, which he knew he should resent, +yet had forgotten. And then, like a river bursting through a dam, the +truth rolled on him its instantaneous volume: his memory teemed with +speech and pictures that he should never again forget; and he sprang to +his feet, stood a moment hand to brow, and began to walk violently +to and fro by the companion. As he walked, he wrung his hands. +“God--God--God,” he kept saying, with no thought of prayer, uttering a +mere voice of agony. + +The time may have been long or short, it was perhaps minutes, perhaps +only seconds, ere he awoke to find himself observed, and saw the captain +sitting up and watching him over the break of the poop, a strange +blindness as of fever in his eyes, a haggard knot of corrugations on his +brow. Cain saw himself in a mirror. For a flash they looked upon each +other, and then glanced guiltily aside; and Carthew fled from the eye of +his accomplice, and stood leaning on the taffrail. + +An hour went by, while the day came brighter, and the sun rose and drank +up the clouds: an hour of silence in the ship, an hour of agony beyond +narration for the sufferers. Brown's gabbling prayers, the cries of the +sailors in the rigging, strains of the dead Hemstead's minstrelsy, +ran together in Carthew's mind, with sickening iteration. He neither +acquitted nor condemned himself: he did not think, he suffered. In +the bright water into which he stared, the pictures changed and were +repeated: the baresark rage of Goddedaal; the blood-red light of the +sunset into which they had run forth; the face of the babbling Chinaman +as they cast him over; the face of the captain, seen a moment since, +as he awoke from drunkenness into remorse. And time passed, and the sun +swam higher, and his torment was not abated. + +Then were fulfilled many sayings, and the weakest of these condemned +brought relief and healing to the others. Amalu the drudge awoke (like +the rest) to sickness of body and distress of mind; but the habit of +obedience ruled in that simple spirit, and appalled to be so late, +he went direct into the galley, kindled the fire, and began to get +breakfast. At the rattle of dishes, the snapping of the fire, and the +thin smoke that went up straight into the air, the spell was lifted. +The condemned felt once more the good dry land of habit under foot; they +touched again the familiar guide-ropes of sanity; they were restored to +a sense of the blessed revolution and return of all things earthly. The +captain drew a bucket of water and began to bathe. Tommy sat up, watched +him awhile, and slowly followed his example; and Carthew, remembering +his last thoughts of the night before, hastened to the cabin. + +Mac was awake; perhaps had not slept. Over his head Goddedaal's canary +twittered shrilly from its cage. + +“How are you?” asked Carthew. + +“Me arrum's broke,” returned Mac; “but I can stand that. It's this place +I can't abide. I was coming on deck anyway.” + +“Stay where you are, though,” said Carthew. “It's deadly hot above, and +there's no wind. I'll wash out this----” and he paused, seeking a word +and not finding one for the grisly foulness of the cabin. + +“Faith, I'll be obliged to ye, then,” replied the Irishman. He spoke +mild and meek, like a sick child with its mother. There was now no +violence in the violent man; and as Carthew fetched a bucket and swab +and the steward's sponge, and began to cleanse the field of battle, +he alternately watched him or shut his eyes and sighed like a man near +fainting. “I have to ask all your pardons,” he began again presently, +“and the more shame to me as I got ye into trouble and couldn't do +nothing when it came. Ye saved me life, sir; ye're a clane shot.” + +“For God's sake, don't talk of it!” cried Carthew. “It can't be talked +of; you don't know what it was. It was nothing down here; they fought. +On deck--O, my God!” And Carthew, with the bloody sponge pressed to his +face, struggled a moment with hysteria. + +“Kape cool, Mr. Cart'ew. It's done now,” said Mac; “and ye may bless God +ye're not in pain and helpless in the bargain.” + +There was no more said by one or other, and the cabin was pretty well +cleansed when a stroke on the ship's bell summoned Carthew to breakfast. +Tommy had been busy in the meanwhile; he had hauled the whaleboat close +aboard, and already lowered into it a small keg of beef that he found +ready broached beside the galley door; it was plain he had but the one +idea--to escape. + +“We have a shipful of stores to draw upon,” he said. “Well, what are +we staying for? Let's get off at once for Hawaii. I've begun preparing +already.” + +“Mac has his arm broken,” observed Carthew; “how would he stand the +voyage?” + +“A broken arm?” repeated the captain. “That all? I'll set it after +breakfast. I thought he was dead like the rest. That madman hit out +like----” and there, at the evocation of the battle, his voice ceased +and the talk died with it. + +After breakfast, the three white men went down into the cabin. + +“I've come to set your arm,” said the captain. + +“I beg your pardon, captain,” replied Mac; “but the firrst thing ye got +to do is to get this ship to sea. We'll talk of me arrum after that.” + +“O, there's no such blooming hurry,” returned Wicks. + +“When the next ship sails in, ye'll tell me stories!” retorted Mac. + +“But there's nothing so unlikely in the world,” objected Carthew. + +“Don't be deceivin' yourself,” said Mac. “If ye want a ship, divil a +one'll look near ye in six year; but if ye don't, ye may take my word +for ut, we'll have a squadron layin' here.” + +“That's what I say,” cried Tommy; “that's what I call sense! Let's stock +that whaleboat and be off.” + +“And what will Captain Wicks be thinking of the whaleboat?” asked the +Irishman. + +“I don't think of it at all,” said Wicks. “We've a smart-looking brig +under foot; that's all the whaleboat I want.” + +“Excuse me!” cried Tommy. “That's childish talk. You've got a brig, to +be sure, and what use is she? You daren't go anywhere in her. What port +are you to sail for?” + +“For the port of Davy Jones's Locker, my son,” replied the captain. +“This brig's going to be lost at sea. I'll tell you where, too, and +that's about forty miles to windward of Kauai. We're going to stay by +her till she's down; and once the masts are under, she's the Flying Scud +no more, and we never heard of such a brig; and it's the crew of the +schooner Currency Lass that comes ashore in the boat, and takes the +first chance to Sydney.” + +“Captain dear, that's the first Christian word I've heard of ut!” cried +Mac. “And now, just let me arrum be, jewel, and get the brig outside.” + +“I'm as anxious as yourself, Mac,” returned Wicks; “but there's not wind +enough to swear by. So let's see your arm, and no more talk.” + +The arm was set and splinted; the body of Brown fetched from the +forepeak, where it lay still and cold, and committed to the waters of +the lagoon; and the washing of the cabin rudely finished. All these were +done ere midday; and it was past three when the first cat's-paw ruffled +the lagoon, and the wind came in a dry squall, which presently sobered +to a steady breeze. + +The interval was passed by all in feverish impatience, and by one of +the party in secret and extreme concern of mind. Captain Wicks was a +fore-and-aft sailor; he could take a schooner through a Scotch reel, +felt her mouth and divined her temper like a rider with a horse; she, +on her side, recognising her master and following his wishes like a dog. +But by a not very unusual train of circumstance, the man's dexterity was +partial and circumscribed. On a schooner's deck he was Rembrandt or (at +the least) Mr. Whistler; on board a brig he was Pierre Grassou. Again +and again in the course of the morning, he had reasoned out his +policy and rehearsed his orders; and ever with the same depression and +weariness. It was guess-work; it was chance; the ship might behave as +he expected, and might not; suppose she failed him, he stood there +helpless, beggared of all the proved resources of experience. Had +not all hands been so weary, had he not feared to communicate his own +misgivings, he could have towed her out. But these reasons sufficed, and +the most he could do was to take all possible precautions. Accordingly +he had Carthew aft, explained what was to be done with anxious patience, +and visited along with him the various sheets and braces. + +“I hope I'll remember,” said Carthew. “It seems awfully muddled.” + +“It's the rottenest kind of rig,” the captain admitted: “all blooming +pocket handkerchiefs! And not one sailor-man on deck! Ah, if she'd only +been a brigantine, now! But it's lucky the passage is so plain; there's +no manoeuvring to mention. We get under way before the wind, and run +right so till we begin to get foul of the island; then we haul our wind +and lie as near south-east as may be till we're on that line; 'bout ship +there and stand straight out on the port tack. Catch the idea?” + +“Yes, I see the idea,” replied Carthew, rather dismally, and the two +incompetents studied for a long time in silence the complicated gear +above their heads. + +But the time came when these rehearsals must be put in practice. The +sails were lowered, and all hands heaved the anchor short. The whaleboat +was then cut adrift, the upper topsails and the spanker set, the yards +braced up, and the spanker sheet hauled out to starboard. + +“Heave away on your anchor, Mr. Carthew.” + +“Anchor's gone, sir.” + +“Set jibs.” + +It was done, and the brig still hung enchanted. Wicks, his head full of +a schooner's mainsail, turned his mind to the spanker. First he hauled +in the sheet, and then he hauled it out, with no result. + +“Brail the damned thing up!” he bawled at last, with a red face. “There +ain't no sense in it.” + +It was the last stroke of bewilderment for the poor captain, that he had +no sooner brailed up the spanker than the vessel came before the wind. +The laws of nature seemed to him to be suspended; he was like a man in +a world of pantomime tricks; the cause of any result, and the probable +result of any action, equally concealed from him. He was the more +careful not to shake the nerve of his amateur assistants. He stood +there with a face like a torch; but he gave his orders with aplomb; and +indeed, now the ship was under weigh, supposed his difficulties over. + +The lower topsails and courses were then set, and the brig began to +walk the water like a thing of life, her forefoot discoursing music, the +birds flying and crying over her spars. Bit by bit the passage began to +open and the blue sea to show between the flanking breakers on the reef; +bit by bit, on the starboard bow, the low land of the islet began to +heave closer aboard. The yards were braced up, the spanker sheet hauled +aft again; the brig was close hauled, lay down to her work like a thing +in earnest, and had soon drawn near to the point of advantage, where she +might stay and lie out of the lagoon in a single tack. + +Wicks took the wheel himself, swelling with success. He kept the brig +full to give her heels, and began to bark his orders: “Ready about. +Helm's a-lee. Tacks and sheets. Mainsail haul.” And then the fatal +words: “That'll do your mainsail; jump forrard and haul round your +foreyards.” + +To stay a square-rigged ship is an affair of knowledge and swift sight; +and a man used to the succinct evolutions of a schooner will always tend +to be too hasty with a brig. It was so now. The order came too soon; the +topsails set flat aback; the ship was in irons. Even yet, had the helm +been reversed, they might have saved her. But to think of a stern-board +at all, far more to think of profiting by one, were foreign to the +schooner-sailor's mind. Wicks made haste instead to wear ship, a +manoeuvre for which room was wanting, and the Flying Scud took ground on +a bank of sand and coral about twenty minutes before five. + +Wicks was no hand with a square-rigger, and he had shown it. But he +was a sailor and a born captain of men for all homely purposes, where +intellect is not required and an eye in a man's head and a heart under +his jacket will suffice. Before the others had time to understand the +misfortune, he was bawling fresh orders, and had the sails clewed up, +and took soundings round the ship. + +“She lies lovely,” he remarked, and ordered out a boat with the +starboard anchor. + +“Here! steady!” cried Tommy. “You ain't going to turn us to, to warp her +off?” + +“I am though,” replied Wicks. + +“I won't set a hand to such tomfoolery for one,” replied Tommy. “I'm +dead beat.” He went and sat down doggedly on the main hatch. “You got us +on; get us off again,” he added. + +Carthew and Wicks turned to each other. + +“Perhaps you don't know how tired we are,” said Carthew. + +“The tide's flowing!” cried the captain. “You wouldn't have me miss a +rising tide?” + +“O, gammon! there's tides to-morrow!” retorted Tommy. + +“And I'll tell you what,” added Carthew, “the breeze is failing fast, +and the sun will soon be down. We may get into all kinds of fresh mess +in the dark and with nothing but light airs.” + +“I don't deny it,” answered Wicks, and stood awhile as if in thought. +“But what I can't make out,” he began again, with agitation, “what I +can't make out is what you're made of! To stay in this place is beyond +me. There's the bloody sun going down--and to stay here is beyond me!” + +The others looked upon him with horrified surprise. This fall of their +chief pillar--this irrational passion in the practical man, suddenly +barred out of his true sphere, the sphere of action--shocked and daunted +them. But it gave to another and unseen hearer the chance for which he +had been waiting. Mac, on the striking of the brig, had crawled up the +companion, and he now showed himself and spoke up. + +“Captain Wicks,” said he, “it's me that brought this trouble on the lot +of ye. I'm sorry for ut, I ask all your pardons, and if there's any one +can say 'I forgive ye,' it'll make my soul the lighter.” + +Wicks stared upon the man in amaze; then his self-control returned to +him. “We're all in glass houses here,” he said; “we ain't going to turn +to and throw stones. I forgive you, sure enough; and much good may it do +you!” + +The others spoke to the same purpose. + +“I thank ye for ut, and 'tis done like gentlemen,” said Mac. “But +there's another thing I have upon my mind. I hope we're all Prodestan's +here?” + +It appeared they were; it seemed a small thing for the Protestant +religion to rejoice in! + +“Well, that's as it should be,” continued Mac. “And why shouldn't we say +the Lord's Prayer? There can't be no hurt in ut.” + +He had the same quiet, pleading, childlike way with him as in the +morning; and the others accepted his proposal, and knelt down without a +word. + +“Knale if ye like!” said he. “I'll stand.” And he covered his eyes. + +So the prayer was said to the accompaniment of the surf and seabirds, +and all rose refreshed and felt lightened of a load. Up to then, they +had cherished their guilty memories in private, or only referred to +them in the heat of a moment and fallen immediately silent. Now they had +faced their remorse in company, and the worst seemed over. Nor was it +only that. But the petition “Forgive us our trespasses,” falling in +so apposite after they had themselves forgiven the immediate author of +their miseries, sounded like an absolution. + +Tea was taken on deck in the time of the sunset, and not long after the +five castaways--castaways once more--lay down to sleep. + +Day dawned windless and hot. Their slumbers had been too profound to be +refreshing, and they woke listless, and sat up, and stared about them +with dull eyes. Only Wicks, smelling a hard day's work ahead, was more +alert. He went first to the well, sounded it once and then a second +time, and stood awhile with a grim look, so that all could see he was +dissatisfied. Then he shook himself, stripped to the buff, clambered on +the rail, drew himself up and raised his arms to plunge. The dive was +never taken. He stood instead transfixed, his eyes on the horizon. + +“Hand up that glass,” he said. + +In a trice they were all swarming aloft, the nude captain leading with +the glass. + +On the northern horizon was a finger of grey smoke, straight in the +windless air like a point of admiration. + +“What do you make it?” they asked of Wicks. + +“She's truck down,” he replied; “no telling yet. By the way the smoke +builds, she must be heading right here.” + +“What can she be?” + +“She might be a China mail,” returned Wicks, “and she might be a +blooming man-of-war, come to look for castaways. Here! This ain't the +time to stand staring. On deck, boys!” + +He was the first on deck, as he had been the first aloft, handed down +the ensign, bent it again to the signal halliards, and ran it up union +down. + +“Now hear me,” he said, jumping into his trousers, “and everything I say +you grip on to. If that's a man-of-war, she'll be in a tearing hurry; +all these ships are what don't do nothing and have their expenses paid. +That's our chance; for we'll go with them, and they won't take the time +to look twice or to ask a question. I'm Captain Trent; Carthew, you're +Goddedaal; Tommy, you're Hardy; Mac's Brown; Amalu--Hold hard! we can't +make a Chinaman of him! Ah Wing must have deserted; Amalu stowed away; +and I turned him to as cook, and was never at the bother to sign him. +Catch the idea? Say your names.” + +And that pale company recited their lesson earnestly. + +“What were the names of the other two?” he asked. “Him Carthew shot in +the companion, and the one I caught in the jaw on the main top-gallant?” + +“Holdorsen and Wallen,” said some one. + +“Well, they're drowned,” continued Wicks; “drowned alongside trying to +lower a boat. We had a bit of a squall last night: that's how we +got ashore.” He ran and squinted at the compass. “Squall out of +nor'-nor'-west-half-west; blew hard; every one in a mess, falls jammed, +and Holdorsen and Wallen spilt overboard. See? Clear your blooming +heads!” He was in his jacket now, and spoke with a feverish impatience +and contention that rang like anger. + +“But is it safe?” asked Tommy. + +“Safe?” bellowed the captain. “We're standing on the drop, you +moon-calf! If that ship's bound for China (which she don't look to be), +we're lost as soon as we arrive; if she's bound the other way, she comes +from China, don't she? Well, if there's a man on board of her that ever +clapped eyes on Trent or any blooming hand out of this brig, we'll all +be in irons in two hours. Safe! no, it ain't safe; it's a beggarly last +chance to shave the gallows, and that's what it is.” + +At this convincing picture, fear took hold on all. + +“Hadn't we a hundred times better stay by the brig?” cried Carthew. +“They would give us a hand to float her off.” + +“You'll make me waste this holy day in chattering!” cried Wicks. “Look +here, when I sounded the well this morning, there was two foot of water +there against eight inches last night. What's wrong? I don't know; might +be nothing; might be the worst kind of smash. And then, there we are in +for a thousand miles in an open boat, if that's your taste!” + +“But it may be nothing, and anyway their carpenters are bound to help us +repair her,” argued Carthew. + +“Moses Murphy!” cried the captain. “How did she strike? Bows on, +I believe. And she's down by the head now. If any carpenter comes +tinkering here, where'll he go first? Down in the forepeak, I suppose! +And then, how about all that blood among the chandlery? You would think +you were a lot of members of Parliament discussing Plimsoll; and you're +just a pack of murderers with the halter round your neck. Any other ass +got any time to waste? No? Thank God for that! Now, all hands! I'm going +below, and I leave you here on deck. You get the boat cover off that +boat; then you turn to and open the specie chest. There are five of us; +get five chests, and divide the specie equal among the five--put it +at the bottom--and go at it like tigers. Get blankets, or canvas, or +clothes, so it won't rattle. It'll make five pretty heavy chests, but we +can't help that. You, Carthew--dash me!--You, Mr. Goddedaal, come below. +We've our share before us.” + +And he cast another glance at the smoke, and hurried below with Carthew +at his heels. + +The logs were found in the main cabin behind the canary's cage; two of +them, one kept by Trent, one by Goddedaal. Wicks looked first at one, +then at the other, and his lip stuck out. + +“Can you forge hand of write?” he asked. + +“No,” said Carthew. + +“There's luck for you--no more can I!” cried the captain. “Hullo! here's +worse yet, here's this Goddedaal up to date; he must have filled it in +before supper. See for yourself: 'Smoke observed.--Captain Kirkup and +five hands of the schooner Currency Lass.' Ah! this is better,” he +added, turning to the other log. “The old man ain't written anything for +a clear fortnight. We'll dispose of your log altogether, Mr. Goddedaal, +and stick to the old man's--to mine, I mean; only I ain't going to write +it up, for reasons of my own. You are. You're going to sit down right +here and fill it in the way I tell you.” + +“How to explain the loss of mine?” asked Carthew. + +“You never kept one,” replied the captain. “Gross neglect of duty. +You'll catch it.” + +“And the change of writing?” resumed Carthew. “You began; why do you +stop and why do I come in? And you'll have to sign anyway.” + +“O! I've met with an accident and can't write,” replied Wicks. + +“An accident?” repeated Carthew. “It don't sound natural. What kind of +an accident?” + +Wicks spread his hand face-up on the table, and drove a knife through +his palm. + +“That kind of an accident,” said he. “There's a way to draw to windward +of most difficulties, if you've a head on your shoulders.” He began +to bind up his hand with a handkerchief, glancing the while over +Goddedaal's log. “Hullo!” he said, “this'll never do for us--this is an +impossible kind of a yarn. Here, to begin with, is this Captain Trent +trying some fancy course, leastways he's a thousand miles to south'ard +of the great circle. And here, it seems, he was close up with this +island on the sixth, sails all these days, and is close up with it again +by daylight on the eleventh.” + +“Goddedaal said they had the deuce's luck,” said Carthew. + +“Well, it don't look like real life--that's all I can say,” returned +Wicks. + +“It's the way it was, though,” argued Carthew. + +“So it is; and what the better are we for that, if it don't look so?” + cried the captain, sounding unwonted depths of art criticism. “Here! try +and see if you can't tie this bandage; I'm bleeding like a pig.” + +As Carthew sought to adjust the handkerchief, his patient seemed sunk +in a deep muse, his eye veiled, his mouth partly open. The job was yet +scarce done, when he sprang to his feet. + +“I have it,” he broke out, and ran on deck. “Here, boys!” he cried, “we +didn't come here on the eleventh; we came in here on the evening of the +sixth, and lay here ever since becalmed. As soon as you've done with +these chests,” he added, “you can turn to and roll out beef and water +breakers; it'll look more shipshape--like as if we were getting ready +for the boat voyage.” + +And he was back again in a moment, cooking the new log. Goddedaal's was +then carefully destroyed, and a hunt began for the ship's papers. Of +all the agonies of that breathless morning, this was perhaps the most +poignant. Here and there the two men searched, cursing, cannoning +together, streaming with heat, freezing with terror. News was bawled +down to them that the ship was indeed a man-of-war, that she was close +up, that she was lowering a boat; and still they sought in vain. By what +accident they missed the iron box with the money and accounts, is hard +to fancy; but they did. And the vital documents were found at last in +the pocket of Trent's shore-going coat, where he had left them when last +he came on board. + +Wicks smiled for the first time that morning. “None too soon,” said +he. “And now for it! Take these others for me; I'm afraid I'll get them +mixed if I keep both.” + +“What are they?” Carthew asked. + +“They're the Kirkup and Currency Lass papers,” he replied. “Pray God we +need 'em again!” + + +“Boat's inside the lagoon, sir,” hailed down Mac, who sat by the +skylight doing sentry while the others worked. + +“Time we were on deck, then, Mr. Goddedaal,” said Wicks. + +As they turned to leave the cabin, the canary burst into piercing song. + +“My God!” cried Carthew, with a gulp, “we can't leave that wretched bird +to starve. It was poor Goddedaal's.” + +“Bring the bally thing along!” cried the captain. + +And they went on deck. + +An ugly brute of a modern man-of-war lay just without the reef, now +quite inert, now giving a flap or two with her propeller. Nearer hand, +and just within, a big white boat came skimming to the stroke of many +oars, her ensign blowing at the stern. + +“One word more,” said Wicks, after he had taken in the scene. “Mac, +you've been in China ports? All right; then you can speak for yourself. +The rest of you I kept on board all the time we were in Hongkong, hoping +you would desert; but you fooled me and stuck to the brig. That'll make +your lying come easier.” + +The boat was now close at hand; a boy in the stern sheets was the +only officer, and a poor one plainly, for the men were talking as they +pulled. + +“Thank God, they've only sent a kind of a middy!” ejaculated Wicks. +“Here you, Hardy, stand for'ard! I'll have no deck hands on my +quarter-deck,” he cried, and the reproof braced the whole crew like a +cold douche. + +The boat came alongside with perfect neatness, and the boy officer +stepped on board, where he was respectfully greeted by Wicks. + +“You the master of this ship?” he asked. + +“Yes, sir,” said Wicks. “Trent is my name, and this is the Flying Scud +of Hull.” + +“You seem to have got into a mess,” said the officer. + +“If you'll step aft with me here, I'll tell you all there is of it,” + said Wicks. + +“Why, man, you're shaking!” cried the officer. + +“So would you, perhaps, if you had been in the same berth,” returned +Wicks; and he told the whole story of the rotten water, the long calm, +the squall, the seamen drowned; glibly and hotly; talking, with his head +in the lion's mouth, like one pleading in the dock. I heard the same +tale from the same narrator in the saloon in San Francisco; and even +then his bearing filled me with suspicion. But the officer was no +observer. + +“Well, the captain is in no end of a hurry,” said he; “but I was +instructed to give you all the assistance in my power, and signal back +for another boat if more hands were necessary. What can I do for you?” + +“O, we won't keep you no time,” replied Wicks cheerily. “We're all +ready, bless you--men's chests, chronometer, papers and all.” + +“Do you mean to leave her?” cried the officer. “She seems to me to lie +nicely; can't we get your ship off?” + +“So we could, and no mistake; but how we're to keep her afloat's another +question. Her bows is stove in,” replied Wicks. + +The officer coloured to the eyes. He was incompetent and knew he was; +thought he was already detected, and feared to expose himself again. +There was nothing further from his mind than that the captain should +deceive him; if the captain was pleased, why, so was he. “All right,” he +said. “Tell your men to get their chests aboard.” + +“Mr. Goddedaal, turn the hands to to get the chests aboard,” said Wicks. + +The four Currency Lasses had waited the while on tenter-hooks. This +welcome news broke upon them like the sun at midnight; and Hadden burst +into a storm of tears, sobbing aloud as he heaved upon the tackle. But +the work went none the less briskly forward; chests, men, and bundles +were got over the side with alacrity; the boat was shoved off; it moved +out of the long shadow of the Flying Scud, and its bows were pointed at +the passage. + +So much, then, was accomplished. The sham wreck had passed muster; they +were clear of her, they were safe away; and the water widened between +them and her damning evidences. On the other hand, they were drawing +nearer to the ship of war, which might very well prove to be their +prison and a hangman's cart to bear them to the gallows--of which they +had not yet learned either whence she came or whither she was bound; and +the doubt weighed upon their heart like mountains. + +It was Wicks who did the talking. The sound was small in Carthew's ears, +like the voices of men miles away, but the meaning of each word struck +home to him like a bullet. “What did you say your ship was?” inquired +Wicks. + +“Tempest, don't you know?” returned the officer. + +Don't you know? What could that mean? Perhaps nothing: perhaps that the +ships had met already. Wicks took his courage in both hands. “Where is +she bound?” he asked. + +“O, we're just looking in at all these miserable islands here,” said the +officer. “Then we bear up for San Francisco.” + +“O, yes, you're from China ways, like us?” pursued Wicks. + +“Hong Kong,” said the officer, and spat over the side. + +Hong Kong. Then the game was up; as soon as they set foot on board, +they would be seized; the wreck would be examined, the blood found, the +lagoon perhaps dredged, and the bodies of the dead would reappear to +testify. An impulse almost incontrollable bade Carthew rise from the +thwart, shriek out aloud, and leap overboard; it seemed so vain a thing +to dissemble longer, to dally with the inevitable, to spin out some +hundred seconds more of agonised suspense, with shame and death thus +visibly approaching. But the indomitable Wicks persevered. His face +was like a skull, his voice scarce recognisable; the dullest of men and +officers (it seemed) must have remarked that telltale countenance and +broken utterance. And still he persevered, bent upon certitude. + +“Nice place, Hong Kong?” he said. + +“I'm sure I don't know,” said the officer. “Only a day and a half there; +called for orders and came straight on here. Never heard of such a +beastly cruise.” And he went on describing and lamenting the untoward +fortunes of the Tempest. + +But Wicks and Carthew heeded him no longer. They lay back on the gunnel, +breathing deep, sunk in a stupor of the body: the mind within still +nimbly and agreeably at work, measuring the past danger, exulting in the +present relief, numbering with ecstasy their ultimate chances of escape. +For the voyage in the man-of-war they were now safe; yet a few more days +of peril, activity, and presence of mind in San Francisco, and the +whole horrid tale was blotted out; and Wicks again became Kirkup, and +Goddedaal became Carthew--men beyond all shot of possible suspicion, men +who had never heard of the Flying Scud, who had never been in sight of +Midway Reef. + +So they came alongside, under many craning heads of seamen and +projecting mouths of guns; so they climbed on board somnambulous, and +looked blindly about them at the tall spars, the white decks, and the +crowding ship's company, and heard men as from far away, and answered +them at random. + +And then a hand fell softly on Carthew's shoulder. + + +“Why, Norrie, old chappie, where have you dropped from? All the world's +been looking for you. Don't you know you've come into your kingdom?” + +He turned, beheld the face of his old schoolmate Sebright, and fell +unconscious at his feet. + +The doctor was attending him, a while later, in Lieutenant Sebright's +cabin, when he came to himself. He opened his eyes, looked hard in the +strange face, and spoke with a kind of solemn vigour. + +“Brown must go the same road,” he said; “now or never.” And then paused, +and his reason coming to him with more clearness, spoke again: “What was +I saying? Where am I? Who are you?” + +“I am the doctor of the Tempest,” was the reply. “You are in Lieutenant +Sebright's berth, and you may dismiss all concern from your mind. Your +troubles are over, Mr. Carthew.” + +“Why do you call me that?” he asked. “Ah, I remember--Sebright knew me! +O!” and he groaned and shook. “Send down Wicks to me; I must see Wicks +at once!” he cried, and seized the doctor's wrist with unconscious +violence. + +“All right,” said the doctor. “Let's make a bargain. You swallow down +this draught, and I'll go and fetch Wicks.” + +And he gave the wretched man an opiate that laid him out within ten +minutes and in all likelihood preserved his reason. + +It was the doctor's next business to attend to Mac; and he found +occasion, while engaged upon his arm, to make the man repeat the names +of the rescued crew. It was now the turn of the captain, and there is +no doubt he was no longer the man that we have seen; sudden relief, the +sense of perfect safety, a square meal and a good glass of grog, had all +combined to relax his vigilance and depress his energy. + +“When was this done?” asked the doctor, looking at the wound. + +“More than a week ago,” replied Wicks, thinking singly of his log. + +“Hey?” cried the doctor, and he raised his hand and looked the captain +in the eyes. + +“I don't remember exactly,” faltered Wicks. + +And at this remarkable falsehood, the suspicions of the doctor were at +once quadrupled. + +“By the way, which of you is called Wicks?” he asked easily. + +“What's that?” snapped the captain, falling white as paper. + +“Wicks,” repeated the doctor; “which of you is he? that's surely a plain +question.” + +Wicks stared upon his questioner in silence. + +“Which is Brown, then?” pursued the doctor. + +“What are you talking of? what do you mean by this?” cried Wicks, +snatching his half-bandaged hand away, so that the blood sprinkled in +the surgeon's face. + +He did not trouble to remove it. Looking straight at his victim, he +pursued his questions. “Why must Brown go the same way?” he asked. + +Wicks fell trembling on a locker. “Carthew's told you,” he cried. + +“No,” replied the doctor, “he has not. But he and you between you have +set me thinking, and I think there's something wrong.” + +“Give me some grog,” said Wicks. “I'd rather tell than have you find +out. I'm damned if it's half as bad as what any one would think.” + +And with the help of a couple of strong grogs, the tragedy of the Flying +Scud was told for the first time. + +It was a fortunate series of accidents that brought the story to the +doctor. He understood and pitied the position of these wretched men, and +came whole-heartedly to their assistance. He and Wicks and Carthew (so +soon as he was recovered) held a hundred councils and prepared a policy +for San Francisco. It was he who certified “Goddedaal” unfit to be moved +and smuggled Carthew ashore under cloud of night; it was he who kept +Wicks's wound open that he might sign with his left hand; he who took +all their Chile silver and (in the course of the first day) got it +converted for them into portable gold. He used his influence in the +wardroom to keep the tongues of the young officers in order, so that +Carthew's identification was kept out of the papers. And he rendered +another service yet more important. He had a friend in San Francisco, +a millionaire; to this man he privately presented Carthew as a young +gentleman come newly into a huge estate, but troubled with Jew debts +which he was trying to settle on the quiet. The millionaire came readily +to help; and it was with his money that the wrecker gang was to be +fought. What was his name, out of a thousand guesses? It was Douglas +Longhurst. + +As long as the Currency Lasses could all disappear under fresh names, +it did not greatly matter if the brig were bought, or any small +discrepancies should be discovered in the wrecking. The identification +of one of their number had changed all that. The smallest scandal must +now direct attention to the movements of Norris. It would be asked how +he who had sailed in a schooner from Sydney, had turned up so shortly +after in a brig out of Hong Kong; and from one question to another all +his original shipmates were pretty sure to be involved. Hence arose +naturally the idea of preventing danger, profiting by Carthew's +new-found wealth, and buying the brig under an alias; and it was put in +hand with equal energy and caution. Carthew took lodgings alone under +a false name, picked up Bellairs at random, and commissioned him to buy +the wreck. + +“What figure, if you please?” the lawyer asked. + +“I want it bought,” replied Carthew. “I don't mind about the price.” + +“Any price is no price,” said Bellairs. “Put a name upon it.” + +“Call it ten thousand pounds then, if you like!” said Carthew. + +In the meanwhile, the captain had to walk the streets, appear in the +consulate, be cross-examined by Lloyd's agent, be badgered about his +lost accounts, sign papers with his left hand, and repeat his lies to +every skipper in San Francisco: not knowing at what moment he might +run into the arms of some old friend who should hail him by the name of +Wicks, or some new enemy who should be in a position to deny him that +of Trent. And the latter incident did actually befall him, but was +transformed by his stout countenance into an element of strength. It was +in the consulate (of all untoward places) that he suddenly heard a big +voice inquiring for Captain Trent. He turned with the customary sinking +at his heart. + +“YOU ain't Captain Trent!” said the stranger, falling back. “Why, what's +all this? They tell me you're passing off as Captain Trent--Captain +Jacob Trent--a man I knew since I was that high.” + +“O, you're thinking of my uncle as had the bank in Cardiff,” replied +Wicks, with desperate aplomb. + +“I declare I never knew he had a nevvy!” said the stranger. + +“Well, you see he has!” says Wicks. + +“And how is the old man?” asked the other. + +“Fit as a fiddle,” answered Wicks, and was opportunely summoned by the +clerk. + +This alert was the only one until the morning of the sale, when he +was once more alarmed by his interview with Jim; and it was with some +anxiety that he attended the sale, knowing only that Carthew was to +be represented, but neither who was to represent him nor what were the +instructions given. I suppose Captain Wicks is a good life. In spite of +his personal appearance and his own known uneasiness, I suppose he is +secure from apoplexy, or it must have struck him there and then, as he +looked on at the stages of that insane sale and saw the old brig and her +not very valuable cargo knocked down at last to a total stranger for ten +thousand pounds. + +It had been agreed that he was to avoid Carthew, and above all Carthew's +lodging, so that no connexion might be traced between the crew and the +pseudonymous purchaser. But the hour for caution was gone by, and he +caught a tram and made all speed to Mission Street. + +Carthew met him in the door. + +“Come away, come away from here,” said Carthew; and when they were clear +of the house, “All's up!” he added. + + +“O, you've heard of the sale, then?” said Wicks. + +“The sale!” cried Carthew. “I declare I had forgotten it.” And he told +of the voice in the telephone, and the maddening question: “Why did you +want to buy the Flying Scud?” + +This circumstance, coming on the back of the monstrous improbabilities +of the sale, was enough to have shaken the reason of Immanuel Kant. The +earth seemed banded together to defeat them; the stones and the boys on +the street appeared to be in possession of their guilty secret. Flight +was their one thought. The treasure of the Currency Lass they packed in +waist-belts, expressed their chests to an imaginary address in British +Columbia, and left San Francisco the same afternoon, booked for Los +Angeles. + +The next day they pursued their retreat by the Southern Pacific route, +which Carthew followed on his way to England; but the other three +branched off for Mexico. + + + +EPILOGUE: + +TO WILL H. LOW. + +DEAR LOW: The other day (at Manihiki of all places) I had the pleasure +to meet Dodd. We sat some two hours in the neat, little, toy-like +church, set with pews after the manner of Europe, and inlaid with +mother-of-pearl in the style (I suppose) of the New Jerusalem. The +natives, who are decidedly the most attractive inhabitants of this +planet, crowded round us in the pew, and fawned upon and patted us; and +here it was I put my questions, and Dodd answered me. + +I first carried him back to the night in Barbizon when Carthew told his +story, and asked him what was done about Bellairs. It seemed he had +put the matter to his friend at once, and that Carthew took it with an +inimitable lightness. “He's poor, and I'm rich,” he had said. “I can +afford to smile at him. I go somewhere else, that's all--somewhere +that's far away and dear to get to. Persia would be found to answer, I +fancy. No end of a place, Persia. Why not come with me?” And they had +left the next afternoon for Constantinople, on their way to Teheran. +Of the shyster, it is only known (by a newspaper paragraph) that he +returned somehow to San Francisco and died in the hospital. + +“Now there's another point,” said I. “There you are off to Persia with +a millionaire, and rich yourself. How come you here in the South Seas, +running a trader?” + +He said, with a smile, that I had not yet heard of Jim's last +bankruptcy. “I was about cleaned out once more,” he said; “and then it +was that Carthew had this schooner built, and put me in as supercargo. +It's his yacht and it's my trader; and as nearly all the expenses go to +the yacht, I do pretty well. As for Jim, he's right again: one of the +best businesses, they say, in the West, fruit, cereals, and real estate; +and he has a Tartar of a partner now--Nares, no less. Nares will keep +him straight, Nares has a big head. They have their country-places next +door at Saucelito, and I stayed with them time about, the last time I +was on the coast. Jim had a paper of his own--I think he has a notion +of being senator one of these days--and he wanted me to throw up the +schooner and come and write his editorials. He holds strong views on the +State Constitution, and so does Mamie.” + +“And what became of the other three Currency Lasses after they left +Carthew?” I inquired. + +“Well, it seems they had a huge spree in the city of Mexico,” said Dodd; +“and then Hadden and the Irishman took a turn at the gold fields in +Venezuela, and Wicks went on alone to Valparaiso. There's a Kirkup in +the Chilean navy to this day, I saw the name in the papers about the +Balmaceda war. Hadden soon wearied of the mines, and I met him the other +day in Sydney. The last news he had from Venezuela, Mac had been knocked +over in an attack on the gold train. So there's only the three of them +left, for Amalu scarcely counts. He lives on his own land in Maui, at +the side of Hale-a-ka-la, where he keeps Goddedaal's canary; and they +say he sticks to his dollars, which is a wonder in a Kanaka. He had +a considerable pile to start with, for not only Hemstead's share but +Carthew's was divided equally among the other four--Mac being counted.” + +“What did that make for him altogether?” I could not help asking, for I +had been diverted by the number of calculations in his narrative. + +“One hundred and twenty-eight pounds nineteen shillings and eleven pence +halfpenny,” he replied with composure. “That's leaving out what little +he won at Van John. It's something for a Kanaka, you know.” + +And about that time we were at last obliged to yield to the +solicitations of our native admirers, and go to the pastor's house to +drink green cocoanuts. The ship I was in was sailing the same night, for +Dodd had been beforehand and got all the shell in the island; and though +he pressed me to desert and return with him to Auckland (whither he was +now bound to pick up Carthew) I was firm in my refusal. + +The truth is, since I have been mixed up with Havens and Dodd in the +design to publish the latter's narrative, I seem to feel no want for +Carthew's society. Of course I am wholly modern in sentiment, and think +nothing more noble than to publish people's private affairs at so much a +line. They like it, and if they don't, they ought to. But a still small +voice keeps telling me they will not like it always, and perhaps not +always stand it. Memory besides supplies me with the face of a pressman +(in the sacred phrase) who proved altogether too modern for one of his +neighbours, and + + + Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum + +as it were, marshalling us our way. I am in no haste to + + --nos proecedens-- + +be that man's successor. Carthew has a record as “a clane shot,” and for +some years Samoa will be good enough for me. + +We agreed to separate, accordingly; but he took me on board in his own +boat with the hard-wood fittings, and entertained me on the way with +an account of his late visit to Butaritari, whither he had gone on +an errand for Carthew, to see how Topelius was getting along, and, if +necessary, to give him a helping hand. But Topelius was in great force, +and had patronised and--well--out-manoeuvred him. + +“Carthew will be pleased,” said Dodd; “for there's no doubt they +oppressed the man abominably when they were in the Currency Lass. It's +diamond cut diamond now.” + + +This, I think, was the most of the news I got from my friend Loudon; and +I hope I was well inspired, and have put all the questions to which you +would be curious to hear an answer. + +But there is one more that I daresay you are burning to put to myself; +and that is, what your own name is doing in this place, cropping up (as +it were uncalled-for) on the stern of our poor ship? If you were not +born in Arcadia, you linger in fancy on its margin; your thoughts are +busied with the flutes of antiquity, with daffodils, and the classic +poplar, and the footsteps of the nymphs, and the elegant and moving +aridity of ancient art. Why dedicate to you a tale of a caste +so modern;--full of details of our barbaric manners and unstable +morals;--full of the need and the lust of money, so that there is scarce +a page in which the dollars do not jingle;--full of the unrest and +movement of our century, so that the reader is hurried from place to +place and sea to sea, and the book is less a romance than a panorama--in +the end, as blood-bespattered as an epic? + +Well, you are a man interested in all problems of art, even the most +vulgar; and it may amuse you to hear the genesis and growth of _The +Wrecker_. On board the schooner Equator, almost within sight of the +Johnstone Islands (if anybody knows where these are) and on a moonlit +night when it was a joy to be alive, the authors were amused with +several stories of the sale of wrecks. The subject tempted them; and +they sat apart in the alley-way to discuss its possibilities. “What a +tangle it would make,” suggested one, “if the wrong crew were aboard. +But how to get the wrong crew there?”--“I have it!” cried the other; +“the so-and-so affair!” For not so many months before, and not so many +hundred miles from where we were then sailing, a proposition almost +tantamount to that of Captain Trent had been made by a British skipper +to some British castaways. + +Before we turned in, the scaffolding of the tale had been put together. +But the question of treatment was as usual more obscure. We had long +been at once attracted and repelled by that very modern form of the +police novel or mystery story, which consists in beginning your yarn +anywhere but at the beginning, and finishing it anywhere but at the +end; attracted by its peculiar interest when done, and the peculiar +difficulties that attend its execution; repelled by that appearance +of insincerity and shallowness of tone, which seems its inevitable +drawback. For the mind of the reader, always bent to pick up clews, +receives no impression of reality or life, rather of an airless, +elaborate mechanism; and the book remains enthralling, but +insignificant, like a game of chess, not a work of human art. It seemed +the cause might lie partly in the abrupt attack; and that if the tale +were gradually approached, some of the characters introduced (as it +were) beforehand, and the book started in the tone of a novel of manners +and experience briefly treated, this defect might be lessened and our +mystery seem to inhere in life. The tone of the age, its movement, the +mingling of races and classes in the dollar hunt, the fiery and not +quite unromantic struggle for existence with its changing trades and +scenery, and two types in particular, that of the American handy-man of +business and that of the Yankee merchant sailor--we agreed to dwell upon +at some length, and make the woof to our not very precious warp. Hence +Dodd's father, and Pinkerton, and Nares, and the Dromedary picnics, and +the railway work in New South Wales--the last an unsolicited testimonial +from the powers that be, for the tale was half written before I saw +Carthew's squad toil in the rainy cutting at South Clifton, or heard +from the engineer of his “young swell.” After we had invented at some +expense of time this method of approaching and fortifying our police +novel, it occurred to us it had been invented previously by some one +else, and was in fact--however painfully different the results may +seem--the method of Charles Dickens in his later work. + +I see you staring. Here, you will say, is a prodigious quantity of +theory to our halfpenny worth of police novel; and withal not a shadow +of an answer to your question. + +Well, some of us like theory. After so long a piece of practice, these +may be indulged for a few pages. And the answer is at hand. It was +plainly desirable, from every point of view of convenience and contrast, +that our hero and narrator should partly stand aside from those with +whom he mingles, and be but a pressed-man in the dollar hunt. Thus it +was that Loudon Dodd became a student of the plastic arts, and that our +globe-trotting story came to visit Paris and look in at Barbizon. And +thus it is, dear Low, that your name appears in the address of this +epilogue. + +For sure, if any person can here appreciate and read between the lines, +it must be you--and one other, our friend. All the dominos will be +transparent to your better knowledge; the statuary contract will be to +you a piece of ancient history; and you will not have now heard for the +first time of the dangers of Roussillon. Dead leaves from the Bas Breau, +echoes from Lavenue's and the Rue Racine, memories of a common past, let +these be your bookmarkers as you read. And if you care for naught else +in the story, be a little pleased to breathe once more for a moment the +airs of our youth. + +The End. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wrecker, by +Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1024 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1025-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1025-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..af6cb79e --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1025-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,178 @@ + + + + + +404 | Project Gutenberg + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + +
+ +
+ +
+
+ + + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+
+ +
+ About Project Gutenberg + Contact Us + History & Philosophy + Kindle & eReaders + Help Pages + Offline Catalogs + Donate +
+
+ +
+ Frequently Downloaded + Main Categories + Reading Lists + Search Options +
+
+ +
+ Frequently Downloaded + Main Categories +
+
+
+ +

Error 404

+ +

Sorry, but our website does not have the page you requested.

+ +

Maybe you have just a wrong url. Go to www.gutenberg.org to see whether the error persists.

+ +

If you think something is broken, follow the “Contact Information” link at the bottom of this page if you would like to report it.

+ + +
+
+
+ + + ibiblio + +
+ + + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1026-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1026-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..43f0c022 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1026-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4290 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1026 *** + + The Diary of + a Nobody + + + BY + GEORGE GROSSMITH + AND + WEEDON GROSSMITH + + WITH ILLUSTRATIONS + BY + WEEDON GROSSMITH + + A NEW EDITION + + * * * * * + + BRISTOL + J. W. ARROWSMITH, PRINTER, QUAY STREET + + LONDON + SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & COMPANY LIMITED + + + + +INTRODUCTION BY MR. POOTER + + +_Why should I not publish my diary_? _I have often seen reminiscences of +people I have never even heard of_, _and I fail to see_—_because I do not +happen to be a_ ‘_Somebody_’—_why my diary should not be interesting_. +_My only regret is that I did not commence it when I was a youth_. + + CHARLES POOTER. + +_The Laurels_, + _Brickfield Terrace_, + _Holloway_. + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +We settle down in our new home, and I resolve to keep a diary. Tradesmen +trouble us a bit, so does the scraper. The Curate calls and pays me a +great compliment. + +My dear wife Carrie and I have just been a week in our new house, “The +Laurels,” Brickfield Terrace, Holloway—a nice six-roomed residence, not +counting basement, with a front breakfast-parlour. We have a little +front garden; and there is a flight of ten steps up to the front door, +which, by-the-by, we keep locked with the chain up. Cummings, Gowing, +and our other intimate friends always come to the little side entrance, +which saves the servant the trouble of going up to the front door, +thereby taking her from her work. We have a nice little back garden +which runs down to the railway. We were rather afraid of the noise of +the trains at first, but the landlord said we should not notice them +after a bit, and took £2 off the rent. He was certainly right; and +beyond the cracking of the garden wall at the bottom, we have suffered no +inconvenience. + +After my work in the City, I like to be at home. What’s the good of a +home, if you are never in it? “Home, Sweet Home,” that’s my motto. I am +always in of an evening. Our old friend Gowing may drop in without +ceremony; so may Cummings, who lives opposite. My dear wife Caroline and +I are pleased to see them, if they like to drop in on us. But Carrie and +I can manage to pass our evenings together without friends. There is +always something to be done: a tin-tack here, a Venetian blind to put +straight, a fan to nail up, or part of a carpet to nail down—all of which +I can do with my pipe in my mouth; while Carrie is not above putting a +button on a shirt, mending a pillow-case, or practising the “Sylvia +Gavotte” on our new cottage piano (on the three years’ system), +manufactured by W. Bilkson (in small letters), from Collard and Collard +(in very large letters). It is also a great comfort to us to know that +our boy Willie is getting on so well in the Bank at Oldham. We should +like to see more of him. Now for my diary:— + + * * * * * + +APRIL 3.—Tradesmen called for custom, and I promised Farmerson, the +ironmonger, to give him a turn if I wanted any nails or tools. +By-the-by, that reminds me there is no key to our bedroom door, and the +bells must be seen to. The parlour bell is broken, and the front door +rings up in the servant’s bedroom, which is ridiculous. Dear friend +Gowing dropped in, but wouldn’t stay, saying there was an infernal smell +of paint. + +APRIL 4. Tradesmen still calling; Carrie being out, I arranged to deal +with Horwin, who seemed a civil butcher with a nice clean shop. Ordered +a shoulder of mutton for to-morrow, to give him a trial. Carrie arranged +with Borset, the butterman, and ordered a pound of fresh butter, and a +pound and a half of salt ditto for kitchen, and a shilling’s worth of +eggs. In the evening, Cummings unexpectedly dropped in to show me a +meerschaum pipe he had won in a raffle in the City, and told me to handle +it carefully, as it would spoil the colouring if the hand was moist. He +said he wouldn’t stay, as he didn’t care much for the smell of the paint, +and fell over the scraper as he went out. Must get the scraper removed, +or else I shall get into a _scrape_. I don’t often make jokes. + +APRIL 5.—Two shoulders of mutton arrived, Carrie having arranged with +another butcher without consulting me. Gowing called, and fell over +scraper coming in. _Must_ get that scraper removed. + +APRIL 6.—Eggs for breakfast simply shocking; sent them back to Borset +with my compliments, and he needn’t call any more for orders. Couldn’t +find umbrella, and though it was pouring with rain, had to go without it. +Sarah said Mr. Gowing must have took it by mistake last night, as there +was a stick in the ‘all that didn’t belong to nobody. In the evening, +hearing someone talking in a loud voice to the servant in the downstairs +hall, I went out to see who it was, and was surprised to find it was +Borset, the butterman, who was both drunk and offensive. Borset, on +seeing me, said he would be hanged if he would ever serve City clerks any +more—the game wasn’t worth the candle. I restrained my feelings, and +quietly remarked that I thought it was _possible_ for a city clerk to be +a _gentleman_. He replied he was very glad to hear it, and wanted to +know whether I had ever come across one, for _he_ hadn’t. He left the +house, slamming the door after him, which nearly broke the fanlight; and +I heard him fall over the scraper, which made me feel glad I hadn’t +removed it. When he had gone, I thought of a splendid answer I ought to +have given him. However, I will keep it for another occasion. + +APRIL 7.—Being Saturday, I looked forward to being home early, and +putting a few things straight; but two of our principals at the office +were absent through illness, and I did not get home till seven. Found +Borset waiting. He had been three times during the day to apologise for +his conduct last night. He said he was unable to take his Bank Holiday +last Monday, and took it last night instead. He begged me to accept his +apology, and a pound of fresh butter. He seems, after all, a decent sort +of fellow; so I gave him an order for some fresh eggs, with a request +that on this occasion they _should_ be fresh. I am afraid we shall have +to get some new stair-carpets after all; our old ones are not quite wide +enough to meet the paint on either side. Carrie suggests that we might +ourselves broaden the paint. I will see if we can match the colour (dark +chocolate) on Monday. + +APRIL 8, Sunday.—After Church, the Curate came back with us. I sent +Carrie in to open front door, which we do not use except on special +occasions. She could not get it open, and after all my display, I had to +take the Curate (whose name, by-the-by, I did not catch,) round the side +entrance. He caught his foot in the scraper, and tore the bottom of his +trousers. Most annoying, as Carrie could not well offer to repair them +on a Sunday. After dinner, went to sleep. Took a walk round the garden, +and discovered a beautiful spot for sowing mustard-and-cress and +radishes. Went to Church again in the evening: walked back with the +Curate. Carrie noticed he had got on the same pair of trousers, only +repaired. He wants me to take round the plate, which I think a great +compliment. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Tradesmen and the scraper still troublesome. Gowing rather tiresome with +his complaints of the paint. I make one of the best jokes of my life. +Delights of Gardening. Mr. Stillbrook, Gowing, Cummings, and I have a +little misunderstanding. Sarah makes me look a fool before Cummings. + +APRIL 9.—Commenced the morning badly. The butcher, whom we decided _not_ +to arrange with, called and blackguarded me in the most uncalled-for +manner. He began by abusing me, and saying he did not want my custom. I +simply said: “Then what are you making all this fuss about it for?” And +he shouted out at the top of his voice, so that all the neighbours could +hear: “Pah! go along. Ugh! I could buy up ‘things’ like you by the +dozen!” + +I shut the door, and was giving Carrie to understand that this +disgraceful scene was entirely her fault, when there was a violent +kicking at the door, enough to break the panels. It was the blackguard +butcher again, who said he had cut his foot over the scraper, and would +immediately bring an action against me. Called at Farmerson’s, the +ironmonger, on my way to town, and gave him the job of moving the scraper +and repairing the bells, thinking it scarcely worth while to trouble the +landlord with such a trifling matter. + +Arrived home tired and worried. Mr. Putley, a painter and decorator, who +had sent in a card, said he could not match the colour on the stairs, as +it contained Indian carmine. He said he spent half-a-day calling at +warehouses to see if he could get it. He suggested he should entirely +repaint the stairs. It would cost very little more; if he tried to match +it, he could only make a bad job of it. It would be more satisfactory to +him and to us to have the work done properly. I consented, but felt I +had been talked over. Planted some mustard-and-cress and radishes, and +went to bed at nine. + +APRIL 10.—Farmerson came round to attend to the scraper himself. He +seems a very civil fellow. He says he does not usually conduct such +small jobs personally, but for me he would do so. I thanked him, and +went to town. It is disgraceful how late some of the young clerks are at +arriving. I told three of them that if Mr. Perkupp, the principal, heard +of it, they might be discharged. + +Pitt, a monkey of seventeen, who has only been with us six weeks, told me +“to keep my hair on!” I informed him I had had the honour of being in +the firm twenty years, to which he insolently replied that I “looked it.” +I gave him an indignant look, and said: “I demand from you some respect, +sir.” He replied: “All right, go on demanding.” I would not argue with +him any further. You cannot argue with people like that. In the evening +Gowing called, and repeated his complaint about the smell of paint. +Gowing is sometimes very tedious with his remarks, and not always +cautious; and Carrie once very properly reminded him that she was +present. + +APRIL 11.—Mustard-and-cress and radishes not come up yet. To-day was a +day of annoyances. I missed the quarter-to-nine ’bus to the City, +through having words with the grocer’s boy, who for the second time had +the impertinence to bring his basket to the hall-door, and had left the +marks of his dirty boots on the fresh-cleaned door-steps. He said he had +knocked at the side door with his knuckles for a quarter of an hour. I +knew Sarah, our servant, could not hear this, as she was upstairs doing +the bedrooms, so asked the boy why he did not ring the bell? He replied +that he did pull the bell, but the handle came off in his hand. + +I was half-an-hour late at the office, a thing that has never happened to +me before. There has recently been much irregularity in the attendance +of the clerks, and Mr. Perkupp, our principal, unfortunately chose this +very morning to pounce down upon us early. Someone had given the tip to +the others. The result was that I was the only one late of the lot. +Buckling, one of the senior clerks, was a brick, and I was saved by his +intervention. As I passed by Pitt’s desk, I heard him remark to his +neighbour: “How disgracefully late some of the head clerks arrive!” This +was, of course, meant for me. I treated the observation with silence, +simply giving him a look, which unfortunately had the effect of making +both of the clerks laugh. Thought afterwards it would have been more +dignified if I had pretended not to have heard him at all. Cummings +called in the evening, and we played dominoes. + +APRIL 12.—Mustard-and-cress and radishes not come up yet. Left Farmerson +repairing the scraper, but when I came home found three men working. I +asked the meaning of it, and Farmerson said that in making a fresh hole +he had penetrated the gas-pipe. He said it was a most ridiculous place +to put the gas-pipe, and the man who did it evidently knew nothing about +his business. I felt his excuse was no consolation for the expense I +shall be put to. + +In the evening, after tea, Gowing dropped in, and we had a smoke together +in the breakfast-parlour. Carrie joined us later, but did not stay long, +saying the smoke was too much for her. It was also rather too much for +me, for Gowing had given me what he called a green cigar, one that his +friend Shoemach had just brought over from America. The cigar didn’t +look green, but I fancy I must have done so; for when I had smoked a +little more than half I was obliged to retire on the pretext of telling +Sarah to bring in the glasses. + +I took a walk round the garden three or four times, feeling the need of +fresh air. On returning Gowing noticed I was not smoking: offered me +another cigar, which I politely declined. Gowing began his usual +sniffing, so, anticipating him, I said: “You’re not going to complain of +the smell of paint again?” He said: “No, not this time; but I’ll tell +you what, I distinctly smell dry rot.” I don’t often make jokes, but I +replied: “You’re talking a lot of _dry rot_ yourself.” I could not help +roaring at this, and Carrie said her sides quite ached with laughter. I +never was so immensely tickled by anything I have ever said before. I +actually woke up twice during the night, and laughed till the bed shook. + +APRIL 13.—An extraordinary coincidence: Carrie had called in a woman to +make some chintz covers for our drawing-room chairs and sofa to prevent +the sun fading the green rep of the furniture. I saw the woman, and +recognised her as a woman who used to work years ago for my old aunt at +Clapham. It only shows how small the world is. + +APRIL 14.—Spent the whole of the afternoon in the garden, having this +morning picked up at a bookstall for fivepence a capital little book, in +good condition, on _Gardening_. I procured and sowed some half-hardy +annuals in what I fancy will be a warm, sunny border. I thought of a +joke, and called out Carrie. Carrie came out rather testy, I thought. I +said: “I have just discovered we have got a lodging-house.” She replied: +“How do you mean?” I said: “Look at the _boarders_.” Carrie said: “Is +that all you wanted me for?” I said: “Any other time you would have +laughed at my little pleasantry.” Carrie said: “Certainly—_at any other +time_, but not when I am busy in the house.” The stairs looked very +nice. Gowing called, and said the stairs looked _all right_, but it made +the banisters look _all wrong_, and suggested a coat of paint on them +also, which Carrie quite agreed with. I walked round to Putley, and +fortunately he was out, so I had a good excuse to let the banisters +slide. By-the-by, that is rather funny. + +APRIL 15, Sunday.—At three o’clock Cummings and Gowing called for a good +long walk over Hampstead and Finchley, and brought with them a friend +named Stillbrook. We walked and chatted together, except Stillbrook, who +was always a few yards behind us staring at the ground and cutting at the +grass with his stick. + +As it was getting on for five, we four held a consultation, and Gowing +suggested that we should make for “The Cow and Hedge” and get some tea. +Stillbrook said: “A brandy-and-soda was good enough for him.” I reminded +them that all public-houses were closed till six o’clock. Stillbrook +said, “That’s all right—_bona-fide_ travellers.” + +We arrived; and as I was trying to pass, the man in charge of the gate +said: “Where from?” I replied: “Holloway.” He immediately put up his +arm, and declined to let me pass. I turned back for a moment, when I saw +Stillbrook, closely followed by Cummings and Gowing, make for the +entrance. I watched them, and thought I would have a good laugh at their +expense, I heard the porter say: “Where from?” When, to my surprise, in +fact disgust, Stillbrook replied: “Blackheath,” and the three were +immediately admitted. + +Gowing called to me across the gate, and said: “We shan’t be a minute.” +I waited for them the best part of an hour. When they appeared they were +all in most excellent spirits, and the only one who made an effort to +apologise was Mr. Stillbrook, who said to me: “It was very rough on you +to be kept waiting, but we had another spin for S. and B.’s.” I walked +home in silence; I couldn’t speak to them. I felt very dull all the +evening, but deemed it advisable _not_ to say anything to Carrie about +the matter. + +APRIL 16.—After business, set to work in the garden. When it got dark I +wrote to Cummings and Gowing (who neither called, for a wonder; perhaps +they were ashamed of themselves) about yesterday’s adventure at “The Cow +and Hedge.” Afterwards made up my mind not to write _yet_. + +APRIL 17.—Thought I would write a kind little note to Gowing and Cummings +about last Sunday, and warning them against Mr. Stillbrook. Afterwards, +thinking the matter over, tore up the letters and determined not to +_write_ at all, but to _speak_ quietly to them. Dumfounded at receiving +a sharp letter from Cummings, saying that both he and Gowing had been +waiting for an explanation of _my_ (mind you, MY) extraordinary conduct +coming home on Sunday. At last I wrote: “I thought I was the aggrieved +party; but as I freely forgive you, you—feeling yourself aggrieved—should +bestow forgiveness on me.” I have copied this _verbatim_ in the diary, +because I think it is one of the most perfect and thoughtful sentences I +have ever written. I posted the letter, but in my own heart I felt I was +actually apologising for having been insulted. + +APRIL 18.—Am in for a cold. Spent the whole day at the office sneezing. +In the evening, the cold being intolerable, sent Sarah out for a bottle +of Kinahan. Fell asleep in the arm-chair, and woke with the shivers. +Was startled by a loud knock at the front door. Carrie awfully flurried. +Sarah still out, so went up, opened the door, and found it was only +Cummings. Remembered the grocer’s boy had again broken the side-bell. +Cummings squeezed my hand, and said: “I’ve just seen Gowing. All right. +Say no more about it.” There is no doubt they are both under the +impression I have apologised. + +While playing dominoes with Cummings in the parlour, he said: “By-the-by, +do you want any wine or spirits? My cousin Merton has just set up in the +trade, and has a splendid whisky, four years in bottle, at thirty-eight +shillings. It is worth your while laying down a few dozen of it.” I +told him my cellars, which were very small, were full up. To my horror, +at that very moment, Sarah entered the room, and putting a bottle of +whisky, wrapped in a dirty piece of newspaper, on the table in front of +us, said: “Please, sir, the grocer says he ain’t got no more Kinahan, but +you’ll find this very good at two-and-six, with twopence returned on the +bottle; and, please, did you want any more sherry? as he has some at +one-and-three, as dry as a nut!” + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +A conversation with Mr. Merton on Society. Mr. and Mrs. James, of +Sutton, come up. A miserable evening at the Tank Theatre. Experiments +with enamel paint. I make another good joke; but Gowing and Cummings are +unnecessarily offended. I paint the bath red, with unexpected result. + +APRIL 19.—Cummings called, bringing with him his friend Merton, who is in +the wine trade. Gowing also called. Mr. Merton made himself at home at +once, and Carrie and I were both struck with him immediately, and +thoroughly approved of his sentiments. + +He leaned back in his chair and said: “You must take me as I am;” and I +replied: “Yes—and you must take us as we are. We’re homely people, we +are not swells.” + +He answered: “No, I can see that,” and Gowing roared with laughter; but +Merton in a most gentlemanly manner said to Gowing: “I don’t think you +quite understand me. I intended to convey that our charming host and +hostess were superior to the follies of fashion, and preferred leading a +simple and wholesome life to gadding about to twopenny-halfpenny +tea-drinking afternoons, and living above their incomes.” + +I was immensely pleased with these sensible remarks of Merton’s, and +concluded that subject by saying: “No, candidly, Mr. Merton, we don’t go +into Society, because we do not care for it; and what with the expense of +cabs here and cabs there, and white gloves and white ties, etc., it +doesn’t seem worth the money.” + +Merton said in reference to _friends_: “My motto is ‘Few and True;’ and, +by the way, I also apply that to wine, ‘Little and Good.’” Gowing said: +“Yes, and sometimes ‘cheap and tasty,’ eh, old man?” Merton, still +continuing, said he should treat me as a friend, and put me down for a +dozen of his “Lockanbar” whisky, and as I was an old friend of Gowing, I +should have it for 36s., which was considerably under what he paid for +it. + +He booked his own order, and further said that at any time I wanted any +passes for the theatre I was to let him know, as his name stood good for +any theatre in London. + +APRIL 20.—Carrie reminded me that as her old school friend, Annie Fullers +(now Mrs. James), and her husband had come up from Sutton for a few days, +it would look kind to take them to the theatre, and would I drop a line +to Mr. Merton asking him for passes for four, either for the Italian +Opera, Haymarket, Savoy, or Lyceum. I wrote Merton to that effect. + +APRIL 21.—Got a reply from Merton, saying he was very busy, and just at +present couldn’t manage passes for the Italian Opera, Haymarket, Savoy, +or Lyceum, but the best thing going on in London was the _Brown Bushes_, +at the Tank Theatre, Islington, and enclosed seats for four; also bill +for whisky. + +APRIL 23.—Mr. and Mrs. James (Miss Fullers that was) came to meat tea, +and we left directly after for the Tank Theatre. We got a ’bus that took +us to King’s Cross, and then changed into one that took us to the +“Angel.” Mr. James each time insisted on paying for all, saying that I +had paid for the tickets and that was quite enough. + +We arrived at theatre, where, curiously enough, all our ’bus-load except +an old woman with a basket seemed to be going in. I walked ahead and +presented the tickets. The man looked at them, and called out: “Mr. +Willowly! do you know anything about these?” holding up my tickets. The +gentleman called to, came up and examined my tickets, and said: “Who gave +you these?” I said, rather indignantly: “Mr. Merton, of course.” He +said: “Merton? Who’s he?” I answered, rather sharply: “You ought to +know, his name’s good at any theatre in London.” He replied: “Oh! is it? +Well, it ain’t no good here. These tickets, which are not dated, were +issued under Mr. Swinstead’s management, which has since changed hands.” +While I was having some very unpleasant words with the man, James, who +had gone upstairs with the ladies, called out: “Come on!” I went up +after them, and a very civil attendant said: “This way, please, box H.” +I said to James: “Why, how on earth did you manage it?” and to my horror +he replied: “Why, paid for it of course.” + +This was humiliating enough, and I could scarcely follow the play, but I +was doomed to still further humiliation. I was leaning out of the box, +when my tie—a little black bow which fastened on to the stud by means of +a new patent—fell into the pit below. A clumsy man not noticing it, had +his foot on it for ever so long before he discovered it. He then picked +it up and eventually flung it under the next seat in disgust. What with +the box incident and the tie, I felt quite miserable. Mr. James, of +Sutton, was very good. He said: “Don’t worry—no one will notice it with +your beard. That is the only advantage of growing one that I can see.” +There was no occasion for that remark, for Carrie is very proud of my +beard. + +To hide the absence of the tie I had to keep my chin down the rest of the +evening, which caused a pain at the back of my neck. + +APRIL 24.—Could scarcely sleep a wink through thinking of having brought +up Mr. and Mrs. James from the country to go to the theatre last night, +and his having paid for a private box because our order was not honoured, +and such a poor play too. I wrote a very satirical letter to Merton, the +wine merchant, who gave us the pass, and said, “Considering we had to pay +for our seats, we did our best to appreciate the performance.” I thought +this line rather cutting, and I asked Carrie how many p’s there were in +appreciate, and she said, “One.” After I sent off the letter I looked at +the dictionary and found there were two. Awfully vexed at this. + +Decided not to worry myself any more about the James’s; for, as Carrie +wisely said, “We’ll make it all right with them by asking them up from +Sutton one evening next week to play at Bézique.” + +APRIL 25.—In consequence of Brickwell telling me his wife was working +wonders with the new Pinkford’s enamel paint, I determined to try it. I +bought two tins of red on my way home. I hastened through tea, went into +the garden and painted some flower-pots. I called out Carrie, who said: +“You’ve always got some newfangled craze;” but she was obliged to admit +that the flower-pots looked remarkably well. Went upstairs into the +servant’s bedroom and painted her washstand, towel-horse, and chest of +drawers. To my mind it was an extraordinary improvement, but as an +example of the ignorance of the lower classes in the matter of taste, our +servant, Sarah, on seeing them, evinced no sign of pleasure, but merely +said “she thought they looked very well as they was before.” + +APRIL 26.—Got some more red enamel paint (red, to my mind, being the best +colour), and painted the coal-scuttle, and the backs of our _Shakspeare_, +the binding of which had almost worn out. + +APRIL 27.—Painted the bath red, and was delighted with the result. Sorry +to say Carrie was not, in fact we had a few words about it. She said I +ought to have consulted her, and she had never heard of such a thing as a +bath being painted red. I replied: “It’s merely a matter of taste.” + +Fortunately, further argument on the subject was stopped by a voice +saying, “May I come in?” It was only Cummings, who said, “Your maid +opened the door, and asked me to excuse her showing me in, as she was +wringing out some socks.” I was delighted to see him, and suggested we +should have a game of whist with a dummy, and by way of merriment said: +“You can be the dummy.” Cummings (I thought rather ill-naturedly) +replied: “Funny as usual.” He said he couldn’t stop, he only called to +leave me the _Bicycle News_, as he had done with it. + +Another ring at the bell; it was Gowing, who said he “must apologise for +coming so often, and that one of these days we must come round to _him_.” +I said: “A very extraordinary thing has struck me.” “Something funny, as +usual,” said Cummings. “Yes,” I replied; “I think even you will say so +this time. It’s concerning you both; for doesn’t it seem odd that +Gowing’s always coming and Cummings’ always going?” Carrie, who had +evidently quite forgotten about the bath, went into fits of laughter, and +as for myself, I fairly doubled up in my chair, till it cracked beneath +me. I think this was one of the best jokes I have ever made. + +Then imagine my astonishment on perceiving both Cummings and Gowing +perfectly silent, and without a smile on their faces. After rather an +unpleasant pause, Cummings, who had opened a cigar-case, closed it up +again and said: “Yes—I think, after that, I _shall_ be going, and I am +sorry I fail to see the fun of your jokes.” Gowing said he didn’t mind a +joke when it wasn’t rude, but a pun on a name, to his thinking, was +certainly a little wanting in good taste. Cummings followed it up by +saying, if it had been said by anyone else but myself, he shouldn’t have +entered the house again. This rather unpleasantly terminated what might +have been a cheerful evening. However, it was as well they went, for the +charwoman had finished up the remains of the cold pork. + +APRIL 28.—At the office, the new and very young clerk Pitt, who was very +impudent to me a week or so ago, was late again. I told him it would be +my duty to inform Mr. Perkupp, the principal. To my surprise, Pitt +apologised most humbly and in a most gentlemanly fashion. I was +unfeignedly pleased to notice this improvement in his manner towards me, +and told him I would look over his unpunctuality. Passing down the room +an hour later. I received a smart smack in the face from a rolled-up +ball of hard foolscap. I turned round sharply, but all the clerks were +apparently riveted to their work. I am not a rich man, but I would give +half-a-sovereign to know whether that was thrown by accident or design. +Went home early and bought some more enamel paint—black this time—and +spent the evening touching up the fender, picture-frames, and an old pair +of boots, making them look as good as new. Also painted Gowing’s +walking-stick, which he left behind, and made it look like ebony. + +APRIL 29, Sunday.—Woke up with a fearful headache and strong symptoms of +a cold. Carrie, with a perversity which is just like her, said it was +“painter’s colic,” and was the result of my having spent the last few +days with my nose over a paint-pot. I told her firmly that I knew a +great deal better what was the matter with me than she did. I had got a +chill, and decided to have a bath as hot as I could bear it. Bath +ready—could scarcely bear it so hot. I persevered, and got in; very hot, +but very acceptable. I lay still for some time. + +On moving my hand above the surface of the water, I experienced the +greatest fright I ever received in the whole course of my life; for +imagine my horror on discovering my hand, as I thought, full of blood. +My first thought was that I had ruptured an artery, and was bleeding to +death, and should be discovered, later on, looking like a second Marat, +as I remember seeing him in Madame Tussaud’s. My second thought was to +ring the bell, but remembered there was no bell to ring. My third was, +that there was nothing but the enamel paint, which had dissolved with +boiling water. I stepped out of the bath, perfectly red all over, +resembling the Red Indians I have seen depicted at an East-End theatre. +I determined not to say a word to Carrie, but to tell Farmerson to come +on Monday and paint the bath white. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +The ball at the Mansion House. + +APRIL 30.—Perfectly astounded at receiving an invitation for Carrie and +myself from the Lord and Lady Mayoress to the Mansion House, to “meet the +Representatives of Trades and Commerce.” My heart beat like that of a +schoolboy’s. Carrie and I read the invitation over two or three times. +I could scarcely eat my breakfast. I said—and I felt it from the bottom +of my heart,—“Carrie darling, I was a proud man when I led you down the +aisle of the church on our wedding-day; that pride will be equalled, if +not surpassed, when I lead my dear, pretty wife up to the Lord and Lady +Mayoress at the Mansion House.” I saw the tears in Carrie’s eyes, and +she said: “Charlie dear, it is _I_ who have to be proud of you. And I am +very, very proud of you. You have called me pretty; and as long as I am +pretty in your eyes, I am happy. You, dear old Charlie, are not +handsome, but you are _good_, which is far more noble.” I gave her a +kiss, and she said: “I wonder if there will be any dancing? I have not +danced with you for years.” + +I cannot tell what induced me to do it, but I seized her round the waist, +and we were silly enough to be executing a wild kind of polka when Sarah +entered, grinning, and said: “There is a man, mum, at the door who wants +to know if you want any good coals.” Most annoyed at this. Spent the +evening in answering, and tearing up again, the reply to the Mansion +House, having left word with Sarah if Gowing or Cummings called we were +not at home. Must consult Mr. Perkupp how to answer the Lord Mayor’s +invitation. + +MAY 1.—Carrie said: “I should like to send mother the invitation to look +at.” I consented, as soon as I had answered it. I told Mr. Perkupp, at +the office, with a feeling of pride, that we had received an invitation +to the Mansion House; and he said, to my astonishment, that he himself +gave in my name to the Lord Mayor’s secretary. I felt this rather +discounted the value of the invitation, but I thanked him; and in reply +to me, he described how I was to answer it. I felt the reply was too +simple; but of course Mr. Perkupp knows best. + +MAY 2.—Sent my dress-coat and trousers to the little tailor’s round the +corner, to have the creases taken out. Told Gowing not to call next +Monday, as we were going to the Mansion House. Sent similar note to +Cummings. + +MAY 3.—Carrie went to Mrs. James, at Sutton, to consult about her dress +for next Monday. While speaking incidentally to Spotch, one of our head +clerks, about the Mansion House, he said: “Oh, I’m asked, but don’t think +I shall go.” When a vulgar man like Spotch is asked, I feel my +invitation is considerably discounted. In the evening, while I was out, +the little tailor brought round my coat and trousers, and because Sarah +had not a shilling to pay for the pressing, he took them away again. + +MAY 4.—Carrie’s mother returned the Lord Mayor’s invitation, which was +sent to her to look at, with apologies for having upset a glass of port +over it. I was too angry to say anything. + +MAY 5.—Bought a pair of lavender kid-gloves for next Monday, and two +white ties, in case one got spoiled in the tying. + +MAY 6, Sunday.—A very dull sermon, during which, I regret to say, I twice +thought of the Mansion House reception to-morrow. + +MAY 7.—A big red-letter day; viz., the Lord Mayor’s reception. The whole +house upset. I had to get dressed at half-past six, as Carrie wanted the +room to herself. Mrs. James had come up from Sutton to help Carrie; so I +could not help thinking it unreasonable that she should require the +entire attention of Sarah, the servant, as well. Sarah kept running out +of the house to fetch “something for missis,” and several times I had, in +my full evening-dress, to answer the back-door. + +The last time it was the greengrocer’s boy, who, not seeing it was me, +for Sarah had not lighted the gas, pushed into my hands two cabbages and +half-a-dozen coal-blocks. I indignantly threw them on the ground, and +felt so annoyed that I so far forgot myself as to box the boy’s ears. He +went away crying, and said he should summons me, a thing I would not have +happen for the world. In the dark, I stepped on a piece of the cabbage, +which brought me down on the flags all of a heap. For a moment I was +stunned, but when I recovered I crawled upstairs into the drawing-room +and on looking into the chimney-glass discovered that my chin was +bleeding, my shirt smeared with the coal-blocks, and my left trouser torn +at the knee. + +However, Mrs. James brought me down another shirt, which I changed in the +drawing-room. I put a piece of court-plaster on my chin, and Sarah very +neatly sewed up the tear at the knee. At nine o’clock Carrie swept into +the room, looking like a queen. Never have I seen her look so lovely, or +so distinguished. She was wearing a satin dress of sky-blue—my favourite +colour—and a piece of lace, which Mrs. James lent her, round the +shoulders, to give a finish. I thought perhaps the dress was a little +too long behind, and decidedly too short in front, but Mrs. James said it +was _à la mode_. Mrs. James was most kind, and lent Carrie a fan of +ivory with red feathers, the value of which, she said, was priceless, as +the feathers belonged to the Kachu eagle—a bird now extinct. I preferred +the little white fan which Carrie bought for three-and-six at +Shoolbred’s, but both ladies sat on me at once. + +We arrived at the Mansion House too early, which was rather fortunate, +for I had an opportunity of speaking to his lordship, who graciously +condescended to talk with me some minutes; but I must say I was +disappointed to find he did not even know Mr. Perkupp, our principal. + +I felt as if we had been invited to the Mansion House by one who did not +know the Lord Mayor himself. Crowds arrived, and I shall never forget +the grand sight. My humble pen can never describe it. I was a little +annoyed with Carrie, who kept saying: “Isn’t it a pity we don’t know +anybody?” + +Once she quite lost her head. I saw someone who looked like Franching, +from Peckham, and was moving towards him when she seized me by the +coat-tails, and said quite loudly: “Don’t leave me,” which caused an +elderly gentleman, in a court-suit, and a chain round him, and two +ladies, to burst out laughing. There was an immense crowd in the +supper-room, and, my stars! it was a splendid supper—any amount of +champagne. + +Carrie made a most hearty supper, for which I was pleased; for I +sometimes think she is not strong. There was scarcely a dish she did not +taste. I was so thirsty, I could not eat much. Receiving a sharp slap +on the shoulder, I turned, and, to my amazement, saw Farmerson, our +ironmonger. He said, in the most familiar way: “This is better than +Brickfield Terrace, eh?” I simply looked at him, and said coolly: “I +never expected to see you here.” He said, with a loud, coarse laugh: “I +like that—if _you_, why not _me_?” I replied: “Certainly,” I wish I +could have thought of something better to say. He said: “Can I get your +good lady anything?” Carrie said: “No, I thank you,” for which I was +pleased. I said, by way of reproof to him: “You never sent to-day to +paint the bath, as I requested.” Farmerson said: “Pardon me, Mr. Pooter, +no shop when we’re in company, please.” + +Before I could think of a reply, one of the sheriffs, in full Court +costume, slapped Farmerson on the back and hailed him as an old friend, +and asked him to dine with him at his lodge. I was astonished. For full +five minutes they stood roaring with laughter, and stood digging each +other in the ribs. They kept telling each other they didn’t look a day +older. They began embracing each other and drinking champagne. + +To think that a man who mends our scraper should know any member of our +aristocracy! I was just moving with Carrie, when Farmerson seized me +rather roughly by the collar, and addressing the sheriff, said: “Let me +introduce my neighbour, Pooter.” He did not even say “Mister.” The +sheriff handed me a glass of champagne. I felt, after all, it was a +great honour to drink a glass of wine with him, and I told him so. We +stood chatting for some time, and at last I said: “You must excuse me now +if I join Mrs. Pooter.” When I approached her, she said: “Don’t let me +take you away from friends. I am quite happy standing here alone in a +crowd, knowing nobody!” + +As it takes two to make a quarrel, and as it was neither the time nor the +place for it, I gave my arm to Carrie, and said: “I hope my darling +little wife will dance with me, if only for the sake of saying we had +danced at the Mansion House as guests of the Lord Mayor.” Finding the +dancing after supper was less formal, and knowing how much Carrie used to +admire my dancing in the days gone by, I put my arm round her waist and +we commenced a waltz. + +A most unfortunate accident occurred. I had got on a new pair of boots. +Foolishly, I had omitted to take Carrie’s advice; namely, to scratch the +soles of them with the points of the scissors or to put a little wet on +them. I had scarcely started when, like lightning, my left foot slipped +away and I came down, the side of my head striking the floor with such +violence that for a second or two I did not know what had happened. I +needly hardly say that Carrie fell with me with equal violence, breaking +the comb in her hair and grazing her elbow. + +There was a roar of laughter, which was immediately checked when people +found that we had really hurt ourselves. A gentleman assisted Carrie to +a seat, and I expressed myself pretty strongly on the danger of having a +plain polished floor with no carpet or drugget to prevent people +slipping. The gentleman, who said his name was Darwitts, insisted on +escorting Carrie to have a glass of wine, an invitation which I was +pleased to allow Carrie to accept. + +I followed, and met Farmerson, who immediately said, in his loud voice +“Oh, are you the one who went down?” + +I answered with an indignant look. + +With execrable taste, he said: “Look here, old man, we are too old for +this game. We must leave these capers to the youngsters. Come and have +another glass, that is more in our line.” + +Although I felt I was buying his silence by accepting, we followed the +others into the supper-room. + +Neither Carrie nor I, after our unfortunate mishap, felt inclined to stay +longer. As we were departing, Farmerson said: “Are you going? if so, you +might give me a lift.” + +I thought it better to consent, but wish I had first consulted Carrie. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +After the Mansion House Ball. Carrie offended. Gowing also offended. A +pleasant party at the Cummings’. Mr. Franching, of Peckham, visits us. + +MAY 8.—I woke up with a most terrible headache. I could scarcely see, +and the back of my neck was as if I had given it a crick. I thought +first of sending for a doctor; but I did not think it necessary. When +up, I felt faint, and went to Brownish’s, the chemist, who gave me a +draught. So bad at the office, had to get leave to come home. Went to +another chemist in the City, and I got a draught. Brownish’s dose seems +to have made me worse; have eaten nothing all day. To make matters +worse, Carrie, every time I spoke to her, answered me sharply—that is, +when she answered at all. + +In the evening I felt very much worse again and said to her: “I do +believe I’ve been poisoned by the lobster mayonnaise at the Mansion House +last night;” she simply replied, without taking her eyes from her sewing: +“Champagne never did agree with you.” I felt irritated, and said: “What +nonsense you talk; I only had a glass and a half, and you know as well as +I do—” Before I could complete the sentence she bounced out of the room. +I sat over an hour waiting for her to return; but as she did not, I +determined I would go to bed. I discovered Carrie had gone to bed +without even saying “good-night”; leaving me to bar the scullery door and +feed the cat. I shall certainly speak to her about this in the morning. + +MAY 9.—Still a little shaky, with black specks. The _Blackfriars +Bi-weekly News_ contains a long list of the guests at the Mansion House +Ball. Disappointed to find our names omitted, though Farmerson’s is in +plainly enough with M.L.L. after it, whatever that may mean. More than +vexed, because we had ordered a dozen copies to send to our friends. +Wrote to the _Blackfriars Bi-weekly News_, pointing out their omission. + +Carrie had commenced her breakfast when I entered the parlour. I helped +myself to a cup of tea, and I said, perfectly calmly and quietly: +“Carrie, I wish a little explanation of your conduct last night.” + +She replied, “Indeed! and I desire something more than a little +explanation of your conduct the night before.” + +I said, coolly: “Really, I don’t understand you.” + +Carrie said sneeringly: “Probably not; you were scarcely in a condition +to understand anything.” + +I was astounded at this insinuation and simply ejaculated: “Caroline!” + +She said: “Don’t be theatrical, it has no effect on me. Reserve that +tone for your new friend, Mister Farmerson, the ironmonger.” + +I was about to speak, when Carrie, in a temper such as I have never seen +her in before, told me to hold my tongue. She said: “Now _I’m_ going to +say something! After professing to snub Mr. Farmerson, you permit him to +snub _you_, in my presence, and then accept his invitation to take a +glass of champagne with you, and you don’t limit yourself to one glass. +You then offer this vulgar man, who made a bungle of repairing our +scraper, a seat in our cab on the way home. I say nothing about his +tearing my dress in getting in the cab, nor of treading on Mrs. James’s +expensive fan, which you knocked out of my hand, and for which he never +even apologised; but you smoked all the way home without having the +decency to ask my permission. That is not all! At the end of the +journey, although he did not offer you a farthing towards his share of +the cab, you asked him in. Fortunately, he was sober enough to detect, +from my manner, that his company was not desirable.” + +Goodness knows I felt humiliated enough at this; but, to make matters +worse, Gowing entered the room, without knocking, with two hats on his +head and holding the garden-rake in his hand, with Carrie’s fur tippet +(which he had taken off the downstairs hall-peg) round his neck, and +announced himself in a loud, coarse voice: “His Royal Highness, the Lord +Mayor!” He marched twice round the room like a buffoon, and finding we +took no notice, said: “Hulloh! what’s up? Lovers’ quarrel, eh?” + +There was a silence for a moment, so I said quietly: “My dear Gowing, I’m +not very well, and not quite in the humour for joking; especially when +you enter the room without knocking, an act which I fail to see the fun +of.” + +Gowing said: “I’m very sorry, but I called for my stick, which I thought +you would have sent round.” I handed him his stick, which I remembered I +had painted black with the enamel paint, thinking to improve it. He +looked at it for a minute with a dazed expression and said: “Who did +this?” + +I said: “Eh, did what?” + +He said: “Did what? Why, destroyed my stick! It belonged to my poor +uncle, and I value it more than anything I have in the world! I’ll know +who did it.” + +I said: “I’m very sorry. I dare say it will come off. I did it for the +best.” + +Gowing said: “Then all I can say is, it’s a confounded liberty; and I +_would_ add, you’re a bigger fool than you look, only _that’s_ absolutely +impossible.” + +MAY 12.—Got a single copy of the _Blackfriars Bi-weekly News_. There was +a short list of several names they had omitted; but the stupid people had +mentioned our names as “Mr. and Mrs. C. Porter.” Most annoying! Wrote +again and I took particular care to write our name in capital letters, +_POOTER_, so that there should be no possible mistake this time. + +MAY 16.—Absolutely disgusted on opening the _Blackfriars Bi-weekly News_ +of to-day, to find the following paragraph: “We have received two letters +from Mr. and Mrs. Charles Pewter, requesting us to announce the important +fact that they were at the Mansion House Ball.” I tore up the paper and +threw it in the waste-paper basket. My time is far too valuable to +bother about such trifles. + +MAY 21.—The last week or ten days terribly dull, Carrie being away at +Mrs. James’s, at Sutton. Cummings also away. Gowing, I presume, is +still offended with me for black enamelling his stick without asking him. + +MAY 22.—Purchased a new stick mounted with silver, which cost +seven-and-sixpence (shall tell Carrie five shillings), and sent it round +with nice note to Gowing. + +MAY 23.—Received strange note from Gowing; he said: “Offended? not a bit, +my boy—I thought you were offended with me for losing my temper. +Besides, I found after all, it was not my poor old uncle’s stick you +painted. It was only a shilling thing I bought at a tobacconist’s. +However, I am much obliged to you for your handsome present all same.” + +MAY 24.—Carrie back. Hoorah! She looks wonderfully well, except that +the sun has caught her nose. + +MAY 25.—Carrie brought down some of my shirts and advised me to take them +to Trillip’s round the corner. She said: “The fronts and cuffs are much +frayed.” I said without a moment’s hesitation: “I’m _’frayed_ they are.” +Lor! how we roared. I thought we should never stop laughing. As I +happened to be sitting next the driver going to town on the ’bus, I told +him my joke about the “frayed” shirts. I thought he would have rolled +off his seat. They laughed at the office a good bit too over it. + +MAY 26.—Left the shirts to be repaired at Trillip’s. I said to him: “I’m +_’fraid_ they are _frayed_.” He said, without a smile: “They’re bound to +do that, sir.” Some people seem to be quite destitute of a sense of +humour. + +JUNE 1.—The last week has been like old times, Carrie being back, and +Gowing and Cummings calling every evening nearly. Twice we sat out in +the garden quite late. This evening we were like a pack of children, and +played “consequences.” It is a good game. + +JUNE 2.—“Consequences” again this evening. Not quite so successful as +last night; Gowing having several times overstepped the limits of good +taste. + +JUNE 4.—In the evening Carrie and I went round to Mr. and Mrs. Cummings’ +to spend a quiet evening with them. Gowing was there, also Mr. +Stillbrook. It was quiet but pleasant. Mrs. Cummings sang five or six +songs, “No, Sir,” and “The Garden of Sleep,” being best in my humble +judgment; but what pleased me most was the duet she sang with +Carrie—classical duet, too. I think it is called, “I would that my +love!” It was beautiful. If Carrie had been in better voice, I don’t +think professionals could have sung it better. After supper we made them +sing it again. I never liked Mr. Stillbrook since the walk that Sunday +to the “Cow and Hedge,” but I must say he sings comic-songs well. His +song: “We don’t Want the old men now,” made us shriek with laughter, +especially the verse referring to Mr. Gladstone; but there was one verse +I think he might have omitted, and I said so, but Gowing thought it was +the best of the lot. + +JUNE 6.—Trillip brought round the shirts and, to my disgust, his charge +for repairing was more than I gave for them when new. I told him so, and +he impertinently replied: “Well, they are better now than when they were +new.” I paid him, and said it was a robbery. He said: “If you wanted +your shirt-fronts made out of pauper-linen, such as is used for packing +and bookbinding, why didn’t you say so?” + +JUNE 7.—A dreadful annoyance. Met Mr. Franching, who lives at Peckham, +and who is a great swell in his way. I ventured to ask him to come home +to meat-tea, and take pot-luck. I did not think he would accept such a +humble invitation; but he did, saying, in a most friendly way, he would +rather “peck” with us than by himself. I said: “We had better get into +this blue ’bus.” He replied: “No blue-bussing for me. I have had enough +of the blues lately. I lost a cool ‘thou’ over the Copper Scare. Step +in here.” + +We drove up home in style, in a hansom-cab, and I knocked three times at +the front door without getting an answer. I saw Carrie, through the +panels of ground-glass (with stars), rushing upstairs. I told Mr. +Franching to wait at the door while I went round to the side. There I +saw the grocer’s boy actually picking off the paint on the door, which +had formed into blisters. No time to reprove him; so went round and +effected an entrance through the kitchen window. I let in Mr. Franching, +and showed him into the drawing-room. I went upstairs to Carrie, who was +changing her dress, and told her I had persuaded Mr. Franching to come +home. She replied: “How can you do such a thing? You know it’s Sarah’s +holiday, and there’s not a thing in the house, the cold mutton having +turned with the hot weather.” + +Eventually Carrie, like a good creature as she is, slipped down, washed +up the teacups, and laid the cloth, and I gave Franching our views of +Japan to look at while I ran round to the butcher’s to get three chops. + +JULY 30.—The miserable cold weather is either upsetting me or Carrie, or +both. We seem to break out into an argument about absolutely nothing, +and this unpleasant state of things usually occurs at meal-times. + +This morning, for some unaccountable reason, we were talking about +balloons, and we were as merry as possible; but the conversation drifted +into family matters, during which Carrie, without the slightest reason, +referred in the most uncomplimentary manner to my poor father’s pecuniary +trouble. I retorted by saying that “Pa, at all events, was a gentleman,” +whereupon Carrie burst out crying. I positively could not eat any +breakfast. + +At the office I was sent for by Mr. Perkupp, who said he was very sorry, +but I should have to take my annual holidays from next Saturday. +Franching called at office and asked me to dine at his club, “The +Constitutional.” Fearing disagreeables at home after the “tiff” this +morning, I sent a telegram to Carrie, telling her I was going out to dine +and she was not to sit up. Bought a little silver bangle for Carrie. + +JULY 31.—Carrie was very pleased with the bangle, which I left with an +affectionate note on her dressing-table last night before going to bed. +I told Carrie we should have to start for our holiday next Saturday. She +replied quite happily that she did not mind, except that the weather was +so bad, and she feared that Miss Jibbons would not be able to get her a +seaside dress in time. I told Carrie that I thought the drab one with +pink bows looked quite good enough; and Carrie said she should not think +of wearing it. I was about to discuss the matter, when, remembering the +argument yesterday, resolved to hold my tongue. + +I said to Carrie: “I don’t think we can do better than ‘Good old +Broadstairs.’” Carrie not only, to my astonishment, raised an objection +to Broadstairs, for the first time; but begged me not to use the +expression, “Good old,” but to leave it to Mr. Stillbrook and other +_gentlemen_ of his type. Hearing my ’bus pass the window, I was obliged +to rush out of the house without kissing Carrie as usual; and I shouted +to her: “I leave it to you to decide.” On returning in the evening, +Carrie said she thought as the time was so short she had decided on +Broadstairs, and had written to Mrs. Beck, Harbour View Terrace, for +apartments. + +AUGUST 1.—Ordered a new pair of trousers at Edwards’s, and told them not +to cut them so loose over the boot; the last pair being so loose and also +tight at the knee, looked like a sailor’s, and I heard Pitt, that +objectionable youth at the office, call out “Hornpipe” as I passed his +desk. Carrie has ordered of Miss Jibbons a pink Garibaldi and blue-serge +skirt, which I always think looks so pretty at the seaside. In the +evening she trimmed herself a little sailor-hat, while I read to her the +_Exchange and Mart_. We had a good laugh over my trying on the hat when +she had finished it; Carrie saying it looked so funny with my beard, and +how the people would have roared if I went on the stage like it. + +AUGUST 2.—Mrs. Beck wrote to say we could have our usual rooms at +Broadstairs. That’s off our mind. Bought a coloured shirt and a pair of +tan-coloured boots, which I see many of the swell clerks wearing in the +City, and hear are all the “go.” + +AUGUST 3.—A beautiful day. Looking forward to to-morrow. Carrie bought +a parasol about five feet long. I told her it was ridiculous. She said: +“Mrs. James, of Sutton, has one twice as long so;” the matter dropped. I +bought a capital hat for hot weather at the seaside. I don’t know what +it is called, but it is the shape of the helmet worn in India, only made +of straw. Got three new ties, two coloured handkerchiefs, and a pair of +navy-blue socks at Pope Brothers. Spent the evening packing. Carrie +told me not to forget to borrow Mr. Higgsworth’s telescope, which he +always lends me, knowing I know how to take care of it. Sent Sarah out +for it. While everything was seeming so bright, the last post brought us +a letter from Mrs. Beck, saying: “I have just let all my house to one +party, and am sorry I must take back my words, and am sorry you must find +other apartments; but Mrs. Womming, next door, will be pleased to +accommodate you, but she cannot take you before Monday, as her rooms are +engaged Bank Holiday week.” + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +The Unexpected Arrival Home of our Son, Willie Lupin Pooter. + +AUGUST 4.—The first post brought a nice letter from our dear son Willie, +acknowledging a trifling present which Carrie sent him, the day before +yesterday being his twentieth birthday. To our utter amazement he turned +up himself in the afternoon, having journeyed all the way from Oldham. +He said he had got leave from the bank, and as Monday was a holiday he +thought he would give us a little surprise. + +AUGUST 5, Sunday.—We have not seen Willie since last Christmas, and are +pleased to notice what a fine young man he has grown. One would scarcely +believe he was Carrie’s son. He looks more like a younger brother. I +rather disapprove of his wearing a check suit on a Sunday, and I think he +ought to have gone to church this morning; but he said he was tired after +yesterday’s journey, so I refrained from any remark on the subject. We +had a bottle of port for dinner, and drank dear Willie’s health. + +He said: “Oh, by-the-by, did I tell you I’ve cut my first name, +‘William,’ and taken the second name ‘Lupin’? In fact, I’m only known at +Oldham as ‘Lupin Pooter.’ If you were to ‘Willie’ me there, they +wouldn’t know what you meant.” + +Of course, Lupin being a purely family name, Carrie was delighted, and +began by giving a long history of the Lupins. I ventured to say that I +thought William a nice simple name, and reminded him he was christened +after his Uncle William, who was much respected in the City. Willie, in +a manner which I did not much care for, said sneeringly: “Oh, I know all +about that—Good old Bill!” and helped himself to a third glass of port. + +Carrie objected strongly to my saying “Good old,” but she made no remark +when Willie used the double adjective. I said nothing, but looked at +her, which meant more. I said: “My dear Willie, I hope you are happy +with your colleagues at the Bank.” He replied: “Lupin, if you please; +and with respect to the Bank, there’s not a clerk who is a gentleman, and +the ‘boss’ is a cad.” I felt so shocked, I could say nothing, and my +instinct told me there was something wrong. + +AUGUST 6, Bank Holiday.—As there was no sign of Lupin moving at nine +o’clock, I knocked at his door, and said we usually breakfasted at +half-past eight, and asked how long would he be? Lupin replied that he +had had a lively time of it, first with the train shaking the house all +night, and then with the sun streaming in through the window in his eyes, +and giving him a cracking headache. Carrie came up and asked if he would +like some breakfast sent up, and he said he could do with a cup of tea, +and didn’t want anything to eat. + +Lupin not having come down, I went up again at half-past one, and said we +dined at two; he said he “would be there.” He never came down till a +quarter to three. I said: “We have not seen much of you, and you will +have to return by the 5.30 train; therefore you will have to leave in an +hour, unless you go by the midnight mail.” He said: “Look here, Guv’nor, +it’s no use beating about the bush. I’ve tendered my resignation at the +Bank.” + +For a moment I could not speak. When my speech came again, I said: “How +dare you, sir? How dare you take such a serious step without consulting +me? Don’t answer me, sir!—you will sit down immediately, and write a +note at my dictation, withdrawing your resignation and amply apologising +for your thoughtlessness.” + +Imagine my dismay when he replied with a loud guffaw: “It’s no use. If +you want the good old truth, I’ve got the chuck!” + +AUGUST 7.—Mr. Perkupp has given me leave to postpone my holiday a week, +as we could not get the room. This will give us an opportunity of trying +to find an appointment for Willie before we go. The ambition of my life +would be to get him into Mr. Perkupp’s firm. + +AUGUST 11.—Although it is a serious matter having our boy Lupin on our +hands, still it is satisfactory to know he was asked to resign from the +Bank simply because “he took no interest in his work, and always arrived +an hour (sometimes two hours) late.” We can all start off on Monday to +Broadstairs with a light heart. This will take my mind off the worry of +the last few days, which have been wasted over a useless correspondence +with the manager of the Bank at Oldham. + +AUGUST 13.—Hurrah! at Broadstairs. Very nice apartments near the +station. On the cliffs they would have been double the price. The +landlady had a nice five o’clock dinner and tea ready, which we all +enjoyed, though Lupin seemed fastidious because there happened to be a +fly in the butter. It was very wet in the evening, for which I was +thankful, as it was a good excuse for going to bed early. Lupin said he +would sit up and read a bit. + +AUGUST 14.—I was a little annoyed to find Lupin, instead of reading last +night, had gone to a common sort of entertainment, given at the Assembly +Rooms. I expressed my opinion that such performances were unworthy of +respectable patronage; but he replied: “Oh, it was only ‘for one night +only.’ I had a fit of the blues come on, and thought I would go to see +Polly Presswell, England’s Particular Spark.” I told him I was proud to +say I had never heard of her. Carrie said: “Do let the boy alone. He’s +quite old enough to take care of himself, and won’t forget he’s a +gentleman. Remember, you were young once yourself.” Rained all day +hard, but Lupin would go out. + +AUGUST 15.—Cleared up a bit, so we all took the train to Margate, and the +first person we met on the jetty was Gowing. I said: “Hulloh! I thought +you had gone to Barmouth with your Birmingham friends?” He said: “Yes, +but young Peter Lawrence was so ill, they postponed their visit, so I +came down here. You know the Cummings’ are here too?” Carrie said: “Oh, +that will be delightful! We must have some evenings together and have +games.” + +I introduced Lupin, saying: “You will be pleased to find we have our dear +boy at home!” Gowing said: “How’s that? You don’t mean to say he’s left +the Bank?” + +I changed the subject quickly, and thereby avoided any of those awkward +questions which Gowing always has a knack of asking. + +AUGUST 16.—Lupin positively refused to walk down the Parade with me +because I was wearing my new straw helmet with my frock-coat. I don’t +know what the boy is coming to. + +AUGUST 17.—Lupin not falling in with our views, Carrie and I went for a +sail. It was a relief to be with her alone; for when Lupin irritates me, +she always sides with him. On our return, he said: “Oh, you’ve been on +the ‘Shilling Emetic,’ have you? You’ll come to six-pennorth on the +‘Liver Jerker’ next.” I presume he meant a tricycle, but I affected not +to understand him. + +AUGUST 18.—Gowing and Cummings walked over to arrange an evening at +Margate. It being wet, Gowing asked Cummings to accompany him to the +hotel and have a game of billiards, knowing I never play, and in fact +disapprove of the game. Cummings said he must hasten back to Margate; +whereupon Lupin, to my horror, said: “I’ll give you a game, Gowing—a +hundred up. A walk round the cloth will give me an appetite for dinner.” +I said: “Perhaps Mister Gowing does not care to play with boys.” Gowing +surprised me by saying: “Oh yes, I do, if they play well,” and they +walked off together. + +AUGUST 19, Sunday.—I was about to read Lupin a sermon on smoking (which +he indulges in violently) and billiards, but he put on his hat and walked +out. Carrie then read _me_ a long sermon on the palpable inadvisability +of treating Lupin as if he were a mere child. I felt she was somewhat +right, so in the evening I offered him a cigar. He seemed pleased, but, +after a few whiffs, said: “This is a good old tup’ny—try one of mine,” +and he handed me a cigar as long as it was strong, which is saying a good +deal. + +AUGUST 20.—I am glad our last day at the seaside was fine, though clouded +overhead. We went over to Cummings’ (at Margate) in the evening, and as +it was cold, we stayed in and played games; Gowing, as usual, +overstepping the mark. He suggested we should play “Cutlets,” a game we +never heard of. He sat on a chair, and asked Carrie to sit on his lap, +an invitation which dear Carrie rightly declined. + +After some species of wrangling, I sat on Gowing’s knees and Carrie sat +on the edge of mine. Lupin sat on the edge of Carrie’s lap, then +Cummings on Lupin’s, and Mrs. Cummings on her husband’s. We looked very +ridiculous, and laughed a good deal. + +Gowing then said: “Are you a believer in the Great Mogul?” We had to +answer all together: “Yes—oh, yes!” (three times). Gowing said: “So am +I,” and suddenly got up. The result of this stupid joke was that we all +fell on the ground, and poor Carrie banged her head against the corner of +the fender. Mrs. Cummings put some vinegar on; but through this we +missed the last train, and had to drive back to Broadstairs, which cost +me seven-and-sixpence. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Home again. Mrs. James’ influence on Carrie. Can get nothing for Lupin. +Next-door neighbours are a little troublesome. Some one tampers with my +diary. Got a place for Lupin. Lupin startles us with an announcement. + +AUGUST 22.—Home sweet Home again! Carrie bought some pretty blue-wool +mats to stand vases on. Fripps, Janus and Co. write to say they are +sorry they have no vacancy among their staff of clerks for Lupin. + +AUGUST 23.—I bought a pair of stags’ heads made of plaster-of-Paris and +coloured brown. They will look just the thing for our little hall, and +give it style; the heads are excellent imitations. Poolers and Smith are +sorry they have nothing to offer Lupin. + +AUGUST 24.—Simply to please Lupin, and make things cheerful for him, as +he is a little down, Carrie invited Mrs. James to come up from Sutton and +spend two or three days with us. We have not said a word to Lupin, but +mean to keep it as a surprise. + +AUGUST 25.—Mrs. James, of Sutton, arrived in the afternoon, bringing with +her an enormous bunch of wild flowers. The more I see of Mrs. James the +nicer I think she is, and she is devoted to Carrie. She went into +Carrie’s room to take off her bonnet, and remained there nearly an hour +talking about dress. Lupin said he was not a bit surprised at Mrs. +James’ _visit_, but was surprised at _her_. + +AUGUST 26, Sunday.—Nearly late for church, Mrs. James having talked +considerably about what to wear all the morning. Lupin does not seem to +get on very well with Mrs. James. I am afraid we shall have some trouble +with our next-door neighbours who came in last Wednesday. Several of +their friends, who drive up in dog-carts, have already made themselves +objectionable. + +An evening or two ago I had put on a white waistcoat for coolness, and +while walking past with my thumbs in my waistcoat pockets (a habit I +have), one man, seated in the cart, and looking like an American, +commenced singing some vulgar nonsense about “_I had thirteen dollars in +my waistcoat pocket_.” I fancied it was meant for me, and my suspicions +were confirmed; for while walking round the garden in my tall hat this +afternoon, a “throw-down” cracker was deliberately aimed at my hat, and +exploded on it like a percussion cap. I turned sharply, and am positive +I saw the man who was in the cart retreating from one of the bedroom +windows. + +AUGUST 27.—Carrie and Mrs. James went off shopping, and had not returned +when I came back from the office. Judging from the subsequent +conversation, I am afraid Mrs. James is filling Carrie’s head with a lot +of nonsense about dress. I walked over to Gowing’s and asked him to drop +in to supper, and make things pleasant. + +Carrie prepared a little extemporised supper, consisting of the remainder +of the cold joint, a small piece of salmon (which I was to refuse, in +case there was not enough to go round), and a blanc-mange and custards. +There was also a decanter of port and some jam puffs on the sideboard. +Mrs. James made us play rather a good game of cards, called “Muggings.” +To my surprise, in fact disgust, Lupin got up in the middle, and, in a +most sarcastic tone, said: “Pardon me, this sort of thing is too fast for +me, I shall go and enjoy a quiet game of marbles in the back-garden.” + +Things might have become rather disagreeable but for Gowing (who seems to +have taken to Lupin) suggesting they should invent games. Lupin said: +“Let’s play ‘monkeys.’” He then led Gowing all round the room, and +brought him in front of the looking-glass. I must confess I laughed +heartily at this. I was a little vexed at everybody subsequently +laughing at some joke which they did not explain, and it was only on +going to bed I discovered I must have been walking about all the evening +with an antimacassar on one button of my coat-tails. + +AUGUST 28.—Found a large brick in the middle bed of geraniums, evidently +come from next door. Pattles and Pattles can’t find a place for Lupin. + +AUGUST 29.—Mrs. James is making a positive fool of Carrie. Carrie +appeared in a new dress like a smock-frock. She said “smocking” was all +the rage. I replied it put me in a rage. She also had on a hat as big +as a kitchen coal-scuttle, and the same shape. Mrs. James went home, and +both Lupin and I were somewhat pleased—the first time we have agreed on a +single subject since his return. Merkins and Son write they have no +vacancy for Lupin. + +OCTOBER 30.—I should very much like to know who has wilfully torn the +last five or six weeks out of my diary. It is perfectly monstrous! Mine +is a large scribbling diary, with plenty of space for the record of my +everyday events, and in keeping up that record I take (with much pride) a +great deal of pains. + +I asked Carrie if she knew anything about it. She replied it was my own +fault for leaving the diary about with a charwoman cleaning and the +sweeps in the house. I said that was not an answer to my question. This +retort of mine, which I thought extremely smart, would have been more +effective had I not jogged my elbow against a vase on a table temporarily +placed in the passage, knocked it over, and smashed it. + +Carrie was dreadfully upset at this disaster, for it was one of a pair of +vases which cannot be matched, given to us on our wedding-day by Mrs. +Burtsett, an old friend of Carrie’s cousins, the Pommertons, late of +Dalston. I called to Sarah, and asked her about the diary. She said she +had not been in the sitting-room at all; after the sweep had left, Mrs. +Birrell (the charwoman) had cleaned the room and lighted the fire +herself. Finding a burnt piece of paper in the grate, I examined it, and +found it was a piece of my diary. So it was evident some one had torn my +diary to light the fire. I requested Mrs. Birrell to be sent to me +to-morrow. + +OCTOBER 31.—Received a letter from our principal, Mr. Perkupp, saying +that he thinks he knows of a place at last for our dear boy Lupin. This, +in a measure, consoles me for the loss of a portion of my diary; for I am +bound to confess the last few weeks have been devoted to the record of +disappointing answers received from people to whom I have applied for +appointments for Lupin. Mrs. Birrell called, and, in reply to me, said: +“She never _see_ no book, much less take such a liberty as _touch_ it.” + +I said I was determined to find out who did it, whereupon she said she +would do her best to help me; but she remembered the sweep lighting the +fire with a bit of the _Echo_. I requested the sweep to be sent to me +to-morrow. I wish Carrie had not given Lupin a latch-key; we never seem +to see anything of him. I sat up till past one for him, and then retired +tired. + +NOVEMBER 1.—My entry yesterday about “retired tired,” which I did not +notice at the time, is rather funny. If I were not so worried just now, +I might have had a little joke about it. The sweep called, but had the +audacity to come up to the hall-door and lean his dirty bag of soot on +the door-step. He, however, was so polite, I could not rebuke him. He +said Sarah lighted the fire. Unfortunately, Sarah heard this, for she +was dusting the banisters, and she ran down, and flew into a temper with +the sweep, causing a row on the front door-steps, which I would not have +had happen for anything. I ordered her about her business, and told the +sweep I was sorry to have troubled him; and so I was, for the door-steps +were covered with soot in consequence of his visit. I would willingly +give ten shillings to find out who tore my diary. + +NOVEMBER 2.—I spent the evening quietly with Carrie, of whose company I +never tire. We had a most pleasant chat about the letters on “Is +Marriage a Failure?” It has been no failure in our case. In talking +over our own happy experiences, we never noticed that it was past +midnight. We were startled by hearing the door slam violently. Lupin +had come in. He made no attempt to turn down the gas in the passage, or +even to look into the room where we were, but went straight up to bed, +making a terrible noise. I asked him to come down for a moment, and he +begged to be excused, as he was “dead beat,” an observation that was +scarcely consistent with the fact that, for a quarter of an hour +afterwards, he was positively dancing in his room, and shouting out, “See +me dance the polka!” or some such nonsense. + +NOVEMBER 3.—Good news at last. Mr. Perkupp has got an appointment for +Lupin, and he is to go and see about it on Monday. Oh, how my mind is +relieved! I went to Lupin’s room to take the good news to him, but he +was in bed, very seedy, so I resolved to keep it over till the evening. + +He said he had last night been elected a member of an Amateur Dramatic +Club, called the “Holloway Comedians”; and, though it was a pleasant +evening, he had sat in a draught, and got neuralgia in the head. He +declined to have any breakfast, so I left him. In the evening I had up +a special bottle of port, and, Lupin being in for a wonder, we filled our +glasses, and I said: “Lupin my boy, I have some good and unexpected news +for you. Mr. Perkupp has procured you an appointment!” Lupin said: +“Good biz!” and we drained our glasses. + +Lupin then said: “Fill up the glasses again, for I have some good and +unexpected news for you.” + +I had some slight misgivings, and so evidently had Carrie, for she said: +“I hope we shall think it good news.” + +Lupin said: “Oh, it’s all right! _I’m engaged to be married_!” + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Daisy Mutlar sole topic of conversation. Lupin’s new berth. Fireworks +at the Cummings’. The “Holloway Comedians.” Sarah quarrels with the +charwoman. Lupin’s uncalled-for interference. Am introduced to Daisy +Mutlar. We decide to give a party in her honour. + +NOVEMBER 5, Sunday.—Carrie and I troubled about that mere boy Lupin +getting engaged to be married without consulting us or anything. After +dinner he told us all about it. He said the lady’s name was Daisy +Mutlar, and she was the nicest, prettiest, and most accomplished girl he +ever met. He loved her the moment he saw her, and if he had to wait +fifty years he would wait, and he knew she would wait for him. + +Lupin further said, with much warmth, that the world was a different +world to him now,—it was a world worth living in. He lived with an +object now, and that was to make Daisy Mutlar—Daisy Pooter, and he would +guarantee she would not disgrace the family of the Pooters. Carrie here +burst out crying, and threw her arms round his neck, and in doing so, +upset the glass of port he held in his hand all over his new light +trousers. + +I said I had no doubt we should like Miss Mutlar when we saw her, but +Carrie said she loved her already. I thought this rather premature, but +held my tongue. Daisy Mutlar was the sole topic of conversation for the +remainder of the day. I asked Lupin who her people were, and he replied: +“Oh, you know Mutlar, Williams and Watts.” I did not know, but refrained +from asking any further questions at present, for fear of irritating +Lupin. + +NOVEMBER 6.—Lupin went with me to the office, and had a long conversation +with Mr. Perkupp, our principal, the result of which was that he accepted +a clerkship in the firm of Job Cleanands and Co., Stock and Share +Brokers. Lupin told me, privately, it was an advertising firm, and he +did not think much of it. I replied: “Beggars should not be choosers;” +and I will do Lupin the justice to say, he looked rather ashamed of +himself. + +In the evening we went round to the Cummings’, to have a few fireworks. +It began to rain, and I thought it rather dull. One of my squibs would +not go off, and Gowing said: “Hit it on your boot, boy; it will go off +then.” I gave it a few knocks on the end of my boot, and it went off +with one loud explosion, and burnt my fingers rather badly. I gave the +rest of the squibs to the little Cummings’ boy to let off. + +Another unfortunate thing happened, which brought a heap of abuse on my +head. Cummings fastened a large wheel set-piece on a stake in the ground +by way of a grand finale. He made a great fuss about it; said it cost +seven shillings. There was a little difficulty in getting it alight. At +last it went off; but after a couple of slow revolutions it stopped. I +had my stick with me, so I gave it a tap to send it round, and, +unfortunately, it fell off the stake on to the grass. Anybody would have +thought I had set the house on fire from the way in which they stormed at +me. I will never join in any more firework parties. It is a ridiculous +waste of time and money. + +NOVEMBER 7.—Lupin asked Carrie to call on Mrs. Mutlar, but Carrie said +she thought Mrs. Mutlar ought to call on her first. I agreed with +Carrie, and this led to an argument. However, the matter was settled by +Carrie saying she could not find any visiting cards, and we must get some +more printed, and when they were finished would be quite time enough to +discuss the etiquette of calling. + +NOVEMBER 8.—I ordered some of our cards at Black’s, the stationers. I +ordered twenty-five of each, which will last us for a good long time. In +the evening, Lupin brought in Harry Mutlar, Miss Mutlar’s brother. He +was rather a gawky youth, and Lupin said he was the most popular and best +amateur in the club, referring to the “Holloway Comedians.” Lupin +whispered to us that if we could only “draw out” Harry a bit, he would +make us roar with laughter. + +At supper, young Mutlar did several amusing things. He took up a knife, +and with the flat part of it played a tune on his cheek in a wonderful +manner. He also gave an imitation of an old man with no teeth, smoking a +big cigar. The way he kept dropping the cigar sent Carrie into fits. + +In the course of conversation, Daisy’s name cropped up, and young Mutlar +said he would bring his sister round to us one evening—his parents being +rather old-fashioned, and not going out much. Carrie said we would get +up a little special party. As young Mutlar showed no inclination to go, +and it was approaching eleven o’clock, as a hint I reminded Lupin that he +had to be up early to-morrow. Instead of taking the hint, Mutlar began a +series of comic imitations. He went on for an hour without cessation. +Poor Carrie could scarcely keep her eyes open. At last she made an +excuse, and said “Good-night.” + +Mutlar then left, and I heard him and Lupin whispering in the hall +something about the “Holloway Comedians,” and to my disgust, although it +was past midnight, Lupin put on his hat and coat, and went out with his +new companion. + +NOVEMBER 9.—My endeavours to discover who tore the sheets out of my diary +still fruitless. Lupin has Daisy Mutlar on the brain, so we see little +of him, except that he invariably turns up at meal times. Cummings +dropped in. + +NOVEMBER 10.—Lupin seems to like his new berth—that’s a comfort. Daisy +Mutlar the sole topic of conversation during tea. Carrie almost as full +of it as Lupin. Lupin informs me, to my disgust, that he has been +persuaded to take part in the forthcoming performance of the “Holloway +Comedians.” He says he is to play Bob Britches in the farce, _Gone to my +Uncle’s_; Frank Mutlar is going to play old Musty. I told Lupin pretty +plainly I was not in the least degree interested in the matter, and +totally disapproved of amateur theatricals. Gowing came in the evening. + +NOVEMBER 11.—Returned home to find the house in a most disgraceful +uproar, Carrie, who appeared very frightened, was standing outside her +bedroom, while Sarah was excited and crying. Mrs. Birrell (the +charwoman), who had evidently been drinking, was shouting at the top of +her voice that she was “no thief, that she was a respectable woman, who +had to work hard for her living, and she would smack anyone’s face who +put lies into her mouth.” Lupin, whose back was towards me, did not hear +me come in. He was standing between the two women, and, I regret to say, +in his endeavour to act as peacemaker, he made use of rather strong +language in the presence of his mother; and I was just in time to hear +him say: “And all this fuss about the loss of a few pages from a rotten +diary that wouldn’t fetch three-halfpence a pound!” I said, quietly: +“Pardon me, Lupin, that is a matter of opinion; and as I am master of +this house, perhaps you will allow me to take the reins.” + +I ascertained that the cause of the row was, that Sarah had accused Mrs. +Birrell of tearing the pages out of my diary to wrap up some kitchen fat +and leavings which she had taken out of the house last week. Mrs. +Birrell had slapped Sarah’s face, and said she had taken nothing out of +the place, as there was “never no leavings to take.” I ordered Sarah +back to her work, and requested Mrs. Birrell to go home. When I entered +the parlour Lupin was kicking his legs in the air, and roaring with +laughter. + +NOVEMBER 12, Sunday.—Coming home from church Carrie and I met Lupin, +Daisy Mutlar, and her brother. Daisy was introduced to us, and we walked +home together, Carrie walking on with Miss Mutlar. We asked them in for +a few minutes, and I had a good look at my future daughter-in-law. My +heart quite sank. She is a big young woman, and I should think at least +eight years older than Lupin. I did not even think her good-looking. +Carrie asked her if she could come in on Wednesday next with her brother +to meet a few friends. She replied that she would only be too pleased. + +NOVEMBER 13.—Carrie sent out invitations to Gowing, the Cummings, to Mr. +and Mrs. James (of Sutton), and Mr. Stillbrook. I wrote a note to Mr. +Franching, of Peckham. Carrie said we may as well make it a nice affair, +and why not ask our principal, Mr. Perkupp? I said I feared we were not +quite grand enough for him. Carrie said there was “no offence in asking +him.” I said: “Certainly not,” and I wrote him a letter. Carrie +confessed she was a little disappointed with Daisy Mutlar’s appearance, +but thought she seemed a nice girl. + +NOVEMBER 14.—Everybody so far has accepted for our quite grand little +party for to-morrow. Mr. Perkupp, in a nice letter which I shall keep, +wrote that he was dining in Kensington, but if he could get away, he +would come up to Holloway for an hour. Carrie was busy all day, making +little cakes and open jam puffs and jellies. She said she felt quite +nervous about her responsibilities to-morrow evening. We decided to have +some light things on the table, such as sandwiches, cold chicken and ham, +and some sweets, and on the sideboard a nice piece of cold beef and a +Paysandu tongue—for the more hungry ones to peg into if they liked. + +Gowing called to know if he was to put on “swallow-tails” to-morrow. +Carrie said he had better dress, especially as Mr. Franching was coming, +and there was a possibility of Mr. Perkupp also putting in an appearance. + +Gowing said: “Oh, I only wanted to know, for I have not worn my +dress-coat for some time, and I must send it to have the creases pressed +out.” + +After Gowing left, Lupin came in, and in his anxiety to please Daisy +Mutlar, carped at and criticised the arrangements, and, in fact, +disapproved of everything, including our having asked our old friend +Cummings, who, he said, would look in evening-dress like a green-grocer +engaged to wait, and who must not be surprised if Daisy took him for one. + +I fairly lost my temper, and said: “Lupin, allow me to tell you Miss +Daisy Mutlar is not the Queen of England. I gave you credit for more +wisdom than to allow yourself to be inveigled into an engagement with a +woman considerably older than yourself. I advise you to think of earning +your living before entangling yourself with a wife whom you will have to +support, and, in all probability, her brother also, who appeared to be +nothing but a loafer.” + +Instead of receiving this advice in a sensible manner, Lupin jumped up +and said: “If you insult the lady I am engaged to, you insult me. I will +leave the house and never darken your doors again.” + +He went out of the house, slamming the hall-door. But it was all right. +He came back to supper, and we played Bézique till nearly twelve o’clock. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Our first important Party. Old Friends and New Friends. Gowing is a +little annoying; but his friend, Mr. Stillbrook, turns out to be quite +amusing. Inopportune arrival of Mr. Perkupp, but he is most kind and +complimentary. Party a great success. + +NOVEMBER 15.—A red-letter day. Our first important party since we have +been in this house. I got home early from the City. Lupin insisted on +having a hired waiter, and stood a half-dozen of champagne. I think this +an unnecessary expense, but Lupin said he had had a piece of luck, having +made three pounds out a private deal in the City. I hope he won’t gamble +in his new situation. The supper-room looked so nice, and Carrie truly +said: “We need not be ashamed of its being seen by Mr. Perkupp, should he +honour us by coming.” + +I dressed early in case people should arrive punctually at eight o’clock, +and was much vexed to find my new dress-trousers much too short. + +Lupin, who is getting beyond his position, found fault with my wearing +ordinary boots instead of dress-boots. + +I replied satirically: “My dear son, I have lived to be above that sort +of thing.” + +Lupin burst out laughing, and said: “A man generally was above his +boots.” + +This may be funny, or it may _not_; but I was gratified to find he had +not discovered the coral had come off one of my studs. Carrie looked a +picture, wearing the dress she wore at the Mansion House. The +arrangement of the drawing-room was excellent. Carrie had hung muslin +curtains over the folding-doors, and also over one of the entrances, for +we had removed the door from its hinges. + +Mr. Peters, the waiter, arrived in good time, and I gave him strict +orders not to open another bottle of champagne until the previous one was +empty. Carrie arranged for some sherry and port wine to be placed on the +drawing-room sideboard, with some glasses. By-the-by, our new enlarged +and tinted photographs look very nice on the walls, especially as Carrie +has arranged some Liberty silk bows on the four corners of them. + +The first arrival was Gowing, who, with his usual taste, greeted me with: +“Hulloh, Pooter, why your trousers are too short!” + +I simply said: “Very likely, and you will find my temper ‘_short_’ also.” + +He said: “That won’t make your trousers longer, Juggins. You should get +your missus to put a flounce on them.” + +I wonder I waste my time entering his insulting observations in my diary. + +The next arrivals were Mr. and Mrs. Cummings. The former said: “As you +didn’t say anything about dress, I have come ‘half dress.’” He had on a +black frock-coat and white tie. The James’, Mr. Merton, and Mr. +Stillbrook arrived, but Lupin was restless and unbearable till his Daisy +Mutlar and Frank arrived. + +Carrie and I were rather startled at Daisy’s appearance. She had a +bright-crimson dress on, cut very low in the neck. I do not think such a +style modest. She ought to have taken a lesson from Carrie, and covered +her shoulders with a little lace. Mr. Nackles, Mr. Sprice-Hogg and his +four daughters came; so did Franching, and one or two of Lupin’s new +friends, members of the “Holloway Comedians.” Some of these seemed +rather theatrical in their manner, especially one, who was posing all the +evening, and leant on our little round table and cracked it. Lupin +called him “our Henry,” and said he was “our lead at the H.C.’s,” and was +quite as good in that department as Harry Mutlar was as the low-comedy +merchant. All this is Greek to me. + +We had some music, and Lupin, who never left Daisy’s side for a moment, +raved over her singing of a song, called “Some Day.” It seemed a pretty +song, but she made such grimaces, and sang, to my mind, so out of tune, I +would not have asked her to sing again; but Lupin made her sing four +songs right off, one after the other. + +At ten o’clock we went down to supper, and from the way Gowing and +Cummings ate you would have thought they had not had a meal for a month. +I told Carrie to keep something back in case Mr. Perkupp should come by +mere chance. Gowing annoyed me very much by filling a large tumbler of +champagne, and drinking it straight off. He repeated this action, and +made me fear our half-dozen of champagne would not last out. I tried to +keep a bottle back, but Lupin got hold of it, and took it to the +side-table with Daisy and Frank Mutlar. + +We went upstairs, and the young fellows began skylarking. Carrie put a +stop to that at once. Stillbrook amused us with a song, “What have you +done with your Cousin John?” I did not notice that Lupin and Frank had +disappeared. I asked Mr. Watson, one of the Holloways, where they were, +and he said: “It’s a case of ‘Oh, what a surprise!’” + +We were directed to form a circle—which we did. Watson then said: “I +have much pleasure in introducing the celebrated Blondin Donkey.” Frank +and Lupin then bounded into the room. Lupin had whitened his face like a +clown, and Frank had tied round his waist a large hearthrug. He was +supposed to be the donkey, and he looked it. They indulged in a very +noisy pantomime, and we were all shrieking with laughter. + +I turned round suddenly, and then I saw Mr. Perkupp standing half-way in +the door, he having arrived without our knowing it. I beckoned to +Carrie, and we went up to him at once. He would not come right into the +room. I apologised for the foolery, but Mr. Perkupp said: “Oh, it seems +amusing.” I could see he was not a bit amused. + +Carrie and I took him downstairs, but the table was a wreck. There was +not a glass of champagne left—not even a sandwich. Mr. Perkupp said he +required nothing, but would like a glass of seltzer or soda water. The +last syphon was empty. Carrie said: “We have plenty of port wine left.” +Mr. Perkupp said, with a smile: “No, thank you. I really require +nothing, but I am most pleased to see you and your husband in your own +home. Good-night, Mrs. Pooter—you will excuse my very short stay, I +know.” I went with him to his carriage, and he said: “Don’t trouble to +come to the office till twelve to-morrow.” + +I felt despondent as I went back to the house, and I told Carrie I +thought the party was a failure. Carrie said it was a great success, and +I was only tired, and insisted on my having some port myself. I drank +two glasses, and felt much better, and we went into the drawing-room, +where they had commenced dancing. Carrie and I had a little dance, which +I said reminded me of old days. She said I was a spooney old thing. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Reflections. I make another Good Joke. Am annoyed at the constant +serving-up of the “Blanc-Mange.” Lupin expresses his opinion of +Weddings. Lupin falls out with Daisy Mutlar. + +NOVEMBER 16.—Woke about twenty times during the night, with terrible +thirst. Finished off all the water in the bottle, as well as half that +in the jug. Kept dreaming also, that last night’s party was a failure, +and that a lot of low people came without invitation, and kept chaffing +and throwing things at Mr. Perkupp, till at last I was obliged to hide +him in the box-room (which we had just discovered), with a bath-towel +over him. It seems absurd now, but it was painfully real in the dream. +I had the same dream about a dozen times. + +Carrie annoyed me by saying: “You know champagne never agrees with you.” +I told her I had only a couple of glasses of it, having kept myself +entirely to port. I added that good champagne hurt nobody, and Lupin +told me he had only got it from a traveller as a favour, as that +particular brand had been entirely bought up by a West-End club. + +I think I ate too heartily of the “side dishes,” as the waiter called +them. I said to Carrie: “I wish I had put those ‘side dishes’ _aside_.” +I repeated this, but Carrie was busy, packing up the teaspoons we had +borrowed of Mrs. Cummings for the party. It was just half-past eleven, +and I was starting for the office, when Lupin appeared, with a yellow +complexion, and said: “Hulloh! Guv., what priced head have you this +morning?” I told him he might just as well speak to me in Dutch. He +added: “When I woke this morning, my head was as big as Baldwin’s +balloon.” On the spur of the moment I said the cleverest thing I think I +have ever said; viz.: “Perhaps that accounts for the para_shooting_ +pains.” We roared. + +NOVEMBER 17.—Still feel tired and headachy! In the evening Gowing +called, and was full of praise about our party last Wednesday. He said +everything was done beautifully, and he enjoyed himself enormously. +Gowing can be a very nice fellow when he likes, but you never know how +long it will last. For instance, he stopped to supper, and seeing some +_blanc-mange_ on the table, shouted out, while the servant was in the +room: “Hulloh! The remains of Wednesday?” + +NOVEMBER 18.—Woke up quite fresh after a good night’s rest, and feel +quite myself again. I am satisfied a life of going-out and Society is +not a life for me; we therefore declined the invitation which we received +this morning to Miss Bird’s wedding. We only met her twice at Mrs. +James’, and it means a present. Lupin said: “I am with you for once. To +my mind a wedding’s a very poor play. There are only two parts in it—the +bride and bridegroom. The best man is only a walking gentleman. With +the exception of a crying father and a snivelling mother, the rest are +_supers_ who have to dress well and have to _pay_ for their insignificant +parts in the shape of costly presents.” I did not care for the +theatrical slang, but thought it clever, though disrespectful. + +I told Sarah not to bring up the _blanc-mange_ again for breakfast. It +seems to have been placed on our table at every meal since Wednesday. +Cummings came round in the evening, and congratulated us on the success +of our party. He said it was the best party he had been to for many a +year; but he wished we had let him know it was full dress, as he would +have turned up in his swallow-tails. We sat down to a quiet game of +dominoes, and were interrupted by the noisy entrance of Lupin and Frank +Mutlar. Cummings and I asked them to join us. Lupin said he did not +care for dominoes, and suggested a game of “Spoof.” On my asking if it +required counters, Frank and Lupin in measured time said: “One, two, +three; go! Have you an estate in Greenland?” It was simply Greek to me, +but it appears it is one of the customs of the “Holloway Comedians” to do +this when a member displays ignorance. + +In spite of my instructions, that _blanc-mange_ was brought up again for +supper. To make matters worse, there had been an attempt to disguise it, +by placing it in a glass dish with jam round it. Carrie asked Lupin if +he would have some, and he replied: “No second-hand goods for me, thank +you.” I told Carrie, when we were alone, if that _blanc-mange_ were +placed on the table again I should walk out of the house. + +NOVEMBER 19, Sunday.—A delightfully quiet day. In the afternoon Lupin +was off to spend the rest of the day with the Mutlars. He departed in +the best of spirits, and Carrie said: “Well, one advantage of Lupin’s +engagement with Daisy is that the boy seems happy all day long. That +quite reconciles me to what I must confess seems an imprudent +engagement.” + +Carrie and I talked the matter over during the evening, and agreed that +it did not always follow that an early engagement meant an unhappy +marriage. Dear Carrie reminded me that we married early, and, with the +exception of a few trivial misunderstandings, we had never had a really +serious word. I could not help thinking (as I told her) that half the +pleasures of life were derived from the little struggles and small +privations that one had to endure at the beginning of one’s married life. +Such struggles were generally occasioned by want of means, and often +helped to make loving couples stand together all the firmer. + +Carrie said I had expressed myself wonderfully well, and that I was quite +a philosopher. + +We are all vain at times, and I must confess I felt flattered by Carrie’s +little compliment. I don’t pretend to be able to express myself in fine +language, but I feel I have the power of expressing my thoughts with +simplicity and lucidness. About nine o’clock, to our surprise, Lupin +entered, with a wild, reckless look, and in a hollow voice, which I must +say seemed rather theatrical, said: “Have you any brandy?” I said: “No; +but here is some whisky.” Lupin drank off nearly a wineglassful without +water, to my horror. + +We all three sat reading in silence till ten, when Carrie and I rose to +go to bed. Carrie said to Lupin: “I hope Daisy is well?” + +Lupin, with a forced careless air that he must have picked up from the +“Holloway Comedians,” replied: “Oh, Daisy? You mean Miss Mutlar. I +don’t know whether she is well or not, but please _never to mention her +name again in my presence_.” + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +We have a dose of Irving imitations. Make the acquaintance of a Mr. +Padge. Don’t care for him. Mr. Burwin-Fosselton becomes a nuisance. + +NOVEMBER 20.—Have seen nothing of Lupin the whole day. Bought a cheap +address-book. I spent the evening copying in the names and addresses of +my friends and acquaintances. Left out the Mutlars of course. + +NOVEMBER 21.—Lupin turned up for a few minutes in the evening. He asked +for a drop of brandy with a sort of careless look, which to my mind was +theatrical and quite ineffective. I said: “My boy, I have none, and I +don’t think I should give it you if I had.” Lupin said: “I’ll go where I +can get some,” and walked out of the house. Carrie took the boy’s part, +and the rest of the evening was spent in a disagreeable discussion, in +which the words “Daisy” and “Mutlar” must have occurred a thousand times. + +NOVEMBER 22.—Gowing and Cummings dropped in during the evening. Lupin +also came in, bringing his friend, Mr. Burwin-Fosselton—one of the +“Holloway Comedians”—who was at our party the other night, and who +cracked our little round table. Happy to say Daisy Mutlar was never +referred to. The conversation was almost entirely monopolised by the +young fellow Fosselton, who not only looked rather like Mr. Irving, but +seemed to imagine that he _was_ the celebrated actor. I must say he gave +some capital imitations of him. As he showed no signs of moving at +supper time, I said: “If you like to stay, Mr. Fosselton, for our usual +crust—pray do.” He replied: “Oh! thanks; but please call me +Burwin-Fosselton. It is a double name. There are lots of Fosseltons, +but please call me Burwin-Fosselton.” + +He began doing the Irving business all through supper. He sank so low +down in his chair that his chin was almost on a level with the table, and +twice he kicked Carrie under the table, upset his wine, and flashed a +knife uncomfortably near Gowing’s face. After supper he kept stretching +out his legs on the fender, indulging in scraps of quotations from plays +which were Greek to me, and more than once knocked over the fire-irons, +making a hideous row—poor Carrie already having a bad headache. + +When he went, he said, to our surprise: “I will come to-morrow and bring +my Irving make-up.” Gowing and Cummings said they would like to see it +and would come too. I could not help thinking they might as well give a +party at my house while they are about it. However, as Carrie sensibly +said: “Do anything, dear, to make Lupin forget the Daisy Mutlar +business.” + +NOVEMBER 23.—In the evening, Cummings came early. Gowing came a little +later and brought, without asking permission, a fat and, I think, very +vulgar-looking man named Padge, who appeared to be all moustache. Gowing +never attempted any apology to either of us, but said Padge wanted to see +the Irving business, to which Padge said: “That’s right,” and that is +about all he _did_ say during the entire evening. Lupin came in and +seemed in much better spirits. He had prepared a bit of a surprise. Mr. +Burwin-Fosselton had come in with him, but had gone upstairs to get +ready. In half-an-hour Lupin retired from the parlour, and returning in +a few minutes, announced “Mr. Henry Irving.” + +I must say we were all astounded. I never saw such a resemblance. It +was astonishing. The only person who did not appear interested was the +man Padge, who had got the best arm-chair, and was puffing away at a foul +pipe into the fireplace. After some little time I said; “Why do actors +always wear their hair so long?” Carrie in a moment said, “Mr. Hare +doesn’t wear long _hair_.” How we laughed except Mr. Fosselton, who +said, in a rather patronising kind of way, “The joke, Mrs. Pooter, is +extremely appropriate, if not altogether new.” Thinking this rather a +snub, I said: “Mr. Fosselton, I fancy—” He interrupted me by saying: +“Mr. _Burwin_-Fosselton, if you please,” which made me quite forget what +I was going to say to him. During the supper Mr. Burwin-Fosselton again +monopolised the conversation with his Irving talk, and both Carrie and I +came to the conclusion one can have even too much imitation of Irving. +After supper, Mr. Burwin-Fosselton got a little too boisterous over his +Irving imitation, and suddenly seizing Gowing by the collar of his coat, +dug his thumb-nail, accidentally of course, into Gowing’s neck and took a +piece of flesh out. Gowing was rightly annoyed, but that man Padge, who +having declined our modest supper in order that he should not lose his +comfortable chair, burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter at the +little misadventure. I was so annoyed at the conduct of Padge, I said: +“I suppose you would have laughed if he had poked Mr. Gowing’s eye out?” +to which Padge replied: “That’s right,” and laughed more than ever. I +think perhaps the greatest surprise was when we broke up, for Mr. +Burwin-Fosselton said: “Good-night, Mr. Pooter. I’m glad you like the +imitation, I’ll bring _the other make-up to-morrow night_.” + +NOVEMBER 24.—I went to town without a pocket-handkerchief. This is the +second time I have done this during the last week. I must be losing my +memory. Had it not been for this Daisy Mutlar business, I would have +written to Mr. Burwin-Fosselton and told him I should be out this +evening, but I fancy he is the sort of young man who would come all the +same. + +Dear old Cummings came in the evening; but Gowing sent round a little +note saying he hoped I would excuse his not turning up, which rather +amused me. He added that his neck was still painful. Of course, +Burwin-Fosselton came, but Lupin never turned up, and imagine my utter +disgust when that man Padge actually came again, and not even accompanied +by Gowing. I was exasperated, and said: “Mr. Padge, this is a +_surprise_.” Dear Carrie, fearing unpleasantness, said: “Oh! I suppose +Mr. Padge has only come to see the other Irving make-up.” Mr. Padge +said: “That’s right,” and took the best chair again, from which he never +moved the whole evening. + +My only consolation is, he takes no supper, so he is not an expensive +guest, but I shall speak to Gowing about the matter. The Irving +imitations and conversations occupied the whole evening, till I was sick +of it. Once we had a rather heated discussion, which was commenced by +Cummings saying that it appeared to him that Mr. Burwin-Fosselton was not +only _like_ Mr. Irving, but was in his judgment every way as _good_ or +even _better_. I ventured to remark that after all it was but an +imitation of an original. + +Cummings said surely some imitations were better than the originals. I +made what I considered a very clever remark: “Without an original there +can be no imitation.” Mr. Burwin-Fosselton said quite impertinently: +“Don’t discuss me in my presence, if you please; and, Mr. Pooter, I +should advise you to talk about what you understand;” to which that cad +Padge replied: “That’s right.” Dear Carrie saved the whole thing by +suddenly saying: “I’ll be Ellen Terry.” Dear Carrie’s imitation wasn’t a +bit liked, but she was so spontaneous and so funny that the disagreeable +discussion passed off. When they left, I very pointedly said to Mr. +Burwin-Fosselton and Mr. Padge that we should be engaged to-morrow +evening. + +NOVEMBER 25.—Had a long letter from Mr. Fosselton respecting last night’s +Irving discussion. I was very angry, and I wrote and said I knew little +or nothing about stage matters, was not in the least interested in them +and positively declined to be drawn into a discussion on the subject, +even at the risk of its leading to a breach of friendship. I never wrote +a more determined letter. + +On returning home at the usual hour on Saturday afternoon I met near the +Archway Daisy Mutlar. My heart gave a leap. I bowed rather stiffly, but +she affected not to have seen me. Very much annoyed in the evening by +the laundress sending home an odd sock. Sarah said she sent two pairs, +and the laundress declared only a pair and a half were sent. I spoke to +Carrie about it, but she rather testily replied: “I am tired of speaking +to her; you had better go and speak to her yourself. She is outside.” I +did so, but the laundress declared that only an odd sock was sent. + +Gowing passed into the passage at this time and was rude enough to listen +to the conversation, and interrupting, said: “Don’t waste the odd sock, +old man; do an act of charity and give it to some poor man with only one +leg.” The laundress giggled like an idiot. I was disgusted and walked +upstairs for the purpose of pinning down my collar, as the button had +come off the back of my shirt. + +When I returned to the parlour, Gowing was retailing his idiotic joke +about the odd sock, and Carrie was roaring with laughter. I suppose I am +losing my sense of humour. I spoke my mind pretty freely about Padge. +Gowing said he had met him only once before that evening. He had been +introduced by a friend, and as he (Padge) had “stood” a good dinner, +Gowing wished to show him some little return. Upon my word, Gowing’s +coolness surpasses all belief. Lupin came in before I could reply, and +Gowing unfortunately inquired after Daisy Mutlar. Lupin shouted: “Mind +your own business, sir!” and bounced out of the room, slamming the door. +The remainder of the night was Daisy Mutlar—Daisy Mutlar—Daisy Mutlar. +Oh dear! + +NOVEMBER 26, Sunday.—The curate preached a very good sermon to-day—very +good indeed. His appearance is never so impressive as our dear old +vicar’s, but I am bound to say his sermons are much more impressive. A +rather annoying incident occurred, of which I must make mention. Mrs. +Fernlosse, who is quite a grand lady, living in one of those large houses +in the Camden Road, stopped to speak to me after church, when we were all +coming out. I must say I felt flattered, for she is thought a good deal +of. I suppose she knew me through seeing me so often take round the +plate, especially as she always occupies the corner seat of the pew. She +is a very influential lady, and may have had something of the utmost +importance to say, but unfortunately, as she commenced to speak a strong +gust of wind came and blew my hat off into the middle of the road. + +I had to run after it, and had the greatest difficulty in recovering it. +When I had succeeded in doing so, I found Mrs. Fernlosse had walked on +with some swell friends, and I felt I could not well approach her now, +especially as my hat was smothered with mud. I cannot say how +disappointed I felt. + +In the evening (_Sunday_ evening of all others) I found an impertinent +note from Mr. Burwin-Fosselton, which ran as follows: + + “DEAR MR. POOTER,—Although your junior by perhaps some twenty or + thirty years—which is sufficient reason that you ought to have a + longer record of the things and ways in this miniature of a planet—I + feel it is just within the bounds of possibility that the wheels of + your life don’t travel so quickly round as those of the humble writer + of these lines. The dandy horse of past days has been known to + overtake the _slow coach_. + + “Do I make myself understood? + + “Very well, then! Permit me, Mr. Pooter, to advise you to accept the + _verb. sap_. Acknowledge your defeat, and take your whipping + gracefully; for remember you threw down the glove, and I cannot claim + to be either mentally or physically a _coward_! + + “_Revenons à nos moutons_. + + “Our lives run in different grooves. I live for MY ART—THE STAGE. + Your life is devoted to commercial pursuits—‘A life among Ledgers.’ + My books are of different metal. Your life in the City is + honourable, I admit. _But how different_! Cannot even you see the + ocean between us? A channel that prevents the meeting of our brains + in harmonious accord. Ah! But _chaçun à son goût_. + + “I have registered a vow to mount the steps of fame. I may crawl, I + may slip, I may even falter (we are all weak), but _reach the top + rung of the ladder I will_!!! When there, my voice shall be heard, + for I will shout to the multitudes below: ‘_Vici_!’ For the present + I am only an amateur, and my work is unknown, forsooth, save to a + party of friends, with here and there an enemy. + + “But, Mr. Pooter, let me ask you, ‘What is the difference between the + amateur and the professional?’ + + “None!!! + + “Stay! Yes, there is a difference. One is _paid_ for doing what the + other does as skilfully for _nothing_! + + “But I will be _paid_, too! For _I_, contrary to the wishes of my + family and friends, have at last elected to adopt the stage as _my_ + profession. And when the _farce_ craze is over—and, _mark you_, + _that will be soon_—I will make my power known; for I feel—pardon my + apparent conceit—that there is no living man who can play the + hump-backed Richard as I _feel_ and _know_ I can. + + “And _you_ will be the first to come round and bend your head in + submission. There are many matters you may understand, but knowledge + of the fine art of acting is to you an _unknown quantity_. + + “Pray let this discussion cease with this letter. _Vale_! + + Yours truly, + “BURWIN-FOSSELTON.” + +I was disgusted. When Lupin came in, I handed him this impertinent +letter, and said: “My boy, in that letter you can see the true character +of your friend.” + +Lupin, to my surprise, said: “Oh yes. He showed me the letter before he +sent it. I think he is right, and you ought to apologise.” + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +A serious discussion concerning the use and value of my diary. Lupin’s +opinion of ’Xmas. Lupin’s unfortunate engagement is on again. + +DECEMBER 17.—As I open my scribbling diary I find the words “Oxford +Michaelmas Term ends.” Why this should induce me to indulge in +retrospective I don’t know, but it does. The last few weeks of my diary +are of minimum interest. The breaking off of the engagement between +Lupin and Daisy Mutlar has made him a different being, and Carrie a +rather depressing companion. She was a little dull last Saturday, and I +thought to cheer her up by reading some extracts from my diary; but she +walked out of the room in the middle of the reading, without a word. On +her return, I said: “Did my diary bore you, darling?” + +She replied, to my surprise: “I really wasn’t listening, dear. I was +obliged to leave to give instructions to the laundress. In consequence +of some stuff she puts in the water, two more of Lupin’s coloured shirts +have run and he says he won’t wear them.” + +I said: “Everything is Lupin. It’s all Lupin, Lupin, Lupin. There was +not a single button on my shirt yesterday, but _I_ made no complaint.” + +Carrie simply replied: “You should do as all other men do, and wear +studs. In fact, I never saw anyone but you wear buttons on the +shirt-fronts.” + +I said: “I certainly wore none yesterday, for there were none on.” + +Another thought that strikes me is that Gowing seldom calls in the +evening, and Cummings never does. I fear they don’t get on well with +Lupin. + +DECEMBER 18.—Yesterday I was in a retrospective vein—to-day it is +_prospective_. I see nothing but clouds, clouds, clouds. Lupin is +perfectly intolerable over the Daisy Mutlar business. He won’t say what +is the cause of the breach. He is evidently condemning her conduct, and +yet, if we venture to agree with him, says he won’t hear a word against +her. So what is one to do? Another thing which is disappointing to me +is, that Carrie and Lupin take no interest whatever in my diary. + +I broached the subject at the breakfast-table to-day. I said: “I was in +hopes that, if anything ever happened to me, the diary would be an +endless source of pleasure to you both; to say nothing of the chance of +the remuneration which may accrue from its being published.” + +Both Carrie and Lupin burst out laughing. Carrie was sorry for this, I +could see, for she said: “I did not mean to be rude, dear Charlie; but +truly I do not think your diary would sufficiently interest the public to +be taken up by a publisher.” + +I replied: “I am sure it would prove quite as interesting as some of the +ridiculous reminiscences that have been published lately. Besides, it’s +the diary that makes the man. Where would Evelyn and Pepys have been if +it had not been for their diaries?” + +Carrie said I was quite a philosopher; but Lupin, in a jeering tone, +said: “If it had been written on larger paper, Guv., we might get a fair +price from a butterman for it.” + +As I am in the prospective vein, I vow the end of this year will see the +end of my diary. + +DECEMBER 19.—The annual invitation came to spend Christmas with Carrie’s +mother—the usual family festive gathering to which we always look +forward. Lupin declined to go. I was astounded, and expressed my +surprise and disgust. Lupin then obliged us with the following Radical +speech: “I hate a family gathering at Christmas. What does it mean? Why +someone says: ‘Ah! we miss poor Uncle James, who was here last year,’ and +we all begin to snivel. Someone else says: ‘It’s two years since poor +Aunt Liz used to sit in that corner.’ Then we all begin to snivel again. +Then another gloomy relation says ‘Ah! I wonder whose turn it will be +next?’ Then we all snivel again, and proceed to eat and drink too much; +and they don’t discover until _I_ get up that we have been seated +thirteen at dinner.” + +DECEMBER 20.—Went to Smirksons’, the drapers, in the Strand, who this +year have turned out everything in the shop and devoted the whole place +to the sale of Christmas cards. Shop crowded with people, who seemed to +take up the cards rather roughly, and, after a hurried glance at them, +throw them down again. I remarked to one of the young persons serving, +that carelessness appeared to be a disease with some purchasers. The +observation was scarcely out of my mouth, when my thick coat-sleeve +caught against a large pile of expensive cards in boxes one on top of the +other, and threw them down. The manager came forward, looking very much +annoyed, and picking up several cards from the ground, said to one of the +assistants, with a palpable side-glance at me: “Put these amongst the +sixpenny goods; they can’t be sold for a shilling now.” The result was, +I felt it my duty to buy some of these damaged cards. + +I had to buy more and pay more than intended. Unfortunately I did not +examine them all, and when I got home I discovered a vulgar card with a +picture of a fat nurse with two babies, one black and the other white, +and the words: “We wish Pa a Merry Christmas.” I tore up the card and +threw it away. Carrie said the great disadvantage of going out in +Society and increasing the number of our friends was, that we should have +to send out nearly two dozen cards this year. + +DECEMBER 21.—To save the postman a miserable Christmas, we follow the +example of all unselfish people, and send out our cards early. Most of +the cards had finger-marks, which I did not notice at night. I shall buy +all future cards in the daytime. Lupin (who, ever since he has had the +appointment with a stock and share broker, does not seem over-scrupulous +in his dealings) told me never to rub out the pencilled price on the +backs of the cards. I asked him why. Lupin said: “Suppose your card is +marked 9d. Well, all you have to do is to pencil a 3—and a long +down-stroke after it—in _front_ of the ninepence, and people will think +you have given five times the price for it.” + +In the evening Lupin was very low-spirited, and I reminded him that +behind the clouds the sun was shining. He said: “Ugh! it never shines on +me.” I said: “Stop, Lupin, my boy; you are worried about Daisy Mutlar. +Don’t think of her any more. You ought to congratulate yourself on +having got off a very bad bargain. Her notions are far too grand for our +simple tastes.” He jumped up and said: “I won’t allow one word to be +uttered against her. She’s worth the whole bunch of your friends put +together, that inflated, sloping-head of a Perkupp included.” I left the +room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat. + +DECEMBER 23.—I exchanged no words with Lupin in the morning; but as he +seemed to be in exuberant spirits in the evening, I ventured to ask him +where he intended to spend his Christmas. He replied: “Oh, most likely +at the Mutlars’.” + +In wonderment, I said: “What! after your engagement has been broken off?” + +Lupin said: “Who said it is off?” + +I said: “You have given us both to understand—” + +He interrupted me by saying: “Well, never mind what I said. _It is on +again—there_!” + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +I receive an insulting Christmas card. We spend a pleasant Christmas at +Carrie’s mother’s. A Mr. Moss is rather too free. A boisterous evening, +during which I am struck in the dark. I receive an extraordinary letter +from Mr. Mutlar, senior, respecting Lupin. We miss drinking out the Old +Year. + +DECEMBER 24.—I am a poor man, but I would gladly give ten shillings to +find out who sent me the insulting Christmas card I received this +morning. I never insult people; why should they insult me? The worst +part of the transaction is, that I find myself suspecting all my friends. +The handwriting on the envelope is evidently disguised, being written +sloping the wrong way. I cannot think either Gowing or Cummings would do +such a mean thing. Lupin denied all knowledge of it, and I believe him; +although I disapprove of his laughing and sympathising with the offender. +Mr. Franching would be above such an act; and I don’t think any of the +Mutlars would descend to such a course. I wonder if Pitt, that impudent +clerk at the office, did it? Or Mrs. Birrell, the charwoman, or +Burwin-Fosselton? The writing is too good for the former. + +CHRISTMAS DAY.—We caught the 10.20 train at Paddington, and spent a +pleasant day at Carrie’s mother’s. The country was quite nice and +pleasant, although the roads were sloppy. We dined in the middle of the +day, just ten of us, and talked over old times. If everybody had a nice, +_un_interfering mother-in-law, such as I have, what a deal of happiness +there would be in the world. Being all in good spirits, I proposed her +health, and I made, I think, a very good speech. + +I concluded, rather neatly, by saying: “On an occasion like this—whether +relatives, friends, or acquaintances,—we are all inspired with good +feelings towards each other. We are of one mind, and think only of love +and friendship. Those who have quarrelled with absent friends should +kiss and make it up. Those who happily have not fallen out, can kiss all +the same.” + +I saw the tears in the eyes of both Carrie and her mother, and must say I +felt very flattered by the compliment. That dear old Reverend John Panzy +Smith, who married us, made a most cheerful and amusing speech, and said +he should act on my suggestion respecting the kissing. He then walked +round the table and kissed all the ladies, including Carrie. Of course +one did not object to this; but I was more than staggered when a young +fellow named Moss, who was a stranger to me, and who had scarcely spoken +a word through dinner, jumped up suddenly with a sprig of misletoe, and +exclaimed: “Hulloh! I don’t see why I shouldn’t be on in this scene.” +Before one could realise what he was about to do, he kissed Carrie and +the rest of the ladies. + +Fortunately the matter was treated as a joke, and we all laughed; but it +was a dangerous experiment, and I felt very uneasy for a moment as to the +result. I subsequently referred to the matter to Carrie, but she said: +“Oh, he’s not much more than a boy.” I said that he had a very large +moustache for a boy. Carrie replied: “I didn’t say he was not a nice +boy.” + +DECEMBER 26.—I did not sleep very well last night; I never do in a +strange bed. I feel a little indigestion, which one must expect at this +time of the year. Carrie and I returned to Town in the evening. Lupin +came in late. He said he enjoyed his Christmas, and added: “I feel as +fit as a Lowther Arcade fiddle, and only require a little more ‘oof’ to +feel as fit as a £500 Stradivarius.” I have long since given up trying +to understand Lupin’s slang, or asking him to explain it. + +DECEMBER 27.—I told Lupin I was expecting Gowing and Cummings to drop in +to-morrow evening for a quiet game. I was in hope the boy would +volunteer to stay in, and help to amuse them. Instead of which, he said: +“Oh, you had better put them off, as I have asked Daisy and Frank Mutlar +to come.” I said I could not think of doing such a thing. Lupin said: +“Then I will send a wire, and put off Daisy.” I suggested that a +post-card or letter would reach her quite soon enough, and would not be +so extravagant. + +Carrie, who had listened to the above conversation with apparent +annoyance, directed a well-aimed shaft at Lupin. She said: “Lupin, why +do you object to Daisy meeting your father’s friends? Is it because they +are not good enough for her, or (which is equally possible) _she_ is not +good enough for them?” Lupin was dumbfounded, and could make no reply. +When he left the room, I gave Carrie a kiss of approval. + +DECEMBER 28—Lupin, on coming down to breakfast, said to his mother: “I +have not put off Daisy and Frank, and should like them to join Gowing and +Cummings this evening.” I felt very pleased with the boy for this. +Carrie said, in reply: “I am glad you let me know in time, as I can turn +over the cold leg of mutton, dress it with a little parsley, and no one +will know it has been cut.” She further said she would make a few +custards, and stew some pippins, so that they would be cold by the +evening. + +Finding Lupin in good spirits, I asked him quietly if he really had any +personal objection to either Gowing or Cummings. He replied: “Not in the +least. I think Cummings looks rather an ass, but that is partly due to +his patronising ‘the three-and-six-one-price hat company,’ and wearing a +reach-me-down frock-coat. As for that perpetual brown velveteen jacket +of Gowing’s—why, he resembles an itinerant photographer.” + +I said it was not the coat that made the gentleman; whereupon Lupin, with +a laugh, replied: “No, and it wasn’t much of a gentleman who made their +coats.” + +We were rather jolly at supper, and Daisy made herself very agreeable, +especially in the earlier part of the evening, when she sang. At supper, +however, she said: “Can you make tee-to-tums with bread?” and she +commenced rolling up pieces of bread, and twisting them round on the +table. I felt this to be bad manners, but of course said nothing. +Presently Daisy and Lupin, to my disgust, began throwing bread-pills at +each other. Frank followed suit, and so did Cummings and Gowing, to my +astonishment. They then commenced throwing hard pieces of crust, one +piece catching me on the forehead, and making me blink. I said: “Steady, +please; steady!” Frank jumped up and said: “Tum, tum; then the band +played.” + +I did not know what this meant, but they all roared, and continued the +bread-battle. Gowing suddenly seized all the parsley off the cold +mutton, and threw it full in my face. I looked daggers at Gowing, who +replied: “I say, it’s no good trying to look indignant, with your hair +full of parsley.” I rose from the table, and insisted that a stop should +be put to this foolery at once. Frank Mutlar shouted: “Time, gentlemen, +please! time!” and turned out the gas, leaving us in absolute darkness. + +I was feeling my way out of the room, when I suddenly received a hard +intentional punch at the back of my head. I said loudly: “Who did that?” +There was no answer; so I repeated the question, with the same result. I +struck a match, and lighted the gas. They were all talking and laughing, +so I kept my own counsel; but, after they had gone, I said to Carrie; +“The person who sent me that insulting post-card at Christmas was here +to-night.” + +DECEMBER 29.—I had a most vivid dream last night. I woke up, and on +falling asleep, dreamed the same dream over again precisely. I dreamt I +heard Frank Mutlar telling his sister that he had not only sent me the +insulting Christmas card, but admitted that he was the one who punched my +head last night in the dark. As fate would have it, Lupin, at breakfast, +was reading extracts from a letter he had just received from Frank. + +I asked him to pass the envelope, that I might compare the writing. He +did so, and I examined it by the side of the envelope containing the +Christmas card. I detected a similarity in the writing, in spite of the +attempted disguise. I passed them on to Carrie, who began to laugh. I +asked her what she was laughing at, and she said the card was never +directed to me at all. It was “L. Pooter,” not “C. Pooter.” Lupin asked +to look at the direction and the card, and exclaimed, with a laugh: “Oh +yes, Guv., it’s meant for me.” + +I said: “Are you in the habit of receiving insulting Christmas cards?” +He replied: “Oh yes, and of _sending_ them, too.” + +In the evening Gowing called, and said he enjoyed himself very much last +night. I took the opportunity to confide in him, as an old friend, about +the vicious punch last night. He burst out laughing, and said: “Oh, it +was _your head_, was it? I know I accidentally hit something, but I +thought it was a brick wall.” I told him I felt hurt, in both senses of +the expression. + +DECEMBER 30, Sunday.—Lupin spent the whole day with the Mutlars. He +seemed rather cheerful in the evening, so I said: “I’m glad to see you so +happy, Lupin.” He answered: “Well, Daisy is a splendid girl, but I was +obliged to take her old fool of a father down a peg. What with his +meanness over his cigars, his stinginess over his drinks, his farthing +economy in turning down the gas if you only quit the room for a second, +writing to one on half-sheets of note-paper, sticking the remnant of the +last cake of soap on to the new cake, putting two bricks on each side of +the fireplace, and his general ‘outside-halfpenny-‘bus-ness,’ I was +compelled to let him have a bit of my mind.” I said: “Lupin, you are not +much more than a boy; I hope you won’t repent it.” + +DECEMBER 31.—The last day of the Old Year. I received an extraordinary +letter from Mr. Mutlar, senior. He writes: “Dear Sir,—For a long time +past I have had considerable difficulty deciding the important question, +‘Who is the master of my own house? Myself, or _your son_ Lupin?’ +Believe me, I have no prejudice one way or the other; but I have been +most reluctantly compelled to give judgment to the effect that I am the +master of it. Under the circumstances, it has become my duty to forbid +your son to enter my house again. I am sorry, because it deprives me of +the society of one of the most modest, unassuming, and gentlemanly +persons I have ever had the honour of being acquainted with.” + +I did not desire the last day to wind up disagreeably, so I said nothing +to either Carrie or Lupin about the letter. + +A most terrible fog came on, and Lupin would go out in it, but promised +to be back to drink out the Old Year—a custom we have always observed. +At a quarter to twelve Lupin had not returned, and the fog was fearful. +As time was drawing close, I got out the spirits. Carrie and I deciding +on whisky, I opened a fresh bottle; but Carrie said it smelt like brandy. +As I knew it to be whisky, I said there was nothing to discuss. Carrie, +evidently vexed that Lupin had not come in, did discuss it all the same, +and wanted me to have a small wager with her to decide by the smell. I +said I could decide it by the taste in a moment. A silly and unnecessary +argument followed, the result of which was we suddenly saw it was a +quarter-past twelve, and, for the first time in our married life, we +missed welcoming in the New Year. Lupin got home at a quarter-past two, +having got lost in the fog—so he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Begin the year with an unexpected promotion at the office. I make two +good jokes. I get an enormous rise in my salary. Lupin speculates +successfully and starts a pony-trap. Have to speak to Sarah. +Extraordinary conduct of Gowing’s. + +JANUARY 1.—I had intended concluding my diary last week; but a most +important event has happened, so I shall continue for a little while +longer on the fly-leaves attached to the end of my last year’s diary. It +had just struck half-past one, and I was on the point of leaving the +office to have my dinner, when I received a message that Mr. Perkupp +desired to see me at once. I must confess that my heart commenced to +beat and I had most serious misgivings. + +Mr. Perkupp was in his room writing, and he said: “Take a seat, Mr. +Pooter, I shall not be a moment.” + +I replied: “No, thank you, sir; I’ll stand.” + +I watched the clock on the mantelpiece, and I was waiting quite twenty +minutes; but it seemed hours. Mr. Perkupp at last got up himself. + +I said: “I hope there is nothing wrong, sir?” + +He replied: “Oh dear, no! quite the reverse, I hope.” What a weight off +my mind! My breath seemed to come back again in an instant. + +Mr. Perkupp said: “Mr. Buckling is going to retire, and there will be +some slight changes in the office. You have been with us nearly +twenty-one years, and, in consequence of your conduct during that period, +we intend making a special promotion in your favour. We have not quite +decided how you will be placed; but in any case there will be a +considerable increase in your salary, which, it is quite unnecessary for +me to say, you fully deserve. I have an appointment at two; but you +shall hear more to-morrow.” + +He then left the room quickly, and I was not even allowed time or thought +to express a single word of grateful thanks to him. I need not say how +dear Carrie received this joyful news. With perfect simplicity she said: +“At last we shall be able to have a chimney-glass for the back +drawing-room, which we always wanted.” I added: “Yes, and at last you +shall have that little costume which you saw at Peter Robinson’s so +cheap.” + +JANUARY 2.—I was in a great state of suspense all day at the office. I +did not like to worry Mr. Perkupp; but as he did not send for me, and +mentioned yesterday that he would see me again to-day, I thought it +better, perhaps, to go to him. I knocked at his door, and on entering, +Mr. Perkupp said: “Oh! it’s you, Mr. Pooter; do you want to see me?” I +said: “No, sir, I thought you wanted to see me!” “Oh!” he replied, “I +remember. Well, I am very busy to-day; I will see you to-morrow.” + +JANUARY 3.—Still in a state of anxiety and excitement, which was not +alleviated by ascertaining that Mr. Perkupp sent word he should not be at +the office to-day. In the evening, Lupin, who was busily engaged with a +paper, said suddenly to me: “Do you know anything about _chalk pits_, +Guv.?” I said: “No, my boy, not that I’m aware of.” Lupin said: “Well, +I give you the tip; _chalk pits_ are as safe as Consols, and pay six per +cent. at par.” I said a rather neat thing, viz.: “They may be six per +cent. at _par_, but your _pa_ has no money to invest.” Carrie and I both +roared with laughter. Lupin did not take the slightest notice of the +joke, although I purposely repeated it for him; but continued: “I give +you the tip, that’s all—_chalk pits_!” I said another funny thing: “Mind +you don’t fall into them!” Lupin put on a supercilious smile, and said: +“Bravo! Joe Miller.” + +JANUARY 4.—Mr. Perkupp sent for me and told me that my position would be +that of one of the senior clerks. I was more than overjoyed. Mr. +Perkupp added, he would let me know to-morrow what the salary would be. +This means another day’s anxiety; I don’t mind, for it is anxiety of the +right sort. That reminded me that I had forgotten to speak to Lupin +about the letter I received from Mr. Mutlar, senr. I broached the +subject to Lupin in the evening, having first consulted Carrie. Lupin +was riveted to the _Financial News_, as if he had been a born capitalist, +and I said: “Pardon me a moment, Lupin, how is it you have not been to +the Mutlars’ any day this week?” + +Lupin answered: “I told you! I cannot stand old Mutlar.” + +I said: “Mr. Mutlar writes to me to say pretty plainly that he cannot +stand you!” + +Lupin said: “Well, I like his cheek in writing to _you_. I’ll find out +if his father is still alive, and I will write _him_ a note complaining +of _his_ son, and I’ll state pretty clearly that his son is a blithering +idiot!” + +I said: “Lupin, please moderate your expressions in the presence of your +mother.” + +Lupin said: “I’m very sorry, but there is no other expression one can +apply to him. However, I’m determined not to enter his place again.” + +I said: “You know, Lupin, he has forbidden you the house.” + +Lupin replied: “Well, we won’t split straws—it’s all the same. Daisy is +a trump, and will wait for me ten years, if necessary.” + +JANUARY 5.—I can scarcely write the news. Mr. Perkupp told me my salary +would be raised £100! I stood gaping for a moment unable to realise it. +I annually get £10 rise, and I thought it might be £15 or even £20; but +£100 surpasses all belief. Carrie and I both rejoiced over our good +fortune. Lupin came home in the evening in the utmost good spirits. I +sent Sarah quietly round to the grocer’s for a bottle of champagne, the +same as we had before, “Jackson Frères.” It was opened at supper, and I +said to Lupin: “This is to celebrate some good news I have received +to-day.” Lupin replied: “Hooray, Guv.! And I have some good news, also; +a double event, eh?” I said: “My boy, as a result of twenty-one years’ +industry and strict attention to the interests of my superiors in office, +I have been rewarded with promotion and a rise in salary of £100.” + +Lupin gave three cheers, and we rapped the table furiously, which brought +in Sarah to see what the matter was. Lupin ordered us to “fill up” +again, and addressing us upstanding, said: “Having been in the firm of +Job Cleanands, stock and share-brokers, a few weeks, and not having paid +particular attention to the interests of my superiors in office, my +Guv’nor, as a reward to me, allotted me £5 worth of shares in a really +good thing. The result is, to-day I have made £200.” I said: “Lupin, +you are joking.” “No, Guv., it’s the good old truth; Job Cleanands _put +me on to Chlorates_.” + +JANUARY 21.—I am very much concerned at Lupin having started a pony-trap. +I said: “Lupin, are you justified in this outrageous extravagance?” +Lupin replied: “Well, one must get to the City somehow. I’ve only hired +it, and can give it up any time I like.” I repeated my question: “Are +you justified in this extravagance?” He replied: “Look here, Guv., +excuse me saying so, but you’re a bit out of date. It does not pay +nowadays, fiddling about over small things. I don’t mean anything +personal, Guv’nor. My boss says if I take his tip, and stick to big +things, I can make big money!” I said I thought the very idea of +speculation most horrifying. Lupin said “It is not speculation, it’s a +dead cert.” I advised him, at all events, not to continue the pony and +cart; but he replied: “I made £200 in one day; now suppose I only make +£200 in a month, or put it at £100 a month, which is ridiculously +low—why, that is £1,250 a year. What’s a few pounds a week for a trap?” + +I did not pursue the subject further, beyond saying that I should feel +glad when the autumn came, and Lupin would be of age and responsible for +his own debts. He answered: “My dear Guv., I promise you faithfully that +I will never speculate with what I have not got. I shall only go on Job +Cleanands’ tips, and as he is in the ‘know’ it is pretty safe sailing.” +I felt somewhat relieved. Gowing called in the evening and, to my +surprise, informed me that, as he had made £10 by one of Lupin’s tips, he +intended asking us and the Cummings round next Saturday. Carrie and I +said we should be delighted. + +JANUARY 22.—I don’t generally lose my temper with servants; but I had to +speak to Sarah rather sharply about a careless habit she has recently +contracted of shaking the table-cloth, after removing the breakfast +things, in a manner which causes all the crumbs to fall on the carpet, +eventually to be trodden in. Sarah answered very rudely: “Oh, you are +always complaining.” I replied: “Indeed, I am not. I spoke to you last +week about walking all over the drawing-room carpet with a piece of +yellow soap on the heel of your boot.” She said: “And you’re always +grumbling about your breakfast.” I said: “No, I am not; but I feel +perfectly justified in complaining that I never can get a hard-boiled +egg. The moment I crack the shell it spurts all over the plate, and I +have spoken to you at least fifty times about it.” She began to cry and +make a scene; but fortunately my ’bus came by, so I had a good excuse for +leaving her. Gowing left a message in the evening, that we were not to +forget next Saturday. Carrie amusingly said: “As he has never asked any +friends before, we are not likely to forget it.” + +JANUARY 23.—I asked Lupin to try and change the hard brushes, he recently +made me a present of, for some softer ones, as my hair-dresser tells me I +ought not to brush my hair too much just now. + +JANUARY 24.—The new chimney-glass came home for the back drawing-room. +Carrie arranged some fans very prettily on the top and on each side. It +is an immense improvement to the room. + +JANUARY 25.—We had just finished our tea, when who should come in but +Cummings, who has not been here for over three weeks. I noticed that he +looked anything but well, so I said: “Well, Cummings, how are you? You +look a little blue.” He replied: “Yes! and I feel blue too.” I said: +“Why, what’s the matter?” He said: “Oh, nothing, except that I have been +on my back for a couple of weeks, that’s all. At one time my doctor +nearly gave me up, yet not a soul has come near me. No one has even +taken the trouble to inquire whether I was alive or dead.” + +I said: “This is the first I have heard of it. I have passed your house +several nights, and presumed you had company, as the rooms were so +brilliantly lighted.” + +Cummings replied: “No! The only company I have had was my wife, the +doctor, and the landlady—the last-named having turned out a perfect +trump. I wonder you did not see it in the paper. I know it was +mentioned in the _Bicycle News_.” + +I thought to cheer him up, and said: “Well, you are all right now?” + +He replied: “That’s not the question. The question is whether an illness +does not enable you to discover who are your _true_ friends.” + +I said such an observation was unworthy of him. To make matters worse, +in came Gowing, who gave Cummings a violent slap on the back, and said: +“Hulloh! Have you seen a ghost? You look scared to death, like Irving +in _Macbeth_.” I said: “Gently, Gowing, the poor fellow has been very +ill.” Gowing roared with laughter and said: “Yes, and you look it, too.” +Cummings quietly said: “Yes, and I feel it too—not that I suppose you +care.” + +An awkward silence followed. Gowing said: “Never mind, Cummings, you and +the missis come round to my place to-morrow, and it will cheer you up a +bit; for we’ll open a bottle of wine.” + +JANUARY 26.—An extraordinary thing happened. Carrie and I went round to +Gowing’s, as arranged, at half-past seven. We knocked and rang several +times without getting an answer. At last the latch was drawn and the +door opened a little way, the chain still being up. A man in +shirt-sleeves put his head through and said: “Who is it? What do you +want?” I said: “Mr. Gowing, he is expecting us.” The man said (as well +as I could hear, owing to the yapping of a little dog): “I don’t think he +is. Mr. Gowing is not at home.” I said: “He will be in directly.” + +With that observation he slammed the door, leaving Carrie and me standing +on the steps with a cutting wind blowing round the corner. + +Carrie advised me to knock again. I did so, and then discovered for the +first time that the knocker had been newly painted, and the paint had +come off on my gloves—which were, in consequence, completely spoiled. + +I knocked at the door with my stick two or three times. + +The man opened the door, taking the chain off this time, and began +abusing me. He said: “What do you mean by scratching the paint with your +stick like that, spoiling the varnish? You ought to be ashamed of +yourself.” + +I said: “Pardon me, Mr. Gowing invited—” + +He interrupted and said: “I don’t care for Mr. Gowing, or any of his +friends. This is _my_ door, not Mr. Gowing’s. There are people here +besides Mr. Gowing.” + +The impertinence of this man was nothing. I scarcely noticed it, it was +so trivial in comparison with the scandalous conduct of Gowing. + +At this moment Cummings and his wife arrived. Cummings was very lame and +leaning on a stick; but got up the steps and asked what the matter was. + +The man said: “Mr. Gowing said nothing about expecting anyone. All he +said was he had just received an invitation to Croydon, and he should not +be back till Monday evening. He took his bag with him.” + +With that he slammed the door again. I was too indignant with Gowing’s +conduct to say anything. Cummings looked white with rage, and as he +descended the steps struck his stick violently on the ground and said: +“Scoundrel!” + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Gowing explains his conduct. Lupin takes us for a drive, which we don’t +enjoy. Lupin introduces us to Mr. Murray Posh. + +FEBRUARY 8.—It does seem hard I cannot get good sausages for breakfast. +They are either full of bread or spice, or are as red as beef. Still +anxious about the £20 I invested last week by Lupin’s advice. However, +Cummings has done the same. + +FEBRUARY 9.—Exactly a fortnight has passed, and I have neither seen nor +heard from Gowing respecting his extraordinary conduct in asking us round +to his house, and then being out. In the evening Carrie was engaged +marking a half-dozen new collars I had purchased. I’ll back Carrie’s +marking against anybody’s. While I was drying them at the fire, and +Carrie was rebuking me for scorching them, Cummings came in. + +He seemed quite well again, and chaffed us about marking the collars. I +asked him if he had heard from Gowing, and he replied that he had not. I +said I should not have believed that Gowing could have acted in such an +ungentlemanly manner. Cummings said: “You are mild in your description +of him; I think he has acted like a cad.” + +The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the door opened, and +Gowing, putting in his head, said: “May I come in?” I said: “Certainly.” +Carrie said very pointedly: “Well, you _are_ a stranger.” Gowing said: +“Yes, I’ve been on and off to Croydon during the last fortnight.” I +could see Cummings was boiling over, and eventually he tackled Gowing +very strongly respecting his conduct last Saturday week. Gowing appeared +surprised, and said: “Why, I posted a letter to you in the morning +announcing that the party was ‘off, very much off.’” I said: “I never +got it.” Gowing, turning to Carrie, said: “I suppose letters sometimes +_miscarry_, don’t they, _Mrs._ Carrie?” Cummings sharply said: “This is +not a time for joking. I had no notice of the party being put off.” +Gowing replied: “I told Pooter in my note to tell you, as I was in a +hurry. However, I’ll inquire at the post-office, and we must meet again +at my place.” I added that I hoped he would be present at the next +meeting. Carrie roared at this, and even Cummings could not help +laughing. + +FEBRUARY 10, Sunday.—Contrary to my wishes, Carrie allowed Lupin to +persuade her to take her for a drive in the afternoon in his trap. I +quite disapprove of driving on a Sunday, but I did not like to trust +Carrie alone with Lupin, so I offered to go too. Lupin said: “Now, that +is nice of you, Guv., but you won’t mind sitting on the back-seat of the +cart?” + +Lupin proceeded to put on a bright-blue coat that seemed miles too large +for him. Carrie said it wanted taking in considerably at the back. +Lupin said: “Haven’t you seen a box-coat before? You can’t drive in +anything else.” + +He may wear what he likes in the future, for I shall never drive with him +again. His conduct was shocking. When we passed Highgate Archway, he +tried to pass everything and everybody. He shouted to respectable people +who were walking quietly in the road to get out of the way; he flicked at +the horse of an old man who was riding, causing it to rear; and, as I had +to ride backwards, I was compelled to face a gang of roughs in a +donkey-cart, whom Lupin had chaffed, and who turned and followed us for +nearly a mile, bellowing, indulging in coarse jokes and laughter, to say +nothing of occasionally pelting us with orange-peel. + +Lupin’s excuse—that the Prince of Wales would have to put up with the +same sort of thing if he drove to the Derby—was of little consolation to +either Carrie or myself. Frank Mutlar called in the evening, and Lupin +went out with him. + +FEBRUARY 11.—Feeling a little concerned about Lupin, I mustered up +courage to speak to Mr. Perkupp about him. Mr. Perkupp has always been +most kind to me, so I told him everything, including yesterday’s +adventure. Mr. Perkupp kindly replied: “There is no necessity for you to +be anxious, Mr. Pooter. It would be impossible for a son of such good +parents to turn out erroneously. Remember he is young, and will soon get +older. I wish we could find room for him in this firm.” The advice of +this good man takes loads off my mind. In the evening Lupin came in. + +After our little supper, he said: “My dear parents, I have some news, +which I fear will affect you considerably.” I felt a qualm come over me, +and said nothing. Lupin then said: “It may distress you—in fact, I’m +sure it will—but this afternoon I have given up my pony and trap for +ever.” It may seem absurd, but I was so pleased, I immediately opened a +bottle of port. Gowing dropped in just in time, bringing with him a +large sheet, with a print of a tailless donkey, which he fastened against +the wall. He then produced several separate tails, and we spent the +remainder of the evening trying blindfolded to pin a tail on in the +proper place. My sides positively ached with laughter when I went to +bed. + +FEBRUARY 12.—In the evening I spoke to Lupin about his engagement with +Daisy Mutlar. I asked if he had heard from her. He replied: “No; she +promised that old windbag of a father of hers that she would not +communicate with me. I see Frank Mutlar, of course; in fact, he said he +might call again this evening.” Frank called, but said he could not +stop, as he had a friend waiting outside for him, named Murray Posh, +adding he was quite a swell. Carrie asked Frank to bring him in. + +He was brought in, Gowing entering at the same time. Mr. Murray Posh was +a tall, fat young man, and was evidently of a very nervous disposition, +as he subsequently confessed he would never go in a hansom cab, nor would +he enter a four-wheeler until the driver had first got on the box with +his reins in his hands. + +On being introduced, Gowing, with his usual want of tact, said: “Any +relation to ‘Posh’s three-shilling hats’?” Mr. Posh replied: “Yes; but +please understand I don’t try on hats myself. I take no _active_ part in +the business.” I replied: “I wish I had a business like it.” Mr. Posh +seemed pleased, and gave a long but most interesting history of the +extraordinary difficulties in the manufacture of cheap hats. + +Murray Posh evidently knew Daisy Mutlar very intimately from the way he +was talking of her; and Frank said to Lupin once, laughingly: “If you +don’t look out, Posh will cut you out!” When they had all gone, I +referred to this flippant conversation; and Lupin said, sarcastically: “A +man who is jealous has no respect for himself. A man who would be +jealous of an elephant like Murray Posh could only have a contempt for +himself. I know Daisy. She _would_ wait ten years for me, as I said +before; in fact, if necessary, _she would wait twenty years for me_.” + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +We lose money over Lupin’s advice as to investment, so does Cummings. +Murray Posh engaged to Daisy Mutlar. + +FEBRUARY 18.—Carrie has several times recently called attention to the +thinness of my hair at the top of my head, and recommended me to get it +seen to. I was this morning trying to look at it by the aid of a small +hand-glass, when somehow my elbow caught against the edge of the chest of +drawers and knocked the glass out of my hand and smashed it. Carrie was +in an awful way about it, as she is rather absurdly superstitious. To +make matters worse, my large photograph in the drawing-room fell during +the night, and the glass cracked. + +Carrie said: “Mark my words, Charles, some misfortune is about to +happen.” + +I said: “Nonsense, dear.” + +In the evening Lupin arrived home early, and seemed a little agitated. I +said: “What’s up, my boy?” He hesitated a good deal, and then said: “You +know those Parachikka Chlorates I advised you to invest £20 in?” I +replied: “Yes, they are all right, I trust?” He replied: “Well, no! To +the surprise of everybody, they have utterly collapsed.” + +My breath was so completely taken away, I could say nothing. Carrie +looked at me, and said: “What did I tell you?” Lupin, after a while, +said: “However, you are specially fortunate. I received an early tip, +and sold out yours immediately, and was fortunate to get £2 for them. So +you get something after all.” + +I gave a sigh of relief. I said: “I was not so sanguine as to suppose, +as you predicted, that I should get six or eight times the amount of my +investment; still a profit of £2 is a good percentage for such a short +time.” Lupin said, quite irritably: “You don’t understand. I sold your +£20 shares for £2; you therefore lose £18 on the transaction, whereby +Cummings and Gowing will lose the whole of theirs.” + +FEBRUARY 19.—Lupin, before going to town, said: “I am very sorry about +those Parachikka Chlorates; it would not have happened if the boss, Job +Cleanands, had been in town. Between ourselves, you must not be +surprised if something goes wrong at our office. Job Cleanands has not +been seen the last few days, and it strikes me several people _do_ want +to see him very particularly.” + +In the evening Lupin was just on the point of going out to avoid a +collision with Gowing and Cummings, when the former entered the room, +without knocking, but with his usual trick of saying, “May I come in?” + +He entered, and to the surprise of Lupin and myself, seemed to be in the +very best of spirits. Neither Lupin nor I broached the subject to him, +but he did so of his own accord. He said: “I say, those Parachikka +Chlorates have gone an awful smash! You’re a nice one, Master Lupin. +How much do you lose?” Lupin, to my utter astonishment, said: “Oh! I +had nothing in them. There was some informality in my application—I +forgot to enclose the cheque or something, and I didn’t get any. The +Guv. loses £18.” I said: “I quite understood you were in it, or nothing +would have induced me to speculate.” Lupin replied: “Well, it can’t be +helped; you must go double on the next tip.” Before I could reply, +Gowing said: “Well, I lose nothing, fortunately. From what I heard, I +did not quite believe in them, so I persuaded Cummings to take my £15 +worth, as he had more faith in them than I had.” + +Lupin burst out laughing, and, in the most unseemly manner, said: “Alas, +poor Cummings. He’ll lose £35.” At that moment there was a ring at the +bell. Lupin said: “I don’t want to meet Cummings.” If he had gone out +of the door he would have met him in the passage, so as quickly as +possible Lupin opened the parlour window and got out. Gowing jumped up +suddenly, exclaiming: “I don’t want to see him either!” and, before I +could say a word, he followed Lupin out of the window. + +For my own part, I was horrified to think my own son and one of my most +intimate friends should depart from the house like a couple of +interrupted burglars. Poor Cummings was very upset, and of course was +naturally very angry both with Lupin and Gowing. I pressed him to have a +little whisky, and he replied that he had given up whisky; but would like +a little “Unsweetened,” as he was advised it was the most healthy spirit. +I had none in the house, but sent Sarah round to Lockwood’s for some. + +FEBRUARY 20.—The first thing that caught my eye on opening the _Standard_ +was—“Great Failure of Stock and Share Dealers! Mr. Job Cleanands +absconded!” I handed it to Carrie, and she replied: “Oh! perhaps it’s +for Lupin’s good. I never did think it a suitable situation for him.” I +thought the whole affair very shocking. + +Lupin came down to breakfast, and seeing he looked painfully distressed, +I said: “We know the news, my dear boy, and feel very sorry for you.” +Lupin said: “How did you know? who told you?” I handed him the +_Standard_. He threw the paper down, and said: “Oh I don’t care a button +for that! I expected that, but I did not expect this.” He then read a +letter from Frank Mutlar, announcing, in a cool manner, that Daisy Mutlar +is to be married next month to Murray Posh. I exclaimed, “Murray Posh! +Is not that the very man Frank had the impudence to bring here last +Tuesday week?” Lupin said: “Yes; the ‘_Posh’s-three-shilling-hats_’ +chap.” + +We all then ate our breakfast in dead silence. + +In fact, I could eat nothing. I was not only too worried, but I cannot +and will not eat cushion of bacon. If I cannot get streaky bacon, I will +do without anything. + +When Lupin rose to go I noticed a malicious smile creep over his face. I +asked him what it meant. He replied: “Oh! only a little +consolation—still it is a consolation. I have just remembered that, by +_my_ advice, Mr. Murray Posh has invested £600 in Parachikka Chlorates!” + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Marriage of Daisy Mutlar and Murray Posh. The dream of my life realised. +Mr. Perkupp takes Lupin into the office. + +MARCH 20.—To-day being the day on which Daisy Mutlar and Mr. Murray Posh +are to be married, Lupin has gone with a friend to spend the day at +Gravesend. Lupin has been much cut-up over the affair, although he +declares that he is glad it is off. I wish he would not go to so many +music-halls, but one dare not say anything to him about it. At the +present moment he irritates me by singing all over the house some +nonsense about “What’s the matter with Gladstone? He’s all right! +What’s the matter with Lupin? He’s all right!” _I_ don’t think either +of them is. In the evening Gowing called, and the chief topic of +conversation was Daisy’s marriage to Murray Posh. I said: “I was glad +the matter was at an end, as Daisy would only have made a fool of Lupin.” +Gowing, with his usual good taste, said: “Oh, Master Lupin can make a +fool of himself without any assistance.” Carrie very properly resented +this, and Gowing had sufficient sense to say he was sorry. + +MARCH 21.—To-day I shall conclude my diary, for it is one of the happiest +days of my life. My great dream of the last few weeks—in fact, of many +years—has been realised. This morning came a letter from Mr. Perkupp, +asking me to take Lupin down to the office with me. I went to Lupin’s +room; poor fellow, he seemed very pale, and said he had a bad headache. +He had come back yesterday from Gravesend, where he spent part of the day +in a small boat on the water, having been mad enough to neglect to take +his overcoat with him. I showed him Mr. Perkupp’s letter, and he got up +as quickly as possible. I begged of him not to put on his fast-coloured +clothes and ties, but to dress in something black or quiet-looking. + +Carrie was all of a tremble when she read the letter, and all she could +keep on saying was: “Oh, I _do_ hope it will be all right.” For myself, +I could scarcely eat any breakfast. Lupin came down dressed quietly, and +looking a perfect gentleman, except that his face was rather yellow. +Carrie, by way of encouragement said: “You do look nice, Lupin.” Lupin +replied: “Yes, it’s a good make-up, isn’t it? A +regular-downright-respectable-funereal-first-class-City-firm-junior- +clerk.” He laughed rather ironically. + +In the hall I heard a great noise, and also Lupin shouting to Sarah to +fetch down his old hat. I went into the passage, and found Lupin in a +fury, kicking and smashing a new tall hat. I said: “Lupin, my boy, what +are you doing? How wicked of you! Some poor fellow would be glad to +have it.” Lupin replied: “I would not insult any poor fellow by giving +it to him.” + +When he had gone outside, I picked up the battered hat, and saw inside +“Posh’s Patent.” Poor Lupin! I can forgive him. It seemed hours before +we reached the office. Mr. Perkupp sent for Lupin, who was with him +nearly an hour. He returned, as I thought, crestfallen in appearance. I +said: “Well, Lupin, how about Mr. Perkupp?” Lupin commenced his song: +“What’s the matter with Perkupp? He’s all right!” I felt instinctively +my boy was engaged. I went to Mr. Perkupp, but I could not speak. He +said: “Well, Mr. Pooter, what is it?” I must have looked a fool, for all +I could say was: “Mr. Perkupp, you are a good man.” He looked at me for +a moment, and said: “No, Mr. Pooter, _you_ are the good man; and we’ll +see if we cannot get your son to follow such an excellent example.” I +said: “Mr. Perkupp, may I go home? I cannot work any more to-day.” + +My good master shook my hand warmly as he nodded his head. It was as +much as I could do to prevent myself from crying in the ’bus; in fact, I +should have done so, had my thoughts not been interrupted by Lupin, who +was having a quarrel with a fat man in the ’bus, whom he accused of +taking up too much room. + +In the evening Carrie sent round for dear old friend Cummings and his +wife, and also to Gowing. We all sat round the fire, and in a bottle of +“Jackson Frères,” which Sarah fetched from the grocer’s, drank Lupin’s +health. I lay awake for hours, thinking of the future. My boy in the +same office as myself—we can go down together by the ’bus, come home +together, and who knows but in the course of time he may take great +interest in our little home. That he may help me to put a nail in here +or a nail in there, or help his dear mother to hang a picture. In the +summer he may help us in our little garden with the flowers, and assist +us to paint the stands and pots. (By-the-by, I must get in some more +enamel paint.) All this I thought over and over again, and a thousand +happy thoughts beside. I heard the clock strike four, and soon after +fell asleep, only to dream of three happy people—Lupin, dear Carrie, and +myself. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Trouble with a stylographic pen. We go to a Volunteer Ball, where I am +let in for an expensive supper. Grossly insulted by a cabman. An odd +invitation to Southend. + +APRIL 8.—No events of any importance, except that Gowing strongly +recommended a new patent stylographic pen, which cost me +nine-and-sixpence, and which was simply nine-and-sixpence thrown in the +mud. It has caused me constant annoyance and irritability of temper. +The ink oozes out of the top, making a mess on my hands, and once at the +office when I was knocking the palm of my hand on the desk to jerk the +ink down, Mr. Perkupp, who had just entered, called out: “Stop that +knocking! I suppose that is you, Mr. Pitt?” That young monkey, Pitt, +took a malicious glee in responding quite loudly: “No, sir; I beg pardon, +it is Mr. Pooter with his pen; it has been going on all the morning.” To +make matters worse, I saw Lupin laughing behind his desk. I thought it +wiser to say nothing. I took the pen back to the shop and asked them if +they would take it back, as it did not act. I did not expect the full +price returned, but was willing to take half. The man said he could not +do that—buying and selling were two different things. Lupin’s conduct +during the period he has been in Mr. Perkupp’s office has been most +exemplary. My only fear is, it is too good to last. + +APRIL 9.—Gowing called, bringing with him an invitation for Carrie and +myself to a ball given by the East Acton Rifle Brigade, which he thought +would be a swell affair, as the member for East Acton (Sir William Grime) +had promised his patronage. We accepted of his kindness, and he stayed +to supper, an occasion I thought suitable for trying a bottle of the +sparkling Algéra that Mr. James (of Sutton) had sent as a present. +Gowing sipped the wine, observing that he had never tasted it before, and +further remarked that his policy was to stick to more recognised brands. +I told him it was a present from a dear friend, and one mustn’t look a +gift-horse in the mouth. Gowing facetiously replied: “And he didn’t like +putting it in the mouth either.” + +I thought the remarks were rude without being funny, but on tasting it +myself, came to the conclusion there was some justification for them. +The sparkling Algéra is very like cider, only more sour. I suggested +that perhaps the thunder had turned it a bit acid. He merely replied: +“Oh! I don’t think so.” We had a very pleasant game of cards, though I +lost four shillings and Carrie lost one, and Gowing said he had lost +about sixpence: how he could have lost, considering that Carrie and I +were the only other players, remains a mystery. + +APRIL 14, Sunday.—Owing, I presume, to the unsettled weather, I awoke +with a feeling that my skin was drawn over my face as tight as a drum. +Walking round the garden with Mr. and Mrs. Treane, members of our +congregation who had walked back with us, I was much annoyed to find a +large newspaper full of bones on the gravel-path, evidently thrown over +by those young Griffin boys next door; who, whenever we have friends, +climb up the empty steps inside their conservatory, tap at the windows, +making faces, whistling, and imitating birds. + +APRIL 15.—Burnt my tongue most awfully with the Worcester sauce, through +that stupid girl Sarah shaking the bottle violently before putting it on +the table. + +APRIL 16.—The night of the East Acton Volunteer Ball. On my advice, +Carrie put on the same dress that she looked so beautiful in at the +Mansion House, for it had occurred to me, being a military ball, that Mr. +Perkupp, who, I believe, is an officer in the Honorary Artillery Company, +would in all probability be present. Lupin, in his usual +incomprehensible language, remarked that he had heard it was a “bounders’ +ball.” I didn’t ask him what he meant though I didn’t understand. Where +he gets these expressions from I don’t know; he certainly doesn’t learn +them at home. + +The invitation was for half-past eight, so I concluded if we arrived an +hour later we should be in good time, without being “unfashionable,” as +Mrs. James says. It was very difficult to find—the cabman having to get +down several times to inquire at different public-houses where the Drill +Hall was. I wonder at people living in such out-of-the-way places. No +one seemed to know it. However, after going up and down a good many +badly-lighted streets we arrived at our destination. I had no idea it +was so far from Holloway. I gave the cabman five shillings, who only +grumbled, saying it was dirt cheap at half-a-sovereign, and was +impertinent enough to advise me the next time I went to a ball to take a +’bus. + +Captain Welcut received us, saying we were rather late, but that it was +better late than never. He seemed a very good-looking gentleman though, +as Carrie remarked, “rather short for an officer.” He begged to be +excused for leaving us, as he was engaged for a dance, and hoped we +should make ourselves at home. Carrie took my arm and we walked round +the rooms two or three times and watched the people dancing. I couldn’t +find a single person I knew, but attributed it to most of them being in +uniform. As we were entering the supper-room I received a slap on the +shoulder, followed by a welcome shake of the hand. I said: “Mr. Padge, I +believe;” he replied, “That’s right.” + +I gave Carrie a chair, and seated by her was a lady who made herself at +home with Carrie at once. + +There was a very liberal repast on the tables, plenty of champagne, +claret, etc., and, in fact, everything seemed to be done regardless of +expense. Mr. Padge is a man that, I admit, I have no particular liking +for, but I felt so glad to come across someone I knew, that I asked him +to sit at our table, and I must say that for a short fat man he looked +well in uniform, although I think his tunic was rather baggy in the back. +It was the only supper-room that I have been in that was not +over-crowded; in fact we were the only people there, everybody being so +busy dancing. + +I assisted Carrie and her newly-formed acquaintance, who said her name +was Lupkin, to some champagne; also myself, and handed the bottle to Mr. +Padge to do likewise, saying: “You must look after yourself.” He +replied: “That’s right,” and poured out half a tumbler and drank Carrie’s +health, coupled, as he said, “with her worthy lord and master.” We all +had some splendid pigeon pie, and ices to follow. + +The waiters were very attentive, and asked if we would like some more +wine. I assisted Carrie and her friend and Mr. Padge, also some people +who had just come from the dancing-room, who were very civil. It +occurred to me at the time that perhaps some of the gentlemen knew me in +the City, as they were so polite. I made myself useful, and assisted +several ladies to ices, remembering an old saying that “There is nothing +lost by civility.” + +The band struck up for the dance, and they all went into the ball-room. +The ladies (Carrie and Mrs. Lupkin) were anxious to see the dancing, and +as I had not quite finished my supper, Mr. Padge offered his arms to them +and escorted them to the ball-room, telling me to follow. I said to Mr. +Padge: “It is quite a West End affair,” to which remark Mr. Padge +replied: “That’s right.” + +When I had quite finished my supper, and was leaving, the waiter who had +been attending on us arrested my attention by tapping me on the shoulder. +I thought it unusual for a waiter at a private ball to expect a tip, but +nevertheless gave a shilling, as he had been very attentive. He +smilingly replied: “I beg your pardon, sir, this is no good,” alluding to +the shilling. “Your party’s had four suppers at 5s. a head, five ices at +1s., three bottles of champagne at 11s. 6d., a glass of claret, and a +sixpenny cigar for the stout gentleman—in all £3 0s. 6d.!” + +I don’t think I was ever so surprised in my life, and had only sufficient +breath to inform him that I had received a private invitation, to which +he answered that he was perfectly well aware of that; but that the +invitation didn’t include eatables and drinkables. A gentleman who was +standing at the bar corroborated the waiter’s statement, and assured me +it was quite correct. + +The waiter said he was extremely sorry if I had been under any +misapprehension; but it was not his fault. Of course there was nothing +to be done but to pay. So, after turning out my pockets, I just managed +to scrape up sufficient, all but nine shillings; but the manager, on my +giving my card to him, said: “That’s all right.” + +I don’t think I ever felt more humiliated in my life, and I determined to +keep this misfortune from Carrie, for it would entirely destroy the +pleasant evening she was enjoying. I felt there was no more enjoyment +for me that evening, and it being late, I sought Carrie and Mrs. Lupkin. +Carrie said she was quite ready to go, and Mrs. Lupkin, as we were +wishing her “Good-night,” asked Carrie and myself if we ever paid a visit +to Southend? On my replying that I hadn’t been there for many years, she +very kindly said: “Well, why don’t you come down and stay at our place?” +As her invitation was so pressing, and observing that Carrie wished to +go, we promised we would visit her the next Saturday week, and stay till +Monday. Mrs. Lupkin said she would write to us to-morrow, giving us the +address and particulars of trains, etc. + +When we got outside the Drill Hall it was raining so hard that the roads +resembled canals, and I need hardly say we had great difficulty in +getting a cabman to take us to Holloway. After waiting a bit, a man said +he would drive us, anyhow, as far as “The Angel,” at Islington, and we +could easily get another cab from there. It was a tedious journey; the +rain was beating against the windows and trickling down the inside of the +cab. + +When we arrived at “The Angel” the horse seemed tired out. Carrie got +out and ran into a doorway, and when I came to pay, to my absolute horror +I remembered I had no money, nor had Carrie. I explained to the cabman +how we were situated. Never in my life have I ever been so insulted; the +cabman, who was a rough bully and to my thinking not sober, called me +every name he could lay his tongue to, and positively seized me by the +beard, which he pulled till the tears came into my eyes. I took the +number of a policeman (who witnessed the assault) for not taking the man +in charge. The policeman said he couldn’t interfere, that he had seen no +assault, and that people should not ride in cabs without money. + +We had to walk home in the pouring rain, nearly two miles, and when I got +in I put down the conversation I had with the cabman, word for word, as I +intend writing to the _Telegraph_ for the purpose of proposing that cabs +should be driven only by men under Government control, to prevent +civilians being subjected to the disgraceful insult and outrage that I +had had to endure. + +APRIL 17.—No water in our cistern again. Sent for Putley, who said he +would soon remedy that, the cistern being zinc. + +APRIL 18.—Water all right again in the cistern. Mrs. James, of Sutton, +called in the afternoon. She and Carrie draped the mantelpiece in the +drawing-room, and put little toy spiders, frogs and beetles all over it, +as Mrs. James says it’s quite the fashion. It was Mrs. James’ +suggestion, and of course Carrie always does what Mrs. James suggests. +For my part, I preferred the mantelpiece as it was; but there, I’m a +plain man, and don’t pretend to be in the fashion. + +APRIL 19.—Our next-door neighbour, Mr. Griffin, called, and in a rather +offensive tone accused me, or “someone,” of boring a hole in his cistern +and letting out his water to supply our cistern, which adjoined his. He +said he should have his repaired, and send us in the bill. + +APRIL 20.—Cummings called, hobbling in with a stick, saying he had been +on his back for a week. It appears he was trying to shut his bedroom +door, which is situated just at the top of the staircase, and unknown to +him a piece of cork the dog had been playing with had got between the +door, and prevented it shutting; and in pulling the door hard, to give it +an extra slam, the handle came off in his hands, and he fell backwards +downstairs. + +On hearing this, Lupin suddenly jumped up from the couch and rushed out +of the room sideways. Cummings looked very indignant, and remarked it +was very poor fun a man nearly breaking his back; and though I had my +suspicions that Lupin was laughing, I assured Cummings that he had only +run out to open the door to a friend he expected. Cummings said this was +the second time he had been laid up, and we had never sent to inquire. I +said I knew nothing about it. Cummings said: “It was mentioned in the +_Bicycle News_.” + +APRIL 22.—I have of late frequently noticed Carrie rubbing her nails a +good deal with an instrument, and on asking her what she was doing, she +replied: “Oh, I’m going in for manicuring. It’s all the fashion now.” I +said: “I suppose Mrs. James introduced that into your head.” Carrie +laughingly replied: “Yes; but everyone does it now.” + +I wish Mrs. James wouldn’t come to the house. Whenever she does she +always introduces some new-fandangled rubbish into Carrie’s head. One of +these days I feel sure I shall tell her she’s not welcome. I am sure it +was Mrs. James who put Carrie up to writing on dark slate-coloured paper +with white ink. Nonsense! + +APRIL 23.—Received a letter from Mrs. Lupkin, of Southend, telling us the +train to come by on Saturday, and hoping we will keep our promise to stay +with her. The letter concluded: “You must come and stay at our house; we +shall charge you half what you will have to pay at the Royal, and the +view is every bit as good.” Looking at the address at the top of the +note-paper, I found it was “Lupkin’s Family and Commercial Hotel.” + +I wrote a note, saying we were compelled to “decline her kind +invitation.” Carrie thought this very satirical, and to the point. + +By-the-by, I will never choose another cloth pattern at night. I ordered +a new suit of dittos for the garden at Edwards’, and chose the pattern by +gaslight, and they seemed to be a quiet pepper-and-salt mixture with +white stripes down. They came home this morning, and, to my horror, I +found it was quite a flash-looking suit. There was a lot of green with +bright yellow-coloured stripes. + +I tried on the coat, and was annoyed to find Carrie giggling. She said: +“What mixture did you say you asked for?” + +I said: “A quiet pepper and salt.” + +Carrie said: “Well, it looks more like mustard, if you want to know the +truth.” + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +Meet Teddy Finsworth, an old schoolfellow. We have a pleasant and quiet +dinner at his uncle’s, marred only by a few awkward mistakes on my part +respecting Mr. Finsworth’s pictures. A discussion on dreams. + +APRIL 27.—Kept a little later than usual at the office, and as I was +hurrying along a man stopped me, saying: “Hulloh! That’s a face I know.” +I replied politely: “Very likely; lots of people know me, although I may +not know them.” He replied: “But you know me—Teddy Finsworth.” So it +was. He was at the same school with me. I had not seen him for years +and years. No wonder I did not know him! At school he was at least a +head taller than I was; now I am at least a head taller than he is, and +he has a thick beard, almost grey. He insisted on my having a glass of +wine (a thing I never do), and told me he lived at Middlesboro’, where he +was Deputy Town Clerk, a position which was as high as the Town Clerk of +London—in fact, higher. He added that he was staying for a few days in +London, with his uncle, Mr. Edgar Paul Finsworth (of Finsworth and +Pultwell). He said he was sure his uncle would be only too pleased to +see me, and he had a nice house, Watney Lodge, only a few minutes’ walk +from Muswell Hill Station. I gave him our address, and we parted. + +In the evening, to my surprise, he called with a very nice letter from +Mr. Finsworth, saying if we (including Carrie) would dine with them +to-morrow (Sunday), at two o’clock, he would be delighted. Carrie did +not like to go; but Teddy Finsworth pressed us so much we consented. +Carrie sent Sarah round to the butcher’s and countermanded our half-leg +of mutton, which we had ordered for to-morrow. + +APRIL 28, Sunday.—We found Watney Lodge farther off than we anticipated, +and only arrived as the clock struck two, both feeling hot and +uncomfortable. To make matters worse, a large collie dog pounced forward +to receive us. He barked loudly and jumped up at Carrie, covering her +light skirt, which she was wearing for the first time, with mud. Teddy +Finsworth came out and drove the dog off and apologised. We were shown +into the drawing-room, which was beautifully decorated. It was full of +knick-knacks, and some plates hung up on the wall. There were several +little wooden milk-stools with paintings on them; also a white wooden +banjo, painted by one of Mr. Paul Finsworth’s nieces—a cousin of Teddy’s. + +Mr. Paul Finsworth seemed quite a distinguished-looking elderly +gentleman, and was most gallant to Carrie. There were a great many +water-colours hanging on the walls, mostly different views of India, +which were very bright. Mr. Finsworth said they were painted by “Simpz,” +and added that he was no judge of pictures himself but had been informed +on good authority that they were worth some hundreds of pounds, although +he had only paid a few shillings apiece for them, frames included, at a +sale in the neighbourhood. + +There was also a large picture in a very handsome frame, done in coloured +crayons. It looked like a religious subject. I was very much struck +with the lace collar, it looked so real, but I unfortunately made the +remark that there was something about the expression of the face that was +not quite pleasing. It looked pinched. Mr. Finsworth sorrowfully +replied: “Yes, the face was done after death—my wife’s sister.” + +I felt terribly awkward and bowed apologetically, and in a whisper said I +hoped I had not hurt his feelings. We both stood looking at the picture +for a few minutes in silence, when Mr. Finsworth took out a handkerchief +and said: “She was sitting in our garden last summer,” and blew his nose +violently. He seemed quite affected, so I turned to look at something +else and stood in front of a portrait of a jolly-looking middle-aged +gentleman, with a red face and straw hat. I said to Mr. Finsworth: “Who +is this jovial-looking gentleman? Life doesn’t seem to trouble him +much.” Mr. Finsworth said: “No, it doesn’t. _He is dead too_—my +brother.” + +I was absolutely horrified at my own awkwardness. Fortunately at this +moment Carrie entered with Mrs. Finsworth, who had taken her upstairs to +take off her bonnet and brush her skirt. Teddy said: “Short is late,” +but at that moment the gentleman referred to arrived, and I was +introduced to him by Teddy, who said: “Do you know Mr. Short?” I +replied, smiling, that I had not that pleasure, but I hoped it would not +be long before I knew Mr. _Short_. He evidently did not see my little +joke, although I repeated it twice with a little laugh. I suddenly +remembered it was Sunday, and Mr. Short was perhaps _very particular_. +In this I was mistaken, for he was not at all particular in several of +his remarks after dinner. In fact I was so ashamed of one of his +observations that I took the opportunity to say to Mrs. Finsworth that I +feared she found Mr. Short occasionally a little embarrassing. To my +surprise she said: “Oh! he is privileged you know.” I did not know as a +matter of fact, and so I bowed apologetically. I fail to see why Mr. +Short should be privileged. + +Another thing that annoyed me at dinner was that the collie dog, which +jumped up at Carrie, was allowed to remain under the dining-room table. +It kept growling and snapping at my boots every time I moved my foot. +Feeling nervous rather, I spoke to Mrs. Finsworth about the animal, and +she remarked: “It is only his play.” She jumped up and let in a +frightfully ugly-looking spaniel called Bibbs, which had been scratching +at the door. This dog also seemed to take a fancy to my boots, and I +discovered afterwards that it had licked off every bit of blacking from +them. I was positively ashamed of being seen in them. Mrs. Finsworth, +who, I must say, is not much of a Job’s comforter, said: “Oh! we are used +to Bibbs doing that to our visitors.” + +Mr. Finsworth had up some fine port, although I question whether it is a +good thing to take on the top of beer. It made me feel a little sleepy, +while it had the effect of inducing Mr. Short to become “privileged” to +rather an alarming extent. It being cold even for April, there was a +fire in the drawing-room; we sat round in easy-chairs, and Teddy and I +waxed rather eloquent over the old school days, which had the effect of +sending all the others to sleep. I was delighted, as far as Mr. Short +was concerned, that it did have that effect on him. + +We stayed till four, and the walk home was remarkable only for the fact +that several fools giggled at the unpolished state of my boots. Polished +them myself when I got home. Went to church in the evening, and could +scarcely keep awake. I will not take port on the top of beer again. + +APRIL 29.—I am getting quite accustomed to being snubbed by Lupin, and I +do not mind being sat upon by Carrie, because I think she has a certain +amount of right to do so; but I do think it hard to be at once snubbed by +wife, son, and both my guests. + +Gowing and Cummings had dropped in during the evening, and I suddenly +remembered an extraordinary dream I had a few nights ago, and I thought I +would tell them about it. I dreamt I saw some huge blocks of ice in a +shop with a bright glare behind them. I walked into the shop and the +heat was overpowering. I found that the blocks of ice were on fire. The +whole thing was so real and yet so supernatural I woke up in a cold +perspiration. Lupin in a most contemptuous manner, said: “What utter +rot.” + +Before I could reply, Gowing said there was nothing so completely +uninteresting as other people’s dreams. + +I appealed to Cummings, but he said he was bound to agree with the others +and my dream was especially nonsensical. I said: “It seemed so real to +me.” Gowing replied: “Yes, to _you_ perhaps, but not to _us_.” +Whereupon they all roared. + +Carrie, who had hitherto been quiet, said: “He tells me his stupid dreams +every morning nearly.” I replied: “Very well, dear, I promise you I will +never tell you or anybody else another dream of mine the longest day I +live.” Lupin said: “Hear! hear!” and helped himself to another glass of +beer. The subject was fortunately changed, and Cummings read a most +interesting article on the superiority of the bicycle to the horse. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +Dinner at Franching’s to meet Mr. Hardfur Huttle. + +MAY 10.—Received a letter from Mr. Franching, of Peckham, asking us to +dine with him to-night, at seven o’clock, to meet Mr. Hardfur Huttle, a +very clever writer for the American papers. Franching apologised for the +short notice; but said he had at the last moment been disappointed of two +of his guests and regarded us as old friends who would not mind filling +up the gap. Carrie rather demurred at the invitation; but I explained to +her that Franching was very well off and influential, and we could not +afford to offend him. “And we are sure to get a good dinner and a good +glass of champagne.” “Which never agrees with you!” Carrie replied, +sharply. I regarded Carrie’s observation as unsaid. Mr. Franching asked +us to wire a reply. As he had said nothing about dress in the letter, I +wired back: “With pleasure. Is it full dress?” and by leaving out our +name, just got the message within the sixpence. + +Got back early to give time to dress, which we received a telegram +instructing us to do. I wanted Carrie to meet me at Franching’s house; +but she would not do so, so I had to go home to fetch her. What a long +journey it is from Holloway to Peckham! Why do people live such a long +way off? Having to change ’buses, I allowed plenty of time—in fact, too +much; for we arrived at twenty minutes to seven, and Franching, so the +servant said, had only just gone up to dress. However, he was down as +the clock struck seven; he must have dressed very quickly. + +I must say it was quite a distinguished party, and although we did not +know anybody personally, they all seemed to be quite swells. Franching +had got a professional waiter, and evidently spared no expense. There +were flowers on the table round some fairy-lamps and the effect, I must +say, was exquisite. The wine was good and there was plenty of champagne, +concerning which Franching said he himself, never wished to taste better. +We were ten in number, and a _menû_ card to each. One lady said she +always preserved the _menû_ and got the guests to write their names on +the back. + +We all of us followed her example, except Mr. Huttle, who was of course +the important guest. + +The dinner-party consisted of Mr. Franching, Mr. Hardfur Huttle, Mr. and +Mrs. Samuel Hillbutter, Mrs. Field, Mr. and Mrs. Purdick, Mr. Pratt, Mr. +R. Kent, and, last but not least, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Pooter. Franching +said he was sorry he had no lady for me to take in to dinner. I replied +that I preferred it, which I afterwards thought was a very +uncomplimentary observation to make. + +I sat next to Mrs. Field at dinner. She seemed a well-informed lady, but +was very deaf. It did not much matter, for Mr. Hardfur Huttle did all +the talking. He is a marvellously intellectual man and says things which +from other people would seem quite alarming. How I wish I could remember +even a quarter of his brilliant conversation. I made a few little +reminding notes on the _menû_ card. + +One observation struck me as being absolutely powerful—though not to my +way of thinking of course. Mrs. Purdick happened to say “You are +certainly unorthodox, Mr. Huttle.” Mr. Huttle, with a peculiar +expression (I can see it now) said in a slow rich voice: “Mrs. Purdick, +‘orthodox’ is a grandiloquent word implying sticking-in-the-mud. If +Columbus and Stephenson had been orthodox, there would neither have been +the discovery of America nor the steam-engine.” There was quite a +silence. It appeared to me that such teaching was absolutely dangerous, +and yet I felt—in fact we must all have felt—there was no answer to the +argument. A little later on, Mrs. Purdick, who is Franching’s sister and +also acted as hostess, rose from the table, and Mr. Huttle said: “Why, +ladies, do you deprive us of your company so soon? Why not wait while we +have our cigars?” + +The effect was electrical. The ladies (including Carrie) were in no way +inclined to be deprived of Mr. Huttle’s fascinating society, and +immediately resumed their seats, amid much laughter and a little chaff. +Mr. Huttle said: “Well, that’s a real good sign; you shall not be +insulted by being called orthodox any longer.” Mrs. Purdick, who seemed +to be a bright and rather sharp woman, said: “Mr. Huttle, we will meet +you half-way—that is, till you get half-way through your cigar. That, at +all events, will be the happy medium.” + +I shall never forget the effect the words, “happy medium,” had upon him. +He was brilliant and most daring in his interpretation of the words. He +positively alarmed me. He said something like the following: “Happy +medium, indeed. Do you know ‘happy medium’ are two words which mean +‘miserable mediocrity’? I say, go first class or third; marry a duchess +or her kitchenmaid. The happy medium means respectability, and +respectability means insipidness. Does it not, Mr. Pooter?” + +I was so taken aback by being personally appealed to, that I could only +bow apologetically, and say I feared I was not competent to offer an +opinion. Carrie was about to say something; but she was interrupted, for +which I was rather pleased, for she is not clever at argument, and one +has to be extra clever to discuss a subject with a man like Mr. Huttle. + +He continued, with an amazing eloquence that made his unwelcome opinions +positively convincing: “The happy medium is nothing more or less than a +vulgar half-measure. A man who loves champagne and, finding a pint too +little, fears to face a whole bottle and has recourse to an imperial +pint, will never build a Brooklyn Bridge or an Eiffel Tower. No, he is +half-hearted, he is a half-measure—respectable—in fact, a happy medium, +and will spend the rest of his days in a suburban villa with a +stucco-column portico, resembling a four-post bedstead.” + +We all laughed. + +“That sort of thing,” continued Mr. Huttle, “belongs to a soft man, with +a soft beard with a soft head, with a made tie that hooks on.” + +This seemed rather personal and twice I caught myself looking in the +glass of the cheffonière; for _I_ had on a tie that hooked on—and why +not? If these remarks were not personal they were rather careless, and +so were some of his subsequent observations, which must have made both +Mr. Franching and his guests rather uncomfortable. I don’t think Mr. +Huttle meant to be personal, for he added; “We don’t know that class here +in this country: but we do in America, and I’ve no use for them.” + +Franching several times suggested that the wine should be passed round +the table, which Mr. Huttle did not heed; but continued as if he were +giving a lecture: + +“What we want in America is your homes. We live on wheels. Your simple, +quiet life and home, Mr. Franching, are charming. No display, no +pretension! You make no difference in your dinner, I dare say, when you +sit down by yourself and when you invite us. You have your own personal +attendant—no hired waiter to breathe on the back of your head.” + +I saw Franching palpably wince at this. + +Mr. Huttle continued: “Just a small dinner with a few good things, such +as you have this evening. You don’t insult your guests by sending to +the grocer for champagne at six shillings a bottle.” + +I could not help thinking of “Jackson Frères” at three-and-six! + +“In fact,” said Mr. Huttle, “a man is little less than a murderer who +does. That is the province of the milksop, who wastes his evening at +home playing dominoes with his wife. I’ve heard of these people. We +don’t want them at this table. Our party is well selected. We’ve no use +for deaf old women, who cannot follow intellectual conversation.” + +All our eyes were turned to Mrs. Field, who fortunately, being deaf, did +not hear his remarks; but continued smiling approval. + +“We have no representative at Mr. Franching’s table,” said Mr. Huttle, +“of the unenlightened frivolous matron, who goes to a second class dance +at Bayswater and fancies she is in Society. Society does not know her; +it has no use for her.” + +Mr. Huttle paused for a moment and the opportunity was afforded for the +ladies to rise. I asked Mr. Franching quietly to excuse me, as I did not +wish to miss the last train, which we very nearly did, by-the-by, through +Carrie having mislaid the little cloth cricket-cap which she wears when +we go out. + +It was very late when Carrie and I got home; but on entering the +sitting-room I said: “Carrie, what do you think of Mr. Hardfur Huttle?” +She simply answered: “How like Lupin!” The same idea occurred to me in +the train. The comparison kept me awake half the night. Mr. Huttle was, +of course, an older and more influential man; but he _was_ like Lupin, +and it made me think how dangerous Lupin would be if he were older and +more influential. I feel proud to think Lupin _does_ resemble Mr. Huttle +in some ways. Lupin, like Mr. Huttle, has original and sometimes +wonderful ideas; but it is those ideas that are so dangerous. They make +men extremely rich or extremely poor. They make or break men. I always +feel people are happier who live a simple unsophisticated life. I +believe _I_ am happy because I am not ambitious. Somehow I feel that +Lupin, since he has been with Mr. Perkupp, has become content to settle +down and follow the footsteps of his father. This is a comfort. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +Lupin is discharged. We are in great trouble. Lupin gets engaged +elsewhere at a handsome salary. + +MAY 13.—A terrible misfortune has happened: Lupin is discharged from Mr. +Perkupp’s office; and I scarcely know how I am writing my diary. I was +away from office last Sat., the first time I have been absent through +illness for twenty years. I believe I was poisoned by some lobster. Mr. +Perkupp was also absent, as Fate would have it; and our most valued +customer, Mr. Crowbillon, went to the office in a rage, and withdrew his +custom. My boy Lupin not only had the assurance to receive him, but +recommended him the firm of Gylterson, Sons and Co. Limited. In my own +humble judgment, and though I have to say it against my own son, this +seems an act of treachery. + +This morning I receive a letter from Perkupp, informing me that Lupin’s +services are no longer required, and an interview with me is desired at +eleven o’clock. I went down to the office with an aching heart, dreading +an interview with Mr. Perkupp, with whom I have never had a word. I saw +nothing of Lupin in the morning. He had not got up when it was time for +me to leave, and Carrie said I should do no good by disturbing him. My +mind wandered so at the office that I could not do my work properly. + +As I expected, I was sent for by Mr. Perkupp, and the following +conversation ensued as nearly as I can remember it. + +Mr. Perkupp said: “Good-morning, Mr. Pooter! This is a very serious +business. I am not referring so much to the dismissal of your son, for I +knew we should have to part sooner or later. _I_ am the head of this +old, influential, and much-respected firm; and when _I_ consider the time +has come to revolutionise the business, _I_ will do it myself.” + +I could see my good master was somewhat affected, and I said: “I hope, +sir, you do not imagine that I have in any way countenanced my son’s +unwarrantable interference?” Mr. Perkupp rose from his seat and took my +hand, and said: “Mr. Pooter, I would as soon suspect myself as suspect +you.” I was so agitated that in the confusion, to show my gratitude I +very nearly called him a “grand old man.” + +Fortunately I checked myself in time, and said he was a “grand old +master.” I was so unaccountable for my actions that I sat down, leaving +him standing. Of course, I at once rose, but Mr. Perkupp bade me sit +down, which I was very pleased to do. Mr. Perkupp, resuming, said: “You +will understand, Mr. Pooter, that the high-standing nature of our firm +will not admit of our bending to anybody. If Mr. Crowbillon chooses to +put his work into other hands—I may add, less experienced hands—it is not +for us to bend and beg back his custom.” “You _shall_ not do it, sir,” I +said with indignation. “Exactly,” replied Mr. Perkupp; “I shall _not_ do +it. But I was thinking this, Mr. Pooter. Mr. Crowbillon is our most +valued client, and I will even confess—for I know this will not go beyond +ourselves—that we cannot afford very well to lose him, especially in +these times, which are not of the brightest. Now, I fancy you can be of +service.” + +I replied: “Mr. Perkupp, I will work day and night to serve you!” + +Mr. Perkupp said: “I know you will. Now, what I should like you to do is +this. You yourself might write to Mr. Crowbillon—you must not, of +course, lead him to suppose I know anything about your doing so—and +explain to him that your son was only taken on as a clerk—quite an +inexperienced one in fact—out of the respect the firm had for you, Mr. +Pooter. This is, of course, a fact. I don’t suggest that you should +speak in too strong terms of your own son’s conduct; but I may add, that +had he been a son of mine, I should have condemned his interference with +no measured terms. That I leave to you. I think the result will be that +Mr. Crowbillon will see the force of the foolish step he has taken, and +our firm will neither suffer in dignity nor in pocket.” + +I could not help thinking what a noble gentleman Mr. Perkupp is. His +manners and his way of speaking seem to almost thrill one with respect. + +I said: “Would you like to see the letter before I send it?” + +Mr. Perkupp said: “Oh no! I had better not. I am supposed to know +nothing about it, and I have every confidence in you. You must write the +letter carefully. We are not very busy; you had better take the morning +to-morrow, or the whole day if you like. I shall be here myself all day +to-morrow, in fact all the week, in case Mr. Crowbillon should call.” + +I went home a little more cheerful, but I left word with Sarah that I +could not see either Gowing or Cummings, nor in fact anybody, if they +called in the evening. Lupin came into the parlour for a moment with a +new hat on, and asked my opinion of it. I said I was not in the mood to +judge of hats, and I did not think he was in a position to buy a new one. +Lupin replied carelessly: “I didn’t buy it; it was a present.” + +I have such terrible suspicions of Lupin now that I scarcely like to ask +him questions, as I dread the answers so. He, however, saved me the +trouble. + +He said: “I met a friend, an old friend, that I did not quite think a +friend at the time; but it’s all right. As he wisely said, ‘all is fair +in love and war,’ and there was no reason why we should not be friends +still. He’s a jolly, good, all-round sort of fellow, and a very +different stamp from that inflated fool of a Perkupp.” + +I said: “Hush, Lupin! Do not pray add insult to injury.” + +Lupin said: “What do you mean by injury? I repeat, I have done no +injury. Crowbillon is simply tired of a stagnant stick-in-the-mud firm, +and made the change on his own account. I simply recommended the new +firm as a matter of biz—good old biz!” + +I said quietly: “I don’t understand your slang, and at my time of life +have no desire to learn it; so, Lupin, my boy, let us change the subject. +I will, if it please you, _try_ and be interested in your new hat +adventure.” + +Lupin said: “Oh! there’s nothing much about it, except I have not once +seen him since his marriage, and he said he was very pleased to see me, +and hoped we should be friends. I stood a drink to cement the +friendship, and he stood me a new hat—one of his own.” + +I said rather wearily: “But you have not told me your old friend’s name?” + +Lupin said, with affected carelessness: “Oh didn’t I? Well, I will. It +was _Murray Posh_.” + +MAY 14.—Lupin came down late, and seeing me at home all the morning, +asked the reason of it. Carrie and I both agreed it was better to say +nothing to him about the letter I was writing, so I evaded the question. + +Lupin went out, saying he was going to lunch with Murray Posh in the +City. I said I hoped Mr. Posh would provide him with a berth. Lupin +went out laughing, saying: “I don’t mind _wearing_ Posh’s one-priced +hats, but I am not going to _sell_ them.” Poor boy, I fear he is +perfectly hopeless. + +It took me nearly the whole day to write to Mr. Crowbillon. Once or +twice I asked Carrie for suggestions; and although it seems ungrateful, +her suggestions were none of them to the point, while one or two were +absolutely idiotic. Of course I did not tell her so. I got the letter +off, and took it down to the office for Mr. Perkupp to see, but he again +repeated that he could trust me. + +Gowing called in the evening, and I was obliged to tell him about Lupin +and Mr. Perkupp; and, to my surprise, he was quite inclined to side with +Lupin. Carrie joined in, and said she thought I was taking much too +melancholy a view of it. Gowing produced a pint sample-bottle of +Madeira, which had been given him, which he said would get rid of the +blues. I dare say it would have done so if there had been more of it; +but as Gowing helped himself to three glasses, it did not leave much for +Carrie and me to get rid of the blues with. + +MAY 15.—A day of great anxiety, for I expected every moment a letter from +Mr. Crowbillon. Two letters came in the evening—one for me, with +“Crowbillon Hall” printed in large gold-and-red letters on the back of +the envelope; the other for Lupin, which I felt inclined to open and +read, as it had “Gylterson, Sons, and Co. Limited,” which was the +recommended firm. I trembled as I opened Mr. Crowbillon’s letter. I +wrote him sixteen pages, closely written; he wrote me less than sixteen +lines. + +His letter was: “Sir,—I totally disagree with you. Your son, in the +course of five minutes’ conversation, displayed more intelligence than +your firm has done during the last five years.—Yours faithfully, Gilbert +E. Gillam O. Crowbillon.” + +What am I to do? Here is a letter that I dare not show to Mr. Perkupp, +and would not show to Lupin for anything. The crisis had yet to come; +for Lupin arrived, and, opening his letter, showed a cheque for £25 as a +commission for the recommendation of Mr. Crowbillon, whose custom to Mr. +Perkupp is evidently lost for ever. Cummings and Gowing both called, and +both took Lupin’s part. Cummings went so far as to say that Lupin would +make a name yet. I suppose I was melancholy, for I could only ask: “Yes, +but what sort of a name?” + +MAY 16.—I told Mr. Perkupp the contents of the letter in a modified form, +but Mr. Perkupp said: “Pray don’t discuss the matter; it is at an end. +Your son will bring his punishment upon himself.” I went home in the +evening, thinking of the hopeless future of Lupin. I found him in most +extravagant spirits and in evening dress. He threw a letter on the table +for me to read. + +To my amazement, I read that Gylterson and Sons had absolutely engaged +Lupin at a salary of £200 a year, with other advantages. I read the +letter through three times and thought it must have been for me. But +there it was—Lupin Pooter—plain enough. I was silent. Lupin said: “What +price Perkupp now? You take my tip, Guv.—‘off’ with Perkupp and freeze +on to Gylterson, the firm of the future! Perkupp’s firm? The stagnant +dummies have been standing still for years, and now are moving back. I +want to go on. In fact I must go _off_, as I am dining with the Murray +Poshs to-night.” + +In the exuberance of his spirits he hit his hat with his stick, gave a +loud war “Whoo-oop,” jumped over a chair, and took the liberty of +rumpling my hair all over my forehead, and bounced out of the room, +giving me no chance of reminding him of his age and the respect which was +due to his parent. Gowing and Cummings came in the evening, and +positively cheered me up with congratulations respecting Lupin. + +Gowing said: “I always said he would get on, and, take my word, he has +more in his head than we three put together.” + +Carrie said: “He is a second Hardfur Huttle.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Master Percy Edgar Smith James. Mrs. James (of Sutton) visits us again +and introduces “Spiritual Séances.” + +MAY 26, Sunday.—We went to Sutton after dinner to have meat-tea with Mr. +and Mrs. James. I had no appetite, having dined well at two, and the +entire evening was spoiled by little Percy—their only son—who seems to me +to be an utterly spoiled child. + +Two or three times he came up to me and deliberately kicked my shins. He +hurt me once so much that the tears came into my eyes. I gently +remonstrated with him, and Mrs. James said: “Please don’t scold him; I do +not believe in being too severe with young children. You spoil their +character.” + +Little Percy set up a deafening yell here, and when Carrie tried to +pacify him, he slapped her face. + +I was so annoyed, I said: “That is not my idea of bringing up children, +Mrs. James.” + +Mrs. James said. “People have different ideas of bringing up +children—even your son Lupin is not the standard of perfection.” + +A Mr. Mezzini (an Italian, I fancy) here took Percy in his lap. The +child wriggled and kicked and broke away from Mr. Mezzini, saying: “I +don’t like you—you’ve got a dirty face.” + +A very nice gentleman, Mr. Birks Spooner, took the child by the wrist and +said: “Come here, dear, and listen to this.” + +He detached his chronometer from the chain and made his watch strike six. + +To our horror, the child snatched it from his hand and bounced it down +upon the ground like one would a ball. + +Mr. Birks Spooner was most amiable, and said he could easily get a new +glass put in, and did not suppose the works were damaged. + +To show you how people’s opinions differ, Carrie said the child was +bad-tempered, but it made up for that defect by its looks, for it was—in +her mind—an unquestionably beautiful child. + +I may be wrong, but I do not think I have seen a much uglier child +myself. That is _my_ opinion. + +MAY 30.—I don’t know why it is, but I never anticipate with any pleasure +the visits to our house of Mrs. James, of Sutton. She is coming again to +stay for a few days. I said to Carrie this morning, as I was leaving: “I +wish, dear Carrie, I could like Mrs. James better than I do.” + +Carrie said: “So do I, dear; but as for years I have had to put up with +Mr. Gowing, who is vulgar, and Mr. Cummings, who is kind but most +uninteresting, I am sure, dear, you won’t mind the occasional visits of +Mrs. James, who has more intellect in her little finger than both your +friends have in their entire bodies.” + +I was so entirely taken back by this onslaught on my two dear old +friends, I could say nothing, and as I heard the ’bus coming, I left with +a hurried kiss—a little too hurried, perhaps, for my upper lip came in +contact with Carrie’s teeth and slightly cut it. It was quite painful +for an hour afterwards. When I came home in the evening I found Carrie +buried in a book on Spiritualism, called _There is no Birth_, by Florence +Singleyet. I need scarcely say the book was sent her to read by Mrs. +James, of Sutton. As she had not a word to say outside her book, I spent +the rest of the evening altering the stair-carpets, which are beginning +to show signs of wear at the edges. + +Mrs. James arrived and, as usual, in the evening took the entire +management of everything. Finding that she and Carrie were making some +preparations for table-turning, I thought it time really to put my foot +down. I have always had the greatest contempt for such nonsense, and put +an end to it years ago when Carrie, at our old house, used to have +séances every night with poor Mrs. Fussters (who is now dead). If I +could see any use in it, I would not care. As I stopped it in the days +gone by, I determined to do so now. + +I said: “I am very sorry Mrs. James, but I totally disapprove of it, +apart from the fact that I receive my old friends on this evening.” + +Mrs. James said: “Do you mean to say you haven’t read _There is no +Birth_?” I said: “No, and I have no intention of doing so.” Mrs. James +seemed surprised and said: “All the world is going mad over the book.” I +responded rather cleverly: “Let it. There will be one sane man in it, at +all events.” + +Mrs. James said she thought it was very unkind, and if people were all as +prejudiced as I was, there would never have been the electric telegraph +or the telephone. + +I said that was quite a different thing. + +Mrs. James said sharply: “In what way, pray—in what way?” + +I said: “In many ways.” + +Mrs. James said: “Well, mention _one_ way.” + +I replied quietly: “Pardon me, Mrs. James; I decline to discuss the +matter. I am not interested in it.” + +Sarah at this moment opened the door and showed in Cummings, for which I +was thankful, for I felt it would put a stop to this foolish +table-turning. But I was entirely mistaken; for, on the subject being +opened again, Cummings said he was most interested in Spiritualism, +although he was bound to confess he did not believe much in it; still, he +was willing to be convinced. + +I firmly declined to take any part in it, with the result that my +presence was ignored. I left the three sitting in the parlour at a small +round table which they had taken out of the drawing-room. I walked into +the hall with the ultimate intention of taking a little stroll. As I +opened the door, who should come in but Gowing! + +On hearing what was going on, he proposed that we should join the circle +and he would go into a trance. He added that he _knew_ a few things +about old Cummings, and would _invent_ a few about Mrs. James. Knowing +how dangerous Gowing is, I declined to let him take part in any such +foolish performance. Sarah asked me if she could go out for half an +hour, and I gave her permission, thinking it would be more comfortable to +sit with Gowing in the kitchen than in the cold drawing-room. We talked +a good deal about Lupin and Mr. and Mrs. Murray Posh, with whom he is as +usual spending the evening. Gowing said: “I say, it wouldn’t be a bad +thing for Lupin if old Posh kicked the bucket.” + +My heart gave a leap of horror, and I rebuked Gowing very sternly for +joking on such a subject. I lay awake half the night thinking of it—the +other half was spent in nightmares on the same subject. + +MAY 31.—I wrote a stern letter to the laundress. I was rather pleased +with the letter, for I thought it very satirical. I said: “You have +returned the handkerchiefs without the colour. Perhaps you will return +either the colour or the value of the handkerchiefs.” I shall be rather +curious to know what she will have to say. + +More table-turning in the evening. Carrie said last night was in a +measure successful, and they ought to sit again. Cummings came in, and +seemed interested. I had the gas lighted in the drawing-room, got the +steps, and repaired the cornice, which has been a bit of an eyesore to +me. In a fit of unthinkingness—if I may use such an expression,—I gave +the floor over the parlour, where the séance was taking place, two loud +raps with the hammer. I felt sorry afterwards, for it was the sort of +ridiculous, foolhardy thing that Gowing or Lupin would have done. + +However, they never even referred to it, but Carrie declared that a +message came through the table to her of a wonderful description, +concerning someone whom she and I knew years ago, and who was quite +unknown to the others. + +When we went to bed, Carrie asked me as a favour to sit to-morrow night, +to oblige her. She said it seemed rather unkind and unsociable on my +part. I promised I would sit once. + +JUNE 1.—I sat reluctantly at the table in the evening, and I am bound to +admit some curious things happened. I contend they were coincidences, +but they were curious. For instance, the table kept tilting towards me, +which Carrie construed as a desire that I should ask the spirit a +question. I obeyed the rules, and I asked the spirit (who said her name +was Lina) if she could tell me the name of an old aunt of whom I was +thinking, and whom we used to call Aunt Maggie. The table spelled out C +A T. We could make nothing out of it, till I suddenly remembered that +her second name was Catherine, which it was evidently trying to spell. I +don’t think even Carrie knew this. But if she did, she would never +cheat. I must admit it was curious. Several other things happened, and +I consented to sit at another séance on Monday. + +JUNE 3.—The laundress called, and said she was very sorry about the +handkerchiefs, and returned ninepence. I said, as the colour was +completely washed out and the handkerchiefs quite spoiled, ninepence was +not enough. Carrie replied that the two handkerchiefs originally only +cost sixpence, for she remembered buying them at a sale at the Holloway +_Bon Marché_. In that case, I insisted that threepence should be +returned to the laundress. Lupin has gone to stay with the Poshs for a +few days. I must say I feel very uncomfortable about it. Carrie said I +was ridiculous to worry about it. Mr. Posh was very fond of Lupin, who, +after all, was only a mere boy. + +In the evening we had another séance, which, in some respects, was very +remarkable, although the first part of it was a little doubtful. Gowing +called, as well as Cummings, and begged to be allowed to join the circle. +I wanted to object, but Mrs. James, who appears a good Medium (that is, +if there is anything in it at all), thought there might be a little more +spirit power if Gowing joined; so the five of us sat down. + +The moment I turned out the gas, and almost before I could get my hands +on the table, it rocked violently and tilted, and began moving quickly +across the room. Gowing shouted out: “Way oh! steady, lad, steady!” I +told Gowing if he could not behave himself I should light the gas, and +put an end to the séance. + +To tell the truth, I thought Gowing was playing tricks, and I hinted as +much; but Mrs. James said she had often seen the table go right off the +ground. The spirit Lina came again, and said, “WARN” three or four +times, and declined to explain. Mrs. James said “Lina” was stubborn +sometimes. She often behaved like that, and the best thing to do was to +send her away. + +She then hit the table sharply, and said: “Go away, Lina; you are +disagreeable. Go away!” I should think we sat nearly three-quarters of +an hour with nothing happening. My hands felt quite cold, and I +suggested we should stop the séance. Carrie and Mrs. James, as well as +Cummings, would not agree to it. In about ten minutes’ time there was +some tilting towards me. I gave the alphabet, and it spelled out S P O O +F. As I have heard both Gowing and Lupin use the word, and as I could +hear Gowing silently laughing, I directly accused him of pushing the +table. He denied it; but, I regret to say, I did not believe him. + +Gowing said: “Perhaps it means ‘Spook,’ a ghost.” + +I said: “_You_ know it doesn’t mean anything of the sort.” + +Gowing said: “Oh! very well—I’m sorry I ‘spook,’” and he rose from the +table. + +No one took any notice of the stupid joke, and Mrs. James suggested he +should sit out for a while. Gowing consented and sat in the arm-chair. + +The table began to move again, and we might have had a wonderful séance +but for Gowing’s stupid interruptions. In answer to the alphabet from +Carrie the table spelt “NIPUL,” then the “WARN” three times. We could +not think what it meant till Cummings pointed out that “NIPUL” was Lupin +spelled backwards. This was quite exciting. Carrie was particularly +excited, and said she hoped nothing horrible was going to happen. + +Mrs. James asked if “Lina” was the spirit. The table replied firmly, +“No,” and the spirit would not give his or her name. We then had the +message, “NIPUL will be very rich.” + +Carrie said she felt quite relieved, but the word “WARN” was again spelt +out. The table then began to oscillate violently, and in reply to Mrs. +James, who spoke very softly to the table, the spirit began to spell its +name. It first spelled “DRINK.” + +Gowing here said: “Ah! that’s more in my line.” + +I asked him to be quiet as the name might not be completed. + +The table then spelt “WATER.” + +Gowing here interrupted again, and said: “Ah! that’s _not_ in my line. +_Outside_ if you like, but not inside.” + +Carrie appealed to him to be quiet. + +The table then spelt “CAPTAIN,” and Mrs. James startled us by crying out, +“Captain Drinkwater, a very old friend of my father’s, who has been dead +some years.” + +This was more interesting, and I could not help thinking that after all +there must be something in Spiritualism. + +Mrs. James asked the spirit to interpret the meaning of the word “Warn” +as applied to “NIPUL.” The alphabet was given again, and we got the word +“BOSH.” + +Gowing here muttered: “So it is.” + +Mrs. James said she did not think the spirit meant that, as Captain +Drinkwater was a perfect gentleman, and would never have used the word in +answer to a lady’s question. Accordingly the alphabet was given again. + +This time the table spelled distinctly “POSH.” We all thought of Mrs. +Murray Posh and Lupin. Carrie was getting a little distressed, and as it +was getting late we broke up the circle. + +We arranged to have one more to-morrow, as it will be Mrs. James’ last +night in town. We also determined _not_ to have Gowing present. + +Cummings, before leaving, said it was certainly interesting, but he +wished the spirits would say something about him. + +JUNE 4.—Quite looking forward to the séance this evening. Was thinking +of it all the day at the office. + +Just as we sat down at the table we were annoyed by Gowing entering +without knocking. + +He said: “I am not going to stop, but I have brought with me a sealed +envelope, which I know I can trust with Mrs. Pooter. In that sealed +envelope is a strip of paper on which I have asked a simple question. If +the spirits can answer that question, I will believe in Spiritualism.” + +I ventured the expression that it might be impossible. + +Mrs. James said: “Oh no! it is of common occurrence for the spirits to +answer questions under such conditions—and even for them to write on +locked slates. It is quite worth trying. If ‘Lina’ is in a good temper, +she is certain to do it.” + +Gowing said: “All right; then I shall be a firm believer. I shall +perhaps drop in about half-past nine or ten, and hear the result.” + +He then left and we sat a long time. Cummings wanted to know something +about some undertaking in which he was concerned, but he could get no +answer of any description whatever—at which he said he was very +disappointed and was afraid there was not much in table-turning after +all. I thought this rather selfish of him. The séance was very similar +to the one last night, almost the same in fact. So we turned to the +letter. “Lina” took a long time answering the question, but eventually +spelt out “ROSES, LILIES, AND COWS.” There was great rocking of the +table at this time, and Mrs. James said: “If that is Captain Drinkwater, +let us ask him the answer as well?” + +It was the spirit of the Captain, and, most singular, he gave the same +identical answer: “ROSES, LILIES, AND COWS.” + +I cannot describe the agitation with which Carrie broke the seal, or the +disappointment we felt on reading the question, to which the answer was +so inappropriate. The question was, “_What’s old Pooter’s age_?” + +This quite decided me. + +As I had put my foot down on Spiritualism years ago, so I would again. + +I am pretty easy-going as a rule, but I can be extremely firm when driven +to it. + +I said slowly, as I turned up the gas: “This is the last of this nonsense +that shall ever take place under my roof. I regret I permitted myself to +be a party to such tomfoolery. If there is anything in it—which I +doubt—it is nothing of any good, and I _won’t have it again_. That is +enough.” + +Mrs. James said: “I think, Mr. Pooter, you are rather over-stepping—” + +I said: “Hush, madam. I am master of this house—please understand that.” + +Mrs. James made an observation which I sincerely hope I was mistaken in. +I was in such a rage I could not quite catch what she said. But if I +thought she said what it sounded like, she should never enter the house +again. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Lupin leaves us. We dine at his new apartments, and hear some +extraordinary information respecting the wealth of Mr. Murray Posh. Meet +Miss Lilian Posh. Am sent for by Mr. Hardfur Huttle. Important. + +JULY 1.—I find, on looking over my diary, nothing of any consequence has +taken place during the last month. To-day we lose Lupin, who has taken +furnished apartments at Bayswater, near his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Murray +Posh, at two guineas a week. I think this is most extravagant of him, as +it is half his salary. Lupin says one never loses by a good address, +and, to use his own expression, Brickfield Terrace is a bit “off.” +Whether he means it is “far off” I do not know. I have long since given +up trying to understand his curious expressions. I said the +neighbourhood had always been good enough for his parents. His reply +was: “It is no question of being good or bad. There is no money in it, +and I am not going to rot away my life in the suburbs.” + +We are sorry to lose him, but perhaps he will get on better by himself, +and there may be some truth in his remark that an old and a young horse +can’t pull together in the same cart. + +Gowing called, and said that the house seemed quite peaceful, and like +old times. He liked Master Lupin very well, but he occasionally suffered +from what he could not help—youth. + +JULY 2.—Cummings called, looked very pale, and said he had been very ill +again, and of course not a single friend had been near him. Carrie said +she had never heard of it, whereupon he threw down a copy of the _Bicycle +News_ on the table, with the following paragraph: “We regret to hear that +that favourite old roadster, Mr. Cummings (‘Long’ Cummings), has met with +what might have been a serious accident in Rye Lane. A mischievous boy +threw a stick between the spokes of one of the back wheels, and the +machine overturned, bringing our brother tricyclist heavily to the +ground. Fortunately he was more frightened than hurt, but we missed his +merry face at the dinner at Chingford, where they turned up in good +numbers. ‘Long’ Cummings’ health was proposed by our popular Vice, Mr. +Westropp, the prince of bicyclists, who in his happiest vein said it was +a case of ‘_Cumming_(s) thro’ the _Rye_, but fortunately there was more +_wheel_ than _woe_,’ a joke which created roars of laughter.” + +We all said we were very sorry, and pressed Cummings to stay to supper. +Cummings said it was like old times being without Lupin, and he was much +better away. + +JULY 3, Sunday.—In the afternoon, as I was looking out of the parlour +window, which was open, a grand trap, driven by a lady, with a gentleman +seated by the side of her, stopped at our door. Not wishing to be seen, +I withdrew my head very quickly, knocking the back of it violently +against the sharp edge of the window-sash. I was nearly stunned. There +was a loud double-knock at the front door; Carrie rushed out of the +parlour, upstairs to her room, and I followed, as Carrie thought it was +Mr. Perkupp. I thought it was Mr. Franching.—I whispered to Sarah over +the banisters: “Show them into the drawing-room.” Sarah said, as the +shutters were not opened, the room would smell musty. There was another +loud rat-tat. I whispered: “Then show them into the parlour, and say Mr. +Pooter will be down directly.” I changed my coat, but could not see to +do my hair, as Carrie was occupying the glass. + +Sarah came up, and said it was Mrs. Murray Posh and Mr. Lupin. + +This was quite a relief. I went down with Carrie, and Lupin met me with +the remark: “I say, what did you run away from the window for? Did we +frighten you?” + +I foolishly said: “What window?” + +Lupin said: “Oh, you know. Shut it. You looked as if you were playing +at Punch and Judy.” + +On Carrie asking if she could offer them anything, Lupin said: “Oh, I +think Daisy will take on a cup of tea. I can do with a B. and S.” + +I said: “I am afraid we have no soda.” + +Lupin said: “Don’t bother about that. You just trip out and hold the +horse; I don’t think Sarah understands it.” + +They stayed a very short time, and as they were leaving, Lupin said: “I +want you both to come and dine with me next Wednesday, and see my new +place. Mr. and Mrs. Murray Posh, Miss Posh (Murray’s sister) are coming. +Eight o’clock sharp. No one else.” + +I said we did not pretend to be fashionable people, and would like the +dinner earlier, as it made it so late before we got home. + +Lupin said: “Rats! You must get used to it. If it comes to that, Daisy +and I can drive you home.” + +We promised to go; but I must say in my simple mind the familiar way in +which Mrs. Posh and Lupin addressed each other is reprehensible. Anybody +would think they had been children together. I certainly should object +to a six months’ acquaintance calling _my_ wife “Carrie,” and driving out +with her. + +JULY 4.—Lupin’s rooms looked very nice; but the dinner was, I thought, a +little too grand, especially as he commenced with champagne straight off. +I also think Lupin might have told us that he and Mr. and Mrs. Murray +Posh and Miss Posh were going to put on full evening dress. Knowing that +the dinner was only for us six, we never dreamed it would be a full dress +affair. I had no appetite. It was quite twenty minutes past eight +before we sat down to dinner. At six I could have eaten a hearty meal. +I had a bit of bread-and-butter at that hour, feeling famished, and I +expect that partly spoiled my appetite. + +We were introduced to Miss Posh, whom Lupin called “Lillie Girl,” as if +he had known her all his life. She was very tall, rather plain, and I +thought she was a little painted round the eyes. I hope I am wrong; but +she had such fair hair, and yet her eyebrows were black. She looked +about thirty. I did not like the way she kept giggling and giving Lupin +smacks and pinching him. Then her laugh was a sort of a scream that went +right through my ears, all the more irritating because there was nothing +to laugh at. In fact, Carrie and I were not at all prepossessed with +her. They all smoked cigarettes after dinner, including Miss Posh, who +startled Carrie by saying: “Don’t you smoke, dear?” I answered for +Carrie, and said: “Mrs. Charles Pooter has not arrived at it yet,” +whereupon Miss Posh gave one of her piercing laughs again. + +Mrs. Posh sang a dozen songs at least, and I can only repeat what I have +said before—she does _not_ sing in tune; but Lupin sat by the side of the +piano, gazing into her eyes the whole time. If I had been Mr. Posh, I +think I should have had something to say about it. Mr. Posh made himself +very agreeable to us, and eventually sent us home in his carriage, which +I thought most kind. He is evidently very rich, for Mrs. Posh had on +some beautiful jewellery. She told Carrie her necklace, which her +husband gave her as a birthday present, alone cost £300. + +Mr. Posh said he had a great belief in Lupin, and thought he would make +rapid way in the world. + +I could not help thinking of the £600 Mr. Posh lost over the _Parachikka +Chlorates_ through Lupin’s advice. + +During the evening I had an opportunity to speak to Lupin, and expressed +a hope that Mr. Posh was not living beyond his means. + +Lupin sneered, and said Mr. Posh was worth thousands. “Posh’s one-price +hat” was a household word in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and all +the big towns throughout England. Lupin further informed me that Mr. +Posh was opening branch establishments at New York, Sydney, and +Melbourne, and was negotiating for Kimberley and Johannesburg. + +I said I was pleased to hear it. + +Lupin said: “Why, he has settled over £10,000 on Daisy, and the same +amount on ‘Lillie Girl.’ If at any time I wanted a little capital, he +would put up a couple of ‘thou’ at a day’s notice, and could buy up +Perkupp’s firm over his head at any moment with ready cash.” + +On the way home in the carriage, for the first time in my life, I was +inclined to indulge in the radical thought that money was _not_ properly +divided. + +On arriving home at a quarter-past eleven, we found a hansom cab, which +had been waiting for me for two hours with a letter. Sarah said she did +not know what to do, as we had not left the address where we had gone. I +trembled as I opened the letter, fearing it was some bad news about Mr. +Perkupp. The note was: “Dear Mr. Pooter,—Come down to the Victoria Hotel +without delay. Important. Yours truly, Hardfur Huttle.” + +I asked the cabman if it was too late. The cabman replied that it was +_not_; for his instructions were, if I happened to be out, he was to wait +till I came home. I felt very tired, and really wanted to go to bed. I +reached the hotel at a quarter before midnight. I apologised for being +so late, but Mr. Huttle said: “Not at all; come and have a few oysters.” +I feel my heart beating as I write these words. To be brief, Mr. Huttle +said he had a rich American friend who wanted to do something large in +our line of business, and that Mr. Franching had mentioned my name to +him. We talked over the matter. If, by any happy chance, the result be +successful, I can more than compensate my dear master for the loss of Mr. +Crowbillon’s custom. Mr. Huttle had previously said: “The glorious +‘Fourth’ is a lucky day for America, and, as it has not yet struck +twelve, we will celebrate it with a glass of the best wine to be had in +the place, and drink good luck to our bit of business.” + +I fervently hope it will bring good luck to us all. + +It was two o’clock when I got home. Although I was so tired, I could not +sleep except for short intervals—then only to dream. + +I kept dreaming of Mr. Perkupp and Mr. Huttle. The latter was in a +lovely palace with a crown on. Mr. Perkupp was waiting in the room. Mr. +Huttle kept taking off this crown and handing it to me, and calling me +“President.” + +He appeared to take no notice of Mr. Perkupp, and I kept asking Mr. +Huttle to give the crown to my worthy master. Mr. Huttle kept saying: +“No, this is the White House of Washington, and you must keep your crown, +Mr. President.” + +We all laughed long and very loudly, till I got parched, and then I woke +up. I fell asleep, only to dream the same thing over and over again. + + + + +CHAPTER THE LAST + + +One of the happiest days of my life. + +JULY 10.—The excitement and anxiety through which I have gone the last +few days have been almost enough to turn my hair grey. It is all but +settled. To-morrow the die will be cast. I have written a long letter +to Lupin—feeling it my duty to do so,—regarding his attention to Mrs. +Posh, for they drove up to our house again last night. + +JULY 11.—I find my eyes filling with tears as I pen the note of my +interview this morning with Mr. Perkupp. Addressing me, he said: “My +faithful servant, I will not dwell on the important service you have done +our firm. You can never be sufficiently thanked. Let us change the +subject. Do you like your house, and are you happy where you are?” + +I replied: “Yes, sir; I love my house and I love the neighbourhood, and +could not bear to leave it.” + +Mr. Perkupp, to my surprise, said: “Mr. Pooter, I will purchase the +freehold of that house, and present it to the most honest and most worthy +man it has ever been my lot to meet.” + +He shook my hand, and said he hoped my wife and I would be spared many +years to enjoy it. My heart was too full to thank him; and, seeing my +embarrassment, the good fellow said: “You need say nothing, Mr. Pooter,” +and left the office. + +I sent telegrams to Carrie, Gowing, and Cummings (a thing I have never +done before), and asked the two latter to come round to supper. + +On arriving home I found Carrie crying with joy, and I sent Sarah round +to the grocer’s to get two bottles of “Jackson Frères.” + +My two dear friends came in the evening, and the last post brought a +letter from Lupin in reply to mine. I read it aloud to them all. It +ran: “My dear old Guv.,—Keep your hair on. You are on the wrong tack +again. I am engaged to be married to ‘Lillie Girl.’ I did not mention +it last Thursday, as it was not definitely settled. We shall be married +in August, and amongst our guests we hope to see your old friends Gowing +and Cummings. With much love to all, from _The same old Lupin_.” + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1026 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1027-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1027-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fec6b3ed --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1027-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10910 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1027 *** + +THE LONE STAR RANGER + +By Zane Grey + + + + To + CAPTAIN JOHN HUGHES + and his Texas Rangers + + +It may seem strange to you that out of all the stories I heard on the +Rio Grande I should choose as first that of Buck Duane--outlaw and +gunman. + +But, indeed, Ranger Coffee's story of the last of the Duanes has haunted +me, and I have given full rein to imagination and have retold it in my +own way. It deals with the old law--the old border days--therefore it is +better first. Soon, perchance, I shall have the pleasure of writing of +the border of to-day, which in Joe Sitter's laconic speech, “Shore is +'most as bad an' wild as ever!” + +In the North and East there is a popular idea that the frontier of the +West is a thing long past, and remembered now only in stories. As I +think of this I remember Ranger Sitter when he made that remark, while +he grimly stroked an unhealed bullet wound. And I remember the giant +Vaughn, that typical son of stalwart Texas, sitting there quietly with +bandaged head, his thoughtful eye boding ill to the outlaw who had +ambushed him. Only a few months have passed since then--when I had my +memorable sojourn with you--and yet, in that short time, Russell and +Moore have crossed the Divide, like Rangers. + +Gentlemen,--I have the honor to dedicate this book to you, and the +hope that it shall fall to my lot to tell the world the truth about a +strange, unique, and misunderstood body of men--the Texas Rangers--who +made the great Lone Star State habitable, who never know peaceful rest +and sleep, who are passing, who surely will not be forgotten and will +some day come into their own. + +ZANE GREY + + + + +BOOK I. THE OUTLAW + + + +CHAPTER I + +So it was in him, then--an inherited fighting instinct, a driving +intensity to kill. He was the last of the Duanes, that old fighting +stock of Texas. But not the memory of his dead father, nor the pleading +of his soft-voiced mother, nor the warning of this uncle who stood +before him now, had brought to Buck Duane so much realization of +the dark passionate strain in his blood. It was the recurrence, a +hundred-fold increased in power, of a strange emotion that for the last +three years had arisen in him. + +“Yes, Cal Bain's in town, full of bad whisky an' huntin' for you,” + repeated the elder man, gravely. + +“It's the second time,” muttered Duane, as if to himself. + +“Son, you can't avoid a meetin'. Leave town till Cal sobers up. He ain't +got it in for you when he's not drinkin'.” + +“But what's he want me for?” demanded Duane. “To insult me again? I +won't stand that twice.” + +“He's got a fever that's rampant in Texas these days, my boy. He wants +gun-play. If he meets you he'll try to kill you.” + +Here it stirred in Duane again, that bursting gush of blood, like a +wind of flame shaking all his inner being, and subsiding to leave him +strangely chilled. + +“Kill me! What for?” he asked. + +“Lord knows there ain't any reason. But what's that to do with most of +the shootin' these days? Didn't five cowboys over to Everall's kill +one another dead all because they got to jerkin' at a quirt among +themselves? An' Cal has no reason to love you. His girl was sweet on +you.” + +“I quit when I found out she was his girl.” + +“I reckon she ain't quit. But never mind her or reasons. Cal's here, +just drunk enough to be ugly. He's achin' to kill somebody. He's one of +them four-flush gun-fighters. He'd like to be thought bad. There's a lot +of wild cowboys who're ambitious for a reputation. They talk about how +quick they are on the draw. They ape Bland an' King Fisher an' Hardin +an' all the big outlaws. They make threats about joinin' the gangs along +the Rio Grande. They laugh at the sheriffs an' brag about how they'd +fix the rangers. Cal's sure not much for you to bother with, if you only +keep out of his way.” + +“You mean for me to run?” asked Duane, in scorn. + +“I reckon I wouldn't put it that way. Just avoid him. Buck, I'm not +afraid Cal would get you if you met down there in town. You've your +father's eye an' his slick hand with a gun. What I'm most afraid of is +that you'll kill Bain.” + +Duane was silent, letting his uncle's earnest words sink in, trying to +realize their significance. + +“If Texas ever recovers from that fool war an' kills off these outlaws, +why, a young man will have a lookout,” went on the uncle. “You're +twenty-three now, an' a powerful sight of a fine fellow, barrin' your +temper. You've a chance in life. But if you go gun-fightin', if you kill +a man, you're ruined. Then you'll kill another. It'll be the same old +story. An' the rangers would make you an outlaw. The rangers mean law +an' order for Texas. This even-break business doesn't work with them. If +you resist arrest they'll kill you. If you submit to arrest, then you go +to jail, an' mebbe you hang.” + +“I'd never hang,” muttered Duane, darkly. + +“I reckon you wouldn't,” replied the old man. “You'd be like your +father. He was ever ready to draw--too ready. In times like these, with +the Texas rangers enforcin' the law, your Dad would have been driven to +the river. An', son, I'm afraid you're a chip off the old block. Can't +you hold in--keep your temper--run away from trouble? Because it'll only +result in you gettin' the worst of it in the end. Your father was killed +in a street-fight. An' it was told of him that he shot twice after a +bullet had passed through his heart. Think of the terrible nature of a +man to be able to do that. If you have any such blood in you, never give +it a chance.” + +“What you say is all very well, uncle,” returned Duane, “but the only +way out for me is to run, and I won't do it. Cal Bain and his outfit +have already made me look like a coward. He says I'm afraid to come out +and face him. A man simply can't stand that in this country. Besides, +Cal would shoot me in the back some day if I didn't face him.” + +“Well, then, what're you goin' to do?” inquired the elder man. + +“I haven't decided--yet.” + +“No, but you're comin' to it mighty fast. That damned spell is workin' +in you. You're different to-day. I remember how you used to be moody an' +lose your temper an' talk wild. Never was much afraid of you then. But +now you're gettin' cool an' quiet, an' you think deep, an' I don't like +the light in your eye. It reminds me of your father.” + +“I wonder what Dad would say to me to-day if he were alive and here,” + said Duane. + +“What do you think? What could you expect of a man who never wore a +glove on his right hand for twenty years?” + +“Well, he'd hardly have said much. Dad never talked. But he would have +done a lot. And I guess I'll go down-town and let Cal Bain find me.” + +Then followed a long silence, during which Duane sat with downcast eyes, +and the uncle appeared lost in sad thought of the future. Presently he +turned to Duane with an expression that denoted resignation, and yet a +spirit which showed wherein they were of the same blood. + +“You've got a fast horse--the fastest I know of in this country. After +you meet Bain hurry back home. I'll have a saddle-bag packed for you and +the horse ready.” + +With that he turned on his heel and went into the house, leaving Duane +to revolve in his mind his singular speech. Buck wondered presently if +he shared his uncle's opinion of the result of a meeting between himself +and Bain. His thoughts were vague. But on the instant of final decision, +when he had settled with himself that he would meet Bain, such a storm +of passion assailed him that he felt as if he was being shaken with +ague. Yet it was all internal, inside his breast, for his hand was like +a rock and, for all he could see, not a muscle about him quivered. He +had no fear of Bain or of any other man; but a vague fear of himself, of +this strange force in him, made him ponder and shake his head. It was as +if he had not all to say in this matter. There appeared to have been in +him a reluctance to let himself go, and some voice, some spirit from a +distance, something he was not accountable for, had compelled him. +That hour of Duane's life was like years of actual living, and in it he +became a thoughtful man. + +He went into the house and buckled on his belt and gun. The gun was a +Colt.45, six-shot, and heavy, with an ivory handle. He had packed it, +on and off, for five years. Before that it had been used by his father. +There were a number of notches filed in the bulge of the ivory handle. +This gun was the one his father had fired twice after being shot +through the heart, and his hand had stiffened so tightly upon it in +the death-grip that his fingers had to be pried open. It had never been +drawn upon any man since it had come into Duane's possession. But the +cold, bright polish of the weapon showed how it had been used. Duane +could draw it with inconceivable rapidity, and at twenty feet he could +split a card pointing edgewise toward him. + +Duane wished to avoid meeting his mother. Fortunately, as he thought, +she was away from home. He went out and down the path toward the gate. +The air was full of the fragrance of blossoms and the melody of birds. +Outside in the road a neighbor woman stood talking to a countryman in a +wagon; they spoke to him; and he heard, but did not reply. Then he began +to stride down the road toward the town. + +Wellston was a small town, but important in that unsettled part of the +great state because it was the trading-center of several hundred miles +of territory. On the main street there were perhaps fifty buildings, +some brick, some frame, mostly adobe, and one-third of the lot, and by +far the most prosperous, were saloons. From the road Duane turned into +this street. It was a wide thoroughfare lined by hitching-rails and +saddled horses and vehicles of various kinds. Duane's eye ranged down +the street, taking in all at a glance, particularly persons moving +leisurely up and down. Not a cowboy was in sight. Duane slackened his +stride, and by the time he reached Sol White's place, which was the +first saloon, he was walking slowly. Several people spoke to him and +turned to look back after they had passed. He paused at the door of +White's saloon, took a sharp survey of the interior, then stepped +inside. + +The saloon was large and cool, full of men and noise and smoke. The +noise ceased upon his entrance, and the silence ensuing presently broke +to the clink of Mexican silver dollars at a monte table. Sol White, who +was behind the bar, straightened up when he saw Duane; then, without +speaking, he bent over to rinse a glass. All eyes except those of the +Mexican gamblers were turned upon Duane; and these glances were keen, +speculative, questioning. These men knew Bain was looking for trouble; +they probably had heard his boasts. But what did Duane intend to do? +Several of the cowboys and ranchers present exchanged glances. Duane had +been weighed by unerring Texas instinct, by men who all packed guns. The +boy was the son of his father. Whereupon they greeted him and returned +to their drinks and cards. Sol White stood with his big red hands out +upon the bar; he was a tall, raw-boned Texan with a long mustache waxed +to sharp points. + +“Howdy, Buck,” was his greeting to Duane. He spoke carelessly and +averted his dark gaze for an instant. + +“Howdy, Sol,” replied Duane, slowly. “Say, Sol, I hear there's a gent in +town looking for me bad.” + +“Reckon there is, Buck,” replied White. “He came in heah aboot an +hour ago. Shore he was some riled an' a-roarin' for gore. Told me +confidential a certain party had given you a white silk scarf, an' he +was hell-bent on wearin' it home spotted red.” + +“Anybody with him?” queried Duane. + +“Burt an' Sam Outcalt an' a little cowpuncher I never seen before. +They-all was coaxin' trim to leave town. But he's looked on the flowin' +glass, Buck, an' he's heah for keeps.” + +“Why doesn't Sheriff Oaks lock him up if he's that bad?” + +“Oaks went away with the rangers. There's been another raid at Flesher's +ranch. The King Fisher gang, likely. An' so the town's shore wide open.” + +Duane stalked outdoors and faced down the street. He walked the whole +length of the long block, meeting many people--farmers, ranchers, +clerks, merchants, Mexicans, cowboys, and women. It was a singular fact +that when he turned to retrace his steps the street was almost empty. He +had not returned a hundred yards on his way when the street was wholly +deserted. A few heads protruded from doors and around corners. That main +street of Wellston saw some such situation every few days. If it was an +instinct for Texans to fight, it was also instinctive for them to sense +with remarkable quickness the signs of a coming gun-play. Rumor could +not fly so swiftly. In less than ten minutes everybody who had been on +the street or in the shops knew that Buck Duane had come forth to meet +his enemy. + +Duane walked on. When he came to within fifty paces of a saloon he +swerved out into the middle of the street, stood there for a moment, +then went ahead and back to the sidewalk. He passed on in this way the +length of the block. Sol White was standing in the door of his saloon. + +“Buck, I'm a-tippin' you off,” he said, quick and low-voiced. “Cal +Bain's over at Everall's. If he's a-huntin' you bad, as he brags, he'll +show there.” + +Duane crossed the street and started down. Notwithstanding White's +statement Duane was wary and slow at every door. Nothing happened, +and he traversed almost the whole length of the block without seeing a +person. Everall's place was on the corner. + +Duane knew himself to be cold, steady. He was conscious of a strange +fury that made him want to leap ahead. He seemed to long for this +encounter more than anything he had ever wanted. But, vivid as were his +sensations, he felt as if in a dream. + +Before he reached Everall's he heard loud voices, one of which was +raised high. Then the short door swung outward as if impelled by a +vigorous hand. A bow-legged cowboy wearing wooley chaps burst out upon +the sidewalk. At sight of Duane he seemed to bound into the air, and he +uttered a savage roar. + +Duane stopped in his tracks at the outer edge of the sidewalk, perhaps a +dozen rods from Everall's door. + +If Bain was drunk he did not show it in his movement. He swaggered +forward, rapidly closing up the gap. Red, sweaty, disheveled, and +hatless, his face distorted and expressive of the most malignant intent, +he was a wild and sinister figure. He had already killed a man, and this +showed in his demeanor. His hands were extended before him, the right +hand a little lower than the left. At every step he bellowed his rancor +in speech mostly curses. Gradually he slowed his walk, then halted. A +good twenty-five paces separated the men. + +“Won't nothin' make you draw, you--!” he shouted, fiercely. + +“I'm waitin' on you, Cal,” replied Duane. + +Bain's right hand stiffened--moved. Duane threw his gun as a boy throws +a ball underhand--a draw his father had taught him. He pulled twice, +his shots almost as one. Bain's big Colt boomed while it was pointed +downward and he was falling. His bullet scattered dust and gravel at +Duane's feet. He fell loosely, without contortion. + +In a flash all was reality for Duane. He went forward and held his gun +ready for the slightest movement on the part of Bain. But Bain lay upon +his back, and all that moved were his breast and his eyes. How strangely +the red had left his face--and also the distortion! The devil that had +showed in Bain was gone. He was sober and conscious. He tried to +speak, but failed. His eyes expressed something pitifully human. They +changed--rolled--set blankly. + +Duane drew a deep breath and sheathed his gun. He felt calm and cool, +glad the fray was over. One violent expression burst from him. “The +fool!” + +When he looked up there were men around him. + +“Plumb center,” said one. + +Another, a cowboy who evidently had just left the gaming-table, leaned +down and pulled open Bain's shirt. He had the ace of spades in his hand. +He laid it on Bain's breast, and the black figure on the card covered +the two bullet-holes just over Bain's heart. + +Duane wheeled and hurried away. He heard another man say: + +“Reckon Cal got what he deserved. Buck Duane's first gunplay. Like +father like son!” + + + +CHAPTER II + +A thought kept repeating itself to Duane, and it was that he might have +spared himself concern through his imagining how awful it would be to +kill a man. He had no such feeling now. He had rid the community of a +drunken, bragging, quarrelsome cowboy. + +When he came to the gate of his home and saw his uncle there with a +mettlesome horse, saddled, with canteen, rope, and bags all in place, +a subtle shock pervaded his spirit. It had slipped his mind--the +consequence of his act. But sight of the horse and the look of his uncle +recalled the fact that he must now become a fugitive. An unreasonable +anger took hold of him. + +“The d--d fool!” he exclaimed, hotly. “Meeting Bain wasn't much, Uncle +Jim. He dusted my boots, that's all. And for that I've got to go on the +dodge.” + +“Son, you killed him--then?” asked the uncle, huskily. + +“Yes. I stood over him--watched him die. I did as I would have been done +by.” + +“I knew it. Long ago I saw it comin'. But now we can't stop to cry over +spilt blood. You've got to leave town an' this part of the country.” + +“Mother!” exclaimed Duane. + +“She's away from home. You can't wait. I'll break it to her--what she +always feared.” + +Suddenly Duane sat down and covered his face with his hands. + +“My God! Uncle, what have I done?” His broad shoulders shook. + +“Listen, son, an' remember what I say,” replied the elder man, +earnestly. “Don't ever forget. You're not to blame. I'm glad to see +you take it this way, because maybe you'll never grow hard an' callous. +You're not to blame. This is Texas. You're your father's son. These are +wild times. The law as the rangers are laying it down now can't change +life all in a minute. Even your mother, who's a good, true woman, has +had her share in making you what you are this moment. For she was one of +the pioneers--the fightin' pioneers of this state. Those years of wild +times, before you was born, developed in her instinct to fight, to save +her life, her children, an' that instinct has cropped out in you. It +will be many years before it dies out of the boys born in Texas.” + +“I'm a murderer,” said Duane, shuddering. + +“No, son, you're not. An' you never will be. But you've got to be an +outlaw till time makes it safe for you to come home.” + +“An outlaw?” + +“I said it. If we had money an' influence we'd risk a trial. But we've +neither. An' I reckon the scaffold or jail is no place for Buckley +Duane. Strike for the wild country, an' wherever you go an' whatever +you do-be a man. Live honestly, if that's possible. If it isn't, be as +honest as you can. If you have to herd with outlaws try not to become +bad. There are outlaws who 're not all bad--many who have been driven to +the river by such a deal as this you had. When you get among these men +avoid brawls. Don't drink; don't gamble. I needn't tell you what to do +if it comes to gun-play, as likely it will. You can't come home. When +this thing is lived down, if that time ever comes, I'll get word into +the unsettled country. It'll reach you some day. That's all. Remember, +be a man. Goodby.” + +Duane, with blurred sight and contracting throat, gripped his uncle's +hand and bade him a wordless farewell. Then he leaped astride the black +and rode out of town. + +As swiftly as was consistent with a care for his steed, Duane put a +distance of fifteen or eighteen miles behind him. With that he slowed +up, and the matter of riding did not require all his faculties. He +passed several ranches and was seen by men. This did not suit him, and +he took an old trail across country. It was a flat region with a poor +growth of mesquite and prickly-pear cactus. Occasionally he caught +a glimpse of low hills in the distance. He had hunted often in that +section, and knew where to find grass and water. When he reached +this higher ground he did not, however, halt at the first favorable +camping-spot, but went on and on. Once he came out upon the brow of a +hill and saw a considerable stretch of country beneath him. It had the +gray sameness characterizing all that he had traversed. He seemed to +want to see wide spaces--to get a glimpse of the great wilderness lying +somewhere beyond to the southwest. It was sunset when he decided to camp +at a likely spot he came across. He led the horse to water, and then +began searching through the shallow valley for a suitable place to camp. +He passed by old camp-sites that he well remembered. These, however, did +not strike his fancy this time, and the significance of the change in +him did not occur at the moment. At last he found a secluded spot, under +cover of thick mesquites and oaks, at a goodly distance from the old +trail. He took saddle and pack off the horse. He looked among his +effects for a hobble, and, finding that his uncle had failed to put one +in, he suddenly remembered that he seldom used a hobble, and never on +this horse. He cut a few feet off the end of his lasso and used that. +The horse, unused to such hampering of his free movements, had to be +driven out upon the grass. + +Duane made a small fire, prepared and ate his supper. This done, ending +the work of that day, he sat down and filled his pipe. Twilight had +waned into dusk. A few wan stars had just begun to show and brighten. +Above the low continuous hum of insects sounded the evening carol of +robins. Presently the birds ceased their singing, and then the quiet +was more noticeable. When night set in and the place seemed all the more +isolated and lonely for that Duane had a sense of relief. + +It dawned upon him all at once that he was nervous, watchful, sleepless. +The fact caused him surprise, and he began to think back, to take note +of his late actions and their motives. The change one day had wrought +amazed him. He who had always been free, easy, happy, especially when +out alone in the open, had become in a few short hours bound, serious, +preoccupied. The silence that had once been sweet now meant nothing +to him except a medium whereby he might the better hear the sounds +of pursuit. The loneliness, the night, the wild, that had always been +beautiful to him, now only conveyed a sense of safety for the present. +He watched, he listened, he thought. He felt tired, yet had no +inclination to rest. He intended to be off by dawn, heading toward the +southwest. Had he a destination? It was vague as his knowledge of that +great waste of mesquite and rock bordering the Rio Grande. Somewhere out +there was a refuge. For he was a fugitive from justice, an outlaw. + +This being an outlaw then meant eternal vigilance. No home, no rest, no +sleep, no content, no life worth the living! He must be a lone wolf +or he must herd among men obnoxious to him. If he worked for an honest +living he still must hide his identity and take risks of detection. If +he did not work on some distant outlying ranch, how was he to live? The +idea of stealing was repugnant to him. The future seemed gray and somber +enough. And he was twenty-three years old. + +Why had this hard life been imposed upon him? + +The bitter question seemed to start a strange iciness that stole +along his veins. What was wrong with him? He stirred the few sticks of +mesquite into a last flickering blaze. He was cold, and for some reason +he wanted some light. The black circle of darkness weighed down upon +him, closed in around him. Suddenly he sat bolt upright and then froze +in that position. He had heard a step. It was behind him--no--on the +side. Some one was there. He forced his hand down to his gun, and the +touch of cold steel was another icy shock. Then he waited. But all +was silent--silent as only a wilderness arroyo can be, with its low +murmuring of wind in the mesquite. Had he heard a step? He began to +breathe again. + +But what was the matter with the light of his camp-fire? It had taken +on a strange green luster and seemed to be waving off into the outer +shadows. Duane heard no step, saw no movement; nevertheless, there was +another present at that camp-fire vigil. Duane saw him. He lay there in +the middle of the green brightness, prostrate, motionless, dying. Cal +Bain! His features were wonderfully distinct, clearer than any cameo, +more sharply outlined than those of any picture. It was a hard face +softening at the threshold of eternity. The red tan of sun, the coarse +signs of drunkenness, the ferocity and hate so characteristic of Bain +were no longer there. This face represented a different Bain, showed all +that was human in him fading, fading as swiftly as it blanched white. +The lips wanted to speak, but had not the power. The eyes held an agony +of thought. They revealed what might have been possible for this man +if he lived--that he saw his mistake too late. Then they rolled, set +blankly, and closed in death. + +That haunting visitation left Duane sitting there in a cold sweat, a +remorse gnawing at his vitals, realizing the curse that was on him. +He divined that never would he be able to keep off that phantom. He +remembered how his father had been eternally pursued by the furies of +accusing guilt, how he had never been able to forget in work or in sleep +those men he had killed. + +The hour was late when Duane's mind let him sleep, and then dreams +troubled him. In the morning he bestirred himself so early that in the +gray gloom he had difficulty in finding his horse. Day had just broken +when he struck the old trail again. + +He rode hard all morning and halted in a shady spot to rest and graze +his horse. In the afternoon he took to the trail at an easy trot. The +country grew wilder. Bald, rugged mountains broke the level of the +monotonous horizon. About three in the afternoon he came to a little +river which marked the boundary line of his hunting territory. + +The decision he made to travel up-stream for a while was owing to two +facts: the river was high with quicksand bars on each side, and he felt +reluctant to cross into that region where his presence alone meant that +he was a marked man. The bottom-lands through which the river wound to +the southwest were more inviting than the barrens he had traversed. The +rest or that day he rode leisurely up-stream. At sunset he penetrated +the brakes of willow and cottonwood to spend the night. It seemed to +him that in this lonely cover he would feel easy and content. But he +did not. Every feeling, every imagining he had experienced the previous +night returned somewhat more vividly and accentuated by newer ones of +the same intensity and color. + +In this kind of travel and camping he spent three more days, during +which he crossed a number of trails, and one road where cattle--stolen +cattle, probably--had recently passed. Thus time exhausted his supply +of food, except salt, pepper, coffee, and sugar, of which he had a +quantity. There were deer in the brakes; but, as he could not get close +enough to kill them with a revolver, he had to satisfy himself with a +rabbit. He knew he might as well content himself with the hard fare that +assuredly would be his lot. + +Somewhere up this river there was a village called Huntsville. It +was distant about a hundred miles from Wellston, and had a reputation +throughout southwestern Texas. He had never been there. The fact was +this reputation was such that honest travelers gave the town a wide +berth. Duane had considerable money for him in his possession, and he +concluded to visit Huntsville, if he could find it, and buy a stock of +provisions. + +The following day, toward evening, he happened upon a road which +he believed might lead to the village. There were a good many fresh +horse-tracks in the sand, and these made him thoughtful. Nevertheless, +he followed the road, proceeding cautiously. He had not gone very far +when the sound of rapid hoof-beats caught his ears. They came from his +rear. In the darkening twilight he could not see any great distance back +along the road. Voices, however, warned him that these riders, whoever +they were, had approached closer than he liked. To go farther down the +road was not to be thought of, so he turned a little way in among the +mesquites and halted, hoping to escape being seen or heard. As he was +now a fugitive, it seemed every man was his enemy and pursuer. + +The horsemen were fast approaching. Presently they were abreast of +Duane's position, so near that he could hear the creak of saddles, the +clink of spurs. + +“Shore he crossed the river below,” said one man. + +“I reckon you're right, Bill. He's slipped us,” replied another. + +Rangers or a posse of ranchers in pursuit of a fugitive! The knowledge +gave Duane a strange thrill. Certainly they could not have been hunting +him. But the feeling their proximity gave him was identical to what +it would have been had he been this particular hunted man. He held +his breath; he clenched his teeth; he pressed a quieting hand upon his +horse. Suddenly he became aware that these horsemen had halted. They +were whispering. He could just make out a dark group closely massed. +What had made them halt so suspiciously? + +“You're wrong, Bill,” said a man, in a low but distinct voice. + +“The idee of hearin' a hoss heave. You're wuss'n a ranger. And you're +hell-bent on killin' that rustler. Now I say let's go home and eat.” + +“Wal, I'll just take a look at the sand,” replied the man called Bill. + +Duane heard the clink of spurs on steel stirrup and the thud of boots on +the ground. There followed a short silence which was broken by a sharply +breathed exclamation. + +Duane waited for no more. They had found his trail. He spurred his horse +straight into the brush. At the second crashing bound there came yells +from the road, and then shots. Duane heard the hiss of a bullet close +by his ear, and as it struck a branch it made a peculiar singing sound. +These shots and the proximity of that lead missile roused in Duane a +quick, hot resentment which mounted into a passion almost ungovernable. +He must escape, yet it seemed that he did not care whether he did or +not. Something grim kept urging him to halt and return the fire of these +men. After running a couple of hundred yards he raised himself from over +the pommel, where he had bent to avoid the stinging branches, and tried +to guide his horse. In the dark shadows under mesquites and cottonwoods +he was hard put to it to find open passage; however, he succeeded so +well and made such little noise that gradually he drew away from his +pursuers. The sound of their horses crashing through the thickets died +away. Duane reined in and listened. He had distanced them. Probably they +would go into camp till daylight, then follow his tracks. He started on +again, walking his horse, and peered sharply at the ground, so that he +might take advantage of the first trail he crossed. It seemed a long +while until he came upon one. He followed it until a late hour, when, +striking the willow brakes again and hence the neighborhood of the +river, he picketed his horse and lay down to rest. But he did not sleep. +His mind bitterly revolved the fate that had come upon him. He made +efforts to think of other things, but in vain. + +Every moment he expected the chill, the sense of loneliness that yet +was ominous of a strange visitation, the peculiarly imagined lights and +shades of the night--these things that presaged the coming of Cal Bain. +Doggedly Duane fought against the insidious phantom. He kept telling +himself that it was just imagination, that it would wear off in time. +Still in his heart he did not believe what he hoped. But he would not +give up; he would not accept the ghost of his victim as a reality. + +Gray dawn found him in the saddle again headed for the river. Half an +hour of riding brought him to the dense chaparral and willow thickets. +These he threaded to come at length to the ford. It was a gravel bottom, +and therefore an easy crossing. Once upon the opposite shore he +reined in his horse and looked darkly back. This action marked his +acknowledgment of his situation: he had voluntarily sought the refuge +of the outlaws; he was beyond the pale. A bitter and passionate curse +passed his lips as he spurred his horse into the brakes on that alien +shore. + +He rode perhaps twenty miles, not sparing his horse nor caring whether +or not he left a plain trail. + +“Let them hunt me!” he muttered. + +When the heat of the day began to be oppressive, and hunger and thirst +made themselves manifest, Duane began to look about him for a place to +halt for the noon-hours. The trail led into a road which was hard packed +and smooth from the tracks of cattle. He doubted not that he had come +across one of the roads used by border raiders. He headed into it, and +had scarcely traveled a mile when, turning a curve, he came point-blank +upon a single horseman riding toward him. Both riders wheeled their +mounts sharply and were ready to run and shoot back. Not more than a +hundred paces separated them. They stood then for a moment watching each +other. + +“Mawnin', stranger,” called the man, dropping his hand from his hip. + +“Howdy,” replied Duane, shortly. + +They rode toward each other, closing half the gap, then they halted +again. + +“I seen you ain't no ranger,” called the rider, “an' shore I ain't +none.” + +He laughed loudly, as if he had made a joke. + +“How'd you know I wasn't a ranger?” asked Duane, curiously. Somehow +he had instantly divined that his horseman was no officer, or even a +rancher trailing stolen stock. + +“Wal,” said the fellow, starting his horse forward at a walk, “a +ranger'd never git ready to run the other way from one man.” + +He laughed again. He was small and wiry, slouchy of attire, and armed to +the teeth, and he bestrode a fine bay horse. He had quick, dancing brown +eyes, at once frank and bold, and a coarse, bronzed face. Evidently he +was a good-natured ruffian. + +Duane acknowledged the truth of the assertion, and turned over in his +mind how shrewdly the fellow had guessed him to be a hunted man. + +“My name's Luke Stevens, an' I hail from the river. Who're you?” said +this stranger. + +Duane was silent. + +“I reckon you're Buck Duane,” went on Stevens. “I heerd you was a damn +bad man with a gun.” + +This time Duane laughed, not at the doubtful compliment, but at the +idea that the first outlaw he met should know him. Here was proof of how +swiftly facts about gun-play traveled on the Texas border. + +“Wal, Buck,” said Stevens, in a friendly manner, “I ain't presumin' on +your time or company. I see you're headin' fer the river. But will you +stop long enough to stake a feller to a bite of grub?” + +“I'm out of grub, and pretty hungry myself,” admitted Duane. + +“Been pushin' your hoss, I see. Wal, I reckon you'd better stock up +before you hit thet stretch of country.” + +He made a wide sweep of his right arm, indicating the southwest, and +there was that in his action which seemed significant of a vast and +barren region. + +“Stock up?” queried Duane, thoughtfully. + +“Shore. A feller has jest got to eat. I can rustle along without whisky, +but not without grub. Thet's what makes it so embarrassin' travelin' +these parts dodgin' your shadow. Now, I'm on my way to Mercer. It's +a little two-bit town up the river a ways. I'm goin' to pack out some +grub.” + +Stevens's tone was inviting. Evidently he would welcome Duane's +companionship, but he did not openly say so. Duane kept silence, +however, and then Stevens went on. + +“Stranger, in this here country two's a crowd. It's safer. I never was +much on this lone-wolf dodgin', though I've done it of necessity. It +takes a damn good man to travel alone any length of time. Why, I've been +thet sick I was jest achin' fer some ranger to come along an' plug me. +Give me a pardner any day. Now, mebbe you're not thet kind of a +feller, an' I'm shore not presumin' to ask. But I just declares myself +sufficient.” + +“You mean you'd like me to go with you?” asked Duane. + +Stevens grinned. “Wal, I should smile. I'd be particular proud to be +braced with a man of your reputation.” + +“See here, my good fellow, that's all nonsense,” declared Duane, in some +haste. + +“Shore I think modesty becomin' to a youngster,” replied Stevens. “I +hate a brag. An' I've no use fer these four-flush cowboys thet 're +always lookin' fer trouble an' talkin' gun-play. Buck, I don't know much +about you. But every man who's lived along the Texas border remembers a +lot about your Dad. It was expected of you, I reckon, an' much of your +rep was established before you thronged your gun. I jest heerd thet you +was lightnin' on the draw, an' when you cut loose with a gun, why the +figger on the ace of spades would cover your cluster of bullet-holes. +Thet's the word thet's gone down the border. It's the kind of reputation +most sure to fly far an' swift ahead of a man in this country. An' the +safest, too; I'll gamble on thet. It's the land of the draw. I see now +you're only a boy, though you're shore a strappin' husky one. Now, +Buck, I'm not a spring chicken, an' I've been long on the dodge. Mebbe +a little of my society won't hurt you none. You'll need to learn the +country.” + +There was something sincere and likable about this outlaw. + +“I dare say you're right,” replied Duane, quietly. “And I'll go to +Mercer with you.” + +Next moment he was riding down the road with Stevens. Duane had never +been much of a talker, and now he found speech difficult. But his +companion did not seem to mind that. He was a jocose, voluble fellow, +probably glad now to hear the sound of his own voice. Duane listened, +and sometimes he thought with a pang of the distinction of name and +heritage of blood his father had left to him. + + + +CHAPTER III + +Late that day, a couple of hours before sunset, Duane and Stevens, +having rested their horses in the shade of some mesquites near the town +of Mercer, saddled up and prepared to move. + +“Buck, as we're lookin' fer grub, an' not trouble, I reckon you'd better +hang up out here,” Stevens was saying, as he mounted. “You see, towns +an' sheriffs an' rangers are always lookin' fer new fellers gone bad. +They sort of forget most of the old boys, except those as are plumb +bad. Now, nobody in Mercer will take notice of me. Reckon there's been +a thousand men run into the river country to become outlaws since yours +truly. You jest wait here an' be ready to ride hard. Mebbe my besettin' +sin will go operatin' in spite of my good intentions. In which case +there'll be--” + +His pause was significant. He grinned, and his brown eyes danced with a +kind of wild humor. + +“Stevens, have you got any money?” asked Duane. + +“Money!” exclaimed Luke, blankly. “Say, I haven't owned a two-bit piece +since--wal, fer some time.” + +“I'll furnish money for grub,” returned Duane. “And for whisky, too, +providing you hurry back here--without making trouble.” + +“Shore you're a downright good pard,” declared Stevens, in admiration, +as he took the money. “I give my word, Buck, an' I'm here to say I never +broke it yet. Lay low, an' look fer me back quick.” + +With that he spurred his horse and rode out of the mesquites toward the +town. At that distance, about a quarter of a mile, Mercer appeared to be +a cluster of low adobe houses set in a grove of cottonwoods. Pastures +of alfalfa were dotted by horses and cattle. Duane saw a sheep-herder +driving in a meager flock. + +Presently Stevens rode out of sight into the town. Duane waited, hoping +the outlaw would make good his word. Probably not a quarter of an hour +had elapsed when Duane heard the clear reports of a Winchester rifle, +the clatter of rapid hoof-beats, and yells unmistakably the kind to mean +danger for a man like Stevens. Duane mounted and rode to the edge of the +mesquites. + +He saw a cloud of dust down the road and a bay horse running fast. +Stevens apparently had not been wounded by any of the shots, for he had +a steady seat in his saddle and his riding, even at that moment, struck +Duane as admirable. He carried a large pack over the pommel, and he kept +looking back. The shots had ceased, but the yells increased. Duane saw +several men running and waving their arms. Then he spurred his horse and +got into a swift stride, so Stevens would not pass him. Presently the +outlaw caught up with him. Stevens was grinning, but there was now no +fun in the dancing eyes. It was a devil that danced in them. His face +seemed a shade paler. + +“Was jest comin' out of the store,” yelled Stevens. “Run plumb into a +rancher--who knowed me. He opened up with a rifle. Think they'll chase +us.” + +They covered several miles before there were any signs of pursuit, and +when horsemen did move into sight out of the cottonwoods Duane and his +companion steadily drew farther away. + +“No hosses in thet bunch to worry us,” called out Stevens. + +Duane had the same conviction, and he did not look back again. He rode +somewhat to the fore, and was constantly aware of the rapid thudding of +hoofs behind, as Stevens kept close to him. At sunset they reached the +willow brakes and the river. Duane's horse was winded and lashed with +sweat and lather. It was not until the crossing had been accomplished +that Duane halted to rest his animal. Stevens was riding up the low, +sandy bank. He reeled in the saddle. With an exclamation of surprise +Duane leaped off and ran to the outlaw's side. + +Stevens was pale, and his face bore beads of sweat. The whole front of +his shirt was soaked with blood. + +“You're shot!” cried Duane. + +“Wal, who 'n hell said I wasn't? Would you mind givin' me a lift--on +this here pack?” + +Duane lifted the heavy pack down and then helped Stevens to dismount. +The outlaw had a bloody foam on his lips, and he was spitting blood. + +“Oh, why didn't you say so!” cried Duane. “I never thought. You seemed +all right.” + +“Wal, Luke Stevens may be as gabby as an old woman, but sometimes he +doesn't say anythin'. It wouldn't have done no good.” + +Duane bade him sit down, removed his shirt, and washed the blood from +his breast and back. Stevens had been shot in the breast, fairly low +down, and the bullet had gone clear through him. His ride, holding +himself and that heavy pack in the saddle, had been a feat little short +of marvelous. Duane did not see how it had been possible, and he felt no +hope for the outlaw. But he plugged the wounds and bound them tightly. + +“Feller's name was Brown,” Stevens said. “Me an' him fell out over a +hoss I stole from him over in Huntsville. We had a shootin'-scrape then. +Wal, as I was straddlin' my hoss back there in Mercer I seen this Brown, +an' seen him before he seen me. Could have killed him, too. But I wasn't +breakin' my word to you. I kind of hoped he wouldn't spot me. But he +did--an' fust shot he got me here. What do you think of this hole?” + +“It's pretty bad,” replied Duane; and he could not look the cheerful +outlaw in the eyes. + +“I reckon it is. Wal, I've had some bad wounds I lived over. Guess mebbe +I can stand this one. Now, Buck, get me some place in the brakes, leave +me some grub an' water at my hand, an' then you clear out.” + +“Leave you here alone?” asked Duane, sharply. + +“Shore. You see, I can't keep up with you. Brown an' his friends will +foller us across the river a ways. You've got to think of number one in +this game.” + +“What would you do in my case?” asked Duane, curiously. + +“Wal, I reckon I'd clear out an' save my hide,” replied Stevens. + +Duane felt inclined to doubt the outlaw's assertion. For his own part he +decided his conduct without further speech. First he watered the horses, +filled canteens and water bag, and then tied the pack upon his own +horse. That done, he lifted Stevens upon his horse, and, holding him in +the saddle, turned into the brakes, being careful to pick out hard or +grassy ground that left little signs of tracks. Just about dark he ran +across a trail that Stevens said was a good one to take into the wild +country. + +“Reckon we'd better keep right on in the dark--till I drop,” concluded +Stevens, with a laugh. + +All that night Duane, gloomy and thoughtful, attentive to the wounded +outlaw, walked the trail and never halted till daybreak. He was tired +then and very hungry. Stevens seemed in bad shape, although he was still +spirited and cheerful. Duane made camp. The outlaw refused food, but +asked for both whisky and water. Then he stretched out. + +“Buck, will you take off my boots?” he asked, with a faint smile on his +pallid face. + +Duane removed them, wondering if the outlaw had the thought that he did +not want to die with his boots on. Stevens seemed to read his mind. + +“Buck, my old daddy used to say thet I was born to be hanged. But I +wasn't--an' dyin' with your boots on is the next wust way to croak.” + +“You've a chance to-to get over this,” said Duane. + +“Shore. But I want to be correct about the boots--an' say, pard, if I do +go over, jest you remember thet I was appreciatin' of your kindness.” + +Then he closed his eyes and seemed to sleep. + +Duane could not find water for the horses, but there was an abundance +of dew-wet grass upon which he hobbled them. After that was done he +prepared himself a much-needed meal. The sun was getting warm when he +lay down to sleep, and when he awoke it was sinking in the west. Stevens +was still alive, for he breathed heavily. The horses were in sight. All +was quiet except the hum of insects in the brush. Duane listened awhile, +then rose and went for the horses. + +When he returned with them he found Stevens awake, bright-eyed, cheerful +as usual, and apparently stronger. + +“Wal, Buck, I'm still with you an' good fer another night's ride,” he +said. “Guess about all I need now is a big pull on thet bottle. Help +me, will you? There! thet was bully. I ain't swallowin' my blood this +evenin'. Mebbe I've bled all there was in me.” + +While Duane got a hurried meal for himself, packed up the little outfit, +and saddled the horses Stevens kept on talking. He seemed to be in a +hurry to tell Duane all about the country. Another night ride would put +them beyond fear of pursuit, within striking distance of the Rio Grande +and the hiding-places of the outlaws. + +When it came time for mounting the horses Stevens said, “Reckon you +can pull on my boots once more.” In spite of the laugh accompanying the +words Duane detected a subtle change in the outlaw's spirit. + +On this night travel was facilitated by the fact that the trail was +broad enough for two horses abreast, enabling Duane to ride while +upholding Stevens in the saddle. + +The difficulty most persistent was in keeping the horses in a walk. They +were used to a trot, and that kind of gait would not do for Stevens. +The red died out of the west; a pale afterglow prevailed for a while; +darkness set in; then the broad expanse of blue darkened and the stars +brightened. After a while Stevens ceased talking and drooped in his +saddle. Duane kept the horses going, however, and the slow hours wore +away. Duane thought the quiet night would never break to dawn, that +there was no end to the melancholy, brooding plain. But at length a +grayness blotted out the stars and mantled the level of mesquite and +cactus. + +Dawn caught the fugitives at a green camping-site on the bank of a rocky +little stream. Stevens fell a dead weight into Duane's arms, and one +look at the haggard face showed Duane that the outlaw had taken his last +ride. He knew it, too. Yet that cheerfulness prevailed. + +“Buck, my feet are orful tired packin' them heavy boots,” he said, and +seemed immensely relieved when Duane had removed them. + +This matter of the outlaw's boots was strange, Duane thought. He made +Stevens as comfortable as possible, then attended to his own needs. And +the outlaw took up the thread of his conversation where he had left off +the night before. + +“This trail splits up a ways from here, an' every branch of it leads +to a hole where you'll find men--a few, mebbe, like yourself--some like +me--an' gangs of no-good hoss-thieves, rustlers, an' such. It's easy +livin', Buck. I reckon, though, that you'll not find it easy. You'll +never mix in. You'll be a lone wolf. I seen that right off. Wal, if +a man can stand the loneliness, an' if he's quick on the draw, mebbe +lone-wolfin' it is the best. Shore I don't know. But these fellers in +here will be suspicious of a man who goes it alone. If they get a chance +they'll kill you.” + +Stevens asked for water several times. He had forgotten or he did not +want the whisky. His voice grew perceptibly weaker. + +“Be quiet,” said Duane. “Talking uses up your strength.” + +“Aw, I'll talk till--I'm done,” he replied, doggedly. “See here, pard, +you can gamble on what I'm tellin' you. An' it'll be useful. From this +camp we'll--you'll meet men right along. An' none of them will be honest +men. All the same, some are better'n others. I've lived along the river +fer twelve years. There's three big gangs of outlaws. King Fisher--you +know him, I reckon, fer he's half the time livin' among respectable +folks. King is a pretty good feller. It'll do to tie up with him ant his +gang. Now, there's Cheseldine, who hangs out in the Rim Rock way up +the river. He's an outlaw chief. I never seen him, though I stayed once +right in his camp. Late years he's got rich an' keeps back pretty well +hid. But Bland--I knowed Bland fer years. An' I haven't any use fer him. +Bland has the biggest gang. You ain't likely to miss strikin' his place +sometime or other. He's got a regular town, I might say. Shore there's +some gamblin' an' gun-fightin' goin' on at Bland's camp all the time. +Bland has killed some twenty men, an' thet's not countin' greasers.” + +Here Stevens took another drink and then rested for a while. + +“You ain't likely to get on with Bland,” he resumed, presently. “You're +too strappin' big an' good-lookin' to please the chief. Fer he's got +women in his camp. Then he'd be jealous of your possibilities with a +gun. Shore I reckon he'd be careful, though. Bland's no fool, an' he +loves his hide. I reckon any of the other gangs would be better fer you +when you ain't goin' it alone.” + +Apparently that exhausted the fund of information and advice Stevens had +been eager to impart. He lapsed into silence and lay with closed eyes. +Meanwhile the sun rose warm; the breeze waved the mesquites; the birds +came down to splash in the shallow stream; Duane dozed in a comfortable +seat. By and by something roused him. Stevens was once more talking, but +with a changed tone. + +“Feller's name--was Brown,” he rambled. “We fell out--over a hoss I +stole from him--in Huntsville. He stole it fuss. Brown's one of them +sneaks--afraid of the open--he steals an' pretends to be honest. Say, +Buck, mebbe you'll meet Brown some day--You an' me are pards now.” + +“I'll remember, if I ever meet him,” said Duane. + +That seemed to satisfy the outlaw. Presently he tried to lift his +head, but had not the strength. A strange shade was creeping across the +bronzed rough face. + +“My feet are pretty heavy. Shore you got my boots off?” + +Duane held them up, but was not certain that Stevens could see them. +The outlaw closed his eyes again and muttered incoherently. Then he fell +asleep. Duane believed that sleep was final. The day passed, with Duane +watching and waiting. Toward sundown Stevens awoke, and his eyes seemed +clearer. Duane went to get some fresh water, thinking his comrade would +surely want some. When he returned Stevens made no sign that he wanted +anything. There was something bright about him, and suddenly Duane +realized what it meant. + +“Pard, you--stuck--to me!” the outlaw whispered. + +Duane caught a hint of gladness in the voice; he traced a faint surprise +in the haggard face. Stevens seemed like a little child. + +To Duane the moment was sad, elemental, big, with a burden of mystery he +could not understand. + +Duane buried him in a shallow arroyo and heaped up a pile of stones +to mark the grave. That done, he saddled his comrade's horse, hung the +weapons over the pommel; and, mounting his own steed, he rode down the +trail in the gathering twilight. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Two days later, about the middle of the forenoon, Duane dragged the +two horses up the last ascent of an exceedingly rough trail and found +himself on top of the Rim Rock, with a beautiful green valley at his +feet, the yellow, sluggish Rio Grande shining in the sun, and the great, +wild, mountainous barren of Mexico stretching to the south. + +Duane had not fallen in with any travelers. He had taken the +likeliest-looking trail he had come across. Where it had led him he had +not the slightest idea, except that here was the river, and probably the +inclosed valley was the retreat of some famous outlaw. + +No wonder outlaws were safe in that wild refuge! Duane had spent the +last two days climbing the roughest and most difficult trail he had ever +seen. From the looks of the descent he imagined the worst part of his +travel was yet to come. Not improbably it was two thousand feet down to +the river. The wedge-shaped valley, green with alfalfa and cottonwood, +and nestling down amid the bare walls of yellow rock, was a delight and +a relief to his tired eyes. Eager to get down to a level and to find a +place to rest, Duane began the descent. + +The trail proved to be the kind that could not be descended slowly. He +kept dodging rocks which his horses loosed behind him. And in a short +time he reached the valley, entering at the apex of the wedge. A stream +of clear water tumbled out of the rocks here, and most of it ran into +irrigation-ditches. His horses drank thirstily. And he drank with that +fullness and gratefulness common to the desert traveler finding sweet +water. Then he mounted and rode down the valley wondering what would be +his reception. + +The valley was much larger than it had appeared from the high elevation. +Well watered, green with grass and tree, and farmed evidently by good +hands, it gave Duane a considerable surprise. Horses and cattle were +everywhere. Every clump of cottonwoods surrounded a small adobe house. +Duane saw Mexicans working in the fields and horsemen going to and +fro. Presently he passed a house bigger than the others with a porch +attached. A woman, young and pretty he thought, watched him from a door. +No one else appeared to notice him. + +Presently the trail widened into a road, and that into a kind of square +lined by a number of adobe and log buildings of rudest structure. +Within sight were horses, dogs, a couple of steers, Mexican women with +children, and white men, all of whom appeared to be doing nothing. His +advent created no interest until he rode up to the white men, who were +lolling in the shade of a house. This place evidently was a store and +saloon, and from the inside came a lazy hum of voices. + +As Duane reined to a halt one of the loungers in the shade rose with a +loud exclamation: + +“Bust me if thet ain't Luke's hoss!” + +The others accorded their interest, if not assent, by rising to advance +toward Duane. + +“How about it, Euchre? Ain't thet Luke's bay?” queried the first man. + +“Plain as your nose,” replied the fellow called Euchre. + +“There ain't no doubt about thet, then,” laughed another, “fer Bosomer's +nose is shore plain on the landscape.” + +These men lined up before Duane, and as he coolly regarded them he +thought they could have been recognized anywhere as desperadoes. The +man called Bosomer, who had stepped forward, had a forbidding face which +showed yellow eyes, an enormous nose, and a skin the color of dust, with +a thatch of sandy hair. + +“Stranger, who are you an' where in the hell did you git thet bay hoss?” + he demanded. His yellow eyes took in Stevens's horse, then the weapons +hung on the saddle, and finally turned their glinting, hard light upward +to Duane. + +Duane did not like the tone in which he had been addressed, and he +remained silent. At least half his mind seemed busy with curious +interest in regard to something that leaped inside him and made his +breast feel tight. He recognized it as that strange emotion which had +shot through him often of late, and which had decided him to go out to +the meeting with Bain. Only now it was different, more powerful. + +“Stranger, who are you?” asked another man, somewhat more civilly. + +“My name's Duane,” replied Duane, curtly. + +“An' how'd you come by the hoss?” + +Duane answered briefly, and his words were followed by a short silence, +during which the men looked at him. Bosomer began to twist the ends of +his beard. + +“Reckon he's dead, all right, or nobody'd hev his hoss an' guns,” + presently said Euchre. + +“Mister Duane,” began Bosomer, in low, stinging tones, “I happen to be +Luke Stevens's side-pardner.” + +Duane looked him over, from dusty, worn-out boots to his slouchy +sombrero. That look seemed to inflame Bosomer. + +“An' I want the hoss an' them guns,” he shouted. + +“You or anybody else can have them, for all I care. I just fetched them +in. But the pack is mine,” replied Duane. “And say, I befriended your +pard. If you can't use a civil tongue you'd better cinch it.” + +“Civil? Haw, haw!” rejoined the outlaw. “I don't know you. How do we +know you didn't plug Stevens, an' stole his hoss, an' jest happened to +stumble down here?” + +“You'll have to take my word, that's all,” replied Duane, sharply. + +“I ain't takin' your word! Savvy thet? An' I was Luke's pard!” + +With that Bosomer wheeled and, pushing his companions aside, he stamped +into the saloon, where his voice broke out in a roar. + +Duane dismounted and threw his bridle. + +“Stranger, Bosomer is shore hot-headed,” said the man Euchre. He did not +appear unfriendly, nor were the others hostile. + +At this juncture several more outlaws crowded out of the door, and +the one in the lead was a tall man of stalwart physique. His manner +proclaimed him a leader. He had a long face, a flaming red beard, and +clear, cold blue eyes that fixed in close scrutiny upon Duane. He was +not a Texan; in truth, Duane did not recognize one of these outlaws as +native to his state. + +“I'm Bland,” said the tall man, authoritatively. “Who're you and what're +you doing here?” + +Duane looked at Bland as he had at the others. This outlaw chief +appeared to be reasonable, if he was not courteous. Duane told his story +again, this time a little more in detail. + +“I believe you,” replied Bland, at once. “Think I know when a fellow is +lying.” + +“I reckon you're on the right trail,” put in Euchre. “Thet about Luke +wantin' his boots took off--thet satisfies me. Luke hed a mortal dread +of dyin' with his boots on.” + +At this sally the chief and his men laughed. + +“You said Duane--Buck Duane?” queried Bland. “Are you a son of that +Duane who was a gunfighter some years back?” + +“Yes,” replied Duane. + +“Never met him, and glad I didn't,” said Bland, with a grim humor. “So +you got in trouble and had to go on the dodge? What kind of trouble?” + +“Had a fight.” + +“Fight? Do you mean gun-play?” questioned Bland. He seemed eager, +curious, speculative. + +“Yes. It ended in gun-play, I'm sorry to say,” answered Duane. + +“Guess I needn't ask the son of Duane if he killed his man,” went on +Bland, ironically. “Well, I'm sorry you bucked against trouble in my +camp. But as it is, I guess you'd be wise to make yourself scarce.” + +“Do you mean I'm politely told to move on?” asked Duane, quietly. + +“Not exactly that,” said Bland, as if irritated. “If this isn't a free +place there isn't one on earth. Every man is equal here. Do you want to +join my band?” + +“No, I don't.” + +“Well, even if you did I imagine that wouldn't stop Bosomer. He's an +ugly fellow. He's one of the few gunmen I've met who wants to kill +somebody all the time. Most men like that are fourflushes. But Bosomer +is all one color, and that's red. Merely for your own sake I advise you +to hit the trail.” + +“Thanks. But if that's all I'll stay,” returned Duane. Even as he spoke +he felt that he did not know himself. + +Bosomer appeared at the door, pushing men who tried to detain him, and +as he jumped clear of a last reaching hand he uttered a snarl like an +angry dog. Manifestly the short while he had spent inside the saloon had +been devoted to drinking and talking himself into a frenzy. Bland and +the other outlaws quickly moved aside, letting Duane stand alone. When +Bosomer saw Duane standing motionless and watchful a strange change +passed quickly in him. He halted in his tracks, and as he did that the +men who had followed him out piled over one another in their hurry to +get to one side. + +Duane saw all the swift action, felt intuitively the meaning of it, and +in Bosomer's sudden change of front. The outlaw was keen, and he had +expected a shrinking, or at least a frightened antagonist. Duane knew he +was neither. He felt like iron, and yet thrill after thrill ran through +him. It was almost as if this situation had been one long familiar to +him. Somehow he understood this yellow-eyed Bosomer. The outlaw had +come out to kill him. And now, though somewhat checked by the stand of +a stranger, he still meant to kill. Like so many desperadoes of his +ilk, he was victim of a passion to kill for the sake of killing. Duane +divined that no sudden animosity was driving Bosomer. It was just his +chance. In that moment murder would have been joy to him. Very likely +he had forgotten his pretext for a quarrel. Very probably his faculties +were absorbed in conjecture as to Duane's possibilities. + +But he did not speak a word. He remained motionless for a long moment, +his eyes pale and steady, his right hand like a claw. + +That instant gave Duane a power to read in his enemy's eyes the thought +that preceded action. But Duane did not want to kill another man. +Still he would have to fight, and he decided to cripple Bosomer. When +Bosomer's hand moved Duane's gun was spouting fire. Two shots only--both +from Duane's gun--and the outlaw fell with his right arm shattered. +Bosomer cursed harshly and floundered in the dust, trying to reach the +gun with his left hand. His comrades, however, seeing that Duane would +not kill unless forced, closed in upon Bosomer and prevented any further +madness on his part. + + + +CHAPTER V + +Of the outlaws present Euchre appeared to be the one most inclined to +lend friendliness to curiosity; and he led Duane and the horses away +to a small adobe shack. He tied the horses in an open shed and removed +their saddles. Then, gathering up Stevens's weapons, he invited his +visitor to enter the house. + +It had two rooms--windows without coverings--bare floors. One room +contained blankets, weapons, saddles, and bridles; the other a stone +fireplace, rude table and bench, two bunks, a box cupboard, and various +blackened utensils. + +“Make yourself to home as long as you want to stay,” said Euchre. “I +ain't rich in this world's goods, but I own what's here, an' you're +welcome.” + +“Thanks. I'll stay awhile and rest. I'm pretty well played out,” replied +Duane. + +Euchre gave him a keen glance. + +“Go ahead an' rest. I'll take your horses to grass.” Euchre left Duane +alone in the house. Duane relaxed then, and mechanically he wiped the +sweat from his face. He was laboring under some kind of a spell or shock +which did not pass off quickly. When it had worn away he took off his +coat and belt and made himself comfortable on the blankets. And he had a +thought that if he rested or slept what difference would it make on the +morrow? No rest, no sleep could change the gray outlook of the future. +He felt glad when Euchre came bustling in, and for the first time he +took notice of the outlaw. + +Euchre was old in years. What little hair he had was gray, his face +clean-shaven and full of wrinkles; his eyes were half shut from long +gazing through the sun and dust. He stooped. But his thin frame denoted +strength and endurance still unimpaired. + +“Hey a drink or a smoke?” he asked. + +Duane shook his head. He had not been unfamiliar with whisky, and he +had used tobacco moderately since he was sixteen. But now, strangely, he +felt a disgust at the idea of stimulants. He did not understand clearly +what he felt. There was that vague idea of something wild in his blood, +something that made him fear himself. + +Euchre wagged his old head sympathetically. “Reckon you feel a little +sick. When it comes to shootin' I run. What's your age?” + +“I'm twenty-three,” replied Duane. + +Euchre showed surprise. “You're only a boy! I thought you thirty +anyways. Buck, I heard what you told Bland, an' puttin' thet with my +own figgerin', I reckon you're no criminal yet. Throwin' a gun in +self-defense--thet ain't no crime!” + +Duane, finding relief in talking, told more about himself. + +“Huh,” replied the old man. “I've been on this river fer years, an' I've +seen hundreds of boys come in on the dodge. Most of them, though, was no +good. An' thet kind don't last long. This river country has been an' is +the refuge fer criminals from all over the states. I've bunked with +bank cashiers, forgers, plain thieves, an' out-an'-out murderers, all +of which had no bizness on the Texas border. Fellers like Bland are +exceptions. He's no Texan--you seen thet. The gang he rules here come +from all over, an' they're tough cusses, you can bet on thet. They live +fat an' easy. If it wasn't fer the fightin' among themselves they'd +shore grow populous. The Rim Rock is no place for a peaceable, decent +feller. I heard you tell Bland you wouldn't join his gang. Thet'll not +make him take a likin' to you. Have you any money?” + +“Not much,” replied Duane. + +“Could you live by gamblin'? Are you any good at cards?” + +“No.” + +“You wouldn't steal hosses or rustle cattle?” + +“No.” + +“When your money's gone how'n hell will you live? There ain't any work +a decent feller could do. You can't herd with greasers. Why, Bland's men +would shoot at you in the fields. What'll you do, son?” + +“God knows,” replied Duane, hopelessly. “I'll make my money last as long +as possible--then starve.” + +“Wal, I'm pretty pore, but you'll never starve while I got anythin'.” + +Here it struck Duane again--that something human and kind and eager +which he had seen in Stevens. Duane's estimate of outlaws had lacked +this quality. He had not accorded them any virtues. To him, as to the +outside world, they had been merely vicious men without one redeeming +feature. + +“I'm much obliged to you, Euchre,” replied Duane. “But of course I won't +live with any one unless I can pay my share.” + +“Have it any way you like, my son,” said Euchre, good-humoredly. “You +make a fire, an' I'll set about gettin' grub. I'm a sourdough, Buck. +Thet man doesn't live who can beat my bread.” + +“How do you ever pack supplies in here?” asked Duane, thinking of the +almost inaccessible nature of the valley. + +“Some comes across from Mexico, an' the rest down the river. Thet river +trip is a bird. It's more'n five hundred miles to any supply point. +Bland has mozos, greaser boatmen. Sometimes, too, he gets supplies in +from down-river. You see, Bland sells thousands of cattle in Cuba. An' +all this stock has to go down by boat to meet the ships.” + +“Where on earth are the cattle driven down to the river?” asked Duane. + +“Thet's not my secret,” replied Euchre, shortly. “Fact is, I don't know. +I've rustled cattle for Bland, but he never sent me through the Rim Rock +with them.” + +Duane experienced a sort of pleasure in the realization that interest +had been stirred in him. He was curious about Bland and his gang, and +glad to have something to think about. For every once in a while he had +a sensation that was almost like a pang. He wanted to forget. In the +next hour he did forget, and enjoyed helping in the preparation and +eating of the meal. Euchre, after washing and hanging up the several +utensils, put on his hat and turned to go out. + +“Come along or stay here, as you want,” he said to Duane. + +“I'll stay,” rejoined Duane, slowly. + +The old outlaw left the room and trudged away, whistling cheerfully. + +Duane looked around him for a book or paper, anything to read; but +all the printed matter he could find consisted of a few words on +cartridge-boxes and an advertisement on the back of a tobacco-pouch. +There seemed to be nothing for him to do. He had rested; he did not want +to lie down any more. He began to walk to and fro, from one end of the +room to the other. And as he walked he fell into the lately acquired +habit of brooding over his misfortune. + +Suddenly he straightened up with a jerk. Unconsciously he had drawn his +gun. Standing there with the bright cold weapon in his hand, he looked +at it in consternation. How had he come to draw it? With difficulty +he traced his thoughts backward, but could not find any that was +accountable for his act. He discovered, however, that he had a +remarkable tendency to drop his hand to his gun. That might have come +from the habit long practice in drawing had given him. Likewise, it +might have come from a subtle sense, scarcely thought of at all, of the +late, close, and inevitable relation between that weapon and himself. He +was amazed to find that, bitter as he had grown at fate, the desire to +live burned strong in him. If he had been as unfortunately situated, but +with the difference that no man wanted to put him in jail or take his +life, he felt that this burning passion to be free, to save himself, +might not have been so powerful. Life certainly held no bright prospects +for him. Already he had begun to despair of ever getting back to his +home. But to give up like a white-hearted coward, to let himself be +handcuffed and jailed, to run from a drunken, bragging cowboy, or be +shot in cold blood by some border brute who merely wanted to add another +notch to his gun--these things were impossible for Duane because there +was in him the temper to fight. In that hour he yielded only to fate and +the spirit inborn in him. Hereafter this gun must be a living part +of him. Right then and there he returned to a practice he had long +discontinued--the draw. It was now a stern, bitter, deadly business with +him. He did not need to fire the gun, for accuracy was a gift and had +become assured. Swiftness on the draw, however, could be improved, and +he set himself to acquire the limit of speed possible to any man. He +stood still in his tracks; he paced the room; he sat down, lay down, +put himself in awkward positions; and from every position he practiced +throwing his gun--practiced it till he was hot and tired and his arm +ached and his hand burned. That practice he determined to keep up every +day. It was one thing, at least, that would help pass the weary hours. + +Later he went outdoors to the cooler shade of the cottonwoods. From +this point he could see a good deal of the valley. Under different +circumstances Duane felt that he would have enjoyed such a beautiful +spot. Euchre's shack sat against the first rise of the slope of the +wall, and Duane, by climbing a few rods, got a view of the whole valley. +Assuredly it was an outlaw settle meet. He saw a good many Mexicans, +who, of course, were hand and glove with Bland. Also he saw enormous +flat-boats, crude of structure, moored along the banks of the river. The +Rio Grande rolled away between high bluffs. A cable, sagging deep in +the middle, was stretched over the wide yellow stream, and an old scow, +evidently used as a ferry, lay anchored on the far shore. + +The valley was an ideal retreat for an outlaw band operating on a big +scale. Pursuit scarcely need be feared over the broken trails of the Rim +Rock. And the open end of the valley could be defended against almost +any number of men coming down the river. Access to Mexico was easy and +quick. What puzzled Duane was how Bland got cattle down to the river, +and he wondered if the rustler really did get rid of his stolen stock by +use of boats. + +Duane must have idled considerable time up on the hill, for when he +returned to the shack Euchre was busily engaged around the camp-fire. + +“Wal, glad to see you ain't so pale about the gills as you was,” he +said, by way of greeting. “Pitch in an' we'll soon have grub ready. +There's shore one consolin' fact round this here camp.” + +“What's that?” asked Duane. + +“Plenty of good juicy beef to eat. An' it doesn't cost a short bit.” + +“But it costs hard rides and trouble, bad conscience, and life, too, +doesn't it?” + +“I ain't shore about the bad conscience. Mine never bothered me none. +An' as for life, why, thet's cheap in Texas.” + +“Who is Bland?” asked Duane, quickly changing the subject. “What do you +know about him?” + +“We don't know who he is or where he hails from,” replied Euchre. +“Thet's always been somethin' to interest the gang. He must have been +a young man when he struck Texas. Now he's middle-aged. I remember how +years ago he was soft-spoken an' not rough in talk or act like he is +now. Bland ain't likely his right name. He knows a lot. He can doctor +you, an' he's shore a knowin' feller with tools. He's the kind thet +rules men. Outlaws are always ridin' in here to join his gang, an' if +it hadn't been fer the gamblin' an' gun-play he'd have a thousand men +around him.” + +“How many in his gang now?” + +“I reckon there's short of a hundred now. The number varies. Then Bland +has several small camps up an' down the river. Also he has men back on +the cattle-ranges.” + +“How does he control such a big force?” asked Duane. “Especially when +his band's composed of bad men. Luke Stevens said he had no use for +Bland. And I heard once somewhere that Bland was a devil.” + +“Thet's it. He is a devil. He's as hard as flint, violent in temper, +never made any friends except his right-hand men, Dave Rugg an' Chess +Alloway. Bland'll shoot at a wink. He's killed a lot of fellers, an' +some fer nothin'. The reason thet outlaws gather round him an' stick is +because he's a safe refuge, an' then he's well heeled. Bland is rich. +They say he has a hundred thousand pesos hid somewhere, an' lots of +gold. But he's free with money. He gambles when he's not off with a +shipment of cattle. He throws money around. An' the fact is there's +always plenty of money where he is. Thet's what holds the gang. Dirty, +bloody money!” + +“It's a wonder he hasn't been killed. All these years on the border!” + exclaimed Duane. + +“Wal,” replied Euchre, dryly, “he's been quicker on the draw than the +other fellers who hankered to kill him, thet's all.” + +Euchre's reply rather chilled Duane's interest for the moment. Such +remarks always made his mind revolve round facts pertaining to himself. + +“Speakin' of this here swift wrist game,” went on Euchre, “there's been +considerable talk in camp about your throwin' of a gun. You know, Buck, +thet among us fellers--us hunted men--there ain't anythin' calculated +to rouse respect like a slick hand with a gun. I heard Bland say this +afternoon--an' he said it serious-like an' speculative--thet he'd +never seen your equal. He was watchin' of you close, he said, an' just +couldn't follow your hand when you drawed. All the fellers who seen you +meet Bosomer had somethin' to say. Bo was about as handy with a gun as +any man in this camp, barrin' Chess Alloway an' mebbe Bland himself. +Chess is the captain with a Colt--or he was. An' he shore didn't like +the references made about your speed. Bland was honest in acknowledgin' +it, but he didn't like it, neither. Some of the fellers allowed your +draw might have been just accident. But most of them figgered different. +An' they all shut up when Bland told who an' what your Dad was. 'Pears +to me I once seen your Dad in a gunscrape over at Santone, years ago. +Wal, I put my oar in to-day among the fellers, an' I says: 'What ails +you locoed gents? Did young Duane budge an inch when Bo came roarin' +out, blood in his eye? Wasn't he cool an' quiet, steady of lips, an' +weren't his eyes readin' Bo's mind? An' thet lightnin' draw--can't +you-all see thet's a family gift?'” + +Euchre's narrow eyes twinkled, and he gave the dough he was rolling a +slap with his flour-whitened hand. Manifestly he had proclaimed himself +a champion and partner of Duane's, with all the pride an old man could +feel in a young one whom he admired. + +“Wal,” he resumed, presently, “thet's your introduction to the border, +Buck. An' your card was a high trump. You'll be let severely alone by +real gun-fighters an' men like Bland, Alloway, Rugg, an' the bosses of +the other gangs. After all, these real men are men, you know, an' onless +you cross them they're no more likely to interfere with you than you +are with them. But there's a sight of fellers like Bosomer in the river +country. They'll all want your game. An' every town you ride into will +scare up some cowpuncher full of booze or a long-haired four-flush +gunman or a sheriff--an' these men will be playin' to the crowd an' +yellin' for your blood. Thet's the Texas of it. You'll have to hide fer +ever in the brakes or you'll have to KILL such men. Buck, I reckon this +ain't cheerful news to a decent chap like you. I'm only tellin' you +because I've taken a likin' to you, an' I seen right off thet you ain't +border-wise. Let's eat now, an' afterward we'll go out so the gang can +see you're not hidin'.” + +When Duane went out with Euchre the sun was setting behind a blue range +of mountains across the river in Mexico. The valley appeared to open to +the southwest. It was a tranquil, beautiful scene. Somewhere in a house +near at hand a woman was singing. And in the road Duane saw a little +Mexican boy driving home some cows, one of which wore a bell. The +sweet, happy voice of a woman and a whistling barefoot boy--these seemed +utterly out of place here. + +Euchre presently led to the square and the row of rough houses Duane +remembered. He almost stepped on a wide imprint in the dust where +Bosomer had confronted him. And a sudden fury beset him that he should +be affected strangely by the sight of it. + +“Let's have a look in here,” said Euchre. + +Duane had to bend his head to enter the door. He found himself in a very +large room inclosed by adobe walls and roofed with brush. It was full of +rude benches, tables, seats. At one corner a number of kegs and barrels +lay side by side in a rack. A Mexican boy was lighting lamps hung on +posts that sustained the log rafters of the roof. + +“The only feller who's goin' to put a close eye on you is Benson,” + said Euchre. “He runs the place an' sells drinks. The gang calls him +Jackrabbit Benson, because he's always got his eye peeled an' his ear +cocked. Don't notice him if he looks you over, Buck. Benson is scared to +death of every new-comer who rustles into Bland's camp. An' the reason, +I take it, is because he's done somebody dirt. He's hidin'. Not from +a sheriff or ranger! Men who hide from them don't act like Jackrabbit +Benson. He's hidin' from some guy who's huntin' him to kill him. Wal, +I'm always expectin' to see some feller ride in here an' throw a gun on +Benson. Can't say I'd be grieved.” + +Duane casually glanced in the direction indicated, and he saw a spare, +gaunt man with a face strikingly white beside the red and bronze and +dark skins of the men around him. It was a cadaverous face. The black +mustache hung down; a heavy lock of black hair dropped down over the +brow; deep-set, hollow, staring eyes looked out piercingly. The man had +a restless, alert, nervous manner. He put his hands on the board that +served as a bar and stared at Duane. But when he met Duane's glance he +turned hurriedly to go on serving out liquor. + +“What have you got against him?” inquired Duane, as he sat down beside +Euchre. He asked more for something to say than from real interest. What +did he care about a mean, haunted, craven-faced criminal? + +“Wal, mebbe I'm cross-grained,” replied Euchre, apologetically. “Shore +an outlaw an' rustler such as me can't be touchy. But I never stole +nothin' but cattle from some rancher who never missed 'em anyway. Thet +sneak Benson--he was the means of puttin' a little girl in Bland's way.” + +“Girl?” queried Duane, now with real attention. + +“Shore. Bland's great on women. I'll tell you about this girl when we +get out of here. Some of the gang are goin' to be sociable, an' I can't +talk about the chief.” + +During the ensuing half-hour a number of outlaws passed by Duane and +Euchre, halted for a greeting or sat down for a moment. They were all +gruff, loud-voiced, merry, and good-natured. Duane replied civilly +and agreeably when he was personally addressed; but he refused all +invitations to drink and gamble. Evidently he had been accepted, in a +way, as one of their clan. No one made any hint of an allusion to his +affair with Bosomer. Duane saw readily that Euchre was well liked. One +outlaw borrowed money from him: another asked for tobacco. + +By the time it was dark the big room was full of outlaws and Mexicans, +most of whom were engaged at monte. These gamblers, especially the +Mexicans, were intense and quiet. The noise in the place came from the +drinkers, the loungers. Duane had seen gambling-resorts--some of the +famous ones in San Antonio and El Paso, a few in border towns where +license went unchecked. But this place of Jackrabbit Benson's impressed +him as one where guns and knives were accessories to the game. To his +perhaps rather distinguishing eye the most prominent thing about the +gamesters appeared to be their weapons. On several of the tables were +piles of silver--Mexican pesos--as large and high as the crown of his +hat. There were also piles of gold and silver in United States coin. +Duane needed no experienced eyes to see that betting was heavy and that +heavy sums exchanged hands. The Mexicans showed a sterner obsession, an +intenser passion. Some of the Americans staked freely, nonchalantly, +as befitted men to whom money was nothing. These latter were manifestly +winning, for there were brother outlaws there who wagered coin with +grudging, sullen, greedy eyes. Boisterous talk and laughter among the +drinking men drowned, except at intervals, the low, brief talk of the +gamblers. The clink of coin sounded incessantly; sometimes just low, +steady musical rings; and again, when a pile was tumbled quickly, there +was a silvery crash. Here an outlaw pounded on a table with the butt of +his gun; there another noisily palmed a roll of dollars while he studied +his opponent's face. The noises, however, in Benson's den did not +contribute to any extent to the sinister aspect of the place. That +seemed to come from the grim and reckless faces, from the bent, intent +heads, from the dark lights and shades. There were bright lights, +but these served only to make the shadows. And in the shadows lurked +unrestrained lust of gain, a spirit ruthless and reckless, a something +at once suggesting lawlessness, theft, murder, and hell. + +“Bland's not here to-night,” Euchre was saying. “He left today on one of +his trips, takin' Alloway an' some others. But his other man, Rugg, he's +here. See him standin' with them three fellers, all close to Benson. +Rugg's the little bow-legged man with the half of his face shot off. +He's one-eyed. But he can shore see out of the one he's got. An', darn +me! there's Hardin. You know him? He's got an outlaw gang as big as +Bland's. Hardin is standin' next to Benson. See how quiet an' unassumin' +he looks. Yes, thet's Hardin. He comes here once in a while to see +Bland. They're friends, which's shore strange. Do you see thet greaser +there--the one with gold an' lace on his sombrero? Thet's Manuel, a +Mexican bandit. He's a great gambler. Comes here often to drop his coin. +Next to him is Bill Marr--the feller with the bandana round his head. +Bill rode in the other day with some fresh bullet-holes. He's been shot +more'n any feller I ever heard of. He's full of lead. Funny, because +Bill's no troublehunter, an', like me, he'd rather run than shoot. But +he's the best rustler Bland's got--a grand rider, an' a wonder with +cattle. An' see the tow-headed youngster. Thet's Kid Fuller, the kid of +Bland's gang. Fuller has hit the pace hard, an' he won't last the year +out on the border. He killed his sweetheart's father, got run out of +Staceytown, took to stealin' hosses. An' next he's here with Bland. +Another boy gone wrong, an' now shore a hard nut.” + +Euchre went on calling Duane's attention to other men, just as he +happened to glance over them. Any one of them would have been a marked +man in a respectable crowd. Here each took his place with more or less +distinction, according to the record of his past wild prowess and his +present possibilities. Duane, realizing that he was tolerated there, +received in careless friendly spirit by this terrible class of outcasts, +experienced a feeling of revulsion that amounted almost to horror. +Was his being there not an ugly dream? What had he in common with such +ruffians? Then in a flash of memory came the painful proof--he was a +criminal in sight of Texas law; he, too, was an outcast. + +For the moment Duane was wrapped up in painful reflections; but Euchre's +heavy hand, clapping with a warning hold on his arm, brought him back to +outside things. + +The hum of voices, the clink of coin, the loud laughter had ceased. +There was a silence that manifestly had followed some unusual word or +action sufficient to still the room. It was broken by a harsh curse and +the scrape of a bench on the floor. Some man had risen. + +“You stacked the cards, you--!” + +“Say that twice,” another voice replied, so different in its cool, +ominous tone from the other. + +“I'll say it twice,” returned the first gamester, in hot haste. “I'll +say it three times. I'll whistle it. Are you deaf? You light-fingered +gent! You stacked the cards!” + +Silence ensued, deeper than before, pregnant with meaning. For all that +Duane saw, not an outlaw moved for a full moment. Then suddenly the room +was full of disorder as men rose and ran and dived everywhere. + +“Run or duck!” yelled Euchre, close to Duane's ear. With that he dashed +for the door. Duane leaped after him. They ran into a jostling mob. +Heavy gun-shots and hoarse yells hurried the crowd Duane was with +pell-mell out into the darkness. There they all halted, and several +peeped in at the door. + +“Who was the Kid callin'?” asked one outlaw. + +“Bud Marsh,” replied another. + +“I reckon them fust shots was Bud's. Adios Kid. It was comin' to him,” + went on yet another. + +“How many shots?” + +“Three or four, I counted.” + +“Three heavy an' one light. Thet light one was the Kid's.38. Listen! +There's the Kid hollerin' now. He ain't cashed, anyway.” + +At this juncture most of the outlaws began to file back into the room. +Duane thought he had seen and heard enough in Benson's den for one night +and he started slowly down the walk. Presently Euchre caught up with +him. + +“Nobody hurt much, which's shore some strange,” he said. “The Kid--young +Fuller thet I was tellin' you about--he was drinkin' an' losin'. Lost +his nut, too, callin' Bud Marsh thet way. Bud's as straight at cards as +any of 'em. Somebody grabbed Bud, who shot into the roof. An' Fuller's +arm was knocked up. He only hit a greaser.” + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Next morning Duane found that a moody and despondent spell had fastened +on him. Wishing to be alone, he went out and walked a trail leading +round the river bluff. He thought and thought. After a while he made out +that the trouble with him probably was that he could not resign himself +to his fate. He abhorred the possibility chance seemed to hold in store +for him. He could not believe there was no hope. But what to do appeared +beyond his power to tell. + +Duane had intelligence and keenness enough to see his peril--the +danger threatening his character as a man, just as much as that which +threatened his life. He cared vastly more, he discovered, for what he +considered honor and integrity than he did for life. He saw that it was +bad for him to be alone. But, it appeared, lonely months and perhaps +years inevitably must be his. Another thing puzzled him. In the bright +light of day he could not recall the state of mind that was his at +twilight or dusk or in the dark night. By day these visitations became +to him what they really were--phantoms of his conscience. He could +dismiss the thought of them then. He could scarcely remember or believe +that this strange feat of fancy or imagination had troubled him, pained +him, made him sleepless and sick. + +That morning Duane spent an unhappy hour wrestling decision out of the +unstable condition of his mind. But at length he determined to create +interest in all that he came across and so forget himself as much as +possible. He had an opportunity now to see just what the outlaw's +life really was. He meant to force himself to be curious, sympathetic, +clear-sighted. And he would stay there in the valley until its +possibilities had been exhausted or until circumstances sent him out +upon his uncertain way. + +When he returned to the shack Euchre was cooking dinner. + +“Say, Buck, I've news for you,” he said; and his tone conveyed either +pride in his possession of such news or pride in Duane. “Feller named +Bradley rode in this mornin'. He's heard some about you. Told about the +ace of spades they put over the bullet holes in thet cowpuncher Bain +you plugged. Then there was a rancher shot at a water-hole twenty miles +south of Wellston. Reckon you didn't do it?” + +“No, I certainly did not,” replied Duane. + +“Wal, you get the blame. It ain't nothin' for a feller to be saddled +with gun-plays he never made. An', Buck, if you ever get famous, as +seems likely, you'll be blamed for many a crime. The border'll make an +outlaw an' murderer out of you. Wal, thet's enough of thet. I've more +news. You're goin' to be popular.” + +“Popular? What do you mean?” + +“I met Bland's wife this mornin'. She seen you the other day when you +rode in. She shore wants to meet you, an' so do some of the other women +in camp. They always want to meet the new fellers who've just come +in. It's lonesome for women here, an' they like to hear news from the +towns.” + +“Well, Euchre, I don't want to be impolite, but I'd rather not meet any +women,” rejoined Duane. + +“I was afraid you wouldn't. Don't blame you much. Women are hell. I was +hopin', though, you might talk a little to thet poor lonesome kid.” + +“What kid?” inquired Duane, in surprise. + +“Didn't I tell you about Jennie--the girl Bland's holdin' here--the one +Jackrabbit Benson had a hand in stealin'?” + +“You mentioned a girl. That's all. Tell me now,” replied Duane, +abruptly. + +“Wal, I got it this way. Mebbe it's straight, an' mebbe it ain't. Some +years ago Benson made a trip over the river to buy mescal an' other +drinks. He'll sneak over there once in a while. An' as I get it he run +across a gang of greasers with some gringo prisoners. I don't know, but +I reckon there was some barterin', perhaps murderin'. Anyway, Benson +fetched the girl back. She was more dead than alive. But it turned out +she was only starved an' scared half to death. She hadn't been harmed. +I reckon she was then about fourteen years old. Benson's idee, he said, +was to use her in his den sellin' drinks an' the like. But I never +went much on Jackrabbit's word. Bland seen the kid right off and took +her--bought her from Benson. You can gamble Bland didn't do thet from +notions of chivalry. I ain't gainsayin, however, but thet Jennie was +better off with Kate Bland. She's been hard on Jennie, but she's kept +Bland an' the other men from treatin' the kid shameful. Late Jennie has +growed into an all-fired pretty girl, an' Kate is powerful jealous of +her. I can see hell brewin' over there in Bland's cabin. Thet's why +I wish you'd come over with me. Bland's hardly ever home. His wife's +invited you. Shore, if she gets sweet on you, as she has on--Wal, thet +'d complicate matters. But you'd get to see Jennie, an' mebbe you could +help her. Mind, I ain't hintin' nothin'. I'm just wantin' to put her +in your way. You're a man an' can think fer yourself. I had a baby girl +once, an' if she'd lived she be as big as Jennie now, an', by Gawd, I +wouldn't want her here in Bland's camp.” + +“I'll go, Euchre. Take me over,” replied Duane. He felt Euchre's eyes +upon him. The old outlaw, however, had no more to say. + +In the afternoon Euchre set off with Duane, and soon they reached +Bland's cabin. Duane remembered it as the one where he had seen the +pretty woman watching him ride by. He could not recall what she looked +like. The cabin was the same as the other adobe structures in the +valley, but it was larger and pleasantly located rather high up in a +grove of cottonwoods. In the windows and upon the porch were evidences +of a woman's hand. Through the open door Duane caught a glimpse of +bright Mexican blankets and rugs. + +Euchre knocked upon the side of the door. + +“Is that you, Euchre?” asked a girl's voice, low, hesitatingly. The tone +of it, rather deep and with a note of fear, struck Duane. He wondered +what she would be like. + +“Yes, it's me, Jennie. Where's Mrs. Bland?” answered Euchre. + +“She went over to Deger's. There's somebody sick,” replied the girl. + +Euchre turned and whispered something about luck. The snap of the +outlaw's eyes was added significance to Duane. + +“Jennie, come out or let us come in. Here's the young man I was tellin' +you about,” Euchre said. + +“Oh, I can't! I look so--so--” + +“Never mind how you look,” interrupted the outlaw, in a whisper. “It +ain't no time to care fer thet. Here's young Duane. Jennie, he's no +rustler, no thief. He's different. Come out, Jennie, an' mebbe he'll--” + +Euchre did not complete his sentence. He had spoken low, with his glance +shifting from side to side. + +But what he said was sufficient to bring the girl quickly. She appeared +in the doorway with downcast eyes and a stain of red in her white cheek. +She had a pretty, sad face and bright hair. + +“Don't be bashful, Jennie,” said Euchre. “You an' Duane have a chance to +talk a little. Now I'll go fetch Mrs. Bland, but I won't be hurryin'.” + +With that Euchre went away through the cottonwoods. + +“I'm glad to meet you, Miss--Miss Jennie,” said Duane. “Euchre didn't +mention your last name. He asked me to come over to--” + +Duane's attempt at pleasantry halted short when Jennie lifted her lashes +to look at him. Some kind of a shock went through Duane. Her gray eyes +were beautiful, but it had not been beauty that cut short his speech. He +seemed to see a tragic struggle between hope and doubt that shone in her +piercing gaze. She kept looking, and Duane could not break the silence. +It was no ordinary moment. + +“What did you come here for?” she asked, at last. + +“To see you,” replied Duane, glad to speak. + +“Why?” + +“Well--Euchre thought--he wanted me to talk to you, cheer you up a bit,” + replied Duane, somewhat lamely. The earnest eyes embarrassed him. + +“Euchre's good. He's the only person in this awful place who's been good +to me. But he's afraid of Bland. He said you were different. Who are +you?” + +Duane told her. + +“You're not a robber or rustler or murderer or some bad man come here to +hide?” + +“No, I'm not,” replied Duane, trying to smile. + +“Then why are you here?” + +“I'm on the dodge. You know what that means. I got in a shooting-scrape +at home and had to run off. When it blows over I hope to go back.” + +“But you can't be honest here?” + +“Yes, I can.” + +“Oh, I know what these outlaws are. Yes, you're different.” She kept the +strained gaze upon him, but hope was kindling, and the hard lines of her +youthful face were softening. + +Something sweet and warm stirred deep in Duane as he realized the +unfortunate girl was experiencing a birth of trust in him. + +“O God! Maybe you're the man to save me--to take me away before it's too +late.” + +Duane's spirit leaped. + +“Maybe I am,” he replied, instantly. + +She seemed to check a blind impulse to run into his arms. Her cheek +flamed, her lips quivered, her bosom swelled under her ragged dress. +Then the glow began to fade; doubt once more assailed her. + +“It can't be. You're only--after me, too, like Bland--like all of them.” + +Duane's long arms went out and his hands clasped her shoulders. He shook +her. + +“Look at me--straight in the eye. There are decent men. Haven't you a +father--a brother?” + +“They're dead--killed by raiders. We lived in Dimmit County. I was +carried away,” Jennie replied, hurriedly. She put up an appealing hand +to him. “Forgive me. I believe--I know you're good. It was only--I live +so much in fear--I'm half crazy--I've almost forgotten what good men are +like, Mister Duane, you'll help me?” + +“Yes, Jennie, I will. Tell me how. What must I do? Have you any plan?” + +“Oh no. But take me away.” + +“I'll try,” said Duane, simply. “That won't be easy, though. I must +have time to think. You must help me. There are many things to consider. +Horses, food, trails, and then the best time to make the attempt. Are +you watched--kept prisoner?” + +“No. I could have run off lots of times. But I was afraid. I'd only have +fallen into worse hands. Euchre has told me that. Mrs. Bland beats me, +half starves me, but she has kept me from her husband and these other +dogs. She's been as good as that, and I'm grateful. She hasn't done it +for love of me, though. She always hated me. And lately she's growing +jealous. There was' a man came here by the name of Spence--so he called +himself. He tried to be kind to me. But she wouldn't let him. She was +in love with him. She's a bad woman. Bland finally shot Spence, and +that ended that. She's been jealous ever since. I hear her fighting with +Bland about me. She swears she'll kill me before he gets me. And Bland +laughs in her face. Then I've heard Chess Alloway try to persuade Bland +to give me to him. But Bland doesn't laugh then. Just lately before +Bland went away things almost came to a head. I couldn't sleep. I wished +Mrs. Bland would kill me. I'll certainly kill myself if they ruin me. +Duane, you must be quick if you'd save me.” + +“I realize that,” replied he, thoughtfully. “I think my difficulty will +be to fool Mrs. Bland. If she suspected me she'd have the whole gang of +outlaws on me at once.” + +“She would that. You've got to be careful--and quick.” + +“What kind of woman is she?” inquired Duane. + +“She's--she's brazen. I've heard her with her lovers. They get drunk +sometimes when Bland's away. She's got a terrible temper. She's vain. +She likes flattery. Oh, you could fool her easy enough if you'd lower +yourself to--to--” + +“To make love to her?” interrupted Duane. + +Jennie bravely turned shamed eyes to meet his. + +“My girl, I'd do worse than that to get you away from here,” he said, +bluntly. + +“But--Duane,” she faltered, and again she put out the appealing hand. +“Bland will kill you.” + +Duane made no reply to this. He was trying to still a rising strange +tumult in his breast. The old emotion--the rush of an instinct to kill! +He turned cold all over. + +“Chess Alloway will kill you if Bland doesn't,” went on Jennie, with her +tragic eyes on Duane's. + +“Maybe he will,” replied Duane. It was difficult for him to force a +smile. But he achieved one. + +“Oh, better take me off at once,” she said. “Save me without risking so +much--without making love to Mrs. Bland!” + +“Surely, if I can. There! I see Euchre coming with a woman.” + +“That's her. Oh, she mustn't see me with you.” + +“Wait--a moment,” whispered Duane, as Jennie slipped indoors. “We've +settled it. Don't forget. I'll find some way to get word to you, perhaps +through Euchre. Meanwhile keep up your courage. Remember I'll save you +somehow. We'll try strategy first. Whatever you see or hear me do, don't +think less of me--” + +Jennie checked him with a gesture and a wonderful gray flash of eyes. + +“I'll bless you with every drop of blood in my heart,” she whispered, +passionately. + +It was only as she turned away into the room that Duane saw she was lame +and that she wore Mexican sandals over bare feet. + +He sat down upon a bench on the porch and directed his attention to the +approaching couple. The trees of the grove were thick enough for him to +make reasonably sure that Mrs. Bland had not seen him talking to Jennie. +When the outlaw's wife drew near Duane saw that she was a tall, +strong, full-bodied woman, rather good-looking with a fullblown, bold +attractiveness. Duane was more concerned with her expression than with +her good looks; and as she appeared unsuspicious he felt relieved. The +situation then took on a singular zest. + +Euchre came up on the porch and awkwardly introduced Duane to Mrs. +Bland. She was young, probably not over twenty-five, and not quite so +prepossessing at close range. Her eyes were large, rather prominent, and +brown in color. Her mouth, too, was large, with the lips full, and she +had white teeth. + +Duane took her proffered hand and remarked frankly that he was glad to +meet her. + +Mrs. Bland appeared pleased; and her laugh, which followed, was loud and +rather musical. + +“Mr. Duane--Buck Duane, Euchre said, didn't he?” she asked. + +“Buckley,” corrected Duane. “The nickname's not of my choosing.” + +“I'm certainly glad to meet you, Buckley Duane,” she said, as she took +the seat Duane offered her. “Sorry to have been out. Kid Fuller's lying +over at Deger's. You know he was shot last night. He's got fever to-day. +When Bland's away I have to nurse all these shot-up boys, and it +sure takes my time. Have you been waiting here alone? Didn't see that +slattern girl of mine?” + +She gave him a sharp glance. The woman had an extraordinary play of +feature, Duane thought, and unless she was smiling was not pretty at +all. + +“I've been alone,” replied Duane. “Haven't seen anybody but a +sick-looking girl with a bucket. And she ran when she saw me.” + +“That was Jen,” said Mrs. Bland. “She's the kid we keep here, and she +sure hardly pays her keep. Did Euchre tell you about her?” + +“Now that I think of it, he did say something or other.” + +“What did he tell you about me?” bluntly asked Mrs. Bland. + +“Wal, Kate,” replied Euchre, speaking for himself, “you needn't worry +none, for I told Buck nothin' but compliments.” + +Evidently the outlaw's wife liked Euchre, for her keen glance rested +with amusement upon him. + +“As for Jen, I'll tell you her story some day,” went on the woman. “It's +a common enough story along this river. Euchre here is a tender-hearted +old fool, and Jen has taken him in.” + +“Wal, seein' as you've got me figgered correct,” replied Euchre, dryly, +“I'll go in an' talk to Jennie if I may.” + +“Certainly. Go ahead. Jen calls you her best friend,” said Mrs. Bland, +amiably. “You're always fetching some Mexican stuff, and that's why, I +guess.” + +When Euchre had shuffled into the house Mrs. Bland turned to Duane with +curiosity and interest in her gaze. + +“Bland told me about you.” + +“What did he say?” queried Duane, in pretended alarm. + +“Oh, you needn't think he's done you dirt Bland's not that kind of a +man. He said: 'Kate, there's a young fellow in camp--rode in here on the +dodge. He's no criminal, and he refused to join my band. Wish he would. +Slickest hand with a gun I've seen for many a day! I'd like to see him +and Chess meet out there in the road.' Then Bland went on to tell how +you and Bosomer came together.” + +“What did you say?” inquired Duane, as she paused. + +“Me? Why, I asked him what you looked like,” she replied, gayly. + +“Well?” went on Duane. + +“Magnificent chap, Bland said. Bigger than any man in the valley. Just a +great blue-eyed sunburned boy!” + +“Humph!” exclaimed Duane. “I'm sorry he led you to expect somebody worth +seeing.” + +“But I'm not disappointed,” she returned, archly. “Duane, are you going +to stay long here in camp?” + +“Yes, till I run out of money and have to move. Why?” + +Mrs. Bland's face underwent one of the singular changes. The smiles and +flushes and glances, all that had been coquettish about her, had lent +her a certain attractiveness, almost beauty and youth. But with some +powerful emotion she changed and instantly became a woman of discontent, +Duane imagined, of deep, violent nature. + +“I'll tell you, Duane,” she said, earnestly, “I'm sure glad if you mean +to bide here awhile. I'm a miserable woman, Duane. I'm an outlaw's wife, +and I hate him and the life I have to lead. I come of a good family in +Brownsville. I never knew Bland was an outlaw till long after he married +me. We were separated at times, and I imagined he was away on business. +But the truth came out. Bland shot my own cousin, who told me. My family +cast me off, and I had to flee with Bland. I was only eighteen then. +I've lived here since. I never see a decent woman or man. I never hear +anything about my old home or folks or friends. I'm buried here--buried +alive with a lot of thieves and murderers. Can you blame me for being +glad to see a young fellow--a gentleman--like the boys I used to go +with? I tell you it makes me feel full--I want to cry. I'm sick for +somebody to talk to. I have no children, thank God! If I had I'd not +stay here. I'm sick of this hole. I'm lonely--” + +There appeared to be no doubt about the truth of all this. Genuine +emotion checked, then halted the hurried speech. She broke down and +cried. It seemed strange to Duane that an outlaw's wife--and a woman +who fitted her consort and the wild nature of their surroundings--should +have weakness enough to weep. Duane believed and pitied her. + +“I'm sorry for you,” he said. + +“Don't be SORRY for me,” she said. “That only makes me see the--the +difference between you and me. And don't pay any attention to what these +outlaws say about me. They're ignorant. They couldn't understand me. +You'll hear that Bland killed men who ran after me. But that's a lie. +Bland, like all the other outlaws along this river, is always looking +for somebody to kill. He SWEARS not, but I don't believe him. He +explains that gunplay gravitates to men who are the real thing--that it +is provoked by the four-flushes, the bad men. I don't know. All I know +is that somebody is being killed every other day. He hated Spence before +Spence ever saw me.” + +“Would Bland object if I called on you occasionally?” inquired Duane. + +“No, he wouldn't. He likes me to have friends. Ask him yourself when he +comes back. The trouble has been that two or three of his men fell in +love with me, and when half drunk got to fighting. You're not going to +do that.” + +“I'm not going to get half drunk, that's certain,” replied Duane. + +He was surprised to see her eyes dilate, then glow with fire. Before +she could reply Euchre returned to the porch, and that put an end to the +conversation. + +Duane was content to let the matter rest there, and had little more to +say. Euchre and Mrs. Bland talked and joked, while Duane listened. +He tried to form some estimate of her character. Manifestly she had +suffered a wrong, if not worse, at Bland's hands. She was bitter, +morbid, overemotional. If she was a liar, which seemed likely enough, +she was a frank one, and believed herself. She had no cunning. The thing +which struck Duane so forcibly was that she thirsted for respect. +In that, better than in her weakness of vanity, he thought he had +discovered a trait through which he could manage her. + +Once, while he was revolving these thoughts, he happened to glance into +the house, and deep in the shadow of a corner he caught a pale gleam +of Jennie's face with great, staring eyes on him. She had been watching +him, listening to what he said. He saw from her expression that she had +realized what had been so hard for her to believe. Watching his chance, +he flashed a look at her; and then it seemed to him the change in her +face was wonderful. + +Later, after he had left Mrs. Bland with a meaning “Adios--manana,” and +was walking along beside the old outlaw, he found himself thinking of +the girl instead of the woman, and of how he had seen her face blaze +with hope and gratitude. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +That night Duane was not troubled by ghosts haunting his waking and +sleeping hours. He awoke feeling bright and eager, and grateful to +Euchre for having put something worth while into his mind. During +breakfast, however, he was unusually thoughtful, working over the idea +of how much or how little he would confide in the outlaw. He was aware +of Euchre's scrutiny. + +“Wal,” began the old man, at last, “how'd you make out with the kid?” + +“Kid?” inquired Duane, tentatively. + +“Jennie, I mean. What'd you An' she talk about?” + +“We had a little chat. You know you wanted me to cheer her up.” + +Euchre sat with coffee-cup poised and narrow eyes studying Duane. + +“Reckon you cheered her, all right. What I'm afeared of is mebbe you +done the job too well.” + +“How so?” + +“Wal, when I went in to Jen last night I thought she was half crazy. +She was burstin' with excitement, an' the look in her eyes hurt me. She +wouldn't tell me a darn word you said. But she hung onto my hands, +an' showed every way without speakin' how she wanted to thank me fer +bringin' you over. Buck, it was plain to me thet you'd either gone the +limit or else you'd been kinder prodigal of cheer an' hope. I'd hate to +think you'd led Jennie to hope more'n ever would come true.” + +Euchre paused, and, as there seemed no reply forthcoming, he went on: + +“Buck, I've seen some outlaws whose word was good. Mine is. You can +trust me. I trusted you, didn't I, takin' you over there an' puttin' you +wise to my tryin' to help thet poor kid?” + +Thus enjoined by Euchre, Duane began to tell the conversations with +Jennie and Mrs. Bland word for word. Long before he had reached an end +Euchre set down the coffee-cup and began to stare, and at the conclusion +of the story his face lost some of its red color and beads of sweat +stood out thickly on his brow. + +“Wal, if thet doesn't floor me!” he ejaculated, blinking at Duane. +“Young man, I figgered you was some swift, an' sure to make your mark on +this river; but I reckon I missed your real caliber. So thet's what +it means to be a man! I guess I'd forgot. Wal, I'm old, an' even if my +heart was in the right place I never was built fer big stunts. Do you +know what it'll take to do all you promised Jen?” + +“I haven't any idea,” replied Duane, gravely. + +“You'll have to pull the wool over Kate Bland's eyes, ant even if she +falls in love with you, which's shore likely, thet won't be easy. +An' she'd kill you in a minnit, Buck, if she ever got wise. You ain't +mistaken her none, are you?” + +“Not me, Euchre. She's a woman. I'd fear her more than any man.” + +“Wal, you'll have to kill Bland an' Chess Alloway an' Rugg, an' mebbe +some others, before you can ride off into the hills with thet girl.” + +“Why? Can't we plan to be nice to Mrs. Bland and then at an opportune +time sneak off without any gun-play?” + +“Don't see how on earth,” returned Euchre, earnestly. “When Bland's +away he leaves all kinds of spies an' scouts watchin' the valley trails. +They've all got rifles. You couldn't git by them. But when the boss is +home there's a difference. Only, of course, him an' Chess keep their +eyes peeled. They both stay to home pretty much, except when they're +playin' monte or poker over at Benson's. So I say the best bet is to +pick out a good time in the afternoon, drift over careless-like with a +couple of hosses, choke Mrs. Bland or knock her on the head, take Jennie +with you, an' make a rush to git out of the valley. If you had luck you +might pull thet stunt without throwin' a gun. But I reckon the best +figgerin' would include dodgin' some lead an' leavin' at least Bland or +Alloway dead behind you. I'm figgerin', of course, thet when they come +home an' find out you're visitin' Kate frequent they'll jest naturally +look fer results. Chess don't like you, fer no reason except you're +swift on the draw--mebbe swifter 'n him. Thet's the hell of this +gun-play business. No one can ever tell who's the swifter of two gunmen +till they meet. Thet fact holds a fascination mebbe you'll learn some +day. Bland would treat you civil onless there was reason not to, an' +then I don't believe he'd invite himself to a meetin' with you. He'd set +Chess or Rugg to put you out of the way. Still Bland's no coward, an' if +you came across him at a bad moment you'd have to be quicker 'n you was +with Bosomer.” + +“All right. I'll meet what comes,” said Duane, quickly. “The great point +is to have horses ready and pick the right moment, then rush the trick +through.” + +“Thet's the ONLY chance fer success. An' you can't do it alone.” + +“I'll have to. I wouldn't ask you to help me. Leave you behind!” + +“Wal, I'll take my chances,” replied Euchre, gruffly. “I'm goin' to help +Jennie, you can gamble your last peso on thet. There's only four men in +this camp who would shoot me--Bland, an' his right-hand pards, an' thet +rabbit-faced Benson. If you happened to put out Bland and Chess, I'd +stand a good show with the other two. Anyway, I'm old an' tired--what's +the difference if I do git plugged? I can risk as much as you, Buck, +even if I am afraid of gun-play. You said correct, 'Hosses ready, the +right minnit, then rush the trick.' Thet much 's settled. Now let's +figger all the little details.” + +They talked and planned, though in truth it was Euchre who planned, +Duane who listened and agreed. While awaiting the return of Bland and +his lieutenants it would be well for Duane to grow friendly with the +other outlaws, to sit in a few games of monte, or show a willingness +to spend a little money. The two schemers were to call upon Mrs. Bland +every day--Euchre to carry messages of cheer and warning to Jennie, +Duane to blind the elder woman at any cost. These preliminaries decided +upon, they proceeded to put them into action. + +No hard task was it to win the friendship of the most of those +good-natured outlaws. They were used to men of a better order than +theirs coming to the hidden camps and sooner or later sinking to their +lower level. Besides, with them everything was easy come, easy go. That +was why life itself went on so carelessly and usually ended so cheaply. +There were men among them, however, that made Duane feel that terrible +inexplicable wrath rise in his breast. He could not bear to be near +them. He could not trust himself. He felt that any instant a word, +a deed, something might call too deeply to that instinct he could no +longer control. Jackrabbit Benson was one of these men. Because of +him and other outlaws of his ilk Duane could scarcely ever forget +the reality of things. This was a hidden valley, a robbers' den, a +rendezvous for murderers, a wild place stained red by deeds of wild men. +And because of that there was always a charged atmosphere. The merriest, +idlest, most careless moment might in the flash of an eye end in +ruthless and tragic action. In an assemblage of desperate characters it +could not be otherwise. The terrible thing that Duane sensed was this. +The valley was beautiful, sunny, fragrant, a place to dream in; the +mountaintops were always blue or gold rimmed, the yellow river slid +slowly and majestically by, the birds sang in the cottonwoods, the +horses grazed and pranced, children played and women longed for love, +freedom, happiness; the outlaws rode in and out, free with money and +speech; they lived comfortably in their adobe homes, smoked, gambled, +talked, laughed, whiled away the idle hours--and all the time life there +was wrong, and the simplest moment might be precipitated by that evil +into the most awful of contrasts. Duane felt rather than saw a dark, +brooding shadow over the valley. + +Then, without any solicitation or encouragement from Duane, the Bland +woman fell passionately in love with him. His conscience was never +troubled about the beginning of that affair. She launched herself. It +took no great perspicuity on his part to see that. And the thing which +evidently held her in check was the newness, the strangeness, and for +the moment the all-satisfying fact of his respect for her. Duane exerted +himself to please, to amuse, to interest, to fascinate her, and always +with deference. That was his strong point, and it had made his part +easy so far. He believed he could carry the whole scheme through without +involving himself any deeper. + +He was playing at a game of love--playing with life and deaths Sometimes +he trembled, not that he feared Bland or Alloway or any other man, but +at the deeps of life he had come to see into. He was carried out of his +old mood. Not once since this daring motive had stirred him had he +been haunted by the phantom of Bain beside his bed. Rather had he been +haunted by Jennie's sad face, her wistful smile, her eyes. He never was +able to speak a word to her. What little communication he had with her +was through Euchre, who carried short messages. But he caught glimpses +of her every time he went to the Bland house. She contrived somehow to +pass door or window, to give him a look when chance afforded. And Duane +discovered with surprise that these moments were more thrilling to +him than any with Mrs. Bland. Often Duane knew Jennie was sitting just +inside the window, and then he felt inspired in his talk, and it was +all made for her. So at least she came to know him while as yet she was +almost a stranger. Jennie had been instructed by Euchre to listen, to +understand that this was Duane's only chance to help keep her mind from +constant worry, to gather the import of every word which had a double +meaning. + +Euchre said that the girl had begun to wither under the strain, to burn +up with intense hope which had flamed within her. But all the difference +Duane could see was a paler face and darker, more wonderful eyes. The +eyes seemed to be entreating him to hurry, that time was flying, that +soon it might be too late. Then there was another meaning in them, a +light, a strange fire wholly inexplicable to Duane. It was only a flash +gone in an instant. But he remembered it because he had never seen it in +any other woman's eyes. And all through those waiting days he knew that +Jennie's face, and especially the warm, fleeting glance she gave him, +was responsible for a subtle and gradual change in him. This change +he fancied, was only that through remembrance of her he got rid of his +pale, sickening ghosts. + +One day a careless Mexican threw a lighted cigarette up into the brush +matting that served as a ceiling for Benson's den, and there was a fire +which left little more than the adobe walls standing. The result was +that while repairs were being made there was no gambling and drinking. +Time hung very heavily on the hands of some two-score outlaws. Days +passed by without a brawl, and Bland's valley saw more successive hours +of peace than ever before. Duane, however, found the hours anything but +empty. He spent more time at Mrs. Bland's; he walked miles on all the +trails leading out of the valley; he had a care for the condition of his +two horses. + +Upon his return from the latest of these tramps Euchre suggested that +they go down to the river to the boat-landing. + +“Ferry couldn't run ashore this mornin',” said Euchre. “River gettin' +low an' sand-bars makin' it hard fer hosses. There's a greaser +freight-wagon stuck in the mud. I reckon we might hear news from the +freighters. Bland's supposed to be in Mexico.” + +Nearly all the outlaws in camp were assembled on the riverbank, lolling +in the shade of the cottonwoods. The heat was oppressive. Not an +outlaw offered to help the freighters, who were trying to dig a heavily +freighted wagon out of the quicksand. Few outlaws would work for +themselves, let alone for the despised Mexicans. + +Duane and Euchre joined the lazy group and sat down with them. Euchre +lighted a black pipe, and, drawing his hat over his eyes, lay back in +comfort after the manner of the majority of the outlaws. But Duane +was alert, observing, thoughtful. He never missed anything. It was +his belief that any moment an idle word might be of benefit to him. +Moreover, these rough men were always interesting. + +“Bland's been chased across the river,” said one. + +“New, he's deliverin' cattle to thet Cuban ship,” replied another. + +“Big deal on, hey?” + +“Some big. Rugg says the boss hed an order fer fifteen thousand.” + +“Say, that order'll take a year to fill.” + +“New. Hardin is in cahoots with Bland. Between 'em they'll fill orders +bigger 'n thet.” + +“Wondered what Hardin was rustlin' in here fer.” + +Duane could not possibly attend to all the conversation among the +outlaws. He endeavored to get the drift of talk nearest to him. + +“Kid Fuller's goin' to cash,” said a sandy-whiskered little outlaw. + +“So Jim was tellin' me. Blood-poison, ain't it? Thet hole wasn't bad. +But he took the fever,” rejoined a comrade. + +“Deger says the Kid might pull through if he hed nursin'.” + +“Wal, Kate Bland ain't nursin' any shot-up boys these days. She hasn't +got time.” + +A laugh followed this sally; then came a penetrating silence. Some of +the outlaws glanced good-naturedly at Duane. They bore him no ill will. +Manifestly they were aware of Mrs. Bland's infatuation. + +“Pete, 'pears to me you've said thet before.” + +“Shore. Wal, it's happened before.” + +This remark drew louder laughter and more significant glances at Duane. +He did not choose to ignore them any longer. + +“Boys, poke all the fun you like at me, but don't mention any lady's +name again. My hand is nervous and itchy these days.” + +He smiled as he spoke, and his speech was drawled; but the good humor in +no wise weakened it. Then his latter remark was significant to a class +of men who from inclination and necessity practiced at gun-drawing until +they wore callous and sore places on their thumbs and inculcated in +the very deeps of their nervous organization a habit that made even the +simplest and most innocent motion of the hand end at or near the hip. +There was something remarkable about a gun-fighter's hand. It never +seemed to be gloved, never to be injured, never out of sight or in an +awkward position. + +There were grizzled outlaws in that group, some of whom had many notches +on their gun-handles, and they, with their comrades, accorded Duane +silence that carried conviction of the regard in which he was held. + +Duane could not recall any other instance where he had let fall a +familiar speech to these men, and certainly he had never before hinted +of his possibilities. He saw instantly that he could not have done +better. + +“Orful hot, ain't it?” remarked Bill Black, presently. Bill could not +keep quiet for long. He was a typical Texas desperado, had never been +anything else. He was stoop-shouldered and bow-legged from much riding; +a wiry little man, all muscle, with a square head, a hard face partly +black from scrubby beard and red from sun, and a bright, roving, cruel +eye. His shirt was open at the neck, showing a grizzled breast. + +“Is there any guy in this heah outfit sport enough to go swimmin'?” he +asked. + +“My Gawd, Bill, you ain't agoin' to wash!” exclaimed a comrade. + +This raised a laugh in which Black joined. But no one seemed eager to +join him in a bath. + +“Laziest outfit I ever rustled with,” went on Bill, discontentedly. +“Nuthin' to do! Say, if nobody wants to swim maybe some of you'll +gamble?” + +He produced a dirty pack of cards and waved them at the motionless +crowd. + +“Bill, you're too good at cards,” replied a lanky outlaw. + +“Now, Jasper, you say thet powerful sweet, an' you look sweet, er I +might take it to heart,” replied Black, with a sudden change of tone. + +Here it was again--that upflashing passion. What Jasper saw fit to reply +would mollify the outlaw or it would not. There was an even balance. + +“No offense, Bill,” said Jasper, placidly, without moving. + +Bill grunted and forgot Jasper. But he seemed restless and dissatisfied. +Duane knew him to be an inveterate gambler. And as Benson's place was +out of running-order, Black was like a fish on dry land. + +“Wal, if you-all are afraid of the cairds, what will you bet on?” he +asked, in disgust. + +“Bill, I'll play you a game of mumbly peg fer two bits.” replied one. + +Black eagerly accepted. Betting to him was a serious matter. The game +obsessed him, not the stakes. He entered into the mumbly peg contest +with a thoughtful mien and a corded brow. He won. Other comrades tried +their luck with him and lost. Finally, when Bill had exhausted their +supply of two-bit pieces or their desire for that particular game, he +offered to bet on anything. + +“See thet turtle-dove there?” he said, pointing. “I'll bet he'll scare +at one stone or he won't. Five pesos he'll fly or he won't fly when some +one chucks a stone. Who'll take me up?” + +That appeared to be more than the gambling spirit of several outlaws +could withstand. + +“Take thet. Easy money,” said one. + +“Who's goin' to chuck the stone?” asked another. + +“Anybody,” replied Bill. + +“Wal, I'll bet you I can scare him with one stone,” said the first +outlaw. + +“We're in on thet, Jim to fire the darnick,” chimed in the others. + +The money was put up, the stone thrown. The turtle-dove took flight, to +the great joy of all the outlaws except Bill. + +“I'll bet you-all he'll come back to thet tree inside of five minnits,” + he offered, imperturbably. + +Hereupon the outlaws did not show any laziness in their alacrity to +cover Bill's money as it lay on the grass. Somebody had a watch, and +they all sat down, dividing attention between the timepiece and the +tree. The minutes dragged by to the accompaniment of various jocular +remarks anent a fool and his money. When four and three-quarter minutes +had passed a turtle-dove alighted in the cottonwood. Then ensued an +impressive silence while Bill calmly pocketed the fifty dollars. + +“But it hadn't the same dove!” exclaimed one outlaw, excitedly. “This +'n'is smaller, dustier, not so purple.” + +Bill eyed the speaker loftily. + +“Wal, you'll have to ketch the other one to prove thet. Sabe, pard? Now +I'll bet any gent heah the fifty I won thet I can scare thet dove with +one stone.” + +No one offered to take his wager. + +“Wal, then, I'll bet any of you even money thet you CAN'T scare him with +one stone.” + +Not proof against this chance, the outlaws made up a purse, in no wise +disconcerted by Bill's contemptuous allusions to their banding together. +The stone was thrown. The dove did not fly. Thereafter, in regard to +that bird, Bill was unable to coax or scorn his comrades into any kind +of wager. + +He tried them with a multiplicity of offers, and in vain. Then he +appeared at a loss for some unusual and seductive wager. Presently a +little ragged Mexican boy came along the river trail, a particularly +starved and poor-looking little fellow. Bill called to him and gave him +a handful of silver coins. Speechless, dazed, he went his way hugging +the money. + +“I'll bet he drops some before he gits to the road,” declared Bill. +“I'll bet he runs. Hurry, you four-flush gamblers.” + +Bill failed to interest any of his companions, and forthwith became +sullen and silent. Strangely his good humor departed in spite of the +fact that he had won considerable. + +Duane, watching the disgruntled outlaw, marveled at him and wondered +what was in his mind. These men were more variable than children, as +unstable as water, as dangerous as dynamite. + +“Bill, I'll bet you ten you can't spill whatever's in the bucket thet +peon's packin',” said the outlaw called Jim. + +Black's head came up with the action of a hawk about to swoop. + +Duane glanced from Black to the road, where he saw a crippled peon +carrying a tin bucket toward the river. This peon was a half-witted +Indian who lived in a shack and did odd jobs for the Mexicans. Duane had +met him often. + +“Jim, I'll take you up,” replied Black. + +Something, perhaps a harshness in his voice, caused Duane to whirl. He +caught a leaping gleam in the outlaw's eye. + +“Aw, Bill, thet's too fur a shot,” said Jasper, as Black rested an elbow +on his knee and sighted over the long, heavy Colt. The distance to the +peon was about fifty paces, too far for even the most expert shot to hit +a moving object so small as a bucket. + +Duane, marvelously keen in the alignment of sights, was positive that +Black held too high. Another look at the hard face, now tense and dark +with blood, confirmed Duane's suspicion that the outlaw was not aiming +at the bucket at all. Duane leaped and struck the leveled gun out of his +hand. Another outlaw picked it up. + +Black fell back astounded. Deprived of his weapon, he did not seem the +same man, or else he was cowed by Duane's significant and formidable +front. Sullenly he turned away without even asking for his gun. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +What a contrast, Duane thought, the evening of that day presented to the +state of his soul! + +The sunset lingered in golden glory over the distant Mexican mountains; +twilight came slowly; a faint breeze blew from the river cool and sweet; +the late cooing of a dove and the tinkle of a cowbell were the only +sounds; a serene and tranquil peace lay over the valley. + +Inside Duane's body there was strife. This third facing of a desperate +man had thrown him off his balance. It had not been fatal, but it +threatened so much. The better side of his nature seemed to urge him +to die rather than to go on fighting or opposing ignorant, unfortunate, +savage men. But the perversity of him was so great that it dwarfed +reason, conscience. He could not resist it. He felt something dying in +him. He suffered. Hope seemed far away. Despair had seized upon him and +was driving him into a reckless mood when he thought of Jennie. + +He had forgotten her. He had forgotten that he had promised to save her. +He had forgotten that he meant to snuff out as many lives as might stand +between her and freedom. The very remembrance sheered off his morbid +introspection. She made a difference. How strange for him to realize +that! He felt grateful to her. He had been forced into outlawry; she had +been stolen from her people and carried into captivity. They had met in +the river fastness, he to instil hope into her despairing life, she to +be the means, perhaps, of keeping him from sinking to the level of her +captors. He became conscious of a strong and beating desire to see her, +talk with her. + +These thoughts had run through his mind while on his way to Mrs. Bland's +house. He had let Euchre go on ahead because he wanted more time +to compose himself. Darkness had about set in when he reached his +destination. There was no light in the house. Mrs. Bland was waiting for +him on the porch. + +She embraced him, and the sudden, violent, unfamiliar contact sent such +a shock through him that he all but forgot the deep game he was playing. +She, however, in her agitation did not notice his shrinking. From her +embrace and the tender, incoherent words that flowed with it he gathered +that Euchre had acquainted her of his action with Black. + +“He might have killed you,” she whispered, more clearly; and if Duane +had ever heard love in a voice he heard it then. It softened him. After +all, she was a woman, weak, fated through her nature, unfortunate in +her experience of life, doomed to unhappiness and tragedy. He met her +advance so far that he returned the embrace and kissed her. Emotion such +as she showed would have made any woman sweet, and she had a certain +charm. It was easy, even pleasant, to kiss her; but Duane resolved that, +whatever her abandonment might become, he would not go further than the +lie she made him act. + +“Buck, you love me?” she whispered. + +“Yes--yes,” he burst out, eager to get it over, and even as he spoke +he caught the pale gleam of Jennie's face through the window. He felt +a shame he was glad she could not see. Did she remember that she had +promised not to misunderstand any action of his? What did she think of +him, seeing him out there in the dusk with this bold woman in his +arms? Somehow that dim sight of Jennie's pale face, the big dark eyes, +thrilled him, inspired him to his hard task of the present. + +“Listen, dear,” he said to the woman, and he meant his words for the +girl. “I'm going to take you away from this outlaw den if I have to kill +Bland, Alloway, Rugg--anybody who stands in my path. You were dragged +here. You are good--I know it. There's happiness for you somewhere--a +home among good people who will care for you. Just wait till--” + +His voice trailed off and failed from excess of emotion. Kate Bland +closed her eyes and leaned her head on his breast. Duane felt her heart +beat against his, and conscience smote him a keen blow. If she loved +him so much! But memory and understanding of her character hardened him +again, and he gave her such commiseration as was due her sex, and no +more. + +“Boy, that's good of you,” she whispered, “but it's too late. I'm done +for. I can't leave Bland. All I ask is that you love me a little and +stop your gun-throwing.” + +The moon had risen over the eastern bulge of dark mountain, and now the +valley was flooded with mellow light, and shadows of cottonwoods wavered +against the silver. + +Suddenly the clip-clop, clip-clop of hoofs caused Duane to raise his +head and listen. Horses were coming down the road from the head of +the valley. The hour was unusual for riders to come in. Presently the +narrow, moonlit lane was crossed at its far end by black moving objects. +Two horses Duane discerned. + +“It's Bland!” whispered the woman, grasping Duane with shaking hands. +“You must run! No, he'd see you. That 'd be worse. It's Bland! I know +his horse's trot.” + +“But you said he wouldn't mind my calling here,” protested Duane. +“Euchre's with me. It'll be all right.” + +“Maybe so,” she replied, with visible effort at self-control. Manifestly +she had a great fear of Bland. “If I could only think!” + +Then she dragged Duane to the door, pushed him in. + +“Euchre, come out with me! Duane, you stay with the girl! I'll tell +Bland you're in love with her. Jen, if you give us away I'll wring your +neck.” + +The swift action and fierce whisper told Duane that Mrs. Bland was +herself again. Duane stepped close to Jennie, who stood near the window. +Neither spoke, but her hands were outstretched to meet his own. They +were small, trembling hands, cold as ice. He held them close, trying to +convey what he felt--that he would protect her. She leaned against him, +and they looked out of the window. Duane felt calm and sure of himself. +His most pronounced feeling besides that for the frightened girl was a +curiosity as to how Mrs. Bland would rise to the occasion. He saw the +riders dismount down the lane and wearily come forward. A boy led away +the horses. Euchre, the old fox, was talking loud and with remarkable +ease, considering what he claimed was his natural cowardice. + +“--that was way back in the sixties, about the time of the war,” he +was saying. “Rustlin' cattle wasn't nuthin' then to what it is now. An' +times is rougher these days. This gun-throwin' has come to be a disease. +Men have an itch for the draw same as they used to have fer poker. The +only real gambler outside of greasers we ever had here was Bill, an' I +presume Bill is burnin' now.” + +The approaching outlaws, hearing voices, halted a rod or so from the +porch. Then Mrs. Bland uttered an exclamation, ostensibly meant to +express surprise, and hurried out to meet them. She greeted her husband +warmly and gave welcome to the other man. Duane could not see well +enough in the shadow to recognize Bland's companion, but he believed it +was Alloway. + +“Dog-tired we are and starved,” said Bland, heavily. “Who's here with +you?” + +“That's Euchre on the porch. Duane is inside at the window with Jen,” + replied Mrs. Bland. + +“Duane!” he exclaimed. Then he whispered low--something Duane could not +catch. + +“Why, I asked him to come,” said the chief's wife. She spoke easily and +naturally and made no change in tone. “Jen has been ailing. She gets +thinner and whiter every day. Duane came here one day with Euchre, saw +Jen, and went loony over her pretty face, same as all you men. So I let +him come.” + +Bland cursed low and deep under his breath. The other man made a violent +action of some kind and apparently was quieted by a restraining hand. + +“Kate, you let Duane make love to Jennie?” queried Bland, incredulously. + +“Yes, I did,” replied the wife, stubbornly. “Why not? Jen's in love with +him. If he takes her away and marries her she can be a decent woman.” + +Bland kept silent a moment, then his laugh pealed out loud and harsh. + +“Chess, did you get that? Well, by God! what do you think of my wife?” + +“She's lyin' or she's crazy,” replied Alloway, and his voice carried an +unpleasant ring. + +Mrs. Bland promptly and indignantly told her husband's lieutenant to +keep his mouth shut. + +“Ho, ho, ho!” rolled out Bland's laugh. + +Then he led the way to the porch, his spurs clinking, the weapons he was +carrying rattling, and he flopped down on a bench. + +“How are you, boss?” asked Euchre. + +“Hello, old man. I'm well, but all in.” + +Alloway slowly walked on to the porch and leaned against the rail. +He answered Euchre's greeting with a nod. Then he stood there a dark, +silent figure. + +Mrs. Bland's full voice in eager questioning had a tendency to ease +the situation. Bland replied briefly to her, reporting a remarkably +successful trip. + +Duane thought it time to show himself. He had a feeling that Bland and +Alloway would let him go for the moment. They were plainly non-plussed, +and Alloway seemed sullen, brooding. “Jennie,” whispered Duane, “that +was clever of Mrs. Bland. We'll keep up the deception. Any day now be +ready!” + +She pressed close to him, and a barely audible “Hurry!” came breathing +into his ear. + +“Good night, Jennie,” he said, aloud. “Hope you feel better to-morrow.” + +Then he stepped out into the moonlight and spoke. Bland returned the +greeting, and, though he was not amiable, he did not show resentment. + +“Met Jasper as I rode in,” said Bland, presently. “He told me you made +Bill Black mad, and there's liable to be a fight. What did you go off +the handle about?” + +Duane explained the incident. “I'm sorry I happened to be there,” he +went on. “It wasn't my business.” + +“Scurvy trick that 'd been,” muttered Bland. “You did right. All the +same, Duane, I want you to stop quarreling with my men. If you were one +of us--that'd be different. I can't keep my men from fighting. But +I'm not called on to let an outsider hang around my camp and plug my +rustlers.” + +“I guess I'll have to be hitting the trail for somewhere,” said Duane. + +“Why not join my band? You've got a bad start already, Duane, and if I +know this border you'll never be a respectable citizen again. You're +a born killer. I know every bad man on this frontier. More than one of +them have told me that something exploded in their brain, and when sense +came back there lay another dead man. It's not so with me. I've done a +little shooting, too, but I never wanted to kill another man just to +rid myself of the last one. My dead men don't sit on my chest at night. +That's the gun-fighter's trouble. He's crazy. He has to kill a new +man--he's driven to it to forget the last one.” + +“But I'm no gun-fighter,” protested Duane. “Circumstances made me--” + +“No doubt,” interrupted Bland, with a laugh. “Circumstances made me a +rustler. You don't know yourself. You're young; you've got a temper; +your father was one of the most dangerous men Texas ever had. I don't +see any other career for you. Instead of going it alone--a lone wolf, +as the Texans say--why not make friends with other outlaws? You'll live +longer.” + +Euchre squirmed in his seat. + +“Boss, I've been givin' the boy egzactly thet same line of talk. Thet's +why I took him in to bunk with me. If he makes pards among us there +won't be any more trouble. An' he'd be a grand feller fer the gang. I've +seen Wild Bill Hickok throw a gun, an' Billy the Kid, an' Hardin, an' +Chess here--all the fastest men on the border. An' with apologies to +present company, I'm here to say Duane has them all skinned. His draw is +different. You can't see how he does it.” + +Euchre's admiring praise served to create an effective little silence. +Alloway shifted uneasily on his feet, his spurs jangling faintly, and +did not lift his head. Bland seemed thoughtful. + +“That's about the only qualification I have to make me eligible for your +band,” said Duane, easily. + +“It's good enough,” replied Bland, shortly. “Will you consider the +idea?” + +“I'll think it over. Good night.” + +He left the group, followed by Euchre. When they reached the end of the +lane, and before they had exchanged a word, Bland called Euchre back. +Duane proceeded slowly along the moonlit road to the cabin and sat down +under the cottonwoods to wait for Euchre. The night was intense and +quiet, a low hum of insects giving the effect of a congestion of life. +The beauty of the soaring moon, the ebony canyons of shadow under the +mountain, the melancholy serenity of the perfect night, made Duane +shudder in the realization of how far aloof he now was from enjoyment of +these things. Never again so long as he lived could he be natural. His +mind was clouded. His eye and ear henceforth must register impressions +of nature, but the joy of them had fled. + +Still, as he sat there with a foreboding of more and darker work ahead +of him there was yet a strange sweetness left to him, and it lay in +thought of Jennie. The pressure of her cold little hands lingered in +his. He did not think of her as a woman, and he did not analyze his +feelings. He just had vague, dreamy thoughts and imaginations that were +interspersed in the constant and stern revolving of plans to save her. + +A shuffling step roused him. Euchre's dark figure came crossing the +moonlit grass under the cottonwoods. The moment the outlaw reached +him Duane saw that he was laboring under great excitement. It scarcely +affected Duane. He seemed to be acquiring patience, calmness, strength. + +“Bland kept you pretty long,” he said. + +“Wait till I git my breath,” replied Euchre. He sat silent a little +while, fanning himself with a sombrero, though the night was cool, and +then he went into the cabin to return presently with a lighted pipe. + +“Fine night,” he said; and his tone further acquainted Duane with +Euchre's quaint humor. “Fine night for love-affairs, by gum!” + +“I'd noticed that,” rejoined Duane, dryly. + +“Wal, I'm a son of a gun if I didn't stand an' watch Bland choke his +wife till her tongue stuck out an' she got black in the face.” + +“No!” ejaculated Duane. + +“Hope to die if I didn't. Buck, listen to this here yarn. When I got +back to the porch I seen Bland was wakin' up. He'd been too fagged out +to figger much. Alloway an' Kate had gone in the house, where they lit +up the lamps. I heard Kate's high voice, but Alloway never chirped. He's +not the talkin' kind, an' he's damn dangerous when he's thet way. Bland +asked me some questions right from the shoulder. I was ready for them, +an' I swore the moon was green cheese. He was satisfied. Bland always +trusted me, an' liked me, too, I reckon. I hated to lie black thet +way. But he's a hard man with bad intentions toward Jennie, an' I'd +double-cross him any day. + +“Then we went into the house. Jennie had gone to her little room, +an' Bland called her to come out. She said she was undressin'. An' he +ordered her to put her clothes back on. Then, Buck, his next move was +some surprisin'. He deliberately thronged a gun on Kate. Yes sir, he +pointed his big blue Colt right at her, an' he says: + +“'I've a mind to blow out your brains.' + +“'Go ahead,' says Kate, cool as could be. + +“'You lied to me,' he roars. + +“Kate laughed in his face. Bland slammed the gun down an' made a grab +fer her. She fought him, but wasn't a match fer him, an' he got her by +the throat. He choked her till I thought she was strangled. Alloway made +him stop. She flopped down on the bed an' gasped fer a while. When she +come to them hardshelled cusses went after her, trying to make her give +herself away. I think Bland was jealous. He suspected she'd got thick +with you an' was foolin' him. I reckon thet's a sore feelin' fer a man +to have--to guess pretty nice, but not to BE sure. Bland gave it up +after a while. An' then he cussed an' raved at her. One sayin' of his is +worth pinnin' in your sombrero: 'It ain't nuthin' to kill a man. I don't +need much fer thet. But I want to KNOW, you hussy!' + +“Then he went in an' dragged poor Jen out. She'd had time to dress. He +was so mad he hurt her sore leg. You know Jen got thet injury fightin' +off one of them devils in the dark. An' when I seen Bland twist +her--hurt her--I had a queer hot feelin' deep down in me, an' fer the +only time in my life I wished I was a gun-fighter. + +“Wal, Jen amazed me. She was whiter'n a sheet, an' her eyes were big and +stary, but she had nerve. Fust time I ever seen her show any. + +“'Jennie,' he said, 'my wife said Duane came here to see you. I believe +she's lyin'. I think she's been carryin' on with him, an' I want to +KNOW. If she's been an' you tell me the truth I'll let you go. I'll send +you out to Huntsville, where you can communicate with your friends. I'll +give you money.' + +“Thet must hev been a hell of a minnit fer Kate Bland. If evet I seen +death in a man's eye I seen it in Bland's. He loves her. Thet's the +strange part of it. + +“'Has Duane been comin' here to see my wife?' Bland asked, fierce-like. + +“'No,' said Jennie. + +“'He's been after you?' + +“'Yes.' + +“'He has fallen in love with you? Kate said thet.' + +“'I--I'm not--I don't know--he hasn't told me.' + +“'But you're in love with him?' + +“'Yes,' she said; an', Buck, if you only could have seen her! She +thronged up her head, an' her eyes were full of fire. Bland seemed dazed +at sight of her. An' Alloway, why, thet little skunk of an outlaw cried +right out. He was hit plumb center. He's in love with Jen. An' the look +of her then was enough to make any feller quit. He jest slunk out of the +room. I told you, mebbe, thet he'd been tryin' to git Bland to marry Jen +to him. So even a tough like Alloway can love a woman! + +“Bland stamped up an' down the room. He sure was dyin' hard. + +“'Jennie,' he said, once more turnin' to her. 'You swear in fear of your +life thet you're tellin' truth. Kate's not in love with Duane? She's let +him come to see you? There's been nuthin' between them?' + +“'No. I swear,' answered Jennie; an' Bland sat down like a man licked. + +“'Go to bed, you white-faced--' Bland choked on some word or other--a +bad one, I reckon--an' he positively shook in his chair. + +“Jennie went then, an' Kate began to have hysterics. An' your Uncle +Euchre ducked his nut out of the door an' come home.” + +Duane did not have a word to say at the end of Euchre's long harangue. +He experienced relief. As a matter of fact, he had expected a good deal +worse. He thrilled at the thought of Jennie perjuring herself to save +that abandoned woman. What mysteries these feminine creatures were! + +“Wal, there's where our little deal stands now,” resumed Euchre, +meditatively. “You know, Buck, as well as me thet if you'd been some +feller who hadn't shown he was a wonder with a gun you'd now be full of +lead. If you'd happen to kill Bland an' Alloway, I reckon you'd be as +safe on this here border as you would in Santone. Such is gun fame in +this land of the draw.” + + + +CHAPTER IX + +Both men were awake early, silent with the premonition of trouble ahead, +thoughtful of the fact that the time for the long-planned action was at +hand. It was remarkable that a man as loquacious as Euchre could hold +his tongue so long; and this was significant of the deadly nature of +the intended deed. During breakfast he said a few words customary in the +service of food. At the conclusion of the meal he seemed to come to an +end of deliberation. + +“Buck, the sooner the better now,” he declared, with a glint in his eye. +“The more time we use up now the less surprised Bland'll be.” + +“I'm ready when you are,” replied Duane, quietly, and he rose from the +table. + +“Wal, saddle up, then,” went on Euchre, gruffly. “Tie on them two packs +I made, one fer each saddle. You can't tell--mebbe either hoss will be +carryin' double. It's good they're both big, strong hosses. Guess thet +wasn't a wise move of your Uncle Euchre's--bringin' in your hosses an' +havin' them ready?” + +“Euchre, I hope you're not going to get in bad here. I'm afraid you are. +Let me do the rest now,” said Duane. + +The old outlaw eyed him sarcastically. + +“Thet 'd be turrible now, wouldn't it? If you want to know, why, I'm in +bad already. I didn't tell you thet Alloway called me last night. He's +gettin' wise pretty quick.” + +“Euchre, you're going with me?” queried Duane, suddenly divining the +truth. + +“Wal, I reckon. Either to hell or safe over the mountain! I wisht I was +a gun-fighter. I hate to leave here without takin' a peg at Jackrabbit +Benson. Now, Buck, you do some hard figgerin' while I go nosin' round. +It's pretty early, which 's all the better.” + +Euchre put on his sombrero, and as he went out Duane saw that he wore +a gun-and-cartridge belt. It was the first time Duane had ever seen the +outlaw armed. + +Duane packed his few belongings into his saddlebags, and then carried +the saddles out to the corral. An abundance of alfalfa in the corral +showed that the horses had fared well. They had gotten almost fat during +his stay in the valley. He watered them, put on the saddles loosely +cinched, and then the bridles. His next move was to fill the two canvas +water-bottles. That done, he returned to the cabin to wait. + +At the moment he felt no excitement or agitation of any kind. There was +no more thinking and planning to do. The hour had arrived, and he was +ready. He understood perfectly the desperate chances he must take. +His thoughts became confined to Euchre and the surprising loyalty and +goodness in the hardened old outlaw. Time passed slowly. Duane kept +glancing at his watch. He hoped to start the thing and get away before +the outlaws were out of their beds. Finally he heard the shuffle of +Euchre's boots on the hard path. The sound was quicker than usual. + +When Euchre came around the corner of the cabin Duane was not so +astounded as he was concerned to see the outlaw white and shaking. Sweat +dripped from him. He had a wild look. + +“Luck ours--so-fur, Buck!” he panted. + +“You don't look it,” replied Duane. + +“I'm turrible sick. Jest killed a man. Fust one I ever killed!” + +“Who?” asked Duane, startled. + +“Jackrabbit Benson. An' sick as I am, I'm gloryin' in it. I went nosin' +round up the road. Saw Alloway goin' into Deger's. He's thick with the +Degers. Reckon he's askin' questions. Anyway, I was sure glad to see him +away from Bland's. An' he didn't see me. When I dropped into Benson's +there wasn't nobody there but Jackrabbit an' some greasers he was +startin' to work. Benson never had no use fer me. An' he up an' said he +wouldn't give a two-bit piece fer my life. I asked him why. + +“'You're double-crossin' the boss an' Chess,' he said. + +“'Jack, what 'd you give fer your own life?' I asked him. + +“He straightened up surprised an' mean-lookin'. An' I let him have it, +plumb center! He wilted, an' the greasers run. I reckon I'll never sleep +again. But I had to do it.” + +Duane asked if the shot had attracted any attention outside. + +“I didn't see anybody but the greasers, an' I sure looked sharp. Comin' +back I cut across through the cottonwoods past Bland's cabin. I meant to +keep out of sight, but somehow I had an idee I might find out if Bland +was awake yet. Sure enough I run plumb into Beppo, the boy who tends +Bland's hosses. Beppo likes me. An' when I inquired of his boss he said +Bland had been up all night fightin' with the Senora. An', Buck, here's +how I figger. Bland couldn't let up last night. He was sore, an' he went +after Kate again, tryin' to wear her down. Jest as likely he might have +went after Jennie, with wuss intentions. Anyway, he an' Kate must have +had it hot an' heavy. We're pretty lucky.” + +“It seems so. Well, I'm going,” said Duane, tersely. + +“Lucky! I should smiler Bland's been up all night after a most draggin' +ride home. He'll be fagged out this mornin', sleepy, sore, an' he won't +be expectin' hell before breakfast. Now, you walk over to his house. +Meet him how you like. Thet's your game. But I'm suggestin', if he comes +out an' you want to parley, you can jest say you'd thought over his +proposition an' was ready to join his band, or you ain't. You'll have +to kill him, an' it 'd save time to go fer your gun on sight. Might be +wise, too, fer it's likely he'll do thet same.” + +“How about the horses?” + +“I'll fetch them an' come along about two minnits behind you. 'Pears to +me you ought to have the job done an' Jennie outside by the time I git +there. Once on them hosses, we can ride out of camp before Alloway or +anybody else gits into action. Jennie ain't much heavier than a rabbit. +Thet big black will carry you both.” + +“All right. But once more let me persuade you to stay--not to mix any +more in this,” said Duane, earnestly. + +“Nope. I'm goin'. You heard what Benson told me. Alloway wouldn't give +me the benefit of any doubts. Buck, a last word--look out fer thet Bland +woman!” + +Duane merely nodded, and then, saying that the horses were ready, he +strode away through the grove. Accounting for the short cut across grove +and field, it was about five minutes' walk up to Bland's house. To +Duane it seemed long in time and distance, and he had difficulty in +restraining his pace. As he walked there came a gradual and subtle +change in his feelings. Again he was going out to meet a man in +conflict. He could have avoided this meeting. But despite the fact of +his courting the encounter he had not as yet felt that hot, inexplicable +rush of blood. The motive of this deadly action was not personal, and +somehow that made a difference. + +No outlaws were in sight. He saw several Mexican herders with cattle. +Blue columns of smoke curled up over some of the cabins. The fragrant +smell of it reminded Duane of his home and cutting wood for the stove. +He noted a cloud of creamy mist rising above the river, dissolving in +the sunlight. + +Then he entered Bland's lane. + +While yet some distance from the cabin he heard loud, angry voices of +man and woman. Bland and Kate still quarreling! He took a quick survey +of the surroundings. There was now not even a Mexican in sight. Then +he hurried a little. Halfway down the lane he turned his head to peer +through the cottonwoods. This time he saw Euchre coming with the horses. +There was no indication that the old outlaw might lose his nerve at the +end. Duane had feared this. + +Duane now changed his walk to a leisurely saunter. He reached the porch +and then distinguished what was said inside the cabin. + +“If you do, Bland, by Heaven I'll fix you and her!” That was panted out +in Kate Bland's full voice. + +“Let me looser I'm going in there, I tell you!” replied Bland, hoarsely. + +“What for?” + +“I want to make a little love to her. Ha! ha! It'll be fun to have the +laugh on her new lover.” + +“You lie!” cried Kate Bland. + +“I'm not saying what I'll do to her AFTERWARD!” His voice grew hoarser +with passion. “Let me go now!” + +“No! no! I won't let you go. You'll choke the--the truth out of +her--you'll kill her.” + +“The TRUTH!” hissed Bland. + +“Yes. I lied. Jen lied. But she lied to save me. You needn't--murder +her--for that.” + +Bland cursed horribly. Then followed a wrestling sound of bodies in +violent straining contact--the scrape of feet--the jangle of spurs--a +crash of sliding table or chair, and then the cry of a woman in pain. + +Duane stepped into the open door, inside the room. Kate Bland lay half +across a table where she had been flung, and she was trying to get to +her feet. Bland's back was turned. He had opened the door into Jennie's +room and had one foot across the threshold. Duane caught the girl's low, +shuddering cry. Then he called out loud and clear. + +With cat-like swiftness Bland wheeled, then froze on the threshold. +His sight, quick as his action, caught Duane's menacing unmistakable +position. + +Bland's big frame filled the door. He was in a bad place to reach for +his gun. But he would not have time for a step. Duane read in his eyes +the desperate calculation of chances. For a fleeting instant Bland +shifted his glance to his wife. Then his whole body seemed to vibrate +with the swing of his arm. + +Duane shot him. He fell forward, his gun exploding as it hit into the +floor, and dropped loose from stretching fingers. Duane stood over him, +stooped to turn him on his back. Bland looked up with clouded gaze, then +gasped his last. + +“Duane, you've killed him!” cried Kate Bland, huskily. “I knew you'd +have to!” + +She staggered against the wall, her eyes dilating, her strong hands +clenching, her face slowly whitening. She appeared shocked, half +stunned, but showed no grief. + +“Jennie!” called Duane, sharply. + +“Oh--Duane!” came a halting reply. + +“Yes. Come out. Hurry!” + +She came out with uneven steps, seeing only him, and she stumbled over +Bland's body. Duane caught her arm, swung her behind him. He feared +the woman when she realized how she had been duped. His action was +protective, and his movement toward the door equally as significant. + +“Duane,” cried Mrs. Bland. + +It was no time for talk. Duane edged on, keeping Jennie behind him. At +that moment there was a pounding of iron-shod hoofs out in the lane. +Kate Bland bounded to the door. When she turned back her amazement was +changing to realization. + +“Where 're you taking Jen?” she cried, her voice like a man's. “Get out +of my way,” replied Duane. His look perhaps, without speech, was enough +for her. In an instant she was transformed into a fury. + +“You hound! All the time you were fooling me! You made love to me! You +let me believe--you swore you loved me! Now I see what was queer about +you. All for that girl! But you can't have her. You'll never leave here +alive. Give me that girl! Let me--get at her! She'll never win any more +men in this camp.” + +She was a powerful woman, and it took all Duane's strength to ward off +her onslaughts. She clawed at Jennie over his upheld arm. Every second +her fury increased. + +“HELP! HELP! HELP!” she shrieked, in a voice that must have penetrated +to the remotest cabin in the valley. + +“Let go! Let go!” cried Duane, low and sharp. He still held his gun in +his right hand, and it began to be hard for him to ward the woman off. +His coolness had gone with her shriek for help. “Let go!” he repeated, +and he shoved her fiercely. + +Suddenly she snatched a rifle off the wall and backed away, her strong +hands fumbling at the lever. As she jerked it down, throwing a shell +into the chamber and cocking the weapon, Duane leaped upon her. He +struck up the rifle as it went off, the powder burning his face. + +“Jennie, run out! Get on a horse!” he said. + +Jennie flashed out of the door. + +With an iron grasp Duane held to the rifle-barrel. He had grasped it +with his left hand, and he gave such a pull that he swung the crazed +woman off the floor. But he could not loose her grip. She was as strong +as he. + +“Kate! Let go!” + +He tried to intimidate her. She did not see his gun thrust in her face, +or reason had given way to such an extent to passion that she did not +care. She cursed. Her husband had used the same curses, and from her +lips they seemed strange, unsexed, more deadly. Like a tigress she +fought him; her face no longer resembled a woman's. The evil of that +outlaw life, the wildness and rage, the meaning to kill, was even in +such a moment terribly impressed upon Duane. + +He heard a cry from outside--a man's cry, hoarse and alarming. + +It made him think of loss of time. This demon of a woman might yet block +his plan. + +“Let go!” he whispered, and felt his lips stiff. In the grimness of that +instant he relaxed his hold on the rifle-barrel. + +With sudden, redoubled, irresistible strength she wrenched the rifle +down and discharged it. Duane felt a blow--a shock--a burning agony +tearing through his breast. Then in a frenzy he jerked so powerfully +upon the rifle that he threw the woman against the wall. She fell and +seemed stunned. + +Duane leaped back, whirled, flew out of the door to the porch. The sharp +cracking of a gun halted him. He saw Jennie holding to the bridle of his +bay horse. Euchre was astride the other, and he had a Colt leveled, +and he was firing down the lane. Then came a single shot, heavier, and +Euchre's ceased. He fell from the horse. + +A swift glance back showed to Duane a man coming down the lane. Chess +Alloway! His gun was smoking. He broke into a run. Then in an instant he +saw Duane, and tried to check his pace as he swung up his arm. But that +slight pause was fatal. Duane shot, and Alloway was falling when his gun +went off. His bullet whistled close to Duane and thudded into the cabin. + +Duane bounded down to the horses. Jennie was trying to hold the plunging +bay. Euchre lay flat on his back, dead, a bullet-hole in his shirt, his +face set hard, and his hands twisted round gun and bridle. + +“Jennie, you've nerve, all right!” cried Duane, as he dragged down +the horse she was holding. “Up with you now! There! Never mind--long +stirrups! Hang on somehow!” + +He caught his bridle out of Euchre's clutching grip and leaped astride. +The frightened horses jumped into a run and thundered down the lane into +the road. Duane saw men running from cabins. He heard shouts. But +there were no shots fired. Jennie seemed able to stay on her horse, but +without stirrups she was thrown about so much that Duane rode closer and +reached out to grasp her arm. + +Thus they rode through the valley to the trail that led up over, the +steep and broken Rim Rock. As they began to climb Duane looked back. No +pursuers were in sight. + +“Jennie, we're going to get away!” he cried, exultation for her in his +voice. + +She was gazing horror-stricken at his breast, as in turning to look back +he faced her. + +“Oh, Duane, your shirt's all bloody!” she faltered, pointing with +trembling fingers. + +With her words Duane became aware of two things--the hand he +instinctively placed to his breast still held his gun, and he had +sustained a terrible wound. + +Duane had been shot through the breast far enough down to give him grave +apprehension of his life. The clean-cut hole made by the bullet bled +freely both at its entrance and where it had come out, but with no signs +of hemorrhage. He did not bleed at the mouth; however, he began to cough +up a reddish-tinged foam. + +As they rode on, Jennie, with pale face and mute lips, looked at him. + +“I'm badly hurt, Jennie,” he said, “but I guess I'll stick it out.” + +“The woman--did she shoot you?” + +“Yes. She was a devil. Euchre told me to look out for her. I wasn't +quick enough.” + +“You didn't have to--to--” shivered the girl. + +“No! no!” he replied. + +They did not stop climbing while Duane tore a scarf and made compresses, +which he bound tightly over his wounds. The fresh horses made fast +time up the rough trail. From open places Duane looked down. When they +surmounted the steep ascent and stood on top of the Rim Rock, with +no signs of pursuit down in the valley, and with the wild, broken +fastnesses before them, Duane turned to the girl and assured her that +they now had every chance of escape. + +“But--your--wound!” she faltered, with dark, troubled eyes. “I see--the +blood--dripping from your back!” + +“Jennie, I'll take a lot of killing,” he said. + +Then he became silent and attended to the uneven trail. He was aware +presently that he had not come into Bland's camp by this route. But +that did not matter; any trail leading out beyond the Rim Rock was safe +enough. What he wanted was to get far away into some wild retreat where +he could hide till he recovered from his wound. He seemed to feel a fire +inside his breast, and his throat burned so that it was necessary for +him to take a swallow of water every little while. He began to suffer +considerable pain, which increased as the hours went by and then gave +way to a numbness. From that time on he had need of his great strength +and endurance. Gradually he lost his steadiness and his keen sight; and +he realized that if he were to meet foes, or if pursuing outlaws should +come up with him, he could make only a poor stand. So he turned off on a +trail that appeared seldom traveled. + +Soon after this move he became conscious of a further thickening of his +senses. He felt able to hold on to his saddle for a while longer, but he +was failing. Then he thought he ought to advise Jennie, so in case she +was left alone she would have some idea of what to do. + +“Jennie, I'll give out soon,” he said. “No-I don't mean--what you think. +But I'll drop soon. My strength's going. If I die--you ride back to +the main trail. Hide and rest by day. Ride at night. That trail goes +to water. I believe you could get across the Nueces, where some rancher +will take you in.” + +Duane could not get the meaning of her incoherent reply. He rode on, +and soon he could not see the trail or hear his horse. He did not +know whether they traveled a mile or many times that far. But he was +conscious when the horse stopped, and had a vague sense of falling and +feeling Jennie's arms before all became dark to him. + +When consciousness returned he found himself lying in a little hut of +mesquite branches. It was well built and evidently some years old. There +were two doors or openings, one in front and the other at the back. +Duane imagined it had been built by a fugitive--one who meant to keep an +eye both ways and not to be surprised. Duane felt weak and had no desire +to move. Where was he, anyway? A strange, intangible sense of time, +distance, of something far behind weighed upon him. Sight of the two +packs Euchre had made brought his thought to Jennie. What had become of +her? There was evidence of her work in a smoldering fire and a little +blackened coffee-pot. Probably she was outside looking after the horses +or getting water. He thought he heard a step and listened, but he felt +tired, and presently his eyes closed and he fell into a doze. + +Awakening from this, he saw Jennie sitting beside him. In some way +she seemed to have changed. When he spoke she gave a start and turned +eagerly to him. + +“Duane!” she cried. + +“Hello. How're you, Jennie, and how am I?” he said, finding it a little +difficult to talk. + +“Oh, I'm all right,” she replied. “And you've come to--your wound's +healed; but you've been sick. Fever, I guess. I did all I could.” + +Duane saw now that the difference in her was a whiteness and tightness +of skin, a hollowness of eye, a look of strain. + +“Fever? How long have we been here?” he asked. + +She took some pebbles from the crown of his sombrero and counted them. + +“Nine. Nine days,” she answered. + +“Nine days!” he exclaimed, incredulously. But another look at her +assured him that she meant what she said. “I've been sick all the time? +You nursed me?” + +“Yes.” + +“Bland's men didn't come along here?” + +“No.” + +“Where are the horses?” + +“I keep them grazing down in a gorge back of here. There's good grass +and water.” + +“Have you slept any?” + +“A little. Lately I couldn't keep awake.” + +“Good Lord! I should think not. You've had a time of it sitting here day +and night nursing me, watching for the outlaws. Come, tell me all about +it.” + +“There's nothing much to tell.” + +“I want to know, anyway, just what you did--how you felt.” + +“I can't remember very well,” she replied, simply. “We must have ridden +forty miles that day we got away. You bled all the time. Toward evening +you lay on your horse's neck. When we came to this place you fell out of +the saddle. I dragged you in here and stopped your bleeding. I thought +you'd die that night. But in the morning I had a little hope. I had +forgotten the horses. But luckily they didn't stray far. I caught them +and kept them down in the gorge. When your wounds closed and you began +to breathe stronger I thought you'd get well quick. It was fever that +put you back. You raved a lot, and that worried me, because I couldn't +stop you. Anybody trailing us could have heard you a good ways. I don't +know whether I was scared most then or when you were quiet, and it was +so dark and lonely and still all around. Every day I put a stone in your +hat.” + +“Jennie, you saved my life,” said Duane. + +“I don't know. Maybe. I did all I knew how to do,” she replied. “You +saved mine--more than my life.” + +Their eyes met in a long gaze, and then their hands in a close clasp. + +“Jennie, we're going to get away,” he said, with gladness. “I'll be well +in a few days. You don't know how strong I am. We'll hide by day and +travel by night. I can get you across the river.” + +“And then?” she asked. + +“We'll find some honest rancher.” + +“And then?” she persisted. + +“Why,” he began, slowly, “that's as far as my thoughts ever got. It +was pretty hard, I tell you, to assure myself of so much. It means your +safety. You'll tell your story. You'll be sent to some village or town +and taken care of until a relative or friend is notified.” + +“And you?” she inquired, in a strange voice. + +Duane kept silence. + +“What will you do?” she went on. + +“Jennie, I'll go back to the brakes. I daren't show my face among +respectable people. I'm an outlaw.” + +“You're no criminal!” she declared, with deep passion. + +“Jennie, on this border the little difference between an out law and a +criminal doesn't count for much.” + +“You won't go back among those terrible men? You, with your gentleness +and sweetness--all that's good about you? Oh, Duane, don't--don't go!” + +“I can't go back to the outlaws, at least not Bland's band. No, I'll go +alone. I'll lone-wolf it, as they say on the border. What else can I do, +Jennie?” + +“Oh, I don't know. Couldn't you hide? Couldn't you slip out of Texas--go +far away?” + +“I could never get out of Texas without being arrested. I could hide, +but a man must live. Never mind about me, Jennie.” + +In three days Duane was able with great difficulty to mount his horse. +During daylight, by short relays, he and Jennie rode back to the main +trail, where they hid again till he had rested. Then in the dark they +rode out of the canyons and gullies of the Rim Rock, and early in the +morning halted at the first water to camp. + +From that point they traveled after nightfall and went into hiding +during the day. Once across the Nueces River, Duane was assured of +safety for her and great danger for himself. They had crossed into +a country he did not know. Somewhere east of the river there were +scattered ranches. But he was as liable to find the rancher in touch +with the outlaws as he was likely to find him honest. Duane hoped his +good fortune would not desert him in this last service to Jennie. Next +to the worry of that was realization of his condition. He had gotten +up too soon; he had ridden too far and hard, and now he felt that any +moment he might fall from his saddle. At last, far ahead over a barren +mesquite-dotted stretch of dusty ground, he espied a patch of green and +a little flat, red ranch-house. He headed his horse for it and turned a +face he tried to make cheerful for Jennie's sake. She seemed both happy +and sorry. + +When near at hand he saw that the rancher was a thrifty farmer. And +thrift spoke for honesty. There were fields of alfalfa, fruit-trees, +corrals, windmill pumps, irrigation-ditches, all surrounding a neat +little adobe house. Some children were playing in the yard. The way +they ran at sight of Duane hinted of both the loneliness and the fear +of their isolated lives. Duane saw a woman come to the door, then a man. +The latter looked keenly, then stepped outside. He was a sandy-haired, +freckled Texan. + +“Howdy, stranger,” he called, as Duane halted. “Get down, you an' your +woman. Say, now, air you sick or shot or what? Let me--” + +Duane, reeling in his saddle, bent searching eyes upon the rancher. He +thought he saw good will, kindness, honesty. He risked all on that one +sharp glance. Then he almost plunged from the saddle. + +The rancher caught him, helped him to a bench. + +“Martha, come out here!” he called. “This man's sick. No; he's shot, or +I don't know blood-stains.” + +Jennie had slipped off her horse and to Duane's side. Duane appeared +about to faint. + +“Air you his wife?” asked the rancher. + +“No. I'm only a girl he saved from outlaws. Oh, he's so paler Duane, +Duane!” + +“Buck Duane!” exclaimed the rancher, excitedly. “The man who killed +Bland an' Alloway? Say, I owe him a good turn, an' I'll pay it, young +woman.” + +The rancher's wife came out, and with a manner at once kind and +practical essayed to make Duane drink from a flask. He was not so far +gone that he could not recognize its contents, which he refused, and +weakly asked for water. When that was given him he found his voice. + +“Yes, I'm Duane. I've only overdone myself--just all in. The wounds I +got at Bland's are healing. Will you take this girl in--hide her awhile +till the excitement's over among the outlaws?” + +“I shore will,” replied the Texan. + +“Thanks. I'll remember you--I'll square it.” + +“What 're you goin' to do?” + +“I'll rest a bit--then go back to the brakes.” + +“Young man, you ain't in any shape to travel. See here--any rustlers on +your trail?” + +“I think we gave Bland's gang the slip.” + +“Good. I'll tell you what. I'll take you in along with the girl, an' +hide both of you till you get well. It'll be safe. My nearest neighbor +is five miles off. We don't have much company.” + +“You risk a great deal. Both outlaws and rangers are hunting me,” said +Duane. + +“Never seen a ranger yet in these parts. An' have always got along with +outlaws, mebbe exceptin' Bland. I tell you I owe you a good turn.” + +“My horses might betray you,” added Duane. + +“I'll hide them in a place where there's water an' grass. Nobody goes to +it. Come now, let me help you indoors.” + +Duane's last fading sensations of that hard day were the strange feel of +a bed, a relief at the removal of his heavy boots, and of Jennie's soft, +cool hands on his hot face. + +He lay ill for three weeks before he began to mend, and it was another +week then before he could walk out a little in the dusk of the evenings. +After that his strength returned rapidly. And it was only at the end +of this long siege that he recovered his spirits. During most of his +illness he had been silent, moody. + +“Jennie, I'll be riding off soon,” he said, one evening. “I can't impose +on this good man Andrews much longer. I'll never forget his kindness. +His wife, too--she's been so good to us. Yes, Jennie, you and I will +have to say good-by very soon.” + +“Don't hurry away,” she replied. + +Lately Jennie had appeared strange to him. She had changed from the +girl he used to see at Mrs. Bland's house. He took her reluctance to say +good-by as another indication of her regret that he must go back to the +brakes. Yet somehow it made him observe her more closely. She wore a +plain, white dress made from material Mrs. Andrews had given her. Sleep +and good food had improved her. If she had been pretty out there in the +outlaw den now she was more than that. But she had the same paleness, +the same strained look, the same dark eyes full of haunting shadows. +After Duane's realization of the change in her he watched her more, with +a growing certainty that he would be sorry not to see her again. + +“It's likely we won't ever see each other again,” he said. “That's +strange to think of. We've been through some hard days, and I seem to +have known you a long time.” + +Jennie appeared shy, almost sad, so Duane changed the subject to +something less personal. + +Andrews returned one evening from a several days' trip to Huntsville. + +“Duane, everybody's talkie' about how you cleaned up the Bland outfit,” + he said, important and full of news. “It's some exaggerated, accordin' +to what you told me; but you've shore made friends on this side of the +Nueces. I reckon there ain't a town where you wouldn't find people to +welcome you. Huntsville, you know, is some divided in its ideas. Half +the people are crooked. Likely enough, all them who was so loud in +praise of you are the crookedest. For instance, I met King Fisher, the +boss outlaw of these parts. Well, King thinks he's a decent citizen. +He was tellin' me what a grand job yours was for the border an' honest +cattlemen. Now that Bland and Alloway are done for, King Fisher will +find rustlin' easier. There's talk of Hardin movie' his camp over to +Bland's. But I don't know how true it is. I reckon there ain't much +to it. In the past when a big outlaw chief went under, his band almost +always broke up an' scattered. There's no one left who could run thet +outfit.” + +“Did you hear of any outlaws hunting me?” asked Duane. + +“Nobody from Bland's outfit is huntin' you, thet's shore,” replied +Andrews. “Fisher said there never was a hoss straddled to go on your +trail. Nobody had any use for Bland. Anyhow, his men would be afraid to +trail you. An' you could go right in to Huntsville, where you'd be some +popular. Reckon you'd be safe, too, except when some of them fool saloon +loafers or bad cowpunchers would try to shoot you for the glory in it. +Them kind of men will bob up everywhere you go, Duane.” + +“I'll be able to ride and take care of myself in a day or two,” went on +Duane. “Then I'll go--I'd like to talk to you about Jennie.” + +“She's welcome to a home here with us.” + +“Thank you, Andrews. You're a kind man. But I want Jennie to get farther +away from the Rio Grande. She'd never be safe here. Besides, she may be +able to find relatives. She has some, though she doesn't know where they +are.” + +“All right, Duane. Whatever you think best. I reckon now you'd better +take her to some town. Go north an' strike for Shelbyville or Crockett. +Them's both good towns. I'll tell Jennie the names of men who'll help +her. You needn't ride into town at all.” + +“Which place is nearer, and how far is it?” + +“Shelbyville. I reckon about two days' ride. Poor stock country, so you +ain't liable to meet rustlers. All the same, better hit the trail at +night an' go careful.” + +At sunset two days later Duane and Jennie mounted their horses and said +good-by to the rancher and his wife. Andrews would not listen to Duane's +thanks. + +“I tell you I'm beholden to you yet,” he declared. + +“Well, what can I do for you?” asked Duane. “I may come along here again +some day.” + +“Get down an' come in, then, or you're no friend of mine. I reckon there +ain't nothin' I can think of--I just happen to remember--” Here he led +Duane out of earshot of the women and went on in a whisper. “Buck, I +used to be well-to-do. Got skinned by a man named Brown--Rodney Brown. +He lives in Huntsville, an' he's my enemy. I never was much on fightin', +or I'd fixed him. Brown ruined me--stole all I had. He's a hoss an' +cattle thief, an' he has pull enough at home to protect him. I reckon I +needn't say any more.” + +“Is this Brown a man who shot an outlaw named Stevens?” queried Duane, +curiously. + +“Shore, he's the same. I heard thet story. Brown swears he plugged +Stevens through the middle. But the outlaw rode off, an' nobody ever +knew for shore.” + +“Luke Stevens died of that shot. I buried him,” said Duane. + +Andrews made no further comment, and the two men returned to the women. + +“The main road for about three miles, then where it forks take the +left-hand road and keep on straight. That what you said, Andrews?” + +“Shore. An' good luck to you both!” + +Duane and Jennie trotted away into the gathering twilight. At the moment +an insistent thought bothered Duane. Both Luke Stevens and the rancher +Andrews had hinted to Duane to kill a man named Brown. Duane wished +with all his heart that they had not mentioned it, let alone taken for +granted the execution of the deed. What a bloody place Texas was! Men +who robbed and men who were robbed both wanted murder. It was in the +spirit of the country. Duane certainly meant to avoid ever meeting this +Rodney Brown. And that very determination showed Duane how dangerous +he really was--to men and to himself. Sometimes he had a feeling of how +little stood between his sane and better self and a self utterly wild +and terrible. He reasoned that only intelligence could save him--only a +thoughtful understanding of his danger and a hold upon some ideal. + +Then he fell into low conversation with Jennie, holding out hopeful +views of her future, and presently darkness set in. The sky was overcast +with heavy clouds; there was no air moving; the heat and oppression +threatened storm. By and by Duane could not see a rod in front of him, +though his horse had no difficulty in keeping to the road. Duane was +bothered by the blackness of the night. Traveling fast was impossible, +and any moment he might miss the road that led off to the left. So +he was compelled to give all his attention to peering into the thick +shadows ahead. As good luck would have it, he came to higher ground +where there was less mesquite, and therefore not such impenetrable +darkness; and at this point he came to where the road split. + +Once headed in the right direction, he felt easier in mind. To his +annoyance, however, a fine, misty rain set in. Jennie was not well +dressed for wet weather; and, for that matter, neither was he. His coat, +which in that dry warm climate he seldom needed, was tied behind his +saddle, and he put it on Jennie. + +They traveled on. The rain fell steadily; if anything, growing thicker. +Duane grew uncomfortably wet and chilly. Jennie, however, fared somewhat +better by reason of the heavy coat. The night passed quickly despite the +discomfort, and soon a gray, dismal, rainy dawn greeted the travelers. + +Jennie insisted that he find some shelter where a fire could be built to +dry his clothes. He was not in a fit condition to risk catching cold. +In fact, Duane's teeth were chattering. To find a shelter in that barren +waste seemed a futile task. Quite unexpectedly, however, they happened +upon a deserted adobe cabin situated a little off the road. Not only did +it prove to have a dry interior, but also there was firewood. Water +was available in pools everywhere; however, there was no grass for the +horses. + +A good fire and hot food and drink changed the aspect of their condition +as far as comfort went. And Jennie lay down to sleep. For Duane, +however, there must be vigilance. This cabin was no hiding-place. The +rain fell harder all the time, and the wind changed to the north. “It's +a norther, all right,” muttered Duane. “Two or three days.” And he felt +that his extraordinary luck had not held out. Still one point favored +him, and it was that travelers were not likely to come along during the +storm. Jennie slept while Duane watched. The saving of this girl meant +more to him than any task he had ever assumed. First it had been partly +from a human feeling to succor an unfortunate woman, and partly a motive +to establish clearly to himself that he was no outlaw. Lately, however, +had come a different sense, a strange one, with something personal and +warm and protective in it. + +As he looked down upon her, a slight, slender girl with bedraggled dress +and disheveled hair, her face, pale and quiet, a little stern in sleep, +and her long, dark lashes lying on her cheek, he seemed to see her +fragility, her prettiness, her femininity as never before. But for him +she might at that very moment have been a broken, ruined girl lying +back in that cabin of the Blands'. The fact gave him a feeling of his +importance in this shifting of her destiny. She was unharmed, still +young; she would forget and be happy; she would live to be a good +wife and mother. Somehow the thought swelled his heart. His act, +death-dealing as it had been, was a noble one, and helped him to hold +on to his drifting hopes. Hardly once since Jennie had entered into his +thought had those ghosts returned to torment him. + +To-morrow she would be gone among good, kind people with a possibility +of finding her relatives. He thanked God for that; nevertheless, he felt +a pang. + +She slept more than half the day. Duane kept guard, always alert, +whether he was sitting, standing, or walking. The rain pattered steadily +on the roof and sometimes came in gusty flurries through the door. +The horses were outside in a shed that afforded poor shelter, and they +stamped restlessly. Duane kept them saddled and bridled. + +About the middle of the afternoon Jennie awoke. They cooked a meal +and afterward sat beside the little fire. She had never been, in his +observation of her, anything but a tragic figure, an unhappy girl, the +farthest removed from serenity and poise. That characteristic capacity +for agitation struck him as stronger in her this day. He attributed it, +however, to the long strain, the suspense nearing an end. Yet sometimes +when her eyes were on him she did not seem to be thinking of her +freedom, of her future. + +“This time to-morrow you'll be in Shelbyville,” he said. + +“Where will you be?” she asked, quickly. + +“Me? Oh, I'll be making tracks for some lonesome place,” he replied. + +The girl shuddered. + +“I've been brought up in Texas. I remember what a hard lot the men of my +family had. But poor as they were, they had a roof over their heads, +a hearth with a fire, a warm bed--somebody to love them. And you, +Duane--oh, my God! What must your life be? You must ride and hide and +watch eternally. No decent food, no pillow, no friendly word, no clean +clothes, no woman's hand! Horses, guns, trails, rocks, holes--these must +be the important things in your life. You must go on riding, hiding, +killing until you meet--” + +She ended with a sob and dropped her head on her knees. Duane was +amazed, deeply touched. + +“My girl, thank you for that thought of me,” he said, with a tremor in +his voice. “You don't know how much that means to me.” + +She raised her face, and it was tear-stained, eloquent, beautiful. + +“I've heard tell--the best of men go to the bad out there. You won't. +Promise me you won't. I never--knew any man--like you. I--I--we may +never see each other again--after to-day. I'll never forget you. I'll +pray for you, and I'll never give up trying to--to do something. Don't +despair. It's never too late. It was my hope that kept me alive--out +there at Bland's--before you came. I was only a poor weak girl. But if +I could hope--so can you. Stay away from men. Be a lone wolf. Fight for +your life. Stick out your exile--and maybe--some day--” + +Then she lost her voice. Duane clasped her hand and with feeling as deep +as hers promised to remember her words. In her despair for him she had +spoken wisdom--pointed out the only course. + +Duane's vigilance, momentarily broken by emotion, had no sooner +reasserted itself than he discovered the bay horse, the one Jennie rode, +had broken his halter and gone off. The soft wet earth had deadened the +sound of his hoofs. His tracks were plain in the mud. There were clumps +of mesquite in sight, among which the horse might have strayed. It +turned out, however, that he had not done so. + +Duane did not want to leave Jennie alone in the cabin so near the road. +So he put her up on his horse and bade her follow. The rain had ceased +for the time being, though evidently the storm was not yet over. The +tracks led up a wash to a wide flat where mesquite, prickly pear, and +thorn-bush grew so thickly that Jennie could not ride into it. Duane was +thoroughly concerned. He must have her horse. Time was flying. It would +soon be night. He could not expect her to scramble quickly through that +brake on foot. Therefore he decided to risk leaving her at the edge of +the thicket and go in alone. + +As he went in a sound startled him. Was it the breaking of a branch +he had stepped on or thrust aside? He heard the impatient pound of +his horse's hoofs. Then all was quiet. Still he listened, not wholly +satisfied. He was never satisfied in regard to safety; he knew too well +that there never could be safety for him in this country. + +The bay horse had threaded the aisles of the thicket. Duane wondered +what had drawn him there. Certainly it had not been grass, for there was +none. Presently he heard the horse tramping along, and then he ran. The +mud was deep, and the sharp thorns made going difficult. He came up +with the horse, and at the same moment crossed a multitude of fresh +horse-tracks. + +He bent lower to examine them, and was alarmed to find that they had +been made very recently, even since it had ceased raining. They were +tracks of well-shod horses. Duane straightened up with a cautious glance +all around. His instant decision was to hurry back to Jennie. But he +had come a goodly way through the thicket, and it was impossible to rush +back. Once or twice he imagined he heard crashings in the brush, but +did not halt to make sure. Certain he was now that some kind of danger +threatened. + +Suddenly there came an unmistakable thump of horses' hoofs off somewhere +to the fore. Then a scream rent the air. It ended abruptly. Duane leaped +forward, tore his way through the thorny brake. He heard Jennie cry +again--an appealing call quickly hushed. It seemed more to his right, +and he plunged that way. He burst into a glade where a smoldering fire +and ground covered with footprints and tracks showed that campers had +lately been. Rushing across this, he broke his passage out to the open. +But he was too late. His horse had disappeared. Jennie was gone. There +were no riders in sight. There was no sound. There was a heavy trail of +horses going north. Jennie had been carried off--probably by outlaws. +Duane realized that pursuit was out of the question--that Jennie was +lost. + + + +CHAPTER X + +A hundred miles from the haunts most familiar with Duane's deeds, far +up where the Nueces ran a trickling clear stream between yellow cliffs, +stood a small deserted shack of covered mesquite poles. It had been made +long ago, but was well preserved. A door faced the overgrown trail, +and another faced down into a gorge of dense thickets. On the border +fugitives from law and men who hid in fear of some one they had wronged +never lived in houses with only one door. + +It was a wild spot, lonely, not fit for human habitation except for the +outcast. He, perhaps, might have found it hard to leave for most of the +other wild nooks in that barren country. Down in the gorge there +was never-failing sweet water, grass all the year round, cool, shady +retreats, deer, rabbits, turkeys, fruit, and miles and miles of +narrow-twisting, deep canyon full of broken rocks and impenetrable +thickets. The scream of the panther was heard there, the squall of the +wildcat, the cough of the jaguar. Innumerable bees buzzed in the spring +blossoms, and, it seemed, scattered honey to the winds. All day there +was continuous song of birds, that of the mocking-bird loud and sweet +and mocking above the rest. + +On clear days--and rare indeed were cloudy days--with the subsiding +of the wind at sunset a hush seemed to fall around the little hut. +Far-distant dim-blue mountains stood gold-rimmed gradually to fade with +the shading of light. + +At this quiet hour a man climbed up out of the gorge and sat in the +westward door of the hut. This lonely watcher of the west and listener +to the silence was Duane. And this hut was the one where, three years +before, Jennie had nursed him back to life. + +The killing of a man named Sellers, and the combination of circumstances +that had made the tragedy a memorable regret, had marked, if not a +change, at least a cessation in Duane's activities. He had trailed +Sellers to kill him for the supposed abducting of Jennie. He had trailed +him long after he had learned Sellers traveled alone. Duane wanted +absolute assurance of Jennie's death. Vague rumors, a few words here and +there, unauthenticated stories, were all Duane had gathered in years to +substantiate his belief--that Jennie died shortly after the beginning of +her second captivity. But Duane did not know surely. Sellers might have +told him. Duane expected, if not to force it from him at the end, to +read it in his eyes. But the bullet went too unerringly; it locked his +lips and fixed his eyes. + +After that meeting Duane lay long at the ranchhouse of a friend, and +when he recovered from the wound Sellers had given him he started with +two horses and a pack for the lonely gorge on the Nueces. There he +had been hidden for months, a prey to remorse, a dreamer, a victim of +phantoms. + +It took work for him to find subsistence in that rocky fastness. And +work, action, helped to pass the hours. But he could not work all the +time, even if he had found it to do. Then in his idle moments and at +night his task was to live with the hell in his mind. + +The sunset and the twilight hour made all the rest bearable. The little +hut on the rim of the gorge seemed to hold Jennie's presence. It was not +as if he felt her spirit. If it had been he would have been sure of her +death. He hoped Jennie had not survived her second misfortune; and that +intense hope had burned into belief, if not surety. Upon his return to +that locality, on the occasion of his first visit to the hut, he had +found things just as they had left them, and a poor, faded piece of +ribbon Jennie had used to tie around her bright hair. No wandering +outlaw or traveler had happened upon the lonely spot, which further +endeared it to Duane. + +A strange feature of this memory of Jennie was the freshness of it--the +failure of years, toil, strife, death-dealing to dim it--to deaden +the thought of what might have been. He had a marvelous gift of +visualization. He could shut his eyes and see Jennie before him just as +clearly as if she had stood there in the flesh. For hours he did that, +dreaming, dreaming of life he had never tasted and now never would +taste. He saw Jennie's slender, graceful figure, the old brown ragged +dress in which he had seen her first at Bland's, her little feet in +Mexican sandals, her fine hands coarsened by work, her round arms and +swelling throat, and her pale, sad, beautiful face with its staring dark +eyes. He remembered every look she had given him, every word she had +spoken to him, every time she had touched him. He thought of her beauty +and sweetness, of the few things which had come to mean to him that +she must have loved him; and he trained himself to think of these in +preference to her life at Bland's, the escape with him, and then her +recapture, because such memories led to bitter, fruitless pain. He had +to fight suffering because it was eating out his heart. + +Sitting there, eyes wide open, he dreamed of the old homestead and his +white-haired mother. He saw the old home life, sweetened and filled by +dear new faces and added joys, go on before his eyes with him a part of +it. + +Then in the inevitable reaction, in the reflux of bitter reality, he +would send out a voiceless cry no less poignant because it was silent: +“Poor fool! No, I shall never see mother again--never go home--never +have a home. I am Duane, the Lone Wolf! Oh, God! I wish it were over! +These dreams torture me! What have I to do with a mother, a home, a +wife? No bright-haired boy, no dark-eyed girl will ever love me. I am +an outlaw, an outcast, dead to the good and decent world. I am +alone--alone. Better be a callous brute or better dead! I shall go mad +thinking! Man, what is left to you? A hiding-place like a wolf's--lonely +silent days, lonely nights with phantoms! Or the trail and the road with +their bloody tracks, and then the hard ride, the sleepless, hungry ride +to some hole in rocks or brakes. What hellish thing drives me? Why can't +I end it all? What is left? Only that damned unquenchable spirit of the +gun-fighter to live--to hang on to miserable life--to have no fear of +death, yet to cling like a leach--to die as gun-fighters seldom die, +with boots off! Bain, you were first, and you're long avenged. I'd +change with you. And Sellers, you were last, and you're avenged. And you +others--you're avenged. Lie quiet in your graves and give me peace!” + +But they did not lie quiet in their graves and give him peace. + +A group of specters trooped out of the shadows of dusk and, gathering +round him, escorted him to his bed. + +When Duane had been riding the trails passion-bent to escape pursuers, +or passion-bent in his search, the constant action and toil and +exhaustion made him sleep. But when in hiding, as time passed, gradually +he required less rest and sleep, and his mind became more active. Little +by little his phantoms gained hold on him, and at length, but for the +saving power of his dreams, they would have claimed him utterly. + +How many times he had said to himself: “I am an intelligent man. I'm +not crazy. I'm in full possession of my faculties. All this is +fancy--imagination--conscience. I've no work, no duty, no ideal, no +hope--and my mind is obsessed, thronged with images. And these images +naturally are of the men with whom I have dealt. I can't forget them. +They come back to me, hour after hour; and when my tortured mind grows +weak, then maybe I'm not just right till the mood wears out and lets me +sleep.” + +So he reasoned as he lay down in his comfortable camp. The night was +star-bright above the canyon-walls, darkly shadowing down between them. +The insects hummed and chirped and thrummed a continuous thick song, low +and monotonous. Slow-running water splashed softly over stones in the +stream-bed. From far down the canyon came the mournful hoot of an owl. +The moment he lay down, thereby giving up action for the day, all these +things weighed upon him like a great heavy mantle of loneliness. In +truth, they did not constitute loneliness. + +And he could no more have dispelled thought than he could have reached +out to touch a cold, bright star. + +He wondered how many outcasts like him lay under this star-studded, +velvety sky across the fifteen hundred miles of wild country between +El Paso and the mouth of the river. A vast wild territory--a refuge for +outlaws! Somewhere he had heard or read that the Texas Rangers kept a +book with names and records of outlaws--three thousand known outlaws. +Yet these could scarcely be half of that unfortunate horde which had +been recruited from all over the states. Duane had traveled from camp to +camp, den to den, hiding-place to hiding-place, and he knew these men. +Most of them were hopeless criminals; some were avengers; a few were +wronged wanderers; and among them occasionally was a man, human in his +way, honest as he could be, not yet lost to good. + +But all of them were akin in one sense--their outlawry; and that starry +night they lay with their dark faces up, some in packs like wolves, +others alone like the gray wolf who knew no mate. It did not make much +difference in Duane's thought of them that the majority were steeped in +crime and brutality, more often than not stupid from rum, incapable of a +fine feeling, just lost wild dogs. + +Duane doubted that there was a man among them who did not realize his +moral wreck and ruin. He had met poor, half witted wretches who knew it. +He believed he could enter into their minds and feel the truth of +all their lives--the hardened outlaw, coarse, ignorant, bestial, who +murdered as Bill Black had murdered, who stole for the sake of stealing, +who craved money to gamble and drink, defiantly ready for death, and, +like that terrible outlaw, Helm, who cried out on the scaffold, “Let her +rip!” + +The wild youngsters seeking notoriety and reckless adventure; the +cowboys with a notch on their guns, with boastful pride in the knowledge +that they were marked by rangers; the crooked men from the North, +defaulters, forgers, murderers, all pale-faced, flat-chested men not fit +for that wilderness and not surviving; the dishonest cattlemen, hand +and glove with outlaws, driven from their homes; the old grizzled, +bow-legged genuine rustlers--all these Duane had come in contact with, +had watched and known, and as he felt with them he seemed to see that as +their lives were bad, sooner or later to end dismally or tragically, so +they must pay some kind of earthly penalty--if not of conscience, then +of fear; if not of fear, then of that most terrible of all things to +restless, active men--pain, the pang of flesh and bone. + +Duane knew, for he had seen them pay. Best of all, moreover, he knew the +internal life of the gun-fighter of that select but by no means small +class of which he was representative. The world that judged him and his +kind judged him as a machine, a killing-machine, with only mind enough +to hunt, to meet, to slay another man. It had taken three endless years +for Duane to understand his own father. Duane knew beyond all doubt that +the gun-fighters like Bland, like Alloway, like Sellers, men who were +evil and had no remorse, no spiritual accusing Nemesis, had something +far more torturing to mind, more haunting, more murderous of rest and +sleep and peace; and that something was abnormal fear of death. Duane +knew this, for he had shot these men; he had seen the quick, dark shadow +in eyes, the presentiment that the will could not control, and then the +horrible certainty. These men must have been in agony at every meeting +with a possible or certain foe--more agony than the hot rend of a +bullet. They were haunted, too, haunted by this fear, by every victim +calling from the grave that nothing was so inevitable as death, which +lurked behind every corner, hid in every shadow, lay deep in the dark +tube of every gun. These men could not have a friend; they could not +love or trust a woman. They knew their one chance of holding on to life +lay in their own distrust, watchfulness, dexterity, and that hope, by +the very nature of their lives, could not be lasting. They had doomed +themselves. What, then, could possibly have dwelt in the depths of +their minds as they went to their beds on a starry night like this, with +mystery in silence and shadow, with time passing surely, and the dark +future and its secret approaching every hour--what, then, but hell? + +The hell in Duane's mind was not fear of man or fear of death. He would +have been glad to lay down the burden of life, providing death came +naturally. Many times he had prayed for it. But that overdeveloped, +superhuman spirit of defense in him precluded suicide or the inviting of +an enemy's bullet. Sometimes he had a vague, scarcely analyzed idea that +this spirit was what had made the Southwest habitable for the white man. + +Every one of his victims, singly and collectively, returned to him for +ever, it seemed, in cold, passionless, accusing domination of these +haunted hours. They did not accuse him of dishonor or cowardice or +brutality or murder; they only accused him of Death. It was as if they +knew more than when they were alive, had learned that life was a divine +mysterious gift not to be taken. They thronged about him with their +voiceless clamoring, drifted around him with their fading eyes. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +After nearly six months in the Nueces gorge the loneliness and inaction +of his life drove Duane out upon the trails seeking anything rather than +to hide longer alone, a prey to the scourge of his thoughts. The moment +he rode into sight of men a remarkable transformation occurred in him. A +strange warmth stirred in him--a longing to see the faces of people, +to hear their voices--a pleasurable emotion sad and strange. But it was +only a precursor of his old bitter, sleepless, and eternal vigilance. +When he hid alone in the brakes he was safe from all except his deeper, +better self; when he escaped from this into the haunts of men his force +and will went to the preservation of his life. + +Mercer was the first village he rode into. He had many friends there. +Mercer claimed to owe Duane a debt. On the outskirts of the village +there was a grave overgrown by brush so that the rude-lettered post +which marked it was scarcely visible to Duane as he rode by. He had +never read the inscription. But he thought now of Hardin, no other than +the erstwhile ally of Bland. For many years Hardin had harassed the +stockmen and ranchers in and around Mercer. On an evil day for him he +or his outlaws had beaten and robbed a man who once succored Duane +when sore in need. Duane met Hardin in the little plaza of the village, +called him every name known to border men, taunted him to draw, and +killed him in the act. + +Duane went to the house of one Jones, a Texan who had known his father, +and there he was warmly received. The feel of an honest hand, the voice +of a friend, the prattle of children who were not afraid of him or his +gun, good wholesome food, and change of clothes--these things for the +time being made a changed man of Duane. To be sure, he did not often +speak. The price of his head and the weight of his burden made him +silent. But eagerly he drank in all the news that was told him. In +the years of his absence from home he had never heard a word about his +mother or uncle. Those who were his real friends on the border would +have been the last to make inquiries, to write or receive letters that +might give a clue to Duane's whereabouts. + +Duane remained all day with this hospitable Jones, and as twilight +fell was loath to go and yielded to a pressing invitation to remain +overnight. It was seldom indeed that Duane slept under a roof. Early +in the evening, while Duane sat on the porch with two awed and +hero-worshiping sons of the house, Jones returned from a quick visit +down to the post-office. Summarily he sent the boys off. He labored +under intense excitement. + +“Duane, there's rangers in town,” he whispered. “It's all over town, +too, that you're here. You rode in long after sunup. Lots of people saw +you. I don't believe there's a man or boy that 'd squeal on you. But the +women might. They gossip, and these rangers are handsome fellows--devils +with the women.” + +“What company of rangers?” asked Duane, quickly. + +“Company A, under Captain MacNelly, that new ranger. He made a big name +in the war. And since he's been in the ranger service he's done wonders. +He's cleaned up some bad places south, and he's working north.” + +“MacNelly. I've heard of him. Describe him to me.” + +“Slight-built chap, but wiry and tough. Clean face, black mustache and +hair. Sharp black eyes. He's got a look of authority. MacNelly's a fine +man, Duane. Belongs to a good Southern family. I'd hate to have him look +you up.” + +Duane did not speak. + +“MacNelly's got nerve, and his rangers are all experienced men. If they +find out you're here they'll come after you. MacNelly's no gun-fighter, +but he wouldn't hesitate to do his duty, even if he faced sure death. +Which he would in this case. Duane, you mustn't meet Captain MacNelly. +Your record is clean, if it is terrible. You never met a ranger or any +officer except a rotten sheriff now and then, like Rod Brown.” + +Still Duane kept silence. He was not thinking of danger, but of the fact +of how fleeting must be his stay among friends. + +“I've already fixed up a pack of grub,” went on Jones. “I'll slip out to +saddle your horse. You watch here.” + +He had scarcely uttered the last word when soft, swift footsteps sounded +on the hard path. A man turned in at the gate. The light was dim, yet +clean enough to disclose an unusually tall figure. When it appeared +nearer he was seen to be walking with both arms raised, hands high. He +slowed his stride. + +“Does Burt Jones live here?” he asked, in a low, hurried voice. + +“I reckon. I'm Burt. What can I do for you?” replied Jones. + +The stranger peered around, stealthily came closer, still with his hands +up. + +“It is known that Buck Duane is here. Captain MacNelly's camping on the +river just out of town. He sends word to Duane to come out there after +dark.” + +The stranger wheeled and departed as swiftly and strangely as he had +come. + +“Bust me! Duane, whatever do you make of that?” exclaimed Jones. + +“A new one on me,” replied Duane, thoughtfully. + +“First fool thing I ever heard of MacNelly doing. Can't make head nor +tails of it. I'd have said offhand that MacNelly wouldn't double-cross +anybody. He struck me as a square man, sand all through. But, hell! he +must mean treachery. I can't see anything else in that deal.” + +“Maybe the Captain wants to give me a fair chance to surrender without +bloodshed,” observed Duane. “Pretty decent of him, if he meant that.” + +“He INVITES YOU out to his camp AFTER DARK. Something strange about +this, Duane. But MacNelly's a new man out here. He does some queer +things. Perhaps he's getting a swelled head. Well, whatever his +intentions, his presence around Mercer is enough for us. Duane, you +hit the road and put some miles between you the amiable Captain before +daylight. To-morrow I'll go out there and ask him what in the devil he +meant.” + +“That messenger he sent--he was a ranger,” said Duane. + +“Sure he was, and a nervy one! It must have taken sand to come bracing +you that way. Duane, the fellow didn't pack a gun. I'll swear to that. +Pretty odd, this trick. But you can't trust it. Hit the road, Duane.” + +A little later a black horse with muffled hoofs, bearing a tall, dark +rider who peered keenly into every shadow, trotted down a pasture lane +back of Jones's house, turned into the road, and then, breaking into +swifter gait, rapidly left Mercer behind. + +Fifteen or twenty miles out Duane drew rein in a forest of mesquite, +dismounted, and searched about for a glade with a little grass. Here he +staked his horse on a long lariat; and, using his saddle for a pillow, +his saddle-blanket for covering, he went to sleep. + +Next morning he was off again, working south. During the next few days +he paid brief visits to several villages that lay in his path. And in +each some one particular friend had a piece of news to impart that made +Duane profoundly thoughtful. A ranger had made a quiet, unobtrusive call +upon these friends and left this message, “Tell Buck Duane to ride into +Captain MacNelly's camp some time after night.” + +Duane concluded, and his friends all agreed with him, that the new +ranger's main purpose in the Nueces country was to capture or kill Buck +Duane, and that this message was simply an original and striking ruse, +the daring of which might appeal to certain outlaws. + +But it did not appeal to Duane. His curiosity was aroused; it did not, +however, tempt him to any foolhardy act. He turned southwest and rode a +hundred miles until he again reached the sparsely settled country. Here +he heard no more of rangers. It was a barren region he had never but +once ridden through, and that ride had cost him dear. He had been +compelled to shoot his way out. Outlaws were not in accord with the +few ranchers and their cowboys who ranged there. He learned that both +outlaws and Mexican raiders had long been at bitter enmity with these +ranchers. Being unfamiliar with roads and trails, Duane had pushed on +into the heart of this district, when all the time he really believed he +was traveling around it. A rifle-shot from a ranch-house, a deliberate +attempt to kill him because he was an unknown rider in those parts, +discovered to Duane his mistake; and a hard ride to get away persuaded +him to return to his old methods of hiding by day and traveling by +night. + +He got into rough country, rode for three days without covering much +ground, but believed that he was getting on safer territory. Twice he +came to a wide bottom-land green with willow and cottonwood and thick as +chaparral, somewhere through the middle of which ran a river he decided +must be the lower Nueces. + +One evening, as he stole out from a covert where he had camped, he saw +the lights of a village. He tried to pass it on the left, but was unable +to because the brakes of this bottom-land extended in almost to the +outskirts of the village, and he had to retrace his steps and go round +to the right. Wire fences and horses in pasture made this a task, so it +was well after midnight before he accomplished it. He made ten miles or +more then by daylight, and after that proceeded cautiously along a road +which appeared to be well worn from travel. He passed several thickets +where he would have halted to hide during the day but for the fact that +he had to find water. + +He was a long while in coming to it, and then there was no thicket or +clump of mesquite near the waterhole that would afford him covert. So he +kept on. + +The country before him was ridgy and began to show cottonwoods here and +there in the hollows and yucca and mesquite on the higher ground. As he +mounted a ridge he noted that the road made a sharp turn, and he could +not see what was beyond it. He slowed up and was making the turn, which +was down-hill between high banks of yellow clay, when his mettlesome +horse heard something to frighten him or shied at something and bolted. + +The few bounds he took before Duane's iron arm checked him were enough +to reach the curve. One flashing glance showed Duane the open once more, +a little valley below with a wide, shallow, rocky stream, a clump of +cottonwoods beyond, a somber group of men facing him, and two dark, +limp, strangely grotesque figures hanging from branches. + +The sight was common enough in southwest Texas, but Duane had never +before found himself so unpleasantly close. + +A hoarse voice pealed out: “By hell! there's another one!” + +“Stranger, ride down an' account fer yourself!” yelled another. + +“Hands up!” + +“Thet's right, Jack; don't take no chances. Plug him!” + +These remarks were so swiftly uttered as almost to be continuous. Duane +was wheeling his horse when a rifle cracked. The bullet struck his left +forearm and he thought broke it, for he dropped the rein. The frightened +horse leaped. Another bullet whistled past Duane. Then the bend in the +road saved him probably from certain death. Like the wind his fleet +steed wend down the long hill. + +Duane was in no hurry to look back. He knew what to expect. His chief +concern of the moment was for his injured arm. He found that the bones +were still intact; but the wound, having been made by a soft bullet, was +an exceedingly bad one. Blood poured from it. Giving the horse his head, +Duane wound his scarf tightly round the holes, and with teeth and hand +tied it tightly. That done, he looked back over his shoulder. + +Riders were making the dust fly on the hillside road. There were more +coming round the cut where the road curved. The leader was perhaps a +quarter of a mile back, and the others strung out behind him. Duane +needed only one glance to tell him that they were fast and hard-riding +cowboys in a land where all riders were good. They would not have owned +any but strong, swift horses. Moreover, it was a district where ranchers +had suffered beyond all endurance the greed and brutality of outlaws. +Duane had simply been so unfortunate as to run right into a lynching +party at a time of all times when any stranger would be in danger and +any outlaw put to his limit to escape with his life. + +Duane did not look back again till he had crossed the ridgy piece +of ground and had gotten to the level road. He had gained upon his +pursuers. When he ascertained this he tried to save his horse, to check +a little that killing gait. This horse was a magnificent animal, big, +strong, fast; but his endurance had never been put to a grueling test. +And that worried Duane. His life had made it impossible to keep one +horse very long at a time, and this one was an unknown quantity. + +Duane had only one plan--the only plan possible in this case--and that +was to make the river-bottoms, where he might elude his pursuers in the +willow brakes. Fifteen miles or so would bring him to the river, and +this was not a hopeless distance for any good horse if not too closely +pressed. Duane concluded presently that the cowboys behind were losing a +little in the chase because they were not extending their horses. It was +decidedly unusual for such riders to save their mounts. Duane pondered +over this, looking backward several times to see if their horses were +stretched out. They were not, and the fact was disturbing. Only one +reason presented itself to Duane's conjecturing, and it was that with +him headed straight on that road his pursuers were satisfied not to +force the running. He began to hope and look for a trail or a road +turning off to right or left. There was none. A rough, mesquite-dotted +and yucca-spired country extended away on either side. Duane believed +that he would be compelled to take to this hard going. One thing was +certain--he had to go round the village. The river, however, was on the +outskirts of the village; and once in the willows, he would be safe. + +Dust-clouds far ahead caused his alarm to grow. He watched with his eyes +strained; he hoped to see a wagon, a few stray cattle. But no, he soon +descried several horsemen. Shots and yells behind him attested to the +fact that his pursuers likewise had seen these new-comers on the scene. +More than a mile separated these two parties, yet that distance did not +keep them from soon understanding each other. Duane waited only to see +this new factor show signs of sudden quick action, and then, with a +muttered curse, he spurred his horse off the road into the brush. + +He chose the right side, because the river lay nearer that way. There +were patches of open sandy ground between clumps of cactus and mesquite, +and he found that despite a zigzag course he made better time. It was +impossible for him to locate his pursuers. They would come together, he +decided, and take to his tracks. + +What, then, was his surprise and dismay to run out of a thicket right +into a low ridge of rough, broken rock, impossible to get a horse over. +He wheeled to the left along its base. The sandy ground gave place to +a harder soil, where his horse did not labor so. Here the growths of +mesquite and cactus became scanter, affording better travel but poor +cover. He kept sharp eyes ahead, and, as he had expected, soon saw +moving dust-clouds and the dark figures of horses. They were half a mile +away, and swinging obliquely across the flat, which fact proved that +they had entertained a fair idea of the country and the fugitive's +difficulty. + +Without an instant's hesitation Duane put his horse to his best efforts, +straight ahead. He had to pass those men. When this was seemingly made +impossible by a deep wash from which he had to turn, Duane began to feel +cold and sick. Was this the end? Always there had to be an end to an +outlaw's career. He wanted then to ride straight at these pursuers. But +reason outweighed instinct. He was fleeing for his life; nevertheless, +the strongest instinct at the time was his desire to fight. + +He knew when these three horsemen saw him, and a moment afterward he +lost sight of them as he got into the mesquite again. He meant now +to try to reach the road, and pushed his mount severely, though still +saving him for a final burst. Rocks, thickets, bunches of cactus, +washes--all operated against his following a straight line. Almost he +lost his bearings, and finally would have ridden toward his enemies +had not good fortune favored him in the matter of an open burned-over +stretch of ground. + +Here he saw both groups of pursuers, one on each side and almost within +gun-shot. Their sharp yells, as much as his cruel spurs, drove his horse +into that pace which now meant life or death for him. And never had +Duane bestrode a gamer, swifter, stancher beast. He seemed about to +accomplish the impossible. In the dragging sand he was far superior to +any horse in pursuit, and on this sandy open stretch he gained enough +to spare a little in the brush beyond. Heated now and thoroughly +terrorized, he kept the pace through thickets that almost tore Duane +from his saddle. Something weighty and grim eased off Duane. He was +going to get out in front! The horse had speed, fire, stamina. + +Duane dashed out into another open place dotted by few trees, and here, +right in his path, within pistol-range, stood horsemen waiting. They +yelled, they spurred toward him, but did not fire at him. He turned his +horse--faced to the right. Only one thing kept him from standing his +ground to fight it out. He remembered those dangling limp figures +hanging from the cottonwoods. These ranchers would rather hang an outlaw +than do anything. They might draw all his fire and then capture him. His +horror of hanging was so great as to be all out of proportion compared +to his gun-fighter's instinct of self-preservation. + +A race began then, a dusty, crashing drive through gray mesquite. Duane +could scarcely see, he was so blinded by stinging branches across his +eyes. The hollow wind roared in his ears. He lost his sense of the +nearness of his pursuers. But they must have been close. Did they +shoot at him? He imagined he heard shots. But that might have been +the cracking of dead snags. His left arm hung limp, almost useless; he +handled the rein with his right; and most of the time he hung low over +the pommel. The gray walls flashing by him, the whip of twigs, the rush +of wind, the heavy, rapid pound of hoofs, the violent motion of his +horse--these vied in sensation with the smart of sweat in his eyes, the +rack of his wound, the cold, sick cramp in his stomach. With these also +was dull, raging fury. He had to run when he wanted to fight. It took +all his mind to force back that bitter hate of himself, of his pursuers, +of this race for his useless life. + +Suddenly he burst out of a line of mesquite into the road. A long +stretch of lonely road! How fiercely, with hot, strange joy, he wheeled +his horse upon it! Then he was sweeping along, sure now that he was out +in front. His horse still had strength and speed, but showed signs of +breaking. Presently Duane looked back. Pursuers--he could not count how +many--were loping along in his rear. He paid no more attention to them, +and with teeth set he faced ahead, grimmer now in his determination to +foil them. + +He passed a few scattered ranch-houses where horses whistled from +corrals, and men curiously watched him fly past. He saw one rancher +running, and he felt intuitively that this fellow was going to join in +the chase. Duane's steed pounded on, not noticeably slower, but with a +lack of former smoothness, with a strained, convulsive, jerking stride +which showed he was almost done. + +Sight of the village ahead surprised Duane. He had reached it sooner +than he expected. Then he made a discovery--he had entered the zone of +wire fences. As he dared not turn back now, he kept on, intending to +ride through the village. Looking backward, he saw that his pursuers +were half a mile distant, too far to alarm any villagers in time to +intercept him in his flight. As he rode by the first houses his horse +broke and began to labor. Duane did not believe he would last long +enough to go through the village. + +Saddled horses in front of a store gave Duane an idea, not by any means +new, and one he had carried out successfully before. As he pulled in +his heaving mount and leaped off, a couple of ranchers came out of the +place, and one of them stepped to a clean-limbed, fiery bay. He was +about to get into his saddle when he saw Duane, and then he halted, a +foot in the stirrup. + +Duane strode forward, grasped the bridle of this man's horse. + +“Mine's done--but not killed,” he panted. “Trade with me.” + +“Wal, stranger, I'm shore always ready to trade,” drawled the man. “But +ain't you a little swift?” + +Duane glanced back up the road. His pursuers were entering the village. + +“I'm Duane--Buck Duane,” he cried, menacingly. “Will you trade? Hurry!” + +The rancher, turning white, dropped his foot from the stirrup and fell +back. + +“I reckon I'll trade,” he said. + +Bounding up, Duane dug spurs into the bay's flanks. The horse snorted +in fright, plunged into a run. He was fresh, swift, half wild. Duane +flashed by the remaining houses on the street out into the open. But the +road ended at that village or else led out from some other quarter, for +he had ridden straight into the fields and from them into rough desert. +When he reached the cover of mesquite once more he looked back to find +six horsemen within rifle-shot of him, and more coming behind them. + +His new horse had not had time to get warm before Duane reached a high +sandy bluff below which lay the willow brakes. As far as he could see +extended an immense flat strip of red-tinged willow. How welcome it was +to his eye! He felt like a hunted wolf that, weary and lame, had reached +his hole in the rocks. Zigzagging down the soft slope, he put the bay to +the dense wall of leaf and branch. But the horse balked. + +There was little time to lose. Dismounting, he dragged the stubborn +beast into the thicket. This was harder and slower work than Duane cared +to risk. If he had not been rushed he might have had better success. So +he had to abandon the horse--a circumstance that only such sore straits +could have driven him to. Then he went slipping swiftly through the +narrow aisles. + +He had not gotten under cover any too soon. For he heard his pursuers +piling over the bluff, loud-voiced, confident, brutal. They crashed into +the willows. + +“Hi, Sid! Heah's your hoss!” called one, evidently to the man Duane had +forced into a trade. + +“Say, if you locoed gents'll hold up a little I'll tell you somethin',” + replied a voice from the bluff. + +“Come on, Sid! We got him corralled,” said the first speaker. + +“Wal, mebbe, an' if you hev it's liable to be damn hot. THET FELLER WAS +BUCK DUANE!” + +Absolute silence followed that statement. Presently it was broken by a +rattling of loose gravel and then low voices. + +“He can't git across the river, I tell you,” came to Duane's ears. “He's +corralled in the brake. I know thet hole.” + +Then Duane, gliding silently and swiftly through the willows, heard no +more from his pursuers. He headed straight for the river. Threading a +passage through a willow brake was an old task for him. Many days and +nights had gone to the acquiring of a skill that might have been envied +by an Indian. + +The Rio Grande and its tributaries for the most of their length in Texas +ran between wide, low, flat lands covered by a dense growth of willow. +Cottonwood, mesquite, prickly pear, and other growths mingled with the +willow, and altogether they made a matted, tangled copse, a thicket that +an inexperienced man would have considered impenetrable. From above, +these wild brakes looked green and red; from the inside they were gray +and yellow--a striped wall. Trails and glades were scarce. There were +a few deer-runways and sometimes little paths made by peccaries--the +jabali, or wild pigs, of Mexico. The ground was clay and unusually dry, +sometimes baked so hard that it left no imprint of a track. Where a +growth of cottonwood had held back the encroachment of the willows there +usually was thick grass and underbrush. The willows were short, slender +poles with stems so close together that they almost touched, and with +the leafy foliage forming a thick covering. The depths of this brake +Duane had penetrated was a silent, dreamy, strange place. In the middle +of the day the light was weird and dim. When a breeze fluttered the +foliage, then slender shafts and spears of sunshine pierced the green +mantle and danced like gold on the ground. + +Duane had always felt the strangeness of this kind of place, and +likewise he had felt a protecting, harboring something which always +seemed to him to be the sympathy of the brake for a hunted creature. Any +unwounded creature, strong and resourceful, was safe when he had glided +under the low, rustling green roof of this wild covert. It was not hard +to conceal tracks; the springy soil gave forth no sound; and men could +hunt each other for weeks, pass within a few yards of each other and +never know it. The problem of sustaining life was difficult; but, then, +hunted men and animals survived on very little. + +Duane wanted to cross the river if that was possible, and, keeping +in the brake, work his way upstream till he had reached country more +hospitable. Remembering what the man had said in regard to the river, +Duane had his doubts about crossing. But he would take any chance to put +the river between him and his hunters. He pushed on. His left arm had to +be favored, as he could scarcely move it. Using his right to spread the +willows, he slipped sideways between them and made fast time. There +were narrow aisles and washes and holes low down and paths brushed by +animals, all of which he took advantage of, running, walking, crawling, +stooping any way to get along. To keep in a straight line was not +easy--he did it by marking some bright sunlit stem or tree ahead, and +when he reached it looked straight on to mark another. His progress +necessarily grew slower, for as he advanced the brake became wilder, +denser, darker. Mosquitoes began to whine about his head. He kept on +without pause. Deepening shadows under the willows told him that the +afternoon was far advanced. He began to fear he had wandered in a wrong +direction. Finally a strip of light ahead relieved his anxiety, and +after a toilsome penetration of still denser brush he broke through to +the bank of the river. + +He faced a wide, shallow, muddy stream with brakes on the opposite bank +extending like a green and yellow wall. Duane perceived at a glance the +futility of his trying to cross at this point. Everywhere the sluggish +water raved quicksand bars. In fact, the bed of the river was all +quicksand, and very likely there was not a foot of water anywhere. He +could not swim; he could not crawl; he could not push a log across. Any +solid thing touching that smooth yellow sand would be grasped and sucked +down. To prove this he seized a long pole and, reaching down from the +high bank, thrust it into the stream. Right there near shore there +apparently was no bottom to the treacherous quicksand. He abandoned any +hope of crossing the river. Probably for miles up and down it would be +just the same as here. Before leaving the bank he tied his hat upon the +pole and lifted enough water to quench his thirst. Then he worked his +way back to where thinner growth made advancement easier, and kept on +up-stream till the shadows were so deep he could not see. Feeling around +for a place big enough to stretch out on, he lay down. For the time +being he was as safe there as he would have been beyond in the Rim Rock. +He was tired, though not exhausted, and in spite of the throbbing pain +in his arm he dropped at once into sleep. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +Some time during the night Duane awoke. A stillness seemingly so thick +and heavy as to have substance blanketed the black willow brake. He +could not see a star or a branch or tree-trunk or even his hand before +his eyes. He lay there waiting, listening, sure that he had been +awakened by an unusual sound. Ordinary noises of the night in the +wilderness never disturbed his rest. His faculties, like those of +old fugitives and hunted creatures, had become trained to a marvelous +keenness. A long low breath of slow wind moaned through the willows, +passed away; some stealthy, soft-footed beast trotted by him in the +darkness; there was a rustling among dry leaves; a fox barked lonesomely +in the distance. But none of these sounds had broken his slumber. + +Suddenly, piercing the stillness, came a bay of a bloodhound. Quickly +Duane sat up, chilled to his marrow. The action made him aware of +his crippled arm. Then came other bays, lower, more distant. Silence +enfolded him again, all the more oppressive and menacing in his +suspense. Bloodhounds had been put on his trail, and the leader was not +far away. All his life Duane had been familiar with bloodhounds; and he +knew that if the pack surrounded him in this impenetrable darkness he +would be held at bay or dragged down as wolves dragged a stag. Rising to +his feet, prepared to flee as best he could, he waited to be sure of the +direction he should take. + +The leader of the hounds broke into cry again, a deep, full-toned, +ringing bay, strange, ominous, terribly significant in its power. It +caused a cold sweat to ooze out all over Duane's body. He turned from +it, and with his uninjured arm outstretched to feel for the willows +he groped his way along. As it was impossible to pick out the narrow +passages, he had to slip and squeeze and plunge between the yielding +stems. He made such a crashing that he no longer heard the baying of +the hounds. He had no hope to elude them. He meant to climb the first +cottonwood that he stumbled upon in his blind flight. But it appeared +he never was going to be lucky enough to run against one. Often he fell, +sometimes flat, at others upheld by the willows. What made the work +so hard was the fact that he had only one arm to open a clump of +close-growing stems and his feet would catch or tangle in the narrow +crotches, holding him fast. He had to struggle desperately. It was as if +the willows were clutching hands, his enemies, fiendishly impeding his +progress. He tore his clothes on sharp branches and his flesh suffered +many a prick. But in a terrible earnestness he kept on until he brought +up hard against a cottonwood tree. + +There he leaned and rested. He found himself as nearly exhausted as he +had ever been, wet with sweat, his hands torn and burning, his breast +laboring, his legs stinging from innumerable bruises. While he leaned +there to catch his breath he listened for the pursuing hounds. For a +long time there was no sound from them. This, however, did not deceive +him into any hopefulness. There were bloodhounds that bayed often on a +trail, and others that ran mostly silent. The former were more valuable +to their owner and the latter more dangerous to the fugitive. Presently +Duane's ears were filled by a chorus of short ringing yelps. The pack +had found where he had slept, and now the trail was hot. Satisfied that +they would soon overtake him, Duane set about climbing the cottonwood, +which in his condition was difficult of ascent. + +It happened to be a fairly large tree with a fork about fifteen feet up, +and branches thereafter in succession. Duane climbed until he got above +the enshrouding belt of blackness. A pale gray mist hung above the +brake, and through it shone a line of dim lights. Duane decided these +were bonfires made along the bluff to render his escape more difficult +on that side. Away round in the direction he thought was north he +imagined he saw more fires, but, as the mist was thick, he could not be +sure. While he sat there pondering the matter, listening for the hounds, +the mist and the gloom on one side lightened; and this side he concluded +was east and meant that dawn was near. Satisfying himself on this score, +he descended to the first branch of the tree. + +His situation now, though still critical, did not appear to be so +hopeless as it had been. The hounds would soon close in on him, and +he would kill them or drive them away. It was beyond the bounds of +possibility that any men could have followed running hounds through that +brake in the night. The thing that worried Duane was the fact of the +bonfires. He had gathered from the words of one of his pursuers that the +brake was a kind of trap, and he began to believe there was only one way +out of it, and that was along the bank where he had entered, and where +obviously all night long his pursuers had kept fires burning. Further +conjecture on this point, however, was interrupted by a crashing in the +willows and the rapid patter of feet. + +Underneath Duane lay a gray, foggy obscurity. He could not see the +ground, nor any object but the black trunk of the tree. Sight would +not be needed to tell him when the pack arrived. With a pattering rush +through the willows the hounds reached the tree; and then high above +crash of brush and thud of heavy paws rose a hideous clamor. Duane's +pursuers far off to the south would hear that and know what it meant. +And at daybreak, perhaps before, they would take a short cut across the +brake, guided by the baying of hounds that had treed their quarry. + +It wanted only a few moments, however, till Duane could distinguish the +vague forms of the hounds in the gray shadow below. Still he waited. He +had no shots to spare. And he knew how to treat bloodhounds. Gradually +the obscurity lightened, and at length Duane had good enough sight of +the hounds for his purpose. His first shot killed the huge brute leader +of the pack. Then, with unerring shots, he crippled several others. That +stopped the baying. Piercing howls arose. The pack took fright and fled, +its course easily marked by the howls of the crippled members. Duane +reloaded his gun, and, making certain all the hounds had gone, he +descended to the ground and set off at a rapid pace to the northward. + +The mist had dissolved under a rising sun when Duane made his first +halt some miles north of the scene where he had waited for the hounds. A +barrier to further progress, in shape of a precipitous rocky bluff, rose +sheer from the willow brake. He skirted the base of the cliff, where +walking was comparatively easy, around in the direction of the river. He +reached the end finally to see there was absolutely no chance to escape +from the brake at that corner. It took extreme labor, attended by some +hazard and considerable pain to his arm, to get down where he could fill +his sombrero with water. After quenching his thirst he had a look at his +wound. It was caked over with blood and dirt. When washed off the arm +was seen to be inflamed and swollen around the bullet-hole. He bathed +it, experiencing a soothing relief in the cool water. Then he bandaged +it as best he could and arranged a sling round his neck. This mitigated +the pain of the injured member and held it in a quiet and restful +position, where it had a chance to begin mending. + +As Duane turned away from the river he felt refreshed. His great +strength and endurance had always made fatigue something almost unknown +to him. However, tramping on foot day and night was as unusual to him as +to any other riders of the Southwest, and it had begun to tell on him. +Retracing his steps, he reached the point where he had abruptly come +upon the bluff, and here he determined to follow along its base in the +other direction until he found a way out or discovered the futility of +such effort. + +Duane covered ground rapidly. From time to time he paused to listen. But +he was always listening, and his eyes were ever roving. This alertness +had become second nature with him, so that except in extreme cases +of caution he performed it while he pondered his gloomy and fateful +situation. Such habit of alertness and thought made time fly swiftly. + +By noon he had rounded the wide curve of the brake and was facing +south. The bluff had petered out from a high, mountainous wall to a +low abutment of rock, but it still held to its steep, rough nature and +afforded no crack or slope where quick ascent could have been possible. +He pushed on, growing warier as he approached the danger-zone, finding +that as he neared the river on this side it was imperative to go deeper +into the willows. In the afternoon he reached a point where he could see +men pacing to and fro on the bluff. This assured him that whatever place +was guarded was one by which he might escape. He headed toward these men +and approached to within a hundred paces of the bluff where they were. +There were several men and several boys, all armed and, after the manner +of Texans, taking their task leisurely. Farther down Duane made out +black dots on the horizon of the bluff-line, and these he concluded were +more guards stationed at another outlet. Probably all the available men +in the district were on duty. Texans took a grim pleasure in such work. +Duane remembered that upon several occasions he had served such duty +himself. + +Duane peered through the branches and studied the lay of the land. For +several hundred yards the bluff could be climbed. He took stock of those +careless guards. They had rifles, and that made vain any attempt to pass +them in daylight. He believed an attempt by night might be successful; +and he was swiftly coming to a determination to hide there till dark and +then try it, when the sudden yelping of a dog betrayed him to the guards +on the bluff. + +The dog had likely been placed there to give an alarm, and he was +lustily true to his trust. Duane saw the men run together and begin to +talk excitedly and peer into the brake, which was a signal for him to +slip away under the willows. He made no noise, and he assured himself he +must be invisible. Nevertheless, he heard shouts, then the cracking of +rifles, and bullets began to zip and swish through the leafy covert. The +day was hot and windless, and Duane concluded that whenever he touched +a willow stem, even ever so slightly, it vibrated to the top and sent +a quiver among the leaves. Through this the guards had located his +position. Once a bullet hissed by him; another thudded into the ground +before him. This shooting loosed a rage in Duane. He had to fly from +these men, and he hated them and himself because of it. Always in +the fury of such moments he wanted to give back shot for shot. But +he slipped on through the willows, and at length the rifles ceased to +crack. + +He sheered to the left again, in line with the rocky barrier, and kept +on, wondering what the next mile would bring. + +It brought worse, for he was seen by sharp-eyed scouts, and a hot +fusillade drove him to run for his life, luckily to escape with no more +than a bullet-creased shoulder. + +Later that day, still undaunted, he sheered again toward the trap-wall, +and found that the nearer he approached to the place where he had +come down into the brake the greater his danger. To attempt to run the +blockade of that trail by day would be fatal. He waited for night, and +after the brightness of the fires had somewhat lessened he assayed to +creep out of the brake. He succeeded in reaching the foot of the bluff, +here only a bank, and had begun to crawl stealthily up under cover of +a shadow when a hound again betrayed his position. Retreating to the +willows was as perilous a task as had ever confronted Duane, and when he +had accomplished it, right under what seemed a hundred blazing rifles, +he felt that he had indeed been favored by Providence. This time men +followed him a goodly ways into the brake, and the ripping of lead +through the willows sounded on all sides of him. + +When the noise of pursuit ceased Duane sat down in the darkness, his +mind clamped between two things--whether to try again to escape or +wait for possible opportunity. He seemed incapable of decision. His +intelligence told him that every hour lessened his chances for escape. +He had little enough chance in any case, and that was what made another +attempt so desperately hard. Still it was not love of life that bound +him. There would come an hour, sooner or later, when he would wrench +decision out of this chaos of emotion and thought. But that time was not +yet. He had remained quiet long enough to cool off and recover from his +run he found that he was tired. He stretched out to rest. But the swarms +of vicious mosquitoes prevented sleep. This corner of the brake was low +and near the river, a breeding-ground for the blood-suckers. They sang +and hummed and whined around him in an ever-increasing horde. He covered +his head and hands with his coat and lay there patiently. That was a +long and wretched night. Morning found him still strong physically, but +in a dreadful state of mind. + +First he hurried for the river. He could withstand the pangs of hunger, +but it was imperative to quench thirst. His wound made him feverish, +and therefore more than usually hot and thirsty. Again he was refreshed. +That morning he was hard put to it to hold himself back from attempting +to cross the river. If he could find a light log it was within the +bounds of possibility that he might ford the shallow water and bars of +quicksand. But not yet! Wearily, doggedly he faced about toward the +bluff. + +All that day and all that night, all the next day and all the next +night, he stole like a hunted savage from river to bluff; and every hour +forced upon him the bitter certainty that he was trapped. + +Duane lost track of days, of events. He had come to an evil pass. +There arrived an hour when, closely pressed by pursuers at the extreme +southern corner of the brake, he took to a dense thicket of willows, +driven to what he believed was his last stand. + +If only these human bloodhounds would swiftly close in on him! Let him +fight to the last bitter gasp and have it over! But these hunters, eager +as they were to get him, had care of their own skins. They took few +risks. They had him cornered. + +It was the middle of the day, hot, dusty, oppressive, threatening storm. +Like a snake Duane crawled into a little space in the darkest part of +the thicket and lay still. Men had cut him off from the bluff, from the +river, seemingly from all sides. But he heard voices only from in front +and toward his left. Even if his passage to the river had not been +blocked, it might just as well have been. + +“Come on fellers--down hyar,” called one man from the bluff. + +“Got him corralled at last,” shouted another. + +“Reckon ye needn't be too shore. We thought thet more'n once,” taunted +another. + +“I seen him, I tell you.” + +“Aw, thet was a deer.” + +“But Bill found fresh tracks an' blood on the willows.” + +“If he's winged we needn't hurry.” + +“Hold on thar, you boys,” came a shout in authoritative tones from +farther up the bluff. “Go slow. You-all air gittin' foolish at the end +of a long chase.” + +“Thet's right, Colonel. Hold 'em back. There's nothin' shorer than +somebody'll be stoppin' lead pretty quick. He'll be huntin' us soon!” + +“Let's surround this corner an' starve him out.” + +“Fire the brake.” + +How clearly all this talk pierced Duane's ears! In it he seemed to hear +his doom. This, then, was the end he had always expected, which had been +close to him before, yet never like now. + +“By God!” whispered Duane, “the thing for me to do now--is go out--meet +them!” + +That was prompted by the fighting, the killing instinct in him. In that +moment it had almost superhuman power. If he must die, that was the way +for him to die. What else could be expected of Buck Duane? He got to his +knees and drew his gun. With his swollen and almost useless hand he held +what spare ammunition he had left. He ought to creep out noiselessly to +the edge of the willows, suddenly face his pursuers, then, while there +was a beat left in his heart, kill, kill, kill. These men all had +rifles. The fight would be short. But the marksmen did not live on earth +who could make such a fight go wholly against him. Confronting them +suddenly he could kill a man for every shot in his gun. + +Thus Duane reasoned. So he hoped to accept his fate--to meet this end. +But when he tried to step forward something checked him. He forced +himself; yet he could not go. The obstruction that opposed his will was +as insurmountable as it had been physically impossible for him to climb +the bluff. + +Slowly he fell back, crouched low, and then lay flat. The grim and +ghastly dignity that had been his a moment before fell away from him. He +lay there stripped of his last shred of self-respect. He wondered was +he afraid; had he, the last of the Duanes--had he come to feel fear? No! +Never in all his wild life had he so longed to go out and meet men face +to face. It was not fear that held him back. He hated this hiding, +this eternal vigilance, this hopeless life. The damnable paradox of the +situation was that if he went out to meet these men there was absolutely +no doubt of his doom. If he clung to his covert there was a chance, a +merest chance, for his life. These pursuers, dogged and unflagging as +they had been, were mortally afraid of him. It was his fame that made +them cowards. Duane's keenness told him that at the very darkest and +most perilous moment there was still a chance for him. And the blood in +him, the temper of his father, the years of his outlawry, the pride of +his unsought and hated career, the nameless, inexplicable something in +him made him accept that slim chance. + +Waiting then became a physical and mental agony. He lay under the +burning sun, parched by thirst, laboring to breathe, sweating and +bleeding. His uncared-for wound was like a red-hot prong in his +flesh. Blotched and swollen from the never-ending attack of flies and +mosquitoes his face seemed twice its natural size, and it ached and +stung. + +On one side, then, was this physical torture; on the other the old hell, +terribly augmented at this crisis, in his mind. It seemed that thought +and imagination had never been so swift. If death found him presently, +how would it come? Would he get decent burial or be left for the +peccaries and the coyotes? Would his people ever know where he had +fallen? How wretched, how miserable his state! It was cowardly, it was +monstrous for him to cling longer to this doomed life. Then the hate in +his heart, the hellish hate of these men on his trail--that was like a +scourge. He felt no longer human. He had degenerated into an animal that +could think. His heart pounded, his pulse beat, his breast heaved; +and this internal strife seemed to thunder into his ears. He was now +enacting the tragedy of all crippled, starved, hunted wolves at bay in +their dens. Only his tragedy was infinitely more terrible because he +had mind enough to see his plight, his resemblance to a lonely wolf, +bloody-fanged, dripping, snarling, fire-eyed in a last instinctive +defiance. + +Mounted upon the horror of Duane's thought was a watching, listening +intensity so supreme that it registered impressions which were creations +of his imagination. He heard stealthy steps that were not there; he saw +shadowy moving figures that were only leaves. A hundred times when he +was about to pull trigger he discovered his error. Yet voices came from +a distance, and steps and crackings in the willows, and other sounds +real enough. But Duane could not distinguish the real from the false. +There were times when the wind which had arisen sent a hot, pattering +breath down the willow aisles, and Duane heard it as an approaching +army. + +This straining of Duane's faculties brought on a reaction which in +itself was a respite. He saw the sun darkened by thick slow spreading +clouds. A storm appeared to be coming. How slowly it moved! The air +was like steam. If there broke one of those dark, violent storms common +though rare to the country, Duane believed he might slip away in the +fury of wind and rain. Hope, that seemed unquenchable in him, resurged +again. He hailed it with a bitterness that was sickening. + +Then at a rustling step he froze into the old strained attention. He +heard a slow patter of soft feet. A tawny shape crossed a little opening +in the thicket. It was that of a dog. The moment while that beast came +into full view was an age. The dog was not a bloodhound, and if he had +a trail or a scent he seemed to be at fault on it. Duane waited for the +inevitable discovery. Any kind of a hunting-dog could have found him +in that thicket. Voices from outside could be heard urging on the dog. +Rover they called him. Duane sat up at the moment the dog entered the +little shaded covert. Duane expected a yelping, a baying, or at least +a bark that would tell of his hiding-place. A strange relief swiftly +swayed over Duane. The end was near now. He had no further choice. Let +them come--a quick fierce exchange of shots--and then this torture past! +He waited for the dog to give the alarm. + +But the dog looked at him and trotted by into the thicket without a +yelp. Duane could not believe the evidence of his senses. He thought he +had suddenly gone deaf. He saw the dog disappear, heard him running to +and fro among the willows, getting farther and farther away, till all +sound from him ceased. + +“Thar's Rover,” called a voice from the bluff-side. “He's been through +thet black patch.” + +“Nary a rabbit in there,” replied another. + +“Bah! Thet pup's no good,” scornfully growled another man. “Put a hound +at thet clump of willows.” + +“Fire's the game. Burn the brake before the rain comes.” + +The voices droned off as their owners evidently walked up the ridge. + +Then upon Duane fell the crushing burden of the old waiting, watching, +listening spell. After all, it was not to end just now. His chance still +persisted--looked a little brighter--led him on, perhaps, to forlorn +hope. + +All at once twilight settled quickly down upon the willow brake, or else +Duane noted it suddenly. He imagined it to be caused by the approaching +storm. But there was little movement of air or cloud, and thunder still +muttered and rumbled at a distance. The fact was the sun had set, and at +this time of overcast sky night was at hand. + +Duane realized it with the awakening of all his old force. He would yet +elude his pursuers. That was the moment when he seized the significance +of all these fortunate circumstances which had aided him. Without haste +and without sound he began to crawl in the direction of the river. It +was not far, and he reached the bank before darkness set in. There were +men up on the bluff carrying wood to build a bonfire. For a moment he +half yielded to a temptation to try to slip along the river-shore, close +in under the willows. But when he raised himself to peer out he saw that +an attempt of this kind would be liable to failure. At the same moment +he saw a rough-hewn plank lying beneath him, lodged against some +willows. The end of the plank extended in almost to a point beneath him. +Quick as a flash he saw where a desperate chance invited him. Then he +tied his gun in an oilskin bag and put it in his pocket. + +The bank was steep and crumbly. He must not break off any earth to +splash into the water. There was a willow growing back some few feet +from the edge of the bank. Cautiously he pulled it down, bent it over +the water so that when he released it there would be no springing back. +Then he trusted his weight to it, with his feet sliding carefully +down the bank. He went into the water almost up to his knees, felt +the quicksand grip his feet; then, leaning forward till he reached the +plank, he pulled it toward him and lay upon it. + +Without a sound one end went slowly under water and the farther end +appeared lightly braced against the overhanging willows. Very carefully +then Duane began to extricate his right foot from the sucking sand. +It seemed as if his foot was incased in solid rock. But there was a +movement upward, and he pulled with all the power he dared use. It +came slowly and at length was free. The left one he released with less +difficulty. The next few moments he put all his attention on the plank +to ascertain if his weight would sink it into the sand. The far end +slipped off the willows with a little splash and gradually settled +to rest upon the bottom. But it sank no farther, and Duane's greatest +concern was relieved. However, as it was manifestly impossible for him +to keep his head up for long he carefully crawled out upon the plank +until he could rest an arm and shoulder upon the willows. + +When he looked up it was to find the night strangely luminous with +fires. There was a bonfire on the extreme end of the bluff, another +a hundred paces beyond. A great flare extended over the brake in that +direction. Duane heard a roaring on the wind, and he knew his pursuers +had fired the willows. He did not believe that would help them much. +The brake was dry enough, but too green to burn readily. And as for the +bonfires he discovered that the men, probably having run out of wood, +were keeping up the light with oil and stuff from the village. A dozen +men kept watch on the bluff scarcely fifty paces from where Duane lay +concealed by the willows. They talked, cracked jokes, sang songs, and +manifestly considered this outlaw-hunting a great lark. As long as the +bright light lasted Duane dared not move. He had the patience and the +endurance to wait for the breaking of the storm, and if that did not +come, then the early hour before dawn when the gray fog and gloom were +over the river. + +Escape was now in his grasp. He felt it. And with that in his mind he +waited, strong as steel in his conviction, capable of withstanding any +strain endurable by the human frame. + +The wind blew in puffs, grew wilder, and roared through the willows, +carrying bright sparks upward. Thunder rolled down over the river, and +lightning began to flash. Then the rain fell in heavy sheets, but +not steadily. The flashes of lightning and the broad flares played so +incessantly that Duane could not trust himself out on the open river. +Certainly the storm rather increased the watchfulness of the men on +the bluff. He knew how to wait, and he waited, grimly standing pain and +cramp and chill. The storm wore away as desultorily as it had come, +and the long night set in. There were times when Duane thought he was +paralyzed, others when he grew sick, giddy, weak from the strained +posture. The first paling of the stars quickened him with a kind of wild +joy. He watched them grow paler, dimmer, disappear one by one. A shadow +hovered down, rested upon the river, and gradually thickened. The +bonfire on the bluff showed as through a foggy veil. The watchers were +mere groping dark figures. + +Duane, aware of how cramped he had become from long inaction, began +to move his legs and uninjured arm and body, and at length overcame a +paralyzing stiffness. Then, digging his hand in the sand and holding the +plank with his knees, he edged it out into the river. Inch by inch he +advanced until clear of the willows. Looking upward, he saw the shadowy +figures of the men on the bluff. He realized they ought to see him, +feared that they would. But he kept on, cautiously, noiselessly, with a +heart-numbing slowness. From time to time his elbow made a little gurgle +and splash in the water. Try as he might, he could not prevent this. It +got to be like the hollow roar of a rapid filling his ears with mocking +sound. There was a perceptible current out in the river, and it hindered +straight advancement. Inch by inch he crept on, expecting to hear +the bang of rifles, the spattering of bullets. He tried not to look +backward, but failed. The fire appeared a little dimmer, the moving +shadows a little darker. + +Once the plank stuck in the sand and felt as if it were settling. +Bringing feet to aid his hand, he shoved it over the treacherous place. +This way he made faster progress. The obscurity of the river seemed to +be enveloping him. When he looked back again the figures of the men were +coalescing with the surrounding gloom, the fires were streaky, blurred +patches of light. But the sky above was brighter. Dawn was not far off. + +To the west all was dark. With infinite care and implacable spirit +and waning strength Duane shoved the plank along, and when at last he +discerned the black border of bank it came in time, he thought, to save +him. He crawled out, rested till the gray dawn broke, and then headed +north through the willows. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +How long Duane was traveling out of that region he never knew. But he +reached familiar country and found a rancher who had before befriended +him. Here his arm was attended to; he had food and sleep; and in a +couple of weeks he was himself again. + +When the time came for Duane to ride away on his endless trail his +friend reluctantly imparted the information that some thirty miles +south, near the village of Shirley, there was posted at a certain +cross-road a reward for Buck Duane dead or alive. Duane had heard of +such notices, but he had never seen one. His friend's reluctance and +refusal to state for what particular deed this reward was offered roused +Duane's curiosity. He had never been any closer to Shirley than this +rancher's home. Doubtless some post-office burglary, some gun-shooting +scrape had been attributed to him. And he had been accused of worse +deeds. Abruptly Duane decided to ride over there and find out who wanted +him dead or alive, and why. + +As he started south on the road he reflected that this was the first +time he had ever deliberately hunted trouble. Introspection awarded him +this knowledge; during that last terrible flight on the lower Nueces +and while he lay abed recuperating he had changed. A fixed, immutable, +hopeless bitterness abided with him. He had reached the end of his rope. +All the power of his mind and soul were unavailable to turn him back +from his fate. + +That fate was to become an outlaw in every sense of the term, to be +what he was credited with being--that is to say, to embrace evil. He +had never committed a crime. He wondered now was crime close to him? He +reasoned finally that the desperation of crime had been forced upon +him, if not its motive; and that if driven, there was no limit to his +possibilities. He understood now many of the hitherto inexplicable +actions of certain noted outlaws--why they had returned to the scene +of the crime that had outlawed them; why they took such strangely fatal +chances; why life was no more to them than a breath of wind; why they +rode straight into the jaws of death to confront wronged men or +hunting rangers, vigilantes, to laugh in their very faces. It was such +bitterness as this that drove these men. + +Toward afternoon, from the top of a long hill, Duane saw the green +fields and trees and shining roofs of a town he considered must be +Shirley. And at the bottom of the hill he came upon an intersecting +road. There was a placard nailed on the crossroad sign-post. Duane drew +rein near it and leaned close to read the faded print. $1000 REWARD FOR +BUCK DUANE DEAD OR ALIVE. Peering closer to read the finer, more faded +print, Duane learned that he was wanted for the murder of Mrs. Jeff +Aiken at her ranch near Shirley. The month September was named, but the +date was illegible. The reward was offered by the woman's husband, whose +name appeared with that of a sheriff's at the bottom of the placard. + +Duane read the thing twice. When he straightened he was sick with the +horror of his fate, wild with passion at those misguided fools who could +believe that he had harmed a woman. Then he remembered Kate Bland, and, +as always when she returned to him, he quaked inwardly. Years before +word had gone abroad that he had killed her, and so it was easy for +men wanting to fix a crime to name him. Perhaps it had been done often. +Probably he bore on his shoulders a burden of numberless crimes. + +A dark, passionate fury possessed him. It shook him like a storm +shakes the oak. When it passed, leaving him cold, with clouded brow and +piercing eye, his mind was set. Spurring his horse, he rode straight +toward the village. + +Shirley appeared to be a large, pretentious country town. A branch of +some railroad terminated there. The main street was wide, bordered by +trees and commodious houses, and many of the stores were of brick. +A large plaza shaded by giant cottonwood trees occupied a central +location. + +Duane pulled his running horse and halted him, plunging and snorting, +before a group of idle men who lounged on benches in the shade of a +spreading cottonwood. How many times had Duane seen just that kind of +lazy shirt-sleeved Texas group! Not often, however, had he seen such +placid, lolling, good-natured men change their expression, their +attitude so swiftly. His advent apparently was momentous. They evidently +took him for an unusual visitor. So far as Duane could tell, not one of +them recognized him, had a hint of his identity. + +He slid off his horse and threw the bridle. + +“I'm Buck Duane,” he said. “I saw that placard--out there on a +sign-post. It's a damn lie! Somebody find this man Jeff Aiken. I want to +see him.” + +His announcement was taken in absolute silence. That was the only effect +he noted, for he avoided looking at these villagers. The reason was +simple enough; Duane felt himself overcome with emotion. There were +tears in his eyes. He sat down on a bench, put his elbows on his knees +and his hands to his face. For once he had absolutely no concern for his +fate. This ignominy was the last straw. + +Presently, however, he became aware of some kind of commotion among +these villagers. He heard whisperings, low, hoarse voices, then the +shuffle of rapid feet moving away. All at once a violent hand jerked +his gun from its holster. When Duane rose a gaunt man, livid of face, +shaking like a leaf, confronted him with his own gun. + +“Hands up, thar, you Buck Duane!” he roared, waving the gun. + +That appeared to be the cue for pandemonium to break loose. Duane opened +his lips to speak, but if he had yelled at the top of his lungs he could +not have made himself heard. In weary disgust he looked at the gaunt +man, and then at the others, who were working themselves into a frenzy. +He made no move, however, to hold up his hands. The villagers surrounded +him, emboldened by finding him now unarmed. Then several men lay hold of +his arms and pinioned them behind his back. Resistance was useless even +if Duane had had the spirit. Some one of them fetched his halter from +his saddle, and with this they bound him helpless. + +People were running now from the street, the stores, the houses. Old +men, cowboys, clerks, boys, ranchers came on the trot. The crowd grew. +The increasing clamor began to attract women as well as men. A group of +girls ran up, then hung back in fright and pity. + +The presence of cowboys made a difference. They split up the crowd, got +to Duane, and lay hold of him with rough, businesslike hands. One of +them lifted his fists and roared at the frenzied mob to fall back, to +stop the racket. He beat them back into a circle; but it was some little +time before the hubbub quieted down so a voice could be heard. + +“Shut up, will you-all?” he was yelling. “Give us a chance to hear +somethin'. Easy now--soho. There ain't nobody goin' to be hurt. Thet's +right; everybody quiet now. Let's see what's come off.” + +This cowboy, evidently one of authority, or at least one of strong +personality, turned to the gaunt man, who still waved Duane's gun. + +“Abe, put the gun down,” he said. “It might go off. Here, give it to me. +Now, what's wrong? Who's this roped gent, an' what's he done?” + +The gaunt fellow, who appeared now about to collapse, lifted a shaking +hand and pointed. + +“Thet thar feller--he's Buck Duane!” he panted. + +An angry murmur ran through the surrounding crowd. + +“The rope! The rope! Throw it over a branch! String him up!” cried an +excited villager. + +“Buck Duane! Buck Duane!” + +“Hang him!” + +The cowboy silenced these cries. + +“Abe, how do you know this fellow is Buck Duane?” he asked, sharply. + +“Why--he said so,” replied the man called Abe. + +“What!” came the exclamation, incredulously. + +“It's a tarnal fact,” panted Abe, waving his hands importantly. He was +an old man and appeared to be carried away with the significance of his +deed. “He like to rid' his hoss right over us-all. Then he jumped off, +says he was Buck Duane, an' he wanted to see Jeff Aiken bad.” + +This speech caused a second commotion as noisy though not so enduring +as the first. When the cowboy, assisted by a couple of his mates, had +restored order again some one had slipped the noose-end of Duane's rope +over his head. + +“Up with him!” screeched a wild-eyed youth. + +The mob surged closer was shoved back by the cowboys. + +“Abe, if you ain't drunk or crazy tell thet over,” ordered Abe's +interlocutor. + +With some show of resentment and more of dignity Abe reiterated his +former statement. + +“If he's Buck Duane how'n hell did you get hold of his gun?” bluntly +queried the cowboy. + +“Why--he set down thar--an' he kind of hid his face on his hand. An' I +grabbed his gun an' got the drop on him.” + +What the cowboy thought of this was expressed in a laugh. His mates +likewise grinned broadly. Then the leader turned to Duane. + +“Stranger, I reckon you'd better speak up for yourself,” he said. + +That stilled the crowd as no command had done. + +“I'm Buck Duane, all right.” said Duane, quietly. “It was this way--” + +The big cowboy seemed to vibrate with a shock. All the ruddy warmth left +his face; his jaw began to bulge; the corded veins in his neck stood out +in knots. In an instant he had a hard, stern, strange look. He shot out +a powerful hand that fastened in the front of Duane's blouse. + +“Somethin' queer here. But if you're Duane you're sure in bad. Any fool +ought to know that. You mean it, then?” + +“Yes.” + +“Rode in to shoot up the town, eh? Same old stunt of you gunfighters? +Meant to kill the man who offered a reward? Wanted to see Jeff Aiken +bad, huh?” + +“No,” replied Duane. “Your citizen here misrepresented things. He seems +a little off his head.” + +“Reckon he is. Somebody is, that's sure. You claim Buck Duane, then, an' +all his doings?” + +“I'm Duane; yes. But I won't stand for the blame of things I never did. +That's why I'm here. I saw that placard out there offering the reward. +Until now I never was within half a day's ride of this town. I'm blamed +for what I never did. I rode in here, told who I was, asked somebody to +send for Jeff Aiken.” + +“An' then you set down an' let this old guy throw your own gun on you?” + queried the cowboy in amazement. + +“I guess that's it,” replied Duane. + +“Well, it's powerful strange, if you're really Buck Duane.” + +A man elbowed his way into the circle. + +“It's Duane. I recognize him. I seen him in more'n one place,” he said. +“Sibert, you can rely on what I tell you. I don't know if he's locoed or +what. But I do know he's the genuine Buck Duane. Any one who'd ever seen +him onct would never forget him.” + +“What do you want to see Aiken for?” asked the cowboy Sibert. + +“I want to face him, and tell him I never harmed his wife.” + +“Why?” + +“Because I'm innocent, that's all.” + +“Suppose we send for Aiken an' he hears you an' doesn't believe you; +what then?” + +“If he won't believe me--why, then my case's so bad--I'd be better off +dead.” + +A momentary silence was broken by Sibert. + +“If this isn't a queer deal! Boys, reckon we'd better send for Jeff.” + +“Somebody went fer him. He'll be comin' soon,” replied a man. + +Duane stood a head taller than that circle of curious faces. He gazed +out above and beyond them. It was in this way that he chanced to see a +number of women on the outskirts of the crowd. Some were old, with +hard faces, like the men. Some were young and comely, and most of these +seemed agitated by excitement or distress. They cast fearful, pitying +glances upon Duane as he stood there with that noose round his neck. +Women were more human than men, Duane thought. He met eyes that dilated, +seemed fascinated at his gaze, but were not averted. It was the old +women who were voluble, loud in expression of their feelings. + +Near the trunk of the cottonwood stood a slender woman in white. Duane's +wandering glance rested upon her. Her eyes were riveted upon him. A +soft-hearted woman, probably, who did not want to see him hanged! + +“Thar comes Jeff Aiken now,” called a man, loudly. + +The crowd shifted and trampled in eagerness. + +Duane saw two men coming fast, one of whom, in the lead, was of stalwart +build. He had a gun in his hand, and his manner was that of fierce +energy. + +The cowboy Sibert thrust open the jostling circle of men. + +“Hold on, Jeff,” he called, and he blocked the man with the gun. He +spoke so low Duane could not hear what he said, and his form hid Aiken's +face. At that juncture the crowd spread out, closed in, and Aiken +and Sibert were caught in the circle. There was a pushing forward, a +pressing of many bodies, hoarse cries and flinging hands--again the +insane tumult was about to break out--the demand for an outlaw's blood, +the call for a wild justice executed a thousand times before on Texas's +bloody soil. + +Sibert bellowed at the dark encroaching mass. The cowboys with him beat +and cuffed in vain. + +“Jeff, will you listen?” broke in Sibert, hurriedly, his hand on the +other man's arm. + +Aiken nodded coolly. Duane, who had seen many men in perfect control of +themselves under circumstances like these, recognized the spirit that +dominated Aiken. He was white, cold, passionless. There were lines of +bitter grief deep round his lips. If Duane ever felt the meaning of +death he felt it then. + +“Sure this 's your game, Aiken,” said Sibert. “But hear me a minute. +Reckon there's no doubt about this man bein' Buck Duane. He seen the +placard out at the cross-roads. He rides in to Shirley. He says he's +Buck Duane an' he's lookin' for Jeff Aiken. That's all clear enough. +You know how these gunfighters go lookin' for trouble. But here's +what stumps me. Duane sits down there on the bench and lets old Abe +Strickland grab his gun ant get the drop on him. More'n that, he gives +me some strange talk about how, if he couldn't make you believe he's +innocent, he'd better be dead. You see for yourself Duane ain't drunk or +crazy or locoed. He doesn't strike me as a man who rode in here huntin' +blood. So I reckon you'd better hold on till you hear what he has to +say.” + +Then for the first time the drawn-faced, hungry-eyed giant turned his +gaze upon Duane. He had intelligence which was not yet subservient to +passion. Moreover, he seemed the kind of man Duane would care to have +judge him in a critical moment like this. + +“Listen,” said Duane, gravely, with his eyes steady on Aiken's, “I'm +Buck Duane. I never lied to any man in my life. I was forced into +outlawry. I've never had a chance to leave the country. I've killed +men to save my own life. I never intentionally harmed any woman. I rode +thirty miles to-day--deliberately to see what this reward was, who made +it, what for. When I read the placard I went sick to the bottom of +my soul. So I rode in here to find you--to tell you this: I never saw +Shirley before to-day. It was impossible for me to have--killed your +wife. Last September I was two hundred miles north of here on the upper +Nueces. I can prove that. Men who know me will tell you I couldn't +murder a woman. I haven't any idea why such a deed should be laid at my +hands. It's just that wild border gossip. I have no idea what reasons +you have for holding me responsible. I only know--you're wrong. You've +been deceived. And see here, Aiken. You understand I'm a miserable man. +I'm about broken, I guess. I don't care any more for life, for anything. +If you can't look me in the eyes, man to man, and believe what I +say--why, by God! you can kill me!” + +Aiken heaved a great breath. + +“Buck Duane, whether I'm impressed or not by what you say needn't +matter. You've had accusers, justly or unjustly, as will soon appear. +The thing is we can prove you innocent or guilty. My girl Lucy saw my +wife's assailant.” + +He motioned for the crowd of men to open up. + +“Somebody--you, Sibert--go for Lucy. That'll settle this thing.” + +Duane heard as a man in an ugly dream. The faces around him, the hum of +voices, all seemed far off. His life hung by the merest thread. Yet he +did not think of that so much as of the brand of a woman-murderer which +might be soon sealed upon him by a frightened, imaginative child. + +The crowd trooped apart and closed again. Duane caught a blurred image +of a slight girl clinging to Sibert's hand. He could not see distinctly. +Aiken lifted the child, whispered soothingly to her not to be afraid. +Then he fetched her closer to Duane. + +“Lucy, tell me. Did you ever see this man before?” asked Aiken, huskily +and low. “Is he the one--who came in the house that day--struck you +down--and dragged mama--?” + +Aiken's voice failed. + +A lightning flash seemed to clear Duane's blurred sight. He saw a pale, +sad face and violet eyes fixed in gloom and horror upon his. No terrible +moment in Duane's life ever equaled this one of silence--of suspense. + +“It's ain't him!” cried the child. + +Then Sibert was flinging the noose off Duane's neck and unwinding the +bonds round his arms. The spellbound crowd awoke to hoarse exclamations. + +“See there, my locoed gents, how easy you'd hang the wrong man,” burst +out the cowboy, as he made the rope-end hiss. “You-all are a lot of wise +rangers. Haw! haw!” + +He freed Duane and thrust the bone-handled gun back in Duane's holster. + +“You Abe, there. Reckon you pulled a stunt! But don't try the like +again. And, men, I'll gamble there's a hell of a lot of bad work Buck +Duane's named for--which all he never done. Clear away there. Where's +his hoss? Duane, the road's open out of Shirley.” + +Sibert swept the gaping watchers aside and pressed Duane toward the +horse, which another cowboy held. Mechanically Duane mounted, felt a +lift as he went up. Then the cowboy's hard face softened in a smile. + +“I reckon it ain't uncivil of me to say--hit that road quick!” he said, +frankly. + +He led the horse out of the crowd. Aiken joined him, and between them +they escorted Duane across the plaza. The crowd appeared irresistibly +drawn to follow. + +Aiken paused with his big hand on Duane's knee. In it, unconsciously +probably, he still held the gun. + +“Duane, a word with you,” he said. “I believe you're not so black as +you've been painted. I wish there was time to say more. Tell me this, +anyway. Do you know the Ranger Captain MacNelly?” + +“I do not,” replied Duane, in surprise. + +“I met him only a week ago over in Fairfield,” went on Aiken, hurriedly. +“He declared you never killed my wife. I didn't believe him--argued with +him. We almost had hard words over it. Now--I'm sorry. The last thing he +said was: 'If you ever see Duane don't kill him. Send him into my camp +after dark!' He meant something strange. What--I can't say. But he was +right, and I was wrong. If Lucy had batted an eye I'd have killed you. +Still, I wouldn't advise you to hunt up MacNelly's camp. He's clever. +Maybe he believes there's no treachery in his new ideas of ranger +tactics. I tell you for all it's worth. Good-by. May God help you +further as he did this day!” + +Duane said good-by and touched the horse with his spurs. + +“So long, Buck!” called Sibert, with that frank smile breaking warm over +his brown face; and he held his sombrero high. + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +When Duane reached the crossing of the roads the name Fairfield on the +sign-post seemed to be the thing that tipped the oscillating balance of +decision in favor of that direction. + +He answered here to unfathomable impulse. If he had been driven to hunt +up Jeff Aiken, now he was called to find this unknown ranger captain. +In Duane's state of mind clear reasoning, common sense, or keenness were +out of the question. He went because he felt he was compelled. + +Dusk had fallen when he rode into a town which inquiry discovered to be +Fairfield. Captain MacNelly's camp was stationed just out of the village +limits on the other side. + +No one except the boy Duane questioned appeared to notice his arrival. +Like Shirley, the town of Fairfield was large and prosperous, compared +to the innumerable hamlets dotting the vast extent of southwestern +Texas. As Duane rode through, being careful to get off the main street, +he heard the tolling of a church-bell that was a melancholy reminder of +his old home. + +There did not appear to be any camp on the outskirts of the town. But as +Duane sat his horse, peering around and undecided what further move to +make, he caught the glint of flickering lights through the darkness. +Heading toward them, he rode perhaps a quarter of a mile to come upon a +grove of mesquite. The brightness of several fires made the surrounding +darkness all the blacker. Duane saw the moving forms of men and heard +horses. He advanced naturally, expecting any moment to be halted. + +“Who goes there?” came the sharp call out of the gloom. + +Duane pulled his horse. The gloom was impenetrable. + +“One man--alone,” replied Duane. + +“A stranger?” + +“Yes.” + +“What do you want?” + +“I'm trying to find the ranger camp.” + +“You've struck it. What's your errand?” + +“I want to see Captain MacNelly.” + +“Get down and advance. Slow. Don't move your hands. It's dark, but I can +see.” + +Duane dismounted, and, leading his horse, slowly advanced a few paces. +He saw a dully bright object--a gun--before he discovered the man who +held it. A few more steps showed a dark figure blocking the trail. Here +Duane halted. + +“Come closer, stranger. Let's have a look at you,” the guard ordered, +curtly. + +Duane advanced again until he stood before the man. Here the rays of +light from the fires flickered upon Duane's face. + +“Reckon you're a stranger, all right. What's your name and your business +with the Captain?” + +Duane hesitated, pondering what best to say. + +“Tell Captain MacNelly I'm the man he's been asking to ride into his +camp--after dark,” finally said Duane. + +The ranger bent forward to peer hard at this night visitor. His manner +had been alert, and now it became tense. + +“Come here, one of you men, quick,” he called, without turning in the +least toward the camp-fire. + +“Hello! What's up, Pickens?” came the swift reply. It was followed by a +rapid thud of boots on soft ground. A dark form crossed the gleams from +the fire-light. Then a ranger loomed up to reach the side of the guard. +Duane heard whispering, the purport of which he could not catch. The +second ranger swore under his breath. Then he turned away and started +back. + +“Here, ranger, before you go, understand this. My visit is +peaceful--friendly if you'll let it be. Mind, I was asked to come +here--after dark.” + +Duane's clear, penetrating voice carried far. The listening rangers at +the camp-fire heard what he said. + +“Ho, Pickens! Tell that fellow to wait,” replied an authoritative voice. +Then a slim figure detached itself from the dark, moving group at the +camp-fire and hurried out. + +“Better be foxy, Cap,” shouted a ranger, in warning. + +“Shut up--all of you,” was the reply. + +This officer, obviously Captain MacNelly, soon joined the two rangers +who were confronting Duane. He had no fear. He strode straight up to +Duane. + +“I'm MacNelly,” he said. “If you're my man, don't mention your +name--yet.” + +All this seemed so strange to Duane, in keeping with much that had +happened lately. + +“I met Jeff Aiken to-day,” said Duane. “He sent me--” + +“You've met Aiken!” exclaimed MacNelly, sharp, eager, low. “By all +that's bully!” Then he appeared to catch himself, to grow restrained. + +“Men, fall back, leave us alone a moment.” + +The rangers slowly withdrew. + +“Buck Duane! It's you?” he whispered, eagerly. + +“Yes.” + +“If I give my word you'll not be arrested--you'll be treated +fairly--will you come into camp and consult with me?” + +“Certainly.” + +“Duane, I'm sure glad to meet you,” went on MacNelly; and he extended +his hand. + +Amazed and touched, scarcely realizing this actuality, Duane gave his +hand and felt no unmistakable grip of warmth. + +“It doesn't seem natural, Captain MacNelly, but I believe I'm glad to +meet you,” said Duane, soberly. + +“You will be. Now we'll go back to camp. Keep your identity mum for the +present.” + +He led Duane in the direction of the camp-fire. + +“Pickers, go back on duty,” he ordered, “and, Beeson, you look after +this horse.” + +When Duane got beyond the line of mesquite, which had hid a good view of +the camp-site, he saw a group of perhaps fifteen rangers sitting around +the fires, near a long low shed where horses were feeding, and a small +adobe house at one side. + +“We've just had grub, but I'll see you get some. Then we'll talk,” said +MacNelly. “I've taken up temporary quarters here. Have a rustler job on +hand. Now, when you've eaten, come right into the house.” + +Duane was hungry, but he hurried through the ample supper that was set +before him, urged on by curiosity and astonishment. The only way +he could account for his presence there in a ranger's camp was that +MacNelly hoped to get useful information out of him. Still that would +hardly have made this captain so eager. There was a mystery here, and +Duane could scarcely wait for it to be solved. While eating he had +bent keen eyes around him. After a first quiet scrutiny the rangers +apparently paid no more attention to him. They were all veterans in +service--Duane saw that--and rugged, powerful men of iron constitution. +Despite the occasional joke and sally of the more youthful members, and +a general conversation of camp-fire nature, Duane was not deceived about +the fact that his advent had been an unusual and striking one, which had +caused an undercurrent of conjecture and even consternation among them. +These rangers were too well trained to appear openly curious about their +captain's guest. If they had not deliberately attempted to be oblivious +of his presence Duane would have concluded they thought him an ordinary +visitor, somehow of use to MacNelly. As it was, Duane felt a suspense +that must have been due to a hint of his identity. + +He was not long in presenting himself at the door of the house. + +“Come in and have a chair,” said MacNelly, motioning for the one other +occupant of the room to rise. “Leave us, Russell, and close the door. +I'll be through these reports right off.” + +MacNelly sat at a table upon which was a lamp and various papers. Seen +in the light he was a fine-looking, soldierly man of about forty years, +dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a bronzed face, shrewd, stern, strong, +yet not wanting in kindliness. He scanned hastily over some papers, +fussed with them, and finally put them in envelopes. Without looking up +he pushed a cigar-case toward Duane, and upon Duane's refusal to +smoke he took a cigar, rose to light it at the lamp-chimney, and then, +settling back in his chair, he faced Duane, making a vain attempt to +hide what must have been the fulfilment of a long-nourished curiosity. + +“Duane, I've been hoping for this for two years,” he began. + +Duane smiled a little--a smile that felt strange on his face. He had +never been much of a talker. And speech here seemed more than ordinarily +difficult. + +MacNelly must have felt that. + +He looked long and earnestly at Duane, and his quick, nervous manner +changed to grave thoughtfulness. + +“I've lots to say, but where to begin,” he mused. “Duane, you've had +a hard life since you went on the dodge. I never met you before, don't +know what you looked like as a boy. But I can see what--well, even +ranger life isn't all roses.” + +He rolled his cigar between his lips and puffed clouds of smoke. + +“Ever hear from home since you left Wellston?” he asked, abruptly. + +“No.” + +“Never a word?” + +“Not one,” replied Duane, sadly. + +“That's tough. I'm glad to be able to tell you that up to just lately +your mother, sister, uncle--all your folks, I believe--were well. I've +kept posted. But haven't heard lately.” + +Duane averted his face a moment, hesitated till the swelling left his +throat, and then said, “It's worth what I went through to-day to hear +that.” + +“I can imagine how you feel about it. When I was in the war--but let's +get down to the business of this meeting.” + +He pulled his chair close to Duane's. + +“You've had word more than once in the last two years that I wanted to +see you?” + +“Three times, I remember,” replied Duane. + +“Why didn't you hunt me up?” + +“I supposed you imagined me one of those gun-fighters who couldn't take +a dare and expected me to ride up to your camp and be arrested.” + +“That was natural, I suppose,” went on MacNelly. “You didn't know me, +otherwise you would have come. I've been a long time getting to you. +But the nature of my job, as far as you're concerned, made me cautious. +Duane, you're aware of the hard name you bear all over the Southwest?” + +“Once in a while I'm jarred into realizing,” replied Duane. + +“It's the hardest, barring Murrell and Cheseldine, on the Texas border. +But there's this difference. Murrell in his day was known to deserve his +infamous name. Cheseldine in his day also. But I've found hundreds +of men in southwest Texas who're your friends, who swear you never +committed a crime. The farther south I get the clearer this becomes. +What I want to know is the truth. Have you ever done anything criminal? +Tell me the truth, Duane. It won't make any difference in my plan. +And when I say crime I mean what I would call crime, or any reasonable +Texan.” + +“That way my hands are clean,” replied Duane. + +“You never held up a man, robbed a store for grub, stole a horse when +you needed him bad--never anything like that?” + +“Somehow I always kept out of that, just when pressed the hardest.” + +“Duane, I'm damn glad!” MacNelly exclaimed, gripping Duane's hand. “Glad +for you mother's sakel But, all the same, in spite of this, you are a +Texas outlaw accountable to the state. You're perfectly aware that under +existing circumstances, if you fell into the hands of the law, you'd +probably hang, at least go to jail for a long term.” + +“That's what kept me on the dodge all these years,” replied Duane. + +“Certainly.” MacNelly removed his cigar. His eyes narrowed and +glittered. The muscles along his brown cheeks set hard and tense. He +leaned closer to Duane, laid sinewy, pressing fingers upon Duane's knee. + +“Listen to this,” he whispered, hoarsely. “If I place a pardon in your +hand--make you a free, honest citizen once more, clear your name of +infamy, make your mother, your sister proud of you--will you swear +yourself to a service, ANY service I demand of you?” + +Duane sat stock still, stunned. + +Slowly, more persuasively, with show of earnest agitation, Captain +MacNelly reiterated his startling query. + +“My God!” burst from Duane. “What's this? MacNelly, you CAN'T be in +earnest!” + +“Never more so in my life. I've a deep game. I'm playing it square. What +do you say?” + +He rose to his feet. Duane, as if impelled, rose with him. Ranger and +outlaw then locked eyes that searched each other's souls. In MacNelly's +Duane read truth, strong, fiery purpose, hope, even gladness, and a +fugitive mounting assurance of victory. + +Twice Duane endeavored to speak, failed of all save a hoarse, incoherent +sound, until, forcing back a flood of speech, he found a voice. + +“Any service? Every service! MacNelly, I give my word,” said Duane. + +A light played over MacNelly's face, warming out all the grim darkness. +He held out his hand. Duane met it with his in a clasp that men +unconsciously give in moments of stress. + +When they unclasped and Duane stepped back to drop into a chair MacNelly +fumbled for another cigar--he had bitten the other into shreds--and, +lighting it as before, he turned to his visitor, now calm and cool. He +had the look of a man who had justly won something at considerable +cost. His next move was to take a long leather case from his pocket and +extract from it several folded papers. + +“Here's your pardon from the Governor,” he said, quietly. “You'll see, +when you look it over, that it's conditional. When you sign this paper I +have here the condition will be met.” + +He smoothed out the paper, handed Duane a pen, ran his forefinger along +a dotted line. + +Duane's hand was shaky. Years had passed since he had held a pen. It +was with difficulty that he achieved his signature. Buckley Duane--how +strange the name looked! + +“Right here ends the career of Buck Duane, outlaw and gunfighter,” said +MacNelly; and, seating himself, he took the pen from Duane's fingers and +wrote several lines in several places upon the paper. Then with a smile +he handed it to Duane. + +“That makes you a member of Company A, Texas Rangers.” + +“So that's it!” burst out Duane, a light breaking in upon his +bewilderment. “You want me for ranger service?” + +“Sure. That's it,” replied the Captain, dryly. “Now to hear what that +service is to be. I've been a busy man since I took this job, and, as +you may have heard, I've done a few things. I don't mind telling you +that political influence put me in here and that up Austin way there's a +good deal of friction in the Department of State in regard to whether or +not the ranger service is any good--whether it should be discontinued or +not. I'm on the party side who's defending the ranger service. I contend +that it's made Texas habitable. Well, it's been up to me to produce +results. So far I have been successful. My great ambition is to break +up the outlaw gangs along the river. I have never ventured in there +yet because I've been waiting to get the lieutenant I needed. You, of +course, are the man I had in mind. It's my idea to start way up the Rio +Grande and begin with Cheseldine. He's the strongest, the worst outlaw +of the times. He's more than rustler. It's Cheseldine and his gang +who are operating on the banks. They're doing bank-robbing. That's my +private opinion, but it's not been backed up by any evidence. Cheseldine +doesn't leave evidences. He's intelligent, cunning. No one seems to have +seen him--to know what he looks like. I assume, of course, that you are +a stranger to the country he dominates. It's five hundred miles west of +your ground. There's a little town over there called Fairdale. It's the +nest of a rustler gang. They rustle and murder at will. Nobody knows who +the leader is. I want you to find out. Well, whatever way you decide is +best you will proceed to act upon. You are your own boss. You know such +men and how they can be approached. You will take all the time needed, +if it's months. It will be necessary for you to communicate with me, and +that will be a difficult matter. For Cheseldine dominates several whole +counties. You must find some way to let me know when I and my rangers +are needed. The plan is to break up Cheseldine's gang. It's the toughest +job on the border. Arresting him alone isn't to be heard of. He couldn't +be brought out. Killing him isn't much better, for his select men, the +ones he operates with, are as dangerous to the community as he is. We +want to kill or jail this choice selection of robbers and break up the +rest of the gang. To find them, to get among them somehow, to learn +their movements, to lay your trap for us rangers to spring--that, Duane, +is your service to me, and God knows it's a great one!” + +“I have accepted it,” replied Duane. + +“Your work will be secret. You are now a ranger in my service. But no +one except the few I choose to tell will know of it until we pull off +the job. You will simply be Buck Duane till it suits our purpose to +acquaint Texas with the fact that you're a ranger. You'll see there's +no date on that paper. No one will ever know just when you entered the +service. Perhaps we can make it appear that all or most of your outlawry +has really been good service to the state. At that, I'll believe it'll +turn out so.” + +MacNelly paused a moment in his rapid talk, chewed his cigar, drew his +brows together in a dark frown, and went on. “No man on the border knows +so well as you the deadly nature of this service. It's a thousand to one +that you'll be killed. I'd say there was no chance at all for any other +man beside you. Your reputation will go far among the outlaws. Maybe +that and your nerve and your gun-play will pull you through. I'm hoping +so. But it's a long, long chance against your ever coming back.” + +“That's not the point,” said Duane. “But in case I get killed out +there--what--” + +“Leave that to me,” interrupted Captain MacNelly. “Your folks will know +at once of your pardon and your ranger duty. If you lose your life out +there I'll see your name cleared--the service you render known. You can +rest assured of that.” + +“I am satisfied,” replied Duane. “That's so much more than I've dared to +hope.” + +“Well, it's settled, then. I'll give you money for expenses. You'll +start as soon as you like--the sooner the better. I hope to think of +other suggestions, especially about communicating with me.” + +Long after the lights were out and the low hum of voices had ceased +round the camp-fire Duane lay wide awake, eyes staring into the +blackness, marveling over the strange events of the day. He was humble, +grateful to the depths of his soul. A huge and crushing burden had been +lifted from his heart. He welcomed this hazardous service to the man who +had saved him. Thought of his mother and sister and Uncle Jim, of his +home, of old friends came rushing over him the first time in years that +he had happiness in the memory. The disgrace he had put upon them would +now be removed; and in the light of that, his wasted life of the past, +and its probable tragic end in future service as atonement changed their +aspects. And as he lay there, with the approach of sleep finally dimming +the vividness of his thought, so full of mystery, shadowy faces floated +in the blackness around him, haunting him as he had always been haunted. + +It was broad daylight when he awakened. MacNelly was calling him to +breakfast. Outside sounded voices of men, crackling of fires, snorting +and stamping of horses, the barking of dogs. Duane rolled out of his +blankets and made good use of the soap and towel and razor and brush +near by on a bench--things of rare luxury to an outlaw on the ride. The +face he saw in the mirror was as strange as the past he had tried so +hard to recall. Then he stepped to the door and went out. + +The rangers were eating in a circle round a tarpaulin spread upon the +ground. + +“Fellows,” said MacNelly, “shake hands with Buck Duane. He's on secret +ranger service for me. Service that'll likely make you all hump soon! +Mind you, keep mum about it.” + +The rangers surprised Duane with a roaring greeting, the warmth of which +he soon divined was divided between pride of his acquisition to their +ranks and eagerness to meet that violent service of which their captain +hinted. They were jolly, wild fellows, with just enough gravity in +their welcome to show Duane their respect and appreciation, while not +forgetting his lone-wolf record. When he had seated himself in that +circle, now one of them, a feeling subtle and uplifting pervaded him. + +After the meal Captain MacNelly drew Duane aside. + +“Here's the money. Make it go as far as you can. Better strike straight +for El Paso, snook around there and hear things. Then go to Valentine. +That's near the river and within fifty miles or so of the edge of the +Rim Rock. Somewhere up there Cheseldine holds fort. Somewhere to the +north is the town Fairdale. But he doesn't hide all the time in the +rocks. Only after some daring raid or hold-up. Cheseldine's got border +towns on his staff, or scared of him, and these places we want to know +about, especially Fairdale. Write me care of the adjutant at Austin. +I don't have to warn you to be careful where you mail letters. Ride a +hundred, two hundred miles, if necessary, or go clear to El Paso.” + +MacNelly stopped with an air of finality, and then Duane slowly rose. + +“I'll start at once,” he said, extending his hand to the Captain. “I +wish--I'd like to thank you.” + +“Hell, man! Don't thank me!” replied MacNelly, crushing the proffered +hand. “I've sent a lot of good men to their deaths, and maybe you're +another. But, as I've said, you've one chance in a thousand. And, by +Heaven! I'd hate to be Cheseldine or any other man you were trailing. +No, not good-by--Adios, Duane! May we meet again!” + + + + +BOOK II. THE RANGER + + + +CHAPTER XV + +West of the Pecos River Texas extended a vast wild region, barren in the +north where the Llano Estacado spread its shifting sands, fertile in +the south along the Rio Grande. A railroad marked an undeviating course +across five hundred miles of this country, and the only villages and +towns lay on or near this line of steel. Unsettled as was this western +Texas, and despite the acknowledged dominance of the outlaw bands, the +pioneers pushed steadily into it. First had come the lone rancher; then +his neighbors in near and far valleys; then the hamlets; at last the +railroad and the towns. And still the pioneers came, spreading +deeper into the valleys, farther and wider over the plains. It was +mesquite-dotted, cactus-covered desert, but rich soil upon which water +acted like magic. There was little grass to an acre, but there were +millions of acres. The climate was wonderful. Cattle flourished and +ranchers prospered. + +The Rio Grande flowed almost due south along the western boundary for a +thousand miles, and then, weary of its course, turned abruptly north, +to make what was called the Big Bend. The railroad, running west, cut +across this bend, and all that country bounded on the north by the +railroad and on the south by the river was as wild as the Staked Plains. +It contained not one settlement. Across the face of this Big Bend, as +if to isolate it, stretched the Ord mountain range, of which Mount +Ord, Cathedral Mount, and Elephant Mount raised bleak peaks above their +fellows. In the valleys of the foothills and out across the plains were +ranches, and farther north villages, and the towns of Alpine and Marfa. + +Like other parts of the great Lone Star State, this section of Texas +was a world in itself--a world where the riches of the rancher were +ever enriching the outlaw. The village closest to the gateway of this +outlaw-infested region was a little place called Ord, named after the +dark peak that loomed some miles to the south. It had been settled +originally by Mexicans--there were still the ruins of adobe +missions--but with the advent of the rustler and outlaw many inhabitants +were shot or driven away, so that at the height of Ord's prosperity and +evil sway there were but few Mexicans living there, and these had their +choice between holding hand-and-glove with the outlaws or furnishing +target practice for that wild element. + +Toward the close of a day in September a stranger rode into Ord, and in +a community where all men were remarkable for one reason or another +he excited interest. His horse, perhaps, received the first and +most engaging attention--horses in that region being apparently more +important than men. This particular horse did not attract with beauty. +At first glance he seemed ugly. But he was a giant, black as coal, rough +despite the care manifestly bestowed upon him, long of body, ponderous +of limb, huge in every way. A bystander remarked that he had a grand +head. True, if only his head had been seen he would have been a +beautiful horse. Like men, horses show what they are in the shape, the +size, the line, the character of the head. This one denoted fire, speed, +blood, loyalty, and his eyes were as soft and dark as a woman's. His +face was solid black, except in the middle of his forehead, where there +was a round spot of white. + +“Say mister, mind tellin' me his name?” asked a ragged urchin, with born +love of a horse in his eyes. + +“Bullet,” replied the rider. + +“Thet there's fer the white mark, ain't it?” whispered the youngster to +another. “Say, ain't he a whopper? Biggest hoss I ever seen.” + +Bullet carried a huge black silver-ornamented saddle of Mexican make, a +lariat and canteen, and a small pack rolled into a tarpaulin. + +This rider apparently put all care of appearances upon his horse. His +apparel was the ordinary jeans of the cowboy without vanity, and it +was torn and travel-stained. His boots showed evidence of an intimate +acquaintance with cactus. Like his horse, this man was a giant in +stature, but rangier, not so heavily built. Otherwise the only striking +thing about him was his somber face with its piercing eyes, and hair +white over the temples. He packed two guns, both low down--but that was +too common a thing to attract notice in the Big Bend. A close observer, +however, would have noted a singular fact--this rider's right hand was +more bronzed, more weather-beaten than his left. He never wore a glove +on that right hand! + +He had dismounted before a ramshackle structure that bore upon its wide, +high-boarded front the sign, “Hotel.” There were horsemen coming and +going down the wide street between its rows of old stores, saloons, +and houses. Ord certainly did not look enterprising. Americans had +manifestly assimilated much of the leisure of the Mexicans. The hotel +had a wide platform in front, and this did duty as porch and sidewalk. +Upon it, and leaning against a hitching-rail, were men of varying ages, +most of them slovenly in old jeans and slouched sombreros. Some were +booted, belted, and spurred. No man there wore a coat, but all wore +vests. The guns in that group would have outnumbered the men. + +It was a crowd seemingly too lazy to be curious. Good nature did not +appear to be wanting, but it was not the frank and boisterous kind +natural to the cowboy or rancher in town for a day. These men were +idlers; what else, perhaps, was easy to conjecture. Certainly to this +arriving stranger, who flashed a keen eye over them, they wore an +atmosphere never associated with work. + +Presently a tall man, with a drooping, sandy mustache, leisurely +detached himself from the crowd. + +“Howdy, stranger,” he said. + +The stranger had bent over to loosen the cinches; he straightened up and +nodded. Then: “I'm thirsty!” + +That brought a broad smile to faces. It was characteristic greeting. +One and all trooped after the stranger into the hotel. It was a dark, +ill-smelling barn of a place, with a bar as high as a short man's head. +A bartender with a scarred face was serving drinks. + +“Line up, gents,” said the stranger. + +They piled over one another to get to the bar, with coarse jests and +oaths and laughter. None of them noted that the stranger did not appear +so thirsty as he had claimed to be. In fact, though he went through the +motions, he did not drink at all. + +“My name's Jim Fletcher,” said the tall man with the drooping, sandy +mustache. He spoke laconically, nevertheless there was a tone that +showed he expected to be known. Something went with that name. The +stranger did not appear to be impressed. + +“My name might be Blazes, but it ain't,” he replied. “What do you call +this burg?” + +“Stranger, this heah me-tropoles bears the handle Ord. Is thet new to +you?” + +He leaned back against the bar, and now his little yellow eyes, clear as +crystal, flawless as a hawk's, fixed on the stranger. Other men crowded +close, forming a circle, curious, ready to be friendly or otherwise, +according to how the tall interrogator marked the new-comer. + +“Sure, Ord's a little strange to me. Off the railroad some, ain't it? +Funny trails hereabouts.” + +“How fur was you goin'?” + +“I reckon I was goin' as far as I could,” replied the stranger, with a +hard laugh. + +His reply had subtle reaction on that listening circle. Some of the +men exchanged glances. Fletcher stroked his drooping mustache, seemed +thoughtful, but lost something of that piercing scrutiny. + +“Wal, Ord's the jumpin'-off place,” he said, presently. “Sure you've +heerd of the Big Bend country?” + +“I sure have, an' was makin' tracks fer it,” replied the stranger. + +Fletcher turned toward a man in the outer edge of the group. “Knell, +come in heah.” + +This individual elbowed his way in and was seen to be scarcely more than +a boy, almost pale beside those bronzed men, with a long, expressionless +face, thin and sharp. + +“Knell, this heah's--” Fletcher wheeled to the stranger. “What'd you +call yourself?” + +“I'd hate to mention what I've been callin' myself lately.” + +This sally fetched another laugh. The stranger appeared cool, careless, +indifferent. Perhaps he knew, as the others present knew, that this show +of Fletcher's, this pretense of introduction, was merely talk while he +was looked over. + +Knell stepped up, and it was easy to see, from the way Fletcher +relinquished his part in the situation, that a man greater than he had +appeared upon the scene. + +“Any business here?” he queried, curtly. When he spoke his +expressionless face was in strange contrast with the ring, the quality, +the cruelty of his voice. This voice betrayed an absence of humor, of +friendliness, of heart. + +“Nope,” replied the stranger. + +“Know anybody hereabouts?” + +“Nary one.” + +“Jest ridin' through?” + +“Yep.” + +“Slopin' fer back country, eh?” + +There came a pause. The stranger appeared to grow a little resentful and +drew himself up disdainfully. + +“Wal, considerin' you-all seem so damn friendly an' oncurious down +here in this Big Bend country, I don't mind sayin' yes--I am in on the +dodge,” he replied, with deliberate sarcasm. + +“From west of Ord--out El Paso way, mebbe?” + +“Sure.” + +“A-huh! Thet so?” Knell's words cut the air, stilled the room. “You're +from way down the river. Thet's what they say down there--'on the +dodge.'... Stranger, you're a liar!” + +With swift clink of spur and thump of boot the crowd split, leaving +Knell and the stranger in the center. + +Wild breed of that ilk never made a mistake in judging a man's nerve. +Knell had cut out with the trenchant call, and stood ready. The stranger +suddenly lost his every semblance to the rough and easy character before +manifest in him. He became bronze. That situation seemed familiar +to him. His eyes held a singular piercing light that danced like a +compass-needle. + +“Sure I lied,” he said; “so I ain't takin' offense at the way you called +me. I'm lookin' to make friends, not enemies. You don't strike me as one +of them four-flushes, achin' to kill somebody. But if you are--go ahead +an' open the ball.... You see, I never throw a gun on them fellers till +they go fer theirs.” + +Knell coolly eyed his antagonist, his strange face not changing in the +least. Yet somehow it was evident in his look that here was metal which +rang differently from what he had expected. Invited to start a fight +or withdraw, as he chose, Knell proved himself big in the manner +characteristic of only the genuine gunman. + +“Stranger, I pass,” he said, and, turning to the bar, he ordered liquor. + +The tension relaxed, the silence broke, the men filled up the gap; the +incident seemed closed. Jim Fletcher attached himself to the stranger, +and now both respect and friendliness tempered his asperity. + +“Wal, fer want of a better handle I'll call you Dodge,” he said. + +“Dodge's as good as any.... Gents, line up again--an' if you can't be +friendly, be careful!” + +Such was Buck Duane's debut in the little outlaw hamlet of Ord. + +Duane had been three months out of the Nueces country. At El Paso +he bought the finest horse he could find, and, armed and otherwise +outfitted to suit him, he had taken to unknown trails. Leisurely he rode +from town to town, village to village, ranch to ranch, fitting his talk +and his occupation to the impression he wanted to make upon different +people whom he met. He was in turn a cowboy, a rancher, a cattleman, +a stock-buyer, a boomer, a land-hunter; and long before he reached the +wild and inhospitable Ord he had acted the part of an outlaw, drifting +into new territory. He passed on leisurely because he wanted to learn +the lay of the country, the location of villages and ranches, the work, +habit, gossip, pleasures, and fears of the people with whom he came +in contact. The one subject most impelling to him--outlaws--he never +mentioned; but by talking all around it, sifting the old ranch and +cattle story, he acquired a knowledge calculated to aid his plot. In +this game time was of no moment; if necessary he would take years to +accomplish his task. The stupendous and perilous nature of it showed +in the slow, wary preparation. When he heard Fletcher's name and faced +Knell he knew he had reached the place he sought. Ord was a hamlet on +the fringe of the grazing country, of doubtful honesty, from which, +surely, winding trails led down into that free and never-disturbed +paradise of outlaws--the Big Bend. + +Duane made himself agreeable, yet not too much so, to Fletcher and +several other men disposed to talk and drink and eat; and then, after +having a care for his horse, he rode out of town a couple of miles to +a grove he had marked, and there, well hidden, he prepared to spend the +night. This proceeding served a double purpose--he was safer, and the +habit would look well in the eyes of outlaws, who would be more inclined +to see in him the lone-wolf fugitive. + +Long since Duane had fought out a battle with himself, won a hard-earned +victory. His outer life, the action, was much the same as it had been; +but the inner life had tremendously changed. He could never become a +happy man, he could never shake utterly those haunting phantoms that had +once been his despair and madness; but he had assumed a task impossible +for any man save one like him, he had felt the meaning of it grow +strangely and wonderfully, and through that flourished up consciousness +of how passionately he now clung to this thing which would blot out his +former infamy. The iron fetters no more threatened his hands; the iron +door no more haunted his dreams. He never forgot that he was free. +Strangely, too, along with this feeling of new manhood there gathered +the force of imperious desire to run these chief outlaws to their dooms. +He never called them outlaws--but rustlers, thieves, robbers, murderers, +criminals. He sensed the growth of a relentless driving passion, and +sometimes he feared that, more than the newly acquired zeal and pride in +this ranger service, it was the old, terrible inherited killing instinct +lifting its hydra-head in new guise. But of that he could not be sure. +He dreaded the thought. He could only wait. + +Another aspect of the change in Duane, neither passionate nor driving, +yet not improbably even more potent of new significance to life, was +the imperceptible return of an old love of nature dead during his outlaw +days. + +For years a horse had been only a machine of locomotion, to carry him +from place to place, to beat and spur and goad mercilessly in flight; +now this giant black, with his splendid head, was a companion, a friend, +a brother, a loved thing, guarded jealously, fed and trained and ridden +with an intense appreciation of his great speed and endurance. For years +the daytime, with its birth of sunrise on through long hours to the +ruddy close, had been used for sleep or rest in some rocky hole or +willow brake or deserted hut, had been hated because it augmented danger +of pursuit, because it drove the fugitive to lonely, wretched hiding; +now the dawn was a greeting, a promise of another day to ride, to plan, +to remember, and sun, wind, cloud, rain, sky--all were joys to him, +somehow speaking his freedom. For years the night had been a black +space, during which he had to ride unseen along the endless trails, to +peer with cat-eyes through gloom for the moving shape that ever pursued +him; now the twilight and the dusk and the shadows of grove and canyon +darkened into night with its train of stars, and brought him calm +reflection of the day's happenings, of the morrow's possibilities, +perhaps a sad, brief procession of the old phantoms, then sleep. For +years canyons and valleys and mountains had been looked at as retreats +that might be dark and wild enough to hide even an outlaw; now he saw +these features of the great desert with something of the eyes of the boy +who had once burned for adventure and life among them. + +This night a wonderful afterglow lingered long in the west, and against +the golden-red of clear sky the bold, black head of Mount Ord reared +itself aloft, beautiful but aloof, sinister yet calling. Small wonder +that Duane gazed in fascination upon the peak! Somewhere deep in +its corrugated sides or lost in a rugged canyon was hidden the secret +stronghold of the master outlaw Cheseldine. All down along the ride from +El Paso Duane had heard of Cheseldine, of his band, his fearful deeds, +his cunning, his widely separated raids, of his flitting here and there +like a Jack-o'-lantern; but never a word of his den, never a word of his +appearance. + +Next morning Duane did not return to Ord. He struck off to the north, +riding down a rough, slow-descending road that appeared to have been +used occasionally for cattle-driving. As he had ridden in from the west, +this northern direction led him into totally unfamiliar country. While +he passed on, however, he exercised such keen observation that in the +future he would know whatever might be of service to him if he chanced +that way again. + +The rough, wild, brush-covered slope down from the foothills gradually +leveled out into plain, a magnificent grazing country, upon which till +noon of that day Duane did not see a herd of cattle or a ranch. About +that time he made out smoke from the railroad, and after a couple of +hours' riding he entered a town which inquiry discovered to be Bradford. +It was the largest town he had visited since Marfa, and he calculated +must have a thousand or fifteen hundred inhabitants, not including +Mexicans. He decided this would be a good place for him to hold up for +a while, being the nearest town to Ord, only forty miles away. So he +hitched his horse in front of a store and leisurely set about studying +Bradford. + +It was after dark, however, that Duane verified his suspicions +concerning Bradford. The town was awake after dark, and there was one +long row of saloons, dance-halls, gambling-resorts in full blast. Duane +visited them all, and was surprised to see wildness and license equal to +that of the old river camp of Bland's in its palmiest days. Here it was +forced upon him that the farther west one traveled along the river +the sparser the respectable settlements, the more numerous the hard +characters, and in consequence the greater the element of lawlessness. +Duane returned to his lodging-house with the conviction that MacNelly's +task of cleaning up the Big Bend country was a stupendous one. Yet, he +reflected, a company of intrepid and quick-shooting rangers could have +soon cleaned up this Bradford. + +The innkeeper had one other guest that night, a long black-coated and +wide-sombreroed Texan who reminded Duane of his grandfather. This man +had penetrating eyes, a courtly manner, and an unmistakable leaning +toward companionship and mint-juleps. The gentleman introduced himself +as Colonel Webb, of Marfa, and took it as a matter of course that Duane +made no comment about himself. + +“Sir, it's all one to me,” he said, blandly, waving his hand. “I have +traveled. Texas is free, and this frontier is one where it's healthier +and just as friendly for a man to have no curiosity about his companion. +You might be Cheseldine, of the Big Bend, or you might be Judge Little, +of El Paso-it's all one to me. I enjoy drinking with you anyway.” + +Duane thanked him, conscious of a reserve and dignity that he could not +have felt or pretended three months before. And then, as always, he was +a good listener. Colonel Webb told, among other things, that he had come +out to the Big Bend to look over the affairs of a deceased brother who +had been a rancher and a sheriff of one of the towns, Fairdale by name. + +“Found no affairs, no ranch, not even his grave,” said Colonel Webb. +“And I tell you, sir, if hell's any tougher than this Fairdale I don't +want to expiate my sins there.” + +“Fairdale.... I imagine sheriffs have a hard row to hoe out here,” + replied Duane, trying not to appear curious. + +The Colonel swore lustily. + +“My brother was the only honest sheriff Fairdale ever had. It was +wonderful how long he lasted. But he had nerve, he could throw a gun, +and he was on the square. Then he was wise enough to confine his work +to offenders of his own town and neighborhood. He let the riding outlaws +alone, else he wouldn't have lasted at all.... What this frontier needs, +sir, is about six companies of Texas Rangers.” + +Duane was aware of the Colonel's close scrutiny. + +“Do you know anything about the service?” he asked. + +“I used to. Ten years ago when I lived in San Antonio. A fine body of +men, sir, and the salvation of Texas.” + +“Governor Stone doesn't entertain that opinion,” said Duane. + +Here Colonel Webb exploded. Manifestly the governor was not his choice +for a chief executive of the great state. He talked politics for a +while, and of the vast territory west of the Pecos that seemed never to +get a benefit from Austin. He talked enough for Duane to realize that +here was just the kind of intelligent, well-informed, honest citizen +that he had been trying to meet. He exerted himself thereafter to +be agreeable and interesting; and he saw presently that here was an +opportunity to make a valuable acquaintance, if not a friend. + +“I'm a stranger in these parts,” said Duane, finally. “What is this +outlaw situation you speak of?” + +“It's damnable, sir, and unbelievable. Not rustling any more, but just +wholesale herd-stealing, in which some big cattlemen, supposed to be +honest, are equally guilty with the outlaws. On this border, you know, +the rustler has always been able to steal cattle in any numbers. But to +get rid of big bunches--that's the hard job. The gang operating between +here and Valentine evidently have not this trouble. Nobody knows where +the stolen stock goes. But I'm not alone in my opinion that most of +it goes to several big stockmen. They ship to San Antonio, Austin, New +Orleans, also to El Paso. If you travel the stock-road between here and +Marfa and Valentine you'll see dead cattle all along the line and stray +cattle out in the scrub. The herds have been driven fast and far, and +stragglers are not rounded up.” + +“Wholesale business, eh?” remarked Duane. “Who are these--er--big +stock-buyers?” + +Colonel Webb seemed a little startled at the abrupt query. He bent his +penetrating gaze upon Duane and thoughtfully stroked his pointed beard. + +“Names, of course, I'll not mention. Opinions are one thing, direct +accusation another. This is not a healthy country for the informer.” + +When it came to the outlaws themselves Colonel Webb was disposed to talk +freely. Duane could not judge whether the Colonel had a hobby of that +subject or the outlaws were so striking in personality and deed that +any man would know all about them. The great name along the river was +Cheseldine, but it seemed to be a name detached from an individual. No +person of veracity known to Colonel Webb had ever seen Cheseldine, +and those who claimed that doubtful honor varied so diversely in +descriptions of the chief that they confused the reality and lent to +the outlaw only further mystery. Strange to say of an outlaw leader, as +there was no one who could identify him, so there was no one who could +prove he had actually killed a man. Blood flowed like water over the +Big Bend country, and it was Cheseldine who spilled it. Yet the fact +remained there were no eye-witnesses to connect any individual called +Cheseldine with these deeds of violence. But in striking contrast to +this mystery was the person, character, and cold-blooded action of +Poggin and Knell, the chief's lieutenants. They were familiar figures in +all the towns within two hundred miles of Bradford. Knell had a record, +but as gunman with an incredible list of victims Poggin was supreme. +If Poggin had a friend no one ever heard of him. There were a hundred +stories of his nerve, his wonderful speed with a gun, his passion for +gambling, his love of a horse--his cold, implacable, inhuman wiping out +of his path any man that crossed it. + +“Cheseldine is a name, a terrible name,” said Colonel Webb. “Sometimes +I wonder if he's not only a name. In that case where does the brains of +this gang come from? No; there must be a master craftsman behind this +border pillage; a master capable of handling those terrors Poggin and +Knell. Of all the thousands of outlaws developed by western Texas in the +last twenty years these three are the greatest. In southern Texas, down +between the Pecos and the Nueces, there have been and are still many +bad men. But I doubt if any outlaw there, possibly excepting Buck Duane, +ever equaled Poggin. You've heard of this Duane?” + +“Yes, a little,” replied Duane, quietly. “I'm from southern Texas. Buck +Duane then is known out here?” + +“Why, man, where isn't his name known?” returned Colonel Webb. “I've +kept track of his record as I have all the others. Of course, Duane, +being a lone outlaw, is somewhat of a mystery also, but not like +Cheseldine. Out here there have drifted many stories of Duane, horrible +some of them. But despite them a sort of romance clings to that Nueces +outlaw. He's killed three great outlaw leaders, I believe--Bland, +Hardin, and the other I forgot. Hardin was known in the Big Bend, had +friends there. Bland had a hard name at Del Rio.” + +“Then this man Duane enjoys rather an unusual repute west of the Pecos?” + inquired Duane. + +“He's considered more of an enemy to his kind than to honest men. +I understand Duane had many friends, that whole counties swear by +him--secretly, of course, for he's a hunted outlaw with rewards on his +head. His fame in this country appears to hang on his matchless gun-play +and his enmity toward outlaw chiefs. I've heard many a rancher say: 'I +wish to God that Buck Duane would drift out here! I'd give a hundred +pesos to see him and Poggin meet.' It's a singular thing, stranger, how +jealous these great outlaws are of each other.” + +“Yes, indeed, all about them is singular,” replied Duane. “Has +Cheseldine's gang been busy lately?” + +“No. This section has been free of rustling for months, though there's +unexplained movements of stock. Probably all the stock that's being +shipped now was rustled long ago. Cheseldine works over a wide section, +too wide for news to travel inside of weeks. Then sometimes he's not +heard of at all for a spell. These lulls are pretty surely indicative of +a big storm sooner or later. And Cheseldine's deals, as they grow fewer +and farther between, certainly get bigger, more daring. There are some +people who think Cheseldine had nothing to do with the bank-robberies +and train-holdups during the last few years in this country. But that's +poor reasoning. The jobs have been too well done, too surely covered, to +be the work of greasers or ordinary outlaws.” + +“What's your view of the outlook? How's all this going to wind up? Will +the outlaw ever be driven out?” asked Duane. + +“Never. There will always be outlaws along the Rio Grande. All the +armies in the world couldn't comb the wild brakes of that fifteen +hundred miles of river. But the sway of the outlaw, such as is enjoyed +by these great leaders, will sooner or later be past. The criminal +element flock to the Southwest. But not so thick and fast as the +pioneers. Besides, the outlaws kill themselves, and the ranchers are +slowly rising in wrath, if not in action. That will come soon. If they +only had a leader to start the fight! But that will come. There's talk +of Vigilantes, the same hat were organized in California and are now in +force in Idaho. So far it's only talk. But the time will come. And the +days of Cheseldine and Poggin are numbered.” + +Duane went to bed that night exceedingly thoughtful. The long trail was +growing hot. This voluble colonel had given him new ideas. It came +to Duane in surprise that he was famous along the upper Rio Grande. +Assuredly he would not long be able to conceal his identity. He had +no doubt that he would soon meet the chiefs of this clever and bold +rustling gang. He could not decide whether he would be safer unknown or +known. In the latter case his one chance lay in the fatality connected +with his name, in his power to look it and act it. Duane had never +dreamed of any sleuth-hound tendency in his nature, but now he felt +something like one. Above all others his mind fixed on Poggin--Poggin +the brute, the executor of Cheseldine's will, but mostly upon Poggin the +gunman. This in itself was a warning to Duane. He felt terrible forces +at work within him. There was the stern and indomitable resolve to +make MacNelly's boast good to the governor of the state--to break up +Cheseldine's gang. Yet this was not in Duane's mind before a strange +grim and deadly instinct--which he had to drive away for fear he would +find in it a passion to kill Poggin, not for the state, nor for his word +to MacNelly, but for himself. Had his father's blood and the hard years +made Duane the kind of man who instinctively wanted to meet Poggin? He +was sworn to MacNelly's service, and he fought himself to keep that, and +that only, in his mind. + +Duane ascertained that Fairdale was situated two days' ride from +Bradford toward the north. There was a stage which made the journey +twice a week. + +Next morning Duane mounted his horse and headed for Fairdale. He rode +leisurely, as he wanted to learn all he could about the country. +There were few ranches. The farther he traveled the better grazing he +encountered, and, strange to note, the fewer herds of cattle. + +It was just sunset when he made out a cluster of adobe houses that +marked the half-way point between Bradford and Fairdale. Here, Duane had +learned, was stationed a comfortable inn for wayfarers. + +When he drew up before the inn the landlord and his family and a number +of loungers greeted him laconically. + +“Beat the stage in, hey?” remarked one. + +“There she comes now,” said another. “Joel shore is drivin' to-night.” + +Far down the road Duane saw a cloud of dust and horses and a lumbering +coach. When he had looked after the needs of his horse he returned to +the group before the inn. They awaited the stage with that +interest common to isolated people. Presently it rolled up, a large +mud-bespattered and dusty vehicle, littered with baggage on top and +tied on behind. A number of passengers alighted, three of whom excited +Duane's interest. One was a tall, dark, striking-looking man, and the +other two were ladies, wearing long gray ulsters and veils. Duane heard +the proprietor of the inn address the man as Colonel Longstreth, and as +the party entered the inn Duane's quick ears caught a few words which +acquainted him with the fact that Longstreth was the Mayor of Fairdale. + +Duane passed inside himself to learn that supper would soon be ready. +At table he found himself opposite the three who had attracted his +attention. + +“Ruth, I envy the lucky cowboys,” Longstreth was saying. + +Ruth was a curly-headed girl with gray or hazel eyes. + +“I'm crazy to ride bronchos,” she said. + +Duane gathered she was on a visit to western Texas. The other girl's +deep voice, sweet like a bell, made Duane regard her closer. She had +beauty as he had never seen it in another woman. She was slender, but +the development of her figure gave Duane the impression she was twenty +years old or more. She had the most exquisite hands Duane had ever seen. +She did not resemble the Colonel, who was evidently her father. She +looked tired, quiet, even melancholy. A finely chiseled oval face; +clear, olive-tinted skin, long eyes set wide apart and black as coal, +beautiful to look into; a slender, straight nose that had something +nervous and delicate about it which made Duane think of a thoroughbred; +and a mouth by no means small, but perfectly curved; and hair like +jet--all these features proclaimed her beauty to Duane. Duane believed +her a descendant of one of the old French families of eastern Texas. He +was sure of it when she looked at him, drawn by his rather persistent +gaze. There were pride, fire, and passion in her eyes. Duane felt +himself blushing in confusion. His stare at her had been rude, perhaps, +but unconscious. How many years had passed since he had seen a girl like +her! Thereafter he kept his eyes upon his plate, yet he seemed to be +aware that he had aroused the interest of both girls. + +After supper the guests assembled in a big sitting-room where an open +fire place with blazing mesquite sticks gave out warmth and cheery glow. +Duane took a seat by a table in the corner, and, finding a paper, +began to read. Presently when he glanced up he saw two dark-faced +men, strangers who had not appeared before, and were peering in from a +doorway. When they saw Duane had observed them they stepped back out of +sight. + +It flashed over Duane that the strangers acted suspiciously. In Texas +in the seventies it was always bad policy to let strangers go unheeded. +Duane pondered a moment. Then he went out to look over these two men. +The doorway opened into a patio, and across that was a little dingy, +dim-lighted bar-room. Here Duane found the innkeeper dispensing drinks +to the two strangers. They glanced up when he entered, and one of them +whispered. He imagined he had seen one of them before. In Texas, where +outdoor men were so rough, bronzed, bold, and sometimes grim of aspect, +it was no easy task to pick out the crooked ones. But Duane's years on +the border had augmented a natural instinct or gift to read character, +or at least to sense the evil in men; and he knew at once that these +strangers were dishonest. + +“Hey somethin'?” one of them asked, leering. Both looked Duane up and +down. + +“No thanks, I don't drink,” Duane replied, and returned their scrutiny +with interest. “How's tricks in the Big Bend?” + +Both men stared. It had taken only a close glance for Duane to recognize +a type of ruffian most frequently met along the river. These strangers +had that stamp, and their surprise proved he was right. Here the +innkeeper showed signs of uneasiness, and seconded the surprise of his +customers. No more was said at the instant, and the two rather hurriedly +went out. + +“Say, boss, do you know those fellows?” Duane asked the innkeeper. + +“Nope.” + +“Which way did they come?” + +“Now I think of it, them fellers rid in from both corners today,” he +replied, and he put both hands on the bar and looked at Duane. “They +nooned heah, comin' from Bradford, they said, an' trailed in after the +stage.” + +When Duane returned to the sitting-room Colonel Longstreth was absent, +also several of the other passengers. Miss Ruth sat in the chair he had +vacated, and across the table from her sat Miss Longstreth. Duane went +directly to them. + +“Excuse me,” said Duane, addressing them. “I want to tell you there are +a couple of rough-looking men here. I've just seen them. They mean +evil. Tell your father to be careful. Lock your doors--bar your windows +to-night.” + +“Oh!” cried Ruth, very low. “Ray, do you hear?” + +“Thank you; we'll be careful,” said Miss Longstreth, gracefully. The +rich color had faded in her cheek. “I saw those men watching you +from that door. They had such bright black eyes. Is there really +danger--here?” + +“I think so,” was Duane's reply. + +Soft swift steps behind him preceded a harsh voice: “Hands up!” + +No man quicker than Duane to recognize the intent in those words! His +hands shot up. Miss Ruth uttered a little frightened cry and sank into +her chair. Miss Longstreth turned white, her eyes dilated. Both girls +were staring at some one behind Duane. + +“Turn around!” ordered the harsh voice. + +The big, dark stranger, the bearded one who had whispered to his comrade +in the bar-room and asked Duane to drink, had him covered with a cocked +gun. He strode forward, his eyes gleaming, pressed the gun against him, +and with his other hand dove into his inside coat pocket and tore out +his roll of bills. Then he reached low at Duane's hip, felt his gun, and +took it. Then he slapped the other hip, evidently in search of another +weapon. That done, he backed away, wearing an expression of fiendish +satisfaction that made Duane think he was only a common thief, a novice +at this kind of game. + +His comrade stood in the door with a gun leveled at two other men, who +stood there frightened, speechless. + +“Git a move on, Bill,” called this fellow; and he took a hasty glance +backward. A stamp of hoofs came from outside. Of course the robbers had +horses waiting. The one called Bill strode across the room, and with +brutal, careless haste began to prod the two men with his weapon and to +search them. The robber in the doorway called “Rustle!” and disappeared. + +Duane wondered where the innkeeper was, and Colonel Longstreth and the +other two passengers. The bearded robber quickly got through with his +searching, and from his growls Duane gathered he had not been well +remunerated. Then he wheeled once more. Duane had not moved a muscle, +stood perfectly calm with his arms high. The robber strode back with his +bloodshot eyes fastened upon the girls. Miss Longstreth never flinched, +but the little girl appeared about to faint. + +“Don't yap, there!” he said, low and hard. He thrust the gun close to +Ruth. Then Duane knew for sure that he was no knight of the road, but a +plain cutthroat robber. Danger always made Duane exult in a kind of cold +glow. But now something hot worked within him. He had a little gun in +his pocket. The robber had missed it. And he began to calculate chances. + +“Any money, jewelry, diamonds!” ordered the ruffian, fiercely. + +Miss Ruth collapsed. Then he made at Miss Longstreth. She stood with +her hands at her breast. Evidently the robber took this position to +mean that she had valuables concealed there. But Duane fancied she had +instinctively pressed her hands against a throbbing heart. + +“Come out with it!” he said, harshly, reaching for her. + +“Don't dare touch me!” she cried, her eyes ablaze. She did not move. She +had nerve. + +It made Duane thrill. He saw he was going to get a chance. Waiting had +been a science with him. But here it was hard. Miss Ruth had fainted, +and that was well. Miss Longstreth had fight in her, which fact helped +Duane, yet made injury possible to her. She eluded two lunges the man +made at her. Then his rough hand caught her waist, and with one pull +ripped it asunder, exposing her beautiful shoulder, white as snow. + +She cried out. The prospect of being robbed or even killed had not +shaken Miss Longstreth's nerve as had this brutal tearing off of half +her waist. + +The ruffian was only turned partially away from Duane. For himself +he could have waited no longer. But for her! That gun was still held +dangerously upward close to her. Duane watched only that. Then a bellow +made him jerk his head. Colonel Longstreth stood in the doorway in a +magnificent rage. He had no weapon. Strange how he showed no fear! He +bellowed something again. + +Duane's shifting glance caught the robber's sudden movement. It was +a kind of start. He seemed stricken. Duane expected him to shoot +Longstreth. Instead the hand that clutched Miss Longstreth's torn waist +loosened its hold. The other hand with its cocked weapon slowly dropped +till it pointed to the floor. That was Duane's chance. + +Swift as a flash he drew his gun and fired. Thud! went his bullet, and +he could not tell on the instant whether it hit the robber or went into +the ceiling. Then the robber's gun boomed harmlessly. He fell with blood +spurting over his face. Duane realized he had hit him, but the small +bullet had glanced. + +Miss Longstreth reeled and might have fallen had Duane not supported +her. It was only a few steps to a couch, to which he half led, half +carried her. Then he rushed out of the room, across the patio, through +the bar to the yard. Nevertheless, he was cautious. In the gloom stood a +saddled horse, probably the one belonging to the fellow he had shot. +His comrade had escaped. Returning to the sitting-room, Duane found a +condition approaching pandemonium. + +The innkeeper rushed in, pitchfork in hands. Evidently he had been out +at the barn. He was now shouting to find out what had happened. Joel, +the stage-driver, was trying to quiet the men who had been robbed. The +woman, wife of one of the men, had come in, and she had hysterics. The +girls were still and white. The robber Bill lay where he had fallen, and +Duane guessed he had made a fair shot, after all. And, lastly, the thing +that struck Duane most of all was Longstreth's rage. He never saw such +passion. Like a caged lion Longstreth stalked and roared. There came a +quieter moment in which the innkeeper shrilly protested: + +“Man, what're you ravin' aboot? Nobody's hurt, an' thet's lucky. I swear +to God I hadn't nothin' to do with them fellers!” + +“I ought to kill you anyhow!” replied Longstreth. And his voice now +astounded Duane, it was so full of power. + +Upon examination Duane found that his bullet had furrowed the robber's +temple, torn a great piece out of his scalp, and, as Duane had guessed, +had glanced. He was not seriously injured, and already showed signs of +returning consciousness. + +“Drag him out of here!” ordered Longstreth; and he turned to his +daughter. + +Before the innkeeper reached the robber Duane had secured the money and +gun taken from him; and presently recovered the property of the other +men. Joel helped the innkeeper carry the injured man somewhere outside. + +Miss Longstreth was sitting white but composed upon the couch, where lay +Miss Ruth, who evidently had been carried there by the Colonel. Duane +did not think she had wholly lost consciousness, and now she lay very +still, with eyes dark and shadowy, her face pallid and wet. The Colonel, +now that he finally remembered his women-folk, seemed to be gentle and +kind. He talked soothingly to Miss Ruth, made light of the adventure, +said she must learn to have nerve out here where things happened. + +“Can I be of any service?” asked Duane, solicitously. + +“Thanks; I guess there's nothing you can do. Talk to these frightened +girls while I go see what's to be done with that thick-skulled robber,” + he replied, and, telling the girls that there was no more danger, he +went out. + +Miss Longstreth sat with one hand holding her torn waist in place; the +other she extended to Duane. He took it awkwardly, and he felt a strange +thrill. + +“You saved my life,” she said, in grave, sweet seriousness. + +“No, no!” Duane exclaimed. “He might have struck you, hurt you, but no +more.” + +“I saw murder in his eyes. He thought I had jewels under my dress. I +couldn't bear his touch. The beast! I'd have fought. Surely my life was +in peril.” + +“Did you kill him?” asked Miss Ruth, who lay listening. + +“Oh no. He's not badly hurt.” + +“I'm very glad he's alive,” said Miss Longstreth, shuddering. + +“My intention was bad enough,” Duane went on. “It was a ticklish place +for me. You see, he was half drunk, and I was afraid his gun might go +off. Fool careless he was!” + +“Yet you say you didn't save me,” Miss Longstreth returned, quickly. + +“Well, let it go at that,” Duane responded. “I saved you something.” + +“Tell me all about it?” asked Miss Ruth, who was fast recovering. + +Rather embarrassed, Duane briefly told the incident from his point of +view. + +“Then you stood there all the time with your hands up thinking of +nothing--watching for nothing except a little moment when you might draw +your gun?” asked Miss Ruth. + +“I guess that's about it,” he replied. + +“Cousin,” said Miss Longstreth, thoughtfully, “it was fortunate for us +that this gentleman happened to be here. Papa scouts--laughs at danger. +He seemed to think there was no danger. Yet he raved after it came.” + +“Go with us all the way to Fairdale--please?” asked Miss Ruth, sweetly +offering her hand. “I am Ruth Herbert. And this is my cousin, Ray +Longstreth.” + +“I'm traveling that way,” replied Duane, in great confusion. He did not +know how to meet the situation. + +Colonel Longstreth returned then, and after bidding Duane a good night, +which seemed rather curt by contrast to the graciousness of the girls, +he led them away. + +Before going to bed Duane went outside to take a look at the injured +robber and perhaps to ask him a few questions. To Duane's surprise, he +was gone, and so was his horse. The innkeeper was dumfounded. He said +that he left the fellow on the floor in the bar-room. + +“Had he come to?” inquired Duane. + +“Sure. He asked for whisky.” + +“Did he say anything else?” + +“Not to me. I heard him talkin' to the father of them girls.” + +“You mean Colonel Longstreth?” + +“I reckon. He sure was some riled, wasn't he? Jest as if I was to blame +fer that two-bit of a hold-up!” + +“What did you make of the old gent's rage?” asked Duane, watching the +innkeeper. He scratched his head dubiously. He was sincere, and Duane +believed in his honesty. + +“Wal, I'm doggoned if I know what to make of it. But I reckon he's +either crazy or got more nerve than most Texans.” + +“More nerve, maybe,” Duane replied. “Show me a bed now, innkeeper.” + +Once in bed in the dark, Duane composed himself to think over the +several events of the evening. He called up the details of the holdup +and carefully revolved them in mind. The Colonel's wrath, under +circumstances where almost any Texan would have been cool, nonplussed +Duane, and he put it down to a choleric temperament. He pondered long on +the action of the robber when Longstreth's bellow of rage burst in +upon him. This ruffian, as bold and mean a type as Duane had ever +encountered, had, from some cause or other, been startled. From whatever +point Duane viewed the man's strange indecision he could come to +only one conclusion--his start, his check, his fear had been that of +recognition. Duane compared this effect with the suddenly acquired sense +he had gotten of Colonel Longstreth's powerful personality. Why had that +desperate robber lowered his gun and stood paralyzed at sight and sound +of the Mayor of Fairdale? This was not answerable. There might have been +a number of reasons, all to Colonel Longstreth's credit, but Duane +could not understand. Longstreth had not appeared to see danger for his +daughter, even though she had been roughly handled, and had advanced in +front of a cocked gun. Duane probed deep into this singular fact, and he +brought to bear on the thing all his knowledge and experience of +violent Texas life. And he found that the instant Colonel Longstreth +had appeared on the scene there was no further danger threatening his +daughter. Why? That likewise Duane could not answer. Then his rage, +Duane concluded, had been solely at the idea of HIS daughter being +assaulted by a robber. This deduction was indeed a thought-disturber, +but Duane put it aside to crystallize and for more careful +consideration. + +Next morning Duane found that the little town was called Sanderson. It +was larger than he had at first supposed. He walked up the main street +and back again. Just as he arrived some horsemen rode up to the inn and +dismounted. And at this juncture the Longstreth party came out. Duane +heard Colonel Longstreth utter an exclamation. Then he saw him shake +hands with a tall man. Longstreth looked surprised and angry, and he +spoke with force; but Duane could not hear what it was he said. The +fellow laughed, yet somehow he struck Duane as sullen, until suddenly +he espied Miss Longstreth. Then his face changed, and he removed his +sombrero. Duane went closer. + +“Floyd, did you come with the teams?” asked Longstreth, sharply. + +“Not me. I rode a horse, good and hard,” was the reply. + +“Humph! I'll have a word to say to you later.” Then Longstreth turned to +his daughter. “Ray, here's the cousin I've told you about. You used to +play with him ten years ago--Floyd Lawson. Floyd, my daughter--and my +niece, Ruth Herbert.” + +Duane always scrutinized every one he met, and now with a dangerous game +to play, with a consciousness of Longstreth's unusual and significant +personality, he bent a keen and searching glance upon this Floyd Lawson. + +He was under thirty, yet gray at his temples--dark, smooth-shaven, with +lines left by wildness, dissipation, shadows under dark eyes, a mouth +strong and bitter, and a square chin--a reckless, careless, handsome, +sinister face strangely losing the hardness when he smiled. The grace +of a gentleman clung round him, seemed like an echo in his mellow voice. +Duane doubted not that he, like many a young man, had drifted out to +the frontier, where rough and wild life had wrought sternly but had not +quite effaced the mark of good family. + +Colonel Longstreth apparently did not share the pleasure of his daughter +and his niece in the advent of this cousin. Something hinged on this +meeting. Duane grew intensely curious, but, as the stage appeared ready +for the journey, he had no further opportunity to gratify it. + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +Duane followed the stage through the town, out into the open, on to a +wide, hard-packed road showing years of travel. It headed northwest. To +the left rose a range of low, bleak mountains he had noted yesterday, +and to the right sloped the mesquite-patched sweep of ridge and flat. +The driver pushed his team to a fast trot, which gait surely covered +ground rapidly. + +The stage made three stops in the forenoon, one at a place where the +horses could be watered, the second at a chuck-wagon belonging to +cowboys who were riding after stock, and the third at a small cluster +of adobe and stone houses constituting a hamlet the driver called +Longstreth, named after the Colonel. From that point on to Fairdale +there were only a few ranches, each one controlling great acreage. + +Early in the afternoon from a ridge-top Duane sighted Fairdale, a green +patch in the mass of gray. For the barrens of Texas it was indeed a fair +sight. But he was more concerned with its remoteness from civilization +than its beauty. At that time, in the early seventies, when the vast +western third of Texas was a wilderness, the pioneer had done wonders to +settle there and establish places like Fairdale. + +It needed only a glance for Duane to pick out Colonel Longstreth's +ranch. The house was situated on the only elevation around Fairdale, and +it was not high, nor more than a few minutes' walk from the edge of the +town. It was a low, flat-roofed structure made of red adobe bricks, and +covered what appeared to be fully an acre of ground. All was green about +it, except where the fenced corrals and numerous barns or sheds showed +gray and red. + +Duane soon reached the shady outskirts of Fairdale, and entered the +town with mingled feelings of curiosity, eagerness, and expectation. The +street he rode down was a main one, and on both sides of the street was +a solid row of saloons, resorts, hotels. Saddled horses stood hitched +all along the sidewalk in two long lines, with a buckboard and team here +and there breaking the continuity. This block was busy and noisy. + +From all outside appearances Fairdale was no different from other +frontier towns, and Duane's expectations were scarcely realized. As the +afternoon was waning he halted at a little inn. A boy took charge of his +horse. Duane questioned the lad about Fairdale and gradually drew to the +subject most in mind. + +“Colonel Longstreth has a big outfit, eh?” + +“Reckon he has,” replied the lad. “Doan know how many cowboys. They're +always comin' and goin'. I ain't acquainted with half of them.” + +“Much movement of stock these days?” + +“Stock's always movin',” he replied, with a queer look. + +“Rustlers?” + +But he did not follow up that look with the affirmative Duane expected. + +“Lively place, I hear--Fairdale is?” + +“Ain't so lively as Sanderson, but it's bigger.” + +“Yes, I heard it was. Fellow down there was talking about two cowboys +who were arrested.” + +“Sure. I heered all about that. Joe Bean an' Brick Higgins--they belong +heah, but they ain't heah much. Longstreth's boys.” + +Duane did not want to appear over-inquisitive, so he turned the talk +into other channels. + +After getting supper Duane strolled up and down the main street. When +darkness set in he went into a hotel, bought cigars, sat around, and +watched. Then he passed out and went into the next place. This was of +rough crude exterior, but the inside was comparatively pretentious and +ablaze with lights. It was full of men coming and going--a dusty-booted +crowd that smelled of horses and smoke. Duane sat down for a while, with +wide eyes and open ears. Then he hunted up the bar, where most of the +guests had been or were going. He found a great square room lighted by +six huge lamps, a bar at one side, and all the floor-space taken up +by tables and chairs. This was the only gambling place of any size in +southern Texas in which he had noted the absence of Mexicans. There was +some card-playing going on at this moment. Duane stayed in there for +a while, and knew that strangers were too common in Fairdale to be +conspicuous. Then he returned to the inn where he had engaged a room. + +Duane sat down on the steps of the dingy little restaurant. Two men were +conversing inside, and they had not noticed Duane. + +“Laramie, what's the stranger's name?” asked one. + +“He didn't say,” replied the other. + +“Sure was a strappin' big man. Struck me a little odd, he did. No +cattleman, him. How'd you size him?” + +“Well, like one of them cool, easy, quiet Texans who's been lookin' for +a man for years--to kill him when he found him.” + +“Right you are, Laramie; and, between you an' me, I hope he's lookin' +for Long--” + +“'S--sh!” interrupted Laramie. “You must be half drunk, to go talkie' +that way.” + +Thereafter they conversed in too low a tone for Duane to hear, and +presently Laramie's visitor left. Duane went inside, and, making himself +agreeable, began to ask casual questions about Fairdale. Laramie was not +communicative. + +Duane went to his room in a thoughtful frame of mind. Had Laramie's +visitor meant he hoped some one had come to kill Longstreth? Duane +inferred just that from the interrupted remark. There was something +wrong about the Mayor of Fairdale. Duane felt it. And he felt also, if +there was a crooked and dangerous man, it was this Floyd Lawson. The +innkeeper Laramie would be worth cultivating. And last in Duane's +thoughts that night was Miss Longstreth. He could not help thinking of +her--how strangely the meeting with her had affected him. It made him +remember that long-past time when girls had been a part of his life. +What a sad and dark and endless void lay between that past and the +present! He had no right even to dream of a beautiful woman like Ray +Longstreth. That conviction, however, did not dispel her; indeed, +it seemed perversely to make her grow more fascinating. Duane grew +conscious of a strange, unaccountable hunger, a something that was like +a pang in his breast. + +Next day he lounged about the inn. He did not make any overtures to +the taciturn proprietor. Duane had no need of hurry now. He contented +himself with watching and listening. And at the close of that day he +decided Fairdale was what MacNelly had claimed it to be, and that he was +on the track of an unusual adventure. The following day he spent in much +the same way, though on one occasion he told Laramie he was looking for +a man. The innkeeper grew a little less furtive and reticent after that. +He would answer casual queries, and it did not take Duane long to learn +that Laramie had seen better days--that he was now broken, bitter, and +hard. Some one had wronged him. + +Several days passed. Duane did not succeed in getting any closer to +Laramie, but he found the idlers on the corners and in front of the +stores unsuspicious and willing to talk. It did not take him long to +find out that Fairdale stood parallel with Huntsville for gambling, +drinking, and fighting. The street was always lined with dusty, saddled +horses, the town full of strangers. Money appeared more abundant than in +any place Duane had ever visited; and it was spent with the abandon +that spoke forcibly of easy and crooked acquirement. Duane decided +that Sanderson, Bradford, and Ord were but notorious outposts to this +Fairdale, which was a secret center of rustlers and outlaws. And what +struck Duane strangest of all was the fact that Longstreth was mayor +here and held court daily. Duane knew intuitively, before a chance +remark gave him proof, that this court was a sham, a farce. And he +wondered if it were not a blind. This wonder of his was equivalent to +suspicion of Colonel Longstreth, and Duane reproached himself. Then +he realized that the reproach was because of the daughter. Inquiry had +brought him the fact that Ray Longstreth had just come to live with her +father. Longstreth had originally been a planter in Louisiana, where his +family had remained after his advent in the West. He was a rich rancher; +he owned half of Fairdale; he was a cattle-buyer on a large scale. Floyd +Lawson was his lieutenant and associate in deals. + +On the afternoon of the fifth day of Duane's stay in Fairdale he +returned to the inn from his usual stroll, and upon entering was amazed +to have a rough-looking young fellow rush by him out of the door. Inside +Laramie was lying on the floor, with a bloody bruise on his face. He did +not appear to be dangerously hurt. + +“Bo Snecker! He hit me and went after the cash-drawer,” said Laramie, +laboring to his feet. + +“Are you hurt much?” queried Duane. + +“I guess not. But Bo needn't to have soaked me. I've been robbed before +without that.” + +“Well, I'll take a look after Bo,” replied Duane. + +He went out and glanced down the street toward the center of the town. +He did not see any one he could take for the innkeeper's assailant. Then +he looked up the street, and he saw the young fellow about a block away, +hurrying along and gazing back. + +Duane yelled for him to stop and started to go after him. Snecker broke +into a run. Then Duane set out to overhaul him. There were two motives +in Duane's action--one of anger, and the other a desire to make a friend +of this man Laramie, whom Duane believed could tell him much. + +Duane was light on his feet, and he had a giant stride. He gained +rapidly upon Snecker, who, turning this way and that, could not get +out of sight. Then he took to the open country and ran straight for +the green hill where Longstreth's house stood. Duane had almost caught +Snecker when he reached the shrubbery and trees and there eluded him. +But Duane kept him in sight, in the shade, on the paths, and up the +road into the courtyard, and he saw Snecker go straight for Longstreth's +house. + +Duane was not to be turned back by that, singular as it was. He did not +stop to consider. It seemed enough to know that fate had directed him to +the path of this rancher Longstreth. Duane entered the first open door +on that side of the court. It opened into a corridor which led into a +plaza. It had wide, smooth stone porches, and flowers and shrubbery in +the center. Duane hurried through to burst into the presence of Miss +Longstreth and a number of young people. Evidently she was giving a +little party. + +Lawson stood leaning against one of the pillars that supported the +porch roof; at sight of Duane his face changed remarkably, expressing +amazement, consternation, then fear. + +In the quick ensuing silence Miss Longstreth rose white as her dress. +The young women present stared in astonishment, if they were not equally +perturbed. There were cowboys present who suddenly grew intent and +still. By these things Duane gathered that his appearance must +be disconcerting. He was panting. He wore no hat or coat. His big +gun-sheath showed plainly at his hip. + +Sight of Miss Longstreth had an unaccountable effect upon Duane. He was +plunged into confusion. For the moment he saw no one but her. + +“Miss Longstreth--I came--to search--your house,” panted Duane. + +He hardly knew what he was saying, yet the instant he spoke he realized +that that should have been the last thing for him to say. He had +blundered. But he was not used to women, and this dark-eyed girl made +him thrill and his heart beat thickly and his wits go scattering. + +“Search my house!” exclaimed Miss Longstreth; and red succeeded the +white in her cheeks. She appeared astonished and angry. “What for? Why, +how dare you! This is unwarrantable!” + +“A man--Bo Snecker--assaulted and robbed Jim Laramie,” replied Duane, +hurriedly. “I chased Snecker here--saw him run into the house.” + +“Here? Oh, sir, you must be mistaken. We have seen no one. In the +absence of my father I'm mistress here. I'll not permit you to search.” + +Lawson appeared to come out of his astonishment. He stepped forward. + +“Ray, don't be bothered now,” he said, to his cousin. “This fellow's +making a bluff. I'll settle him. See here, Mister, you clear out!” + +“I want Snecker. He's here, and I'm going to get him,” replied Duane, +quietly. + +“Bah! That's all a bluff,” sneered Lawson. “I'm on to your game. You +just wanted an excuse to break in here--to see my cousin again. When you +saw the company you invented that excuse. Now, be off, or it'll be the +worse for you.” + +Duane felt his face burn with a tide of hot blood. Almost he felt that +he was guilty of such motive. Had he not been unable to put this Ray +Longstreth out of his mind? There seemed to be scorn in her eyes now. +And somehow that checked his embarrassment. + +“Miss Longstreth, will you let me search the house?” he asked. + +“No.” + +“Then--I regret to say--I'll do so without your permission.” + +“You'll not dare!” she flashed. She stood erect, her bosom swelling. + +“Pardon me, yes, I will.” + +“Who are you?” she demanded, suddenly. + +“I'm a Texas Ranger,” replied Duane. + +“A TEXAS RANGER!” she echoed. + +Floyd Lawson's dark face turned pale. + +“Miss Longstreth, I don't need warrants to search houses,” said Duane. +“I'm sorry to annoy you. I'd prefer to have your permission. A ruffian +has taken refuge here--in your father's house. He's hidden somewhere. +May I look for him?” + +“If you are indeed a ranger.” + +Duane produced his papers. Miss Longstreth haughtily refused to look at +them. + +“Miss Longstreth, I've come to make Fairdale a safer, cleaner, better +place for women and children. I don't wonder at your resentment. But to +doubt me--insult me. Some day you may be sorry.” + +Floyd Lawson made a violent motion with his hands. + +“All stuff! Cousin, go on with your party. I'll take a couple of cowboys +and go with this--this Texas Ranger.” + +“Thanks,” said Duane, coolly, as he eyed Lawson. “Perhaps you'll be able +to find Snecker quicker than I could.” + +“What do you mean?” demanded Lawson, and now he grew livid. Evidently he +was a man of fierce quick passions. + +“Don't quarrel,” said Miss Longstreth. “Floyd, you go with him. Please +hurry. I'll be nervous till--the man's found or you're sure there's not +one.” + +They started with several cowboys to search the house. They went through +the rooms searching, calling out, peering into dark places. It struck +Duane more than forcibly that Lawson did all the calling. He was +hurried, too, tried to keep in the lead. Duane wondered if he knew his +voice would be recognized by the hiding man. Be that as it might, it was +Duane who peered into a dark corner and then, with a gun leveled, said +“Come out!” + +He came forth into the flare--a tall, slim, dark-faced youth, wearing +sombrero, blouse and trousers. Duane collared him before any of the +others could move and held the gun close enough to make him shrink. But +he did not impress Duane as being frightened just then; nevertheless, he +had a clammy face, the pallid look of a man who had just gotten over a +shock. He peered into Duane's face, then into that of the cowboy next to +him, then into Lawson's, and if ever in Duane's life he beheld relief +it was then. That was all Duane needed to know, but he meant to find out +more if he could. + +“Who're you?” asked Duane, quietly. + +“Bo Snecker,” he said. + +“What'd you hide here for?” + +He appeared to grow sullen. + +“Reckoned I'd be as safe in Longstreth's as anywheres.” + +“Ranger, what'll you do with him?” Lawson queried, as if uncertain, now +the capture was made. + +“I'll see to that,” replied Duane, and he pushed Snecker in front of him +out into the court. + +Duane had suddenly conceived the idea of taking Snecker before Mayor +Longstreth in the court. + +When Duane arrived at the hall where court was held there were other men +there, a dozen or more, and all seemed excited; evidently, news of Duane +had preceded him. Longstreth sat at a table up on a platform. Near +him sat a thick-set grizzled man, with deep eyes, and this was Hanford +Owens, county judge. To the right stood a tall, angular, yellow-faced +fellow with a drooping sandy mustache. Conspicuous on his vest was a +huge silver shield. This was Gorsech, one of Longstreth's sheriffs. +There were four other men whom Duane knew by sight, several whose faces +were familiar, and half a dozen strangers, all dusty horsemen. + +Longstreth pounded hard on the table to be heard. Mayor or not, he was +unable at once to quell the excitement. Gradually, however, it subsided, +and from the last few utterances before quiet was restored Duane +gathered that he had intruded upon some kind of a meeting in the hall. + +“What'd you break in here for,” demanded Longstreth. + +“Isn't this the court? Aren't you the Mayor of Fairdale?” interrogated +Duane. His voice was clear and loud, almost piercing. + +“Yes,” replied Longstreth. Like flint he seemed, yet Duane felt his +intense interest. + +“I've arrested a criminal,” said Duane. + +“Arrested a criminal!” ejaculated Longstreth. “You? Who're you?” + +“I'm a ranger,” replied Duane. + +A significant silence ensued. + +“I charge Snecker with assault on Laramie and attempted robbery--if not +murder. He's had a shady past here, as this court will know if it keeps +a record.” + +“What's this I hear about you, Bo? Get up and speak for yourself,” said +Longstreth, gruffly. + +Snecker got up, not without a furtive glance at Duane, and he had +shuffled forward a few steps toward the Mayor. He had an evil front, but +not the boldness even of a rustler. + +“It ain't so, Longstreth,” he began, loudly. “I went in Laramie's place +fer grub. Some feller I never seen before come in from the hall an' hit +Laramie an' wrestled him on the floor. I went out. Then this big ranger +chased me an' fetched me here. I didn't do nothin'. This ranger's +hankerin' to arrest somebody. Thet's my hunch, Longstreth.” + +Longstreth said something in an undertone to Judge Owens, and that +worthy nodded his great bushy head. + +“Bo, you're discharged,” said Longstreth, bluntly. “Now the rest of you +clear out of here.” + +He absolutely ignored the ranger. That was his rebuff to Duane--his slap +in the face to an interfering ranger service. If Longstreth was crooked +he certainly had magnificent nerve. Duane almost decided he was above +suspicion. But his nonchalance, his air of finality, his authoritative +assurance--these to Duane's keen and practiced eyes were in significant +contrast to a certain tenseness of line about his mouth and a slow +paling of his olive skin. In that momentary lull Duane's scrutiny of +Longstreth gathered an impression of the man's intense curiosity. + +Then the prisoner, Snecker, with a cough that broke the spell of +silence, shuffled a couple of steps toward the door. + +“Hold on!” called Duane. The call halted Snecker, as if it had been a +bullet. + +“Longstreth, I saw Snecker attack Laramie,” said Duane, his voice still +ringing. “What has the court to say to that?” + +“The court has this to say. West of the Pecos we'll not aid any ranger +service. We don't want you out here. Fairdale doesn't need you.” + +“That's a lie, Longstreth,” retorted Duane. “I've letters from Fairdale +citizens all begging for ranger service.” + +Longstreth turned white. The veins corded at his temples. He appeared +about to burst into rage. He was at a loss for quick reply. + +Floyd Lawson rushed in and up to the table. The blood showed black and +thick in his face; his utterance was incoherent, his uncontrollable +outbreak of temper seemed out of all proportion to any cause he should +reasonably have had for anger. Longstreth shoved him back with a curse +and a warning glare. + +“Where's your warrant to arrest Snecker?” shouted Longstreth. + +“I don't need warrants to make arrests. Longstreth, you're ignorant of +the power of Texas Rangers.” + +“You'll come none of your damned ranger stunts out here. I'll block +you.” + +That passionate reply of Longstreth's was the signal Duane had +been waiting for. He had helped on the crisis. He wanted to force +Longstreth's hand and show the town his stand. + +Duane backed clear of everybody. + +“Men! I call on you all!” cried Duane, piercingly. “I call on you to +witness the arrest of a criminal prevented by Longstreth, Mayor of +Fairdale. It will be recorded in the report to the Adjutant-General at +Austin. Longstreth, you'll never prevent another arrest.” + +Longstreth sat white with working jaw. + +“Longstreth, you've shown your hand,” said Duane, in a voice that +carried far and held those who heard. “Any honest citizen of Fairdale +can now see what's plain--yours is a damn poor hand! You're going to +hear me call a spade a spade. In the two years you've been Mayor +you've never arrested one rustler. Strange, when Fairdale's a nest for +rustlers! You've never sent a prisoner to Del Rio, let alone to +Austin. You have no jail. There have been nine murders during your +office--innumerable street-fights and holdups. Not one arrest! But you +have ordered arrests for trivial offenses, and have punished these out +of all proportion. There have been lawsuits in your court-suits over +water-rights, cattle deals, property lines. Strange how in these +lawsuits you or Lawson or other men close to you were always involved! +Strange how it seems the law was stretched to favor your interest!” + +Duane paused in his cold, ringing speech. In the silence, both outside +and inside the hall, could be heard the deep breathing of agitated men. +Longstreth was indeed a study. Yet did he betray anything but rage at +this interloper? + +“Longstreth, here's plain talk for you and Fairdale,” went on Duane. “I +don't accuse you and your court of dishonesty. I say STRANGE! Law here +has been a farce. The motive behind all this laxity isn't plain to +me--yet. But I call your hand!” + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +Duane left the hall, elbowed his way through the crowd, and went down +the street. He was certain that on the faces of some men he had seen +ill-concealed wonder and satisfaction. He had struck some kind of a hot +trait, and he meant to see where it led. It was by no means unlikely +that Cheseldine might be at the other end. Duane controlled a mounting +eagerness. But ever and anon it was shot through with a remembrance of +Ray Longstreth. He suspected her father of being not what he pretended. +He might, very probably would, bring sorrow and shame to this young +woman. The thought made him smart with pain. She began to haunt him, +and then he was thinking more of her beauty and sweetness than of the +disgrace he might bring upon her. Some strange emotion, long locked +inside Duane's heart, knocked to be heard, to be let out. He was +troubled. + +Upon returning to the inn he found Laramie there, apparently none the +worse for his injury. + +“How are you, Laramie?” he asked. + +“Reckon I'm feelin' as well as could be expected,” replied Laramie. His +head was circled by a bandage that did not conceal the lump where he had +been struck. He looked pale, but was bright enough. + +“That was a good crack Snecker gave you,” remarked Duane. + +“I ain't accusin' Bo,” remonstrated Laramie, with eyes that made Duane +thoughtful. + +“Well, I accuse him. I caught him--took him to Longstreth's court. But +they let him go.” + +Laramie appeared to be agitated by this intimation of friendship. + +“See here, Laramie,” went on Duane, “in some parts of Texas it's policy +to be close-mouthed. Policy and health-preserving! Between ourselves, I +want you to know I lean on your side of the fence.” + +Laramie gave a quick start. Presently Duane turned and frankly met his +gaze. He had startled Laramie out of his habitual set taciturnity; but +even as he looked the light that might have been amaze and joy faded out +of his face, leaving it the same old mask. Still Duane had seen enough. +Like a bloodhound he had a scent. + +“Talking about work, Laramie, who'd you say Snecker worked for?” + +“I didn't say.” + +“Well, say so now, can't you? Laramie, you're powerful peevish to-day. +It's that bump on your head. Who does Snecker work for?” + +“When he works at all, which sure ain't often, he rides for Longstreth.” + +“Humph! Seems to me that Longstreth's the whole circus round Fairdale. +I was some sore the other day to find I was losing good money at +Longstreth's faro game. Sure if I'd won I wouldn't have been sore--ha, +ha! But I was surprised to hear some one say Longstreth owned the Hope +So joint.” + +“He owns considerable property hereabouts,” replied Laramie, +constrainedly. + +“Humph again! Laramie, like every other fellow I meet in this town, +you're afraid to open your trap about Longstreth. Get me straight, +Laramie. I don't care a damn for Colonel Mayor Longstreth. And for cause +I'd throw a gun on him just as quick as on any rustler in Pecos.” + +“Talk's cheap,” replied Laramie, making light of his bluster, but the +red was deeper in his face. + +“Sure. I know that,” Duane said. “And usually I don't talk. Then it's +not well known that Longstreth owns the Hope So?” + +“Reckon it's known in Pecos, all right. But Longstreth's name isn't +connected with the Hope So. Blandy runs the place.” + +“That Blandy. His faro game's crooked, or I'm a locoed bronch. Not that +we don't have lots of crooked faro-dealers. A fellow can stand for them. +But Blandy's mean, back-handed, never looks you in the eyes. That Hope +So place ought to be run by a good fellow like you, Laramie.” + +“Thanks,” replied he; and Duane imagined his voice a little husky. +“Didn't you hear I used to run it?” + +“No. Did you?” Duane said, quickly. + +“I reckon. I built the place, made additions twice, owned it for eleven +years.” + +“Well, I'll be doggoned.” It was indeed Duane's turn to be surprised, +and with the surprise came a glimmering. “I'm sorry you're not there +now. Did you sell out?” + +“No. Just lost the place.” + +Laramie was bursting for relief now--to talk, to tell. Sympathy had made +him soft. + +“It was two years ago-two years last March,” he went on. “I was in a big +cattle deal with Longstreth. We got the stock--an' my share, eighteen +hundred head, was rustled off. I owed Longstreth. He pressed me. It come +to a lawsuit--an' I--was ruined.” + +It hurt Duane to look at Laramie. He was white, and tears rolled down +his cheeks. Duane saw the bitterness, the defeat, the agony of the +man. He had failed to meet his obligations; nevertheless, he had been +swindled. All that he suppressed, all that would have been passion had +the man's spirit not been broken, lay bare for Duane to see. He had now +the secret of his bitterness. But the reason he did not openly accuse +Longstreth, the secret of his reticence and fear--these Duane thought +best to try to learn at some later time. + +“Hard luck! It certainly was tough,” Duane said. “But you're a good +loser. And the wheel turns! Now, Laramie, here's what. I need your +advice. I've got a little money. But before I lose it I want to invest +some. Buy some stock, or buy an interest in some rancher's herd. What I +want you to steer me on is a good square rancher. Or maybe a couple of +ranchers, if there happen to be two honest ones. Ha, ha! No deals with +ranchers who ride in the dark with rustlers! I've a hunch Fairdale is +full of them. Now, Laramie, you've been here for years. Sure you must +know a couple of men above suspicion.” + +“Thank God I do,” he replied, feelingly. “Frank Morton an' Si Zimmer, my +friends an' neighbors all my prosperous days, an' friends still. You +can gamble on Frank and Si. But if you want advice from me--don't invest +money in stock now.” + +“Why?” + +“Because any new feller buyin' stock these days will be rustled quicker +'n he can say Jack Robinson. The pioneers, the new cattlemen--these +are easy pickin' for the rustlers. Lord knows all the ranchers are easy +enough pickin'. But the new fellers have to learn the ropes. They don't +know anythin' or anybody. An' the old ranchers are wise an' sore. They'd +fight if they--” + +“What?” Duane put in, as he paused. “If they knew who was rustling the +stock?” + +“Nope.” + +“If they had the nerve?” + +“Not thet so much.” + +“What then? What'd make them fight?” + +“A leader!” + +“Howdy thar, Jim,” boomed a big voice. + +A man of great bulk, with a ruddy, merry face, entered the room. + +“Hello, Morton,” replied Laramie. “I'd introduce you to my guest here, +but I don't know his name.” + +“Haw! Haw! Thet's all right. Few men out hyar go by their right names.” + +“Say, Morton,” put in Duane, “Laramie gave me a hunch you'd be a good +man to tie to. Now, I've a little money and before I lose it I'd like to +invest it in stock.” + +Morton smiled broadly. + +“I'm on the square,” Duane said, bluntly. “If you fellows never size up +your neighbors any better than you have sized me--well, you won't get +any richer.” + +It was enjoyment for Duane to make his remarks to these men pregnant +with meaning. Morton showed his pleasure, his interest, but his faith +held aloof. + +“I've got some money. Will you let me in on some kind of deal? Will you +start me up as a stockman with a little herd all my own?” + +“Wal, stranger, to come out flat-footed, you'd be foolish to buy cattle +now. I don't want to take your money an' see you lose out. Better go +back across the Pecos where the rustlers ain't so strong. I haven't had +more'n twenty-five hundred herd of stock for ten years. The rustlers let +me hang on to a breedin' herd. Kind of them, ain't it?” + +“Sort of kind. All I hear is rustlers, Morton,” replied Duane, with +impatience. “You see, I haven't ever lived long in a rustler-run county. +Who heads the gang, anyway?” + +Morton looked at Duane with a curiously amused smile, then snapped his +big jaw as if to shut in impulsive words. + +“Look here, Morton. It stands to reason, no matter how strong these +rustlers are, how hidden their work, however involved with supposedly +honest men--they CAN'T last.” + +“They come with the pioneers, an' they'll last till thar's a single +steer left,” he declared. + +“Well, if you take that view of circumstances I just figure you as one +of the rustlers.” + +Morton looked as if he were about to brain Duane with the butt of his +whip. His anger flashed by then, evidently as unworthy of him, and, +something striking him as funny, he boomed out a laugh. + +“It's not so funny,” Duane went on. “If you're going to pretend a yellow +streak, what else will I think?” + +“Pretend?” he repeated. + +“Sure. I know men of nerve. And here they're not any different from +those in other places. I say if you show anything like a lack of sand +it's all bluff. By nature you've got nerve. There are a lot of men +around Fairdale who're afraid of their shadows--afraid to be out after +dark--afraid to open their mouths. But you're not one. So I say if you +claim these rustlers will last you're pretending lack of nerve just to +help the popular idea along. For they CAN'T last. What you need out here +is some new blood. Savvy what I mean?” + +“Wal, I reckon I do,” he replied, looking as if a storm had blown over +him. “Stranger, I'll look you up the next time I come to town.” + +Then he went out. + +Laramie had eyes like flint striking fire. + +He breathed a deep breath and looked around the room before his gaze +fixed again on Duane. + +“Wal,” he replied, speaking low. “You've picked the right men. Now, who +in the hell are you?” + +Reaching into the inside pocket of his buckskin vest, Duane turned the +lining out. A star-shaped bright silver object flashed as he shoved it, +pocket and all, under Jim's hard eyes. + +“RANGER!” he whispered, cracking the table with his fist. “You sure rung +true to me.” + +“Laramie, do you know who's boss of this secret gang of rustlers +hereabouts?” asked Duane, bluntly. It was characteristic of him to +come sharp to the point. His voice--something deep, easy, cool about +him--seemed to steady Laramie. + +“No,” replied Laramie. + +“Does anybody know?” went on Duane. + +“Wal, I reckon there's not one honest native who KNOWS.” + +“But you have your suspicions?” + +“We have.” + +“Give me your idea about this crowd that hangs round the saloons--the +regulars.” + +“Jest a bad lot,” replied Laramie, with the quick assurance of +knowledge. “Most of them have been here years. Others have drifted in. +Some of them work, odd times. They rustle a few steers, steal, rob, +anythin' for a little money to drink an' gamble. Jest a bad lot!” + +“Have you any idea whether Cheseldine and his gang are associated with +this gang here?” + +“Lord knows. I've always suspected them the same gang. None of us ever +seen Cheseldine--an' thet's strange, when Knell, Poggin, Panhandle +Smith, Blossom Kane, and Fletcher, they all ride here often. No, Poggin +doesn't come often. But the others do. For thet matter, they're around +all over west of the Pecos.” + +“Now I'm puzzled over this,” said Duane. “Why do men--apparently honest +men--seem to be so close-mouthed here? Is that a fact, or only my +impression?” + +“It's a sure fact,” replied Laramie, darkly. “Men have lost cattle an' +property in Fairdale--lost them honestly or otherwise, as hasn't been +proved. An' in some cases when they talked--hinted a little--they was +found dead. Apparently held up an robbed. But dead. Dead men don't talk! +Thet's why we're close mouthed.” + +Duane felt a dark, somber sternness. Rustling cattle was not +intolerable. Western Texas had gone on prospering, growing in spite of +the hordes of rustlers ranging its vast stretches; but a cold, secret, +murderous hold on a little struggling community was something too +strange, too terrible for men to stand long. + +The ranger was about to speak again when the clatter of hoofs +interrupted him. Horses halted out in front, and one rider got down. +Floyd Lawson entered. He called for tobacco. + +If his visit surprised Laramie he did not show any evidence. But Lawson +showed rage as he saw the ranger, and then a dark glint flitted from +the eyes that shifted from Duane to Laramie and back again. Duane leaned +easily against the counter. + +“Say, that was a bad break of yours,” Lawson said. “If you come fooling +round the ranch again there'll be hell.” + +It seemed strange that a man who had lived west of the Pecos for ten +years could not see in Duane something which forbade that kind of talk. +It certainly was not nerve Lawson showed; men of courage were seldom +intolerant. With the matchless nerve that characterized the great gunmen +of the day there was a cool, unobtrusive manner, a speech brief, almost +gentle, certainly courteous. Lawson was a hot-headed Louisianian of +French extraction; a man, evidently, who had never been crossed in +anything, and who was strong, brutal, passionate, which qualities in the +face of a situation like this made him simply a fool. + +“I'm saying again, you used your ranger bluff just to get near Ray +Longstreth,” Lawson sneered. “Mind you, if you come up there again +there'll be hell.” + +“You're right. But not the kind you think,” Duane retorted, his voice +sharp and cold. + +“Ray Longstreth wouldn't stoop to know a dirty blood-tracker like you,” + said Lawson, hotly. He did not seem to have a deliberate intention +to rouse Duane; the man was simply rancorous, jealous. “I'll call +you right. You cheap bluffer! You four-flush! You damned interfering, +conceited ranger!” + +“Lawson, I'll not take offense, because you seem to be championing your +beautiful cousin,” replied Duane, in slow speech. “But let me return +your compliment. You're a fine Southerner! Why, you're only a cheap +four-flush--damned, bull-headed RUSTLER!” + +Duane hissed the last word. Then for him there was the truth in Lawson's +working passion-blackened face. + +Lawson jerked, moved, meant to draw. But how slow! Duane lunged forward. +His long arm swept up. And Lawson staggered backward, knocking table and +chairs, to fall hard, in a half-sitting posture against the wall. + +“Don't draw!” warned Duane. + +“Lawson, git away from your gun!” yelled Laramie. + +But Lawson was crazed with fury. He tugged at his hip, his face corded +with purple welts, malignant, murderous. Duane kicked the gun out of his +hand. Lawson got up, raging, and rushed out. + +Laramie lifted his shaking hands. + +“What'd you wing him for?” he wailed. “He was drawin' on you. Kickin' +men like him won't do out here.” + +“That bull-headed fool will roar and butt himself with all his gang +right into our hands. He's just the man I've needed to meet. Besides, +shooting him would have been murder.” + +“Murder!” exclaimed Laramie. + +“Yes, for me,” replied Duane. + +“That may be true--whoever you are--but if Lawson's the man you think he +is he'll begin thet secret underground bizness. Why, Lawson won't sleep +of nights now. He an' Longstreth have always been after me.” + +“Laramie, what are your eyes for?” demanded Duane. “Watch out. And now +here. See your friend Morton. Tell him this game grows hot. Together you +approach four or five men you know well and can absolutely trust. I may +need your help.” + +Then Duane went from place to place, corner to corner, bar to bar, +watching, listening, recording. The excitement had preceded him, and +speculation was rife. He thought best to keep out of it. After dark he +stole up to Longstreth's ranch. The evening was warm; the doors were +open; and in the twilight the only lamps that had been lit were in +Longstreth's big sitting-room, at the far end of the house. When a +buckboard drove up and Longstreth and Lawson alighted, Duane was well +hidden in the bushes, so well screened that he could get but a fleeting +glimpse of Longstreth as he went in. For all Duane could see, he +appeared to be a calm and quiet man, intense beneath the surface, with +an air of dignity under insult. Duane's chance to observe Lawson was +lost. They went into the house without speaking and closed the door. + +At the other end of the porch, close under a window, was an offset +between step and wall, and there in the shadow Duane hid. So Duane +waited there in the darkness with patience born of many hours of hiding. + +Presently a lamp was lit; and Duane heard the swish of skirts. + +“Something's happened surely, Ruth,” he heard Miss Longstreth say, +anxiously. “Papa just met me in the hall and didn't speak. He seemed +pale, worried.” + +“Cousin Floyd looked like a thunder-cloud,” said Ruth. “For once he +didn't try to kiss me. Something's happened. Well, Ray, this had been a +bad day.” + +“Oh, dear! Ruth, what can we do? These are wild men. Floyd makes life +miserable for me. And he teases you unmer--” + +“I don't call it teasing. Floyd wants to spoon,” declared Ruth, +emphatically. “He'd run after any woman.” + +“A fine compliment to me, Cousin Ruth,” laughed Ray. + +“I don't care,” replied Ruth, stubbornly, “it's so. He's mushy. And when +he's been drinking and tries to kiss me--I hate him!” + +There were steps on the hall floor. + +“Hello, girls!” sounded out Lawson's voice, minus its usual gaiety. + +“Floyd, what's the matter?” asked Ray, presently. “I never saw papa as +he is to-night, nor you so--so worried. Tell me, what has happened?” + +“Well, Ray, we had a jar to-day,” replied Lawson, with a blunt, +expressive laugh. + +“Jar?” echoed both the girls, curiously. + +“We had to submit to a damnable outrage,” added Lawson, passionately, +as if the sound of his voice augmented his feeling. “Listen, girls; I'll +tell you-all about it.” He coughed, cleared his throat in a way that +betrayed he had been drinking. + +Duane sunk deeper into the shadow of his covert, and, stiffening his +muscles for a protected spell of rigidity, prepared to listen with all +acuteness and intensity. Just one word from this Lawson, inadvertently +uttered in a moment of passion, might be the word Duane needed for his +clue. + +“It happened at the town hall,” began Lawson, rapidly. “Your father and +Judge Owens and I were there in consultation with three ranchers from +out of town. Then that damned ranger stalked in dragging Snecker, the +fellow who hid here in the house. He had arrested Snecker for alleged +assault on a restaurant-keeper named Laramie. Snecker being obviously +innocent, he was discharged. Then this ranger began shouting his +insults. Law was a farce in Fairdale. The court was a farce. There +was no law. Your father's office as mayor should be impeached. He +made arrests only for petty offenses. He was afraid of the rustlers, +highwaymen, murderers. He was afraid or--he just let them alone. He used +his office to cheat ranchers and cattlemen in lawsuits. All this the +ranger yelled for every one to hear. A damnable outrage. Your father, +Ray, insulted in his own court by a rowdy ranger!” + +“Oh!” cried Ray Longstreth, in mingled distress and anger. + +“The ranger service wants to rule western Texas,” went on Lawson. “These +rangers are all a low set, many of them worse than the outlaws they +hunt. Some of them were outlaws and gun-fighters before they became +rangers. This is one of the worst of the lot. He's keen, intelligent, +smooth, and that makes him more to be feared. For he is to be feared. He +wanted to kill. He would kill. If your father had made the least move he +would have shot him. He's a cold-nerved devil--the born gunman. My God, +any instant I expected to see your father fall dead at my feet!” + +“Oh, Floyd! The unspeakable ruffian!” cried Ray Longstreth, +passionately. + +“You see, Ray, this fellow, like all rangers, seeks notoriety. He made +that play with Snecker just for a chance to rant against your father. He +tried to inflame all Fairdale against him. That about the lawsuits was +the worst! Damn him! He'll make us enemies.” + +“What do you care for the insinuations of such a man?” said Ray +Longstreth, her voice now deep and rich with feeling. “After a moment's +thought no one will be influenced by them. Do not worry, Floyd. Tell +papa not to worry. Surely after all these years he can't be injured in +reputation by--by an adventurer.” + +“Yes, he can be injured,” replied Floyd, quickly. “The frontier is a +queer place. There are many bitter men here--men who have failed at +ranching. And your father has been wonderfully successful. The ranger +has dropped poison, and it'll spread.” + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +Strangers rode into Fairdale; and other hard-looking customers, new +to Duane if not to Fairdale, helped to create a charged and waiting +atmosphere. The saloons did unusual business and were never closed. +Respectable citizens of the town were awakened in the early dawn by +rowdies carousing in the streets. + +Duane kept pretty close under cover during the day. He did not entertain +the opinion that the first time he walked down-street he would be a +target for guns. Things seldom happened that way; and when they did +happen so, it was more accident than design. But at night he was not +idle. He met Laramie, Morton, Zimmer, and others of like character; a +secret club had been formed; and all the members were ready for action. +Duane spent hours at night watching the house where Floyd Lawson stayed +when he was not up at Longstreth's. At night he was visited, or at least +the house was, by strange men who were swift, stealthy, mysterious--all +that kindly disposed friends or neighbors would not have been. Duane had +not been able to recognize any of these night visitors; and he did +not think the time was ripe for a bold holding-up of one of them. +Nevertheless, he was sure such an event would discover Lawson, or some +one in that house, to be in touch with crooked men. + +Laramie was right. Not twenty-four hours after his last talk with Duane, +in which he advised quick action, he was found behind the little bar of +his restaurant with a bullet-hole in his breast, dead. No one could be +found who had heard a shot. It had been deliberate murder, for upon the +bar had been left a piece of paper rudely scrawled with a pencil: “All +friends of rangers look for the same.” + +This roused Duane. His first move, however, was to bury Laramie. None +of Laramie's neighbors evinced any interest in the dead man or the +unfortunate family he had left. Duane saw that these neighbors were held +in check by fear. Mrs. Laramie was ill; the shock of her husband's +death was hard on her; and she had been left almost destitute with five +children. Duane rented a small adobe house on the outskirts of town and +moved the family into it. Then he played the part of provider and nurse +and friend. + +After several days Duane went boldly into town and showed that he meant +business. It was his opinion that there were men in Fairdale secretly +glad of a ranger's presence. What he intended to do was food for great +speculation. A company of militia could not have had the effect upon the +wild element of Fairdale that Duane's presence had. It got out that he +was a gunman lightning swift on the draw. It was death to face him. He +had killed thirty men--wildest rumor of all--it was actually said of him +he had the gun-skill of Buck Duane or of Poggin. + +At first there had not only been great conjecture among the vicious +element, but also a very decided checking of all kinds of action +calculated to be conspicuous to a keen-eyed ranger. At the tables, at +the bars and lounging-places Duane heard the remarks: “Who's thet ranger +after? What'll he do fust off? Is he waitin' fer somebody? Who's goin' +to draw on him fust--an' go to hell? Jest about how soon will he be +found somewheres full of lead?” + +When it came out somewhere that Duane was openly cultivating the honest +stay-at-home citizens to array them in time against the other element, +then Fairdale showed its wolf-teeth. Several times Duane was shot at +in the dark and once slightly injured. Rumor had it that Poggin, the +gunman, was coming to meet him. But the lawless element did not rise up +in a mass to slay Duane on sight. It was not so much that the enemies +of the law awaited his next move, but just a slowness peculiar to +the frontier. The ranger was in their midst. He was interesting, if +formidable. He would have been welcomed at card-tables, at the bars, to +play and drink with the men who knew they were under suspicion. There +was a rude kind of good humor even in their open hostility. + +Besides, one ranger or a company of rangers could not have held the +undivided attention of these men from their games and drinks and +quarrels except by some decided move. Excitement, greed, appetite were +rife in them. Duane marked, however, a striking exception to the usual +run of strangers he had been in the habit of seeing. Snecker had gone +or was under cover. Again Duane caught a vague rumor of the coming of +Poggin, yet he never seemed to arrive. Moreover, the goings-on among the +habitues of the resorts and the cowboys who came in to drink and gamble +were unusually mild in comparison with former conduct. This lull, +however, did not deceive Duane. It could not last. The wonder was that +it had lasted so long. + +Duane went often to see Mrs. Laramie and her children. One afternoon +while he was there he saw Miss Longstreth and Ruth ride up to the +door. They carried a basket. Evidently they had heard of Mrs. Laramie's +trouble. Duane felt strangely glad, but he went into an adjoining room +rather than meet them. + +“Mrs. Laramie, I've come to see you,” said Miss Longstreth, cheerfully. + +The little room was not very light, there being only one window and +the doors, but Duane could see plainly enough. Mrs. Laramie lay, +hollow-checked and haggard, on a bed. Once she had evidently been a +woman of some comeliness. The ravages of trouble and grief were there to +read in her worn face; it had not, however, any of the hard and bitter +lines that had characterized her husband's. + +Duane wondered, considering that Longstreth had ruined Laramie, how Mrs. +Laramie was going to regard the daughter of an enemy. + +“So you're Granger Longstreth's girl?” queried the woman, with her +bright, black eyes fixed on her visitor. + +“Yes,” replied Miss Longstreth, simply. “This is my cousin, Ruth +Herbert. We've come to nurse you, take care of the children, help you in +any way you'll let us.” + +There was a long silence. + +“Well, you look a little like Longstreth,” finally said Mrs. Laramie, +“but you're not at ALL like him. You must take after your mother. Miss +Longstreth, I don't know if I can--if I ought accept anything from you. +Your father ruined my husband.” + +“Yes, I know,” replied the girl, sadly. “That's all the more reason you +should let me help you. Pray don't refuse. It will--mean so much to me.” + +If this poor, stricken woman had any resentment it speedily melted in +the warmth and sweetness of Miss Longstreth's manner. Duane's idea +was that the impression of Ray Longstreth's beauty was always swiftly +succeeded by that of her generosity and nobility. At any rate, she had +started well with Mrs. Laramie, and no sooner had she begun to talk to +the children than both they and the mother were won. The opening of that +big basket was an event. Poor, starved little beggars! Duane's feelings +seemed too easily roused. Hard indeed would it have gone with Jim +Laramie's slayer if he could have laid eyes on him then. However, Miss +Longstreth and Ruth, after the nature of tender and practical girls, did +not appear to take the sad situation to heart. The havoc was wrought in +that household. + +The needs now were cheerfulness, kindness, help, action--and these the +girls furnished with a spirit that did Duane good. + +“Mrs. Laramie, who dressed this baby?” presently asked Miss Longstreth. +Duane peeped in to see a dilapidated youngster on her knee. That sight, +if any other was needed, completed his full and splendid estimate of Ray +Longstreth and wrought strangely upon his heart. + +“The ranger,” replied Mrs. Laramie. + +“The ranger!” exclaimed Miss Longstreth. + +“Yes, he's taken care of us all since--since--” Mrs. Laramie choked. + +“Oh! So you've had no help but his,” replied Miss Longstreth, hastily. +“No women. Too bad! I'll send some one, Mrs. Laramie, and I'll come +myself.” + +“It'll be good of you,” went on the older woman. “You see, Jim had +few friends--that is, right in town. And they've been afraid to help +us--afraid they'd get what poor Jim--” + +“That's awful!” burst out Miss Longstreth, passionately. “A brave lot of +friends! Mrs. Laramie, don't you worry any more. We'll take care of you. +Here, Ruth, help me. Whatever is the matter with baby's dress?” + +Manifestly Miss Longstreth had some difficulty in subduing her emotion. + +“Why, it's on hind side before,” declared Ruth. “I guess Mr. Ranger +hasn't dressed many babies.” + +“He did the best he could,” said Mrs. Laramie. “Lord only knows what +would have become of us!” + +“Then he is--is something more than a ranger?” queried Miss Longstreth, +with a little break in her voice. + +“He's more than I can tell,” replied Mrs. Laramie. “He buried Jim. He +paid our debts. He fetched us here. He bought food for us. He cooked for +us and fed us. He washed and dressed the baby. He sat with me the first +two nights after Jim's death, when I thought I'd die myself. He's so +kind, so gentle, so patient. He has kept me up just by being near. +Sometimes I'd wake from a doze, an', seeing him there, I'd know how +false were all these tales Jim heard about him and believed at first. +Why, he plays with the children just--just like any good man might. When +he has the baby up I just can't believe he's a bloody gunman, as they +say. He's good, but he isn't happy. He has such sad eyes. He looks far +off sometimes when the children climb round him. They love him. His life +is sad. Nobody need tell me--he sees the good in things. Once he said +somebody had to be a ranger. Well, I say, 'Thank God for a ranger like +him!'” + +Duane did not want to hear more, so he walked into the room. + +“It was thoughtful of you,” Duane said. “Womankind are needed here. I +could do so little. Mrs. Laramie, you look better already. I'm glad. +And here's baby, all clean and white. Baby, what a time I had trying to +puzzle out the way your clothes went on! Well, Mrs. Laramie, didn't I +tell you--friends would come? So will the brighter side.” + +“Yes, I've more faith than I had,” replied Mrs. Laramie. “Granger +Longstreth's daughter has come to me. There for a while after Jim's +death I thought I'd sink. We have nothing. How could I ever take care of +my little ones? But I'm gaining courage to--” + +“Mrs. Laramie, do not distress yourself any more,” said Miss Longstreth. +“I shall see you are well cared for. I promise you.” + +“Miss Longstreth, that's fine!” exclaimed Duane. “It's what I'd +have--expected of you.” + +It must have been sweet praise to her, for the whiteness of her face +burned out in a beautiful blush. + +“And it's good of you, too, Miss Herbert, to come,” added Duane. “Let me +thank you both. I'm glad I have you girls as allies in part of my lonely +task here. More than glad for the sake of this good woman and the little +ones. But both of you be careful about coming here alone. There's +risk. And now I'll be going. Good-by, Mrs. Laramie. I'll drop in again +to-night. Good-by.” + +“Mr. Ranger, wait!” called Miss Longstreth, as he went out. She was +white and wonderful. She stepped out of the door close to him. + +“I have wronged you,” she said, impulsively. + +“Miss Longstreth! How can you say that?” he returned. + +“I believed what my father and Floyd Lawson said about you. Now I see--I +wronged you.” + +“You make me very glad. But, Miss Longstreth, please don't speak of +wronging me. I have been a--a gunman, I am a ranger--and much said of me +is true. My duty is hard on others--sometimes on those who are innocent, +alas! But God knows that duty is hard, too, on me.” + +“I did wrong you. If you entered my home again I would think it an +honor. I--” + +“Please--please don't, Miss Longstreth,” interrupted Duane. + +“But, sir, my conscience flays me,” she went on. There was no other +sound like her voice. “Will you take my hand? Will you forgive me?” + +She gave it royally, while the other was there pressing at her breast. +Duane took the proffered hand. He did not know what else to do. + +Then it seemed to dawn upon him that there was more behind this white, +sweet, noble intensity of her than just the making amends for a fancied +or real wrong. Duane thought the man did not live on earth who could +have resisted her then. + +“I honor you for your goodness to this unfortunate woman,” she said, and +now her speech came swiftly. “When she was all alone and helpless you +were her friend. It was the deed of a man. But Mrs. Laramie isn't the +only unfortunate woman in the world. I, too, am unfortunate. Ah, how +I may soon need a friend! Will you be my friend? I'm so alone. I'm +terribly worried. I fear--I fear--Oh, surely I'll need a friend +soon--soon. Oh, I'm afraid of what you'll find out sooner or later. I +want to help you. Let us save life if not honor. Must I stand alone--all +alone? Will you--will you be--” Her voice failed. + +It seemed to Duane that she must have discovered what he had begun to +suspect--that her father and Lawson were not the honest ranchers they +pretended to be. Perhaps she knew more! Her appeal to Duane shook him +deeply. He wanted to help her more than he had ever wanted anything. And +with the meaning of the tumultuous sweetness she stirred in him there +came realization of a dangerous situation. + +“I must be true to my duty,” he said, hoarsely. + +“If you knew me you'd know I could never ask you to be false to it.” + +“Well, then--I'll do anything for you.” + +“Oh, thank you! I'm ashamed that I believed my cousin Floyd! He lied--he +lied. I'm all in the dark, strangely distressed. My father wants me to +go back home. Floyd is trying to keep me here. They've quarreled. Oh, I +know something dreadful will happen. I know I'll need you if--if--Will +you help me?” + +“Yes,” replied Duane, and his look brought the blood to her face. + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +After supper Duane stole out for his usual evening's spying. The night +was dark, without starlight, and a stiff wind rustled the leaves. Duane +bent his steps toward the Longstreth's ranchhouse. He had so much to +think about that he never knew where the time went. This night when he +reached the edge of the shrubbery he heard Lawson's well-known footsteps +and saw Longstreth's door open, flashing a broad bar of light in the +darkness. Lawson crossed the threshold, the door closed, and all was +dark again outside. Not a ray of light escaped from the window. + +Little doubt there was that his talk with Longstreth would be +interesting to Duane. He tiptoed to the door and listened, but could +hear only a murmur of voices. Besides, that position was too risky. He +went round the corner of the house. + +This side of the big adobe house was of much older construction than +the back and larger part. There was a narrow passage between the houses, +leading from the outside through to the patio. + +This passage now afforded Duane an opportunity, and he decided to +avail himself of it in spite of the very great danger. Crawling on very +stealthily, he got under the shrubbery to the entrance of the passage. +In the blackness a faint streak of light showed the location of a crack +in the wall. He had to slip in sidewise. It was a tight squeeze, but he +entered without the slightest noise. As he progressed the passage grew +a very little wider in that direction, and that fact gave rise to the +thought that in case of a necessary and hurried exit he would do best by +working toward the patio. It seemed a good deal of time was consumed in +reaching a vantage-point. When he did get there the crack he had marked +was a foot over his head. There was nothing to do but find toe-holes in +the crumbling walls, and by bracing knees on one side, back against the +other, hold himself up Once with his eye there he did not care what risk +he ran. Longstreth appeared disturbed; he sat stroking his mustache; his +brow was clouded. Lawson's face seemed darker, more sullen, yet lighted +by some indomitable resolve. + +“We'll settle both deals to-night,” Lawson was saying. “That's what I +came for.” + +“But suppose I don't choose to talk here?” protested Longstreth, +impatiently. “I never before made my house a place to--” + +“We've waited long enough. This place's as good as any. You've lost your +nerve since that ranger hit the town. First now, will you give Ray to +me?” + +“Floyd; you talk like a spoiled boy. Give Ray to you! Why, she's a +woman, and I'm finding out that she's got a mind of her own. I told you +I was willing for her to marry you. I tried to persuade her. But Ray +hasn't any use for you now. She liked you at first. But now she doesn't. +So what can I do?” + +“You can make her marry me,” replied Lawson. + +“Make that girl do what she doesn't want to? It couldn't be done even if +I tried. And I don't believe I'll try. I haven't the highest opinion +of you as a prospective son-in-law, Floyd. But if Ray loved you I would +consent. We'd all go away together before this damned miserable business +is out. Then she'd never know. And maybe you might be more like you used +to be before the West ruined you. But as matters stand, you fight your +own game with her. And I'll tell you now you'll lose.” + +“What'd you want to let her come out here for?” demanded Lawson, hotly. +“It was a dead mistake. I've lost my head over her. I'll have her or +die. Don't you think if she was my wife I'd soon pull myself together? +Since she came we've none of us been right. And the gang has put up a +holler. No, Longstreth, we've got to settle things to-night.” + +“Well, we can settle what Ray's concerned in, right now,” replied +Longstreth, rising. “Come on; we'll ask her. See where you stand.” + +They went out, leaving the door open. Duane dropped down to rest himself +and to wait. He would have liked to hear Miss Longstreth's answer. But +he could guess what it would be. Lawson appeared to be all Duane had +thought him, and he believed he was going to find out presently that he +was worse. + +The men seemed to be absent a good while, though that feeling might have +been occasioned by Duane's thrilling interest and anxiety. Finally +he heard heavy steps. Lawson came in alone. He was leaden-faced, +humiliated. Then something abject in him gave place to rage. He strode +the room; he cursed. Then Longstreth returned, now appreciably calmer. +Duane could not but decide that he felt relief at the evident rejection +of Lawson's proposal. + +“Don't fuss about it, Floyd,” he said. “You see I can't help it. We're +pretty wild out here, but I can't rope my daughter and give her to you +as I would an unruly steer.” + +“Longstreth, I can MAKE her marry me,” declared Lawson, thickly. + +“How?” + +“You know the hold I got on you--the deal that made you boss of this +rustler gang?” + +“It isn't likely I'd forget,” replied Longstreth, grimly. + +“I can go to Ray, tell her that, make her believe I'd tell it +broadcast--tell this ranger--unless she'd marry me.” + +Lawson spoke breathlessly, with haggard face and shadowed eyes. He had +no shame. He was simply in the grip of passion. Longstreth gazed with +dark, controlled fury at this relative. In that look Duane saw a strong, +unscrupulous man fallen into evil ways, but still a man. It betrayed +Lawson to be the wild and passionate weakling. Duane seemed to see also +how during all the years of association this strong man had upheld +the weak one. But that time had gone for ever, both in intent on +Longstreth's part and in possibility. Lawson, like the great majority +of evil and unrestrained men on the border, had reached a point where +influence was futile. Reason had degenerated. He saw only himself. + +“But, Floyd, Ray's the one person on earth who must never know I'm a +rustler, a thief, a red-handed ruler of the worst gang on the border,” + replied Longstreth, impressively. + +Floyd bowed his head at that, as if the significance had just occurred +to him. But he was not long at a loss. + +“She's going to find it out sooner or later. I tell you she knows now +there's something wrong out here. She's got eyes. Mark what I say.” + +“Ray has changed, I know. But she hasn't any idea yet that her daddy's +a boss rustler. Ray's concerned about what she calls my duty as mayor. +Also I think she's not satisfied with my explanations in regard to +certain property.” + +Lawson halted in his restless walk and leaned against the stone +mantelpiece. He had his hands in his pockets. He squared himself as if +this was his last stand. He looked desperate, but on the moment showed +an absence of his usual nervous excitement. + +“Longstreth, that may well be true,” he said. “No doubt all you say is +true. But it doesn't help me. I want the girl. If I don't get her--I +reckon we'll all go to hell!” + +He might have meant anything, probably meant the worst. He certainly +had something more in mind. Longstreth gave a slight start, barely +perceptible, like the switch of an awakening tiger. He sat there, head +down, stroking his mustache. Almost Duane saw his thought. He had long +experience in reading men under stress of such emotion. He had no means +to vindicate his judgment, but his conviction was that Longstreth right +then and there decided that the thing to do was to kill Lawson. +For Duane's part he wondered that Longstreth had not come to such a +conclusion before. Not improbably the advent of his daughter had put +Longstreth in conflict with himself. + +Suddenly he threw off a somber cast of countenance, and he began to +talk. He talked swiftly, persuasively, yet Duane imagined he was talking +to smooth Lawson's passion for the moment. Lawson no more caught the +fateful significance of a line crossed, a limit reached, a decree +decided than if he had not been present. He was obsessed with himself. +How, Duane wondered, had a man of his mind ever lived so long and gone +so far among the exacting conditions of the Southwest? The answer was, +perhaps, that Longstreth had guided him, upheld him, protected him. The +coming of Ray Longstreth had been the entering-wedge of dissension. + +“You're too impatient,” concluded Longstreth. “You'll ruin any chance +of happiness if you rush Ray. She might be won. If you told her who I am +she'd hate you for ever. She might marry you to save me, but she'd hate +you. That isn't the way. Wait. Play for time. Be different with her. +Cut out your drinking. She despises that. Let's plan to sell out +here--stock, ranch, property--and leave the country. Then you'd have a +show with her.” + +“I told you we've got to stick,” growled Lawson. “The gang won't +stand for our going. It can't be done unless you want to sacrifice +everything.” + +“You mean double-cross the men? Go without their knowing? Leave them +here to face whatever comes?” + +“I mean just that.” + +“I'm bad enough, but not that bad,” returned Longstreth. “If I can't +get the gang to let me off, I'll stay and face the music. All the same, +Lawson, did it ever strike you that most of the deals the last few years +have been YOURS?” + +“Yes. If I hadn't rung them in there wouldn't have been any. You've had +cold feet, and especially since this ranger has been here.” + +“Well, call it cold feet if you like. But I call it sense. We reached +our limit long ago. We began by rustling a few cattle--at a time when +rustling was laughed at. But as our greed grew so did our boldness. Then +came the gang, the regular trips, the one thing and another till, before +we knew it--before I knew it--we had shady deals, holdups, and MURDERS +on our record. Then we HAD to go on. Too late to turn back!” + +“I reckon we've all said that. None of the gang wants to quit. They all +think, and I think, we can't be touched. We may be blamed, but nothing +can be proved. We're too strong.” + +“There's where you're dead wrong,” rejoined Longstreth, emphatically. +“I imagined that once, not long ago. I was bullheaded. Who would ever +connect Granger Longstreth with a rustler gang? I've changed my mind. +I've begun to think. I've reasoned out things. We're crooked, and we +can't last. It's the nature of life, even here, for conditions to grow +better. The wise deal for us would be to divide equally and leave the +country, all of us.” + +“But you and I have all the stock--all the gain,” protested Lawson. + +“I'll split mine.” + +“I won't--that settles that,” added Lawson, instantly. + +Longstreth spread wide his hands as if it was useless to try to convince +this man. Talking had not increased his calmness, and he now showed more +than impatience. A dull glint gleamed deep in his eyes. + +“Your stock and property will last a long time--do you lots of good when +this ranger--” + +“Bah!” hoarsely croaked Lawson. The ranger's name was a match applied to +powder. “Haven't I told you he'd be dead soon--any time--same as Laramie +is?” + +“Yes, you mentioned the--the supposition,” replied Longstreth, +sarcastically. “I inquired, too, just how that very desired event was to +be brought about.” + +“The gang will lay him out.” + +“Bah!” retorted Longstreth, in turn. He laughed contemptuously. + +“Floyd, don't be a fool. You've been on the border for ten years. You've +packed a gun and you've used it. You've been with rustlers when they +killed their men. You've been present at many fights. But you never in +all that time saw a man like this ranger. You haven't got sense enough +to see him right if you had a chance. Neither have any of you. The only +way to get rid of him is for the gang to draw on him, all at once. Then +he's going to drop some of them.” + +“Longstreth, you say that like a man who wouldn't care much if he did +drop some of them,” declared Lawson; and now he was sarcastic. + +“To tell you the truth, I wouldn't,” returned the other, bluntly. “I'm +pretty sick of this mess.” + +Lawson cursed in amazement. His emotions were all out of proportion to +his intelligence. He was not at all quick-witted. Duane had never seen a +vainer or more arrogant man. + +“Longstreth, I don't like your talk,” he said. + +“If you don't like the way I talk you know what you can do,” replied +Longstreth, quickly. He stood up then, cool and quiet, with flash of +eyes and set of lips that told Duane he was dangerous. + +“Well, after all, that's neither here nor there,” went on Lawson, +unconsciously cowed by the other. “The thing is, do I get the girl?” + +“Not by any means except her consent.” + +“You'll not make her marry me?” + +“No. No,” replied Longstreth, his voice still cold, low-pitched. + +“All right. Then I'll make her.” + +Evidently Longstreth understood the man before him so well that he +wasted no more words. Duane knew what Lawson never dreamed of, and that +was that Longstreth had a gun somewhere within reach and meant to use +it. Then heavy footsteps sounded outside tramping upon the porch. Duane +might have been mistaken, but he believed those footsteps saved Lawson's +life. + +“There they are,” said Lawson, and he opened the door. + +Five masked men entered. They all wore coats hiding any weapons. A big +man with burly shoulders shook hands with Longstreth, and the others +stood back. + +The atmosphere of that room had changed. Lawson might have been a +nonentity for all he counted. Longstreth was another man--a stranger to +Duane. If he had entertained a hope of freeing himself from this band, +of getting away to a safer country, he abandoned it at the very sight of +these men. There was power here, and he was bound. + +The big man spoke in low, hoarse whispers, and at this all the others +gathered around him close to the table. There were evidently some signs +of membership not plain to Duane. Then all the heads were bent over the +table. Low voices spoke, queried, answered, argued. By straining his +ears Duane caught a word here and there. They were planning, and they +were brief. Duane gathered they were to have a rendezvous at or near +Ord. + +Then the big man, who evidently was the leader of the present +convention, got up to depart. He went as swiftly as he had come, and was +followed by his comrades. Longstreth prepared for a quiet smoke. Lawson +seemed uncommunicative and unsociable. He smoked fiercely and drank +continually. All at once he straightened up as if listening. + +“What's that?” he called, suddenly. + +Duane's strained ears were pervaded by a slight rustling sound. + +“Must be a rat,” replied Longstreth. + +The rustle became a rattle. + +“Sounds like a rattlesnake to me,” said Lawson. + +Longstreth got up from the table and peered round the room. + +Just at that instant Duane felt an almost inappreciable movement of the +adobe wall which supported him. He could scarcely credit his senses. But +the rattle inside Longstreth's room was mingling with little dull thuds +of falling dirt. The adobe wall, merely dried mud, was crumbling. Duane +distinctly felt a tremor pass through it. Then the blood gushed back to +his heart. + +“What in the hell!” exclaimed Longstreth. + +“I smell dust,” said Lawson, sharply. + +That was the signal for Duane to drop down from his perch, yet despite +his care he made a noise. + +“Did you hear a step?” queried Longstreth. + +No one answered. But a heavy piece of the adobe wall fell with a thud. +Duane heard it crack, felt it shake. + +“There's somebody between the walls!” thundered Longstreth. + +Then a section of the wall fell inward with a crash. Duane began to +squeeze his body through the narrow passage toward the patio. + +“Hear him!” yelled Lawson. “This side!” + +“No, he's going that way,” yelled Longstreth. + +The tramp of heavy boots lent Duane the strength of desperation. He +was not shirking a fight, but to be cornered like a trapped coyote was +another matter. He almost tore his clothes off in that passage. The dust +nearly stifled him. When he burst into the patio it was not a single +instant too soon. But one deep gasp of breath revived him and he was up, +gun in hand, running for the outlet into the court. Thumping footsteps +turned him back. While there was a chance to get away he did not want to +fight. He thought he heard someone running into the patio from the other +end. He stole along, and coming to a door, without any idea of where it +might lead, he softly pushed it open a little way and slipped in. + + + +CHAPTER XX + +A low cry greeted Duane. The room was light. He saw Ray Longstreth +sitting on her bed in her dressing-gown. With a warning gesture to her +to be silent he turned to close the door. It was a heavy door without +bolt or bar, and when Duane had shut it he felt safe only for the +moment. Then he gazed around the room. There was one window with blind +closely drawn. He listened and seemed to hear footsteps retreating, +dying away. + +Then Duane turned to Miss Longstreth. She had slipped off the bed, half +to her knees, and was holding out trembling hands. She was as white as +the pillow on her bed. She was terribly frightened. Again with warning +hand commanding silence, Duane stepped softly forward, meaning to +reassure her. + +“Oh!” she whispered, wildly; and Duane thought she was going to faint. +When he got close and looked into her eyes he understood the strange, +dark expression in them. She was terrified because she believed he meant +to kill her, or do worse, probably worse. Duane realized he must have +looked pretty hard and fierce bursting into her room with that big gun +in hand. + +The way she searched Duane's face with doubtful, fearful eyes hurt him. + +“Listen. I didn't know this was your room. I came here to get away--to +save my life. I was pursued. I was spying on--on your father and +his men. They heard me, but did not see me. They don't know who was +listening. They're after me now.” + +Her eyes changed from blank gulfs to dilating, shadowing, quickening +windows of thought. + +Then she stood up and faced Duane with the fire and intelligence of a +woman in her eyes. + +“Tell me now. You were spying on my father?” + +Briefly Duane told her what had happened before he entered her room, not +omitting a terse word as to the character of the men he had watched. + +“My God! So it's that? I knew something was terribly wrong here--with +him--with the place--the people. And right off I hated Floyd Lawson. Oh, +it'll kill me if--if--It's so much worse than I dreamed. What shall I +do?” + +The sound of soft steps somewhere near distracted Duane's attention, +reminded him of her peril, and now, what counted more with him, made +clear the probability of being discovered in her room. + +“I'll have to get out of here,” whispered Duane. + +“Wait,” she replied. “Didn't you say they were hunting for you?” + +“They sure are,” he returned, grimly. + +“Oh, then you mustn't go. They might shoot you before you got away. +Stay. If we hear them you can hide. I'll turn out the light. I'll meet +them at the door. You can trust me. Wait till all quiets down, if we +have to wait till morning. Then you can slip out.” + +“I oughtn't to stay. I don't want to--I won't,” Duane replied, perplexed +and stubborn. + +“But you must. It's the only safe way. They won't come here.” + +“Suppose they should? It's an even chance Longstreth'll search every +room and corner in this old house. If they found me here I couldn't +start a fight. You might be hurt. Then--the fact of my being here--” + +Duane did not finish what he meant, but instead made a step toward the +door. White of face and dark of eye, she took hold of him to detain him. +She was as strong and supple as a panther. But she need not have been +either resolute or strong, for the clasp of her hand was enough to make +Duane weak. + +“Up yet, Ray?” came Longstreth's clear voice, too strained, too eager to +be natural. + +“No. I'm in bed reading. Good night,” instantly replied Miss Longstreth, +so calmly and naturally that Duane marveled at the difference between +man and woman. Then she motioned for Duane to hide in the closet. He +slipped in, but the door would not close altogether. + +“Are you alone?” went on Longstreth's penetrating voice. + +“Yes,” she replied. “Ruth went to bed.” + +The door swung inward with a swift scrape and jar. Longstreth half +entered, haggard, flaming-eyed. Behind him Duane saw Lawson, and +indistinctly another man. + +Longstreth barred Lawson from entering, which action showed control as +well as distrust. He wanted to see into the room. When he had glanced +around he went out and closed the door. + +Then what seemed a long interval ensued. The house grew silent once +more. Duane could not see Miss Longstreth, but he heard her quick +breathing. How long did she mean to let him stay hidden there? Hard and +perilous as his life had been, this was a new kind of adventure. He +had divined the strange softness of his feeling as something due to the +magnetism of this beautiful woman. It hardly seemed possible that he, +who had been outside the pale for so many years, could have fallen in +love. Yet that must be the secret of his agitation. + +Presently he pushed open the closet door and stepped forth. Miss +Longstreth had her head lowered upon her arms and appeared to be in +distress. At his touch she raised a quivering face. + +“I think I can go now--safely,” he whispered. + +“Go then, if you must, but you may stay till you're safe,” she replied. + +“I--I couldn't thank you enough. It's been hard on me--this finding +out--and you his daughter. I feel strange. I don't understand myself +well. But I want you to know--if I were not an outlaw--a ranger--I'd lay +my life at your feet.” + +“Oh! You have seen so--so little of me,” she faltered. + +“All the same it's true. And that makes me feel more the trouble my +coming caused you.” + +“You will not fight my father?” + +“Not if I can help it. I'm trying to get out of his way.' + +“But you spied upon him.” + +“I am a ranger, Miss Longstreth.” + +“And oh! I am a rustler's daughter,” she cried. “That's so much more +terrible than I'd suspected. It was tricky cattle deals I imagined he +was engaged in. But only to-night I had strong suspicions aroused.” + +“How? Tell me.” + +“I overheard Floyd say that men were coming to-night to arrange a +meeting for my father at a rendezvous near Ord. Father did not want to +go. Floyd taunted him with a name.” + +“What name?” queried Duane. + +“It was Cheseldine.” + +“CHESELDINE! My God! Miss Longstreth, why did you tell me that?” + +“What difference does that make?” + +“Your father and Cheseldine are one and the same,” whispered Duane, +hoarsely. + +“I gathered so much myself,” she replied, miserably. “But Longstreth is +father's real name.” + +Duane felt so stunned he could not speak at once. It was the girl's part +in this tragedy that weakened him. The instant she betrayed the secret +Duane realized perfectly that he did love her. The emotion was like a +great flood. + +“Miss Longstreth, all this seems so unbelievable,” he whispered. +“Cheseldine is the rustler chief I've come out here to get. He's only a +name. Your father is the real man. I've sworn to get him. I'm bound by +more than law or oaths. I can't break what binds me. And I must disgrace +you--wreck your lifer Why, Miss Longstreth, I believe I--I love +you. It's all come in a rush. I'd die for you if I could. How +fatal--terrible--this is! How things work out!” + +She slipped to her knees, with her hands on his. + +“You won't kill him?” she implored. “If you care for me--you won't kill +him?” + +“No. That I promise you.” + +With a low moan she dropped her head upon the bed. + +Duane opened the door and stealthily stole out through the corridor to +the court. + +When Duane got out into the dark, where his hot face cooled in the wind, +his relief equaled his other feelings. + +The night was dark, windy, stormy, yet there was no rain. Duane hoped as +soon as he got clear of the ranch to lose something of the pain he felt. +But long after he had tramped out into the open there was a lump in his +throat and an ache in his breast. All his thought centered around Ray +Longstreth. What a woman she had turned out to be! He seemed to have +a vague, hopeless hope that there might be, there must be, some way he +could save her. + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +Before going to sleep that night Duane had decided to go to Ord and try +to find the rendezvous where Longstreth was to meet his men. These men +Duane wanted even more than their leader. If Longstreth, or Cheseldine, +was the brains of that gang, Poggin was the executor. It was Poggin who +needed to be found and stopped. Poggin and his right-hand men! Duane +experienced a strange, tigerish thrill. It was thought of Poggin more +than thought of success for MacNelly's plan. Duane felt dubious over +this emotion. + +Next day he set out for Bradford. He was glad to get away from Fairdale +for a while. But the hours and the miles in no wise changed the new pain +in his heart. The only way he could forget Miss Longstreth was to let +his mind dwell upon Poggin, and even this was not always effective. + +He avoided Sanderson, and at the end of the day and a half he arrived at +Bradford. + +The night of the day before he reached Bradford, No. 6, the mail and +express train going east, was held up by train-robbers, the Wells-Fargo +messenger killed over his safe, the mail-clerk wounded, the bags carried +away. The engine of No. 6 came into town minus even a tender, and +engineer and fireman told conflicting stories. A posse of railroad men +and citizens, led by a sheriff Duane suspected was crooked, was made up +before the engine steamed back to pick up the rest of the train. Duane +had the sudden inspiration that he had been cudgeling his mind to +find; and, acting upon it, he mounted his horse again and left Bradford +unobserved. As he rode out into the night, over a dark trail in the +direction of Ord, he uttered a short, grim, sardonic laugh at the hope +that he might be taken for a train-robber. + +He rode at an easy trot most of the night, and when the black peak of +Ord Mountain loomed up against the stars he halted, tied his horse, and +slept until dawn. He had brought a small pack, and now he took his time +cooking breakfast. When the sun was well up he saddled Bullet, and, +leaving the trail where his tracks showed plain in the ground, he put +his horse to the rocks and brush. He selected an exceedingly rough, +roundabout, and difficult course to Ord, hid his tracks with the skill +of a long-hunted fugitive, and arrived there with his horse winded and +covered with lather. It added considerable to his arrival that the man +Duane remembered as Fletcher and several others saw him come in the back +way through the lots and jump a fence into the road. + +Duane led Bullet up to the porch where Fletcher stood wiping his beard. +He was hatless, vestless, and evidently had just enjoyed a morning +drink. + +“Howdy, Dodge,” said Fletcher, laconically. + +Duane replied, and the other man returned the greeting with interest. + +“Jim, my hoss 's done up. I want to hide him from any chance tourists as +might happen to ride up curious-like.” + +“Haw! haw! haw!” + +Duane gathered encouragement from that chorus of coarse laughter. + +“Wal, if them tourists ain't too durned snooky the hoss'll be safe in +the 'dobe shack back of Bill's here. Feed thar, too, but you'll hev to +rustle water.” + +Duane led Bullet to the place indicated, had care of his welfare, and +left him there. Upon returning to the tavern porch Duane saw the group +of men had been added to by others, some of whom he had seen before. +Without comment Duane walked along the edge of the road, and wherever +one of the tracks of his horse showed he carefully obliterated it. This +procedure was attentively watched by Fletcher and his companions. + +“Wal, Dodge,” remarked Fletcher, as Duane returned, “thet's safer 'n +prayin' fer rain.” + +Duanes reply was a remark as loquacious as Fletcher's, to the effect +that a long, slow, monotonous ride was conducive to thirst. They all +joined him, unmistakably friendly. But Knell was not there, and most +assuredly not Poggin. Fletcher was no common outlaw, but, whatever his +ability, it probably lay in execution of orders. Apparently at that +time these men had nothing to do but drink and lounge around the tavern. +Evidently they were poorly supplied with money, though Duane observed +they could borrow a peso occasionally from the bartender. Duane set +out to make himself agreeable and succeeded. There was card-playing +for small stakes, idle jests of coarse nature, much bantering among the +younger fellows, and occasionally a mild quarrel. All morning men came +and went, until, all told, Duane calculated he had seen at least fifty. +Toward the middle of the afternoon a young fellow burst into the saloon +and yelled one word: + +“Posse!” + +From the scramble to get outdoors Duane judged that word and the ensuing +action was rare in Ord. + +“What the hell!” muttered Fletcher, as he gazed down the road at a dark, +compact bunch of horses and riders. “Fust time I ever seen thet in Ord! +We're gettin' popular like them camps out of Valentine. Wish Phil was +here or Poggy. Now all you gents keep quiet. I'll do the talkin'.” + +The posse entered the town, trotted up on dusty horses, and halted in +a bunch before the tavern. The party consisted of about twenty men, +all heavily armed, and evidently in charge of a clean-cut, lean-limbed +cowboy. Duane experienced considerable satisfaction at the absence of +the sheriff who he had understood was to lead the posse. Perhaps he was +out in another direction with a different force. + +“Hello, Jim Fletcher,” called the cowboy. + +“Howdy,” replied Fletcher. + +At his short, dry response and the way he strode leisurely out before +the posse Duane found himself modifying his contempt for Fletcher. The +outlaw was different now. + +“Fletcher, we've tracked a man to all but three miles of this place. +Tracks as plain as the nose on your face. Found his camp. Then he hit +into the brush, an' we lost the trail. Didn't have no tracker with us. +Think he went into the mountains. But we took a chance an' rid over the +rest of the way, seein' Ord was so close. Anybody come in here late last +night or early this mornin'?” + +“Nope,” replied Fletcher. + +His response was what Duane had expected from his manner, and evidently +the cowboy took it as a matter of course. He turned to the others of the +posse, entering into a low consultation. Evidently there was difference +of opinion, if not real dissension, in that posse. + +“Didn't I tell ye this was a wild-goose chase, comin' way out here?” + protested an old hawk-faced rancher. “Them hoss tracks we follored ain't +like any of them we seen at the water-tank where the train was held up.” + +“I'm not so sure of that,” replied the leader. + +“Wal, Guthrie, I've follored tracks all my life--' + +“But you couldn't keep to the trail this feller made in the brush.” + +“Gimme time, an' I could. Thet takes time. An' heah you go hell-bent +fer election! But it's a wrong lead out this way. If you're right this +road-agent, after he killed his pals, would hev rid back right through +town. An' with them mail-bags! Supposin' they was greasers? Some +greasers has sense, an' when it comes to thievin' they're shore cute.” + +“But we sent got any reason to believe this robber who murdered the +greasers is a greaser himself. I tell you it was a slick job done by no +ordinary sneak. Didn't you hear the facts? One greaser hopped the engine +an' covered the engineer an' fireman. Another greaser kept flashin' his +gun outside the train. The big man who shoved back the car-door an' did +the killin'--he was the real gent, an' don't you forget it.” + +Some of the posse sided with the cowboy leader and some with the old +cattleman. Finally the young leader disgustedly gathered up his bridle. + +“Aw, hell! Thet sheriff shoved you off this trail. Mebbe he hed reasons +Savvy thet? If I hed a bunch of cowboys with me--I tell you what--I'd +take a chance an' clean up this hole!” + +All the while Jim Fletcher stood quietly with his hands in his pockets. + +“Guthrie, I'm shore treasurin' up your friendly talk,” he said. The +menace was in the tone, not the content of his speech. + +“You can--an' be damned to you, Fletcher!” called Guthrie, as the horses +started. + +Fletcher, standing out alone before the others of his clan, watched the +posse out of sight. + +“Luck fer you-all thet Poggy wasn't here,” he said, as they disappeared. +Then with a thoughtful mien he strode up on the porch and led Duane away +from the others into the bar-room. When he looked into Duane's face it +was somehow an entirely changed scrutiny. + +“Dodge, where'd you hide the stuff? I reckon I git in on this deal, +seein' I staved off Guthrie.” + +Duane played his part. Here was his a tiger after prey he seized it. +First he coolly eyed the outlaw and then disclaimed any knowledge +whatever of the train-robbery other than Fletcher had heard himself. +Then at Fletcher's persistence and admiration and increasing show of +friendliness he laughed occasionally and allowed himself to swell +with pride, though still denying. Next he feigned a lack of consistent +will-power and seemed to be wavering under Fletcher's persuasion and +grew silent, then surly. Fletcher, evidently sure of ultimate victory, +desisted for the time being; however, in his solicitous regard and close +companionship for the rest of that day he betrayed the bent of his mind. + +Later, when Duane started up announcing his intention to get his horse +and make for camp out in the brush, Fletcher seemed grievously offended. + +“Why don't you stay with me? I've got a comfortable 'dobe over here. +Didn't I stick by you when Guthrie an' his bunch come up? Supposin' I +hedn't showed down a cold hand to him? You'd be swingin' somewheres now. +I tell you, Dodge, it ain't square.” + +“I'll square it. I pay my debts,” replied Duane. “But I can't put up +here all night. If I belonged to the gang it 'd be different.” + +“What gang?” asked Fletcher, bluntly. + +“Why, Cheseldine's.” + +Fletcher's beard nodded as his jaw dropped. + +Duane laughed. “I run into him the other day. Knowed him on sight. Sure, +he's the king-pin rustler. When he seen me an' asked me what reason I +had for bein' on earth or some such like--why, I up an' told him.” + +Fletcher appeared staggered. + +“Who in all-fired hell air you talkin' about?” + +“Didn't I tell you once? Cheseldine. He calls himself Longstreth over +there.” + +All of Fletcher's face not covered by hair turned a dirty white. +“Cheseldine--Longstreth!” he whispered, hoarsely. “Gord Almighty! You +braced the--” Then a remarkable transformation came over the outlaw. He +gulped; he straightened his face; he controlled his agitation. But he +could not send the healthy brown back to his face. Duane, watching this +rude man, marveled at the change in him, the sudden checking movement, +the proof of a wonderful fear and loyalty. It all meant Cheseldine, a +master of men! + +“WHO AIR YOU?” queried Fletcher, in a queer, strained voice. + +“You gave me a handle, didn't you? Dodge. Thet's as good as any. Shore +it hits me hard. Jim, I've been pretty lonely for years, an' I'm gettin' +in need of pals. Think it over, will you? See you manana.” + +The outlaw watched Duane go off after his horse, watched him as he +returned to the tavern, watched him ride out into the darkness--all +without a word. + +Duane left the town, threaded a quiet passage through cactus and +mesquite to a spot he had marked before, and made ready for the night. +His mind was so full that he found sleep aloof. Luck at last was playing +his game. He sensed the first slow heave of a mighty crisis. The end, +always haunting, had to be sternly blotted from thought. It was the +approach that needed all his mind. + +He passed the night there, and late in the morning, after watching trail +and road from a ridge, he returned to Ord. If Jim Fletcher tried to +disguise his surprise the effort was a failure. Certainly he had not +expected to see Duane again. Duane allowed himself a little freedom with +Fletcher, an attitude hitherto lacking. + +That afternoon a horseman rode in from Bradford, an outlaw evidently +well known and liked by his fellows, and Duane heard him say, before he +could possibly have been told the train-robber was in Ord, that the loss +of money in the holdup was slight. Like a flash Duane saw the luck of +this report. He pretended not to have heard. + +In the early twilight at an opportune moment he called Fletcher to him, +and, linking his arm within the outlaw's, he drew him off in a stroll to +a log bridge spanning a little gully. Here after gazing around, he took +out a roll of bills, spread it out, split it equally, and without a word +handed one half to Fletcher. With clumsy fingers Fletcher ran through +the roll. + +“Five hundred!” he exclaimed. “Dodge, thet's damn handsome of you, +considerin' the job wasn't--” + +“Considerin' nothin',” interrupted Duane. “I'm makin' no reference to +a job here or there. You did me a good turn. I split my pile. If +thet doesn't make us pards, good turns an' money ain't no use in this +country.” + +Fletcher was won. + +The two men spent much time together. Duane made up a short fictitious +history about himself that satisfied the outlaw, only it drew forth a +laughing jest upon Duane's modesty. For Fletcher did not hide his belief +that this new partner was a man of achievements. Knell and Poggin, and +then Cheseldine himself, would be persuaded of this fact, so Fletcher +boasted. He had influence. He would use it. He thought he pulled a +stroke with Knell. But nobody on earth, not even the boss, had any +influence on Poggin. Poggin was concentrated ice part of the time; all +the rest he was bursting hell. But Poggin loved a horse. He never loved +anything else. He could be won with that black horse Bullet. Cheseldine +was already won by Duane's monumental nerve; otherwise he would have +killed Duane. + +Little by little the next few days Duane learned the points he longed +to know; and how indelibly they etched themselves in his memory! +Cheseldine's hiding-place was on the far slope of Mount Ord, in a deep, +high-walled valley. He always went there just before a contemplated job, +where he met and planned with his lieutenants. Then while they executed +he basked in the sunshine before one or another of the public places +he owned. He was there in the Ord den now, getting ready to plan the +biggest job yet. It was a bank-robbery; but where, Fletcher had not as +yet been advised. + +Then when Duane had pumped the now amenable outlaw of all details +pertaining to the present he gathered data and facts and places covering +a period of ten years Fletcher had been with Cheseldine. And herewith +was unfolded a history so dark in its bloody regime, so incredible in +its brazen daring, so appalling in its proof of the outlaw's sweep and +grasp of the country from Pecos to Rio Grande, that Duane was +stunned. Compared to this Cheseldine of the Big Bend, to this rancher, +stock-buyer, cattle-speculator, property-holder, all the outlaws Duane +had ever known sank into insignificance. The power of the man stunned +Duane; the strange fidelity given him stunned Duane; the intricate +inside working of his great system was equally stunning. But when Duane +recovered from that the old terrible passion to kill consumed him, +and it raged fiercely and it could not be checked. If that red-handed +Poggin, if that cold-eyed, dead-faced Knell had only been at Ord! But +they were not, and Duane with help of time got what he hoped was the +upper hand of himself. + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +Again inaction and suspense dragged at Duane's spirit. Like a leashed +hound with a keen scent in his face Duane wanted to leap forth when he +was bound. He almost fretted. Something called to him over the bold, +wild brow of Mount Ord. But while Fletcher stayed in Ord waiting for +Knell and Poggin, or for orders, Duane knew his game was again a waiting +one. + +But one day there were signs of the long quiet of Ord being broken. A +messenger strange to Duane rode in on a secret mission that had to do +with Fletcher. When he went away Fletcher became addicted to thoughtful +moods and lonely walks. He seldom drank, and this in itself was a +striking contrast to former behavior. The messenger came again. Whatever +communication he brought, it had a remarkable effect upon the outlaw. +Duane was present in the tavern when the fellow arrived, saw the few +words whispered, but did not hear them. Fletcher turned white with anger +or fear, perhaps both, and he cursed like a madman. The messenger, +a lean, dark-faced, hard-riding fellow reminding Duane of the cowboy +Guthrie, left the tavern without even a drink and rode away off to the +west. This west mystified and fascinated Duane as much as the south +beyond Mount Ord. Where were Knell and Poggin? Apparently they were not +at present with the leader on the mountain. After the messenger left +Fletcher grew silent and surly. He had presented a variety of moods to +Duane's observation, and this latest one was provocative of thought. +Fletcher was dangerous. It became clear now that the other outlaws +of the camp feared him, kept out of his way. Duane let him alone, yet +closely watched him. + +Perhaps an hour after the messenger had left, not longer, Fletcher +manifestly arrived at some decision, and he called for his horse. Then +he went to his shack and returned. To Duane the outlaw looked in shape +both to ride and to fight. He gave orders for the men in camp to keep +close until he returned. Then he mounted. + +“Come here, Dodge,” he called. + +Duane went up and laid a hand on the pommel of the saddle. Fletcher +walked his horse, with Duane beside him, till they reached the log +bridge, when he halted. + +“Dodge, I'm in bad with Knell,” he said. “An' it 'pears I'm the cause +of friction between Knell an' Poggy. Knell never had any use fer me, but +Poggy's been square, if not friendly. The boss has a big deal on, an' +here it's been held up because of this scrap. He's waitin' over there on +the mountain to give orders to Knell or Poggy, an' neither one's +showin' up. I've got to stand in the breach, an' I ain't enjoyin' the +prospects.” + +“What's the trouble about, Jim?” asked Duane. + +“Reckon it's a little about you, Dodge,” said Fletcher, dryly. “Knell +hadn't any use fer you thet day. He ain't got no use fer a man onless he +can rule him. Some of the boys here hev blabbed before I edged in with +my say, an' there's hell to pay. Knell claims to know somethin' about +you that'll make both the boss an' Poggy sick when he springs it. But +he's keepin' quiet. Hard man to figger, thet Knell. Reckon you'd better +go back to Bradford fer a day or so, then camp out near here till I come +back.” + +“Why?” + +“Wal, because there ain't any use fer you to git in bad, too.” + +“The gang will ride over here any day. If they're friendly, I'll light a +fire on the hill there, say three nights from to-night. If you don't see +it thet night you hit the trail. I'll do what I can. Jim Fletcher sticks +to his pals. So long, Dodge.” + +Then he rode away. + +He left Duane in a quandary. This news was black. Things had been +working out so well. Here was a setback. At the moment Duane did not +know which way to turn, but certainly he had no idea of going back to +Bradford. Friction between the two great lieutenants of Cheseldine! Open +hostility between one of them and another of the chief's right-hand +men! Among outlaws that sort of thing was deadly serious. Generally such +matters were settled with guns. Duane gathered encouragement even from +disaster. Perhaps the disintegration of Cheseldine's great band had +already begun. But what did Knell know? Duane did not circle around +the idea with doubts and hopes; if Knell knew anything it was that this +stranger in Ord, this new partner of Fletcher's, was no less than Buck +Duane. Well, it was about time, thought Duane, that he made use of his +name if it were to help him at all. That name had been MacNelly's hope. +He had anchored all his scheme to Duane's fame. Duane was tempted to +ride off after Fletcher and stay with him. This, however, would hardly +be fair to an outlaw who had been fair to him. Duane concluded to await +developments and when the gang rode in to Ord, probably from their +various hiding-places, he would be there ready to be denounced by Knell. +Duane could not see any other culmination of this series of events than +a meeting between Knell and himself. If that terminated fatally for +Knell there was all probability of Duane's being in no worse situation +than he was now. If Poggin took up the quarrel! Here Duane accused +himself again--tried in vain to revolt from a judgment that he was only +reasoning out excuses to meet these outlaws. + +Meanwhile, instead of waiting, why not hunt up Cheseldine in his +mountain retreat? The thought no sooner struck Duane than he was +hurrying for his horse. + +He left Ord, ostensibly toward Bradford, but, once out of sight, he +turned off the road, circled through the brush, and several miles south +of town he struck a narrow grass-grown trail that Fletcher had told him +led to Cheseldine's camp. The horse tracks along this trail were not +less than a week old, and very likely much more. It wound between +low, brush-covered foothills, through arroyos and gullies lined with +mesquite, cottonwood, and scrub-oak. + +In an hour Duane struck the slope of Mount Ord, and as he climbed he +got a view of the rolling, black-spotted country, partly desert, partly +fertile, with long, bright lines of dry stream-beds winding away to grow +dim in the distance. He got among broken rocks and cliffs, and here the +open, downward-rolling land disappeared, and he was hard put to it to +find the trail. He lost it repeatedly and made slow progress. Finally +he climbed into a region of all rock benches, rough here, smooth there, +with only an occasional scratch of iron horseshoe to guide him. Many +times he had to go ahead and then work to right or left till he found +his way again. It was slow work; it took all day; and night found him +half-way up the mountain. He halted at a little side-canyon with grass +and water, and here he made camp. The night was clear and cool at that +height, with a dark-blue sky and a streak of stars blinking across. With +this day of action behind him he felt better satisfied than he had been +for some time. Here, on this venture, he was answering to a call that +had so often directed his movements, perhaps his life, and it was one +that logic or intelligence could take little stock of. And on this +night, lonely like the ones he used to spend in the Nueces gorge, and +memorable of them because of a likeness to that old hiding-place, he +felt the pressing return of old haunting things--the past so long ago, +wild flights, dead faces--and the places of these were taken by one +quiveringly alive, white, tragic, with its dark, intent, speaking +eyes--Ray Longstreth's. + + +That last memory he yielded to until he slept. + +In the morning, satisfied that he had left still fewer tracks than +he had followed up this trail, he led his horse up to the head of the +canyon, there a narrow crack in low cliffs, and with branches of cedar +fenced him in. Then he went back and took up the trail on foot. + +Without the horse he made better time and climbed through deep clefts, +wide canyons, over ridges, up shelving slopes, along precipices--a long, +hard climb--till he reached what he concluded was a divide. Going down +was easier, though the farther he followed this dim and winding trail +the wider the broken battlements of rock. Above him he saw the black +fringe of pinon and pine, and above that the bold peak, bare, yellow, +like a desert butte. Once, through a wide gateway between great +escarpments, he saw the lower country beyond the range, and beyond this, +vast and clear as it lay in his sight, was the great river that made the +Big Bend. He went down and down, wondering how a horse could follow that +broken trail, believing there must be another better one somewhere into +Cheseldine's hiding-place. + +He rounded a jutting corner, where view had been shut off, and presently +came out upon the rim of a high wall. Beneath, like a green gulf seen +through blue haze, lay an amphitheater walled in on the two sides he +could see. It lay perhaps a thousand feet below him; and, plain as all +the other features of that wild environment, there shone out a big red +stone or adobe cabin, white water shining away between great borders, +and horses and cattle dotting the levels. It was a peaceful, beautiful +scene. Duane could not help grinding his teeth at the thought of +rustlers living there in quiet and ease. + +Duane worked half-way down to the level, and, well hidden in a niche, +he settled himself to watch both trail and valley. He made note of the +position of the sun and saw that if anything developed or if he decided +to descend any farther there was small likelihood of his getting back to +his camp before dark. To try that after nightfall he imagined would be +vain effort. + +Then he bent his keen eyes downward. The cabin appeared to be a crude +structure. Though large in size, it had, of course, been built by +outlaws. + +There was no garden, no cultivated field, no corral. Excepting for the +rude pile of stones and logs plastered together with mud, the valley was +as wild, probably, as on the day of discovery. Duane seemed to have been +watching for a long time before he saw any sign of man, and this one +apparently went to the stream for water and returned to the cabin. + +The sun went down behind the wall, and shadows were born in the darker +places of the valley. Duane began to want to get closer to that cabin. +What had he taken this arduous climb for? He held back, however, trying +to evolve further plans. + +While he was pondering the shadows quickly gathered and darkened. If he +was to go back to camp he must set out at once. Still he lingered. And +suddenly his wide-roving eye caught sight of two horsemen riding up the +valley. The must have entered at a point below, round the huge abutment +of rock, beyond Duane's range of sight. Their horses were tired and +stopped at the stream for a long drink. + +Duane left his perch, took to the steep trail, and descended as fast +as he could without making noise. It did not take him long to reach the +valley floor. It was almost level, with deep grass, and here and there +clumps of bushes. Twilight was already thick down there. Duane marked +the location of the trail, and then began to slip like a shadow through +the grass and from bush to bush. He saw a bright light before he +made out the dark outline of the cabin. Then he heard voices, a merry +whistle, a coarse song, and the clink of iron cooking-utensils. He +smelled fragrant wood-smoke. He saw moving dark figures cross the light. +Evidently there was a wide door, or else the fire was out in the open. + +Duane swerved to the left, out of direct line with the light, and thus +was able to see better. Then he advanced noiselessly but swiftly toward +the back of the house. There were trees close to the wall. He would make +no noise, and he could scarcely be seen--if only there was no watch-dog! +But all his outlaw days he had taken risks with only his useless life +at stake; now, with that changed, he advanced stealthy and bold as an +Indian. He reached the cover of the trees, knew he was hidden in their +shadows, for at few paces' distance he had been able to see only their +tops. From there he slipped up to the house and felt along the wall with +his hands. + +He came to a little window where light shone through. He peeped in. He +saw a room shrouded in shadows, a lamp turned low, a table, chairs. He +saw an open door, with bright flare beyond, but could not see the +fire. Voices came indistinctly. Without hesitation Duane stole farther +along--all the way to the end of the cabin. Peeping round, he saw only +the flare of light on bare ground. Retracing his cautious steps, he +paused at the crack again, saw that no man was in the room, and then +he went on round that end of the cabin. Fortune favored him. There +were bushes, an old shed, a wood-pile, all the cover he needed at that +corner. He did not even need to crawl. + +Before he peered between the rough corner of wall and the bush growing +close to it Duane paused a moment. This excitement was different from +that he had always felt when pursued. It had no bitterness, no pain, no +dread. There was as much danger here, perhaps more, yet it was not the +same. Then he looked. + +He saw a bright fire, a red-faced man bending over it, whistling, while +he handled a steaming pot. Over him was a roofed shed built against +the wall, with two open sides and two supporting posts. Duane's second +glance, not so blinded by the sudden bright light, made out other men, +three in the shadow, two in the flare, but with backs to him. + +“It's a smoother trail by long odds, but ain't so short as this one +right over the mountain,” one outlaw was saying. + +“What's eatin' you, Panhandle?” ejaculated another. “Blossom an' me rode +from Faraway Springs, where Poggin is with some of the gang.” + +“Excuse me, Phil. Shore I didn't see you come in, an' Boldt never said +nothin'.” + +“It took you a long time to get here, but I guess that's just as well,” + spoke up a smooth, suave voice with a ring in it. + +Longstreth's voice--Cheseldine's voice! + +Here they were--Cheseldine, Phil Knell, Blossom Kane, Panhandle Smith, +Boldt--how well Duane remembered the names!--all here, the big men of +Cheseldine's gang, except the biggest--Poggin. Duane had holed them, and +his sensations of the moment deadened sight and sound of what was before +him. He sank down, controlled himself, silenced a mounting exultation, +then from a less-strained position he peered forth again. + +The outlaws were waiting for supper. Their conversation might have been +that of cowboys in camp, ranchers at a roundup. Duane listened with +eager ears, waiting for the business talk that he felt would come. All +the time he watched with the eyes of a wolf upon its quarry. Blossom +Kane was the lean-limbed messenger who had so angered Fletcher. Boldt +was a giant in stature, dark, bearded, silent. Panhandle Smith was the +red-faced cook, merry, profane, a short, bow-legged man resembling many +rustlers Duane had known, particularly Luke Stevens. And Knell, who sat +there, tall, slim, like a boy in build, like a boy in years, with +his pale, smooth, expressionless face and his cold, gray eyes. And +Longstreth, who leaned against the wall, handsome, with his dark face +and beard like an aristocrat, resembled many a rich Louisiana planter +Duane had met. The sixth man sat so much in the shadow that he could not +be plainly discerned, and, though addressed, his name was not mentioned. + +Panhandle Smith carried pots and pans into the cabin, and cheerfully +called out: “If you gents air hungry fer grub, don't look fer me to feed +you with a spoon.” + +The outlaws piled inside, made a great bustle and clatter as they sat to +their meal. Like hungry men, they talked little. + +Duane waited there awhile, then guardedly got up and crept round to +the other side of the cabin. After he became used to the dark again +he ventured to steal along the wall to the window and peeped in. The +outlaws were in the first room and could not be seen. + +Duane waited. The moments dragged endlessly. His heart pounded. +Longstreth entered, turned up the light, and, taking a box of cigars +from the table, he carried it out. + +“Here, you fellows, go outside and smoke,” he said. “Knell, come on in +now. Let's get it over.” + +He returned, sat down, and lighted a cigar for himself. He put his +booted feet on the table. + +Duane saw that the room was comfortably, even luxuriously furnished. +There must have been a good trail, he thought, else how could all that +stuff have been packed in there. Most assuredly it could not have come +over the trail he had traveled. Presently he heard the men go outside, +and their voices became indistinct. Then Knell came in and seated +himself without any of his chief's ease. He seemed preoccupied and, as +always, cold. + +“What's wrong, Knell? Why didn't you get here sooner?” queried +Longstreth. + +“Poggin, damn him! We're on the outs again.” + +“What for?” + +“Aw, he needn't have got sore. He's breakin' a new hoss over at Faraway, +an you know him where a hoss 's concerned. That kept him, I reckon, more +than anythin'.” + +“What else? Get it out of your system so we can go on to the new job.” + +“Well, it begins back a ways. I don't know how long ago--weeks--a +stranger rode into Ord an' got down easy-like as if he owned the place. +He seemed familiar to me. But I wasn't sure. We looked him over, an' I +left, tryin' to place him in my mind.” + +“What'd he look like?” + +“Rangy, powerful man, white hair over his temples, still, hard face, +eyes like knives. The way he packed his guns, the way he walked an' +stood an' swung his right hand showed me what he was. You can't fool me +on the gun-sharp. An' he had a grand horse, a big black.” + +“I've met your man,” said Longstreth. + +“No!” exclaimed Knell. It was wonderful to hear surprise expressed by +this man that did not in the least show it in his strange physiognomy. +Knell laughed a short, grim, hollow laugh. “Boss, this here big gent +drifts into Ord again an' makes up to Jim Fletcher. Jim, you know, is +easy led. He likes men. An' when a posse come along trailin' a blind +lead, huntin' the wrong way for the man who held up No. 6, why, Jim--he +up an' takes this stranger to be the fly road-agent an' cottons to him. +Got money out of him sure. An' that's what stumps me more. What's this +man's game? I happen to know, boss, that he couldn't have held up No. +6.” + +“How do you know?” demanded Longstreth. + +“Because I did the job myself.” + +A dark and stormy passion clouded the chief's face. + +“Damn you, Knell! You're incorrigible. You're unreliable. Another break +like that queers you with me. Did you tell Poggin?” + +“Yes. That's one reason we fell out. He raved. I thought he was goin' to +kill me.” + +“Why did you tackle such a risky job without help or plan?” + +“It offered, that's all. An' it was easy. But it was a mistake. I got +the country an' the railroad hollerin' for nothin'. I just couldn't help +it. You know what idleness means to one of us. You know also that this +very life breeds fatality. It's wrong--that's why. I was born of good +parents, an' I know what's right. We're wrong, an' we can't beat the +end, that's all. An' for my part I don't care a damn when that comes.” + +“Fine wise talk from you, Knell,” said Longstreth, scornfully. “Go on +with your story.” + +“As I said, Jim cottons to the pretender, an' they get chummy. They're +together all the time. You can gamble Jim told all he knew an' then +some. A little liquor loosens his tongue. Several of the boys rode over +from Ord, an' one of them went to Poggin an' says Jim Fletcher has a new +man for the gang. Poggin, you know, is always ready for any new man. +He says if one doesn't turn out good he can be shut off easy. He rather +liked the way this new part of Jim's was boosted. Jim an' Poggin always +hit it up together. So until I got on the deal Jim's pard was already in +the gang, without Poggin or you ever seein' him. Then I got to figurin' +hard. Just where had I ever seen that chap? As it turned out, I never +had seen him, which accounts for my bein' doubtful. I'd never forget +any man I'd seen. I dug up a lot of old papers from my kit an' went over +them. Letters, pictures, clippin's, an' all that. I guess I had a pretty +good notion what I was lookin' for an' who I wanted to make sure of. At +last I found it. An' I knew my man. But I didn't spring it on Poggin. +Oh no! I want to have some fun with him when the time comes. He'll be +wilder than a trapped wolf. I sent Blossom over to Ord to get word from +Jim, an' when he verified all this talk I sent Blossom again with a +message calculated to make Jim hump. Poggin got sore, said he'd wait for +Jim, an' I could come over here to see you about the new job. He'd meet +me in Ord.” + +Knell had spoken hurriedly and low, now and then with passion. His pale +eyes glinted like fire in ice, and now his voice fell to a whisper. + +“Who do you think Fletcher's new man is?” + +“Who?” demanded Longstreth. + +“BUCK DUANE!” + +Down came Longstreth's boots with a crash, then his body grew rigid. + +“That Nueces outlaw? That two-shot ace-of-spades gun-thrower who killed +Bland, Alloway--?” + +“An' Hardin.” Knell whispered this last name with more feeling than the +apparent circumstance demanded. + +“Yes; and Hardin, the best one of the Rim Rock fellows--Buck Duane!” + +Longstreth was so ghastly white now that his black mustache seemed +outlined against chalk. He eyed his grim lieutenant. They understood +each other without more words. It was enough that Buck Duane was there +in the Big Bend. Longstreth rose presently and reached for a flask, from +which he drank, then offered it to Knell. He waved it aside. + +“Knell,” began the chief, slowly, as he wiped his lips, “I gathered you +have some grudge against this Buck Duane.” + +“Yes.” + +“Well, don't be a fool now and do what Poggin or almost any of you men +would--don't meet this Buck Duane. I've reason to believe he's a Texas +Ranger now.” + +“The hell you say!” exclaimed Knell. + +“Yes. Go to Ord and give Jim Fletcher a hunch. He'll get Poggin, and +they'll fix even Buck Duane.” + +“All right. I'll do my best. But if I run into Duane--” + +“Don't run into him!” Longstreth's voice fairly rang with the force of +its passion and command. He wiped his face, drank again from the flask, +sat down, resumed his smoking, and, drawing a paper from his vest pocket +he began to study it. + +“Well, I'm glad that's settled,” he said, evidently referring to the +Duane matter. “Now for the new job. This is October the eighteenth. On +or before the twenty-fifth there will be a shipment of gold reach the +Rancher's Bank of Val Verde. After you return to Ord give Poggin these +orders. Keep the gang quiet. You, Poggin, Kane, Fletcher, Panhandle +Smith, and Boldt to be in on the secret and the job. Nobody else. You'll +leave Ord on the twenty-third, ride across country by the trail till you +get within sight of Mercer. It's a hundred miles from Bradford to Val +Verde--about the same from Ord. Time your travel to get you near Val +Verde on the morning of the twenty-sixth. You won't have to more than +trot your horses. At two o'clock in the afternoon, sharp, ride into town +and up to the Rancher's Bank. Val Verde's a pretty big town. Never been +any holdups there. Town feels safe. Make it a clean, fast, daylight job. +That's all. Have you got the details?” + +Knell did not even ask for the dates again. + +“Suppose Poggin or me might be detained?” he asked. + +Longstreth bent a dark glance upon his lieutenant. + +“You never can tell what'll come off,” continued Knell. “I'll do my +best.” + +“The minute you see Poggin tell him. A job on hand steadies him. And I +say again--look to it that nothing happens. Either you or Poggin carry +the job through. But I want both of you in it. Break for the hills, and +when you get up in the rocks where you can hide your tracks head for +Mount Ord. When all's quiet again I'll join you here. That's all. Call +in the boys.” + +Like a swift shadow and as noiseless Duane stole across the level toward +the dark wall of rock. Every nerve was a strung wire. For a little while +his mind was cluttered and clogged with whirling thoughts, from which, +like a flashing scroll, unrolled the long, baffling order of action. The +game was now in his hands. He must cross Mount Ord at night. The feat +was improbable, but it might be done. He must ride into Bradford, forty +miles from the foothills before eight o'clock next morning. He must +telegraph MacNelly to be in Val Verde on the twenty-fifth. He must ride +back to Ord, to intercept Knell, face him be denounced, kill him, and +while the iron was hot strike hard to win Poggin's half-won interest as +he had wholly won Fletcher's. Failing that last, he must let the outlaws +alone to bide their time in Ord, to be free to ride on to their new job +in Val Verde. In the mean time he must plan to arrest Longstreth. It +was a magnificent outline, incredible, alluring, unfathomable in +its nameless certainty. He felt like fate. He seemed to be the iron +consequences falling upon these doomed outlaws. + +Under the wall the shadows were black, only the tips of trees and crags +showing, yet he went straight to the trail. It was merely a grayness +between borders of black. He climbed and never stopped. It did not +seem steep. His feet might have had eyes. He surmounted the wall, and, +looking down into the ebony gulf pierced by one point of light, he +lifted a menacing arm and shook it. Then he strode on and did not falter +till he reached the huge shelving cliffs. Here he lost the trail; there +was none; but he remembered the shapes, the points, the notches of rock +above. Before he reached the ruins of splintered ramparts and jumbles of +broken walls the moon topped the eastern slope of the mountain, and the +mystifying blackness he had dreaded changed to magic silver light. +It seemed as light as day, only soft, mellow, and the air held a +transparent sheen. He ran up the bare ridges and down the smooth slopes, +and, like a goat, jumped from rock to rock. In this light he knew his +way and lost no time looking for a trail. He crossed the divide and then +had all downhill before him. Swiftly he descended, almost always sure of +his memory of the landmarks. He did not remember having studied them in +the ascent, yet here they were, even in changed light, familiar to his +sight. What he had once seen was pictured on his mind. And, true as +a deer striking for home, he reached the canyon where he had left his +horse. + +Bullet was quickly and easily found. Duane threw on the saddle and pack, +cinched them tight, and resumed his descent. The worst was now to come. +Bare downward steps in rock, sliding, weathered slopes, narrow black +gullies, a thousand openings in a maze of broken stone--these Duane had +to descend in fast time, leading a giant of a horse. Bullet cracked the +loose fragments, sent them rolling, slid on the scaly slopes, plunged +down the steps, followed like a faithful dog at Duane's heels. + +Hours passed as moments. Duane was equal to his great opportunity. But +he could not quell that self in him which reached back over the lapse +of lonely, searing years and found the boy in him. He who had been worse +than dead was now grasping at the skirts of life--which meant victory, +honor, happiness. Duane knew he was not just right in part of his mind. +Small wonder that he was not insane, he thought! He tramped on downward, +his marvelous faculty for covering rough ground and holding to the true +course never before even in flight so keen and acute. Yet all the time +a spirit was keeping step with him. Thought of Ray Longstreth as he had +left her made him weak. But now, with the game clear to its end, with +the trap to spring, with success strangely haunting him, Duane could not +dispel memory of her. He saw her white face, with its sweet sad lips and +the dark eyes so tender and tragic. And time and distance and risk and +toil were nothing. + +The moon sloped to the west. Shadows of trees and crags now crossed to +the other side of him. The stars dimmed. Then he was out of the rocks, +with the dim trail pale at his feet. Mounting Bullet, he made short work +of the long slope and the foothills and the rolling land leading down +to Ord. The little outlaw camp, with its shacks and cabins and row of +houses, lay silent and dark under the paling moon. Duane passed by on +the lower trail, headed into the road, and put Bullet to a gallop. He +watched the dying moon, the waning stars, and the east. He had time +to spare, so he saved the horse. Knell would be leaving the rendezvous +about the time Duane turned back toward Ord. Between noon and sunset +they would meet. + +The night wore on. The moon sank behind low mountains in the west. +The stars brightened for a while, then faded. Gray gloom enveloped the +world, thickened, lay like smoke over the road. Then shade by shade it +lightened, until through the transparent obscurity shone a dim light. + +Duane reached Bradford before dawn. He dismounted some distance from the +tracks, tied his horse, and then crossed over to the station. He heard +the clicking of the telegraph instrument, and it thrilled him. An +operator sat inside reading. When Duane tapped on the window he looked +up with startled glance, then went swiftly to unlock the door. + +“Hello. Give me paper and pencil. Quick,” whispered Duane. + +With trembling hands the operator complied. Duane wrote out the message +he had carefully composed. + +“Send this--repeat it to make sure--then keep mum. I'll see you again. +Good-by.” + +The operator stared, but did not speak a word. + +Duane left as stealthily and swiftly as he had come. He walked his horse +a couple miles back on the road and then rested him till break of day. +The east began to redden, Duane turned grimly in the direction of Ord. + +When Duane swung into the wide, grassy square on the outskirts of Ord +he saw a bunch of saddled horses hitched in front of the tavern. He knew +what that meant. Luck still favored him. If it would only hold! But he +could ask no more. The rest was a matter of how greatly he could make +his power felt. An open conflict against odds lay in the balance. That +would be fatal to him, and to avoid it he had to trust to his name and a +presence he must make terrible. He knew outlaws. He knew what qualities +held them. He knew what to exaggerate. + +There was not an outlaw in sight. The dusty horses had covered distance +that morning. As Duane dismounted he heard loud, angry voices inside the +tavern. He removed coat and vest, hung them over the pommel. He packed +two guns, one belted high on the left hip, the other swinging low on the +right side. He neither looked nor listened, but boldly pushed the door +and stepped inside. + +The big room was full of men, and every face pivoted toward him. Knell's +pale face flashed into Duane's swift sight; then Boldt's, then Blossom +Kane's, then Panhandle Smith's, then Fletcher's, then others that were +familiar, and last that of Poggin. Though Duane had never seen Poggin or +heard him described, he knew him. For he saw a face that was a record of +great and evil deeds. + +There was absolute silence. The outlaws were lined back of a long table +upon which were papers, stacks of silver coin, a bundle of bills, and a +huge gold-mounted gun. + +“Are you gents lookin' for me?” asked Duane. He gave his voice all the +ringing force and power of which he was capable. And he stepped back, +free of anything, with the outlaws all before him. + +Knell stood quivering, but his face might have been a mask. The other +outlaws looked from him to Duane. Jim Fletcher flung up his hands. + +“My Gawd, Dodge, what'd you bust in here fer?” he said, plaintively, and +slowly stepped forward. His action was that of a man true to himself. He +meant he had been sponsor for Duane and now he would stand by him. + +“Back, Fletcher!” called Duane, and his voice made the outlaw jump. + +“Hold on, Dodge, an' you-all, everybody,” said Fletcher. “Let me talk, +seein' I'm in wrong here.” + +His persuasions did not ease the strain. + +“Go ahead. Talk,” said Poggin. + +Fletcher turned to Duane. “Pard, I'm takin' it on myself thet you meet +enemies here when I swore you'd meet friends. It's my fault. I'll stand +by you if you let me.” + +“No, Jim,” replied Duane. + +“But what'd you come fer without the signal?” burst out Fletcher, in +distress. He saw nothing but catastrophe in this meeting. + +“Jim, I ain't pressin' my company none. But when I'm wanted bad--” + +Fletcher stopped him with a raised hand. Then he turned to Poggin with a +rude dignity. + +“Poggy, he's my pard, an' he's riled. I never told him a word thet'd +make him sore. I only said Knell hadn't no more use fer him than fer +me. Now, what you say goes in this gang. I never failed you in my life. +Here's my pard. I vouch fer him. Will you stand fer me? There's goin' to +be hell if you don't. An' us with a big job on hand!” + +While Fletcher toiled over his slow, earnest persuasion Duane had his +gaze riveted upon Poggin. There was something leonine about Poggin. He +was tawny. He blazed. He seemed beautiful as fire was beautiful. But +looked at closer, with glance seeing the physical man, instead of that +thing which shone from him, he was of perfect build, with muscles that +swelled and rippled, bulging his clothes, with the magnificent head and +face of the cruel, fierce, tawny-eyed jaguar. + +Looking at this strange Poggin, instinctively divining his abnormal +and hideous power, Duane had for the first time in his life the inward +quaking fear of a man. It was like a cold-tongued bell ringing within +him and numbing his heart. The old instinctive firing of blood followed, +but did not drive away that fear. He knew. He felt something here deeper +than thought could go. And he hated Poggin. + +That individual had been considering Fletcher's appeal. + +“Jim, I ante up,” he said, “an' if Phil doesn't raise us out with a big +hand--why, he'll get called, an' your pard can set in the game.” + +Every eye shifted to Knell. He was dead white. He laughed, and any one +hearing that laugh would have realized his intense anger equally with an +assurance which made him master of the situation. + +“Poggin, you're a gambler, you are--the ace-high, straight-flush hand of +the Big Bend,” he said, with stinging scorn. “I'll bet you my roll to a +greaser peso that I can deal you a hand you'll be afraid to play.” + +“Phil, you're talkin' wild,” growled Poggin, with both advice and menace +in his tone. + +“If there's anythin' you hate it's a man who pretends to be somebody +else when he's not. Thet so?” + +Poggin nodded in slow-gathering wrath. + +“Well, Jim's new pard--this man Dodge--he's not who he seems. Oh-ho! +He's a hell of a lot different. But _I_ know him. An' when I spring +his name on you, Poggin, you'll freeze to your gizzard. Do you get +me? You'll freeze, an' your hand'll be stiff when it ought to be +lightnin'--All because you'll realize you've been standin' there five +minutes--five minutes ALIVE before him!” + +If not hate, then assuredly great passion toward Poggin manifested +itself in Knell's scornful, fiery address, in the shaking hand he thrust +before Poggin's face. In the ensuing silent pause Knell's panting could +be plainly heard. The other men were pale, watchful, cautiously edging +either way to the wall, leaving the principals and Duane in the center +of the room. + +“Spring his name, then, you--” said Poggin, violently, with a curse. + +Strangely Knell did not even look at the man he was about to denounce. +He leaned toward Poggin, his hands, his body, his long head all somewhat +expressive of what his face disguised. + +“BUCK DUANE!” he yelled, suddenly. + +The name did not make any great difference in Poggin. But Knell's +passionate, swift utterance carried the suggestion that the name ought +to bring Poggin to quick action. It was possible, too, that Knell's +manner, the import of his denunciation the meaning back of all his +passion held Poggin bound more than the surprise. For the outlaw +certainly was surprised, perhaps staggered at the idea that he, Poggin, +had been about to stand sponsor with Fletcher for a famous outlaw hated +and feared by all outlaws. + +Knell waited a long moment, and then his face broke its cold immobility +in an extraordinary expression of devilish glee. He had hounded the +great Poggin into something that gave him vicious, monstrous joy. + +“BUCK DUANE! Yes,” he broke out, hotly. “The Nueces gunman! That +two-shot, ace-of-spades lone wolf! You an' I--we've heard a thousand +times of him--talked about him often. An' here he IN FRONT of you! +Poggin, you were backin' Fletcher's new pard, Buck Duane. An' he'd +fooled you both but for me. But _I_ know him. An' I know why he drifted +in here. To flash a gun on Cheseldine--on you--on me! Bah! Don't tell me +he wanted to join the gang. You know a gunman, for you're one yourself. +Don't you always want to kill another man? An' don't you always want to +meet a real man, not a four-flush? It's the madness of the gunman, an' I +know it. Well, Duane faced you--called you! An' when I sprung his name, +what ought you have done? What would the boss--anybody--have expected of +Poggin? Did you throw your gun, swift, like you have so often? Naw; you +froze. An' why? Because here's a man with the kind of nerve you'd love +to have. Because he's great--meetin' us here alone. Because you know +he's a wonder with a gun an' you love life. Because you an' I an' every +damned man here had to take his front, each to himself. If we all drew +we'd kill him. Sure! But who's goin' to lead? Who was goin' to be first? +Who was goin' to make him draw? Not you, Poggin! You leave that for a +lesser man--me--who've lived to see you a coward. It comes once to every +gunman. You've met your match in Buck Duane. An', by God, I'm glad! +Here's once I show you up!” + +The hoarse, taunting voice failed. Knell stepped back from the comrade +he hated. He was wet, shaking, haggard, but magnificent. + +“Buck Duane, do you remember Hardin?” he asked, in scarcely audible +voice. + +“Yes,” replied Duane, and a flash of insight made clear Knell's +attitude. + +“You met him--forced him to draw--killed him?” + +“Yes.” + +“Hardin was the best pard I ever had.” + +His teeth clicked together tight, and his lips set in a thin line. + +The room grew still. Even breathing ceased. The time for words +had passed. In that long moment of suspense Knell's body gradually +stiffened, and at last the quivering ceased. He crouched. His eyes had a +soul-piercing fire. + +Duane watched them. He waited. He caught the thought--the breaking of +Knell's muscle-bound rigidity. Then he drew. + +Through the smoke of his gun he saw two red spurts of flame. Knell's +bullets thudded into the ceiling. He fell with a scream like a wild +thing in agony. + +Duane did not see Knell die. He watched Poggin. And Poggin, like a +stricken and astounded man, looked down upon his prostrate comrade. + +Fletcher ran at Duane with hands aloft. + +“Hit the trail, you liar, or you'll hev to kill me!” he yelled. + +With hands still up, he shouldered and bodied Duane out of the room. + +Duane leaped on his horse, spurred, and plunged away. + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +Duane returned to Fairdale and camped in the mesquite till the +twenty-third of the month. The few days seemed endless. All he could +think of was that the hour in which he must disgrace Ray Longstreth was +slowly but inexorably coming. In that waiting time he learned what +love was and also duty. When the day at last dawned he rode like one +possessed down the rough slope, hurdling the stones and crashing through +the brush, with a sound in his ears that was not all the rush of the +wind. Something dragged at him. + +Apparently one side of his mind was unalterably fixed, while the other +was a hurrying conglomeration of flashes of thought, reception of +sensations. He could not get calmness. By and by, almost involuntarily, +he hurried faster on. Action seemed to make his state less oppressive; +it eased the weight. But the farther he went on the harder it was to +continue. Had he turned his back upon love, happiness, perhaps on life +itself? + +There seemed no use to go on farther until he was absolutely sure of +himself. Duane received a clear warning thought that such work as seemed +haunting and driving him could never be carried out in the mood under +which he labored. He hung on to that thought. Several times he slowed +up, then stopped, only to go on again. At length, as he mounted a low +ridge, Fairdale lay bright and green before him not far away, and the +sight was a conclusive check. There were mesquites on the ridge, and +Duane sought the shade beneath them. It was the noon-hour, with hot, +glary sun and no wind. Here Duane had to have out his fight. Duane was +utterly unlike himself; he could not bring the old self back; he was +not the same man he once had been. But he could understand why. It was +because of Ray Longstreth. Temptation assailed him. To have her his +wife! It was impossible. The thought was insidiously alluring. Duane +pictured a home. He saw himself riding through the cotton and rice and +cane, home to a stately old mansion, where long-eared hounds bayed him +welcome, and a woman looked for him and met him with happy and beautiful +smile. There might--there would be children. And something new, strange, +confounding with its emotion, came to life deep in Duane's heart. There +would be children! Ray their mother! The kind of life a lonely outcast +always yearned for and never had! He saw it all, felt it all. + +But beyond and above all other claims came Captain MacNelly's. It was +then there was something cold and death-like in Duane's soul. For he +knew, whatever happened, of one thing he was sure--he would have to kill +either Longstreth or Lawson. Longstreth might be trapped into arrest; +but Lawson had no sense, no control, no fear. He would snarl like a +panther and go for his gun, and he would have to be killed. This, of all +consummations, was the one to be calculated upon. + +Duane came out of it all bitter and callous and sore--in the most +fitting of moods to undertake a difficult and deadly enterprise. He had +fallen upon his old strange, futile dreams, now rendered poignant by +reason of love. He drove away those dreams. In their places came the +images of the olive-skinned Longstreth with his sharp eyes, and the +dark, evil-faced Lawson, and then returned tenfold more thrilling and +sinister the old strange passion to meet Poggin. + +It was about one o'clock when Duane rode into Fairdale. The streets for +the most part were deserted. He went directly to find Morton and Zimmer. +He found them at length, restless, somber, anxious, but unaware of the +part he had played at Ord. They said Longstreth was home, too. It was +possible that Longstreth had arrived home in ignorance. + +Duane told them to be on hand in town with their men in case he might +need them, and then with teeth locked he set off for Longstreth's ranch. + +Duane stole through the bushes and trees, and when nearing the porch +he heard loud, angry, familiar voices. Longstreth and Lawson were +quarreling again. How Duane's lucky star guided him! He had no plan of +action, but his brain was equal to a hundred lightning-swift evolutions. +He meant to take any risk rather than kill Longstreth. Both of the men +were out on the porch. Duane wormed his way to the edge of the shrubbery +and crouched low to watch for his opportunity. + +Longstreth looked haggard and thin. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and he +had come out with a gun in his hand. This he laid on a table near the +wall. He wore no belt. + +Lawson was red, bloated, thick-lipped, all fiery and sweaty from drink, +though sober on the moment, and he had the expression of a desperate +man in his last stand. It was his last stand, though he was ignorant of +that. + +“What's your news? You needn't be afraid of my feelings,” said Lawson. + +“Ray confessed to an interest in this ranger,” replied Longstreth. + +Duane thought Lawson would choke. He was thick-necked anyway, and the +rush of blood made him tear at the soft collar of his shirt. Duane +awaited his chance, patient, cold, all his feelings shut in a vise. + +“But why should your daughter meet this ranger?” demanded Lawson, +harshly. + +“She's in love with him, and he's in love with her.” + +Duane reveled in Lawson's condition. The statement might have had the +force of a juggernaut. Was Longstreth sincere? What was his game? + +Lawson, finding his voice, cursed Ray, cursed the ranger, then +Longstreth. + +“You damned selfish fool!” cried Longstreth, in deep bitter scorn. “All +you think of is yourself--your loss of the girl. Think once of ME--my +home--my life!” + +Then the connection subtly put out by Longstreth apparently dawned upon +the other. Somehow through this girl her father and cousin were to be +betrayed. Duane got that impression, though he could not tell how true +it was. Certainly Lawson's jealousy was his paramount emotion. + +“To hell with you!” burst out Lawson, incoherently. He was frenzied. +“I'll have her, or nobody else will!” + +“You never will,” returned Longstreth, stridently. “So help me God I'd +rather see her the ranger's wife than yours!” + +While Lawson absorbed that shock Longstreth leaned toward him, all of +hate and menace in his mien. + +“Lawson, you made me what I am,” continued Longstreth. “I backed +you--shielded you. YOU'RE Cheseldine--if the truth is told! Now it's +ended. I quit you. I'm done!” + +Their gray passion-corded faces were still as stones. + +“GENTLEMEN!” Duane called in far-reaching voice as he stepped out. +“YOU'RE BOTH DONE!” + +They wheeled to confront Duane. + +“Don't move! Not a muscle! Not a finger!” he warned. + +Longstreth read what Lawson had not the mind to read. His face turned +from gray to ashen. + +“What d'ye mean?” yelled Lawson, fiercely, shrilly. It was not in him to +obey a command, to see impending death. + +All quivering and strung, yet with perfect control, Duane raised his +left hand to turn back a lapel of his open vest. The silver star flashed +brightly. + +Lawson howled like a dog. With barbarous and insane fury, with sheer +impotent folly, he swept a clawing hand for his gun. Duane's shot broke +his action. + +Before Lawson ever tottered, before he loosed the gun, Longstreth leaped +behind him, clasped him with left arm, quick as lightning jerked the +gun from both clutching fingers and sheath. Longstreth protected himself +with the body of the dead man. Duane saw red flashes, puffs of smoke; +he heard quick reports. Something stung his left arm. Then a blow like +wind, light of sound yet shocking in impact, struck him, staggered him. +The hot rend of lead followed the blow. Duane's heart seemed to explode, +yet his mind kept extraordinarily clear and rapid. + +Duane heard Longstreth work the action of Lawson's gun. He heard the +hammer click, fall upon empty shells. Longstreth had used up all the +loads in Lawson's gun. He cursed as a man cursed at defeat. Duane +waited, cool and sure now. Longstreth tried to lift the dead man, to +edge him closer toward the table where his own gun lay. But, considering +the peril of exposing himself, he found the task beyond him. He bent +peering at Duane under Lawson's arm, which flopped out from his side. +Longstreth's eyes were the eyes of a man who meant to kill. There was +never any mistaking the strange and terrible light of eyes like +those. More than once Duane had a chance to aim at them, at the top of +Longstreth's head, at a strip of his side. + +Longstreth flung Lawson's body off. But even as it dropped, before +Longstreth could leap, as he surely intended, for the gun, Duane covered +him, called piercingly to him: + +“Don't jump for the gun! Don't! I'll kill you! Sure as God I'll kill +you!” + +Longstreth stood perhaps ten feet from the table where his gun lay Duane +saw him calculating chances. He was game. He had the courage that forced +Duane to respect him. Duane just saw him measure the distance to that +gun. He was magnificent. He meant to do it. Duane would have to kill +him. + +“Longstreth, listen,” cried Duane, swiftly. “The game's up. You're done. +But think of your daughter! I'll spare your life--I'll try to get you +freedom on one condition. For her sake! I've got you nailed--all the +proofs. There lies Lawson. You're alone. I've Morton and men to my aid. +Give up. Surrender. Consent to demands, and I'll spare you. Maybe I can +persuade MacNelly to let you go free back to your old country. It's for +Ray's sake! Her life, perhaps her happiness, can be saved! Hurry, man! +Your answer!” + +“Suppose I refuse?” he queried, with a dark and terrible earnestness. + +“Then I'll kill you in your tracks! You can't move a hand! Your word or +death! Hurry, Longstreth! Be a man! For her sake! Quick! Another second +now--I'll kill you!” + +“All right, Buck Duane, I give my word,” he said, and deliberately +walked to the chair and fell into it. + +Longstreth looked strangely at the bloody blot on Duane's shoulder. + +“There come the girls!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Can you help me drag +Lawson inside? They mustn't see him.” + +Duane was facing down the porch toward the court and corrals. Miss +Longstreth and Ruth had come in sight, were swiftly approaching, +evidently alarmed. The two men succeeded in drawing Lawson into the +house before the girls saw him. + +“Duane, you're not hard hit?” said Longstreth. + +“Reckon not,” replied Duane. + +“I'm sorry. If only you could have told me sooner! Lawson, damn him! +Always I've split over him!” + +“But the last time, Longstreth.” + +“Yes, and I came near driving you to kill me, too. Duane, you talked +me out of it. For Ray's sake! She'll be in here in a minute. This'll be +harder than facing a gun.” + +“Hard now. But I hope it'll turn out all right.” + +“Duane, will you do me a favor?” he asked, and he seemed shamefaced. + +“Sure.” + +“Let Ray and Ruth think Lawson shot you. He's dead. It can't matter. +Duane, the old side of my life is coming back. It's been coming. It'll +be here just about when she enters this room. And, by God, I'd change +places with Lawson if I could!” + +“Glad you--said that, Longstreth,” replied Duane. “And sure--Lawson +plugged me. It's our secret.” + +Just then Ray and Ruth entered the room. Duane heard two low cries, so +different in tone, and he saw two white faces. Ray came to his side, She +lifted a shaking hand to point at the blood upon his breast. White and +mute, she gazed from that to her father. + +“Papa!” cried Ray, wringing her hands. + +“Don't give way,” he replied, huskily. “Both you girls will need your +nerve. Duane isn't badly hurt. But Floyd is--is dead. Listen. Let me +tell it quick. There's been a fight. It--it was Lawson--it was Lawson's +gun that shot Duane. Duane let me off. In fact, Ray, he saved me. I'm +to divide my property--return so far as possible what I've stolen--leave +Texas at once with Duane, under arrest. He says maybe he can get +MacNelly, the ranger captain, to let me go. For your sake!” + +She stood there, realizing her deliverance, with the dark and tragic +glory of her eyes passing from her father to Duane. + +“You must rise above this,” said Duane to her. “I expected this to ruin +you. But your father is alive. He will live it down. I'm sure I can +promise you he'll be free. Perhaps back there in Louisiana the dishonor +will never be known. This country is far from your old home. And even in +San Antonio and Austin a man's evil repute means little. Then the line +between a rustler and a rancher is hard to draw in these wild border +days. Rustling is stealing cattle, and I once heard a well-known rancher +say that all rich cattlemen had done a little stealing Your father +drifted out here, and, like a good many others, he succeeded. It's +perhaps just as well not to split hairs, to judge him by the law and +morality of a civilized country. Some way or other he drifted in with +bad men. Maybe a deal that was honest somehow tied his hands. This +matter of land, water, a few stray head of stock had to be decided out +of court. I'm sure in his case he never realized where he was drifting. +Then one thing led to another, until he was face to face with dealing +that took on crooked form. To protect himself he bound men to him. And +so the gang developed. Many powerful gangs have developed that way +out here. He could not control them. He became involved with them. And +eventually their dealings became deliberately and boldly dishonest. That +meant the inevitable spilling of blood sooner or later, and so he grew +into the leader because he was the strongest. Whatever he is to be +judged for, I think he could have been infinitely worse.” + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +On the morning of the twenty-sixth Duane rode into Bradford in time to +catch the early train. His wounds did not seriously incapacitate him. +Longstreth was with him. And Miss Longstreth and Ruth Herbert would not +be left behind. They were all leaving Fairdale for ever. Longstreth had +turned over the whole of his property to Morton, who was to divide it +as he and his comrades believed just. Duane had left Fairdale with his +party by night, passed through Sanderson in the early hours of dawn, and +reached Bradford as he had planned. + +That fateful morning found Duane outwardly calm, but inwardly he was +in a tumult. He wanted to rush to Val Verde. Would Captain MacNelly be +there with his rangers, as Duane had planned for them to be? Memory of +that tawny Poggin returned with strange passion. Duane had borne hours +and weeks and months of waiting, had endured the long hours of the +outlaw, but now he had no patience. The whistle of the train made him +leap. + +It was a fast train, yet the ride seemed slow. + +Duane, disliking to face Longstreth and the passengers in the car, +changed his seat to one behind his prisoner. They had seldom spoken. +Longstreth sat with bowed head, deep in thought. The girls sat in a +seat near by and were pale but composed. Occasionally the train halted +briefly at a station. The latter half of that ride Duane had observed +a wagon-road running parallel with the railroad, sometimes right +alongside, at others near or far away. When the train was about twenty +miles from Val Verde Duane espied a dark group of horsemen trotting +eastward. His blood beat like a hammer at his temples. The gang! +He thought he recognized the tawny Poggin and felt a strange inward +contraction. He thought he recognized the clean-cut Blossom Kane, the +black-bearded giant Boldt, the red-faced Panhandle Smith, and Fletcher. +There was another man strange to him. Was that Knell? No! it could not +have been Knell. + +Duane leaned over the seat and touched Longstreth on the shoulder. + +“Look!” he whispered. Cheseldine was stiff. He had already seen. + +The train flashed by; the outlaw gang receded out of range of sight. + +“Did you notice Knell wasn't with them?” whispered Duane. + +Duane did not speak to Longstreth again till the train stopped at Val +Verde. + +They got off the car, and the girls followed as naturally as ordinary +travelers. The station was a good deal larger than that at Bradford, and +there was considerable action and bustle incident to the arrival of the +train. + +Duane's sweeping gaze searched faces, rested upon a man who seemed +familiar. This fellow's look, too, was that of one who knew Duane, but +was waiting for a sign, a cue. Then Duane recognized him--MacNelly, +clean-shaven. Without mustache he appeared different, younger. + +When MacNelly saw that Duane intended to greet him, to meet him, he +hurried forward. A keen light flashed from his eyes. He was glad, eager, +yet suppressing himself, and the glances he sent back and forth from +Duane to Longstreth were questioning, doubtful. Certainly Longstreth did +not look the part of an outlaw. + +“Duane! Lord, I'm glad to see you,” was the Captain's greeting. Then at +closer look into Duane's face his warmth fled--something he saw there +checked his enthusiasm, or at least its utterance. + +“MacNelly, shake hand with Cheseldine,” said Duane, low-voiced. + +The ranger captain stood dumb, motionless. But he saw Longstreth's +instant action, and awkwardly he reached for the outstretched hand. + +“Any of your men down here?” queried Duane, sharply. + +“No. They're up-town.” + +“Come. MacNelly, you walk with him. We've ladies in the party. I'll come +behind with them.” + +They set off up-town. Longstreth walked as if he were with friends on +the way to dinner. The girls were mute. MacNelly walked like a man in a +trance. There was not a word spoken in four blocks. + +Presently Duane espied a stone building on a corner of the broad street. +There was a big sign, “Rancher's Bank.” + +“There's the hotel,” said MacNelly. “Some of my men are there. We've +scattered around.” + +They crossed the street, went through office and lobby, and then Duane +asked MacNelly to take them to a private room. Without a word the +Captain complied. When they were all inside Duane closed the door, and, +drawing a deep breath as if of relief, he faced them calmly. + +“Miss Longstreth, you and Miss Ruth try to make yourselves comfortable +now,” he said. “And don't be distressed.” Then he turned to his captain. +“MacNelly, this girl is the daughter of the man I've brought to you, and +this one is his niece.” + +Then Duane briefly related Longstreth's story, and, though he did not +spare the rustler chief, he was generous. + +“When I went after Longstreth,” concluded Duane, “it was either to kill +him or offer him freedom on conditions. So I chose the latter for his +daughter's sake. He has already disposed of all his property. I believe +he'll live up to the conditions. He's to leave Texas never to return. +The name Cheseldine has been a mystery, and now it'll fade.” + +A few moments later Duane followed MacNelly to a large room, like a +hall, and here were men reading and smoking. Duane knew them--rangers! + +MacNelly beckoned to his men. + +“Boys, here he is.” + +“How many men have you?” asked Duane. + +“Fifteen.” + +MacNelly almost embraced Duane, would probably have done so but for the +dark grimness that seemed to be coming over the man. Instead he glowed, +he sputtered, he tried to talk, to wave his hands. He was beside +himself. And his rangers crowded closer, eager, like hounds ready to +run. They all talked at once, and the word most significant and frequent +in their speech was “outlaws.” + +MacNelly clapped his fist in his hand. + +“This'll make the adjutant sick with joy. Maybe we won't have it on the +Governor! We'll show them about the ranger service. Duane! how'd you +ever do it?” + +“Now, Captain, not the half nor the quarter of this job's done. The +gang's coming down the road. I saw them from the train. They'll ride +into town on the dot--two-thirty.” + +“How many?” asked MacNelly. + +“Poggin, Blossom Kane, Panhandle Smith, Boldt, Jim Fletcher, and another +man I don't know. These are the picked men of Cheseldine's gang. I'll +bet they'll be the fastest, hardest bunch you rangers ever faced.” + +“Poggin--that's the hard nut to crack! I've heard their records since +I've been in Val Verde. Where's Knell? They say he's a boy, but hell and +blazes!” + +“Knell's dead.” + +“Ah!” exclaimed MacNelly, softly. Then he grew businesslike, cool, and +of harder aspect. “Duane, it's your game to-day. I'm only a ranger under +orders. We're all under your orders. We've absolute faith in you. Make +your plan quick, so I can go around and post the boys who're not here.” + +“You understand there's no sense in trying to arrest Poggin, Kane, and +that lot?” queried Duane. + +“No, I don't understand that,” replied MacNelly, bluntly. + +“It can't be done. The drop can't be got on such men. If you meet them +they shoot, and mighty quick and straight. Poggin! That outlaw has no +equal with a gun--unless--He's got to be killed quick. They'll all have +to be killed. They're all bad, desperate, know no fear, are lightning in +action.” + +“Very well, Duane; then it's a fight. That'll be easier, perhaps. The +boys are spoiling for a fight. Out with your plan, now.” + +“Put one man at each end of this street, just at the edge of town. Let +him hide there with a rifle to block the escape of any outlaw that we +might fail to get. I had a good look at the bank building. It's +well situated for our purpose. Put four men up in that room over the +bank--four men, two at each open window. Let them hide till the game +begins. They want to be there so in case these foxy outlaws get wise +before they're down on the ground or inside the bank. The rest of your +men put inside behind the counters, where they'll hide. Now go over to +the bank, spring the thing on the bank officials, and don't let them +shut up the bank. You want their aid. Let them make sure of their gold. +But the clerks and cashier ought to be at their desks or window when +Poggin rides up. He'll glance in before he gets down. They make no +mistakes, these fellows. We must be slicker than they are, or lose. When +you get the bank people wise, send your men over one by one. No hurry, +no excitement, no unusual thing to attract notice in the bank.” + +“All right. That's great. Tell me, where do you intend to wait?” + +Duane heard MacNelly's question, and it struck him peculiarly. He had +seemed to be planning and speaking mechanically. As he was confronted +by the fact it nonplussed him somewhat, and he became thoughtful, with +lowered head. + +“Where'll you wait, Duane?” insisted MacNelly, with keen eyes +speculating. + +“I'll wait in front, just inside the door,” replied Duane, with an +effort. + +“Why?” demanded the Captain. + +“Well,” began Duane, slowly, “Poggin will get down first and start in. +But the others won't be far behind. They'll not get swift till inside. +The thing is--they MUSTN'T get clear inside, because the instant they +do they'll pull guns. That means death to somebody. If we can we want to +stop them just at the door.” + +“But will you hide?” asked MacNelly. + +“Hide!” The idea had not occurred to Duane. + +“There's a wide-open doorway, a sort of round hall, a vestibule, with +steps leading up to the bank. There's a door in the vestibule, too. It +leads somewhere. We can put men in there. You can be there.” + +Duane was silent. + +“See here, Duane,” began MacNelly, nervously. “You shan't take any undue +risk here. You'll hide with the rest of us?” + +“No!” The word was wrenched from Duane. + +MacNelly stared, and then a strange, comprehending light seemed to flit +over his face. + +“Duane, I can give you no orders to-day,” he said, distinctly. “I'm only +offering advice. Need you take any more risks? You've done a grand +job for the service--already. You've paid me a thousand times for +that pardon. You've redeemed yourself.--The Governor, the +adjutant-general--the whole state will rise up and honor you. The game's +almost up. We'll kill these outlaws, or enough of them to break for +ever their power. I say, as a ranger, need you take more risk than your +captain?” + +Still Duane remained silent. He was locked between two forces. And one, +a tide that was bursting at its bounds, seemed about to overwhelm him. +Finally that side of him, the retreating self, the weaker, found a +voice. + +“Captain, you want this job to be sure?” he asked. + +“Certainly.” + +“I've told you the way. I alone know the kind of men to be met. Just +WHAT I'll do or WHERE I'll be I can't say yet. In meetings like this the +moment decides. But I'll be there!” + +MacNelly spread wide his hands, looked helplessly at his curious and +sympathetic rangers, and shook his head. + +“Now you've done your work--laid the trap--is this strange move of yours +going to be fair to Miss Longstreth?” asked MacNelly, in significant low +voice. + +Like a great tree chopped at the roots Duane vibrated to that. He looked +up as if he had seen a ghost. + +Mercilessly the ranger captain went on: “You can win her, Duane! Oh, you +can't fool me. I was wise in a minute. Fight with us from cover--then go +back to her. You will have served the Texas Rangers as no other man has. +I'll accept your resignation. You'll be free, honored, happy. That girl +loves you! I saw it in her eyes. She's--” + +But Duane cut him short with a fierce gesture. He lunged up to his feet, +and the rangers fell back. Dark, silent, grim as he had been, still +there was a transformation singularly more sinister, stranger. + +“Enough. I'm done,” he said, somberly. “I've planned. Do we agree--or +shall I meet Poggin and his gang alone?” + +MacNelly cursed and again threw up his hands, this time in baffled +chagrin. There was deep regret in his dark eyes as they rested upon +Duane. + +Duane was left alone. + +Never had his mind been so quick, so clear, so wonderful in its +understanding of what had heretofore been intricate and elusive impulses +of his strange nature. His determination was to meet Poggin; meet him +before any one else had a chance--Poggin first--and then the others! +He was as unalterable in that decision as if on the instant of its +acceptance he had become stone. + +Why? Then came realization. He was not a ranger now. He cared nothing +for the state. He had no thought of freeing the community of a dangerous +outlaw, of ridding the country of an obstacle to its progress and +prosperity. He wanted to kill Poggin. It was significant now that +he forgot the other outlaws. He was the gunman, the gun-thrower, the +gun-fighter, passionate and terrible. His father's blood, that dark and +fierce strain, his mother's spirit, that strong and unquenchable spirit +of the surviving pioneer--these had been in him; and the killings, one +after another, the wild and haunted years, had made him, absolutely in +spite of his will, the gunman. He realized it now, bitterly, hopelessly. +The thing he had intelligence enough to hate he had become. At last he +shuddered under the driving, ruthless inhuman blood-lust of the gunman. +Long ago he had seemed to seal in a tomb that horror of his kind--the +need, in order to forget the haunting, sleepless presence of his last +victim, to go out and kill another. But it was still there in his mind, +and now it stalked out, worse, more powerful, magnified by its rest, +augmented by the violent passions peculiar and inevitable to that +strange, wild product of the Texas frontier--the gun-fighter. And those +passions were so violent, so raw, so base, so much lower than what ought +to have existed in a thinking man. Actual pride of his record! Actual +vanity in his speed with a gun. Actual jealousy of any rival! + +Duane could not believe it. But there he was, without a choice. What +he had feared for years had become a monstrous reality. Respect for +himself, blindness, a certain honor that he had clung to while in +outlawry--all, like scales, seemed to fall away from him. He stood +stripped bare, his soul naked--the soul of Cain. Always since the first +brand had been forced and burned upon him he had been ruined. But now +with conscience flayed to the quick, yet utterly powerless over this +tiger instinct, he was lost. He said it. He admitted it. And at the +utter abasement the soul he despised suddenly leaped and quivered with +the thought of Ray Longstreth. + +Then came agony. As he could not govern all the chances of this fatal +meeting--as all his swift and deadly genius must be occupied with +Poggin, perhaps in vain--as hard-shooting men whom he could not watch +would be close behind, this almost certainly must be the end of Buck +Duane. That did not matter. But he loved the girl. He wanted her. All +her sweetness, her fire, and pleading returned to torture him. + +At that moment the door opened, and Ray Longstreth entered. + +“Duane,” she said, softly. “Captain MacNelly sent me to you.” + +“But you shouldn't have come,” replied Duane. + +“As soon as he told me I would have come whether he wished it or not. +You left me--all of us--stunned. I had no time to thank you. Oh, I +do-with all my soul. It was noble of you. Father is overcome. He didn't +expect so much. And he'll be true. But, Duane, I was told to hurry, and +here I'm selfishly using time.” + +“Go, then--and leave me. You mustn't unnerve me now, when there's a +desperate game to finish.” + +“Need it be desperate?” she whispered, coming close to him. + +“Yes; it can't be else.” + +MacNelly had sent her to weaken him; of that Duane was sure. And he felt +that she had wanted to come. Her eyes were dark, strained, beautiful, +and they shed a light upon Duane he had never seen before. + +“You're going to take some mad risk,” she said. “Let me persuade you not +to. You said--you cared for me--and I--oh, Duane--don't you--know--?” + +The low voice, deep, sweet as an old chord, faltered and broke and +failed. + +Duane sustained a sudden shock and an instant of paralyzed confusion of +thought. + +She moved, she swept out her hands, and the wonder of her eyes dimmed in +a flood of tears. + +“My God! You can't care for me?” he cried, hoarsely. + +Then she met him, hands outstretched. + +“But I do-I do!” + +Swift as light Duane caught her and held her to his breast. He stood +holding her tight, with the feel of her warm, throbbing breast and the +clasp of her arms as flesh and blood realities to fight a terrible fear. +He felt her, and for the moment the might of it was stronger than all +the demons that possessed him. And he held her as if she had been his +soul, his strength on earth, his hope of Heaven, against his lips. + +The strife of doubt all passed. He found his sight again. And there +rushed over him a tide of emotion unutterably sweet and full, strong +like an intoxicating wine, deep as his nature, something glorious and +terrible as the blaze of the sun to one long in darkness. He had become +an outcast, a wanderer, a gunman, a victim of circumstances; he had lost +and suffered worse than death in that loss; he had gone down the +endless bloody trail, a killer of men, a fugitive whose mind slowly +and inevitably closed to all except the instinct to survive and a black +despair; and now, with this woman in his arms, her swelling breast +against his, in this moment almost of resurrection, he bent under the +storm of passion and joy possible only to him who had endured so much. + +“Do you care--a little?” he whispered, unsteadily. + +He bent over her, looking deep into the dark wet eyes. + +She uttered a low laugh that was half sob, and her arms slipped up to +his neck. + +“A littler Oh, Duane--Duane--a great deal!” + +Their lips met in their first kiss. The sweetness, the fire of her mouth +seemed so new, so strange, so irresistible to Duane. His sore and hungry +heart throbbed with thick and heavy beats. He felt the outcast's need +of love. And he gave up to the enthralling moment. She met him half-way, +returned kiss for kiss, clasp for clasp, her face scarlet, her eyes +closed, till, her passion and strength spent, she fell back upon his +shoulder. + +Duane suddenly thought she was going to faint. He divined then that she +had understood him, would have denied him nothing, not even her life, in +that moment. But she was overcome, and he suffered a pang of regret at +his unrestraint. + +Presently she recovered, and she drew only the closer, and leaned upon +him with her face upturned. He felt her hands on his, and they were +soft, clinging, strong, like steel under velvet. He felt the rise and +fall, the warmth of her breast. A tremor ran over him. He tried to draw +back, and if he succeeded a little her form swayed with him, pressing +closer. She held her face up, and he was compelled to look. It was +wonderful now: white, yet glowing, with the red lips parted, and dark +eyes alluring. But that was not all. There was passion, unquenchable +spirit, woman's resolve deep and mighty. + +“I love you, Duane!” she said. “For my sake don't go out to meet this +outlaw face to face. It's something wild in you. Conquer it if you love +me.” + +Duane became suddenly weak, and when he did take her into his arms again +he scarcely had strength to lift her to a seat beside him. She seemed +more than a dead weight. Her calmness had fled. She was throbbing, +palpitating, quivering, with hot wet cheeks and arms that clung to him +like vines. She lifted her mouth to his, whispering, “Kiss me!” She +meant to change him, hold him. + +Duane bent down, and her arms went round his neck and drew him close. +With his lips on hers he seemed to float away. That kiss closed his +eyes, and he could not lift his head. He sat motionless holding her, +blind and helpless, wrapped in a sweet dark glory. She kissed him--one +long endless kiss--or else a thousand times. Her lips, her wet cheeks, +her hair, the softness, the fragrance of her, the tender clasp of her +arms, the swell of her breast--all these seemed to inclose him. + +Duane could not put her from him. He yielded to her lips and arms, +watching her, involuntarily returning her caresses, sure now of her +intent, fascinated by the sweetness of her, bewildered, almost lost. +This was what it was to be loved by a woman. His years of outlawry had +blotted out any boyish love he might have known. This was what he had +to give up--all this wonder of her sweet person, this strange fire he +feared yet loved, this mate his deep and tortured soul recognized. Never +until that moment had he divined the meaning of a woman to a man. That +meaning was physical inasmuch that he learned what beauty was, what +marvel in the touch of quickening flesh; and it was spiritual in that he +saw there might have been for him, under happier circumstances, a life +of noble deeds lived for such a woman. + +“Don't go! Don't go!” she cried, as he started violently. + +“I must. Dear, good-by! Remember I loved you.” + +He pulled her hands loose from his, stepped back. + +“Ray, dearest--I believe--I'll come back!” he whispered. + +These last words were falsehood. + +He reached the door, gave her one last piercing glance, to fix for ever +in memory that white face with its dark, staring, tragic eyes. + +“DUANE!” + +He fled with that moan like thunder, death, hell in his ears. + +To forget her, to get back his nerve, he forced into mind the image of +Poggin-Poggin, the tawny-haired, the yellow-eyed, like a jaguar, +with his rippling muscles. He brought back his sense of the outlaw's +wonderful presence, his own unaccountable fear and hate. Yes, Poggin had +sent the cold sickness of fear to his marrow. Why, since he hated +life so? Poggin was his supreme test. And this abnormal and stupendous +instinct, now deep as the very foundation of his life, demanded its wild +and fatal issue. There was a horrible thrill in his sudden remembrance +that Poggin likewise had been taunted in fear of him. + +So the dark tide overwhelmed Duane, and when he left the room he was +fierce, implacable, steeled to any outcome, quick like a panther, somber +as death, in the thrall of his strange passion. + +There was no excitement in the street. He crossed to the bank corner. A +clock inside pointed the hour of two. He went through the door into the +vestibule, looked around, passed up the steps into the bank. The clerks +were at their desks, apparently busy. But they showed nervousness. The +cashier paled at sight of Duane. There were men--the rangers--crouching +down behind the low partition. All the windows had been removed from the +iron grating before the desks. The safe was closed. There was no money +in sight. A customer came in, spoke to the cashier, and was told to come +to-morrow. + +Duane returned to the door. He could see far down the street, out into +the country. There he waited, and minutes were eternities. He saw no +person near him; he heard no sound. He was insulated in his unnatural +strain. + +At a few minutes before half past two a dark, compact body of horsemen +appeared far down, turning into the road. They came at a sharp trot--a +group that would have attracted attention anywhere at any time. They +came a little faster as they entered town; then faster still; now they +were four blocks away, now three, now two. Duane backed down the middle +of the vestibule, up the steps, and halted in the center of the wide +doorway. + +There seemed to be a rushing in his ears through which pierced sharp, +ringing clip-clop of iron hoofs. He could see only the corner of the +street. But suddenly into that shot lean-limbed dusty bay horses. There +was a clattering of nervous hoofs pulled to a halt. + +Duane saw the tawny Poggin speak to his companions. He dismounted +quickly. They followed suit. They had the manner of ranchers about to +conduct some business. No guns showed. Poggin started leisurely for the +bank door, quickening step a little. The others, close together, came +behind him. Blossom Kane had a bag in his left hand. Jim Fletcher was +left at the curb, and he had already gathered up the bridles. + +Poggin entered the vestibule first, with Kane on one side, Boldt on the +other, a little in his rear. + +As he strode in he saw Duane. + +“HELL'S FIRE!” he cried. + +Something inside Duane burst, piercing all of him with cold. Was it that +fear? + +“BUCK DUANE!” echoed Kane. + +One instant Poggin looked up and Duane looked down. + +Like a striking jaguar Poggin moved. Almost as quickly Duane threw his +arm. + +The guns boomed almost together. + +Duane felt a blow just before he pulled trigger. His thoughts came fast, +like the strange dots before his eyes. His rising gun had loosened in +his hand. Poggin had drawn quicker! A tearing agony encompassed his +breast. He pulled--pulled--at random. Thunder of booming shots all about +him! Red flashes, jets of smoke, shrill yells! He was sinking. The end; +yes, the end! With fading sight he saw Kane go down, then Boldt. But +supreme torture, bitterer than death, Poggin stood, mane like a lion's, +back to the wall, bloody-faced, grand, with his guns spouting red! + +All faded, darkened. The thunder deadened. Duane fell, seemed floating. +There it drifted--Ray Longstreth's sweet face, white, with dark, tragic +eyes, fading from his sight... fading.. . fading... + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +Light shone before Duane's eyes--thick, strange light that came and +went. For a long time dull and booming sounds rushed by, filling all. +It was a dream in which there was nothing; a drifting under a burden; +darkness, light, sound, movement; and vague, obscure sense of time--time +that was very long. There was fire--creeping, consuming fire. A dark +cloud of flame enveloped him, rolled him away. + +He saw then, dimly, a room that was strange, strange people moving about +over him, with faint voices, far away, things in a dream. He saw again, +clearly, and consciousness returned, still unreal, still strange, full +of those vague and far-away things. Then he was not dead. He lay stiff, +like a stone, with a weight ponderous as a mountain upon him and all his +bound body racked in slow, dull-beating agony. + +A woman's face hovered over him, white and tragic-eyed, like one of his +old haunting phantoms, yet sweet and eloquent. Then a man's face bent +over him, looked deep into his eyes, and seemed to whisper from a +distance: “Duane--Duane! Ah, he knew me!” + +After that there was another long interval of darkness. When the light +came again, clearer this time, the same earnest-faced man bent over him. +It was MacNelly. And with recognition the past flooded back. + +Duane tried to speak. His lips were weak, and he could scarcely move +them. + +“Poggin!” he whispered. His first real conscious thought was for Poggin. +Ruling passion--eternal instinct! + +“Poggin is dead, Duane; shot to pieces,” replied MacNelly, solemnly. +“What a fight he made! He killed two of my men, wounded others. God! he +was a tiger. He used up three guns before we downed him.” + +“Who-got--away?” + +“Fletcher, the man with the horses. We downed all the others. Duane, the +job's done--it's done! Why, man, you're--” + +“What of--of--HER?” + +“Miss Longstreth has been almost constantly at your bedside. She helped +the doctor. She watched your wounds. And, Duane, the other night, when +you sank low--so low--I think it was her spirit that held yours back. +Oh, she's a wonderful girl. Duane, she never gave up, never lost her +nerve for a moment. Well, we're going to take you home, and she'll go +with us. Colonel Longstreth left for Louisiana right after the fight. I +advised it. There was great excitement. It was best for him to leave.” + +“Have I--a--chance--to recover?” + +“Chance? Why, man,” exclaimed the Captain, “you'll get well! You'll pack +a sight of lead all your life. But you can stand that. Duane, the whole +Southwest knows your story. You need never again be ashamed of the name +Buck Duane. The brand outlaw is washed out. Texas believes you've been +a secret ranger all the time. You're a hero. And now think of home, your +mother, of this noble girl--of your future.” + +The rangers took Duane home to Wellston. + +A railroad had been built since Duane had gone into exile. Wellston had +grown. A noisy crowd surrounded the station, but it stilled as Duane was +carried from the train. + +A sea of faces pressed close. Some were faces he +remembered--schoolmates, friends, old neighbors. There was an upflinging +of many hands. Duane was being welcomed home to the town from which he +had fled. A deadness within him broke. This welcome hurt him somehow, +quickened him; and through his cold being, his weary mind, passed a +change. His sight dimmed. + +Then there was a white house, his old home. How strange, yet how real! +His heart beat fast. Had so many, many years passed? Familiar yet +strange it was, and all seemed magnified. + +They carried him in, these ranger comrades, and laid him down, and +lifted his head upon pillows. The house was still, though full of +people. Duane's gaze sought the open door. + +Some one entered--a tall girl in white, with dark, wet eyes and a light +upon her face. She was leading an old lady, gray-haired, austere-faced, +somber and sad. His mother! She was feeble, but she walked erect. She +was pale, shaking, yet maintained her dignity. + +The some one in white uttered a low cry and knelt by Duane's bed. His +mother flung wide her arms with a strange gesture. + +“This man! They've not brought back my boy. This man's his father! Where +is my son? My son--oh, my son!” + +When Duane grew stronger it was a pleasure to lie by the west window and +watch Uncle Jim whittle his stick and listen to his talk. The old man +was broken now. He told many interesting things about people Duane had +known--people who had grown up and married, failed, succeeded, gone +away, and died. But it was hard to keep Uncle Jim off the subject of +guns, outlaws, fights. He could not seem to divine how mention of these +things hurt Duane. Uncle Jim was childish now, and he had a great pride +in his nephew. He wanted to hear of all of Duane's exile. And if there +was one thing more than another that pleased him it was to talk about +the bullets which Duane carried in his body. + +“Five bullets, ain't it?” he asked, for the hundredth time. + +“Five in that last scrap! By gum! And you had six before?” + +“Yes, uncle,” replied Duane. + +“Five and six. That makes eleven. By gum! A man's a man, to carry all +that lead. But, Buck, you could carry more. There's that nigger Edwards, +right here in Wellston. He's got a ton of bullets in him. Doesn't seem +to mind them none. And there's Cole Miller. I've seen him. Been a bad +man in his day. They say he packs twenty-three bullets. But he's bigger +than you--got more flesh.... Funny, wasn't it, Buck, about the +doctor only bein' able to cut one bullet out of you--that one in your +breastbone? It was a forty-one caliber, an unusual cartridge. I saw it, +and I wanted it, but Miss Longstreth wouldn't part with it. Buck, there +was a bullet left in one of Poggin's guns, and that bullet was the same +kind as the one cut out of you. By gum! Boy, it'd have killed you if +it'd stayed there.” + +“It would indeed, uncle,” replied Duane, and the old, haunting, somber +mood returned. + +But Duane was not often at the mercy of childish old hero-worshiping +Uncle Jim. Miss Longstreth was the only person who seemed to divine +Duane's gloomy mood, and when she was with him she warded off all +suggestion. + +One afternoon, while she was there at the west window, a message came +for him. They read it together. + +You have saved the ranger service to the Lone Star State + +MACNELLEY. + +Ray knelt beside him at the window, and he believed she meant to speak +then of the thing they had shunned. Her face was still white, but +sweeter now, warm with rich life beneath the marble; and her dark eyes +were still intent, still haunted by shadows, but no longer tragic. + +“I'm glad for MacNelly's sake as well as the state's,” said Duane. + +She made no reply to that and seemed to be thinking deeply. Duane shrank +a little. + +“The pain--Is it any worse to-day?” she asked, instantly. + +“No; it's the same. It will always be the same. I'm full of lead, you +know. But I don't mind a little pain.” + +“Then--it's the old mood--the fear?” she whispered. “Tell me.” + +“Yes. It haunts me. I'll be well soon--able to go out. Then that--that +hell will come back!” + +“No, no!” she said, with emotion. + +“Some drunken cowboy, some fool with a gun, will hunt me out in every +town, wherever I go,” he went on, miserably. “Buck Duane! To kill Buck +Duane!” + +“Hush! Don't speak so. Listen. You remember that day in Val Verde, +when I came to you--plead with you not to meet Poggin? Oh, that was a +terrible hour for me. But it showed me the truth. I saw the struggle +between your passion to kill and your love for me. I could have saved +you then had I known what I know now. Now I understand that--that thing +which haunts you. But you'll never have to draw again. You'll never have +to kill another man, thank God!” + +Like a drowning man he would have grasped at straws, but he could not +voice his passionate query. + +She put tender arms round his neck. “Because you'll have me with +you always,” she replied. “Because always I shall be between you and +that--that terrible thing.” + +It seemed with the spoken thought absolute assurance of her power came +to her. Duane realized instantly that he was in the arms of a stronger +woman that she who had plead with him that fatal day. + +“We'll--we'll be married and leave Texas,” she said, softly, with the +red blood rising rich and dark in her cheeks. + +“Ray!” + +“Yes we will, though you're laggard in asking me, sir.” + +“But, dear--suppose,” he replied, huskily, “suppose there might be--be +children--a boy. A boy with his father's blood!” + +“I pray God there will be. I do not fear what you fear. But even +so--he'll be half my blood.” + +Duane felt the storm rise and break in him. And his terror was that of +joy quelling fear. The shining glory of love in this woman's eyes made +him weak as a child. How could she love him--how could she so bravely +face a future with him? Yet she held him in her arms, twining her +hands round his neck, and pressing close to him. Her faith and love and +beauty--these she meant to throw between him and all that terrible past. +They were her power, and she meant to use them all. He dared not think +of accepting her sacrifice. + +“But Ray--you dear, noble girl--I'm poor. I have nothing. And I'm a +cripple.” + +“Oh, you'll be well some day,” she replied. “And listen. I have money. +My mother left me well off. All she had was her father's--Do you +understand? We'll take Uncle Jim and your mother. We'll go to +Louisiana--to my old home. It's far from here. There's a plantation to +work. There are horses and cattle--a great cypress forest to cut. Oh, +you'll have much to do. You'll forget there. You'll learn to love my +home. It's a beautiful old place. There are groves where the gray moss +blows all day and the nightingales sing all night.” + +“My darling!” cried Duane, brokenly. “No, no, no!” + +Yet he knew in his heart that he was yielding to her, that he could not +resist her a moment longer. What was this madness of love? + +“We'll be happy,” she whispered. “Oh, I know. Come!--come!-come!” + +Her eyes were closing, heavy-lidded, and she lifted sweet, tremulous, +waiting lips. + +With bursting heart Duane bent to them. Then he held her, close pressed +to him, while with dim eyes he looked out over the line of low hills +in the west, down where the sun was setting gold and red, down over the +Nueces and the wild brakes of the Rio Grande which he was never to see +again. + +It was in this solemn and exalted moment that Duane accepted happiness +and faced a new life, trusting this brave and tender woman to be +stronger than the dark and fateful passion that had shadowed his past. + +It would come back--that wind of flame, that madness to forget, that +driving, relentless instinct for blood. It would come back with those +pale, drifting, haunting faces and the accusing fading eyes, but all his +life, always between them and him, rendering them powerless, would be +the faith and love and beauty of this noble woman. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lone Star Ranger, by Zane Grey + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1027 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1028-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1028-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ac43f71a --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1028-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9421 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1028 *** + + + + +THE PROFESSOR + +by (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell + + + + + +CONTENTS + + + +PREFACE. + + + +T H E   P R O F E S S O R + +CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. + +CHAPTER II. + +CHAPTER III. + +CHAPTER IV. + +CHAPTER V. + +CHAPTER VI. + +CHAPTER VII. + +CHAPTER VIII. + +CHAPTER IX. + +CHAPTER X. + +CHAPTER XI. + +CHAPTER XII. + +CHAPTER XIII. + +CHAPTER XIV. + +CHAPTER XV. + +CHAPTER XVI. + +CHAPTER XVII. + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +CHAPTER XIX. + +CHAPTER XX. + +CHAPTER XXI. + +CHAPTER XXII + +CHAPTER XXIII + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +CHAPTER XXV. + + + + + + + + +PREFACE. + +This little book was written before either “Jane Eyre” or “Shirley,” + and yet no indulgence can be solicited for it on the plea of a first +attempt. A first attempt it certainly was not, as the pen which wrote it +had been previously worn a good deal in a practice of some years. I had +not indeed published anything before I commenced “The Professor,” but +in many a crude effort, destroyed almost as soon as composed, I had +got over any such taste as I might once have had for ornamented and +redundant composition, and come to prefer what was plain and homely. +At the same time I had adopted a set of principles on the subject of +incident, &c., such as would be generally approved in theory, but the +result of which, when carried out into practice, often procures for an +author more surprise than pleasure. + +I said to myself that my hero should work his way through life as I had +seen real living men work theirs--that he should never get a shilling +he had not earned--that no sudden turns should lift him in a moment to +wealth and high station; that whatever small competency he might gain, +should be won by the sweat of his brow; that, before he could find so +much as an arbour to sit down in, he should master at least half the +ascent of “the Hill of Difficulty;” that he should not even marry a +beautiful girl or a lady of rank. As Adam’s son he should share Adam’s +doom, and drain throughout life a mixed and moderate cup of enjoyment. + +In the sequel, however, I find that publishers in general scarcely +approved of this system, but would have liked something more imaginative +and poetical--something more consonant with a highly wrought fancy, with +a taste for pathos, with sentiments more tender, elevated, unworldly. +Indeed, until an author has tried to dispose of a manuscript of this +kind, he can never know what stores of romance and sensibility lie +hidden in breasts he would not have suspected of casketing such +treasures. Men in business are usually thought to prefer the real; on +trial the idea will be often found fallacious: a passionate preference +for the wild, wonderful, and thrilling--the strange, startling, and +harrowing--agitates divers souls that show a calm and sober surface. + +Such being the case, the reader will comprehend that to have reached +him in the form of a printed book, this brief narrative must have gone +through some struggles--which indeed it has. And after all, its +worst struggle and strongest ordeal is yet to come but it takes +comfort--subdues fear--leans on the staff of a moderate expectation--and +mutters under its breath, while lifting its eye to that of the public, + +“He that is low need fear no fall.” + +CURRER BELL. + +The foregoing preface was written by my wife with a view to the +publication of “The Professor,” shortly after the appearance of +“Shirley.” Being dissuaded from her intention, the authoress made some +use of the materials in a subsequent work--“Villette.” As, however, +these two stories are in most respects unlike, it has been represented +to me that I ought not to withhold “The Professor” from the public. I +have therefore consented to its publication. + +A. B. NICHOLLS + +Haworth Parsonage, + +September 22nd, 1856. + + + + + + +T H E    P R O F E S S O R + + + + +CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. + +THE other day, in looking over my papers, I found in my desk the +following copy of a letter, sent by me a year since to an old school +acquaintance:-- + +“DEAR CHARLES, + +“I think when you and I were at Eton together, we were neither of +us what could be called popular characters: you were a sarcastic, +observant, shrewd, cold-blooded creature; my own portrait I will +not attempt to draw, but I cannot recollect that it was a strikingly +attractive one--can you? What animal magnetism drew thee and me together +I know not; certainly I never experienced anything of the Pylades and +Orestes sentiment for you, and I have reason to believe that you, on +your part, were equally free from all romantic regard to me. Still, +out of school hours we walked and talked continually together; when the +theme of conversation was our companions or our masters we understood +each other, and when I recurred to some sentiment of affection, some +vague love of an excellent or beautiful object, whether in animate or +inanimate nature, your sardonic coldness did not move me. I felt myself +superior to that check THEN as I do NOW. + +“It is a long time since I wrote to you, and a still longer time since +I saw you. Chancing to take up a newspaper of your county the other day, +my eye fell upon your name. I began to think of old times; to run over +the events which have transpired since we separated; and I sat down +and commenced this letter. What you have been doing I know not; but you +shall hear, if you choose to listen, how the world has wagged with me. + +“First, after leaving Eton, I had an interview with my maternal uncles, +Lord Tynedale and the Hon. John Seacombe. They asked me if I would enter +the Church, and my uncle the nobleman offered me the living of Seacombe, +which is in his gift, if I would; then my other uncle, Mr. Seacombe, +hinted that when I became rector of Seacombe-cum-Scaife, I might perhaps +be allowed to take, as mistress of my house and head of my parish, one +of my six cousins, his daughters, all of whom I greatly dislike. + +“I declined both the Church and matrimony. A good clergyman is a good +thing, but I should have made a very bad one. As to the wife--oh how +like a night-mare is the thought of being bound for life to one of +my cousins! No doubt they are accomplished and pretty; but not an +accomplishment, not a charm of theirs, touches a chord in my bosom. +To think of passing the winter evenings by the parlour fire-side of +Seacombe Rectory alone with one of them--for instance, the large and +well-modelled statue, Sarah--no; I should be a bad husband, under such +circumstances, as well as a bad clergyman. + +“When I had declined my uncles’ offers they asked me ‘what I intended +to do?’ I said I should reflect. They reminded me that I had no fortune, +and no expectation of any, and, after a considerable pause, Lord +Tynedale demanded sternly, ‘Whether I had thoughts of following my +father’s steps and engaging in trade?’ Now, I had had no thoughts of the +sort. I do not think that my turn of mind qualifies me to make a good +tradesman; my taste, my ambition does not lie in that way; but such was +the scorn expressed in Lord Tynedale’s countenance as he pronounced +the word TRADE--such the contemptuous sarcasm of his tone--that I was +instantly decided. My father was but a name to me, yet that name I did +not like to hear mentioned with a sneer to my very face. I answered +then, with haste and warmth, ‘I cannot do better than follow in +my father’s steps; yes, I will be a tradesman.’ My uncles did not +remonstrate; they and I parted with mutual disgust. In reviewing this +transaction, I find that I was quite right to shake off the burden of +Tynedale’s patronage, but a fool to offer my shoulders instantly for the +reception of another burden--one which might be more intolerable, and +which certainly was yet untried. + +“I wrote instantly to Edward--you know Edward--my only brother, ten +years my senior, married to a rich mill-owner’s daughter, and now +possessor of the mill and business which was my father’s before he +failed. You are aware that my father--once reckoned a Croesus of +wealth--became bankrupt a short time previous to his death, and that my +mother lived in destitution for some six months after him, unhelped by +her aristocratical brothers, whom she had mortally offended by her union +with Crimsworth, the----shire manufacturer. At the end of the six months +she brought me into the world, and then herself left it without, I +should think, much regret, as it contained little hope or comfort for +her. + +“My father’s relations took charge of Edward, as they did of me, till I +was nine years old. At that period it chanced that the representation of +an important borough in our county fell vacant; Mr. Seacombe stood for +it. My uncle Crimsworth, an astute mercantile man, took the opportunity +of writing a fierce letter to the candidate, stating that if he and Lord +Tynedale did not consent to do something towards the support of their +sister’s orphan children, he would expose their relentless and malignant +conduct towards that sister, and do his best to turn the circumstances +against Mr. Seacombe’s election. That gentleman and Lord T. knew well +enough that the Crimsworths were an unscrupulous and determined race; +they knew also that they had influence in the borough of X----; and, +making a virtue of necessity, they consented to defray the expenses of +my education. I was sent to Eton, where I remained ten years, during +which space of time Edward and I never met. He, when he grew up, entered +into trade, and pursued his calling with such diligence, ability, and +success, that now, in his thirtieth year, he was fast making a fortune. +Of this I was apprised by the occasional short letters I received from +him, some three or four times a year; which said letters never concluded +without some expression of determined enmity against the house of +Seacombe, and some reproach to me for living, as he said, on the bounty +of that house. At first, while still in boyhood, I could not understand +why, as I had no parents, I should not be indebted to my uncles Tynedale +and Seacombe for my education; but as I grew up, and heard by degrees of +the persevering hostility, the hatred till death evinced by them against +my father--of the sufferings of my mother--of all the wrongs, in short, +of our house--then did I conceive shame of the dependence in which I +lived, and form a resolution no more to take bread from hands which had +refused to minister to the necessities of my dying mother. It was by +these feelings I was influenced when I refused the Rectory of Seacombe, +and the union with one of my patrician cousins. + +“An irreparable breach thus being effected between my uncles and myself, +I wrote to Edward; told him what had occurred, and informed him of my +intention to follow his steps and be a tradesman. I asked, moreover, if +he could give me employment. His answer expressed no approbation of my +conduct, but he said I might come down to ----shire, if I liked, and he +would ‘see what could be done in the way of furnishing me with work.’ +I repressed all--even mental comment on his note--packed my trunk and +carpet-bag, and started for the North directly. + +“After two days’ travelling (railroads were not then in existence) I +arrived, one wet October afternoon, in the town of X----. I had always +understood that Edward lived in this town, but on inquiry I found that +it was only Mr. Crimsworth’s mill and warehouse which were situated in +the smoky atmosphere of Bigben Close; his RESIDENCE lay four miles out, +in the country. + +“It was late in the evening when I alighted at the gates of the +habitation designated to me as my brother’s. As I advanced up the +avenue, I could see through the shades of twilight, and the dark gloomy +mists which deepened those shades, that the house was large, and the +grounds surrounding it sufficiently spacious. I paused a moment on the +lawn in front, and leaning my back against a tall tree which rose in the +centre, I gazed with interest on the exterior of Crimsworth Hall. + +“Edward is rich,” thought I to myself. ‘I believed him to be doing +well--but I did not know he was master of a mansion like this.’ Cutting +short all marvelling; speculation, conjecture, &c., I advanced to the +front door and rang. A man-servant opened it--I announced myself--he +relieved me of my wet cloak and carpet-bag, and ushered me into a +room furnished as a library, where there was a bright fire and candles +burning on the table; he informed me that his master was not yet +returned from X----market, but that he would certainly be at home in the +course of half an hour. + +“Being left to myself, I took the stuffed easy chair, covered with red +morocco, which stood by the fireside, and while my eyes watched the +flames dart from the glowing coals, and the cinders fall at intervals on +the hearth, my mind busied itself in conjectures concerning the meeting +about to take place. Amidst much that was doubtful in the subject of +these conjectures, there was one thing tolerably certain--I was in no +danger of encountering severe disappointment; from this, the moderation +of my expectations guaranteed me. I anticipated no overflowings of +fraternal tenderness; Edward’s letters had always been such as to +prevent the engendering or harbouring of delusions of this sort. Still, +as I sat awaiting his arrival, I felt eager--very eager--I cannot tell +you why; my hand, so utterly a stranger to the grasp of a kindred hand, +clenched itself to repress the tremor with which impatience would fain +have shaken it. + +“I thought of my uncles; and as I was engaged in wondering whether +Edward’s indifference would equal the cold disdain I had always +experienced from them, I heard the avenue gates open: wheels approached +the house; Mr. Crimsworth was arrived; and after the lapse of some +minutes, and a brief dialogue between himself and his servant in the +hall, his tread drew near the library door--that tread alone announced +the master of the house. + +“I still retained some confused recollection of Edward as he was ten +years ago--a tall, wiry, raw youth; NOW, as I rose from my seat and +turned towards the library door, I saw a fine-looking and powerful man, +light-complexioned, well-made, and of athletic proportions; the first +glance made me aware of an air of promptitude and sharpness, shown +as well in his movements as in his port, his eye, and the general +expression of his face. He greeted me with brevity, and, in the moment +of shaking hands, scanned me from head to foot; he took his seat in the +morocco covered arm-chair, and motioned me to another seat. + +“‘I expected you would have called at the counting-house in the Close,’ +said he; and his voice, I noticed, had an abrupt accent, probably +habitual to him; he spoke also with a guttural northern tone, which +sounded harsh in my ears, accustomed to the silvery utterance of the +South. + +“‘The landlord of the inn, where the coach stopped, directed me here,’ +said I. ‘I doubted at first the accuracy of his information, not being +aware that you had such a residence as this.’ + +“‘Oh, it is all right!’ he replied, ‘only I was kept half an hour behind +time, waiting for you--that is all. I thought you must be coming by the +eight o’clock coach.’ + +“I expressed regret that he had had to wait; he made no answer, but +stirred the fire, as if to cover a movement of impatience; then he +scanned me again. + +“I felt an inward satisfaction that I had not, in the first moment of +meeting, betrayed any warmth, any enthusiasm; that I had saluted this +man with a quiet and steady phlegm. + +“‘Have you quite broken with Tynedale and Seacombe?’ he asked hastily. + +“‘I do not think I shall have any further communication with them; my +refusal of their proposals will, I fancy, operate as a barrier against +all future intercourse.’ + +“‘Why,’ said he, ‘I may as well remind you at the very outset of our +connection, that “no man can serve two masters.” Acquaintance with Lord +Tynedale will be incompatible with assistance from me.’ There was a kind +of gratuitous menace in his eye as he looked at me in finishing this +observation. + +“Feeling no disposition to reply to him, I contented myself with an +inward speculation on the differences which exist in the constitution +of men’s minds. I do not know what inference Mr. Crimsworth drew from +my silence--whether he considered it a symptom of contumacity or an +evidence of my being cowed by his peremptory manner. After a long and +hard stare at me, he rose sharply from his seat. + +“‘To-morrow,’ said he, ‘I shall call your attention to some other +points; but now it is supper time, and Mrs. Crimsworth is probably +waiting; will you come?’ + +“He strode from the room, and I followed. In crossing the hall, I +wondered what Mrs. Crimsworth might be. ‘Is she,’ thought I, ‘as alien +to what I like as Tynedale, Seacombe, the Misses Seacombe--as the +affectionate relative now striding before me? or is she better than +these? Shall I, in conversing with her, feel free to show something of +my real nature; or--’ Further conjectures were arrested by my entrance +into the dining-room. + +“A lamp, burning under a shade of ground-glass, showed a handsome +apartment, wainscoted with oak; supper was laid on the table; by the +fire-place, standing as if waiting our entrance, appeared a lady; +she was young, tall, and well shaped; her dress was handsome and +fashionable: so much my first glance sufficed to ascertain. A gay +salutation passed between her and Mr. Crimsworth; she chid him, half +playfully, half poutingly, for being late; her voice (I always take +voices into the account in judging of character) was lively--it +indicated, I thought, good animal spirits. Mr. Crimsworth soon checked +her animated scolding with a kiss--a kiss that still told of the +bridegroom (they had not yet been married a year); she took her seat +at the supper-table in first-rate spirits. Perceiving me, she begged +my pardon for not noticing me before, and then shook hands with me, as +ladies do when a flow of good-humour disposes them to be cheerful to +all, even the most indifferent of their acquaintance. It was now further +obvious to me that she had a good complexion, and features sufficiently +marked but agreeable; her hair was red--quite red. She and Edward +talked much, always in a vein of playful contention; she was vexed, or +pretended to be vexed, that he had that day driven a vicious horse in +the gig, and he made light of her fears. Sometimes she appealed to me. + +“‘Now, Mr. William, isn’t it absurd in Edward to talk so? He says he +will drive Jack, and no other horse, and the brute has thrown him twice +already. + +“She spoke with a kind of lisp, not disagreeable, but childish. I +soon saw also that there was more than girlish--a somewhat infantine +expression in her by no means small features; this lisp and expression +were, I have no doubt, a charm in Edward’s eyes, and would be so to +those of most men, but they were not to mine. I sought her eye, desirous +to read there the intelligence which I could not discern in her face +or hear in her conversation; it was merry, rather small; by turns I saw +vivacity, vanity, coquetry, look out through its irid, but I watched in +vain for a glimpse of soul. I am no Oriental; white necks, carmine lips +and cheeks, clusters of bright curls, do not suffice for me without that +Promethean spark which will live after the roses and lilies are faded, +the burnished hair grown grey. In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers +are very well; but how many wet days are there in life--November seasons +of disaster, when a man’s hearth and home would be cold indeed, without +the clear, cheering gleam of intellect. + +“Having perused the fair page of Mrs. Crimsworth’s face, a deep, +involuntary sigh announced my disappointment; she took it as a homage to +her beauty, and Edward, who was evidently proud of his rich and handsome +young wife, threw on me a glance--half ridicule, half ire. + +“I turned from them both, and gazing wearily round the room, I saw two +pictures set in the oak panelling--one on each side the mantel-piece. +Ceasing to take part in the bantering conversation that flowed on +between Mr. and Mrs. Crimsworth, I bent my thoughts to the examination +of these pictures. They were portraits--a lady and a gentleman, both +costumed in the fashion of twenty years ago. The gentleman was in the +shade. I could not see him well. The lady had the benefit of a full beam +from the softly shaded lamp. I presently recognised her; I had seen this +picture before in childhood; it was my mother; that and the companion +picture being the only heir-looms saved out of the sale of my father’s +property. + +“The face, I remembered, had pleased me as a boy, but then I did not +understand it; now I knew how rare that class of face is in the world, +and I appreciated keenly its thoughtful, yet gentle expression. The +serious grey eye possessed for me a strong charm, as did certain lines +in the features indicative of most true and tender feeling. I was sorry +it was only a picture. + +“I soon left Mr. and Mrs. Crimsworth to themselves; a servant +conducted me to my bed-room; in closing my chamber-door, I shut out all +intruders--you, Charles, as well as the rest. + +“Good-bye for the present, + +“WILLIAM CRIMSWORTH.” + +To this letter I never got an answer; before my old friend received it, +he had accepted a Government appointment in one of the colonies, and was +already on his way to the scene of his official labours. What has become +of him since, I know not. + +The leisure time I have at command, and which I intended to employ +for his private benefit, I shall now dedicate to that of the public at +large. My narrative is not exciting, and above all, not marvellous; +but it may interest some individuals, who, having toiled in the same +vocation as myself, will find in my experience frequent reflections +of their own. The above letter will serve as an introduction. I now +proceed. + + + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +A FINE October morning succeeded to the foggy evening that had witnessed +my first introduction to Crimsworth Hall. I was early up and walking in +the large park-like meadow surrounding the house. The autumn sun, rising +over the ----shire hills, disclosed a pleasant country; woods brown and +mellow varied the fields from which the harvest had been lately carried; +a river, gliding between the woods, caught on its surface the somewhat +cold gleam of the October sun and sky; at frequent intervals along the +banks of the river, tall, cylindrical chimneys, almost like slender +round towers, indicated the factories which the trees half concealed; +here and there mansions, similar to Crimsworth Hall, occupied agreeable +sites on the hill-side; the country wore, on the whole, a cheerful, +active, fertile look. Steam, trade, machinery had long banished from +it all romance and seclusion. At a distance of five miles, a valley, +opening between the low hills, held in its cups the great town of X----. +A dense, permanent vapour brooded over this locality--there lay Edward’s +“Concern.” + +I forced my eye to scrutinize this prospect, I forced my mind to dwell +on it for a time, and when I found that it communicated no pleasurable +emotion to my heart--that it stirred in me none of the hopes a man ought +to feel, when he sees laid before him the scene of his life’s career--I +said to myself, “William, you are a rebel against circumstances; you are +a fool, and know not what you want; you have chosen trade and you shall +be a tradesman. Look!” I continued mentally--“Look at the sooty smoke in +that hollow, and know that there is your post! There you cannot dream, +you cannot speculate and theorize--there you shall out and work!” + +Thus self-schooled, I returned to the house. My brother was in the +breakfast-room. I met him collectedly--I could not meet him cheerfully; +he was standing on the rug, his back to the fire--how much did I read in +the expression of his eye as my glance encountered his, when I advanced +to bid him good morning; how much that was contradictory to my nature! +He said “Good morning” abruptly and nodded, and then he snatched, rather +than took, a newspaper from the table, and began to read it with the air +of a master who seizes a pretext to escape the bore of conversing with +an underling. It was well I had taken a resolution to endure for a time, +or his manner would have gone far to render insupportable the disgust +I had just been endeavouring to subdue. I looked at him: I measured his +robust frame and powerful proportions; I saw my own reflection in the +mirror over the mantel-piece; I amused myself with comparing the two +pictures. In face I resembled him, though I was not so handsome; my +features were less regular; I had a darker eye, and a broader brow--in +form I was greatly inferior--thinner, slighter, not so tall. As an +animal, Edward excelled me far; should he prove as paramount in mind +as in person I must be a slave--for I must expect from him no lion-like +generosity to one weaker than himself; his cold, avaricious eye, his +stern, forbidding manner told me he would not spare. Had I then force of +mind to cope with him? I did not know; I had never been tried. + +Mrs. Crimsworth’s entrance diverted my thoughts for a moment. She looked +well, dressed in white, her face and her attire shining in morning +and bridal freshness. I addressed her with the degree of ease her last +night’s careless gaiety seemed to warrant, but she replied with coolness +and restraint: her husband had tutored her; she was not to be too +familiar with his clerk. + +As soon as breakfast was over Mr. Crimsworth intimated to me that they +were bringing the gig round to the door, and that in five minutes he +should expect me to be ready to go down with him to X----. I did not +keep him waiting; we were soon dashing at a rapid rate along the +road. The horse he drove was the same vicious animal about which Mrs. +Crimsworth had expressed her fears the night before. Once or twice +Jack seemed disposed to turn restive, but a vigorous and determined +application of the whip from the ruthless hand of his master soon +compelled him to submission, and Edward’s dilated nostril expressed his +triumph in the result of the contest; he scarcely spoke to me during the +whole of the brief drive, only opening his lips at intervals to damn his +horse. + +X---- was all stir and bustle when we entered it; we left the clean +streets where there were dwelling-houses and shops, churches, and public +buildings; we left all these, and turned down to a region of mills and +warehouses; thence we passed through two massive gates into a great +paved yard, and we were in Bigben Close, and the mill was before us, +vomiting soot from its long chimney, and quivering through its thick +brick walls with the commotion of its iron bowels. Workpeople were +passing to and fro; a waggon was being laden with pieces. Mr. Crimsworth +looked from side to side, and seemed at one glance to comprehend all +that was going on; he alighted, and leaving his horse and gig to the +care of a man who hastened to take the reins from his hand, he bid me +follow him to the counting-house. We entered it; a very different place +from the parlours of Crimsworth Hall--a place for business, with a bare, +planked floor, a safe, two high desks and stools, and some chairs. A +person was seated at one of the desks, who took off his square cap when +Mr. Crimsworth entered, and in an instant was again absorbed in his +occupation of writing or calculating--I know not which. + +Mr. Crimsworth, having removed his mackintosh, sat down by the fire. I +remained standing near the hearth; he said presently-- + +“Steighton, you may leave the room; I have some business to transact +with this gentleman. Come back when you hear the bell.” + +The individual at the desk rose and departed, closing the door as he +went out. Mr. Crimsworth stirred the fire, then folded his arms, and sat +a moment thinking, his lips compressed, his brow knit. I had nothing to +do but to watch him--how well his features were cut! what a handsome man +he was! Whence, then, came that air of contraction--that narrow and hard +aspect on his forehead, in all his lineaments? + +Turning to me he began abruptly: + +“You are come down to ----shire to learn to be a tradesman?” + +“Yes, I am.” + +“Have you made up your mind on the point? Let me know that at once.” + +“Yes.” + +“Well, I am not bound to help you, but I have a place here vacant, if +you are qualified for it. I will take you on trial. What can you do? Do +you know anything besides that useless trash of college learning--Greek, +Latin, and so forth?” + +“I have studied mathematics.” + +“Stuff! I dare say you have.” + +“I can read and write French and German.” + +“Hum!” He reflected a moment, then opening a drawer in a desk near him +took out a letter, and gave it to me. + +“Can you read that?” he asked. + +It was a German commercial letter; I translated it; I could not tell +whether he was gratified or not--his countenance remained fixed. + +“It is well,” he said, after a pause, “that you are acquainted with +something useful, something that may enable you to earn your board and +lodging: since you know French and German, I will take you as second +clerk to manage the foreign correspondence of the house. I shall give +you a good salary--90l. a year--and now,” he continued, raising his +voice, “hear once for all what I have to say about our relationship, and +all that sort of humbug! I must have no nonsense on that point; it +would never suit me. I shall excuse you nothing on the plea of being my +brother; if I find you stupid, negligent, dissipated, idle, or possessed +of any faults detrimental to the interests of the house, I shall dismiss +you as I would any other clerk. Ninety pounds a year are good wages, and +I expect to have the full value of my money out of you; remember, +too, that things are on a practical footing in my +establishment--business-like habits, feelings, and ideas, suit me best. +Do you understand?” + +“Partly,” I replied. “I suppose you mean that I am to do my work for my +wages; not to expect favour from you, and not to depend on you for any +help but what I earn; that suits me exactly, and on these terms I will +consent to be your clerk.” + +I turned on my heel, and walked to the window; this time I did not +consult his face to learn his opinion: what it was I do not know, nor +did I then care. After a silence of some minutes he recommenced:-- + +“You perhaps expect to be accommodated with apartments at Crimsworth +Hall, and to go and come with me in the gig. I wish you, however, to be +aware that such an arrangement would be quite inconvenient to me. I +like to have the seat in my gig at liberty for any gentleman whom for +business reasons I may wish to take down to the hall for a night or so. +You will seek out lodgings in X----.” + +Quitting the window, I walked back to the hearth. + +“Of course I shall seek out lodgings in X----,” I answered. “It would +not suit me either to lodge at Crimsworth Hall.” + +My tone was quiet. I always speak quietly. Yet Mr. Crimsworth’s blue eye +became incensed; he took his revenge rather oddly. Turning to me he said +bluntly-- + +“You are poor enough, I suppose; how do you expect to live till your +quarter’s salary becomes due?” + +“I shall get on,” said I. + +“How do you expect to live?” he repeated in a louder voice. + +“As I can, Mr. Crimsworth.” + +“Get into debt at your peril! that’s all,” he answered. “For aught I +know you may have extravagant aristocratic habits: if you have, drop +them; I tolerate nothing of the sort here, and I will never give you a +shilling extra, whatever liabilities you may incur--mind that.” + +“Yes, Mr. Crimsworth, you will find I have a good memory.” + +I said no more. I did not think the time was come for much parley. I +had an instinctive feeling that it would be folly to let one’s temper +effervesce often with such a man as Edward. I said to myself, “I will +place my cup under this continual dropping; it shall stand there still +and steady; when full, it will run over of itself--meantime patience. +Two things are certain. I am capable of performing the work Mr. +Crimsworth has set me; I can earn my wages conscientiously, and those +wages are sufficient to enable me to live. As to the fact of my brother +assuming towards me the bearing of a proud, harsh master, the fault is +his, not mine; and shall his injustice, his bad feeling, turn me at once +aside from the path I have chosen? No; at least, ere I deviate, I will +advance far enough to see whither my career tends. As yet I am only +pressing in at the entrance--a strait gate enough; it ought to have a +good terminus.” While I thus reasoned, Mr. Crimsworth rang a bell; his +first clerk, the individual dismissed previously to our conference, +re-entered. + +“Mr. Steighton,” said he, “show Mr. William the letters from Voss, +Brothers, and give him English copies of the answers; he will translate +them.” + +Mr. Steighton, a man of about thirty-five, with a face at once sly and +heavy, hastened to execute this order; he laid the letters on the +desk, and I was soon seated at it, and engaged in rendering the English +answers into German. A sentiment of keen pleasure accompanied this first +effort to earn my own living--a sentiment neither poisoned nor weakened +by the presence of the taskmaster, who stood and watched me for some +time as I wrote. I thought he was trying to read my character, but I +felt as secure against his scrutiny as if I had had on a casque with the +visor down--or rather I showed him my countenance with the confidence +that one would show an unlearned man a letter written in Greek; he might +see lines, and trace characters, but he could make nothing of them; my +nature was not his nature, and its signs were to him like the words of +an unknown tongue. Ere long he turned away abruptly, as if baffled, and +left the counting-house; he returned to it but twice in the course of +that day; each time he mixed and swallowed a glass of brandy-and-water, +the materials for making which he extracted from a cupboard on one side +of the fireplace; having glanced at my translations--he could read both +French and German--he went out again in silence. + + + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +I SERVED Edward as his second clerk faithfully, punctually, diligently. +What was given me to do I had the power and the determination to do +well. Mr. Crimsworth watched sharply for defects, but found none; he set +Timothy Steighton, his favourite and head man, to watch also. Tim was +baffled; I was as exact as himself, and quicker. Mr. Crimsworth made +inquiries as to how I lived, whether I got into debt--no, my accounts +with my landlady were always straight. I had hired small lodgings, which +I contrived to pay for out of a slender fund--the accumulated savings of +my Eton pocket-money; for as it had ever been abhorrent to my nature to +ask pecuniary assistance, I had early acquired habits of self-denying +economy; husbanding my monthly allowance with anxious care, in order to +obviate the danger of being forced, in some moment of future exigency, +to beg additional aid. I remember many called me miser at the time, +and I used to couple the reproach with this consolation--better to be +misunderstood now than repulsed hereafter. At this day I had my reward; +I had had it before, when on parting with my irritated uncles one of +them threw down on the table before me a 5l. note, which I was able to +leave there, saying that my travelling expenses were already provided +for. Mr. Crimsworth employed Tim to find out whether my landlady had +any complaint to make on the score of my morals; she answered that she +believed I was a very religious man, and asked Tim, in her turn, if he +thought I had any intention of going into the Church some day; for, she +said, she had had young curates to lodge in her house who were nothing +equal to me for steadiness and quietness. Tim was “a religious man” + himself; indeed, he was “a joined Methodist,” which did not (be it +understood) prevent him from being at the same time an engrained rascal, +and he came away much posed at hearing this account of my piety. Having +imparted it to Mr. Crimsworth, that gentleman, who himself frequented +no place of worship, and owned no God but Mammon, turned the information +into a weapon of attack against the equability of my temper. He +commenced a series of covert sneers, of which I did not at first +perceive the drift, till my landlady happened to relate the conversation +she had had with Mr. Steighton; this enlightened me; afterwards I came +to the counting-house prepared, and managed to receive the millowner’s +blasphemous sarcasms, when next levelled at me, on a buckler of +impenetrable indifference. Ere long he tired of wasting his ammunition +on a statue, but he did not throw away the shafts--he only kept them +quiet in his quiver. + +Once during my clerkship I had an invitation to Crimsworth Hall; it +was on the occasion of a large party given in honour of the master’s +birthday; he had always been accustomed to invite his clerks on similar +anniversaries, and could not well pass me over; I was, however, kept +strictly in the background. Mrs. Crimsworth, elegantly dressed in satin +and lace, blooming in youth and health, vouchsafed me no more notice +than was expressed by a distant move; Crimsworth, of course, never +spoke to me; I was introduced to none of the band of young ladies, who, +enveloped in silvery clouds of white gauze and muslin, sat in array +against me on the opposite side of a long and large room; in fact, I was +fairly isolated, and could but contemplate the shining ones from afar, +and when weary of such a dazzling scene, turn for a change to the +consideration of the carpet pattern. Mr. Crimsworth, standing on the +rug, his elbow supported by the marble mantelpiece, and about him +a group of very pretty girls, with whom he conversed gaily--Mr. +Crimsworth, thus placed, glanced at me; I looked weary, solitary, kept +down like some desolate tutor or governess; he was satisfied. + +Dancing began; I should have liked well enough to be introduced to some +pleasing and intelligent girl, and to have freedom and opportunity +to show that I could both feel and communicate the pleasure of social +intercourse--that I was not, in short, a block, or a piece of furniture, +but an acting, thinking, sentient man. Many smiling faces and graceful +figures glided past me, but the smiles were lavished on other eyes, the +figures sustained by other hands than mine. I turned away tantalized, +left the dancers, and wandered into the oak-panelled dining-room. No +fibre of sympathy united me to any living thing in this house; I looked +for and found my mother’s picture. I took a wax taper from a stand, +and held it up. I gazed long, earnestly; my heart grew to the image. +My mother, I perceived, had bequeathed to me much of her features and +countenance--her forehead, her eyes, her complexion. No regular beauty +pleases egotistical human beings so much as a softened and refined +likeness of themselves; for this reason, fathers regard with complacency +the lineaments of their daughters’ faces, where frequently their own +similitude is found flatteringly associated with softness of hue and +delicacy of outline. I was just wondering how that picture, to me so +interesting, would strike an impartial spectator, when a voice close +behind me pronounced the words-- + +“Humph! there’s some sense in that face.” + +I turned; at my elbow stood a tall man, young, though probably five or +six years older than I--in other respects of an appearance the opposite +to common place; though just now, as I am not disposed to paint his +portrait in detail, the reader must be content with the silhouette I +have just thrown off; it was all I myself saw of him for the moment: I +did not investigate the colour of his eyebrows, nor of his eyes either; +I saw his stature, and the outline of his shape; I saw, too, his +fastidious-looking RETROUSSE nose; these observations, few in number, +and general in character (the last excepted), sufficed, for they enabled +me to recognize him. + +“Good evening, Mr. Hunsden,” muttered I with a bow, and then, like a +shy noodle as I was, I began moving away--and why? Simply because Mr. +Hunsden was a manufacturer and a millowner, and I was only a clerk, and +my instinct propelled me from my superior. I had frequently seen Hunsden +in Bigben Close, where he came almost weekly to transact business with +Mr. Crimsworth, but I had never spoken to him, nor he to me, and I owed +him a sort of involuntary grudge, because he had more than once been the +tacit witness of insults offered by Edward to me. I had the conviction +that he could only regard me as a poor-spirited slave, wherefore I now +went about to shun his presence and eschew his conversation. + +“Where are you going?” asked he, as I edged off sideways. I had already +noticed that Mr. Hunsden indulged in abrupt forms of speech, and I +perversely said to myself-- + +“He thinks he may speak as he likes to a poor clerk; but my mood is not, +perhaps, so supple as he deems it, and his rough freedom pleases me not +at all.” + +I made some slight reply, rather indifferent than courteous, and +continued to move away. He coolly planted himself in my path. + +“Stay here awhile,” said he: “it is so hot in the dancing-room; besides, +you don’t dance; you have not had a partner to-night.” + +He was right, and as he spoke neither his look, tone, nor manner +displeased me; my AMOUR-PROPRE was propitiated; he had not addressed +me out of condescension, but because, having repaired to the cool +dining-room for refreshment, he now wanted some one to talk to, by way +of temporary amusement. I hate to be condescended to, but I like well +enough to oblige; I stayed. + +“That is a good picture,” he continued, recurring to the portrait. + +“Do you consider the face pretty?” I asked. + +“Pretty! no--how can it be pretty, with sunk eyes and hollow cheeks? +but it is peculiar; it seems to think. You could have a talk with that +woman, if she were alive, on other subjects than dress, visiting, and +compliments.” + +I agreed with him, but did not say so. He went on. + +“Not that I admire a head of that sort; it wants character and force; +there’s too much of the sen-si-tive (so he articulated it, curling +his lip at the same time) in that mouth; besides, there is Aristocrat +written on the brow and defined in the figure; I hate your aristocrats.” + +“You think, then, Mr. Hunsden, that patrician descent may be read in a +distinctive cast of form and features?” + +“Patrician descent be hanged! Who doubts that your lordlings may have +their ‘distinctive cast of form and features’ as much as we----shire +tradesmen have ours? But which is the best? Not theirs assuredly. As +to their women, it is a little different: they cultivate beauty from +childhood upwards, and may by care and training attain to a certain +degree of excellence in that point, just like the oriental odalisques. +Yet even this superiority is doubtful. Compare the figure in that frame +with Mrs. Edward Crimsworth--which is the finer animal?” + +I replied quietly: “Compare yourself and Mr. Edward Crimsworth, Mr +Hunsden.” + +“Oh, Crimsworth is better filled up than I am, I know besides he has a +straight nose, arched eyebrows, and all that; but these advantages--if +they are advantages--he did not inherit from his mother, the patrician, +but from his father, old Crimsworth, who, MY father says, was as +veritable a ----shire blue-dyer as ever put indigo in a vat yet withal +the handsomest man in the three Ridings. It is you, William, who are +the aristocrat of your family, and you are not as fine a fellow as your +plebeian brother by long chalk.” + +There was something in Mr. Hunsden’s point-blank mode of speech which +rather pleased me than otherwise because it set me at my ease. I +continued the conversation with a degree of interest. + +“How do you happen to know that I am Mr. Crimsworth’s brother? I thought +you and everybody else looked upon me only in the light of a poor +clerk.” + +“Well, and so we do; and what are you but a poor clerk? You do +Crimsworth’s work, and he gives you wages--shabby wages they are, too.” + +I was silent. Hunsden’s language now bordered on the impertinent, still +his manner did not offend me in the least--it only piqued my curiosity; +I wanted him to go on, which he did in a little while. + +“This world is an absurd one,” said he. + +“Why so, Mr. Hunsden?” + +“I wonder you should ask: you are yourself a strong proof of the +absurdity I allude to.” + +I was determined he should explain himself of his own accord, without my +pressing him so to do--so I resumed my silence. + +“Is it your intention to become a tradesman?” he inquired presently. + +“It was my serious intention three months ago.” + +“Humph! the more fool you--you look like a tradesman! What a practical +business-like face you have!” + +“My face is as the Lord made it, Mr. Hunsden.” + +“The Lord never made either your face or head for X---- What good can +your bumps of ideality, comparison, self-esteem, conscientiousness, +do you here? But if you like Bigben Close, stay there; it’s your own +affair, not mine.” + +“Perhaps I have no choice.” + +“Well, I care nought about it--it will make little difference to me what +you do or where you go; but I’m cool now--I want to dance again; and +I see such a fine girl sitting in the corner of the sofa there by +her mamma; see if I don’t get her for a partner in a jiffy! There’s +Waddy--Sam Waddy making up to her; won’t I cut him out?” + +And Mr. Hunsden strode away. I watched him through the open +folding-doors; he outstripped Waddy, applied for the hand of the +fine girl, and led her off triumphant. She was a tall, well-made, +full-formed, dashingly-dressed young woman, much in the style of Mrs. E. +Crimsworth; Hunsden whirled her through the waltz with spirit; he kept +at her side during the remainder of the evening, and I read in her +animated and gratified countenance that he succeeded in making himself +perfectly agreeable. The mamma too (a stout person in a turban--Mrs. +Lupton by name) looked well pleased; prophetic visions probably +flattered her inward eye. The Hunsdens were of an old stem; and scornful +as Yorke (such was my late interlocutor’s name) professed to be of +the advantages of birth, in his secret heart he well knew and fully +appreciated the distinction his ancient, if not high lineage conferred +on him in a mushroom-place like X----, concerning whose inhabitants +it was proverbially said, that not one in a thousand knew his own +grandfather. Moreover the Hunsdens, once rich, were still independent; +and report affirmed that Yorke bade fair, by his success in business, +to restore to pristine prosperity the partially decayed fortunes of his +house. These circumstances considered, Mrs. Lupton’s broad face might +well wear a smile of complacency as she contemplated the heir of Hunsden +Wood occupied in paying assiduous court to her darling Sarah Martha. I, +however, whose observations being less anxious, were likely to be more +accurate, soon saw that the grounds for maternal self-congratulation +were slight indeed; the gentleman appeared to me much more desirous of +making, than susceptible of receiving an impression. I know not what it +was in Mr. Hunsden that, as I watched him (I had nothing better to do), +suggested to me, every now and then, the idea of a foreigner. In form +and features he might be pronounced English, though even there one +caught a dash of something Gallic; but he had no English shyness: he had +learnt somewhere, somehow, the art of setting himself quite at his ease, +and of allowing no insular timidity to intervene as a barrier between +him and his convenience or pleasure. Refinement he did not affect, yet +vulgar he could not be called; he was not odd--no quiz--yet he resembled +no one else I had ever seen before; his general bearing intimated +complete, sovereign satisfaction with himself; yet, at times, an +indescribable shade passed like an eclipse over his countenance, and +seemed to me like the sign of a sudden and strong inward doubt of +himself, his words and actions an energetic discontent at his life or +his social position, his future prospects or his mental attainments--I +know not which; perhaps after all it might only be a bilious caprice. + + + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of +his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against +wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, “I am baffled!” and +submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my +residence in X---- I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself--the +work of copying and translating business-letters--was a dry and tedious +task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the +nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double +desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the +resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, I should have endured +in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have +whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent +in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its +distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony and joyless tumult of +Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes; I +should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my +small bedroom at Mrs. King’s lodgings, and they two should have been +my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret, +Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness +or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; the antipathy which +had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and +spreading denser shade daily, excluded me from every glimpse of the +sunshine of life; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid +darkness out of the slimy walls of a well. + +Antipathy is the only word which can express the feeling Edward +Crimsworth had for me--a feeling, in a great measure, involuntary, and +which was liable to be excited by every, the most trifling movement, +look, or word of mine. My southern accent annoyed him; the degree +of education evinced in my language irritated him; my punctuality, +industry, and accuracy, fixed his dislike, and gave it the high flavour +and poignant relish of envy; he feared that I too should one day make a +successful tradesman. Had I been in anything inferior to him, he would +not have hated me so thoroughly, but I knew all that he knew, and, what +was worse, he suspected that I kept the padlock of silence on mental +wealth in which he was no sharer. If he could have once placed me in a +ridiculous or mortifying position, he would have forgiven me much, but I +was guarded by three faculties--Caution, Tact, Observation; and +prowling and prying as was Edward’s malignity, it could never baffle +the lynx-eyes of these, my natural sentinels. Day by day did his malice +watch my tact, hoping it would sleep, and prepared to steal snake-like +on its slumber; but tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps. + +I had received my first quarter’s wages, and was returning to my +lodgings, possessed heart and soul with the pleasant feeling that +the master who had paid me grudged every penny of that hard-earned +pittance--(I had long ceased to regard Mr. Crimsworth as my brother--he +was a hard, grinding master; he wished to be an inexorable tyrant: that +was all). Thoughts, not varied but strong, occupied my mind; two voices +spoke within me; again and again they uttered the same monotonous +phrases. One said: “William, your life is intolerable.” The other: “What +can you do to alter it?” I walked fast, for it was a cold, frosty night +in January; as I approached my lodgings, I turned from a general view of +my affairs to the particular speculation as to whether my fire would be +out; looking towards the window of my sitting-room, I saw no cheering +red gleam. + +“That slut of a servant has neglected it as usual,” said I, “and I shall +see nothing but pale ashes if I go in; it is a fine starlight night--I +will walk a little farther.” + +It WAS a fine night, and the streets were dry and even clean for X----; +there was a crescent curve of moonlight to be seen by the parish church +tower, and hundreds of stars shone keenly bright in all quarters of the +sky. + +Unconsciously I steered my course towards the country; I had got into +Grove-street, and began to feel the pleasure of seeing dim trees at the +extremity, round a suburban house, when a person leaning over the iron +gate of one of the small gardens which front the neat dwelling-houses in +this street, addressed me as I was hurrying with quick stride past. + +“What the deuce is the hurry? Just so must Lot have left Sodom, when he +expected fire to pour down upon it, out of burning brass clouds.” + +I stopped short, and looked towards the speaker. I smelt the fragrance, +and saw the red spark of a cigar; the dusk outline of a man, too, bent +towards me over the wicket. + +“You see I am meditating in the field at eventide,” continued this +shade. “God knows it’s cool work! especially as instead of Rebecca on +a camel’s hump, with bracelets on her arms and a ring in her nose, Fate +sends me only a counting-house clerk, in a grey tweed wrapper.” The +voice was familiar to me--its second utterance enabled me to seize the +speaker’s identity. + +“Mr. Hunsden! good evening.” + +“Good evening, indeed! yes, but you would have passed me without +recognition if I had not been so civil as to speak first.” + +“I did not know you.” + +“A famous excuse! You ought to have known me; I knew you, though you +were going ahead like a steam-engine. Are the police after you?” + +“It wouldn’t be worth their while; I’m not of consequence enough to +attract them.” + +“Alas, poor shepherd! Alack and well-a-day! What a theme for regret, and +how down in the mouth you must be, judging from the sound of your voice! +But since you’re not running from the police, from whom are you running? +the devil?” + +“On the contrary, I am going post to him.” + +“That is well--you’re just in luck: this is Tuesday evening; there are +scores of market gigs and carts returning to Dinneford to-night; and he, +or some of his, have a seat in all regularly; so, if you’ll step in +and sit half-an-hour in my bachelor’s parlour, you may catch him as he +passes without much trouble. I think though you’d better let him alone +to-night, he’ll have so many customers to serve; Tuesday is his busy day +in X---- and Dinneford; come in at all events.” + +He swung the wicket open as he spoke. + +“Do you really wish me to go in?” I asked. + +“As you please--I’m alone; your company for an hour or two would be +agreeable to me; but, if you don’t choose to favour me so far, I’ll not +press the point. I hate to bore any one.” + +It suited me to accept the invitation as it suited Hunsden to give it. +I passed through the gate, and followed him to the front door, which he +opened; thence we traversed a passage, and entered his parlour; the door +being shut, he pointed me to an arm-chair by the hearth; I sat down, and +glanced round me. + +It was a comfortable room, at once snug and handsome; the bright grate +was filled with a genuine ----shire fire, red, clear, and generous, no +penurious South-of-England embers heaped in the corner of a grate. On +the table a shaded lamp diffused around a soft, pleasant, and equal +light; the furniture was almost luxurious for a young bachelor, +comprising a couch and two very easy chairs; bookshelves filled the +recesses on each side of the mantelpiece; they were well-furnished, and +arranged with perfect order. The neatness of the room suited my taste; +I hate irregular and slovenly habits. From what I saw I concluded that +Hunsden’s ideas on that point corresponded with my own. While he removed +from the centre-table to the side-board a few pamphlets and periodicals, +I ran my eye along the shelves of the book-case nearest me. French and +German works predominated, the old French dramatists, sundry modern +authors, Thiers, Villemain, Paul de Kock, George Sand, Eugene Sue; in +German--Goethe, Schiller, Zschokke, Jean Paul Richter; in English there +were works on Political Economy. I examined no further, for Mr. Hunsden +himself recalled my attention. + +“You shall have something,” said he, “for you ought to feel disposed for +refreshment after walking nobody knows how far on such a Canadian night +as this; but it shall not be brandy-and-water, and it shall not be +a bottle of port, nor ditto of sherry. I keep no such poison. I have +Rhein-wein for my own drinking, and you may choose between that and +coffee.” + +Here again Hunsden suited me: if there was one generally received +practice I abhorred more than another, it was the habitual imbibing of +spirits and strong wines. I had, however, no fancy for his acid German +nectar, but I liked coffee, so I responded-- + +“Give me some coffee, Mr. Hunsden.” + +I perceived my answer pleased him; he had doubtless expected to see a +chilling effect produced by his steady announcement that he would give +me neither wine nor spirits; he just shot one searching glance at my +face to ascertain whether my cordiality was genuine or a mere feint +of politeness. I smiled, because I quite understood him; and, while I +honoured his conscientious firmness, I was amused at his mistrust; he +seemed satisfied, rang the bell, and ordered coffee, which was presently +brought; for himself, a bunch of grapes and half a pint of something +sour sufficed. My coffee was excellent; I told him so, and expressed the +shuddering pity with which his anchorite fare inspired me. He did not +answer, and I scarcely think heard my remark. At that moment one of +those momentary eclipses I before alluded to had come over his face, +extinguishing his smile, and replacing, by an abstracted and alienated +look, the customarily shrewd, bantering glance of his eye. I employed +the interval of silence in a rapid scrutiny of his physiognomy. I had +never observed him closely before; and, as my sight is very short, I had +gathered only a vague, general idea of his appearance; I was surprised +now, on examination, to perceive how small, and even feminine, were his +lineaments; his tall figure, long and dark locks, his voice and general +bearing, had impressed me with the notion of something powerful and +massive; not at all:--my own features were cast in a harsher and squarer +mould than his. I discerned that there would be contrasts between his +inward and outward man; contentions, too; for I suspected his soul +had more of will and ambition than his body had of fibre and muscle. +Perhaps, in these incompatibilities of the “physique” with the “morale,” + lay the secret of that fitful gloom; he WOULD but COULD not, and the +athletic mind scowled scorn on its more fragile companion. As to his +good looks, I should have liked to have a woman’s opinion on that +subject; it seemed to me that his face might produce the same effect +on a lady that a very piquant and interesting, though scarcely pretty, +female face would on a man. I have mentioned his dark locks--they were +brushed sideways above a white and sufficiently expansive forehead; his +cheek had a rather hectic freshness; his features might have done well +on canvas, but indifferently in marble: they were plastic; character +had set a stamp upon each; expression re-cast them at her pleasure, and +strange metamorphoses she wrought, giving him now the mien of a morose +bull, and anon that of an arch and mischievous girl; more frequently, +the two semblances were blent, and a queer, composite countenance they +made. + +Starting from his silent fit, he began:-- + +“William! what a fool you are to live in those dismal lodgings of Mrs. +King’s, when you might take rooms here in Grove Street, and have a +garden like me!” + +“I should be too far from the mill.” + +“What of that? It would do you good to walk there and back two or three +times a day; besides, are you such a fossil that you never wish to see a +flower or a green leaf?” + +“I am no fossil.” + +“What are you then? You sit at that desk in Crimsworth’s counting-house +day by day and week by week, scraping with a pen on paper, just like an +automaton; you never get up; you never say you are tired; you never ask +for a holiday; you never take change or relaxation; you give way to +no excess of an evening; you neither keep wild company, nor indulge in +strong drink.” + +“Do you, Mr. Hunsden?” + +“Don’t think to pose me with short questions; your case and mine +are diametrically different, and it is nonsense attempting to draw a +parallel. I say, that when a man endures patiently what ought to be +unendurable, he is a fossil.” + +“Whence do you acquire the knowledge of my patience?” + +“Why, man, do you suppose you are a mystery? The other night you seemed +surprised at my knowing to what family you belonged; now you find +subject for wonderment in my calling you patient. What do you think I do +with my eyes and ears? I’ve been in your counting-house more than once +when Crimsworth has treated you like a dog; called for a book, for +instance, and when you gave him the wrong one, or what he chose to +consider the wrong one, flung it back almost in your face; desired you +to shut or open the door as if you had been his flunkey; to say nothing +of your position at the party about a month ago, where you had neither +place nor partner, but hovered about like a poor, shabby hanger-on; and +how patient you were under each and all of these circumstances!” + +“Well, Mr. Hunsden, what then?” + +“I can hardly tell you what then; the conclusion to be drawn as to +your character depends upon the nature of the motives which guide +your conduct; if you are patient because you expect to make something +eventually out of Crimsworth, notwithstanding his tyranny, or perhaps by +means of it, you are what the world calls an interested and mercenary, +but may be a very wise fellow; if you are patient because you think it a +duty to meet insult with submission, you are an essential sap, and in +no shape the man for my money; if you are patient because your nature is +phlegmatic, flat, inexcitable, and that you cannot get up to the pitch +of resistance, why, God made you to be crushed; and lie down by all +means, and lie flat, and let Juggernaut ride well over you.” + +Mr. Hunsden’s eloquence was not, it will be perceived, of the smooth and +oily order. As he spoke, he pleased me ill. I seem to recognize in him +one of those characters who, sensitive enough themselves, are selfishly +relentless towards the sensitiveness of others. Moreover, though he +was neither like Crimsworth nor Lord Tynedale, yet he was acrid, and, I +suspected, overbearing in his way: there was a tone of despotism in +the urgency of the very reproaches by which he aimed at goading the +oppressed into rebellion against the oppressor. Looking at him still +more fixedly than I had yet done, I saw written in his eye and mien a +resolution to arrogate to himself a freedom so unlimited that it might +often trench on the just liberty of his neighbours. I rapidly ran over +these thoughts, and then I laughed a low and involuntary laugh, moved +thereto by a slight inward revelation of the inconsistency of man. +It was as I thought: Hunsden had expected me to take with calm his +incorrect and offensive surmises, his bitter and haughty taunts; and +himself was chafed by a laugh, scarce louder than a whisper. + +His brow darkened, his thin nostril dilated a little. + +“Yes,” he began, “I told you that you were an aristocrat, and who but +an aristocrat would laugh such a laugh as that, and look such a look? +A laugh frigidly jeering; a look lazily mutinous; gentlemanlike irony, +patrician resentment. What a nobleman you would have made, William +Crimsworth! You are cut out for one; pity Fortune has baulked Nature! +Look at the features, figure, even to the hands--distinction all +over--ugly distinction! Now, if you’d only an estate and a mansion, +and a park, and a title, how you could play the exclusive, maintain the +rights of your class, train your tenantry in habits of respect to the +peerage, oppose at every step the advancing power of the people, support +your rotten order, and be ready for its sake to wade knee-deep in +churls’ blood; as it is, you’ve no power; you can do nothing; you’re +wrecked and stranded on the shores of commerce; forced into collision +with practical men, with whom you cannot cope, for YOU’LL NEVER BE A +TRADESMAN.” + +The first part of Hunsden’s speech moved me not at all, or, if it did, +it was only to wonder at the perversion into which prejudice had twisted +his judgment of my character; the concluding sentence, however, not only +moved, but shook me; the blow it gave was a severe one, because Truth +wielded the weapon. If I smiled now, it, was only in disdain of myself. + +Hunsden saw his advantage; he followed it up. + +“You’ll make nothing by trade,” continued he; “nothing more than the +crust of dry bread and the draught of fair water on which you now live; +your only chance of getting a competency lies in marrying a rich widow, +or running away with an heiress.” + +“I leave such shifts to be put in practice by those who devise them,” + said I, rising. + +“And even that is hopeless,” he went on coolly. “What widow would have +you? Much less, what heiress? You’re not bold and venturesome enough for +the one, nor handsome and fascinating enough for the other. You think +perhaps you look intelligent and polished; carry your intellect and +refinement to market, and tell me in a private note what price is bid +for them.” + +Mr. Hunsden had taken his tone for the night; the string he struck was +out of tune, he would finger no other. Averse to discord, of which I had +enough every day and all day long, I concluded, at last, that silence +and solitude were preferable to jarring converse; I bade him good-night. + +“What! Are you going, lad? Well, good-night: you’ll find the door.” And +he sat still in front of the fire, while I left the room and the house. +I had got a good way on my return to my lodgings before I found out that +I was walking very fast, and breathing very hard, and that my nails were +almost stuck into the palms of my clenched hands, and that my teeth were +set fast; on making this discovery, I relaxed both my pace, fists, and +jaws, but I could not so soon cause the regrets rushing rapidly through +my mind to slacken their tide. Why did I make myself a tradesman? Why +did I enter Hunsden’s house this evening? Why, at dawn to-morrow, must +I repair to Crimsworth’s mill? All that night did I ask myself these +questions, and all that night fiercely demanded of my soul an answer. I +got no sleep; my head burned, my feet froze; at last the factory bells +rang, and I sprang from my bed with other slaves. + + + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THERE is a climax to everything, to every state of feeling as well as to +every position in life. I turned this truism over in my mind as, in the +frosty dawn of a January morning, I hurried down the steep and now +icy street which descended from Mrs. King’s to the Close. The factory +workpeople had preceded me by nearly an hour, and the mill was all +lighted up and in full operation when I reached it. I repaired to my +post in the counting-house as usual; the fire there, but just lit, as +yet only smoked; Steighton had not yet arrived. I shut the door and sat +down at the desk; my hands, recently washed in half-frozen water, were +still numb; I could not write till they had regained vitality, so I +went on thinking, and still the theme of my thoughts was the “climax.” + Self-dissatisfaction troubled exceedingly the current of my meditations. + +“Come, William Crimsworth,” said my conscience, or whatever it is that +within ourselves takes ourselves to task--“come, get a clear notion of +what you would have, or what you would not have. You talk of a climax; +pray has your endurance reached its climax? It is not four months old. +What a fine resolute fellow you imagined yourself to be when you told +Tynedale you would tread in your father’s steps, and a pretty treading +you are likely to make of it! How well you like X----! Just at this +moment how redolent of pleasant associations are its streets, its shops, +its warehouses, its factories! How the prospect of this day cheers +you! Letter-copying till noon, solitary dinner at your lodgings, +letter-copying till evening, solitude; for you neither find pleasure +in Brown’s, nor Smith’s, nor Nicholl’s, nor Eccle’s company; and as +to Hunsden, you fancied there was pleasure to be derived from his +society--he! he! how did you like the taste you had of him last night? +was it sweet? Yet he is a talented, an original-minded man, and even +he does not like you; your self-respect defies you to like him; he has +always seen you to disadvantage; he always will see you to disadvantage; +your positions are unequal, and were they on the same level your +minds could not assimilate; never hope, then, to gather the honey of +friendship out of that thorn-guarded plant. Hello, Crimsworth! where are +your thoughts tending? You leave the recollection of Hunsden as a bee +would a rock, as a bird a desert; and your aspirations spread eager +wings towards a land of visions where, now in advancing daylight--in +X---- daylight--you dare to dream of congeniality, repose, union. Those +three you will never meet in this world; they are angels. The souls of +just men made perfect may encounter them in heaven, but your soul will +never be made perfect. Eight o’clock strikes! your hands are thawed, get +to work!” + +“Work? why should I work?” said I sullenly: “I cannot please though I +toil like a slave.” “Work, work!” reiterated the inward voice. “I may +work, it will do no good,” I growled; but nevertheless I drew out a +packet of letters and commenced my task--task thankless and bitter as +that of the Israelite crawling over the sun-baked fields of Egypt in +search of straw and stubble wherewith to accomplish his tale of bricks. + +About ten o’clock I heard Mr. Crimsworth’s gig turn into the yard, and +in a minute or two he entered the counting-house. It was his custom to +glance his eye at Steighton and myself, to hang up his mackintosh, stand +a minute with his back to the fire, and then walk out. Today he did +not deviate from his usual habits; the only difference was that when +he looked at me, his brow, instead of being merely hard, was surly; his +eye, instead of being cold, was fierce. He studied me a minute or two +longer than usual, but went out in silence. + +Twelve o’clock arrived; the bell rang for a suspension of labour; the +workpeople went off to their dinners; Steighton, too, departed, desiring +me to lock the counting-house door, and take the key with me. I +was tying up a bundle of papers, and putting them in their place, +preparatory to closing my desk, when Crimsworth reappeared at the door, +and entering closed it behind him. + +“You’ll stay here a minute,” said he, in a deep, brutal voice, while his +nostrils distended and his eye shot a spark of sinister fire. + +Alone with Edward I remembered our relationship, and remembering that +forgot the difference of position; I put away deference and careful +forms of speech; I answered with simple brevity. + +“It is time to go home,” I said, turning the key in my desk. + +“You’ll stay here!” he reiterated. “And take your hand off that key! +leave it in the lock!” + +“Why?” asked I. “What cause is there for changing my usual plans?” + +“Do as I order,” was the answer, “and no questions! You are my servant, +obey me! What have you been about--?” He was going on in the same +breath, when an abrupt pause announced that rage had for the moment got +the better of articulation. + +“You may look, if you wish to know,” I replied. “There is the open desk, +there are the papers.” + +“Confound your insolence! What have you been about?” + +“Your work, and have done it well.” + +“Hypocrite and twaddler! Smooth-faced, snivelling greasehorn!” (This +last term is, I believe, purely ----shire, and alludes to the horn of +black, rancid whale-oil, usually to be seen suspended to cart-wheels, +and employed for greasing the same.) + +“Come, Edward Crimsworth, enough of this. It is time you and I wound up +accounts. I have now given your service three months’ trial, and I find +it the most nauseous slavery under the sun. Seek another clerk. I stay +no longer.” + +“What! do you dare to give me notice? Stop at least for your wages.” He +took down the heavy gig whip hanging beside his mackintosh. + +I permitted myself to laugh with a degree of scorn I took no pains to +temper or hide. His fury boiled up, and when he had sworn half-a-dozen +vulgar, impious oaths, without, however, venturing to lift the whip, he +continued: + +“I’ve found you out and know you thoroughly, you mean, whining +lickspittle! What have you been saying all over X---- about me? answer +me that!” + +“You? I have neither inclination nor temptation to talk about you.” + +“You lie! It is your practice to talk about me; it is your constant +habit to make public complaint of the treatment you receive at my hands. +You have gone and told it far and near that I give you low wages and +knock you about like a dog. I wish you were a dog! I’d set-to this +minute, and never stir from the spot till I’d cut every strip of flesh +from your bones with this whip.” + +He flourished his tool. The end of the lash just touched my forehead. +A warm excited thrill ran through my veins, my blood seemed to give a +bound, and then raced fast and hot along its channels. I got up nimbly, +came round to where he stood, and faced him. + +“Down with your whip!” said I, “and explain this instant what you mean.” + +“Sirrah! to whom are you speaking?” + +“To you. There is no one else present, I think. You say I have been +calumniating you--complaining of your low wages and bad treatment. Give +your grounds for these assertions.” + +Crimsworth had no dignity, and when I sternly demanded an explanation, +he gave one in a loud, scolding voice. + +“Grounds! you shall have them; and turn to the light that I may see your +brazen face blush black, when you hear yourself proved to be a liar and +a hypocrite. At a public meeting in the Town-hall yesterday, I had the +pleasure of hearing myself insulted by the speaker opposed to me in the +question under discussion, by allusions to my private affairs; by cant +about monsters without natural affection, family despots, and such +trash; and when I rose to answer, I was met by a shout from the filthy +mob, where the mention of your name enabled me at once to detect the +quarter in which this base attack had originated. When I looked round, I +saw that treacherous villain, Hunsden acting as fugleman. I detected you +in close conversation with Hunsden at my house a month ago, and I know +that you were at Hunsden’s rooms last night. Deny it if you dare.” + +“Oh, I shall not deny it! And if Hunsden hounded on the people to hiss +you, he did quite right. You deserve popular execration; for a worse +man, a harder master, a more brutal brother than you are has seldom +existed.” + +“Sirrah! sirrah!” reiterated Crimsworth; and to complete his apostrophe, +he cracked the whip straight over my head. + +A minute sufficed to wrest it from him, break it in two pieces, and +throw it under the grate. He made a headlong rush at me, which I evaded, +and said-- + +“Touch me, and I’ll have you up before the nearest magistrate.” + +Men like Crimsworth, if firmly and calmly resisted, always abate +something of their exorbitant insolence; he had no mind to be brought +before a magistrate, and I suppose he saw I meant what I said. After +an odd and long stare at me, at once bull-like and amazed, he seemed +to bethink himself that, after all, his money gave him sufficient +superiority over a beggar like me, and that he had in his hands a surer +and more dignified mode of revenge than the somewhat hazardous one of +personal chastisement. + +“Take your hat,” said he. “Take what belongs to you, and go out at +that door; get away to your parish, you pauper: beg, steal, starve, get +transported, do what you like; but at your peril venture again into +my sight! If ever I hear of your setting foot on an inch of ground +belonging to me, I’ll hire a man to cane you.” + +“It is not likely you’ll have the chance; once off your premises, what +temptation can I have to return to them? I leave a prison, I leave a +tyrant; I leave what is worse than the worst that can lie before me, so +no fear of my coming back.” + +“Go, or I’ll make you!” exclaimed Crimsworth. + +I walked deliberately to my desk, took out such of its contents as were +my own property, put them in my pocket, locked the desk, and placed the +key on the top. + +“What are you abstracting from that desk?” demanded the millowner. +“Leave all behind in its place, or I’ll send for a policeman to search +you.” + +“Look sharp about it, then,” said I, and I took down my hat, drew on my +gloves, and walked leisurely out of the counting-house--walked out of it +to enter it no more. + +I recollect that when the mill-bell rang the dinner hour, before Mr. +Crimsworth entered, and the scene above related took place, I had had +rather a sharp appetite, and had been waiting somewhat impatiently to +hear the signal of feeding time. I forgot it now, however; the images +of potatoes and roast mutton were effaced from my mind by the stir and +tumult which the transaction of the last half-hour had there excited. I +only thought of walking, that the action of my muscles might harmonize +with the action of my nerves; and walk I did, fast and far. How could +I do otherwise? A load was lifted off my heart; I felt light and +liberated. I had got away from Bigben Close without a breach of +resolution; without injury to my self-respect. I had not forced +circumstances; circumstances had freed me. Life was again open to me; +no longer was its horizon limited by the high black wall surrounding +Crimsworth’s mill. Two hours had elapsed before my sensations had so far +subsided as to leave me calm enough to remark for what wider and clearer +boundaries I had exchanged that sooty girdle. When I did look up, lo! +straight before me lay Grovetown, a village of villas about five miles +out of X----. The short winter day, as I perceived from the far-declined +sun, was already approaching its close; a chill frost-mist was rising +from the river on which X---- stands, and along whose banks the road I +had taken lay; it dimmed the earth, but did not obscure the clear icy +blue of the January sky. There was a great stillness near and far; the +time of the day favoured tranquillity, as the people were all employed +within-doors, the hour of evening release from the factories not being +yet arrived; a sound of full-flowing water alone pervaded the air, for +the river was deep and abundant, swelled by the melting of a late snow. +I stood awhile, leaning over a wall; and looking down at the current: +I watched the rapid rush of its waves. I desired memory to take a clear +and permanent impression of the scene, and treasure it for future years. +Grovetown church clock struck four; looking up, I beheld the last of +that day’s sun, glinting red through the leafless boughs of some +very old oak trees surrounding the church--its light coloured and +characterized the picture as I wished. I paused yet a moment, till the +sweet, slow sound of the bell had quite died out of the air; then ear, +eye and feeling satisfied, I quitted the wall and once more turned my +face towards X----. + + + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +I RE-ENTERED the town a hungry man; the dinner I had forgotten recurred +seductively to my recollection; and it was with a quick step and sharp +appetite I ascended the narrow street leading to my lodgings. It was +dark when I opened the front door and walked into the house. I wondered +how my fire would be; the night was cold, and I shuddered at the +prospect of a grate full of sparkless cinders. To my joyful surprise, +I found, on entering my sitting-room, a good fire and a clean hearth. +I had hardly noticed this phenomenon, when I became aware of another +subject for wonderment; the chair I usually occupied near the hearth was +already filled; a person sat there with his arms folded on his chest, +and his legs stretched out on the rug. Short-sighted as I am, doubtful +as was the gleam of the firelight, a moment’s examination enabled me to +recognize in this person my acquaintance, Mr. Hunsden. I could not of +course be much pleased to see him, considering the manner in which I had +parted from him the night before, and as I walked to the hearth, stirred +the fire, and said coolly, “Good evening,” my demeanour evinced as +little cordiality as I felt; yet I wondered in my own mind what had +brought him there; and I wondered, also, what motives had induced him to +interfere so actively between me and Edward; it was to him, it appeared, +that I owed my welcome dismissal; still I could not bring myself to +ask him questions, to show any eagerness of curiosity; if he chose to +explain, he might, but the explanation should be a perfectly voluntary +one on his part; I thought he was entering upon it. + +“You owe me a debt of gratitude,” were his first words. + +“Do I?” said I; “I hope it is not a large one, for I am much too poor to +charge myself with heavy liabilities of any kind.” + +“Then declare yourself bankrupt at once, for this liability is a ton +weight at least. When I came in I found your fire out, and I had it lit +again, and made that sulky drab of a servant stay and blow at it with +the bellows till it had burnt up properly; now, say ‘Thank you!’” + +“Not till I have had something to eat; I can thank nobody while I am so +famished.” + +I rang the bell and ordered tea and some cold meat. + +“Cold meat!” exclaimed Hunsden, as the servant closed the door, “what a +glutton you are; man! Meat with tea! you’ll die of eating too much.” + +“No, Mr. Hunsden, I shall not.” I felt a necessity for contradicting +him; I was irritated with hunger, and irritated at seeing him there, and +irritated at the continued roughness of his manner. + +“It is over-eating that makes you so ill-tempered,” said he. + +“How do you know?” I demanded. “It is like you to give a pragmatical +opinion without being acquainted with any of the circumstances of the +case; I have had no dinner.” + +What I said was petulant and snappish enough, and Hunsden only replied +by looking in my face and laughing. + +“Poor thing!” he whined, after a pause. “It has had no dinner, has it? +What! I suppose its master would not let it come home. Did Crimsworth +order you to fast by way of punishment, William!” + +“No, Mr. Hunsden.” Fortunately at this sulky juncture, tea, was brought +in, and I fell to upon some bread and butter and cold beef directly. +Having cleared a plateful, I became so far humanized as to intimate to +Mr. Hunsden that he need not sit there staring, but might come to the +table and do as I did, if he liked. + +“But I don’t like in the least,” said he, and therewith he summoned the +servant by a fresh pull of the bell-rope, and intimated a desire to +have a glass of toast-and-water. “And some more coal,” he added; “Mr. +Crimsworth shall keep a good fire while I stay.” + +His orders being executed, he wheeled his chair round to the table, so +as to be opposite me. + +“Well,” he proceeded. “You are out of work, I suppose.” + +“Yes,” said I; and not disposed to show the satisfaction I felt on this +point, I, yielding to the whim of the moment, took up the subject as +though I considered myself aggrieved rather than benefited by what had +been done. “Yes--thanks to you, I am. Crimsworth turned me off at +a minute’s notice, owing to some interference of yours at a public +meeting, I understand.” + +“Ah! what! he mentioned that? He observed me signalling the lads, did +he? What had he to say about his friend Hunsden--anything sweet?” + +“He called you a treacherous villain.” + +“Oh, he hardly knows me yet! I’m one of those shy people who don’t come +out all at once, and he is only just beginning to make my acquaintance, +but he’ll find I’ve some good qualities--excellent ones! The Hunsdens +were always unrivalled at tracking a rascal; a downright, dishonourable +villain is their natural prey--they could not keep off him wherever +they met him; you used the word pragmatical just now--that word is the +property of our family; it has been applied to us from generation to +generation; we have fine noses for abuses; we scent a scoundrel a mile +off; we are reformers born, radical reformers; and it was impossible for +me to live in the same town with Crimsworth, to come into weekly contact +with him, to witness some of his conduct to you (for whom personally +I care nothing; I only consider the brutal injustice with which he +violated your natural claim to equality)--I say it was impossible for +me to be thus situated and not feel the angel or the demon of my race +at work within me. I followed my instinct, opposed a tyrant, and broke a +chain.” + +Now this speech interested me much, both because it brought out +Hunsden’s character, and because it explained his motives; it interested +me so much that I forgot to reply to it, and sat silent, pondering over +a throng of ideas it had suggested. + +“Are you grateful to me?” he asked, presently. + +In fact I was grateful, or almost so, and I believe I half liked him at +the moment, notwithstanding his proviso that what he had done was not +out of regard for me. But human nature is perverse. Impossible to answer +his blunt question in the affirmative, so I disclaimed all tendency +to gratitude, and advised him if he expected any reward for his +championship, to look for it in a better world, as he was not likely +to meet with it here. In reply he termed me “a dry-hearted aristocratic +scamp,” whereupon I again charged him with having taken the bread out of +my mouth. + +“Your bread was dirty, man!” cried Hunsden--“dirty and unwholesome! +It came through the hands of a tyrant, for I tell you Crimsworth is a +tyrant,--a tyrant to his workpeople, a tyrant to his clerks, and will +some day be a tyrant to his wife.” + +“Nonsense! bread is bread, and a salary is a salary. I’ve lost mine, and +through your means.” + +“There’s sense in what you say, after all,” rejoined Hunsden. “I must +say I am rather agreeably surprised to hear you make so practical +an observation as that last. I had imagined now, from my previous +observation of your character, that the sentimental delight you would +have taken in your newly regained liberty would, for a while at least, +have effaced all ideas of forethought and prudence. I think better of +you for looking steadily to the needful.” + +“Looking steadily to the needful! How can I do otherwise? I must live, +and to live I must have what you call ‘the needful,’ which I can only +get by working. I repeat it, you have taken my work from me.” + +“What do you mean to do?” pursued Hunsden coolly. “You have influential +relations; I suppose they’ll soon provide you with another place.” + +“Influential relations? Who? I should like to know their names.” + +“The Seacombes.” + +“Stuff! I have cut them.” + +Hunsden looked at me incredulously. + +“I have,” said I, “and that definitively.” + +“You must mean they have cut you, William.” + +“As you please. They offered me their patronage on condition of my +entering the Church; I declined both the terms and the recompence; I +withdrew from my cold uncles, and preferred throwing myself into my +elder brother’s arms, from whose affectionate embrace I am now torn by +the cruel intermeddling of a stranger--of yourself, in short.” + +I could not repress a half-smile as I said this; a similar +demi-manifestation of feeling appeared at the same moment on Hunsden’s +lips. + +“Oh, I see!” said he, looking into my eyes, and it was evident he did +see right down into my heart. Having sat a minute or two with his chin +resting on his hand, diligently occupied in the continued perusal of my +countenance, he went on: + +“Seriously, have you then nothing to expect from the Seacombes?” + +“Yes, rejection and repulsion. Why do you ask me twice? How can hands +stained with the ink of a counting-house, soiled with the grease of +a wool-warehouse, ever again be permitted to come into contact with +aristocratic palms?” + +“There would be a difficulty, no doubt; still you are such a complete +Seacombe in appearance, feature, language, almost manner, I wonder they +should disown you.” + +“They have disowned me; so talk no more about it.” + +“Do you regret it, William?” + +“No.” + +“Why not, lad?” + +“Because they are not people with whom I could ever have had any +sympathy.” + +“I say you are one of them.” + +“That merely proves that you know nothing at all about it; I am my +mother’s son, but not my uncles’ nephew.” + +“Still--one of your uncles is a lord, though rather an obscure and not a +very wealthy one, and the other a right honourable: you should consider +worldly interest.” + +“Nonsense, Mr. Hunsden. You know or may know that even had I desired to +be submissive to my uncles, I could not have stooped with a good enough +grace ever to have won their favour. I should have sacrificed my own +comfort and not have gained their patronage in return.” + +“Very likely--so you calculated your wisest plan was to follow your own +devices at once?” + +“Exactly. I must follow my own devices--I must, till the day of my +death; because I can neither comprehend, adopt, nor work out those of +other people.” + +Hunsden yawned. “Well,” said he, “in all this, I see but one thing +clearly-that is, that the whole affair is no business of mine.” He +stretched himself and again yawned. “I wonder what time it is,” he went +on: “I have an appointment for seven o’clock.” + +“Three quarters past six by my watch.” + +“Well, then I’ll go.” He got up. “You’ll not meddle with trade again?” + said he, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece. + +“No; I think not.” + +“You would be a fool if you did. Probably, after all, you’ll think +better of your uncles’ proposal and go into the Church.” + +“A singular regeneration must take place in my whole inner and outer man +before I do that. A good clergyman is one of the best of men.” + +“Indeed! Do you think so?” interrupted Hunsden, scoffingly. + +“I do, and no mistake. But I have not the peculiar points which go to +make a good clergyman; and rather than adopt a profession for which I +have no vocation, I would endure extremities of hardship from poverty.” + +“You’re a mighty difficult customer to suit. You won’t be a tradesman +or a parson; you can’t be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a gentleman, because +you’ve no money. I’d recommend you to travel.” + +“What! without money?” + +“You must travel in search of money, man. You can speak French--with +a vile English accent, no doubt--still, you can speak it. Go on to the +Continent, and see what will turn up for you there.” + +“God knows I should like to go!” exclaimed I with involuntary ardour. + +“Go: what the deuce hinders you? You may get to Brussels, for instance, +for five or six pounds, if you know how to manage with economy.” + +“Necessity would teach me if I didn’t.” + +“Go, then, and let your wits make a way for you when you get there. I +know Brussels almost as well as I know X----, and I am sure it would +suit such a one as you better than London.” + +“But occupation, Mr. Hunsden! I must go where occupation is to be had; +and how could I get recommendation, or introduction, or employment at +Brussels?” + +“There speaks the organ of caution. You hate to advance a step before +you know every inch of the way. You haven’t a sheet of paper and a +pen-and-ink?” + +“I hope so,” and I produced writing materials with alacrity; for I +guessed what he was going to do. He sat down, wrote a few lines, folded, +sealed, and addressed a letter, and held it out to me. + +“There, Prudence, there’s a pioneer to hew down the first rough +difficulties of your path. I know well enough, lad, you are not one of +those who will run their neck into a noose without seeing how they +are to get it out again, and you’re right there. A reckless man is +my aversion, and nothing should ever persuade me to meddle with the +concerns of such a one. Those who are reckless for themselves are +generally ten times more so for their friends.” + +“This is a letter of introduction, I suppose?” said I, taking the +epistle. + +“Yes. With that in your pocket you will run no risk of finding yourself +in a state of absolute destitution, which, I know, you will regard as a +degradation--so should I, for that matter. The person to whom you will +present it generally has two or three respectable places depending upon +his recommendation.” + +“That will just suit me,” said I. + +“Well, and where’s your gratitude?” demanded Mr. Hunsden; “don’t you +know how to say ‘Thank you?’” + +“I’ve fifteen pounds and a watch, which my godmother, whom I never saw, +gave me eighteen years ago,” was my rather irrelevant answer; and I +further avowed myself a happy man, and professed that I did not envy any +being in Christendom. + +“But your gratitude?” + +“I shall be off presently, Mr. Hunsden--to-morrow, if all be well: I’ll +not stay a day longer in X---- than I’m obliged.” + +“Very good--but it will be decent to make due acknowledgment for the +assistance you have received; be quick! It is just going to strike +seven: I’m waiting to be thanked.” + +“Just stand out of the way, will you, Mr. Hunsden: I want a key there is +on the corner of the mantelpiece. I’ll pack my portmanteau before I go +to bed.” + +The house clock struck seven. + +“The lad is a heathen,” said Hunsden, and taking his hat from a +sideboard, he left the room, laughing to himself. I had half an +inclination to follow him: I really intended to leave X---- the next +morning, and should certainly not have another opportunity of bidding +him good-bye. The front door banged to. + +“Let him go,” said I, “we shall meet again some day.” + + + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +READER, perhaps you were never in Belgium? Haply you don’t know the +physiognomy of the country? You have not its lineaments defined upon +your memory, as I have them on mine? + +Three--nay four--pictures line the four-walled cell where are stored for +me the records of the past. First, Eton. All in that picture is in far +perspective, receding, diminutive; but freshly coloured, green, dewy, +with a spring sky, piled with glittering yet showery clouds; for my +childhood was not all sunshine--it had its overcast, its cold, its +stormy hours. Second, X----, huge, dingy; the canvas cracked and smoked; +a yellow sky, sooty clouds; no sun, no azure; the verdure of the suburbs +blighted and sullied--a very dreary scene. + +Third, Belgium; and I will pause before this landscape. As to the +fourth, a curtain covers it, which I may hereafter withdraw, or may not, +as suits my convenience and capacity. At any rate, for the present it +must hang undisturbed. Belgium! name unromantic and unpoetic, yet name +that whenever uttered has in my ear a sound, in my heart an echo, such +as no other assemblage of syllables, however sweet or classic, can +produce. Belgium! I repeat the word, now as I sit alone near midnight. +It stirs my world of the past like a summons to resurrection; the graves +unclose, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that slept, +are seen by me ascending from the clouds--haloed most of them--but while +I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to ascertain definitely their +outline, the sound which wakened them dies, and they sink, each and all, +like a light wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns, +resealed in monuments. Farewell, luminous phantoms! + +This is Belgium, reader. Look! don’t call the picture a flat or a dull +one--it was neither flat nor dull to me when I first beheld it. When I +left Ostend on a mild February morning, and found myself on the road +to Brussels, nothing could look vapid to me. My sense of enjoyment +possessed an edge whetted to the finest, untouched, keen, exquisite. +I was young; I had good health; pleasure and I had never met; no +indulgence of hers had enervated or sated one faculty of my nature. +Liberty I clasped in my arms for the first time, and the influence of +her smile and embrace revived my life like the sun and the west wind. +Yes, at that epoch I felt like a morning traveller who doubts not that +from the hill he is ascending he shall behold a glorious sunrise; what +if the track be strait, steep, and stony? he sees it not; his eyes are +fixed on that summit, flushed already, flushed and gilded, and having +gained it he is certain of the scene beyond. He knows that the sun will +face him, that his chariot is even now coming over the eastern horizon, +and that the herald breeze he feels on his cheek is opening for the +god’s career a clear, vast path of azure, amidst clouds soft as pearl +and warm as flame. Difficulty and toil were to be my lot, but sustained +by energy, drawn on by hopes as bright as vague, I deemed such a lot +no hardship. I mounted now the hill in shade; there were pebbles, +inequalities, briars in my path, but my eyes were fixed on the crimson +peak above; my imagination was with the refulgent firmament beyond, and +I thought nothing of the stones turning under my feet, or of the thorns +scratching my face and hands. + +I gazed often, and always with delight, from the window of the diligence +(these, be it remembered, were not the days of trains and railroads). +Well! and what did I see? I will tell you faithfully. Green, reedy +swamps; fields fertile but flat, cultivated in patches that made them +look like magnified kitchen-gardens; belts of cut trees, formal as +pollard willows, skirting the horizon; narrow canals, gliding slow by +the road-side; painted Flemish farmhouses; some very dirty hovels; a +gray, dead sky; wet road, wet fields, wet house-tops: not a beautiful, +scarcely a picturesque object met my eye along the whole route; yet to +me, all was beautiful, all was more than picturesque. It continued fair +so long as daylight lasted, though the moisture of many preceding damp +days had sodden the whole country; as it grew dark, however, the rain +recommenced, and it was through streaming and starless darkness my eye +caught the first gleam of the lights of Brussels. I saw little of the +city but its lights that night. Having alighted from the diligence, a +fiacre conveyed me to the Hotel de ----, where I had been advised by a +fellow-traveller to put up; having eaten a traveller’s supper, I retired +to bed, and slept a traveller’s sleep. + +Next morning I awoke from prolonged and sound repose with the impression +that I was yet in X----, and perceiving it to be broad daylight I +started up, imagining that I had overslept myself and should be behind +time at the counting-house. The momentary and painful sense of restraint +vanished before the revived and reviving consciousness of freedom, as, +throwing back the white curtains of my bed, I looked forth into a wide, +lofty foreign chamber; how different from the small and dingy, though +not uncomfortable, apartment I had occupied for a night or two at a +respectable inn in London while waiting for the sailing of the packet! +Yet far be it from me to profane the memory of that little dingy room! +It, too, is dear to my soul; for there, as I lay in quiet and darkness, +I first heard the great bell of St. Paul’s telling London it was +midnight, and well do I recall the deep, deliberate tones, so full +charged with colossal phlegm and force. From the small, narrow window +of that room, I first saw THE dome, looming through a London mist. I +suppose the sensations, stirred by those first sounds, first sights, are +felt but once; treasure them, Memory; seal them in urns, and keep them +in safe niches! Well--I rose. Travellers talk of the apartments in +foreign dwellings being bare and uncomfortable; I thought my chamber +looked stately and cheerful. It had such large windows--CROISEES that +opened like doors, with such broad, clear panes of glass; such a great +looking-glass stood on my dressing-table--such a fine mirror glittered +over the mantelpiece--the painted floor looked so clean and glossy; +when I had dressed and was descending the stairs, the broad marble steps +almost awed me, and so did the lofty hall into which they conducted. +On the first landing I met a Flemish housemaid: she had wooden shoes, a +short red petticoat, a printed cotton bedgown, her face was broad, +her physiognomy eminently stupid; when I spoke to her in French, she +answered me in Flemish, with an air the reverse of civil; yet I thought +her charming; if she was not pretty or polite, she was, I conceived, +very picturesque; she reminded me of the female figures in certain Dutch +paintings I had seen in other years at Seacombe Hall. + +I repaired to the public room; that, too, was very large and very lofty, +and warmed by a stove; the floor was black, and the stove was black, and +most of the furniture was black: yet I never experienced a freer +sense of exhilaration than when I sat down at a very long, black table +(covered, however, in part by a white cloth), and, having ordered +breakfast, began to pour out my coffee from a little black coffee-pot. +The stove might be dismal-looking to some eyes, not to mine, but it +was indisputably very warm, and there were two gentlemen seated by +it talking in French; impossible to follow their rapid utterance, or +comprehend much of the purport of what they said--yet French, in the +mouths of Frenchmen, or Belgians (I was not then sensible of the horrors +of the Belgian accent) was as music to my ears. One of these gentlemen +presently discerned me to be an Englishman--no doubt from the fashion in +which I addressed the waiter; for I would persist in speaking French in +my execrable South-of-England style, though the man understood English. +The gentleman, after looking towards me once or twice, politely accosted +me in very good English; I remember I wished to God that I could speak +French as well; his fluency and correct pronunciation impressed me for +the first time with a due notion of the cosmopolitan character of the +capital I was in; it was my first experience of that skill in living +languages I afterwards found to be so general in Brussels. + +I lingered over my breakfast as long as I could; while it was there +on the table, and while that stranger continued talking to me, I was a +free, independent traveller; but at last the things were removed, the +two gentlemen left the room; suddenly the illusion ceased, reality and +business came back. I, a bondsman just released from the yoke, freed for +one week from twenty-one years of constraint, must, of necessity, resume +the fetters of dependency. Hardly had I tasted the delight of being +without a master when duty issued her stern mandate: “Go forth and seek +another service.” I never linger over a painful and necessary task; I +never take pleasure before business, it is not in my nature to do so; +impossible to enjoy a leisurely walk over the city, though I perceived +the morning was very fine, until I had first presented Mr. Hunsden’s +letter of introduction, and got fairly on to the track of a new +situation. Wrenching my mind from liberty and delight, I seized my hat, +and forced my reluctant body out of the Hotel de ---- into the foreign +street. + +It was a fine day, but I would not look at the blue sky or at the +stately houses round me; my mind was bent on one thing, finding out “Mr. +Brown, Numero --, Rue Royale,” for so my letter was addressed. By dint +of inquiry I succeeded; I stood at last at the desired door, knocked, +asked for Mr. Brown, and was admitted. + +Being shown into a small breakfast-room, I found myself in the +presence of an elderly gentleman--very grave, business-like, and +respectable-looking. I presented Mr. Hunsden’s letter; he received me +very civilly. After a little desultory conversation he asked me if there +was anything in which his advice or experience could be of use. I said, +“Yes,” and then proceeded to tell him that I was not a gentleman of +fortune, travelling for pleasure, but an ex-counting-house clerk, who +wanted employment of some kind, and that immediately too. He replied +that as a friend of Mr. Hunsden’s he would be willing to assist me as +well as he could. After some meditation he named a place in a mercantile +house at Liege, and another in a bookseller’s shop at Louvain. + +“Clerk and shopman!” murmured I to myself. “No.” I shook my head. I +had tried the high stool; I hated it; I believed there were other +occupations that would suit me better; besides I did not wish to leave +Brussels. + +“I know of no place in Brussels,” answered Mr. Brown, “unless indeed you +were disposed to turn your attention to teaching. I am acquainted with +the director of a large establishment who is in want of a professor of +English and Latin.” + +I thought two minutes, then I seized the idea eagerly. + +“The very thing, sir!” said I. + +“But,” asked he, “do you understand French well enough to teach Belgian +boys English?” + +Fortunately I could answer this question in the affirmative; +having studied French under a Frenchman, I could speak the language +intelligibly though not fluently. I could also read it well, and write +it decently. + +“Then,” pursued Mr. Brown, “I think I can promise you the place, for +Monsieur Pelet will not refuse a professor recommended by me; but come +here again at five o’clock this afternoon, and I will introduce you to +him.” + +The word “professor” struck me. “I am not a professor,” said I. + +“Oh,” returned Mr. Brown, “professor, here in Belgium, means a teacher, +that is all.” + +My conscience thus quieted, I thanked Mr. Brown, and, for the present, +withdrew. This time I stepped out into the street with a relieved heart; +the task I had imposed on myself for that day was executed. I might now +take some hours of holiday. I felt free to look up. For the first time +I remarked the sparkling clearness of the air, the deep blue of the sky, +the gay clean aspect of the white-washed or painted houses; I saw what +a fine street was the Rue Royale, and, walking leisurely along its broad +pavement, I continued to survey its stately hotels, till the palisades, +the gates, and trees of the park appearing in sight, offered to my eye a +new attraction. I remember, before entering the park, I stood awhile to +contemplate the statue of General Belliard, and then I advanced to the +top of the great staircase just beyond, and I looked down into a narrow +back street, which I afterwards learnt was called the Rue d’Isabelle. +I well recollect that my eye rested on the green door of a rather large +house opposite, where, on a brass plate, was inscribed, “Pensionnat de +Demoiselles.” Pensionnat! The word excited an uneasy sensation in +my mind; it seemed to speak of restraint. Some of the demoiselles, +externats no doubt, were at that moment issuing from the door--I looked +for a pretty face amongst them, but their close, little French bonnets +hid their features; in a moment they were gone. + +I had traversed a good deal of Brussels before five o’clock arrived, +but punctually as that hour struck I was again in the Rue Royale. +Re-admitted to Mr. Brown’s breakfast-room, I found him, as before, +seated at the table, and he was not alone--a gentleman stood by the +hearth. Two words of introduction designated him as my future master. +“M. Pelet, Mr. Crimsworth; Mr. Crimsworth, M. Pelet,” a bow on each +side finished the ceremony. I don’t know what sort of a bow I made; an +ordinary one, I suppose, for I was in a tranquil, commonplace frame of +mind; I felt none of the agitation which had troubled my first interview +with Edward Crimsworth. M. Pelet’s bow was extremely polite, yet not +theatrical, scarcely French; he and I were presently seated opposite to +each other. In a pleasing voice, low, and, out of consideration to my +foreign ears, very distinct and deliberate, M. Pelet intimated that he +had just been receiving from “le respectable M. Brown,” an account of my +attainments and character, which relieved him from all scruple as to +the propriety of engaging me as professor of English and Latin in +his establishment; nevertheless, for form’s sake, he would put a few +questions to test my powers. He did, and expressed in flattering terms +his satisfaction at my answers. The subject of salary next came on; it +was fixed at one thousand francs per annum, besides board and lodging. +“And in addition,” suggested M. Pelet, “as there will be some hours +in each day during which your services will not be required in my +establishment, you may, in time, obtain employment in other seminaries, +and thus turn your vacant moments to profitable account.” + +I thought this very kind, and indeed I found afterwards that the terms +on which M. Pelet had engaged me were really liberal for Brussels; +instruction being extremely cheap there on account of the number of +teachers. It was further arranged that I should be installed in my new +post the very next day, after which M. Pelet and I parted. + +Well, and what was he like? and what were my impressions concerning him? +He was a man of about forty years of age, of middle size, and rather +emaciated figure; his face was pale, his cheeks were sunk, and his eyes +hollow; his features were pleasing and regular, they had a French +turn (for M. Pelet was no Fleming, but a Frenchman both by birth +and parentage), yet the degree of harshness inseparable from Gallic +lineaments was, in his case, softened by a mild blue eye, and a +melancholy, almost suffering, expression of countenance; his physiognomy +was “fine et spirituelle.” I use two French words because they define +better than any English terms the species of intelligence with which his +features were imbued. He was altogether an interesting and prepossessing +personage. I wondered only at the utter absence of all the ordinary +characteristics of his profession, and almost feared he could not be +stern and resolute enough for a schoolmaster. Externally at least +M. Pelet presented an absolute contrast to my late master, Edward +Crimsworth. + +Influenced by the impression I had received of his gentleness, I was a +good deal surprised when, on arriving the next day at my new employer’s +house, and being admitted to a first view of what was to be the +sphere of my future labours, namely the large, lofty, and well-lighted +schoolrooms, I beheld a numerous assemblage of pupils, boys of course, +whose collective appearance showed all the signs of a full, flourishing, +and well-disciplined seminary. As I traversed the classes in company +with M. Pelet, a profound silence reigned on all sides, and if by chance +a murmur or a whisper arose, one glance from the pensive eye of this +most gentle pedagogue stilled it instantly. It was astonishing, I +thought, how so mild a check could prove so effectual. When I had +perambulated the length and breadth of the classes, M. Pelet turned and +said to me-- + +“Would you object to taking the boys as they are, and testing their +proficiency in English?” + +The proposal was unexpected. I had thought I should have been allowed at +least three days to prepare; but it is a bad omen to commence any career +by hesitation, so I just stepped to the professor’s desk near which we +stood, and faced the circle of my pupils. I took a moment to collect +my thoughts, and likewise to frame in French the sentence by which I +proposed to open business. I made it as short as possible:-- + +“Messieurs, prenez vos livres de lecture.” + +“Anglais ou Francais, monsieur?” demanded a thickset, moon-faced young +Flamand in a blouse. The answer was fortunately easy:-- + +“Anglais.” + +I determined to give myself as little trouble as possible in this +lesson; it would not do yet to trust my unpractised tongue with the +delivery of explanations; my accent and idiom would be too open to the +criticisms of the young gentlemen before me, relative to whom I felt +already it would be necessary at once to take up an advantageous +position, and I proceeded to employ means accordingly. + +“Commencez!” cried I, when they had all produced their books. The +moon-faced youth (by name Jules Vanderkelkov, as I afterwards learnt) +took the first sentence. The “livre de lecture” was the “Vicar of +Wakefield,” much used in foreign schools because it is supposed to +contain prime samples of conversational English; it might, however, +have been a Runic scroll for any resemblance the words, as enunciated by +Jules, bore to the language in ordinary use amongst the natives of Great +Britain. My God! how he did snuffle, snort, and wheeze! All he said was +said in his throat and nose, for it is thus the Flamands speak, but +I heard him to the end of his paragraph without proffering a word of +correction, whereat he looked vastly self-complacent, convinced, +no doubt, that he had acquitted himself like a real born and bred +“Anglais.” In the same unmoved silence I listened to a dozen in +rotation, and when the twelfth had concluded with splutter, hiss, and +mumble, I solemnly laid down the book. + +“Arretez!” said I. There was a pause, during which I regarded them all +with a steady and somewhat stern gaze; a dog, if stared at hard enough +and long enough, will show symptoms of embarrassment, and so at length +did my bench of Belgians. Perceiving that some of the faces before me +were beginning to look sullen, and others ashamed, I slowly joined my +hands, and ejaculated in a deep “voix de poitrine”-- + +“Comme c’est affreux!” + +They looked at each other, pouted, coloured, swung their heels; they +were not pleased, I saw, but they were impressed, and in the way +I wished them to be. Having thus taken them down a peg in their +self-conceit, the next step was to raise myself in their estimation; not +a very easy thing, considering that I hardly dared to speak for fear of +betraying my own deficiencies. + +“Ecoutez, messieurs!” said I, and I endeavoured to throw into my +accents the compassionate tone of a superior being, who, touched by the +extremity of the helplessness, which at first only excited his scorn, +deigns at length to bestow aid. I then began at the very beginning of +the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and read, in a slow, distinct voice, some +twenty pages, they all the while sitting mute and listening with fixed +attention; by the time I had done nearly an hour had elapsed. I then +rose and said:-- + +“C’est assez pour aujourd’hui, messieurs; demain nous recommencerons, et +j’espere que tout ira bien.” + +With this oracular sentence I bowed, and in company with M. Pelet +quitted the school-room. + +“C’est bien! c’est tres bien!” said my principal as we entered his +parlour. “Je vois que monsieur a de l’adresse; cela, me plait, car, dans +l’instruction, l’adresse fait tout autant que le savoir.” + +From the parlour M. Pelet conducted me to my apartment, my “chambre,” + as Monsieur said with a certain air of complacency. It was a very small +room, with an excessively small bed, but M. Pelet gave me to understand +that I was to occupy it quite alone, which was of course a great +comfort. Yet, though so limited in dimensions, it had two windows. Light +not being taxed in Belgium, the people never grudge its admission into +their houses; just here, however, this observation is not very APROPOS, +for one of these windows was boarded up; the open windows looked into +the boys’ playground. I glanced at the other, as wondering what aspect +it would present if disencumbered of the boards. M. Pelet read, I +suppose, the expression of my eye; he explained:-- + +“La fenetre fermee donne sur un jardin appartenant a un pensionnat +de demoiselles,” said he, “et les convenances exigent--enfin, vous +comprenez--n’est-ce pas, monsieur?” + +“Oui, oui,” was my reply, and I looked of course quite satisfied; but +when M. Pelet had retired and closed the door after him, the first thing +I did was to scrutinize closely the nailed boards, hoping to find +some chink or crevice which I might enlarge, and so get a peep at the +consecrated ground. My researches were vain, for the boards were well +joined and strongly nailed. It is astonishing how disappointed I felt. I +thought it would have been so pleasant to have looked out upon a +garden planted with flowers and trees, so amusing to have watched the +demoiselles at their play; to have studied female character in a variety +of phases, myself the while sheltered from view by a modest muslin +curtain, whereas, owing doubtless to the absurd scruples of some old +duenna of a directress, I had now only the option of looking at a bare +gravelled court, with an enormous “pas de geant” in the middle, and the +monotonous walls and windows of a boys’ school-house round. Not only +then, but many a time after, especially in moments of weariness and +low spirits, did I look with dissatisfied eyes on that most tantalizing +board, longing to tear it away and get a glimpse of the green region +which I imagined to lie beyond. I knew a tree grew close up to the +window, for though there were as yet no leaves to rustle, I often heard +at night the tapping of branches against the panes. In the daytime, +when I listened attentively, I could hear, even through the boards, the +voices of the demoiselles in their hours of recreation, and, to speak +the honest truth, my sentimental reflections were occasionally a trifle +disarranged by the not quite silvery, in fact the too often brazen +sounds, which, rising from the unseen paradise below, penetrated +clamorously into my solitude. Not to mince matters, it really seemed to +me a doubtful case whether the lungs of Mdlle. Reuter’s girls or those +of M. Pelet’s boys were the strongest, and when it came to shrieking +the girls indisputably beat the boys hollow. I forgot to say, by-the-by, +that Reuter was the name of the old lady who had had my window bearded +up. I say old, for such I, of course, concluded her to be, judging from +her cautious, chaperon-like proceedings; besides, nobody ever spoke of +her as young. I remember I was very much amused when I first heard her +Christian name; it was Zoraide--Mademoiselle Zoraide Reuter. But the +continental nations do allow themselves vagaries in the choice of names, +such as we sober English never run into. I think, indeed, we have too +limited a list to choose from. + +Meantime my path was gradually growing smooth before me. I, in a +few weeks, conquered the teasing difficulties inseparable from the +commencement of almost every career. Ere long I had acquired as much +facility in speaking French as set me at my ease with my pupils; and +as I had encountered them on a right footing at the very beginning, and +continued tenaciously to retain the advantage I had early gained, they +never attempted mutiny, which circumstance, all who are in any degree +acquainted with the ongoings of Belgian schools, and who know the +relation in which professors and pupils too frequently stand towards +each other in those establishments, will consider an important and +uncommon one. Before concluding this chapter I will say a word on the +system I pursued with regard to my classes: my experience may possibly +be of use to others. + +It did not require very keen observation to detect the character of the +youth of Brabant, but it needed a certain degree of tact to adopt one’s +measures to their capacity. Their intellectual faculties were generally +weak, their animal propensities strong; thus there was at once an +impotence and a kind of inert force in their natures; they were dull, +but they were also singularly stubborn, heavy as lead and, like lead, +most difficult to move. Such being the case, it would have been truly +absurd to exact from them much in the way of mental exertion; having +short memories, dense intelligence, feeble reflective powers, they +recoiled with repugnance from any occupation that demanded close study +or deep thought. Had the abhorred effort been extorted from them by +injudicious and arbitrary measures on the part of the Professor, they +would have resisted as obstinately, as clamorously, as desperate swine; +and though not brave singly, they were relentless acting EN MASSE. + +I understood that before my arrival in M. Pelet’s establishment, the +combined insubordination of the pupils had effected the dismissal of +more than one English master. It was necessary then to exact only the +most moderate application from natures so little qualified to apply--to +assist, in every practicable way, understandings so opaque and +contracted--to be ever gentle, considerate, yielding even, to a certain +point, with dispositions so irrationally perverse; but, having reached +that culminating point of indulgence, you must fix your foot, plant it, +root it in rock--become immutable as the towers of Ste. Gudule; for a +step--but half a step farther, and you would plunge headlong into the +gulf of imbecility; there lodged, you would speedily receive proofs +of Flemish gratitude and magnanimity in showers of Brabant saliva and +handfuls of Low Country mud. You might smooth to the utmost the path of +learning, remove every pebble from the track; but then you must finally +insist with decision on the pupil taking your arm and allowing himself +to be led quietly along the prepared road. When I had brought down my +lesson to the lowest level of my dullest pupil’s capacity--when I +had shown myself the mildest, the most tolerant of masters--a word of +impertinence, a movement of disobedience, changed me at once into +a despot. I offered then but one alternative--submission and +acknowledgment of error, or ignominious expulsion. This system answered, +and my influence, by degrees, became established on a firm basis. “The +boy is father to the man,” it is said; and so I often thought when +looked at my boys and remembered the political history of their +ancestors. Pelet’s school was merely an epitome of the Belgian nation. + + + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +AND Pelet himself? How did I continue to like him? Oh, extremely well! +Nothing could be more smooth, gentlemanlike, and even friendly, than +his demeanour to me. I had to endure from him neither cold neglect, +irritating interference, nor pretentious assumption of superiority. I +fear, however, two poor, hard-worked Belgian ushers in the establishment +could not have said as much; to them the director’s manner was +invariably dry, stern, and cool. I believe he perceived once or twice +that I was a little shocked at the difference he made between them and +me, and accounted for it by saying, with a quiet sarcastic smile-- + +“Ce ne sont que des Flamands--allez!” + +And then he took his cigar gently from his lips and spat on the painted +floor of the room in which we were sitting. Flamands certainly they +were, and both had the true Flamand physiognomy, where intellectual +inferiority is marked in lines none can mistake; still they were men, +and, in the main, honest men; and I could not see why their being +aboriginals of the flat, dull soil should serve as a pretext for +treating them with perpetual severity and contempt. This idea, of +injustice somewhat poisoned the pleasure I might otherwise have derived +from Pelet’s soft affable manner to myself. Certainly it was agreeable, +when the day’s work was over, to find one’s employer an intelligent +and cheerful companion; and if he was sometimes a little sarcastic +and sometimes a little too insinuating, and if I did discover that +his mildness was more a matter of appearance than of reality--if I did +occasionally suspect the existence of flint or steel under an external +covering of velvet--still we are none of us perfect; and weary as I was +of the atmosphere of brutality and insolence in which I had constantly +lived at X----, I had no inclination now, on casting anchor in calmer +regions, to institute at once a prying search after defects that were +scrupulously withdrawn and carefully veiled from my view. I was willing +to take Pelet for what he seemed--to believe him benevolent and friendly +until some untoward event should prove him otherwise. He was not +married, and I soon perceived he had all a Frenchman’s, all a Parisian’s +notions about matrimony and women. I suspected a degree of laxity in +his code of morals, there was something so cold and BLASE in his tone +whenever he alluded to what he called “le beau sexe;” but he was too +gentlemanlike to intrude topics I did not invite, and as he was really +intelligent and really fond of intellectual subjects of discourse, he +and I always found enough to talk about, without seeking themes in the +mire. I hated his fashion of mentioning love; I abhorred, from my soul, +mere licentiousness. He felt the difference of our notions, and, by +mutual consent, we kept off ground debateable. + +Pelet’s house was kept and his kitchen managed by his mother, a real +old Frenchwoman; she had been handsome--at least she told me so, and I +strove to believe her; she was now ugly, as only continental old women +can be; perhaps, though, her style of dress made her look uglier than +she really was. Indoors she would go about without cap, her grey hair +strangely dishevelled; then, when at home, she seldom wore a gown--only +a shabby cotton camisole; shoes, too, were strangers to her feet, and in +lieu of them she sported roomy slippers, trodden down at the heels. On +the other hand, whenever it was her pleasure to appear abroad, as on +Sundays and fete-days, she would put on some very brilliant-coloured +dress, usually of thin texture, a silk bonnet with a wreath of flowers, +and a very fine shawl. She was not, in the main, an ill-natured old +woman, but an incessant and most indiscreet talker; she kept chiefly +in and about the kitchen, and seemed rather to avoid her son’s august +presence; of him, indeed, she evidently stood in awe. When he reproved +her, his reproofs were bitter and unsparing; but he seldom gave himself +that trouble. + +Madame Pelet had her own society, her own circle of chosen visitors, +whom, however, I seldom saw, as she generally entertained them in what +she called her “cabinet,” a small den of a place adjoining the kitchen, +and descending into it by one or two steps. On these steps, by-the-by, +I have not unfrequently seen Madame Pelet seated with a trencher on +her knee, engaged in the threefold employment of eating her dinner, +gossiping with her favourite servant, the housemaid, and scolding her +antagonist, the cook; she never dined, and seldom indeed took any meal +with her son; and as to showing her face at the boys’ table, that was +quite out of the question. These details will sound very odd in English +ears, but Belgium is not England, and its ways are not our ways. + +Madame Pelet’s habits of life, then, being taken into consideration, +I was a good deal surprised when, one Thursday evening (Thursday was +always a half-holiday), as I was sitting all alone in my apartment, +correcting a huge pile of English and Latin exercises, a servant +tapped at the door, and, on its being opened, presented Madame Pelet’s +compliments, and she would be happy to see me to take my “gouter” (a +meal which answers to our English “tea”) with her in the dining-room. + +“Plait-il?” said I, for I thought I must have misunderstood, the +message and invitation were so unusual; the same words were repeated. I +accepted, of course, and as I descended the stairs, I wondered what +whim had entered the old lady’s brain; her son was out--gone to pass the +evening at the Salle of the Grande Harmonie or some other club of which +he was a member. Just as I laid my hand on the handle of the dining-room +door, a queer idea glanced across my mind. + +“Surely she’s not going to make love to me,” said I. “I’ve heard of +old Frenchwomen doing odd things in that line; and the gouter? They +generally begin such affairs with eating and drinking, I believe.” + +There was a fearful dismay in this suggestion of my excited imagination, +and if I had allowed myself time to dwell upon it, I should no doubt +have cut there and then, rushed back to my chamber, and bolted myself +in; but whenever a danger or a horror is veiled with uncertainty, +the primary wish of the mind is to ascertain first the naked truth, +reserving the expedient of flight for the moment when its dread +anticipation shall be realized. I turned the door-handle, and in an +instant had crossed the fatal threshold, closed the door behind me, and +stood in the presence of Madame Pelet. + +Gracious heavens! The first view of her seemed to confirm my worst +apprehensions. There she sat, dressed out in a light green muslin gown, +on her head a lace cap with flourishing red roses in the frill; her +table was carefully spread; there were fruit, cakes, and coffee, with a +bottle of something--I did not know what. Already the cold sweat started +on my brow, already I glanced back over my shoulder at the closed +door, when, to my unspeakable relief, my eye, wandering mildly in the +direction of the stove, rested upon a second figure, seated in a large +fauteuil beside it. This was a woman, too, and, moreover, an old woman, +and as fat and as rubicund as Madame Pelet was meagre and yellow; her +attire was likewise very fine, and spring flowers of different hues +circled in a bright wreath the crown of her violet-coloured velvet +bonnet. + +I had only time to make these general observations when Madame Pelet, +coming forward with what she intended should be a graceful and elastic +step, thus accosted me: + +“Monsieur is indeed most obliging to quit his books, his studies, at the +request of an insignificant person like me--will Monsieur complete his +kindness by allowing me to present him to my dear friend Madame Reuter, +who resides in the neighbouring house--the young ladies’ school.” + +“Ah!” thought I, “I knew she was old,” and I bowed and took my seat. +Madame Reuter placed herself at the table opposite to me. + +“How do you like Belgium, Monsieur?” asked she, in an accent of the +broadest Bruxellois. I could now well distinguish the difference between +the fine and pure Parisian utterance of M. Pelet, for instance, and +the guttural enunciation of the Flamands. I answered politely, and then +wondered how so coarse and clumsy an old woman as the one before me +should be at the head of a ladies’ seminary, which I had always heard +spoken of in terms of high commendation. In truth there was something +to wonder at. Madame Reuter looked more like a joyous, free-living old +Flemish fermiere, or even a maitresse d’auberge, than a staid, grave, +rigid directrice de pensionnat. In general the continental, or at least +the Belgian old women permit themselves a licence of manners, speech, +and aspect, such as our venerable granddames would recoil from as +absolutely disreputable, and Madame Reuter’s jolly face bore evidence +that she was no exception to the rule of her country; there was a +twinkle and leer in her left eye; her right she kept habitually half +shut, which I thought very odd indeed. After several vain attempts to +comprehend the motives of these two droll old creatures for inviting me +to join them at their gouter, I at last fairly gave it up, and resigning +myself to inevitable mystification, I sat and looked first at one, then +at the other, taking care meantime to do justice to the confitures, +cakes, and coffee, with which they amply supplied me. They, too, ate, +and that with no delicate appetite, and having demolished a large +portion of the solids, they proposed a “petit verre.” I declined. Not +so Mesdames Pelet and Reuter; each mixed herself what I thought rather +a stiff tumbler of punch, and placing it on a stand near the stove, they +drew up their chairs to that convenience, and invited me to do the same. +I obeyed; and being seated fairly between them, I was thus addressed +first by Madame Pelet, then by Madame Reuter. + +“We will now speak of business,” said Madame Pelet, and she went on to +make an elaborate speech, which, being interpreted, was to the effect +that she had asked for the pleasure of my company that evening in +order to give her friend Madame Reuter an opportunity of broaching an +important proposal, which might turn out greatly to my advantage. + +“Pourvu que vous soyez sage,” said Madame Reuter, “et a vrai dire, +vous en avez bien l’air. Take one drop of the punch” (or ponche, as she +pronounced it); “it is an agreeable and wholesome beverage after a full +meal.” + +I bowed, but again declined it. She went on: + +“I feel,” said she, after a solemn sip--“I feel profoundly the +importance of the commission with which my dear daughter has entrusted +me, for you are aware, Monsieur, that it is my daughter who directs the +establishment in the next house?” + +“Ah! I thought it was yourself, madame.” Though, indeed, at that moment +I recollected that it was called Mademoiselle, not Madame Reuter’s +pensionnat. + +“I! Oh, no! I manage the house and look after the servants, as my friend +Madame Pelet does for Monsieur her son--nothing more. Ah! you thought I +gave lessons in class--did you?” + +And she laughed loud and long, as though the idea tickled her fancy +amazingly. + +“Madame is in the wrong to laugh,” I observed; “if she does not give +lessons, I am sure it is not because she cannot;” and I whipped out a +white pocket-handkerchief and wafted it, with a French grace, past my +nose, bowing at the same time. + +“Quel charmant jeune homme!” murmured Madame Pelet in a low voice. +Madame Reuter, being less sentimental, as she was Flamand and not +French, only laughed again. + +“You are a dangerous person, I fear,” said she; “if you can forge +compliments at that rate, Zoraide will positively be afraid of you; but +if you are good, I will keep your secret, and not tell her how well you +can flatter. Now, listen what sort of a proposal she makes to you. She +has heard that you are an excellent professor, and as she wishes to get +the very best masters for her school (car Zoraide fait tout comme une +reine, c’est une veritable maitresse-femme), she has commissioned me to +step over this afternoon, and sound Madame Pelet as to the possibility +of engaging you. Zoraide is a wary general; she never advances without +first examining well her ground. I don’t think she would be pleased +if she knew I had already disclosed her intentions to you; she did not +order me to go so far, but I thought there would be no harm in letting +you into the secret, and Madame Pelet was of the same opinion. Take +care, however, you don’t betray either of us to Zoraide--to my +daughter, I mean; she is so discreet and circumspect herself, she cannot +understand that one should find a pleasure in gossiping a little--” + +“C’est absolument comme mon fils!” cried Madame Pelet. + +“All the world is so changed since our girlhood!” rejoined the other: +“young people have such old heads now. But to return, Monsieur. Madame +Pelet will mention the subject of your giving lessons in my daughter’s +establishment to her son, and he will speak to you; and then to-morrow, +you will step over to our house, and ask to see my daughter, and you +will introduce the subject as if the first intimation of it had reached +you from M. Pelet himself, and be sure you never mention my name, for I +would not displease Zoraide on any account.” + +“Bien! bien!” interrupted I--for all this chatter and circumlocution +began to bore me very much; “I will consult M. Pelet, and the thing +shall be settled as you desire. Good evening, mesdames--I am infinitely +obliged to you.” + +“Comment! vous vous en allez deja?” exclaimed Madame Pelet. + +“Prenez encore quelquechose, monsieur; une pomme cuite, des biscuits, +encore une tasse de cafe?” + +“Merci, merci, madame--au revoir.” And I backed at last out of the +apartment. + +Having regained my own room, I set myself to turn over in my mind +the incident of the evening. It seemed a queer affair altogether, and +queerly managed; the two old women had made quite a little intricate +mess of it; still I found that the uppermost feeling in my mind on the +subject was one of satisfaction. In the first place it would be a change +to give lessons in another seminary, and then to teach young ladies +would be an occupation so interesting--to be admitted at all into a +ladies’ boarding-school would be an incident so new in my life. Besides, +thought I, as I glanced at the boarded window, “I shall now at last see +the mysterious garden: I shall gaze both on the angels and their Eden.” + + + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +M. PELET could not of course object to the proposal made by Mdlle. +Reuter; permission to accept such additional employment, should it +offer, having formed an article of the terms on which he had engaged me. +It was, therefore, arranged in the course of next day that I should +be at liberty to give lessons in Mdlle. Reuter’s establishment four +afternoons in every week. + +When evening came I prepared to step over in order to seek a conference +with Mademoiselle herself on the subject; I had not had time to pay the +visit before, having been all day closely occupied in class. I remember +very well that before quitting my chamber, I held a brief debate with +myself as to whether I should change my ordinary attire for something +smarter. At last I concluded it would be a waste of labour. “Doubtless,” + thought I, “she is some stiff old maid; for though the daughter of +Madame Reuter, she may well number upwards of forty winters; besides, if +it were otherwise, if she be both young and pretty, I am not handsome, +and no dressing can make me so, therefore I’ll go as I am.” And off +I started, cursorily glancing sideways as I passed the toilet-table, +surmounted by a looking-glass: a thin irregular face I saw, with sunk, +dark eyes under a large, square forehead, complexion destitute of bloom +or attraction; something young, but not youthful, no object to win a +lady’s love, no butt for the shafts of Cupid. + +I was soon at the entrance of the pensionnat, in a moment I had pulled +the bell; in another moment the door was opened, and within appeared a +passage paved alternately with black and white marble; the walls were +painted in imitation of marble also; and at the far end opened a glass +door, through which I saw shrubs and a grass-plat, looking pleasant in +the sunshine of the mild spring evening--for it was now the middle of +April. + +This, then, was my first glimpse of the garden; but I had not time to +look long, the portress, after having answered in the affirmative +my question as to whether her mistress was at home, opened the +folding-doors of a room to the left, and having ushered me in, closed +them behind me. I found myself in a salon with a very well-painted, +highly varnished floor; chairs and sofas covered with white draperies, +a green porcelain stove, walls hung with pictures in gilt frames, a gilt +pendule and other ornaments on the mantelpiece, a large lustre pendent +from the centre of the ceiling, mirrors, consoles, muslin curtains, and +a handsome centre table completed the inventory of furniture. All looked +extremely clean and glittering, but the general effect would have been +somewhat chilling had not a second large pair of folding-doors, standing +wide open, and disclosing another and smaller salon, more snugly +furnished, offered some relief to the eye. This room was carpeted, and +therein was a piano, a couch, a chiffonniere--above all, it contained +a lofty window with a crimson curtain, which, being undrawn, afforded +another glimpse of the garden, through the large, clear panes, round +which some leaves of ivy, some tendrils of vine were trained. + +“Monsieur Creemsvort, n’est ce pas?” said a voice behind me; and, +starting involuntarily, I turned. I had been so taken up with the +contemplation of the pretty little salon that I had not noticed the +entrance of a person into the larger room. It was, however, Mdlle. +Reuter who now addressed me, and stood close beside me; and when I had +bowed with instantaneously recovered sang-froid--for I am not easily +embarrassed--I commenced the conversation by remarking on the pleasant +aspect of her little cabinet, and the advantage she had over M. Pelet in +possessing a garden. + +“Yes,” she said, “she often thought so;” and added, “it is my garden, +monsieur, which makes me retain this house, otherwise I should probably +have removed to larger and more commodious premises long since; but you +see I could not take my garden with me, and I should scarcely find one +so large and pleasant anywhere else in town.” + +I approved her judgment. + +“But you have not seen it yet,” said she, rising; “come to the window +and take a better view.” I followed her; she opened the sash, and +leaning out I saw in full the enclosed demesne which had hitherto been +to me an unknown region. It was a long, not very broad strip of cultured +ground, with an alley bordered by enormous old fruit trees down the +middle; there was a sort of lawn, a parterre of rose-trees, some +flower-borders, and, on the far side, a thickly planted copse of lilacs, +laburnums, and acacias. It looked pleasant, to me--very pleasant, so +long a time had elapsed since I had seen a garden of any sort. But it +was not only on Mdlle. Reuter’s garden that my eyes dwelt; when I had +taken a view of her well-trimmed beds and budding shrubberies, I allowed +my glance to come back to herself, nor did I hastily withdraw it. + +I had thought to see a tall, meagre, yellow, conventual image in black, +with a close white cap, bandaged under the chin like a nun’s head-gear; +whereas, there stood by me a little and roundly formed woman, who might +indeed be older than I, but was still young; she could not, I thought, +be more than six or seven and twenty; she was as fair as a fair +Englishwoman; she had no cap; her hair was nut-brown, and she wore it +in curls; pretty her features were not, nor very soft, nor very regular, +but neither were they in any degree plain, and I already saw cause +to deem them expressive. What was their predominant cast? Was it +sagacity?--sense? Yes, I thought so; but I could scarcely as yet be +sure. I discovered, however, that there was a certain serenity of eye, +and freshness of complexion, most pleasing to behold. The colour on her +cheek was like the bloom on a good apple, which is as sound at the core +as it is red on the rind. + +Mdlle. Reuter and I entered upon business. She said she was not +absolutely certain of the wisdom of the step she was about to take, +because I was so young, and parents might possibly object to a professor +like me for their daughters: “But it is often well to act on one’s own +judgment,” said she, “and to lead parents, rather than be led by them. +The fitness of a professor is not a matter of age; and, from what I have +heard, and from what I observe myself, I would much rather trust you +than M. Ledru, the music-master, who is a married man of near fifty.” + +I remarked that I hoped she would find me worthy of her good opinion; +that if I knew myself, I was incapable of betraying any confidence +reposed in me. “Du reste,” said she, “the surveillance will be strictly +attended to.” And then she proceeded to discuss the subject of terms. +She was very cautious, quite on her guard; she did not absolutely +bargain, but she warily sounded me to find out what my expectations +might be; and when she could not get me to name a sum, she reasoned and +reasoned with a fluent yet quiet circumlocution of speech, and at last +nailed me down to five hundred francs per annum--not too much, but I +agreed. Before the negotiation was completed, it began to grow a little +dusk. I did not hasten it, for I liked well enough to sit and hear +her talk; I was amused with the sort of business talent she displayed. +Edward could not have shown himself more practical, though he might have +evinced more coarseness and urgency; and then she had so many reasons, +so many explanations; and, after all, she succeeded in proving herself +quite disinterested and even liberal. At last she concluded, she could +say no more, because, as I acquiesced in all things, there was no +further ground for the exercise of her parts of speech. I was obliged to +rise. I would rather have sat a little longer; what had I to return to +but my small empty room? And my eyes had a pleasure in looking at +Mdlle. Reuter, especially now, when the twilight softened her features a +little, and, in the doubtful dusk, I could fancy her forehead as open +as it was really elevated, her mouth touched with turns of sweetness +as well as defined in lines of sense. When I rose to go, I held out +my hand, on purpose, though I knew it was contrary to the etiquette of +foreign habits; she smiled, and said-- + +“Ah! c’est comme tous les Anglais,” but gave me her hand very kindly. + +“It is the privilege of my country, Mademoiselle,” said I; “and, +remember, I shall always claim it.” + +She laughed a little, quite good-naturedly, and with the sort of +tranquillity obvious in all she did--a tranquillity which soothed and +suited me singularly, at least I thought so that evening. Brussels +seemed a very pleasant place to me when I got out again into the street, +and it appeared as if some cheerful, eventful, upward-tending career +were even then opening to me, on that selfsame mild, still April night. +So impressionable a being is man, or at least such a man as I was in +those days. + + + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +NEXT day the morning hours seemed to pass very slowly at M. Pelet’s; I +wanted the afternoon to come that I might go again to the neighbouring +pensionnat and give my first lesson within its pleasant precincts; for +pleasant they appeared to me. At noon the hour of recreation arrived; at +one o’clock we had lunch; this got on the time, and at last St. Gudule’s +deep bell, tolling slowly two, marked the moment for which I had been +waiting. + +At the foot of the narrow back-stairs that descended from my room, I met +M. Pelet. + +“Comme vous avez l’air rayonnant!” said he. “Je ne vous ai jamais vu +aussi gai. Que s’est-il donc passe?” + +“Apparemment que j’aime les changements,” replied I. + +“Ah! je comprends--c’est cela--soyez sage seulement. Vous etes bien +jeune--trop jeune pour le role que vous allez jouer; il faut prendre +garde--savez-vous?” + +“Mais quel danger y a-t-il?” + +“Je n’en sais rien--ne vous laissez pas aller a de vives +impressions--voila tout.” + +I laughed: a sentiment of exquisite pleasure played over my nerves at +the thought that “vives impressions” were likely to be created; it was +the deadness, the sameness of life’s daily ongoings that had hitherto +been my bane; my blouse-clad “eleves” in the boys’ seminary never +stirred in me any “vives impressions” except it might be occasionally +some of anger. I broke from M. Pelet, and as I strode down the passage +he followed me with one of his laughs--a very French, rakish, mocking +sound. + +Again I stood at the neighbouring door, and soon was re-admitted into +the cheerful passage with its clear dove-colour imitation marble walls. +I followed the portress, and descending a step, and making a turn, I +found myself in a sort of corridor; a side-door opened, Mdlle. Reuter’s +little figure, as graceful as it was plump, appeared. I could now see +her dress in full daylight; a neat, simple mousseline-laine gown fitted +her compact round shape to perfection--delicate little collar and +manchettes of lace, trim Parisian brodequins showed her neck, wrists, +and feet, to complete advantage; but how grave was her face as she +came suddenly upon me! Solicitude and business were in her eye--on her +forehead; she looked almost stern. Her “Bon jour, monsieur,” was quite +polite, but so orderly, so commonplace, it spread directly a cool, damp +towel over my “vives impressions.” The servant turned back when her +mistress appeared, and I walked slowly along the corridor, side by side +with Mdlle. Reuter. + +“Monsieur will give a lesson in the first class to-day,” said she; +“dictation or reading will perhaps be the best thing to begin with, for +those are the easiest forms of communicating instruction in a foreign +language; and, at the first, a master naturally feels a little +unsettled.” + +She was quite right, as I had found from experience; it only remained +for me to acquiesce. We proceeded now in silence. The corridor +terminated in a hall, large, lofty, and square; a glass door on one side +showed within a long narrow refectory, with tables, an armoire, and +two lamps; it was empty; large glass doors, in front, opened on the +playground and garden; a broad staircase ascended spirally on the +opposite side; the remaining wall showed a pair of great folding-doors, +now closed, and admitting, doubtless, to the classes. + +Mdlle. Reuter turned her eye laterally on me, to ascertain, probably, +whether I was collected enough to be ushered into her sanctum sanctorum. +I suppose she judged me to be in a tolerable state of self-government, +for she opened the door, and I followed her through. A rustling sound of +uprising greeted our entrance; without looking to the right or left, I +walked straight up the lane between two sets of benches and desks, +and took possession of the empty chair and isolated desk raised on an +estrade, of one step high, so as to command one division; the other +division being under the surveillance of a maitresse similarly elevated. +At the back of the estrade, and attached to a moveable partition +dividing this schoolroom from another beyond, was a large tableau of +wood painted black and varnished; a thick crayon of white chalk lay on +my desk for the convenience of elucidating any grammatical or verbal +obscurity which might occur in my lessons by writing it upon the +tableau; a wet sponge appeared beside the chalk, to enable me to efface +the marks when they had served the purpose intended. + +I carefully and deliberately made these observations before allowing +myself to take one glance at the benches before me; having handled the +crayon, looked back at the tableau, fingered the sponge in order to +ascertain that it was in a right state of moisture, I found myself cool +enough to admit of looking calmly up and gazing deliberately round me. + +And first I observed that Mdlle. Reuter had already glided away, she +was nowhere visible; a maitresse or teacher, the one who occupied the +corresponding estrade to my own, alone remained to keep guard over me; +she was a little in the shade, and, with my short sight, I could only +see that she was of a thin bony figure and rather tallowy complexion, +and that her attitude, as she sat, partook equally of listlessness and +affectation. More obvious, more prominent, shone on by the full light of +the large window, were the occupants of the benches just before me, of +whom some were girls of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, some young women +from eighteen (as it appeared to me) up to twenty; the most modest +attire, the simplest fashion of wearing the hair, were apparent in all; +and good features, ruddy, blooming complexions, large and brilliant +eyes, forms full, even to solidity, seemed to abound. I did not bear +the first view like a stoic; I was dazzled, my eyes fell, and in a voice +somewhat too low I murmured-- + +“Prenez vos cahiers de dictee, mesdemoiselles.” + +Not so had I bid the boys at Pelet’s take their reading-books. A +rustle followed, and an opening of desks; behind the lifted lids which +momentarily screened the heads bent down to search for exercise-books, I +heard tittering and whispers. + +“Eulalie, je suis prete a pleuer de rire,” observed one. + +“Comme il a rougi en parlant!” + +“Oui, c’est un veritable blanc-bec.” + +“Tais-toi, Hortense--il nous ecoute.” + +And now the lids sank and the heads reappeared; I had marked three, the +whisperers, and I did not scruple to take a very steady look at them as +they emerged from their temporary eclipse. It is astonishing what ease +and courage their little phrases of flippancy had given me; the idea by +which I had been awed was that the youthful beings before me, with their +dark nun-like robes and softly braided hair, were a kind of half-angels. +The light titter, the giddy whisper, had already in some measure +relieved my mind of that fond and oppressive fancy. + +The three I allude to were just in front, within half a yard of my +estrade, and were among the most womanly-looking present. Their names +I knew afterwards, and may as well mention now; they were Eulalie, +Hortense, Caroline. Eulalie was tall, and very finely shaped: she was +fair, and her features were those of a Low Country Madonna; many a +“figure de Vierge” have I seen in Dutch pictures exactly resembling +hers; there were no angles in her shape or in her face, all was curve +and roundness--neither thought, sentiment, nor passion disturbed by line +or flush the equality of her pale, clear skin; her noble bust heaved +with her regular breathing, her eyes moved a little--by these evidences +of life alone could I have distinguished her from some large handsome +figure moulded in wax. Hortense was of middle size and stout, her +form was ungraceful, her face striking, more alive and brilliant than +Eulalie’s, her hair was dark brown, her complexion richly coloured; +there were frolic and mischief in her eye: consistency and good sense +she might possess, but none of her features betokened those qualities. + +Caroline was little, though evidently full grown; raven-black hair, +very dark eyes, absolutely regular features, with a colourless olive +complexion, clear as to the face and sallow about the neck, formed in +her that assemblage of points whose union many persons regard as the +perfection of beauty. How, with the tintless pallor of her skin and the +classic straightness of her lineaments, she managed to look sensual, I +don’t know. I think her lips and eyes contrived the affair between +them, and the result left no uncertainty on the beholder’s mind. She was +sensual now, and in ten years’ time she would be coarse--promise plain +was written in her face of much future folly. + +If I looked at these girls with little scruple, they looked at me +with still less. Eulalie raised her unmoved eye to mine, and seemed to +expect, passively but securely, an impromptu tribute to her majestic +charms. Hortense regarded me boldly, and giggled at the same time, while +she said, with an air of impudent freedom-- + +“Dictez-nous quelquechose de facile pour commencer, monsieur.” + +Caroline shook her loose ringlets of abundant but somewhat coarse hair +over her rolling black eyes; parting her lips, as full as those of a +hot-blooded Maroon, she showed her well-set teeth sparkling between +them, and treated me at the same time to a smile “de sa facon.” + Beautiful as Pauline Borghese, she looked at the moment scarcely purer +than Lucrece de Borgia. Caroline was of noble family. I heard her +lady-mother’s character afterwards, and then I ceased to wonder at the +precocious accomplishments of the daughter. These three, I at once saw, +deemed themselves the queens of the school, and conceived that by their +splendour they threw all the rest into the shade. In less than five +minutes they had thus revealed to me their characters, and in less than +five minutes I had buckled on a breast-plate of steely indifference, and +let down a visor of impassible austerity. + +“Take your pens and commence writing,” said I, in as dry and trite a +voice as if I had been addressing only Jules Vanderkelkov and Co. + +The dictee now commenced. My three belles interrupted me perpetually +with little silly questions and uncalled-for remarks, to some of which I +made no answer, and to others replied very quietly and briefly. “Comment +dit-on point et virgule en Anglais, monsieur?” + +“Semi-colon, mademoiselle.” + +“Semi-collong? Ah, comme c’est drole!” (giggle.) + +“J’ai une si mauvaise plume--impossible d’ecrire!” + +“Mais, monsieur--je ne sais pas suivre--vous allez si vite.” + +“Je n’ai rien compris, moi!” + +Here a general murmur arose, and the teacher, opening her lips for the +first time, ejaculated-- + +“Silence, mesdemoiselles!” + +No silence followed--on the contrary, the three ladies in front began to +talk more loudly. + +“C’est si difficile, l’Anglais!” + +“Je deteste la dictee.” + +“Quel ennui d’ecrire quelquechose que l’on ne comprend pas!” + +Some of those behind laughed: a degree of confusion began to pervade the +class; it was necessary to take prompt measures. + +“Donnez-moi votre cahier,” said I to Eulalie in an abrupt tone; and +bending over, I took it before she had time to give it. + +“Et vous, mademoiselle--donnez-moi le votre,” continued I, more mildly, +addressing a little pale, plain looking girl who sat in the first row of +the other division, and whom I had remarked as being at once the ugliest +and the most attentive in the room; she rose up, walked over to me, and +delivered her book with a grave, modest curtsey. I glanced over the +two dictations; Eulalie’s was slurred, blotted, and full of silly +mistakes--Sylvie’s (such was the name of the ugly little girl) was +clearly written, it contained no error against sense, and but few +faults of orthography. I coolly read aloud both exercises, marking the +faults--then I looked at Eulalie: + +“C’est honteux!” said I, and I deliberately tore her dictation in four +parts, and presented her with the fragments. I returned Sylvie her book +with a smile, saying-- + +“C’est bien--je suis content de vous.” + +Sylvie looked calmly pleased, Eulalie swelled like an incensed turkey, +but the mutiny was quelled: the conceited coquetry and futile flirtation +of the first bench were exchanged for a taciturn sullenness, much more +convenient to me, and the rest of my lesson passed without interruption. + +A bell clanging out in the yard announced the moment for the cessation +of school labours. I heard our own bell at the same time, and that of a +certain public college immediately after. Order dissolved instantly; up +started every pupil, I hastened to seize my hat, bow to the maitresse, +and quit the room before the tide of externats should pour from the +inner class, where I knew near a hundred were prisoned, and whose rising +tumult I already heard. + +I had scarcely crossed the hall and gained the corridor, when Mdlle. +Reuter came again upon me. + +“Step in here a moment,” said she, and she held open the door of +the side room from whence she had issued on my arrival; it was a +SALLE-A-MANGER, as appeared from the beaufet and the armoire vitree, +filled with glass and china, which formed part of its furniture. Ere she +had closed the door on me and herself, the corridor was already filled +with day-pupils, tearing down their cloaks, bonnets, and cabas from +the wooden pegs on which they were suspended; the shrill voice of a +maitresse was heard at intervals vainly endeavouring to enforce some +sort of order; vainly, I say: discipline there was none in these rough +ranks, and yet this was considered one of the best-conducted schools in +Brussels. + +“Well, you have given your first lesson,” began Mdlle. Reuter in the +most calm, equable voice, as though quite unconscious of the chaos from +which we were separated only by a single wall. + +“Were you satisfied with your pupils, or did any circumstance in their +conduct give you cause for complaint? Conceal nothing from me, repose in +me entire confidence.” + +Happily, I felt in myself complete power to manage my pupils without +aid; the enchantment, the golden haze which had dazzled my perspicuity +at first, had been a good deal dissipated. I cannot say I was chagrined +or downcast by the contrast which the reality of a pensionnat de +demoiselles presented to my vague ideal of the same community; I was +only enlightened and amused; consequently, I felt in no disposition to +complain to Mdlle. Reuter, and I received her considerate invitation to +confidence with a smile. + +“A thousand thanks, mademoiselle, all has gone very smoothly.” + +She looked more than doubtful. + +“Et les trois demoiselles du premier banc?” said she. + +“Ah! tout va au mieux!” was my answer, and Mdlle. Reuter ceased to +question me; but her eye--not large, not brilliant, not melting, or +kindling, but astute, penetrating, practical, showed she was even with +me; it let out a momentary gleam, which said plainly, “Be as close as +you like, I am not dependent on your candour; what you would conceal I +already know.” + +By a transition so quiet as to be scarcely perceptible, the directress’s +manner changed; the anxious business-air passed from her face, and she +began chatting about the weather and the town, and asking in neighbourly +wise after M. and Madame Pelet. I answered all her little questions; she +prolonged her talk, I went on following its many little windings; she +sat so long, said so much, varied so often the topics of discourse, +that it was not difficult to perceive she had a particular aim in thus +detaining me. Her mere words could have afforded no clue to this +aim, but her countenance aided; while her lips uttered only affable +commonplaces, her eyes reverted continually to my face. Her glances were +not given in full, but out of the corners, so quietly, so stealthily, +yet I think I lost not one. I watched her as keenly as she watched me; +I perceived soon that she was feeling after my real character; she was +searching for salient points, and weak points, and eccentric points; +she was applying now this test, now that, hoping in the end to find some +chink, some niche, where she could put in her little firm foot and stand +upon my neck--mistress of my nature. Do not mistake me, reader, it was +no amorous influence she wished to gain--at that time it was only the +power of the politician to which she aspired; I was now installed as a +professor in her establishment, and she wanted to know where her mind +was superior to mine--by what feeling or opinion she could lead me. + +I enjoyed the game much, and did not hasten its conclusion; sometimes I +gave her hopes, beginning a sentence rather weakly, when her shrewd eye +would light up--she thought she had me; having led her a little way, I +delighted to turn round and finish with sound, hard sense, whereat her +countenance would fall. At last a servant entered to announce dinner; +the conflict being thus necessarily terminated, we parted without having +gained any advantage on either side: Mdlle. Reuter had not even given +me an opportunity of attacking her with feeling, and I had managed to +baffle her little schemes of craft. It was a regular drawn battle. I +again held out my hand when I left the room, she gave me hers; it was a +small and white hand, but how cool! I met her eye too in full--obliging +her to give me a straightforward look; this last test went against +me: it left her as it found her--moderate, temperate, tranquil; me it +disappointed. + +“I am growing wiser,” thought I, as I walked back to M. Pelet’s. “Look +at this little woman; is she like the women of novelists and romancers? +To read of female character as depicted in Poetry and Fiction, one would +think it was made up of sentiment, either for good or bad--here is +a specimen, and a most sensible and respectable specimen, too, whose +staple ingredient is abstract reason. No Talleyrand was ever more +passionless than Zoraide Reuter!” So I thought then; I found +afterwards that blunt susceptibilities are very consistent with strong +propensities. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +I HAD indeed had a very long talk with the crafty little politician, and +on regaining my quarters, I found that dinner was half over. To be late +at meals was against a standing rule of the establishment, and had it +been one of the Flemish ushers who thus entered after the removal of the +soup and the commencement of the first course, M. Pelet would probably +have greeted him with a public rebuke, and would certainly have mulcted +him both of soup and fish; as it was, that polite though partial +gentleman only shook his head, and as I took my place, unrolled my +napkin, and said my heretical grace to myself, he civilly despatched a +servant to the kitchen, to bring me a plate of “puree aux carottes” + (for this was a maigre-day), and before sending away the first course, +reserved for me a portion of the stock-fish of which it consisted. +Dinner being over, the boys rushed out for their evening play; Kint and +Vandam (the two ushers) of course followed them. Poor fellows! if they +had not looked so very heavy, so very soulless, so very indifferent to +all things in heaven above or in the earth beneath, I could have pitied +them greatly for the obligation they were under to trail after those +rough lads everywhere and at all times; even as it was, I felt disposed +to scout myself as a privileged prig when I turned to ascend to my +chamber, sure to find there, if not enjoyment, at least liberty; but +this evening (as had often happened before) I was to be still farther +distinguished. + +“Eh bien, mauvais sujet!” said the voice of M. Pelet behind me, as I +set my foot on the first step of the stair, “ou allez-vous? Venez a la +salle-a-manger, que je vous gronde un peu.” + +“I beg pardon, monsieur,” said I, as I followed him to his private +sitting-room, “for having returned so late--it was not my fault.” + +“That is just what I want to know,” rejoined M. Pelet, as he ushered me +into the comfortable parlour with a good wood-fire--for the stove had +now been removed for the season. Having rung the bell he ordered “Coffee +for two,” and presently he and I were seated, almost in English comfort, +one on each side of the hearth, a little round table between us, with +a coffee-pot, a sugar-basin, and two large white china cups. While +M. Pelet employed himself in choosing a cigar from a box, my thoughts +reverted to the two outcast ushers, whose voices I could hear even now +crying hoarsely for order in the playground. + +“C’est une grande responsabilite, que la surveillance,” observed I. + +“Plait-il?” dit M. Pelet. + +I remarked that I thought Messieurs Vandam and Kint must sometimes be a +little fatigued with their labours. + +“Des betes de somme,--des betes de somme,” murmured scornfully the +director. Meantime I offered him his cup of coffee. + +“Servez-vous mon garcon,” said he blandly, when I had put a couple of +huge lumps of continental sugar into his cup. “And now tell me why you +stayed so long at Mdlle. Reuter’s. I know that lessons conclude, in her +establishment as in mine, at four o’clock, and when you returned it was +past five.” + +“Mdlle. wished to speak with me, monsieur.” + +“Indeed! on what subject? if one may ask.” + +“Mademoiselle talked about nothing, monsieur.” + +“A fertile topic! and did she discourse thereon in the schoolroom, +before the pupils?” + +“No; like you, monsieur, she asked me to walk into her parlour.” + +“And Madame Reuter--the old duenna--my mother’s gossip, was there, of +course?” + +“No, monsieur; I had the honour of being quite alone with mademoiselle.” + +“C’est joli--cela,” observed M. Pelet, and he smiled and looked into the +fire. + +“Honi soit qui mal y pense,” murmured I, significantly. + +“Je connais un peu ma petite voisine--voyez-vous.” + +“In that case, monsieur will be able to aid me in finding out what was +mademoiselle’s reason for making me sit before her sofa one mortal hour, +listening to the most copious and fluent dissertation on the merest +frivolities.” + +“She was sounding your character.” + +“I thought so, monsieur.” + +“Did she find out your weak point?” + +“What is my weak point?” + +“Why, the sentimental. Any woman sinking her shaft deep enough, will +at last reach a fathomless spring of sensibility in thy breast, +Crimsworth.” + +I felt the blood stir about my heart and rise warm to my cheek. + +“Some women might, monsieur.” + +“Is Mdlle. Reuter of the number? Come, speak frankly, mon fils; elle est +encore jeune, plus agee que toi peut-etre, mais juste assey pour unir +la tendresse d’une petite maman a l’amour d’une epouse devouee; n’est-ce +pas que cela t’irait superieurement?” + +“No, monsieur; I should like my wife to be my wife, and not half my +mother.” + +“She is then a little too old for you?” + +“No, monsieur, not a day too old if she suited me in other things.” + +“In what does she not suit you, William? She is personally agreeable, is +she not?” + +“Very; her hair and complexion are just what I admire; and her turn of +form, though quite Belgian, is full of grace.” + +“Bravo! and her face? her features? How do you like them?” + +“A little harsh, especially her mouth.” + +“Ah, yes! her mouth,” said M. Pelet, and he chuckled inwardly. “There is +character about her mouth--firmness--but she has a very pleasant smile; +don’t you think so?” + +“Rather crafty.” + +“True, but that expression of craft is owing to her eyebrows; have you +remarked her eyebrows?” + +I answered that I had not. + +“You have not seen her looking down then?” said he. + +“No.” + +“It is a treat, notwithstanding. Observe her when she has some knitting, +or some other woman’s work in hand, and sits the image of peace, calmly +intent on her needles and her silk, some discussion meantime going on +around her, in the course of which peculiarities of character are being +developed, or important interests canvassed; she takes no part in it; +her humble, feminine mind is wholly with her knitting; none of her +features move; she neither presumes to smile approval, nor frown +disapprobation; her little hands assiduously ply their unpretending +task; if she can only get this purse finished, or this bonnet-grec +completed, it is enough for her. If gentlemen approach her chair, a +deeper quiescence, a meeker modesty settles on her features, and clothes +her general mien; observe then her eyebrows, et dites-moi s’il n’y a pas +du chat dans l’un et du renard dans l’autre.” + +“I will take careful notice the first opportunity,” said I. + +“And then,” continued M. Pelet, “the eyelid will flicker, the +light-coloured lashes be lifted a second, and a blue eye, glancing out +from under the screen, will take its brief, sly, searching survey, and +retreat again.” + +I smiled, and so did Pelet, and after a few minutes’ silence, I asked: + +“Will she ever marry, do you think?” + +“Marry! Will birds pair? Of course it is both her intention and +resolution to marry when she finds a suitable match, and no one is +better aware than herself of the sort of impression she is capable +of producing; no one likes better to captivate in a quiet way. I am +mistaken if she will not yet leave the print of her stealing steps on +thy heart, Crimsworth.” + +“Of her steps? Confound it, no! My heart is not a plank to be walked +on.” + +“But the soft touch of a patte de velours will do it no harm.” + +“She offers me no patte de velours; she is all form and reserve with +me.” + +“That to begin with; let respect be the foundation, affection the first +floor, love the superstructure; Mdlle. Reuter is a skilful architect.” + +“And interest, M. Pelet--interest. Will not mademoiselle consider that +point?” + +“Yes, yes, no doubt; it will be the cement between every stone. And now +we have discussed the directress, what of the pupils? N’y a-t-il pas de +belles etudes parmi ces jeunes tetes?” + +“Studies of character? Yes; curious ones, at least, I imagine; but one +cannot divine much from a first interview.” + +“Ah, you affect discretion; but tell me now, were you not a little +abashed before these blooming young creatures?” + +“At first, yes; but I rallied and got through with all due sang-froid.” + +“I don’t believe you.” + +“It is true, notwithstanding. At first I thought them angels, but they +did not leave me long under that delusion; three of the eldest and +handsomest undertook the task of setting me right, and they managed +so cleverly that in five minutes I knew them, at least, for what they +were--three arrant coquettes.” + +“Je les connais!” exclaimed M. Pelet. “Elles sont toujours au premier +rang a l’eglise et a la promenade; une blonde superbe, une jolie +espiegle, une belle brune.” + +“Exactly.” + +“Lovely creatures all of them--heads for artists; what a group they +would make, taken together! Eulalie (I know their names), with her +smooth braided hair and calm ivory brow. Hortense, with her rich chesnut +locks so luxuriantly knotted, plaited, twisted, as if she did not know +how to dispose of all their abundance, with her vermilion lips, damask +cheek, and roguish laughing eye. And Caroline de Blemont! Ah, there is +beauty! beauty in perfection. What a cloud of sable curls about the face +of a houri! What fascinating lips! What glorious black eyes! Your Byron +would have worshipped her, and you--you cold, frigid islander!--you +played the austere, the insensible in the presence of an Aphrodite so +exquisite?” + +I might have laughed at the director’s enthusiasm had I believed +it real, but there was something in his tone which indicated got-up +raptures. I felt he was only affecting fervour in order to put me off my +guard, to induce me to come out in return, so I scarcely even smiled. He +went on: + +“Confess, William, do not the mere good looks of Zoraide Reuter appear +dowdyish and commonplace compared with the splendid charms of some of +her pupils?” + +The question discomposed me, but I now felt plainly that my principal +was endeavouring (for reasons best known to himself--at that time I +could not fathom them) to excite ideas and wishes in my mind alien to +what was right and honourable. The iniquity of the instigation proved +its antidote, and when he further added:-- + +“Each of those three beautiful girls will have a handsome fortune; and +with a little address, a gentlemanlike, intelligent young fellow like +you might make himself master of the hand, heart, and purse of any one +of the trio.” + +I replied by a look and an interrogative “Monsieur?” which startled him. + +He laughed a forced laugh, affirmed that he had only been joking, and +demanded whether I could possibly have thought him in earnest. Just then +the bell rang; the play-hour was over; it was an evening on which M. +Pelet was accustomed to read passages from the drama and the belles +lettres to his pupils. He did not wait for my answer, but rising, left +the room, humming as he went some gay strain of Beranger’s. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +DAILY, as I continued my attendance at the seminary of Mdlle. Reuter, +did I find fresh occasions to compare the ideal with the real. What +had I known of female character previously to my arrival at Brussels? +Precious little. And what was my notion of it? Something vague, slight, +gauzy, glittering; now when I came in contact with it I found it to be +a palpable substance enough; very hard too sometimes, and often heavy; +there was metal in it, both lead and iron. + +Let the idealists, the dreamers about earthly angel and human flowers, +just look here while I open my portfolio and show them a sketch or +two, pencilled after nature. I took these sketches in the second-class +schoolroom of Mdlle. Reuter’s establishment, where about a hundred +specimens of the genus “jeune fille” collected together offered a +fertile variety of subject. A miscellaneous assortment they were, +differing both in caste and country; as I sat on my estrade and glanced +over the long range of desks, I had under my eye French, English, +Belgians, Austrians, and Prussians. The majority belonged to the class +bourgeois; but there were many countesses, there were the daughters of +two generals and of several colonels, captains, and government EMPLOYES; +these ladies sat side by side with young females destined to be +demoiselles de magasins, and with some Flamandes, genuine aborigines of +the country. In dress all were nearly similar, and in manners there was +small difference; exceptions there were to the general rule, but the +majority gave the tone to the establishment, and that tone was rough, +boisterous, masked by a point-blank disregard of all forbearance towards +each other or their teachers; an eager pursuit by each individual of her +own interest and convenience; and a coarse indifference to the interest +and convenience of every one else. Most of them could lie with audacity +when it appeared advantageous to do so. All understood the art of +speaking fair when a point was to be gained, and could with consummate +skill and at a moment’s notice turn the cold shoulder the instant +civility ceased to be profitable. Very little open quarrelling ever took +place amongst them; but backbiting and talebearing were universal. Close +friendships were forbidden by the rules of the school, and no one girl +seemed to cultivate more regard for another than was just necessary to +secure a companion when solitude would have been irksome. They were each +and all supposed to have been reared in utter unconsciousness of vice. +The precautions used to keep them ignorant, if not innocent, were +innumerable. How was it, then, that scarcely one of those girls having +attained the age of fourteen could look a man in the face with modesty +and propriety? An air of bold, impudent flirtation, or a loose, silly +leer, was sure to answer the most ordinary glance from a masculine eye. +I know nothing of the arcana of the Roman Catholic religion, and I +am not a bigot in matters of theology, but I suspect the root of this +precocious impurity, so obvious, so general in Popish countries, is to +be found in the discipline, if not the doctrines of the Church of Rome. +I record what I have seen: these girls belonged to what are called the +respectable ranks of society; they had all been carefully brought up, +yet was the mass of them mentally depraved. So much for the general +view: now for one or two selected specimens. + +The first picture is a full length of Aurelia Koslow, a German fraulein, +or rather a half-breed between German and Russian. She is eighteen years +of age, and has been sent to Brussels to finish her education; she is +of middle size, stiffly made, body long, legs short, bust much developed +but not compactly moulded, waist disproportionately compressed by an +inhumanly braced corset, dress carefully arranged, large feet tortured +into small bottines, head small, hair smoothed, braided, oiled, and +gummed to perfection; very low forehead, very diminutive and vindictive +grey eyes, somewhat Tartar features, rather flat nose, rather high-cheek +bones, yet the ensemble not positively ugly; tolerably good complexion. +So much for person. As to mind, deplorably ignorant and ill-informed: +incapable of writing or speaking correctly even German, her native +tongue, a dunce in French, and her attempts at learning English a mere +farce, yet she has been at school twelve years; but as she invariably +gets her exercises, of every description, done by a fellow pupil, and +reads her lessons off a book concealed in her lap, it is not wonderful +that her progress has been so snail-like. I do not know what Aurelia’s +daily habits of life are, because I have not the opportunity of +observing her at all times; but from what I see of the state of her +desk, books, and papers, I should say she is slovenly and even dirty; +her outward dress, as I have said, is well attended to, but in passing +behind her bench, I have remarked that her neck is gray for want of +washing, and her hair, so glossy with gum and grease, is not such as +one feels tempted to pass the hand over, much less to run the fingers +through. Aurelia’s conduct in class, at least when I am present, is +something extraordinary, considered as an index of girlish innocence. +The moment I enter the room, she nudges her next neighbour and indulges +in a half-suppressed laugh. As I take my seat on the estrade, she +fixes her eye on me; she seems resolved to attract, and, if possible, +monopolize my notice: to this end she launches at me all sorts of looks, +languishing, provoking, leering, laughing. As I am found quite proof +against this sort of artillery--for we scorn what, unasked, is lavishly +offered--she has recourse to the expedient of making noises; sometimes +she sighs, sometimes groans, sometimes utters inarticulate sounds, for +which language has no name. If, in walking up the schoolroom, I pass +near her, she puts out her foot that it may touch mine; if I do not +happen to observe the manoeuvre, and my boot comes in contact with her +brodequin, she affects to fall into convulsions of suppressed laughter; +if I notice the snare and avoid it, she expresses her mortification in +sullen muttering, where I hear myself abused in bad French, pronounced +with an intolerable Low German accent. + +Not far from Mdlle. Koslow sits another young lady by name Adele +Dronsart: this is a Belgian, rather low of stature, in form heavy, +with broad waist, short neck and limbs, good red and white complexion, +features well chiselled and regular, well-cut eyes of a clear brown +colour, light brown hair, good teeth, age not much above fifteen, but as +full-grown as a stout young Englishwoman of twenty. This portrait gives +the idea of a somewhat dumpy but good-looking damsel, does it not? Well, +when I looked along the row of young heads, my eye generally stopped at +this of Adele’s; her gaze was ever waiting for mine, and it frequently +succeeded in arresting it. She was an unnatural-looking being--so young, +fresh, blooming, yet so Gorgon-like. Suspicion, sullen ill-temper were +on her forehead, vicious propensities in her eye, envy and panther-like +deceit about her mouth. In general she sat very still; her massive shape +looked as if it could not bend much, nor did her large head--so broad +at the base, so narrow towards the top--seem made to turn readily on her +short neck. She had but two varieties of expression; the prevalent one +a forbidding, dissatisfied scowl, varied sometimes by a most pernicious +and perfidious smile. She was shunned by her fellow-pupils, for, bad as +many of them were, few were as bad as she. + +Aurelia and Adele were in the first division of the second class; the +second division was headed by a pensionnaire named Juanna Trista. This +girl was of mixed Belgian and Spanish origin; her Flemish mother was +dead, her Catalonian father was a merchant residing in the ---- Isles, +where Juanna had been born and whence she was sent to Europe to be +educated. I wonder that any one, looking at that girl’s head and +countenance, would have received her under their roof. She had precisely +the same shape of skull as Pope Alexander the Sixth; her organs +of benevolence, veneration, conscientiousness, adhesiveness, were +singularly small, those of self-esteem, firmness, destructiveness, +combativeness, preposterously large; her head sloped up in the penthouse +shape, was contracted about the forehead, and prominent behind; she +had rather good, though large and marked features; her temperament was +fibrous and bilious, her complexion pale and dark, hair and eyes black, +form angular and rigid but proportionate, age fifteen. + +Juanna was not very thin, but she had a gaunt visage, and her “regard” + was fierce and hungry; narrow as was her brow, it presented space enough +for the legible graving of two words, Mutiny and Hate; in some one of +her other lineaments I think the eye--cowardice had also its distinct +cipher. Mdlle. Trista thought fit to trouble my first lessons with a +coarse work-day sort of turbulence; she made noises with her mouth like +a horse, she ejected her saliva, she uttered brutal expressions; behind +and below her were seated a band of very vulgar, inferior-looking +Flamandes, including two or three examples of that deformity of person +and imbecility of intellect whose frequency in the Low Countries would +seem to furnish proof that the climate is such as to induce degeneracy +of the human mind and body; these, I soon found, were completely under +her influence, and with their aid she got up and sustained a swinish +tumult, which I was constrained at last to quell by ordering her and two +of her tools to rise from their seats, and, having kept them standing +five minutes, turning them bodily out of the schoolroom: the accomplices +into a large place adjoining called the grands salle; the principal +into a cabinet, of which I closed the door and pocketed the key. This +judgment I executed in the presence of Mdlle. Reuter, who looked much +aghast at beholding so decided a proceeding--the most severe that had +ever been ventured on in her establishment. Her look of affright I +answered with one of composure, and finally with a smile, which perhaps +flattered, and certainly soothed her. Juanna Trista remained in Europe +long enough to repay, by malevolence and ingratitude, all who had ever +done her a good turn; and she then went to join her father in the---- +Isles, exulting in the thought that she should there have slaves, whom, +as she said, she could kick and strike at will. + +These three pictures are from the life. I possess others, as marked and +as little agreeable, but I will spare my reader the exhibition of them. + +Doubtless it will be thought that I ought now, by way of contrast, to +show something charming; some gentle virgin head, circled with a halo, +some sweet personification of innocence, clasping the dove of peace to +her bosom. No: I saw nothing of the sort, and therefore cannot portray +it. The pupil in the school possessing the happiest disposition was +a young girl from the country, Louise Path; she was sufficiently +benevolent and obliging, but not well taught nor well mannered; +moreover, the plague-spot of dissimulation was in her also; honour and +principle were unknown to her, she had scarcely heard their names. The +least exceptionable pupil was the poor little Sylvie I have mentioned +once before. Sylvie was gentle in manners, intelligent in mind; she was +even sincere, as far as her religion would permit her to be so, but her +physical organization was defective; weak health stunted her growth and +chilled her spirits, and then, destined as she was for the cloister, +her whole soul was warped to a conventual bias, and in the tame, trained +subjection of her manner, one read that she had already prepared herself +for her future course of life, by giving up her independence of thought +and action into the hands of some despotic confessor. She permitted +herself no original opinion, no preference of companion or employment; +in everything she was guided by another. With a pale, passive, automaton +air, she went about all day long doing what she was bid; never what she +liked, or what, from innate conviction, she thought it right to do. The +poor little future religieuse had been early taught to make the dictates +of her own reason and conscience quite subordinate to the will of +her spiritual director. She was the model pupil of Mdlle. Reuter’s +establishment; pale, blighted image, where life lingered feebly, but +whence the soul had been conjured by Romish wizard-craft! + +A few English pupils there were in this school, and these might be +divided into two classes. 1st. The continental English--the daughters +chiefly of broken adventurers, whom debt or dishonour had driven from +their own country. These poor girls had never known the advantages +of settled homes, decorous example, or honest Protestant education; +resident a few months now in one Catholic school, now in another, as +their parents wandered from land to land--from France to Germany, from +Germany to Belgium--they had picked up some scanty instruction, many bad +habits, losing every notion even of the first elements of religion and +morals, and acquiring an imbecile indifference to every sentiment that +can elevate humanity; they were distinguishable by an habitual look +of sullen dejection, the result of crushed self-respect and constant +browbeating from their Popish fellow-pupils, who hated them as English, +and scorned them as heretics. + +The second class were British English. Of these I did not encounter half +a dozen during the whole time of my attendance at the seminary; their +characteristics were clean but careless dress, ill-arranged hair +(compared with the tight and trim foreigners), erect carriage, flexible +figures, white and taper hands, features more irregular, but also more +intellectual than those of the Belgians, grave and modest countenances, +a general air of native propriety and decency; by this last circumstance +alone I could at a glance distinguish the daughter of Albion and +nursling of Protestantism from the foster-child of Rome, the PROTEGEE +of Jesuistry: proud, too, was the aspect of these British girls; at once +envied and ridiculed by their continental associates, they warded off +insult with austere civility, and met hate with mute disdain; they +eschewed company-keeping, and in the midst of numbers seemed to dwell +isolated. + +The teachers presiding over this mixed multitude were three in number, +all French--their names Mdlles. Zephyrine, Pelagie, and Suzette; the two +last were commonplace personages enough; their look was ordinary, +their manner was ordinary, their temper was ordinary, their thoughts, +feelings, and views were all ordinary--were I to write a chapter on the +subject I could not elucidate it further. Zephyrine was somewhat more +distinguished in appearance and deportment than Pelagie and Suzette, +but in character genuine Parisian coquette, perfidious, mercenary, and +dry-hearted. A fourth maitresse I sometimes saw who seemed to come daily +to teach needlework, or netting, or lace-mending, or some such flimsy +art; but of her I never had more than a passing glimpse, as she sat in +the CARRE, with her frames and some dozen of the elder pupils about her, +consequently I had no opportunity of studying her character, or even of +observing her person much; the latter, I remarked, had a very English +air for a maitresse, otherwise it was not striking; of character I +should think she possessed but little, as her pupils seemed constantly +“en revolte” against her authority. She did not reside in the house; her +name, I think, was Mdlle. Henri. + +Amidst this assemblage of all that was insignificant and defective, much +that was vicious and repulsive (by that last epithet many would have +described the two or three stiff, silent, decently behaved, ill-dressed +British girls), the sensible, sagacious, affable directress shone like a +steady star over a marsh full of Jack-o’-lanthorns; profoundly aware +of her superiority, she derived an inward bliss from that consciousness +which sustained her under all the care and responsibility inseparable +from her position; it kept her temper calm, her brow smooth, her manner +tranquil. She liked--as who would not?--on entering the school-room, +to feel that her sole presence sufficed to diffuse that order and +quiet which all the remonstrances, and even commands, of her underlings +frequently failed to enforce; she liked to stand in comparison, or +rather--contrast, with those who surrounded her, and to know that in +personal as well as mental advantages, she bore away the undisputed +palm of preference--(the three teachers were all plain.) Her pupils she +managed with such indulgence and address, taking always on herself the +office of recompenser and eulogist, and abandoning to her subalterns +every invidious task of blame and punishment, that they all regarded her +with deference, if not with affection; her teachers did not love her, +but they submitted because they were her inferiors in everything; the +various masters who attended her school were each and all in some way +or other under her influence; over one she had acquired power by her +skilful management of his bad temper; over another by little attentions +to his petty caprices; a third she had subdued by flattery; a fourth--a +timid man--she kept in awe by a sort of austere decision of mien; me, +she still watched, still tried by the most ingenious tests--she roved +round me, baffled, yet persevering; I believe she thought I was like +a smooth and bare precipice, which offered neither jutting stone nor +tree-root, nor tuft of grass to aid the climber. Now she flattered +with exquisite tact, now she moralized, now she tried how far I was +accessible to mercenary motives, then she disported on the brink of +affection--knowing that some men are won by weakness--anon, she talked +excellent sense, aware that others have the folly to admire judgment. +I found it at once pleasant and easy to evade all these efforts; it was +sweet, when she thought me nearly won, to turn round and to smile in +her very eyes, half scornfully, and then to witness her scarcely veiled, +though mute mortification. Still she persevered, and at last, I am bound +to confess it, her finger, essaying, proving every atom of the casket, +touched its secret spring, and for a moment the lid sprung open; she +laid her hand on the jewel within; whether she stole and broke it, or +whether the lid shut again with a snap on her fingers, read on, and you +shall know. + +It happened that I came one day to give a lesson when I was indisposed; +I had a bad cold and a cough; two hours’ incessant talking left me very +hoarse and tired; as I quitted the schoolroom, and was passing along the +corridor, I met Mdlle. Reuter; she remarked, with an anxious air, that +I looked very pale and tired. “Yes,” I said, “I was fatigued;” and then, +with increased interest, she rejoined, “You shall not go away till you +have had some refreshment.” She persuaded me to step into the parlour, +and was very kind and gentle while I stayed. The next day she was kinder +still; she came herself into the class to see that the windows were +closed, and that there was no draught; she exhorted me with friendly +earnestness not to over-exert myself; when I went away, she gave me +her hand unasked, and I could not but mark, by a respectful and gentle +pressure, that I was sensible of the favour, and grateful for it. My +modest demonstration kindled a little merry smile on her countenance; +I thought her almost charming. During the remainder of the evening, my +mind was full of impatience for the afternoon of the next day to arrive, +that I might see her again. + +I was not disappointed, for she sat in the class during the whole of my +subsequent lesson, and often looked at me almost with affection. At four +o’clock she accompanied me out of the schoolroom, asking with solicitude +after my health, then scolding me sweetly because I spoke too loud and +gave myself too much trouble; I stopped at the glass-door which led into +the garden, to hear her lecture to the end; the door was open, it was a +very fine day, and while I listened to the soothing reprimand, I looked +at the sunshine and flowers, and felt very happy. The day-scholars began +to pour from the schoolrooms into the passage. + +“Will you go into the garden a minute or two,” asked she, “till they are +gone?” + +I descended the steps without answering, but I looked back as much as to +say-- + +“You will come with me?” + +In another minute I and the directress were walking side by side down +the alley bordered with fruit-trees, whose white blossoms were then in +full blow as well as their tender green leaves. The sky was blue, the +air still, the May afternoon was full of brightness and fragrance. +Released from the stifling class, surrounded with flowers and foliage, +with a pleasing, smiling, affable woman at my side--how did I feel? Why, +very enviably. It seemed as if the romantic visions my imagination had +suggested of this garden, while it was yet hidden from me by the jealous +boards, were more than realized; and, when a turn in the alley shut out +the view of the house, and some tall shrubs excluded M. Pelet’s +mansion, and screened us momentarily from the other houses, rising +amphitheatre-like round this green spot, I gave my arm to Mdlle. Reuter, +and led her to a garden-chair, nestled under some lilacs near. She sat +down; I took my place at her side. She went on talking to me with that +ease which communicates ease, and, as I listened, a revelation dawned +in my mind that I was on the brink of falling in love. The dinner-bell +rang, both at her house and M. Pelet’s; we were obliged to part; I +detained her a moment as she was moving away. + +“I want something,” said I. + +“What?” asked Zoraide naively. + +“Only a flower.” + +“Gather it then--or two, or twenty, if you like.” + +“No--one will do--but you must gather it, and give it to me.” + +“What a caprice!” she exclaimed, but she raised herself on her tip-toes, +and, plucking a beautiful branch of lilac, offered it to me with grace. +I took it, and went away, satisfied for the present, and hopeful for the +future. + +Certainly that May day was a lovely one, and it closed in moonlight +night of summer warmth and serenity. I remember this well; for, having +sat up late that evening, correcting devoirs, and feeling weary and +a little oppressed with the closeness of my small room, I opened the +often-mentioned boarded window, whose boards, however, I had persuaded +old Madame Pelet to have removed since I had filled the post of +professor in the pensionnat de demoiselles, as, from that time, it +was no longer “inconvenient” for me to overlook my own pupils at their +sports. I sat down in the window-seat, rested my arm on the sill, +and leaned out: above me was the clear-obscure of a cloudless +night sky--splendid moonlight subdued the tremulous sparkle of the +stars--below lay the garden, varied with silvery lustre and deep shade, +and all fresh with dew--a grateful perfume exhaled from the closed +blossoms of the fruit-trees--not a leaf stirred, the night was +breezeless. My window looked directly down upon a certain walk of Mdlle. +Reuter’s garden, called “l’allee defendue,” so named because the pupils +were forbidden to enter it on account of its proximity to the boys’ +school. It was here that the lilacs and laburnums grew especially thick; +this was the most sheltered nook in the enclosure, its shrubs screened +the garden-chair where that afternoon I had sat with the young +directress. I need not say that my thoughts were chiefly with her as +I leaned from the lattice, and let my eye roam, now over the walks and +borders of the garden, now along the many-windowed front of the house +which rose white beyond the masses of foliage. I wondered in what part +of the building was situated her apartment; and a single light, shining +through the persiennes of one croisee, seemed to direct me to it. + +“She watches late,” thought I, “for it must be now near midnight. She +is a fascinating little woman,” I continued in voiceless soliloquy; “her +image forms a pleasant picture in memory; I know she is not what the +world calls pretty--no matter, there is harmony in her aspect, and I +like it; her brown hair, her blue eye, the freshness of her cheek, the +whiteness of her neck, all suit my taste. Then I respect her talent; +the idea of marrying a doll or a fool was always abhorrent to me: I know +that a pretty doll, a fair fool, might do well enough for the honeymoon; +but when passion cooled, how dreadful to find a lump of wax and wood +laid in my bosom, a half idiot clasped in my arms, and to remember that +I had made of this my equal--nay, my idol--to know that I must pass the +rest of my dreary life with a creature incapable of understanding what +I said, of appreciating what I thought, or of sympathizing with what I +felt! “Now, Zoraide Reuter,” thought I, “has tact, CARACTERE, judgment, +discretion; has she heart? What a good, simple little smile played +about her lips when she gave me the branch of lilacs! I have thought her +crafty, dissembling, interested sometimes, it is true; but may not much +that looks like cunning and dissimulation in her conduct be only +the efforts made by a bland temper to traverse quietly perplexing +difficulties? And as to interest, she wishes to make her way in the +world, no doubt, and who can blame her? Even if she be truly deficient +in sound principle, is it not rather her misfortune than her fault? She +has been brought up a Catholic: had she been born an Englishwoman, and +reared a Protestant, might she not have added straight integrity to +all her other excellences? Supposing she were to marry an English and +Protestant husband, would she not, rational, sensible as she is, quickly +acknowledge the superiority of right over expediency, honesty over +policy? It would be worth a man’s while to try the experiment; to-morrow +I will renew my observations. She knows that I watch her: how calm she +is under scrutiny! it seems rather to gratify than annoy her.” Here a +strain of music stole in upon my monologue, and suspended it; it was +a bugle, very skilfully played, in the neighbourhood of the park, I +thought, or on the Place Royale. So sweet were the tones, so subduing +their effect at that hour, in the midst of silence and under the +quiet reign of moonlight, I ceased to think, that I might listen more +intently. The strain retreated, its sound waxed fainter and was soon +gone; my ear prepared to repose on the absolute hush of midnight once +more. No. What murmur was that which, low, and yet near and approaching +nearer, frustrated the expectation of total silence? It was some one +conversing--yes, evidently, an audible, though subdued voice spoke in +the garden immediately below me. Another answered; the first voice was +that of a man, the second that of a woman; and a man and a woman I saw +coming slowly down the alley. Their forms were at first in shade, I +could but discern a dusk outline of each, but a ray of moonlight met +them at the termination of the walk, when they were under my very nose, +and revealed very plainly, very unequivocally, Mdlle. Zoraide Reuter, +arm-in-arm, or hand-in-hand (I forget which) with my principal, +confidant, and counsellor, M. Francois Pelet. And M. Pelet was saying-- + +“A quand donc le jour des noces, ma bien-aimee?” + +And Mdlle. Reuter answered-- + +“Mais, Francois, tu sais bien qu’il me serait impossible de me marier +avant les vacances.” + +“June, July, August, a whole quarter!” exclaimed the director. “How can +I wait so long?--I who am ready, even now, to expire at your feet with +impatience!” + +“Ah! if you die, the whole affair will be settled without any trouble +about notaries and contracts; I shall only have to order a slight +mourning dress, which will be much sooner prepared than the nuptial +trousseau.” + +“Cruel Zoraide! you laugh at the distress of one who loves you so +devotedly as I do: my torment is your sport; you scruple not to stretch +my soul on the rack of jealousy; for, deny it as you will, I am certain +you have cast encouraging glances on that school-boy, Crimsworth; he has +presumed to fall in love, which he dared not have done unless you had +given him room to hope.” + +“What do you say, Francois? Do you say Crimsworth is in love with me?” + +“Over head and ears.” + +“Has he told you so?” + +“No--but I see it in his face: he blushes whenever your name is +mentioned.” A little laugh of exulting coquetry announced Mdlle. +Reuter’s gratification at this piece of intelligence (which was a lie, +by-the-by--I had never been so far gone as that, after all). M. Pelet +proceeded to ask what she intended to do with me, intimating pretty +plainly, and not very gallantly, that it was nonsense for her to think +of taking such a “blanc-bec” as a husband, since she must be at least +ten years older than I (was she then thirty-two? I should not have +thought it). I heard her disclaim any intentions on the subject--the +director, however, still pressed her to give a definite answer. + +“Francois,” said she, “you are jealous,” and still she laughed; then, as +if suddenly recollecting that this coquetry was not consistent with the +character for modest dignity she wished to establish, she proceeded, +in a demure voice: “Truly, my dear Francois, I will not deny that this +young Englishman may have made some attempts to ingratiate himself with +me; but, so far from giving him any encouragement, I have always treated +him with as much reserve as it was possible to combine with civility; +affianced as I am to you, I would give no man false hopes; believe me, +dear friend.” Still Pelet uttered murmurs of distrust--so I judged, at +least, from her reply. + +“What folly! How could I prefer an unknown foreigner to you? And +then--not to flatter your vanity--Crimsworth could not bear comparison +with you either physically or mentally; he is not a handsome man at all; +some may call him gentleman-like and intelligent-looking, but for my +part--” + +The rest of the sentence was lost in the distance, as the pair, rising +from the chair in which they had been seated, moved away. I waited their +return, but soon the opening and shutting of a door informed me that +they had re-entered the house; I listened a little longer, all was +perfectly still; I listened more than an hour--at last I heard M. Pelet +come in and ascend to his chamber. Glancing once more towards the long +front of the garden-house, I perceived that its solitary light was +at length extinguished; so, for a time, was my faith in love and +friendship. I went to bed, but something feverish and fiery had got into +my veins which prevented me from sleeping much that night. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +NEXT morning I rose with the dawn, and having dressed myself and stood +half-an-hour, my elbow leaning on the chest of drawers, considering what +means I should adopt to restore my spirits, fagged with sleeplessness, +to their ordinary tone--for I had no intention of getting up a scene +with M. Pelet, reproaching him with perfidy, sending him a challenge, or +performing other gambadoes of the sort--I hit at last on the +expedient of walking out in the cool of the morning to a neighbouring +establishment of baths, and treating myself to a bracing plunge. +The remedy produced the desired effect. I came back at seven o’clock +steadied and invigorated, and was able to greet M. Pelet, when he +entered to breakfast, with an unchanged and tranquil countenance; even +a cordial offering of the hand and the flattering appellation of “mon +fils,” pronounced in that caressing tone with which Monsieur had, of +late days especially, been accustomed to address me, did not elicit any +external sign of the feeling which, though subdued, still glowed at +my heart. Not that I nursed vengeance--no; but the sense of insult and +treachery lived in me like a kindling, though as yet smothered coal. God +knows I am not by nature vindictive; I would not hurt a man because I +can no longer trust or like him; but neither my reason nor feelings +are of the vacillating order--they are not of that sand-like sort where +impressions, if soon made, are as soon effaced. Once convinced that my +friend’s disposition is incompatible with my own, once assured that he +is indelibly stained with certain defects obnoxious to my principles, +and I dissolve the connection. I did so with Edward. As to Pelet, the +discovery was yet new; should I act thus with him? It was the question I +placed before my mind as I stirred my cup of coffee with a half-pistolet +(we never had spoons), Pelet meantime being seated opposite, his pallid +face looking as knowing and more haggard than usual, his blue eye +turned, now sternly on his boys and ushers, and now graciously on me. + +“Circumstances must guide me,” said I; and meeting Pelet’s false glance +and insinuating smile, I thanked heaven that I had last night opened +my window and read by the light of a full moon the true meaning of that +guileful countenance. I felt half his master, because the reality of +his nature was now known to me; smile and flatter as he would, I saw his +soul lurk behind his smile, and heard in every one of his smooth phrases +a voice interpreting their treacherous import. + +But Zoraide Reuter? Of course her defection had cut me to the quick? +That stint must have gone too deep for any consolations of philosophy +to be available in curing its smart? Not at all. The night fever over, +I looked about for balm to that wound also, and found some nearer home +than at Gilead. Reason was my physician; she began by proving that the +prize I had missed was of little value: she admitted that, physically, +Zoraide might have suited me, but affirmed that our souls were not in +harmony, and that discord must have resulted from the union of her mind +with mine. She then insisted on the suppression of all repining, +and commanded me rather to rejoice that I had escaped a snare. Her +medicament did me good. I felt its strengthening effect when I met the +directress the next day; its stringent operation on the nerves suffered +no trembling, no faltering; it enabled me to face her with firmness, +to pass her with ease. She had held out her hand to me--that I did not +choose to see. She had greeted me with a charming smile--it fell on my +heart like light on stone. I passed on to the estrade, she followed me; +her eye, fastened on my face, demanded of every feature the meaning of +my changed and careless manner. “I will give her an answer,” thought I; +and, meeting her gaze full, arresting, fixing her glance, I shot into +her eyes, from my own, a look, where there was no respect, no love, +no tenderness, no gallantry; where the strictest analysis could detect +nothing but scorn, hardihood, irony. I made her bear it, and feel it; +her steady countenance did not change, but her colour rose, and she +approached me as if fascinated. She stepped on to the estrade, and +stood close by my side; she had nothing to say. I would not relieve her +embarrassment, and negligently turned over the leaves of a book. + +“I hope you feel quite recovered to-day,” at last she said, in a low +tone. + +“And I, mademoiselle, hope that you took no cold last night in +consequence of your late walk in the garden.” + +Quick enough of comprehension, she understood me directly; her face +became a little blanched--a very little--but no muscle in her rather +marked features moved; and, calm and self-possessed, she retired from +the estrade, taking her seat quietly at a little distance, and occupying +herself with netting a purse. I proceeded to give my lesson; it was a +“Composition,” i.e., I dictated certain general questions, of which the +pupils were to compose the answers from memory, access to books being +forbidden. While Mdlle. Eulalie, Hortense, Caroline, &c., were pondering +over the string of rather abstruse grammatical interrogatories I had +propounded, I was at liberty to employ the vacant half hour in further +observing the directress herself. The green silk purse was progressing +fast in her hands; her eyes were bent upon it; her attitude, as she +sat netting within two yards of me, was still yet guarded; in her whole +person were expressed at once, and with equal clearness, vigilance and +repose--a rare union! Looking at her, I was forced, as I had often been +before, to offer her good sense, her wondrous self-control, the tribute +of involuntary admiration. She had felt that I had withdrawn from her +my esteem; she had seen contempt and coldness in my eye, and to her, who +coveted the approbation of all around her, who thirsted after universal +good opinion, such discovery must have been an acute wound. I had +witnessed its effect in the momentary pallor of her cheek--cheek unused +to vary; yet how quickly, by dint of self-control, had she recovered +her composure! With what quiet dignity she now sat, almost at my side, +sustained by her sound and vigorous sense; no trembling in her somewhat +lengthened, though shrewd upper lip, no coward shame on her austere +forehead! + +“There is metal there,” I said, as I gazed. “Would that there were fire +also, living ardour to make the steel glow--then I could love her.” + +Presently I discovered that she knew I was watching her, for she stirred +not, she lifted not her crafty eyelid; she had glanced down from her +netting to her small foot, peeping from the soft folds of her purple +merino gown; thence her eye reverted to her hand, ivory white, with a +bright garnet ring on the forefinger, and a light frill of lace round +the wrist; with a scarcely perceptible movement she turned her head, +causing her nut-brown curls to wave gracefully. In these slight signs +I read that the wish of her heart, the design of her brain, was to lure +back the game she had scared. A little incident gave her the opportunity +of addressing me again. + +While all was silence in the class--silence, but for the rustling of +copy-books and the travelling of pens over their pages--a leaf of the +large folding-door, opening from the hall, unclosed, admitting a +pupil who, after making a hasty obeisance, ensconced herself with some +appearance of trepidation, probably occasioned by her entering so +late, in a vacant seat at the desk nearest the door. Being seated, she +proceeded, still with an air of hurry and embarrassment, to open her +cabas, to take out her books; and, while I was waiting for her to look +up, in order to make out her identity--for, shortsighted as I was, I had +not recognized her at her entrance--Mdlle. Reuter, leaving her chair, +approached the estrade. + +“Monsieur Creemsvort,” said she, in a whisper: for when the schoolrooms +were silent, the directress always moved with velvet tread, and spoke +in the most subdued key, enforcing order and stillness fully as much +by example as precept: “Monsieur Creemsvort, that young person, who has +just entered, wishes to have the advantage of taking lessons with you in +English; she is not a pupil of the house; she is, indeed, in one sense, +a teacher, for she gives instruction in lace-mending, and in little +varieties of ornamental needle-work. She very properly proposes to +qualify herself for a higher department of education, and has asked +permission to attend your lessons, in order to perfect her knowledge +of English, in which language she has, I believe, already made +some progress; of course it is my wish to aid her in an effort +so praiseworthy; you will permit her then to benefit by your +instruction--n’est ce pas, monsieur?” And Mdlle. Reuter’s eyes were +raised to mine with a look at once naive, benign, and beseeching. + +I replied, “Of course,” very laconically, almost abruptly. + +“Another word,” she said, with softness: “Mdlle. Henri has not received +a regular education; perhaps her natural talents are not of the highest +order: but I can assure you of the excellence of her intentions, and +even of the amiability of her disposition. Monsieur will then, I am +sure, have the goodness to be considerate with her at first, and not +expose her backwardness, her inevitable deficiencies, before the young +ladies, who, in a sense, are her pupils. Will Monsieur Creemsvort favour +me by attending to this hint?” I nodded. She continued with subdued +earnestness-- + +“Pardon me, monsieur, if I venture to add that what I have just said is +of importance to the poor girl; she already experiences great difficulty +in impressing these giddy young things with a due degree of deference +for her authority, and should that difficulty be increased by new +discoveries of her incapacity, she might find her position in my +establishment too painful to be retained; a circumstance I should much +regret for her sake, as she can ill afford to lose the profits of her +occupation here.” + +Mdlle. Reuter possessed marvellous tact; but tact the most exclusive, +unsupported by sincerity, will sometimes fail of its effect; thus, on +this occasion, the longer she preached about the necessity of being +indulgent to the governess pupil, the more impatient I felt as I +listened. I discerned so clearly that while her professed motive was a +wish to aid the dull, though well-meaning Mdlle. Henri, her real one +was no other than a design to impress me with an idea of her own exalted +goodness and tender considerateness; so having again hastily nodded +assent to her remarks, I obviated their renewal by suddenly demanding +the compositions, in a sharp accent, and stepping from the estrade, I +proceeded to collect them. As I passed the governess-pupil, I said to +her-- + +“You have come in too late to receive a lesson to-day; try to be more +punctual next time.” + +I was behind her, and could not read in her face the effect of my not +very civil speech. Probably I should not have troubled myself to do so, +had I been full in front; but I observed that she immediately began +to slip her books into her cabas again; and, presently, after I had +returned to the estrade, while I was arranging the mass of compositions, +I heard the folding-door again open and close; and, on looking up, I +perceived her place vacant. I thought to myself, “She will consider her +first attempt at taking a lesson in English something of a failure;” and +I wondered whether she had departed in the sulks, or whether stupidity +had induced her to take my words too literally, or, finally, whether +my irritable tone had wounded her feelings. The last notion I dismissed +almost as soon as I had conceived it, for not having seen any appearance +of sensitiveness in any human face since my arrival in Belgium, I had +begun to regard it almost as a fabulous quality. Whether her physiognomy +announced it I could not tell, for her speedy exit had allowed me no +time to ascertain the circumstance. I had, indeed, on two or three +previous occasions, caught a passing view of her (as I believe has been +mentioned before); but I had never stopped to scrutinize either her face +or person, and had but the most vague idea of her general appearance. +Just as I had finished rolling up the compositions, the four o’clock +bell rang; with my accustomed alertness in obeying that signal, I +grasped my hat and evacuated the premises. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +IF I was punctual in quitting Mdlle. Reuter’s domicile, I was at least +equally punctual in arriving there; I came the next day at five minutes +before two, and on reaching the schoolroom door, before I opened it, I +heard a rapid, gabbling sound, which warned me that the “priere du midi” + was not yet concluded. I waited the termination thereof; it would have +been impious to intrude my heretical presence during its progress. How +the repeater of the prayer did cackle and splutter! I never before or +since heard language enounced with such steam-engine haste. “Notre Pere +qui etes au ciel” went off like a shot; then followed an address to +Marie “vierge celeste, reine des anges, maison d’or, tour d’ivoire!” and +then an invocation to the saint of the day; and then down they all sat, +and the solemn (?) rite was over; and I entered, flinging the door wide +and striding in fast, as it was my wont to do now; for I had found +that in entering with aplomb, and mounting the estrade with emphasis, +consisted the grand secret of ensuring immediate silence. The +folding-doors between the two classes, opened for the prayer, were +instantly closed; a maitresse, work-box in hand, took her seat at her +appropriate desk; the pupils sat still with their pens and books before +them; my three beauties in the van, now well humbled by a demeanour of +consistent coolness, sat erect with their hands folded quietly on their +knees; they had given up giggling and whispering to each other, and no +longer ventured to utter pert speeches in my presence; they now only +talked to me occasionally with their eyes, by means of which organs +they could still, however, say very audacious and coquettish things. Had +affection, goodness, modesty, real talent, ever employed those bright +orbs as interpreters, I do not think I could have refrained from giving +a kind and encouraging, perhaps an ardent reply now and then; but as it +was, I found pleasure in answering the glance of vanity with the gaze +of stoicism. Youthful, fair, brilliant, as were many of my pupils, I can +truly say that in me they never saw any other bearing than such as an +austere, though just guardian, might have observed towards them. If any +doubt the accuracy of this assertion, as inferring more conscientious +self-denial or Scipio-like self-control than they feel disposed to +give me credit for, let them take into consideration the following +circumstances, which, while detracting from my merit, justify my +veracity. + +Know, O incredulous reader! that a master stands in a somewhat different +relation towards a pretty, light-headed, probably ignorant girl, to +that occupied by a partner at a ball, or a gallant on the promenade. +A professor does not meet his pupil to see her dressed in satin and +muslin, with hair perfumed and curled, neck scarcely shaded by aerial +lace, round white arms circled with bracelets, feet dressed for the +gliding dance. It is not his business to whirl her through the waltz, +to feed her with compliments, to heighten her beauty by the flush of +gratified vanity. Neither does he encounter her on the smooth-rolled, +tree shaded Boulevard, in the green and sunny park, whither she repairs +clad in her becoming walking dress, her scarf thrown with grace over her +shoulders, her little bonnet scarcely screening her curls, the red rose +under its brim adding a new tint to the softer rose on her cheek; her +face and eyes, too, illumined with smiles, perhaps as transient as the +sunshine of the gala-day, but also quite as brilliant; it is not his +office to walk by her side, to listen to her lively chat, to carry her +parasol, scarcely larger than a broad green leaf, to lead in a ribbon +her Blenheim spaniel or Italian greyhound. No: he finds her in the +schoolroom, plainly dressed, with books before her. Owing to her +education or her nature books are to her a nuisance, and she opens them +with aversion, yet her teacher must instil into her mind the contents +of these books; that mind resists the admission of grave information, it +recoils, it grows restive, sullen tempers are shown, disfiguring frowns +spoil the symmetry of the face, sometimes coarse gestures banish grace +from the deportment, while muttered expressions, redolent of native and +ineradicable vulgarity, desecrate the sweetness of the voice. Where the +temperament is serene though the intellect be sluggish, an unconquerable +dullness opposes every effort to instruct. Where there is cunning but +not energy, dissimulation, falsehood, a thousand schemes and tricks +are put in play to evade the necessity of application; in short, to the +tutor, female youth, female charms are like tapestry hangings, of which +the wrong side is continually turned towards him; and even when he sees +the smooth, neat external surface he so well knows what knots, long +stitches, and jagged ends are behind that he has scarce a temptation to +admire too fondly the seemly forms and bright colours exposed to general +view. + +Our likings are regulated by our circumstances. The artist prefers a +hilly country because it is picturesque; the engineer a flat one because +it is convenient; the man of pleasure likes what he calls “a fine +woman”--she suits him; the fashionable young gentleman admires the +fashionable young lady--she is of his kind; the toil-worn, fagged, +probably irritable tutor, blind almost to beauty, insensible to airs and +graces, glories chiefly in certain mental qualities: application, love +of knowledge, natural capacity, docility, truthfulness, gratefulness, +are the charms that attract his notice and win his regard. These he +seeks, but seldom meets; these, if by chance he finds, he would fain +retain for ever, and when separation deprives him of them he feels as if +some ruthless hand had snatched from him his only ewe-lamb. Such being +the case, and the case it is, my readers will agree with me that there +was nothing either very meritorious or very marvellous in the +integrity and moderation of my conduct at Mdlle. Reuter’s pensionnat de +demoiselles. + +My first business this afternoon consisted in reading the list of +places for the month, determined by the relative correctness of the +compositions given the preceding day. The list was headed, as usual, +by the name of Sylvie, that plain, quiet little girl I have described +before as being at once the best and ugliest pupil in the establishment; +the second place had fallen to the lot of a certain Leonie Ledru, a +diminutive, sharp-featured, and parchment-skinned creature of quick +wits, frail conscience, and indurated feelings; a lawyer-like thing, of +whom I used to say that, had she been a boy, she would have made a +model of an unprincipled, clever attorney. Then came Eulalie, the proud +beauty, the Juno of the school, whom six long years of drilling in the +simple grammar of the English language had compelled, despite the stiff +phlegm of her intellect, to acquire a mechanical acquaintance with most +of its rules. No smile, no trace of pleasure or satisfaction appeared in +Sylvie’s nun-like and passive face as she heard her name read first. +I always felt saddened by the sight of that poor girl’s absolute +quiescence on all occasions, and it was my custom to look at her, to +address her, as seldom as possible; her extreme docility, her assiduous +perseverance, would have recommended her warmly to my good opinion; +her modesty, her intelligence, would have induced me to feel most +kindly--most affectionately towards her, notwithstanding the almost +ghastly plainness of her features, the disproportion of her form, the +corpse-like lack of animation in her countenance, had I not been aware +that every friendly word, every kindly action, would be reported by her +to her confessor, and by him misinterpreted and poisoned. Once I laid my +hand on her head, in token of approbation; I thought Sylvie was going to +smile, her dim eye almost kindled; but, presently, she shrank from me; +I was a man and a heretic; she, poor child! a destined nun and devoted +Catholic: thus a four-fold wall of separation divided her mind from +mine. A pert smirk, and a hard glance of triumph, was Leonie’s method of +testifying her gratification; Eulalie looked sullen and envious--she had +hoped to be first. Hortense and Caroline exchanged a reckless grimace on +hearing their names read out somewhere near the bottom of the list; the +brand of mental inferiority was considered by them as no disgrace, their +hopes for the future being based solely on their personal attractions. + +This affair arranged, the regular lesson followed. During a brief +interval, employed by the pupils in ruling their books, my eye, ranging +carelessly over the benches, observed, for the first time, that the +farthest seat in the farthest row--a seat usually vacant--was +again filled by the new scholar, the Mdlle. Henri so ostentatiously +recommended to me by the directress. To-day I had on my spectacles; her +appearance, therefore, was clear to me at the first glance; I had not to +puzzle over it. She looked young; yet, had I been required to name her +exact age, I should have been somewhat nonplussed; the slightness of her +figure might have suited seventeen; a certain anxious and pre-occupied +expression of face seemed the indication of riper years. She was +dressed, like all the rest, in a dark stuff gown and a white collar; her +features were dissimilar to any there, not so rounded, more defined, yet +scarcely regular. The shape of her head too was different, the superior +part more developed, the base considerably less. I felt assured, +at first sight, that she was not a Belgian; her complexion, her +countenance, her lineaments, her figure, were all distinct from theirs, +and, evidently, the type of another race--of a race less gifted with +fullness of flesh and plenitude of blood; less jocund, material, +unthinking. When I first cast my eyes on her, she sat looking fixedly +down, her chin resting on her hand, and she did not change her attitude +till I commenced the lesson. None of the Belgian girls would have +retained one position, and that a reflective one, for the same length of +time. Yet, having intimated that her appearance was peculiar, as +being unlike that of her Flemish companions, I have little more to say +respecting it; I can pronounce no encomiums on her beauty, for she was +not beautiful; nor offer condolence on her plainness, for neither +was she plain; a careworn character of forehead, and a corresponding +moulding of the mouth, struck me with a sentiment resembling surprise, +but these traits would probably have passed unnoticed by any less +crotchety observer. + +Now, reader, though I have spent more than a page in describing Mdlle. +Henri, I know well enough that I have left on your mind’s eye no +distinct picture of her; I have not painted her complexion, nor her +eyes, nor her hair, nor even drawn the outline of her shape. You cannot +tell whether her nose was aquiline or retrousse, whether her chin was +long or short, her face square or oval; nor could I the first day, +and it is not my intention to communicate to you at once a knowledge I +myself gained by little and little. + +I gave a short exercise: which they all wrote down. I saw the new pupil +was puzzled at first with the novelty of the form and language; once +or twice she looked at me with a sort of painful solicitude, as not +comprehending at all what I meant; then she was not ready when the +others were, she could not write her phrases so fast as they did; I +would not help her, I went on relentless. She looked at me; her eye +said most plainly, “I cannot follow you.” I disregarded the appeal, and, +carelessly leaning back in my chair, glancing from time to time with a +NONCHALANT air out of the window, I dictated a little faster. On looking +towards her again, I perceived her face clouded with embarrassment, but +she was still writing on most diligently; I paused a few seconds; she +employed the interval in hurriedly re-perusing what she had written, and +shame and discomfiture were apparent in her countenance; she evidently +found she had made great nonsense of it. In ten minutes more the +dictation was complete, and, having allowed a brief space in which to +correct it, I took their books; it was with a reluctant hand Mdlle. +Henri gave up hers, but, having once yielded it to my possession, she +composed her anxious face, as if, for the present she had resolved to +dismiss regret, and had made up her mind to be thought unprecedentedly +stupid. Glancing over her exercise, I found that several lines had been +omitted, but what was written contained very few faults; I instantly +inscribed “Bon” at the bottom of the page, and returned it to her; she +smiled, at first incredulously, then as if reassured, but did not +lift her eyes; she could look at me, it seemed, when perplexed and +bewildered, but not when gratified; I thought that scarcely fair. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +SOME time elapsed before I again gave a lesson in the first class; the +holiday of Whitsuntide occupied three days, and on the fourth it was the +turn of the second division to receive my instructions. As I made +the transit of the CARRE, I observed, as usual, the band of sewers +surrounding Mdlle. Henri; there were only about a dozen of them, but +they made as much noise as might have sufficed for fifty; they seemed +very little under her control; three or four at once assailed her with +importunate requirements; she looked harassed, she demanded silence, but +in vain. She saw me, and I read in her eye pain that a stranger should +witness the insubordination of her pupils; she seemed to entreat +order--her prayers were useless; then I remarked that she compressed +her lips and contracted her brow; and her countenance, if I read +it correctly, said--“I have done my best; I seem to merit blame +notwithstanding; blame me then who will.” I passed on; as I closed the +school-room door, I heard her say, suddenly and sharply, addressing one +of the eldest and most turbulent of the lot-- + +“Amelie Mullenberg, ask me no question, and request of me no assistance, +for a week to come; during that space of time I will neither speak to +you nor help you.” + +The words were uttered with emphasis--nay, with vehemence--and a +comparative silence followed; whether the calm was permanent, I know +not; two doors now closed between me and the CARRE. + +Next day was appropriated to the first class; on my arrival, I found the +directress seated, as usual, in a chair between the two estrades, and +before her was standing Mdlle. Henri, in an attitude (as it seemed to +me) of somewhat reluctant attention. The directress was knitting and +talking at the same time. Amidst the hum of a large school-room, it was +easy so to speak in the ear of one person, as to be heard by that person +alone, and it was thus Mdlle. Reuter parleyed with her teacher. The face +of the latter was a little flushed, not a little troubled; there was +vexation in it, whence resulting I know not, for the directress looked +very placid indeed; she could not be scolding in such gentle whispers, +and with so equable a mien; no, it was presently proved that her +discourse had been of the most friendly tendency, for I heard the +closing words-- + +“C’est assez, ma bonne amie; a present je ne veux pas vous retenir +davantage.” + +Without reply, Mdlle. Henri turned away; dissatisfaction was plainly +evinced in her face, and a smile, slight and brief, but bitter, +distrustful, and, I thought, scornful, curled her lip as she took her +place in the class; it was a secret, involuntary smile, which lasted but +a second; an air of depression succeeded, chased away presently by one +of attention and interest, when I gave the word for all the pupils to +take their reading-books. In general I hated the reading-lesson, it +was such a torture to the ear to listen to their uncouth mouthing of +my native tongue, and no effort of example or precept on my part ever +seemed to effect the slightest improvement in their accent. To-day, +each in her appropriate key, lisped, stuttered, mumbled, and jabbered as +usual; about fifteen had racked me in turn, and my auricular nerve was +expecting with resignation the discords of the sixteenth, when a full, +though low voice, read out, in clear correct English. + +“On his way to Perth, the king was met by a Highland woman, calling +herself a prophetess; she stood at the side of the ferry by which he was +about to travel to the north, and cried with a loud voice, ‘My lord the +king, if you pass this water you will never return again alive!’”--(VIDE +the HISTORY OF SCOTLAND). + +I looked up in amazement; the voice was a voice of Albion; the accent +was pure and silvery; it only wanted firmness, and assurance, to be the +counterpart of what any well-educated lady in Essex or Middlesex might +have enounced, yet the speaker or reader was no other than Mdlle. Henri, +in whose grave, joyless face I saw no mark of consciousness that she had +performed any extraordinary feat. No one else evinced surprise either. +Mdlle. Reuter knitted away assiduously; I was aware, however, that at +the conclusion of the paragraph, she had lifted her eyelid and honoured +me with a glance sideways; she did not know the full excellency of the +teacher’s style of reading, but she perceived that her accent was not +that of the others, and wanted to discover what I thought; I masked my +visage with indifference, and ordered the next girl to proceed. + +When the lesson was over, I took advantage of the confusion caused by +breaking up, to approach Mdlle. Henri; she was standing near the window +and retired as I advanced; she thought I wanted to look out, and did +not imagine that I could have anything to say to her. I took her +exercise-book out of her hand; as I turned over the leaves I addressed +her:-- + +“You have had lessons in English before?” I asked. + +“No, sir.” + +“No! you read it well; you have been in England?” + +“Oh, no!” with some animation. + +“You have been in English families?” + +Still the answer was “No.” Here my eye, resting on the flyleaf of the +book, saw written, “Frances Evan Henri.” + +“Your name?” I asked + +“Yes, sir.” + +My interrogations were cut short; I heard a little rustling behind me, +and close at my back was the directress, professing to be examining the +interior of a desk. + +“Mademoiselle,” said she, looking up and addressing the teacher, “Will +you have the goodness to go and stand in the corridor, while the young +ladies are putting on their things, and try to keep some order?” + +Mdlle. Henri obeyed. + +“What splendid weather!” observed the directress cheerfully, glancing at +the same time from the window. I assented and was withdrawing. “What of +your new pupil, monsieur?” continued she, following my retreating steps. +“Is she likely to make progress in English?” + +“Indeed I can hardly judge. She possesses a pretty good accent; of +her real knowledge of the language I have as yet had no opportunity of +forming an opinion.” + +“And her natural capacity, monsieur? I have had my fears about that: can +you relieve me by an assurance at least of its average power?” + +“I see no reason to doubt its average power, mademoiselle, but really +I scarcely know her, and have not had time to study the calibre of her +capacity. I wish you a very good afternoon.” + +She still pursued me. “You will observe, monsieur, and tell me what you +think; I could so much better rely on your opinion than on my own; women +cannot judge of these things as men can, and, excuse my pertinacity, +monsieur, but it is natural I should feel interested about this poor +little girl (pauvre petite); she has scarcely any relations, her own +efforts are all she has to look to, her acquirements must be her sole +fortune; her present position has once been mine, or nearly so; it is +then but natural I should sympathize with her; and sometimes when I see +the difficulty she has in managing pupils, I feel quite chagrined. +I doubt not she does her best, her intentions are excellent; but, +monsieur, she wants tact and firmness. I have talked to her on the +subject, but I am not fluent, and probably did not express myself +with clearness; she never appears to comprehend me. Now, would you +occasionally, when you see an opportunity, slip in a word of advice +to her on the subject; men have so much more influence than women +have--they argue so much more logically than we do; and you, monsieur, +in particular, have so paramount a power of making yourself obeyed; +a word of advice from you could not but do her good; even if she were +sullen and headstrong (which I hope she is not), she would scarcely +refuse to listen to you; for my own part, I can truly say that I never +attend one of your lessons without deriving benefit from witnessing your +management of the pupils. The other masters are a constant source of +anxiety to me; they cannot impress the young ladies with sentiments of +respect, nor restrain the levity natural to youth: in you, monsieur, I +feel the most absolute confidence; try then to put this poor child +into the way of controlling our giddy, high-spirited Brabantoises. +But, monsieur, I would add one word more; don’t alarm her AMOUR PROPRE; +beware of inflicting a wound there. I reluctantly admit that in that +particular she is blameably--some would say ridiculously--susceptible. +I fear I have touched this sore point inadvertently, and she cannot get +over it.” + +During the greater part of this harangue my hand was on the lock of the +outer door; I now turned it. + +“Au revoir, mademoiselle,” said I, and I escaped. I saw the directress’s +stock of words was yet far from exhausted. She looked after me, she +would fain have detained me longer. Her manner towards me had +been altered ever since I had begun to treat her with hardness and +indifference: she almost cringed to me on every occasion; she consulted +my countenance incessantly, and beset me with innumerable little +officious attentions. Servility creates despotism. This slavish homage, +instead of softening my heart, only pampered whatever was stern and +exacting in its mood. The very circumstance of her hovering round me +like a fascinated bird, seemed to transform me into a rigid pillar of +stone; her flatteries irritated my scorn, her blandishments confirmed +my reserve. At times I wondered what she meant by giving herself such +trouble to win me, when the more profitable Pelet was already in her +nets, and when, too, she was aware that I possessed her secret, for I +had not scrupled to tell her as much: but the fact is that as it was +her nature to doubt the reality and under-value the worth of modesty, +affection, disinterestedness--to regard these qualities as foibles of +character--so it was equally her tendency to consider pride, hardness, +selfishness, as proofs of strength. She would trample on the neck +of humility, she would kneel at the feet of disdain; she would meet +tenderness with secret contempt, indifference she would woo with +ceaseless assiduities. Benevolence, devotedness, enthusiasm, were +her antipathies; for dissimulation and self-interest she had a +preference--they were real wisdom in her eyes; moral and physical +degradation, mental and bodily inferiority, she regarded with +indulgence; they were foils capable of being turned to good account as +set-offs for her own endowments. To violence, injustice, tyranny, she +succumbed--they were her natural masters; she had no propensity to hate, +no impulse to resist them; the indignation their behests awake in some +hearts was unknown in hers. From all this it resulted that the false and +selfish called her wise, the vulgar and debased termed her charitable, +the insolent and unjust dubbed her amiable, the conscientious and +benevolent generally at first accepted as valid her claim to be +considered one of themselves; but ere long the plating of pretension +wore off, the real material appeared below, and they laid her aside as a +deception. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +In the course of another fortnight I had seen sufficient of Frances +Evans Henri, to enable me to form a more definite opinion of her +character. I found her possessed in a somewhat remarkable degree of at +least two good points, viz., perseverance and a sense of duty; I +found she was really capable of applying to study, of contending with +difficulties. At first I offered her the same help which I had always +found it necessary to confer on the others; I began with unloosing for +her each knotty point, but I soon discovered that such help was regarded +by my new pupil as degrading; she recoiled from it with a certain proud +impatience. Hereupon I appointed her long lessons, and left her to solve +alone any perplexities they might present. She set to the task with +serious ardour, and having quickly accomplished one labour, eagerly +demanded more. So much for her perseverance; as to her sense of duty, +it evinced itself thus: she liked to learn, but hated to teach; her +progress as a pupil depended upon herself, and I saw that on herself she +could calculate with certainty; her success as a teacher rested partly, +perhaps chiefly, upon the will of others; it cost her a most painful +effort to enter into conflict with this foreign will, to endeavour +to bend it into subjection to her own; for in what regarded people in +general the action of her will was impeded by many scruples; it was as +unembarrassed as strong where her own affairs were concerned, and to it +she could at any time subject her inclination, if that inclination went +counter to her convictions of right; yet when called upon to wrestle +with the propensities, the habits, the faults of others, of children +especially, who are deaf to reason, and, for the most part, insensate to +persuasion, her will sometimes almost refused to act; then came in the +sense of duty, and forced the reluctant will into operation. A wasteful +expense of energy and labour was frequently the consequence; Frances +toiled for and with her pupils like a drudge, but it was long ere her +conscientious exertions were rewarded by anything like docility on their +part, because they saw that they had power over her, inasmuch as by +resisting her painful attempts to convince, persuade, control--by +forcing her to the employment of coercive measures--they could +inflict upon her exquisite suffering. Human beings--human children +especially--seldom deny themselves the pleasure of exercising a power +which they are conscious of possessing, even though that power consist +only in a capacity to make others wretched; a pupil whose sensations are +duller than those of his instructor, while his nerves are tougher and +his bodily strength perhaps greater, has an immense advantage over that +instructor, and he will generally use it relentlessly, because the very +young, very healthy, very thoughtless, know neither how to sympathize +nor how to spare. Frances, I fear, suffered much; a continual weight +seemed to oppress her spirits; I have said she did not live in the +house, and whether in her own abode, wherever that might be, she wore +the same preoccupied, unsmiling, sorrowfully resolved air that always +shaded her features under the roof of Mdlle. Reuter, I could not tell. + +One day I gave, as a devoir, the trite little anecdote of Alfred tending +cakes in the herdsman’s hut, to be related with amplifications. A +singular affair most of the pupils made of it; brevity was what they +had chiefly studied; the majority of the narratives were perfectly +unintelligible; those of Sylvie and Leonie Ledru alone pretended to +anything like sense and connection. Eulalie, indeed, had hit, upon a +clever expedient for at once ensuring accuracy and saving trouble; she +had obtained access somehow to an abridged history of England, and had +copied the anecdote out fair. I wrote on the margin of her production +“Stupid and deceitful,” and then tore it down the middle. + +Last in the pile of single-leaved devoirs, I found one of several +sheets, neatly written out and stitched together; I knew the hand, and +scarcely needed the evidence of the signature “Frances Evans Henri” to +confirm my conjecture as to the writer’s identity. + +Night was my usual time for correcting devoirs, and my own room the +usual scene of such task--task most onerous hitherto; and it seemed +strange to me to feel rising within me an incipient sense of interest, +as I snuffed the candle and addressed myself to the perusal of the poor +teacher’s manuscript. + +“Now,” thought I, “I shall see a glimpse of what she really is; I shall +get an idea of the nature and extent of her powers; not that she can be +expected to express herself well in a foreign tongue, but still, if she +has any mind, here will be a reflection of it.” + +The narrative commenced by a description of a Saxon peasant’s hut, +situated within the confines of a great, leafless, winter forest; it +represented an evening in December; flakes of snow were falling, and +the herdsman foretold a heavy storm; he summoned his wife to aid him in +collecting their flock, roaming far away on the pastoral banks of the +Thone; he warns her that it will be late ere they return. The good woman +is reluctant to quit her occupation of baking cakes for the evening +meal; but acknowledging the primary importance of securing the herds and +flocks, she puts on her sheep-skin mantle; and, addressing a stranger +who rests half reclined on a bed of rushes near the hearth, bids him +mind the bread till her return. + +“Take care, young man,” she continues, “that you fasten the door well +after us; and, above all, open to none in our absence; whatever sound +you hear, stir not, and look not out. The night will soon fall; this +forest is most wild and lonely; strange noises are often heard therein +after sunset; wolves haunt these glades, and Danish warriors infest the +country; worse things are talked of; you might chance to hear, as it +were, a child cry, and on opening the door to afford it succour, a great +black bull, or a shadowy goblin dog, might rush over the threshold; +or, more awful still, if something flapped, as with wings, against the +lattice, and then a raven or a white dove flew in and settled on the +hearth, such a visitor would be a sure sign of misfortune to the house; +therefore, heed my advice, and lift the latchet for nothing.” + +Her husband calls her away, both depart. The stranger, left alone, +listens awhile to the muffled snow-wind, the remote, swollen sound of +the river, and then he speaks. + +“It is Christmas Eve,” says he, “I mark the date; here I sit alone on +a rude couch of rushes, sheltered by the thatch of a herdsman’s hut; +I, whose inheritance was a kingdom, owe my night’s harbourage to a poor +serf; my throne is usurped, my crown presses the brow of an invader; I +have no friends; my troops wander broken in the hills of Wales; reckless +robbers spoil my country; my subjects lie prostrate, their breasts +crushed by the heel of the brutal Dane. Fate! thou hast done thy worst, +and now thou standest before me resting thy hand on thy blunted blade. +Ay; I see thine eye confront mine and demand why I still live, why I +still hope. Pagan demon, I credit not thine omnipotence, and so cannot +succumb to thy power. My God, whose Son, as on this night, took on Him +the form of man, and for man vouchsafed to suffer and bleed, controls +thy hand, and without His behest thou canst not strike a stroke. My God +is sinless, eternal, all-wise--in Him is my trust; and though stripped +and crushed by thee--though naked, desolate, void of resource--I do not +despair, I cannot despair: were the lance of Guthrum now wet with my +blood, I should not despair. I watch, I toil, I hope, I pray; Jehovah, +in his own time, will aid.” + +I need not continue the quotation; the whole devoir was in the same +strain. There were errors of orthography, there were foreign idioms, +there were some faults of construction, there were verbs irregular +transformed into verbs regular; it was mostly made up, as the above +example shows, of short and somewhat rude sentences, and the style stood +in great need of polish and sustained dignity; yet such as it was, I +had hitherto seen nothing like it in the course of my professorial +experience. The girl’s mind had conceived a picture of the hut, of the +two peasants, of the crownless king; she had imagined the wintry forest, +she had recalled the old Saxon ghost-legends, she had appreciated +Alfred’s courage under calamity, she had remembered his Christian +education, and had shown him, with the rooted confidence of those +primitive days, relying on the scriptural Jehovah for aid against the +mythological Destiny. This she had done without a hint from me: I had +given the subject, but not said a word about the manner of treating it. + +“I will find, or make, an opportunity of speaking to her,” I said to +myself as I rolled the devoir up; “I will learn what she has of English +in her besides the name of Frances Evans; she is no novice in the +language, that is evident, yet she told me she had neither been in +England, nor taken lessons in English, nor lived in English families.” + +In the course of my next lesson, I made a report of the other devoirs, +dealing out praise and blame in very small retail parcels, according to +my custom, for there was no use in blaming severely, and high encomiums +were rarely merited. I said nothing of Mdlle. Henri’s exercise, and, +spectacles on nose, I endeavoured to decipher in her countenance her +sentiments at the omission. I wanted to find out whether in her existed +a consciousness of her own talents. “If she thinks she did a clever +thing in composing that devoir, she will now look mortified,” thought +I. Grave as usual, almost sombre, was her face; as usual, her eyes were +fastened on the cahier open before her; there was something, I thought, +of expectation in her attitude, as I concluded a brief review of the +last devoir, and when, casting it from me and rubbing my hands, I bade +them take their grammars, some slight change did pass over her air +and mien, as though she now relinquished a faint prospect of pleasant +excitement; she had been waiting for something to be discussed in which +she had a degree of interest; the discussion was not to come on, so +expectation sank back, shrunk and sad, but attention, promptly filling +up the void, repaired in a moment the transient collapse of feature; +still, I felt, rather than saw, during the whole course of the lesson, +that a hope had been wrenched from her, and that if she did not show +distress, it was because she would not. + +At four o’clock, when the bell rang and the room was in immediate +tumult, instead of taking my hat and starting from the estrade, I sat +still a moment. I looked at Frances, she was putting her books into her +cabas; having fastened the button, she raised her head; encountering my +eye, she made a quiet, respectful obeisance, as bidding good afternoon, +and was turning to depart:-- + +“Come here,” said I, lifting my finger at the same time. She hesitated; +she could not hear the words amidst the uproar now pervading both +school-rooms; I repeated the sign; she approached; again she paused +within half a yard of the estrade, and looked shy, and still doubtful +whether she had mistaken my meaning. + +“Step up,” I said, speaking with decision. It is the only way of dealing +with diffident, easily embarrassed characters, and with some slight +manual aid I presently got her placed just where I wanted her to be, +that is, between my desk and the window, where she was screened from the +rush of the second division, and where no one could sneak behind her to +listen. + +“Take a seat,” I said, placing a tabouret; and I made her sit down. I +knew what I was doing would be considered a very strange thing, and, +what was more, I did not care. Frances knew it also, and, I fear, by an +appearance of agitation and trembling, that she cared much. I drew from +my pocket the rolled-up devoir. + +“This is yours, I suppose?” said I, addressing her in English, for I now +felt sure she could speak English. + +“Yes,” she answered distinctly; and as I unrolled it and laid it out +flat on the desk before her with my hand upon it, and a pencil in that +hand, I saw her moved, and, as it were, kindled; her depression beamed +as a cloud might behind which the sun is burning. + +“This devoir has numerous faults,” said I. “It will take you some years +of careful study before you are in a condition to write English with +absolute correctness. Attend: I will point out some principal defects.” + And I went through it carefully, noting every error, and demonstrating +why they were errors, and how the words or phrases ought to have been +written. In the course of this sobering process she became calm. I now +went on: + +“As to the substance of your devoir, Mdlle. Henri, it has surprised me; +I perused it with pleasure, because I saw in it some proofs of taste and +fancy. Taste and fancy are not the highest gifts of the human mind, but +such as they are you possess them--not probably in a paramount degree, +but in a degree beyond what the majority can boast. You may then take +courage; cultivate the faculties that God and nature have bestowed on +you, and do not fear in any crisis of suffering, under any pressure of +injustice, to derive free and full consolation from the consciousness of +their strength and rarity.” + +“Strength and rarity!” I repeated to myself; “ay, the words are probably +true,” for on looking up, I saw the sun had dissevered its screening +cloud, her countenance was transfigured, a smile shone in her eyes--a +smile almost triumphant; it seemed to say-- + +“I am glad you have been forced to discover so much of my nature; you +need not so carefully moderate your language. Do you think I am myself a +stranger to myself? What you tell me in terms so qualified, I have known +fully from a child.” + +She did say this as plainly as a frank and flashing glance could, but +in a moment the glow of her complexion, the radiance of her aspect, +had subsided; if strongly conscious of her talents, she was equally +conscious of her harassing defects, and the remembrance of these +obliterated for a single second, now reviving with sudden force, at once +subdued the too vivid characters in which her sense of her powers had +been expressed. So quick was the revulsion of feeling, I had not time to +check her triumph by reproof; ere I could contract my brows to a frown +she had become serious and almost mournful-looking. + +“Thank you, sir,” said she, rising. There was gratitude both in her +voice and in the look with which she accompanied it. It was time, +indeed, for our conference to terminate; for, when I glanced around, +behold all the boarders (the day-scholars had departed) were congregated +within a yard or two of my desk, and stood staring with eyes and mouths +wide open; the three maitresses formed a whispering knot in one corner, +and, close at my elbow, was the directress, sitting on a low chair, +calmly clipping the tassels of her finished purse. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +AFTER all I had profited but imperfectly by the opportunity I had so +boldly achieved of speaking to Mdlle. Henri; it was my intention to ask +her how she came to be possessed of two English baptismal names, Frances +and Evans, in addition to her French surname, also whence she derived +her good accent. I had forgotten both points, or, rather, our colloquy +had been so brief that I had not had time to bring them forward; +moreover, I had not half tested her powers of speaking English; all I +had drawn from her in that language were the words “Yes,” and “Thank +you, sir.” “No matter,” I reflected. “What has been left incomplete now, +shall be finished another day.” Nor did I fail to keep the promise thus +made to myself. It was difficult to get even a few words of particular +conversation with one pupil among so many; but, according to the old +proverb, “Where there is a will, there is a way;” and again and again +I managed to find an opportunity for exchanging a few words with Mdlle. +Henri, regardless that envy stared and detraction whispered whenever I +approached her. + +“Your book an instant.” Such was the mode in which I often began these +brief dialogues; the time was always just at the conclusion of the +lesson; and motioning to her to rise, I installed myself in her place, +allowing her to stand deferentially at my side; for I esteemed it wise +and right in her case to enforce strictly all forms ordinarily in +use between master and pupil; the rather because I perceived that in +proportion as my manner grew austere and magisterial, hers became easy +and self-possessed--an odd contradiction, doubtless, to the ordinary +effect in such cases; but so it was. + +“A pencil,” said I, holding out my hand without looking at her. (I am +now about to sketch a brief report of the first of these conferences.) +She gave me one, and while I underlined some errors in a grammatical +exercise she had written, I observed-- + +“You are not a native of Belgium?” + +“No.” + +“Nor of France?” + +“No.” + +“Where, then, is your birthplace?” + +“I was born at Geneva.” + +“You don’t call Frances and Evans Swiss names, I presume?” + +“No, sir; they are English names.” + +“Just so; and is it the custom of the Genevese to give their children +English appellatives?” + +“Non, Monsieur; mais--” + +“Speak English, if you please.” + +“Mais--” + +“English--” + +“But” (slowly and with embarrassment) “my parents were not all the two +Genevese.” + +“Say BOTH, instead of ‘all the two,’ mademoiselle.” + +“Not BOTH Swiss: my mother was English.” + +“Ah! and of English extraction?” + +“Yes--her ancestors were all English.” + +“And your father?” + +“He was Swiss.” + +“What besides? What was his profession?” + +“Ecclesiastic--pastor--he had a church.” + +“Since your mother is an Englishwoman, why do you not speak English with +more facility?” + +“Maman est morte, il y a dix ans.” + +“And you do homage to her memory by forgetting her language. Have the +goodness to put French out of your mind so long as I converse with +you--keep to English.” + +“C’est si difficile, monsieur, quand on n’en a plus l’habitude.” + +“You had the habitude formerly, I suppose? Now answer me in your mother +tongue.” + +“Yes, sir, I spoke the English more than the French when I was a child.” + +“Why do you not speak it now?” + +“Because I have no English friends.” + +“You live with your father, I suppose?” + +“My father is dead.” + +“You have brothers and sisters?” + +“Not one.” + +“Do you live alone?” + +“No--I have an aunt--ma tante Julienne.” + +“Your father’s sister?” + +“Justement, monsieur.” + +“Is that English?” + +“No--but I forget--” + +“For which, mademoiselle, if you were a child I should certainly devise +some slight punishment; at your age--you must be two or three and +twenty, I should think?” + +“Pas encore, monsieur--en un mois j’aurai dix-neuf ans.” + +“Well, nineteen is a mature age, and, having attained it, you ought to +be so solicitous for your own improvement, that it should not be needful +for a master to remind you twice of the expediency of your speaking +English whenever practicable.” + +To this wise speech I received no answer; and, when I looked up, my +pupil was smiling to herself a much-meaning, though not very gay smile; +it seemed to say, “He talks of he knows not what:” it said this +so plainly, that I determined to request information on the point +concerning which my ignorance seemed to be thus tacitly affirmed. + +“Are you solicitous for your own improvement?” + +“Rather.” + +“How do you prove it, mademoiselle?” + +An odd question, and bluntly put; it excited a second smile. + +“Why, monsieur, I am not inattentive--am I? I learn my lessons well--” + +“Oh, a child can do that! and what more do you do?” + +“What more can I do?” + +“Oh, certainly, not much; but you are a teacher, are you not, as well as +a pupil?” + +“Yes.” + +“You teach lace-mending?” + +“Yes.” + +“A dull, stupid occupation; do you like it?” + +“No--it is tedious.” + +“Why do you pursue it? Why do you not rather teach history, geography, +grammar, even arithmetic?” + +“Is monsieur certain that I am myself thoroughly acquainted with these +studies?” + +“I don’t know; you ought to be at your age.” + +“But I never was at school, monsieur--” + +“Indeed! What then were your friends--what was your aunt about? She is +very much to blame.” + +“No monsieur, no--my aunt is good--she is not to blame--she does what +she can; she lodges and nourishes me” (I report Mdlle. Henri’s phrases +literally, and it was thus she translated from the French). “She is not +rich; she has only an annuity of twelve hundred francs, and it would be +impossible for her to send me to school.” + +“Rather,” thought I to myself on hearing this, but I continued, in the +dogmatical tone I had adopted:-- + +“It is sad, however, that you should be brought up in ignorance of the +most ordinary branches of education; had you known something of history +and grammar you might, by degrees, have relinquished your lace-mending +drudgery, and risen in the world.” + +“It is what I mean to do.” + +“How? By a knowledge of English alone? That will not suffice; no +respectable family will receive a governess whose whole stock of +knowledge consists in a familiarity with one foreign language.” + +“Monsieur, I know other things.” + +“Yes, yes, you can work with Berlin wools, and embroider handkerchiefs +and collars--that will do little for you.” + +Mdlle. Henri’s lips were unclosed to answer, but she checked herself, +as thinking the discussion had been sufficiently pursued, and remained +silent. + +“Speak,” I continued, impatiently; “I never like the appearance of +acquiescence when the reality is not there; and you had a contradiction +at your tongue’s end.” + +“Monsieur, I have had many lessons both in grammar, history, geography, +and arithmetic. I have gone through a course of each study.” + +“Bravo! but how did you manage it, since your aunt could not afford to +send you to school?” + +“By lace-mending; by the thing monsieur despises so much.” + +“Truly! And now, mademoiselle, it will be a good exercise for you to +explain to me in English how such a result was produced by such means.” + +“Monsieur, I begged my aunt to have me taught lace-mending soon after +we came to Brussels, because I knew it was a METIER, a trade which was +easily learnt, and by which I could earn some money very soon. I learnt +it in a few days, and I quickly got work, for all the Brussels ladies +have old lace--very precious--which must be mended all the times it is +washed. I earned money a little, and this money I gave for lessons +in the studies I have mentioned; some of it I spent in buying books, +English books especially; soon I shall try to find a place of governess, +or school-teacher, when I can write and speak English well; but it will +be difficult, because those who know I have been a lace-mender will +despise me, as the pupils here despise me. Pourtant j’ai mon projet,” + she added in a lower tone. + +“What is it?” + +“I will go and live in England; I will teach French there.” + +The words were pronounced emphatically. She said “England” as you might +suppose an Israelite of Moses’ days would have said Canaan. + +“Have you a wish to see England?” + +“Yes, and an intention.” + +And here a voice, the voice of the directress, interposed: + +“Mademoiselle Henri, je crois qu’il va pleuvoir; vous feriez bien, ma +bonne amie, de retourner chez vous tout de suite.” + +In silence, without a word of thanks for this officious warning, Mdlle. +Henri collected her books; she moved to me respectfully, endeavoured to +move to her superior, though the endeavour was almost a failure, for her +head seemed as if it would not bend, and thus departed. + +Where there is one grain of perseverance or wilfulness in the +composition, trifling obstacles are ever known rather to stimulate than +discourage. Mdlle. Reuter might as well have spared herself the trouble +of giving that intimation about the weather (by-the-by her prediction +was falsified by the event--it did not rain that evening). At the close +of the next lesson I was again at Mdlle. Henri’s desk. Thus did I accost +her:-- + +“What is your idea of England, mademoiselle? Why do you wish to go +there?” + +Accustomed by this time to the calculated abruptness of my manner, it no +longer discomposed or surprised her, and she answered with only so +much of hesitation as was rendered inevitable by the difficulty she +experienced in improvising the translation of her thoughts from French +to English. + +“England is something unique, as I have heard and read; my idea of it is +vague, and I want to go there to render my idea clear, definite.” + +“Hum! How much of England do you suppose you could see if you went there +in the capacity of a teacher? A strange notion you must have of getting +a clear and definite idea of a country! All you could see of Great +Britain would be the interior of a school, or at most of one or two +private dwellings.” + +“It would be an English school; they would be English dwellings.” + +“Indisputably; but what then? What would be the value of observations +made on a scale so narrow?” + +“Monsieur, might not one learn something by analogy? +An--echantillon--a--a sample often serves to give an idea of the whole; +besides, narrow and wide are words comparative, are they not? All my +life would perhaps seem narrow in your eyes--all the life of a--that +little animal subterranean--une taupe--comment dit-on?” + +“Mole.” + +“Yes--a mole, which lives underground would seem narrow even to me.” + +“Well, mademoiselle--what then? Proceed.” + +“Mais, monsieur, vous me comprenez.” + +“Not in the least; have the goodness to explain.” + +“Why, monsieur, it is just so. In Switzerland I have done but little, +learnt but little, and seen but little; my life there was in a circle; +I walked the same round every day; I could not get out of it; had I +rested--remained there even till my death, I should never have enlarged +it, because I am poor and not skilful, I have not great acquirements; +when I was quite tired of this round, I begged my aunt to go to +Brussels; my existence is no larger here, because I am no richer or +higher; I walk in as narrow a limit, but the scene is changed; it would +change again if I went to England. I knew something of the bourgeois of +Geneva, now I know something of the bourgeois of Brussels; if I went to +London, I would know something of the bourgeois of London. Can you make +any sense out of what I say, monsieur, or is it all obscure?” + +“I see, I see--now let us advert to another subject; you propose to +devote your life to teaching, and you are a most unsuccessful teacher; +you cannot keep your pupils in order.” + +A flush of painful confusion was the result of this harsh remark; she +bent her head to the desk, but soon raising it replied-- + +“Monsieur, I am not a skilful teacher, it is true, but practice +improves; besides, I work under difficulties; here I only teach sewing, +I can show no power in sewing, no superiority--it is a subordinate +art; then I have no associates in this house, I am isolated; I am too a +heretic, which deprives me of influence.” + +“And in England you would be a foreigner; that too would deprive you +of influence, and would effectually separate you from all round you; in +England you would have as few connections, as little importance as you +have here.” + +“But I should be learning something; for the rest, there are probably +difficulties for such as I everywhere, and if I must contend, and +perhaps be conquered, I would rather submit to English pride than to +Flemish coarseness; besides, monsieur--” + +She stopped--not evidently from any difficulty in finding words to +express herself, but because discretion seemed to say, “You have said +enough.” + +“Finish your phrase,” I urged. + +“Besides, monsieur, I long to live once more among Protestants; they are +more honest than Catholics; a Romish school is a building with porous +walls, a hollow floor, a false ceiling; every room in this house, +monsieur, has eyeholes and ear-holes, and what the house is, the +inhabitants are, very treacherous; they all think it lawful to tell +lies; they all call it politeness to profess friendship where they feel +hatred.” + +“All?” said I; “you mean the pupils--the mere children--inexperienced, +giddy things, who have not learnt to distinguish the difference between +right and wrong?” + +“On the contrary, monsieur--the children are the most sincere; they have +not yet had time to become accomplished in duplicity; they will tell +lies, but they do it inartificially, and you know they are lying; but +the grown-up people are very false; they deceive strangers, they deceive +each other--” + +A servant here entered:-- + +“Mdlle. Henri--Mdlle. Reuter vous prie de vouloir bien conduire la +petite de Dorlodot chez elle, elle vous attend dans le cabinet +de Rosalie la portiere--c’est que sa bonne n’est pas venue la +chercher--voyez-vous.” + +“Eh bien! est-ce que je suis sa bonne--moi?” demanded Mdlle. Henri; then +smiling, with that same bitter, derisive smile I had seen on her lips +once before, she hastily rose and made her exit. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +THE young Anglo-Swiss evidently derived both pleasure and profit from +the study of her mother-tongue. In teaching her I did not, of course, +confine myself to the ordinary school routine; I made instruction in +English a channel for instruction in literature. I prescribed to her a +course of reading; she had a little selection of English classics, a +few of which had been left her by her mother, and the others she had +purchased with her own penny-fee. I lent her some more modern works; all +these she read with avidity, giving me, in writing, a clear summary of +each work when she had perused it. Composition, too, she delighted in. +Such occupation seemed the very breath of her nostrils, and soon her +improved productions wrung from me the avowal that those qualities in +her I had termed taste and fancy ought rather to have been denominated +judgment and imagination. When I intimated so much, which I did as usual +in dry and stinted phrase, I looked for the radiant and exulting smile +my one word of eulogy had elicited before; but Frances coloured. If she +did smile, it was very softly and shyly; and instead of looking up to me +with a conquering glance, her eyes rested on my hand, which, stretched +over her shoulder, was writing some directions with a pencil on the +margin of her book. + +“Well, are you pleased that I am satisfied with your progress?” I asked. + +“Yes,” said she slowly, gently, the blush that had half subsided +returning. + +“But I do not say enough, I suppose?” I continued. “My praises are too +cool?” + +She made no answer, and, I thought, looked a little sad. I divined her +thoughts, and should much have liked to have responded to them, had +it been expedient so to do. She was not now very ambitious of +my admiration--not eagerly desirous of dazzling me; a little +affection--ever so little--pleased her better than all the panegyrics in +the world. Feeling this, I stood a good while behind her, writing on +the margin of her book. I could hardly quit my station or relinquish my +occupation; something retained me bending there, my head very near +hers, and my hand near hers too; but the margin of a copy-book is not an +illimitable space--so, doubtless, the directress thought; and she took +occasion to walk past in order to ascertain by what art I prolonged so +disproportionately the period necessary for filling it. I was obliged to +go. Distasteful effort--to leave what we most prefer! + +Frances did not become pale or feeble in consequence of her sedentary +employment; perhaps the stimulus it communicated to her mind +counterbalanced the inaction it imposed on her body. She changed, +indeed, changed obviously and rapidly; but it was for the better. When +I first saw her, her countenance was sunless, her complexion colourless; +she looked like one who had no source of enjoyment, no store of bliss +anywhere in the world; now the cloud had passed from her mien, leaving +space for the dawn of hope and interest, and those feelings rose like a +clear morning, animating what had been depressed, tinting what had been +pale. Her eyes, whose colour I had not at first known, so dim were they +with repressed tears, so shadowed with ceaseless dejection, now, lit by +a ray of the sunshine that cheered her heart, revealed irids of bright +hazel--irids large and full, screened with long lashes; and pupils +instinct with fire. That look of wan emaciation which anxiety or low +spirits often communicates to a thoughtful, thin face, rather long than +round, having vanished from hers, a clearness of skin almost bloom, +and a plumpness almost embonpoint, softened the decided lines of +her features. Her figure shared in this beneficial change; it became +rounder, and as the harmony of her form was complete and her stature of +the graceful middle height, one did not regret (or at least I did not +regret) the absence of confirmed fulness, in contours, still slight, +though compact, elegant, flexible--the exquisite turning of waist, +wrist, hand, foot, and ankle satisfied completely my notions of +symmetry, and allowed a lightness and freedom of movement which +corresponded with my ideas of grace. + +Thus improved, thus wakened to life, Mdlle. Henri began to take a +new footing in the school; her mental power, manifested gradually but +steadily, ere long extorted recognition even from the envious; and when +the young and healthy saw that she could smile brightly, converse gaily, +move with vivacity and alertness, they acknowledged in her a sisterhood +of youth and health, and tolerated her as of their kind accordingly. + +To speak truth, I watched this change much as a gardener watches the +growth of a precious plant, and I contributed to it too, even as the +said gardener contributes to the development of his favourite. To me it +was not difficult to discover how I could best foster my pupil, cherish +her starved feelings, and induce the outward manifestation of that +inward vigour which sunless drought and blighting blast had hitherto +forbidden to expand. Constancy of attention--a kindness as mute +as watchful, always standing by her, cloaked in the rough garb of +austerity, and making its real nature known only by a rare glance of +interest, or a cordial and gentle word; real respect masked with seeming +imperiousness, directing, urging her actions, yet helping her too, and +that with devoted care: these were the means I used, for these means +best suited Frances’ feelings, as susceptible as deep vibrating--her +nature at once proud and shy. + +The benefits of my system became apparent also in her altered demeanour +as a teacher; she now took her place amongst her pupils with an air +of spirit and firmness which assured them at once that she meant to be +obeyed--and obeyed she was. They felt they had lost their power over +her. If any girl had rebelled, she would no longer have taken her +rebellion to heart; she possessed a source of comfort they could not +drain, a pillar of support they could not overthrow: formerly, when +insulted, she wept; now, she smiled. + +The public reading of one of her devoirs achieved the revelation of her +talents to all and sundry; I remember the subject--it was an emigrant’s +letter to his friends at home. It opened with simplicity; some natural +and graphic touches disclosed to the reader the scene of virgin forest +and great, New-World river--barren of sail and flag--amidst which the +epistle was supposed to be indited. The difficulties and dangers that +attend a settler’s life, were hinted at; and in the few words said on +that subject, Mdlle. Henri failed not to render audible the voice of +resolve, patience, endeavour. The disasters which had driven him +from his native country were alluded to; stainless honour, inflexible +independence, indestructible self-respect there took the word. Past +days were spoken of; the grief of parting, the regrets of absence, were +touched upon; feeling, forcible and fine, breathed eloquent in every +period. At the close, consolation was suggested; religious faith became +there the speaker, and she spoke well. + +The devoir was powerfully written in language at once chaste and choice, +in a style nerved with vigour and graced with harmony. + +Mdlle. Reuter was quite sufficiently acquainted with English to +understand it when read or spoken in her presence, though she could +neither speak nor write it herself. During the perusal of this devoir, +she sat placidly busy, her eyes and fingers occupied with the formation +of a “riviere” or open-work hem round a cambric handkerchief; she +said nothing, and her face and forehead, clothed with a mask of purely +negative expression, were as blank of comment as her lips. As neither +surprise, pleasure, approbation, nor interest were evinced in her +countenance, so no more were disdain, envy, annoyance, weariness; if +that inscrutable mien said anything, it was simply this-- + +“The matter is too trite to excite an emotion, or call forth an +opinion.” + +As soon as I had done, a hum rose; several of the pupils, pressing round +Mdlle. Henri, began to beset her with compliments; the composed voice of +the directress was now heard:-- + +“Young ladies, such of you as have cloaks and umbrellas will hasten +to return home before the shower becomes heavier” (it was raining a +little), “the remainder will wait till their respective servants arrive +to fetch them.” And the school dispersed, for it was four o’clock. + +“Monsieur, a word,” said Mdlle. Reuter, stepping on to the estrade, and +signifying, by a movement of the hand, that she wished me to relinquish, +for an instant, the castor I had clutched. + +“Mademoiselle, I am at your service.” + +“Monsieur, it is of course an excellent plan to encourage effort in +young people by making conspicuous the progress of any particularly +industrious pupil; but do you not think that in the present instance, +Mdlle. Henri can hardly be considered as a concurrent with the other +pupils? She is older than most of them, and has had advantages of an +exclusive nature for acquiring a knowledge of English; on the other +hand, her sphere of life is somewhat beneath theirs; under these +circumstances, a public distinction, conferred upon Mdlle. Henri, may be +the means of suggesting comparisons, and exciting feelings such as would +be far from advantageous to the individual forming their object. The +interest I take in Mdlle. Henri’s real welfare makes me desirous of +screening her from annoyances of this sort; besides, monsieur, as I +have before hinted to you, the sentiment of AMOUR-PROPRE has a somewhat +marked preponderance in her character; celebrity has a tendency to +foster this sentiment, and in her it should be rather repressed--she +rather needs keeping down than bringing forward; and then I think, +monsieur--it appears to me that ambition, LITERARY ambition especially, +is not a feeling to be cherished in the mind of a woman: would not +Mdlle. Henri be much safer and happier if taught to believe that in the +quiet discharge of social duties consists her real vocation, than if +stimulated to aspire after applause and publicity? She may never marry; +scanty as are her resources, obscure as are her connections, uncertain +as is her health (for I think her consumptive, her mother died of that +complaint), it is more than probable she never will. I do not see how +she can rise to a position, whence such a step would be possible; but +even in celibacy it would be better for her to retain the character and +habits of a respectable decorous female.” + +“Indisputably, mademoiselle,” was my answer. “Your opinion admits of no +doubt;” and, fearful of the harangue being renewed, I retreated under +cover of that cordial sentence of assent. + +At the date of a fortnight after the little incident noted above, I find +it recorded in my diary that a hiatus occurred in Mdlle. Henri’s usually +regular attendance in class. The first day or two I wondered at her +absence, but did not like to ask an explanation of it; I thought indeed +some chance word might be dropped which would afford me the information +I wished to obtain, without my running the risk of exciting silly smiles +and gossiping whispers by demanding it. But when a week passed and +the seat at the desk near the door still remained vacant, and when +no allusion was made to the circumstance by any individual of the +class--when, on the contrary, I found that all observed a marked silence +on the point--I determined, COUTE QUI COUTE, to break the ice of this +silly reserve. I selected Sylvie as my informant, because from her I +knew that I should at least get a sensible answer, unaccompanied by +wriggle, titter, or other flourish of folly. + +“Ou donc est Mdlle. Henri?” I said one day as I returned an +exercise-book I had been examining. + +“Elle est partie, monsieur.” + +“Partie? et pour combien de temps? Quand reviendra-t-elle?” + +“Elle est partie pour toujours, monsieur; elle ne reviendra plus.” + +“Ah!” was my involuntary exclamation; then after a pause:-- + +“En etes-vous bien sure, Sylvie?” + +“Oui, oui, monsieur, mademoiselle la directrice nous l’a dit elle-meme +il y a deux ou trois jours.” + +And I could pursue my inquiries no further; time, place, and +circumstances forbade my adding another word. I could neither comment on +what had been said, nor demand further particulars. A question as to the +reason of the teacher’s departure, as to whether it had been voluntary +or otherwise, was indeed on my lips, but I suppressed it--there were +listeners all round. An hour after, in passing Sylvie in the corridor as +she was putting on her bonnet, I stopped short and asked:-- + +“Sylvie, do you know Mdlle. Henri’s address? I have some books of hers,” + I added carelessly, “and I should wish to send them to her.” + +“No, monsieur,” replied Sylvie; “but perhaps Rosalie, the portress, will +be able to give it you.” + +Rosalie’s cabinet was just at hand; I stepped in and repeated the +inquiry. Rosalie--a smart French grisette--looked up from her work with +a knowing smile, precisely the sort of smile I had been so desirous to +avoid exciting. Her answer was prepared; she knew nothing whatever +of Mdlle. Henri’s address--had never known it. Turning from her with +impatience--for I believed she lied and was hired to lie--I almost +knocked down some one who had been standing at my back; it was the +directress. My abrupt movement made her recoil two or three steps. I was +obliged to apologize, which I did more concisely than politely. No man +likes to be dogged, and in the very irritable mood in which I then +was the sight of Mdlle. Reuter thoroughly incensed me. At the moment I +turned her countenance looked hard, dark, and inquisitive; her eyes +were bent upon me with an expression of almost hungry curiosity. I had +scarcely caught this phase of physiognomy ere it had vanished; a +bland smile played on her features; my harsh apology was received with +good-humoured facility. + +“Oh, don’t mention it, monsieur; you only touched my hair with your +elbow; it is no worse, only a little dishevelled.” She shook it back, +and passing her fingers through her curls, loosened them into more +numerous and flowing ringlets. Then she went on with vivacity: + +“Rosalie, I was coming to tell you to go instantly and close the windows +of the salon; the wind is rising, and the muslin curtains will be +covered with dust.” + +Rosalie departed. “Now,” thought I, “this will not do; Mdlle. Reuter +thinks her meanness in eaves-dropping is screened by her art in devising +a pretext, whereas the muslin curtains she speaks of are not more +transparent than this same pretext.” An impulse came over me to thrust +the flimsy screen aside, and confront her craft boldly with a word or +two of plain truth. “The rough-shod foot treads most firmly on slippery +ground,” thought I; so I began: + +“Mademoiselle Henri has left your establishment--been dismissed, I +presume?” + +“Ah, I wished to have a little conversation with you, monsieur,” replied +the directress with the most natural and affable air in the world; +“but we cannot talk quietly here; will Monsieur step into the garden a +minute?” And she preceded me, stepping out through the glass-door I have +before mentioned. + +“There,” said she, when we had reached the centre of the middle alley, +and when the foliage of shrubs and trees, now in their summer pride, +closing behind and around us, shut out the view of the house, and thus +imparted a sense of seclusion even to this little plot of ground in the +very core of a capital. + +“There, one feels quiet and free when there are only pear-trees and +rose-bushes about one; I dare say you, like me, monsieur, are sometimes +tired of being eternally in the midst of life; of having human faces +always round you, human eyes always upon you, human voices always in +your ear. I am sure I often wish intensely for liberty to spend a whole +month in the country at some little farm-house, bien gentille, bien +propre, tout entouree de champs et de bois; quelle vie charmante que la +vie champetre! N’est-ce pas, monsieur?” + +“Cela depend, mademoiselle.” + +“Que le vent est bon et frais!” continued the directress; and she was +right there, for it was a south wind, soft and sweet. I carried my hat +in my hand, and this gentle breeze, passing through my hair, soothed my +temples like balm. Its refreshing effect, however, penetrated no deeper +than the mere surface of the frame; for as I walked by the side of +Mdlle. Reuter, my heart was still hot within me, and while I was musing +the fire burned; then spake I with my tongue:-- + +“I understand Mdlle. Henri is gone from hence, and will not return?” + +“Ah, true! I meant to have named the subject to you some days ago, but +my time is so completely taken up, I cannot do half the things I wish: +have you never experienced what it is, monsieur, to find the day too +short by twelve hours for your numerous duties?” + +“Not often. Mdlle. Henri’s departure was not voluntary, I presume? If it +had been, she would certainly have given me some intimation of it, being +my pupil.” + +“Oh, did she not tell you? that was strange; for my part, I never +thought of adverting to the subject; when one has so many things to +attend to, one is apt to forget little incidents that are not of primary +importance.” + +“You consider Mdlle. Henri’s dismission, then, as a very insignificant +event?” + +“Dismission? Ah! she was not dismissed; I can say with truth, monsieur, +that since I became the head of this establishment no master or teacher +has ever been dismissed from it.” + +“Yet some have left it, mademoiselle?” + +“Many; I have found it necessary to change frequently--a change of +instructors is often beneficial to the interests of a school; it gives +life and variety to the proceedings; it amuses the pupils, and suggests +to the parents the idea of exertion and progress.” + +“Yet when you are tired of a professor or maitresse, you scruple to +dismiss them?” + +“No need to have recourse to such extreme measures, I assure you. +Allons, monsieur le professeur--asseyons-nous; je vais vous donner une +petite lecon dans votre etat d’instituteur.” (I wish I might write +all she said to me in French--it loses sadly by being translated into +English.) We had now reached THE garden-chair; the directress sat down, +and signed to me to sit by her, but I only rested my knee on the seat, +and stood leaning my head and arm against the embowering branch of a +huge laburnum, whose golden flowers, blent with the dusky green leaves +of a lilac-bush, formed a mixed arch of shade and sunshine over the +retreat. Mdlle. Reuter sat silent a moment; some novel movements were +evidently working in her mind, and they showed their nature on her +astute brow; she was meditating some CHEF D’OEUVRE of policy. Convinced +by several months’ experience that the affectation of virtues she did +not possess was unavailing to ensnare me--aware that I had read her real +nature, and would believe nothing of the character she gave out as being +hers--she had determined, at last, to try a new key, and see if the lock +of my heart would yield to that; a little audacity, a word of truth, a +glimpse of the real. “Yes, I will try,” was her inward resolve; and then +her blue eye glittered upon me--it did not flash--nothing of flame ever +kindled in its temperate gleam. + +“Monsieur fears to sit by me?” she inquired playfully. + +“I have no wish to usurp Pelet’s place,” I answered, for I had got the +habit of speaking to her bluntly--a habit begun in anger, but continued +because I saw that, instead of offending, it fascinated her. She cast +down her eyes, and drooped her eyelids; she sighed uneasily; she turned +with an anxious gesture, as if she would give me the idea of a bird that +flutters in its cage, and would fain fly from its jail and jailer, and +seek its natural mate and pleasant nest. + +“Well--and your lesson?” I demanded briefly. + +“Ah!” she exclaimed, recovering herself, “you are so young, so frank +and fearless, so talented, so impatient of imbecility, so disdainful of +vulgarity, you need a lesson; here it is then: far more is to be done +in this world by dexterity than by strength; but, perhaps, you knew +that before, for there is delicacy as well as power in your +character--policy, as well as pride?” + +“Go on,” said I; and I could hardly help smiling, the flattery was so +piquant, so finely seasoned. She caught the prohibited smile, though I +passed my hand over my month to conceal it; and again she made room for +me to sit beside her. I shook my head, though temptation penetrated to +my senses at the moment, and once more I told her to go on. + +“Well, then, if ever you are at the head of a large establishment, +dismiss nobody. To speak truth, monsieur (and to you I will speak +truth), I despise people who are always making rows, blustering, sending +off one to the right, and another to the left, urging and hurrying +circumstances. I’ll tell you what I like best to do, monsieur, shall I?” + She looked up again; she had compounded her glance well this time--much +archness, more deference, a spicy dash of coquetry, an unveiled +consciousness of capacity. I nodded; she treated me like the great +Mogul; so I became the great Mogul as far as she was concerned. + +“I like, monsieur, to take my knitting in my hands, and to sit quietly +down in my chair; circumstances defile past me; I watch their march; so +long as they follow the course I wish, I say nothing, and do nothing; I +don’t clap my hands, and cry out ‘Bravo! How lucky I am!’ to attract +the attention and envy of my neighbours--I am merely passive; but when +events fall out ill--when circumstances become adverse--I watch very +vigilantly; I knit on still, and still I hold my tongue; but every now +and then, monsieur, I just put my toe out--so--and give the rebellious +circumstance a little secret push, without noise, which sends it the way +I wish, and I am successful after all, and nobody has seen my expedient. +So, when teachers or masters become troublesome and inefficient--when, +in short, the interests of the school would suffer from their retaining +their places--I mind my knitting, events progress, circumstances glide +past; I see one which, if pushed ever so little awry, will render +untenable the post I wish to have vacated--the deed is done--the +stumbling-block removed--and no one saw me: I have not made an enemy, I +am rid of an incumbrance.” + +A moment since, and I thought her alluring; this speech concluded, I +looked on her with distaste. “Just like you,” was my cold answer. +“And in this way you have ousted Mdlle. Henri? You wanted her office, +therefore you rendered it intolerable to her?” + +“Not at all, monsieur, I was merely anxious about Mdlle. Henri’s health; +no, your moral sight is clear and piercing, but there you have failed +to discover the truth. I took--I have always taken a real interest in +Mdlle. Henri’s welfare; I did not like her going out in all weathers; +I thought it would be more advantageous for her to obtain a permanent +situation; besides, I considered her now qualified to do something more +than teach sewing. I reasoned with her; left the decision to herself; +she saw the correctness of my views, and adopted them.” + +“Excellent! and now, mademoiselle, you will have the goodness to give me +her address.” + +“Her address!” and a sombre and stony change came over the mien of +the directress. “Her address? Ah?--well--I wish I could oblige you, +monsieur, but I cannot, and I will tell you why; whenever I myself asked +her for her address, she always evaded the inquiry. I thought--I may +be wrong--but I THOUGHT her motive for doing so, was a natural, though +mistaken reluctance to introduce me to some, probably, very poor +abode; her means were narrow, her origin obscure; she lives somewhere, +doubtless, in the ‘basse ville.’” + +“I’ll not lose sight of my best pupil yet,” said I, “though she were +born of beggars and lodged in a cellar; for the rest, it is absurd to +make a bugbear of her origin to me--I happen to know that she was a +Swiss pastor’s daughter, neither more nor less; and, as to her narrow +means, I care nothing for the poverty of her purse so long as her heart +overflows with affluence.” + +“Your sentiments are perfectly noble, monsieur,” said the directress, +affecting to suppress a yawn; her sprightliness was now extinct, her +temporary candour shut up; the little, red-coloured, piratical-looking +pennon of audacity she had allowed to float a minute in the air, was +furled, and the broad, sober-hued flag of dissimulation again hung +low over the citadel. I did not like her thus, so I cut short the +TETE-A-TETE and departed. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +NOVELISTS should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real +life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us +fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; +they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of +rapture--still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we +rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour +the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish; unless, indeed, we have +plunged like beasts into sensual indulgence, abused, strained, +stimulated, again overstrained, and, at last, destroyed our faculties +for enjoyment; then, truly, we may find ourselves without support, +robbed of hope. Our agony is great, and how can it end? We have broken +the spring of our powers; life must be all suffering--too feeble to +conceive faith--death must be darkness--God, spirits, religion can have +no place in our collapsed minds, where linger only hideous and polluting +recollections of vice; and time brings us on to the brink of the grave, +and dissolution flings us in--a rag eaten through and through with +disease, wrung together with pain, stamped into the churchyard sod by +the inexorable heel of despair. + +But the man of regular life and rational mind never despairs. He loses +his property--it is a blow--he staggers a moment; then, his energies, +roused by the smart, are at work to seek a remedy; activity soon +mitigates regret. Sickness affects him; he takes patience--endures what +he cannot cure. Acute pain racks him; his writhing limbs know not where +to find rest; he leans on Hope’s anchors. Death takes from him what +he loves; roots up, and tears violently away the stem round which his +affections were twined--a dark, dismal time, a frightful wrench--but +some morning Religion looks into his desolate house with sunrise, and +says, that in another world, another life, he shall meet his kindred +again. She speaks of that world as a place unsullied by sin--of that +life, as an era unembittered by suffering; she mightily strengthens +her consolation by connecting with it two ideas--which mortals cannot +comprehend, but on which they love to repose--Eternity, Immortality; and +the mind of the mourner, being filled with an image, faint yet glorious, +of heavenly hills all light and peace--of a spirit resting there in +bliss--of a day when his spirit shall also alight there, free and +disembodied--of a reunion perfected by love, purified from fear--he +takes courage--goes out to encounter the necessities and discharge the +duties of life; and, though sadness may never lift her burden from his +mind, Hope will enable him to support it. + +Well--and what suggested all this? and what is the inference to be drawn +therefrom? What suggested it, is the circumstance of my best pupil--my +treasure--being snatched from my hands, and put away out of my reach; +the inference to be drawn from it is--that, being a steady, reasonable +man, I did not allow the resentment, disappointment, and grief, +engendered in my mind by this evil chance, to grow there to any +monstrous size; nor did I allow them to monopolize the whole space of my +heart; I pent them, on the contrary, in one strait and secret nook. In +the daytime, too, when I was about my duties, I put them on the silent +system; and it was only after I had closed the door of my chamber +at night that I somewhat relaxed my severity towards these morose +nurslings, and allowed vent to their language of murmurs; then, in +revenge, they sat on my pillow, haunted my bed, and kept me awake with +their long, midnight cry. + +A week passed. I had said nothing more to Mdlle. Reuter. I had been calm +in my demeanour to her, though stony cold and hard. When I looked at +her, it was with the glance fitting to be bestowed on one who I knew +had consulted jealousy as an adviser, and employed treachery as an +instrument--the glance of quiet disdain and rooted distrust. On Saturday +evening, ere I left the house, I stept into the SALLE-A-MANGER, where +she was sitting alone, and, placing myself before her, I asked, with +the same tranquil tone and manner that I should have used had I put the +question for the first time-- + +“Mademoiselle, will you have the goodness to give me the address of +Frances Evans Henri?” + +A little surprised, but not disconcerted, she smilingly disclaimed any +knowledge of that address, adding, “Monsieur has perhaps forgotten that +I explained all about that circumstance before--a week ago?” + +“Mademoiselle,” I continued, “you would greatly oblige me by directing +me to that young person’s abode.” + +She seemed somewhat puzzled; and, at last, looking up with an admirably +counterfeited air of naivete, she demanded, “Does Monsieur think I am +telling an untruth?” + +Still avoiding to give her a direct answer, I said, “It is not then your +intention, mademoiselle, to oblige me in this particular?” + +“But, monsieur, how can I tell you what I do not know?” + +“Very well; I understand you perfectly, mademoiselle, and now I have +only two or three words to say. This is the last week in July; in +another month the vacation will commence, have the goodness to avail +yourself of the leisure it will afford you to look out for another +English master--at the close of August, I shall be under the necessity +of resigning my post in your establishment.” + +I did not wait for her comments on this announcement, but bowed and +immediately withdrew. + +That same evening, soon after dinner, a servant brought me a small +packet; it was directed in a hand I knew, but had not hoped so soon to +see again; being in my own apartment and alone, there was nothing to +prevent my immediately opening it; it contained four five-franc pieces, +and a note in English. + +“MONSIEUR, + +“I came to Mdlle. Reuter’s house yesterday, at the time when I knew you +would be just about finishing your lesson, and I asked if I might go +into the schoolroom and speak to you. Mdlle. Reuter came out and said +you were already gone; it had not yet struck four, so I thought she must +be mistaken, but concluded it would be vain to call another day on the +same errand. In one sense a note will do as well--it will wrap up the +20 francs, the price of the lessons I have received from you; and if it +will not fully express the thanks I owe you in addition--if it will not +bid you good-bye as I could wish to have done--if it will not tell you, +as I long to do, how sorry I am that I shall probably never see you +more--why, spoken words would hardly be more adequate to the task. Had +I seen you, I should probably have stammered out something feeble and +unsatisfactory--something belying my feelings rather than explaining +them; so it is perhaps as well that I was denied admission to your +presence. You often remarked, monsieur, that my devoirs dwelt a great +deal on fortitude in bearing grief--you said I introduced that theme too +often: I find indeed that it is much easier to write about a severe duty +than to perform it, for I am oppressed when I see and feel to what a +reverse fate has condemned me; you were kind to me, monsieur--very kind; +I am afflicted--I am heart-broken to be quite separated from you; soon +I shall have no friend on earth. But it is useless troubling you with my +distresses. What claim have I on your sympathy? None; I will then say no +more. + +“Farewell, Monsieur. + +“F. E. HENRI.” + +I put up the note in my pocket-book. I slipped the five-franc pieces +into my purse--then I took a turn through my narrow chamber. + +“Mdlle. Reuter talked about her poverty,” said I, “and she is poor; +yet she pays her debts and more. I have not yet given her a quarter’s +lessons, and she has sent me a quarter’s due. I wonder of what she +deprived herself to scrape together the twenty francs--I wonder what +sort of a place she has to live in, and what sort of a woman her aunt +is, and whether she is likely to get employment to supply the place she +has lost. No doubt she will have to trudge about long enough from school +to school, to inquire here, and apply there--be rejected in this place, +disappointed in that. Many an evening she’ll go to her bed tired +and unsuccessful. And the directress would not let her in to bid me +good-bye? I might not have the chance of standing with her for a few +minutes at a window in the schoolroom and exchanging some half-dozen of +sentences--getting to know where she lived--putting matters in train +for having all things arranged to my mind? No address on the note”--I +continued, drawing it again from the pocket-book and examining it on +each side of the two leaves: “women are women, that is certain, and +always do business like women; men mechanically put a date and address +to their communications. And these five-franc pieces?”--(I hauled them +forth from my purse)--“if she had offered me them herself instead of +tying them up with a thread of green silk in a kind of Lilliputian +packet, I could have thrust them back into her little hand, and shut +up the small, taper fingers over them--so--and compelled her shame, her +pride, her shyness, all to yield to a little bit of determined Will--now +where is she? How can I get at her?” + +Opening my chamber door I walked down into the kitchen. + +“Who brought the packet?” I asked of the servant who had delivered it to +me. + +“Un petit commissionaire, monsieur.” + +“Did he say anything?” + +“Rien.” + +And I wended my way up the back-stairs, wondrously the wiser for my +inquiries. + +“No matter,” said I to myself, as I again closed the door. “No +matter--I’ll seek her through Brussels.” + +And I did. I sought her day by day whenever I had a moment’s leisure, +for four weeks; I sought her on Sundays all day long; I sought her on +the Boulevards, in the Allee Verte, in the Park; I sought her in Ste. +Gudule and St. Jacques; I sought her in the two Protestant chapels; I +attended these latter at the German, French, and English services, not +doubting that I should meet her at one of them. All my researches were +absolutely fruitless; my security on the last point was proved by the +event to be equally groundless with my other calculations. I stood +at the door of each chapel after the service, and waited till every +individual had come out, scrutinizing every gown draping a slender form, +peering under every bonnet covering a young head. In vain; I saw +girlish figures pass me, drawing their black scarfs over their sloping +shoulders, but none of them had the exact turn and air of Mdlle. +Henri’s; I saw pale and thoughtful faces “encadrees” in bands of brown +hair, but I never found her forehead, her eyes, her eyebrows. All the +features of all the faces I met seemed frittered away, because my eye +failed to recognize the peculiarities it was bent upon; an ample space +of brow and a large, dark, and serious eye, with a fine but decided line +of eyebrow traced above. + +“She has probably left Brussels--perhaps is gone to England, as she +said she would,” muttered I inwardly, as on the afternoon of the fourth +Sunday, I turned from the door of the chapel-royal which the door-keeper +had just closed and locked, and followed in the wake of the last of the +congregation, now dispersed and dispersing over the square. I had +soon outwalked the couples of English gentlemen and ladies. (Gracious +goodness! why don’t they dress better? My eye is yet filled with visions +of the high-flounced, slovenly, and tumbled dresses in costly silk and +satin, of the large unbecoming collars in expensive lace; of the ill-cut +coats and strangely fashioned pantaloons which every Sunday, at the +English service, filled the choirs of the chapel-royal, and after it, +issuing forth into the square, came into disadvantageous contrast with +freshly and trimly attired foreign figures, hastening to attend salut +at the church of Coburg.) I had passed these pairs of Britons, and +the groups of pretty British children, and the British footmen and +waiting-maids; I had crossed the Place Royale, and got into the Rue +Royale, thence I had diverged into the Rue de Louvain--an old and quiet +street. I remember that, feeling a little hungry, and not desiring to +go back and take my share of the “gouter,” now on the refectory-table +at Pelet’s--to wit, pistolets and water--I stepped into a baker’s and +refreshed myself on a COUC(?)--it is a Flemish word, I don’t know how +to spell it--A CORINTHE-ANGLICE, a currant bun--and a cup of coffee; and +then I strolled on towards the Porte de Louvain. Very soon I was out of +the city, and slowly mounting the hill, which ascends from the gate, I +took my time; for the afternoon, though cloudy, was very sultry, and not +a breeze stirred to refresh the atmosphere. No inhabitant of Brussels +need wander far to search for solitude; let him but move half a league +from his own city and he will find her brooding still and blank over +the wide fields, so drear though so fertile, spread out treeless and +trackless round the capital of Brabant. Having gained the summit of the +hill, and having stood and looked long over the cultured but lifeless +campaign, I felt a wish to quit the high road, which I had hitherto +followed, and get in among those tilled grounds--fertile as the beds +of a Brobdignagian kitchen-garden--spreading far and wide even to the +boundaries of the horizon, where, from a dusk green, distance changed +them to a sullen blue, and confused their tints with those of the livid +and thunderous-looking sky. Accordingly I turned up a by-path to the +right; I had not followed it far ere it brought me, as I expected, into +the fields, amidst which, just before me, stretched a long and lofty +white wall enclosing, as it seemed from the foliage showing above, some +thickly planted nursery of yew and cypress, for of that species were +the branches resting on the pale parapets, and crowding gloomily about a +massive cross, planted doubtless on a central eminence and extending its +arms, which seemed of black marble, over the summits of those sinister +trees. I approached, wondering to what house this well-protected garden +appertained; I turned the angle of the wall, thinking to see some +stately residence; I was close upon great iron gates; there was a +hut serving for a lodge near, but I had no occasion to apply for the +key--the gates were open; I pushed one leaf back--rain had rusted +its hinges, for it groaned dolefully as they revolved. Thick planting +embowered the entrance. Passing up the avenue, I saw objects on +each hand which, in their own mute language of inscription and sign, +explained clearly to what abode I had made my way. This was the +house appointed for all living; crosses, monuments, and garlands of +everlastings announced, “The Protestant Cemetery, outside the gate of +Louvain.” + +The place was large enough to afford half an hour’s strolling without +the monotony of treading continually the same path; and, for those who +love to peruse the annals of graveyards, here was variety of inscription +enough to occupy the attention for double or treble that space of time. +Hither people of many kindreds, tongues, and nations, had brought their +dead for interment; and here, on pages of stone, of marble, and of +brass, were written names, dates, last tributes of pomp or love, in +English, in French, in German, and Latin. Here the Englishman had +erected a marble monument over the remains of his Mary Smith or Jane +Brown, and inscribed it only with her name. There the French widower had +shaded the grave of his Elmire or Celestine with a brilliant thicket +of roses, amidst which a little tablet rising, bore an equally bright +testimony to her countless virtues. Every nation, tribe, and kindred, +mourned after its own fashion; and how soundless was the mourning of +all! My own tread, though slow and upon smooth-rolled paths, seemed to +startle, because it formed the sole break to a silence otherwise total. +Not only the winds, but the very fitful, wandering airs, were that +afternoon, as by common consent, all fallen asleep in their various +quarters; the north was hushed, the south silent, the east sobbed not, +nor did the west whisper. The clouds in heaven were condensed and +dull, but apparently quite motionless. Under the trees of this cemetery +nestled a warm breathless gloom, out of which the cypresses stood up +straight and mute, above which the willows hung low and still; where +the flowers, as languid as fair, waited listless for night dew or +thunder-shower; where the tombs, and those they hid, lay impassible to +sun or shadow, to rain or drought. + +Importuned by the sound of my own footsteps, I turned off upon the turf, +and slowly advanced to a grove of yews; I saw something stir among the +stems; I thought it might be a broken branch swinging, my short-sighted +vision had caught no form, only a sense of motion; but the dusky shade +passed on, appearing and disappearing at the openings in the avenue. I +soon discerned it was a living thing, and a human thing; and, drawing +nearer, I perceived it was a woman, pacing slowly to and fro, and +evidently deeming herself alone as I had deemed myself alone, and +meditating as I had been meditating. Ere long she returned to a seat +which I fancy she had but just quitted, or I should have caught sight +of her before. It was in a nook, screened by a clump of trees; there was +the white wall before her, and a little stone set up against the wall, +and, at the foot of the stone, was an allotment of turf freshly turned +up, a new-made grave. I put on my spectacles, and passed softly close +behind her; glancing at the inscription on the stone, I read, “Julienne +Henri, died at Brussels, aged sixty. August 10th, 18--.” Having perused +the inscription, I looked down at the form sitting bent and thoughtful +just under my eyes, unconscious of the vicinity of any living thing; it +was a slim, youthful figure in mourning apparel of the plainest black +stuff, with a little simple, black crape bonnet; I felt, as well as +saw, who it was; and, moving neither hand nor foot, I stood some moments +enjoying the security of conviction. I had sought her for a month, and +had never discovered one of her traces--never met a hope, or seized +a chance of encountering her anywhere. I had been forced to loosen my +grasp on expectation; and, but an hour ago, had sunk slackly under +the discouraging thought that the current of life, and the impulse +of destiny, had swept her for ever from my reach; and, behold, while +bending suddenly earthward beneath the pressure of despondency--while +following with my eyes the track of sorrow on the turf of a +graveyard--here was my lost jewel dropped on the tear-fed herbage, +nestling in the messy and mouldy roots of yew-trees. + +Frances sat very quiet, her elbow on her knee, and her head on her hand. +I knew she could retain a thinking attitude a long time without change; +at last, a tear fell; she had been looking at the name on the +stone before her, and her heart had no doubt endured one of those +constrictions with which the desolate living, regretting the dead, are, +at times, so sorely oppressed. Many tears rolled down, which she wiped +away, again and again, with her handkerchief; some distressed sobs +escaped her, and then, the paroxysm over, she sat quiet as before. I put +my hand gently on her shoulder; no need further to prepare her, for +she was neither hysterical nor liable to fainting-fits; a sudden push, +indeed, might have startled her, but the contact of my quiet touch +merely woke attention as I wished; and, though she turned quickly, yet +so lightning-swift is thought--in some minds especially--I believe the +wonder of what--the consciousness of who it was that thus stole unawares +on her solitude, had passed through her brain, and flashed into her +heart, even before she had effected that hasty movement; at least, +Amazement had hardly opened her eyes and raised them to mine, ere +Recognition informed their irids with most speaking brightness. Nervous +surprise had hardly discomposed her features ere a sentiment of most +vivid joy shone clear and warm on her whole countenance. I had hardly +time to observe that she was wasted and pale, ere called to feel a +responsive inward pleasure by the sense of most full and exquisite +pleasure glowing in the animated flush, and shining in the expansive +light, now diffused over my pupil’s face. It was the summer sun flashing +out after the heavy summer shower; and what fertilizes more rapidly than +that beam, burning almost like fire in its ardour? + +I hate boldness--that boldness which is of the brassy brow and insensate +nerves; but I love the courage of the strong heart, the fervour of the +generous blood; I loved with passion the light of Frances Evans’ clear +hazel eye when it did not fear to look straight into mine; I loved the +tones with which she uttered the words-- + +“Mon maitre! mon maitre!” + +I loved the movement with which she confided her hand to my hand; I +loved her as she stood there, penniless and parentless; for a sensualist +charmless, for me a treasure--my best object of sympathy on earth, +thinking such thoughts as I thought, feeling such feelings as I felt; my +ideal of the shrine in which to seal my stores of love; personification +of discretion and forethought, of diligence and perseverance, of +self-denial and self-control--those guardians, those trusty keepers of +the gift I longed to confer on her--the gift of all my affections; +model of truth and honour, of independence and conscientiousness--those +refiners and sustainers of an honest life; silent possessor of a well +of tenderness, of a flame, as genial as still, as pure as quenchless, +of natural feeling, natural passion--those sources of refreshment and +comfort to the sanctuary of home. I knew how quietly and how deeply the +well bubbled in her heart; I knew how the more dangerous flame burned +safely under the eye of reason; I had seen when the fire shot up a +moment high and vivid, when the accelerated heat troubled life’s current +in its channels; I had seen reason reduce the rebel, and humble its +blaze to embers. I had confidence in Frances Evans; I had respect +for her, and as I drew her arm through mine, and led her out of the +cemetery, I felt I had another sentiment, as strong as confidence, as +firm as respect, more fervid than either--that of love. + +“Well, my pupil,” said I, as the ominous sounding gate swung to behind +us--“Well, I have found you again: a month’s search has seemed long, +and I little thought to have discovered my lost sheep straying amongst +graves.” + +Never had I addressed her but as “Mademoiselle” before, and to speak +thus was to take up a tone new to both her and me. Her answer suprised +me that this language ruffled none of her feelings, woke no discord in +her heart: + +“Mon maitre,” she said, “have you troubled yourself to seek me? I little +imagined you would think much of my absence, but I grieved bitterly to +be taken away from you. I was sorry for that circumstance when heavier +troubles ought to have made me forget it.” + +“Your aunt is dead?” + +“Yes, a fortnight since, and she died full of regret, which I could not +chase from her mind; she kept repeating, even during the last night +of her existence, ‘Frances, you will be so lonely when I am gone, +so friendless:’ she wished too that she could have been buried in +Switzerland, and it was I who persuaded her in her old age to leave the +banks of Lake Leman, and to come, only as it seems to die, in this flat +region of Flanders. Willingly would I have observed her last wish, and +taken her remains back to our own country, but that was impossible; I +was forced to lay her here.” + +“She was ill but a short time, I presume?” + +“But three weeks. When she began to sink I asked Mdlle. Reuter’s leave +to stay with her and wait on her; I readily got leave.” + +“Do you return to the pensionnat!” I demanded hastily. + +“Monsieur, when I had been at home a week Mdlle. Reuter called one +evening, just after I had got my aunt to bed; she went into her room +to speak to her, and was extremely civil and affable, as she always is; +afterwards she came and sat with me a long time, and just as she rose to +go away, she said: “Mademoiselle, I shall not soon cease to regret your +departure from my establishment, though indeed it is true that you have +taught your class of pupils so well that they are all quite accomplished +in the little works you manage so skilfully, and have not the slightest +need of further instruction; my second teacher must in future supply +your place, with regard to the younger pupils, as well as she can, +though she is indeed an inferior artiste to you, and doubtless it will +be your part now to assume a higher position in your calling; I am sure +you will everywhere find schools and families willing to profit by your +talents.’ And then she paid me my last quarter’s salary. I asked, as +mademoiselle would no doubt think, very bluntly, if she designed to +discharge me from the establishment. She smiled at my inelegance of +speech, and answered that ‘our connection as employer and employed was +certainly dissolved, but that she hoped still to retain the pleasure of +my acquaintance; she should always be happy to see me as a friend;’ and +then she said something about the excellent condition of the streets, +and the long continuance of fine weather, and went away quite cheerful.” + +I laughed inwardly; all this was so like the directress--so like what I +had expected and guessed of her conduct; and then the exposure and proof +of her lie, unconsciously afforded by Frances:--“She had frequently +applied for Mdlle. Henri’s address,” forsooth; “Mdlle. Henri had always +evaded giving it,” &c., &c., and here I found her a visitor at the very +house of whose locality she had professed absolute ignorance! + +Any comments I might have intended to make on my pupil’s communication, +were checked by the plashing of large rain-drops on our faces and on the +path, and by the muttering of a distant but coming storm. The warning +obvious in stagnant air and leaden sky had already induced me to take +the road leading back to Brussels, and now I hastened my own steps and +those of my companion, and, as our way lay downhill, we got on rapidly. +There was an interval after the fall of the first broad drops before +heavy rain came on; in the meantime we had passed through the Porte de +Louvain, and were again in the city. + +“Where do you live?” I asked; “I will see you safe home.” + +“Rue Notre Dame aux Neiges,” answered Frances. + +It was not far from the Rue de Louvain, and we stood on the doorsteps +of the house we sought ere the clouds, severing with loud peal and +shattered cataract of lightning, emptied their livid folds in a torrent, +heavy, prone, and broad. + +“Come in! come in!” said Frances, as, after putting her into the house, +I paused ere I followed: the word decided me; I stepped across the +threshold, shut the door on the rushing, flashing, whitening storm, and +followed her upstairs to her apartments. Neither she nor I were wet; a +projection over the door had warded off the straight-descending flood; +none but the first, large drops had touched our garments; one minute +more and we should not have had a dry thread on us. + +Stepping over a little mat of green wool, I found myself in a small room +with a painted floor and a square of green carpet in the middle; the +articles of furniture were few, but all bright and exquisitely clean; +order reigned through its narrow limits--such order as it soothed my +punctilious soul to behold. And I had hesitated to enter the abode, +because I apprehended after all that Mdlle. Reuter’s hint about its +extreme poverty might be too well-founded, and I feared to embarrass the +lace-mender by entering her lodgings unawares! Poor the place might be; +poor truly it was; but its neatness was better than elegance, and had +but a bright little fire shone on that clean hearth, I should have +deemed it more attractive than a palace. No fire was there, however, and +no fuel laid ready to light; the lace-mender was unable to allow herself +that indulgence, especially now when, deprived by death of her sole +relative, she had only her own unaided exertions to rely on. Frances +went into an inner room to take off her bonnet, and she came out a +model of frugal neatness, with her well-fitting black stuff dress, so +accurately defining her elegant bust and taper waist, with her spotless +white collar turned back from a fair and shapely neck, with her +plenteous brown hair arranged in smooth bands on her temples, and in +a large Grecian plait behind: ornaments she had none--neither brooch, +ring, nor ribbon; she did well enough without them--perfection of fit, +proportion of form, grace of carriage, agreeably supplied their place. +Her eye, as she re-entered the small sitting-room, instantly sought +mine, which was just then lingering on the hearth; I knew she read at +once the sort of inward ruth and pitying pain which the chill vacancy of +that hearth stirred in my soul: quick to penetrate, quick to determine, +and quicker to put in practice, she had in a moment tied a holland apron +round her waist; then she disappeared, and reappeared with a basket; +it had a cover; she opened it, and produced wood and coal; deftly and +compactly she arranged them in the grate. + +“It is her whole stock, and she will exhaust it out of hospitality,” + thought I. + +“What are you going to do?” I asked: “not surely to light a fire this +hot evening? I shall be smothered.” + +“Indeed, monsieur, I feel it very chilly since the rain began; besides, +I must boil the water for my tea, for I take tea on Sundays; you will be +obliged to try and bear the heat.” + +She had struck a light; the wood was already in a blaze; and truly, when +contrasted with the darkness, the wild tumult of the tempest without, +that peaceful glow which began to beam on the now animated hearth, +seemed very cheering. A low, purring sound, from some quarter, announced +that another being, besides myself, was pleased with the change; a +black cat, roused by the light from its sleep on a little cushioned +foot-stool, came and rubbed its head against Frances’ gown as she knelt; +she caressed it, saying it had been a favourite with her “pauvre tante +Julienne.” + +The fire being lit, the hearth swept, and a small kettle of a very +antique pattern, such as I thought I remembered to have seen in old +farmhouses in England, placed over the now ruddy flame, Frances’ hands +were washed, and her apron removed in an instant; then she opened a +cupboard, and took out a tea-tray, on which she had soon arranged a +china tea-equipage, whose pattern, shape, and size, denoted a remote +antiquity; a little, old-fashioned silver spoon was deposited in each +saucer; and a pair of silver tongs, equally old-fashioned, were laid +on the sugar-basin; from the cupboard, too, was produced a tidy +silver cream-ewer, not larger then an egg-shell. While making these +preparations, she chanced to look up, and, reading curiosity in my eyes, +she smiled and asked-- + +“Is this like England, monsieur?” + +“Like the England of a hundred years ago,” I replied. + +“Is it truly? Well, everything on this tray is at least a hundred +years old: these cups, these spoons, this ewer, are all heirlooms; my +great-grandmother left them to my grandmother, she to my mother, and my +mother brought them with her from England to Switzerland, and left them +to me; and, ever since I was a little girl, I have thought I should like +to carry them back to England, whence they came.” + +She put some pistolets on the table; she made the tea, as foreigners do +make tea--i.e., at the rate of a teaspoonful to half-a-dozen cups; +she placed me a chair, and, as I took it, she asked, with a sort of +exaltation-- + +“Will it make you think yourself at home for a moment?” + +“If I had a home in England, I believe it would recall it,” I +answered; and, in truth, there was a sort of illusion in seeing the +fair-complexioned English-looking girl presiding at the English meal, +and speaking in the English language. + +“You have then no home?” was her remark. + +“None, nor ever have had. If ever I possess a home, it must be of my own +making, and the task is yet to begin.” And, as I spoke, a pang, new to +me, shot across my heart: it was a pang of mortification at the humility +of my position, and the inadequacy of my means; while with that pang was +born a strong desire to do more, earn more, be more, possess more; +and in the increased possessions, my roused and eager spirit panted to +include the home I had never had, the wife I inwardly vowed to win. + +Frances’ tea was little better than hot water, sugar, and milk; and her +pistolets, with which she could not offer me butter, were sweet to my +palate as manna. + +The repast over, and the treasured plate and porcelain being washed and +put by, the bright table rubbed still brighter, “le chat de ma tante +Julienne” also being fed with provisions brought forth on a plate for +its special use, a few stray cinders, and a scattering of ashes too, +being swept from the hearth, Frances at last sat down; and then, as she +took a chair opposite to me, she betrayed, for the first time, a little +embarrassment; and no wonder, for indeed I had unconsciously watched +her rather too closely, followed all her steps and all her movements +a little too perseveringly with my eyes, for she mesmerized me by +the grace and alertness of her action--by the deft, cleanly, and even +decorative effect resulting from each touch of her slight and fine +fingers; and when, at last, she subsided to stillness, the intelligence +of her face seemed beauty to me, and I dwelt on it accordingly. Her +colour, however, rising, rather than settling with repose, and her eyes +remaining downcast, though I kept waiting for the lids to be raised that +I might drink a ray of the light I loved--a light where fire dissolved +in softness, where affection tempered penetration, where, just now +at least, pleasure played with thought--this expectation not being +gratified, I began at last to suspect that I had probably myself to +blame for the disappointment; I must cease gazing, and begin talking, +if I wished to break the spell under which she now sat motionless; so +recollecting the composing effect which an authoritative tone and manner +had ever been wont to produce on her, I said-- + +“Get one of your English books, mademoiselle, for the rain yet falls +heavily, and will probably detain me half an hour longer.” + +Released, and set at ease, up she rose, got her book, and accepted at +once the chair I placed for her at my side. She had selected “Paradise +Lost” from her shelf of classics, thinking, I suppose, the religious +character of the book best adapted it to Sunday; I told her to begin at +the beginning, and while she read Milton’s invocation to that heavenly +muse, who on the “secret top of Oreb or Sinai” had taught the Hebrew +shepherd how in the womb of chaos, the conception of a world had +originated and ripened, I enjoyed, undisturbed, the treble pleasure of +having her near me, hearing the sound of her voice--a sound sweet and +satisfying in my ear--and looking, by intervals, at her face: of this +last privilege, I chiefly availed myself when I found fault with an +intonation, a pause, or an emphasis; as long as I dogmatized, I might +also gaze, without exciting too warm a flush. + +“Enough,” said I, when she had gone through some half dozen pages (a +work of time with her, for she read slowly and paused often to ask and +receive information)--“enough; and now the rain is ceasing, and I must +soon go.” For indeed, at that moment, looking towards the window, I +saw it all blue; the thunder-clouds were broken and scattered, and the +setting August sun sent a gleam like the reflection of rubies through +the lattice. I got up; I drew on my gloves. + +“You have not yet found another situation to supply the place of that +from which you were dismissed by Mdlle. Reuter?” + +“No, monsieur; I have made inquiries everywhere, but they all ask me +for references; and to speak truth, I do not like to apply to the +directress, because I consider she acted neither justly nor honourably +towards me; she used underhand means to set my pupils against me, and +thereby render me unhappy while I held my place in her establishment, +and she eventually deprived me of it by a masked and hypocritical +manoeuvre, pretending that she was acting for my good, but really +snatching from me my chief means of subsistence, at a crisis when not +only my own life, but that of another, depended on my exertions: of her +I will never more ask a favour.” + +“How, then, do you propose to get on? How do you live now?” + +“I have still my lace-mending trade; with care it will keep me from +starvation, and I doubt not by dint of exertion to get better employment +yet; it is only a fortnight since I began to try; my courage or hopes +are by no means worn out yet.” + +“And if you get what you wish, what then? what are your ultimate views?” + +“To save enough to cross the Channel: I always look to England as my +Canaan.” + +“Well, well--ere long I shall pay you another visit; good evening now,” + and I left her rather abruptly; I had much ado to resist a strong inward +impulse, urging me to take a warmer, more expressive leave: what so +natural as to fold her for a moment in a close embrace, to imprint one +kiss on her cheek or forehead? I was not unreasonable--that was all I +wanted; satisfied in that point, I could go away content; and Reason +denied me even this; she ordered me to turn my eyes from her face, and +my steps from her apartment--to quit her as dryly and coldly as I would +have quitted old Madame Pelet. I obeyed, but I swore rancorously to be +avenged one day. “I’ll earn a right to do as I please in this matter, +or I’ll die in the contest. I have one object before me now--to get that +Genevese girl for my wife; and my wife she shall be--that is, provided +she has as much, or half as much regard for her master as he has +for her. And would she be so docile, so smiling, so happy under my +instructions if she had not? would she sit at my side when I dictate +or correct, with such a still, contented, halcyon mien?” for I had ever +remarked, that however sad or harassed her countenance might be when +I entered a room, yet after I had been near her, spoken to her a few +words, given her some directions, uttered perhaps some reproofs, she +would, all at once, nestle into a nook of happiness, and look up serene +and revived. The reproofs suited her best of all: while I scolded she +would chip away with her pen-knife at a pencil or a pen; fidgetting a +little, pouting a little, defending herself by monosyllables, and when I +deprived her of the pen or pencil, fearing it would be all cut away, +and when I interdicted even the monosyllabic defence, for the purpose +of working up the subdued excitement a little higher, she would at last +raise her eyes and give me a certain glance, sweetened with gaiety, and +pointed with defiance, which, to speak truth, thrilled me as nothing had +ever done, and made me, in a fashion (though happily she did not know +it), her subject, if not her slave. After such little scenes her spirits +would maintain their flow, often for some hours, and, as I remarked +before, her health therefrom took a sustenance and vigour which, +previously to the event of her aunt’s death and her dismissal, had +almost recreated her whole frame. + +It has taken me several minutes to write these last sentences; but I had +thought all their purport during the brief interval of descending the +stairs from Frances’ room. Just as I was opening the outer door, +I remembered the twenty francs which I had not restored; I paused: +impossible to carry them away with me; difficult to force them back +on their original owner; I had now seen her in her own humble abode, +witnessed the dignity of her poverty, the pride of order, the fastidious +care of conservatism, obvious in the arrangement and economy of her +little home; I was sure she would not suffer herself to be excused +paying her debts; I was certain the favour of indemnity would be +accepted from no hand, perhaps least of all from mine: yet these four +five-franc pieces were a burden to my self-respect, and I must get +rid of them. An expedient--a clumsy one no doubt, but the best I +could devise-suggested itself to me. I darted up the stairs, knocked, +re-entered the room as if in haste:-- + +“Mademoiselle, I have forgotten one of my gloves; I must have left it +here.” + +She instantly rose to seek it; as she turned her back, I--being now +at the hearth--noiselessly lifted a little vase, one of a set of china +ornaments, as old-fashioned as the tea-cups--slipped the money under it, +then saying--“Oh here is my glove! I had dropped it within the fender; +good evening, mademoiselle,” I made my second exit. + +Brief as my impromptu return had been, it had afforded me time to pick +up a heart-ache; I remarked that Frances had already removed the red +embers of her cheerful little fire from the grate: forced to calculate +every item, to save in every detail, she had instantly on my departure +retrenched a luxury too expensive to be enjoyed alone. + +“I am glad it is not yet winter,” thought I; “but in two months more +come the winds and rains of November; would to God that before then I +could earn the right, and the power, to shovel coals into that grate AD +LIBITUM!” + +Already the pavement was drying; a balmy and fresh breeze stirred the +air, purified by lightning; I felt the West behind me, where spread a +sky like opal; azure immingled with crimson: the enlarged sun, glorious +in Tyrian tints, dipped his brim already; stepping, as I was, eastward, +I faced a vast bank of clouds, but also I had before me the arch of an +evening rainbow; a perfect rainbow--high, wide, vivid. I looked long; +my eye drank in the scene, and I suppose my brain must have absorbed +it; for that night, after lying awake in pleasant fever a long time, +watching the silent sheet-lightning, which still played among the +retreating clouds, and flashed silvery over the stars, I at last fell +asleep; and then in a dream were reproduced the setting sun, the bank of +clouds, the mighty rainbow. I stood, methought, on a terrace; I leaned +over a parapeted wall; there was space below me, depth I could not +fathom, but hearing an endless dash of waves, I believed it to be the +sea; sea spread to the horizon; sea of changeful green and intense +blue: all was soft in the distance; all vapour-veiled. A spark of gold +glistened on the line between water and air, floated up, approached, +enlarged, changed; the object hung midway between heaven and earth, +under the arch of the rainbow; the soft but dusk clouds diffused behind. +It hovered as on wings; pearly, fleecy, gleaming air streamed like +raiment round it; light, tinted with carnation, coloured what seemed +face and limbs; a large star shone with still lustre on an angel’s +forehead; an upraised arm and hand, glancing like a ray, pointed to the +bow overhead, and a voice in my heart whispered-- + +“Hope smiles on Effort!” + + + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +A COMPETENCY was what I wanted; a competency it was now my aim and +resolve to secure; but never had I been farther from the mark. With +August the school-year (l’annee scolaire) closed, the examinations +concluded, the prizes were adjudged, the schools dispersed, the gates of +all colleges, the doors of all pensionnats shut, not to be reopened till +the beginning or middle of October. The last day of August was at hand, +and what was my position? Had I advanced a step since the commencement +of the past quarter? On the contrary, I had receded one. By renouncing +my engagement as English master in Mdlle. Reuter’s establishment, I had +voluntarily cut off 20l. from my yearly income; I had diminished my 60l. +per annum to 40l., and even that sum I now held by a very precarious +tenure. + +It is some time since I made any reference to M. Pelet. The moonlight +walk is, I think, the last incident recorded in this narrative where +that gentleman cuts any conspicuous figure: the fact is, since that +event, a change had come over the spirit of our intercourse. He, indeed, +ignorant that the still hour, a cloudless moon, and an open lattice, +had revealed to me the secret of his selfish love and false friendship, +would have continued smooth and complaisant as ever; but I grew spiny as +a porcupine, and inflexible as a blackthorn cudgel; I never had a smile +for his raillery, never a moment for his society; his invitations to +take coffee with him in his parlour were invariably rejected, and +very stiffly and sternly rejected too; his jesting allusions to the +directress (which he still continued) were heard with a grim calm very +different from the petulant pleasure they were formerly wont to excite. +For a long time Pelet bore with my frigid demeanour very patiently; +he even increased his attentions; but finding that even a cringing +politeness failed to thaw or move me, he at last altered too; in +his turn he cooled; his invitations ceased; his countenance became +suspicious and overcast, and I read in the perplexed yet brooding aspect +of his brow, a constant examination and comparison of premises, and an +anxious endeavour to draw thence some explanatory inference. Ere long, +I fancy, he succeeded, for he was not without penetration; perhaps, too, +Mdlle. Zoraide might have aided him in the solution of the enigma; at +any rate I soon found that the uncertainty of doubt had vanished from +his manner; renouncing all pretence of friendship and cordiality, he +adopted a reserved, formal, but still scrupulously polite deportment. +This was the point to which I had wished to bring him, and I was now +again comparatively at my ease. I did not, it is true, like my position +in his house; but being freed from the annoyance of false professions +and double-dealing I could endure it, especially as no heroic sentiment +of hatred or jealousy of the director distracted my philosophical soul; +he had not, I found, wounded me in a very tender point, the wound was so +soon and so radically healed, leaving only a sense of contempt for +the treacherous fashion in which it had been inflicted, and a lasting +mistrust of the hand which I had detected attempting to stab in the +dark. + +This state of things continued till about the middle of July, and then +there was a little change; Pelet came home one night, an hour after his +usual time, in a state of unequivocal intoxication, a thing anomalous +with him; for if he had some of the worst faults of his countrymen, +he had also one at least of their virtues, i.e. sobriety. So drunk, +however, was he upon this occasion, that after having roused the whole +establishment (except the pupils, whose dormitory being over the classes +in a building apart from the dwelling-house, was consequently out of the +reach of disturbance) by violently ringing the hall-bell and ordering +lunch to be brought in immediately, for he imagined it was noon, whereas +the city bells had just tolled midnight; after having furiously rated +the servants for their want of punctuality, and gone near to chastise +his poor old mother, who advised him to go to bed, he began raving +dreadfully about “le maudit Anglais, Creemsvort.” I had not yet retired; +some German books I had got hold of had kept me up late; I heard the +uproar below, and could distinguish the director’s voice exalted in +a manner as appalling as it was unusual. Opening my door a little, I +became aware of a demand on his part for “Creemsvort” to be brought +down to him that he might cut his throat on the hall-table and wash +his honour, which he affirmed to be in a dirty condition, in infernal +British blood. “He is either mad or drunk,” thought I, “and in either +case the old woman and the servants will be the better of a man’s +assistance,” so I descended straight to the hall. I found him staggering +about, his eyes in a fine frenzy rolling--a pretty sight he was, a just +medium between the fool and the lunatic. + +“Come, M. Pelet,” said I, “you had better go to bed,” and I took hold of +his arm. His excitement, of course, increased greatly at sight and touch +of the individual for whose blood he had been making application: he +struggled and struck with fury--but a drunken man is no match for a +sober one; and, even in his normal state, Pelet’s worn out frame could +not have stood against my sound one. I got him up-stairs, and, in +process of time, to bed. During the operation he did not fail to +utter comminations which, though broken, had a sense in them; while +stigmatizing me as the treacherous spawn of a perfidious country, he, +in the same breath, anathematized Zoraide Reuter; he termed her “femme +sotte et vicieuse,” who, in a fit of lewd caprice, had thrown herself +away on an unprincipled adventurer; directing the point of the last +appellation by a furious blow, obliquely aimed at me. I left him in the +act of bounding elastically out of the bed into which I had tucked him; +but, as I took the precaution of turning the key in the door behind me, +I retired to my own room, assured of his safe custody till the morning, +and free to draw undisturbed conclusions from the scene I had just +witnessed. + +Now, it was precisely about this time that the directress, stung by +my coldness, bewitched by my scorn, and excited by the preference she +suspected me of cherishing for another, had fallen into a snare of her +own laying--was herself caught in the meshes of the very passion with +which she wished to entangle me. Conscious of the state of things in +that quarter, I gathered, from the condition in which I saw my +employer, that his lady-love had betrayed the alienation of her +affections--inclinations, rather, I would say; affection is a word at +once too warm and too pure for the subject--had let him see that the +cavity of her hollow heart, emptied of his image, was now occupied by +that of his usher. It was not without some surprise that I found +myself obliged to entertain this view of the case; Pelet, with +his old-established school, was so convenient, so profitable a +match--Zoraide was so calculating, so interested a woman--I wondered +mere personal preference could, in her mind, have prevailed for a moment +over worldly advantage: yet, it was evident, from what Pelet said, that, +not only had she repulsed him, but had even let slip expressions of +partiality for me. One of his drunken exclamations was, “And the +jade doats on your youth, you raw blockhead! and talks of your noble +deportment, as she calls your accursed English formality--and your pure +morals, forsooth! des moeurs de Caton a-t-elle dit--sotte!” Hers, I +thought, must be a curious soul, where in spite of a strong, natural +tendency to estimate unduly advantages of wealth and station, the +sardonic disdain of a fortuneless subordinate had wrought a deeper +impression than could be imprinted by the most flattering assiduities of +a prosperous CHEF D’INSTITUTION. I smiled inwardly; and strange to say, +though my AMOUR PROPRE was excited not disagreeably by the conquest, my +better feelings remained untouched. Next day, when I saw the directress, +and when she made an excuse to meet me in the corridor, and besought my +notice by a demeanour and look subdued to Helot humility, I could +not love, I could scarcely pity her. To answer briefly and dryly +some interesting inquiry about my health--to pass her by with a stern +bow--was all I could; her presence and manner had then, and for some +time previously and consequently, a singular effect upon me: they +sealed up all that was good, elicited all that was noxious in my nature; +sometimes they enervated my senses, but they always hardened my heart. +I was aware of the detriment done, and quarrelled with myself for the +change. I had ever hated a tyrant; and, behold, the possession of a +slave, self-given, went near to transform me into what I abhorred! +There was at once a sort of low gratification in receiving this luscious +incense from an attractive and still young worshipper; and an irritating +sense of degradation in the very experience of the pleasure. When she +stole about me with the soft step of a slave, I felt at once barbarous +and sensual as a pasha. I endured her homage sometimes; sometimes I +rebuked it. My indifference or harshness served equally to increase the +evil I desired to check. + +“Que le dedain lui sied bien!” I once overheard her say to her mother: +“il est beau comme Apollon quand il sourit de son air hautain.” + +And the jolly old dame laughed, and said she thought her daughter was +bewitched, for I had no point of a handsome man about me, except being +straight and without deformity. “Pour moi,” she continued, “il me fait +tout l’effet d’un chat-huant, avec ses besicles.” + +Worthy old girl! I could have gone and kissed her had she not been a +little too old, too fat, and too red-faced; her sensible, truthful +words seemed so wholesome, contrasted with the morbid illusions of her +daughter. + +When Pelet awoke on the morning after his frenzy fit, he retained no +recollection of what had happened the previous night, and his mother +fortunately had the discretion to refrain from informing him that I had +been a witness of his degradation. He did not again have recourse to +wine for curing his griefs, but even in his sober mood he soon showed +that the iron of jealousy had entered into his soul. A thorough +Frenchman, the national characteristic of ferocity had not been omitted +by nature in compounding the ingredients of his character; it had +appeared first in his access of drunken wrath, when some of his +demonstrations of hatred to my person were of a truly fiendish +character, and now it was more covertly betrayed by momentary +contractions of the features, and flashes of fierceness in his light +blue eyes, when their glance chanced to encounter mine. He absolutely +avoided speaking to me; I was now spared even the falsehood of his +politeness. In this state of our mutual relations, my soul rebelled +sometimes almost ungovernably, against living in the house and +discharging the service of such a man; but who is free from the +constraint of circumstances? At that time, I was not: I used to rise +each morning eager to shake off his yoke, and go out with my portmanteau +under my arm, if a beggar, at least a freeman; and in the evening, when +I came back from the pensionnat de demoiselles, a certain pleasant voice +in my ear; a certain face, so intelligent, yet so docile, so reflective, +yet so soft, in my eyes; a certain cast of character, at once proud +and pliant, sensitive and sagacious, serious and ardent, in my head; a +certain tone of feeling, fervid and modest, refined and practical, pure +and powerful, delighting and troubling my memory--visions of new ties I +longed to contract, of new duties I longed to undertake, had taken the +rover and the rebel out of me, and had shown endurance of my hated lot +in the light of a Spartan virtue. + +But Pelet’s fury subsided; a fortnight sufficed for its rise, progress, +and extinction: in that space of time the dismissal of the obnoxious +teacher had been effected in the neighbouring house, and in the same +interval I had declared my resolution to follow and find out my pupil, +and upon my application for her address being refused, I had summarily +resigned my own post. This last act seemed at once to restore Mdlle. +Reuter to her senses; her sagacity, her judgment, so long misled by a +fascinating delusion, struck again into the right track the moment +that delusion vanished. By the right track, I do not mean the steep and +difficult path of principle--in that path she never trod; but the plain +highway of common sense, from which she had of late widely diverged. +When there she carefully sought, and having found, industriously pursued +the trail of her old suitor, M. Pelet. She soon overtook him. What arts +she employed to soothe and blind him I know not, but she succeeded both +in allaying his wrath, and hoodwinking his discernment, as was soon +proved by the alteration in his mien and manner; she must have managed +to convince him that I neither was, nor ever had been, a rival of his, +for the fortnight of fury against me terminated in a fit of exceeding +graciousness and amenity, not unmixed with a dash of exulting +self-complacency, more ludicrous than irritating. Pelet’s bachelor’s +life had been passed in proper French style with due disregard to moral +restraint, and I thought his married life promised to be very French +also. He often boasted to me what a terror he had been to certain +husbands of his acquaintance; I perceived it would not now be difficult +to pay him back in his own coin. + +The crisis drew on. No sooner had the holidays commenced than note of +preparation for some momentous event sounded all through the premises +of Pelet: painters, polishers, and upholsterers were immediately set +to work, and there was talk of “la chambre de Madame,” “le salon de +Madame.” Not deeming it probable that the old duenna at present graced +with that title in our house, had inspired her son with such enthusiasm +of filial piety, as to induce him to fit up apartments expressly for her +use, I concluded, in common with the cook, the two housemaids, and the +kitchen-scullion, that a new and more juvenile Madame was destined to be +the tenant of these gay chambers. + +Presently official announcement of the coming event was put forth. In +another week’s time M. Francois Pelet, directeur, and Mdlle. Zoraide +Reuter, directrice, were to be joined together in the bands of +matrimony. Monsieur, in person, heralded the fact to me; terminating +his communication by an obliging expression of his desire that I should +continue, as heretofore, his ablest assistant and most trusted friend; +and a proposition to raise my salary by an additional two hundred francs +per annum. I thanked him, gave no conclusive answer at the time, and, +when he had left me, threw off my blouse, put on my coat, and set out +on a long walk outside the Porte de Flandre, in order, as I thought, to +cool my blood, calm my nerves, and shake my disarranged ideas into some +order. In fact, I had just received what was virtually my dismissal. +I could not conceal, I did not desire to conceal from myself the +conviction that, being now certain that Mdlle. Reuter was destined to +become Madame Pelet it would not do for me to remain a dependent dweller +in the house which was soon to be hers. Her present demeanour towards +me was deficient neither in dignity nor propriety; but I knew her former +feeling was unchanged. Decorum now repressed, and Policy masked it, but +Opportunity would be too strong for either of these--Temptation would +shiver their restraints. + +I was no pope--I could not boast infallibility: in short, if I stayed, +the probability was that, in three months’ time, a practical modern +French novel would be in full process of concoction under the roof of +the unsuspecting Pelet. Now, modern French novels are not to my +taste, either practically or theoretically. Limited as had yet been my +experience of life, I had once had the opportunity of contemplating, +near at hand, an example of the results produced by a course of +interesting and romantic domestic treachery. No golden halo of fiction +was about this example, I saw it bare and real, and it was very +loathsome. I saw a mind degraded by the practice of mean subterfuge, by +the habit of perfidious deception, and a body depraved by the infectious +influence of the vice-polluted soul. I had suffered much from the forced +and prolonged view of this spectacle; those sufferings I did not now +regret, for their simple recollection acted as a most wholesome antidote +to temptation. They had inscribed on my reason the conviction that +unlawful pleasure, trenching on another’s rights, is delusive and +envenomed pleasure--its hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison +cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects deprave for ever. + +From all this resulted the conclusion that I must leave Pelet’s, and +that instantly; “but,” said Prudence, “you know not where to go, nor how +to live;” and then the dream of true love came over me: Frances Henri +seemed to stand at my side; her slender waist to invite my arm; her +hand to court my hand; I felt it was made to nestle in mine; I could not +relinquish my right to it, nor could I withdraw my eyes for ever from +hers, where I saw so much happiness, such a correspondence of heart with +heart; over whose expression I had such influence; where I could kindle +bliss, infuse awe, stir deep delight, rouse sparkling spirit, and +sometimes waken pleasurable dread. My hopes to will and possess, my +resolutions to merit and rise, rose in array against me; and here I was +about to plunge into the gulf of absolute destitution; “and all this,” + suggested an inward voice, “because you fear an evil which may never +happen!” “It will happen; you KNOW it will,” answered that stubborn +monitor, Conscience. “Do what you feel is right; obey me, and even in +the sloughs of want I will plant for you firm footing.” And then, as I +walked fast along the road, there rose upon me a strange, inly-felt idea +of some Great Being, unseen, but all present, who in His beneficence +desired only my welfare, and now watched the struggle of good and evil +in my heart, and waited to see whether I should obey His voice, heard in +the whispers of my conscience, or lend an ear to the sophisms by which +His enemy and mine--the Spirit of Evil--sought to lead me astray. +Rough and steep was the path indicated by divine suggestion; mossy and +declining the green way along which Temptation strewed flowers; but +whereas, methought, the Deity of Love, the Friend of all that exists, +would smile well-pleased were I to gird up my loins and address myself +to the rude ascent; so, on the other hand, each inclination to the +velvet declivity seemed to kindle a gleam of triumph on the brow of the +man-hating, God-defying demon. Sharp and short I turned round; fast I +retraced my steps; in half an hour I was again at M. Pelet’s: I sought +him in his study; brief parley, concise explanation sufficed; my manner +proved that I was resolved; he, perhaps, at heart approved my +decision. After twenty minutes’ conversation, I re-entered my own room, +self-deprived of the means of living, self-sentenced to leave my present +home, with the short notice of a week in which to provide another. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +DIRECTLY as I closed the door, I saw laid on the table two letters; my +thought was, that they were notes of invitation from the friends of some +of my pupils; I had received such marks of attention occasionally, and +with me, who had no friends, correspondence of more interest was out +of the question; the postman’s arrival had never yet been an event of +interest to me since I came to Brussels. I laid my hand carelessly on +the documents, and coldly and slowly glancing at them, I prepared to +break the seals; my eye was arrested and my hand too; I saw what excited +me, as if I had found a vivid picture where I expected only to discover +a blank page: on one cover was an English postmark; on the other, a +lady’s clear, fine autograph; the last I opened first:-- + +“MONSIEUR, + +“I FOUND out what you had done the very morning after your visit to me; +you might be sure I should dust the china, every day; and, as no one but +you had been in my room for a week, and as fairy-money is not current +in Brussels, I could not doubt who left the twenty francs on the +chimney-piece. I thought I heard you stir the vase when I was stooping +to look for your glove under the table, and I wondered you should +imagine it had got into such a little cup. Now, monsieur, the money +is not mine, and I shall not keep it; I will not send it in this note +because it might be lost--besides, it is heavy; but I will restore it +to you the first time I see you, and you must make no difficulties about +taking it; because, in the first place, I am sure, monsieur, you can +understand that one likes to pay one’s debts; that it is satisfactory +to owe no man anything; and, in the second place, I can now very well +afford to be honest, as I am provided with a situation. This last +circumstance is, indeed, the reason of my writing to you, for it is +pleasant to communicate good news; and, in these days, I have only my +master to whom I can tell anything. + +“A week ago, monsieur, I was sent for by a Mrs. Wharton, an English +lady; her eldest daughter was going to be married, and some rich +relation having made her a present of a veil and dress in costly old +lace, as precious, they said, almost as jewels, but a little damaged by +time, I was commissioned to put them in repair. I had to do it at the +house; they gave me, besides, some embroidery to complete, and nearly +a week elapsed before I had finished everything. While I worked, Miss +Wharton often came into the room and sat with me, and so did Mrs. +Wharton; they made me talk English; asked how I had learned to speak it +so well; then they inquired what I knew besides--what books I had read; +soon they seemed to make a sort of wonder of me, considering me no doubt +as a learned grisette. One afternoon, Mrs. Wharton brought in a Parisian +lady to test the accuracy of my knowledge of French; the result of +it was that, owing probably in a great degree to the mother’s and +daughter’s good humour about the marriage, which inclined them to +do beneficent deeds, and partly, I think, because they are naturally +benevolent people, they decided that the wish I had expressed to do +something more than mend lace was a very legitimate one; and the same +day they took me in their carriage to Mrs. D.’s, who is the directress +of the first English school at Brussels. It seems she happened to be in +want of a French lady to give lessons in geography, history, grammar, +and composition, in the French language. Mrs. Wharton recommended me +very warmly; and, as two of her younger daughters are pupils in the +house, her patronage availed to get me the place. It was settled that I +am to attend six hours daily (for, happily, it was not required that +I should live in the house; I should have been sorry to leave my +lodgings), and, for this, Mrs. D. will give me twelve hundred francs per +annum. + +“You see, therefore, monsieur, that I am now rich; richer almost than +I ever hoped to be: I feel thankful for it, especially as my sight was +beginning to be injured by constant working at fine lace; and I was +getting, too, very weary of sitting up late at nights, and yet not being +able to find time for reading or study. I began to fear that I should +fall ill, and be unable to pay my way; this fear is now, in a great +measure, removed; and, in truth, monsieur, I am very grateful to God for +the relief; and I feel it necessary, almost, to speak of my happiness +to some one who is kind-hearted enough to derive joy from seeing others +joyful. I could not, therefore, resist the temptation of writing to you; +I argued with myself it is very pleasant for me to write, and it will +not be exactly painful, though it may be tiresome to monsieur to +read. Do not be too angry with my circumlocution and inelegancies of +expression, and, believe me + +“Your attached pupil, + +“F. E. HENRI.” + +Having read this letter, I mused on its contents for a few +moments--whether with sentiments pleasurable or otherwise I will +hereafter note--and then took up the other. It was directed in a hand +to me unknown--small, and rather neat; neither masculine nor exactly +feminine; the seal bore a coat of arms, concerning which I could only +decipher that it was not that of the Seacombe family, consequently the +epistle could be from none of my almost forgotten, and certainly quite +forgetting patrician relations. From whom, then, was it? I removed the +envelope; the note folded within ran as follows: + +“I have no doubt in the world that you are doing well in that greasy +Flanders; living probably on the fat of the unctuous land; sitting like +a black-haired, tawny-skinned, long-nosed Israelite by the flesh-pots +of Egypt; or like a rascally son of Levi near the brass cauldrons of the +sanctuary, and every now and then plunging in a consecrated hook, and +drawing out of the sea of broth the fattest of heave-shoulders and the +fleshiest of wave-breasts. I know this, because you never write to any +one in England. Thankless dog that you are! I, by the sovereign efficacy +of my recommendation, got you the place where you are now living in +clover, and yet not a word of gratitude, or even acknowledgment, have +you ever offered in return; but I am coming to see you, and small +conception can you, with your addled aristocratic brains, form of the +sort of moral kicking I have, ready packed in my carpet-bag, destined to +be presented to you immediately on my arrival. + +“Meantime I know all about your affairs, and have just got information, +by Brown’s last letter, that you are said to be on the point of forming +an advantageous match with a pursy, little Belgian schoolmistress--a +Mdlle. Zenobie, or some such name. Won’t I have a look at her when I +come over! And this you may rely on: if she pleases my taste, or if I +think it worth while in a pecuniary point of view, I’ll pounce on your +prize and bear her away triumphant in spite of your teeth. Yet I don’t +like dumpies either, and Brown says she is little and stout--the better +fitted for a wiry, starved-looking chap like you. “Be on the look-out, +for you know neither the day nor hour when your ----” (I don’t wish to +blaspheme, so I’ll leave a blank)--cometh. + +“Yours truly, + +“HUNSDEN YORKE HUNSDEN.” + +“Humph!” said I; and ere I laid the letter down, I again glanced at the +small, neat handwriting, not a bit like that of a mercantile man, nor, +indeed, of any man except Hunsden himself. They talk of affinities +between the autograph and the character: what affinity was there here? +I recalled the writer’s peculiar face and certain traits I suspected, +rather than knew, to appertain to his nature, and I answered, “A great +deal.” + +Hunsden, then, was coming to Brussels, and coming I knew not when; +coming charged with the expectation of finding me on the summit of +prosperity, about to be married, to step into a warm nest, to lie +comfortably down by the side of a snug, well-fed little mate. + +“I wish him joy of the fidelity of the picture he has painted,” thought +I. “What will he say when, instead of a pair of plump turtle doves, +billing and cooing in a bower of roses, he finds a single lean +cormorant, standing mateless and shelterless on poverty’s bleak cliff? +Oh, confound him! Let him come, and let him laugh at the contrast +between rumour and fact. Were he the devil himself, instead of being +merely very like him, I’d not condescend to get out of his way, or to +forge a smile or a cheerful word wherewith to avert his sarcasm.” + +Then I recurred to the other letter: that struck a chord whose sound I +could not deaden by thrusting my fingers into my ears, for it vibrated +within; and though its swell might be exquisite music, its cadence was a +groan. + +That Frances was relieved from the pressure of want, that the curse of +excessive labour was taken off her, filled me with happiness; that her +first thought in prosperity should be to augment her joy by sharing +it with me, met and satisfied the wish of my heart. Two results of her +letter were then pleasant, sweet as two draughts of nectar; but applying +my lips for the third time to the cup, and they were excoriated as with +vinegar and gall. + +Two persons whose desires are moderate may live well enough in Brussels +on an income which would scarcely afford a respectable maintenance for +one in London: and that, not because the necessaries of life are so +much dearer in the latter capital, or taxes so much higher than in the +former, but because the English surpass in folly all the nations on +God’s earth, and are more abject slaves to custom, to opinion, to +the desire to keep up a certain appearance, than the Italians are to +priestcraft, the French to vain-glory, the Russians to their Czar, or +the Germans to black beer. I have seen a degree of sense in the modest +arrangement of one homely Belgian household, that might put to shame the +elegance, the superfluities, the luxuries, the strained refinements of +a hundred genteel English mansions. In Belgium, provided you can +make money, you may save it; this is scarcely possible in England; +ostentation there lavishes in a month what industry has earned in a +year. More shame to all classes in that most bountiful and beggarly +country for their servile following of Fashion; I could write a chapter +or two on this subject, but must forbear, at least for the present. Had +I retained my 60l. per annum I could, now that Frances was in possession +of 50l., have gone straight to her this very evening, and spoken out the +words which, repressed, kept fretting my heart with fever; our united +income would, as we should have managed it, have sufficed well for +our mutual support; since we lived in a country where economy was not +confounded with meanness, where frugality in dress, food, and furniture, +was not synonymous with vulgarity in these various points. But the +placeless usher, bare of resource, and unsupported by connections, must +not think of this; such a sentiment as love, such a word as marriage, +were misplaced in his heart, and on his lips. Now for the first time did +I truly feel what it was to be poor; now did the sacrifice I had made +in casting from me the means of living put on a new aspect; instead of +a correct, just, honourable act, it seemed a deed at once light and +fanatical; I took several turns in my room, under the goading influence +of most poignant remorse; I walked a quarter of an hour from the wall to +the window; and at the window, self-reproach seemed to face me; at the +wall, self-disdain: all at once out spoke Conscience:-- + +“Down, stupid tormenters!” cried she; “the man has done his duty; +you shall not bait him thus by thoughts of what might have been; he +relinquished a temporary and contingent good to avoid a permanent and +certain evil he did well. Let him reflect now, and when your blinding +dust and deafening hum subside, he will discover a path.” + +I sat down; I propped my forehead on both my hands; I thought and +thought an hour--two hours; vainly. I seemed like one sealed in a +subterranean vault, who gazes at utter blackness; at blackness ensured +by yard-thick stone walls around, and by piles of building above, +expecting light to penetrate through granite, and through cement firm +as granite. But there are chinks, or there may be chinks, in the +best adjusted masonry; there was a chink in my cavernous cell; for, +eventually, I saw, or seemed to see, a ray--pallid, indeed, and cold, +and doubtful, but still a ray, for it showed that narrow path which +conscience had promised after two, three hours’ torturing research in +brain and memory, I disinterred certain remains of circumstances, and +conceived a hope that by putting them together an expedient might be +framed, and a resource discovered. The circumstances were briefly these: + +Some three months ago M. Pelet had, on the occasion of his fete, given +the boys a treat, which treat consisted in a party of pleasure to a +certain place of public resort in the outskirts of Brussels, of which +I do not at this moment remember the name, but near it were several of +those lakelets called etangs; and there was one etang, larger than the +rest, where on holidays people were accustomed to amuse themselves by +rowing round it in little boats. The boys having eaten an unlimited +quantity of “gaufres,” and drank several bottles of Louvain beer, amid +the shades of a garden made and provided for such crams, petitioned +the director for leave to take a row on the etang. Half a dozen of the +eldest succeeded in obtaining leave, and I was commissioned to accompany +them as surveillant. Among the half dozen happened to be a certain Jean +Baptiste Vandenhuten, a most ponderous young Flamand, not tall, but +even now, at the early age of sixteen, possessing a breadth and depth of +personal development truly national. It chanced that Jean was the first +lad to step into the boat; he stumbled, rolled to one side, the boat +revolted at his weight and capsized. Vandenhuten sank like lead, rose, +sank again. My coat and waistcoat were off in an instant; I had not been +brought up at Eton and boated and bathed and swam there ten long years +for nothing; it was a natural and easy act for me to leap to the rescue. +The lads and the boatmen yelled; they thought there would be two deaths +by drowning instead of one; but as Jean rose the third time, I clutched +him by one leg and the collar, and in three minutes more both he and I +were safe landed. To speak heaven’s truth, my merit in the action was +small indeed, for I had run no risk, and subsequently did not even catch +cold from the wetting; but when M. and Madame Vandenhuten, of whom Jean +Baptiste was the sole hope, came to hear of the exploit, they seemed +to think I had evinced a bravery and devotion which no thanks could +sufficiently repay. Madame, in particular, was “certain I must have +dearly loved their sweet son, or I would not thus have hazarded my own +life to save his.” Monsieur, an honest-looking, though phlegmatic man, +said very little, but he would not suffer me to leave the room, till +I had promised that in case I ever stood in need of help I would, by +applying to him, give him a chance of discharging the obligation under +which he affirmed I had laid him. These words, then, were my glimmer of +light; it was here I found my sole outlet; and in truth, though the cold +light roused, it did not cheer me; nor did the outlet seem such as I +should like to pass through. Right I had none to M. Vandenhuten’s good +offices; it was not on the ground of merit I could apply to him; no, I +must stand on that of necessity: I had no work; I wanted work; my best +chance of obtaining it lay in securing his recommendation. This I knew +could be had by asking for it; not to ask, because the request revolted +my pride and contradicted my habits, would, I felt, be an indulgence of +false and indolent fastidiousness. I might repent the omission all my +life; I would not then be guilty of it. + +That evening I went to M. Vandenhuten’s; but I had bent the bow and +adjusted the shaft in vain; the string broke. I rang the bell at the +great door (it was a large, handsome house in an expensive part of the +town); a manservant opened; I asked for M. Vandenhuten; M. Vandenhuten +and family were all out of town--gone to Ostend--did not know when they +would be back. I left my card, and retraced my steps. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +A WEEK is gone; LE JOUR DES NOCES arrived; the marriage was solemnized +at St. Jacques; Mdlle. Zoraide became Madame Pelet, NEE Reuter; and, in +about an hour after this transformation, “the happy pair,” as newspapers +phrase it, were on their way to Paris; where, according to previous +arrangement, the honeymoon was to be spent. The next day I quitted the +pensionnat. Myself and my chattels (some books and clothes) were soon +transferred to a modest lodging I had hired in a street not far off. In +half an hour my clothes were arranged in a commode, my books on a shelf, +and the “flitting” was effected. I should not have been unhappy that day +had not one pang tortured me--a longing to go to the Rue Notre Dame +aux Neiges, resisted, yet irritated by an inward resolve to avoid +that street till such time as the mist of doubt should clear from my +prospects. + +It was a sweet September evening--very mild, very still; I had nothing +to do; at that hour I knew Frances would be equally released from +occupation; I thought she might possibly be wishing for her master, I +knew I wished for my pupil. Imagination began with her low whispers, +infusing into my soul the soft tale of pleasures that might be. + +“You will find her reading or writing,” said she; “you can take your +seat at her side; you need not startle her peace by undue excitement; +you need not embarrass her manner by unusual action or language. Be as +you always are; look over what she has written; listen while she reads; +chide her, or quietly approve; you know the effect of either system; you +know her smile when pleased, you know the play of her looks when roused; +you have the secret of awakening what expression you will, and you can +choose amongst that pleasant variety. With you she will sit silent as +long as it suits you to talk alone; you can hold her under a potent +spell: intelligent as she is, eloquent as she can be, you can seal her +lips, and veil her bright countenance with diffidence; yet, you know, +she is not all monotonous mildness; you have seen, with a sort of +strange pleasure, revolt, scorn, austerity, bitterness, lay energetic +claim to a place in her feelings and physiognomy; you know that few +could rule her as you do; you know she might break, but never bend under +the hand of Tyranny and Injustice, but Reason and Affection can guide +her by a sign. Try their influence now. Go--they are not passions; you +may handle them safely.” + +“I will NOT go was my answer to the sweet temptress. A man is master +of himself to a certain point, but not beyond it. Could I seek Frances +to-night, could I sit with her alone in a quiet room, and address her +only in the language of Reason and Affection?” + +“No,” was the brief, fervent reply of that Love which had conquered and +now controlled me. + +Time seemed to stagnate; the sun would not go down; my watch ticked, but +I thought the hands were paralyzed. + +“What a hot evening!” I cried, throwing open the lattice; for, indeed, I +had seldom felt so feverish. Hearing a step ascending the common stair, +I wondered whether the “locataire,” now mounting to his apartments, were +as unsettled in mind and condition as I was, or whether he lived in the +calm of certain resources, and in the freedom of unfettered feelings. +What! was he coming in person to solve the problem hardly proposed in +inaudible thought? He had actually knocked at the door--at MY door; a +smart, prompt rap; and, almost before I could invite him in, he was over +the threshold, and had closed the door behind him. + +“And how are you?” asked an indifferent, quiet voice, in the English +language; while my visitor, without any sort of bustle or introduction, +put his hat on the table, and his gloves into his hat, and drawing +the only armchair the room afforded a little forward, seated himself +tranquilly therein. + +“Can’t you speak?” he inquired in a few moments, in a tone whose +nonchalance seemed to intimate that it was much the same thing whether +I answered or not. The fact is, I found it desirable to have recourse to +my good friends “les besicles;” not exactly to ascertain the identity of +my visitor--for I already knew him, confound his impudence! but to see +how he looked--to get a clear notion of his mien and countenance. +I wiped the glasses very deliberately, and put them on quite as +deliberately; adjusting them so as not to hurt the bridge of my nose +or get entangled in my short tufts of dun hair. I was sitting in the +window-seat, with my back to the light, and I had him VIS-A-VIS; a +position he would much rather have had reversed; for, at any time, he +preferred scrutinizing to being scrutinized. Yes, it was HE, and no +mistake, with his six feet of length arranged in a sitting attitude; +with his dark travelling surtout with its velvet collar, his gray +pantaloons, his black stock, and his face, the most original one Nature +ever modelled, yet the least obtrusively so; not one feature that could +be termed marked or odd, yet the effect of the whole unique. There is no +use in attempting to describe what is indescribable. Being in no hurry +to address him, I sat and stared at my ease. + +“Oh, that’s your game--is it?” said he at last. “Well, we’ll see which +is soonest tired.” And he slowly drew out a fine cigar-case, picked one +to his taste, lit it, took a book from the shelf convenient to his hand, +then leaning back, proceeded to smoke and read as tranquilly as if he +had been in his own room, in Grove-street, X---shire, England. I knew +he was capable of continuing in that attitude till midnight, if he +conceived the whim, so I rose, and taking the book from his hand, I +said,-- + +“You did not ask for it, and you shall not have it.” + +“It is silly and dull,” he observed, “so I have not lost much;” then the +spell being broken, he went on: “I thought you lived at Pelet’s; I went +there this afternoon expecting to be starved to death by sitting in +a boarding-school drawing-room, and they told me you were gone, had +departed this morning; you had left your address behind you though, +which I wondered at; it was a more practical and sensible precaution +than I should have imagined you capable of. Why did you leave?” + +“Because M. Pelet has just married the lady whom you and Mr. Brown +assigned to me as my wife.” + +“Oh, indeed!” replied Hunsden with a short laugh; “so you’ve lost both +your wife and your place?” + +“Precisely so.” + +I saw him give a quick, covert glance all round my room; he marked its +narrow limits, its scanty furniture: in an instant he had comprehended +the state of matters--had absolved me from the crime of prosperity. A +curious effect this discovery wrought in his strange mind; I am morally +certain that if he had found me installed in a handsome parlour, +lounging on a soft couch, with a pretty, wealthy wife at my side, he +would have hated me; a brief, cold, haughty visit, would in such a case +have been the extreme limit of his civilities, and never would he have +come near me more, so long as the tide of fortune bore me smoothly on +its surface; but the painted furniture, the bare walls, the cheerless +solitude of my room relaxed his rigid pride, and I know not what +softening change had taken place both in his voice and look ere he spoke +again. + +“You have got another place?” + +“No.” + +“You are in the way of getting one?” + +“No.” + +“That is bad; have you applied to Brown?” + +“No, indeed.” + +“You had better; he often has it in his power to give useful information +in such matters.” + +“He served me once very well; I have no claim on him, and am not in the +humour to bother him again.” + +“Oh, if you’re bashful, and dread being intrusive, you need only +commission me. I shall see him to-night; I can put in a word.” + +“I beg you will not, Mr. Hunsden; I am in your debt already; you did me +an important service when I was at X----; got me out of a den where I +was dying: that service I have never repaid, and at present I decline +positively adding another item to the account.” + +“If the wind sits that way, I’m satisfied. I thought my unexampled +generosity in turning you out of that accursed counting-house would be +duly appreciated some day: ‘Cast your bread on the waters, and it +shall be found after many days,’ say the Scriptures. Yes, that’s right, +lad--make much of me--I’m a nonpareil: there’s nothing like me in the +common herd. In the meantime, to put all humbug aside and talk sense for +a few moments, you would be greatly the better of a situation, and what +is more, you are a fool if you refuse to take one from any hand that +offers it.” + +“Very well, Mr. Hunsden; now you have settled that point, talk of +something else. What news from X----?” + +“I have not settled that point, or at least there is another to settle +before we get to X----. Is this Miss Zenobie” (Zoraide, interposed +I)--“well, Zoraide--is she really married to Pelet?” + +“I tell you yes--and if you don’t believe me, go and ask the cure of St. +Jacques.” + +“And your heart is broken?” + +“I am not aware that it is; it feels all right--beats as usual.” + +“Then your feelings are less superfine than I took them to be; you must +be a coarse, callous character, to bear such a thwack without staggering +under it.” + +“Staggering under it? What the deuce is there to stagger under in the +circumstance of a Belgian schoolmistress marrying a French schoolmaster? +The progeny will doubtless be a strange hybrid race; but that’s their +look-out--not mine.” + +“He indulges in scurrilous jests, and the bride was his affianced one!” + +“Who said so?” + +“Brown.” + +“I’ll tell you what, Hunsden--Brown is an old gossip.” + +“He is; but in the meantime, if his gossip be founded on less than +fact--if you took no particular interest in Miss Zoraide--why, O +youthful pedagogue! did you leave your place in consequence of her +becoming Madame Pelet?” + +“Because--” I felt my face grow a little hot; “because--in short, Mr. +Hunsden, I decline answering any more questions,” and I plunged my hands +deep in my breeches pocket. + +Hunsden triumphed: his eyes--his laugh announced victory. + +“What the deuce are you laughing at, Mr. Hunsden?” + +“At your exemplary composure. Well, lad, I’ll not bore you; I see how +it is: Zoraide has jilted you--married some one richer, as any sensible +woman would have done if she had had the chance.” + +I made no reply--I let him think so, not feeling inclined to enter into +an explanation of the real state of things, and as little to forge a +false account; but it was not easy to blind Hunsden; my very silence, +instead of convincing him that he had hit the truth, seemed to render +him doubtful about it; he went on:-- + +“I suppose the affair has been conducted as such affairs always +are amongst rational people: you offered her your youth and your +talents--such as they are--in exchange for her position and money: I +don’t suppose you took appearance, or what is called LOVE, into the +account--for I understand she is older than you, and Brown says, rather +sensible-looking than beautiful. She, having then no chance of making +a better bargain, was at first inclined to come to terms with you, but +Pelet--the head of a flourishing school--stepped in with a higher bid; +she accepted, and he has got her: a correct transaction--perfectly +so--business-like and legitimate. And now we’ll talk of something else.” + +“Do,” said I, very glad to dismiss the topic, and especially glad to +have baffled the sagacity of my cross-questioner--if, indeed, I had +baffled it; for though his words now led away from the dangerous point, +his eyes, keen and watchful, seemed still preoccupied with the former +idea. + +“You want to hear news from X----? And what interest can you have in +X----? You left no friends there, for you made none. Nobody ever asks +after you--neither man nor woman; and if I mention your name in company, +the men look as if I had spoken of Prester John; and the women sneer +covertly. Our X---- belles must have disliked you. How did you excite +their displeasure?” + +“I don’t know. I seldom spoke to them--they were nothing to me. I +considered them only as something to be glanced at from a distance; +their dresses and faces were often pleasing enough to the eye: but +I could not understand their conversation, nor even read their +countenances. When I caught snatches of what they said, I could never +make much of it; and the play of their lips and eyes did not help me at +all.” + +“That was your fault, not theirs. There are sensible, as well as +handsome women in X----; women it is worth any man’s while to talk to, +and with whom I can talk with pleasure: but you had and have no pleasant +address; there is nothing in you to induce a woman to be affable. I have +remarked you sitting near the door in a room full of company, bent on +hearing, not on speaking; on observing, not on entertaining; looking +frigidly shy at the commencement of a party, confusingly vigilant about +the middle, and insultingly weary towards the end. Is that the way, do +you think, ever to communicate pleasure or excite interest? No; and if +you are generally unpopular, it is because you deserve to be so.” + +“Content!” I ejaculated. + +“No, you are not content; you see beauty always turning its back on +you; you are mortified and then you sneer. I verily believe all that is +desirable on earth--wealth, reputation, love--will for ever to you be +the ripe grapes on the high trellis: you’ll look up at them; they will +tantalize in you the lust of the eye; but they are out of reach: you +have not the address to fetch a ladder, and you’ll go away calling them +sour.” + +Cutting as these words might have been under some circumstances, they +drew no blood now. My life was changed; my experience had been varied +since I left X----, but Hunsden could not know this; he had seen me only +in the character of Mr. Crimsworth’s clerk--a dependant amongst wealthy +strangers, meeting disdain with a hard front, conscious of an unsocial +and unattractive exterior, refusing to sue for notice which I was sure +would be withheld, declining to evince an admiration which I knew would +be scorned as worthless. He could not be aware that since then youth and +loveliness had been to me everyday objects; that I had studied them at +leisure and closely, and had seen the plain texture of truth under +the embroidery of appearance; nor could he, keen-sighted as he +was, penetrate into my heart, search my brain, and read my peculiar +sympathies and antipathies; he had not known me long enough, or well +enough, to perceive how low my feelings would ebb under some influences, +powerful over most minds; how high, how fast they would flow under +other influences, that perhaps acted with the more intense force on me, +because they acted on me alone. Neither could he suspect for an instant +the history of my communications with Mdlle. Reuter; secret to him +and to all others was the tale of her strange infatuation; her +blandishments, her wiles had been seen but by me, and to me only were +they known; but they had changed me, for they had proved that I COULD +impress. A sweeter secret nestled deeper in my heart; one full of +tenderness and as full of strength: it took the sting out of Hunsden’s +sarcasm; it kept me unbent by shame, and unstirred by wrath. But of all +this I could say nothing--nothing decisive at least; uncertainty sealed +my lips, and during the interval of silence by which alone I replied to +Mr. Hunsden, I made up my mind to be for the present wholly misjudged +by him, and misjudged I was; he thought he had been rather too hard +upon me, and that I was crushed by the weight of his upbraidings; so to +re-assure me he said, doubtless I should mend some day; I was only at +the beginning of life yet; and since happily I was not quite without +sense, every false step I made would be a good lesson. + +Just then I turned my face a little to the light; the approach of +twilight, and my position in the window-seat, had, for the last ten +minutes, prevented him from studying my countenance; as I moved, +however, he caught an expression which he thus interpreted:-- + +“Confound it! How doggedly self-approving the lad looks! I thought he +was fit to die with shame, and there he sits grinning smiles, as good as +to say, ‘Let the world wag as it will, I’ve the philosopher’s stone +in my waist-coat pocket, and the elixir of life in my cupboard; I’m +independent of both Fate and Fortune.’” + +“Hunsden--you spoke of grapes; I was thinking of a fruit I like better +than your X---- hot-house grapes--an unique fruit, growing wild, which I +have marked as my own, and hope one day to gather and taste. It is of no +use your offering me the draught of bitterness, or threatening me with +death by thirst: I have the anticipation of sweetness on my palate; the +hope of freshness on my lips; I can reject the unsavoury, and endure the +exhausting.” + +“For how long?” + +“Till the next opportunity for effort; and as the prize of success will +be a treasure after my own heart, I’ll bring a bull’s strength to the +struggle.” + +“Bad luck crushes bulls as easily as bullaces; and, I believe, the fury +dogs you: you were born with a wooden spoon in your mouth, depend on +it.” + +“I believe you; and I mean to make my wooden spoon do the work of some +people’s silver ladles: grasped firmly, and handled nimbly, even a +wooden spoon will shovel up broth.” + +Hunsden rose: “I see,” said he; “I suppose you’re one of those who +develop best unwatched, and act best unaided--work your own way. Now, +I’ll go.” And, without another word, he was going; at the door he +turned:-- + +“Crimsworth Hall is sold,” said he. + +“Sold!” was my echo. + +“Yes; you know, of course, that your brother failed three months ago?” + +“What! Edward Crimsworth?” + +“Precisely; and his wife went home to her father’s; when affairs went +awry, his temper sympathized with them; he used her ill; I told you he +would be a tyrant to her some day; as to him--” + +“Ay, as to him--what is become of him?” + +“Nothing extraordinary--don’t be alarmed; he put himself under the +protection of the court, compounded with his creditors--tenpence in +the pound; in six weeks set up again, coaxed back his wife, and is +flourishing like a green bay-tree.” + +“And Crimsworth Hall--was the furniture sold too?” + +“Everything--from the grand piano down to the rolling-pin.” + +“And the contents of the oak dining-room--were they sold?” + +“Of course; why should the sofas and chairs of that room be held more +sacred than those of any other?” + +“And the pictures?” + +“What pictures? Crimsworth had no special collection that I know of--he +did not profess to be an amateur.” + +“There were two portraits, one on each side the mantelpiece; you cannot +have forgotten them, Mr. Hunsden; you once noticed that of the lady--” + +“Oh, I know! the thin-faced gentlewoman with a shawl put on like +drapery.--Why, as a matter of course, it would be sold among the other +things. If you had been rich, you might have bought it, for I remember +you said it represented your mother: you see what it is to be without a +sou.” + +I did. “But surely,” I thought to myself, “I shall not always be so +poverty-stricken; I may one day buy it back yet.--Who purchased it? do +you know?” I asked. + +“How is it likely? I never inquired who purchased anything; there spoke +the unpractical man--to imagine all the world is interested in what +interests himself! Now, good night--I’m off for Germany to-morrow +morning; I shall be back here in six weeks, and possibly I may call +and see you again; I wonder whether you’ll be still out of place!” + he laughed, as mockingly, as heartlessly as Mephistopheles, and so +laughing, vanished. + +Some people, however indifferent they may become after a considerable +space of absence, always contrive to leave a pleasant impression just +at parting; not so Hunsden, a conference with him affected one like a +draught of Peruvian bark; it seemed a concentration of the specially +harsh, stringent, bitter; whether, like bark, it invigorated, I scarcely +knew. + +A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow; I slept little on the night +after this interview; towards morning I began to doze, but hardly had my +slumber become sleep, when I was roused from it by hearing a noise in +my sitting room, to which my bed-room adjoined--a step, and a shoving of +furniture; the movement lasted barely two minutes; with the closing +of the door it ceased. I listened; not a mouse stirred; perhaps I +had dreamt it; perhaps a locataire had made a mistake, and entered my +apartment instead of his own. It was yet but five o’clock; neither I nor +the day were wide awake; I turned, and was soon unconscious. When I did +rise, about two hours later, I had forgotten the circumstance; the first +thing I saw, however, on quitting my chamber, recalled it; just pushed +in at the door of my sitting-room, and still standing on end, was a +wooden packing-case--a rough deal affair, wide but shallow; a porter +had doubtless shoved it forward, but seeing no occupant of the room, had +left it at the entrance. + +“That is none of mine,” thought I, approaching; “it must be meant for +somebody else.” I stooped to examine the address:-- + +“Wm. Crimsworth, Esq., No --, -- St., Brussels.” + +I was puzzled, but concluding that the best way to obtain information +was to ask within, I cut the cords and opened the case. Green baize +enveloped its contents, sewn carefully at the sides; I ripped the +pack-thread with my pen-knife, and still, as the seam gave way, glimpses +of gilding appeared through the widening interstices. Boards and baize +being at length removed, I lifted from the case a large picture, in a +magnificent frame; leaning it against a chair, in a position where the +light from the window fell favourably upon it, I stepped back--already I +had mounted my spectacles. A portrait-painter’s sky (the most sombre and +threatening of welkins), and distant trees of a conventional depth of +hue, raised in full relief a pale, pensive-looking female face, shadowed +with soft dark hair, almost blending with the equally dark clouds; +large, solemn eyes looked reflectively into mine; a thin cheek rested +on a delicate little hand; a shawl, artistically draped, half hid, half +showed a slight figure. A listener (had there been one) might have heard +me, after ten minutes’ silent gazing, utter the word “Mother!” I might +have said more--but with me, the first word uttered aloud in soliloquy +rouses consciousness; it reminds me that only crazy people talk to +themselves, and then I think out my monologue, instead of speaking it. +I had thought a long while, and a long while had contemplated the +intelligence, the sweetness, and--alas! the sadness also of those fine, +grey eyes, the mental power of that forehead, and the rare sensibility +of that serious mouth, when my glance, travelling downwards, fell on a +narrow billet, stuck in the corner of the picture, between the frame and +the canvas. Then I first asked, “Who sent this picture? Who thought of +me, saved it out of the wreck of Crimsworth Hall, and now commits it to +the care of its natural keeper?” I took the note from its niche; thus it +spoke:-- + +“There is a sort of stupid pleasure in giving a child sweets, a fool his +bells, a dog a bone. You are repaid by seeing the child besmear his face +with sugar; by witnessing how the fool’s ecstasy makes a greater fool of +him than ever; by watching the dog’s nature come out over his bone. +In giving William Crimsworth his mother’s picture, I give him sweets, +bells, and bone all in one; what grieves me is, that I cannot behold +the result; I would have added five shillings more to my bid if the +auctioneer could only have promised me that pleasure. + +“H. Y. H. + +“P.S.--You said last night you positively declined adding another item +to your account with me; don’t you think I’ve saved you that trouble?” + +I muffled the picture in its green baize covering, restored it to the +case, and having transported the whole concern to my bed-room, put it +out of sight under my bed. My pleasure was now poisoned by pungent pain; +I determined to look no more till I could look at my ease. If Hunsden +had come in at that moment, I should have said to him, “I owe you +nothing, Hunsden--not a fraction of a farthing: you have paid yourself +in taunts!” + +Too anxious to remain any longer quiescent, I had no sooner breakfasted, +than I repaired once more to M. Vandenhuten’s, scarcely hoping to find +him at home; for a week had barely elapsed since my first call: but +fancying I might be able to glean information as to the time when his +return was expected. A better result awaited me than I had anticipated, +for though the family were yet at Ostend, M. Vandenhuten had come over +to Brussels on business for the day. He received me with the quiet +kindness of a sincere though not excitable man. I had not sat five +minutes alone with him in his bureau, before I became aware of a sense +of ease in his presence, such as I rarely experienced with strangers. +I was surprised at my own composure, for, after all, I had come on +business to me exceedingly painful--that of soliciting a favour. I asked +on what basis the calm rested--I feared it might be deceptive. Ere long +I caught a glimpse of the ground, and at once I felt assured of its +solidity; I knew where it was. + +M. Vandenhuten was rich, respected, and influential; I, poor, despised +and powerless; so we stood to the world at large as members of the +world’s society; but to each other, as a pair of human beings, our +positions were reversed. The Dutchman (he was not Flamand, but pure +Hollandais) was slow, cool, of rather dense intelligence, though sound +and accurate judgment; the Englishman far more nervous, active, quicker +both to plan and to practise, to conceive and to realize. The Dutchman +was benevolent, the Englishman susceptible; in short our characters +dovetailed, but my mind having more fire and action than his, +instinctively assumed and kept the predominance. + +This point settled, and my position well ascertained, I addressed him +on the subject of my affairs with that genuine frankness which full +confidence can alone inspire. It was a pleasure to him to be so appealed +to; he thanked me for giving him this opportunity of using a little +exertion in my behalf. I went on to explain to him that my wish was not +so much to be helped, as to be put into the way of helping myself; +of him I did not want exertion--that was to be my part--but only +information and recommendation. Soon after I rose to go. He held out his +hand at parting--an action of greater significance with foreigners +than with Englishmen. As I exchanged a smile with him, I thought the +benevolence of his truthful face was better than the intelligence of my +own. Characters of my order experience a balm-like solace in the contact +of such souls as animated the honest breast of Victor Vandenhuten. + +The next fortnight was a period of many alternations; my existence +during its lapse resembled a sky of one of those autumnal nights which +are specially haunted by meteors and falling stars. Hopes and fears, +expectations and disappointments, descended in glancing showers from +zenith to horizon; but all were transient, and darkness followed swift +each vanishing apparition. M. Vandenhuten aided me faithfully; he set me +on the track of several places, and himself made efforts to secure +them for me; but for a long time solicitation and recommendation were +vain--the door either shut in my face when I was about to walk in, +or another candidate, entering before me, rendered my further advance +useless. Feverish and roused, no disappointment arrested me; defeat +following fast on defeat served as stimulants to will. I forgot +fastidiousness, conquered reserve, thrust pride from me: I asked, I +persevered, I remonstrated, I dunned. It is so that openings are forced +into the guarded circle where Fortune sits dealing favours round. My +perseverance made me known; my importunity made me remarked. I was +inquired about; my former pupils’ parents, gathering the reports of +their children, heard me spoken of as talented, and they echoed the +word: the sound, bandied about at random, came at last to ears which, +but for its universality, it might never have reached; and at the very +crisis when I had tried my last effort and knew not what to do, Fortune +looked in at me one morning, as I sat in drear and almost desperate +deliberation on my bedstead, nodded with the familiarity of an old +acquaintance--though God knows I had never met her before--and threw a +prize into my lap. + +In the second week of October, 18--, I got the appointment of English +professor to all the classes of ---- College, Brussels, with a salary +of three thousand francs per annum; and the certainty of being able, by +dint of the reputation and publicity accompanying the position, to make +as much more by private means. The official notice, which communicated +this information, mentioned also that it was the strong recommendation +of M. Vandenhuten, negociant, which had turned the scale of choice in my +favour. + +No sooner had I read the announcement than I hurried to M. Vandenhuten’s +bureau, pushed the document under his nose, and when he had perused +it, took both his hands, and thanked him with unrestrained vivacity. +My vivid words and emphatic gesture moved his Dutch calm to unwonted +sensation. He said he was happy--glad to have served me; but he had +done nothing meriting such thanks. He had not laid out a centime--only +scratched a few words on a sheet of paper. + +Again I repeated to him-- + +“You have made me quite happy, and in a way that suits me; I do not +feel an obligation irksome, conferred by your kind hand; I do not feel +disposed to shun you because you have done me a favour; from this day +you must consent to admit me to your intimate acquaintance, for I shall +hereafter recur again and again to the pleasure of your society.” + +“Ainsi soit-il,” was the reply, accompanied by a smile of benignant +content. I went away with its sunshine in my heart. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +IT was two o’clock when I returned to my lodgings; my dinner, just +brought in from a neighbouring hotel, smoked on the table; I sat down +thinking to eat--had the plate been heaped with potsherds and broken +glass, instead of boiled beef and haricots, I could not have made a more +signal failure: appetite had forsaken me. Impatient of seeing food +which I could not taste, I put it all aside into a cupboard, and then +demanded, “What shall I do till evening?” for before six P.M. it would +be vain to seek the Rue Notre Dame aux Neiges; its inhabitant (for me +it had but one) was detained by her vocation elsewhere. I walked in the +streets of Brussels, and I walked in my own room from two o’clock +till six; never once in that space of time did I sit down. I was in my +chamber when the last-named hour struck; I had just bathed my face and +feverish hands, and was standing near the glass; my cheek was crimson, +my eye was flame, still all my features looked quite settled and +calm. Descending swiftly the stair and stepping out, I was glad to see +Twilight drawing on in clouds; such shade was to me like a grateful +screen, and the chill of latter Autumn, breathing in a fitful wind from +the north-west, met me as a refreshing coolness. Still I saw it was cold +to others, for the women I passed were wrapped in shawls, and the men +had their coats buttoned close. + +When are we quite happy? Was I so then? No; an urgent and growing dread +worried my nerves, and had worried them since the first moment good +tidings had reached me. How was Frances? It was ten weeks since I had +seen her, six since I had heard from her, or of her. I had answered +her letter by a brief note, friendly but calm, in which no mention of +continued correspondence or further visits was made. At that hour my +bark hung on the topmost curl of a wave of fate, and I knew not on what +shoal the onward rush of the billow might hurl it; I would not then +attach her destiny to mine by the slightest thread; if doomed to split +on the rock, or run aground on the sand-bank, I was resolved no other +vessel should share my disaster: but six weeks was a long time; and +could it be that she was still well and doing well? Were not all sages +agreed in declaring that happiness finds no climax on earth? Dared +I think that but half a street now divided me from the full cup of +contentment--the draught drawn from waters said to flow only in heaven? + +I was at the door; I entered the quiet house; I mounted the stairs; the +lobby was void and still, all the doors closed; I looked for the neat +green mat; it lay duly in its place. + +“Signal of hope!” I said, and advanced. “But I will be a little calmer; +I am not going to rush in, and get up a scene directly.” Forcibly +staying my eager step, I paused on the mat. + +“What an absolute hush! Is she in? Is anybody in?” I demanded to +myself. A little tinkle, as of cinders falling from a grate, replied; +a movement--a fire was gently stirred; and the slight rustle of life +continuing, a step paced equably backwards and forwards, backwards and +forwards, in the apartment. Fascinated, I stood, more fixedly fascinated +when a voice rewarded the attention of my strained ear--so low, so +self-addressed, I never fancied the speaker otherwise than alone; +solitude might speak thus in a desert, or in the hall of a forsaken +house. + + + “‘And ne’er but once, my son,’ he said, + ‘Was yon dark cavern trod; + In persecution’s iron days, + When the land was left by God. + From Bewley’s bog, with slaughter red, + A wanderer hither drew; + And oft he stopp’d and turn’d his head, + As by fits the night-winds blew. + For trampling round by Cheviot-edge + Were heard the troopers keen; + And frequent from the Whitelaw ridge + The death-shot flash’d between.’” etc. etc. + +The old Scotch ballad was partly recited, then dropt; a pause ensued; +then another strain followed, in French, of which the purport, +translated, ran as follows:-- + + + I gave, at first, attention close; + Then interest warm ensued; + From interest, as improvement rose, + Succeeded gratitude. + + Obedience was no effort soon, + And labour was no pain; + If tired, a word, a glance alone + Would give me strength again. + + From others of the studious band, + Ere long he singled me; + But only by more close demand, + And sterner urgency. + + The task he from another took, + From me he did reject; + He would no slight omission brook, + And suffer no defect. + + If my companions went astray, + He scarce their wanderings blam’d; + If I but falter’d in the way, + His anger fiercely flam’d. + +Something stirred in an adjoining chamber; it would not do to be +surprised eaves-dropping; I tapped hastily, and as hastily entered. +Frances was just before me; she had been walking slowly in her room, +and her step was checked by my advent: Twilight only was with her, and +tranquil, ruddy Firelight; to these sisters, the Bright and the Dark, +she had been speaking, ere I entered, in poetry. Sir Walter Scott’s +voice, to her a foreign, far-off sound, a mountain echo, had uttered +itself in the first stanzas; the second, I thought, from the style and +the substance, was the language of her own heart. Her face was grave, +its expression concentrated; she bent on me an unsmiling eye--an eye +just returning from abstraction, just awaking from dreams: well-arranged +was her simple attire, smooth her dark hair, orderly her tranquil room; +but what--with her thoughtful look, her serious self-reliance, her +bent to meditation and haply inspiration--what had she to do with love? +“Nothing,” was the answer of her own sad, though gentle countenance; it +seemed to say, “I must cultivate fortitude and cling to poetry; one is +to be my support and the other my solace through life. Human affections +do not bloom, nor do human passions glow for me.” Other women have such +thoughts. Frances, had she been as desolate as she deemed, would not +have been worse off than thousands of her sex. Look at the rigid and +formal race of old maids--the race whom all despise; they have fed +themselves, from youth upwards, on maxims of resignation and endurance. +Many of them get ossified with the dry diet; self-control is so +continually their thought, so perpetually their object, that at last +it absorbs the softer and more agreeable qualities of their nature; and +they die mere models of austerity, fashioned out of a little parchment +and much bone. Anatomists will tell you that there is a heart in the +withered old maid’s carcass--the same as in that of any cherished wife +or proud mother in the land. Can this be so? I really don’t know; but +feel inclined to doubt it. + +I came forward, bade Frances “good evening,” and took my seat. The chair +I had chosen was one she had probably just left; it stood by a little +table where were her open desk and papers. I know not whether she had +fully recognized me at first, but she did so now; and in a voice, soft +but quiet, she returned my greeting. I had shown no eagerness; she took +her cue from me, and evinced no surprise. We met as we had always met, +as master and pupil--nothing more. I proceeded to handle the papers; +Frances, observant and serviceable, stepped into an inner room, brought +a candle, lit it, placed it by me; then drew the curtain over the +lattice, and having added a little fresh fuel to the already bright +fire, she drew a second chair to the table and sat down at my right +hand, a little removed. The paper on the top was a translation of +some grave French author into English, but underneath lay a sheet with +stanzas; on this I laid hands. Frances half rose, made a movement to +recover the captured spoil, saying, that was nothing--a mere copy of +verses. I put by resistance with the decision I knew she never long +opposed; but on this occasion her fingers had fastened on the paper. I +had quietly to unloose them; their hold dissolved to my touch; her hand +shrunk away; my own would fain have followed it, but for the present I +forbade such impulse. The first page of the sheet was occupied with +the lines I had overheard; the sequel was not exactly the writer’s own +experience, but a composition by portions of that experience suggested. +Thus while egotism was avoided, the fancy was exercised, and the heart +satisfied. I translate as before, and my translation is nearly literal; +it continued thus:-- + + + When sickness stay’d awhile my course, + He seem’d impatient still, + Because his pupil’s flagging force + Could not obey his will. + + One day when summoned to the bed + Where pain and I did strive, + I heard him, as he bent his head, + Say, “God, she must revive!” + + I felt his hand, with gentle stress, + A moment laid on mine, + And wished to mark my consciousness + By some responsive sign. + + But pow’rless then to speak or move, + I only felt, within, + The sense of Hope, the strength of Love, + Their healing work begin. + + And as he from the room withdrew, + My heart his steps pursued; + I long’d to prove, by efforts new; + My speechless gratitude. + + When once again I took my place, + Long vacant, in the class, + Th’ unfrequent smile across his face + Did for one moment pass. + + The lessons done; the signal made + Of glad release and play, + He, as he passed, an instant stay’d, + One kindly word to say. + + “Jane, till to-morrow you are free + From tedious task and rule; + This afternoon I must not see + That yet pale face in school. + + “Seek in the garden-shades a seat, + Far from the play-ground din; + The sun is warm, the air is sweet: + Stay till I call you in.” + + A long and pleasant afternoon + I passed in those green bowers; + All silent, tranquil, and alone + With birds, and bees, and flowers. + + Yet, when my master’s voice I heard + Call, from the window, “Jane!” + I entered, joyful, at the word, + The busy house again. + + He, in the hall, paced up and down; + He paused as I passed by; + His forehead stern relaxed its frown: + He raised his deep-set eye. + + “Not quite so pale,” he murmured low. + “Now Jane, go rest awhile.” + And as I smiled, his smoothened brow + Returned as glad a smile. + + My perfect health restored, he took + His mien austere again; + And, as before, he would not brook + The slightest fault from Jane. + + The longest task, the hardest theme + Fell to my share as erst, + And still I toiled to place my name + In every study first. + + He yet begrudged and stinted praise, + But I had learnt to read + The secret meaning of his face, + And that was my best meed. + + Even when his hasty temper spoke + In tones that sorrow stirred, + My grief was lulled as soon as woke + By some relenting word. + + And when he lent some precious book, + Or gave some fragrant flower, + I did not quail to Envy’s look, + Upheld by Pleasure’s power. + + At last our school ranks took their ground, + The hard-fought field I won; + The prize, a laurel-wreath, was bound + My throbbing forehead on. + + Low at my master’s knee I bent, + The offered crown to meet; + Its green leaves through my temples sent + A thrill as wild as sweet. + + The strong pulse of Ambition struck + In every vein I owned; + At the same instant, bleeding broke + A secret, inward wound. + + The hour of triumph was to me + The hour of sorrow sore; + A day hence I must cross the sea, + Ne’er to recross it more. + + An hour hence, in my master’s room + I with him sat alone, + And told him what a dreary gloom + O’er joy had parting thrown. + + He little said; the time was brief, + The ship was soon to sail, + And while I sobbed in bitter grief, + My master but looked pale. + + They called in haste; he bade me go, + Then snatched me back again; + He held me fast and murmured low, + “Why will they part us, Jane?” + + “Were you not happy in my care? + Did I not faithful prove? + Will others to my darling bear + As true, as deep a love? + + “O God, watch o’er my foster child! + O guard her gentle head! + When minds are high and tempests wild + Protection round her spread! + + “They call again; leave then my breast; + Quit thy true shelter, Jane; + But when deceived, repulsed, opprest, + Come home to me again!” + +I read--then dreamily made marks on the margin with my pencil; thinking +all the while of other things; thinking that “Jane” was now at my side; +no child, but a girl of nineteen; and she might be mine, so my heart +affirmed; Poverty’s curse was taken off me; Envy and Jealousy were +far away, and unapprized of this our quiet meeting; the frost of the +Master’s manner might melt; I felt the thaw coming fast, whether I would +or not; no further need for the eye to practise a hard look, for the +brow to compress its expanse into a stern fold: it was now permitted +to suffer the outward revelation of the inward glow--to seek, demand, +elicit an answering ardour. While musing thus, I thought that the grass +on Hermon never drank the fresh dews of sunset more gratefully than my +feelings drank the bliss of this hour. + +Frances rose, as if restless; she passed before me to stir the fire, +which did not want stirring; she lifted and put down the little +ornaments on the mantelpiece; her dress waved within a yard of me; +slight, straight, and elegant, she stood erect on the hearth. + +There are impulses we can control; but there are others which control +us, because they attain us with a tiger-leap, and are our masters ere +we have seen them. Perhaps, though, such impulses are seldom altogether +bad; perhaps Reason, by a process as brief as quiet, a process that +is finished ere felt, has ascertained the sanity of the deed. Instinct +meditates, and feels justified in remaining passive while it is +performed. I know I did not reason, I did not plan or intend, yet, +whereas one moment I was sitting solus on the chair near the table, +the next, I held Frances on my knee, placed there with sharpness and +decision, and retained with exceeding tenacity. + +“Monsieur!” cried Frances, and was still: not another word escaped her +lips; sorely confounded she seemed during the lapse of the first few +moments; but the amazement soon subsided; terror did not succeed, nor +fury: after all, she was only a little nearer than she had ever been +before, to one she habitually respected and trusted; embarrassment might +have impelled her to contend, but self-respect checked resistance where +resistance was useless. + +“Frances, how much regard have you for me?” was my demand. No answer; +the situation was yet too new and surprising to permit speech. On this +consideration, I compelled myself for some seconds to tolerate her +silence, though impatient of it: presently, I repeated the same +question--probably, not in the calmest of tones; she looked at me; my +face, doubtless, was no model of composure, my eyes no still wells of +tranquillity. + +“Do speak,” I urged; and a very low, hurried, yet still arch voice +said-- + +“Monsieur, vous me faites mal; de grace lachez un peu ma main droite.” + +In truth I became aware that I was holding the said “main droite” in +a somewhat ruthless grasp: I did as desired; and, for the third time, +asked more gently-- + +“Frances, how much regard have you for me?” + +“Mon maitre, j’en ai beaucoup,” was the truthful rejoinder. + +“Frances, have you enough to give yourself to me as my wife?--to accept +me as your husband?” + +I felt the agitation of the heart, I saw “the purple light of love” cast +its glowing reflection on cheeks, temples, neck; I desired to consult +the eye, but sheltering lash and lid forbade. + +“Monsieur,” said the soft voice at last,--“Monsieur desire savoir si je +consens--si--enfin, si je veux me marier avec lui?” + +“Justement.” + +“Monsieur sera-t-il aussi bon mari qu’il a ete bon maitre?” + +“I will try, Frances.” + +A pause; then with a new, yet still subdued inflexion of the voice--an +inflexion which provoked while it pleased me--accompanied, too, by a +“sourire a la fois fin et timide” in perfect harmony with the tone:-- + +“C’est a dire, monsieur sera toujours un peu entete exigeant, +volontaire--?” + +“Have I been so, Frances?” + +“Mais oui; vous le savez bien.” + +“Have I been nothing else?” + +“Mais oui; vous avez ete mon meilleur ami.” + +“And what, Frances, are you to me?” + +“Votre devouee eleve, qui vous aime de tout son coeur.” + +“Will my pupil consent to pass her life with me? Speak English now, +Frances.” + +Some moments were taken for reflection; the answer, pronounced slowly, +ran thus:-- + +“You have always made me happy; I like to hear you speak; I like to +see you; I like to be near you; I believe you are very good, and very +superior; I know you are stern to those who are careless and idle, but +you are kind, very kind to the attentive and industrious, even if they +are not clever. Master, I should be GLAD to live with you always;” + and she made a sort of movement, as if she would have clung to me, but +restraining herself she only added with earnest emphasis--“Master, I +consent to pass my life with you.” + +“Very well, Frances.” + +I drew her a little nearer to my heart; I took a first kiss from her +lips, thereby sealing the compact, now framed between us; afterwards she +and I were silent, nor was our silence brief. Frances’ thoughts, during +this interval, I know not, nor did I attempt to guess them; I was not +occupied in searching her countenance, nor in otherwise troubling her +composure. The peace I felt, I wished her to feel; my arm, it is true, +still detained her; but with a restraint that was gentle enough, so long +as no opposition tightened it. My gaze was on the red fire; my heart was +measuring its own content; it sounded and sounded, and found the depth +fathomless. + +“Monsieur,” at last said my quiet companion, as stirless in her +happiness as a mouse in its terror. Even now in speaking she scarcely +lifted her head. + +“Well, Frances?” I like unexaggerated intercourse; it is not my way to +overpower with amorous epithets, any more than to worry with selfishly +importunate caresses. + +“Monsieur est raisonnable, n’est-ce pas?” + +“Yes; especially when I am requested to be so in English: but why do +you ask me? You see nothing vehement or obtrusive in my manner; am I not +tranquil enough?” + +“Ce n’est pas cela--” began Frances. + +“English!” I reminded her. + +“Well, monsieur, I wished merely to say, that I should like, of course, +to retain my employment of teaching. You will teach still, I suppose, +monsieur?” + +“Oh, yes! It is all I have to depend on.” + +“Bon!--I mean good. Thus we shall have both the same profession. I like +that; and my efforts to get on will be as unrestrained as yours--will +they not, monsieur?” + +“You are laying plans to be independent of me,” said I. + +“Yes, monsieur; I must be no incumbrance to you--no burden in any way.” + +“But, Frances, I have not yet told you what my prospects are. I have +left M. Pelet’s; and after nearly a month’s seeking, I have got another +place, with a salary of three thousand francs a year, which I can easily +double by a little additional exertion. Thus you see it would be useless +for you to fag yourself by going out to give lessons; on six thousand +francs you and I can live, and live well.” + +Frances seemed to consider. There is something flattering to man’s +strength, something consonant to his honourable pride, in the idea of +becoming the providence of what he loves--feeding and clothing it, as +God does the lilies of the field. So, to decide her resolution, I went +on:-- + +“Life has been painful and laborious enough to you so far, Frances; you +require complete rest; your twelve hundred francs would not form a very +important addition to our income, and what sacrifice of comfort to earn +it! Relinquish your labours: you must be weary, and let me have the +happiness of giving you rest.” + +I am not sure whether Frances had accorded due attention to my harangue; +instead of answering me with her usual respectful promptitude, she only +sighed and said,-- + +“How rich you are, monsieur!” and then she stirred uneasy in my +arms. “Three thousand francs!” she murmured, “While I get only twelve +hundred!” She went on faster. “However, it must be so for the present; +and, monsieur, were you not saying something about my giving up my +place? Oh no! I shall hold it fast;” and her little fingers emphatically +tightened on mine. + +“Think of my marrying you to be kept by you, monsieur! I could not do +it; and how dull my days would be! You would be away teaching in close, +noisy school-rooms, from morning till evening, and I should be lingering +at home, unemployed and solitary; I should get depressed and sullen, and +you would soon tire of me.” + +“Frances, you could read and study--two things you like so well.” + +“Monsieur, I could not; I like a contemplative life, but I like an +active life better; I must act in some way, and act with you. I have +taken notice, monsieur, that people who are only in each other’s company +for amusement, never really like each other so well, or esteem each +other so highly, as those who work together, and perhaps suffer +together.” + +“You speak God’s truth,” said I at last, “and you shall have your own +way, for it is the best way. Now, as a reward for such ready consent, +give me a voluntary kiss.” + +After some hesitation, natural to a novice in the art of kissing, she +brought her lips into very shy and gentle contact with my forehead; I +took the small gift as a loan, and repaid it promptly, and with generous +interest. + +I know not whether Frances was really much altered since the time +I first saw her; but, as I looked at her now, I felt that she was +singularly changed for me; the sad eye, the pale cheek, the dejected +and joyless countenance I remembered as her early attributes, were quite +gone, and now I saw a face dressed in graces; smile, dimple, and +rosy tint rounded its contours and brightened its hues. I had been +accustomed to nurse a flattering idea that my strong attachment to her +proved some particular perspicacity in my nature; she was not handsome, +she was not rich, she was not even accomplished, yet was she my life’s +treasure; I must then be a man of peculiar discernment. To-night my eyes +opened on the mistake I had made; I began to suspect that it was only my +tastes which were unique, not my power of discovering and appreciating +the superiority of moral worth over physical charms. For me Frances +had physical charms: in her there was no deformity to get over; none of +those prominent defects of eyes, teeth, complexion, shape, which hold at +bay the admiration of the boldest male champions of intellect (for +women can love a downright ugly man if he be but talented); had she been +either “edentee, myope, rugueuse, ou bossue,” my feelings towards +her might still have been kindly, but they could never have been +impassioned; I had affection for the poor little misshapen Sylvie, but +for her I could never have had love. It is true Frances’ mental points +had been the first to interest me, and they still retained the strongest +hold on my preference; but I liked the graces of her person too. I +derived a pleasure, purely material, from contemplating the clearness +of her brown eyes, the fairness of her fine skin, the purity of her +well-set teeth, the proportion of her delicate form; and that pleasure +I could ill have dispensed with. It appeared, then, that I too was a +sensualist, in my temperate and fastidious way. + +Now, reader, during the last two pages I have been giving you honey +fresh from flowers, but you must not live entirely on food so luscious; +taste then a little gall--just a drop, by way of change. + +At a somewhat late hour I returned to my lodgings: having temporarily +forgotten that man had any such coarse cares as those of eating and +drinking, I went to bed fasting. I had been excited and in action all +day, and had tasted no food since eight that morning; besides, for a +fortnight past, I had known no rest either of body or mind; the last few +hours had been a sweet delirium, it would not subside now, and till long +after midnight, broke with troubled ecstacy the rest I so much needed. +At last I dozed, but not for long; it was yet quite dark when I awoke, +and my waking was like that of Job when a spirit passed before his face, +and like him, “the hair of my flesh stood up.” I might continue the +parallel, for in truth, though I saw nothing, yet “a thing was secretly +brought unto me, and mine ear received a little thereof; there was +silence, and I heard a voice,” saying--“In the midst of life we are in +death.” + +That sound, and the sensation of chill anguish accompanying it, many +would have regarded as supernatural; but I recognized it at once as the +effect of reaction. Man is ever clogged with his mortality, and it was +my mortal nature which now faltered and plained; my nerves, which jarred +and gave a false sound, because the soul, of late rushing headlong to an +aim, had overstrained the body’s comparative weakness. A horror of great +darkness fell upon me; I felt my chamber invaded by one I had known +formerly, but had thought for ever departed. I was temporarily a prey to +hypochondria. + +She had been my acquaintance, nay, my guest, once before in boyhood; I +had entertained her at bed and board for a year; for that space of time +I had her to myself in secret; she lay with me, she ate with me, she +walked out with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills, where +we could sit together, and where she could drop her drear veil over me, +and so hide sky and sun, grass and green tree; taking me entirely to her +death-cold bosom, and holding me with arms of bone. What tales she would +tell me at such hours! What songs she would recite in my ears! How she +would discourse to me of her own country--the grave--and again and again +promise to conduct me there ere long; and, drawing me to the very brink +of a black, sullen river, show me, on the other side, shores unequal +with mound, monument, and tablet, standing up in a glimmer more hoary +than moonlight. “Necropolis!” she would whisper, pointing to the pale +piles, and add, “It contains a mansion prepared for you.” + +But my boyhood was lonely, parentless; uncheered by brother or sister; +and there was no marvel that, just as I rose to youth, a sorceress, +finding me lost in vague mental wanderings, with many affections and few +objects, glowing aspirations and gloomy prospects, strong desires and +slender hopes, should lift up her illusive lamp to me in the distance, +and lure me to her vaulted home of horrors. No wonder her spells +THEN had power; but NOW, when my course was widening, my prospect +brightening; when my affections had found a rest; when my desires, +folding wings, weary with long flight, had just alighted on the very lap +of fruition, and nestled there warm, content, under the caress of a soft +hand--why did hypochondria accost me now? + +I repulsed her as one would a dreaded and ghastly concubine coming to +embitter a husband’s heart toward his young bride; in vain; she kept her +sway over me for that night and the next day, and eight succeeding days. +Afterwards, my spirits began slowly to recover their tone; my appetite +returned, and in a fortnight I was well. I had gone about as usual all +the time, and had said nothing to anybody of what I felt; but I was glad +when the evil spirit departed from me, and I could again seek Frances, +and sit at her side, freed from the dreadful tyranny of my demon. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +ONE fine, frosty Sunday in November, Frances and I took a long walk; we +made the tour of the city by the Boulevards; and, afterwards, Frances +being a little tired, we sat down on one of those wayside seats placed +under the trees, at intervals, for the accommodation of the weary. +Frances was telling me about Switzerland; the subject animated her; +and I was just thinking that her eyes spoke full as eloquently as her +tongue, when she stopped and remarked-- + +“Monsieur, there is a gentleman who knows you.” + +I looked up; three fashionably dressed men were just then +passing--Englishmen, I knew by their air and gait as well as by their +features; in the tallest of the trio I at once recognized Mr. Hunsden; +he was in the act of lifting his hat to Frances; afterwards, he made a +grimace at me, and passed on. + +“Who is he?” + +“A person I knew in England.” + +“Why did he bow to me? He does not know me.” + +“Yes, he does know you, in his way.” + +“How, monsieur?” (She still called me “monsieur”; I could not persuade +her to adopt any more familiar term.) + +“Did you not read the expression of his eyes?” + +“Of his eyes? No. What did they say?” + +“To you they said, ‘How do you do, Wilhelmina Crimsworth?’ To me, ‘So +you have found your counterpart at last; there she sits, the female of +your kind!’” + +“Monsieur, you could not read all that in his eyes; he was so soon +gone.” + +“I read that and more, Frances; I read that he will probably call on me +this evening, or on some future occasion shortly; and I have no doubt +he will insist on being introduced to you; shall I bring him to your +rooms?” + +“If you please, monsieur--I have no objection; I think, indeed, I should +rather like to see him nearer; he looks so original.” + +As I had anticipated, Mr. Hunsden came that evening. The first thing he +said was:-- + +“You need not begin boasting, Monsieur le Professeur; I know about your +appointment to ---- College, and all that; Brown has told me.” Then +he intimated that he had returned from Germany but a day or two since; +afterwards, he abruptly demanded whether that was Madame Pelet-Reuter +with whom he had seen me on the Boulevards. I was going to utter a +rather emphatic negative, but on second thoughts I checked myself, and, +seeming to assent, asked what he thought of her? + +“As to her, I’ll come to that directly; but first I’ve a word for you. I +see you are a scoundrel; you’ve no business to be promenading about with +another man’s wife. I thought you had sounder sense than to get mixed up +in foreign hodge-podge of this sort.” + +“But the lady?” + +“She’s too good for you evidently; she is like you, but something better +than you--no beauty, though; yet when she rose (for I looked back to +see you both walk away) I thought her figure and carriage good. These +foreigners understand grace. What the devil has she done with Pelet? She +has not been married to him three months--he must be a spoon!” + +I would not let the mistake go too far; I did not like it much. + +“Pelet? How your head runs on Mons. and Madame Pelet! You are always +talking about them. I wish to the gods you had wed Mdlle. Zoraide +yourself!” + +“Was that young gentlewoman not Mdlle. Zoraide?” + +“No; nor Madame Zoraide either.” + +“Why did you tell a lie, then?” + +“I told no lie; but you are is such a hurry. She is a pupil of mine--a +Swiss girl.” + +“And of course you are going to be married to her? Don’t deny that.” + +“Married! I think I shall--if Fate spares us both ten weeks longer. That +is my little wild strawberry, Hunsden, whose sweetness made me careless +of your hothouse grapes.” + +“Stop! No boasting--no heroics; I won’t hear them. What is she? To what +caste does she belong?” + +I smiled. Hunsden unconsciously laid stress on the word caste, and, in +fact, republican, lord-hater as he was, Hunsden was as proud of his old +----shire blood, of his descent and family standing, respectable and +respected through long generations back, as any peer in the realm of +his Norman race and Conquest-dated title. Hunsden would as little have +thought of taking a wife from a caste inferior to his own, as a Stanley +would think of mating with a Cobden. I enjoyed the surprise I should +give; I enjoyed the triumph of my practice over his theory; and leaning +over the table, and uttering the words slowly but with repressed glee, I +said concisely-- + +“She is a lace-mender.” + +Hunsden examined me. He did not SAY he was surprised, but surprised he +was; he had his own notions of good breeding. I saw he suspected I +was going to take some very rash step; but repressing declamation or +remonstrance, he only answered-- + +“Well, you are the best judge of your own affairs. A lace-mender may +make a good wife as well as a lady; but of course you have taken care +to ascertain thoroughly that since she has not education, fortune or +station, she is well furnished with such natural qualities as you think +most likely to conduce to your happiness. Has she many relations?” + +“None in Brussels.” + +“That is better. Relations are often the real evil in such cases. I +cannot but think that a train of inferior connections would have been a +bore to you to your life’s end.” + +After sitting in silence a little while longer, Hunsden rose, and was +quietly bidding me good evening; the polite, considerate manner in which +he offered me his hand (a thing he had never done before), convinced me +that he thought I had made a terrible fool of myself; and that, ruined +and thrown away as I was, it was no time for sarcasm or cynicism, or +indeed for anything but indulgence and forbearance. + +“Good night, William,” he said, in a really soft voice, while his face +looked benevolently compassionate. “Good night, lad. I wish you and your +future wife much prosperity; and I hope she will satisfy your fastidious +soul.” + +I had much ado to refrain from laughing as I beheld the magnanimous pity +of his mien; maintaining, however, a grave air, I said:-- + +“I thought you would have liked to have seen Mdlle. Henri?” + +“Oh, that is the name! Yes--if it would be convenient, I should like to +see her--but----.” He hesitated. + +“Well?” + +“I should on no account wish to intrude.” + +“Come, then,” said I. We set out. Hunsden no doubt regarded me as a +rash, imprudent man, thus to show my poor little grisette sweetheart, +in her poor little unfurnished grenier; but he prepared to act the real +gentleman, having, in fact, the kernel of that character, under the +harsh husk it pleased him to wear by way of mental mackintosh. He talked +affably, and even gently, as we went along the street; he had never been +so civil to me in his life. We reached the house, entered, ascended the +stair; on gaining the lobby, Hunsden turned to mount a narrower stair +which led to a higher story; I saw his mind was bent on the attics. + +“Here, Mr. Hunsden,” said I quietly, tapping at Frances’ door. He +turned; in his genuine politeness he was a little disconcerted at +having made the mistake; his eye reverted to the green mat, but he said +nothing. + +We walked in, and Frances rose from her seat near the table to receive +us; her mourning attire gave her a recluse, rather conventual, but +withal very distinguished look; its grave simplicity added nothing +to beauty, but much to dignity; the finish of the white collar and +manchettes sufficed for a relief to the merino gown of solemn black; +ornament was forsworn. Frances curtsied with sedate grace, looking, as +she always did, when one first accosted her, more a woman to respect +than to love; I introduced Mr. Hunsden, and she expressed her happiness +at making his acquaintance in French. The pure and polished accent, the +low yet sweet and rather full voice, produced their effect immediately; +Hunsden spoke French in reply; I had not heard him speak that language +before; he managed it very well. I retired to the window-seat; Mr. +Hunsden, at his hostess’s invitation, occupied a chair near the hearth; +from my position I could see them both, and the room too, at a glance. +The room was so clean and bright, it looked like a little polished +cabinet; a glass filled with flowers in the centre of the table, a +fresh rose in each china cup on the mantelpiece gave it an air of FETE. +Frances was serious, and Mr. Hunsden subdued, but both mutually polite; +they got on at the French swimmingly: ordinary topics were discussed +with great state and decorum; I thought I had never seen two such models +of propriety, for Hunsden (thanks to the constraint of the foreign +tongue) was obliged to shape his phrases, and measure his sentences, +with a care that forbade any eccentricity. At last England was +mentioned, and Frances proceeded to ask questions. Animated by degrees, +she began to change, just as a grave night-sky changes at the approach +of sunrise: first it seemed as if her forehead cleared, then her eyes +glittered, her features relaxed, and became quite mobile; her subdued +complexion grew warm and transparent; to me, she now looked pretty; +before, she had only looked ladylike. + +She had many things to say to the Englishman just fresh from his +island-country, and she urged him with an enthusiasm of curiosity, which +ere long thawed Hunsden’s reserve as fire thaws a congealed viper. I use +this not very flattering comparison because he vividly reminded me of a +snake waking from torpor, as he erected his tall form, reared his head, +before a little declined, and putting back his hair from his broad Saxon +forehead, showed unshaded the gleam of almost savage satire which his +interlocutor’s tone of eagerness and look of ardour had sufficed at +once to kindle in his soul and elicit from his eyes: he was himself; +as Frances was herself, and in none but his own language would he now +address her. + +“You understand English?” was the prefatory question. + +“A little.” + +“Well, then, you shall have plenty of it; and first, I see you’ve not +much more sense than some others of my acquaintance” (indicating me +with his thumb), “or else you’d never turn rabid about that dirty little +country called England; for rabid, I see you are; I read Anglophobia in +your looks, and hear it in your words. Why, mademoiselle, is it possible +that anybody with a grain of rationality should feel enthusiasm about a +mere name, and that name England? I thought you were a lady-abbess five +minutes ago, and respected you accordingly; and now I see you are a sort +of Swiss sibyl, with high Tory and high Church principles!” + +“England is your country?” asked Frances. + +“Yes.” + +“And you don’t like it?” + +“I’d be sorry to like it! A little corrupt, venal, lord-and-king-cursed +nation, full of mucky pride (as they say in ----shire), and helpless +pauperism; rotten with abuses, worm-eaten with prejudices!” + +“You might say so of almost every state; there are abuses and prejudices +everywhere, and I thought fewer in England than in other countries.” + +“Come to England and see. Come to Birmingham and Manchester; come to St. +Giles’ in London, and get a practical notion of how our system works. +Examine the footprints of our august aristocracy; see how they walk +in blood, crushing hearts as they go. Just put your head in at English +cottage doors; get a glimpse of Famine crouched torpid on black +hearthstones; of Disease lying bare on beds without coverlets, of +Infamy wantoning viciously with Ignorance, though indeed Luxury is her +favourite paramour, and princely halls are dearer to her than thatched +hovels----” + +“I was not thinking of the wretchedness and vice in England; I was +thinking of the good side--of what is elevated in your character as a +nation.” + +“There is no good side--none at least of which you can have any +knowledge; for you cannot appreciate the efforts of industry, the +achievements of enterprise, or the discoveries of science: narrowness +of education and obscurity of position quite incapacitate you +from understanding these points; and as to historical and poetical +associations, I will not insult you, mademoiselle, by supposing that you +alluded to such humbug.” + +“But I did partly.” + +Hunsden laughed--his laugh of unmitigated scorn. + +“I did, Mr. Hunsden. Are you of the number of those to whom such +associations give no pleasure?” + +“Mademoiselle, what is an association? I never saw one. What is its +length, breadth, weight, value--ay, VALUE? What price will it bring in +the market?” + +“Your portrait, to any one who loved you, would, for the sake of +association, be without price.” + +That inscrutable Hunsden heard this remark and felt it rather acutely, +too, somewhere; for he coloured--a thing not unusual with him, when hit +unawares on a tender point. A sort of trouble momentarily darkened +his eye, and I believe he filled up the transient pause succeeding his +antagonist’s home-thrust, by a wish that some one did love him as +he would like to be loved--some one whose love he could unreservedly +return. + +The lady pursued her temporary advantage. + +“If your world is a world without associations, Mr. Hunsden, I no longer +wonder that you hate England so. I don’t clearly know what Paradise is, +and what angels are; yet taking it to be the most glorious region I can +conceive, and angels the most elevated existences--if one of them--if +Abdiel the Faithful himself” (she was thinking of Milton) “were suddenly +stripped of the faculty of association, I think he would soon rush forth +from ‘the ever-during gates,’ leave heaven, and seek what he had lost in +hell. Yes, in the very hell from which he turned ‘with retorted scorn.’” + +Frances’ tone in saying this was as marked as her language, and it +was when the word “hell” twanged off from her lips, with a somewhat +startling emphasis, that Hunsden deigned to bestow one slight glance of +admiration. He liked something strong, whether in man or woman; he liked +whatever dared to clear conventional limits. He had never before heard +a lady say “hell” with that uncompromising sort of accent, and the sound +pleased him from a lady’s lips; he would fain have had Frances to strike +the string again, but it was not in her way. The display of eccentric +vigour never gave her pleasure, and it only sounded in her voice or +flashed in her countenance when extraordinary circumstances--and those +generally painful--forced it out of the depths where it burned latent. +To me, once or twice, she had in intimate conversation, uttered +venturous thoughts in nervous language; but when the hour of such +manifestation was past, I could not recall it; it came of itself and of +itself departed. Hunsden’s excitations she put by soon with a smile, and +recurring to the theme of disputation, said-- + +“Since England is nothing, why do the continental nations respect her +so?” + +“I should have thought no child would have asked that question,” replied +Hunsden, who never at any time gave information without reproving for +stupidity those who asked it of him. “If you had been my pupil, as I +suppose you once had the misfortune to be that of a deplorable character +not a hundred miles off, I would have put you in the corner for such a +confession of ignorance. Why, mademoiselle, can’t you see that it is +our GOLD which buys us French politeness, German good-will, and Swiss +servility?” And he sneered diabolically. + +“Swiss?” said Frances, catching the word “servility.” “Do you call my +countrymen servile?” and she started up. I could not suppress a low +laugh; there was ire in her glance and defiance in her attitude. “Do +you abuse Switzerland to me, Mr. Hunsden? Do you think I have no +associations? Do you calculate that I am prepared to dwell only on what +vice and degradation may be found in Alpine villages, and to leave +quite out of my heart the social greatness of my countrymen, and our +blood-earned freedom, and the natural glories of our mountains? You’re +mistaken--you’re mistaken.” + +“Social greatness? Call it what you will, your countrymen are sensible +fellows; they make a marketable article of what to you is an abstract +idea; they have, ere this, sold their social greatness and also their +blood-earned freedom to be the servants of foreign kings.” + +“You never were in Switzerland?” + +“Yes--I have been there twice.” + +“You know nothing of it.” + +“I do.” + +“And you say the Swiss are mercenary, as a parrot says ‘Poor Poll,’ or +as the Belgians here say the English are not brave, or as the French +accuse them of being perfidious: there is no justice in your dictums.” + +“There is truth.” + +“I tell you, Mr. Hunsden, you are a more unpractical man than I am an +unpractical woman, for you don’t acknowledge what really exists; you +want to annihilate individual patriotism and national greatness as +an atheist would annihilate God and his own soul, by denying their +existence.” + +“Where are you flying to? You are off at a tangent--I thought we were +talking about the mercenary nature of the Swiss.” + +“We were--and if you proved to me that the Swiss are mercenary to-morrow +(which you cannot do) I should love Switzerland still.” + +“You would be mad, then--mad as a March hare--to indulge in a passion +for millions of shiploads of soil, timber, snow, and ice.” + +“Not so mad as you who love nothing.” + +“There’s a method in my madness; there’s none in yours.” + +“Your method is to squeeze the sap out of creation and make manure of +the refuse, by way of turning it to what you call use.” + +“You cannot reason at all,” said Hunsden; “there is no logic in you.” + +“Better to be without logic than without feeling,” retorted Frances, who +was now passing backwards and forwards from her cupboard to the table, +intent, if not on hospitable thoughts, at least on hospitable deeds, for +she was laying the cloth, and putting plates, knives and forks thereon. + +“Is that a hit at me, mademoiselle? Do you suppose I am without +feeling?” + +“I suppose you are always interfering with your own feelings, and those +of other people, and dogmatizing about the irrationality of this, that, +and the other sentiment, and then ordering it to be suppressed because +you imagine it to be inconsistent with logic.” + +“I do right.” + +Frances had stepped out of sight into a sort of little pantry; she soon +reappeared. + +“You do right? Indeed, no! You are much mistaken if you think so. Just +be so good as to let me get to the fire, Mr. Hunsden; I have something +to cook.” (An interval occupied in settling a casserole on the fire; +then, while she stirred its contents:) “Right! as if it were right to +crush any pleasurable sentiment that God has given to man, especially +any sentiment that, like patriotism, spreads man’s selfishness in wider +circles” (fire stirred, dish put down before it). + +“Were you born in Switzerland?” + +“I should think so, or else why should I call it my country?” + +“And where did you get your English features and figure?” + +“I am English, too; half the blood in my veins is English; thus I have +a right to a double power of patriotism, possessing an interest in two +noble, free, and fortunate countries.” + +“You had an English mother?” + +“Yes, yes; and you, I suppose, had a mother from the moon or from +Utopia, since not a nation in Europe has a claim on your interest?” + +“On the contrary, I’m a universal patriot, if you could understand me +rightly: my country is the world.” + +“Sympathies so widely diffused must be very shallow: will you have +the goodness to come to table. Monsieur” (to me who appeared to be now +absorbed in reading by moonlight)--“Monsieur, supper is served.” + +This was said in quite a different voice to that in which she had been +bandying phrases with Mr. Hunsden--not so short, graver and softer. + +“Frances, what do you mean by preparing, supper? we had no intention of +staying.” + +“Ah, monsieur, but you have stayed, and supper is prepared; you have +only the alternative of eating it.” + +The meal was a foreign one, of course; it consisted in two small but +tasty dishes of meat prepared with skill and served with nicety; a salad +and “fromage francais,” completed it. The business of eating interposed +a brief truce between the belligerents, but no sooner was supper +disposed of than they were at it again. The fresh subject of dispute +ran on the spirit of religious intolerance which Mr. Hunsden affirmed to +exist strongly in Switzerland, notwithstanding the professed attachment +of the Swiss to freedom. Here Frances had greatly the worst of it, +not only because she was unskilled to argue, but because her own real +opinions on the point in question happened to coincide pretty nearly +with Mr. Hunsden’s, and she only contradicted him out of opposition. At +last she gave in, confessing that she thought as he thought, but bidding +him take notice that she did not consider herself beaten. + +“No more did the French at Waterloo,” said Hunsden. + +“There is no comparison between the cases,” rejoined Frances; “mine was +a sham fight.” + +“Sham or real, it’s up with you.” + +“No; though I have neither logic nor wealth of words, yet in a case +where my opinion really differed from yours, I would adhere to it when +I had not another word to say in its defence; you should be baffled by +dumb determination. You speak of Waterloo; your Wellington ought to have +been conquered there, according to Napoleon; but he persevered in spite +of the laws of war, and was victorious in defiance of military tactics. +I would do as he did.” + +“I’ll be bound for it you would; probably you have some of the same sort +of stubborn stuff in you.” + +“I should be sorry if I had not; he and Tell were brothers, and I’d +scorn the Swiss, man or woman, who had none of the much-enduring nature +of our heroic William in his soul.” + +“If Tell was like Wellington, he was an ass.” + +“Does not ASS mean BAUDET?” asked Frances, turning to me. + +“No, no,” replied I, “it means an ESPRIT-FORT; and now,” I continued, as +I saw that fresh occasion of strife was brewing between these two, “it +is high time to go.” + +Hunsden rose. “Good bye,” said he to Frances; “I shall be off for this +glorious England to-morrow, and it may be twelve months or more before +I come to Brussels again; whenever I do come I’ll seek you out, and +you shall see if I don’t find means to make you fiercer than a dragon. +You’ve done pretty well this evening, but next interview you shall +challenge me outright. Meantime you’re doomed to become Mrs. William +Crimsworth, I suppose; poor young lady? but you have a spark of spirit; +cherish it, and give the Professor the full benefit thereof.” + +“Are you married. Mr. Hunsden?” asked Frances, suddenly. + +“No. I should have thought you might have guessed I was a Benedict by my +look.” + +“Well, whenever you marry don’t take a wife out of Switzerland; for if +you begin blaspheming Helvetia, and cursing the cantons--above all, if +you mention the word ASS in the same breath with the name Tell (for +ass IS baudet, I know; though Monsieur is pleased to translate +it ESPRIT-FORT) your mountain maid will some night smother her +Breton-bretonnant, even as your own Shakspeare’s Othello smothered +Desdemona.” + +“I am warned,” said Hunsden; “and so are you, lad,” (nodding to me). “I +hope yet to hear of a travesty of the Moor and his gentle lady, in which +the parts shall be reversed according to the plan just sketched--you, +however, being in my nightcap. Farewell, mademoiselle!” He bowed on her +hand, absolutely like Sir Charles Grandison on that of Harriet Byron; +adding--“Death from such fingers would not be without charms.” + +“Mon Dieu!” murmured Frances, opening her large eyes and lifting her +distinctly arched brows; “c’est qu’il fait des compliments! je ne m’y +suis pas attendu.” She smiled, half in ire, half in mirth, curtsied with +foreign grace, and so they parted. + +No sooner had we got into the street than Hunsden collared me. + +“And that is your lace-mender?” said he; “and you reckon you have done +a fine, magnanimous thing in offering to marry her? You, a scion of +Seacombe, have proved your disdain of social distinctions by taking up +with an ouvriere! And I pitied the fellow, thinking his feelings had +misled him, and that he had hurt himself by contracting a low match!” + +“Just let go my collar, Hunsden.” + +On the contrary, he swayed me to and fro; so I grappled him round the +waist. It was dark; the street lonely and lampless. We had then a +tug for it; and after we had both rolled on the pavement, and with +difficulty picked ourselves up, we agreed to walk on more soberly. + +“Yes, that’s my lace-mender,” said I; “and she is to be mine for +life--God willing.” + +“God is not willing--you can’t suppose it; what business have you to +be suited so well with a partner? And she treats you with a sort of +respect, too, and says, ‘Monsieur’ and modulates her tone in addressing +you, actually, as if you were something superior! She could not evince +more deference to such a one as I, were she favoured by fortune to the +supreme extent of being my choice instead of yours.” + +“Hunsden, you’re a puppy. But you’ve only seen the title-page of my +happiness; you don’t know the tale that follows; you cannot conceive the +interest and sweet variety and thrilling excitement of the narrative.” + +Hunsden--speaking low and deep, for we had now entered a busier +street--desired me to hold my peace, threatening to do something +dreadful if I stimulated his wrath further by boasting. I laughed till +my sides ached. We soon reached his hotel; before he entered it, he +said-- + +“Don’t be vainglorious. Your lace-mender is too good for you, but not +good enough for me; neither physically nor morally does she come up +to my ideal of a woman. No; I dream of something far beyond that +pale-faced, excitable little Helvetian (by-the-by she has infinitely +more of the nervous, mobile Parisienne in her than of the the robust +‘jungfrau’). Your Mdlle. Henri is in person “chetive”, in mind “sans +caractere”, compared with the queen of my visions. You, indeed, may put +up with that “minois chiffone”; but when I marry I must have straighter +and more harmonious features, to say nothing of a nobler and better +developed shape than that perverse, ill-thriven child can boast.” + +“Bribe a seraph to fetch you a coal of fire from heaven, if you will,” + said I, “and with it kindle life in the tallest, fattest, most boneless, +fullest-blooded of Ruben’s painted women--leave me only my Alpine peri, +and I’ll not envy you.” + +With a simultaneous movement, each turned his back on the other. Neither +said “God bless you;” yet on the morrow the sea was to roll between us. + + + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +IN two months more Frances had fulfilled the time of mourning for her +aunt. One January morning--the first of the new year holidays--I went in +a fiacre, accompanied only by M. Vandenhuten, to the Rue Notre Dame aux +Neiges, and having alighted alone and walked upstairs, I found Frances +apparently waiting for me, dressed in a style scarcely appropriate to +that cold, bright, frosty day. Never till now had I seen her attired in +any other than black or sad-coloured stuff; and there she stood by the +window, clad all in white, and white of a most diaphanous texture; her +array was very simple, to be sure, but it looked imposing and festal +because it was so clear, full, and floating; a veil shadowed her head, +and hung below her knee; a little wreath of pink flowers fastened it +to her thickly tressed Grecian plait, and thence it fell softly on each +side of her face. Singular to state, she was, or had been crying; when +I asked her if she were ready, she said “Yes, monsieur,” with something +very like a checked sob; and when I took a shawl, which lay on the +table, and folded it round her, not only did tear after tear course +unbidden down her cheek, but she shook to my ministration like a reed. +I said I was sorry to see her in such low spirits, and requested to +be allowed an insight into the origin thereof. She only said, “It was +impossible to help it,” and then voluntarily, though hurriedly, putting +her hand into mine, accompanied me out of the room, and ran downstairs +with a quick, uncertain step, like one who was eager to get some +formidable piece of business over. I put her into the fiacre. M. +Vandenhuten received her, and seated her beside himself; we drove all +together to the Protestant chapel, went through a certain service in the +Common Prayer Book, and she and I came out married. M. Vandenhuten had +given the bride away. + +We took no bridal trip; our modesty, screened by the peaceful obscurity +of our station, and the pleasant isolation of our circumstances, did not +exact that additional precaution. We repaired at once to a small house +I had taken in the faubourg nearest to that part of the city where the +scene of our avocations lay. + +Three or four hours after the wedding ceremony, Frances, divested of her +bridal snow, and attired in a pretty lilac gown of warmer materials, +a piquant black silk apron, and a lace collar with some finishing +decoration of lilac ribbon, was kneeling on the carpet of a neatly +furnished though not spacious parlour, arranging on the shelves of a +chiffoniere some books, which I handed to her from the table. It was +snowing fast out of doors; the afternoon had turned out wild and +cold; the leaden sky seemed full of drifts, and the street was already +ankle-deep in the white downfall. Our fire burned bright, our new +habitation looked brilliantly clean and fresh, the furniture was all +arranged, and there were but some articles of glass, china, books, +&c., to put in order. Frances found in this business occupation till +tea-time, and then, after I had distinctly instructed her how to make +a cup of tea in rational English style, and after she had got over the +dismay occasioned by seeing such an extravagant amount of material put +into the pot, she administered to me a proper British repast, at which +there wanted neither candles nor urn, firelight nor comfort. + +Our week’s holiday glided by, and we readdressed ourselves to labour. +Both my wife and I began in good earnest with the notion that we were +working people, destined to earn our bread by exertion, and that of the +most assiduous kind. Our days were thoroughly occupied; we used to part +every morning at eight o’clock, and not meet again till five P.M.; but +into what sweet rest did the turmoil of each busy day decline! Looking +down the vista of memory, I see the evenings passed in that little +parlour like a long string of rubies circling the dusky brow of the past. +Unvaried were they as each cut gem, and like each gem brilliant and +burning. + +A year and a half passed. One morning (it was a FETE, and we had the day +to ourselves) Frances said to me, with a suddenness peculiar to her when +she had been thinking long on a subject, and at last, having come to +a conclusion, wished to test its soundness by the touchstone of my +judgment:-- + +“I don’t work enough.” + +“What now?” demanded I, looking up from my coffee, which I had been +deliberately stirring while enjoying, in anticipation, a walk I proposed +to take with Frances, that fine summer day (it was June), to a certain +farmhouse in the country, where we were to dine. “What now?” and I +saw at once, in the serious ardour of her face, a project of vital +importance. + +“I am not satisfied,” returned she: “you are now earning eight thousand +francs a year” (it was true; my efforts, punctuality, the fame of my +pupils’ progress, the publicity of my station, had so far helped me +on), “while I am still at my miserable twelve hundred francs. I CAN do +better, and I WILL.” + +“You work as long and as diligently as I do, Frances.” + +“Yes, monsieur, but I am not working in the right way, and I am +convinced of it.” + +“You wish to change--you have a plan for progress in your mind; go and +put on your bonnet; and, while we take our walk, you shall tell me of +it.” + +“Yes, monsieur.” + +She went--as docile as a well-trained child; she was a curious mixture +of tractability and firmness: I sat thinking about her, and wondering +what her plan could be, when she re-entered. + +“Monsieur, I have given Minnie” (our bonne) “leave to go out too, as it +is so very fine; so will you be kind enough to lock the door, and take +the key with you?” + +“Kiss me, Mrs. Crimsworth,” was my not very apposite reply; but she +looked so engaging in her light summer dress and little cottage bonnet, +and her manner in speaking to me was then, as always, so unaffectedly +and suavely respectful, that my heart expanded at the sight of her, and +a kiss seemed necessary to content its importunity. + +“There, monsieur.” + +“Why do you always call me ‘Monsieur’? Say, ‘William.’” + +“I cannot pronounce your W; besides, ‘Monsieur’ belongs to you; I like +it best.” + +Minnie having departed in clean cap and smart shawl, we, too, set out, +leaving the house solitary and silent--silent, at least, but for +the ticking of the clock. We were soon clear of Brussels; the fields +received us, and then the lanes, remote from carriage-resounding +CHAUSSEES. Ere long we came upon a nook, so rural, green, and secluded, +it might have been a spot in some pastoral English province; a bank of +short and mossy grass, under a hawthorn, offered a seat too tempting +to be declined; we took it, and when we had admired and examined some +English-looking wild-flowers growing at our feet, I recalled Frances’ +attention and my own to the topic touched on at breakfast. + +“What was her plan?” A natural one--the next step to be mounted by +us, or, at least, by her, if she wanted to rise in her profession. She +proposed to begin a school. We already had the means for commencing on +a careful scale, having lived greatly within our income. We possessed, +too, by this time, an extensive and eligible connection, in the sense +advantageous to our business; for, though our circle of visiting +acquaintance continued as limited as ever, we were now widely known in +schools and families as teachers. When Frances had developed her plan, +she intimated, in some closing sentences, her hopes for the future. If +we only had good health and tolerable success, me might, she was sure, +in time realize an independency; and that, perhaps, before we were too +old to enjoy it; then both she and I would rest; and what was to hinder +us from going to live in England? England was still her Promised Land. + +I put no obstacle in her way; raised no objection; I knew she was +not one who could live quiescent and inactive, or even comparatively +inactive. Duties she must have to fulfil, and important duties; work to +do--and exciting, absorbing, profitable work; strong faculties stirred +in her frame, and they demanded full nourishment, free exercise: mine +was not the hand ever to starve or cramp them; no, I delighted in +offering them sustenance, and in clearing them wider space for action. + +“You have conceived a plan, Frances,” said I, “and a good plan; execute +it; you have my free consent, and wherever and whenever my assistance is +wanted, ask and you shall have.” + +Frances’ eyes thanked me almost with tears; just a sparkle or two, soon +brushed away; she possessed herself of my hand too, and held it for +some time very close clasped in both her own, but she said no more than +“Thank you, monsieur.” + +We passed a divine day, and came home late, lighted by a full summer +moon. + +Ten years rushed now upon me with dusty, vibrating, unresting wings; +years of bustle, action, unslacked endeavour; years in which I and +my wife, having launched ourselves in the full career of progress, as +progress whirls on in European capitals, scarcely knew repose, were +strangers to amusement, never thought of indulgence, and yet, as +our course ran side by side, as we marched hand in hand, we neither +murmured, repented, nor faltered. Hope indeed cheered us; health kept us +up; harmony of thought and deed smoothed many difficulties, and finally, +success bestowed every now and then encouraging reward on diligence. Our +school became one of the most popular in Brussels, and as by degrees +we raised our terms and elevated our system of education, our choice of +pupils grew more select, and at length included the children of the +best families in Belgium. We had too an excellent connection in England, +first opened by the unsolicited recommendation of Mr. Hunsden, who +having been over, and having abused me for my prosperity in set terms, +went back, and soon after sent a leash of young ----shire heiresses--his +cousins; as he said “to be polished off by Mrs. Crimsworth.” + +As to this same Mrs. Crimsworth, in one sense she was become another +woman, though in another she remained unchanged. So different was +she under different circumstances. I seemed to possess two wives. The +faculties of her nature, already disclosed when I married her, remained +fresh and fair; but other faculties shot up strong, branched out +broad, and quite altered the external character of the plant. Firmness, +activity, and enterprise, covered with grave foliage, poetic feeling +and fervour; but these flowers were still there, preserved pure and dewy +under the umbrage of later growth and hardier nature: perhaps I only in +the world knew the secret of their existence, but to me they were ever +ready to yield an exquisite fragrance and present a beauty as chaste as +radiant. + +In the daytime my house and establishment were conducted by Madame the +directress, a stately and elegant woman, bearing much anxious thought on +her large brow; much calculated dignity in her serious mien: immediately +after breakfast I used to part with this lady; I went to my college, +she to her schoolroom; returning for an hour in the course of the day, +I found her always in class, intently occupied; silence, industry, +observance, attending on her presence. When not actually teaching, +she was overlooking and guiding by eye and gesture; she then appeared +vigilant and solicitous. When communicating instruction, her aspect was +more animated; she seemed to feel a certain enjoyment in the occupation. +The language in which she addressed her pupils, though simple and +unpretending, was never trite or dry; she did not speak from routine +formulas--she made her own phrases as she went on, and very nervous +and impressive phrases they frequently were; often, when elucidating +favourite points of history, or geography, she would wax genuinely +eloquent in her earnestness. Her pupils, or at least the elder and more +intelligent amongst them, recognized well the language of a superior +mind; they felt too, and some of them received the impression of +elevated sentiments; there was little fondling between mistress and +girls, but some of Frances’ pupils in time learnt to love her sincerely, +all of them beheld her with respect; her general demeanour towards +them was serious; sometimes benignant when they pleased her with their +progress and attention, always scrupulously refined and considerate. +In cases where reproof or punishment was called for she was usually +forbearing enough; but if any took advantage of that forbearance, which +sometimes happened, a sharp, sudden and lightning-like severity taught +the culprit the extent of the mistake committed. Sometimes a gleam of +tenderness softened her eyes and manner, but this was rare; only when +a pupil was sick, or when it pined after home, or in the case of some +little motherless child, or of one much poorer than its companions, +whose scanty wardrobe and mean appointments brought on it the contempt +of the jewelled young countesses and silk-clad misses. Over such feeble +fledglings the directress spread a wing of kindliest protection: it was +to their bedside she came at night to tuck them warmly in; it was after +them she looked in winter to see that they always had a comfortable seat +by the stove; it was they who by turns were summoned to the salon to +receive some little dole of cake or fruit--to sit on a footstool at +the fireside--to enjoy home comforts, and almost home liberty, for +an evening together--to be spoken to gently and softly, comforted, +encouraged, cherished--and when bedtime came, dismissed with a kiss +of true tenderness. As to Julia and Georgiana G----, daughters of an +English baronet, as to Mdlle. Mathilde de ----, heiress of a Belgian +count, and sundry other children of patrician race, the directress was +careful of them as of the others, anxious for their progress, as for +that of the rest--but it never seemed to enter her head to distinguish +them by a mark of preference; one girl of noble blood she loved +dearly--a young Irish baroness--lady Catherine ----; but it was for her +enthusiastic heart and clever head, for her generosity and her genius, +the title and rank went for nothing. + +My afternoons were spent also in college, with the exception of an hour +that my wife daily exacted of me for her establishment, and with which +she would not dispense. She said that I must spend that time amongst her +pupils to learn their characters, to be AU COURANT with everything that +was passing in the house, to become interested in what interested her, +to be able to give her my opinion on knotty points when she required it, +and this she did constantly, never allowing my interest in the pupils +to fall asleep, and never making any change of importance without +my cognizance and consent. She delighted to sit by me when I gave my +lessons (lessons in literature), her hands folded on her knee, the most +fixedly attentive of any present. She rarely addressed me in class; when +she did it was with an air of marked deference; it was her pleasure, her +joy to make me still the master in all things. + +At six o’clock P.M. my daily labours ceased. I then came home, for +my home was my heaven; ever at that hour, as I entered our private +sitting-room, the lady-directress vanished from before my eyes, and +Frances Henri, my own little lace-mender, was magically restored to my +arms; much disappointed she would have been if her master had not been +as constant to the tryst as herself, and if his truthfull kiss had not +been prompt to answer her soft, “Bon soir, monsieur.” + +Talk French to me she would, and many a punishment she has had for +her wilfulness. I fear the choice of chastisement must have been +injudicious, for instead of correcting the fault, it seemed to encourage +its renewal. Our evenings were our own; that recreation was necessary to +refresh our strength for the due discharge of our duties; sometimes we +spent them all in conversation, and my young Genevese, now that she was +thoroughly accustomed to her English professor, now that she loved +him too absolutely to fear him much, reposed in him a confidence so +unlimited that topics of conversation could no more be wanting with him +than subjects for communion with her own heart. In those moments, happy +as a bird with its mate, she would show me what she had of vivacity, of +mirth, of originality in her well-dowered nature. She would show, too, +some stores of raillery, of “malice,” and would vex, tease, pique me +sometimes about what she called my “bizarreries anglaises,” my “caprices +insulaires,” with a wild and witty wickedness that made a perfect white +demon of her while it lasted. This was rare, however, and the elfish +freak was always short: sometimes when driven a little hard in the war +of words--for her tongue did ample justice to the pith, the point, the +delicacy of her native French, in which language she always attacked +me--I used to turn upon her with my old decision, and arrest bodily the +sprite that teased me. Vain idea! no sooner had I grasped hand or arm +than the elf was gone; the provocative smile quenched in the expressive +brown eyes, and a ray of gentle homage shone under the lids in its +place. I had seized a mere vexing fairy, and found a submissive and +supplicating little mortal woman in my arms. Then I made her get a book, +and read English to me for an hour by way of penance. I frequently dosed +her with Wordsworth in this way, and Wordsworth steadied her soon; she +had a difficulty in comprehending his deep, serene, and sober mind; his +language, too, was not facile to her; she had to ask questions, to sue +for explanations, to be like a child and a novice, and to acknowledge +me as her senior and director. Her instinct instantly penetrated and +possessed the meaning of more ardent and imaginative writers. Byron +excited her; Scott she loved; Wordsworth only she puzzled at, wondered +over, and hesitated to pronounce an opinion upon. + +But whether she read to me, or talked with me; whether she teased me +in French, or entreated me in English; whether she jested with wit, +or inquired with deference; narrated with interest, or listened with +attention; whether she smiled at me or on me, always at nine o’clock I +was left abandoned. She would extricate herself from my arms, quit +my side, take her lamp, and be gone. Her mission was upstairs; I have +followed her sometimes and watched her. First she opened the door of the +dortoir (the pupils’ chamber), noiselessly she glided up the long room +between the two rows of white beds, surveyed all the sleepers; if any +were wakeful, especially if any were sad, spoke to them and soothed +them; stood some minutes to ascertain that all was safe and tranquil; +trimmed the watch-light which burned in the apartment all night, then +withdrew, closing the door behind her without sound. Thence she glided +to our own chamber; it had a little cabinet within; this she sought; +there, too, appeared a bed, but one, and that a very small one; her face +(the night I followed and observed her) changed as she approached this +tiny couch; from grave it warmed to earnest; she shaded with one hand +the lamp she held in the other; she bent above the pillow and hung +over a child asleep; its slumber (that evening at least, and usually, +I believe) was sound and calm; no tear wet its dark eyelashes; no fever +heated its round cheek; no ill dream discomposed its budding features. +Frances gazed, she did not smile, and yet the deepest delight filled, +flushed her face; feeling pleasurable, powerful, worked in her whole +frame, which still was motionless. I saw, indeed, her heart heave, her +lips were a little apart, her breathing grew somewhat hurried; the child +smiled; then at last the mother smiled too, and said in low soliloquy, +“God bless my little son!” She stooped closer over him, breathed the +softest of kisses on his brow, covered his minute hand with hers, and +at last started up and came away. I regained the parlour before her. +Entering it two minutes later she said quietly as she put down her +extinguished lamp-- + +“Victor rests well: he smiled in his sleep; he has your smile, +monsieur.” + +The said Victor was of course her own boy, born in the third year of +our marriage: his Christian name had been given him in honour of M. +Vandenhuten, who continued always our trusty and well-beloved friend. + +Frances was then a good and dear wife to me, because I was to her a +good, just, and faithful husband. What she would have been had she +married a harsh, envious, careless man--a profligate, a prodigal, +a drunkard, or a tyrant--is another question, and one which I once +propounded to her. Her answer, given after some reflection, was-- + +“I should have tried to endure the evil or cure it for awhile; and when +I found it intolerable and incurable, I should have left my torturer +suddenly and silently.” + +“And if law or might had forced you back again?” + +“What, to a drunkard, a profligate, a selfish spendthrift, an unjust +fool?” + +“Yes.” + +“I would have gone back; again assured myself whether or not his vice +and my misery were capable of remedy; and if not, have left him again.” + +“And if again forced to return, and compelled to abide?” + +“I don’t know,” she said, hastily. “Why do you ask me, monsieur?” + +I would have an answer, because I saw a strange kind of spirit in her +eye, whose voice I determined to waken. + +“Monsieur, if a wife’s nature loathes that of the man she is wedded to, +marriage must be slavery. Against slavery all right thinkers revolt, and +though torture be the price of resistance, torture must be dared: though +the only road to freedom lie through the gates of death, those gates +must be passed; for freedom is indispensable. Then, monsieur, I would +resist as far as my strength permitted; when that strength failed I +should be sure of a refuge. Death would certainly screen me both from +bad laws and their consequences.” + +“Voluntary death, Frances?” + +“No, monsieur. I’d have courage to live out every throe of anguish fate +assigned me, and principle to contend for justice and liberty to the +last.” + +“I see you would have made no patient Grizzle. And now, supposing fate +had merely assigned you the lot of an old maid, what then? How would you +have liked celibacy?” + +“Not much, certainly. An old maid’s life must doubtless be void and +vapid--her heart strained and empty. Had I been an old maid I should +have spent existence in efforts to fill the void and ease the aching. I +should have probably failed, and died weary and disappointed, despised +and of no account, like other single women. But I’m not an old maid,” + she added quickly. “I should have been, though, but for my master. I +should never have suited any man but Professor Crimsworth--no other +gentleman, French, English, or Belgian, would have thought me amiable or +handsome; and I doubt whether I should have cared for the approbation +of many others, if I could have obtained it. Now, I have been Professor +Crimsworth’s wife eight years, and what is he in my eyes? Is he +honourable, beloved ----?” She stopped, her voice was cut off, her eyes +suddenly suffused. She and I were standing side by side; she threw her +arms round me, and strained me to her heart with passionate earnestness: +the energy of her whole being glowed in her dark and then dilated +eye, and crimsoned her animated cheek; her look and movement were like +inspiration; in one there was such a flash, in the other such a power. +Half an hour afterwards, when she had become calm, I asked where all +that wild vigour was gone which had transformed her ere-while and made +her glance so thrilling and ardent--her action so rapid and strong. She +looked down, smiling softly and passively:-- + +“I cannot tell where it is gone, monsieur,” said she, “but I know that, +whenever it is wanted, it will come back again.” + +Behold us now at the close of the ten years, and we have realized an +independency. The rapidity with which we attained this end had its +origin in three reasons:-- Firstly, we worked so hard for it; secondly, +we had no incumbrances to delay success; thirdly, as soon as we had +capital to invest, two well-skilled counsellors, one in Belgium, one in +England, viz. Vandenhuten and Hunsden, gave us each a word of advice +as to the sort of investment to be chosen. The suggestion made was +judicious; and, being promptly acted on, the result proved gainful--I +need not say how gainful; I communicated details to Messrs. Vandenhuten +and Hunsden; nobody else can be interested in hearing them. + +Accounts being wound up, and our professional connection disposed of, we +both agreed that, as mammon was not our master, nor his service that in +which we desired to spend our lives; as our desires were temperate, and +our habits unostentatious, we had now abundance to live on--abundance to +leave our boy; and should besides always have a balance on hand, which, +properly managed by right sympathy and unselfish activity, might +help philanthropy in her enterprises, and put solace into the hand of +charity. + +To England we now resolved to take wing; we arrived there safely; +Frances realized the dream of her lifetime. We spent a whole summer +and autumn in travelling from end to end of the British islands, and +afterwards passed a winter in London. Then we thought it high time +to fix our residence. My heart yearned towards my native county of +----shire; and it is in ----shire I now live; it is in the library of my +own home I am now writing. That home lies amid a sequestered and rather +hilly region, thirty miles removed from X----; a region whose verdure +the smoke of mills has not yet sullied, whose waters still run pure, +whose swells of moorland preserve in some ferny glens that lie between +them the very primal wildness of nature, her moss, her bracken, her +blue-bells, her scents of reed and heather, her free and fresh breezes. +My house is a picturesque and not too spacious dwelling, with low and +long windows, a trellised and leaf-veiled porch over the front door, +just now, on this summer evening, looking like an arch of roses and ivy. +The garden is chiefly laid out in lawn, formed of the sod of the hills, +with herbage short and soft as moss, full of its own peculiar flowers, +tiny and starlike, imbedded in the minute embroidery of their fine +foliage. At the bottom of the sloping garden there is a wicket, which +opens upon a lane as green as the lawn, very long, shady, and little +frequented; on the turf of this lane generally appear the first daisies +of spring--whence its name--Daisy Lane; serving also as a distinction to +the house. + +It terminates (the lane I mean) in a valley full of wood; which +wood--chiefly oak and beech--spreads shadowy about the vicinage of a +very old mansion, one of the Elizabethan structures, much larger, as +well as more antique than Daisy Lane, the property and residence of +an individual familiar both to me and to the reader. Yes, in Hunsden +Wood--for so are those glades and that grey building, with many gables +and more chimneys, named--abides Yorke Hunsden, still unmarried; never, +I suppose, having yet found his ideal, though I know at least a score +of young ladies within a circuit of forty miles, who would be willing to +assist him in the search. + +The estate fell to him by the death of his father, five years since; he +has given up trade, after having made by it sufficient to pay off some +incumbrances by which the family heritage was burdened. I say he abides +here, but I do not think he is resident above five months out of the +twelve; he wanders from land to land, and spends some part of each +winter in town: he frequently brings visitors with him when he comes to +----shire, and these visitors are often foreigners; sometimes he has +a German metaphysician, sometimes a French savant; he had once a +dissatisfied and savage-looking Italian, who neither sang nor played, +and of whom Frances affirmed that he had “tout l’air d’un conspirateur.” + +What English guests Hunsden invites, are all either men of Birmingham or +Manchester--hard men, seemingly knit up in one thought, whose talk is +of free trade. The foreign visitors, too, are politicians; they take a +wider theme--European progress--the spread of liberal sentiments over +the Continent; on their mental tablets, the names of Russia, Austria, +and the Pope, are inscribed in red ink. I have heard some of them talk +vigorous sense--yea, I have been present at polyglot discussions in the +old, oak-lined dining-room at Hunsden Wood, where a singular insight +was given of the sentiments entertained by resolute minds respecting old +northern despotisms, and old southern superstitions: also, I have heard +much twaddle, enounced chiefly in French and Deutsch, but let that pass. +Hunsden himself tolerated the drivelling theorists; with the practical +men he seemed leagued hand and heart. + +When Hunsden is staying alone at the Wood (which seldom happens) he +generally finds his way two or three times a week to Daisy Lane. He has +a philanthropic motive for coming to smoke his cigar in our porch on +summer evenings; he says he does it to kill the earwigs amongst the +roses, with which insects, but for his benevolent fumigations, he +intimates we should certainly be overrun. On wet days, too, we are +almost sure to see him; according to him, it gets on time to work +me into lunacy by treading on my mental corns, or to force from Mrs. +Crimsworth revelations of the dragon within her, by insulting the memory +of Hofer and Tell. + +We also go frequently to Hunsden Wood, and both I and Frances relish a +visit there highly. If there are other guests, their characters are +an interesting study; their conversation is exciting and strange; the +absence of all local narrowness both in the host and his chosen society +gives a metropolitan, almost a cosmopolitan freedom and largeness to the +talk. Hunsden himself is a polite man in his own house: he has, when he +chooses to employ it, an inexhaustible power of entertaining guests; his +very mansion too is interesting, the rooms look storied, the +passages legendary, the low-ceiled chambers, with their long rows of +diamond-paned lattices, have an old-world, haunted air: in his travels +he has collected stores of articles of VERTU, which are well and +tastefully disposed in his panelled or tapestried rooms: I have seen +there one or two pictures, and one or two pieces of statuary which many +an aristocratic connoisseur might have envied. + +When I and Frances have dined and spent an evening with Hunsden, he +often walks home with us. His wood is large, and some of the timber +is old and of huge growth. There are winding ways in it which, pursued +through glade and brake, make the walk back to Daisy Lane a somewhat +long one. Many a time, when we have had the benefit of a full moon, +and when the night has been mild and balmy, when, moreover, a certain +nightingale has been singing, and a certain stream, hid in alders, has +lent the song a soft accompaniment, the remote church-bell of the one +hamlet in a district of ten miles, has tolled midnight ere the lord of +the wood left us at our porch. Free-flowing was his talk at such hours, +and far more quiet and gentle than in the day-time and before numbers. +He would then forget politics and discussion, and would dwell on the +past times of his house, on his family history, on himself and his own +feelings--subjects each and all invested with a peculiar zest, for they +were each and all unique. One glorious night in June, after I had been +taunting him about his ideal bride and asking him when she would +come and graft her foreign beauty on the old Hunsden oak, he answered +suddenly-- + +“You call her ideal; but see, here is her shadow; and there cannot be a +shadow without a substance.” + +He had led us from the depth of the “winding way” into a glade from +whence the beeches withdrew, leaving it open to the sky; an unclouded +moon poured her light into this glade, and Hunsden held out under her +beam an ivory miniature. + +Frances, with eagerness, examined it first; then she gave it to +me--still, however, pushing her little face close to mine, and seeking +in my eyes what I thought of the portrait. I thought it represented a +very handsome and very individual-looking female face, with, as he had +once said, “straight and harmonious features.” It was dark; the hair, +raven-black, swept not only from the brow, but from the temples--seemed +thrust away carelessly, as if such beauty dispensed with, nay, +despised arrangement. The Italian eye looked straight into you, and an +independent, determined eye it was; the mouth was as firm as fine; the +chin ditto. On the back of the miniature was gilded “Lucia.” + +“That is a real head,” was my conclusion. + +Hunsden smiled. + +“I think so,” he replied. “All was real in Lucia.” + +“And she was somebody you would have liked to marry--but could not?” + +“I should certainly have liked to marry her, and that I HAVE not done so +is a proof that I COULD not.” + +He repossessed himself of the miniature, now again in Frances’ hand, and +put it away. + +“What do YOU think of it?” he asked of my wife, as he buttoned his coat +over it. + +“I am sure Lucia once wore chains and broke them,” was the strange +answer. “I do not mean matrimonial chains,” she added, correcting +herself, as if she feared mis-interpretation, “but social chains of some +sort. The face is that of one who has made an effort, and a successful +and triumphant effort, to wrest some vigorous and valued faculty from +insupportable constraint; and when Lucia’s faculty got free, I am +certain it spread wide pinions and carried her higher than--” she +hesitated. + +“Than what?” demanded Hunsden. + +“Than ‘les convenances’ permitted you to follow.” + +“I think you grow spiteful--impertinent.” + +“Lucia has trodden the stage,” continued Frances. “You never seriously +thought of marrying her; you admired her originality, her fearlessness, +her energy of body and mind; you delighted in her talent, whatever that +was, whether song, dance, or dramatic representation; you worshipped her +beauty, which was of the sort after your own heart: but I am sure she +filled a sphere from whence you would never have thought of taking a +wife.” + +“Ingenious,” remarked Hunsden; “whether true or not is another question. +Meantime, don’t you feel your little lamp of a spirit wax very pale, +beside such a girandole as Lucia’s?” + +“Yes.” + +“Candid, at least; and the Professor will soon be dissatisfied with the +dim light you give?” + +“Will you, monsieur?” + +“My sight was always too weak to endure a blaze, Frances,” and we had +now reached the wicket. + +I said, a few pages back, that this is a sweet summer evening; it +is--there has been a series of lovely days, and this is the loveliest; +the hay is just carried from my fields, its perfume still lingers in the +air. Frances proposed to me, an hour or two since, to take tea out +on the lawn; I see the round table, loaded with china, placed under a +certain beech; Hunsden is expected--nay, I hear he is come--there is his +voice, laying down the law on some point with authority; that of Frances +replies; she opposes him of course. They are disputing about Victor, +of whom Hunsden affirms that his mother is making a milksop. Mrs. +Crimsworth retaliates:-- + +“Better a thousand times he should be a milksop than what he, Hunsden, +calls ‘a fine lad;’ and moreover she says that if Hunsden were to become +a fixture in the neighbourhood, and were not a mere comet, coming and +going, no one knows how, when, where, or why, she should be quite uneasy +till she had got Victor away to a school at least a hundred miles off; +for that with his mutinous maxims and unpractical dogmas, he would ruin +a score of children.” + +I have a word to say of Victor ere I shut this manuscript in my +desk--but it must be a brief one, for I hear the tinkle of silver on +porcelain. + +Victor is as little of a pretty child as I am of a handsome man, or his +mother of a fine woman; he is pale and spare, with large eyes, as dark +as those of Frances, and as deeply set as mine. His shape is symmetrical +enough, but slight; his health is good. I never saw a child smile less +than he does, nor one who knits such a formidable brow when sitting over +a book that interests him, or while listening to tales of adventure, +peril, or wonder, narrated by his mother, Hunsden, or myself. But +though still, he is not unhappy--though serious, not morose; he has a +susceptibility to pleasurable sensations almost too keen, for it amounts +to enthusiasm. He learned to read in the old-fashioned way out of a +spelling-book at his mother’s knee, and as he got on without driving by +that method, she thought it unnecessary to buy him ivory letters, or to +try any of the other inducements to learning now deemed indispensable. +When he could read, he became a glutton of books, and is so still. +His toys have been few, and he has never wanted more. For those he +possesses, he seems to have contracted a partiality amounting to +affection; this feeling, directed towards one or two living animals of +the house, strengthens almost to a passion. + +Mr. Hunsden gave him a mastiff cub, which he called Yorke, after the +donor; it grew to a superb dog, whose fierceness, however, was much +modified by the companionship and caresses of its young master. He would +go nowhere, do nothing without Yorke; Yorke lay at his feet while he +learned his lessons, played with him in the garden, walked with him in +the lane and wood, sat near his chair at meals, was fed always by his +own hand, was the first thing he sought in the morning, the last he left +at night. Yorke accompanied Mr. Hunsden one day to X----, and was bitten +in the street by a dog in a rabid state. As soon as Hunsden had brought +him home, and had informed me of the circumstance, I went into the yard +and shot him where he lay licking his wound: he was dead in an instant; +he had not seen me level the gun; I stood behind him. I had scarcely +been ten minutes in the house, when my ear was struck with sounds of +anguish: I repaired to the yard once more, for they proceeded thence. +Victor was kneeling beside his dead mastiff, bent over it, embracing its +bull-like neck, and lost in a passion of the wildest woe: he saw me. + +“Oh, papa, I’ll never forgive you! I’ll never forgive you!” was his +exclamation. “You shot Yorke--I saw it from the window. I never believed +you could be so cruel--I can love you no more!” + +I had much ado to explain to him, with a steady voice, the stern +necessity of the deed; he still, with that inconsolable and bitter +accent which I cannot render, but which pierced my heart, repeated-- + +“He might have been cured--you should have tried--you should have burnt +the wound with a hot iron, or covered it with caustic. You gave no time; +and now it is too late--he is dead!” + +He sank fairly down on the senseless carcase; I waited patiently a long +while, till his grief had somewhat exhausted him; and then I lifted him +in my arms and carried him to his mother, sure that she would comfort +him best. She had witnessed the whole scene from a window; she would not +come out for fear of increasing my difficulties by her emotion, but she +was ready now to receive him. She took him to her kind heart, and on +to her gentle lap; consoled him but with her lips, her eyes, her soft +embrace, for some time; and then, when his sobs diminished, told him +that Yorke had felt no pain in dying, and that if he had been left to +expire naturally, his end would have been most horrible; above all, she +told him that I was not cruel (for that idea seemed to give exquisite +pain to poor Victor), that it was my affection for Yorke and him which +had made me act so, and that I was now almost heart-broken to see him +weep thus bitterly. + +Victor would have been no true son of his father, had these +considerations, these reasons, breathed in so low, so sweet a +tone--married to caresses so benign, so tender--to looks so inspired +with pitying sympathy--produced no effect on him. They did produce an +effect: he grew calmer, rested his face on her shoulder, and lay still +in her arms. Looking up, shortly, he asked his mother to tell him over +again what she had said about Yorke having suffered no pain, and my not +being cruel; the balmy words being repeated, he again pillowed his cheek +on her breast, and was again tranquil. + +Some hours after, he came to me in my library, asked if I forgave him, +and desired to be reconciled. I drew the lad to my side, and there I +kept him a good while, and had much talk with him, in the course of +which he disclosed many points of feeling and thought I approved of in +my son. I found, it is true, few elements of the “good fellow” or the +“fine fellow” in him; scant sparkles of the spirit which loves to flash +over the wine cup, or which kindles the passions to a destroying +fire; but I saw in the soil of his heart healthy and swelling germs +of compassion, affection, fidelity. I discovered in the garden of his +intellect a rich growth of wholesome principles--reason, justice, moral +courage, promised, if not blighted, a fertile bearing. So I bestowed on +his large forehead, and on his cheek--still pale with tears--a proud and +contented kiss, and sent him away comforted. Yet I saw him the next day +laid on the mound under which Yorke had been buried, his face covered +with his hands; he was melancholy for some weeks, and more than a year +elapsed before he would listen to any proposal of having another dog. + +Victor learns fast. He must soon go to Eton, where, I suspect, his first +year or two will be utter wretchedness: to leave me, his mother, and his +home, will give his heart an agonized wrench; then, the fagging will not +suit him--but emulation, thirst after knowledge, the glory of success, +will stir and reward him in time. Meantime, I feel in myself a strong +repugnance to fix the hour which will uproot my sole olive branch, and +transplant it far from me; and, when I speak to Frances on the subject, +I am heard with a kind of patient pain, as though I alluded to some +fearful operation, at which her nature shudders, but from which her +fortitude will not permit her to recoil. The step must, however, be +taken, and it shall be; for, though Frances will not make a milksop of +her son, she will accustom him to a style of treatment, a forbearance, +a congenial tenderness, he will meet with from none else. She sees, as +I also see, a something in Victor’s temper--a kind of electrical ardour +and power--which emits, now and then, ominous sparks; Hunsden calls it +his spirit, and says it should not be curbed. I call it the leaven of +the offending Adam, and consider that it should be, if not WHIPPED out +of him, at least soundly disciplined; and that he will be cheap of +any amount of either bodily or mental suffering which will ground him +radically in the art of self-control. Frances gives this something in +her son’s marked character no name; but when it appears in the grinding +of his teeth, in the glittering of his eye, in the fierce revolt of +feeling against disappointment, mischance, sudden sorrow, or supposed +injustice, she folds him to her breast, or takes him to walk with her +alone in the wood; then she reasons with him like any philosopher, and +to reason Victor is ever accessible; then she looks at him with eyes of +love, and by love Victor can be infallibly subjugated; but will reason +or love be the weapons with which in future the world will meet his +violence? Oh, no! for that flash in his black eye--for that cloud on +his bony brow--for that compression of his statuesque lips, the lad will +some day get blows instead of blandishments--kicks instead of kisses; +then for the fit of mute fury which will sicken his body and madden +his soul; then for the ordeal of merited and salutary suffering, out of +which he will come (I trust) a wiser and a better man. + +I see him now; he stands by Hunsden, who is seated on the lawn under the +beech; Hunsden’s hand rests on the boy’s collar, and he is instilling +God knows what principles into his ear. Victor looks well just now, for +he listens with a sort of smiling interest; he never looks so like his +mother as when he smiles--pity the sunshine breaks out so rarely! Victor +has a preference for Hunsden, full as strong as I deem desirable, being +considerably more potent, decided, and indiscriminating, than any I ever +entertained for that personage myself. Frances, too, regards it with a +sort of unexpressed anxiety; while her son leans on Hunsden’s knee, or +rests against his shoulder, she roves with restless movement round, +like a dove guarding its young from a hovering hawk; she says she wishes +Hunsden had children of his own, for then he would better know the +danger of inciting their pride end indulging their foibles. + +Frances approaches my library window; puts aside the honeysuckle which +half covers it, and tells me tea is ready; seeing that I continue busy +she enters the room, comes near me quietly, and puts her hand on my +shoulder. + +“Monsieur est trop applique.” + +“I shall soon have done.” + +She draws a chair near, and sits down to wait till I have finished; her +presence is as pleasant to my mind as the perfume of the fresh hay and +spicy flowers, as the glow of the westering sun, as the repose of the +midsummer eve are to my senses. + +But Hunsden comes; I hear his step, and there he is, bending through the +lattice, from which he has thrust away the woodbine with unsparing hand, +disturbing two bees and a butterfly. + +“Crimsworth! I say, Crimsworth! take that pen out of his hand, mistress, +and make him lift up his head.” + +“Well, Hunsden? I hear you--” + +“I was at X---- yesterday! your brother Ned is getting richer than +Croesus by railway speculations; they call him in the Piece Hall a stag +of ten; and I have heard from Brown. M. and Madame Vandenhuten and Jean +Baptiste talk of coming to see you next month. He mentions the Pelets +too; he says their domestic harmony is not the finest in the world, but +in business they are doing ‘on ne peut mieux,’ which circumstance +he concludes will be a sufficient consolation to both for any little +crosses in the affections. Why don’t you invite the Pelets to ----shire, +Crimsworth? I should so like to see your first flame, Zoraide. Mistress, +don’t be jealous, but he loved that lady to distraction; I know it for a +fact. Brown says she weighs twelve stones now; you see what you’ve +lost, Mr. Professor. Now, Monsieur and Madame, if you don’t come to tea, +Victor and I will begin without you.” + +“Papa, come!” + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1028 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1029-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1029-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..46dec378 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1029-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5885 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1029 *** + +THE NIGHT-BORN + +By Jack London + + + +CONTENTS: + + THE NIGHT-BORN + THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED + WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG + THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT + WINGED BLACKMAIL + BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES + WAR + UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS + TO KILL A MAN + THE MEXICAN + + + + +THE NIGHT-BORN + +It was in the old Alta-Inyo Club--a warm night for San Francisco--and +through the open windows, hushed and far, came the brawl of the streets. +The talk had led on from the Graft Prosecution and the latest signs +that the town was to be run wide open, down through all the grotesque +sordidness and rottenness of man-hate and man-meanness, until the name +of O'Brien was mentioned--O'Brien, the promising young pugilist who +had been killed in the prize-ring the night before. At once the air +had seemed to freshen. O'Brien had been a clean-living young man with +ideals. He neither drank, smoked, nor swore, and his had been the body +of a beautiful young god. He had even carried his prayer-book to the +ringside. They found it in his coat pocket in the dressing-room... +afterward. + +Here was Youth, clean and wholesome, unsullied--the thing of glory and +wonder for men to conjure with..... after it has been lost to them and +they have turned middle-aged. And so well did we conjure, that Romance +came and for an hour led us far from the man-city and its snarling roar. +Bardwell, in a way, started it by quoting from Thoreau; but it was old +Trefethan, bald-headed and dewlapped, who took up the quotation and for +the hour to come was romance incarnate. At first we wondered how many +Scotches he had consumed since dinner, but very soon all that was +forgotten. + +“It was in 1898--I was thirty-five then,” he said. “Yes, I know you are +adding it up. You're right. I'm forty-seven now; look ten years more; +and the doctors say--damn the doctors anyway!” + +He lifted the long glass to his lips and sipped it slowly to soothe away +his irritation. + +“But I was young... once. I was young twelve years ago, and I had +hair on top of my head, and my stomach was lean as a runner's, and the +longest day was none too long for me. I was a husky back there in '98. +You remember me, Milner. You knew me then. Wasn't I a pretty good bit of +all right?” + +Milner nodded and agreed. Like Trefethan, he was another mining engineer +who had cleaned up a fortune in the Klondike. + +“You certainly were, old man,” Milner said. “I'll never forget when +you cleaned out those lumberjacks in the M. & M. that night that +little newspaper man started the row. Slavin was in the country at +the time,”--this to us--“and his manager wanted to get up a match with +Trefethan.” + +“Well, look at me now,” Trefethan commanded angrily. “That's what the +Goldstead did to me--God knows how many millions, but nothing left in my +soul..... nor in my veins. The good red blood is gone. I am a jellyfish, +a huge, gross mass of oscillating protoplasm, a--a...” + +But language failed him, and he drew solace from the long glass. + +“Women looked at me then; and turned their heads to look a second time. +Strange that I never married. But the girl. That's what I started to +tell you about. I met her a thousand miles from anywhere, and then some. +And she quoted to me those very words of Thoreau that Bardwell quoted a +moment ago--the ones about the day-born gods and the night-born.” + +“It was after I had made my locations on Goldstead--and didn't know what +a treasure-pot that that trip creek was going to prove--that I made that +trip east over the Rockies, angling across to the Great Up North there +the Rockies are something more than a back-bone. They are a boundary, +a dividing line, a wall impregnable and unscalable. There is no +intercourse across them, though, on occasion, from the early days, +wandering trappers have crossed them, though more were lost by the way +than ever came through. And that was precisely why I tackled the job. It +was a traverse any man would be proud to make. I am prouder of it right +now than anything else I have ever done. + +“It is an unknown land. Great stretches of it have never been explored. +There are big valleys there where the white man has never set foot, and +Indian tribes as primitive as ten thousand years... almost, for they +have had some contact with the whites. Parties of them come out once in +a while to trade, and that is all. Even the Hudson Bay Company failed to +find them and farm them. + +“And now the girl. I was coming up a stream--you'd call it a river in +California--uncharted--and unnamed. It was a noble valley, now shut in +by high canyon walls, and again opening out into beautiful stretches, +wide and long, with pasture shoulder-high in the bottoms, meadows dotted +with flowers, and with clumps of timberspruce--virgin and magnificent. +The dogs were packing on their backs, and were sore-footed and played +out; while I was looking for any bunch of Indians to get sleds and +drivers from and go on with the first snow. It was late fall, but +the way those flowers persisted surprised me. I was supposed to be in +sub-arctic America, and high up among the buttresses of the Rockies, +and yet there was that everlasting spread of flowers. Some day the white +settlers will be in there and growing wheat down all that valley. + +“And then I lifted a smoke, and heard the barking of the dogs--Indian +dogs--and came into camp. There must have been five hundred of them, +proper Indians at that, and I could see by the jerking-frames that the +fall hunting had been good. And then I met her--Lucy. That was her name. +Sign language--that was all we could talk with, till they led me to a +big fly--you know, half a tent, open on the one side where a campfire +burned. It was all of moose-skins, this fly--moose-skins, smoke-cured, +hand-rubbed, and golden-brown. Under it everything was neat and orderly +as no Indian camp ever was. The bed was laid on fresh spruce boughs. +There were furs galore, and on top of all was a robe of swanskins--white +swan-skins--I have never seen anything like that robe. And on top of it, +sitting cross-legged, was Lucy. She was nut-brown. I have called her a +girl. But she was not. She was a woman, a nut-brown woman, an Amazon, a +full-blooded, full-bodied woman, and royal ripe. And her eyes were blue. + +“That's what took me off my feet--her eyes--blue, not China blue, but +deep blue, like the sea and sky all melted into one, and very wise. More +than that, they had laughter in them--warm laughter, sun-warm and human, +very human, and... shall I say feminine? They were. They were a woman's +eyes, a proper woman's eyes. You know what that means. Can I say more? +Also, in those blue eyes were, at the same time, a wild unrest, a +wistful yearning, and a repose, an absolute repose, a sort of all-wise +and philosophical calm.” + +Trefethan broke off abruptly. + +“You fellows think I am screwed. I'm not. This is only my fifth since +dinner. I am dead sober. I am solemn. I sit here now side by side with +my sacred youth. It is not I--'old' Trefethan--that talks; it is my +youth, and it is my youth that says those were the most wonderful eyes +I have ever seen--so very calm, so very restless; so very wise, so very +curious; so very old, so very young; so satisfied and yet yearning so +wistfully. Boys, I can't describe them. When I have told you about her, +you may know better for yourselves.” + +“She did not stand up. But she put out her hand.” + +“'Stranger,' she said, 'I'm real glad to see you.' + +“I leave it to you--that sharp, frontier, Western tang of speech. +Picture my sensations. It was a woman, a white woman, but that tang! +It was amazing that it should be a white woman, here, beyond the last +boundary of the world--but the tang. I tell you, it hurt. It was like +the stab of a flatted note. And yet, let me tell you, that woman was a +poet. You shall see.” + +“She dismissed the Indians. And, by Jove, they went. They took her +orders and followed her blind. She was hi-yu skookam chief. She told the +bucks to make a camp for me and to take care of my dogs. And they +did, too. And they knew enough not to get away with as much as a +moccasin-lace of my outfit. She was a regular She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, +and I want to tell you it chilled me to the marrow, sent those little +thrills Marathoning up and down my spinal column, meeting a white woman +out there at the head of a tribe of savages a thousand miles the other +side of No Man's Land. + +“'Stranger,” she said, 'I reckon you're sure the first white that ever +set foot in this valley. Set down an' talk a spell, and then we'll have +a bite to eat. Which way might you be comin'?' + +“There it was, that tang again. But from now to the end of the yarn I +want you to forget it. I tell you I forgot it, sitting there on the edge +of that swan-skin robe and listening and looking at the most wonderful +woman that ever stepped out of the pages of Thoreau or of any other +man's book. + +“I stayed on there a week. It was on her invitation. She promised to fit +me out with dogs and sleds and with Indians that would put me across +the best pass of the Rockies in five hundred miles. Her fly was pitched +apart from the others, on the high bank by the river, and a couple of +Indian girls did her cooking for her and the camp work. And so we talked +and talked, while the first snow fell and continued to fall and make a +surface for my sleds. And this was her story. + +“She was frontier-born, of poor settlers, and you know what that +means--work, work, always work, work in plenty and without end. + +“'I never seen the glory of the world,' she said. 'I had no time. I knew +it was right out there, anywhere, all around the cabin, but there was +always the bread to set, the scrubbin' and the washin' and the work that +was never done. I used to be plumb sick at times, jes' to get out into +it all, especially in the spring when the songs of the birds drove me +most clean crazy. I wanted to run out through the long pasture grass, +wetting my legs with the dew of it, and to climb the rail fence, and +keep on through the timber and up and up over the divide so as to get a +look around. Oh, I had all kinds of hankerings--to follow up the +canyon beds and slosh around from pool to pool, making friends with +the water-dogs and the speckly trout; to peep on the sly and watch the +squirrels and rabbits and small furry things and see what they was doing +and learn the secrets of their ways. Seemed to me, if I had time, I +could crawl among the flowers, and, if I was good and quiet, catch them +whispering with themselves, telling all kinds of wise things that mere +humans never know.'” + +Trefethan paused to see that his glass had been refilled. + +“Another time she said: 'I wanted to run nights like a wild thing, just +to run through the moonshine and under the stars, to run white and naked +in the darkness that I knew must feel like cool velvet, and to run and +run and keep on running. One evening, plumb tuckered out--it had been a +dreadful hard hot day, and the bread wouldn't raise and the churning had +gone wrong, and I was all irritated and jerky--well, that evening I +made mention to dad of this wanting to run of mine. He looked at me +curious-some and a bit scared. And then he gave me two pills to take. +Said to go to bed and get a good sleep and I'd be all hunky-dory in +the morning. So I never mentioned my hankerings to him, or any one any +more.' + +“The mountain home broke up--starved out, I imagine--and the family came +to Seattle to live. There she worked in a factory--long hours, you +know, and all the rest, deadly work. And after a year of that she became +waitress in a cheap restaurant--hash-slinger, she called it. She said +to me once, 'Romance I guess was what I wanted. But there wan't no +romance floating around in dishpans and washtubs, or in factories and +hash-joints.' + +“When she was eighteen she married--a man who was going up to Juneau to +start a restaurant. He had a few dollars saved, and appeared prosperous. +She didn't love him--she was emphatic about that, but she was all tired +out, and she wanted to get away from the unending drudgery. Besides, +Juneau was in Alaska, and her yearning took the form of a desire to see +that wonderland. But little she saw of it. He started the restaurant, +a little cheap one, and she quickly learned what he had married her +for..... to save paying wages. She came pretty close to running the +joint and doing all the work from waiting to dishwashing. She cooked +most of the time as well. And she had four years of it. + +“Can't you picture her, this wild woods creature, quick with every old +primitive instinct, yearning for the free open, and mowed up in a vile +little hash-joint and toiling and moiling for four mortal years? + +“'There was no meaning in anything,' she said. 'What was it all about! +Why was I born! Was that all the meaning of life--just to work and work +and be always tired!--to go to bed tired and to wake up tired, with +every day like every other day unless it was harder?' She had heard talk +of immortal life from the gospel sharps, she said, but she could +not reckon that what she was doin' was a likely preparation for her +immortality. + +“But she still had her dreams, though more rarely. She had read a few +books--what, it is pretty hard to imagine, Seaside Library novels most +likely; yet they had been food for fancy. 'Sometimes,' she said, 'when +I was that dizzy from the heat of the cooking that if I didn't take +a breath of fresh air I'd faint, I'd stick my head out of the kitchen +window, and close my eyes and see most wonderful things. All of a sudden +I'd be traveling down a country road, and everything clean and quiet, +no dust, no dirt; just streams ripplin' down sweet meadows, and lambs +playing, breezes blowing the breath of flowers, and soft sunshine over +everything; and lovely cows lazying knee-deep in quiet pools, and young +girls bathing in a curve of stream all white and slim and natural--and +I'd know I was in Arcady. I'd read about that country once, in a book. +And maybe knights, all flashing in the sun, would come riding around a +bend in the road, or a lady on a milk-white mare, and in the distance +I could see the towers of a castle rising, or I just knew, on the next +turn, that I'd come upon some palace, all white and airy and fairy-like, +with fountains playing, and flowers all over everything, and peacocks +on the lawn..... and then I'd open my eyes, and the heat of the +cooking range would strike on me, and I'd hear Jake sayin'--he was my +husband--I'd hear Jake sayin', “Why ain't you served them beans? Think I +can wait here all day!” Romance!--I reckon the nearest I ever come to +it was when a drunken Armenian cook got the snakes and tried to cut my +throat with a potato knife and I got my arm burned on the stove before I +could lay him out with the potato stomper. + +“'I wanted easy ways, and lovely things, and Romance and all that; but +it just seemed I had no luck nohow and was only and expressly born for +cooking and dishwashing. There was a wild crowd in Juneau them days, but +I looked at the other women, and their way of life didn't excite me. +I reckon I wanted to be clean. I don't know why; I just wanted to, I +guess; and I reckoned I might as well die dishwashing as die their way.” + +Trefethan halted in his tale for a moment, completing to himself some +thread of thought. + +“And this is the woman I met up there in the Arctic, running a tribe of +wild Indians and a few thousand square miles of hunting territory. And +it happened, simply enough, though, for that matter, she might have +lived and died among the pots and pans. But 'Came the whisper, came the +vision.' That was all she needed, and she got it. + +“'I woke up one day,' she said. 'Just happened on it in a scrap of +newspaper. I remember every word of it, and I can give it to you.' And +then she quoted Thoreau's Cry of the Human: + +“'The young pines springing up, in the corn field from year to year are +to me a refreshing fact. We talk of civilizing the Indian, but that is +not the name for his improvement. By the wary independence and aloofness +of his dim forest life he preserves his intercourse with his native gods +and is admitted from time to time to a rare and peculiar society with +nature. He has glances of starry recognition, to which our saloons +are strangers. The steady illumination of his qenius, dim only because +distant, is like the faint but satisfying light of the stars compared +with the dazzling but ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. The +Society Islanders had their day-born gods, but they were not supposed to +be of equal antiquity with the..... night-born gods.' + +“That's what she did, repeated it word for word, and I forgot the tang, +for it was solemn, a declaration of religion--pagan, if you will; and +clothed in the living garmenture of herself. + +“'And the rest of it was torn away,' she added, a great emptiness in her +voice. 'It was only a scrap of newspaper. But that Thoreau was a wise +man. I wish I knew more about him.' She stopped a moment, and I swear +her face was ineffably holy as she said, 'I could have made him a good +wife.' + +“And then she went on. 'I knew right away, as soon as I read that, what +was the matter with me. I was a night-born. I, who had lived all my +life with the day-born, was a night-born. That was why I had never been +satisfied with cooking and dishwashing; that was why I had hankered to +run naked in the moonlight. And I knew that this dirty little Juneau +hash-joint was no place for me. And right there and then I said, “I +quit.” I packed up my few rags of clothes, and started. Jake saw me and +tried to stop me. + +“'What you doing?” he says. + +“'Divorcin' you and me,' I says. 'I'm headin' for tall timber and where +I belong.'” + +“'No you don't,' he says, reaching for me to stop me. 'The cooking has +got on your head. You listen to me talk before you up and do anything +brash.' + +“But I pulled a gun-a little Colt's forty-four--and says, 'This does my +talkin' for me.' + +“And I left.” + +Trefethan emptied his glass and called for another. + +“Boys, do you know what that girl did? She was twenty-two. She had spent +her life over the dish-pan and she knew no more about the world than I +do of the fourth dimension, or the fifth. All roads led to her desire. +No; she didn't head for the dance-halls. On the Alaskan Pan-handle it +is preferable to travel by water. She went down to the beach. An Indian +canoe was starting for Dyea--you know the kind, carved out of a single +tree, narrow and deep and sixty feet long. She gave them a couple of +dollars and got on board. + +“'Romance?' she told me. 'It was Romance from the jump. There were three +families altogether in that canoe, and that crowded there wasn't room to +turn around, with dogs and Indian babies sprawling over everything, and +everybody dipping a paddle and making that canoe go.' And all around the +great solemn mountains, and tangled drifts of clouds and sunshine. And +oh, the silence! the great wonderful silence! And, once, the smoke of +a hunter's camp, away off in the distance, trailing among the trees. +It was like a picnic, a grand picnic, and I could see my dreams coming +true, and I was ready for something to happen 'most any time. And it +did. + +“'And that first camp, on the island! And the boys spearing fish in the +mouth of the creek, and the big deer one of the bucks shot just around +the point. And there were flowers everywhere, and in back from the beach +the grass was thick and lush and neck-high. And some of the girls went +through this with me, and we climbed the hillside behind and picked +berries and roots that tasted sour and were good to eat. And we came +upon a big bear in the berries making his supper, and he said “Oof!” and +ran away as scared as we were. And then the camp, and the camp smoke, +and the smell of fresh venison cooking. It was beautiful. I was with the +night-born at last, and I knew that was where I belonged. And for the +first time in my life, it seemed to me, I went to bed happy that night, +looking out under a corner of the canvas at the stars cut off black by a +big shoulder of mountain, and listening to the night-noises, and knowing +that the same thing would go on next day and forever and ever, for I +wasn't going back. And I never did go back.' + +“'Romance! I got it next day. We had to cross a big arm of the +ocean--twelve or fifteen miles, at least; and it came on to blow when we +were in the middle. That night I was along on shore, with one wolf-dog, +and I was the only one left alive.' + +“Picture it yourself,” Trefethan broke off to say. “The canoe was +wrecked and lost, and everybody pounded to death on the rocks except +her. She went ashore hanging on to a dog's tail, escaping the rocks and +washing up on a tiny beach, the only one in miles. + +“'Lucky for me it was the mainland,' she said. 'So I headed right away +back, through the woods and over the mountains and straight on anywhere. +Seemed I was looking for something and knew I'd find it. I wasn't +afraid. I was night-born, and the big timber couldn't kill me. And on +the second day I found it. I came upon a small clearing and a tumbledown +cabin. Nobody had been there for years and years. The roof had fallen +in. Rotted blankets lay in the bunks, and pots and pans were on the +stove. But that was not the most curious thing. Outside, along the +edge of the trees, you can't guess what I found. The skeletons of eight +horses, each tied to a tree. They had starved to death, I reckon, and +left only little piles of bones scattered some here and there. And each +horse had had a load on its back. There the loads lay, in among the +bones--painted canvas sacks, and inside moosehide sacks, and inside the +moosehide sacks--what do you think?'” + +She stopped, reached under a corner of the bed among the spruce boughs, +and pulled out a leather sack. She untied the mouth and ran out into my +hand as pretty a stream of gold as I have ever seen--coarse gold, placer +gold, some large dust, but mostly nuggets, and it was so fresh and rough +that it scarcely showed signs of water-wash. + +“'You say you're a mining engineer,' she said, 'and you know this +country. Can you name a pay-creek that has the color of that gold!' + +“I couldn't! There wasn't a trace of silver. It was almost pure, and I +told her so. + +“'You bet,' she said. 'I sell that for nineteen dollars an ounce. You +can't get over seventeen for Eldorado gold, and Minook gold don't fetch +quite eighteen. Well, that was what I found among the bones--eight +horse-loads of it, one hundred and fifty pounds to the load.' + +“'A quarter of a million dollars!' I cried out. + +“'That's what I reckoned it roughly,' she answered. 'Talk about Romance! +And me a slaving the way I had all the years, when as soon as I ventured +out, inside three days, this was what happened. And what became of the +men that mined all that gold? Often and often I wonder about it. They +left their horses, loaded and tied, and just disappeared off the face of +the earth, leaving neither hide nor hair behind them. I never heard tell +of them. Nobody knows anything about them. Well, being the night-born, I +reckon I was their rightful heir.'” + +Trefethan stopped to light a cigar. + +“Do you know what that girl did? She cached the gold, saving out thirty +pounds, which she carried back to the coast. Then she signaled a passing +canoe, made her way to Pat Healy's trading post at Dyea, outfitted, +and went over Chilcoot Pass. That was in '88--eight years before the +Klondike strike, and the Yukon was a howling wilderness. She was afraid +of the bucks, but she took two young squaws with her, crossed the lakes, +and went down the river and to all the early camps on the Lower Yukon. +She wandered several years over that country and then on in to where I +met her. Liked the looks of it, she said, seeing, in her own words, 'a +big bull caribou knee-deep in purple iris on the valley-bottom.' She +hooked up with the Indians, doctored them, gained their confidence, and +gradually took them in charge. She had only left that country once, and +then, with a bunch of the young bucks, she went over Chilcoot, cleaned +up her gold-cache, and brought it back with her. + +“'And here I be, stranger,' she concluded her yarn, 'and here's the most +precious thing I own.' + +“She pulled out a little pouch of buckskin, worn on her neck like a +locket, and opened it. And inside, wrapped in oiled silk, yellowed with +age and worn and thumbed, was the original scrap of newspaper containing +the quotation from Thoreau. + +“'And are you happy... satisfied?' I asked her. 'With a quarter of a +million you wouldn't have to work down in the States. You must miss a +lot.' + +“'Not much,' she answered. 'I wouldn't swop places with any woman down +in the States. These are my people; this is where I belong. But there +are times--and in her eyes smoldered up that hungry yearning I've +mentioned--'there are times when I wish most awful bad for that Thoreau +man to happen along.' + +“'Why?' I asked. + +“'So as I could marry him. I do get mighty lonesome at spells. I'm just +a woman--a real woman. I've heard tell of the other kind of women that +gallivanted off like me and did queer things--the sort that become +soldiers in armies, and sailors on ships. But those women are queer +themselves. They're more like men than women; they look like men and +they don't have ordinary women's needs. They don't want love, nor little +children in their arms and around their knees. I'm not that sort. I +leave it to you, stranger. Do I look like a man?' + +“She didn't. She was a woman, a beautiful, nut-brown woman, with a +sturdy, health-rounded woman's body and with wonderful deep-blue woman's +eyes. + +“'Ain't I woman?' she demanded. 'I am. I'm 'most all woman, and then +some. And the funny thing is, though I'm night-born in everything else, +I'm not when it comes to mating. I reckon that kind likes its own kind +best. That's the way it is with me, anyway, and has been all these +years.' + +“'You mean to tell me--' I began. + +“'Never,' she said, and her eyes looked into mine with the straightness +of truth. 'I had one husband, only--him I call the Ox; and I reckon he's +still down in Juneau running the hash-joint. Look him up, if you ever +get back, and you'll find he's rightly named.' + +“And look him up I did, two years afterward. He was all she said--solid +and stolid, the Ox--shuffling around and waiting on the tables. + +“'You need a wife to help you,' I said. + +“'I had one once,' was his answer. + +“'Widower?' + +“'Yep. She went loco. She always said the heat of the cooking would +get her, and it did. Pulled a gun on me one day and ran away with some +Siwashes in a canoe. Caught a blow up the coast and all hands drowned.'” + +Trefethan devoted himself to his glass and remained silent. + +“But the girl?” Milner reminded him. + +“You left your story just as it was getting interesting, tender. Did +it?” + +“It did,” Trefethan replied. “As she said herself, she was savage in +everything except mating, and then she wanted her own kind. She was very +nice about it, but she was straight to the point. She wanted to marry +me. + +“'Stranger,' she said, 'I want you bad. You like this sort of life or +you wouldn't be here trying to cross the Rockies in fall weather. It's +a likely spot. You'll find few likelier. Why not settle down! I'll make +you a good wife.' + +“And then it was up to me. And she waited. I don't mind confessing that +I was sorely tempted. I was half in love with her as it was. You know I +have never married. And I don't mind adding, looking back over my life, +that she is the only woman that ever affected me that way. But it was +too preposterous, the whole thing, and I lied like a gentleman. I told +her I was already married. + +“'Is your wife waiting for you?' she asked. + +“I said yes. + +“'And she loves you?' + +“I said yes. + +“And that was all. She never pressed her point... except once, and then +she showed a bit of fire. + +“'All I've got to do,' she said, 'is to give the word, and you don't get +away from here. If I give the word, you stay on... But I ain't going to +give it. I wouldn't want you if you didn't want to be wanted... and if +you didn't want me.' + +“She went ahead and outfitted me and started me on my way. + +“'It's a darned shame, stranger,” she said, at parting. 'I like your +looks, and I like you. If you ever change your mind, come back.' + +“Now there was one thing I wanted to do, and that was to kiss her +good-bye, but I didn't know how to go about it nor how she would take +it.--I tell you I was half in love with her. But she settled it herself. + +“'Kiss me,' she said. 'Just something to go on and remember.' + +“And we kissed, there in the snow, in that valley by the Rockies, and +I left her standing by the trail and went on after my dogs. I was six +weeks in crossing over the pass and coming down to the first post on +Great Slave Lake.” + +The brawl of the streets came up to us like a distant surf. A +steward, moving noiselessly, brought fresh siphons. And in the silence +Trefethan's voice fell like a funeral bell: + +“It would have been better had I stayed. Look at me.” + +We saw his grizzled mustache, the bald spot on his head, the puff-sacks +under his eyes, the sagging cheeks, the heavy dewlap, the general +tiredness and staleness and fatness, all the collapse and ruin of a man +who had once been strong but who had lived too easily and too well. + +“It's not too late, old man,” Bardwell said, almost in a whisper. + +“By God! I wish I weren't a coward!” was Trefethan's answering cry. “I +could go back to her. She's there, now. I could shape up and live many a +long year... with her... up there. To remain here is to commit suicide. +But I am an old man--forty-seven--look at me. The trouble is,” he lifted +his glass and glanced at it, “the trouble is that suicide of this sort +is so easy. I am soft and tender. The thought of the long day's travel +with the dogs appalls me; the thought of the keen frost in the morning +and of the frozen sled-lashings frightens me--” + +Automatically the glass was creeping toward his lips. With a swift +surge of anger he made as if to crash it down upon the floor. Next came +hesitancy and second thought. The glass moved upward to his lips and +paused. He laughed harshly and bitterly, but his words were solemn: + +“Well, here's to the Night-Born. She WAS a wonder.” + + + + +THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED + +I TELL this for a fact. It happened in the bull-ring at Quito. I sat +in the box with John Harned, and with Maria Valenzuela, and with Luis +Cervallos. I saw it happen. I saw it all from first to last. I was on +the steamer Ecuadore from Panama to Guayaquil. Maria Valenzuela is +my cousin. I have known her always. She is very beautiful. I am a +Spaniard--an Ecuadoriano, true, but I am descended from Pedro Patino, +who was one of Pizarro's captains. They were brave men. They were +heroes. Did not Pizarro lead three hundred and fifty Spanish cavaliers +and four thousand Indians into the far Cordilleras in search of +treasure? And did not all the four thousand Indians and three hundred +of the brave cavaliers die on that vain quest? But Pedro Patino did +not die. He it was that lived to found the family of the Patino. I am +Ecuadoriano, true, but I am Spanish. I am Manuel de Jesus Patino. I own +many haciendas, and ten thousand Indians are my slaves, though the law +says they are free men who work by freedom of contract. The law is a +funny thing. We Ecuadorianos laugh at it. It is our law. We make it for +ourselves. I am Manuel de Jesus Patino. Remember that name. It will be +written some day in history. There are revolutions in Ecuador. We call +them elections. It is a good joke is it not?--what you call a pun? + +John Harned was an American. I met him first at the Tivoli hotel in +Panama. He had much money--this I have heard. He was going to Lima, +but he met Maria Valenzuela in the Tivoli hotel. Maria Valenzuela is +my cousin, and she is beautiful. It is true, she is the most beautiful +woman in Ecuador. But also is she most beautiful in every country--in +Paris, in Madrid, in New York, in Vienna. Always do all men look at her, +and John Harned looked long at her at Panama. He loved her, that I know +for a fact. She was Ecuadoriano, true--but she was of all countries; she +was of all the world. She spoke many languages. She sang--ah! like an +artiste. Her smile--wonderful, divine. Her eyes--ah! have I not seen +men look in her eyes? They were what you English call amazing. They were +promises of paradise. Men drowned themselves in her eyes. + +Maria Valenzuela was rich--richer than I, who am accounted very rich in +Ecuador. But John Harned did not care for her money. He had a heart--a +funny heart. He was a fool. He did not go to Lima. He left the steamer +at Guayaquil and followed her to Quito. She was coming home from Europe +and other places. I do not see what she found in him, but she liked him. +This I know for a fact, else he would not have followed her to Quito. +She asked him to come. Well do I remember the occasion. She said: + +“Come to Quito and I will show you the bullfight--brave, clever, +magnificent!” + +But he said: “I go to Lima, not Quito. Such is my passage engaged on the +steamer.” + +“You travel for pleasure--no?” said Maria Valenzuela; and she looked at +him as only Maria Valenzuela could look, her eyes warm with the promise. + +And he came. No; he did not come for the bull-fight. He came because of +what he had seen in her eyes. Women like Maria Valenzuela are born once +in a hundred years. They are of no country and no time. They are what +you call goddesses. Men fall down at their feet. They play with men and +run them through their pretty fingers like sand. Cleopatra was such a +woman they say; and so was Circe. She turned men into swine. Ha! ha! It +is true--no? + +It all came about because Maria Valenzuela said: + +“You English people are--what shall I say?--savage--no? You prize-fight. +Two men each hit the other with their fists till their eyes are blinded +and their noses are broken. Hideous! And the other men who look on cry +out loudly and are made glad. It is barbarous--no?” + +“But they are men,” said John Harned; “and they prize-fight out of +desire. No one makes them prize-fight. They do it because they desire it +more than anything else in the world.” + +Maria Valenzuela--there was scorn in her smile as she said: “They kill +each other often--is it not so? I have read it in the papers.” + +“But the bull,” said John Harned. + +“The bull is killed many times in the bull-fight, and the bull does not +come into the the ring out of desire. It is not fair to the bull. He +is compelled to fight. But the man in the prize-fight--no; he is not +compelled.” + +“He is the more brute therefore,” said Maria Valenzuela. + +“He is savage. He is primitive. He is animal. He strikes with his paws +like a bear from a cave, and he is ferocious. But the bull-fight--ah! +You have not seen the bullfight--no? The toreador is clever. He must +have skill. He is modern. He is romantic. He is only a man, soft and +tender, and he faces the wild bull in conflict. And he kills with a +sword, a slender sword, with one thrust, so, to the heart of the great +beast. It is delicious. It makes the heart beat to behold--the small +man, the great beast, the wide level sand, the thousands that look on +without breath; the great beast rushes to the attack, the small man +stands like a statue; he does not move, he is unafraid, and in his hand +is the slender sword flashing like silver in the sun; nearer and nearer +rushes the great beast with its sharp horns, the man does not move, and +then--so--the sword flashes, the thrust is made, to the heart, to the +hilt, the bull falls to the sand and is dead, and the man is unhurt. It +is brave. It is magnificent! Ah!--I could love the toreador. But the +man of the prize-fight--he is the brute, the human beast, the savage +primitive, the maniac that receives many blows in his stupid face and +rejoices. Come to Quito and I will show you the brave sport of men, the +toreador and the bull.” + +But John Harned did not go to Quito for the bull-fight. He went because +of Maria Valenzuela. He was a large man, more broad of shoulder than +we Ecuadorianos, more tall, more heavy of limb and bone. True, he was +larger of his own race. His eyes were blue, though I have seen them +gray, and, sometimes, like cold steel. His features were large, too--not +delicate like ours, and his jaw was very strong to look at. Also, his +face was smooth-shaven like a priest's. Why should a man feel shame for +the hair on his face? Did not God put it there? Yes, I believe in God--I +am not a pagan like many of you English. God is good. He made me an +Ecuadoriano with ten thousand slaves. And when I die I shall go to God. +Yes, the priests are right. + +But John Harned. He was a quiet man. He talked always in a low voice, +and he never moved his hands when he talked. One would have thought his +heart was a piece of ice; yet did he have a streak of warm in his blood, +for he followed Maria Valenzuela to Quito. Also, and for all that he +talked low without moving his hands, he was an animal, as you shall +see--the beast primitive, the stupid, ferocious savage of the long ago +that dressed in wild skins and lived in the caves along with the bears +and wolves. + +Luis Cervallos is my friend, the best of Ecuadorianos. He owns three +cacao plantations at Naranjito and Chobo. At Milagro is his big sugar +plantation. He has large haciendas at Ambato and Latacunga, and down +the coast is he interested in oil-wells. Also has he spent much money +in planting rubber along the Guayas. He is modern, like the Yankee; and, +like the Yankee, full of business. He has much money, but it is in many +ventures, and ever he needs more money for new ventures and for the old +ones. He has been everywhere and seen everything. When he was a very +young man he was in the Yankee military academy what you call West +Point. There was trouble. He was made to resign. He does not like +Americans. But he did like Maria Valenzuela, who was of his own country. +Also, he needed her money for his ventures and for his gold mine in +Eastern Ecuador where the painted Indians live. I was his friend. It +was my desire that he should marry Maria Valenzuela. Further, much of my +money had I invested in his ventures, more so in his gold mine which was +very rich but which first required the expense of much money before it +would yield forth its riches. If Luis Cervallos married Maria Valenzuela +I should have more money very immediately. + +But John Harned followed Maria Valenzuela to Quito, and it was quickly +clear to us--to Luis Cervallos and me that she looked upon John Harned +with great kindness. It is said that a woman will have her will, but +this is a case not in point, for Maria Valenzuela did not have her +will--at least not with John Harned. Perhaps it would all have happened +as it did, even if Luis Cervallos and I had not sat in the box that day +at the bull-ring in Quito. But this I know: we DID sit in the box that +day. And I shall tell you what happened. + +The four of us were in the one box, guests of Luis Cervallos. I was next +to the Presidente's box. On the other side was the box of General Jose +Eliceo Salazar. With him were Joaquin Endara and Urcisino Castillo, +both generals, and Colonel Jacinto Fierro and Captain Baltazar de +Echeverria. Only Luis Cervallos had the position and the influence +to get that box next to the Presidente. I know for a fact that the +Presidente himself expressed the desire to the management that Luis +Cervallos should have that box. + +The band finished playing the national hymn of Ecuador. The procession +of the toreadors was over. The Presidente nodded to begin. The bugles +blew, and the bull dashed in--you know the way, excited, bewildered, the +darts in its shoulder burning like fire, itself seeking madly whatever +enemy to destroy. The toreadors hid behind their shelters and waited. +Suddenly they appeared forth, the capadores, five of them, from every +side, their colored capes flinging wide. The bull paused at sight of +such a generosity of enemies, unable in his own mind to know which to +attack. Then advanced one of the capadors alone to meet the bull. The +bull was very angry. With its fore-legs it pawed the sand of the arena +till the dust rose all about it. Then it charged, with lowered head, +straight for the lone capador. + +It is always of interest, the first charge of the first bull. After a +time it is natural that one should grow tired, trifle, that the keenness +should lose its edge. But that first charge of the first bull! John +Harned was seeing it for the first time, and he could not escape the +excitement--the sight of the man, armed only with a piece of cloth, +and of the bull rushing upon him across the sand with sharp horns, +widespreading. + +“See!” cried Maria Valenzuela. “Is it not superb?” + +John Harned nodded, but did not look at her. His eyes were sparkling, +and they were only for the bull-ring. The capador stepped to the side, +with a twirl of the cape eluding the bull and spreading the cape on his +own shoulders. + +“What do you think?” asked Maria Venzuela. “Is it not +a--what-you-call--sporting proposition--no?” + +“It is certainly,” said John Harned. “It is very clever.” + +She clapped her hands with delight. They were little hands. The audience +applauded. The bull turned and came back. Again the capadore eluded him, +throwing the cape on his shoulders, and again the audience applauded. +Three times did this happen. The capadore was very excellent. Then he +retired, and the other capadore played with the bull. After that they +placed the banderillos in the bull, in the shoulders, on each side of +the back-bone, two at a time. Then stepped forward Ordonez, the chief +matador, with the long sword and the scarlet cape. The bugles blew for +the death. He is not so good as Matestini. Still he is good, and with +one thrust he drove the sword to the heart, and the bull doubled his +legs under him and lay down and died. It was a pretty thrust, clean and +sure; and there was much applause, and many of the common people threw +their hats into the ring. Maria Valenzuela clapped her hands with the +rest, and John Harned, whose cold heart was not touched by the event, +looked at her with curiosity. + +“You like it?” he asked. + +“Always,” she said, still clapping her hands. + +“From a little girl,” said Luis Cervallos. “I remember her first fight. +She was four years old. She sat with her mother, and just like now she +clapped her hands. She is a proper Spanish woman. + +“You have seen it,” said Maria Valenzuela to John Harned, as they +fastened the mules to the dead bull and dragged it out. “You have seen +the bull-fight and you like it--no? What do you think? + +“I think the bull had no chance,” he said. “The bull was doomed from +the first. The issue was not in doubt. Every one knew, before the bull +entered the ring, that it was to die. To be a sporting proposition, the +issue must be in doubt. It was one stupid bull who had never fought +a man against five wise men who had fought many bulls. It would be +possibly a little bit fair if it were one man against one bull.” + +“Or one man against five bulls,” said Maria Valenzuela; and we all +laughed, and Luis Ceryallos laughed loudest. + +“Yes,” said John Harned, “against five bulls, and the man, like the +bulls, never in the bull ring before--a man like yourself, Senor +Crevallos.” + +“Yet we Spanish like the bull-fight,” said Luis Cervallos; and I swear +the devil was whispering then in his ear, telling him to do that which I +shall relate. + +“Then must it be a cultivated taste,” John Harned made answer. “We kill +bulls by the thousand every day in Chicago, yet no one cares to pay +admittance to see.” + +“That is butchery,” said I; “but this--ah, this is an art. It is +delicate. It is fine. It is rare.” + +“Not always,” said Luis Cervallos. “I have seen clumsy matadors, and I +tell you it is not nice.” + +He shuddered, and his face betrayed such what-you-call disgust, that I +knew, then, that the devil was whispering and that he was beginning to +play a part. + +“Senor Harned may be right,” said Luis Cervallos. “It may not be fair +to the bull. For is it not known to all of us that for twenty-four hours +the bull is given no water, and that immediately before the fight he is +permitted to drink his fill?” + +“And he comes into the ring heavy with water?” said John Harned quickly; +and I saw that his eyes were very gray and very sharp and very cold. + +“It is necessary for the sport,” said Luis Cervallos. “Would you have +the bull so strong that he would kill the toreadors?” + +“I would that he had a fighting chance,” said John Harned, facing the +ring to see the second bull come in. + +It was not a good bull. It was frightened. It ran around the ring in +search of a way to get out. The capadors stepped forth and flared their +capes, but he refused to charge upon them. + +“It is a stupid bull,” said Maria Valenzuela. + +“I beg pardon,” said John Harned; “but it would seem to me a wise bull. +He knows he must not fight man. See! He smells death there in the ring.” + +True. The bull, pausing where the last one had died, was smelling the +wet sand and snorting. Again he ran around the ring, with raised head, +looking at the faces of the thousands that hissed him, that threw +orange-peel at him and called him names. But the smell of blood decided +him, and he charged a capador, so without warning that the man just +escaped. He dropped his cape and dodged into the shelter. The bull +struck the wall of the ring with a crash. And John Harned said, in a +quiet voice, as though he talked to himself: + +“I will give one thousand sucres to the lazar-house of Quito if a bull +kills a man this day.” + +“You like bulls?” said Maria Valenzuela with a smile. + +“I like such men less,” said John Harned. “A toreador is not a brave +man. He surely cannot be a brave man. See, the bull's tongue is already +out. He is tired and he has not yet begun.” + +“It is the water,” said Luis Cervallos. + +“Yes, it is the water,” said John Harned. “Would it not be safer to +hamstring the bull before he comes on?” + +Maria Valenzuela was made angry by this sneer in John Harned's words. +But Luis Cervallos smiled so that only I could see him, and then it +broke upon my mind surely the game he was playing. He and I were to be +banderilleros. The big American bull was there in the box with us. We +were to stick the darts in him till he became angry, and then there +might be no marriage with Maria Valenzuela. It was a good sport. And the +spirit of bull-fighters was in our blood. + +The bull was now angry and excited. The capadors had great game with +him. He was very quick, and sometimes he turned with such sharpness +that his hind legs lost their footing and he plowed the sand with his +quarter. But he charged always the flung capes and committed no harm. + +“He has no chance,” said John Harned. “He is fighting wind.” + +“He thinks the cape is his enemy,” explained Maria Valenzuela. “See how +cleverly the capador deceives him.” + +“It is his nature to be deceived,” said John Harned. “Wherefore he is +doomed to fight wind. The toreadors know it, you know it, I know it--we +all know from the first that he will fight wind. He only does not know +it. It is his stupid beast-nature. He has no chance.” + +“It is very simple,” said Luis Cervallos. “The bull shuts his eyes when +he charges. Therefore--” + +“The man steps, out of the way and the bull rushes by,” Harned +interrupted. + +“Yes,” said Luis Cervallos; “that is it. The bull shuts his eyes, and +the man knows it.” + +“But cows do not shut their eyes,” said John Harned. “I know a cow at +home that is a Jersey and gives milk, that would whip the whole gang of +them.” + +“But the toreadors do not fight cows,” said I. + +“They are afraid to fight cows,” said John Harned. + +“Yes,” said Luis Cervallos, “they are afraid to fight cows. There would +be no sport in killing toreadors.” + +“There would be some sport,” said John Harned, “if a toreador were +killed once in a while. When I become an old man, and mayhap a cripple, +and should I need to make a living and be unable to do hard work, +then would I become a bull-fighter. It is a light vocation for elderly +gentlemen and pensioners.” + +“But see!” said Maria Valenzuela, as the bull charged bravely and the +capador eluded it with a fling of his cape. “It requires skill so to +avoid the beast.” + +“True,” said John Harned. “But believe me, it requires a thousand times +more skill to avoid the many and quick punches of a prize-fighter who +keeps his eyes open and strikes with intelligence. Furthermore, this +bull does not want to fight. Behold, he runs away.” + +It was not a good bull, for again it ran around the ring, seeking to +find a way out. + +“Yet these bulls are sometimes the most dangerous,” said Luis Cervallos. +“It can never be known what they will do next. They are wise. They are +half cow. The bull-fighters never like them.--See! He has turned!” + +Once again, baffled and made angry by the walls of the ring that would +not let him out, the bull was attacking his enemies valiantly. + +“His tongue is hanging out,” said John Harned. “First, they fill him +with water. Then they tire him out, one man and then another, persuading +him to exhaust himself by fighting wind. While some tire him, others +rest. But the bull they never let rest. Afterward, when he is quite +tired and no longer quick, the matador sticks the sword into him.” + +The time had now come for the banderillos. Three times one of the +fighters endeavored to place the darts, and three times did he fail. +He but stung the bull and maddened it. The banderillos must go in, you +know, two at a time, into the shoulders, on each side the backbone and +close to it. If but one be placed, it is a failure. The crowd hissed and +called for Ordonez. And then Ordonez did a great thing. Four times +he stood forth, and four times, at the first attempt, he stuck in the +banderillos, so that eight of them, well placed, stood out of the back +of the bull at one time. The crowd went mad, and a rain of hats and +money fell on the sand of the ring. + +And just then the bull charged unexpectedly one of the capadors. The man +slipped and lost his head. The bull caught him--fortunately, between his +wide horns. And while the audience watched, breathless and silent, John +Harned stood up and yelled with gladness. Alone, in that hush of all of +us, John Harned yelled. And he yelled for the bull. As you see yourself, +John Harned wanted the man killed. His was a brutal heart. This bad +conduct made those angry that sat in the box of General Salazar, and +they cried out against John Harned. And Urcisino Castillo told him to +his face that he was a dog of a Gringo and other things. Only it was +in Spanish, and John Harned did not understand. He stood and yelled, +perhaps for the time of ten seconds, when the bull was enticed into +charging the other capadors and the man arose unhurt. + +“The bull has no chance,” John Harned said with sadness as he sat down. +“The man was uninjured. They fooled the bull away from him.” Then he +turned to Maria Valenzuela and said: “I beg your pardon. I was excited.” + +She smiled and in reproof tapped his arm with her fan. + +“It is your first bull-fight,” she said. “After you have seen more you +will not cry for the death of the man. You Americans, you see, are more +brutal than we. It is because of your prize-fighting. We come only to +see the bull killed.” + +“But I would the bull had some chance,” he answered. “Doubtless, in +time, I shall cease to be annoyed by the men who take advantage of the +bull.” + +The bugles blew for the death of the bull. Ordonez stood forth with the +sword and the scarlet cloth. But the bull had changed again, and did not +want to fight. Ordonez stamped his foot in the sand, and cried out, and +waved the scarlet cloth. Then the bull charged, but without heart. There +was no weight to the charge. It was a poor thrust. The sword struck +a bone and bent. Ordonez took a fresh sword. The bull, again stung to +fight, charged once more. Five times Ordonez essayed the thrust, and +each time the sword went but part way in or struck bone. The sixth time, +the sword went in to the hilt. But it was a bad thrust. The sword missed +the heart and stuck out half a yard through the ribs on the opposite +side. The audience hissed the matador. I glanced at John Harned. He sat +silent, without movement; but I could see his teeth were set, and his +hands were clenched tight on the railing of the box. + +All fight was now out of the bull, and, though it was no vital thrust, +he trotted lamely what of the sword that stuck through him, in one side +and out the other. He ran away from the matador and the capadors, and +circled the edge of the ring, looking up at the many faces. + +“He is saying: 'For God's sake let me out of this; I don't want to +fight,'” said John Harned. + +That was all. He said no more, but sat and watched, though sometimes +he looked sideways at Maria Valenzuela to see how she took it. She was +angry with the matador. He was awkward, and she had desired a clever +exhibition. + +The bull was now very tired, and weak from loss of blood, though far +from dying. He walked slowly around the wall of the ring, seeking a +way out. He would not charge. He had had enough. But he must be killed. +There is a place, in the neck of a bull behind the horns, where the +cord of the spine is unprotected and where a short stab will immediately +kill. Ordonez stepped in front of the bull and lowered his scarlet cloth +to the ground. The bull would not charge. He stood still and smelled the +cloth, lowering his head to do so. Ordonez stabbed between the horns at +the spot in the neck. The bull jerked his head up. The stab had missed. +Then the bull watched the sword. When Ordonez moved the cloth on the +ground, the bull forgot the sword and lowered his head to smell the +cloth. Again Ordonez stabbed, and again he failed. He tried many times. +It was stupid. And John Harned said nothing. At last a stab went home, +and the bull fell to the sand, dead immediately, and the mules were made +fast and he was dragged out. + +“The Gringos say it is a cruel sport--no?” said Luis Cervallos. “That it +is not humane. That it is bad for the bull. No?” + +“No,” said John Harned. “The bull does not count for much. It is bad for +those that look on. It is degrading to those that look on. It teaches +them to delight in animal suffering. It is cowardly for five men to +fight one stupid bull. Therefore those that look on learn to be cowards. +The bull dies, but those that look on live and the lesson is learned. +The bravery of men is not nourished by scenes of cowardice.” + +Maria Valenzuela said nothing. Neither did she look at him. But she +heard every word and her cheeks were white with anger. She looked out +across the ring and fanned herself, but I saw that her hand trembled. +Nor did John Harned look at her. He went on as though she were not +there. He, too, was angry, coldly angry. + +“It is the cowardly sport of a cowardly people,” he said. + +“Ah,” said Luis Cervallos softly, “you think you understand us.” + +“I understand now the Spanish Inquisition,” said John Harned. “It must +have been more delightful than bull-fighting.” + +Luis Cervallos smiled but said nothing. He glanced at Maria Valenzuela, +and knew that the bull-fight in the box was won. Never would she have +further to do with the Gringo who spoke such words. But neither Luis +Cervallos nor I was prepared for the outcome of the day. I fear we do +not understand the Gringos. How were we to know that John Harned, who +was so coldly angry, should go suddenly mad! But mad he did go, as you +shall see. The bull did not count for much--he said so himself. Then why +should the horse count for so much? That I cannot understand. The mind +of John Harned lacked logic. That is the only explanation. + +“It is not usual to have horses in the bull-ring at Quito,” said Luis +Cervallos, looking up from the program. “In Spain they always have them. +But to-day, by special permission we shall have them. When the next bull +comes on there will be horses and picadors-you know, the men who carry +lances and ride the horses.” + +“The bull is doomed from the first,” said John Harned. “Are the horses +then likewise doomed!” + +“They are blindfolded so that they may not see the bull,” said Luis +Cervallos. “I have seen many horses killed. It is a brave sight.” + +“I have seen the bull slaughtered,” said John Harned “I will now see the +horse slaughtered, so that I may understand more fully the fine points +of this noble sport.” + +“They are old horses,” said Luis Cervallos, “that are not good for +anything else.” + +“I see,” said John Harned. + +The third bull came on, and soon against it were both capadors and +picadors. One picador took his stand directly below us. I agree, it was +a thin and aged horse he rode, a bag of bones covered with mangy hide. + +“It is a marvel that the poor brute can hold up the weight of the +rider,” said John Harned. “And now that the horse fights the bull, what +weapons has it?” + +“The horse does not fight the bull,” said Luis Cervallos. + +“Oh,” said John Harned, “then is the horse there to be gored? That must +be why it is blindfolded, so that it shall not see the bull coming to +gore it.” + +“Not quite so,” said I. “The lance of the picador is to keep the bull +from goring the horse.” + +“Then are horses rarely gored?” asked John Harned. + +“No,” said Luis Cervallos. “I have seen, at Seville, eighteen horses +killed in one day, and the people clamored for more horses.” + +“Were they blindfolded like this horse?” asked John Harned. + +“Yes,” said Luis Cervallos. + +After that we talked no more, but watched the fight. And John Harned was +going mad all the time, and we did not know. The bull refused to charge +the horse. And the horse stood still, and because it could not see it +did not know that the capadors were trying to make the bull charge upon +it. The capadors teased the bull their capes, and when it charged them +they ran toward the horse and into their shelters. At last the bull was +angry, and it saw the horse before it. + +“The horse does not know, the horse does not know,” John Harned +whispered to himself, unaware that he voiced his thought aloud. + +The bull charged, and of course the horse knew nothing till the picador +failed and the horse found himself impaled on the bull's horns from +beneath. The bull was magnificently strong. The sight of its strength +was splendid to see. It lifted the horse clear into the air; and as the +horse fell to its side on on the ground the picador landed on his feet +and escaped, while the capadors lured the bull away. The horse was +emptied of its essential organs. Yet did it rise to its feet screaming. +It was the scream of the horse that did it, that made John Harned +completely mad; for he, too, started to rise to his feet, I heard +him curse low and deep. He never took his eyes from the horse, which, +screaming, strove to run, but fell down instead and rolled on its back +so that all its four legs were kicking in the air. Then the bull charged +it and gored it again and again until it was dead. + +John Harned was now on his feet. His eyes were no longer cold like +steel. They were blue flames. He looked at Maria Valenzuela, and she +looked at him, and in his face was a great loathing. The moment of his +madness was upon him. Everybody was looking, now that the horse was +dead; and John Harned was a large man and easy to be seen. + +“Sit down,” said Luis Cervallos, “or you will make a fool of yourself.” + +John Harned replied nothing. He struck out his fist. He smote Luis +Cervallos in the face so that he fell like a dead man across the chairs +and did not rise again. He saw nothing of what followed. But I saw much. +Urcisino Castillo, leaning forward from the next box, with his cane +struck John Harned full across the face. And John Harned smote him with +his fist so that in falling he overthrew General Salazar. John Harned +was now in what-you-call Berserker rage--no? The beast primitive in him +was loose and roaring--the beast primitive of the holes and caves of the +long ago. + +“You came for a bull-fight,” I heard him say, “And by God I'll show you +a man-fight!” + +It was a fight. The soldiers guarding the Presidente's box leaped +across, but from one of them he took a rifle and beat them on their +heads with it. From the other box Colonel Jacinto Fierro was shooting at +him with a revolver. The first shot killed a soldier. This I know for +a fact. I saw it. But the second shot struck John Harned in the side. +Whereupon he swore, and with a lunge drove the bayonet of his rifle into +Colonel Jacinto Fierro's body. It was horrible to behold. The Americans +and the English are a brutal race. They sneer at our bull-fighting, yet +do they delight in the shedding of blood. More men were killed that day +because of John Harned than were ever killed in all the history of the +bull-ring of Quito, yes, and of Guayaquil and all Ecuador. + +It was the scream of the horse that did it, yet why did not John Harned +go mad when the bull was killed? A beast is a beast, be it bull or +horse. John Harned was mad. There is no other explanation. He was +blood-mad, a beast himself. I leave it to your judgment. Which is +worse--the goring of the horse by the bull, or the goring of Colonel +Jacinto Fierro by the bayonet in the hands of John Harned! And John +Harned gored others with that bayonet. He was full of devils. He fought +with many bullets in him, and he was hard to kill. And Maria Valenzuela +was a brave woman. Unlike the other women, she did not cry out nor +faint. She sat still in her box, gazing out across the bull-ring. Her +face was white and she fanned herself, but she never looked around. + +From all sides came the soldiers and officers and the common people +bravely to subdue the mad Gringo. It is true--the cry went up from +the crowd to kill all the Gringos. It is an old cry in Latin-American +countries, what of the dislike for the Gringos and their uncouth ways. +It is true, the cry went up. But the brave Ecuadorianos killed only +John Harned, and first he killed seven of them. Besides, there were many +hurt. I have seen many bull-fights, but never have I seen anything so +abominable as the scene in the boxes when the fight was over. It was +like a field of battle. The dead lay around everywhere, while the +wounded sobbed and groaned and some of them died. One man, whom John +Harned had thrust through the belly with the bayonet, clutched at +himself with both his hands and screamed. I tell you for a fact it was +more terrible than the screaming of a thousand horses. + +No, Maria Valenzuela did not marry Luis Cervallos. I am sorry for that. +He was my friend, and much of my money was invested in his ventures. It +was five weeks before the surgeons took the bandages from his face. And +there is a scar there to this day, on the cheek, under the eye. Yet +John Harned struck him but once and struck him only with his naked +fist. Maria Valenzuela is in Austria now. It is said she is to marry an +Arch-Duke or some high nobleman. I do not know. I think she liked John +Harned before he followed her to Quito to see the bull-fight. But why +the horse? That is what I desire to know. Why should he watch the bull +and say that it did not count, and then go immediately and most horribly +mad because a horse screamed? There is no understanding the Gringos. +They are barbarians. + + + + +WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG + +HE was a very quiet, self-possessed sort of man, sitting a moment on top +of the wall to sound the damp darkness for warnings of the dangers it +might conceal. But the plummet of his hearing brought nothing to him +save the moaning of wind through invisible trees and the rustling of +leaves on swaying branches. A heavy fog drifted and drove before the +wind, and though he could not see this fog, the wet of it blew upon his +face, and the wall on which he sat was wet. + +Without noise he had climbed to the top of the wall from the outside, +and without noise he dropped to the ground on the inside. From his +pocket he drew an electric night-stick, but he did not use it. Dark as +the way was, he was not anxious for light. Carrying the night-stick in +his hand, his finger on the button, he advanced through the darkness. +The ground was velvety and springy to his feet, being carpeted with dead +pine-needles and leaves and mold which evidently had been undisturbed +for years. Leaves and branches brushed against his body, but so dark was +it that he could not avoid them. Soon he walked with his hand stretched +out gropingly before him, and more than once the hand fetched up against +the solid trunks of massive trees. All about him he knew were these +trees; he sensed the loom of them everywhere; and he experienced a +strange feeling of microscopic smallness in the midst of great bulks +leaning toward him to crush him. Beyond, he knew, was the house, and he +expected to find some trail or winding path that would lead easily to +it. + +Once, he found himself trapped. On every side he groped against trees +and branches, or blundered into thickets of underbrush, until there +seemed no way out. Then he turned on his light, circumspectly, directing +its rays to the ground at his feet. Slowly and carefully he moved +it about him, the white brightness showing in sharp detail all the +obstacles to his progress. He saw, an opening between huge-trunked +trees, and advanced through it, putting out the light and treading +on dry footing as yet protected from the drip of the fog by the dense +foliage overhead. His sense of direction was good, and he knew he was +going toward the house. + +And then the thing happened--the thing unthinkable and unexpected. His +descending foot came down upon something that was soft and alive, and +that arose with a snort under the weight of his body. He sprang clear, +and crouched for another spring, anywhere, tense and expectant, keyed +for the onslaught of the unknown. He waited a moment, wondering what +manner of animal it was that had arisen from under his foot and that now +made no sound nor movement and that must be crouching and waiting just +as tensely and expectantly as he. The strain became unbearable. Holding +the night-stick before him, he pressed the button, saw, and screamed +aloud in terror. He was prepared for anything, from a frightened calf or +fawn to a belligerent lion, but he was not prepared for what he saw. In +that instant his tiny searchlight, sharp and white, had shown him what a +thousand years would not enable him to forget--a man, huge and blond, +yellow-haired and yellow-bearded, naked except for soft-tanned moccasins +and what seemed a goat-skin about his middle. Arms and legs were bare, +as were his shoulders and most of his chest. The skin was smooth and +hairless, but browned by sun and wind, while under it heavy muscles were +knotted like fat snakes. Still, this alone, unexpected as it well was, +was not what had made the man scream out. What had caused his terror was +the unspeakable ferocity of the face, the wild-animal glare of the blue +eyes scarcely dazzled by the light, the pine-needles matted and clinging +in the beard and hair, and the whole formidable body crouched and in the +act of springing at him. Practically in the instant he saw all this, and +while his scream still rang, the thing leaped, he flung his night-stick +full at it, and threw himself to the ground. He felt its feet and shins +strike against his ribs, and he bounded up and away while the thing +itself hurled onward in a heavy crashing fall into the underbrush. + +As the noise of the fall ceased, the man stopped and on hands and knees +waited. He could hear the thing moving about, searching for him, and he +was afraid to advertise his location by attempting further flight. He +knew that inevitably he would crackle the underbrush and be pursued. +Once he drew out his revolver, then changed his mind. He had recovered +his composure and hoped to get away without noise. Several times he +heard the thing beating up the thickets for him, and there were moments +when it, too, remained still and listened. This gave an idea to the man. +One of his hands was resting on a chunk of dead wood. Carefully, first +feeling about him in the darkness to know that the full swing of his arm +was clear, he raised the chunk of wood and threw it. It was not a large +piece, and it went far, landing noisily in a bush. He heard the thing +bound into the bush, and at the same time himself crawled steadily away. +And on hands and knees, slowly and cautiously, he crawled on, till his +knees were wet on the soggy mold, When he listened he heard naught but +the moaning wind and the drip-drip of the fog from the branches. Never +abating his caution, he stood erect and went on to the stone wall, over +which he climbed and dropped down to the road outside. + +Feeling his way in a clump of bushes, he drew out a bicycle and prepared +to mount. He was in the act of driving the gear around with his foot for +the purpose of getting the opposite pedal in position, when he heard the +thud of a heavy body that landed lightly and evidently on its feet. +He did not wait for more, but ran, with hands on the handles of his +bicycle, until he was able to vault astride the saddle, catch the +pedals, and start a spurt. Behind he could hear the quick thud-thud +of feet on the dust of the road, but he drew away from it and lost it. +Unfortunately, he had started away from the direction of town and was +heading higher up into the hills. He knew that on this particular road +there were no cross roads. The only way back was past that terror, +and he could not steel himself to face it. At the end of half an hour, +finding himself on an ever increasing grade, he dismounted. For still +greater safety, leaving the wheel by the roadside, he climbed through a +fence into what he decided was a hillside pasture, spread a newspaper on +the ground, and sat down. + +“Gosh!” he said aloud, mopping the sweat and fog from his face. + +And “Gosh!” he said once again, while rolling a cigarette and as he +pondered the problem of getting back. + +But he made no attempt to go back. He was resolved not to face that +road in the dark, and with head bowed on knees, he dozed, waiting for +daylight. + +How long afterward he did not know, he was awakened by the yapping bark +of a young coyote. As he looked about and located it on the brow of the +hill behind him, he noted the change that had come over the face of the +night. The fog was gone; the stars and moon were out; even the wind had +died down. It had transformed into a balmy California summer night. +He tried to doze again, but the yap of the coyote disturbed him. Half +asleep, he heard a wild and eery chant. Looking about him, he noticed +that the coyote had ceased its noise and was running away along the +crest of the hill, and behind it, in full pursuit, no longer chanting, +ran the naked creature he had encountered in the garden. It was a young +coyote, and it was being overtaken when the chase passed from view. The +man trembled as with a chill as he started to his feet, clambered over +the fence, and mounted his wheel. But it was his chance and he knew it. +The terror was no longer between him and Mill Valley. + +He sped at a breakneck rate down the hill, but in the turn at the +bottom, in the deep shadows, he encountered a chuck-hole and pitched +headlong over the handle bar. + +“It's sure not my night,” he muttered, as he examined the broken fork of +the machine. + +Shouldering the useless wheel, he trudged on. In time he came to the +stone wall, and, half disbelieving his experience, he sought in the road +for tracks, and found them--moccasin tracks, large ones, deep-bitten +into the dust at the toes. It was while bending over them, examining, +that again he heard the eery chant. He had seen the thing pursue the +coyote, and he knew he had no chance on a straight run. He did not +attempt it, contenting himself with hiding in the shadows on the off +side of the road. + +And again he saw the thing that was like a naked man, running swiftly +and lightly and singing as it ran. Opposite him it paused, and his heart +stood still. But instead of coming toward his hiding-place, it leaped +into the air, caught the branch of a roadside tree, and swung swiftly +upward, from limb to limb, like an ape. It swung across the wall, and a +dozen feet above the top, into the branches of another tree, and dropped +out of sight to the ground. The man waited a few wondering minutes, then +started on. + +II + +Dave Slotter leaned belligerently against the desk that barred the way +to the private office of James Ward, senior partner of the firm of Ward, +Knowles & Co. Dave was angry. Every one in the outer office had looked +him over suspiciously, and the man who faced him was excessively +suspicious. + +“You just tell Mr. Ward it's important,” he urged. + +“I tell you he is dictating and cannot be disturbed,” was the answer. +“Come to-morrow.” + +“To-morrow will be too late. You just trot along and tell Mr. Ward it's +a matter of life and death.” + +The secretary hesitated and Dave seized the advantage. + +“You just tell him I was across the bay in Mill Valley last night, and +that I want to put him wise to something.” + +“What name?” was the query. + +“Never mind the name. He don't know me.” + +When Dave was shown into the private office, he was still in the +belligerent frame of mind, but when he saw a large fair man whirl in +a revolving chair from dictating to a stenographer to face him, Dave's +demeanor abruptly changed. He did not know why it changed, and he was +secretly angry with himself. + +“You are Mr. Ward?” Dave asked with a fatuousness that still further +irritated him. He had never intended it at all. + +“Yes,” came the answer. + +“And who are you?” + +“Harry Bancroft,” Dave lied. “You don't know me, and my name don't +matter.” + +“You sent in word that you were in Mill Valley last night?” + +“You live there, don't you?” Dave countered, looking suspiciously at the +stenographer. + +“Yes. What do you mean to see me about? I am very busy.” + +“I'd like to see you alone, sir.” + +Mr. Ward gave him a quick, penetrating look, hesitated, then made up his +mind. + +“That will do for a few minutes, Miss Potter.” + +The girl arose, gathered her notes together, and passed out. Dave looked +at Mr. James Ward wonderingly, until that gentleman broke his train of +inchoate thought. + +“Well?” + +“I was over in Mill Valley last night,” Dave began confusedly. + +“I've heard that before. What do you want?” + +And Dave proceeded in the face of a growing conviction that was +unbelievable. “I was at your house, or in the grounds, I mean.” + +“What were you doing there?” + +“I came to break in,” Dave answered in all frankness. + +“I heard you lived all alone with a Chinaman for cook, and it looked +good to me. Only I didn't break in. Something happened that prevented. +That's why I'm here. I come to warn you. I found a wild man loose in +your grounds--a regular devil. He could pull a guy like me to pieces. +He gave me the run of my life. He don't wear any clothes to speak of, he +climbs trees like a monkey, and he runs like a deer. I saw him chasing a +coyote, and the last I saw of it, by God, he was gaining on it.” + +Dave paused and looked for the effect that would follow his words. But +no effect came. James Ward was quietly curious, and that was all. + +“Very remarkable, very remarkable,” he murmured. “A wild man, you say. +Why have you come to tell me?” + +“To warn you of your danger. I'm something of a hard proposition myself, +but I don't believe in killing people... that is, unnecessarily. I +realized that you was in danger. I thought I'd warn you. Honest, that's +the game. Of course, if you wanted to give me anything for my trouble, +I'd take it. That was in my mind, too. But I don't care whether you give +me anything or not. I've warned you any way, and done my duty.” + +Mr. Ward meditated and drummed on the surface of his desk. Dave noticed +they were large, powerful hands, withal well-cared for despite their +dark sunburn. Also, he noted what had already caught his eye before--a +tiny strip of flesh-colored courtplaster on the forehead over one eye. +And still the thought that forced itself into his mind was unbelievable. + +Mr. Ward took a wallet from his inside coat pocket, drew out a +greenback, and passed it to Dave, who noted as he pocketed it that it +was for twenty dollars. + +“Thank you,” said Mr. Ward, indicating that the interview was at an end. + +“I shall have the matter investigated. A wild man running loose IS +dangerous.” + +But so quiet a man was Mr. Ward, that Dave's courage returned. Besides, +a new theory had suggested itself. The wild man was evidently Mr. Ward's +brother, a lunatic privately confined. Dave had heard of such things. +Perhaps Mr. Ward wanted it kept quiet. That was why he had given him the +twenty dollars. + +“Say,” Dave began, “now I come to think of it that wild man looked a lot +like you--” + +That was as far as Dave got, for at that moment he witnessed a +transformation and found himself gazing into the same unspeakably +ferocious blue eyes of the night before, at the same clutching +talon-like hands, and at the same formidable bulk in the act of +springing upon him. But this time Dave had no night-stick to throw, and +he was caught by the biceps of both arms in a grip so terrific that it +made him groan with pain. He saw the large white teeth exposed, for all +the world as a dog's about to bite. Mr. Ward's beard brushed his face +as the teeth went in for the grip on his throat. But the bite was not +given. Instead, Dave felt the other's body stiffen as with an iron +restraint, and then he was flung aside, without effort but with such +force that only the wall stopped his momentum and dropped him gasping to +the floor. + +“What do you mean by coming here and trying to blackmail me?” Mr. Ward +was snarling at him. “Here, give me back that money.” + +Dave passed the bill back without a word. + +“I thought you came here with good intentions. I know you now. Let me +see and hear no more of you, or I'll put you in prison where you belong. +Do you understand?” + +“Yes, sir,” Dave gasped. + +“Then go.” + +And Dave went, without further word, both his biceps aching intolerably +from the bruise of that tremendous grip. As his hand rested on the door +knob, he was stopped. + +“You were lucky,” Mr. Ward was saying, and Dave noted that his face and +eyes were cruel and gloating and proud. + +“You were lucky. Had I wanted, I could have torn your muscles out of +your arms and thrown them in the waste basket there.” + +“Yes, sir,” said Dave; and absolute conviction vibrated in his voice. + +He opened the door and passed out. The secretary looked at him +interrogatively. + +“Gosh!” was all Dave vouchsafed, and with this utterance passed out of +the offices and the story. + +III + +James G. Ward was forty years of age, a successful business man, and +very unhappy. For forty years he had vainly tried to solve a problem +that was really himself and that with increasing years became more +and more a woeful affliction. In himself he was two men, and, +chronologically speaking, these men were several thousand years or so +apart. He had studied the question of dual personality probably more +profoundly than any half dozen of the leading specialists in that +intricate and mysterious psychological field. In himself he was a +different case from any that had been recorded. Even the most fanciful +flights of the fiction-writers had not quite hit upon him. He was not +a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, nor was he like the unfortunate young man in +Kipling's “Greatest Story in the World.” His two personalities were so +mixed that they were practically aware of themselves and of each other +all the time. + +His other self he had located as a savage and a barbarian living under +the primitive conditions of several thousand years before. But which +self was he, and which was the other, he could never tell. For he was +both selves, and both selves all the time. Very rarely indeed did it +happen that one self did not know what the other was doing. Another +thing was that he had no visions nor memories of the past in which that +early self had lived. That early self lived in the present; but while +it lived in the present, it was under the compulsion to live the way of +life that must have been in that distant past. + +In his childhood he had been a problem to his father and mother, and to +the family doctors, though never had they come within a thousand miles +of hitting upon the clue to his erratic, conduct. Thus, they could not +understand his excessive somnolence in the forenoon, nor his excessive +activity at night. When they found him wandering along the hallways +at night, or climbing over giddy roofs, or running in the hills, they +decided he was a somnambulist. In reality he was wide-eyed awake and +merely under the nightroaming compulsion of his early self. Questioned +by an obtuse medico, he once told the truth and suffered the ignominy of +having the revelation contemptuously labeled and dismissed as “dreams.” + +The point was, that as twilight and evening came on he became wakeful. +The four walls of a room were an irk and a restraint. He heard a +thousand voices whispering to him through the darkness. The night +called to him, for he was, for that period of the twenty-four hours, +essentially a night-prowler. But nobody understood, and never again did +he attempt to explain. They classified him as a sleep-walker and took +precautions accordingly--precautions that very often were futile. As his +childhood advanced, he grew more cunning, so that the major portion of +all his nights were spent in the open at realizing his other self. As +a result, he slept in the forenoons. Morning studies and schools were +impossible, and it was discovered that only in the afternoons, under +private teachers, could he be taught anything. Thus was his modern self +educated and developed. + +But a problem, as a child, he ever remained. He was known as a little +demon, of insensate cruelty and viciousness. The family medicos +privately adjudged him a mental monstrosity and degenerate. Such few +boy companions as he had, hailed him as a wonder, though they were all +afraid of him. He could outclimb, outswim, outrun, outdevil any of +them; while none dared fight with him. He was too terribly strong, madly +furious. + +When nine years of age he ran away to the hills, where he flourished, +night-prowling, for seven weeks before he was discovered and brought +home. The marvel was how he had managed to subsist and keep in condition +during that time. They did not know, and he never told them, of the +rabbits he had killed, of the quail, young and old, he had captured +and devoured, of the farmers' chicken-roosts he had raided, nor of the +cave-lair he had made and carpeted with dry leaves and grasses and in +which he had slept in warmth and comfort through the forenoons of many +days. + +At college he was notorious for his sleepiness and stupidity during the +morning lectures and for his brilliance in the afternoon. By collateral +reading and by borrowing the notebook of his fellow students he managed +to scrape through the detestable morning courses, while his afternoon +courses were triumphs. In football he proved a giant and a terror, and, +in almost every form of track athletics, save for strange Berserker +rages that were sometimes displayed, he could be depended upon to win. +But his fellows were afraid to box with him, and he signalized his last +wrestling bout by sinking his teeth into the shoulder of his opponent. + +After college, his father, in despair, sent him among the cow-punchers +of a Wyoming ranch. Three months later the doughty cowmen confessed he +was too much for them and telegraphed his father to come and take the +wild man away. Also, when the father arrived to take him away, the +cowmen allowed that they would vastly prefer chumming with howling +cannibals, gibbering lunatics, cavorting gorillas, grizzly bears, and +man-eating tigers than with this particular Young college product with +hair parted in the middle. + +There was one exception to the lack of memory of the life of his early +self, and that was language. By some quirk of atavism, a certain portion +of that early self's language had come down to him as a racial memory. +In moments of happiness, exaltation, or battle, he was prone to burst +out in wild barbaric songs or chants. It was by this means that he +located in time and space that strayed half of him who should have been +dead and dust for thousands of years. He sang, once, and deliberately, +several of the ancient chants in the presence of Professor Wertz, who +gave courses in old Saxon and who was a philogist of repute and passion. +At the first one, the professor pricked up his ears and demanded to +know what mongrel tongue or hog-German it was. When the second chant was +rendered, the professor was highly excited. James Ward then concluded +the performance by giving a song that always irresistibly rushed to his +lips when he was engaged in fierce struggling or fighting. Then it was +that Professor Wertz proclaimed it no hog-German, but early German, or +early Teuton, of a date that must far precede anything that had ever +been discovered and handed down by the scholars. So early was it that +it was beyond him; yet it was filled with haunting reminiscences of +word-forms he knew and which his trained intuition told him were true +and real. He demanded the source of the songs, and asked to borrow the +precious book that contained them. Also, he demanded to know why +young Ward had always posed as being profoundly ignorant of the German +language. And Ward could neither explain his ignorance nor lend the +book. Whereupon, after pleadings and entreaties that extended through +weeks, Professor Wert took a dislike to the young man, believed him +a liar, and classified him as a man of monstrous selfishness for not +giving him a glimpse of this wonderful screed that was older than the +oldest any philologist had ever known or dreamed. + +But little good did it do this much-mixed young man to know that half of +him was late American and the other half early Teuton. Nevertheless, the +late American in him was no weakling, and he (if he were a he and had +a shred of existence outside of these two) compelled an adjustment or +compromise between his one self that was a nightprowling savage that +kept his other self sleepy of mornings, and that other self that was +cultured and refined and that wanted to be normal and live and love and +prosecute business like other people. The afternoons and early evenings +he gave to the one, the nights to the other; the forenoons and parts of +the nights were devoted to sleep for the twain. But in the mornings he +slept in bed like a civilized man. In the night time he slept like a +wild animal, as he had slept Dave Slotter stepped on him in the woods. + +Persuading his father to advance the capital, he went into business +and keen and successful business he made of it, devoting his afternoons +whole-souled to it, while his partner devoted the mornings. The early +evenings he spent socially, but, as the hour grew to nine or ten, an +irresistible restlessness overcame him and he disappeared from the +haunts of men until the next afternoon. Friends and acquaintances +thought that he spent much of his time in sport. And they were right, +though they never would have dreamed of the nature of the sport, even if +they had seen him running coyotes in night-chases over the hills of Mill +Valley. Neither were the schooner captains believed when they reported +seeing, on cold winter mornings, a man swimming in the tide-rips of +Raccoon Straits or in the swift currents between Goat island and Angel +Island miles from shore. + +In the bungalow at Mill Valley he lived alone, save for Lee Sing, the +Chinese cook and factotum, who knew much about the strangeness of his +master, who was paid well for saying nothing, and who never did say +anything. After the satisfaction of his nights, a morning's sleep, and a +breakfast of Lee Sing's, James Ward crossed the bay to San Francisco on +a midday ferryboat and went to the club and on to his office, as normal +and conventional a man of business as could be found in the city. But as +the evening lengthened, the night called to him. There came a quickening +of all his perceptions and a restlessness. His hearing was suddenly +acute; the myriad night-noises told him a luring and familiar story; +and, if alone, he would begin to pace up and down the narrow room like +any caged animal from the wild. + +Once, he ventured to fall in love. He never permitted himself that +diversion again. He was afraid. And for many a day the young lady, +scared at least out of a portion of her young ladyhood, bore on her +arms and shoulders and wrists divers black-and-blue bruises--tokens of +caresses which he had bestowed in all fond gentleness but too late +at night. There was the mistake. Had he ventured love-making in the +afternoon, all would have been well, for it would have been as the quiet +gentleman that he would have made love--but at night it was the uncouth, +wife-stealing savage of the dark German forests. Out of his wisdom, he +decided that afternoon love-making could be prosecuted successfully; but +out of the same wisdom he was convinced that marriage as would prove +a ghastly failure. He found it appalling to imagine being married and +encountering his wife after dark. + +So he had eschewed all love-making, regulated his dual life, cleaned up +a million in business, fought shy of match-making mamas and bright-eyed +and eager young ladies of various ages, met Lilian Gersdale and made +it a rigid observance never to see her later than eight o'clock in the +evening, run of nights after his coyotes, and slept in forest lairs--and +through it all had kept his secret safe save Lee Sing... and now, +Dave Slotter. It was the latter's discovery of both his selves that +frightened him. In spite of the counter fright he had given the burglar, +the latter might talk. And even if he did not, sooner or later he would +be found out by some one else. + +Thus it was that James Ward made a fresh and heroic effort to control +the Teutonic barbarian that was half of him. So well did he make it +a point to see Lilian in the afternoons, that the time came when +she accepted him for better or worse, and when he prayed privily and +fervently that it was not for worse. During this period no prize-fighter +ever trained more harshly and faithfully for a contest than he trained +to subdue the wild savage in him. Among other things, he strove to +exhaust himself during the day, so that sleep would render him deaf to +the call of the night. He took a vacation from the office and went on +long hunting trips, following the deer through the most inaccessible and +rugged country he could find--and always in the daytime. Night found him +indoors and tired. At home he installed a score of exercise machines, +and where other men might go through a particular movement ten times, he +went hundreds. Also, as a compromise, he built a sleeping porch on the +second story. Here he at least breathed the blessed night air. Double +screens prevented him from escaping into the woods, and each night Lee +Sing locked him in and each morning let him out. + +The time came, in the month of August, when he engaged additional +servants to assist Lee Sing and dared a house party in his Mill Valley +bungalow. Lilian, her mother and brother, and half a dozen mutual +friends, were the guests. For two days and nights all went well. And on +the third night, playing bridge till eleven o'clock, he had reason to be +proud of himself. His restlessness fully hid, but as luck would have it, +Lilian Gersdale was his opponent on his right. She was a frail delicate +flower of a woman, and in his night-mood her very frailty incensed +him. Not that he loved her less, but that he felt almost irresistibly +impelled to reach out and paw and maul her. Especially was this true +when she was engaged in playing a winning hand against him. + +He had one of the deer-hounds brought in and, when it seemed he must fly +to pieces with the tension, a caressing hand laid on the animal brought +him relief. These contacts with the hairy coat gave him instant easement +and enabled him to play out the evening. Nor did anyone guess the +while terrible struggle their host was making, the while he laughed so +carelessly and played so keenly and deliberately. + +When they separated for the night, he saw to it that he parted from +Lilian in the presence or the others. Once on his sleeping porch +and safely locked in, he doubled and tripled and even quadrupled his +exercises until, exhausted, he lay down on the couch to woo sleep and to +ponder two problems that especially troubled him. One was this matter +of exercise. It was a paradox. The more he exercised in this excessive +fashion, the stronger he became. While it was true that he thus quite +tired out his night-running Teutonic self, it seemed that he was merely +setting back the fatal day when his strength would be too much for him +and overpower him, and then it would be a strength more terrible than +he had yet known. The other problem was that of his marriage and of the +stratagems he must employ in order to avoid his wife after dark. And +thus, fruitlessly pondering, he fell asleep. + +Now, where the huge grizzly bear came from that night was long a +mystery, while the people of the Springs Brothers' Circus, showing at +Sausalito, searched long and vainly for “Big Ben, the Biggest Grizzly +in Captivity.” But Big Ben escaped, and, out of the mazes of half a +thousand bungalows and country estates, selected the grounds of James J. +Ward for visitation. The self first Mr. Ward knew was when he found him +on his feet, quivering and tense, a surge of battle in his breast and +on his lips the old war-chant. From without came a wild baying and +bellowing of the hounds. And sharp as a knife-thrust through the +pandemonium came the agony of a stricken dog--his dog, he knew. + +Not stopping for slippers, pajama-clad, he burst through the door Lee +Sing had so carefully locked, and sped down the stairs and out into +the night. As his naked feet struck the graveled driveway, he stopped +abruptly, reached under the steps to a hiding-place he knew well, and +pulled forth a huge knotty club--his old companion on many a mad night +adventure on the hills. The frantic hullabaloo of the dogs was coming +nearer, and, swinging the club, he sprang straight into the thickets to +meet it. + +The aroused household assembled on the wide veranda. Somebody turned +on the electric lights, but they could see nothing but one another's +frightened faces. Beyond the brightly illuminated driveway the trees +formed a wall of impenetrable blackness. Yet somewhere in that blackness +a terrible struggle was going on. There was an infernal outcry of +animals, a great snarling and growling, the sound of blows being struck +and a smashing and crashing of underbrush by heavy bodies. + +The tide of battle swept out from among the trees and upon the driveway +just beneath the onlookers. Then they saw. Mrs. Gersdale cried out +and clung fainting to her son. Lilian, clutching the railing so +spasmodically that a bruising hurt was left in her finger-ends for +days, gazed horror-stricken at a yellow-haired, wild-eyed giant whom she +recognized as the man who was to be her husband. He was swinging a great +club, and fighting furiously and calmly with a shaggy monster that was +bigger than any bear she had ever seen. One rip of the beast's claws had +dragged away Ward's pajama-coat and streaked his flesh with blood. + +While most of Lilian Gersdale's fright was for the man beloved, there +was a large portion of it due to the man himself. Never had she dreamed +so formidable and magnificent a savage lurked under the starched shirt +and conventional garb of her betrothed. And never had she had any +conception of how a man battled. Such a battle was certainly not modern; +nor was she there beholding a modern man, though she did not know it. +For this was not Mr. James J. Ward, the San Francisco business man, but +one, unnamed and unknown, a crude, rude savage creature who, by some +freak of chance, lived again after thrice a thousand years. + +The hounds, ever maintaining their mad uproar, circled about the fight, +or dashed in and out, distracting the bear. When the animal turned to +meet such flanking assaults, the man leaped in and the club came down. +Angered afresh by every such blow, the bear would rush, and the man, +leaping and skipping, avoiding the dogs, went backwards or circled +to one side or the other. Whereupon the dogs, taking advantage of the +opening, would again spring in and draw the animal's wrath to them. + +The end came suddenly. Whirling, the grizzly caught a hound with a +wide sweeping cuff that sent the brute, its ribs caved in and its back +broken, hurtling twenty feet. Then the human brute went mad. A foaming +rage flecked the lips that parted with a wild inarticulate cry, as it +sprang in, swung the club mightily in both hands, and brought it down +full on the head of the uprearing grizzly. Not even the skull of a +grizzly could withstand the crushing force of such a blow, and the +animal went down to meet the worrying of the hounds. And through their +scurrying leaped the man, squarely upon the body, where, in the white +electric light, resting on his club, he chanted a triumph in an unknown +tongue--a song so ancient that Professor Wertz would have given ten +years of his life for it. + +His guests rushed to possess him and acclaim him, but James Ward, +suddenly looking out of the eyes of the early Teuton, saw the fair frail +Twentieth Century girl he loved, and felt something snap in his brain. +He staggered weakly toward her, dropped the club, and nearly fell. +Something had gone wrong with him. Inside his brain was an intolerable +agony. It seemed as if the soul of him were flying asunder. Following +the excited gaze of the others, he glanced back and saw the carcass of +the bear. The sight filled him with fear. He uttered a cry and would +have fled, had they not restrained him and led him into the bungalow. + +***** + +James J. Ward is still at the head of the firm of Ward, Knowles & Co. +But he no longer lives in the country; nor does he run of nights after +the coyotes under the moon. The early Teuton in him died the night of +the Mill Valley fight with the bear. James J. Ward is now wholly +James J. Ward, and he shares no part of his being with any vagabond +anachronism from the younger world. And so wholly is James J. Ward +modern, that he knows in all its bitter fullness the curse of civilized +fear. He is now afraid of the dark, and night in the forest is to him a +thing of abysmal terror. His city house is of the spick and span order, +and he evinces a great interest in burglarproof devices. His home is +a tangle of electric wires, and after bed-time a guest can scarcely +breathe without setting off an alarm. Also, he had invented a +combination keyless door-lock that travelers may carry in their vest +pockets and apply immediately and successfully under all circumstances. +But his wife does not deem him a coward. She knows better. And, like +any hero, he is content to rest on his laurels. His bravery is never +questioned by those friends who are aware of the Mill Valley episode. + + + + +THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT + +CARTER WATSON, a current magazine under his arm, strolled slowly along, +gazing about him curiously. Twenty years had elapsed since he had been +on this particular street, and the changes were great and stupefying. +This Western city of three hundred thousand souls had contained but +thirty thousand, when, as a boy, he had been wont to ramble along +its streets. In those days the street he was now on had been a quiet +residence street in the respectable workingclass quarter. On this late +afternoon he found that it had been submerged by a vast and vicious +tenderloin. Chinese and Japanese shops and dens abounded, all confusedly +intermingled with low white resorts and boozing dens. This quiet street +of his youth had become the toughest quarter of the city. + +He looked at his watch. It was half-past five. It was the slack time of +the day in such a region, as he well knew, yet he was curious to see. In +all his score of years of wandering and studying social conditions over +the world, he had carried with him the memory of his old town as a sweet +and wholesome place. The metamorphosis he now beheld was startling. He +certainly must continue his stroll and glimpse the infamy to which his +town had descended. + +Another thing: Carter Watson had a keen social and civic consciousness. +Independently wealthy, he had been loath to dissipate his energies +in the pink teas and freak dinners of society, while actresses, +race-horses, and kindred diversions had left him cold. He had the +ethical bee in his bonnet and was a reformer of no mean pretension, +though his work had been mainly in the line of contributions to the +heavier reviews and quarterlies and to the publication over his name +of brightly, cleverly written books on the working classes and the +slum-dwellers. Among the twenty-seven to his credit occurred titles such +as, “If Christ Came to New Orleans,” “The Worked-out Worker,” “Tenement +Reform in Berlin,” “The Rural Slums of England,” “The people of the East +Side,” “Reform Versus Revolution,” “The University Settlement as a Hot +Bed of Radicalism” and “The Cave Man of Civilization.” + +But Carter Watson was neither morbid nor fanatic. He did not lose his +head over the horrors he encountered, studied, and exposed. No hair +brained enthusiasm branded him. His humor saved him, as did his wide +experience and his conservative philosophic temperament. Nor did he +have any patience with lightning change reform theories. As he saw it, +society would grow better only through the painfully slow and arduously +painful processes of evolution. There were no short cuts, no sudden +regenerations. The betterment of mankind must be worked out in agony and +misery just as all past social betterments had been worked out. + +But on this late summer afternoon, Carter Watson was curious. As he +moved along he paused before a gaudy drinking place. The sign above +read, “The Vendome.” There were two entrances. One evidently led to the +bar. This he did not explore. The other was a narrow hallway. +Passing through this he found himself in a huge room, filled with +chair-encircled tables and quite deserted. In the dim light he made out +a piano in the distance. Making a mental note that he would come back +some time and study the class of persons that must sit and drink at +those multitudinous tables, he proceeded to circumnavigate the room. + +Now, at the rear, a short hallway led off to a small kitchen, and here, +at a table, alone, sat Patsy Horan, proprietor of the Vendome, consuming +a hasty supper ere the evening rush of business. Also, Patsy Horan +was angry with the world. He had got out of the wrong side of bed that +morning, and nothing had gone right all day. Had his barkeepers been +asked, they would have described his mental condition as a grouch. But +Carter Watson did not know this. As he passed the little hallway, Patsy +Horan's sullen eyes lighted on the magazine he carried under his arm. +Patsy did not know Carter Watson, nor did he know that what he carried +under his arm was a magazine. Patsy, out of the depths of his grouch, +decided that this stranger was one of those pests who marred and scarred +the walls of his back rooms by tacking up or pasting up advertisements. +The color on the front cover of the magazine convinced him that it was +such an advertisement. Thus the trouble began. Knife and fork in hand, +Patsy leaped for Carter Watson. + +“Out wid yeh!” Patsy bellowed. “I know yer game!” + +Carter Watson was startled. The man had come upon him like the eruption +of a jack-in-the-box. + +“A defacin' me walls,” cried Patsy, at the same time emitting a string +of vivid and vile, rather than virile, epithets of opprobrium. + +“If I have given any offense I did not mean to--” + +But that was as far as the visitor got. Patsy interrupted. + +“Get out wid yeh; yeh talk too much wid yer mouth,” quoted Patsy, +emphasizing his remarks with flourishes of the knife and fork. + +Carter Watson caught a quick vision of that eating-fork inserted +uncomfortably between his ribs, knew that it would be rash to talk +further with his mouth, and promptly turned to go. The sight of his +meekly retreating back must have further enraged Patsy Horan, for that +worthy, dropping the table implements, sprang upon him. + +Patsy weighed one hundred and eighty pounds. So did Watson. In this they +were equal. But Patsy was a rushing, rough-and-tumble saloon-fighter, +while Watson was a boxer. In this the latter had the advantage, for +Patsy came in wide open, swinging his right in a perilous sweep. All +Watson had to do was to straight-left him and escape. But Watson had +another advantage. His boxing, and his experience in the slums and +ghettos of the world, had taught him restraint. + +He pivoted on his feet, and, instead of striking, ducked the other's +swinging blow and went into a clinch. But Patsy, charging like a bull, +had the momentum of his rush, while Watson, whirling to meet him, had no +momentum. As a result, the pair of them went down, with all their three +hundred and sixty pounds of weight, in a long crashing fall, Watson +underneath. He lay with his head touching the rear wall of the large +room. The street was a hundred and fifty feet away, and he did some +quick thinking. His first thought was to avoid trouble. He had no wish +to get into the papers of this, his childhood town, where many of his +relatives and family friends still lived. + +So it was that he locked his arms around the man on top of him, held him +close, and waited for the help to come that must come in response to the +crash of the fall. The help came--that is, six men ran in from the bar +and formed about in a semi-circle. + +“Take him off, fellows,” Watson said. “I haven't struck him, and I don't +want any fight.” + +But the semi-circle remained silent. Watson held on and waited. Patsy, +after various vain efforts to inflict damage, made an overture. + +“Leggo o' me an' I'll get off o' yeh,” said he. + +Watson let go, but when Patsy scrambled to his feet he stood over his +recumbent foe, ready to strike. + +“Get up,” Patsy commanded. + +His voice was stern and implacable, like the voice of God calling to +judgment, and Watson knew there was no mercy there. + +“Stand back and I'll get up,” he countered. + +“If yer a gentleman, get up,” quoth Patsy, his pale blue eyes aflame +with wrath, his fist ready for a crushing blow. + +At the same moment he drew his foot back to kick the other in the face. +Watson blocked the kick with his crossed arms and sprang to his feet so +quickly that he was in a clinch with his antagonist before the latter +could strike. Holding him, Watson spoke to the onlookers: + +“Take him away from me, fellows. You see I am not striking him. I don't +want to fight. I want to get out of here.” + +The circle did not move nor speak. Its silence was ominous and sent a +chill to Watson's heart. + +Patsy made an effort to throw him, which culminated in his putting Patsy +on his back. Tearing loose from him, Watson sprang to his feet and made +for the door. But the circle of men was interposed a wall. He noticed +the white, pasty faces, the kind that never see the sun, and knew that +the men who barred his way were the nightprowlers and preying beasts +of the city jungle. By them he was thrust back upon the pursuing, +bull-rushing Patsy. + +Again it was a clinch, in which, in momentary safety, Watson appealed +to the gang. And again his words fell on deaf ears. Then it was that +he knew of many similar knew fear. For he had known of many similar +situations, in low dens like this, when solitary men were man-handled, +their ribs and features caved in, themselves beaten and kicked to death. +And he knew, further, that if he were to escape he must neither strike +his assailant nor any of the men who opposed him. + +Yet in him was righteous indignation. Under no circumstances could +seven to one be fair. Also, he was angry, and there stirred in him +the fighting beast that is in all men. But he remembered his wife and +children, his unfinished book, the ten thousand rolling acres of the +up-country ranch he loved so well. He even saw in flashing visions the +blue of the sky, the golden sun pouring down on his flower-spangled +meadows, the lazy cattle knee-deep in the brooks, and the flash of trout +in the riffles. Life was good-too good for him to risk it for a moment's +sway of the beast. In short, Carter Watson was cool and scared. + +His opponent, locked by his masterly clinch, was striving to throw him. +Again Watson put him on the floor, broke away, and was thrust back by +the pasty-faced circle to duck Patsy's swinging right and effect another +clinch. This happened many times. And Watson grew even cooler, while +the baffled Patsy, unable to inflict punishment, raged wildly and more +wildly. He took to batting with his head in the clinches. The first +time, he landed his forehead flush on Watson's nose. After that, the +latter, in the clinches, buried his face in Patsy's breast. But the +enraged Patsy batted on, striking his own eye and nose and cheek on the +top of the other's head. The more he was thus injured, the more and the +harder did Patsy bat. + +This one-sided contest continued for twelve or fifteen minutes. Watson +never struck a blow, and strove only to escape. Sometimes, in the free +moments, circling about among the tables as he tried to win the door, +the pasty-faced men gripped his coat-tails and flung him back at the +swinging right of the on-rushing Patsy. Time upon time, and times +without end, he clinched and put Patsy on his back, each time first +whirling him around and putting him down in the direction of the door +and gaining toward that goal by the length of the fall. + +In the end, hatless, disheveled, with streaming nose and one eye closed, +Watson won to the sidewalk and into the arms of a policeman. + +“Arrest that man,” Watson panted. + +“Hello, Patsy,” said the policeman. “What's the mix-up?” + +“Hello, Charley,” was the answer. “This guy comes in--” + +“Arrest that man, officer,” Watson repeated. + +“G'wan! Beat it!” said Patsy. + +“Beat it!” added the policeman. “If you don't, I'll pull you in.” + +“Not unless you arrest that man. He has committed a violent and +unprovoked assault on me.” + +“Is it so, Patsy?” was the officer's query. + +“Nah. Lemme tell you, Charley, an' I got the witnesses to prove it, so +help me God. I was settin' in me kitchen eatin' a bowl of soup, when +this guy comes in an' gets gay wid me. I never seen him in me born days +before. He was drunk--” + +“Look at me, officer,” protested the indignant sociologist. “Am I +drunk?” + +The officer looked at him with sullen, menacing eyes and nodded to Patsy +to continue. + +“This guy gets gay wid me. 'I'm Tim McGrath,' says he, 'an' I can do the +like to you,' says he. 'Put up yer hands.' I smiles, an' wid that, biff +biff, he lands me twice an' spills me soup. Look at me eye. I'm fair +murdered.” + +“What are you going to do, officer?” Watson demanded. + +“Go on, beat it,” was the answer, “or I'll pull you sure.” + +The civic righteousness of Carter Watson flamed up. + +“Mr. Officer, I protest--” + +But at that moment the policeman grabbed his arm with a savage jerk that +nearly overthrew him. + +“Come on, you're pulled.” + +“Arrest him, too,” Watson demanded. + +“Nix on that play,” was the reply. + +“What did you assault him for, him a peacefully eatin' his soup?” + +II + +Carter Watson was genuinely angry. Not only had he been wantonly +assaulted, badly battered, and arrested, but the morning papers without +exception came out with lurid accounts of his drunken brawl with the +proprietor of the notorious Vendome. Not one accurate or truthful line +was published. Patsy Horan and his satellites described the battle in +detail. The one incontestable thing was that Carter Watson had been +drunk. Thrice he had been thrown out of the place and into the gutter, +and thrice he had come back, breathing blood and fire and announcing +that he was going to clean out the place. “EMINENT SOCIOLOGIST JAGGED +AND JUGGED,” was the first head-line he read, on the front page, +accompanied by a large portrait of himself. Other headlines were: +“CARTER WATSON ASPIRED TO CHAMPIONSHIP HONORS”; “CARTER WATSON GETS +HIS”; “NOTED SOCIOLOGIST ATTEMPTS TO CLEAN OUT A TENDERLOIN CAFE”; and +“CARTER WATSON KNOCKED OUT BY PATSY HORAN IN THREE ROUNDS.” + +At the police court, next morning, under bail, appeared Carter Watson +to answer the complaint of the People Versus Carter Watson, for +the latter's assault and battery on one Patsy Horan. But first, the +Prosecuting Attorney, who was paid to prosecute all offenders against +the People, drew him aside and talked with him privately. + +“Why not let it drop!” said the Prosecuting Attorney. “I tell you what +you do, Mr. Watson: Shake hands with Mr. Horan and make it up, and we'll +drop the case right here. A word to the Judge, and the case against you +will be dismissed.” + +“But I don't want it dismissed,” was the answer. “Your office being what +it is, you should be prosecuting me instead of asking me to make up with +this--this fellow.” + +“Oh, I'll prosecute you all right,” retorted the Prosecuting Attorney. + +“Also you will have to prosecute this Patsy Horan,” Watson advised; “for +I shall now have him arrested for assault and battery.” + +“You'd better shake and make up,” the Prosecuting Attorney repeated, and +this time there was almost a threat in his voice. + +The trials of both men were set for a week later, on the same morning, +in Police Judge Witberg's court. + +“You have no chance,” Watson was told by an old friend of his boyhood, +the retired manager of the biggest paper in the city. “Everybody knows +you were beaten up by this man. His reputation is most unsavory. But it +won't help you in the least. Both cases will be dismissed. This will be +because you are you. Any ordinary man would be convicted.” + +“But I do not understand,” objected the perplexed sociologist. “Without +warning I was attacked by this man; and badly beaten. I did not strike a +blow. I--” + +“That has nothing to do with it,” the other cut him off. + +“Then what is there that has anything to do with it?” + +“I'll tell you. You are now up against the local police and political +machine. Who are you? You are not even a legal resident in this town. +You live up in the country. You haven't a vote of your own here. Much +less do you swing any votes. This dive proprietor swings a string of +votes in his precincts--a mighty long string.” + +“Do you mean to tell me that this Judge Witberg will violate the +sacredness of his office and oath by letting this brute off?” Watson +demanded. + +“Watch him,” was the grim reply. “Oh, he'll do it nicely enough. He will +give an extra-legal, extra-judicial decision, abounding in every word in +the dictionary that stands for fairness and right.” + +“But there are the newspapers,” Watson cried. + +“They are not fighting the administration at present. They'll give it to +you hard. You see what they have already done to you.” + +“Then these snips of boys on the police detail won't write the truth?” + +“They will write something so near like the truth that the public will +believe it. They write their stories under instruction, you know. They +have their orders to twist and color, and there won't be much left of +you when they get done. Better drop the whole thing right now. You are +in bad.” + +“But the trials are set.” + +“Give the word and they'll drop them now. A man can't fight a machine +unless he has a machine behind him.” + +III + +But Carter Watson was stubborn. He was convinced that the machine would +beat him, but all his days he had sought social experience, and this was +certainly something new. + +The morning of the trial the Prosecuting Attorney made another attempt +to patch up the affair. + +“If you feel that way, I should like to get a lawyer to prosecute the +case,” said Watson. + +“No, you don't,” said the Prosecuting Attorney. “I am paid by the People +to prosecute, and prosecute I will. But let me tell you. You have no +chance. We shall lump both cases into one, and you watch out.” + +Judge Witberg looked good to Watson. A fairly young man, short, +comfortably stout, smooth-shaven and with an intelligent face, he seemed +a very nice man indeed. This good impression was added to by the smiling +lips and the wrinkles of laughter in the corners of his black eyes. +Looking at him and studying him, Watson felt almost sure that his old +friend's prognostication was wrong. + +But Watson was soon to learn. Patsy Horan and two of his satellites +testified to a most colossal aggregation of perjuries. Watson could not +have believed it possible without having experienced it. They denied +the existence of the other four men. And of the two that testified, one +claimed to have been in the kitchen, a witness to Watson's unprovoked +assault on Patsy, while the other, remaining in the bar, had witnessed +Watson's second and third rushes into the place as he attempted to +annihilate the unoffending Patsy. The vile language ascribed to Watson +was so voluminously and unspeakably vile, that he felt they were +injuring their own case. It was so impossible that he should utter such +things. But when they described the brutal blows he had rained on poor +Patsy's face, and the chair he demolished when he vainly attempted to +kick Patsy, Watson waxed secretly hilarious and at the same time sad. +The trial was a farce, but such lowness of life was depressing to +contemplate when he considered the long upward climb humanity must make. + +Watson could not recognize himself, nor could his worst enemy have +recognized him, in the swashbuckling, rough-housing picture that was +painted of him. But, as in all cases of complicated perjury, rifts and +contradictions in the various stories appeared. The Judge somehow failed +to notice them, while the Prosecuting Attorney and Patsy's attorney +shied off from them gracefully. Watson had not bothered to get a lawyer +for himself, and he was now glad that he had not. + +Still, he retained a semblance of faith in Judge Witberg when he went +himself on the stand and started to tell his story. + +“I was strolling casually along the street, your Honor,” Watson began, +but was interrupted by the Judge. + +“We are not here to consider your previous actions,” bellowed Judge +Witberg. “Who struck the first blow?” + +“Your Honor,” Watson pleaded, “I have no witnesses of the actual fray, +and the truth of my story can only be brought out by telling the story +fully--” + +Again he was interrupted. + +“We do not care to publish any magazines here,” Judge Witberg roared, +looking at him so fiercely and malevolently that Watson could scarcely +bring himself to believe that this was same man he had studied a few +minutes previously. + +“Who struck the first blow?” Patsy's attorney asked. + +The Prosecuting Attorney interposed, demanding to know which of the two +cases lumped together was, and by what right Patsy's lawyer, at that +stage of the proceedings, should take the witness. Patsy's attorney +fought back. Judge Witberg interfered, professing no knowledge of any +two cases being lumped together. All this had to be explained. Battle +royal raged, terminating in both attorneys apologizing to the Court and +to each other. And so it went, and to Watson it had the seeming of a +group of pickpockets ruffling and bustling an honest man as they took +his purse. The machine was working, that was all. + +“Why did you enter this place of unsavory reputations?” was asked him. + +“It has been my custom for many years, as a student of economics and +sociology, to acquaint myself--” + +But this was as far as Watson got. + +“We want none of your ologies here,” snarled Judge Witberg. “It is a +plain question. Answer it plainly. Is it true or not true that you were +drunk? That is the gist of the question.” + +When Watson attempted to tell how Patsy had injured his face in his +attempts to bat with his head, Watson was openly scouted and flouted, +and Judge Witberg again took him in hand. + +“Are you aware of the solemnity of the oath you took to testify to +nothing but the truth on this witness stand?” the Judge demanded. “This +is a fairy story you are telling. It is not reasonable that a man would +so injure himself, and continue to injure himself, by striking the soft +and sensitive parts of his face against your head. You are a sensible +man. It is unreasonable, is it not?” + +“Men are unreasonable when they are angry,” Watson answered meekly. + +Then it was that Judge Witberg was deeply outraged and righteously +wrathful. + +“What right have you to say that?” he cried. “It is gratuitous. It has +no bearing on the case. You are here as a witness, sir, of events that +have transpired. The Court does not wish to hear any expressions of +opinion from you at all.” + +“I but answered your question, your Honor,” Watson protested humbly. + +“You did nothing of the sort,” was the next blast. “And let me warn you, +sir, let me warn you, that you are laying yourself liable to contempt by +such insolence. And I will have you know that we know how to observe the +law and the rules of courtesy down here in this little courtroom. I am +ashamed of you.” + +And, while the next punctilious legal wrangle between the attorneys +interrupted his tale of what happened in the Vendome, Carter Watson, +without bitterness, amused and at the same time sad, saw rise before him +the machine, large and small, that dominated his country, the unpunished +and shameless grafts of a thousand cities perpetrated by the spidery +and vermin-like creatures of the machines. Here it was before him, a +courtroom and a judge, bowed down in subservience by the machine to a +dive-keeper who swung a string of votes. Petty and sordid as it was, it +was one face of the many-faced machine that loomed colossally, in every +city and state, in a thousand guises overshadowing the land. + +A familiar phrase rang in his ears: “It is to laugh.” At the height of +the wrangle, he giggled, once, aloud, and earned a sullen frown from +Judge Witberg. Worse, a myriad times, he decided, were these bullying +lawyers and this bullying judge then the bucko mates in first quality +hell-ships, who not only did their own bullying but protected themselves +as well. These petty rapscallions, on the other hand, sought protection +behind the majesty of the law. They struck, but no one was permitted to +strike back, for behind them were the prison cells and the clubs of the +stupid policemen--paid and professional fighters and beaters-up of +men. Yet he was not bitter. The grossness and the sliminess of it was +forgotten in the simple grotesqueness of it, and he had the saving sense +of humor. + +Nevertheless, hectored and heckled though he was, he managed in the end +to give a simple, straightforward version of the affair, and, despite +a belligerent cross-examination, his story was not shaken in any +particular. Quite different it was from the perjuries that had shouted +aloud from the perjuries of Patsy and his two witnesses. + +Both Patsy's attorney and the Prosecuting Attorney rested their +cases, letting everything go before the Court without argument. Watson +protested against this, but was silenced when the Prosecuting Attorney +told him that Public Prosecutor and knew his business. + +“Patrick Horan has testified that he was in danger of his life and that +he was compelled to defend himself,” Judge Witberg's verdict began. “Mr. +Watson has testified to the same thing. Each has sworn that the other +struck the first blow; each has sworn that the other made an unprovoked +assault on him. It is an axiom of the law that the defendant should +be given the benefit of the doubt. A very reasonable doubt exists. +Therefore, in the case of the People Versus Carter Watson the benefit +of the doubt is given to said Carter Watson and he is herewith ordered +discharged from custody. The same reasoning applies to the case of the +People Versus Patrick Horan. He is given the benefit of the doubt and +discharged from custody. My recommendation is that both defendants shake +hands and make up.” + +In the afternoon papers the first headline that caught Watson's eye was: +“CARTER WATSON ACQUITTED.” In the second paper it was: “CARTER WATSON +ESCAPES A FINE.” But what capped everything was the one beginning: +“CARTER WATSON A GOOD FELLOW.” In the text he read how Judge Witberg had +advised both fighters to shake hands, which they promptly did. Further, +he read: + +“'Let's have a nip on it,' said Patsy Horan. + +“'Sure,' said Carter Watson. + +“And, arm in arm, they ambled for the nearest saloon.” + +IV + +Now, from the whole adventure, Watson carried away no bitterness. It was +a social experience of a new order, and it led to the writing of another +book, which he entitled, “POLICE COURT PROCEDURE: A Tentative Analysis.” + +One summer morning a year later, on his ranch, he left his horse and +himself clambered on through a miniature canyon to inspect some rock +ferns he had planted the previous winter. Emerging from the upper end +of the canyon, he came out on one of his flower-spangled meadows, a +delightful isolated spot, screened from the world by low hills and +clumps of trees. And here he found a man, evidently on a stroll from the +summer hotel down at the little town a mile away. They met face to face +and the recognition was mutual. It was Judge Witberg. Also, it was +a clear case of trespass, for Watson had trespass signs upon his +boundaries, though he never enforced them. + +Judge Witberg held out his hand, which Watson refused to see. + +“Politics is a dirty trade, isn't it, Judge?” he remarked. “Oh, yes, +I see your hand, but I don't care to take it. The papers said I shook +hands with Patsy Horan after the trial. You know I did not, but let me +tell you that I'd a thousand times rather shake hands with him and his +vile following of curs, than with you.” + +Judge Witberg was painfully flustered, and as he hemmed and hawed and +essayed to speak, Watson, looking at him, was struck by a sudden whim, +and he determined on a grim and facetious antic. + +“I should scarcely expect any animus from a man of your acquirements and +knowledge of the world,” the Judge was saying. + +“Animus?” Watson replied. “Certainly not. I haven't such a thing in my +nature. And to prove it, let me show you something curious, something +you have never seen before.” Casting about him, Watson picked up a rough +stone the size of his fist. “See this. Watch me.” + +So saying, Carter Watson tapped himself a sharp blow on the cheek. The +stone laid the flesh open to the bone and the blood spurted forth. + +“The stone was too sharp,” he announced to the astounded police judge, +who thought he had gone mad. + +“I must bruise it a trifle. There is nothing like being realistic in +such matters.” + +Whereupon Carter Watson found a smooth stone and with it pounded his +cheek nicely several times. + +“Ah,” he cooed. “That will turn beautifully green and black in a few +hours. It will be most convincing.” + +“You are insane,” Judge Witberg quavered. + +“Don't use such vile language to me,” said Watson. “You see my bruised +and bleeding face? You did that, with that right hand of yours. You hit +me twice--biff, biff. It is a brutal and unprovoked assault. I am in +danger of my life. I must protect myself.” + +Judge Witberg backed away in alarm before the menacing fists of the +other. + +“If you strike me I'll have you arrested,” Judge Witberg threatened. + +“That is what I told Patsy,” was the answer. “And do you know what he +did when I told him that?” + +“No.” + +“That!” + +And at the same moment Watson's right fist landed flush on Judge +Witberg's nose, putting that legal gentleman over on his back on the +grass. + +“Get up!” commanded Watson. “If you are a gentleman, get up--that's what +Patsy told me, you know.” + +Judge Witberg declined to rise, and was dragged to his feet by the +coat-collar, only to have one eye blacked and be put on his back again. +After that it was a red Indian massacre. Judge Witberg was humanely and +scientifically beaten up. His checks were boxed, his cars cuffed, and +his face was rubbed in the turf. And all the time Watson exposited +the way Patsy Horan had done it. Occasionally, and very carefully, the +facetious sociologist administered a real bruising blow. Once, dragging +the poor Judge to his feet, he deliberately bumped his own nose on the +gentleman's head. The nose promptly bled. + +“See that!” cried Watson, stepping back and deftly shedding his blood +all down his own shirt front. “You did it. With your fist you did it. It +is awful. I am fair murdered. I must again defend myself.” + +And once more Judge Witberg impacted his features on a fist and was sent +to grass. + +“I will have you arrested,” he sobbed as he lay. + +“That's what Patsy said.” + +“A brutal---sniff, sniff,--and unprovoked--sniff, sniff--assault.” + +“That's what Patsy said.” + +“I will surely have you arrested.” + +“Speaking slangily, not if I can beat you to it.” + +And with that, Carter Watson departed down the canyon, mounted his +horse, and rode to town. + +An hour later, as Judge Witberg limped up the grounds to his hotel, he +was arrested by a village constable on a charge of assault and battery +preferred by Carter Watson. + +V + +“Your Honor,” Watson said next day to the village Justice, a well to +do farmer and graduate, thirty years before, from a cow college, “since +this Sol Witberg has seen fit to charge me with battery, following upon +my charge of battery against him, I would suggest that both cases +be lumped together. The testimony and the facts are the same in both +cases.” + +To this the Justice agreed, and the double case proceeded. Watson, as +prosecuting witness, first took the stand and told his story. + +“I was picking flowers,” he testified. “Picking flowers on my own land, +never dreaming of danger. Suddenly this man rushed upon me from behind +the trees. 'I am the Dodo,' he says, 'and I can do you to a frazzle. +Put up your hands.' I smiled, but with that, biff, biff, he struck +me, knocking me down and spilling my flowers. The language he used was +frightful. It was an unprovoked and brutal assault. Look at my cheek. +Look at my nose--I could not understand it. He must have been drunk. +Before I recovered from my surprise he had administered this beating. +I was in danger of my life and was compelled to defend himself. That +is all, Your Honor, though I must say, in conclusion, that I cannot +get over my perplexity. Why did he say he was the Dodo? Why did he so +wantonly attack me?” + +And thus was Sol Witberg given a liberal education in the art of +perjury. Often, from his high seat, he had listened indulgently to +police court perjuries in cooked-up cases; but for the first time +perjury was directed against him, and he no longer sat above the court, +with the bailiffs, the Policemen's clubs, and the prison cells behind +him. + +“Your Honor,” he cried, “never have I heard such a pack of lies told by +so bare-faced a liar--!” + +Watson here sprang to his feet. + +“Your Honor, I protest. It is for your Honor to decide truth or +falsehood. The witness is on the stand to testify to actual events that +have transpired. His personal opinion upon things in general, and upon +me, has no bearing on the case whatever.” + +The Justice scratched his head and waxed phlegmatically indignant. + +“The point is well taken,” he decided. “I am surprised at you, Mr. +Witberg, claiming to be a judge and skilled in the practice of the law, +and yet being guilty of such unlawyerlike conduct. Your manner, sir, and +your methods, remind me of a shyster. This is a simple case of assault +and battery. We are here to determine who struck the first blow, and we +are not interested in your estimates of Mr. Watson's personal character. +Proceed with your story.” + +Sol Witberg would have bitten his bruised and swollen lip in chagrin, +had it not hurt so much. But he contained himself and told a simple, +straightforward, truthful story. + +“Your Honor,” Watson said, “I would suggest that you ask him what he was +doing on my premises.” + +“A very good question. What were you doing, sir, on Mr. Watson's +premises?” + +“I did not know they were his premises.” + +“It was a trespass, your Honor,” Watson cried. “The warnings are posted +conspicuously.” + +“I saw no warnings,” said Sol Witberg. + +“I have seen them myself,” snapped the Justice. “They are very +conspicuous. And I would warn you, sir, that if you palter with +the truth in such little matters you may darken your more important +statements with suspicion. Why did you strike Mr. Watson?” + +“Your Honor, as I have testified, I did not strike a blow.” + +The Justice looked at Carter Watson's bruised and swollen visage, and +turned to glare at Sol Witberg. + +“Look at that man's cheek!” he thundered. “If you did not strike a blow +how comes it that he is so disfigured and injured?” + +“As I testified--” + +“Be careful,” the Justice warned. + +“I will be careful, sir. I will say nothing but the truth. He struck +himself with a rock. He struck himself with two different rocks.” + +“Does it stand to reason that a man, any man not a lunatic, would so +injure himself, and continue to injure himself, by striking the soft and +sensitive parts of his face with a stone?” Carter Watson demanded + +“It sounds like a fairy story,” was the Justice's comment. + +“Mr. Witberg, had you been drinking?” + +“No, sir.” + +“Do you never drink?” + +“On occasion.” + +The Justice meditated on this answer with an air of astute profundity. + +Watson took advantage of the opportunity to wink at Sol Witberg, but +that much-abused gentleman saw nothing humorous in the situation. + +“A very peculiar case, a very peculiar case,” the Justice announced, +as he began his verdict. “The evidence of the two parties is flatly +contradictory. There are no witnesses outside the two principals. Each +claims the other committed the assault, and I have no legal way of +determining the truth. But I have my private opinion, Mr. Witberg, and +I would recommend that henceforth you keep off of Mr. Watson's premises +and keep away from this section of the country--” + +“This is an outrage!” Sol Witberg blurted out. + +“Sit down, sir!” was the Justice's thundered command. “If you interrupt +the Court in this manner again, I shall fine you for contempt. And I +warn you I shall fine you heavily--you, a judge yourself, who should be +conversant with the courtesy and dignity of courts. I shall now give my +verdict: + +“It is a rule of law that the defendant shall be given the benefit of +the doubt. As I have said, and I repeat, there is no legal way for me +to determine who struck the first blow. Therefore, and much to my +regret,”--here he paused and glared at Sol Witberg--“in each of these +cases I am compelled to give the defendant the benefit of the doubt. +Gentlemen, you are both dismissed.” + +“Let us have a nip on it,” Watson said to Witberg, as they left the +courtroom; but that outraged person refused to lock arms and amble to +the nearest saloon. + + + + +WINGED BLACKMAIL + +PETER WINN lay back comfortably in a library chair, with closed eyes, +deep in the cogitation of a scheme of campaign destined in the near +future to make a certain coterie of hostile financiers sit up. The +central idea had come to him the night before, and he was now reveling +in the planning of the remoter, minor details. By obtaining control of a +certain up-country bank, two general stores, and several logging camps, +he could come into control of a certain dinky jerkwater line which shall +here be nameless, but which, in his hands, would prove the key to a +vastly larger situation involving more main-line mileage almost than +there were spikes in the aforesaid dinky jerkwater. It was so simple +that he had almost laughed aloud when it came to him. No wonder those +astute and ancient enemies of his had passed it by. + +The library door opened, and a slender, middle-aged man, weak-eyed and +eye glassed, entered. In his hands was an envelope and an open letter. +As Peter Winn's secretary it was his task to weed out, sort, and +classify his employer's mail. + +“This came in the morning post,” he ventured apologetically and with +the hint of a titter. “Of course it doesn't amount to anything, but I +thought you would like to see it.” + +“Read it,” Peter Winn commanded, without opening his eyes. + +The secretary cleared his throat. + +“It is dated July seventeenth, but is without address. Postmark San +Francisco. It is also quite illiterate. The spelling is atrocious. Here +it is: + +“Mr. Peter Winn, SIR: I send you respectfully by express a pigeon worth +good money. She's a loo-loo--” + +“What is a loo-loo?” Peter Winn interrupted. + +The secretary tittered. + +“I'm sure I don't know, except that it must be a superlative of some +sort. The letter continues: + +“Please freight it with a couple of thousand-dollar bills and let it go. +If you do I wont never annoy you no more. If you dont you will be sorry. + +“That is all. It is unsigned. I thought it would amuse you.” + +“Has the pigeon come?” Peter Winn demanded. + +“I'm sure I never thought to enquire.” + +“Then do so.” + +In five minutes the secretary was back. + +“Yes, sir. It came this morning.” + +“Then bring it in.” + +The secretary was inclined to take the affair as a practical joke, but +Peter Winn, after an examination of the pigeon, thought otherwise. + +“Look at it,” he said, stroking and handling it. “See the length of the +body and that elongated neck. A proper carrier. I doubt if I've ever +seen a finer specimen. Powerfully winged and muscled. As our unknown +correspondent remarked, she is a loo-loo. It's a temptation to keep +her.” + +The secretary tittered. + +“Why not? Surely you will not let it go back to the writer of that +letter.” + +Peter Winn shook his head. + +“I'll answer. No man can threaten me, even anonymously or in foolery.” + +On a slip of paper he wrote the succinct message, “Go to hell,” signed +it, and placed it in the carrying apparatus with which the bird had been +thoughtfully supplied. + +“Now we'll let her loose. Where's my son? I'd like him to see the +flight.” + +“He's down in the workshop. He slept there last night, and had his +breakfast sent down this morning.” + +“He'll break his neck yet,” Peter Winn remarked, half-fiercely, +half-proudly, as he led the way to the veranda. + +Standing at the head of the broad steps, he tossed the pretty creature +outward and upward. She caught herself with a quick beat of wings, +fluttered about undecidedly for a space, then rose in the air. + +Again, high up, there seemed indecision; then, apparently getting her +bearings, she headed east, over the oak-trees that dotted the park-like +grounds. + +“Beautiful, beautiful,” Peter Winn murmured. “I almost wish I had her +back.” + +But Peter Winn was a very busy man, with such large plans in his head +and with so many reins in his hands that he quickly forgot the incident. +Three nights later the left wing of his country house was blown up. It +was not a heavy explosion, and nobody was hurt, though the wing itself +was ruined. Most of the windows of the rest of the house were broken, +and there was a deal of general damage. By the first ferry boat of the +morning half a dozen San Francisco detectives arrived, and several hours +later the secretary, in high excitement, erupted on Peter Winn. + +“It's come!” the secretary gasped, the sweat beading his forehead and +his eyes bulging behind their glasses. + +“What has come?” Peter demanded. “It--the--the loo-loo bird.” + +Then the financier understood. + +“Have you gone over the mail yet?” + +“I was just going over it, sir.” + +“Then continue, and see if you can find another letter from our +mysterious friend, the pigeon fancier.” + +The letter came to light. It read: + +Mr. Peter Winn, HONORABLE SIR: Now dont be a fool. If youd came through, +your shack would not have blew up--I beg to inform you respectfully, +am sending same pigeon. Take good care of same, thank you. Put five one +thousand dollar bills on her and let her go. Dont feed her. Dont try to +follow bird. She is wise to the way now and makes better time. If you +dont come through, watch out. + +Peter Winn was genuinely angry. This time he indited no message for the +pigeon to carry. Instead, he called in the detectives, and, under their +advice, weighted the pigeon heavily with shot. Her previous flight +having been eastward toward the bay, the fastest motor-boat in Tiburon +was commissioned to take up the chase if it led out over the water. + +But too much shot had been put on the carrier, and she was exhausted +before the shore was reached. Then the mistake was made of putting too +little shot on her, and she rose high in the air, got her bearings and +started eastward across San Francisco Bay. She flew straight over Angel +Island, and here the motor-boat lost her, for it had to go around the +island. + +That night, armed guards patrolled the grounds. But there was no +explosion. Yet, in the early morning Peter Winn learned by telephone +that his sister's home in Alameda had been burned to the ground. + +Two days later the pigeon was back again, coming this time by freight in +what had seemed a barrel of potatoes. Also came another letter: + +Mr. Peter Winn, RESPECTABLE SIR: It was me that fixed yr sisters house. +You have raised hell, aint you. Send ten thousand now. Going up all the +time. Dont put any more handicap weights on that bird. You sure cant +follow her, and its cruelty to animals. + +Peter Winn was ready to acknowledge himself beaten. The detectives +were powerless, and Peter did not know where next the man would +strike--perhaps at the lives of those near and dear to him. He even +telephoned to San Francisco for ten thousand dollars in bills of large +denomination. But Peter had a son, Peter Winn, Junior, with the +same firm-set jaw as his fathers, and the same knitted, brooding +determination in his eyes. He was only twenty-six, but he was all man, a +secret terror and delight to the financier, who alternated between pride +in his son's aeroplane feats and fear for an untimely and terrible end. + +“Hold on, father, don't send that money,” said Peter Winn, Junior. +“Number Eight is ready, and I know I've at last got that reefing down +fine. It will work, and it will revolutionize flying. Speed--that's +what's needed, and so are the large sustaining surfaces for getting +started and for altitude. I've got them both. Once I'm up I reef down. +There it is. The smaller the sustaining surface, the higher the speed. +That was the law discovered by Langley. And I've applied it. I can rise +when the air is calm and full of holes, and I can rise when its boiling, +and by my control of my plane areas I can come pretty close to making +any speed I want. Especially with that new Sangster-Endholm engine.” + +“You'll come pretty close to breaking your neck one of these days,” was +his father's encouraging remark. + +“Dad, I'll tell you what I'll come pretty close to-ninety miles an +hour--Yes, and a hundred. Now listen! I was going to make a trial +tomorrow. But it won't take two hours to start today. I'll tackle it +this afternoon. Keep that money. Give me the pigeon and I'll follow her +to her loft where ever it is. Hold on, let me talk to the mechanics.” + +He called up the workshop, and in crisp, terse sentences gave his orders +in a way that went to the older man's heart. Truly, his one son was a +chip off the old block, and Peter Winn had no meek notions concerning +the intrinsic value of said old block. + +Timed to the minute, the young man, two hours later, was ready for the +start. In a holster at his hip, for instant use, cocked and with the +safety on, was a large-caliber automatic pistol. With a final inspection +and overhauling he took his seat in the aeroplane. He started the +engine, and with a wild burr of gas explosions the beautiful fabric +darted down the launching ways and lifted into the air. Circling, as he +rose, to the west, he wheeled about and jockeyed and maneuvered for the +real start of the race. + +This start depended on the pigeon. Peter Winn held it. Nor was it +weighted with shot this time. Instead, half a yard of bright ribbon was +firmly attached to its leg--this the more easily to enable its flight +being followed. Peter Winn released it, and it arose easily enough +despite the slight drag of the ribbon. There was no uncertainty about +its movements. This was the third time it had made particular homing +passage, and it knew the course. + +At an altitude of several hundred feet it straightened out and went due +east. The aeroplane swerved into a straight course from its last curve +and followed. The race was on. Peter Winn, looking up, saw that the +pigeon was outdistancing the machine. Then he saw something else. The +aeroplane suddenly and instantly became smaller. It had reefed. Its +high-speed plane-design was now revealed. Instead of the generous +spread of surface with which it had taken the air, it was now a lean and +hawklike monoplane balanced on long and exceedingly narrow wings. + +***** + +When young Winn reefed down so suddenly, he received a surprise. It +was his first trial of the new device, and while he was prepared for +increased speed he was not prepared for such an astonishing increase. It +was better than he dreamed, and, before he knew it, he was hard upon +the pigeon. That little creature, frightened by this, the most monstrous +hawk it had ever seen, immediately darted upward, after the manner of +pigeons that strive always to rise above a hawk. + +In great curves the monoplane followed upward, higher and higher into +the blue. It was difficult, from underneath to see the pigeon, and young +Winn dared not lose it from his sight. He even shook out his reefs in +order to rise more quickly. Up, up they went, until the pigeon, true +to its instinct, dropped and struck at what it thought to be the back of +its pursuing enemy. Once was enough, for, evidently finding no life in +the smooth cloth surface of the machine, it ceased soaring and +straightened out on its eastward course. + +A carrier pigeon on a passage can achieve a high rate of speed, and +Winn reefed again. And again, to his satisfaction, he found that he was +beating the pigeon. But this time he quickly shook out a portion of his +reefed sustaining surface and slowed down in time. From then on he knew +he had the chase safely in hand, and from then on a chant rose to his +lips which he continued to sing at intervals, and unconsciously, for the +rest of the passage. It was: “Going some; going some; what did I tell +you!--going some.” + +Even so, it was not all plain sailing. The air is an unstable medium at +best, and quite without warning, at an acute angle, he entered an aerial +tide which he recognized as the gulf stream of wind that poured through +the drafty-mouthed Golden Gate. His right wing caught it first--a +sudden, sharp puff that lifted and tilted the monoplane and threatened +to capsize it. But he rode with a sensitive “loose curb,” and quickly, +but not too quickly, he shifted the angles of his wing-tips, depressed +the front horizontal rudder, and swung over the rear vertical rudder to +meet the tilting thrust of the wind. As the machine came back to an even +keel, and he knew that he was now wholly in the invisible stream, he +readjusted the wing-tips, rapidly away from him during the several +moments of his discomfiture. + +The pigeon drove straight on for the Alameda County shore, and it +was near this shore that Winn had another experience. He fell into an +air-hole. He had fallen into air-holes before, in previous flights, but +this was a far larger one than he had ever encountered. With his eyes +strained on the ribbon attached to the pigeon, by that fluttering bit of +color he marked his fall. Down he went, at the pit of his stomach that +old sink sensation which he had known as a boy he first negotiated +quick-starting elevators. But Winn, among other secrets of aviation, had +learned that to go up it was sometimes necessary first to go down. +The air had refused to hold him. Instead of struggling futilely and +perilously against this lack of sustension, he yielded to it. With +steady head and hand, he depressed the forward horizontal rudder--just +recklessly enough and not a fraction more--and the monoplane dived head +foremost and sharply down the void. It was falling with the keenness of +a knife-blade. Every instant the speed accelerated frightfully. Thus +he accumulated the momentum that would save him. But few instants were +required, when, abruptly shifting the double horizontal rudders forward +and astern, he shot upward on the tense and straining plane and out of +the pit. + +At an altitude of five hundred feet, the pigeon drove on over the town +of Berkeley and lifted its flight to the Contra Costa hills. Young Winn +noted the campus and buildings of the University of California--his +university--as he rose after the pigeon. + +Once more, on these Contra Costa hills, he early came to grief. The +pigeon was now flying low, and where a grove of eucalyptus presented a +solid front to the wind, the bird was suddenly sent fluttering wildly +upward for a distance of a hundred feet. Winn knew what it meant. It had +been caught in an air-surf that beat upward hundreds of feet where +the fresh west wind smote the upstanding wall of the grove. He reefed +hastily to the uttermost, and at the same time depressed the angle of +his flight to meet that upward surge. Nevertheless, the monoplane was +tossed fully three hundred feet before the danger was left astern. + +Two or more ranges of hills the pigeon crossed, and then Winn saw it +dropping down to a landing where a small cabin stood in a hillside +clearing. He blessed that clearing. Not only was it good for alighting, +but, on account of the steepness of the slope, it was just the thing for +rising again into the air. + +A man, reading a newspaper, had just started up at the sight of the +returning pigeon, when he heard the burr of Winn's engine and saw the +huge monoplane, with all surfaces set, drop down upon him, stop suddenly +on an air-cushion manufactured on the spur of the moment by a shift of +the horizontal rudders, glide a few yards, strike ground, and come to +rest not a score of feet away from him. But when he saw a young man, +calmly sitting in the machine and leveling a pistol at him, the man +turned to run. Before he could make the corner of the cabin, a bullet +through the leg brought him down in a sprawling fall. + +“What do you want!” he demanded sullenly, as the other stood over him. + +“I want to take you for a ride in my new machine,” Winn answered. +“Believe me, she is a loo-loo.” + +The man did not argue long, for this strange visitor had most convincing +ways. Under Winn's instructions, covered all the time by the pistol, +the man improvised a tourniquet and applied it to his wounded leg. Winn +helped him to a seat in the machine, then went to the pigeon-loft and +took possession of the bird with the ribbon still fast to its leg. + +A very tractable prisoner, the man proved. Once up in the air, he sat +close, in an ecstasy of fear. An adept at winged blackmail, he had no +aptitude for wings himself, and when he gazed down at the flying land +and water far beneath him, he did not feel moved to attack his captor, +now defenseless, both hands occupied with flight. + +Instead, the only way the man felt moved was to sit closer. + +***** + +Peter Winn, Senior, scanning the heavens with powerful glasses, saw +the monoplane leap into view and grow large over the rugged backbone +of Angel Island. Several minutes later he cried out to the waiting +detectives that the machine carried a passenger. Dropping swiftly and +piling up an abrupt air-cushion, the monoplane landed. + +“That reefing device is a winner!” young Winn cried, as he climbed out. +“Did you see me at the start? I almost ran over the pigeon. Going some, +dad! Going some! What did I tell you? Going some!” + +“But who is that with you?” his father demanded. + +The young man looked back at his prisoner and remembered. + +“Why, that's the pigeon-fancier,” he said. “I guess the officers can +take care of him.” + +Peter Winn gripped his son's hand in grim silence, and fondled the +pigeon which his son had passed to him. Again he fondled the pretty +creature. Then he spoke. + +“Exhibit A, for the People,” he said. + + + + +BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES + +ARRANGEMENTS quite extensive had been made for the celebration of +Christmas on the yacht Samoset. Not having been in any civilized port +for months, the stock of provisions boasted few delicacies; yet Minnie +Duncan had managed to devise real feasts for cabin and forecastle. + +“Listen, Boyd,” she told her husband. “Here are the menus. For the cabin, +raw bonita native style, turtle soup, omelette a la Samoset--” + +“What the dickens?” Boyd Duncan interrupted. + +“Well, if you must know, I found a tin of mushrooms and a package of +egg-powder which had fallen down behind the locker, and there are other +things as well that will go into it. But don't interrupt. Boiled yam, +fried taro, alligator pear salad--there, you've got me all mixed, Then +I found a last delectable half-pound of dried squid. There will be baked +beans Mexican, if I can hammer it into Toyama's head; also, baked papaia +with Marquesan honey, and, lastly, a wonderful pie the secret of which +Toyama refuses to divulge.” + +“I wonder if it is possible to concoct a punch or a cocktail out of +trade rum?” Duncan muttered gloomily. + +“Oh! I forgot! Come with me.” + +His wife caught his hand and led him through the small connecting door +to her tiny stateroom. Still holding his hand, she fished in the depths +of a hat-locker and brought forth a pint bottle of champagne. + +“The dinner is complete!” he cried. + +“Wait.” + +She fished again, and was rewarded with a silver-mounted whisky flask. +She held it to the light of a port-hole, and the liquor showed a quarter +of the distance from the bottom. + +“I've been saving it for weeks,” she explained. “And there's enough for +you and Captain Dettmar.” + +“Two mighty small drinks,” Duncan complained. + +“There would have been more, but I gave a drink to Lorenzo when he was +sick.” + +Duncan growled, “Might have given him rum,” facetiously. + +“The nasty stuff! For a sick man? Don't be greedy, Boyd. And I'm glad +there isn't any more, for Captain Dettmar's sake. Drinking always makes +him irritable. And now for the men's dinner. Soda crackers, sweet cakes, +candy--” + +“Substantial, I must say.” + +“Do hush. Rice, and curry, yam, taro, bonita, of course, a big cake +Toyama is making, young pig--” + +“Oh, I say,” he protested. + +“It is all right, Boyd. We'll be in Attu-Attu in three days. Besides, +it's my pig. That old chief what-ever-his-name distinctly presented it +to me. You saw him yourself. And then two tins of bullamacow. That's +their dinner. And now about the presents. Shall we wait until tomorrow, +or give them this evening?” + +“Christmas Eve, by all means,” was the man's judgment. “We'll call all +hands at eight bells; I'll give them a tot of rum all around, and then +you give the presents. Come on up on deck. It's stifling down here. I +hope Lorenzo has better luck with the dynamo; without the fans there +won't be much sleeping to-night if we're driven below.” + +They passed through the small main-cabin, climbed a steep companion +ladder, and emerged on deck. The sun was setting, and the promise was +for a clear tropic night. The Samoset, with fore- and main-sail winged +out on either side, was slipping a lazy four-knots through the smooth +sea. Through the engine-room skylight came a sound of hammering. They +strolled aft to where Captain Dettmar, one foot on the rail, was +oiling the gear of the patent log. At the wheel stood a tall South Sea +Islander, clad in white undershirt and scarlet hip-cloth. + +Boyd Duncan was an original. At least that was the belief of his +friends. Of comfortable fortune, with no need to do anything but take +his comfort, he elected to travel about the world in outlandish and +most uncomfortable ways. Incidentally, he had ideas about coral-reefs, +disagreed profoundly with Darwin on that subject, had voiced his opinion +in several monographs and one book, and was now back at his hobby, +cruising the South Seas in a tiny, thirty-ton yacht and studying +reef-formations. + +His wife, Minnie Duncan, was also declared an original, inasmuch as she +joyfully shared his vagabond wanderings. Among other things, in the six +exciting years of their marriage she had climbed Chimborazo with him, +made a three-thousand-mile winter journey with dogs and sleds in Alaska, +ridden a horse from Canada to Mexico, cruised the Mediterranean in a +ten-ton yawl, and canoed from Germany to the Black Sea across the +heart of Europe. They were a royal pair of wanderlusters, he, big and +broad-shouldered, she a small, brunette, and happy woman, whose one +hundred and fifteen pounds were all grit and endurance, and withal, +pleasing to look upon. + +The Samoset had been a trading schooner, when Duncan bought her in San +Francisco and made alterations. Her interior was wholly rebuilt, so that +the hold became main-cabin and staterooms, while abaft amidships were +installed engines, a dynamo, an ice machine, storage batteries, and, +far in the stern, gasoline tanks. Necessarily, she carried a small crew. +Boyd, Minnie, and Captain Dettmar were the only whites on board, though +Lorenzo, the small and greasy engineer, laid a part claim to white, +being a Portuguese half-caste. A Japanese served as cook, and a Chinese +as cabin boy. Four white sailors had constituted the original crew +for'ard, but one by one they had yielded to the charms of palm-waving +South Sea isles and been replaced by islanders. Thus, one of the dusky +sailors hailed from Easter Island, a second from the Carolines, a third +from the Paumotus, while the fourth was a gigantic Samoan. At sea, Boyd +Duncan, himself a navigator, stood a mate's watch with Captain Dettmar, +and both of them took a wheel or lookout occasionally. On a pinch, +Minnie herself could take a wheel, and it was on pinches that she proved +herself more dependable at steering than did the native sailors. + +At eight bells, all hands assembled at the wheel, and Boyd Duncan +appeared with a black bottle and a mug. The rum he served out himself, +half a mug of it to each man. They gulped the stuff down with many +facial expressions of delight, followed by loud lip-smackings of +approval, though the liquor was raw enough and corrosive enough to burn +their mucous membranes. All drank except Lee Goom, the abstemious +cabin boy. This rite accomplished, they waited for the next, the +present-giving. Generously molded on Polynesian lines, huge-bodied and +heavy-muscled, they were nevertheless like so many children, laughing +merrily at little things, their eager black eyes flashing in the lantern +light as their big bodies swayed to the heave and roll of the ship. + +Calling each by name, Minnie gave the presents out, accompanying each +presentation with some happy remark that added to the glee. There +were trade watches, clasp knives, amazing assortments of fish-hooks +in packages, plug tobacco, matches, and gorgeous strips of cotton for +loincloths all around. That Boyd Duncan was liked by them was evidenced +by the roars of laughter with which they greeted his slightest joking +allusion. + +Captain Dettmar, white-faced, smiling only when his employer chanced to +glance at him, leaned against the wheel-box, looking on. Twice, he left +the group and went below, remaining there but a minute each time. Later, +in the main cabin, when Lorenzo, Lee Goom and Toyama received their +presents, he disappeared into his stateroom twice again. For of all +times, the devil that slumbered in Captain Dettmar's soul chose this +particular time of good cheer to awaken. Perhaps it was not entirely the +devil's fault, for Captain Dettmar, privily cherishing a quart of whisky +for many weeks, had selected Christmas Eve for broaching it. + +It was still early in the evening--two bells had just gone--when Duncan +and his wife stood by the cabin companionway, gazing to windward and +canvassing the possibility of spreading their beds on deck. A small, +dark blot of cloud, slowly forming on the horizon, carried the threat +of a rain-squall, and it was this they were discussing when Captain +Dettmar, coming from aft and about to go below, glanced at them with +sudden suspicion. He paused, his face working spasmodically. Then he +spoke: + +“You are talking about me.” + +His voice was hoarse, and there was an excited vibration in it. Minnie +Duncan started, then glanced at her husband's immobile face, took the +cue, and remained silent. + +“I say you were talking about me,” Captain Dettmar repeated, this time +with almost a snarl. + +He did not lurch nor betray the liquor on him in any way save by the +convulsive working of his face. + +“Minnie, you'd better go down,” Duncan said gently. “Tell Lee Goom we'll +sleep below. It won't be long before that squall is drenching things.” + +She took the hint and left, delaying just long enough to give one +anxious glance at the dim faces of the two men. + +Duncan puffed at his cigar and waited till his wife's voice, in talk +with the cabin-boy, came up through the open skylight. + +“Well?” Duncan demanded in a low voice, but sharply. + +“I said you were talking about me. I say it again. Oh, I haven't been +blind. Day after day I've seen the two of you talking about me. Why +don't you come out and say it to my face! I know you know. And I know +your mind's made up to discharge me at Attu-Attu.” + +“I am sorry you are making such a mess of everything,” was Duncan's +quiet reply. + +But Captain Dettmar's mind was set on trouble. + +“You know you are going to discharge me. You think you are too good to +associate with the likes of me--you and your wife.” + +“Kindly keep her out of this,” Duncan warned. “What do you want?” + +“I want to know what you are going to do!” + +“Discharge you, after this, at Attu-Attu.” + +“You intended to, all along.” + +“On the contrary. It is your present conduct that compels me.” + +“You can't give me that sort of talk.” + +“I can't retain a captain who calls me a liar.” + +Captain Dettmar for the moment was taken aback. His face and lips +worked, but he could say nothing. Duncan coolly pulled at his cigar and +glanced aft at the rising cloud of squall. + +“Lee Goom brought the mail aboard at Tahiti,” Captain Dettmar began. + +“We were hove short then and leaving. You didn't look at your letters +until we were outside, and then it was too late. That's why you didn't +discharge me at Tahiti. Oh, I know. I saw the long envelope when Lee +Goom came over the side. It was from the Governor of California, printed +on the corner for any one to see. You'd been working behind my back. +Some beachcomber in Honolulu had whispered to you, and you'd written to +the Governor to find out. And that was his answer Lee Goom carried +out to you. Why didn't you come to me like a man! No, you must play +underhand with me, knowing that this billet was the one chance for me to +get on my feet again. And as soon as you read the Governor's letter your +mind was made up to get rid of me. I've seen it on your face ever since +for all these months.. I've seen the two of you, polite as hell to me +all the time, and getting away in corners and talking about me and that +affair in 'Frisco.” + +“Are you done?” Duncan asked, his voice low, and tense. “Quite done?” + +Captain Dettmar made no answer. + +“Then I'll tell you a few things. It was precisely because of that +affair in 'Frisco that I did not discharge you in Tahiti. God knows you +gave me sufficient provocation. I thought that if ever a man needed a +chance to rehabilitate himself, you were that man. Had there been no +black mark against you, I would have discharged you when I learned how +you were robbing me.” + +Captain Dettmar showed surprise, started to interrupt, then changed his +mind. + +“There was that matter of the deck-calking, the bronze rudder-irons, the +overhauling of the engine, the new spinnaker boom, the new davits, and +the repairs to the whale-boat. You OKd the shipyard bill. It was four +thousand one hundred and twenty-two francs. By the regular shipyard +charges it ought not to have been a centime over twenty-five hundred +francs-” + +“If you take the word of those alongshore sharks against mine--' the +other began thickly. + +“Save yourself the trouble of further lying,” Duncan went on coldly. +“I looked it up. I got Flaubin before the Governor himself, and the old +rascal confessed to sixteen hundred overcharge. Said you'd stuck him up +for it. Twelve hundred went to you, and his share was four hundred and +the job. Don't interrupt. I've got his affidavit below. Then was when I +would have put you ashore, except for the cloud you were under. You had +to have this one chance or go clean to hell. I gave you the chance. And +what have you got to say about it?” + +“What did the Governor say?” Captain Dettmar demanded truculently. + +“Which governor?” + +“Of California. Did he lie to you like all the rest?” + +“I'll tell you what he said. He said that you had been convicted on +circumstantial evidence; that was why you had got life imprisonment +instead of hanging; that you had always stoutly maintained your +innocence; that you were the black sheep of the Maryland Dettmars; that +they moved heaven and earth for your pardon; that your prison conduct +was most exemplary; that he was prosecuting attorney at the time you +were convicted; that after you had served seven years he yielded to your +family's plea and pardoned you; and that in his own mind existed a doubt +that you had killed McSweeny.” + +There was a pause, during which Duncan went on studying the rising +squall, while Captain Dettmar's face worked terribly. + +“Well, the Governor was wrong,” he announced, with a short laugh. “I did +kill McSweeny. I did get the watchman drunk that night. I beat McSweeny +to death in his bunk. I used the iron belaying pin that appeared in the +evidence. He never had a chance. I beat him to a jelly. Do you want the +details?” + +Duncan looked at him in the curious way one looks at any monstrosity, +but made no reply. + +“Oh, I'm not afraid to tell you,” Captain Dettmar blustered on. “There +are no witnesses. Besides, I am a free man now. I am pardoned, and by +God they can never put me back in that hole again. I broke McSweeny's +jaw with the first blow. He was lying on his back asleep. He said, 'My +God, Jim! My God!' It was funny to see his broken jaw wabble as he said +it. Then I smashed him... I say, do you want the rest of the details?” + +“Is that all you have to say?” was the answer. + +“Isn't it enough?” Captain Dettmar retorted. + +“It is enough.” + +“What are you going to do about it?” + +“Put you ashore at Attu-Attu.” + +“And in the meantime?” + +“In the meantime...” Duncan paused. An increase of weight in the wind +rippled his hair. The stars overhead vanished, and the Samoset swung +four points off her course in the careless steersman's hands. “In the +meantime throw your halyards down on deck and look to your wheel. I'll +call the men.” + +The next moment the squall burst upon them. Captain Dettmar, springing +aft, lifted the coiled mainsail halyards from their pins and threw them, +ready to run, on the deck. The three islanders swarmed from the tiny +forecastle, two of them leaping to the halyards and holding by a single +turn, while the third fastened down the engineroom, companion and +swung the ventilators around. Below, Lee Goom and Toyama were lowering +skylight covers and screwing up deadeyes. Duncan pulled shut the cover +of the companion scuttle, and held on, waiting, the first drops of rain +pelting his face, while the Samoset leaped violently ahead, at the same +time heeling first to starboard then to port as the gusty pressures +caught her winged-out sails. + +All waited. But there was no need to lower away on the run. The +power went out of the wind, and the tropic rain poured a deluge over +everything. Then it was, the danger past, and as the Kanakas began to +coil the halyards back on the pins, that Boyd Duncan went below. + +“All right,” he called in cheerily to his wife. “Only a puff.” + +“And Captain Dettmar?” she queried. + +“Has been drinking, that is all. I shall get rid of him at Attu-Attu.” + +But before Duncan climbed into his bunk, he strapped around himself, +against the skin and under his pajama coat, a heavy automatic pistol. + +He fell asleep almost immediately, for his was the gift of perfect +relaxation. He did things tensely, in the way savages do, but the +instant the need passed he relaxed, mind and body. So it was that he +slept, while the rain still poured on deck and the yacht plunged and +rolled in the brief, sharp sea caused by the squall. + +He awoke with a feeling of suffocation and heaviness. The electric fans +had stopped, and the air was thick and stifling. Mentally cursing +all Lorenzos and storage batteries, he heard his wife moving in the +adjoining stateroom and pass out into the main cabin. Evidently heading +for the fresher air on deck, he thought, and decided it was a good +example to imitate. Putting on his slippers and tucking a pillow and a +blanket under his arm, he followed her. As he was about to emerge from +the companionway, the ship's clock in the cabin began to strike and he +stopped to listen. Four bells sounded. It was two in the morning. From +without came the creaking of the gaff-jaw against the mast. The Samoset +rolled and righted on a sea, and in the light breeze her canvas gave +forth a hollow thrum. + +He was just putting his foot out on the damp deck when he heard his +wife scream. It was a startled frightened scream that ended in a splash +overside. He leaped out and ran aft. In the dim starlight he could make +out her head and shoulders disappearing astern in the lazy wake. + +“What was it?” Captain Dettmar, who was at the wheel, asked. + +“Mrs. Duncan,” was Duncan's reply, as he tore the life-buoy from its +hook and flung it aft. “Jibe over to starboard and come up on the wind!” + he commanded. + +And then Boyd Duncan made a mistake. He dived overboard. + +When he came up, he glimpsed the blue-light on the buoy, which had +ignited automatically when it struck the water. He swam for it, and +found Minnie had reached it first. + +“Hello,” he said. “Just trying to keep cool?” + +“Oh, Boyd!” was her answer, and one wet hand reached out and touched +his. + +The blue light, through deterioration or damage, flickered out. As they +lifted on the smooth crest of a wave, Duncan turned to look where the +Samoset made a vague blur in the darkness. No lights showed, but there +was noise of confusion. He could hear Captain Dettmar's shouting above +the cries of the others. + +“I must say he's taking his time,” Duncan grumbled. “Why doesn't he +jibe? There she goes now.” + +They could hear the rattle of the boom tackle blocks as the sail was +eased across. + +“That was the mainsail,” he muttered. “Jibed to port when I told him +starboard.” + +Again they lifted on a wave, and again and again, ere they could make +out the distant green of the Samoset's starboard light. But instead of +remaining stationary, in token that the yacht was coming toward them, it +began moving across their field of vision. Duncan swore. + +“What's the lubber holding over there for!” he demanded. “He's got his +compass. He knows our bearing.” + +But the green light, which was all they could see, and which they could +see only when they were on top of a wave, moved steadily away from them, +withal it was working up to windward, and grew dim and dimmer. Duncan +called out loudly and repeatedly, and each time, in the intervals, they +could hear, very faintly, the voice of Captain Dettmar shouting orders. + +“How can he hear me with such a racket?” Duncan complained. + +“He's doing it so the crew won't hear you,” was Minnie's answer. + +There was something in the quiet way she said it that caught her +husband's attention. + +“What do you mean?” + +“I mean that he is not trying to pick us up,” she went on in the same +composed voice. “He threw me overboard.” + +“You are not making a mistake?” + +“How could I? I was at the main rigging, looking to see if any more +rain threatened. He must have left the wheel and crept behind me. I was +holding on to a stay with one hand. He gripped my hand free from behind +and threw me over. It's too bad you didn't know, or else you would have +staid aboard.” + +Duncan groaned, but said nothing for several minutes. The green light +changed the direction of its course. + +“She's gone about,” he announced. “You are right. He's deliberately +working around us and to windward. Up wind they can never hear me. But +here goes.” + +He called at minute intervals for a long time. The green light +disappeared, being replaced by the red, showing that the yacht had gone +about again. + +“Minnie,” he said finally, “it pains me to tell you, but you married a +fool. Only a fool would have gone overboard as I did.” + +“What chance have we of being picked up... by some other vessel, I +mean?” she asked. + +“About one in ten thousand, or ten thousand million. Not a steamer route +nor trade route crosses this stretch of ocean. And there aren't any +whalers knocking about the South Seas. There might be a stray trading +schooner running across from Tutuwanga. But I happen to know that island +is visited only once a year. A chance in a million is ours.” + +“And we'll play that chance,” she rejoined stoutly. + +“You ARE a joy!” His hand lifted hers to his lips. “And Aunt Elizabeth +always wondered what I saw in you. Of course we'll play that chance. And +we'll win it, too. To happen otherwise would be unthinkable. Here goes.” + +He slipped the heavy pistol from his belt and let it sink into the sea. +The belt, however, he retained. + +“Now you get inside the buoy and get some sleep. Duck under.” + +She ducked obediently, and came up inside the floating circle. He +fastened the straps for her, then, with the pistol belt, buckled himself +across one shoulder to the outside of the buoy. + +“We're good for all day to-morrow,” he said. “Thank God the water's +warm. It won't be a hardship for the first twenty-hour hours, anyway. +And if we're not picked up by nightfall, we've just got to hang on for +another day, that's all.” + +For half an hour they maintained silence, Duncan, his head resting on +the arm that was on the buoy, seemed asleep. + +“Boyd?” Minnie said softly. + +“Thought you were asleep,” he growled. + +“Boyd, if we don't come through this--” + +“Stow that!” he broke in ungallantly. “Of course we're coming through. +There is isn't a doubt of it. Somewhere on this ocean is a ship that's +heading right for us. You wait and see. Just the same I wish my brain +were equipped with wireless. Now I'm going to sleep, if you don't.” + +But for once, sleep baffled him. An hour later he heard Minnie stir and +knew she was awake. + +“Say, do you know what I've been thinking!” she asked. + +“No; what?” + +“That I'll wish you a Merry Christmas.” + +“By George, I never thought of it. Of course it's Christmas Day. We'll +have many more of them, too. And do you know what I've been thinking? +What a confounded shame we're done out of our Christmas dinner. Wait +till I lay hands on Dettmar. I'll take it out of him. And it won't be +with an iron belaying pin either, Just two bunches of naked knuckles, +that's all.” + +Despite his facetiousness, Boyd Duncan had little hope. He knew well +enough the meaning of one chance in a million, and was calmly certain +that his wife and he had entered upon their last few living hours--hours +that were inevitably bound to be black and terrible with tragedy. + +The tropic sun rose in a cloudless sky. Nothing was to be seen. The +Samoset was beyond the sea-rim. As the sun rose higher, Duncan ripped +his pajama trousers in halves and fashioned them into two rude turbans. +Soaked in sea-water they offset the heat-rays. + +“When I think of that dinner, I'm really angry,” he complained, as he +noted an anxious expression threatening to set on his wife's face. “And +I want you to be with me when I settle with Dettmar. I've always been +opposed to women witnessing scenes of blood, but this is different. It +will be a beating.” + +“I hope I don't break my knuckles on him,” he added, after a pause. + +Midday came and went, and they floated on, the center of a narrow +sea-circle. A gentle breath of the dying trade-wind fanned them, and +they rose and fell monotonously on the smooth swells of a perfect summer +sea. Once, a gunie spied them, and for half an hour circled about them +with majestic sweeps. And, once, a huge rayfish, measuring a score of +feet across the tips, passed within a few yards. + +By sunset, Minnie began to rave, softly, babblingly, like a child. +Duncan's face grew haggard as he watched and listened, while in his +mind he revolved plans of how best to end the hours of agony that were +coming. And, so planning, as they rose on a larger swell than usual, +he swept the circle of the sea with his eyes, and saw, what made him cry +out. + +“Minnie!” She did not answer, and he shouted her name again in her ear, +with all the voice he could command. Her eyes opened, in them fluttered +commingled consciousness and delirium. He slapped her hands and wrists +till the sting of the blows roused her. + +“There she is, the chance in a million!” he cried. + +“A steamer at that, heading straight for us! By George, it's a cruiser! +I have it!--the Annapolis, returning with those astronomers from +Tutuwanga.” + +***** + +United States Consul Lingford was a fussy, elderly gentleman, and in +the two years of his service at Attu-Attu had never encountered so +unprecedented a case as that laid before him by Boyd Duncan. The +latter, with his wife, had been landed there by the Annapolis, which had +promptly gone on with its cargo of astronomers to Fiji. + +“It was cold-blooded, deliberate attempt to murder,” said Consul +Lingford. “The law shall take its course. I don't know how precisely +to deal with this Captain Dettmar, but if he comes to Attu-Attu, depend +upon it he shall be dealt with, he--ah--shall be dealt with. In the +meantime, I shall read up the law. And now, won't you and your good lady +stop for lunch!” + +As Duncan accepted the invitation, Minnie, who had been glancing out +of the window at the harbor, suddenly leaned forward and touched her +husband's arm. He followed her gaze, and saw the Samoset, flag at half +mast, rounding up and dropping anchor scarcely a hundred yards away. + +“There's my boat now,” Duncan said to the Consul. “And there's the +launch over the side, and Captain Dettmar dropping into it. If I don't +miss my guess, he's coming to report our deaths to you.” + +The launch landed on the white beach, and leaving Lorenzo tinkering with +the engine, Captain Dettmar strode across the beach and up the path to +the Consulate. + +“Let him make his report,” Duncan said. “We'll just step into this next +room and listen.” + +And through the partly open door, he and his wife heard Captain Dettmar, +with tears in his voice, describe the loss of his owners. + +“I jibed over and went back across the very spot,” he concluded. “There +was not a sign of them. I called and called, but there was never an +answer. I tacked back and forth and wore for two solid hours, then hove +to till daybreak, and cruised back and forth all day, two men at the +mastheads. It is terrible. I am heartbroken. Mr. Duncan was a splendid +man, and I shall never...” + +But he never completed the sentence, for at that moment his splendid +employer strode out upon him, leaving Minnie standing in the doorway. +Captain Dettmar's white face blanched even whiter. + +“I did my best to pick you up, sir,” he began. + +Boyd Duncan's answer was couched in terms of bunched knuckles, two +bunches of them, that landed right and left on Captain Dettmar's face. + +Captain Dettmar staggered backward, recovered, and rushed with swinging +arms at his employer, only to be met with a blow squarely between the +eyes. This time the Captain went down, bearing the typewriter under him +as he crashed to the floor. + +“This is not permissible,” Consul Lingford spluttered. “I beg of you, I +beg of you, to desist.” + +“I'll pay the damages to office furniture,” Duncan answered, and at the +same time landing more bunched knuckles on the eyes and nose of Dettmar. + +Consul Lingford bobbed around in the turmoil like a wet hen, while his +office furniture went to ruin. Once, he caught Duncan by the arm, but +was flung back, gasping, half-across the room. Another time he appealed +to Minnie. + +“Mrs. Duncan, won't you, please, please, restrain your husband?” + +But she, white-faced and trembling, resolutely shook her head and +watched the fray with all her eyes. + +“It is outrageous,” Consul Lingford cried, dodging the hurtling bodies +of the two men. “It is an affront to the Government, to the United +States Government. Nor will it be overlooked, I warn you. Oh, do pray +desist, Mr. Duncan. You will kill the man. I beg of you. I beg, I +beg...” + +But the crash of a tall vase filled with crimson hibiscus blossoms left +him speechless. + +The time came when Captain Dettmar could no longer get up. He got as far +as hands and knees, struggled vainly to rise further, then collapsed. +Duncan stirred the groaning wreck with his foot. + +“He's all right,” he announced. “I've only given him what he has given +many a sailor and worse.” + +“Great heavens, sir!” Consul Lingford exploded, staring horror-stricken +at the man whom he had invited to lunch. + +Duncan giggled involuntarily, then controlled himself. + +“I apologize, Mr. Lingford, I most heartily apologize. I fear I was +slightly carried away by my feelings.” + +Consul Lingford gulped and sawed the air speechlessly with his arms. + +“Slightly, sir? Slightly?” he managed to articulate. + +“Boyd,” Minnie called softly from the doorway. + +He turned and looked. + +“You ARE a joy,” she said. + +“And now, Mr. Lingford, I am done with him,” Duncan said. “I turn over +what is left to you and the law.” + +“That?” Consul Lingford queried, in accent of horror. + +“That,” Boyd Duncan replied, looking ruefully at his battered knuckles. + + + + +WAR + +HE was a young man, not more than twenty-four or five, and he might have +sat his horse with the careless grace of his youth had he not been +so catlike and tense. His black eyes roved everywhere, catching the +movements of twigs and branches where small birds hopped, questing ever +onward through the changing vistas of trees and brush, and returning +always to the clumps of undergrowth on either side. And as he watched, +so did he listen, though he rode on in silence, save for the boom of +heavy guns from far to the west. This had been sounding monotonously +in his ears for hours, and only its cessation could have aroused his +notice. For he had business closer to hand. Across his saddle-bow was +balanced a carbine. + +So tensely was he strung, that a bunch of quail, exploding into flight +from under his horse's nose, startled him to such an extent that +automatically, instantly, he had reined in and fetched the carbine +halfway to his shoulder. He grinned sheepishly, recovered himself, and +rode on. So tense was he, so bent upon the work he had to do, that the +sweat stung his eyes unwiped, and unheeded rolled down his nose and +spattered his saddle pommel. The band of his cavalryman's hat was +fresh-stained with sweat. The roan horse under him was likewise wet. It +was high noon of a breathless day of heat. Even the birds and squirrels +did not dare the sun, but sheltered in shady hiding places among the +trees. + +Man and horse were littered with leaves and dusted with yellow pollen, +for the open was ventured no more than was compulsory. They kept to the +brush and trees, and invariably the man halted and peered out before +crossing a dry glade or naked stretch of upland pasturage. He worked +always to the north, though his way was devious, and it was from the +north that he seemed most to apprehend that for which he was looking. +He was no coward, but his courage was only that of the average civilized +man, and he was looking to live, not die. + +Up a small hillside he followed a cowpath through such dense scrub that +he was forced to dismount and lead his horse. But when the path swung +around to the west, he abandoned it and headed to the north again along +the oak-covered top of the ridge. + +The ridge ended in a steep descent-so steep that he zigzagged back and +forth across the face of the slope, sliding and stumbling among the dead +leaves and matted vines and keeping a watchful eye on the horse above +that threatened to fall down upon him. The sweat ran from him, and the +pollen-dust, settling pungently in mouth and nostrils, increased +his thirst. Try as he would, nevertheless the descent was noisy, and +frequently he stopped, panting in the dry heat and listening for any +warning from beneath. + +At the bottom he came out on a flat, so densely forested that he could +not make out its extent. Here the character of the woods changed, and he +was able to remount. Instead of the twisted hillside oaks, tall straight +trees, big-trunked and prosperous, rose from the damp fat soil. Only +here and there were thickets, easily avoided, while he encountered +winding, park-like glades where the cattle had pastured in the days +before war had run them off. + +His progress was more rapid now, as he came down into the valley, and at +the end of half an hour he halted at an ancient rail fence on the edge +of a clearing. He did not like the openness of it, yet his path lay +across to the fringe of trees that marked the banks of the stream. +It was a mere quarter of a mile across that open, but the thought of +venturing out in it was repugnant. A rifle, a score of them, a thousand, +might lurk in that fringe by the stream. + +Twice he essayed to start, and twice he paused. He was appalled by his +own loneliness. The pulse of war that beat from the West suggested the +companionship of battling thousands; here was naught but silence, and +himself, and possible death-dealing bullets from a myriad ambushes. And +yet his task was to find what he feared to find. He must on, and on, +till somewhere, some time, he encountered another man, or other men, +from the other side, scouting, as he was scouting, to make report, as he +must make report, of having come in touch. + +Changing his mind, he skirted inside the woods for a distance, and again +peeped forth. This time, in the middle of the clearing, he saw a +small farmhouse. There were no signs of life. No smoke curled from the +chimney, not a barnyard fowl clucked and strutted. The kitchen door +stood open, and he gazed so long and hard into the black aperture that +it seemed almost that a farmer's wife must emerge at any moment. + +He licked the pollen and dust from his dry lips, stiffened himself, mind +and body, and rode out into the blazing sunshine. Nothing stirred. He +went on past the house, and approached the wall of trees and bushes by +the river's bank. One thought persisted maddeningly. It was of the crash +into his body of a high-velocity bullet. It made him feel very fragile +and defenseless, and he crouched lower in the saddle. + +Tethering his horse in the edge of the wood, he continued a hundred +yards on foot till he came to the stream. Twenty feet wide it was, +without perceptible current, cool and inviting, and he was very thirsty. +But he waited inside his screen of leafage, his eyes fixed on the screen +on the opposite side. To make the wait endurable, he sat down, his +carbine resting on his knees. The minutes passed, and slowly his +tenseness relaxed. At last he decided there was no danger; but just as +he prepared to part the bushes and bend down to the water, a movement +among the opposite bushes caught his eye. + +It might be a bird. But he waited. Again there was an agitation of the +bushes, and then, so suddenly that it almost startled a cry from him, +the bushes parted and a face peered out. It was a face covered with +several weeks' growth of ginger-colored beard. The eyes were blue and +wide apart, with laughter-wrinkles in the comers that showed despite the +tired and anxious expression of the whole face. + +All this he could see with microscopic clearness, for the distance was +no more than twenty feet. And all this he saw in such brief time, that +he saw it as he lifted his carbine to his shoulder. He glanced along the +sights, and knew that he was gazing upon a man who was as good as dead. +It was impossible to miss at such point blank range. + +But he did not shoot. Slowly he lowered the carbine and watched. A +hand, clutching a water-bottle, became visible and the ginger beard bent +downward to fill the bottle. He could hear the gurgle of the water. Then +arm and bottle and ginger beard disappeared behind the closing bushes. +A long time he waited, when, with thirst unslaked, he crept back to his +horse, rode slowly across the sun-washed clearing, and passed into the +shelter of the woods beyond. + +II + +Another day, hot and breathless. A deserted farmhouse, large, with many +outbuildings and an orchard, standing in a clearing. From the Woods, on +a roan horse, carbine across pommel, rode the young man with the quick +black eyes. He breathed with relief as he gained the house. That a fight +had taken place here earlier in the season was evident. Clips and empty +cartridges, tarnished with verdigris, lay on the ground, which, while +wet, had been torn up by the hoofs of horses. Hard by the kitchen garden +were graves, tagged and numbered. From the oak tree by the kitchen door, +in tattered, weatherbeaten garments, hung the bodies of two men. The +faces, shriveled and defaced, bore no likeness to the faces of men. The +roan horse snorted beneath them, and the rider caressed and soothed it +and tied it farther away. + +Entering the house, he found the interior a wreck. He trod on empty +cartridges as he walked from room to room to reconnoiter from the +windows. Men had camped and slept everywhere, and on the floor of one +room he came upon stains unmistakable where the wounded had been laid +down. + +Again outside, he led the horse around behind the barn and invaded the +orchard. A dozen trees were burdened with ripe apples. He filled his +pockets, eating while he picked. Then a thought came to him, and he +glanced at the sun, calculating the time of his return to camp. He +pulled off his shirt, tying the sleeves and making a bag. This he +proceeded to fill with apples. + +As he was about to mount his horse, the animal suddenly pricked up its +ears. The man, too, listened, and heard, faintly, the thud of hoofs on +soft earth. He crept to the corner of the barn and peered out. A dozen +mounted men, strung out loosely, approaching from the opposite side of +the clearing, were only a matter of a hundred yards or so away. They +rode on to the house. Some dismounted, while others remained in the +saddle as an earnest that their stay would be short. They seemed to +be holding a council, for he could hear them talking excitedly in the +detested tongue of the alien invader. The time passed, but they seemed +unable to reach a decision. He put the carbine away in its boot, +mounted, and waited impatiently, balancing the shirt of apples on the +pommel. + +He heard footsteps approaching, and drove his spurs so fiercely into the +roan as to force a surprised groan from the animal as it leaped forward. +At the corner of the barn he saw the intruder, a mere boy of nineteen or +twenty for all of his uniform jump back to escape being run down. At +the same moment the roan swerved and its rider caught a glimpse of the +aroused men by the house. Some were springing from their horses, and +he could see the rifles going to their shoulders. He passed the kitchen +door and the dried corpses swinging in the shade, compelling his foes to +run around the front of the house. A rifle cracked, and a second, but he +was going fast, leaning forward, low in the saddle, one hand clutching +the shirt of apples, the other guiding the horse. + +The top bar of the fence was four feet high, but he knew his roan and +leaped it at full career to the accompaniment of several scattered +shots. Eight hundred yards straight away were the woods, and the roan +was covering the distance with mighty strides. Every man was now firing. +pumping their guns so rapidly that he no longer heard individual shots. +A bullet went through his hat, but he was unaware, though he did know +when another tore through the apples on the pommel. And he winced and +ducked even lower when a third bullet, fired low, struck a stone between +his horse's legs and ricochetted off through the air, buzzing and +humming like some incredible insect. + +The shots died down as the magazines were emptied, until, quickly, there +was no more shooting. The young man was elated. Through that astonishing +fusillade he had come unscathed. He glanced back. Yes, they had emptied +their magazines. He could see several reloading. Others were running +back behind the house for their horses. As he looked, two already +mounted, came back into view around the corner, riding hard. And at the +same moment, he saw the man with the unmistakable ginger beard kneel +down on the ground, level his gun, and coolly take his time for the long +shot. + +The young man threw his spurs into the horse, crouched very low, and +swerved in his flight in order to distract the other's aim. And still +the shot did not come. With each jump of the horse, the woods sprang +nearer. They were only two hundred yards away and still the shot was +delayed. + +And then he heard it, the last thing he was to hear, for he was dead ere +he hit the ground in the long crashing fall from the saddle. And they, +watching at the house, saw him fall, saw his body bounce when it struck +the earth, and saw the burst of red-cheeked apples that rolled about +him. They laughed at the unexpected eruption of apples, and clapped +their hands in applause of the long shot by the man with the ginger +beard. + + + + +UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS + +“CAN any man--a gentleman, I mean--call a woman a pig?” + +The little man flung this challenge forth to the whole group, then +leaned back in his deck chair, sipping lemonade with an air commingled +of certitude and watchful belligerence. Nobody made answer. They were +used to the little man and his sudden passions and high elevations. + +“I repeat, it was in my presence that he said a certain lady, whom none +of you knows, was a pig. He did not say swine. He grossly said that she +was a pig. And I hold that no man who is a man could possibly make such +a remark about any woman.” + +Dr. Dawson puffed stolidly at his black pipe. Matthews, with knees +hunched up and clasped by his arms, was absorbed in the flight of a +gunie. Sweet, finishing his Scotch and soda, was questing about with his +eyes for a deck steward. + +“I ask you, Mr. Treloar, can any man call any woman a pig?” + +Treloar, who happened to be sitting next to him, was startled by the +abruptness of the attack, and wondered what grounds he had ever given +the little man to believe that he could call a woman a pig. + +“I should say,” he began his hesitant answer, “that it--er--depends on +the--er--the lady.” + +The little man was aghast. + +“You mean...?” he quavered. + +“That I have seen female humans who were as bad as pigs--and worse.” + +There was a long pained silence. The little man seemed withered by the +coarse brutality of the reply. In his face was unutterable hurt and woe. + +“You have told of a man who made a not nice remark and you have +classified him,” Treloar said in cold, even tones. “I shall now tell +you about a woman--I beg your pardon--a lady, and when I have finished +I shall ask you to classify her. Miss Caruthers I shall call her, +principally for the reason that it is not her name. It was on a P. & O. +boat, and it occurred neither more nor less than several years ago. + +“Miss Caruthers was charming. No; that is not the word. She was amazing. +She was a young woman, and a lady. Her father was a certain high +official whose name, if I mentioned it, would be immediately recognized +by all of you. She was with her mother and two maids at the time, going +out to join the old gentleman wherever you like to wish in the East. + +“She, and pardon me for repeating, was amazing. It is the one adequate +word. Even the most minor adjectives applicable to her are bound to be +sheer superlatives. There was nothing she could not do better than any +woman and than most men. Sing, play--bah!--as some rhetorician once +said of old Nap, competition fled from her. Swim! She could have made +a fortune and a name as a public performer. She was one of those rare +women who can strip off all the frills of dress, and in simple swimming +suit be more satisfying beautiful. Dress! She was an artist. + +“But her swimming. Physically, she was the perfect woman--you know +what I mean, not in the gross, muscular way of acrobats, but in all the +delicacy of line and fragility of frame and texture. And combined with +this, strength. How she could do it was the marvel. You know the wonder +of a woman's arm--the fore arm, I mean; the sweet fading away from +rounded biceps and hint of muscle, down through small elbow and firm +soft swell to the wrist, small, unthinkably small and round and strong. +This was hers. And yet, to see her swimming the sharp quick English +overhand stroke, and getting somewhere with it, too, was--well, I +understand anatomy and athletics and such things, and yet it was a +mystery to me how she could do it. + +“She could stay under water for two minutes. I have timed her. No man +on board, except Dennitson, could capture as many coins as she with a +single dive. On the forward main-deck was a big canvas tank with six +feet of sea-water. We used to toss small coins into it. I have seen her +dive from the bridge deck--no mean feat in itself--into that six-feet +of water, and fetch up no less than forty-seven coins, scattered +willy-nilly over the whole bottom of the tank. Dennitson, a quiet young +Englishman, never exceeded her in this, though he made it a point always +to tie her score. + +“She was a sea-woman, true. But she was a land-woman, a +horsewoman--a--she was the universal woman. To see her, all softness of +soft dress, surrounded by half a dozen eager men, languidly careless of +them all or flashing brightness and wit on them and at them and through +them, one would fancy she was good for nothing else in the world. +At such moments I have compelled myself to remember her score of +forty-seven coins from the bottom of the swimming tank. But that was +she, the everlasting, wonder of a woman who did all things well. + +“She fascinated every betrousered human around her. She had me--and I +don't mind confessing it--she bad me to heel along with the rest. Young +puppies and old gray dogs who ought to have known better--oh, they all +came up and crawled around her skirts and whined and fawned when she +whistled. They were all guilty, from young Ardmore, a pink cherub of +nineteen outward bound for some clerkship in the Consular Service, to +old Captain Bentley, grizzled and sea-worn, and as emotional, to look +at, as a Chinese joss. There was a nice middle-aged chap, Perkins, I +believe, who forgot his wife was on board until Miss Caruthers sent him +to the right about and back where he belonged. + +“Men were wax in her hands. She melted them, or softly molded them, or +incinerated them, as she pleased. There wasn't a steward, even, grand +and remote as she was, who, at her bidding, would have hesitated to +souse the Old Man himself with a plate of soup. You have all seen such +women--a sort of world's desire to all men. As a man-conqueror she was +supreme. She was a whip-lash, a sting and a flame, an electric spark. +Oh, believe me, at times there were flashes of will that scorched +through her beauty and seduction and smote a victim into blank and +shivering idiocy and fear. + +“And don't fail to mark, in the light of what is to come, that she was +a prideful woman. Pride of race, pride of caste, pride of sex, pride of +power--she had it all, a pride strange and wilful and terrible. + +“She ran the ship, she ran the voyage, she ran everything, and she ran +Dennitson. That he had outdistanced the pack even the least wise of us +admitted. That she liked him, and that this feeling was growing, there +was not a doubt. I am certain that she looked on him with kinder eyes +than she had ever looked with on man before. We still worshiped, and +were always hanging about waiting to be whistled up, though we knew that +Dennitson was laps and laps ahead of us. What might have happened we +shall never know, for we came to Colombo and something else happened. + +“You know Colombo, and how the native boys dive for coins in the +shark-infested bay. Of course, it is only among the ground sharks and +fish sharks that they venture. It is almost uncanny the way they know +sharks and can sense the presence of a real killer--a tiger shark, for +instance, or a gray nurse strayed up from Australian waters. Let such a +shark appear, and, long before the passengers can guess, every mother's +son of them is out of the water in a wild scramble for safety. + +“It was after tiffin, and Miss Caruthers was holding her usual court +under the deck-awnings. Old Captain Bentley had just been whistled +up, and had granted her what he never granted before... nor +since--permission for the boys to come up on the promenade deck. You +see, Miss Caruthers was a swimmer, and she was interested. She took up +a collection of all our small change, and herself tossed it overside, +singly and in handfuls, arranging the terms of the contests, chiding a +miss, giving extra rewards to clever wins, in short, managing the whole +exhibition. + +“She was especially keen on their jumping. You know, jumping feet-first +from a height, it is very difficult to hold the body perpendicularly +while in the air. The center of gravity of the male body is high, and +the tendency is to overtopple. But the little beggars employed a method +which she declared was new to her and which she desired to learn. +Leaping from the davits of the boat-deck above, they plunged downward, +their faces and shoulders bowed forward, looking at the water. And only +at the last moment did they abruptly straighten up and enter the water +erect and true. + +“It was a pretty sight. Their diving was not so good, though there was +one of them who was excellent at it, as he was in all the other stunts. +Some white man must have taught him, for he made the proper swan dive +and did it as beautifully as I have ever seen it. You know, headfirst +into the water, from a great height, the problem is to enter the water +at the perfect angle. Miss the angle and it means at the least a twisted +back and injury for life. Also, it has meant death for many a bungler. +But this boy could do it--seventy feet I know he cleared in one dive +from the rigging--clenched hands on chest, head thrown back, sailing +more like a bird, upward and out, and out and down, body flat on the air +so that if it struck the surface in that position it would be split in +half like a herring. But the moment before the water is reached, the +head drops forward, the hands go out and lock the arms in an arch in +advance of the head, and the body curves gracefully downward and enters +the water just right. + +“This the boy did, again and again, to the delight of all of us, but +particularly of Miss Caruthers. He could not have been a moment over +twelve or thirteen, yet he was by far the cleverest of the gang. He was +the favorite of his crowd, and its leader. Though there were a number +older than he, they acknowledged his chieftaincy. He was a beautiful +boy, a lithe young god in breathing bronze, eyes wide apart, intelligent +and daring, a bubble, a mote, a beautiful flash and sparkle of life. You +have seen wonderful glorious creatures--animals, anything, a leopard, +a horse-restless, eager, too much alive ever to be still, silken of +muscle, each slightest movement a benediction of grace, every action +wild, untrammeled, and over all spilling out that intense vitality, that +sheen and luster of living light. The boy had it. Life poured out of him +almost in an effulgence. His skin glowed with it. It burned in his eyes. +I swear I could almost hear it crackle from him. Looking at him, it was +as if a whiff of ozone came to one's nostrils--so fresh and young was +he, so resplendent with health, so wildly wild. + +“This was the boy. And it was he who gave the alarm in the midst of the +sport. The boys made a dash of it for the gangway platform, swimming the +fastest strokes they knew, pellmell, floundering and splashing, fright +in their faces, clambering out with jumps and surges, any way to get +out, lending one another a hand to safety, till all were strung along +the gangway and peering down into the water. + +“'What is the matter?' asked Miss Caruthers. + +“'A shark, I fancy,' Captain Bentley answered. 'Lucky little beggars +that he didn't get one of them.' + +“'Are they afraid of sharks?' she asked. + +“'Aren't you?' he asked back.” + +She shuddered, looked overside at the water, and made a move. + +“'Not for the world would I venture where a shark might be,' she said, +and shuddered again. 'They are horrible! Horrible!' + +“The boys came up on the promenade deck, clustering close to the rail +and worshiping Miss Caruthers who had flung them such a wealth of +backsheesh. The performance being over, Captain Bentley motioned to them +to clear out. But she stopped him. + +“'One moment, please, Captain. I have always understood that the natives +are not afraid of sharks.' + +“She beckoned the boy of the swan dive nearer to her, and signed to +him to dive over again. He shook his head, and along with all his crew +behind him laughed as if it were a good joke. + +“'Shark,' he volunteered, pointing to the water. + +“'No,' she said. 'There is no shark.' + +“But he nodded his head positively, and the boys behind him nodded with +equal positiveness. + +“'No, no, no,' she cried. And then to us, 'Who'll lend me a half-crown +and a sovereign!' + +“Immediately the half dozen of us were presenting her with crowns and +sovereigns, and she accepted the two coins from young Ardmore. + +“She held up the half-crown for the boys to see. But there was no eager +rush to the rail preparatory to leaping. They stood there grinning +sheepishly. She offered the coin to each one individually, and each, +as his turn came, rubbed his foot against his calf, shook his head, +and grinned. Then she tossed the half-crown overboard. With wistful, +regretful faces they watched its silver flight through the air, but not +one moved to follow it. + +“'Don't do it with the sovereign,' Dennitson said to her in a low voice. + +“She took no notice, but held up the gold coin before the eyes of the +boy of the swan dive. + +“'Don't,' said Captain Bentley. 'I wouldn't throw a sick cat overside +with a shark around.' + +“But she laughed, bent on her purpose, and continued to dazzle the boy. + +“'Don't tempt him,' Dennitson urged. 'It is a fortune to him, and he +might go over after it.' + +“'Wouldn't YOU?' she flared at him. 'If I threw it?'” + +This last more softly. + +Dennitson shook his head. + +“'Your price is high,' she said. 'For how many sovereigns would you go?' + +“'There are not enough coined to get me overside,' was his answer. + +“She debated a moment, the boy forgotten in her tilt with Dennitson. + +“'For me?' she said very softly. + +“'To save your life--yes. But not otherwise.' + +“She turned back to the boy. Again she held the coin before his eyes, +dazzling him with the vastness of its value. Then she made as to toss +it out, and, involuntarily, he made a half-movement toward the rail, +but was checked by sharp cries of reproof from his companions. There was +anger in their voices as well. + +“'I know it is only fooling,' Dennitson said. 'Carry it as far as you +like, but for heaven's sake don't throw it.' + +“Whether it was that strange wilfulness of hers, or whether she doubted +the boy could be persuaded, there is no telling. It was unexpected to +all of us. Out from the shade of the awning the coin flashed golden +in the blaze of sunshine and fell toward the sea in a glittering arch. +Before a hand could stay him, the boy was over the rail and curving +beautifully downward after the coin. Both were in the air at the same +time. It was a pretty sight. The sovereign cut the water sharply, and at +the very spot, almost at the same instant, with scarcely a splash, the +boy entered. + +“From the quicker-eyed black boys watching, came an exclamation. We were +all at the railing. Don't tell me it is necessary for a shark to turn on +its back. That one did not. In the clear water, from the height we were +above it, we saw everything. The shark was a big brute, and with one +drive he cut the boy squarely in half. + +“There was a murmur or something from among us--who made it I did not +know; it might have been I. And then there was silence. Miss Caruthers +was the first to speak. Her face was deathly white. + +“'I never dreamed,' she said, and laughed a short, hysterical laugh. + +“All her pride was at work to give her control. She turned weakly toward +Dennitson, and then, on from one to another of us. In her eyes was a +terrible sickness, and her lips were trembling. We were brutes--oh, I +know it, now that I look back upon it. But we did nothing. + +“'Mr. Dennitson,' she said, 'Tom, won't you take me below!' + +“He never changed the direction of his gaze, which was the bleakest I +have ever seen in a man's face, nor did he move an eyelid. He took a +cigarette from his case and lighted it. Captain Bentley made a nasty +sound in his throat and spat overboard. That was all; that and the +silence. + +“She turned away and started to walk firmly down the deck. Twenty feet +away, she swayed and thrust a hand against the wall to save herself. And +so she went on, supporting herself against the cabins and walking very +slowly.” Treloar ceased. He turned his head and favored the little man +with a look of cold inquiry. + +“Well,” he said finally. “Classify her.” + +The little man gulped and swallowed. + +“I have nothing to say,” he said. “I have nothing whatever to say.” + + + + +TO KILL A MAN + +THOUGH dim night-lights burned, she moved familiarly through the big +rooms and wide halls, seeking vainly the half-finished book of verse she +had mislaid and only now remembered. When she turned on the lights in +the drawing-room, she disclosed herself clad in a sweeping negligee gown +of soft rose-colored stuff, throat and shoulders smothered in lace. Her +rings were still on her fingers, her massed yellow hair had not yet been +taken down. She was delicately, gracefully beautiful, with slender, +oval face, red lips, a faint color in the cheeks, and blue eyes of the +chameleon sort that at will stare wide with the innocence of childhood, +go hard and gray and brilliantly cold, or flame up in hot wilfulness and +mastery. + +She turned the lights off and passed out and down the hall toward the +morning room. At the entrance she paused and listened. From farther on +had come, not a noise, but an impression of movement. She could have +sworn she had not heard anything, yet something had been different. +The atmosphere of night quietude had been disturbed. She wondered what +servant could be prowling about. Not the butler, who was notorious +for retiring early save on special occasion. Nor could it be her maid, +whom she had permitted to go that evening. + +Passing on to the dining-room, she found the door closed. Why she opened +it and went on in, she did not know, except for the feeling that the +disturbing factor, whatever it might be, was there. The room was in +darkness, and she felt her way to the button and pressed. As the blaze +of light flashed on, she stepped back and cried out. It was a mere “Oh!” + and it was not loud. + + +Facing her, alongside the button, flat against the wall, was a man. In +his hand, pointed toward her, was a revolver. She noticed, even in +the shock of seeing him, that the weapon was black and exceedingly +long-barreled. She knew black and exceedingly long it for what it was, a +Colt's. He was a medium-sized man, roughly clad, brown-eyed, and swarthy +with sunburn. He seemed very cool. There was no wabble to the revolver +and it was directed toward her stomach, not from an outstretched arm, +but from the hip, against which the forearm rested. + +“Oh,” she said. “I beg your pardon. You startled me. What do you want?” + +“I reckon I want to get out,” he answered, with a humorous twitch to +the lips. “I've kind of lost my way in this here shebang, and if you'll +kindly show me the door I'll cause no trouble and sure vamoose.” + +“But what are you doing here?” she demanded, her voice touched with the +sharpness of one used to authority. + +“Plain robbing, Miss, that's all. I came snooping around to see what I +could gather up. I thought you wan't to home, seein' as I saw you pull +out with your old man in an auto. I reckon that must a ben your pa, and +you're Miss Setliffe.” + +Mrs. Setliffe saw his mistake, appreciated the naive compliment, and +decided not to undeceive him. + +“How do you know I am Miss Setliffe?” she asked. + +“This is old Setliffe's house, ain't it?” + +She nodded. + +“I didn't know he had a daughter, but I reckon you must be her. And now, +if it ain't botherin' you too much, I'd sure be obliged if you'd show me +the way out.” + +“But why should I? You are a robber, a burglar.” + +“If I wan't an ornery shorthorn at the business, I'd be accumulatin' +them rings on your fingers instead of being polite,” he retorted. + +“I come to make a raise outa old Setliffe, and not to be robbing +women-folks. If you get outa the way, I reckon I can find my own way +out.” + +Mrs. Setliffe was a keen woman, and she felt that from such a man there +was little to fear. That he was not a typical criminal, she was certain. +From his speech she knew he was not of the cities, and she seemed to +sense the wider, homelier air of large spaces. + +“Suppose I screamed?” she queried curiously. “Suppose I made an outcry +for help? You couldn't shoot me?... a woman?” + +She noted the fleeting bafflement in his brown eyes. He answered slowly +and thoughtfully, as if working out a difficult problem. “I reckon, +then, I'd have to choke you and maul you some bad.” + +“A woman?” + +“I'd sure have to,” he answered, and she saw his mouth set grimly. + +“You're only a soft woman, but you see, Miss, I can't afford to go to +jail. No, Miss, I sure can't. There's a friend of mine waitin' for +me out West. He's in a hole, and I've got to help him out.” The mouth +shaped even more grimly. “I guess I could choke you without hurting you +much to speak of.” + +Her eyes took on a baby stare of innocent incredulity as she watched +him. + +“I never met a burglar before,” she assured him, “and I can't begin to +tell you how interested I am.” + +“I'm not a burglar, Miss. Not a real one,” he hastened to add as she +looked her amused unbelief. “It looks like it, me being here in your +house. But it's the first time I ever tackled such a job. I needed the +money bad. Besides, I kind of look on it like collecting what's coming +to me.” + +“I don't understand,” she smiled encouragingly. “You came here to rob, +and to rob is to take what is not yours.” + +“Yes, and no, in this here particular case. But I reckon I'd better be +going now.” + +He started for the door of the dining-room, but she interposed, and a +very beautiful obstacle she made of herself. His left hand went out +as if to grip her, then hesitated. He was patently awed by her soft +womanhood. + +“There!” she cried triumphantly. “I knew you wouldn't.” + +The man was embarrassed. + +“I ain't never manhandled a woman yet,” he explained, “and it don't come +easy. But I sure will, if you set to screaming.” + +“Won't you stay a few minutes and talk?” she urged. “I'm so interested. +I should like to hear you explain how burglary is collecting what is +coming to you.” + +He looked at her admiringly. + +“I always thought women-folks were scairt of robbers,” he confessed. +“But you don't seem none.” + +She laughed gaily. + +“There are robbers and robbers, you know. I am not afraid of you, +because I am confident you are not the sort of creature that would harm +a woman. Come, talk with me a while. Nobody will disturb us. I am all +alone. My--father caught the night train to New York. The servants are +all asleep. I should like to give you something to eat--women always +prepare midnight suppers for the burglars they catch, at least they +do in the magazine stories. But I don't know where to find the food. +Perhaps you will have something to drink?” + +He hesitated, and did not reply; but she could see the admiration for +her growing in his eyes. + +“You're not afraid?” she queried. “I won't poison you, I promise. I'll +drink with you to show you it is all right.” + +“You sure are a surprise package of all right,” he declared, for the +first time lowering the weapon and letting it hang at his side. “No one +don't need to tell me ever again that women-folks in cities is afraid. +You ain't much--just a little soft pretty thing. But you've sure got the +spunk. And you're trustful on top of it. There ain't many women, or men +either, who'd treat a man with a gun the way you're treating me.” + +She smiled her pleasure in the compliment, and her face, was very +earnest as she said: + +“That is because I like your appearance. You are too decent-looking a +man to be a robber. You oughtn't to do such things. If you are in bad +luck you should go to work. Come, put away that nasty revolver and let +us talk it over. The thing for you to do is to work.” + +“Not in this burg,” he commented bitterly. “I've walked two inches off +the bottom of my legs trying to find a job. Honest, I was a fine large +man once... before I started looking for a job.” + +The merry laughter with which she greeted his sally obviously pleased +him, and she was quick to note and take advantage of it. She moved +directly away from the door and toward the sideboard. + +“Come, you must tell me all about it while I get that drink for you. +What will it be? Whisky?” + +“Yes, ma'am,” he said, as he followed her, though he still carried +the big revolver at his side, and though he glanced reluctantly at the +unguarded open door. + +She filled a glass for him at the sideboard. + +“I promised to drink with you,” she said hesitatingly. “But I don't like +whisky. I... I prefer sherry.” + +She lifted the sherry bottle tentatively for his consent. + +“Sure,” he answered, with a nod. “Whisky's a man's drink. I never like +to see women at it. Wine's more their stuff.” + +She raised her glass to his, her eyes meltingly sympathetic. + +“Here's to finding you a good position--” + +But she broke off at sight of the expression of surprised disgust on his +face. The glass, barely touched, was removed from his wry lips. + +“What is the matter!” she asked anxiously. “Don't you like it? Have I +made a mistake?” + +“It's sure funny whisky. Tastes like it got burned and smoked in the +making.” + +“Oh! How silly of me! I gave you Scotch. Of course you are accustomed to +rye. Let me change it.” + +She was almost solicitiously maternal, as she replaced the glass with +another and sought and found the proper bottle. + +“Better?” she asked. + +“Yes, ma'am. No smoke in it. It's sure the real good stuff. I ain't had +a drink in a week. Kind of slick, that; oily, you know; not made in a +chemical factory.” + +“You are a drinking man?” It was half a question, half a challenge. + +“No, ma'am, not to speak of. I HAVE rared up and ripsnorted at spells, +but most unfrequent. But there is times when a good stiff jolt lands on +the right spot kerchunk, and this is sure one of them. And now, thanking +you for your kindness, ma'am, I'll just be a pulling along.” + +But Mrs. Setliffe did not want to lose her burglar. She was too poised a +woman to possess much romance, but there was a thrill about the present +situation that delighted her. Besides, she knew there was no danger. The +man, despite his jaw and the steady brown eyes, was eminently tractable. +Also, farther back in her consciousness glimmered the thought of an +audience of admiring friends. It was too bad not to have that audience. + +“You haven't explained how burglary, in your case, is merely collecting +what is your own,” she said. “Come, sit down, and tell me about it here +at the table.” + +She maneuvered for her own seat, and placed him across the corner from +her. His alertness had not deserted him, as she noted, and his eyes +roved sharply about, returning always with smoldering admiration to +hers, but never resting long. And she noted likewise that while she +spoke he was intent on listening for other sounds than those of her +voice. Nor had he relinquished the revolver, which lay at the corner of +the table between them, the butt close to his right hand. + +But he was in a new habitat which he did not know. This man from the +West, cunning in woodcraft and plainscraft, with eyes and ears open, +tense and suspicious, did not know that under the table, close to her +foot, was the push button of an electric bell. He had never heard of +such a contrivance, and his keenness and wariness went for naught. + +“It's like this, Miss,” he began, in response to her urging. “Old +Setliffe done me up in a little deal once. It was raw, but it worked. +Anything will work full and legal when it's got few hundred million +behind it. I'm not squealin', and I ain't taking a slam at your pa. +He don't know me from Adam, and I reckon he don't know he done me outa +anything. He's too big, thinking and dealing in millions, to ever hear +of a small potato like me. He's an operator. He's got all kinds of +experts thinking and planning and working for him, some of them, I hear, +getting more cash salary than the President of the United States. I'm +only one of thousands that have been done up by your pa, that's all. + +“You see, ma'am, I had a little hole in the ground--a dinky, hydraulic, +one-horse outfit of a mine. And when the Setliffe crowd shook down +Idaho, and reorganized the smelter trust, and roped in the rest of the +landscape, and put through the big hydraulic scheme at Twin Pines, why +I sure got squeezed. I never had a run for my money. I was scratched +off the card before the first heat. And so, to-night, being broke and my +friend needing me bad, I just dropped around to make a raise outa your +pa. Seeing as I needed it, it kinda was coming to me.” + +“Granting all that you say is so,” she said, “nevertheless it does not +make house-breaking any the less house-breaking. You couldn't make such +a defense in a court of law.” + +“I know that,” he confessed meekly. “What's right ain't always legal. +And that's why I am so uncomfortable a-settin' here and talking with +you. Not that I ain't enjoying your company--I sure do enjoy it--but I +just can't afford to be caught. I know what they'd do to me in this here +city. There was a young fellow that got fifty years only last week for +holding a man up on the street for two dollars and eighty-five cents. I +read about it in the paper. When times is hard and they ain't no work, +men get desperate. And then the other men who've got something to be +robbed of get desperate, too, and they just sure soak it to the other +fellows. If I got caught, I reckon I wouldn't get a mite less than ten +years. That's why I'm hankering to be on my way.” + +“No; wait.” She lifted a detaining hand, at the same time removing her +foot from the bell, which she had been pressing intermittently. “You +haven't told me your name yet.” + +He hesitated. + +“Call me Dave.” + +“Then... Dave,” she laughed with pretty confusion. “Something must be +done for you. You are a young man, and you are just at the beginning +of a bad start. If you begin by attempting to collect what you think is +coming to you, later on you will be collecting what you are perfectly +sure isn't coming to you. And you know what the end will be. Instead of +this, we must find something honorable for you to do.” + +“I need the money, and I need it now,” he replied doggedly. “It's not +for myself, but for that friend I told you about. He's in a peck of +trouble, and he's got to get his lift now or not at all.” + +“I can find you a position,” she said quickly. “And--yes, the very +thing!--I'll lend you the money you want to send to your friend. This +you can pay back out of your salary.” + +“About three hundred would do,” he said slowly. “Three hundred would +pull him through. I'd work my fingers off for a year for that, and my +keep, and a few cents to buy Bull Durham with.” + +“Ah! You smoke! I never thought of it.” + +Her hand went out over the revolver toward his hand, as she pointed to +the tell-tale yellow stain on his fingers. At the same time her eyes +measured the nearness of her own hand and of his to the weapon. She +ached to grip it in one swift movement. She was sure she could do +it, and yet she was not sure; and so it was that she refrained as she +withdrew her hand. + +“Won't you smoke?” she invited. + +“I'm 'most dying to.” + +“Then do so. I don't mind. I really like it--cigarettes, I mean.” + +With his left band he dipped into his side pocket, brought out a +loose wheat-straw paper and shifted it to his right hand close by the +revolver. Again he dipped, transferring to the paper a pinch of brown, +flaky tobacco. Then he proceeded, both hands just over the revolver, to +roll the cigarette. + +“From the way you hover close to that nasty weapon, you seem to be +afraid of me,” she challenged. + +“Not exactly afraid of you, ma'am, but, under the circumstances, just a +mite timid.” + +“But I've not been afraid of you.” + +“You've got nothing to lose.” + +“My life,” she retorted. + +“That's right,” he acknowledged promptly, “and you ain't been scairt of +me. Mebbe I am over anxious.” + +“I wouldn't cause you any harm.” + +Even as she spoke, her slipper felt for the bell and pressed it. At the +same time her eyes were earnest with a plea of honesty. + +“You are a judge of men. I know it. And of women. Surely, when I am +trying to persuade you from a criminal life and to get you honest work +to do....?” + +He was immediately contrite. + +“I sure beg your pardon, ma'am,” he said. “I reckon my nervousness ain't +complimentary.” + +As he spoke, he drew his right hand from the table, and after lighting +the cigarette, dropped it by his side. + +“Thank you for your confidence,” she breathed softly, resolutely keeping +her eyes from measuring the distance to the revolver, and keeping her +foot pressed firmly on the bell. + +“About that three hundred,” he began. “I can telegraph it West to-night. +And I'll agree to work a year for it and my keep.” + +“You will earn more than that. I can promise seventy-five dollars a +month at the least. Do you know horses?” + +His face lighted up and his eyes sparkled. + +“Then go to work for me--or for my father, rather, though I engage all +the servants. I need a second coachman--” + +“And wear a uniform?” he interrupted sharply, the sneer of the free-born +West in his voice and on his lips. + +She smiled tolerantly. + +“Evidently that won't do. Let me think. Yes. Can you break and handle +colts?” + +He nodded. + +“We have a stock farm, and there's room for just such a man as you. Will +you take it?” + +“Will I, ma'am?” His voice was rich with gratitude and enthusiasm. “Show +me to it. I'll dig right in to-morrow. And I can sure promise you one +thing, ma'am. You'll never be sorry for lending Hughie Luke a hand in +his trouble--” + +“I thought you said to call you Dave,” she chided forgivingly. + +“I did, ma'am. I did. And I sure beg your pardon. It was just plain +bluff. My real name is Hughie Luke. And if you'll give me the address +of that stock farm of yours, and the railroad fare, I head for it first +thing in the morning.” + +Throughout the conversation she had never relaxed her attempts on the +bell. She had pressed it in every alarming way--three shorts and a long, +two and a long, and five. She had tried long series of shorts, and, +once, she had held the button down for a solid three minutes. And she +had been divided between objurgation of the stupid, heavy-sleeping +butler and doubt if the bell were in order. + +“I am so glad,” she said; “so glad that you are willing. There won't be +much to arrange. But you will first have to trust me while I go upstairs +for my purse.” + +She saw the doubt flicker momentarily in his eyes, and added hastily, +“But you see I am trusting you with the three hundred dollars.” + +“I believe you, ma'am,” he came back gallantly. “Though I just can't +help this nervousness.” + +“Shall I go and get it?” + +But before she could receive consent, a slight muffled jar from the +distance came to her ear. She knew it for the swing-door of the butler's +pantry. But so slight was it--more a faint vibration than a sound--that +she would not have heard had not her ears been keyed and listening for +it. Yet the man had heard. He was startled in his composed way. + +“What was that?” he demanded. + +For answer, her left hand flashed out to the revolver and brought it +back. She had had the start of him, and she needed it, for the next +instant his hand leaped up from his side, clutching emptiness where the +revolver had been. + +“Sit down!” she commanded sharply, in a voice new to him. “Don't move. +Keep your hands on the table.” + +She had taken a lesson from him. Instead of holding the heavy weapon +extended, the butt of it and her forearm rested on the table, the muzzle +pointed, not at his head, but his chest. And he, looking coolly and +obeying her commands, knew there was no chance of the kick-up of the +recoil producing a miss. Also, he saw that the revolver did not wabble, +nor the hand shake, and he was thoroughly conversant with the size of +hole the soft-nosed bullets could make. He had eyes, not for her, but +for the hammer, which had risen under the pressure of her forefinger on +the trigger. + +“I reckon I'd best warn you that that there trigger-pull is filed +dreadful fine. Don't press too hard, or I'll have a hole in me the size +of a walnut.” + +She slacked the hammer partly down. + +“That's better,” he commented. “You'd best put it down all the way. You +see how easy it works. If you want to, a quick light pull will jiffy her +up and back and make a pretty mess all over your nice floor.” + +A door opened behind him, and he heard somebody enter the room. But he +did not turn his bead. He was looking at her, and he found it the face +of another woman--hard, cold, pitiless yet brilliant in its beauty. The +eyes, too, were hard, though blazing with a cold light. + +“Thomas,” she commanded, “go to the telephone and call the police. Why +were you so long in answering?” + +“I came as soon as I heard the bell, madam,” was the answer. + +The robber never took his eyes from hers, nor did she from his, but +at mention of the bell she noticed that his eyes were puzzled for the +moment. + +“Beg your pardon,” said the butler from behind, “but wouldn't it be +better for me to get a weapon and arouse the servants?” + +“No; ring for the police. I can hold this man. Go and do it--quickly.” + +The butler slippered out of the room, and the man and the woman sat on, +gazing into each other's eyes. To her it was an experience keen with +enjoyment, and in her mind was the gossip of her crowd, and she saw +notes in the society weeklies of the beautiful young Mrs. Setliffe +capturing an armed robber single-handed. It would create a sensation, +she was sure. + +“When you get that sentence you mentioned,” she said coldly, “you will +have time to meditate upon what a fool you have been, taking other +persons' property and threatening women with revolvers. You will have +time to learn your lesson thoroughly. Now tell the truth. You haven't +any friend in trouble. All that you told me was lies.” + +He did not reply. Though his eyes were upon her, they seemed blank. In +truth, for the instant she was veiled to him, and what he saw was the +wide sunwashed spaces of the West, where men and women were bigger than +the rotten denizens, as he had encountered them, of the thrice rotten +cities of the East. + +“Go on. Why don't you speak? Why don't you lie some more? Why don't you +beg to be let off?” + +“I might,” he answered, licking his dry lips. “I might ask to be let off +if...” + +“If what?” she demanded peremptorily, as he paused. + +“I was trying to think of a word you reminded me of. As I was saying, I +might if you was a decent woman.” + +Her face paled. + +“Be careful,” she warned. + +“You don't dast kill me,” he sneered. “The world's a pretty low down +place to have a thing like you prowling around in it, but it ain't so +plumb low down, I reckon, as to let you put a hole in me. You're sure +bad, but the trouble with you is that you're weak in your badness. It +ain't much to kill a man, but you ain't got it in you. There's where you +lose out.” + +“Be careful of what you say,” she repeated. “Or else, I warn you, it +will go hard with you. It can be seen to whether your sentence is light +or heavy.” + +“Something's the matter with God,” he remarked irrelevantly, “to be +letting you around loose. It's clean beyond me what he's up to, playing +such-like tricks on poor humanity. Now if I was God--” + +His further opinion was interrupted by the entrance of the butler. + +“Something is wrong with the telephone, madam,” he announced. “The wires +are crossed or something, because I can't get Central.” + +“Go and call one of the servants,” she ordered. “Send him out for an +officer, and then return here.” + +Again the pair was left alone. + +“Will you kindly answer one question, ma'am?” the man said. “That +servant fellow said something about a bell. I watched you like a cat, +and you sure rung no bell.” + +“It was under the table, you poor fool. I pressed it with my foot.” + +“Thank you, ma'am. I reckoned I'd seen your kind before, and now I sure +know I have. I spoke to you true and trusting, and all the time you was +lying like hell to me.” + +She laughed mockingly. + +“Go on. Say what you wish. It is very interesting.” + +“You made eyes at me, looking soft and kind, playing up all the time the +fact that you wore skirts instead of pants--and all the time with your +foot on the bell under the table. Well, there's some consolation. I'd +sooner be poor Hughie Luke, doing his ten years, than be in your skin. +Ma'am, hell is full of women like you.” + +There was silence for a space, in which the man, never taking his eyes +from her, studying her, was making up his mind. + +“Go on,” she urged. “Say something.” + +“Yes, ma'am, I'll say something. I'll sure say something. Do you know +what I'm going to do? I'm going to get right up from this chair and walk +out that door. I'd take the gun from you, only you might turn foolish +and let it go off. You can have the gun. It's a good one. As I was +saying, I am going right out that door. And you ain't going to pull that +gun off either. It takes guts to shoot a man, and you sure ain't got +them. Now get ready and see if you can pull that trigger. I ain't going +to harm you. I'm going out that door, and I'm starting.” + +Keeping his eyes fixed on her, he pushed back the chair and slowly stood +erect. The hammer rose halfway. She watched it. So did he. + +“Pull harder,” he advised. “It ain't half up yet. Go on and pull it and +kill a man. That's what I said, kill a man, spatter his brains out on +the floor, or slap a hole into him the size of your fist. That's what +killing a man means.” + +The hammer lowered jerkily but gently. The man turned his back and +walked slowly to the door. She swung the revolver around so that it bore +on his back. Twice again the hammer came up halfway and was reluctantly +eased down. + +At the door the man turned for a moment before passing on. A sneer was +on his lips. He spoke to her in a low voice, almost drawling, but in +it was the quintessence of all loathing, as he called her a name +unspeakable and vile. + + + + +THE MEXICAN + +NOBODY knew his history--they of the Junta least of all. He was their +“little mystery,” their “big patriot,” and in his way he worked as +hard for the coming Mexican Revolution as did they. They were tardy in +recognizing this, for not one of the Junta liked him. The day he first +drifted into their crowded, busy rooms, they all suspected him of being +a spy--one of the bought tools of the Diaz secret service. Too many of +the comrades were in civil an military prisons scattered over the United +States, and others of them, in irons, were even then being taken across +the border to be lined up against adobe walls and shot. + +At the first sight the boy did not impress them favorably. Boy he was, +not more than eighteen and not over large for his years. He announced +that he was Felipe Rivera, and that it was his wish to work for the +Revolution. That was all--not a wasted word, no further explanation. He +stood waiting. There was no smile on his lips, no geniality in his eyes. +Big dashing Paulino Vera felt an inward shudder. Here was something +forbidding, terrible, inscrutable. There was something venomous and +snakelike in the boy's black eyes. They burned like cold fire, as with +a vast, concentrated bitterness. He flashed them from the faces of +the conspirators to the typewriter which little Mrs. Sethby was +industriously operating. His eyes rested on hers but an instant--she +had chanced to look up--and she, too, sensed the nameless something that +made her pause. She was compelled to read back in order to regain the +swing of the letter she was writing. + +Paulino Vera looked questioningly at Arrellano and Ramos, and +questioningly they looked back and to each other. The indecision of +doubt brooded in their eyes. This slender boy was the Unknown, vested +with all the menace of the Unknown. He was unrecognizable, something +quite beyond the ken of honest, ordinary revolutionists whose fiercest +hatred for Diaz and his tyranny after all was only that of honest and +ordinary patriots. Here was something else, they knew not what. But +Vera, always the most impulsive, the quickest to act, stepped into the +breach. + +“Very well,” he said coldly. “You say you want to work for the +Revolution. Take off your coat. Hang it over there. I will show you, +come--where are the buckets and cloths. The floor is dirty. You will +begin by scrubbing it, and by scrubbing the floors of the other rooms. +The spittoons need to be cleaned. Then there are the windows.” + +“Is it for the Revolution?” the boy asked. + +“It is for the Revolution,” Vera answered. + +Rivera looked cold suspicion at all of them, then proceeded to take off +his coat. + +“It is well,” he said. + +And nothing more. Day after day he came to his work--sweeping, +scrubbing, cleaning. He emptied the ashes from the stoves, brought up +the coal and kindling, and lighted the fires before the most energetic +one of them was at his desk. + +“Can I sleep here?” he asked once. + +Ah, ha! So that was it--the hand of Diaz showing through! To sleep in +the rooms of the Junta meant access to their secrets, to the lists of +names, to the addresses of comrades down on Mexican soil. The request +was denied, and Rivera never spoke of it again. He slept they knew not +where, and ate they knew not where nor how. Once, Arrellano offered him +a couple of dollars. Rivera declined the money with a shake of the head. +When Vera joined in and tried to press it upon him, he said: + +“I am working for the Revolution.” + +It takes money to raise a modern revolution, and always the Junta was +pressed. The members starved and toiled, and the longest day was none +too long, and yet there were times when it appeared as if the Revolution +stood or fell on no more than the matter of a few dollars. Once, the +first time, when the rent of the house was two months behind and the +landlord was threatening dispossession, it was Felipe Rivera, the +scrub-boy in the poor, cheap clothes, worn and threadbare, who laid +sixty dollars in gold on May Sethby's desk. There were other times. +Three hundred letters, clicked out on the busy typewriters (appeals for +assistance, for sanctions from the organized labor groups, requests for +square news deals to the editors of newspapers, protests against the +high-handed treatment of revolutionists by the United States courts), +lay unmailed, awaiting postage. Vera's watch had disappeared--the +old-fashioned gold repeater that had been his father's. Likewise had +gone the plain gold band from May Setbby's third finger. Things were +desperate. Ramos and Arrellano pulled their long mustaches in despair. +The letters must go off, and the Post Office allowed no credit to +purchasers of stamps. Then it was that Rivera put on his hat and +went out. When he came back he laid a thousand two-cent stamps on May +Sethby's desk. + +“I wonder if it is the cursed gold of Diaz?” said Vera to the comrades. + +They elevated their brows and could not decide. And Felipe Rivera, the +scrubber for the Revolution, continued, as occasion arose, to lay down +gold and silver for the Junta's use. + +And still they could not bring themselves to like him. They did not know +him. His ways were not theirs. He gave no confidences. He repelled all +probing. Youth that he was, they could never nerve themselves to dare to +question him. + +“A great and lonely spirit, perhaps, I do not know, I do not know,” + Arrellano said helplessly. + +“He is not human,” said Ramos. + +“His soul has been seared,” said May Sethby. “Light and laughter have +been burned out of him. He is like one dead, and yet he is fearfully +alive.” + +“He has been through hell,” said Vera. “No man could look like that who +has not been through hell--and he is only a boy.” + +Yet they could not like him. He never talked, never inquired, never +suggested. He would stand listening, expressionless, a thing dead, save +for his eyes, coldly burning, while their talk of the Revolution ran +high and warm. From face to face and speaker to speaker his eyes +would turn, boring like gimlets of incandescent ice, disconcerting and +perturbing. + +“He is no spy,” Vera confided to May Sethby. “He is a patriot--mark me, +the greatest patriot of us all. I know it, I feel it, here in my heart +and head I feel it. But him I know not at all.” + +“He has a bad temper,” said May Sethby. + +“I know,” said Vera, with a shudder. “He has looked at me with those +eyes of his. They do not love; they threaten; they are savage as a wild +tiger's. I know, if I should prove unfaithful to the Cause, that he +would kill me. He has no heart. He is pitiless as steel, keen and cold +as frost. He is like moonshine in a winter night when a man freezes to +death on some lonely mountain top. I am not afraid of Diaz and all his +killers; but this boy, of him am I afraid. I tell you true. I am afraid. +He is the breath of death.” + +Yet Vera it was who persuaded the others to give the first trust +to Rivera. The line of communication between Los Angeles and Lower +California had broken down. Three of the comrades had dug their own +graves and been shot into them. Two more were United States prisoners +in Los Angeles. Juan Alvarado, the Federal commander, was a monster. All +their plans did he checkmate. They could no longer gain access to the +active revolutionists, and the incipient ones, in Lower California. + +Young Rivera was given his instructions and dispatched south. When he +returned, the line of communication was reestablished, and Juan Alvarado +was dead. He had been found in bed, a knife hilt-deep in his breast. +This had exceeded Rivera's instructions, but they of the Junta knew the +times of his movements. They did not ask him. He said nothing. But they +looked at one another and conjectured. + +“I have told you,” said Vera. “Diaz has more to fear from this youth +than from any man. He is implacable. He is the hand of God.” + +The bad temper, mentioned by May Sethby, and sensed by them all, +was evidenced by physical proofs. Now he appeared with a cut lip, +a blackened cheek, or a swollen ear. It was patent that he brawled, +somewhere in that outside world where he ate and slept, gained money, +and moved in ways unknown to them. As the time passed, he had come to +set type for the little revolutionary sheet they published weekly. There +were occasions when he was unable to set type, when his knuckles were +bruised and battered, when his thumbs were injured and helpless, when +one arm or the other hung wearily at his side while his face was drawn +with unspoken pain. + +“A wastrel,” said Arrellano. + +“A frequenter of low places,” said Ramos. + +“But where does he get the money?” Vera demanded. “Only to-day, just +now, have I learned that he paid the bill for white paper--one hundred +and forty dollars.” + +“There are his absences,” said May Sethby. “He never explains them.” + +“We should set a spy upon him,” Ramos propounded. + +“I should not care to be that spy,” said Vera. “I fear you would never +see me again, save to bury me. He has a terrible passion. Not even God +would he permit to stand between him and the way of his passion.” + +“I feel like a child before him,” Ramos confessed. + +“To me he is power--he is the primitive, the wild wolf, the striking +rattlesnake, the stinging centipede,” said Arrellano. + +“He is the Revolution incarnate,” said Vera. “He is the flame and the +spirit of it, the insatiable cry for vengeance that makes no cry but +that slays noiselessly. He is a destroying angel in moving through the +still watches of the night.” + +“I could weep over him,” said May Sethby. “He knows nobody. He hates +all people. Us he tolerates, for we are the way of his desire. He is +alone.... lonely.” Her voice broke in a half sob and there was dimness +in her eyes. + +Rivera's ways and times were truly mysterious. There were periods when +they did not see him for a week at a time. Once, he was away a month. +These occasions were always capped by his return, when, without +advertisement or speech, he laid gold coins on May Sethby's desk. Again, +for days and weeks, he spent all his time with the Junta. And yet again, +for irregular periods, he would disappear through the heart of each day, +from early morning until late afternoon. At such times he came early and +remained late. Arrellano had found him at midnight, setting type with +fresh swollen knuckles, or mayhap it was his lip, new-split, that still +bled. + +II + +The time of the crisis approached. Whether or not the Revolution would +be depended upon the Junta, and the Junta was hard-pressed. The need +for money was greater than ever before, while money was harder to get. +Patriots had given their last cent and now could give no more. Section +gang laborers-fugitive peons from Mexico--were contributing half +their scanty wages. But more than that was needed. The heart-breaking, +conspiring, undermining toil of years approached fruition. The time +was ripe. The Revolution hung on the balance. One shove more, one last +heroic effort, and it would tremble across the scales to victory. They +knew their Mexico. Once started, the Revolution would take care of +itself. The whole Diaz machine would go down like a house of cards. The +border was ready to rise. One Yankee, with a hundred I.W.W. men, waited +the word to cross over the border and begin the conquest of Lower +California. But he needed guns. And clear across to the Atlantic, +the Junta in touch with them all and all of them needing guns, mere +adventurers, soldiers of fortune, bandits, disgruntled American union +men, socialists, anarchists, rough-necks, Mexican exiles, peons escaped +from bondage, whipped miners from the bull-pens of Coeur d'Alene and +Colorado who desired only the more vindictively to fight--all the +flotsam and jetsam of wild spirits from the madly complicated modern +world. And it was guns and ammunition, ammunition and guns--the +unceasing and eternal cry. + +Fling this heterogeneous, bankrupt, vindictive mass across the border, +and the Revolution was on. The custom house, the northern ports of +entry, would be captured. Diaz could not resist. He dared not throw +the weight of his armies against them, for he must hold the south. And +through the south the flame would spread despite. The people would rise. +The defenses of city after city would crumple up. State after state +would totter down. And at last, from every side, the victorious armies +of the Revolution would close in on the City of Mexico itself, Diaz's +last stronghold. + +But the money. They had the men, impatient and urgent, who would use the +guns. They knew the traders who would sell and deliver the guns. But to +culture the Revolution thus far had exhausted the Junta. The last dollar +had been spent, the last resource and the last starving patriot milked +dry, and the great adventure still trembled on the scales. Guns and +ammunition! The ragged battalions must be armed. But how? Ramos lamented +his confiscated estates. Arrellano wailed the spendthriftness of his +youth. May Sethby wondered if it would have been different had they of +the Junta been more economical in the past. + +“To think that the freedom of Mexico should stand or fall on a few +paltry thousands of dollars,” said Paulino Vera. + +Despair was in all their faces. Jose Amarillo, their last hope, a recent +convert, who had promised money, had been apprehended at his hacienda in +Chihuahua and shot against his own stable wall. The news had just come +through. + +Rivera, on his knees, scrubbing, looked up, with suspended brush, his +bare arms flecked with soapy, dirty water. + +“Will five thousand do it?” he asked. + +They looked their amazement. Vera nodded and swallowed. He could not +speak, but he was on the instant invested with a vast faith. + +“Order the guns,” Rivera said, and thereupon was guilty of the longest +flow of words they had ever heard him utter. “The time is short. In +three weeks I shall bring you the five thousand. It is well. The weather +will be warmer for those who fight. Also, it is the best I can do.” + +Vera fought his faith. It was incredible. Too many fond hopes had been +shattered since he had begun to play the revolution game. He believed +this threadbare scrubber of the Revolution, and yet he dared not +believe. + +“You are crazy,” he said. + +“In three weeks,” said Rivera. “Order the guns.” + +He got up, rolled down his sleeves, and put on his coat. + +“Order the guns,” he said. + +“I am going now.” + +III + +After hurrying and scurrying, much telephoning and bad language, a night +session was held in Kelly's office. Kelly was rushed with business; +also, he was unlucky. He had brought Danny Ward out from New York, +arranged the fight for him with Billy Carthey, the date was three +weeks away, and for two days now, carefully concealed from the sporting +writers, Carthey had been lying up, badly injured. There was no one to +take his place. Kelly had been burning the wires East to every eligible +lightweight, but they were tied up with dates and contracts. And now +hope had revived, though faintly. + +“You've got a hell of a nerve,” Kelly addressed Rivera, after one look, +as soon as they got together. + +Hate that was malignant was in Rivera's eyes, but his face remained +impassive. + +“I can lick Ward,” was all he said. + +“How do you know? Ever see him fight?” + +Rivera shook his head. + +“He can beat you up with one hand and both eyes closed.” + +Rivera shrugged his shoulders. + +“Haven't you got anything to say?” the fight promoter snarled. + +“I can lick him.” + +“Who'd you ever fight, anyway!” Michael Kelly demanded. Michael was the +promotor's brother, and ran the Yellowstone pool rooms where he made +goodly sums on the fight game. + +Rivera favored him with a bitter, unanswering stare. + +The promoter's secretary, a distinctively sporty young man, sneered +audibly. + +“Well, you know Roberts,” Kelly broke the hostile silence. “He ought to +be here. I've sent for him. Sit down and wait, though f rom the looks of +you, you haven't got a chance. I can't throw the public down with a bum +fight. Ringside seats are selling at fifteen dollars, you know that.” + +When Roberts arrived, it was patent that he was mildly drunk. He was a +tall, lean, slack-jointed individual, and his walk, like his talk, was a +smooth and languid drawl. + +Kelly went straight to the point. + +“Look here, Roberts, you've been bragging you discovered this little +Mexican. You know Carthey's broke his arm. Well, this little yellow +streak has the gall to blow in to-day and say he'll take Carthey's +place. What about it?” + +“It's all right, Kelly,” came the slow response. “He can put up a +fight.” + +“I suppose you'll be sayin' next that he can lick Ward,” Kelly snapped. + +Roberts considered judicially. + +“No, I won't say that. Ward's a top-notcher and a ring general. But he +can't hashhouse Rivera in short order. I know Rivera. Nobody can get +his goat. He ain't got a goat that I could ever discover. And he's a +two-handed fighter. He can throw in the sleep-makers from any position.” + +“Never mind that. What kind of a show can he put up? You've been +conditioning and training fighters all your life. I take off my hat to +your judgment. Can he give the public a run for its money?” + +“He sure can, and he'll worry Ward a mighty heap on top of it. You +don't know that boy. I do. I discovered him. He ain't got a goat. He's a +devil. He's a wizzy-wooz if anybody should ask you. He'll make Ward sit +up with a show of local talent that'll make the rest of you sit up. I +won't say he'll lick Ward, but he'll put up such a show that you'll all +know he's a comer.” + +“All right.” Kelly turned to his secretary. “Ring up Ward. I warned +him to show up if I thought it worth while. He's right across at the +Yellowstone, throwin' chests and doing the popular.” + +Kelly turned back to the conditioner. “Have a drink?” + +Roberts sipped his highball and unburdened himself. + +“Never told you how I discovered the little cuss. It was a couple of +years ago he showed up out at the quarters. I was getting Prayne ready +for his fight with Delaney. Prayne's wicked. He ain't got a tickle of +mercy in his make-up. I chopped up his pardner's something cruel, and +I couldn't find a willing boy that'd work with him. I'd noticed this +little starved Mexican kid hanging around, and I was desperate. So +I grabbed him, shoved on the gloves and put him in. He was tougher'n +rawhide, but weak. And he didn't know the first letter in the alphabet +of boxing. Prayne chopped him to ribbons. But he hung on for two +sickening rounds, when he fainted. Starvation, that was all. Battered! +You couldn't have recognized him. I gave him half a dollar and a square +meal. You oughta seen him wolf it down. He hadn't had the end of a bite +for a couple of days. That's the end of him, thinks I. But next day he +showed up, stiff an' sore, ready for another half and a square meal. And +he done better as time went by. Just a born fighter, and tough beyond +belief. He hasn't a heart. He's a piece of ice. And he never talked +eleven words in a string since I know him. He saws wood and does his +work.” + +“I've seen 'm,” the secretary said. “He's worked a lot for you.” + +“All the big little fellows has tried out on him,” Roberts answered. +“And he's learned from 'em. I've seen some of them he could lick. But +his heart wasn't in it. I reckoned he never liked the game. He seemed to +act that way.” + +“He's been fighting some before the little clubs the last few months,” + Kelly said. + +“Sure. But I don't know what struck 'm. All of a sudden his heart got +into it. He just went out like a streak and cleaned up all the little +local fellows. Seemed to want the money, and he's won a bit, though his +clothes don't look it. He's peculiar. Nobody knows his business. Nobody +knows how he spends his time. Even when he's on the job, he plumb up and +disappears most of each day soon as his work is done. Sometimes he just +blows away for weeks at a time. But he don't take advice. There's a +fortune in it for the fellow that gets the job of managin' him, only he +won't consider it. And you watch him hold out for the cash money when +you get down to terms.” + +It was at this stage that Danny Ward arrived. Quite a party it was. +His manager and trainer were with him, and he breezed in like a gusty +draught of geniality, good-nature, and all-conqueringness. Greetings +flew about, a joke here, a retort there, a smile or a laugh for +everybody. Yet it was his way, and only partly sincere. He was a good +actor, and he had found geniality a most valuable asset in the game +of getting on in the world. But down underneath he was the deliberate, +cold-blooded fighter and business man. The rest was a mask. Those who +knew him or trafficked with him said that when it came to brass tacks +he was Danny-on-the-Spot. He was invariably present at all business +discussions, and it was urged by some that his manager was a blind whose +only function was to serve as Danny's mouth-piece. + +Rivera's way was different. Indian blood, as well as Spanish, was in +his veins, and he sat back in a corner, silent, immobile, only his black +eyes passing from face to face and noting everything. + +“So that's the guy,” Danny said, running an appraising eye over his +proposed antagonist. “How de do, old chap.” + +Rivera's eyes burned venomously, but he made no sign of acknowledgment. +He disliked all Gringos, but this Gringo he hated with an immediacy that +was unusual even in him. + +“Gawd!” Danny protested facetiously to the promoter. “You ain't +expectin' me to fight a deef mute.” When the laughter subsided, he made +another hit. “Los Angeles must be on the dink when this is the best you +can scare up. What kindergarten did you get 'm from?” + +“He's a good little boy, Danny, take it from me,” Roberts defended. “Not +as easy as he looks.” + +“And half the house is sold already,” Kelly pleaded. “You'll have to +take 'm on, Danny. It is the best we can do.” + +Danny ran another careless and unflattering glance over Rivera and +sighed. + +“I gotta be easy with 'm, I guess. If only he don't blow up.” + +Roberts snorted. + +“You gotta be careful,” Danny's manager warned. “No taking chances with +a dub that's likely to sneak a lucky one across.” + +“Oh, I'll be careful all right, all right,” Danny smiled. “I'll get in +at the start an' nurse 'im along for the dear public's sake. What d' ye +say to fifteen rounds, Kelly--an' then the hay for him?” + +“That'll do,” was the answer. “As long as you make it realistic.” + +“Then let's get down to biz.” Danny paused and calculated. “Of course, +sixty-five per cent of the gate receipts, same as with Carthey. But +the split'll be different. Eighty will just about suit me.” And to his +manager, “That right?” + +The manager nodded. + +“Here, you, did you get that?” Kelly asked Rivera. + +Rivera shook his head. + +“Well, it is this way,” Kelly exposited. “The purse'll be sixty-five per +cent of the gate receipts. You're a dub, and an unknown. You and Danny +split, twenty per cent goin' to you, an' eighty to Danny. That's fair, +isn't it, Roberts?” + +“Very fair, Rivera,” Roberts agreed. + +“You see, you ain't got a reputation yet.” + +“What will sixty-five per cent of the gate receipts be?” Rivera +demanded. + +“Oh, maybe five thousand, maybe as high as eight thousand,” Danny broke +in to explain. “Something like that. Your share'll come to something +like a thousand or sixteen hundred. Pretty good for takin' a licking +from a guy with my reputation. What d' ye say?” + +Then Rivera took their breaths away. “Winner takes all,” he said with +finality. + +A dead silence prevailed. + +“It's like candy from a baby,” Danny's manager proclaimed. + +Danny shook his head. + +“I've been in the game too long,” he explained. + +“I'm not casting reflections on the referee, or the present company. +I'm not sayin' nothing about book-makers an' frame-ups that sometimes +happen. But what I do say is that it's poor business for a fighter like +me. I play safe. There's no tellin'. Mebbe I break my arm, eh? Or some +guy slips me a bunch of dope?” He shook his head solemnly. “Win or lose, +eighty is my split. What d' ye say, Mexican?” + +Rivera shook his head. + +Danny exploded. He was getting down to brass tacks now. + +“Why, you dirty little greaser! I've a mind to knock your block off +right now.” + +Roberts drawled his body to interposition between hostilities. + +“Winner takes all,” Rivera repeated sullenly. + +“Why do you stand out that way?” Danny asked. + +“I can lick you,” was the straight answer. + +Danny half started to take off his coat. But, as his manager knew, it +was a grand stand play. The coat did not come off, and Danny allowed +himself to be placated by the group. Everybody sympathized with him. +Rivera stood alone. + +“Look here, you little fool,” Kelly took up the argument. “You're +nobody. We know what you've been doing the last few months--putting away +little local fighters. But Danny is class. His next fight after this +will be for the championship. And you're unknown. Nobody ever heard of +you out of Los Angeles.” + +“They will,” Rivera answered with a shrug, “after this fight.” + +“You think for a second you can lick me?” Danny blurted in. + +Rivera nodded. + +“Oh, come; listen to reason,” Kelly pleaded. “Think of the advertising.” + +“I want the money,” was Rivera's answer. + +“You couldn't win from me in a thousand years,” Danny assured him. + +“Then what are you holdin' out for?” Rivera countered. “If the money's +that easy, why don't you go after it?” + +“I will, so help me!” Danny cried with abrupt conviction. “I'll beat you +to death in the ring, my boy--you monkeyin' with me this way. Make +out the articles, Kelly. Winner take all. Play it up in the sportin' +columns. Tell 'em it's a grudge fight. I'll show this fresh kid a few.” + +Kelly's secretary had begun to write, when Danny interrupted. + +“Hold on!” He turned to Rivera. + +“Weights?” + +“Ringside,” came the answer. + +“Not on your life, Fresh Kid. If winner takes all, we weigh in at ten +A.M.” + +“And winner takes all?” Rivera queried. + +Danny nodded. That settled it. He would enter the ring in his full +ripeness of strength. + +“Weigh in at ten,” Rivera said. + +The secretary's pen went on scratching. + +“It means five pounds,” Roberts complained to Rivera. + +“You've given too much away. You've thrown the fight right there. +Danny'll lick you sure. He'll be as strong as a bull. You're a fool. You +ain't got the chance of a dewdrop in hell.” + +Rivera's answer was a calculated look of hatred. Even this Gringo he +despised, and him had he found the whitest Gringo of them all. + +IV + +Barely noticed was Rivera as he entered the ring. Only a very slight and +very scattering ripple of half-hearted hand-clapping greeted him. The +house did not believe in him. He was the lamb led to slaughter at the +hands of the great Danny. Besides, the house was disappointed. It had +expected a rushing battle between Danny Ward and Billy Carthey, and +here it must put up with this poor little tyro. Still further, it had +manifested its disapproval of the change by betting two, and even three, +to one on Danny. And where a betting audience's money is, there is its +heart. + +The Mexican boy sat down in his corner and waited. The slow minutes +lagged by. Danny was making him wait. It was an old trick, but ever it +worked on the young, new fighters. They grew frightened, sitting thus +and facing their own apprehensions and a callous, tobacco-smoking +audience. But for once the trick failed. Roberts was right. Rivera had +no goat. He, who was more delicately coordinated, more finely nerved and +strung than any of them, had no nerves of this sort. The atmosphere of +foredoomed defeat in his own corner had no effect on him. His handlers +were Gringos and strangers. Also they were scrubs--the dirty driftage +of the fight game, without honor, without efficiency. And they were +chilled, as well, with certitude that theirs was the losing corner. + +“Now you gotta be careful,” Spider Hagerty warned him. Spider was his +chief second. “Make it last as long as you can--them's my instructions +from Kelly. If you don't, the papers'll call it another bum fight and +give the game a bigger black eye in Los Angeles.” + +All of which was not encouraging. But Rivera took no notice. He despised +prize fighting. It was the hated game of the hated Gringo. He had taken +up with it, as a chopping block for others in the training quarters, +solely because he was starving. The fact that he was marvelously made +for it had meant nothing. He hated it. Not until he had come in to the +Junta, had he fought for money, and he had found the money easy. Not +first among the sons of men had he been to find himself successful at a +despised vocation. + +He did not analyze. He merely knew that he must win this fight. There +could be no other outcome. For behind him, nerving him to this belief, +were profounder forces than any the crowded house dreamed. Danny Ward +fought for money, and for the easy ways of life that money would bring. +But the things Rivera fought for burned in his brain--blazing and +terrible visions, that, with eyes wide open, sitting lonely in the +corner of the ring and waiting for his tricky antagonist, he saw as +clearly as he had lived them. + +He saw the white-walled, water-power factories of Rio Blanco. He saw the +six thousand workers, starved and wan, and the little children, seven +and eight years of age, who toiled long shifts for ten cents a day. +He saw the perambulating corpses, the ghastly death's heads of men who +labored in the dye-rooms. He remembered that he had heard his father +call the dye-rooms the “suicide-holes,” where a year was death. He +saw the little patio, and his mother cooking and moiling at crude +housekeeping and finding time to caress and love him. And his father he +saw, large, big-moustached and deep-chested, kindly above all men, +who loved all men and whose heart was so large that there was love to +overflowing still left for the mother and the little muchacho playing +in the corner of the patio. In those days his name had not been Felipe +Rivera. It had been Fernandez, his father's and mother's name. Him had +they called Juan. Later, he had changed it himself, for he had found +the name of Fernandez hated by prefects of police, jefes politicos, and +rurales. + +Big, hearty Joaquin Fernandez! A large place he occupied in Rivera's +visions. He had not understood at the time, but looking back he could +understand. He could see him setting type in the little printery, or +scribbling endless hasty, nervous lines on the much-cluttered desk. And +he could see the strange evenings, when workmen, coming secretly in the +dark like men who did ill deeds, met with his father and talked long +hours where he, the muchacho, lay not always asleep in the corner. + +As from a remote distance he could hear Spider Hagerty saying to him: +“No layin' down at the start. Them's instructions. Take a beatin' and +earn your dough.” + +Ten minutes had passed, and he still sat in his corner. There were no +signs of Danny, who was evidently playing the trick to the limit. + +But more visions burned before the eye of Rivera's memory. The strike, +or, rather, the lockout, because the workers of Rio Blanco had helped +their striking brothers of Puebla. The hunger, the expeditions in the +hills for berries, the roots and herbs that all ate and that twisted and +pained the stomachs of all of them. And then, the nightmare; the waste +of ground before the company's store; the thousands of starving workers; +General Rosalio Martinez and the soldiers of Porfirio Diaz, and the +death-spitting rifles that seemed never to cease spitting, while the +workers' wrongs were washed and washed again in their own blood. And +that night! He saw the flat cars, piled high with the bodies of the +slain, consigned to Vera Cruz, food for the sharks of the bay. Again +he crawled over the grisly heaps, seeking and finding, stripped +and mangled, his father and his mother. His mother he especially +remembered--only her face projecting, her body burdened by the weight +of dozens of bodies. Again the rifles of the soldiers of Porfirio Diaz +cracked, and again he dropped to the ground and slunk away like some +hunted coyote of the hills. + +To his ears came a great roar, as of the sea, and he saw Danny Ward, +leading his retinue of trainers and seconds, coming down the center +aisle. The house was in wild uproar for the popular hero who was bound +to win. Everybody proclaimed him. Everybody was for him. Even Rivera's +own seconds warmed to something akin to cheerfulness when Danny ducked +jauntily through the ropes and entered the ring. His face continually +spread to an unending succession of smiles, and when Danny smiled he +smiled in every feature, even to the laughter-wrinkles of the corners of +the eyes and into the depths of the eyes themselves. Never was there so +genial a fighter. His face was a running advertisement of good feeling, +of good fellowship. He knew everybody. He joked, and laughed, and +greeted his friends through the ropes. Those farther away, unable to +suppress their admiration, cried loudly: “Oh, you Danny!” It was a +joyous ovation of affection that lasted a full five minutes. + +Rivera was disregarded. For all that the audience noticed, he did not +exist. Spider Lagerty's bloated face bent down close to his. + +“No gettin' scared,” the Spider warned. + +“An' remember instructions. You gotta last. No layin' down. If you lay +down, we got instructions to beat you up in the dressing rooms. Savve? +You just gotta fight.” + +The house began to applaud. Danny was crossing the ring to him. Danny +bent over, caught Rivera's right hand in both his own and shook it with +impulsive heartiness. Danny's smile-wreathed face was close to his. The +audience yelled its appreciation of Danny's display of sporting spirit. +He was greeting his opponent with the fondness of a brother. Danny's +lips moved, and the audience, interpreting the unheard words to be +those of a kindly-natured sport, yelled again. Only Rivera heard the low +words. + +“You little Mexican rat,” hissed from between Danny's gaily smiling +lips, “I'll fetch the yellow outa you.” + +Rivera made no move. He did not rise. He merely hated with his eyes. + +“Get up, you dog!” some man yelled through the ropes from behind. + +The crowd began to hiss and boo him for his unsportsmanlike conduct, +but he sat unmoved. Another great outburst of applause was Danny's as he +walked back across the ring. + +When Danny stripped, there was ohs! and ahs! of delight. His body was +perfect, alive with easy suppleness and health and strength. The skin +was white as a woman's, and as smooth. All grace, and resilience, +and power resided therein. He had proved it in scores of battles. His +photographs were in all the physical culture magazines. + +A groan went up as Spider Hagerty peeled Rivera's sweater over his head. +His body seemed leaner, because of the swarthiness of the skin. He had +muscles, but they made no display like his opponent's. What the audience +neglected to see was the deep chest. Nor could it guess the toughness of +the fiber of the flesh, the instantaneousness of the cell explosions +of the muscles, the fineness of the nerves that wired every part of +him into a splendid fighting mechanism. All the audience saw was a +brown-skinned boy of eighteen with what seemed the body of a boy. With +Danny it was different. Danny was a man of twenty-four, and his body +was a man's body. The contrast was still more striking as they stood +together in the center of the ring receiving the referee's last +instructions. + +Rivera noticed Roberts sitting directly behind the newspaper men. He was +drunker than usual, and his speech was correspondingly slower. + +“Take it easy, Rivera,” Roberts drawled. + +“He can't kill you, remember that. He'll rush you at the go-off, but +don't get rattled. You just and stall, and clinch. He can't hurt cover +up, much. Just make believe to yourself that he's choppin' out on you at +the trainin' quarters.” + +Rivera made no sign that he had heard. + +“Sullen little devil,” Roberts muttered to the man next to him. “He +always was that way.” + +But Rivera forgot to look his usual hatred. A vision of countless rifles +blinded his eyes. Every face in the audience, far as he could see, to +the high dollar-seats, was transformed into a rifle. And he saw the long +Mexican border arid and sun-washed and aching, and along it he saw the +ragged bands that delayed only for the guns. + +Back in his corner he waited, standing up. His seconds had crawled out +through the ropes, taking the canvas stool with them. Diagonally across +the squared ring, Danny faced him. The gong struck, and the battle was +on. The audience howled its delight. Never had it seen a battle open +more convincingly. The papers were right. It was a grudge fight. +Three-quarters of the distance Danny covered in the rush to get +together, his intention to eat up the Mexican lad plainly advertised. He +assailed with not one blow, nor two, nor a dozen. He was a gyroscope +of blows, a whirlwind of destruction. Rivera was nowhere. He was +overwhelmed, buried beneath avalanches of punches delivered from every +angle and position by a past master in the art. He was overborne, swept +back against the ropes, separated by the referee, and swept back against +the ropes again. + +It was not a fight. It was a slaughter, a massacre. Any audience, save +a prize fighting one, would have exhausted its emotions in that first +minute. Danny was certainly showing what he could do--a splendid +exhibition. Such was the certainty of the audience, as well as its +excitement and favoritism, that it failed to take notice that the +Mexican still stayed on his feet. It forgot Rivera. It rarely saw him, +so closely was he enveloped in Danny's man-eating attack. A minute of +this went by, and two minutes. Then, in a separation, it caught a clear +glimpse of the Mexican. His lip was cut, his nose was bleeding. As he +turned and staggered into a clinch, the welts of oozing blood, from his +contacts with the ropes, showed in red bars across his back. But what +the audience did not notice was that his chest was not heaving and that +his eyes were coldly burning as ever. Too many aspiring champions, in +the cruel welter of the training camps, had practiced this man-eating +attack on him. He had learned to live through for a compensation of from +half a dollar a go up to fifteen dollars a week--a hard school, and he +was schooled hard. + +Then happened the amazing thing. The whirling, blurring mix-up ceased +suddenly. Rivera stood alone. Danny, the redoubtable Danny, lay on his +back. His body quivered as consciousness strove to return to it. He had +not staggered and sunk down, nor had he gone over in a long slumping +fall. The right hook of Rivera had dropped him in midair with the +abruptness of death. The referee shoved Rivera back with one hand, and +stood over the fallen gladiator counting the seconds. It is the custom +of prize-fighting audiences to cheer a clean knock-down blow. But this +audience did not cheer. The thing had been too unexpected. It watched +the toll of the seconds in tense silence, and through this silence the +voice of Roberts rose exultantly: + +“I told you he was a two-handed fighter!” + +By the fifth second, Danny was rolling over on his face, and when seven +was counted, he rested on one knee, ready to rise after the count of +nine and before the count of ten. If his knee still touched the floor +at “ten,” he was considered “down,” and also “out.” The instant his +knee left the floor, he was considered “up,” and in that instant it was +Rivera's right to try and put him down again. Rivera took no chances. +The moment that knee left the floor he would strike again. He circled +around, but the referee circled in between, and Rivera knew that the +seconds he counted were very slow. All Gringos were against him, even +the referee. + +At “nine” the referee gave Rivera a sharp thrust back. It was unfair, +but it enabled Danny to rise, the smile back on his lips. Doubled partly +over, with arms wrapped about face and abdomen, he cleverly stumbled +into a clinch. By all the rules of the game the referee should have +broken it, but he did not, and Danny clung on like a surf-battered +barnacle and moment by moment recuperated. The last minute of the round +was going fast. If he could live to the end, he would have a full minute +in his corner to revive. And live to the end he did, smiling through all +desperateness and extremity. + +“The smile that won't come off!” somebody yelled, and the audience +laughed loudly in its relief. + +“The kick that Greaser's got is something God-awful,” Danny gasped in +his corner to his adviser while his handlers worked frantically over +him. + +The second and third rounds were tame. Danny, a tricky and consummate +ring general, stalled and blocked and held on, devoting himself to +recovering from that dazing first-round blow. In the fourth round he was +himself again. Jarred and shaken, nevertheless his good condition had +enabled him to regain his vigor. But he tried no man-eating tactics. +The Mexican had proved a tartar. Instead, he brought to bear his best +fighting powers. In tricks and skill and experience he was the master, +and though he could land nothing vital, he proceeded scientifically to +chop and wear down his opponent. He landed three blows to Rivera's one, +but they were punishing blows only, and not deadly. It was the sum of +many of them that constituted deadliness. He was respectful of this +two-handed dub with the amazing short-arm kicks in both his fists. + +In defense, Rivera developed a disconcerting straight-left. Again +and again, attack after attack he straight-lefted away from him with +accumulated damage to Danny's mouth and nose. But Danny was protean. +That was why he was the coming champion. He could change from style to +style of fighting at will. He now devoted himself to infighting. In +this he was particularly wicked, and it enabled him to avoid the other's +straight-left. Here he set the house wild repeatedly, capping it with +a marvelous lockbreak and lift of an inside upper-cut that raised the +Mexican in the air and dropped him to the mat. Rivera rested on one +knee, making the most of the count, and in the soul of him he knew the +referee was counting short seconds on him. + +Again, in the seventh, Danny achieved the diabolical inside uppercut. +He succeeded only in staggering Rivera, but, in the ensuing moment of +defenseless helplessness, he smashed him with another blow through the +ropes. Rivera's body bounced on the heads of the newspaper men below, +and they boosted him back to the edge of the platform outside the ropes. +Here he rested on one knee, while the referee raced off the seconds. +Inside the ropes, through which he must duck to enter the ring, Danny +waited for him. Nor did the referee intervene or thrust Danny back. + +The house was beside itself with delight. + +“Kill'm, Danny, kill'm!” was the cry. + +Scores of voices took it up until it was like a war-chant of wolves. + +Danny did his best, but Rivera, at the count of eight, instead of nine, +came unexpectedly through the ropes and safely into a clinch. Now the +referee worked, tearing him away so that he could be hit, giving Danny +every advantage that an unfair referee can give. + +But Rivera lived, and the daze cleared from his brain. It was all of a +piece. They were the hated Gringos and they were all unfair. And in the +worst of it visions continued to flash and sparkle in his brain--long +lines of railroad track that simmered across the desert; rurales and +American constables, prisons and calabooses; tramps at water tanks--all +the squalid and painful panorama of his odyssey after Rio Blanca and the +strike. And, resplendent and glorious, he saw the great, red Revolution +sweeping across his land. The guns were there before him. Every hated +face was a gun. It was for the guns he fought. He was the guns. He was +the Revolution. He fought for all Mexico. + +The audience began to grow incensed with Rivera. Why didn't he take the +licking that was appointed him? Of course he was going to be licked, but +why should he be so obstinate about it? Very few were interested in him, +and they were the certain, definite percentage of a gambling crowd that +plays long shots. Believing Danny to be the winner, nevertheless they +had put their money on the Mexican at four to ten and one to three. More +than a trifle was up on the point of how many rounds Rivera could last. +Wild money had appeared at the ringside proclaiming that he could not +last seven rounds, or even six. The winners of this, now that their cash +risk was happily settled, had joined in cheering on the favorite. + +Rivera refused to be licked. Through the eighth round his opponent +strove vainly to repeat the uppercut. In the ninth, Rivera stunned the +house again. In the midst of a clinch he broke the lock with a quick, +lithe movement, and in the narrow space between their bodies his right +lifted from the waist. Danny went to the floor and took the safety of +the count. The crowd was appalled. He was being bested at his own game. +His famous right-uppercut had been worked back on him. Rivera made +no attempt to catch him as he arose at “nine.” The referee was openly +blocking that play, though he stood clear when the situation was +reversed and it was Rivera who desired to rise. + +Twice in the tenth, Rivera put through the right-uppercut, lifted from +waist to opponent's chin. Danny grew desperate. The smile never left his +face, but he went back to his man-eating rushes. Whirlwind as he would, +he could not damage Rivera, while Rivera through the blur and whirl, +dropped him to the mat three times in succession. Danny did not +recuperate so quickly now, and by the eleventh round he was in a serious +way. But from then till the fourteenth he put up the gamest exhibition +of his career. He stalled and blocked, fought parsimoniously, and strove +to gather strength. Also, he fought as foully as a successful fighter +knows how. Every trick and device he employed, butting in the clinches +with the seeming of accident, pinioning Rivera's glove between arm and +body, heeling his glove on Rivera's mouth to clog his breathing. Often, +in the clinches, through his cut and smiling lips he snarled insults +unspeakable and vile in Rivera's ear. Everybody, from the referee to the +house, was with Danny and was helping Danny. And they knew what he had +in mind. Bested by this surprise-box of an unknown, he was pinning +all on a single punch. He offered himself for punishment, fished, and +feinted, and drew, for that one opening that would enable him to whip +a blow through with all his strength and turn the tide. As another and +greater fighter had done before him, he might do a right and left, to +solar plexus and across the jaw. He could do it, for he was noted for +the strength of punch that remained in his arms as long as he could keep +his feet. + +Rivera's seconds were not half-caring for him in the intervals between +rounds. Their towels made a showing, but drove little air into his +panting lungs. Spider Hagerty talked advice to him, but Rivera knew +it was wrong advice. Everybody was against him. He was surrounded by +treachery. In the fourteenth round he put Danny down again, and himself +stood resting, hands dropped at side, while the referee counted. In +the other corner Rivera had been noting suspicious whisperings. He saw +Michael Kelly make his way to Roberts and bend and whisper. Rivera's +ears were a cat's, desert-trained, and he caught snatches of what was +said. He wanted to hear more, and when his opponent arose he maneuvered +the fight into a clinch over against the ropes. + +“Got to,” he could hear Michael, while Roberts nodded. “Danny's got to +win--I stand to lose a mint--I've got a ton of money covered--my own. +If he lasts the fifteenth I'm bust--the boy'll mind you. Put something +across.” + +And thereafter Rivera saw no more visions. They were trying to job him. +Once again he dropped Danny and stood resting, his hands at his slide. +Roberts stood up. + +“That settled him,” he said. + +“Go to your corner.” + +He spoke with authority, as he had often spoken to Rivera at the +training quarters. But Rivera looked hatred at him and waited for Danny +to rise. Back in his corner in the minute interval, Kelly, the promoter, +came and talked to Rivera. + +“Throw it, damn you,” he rasped in, a harsh low voice. “You gotta lay +down, Rivera. Stick with me and I'll make your future. I'll let you lick +Danny next time. But here's where you lay down.” + +Rivera showed with his eyes that he heard, but he made neither sign of +assent nor dissent. + +“Why don't you speak?” Kelly demanded angrily. + +“You lose, anyway,” Spider Hagerty supplemented. “The referee'll take it +away from you. Listen to Kelly, and lay down.” + +“Lay down, kid,” Kelly pleaded, “and I'll help you to the championship.” + +Rivera did not answer. + +“I will, so help me, kid.” + +At the strike of the gong Rivera sensed something impending. The house +did not. Whatever it was it was there inside the ring with him and very +close. Danny's earlier surety seemed returned to him. The confidence of +his advance frightened Rivera. Some trick was about to be worked. Danny +rushed, but Rivera refused the encounter. He side-stepped away into +safety. What the other wanted was a clinch. It was in some way necessary +to the trick. Rivera backed and circled away, yet he knew, sooner or +later, the clinch and the trick would come. Desperately he resolved +to draw it. He made as if to effect the clinch with Danny's next rush. +Instead, at the last instant, just as their bodies should have come +together, Rivera darted nimbly back. And in the same instant Danny's +corner raised a cry of foul. Rivera had fooled them. The referee paused +irresolutely. The decision that trembled on his lips was never uttered, +for a shrill, boy's voice from the gallery piped, “Raw work!” + +Danny cursed Rivera openly, and forced him, while Rivera danced away. +Also, Rivera made up his mind to strike no more blows at the body. In +this he threw away half his chance of winning, but he knew if he was to +win at all it was with the outfighting that remained to him. Given the +least opportunity, they would lie a foul on him. Danny threw all caution +to the winds. For two rounds he tore after and into the boy who dared +not meet him at close quarters. Rivera was struck again and again; +he took blows by the dozens to avoid the perilous clinch. During this +supreme final rally of Danny's the audience rose to its feet and went +mad. It did not understand. All it could see was that its favorite was +winning, after all. + +“Why don't you fight?” it demanded wrathfully of Rivera. + +“You're yellow! You're yellow!” “Open up, you cur! Open up!” “Kill'm, +Danny! Kill 'm!” “You sure got 'm! Kill 'm!” + +In all the house, bar none, Rivera was the only cold man. By temperament +and blood he was the hottest-passioned there; but he had gone through +such vastly greater heats that this collective passion of ten thousand +throats, rising surge on surge, was to his brain no more than the velvet +cool of a summer twilight. + +Into the seventeenth round Danny carried his rally. Rivera, under a +heavy blow, drooped and sagged. His hands dropped helplessly as he +reeled backward. Danny thought it was his chance. The boy was at, his +mercy. Thus Rivera, feigning, caught him off his guard, lashing out a +clean drive to the mouth. Danny went down. When he arose, Rivera felled +him with a down-chop of the right on neck and jaw. Three times he +repeated this. It was impossible for any referee to call these blows +foul. + +“Oh, Bill! Bill!” Kelly pleaded to the referee. + +“I can't,” that official lamented back. “He won't give me a chance.” + +Danny, battered and heroic, still kept coming up. Kelly and others near +to the ring began to cry out to the police to stop it, though Danny's +corner refused to throw in the towel. Rivera saw the fat police captain +starting awkwardly to climb through the ropes, and was not sure what it +meant. There were so many ways of cheating in this game of the Gringos. +Danny, on his feet, tottered groggily and helplessly before him. The +referee and the captain were both reaching for Rivera when he struck the +last blow. There was no need to stop the fight, for Danny did not rise. + +“Count!” Rivera cried hoarsely to the referee. + +And when the count was finished, Danny's seconds gathered him up and +carried him to his corner. + +“Who wins?” Rivera demanded. + +Reluctantly, the referee caught his gloved hand and held it aloft. + +There were no congratulations for Rivera. He walked to his corner +unattended, where his seconds had not yet placed his stool. He leaned +backward on the ropes and looked his hatred at them, swept it on and +about him till the whole ten thousand Gringos were included. His knees +trembled under him, and he was sobbing from exhaustion. Before his eyes +the hated faces swayed back and forth in the giddiness of nausea. Then +he remembered they were the guns. The guns were his. The Revolution +could go on. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Night-Born, by Jack London + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1029 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1030-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1030-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5018e5fd --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1030-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11250 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England, by +Various, Edited by Charles Mackay + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: The Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England + from 1642 to 1684 + + +Author: Various + +Editor: Charles Mackay + +Release Date: February 22, 2015 [eBook #1030] +[This file was first posted on September 2, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAVALIER SONGS AND BALLADS OF +ENGLAND*** + + +Transcribed from the 1863 Griffin Bohn and Co. edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + The + CAVALIER SONGS AND BALLADS + OF ENGLAND + + + FROM 1642 TO 1684 + + * * * * * + + EDITED BY + CHARLES MACKAY + LL.D. + + * * * * * + + LONDON + GRIFFIN BOHN AND CO + STATIONERS’ HALL COURT + 1863. + + * * * * * + + JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. + + * * * * * + + + + +INTRODUCTION. + + +THE Cavalier Ballads of England, like the Jacobite Ballads of England and +Scotland at a later period, are mines of wealth for the student of the +history and social manners of our ancestors. The rude but often +beautiful political lyrics of the early days of the Stuarts were far more +interesting and important to the people who heard or repeated them, than +any similar compositions can be in our time. When the printing press was +the mere vehicle of polemics for the educated minority, and when the +daily journal was neither a luxury of the poor, a necessity of the rich, +nor an appreciable power in the formation and guidance of public opinion, +the song and the ballad appealed to the passion, if not to the intellect +of the masses, and instructed them in all the leading events of the time. +In our day the people need no information of the kind, for they procure +it from the more readily available and more copious if not more reliable, +source of the daily and weekly press. The song and ballad have ceased to +deal with public affairs. No new ones of the kind are made except as +miserable parodies and burlesques that may amuse sober costermongers and +half-drunken men about town, who frequent music saloons at midnight, but +which are offensive to every one else. Such genuine old ballads as +remain in the popular memory are either fast dying out, or relate +exclusively to the never-to-be-superseded topics of love, war, and wine. +The people of our day have little heart or appreciation for song, except +in Scotland and Ireland. England and America are too prosaic and too +busy, and the masses, notwithstanding all their supposed advantages in +education, are much too vulgar to delight in either song or ballad that +rises to the dignity of poetry. They appreciate the buffooneries of the +“Negro Minstrelsy,” and the inanities and the vapidities of sentimental +love songs, but the elegance of such writers as Thomas Moore, and the +force of such vigorous thinkers and tender lyrists as Robert Burns, are +above their sphere, and are left to scholars in their closets and ladies +in their drawing-rooms. The case was different among our ancestors in +the memorable period of the struggle for liberty that commenced in the +reign of Charles I. The Puritans had the pulpit on their side, and found +it a powerful instrument. The Cavaliers had the song writers on theirs, +and found them equally effective. And the song and ballad writers of +that day were not always illiterate versifiers. Some of them were the +choicest wits and most accomplished gentlemen of the nation. As they +could not reach the ears of their countrymen by the printed book, the +pamphlet, or the newspaper, nor mount the pulpit and dispute with +Puritanism on its own ground and in its own precincts, they found the +song, the ballad, and the epigram more available among a musical and +song-loving people such as the English then were, and trusted to these to +keep up the spirit of loyalty in the evil days of the royal cause, to +teach courage in adversity, and cheerfulness in all circumstances, and to +ridicule the hypocrites whom they could not shame, and the tyrants whom +they could not overthrow. Though many thousands of these have been +preserved in the King’s Pamphlets in the British Museum, and in other +collections which have been freely ransacked for the materials of the +following pages, as many thousands more have undoubtedly perished. +Originally printed as broadsides, and sold for a halfpenny at country +fairs, it used to be the fashion of the peasantry to paste them up in +cupboards, or on the backs of doors, and farmers’ wives, as well as +servant girls and farm labourers, who were able to read, would often +paste them on the lids of their trunks, as the best means of preserving +them. This is one reason why so many of them have been lost without +recovery. To Sir W. C. Trevelyan literature is indebted for the +restoration of a few of these waifs and strays, which he found pasted in +an old trunk of the days of Cromwell, and which he carefully detached and +presented to the British Museum. But a sufficient number of these flying +leaves of satire, sentiment, and loyalty have reached our time, to throw +a curious and instructive light upon the feelings of the men who resisted +the progress of the English Revolution; and who made loyalty to the +person of the monarch, even when the monarch was wrong, the first of the +civic virtues. In the superabundance of the materials at command, as +will be seen from the appended list of books and MSS. which have been +consulted and drawn upon to form this collection, the difficulty was to +keep within bounds, and to select only such specimens as merited a place +in a volume necessarily limited, by their celebrity, their wit, their +beauty, their historical interest, or the light they might happen to +throw on the obscure biography of the most remarkable actors in the +scenes which they describe. It would be too much to claim for these +ballads the exalted title of poetry. They are not poetical in the +highest sense of the word, and possibly would not have been so effective +for the purpose which they were intended to serve, if their writers had +been more fanciful and imaginative, or less intent upon what they had to +say than upon the manner of saying it. But if not extremely poetical, +they are extremely national, and racy of the soil; and some of them are +certain to live as long as the language which produced them. For the +convenience of reference and consultation they have been arranged +chronologically; beginning with the discontents that inaugurated the +reign of Charles I., and following regularly to the final, though +short-lived, triumph of the Cavalier cause, in the accession of James II. +After his ill-omened advent to the throne, the Cavalier became the +Jacobite. In this collection no Jacobite songs, properly so called, are +included, it being the intention of the publishers to issue a companion +volume, of the Jacobite Ballads of England, from the accession of James +II. to the battle of Culloden, should the public receive the present +volume with sufficient favour to justify the venture. + +The Editor cannot, in justice to previous fellow-labourers, omit to +record his obligation to the interesting volume, with its learned +annotations, contributed by Mr Thomas Wright to the Percy Society; or to +another and equally valuable collection, edited by Mr J. O. Halliwell. + +_December_, 1862. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + PAGE +When the King enjoys his own again 1 +,, comes home in Peace again 4 +I love my King and Country well 6 +The Commoners 8 +The Royalist 10 +The New Courtier 11 +Upon the Cavaliers departing out of London 13 +A Mad World, my Masters 14 +The Man O’ The Moon 16 +The Tub-Preacher 18 +The New Litany 20 +The Old Protestant’s Litany 23 +Vive Le Roy 27 +The Cavalier 28 +A Caveat to the Roundheads 31 +Hey, then, up go we 32 +The Clean Contrary Way, or, Colonel Venne’s Encouragement 35 +to his Soldiers +The Cameronian Cat 37 +The Royal Feast 39 +Upon His Majesty’s coming to Holmby 50 +I thank you twice 51 +The Cities Loyaltie to the King 52 +The Lawyers’ Lamentation for the Loss of Charing-Cross 55 +The Downfal of Charing-Cross 56 +The Long Parliament 58 +The Puritan 61 +The Roundhead 64 +Prattle your pleasure under the rose 65 +The Dominion of the Sword 67 +The State’s New Coin 70 +The Anarchie, or the Blest Reformation since 1640 71 +A Coffin for King Charles, a Crown For Cromwell, And A Pit 76 +For The People +A Short Litany For The Year 1649 81 +The Sale of Rebellion’s Household Stuff 82 +The Cavalier’s Farewell to his Mistress, being called to 86 +the Wars +The Last News from France 87 +Song to the Figure Two 91 +The Reformation 94 +Upon the General Pardon passed by the Rump 98 +An Old Song on Oliver’s Court 100 +The Parliament Routed, or Here’s a House to be Let 102 +A Christmas Song, when the Rump was first dissolved 107 +A Free Parliament Litany 110 +The Mock Song 114 +The Answer 116 +As close as a Goose 118 +The Prisoners 120 +The Protecting Brewer 122 +The Arraignment of the Devil for stealing away President 124 +Bradshaw +A New Ballad to an Old Tune, “Tom Of Bedlam” 130 +Saint George and the Dragon, Anglice Mercurius Poeticus 133 +The Second Part of St George for England 143 +A New-year’s Gift for the Rump 147 +A Proper New Ballad on the Old Parliament; or, the Second 151 +Part of Knave Out of Doors +The Tale of the Cobbler and the Vicar of Bray 166 +The Geneva Ballad 191 +The Devil’s Progress on Earth, or Huggle Duggle, etc. 194 +A Bottle Definition of that Fallen Angel, called a Whig 196 +The Desponding Whig 197 +Phanatick Zeal, or a Looking-glass for the Whigs 199 +A New Game at Cards: or, Win at First and Lose at Last 202 +The Cavaleers Litany 205 +The Cavalier’s Complaint 209 +An Echo to the Cavalier’s Complaint 211 +A Relation 213 +The Glory of these Nations 217 +The Noble Progress, or, a True Relation of the Lord General 223 +Monk’s Political Proceedings +On the King’s Return 227 +The Brave Barbary 228 +A Catch 229 +The Turn-coat 231 +The Claret-drinker’s Song, or, the Good Fellow’s Design 233 +The Loyal Subjects’ Hearty Wishes to King Charles II. 236 +King Charles the Second’s Restoration, 29th May 243 +The Jubilee, or the Coronation Day 246 +The King enjoys his own again 247 +A Country Song, intituled the Restoration 248 +Here’s a Health unto His Majesty 251 +The Whigs drowned in an Honest Tory health 251 +The Cavalier 253 +The Lamentation of a Bad Market, or the Disbanded Souldier 255 +The Courtier’s Health; or, The Merry Boys of the Times 260 +The Loyal Tories’ Delight; or A Pill for Fanaticks 262 +The Royal Admiral 265 +The Unfortunate Whigs 266 +The Downfall of the Good Old Cause 268 +Old Jemmy 271 +The Cloak’s Knavery 274 +The Time-server, or a Medley 278 +The Soldier’s Delight 280 +The Loyal Soldier 281 +The Polititian 283 +A New Droll 285 +The Royalist 287 +The Royalist’s Resolve 288 +Loyalty turned up Trump, or the Danger over 290 +The Loyalist’s Encouragement 290 +The Trouper 292 +On the Times, or The Good Subject’s Wish 293 +The Jovialists’ Coronation 294 +The Loyal Prisoner 295 +Canary’s Coronation 297 +The Mournful Subjects, or, The Whole Nation’s Lamination, 299 +from the highest to the lowest +Memento Mori 303 +Accession of James II. 305 +On the Most High and Mighty Monarch King James 307 +In a Summer’s Day 309 + + + + +LIST OF +BALLAD AND SONG BOOKS +AND +MSS. QUOTED IN THIS COLLECTION. + + +Ashmolean Collection. + +Antidote to Melancholy, 1682. + +Apollo’s Banquet, 1690. + +Additional MSS. + +Aviary, 1740–1745. + +Broadsides, in the reign of Charles II. + +„ „ „ _Roxburghe ballads_. + +Butler’s, Samuel, Posthumous Works, 1732. + +Burney’s, Dr, Collection of Songs. + +Ballads, six, of the time of Charles II., in the British Museum. + +Bagford’s Collection [qu. date]. + +Brome’s, Alex., Songs [qu. date]. + +Banquet of Music, 1689. + +Bull’s, Dr, Collection of Songs [qu. date]. + +* Collection of State Songs that have been published since the Rebellion, +and sung at the several Mug-houses in the Cities of London and +Westminster, 1716. + +* Collection of Loyal Songs, 1750 [Jacobites]. + +Complete Collection of Old and New English and Scotch Songs, 1735. + +Craig’s Collection, 1730. + +Convivial Songster, 1782. + +Crown Garlands of Golden Roses. + +Carey’s, Henry, Musical Centus, 1740. + +* D’Urfey’s Songs (4 volumes,) or Pills to Purge Melancholy. + +Douce’s Collection, Oxford. + +Delightful Companion for the Recorder, 1686. + +Dixon’s Ballads of the Peasants of England. + +English Political Songs and Ballads of the 17th and 18th Centuries, by +Walker Wilkins. + +Evans’ Old Ballads, 1810. + +England under the House of Hanover, by Thos. Wright. + +Folly in Print, or a Book of Rhymes, 1667. + +Golden Garlands of Princely delights, 1620. + +Harleian MSS. + +Halifax’s Songs, 1694. + +Halliwell’s Collection of Ballads, “Cheetham Library.” + +Hogg’s Jacobite Relics of Scotland. + +Jordan’s, Thomas, London Triumphant, 1672. + +King’s Library. + +„ Pamphlets—Collection of Political Songs, from 1640 to the Restoration +of Charles II. + +Kitchener, Dr, Loyal and National Songs. + +Loyal Songs, 120, 1684, by N. Thompson. + +,, 180, 1685 to 1694. + +Loyal Songs, 1731. + +* Loyal Songs written against the Rump Parliament, between 1639 and 1661. + +Loyal Garland, containing choice Songs, &c., of our late Revolution, +1761, and 5th Edition, 1686, Percy Society. + +Merry Drollery, complete, 1670. + +Muses’ Merriment, 1656. _See_ “Sportive Wit.” + +Musical MSS., British Museum. + +Musical Miscellany, Watts. + +Muse’s Delight, 1757, or “Apollo’s Cabinet.” + +Old Ballads, 1723, British Museum. + +Playford’s Music and Mirth—“Douce’s Collection.” + +„ Choice Songs, &c. + +Playford’s Theatre of Music, 1685. + +,, Pleasant Music Companion. + +,, Catch that Catch can. + +„ Antidote against Melancholy, 1669. + +Political Merriment. + +* Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1661. + +Parker’s, Martin, Ballads, Roxburghe Collection. + +Political Ballads, Percy Society, Wright’s Collection. + +Pepys’ Collection, British Museum. + +Rats rhymed to Death, 1660; King’s Pamphlets, British Museum. + +* Roxburghe Ballads, 3 vols. + +Rump Collection of Songs, 1639 to 1661. _See_ Loyal Songs. + +Ritson’s Ancient Songs, 1790. + +,, English ,, + +Ramsay, Allan, Tea-table Miscellany, 1724. + +Rome rhymed to Death [qu. date]. + +Sportive Wit; the Muse’s Merriment [qu. date]. + +Skene MSS. + +Suckling’s, Sir John, Works [qu. date]. + +Second Tale of a Tub, 1715. + +Satirical Songs on Costume. + +True Loyalist, or Chevalier’s Favourite, 1779. + +Triumph of Wit, or Ingenuity Displayed. + +Taubman’s, Mat., Heroic and Choice Songs on the Times, 1682. + +Westminster Drollery, 1671. + +* Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy. + +Wit restored, 1658. + +Wit’s Recreation, 1654 + +Williams’, Sir Charles Hanbury, Political Songs. + +Wood’s, Anthony, Collection at Oxford [Ashmolean]. + +Withers, George, Songs. + +Wade’s, John, Ballads [qu. date]. + + + + +CAVALIER SONGS AND BALLADS. + + +WHEN THE KING ENJOYS HIS OWN AGAIN. + + +This is perhaps the most popular of all the Cavalier songs—a favour which +it partly owes to the excellent melody with which it is associated. The +song, says Mr Chappell, is ascertained to be by Martin Parker, by the +following extract from the _Gossips’ Feast_, or Moral Tales, 1647. “By +my faith, Martin Parker never got a fairer treat: no, not when he indited +that sweet ballad, When the King enjoys his own again.” In the poet’s +Blind Man’s Bough (or Buff), 1641, Martin Parker says, + + “Whatever yet was published by me + Was known as Martin Parker, or M. P.;” + +but this song was printed without his name or initials, at a time when it +would have been dangerous to give either his own name or that of his +publisher. Ritson calls it the most famous song of any time or country. +Invented to support the declining interest of Charles I., it served +afterwards with more success to keep up the spirits of the Cavaliers, and +promote the restoration of his son; an event which it was employed to +celebrate all over the kingdom. At the Revolution of 1688, it of course +became an adherent of the exiled King, whose cause it never deserted. It +did equal service in 1715 and 1745. The tune appears to have been +originally known as _Marry me_, _marry me_, _quoth he_, _bonnie lass_. +Booker, Pond, Hammond, Rivers, Swallow, Dade, and “The Man in the Moon,” +were all astrologers and Almanac makers in the early days of the civil +war. “The Man in the Moon” appears to have been a loyalist in his +predictions. Hammond’s Almanac is called “bloody” because the compiler +always took care to note the anniversary of the death, execution, or +downfall of a Royalist. + + WHAT _Booker_ doth prognosticate + Concerning kings’ or kingdoms’ fate? + I think myself to be as wise + As he that gazeth on the skies; + My skill goes beyond the depth of a _Pond_, + Or _Rivers_ in the greatest rain, + Thereby I can tell all things will be well + When the King enjoys his own again. + + There’s neither _Swallow_, _Dove_, nor _Dade_, + Can soar more high, or deeper wade, + Nor show a reason from the stars + What causeth peace or civil wars; + The Man in the Moon may wear out his shoon + By running after Charles his wain: + But all’s to no end, for the times will not mend + Till the King enjoys his own again. + + Though for a time we see Whitehall + With cobwebs hanging on the wall + Instead of silk and silver brave, + Which formerly it used to have, + With rich perfume in every room,— + Delightful to that princely train, + Which again you shall see, when the time it shall be, + That the King enjoys his own again. + + Full forty years the royal crown + Hath been his father’s and his own; + And is there any one but he + That in the same should sharer be? + For who better may the sceptre sway + Than he that hath such right to reign? + Then let’s hope for a peace, for the wars will not cease + Till the King enjoys his own again. + + [Did _Walker_ no predictions lack + In Hammond’s bloody almanack? + Foretelling things that would ensue, + That all proves right, if lies be true; + But why should not he the pillory foresee, + Wherein poor Toby once was ta’en? + And also foreknow to the gallows he must go + When the King enjoys his own again?] {1} + + Till then upon Ararat’s hill + My hope shall cast her anchor still, + Until I see some peaceful dove + Bring home the branch I dearly love; + Then will I wait till the waters abate + Which now disturb my troubled brain, + Else never rejoice till I hear the voice + That the King enjoys his own again. + + + +WHEN THE KING COMES HOME IN PEACE AGAIN. + + +From a broadside in the Roxburghe Collection of Ballads. It appears to +have been written shortly after Martin Parker’s original ballad obtained +popularity among the Royalists, and to be by another hand. It bears +neither date nor printer’s name; and has “God save the King, Amen,” in +large letters at the end. + + OXFORD and Cambridge shall agree, + With honour crown’d, and dignity; + For learned men shall then take place, + And bad be silenced with disgrace: + They’ll know it to be but a casualty + That hath so long disturb’d their brain; + For I can surely tell that all things will go well + When the King comes home in peace again. + + Church government shall settled be, + And then I hope we shall agree + Without their help, whose high-brain’d zeal + Hath long disturb’d the common weal; + Greed out of date, and cobblers that do prate + Of wars that still disturb their brain; + The which you will see, when the time it shall be + That the King comes home in peace again. + + Though many now are much in debt, + And many shops are to be let, + A golden time is drawing near, + Men shops shall take to hold their ware; + And then all our trade shall flourishing be made, + To which ere long we shall attain; + For still I can tell all things will be well + When the King comes home in peace again. + + Maidens shall enjoy their mates, + And honest men their lost estates; + Women shall have what they do lack, + Their husbands, who are coming back. + When the wars have an end, then I and my friend + All subjects’ freedom shall obtain; + By which I can tell all things will be well + When we enjoy sweet peace again. + + Though people now walk in great fear + Along the country everywhere, + Thieves shall then tremble at the law, + And justice shall keep them in awe: + The Frenchies shall flee with their treacherie, + And the foes of the King ashamed remain: + The which you shall see when the time it shall be + That the King comes home in peace again. + + The Parliament must willing be + That all the world may plainly see + How they do labour still for peace, + That now these bloody wars may cease; + For they will gladly spend their lives to defend + The King in all his right to reign: + So then I can tell all things will be well + When we enjoy sweet peace again. + + When all these things to pass shall come + Then farewell Musket, Pick, and Drum, + The Lamb shall with the Lion feed, + Which were a happy time indeed. + O let us pray we may all see the day + That peace may govern in his name, + For then I can tell all things will be well + When the King comes home in peace again. + + + +I LOVE MY KING AND COUNTRY WELL. + + +From Songs and other Poems by Alex. Brome, Gent. Published London 1664; +written 1645. + + I LOVE my King and country well, + Religion and the laws; + Which I’m mad at the heart that e’er we did sell + To buy the good old cause. + These unnatural wars + And brotherly jars + Are no delight or joy to me; + But it is my desire + That the wars should expire, + And the King and his realms agree. + + I never yet did take up arms, + And yet I dare to dye; + But I’ll not be seduced by phanatical charms + Till I know a reason why. + Why the King and the state + Should fall to debate + I ne’er could yet a reason see, + But I find many one + Why the wars should be done, + And the King and his realms agree. + + I love the King and the Parliament, + But I love them both together: + And when they by division asunder are rent, + I know ’tis good for neither. + Whichsoe’er of those + Be victorious, + I’m sure for us no good ’twill be, + For our plagues will increase + Unless we have peace, + And the King and his realms agree. + + The King without them can’t long stand, + Nor they without the King; + ’Tis they must advise, and ’tis he must command, + For their power from his must spring. + ’Tis a comfortless sway + When none will obey; + If the King han’t his right, which way shall we? + They may vote and make laws, + But no good they will cause + Till the King and his realm agree. + + A pure religion I would have, + Not mixt with human wit; + And I cannot endure that each ignorant knave + Should dare to meddle with it. + The tricks of the law + I would fain withdraw, + That it may be alike to each degree: + And I fain would have such + As do meddle so much, + With the King and the church agree. + + We have pray’d and pray’d that the wars might cease, + And we be free men made; + I would fight, if my fighting would bring any peace, + But war is become a trade. + Our servants did ride + With swords by their side, + And made their masters footmen be; + But we’ll be no more slaves + To the beggars and knaves + Now the King and the realms do agree. + + + +THE COMMONERS. + + + Written in 1645 to the Club-men, by Alex. Brome. + + COME your ways, + Bonny boys + Of the town, + For now is your time or never: + Shall your fears + Or your cares + Cast you down? + Hang your wealth + And your health, + Get renown. + We are all undone for ever, + Now the King and the crown + Are tumbling down, + And the realm doth groan with disasters; + And the scum of the land + Are the men that command, + And our slaves are become our masters. + + Now our lives, + Children, wives, + And estate, + Are a prey to the lust and plunder, + To the rage + Of our age; + And the fate + Of our land + Is at hand; + ’Tis too late + To tread these usurpers under. + First down goes the crown, + Then follows the gown, + Thus levell’d are we by the Roundhead; + While Church and State must + Feed their pride and their lust, + And the kingdom and king be confounded. + + Shall we still + Suffer ill + And be dumb, + And let every varlet undo us? + Shall we doubt + Of each lout + That doth come, + With a voice + Like the noise + Of a drum, + And a sword or a buff-coat, to us? + Shall we lose our estates + By plunder and rates, + To bedeck those proud upstarts that swagger? + Rather fight for your meat + Which those locusts do eat, + Now every man’s a beggar. + + + +THE ROYALIST. + + + By Alex. Brome. Written 1646. + + COME pass about the bowl to me, + A health to our distressed King; + Though we’re in hold let cups go free, + Birds in a cage may freely sing. + The ground does tipple healths afar + When storms do fall, and shall not we? + A sorrow dares not show its face + When we are ships, and sack’s the sea. + + Pox on this grief, hang wealth, let’s sing; + Shall’s kill ourselves for fear of death? + We’ll live by th’ air which songs do bring, + Our sighing does but waste our breath. + Then let us not be discontent, + Nor drink a glass the less of wine; + In vain they’ll think their plagues are spent + When once they see we don’t repine. + + We do not suffer here alone, + Though we are beggar’d, so’s the King; + ’Tis sin t’ have wealth when he has none, + Tush! poverty’s a royal thing! + When we are larded well with drink, + Our head shall turn as round as theirs, + Our feet shall rise, our bodies sink + Clean down the wind like Cavaliers. + + Fill this unnatural quart with sack, + Nature all vacuums doth decline; + Ourselves will be a zodiac, + And every mouth shall be a sign. + Methinks the travels of the glass + Are circular, like Plato’s year; + Where everything is as it was + Let’s tipple round: and so ’tis here. + + + +THE NEW COURTIER. + + + By Alex. Brome. 1648. + + SINCE it must be so + Then so let it go, + Let the giddy-brain’d times turn round; + Since we have no king let the goblet be crown’d, + Our monarchy thus will recover: + While the pottles are weeping + We’ll drench our sad souls + In big-bellied bowls; + Our sorrows in sack shall lie steeping, + And we’ll drink till our eyes do run over; + And prove it by reason + That it can be no treason + To drink and to sing + A mournival of healths to our new-crown’d King. + + Let us all stand bare;— + In the presence we are, + Let our noses like bonfires shine; + Instead of the conduits, let the pottles run wine, + To perfect this new coronation; + And we that are loyal + In drink shall be peers, + While that face that wears + Pure claret, looks like the blood-royal, + And outstares the bones of the nation: + In sign of obedience, + Our oath of allegiance + Beer-glasses shall be, + And he that tipples ten is of the nobility. + + But if in this reign + The halberted train + Or the constable should rebel, + And should make their turbill’d militia to swell, + And against the King’s party raise arms; + Then the drawers, like yeomen + Of the guards, with quart pots + Shall fuddle the sots, + While we make ’em both cuckolds and freemen; + And on their wives beat up alarums. + Thus as each health passes + We’ll triple the glasses, + And hold it no sin + To be loyal and drink in defence of our King. + + + +UPON THE CAVALIERS DEPARTING OUT OF LONDON. + + + By Alex. Brome. + + NOW fare thee well, London, + Thou next must be undone, + ’Cause thou hast undone us before; + This cause and this tyrant + Had never play’d this high rant + Were’t not for thy _argent d’or_. + + Now we must desert thee, + With the lines that begirt thee, + And the red-coated saints domineer; + Who with liberty fool thee, + While a monster doth rule thee, + And thou feel’st what before thou didst fear. + + Now justice and freedom, + With the laws that did breed ’em, + Are sent to Jamaica for gold, + And those that upheld ’em + Have power but seldom, + For justice is barter’d and sold. + + Now the Christian religion + Must seek a new region, + And the old saints give way to the new; + And we that are loyal + Vail to those that destroy all, + When the Christian gives place to the Jew. + + But this is our glory, + In this wretched story + Calamities fall on the best; + And those that destroy us + Do better employ us, + To sing till they are supprest. + + + +A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS. + + + From the King’s pamphlets, British Museum. + + WE have a King, and yet no King, + For he hath lost his power; + For ’gainst his will his subjects are + Imprison’d in the Tower. + + We had some laws (but now no laws) + By which he held his crown; + And we had estates and liberties, + But now they’re voted down. + + We had religion, but of late + That’s beaten down with clubs; + Whilst that profaneness authorized + Is belched forth in tubs. + + We were free subjects born, but now + We are by force made slaves, + By some whom we did count our friends, + But in the end proved knaves. + + And now to such a grievous height + Are our misfortunes grown, + That our estates are took away + By tricks before ne’er known. + + For there are agents sent abroad + Most humbly for to crave + Our alms; but if they are denied, + And of us nothing have, + + Then by a vote _ex tempore_ + We are to prison sent, + Mark’d with the name of enemy, + To King and Parliament: + + And during our imprisonment, + Their lawless bulls do plunder + A license to their soldiers, + Our houses for to plunder. + + And if their hounds do chance to smell + A man whose fortunes are + Of some account, whose purse is full, + Which now is somewhat rare; + + A _monster_ now, _delinquent_ term’d, + He is declared to be, + And that his lands, as well as goods, + Sequester’d ought to be. + + As if our prisons were too good, + He is to Yarmouth sent, + By virtue of a warrant from + The King and Parliament. + + Thus in our royal sovereign’s name, + And eke his power infused, + And by the virtue of the same, + He and all his abused. + + For by this means his castles now + Are in the power of those + Who treach’rously, with might and main, + Do strive him to depose. + + Arise, therefore, brave British men, + Fight for your King and State, + Against those trait’rous men that strive + This realm to ruinate. + + ’Tis Pym, ’tis Pym and his colleagues, + That did our woe engender; + Nought but their lives can end our woes, + And us in safety render. + + + +THE MAN O’ THE MOON. + + +Hogg, in his second series of Jacobite Relics, states that he “got this +song among some old papers belonging to Mr Orr of Alloa,” and that he +never met with it elsewhere. In his first series he printed a Scottish +song beginning,— + + “Then was a man came fron the moon + And landed in our town, sir, + And he has sworn a solemn oath + That all but knaves must down, sir.” + +In Martin Parker’s foregoing ballad, “When the King enjoys his own +again,” there is also an allusion to the man in the moon:— + + “The Man in the Moon + May wear out his shoon + By running after Charles his wain;” + +as it would appear that the “Man in the Moon,” was the title assumed by +an almanack-maker of the time of the Commonwealth, who, like other +astronomers and astrologers, predicted the King’s restoration. In this +song the “Man o’ the Moon” clearly signifies King Charles. + + The man o’ the moon for ever! + The man o’ the moon for ever! + We’ll drink to him still + In a merry cup of ale,— + Here’s the man o’ the moon for ever! + + The man o’ the moon, here’s to him! + How few there be that know him! + But we’ll drink to him still + In a merry cup of ale,— + The man o’ the moon, here’s to him! + + Brave man o’ the moon, we hail thee, + The true heart ne’er shall fail thee; + For the day that’s gone + And the day that’s our own— + Brave man o’ the moon, we hail thee. + + We have seen the bear bestride thee, + And the clouds of winter hide thee, + But the moon is changed + And here we are ranged,— + Brave man o’ the moon, we bide thee. + + The man o’ the moon for ever! + The man o’ the moon for ever! + We’ll drink to him still + In a merry cup of ale,— + Here’s the man o’ the moon for ever! + + We have grieved the land should shun thee, + And have never ceased to mourn thee, + But for all our grief + There was no relief,— + Now, man o’ the moon, return thee. + + There’s Orion with his golden belt, + And Mars, that burning mover, + But of all the lights + That rule the nights, + The man o’ the moon for ever! + + + +THE TUB-PREACHER. + + + By Samuel Butler (Author of Hudibras). + To the tune of “The Old Courtier of the Queen’s.” + + WITH face and fashion to be known, + With eyes all white, and many a groan, + With neck awry and snivelling tone, + And handkerchief from nose new-blown, + And loving cant to sister Joan; + ’Tis a new teacher about the town, + Oh! the town’s new teacher! + + With cozening laugh, and hollow cheek, + To get new gatherings every week, + With paltry sense as man can speak, + With some small Hebrew, and no Greek, + With hums and haws when stuff’s to seek; + ’Tis a new teacher, etc. + + With hair cut shorter than the brow, + With little band, as you know how, + With cloak like Paul, no coat I trow, + With surplice none, nor girdle now, + With hands to thump, nor knees to bow; + ’Tis a new teacher, etc. + + With shop-board breeding and intrusion, + By some outlandish institution, + With Calvin’s method and conclusion, + To bring all things into confusion, + And far-stretched sighs for mere illusion; + ’Tis a new teacher, etc. + + With threats of absolute damnation, + But certainty of some salvation + To his new sect, not every nation, + With election and reprobation, + And with some use of consolation; + ’Tis a new teacher, etc. + + With troops expecting him at door + To hear a sermon and no more, + And women follow him good store, + And with great Bibles to turn o’er, + Whilst Tom writes notes, as bar-boys score, + ’Tis a new teacher, etc. + + With double cap to put his head in, + That looks like a black pot tipp’d with tin; + While with antic gestures he doth gape and grin; + The sisters admire, and he wheedles them in, + Who to cheat their husbands think no sin; + ’Tis a new teacher, etc. + + With great pretended spiritual motions, + And many fine whimsical notions, + With blind zeal and large devotions, + With broaching rebellion and raising commotions, + And poisoning the people with Geneva potions; + ’Tis a new teacher, etc. + + + +THE NEW LITANY. + + +From the King’s pamphlets, British Museum. Satires in the form of a +litany were common from 1646 to 1746, and even later. + + FROM an extempore prayer and a godly ditty, + From the churlish government of a city, + From the power of a country committee, + Libera nos, Domine. + + From the Turk, the Pope, and the Scottish nation, + From being govern’d by proclamation, + And from an old Protestant, quite out of fashion, + Libera, etc. + + From meddling with those that are out of our reaches, + From a fighting priest, and a soldier that preaches, + From an ignoramus that writes, and a woman that teaches, + Libera, etc. + + From the doctrine of deposing of a king, + From the _Directory_, {2} or any such thing, + From a fine new marriage without a ring, + Libera, etc. + + From a city that yields at the first summons, + From plundering goods, either man or woman’s, + Or having to do with the House of Commons, + Libera, etc. + + From a stumbling horse that tumbles o’er and o’er, + From ushering a lady, or walking before, + From an English-Irish rebel, newly come o’er, {3} + Libera, etc. + + From compounding, or hanging in a silken altar, + From oaths and covenants, and being pounded in a mortar, + From contributions, or free-quarter, + Libera, etc. + + From mouldy bread, and musty beer, + From a holiday’s fast, and a Friday’s cheer, + From a brother-hood, and a she-cavalier, + Libera, etc. + + From Nick Neuter, for you, and for you, + From Thomas Turn-coat, that will never prove true, + From a reverend Rabbi that’s worse than a Jew, + Libera, etc. + + From a country justice that still looks big, + From swallowing up the Italian fig, + Or learning of the Scottish jig, + Libera, etc. + + From being taken in a disguise, + From believing of the printed lies, + From the Devil and from the Excise, {4} + Libera, etc. + + From a broken pate with a pint pot, + For fighting for I know not what, + And from a friend as false as a Scot, + Libera, etc. + + From one that speaks no sense, yet talks all that he can, + From an old woman and a Parliament man, + From an Anabaptist and a Presbyter man, + Libera, etc. + + From Irish rebels and Welsh hubbub-men, + From Independents and their tub-men, + From sheriffs’ bailiffs, and their club-men, + Libera, etc. + + From one that cares not what he saith, + From trusting one that never payeth, + From a private preacher and a public faith, + Libera, etc. + + From a vapouring horse and a Roundhead in buff, + From roaring Jack Cavee, with money little enough, + From beads and such idolatrous stuff, + Libera, etc. + + From holydays, and all that’s holy, + From May-poles and fiddlers, and all that’s jolly + From Latin or learning, since that is folly, + Libera, etc. + + And now to make an end of all, + I wish the Roundheads had a fall, + Or else were hanged in Goldsmith’s Hall. + Amen. + + Benedicat Dominus. + + + +THE OLD PROTESTANT’S LITANY. + + + Against all sectaries + And their defendants, + Both Presbyterians + And Independents. + +Mr Walter Wilkins, in his Political Ballads of the Seventeenth and +Eighteenth Centuries, says, the imprint of this broadside intimates that +it was published in “the year of Hope, 1647,” and Thomson, the collector, +added the precise date, the 7th of September. + + THAT thou wilt be pleased to grant our requests, + And quite destroy all the vipers’ nests, + That England and her true religion molests, + Te rogamus audi nos. + + That thou wilt be pleased to censure with pity + The present estate of our once famous city; + Let her still be govern’d by men just and witty, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That thou wilt be pleased to consider the Tower, + And all other prisons in the Parliament’s power, + Where King Charles his friends find their welcome but sour, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That thou wilt be pleased to look on the grief + Of the King’s old servants, and send them relief, + Restore to the yeomen o’ th’ Guard chines of beef, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That thou wilt be pleased very quickly to bring + Unto his just rights our so much-wrong’d King, + That he may be happy in everything, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That Whitehall may shine in its pristine lustre, + That the Parliament may make a general muster, + That knaves may be punish’d by men who are juster, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That now the dog-days are fully expired, + That those cursed curs, which our patience have tired, + May suffer what is by true justice required, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That thou wilt be pleased to incline conquering Thomas + (Who now hath both city and Tower gotten from us), + That he may be just in performing his promise, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That our hopeful Prince and our gracious Queen + (Whom we here in England long time have not seen) + May soon be restored to what they have been, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That the rest of the royal issue may be + From their Parliamentary guardians set free, + And be kept according to their high degree, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That our ancient Liturgy may be restored, + That the organs (by sectaries so much abhorr’d) + May sound divine praises, according to the word, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That the ring in marriage, the cross at the font, + Which the devil and the Roundheads so much affront, + May be used again, as before they were wont, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That Episcopacy, used in its right kind, + In England once more entertainment may find, + That Scots and lewd factions may go down the wind, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That thou wilt be pleased again to restore + All things in due order, as they were before, + That the Church and the State may be vex’d no more, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That all the King’s friends may enjoy their estates, + And not be kept, as they have been, at low rates, + That the poor may find comfort again at their gates, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That thou wilt all our oppressions remove, + And grant us firm faith and hope, join’d with true love, + Convert or confound all which virtue reprove, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That all peevish sects that would live uncontroll’d, + And will not be govern’d, as all subjects should, + To New England may pack, or live quiet i’ th’ Old, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That gracious King Charles, with his children and wife, + Who long time have suffer’d through this civil strife, + May end with high honour their natural life, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That they who have seized on honest men’s treasure, + Only for their loyalty to God and to Cæsar, + May in time convenient find measure for measure, + Te rogamus, etc. + + That thou all these blessings upon us wilt send, + We are no _Independents_, on Thee we depend, + And as we believe, from all harm us defend; + Te rogamus, etc. + + + +VIVE LE ROY. + + +From a collection of songs, 1640 to 1660. It is also to be found in the +additional MSS., No. 11, 608, p. 54, in the collection in the British +Museum. It was sung to the air of Love lies bleeding,—and was, says Mr +Chappell, “the God save the King” of Charles I., Charles II., and James +II. + + WHAT though the zealots pull down the prelates, + Push at the pulpit, and kick at the crown, + Shall we not never once more endeavour, + Strive to purchase our royall renown? + Shall not the Roundhead first be confounded? + Sa, sa, sa, say, boys, ha, ha, ha, ha, boys, + Then we’ll return with triumph and joy. + Then we’ll be merry, drink white wine and sherry, + Then we will sing, boys, God bless the King, boys, + Cast up our caps, and cry, _Vive le Roy_. + + What though the wise make Alderman Isaac + Put us in prison and steal our estates, + Though we be forced to be unhorsed, + And walk on foot as it pleaseth the fates; + In the King’s army no man shall harm ye. + Then come along, boys, valiant and strong, boys, + Fight for your goods, which the Roundheads enjoy; + And when you venture London to enter, + And when you come, boys, with fife and drum, boys, + Isaac himself shall cry, _Vive le Roy_. + + If you will choose them, do not refuse them, + Since honest Parliament never made thieves, + Charles will not further have rogues dipt in murder, + Neither by leases, long lives, nor reprieves. + ’Tis the conditions and propositions + Will not be granted, then be not daunted, + We will our honest old customs enjoy; + Paul’s not rejected, will be respected, + And in the quier voices rise higher, + Thanks to the heavens, and (cry), _Vive le Roy_. + + + +THE CAVALIER. + + +By Samuel Butler. From his Posthumous Works. A somewhat different +version appears in Chappell’s Popular Music of the Olden Time. + + HE that is a clear + Cavalier + Will not repine, + Although + His pocket grow + So very low + He cannot get wine. + + Fortune is a lass + Will embrace, + But soon destroy; + Born free, + In liberty + We’ll always be, + Singing _Vive le Roy_. + + Virtue is its own reward, + And Fortune is a whore; + There’s none but knaves and fools regard her, + Or her power implore. + But he that is a trusty _Roger_, + And will serve the King; + Altho’ he be a tatter’d soldier, + Yet may skip and sing: + Whilst we that fight for love, + May in the way of honour prove + That they who make sport of us + May come short of us; + Fate will flatter them, + And will scatter them; + Whilst our loyalty + Looks upon royalty, + We that live peacefully, + May be successfully + Crown’d with a crown at last. + + Tho’ a real honest man + May be quite undone, + He’ll show his allegiance, + Love, and obedience; + Those will raise him up, + Honour stays him up, + Virtue keeps him up, + And we praise him up. + Whilst the vain courtiers dine, + With their bottles full of wine, + Honour will make him fast. + Freely then + Let’s be honest men + And kick at fate, + For we may live to see + Our loyalty + Valued at a higher rate. + He that bears a sword + Or a word against the throne, + And does profanely prate + To abuse the state, + Hath no kindness for his own. + + What tho’ painted plumes and prayers + Are the prosp’rous men, + Yet we’ll attend our own affairs + ’Till they come to ’t agen; + Treachery may be faced with light, + And letchery lined with furr; + A cuckold may be made a knight, + Sing _Fortune de la Guerre_. + But what’s that to us, brave boys, + That are right honest men? + We’ll conquer and come again, + Beat up the drum again; + Hey for _Cavaliers_, + Hoe for _Cavaliers_, + Drink for _Cavaliers_, + Fight for _Cavaliers_, + Dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub, + Have at Old _Beelzebub_, + _Oliver_ stinks for fear. + + _Fifth Monarchy-men_ must down, boys, + With bulleys of every sect in town, boys; + We’ll rally and to ’t again, + Give ’em the rout again; + Fly like light about, + Face to the right-about, + Charge them home again + When they come on again; + _Sing Tantara rara_, _boys_, + _Tantara rara_, _boys_, + This is the life of an Old Cavalier. + + + +A CAVEAT TO THE ROUNDHEADS. + + + From the Posthumous Works of Samuel Butler. + + I COME to charge ye + That fight the clergy, + And pull the mitre from the prelate’s head, + That you will be wary + Lest you miscarry + In all those factious humours you have bred; + But as for _Brownists_ we’ll have none, + But take them all and hang them one by one. + + Your wicked actions + Join’d in factions + Are all but aims to rob the King of his due; + Then give this reason + For your treason, + That you’ll be ruled, if he’ll be ruled by you. + Then leave these factions, zealous brother, + Lest you be hanged one against another. + + + +HEY, THEN, UP GO WE. + + +This song, says Mr Chappell, in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, +which describes with some humour the taste of the Puritans, might pass +for a Puritan song, if it were not contained in the “Shepherds’ Oracles,” +by Francis Quarles, 1646. He was cup-bearer to Elizabeth, Queen of +Bohemia, daughter of James I., and afterwards chronologer to the city of +London. He died in 1644, and his Shepherds’ Oracles were a posthumous +publication. It was often reprinted during the Restoration, and +reproduced and slightly altered by Thomas Durfey, in his “Pills to Purge +Melancholy,” where the burthen is, “Hey, boys, up go we.” + + KNOW this, my brethren, heaven is clear, + And all the clouds are gone; + The righteous man shall flourish now, + Good days are coming on. + Then come, my brethren, and be glad, + And eke rejoyce with me; + Lawn sleeves and rochets shall go down, + And hey, then, up go we. + + We’ll break the windows which the whore + Of Babylon hath painted, + And when the popish saints are down + Then Barrow shall be sainted; + There’s neither cross nor crucifix + Shall stand for men to see, + Rome’s trash and trumpery shall go down, + And hey, then, up go we. + + Whate’er the Popish hands have built + Our hammers shall undo; + We’ll break their pipes and burn their copes, + And pull down churches too; + We’ll exercise within the groves, + And teach beneath a tree; + We’ll make a pulpit of a cask, + And hey, then, up go we. + + We’ll put down Universities, + Where learning is profest, + Because they practise and maintain + The language of the Beast; + We’ll drive the doctors out of doors, + And all that learned be; + We’ll cry all arts and learning down, + And hey, then, up go we. + + We’ll down with deans and prebends, too, + And I rejoyce to tell ye + We then shall get our fill of pig, + And capons for the belly. + We’ll burn the Fathers’ weighty tomes, + And make the School-men flee; + We’ll down with all that smells of wit, + And hey, then, up go we. + + If once the Antichristian crew + Be crush’d and overthrown, + We’ll teach the nobles how to stoop, + And keep the gentry down: + Good manners have an ill report, + And turn to pride, we see, + We’ll therefore put good manners down, + And hey, then, up go we. + + The name of lords shall be abhorr’d, + For every man’s a brother; + No reason why in Church and State + One man should rule another; + But when the change of government + Shall set our fingers free, + We’ll make these wanton sisters stoop, + And hey, then, up go we. + + What though the King and Parliament + Do not accord together, + We have more cause to be content, + This is our sunshine weather: + For if that reason should take place, + And they should once agree, + Who would be in a Roundhead’s case, + For hey, then, up go we. + + What should we do, then, in this case? + Let’s put it to a venture; + If that we hold out seven years’ space + We’ll sue out our indenture. + A time may come to make us rue, + And time may set us free, + Except the gallows claim his due, + And hey, then, up go we. + + + +THE CLEAN CONTRARY WAY, +OR, +COLONEL VENNE’S ENCOURAGEMENT TO HIS SOLDIERS. + + + To the air of “Hey, then, up go we.” + From a Collection of Loyal Songs written against the Rump Parliament. + + FIGHT on, brave soldiers, for the cause, + Fear not the Cavaliers; + Their threat’nings are as senseless as + Our jealousies and fears. + Tis you must perfect this great work, + And all malignants slay; + You must bring back the King again + The clean contrary way. + + ’Tis for religion that you fight, + And for the kingdom’s good; + By robbing churches, plundering them, + And shedding guiltless blood. + Down with the orthodoxal train, + All loyal subjects slay; + When these are gone, we shall be blest + The clean contrary way. + + When _Charles_ we have made bankrupt, + Of power and crown bereft him, + And all his loyal subjects slain, + And none but rebels left him; + When we have beggar’d all the land, + And sent our trunks away, + We’ll make him then a glorious prince + The clean contrary way. + + ’Tis to preserve his Majesty + That we against him fight, + Nor ever are we beaten back, + Because our cause is right: + If any make a scruple at + Our Declarations, say,— + Who fight for us, fight for the King + The clean contrary way. + + At _Keinton_, _Brainsford_, _Plymouth_, _York_, + And divers places more, + What victories we saints obtain, + The like ne’er seen before: + How often we Prince _Rupert_ kill’d, + And bravely won the day, + The wicked Cavaliers did run + The clean contrary way. + + The true religion we maintain, + The kingdom’s peace and plenty; + The privilege of Parliament + Not known to one and twenty; + The ancient fundamental laws, + And teach men to obey + Their lawful sovereign, and all these + The clean contrary way. + + We subjects’ liberties preserve + By imprisonment and plunder, + And do enrich ourselves and state + By keeping th’ wicked under. + We must preserve mechanicks now + To lectorize and pray; + By them the gospel is advanced + The clean contrary way. + + And though the King be much misled + By that malignant crew, + He’ll find us honest at the last, + Give all of us our due. + For we do wisely plot, and plot + Rebellion to alloy, + He sees we stand for peace and truth + The clean contrary way. + + The publick faith shall save our souls + And our good works together; + And ships shall save our lives, that stay + Only for wind and weather: + But when our faith and works fall down + And all our hopes decay, + Our acts will bear us up to heaven + The clean contrary way. + + + +THE CAMERONIAN CAT. + + +A well-known song from Hogg’s Jacobite Relics; and popular among the +Cavaliers both of England and Scotland in the days of the Commonwealth. +It was usually sung to a psalm tune; the singers imitating the style and +manner of a precentor at a Presbyterian church. + + THERE was a Cameronian cat + Was hunting for a prey, + And in the house she catch’d a mouse + Upon the Sabbath-day. + + The Whig, being offended + At such an act profane, + Laid by his book, the cat he took, + And bound her in a chain. + + Thou damn’d, thou cursed creature, + This deed so dark with thee, + Think’st thou to bring to hell below + My holy wife and me? + + Assure thyself that for the deed + Thou blood for blood shalt pay, + For killing of the Lord’s own mouse + Upon the Sabbath-day. + + The presbyter laid by the book, + And earnestly he pray’d + That the great sin the cat had done + Might not on him be laid. + + And straight to execution + Poor pussy she was drawn, + And high hang’d up upon a tree— + The preacher sung a psalm. + + And when the work was ended, + They thought the cat near dead, + She gave a paw, and then a mew, + And stretched out her head. + + Thy name, said he, shall certainly + A beacon still remain, + A terror unto evil ones + For evermore, Amen. + + + +THE ROYAL FEAST. + + +A Loyall Song of the Royall Feast kept by the Prisoners in the Towre, +August last, with the Names, Titles, and Characters of every Prisoner. +By Sir F. W., Knight and Baronet, Prisoner. (Sept. 16th, 1647.) + +“In the negotiations between the King and the Parliament during the +summer and autumn of this year,” says Mr Thomas Wright in his Political +Ballads of the Commonwealth, published for the Percy Society, “the case +of the royalist prisoners in the Tower was frequently brought into +question. The latter seized the occasion of complaining against the +rigours (complaints apparently exaggerated) which were exerted against +them, and on the 16th June, 1647, was published ‘A True Relation of the +cruell and unparallel’d Oppression which hath been illegally imposed upon +the Gentlemen Prisoners in the Tower of London.’ The several petitions +contained in this tract have the signatures of Francis Howard, Henry +Bedingfield, Walter Blount, Giles Strangwaies, Francis Butler, Henry +Vaughan, Thomas Lunsford, Richard Gibson, Tho. Violet, John Morley, +Francis Wortley, Edw. Bishop, John Hewet, Wingfield Bodenham, Henry +Warren, W. Morton, John Slaughter, Gilbert Swinhow.” + +On the 19th of August (according to the MODERATE INTELLIGENCER of that +date) the King sent to the royal prisoners in the Tower two fat bucks for +a feast. This circumstance was the origin of the present ballad. It was +written by Sir Francis Wortley, one of the prisoners. This ballad, as we +learn by the concluding lines, was to be sung to the popular tune of +“Chevy Chace.” + + GOD save the best of kings, King Charles! + The best of queens, Queen Mary! + The ladies all, Gloster and Yorke, + Prince Charles, so like old harry! {5} + + God send the King his own again, + His towre and all his coyners! + And blesse all kings who are to reigne, + From traytors and purloyners! + The King sent us poor traytors here + (But you may guesse the reason) + Two brace of bucks to mend the cheere, + Is’t not to eat them treason? + + Let Selden search Cotton’s records, + And Rowley in the Towre, + They cannot match the president, + It is not in their power. + Old Collet would have joy’d to ’ve seen + This president recorded; + For all the papers he ere saw + Scarce such an one afforded. + The King sent us, etc. + + But that you may these traytors know, + I’ll be so bold to name them; + That if they ever traytors prove + Then this record may shame them: + But these are well-try’d loyal blades + (If England ere had any), + Search both the Houses through and through + You’ld scarcely finde so many. + The King sent us, etc. + + The first and chiefe a marquesse {6} is, + Long with the State did wrestle; + Had Ogle {7} done as much as he, + Th’ad spoyl’d Will Waller’s castle. + Ogle had wealth and title got, + So layd down his commissions; + The noble marquesse would not yield, + But scorn’d all base conditions. + The King sent us, etc. + + The next a worthy bishop {8} is, + Of schismaticks was hated; + But I the cause could never know, + Nor see the reason stated. + The cryes were loud, God knowes the cause, + They had a strange committee, + Which was a-foot well neere a yeare, + Who would have had small pitty. + The King sent us, etc. + + The next to him is a Welsh Judge, {9} + Durst tell them what was treason; + Old honest David durst be good + When it was out of season; + He durst discover all the tricks + The lawyers use, and knavery, + And show the subtile plots they use + To enthrall us into slavery. + The King sent us, etc. + + Frank Wortley {10} hath a jovial soule, + Yet never was good club-man; + He’s for the bishops and the church, + But can endure no tub-man. + He told Sir Thomas in the Towre, + Though he by him was undone, + It pleased him that he lost more men + In taking him then London. + The King sent us, etc. + + Sir Edward Hayles {11} was wond’rous rich, + No flower in Kent yields honey + In more abundance to the bee + Then they from him suck money; + Yet hee’s as chearfull as the best— + Judge Jenkins sees no reason + That honest men for wealth should be + Accused of high treason. + The King sent us, etc. + + Old Sir George Strangways {12} he came in, + Though he himself submitted, + Yet as a traytor he must be + Excepted and committed: + Yet they th’ exception now take off, + But not the sequestrations, + Hee must forsooth to Goldsmith’s-hall, + The place of desolation. + The King sent us, etc. + + Honest Sir Berr’s a reall man, + As ere was lapt in leather; + But he (God blesse us) loves the King, + And therefore was sent hither. + He durst be sheriff, and durst make + The Parliament acquainted + What he intended for to doe, + And for this was attainted. + The King sent us, etc. + + Sir Benefield, {13} Sir Walter Blunt, + Are Romishly affected, + So’s honest Frank of Howard’s race, + And slaughter is suspected. {14} + But how the devill comes this about, + That Papists are so loyall, + And those that call themselves God’s saints + Like devils do destroy all? + The King sent us, etc. + + Jack Hewet {15} will have wholesome meat, + And drink good wine, if any; + His entertainment’s free and neat, + His choyce of friends not many; + Jack is a loyall-hearted man, + Well parted and a scholar; + He’ll grumble if things please him not, + But never grows to choller. + The King sent us, etc. + + Gallant Sir Thomas, {16} bold and stout + (Brave Lunsford), children eateth; + But he takes care, where he eats one, + There he a hundred getteth; + When Harlow’s wife brings her long bills, + He wishes she were blinded; + When shee speaks loud, as loud he swears + The woman’s earthly-minded. + The King sent us, etc. + + Sir Lewis {17} hath an able pen, + Can cudgell a committee; + He makes them doe him reason, though + They others do not pitty. + Brave Cleaveland had a willing minde, + Frank Wortley was not able, + But Lewis got foure pound per weeke + For’s children and his table. + The King sent us, etc. + + Giles Strangwayes {18} has a gallant soul, + A brain infatigable; + What study he ere undertakes + To master it hee’s able: + He studies on his theoremes, + And logarithmes for number; + He loves to speake of Lewis Dives, {19} + And they are ne’er asunder. + The King sent us, etc. + + Sir John Marlow’s {20} a loyall man + (If England ere bred any), + He bang’d the pedlar back and side, + Of Scots he killed many. + Had General King {21} done what he should, + And given the blew-caps battail, + Wee’d make them all run into Tweed + By droves, like sommer cattell. + The King sent us, etc. + + Will Morton’s {22} of that Cardinal’s race, + Who made that blessed maryage; + He is most loyall to his King, + In action, word, and carryage; + His sword and pen defends the cause, + If King Charles thinke not on him, + Will is amongst the rest undone,— + The Lord have mercy on him! + The King sent us, etc. + + Tom Conisby {23} is stout and stern, + Yet of a sweet condition; + To them he loves his crime was great, + He read the King’s commission, + And required Cranborn to assist; + He charged, but should have pray’d him; + Tom was so bold he did require + All for the King should aid him. + The King sent us, etc. + + But I Win. Bodnam {24} had forgot, + Had suffer’d so much hardship; + There’s no man in the Towre had left + The King so young a wardship; + He’s firme both to the church and crowne, + The crown law and the canon; + The Houses put him to his shifts, + And his wife’s father Mammon. + The King sent us, etc. + + Sir Henry Vaughan {25} looks as grave + As any beard can make him; + Those come poore prisoners for to see + Doe for our patriarke take him. + Old Harry is a right true-blue, + As valiant as Pendraggon; + And would be loyall to his King, + Had King Charles ne’er a rag on. + The King sent us, etc. + + John Lilburne {26} is a stirring blade, + And understands the matter; + He neither will king, bishops, lords, + Nor th’ House of Commons flatter: + John loves no power prerogative, + But that derived from Sion; + As for the mitre and the crown, + Those two he looks awry on. + The King sent us, etc. + + Tom Violet {27} swears his injuries + Are scarcely to be numbred; + He was close prisoner to the State + These score dayes and nine hundred; + For Tom does set down all the dayes, + And hopes he has good debters; + ’Twould be no treason (Jenkin sayes) + To bring them peaceful letters. + The King sent us, etc. + + Poore Hudson {28} of all was the last, + For it was his disaster, + He met a turncoat swore that he + Was once King Charles his master; + So he to London soon was brought, + But came in such a season, + Their martial court was then cry’d down, + They could not try his treason. + The king sent us, etc. + + Else Hudson had gone to the pot, + Who is he can abide him? + For he was master to the King, + And (which is more) did guide him. + Had Hudson done (as Judas did), + Most loyally betray’d him, + The Houses are so noble, they + As bravely would have paid him. + The King sent us, etc. + + We’ll then conclude with hearty healths + To King Charles and Queen Mary; + To the black lad in buff (the Prince), + So like his grandsire Harry; + To York, to Glo’ster; may we not + Send Turk and Pope defiance, + Since we such gallant seconds have + To strengthen our alliance? + Wee’l drink them o’re and o’re again, + Else we’re unthankfull creatures; + Since Charles, the wise, the valiant King, + Takes us for loyall traytors. + + This if you will rhyme dogrell call, + (That you please you may name it,) + One of the loyal traytors here + Did for a ballad frame it: + Old Chevy Chace was in his minde; + If any suit it better, + All those concerned in the song + Will kindly thank the setter. + + + +UPON HIS MAJESTY’S COMING TO HOLMBY. + + +Charles I., after his surrender to the English Commissioners by the +Scotch, was conveyed to Holmby House, Northamptonshire, 16th February, +1647. + + HOLD out, brave Charles, and thou shaft win the field; + Thou canst not lose thyself, unless thou yield + On such conditions as will force thy hand + To give away thy sceptre, crown, and land. + And what is worse, to hazard by thy fall, + To lose a greater crown, more worth than all. + + Thy poor distressed Cavaliers rejoyced + To hear thy royal resolution voiced, + And are content far more poor to be + Than yet they are, so it reflects from thee. + Thou art our sovereign still, in spite of hate; + Our zeal is to thy _person_, not thy _state_. + + We are not so ambitious to desire + Our drooping fortunes to be mounted higher, + And thou so great a monarch, to our grief, + Must sue unto thy subjects for relief: + And when they sit and long debate about it, + Must either stay their time, or go without it. + + No, sacred prince, thy friends esteem thee more + In thy distresses than ere they did before; + And though their wings be clipt, their wishes fly + To heaven by millions, for a fresh supply. + That as thy cause was so betray’d by _men_, + It may by _angels_ be restored agen. + + + +I THANK YOU TWICE; + + + OR + + The city courting their own ruin, + Thank the Parliament twice for their treble undoing. + + A street ballad. From a broadside, 1647. + + THE hierarchy is out of date, + Our monarchy was sick of late, + But now ’tis grown an excellent state: + Oh, God a-mercy, Parliament! + + The teachers knew not what to say, + The ’prentices have leave to play, + The people have all forgotten to pray; + Still, God a-mercy, Parliament! + + The Roundhead and the Cavalier + Have fought it out almost seven year, + And yet, methinks, they are never the near: + Oh, God, etc. + + The gentry are sequester’d all; + Our wives you find at Goldsmith Hall, + For there they meet with the devil and all; + Still, God, etc. + + The Parliament are grown to that height + They care not a pin what his Majesty saith; + And they pay all their debts with the public faith. + Oh, God, etc. + + Though all we have here is brought to nought, + In Ireland we have whole lordships bought, + There we shall one day be rich, ’tis thought: + Still, God, etc. + + We must forsake our father and mother, + And for the State undo our own brother + And never leave murthering one another: + Oh, God, etc. + + Now the King is caught and the devil is dead; + Fairfax must be disbanded, + Or else he may chance be Hotham-ed. + Still, God, etc. + + They have made King Charles a glorious king, + He was told, long ago, of such a thing; + Now he and his subjects have reason to sing, + Oh, God, etc. + + + +THE CITIES LOYALTIE TO THE KING. + + + (Aug. 13th, 1647.) + +The city of London made several demonstrations this year to support the +Presbyterian party in the Parliament against the Independents and the +army. In the latter end of September, after the army had marched to +London, and the Parliament acted under its influence, the lord mayor and +a large part of the aldermen were committed to the Tower on the charge of +high treason; and a new mayor for the rest of the year was appointed by +the Parliament. + + To the tune of “London is a fine town and a gallant city.” + + WHY kept your train-bands such a stirre? + Why sent you them by clusters? + Then went into Saint James’s Parke? + Why took you then their musters? + Why rode my Lord up Fleet-street + With coaches at least twenty, + And fill’d they say with aldermen, + As good they had been empty? + London is a brave towne, + Yet I their cases pitty; + Their mayor and some few aldermen + Have cleane undone the city. + + The ’prentices are gallant blades, + And to the king are clifty; + But the lord mayor and aldermen + Are scarce so wise as thrifty. + I’le pay for the apprentices, + They to the King were hearty; + For they have done all that they can + To advance their soveraignes party. + London, etc. + + What’s now become of your brave Poyntz? + And of your Generall Massey? {29} + If you petition for a peace, + These gallants they will slash yee. + Where now are your reformadoes? + To Scotland gone together: + ’Twere better they were fairly trusst + Then they should bring them thither. + London, etc. + + But if your aldermen were false, + Or Glyn, that’s your recorder! {30} + Let them never betray you more, + But hang them up in order. + All these men may be coach’t as well + As any other sinner + Up Holborne, and ride forwarde still, + To Tyburne to their dinner. + London, &c. + + God send the valiant General may + Restore the King to glory! {31} + Then that name I have honour’d so + Will famous be in story; + While if he doe not, I much feare + The ruine of the nation, + And (that I should be loth to see) + His house’s desolation. + London, etc. + + + +THE LAWYERS’ LAMENTATION FOR THE LOSS OF CHARING-CROSS. + + + From a Collection of Loyal Songs, 1610 to 1660. + + UNDONE! undone! the lawyers cry, + They ramble up and down; + We know not the way to _Westminster_ + Now _Charing-Cross_ is down. + Now fare thee well, old Charing-Cross, + Then fare thee well, old stump; + It was a thing set up by a King, + And so pull’d down by the _Rump_. + + And when they came to the bottom of the Strand + They were all at a loss: + This is not the way to _Westminster_, + We must go by _Charing-Cross_. + Then fare thee well, etc. + + The Parliament did vote it down + As a thing they thought most fitting, + For fear it should fall, and so kill ’em all + In the House as they were sitting. + Then fare thee well, etc. + + Some letters about this _Cross_ were found, + Or else it might been freed; + But I dare say, and safely swear, + It could neither write nor read. + Then fare thee well, etc. + + The _Whigs_ they do affirm and say + To _Popery_ it was bent; + For what I know it might be so, + For to church it never went, + Then fare thee well, etc. + + This cursed _Rump-Rebellious Crew_, + They were so damn’d hard-hearted; + They pass’d a vote that _Charing-Cross_ + Should be taken down and carted: + Then fare thee well, etc. + + Now, _Whigs_, I would advise you all, + ’Tis what I’d have you do; + For fear the King should come again, + Pray pull down _Tyburn_ too. + Then fare thee well, etc. + + + +THE DOWNFAL OF CHARING-CROSS. + + +Charing-Cross, as it stood before the civil wars, was one of those +beautiful Gothic obelisks, erected to conjugal affection by Edward I., +who built such a one wherever the hearse of his beloved Eleanor rested in +its way from Lincolnshire to Westminster. But neither its ornamental +situation, the beauty of its structure, nor the noble design of its +erection (which did honour to humanity), could preserve it from the +merciless zeal of the times; for in 1647 it was demolished by order of +the House of Commons, as Popish and superstitious. This occasioned the +following not unhumorous sarcasm, which has been often printed among the +popular sonnets of those times. + +The plot referred to in ver. 3 was that entered into by Mr Waller the +poet, and others, with a view to reduce the city and Tower to the service +of the King; for which two of them, Nath. Tomkins and Richard Chaloner, +suffered death, July 5, 1643. Vid. Ath. Ox. 11. 24.—_Percy’s Reliques of +Ancient English Poetry_. + + UNDONE! undone! the lawyers are, + They wander about the towne, + Nor can find the way to Westminster + Now Charing-Cross is downe: + At the end of the Strand they make a stand, + Swearing they are at a loss, + And chaffing say, that’s not the way, + They must go by Charing-Cross. + + The Parliament to vote it down + Conceived it very fitting, + For fear it should fall, and kill them all + In the House as they were sitting. + They were told god-wot, it had a plot, + Which made them so hard-hearted, + To give command it should not stand, + But be taken down and carted. + + Men talk of plots, this might have been worse, + For anything I know, + Than that _Tomkins_ and _Chaloner_ + Were hang’d for long agoe. + Our Parliament did that prevent, + And wisely them defended, + For plots they will discover still + Before they were intended. + + But neither man, woman, nor child + Will say, I’m confident, + They ever heard it speak one word + Against the Parliament. + An informer swore it letters bore, + Or else it had been freed; + In troth I’ll take my Bible oath + It could neither write nor read. + + The Committee said that verify + To Popery it was bent: + For ought I know, it might be so, + For to church it never went. + What with excise, and such device, + The kingdom doth begin + To think you’ll leave them ne’er a cross + Without doors nor within. + + Methinks the Common-council should + Of it have taken pity, + ’Cause, good old cross, it always stood + So firmly to the city. + Since crosses you so much disdain, + Faith, if I were as you, + For fear the King should rule again + I’d pull down Tiburn too. + +Whitlocke says, “May 3rd, 1643, Cheapside Cross and other crosses were +voted down,” &c. When this vote was put in execution does not appear; +probably not till many mouths after Tomkins and Chaloner had suffered. + +We had a very curious account of the pulling down of Cheapside Cross +lately published in one of the Numbers of the _Gentlemen’s Magazine_, +1766.—_Percy’s Reliques_. + + + +THE LONG PARLIAMENT. + + + By John Cleveland. + + MOST gracious and omnipotent, + And everlasting Parliament, + Whose power and majesty + Are greater than all kings by odds; + And to account you less than gods + Must needs be blasphemy. + + Mosses and Aaron ne’er did do + More wonder than is wrought by you + For England’s Israel; + But though the Red Sea we have past, + If you to Canaan bring’s at last, + Is’t not a miracle—? + + In six years’ space you have done more + Than all the parliaments before; + You have quite done the work. + The King, the Cavalier, and Pope, + You have o’erthrown, and next we hope + You will confound the Turk. + + By you we have deliverance + From the design of Spain and France, + Ormond, Montrose, the Danes; + You, aided by our brethren Scots, + Defeated have malignant plots, + And brought your sword to Cain’s. + + What wholesome laws you have ordain’d, + Whereby our property’s maintain’d, + ’Gainst those would us undo; + So that our fortunes and our lives, + Nay, what is dearer, our own wives, + Are wholly kept by you. + + Oh! what a flourishing Church and State + Have we enjoy’d e’er since you sate, + With a glorious King (God save him!): + Have you not made his Majesty, + Had he the grace but to comply, + And do as you would have him! + + Your _Directory_ how to pray + By the spirit shows the perfect way; + In real you have abolisht + The Dagon of the _Common Prayer_, + And next we see you will take care + That churches be demolisht. + + A multitude in every trade + Of painful preachers you have made, + Learned by revelation; + Cambridge and Oxford made poor preachers, + Each shop affordeth better teachers,— + O blessed reformation! + + Your godly wisdom hath found out + The true religion, without doubt; + For sure among so many + We have five hundred at the least; + Is not the gospel much increast? + All must be pure, if any. + + Could you have done more piously + Than sell church lands the King to buy, + And stop the city’s plaints? + Paying the Scots church-militant, + That the new gospel helpt to plant; + God knows they are poor saints! + + Because th’ Apostles’ Creed is lame, + Th’ Assembly doth a better frame, + Which saves us all with ease; + Provided still we have the grace + To believe th’ House in the first place, + Our works be what they please. + + ’Tis strange your power and holiness + Can’t the Irish devils dispossess, + His end is very stout: + But tho’ you do so often pray, + And ev’ry month keep fasting-day, + You cannot cast them out. + + + +THE PURITAN. + + + By John Cleveland. + To the tune of “An old Courtier of the Queen’s.” + + WITH face and fashion to be known, + For one of sure election; + With eyes all white, and many a groan, + With neck aside to draw in tone, + With harp in’s nose, or he is none: + See a new teacher of the town, + Oh the town, oh the town’s new teacher! + + With pate cut shorter than the brow, + With little ruff starch’d, you know how, + With cloak like Paul, no cape I trow, + With surplice none; but lately now + With hands to thump, no knees to bow: + See a new teacher, etc. + + With coz’ning cough, and hollow cheek, + To get new gatherings every week, + With paltry change of _and_ to _eke_, + With some small Hebrew, and no Greek, + To find out words, when stuff’s to seek: + See a new teacher, etc. + + With shop-board breeding and intrusion, + With some outlandish institution, + With Ursine’s catechism to muse on, + With system’s method for confusion, + With grounds strong laid of mere illusion: + See a new teacher, etc. + + With rites indifferent all damned, + And made unlawful, if commanded; + Good works of Popery down banded, + And moral laws from him estranged, + Except the sabbath still unchanged: + See a new teacher, etc. + + With speech unthought, quick revelation, + With boldness in predestination, + With threats of absolute damnation + Yet _yea_ and _nay_ hath some salvation + For his own tribe, not every nation: + See a new teacher, etc. + + With after license cast a crown, + When Bishop new had put him down; + With tricks call’d repetition, + And doctrine newly brought to town + Of teaching men to hang and drown: + See a new teacher, etc. + + With flesh-provision to keep Lent, + With shelves of sweetmeats often spent, + Which new maid bought, old lady sent, + Though, to be saved, a poor present, + Yet legacies assure to event: + See a new teacher, etc. + + With troops expecting him at th’ door, + That would hear sermons, and no more; + With noting tools, and sighs great store, + With Bibles great to turn them o’er, + While he wrests places by the score: + See a new teacher, etc. + + With running text, the named forsaken, + With _for_ and _but_, both by sense shaken, + Cheap doctrines forced, wild uses taken, + Both sometimes one by mark mistaken; + With anything to any shapen: + See a new teacher, etc. + + With new-wrought caps, against the canon, + For taking cold, tho’ sure he have none; + A sermon’s end, where he began one, + A new hour long, when’s glass had run one, + New use, new points, new notes to stand on: + See a new teacher, etc. + + + +THE ROUNDHEAD. + + + From Samuel Butler’s Posthumous Works. + + WHAT creature’s that, with his short hairs, + His little band, and huge long ears, + That this new faith hath founded? + The saints themselves were never such, + The prelates ne’er ruled half so much; + Oh! such a rogue’s a Roundhead. + + What’s he that doth the bishops hate, + And counts their calling reprobate, + ’Cause by the Pope propounded; + And thinks a zealous cobbler better + Than learned Usher in ev’ry letter? + Oh! such a rogue’s a Roundhead. + + What’s he that doth _high treason_ say, + As often as his _yea_ and _nay_, + And wish the King confounded; + And dares maintain that Mr Pim + Is fitter for a crown than him? + Oh! such a rogue’s a Roundhead. + + What’s he that if he chance to hear + A little piece of _Common Prayer_, + Doth think his conscience wounded; + Will go five miles to preach and pray, + And meet a sister by the way? + Oh! such a rogue’s a Roundhead. + + What’s he that met a holy sister + And in a haycock gently kiss’d her? + Oh! then his zeal abounded: + ’Twas underneath a shady willow, + Her Bible served her for a pillow, + And there he got a Roundhead. + + + +PRATTLE YOUR PLEASURE UNDER THE ROSE. + + + From the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum. + + THERE is an old proverb which all the world knows, + Anything may be spoke, if ’t be under the rose: + Then now let us speak, whilst we are in the hint, + Of the state of the land, and th’ enormities in’t. + + Under the rose be it spoke, there is a number of knaves, + More than ever were known in a State before; + But I hope that their mischiefs have digg’d their own graves, + And we’ll never trust knaves for their sakes any more. + + Under the rose be it spoken, the city’s an ass + So long to the public to let their gold run, + To keep the King out; but ’tis now come to pass, + I am sure they will lose, whosoever has won. + + Under the rose be it spoken, there’s a company of men, + Trainbands they are called—a plague confound ’em:— + And when they are waiting at Westminster Hall, + May their wives be beguiled and begat with child all! + + Under the rose be it spoken, there’s a damn’d committee + Sits in hell (Goldsmiths’ Hall), in the midst of the city, + Only to sequester the poor Cavaliers— + The devil take their souls, and the hangman their ears. + + Under the rose be it spoken, if you do not repent + Of that horrible sin, your pure Parliament, + Pray stay till Sir Thomas doth bring in the King, + Then Derrick {32} may chance have ’em all in a string. + + Under the rose be it spoken, let the synod now leave + To wrest the whole Scripture, how souls to deceive; + For all they have spoken or taught will ne’er save ’em, + Unless they will leave that fault, hell’s sure to have ’em! + + + +THE DOMINION OF THE SWORD. + + + A song made in the Rebellion. + + From the Loyal Garland, 1686. + To the tune of “Love lies a bleeding.” + + LAY by your pleading, + Law lies a bleeding; + Burn all your studies down, and + Throw away your reading. + + Small pow’r the word has, + And can afford us + Not half so much privilege as + The sword does. + + It fosters your masters, + It plaisters disasters, + It makes the servants quickly greater + Than their masters. + + It venters, it enters, + It seeks and it centers, + It makes a’prentice free in spite + Of his indentures. + + It talks of small things, + But it sets up all things; + This masters money, though money + Masters all things. + + It is not season + To talk of reason, + Nor call it loyalty, when the sword + Will have it treason. + + It conquers the crown, too, + The grave and the gown, too, + First it sets up a presbyter, and + Then it pulls him down too. + + This subtle disaster + Turns bonnet to beaver; + Down goes a bishop, sirs, and up + Starts a weaver. + + This makes a layman + To preach and to pray, man; + And makes a lord of him that + Was but a drayman. + + Far from the gulpit + Of Saxby’s pulpit, + This brought an Hebrew ironmonger + To the pulpit. + + Such pitiful things be + More happy than kings be; + They get the upper hand of Thimblebee + And Slingsbee. + + No gospel can guide it, + No law can decide it, + In Church or State, till the sword + Has sanctified it. + + Down goes your law-tricks, + Far from the matricks, + Sprung up holy Hewson’s power, + And pull’d down St Patrick’s. + + This sword it prevails, too, + So highly in Wales, too, + Shenkin ap Powel swears + “Cots-splutterer nails, too.” + + In Scotland this faster + Did make such disaster, + That they sent their money back + For which they sold their master. + + It batter’d their Gunkirk, + And so it did their Spainkirk, + That he is fled, and swears the devil + Is in Dunkirk. + + He that can tower, + Or he that is lower, + Would be judged a fool to put + Away his power. + + Take books and rent ’em, + Who can invent ’em, + When that the sword replies, + _Negatur argumentum_. + + Your brave college-butlers + Must stoop to the sutlers; + There’s ne’er a library + Like to the cutlers’. + + The blood that was spilt, sir, + Hath gain’d all the gilt, sir; + Thus have you seen me run my + Sword up to the hilt, sir. + + + +THE STATE’S NEW COIN. + + +The coinage issued during the Protectorate of Cromwell, consisted of +pieces having on the obverse side a shield with St George’s cross, +encircled by a laurel and palm branch, and the words, “The Commonwealth +of England.” On the reverse side was the legend, “God with us,” and two +shields, bearing the arms of England and Ireland. + + SAW you the State’s money new come from the Mint? + Some people do say it is wonderous fine; + And that you may read a great mystery in’t, + Of mighty King Nol, the lord of the coin. + + They have quite omitted his politic head, + His worshipful face, and his excellent nose; + But the better to show the life he had led, + They have fix’d upon it the print of his hose. + + For, if they had set up his picture there, + They needs must ha’ crown’d him in Charles’s stead; + But ’twas cunningly done, that they did forbear, + And rather would set up aught else than his head. + + ’Tis monstrous strange, and yet it is true, + In this reformation we should have such luck; + That crosses were always disdain’d by you, + Who before pull’d them down, should now set them up. + + On this side they have circumscribed “God with us,” + And in this stamp and coin they confide; + _Common-Wealth_ on the other, by which we may guess + That God and the States were not both of a side. + + On this side they have cross and harp, + And only a cross on the other set forth; + By which we may learn, it falls to our part + Two crosses to have for one fit of mirth! + + + +THE ANARCHIE, OR THE BLEST REFORMATION SINCE 1640. + + +Being a new song, wherein the people expresse their thankes and pray for +the reformers. + +To be said or sung of all the well-affected of the kingdome of England, +and dominion of Wales, before the breaking up of this unhappy Parliament. + +[From the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum. It is printed but +incorrectly in the “Rump Songs,” ed. 1665, under the title of “The +Rebellion.”] + + To a rare new Tune. + (Oct. 24, 1648.) + + NOW that, thankes to the powers below! + We have e’ne done out our doe, + The mitre is downe, and so is the crowne, + And with them the coronet too; + Come clownes, and come boyes, come hober-de-hoyes, + Come females of each degree; + Stretch your throats, bring in your votes, + And make good the anarchy. + And “thus it shall goe,” sayes Alice; + “Nay, thus it shall goe,” sayes Amy; + “Nay, thus it shall goe,” sayes Taffie, “I trow;” + “Nay, thus it shall goe,” sayes Jamy. + + Ah! but the truth, good people all, + The truth is such a thing; + For it wou’d undoe both Church and State too, + And cut the throat of our King. + Yet not the spirit, nor the new light, + Can make this point so cleare, + But thou must bring out, thou deified rout, + What thing this truth is, and where. + Speak Abraham, speak Kester, speak Judith, speak Hester, + Speak tag and rag, short coat and long; + Truth’s the spell made us rebell, + And murther and plunder, ding-dong. + “Sure I have the truth,” sayes Numph; + “Nay, I ha’ the truth,” sayes Clemme; + “Nay, I ha’ the truth,” sayes Reverend Ruth; + “Nay, I ha’ the truth,” sayes Nem. + + Well, let the truth be where it will, + We’re sure all else is ours; + Yet these divisions in our religions + May chance abate our powers. + Then let’s agree on some one way, + It skills not much how true; + Take Pryn and his clubs; or Say and his tubs, {33} + Or any sect old or new; + The devil’s i’ th’ pack, if choyce you can lack, + We’re fourscore religions strong; + Take your choyce, the major voyce + Shall carry it, right or wrong. + “Then wee’le be of this,” sayes Megg; + “Nay, wee’le be of that,” sayes Tibb; + “Nay, wee’le be of all,” sayes pitifull Paul; + “Nay, wee’le be of none,” sayes Gibb. + + Neighbours and friends, pray one word more, + There’s something yet behinde; + And wise though you be, you doe not well see + In which doore sits the winde. + As for religion to speake right, + And in the Houses sence, + The matter’s all one to have any or none, + If ’twere not for the pretence. + But herein doth lurke the key of the worke, + Even to dispose of the crowne, + Dexteriously, and as may be, + For your behoofe and your owne. + “Then let’s ha’ King Charles,” sayes George; + “Nay, let’s have his son,” sayes Hugh; + “Nay, let’s have none,” sayes Jabbering Jone; + “Nay, let’s be all kings,” sayes Prue. + + Oh we shall have (if we go on + In plunder, excise, and blood) + But few folke and poore to domineere ore, + And that will not be so good; + Then let’s resolve on some new way, + Some new and happy course, + The country’s growne sad, the city horne-mad, + And both the Houses are worse. + The synod hath writ, the generall hath spit, + And both to like purposes too; + Religion, lawes, the truth, the cause, + Are talk’t of, but nothing we doe. + “Come, come, shal’s ha’ peace?” sayes Nell; + “No, no, but we won’t,” sayes Madge; + “But I say we will,” sayes firy-faced Phill; + “We will and we won’t,” sayes Hodge. + + Thus from the rout who can expect + Ought but division? + Since unity doth with monarchy + Begin and end in one. + If then when all is thought their owne, + And lyes at their behest, + These popular pates reap nought but debates, + From that many round-headed beast; + Come, Royalists, then, doe you play the men, + And Cavaliers give the word; + Now let us see at what you would be, + And whether you can accord. + “A health to King Charles!” sayes Tom; + “Up with it,” sayes Ralph, like a man; + “God blesse him,” sayes Doll; “and raise him,” sayes Moll; + “And send him his owne!” sayes Nan. + + Now for these prudent things that sit + Without end and to none, + And their committees, that townes and cities + Fill with confusion; + For the bold troopes of sectaries, + The Scots and their partakers, + Our new British states, Col. Burges and his mates, + The covenant and its makers; + For all these wee’le pray, and in such a way, + As if it might granted be, + Jack and Gill, Mat and Will, + And all the world would agree. + “A plague take them all!” sayes Besse; + “And a pestilence too!” sayes Margery, + “The devill!” sayes Dick; “And his dam, {34} too!” sayes Nick; + “Amen! and Amen!” say I. + +It is desired that the knights and burgesses would take especial care to +send down full numbers hereof to their respective counties and burroughs, +for which they have served apprenticeship, that all the people may +rejoyce as one man for their freedom. + + + +A COFFIN FOR KING CHARLES, +A CROWN FOR CROMWELL, +AND A PIT FOR THE PEOPLE. + + +From a broadside in the King’s Pamphlets, vol. viii. in the British +Museum, with the direction, “You may sing this to the tune of ‘Faine I +would.’” The tune sometimes called “Parthenia,” and “The King’s +Complaint,” is to be found in Mr Chappell’s Popular Music of the Olden +Time. The King was beheaded in January, 1649. This Ballad is dated the +23rd of April in the same year. + + CROMWELL ON THE THRONE. + + SO, so, the deed is done, + The royal head is sever’d, + As I meant when I first begun, + And strongly have endeavour’d. + Now Charles the First is tumbled down, + The Second I do not fear; + I grasp the sceptre, wear the crown, + Nor for Jehovah care. + + KING CHARLES IN HIS COFFIN. + + Think’st thou, base slave, though in my grave + Like other men I lie, + My sparkling fame and royal name + Can (as thou wishest) die? + Know, caitif, in my son I live + (The Black Prince call’d by some), + And he shall ample vengeance give + To those that did my doom. + + THE PEOPLE IN THE PIT. + + Supprest, deprest, involved in woes, + Great Charles, thy people be + Basely deceived with specious shows + By those that murther’d thee. + We are enslaved to tyrants’ hests, + Who have our freedom won: + Our fainting hope now only rests + On thy succeeding son. + + CROMWELL ON THE THRONE. + + Base vulgar! know, the more you stir, + The more your woes increase, + Your rashness will your hopes deter, + ’Tis we must give you peace. + Black Charles a traitor is proclaim’d + Unto our dignity; + He dies (if e’er by us he’s gain’d) + Without all remedy. + + KING CHARLES IN HIS COFFIN. + + Thrice perjured villain! didst not thou + And thy degenerate train, + By mankind’s Saviour’s body vow + To me thy sovereign, + To make me the most glorious king + That e’er o’er England reign’d; + That me and mine in everything + By you should be maintain’d? + + THE PEOPLE IN THE PIT. + + Sweet prince! O let us pardon crave + Of thy beloved shade; + ’Tis we that brought thee to the grave, + Thou wert by us betray’d. + We did believe ’twas reformation + These monsters did desire; + Not knowing that thy degradation + And death should be our hire. + + CROMWELL ON THE THRONE. + + Ye sick-brain’d fools! whose wit does lie + In your small guts; could you + Imagine our conspiracy + Did claim no other due, + But for to spend our dearest bloods + To make rascallions flee? + No, we sought for your lives and goods, + And for a monarchy. + + KING CHARLES IN HIS COFFIN. + + But there’s a Thunderer above, + Who, though he winks awhile, + Is not with your black deeds in love, + He hates your damned guile. + And though a time you perch upon + The top of Fortune’s wheel, + You shortly unto Acharon + (Drunk with your crimes) shall reel. + + THE PEOPLE IN THE PIT. + + Meanwhile (thou glory of the earth) + We languishing do die: + _Excise_ doth give free-quarters birth, + While soldiers multiply. + Our lives we forfeit every day, + Our money cuts our throats; + The laws are taken clean away, + Or shrunk to traitor’s votes. + + CROMWELL ON THE THRONE. + + Like patient mules resolve to bear + Whate’er we shall impose; + Your lives and goods you need not fear, + We’ll prove your friends, not foes. + We (the _elected_ ones) must guide + A thousand years this land; + You must be props unto our pride, + And slaves to our command. + + KING CHARLES IN HIS COFFIN. + + But you may fail of your fair hopes, + If fates propitious be; + And yield your loathed lives in ropes + To vengeance and to me. + When as the Swedes and Irish join, + The Cumbrian and the Scot + Do with the Danes and French combine, + Then look unto your lot. + + THE PEOPLE IN THE PIT. + + Our wrongs have arm’d us with such strength, + So sad is our condition, + That could we hope that now at length + We might find intermission, + And had but half we had before, + Ere these mechanics sway’d; + To our revenge, knee-deep in gore, + We would not fear to wade. + + CROMWELL ON THE THRONE. + + In vain (fond people) do you grutch + And tacitly repine. + For why? my skill and strength are such + Both poles of heaven are mine. + Your hands and purses both cohered + To raise us to this height: + You must protect those you have rear’d, + Or sink beneath their weight. + + KING CHARLES IN HIS COFFIN. + + Singing with angels near the throne + Of the Almighty Three + I sit, and know perdition + (Base Cromwell) waits on thee, + And on thy vile associates: + Twelve months {35} shall full conclude + Your power—thus speak the powerful fates, + Then _vades_ your interlude. + + THE PEOPLE IN THE PIT. + + Yea, powerful fates, haste, haste the time, + The most auspicious day, + On which these monsters of our time + To hell must post away. + Meanwhile, so pare their sharpen’d claws, + And so impair their stings, + We may no more fight for the Cause + Or other _novel_ things! + + + +A SHORT LITANY FOR THE YEAR 1649. + + + By Samuel Butler. (From his Posthumous Works.) + + FROM all the mischiefs that I mention here, + Preserve us, Heaven, in this approaching year: + From civil wars and those uncivil things + That hate the race of all our queens and kings; + From those who for self-ends would all betray, + From saints that curse and flatter when they pray; + From those that hold it merit to rebel, + In treason, murthers, and in theft excel; + From those new teachers have destroy’d the old, + And those that turn the gospel into gold; + From a High-Court, and that rebellious crew + That did their hands in royal blood imbrue,— + Defend us, Heaven, and to the throne restore + The rightful heir, and we will ask no more. + + + +THE SALE OF REBELLION’S HOUSE-HOLD STUFF. + + +Printed in “Percy’s Reliques,” from an old black-letter copy in Mr Pepys’ +collection, corrected by two others, one of which is preserved in a +Choice Collection of 120 Loyal Songs—1684 + + To the tune of “Old Sir Simon the King.” + + REBELLION hath broken up house, + And hath left me old lumber to sell; + Come hither and take your choice, + I’ll promise to use you well. + Will you buy the old Speaker’s chair? + Which was warm and easy to sit in, + And oft has been clean’d, I declare, + Whereas it was fouler than fitting. + Says old Simon the King, + Says old Simon the King, + With his ale-dropt hose, and his Malmsey nose, + Sing, hey ding, ding-a-ding, ding. + + Will you buy any bacon flitches, + The fattest that ever were spent? + They’re the sides of the old committees + Fed up in the Long Parliament. + Here’s a pair of bellows and tongs, + And for a small matter I’ll sell ye ’um, + They are made of the presbyter’s lungs, + To blow up the coals of rebellion. + Says old Simon, etc. + + I had thought to have given them once + To some blacksmith for his forge; + But now I have consider’d on’t, + They are consecrate to the Church: + So I’ll give them unto some quire, + They will make the big organs roar, + And the little pipes to squeak higher + Than ever they could before. + Says old Simon, etc. + + Here’s a couple of stools for sale, + One’s square, and t’other is round; + Betwixt them both, the tail + Of the Rump fell down to the ground. + Will you buy the State’s council-table, + Which was made of the good wain-Scot? + The frame was a tottering Babel, + To uphold th’ Independent plot. + Says old Simon, etc. + + Here’s the besom of Reformation, + Which should have made clean the floor; + But it swept the wealth out of the nation, + And left us dirt good store. + Will you buy the state’s spinning-wheel, + Which spun for the roper’s trade? + But better it had stood still, + For now it has spun a fair thread. + Says old Simon, etc. + + Here’s a glyster-pipe well tried, + Which was made of a butcher’s stump, + And has been safely applied + To cure the colds of the Rump. + Here’s a lump of pilgrim’s-salve, + Which once was a justice of peace, + Who Noll and the devil did serve, + But now it is come to this, + Says old Simon, etc. + + Here’s a roll of the State’s tobacco, + If any good fellow will take it; + No Virginia had e’er such a Smack-o, + And I’ll tell you how they did make it: + ’Tis th’ Engagement and Covenant cook’t + Up with the abjuration oath, + And many of them that have took’t + Complain it was foul in the mouth. + Says old Simon, etc. + + Yet the ashes may happily serve + To cure the scab of the nation, + Whene’er’t has an itch to swerve + To rebellion by innovation. + A lanthorn here is to be bought, + The like was scarce ever gotten, + For many plots it has found out + Before they ever were thought on. + Says old Simon, etc. + + Will you buy the Rump’s great saddle, + With which it jockey’d the nation? + And here is the bit and the bridle, + And curb of dissimulation; + And here’s the trunk-hose of the Rump, + And their fair dissembling cloak; + And a Presbyterian jump, + With an Independent smock. + Says old Simon, etc. + + Will you buy a conscience oft turn’d, + Which served the High-Court of justice, + And stretch’d until England it mourn’d, + But hell will buy that if the worst is. + Here’s Joan Cromwell’s kitchen-stuff tub, + Wherein is the fat of the Rumpers, + With which old Noll’s horns she did rub, + When he was got drunk with false bumbers. + Says old Simon, etc. + + Here’s the purse of the public faith; + Here’s the model of the Sequestration, + When the old wives upon their good troth + Lent thimbles to ruin the nation. + Here’s Dick Cromwell’s Protectorship, + And here are Lambert’s commissions, + And here is Hugh Peters his scrip, + Cramm’d with tumultuous petitions. + Says old Simon, etc. + + And here are old Noll’s brewing vessels, + And here are his dray and his flings; + Here are Hewson’s {36} awl and his bristles, + With diverse other odd things: + And what is the price doth belong + To all these matters before ye? + I’ll sell them all for an old song, + And so I do end my story. + Says old Simon, etc. + + + +THE CAVALIER’S FAREWELL TO HIS MISTRESS, BEING CALLED TO THE WARRS. + + +The following song was extracted from the MS. Diary of the Rev. John +Adamson (afterwards Rector of Burton Coggles, Lincolnshire), commencing +in 1658; by a correspondent of Notes and Queries, First Series, Jan. 18, +1851. + + FAIR Fidelia, tempt no more, + I may no more thy deity adore + Nor offer to thy shrine, + I serve one more divine + And farr more great than you: + I must goe, + Lest the foe + Gaine the cause and win the day. + Let’s march bravely on, + Charge ym in the van, + Our cause God’s is, + Though their odds is + Ten to one. + + Tempt no more, I may not yeeld + Altho’ thine eyes + A kingdome may surprize: + Leave off thy wanton toiles, + The high-borne Prince of Wales + Is mounted in the field, + Where the royall gentry flocke. + Though alone + Nobly borne + Of a ne’re decaying stocke. + Cavaliers, be bold, + Bravely keep your hold, + He that loyters + Is by traytors + Bought and sold. + + One kisse more, and then farewell; + Oh no, no more, + I prithee give me o’er,— + Why cloudest thou thy beames? + I see by these extreames + A woman’s heaven or hell. + Pray the King may have his owne, + And the Queen + May be seen + With her babes on England’s throne. + Rally up your men, + One shall vanquish ten, + Victory, we + Come to try thee + Once agen. + + + +THE LAST NEWS FROM FRANCE. + + + [From vol. iii. of the Roxburgh Ballads, in the British Museum.] + +The last news from France, being a true relation of the escape of the +King of Scots from Worcester to London and from London to France,—who was +conveyed away by a young gentleman in woman’s apparel; the King of Scots +attending on this supposed gentlewoman in manner of a serving-man. + + Tune, “When the King enjoys his own again.” + + ALL you that do desire to know + What is become of the King o’ Scots, + I unto you will truly show + After the fight of Northern Rats. + ’Twas I did convey + His Highness away, + And from all dangers set him free;— + In woman attire, + As reason did require, + And the King himself did wait on me. + + He of me a service did crave, + And oftentimes to me stood bare; + In woman’s apparel he was most brave, + And on his chin he had no hare; + Wherever I came + My speeches did frame + So well my waiting-man to free, + The like was never known + I think by any I one, + For the King himself did wait on me. + + My waiting-man a jewel had, + Which I for want of money sold; + Because my fortune was so bad + We turn’d our jewel into gold. + A good shift indeed, + In time of our need, + Then glad was I and glad was he; + Our cause it did advance + Until we came to France, + And the King himself did wait on me. + + We walked through Westminster Hall, + Where law and justice doth take place + Our grief was great, our comfort small, + We lookt grim death all in the face. + I lookt round about, + And made no other doubt + But I and my man should taken be; + The people little knew, + As I may tell to you, + The King himself did wait on me. + + From thence we went to the fatal place + Where his father lost his life; + And then my man did weep apace, + And sorrow with him then was rife. + I bid him peace, + Let sorrow cease, + For fear that we should taken be. + The gallants in Whitehall + Did little know at all + That the King himself did wait on me. + + The King he was my serving-man, + And thus the plot we did contrive: + I went by the name of Mistress Anne + When we took water at Queenhythe. + A boat there we took, + And London forsook, + And now in France arrived are we. + We got away by stealth, + And the King is in good health, + And he shall no longer wait on me. + + The King of Denmark’s dead, they say, + Then Charles is like to rule the land; + In France he will no longer stay, + As I do rightly understand. + That land is his due, + If they be but true, + And he with them do well agree: + I heard a bird sing + If he once be their king, + My man will then my master be. + + Now Heaven grant them better success + With their young king than England had; + Free from war and from distress, + Their fortune may not be so bad; + Since the case thus stands, + Let neighbouring lands + Lay down their arms and at quiet be; + But as for my part, + I am glad with all my heart + That my King must now my master be. + + And thus I have declared to you + By what means we escaped away; + Now we bid our cares adieu, + Though the King did lose the day. + To him I was true, + And that he well knew; + ’Tis God that must his comfort be, + Else all our policy + Had been but foolery, + For the King no longer waits on me. + + + +SONG TO THE FIGURE TWO. + + + From vol. ii. of the Roxburgh Ballads, in the British Museum. + + A merry new song wherein you may view + The drinking healths of a joviall crew, + To t’ happie return of the figure of TWO. + + The figure of TWO is a palpable allusion to Charles II. Tune, “Ragged, + and torn, and true.” + + I HAVE been a traveller long, + And seen the conditions of all; + I see how each other they wrong, + And the weakest still goes to the wall. + And here I’ll begin to relate + The crosse condition of those + That hinder our happy fate, + And now are turned our foes. + Here’s a health to the figure of TWO, + To the rest of the issue renown’d; + We’ll bid all our sorrows adieu, + When the figure of TWO shall be crown’d. + + I crossed the ocean of late, + And there I did meet with a crosse, + But having a pretty estate, + I never lamented my losse: + I never lamented my harmes, + And yet I was wondrous sad; + I found all the land up in arms, + And I thought all the folke had bin mad. + Here’s a health, etc. + + Kind countrymen, how fell ye out? + I left you all quiet and still; + But things are now brought so about, + You nothing but plunder and kill; + Some doe seem seemingly holy, + And would be reformers of men, + But wisdom doth laugh at their folly, + And sayes they’ll be children agen, + Here’s a health, etc. + + But woe to the figure of One! + King Solomon telleth us so; + But he shall be wronged by none + That hath two strings to his bow. + How I love this figure of TWO + Among all the figures that be, + I’ll make it appear unto you + If that you will listen to me. + Here’s a health, etc. + + Observe when the weather is cold + I wear a cap on my head, + But wish, if I may be so bold, + The figure of TWO in my bed. + TWO in my bed I do crave, + And that is myself and my mate; + But pray do not think I would have + TWO large great hornes on my pate. + Here’s a health, etc. + + Since Nature hath given two hands, + But when they are foul I might scorn them; + Yet people thus much understands, + TWO fine white gloves will adorn them. + TWO feet for to bear up my body, + No more had the knight of the sun; + But people would think me a noddy + If two shoes I would not put on. + Here’s a health, etc. + + The figure of TWO is a thing + That we cannot well live without, + No more than without a good king, + Though we be never so stout; + And thus we may well understand, + If ever our troubles should cease, + Two needful things in a land + Is a king and a justice of peace. + Here’s a health, etc. + + And now for to draw to an end, + I wish a good happy conclusion, + The State would so much stand our friend, + To end this unhappy confusion; + The which might be done in a trice, + In giving of Cæsar his due; + If we were so honest and wise + As to think of the figure of TWO. + Here’s a health, etc. + + If any desire to know, + This riddle I now will unfold, + It is a man wrapped in woe, + Whose father is wrapped in mould: + So now to conclude my song, + I mention him so much the rather + Because he hath suffer’d some wrong, + And bears up the name of his father. + Here’s a health, etc. + + + +THE REFORMATION. + + + Written in the year 1652, by Samuel Butler. From his Posthumous Works. + + TELL me not of Lords and laws, + Rules or reformation; + All that’s done not worth two straws + To the welfare of the nation; + If men in power do rant it still, + And give no reason but their will + For all their domination; + Or if they do an act that’s just, + ’Tis not because they would, but must, + To gratify some party’s lust. + + All our expense of blood and purse + Has yet produced no profit; + Men are still as bad or worse, + And will whate’er comes of it. + We’ve shuffled out and shuffled in + The person, but retain the sin, + To make our game the surer; + Yet spight of all our pains and skill, + The knaves all in the pack are still, + And ever were, and ever will, + Though something now demurer. + + And it can never be so, + Since knaves are still in fashion; + Men of souls so base and low, + Meer bigots of the nation; + Whose designs are power and wealth, + At which by rapine, power, and stealth, + Audaciously they vent’re ye; + They lay their consciences aside, + And turn with every wind and tide, + Puff’d on by ignorance and pride, + And all to look like gentry. + + Crimes are not punish’d ’cause they’re crimes, + But cause they’re low and little: + Mean men for mean faults in these times + Make satisfaction to tittle; + While those in office and in power + Boldly the underlings devour, + Our cobweb laws can’t hold ’em; + They sell for many a thousand crown + Things which were never yet their own, + And this is law and custom grown, + ’Cause those do judge who sold ’em. + + Brothers still with brothers brawl, + And for trifles sue ’em; + For two pronouns that spoil all + Contentious _meum_ and _tuum_. + The wary lawyer buys and builds + While the client sells his fields + To sacrifice his fury; + And when he thinks t’ obtain his right, + He’s baffled off or beaten quite + By the judge’s will, or lawyer’s slight, + Or ignorance of the jury. + + See the tradesman how he thrives + With perpetual trouble: + How he cheats and how he strives, + His estate t’ enlarge and double; + Extort, oppress, grind and encroach, + To be a squire and keep a coach, + And to be one o’ th’ quorum; + Who may with’s brother-worships sit, + And judge without law, fear, or wit, + Poor petty thieves, that nothing get, + And yet are brought before ’em. + + And his way to get all this + Is mere dissimulation; + No factious lecture does he miss, + And ’scape no schism that’s in fashion: + But with short hair and shining shoes, + He with two pens and note-book goes, + And winks and writes at random; + Thence with short meal and tedious grace, + In a loud tone and public place, + Sings wisdom’s hymns, that trot and pace + As if Goliah scann’d ’em. + + But when Death begins his threats, + And his conscience struggles + To call to mind his former cheats, + Then at Heaven he turns and juggles: + And out of all’s ill-gotten store + He gives a dribbling to the poor; + An hospital or school-house; + And the suborn’d priest for his hire + Quite frees him from th’ infernal fire, + And places him in th’ angel’s quire: + Thus these Jack-puddings fool us! + + All he gets by’s pains i’ th’ close, + Is, that he dy’d worth so much; + Which he on’s doubtful seed bestows, + That neither care nor know much: + Then fortune’s favourite, his heir, + Bred base and ignorant and bare, + Is blown up like a bubble: + Who wondering at’s own sudden rise, + By pride, simplicity, and vice, + Falls to his sports, drink, drabs, and dice, + And make all fly like stubble. + + And the Church, the other twin, + Whose mad zeal enraged us, + Is not purified a pin + By all those broils in which th’ engaged us: + We our wives turn’d out of doors, + And took in concubines and whores, + To make an alteration; + Our pulpitors are proud and bold, + They their own wills and factions hold, + And sell salvation still for gold, + And here’s our _reformation_! + + ’Tis a madness then to make + Thriving our employment, + And lucre love for lucre’s sake, + Since we’ve possession, not enjoyment: + Let the times run on their course, + For oppression makes them worse, + We ne’er shall better find ’em; + Let grandees wealth and power engross, + And honour, too, while we sit close, + And laugh and take our plenteous dose + Of sack, and never mind ’em. + + + +UPON THE GENERAL PARDON PASSED BY THE RUMP. + + +From a broadside in the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum. After +Cromwell’s victory at Worcester, he prevailed on the Parliament to pass a +general, or quasi-general, amnesty for all political offences committed +prior to that time. + + REJOICE, rejoice, ye Cavaliers, + For here comes that dispels your fears; + A general pardon is now past, + What was long look’d for, comes at last. + + It pardons all that are undone; + The Pope ne’er granted such a one: + So long, so large, so full, so free, + Oh what a glorious State have we! + + Yet do not joy too much, my friends, + First see how well this pardon ends; + For though it hath a glorious face, + I fear there’s in’t but little grace. + + ’Tis said the mountains once brought forth,— + And what brought they? a mouse, in troth; + Our States have done the like, I doubt, + In this their pardon now set out. + + We’ll look it o’er, then, if you please, + And see wherein it brings us ease: + And first, it pardons words, I find, + Against our State—words are but wind. + + Hath any pray’d for th’ King of late, + And wish’d confusion to our State? + And call’d them rebels? He may come in + And plead this pardon for that sin. + + Has any call’d King Charles that’s dead + A martyr—he that lost his head? + And villains those that did the fact? + That man is pardon’d by this Act. + + Hath any said our Parliament + I such a one as God ne’er sent? + Or hath he writ, and put in print, + That he believes the devil’s in’t? + + Or hath he said there never were + Such tyrants anywhere as here? + Though this offence of his be high, + He’s pardon’d for his blasphemy. + + You see how large this pardon is, + It pardons all our _Mercuries_, {37} + And poets too, for you know they + Are poor, and have not aught to pay. + + For where there’s money to be got, + I find this pardon pardons not; + Malignants that were rich before, + Shall not be pardon’d till they’re poor. + + Hath any one been true to th’ Crown, + And for that paid his money down, + By this new Act he shall be free, + And pardon’d for his loyalty. + + Who have their lands confiscate quite, + For not compounding when they might; + If that they know not how to dig, + This pardon gives them leave to beg. + + Before this Act came out in print, + We thought there had been comfort in’t; + We drank some healths to the higher powers, + But now we’ve seen’t they’d need drink ours. + + For by this Act it is thought fit + That no man shall have benefit, + Unless he first engage to be + A rebel to eternity. + + Thus, in this pardon it is clear + That nothing’s here and nothing’s there: + I think our States do mean to choke us + With this new Act of _hocus pocus_. + + Well, since this Act’s not worth a pin, + We’ll pray our States to call it in, + For most men think it ought to be + Burnt by the hand of Gregory. + + Then, to conclude, here’s little joy + For those that pray _Vive le Roy_! + But since they’ll not forget our crimes, + We’ll keep our mirth till better times. + + + +AN OLD SONG ON OLIVER’S COURT. + + + Written in the year 1654, by Samuel Butler. + + HE that would a new courtier be + And of the late coyn’d gentry; + A brother of the prick-eared crew, + Half a presbyter, half a Jew, + When he is dipp’d in Jordan’s flood, + And wash’d his hands in royal blood, + Let him to our court repair, + Where all trades and religions are. + + If he can devoutly pray, + Feast upon a fasting day, + Be longer blessing a warm bit + Than the cook was dressing it; + With covenants and oaths dispense, + Betray his lord for forty pence, + Let him, etc. + + If he be one of the eating tribe, + Both a Pharisee and a Scribe, + And hath learn’d the snivelling tone + Of a flux’d devotion; + Cursing from his sweating tub + The Cavaliers to Beelzebub, + Let him, etc. + + Who sickler than the city ruff, + Can change his brewer’s coat to buff, + His dray-cart to a coach, the beast + Into Flanders mares at least; + Nay, hath the art to murder kings, + Like David, only with his slings, + Let him, etc. + + If he can invert the word, + Turning his ploughshare to a sword, + His cassock to a coat of mail; + ’Gainst bishops and the clergy rail; + Convert Paul’s church into the mews; + Make a new colonel of old shoes, + Let him, etc. + + Who hath commission to convey + Both sexes to _Jamaica_, + There to beget new babes of grace + On wenches hotter than the place, + Who carry in their tails a fire + Will rather scorch than quench desire, + Let him, etc. + + + +THE PARLIAMENT ROUTED, +OR +HERE’S A HOUSE TO BE LET. + + + I hope that England, after many jarres, + Shall be at peace, and give no way to warres: + O Lord, protect the generall, that he + May be the agent of our unitie. + +Written upon the dissolution of the Long Parliament by Cromwell, on the +20th April, 1653, and extracted from the King’s Pamphlets, British +Museum. June 3rd, 1653. + + To the tune of “Lucina, or, Merrily and Cherrily.” + + CHEARE up, kind countrymen, be not dismay’d, + True news I can tell ye concerning the nation; + Hot spirits are quench’d, the tempest is layd, + (And now we may hope for a good reformation). + The Parliament bold and the counsell of state + Doe wish them beyond sea, or else at Virginie; + For now all their orders are quite out of date, + Twelve Parliament men shall be sold for peny. + + Full twelve years and more these rooks they have sat, + To gull and to cozen all true-hearted people; + Our gold and our silver has made them so fat, + That they lookt more big and mighty than Paul’s steeple. + The freedome of subject they much did pretend, + But since they bore sway we never had any; + For every member promoted self-end, + Twelve Parliament men are now sold for one peny. + + Their acts and their orders which they have contrived, + Was still in conclusion to multiply riches: + The Common-wealth sweetly by these men have thrived, + As Lancashire did with the juncto of witches. {38} + Oh! our freedome was chain’d to the Egyptian yoak, + As it hath been felt and endured by many, + Still making religion their author and cloak, + Twelve Parliament men shall be sold for a peny. + + Both citie and countrey are almost undone + By these caterpillars, which swarm’d in the nation; + Their imps and their goblins did up and downe run, + Excise-men, I meane, all knaves of a fashion: + For all the great treasure that dayly came in, + The souldier wants pay, ’tis well knowne by a many; + To cheat and to cozen they held it no sinne, + Twelve Parliament men shall be sold for a peny. + + The land and the livings which these men have had, + ’Twould make one admire what use they’ve made of it, + With plate and with jewels they have bin well clad, + The souldier fared hard whilst they got the profit. + Our gold and our silver to Holland they sent, + But being found out, this is knowne by a many, + That no one would owne it for feare of a shent, + Twelve Parliament men are sold for a peny. + + ’Tis judged by most people that they were the cause + Of England and Holland, their warring together, {39} + Both friends and dear lovers to break civill lawes, + And in cruell manner to kill one another. + What cared they how many did lose their dear lives, + So they by the bargain did get people’s money, + Sitting secure like bees in their hives? + But twelve Parliament men are now sold for a peny. + + +THE SECOND PART + + + To the same tune. + + THEY voted, unvoted, as fancy did guide, + To passe away time, but increasing their treasure + (When Jack is on cock-horse hee’l galloping ride, + But falling at last, hee’l repent it at leisure). + The widow, the fatherlesse, gentry and poore, + The tradesman and citizen, with a great many, + Have suffer’d full dearly to heap up their store; + But twelve Parliament men shall be sold for a peny. + + These burdens and grievances England hath felt, + So long and so heavy, our hearts are e’en broken, + Our plate, gold and silver, to themselves they’ve dealt + (All this is too true, in good time be it spoken). + For a man to rise high and at last to fall low, + It is a discredit: this lot fals to many, + But ’tis no great matter these men to serve so, + Twelve Parliament men now are sold for a peny. + + The generall {40} perceiving their lustfull desire + To covet more treasure, being puft with ambition, + By their acts and their orders to set all on fire, + Pretending religion to rout superstition: + He bravely commanded the souldiers to goe + In the Parliament-house, in defiance of any; + To which they consented, and now you doe know + That twelve Parliament men may be sold for a peny. + + The souldiers undaunted laid hold on the mace, + And out of the chaire they removed the speaker: + The great ones was then in a pittifull case, + And Tavee cryd out, All her cold must forsake her. {41} + Thus they were routed, pluckt out by the eares, + The House was soone empty and rid of a many + Usurpers, that sate there this thirteen long yeares; + Twelve Parliament men may be sold for a peny. + + To the Tower of London away they were sent, + As they have sent others by them captivated; + Oh what will become of this old Parliament + And all their compeers, that were royally stated. + What they have deserved I wish they may have, + And ’tis the desire I know of a many; + For us to have freedome, oh that will be brave! + But twelve Parliament men may be sold for a peny. + + Let’s pray for the generall and all his brave traine, + He may be an instrument for England’s blessing, + Appointed in heaven to free us againe,— + For this is the way of our burdens redressing: + For England to be in glory once more, + It would satisfy, I know, a great many; + But ending I say, as I said before, + Twelve Parliament men now are sold for a peny. + + + +A CHRISTMAS SONG WHEN THE RUMP WAS FIRST DISSOLVED. + + +From the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum. The Rump Parliament, in an +excess of Puritanic acerbity, had abolished the observance of Christmas, +and forbidden the eating of puddings and pies, as savouring of Popery. + + Tune—“I tell thee, Dick.” + + THIS Christmas time ’tis fit that we + Should feast, and sing, and merry be. + It is a time of mirth; + For never since the world began + More joyful news was brought to man + Than at our Saviour’s birth. + + But such have been these times of late, + That holidays are out of date, + And holiness to boot; + For they that do despise and scorn + To keep the day that Christ was born, + Want holiness no doubt. + + That Parliament that took away + The observation of that day, + We know it was not free; + For if it had, such acts as those + Had ne’er been seen in verse or prose, + You may conclude with me. + + ’Twas that Assembly did maintain + ’Twas law to kill their sovereign, + Who by that law must die; + Though God’s anointed ones are such, + Which subjects should not dare to touch, + Much less to crucify. + + ’Twas that which turn’d our bishops out + Of house and home, both branch and root, + And gave no reason why; + And all our clergy did expel, + That would not do like that rebel— + This no man can deny. + + It was that Parliament that took + Out of our churches our _Service book_, + A book without compare; + And made God’s house (to all our griefs), + That house of prayer, a den of thiefs’ + Both here and everywhere. + + They had no head for many years, + Nor heart (I mean the House of Peers), + And yet it did not die; + Of these long since it was bereft, + And nothing but the tail was left, + You know as well as I. + + And in this tail was a tongue, + Lenthal {42} I mean, whose fame hath rung + In country and in city; + Not for his worth or eloquence, + But for a rebel to his prince, + And neither wise nor witty. + + This Speaker’s words must needs be wind, + Since they proceeded from behind; + Besides, you way remember, + From thence no act could be discreet, + Nor could the sense o’ the House be sweet + Where Atkins was a member. + + This tale’s now done, the Speaker’s dumb, + Thanks to the trumpet and the drum; + And now I hope to see + A Parliament that will restore + All things that were undone before, + That we may Christians be. + + + +A FREE PARLIAMENT LITANY. + + + From the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum.—(A. D. 1655.) + To the tune of “An Old Courtier of the Queen’s.” + + MORE ballads!—here’s a spick and span new supplication, + By order of a Committee for the Reformation, + To be read in all churches and chapels of this nation, + Upon pain of slavery and sequestration. + From fools and knaves in our Parliament free, + _Libera nos_, _Domine_. + + From those that ha’ more religion and less conscience than their + fellows; + From a representative that’s fearful and zealous; + From a starting jadish people that is troubled with the yellows, + And a priest that blows the coal (a crack in his bellows); + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From shepherds that lead their flocks into the briars, + And then fleece ’em; from vow-breakers and king-tryers; + Of Church and Crown lands, from both sellers and buyers; + From the children of him that is the father of liars; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From the doctrine and discipline of _now and anon_, + Preserve us and our wives from John T. and Saint John, + Like master like man, every way but one,— + The master has a large conscience, and the man has none; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From major-generals, army officers, and that phanatique crew; + From the parboil’d pimp Scot, and from Good-face the Jew; + From old Mildmay, that in Cheapside mistook his queu, + And from him that won’t pledge—Give the devil his due; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From long-winded speeches, and not a wise word; + From a gospel ministry settled by the sword; + From the act of a Rump, that stinks when ’tis stirr’d; + From a knight of the post, and a cobbling lord; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From all the rich people that ha’ made us poor; + From a Speaker that creeps to the House by a back-door; + From that badger, Robinson (that limps and bites sore); + And that dog in a doublet, Arthur—that will do so no more; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From a certain sly knave with a beastly name; + From a Parliament that’s wild, and a people that’s tame; + From Skippon, Titchbourne, Ireton,—and another of the same; + From a dung-hill cock, and a hen of the game; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From all those that sat in the High Court of Justice; + From usurpers that style themselves the people’s trustees; + From an old Rump, in which neither profit nor gust is, + And from the recovery of that which now in the dust is; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From a backsliding saint that pretend t’ acquiesce; + From crossing of proverbs (let ’um hang that confess); + From a sniveling cause, in a pontificall dress, + And two lawyers, with the devil and his dam in a mess; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From those that trouble the waters to mend the fishing, + And fight the Lord’s battles under the devil’s commission, + Such as eat up the nation, whilst the government’s a-dishing; + And from a people when it should be doing, stands wishing; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From an everlasting mock-parliament—and from _none_; + From Strafford’s old friends—Harry, Jack, and John; + From our solicitor’s wolf-law deliver our King’s son; + And from the resurrection of the Rump that is dead and gone; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From foreign invasion and commotions at home; + From our present distraction, and from work to come; + From the same hand again Smectymnus, or the bum, + And from taking Geneva in our way to Rome; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From a hundred thousand pound tax to keep knaves by the score + (But it is well given to these that turn’d those out of door); + From undoing ourselves in plaistering old sores; + He that set them a-work, let him pay their scores; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From saints and tender consciences in buff; + From Mounson in a foam, and Haslerig in a huff; + From both men and women that think they never have enough; + And from a fool’s head that looks through a chain and a duff; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From those that would divide the gen’ral and the city; + From Harry Martin’s girl, that was neither sweet nor pretty; + From a faction that has neither brain nor pity: + From the mercy of a phanatique committee; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + Preserve us, good Heaven, from entrusting those + That ha’ much to get and little to lose; + That murther’d the father, and the son would depose + (Sure they can’t be our friends that are their country’s foes); + From fools and knaves, etc. + + From Bradshaw’s presumption, and from Hoyle’s despairs; + From rotten members, blind guides, preaching aldermen, and false + may’rs; + From long knives, long ears, long parliaments, and long pray’rs; + In mercy to this nation—Deliver us and our heirs; + From fools and knaves, etc. + + + +THE MOCK SONG. + + + By T. J. With a reply by Alex. Brome.—(A.D. 1657.) + + HOLD, hold, quaff no more, + But restore + If you can what you’ve lost by your drinking: + Three kingdoms and crowns, + With their cities and towns, + While the King and his progeny’s sinking. + The studs in your cheeks have obscured his star, boys, + Your drinking miscarriages in the late war, boys, + Have brought his prerogative now to the war, boys. + + Throw, throw down the glass! + He’s an ass + That extracts all his worth from Canary; + That valour will shrink + That’s only good in drink; + ’Twas the cup made the camp to miscarry. + You thought in the world there’s no power could tame ye, + You tippled and whored till the foe overcame ye; + God’s nigs and Ne’er stir, sirs, has vanquish’d God damn me. + + Fly, fly from the coast, + Or you’re lost, + And the water will run where the drink went; + From hence you must slink, + If you have no chink, + ’Tis the course of the royal delinquent; + You love to see beer-bowls turn’d over the thumb well, + You like three fair gamesters, four dice, and a drum well, + But you’d as lief see the devil as Fairfax or Cromwell. + + Drink, drink not the round, + You’ll be drown’d + In the source of your sack and your sonnets; + Try once more your fate + For the King against the State, + And go barter your beavers for bonnets. + You see how they’re charm’d by the King’s enchanters, + And therefore pack hence to Virginia for planters, + For an act and two red-coats will rout all the ranters. + + + +THE ANSWER. + + + By Alex. Brome. + + STAY, stay, prate no more, + Lest thy brain, like thy purse, run the score, + Though thou strain’st it; + Those are traitors in grain + That of sack do complain, + And rail by its own power against it. + Those kingdoms and crowns which your poetry pities, + Are fall’n by the pride and hypocrisy of cities, + And not by those brains that love sack and good ditties; + The K. and his progeny had kept them from sinking, + Had they had no worse foes than the lads that love drinking, + We that tipple ha’ no leisure for plotting or thinking. + + He is an ass + That doth throw down himself with a glass + Of Canary; + He that’s quiet will think + Much the better of drink, + ’Cause the cups made the camp to miscarry. + You whore while we tipple, and there, my friend, you lie, + Your sports did determine in the month of July; + There’s less fraud in plain damme than your sly by my truly; + ’Tis sack makes our bloods both purer and warmer, + We need not your priest or the feminine charmer, + For a bowl of Canary’s a whole suit of armour. + + Hold, hold, not so fast, + Tipple on, for there is no such haste + To be going; + We drowning may fear, + But your end will be there + Where there is neither swimming nor rowing. + We were gamesters alike, and our stakes were both down, boys, + But Fortune did favour you, being her own, boys; + And who would not venture a cast for a crown, boys? + Since we wear the right colours, he the worst of our foes is + That goes to traduce, and fondly supposes + That Cromwell’s an enemy to sack and red noses. + + Then, then, quaff it round, + No deceit in a brimmer is found; + Here’s no swearing: + Beer and ale makes you prate + Of the Church and the State, + Wanting other discourse worth the hearing. + This strumpet your muse is, to ballad or flatter, + Or rail, and your betters with froth to bespatter, + And your talk’s all dismals and gunpowder matter; + But we, while old sack does divinely inspire us, + Are active to do what our rulers require us, + And attempt such exploits as the world shall admire us. + + + +AS CLOSE AS A GOOSE. + + +By Samuel Butler.—(A.D. 1657.) This ballad ridicules the tender of the +Crown of England to Oliver Cromwell by Alderman Pack, M.P. for London. + + AS close as a goose + Sat the Parliament-house, + To hatch the royal gull; + After much fiddle-faddle + The egg proved addle, + And Oliver came forth _Noll_. + + Yet old Queen Madge, {43} + Though things do not fadge, + Will serve to be queen of a May-pole; + Two Princes of Wales, {44} + For Whitsun-ales, + And her grace, Maid Marion Claypole. {45} + + In a robe of cow hide + Sat yeasty Pride, {46} + With his dagger and his sling; + He was the pertinenst peer + Of all that were there, + T’ advise with such a king. + + A great philosopher + Had a goose for his lover + That follow’d him day and night: + If it be a true story, + Or but an allegory, + It may be both ways right. + + Strickland {47} and his son, + Both cast into one, + Were meant for a single baron; + But when they came to sit, + There was not wit + Enough in them both to serve for one. + + Wherefore ’twas thought good + To add Honeywood, + But when they came to trial + Each one proved a fool, + Yet three knaves in the whole, + And that made up a _pair-royal_. + + + +THE PRISONERS. + + + Written when O. C. attempted to be King. By Alex. Brome. + + COME, a brimmer (my bullies), drink whole ones or nothing, + Now healths have been voted down; + ’Tis sack that can heat us, we care not for clothing, + A gallon’s as warm as a gown; + ’Cause the Parliament sees + Nor the former nor these + Could engage us to drink their health, + They may vote that we shall + Drink no healths at all, + Not to King nor to Commonwealth, + So that now we must venture to drink ’em by stealth. + + But we’ve found out a way that’s beyond all their thinking; + To keep up good fellowship still, + We’ll drink their destruction that would destroy drinking,— + Let ’um vote _that_ a health if they will. + Those men that did fight, + And did pray day and night + For the Parliament and its attendant, + Did make all that bustle + The King out to justle, + And bring in the Independent, + But now we all clearly see what was the end on’t. + + Now their idols thrown down with their sooter-kin also, + About which they did make such a pother; + And tho’ their contrivance did make one thing to fall so, + We have drank ourselves into another; + And now (my lads) we + May still Cavaliers be, + In spite of the Committee’s frown; + We will drink and we’ll sing, + And each health to our King + Shall be loyally drunk in the ‘_Crown_,’ + Which shall be the standard in every town. + + Their politick would-be’s do but show themselves asses + That other men’s calling invade; + We only converse with pots and with glasses, + Let the rulers alone with their trade; + The Lyon of the Tower + There estates does devour, + Without showing law for’t or reason; + Into prison we get + For the crime called debt, + Where our bodies and brains we do season, + And that is ne’er taken for murder or treason. + + Where our ditties still be, Give’s more drink, give’s more drink, + boys. + Let those that are frugal take care; + Our gaolers and we will live by our chink, boys, + While our creditors live by the air; + Here we live at our ease, + And get craft and grease, + ’Till we’ve merrily spent all our store; + Then, as drink brought us in, + ’Twill redeem us agen; + We got in because we were poor, + And swear ourselves out on the very same score. + + + +THE PROTECTING BREWER. + + +This was apparently written as a parody on the Brewer, in Pills to purge +Melancholy, 1682. The original was too complimentary to Oliver Cromwell, +asserted by the Royalists to have been a brewer in early life, to suit +the taste of the Cavaliers, and hence the alteration made in it. Such +compliments as the following must have proceeded from a writer of the +opposite party. + + Some Christian kings began to quake, + And said With the brewer no quarrel we’ll make, + We’ll let him alone; as he brews let him bake; + Which nobody can deny. + + He had a strong and a very stout heart, + And thought to be made an Emperor for’t, + * * * * * + Which nobody can deny. + + A BREWER may be a burgess grave, + And carry the matter so fine and so brave, + That he the better may play the knave, + Which nobody can deny. + + A brewer may put on a Nabal face, + And march to the wars with such a grace + That he may get a captain’s place; + Which nobody, etc. + + A brewer may speak so wondrous well + That he may rise (strange things to tell), + And so be made a colonel; + Which nobody, etc. + + A brewer may make his foes to flee, + And rise his fortunes, so that he + Lieutenant-general may be; + Which nobody, etc. + + A brewer may be all in all, + And raise his powers, both great and small, + That he may be a lord general; + Which nobody, etc. + + A brewer may be like a fox in a cub, + And teach a lecture out of a tub, + And give the wicked world a rub; + Which nobody, etc. + + A brewer, by’s excise and rate, + Will promise his army he knows what, + And set upon the college-gate; + Which nobody, etc. + + Methinks I hear one say to me, + Pray why may not a brewer be + Lord Chancellor o’ the University? + Which nobody, etc. + + A brewer may be as bold as Hector, + When as he had drank his cup o’ Nectar, + And a brewer may be a Lord Protector; + Which nobody, etc. + + Now here remains the strangest thing, + How this brewer about his liquor did bring + To be an emperor or a king; + Which nobody, etc. + + A brewer may do what he will, + And rob the Church and State, to sell + His soul unto the devil in hell; + Which nobody, etc. + + + +THE ARRAIGNMENT OF THE DEVIL FOR STEALING AWAY PRESIDENT BRADSHAW. + + +John Bradshaw, who had presided over the court of justice which condemned +Charles I. to the scaffold, and who by his extreme republican principles +had rendered himself obnoxious to Cromwell, began again to be +distinguished in public affairs after the Protector’s death, and was +elected President of the Council of State. He did not live long to enjoy +this honour, but died, according to some authorities, on the 31st +October, 1659. Chalmers places his death on the 22nd of November in that +year. + + To the tune of “Well-a-day, well-a-day.” + + IF you’ll hear news that’s ill, + Gentlemen, gentlemen, + Against the devil, I will + Be the relator; + Arraigned he must be, + For that feloniously, + ’Thout due solemnity, + He took a traitor. + + John Bradshaw was his name, + How it stinks! how it stinks! + Who’ll make with blacker fame + Pilate unknown. + This worse than worse of things + Condemn’d the best of kings, + And, what more guilt yet brings, + Knew ’twas his own. + + Virtue in Charles did seem + Eagerly, eagerly, + And villainy in him + To vye for glory. + Majesty so compleat + And impudence so great + Till that time never met:— + But to my story. + + Accusers there will be, + Bitter ones, bitter ones, + More than one, two, or three, + All full of spight; + Hangman and tree so tall, + Bridge, tower, and city-wall, + Kite and crow, which were all + Robb’d of their right. + + But judges none are fit, + Shame it is, shame it is, + That twice seven years did sit + To give hemp-string dome; + The friend they would befriend, + That he might in the end + To them like favour lend, + In his own kingdome. + + Sword-men, it must be you, + Boldly to’t, boldly to’t, + Must give the diver his due; + Do it not faintly, + But as you raised by spell + Last Parliament from hell, + And it again did quell + Omnipotently. + + The charge they wisely frame + (On with it, on with it) + In that yet unknown name + Of supream power; + While six weeks hence by vote + Shall be or it shall not, + When Monk’s to London got {48} + In a good hour. + + But twelve good men and true, + Caveliers, Caveliers, + He excepts against you; + Justice he fears. + From bar and pulpit hee + Craves such as do for fee + Serve all turns, for he’l be + Try’d by his peers. + + Satan, y’ are guilty found + By your peers, by your peers, + And must die above ground! + Look for no pity; + Some of our ministry, + Whose spir’ts with yours comply, + As Owen, Caryl, Nye, {49} + For death shall fit ’ee. + + Dread judges, mine own limb + I but took, I but took, + I was forced without him + To use a crutch; + Some of the robe can tell + How to supply full well + His place here, but in hell + I had none such. + + Divel, you are an asse, + Plain it is, plain it is, + And weakly plead the case; + Your wits are lost. + Some lawyers will outdo’t, + When shortly they come to’t; + Your craft, our gold to boot, + They have ingross’d. + + Should all men take their right, + Well-a-day, well-a-day, + We were in a sad plight, + O’ th’ holy party! + Such practise hath a scent + Of kingly government, + Against it we are bent, + Out of home char’ty. + + But if I die, who am + King of hell, King of hell, + You will not quench its flame, + But find it worse: + Confused anarchy + Will a new torment be; + Ne’r did these kingdoms three + Feel such a curse. + + To our promotion, sir, + There as here, there as here, + Through some confused stir + Doth the high-road lie; + In hell we need not fear + Nor King nor Cavalier, + Who then shall dominere + But we the godly? + + Truth, then, sirs, which of old + Was my shame, was my shame, + Shall now to yours be told: + You caused his death; + The house being broken by + Yourselves (there’s burglary), + Wrath enter’d forcibly, + And stopt his breath. + + Sir, as our president, + Taught by you, taught by you, + ’Gainst the King away went + Most strange and new; + Charging him with the guilt + Of all the blond we spilt, + With swords up to the hilt, + So we’le serve you. + + For mercy then I call, + Good my lords, good my lords, + And traytors I’le leave all + Duly to end it; + Sir, sir, ’tis frivolous, + As well for you as us, + To beg for mercy thus,— + Our crimes transcend it. + + You must die out of hand, + Satanas, Satanas: + This our decree shall stand + Without controll; + And we for you will pray, + Because the Scriptures say, + When some men curse you, they + Curse their own soul. + + The fiend to Tiburn’s gone, + There to die, there to die; + Black is the north, anon + Great storms will be; + Therefore together now + I leave him and th’ gallow,— + So, newes-man, take ’em now, + Soon they’l take thee. + + Finis, Fustis, Funis. + + + +A NEW BALLAD TO AN OLD TUNE,—TOM OF BEDLAM. + + + January 17th, 1659.—From the King’s Ballads, British Museum. + + MAKE room for an honest red-coat + (And that you’ll say’s a wonder), + The gun and the blade + Are the tools, and his trade + Is, for _pay_, to _kill_ and _plunder_. + Then away with the laws, + And the “Good old Cause;” + Ne’er talk of the Rump or the Charter; + ’Tis the cash does the feat, + All the rest’s but a cheat, + Without _that_ there’s no faith nor quarter. + + ’Tis the mark of our coin “_God with us_,” + And the grace of the Lord goes along with’t. + When the _Georges_ are flown + Then the Cause goes down, + For the Lord has departed from it. + Then away, etc. + + For Rome, or for Geneva, + For the table or the altar, + This spawn of a vote, + He cares not a groat— + For the _pence_ he’s your dog in a halter, + Then away, etc. + + Tho’ the name of King or Bishop + To nostrils pure may be loathsome, + Yet many there are + That agree with the May’r, + That their lands are wondrous toothsome. + Then away, etc. + + When our masters are poor we leave ’em, + ’Tis the Golden Calf we bow to; + We kill and we slay + Not for conscience, but pay; + Give us _that_, we’ll fight for you too. + Then away, etc. + + ’Twas _that_ first turn’d the King out; + The Lords next; then the Commons: + ’Twas that kept up Noll, + Till the Devil fetch’d his soul, + And then it set the _Rump_ on’s. + Then away, etc. + + Drunken Dick was a lame Protector, + And Fleetwood a back-slider; + These we served as the rest, + But the City’s the beast + That will never cast her rider. + Then away, etc. + + When the Mayor holds the stirrup + And the Shrieves cry, God save your honours; + Then ’tis but a jump + And up goes the Rump, + That will spur to the Devil upon us. + Then away, etc. + + And now for fling at your thimbles, + Your bodkins, rings, and whistles; + In truck for your toys + We’ll fit you with boys + (’Tis the doctrine of Hugh’s _Epistles_). + Then away, etc. + + When your plate is gone, and your jewels, + You must be next entreated + To part with your bags, + And to strip you to rags, + And yet not think you’re cheated. + Then away, etc. + + The truth is, the town deserves it, + ’Tis a brainless, heartless monster: + At a club they may bawl, + Or declare at their hall, + And yet at a push not one stir. + Then away, etc. + + Sir Arthur vow’d he’ll treat ’em + Far worse than the men of Chester; + He’s bold now they’re cow’d, + But he was nothing so loud + When he lay in the ditch at Lester. + Then away, etc. + + The Lord has left John Lambert, + And the spirit, Feak’s anointed; + But why, O Lord, + Hast thou sheath’d thy sword? + Lo! thy saints are disappointed. + Then away, etc. + + Though Sir Henry be departed, + Sir John makes good the place now; + And to help out the work + Of the glorious Kirk, + Our brethren march apace too. + Then away, etc. + + Whilst divines and statesmen wrangle, + Let the Rump-ridden nation bite on’t; + There are none but we + That are sure to go free, + For the soldier’s still in the right on’t. + Then away, etc. + + If our masters won’t supply us + With money, food, and clothing, + Let the State look to’t, + We’ll find one that will do’t, + Let him live—we will not damn. + Then away, etc. + + + +SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, +ANGLICE MERCURIUS POETICUS. + + +“The following ballad,” says Mr Wright in the Political Ballads of the +Commonwealth, published for the Percy Society, “was written on the +occasion of the overthrow of the Rump by Monck. He arrived in London on +the third of February, and professed himself a determined supporter of +the party then uppermost. On the ninth and tenth he executed their +orders against the city; but suddenly on the eleventh he joined the city +and the Presbyterian party, and demanded the readmission of the members +who were secluded formerly from the Long Parliament. This measure put an +end to the reign of the Rump, and immediately afterwards the Parliament +dissolved itself, and a new one was called.—(February 28th, 1659.)”—All +the notes to this Ballad are from the pen of Mr Wright. + + To the tune of “The Old Courtier of the Queen’s,” etc. + + NEWS! news! here’s the occurrences and a new Mercurius, + A dialogue betwixt Haselrigg the baffled and Arthur the furious; + With Ireton’s {50} readings upon legitimate and spurious, + Proving that a saint may be the son of a whore, for the satisfaction + of the curious. + From a Rump insatiate as the sea, + Libera nos, Domine. + + Here’s the true reason of the citie’s infatuation, + Ireton has made it drunk with the cup of abomination; + That is, the cup of the whore, after the Geneva Interpretation, + Which with the juyce of Titchburn’s grapes {51} must needs cause + intoxication. + From a Rump, etc. + + Here’s the Whipper whipt by a friend to George, that whipp’d Jack, + {52} that whipp’d the breech, + That whipp’d the nation as long as it could stand over it—after which + It was itself re-jerk’d by the sage author of this speech: + “Methinks a Rump should go as well with a Scotch spur as with a + switch.” + From a Rump, etc. + + This Rump hath many a rotten and unruly member; + “Give the generall the oath!” cries one (but his conscience being a + little tender); + “I’ll abjure you with a pestilence!” quoth George, “and make you + remember + The ’leaventh of February {53} longer than the fifth of November!” + From a Rump, etc. + + With that, Monk leaves (in Rump assembled) the three estates, + But oh! how the citizens hugg’d him for breaking down their gates, + For tearing up their posts and chaynes, and for clapping up their + mates {54} + (When they saw that he brought them plasters for their broken pates). + From a Rump, etc. + + In truth this ruffle put the town in great disorder, + Some knaves (in office) smiled, expecting ’twould go furder; + But at the last, “My life on’t! George is no Rumper,” said the + Recorder, + “For there never was either honest man or monk of that order.” + From a Rump, etc. + + And so it proved; for, “Gentlemen,” says the general, “I’ll make you + amends; + Our greeting was a little untoward, but we’ll part friends; + A little time shall show you which way my design tends, + And that, besides the good of Church and State, I have no other ends.” + From a Rump, etc. + + His Excellence had no sooner pass’d this declaration and promise, + But in steps Secretary Scot, the Rump’s man Thomas, + With Luke, their lame evangelist (the Devil keep ’um from us!) {55} + To shew Monk what precious members of Church and State the Bumm has. + From a Rump, etc. + + And now comes the supplication of the members under the rod: + “Nay, my Lord!” cryes the brewer’s clerk; “good, my Lord, for the love + of God! + Consider yourself, us, and this poor nation, and that tyrant abroad; + Don’t leave us:”—but George gave him a shrugg instead of a nodd. + From a Rump, etc. + + This mortal silence was followed with a most hideous noyse, + Of free Parliament bells and Rump-confounding boyes, + Crying, “Cut the rogues! singe their tayles!” when, with a low voyce, + “Fire and sword! by this light,” cryes Tom, “Lets look to our toyes!” + From a Rump, etc. + + Never were wretched members in so sad a plight; + Some were broyl’d, some toasted, others burnt outright; {56} + Nay against Rumps so pittylesse was their rage and spite, + That not a citizen would kisse his wife that night. + From a Rump, etc. + + By this time death and hell appear’d in the ghastly looks + Of Scot and Robinson (those legislative rooks); + And it must needs put the Rump most damnably off the hooks + To see that when God has sent meat the Devil should send cooks. + From a Rump, etc. + + But Providence, their old friend, brought these saints off at last, + And through the pikes and the flames undismember’d they past, + Although (God wet) with many struglings and much hast,— + For, members, or no members, was but a measuring cast. + From a Rump, etc. + + Being come to Whitehall, there’s the dismal mone, + “Let Monk be damn’d!” cries Arthur in a terrible tone {57}— + “That traytor, and those cuckoldy rogues that set him on!” + (But tho’ the knight spits blood, ’tis observed that he draws none.) + From a Rump, etc. + + “The plague bawle you!” cries Harry Martin, “you have brought us to + this condition, {58} + You must be canting and be plagued, with your Barebones petition, {59} + And take in that bull-headed, splay-footed member of the circumcision, + That bacon-faced Jew, Corbet, {60} that son of perdition!” + From a Rump, etc. + + Then in steps driv’ling Mounson to take up the squabble, + That lord which first taught the use of the woodden dagger and ladle: + {61} + He that out-does Jack Pudding {62} at a custard or a caudle, + And were the best foole in Europe but that he wants a bauble. + From a Rump, etc. + + More was said to little purpose,—the next news is, a declaration + From the Rump, for a free state according to the covenant of the + nation, + And a free Parliament under oath and qualification, + Where none shall be elect but members of reprobation. + From a Rump, &c. + + Here’s the tail firk’d, a piece acted lately with great applause, + With a plea for the prerogative breech and the Good old Cause, + Proving that Rumps and members are antienter than laws, + And that a bumme divided is never the worse for the flawes. + From a Rump, etc. + + But all things have their period and fate, + An Act of Parliament dissolves a Rump of state, + Members grow weak, and tayles themselves run out of date, + And yet thou shalt not dye (dear breech), thy fame I’ll celebrate. + From a Rump, etc. + + Here lies a pack of saints that did their souls and country sell + For dirt, the Devil was their good lord, him they served well; + By his advice they stood and acted, and by his president they fell + (Like Lucifer), making but one step betwixt heaven and hell. + From a Rump insatiate as the sea + Liberasti nos, Domine. + + + +THE SECOND PART OF ST GEORGE FOR ENGLAND. + + + To the tune of “To drive the cold winter away.” + (March 7, 1659.) + + NOW the Rump is confounded + There’s an end of the Roundhead, + Who hath been such a bane to our nation; + He hath now play’d his part, + And’s gone out like a f—, + Together with his reformation; + For by his good favour + He hath left a bad savour; + But’s no matter, we’ll trust him no more. + Kings and queens may appear + Once again in our sphere, + Now the knaves are turn’d out of door, + And drive the cold winter away. + + Scot, Nevil, and Vane, + With the rest of that train, + Are into Oceana {63} fled; + Sir Arthur the brave, + That’s as arrant a knave, + Has Harrington’s Rota in’s head; {64} + But hee’s now full of cares + For his foals and his mares, + As when he was routed before; + But I think he despairs, + By his arms or his prayers, + To set up the Rump any more, + And drive the cold winter away. + + I should never have thought + That a monk could have wrought + Such a reformation so soon; + That House which of late + Was the jakes of our state + Will ere long be a house of renown. + How good wits did jump + In abusing the Rump, + Whilst the House was prest by the rabble; + But our Hercules, Monk, + Though it grievously stunk, + Now hath cleansed that Augean stable, + And drive the cold winter away. + + And now Mr Prynne {65} + With the rest may come in, + And take their places again; + For the House is made sweet + For those members to meet, + Though part of the Rump yet remain; + Nor need they to fear, + Though his breeches be there, + Which were wrong’d both behind and before; + For he saith ’twas a chance, + And forgive him this once, + And he swears he will do so no more, + And drive the cold winter away. + + ’Tis true there are some + Who are still for the Bum; + Such tares will grow up with the wheat; + And there they will be, till a Parliament come + That can give them a total defeat. + But yet I am told + That the Rumpers do hold + That the saints may swim with the tyde; + Nor can it be treason, + But Scripture and reason, + Still to close with the stronger side, + And drive the cold winter away. + + Those lawyers o’ th’ House— + As Baron Wild-goose, {66} + With Treason Hill, Whitlock, and Say— + Were the bane of our laws + And our Good old Cause, + And ’twere well if such were away. + Some more there are to blame, + Whom I care not to name, + That are men of the very same ranks; + ’Mongst whom there is one, + That to Devil Barebone + For his ugly petition gave thanks, + And drive the cold winter away. + + But I hope by this time + He’ll confess ’twas a crime + To abet such a damnable crew; + Whose petition was drawn + By Alcoran Vane, + Or else by Corbet the Jew. {67} + By it you may know + What the Rump meant to do, + And what a religion to frame; + So ’twas time for St George + That Rump to disgorge, + And to send it from whence it first came; + Then drive the cold winter away. + + + +A NEW-YEAR’S GIFT FOR THE RUMP. + + + (January 1659–60.)—From a broadside, vol. xv. in the King’s Pamphlets. + + “The condition of the State was thus: viz. the Rump, after being + disturbed by my Lord Lambert, was lately returned to sit again. The + officers of the army all forced to yield. Lawson lies still in the + river, and Monk is with his army in Scotland. Only my Lord Lambert + is not yet come in to the Parliament, nor is it expected that he will + without being forced to it. The new Common Council of the city do + speak very high; and had sent to Monk their sword-bearer to acquaint + him with their desires for a free and full Parliament, which is at + present the desires, and the hopes, and the expectations of all. + Twenty-two of the old secluded members having been at the House-door + the last week to demand entrance, but it was denied them; and it is + believed that neither they nor the people will be satisfied till the + House be filled.” Pepys’ Diary, January, 1660. + + YOU may have heard of the politique snout, + Or a tale of a tub with the bottom out, + But scarce of a Parliament in a dirty clout, + Which no body can deny. + + ’Twas Atkins {68} first served this Rump in with mustard— + The sauce was a compound of courage and custard; + Sir Vane bless’d the creature, Noll snuffled and bluster’d, + Which no body can deny. + + The right was as then in old Oliver’s nose; + But when the Devil of that did dispose, + It descended from thence to the Rump in the close, + Which no body can deny. + + Nor is it likely there to stay long, + The retentive faculties being gone, + The juggle is stale, and money there’s none, + Which no body can deny. + + The secluded members made a trial + To enter, but them the Rump did defy all + By the ordinance of self-denial, + Which no body can deny. + + Our politique doctors do us teach + That a blood-sucking red-coat’s as good as a leech + To relieve the head, if applied to the breech, + Which no body can deny. + + But never was such a worm as Vane; + When the State scour’d last, it voided him then, + Yet now he’s crept into the Rump again, + Which no body can deny. + + Ludlow’s f— was a prophetique trump {69} + (There never was anything so jump), + ’Twas the very type of a vote of this Rump, + Which no body can deny. + + They say ’tis good luck when a body rises + With the rump upward, but he that advises + To live in that posture is none of the wisest, + Which no body can deny. + + The reason is worse, though the rime be untoward, + When things proceed with the wrong end forward; + But they say there’s sad news to the Rump from the Nor’ward; {70} + Which no body can deny. + + ’Tis a wonderfull thing, the strength of that part; + At a blast it will take you a team from a cart, + And blow a man’s head away with a f—, + Which no body can deny. + + When our brains are sunck below the middle, + And our consciences steer’d by the hey-down-diddle, + Then things will go round without a fiddle, + Which no body can deny. + + You may order the city with hand-granado, + Or the generall with a bastonado,— + But no way for a Rump like a carbonado, + Which no body can deny. + + To make us as famous in council as wars, + Here’s Lenthal a speaker for mine— + And Fleetwood is a man of Mars, + Which no body can deny. + + ’Tis pitty that Nedham’s {71} fall’n into disgrace, + For he orders a bum with a marvellous grace, + And ought to attend the Rump by his place, + Which no body can deny. + + Yet this in spight of all disasters, + Although he hath broken the heads of his masters, + ’Tis still his profession to give ’em all plasters, + Which no body can deny. + + The Rump’s an old story, if well understood; + ’Tis a thing dress’d up in a Parliament’s hood, + And like ’t, but the tayl stands where the head should, + Which no body can deny. + + ’Twould make a man scratch where it does not itch, + To see forty fools’ heads in one politique breech, + And that, hugging the nation, as the devil did the witch; + Which no body can deny. + + From rotten members preserve our wives! + From the mercy of a Rump, our estates and our lives! + For they must needs go whom the Devil drives, + Which no body can deny. + + + +A PROPER NEW BALLAD ON THE OLD PARLIAMENT; +OR, +THE SECOND PART OF KNAVE OUT OF DOORS. + + + To the tune of + + “Hei ho, my honey, my heart shall never rue, + Four-and-twenty now for your mony, and yet a hard penny-worth too.” + + (Dec. 11th, 1659.)—From the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum. + + “The events which gave occasion to the following ballad,” says Mr T. + Wright in his Political Ballads, published for the Percy Society, + “may be summed up in a few words. After the death of Cromwell, his + son Richard was without opposition raised to the Protectorate; but + his weak and easy character gave an opening to the intrigues of the + Royalists, and the factious movement of the Republican party. + Fleetwood, who had been named commander-in-chief of the army under + the Protector, plotted to gain the chief power in the State, and was + joined by Lambert, Desborough, and others. The Republicans were + strengthened by the return of Vane, Ludlow, and Bradshaw, to the + Parliament called by the new Protector. Lambert, the Protector’s + brother-in-law, was the ostensible head of a party, and seems to have + aimed at obtaining the power which had been held by Oliver. They + formed a council of officers, who met at Wallingford House; and on + the 20th April, 1659, having gained the upper hand, and having + obtained the dissolution of the Parliament, they determined to + restore the old Long Parliament, which they said had only been + interrupted, and not legally dissolved, and to set aside the + Protector, who soon afterwards resigned. On the 21st April, + Lenthall, the old Speaker, with as many members of the Long + Parliament as could be brought together, met in the House, and opened + their session. The Parliament thus formed, as being the fag-end of + the old Long Parliament, obtained the name of the Rump Parliament. + Lambert’s hopes and aims were raised by his success against Sir + George Booth in the August following, and jealousies soon arose + between his party in the army and the Rump. The Parliament would + have dismissed him, and the chief officers in the cabal with him, but + Lambert with the army in October hindered their free meeting, and + took the management of the government into the hands of a council of + officers, whom they called the Committee of Safety. Towards the + latter end of the year, the tide began to be changed in favour of the + Parliament, by the declaration of Monk in Scotland, Henry Cromwell + with the army in Ireland, and Hazelrigge and the officers at + Portsmouth, in favour of the freedom of the Parliament. This ballad + was written at the period when Lambert’s party was uppermost.” + +The tune of “Hei ho, my honey,” may be found in Playford’s edition of +“The English Dancing Master,” printed in 1686, but in no earlier edition +of the same work. + + GOOD-MORROW, my neighbours all, what news is this I heard tell + As I past through Westminster-hall by the House that’s neck to hell? + They told John Lambert {72} was there with his bears, and deeply he + swore + (As Cromwell had done before) those vermin should sit there no more. + Sing hi ho, Wil. Lenthall, {73} who shall our general be? + For the House to the Devil is sent all, and follow, good faith, mun + ye! + Sing hi ho, my honey, my heart shall never rue, + Here’s all pickt ware for the money, and yet a hard pennyworth too. + + Then, Muse, strike up a sonnet, come, piper, and play us a spring, + For now I think upon it, these R’s turn’d out their King; + But now is come about, that once again they must turn out, + And not without justice and reason, that every one home to his prison. + Sing hi ho, Harry Martin, {74} a burgess of the bench, + There’s nothing here is certain, you must back and leave your + wench. + Sing, hi ho, etc. + + He there with the buffle head is called lord and of the same House, + Who (as I have heard it said) was chastised by his ladye spouse; + Because he ran at sheep, she and her maid gave him the whip, + And beat his head so addle, you’d think he had a knock in the cradle. + Sing hi ho, Lord Munson, {75} you ha’ got a park of the King’s; + One day you’l hang like a hounson, for this and other things, + Sing hi, ho, etc. + + It was by their master’s orders at first together they met, + Whom piously they did murder, and since by their own they did set. + The cause of this disaster is ’cause they were false to their master; + Nor can they their gens-d’armes blame for serving them the same. + Sing hi ho, Sir Arthur, {76} no more in the House you shall prate; + For all you kept such a quarter, {77} you are out of the councell + of state. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Old Noll once gave them a purge (forgetting OCCIDISTI), + (The furies be his scourge!) so of the cure must he; + And yet the drug he well knew it, for he gave it to Dr Huit; {78} + Had he given it them, he had done it, and they had not turn’d out his + son yet; + Sing hi ho, brave Dick, Lenthall, and Lady Joane, + Who did against lovalty kick is now for a new-year’s gift gone. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + For had Old Noll been alive, he had pull’d them out by the ears, + Or else had fired their hive, and kickt them down the staires; + Because they were so bold to vex his righteous soul, + When he so deeply had swore that there they should never sit more. + But hi ho, Noll’s dead, and stunk long since above ground, + Though lapt in spices and lead that cost us many a pound. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Indeed, brother burgess, your ling did never stink half so bad, + Nor did your habberdin when it no pease-straw had; + Ye both were chose together, ’cause ye wore stuff cloaks in hard + weather, + And Cambridge needs would have a burgess fool and knave. + Sing hi ho, John Lowry, {79} concerning habberdin, + No member spake before ye, yet you ne’re spoke againe. + Sing hi, ho, etc. + + Ned Prideaux {80} he went post to tell the Protector the news, + That Fleetwood ruld the rost, having tane off Dicke’s shoes. + And that he did believe, Lambert would him deceive + As he his brother had gull’d, and Cromwell Fairfax bull’d. + Sing hi ho, the attorney was still at your command; + In flames together burn ye, still dancing hand in hand! + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Who’s that would hide his face, and his neck from the collar pull? + He must appear in this place, if his cap be made of wool. + Who is it? with a vengeance! it is the good Lord St Johns, {81} + Who made God’s house to fall, to build his own withall. + Sing hi ho, who comes there? who ’tis I must not say; + But by his dark lanthorn, I sweare he’s as good in the night as + day. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Edge, brethren, room for one that looks as big as the best; + ’Tis pity to leave him alone, for he is as good as the rest; + No picklock of the laws, he builds among the daws, + If you ha’ any more kings to murder, for a President look no further. + Sing hi ho, John Bradshaw, in blood none further engages; + The Devil from whom he had’s law, will shortly pay him his wages. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Next, Peagoose Wild, {82} come in to show your weesle face, + And tell us Burley’s sin, whose blood bought you your place; + When loyalty was a crime, he lived in a dangerous time, + Was forced to pay his neck to make you baron of the cheque. + Sing hi ho, Jack Straw, we’ll put it in the margent, + ’Twas not for justice or law that you were made a sergeant. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Noll served not Satan faster, nor with him did better accord; + For he was my good master, and the Devil was his good lord. + Both Slingsby, Gerard, and Hewet, {83} were sure enough to go to it, + According to his intent, that chose me President. + Sing hi ho, Lord Lisle, {84} sure law had got a wrench, + And where was justice the while, when you sate on the bench. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Next comes the good Lord Keble, of the Triumvirate, + Of the seal in the law but feeble, though on the bench he sate; + For when one puts him a case, I wish him out of the place, + And, if it were not a sin, an able lawyer in. + Sing, give the seal about, I’de have it so the rather, + Because we might get out the knave, my lord, my father. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Pull out the other three, it is Nathaniel Fines {85} + (Who Bristol lost for fear), we’ll not leave him behind’s; + ’Tis a chip of that good old block, who to loyalty gave the first + knock, + Then stole away to Lundey, whence the foul fiend fetches him one day. + Sing hi ho, canting Fines, you and the rest to mend ’um, + Would ye were served in your kinds with an _ense rescidendum_. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + He that comes down-stairs, is Lord Chief Justice Glin; {86} + If no man for him cares, he cares as little again: + The reason too I know’t, he helpt cut Strafford’s throat, + And take away his life, though with a cleaner knife. + Sing hi ho, Britain bold, straight to the bar you get, + Where it is not so cold as where your justice set. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + He that will next come in, was long of the Council of State, + Though hardly a hair on his chin when first in the council he sate; + He was sometime in Italy, and learned their fashions prettily, + Then came back to’s own nation, to help up reformation. + Sing hi ho, Harry Nevil, {87} I prythee be not too rash + With atheism to court the Divel, you’re too bold to be his bardash. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + He there with ingratitude blackt is one Cornelius Holland, {88} + Who, but for the King’s house, lackt wherewith to appease his colon; + The case is well amended since that time, as I think, + When at court gate he tended with a little stick and a short link. + Sing hi ho, Cornelius, your zeal cannot delude us; + The reason pray now tell ye us why thus you play’d the Judas. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + At first he was a grocer who now we Major call, + Although you would think no, Sir, if you saw him in Whitehall, + Where he has great command, and looks for cap in hand, + And if our eggs be not addle, shall be of the next new moddel. + Sing hi ho, Mr Salloway, {89} the Lord in heaven doth know + When that from hence you shall away, where to the Devil you’l go. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Little Hill, {90} since set in the House, is to a mountain grown; + Not that which brought forth the mouse, but thousands the year of his + own. + The purchase that I mean, where else but at Taunton Dean; + Five thousand pounds per annum, a sum not known to his grannam. + Sing hi, the Good old Cause, {91} ’tis old enough not true + You got more by that then the laws, so a good old cause to you. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Master Cecil, {92} pray come behind, because on your own accord + The other House you declined, you shall be no longer a lord; + The reason, as I guess, you silently did confess, + Such lords deserved ill the other House to fill. + Sing hi ho, Mr Cecil, your honour now is gone; + Such lords are not worth a whistle, we have made better lords of + our own. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Luke Robinson {93} shall go before ye, that snarling northern tyke; + Be sure he’ll not adore ye, for honour he doth not like; + He cannot honour inherit, and he knows he can never merit, + And therefore he cannot bear it that any one else should wear it. + Sing hi ho, envious lown, you’re of the beagle’s kind, + Who always bark’d at the moon, because in the dark it shined. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + ’Tis this that vengeance rouses, that, while you make long prayers, + You eat up widows’ houses, and drink the orphan’s tears; + Long time you kept a great noise, of God and the Good old Cause; + But if God to you be so kind, then I’me of the Indian’s mind. + Sing hi ho, Sir Harry, {94} we see, by your demeanour, + If longer here you tarry, you’ll be Sir Harry Vane, Senior. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Now if your zeal do warme ye, pray loud for fairer weather; + Swear to live and die with the army, for these birds are flown + together; + The House is turn’d out a doe, (and I think it was no sin, too); + If we take them there any more, we’ll throw the House out of the + window. + Sing hi ho, Tom Scot, {95} you lent the Devil your hand; + I wonder he helpt you not, but suffred you t’ be trapand. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + They’re once again conduced, and we freed from the evil + To which we long were used; God blesse us next from the Devil! + If they had not been outed the array had been routed, + And then this rotten Rump had sat until the last trump. + But, hi ho, Lambert’s here, the Protector’s instrument bore, + And many there be who swear that he will do it no more. + Sing hi ho, etc. + + Come here, then, honest Peters, {96} say grace for the second course, + So long as these your betters must patience have upon force, + Long time he kept a great noise with God and the Good old Cause, + But if God own such as these, then where’s the Devil’s fees? + Sing hi ho, Hugo, I hear thou art not dead; + Where now to the Devil will you go, your patrons being fled? + Sing hi ho, my honey, my heart shall never rue, + Four-and-twenty now for a penny, and into the bargain Hugh. + + + +THE TALE OF THE COBBLER AND THE VICAR OF BRAY. + + + Rara est concordia fratrum. Ovid. + + By Samuel Butler. + +The “Sir Samuel” of this Ballad is the same person—Sir Samuel Luke of +Bedfordshire—who is supposed to have been the unconscious model of the +portrait which is drawn so much more fully in the inimitable Hudibras. +Ralph is also the well-known Squire in the same poem. The Ballad, though +published in Butler’s “Posthumous Works,” 1724, was rejected by Thyer in +the edition of 1784, and is not included in the “Genuine Remains,” +published from the original manuscripts, formerly in the possession of +William Longueville, Esq. If not by Butler, it is a successful imitation +of his style, and abounds in phrases of sturdy colloquial English, and is +of a date long anterior to the popular song, “The Vicar of Bray.” + + IN Bedfordshire there dwelt a knight, + Sir Samuel by name, + Who by his feats in civil broils + Obtain’d a mighty fame. + + Nor was he much less wise and stout, + But fit in both respects + To humble sturdy Cavaliers, + And to support the sects. + + This worthy knight was one that swore + He would not cut his beard + Till this ungodly nation was + From kings and bishops clear’d: + + Which holy vow he firmly kept, + And most devoutly wore + A grizly meteor on his face + Till they were both no more. + + His worship was, in short, a man + Of such exceeding worth, + No pen or pencil can describe, + Or rhyming bard set forth. + + Many and mighty things he did + Both sober and in liquor,— + Witness the mortal fray between + The Cobbler and the Vicar; + + Which by his wisdom and his power + He wisely did prevent, + And both the combatants at once + In wooden durance pent. + + The manner how these two fell out + And quarrell’d in their ale, + I shall attempt at large to show + In the succeeding tale. + + A strolling cobbler, who was wont + To trudge from town to town, + Happen’d upon his walk to meet + A vicar in his gown. + + And as they forward jogg’d along, + The vicar, growing hot, + First asked the cobbler if he knew + Where they might take a pot? + + Yes, marry that I do, quoth he; + Here is a house hard by, + That far exceeds all Bedfordshire + For ale and landlady. + + Thither let’s go, the vicar said; + And when they thither came, + He liked the liquor wondrous well, + But better far the dame. + + And she, who, like a cunning jilt, + Knew how to please her guest, + Used all her little tricks and arts + To entertain the priest. + + The cobbler too, who quickly saw + The landlady’s design, + Did all that in his power was + To manage the divine. + + With smutty jests and merry songs + They charm’d the vicar so, + That he determined for that night + No further he would go. + + And being fixt, the cobbler thought + ’Twas proper to go try + If he could get a job or two + His charges to supply. + + So going out into the street, + He bawls with all his might,— + If any of you tread awry + I’m here to set you right. + + I can repair your leaky boots, + And underlay your soles; + Backsliders, I can underprop + And patch up all your holes. + + The vicar, who unluckily + The cobbler’s outcry heard, + From off the bench on which he sat + With mighty fury rear’d. + + Quoth he, What priest, what holy priest + Can hear this bawling slave, + But must, in justice to his coat, + Chastise the saucy knave? + + What has this wretch to do with souls, + Or with backsliders either, + Whose business only is his awls, + His lasts, his thread, and leather? + + I lose my patience to be made + This strolling varlet’s sport; + Nor could I think this saucy rogue + Could serve me in such sort. + + The cobbler, who had no design + The vicar to displease, + Unluckily repeats again,— + I’m come your soals to ease: + + The inward and the outward too + I can repair and mend; + And all that my assistance want, + I’ll use them like a friend. + + The country folk no sooner heard + The honest cobbler’s tongue, + But from the village far and near + They round about him throng. + + Some bring their boots, and some their shoes, + And some their buskins bring: + The cobbler sits him down to work, + And then begins to sing. + + Death often at the cobbler’s stall + Was wont to make a stand, + But found the cobbler singing still, + And on the mending hand; + + Until at length he met old Time, + And then they both together + Quite tear the cobbler’s aged sole + From off the upper leather. + + Even so a while I may old shoes + By care and art maintain, + But when the leather’s rotten grown + All art and care is vain. + + And thus the cobbler stitched and sung, + Not thinking any harm; + Till out the angry vicar came + With ale and passion warm. + + Dost thou not know, vile slave! quoth he, + How impious ’tis to jest + With sacred things, and to profane + The office of a priest? + + How dar’st thou, most audacious wretch! + Those vile expressions use, + Which make the souls of men as cheap + As soals of boots and shoes? + + Such reprobates as you betray + Our character and gown, + And would, if you had once the power, + The Church itself pull down. + + The cobbler, not aware that he + Had done or said amiss, + Reply’d, I do not understand + What you can mean by this. + + Tho’ I but a poor cobbler be, + And stroll about for bread, + None better loves the Church than I + That ever wore a head. + + But since you are so good at names, + And make so loud a pother, + I’ll tell you plainly I’m afraid + You’re but some cobbling brother. + + Come, vicar, tho’ you talk so big, + Our trades are near akin; + I patch and cobble outward soals + As you do those within. + + And I’ll appeal to any man + That understands the nation, + If I han’t done more good than you + In my respective station. + + Old leather, I must needs confess, + I’ve sometimes used as new, + And often pared the soal so near + That I have spoil’d the shoe. + + You vicars, by a different way, + Have done the very same; + For you have pared your doctrines so + You made religion lame. + + Your principles you’ve quite disown’d, + And old ones changed for new, + That no man can distinguish right + Which are the false or true. + + I dare be bold, you’re one of those + Have took the Covenant; + With Cavaliers are Cavalier, + And with the saints a saint. + + The vicar at this sharp rebuke + Begins to storm and swear; + Quoth he, Thou vile apostate wretch! + Dost thou with me compare? + + I that have care of many souls, + And power to damn or save, + Dar’st thou thyself compare with me, + Thou vile, ungodly knave! + + I wish I had thee somewhere else, + I’d quickly make thee know + What ’tis to make comparisons, + And to revile me so. + + Thou art an enemy to the State, + Some priest in masquerade, + That, to promote the Pope’s designs, + Has learnt the cobbling trade: + + Or else some spy to Cavaliers, + And art by them sent out + To carry false intelligence, + And scatter lies about. + + But whilst the vicar full of ire + Was railing at this rate, + His worship, good Sir Samuel, + O’erlighted at the gate. + + And asking of the landlady + Th’ occasion of the stir; + Quoth she, If you will give me leave + I will inform you, Sir. + + This cobbler happening to o’ertake + The vicar in his walk, + In friendly sort they forward march, + And to each other talk. + + Until the parson first proposed + To stop and take a whet; + So cheek by jole they hither came + Like travellers well met. + + A world of healths and jests went round, + Sometimes a merry tale; + Till they resolved to stay all night, + So well they liked my ale. + + Thus all things lovingly went on, + And who so great as they; + Before an ugly accident + Began this mortal fray. + + The case I take it to be this,— + The vicar being fixt, + The cobbler chanced to cry his trade, + And in his cry he mixt + + Some harmless words, which I suppose + The vicar falsely thought + Might be design’d to banter him, + And scandalize his coat. + + If that be all, quoth he, go out + And bid them both come in; + A dozen of your nappy ale + Will set ’em right again. + + And if the ale should chance to fail, + For so perhaps it may, + I have it in my powers to try + A more effectual way. + + These vicars are a wilful tribe, + A restless, stubborn crew; + And if they are not humbled quite, + The State they will undo. + + The cobbler is a cunning knave, + That goes about by stealth, + And would, instead of mending shoes, + Repair the Commonwealth. + + However, bid ’em both come in, + This fray must have an end; + Such little feuds as these do oft + To greater mischiefs tend. + + Without more bidding out she goes + And told them, by her troth, + There was a magistrate within + That needs must see ’em both. + + But, gentlemen, pray distance keep, + And don’t too testy be; + Ill words good manners still corrupt + And spoil good company. + + To this the vicar first replies, + I fear no magistrate; + For let ’em make what laws they will, + I’ll still obey the State. + + Whatever I can say or do, + I’m sure not much avails; + I stall still be Vicar of Bray + Whichever side prevails. + + My conscience, thanks to Heaven, is come + To such a happy pass, + That I can take the Covenant + And never hang an ass. + + I’ve took so many oaths before, + That now without remorse + I take all oaths the State can make, + As meerly things of course. + + Go therefore, dame, the justice tell + His summons I’ll obey; + And further you may let him know + I Vicar am of Bray. + + I find indeed, the cobbler said, + I am not much mistaken; + This vicar knows the ready way + To save his reverend bacon. {97} + + This is a hopeful priest indeed, + And well deserves a rope; + Rather than lose his vicarage + He’d swear to Turk or Pope. + + For gain he would his God deny, + His country and his King; + Swear and forswear, recant and lye, + Do any wicked thing. + + At this the vicar set his teeth, + And to the cobbler flew; + And with his sacerdotal fist + Gave him a box or two. + + The cobbler soon return’d the blows, + And with both head and heel + So manfully behaved himself, + He made the vicar reel. + + Great was the outcry that was made, + And in the woman ran + To tell his worship that the fight + Betwixt them was began. + + And is it so indeed? quoth he; + I’ll make the slaves repent: + Then up he took his basket hilt, + And out enraged he went. + + The country folk no sooner saw + The knight with naked blade, + But for his worship instantly + An open lane was made; + + Who with a stern and angry look + Cry’d out, What knaves are these + That in the face of justice dare + Disturb the public peace? + + Vile rascals! I will make you know + I am a magistrate, + And that as such I bear about + The vengeance of the State. + + Go, seize them, Ralph, and bring them in, + That I may know the cause, + That first induced them to this rage, + And thus to break the laws. + + Ralph, who was both his squire and clerk, + And constable withal, + I’ th’ name o’ th’ Commonwealth aloud + Did for assistance bawl. + + The words had hardly pass’d his mouth + But they secure them both; + And Ralph, to show his furious zeal + And hatred to the cloth, + + Runs to the vicar through the crowd, + And takes him by the throat: + How ill, says he, doth this become + Your character and coat! + + Was it for this not long ago + You took the Covenant, + And in most solemn manner swore + That you’d become a saint? + + And here he gave him such a pinch + That made the vicar shout,— + Good people, I shall murder’d be + By this ungodly lout. + + He gripes my throat to that degree + I can’t his talons bear; + And if you do not hold his hands, + He’ll throttle me, I fear. + + At this a butcher of the town + Steps up to Ralph in ire,— + What, will you squeeze his gullet through, + You son of blood and fire? + + You are the Devil’s instrument + To execute the laws; + What, will you murther the poor man + With your phanatick claws? + + At which the squire quits his hold, + And lugging out his blade, + Full at the sturdy butcher’s pate + A furious stroke he made. + + A dismal outcry then began + Among the country folk; + Who all conclude the butcher slain + By such a mortal stroke. + + But here good fortune, that has still + A friendship for the brave, + I’ th’ nick misguides the fatal blow, + And does the butcher save. + + The knight, who heard the noise within, + Runs out with might and main, + And seeing Ralph amidst the crowd + In danger to be slain, + + Without regard to age or sex + Old basket-hilt so ply’d, + That in an instant three or four + Lay bleeding at his side. + + And greater mischiefs in his rage + This furious knight had done, + If he had not prevented been + By Dick, the blacksmith’s son, + + Who catch’d his worship on the hip, + And gave him such a squelch, + That he some moments breathless lay + Ere he was heard to belch. + + Nor was the squire in better case, + By sturdy butcher ply’d, + Who from the shoulder to the flank + Had soundly swinged his hide. + + Whilst things in this confusion stood, + And knight and squire disarm’d, + Up comes a neighbouring gentleman + The outcry had alarm’d; + + Who riding up among the crowd, + The vicar first he spy’d, + With sleeveless gown and bloody band + And hands behind him ty’d. + + Bless me, says he, what means all this? + Then turning round his eyes, + In the same plight, or in a worse, + The cobbler bleeding spies. + + And looking further round he saw, + Like one in doleful dump, + The knight, amidst a gaping mob, + Sit pensive on his rump. + + And by his side lay Ralph his squire, + Whom butcher fell had maul’d; + Who bitterly bemoan’d his fate, + And for a surgeon call’d. + + Surprised at first he paused awhile, + And then accosts the knight,— + What makes you here, Sir Samuel, + In this unhappy plight? + + At this the knight gave’s breast a thump, + And stretching out his hand,— + If you will pull me up, he cried, + I’ll try if I can stand. + + And then I’ll let you know the cause; + But first take care of Ralph, + Who in my good or ill success + Doth always stand my half. + + In short, he got his worship up + And led him in the door; + Where he at length relates the tale + As I have told before. + + When he had heard the story out, + The gentleman replies,— + It is not in my province, sir, + Your worship to advise. + + But were I in your worship’s place, + The only thing I’d do, + Was first to reprimand the fools, + And then to let them go. + + I think it first advisable + To take them from the rabble, + And let them come and both set forth + The occasion of the squabble. + + This is the Vicar, Sir, of Bray, + A man of no repute, + The scorn and scandal of his tribe, + A loose, ill-manner’d brute. + + The cobbler’s a poor strolling wretch + That mends my servants’ shoes; + And often calls as he goes by + To bring me country news. + + At this his worship grip’d his beard, + And in an angry mood, + Swore by the laws of chivalry + That blood required blood. + + Besides, I’m by the Commonwealth + Entrusted to chastise + All knaves that straggle up and down + To raise such mutinies. + + However, since ’tis your request, + They shall be call’d and heard; + But neither Ralph nor I can grant + Such rascals should be clear’d. + + And so, to wind the tale up short, + They were call’d in together; + And by the gentlemen were ask’d + What wind ’twas blew them thither. + + Good ale and handsome landladies + You might have nearer home; + And therefore ’tis for something more + That you so far are come. + + To which the vicar answer’d first,— + My living is so small, + That I am forced to stroll about + To try and get a call. + + And, quoth the cobbler, I am forced + To leave my wife and dwelling, + T’ escape the danger of being press’d + To go a colonelling. + + There’s many an honest jovial lad + Unwarily drawn in, + That I have reason to suspect + Will scarce get out again. + + The proverb says, _Harm watch harm catch_, + I’ll out of danger keep, + For he that sleeps in a whole skin + Doth most securely sleep. + + My business is to mend bad soals + And stitch up broken quarters: + A cobbler’s name would look but odd + Among a list of martyrs. + + Faith, cobbler, quoth the gentleman, + And that shall be my case; + I will neither party join, + Let what will come to pass. + + No importunities or threats + My fixt resolves shall rest; + Come here, Sir Samuel, where’s his health + That loves old England best. + + I pity those unhappy fools + Who, ere they were aware, + Designing and ambitious men + Have drawn into a snare. + + But, vicar, to come to the case,— + Amidst a senseless crowd, + What urged you to such violence, + And made you talk so loud? + + Passion I’m sure does ill become + Your character and cloath, + And, tho’ the cause be ne’er so just, + Brings scandal upon both. + + Vicar, I speak it with regret, + An inadvertent priest + Renders himself ridiculous, + And every body’s jest. + + The vicar to be thus rebuked + A little time stood mute; + But having gulp’d his passion down, + Replies,—That cobbling brute + + Has treated me with such contempt, + Such vile expressions used, + That I no longer could forbear + To hear myself abused. + + The rascal had the insolence + To give himself the lie, + And to aver h’ had done more good + And saved more soals than I. + + Nay, further, Sir, this miscreant + To tell me was so bold, + Our trades were very near of kin, + But his was the more old. + + Now, Sir, I will to you appeal + On such a provocation, + If there was not sufficient cause + To use a little passion? + + Now, quoth the cobbler, with your leave, + I’ll prove it to his face, + All this is mere suggestion, + And foreign to the case. + + And since he calls so many names + And talks so very loud, + I will be bound to make it plain + ’Twas he that raised the crowd. + + Nay, further, I will make ’t appear + He and the priests have done + More mischief than the cobblers far + All over Christendom. + + All Europe groans beneath their yoke, + And poor Great Britain owes + To them her present miseries, + And dread of future woes. + + The priests of all religions are + And will be still the same, + And all, tho’ in a different way, + Are playing the same game. + + At this the gentleman stood up,— + Cobbler, you run too fast; + By thus condemning all the tribe + You go beyond your last. + + Much mischief has by priests been done, + And more is doing still; + But then to censure all alike + Must be exceeding ill. + + Too many, I must needs confess, + Are mightily to blame, + Who by their wicked practices + Disgrace the very name. + + But, cobbler, still the major part + The minor should conclude; + To argue at another rate’s + Impertinent and rude. + + By this time all the neighbours round + Were flock’d about the door, + And some were on the vicar’s side, + But on the cobbler’s more. + + Among the rest a grazier, who + Had lately been at town + To sell his oxen and his sheep, + Brim-full of news came down. + + Quoth he, The priests have preach’d and pray’d, + And made so damn’d a pother, + That all the people are run mad + To murther one another. + + By their contrivances and arts + They’ve play’d their game so long, + That no man knows which side is right, + Or which is in the wrong. + + I’m sure I’ve Smithfield market used + For more than twenty year, + But never did such murmurings + And dreadful outcries hear. + + Some for a church, and some a tub, + And some for both together; + And some, perhaps the greater part, + Have no regard for either. + + Some for a king, and some for none; + And some have hankerings + To mend the Commonwealth, and make + An empire of all kings. + + What’s worse, old Noll is marching off, + And Dick, his heir-apparent, + Succeeds him in the government, + A very lame vicegerent. + + He’ll reign but little time, poor fool, + But sink beneath the State, + That will not fail to ride the fool + ’Bove common horseman’s weight. + + And rulers, when they lose the power, + Like horses overweigh’d, + Must either fall and break their knees, + Or else turn perfect jade. + + The vicar to be twice rebuked + No longer could contain; + But thus replies,—To knaves like you + All arguments are vain. + + The Church must use her arm of flesh, + The other will not do; + The clergy waste their breath and time + On miscreants like you. + + You are so stubborn and so proud, + So dull and prepossest, + That no instructions can prevail + How well soe’er addrest. + + Who would reform such reprobates, + Must drub them soundly first; + I know no other way but that + To make them wise or just. + + Fie, vicar, fie, his patron said, + Sure that is not the way; + You should instruct your auditors + To suffer or obey. + + Those were the doctrines that of old + The learned fathers taught; + And ’twas by them the Church at first + Was to perfection brought. + + Come, vicar, lay your feuds aside, + And calmly take your cup; + And let us try in friendly wise + To make the matter up. + + That’s certainly the wiser course, + And better too by far; + All men of prudence strive to quench + The sparks of civil war. + + By furious heats and ill advice + Our neighbours are undone, + Then let us timely caution take + From their destruction. + + If we would turn our heads about, + And look towards forty-one, + We soon should see what little jars + Those cruel wars begun. + + A one-eyed cobbler then was one + Of that rebellious crew, + That did in Charles the martyr’s blood + Their wicked hands imbrue. + + I mention this not to deface + This cobbler’s reputation, + Whom I have always honest found, + And useful in his station. + + But this I urge to let you see + The danger of a fight + Between a cobbler and a priest, + Though he were ne’er so right. + + The vicars are a numerous tribe, + So are the cobblers too; + And if a general quarrel rise, + What must the country do? + + Our outward and our inward soals + Must quickly want repair; + And all the neighbourhood around + Would the misfortune share. + + Sir, quoth the grazier, I believe + Our outward soals indeed + May quickly want the cobbler’s help + To be from leakings freed. + + But for our inward souls, I think + They’re of a worth too great + To be committed to the care + Of any holy cheat, + + Who only serves his God for gain, + Religion is his trade; + And ’tis by such as these our Church + So scandalous is made. + + Why should I trust my soul with one + That preaches, swears, and prays, + And the next moment contradicts + Himself in all he says? + + His solemn oaths he looks upon + As only words of course! + Which like their wives our fathers took + For better or for worse. + + But he takes oaths as some take w—s, + Only to serve his ease; + And rogues and w—s, it is well known, + May part whene’er they please. + + At this the cobbler bolder grew, + And stoutly thus reply’d,— + If you’re so good at drubbing, Sir, + Your manhood shall be try’d. + + What I have said I will maintain, + And further prove withal— + I daily do more good than you + In my respective call. + + I know your character, quoth he, + You proud insulting vicar, + Who only huff and domineer + And quarrel in your liquor. + + The honest gentleman, who saw + ’Twould come again to blows, + Commands the cobbler to forbear, + And to the vicar goes. + + Vicar, says he, for shame give o’er + And mitigate your rage; + You scandalize your cloth too much + A cobbler to engage. + + All people’s eyes are on your tribe, + And every little ill + They multiply and aggravate + And will because they will. + + But now let’s call another cause, + So let this health go round; + Be peace and plenty, truth and right, + In good old England found. + + Quoth Ralph, All this is empty talk + And only tends to laughter; + If these two varlets should be spared, + Who’d pity us hereafter? + + Your worship may do what you please, + But I’ll have satisfaction + For drubbing and for damages + In this ungodly action. + + I think that you can do no less + Than send them to the stocks; + And I’ll assist the constable + In fixing in their hocks. + + There let ’em sit and fight it out, + Or scold till they are friends; + Or, what is better much than both, + Till I am made amends. + + Ralph, quoth the knight, that’s well advised, + Let them both hither go, + And you and the sub-magistrate + Take care that it be so. + + Let them be lock’d in face to face, + Bare buttocks on the ground; + And let them in that posture sit + Till they with us compound. + + Thus fixt, well leave them for a time, + Whilst we with grief relate, + How at a wake this knight and squire + Got each a broken pate. + + + +THE GENEVA BALLAD. + + + From Samuel Butler’s Posthumous Works. + + OF all the factions in the town + Moved by French springs or Flemish wheels, + None turns religion upside down, + Or tears pretences out at heels, + Like _Splaymouth_ with his brace of caps, + Whose conscience might be scann’d perhaps + By the dimensions of his chaps; + + He whom the sisters do adore, + Counting his actions all divine, + Who when the spirit hints can roar, + And, if occasion serves, can whine; + Nay, he can bellow, bray, or bark; + Was ever _sike a Beauk-learn’d_ clerk + That speaks all linguas of the ark? + + To draw the hornets in like bees, + With pleasing twangs he tones his prose; + He gives his handkerchief a squeeze, + And draws John Calvin thro’ his nose; + Motive on motive he obtrudes, + With slip-stocking similitudes, + Eight uses more, and so concludes. + + When monarchy began to bleed, + And treason had a fine new name; + When Thames was balderdash’d with Tweed, + And pulpits did like beacons flame; + When Jeroboam’s calves were rear’d, + And Laud was neither loved nor fear’d, + This gospel-comet first appear’d. + + Soon his unhallow’d fingers stript + His sovereign-liege of power and land; + And, having smote his master, slipt + His sword into his fellow’s hand; + But he that wears his eyes may note + Oft-times the butcher binds a goat, + And leaves his boy to cut her throat. + + Poor England felt his fury then + Outweigh’d Queen Mary’s many grains; + His very preaching slew more men + Than Bonnar’s faggots, stakes, and chains: + With dog-star zeal, and lungs like Boreas, + He fought, and taught, and, what’s notorious, + Destroy’d his Lord to make him glorious. + + Yet drew for King and Parliament, + As if the wind could stand north-south; + Broke Moses’ law with blest intent, + Murther’d, and then he wiped his mouth: + Oblivion alters not his case, + Nor clemency nor acts of grace + Can blanch an Ethiopian’s face. + + Ripe for rebellion, he begins + To rally up the saints in swarms; + He bawls aloud, Sir, leave your sins, + But whispers, Boys, stand to your arms: + Thus he’s grown insolently rude, + Thinking his gods can’t be subdued— + _Money_, I mean, and _multitude_. + + Magistrates he regards no more + Than St George or the King of Colon, + Vowing he’ll not conform before + The old wives wind their dead in woollen: + He calls the bishop gray-hair’d coff, + And makes his power as mere a scoff + As Dagon when his hands were off. + + Hark! how he opens with full cry, + Halloo, my hearts, beware of Rome! + Cowards that are afraid to die + Thus make domestic brawls at home. + How quietly great Charles might reign, + Would all these Hotspurs cross the main + And preach down Popery in Spain. + + The starry rule of Heaven is fixt, + There’s no dissension in the sky; + And can there be a mean betwixt, + Confusion and conformity? + A place divided never thrives, + ’Tis bad when hornets dwell in hives, + But worse when children play with knives. + + I would as soon turn back to mass, + Or change my praise to _Thee_ and _Thou_; + Let the Pope ride me like an ass, + And his priests milk me like a cow! + As buckle to Smectymnian laws, + The bad effects o’ th’ Good old Cause, + That have dove’s plumes, but vulture’s claws. + + For ’twas the holy Kirk that nursed, + The Brownists and the ranters’ crew; + Foul error’s motley vesture first + Was oaded {98} in a northern blue; + And what’s th’ enthusiastick breed, + Or men of Knipperdolin’s creed, + But Cov’nanters run up to seed! + + Yet they all cry they love the King, + And make boast of their innocence: + There cannot be so vile a thing + But may be cover’d with pretence; + Yet when all’s said, one thing I’ll swear, + No subject like th’ old Cavalier, + No traytor like _Jack-Presbyter_. + + + +THE DEVIL’S PROGRESS ON EARTH, +OR +HUGGLE DUGGLE. + + + From Durfey’s “Pills to Purge Melancholy.” + + _Frier Bacon_ walks again, + And Doctor _Forster_ {99} too; + _Prosperine_ and _Pluto_, + And many a goblin crew: + With that a merry devil, + To make the _Airing_, vow’d; + Huggle Duggle, Ha! ha! ha! + The Devil laugh’d aloud. + + Why think you that he laugh’d? + Forsooth he came from court; + And there amongst the gallants + Had spy’d such pretty sport; + There was such cunning jugling, + And ladys gon so proud; + Huggle Duggle, etc. + + With that into the city + Away the Devil went; + To view the merchants’ dealings + It was his full intent: + And there along the brave Exchange + He crept into the croud. + Huggle Duggle, etc. + + He went into the city + To see all there was well; + Their scales were false, their weights were light, + Their conscience fit for hell; + And _Panders_ chosen magistrates, + And _Puritans_ allow’d. + Huggle Duggle, etc. + + With that unto the country + Away the Devil goeth; + For there is all plain dealing, + For that the Devil knoweth: + But the rich man reaps the gains + For which the poor man plough’d. + Huggle Duggle, etc. + + With that the Devil in haste + Took post away to hell, + And call’d his fellow furies, + And told them all on earth was well: + That falsehood there did flourish, + Plain dealing was in a cloud. + Huggle Duggle, Ha! ha! ha! + The devils laugh’d aloud. + + + +A BOTTLE DEFINITION OF THAT FALLEN ANGEL, CALLED A WHIG. + + +From a collection of Historical and State Poems, Satyrs, Songs, and +Epigrams, by Ned Ward, A. D. 1717. + + WHAT is a Whig? A cunning rogue + That once was in, now out of vogue: + A rebel to the Church and throne, + Of Lucifer the very spawn. + + A tyrant, who is ne’er at rest + In power, or when he’s dispossess’d; + A knave, who foolishly has lost + What so much blood and treasure cost. + + A lying, bouncing desperado, + A bomb, a stink-pot, a granado; + That’s ready primed, and charged to break, + And mischief do for mischief’s sake: + + A comet, whose portending phiz + Appears more dreadful than it is; + But now propitious stars repel + Those ills it lastly did fortel. + + ’Twill burst with unregarded spight, + And, since the Parliament proves right, + Will turn to smoke, which shone of late + So bright and flaming in the State. + + + +THE DESPONDING WHIG. + + + From Ned Ward’s Works, vol. iv. 1709. + + WHEN owles are strip’d of their disguise, + And wolves of shepherd’s cloathing, + Those birds and beasts that please our eyes + Will then beget our loathing; + When foxes tremble in their holes + At dangers that they see, + And those we think so wise prove fools, + Then low, boys, down go we. + + If those designs abortive prove + We’ve been so long in hatching, + And cunning knaves are forced to move + From home for fear of catching; + The rabble soon will change their tone + When our intrigues they see, + And cry God save the Church and Throne, + Then low, boys, down go we. + + The weaver then no more must leave + His loom and turn a preacher, + Nor with his cant poor fools deceive + To make himself the richer. + Our leaders soon would disappear + If such a change should be, + Our scriblers too would stink for fear, + Then low, boys, down go we. + + No canvisars would dare to shew + Their postures and grimaces, + Or proph’sy what they never knew, + By dint of ugly faces. + But shove the tumbler through the town, + And quickly banish’d be, + For none must teach without a gown, + Then low, boys, down go we. + + If such unhappy days should come, + Our virtue, moderation, + Would surely be repaid us home + With double compensation; + For as we never could forgive, + I fear we then should see + That what we lent we must receive, + Then low, boys, down go we. + + Should honest brethren once discern + Our knaveries, they’d disown us, + And bubbl’d fools more wit should learn, + The Lord have mercy on us; + Let’s guard against that evil day, + Least such a time should be, + And tackers should come into play, + Then low, boys, down go we. + + Tho’ hitherto we’ve play’d our parts + Like wary cunning foxes, + And gain’d the common people’s hearts + By broaching het’rodoxes,— + But they’re as fickle as the winds, + With nothing long agree, + And when they change their wav’ring minds, + Then low, boys, down go we. + + Let’s preach and pray, but spit our gall + On those that do oppose us, + And cant of grace, in spite of all + The shame the Devil owes us: + The just, the loyal, and the wise + With us shall Papists be, + For if the _High Church_ once should rise, + Then, _Low Church_, down go we. + + + +PHANATICK ZEAL, +OR +A LOOKING-GLASS FOR THE WHIGS. + + + From a Collection of 180 Loyal Songs. + Tune, “A Swearing we will go.” + + WHO would not be a Tory + When the loyal are call’d so: + And a Whig now is known + To be the nation’s foe? + So a Tory I will be, will be, + And a Tory I will be. + + With little band precise, + Hair Presbyterian cut, + Whig turns up hands and eyes + Though smoking hot from slut. + So a Tory I will be, etc. + + Black cap turn’d up with white, + With wolfish neck and face, + And mouth with nonsense stuft, + Speaks Whig a man of grace, + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + The sisters go to meetings + To meet their gallants there; + And oft mistake for my Lord, + And snivel out my dear. + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + Example, we do own, + Than precept better is; + For Creswell she was safe, + When she lived a private Miss. + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + The Whigs, though ne’er so proud, + Sometimes have been as low, + For there are some of note + Have long a raree-show. + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + These mushrooms now have got + Their champion turn-coat hick; + But if the naked truth were known + They’re assisted by old Nick. + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + To be and to be not + At once is in their power; + For when they’re in, they’re guilty, + But clear when out o’ the tower. + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + To carry their designs, + Though ’t contradicts their sense; + They’re clear a Whiggish traytor + Against clear evidence. + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + The old proverb doth us tell, + Each dog will have his day; + And Whig has had his too, + For which he’ll soundly pay; + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + For bodkins and for thimbles + Now let your tubsters cant; + Their confounded tired cause + Had never yet more want. + So a Tory I will be, etc. + + For ignoramus Toney + Has left you in the lurch; + And you have spent your money, + So, faith, e’en come to Church; + For a Tory I will be, etc. + + They are of no religion, + Be it spoken to their glories, + For St Peter and St Paul + With them both are Tories; + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + They’re excellent contrivers, + I wonder what they’re not, + For something they can make + Of nothing and a plot. + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + But now your holy cheat + Is known throughout the nation; + And a Whig is known to be + A thing quite out of fashion. + And a Tory I will be, etc. + + + +A NEW GAME AT CARDS: +OR, +WIN AT FIRST AND LOSE AT LAST. + + +A popular ballad, written immediately after the restoration of Charles +II.; and in which the victorious Cavaliers render honour to General Monk, +Duke of Albemarle. + + Tune, “Ye gallants that delight to play.” + + YE merry hearts that love to play + At cards, see who hath won the day; + You that once did sadly sing + The knave of clubs hath won the king; + Now more happy times we have, + The king hath overcome the knave. + + Not long ago a game was play’d, + When three crowns at the stakes were laid; + England had no cause to boast, + Knaves won that which kings had lost: + Coaches gave the way to carts, + And clubs were better cards than hearts. + + Old Noll was the knave o’ clubs, + And dad of such as preach in tubs; + Bradshaw, Ireton, and Pride + Were three other knaves beside; + And they play’d with half the pack, + Throwing out all cards but black. + + But the just Fates threw these four out, + Which made the loyal party shout; + The Pope would fain have had the stock, + And with these cards have whipt his dock. + But soon the Devil these cards snatches + To dip in brimstone, and make matches. + + But still the sport for to maintain, + Bold Lambert, Haslerigg, and Vane, + With one-eyed Hewson, took their places, + Knaves were better cards than aces; + But Fleetwood he himself did save, + Because he was more fool than knave. + + Cromwell, though he so much had won, + Yet he had an unlucky son; + He sits still, and not regards, + Whilst cunning gamesters set the cards; + And thus, alas! poor silly Dick, + He play’d awhile, and lost his trick. + + The Rumpers that had won whole towns, + The spoils of martyrs and of crowns, + Were not contented, but grew rough, + As though they had not won enough; + They kept the cards still in their hands, + To play for tithes and college lands. + + The Presbyters began to fret + That they were like to lose the sett; + Unto the Rump they did appeal, + And said it was their turn to deal; + Then dealt with Presbyterians, but + The army swore that they would cut. + + The foreign lands began to wonder, + To see what gallants we lived under, + That they, which Christians did forswear, + Should follow gaming all the year,— + Nay more, which was the strangest thing, + To play so long without a king. + + The bold phanatics present were, + Like butlers with their boxes there, + Not doubting but that every game + Some profit would redound to them; + Because they were the gamesters’ minions, + And every day broach’d new opinions. + + But Cheshire men (as stories say) + Began to show them gamester’s play; + Brave Booth and all his army strives + To save the stakes, or lose their lives; + But, oh sad fate! they were undone + By playing of their cards too soon. + + Thus all the while a club was trump, + There’s none could ever beat the Rump, + Until a noble general came, + And gave the cheaters a clear slam; + His finger did outwit their noddy, + And screw’d up poor Jack Lambert’s body. + + Then Haslerigg began to scowl, + And said the general play’d foul. + Look to him, partners, for I tell ye, + This Monk has got a king in’s belly. + Not so, quoth Monk, but I believe + Sir Arthur has a knave in’s sleeve. + + When General Monk did understand + The Rump were peeping into’s hand, + He wisely kept his cards from sight, + Which put the Rump into a fright; + He saw how many were betray’d + That show’d their cards before they play’d. + + At length, quoth he, some cards we lack, + I will not play with half a pack; + What you cast out I will bring in, + And a new game we will begin: + With that the standers-by did say + They never yet saw fairer play. + + But presently this game was past, + And for a second knaves were cast; + All new cards, not stain’d with spots, + As was the Rumpers and the Scots,— + Here good gamesters play’d their parts + And turn’d up the king of hearts. + + After this game was done, I think + The standers-by had cause to drink, + And all loyal subjects sing, + Farewell knaves, and welcome King; + For, till we saw the King return’d, + We wish’d the cards had all been burn’d. + + + +THE CAVALEERS LITANY. + + + (March 25th, 1660.)—From the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum. + + FROM pardons which extend to woods, + Entitle thieves to keep our goods, + Forgive our rents as well as bloods, + God bless, etc. + + From judges who award that none + Of our oppressours should attone + (The losses sure were not their own), + God bless, etc. + + From Christians which can soon forget + Our injuries, but not one bit + Of self-concernment would remit, + God bless, etc. + + From duresse, and their dolefull tale, + Who, famisht by a lawless sale, + Compounded it for cakes and ale, + God bless, etc. + + From persons still to tread the stage, + Who did the drudgeries of our age + (Such counsells are, I fear, too sage), + God bless, etc. + + From maximes which (to make all sure) + With great rewards the bad allure, + ’Cause of the good they are secure, + God bless, etc. + + From cunning gamesters, who, they say, + Are sure to winne, what-e’re they play; + In April Lambert, Charles in May, + God bless, etc. + + From neuters and their leven’d lump, + Who name the King and mean the Rump, + Or care not much what card is trump, + God bless, etc. + + From midnight-birds, who lye at catch + Some plume from monarchy to snatch, + And from fond youths that cannot watch, + God bless, etc. + + From brethren who must still dissent, + Whose froward gospell brooks no Lent, + And who recant, but ne’er repent, + God bless, etc. + + From Levites void of truth and shame, + Who to the time their pulpits frame, + And keep the style but change the name, + God bless, etc. + + From men by heynous crimes made rich, + Who (though their hopes are in the ditch) + Have still th’ old fornicatours itch, + God bless, etc. + + From such as freely paid th’ arrears + Of the State-troops for many years, + But grudge one tax for Cavaleers, + God bless, etc. + + + +THE SECOND PART. + + + A CROWN of gold without allay, + Not here provided for one day, + But framed above to last for aye! + God send, etc. + + A Queen to fill the empty place, + And multiply his noble race, + Wee all beseech the throne of grace + To send, etc. + + A people still as true and kind + As late (when for their King they pin’d), + Not fickle as the tide or wild, + God send, etc. + + A fleet like that in fifty-three, + To re-assert our power at sea, + And make proud Flemings bend their knee, + God send, etc. + + Full magazines and cash in store, + That such as wrought his fate before + May hope to do the same no more, + God send, etc. + + A searching judgement to divine, + Of persons whether they do joyn + For love, for fear, or for design, + God send, etc. + + A well-complexion’d Parliament, + That shall (like Englishmen) resent + What loyall subjects underwent, + God send, etc. + + Review of statutes lately past, + Made in such heat, pen’d in such hast, + That all events were not forecast, + God send, etc. + + Dispatch of businesse, lawes upright, + And favour where it stands with right, + (Be their purses ne’er so light), + God send, etc. + + A raven to supply their need, + Whose martyrdom (like noble seed) + Sprung up at length and choak’t the weed, + God send, etc. + + The King and kingdom’s debts defray’d, + And those of honest men well pay’d, + To which their vertue them betray’d, + God send, etc. + + Increase of customes to the King + May our increase of traffick bring, + ’Tis that will make the people sing + Long live, etc. + +London, printed for Robert Crofts, at the Crown, in Chancery Lane, 1661. + + + +THE CAVALIER’S COMPLAINT. + + +This and the following ballad, from the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum, +express the discontent of the Cavaliers at the ingratitude of King +Charles to the old supporters of the fortunes of his family.—(March 15th, +1660.) + + To the tune of “I tell thee, Dick.” + + COME, Jack, let’s drink a pot of ale, + And I shall tell thee such a tale + Will make thine ears to ring; + My coyne is spent, my time is lost, + And I this only fruit can boast, + That once I saw my King. + + But this doth most afflict my mind: + I went to Court in hope to find + Some of my friends in place; + And walking there, I had a sight + Of all the crew, but, by this light! + I hardly knew one face. + + ’S’life! of so many noble sparkes, + Who on their bodies bear the markes + Of their integritie; + And suffer’d ruine of estate, + It was my damn’d unhappy fate + That I not one could see. + + Not one, upon my life, among + My old acquaintance all along + At Truro and before; + And I suppose the place can show + As few of those whom thou didst know + At Yorke or Marston-moore. + + But truly there are swarmes of those + Who lately were our chiefest foes, + Of pantaloons and muffes; + Whilst the old rusty Cavaleer + Retires, or dares not once appear, + For want of coyne and cuffes. + + When none of these I could descry, + Who better far deserv’d then I, + Calmely I did reflect; + “Old services (by rule of State) + Like almanacks grow out of date,— + What then can I expect?” + + Troth! in contempt of Fortune’s frown, + I’ll get me fairly out of town, + And in a cloyster pray; + That since the starres are yet unkind + To Royalists, the King may find + More faithfull friends than they. + + + +AN ECHO TO THE CAVALIER’S COMPLAINT. + + + I MARVEL, Dick, that having been + So long abroad, and having seen + The world as thou hast done, + Thou should’st acquaint mee with a tale + As old as Nestor, and as stale + As that of Priest and Nunne. {100} + + Are we to learn what is a Court? + A pageant made for fortune’s sport, + Where merits scarce appear; + For bashfull merit only dwells + In camps, in villages, and cells; + Alas! it dwells not there. + + Desert is nice in its addresse, + And merit ofttimes doth oppresse + Beyond what guilt would do; + But they are sure of their demands + That come to Court with golden hands, + And brazen faces, too. + + The King, they say, doth still professe + To give his party some redresse, + And cherish honestie; + But his good wishes prove in vain, + Whose service with his servants’ gain + Not alwayes doth agree. + + All princes (be they ne’er so wise) + Are fain to see with others’ eyes, + But seldom hear at all; + And courtiers find their interest + In time to feather well their nest, + Providing for their fall. + + Our comfort doth on time depend, + Things when they are at worst will mend; + And let us but reflect + On our condition th’ other day, + When none but tyrants bore the sway, + What did we then expect? + + Meanwhile a calm retreat is best, + But discontent (if not supprest) + Will breed disloyaltie; + This is the constant note I sing, + I have been faithful to the King, + And so shall ever be. + +London, printed for Robert Crofts, at the Crown, in Chancery Lane, 1661. + + + +A RELATION. + + +Of Ten grand infamous Traytors, who, for their horrid murder and +detestable villany against our late soveraigne Lord King Charles the +First, that ever blessed martyr, were arraigned, tryed, and executed in +the moneth of October, 1660, which in perpetuity will be had in +remembrance unto the world’s end. + +This is one of the Six Ballads of the Restoration found in a trunk, and +sent by Sir W. C. Trevelyan to the British Museum. “No measure threw +more disgrace on the Restoration,” says Mr Wright, “than the prosecution +of the regicides; and the heartless and sanguinary manner in which it was +conducted tended more than any other circumstance to open the eyes of the +people to the real character of the government to which they had been +betrayed.” Pepys observes on the 20th Oct., “A bloody week this and the +last have been; there being ten hanged, drawn, and quartered.” + + The tune is “Come let us drinke, the time invites.” + + HEE that can impose a thing, + And shew forth a reason + For what was done against the King, + From the palace to the prison; + Let him here with me recite, + For my pen is bent to write + The horrid facts of treason. + + Since there is no learned scribe + Nor arithmaticion + Ever able to decide + The usurp’d base ambition, + Which in truth I shall declare, + Traytors here which lately were, + Who wanted a phisitian. + + For the grand disease that bred + Nature could not weane it; + From the foot unto the head, + Was putrefacted treason in it; + Doctors could no cure give, + Which made the squire then beleeve + That he must first begin it. + + And the phisick did compose, + Within a pound of reason; + First to take away the cause, + Then to purge away the treason, + With a dosse of hemp made up, + Wrought as thickly as a rope, + And given them in due season. + + The doctors did prescribe at last + To give ’um this potation, + A vomit or a single cast, + Well deserved, in purgation; + After that to lay them downe, + And bleed a veine in every one, + As traytors of the nation. + + So when first the physicke wrought, + The thirteenth of October, {101} + The patient on a sledge was brought, + Like a rebell and a rover, + To the execution tree; + Where with much dexterity + Was gently turned over. + + +THE SECOND PART. + + + To the same tune. + + MONDAY was the fifteenth day, + As Carew then did follow, {102} + Of whom all men I thinke might say + In tyranny did deeply wallow; + Traytor proved unto the King, + Which made him on the gallowes swing, + And all the people hallow. + + Tuesday, after Peters, Cooke, {103} + Two notorious traytors, + That brought our soveraigne to the blocke, + For which were hang’d and cut in quarters; + ’Twas Cooke which wrought the bloody thing + To draw the charge against our King, + That ever blessed martyr. + + Next, on Wednesday, foure came, + For murthur all imputed, + There to answer for the same, + Which in judgement were confuted. + Gregorie Clement, Jones, and Scot, + And Scroop together, for a plot, {104} + Likewise were executed. + + Thursday past, and Friday then, + To end the full conclusion, + And make the traytors just up ten, + That day were brought to execution, + Hacker and proud Axtell he, {105} + At Tyburne for their treachery + Received their absolution. + + Being against the King and States, + The Commons all condemn’d ’um, + And their quarters on the gates + Hangeth for a memorandum + ’Twixt the heavens and the earth; + Traytors are so little worth, + To dust and smoake wee’l send ’um. + + Let now October warning make + To bloody-minded traytors, + That never phisicke more they take, + For in this moneth they lost their quarters; + Being so against the King, + Which to murther they did bring, + The ever blessed martyr. + +London, printed for Fr. Coles, T. Vere, M. Wright, and W. Gilbertson. + + + +THE GLORY OF THESE NATIONS; + + +OR, KING AND PEOPLES HAPPINESSE. BEING A BRIEF RELATION OF KING +CHARLES’S ROYALL PROGRESSE FROM DOVER TO LONDON, HOW THE LORD GENERALL +AND THE LORD MAYOR, WITH ALL THE NOBILITY AND GENTRY OF THE LAND, BROUGHT +HIM THOROW THE FAMOUS CITY OF LONDON TO HIS PALLACE AT WESTMINSTER, THE +29TH OF MAY LAST, BEING HIS MAJESTIES BIRTH-DAY, TO THE GREAT COMFORT OF +HIS LOYALL SUBJECTS. + +One of the six curious broadsides found by Sir W. C. Trevelyan in the +lining of a trunk, and now in the British Museum. + +The new Parliament met on the twenty-fifth of April, and on the first of +May the King’s letter from Breda was read, and the Restoration determined +by a vote of the House. The King immediately repaired to the coast, and, +after meeting with some obstruction from the roughness of the weather, +went on board the _Nazeby_ on the 23rd of May. On the 25th he landed at +Dover. He made his entry into London on the 29th. + + To the tune of “When the King enjoys his own again.” + + WHERE’S those that did prognosticate, + And did envy fair England’s state, + And said King Charles no more should reign? + Their predictions were but in vain, + For the King is now return’d, + For whom fair England mourn’d; + His nobles royally him entertain. + Now blessed be the day! + Thus do his subjects say, + That God hath brought him home again. + + The twenty-second of lovely May + At Dover arrived, fame doth say, + Where our most noble generall + Did on his knees before him fall, + Craving to kiss his hand, + So soon as he did land. + Royally they did him entertain, + With all their pow’r and might, + To bring him to his right, + And place him in his own again. + + Then the King, I understand, + Did kindly take him by the hand + And lovingly did him embrace, + Rejoycing for to see his face. + Hee lift him from the ground + With joy that did abound, + And graciously did him entertain; + Rejoycing that once more + He was o’ th’ English shore, + To enjoy his own in peace again. + + From Dover to Canterbury they past, + And so to Cobham-hall at last; + From thence to London march amain, + With a triumphant and glorious train, + Where he was received with joy, + His sorrow to destroy, + In England once more for to raign; + Now all men do sing, + God save Charles our King, + That now enjoyes his own again. + + At Deptford the maidens they + Stood all in white by the high-way + Their loyalty to Charles to show, + They with sweet flowers his way to strew. + Each wore a ribbin blew, + They were of comely hue, + With joy they did him entertain, + With acclamations to the skye + As the King passed by, + For joy that he receives his own again. + + In Wallworth-fields a gallant band + Of London ’prentices did stand, + All in white dublets very gay, + To entertain King Charles that day, + With muskets, swords, and pike; + I never saw the like, + Nor a more youthfull gallant train; + They up their hats did fling, + And cry, “God save the King! + Now he enjoys his own again.” + + At Newington-Buts the Lord Mayor willed + A famous booth for to be builded, + Where King Charles did make a stand, + And received the sword into his hand; + Which his Majesty did take, + And then returned back + Unto the Mayor with love again. + A banquet they him make, + He doth thereof partake, + Then marcht his triumphant train. + + The King with all his noblemen, + Through Southwark they marched then; + First marched Major Generall Brown, {106} + Then Norwich Earle of great renown, {107} + With many a valiant knight + And gallant men of might, + Richly attired, marching amain, + There Lords Mordin, Gerard, and + The good Earle of Cleavland, {108} + To bring the King to his own again. + + Near sixty flags and streamers then + Was born before a thousand men, + In plush coats and chaines of gold, + These were most rich for to behold; + With every man his page, + The glory of his age; + With courage bold they marcht amain, + Then with gladnesse they + Brought the King on his way + For to enjoy his own again. + + Then Lichfields and Darbyes Earles, {109} + Two of fair England’s royall pearles; + Major Generall Massey then + Commanded the life guard of men, + The King for to defend, + If any should contend, + Or seem his comming to restrain; + But also joyfull were + That no such durst appear, + Now the King enjoyes his own again. + + Four rich maces before them went, + And many heralds well content; + The Lord Mayor and the generall + Did march before the King withall. + His brothers on each side + Along by him did ride; + The Southwark-waits did play amain, + Which made them all to smile + And to stand still awhile, + And then they marched on again. + + Then with drawn swords all men did side, + And flourishing the same, then cryed, + “Charles the Second now God save, + That he his lawfull right may have! + And we all on him attend, + From dangers him to defend, + And all that with him doth remain. + Blessed be God that we + Did live these days to see, + That the King enjoyes his own again!” + + The bells likewise did loudly ring, + Bonefires did burn and people sing; + London conduits did run with wine, + And all men do to Charles incline; + Hoping now that all + Unto their trades may fall, + Their famylies for to maintain, + And from wrong be free, + ’Cause we have liv’d to see + The King enjoy his own again. + + London, printed for Charles Tyns, on London Bridge. + + + +THE NOBLE PROGRESS, +OR, +A TRUE RELATION OF THE LORD +GENERAL MONK’S POLITICAL +PROCEEDINGS. + + +The Noble Progresse, or a True Relation of the Lord General Monk’s +Political Proceedings with the Rump, the calling in the secluded Members, +their transcendant vote for his sacred Majesty, with his reception at +Dover, and royal conduct through the City of London to his famous Palace +at Whitehall. One of the broadsides in the British Museum, found in the +lining of an old trunk by Sir W. C. Trevelyan. + + Tune—“When first the Scottish wars began.” + + GOOD people, hearken to my call, + I’le tell you all what did befall + And hapned of late; + Our noble valiant General Monk + Came to the Rump, who lately stunk + With their council of state. + Admiring what this man would doe, + His secret mind there’s none could know, + They div’d into him as much as they could,— + George would not be won with their silver nor gold: + The sectarian saints at this lookt blew, + With all the rest of the factious crew, + They vapour’d awhile, and were in good hope, + But now they have nothing left but the rope. + + Another invention then they sought, + Which long they wrought for to be brought + To claspe him with they; + Quoth Vane and Scot, I’le tell you what, + Wee’l have a plot and he shall not, + Wee’l carry the sway: + Let’s vote him a thousand pound a yeare, + And Hampton Court for him and his Heire. + Indeed, quoth George, ye’re Free Parliament men + To cut a thong out of another man’s skin. + The sectarian, etc. + + They sent him then with all his hosts + To break our posts and raise our ghosts, + Which was their intent; + To cut our gates and chain all downe + Unto the ground—this trick they found + To make him be shent: + This plot the Rump did so accord + To cast an odium on my lord, + But in the task he was hard put untoo’t, + ’Twas enough to infect both his horse and his foot, + The sectarian, etc. + + But when my lord perceived that night + What was their spight, he brought to light + Their knaveries all; + This Parliament of forty-eight, + Which long did wait, came to him straight, + To give them a fall, + And some phanatical people knew + That George would give them their fatall due; + Indeed he did requite them agen, + For he pul’d the Monster out of his den. + The sectarian, etc. + + To the House our worthy Parliament + With good intent they boldly went + To vote home the King, + And many hundred people more + Stood at the doore, and waited for + Good tidings to bring; + Yet some in the House had their hands much in blood, + And in great opposition like traytors they stood; + But yet I believe it is very well known + That those that were for him were twenty to one. + But the sectarian, etc. + + They call’d the League and Covenant in + To read again to every man; + But what comes next? + All sequestrations null be void, + The people said none should be paid, + For this was the text. + For, as I heard all the people say, + They voted King Charles the first of May; + Bonfires burning, bells did ring, + And our streets did echo with God bless ye King. + At this the sectarian, etc. + + Our general then to Dover goes, + In spite of foes or deadly blowes, + Saying Vive le Roy; + And all the glories of the land, + At his command they there did stand + In triumph and joy. + Good Lord, what a sumptuous sight ’twas to see + Our good Lord General fall on his knee + To welcome home his Majestie, + And own his sacred sovereignty. + But the sectarian, etc. + + When all the worthy noble train + Came back again with Charlemain, + Our sovereign great: + The Lord Mayor in his scarlet gown, + His chain so long, went through the town + In pompe and state. + The livery-men each line the way + Upon this great triumphant day; + Five rich maces carried before, + And my Lord himselfe the sword he bore. + Then Vive le Roy the gentry did sing, + For General Monk rode next to the King; + With acclamations, shouts, and cryes, + I thought they would have rent the skyes. + + The conduits, ravished with joy, + As I may say, did run all day + Great plenty of wine; + And every gentleman of note + In’s velvet coat that could be got + In glory did shine. + There were all the peeres and barrons bold, + Richly clad in silver and gold, + Marched through the street so brave, + No greater pompe a king could have. + At this, the sacristan, etc. + + And thus conducted all along + Throughout the throng, still he did come + Unto White Hall; + Attended by those noble-men, + Bold heroes’ kin that brought him in + With the geneall; + Who was the man that brought him home + And placed him on his royal throne;— + ’Twas General Monk did doe the thing, + So God preserve our gracious King, + Now the sacristan, etc. + + + +ON THE KING’S RETURN. + + + By Alex. Brome. + + LONG have we waited for a happy end + Of all our miseries and strife;— + But still in vain;—the swordmen did intend + To make them hold for term of life: + That our distempers might be made + Their everlasting livelihood and trade. + + They entail their swords and guns, + And pay, which wounded more, + Upon their daughters and their sons, + Thereby to keep us ever poor. + + But when the Civil Wars were past, + They civil government invade, + To make our taxes and our slavery last, + Both to their titles and their trade. + + But now we are redeem’d from all + By our indulgent King, + Whose coming does prevent our fall, + With loyal and with joyful hearts we’ll sing: + + CHORUS, + + Welcome, welcome, royal May, + Welcome, long-desired Spring. + Many Springs and Mays we’ve seen, + Have brought forth what’s gay and green; + But none is like this glorious day, + Which brings forth our gracious King. + + + +THE BRAVE BARBARY. + + + A Ballad by Alex. Brome. + + OLD England is now a brave Barbary made, + And every one has an ambition to ride her; + King Charles was a horseman that long used the trade, + But he rode in a snaffle, and that could not guide her. + + Then the hungry Scot comes with spur and with switch, + And would teach her to run a Geneva career; + His grooms were all Puritan, Traytor, and Witch, + But she soon threw them down with their pedlary geer. + + The Long Parliament next came all to the block, + And they this untameable palfrey would ride; + But she would not bear all that numerous flock, + At which they were fain themselves to divide. + + Jack Presbyter first gets the steed by the head, + While the reverend Bishops had hold of the bridle; + Jack said through the nose they their flockes did not feed, + But sat still on the beast and grew aged and idle. + + And then comes the Rout, with broom-sticks inspired, + And pull’d down their graces, their sleeves, and their train; + And sets up Sir Jack, who the beast quickly tyr’d + With a journey to Scotland and thence back again. + + Jack rode in a doublet, with a yoke of prick-ears, + A cursed splay-mouth and a Covenant spur, + Rides switching and spurring with jealousies and fears, + Till the poor famish’d beast was not able to stir. + + Next came th’ Independent—a dev’lish designer, + And got himself call’d by a holier name— + Makes Jack to unhorse, for he was diviner, + And would make her travel as far’s Amsterdam. + + But Nol, a rank-rider, gets first in the saddle, + And made her show tricks, and curvate, and rebound; + She quickly perceived that he rode widdle waddle, + And like his coach-horses threw his Highness to ground. + + Then Dick, being lame, rode holding by the pummel, + Not having the wit to get hold of the rein; + But the jade did so snort at the sight of a Cromwell, + That poor Dick and his kindred turn’d footmen again. + + Next Fleetwood and Vane with their rascally pack, + Would every one put their feet in the stirrup; + But they pull’d the saddle quite off of her back, + And were all got under her before they were up. + + At last the King mounts her, and then she stood still; + As his Bucephalus, proud of this rider, + She cheerfully yields to his power and skill + Who is careful to feed her, and skilful to guide her. + + + +A CATCH. + + + By Alex. Brome. A.D. 1660. + + LET’S leave off our labour, and now let’s go play, + For this is our time to be jolly; + Our plagues and our plaguers are both fled away, + To nourish our griefs is but folly: + He that won’t drink and sing + Is a traytor to’s King, + And so he that does not look twenty years younger; + We’ll look blythe and trim + With rejoicing at him + That is the restorer and will be the prolonger + Of all our felicity and health, + The joy of our hearts, and increase of our wealth. + ’Tis he brings our trading, our trading brings riches, + Our riches brings honour, at which every mind itches, + And our riches bring sack, and our sack brings us joy, + And our joy makes us leap and sing, + Vive le Roy! + + + +THE TURN-COAT. + + + By Samuel Butler. 1661. + +Several lines in this song were incorporated in the better-known ballad +of the Vicar of Bray, said by Nichols in his Select Poems to have been +written by a soldier in Colonel Fuller’s troop of dragoons, in the reign +of George I. Butler’s ballad, though unpublished, must therefore have +been known at the time. + + To the tune of “London is a fine town.” + + I LOVED no King since forty-one, + When Prelacy went down; + A cloak and band I then put on + And preach’d against the crown. + A turn-coat is a cunning man + That cants to admiration, + And prays for any king to gain + The people’s approbation. + + I show’d the paths to heaven untrod, + From Popery to refine ’em, + And taught the people to serve God, + As if the Devil were in ’em. + A turn-coat, etc. + + When Charles return’d into our land, + The English Church supporter, + I shifted off my cloak and band, + And so became a courtier. + A turn-coat, etc. + + The King’s religion I profest, + And found there was no harm in ’t; + I cogg’d and flatter’d like the rest, + Till I had got preferment. + A turn-coat, etc. + + I taught my conscience how to cope + With honesty or evil; + And when I rail’d against the Pope + I sided with the Devil. + A turn-coat, etc. + + + +THE CLARET DRINKER’S SONG, +OR +THE GOOD FELLOW’S DESIGN. + + +Being a pleasant song of the times, written by a person of quality.—From +the Roxburgh Ballads, Vol. iii. + + Wine the most powerfull’st of all things on earth, + Which stifles cares and sorrows in their birth; + No treason in it harbours, nor can hate + Creep in when it bears away, to hurt the State. + Though storms grow high, so wine is to be got, + We are secure, their rage we value not; + The Muses cherish’d up such nectar, sing + Eternal joy to him that loves the King. + + To the tune of “Let Cæsar live long.” + + A POX of the fooling and plotting of late, + What a pudder and stir has it kept in the State! + Let the rabble run mad with suspicions and fears, + Let ’em scuffle and rail till they go by the ears,— + Their grievances never shall trouble my pate, + So I but enjoy my dear bottle at quiet. + + What coxcombs were those that would ruin their case + And their necks for a toy, a thin wafer, and mass! + For at Tyburn they never had needed to swing + Had they been but true subjects to drink and their King: + A friend and a bottle is all my design,— + He’s no room for treason that’s top-full of wine. + + I mind not the members and makers of laws, + Let them sit or prorogue as his Majesty please; + Let ’em damn us to Woolen, I’le never repine + At my usage when dead, so alive I have wine; + Yet oft in my drink I can hardly forbear + To blame them for making my claret so dear. + + I mind not grave allies who idly debate + About rights and successions, the trifles of State; + We’ve a good King already, and he deserves laughter + That will trouble his head with who shall come after: + Come, here’s to his health! and I wish he may be + As free from all cares and all troubles as we. + + SECOND PART. + + WHAT care I how leagues with Hollanders go, + Or intrigues ’twist Mounsieurs or Dons for to? + What concerns it my drinking if cities be sold, + If the conqueror takes them by storming or gold? + From whence claret comes is the place that I mind, + And when the fleet’s coming I pray for a wind. + + The bully of France that aspires to renown + By dull cutting of throats, and by venturing his own; + Let him fight till he’s ruined, make matches, and treat, + To afford us still news, the dull coffee-house cheat: + He’s but a brave wretch, whilst that I am more free, + More safe, and a thousand times happier than he. + + In spite of him, or the Pope, or the Devil, + Or faggot, or fire, or the worst of hell’s evil, + I still will drink healths to the lovers of wine, + Those jovial, brisk blades that do never repine; + I’ll drink in defiance of napkin or halter, + Tho’ religion turn round still, yet mine shall ne’er alter. + + But a health to good fellows shall still be my care, + And whilst wine it holds out, no bumpers we’ll spare. + I’ll subscribe to petitions for nothing but claret, + That that may be cheap, here’s both my hands for it; + ’Tis my province, and with it I only am pleased, + With the rest, scolding wives let poor cuckolds appease. + + No doubt ’tis the best of all drinks, or so soon + It ne’er had been chose by the Man in the Moon, {110} + Who drinks nothing else, both by night and by day + But claret, brisk claret, and most people say, + Whilst glasses brimful to the stars they go round, + Which makes them shine brighter with red juice still crown’d. + + For all things in Nature doe live by good drinking, + And he’s a dull fool, and not worthy my thinking, + That does not prefer it before all the treasure + The Indies contain, or the sea without measure; + ’Tis the life of good fellows, for without it they pine, + When nought can revive them but brimmers of wine. + + I know the refreshments that still it does bring, + Which have oftentimes made us as great as a king + In the midst of his armies where’er he is found, + Whilst the bottles and glasses I’ve muster’d round; + Who are Bacchus’ warriors a conquest will gain + Without the least bloodshed, or wounded, or slain. + + Then here’s a good health to all those that love peace, + Let plotters be damn’d and all quarrels now cease + Let me but have wine and I care for no more, + ’Tis a treasure sufficient; there’s none can be poor + That has Bacchus to’s friend, for he laughs at all harm, + Whilst with high-proofed claret he does himself arm. + + Printed for J. Jordan, at the Angel, Giltspur Street. + + + +THE LOYAL SUBJECTS’ HEARTY WISHES TO KING CHARLES II. + + + From Sir W. C. Trevelyan’s Broadsides in the British Museum. + + He that write these verses certainly + Did serve his royal father faithfully, + Likewise himself he served at Worcester fight, + And for his loyalty was put to flight. + + But had he a haid of hair like Absolom, + And every hair as strong as was Samson, + I’d venture all for Charles the Second’s sake, + And for his Majesty my life forsake. + + To the tune “When Cannons are roaring.” + + FIRST PART. + + TRUE subjects, all rejoice + After long sadness, + And now with heart and voice + Show forth your gladness. + That to King Charles were true + And rebels hated, + This song only to you + Is dedicated; + For Charles our sovereign dear + Is safe returned + True subjects’ hearts to cheer, + That long have mourned: + Then let us give God praise + That doth defend him, + And pray with heart and voice, + Angels, attend him. + + The dangers he hath past + From vile usurpers + Now bring him joy at last, + Although some lurkers + Did seek his blood to spill + By actions evil; + But God we see is still + Above the Devil: + Though many serpents hiss + Him to devour, + God his defender is + By His strong power: + Then let us give him praise + That doth defend him, + And sing with heart and voice, + Angels, defend him. + + The joy that he doth bring, + If true confessed, + The tongues of mortal men + Cannot confess it; + He cures our drooping fears, + Being long tormented, + And his true Cavaliers + Are well contented; + For now the Protestant + Again shall flourish; + The King our nursing father + He will us cherish: + Then let us give God praise + That did defend him, + And sing with heart and voice, + Angels, attend him. + + Like Moses, he is meek + And tender-hearted; + And by all means doth seek + To have foes converted; + But, like the Israelites, + There are a number + That for his love to them + ’Gainst him doth murmur: + Read Exodus,—’tis true + The Israelites rather + Yield to the Egyptian crew + Than Moses their father: + So many phanaticks, + With hearts disloyal, + Their hearts and minds do fix + ’Gainst our King royal. + + SECOND PART. + + LIKE holy David, he + Past many troubles, + And by his constancy + His joys redoubles; + For now he doth bear sway + By God appointed, + For Holy Writ doth say, + Touch not mine Anointed. + He is God’s anointed sure, + Who still doth guide him + In all his wayes most pure, + Though some divide him. + Then let us give God praise + That doth defend him, + And sing with heart and voice, + Angels, attend him. + + Many there are, we know, + Within this nation, + Lip-love to him do show + In ’simulation; + Of such vile hereticks + There are a number, + Whose hearts and tongues, we know, + Are far asunder; + Some do pray for the King + Being constrained; + Who lately against him + Greatly complained; + They turn both seat and seam + To cheat poor tailors, + But the fit place for them + Is under strong jailors. + + Let the King’s foes admire + Who do reject him; + Seeing God doth him inspire, + And still direct him, + To heal those evil sores, + And them to cure + By his most gracious hand + And prayers pure. + Though simple people say + Doctors do as much, + None but our lawful King + Can cure with a touch; + As plainly hath been seen + Since he returned,— + Many have cured been + Which long have mourned. + + The poorest wretch that hath + This evil, sure + May have ease from the King + And perfect cure; + His Grace is meek and wise, + Loving and civil, + And to his enemies + Doth good for evil; + For some that were his foes + Were by him healed; + His liberal cause to bless + Is not concealed; + He heals both poor and rich + By God’s great power, + And his most gracious touch + Doth them all cure. + + Then blush, you infidels, + That late did scorn him; + And you that did rebel, + Crave pardon of him; + With speed turn a new leaf + For your transgresses; + Hear what the preacher sayes + In Ecclesiastes,— + The Scripture’s true, and shall + Ever be taught; + Curse not the King at all, + No, not in thy thought: + And holy Peter + Two commandments doth bring,— + Is first for to fear God, + And then honour the King. + + When that we had no King + To guide the nation, + Opinions up did spring + By toleration; + And many heresies + Were then advanced, + And cruel liberties + By old Noll granted. + Even able ministers + Were not esteemed; + Many false prophets + Good preachers were deemed. + The Church some hated; + A barn, house, or stable + Would serve the Quakers, + With their wicked rabble. + + And now for to conclude: + The God of power + Preserve and guide our King + Both day and hour; + That he may rule and reign + Our hearts to cherish; + And on his head, good Lord, + Let his crown flourish. + Let his true subjects sing + With hearts most loyal, + God bless and prosper still + Charles our King royal. + So now let’s give God praise + That doth defend him, + And sing with heart and voice, + Angels defend him. + +London, printed for John Andrews, at the White Lion, near Pye-Court. + + + +KING CHARLES THE SECOND’S RESTORATION, 29TH MAY. + + + Tune, “Where have you been, my lovely sailor bold?” + + YOU brave loyal Churchmen, + That ever stood by the crown, + Have you forgot that noble prince + Great Charles of high renown, + That from his rights was banish’d + By Presbyterians, who + Most cruelty his father kill’d?— + O cursed, damned crew! + So let the bells in steeples ring, + And music sweetly play, + That loyal Tories mayn’t forget + The twenty-ninth of May. + + Twelve years was he banish’d + From what was his just due, + And forced to hide in fields and woods + From Presbyterian crew; + But God did preserve him, + As plainly you do see, + The blood-hounds did surround the oak + While he was in the tree. + So let, etc. + + As Providence would have it, + The hounds did lose their scent; + To spill the blood of this brave prince + It was their whole intent. + While that he was in exile, + The Church they pull’d down, + The Common-prayer they burnt, sir, + And trampled on the crown. + So let, etc. + + They plunder’d at their pleasure, + On lords’ estates they seiz’d, + The bishops they did send away, + They did just as they pleas’d. + But General Monk at last rose up, + With valiant heart so bold, + Saying, that he no longer + By them would be controul’d. + So let, etc. + + So in great splendour + At last he did bring in, + Unto every Torie’s joy, + Great Charles our sovereign. + Then loyal hearts so merry + The royal oak did wear, + While balconies with tapestry hung— + Nothing but joy was there. + So let, etc. + + The conduits they with wine did run, + The bonfires did blaze, + In every street likewise the skies + Did ring with loud huzzas,— + Saying, God bless our sovereign, + And send him long to reign, + Hoping the P—n crew + May never rule again. + So let, etc. + + Soon as great Charles + Our royal King was crown’d, + He built the Church up again, + The meetings were pull’d down. + No canting then was in the land, + The subjects were at peace, + The Church again did flourish, + And joy did then increase. + So let, etc. + + The cursed Presbyterian crew + Was then put to the flight, + Some did fly by day, + And others run by night. + In barns and stables they did cant, + And every place they could; + He made them remember + The spilling royal blood. + So let, etc. + + May God for ever + Bless the Church and Crown, + And never let any subject strive + The King for to dethrone. + May Churchmen ever flourish, + And peace increase again; + God for ever bless the King, + And send him long to reign. + So let, etc. + + + +THE JUBILEE, +OR +THE CORONATION DAY. + + +From Thomas Jordan’s “_Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie_,” 12mo, 1664. Mr +Chappell states—“As this consists of only two stanzas, and the copy of +the book, which is now in the possession of Mr Payne Collier, is probably +unique, they are here subjoined.” + + LET every man with tongue and pen + Rejoice that Charles is come agen, + To gain his sceptre and his throne, + And give to every man his own; + Let all men that be + Together agree, + And freely now express their joy; + Let your sweetest voices bring + Pleasant songs unto the King, + To crown his Coronation Day. + + All that do thread on English earth + Shall live in freedom, peace, and mirth; + The golden times are come that we + Did one day think we ne’er should see; + Protector and Rump + Did put us in a dump, + When they their colours did display; + But the time is come about, + We are in, and they are out, + By King Charles his Coronation Day. + + + +THE KING ENJOYS HIS OWN AGAIN. + + + (1661.)—From Hogg’s Jacobite Relics. + + WHIGS are now such precious things, + We see there’s not one to be found; + All roar “God bless and save the King!” + And his health goes briskly all day round. + To the soldier, cap in hand, the sneaking rascals stand, + And would put in for honest men; + But the King he well knows his friends from his foes, + And now he enjoys his own again. + + From this plot’s first taking air, + Like lightning all the Whigs have run; + Nay, they’ve left their topping square, + To march off with our eldest son: + They’ve left their ’states and wives to save their precious lives, + Yet who can blame their flying, when + ’Twas plain to them all, the great and the small, + That the King would have his own again? + + This may chance a warning be + (If e’er the saints will warning take) + To leave off hatching villany, + Since they’ve seen their brother at the stake: + And more must mounted be (which God grant we may see), + Since juries now are honest men: + And the King lets them swing with a hey ding a ding, + Great James enjoys his own again. + + Since they have voted that his Guards + A nuisance were, which now they find, + Since they stand between the King + And the treason that such dogs design’d; + ’Tis they will you maul, though it cost them a fall, + In spight of your most mighty men; + For now they are alarm’d, and all Loyalists well arm’d, + Since the King enjoys his own again. + + To the King, come, bumpers round, + Let’s drink, my boys, while life doth last: + He that at the core’s not sound + Shall be kick’d out without a taste. + We’ll fear no disgrace, but look traitors in the face, + Since we’re case-harden’d, honest men; + Which makes their crew mad, but us loyal hearts full glad, + That the King enjoys his own again. + + + +A COUNTRY SONG, INTITULED THE RESTORATION. + + + (May, 1661.)—From the twentieth volume of the folio broadsides, King’s + Pamphlets. + + COME, come away + To the temple, and pray, + And sing with a pleasant strain; + The schismatick’s dead, + The liturgy’s read, + And the King enjoyes his own again. + + The vicar is glad, + The clerk is not sad, + And the parish cannot refrain + To leap and rejoyce + And lift up their voyce, + That the King enjoyes his own again. + + The country doth bow + To old justices now, + That long aside have been lain; + The bishop’s restored, + God is rightly adored, + And the King enjoyes his own again. + + Committee-men fall, + And majors-generall, + No more doe those tyrants reign; + There’s no sequestration, + Nor new decimation, + For the King enjoyes the sword again. + + The scholar doth look + With joy on his book, + Tom whistles and plows amain; + Soldiers plunder no more + As they did heretofore, + For the King enjoyes the sword again. + + The citizens trade, + The merchants do lade, + And send their ships into Spain; + No pirates at sea + To make them a prey, + For the King enjoyes the sword again. + + The old man and boy, + The clergy and lay, + Their joyes cannot contain; + ’Tis better than of late + With the Church and the State, + Now the King enjoyes the sword again. + + Let’s render our praise + For these happy dayes + To God and our sovereign; + Your drinking give ore, + Swear not as before, + For the King bears not the sword in vain. + + Fanaticks, be quiet, + And keep a good diet, + To cure your crazy brain; + Throw off your disguise, + Go to church and be wise, + For the King bears not the sword in vain. + + Let faction and pride + Be now laid aside, + That truth and peace may reign; + Let every one mend, + And there is an end, + For the King bears not the sword in vain. + + + +HERE’S A HEALTH UNTO HIS MAJESTY. + + +There is only one verse to this Song. The music is arranged for three +voices in “Playford’s Musical Companion, 1667.” + + HERE’S a health unto his Majesty, + With a fal la la la la la la, + Confusion to his enemies, + With a fal lal la la la la la la. + And he that will not drink his health, + I wish him neither wit nor wealth, + Nor but a rope to hang himself. + With a fal lal la la la la la la la la, + With a fal lal la la la la la. + + + +THE WHIGS DROWNED IN AN HONEST TORY HEALTH. + + + From Col. 180 Loyal Songs. + + Tune, “Hark, the thundering canons roar.” + + WEALTH breeds care, love, hope, and fear; + What does love or bus’ness here? + While Bacchus’ navy doth appear, + Fight on and fear not sinking; + Fill it briskly to the brim, + Till the flying top-sails swim, + We owe the first discovery to him + Of this great world of drinking. + + Brave Cabals, who states refine, + Mingle their debates with wine, + Ceres and the god o’ th’ vine + Make every great commander; + Let sober Scots small beer subdue, + The wise and valiant wine do woo, + The Stagerite had the horrors too, + To be drunk with Alexander. + + _Stand to your arms_! and now advance, + A health to the English King of France; + And to the next of boon esperance, + By Bacchus and Apollo; + Thus in state I lead the van, + Fall in your place by the right-hand man, + Beat drum! march on! dub a dub, ran dan! + He’s a Whig that will not follow. + + Face about to the right again, + Britain’s admiral of the main, + York and his illustrious train + Crown the day’s conclusion; + Let a halter stop his throat + Who brought in the foremost vote, + And of all that did promote + The mystery of exclusion. + + Next to Denmark’s warlike prince + Let the following health commence, + To the nymph whose influence + That brought the hero hither;— + May their race the tribe annoy, + Who the Grandsire would destroy, + And get every year a boy + Whilst they live together. + + To the royal family + Let us close in bumpers three, + May the ax and halter be + The pledge of every Roundhead; + To all loyal hearts pursue, + Who to the monarch dare prove true; + But for him they call True Blue, + Let him be confounded. + + + +THE CAVALIER. + + + By Alex. Brome.—(1661–2.) + + WE have ventured our estates, + And our liberties and lives, + For our master and his mates, + And been toss’d by cruel fates + Where the rebellious Devil drives, + So that not one of ten survives; + We have laid all at stake + For his Majesty’s sake; + We have fought, we have paid, + We’ve been sold and betray’d, + And tumbled from nation to nation; + But now those are thrown down + That usurped the Crown, + Our hopes were that we + All rewarded should be, + But we’re paid with a Proclamation. + + Now the times are turn’d about, + And the rebels’ race is run; + That many-headed beast the Rout, + That did turn the Father out, + When they saw they were undone, + Were for bringing in the son. + That phanatical crew, + Which made us all rue, + Have got so much wealth + By their plunder and stealth + That they creep into profit and power: + And so come what will, + They’ll be uppermost still; + And we that are low + Shall still be kept so, + While those domineer and devour. + + Yet we will be loyal still, + And serve without reward or hire: + To be redeem’d from so much ill, + May stay our stomachs, though not still, + And if our patience do not tire, + We may in time have our desire. + + + +THE LAMENTATION OF A BAD MARKET, +OR +THE DISBANDED SOULDIER. + + + (July 17th, 1660.)—From the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum. + +This ballad relates to the disbanding of the Parliamentary army. +Contrary, however, to what is pretended in it, says Mr. Wright, in his +volume printed for the Percy Society, the writers of the time mention +with admiration the good conduct of the soldiers after they were +disbanded, each betaking himself to some honest trade or calling, with as +much readiness as if he had never been employed in any other way. Not +many weeks before the date of the present ballad, a prose tract had been +published, with the same title, “The Lamentation of a Bad Market, or +Knaves and Fools foully foyled, and fallen into a Pit of their own +digging,” &c. March 21st, 1659–60. + + IN red-coat raggs attired, + I wander up and down, + Since fate and foes conspired, + Thus to array me, + Or betray me + To the harsh censure of the town. + My buffe doth make me boots, my velvet coat and scarlet, + Which used to do me credit with many a wicked harlot, + Have bid me all adieu, most despicable varlet! + Alas, poor souldier, whither wilt thou march? + + I’ve been in France and Holland, + Guided by my starrs; + I’ve been in Spain and Poland, + I’ve been in Hungarie, + In Greece and Italy, + And served them in all their wars. + Britain these eighteen years has known my desperate slaughter, + I’ve killed ten at one blow, even in a fit of laughter, + Gone home again and smiled, and kiss’d my landlor’s daughter; + Alas! poor souldier, etc. + + My valour prevailed, + Meeting with my foes, + Which strongly we assailed; + Oh! strange I wondred, + They were a hundred; + Yet I routed them with few blowes. + This fauchion by my side has kind more men, I’ll swear it, + Than Ajax ever did, alas! he ne’er came near it, + Yea, more than Priam’s boy, or all that ere did hear it. + Alas! poor souldier, etc. + + For King and Parliament + I was Prester John. + Devout was my intent; + I haunted meetings, + Used zealous greetings, + Crept full of devotion; + Smectymnuus won me first, then holy Nye prevail, {111} + Then Captain Kiffin {112} slops me with John of Leyden’s tail, + Then Fox and Naylor bangs me with Jacob Beamond’s flail. {113} + Alas! poor souldier, etc. + + I did about this nation + Hold forth my gifts and teach, + Maintained the tolleration + The common story + And Directory + I damn’d with the word “preach.” + Time was when all trades failed, men counterfeitly zealous + Turn’d whining, snievling praters, or kept a country ale-house, + Got handsome wives, turn’d cuckolds, howe’er were very jealous. + Alas! poor souldier, etc. + + The world doth know me well, + I ne’re did peace desire, + Because I could not tell + Of what behaviour + I should savour + In a field of thundring fire. + When we had murdered King, confounded Church and State, + Divided parks and forests, houses, money, plate, + We then did peace desire, to keep what he had gat. + Alas! poor souldier, etc. + + Surplice was surplisage, + We voted right or wrong, + Within that furious age, + Of the painted glass, + Or pictured brass, + And liturgie we made a song. + Bishops, and bishops’ lands, were superstitious words, + Until in souldiers’ hands, and so were kings and lords, + But in fashion now again in spight of all our swords. + Alas! poor souldier, etc. + + Some say I am forsaken + By the great men of these times, + And they’re no whit mistaken; + It is my fate + To be out of date, + My masters most are guilty of such crimes. + Like an old Almanack, I now but represent + How long since Edge-Hill fight, or the rising was in Kent, + Or since the dissolution of the first Long Parliament. + Alas! poor souldier, etc. + + Good sirs, what shall I fancie, + Amidst these gloomy dayes? + Shall I goe court brown Nancy? + In a countrey town + They’l call me clown, + If I sing them my outlandish playes. + Let me inform their nodle with my heroick spirit, + My language and worth besides transcend unto merit; + They’l not believe one word, what mortal flesh can bear it? + Alas! poor souldier, etc. + + Into the countrey places + I resolve to goe, + Amongst those sun-burnt faces + I’le goe to plough + Or keep a cow, + ’Tis that my masters now again must do. + Souldiers ye see will be of each religion, + They’re but like stars, which when the true sun rise they’re gon. + I’le to the countrey goe, and there I’le serve Sir John; + Aye, aye, ’tis thither, and thither will I goe. + + London, printed for Charles Gustavus, 1660. + + + +THE COURTIER’S HEALTH; +OR, +THE MERRY BOYS OF THE TIMES. + + + (A.D. 1672.)—From the Roxburgh Ballads, Vol. ii. + To the tune of “Come, Boys, fill us a Bumper.” + + COME, boys, fill us a bumper, + Wee’l make the nation roar, + She’s grown sick of a _Rumper_, + That sticks on the old score. + Pox on phanaticks, rout ’um, + They thirst for our blood; + Wee’l taxes raise without ’um, + And drink for the nation’s good. + Fill the pottles and the gallons, + And bring the hogshead in, + Wee’l begin with a tallen, + A brimmer to the King. + + Round, around, fill a fresh one, + Let no man bawk his wine, + Wee’l drink to the next in succession, + And keep it in the right line. + Bring us ten thousand glasses, + The more we drink we’re dry; + We mind not the beautiful lasses, + Whose conquest lyes all in the eye. + Fill the pottles, etc. + + We boys are truly loyal, + For Charles wee’l venture all, + We know his blood is royal, + His name shall never fall. + But those that seek his ruine + May chance to dye before him, + While we that sacks are woeing + For ever will adore him. + Fill the pottles, etc. + + I hate those strange dissenters + That strives to hawk a glass, + He that at all adventures + Will see what comes to pass: + And let the Popish nation + Disturb us if they can, + They ne’er shall breed distraction + In a true-hearted man. + Fill the pottles, etc. + + Let the fanatics grumble + To see things cross their grain, + Wee’l make them now more humble + Or ease them of their pain: + They shall drink sack amain too, + Or they shall be choak’t; + Wee’l tell ’um ’tis in vain too + For us to be provok’t. + Fill the pottles, etc. + + He that denyes the brimmer + Shall banish’d be in this isle, + And we will look more grimmer + Till he begins to smile: + Wee’l drown him in Canary, + And make him all our own, + And when his heart is merry + Hee’l drink to Charles on’s throne. + Fill the pottles, etc. + + Quakers and Anabaptists, + Wee’l sink them in a glass; + He deals most plain and flattest + That sayes he loves a lass: + Then tumble down Canary, + And let our brains go round, + For he that won’t be merry + He can’t at heart be sound. + Fill the pottles, etc. + + Printed for P. Brooksly, at the Golden Ball in West Smithfield, 1672. + + + +THE LOYAL TORIES’ DELIGHT; +OR, +A PILL FOR FANATICKS. + + + Being a most pleasant and new song. + + 1680.—From the Roxburgh Ballads, Vol. iii., fol. 911. + + To the tune of “Great York has been debar’d of late, etc.” + + GREAT York has been debar’d of late + From Court by some accursed fate; + But ere long, we do not fear, + We shall have him, have him here, + We shall have him, have him here. + + The makers of the plot we see, + By damn’d old _Tony’s_ treachery, + How they would have brought it about, + To have given great York the rout, + To have given, etc. + + God preserve our gracious King, + And safe tydings to us bring, + Defend us from the _sham black box_, {114} + And all damn’d fanatick plots, + And all damn’d, etc. + + Here Charles’s health I drink to thee, + And with him all prosperity; + God grant that he long time may reign, + To bring us home great York again, + To bring us home, etc. + + That he, in spight of all his foes + Who loyalty and laws oppose, + May long remain in health and peace, + Whilst plots and plotters all shall cease, + Whilst plots, etc. + + Let Whigs go down to Erebus, + And not stay here to trouble us + With noisy cant and needless fear, + Of ills to come they know not where, + Of ills to come, etc. + + When our chief trouble they create, + For plain we see what they’d be at; + Could they but push great York once down + They’d next attempt to snatch the crown, + They’d next attempt, etc. + + But Heaven preserve our gracious King, + May all good subjects loudly sing; + And Royal James preserve likewise, + From such as do against him rise, + From such as do, etc. + + Then come, again fill round our glass, + And, loyal Tories, less it pass, + Fill up, fill up unto the brim, + And let each boule with necture swim, + And let each boule, etc. + + Though _cloakmen_, that seem much precise, + ’Gainst wine exclaim with turn’d-up eyes; + Yet in a corner they’l be drunk, + With drinking healths unto the Rump, + With drinking, etc. + + In hopes that once more they shall tear + Both Church and State, which is their prayer; + But Heaven does yet protect the throne, + Whilst Tyburn for such slaves does groan, + Whilst Tyburn, etc. + + For now ’tis plain, most men abhor, + What some so strongly voted for; + Great York in favour does remain, + In spight of all the Whiggish train, + In spight of all, etc. + + And now the _Old Cause_ goes to wrack, + Sedition mauger cloath in black + Do greatly dread the triple tree, + Whilst we rejoyce in loyalty, + Whilst we rejoyce, etc. + + Then come, let’s take another round, + And still in loyalty abound, + And wish our King he long may reign + To bring us home great York again, + To bring us home great York again. + + + +THE ROYAL ADMIRAL. + + +Miss Strickland quotes this ballad in her Lives of the Queens of England, +and states that this was the first Jacobite song that was written and set +to music. + + LET Titus {115} and Patience {116} stir up a commotion, + Their plotting and swearing shall prosper no more; + Now gallant old Jamie commands on the ocean, + And mighty Charles keeps them in awe on the shore. + + Jamie the Valiant, the Champion Royal, + His own and the monarchy’s rival withstood; + The bane and the terror of those the disloyal, + Who slew his loved father and thirst for his blood. + + York, the great admiral,—Ocean’s defender, + The joy of our navy, the dread of its foes, + The lawful successor,—what upstart pretender + Shall dare, in our isle, the true heir to oppose? + + Jamie quelled the proud foe on the ocean, + And rode the sole conqueror over the main; + To this gallant hero let all pay devotion, + For England her admiral sees him again. + + + +THE UNFORTUNATE WHIGS. + + + 1682.—From the Roxburgh Ballads. + + To the tune of “The King enjoys his own,” &c. + + THE Whigs are but small, and of no good race, + And are beloved by very few; + Old _Tony_ broach’d his tap in every place, + To encourage all his factious crew. + At some great houses in this town, + The Whigs of high renown, + And all with a true blue was their stain; + For since it is so, + They have wrought their overthrow, + Old Tony _will ne’r enjoy his own_, _again_. + + They all owne duty to their lawful prince, + And loyal subjects should have been; + But their duty is worn out long since, + By the _Association_ seen. + But these are the Whigs, + That have cut off some legs, + And fain would be at that sport amain; + For since it is so, + They have wrought their overthrow, + Old Tony _will ne’r enjoy his own again_. + + And yet they are sham-pretenders, + And they swear they’ll support our laws; + These be the great defenders of + _Ignoramus_ and the _Old Cause_: + They’ll defend the King + By swearing of the thing, + These are the cursed rogues in grain; + For since it is so, + They have wrought their overthrow, + Old Tony _will ne’r enjoy his own again_. + + The true religion that shall down, + Which so long has won the day, + And _Common-prayer_ i’th’ church of ev’ry town, + If that the Whigs could but bear the sway: + For Oates he does begin + Now for to bring them in, + As when he came mumping from Spain; + For since it is so, + They have wrought their overthrow, + Old Tony _will ne’r enjoy his own again_. + + How all their shamming plots they would hide, + Yet they are ignorant, they say, + When as Old _Tony_ he was try’d + And brought off with _Ignoramus_ sway: + When Oates he was dumb + And could not use his tongue, + This is the shamming rogues in grain; + For since it is so, + They have wrought their overthrow, + Old Tony _will ne’r enjoy his own again_. + + Then let all true subjects sing, + And damn the power of all those + That won’t show loyalty to their King, + And assist him against his Whiggish foes. + Then in this our happy state, + In spight of traytors’ hate, + We will all loyal still remain; + For since it is so, + They have wrought their overthrow, + Old Tony _will ne’r enjoy his own again_. + + God preserve our gracious King, + With the Royal Consort of his bed, + And let all loyal subjects sing + That the crown may remain on Charles’s head; + For we will drink his health + In spight of _Common-wealth_, + And his lawful rights we will maintain; + For since it is so, + They have wrought their overthrow, + Old Tony _will ne’r enjoy his own again_. + + Printed for S. Maurel, in the year 1682. + + + +THE DOWNFALL OF THE GOOD OLD CAUSE. + + +From a “Collection of One Hundred and Eighty Loyal Songs, all written +since 1678,” and published London, 1694. [Fourth Edition.] + + Tune,—“Hey, Boys, up go we.” + + NOW the Bad Old Cause is tapt, + And the vessel standeth stoop’d; + The cooper may starve for want of work, + For the cask shall never be hoop’d;— + We will burn the Association, + The Covenant and vow, + The public cheat of the nation, + Anthony, now, now, now + + No fanatick shall bear the sway + In court, city, or town, + These good kingdoms to betray, + And cry the right line down;— + Let them cry they love the King, + Yet if they hate his brother, + Remember Charles they murdered, + And so they would the other. + + Weavers and such like fellows + In pulpit daily prate, + Like the Covenanters, + Against the Church and State: + Yet they cry they love the King, + But their baseness will discover; + Charles the First they murdered, + And so they would the other. + + When these fellows go to drink, + In city or in town, + They vilify the bishops + And they cry the Stuarts down: + Still they cry they love the King, + But their baseness I’ll discover; + Charles the First they murdered, + And so they would the other. + + When the King wanted money, + Poor Tangier to relieve, + They cry’d down his revenue, + Not a penny they would give: + Still they cry’d they loved the King, + But their baseness I’ll discover; + Charles the First they murdered, + And so they would the other. + + The noble Marquis of Worcester, + And many such brave lord, + By the King-killing crew + They daily are abhor’d, + And called evil councellors, + When the truth they did discover; + And Charles the First they murdered, + And so they would the other. + + The Papists they would kill the King, + But the Phanaticks did; + Their perjuries and treacheries + Aren’t to be parallel’d: + Let them cry they love the King, + Their faults I will discover; + Charles the First they murdered, + And so they would the other. + + Charles the Second stands on’s guard, + Like a good politick King; + The Phanaticks ought to be abhor’d + For all their flattering: + Let them cry they love the King, + Their faults I will discover; + Charles the First they murdered, + And so they would the other. + + Now let us all good subjects be, + That bear a loyal heart; + Stand fast for the King + And each man act his part; + And to support his Sovereign, + Religion, and the laws, + That formerly were established, + And down with the cursed cause. + + + +OLD JEMMY. + + +From a “Collection of 180 Loyal Songs,” written since 1678. This is a +parody on the Whig song, “Young Jemmy is a lad that’s royally descended,” +written in celebration of the Duke of Monmouth. Old Jemmy is the Duke of +York, afterwards James II. + + To the tune of “Young Jemmy.” + + OLD Jemmy is a lad + Right lawfully descended; + No bastard born nor bred, + Nor for a Whig suspended; + The true and lawful heir to th’ crown + By right of birth and laws, + And bravely will maintain his own + In spight of all his foes. + + Old Jemmy is the top + And chief among the princes; + No _Mobile_ gay fop, + With Birmingham pretences; + A heart and soul so wondrous great, + And such a conquering eye, + That every loyal lad fears not + In Jemmy’s cause to die. + + Old Jemmy is a prince + Of noble resolutions, + Whose powerful influence + Can order our confusions; + But oh! he fights with such a grace + No force can him withstand, + No god of war but must give place + When Jemmy leads the van. + + To Jemmy every swain + Does pay due veneration, + And Scotland does maintain + His title to the nation; + The pride of all the court he stands, + The patron of his cause, + The joy and hope of all his friends, + And terror of his foes. + + Maliciously they vote + To work Old Jemmy’s ruin, + And zealously promote + A Bill for his undoing; + Both Lords and Commons most agree + To pull his Highness down, + But (spight of all their policy) + Old Jemmy’s heir to th’ crown. + + The schismatick and saint, + The Baptist and the Atheist, + Swear by the Covenant, + Old Jemmy is a Papist: + Whilst all the holy crew did plot + To pull his Highness down, + Great Albany, a noble Scot + Did raise unto a crown. + + Great Albany, they swear, + He before any other + Shall be immediate heir + Unto his royal brother; + Who will, in spight of all his foes, + His lawful rights maintain, + And all the fops that interpose + Old Jemmy’s York again. + + The Whigs and zealots plot + To banish him the nation, + But the renowned Scot + Hath wrought his restoration: + With high respects they treat his Grace, + His royal cause maintain; + Brave Albany (to Scotland’s praise) + Is mighty York again. + + Against his envious fates + The Kirk hath taught a lesson, + A blessing on the States, + To settle the succession; + They real were, both knight and lord, + And will his right maintain, + By royal Parliament restored, + Old Jemmy’s come again. + + And now he’s come again, + In spight of all Pretenders; + Great Albany shall reign, + Amongst the Faith’s defenders. + Let Whig and Birmingham repine, + They show their teeth in vain, + The glory of the British line, + Old Jemmy’s come again. + + + +THE CLOAK’S KNAVERY. + + +From “Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy; being a Collection of +the best merry Ballads and Songs, old and new.” London, 1714. + + COME buy my new ballad, + I have’t in my wallet, + But ’twill not I fear please every pallate; + Then mark what ensu’th, + I swear by my youth + That every line in my ballad is truth. + A ballad of wit, a ballad of worth, + ’Tis newly printed and newly come forth; + ’Twas made of a cloak that fell out with a gown, + That cramp’d all the kingdom and crippled the crown. + + I’ll tell you in brief + A story of grief, + Which happen’d when Cloak was Commander-in-chief; + It tore common prayers, + Imprison’d lord mayors, + In one day it voted down prelates and prayers; + It made people perjured in point of obedience, + And the Covenant did cut off the oath of allegiance. + Then let us endeavour to pull the Cloak down + That cramp’d all the kingdom and crippled the crown. + + It was a black Cloke, + In good time be it spoke, + That kill’d many thousands but never struck stroke; + With hatchet and rope + The forlorn hope + Did join with the Devil to pull down the Pope; + It set all the sects in the city to work, + And rather than fail ’twould have brought in the Turk. + Then let us endeavour, etc. + + It seized on the tower-guns, + Those fierce demi-gorgons, + It brought in the bag-pipes, and brought in the organs; + The pulpits did smoke, + The churches did choke, + And all our religion was turn’d to a cloak. + It brought in lay-elders could not write nor read, + It set public faith up and pull’d down the creed. + Then let us endeavour, etc. + + This pious impostor + Such fury did foster, + It left us no penny nor no _pater-noster_; + It threw to the ground + The commandments down, + And set up twice twenty times ten of its own; + It routed the King and villains elected, + To plunder all those whom they thought disaffected. + Then let us endeavour, etc. + + To blind people’s eyes + This Cloak was so wise, + It took off ship-money, but set up excise; + Men brought in their plate + For reasons of state, + And gave it to Tom Trumpeter and his mate. + In pamphlets it writ many specious epistles, + To cozen poor wenches of bodkins and whistles. + Then let us endeavour, etc. + + In pulpits it moved, + And was much approved + For crying out, _Fight The Lord’s battles_, _beloved_; + It bob-tayled the gown, + Put Prelacy down, + It trod on the mitre to reach at the crown; + And into the field it an army did bring, + To aim at the council but shoot at the King. + Then let us endeavour, etc. + + It raised up States + Whose politic fates + Do now keep their quarters on the city gates. + To father and mother, + To sister and brother, + It gave a commission to kill one another. + It took up men’s horses at very low rates, + And plunder’d our goods to secure our estates. + Then let us endeavour, etc. + + This Cloak did proceed + To damnable deed, + It made the best mirror of majesty bleed; + Tho’ Cloak did not do’t, + He set it on foot, + By rallying and calling his journeymen to’t. + For never had come such a bloody disaster, + If Cloak had not first drawn a sword at his master. + Then let us endeavour, etc. + + Tho’ some of them went hence + By sorrowful sentence, + This lofty long Cloak is not moved to repentance; + But he and his men, + Twenty thousand times ten, + Are plotting to do their tricks over again. + But let this proud Cloak to authority stoop, + Or DUN will provide him a button and loop. + Then let us endeavour to pull the Cloak down + That basely did sever the head from the crown. + + Let’s pray that the King + And his Parliament + In sacred and secular things may consent; + So righteously firm, + And religiously free, + That Papists and Atheists suppressed may be. + And as there’s one Deity does over-reign us, + One faith and one form and one Church may contain us. + Then peace, truth, and plenty our kingdom will crown, + And all Popish plots and their plotters shall down. + + + +THE TIME-SERVER, +OR +A MEDLEY. + + +From the Loyal Garland, 1686. Reprinted for the Percy Society, and +edited by J. O. Halliwell. + + ROOM for a gamester that plays at all he sees, + Whose fickle fancy suits such times as these, + One that says Amen to every factious prayer, + From Hugh Peters’ pulpit to St Peter’s chair; + One that doth defy the Crozier and the Crown, + But yet can house with blades that carouse, + Whilst pottle pots tumble down, derry down, + One that can comply with surplice and with cloak, + Yet for his end can independ + Whilst Presbyterian broke Brittain’s yoke. + + This is the way to trample without trembling, + ’Tis the sycophant’s only secure. + Covenants and oaths are badges of dissembling, + ’Tis the politick pulls down the pure. + To profess and betray, to plunder and pray, + Is the only ready way to be great; + Flattery doth the feat; + Ne’er go, ne’er stir, sir—will venture further + Than the greatest dons in the town, + From a coffer to a crown. + + I’m in a temperate humour now to think well, + Now I’m in another humour for to drink well, + Then fill us up a beer-bowl, boys, that we + May drink it, drink it merrily; + No knavish spy shall understand, + For, if it should be known, + ’Tis ten to one we shall be trepanned. + + I’ll drink to them a brace of quarts, + Whose anagram is call’d true hearts; + If all were well, as I would ha’t, + And Britain cured of its tumour, + I should very well like my fate, + And drink my sack at a cheaper rate, + Without any noise or rumour, + Oh then I should fix my humour. + + But since ’tis no such matter, change your hue, + I may cog and flatter, so may you; + Religion is a widgeon, and reason is treason, + And he that hath a loyal heart may bid the world adieu. + + We must be like the Scottish man, + Who, with intent to beat down schism, + Brought in the Presbyterian + With canon and with catechism. + If beuk wont do’t, then Jockey shoot, + For the Church of Scotland doth command; + And what hath been since they came in + I think we have cause to understand. + + + +THE SOLDIER’S DELIGHT. + + + (Made in the late times.) + +From the Loyal Garland, 1686. Reprinted for the Percy Society, and +edited by J. O. Halliwell. + + FAIR Phydelia, tempt no more, + I may not now thy beauty so adore, + Nor offer to thy shrine; + I serve one more divine + And greater far than you: + Hark! the trumpet calls away, + We must go, lest the foe + Get the field and win the day; + Then march bravely on, + Charge them in the van, + Our cause God’s is, though the odds is + Ten times ten to one. + + Tempt no more, I may not yield, + Although thine eyes a kingdom may surprise; + Leave off thy wanton tales, + The high-born Prince of Wales + Is mounted in the field, + Where the loyal gentry flock, + Though forlorn, nobly born, + Of a ne’er-decaying stock; + Cavaliers, be bold, ne’er let go your hold, + Those that loiters are by traitors + Dearly bought and sold. + + _Phydelia_.—One kiss more, and so farewell. + _Soldier_.—Fie, no more! I prithee fool give o’er; + Why cloud’st thou thus thy beams? + I see by these extremes, + A woman’s heaven or hell. + Pray the King may have his own, + That the Queen may be seen + With her babes on England’s throne; + Rally up your men, one shall vanquish ten, + Victory, we come to try our valour once again. + + + +THE LOYAL SOLDIER. + + + From the Loyal Garland, 1686. Reprinted for the Percy Society, and + edited by J. O. Halliwell. + + WHEN in the field of Mars we lie, + Amongst those martial wights, + Who, never daunted, are to dye + For King and countrie’s rights; + As on Belona’s god I wait, + And her attendant be, + Yet, being absent from my mate, + I live in misery. + + When lofty winds aloud do blow, + It snoweth, hail, or rain, + And Charon in his boat doth row, + Yet stedfast I’ll remain; + And for my shelter in some barn creep, + Or under some hedge lye; + Whilst such as do now strong castles keep + Knows no such misery. + + When down in straw we tumbling lye, + With Morpheus’ charms asleep, + My heavy, sad, and mournful eye + In security so deep; + Then do I dream within my arms + With thee I sleeping lye, + Then do I dread or fear no harms, + Nor feel no misery. + + When all my joys are thus compleat, + The canons loud do play, + The drums alarum straight do beat, + Trumpet sounds, horse, away! + Awake I then, and nought can find + But death attending me, + And all my joys are vanisht quite,— + This is my misery. + + When hunger oftentimes I feel, + And water cold do drink, + Yet from my colours I’le not steal, + Nor from my King will shrink; + No traytor base shall make me yield, + But for the cause I’le be: + This is my love, pray Heaven to shield, + And farewell misery. + + Then to our arms we straight do fly, + And forthwith march away; + Few towns or cities we come nigh + Good liquor us deny; + In Lethe deep our woes we steep— + Our loves forgotten be, + Amongst the jovialst we sing, + Hang up all misery. + + Propitious fate, then be more kind, + Grim death, lend me thy dart, + O sun and moon, and eke the wind, + Great Jove, take thou our part; + That of these Roundheads and these wars + An end that we may see, + And thy great name we’ll all applaud, + And hang all misery. + + + +THE POLITITIAN. + + + Upon an act of Treason made by the Rebels, etc. + + From the Loyal Garland, 1686. Reprinted for the Percy Society, and + edited by J. O. Halliwell. + + BUT since it was lately enacted high treason + For a man to speak truth ’gainst the head of a state, + Let every wise man make a use of his reason + To think what he will, but take heed what he prate; + For the proverb doth learn us, + He that stays from the battel sleeps in a whole skin, + And our words are our own if we keep them within, + What fools are we then that to prattle do begin + Of things that do not concern us! + + ’Tis no matter to me whoe’er gets the battle, + The rubs or the crosses, ’tis all one to me; + It neither increaseth my goods nor my cattle; + A beggar’s a beggar, and so he shall be + Unless he turn traitor. + Let misers take courses to hoard up their treasure, + Whose bounds have no limits, whose minds have no measure, + Let me be but quiet and take a little pleasure, + A little contents my own nature. + + But what if the kingdom returns to the prime ones? + My mind is a kingdom, and so it shall be; + I’ll make it appear, if I had but the time once, + He’s as happy in one as they are in three, + If he might but enjoy it. + He that’s mounted aloft is a mark for the fate, + And an envy to every pragmatical pate, + Whilst he that is low is safe in his estate, + And the great ones do scorn to annoy him. + + I count him no wit that is gifted in rayling + And flurting at those that above him do sit; + Whilst they do outwit him with whipping and jailing, + His purse and his person must pay for his wit. + But ’tis better to be drinking; + If sack were reform’d to twelve-pence a quart + I’d study for money to merchandise for’t, + With a friend that is willing in mirth we would sport; + Not a word, but we’d pay it with thinking. + + My petition shall be that Canary be cheaper, + Without either custom or cursed excise; + That the wits may have freedom to drink deeper and deeper, + And not be undone whilst our noses we baptize; + But we’ll liquor them and drench them. + If this were but granted, who would not desire + To dub himself one of Apollo’s own quire? + And then we will drink whilst our noses are on fire, + And the quart pots shall be buckets to quench them. + + + +A NEW DROLL. + + + From the Loyal Garland, 1686. Edited by J. O. Halliwell. + + COME let’s drink, the time invites, + Winter and cold weather; + For to spend away long nights, + And to keep good wits together. + Better far than cards or dice, + Isaac’s balls are quaint device, + Made up with fan and feather. + + Of strange actions on the seas + Why should we be jealous? + Bring us liquor that will please, + And will make us braver fellows + Than the bold Venetian fleet, + When the Turks and they do meet + Within their Dardanellos. + + Valentian, that famous town, + Stood the French man’s wonder; + Water they employ’d to drown, + So to cut their troops assunder; + Turein gave a helpless look, + While the lofty Spaniard took + La Ferta and his plunder. + + As for water, we disclaim + Mankind’s adversary; + Once it caused the world’s whole frame + In the deluge to miscarry; + And that enemy of joy + Which sought our freedom to destroy + And murder good Canary. + + We that drink have no such thoughts, + Black and void of reason: + We take care to fill our vaults + With good wine of every season; + And with many a chirping cup + We blow one another up, + And that’s our only treason. + + Hear the squibs and mind the bells, + The fifth of November; + The parson a sad story tells, + And with horror doth remember + How some hot-brain’d traitor wrought + Plots that would have ruin brought + To King and every member. + + + +THE ROYALIST. + + + A song made in the Rebellion. + + From the Loyal Garland, 1686. Reprinted for the Percy Society, and + edited by J. O. Halliwell. + + STAY, shut the gate! + T’other quart, boys, ’tis not so late + As you are thinking; + The stars which you see in the hemisphere be + Are but studs in your cheeks by good drinking; + The sun’s gone to tipple all night in the sea, boys, + To-morrow he’ll blush that he’s paler than we, boys; + Drink wine, give him water, + ’Tis sack makes us the boys. + + Fill up the glass, + To the next merry lad let it pass; + Come, away wi’t; + Let’s set foot to foot and but give our minds to’t, + ’Tis heretical sir, that doth slay wit; + Then hang up good faces, let’s drink till our noses + Give’s freedom to speak what our fancy disposes, + Beneath whose protection now under the rose is. + + Drink off your bowl, + ’Twill enrich both your head and your soul with Canary; + For a carbuncled face saves a tedious race, + And the Indies about us we carry; + No Helicon like to the juice of good wine is, + For Phoebus had never had wit that divine is, + Had his face not been bow-dy’d as thine is and mine is. + + This must go round, + Off with your hats till the pavement be crown’d with your beavers; + A red-coated face frights a sergeant and his mace, + Whilst the constables tremble to shivers. + In state march our faces like some of that quorum, + While the . . . do fall down and the vulgar adore ’um, + And our noses like link-boys run shining before ’um. + + + +THE ROYALIST’S RESOLVE. + + + From the Loyal Garland, 1686. Reprinted for the Percy Society. + + COME, drawer, some wine, + Or we’ll pull down the sign, + For we are all jovial compounders; + We’ll make the house ring + With healths to our King, + And confusion light on his confounders. + + Since former committee + Afforded no pity, + Our sorrows in wine we will steep ’um; + They force us to take + Two oaths, but we’ll make + A third, that we ne’er mean to keep ’um. + + And next, whoe’er sees, + We’ll drink on our knees + To the King; may he thirst that repines: + A fig for those traytors + That look to our waters, + They have nothing to do with our wines. + + And next here’s three bowls + To all gallant souls + That for the King did and will venture; + May they flourish when those + That are his and our foes + Are hang’d, and ram’d down to the center. + + And may they be found + In all to abound, + Both with Heaven and the country’s anger; + May they never want fractions, + Doubts, fears, and distractions, + Till the gallows-tree frees them from danger. + + + +LOYALTY TURNED UP TRUMP, +OR +THE DANGER OVER. + + +From the Loyal Garland, reprinted from a Black-Letter copy, printed 1686. +Reprinted for the Percy society, 1850. + + IN vain ill men attempt us, + Their day is out of date; + The fates do now exempt us + From what we felt of late. + The nation is grown wiser + Than to believe their shame; + He that was the deviser + Themselves begin to blame. + + They thought the trumps would ever + Turn on rebellion’s side, + But kinder power deliver + Us from their foolish pride; + For see, they are deceived, + And can no more prevail; + Those who the Rump believed, + Ashamed are of the tale. + + + +THE LOYALIST’S ENCOURAGEMENT. + + + From the Loyal Garland. + To the tune of “Now, now the fight’s done.” + + YOU Royalists all, now rejoice and be glad, + The day is our own, there’s no cause to be sad, + The tumult of faction is crush’d in its pride, + And the grand promoters their noddles all hide, + For fear of a swing, which does make it appear + Though treason they loved yet for hemp they don’t care. + + Then let us be bold still, and baffle their plots, + That they in the end may prove impotent sots; + And find both their wit and their malice defeated, + Nay, find how themselves and their pupils they cheated, + By heaping and thrusting to unhinge a State, + Of which Heaven’s guardian fixt is by fate. + + Though once they the rabble bewitch’d with their cant, + Whilst cobler and weaver set up for a saint; + Yet now the stale cheat they can fasten no more, + The juggle’s discover’d and they must give o’er; + Yet give them their due that such mischief did work, + Who revile Christian princes and pray for the Turk. + + Oh! give them their due, and let none of ’em want + A cup of Geneva or Turkish turbant, + That, clad in their colours, they may not deceive + The vulgar, too prone and too apt to believe + The fears they suggest on a groundless pretence, + On purpose to make ’em repine or their prince. + + + +THE TROUPER. + + + From the Loyal Garland. A pleasant song revived. + + COME, come, let us drink, + ’Tis vain to think + Like fools of grief or sadness; + Let our money fly + And our sorrows dye, + All worldly care is madness; + But wine and good cheer + Will, in spite of our fear, + Inspire us all with gladness. + + Let the greedy clowns, + That do live like hounds, + They know neither bound nor measure, + Lament every loss, + For their wealth is their cross, + Whose delight is in their treasure; + Whilst we with our own + Do go merrily on, + And spend it at our leisure. + + Then trout about the bowl + To every loyal soul, + And to his hand commend it. + A fig for chink, + ’Twas made to buy drink, + Before we depart we’ll end it. + When we’ve spent our store, + The nation yields no more, + And merrily we will spend it. + + + +ON THE TIMES, +OR +THE GOOD SUBJECT’S WISH. + + + From the Loyal Garland. + To the tune of “Young Phaon.” + + GOOD days we see, let us rejoice, + In peace and loyalty, + And still despise the factious noise + Of those that vainly try + To undermine our happiness, + That they may by it get; + Knavery has great increase + When honesty does set. + + But let us baffle all their tricks, + Our King and country serve; + And may he never thrive that likes + Sedition in reserve: + Then let each in his station rest, + As all good subjects should; + And he that otherwise designs, + May he remain unblest. + + May traytors ever be deceived + In all they undertake, + And never by good men believed; + May all the plots they make + Fall heavy on themselves, and may + They see themselves undone, + And never have a happy day, + That would the King dethrone. + + + +THE JOVIALISTS’ CORONATION. + + + From the Loyal Garland. + + SINCE it must be so, why then so let it go, + Let the giddy-brain’d times turn round; + Now we have our King, let the goblets be crowned, + And our monarchy thus we recover; + Whilst the pottles are weeping + We’ll drench our sad souls + In big-belly’d bowls, + And our sorrows in wine shall lie steeping. + And we’ll drink till our eyes do run over, + And prove it by reason, + It can be no treason + To drink or to sing + A mournifal of healths to our new-crowned King. + + Let us all stand bare in the presence we are, + Let our noses like bonfires shine; + Instead of the conduits, let pottles run wine, + To perfect this true coronation; + And we that are loyal, in drink shall be peers; + For that face that wears claret + Can traytors defie all, + And out-stares the bores of our nation; + In sign of obedience + Our oaths of allegiance + Beer glasses shall be, + And he that tipples tends to jollitry. + + But if in this reign a halberdly train, + Or a constable, chance to revel, + And would with his twyvels maliciously swell, + And against the King’s party raise arms: + Then the drawers, like yeomen o’ the guard, + With quart-pots + Shall fuddle the sots, + Till they make ’um both cuckolds and freemen, + And on their wives beat up alarms, + Thus as the health passes, + We’ll triple our glasses, + And count it no sin + To drink and be loyal in defence of our King. + + + +THE LOYAL PRISONER. + + + From the Loyal Garland. + + HOW happy’s that pris’ner that conquers his fate + With silence, and ne’er on bad fortune complains, + But carelessly plays with keys on his grate, + And he makes a sweet concert with them and his chains! + He drowns care in sack, while his thoughts are opprest, + And he makes his heart float like a cork in his breast. + Then since we are slaves, and all islanders be, + And our land a large prison enclosed by the sea, + We’ll drink off the ocean, and set ourselves free, + For man is the world’s epitomy. + + Let tyrants wear purple, deep-dy’d in the blood + Of those they have slain, their scepters to sway, + If our conscience be clear, and our title be good, + With the rags that hang on us we are richer than they; + We’ll drink down at night what we beg or can borrow, + And sleep without plotting for more the next morrow. + Then since, etc. + + Let the usurer watch o’er his bags and his house, + To keep that from robbers he rak’d from his debtors, + Which at midnight cries thieves at the noise of a mouse, + And he looks if his trunks are fast bound to their fetters; + When once he’s grown rich enough for a State’s plot, + But in one hour plunders what threescore years got. + Then since, etc. + + Come, drawer, fill each man a peck of old sherry, + This brimmer shall bid all our senses good-night; + When old Aristotle was frolic and merry, + By the juice of the grape, he stagger’d out-right; + Copernicus once, in a drunken fit, found + By the course of’s brains that the world did turn round. + Then since, etc. + + ’Tis sack makes our faces like comets to shine, + And gives tincture beyond a complexion mask. + Diogenes fell so in love with his wine, + That when ’twas all out he dwelt in the cask, + And being shut up within a close room, + He, dying, requested a tub for his tomb. + Then since, etc. + + Let him never so privately muster his gold, + His angels will their intelligence be; + How closely they’re prest in their canvas hold, + And they want the State-souldier to set them all free: + Let them pine and be hanged, we’ll merrily sing, + Who hath nothing to lose, may cry, God bless the King. + Then since, etc. + + + +CANARY’S CORONATION. + + + From the Loyal Garland. + + COME, let’s purge our brains + From ale and grains, + That do smell of anarchy; + Let’s chuse a King + From whose blood may spring + Such a sparkling progeny; + It will be fit, strew mine in it, + Whose flames are bright and clear; + We’ll not bind our hands with drayman’s bands, + When as we may be freer; + Why should we droop, or basely stoop + To popular ale or beer? + + Who shall be King? how comes the thing + For which we all are met? + Claret is a prince that hath long since + In the royal order set: + His face is spread with a warlike seed, + And so he loves to see men; + When he bears the sway, his subjects they + Shall be as good as freemen; + But here’s the plot, almost forgot, + ’Tis too much burnt with women. + + By the river of Rhine is a valiant wine + That can all other replenish; + Let’s then consent to the government + And the royal rule of Rhenish: + The German wine will warm the chine, + And frisk in every vein; + ’Twill make the bride forget to chide, + And call him to’t again: + But that’s not all, he is too small + To be our sovereign. + + Let us never think of a noble drink, + But with notes advance on high, + Let’s proclaim good Canary’s name,— + Heaven bless his Majesty! + He is a King in everything, + Whose nature doth renounce all, + He’ll make us skip and nimbly trip + From ceiling to the groundsil; + Especially when poets be + Lords of the Privy Council. + + But a vintner will his taster be, + Here’s nothing that can him let; + A drawer that hath a good palat + Shall be squire of the gimblet. + The bar-boys shall be pages all, + A tavern well-prepared, + And nothing shall be spared; + In jovial sort shall be the court, + Wine-porters that are soldiers tall + Be yeomen of the guard. + + But if a cooper we with a red nose see + In any part of the town; + The cooper shall, with his aids-royal, + Bear the sceptre of the crown; + Young wits that wash away their cash + In wine and recreation, + Who hates ale and beer, shall be welcome here + To give their approbation; + So shall all you that will allow + Canary’s recreation. + + + +THE MOURNFUL SUBJECTS, +OR +THE WHOLE NATION’S LAMENTATION, +FROM THE HIGHEST TO THE LOWEST. + + +The Mournful Subjects, or the Whole Nation’s Lamentation, from the +Highest to the Lowest; who did with brinish tears (the true signs of +sorrow) bewail the death of their most gracious Soveraign King Charles +the Second, who departed this life Feb. 6th, 1684, and was interred in +Westminster Abbey, in King Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, on Saturday night +last, being the 14th day of the said month; to the sollid grief and +sorrow of all his loving subjects. + + From vol. i. of the Roxburgh Ballads in Brit. Mus. + + Tune, “Troy Town, or the Duchess of Suffolk.” + + TRUE subjects mourn, and well they may, + Of each degree, both lords and earls, + Which did behold that dismal day, + The death of princely pious Charles; + Some thousand weeping tears did fall + At his most sollid funeral. + + He was a prince of clemency, + Whose love and mercy did abound; + His death may well lamented be + Through all the nations Europe round; + Unto the ears of Christian kings + His death unwelcome tidings brings. + + All those that ever thought him ill, + And did disturb him in his reign,— + Let horrour now their conscience fill, + And strive such actions to restrain; + For sure they know not what they do, + The time will come when they shall rue. + + How often villains did design + By cruelty his blood to spill, + Yet by the Providence divine + God would not let them have their will, + But did preserve our gracious King, + Under the shadow of his wing. + + We grieved his soul while he was here, + When we would not his laws obey; + Therefore the Lord he was severe, + And took our gracious prince away: + We were not worthy to enjoy + The prince whom subjects would annoy. + + In peace he did lay down his head, + The sceptre and the royal crown; + His soul is now to heaven fled, + Above the reach of mortal frown, + Where joy and glory will not cease, + In presence with the King of Peace. + + Alas! we had our liberty, + He never sought for to devour + By a usurping tyranny, + To rule by arbitrary power; + No, no, in all his blessed reign + We had no cause for to complain. + + Let mourners now lament the loss + Of him that did the scepter sway, + And look upon it as a cross + That he from us is snatch’d away; + Though he is free from care or woe, + Yet we cannot forget him so. + + But since it was thy blessed will + To call him from a sinful land, + Oh let us all be thankful still + That it was done by thine own hand: + No pitch of honour can be free + From Death’s usurping tyranny. + + The fourteen day of February + They did interr our gracious Charles; + His funeral solemnity, + Accompanied with lords and earls, + Four Dukes, I, and Prince George by name, + Went next the King with all his train. + + And thus they to the Abbey went + To lay him in his silent tomb, + Where many inward sighs were spent + To think upon their dismal doom. + Whole showers of tears afresh then fell + When they beheld his last farewell. + + Since it is so, that all must die, + And must before our God appear, + Oh let us have a watchful eye, + Over our conversation here; + That like great Charles, our King and friend, + We all may have a happy end. + + Let England by their loyalty + Repair the breach which they did make; + And let us all united be + To gracious James, for Charles his sake; + And let there be no more discord, + But love the King and fear the Lord. + + Printed for F. Deacon in Guilt-Spur Street. + + + +“MEMENTO MORI.” + + + AN ELOGY ON THE DEATH OF HIS SACRED + MAJESTY KING CHARLES II., OF + BLESSED MEMORY. + + From the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum. + + UNWELCOME news! Whitehall its sable wears, + And each good subject lies dissolved in tears! + Justly indeed; for Charles is dead, the great, + (Who can so much as such great griefs repeat?) + King Charles the good, in whom that day there fell + More than one tribe in this our Israel! + Ah! cruel Death! we find thy fatal sting + In losing him who was so good a King,— + A King so wise, so just, and he’d great part + In Solomon’s wisdom and in David’s heart; + A King! whose virtues only to rehearse + Rather requires a volume than a verse. + Sprung from the loyns of Charles of blessed fame, + A worthy son of his great father’s name, + His parent’s and his grandsire’s virtues he, + As h’ did their crown, enjoy’d _ex traduce_, + Of th’ best and greatest of Kings the epitome. + His justice such as him none could affright + From doing t’all to God and subjects right. + Punish he could, but, like Heaven’s Majesty, + Would that a traitor should repent, not die. + His prudence to the laws due vigour gave, + He saved others and himself did save. + His valour and his courage, write who can? + Being a good souldier ere he was a man. + Wrestling with sorrows in a land unknown, + Whilst Herod did usurp his royal throne, + Banish’d his native country, every day, + Like Moses, at the brink of death he lay. + But that storm’s over, and blest be that hand + That gave him conduct to his peaceful land; + Where this great King the Gordian knot unties, + Of Heaven’s, the kingdom’s, and his enemies; + Not with the sword, but with his grace and love, + Giving to those their lives that for his strove: + Never did person so much mercy breath + Since our blest Saviour’s and his father’s death. + In fine, his actions may our pattern be, + His godly life, the Christian diary; + But now he’s dead, alas! our David’s gone, + And having served his generation, + Is fall’n asleep; that glorious star’s no more + That English wise men led unto the shore + Of peace, where gospel-truth’s protest + Cherished within our pious mother’s breast, + And with protection of such Kings still blest; + Blest with his piety and the nation too, + Happy in’s reign, with milk and honey flew; + Yea, blest so much with peace and nature’s store + Heaven could scarce give or we desire he more; + But yet, alas! he’s dead! Mourn, England, mourn, + And all your scarlet into black cloth turn; + Let dust and ashes with your tears comply. + To weep, not sing, his mournful elegy; + And let your love to Charles be shown hereby + In rendering James your prayers and loyalty. + Long may Great James these kingdoms’ sceptre sway, + And may his subjects lovingly obey, + Whilst with joint comfort all agree to sing, + Heaven bless these kingdoms and “God save the King!” + +London: printed by F. Millet for W. Thackeray, at the sign of the Angel +in Duck Lane, 1685. + + + +ACCESSION OF JAMES II. + + +From “Read’s Weekly Journal, or British Gazetteer.” Saturday, May 15th, +1731. This was a Jacobite Journal, and this song was reproduced at the +time, from an earlier period. The allusions are evidently to the death +of Charles II. and the succession of James II. + + WHAT means, honest shepherd, this cloud on thy brow? + Say, where is thy mirth and thy melody now? + Thy pipe thrown aside, and thy looks full of thought, + As silent and sad as a bird newly caught. + Has any misfortune befallen thy flocks, + Some lamb been betray’d by the craft of the fox; + Or murrain, more fatal, just seized on thy herd; + Or has thy dear Phyllis let slip a cross word? + + The season indeed may to musing incline, + Now that grey-bearded Winter makes Autumn resign; + The hills all around us their russet put on, + And the skies seem in mourning for loss of the sun. + The winds make the tree, where thou sitt’st, shake its head; + Yet tho’ with dry leaves mother earth’s lap is spread, + Her bosom, to cheer it, is verdant with wheat, + And the woods can supply us with pastime and meat. + + Oh! no, says the shepherd, I mourn none of these, + Content with such changes as Heaven shall please; + Tho’ now we have got the wrong side of the year, + ’Twill turn up again, and fresh beauties appear: + But the loss that I grieve for no time can restore; + Our master that lov’d us so well is no more; + That oak which we hop’d wou’d long shelter us all, + Is fallen; then well may we shake at its fall. + + Where find we a pastor so kind and so good, + So careful to feed us with wholesomest food, + To watch for our safety, and drive far away + The sly prouling fox that would make us his prey? + Oh! may his remembrance for ever remain + To shame those hard shepherds who, mindful of gain, + Only look at their sheep with an eye to the fleece, + And watch ’em but so as the fox watch’d the geese. + + Whom now shall I choose for the theme of my song? + Or must my poor pipe on the willow be hung? + No more to commend that good nature and sense, + Which always cou’d please, but ne’er once gave offence. + What honour directed he firmly pursu’d, + Yet would not his judgment on others intrude; + Still ready to help with his service and vote, + But ne’er to thrust oar in another man’s boat. + + No more, honest shepherd, these sorrows resound, + The virtues thou praisest, so hard to be found, + Are yet not all fled, for the swain who succeeds + To his fields and his herds is true heir to his deeds; + His pattern he’ll follow, his gentleness use, + Take care of the shepherds and cherish the muse: + Then cease for the dead thy impertinent care, + Rejoice, he survives in his brother and heir. + + + +ON THE MOST HIGH AND MIGHTY MONARCH +KING JAMES, +ON HIS EXALTATION ON THE THRONE OF ENGLAND. + + +Being an excellent new song. From a “Collection of One Hundred and +Eighty Loyal Songs, written since 1678.” + + To the tune of “Hark! the Thundering Cannons roar.” + + HARK! the bells and steeples ring! + A health to James our royal King; + Heaven approves the offering, + Resounding in chorus; + Let our sacrifice aspire, + Richest gems perfume the fire, + Angels and the sacred quire + Have led the way before us. + + Thro’ loud storms and tempests driven, + This wrong’d prince to us was given, + The mighty James, preserved by Heaven + To be a future blessing; + The anointed instrument, + Good great Charles to represent, + And fill our souls with that content + Which we are now possessing. + + Justice, plenty, wealth, and peace, + With the fruitful land’s increase, + All the treasures of the seas, + With him to us are given; + As the brother, just and good, + From whose royal father’s blood + Clemency runs like a flood, + A legacy from Heaven. + + Summon’d young to fierce alarms, + Born a man in midst of arms, + His good angels kept from harms— + The people’s joy and wonder; + Early laurels crown’d his brow, + And the crowd did praise allow, + Whilst against the Belgick foe + Great Jove implored his thunder. + + Like him none e’er fill’d the throne, + Never courage yet was known + With so much conduct met in one, + To claim our due devotion; + Who made the Belgick lion roar, + Drove ’em back to their own shore, + To humble and encroach no more + Upon the British ocean. + + When poor Holland first grew proud, + Saucy, insolent, and loud, + Great James subdued the boisterous crowd, + The foaming ocean stemming; + His country’s glory and its good + He valued dearer than his blood, + And rid sole sovereign o’er his flood, + In spight of French or Fleming. + + When he the foe had overcome, + Brought them peace and conquest home, + Exiled in foreign parts to roam, + Ungrateful rebels vote him; + But spite of all their insolence, + Inspired with god-like patience, + The rightful heir, kind Providence + Did to a throne promote him. + + May justice at his elbow wait + To defend the Church and State, + The subject and this monarch’s date + May no storm e’er dissever: + May he long adorn this place + With his royal brother’s grace, + His mercy and his tenderness, + To rule this land for ever. + + + +IN A SUMMER’S DAY. + + + From Hogg’s Jacobite Relics. + + IN a summer’s day when all was gay + The lads and lasses met + In a flowery mead, when each lovely maid + Was by her true love set. + Dick took the glass, and drank to his lass, + And _Jamie’s_ health around did pass; + Huzza! they cried; Huzza! they all replied, + God bless our noble King. + + To the Queen, quothiwell; Drink it off, says Nell, + They say she is wondrous pretty; + And the prince, says Hugh; That’s right, says Sue; + God send him home, says Katy; + May the powers above this tribe remove, + And send us back the man we love. + Huzza! they cried; Huzza! they all replied, + God bless our noble King. + + The liquor spent, they to dancing went, + Each gamester took his mate; + Ralph bow’d to Moll, and Hodge to Doll, + Hal took out black-eyed Kate. + Name your dance, quoth John; Bid him, says Anne, + Play, The King shall enjoy his own again. + Huzza! they cried; Huzza! they all replied, + God bless our noble King. + + * * * * * + + THE END. + + * * * * * + + JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. + + * * * * * + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{1} This stanza is omitted in most collections. Walker was a colonel in +the parliamentary army; and afterwards a member of the Committee of +Safety. + +{2} The Directory for the Public Worship of God, ordered by the Assembly +of Divines at Westminster in 1644, to supersede the Book of Common +Prayer. + +{3} The Earl of Thomond. + +{4} The Excise, first introduced by the Long Parliament, was +particularly obnoxious to the Tory party. Dr Johnson more than a hundred +years later shared all the antipathy of his party to it, and in his +Dictionary defined it to be “a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and +adjudged not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by +those to whom excise is paid.” + +{5} Henry the Eighth. The comparison is made in other ballads of the +age. To play old Harry with any one is a phrase that seems to have +originated with those who suffered by the confiscation of church +property. + +{6} The Marquis of Winchester, the brave defender of his house at +Basing, had been made prisoner by Cromwell at the storming of that house +in 1645. Waller had been foiled in his attempt on this place in the year +preceding.—T. W. + +{7} Sir John Ogle, one of the Royalist commanders, who was intrusted +with the defence of Winchester Castle, which he surrendered on conditions +just before the siege of Basing House.—T. W. + +{8} Wren, bishop of Ely, was committed to the Tower in 1641, accused +with high “misdemeanours” in his diocese. + +{9} David Jenkins, a Welsh Judge, who had been made prisoner at the +taking of Hereford, and committed first to Newgate and afterwards to the +Tower. He refused to acknowledge the authority of the Parliament, and +was the author of several tracts published during the year (while he was +prisoner in the Tower), which made a great noise.—T. W. + +{10} Sir Francis Wortley, Bart., was made a prisoner in 1644, at the +taking of Walton House, near Wakefield, by Sir Thomas Fairfax. + +{11} Sir Edward Hales, Bart., of Woodchurch, in Kent, had been member +for Queenborough in the Isle of Sheppey. He was not a Royalist. + +{12} Sir George Strangways, Bart., according to the marginal note in the +original. Another of the name, Sir John Strangways, was taken at the +surrender of Sherborne Castle. + +{13} Sir Henry Bedingfield, Bart., of Norfolk; Sir Walter Blount, Bart., +of Worcester; and Sir Francis Howard, Bart., of the North, were committed +to the Tower on the 22nd of January, 1646. + +{14} The horrible barbarities committed by the Irish rebels had made the +Catholics so much abhorred in England, that every English member of that +community was suspected of plotting the same massacres in England.—T. W. + +{15} Sir John Hewet, of Huntingdonshire, was committed to the Tower on +the 28th of January, 1645(–6). + +{16} Sir Thomas Lunsford, Bart., the celebrated Royalist officer, was +committed to the Tower on the 22nd of January, 1646. The violence and +barbarities which he and his troop were said to have perpetrated led to +the popular belief that he was in the habit of eating children. + + From Fielding and from Vavasour, + Both ill-affected men; + From Lunsford eke dilver us, + That eateth up children. + Loyal Songs, ed. 1731, i. 38. + + T. W. + +{17} Sir William Lewis, one of the eleven members who had been impeached +by the army. + +{18} Col. Giles Strangwaies, of Dorsetshire, taken with Sir Lewis Dives, +at the surrender of Sherborne, was committed to the Tower on the 28th +August, 1645. He was member for Bridport in the Long Parliament, and was +one of those who attended Charles’s “Mongrel” Parliament at Oxford. + +{19} Sir Lewis Dives, an active Royalist, was governor of Sherborne +Castle for the King, and had been made a prisoner by Fairfax in August, +1645, when that fortress was taken by storm. He was brother-in-law to +Lord Digby. + +{20} Sir John Morley, of Newcastle, committed to the Tower on the 18th +of July, 1645. + +{21} King was a Royalist general, in the north, who was slain July, +1643. + +{22} Sir William Morton, of Gloucestershire, committed to the Tower on +the 17th August, 1644. Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, +brought about the marriage between King Henry VII. and the daughter of +Edward IV., and thus effected the unison of the rival houses of York and +Lancaster. + +{23} Thomas Coningsby, Esq., of Northmyus in Hertfordshire, committed to +the Tower in November, 1642, for reading the King’s commission of array +in that county. + +{24} Sir Wingfield Bodenham, of the county of Rutland, committed to the +Tower on the 31st of July, 1643. + +{25} Sir Henry Vaughan, a Welsh knight, committed to the Tower on the +18th July, 1645. + +{26} Lilburn was, as has been observed, in the Tower for his practices +against the present order of things, he being an advocate of extreme +democratic principles; and he was there instructed in knotty points of +law by Judge Jenkins, to enable him to torment and baffle the party in +power. It was Jenkins who said of Lilburne that “If the world were +emptied of all but John Lilburne, Lilburne would quarrel with John, and +John with Lilburne.”—T. W. + +{27} Mr Thomas Violet, of London, goldsmith, committed to the Tower +January 6th, 1643(–4), for carrying a letter from the King to the mayor +and common council of London. + +{28} Dr Hudson had been concerned in the King’s transactions with the +Scots, previous to his delivering himself up to them, and he and +Ashburnham had been his sole attendants in his flight from Oxford for +that purpose.—T. W. + +{29} Poyntz and Massey were staunch Presbyterians, and their party +counted on their assistance in opposing the army: but they withdrew, when +the quarrel seemed to be near coming to extremities. + +{30} Glynn was one of the eleven members impeached by the army. + +{31} It was believed at this time that Fairfax was favourable to the +restoration of the King. + +{32} The “Jack Ketch” of the day. + +{33} The copy in the “Rump Songs” has “Smee and his tub.” + +{34} The old proverbial expression of “the devil and his dam” was +founded on an article of popular superstition which is now obsolete. In +1598, a Welshman, or borderer, writes to Lord Burghley for leave “to +drive the devill and his dam” from the castle of Skenfrith, where they +were said to watch over hidden treasure: “The voyce of the countrey goeth +there is a dyvell and his dame, one sitts upon a hogshed of gold, the +other upon a hogshed of silver.” (Queen Elizabeth and her Times, ii. +397.) The expression is common in our earlier dramatic poets: thus +Shakespeare,— + + —“I’ll have a bout with thee; + Devil, or devil’s dam, I’ll conjure thee: + Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch.” + + (Hen. V. Part I. Act I. sc. 5.) + T. W. + +{35} The prediction was not _quite_ so speedily verified. + +{36} Colonel Hewson, originally a shoemaker. + +{37} Newspapers. + +{38} In the seventeenth century Lancashire enjoyed an unhappy +pre-eminence in the annals of superstition, and it was regarded +especially as a land of witches. This fame appears to have originated +partly in the execution of a number of persons in 1612, who were +pretended to have been associated together in the crime of witchcraft, +and who held their unearthly meetings at the Malkin Tower, in the forest +of Pendle. In 1613 was published an account of the trials, in a thick +pamphlet, entitled “The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of +Lancaster. With the Arraignment and Triall of nineteene notorious +Witches, at the Assizes and general Goale Deliverie, holden in the Castle +of Lancaster, on Monday, the seventeenth of August last, 1612. Published +and set forth by commandment of his Majesties Justices of Assize in the +North Parts, by Thomas Potts, Esquier.” “The famous History of the +Lancashire Witches” continued to be popular as a chap-book up to the +beginning of the nineteenth century.—T. WRIGHT. + +{39} An allusion to the Dutch War of 1651 and 1652. + +{40} Oliver Cromwell. + +{41} The Welsh were frequently the subject of satirical allusions during +the civil wars and the Commonwealth. + +{42} Speaker of the Long Parliament. + +{43} Cromwell’s wife. + +{44} Cromwell’s two sons, Richard and Henry. + +{45} Cromwell’s daughter. + +{46} Col. Pride, originally a brewer’s drayman. + +{47} Walter Strickland, M.P. for a Cornish borough. + +{48} Monk was with his troops in Scotland, but had declared himself an +approver of the proceedings of the Parliament. + +{49} Dr John Owen, Joseph Caryl, and Philip Nye, were three of the most +eminent divines of this eventful age. Caryl, who was a moderate +independent, was the author of the well-known “Commentary on Job.” Dr +Owen enjoyed the especial favour of Cromwell, who made him Dean of +Christchurch, Oxford; in his youth he had shown an inclination to +Presbyterianism, but early in the war he embraced the party of the +Independents. He was a most prolific writer. Nye was also an eminent +writer: previous to 1647 he had been a zealous Presbyterian, but on the +rise of Cromwell’s influence he joined the Independents, and was employed +on several occasions by that party.—T. W. + +{50} Col. John Ireton was the brother of the more celebrated Henry +Ireton, and was an alderman of London. He appears to have been clerk of +the Council of Officers at Wallingford House. + +{51} Col. Robert Tichbourne was also an alderman, and had been Lord +Mayor in 1658. He was an enthusiast in religion of the Independent +party, and published several books, among which one was very celebrated, +and is often referred to in the tracts of this period, entitled, “A +Cluster of Canaan’s Grapes. Being severall experimented truths received +through private communion with God by his Spirit, grounded on Scripture, +and presented to open view for publique edification.” London, 4to, Feb. +16, 1649. In a satirical tract of the year 1660 he is made to say, “I +made my mother, the city, drunk with the clusters which I brought from +Canaan, and she in her drink made me a colonel.” After the return of the +secluded members to the House, and the triumph of the city and the +Presbyterian party, Ireton and Tichbourne were committed to the Tower, +charged with aiming at the overthrow of the liberties of the city, and +other grave misdemeanours. There are in the British Museum two satirical +tracts relating to their imprisonment: 1. “The Apology of Robert Tichborn +and John Ireton. Being a serious Vindication of themselves and the Good +old Cause, from the imputations cast upon them and it by the triumphing +city and nation in this their day of desertion. Printed for everybody +but the light-heeled apprentices and head-strong masters of this wincing +city of London.” (March 12, 1659–60.) 2. “Brethren in Iniquity: or, a +Beardless Pair; held forth in a Dialogue betwixt Tichburn and Ireton, +Prisoners in the Tower of London.” 4to. (April 30, 1660.) + +{52} George Monk and John Lambert. + +{53} The eleventh of February was the day on which Monck overthrew the +Rump, by declaring for the admission of the secluded members. + +{54} On the tenth of February Monk, by order of the Parliament, had +entered the city in a hostile manner. “Mr Fage told me,” says Pepys, +“what Monck had done in the city, how he had pulled down the most parts +of the gates and chains that he could break down, and that he was now +gone back to Whitehall. The city look mighty blank, and cannot tell what +in the world to do.” The next day he turned from the Parliament, and +took part with the city. + +{55} Thomas Scot and Luke Robinson were sent by the Parliament to +expostulate with Monk, but without effect. + +{56} Pepys gives the following description of the rejoicings in the city +on the evening of the eleventh of February:—“In Cheapside there were a +great many bonfires, and Bow bells and all the bells in all the churches +as we went home were a-ringing. Hence we went homewards, it being about +ten at night. But the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The +number of bonfires! there being fourteen between St Dunstan’s and Temple +Bar, and at Strand Bridge I could at one time tell thirty-one fires. In +King-street seven or eight; and all along burning, and roasting, and +drinking for Rumps, there being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and +down. The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a peal with their +knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill +there was one turning of a spit that had a rump tied upon it, and another +basting of it. Indeed it was past imagination, both the greatness and +the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would think there was +a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to keep on the further +side.” + +{57} In a satirical tract, entitled “Free Parliament Quæries,” 4to, +April 10, 1660, it is inquired “Whether Sir Arthur did not act the Raging +Turk in Westminster Hall, when he saw the admission of the secluded +members?” Pepys gives the following account of the reception of Monck’s +letter from the city on the 11th of February:—“So I went up to the lobby, +where I saw the Speaker reading of the letter; and after it was read Sir +A. Haselrigge came out very angry, and Billing, standing by the door, +took him by the arm and cried, ‘Thou man, will thy beast carry thee no +longer? thou must fall!’” + +{58} Haselrigge was accused of having been a dupe to Monck’s cunning +intrigues. + +{59} The celebrated Praise-God Barebone, at the head of a body of +fanatics, had (February 9th) presented a strong petition to the House in +support of the Good old Cause, which gave great offence to the +Presbyterian party and the citizens, although it was received with +thanks. According to Pepys, one of Monck’s complaints against the +Parliament was, “That the late petition of the fanatique people presented +by Barebone, for the imposing of an oath upon all sorts of people, was +received by the House with thanks.” The citizens did not omit to show +their hostility against the presenter of the petition. On the 12th, +Pepys says, “Charles Glascocke . . . told me the boys had last night +broke Barebone’s windows.” And again, on the 22nd, “I observed this day +how abominably Barebone’s windows are broke again last night.” + +{60} Miles Corbet, as well as Tichbourn, had sat upon the King in +judgment. In a satirical tract, published about the same time as the +present ballad, Tichbourn is made to say, “They say I am as notorious as +Miles Corbet the Jew.” In another, entitled “The Private Debates, etc., +of the Rump,” 4to, April 2, 1660, we read, “Call in the Jews, cryes +Corbet, there is a certain sympathy (quoth he), methinks, between them +and me. Those wandering pedlers and I were doubtless made of the same +mould; they have all such blote-herring faces as myself, and the devil +himself is in ’um for cruelty.” He was one of those who fled on the +Restoration, but he was afterwards taken treacherously in Holland, and, +being brought to London, was executed as a regicide. In another +satirical tract, entitled “A Continuation of the Acts and Monuments of +our late Parliament” (Dec. 1659), it is stated that, “July 1, This very +day the House made two serjeants-at-law, William Steele and Miles Corbet, +and that was work enough for one day.” And, in a fourth, “Resolved, That +Miles Corbet and Robert Goodwin be freed from the trouble of the Chief +Register Office in Chancery.” _Mercurius Honestus_, No. 1. (March 21, +1659–60.) + +{61} William Lord Monson, Viscount Castlemaine, was member for Ryegate +in the Long Parliament. He was degraded from his honour at the +Restoration, and was condemned to be drawn on a sledge with a rope round +his neck from the Tower to Tyburn, and back again, and to be imprisoned +there for life. It appears, by the satirical tracts of the day, that he +was chiefly famous for being beaten by his wife. In one, entitled “Your +Servant, Gentlemen,” 4to, 1659, it is asked, “Whether that member who +lives nearest the church ought not to ride Skimmington next time my Lady +Mounson cudgels her husband?” And in another (“The Rump Despairing,” +4to, London, March 26, 1660) we find the following passage:—“To my Lord +Monson. A sceptre is one thing, and a ladle is another, and though his +wife can tell how to use one, yet he is not fit to hold the other.” + +{62} Pudding John, or Jack Pudding, was a proverbial expression of the +times for a Merry Andrew. In an old English-German Dictionary it is +explained thus:—“_Jack-Pudding_, un buffon de theatre, deliciæ populi, +ein Hanswurst, Pickelhering.” The term was applied as a soubriquet to +any man who played the fool to serve another person’s ends. “And first +Sir Thomas Wrothe (_Jack Pudding_ to Prideaux the post-master) had his +cue to go high, and feele the pulse of the hous.” History of +Independency, p. 69 (4to, 1648). + +{63} An allusion to James Harrington’s “Oceana.” + +{64} James Harrington, a remarkable political writer of this time, had +founded a club called the Rota, in 1659, for the debating of political +questions. This club met at Miles’s Coffee-house, in Old Palace Yard, +and lasted a few mouths. At the beginning of the present year was +published the result of their deliberations, under the title of “The +Rota: or, a Model of a Free State, or Equall Commonwealth; once proposed +and debated in brief, and to be again more at large proposed to, and +debated by, a free and open Society of ingenious Gentlemen.” 4to, +London, 1660 (Jan. 9). + +{65} William Prynne, the lawyer, who had been so active a member of the +Long Parliament when the Presbyterians were in power, was one of the +secluded members. He returned to the House on the 21st of January, this +year. Pepys says, “Mr Prin came with an old basket-hilt sword on, and +had a great many shouts upon his going into the hall.” + +{66} John Wilde was one of the members for Worcestershire in the Long +Parliament. In Cromwell’s last Parliament he represented Droitwich, and +was made by the Protector “Lord Chief Baron of the publick Exchequer.” +In a satirical pamphlet, contemporary with the present ballad, he is +spoken of as “Sarjeant Wilde, best known by the name of the Wilde +Serjeant.” Another old song describes his personal appearance: + + “But, Baron Wild, come out here, + Show your ferret face and snout here, + For you, being both a fool and a knave, + Are a monster in the rout here.” + + Loyal songs II. 55. + +{67} See footnote {60}. + +{68} Alderman Atkins. + +{69} Ludlow was well known as a staunch Republican. The incident +alluded to was a subject of much merriment, and exercised the pen of some +of the choicest poets of the latter half of the seventeenth century.—T. +W. + +{70} Lambert, with his army, was in the North, and amid the +contradictory intelligence which daily came in, we find some people who, +according to Pepys, spread reports that Lambert was gaining strength.—T. +W. + +{71} Marchamont Nedham. + +{72} Lambert and “his bears” are frequently mentioned in the satirical +writings of this period. Cromwell is said to have sworn “by the living +God,” when he dissolved the Long Parliament.—T. W. + +{73} Speaker of the Long Parliament. + +{74} Harry Marten, member for Berkshire, a man of equivocal private +character. In the heat of the civil wars he had been committed to the +Tower for a short time by the Parliament, for speaking too openly against +the person of the King. When he attempted to speak against the violent +dissolution of the Long Parliament by Cromwell, the latter reproached him +with the licentiousness of his life.—T. W. + +{75} William Lord Monson, Viscount Castlemaine, was member for Ryegate. +He was degraded from his honours at the Restoration, and was condemned to +be drawn on a sledge with a rope round his neck from the Tower to Tyburn, +and back again, and to be imprisoned there for life. It appears, by the +satirical tracts of the day, that he was chiefly famous for being beaten +by his wife.—T. W. + +{76} Sir Arthur Haselrigge, member for Leicestershire. + +{77} Noise or disturbance. + +{78} Dr John Hewit, an episcopal clergyman, executed for high treason in +1658, for having held an active correspondence with the Royalists abroad, +and having zealously contributed to the insurrection headed by +Penruddock. + +{79} John Lowry, member for Cambridge. + +{80} Sir Edmund Prideaux, Bart., member for Lyme Regis. He was +Cromwell’s Attorney-General. + +{81} Oliver St John, member for Totness, and Lord Chief Justice of the +Common Pleas. + +{82} John Wilde, one of the members for Worcestershire. In Cromwell’s +last Parliament he represented Droitwich, and was made by the Protector +“Lord Chief Baron of the Public Exchequer.” + +{83} Sir Henry Slingsby and Dr Hewet were executed for treason against +the government of Oliver Cromwell in 1658. Colonel John Gerard was +brought to the block at the beginning of the Protectorate, in 1654, for +being engaged in a plot to assassinate Cromwell. + +{84} John Lord Lisle represented Yarmouth in the Long Parliament. He +sat for Kent in the Parliament of 1653, and was afterwards a member of +Cromwell’s “other House,” and held the office of Lord Commissioner of the +Great Seal. He was president of the High Courts of Justice which tried +Gerard, Slingsby, and Hewet. + +{85} Nathaniel Fiennes, member for Banbury. In the Parliament of 1654 +he represented Oxfordshire. He was afterwards, as Nathaniel Lord +Fiennes, a member of Cromwell’s “other House.” Fiennes was accused of +cowardice in surrendering Bristol (of which he was governor) to Prince +Rupert, somewhat hastily, in 1643. His father, Lord Say and Sele, +opposing Cromwell, was obliged to retire to the Isle of Lundy. + +{86} John Lord Glynn, member of Cromwell’s “other House,” was “Chief +Justice assigned to hold pleas in the Upper Bench.” He was engaged in +the prosecution of the Earl of Strafford. He was one of the eleven +members impeached by the army in 1647. In the Long Parliament, as well +as in Cromwell’s Parliaments, he was member for Carnarvon.—T. W. + +{87} Henry Nevil, member for Abingdon. In Cromwell’s last Parliament he +represented Reading. In a satirical tract, he is spoken of as “religious +Harry Nevill;” and we find in Burton’s Diary, that some months before the +date of the present song (on the 16th Feb. 1658–9) there was “a great +debate” on a charge of atheism and blasphemy which had been brought +against him.—T. W. + +{88} In the satirical tract entitled “England’s Confusion,” this member +is described as “hastily rich Cornelius Holland.” He appears to have +risen from a low station, and is characterized in the songs of the day as +having been a link-bearer.—T. W. + +{89} Major Salwey was an officer in the Parliamentary array. On the +17th January, 1660, he incurred the displeasure of the House, and was +sequestered from his seat and sent to the Tower. He is described as “a +smart, prating apprentice, newly set for himself.” He appears to have +been originally a grocer and tobacconist; a ballad of the time speaks of +him as, + + “Salloway with tobacco + Inspired, turned State quack-o; + And got more by his feigned zeal + Then by his, _What d’ye lack-o_?” + +In another he is introduced thus, + + “The tobacco-man Salway, with a heart tall of gall + Puffs down bells, steeples, priests, churches and all, + As old superstitions relicks of Baal.” + +A third ballad, alluding to his attitude in the House, couples together + + “Mr William Lilly’s astrological lyes, + And the meditations of Salloway biting his thumbs.”—T. W. + +{90} Roger Hill was member for Bridport, in Dorsetshire. He bought a +grant of the Bishop of Winchester’s manor of Taunton Dean, valued at 1200 +pounds a year. A ballad written towards the end of 1659 says of him, + + “Baron Hill was but a valley, + And born scarce to an alley; + But now is lord of Taunton Dean, + And thousands he can rally.” + +{91} With the revival of the Long Parliament, the old Republican +feelings arose again under the denomination of the “Good old Cause.” +Innumerable pamphlets were published for and against “The Cause.” Even +Prynne, the fierce old Presbyterian, who was now turning against the +patriots, lifted up his pen against it, and published “The Republicans +and others spurious Good old Cause briefly and truly Anatomized,” 4to, +May 13, 1659. + +{92} Robert Cecil, Esq., was one of the members of the Old Long +Parliament who were now brought together to form the Rump. He +represented Old Sarum, Wilts. + +{93} Luke Robinson, of Pickering Lyth, in Yorkshire, was member for +Scarborough. An old ballad says of him, + + “Luke Robinson, that clownado, + Though his heart be a granado, + Yet a high shoe with his hand in his poke + Is his most perfect shadow.” + +{94} Sir Harry Vane. + +{95} Thomas Scott was member for Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire, in the +Long Parliament. + +{96} Hugh Peters, the celebrated fanatic. In the margin of the +original, opposite to the words “the Devil’s fees,” is the following +note—“His numps and his kidneys.”—T. W. + +{97} To save his tithe pig:—probably the origin of the well known slang +phrase of the present day. + +{98} Coloured, or dyed. + +{99} Faustus. + +{100} An allusion to a popular old story and song. A copy of the words +and tune of “The Fryar and the Nun” is preserved in the valuable +collection of ballads in the possession of Mr Thorpe of Piccadilly.—T. +W. + +{101} “October 13th. I went out to Charing Cross to see Major-General +Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered, which was done there, he looking +as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.”—Pepys. Thomas +Harrison was the son of a butcher at Newcastle-under-Line; he conveyed +Charles I. from Windsor to Whitehall to his trial, and afterwards sat as +one of the judges. + +{102} “October 15th. This morning Mr Carew was hanged and quartered at +Charing Cross; but his quarters, by a great favour, are not to be hanged +up.”—Pepys. Colonel John Carew, like Harrison, was one of the +Fifth-monarchy men, a violent and visionary but honest enthusiast. + +{103} Hugh Peters, for his zeal in encouraging the Commonwealth +soldiery, was particularly hated by the Royalists. John Coke, the able +lawyer, conducted the prosecution of the King. + +{104} Gregory Clement, John Jones, Thomas Scott, and Adrian Scrope, were +charged with sitting in the High Court of Justice which tried the King. +Scott was further charged with having, during the sitting of the Rump +Parliament, expressed his approbation of the sentence against the King. +Colonel Scrope, although he had been admitted to pardon, was selected as +one of the objects of vengeance, and was condemned chiefly on a reported +conversation, in which, when one person had strongly blamed what he +called the “murder” of the King, Scrope observed, “Some are of one +opinion, and some of another.” + +{105} “October 19th. This morning Hacker and Axtell were hanged and +quartered, as the rest are.”—Pepys. Colonel Francis Hacker commanded the +guards at the King’s execution. Axtell was captain of the guard of the +High Court of Justice at which the King was tried. + +{106} Richard Brown, one of Cromwell’s Major-generals, Governor of +Abingdon, and member for London in the Long Parliament. He had been +imprisoned by the Rump. + +{107} The Earl of Norwich was George Lord Goring, who, with his son, +acted a prominent part in the Civil Wars. He was created Earl of Norwich +in 1644. + +{108} John Mordaunt, son of the Earl of Peterborough, celebrated for his +exertions to raise insurrections for the King during the Protectorate, +was one of the bearers of the letters of the King to Monck. He was +created Baron Mordaunt, July 10, 1659. Charles Lord Gerard, afterwards +created Earl of Macclesfield, was a very distinguished Royalist officer. +Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Cleveland, who had suffered much for his +loyalty to Charles I., headed a body of three hundred noblemen and +gentlemen in the triumphal procession of Charles II. into London. + +{109} Charles Stuart, a gallant Royalist officer, who had been created +Earl of Litchfield by Charles I. in 1645, and who immediately after the +Restoration succeeded his cousin Esme Stuart as Duke of Richmond. +Charles Stanley, Earl of Derby, was son of the Earl of Derby who was +beheaded after the battle of Worcester, and of the Countess who so +gallantly defended Latham House in 1644. + +{110} The Nursery Rhyme, “The Man in the Moon drinks claret.” + +{111} Philip Nye. + +{112} William Kiffin was a celebrated preacher of this time, and had +been an officer in the Parliamentary army. A little before the +publication of the present ballad a tract had appeared, with the title, +“The Life and Approaching Death of William Kiffin. Extracted out of the +Visitation Book by a Church Member.” 4to, London, March 13, 1659–60. He +is here said to have been originally ’prentice to a glover, and to have +been in good credit with Cromwell, who made him a lieutenant-colonel. He +appears to have been busy among the sectaries at the period of the +Restoration. He is thus mentioned in a satirical pamphlet of that time, +entitled “Select City Quæries:”—“Whether the Anabaptists’ late manifesto +can be said to be forged, false, and scandalous (as Politicus terms it), +it being well known to be writ by one of Kiffin’s disciples; and whether +the author thereof or Politicus may be accounted the greater +incendiary?”—T. W. + +{113} Fox and Naylor were the founders of the sect of Quakers. Naylor, +in particular, was celebrated as an enthusiast. Jacob Boehmen, or +Behmen, was a celebrated German visionary and enthusiast, who lived at +the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, and +the founder of a sect. + +{114} There was a story that Charles II. was really married to Lucy +Walters, the mother of the Duke of Monmouth, and that the contract of +marriage was in existence in a “black box,” in the custody of the Bishop +of Durham, suggested apparently by the endeavours of that Bishop to +change the succession to the crown in favour of the Duke of Monmouth, to +the exclusion of James II. + +{115} Titus Oates, the inventor of the Popish plot. + +{116} Patience Ward, the alderman. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAVALIER SONGS AND BALLADS OF +ENGLAND*** + + +******* This file should be named 1030-0.txt or 1030-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/3/1030 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1031-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1031-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..db39c427 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1031-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2466 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Charmides and Other Poems, by Oscar Wilde + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Charmides and Other Poems + + +Author: Oscar Wilde + + + +Release Date: September 19, 2014 [eBook #1031] +[This file was first posted on 17 July 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARMIDES AND OTHER POEMS*** + + +Transcribed from 1913 Methuen and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + CHARMIDES + AND OTHER POEMS + + + BY + OSCAR WILDE + + * * * * * + + METHUEN & CO. LTD. + 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. + LONDON + + * * * * * + + _This volume was first published in 1913_ + + * * * * * + +_Wilde’s Poems_, _a selection of which is given in this volume_, _were +first published in volume form in_ 1881, _and were reprinted four times +before the end of_ 1882. _A new Edition with additional poems_, +_including Ravenna_, _The Sphinx_, _and The Ballad of Reading Goal_, _was +first published_ (_limited issues on hand-made paper and Japanese +vellum_) _by Methuen & Co. in March_ 1908. _A further Edition_ (_making +the seventh_) _with some omissions from the issue of_ 1908, _but +including two new poems_, _was published in September_, 1909. _Eighth +Edition_, _November_ 1909. _Ninth Edition_, _December_ 1909. _Tenth +Edition_, _December_ 1910. _Eleventh Edition_, _December_, 1911. +_Twelfth Edition_, _May_, 1913. + +_A further selection of the poems_, _including The Ballad of Reading +Gaol_, _is published uniform with this volume_. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +CHARMIDES 9 +REQUIESCAT 67 +SAN MINIATO 69 +ROME UNVISITED 71 +HUMANITAD 77 +LOUIS NAPOLEON 114 +ENDYMION 116 +LE JARDIN 119 +LA MER 120 +LE PANNEAU 121 +LES BALLONS 124 +CANZONET 126 +LE JARDIN DES TUILERIES 129 +PAN: DOUBLE VILLANELLE 131 +IN THE FOREST 135 +SYMPHONY IN YELLOW 136 + SONNETS +HÉLAS! 139 +TO MILTON 140 +ON THE MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA 141 +HOLY WEEK AT GENOA 142 +URBS SACRA ÆTERNA 143 +E TENEBRIS 144 +AT VERONA 145 +ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’ LOVE LETTERS 146 +THE NEW REMORSE 147 + + + + +CHARMIDES + + + I. + + HE was a Grecian lad, who coming home + With pulpy figs and wine from Sicily + Stood at his galley’s prow, and let the foam + Blow through his crisp brown curls unconsciously, + And holding wave and wind in boy’s despite + Peered from his dripping seat across the wet and stormy night. + + Till with the dawn he saw a burnished spear + Like a thin thread of gold against the sky, + And hoisted sail, and strained the creaking gear, + And bade the pilot head her lustily + Against the nor’west gale, and all day long + Held on his way, and marked the rowers’ time with measured song. + + And when the faint Corinthian hills were red + Dropped anchor in a little sandy bay, + And with fresh boughs of olive crowned his head, + And brushed from cheek and throat the hoary spray, + And washed his limbs with oil, and from the hold + Brought out his linen tunic and his sandals brazen-soled, + + And a rich robe stained with the fishers’ juice + Which of some swarthy trader he had bought + Upon the sunny quay at Syracuse, + And was with Tyrian broideries inwrought, + And by the questioning merchants made his way + Up through the soft and silver woods, and when the labouring day + + Had spun its tangled web of crimson cloud, + Clomb the high hill, and with swift silent feet + Crept to the fane unnoticed by the crowd + Of busy priests, and from some dark retreat + Watched the young swains his frolic playmates bring + The firstling of their little flock, and the shy shepherd fling + + The crackling salt upon the flame, or hang + His studded crook against the temple wall + To Her who keeps away the ravenous fang + Of the base wolf from homestead and from stall; + And then the clear-voiced maidens ’gan to sing, + And to the altar each man brought some goodly offering, + + A beechen cup brimming with milky foam, + A fair cloth wrought with cunning imagery + Of hounds in chase, a waxen honey-comb + Dripping with oozy gold which scarce the bee + Had ceased from building, a black skin of oil + Meet for the wrestlers, a great boar the fierce and white-tusked spoil + + Stolen from Artemis that jealous maid + To please Athena, and the dappled hide + Of a tall stag who in some mountain glade + Had met the shaft; and then the herald cried, + And from the pillared precinct one by one + Went the glad Greeks well pleased that they their simple vows had + done. + + And the old priest put out the waning fires + Save that one lamp whose restless ruby glowed + For ever in the cell, and the shrill lyres + Came fainter on the wind, as down the road + In joyous dance these country folk did pass, + And with stout hands the warder closed the gates of polished brass. + + Long time he lay and hardly dared to breathe, + And heard the cadenced drip of spilt-out wine, + And the rose-petals falling from the wreath + As the night breezes wandered through the shrine, + And seemed to be in some entrancèd swoon + Till through the open roof above the full and brimming moon + + Flooded with sheeny waves the marble floor, + When from his nook up leapt the venturous lad, + And flinging wide the cedar-carven door + Beheld an awful image saffron-clad + And armed for battle! the gaunt Griffin glared + From the huge helm, and the long lance of wreck and ruin flared + + Like a red rod of flame, stony and steeled + The Gorgon’s head its leaden eyeballs rolled, + And writhed its snaky horrors through the shield, + And gaped aghast with bloodless lips and cold + In passion impotent, while with blind gaze + The blinking owl between the feet hooted in shrill amaze. + + The lonely fisher as he trimmed his lamp + Far out at sea off Sunium, or cast + The net for tunnies, heard a brazen tramp + Of horses smite the waves, and a wild blast + Divide the folded curtains of the night, + And knelt upon the little poop, and prayed in holy fright. + + And guilty lovers in their venery + Forgat a little while their stolen sweets, + Deeming they heard dread Dian’s bitter cry; + And the grim watchmen on their lofty seats + Ran to their shields in haste precipitate, + Or strained black-bearded throats across the dusky parapet. + + For round the temple rolled the clang of arms, + And the twelve Gods leapt up in marble fear, + And the air quaked with dissonant alarums + Till huge Poseidon shook his mighty spear, + And on the frieze the prancing horses neighed, + And the low tread of hurrying feet rang from the cavalcade. + + Ready for death with parted lips he stood, + And well content at such a price to see + That calm wide brow, that terrible maidenhood, + The marvel of that pitiless chastity, + Ah! well content indeed, for never wight + Since Troy’s young shepherd prince had seen so wonderful a sight. + + Ready for death he stood, but lo! the air + Grew silent, and the horses ceased to neigh, + And off his brow he tossed the clustering hair, + And from his limbs he throw the cloak away; + For whom would not such love make desperate? + And nigher came, and touched her throat, and with hands violate + + Undid the cuirass, and the crocus gown, + And bared the breasts of polished ivory, + Till from the waist the peplos falling down + Left visible the secret mystery + Which to no lover will Athena show, + The grand cool flanks, the crescent thighs, the bossy hills of snow. + + Those who have never known a lover’s sin + Let them not read my ditty, it will be + To their dull ears so musicless and thin + That they will have no joy of it, but ye + To whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile, + Ye who have learned who Eros is,—O listen yet awhile. + + A little space he let his greedy eyes + Rest on the burnished image, till mere sight + Half swooned for surfeit of such luxuries, + And then his lips in hungering delight + Fed on her lips, and round the towered neck + He flung his arms, nor cared at all his passion’s will to check. + + Never I ween did lover hold such tryst, + For all night long he murmured honeyed word, + And saw her sweet unravished limbs, and kissed + Her pale and argent body undisturbed, + And paddled with the polished throat, and pressed + His hot and beating heart upon her chill and icy breast. + + It was as if Numidian javelins + Pierced through and through his wild and whirling brain, + And his nerves thrilled like throbbing violins + In exquisite pulsation, and the pain + Was such sweet anguish that he never drew + His lips from hers till overhead the lark of warning flew. + + They who have never seen the daylight peer + Into a darkened room, and drawn the curtain, + And with dull eyes and wearied from some dear + And worshipped body risen, they for certain + Will never know of what I try to sing, + How long the last kiss was, how fond and late his lingering. + + The moon was girdled with a crystal rim, + The sign which shipmen say is ominous + Of wrath in heaven, the wan stars were dim, + And the low lightening east was tremulous + With the faint fluttering wings of flying dawn, + Ere from the silent sombre shrine his lover had withdrawn. + + Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast + Clomb the brave lad, and reached the cave of Pan, + And heard the goat-foot snoring as he passed, + And leapt upon a grassy knoll and ran + Like a young fawn unto an olive wood + Which in a shady valley by the well-built city stood; + + And sought a little stream, which well he knew, + For oftentimes with boyish careless shout + The green and crested grebe he would pursue, + Or snare in woven net the silver trout, + And down amid the startled reeds he lay + Panting in breathless sweet affright, and waited for the day. + + On the green bank he lay, and let one hand + Dip in the cool dark eddies listlessly, + And soon the breath of morning came and fanned + His hot flushed cheeks, or lifted wantonly + The tangled curls from off his forehead, while + He on the running water gazed with strange and secret smile. + + And soon the shepherd in rough woollen cloak + With his long crook undid the wattled cotes, + And from the stack a thin blue wreath of smoke + Curled through the air across the ripening oats, + And on the hill the yellow house-dog bayed + As through the crisp and rustling fern the heavy cattle strayed. + + And when the light-foot mower went afield + Across the meadows laced with threaded dew, + And the sheep bleated on the misty weald, + And from its nest the waking corncrake flew, + Some woodmen saw him lying by the stream + And marvelled much that any lad so beautiful could seem, + + Nor deemed him born of mortals, and one said, + ‘It is young Hylas, that false runaway + Who with a Naiad now would make his bed + Forgetting Herakles,’ but others, ‘Nay, + It is Narcissus, his own paramour, + Those are the fond and crimson lips no woman can allure.’ + + And when they nearer came a third one cried, + ‘It is young Dionysos who has hid + His spear and fawnskin by the river side + Weary of hunting with the Bassarid, + And wise indeed were we away to fly: + They live not long who on the gods immortal come to spy.’ + + So turned they back, and feared to look behind, + And told the timid swain how they had seen + Amid the reeds some woodland god reclined, + And no man dared to cross the open green, + And on that day no olive-tree was slain, + Nor rushes cut, but all deserted was the fair domain, + + Save when the neat-herd’s lad, his empty pail + Well slung upon his back, with leap and bound + Raced on the other side, and stopped to hail, + Hoping that he some comrade new had found, + And gat no answer, and then half afraid + Passed on his simple way, or down the still and silent glade + + A little girl ran laughing from the farm, + Not thinking of love’s secret mysteries, + And when she saw the white and gleaming arm + And all his manlihood, with longing eyes + Whose passion mocked her sweet virginity + Watched him awhile, and then stole back sadly and wearily. + + Far off he heard the city’s hum and noise, + And now and then the shriller laughter where + The passionate purity of brown-limbed boys + Wrestled or raced in the clear healthful air, + And now and then a little tinkling bell + As the shorn wether led the sheep down to the mossy well. + + Through the grey willows danced the fretful gnat, + The grasshopper chirped idly from the tree, + In sleek and oily coat the water-rat + Breasting the little ripples manfully + Made for the wild-duck’s nest, from bough to bough + Hopped the shy finch, and the huge tortoise crept across the slough. + + On the faint wind floated the silky seeds + As the bright scythe swept through the waving grass, + The ouzel-cock splashed circles in the reeds + And flecked with silver whorls the forest’s glass, + Which scarce had caught again its imagery + Ere from its bed the dusky tench leapt at the dragon-fly. + + But little care had he for any thing + Though up and down the beech the squirrel played, + And from the copse the linnet ’gan to sing + To its brown mate its sweetest serenade; + Ah! little care indeed, for he had seen + The breasts of Pallas and the naked wonder of the Queen. + + But when the herdsman called his straggling goats + With whistling pipe across the rocky road, + And the shard-beetle with its trumpet-notes + Boomed through the darkening woods, and seemed to bode + Of coming storm, and the belated crane + Passed homeward like a shadow, and the dull big drops of rain + + Fell on the pattering fig-leaves, up he rose, + And from the gloomy forest went his way + Past sombre homestead and wet orchard-close, + And came at last unto a little quay, + And called his mates aboard, and took his seat + On the high poop, and pushed from land, and loosed the dripping sheet, + + And steered across the bay, and when nine suns + Passed down the long and laddered way of gold, + And nine pale moons had breathed their orisons + To the chaste stars their confessors, or told + Their dearest secret to the downy moth + That will not fly at noonday, through the foam and surging froth + + Came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes + And lit upon the ship, whose timbers creaked + As though the lading of three argosies + Were in the hold, and flapped its wings and shrieked, + And darkness straightway stole across the deep, + Sheathed was Orion’s sword, dread Mars himself fled down the steep, + + And the moon hid behind a tawny mask + Of drifting cloud, and from the ocean’s marge + Rose the red plume, the huge and hornèd casque, + The seven-cubit spear, the brazen targe! + And clad in bright and burnished panoply + Athena strode across the stretch of sick and shivering sea! + + To the dull sailors’ sight her loosened looks + Seemed like the jagged storm-rack, and her feet + Only the spume that floats on hidden rocks, + And, marking how the rising waters beat + Against the rolling ship, the pilot cried + To the young helmsman at the stern to luff to windward side + + But he, the overbold adulterer, + A dear profaner of great mysteries, + An ardent amorous idolater, + When he beheld those grand relentless eyes + Laughed loud for joy, and crying out ‘I come’ + Leapt from the lofty poop into the chill and churning foam. + + Then fell from the high heaven one bright star, + One dancer left the circling galaxy, + And back to Athens on her clattering car + In all the pride of venged divinity + Pale Pallas swept with shrill and steely clank, + And a few gurgling bubbles rose where her boy lover sank. + + And the mast shuddered as the gaunt owl flew + With mocking hoots after the wrathful Queen, + And the old pilot bade the trembling crew + Hoist the big sail, and told how he had seen + Close to the stern a dim and giant form, + And like a dipping swallow the stout ship dashed through the storm. + + And no man dared to speak of Charmides + Deeming that he some evil thing had wrought, + And when they reached the strait Symplegades + They beached their galley on the shore, and sought + The toll-gate of the city hastily, + And in the market showed their brown and pictured pottery. + + II. + + BUT some good Triton-god had ruth, and bare + The boy’s drowned body back to Grecian land, + And mermaids combed his dank and dripping hair + And smoothed his brow, and loosed his clenching hand; + Some brought sweet spices from far Araby, + And others bade the halcyon sing her softest lullaby. + + And when he neared his old Athenian home, + A mighty billow rose up suddenly + Upon whose oily back the clotted foam + Lay diapered in some strange fantasy, + And clasping him unto its glassy breast + Swept landward, like a white-maned steed upon a venturous quest! + + Now where Colonos leans unto the sea + There lies a long and level stretch of lawn; + The rabbit knows it, and the mountain bee + For it deserts Hymettus, and the Faun + Is not afraid, for never through the day + Comes a cry ruder than the shout of shepherd lads at play. + + But often from the thorny labyrinth + And tangled branches of the circling wood + The stealthy hunter sees young Hyacinth + Hurling the polished disk, and draws his hood + Over his guilty gaze, and creeps away, + Nor dares to wind his horn, or—else at the first break of day + + The Dryads come and throw the leathern ball + Along the reedy shore, and circumvent + Some goat-eared Pan to be their seneschal + For fear of bold Poseidon’s ravishment, + And loose their girdles, with shy timorous eyes, + Lest from the surf his azure arms and purple beard should rise. + + On this side and on that a rocky cave, + Hung with the yellow-belled laburnum, stands + Smooth is the beach, save where some ebbing wave + Leaves its faint outline etched upon the sands, + As though it feared to be too soon forgot + By the green rush, its playfellow,—and yet, it is a spot + + So small, that the inconstant butterfly + Could steal the hoarded money from each flower + Ere it was noon, and still not satisfy + Its over-greedy love,—within an hour + A sailor boy, were he but rude enow + To land and pluck a garland for his galley’s painted prow, + + Would almost leave the little meadow bare, + For it knows nothing of great pageantry, + Only a few narcissi here and there + Stand separate in sweet austerity, + Dotting the unmown grass with silver stars, + And here and there a daffodil waves tiny scimitars. + + Hither the billow brought him, and was glad + Of such dear servitude, and where the land + Was virgin of all waters laid the lad + Upon the golden margent of the strand, + And like a lingering lover oft returned + To kiss those pallid limbs which once with intense fire burned, + + Ere the wet seas had quenched that holocaust, + That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead, + Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost + Had withered up those lilies white and red + Which, while the boy would through the forest range, + Answered each other in a sweet antiphonal counter-change. + + And when at dawn the wood-nymphs, hand-in-hand, + Threaded the bosky dell, their satyr spied + The boy’s pale body stretched upon the sand, + And feared Poseidon’s treachery, and cried, + And like bright sunbeams flitting through a glade + Each startled Dryad sought some safe and leafy ambuscade. + + Save one white girl, who deemed it would not be + So dread a thing to feel a sea-god’s arms + Crushing her breasts in amorous tyranny, + And longed to listen to those subtle charms + Insidious lovers weave when they would win + Some fencèd fortress, and stole back again, nor thought it sin + + To yield her treasure unto one so fair, + And lay beside him, thirsty with love’s drouth, + Called him soft names, played with his tangled hair, + And with hot lips made havoc of his mouth + Afraid he might not wake, and then afraid + Lest he might wake too soon, fled back, and then, fond renegade, + + Returned to fresh assault, and all day long + Sat at his side, and laughed at her new toy, + And held his hand, and sang her sweetest song, + Then frowned to see how froward was the boy + Who would not with her maidenhood entwine, + Nor knew that three days since his eyes had looked on Proserpine; + + Nor knew what sacrilege his lips had done, + But said, ‘He will awake, I know him well, + He will awake at evening when the sun + Hangs his red shield on Corinth’s citadel; + This sleep is but a cruel treachery + To make me love him more, and in some cavern of the sea + + Deeper than ever falls the fisher’s line + Already a huge Triton blows his horn, + And weaves a garland from the crystalline + And drifting ocean-tendrils to adorn + The emerald pillars of our bridal bed, + For sphered in foaming silver, and with coral crownèd head, + + We two will sit upon a throne of pearl, + And a blue wave will be our canopy, + And at our feet the water-snakes will curl + In all their amethystine panoply + Of diamonded mail, and we will mark + The mullets swimming by the mast of some storm-foundered bark, + + Vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold + Like flakes of crimson light, and the great deep + His glassy-portaled chamber will unfold, + And we will see the painted dolphins sleep + Cradled by murmuring halcyons on the rocks + Where Proteus in quaint suit of green pastures his monstrous flocks. + + And tremulous opal-hued anemones + Will wave their purple fringes where we tread + Upon the mirrored floor, and argosies + Of fishes flecked with tawny scales will thread + The drifting cordage of the shattered wreck, + And honey-coloured amber beads our twining limbs will deck.’ + + But when that baffled Lord of War the Sun + With gaudy pennon flying passed away + Into his brazen House, and one by one + The little yellow stars began to stray + Across the field of heaven, ah! then indeed + She feared his lips upon her lips would never care to feed, + + And cried, ‘Awake, already the pale moon + Washes the trees with silver, and the wave + Creeps grey and chilly up this sandy dune, + The croaking frogs are out, and from the cave + The nightjar shrieks, the fluttering bats repass, + And the brown stoat with hollow flanks creeps through the dusky grass. + + Nay, though thou art a god, be not so coy, + For in yon stream there is a little reed + That often whispers how a lovely boy + Lay with her once upon a grassy mead, + Who when his cruel pleasure he had done + Spread wings of rustling gold and soared aloft into the sun. + + Be not so coy, the laurel trembles still + With great Apollo’s kisses, and the fir + Whose clustering sisters fringe the seaward hill + Hath many a tale of that bold ravisher + Whom men call Boreas, and I have seen + The mocking eyes of Hermes through the poplar’s silvery sheen. + + Even the jealous Naiads call me fair, + And every morn a young and ruddy swain + Woos me with apples and with locks of hair, + And seeks to soothe my virginal disdain + By all the gifts the gentle wood-nymphs love; + But yesterday he brought to me an iris-plumaged dove + + With little crimson feet, which with its store + Of seven spotted eggs the cruel lad + Had stolen from the lofty sycamore + At daybreak, when her amorous comrade had + Flown off in search of berried juniper + Which most they love; the fretful wasp, that earliest vintager + + Of the blue grapes, hath not persistency + So constant as this simple shepherd-boy + For my poor lips, his joyous purity + And laughing sunny eyes might well decoy + A Dryad from her oath to Artemis; + For very beautiful is he, his mouth was made to kiss; + + His argent forehead, like a rising moon + Over the dusky hills of meeting brows, + Is crescent shaped, the hot and Tyrian noon + Leads from the myrtle-grove no goodlier spouse + For Cytheræa, the first silky down + Fringes his blushing cheeks, and his young limbs are strong and brown; + + And he is rich, and fat and fleecy herds + Of bleating sheep upon his meadows lie, + And many an earthen bowl of yellow curds + Is in his homestead for the thievish fly + To swim and drown in, the pink clover mead + Keeps its sweet store for him, and he can pipe on oaten reed. + + And yet I love him not; it was for thee + I kept my love; I knew that thou would’st come + To rid me of this pallid chastity, + Thou fairest flower of the flowerless foam + Of all the wide Ægean, brightest star + Of ocean’s azure heavens where the mirrored planets are! + + I knew that thou would’st come, for when at first + The dry wood burgeoned, and the sap of spring + Swelled in my green and tender bark or burst + To myriad multitudinous blossoming + Which mocked the midnight with its mimic moons + That did not dread the dawn, and first the thrushes’ rapturous tunes + + Startled the squirrel from its granary, + And cuckoo flowers fringed the narrow lane, + Through my young leaves a sensuous ecstasy + Crept like new wine, and every mossy vein + Throbbed with the fitful pulse of amorous blood, + And the wild winds of passion shook my slim stem’s maidenhood. + + The trooping fawns at evening came and laid + Their cool black noses on my lowest boughs, + And on my topmost branch the blackbird made + A little nest of grasses for his spouse, + And now and then a twittering wren would light + On a thin twig which hardly bare the weight of such delight. + + I was the Attic shepherd’s trysting place, + Beneath my shadow Amaryllis lay, + And round my trunk would laughing Daphnis chase + The timorous girl, till tired out with play + She felt his hot breath stir her tangled hair, + And turned, and looked, and fled no more from such delightful snare. + + Then come away unto my ambuscade + Where clustering woodbine weaves a canopy + For amorous pleasaunce, and the rustling shade + Of Paphian myrtles seems to sanctify + The dearest rites of love; there in the cool + And green recesses of its farthest depth there is pool, + + The ouzel’s haunt, the wild bee’s pasturage, + For round its rim great creamy lilies float + Through their flat leaves in verdant anchorage, + Each cup a white-sailed golden-laden boat + Steered by a dragon-fly,—be not afraid + To leave this wan and wave-kissed shore, surely the place was made + + For lovers such as we; the Cyprian Queen, + One arm around her boyish paramour, + Strays often there at eve, and I have seen + The moon strip off her misty vestiture + For young Endymion’s eyes; be not afraid, + The panther feet of Dian never tread that secret glade. + + Nay if thou will’st, back to the beating brine, + Back to the boisterous billow let us go, + And walk all day beneath the hyaline + Huge vault of Neptune’s watery portico, + And watch the purple monsters of the deep + Sport in ungainly play, and from his lair keen Xiphias leap. + + For if my mistress find me lying here + She will not ruth or gentle pity show, + But lay her boar-spear down, and with austere + Relentless fingers string the cornel bow, + And draw the feathered notch against her breast, + And loose the archèd cord; aye, even now upon the quest + + I hear her hurrying feet,—awake, awake, + Thou laggard in love’s battle! once at least + Let me drink deep of passion’s wine, and slake + My parchèd being with the nectarous feast + Which even gods affect! O come, Love, come, + Still we have time to reach the cavern of thine azure home.’ + + Scarce had she spoken when the shuddering trees + Shook, and the leaves divided, and the air + Grew conscious of a god, and the grey seas + Crawled backward, and a long and dismal blare + Blew from some tasselled horn, a sleuth-hound bayed, + And like a flame a barbèd reed flew whizzing down the glade. + + And where the little flowers of her breast + Just brake into their milky blossoming, + This murderous paramour, this unbidden guest, + Pierced and struck deep in horrid chambering, + And ploughed a bloody furrow with its dart, + And dug a long red road, and cleft with wingèd death her heart. + + Sobbing her life out with a bitter cry + On the boy’s body fell the Dryad maid, + Sobbing for incomplete virginity, + And raptures unenjoyed, and pleasures dead, + And all the pain of things unsatisfied, + And the bright drops of crimson youth crept down her throbbing side. + + Ah! pitiful it was to hear her moan, + And very pitiful to see her die + Ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known + The joy of passion, that dread mystery + Which not to know is not to live at all, + And yet to know is to be held in death’s most deadly thrall. + + But as it hapt the Queen of Cythere, + Who with Adonis all night long had lain + Within some shepherd’s hut in Arcady, + On team of silver doves and gilded wain + Was journeying Paphos-ward, high up afar + From mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star, + + And when low down she spied the hapless pair, + And heard the Oread’s faint despairing cry, + Whose cadence seemed to play upon the air + As though it were a viol, hastily + She bade her pigeons fold each straining plume, + And dropt to earth, and reached the strand, and saw their dolorous + doom. + + For as a gardener turning back his head + To catch the last notes of the linnet, mows + With careless scythe too near some flower bed, + And cuts the thorny pillar of the rose, + And with the flower’s loosened loneliness + Strews the brown mould; or as some shepherd lad in wantonness + + Driving his little flock along the mead + Treads down two daffodils, which side by aide + Have lured the lady-bird with yellow brede + And made the gaudy moth forget its pride, + Treads down their brimming golden chalices + Under light feet which were not made for such rude ravages; + + Or as a schoolboy tired of his book + Flings himself down upon the reedy grass + And plucks two water-lilies from the brook, + And for a time forgets the hour glass, + Then wearies of their sweets, and goes his way, + And lets the hot sun kill them, even go these lovers lay. + + And Venus cried, ‘It is dread Artemis + Whose bitter hand hath wrought this cruelty, + Or else that mightier maid whose care it is + To guard her strong and stainless majesty + Upon the hill Athenian,—alas! + That they who loved so well unloved into Death’s house should pass.’ + + So with soft hands she laid the boy and girl + In the great golden waggon tenderly + (Her white throat whiter than a moony pearl + Just threaded with a blue vein’s tapestry + Had not yet ceased to throb, and still her breast + Swayed like a wind-stirred lily in ambiguous unrest) + + And then each pigeon spread its milky van, + The bright car soared into the dawning sky, + And like a cloud the aerial caravan + Passed over the Ægean silently, + Till the faint air was troubled with the song + From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long. + + But when the doves had reached their wonted goal + Where the wide stair of orbèd marble dips + Its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul + Just shook the trembling petals of her lips + And passed into the void, and Venus knew + That one fair maid the less would walk amid her retinue, + + And bade her servants carve a cedar chest + With all the wonder of this history, + Within whose scented womb their limbs should rest + Where olive-trees make tender the blue sky + On the low hills of Paphos, and the Faun + Pipes in the noonday, and the nightingale sings on till dawn. + + Nor failed they to obey her hest, and ere + The morning bee had stung the daffodil + With tiny fretful spear, or from its lair + The waking stag had leapt across the rill + And roused the ouzel, or the lizard crept + Athwart the sunny rock, beneath the grass their bodies slept. + + And when day brake, within that silver shrine + Fed by the flames of cressets tremulous, + Queen Venus knelt and prayed to Proserpine + That she whose beauty made Death amorous + Should beg a guerdon from her pallid Lord, + And let Desire pass across dread Charon’s icy ford. + + III + + IN melancholy moonless Acheron, + Farm for the goodly earth and joyous day + Where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun + Weighs down the apple trees, nor flowery May + Chequers with chestnut blooms the grassy floor, + Where thrushes never sing, and piping linnets mate no more, + + There by a dim and dark Lethæan well + Young Charmides was lying; wearily + He plucked the blossoms from the asphodel, + And with its little rifled treasury + Strewed the dull waters of the dusky stream, + And watched the white stars founder, and the land was like a dream, + + When as he gazed into the watery glass + And through his brown hair’s curly tangles scanned + His own wan face, a shadow seemed to pass + Across the mirror, and a little hand + Stole into his, and warm lips timidly + Brushed his pale cheeks, and breathed their secret forth into a sigh. + + Then turned he round his weary eyes and saw, + And ever nigher still their faces came, + And nigher ever did their young mouths draw + Until they seemed one perfect rose of flame, + And longing arms around her neck he cast, + And felt her throbbing bosom, and his breath came hot and fast, + + And all his hoarded sweets were hers to kiss, + And all her maidenhood was his to slay, + And limb to limb in long and rapturous bliss + Their passion waxed and waned,—O why essay + To pipe again of love, too venturous reed! + Enough, enough that Eros laughed upon that flowerless mead. + + Too venturous poesy, O why essay + To pipe again of passion! fold thy wings + O’er daring Icarus and bid thy lay + Sleep hidden in the lyre’s silent strings + Till thou hast found the old Castalian rill, + Or from the Lesbian waters plucked drowned Sappho’s golden quid! + + Enough, enough that he whose life had been + A fiery pulse of sin, a splendid shame, + Could in the loveless land of Hades glean + One scorching harvest from those fields of flame + Where passion walks with naked unshod feet + And is not wounded,—ah! enough that once their lips could meet + + In that wild throb when all existences + Seemed narrowed to one single ecstasy + Which dies through its own sweetness and the stress + Of too much pleasure, ere Persephone + Had bade them serve her by the ebon throne + Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna loosed her zone. + + + + +POEMS + + +REQUIESCAT + + + TREAD lightly, she is near + Under the snow, + Speak gently, she can hear + The daisies grow. + + All her bright golden hair + Tarnished with rust, + She that was young and fair + Fallen to dust. + + Lily-like, white as snow, + She hardly knew + She was a woman, so + Sweetly she grew. + + Coffin-board, heavy stone, + Lie on her breast, + I vex my heart alone, + She is at rest. + + Peace, Peace, she cannot hear + Lyre or sonnet, + All my life’s buried here, + Heap earth upon it. + + AVIGNON + + + +SAN MINIATO + + + SEE, I have climbed the mountain side + Up to this holy house of God, + Where once that Angel-Painter trod + Who saw the heavens opened wide, + + And throned upon the crescent moon + The Virginal white Queen of Grace,— + Mary! could I but see thy face + Death could not come at all too soon. + + O crowned by God with thorns and pain! + Mother of Christ! O mystic wife! + My heart is weary of this life + And over-sad to sing again. + + O crowned by God with love and flame! + O crowned by Christ the Holy One! + O listen ere the searching sun + Show to the world my sin and shame. + + + +ROME UNVISITED + + + I. + + THE corn has turned from grey to red, + Since first my spirit wandered forth + From the drear cities of the north, + And to Italia’s mountains fled. + + And here I set my face towards home, + For all my pilgrimage is done, + Although, methinks, yon blood-red sun + Marshals the way to Holy Rome. + + O Blessed Lady, who dost hold + Upon the seven hills thy reign! + O Mother without blot or stain, + Crowned with bright crowns of triple gold! + + O Roma, Roma, at thy feet + I lay this barren gift of song! + For, ah! the way is steep and long + That leads unto thy sacred street. + + II. + + AND yet what joy it were for me + To turn my feet unto the south, + And journeying towards the Tiber mouth + To kneel again at Fiesole! + + And wandering through the tangled pines + That break the gold of Arno’s stream, + To see the purple mist and gleam + Of morning on the Apennines + + By many a vineyard-hidden home, + Orchard and olive-garden grey, + Till from the drear Campagna’s way + The seven hills bear up the dome! + + III. + + A PILGRIM from the northern seas— + What joy for me to seek alone + The wondrous temple and the throne + Of him who holds the awful keys! + + When, bright with purple and with gold + Come priest and holy cardinal, + And borne above the heads of all + The gentle Shepherd of the Fold. + + O joy to see before I die + The only God-anointed king, + And hear the silver trumpets ring + A triumph as he passes by! + + Or at the brazen-pillared shrine + Holds high the mystic sacrifice, + And shows his God to human eyes + Beneath the veil of bread and wine. + + IV. + + FOR lo, what changes time can bring! + The cycles of revolving years + May free my heart from all its fears, + And teach my lips a song to sing. + + Before yon field of trembling gold + Is garnered into dusty sheaves, + Or ere the autumn’s scarlet leaves + Flutter as birds adown the wold, + + I may have run the glorious race, + And caught the torch while yet aflame, + And called upon the holy name + Of Him who now doth hide His face. + + ARONA + + + +HUMANITAD + + + IT is full winter now: the trees are bare, + Save where the cattle huddle from the cold + Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear + The autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold + Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true + To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew + + From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay + Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain + Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day + From the low meadows up the narrow lane; + Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep + Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep + + From the shut stable to the frozen stream + And back again disconsolate, and miss + The bawling shepherds and the noisy team; + And overhead in circling listlessness + The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack, + Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack + + Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds + And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck, + And hoots to see the moon; across the meads + Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck; + And a stray seamew with its fretful cry + Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky. + + Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings + His load of faggots from the chilly byre, + And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings + The sappy billets on the waning fire, + And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare + His children at their play, and yet,—the spring is in the air; + + Already the slim crocus stirs the snow, + And soon yon blanchèd fields will bloom again + With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow, + For with the first warm kisses of the rain + The winter’s icy sorrow breaks to tears, + And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers + + From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie, + And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs + Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly + Across our path at evening, and the suns + Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see + Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery + + Dance through the hedges till the early rose, + (That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!) + Burst from its sheathèd emerald and disclose + The little quivering disk of golden fire + Which the bees know so well, for with it come + Pale boy’s-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom. + + Then up and down the field the sower goes, + While close behind the laughing younker scares + With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows, + And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears, + And on the grass the creamy blossom falls + In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals + + Steal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons + Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine, + That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons + With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine + In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed + And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed + + Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply, + And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes, + Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy + Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise, + And violets getting overbold withdraw + From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw. + + O happy field! and O thrice happy tree! + Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock + And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea, + Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock + Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon + Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon. + + Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour, + The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns + Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture + Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations + With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind, + And straggling traveller’s-joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind. + + Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring, + That canst give increase to the sweet-breath’d kine, + And to the kid its little horns, and bring + The soft and silky blossoms to the vine, + Where is that old nepenthe which of yore + Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore! + + There was a time when any common bird + Could make me sing in unison, a time + When all the strings of boyish life were stirred + To quick response or more melodious rhyme + By every forest idyll;—do I change? + Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range? + + Nay, nay, thou art the same: ’tis I who seek + To vex with sighs thy simple solitude, + And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek + Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood; + Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare + To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair! + + Thou art the same: ’tis I whose wretched soul + Takes discontent to be its paramour, + And gives its kingdom to the rude control + Of what should be its servitor,—for sure + Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea + Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ‘’Tis not in me.’ + + To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect + In natural honour, not to bend the knee + In profitless prostrations whose effect + Is by itself condemned, what alchemy + Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed + Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued? + + The minor chord which ends the harmony, + And for its answering brother waits in vain + Sobbing for incompleted melody, + Dies a swan’s death; but I the heir of pain, + A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes, + Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise. + + The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom, + The little dust stored in the narrow urn, + The gentle ΧΑΙΡΕ of the Attic tomb,— + Were not these better far than to return + To my old fitful restless malady, + Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery? + + Nay! for perchance that poppy-crownèd god + Is like the watcher by a sick man’s bed + Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod + Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said, + Death is too rude, too obvious a key + To solve one single secret in a life’s philosophy. + + And Love! that noble madness, whose august + And inextinguishable might can slay + The soul with honeyed drugs,—alas! I must + From such sweet ruin play the runaway, + Although too constant memory never can + Forget the archèd splendour of those brows Olympian + + Which for a little season made my youth + So soft a swoon of exquisite indolence + That all the chiding of more prudent Truth + Seemed the thin voice of jealousy,—O hence + Thou huntress deadlier than Artemis! + Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss. + + My lips have drunk enough,—no more, no more,— + Though Love himself should turn his gilded prow + Back to the troubled waters of this shore + Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now + The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near, + Hence! Hence! I pass unto a life more barren, more austere. + + More barren—ay, those arms will never lean + Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul + In sweet reluctance through the tangled green; + Some other head must wear that aureole, + For I am hers who loves not any man + Whose white and stainless bosom bears the sign Gorgonian. + + Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page, + And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair, + With net and spear and hunting equipage + Let young Adonis to his tryst repair, + But me her fond and subtle-fashioned spell + Delights no more, though I could win her dearest citadel. + + Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy + Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloud + Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy + And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed + In wonder at her feet, not for the sake + Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take. + + Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed! + And, if my lips be musicless, inspire + At least my life: was not thy glory hymned + By One who gave to thee his sword and lyre + Like Æschylos at well-fought Marathon, + And died to show that Milton’s England still could bear a son! + + And yet I cannot tread the Portico + And live without desire, fear and pain, + Or nurture that wise calm which long ago + The grave Athenian master taught to men, + Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted, + To watch the world’s vain phantasies go by with unbowed head. + + Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips, + Those eyes that mirrored all eternity, + Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse + Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne + Is childless; in the night which she had made + For lofty secure flight Athena’s owl itself hath strayed. + + Nor much with Science do I care to climb, + Although by strange and subtle witchery + She drew the moon from heaven: the Muse Time + Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestry + To no less eager eyes; often indeed + In the great epic of Polymnia’s scroll I love to read + + How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war + Against a little town, and panoplied + In gilded mail with jewelled scimitar, + White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede + Between the waving poplars and the sea + Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylæ + + Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall, + And on the nearer side a little brood + Of careless lions holding festival! + And stood amazèd at such hardihood, + And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore, + And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o’er + + Some unfrequented height, and coming down + The autumn forests treacherously slew + What Sparta held most dear and was the crown + Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew + How God had staked an evil net for him + In the small bay at Salamis,—and yet, the page grows dim, + + Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel + With such a goodly time too out of tune + To love it much: for like the Dial’s wheel + That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon + Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes + Restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies. + + O for one grand unselfish simple life + To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills + Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife + Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills, + Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly + Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century! + + Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he + Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul + Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty + Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal + Where love and duty mingle! Him at least + The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom’s feast; + + But we are Learning’s changelings, know by rote + The clarion watchword of each Grecian school + And follow none, the flawless sword which smote + The pagan Hydra is an effete tool + Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now + Shall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow? + + One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod! + Gone is that last dear son of Italy, + Who being man died for the sake of God, + And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully, + O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower, + Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour + + Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or + The Arno with its tawny troubled gold + O’er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror + Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old + When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty + Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery + + Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell + With an old man who grabbled rusty keys, + Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell + With which oblivion buries dynasties + Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast, + As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed. + + He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome, + He drave the base wolf from the lion’s lair, + And now lies dead by that empyreal dome + Which overtops Valdarno hung in air + By Brunelleschi—O Melpomene + Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody! + + Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies + That Joy’s self may grow jealous, and the Nine + Forget awhile their discreet emperies, + Mourning for him who on Rome’s lordliest shrine + Lit for men’s lives the light of Marathon, + And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun! + + O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower! + Let some young Florentine each eventide + Bring coronals of that enchanted flower + Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide, + And deck the marble tomb wherein he lies + Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes; + + Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings, + Being tempest-driven to the farthest rim + Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings + Of the eternal chanting Cherubim + Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed away + Into a moonless void,—and yet, though he is dust and clay, + + He is not dead, the immemorial Fates + Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain. + Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates! + Ye argent clarions, sound a loftier strain + For the vile thing he hated lurks within + Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin. + + Still what avails it that she sought her cave + That murderous mother of red harlotries? + At Munich on the marble architrave + The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas + Which wash Ægina fret in loneliness + Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless + + For lack of our ideals, if one star + Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust + Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war + Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust + Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe + For all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy, + + What Easter Day shall make her children rise, + Who were not Gods yet suffered? what sure feet + Shall find their grave-clothes folded? what clear eyes + Shall see them bodily? O it were meet + To roll the stone from off the sepulchre + And kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of her, + + Our Italy! our mother visible! + Most blessed among nations and most sad, + For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell + That day at Aspromonte and was glad + That in an age when God was bought and sold + One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold, + + See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves + Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: Poverty + Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives + Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily, + And no word said:—O we are wretched men + Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen + + Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword + Which slew its master righteously? the years + Have lost their ancient leader, and no word + Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears: + While as a ruined mother in some spasm + Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm + + Genders unlawful children, Anarchy + Freedom’s own Judas, the vile prodigal + Licence who steals the gold of Liberty + And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real + One Fraticide since Cain, Envy the asp + That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp + + Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed + For whose dull appetite men waste away + Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed + Of things which slay their sower, these each day + Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet + Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street. + + What even Cromwell spared is desecrated + By weed and worm, left to the stormy play + Of wind and beating snow, or renovated + By more destructful hands: Time’s worst decay + Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness, + But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness. + + Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing + Through Lincoln’s lofty choir, till the air + Seems from such marble harmonies to ring + With sweeter song than common lips can dare + To draw from actual reed? ah! where is now + The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow + + For Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One + Who loved the lilies of the field with all + Our dearest English flowers? the same sun + Rises for us: the seasons natural + Weave the same tapestry of green and grey: + The unchanged hills are with us: but that Spirit hath passed away. + + And yet perchance it may be better so, + For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen, + Murder her brother is her bedfellow, + And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene + And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set; + Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate! + + For gentle brotherhood, the harmony + Of living in the healthful air, the swift + Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free + And women chaste, these are the things which lift + Our souls up more than even Agnolo’s + Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er the scroll of human woes, + + Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair + White as her own sweet lily and as tall, + Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,— + Ah! somehow life is bigger after all + Than any painted angel, could we see + The God that is within us! The old Greek serenity + + Which curbs the passion of that level line + Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes + And chastened limbs ride round Athena’s shrine + And mirror her divine economies, + And balanced symmetry of what in man + Would else wage ceaseless warfare,—this at least within the span + + Between our mother’s kisses and the grave + Might so inform our lives, that we could win + Such mighty empires that from her cave + Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin + Would walk ashamed of his adulteries, + And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes. + + To make the body and the spirit one + With all right things, till no thing live in vain + From morn to noon, but in sweet unison + With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain + The soul in flawless essence high enthroned, + Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned, + + Mark with serene impartiality + The strife of things, and yet be comforted, + Knowing that by the chain causality + All separate existences are wed + Into one supreme whole, whose utterance + Is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance + + Of Life in most august omnipresence, + Through which the rational intellect would find + In passion its expression, and mere sense, + Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind, + And being joined with it in harmony + More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary, + + Strike from their several tones one octave chord + Whose cadence being measureless would fly + Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord + Return refreshed with its new empery + And more exultant power,—this indeed + Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed. + + Ah! it was easy when the world was young + To keep one’s life free and inviolate, + From our sad lips another song is rung, + By our own hands our heads are desecrate, + Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessed + Of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest. + + Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown, + And of all men we are most wretched who + Must live each other’s lives and not our own + For very pity’s sake and then undo + All that we lived for—it was otherwise + When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies. + + But we have left those gentle haunts to pass + With weary feet to the new Calvary, + Where we behold, as one who in a glass + Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity, + And in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze + Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise. + + O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn! + O chalice of all common miseries! + Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne + An agony of endless centuries, + And we were vain and ignorant nor knew + That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew. + + Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds, + The night that covers and the lights that fade, + The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds, + The lips betraying and the life betrayed; + The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we + Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy. + + Is this the end of all that primal force + Which, in its changes being still the same, + From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course, + Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame, + Till the suns met in heaven and began + Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man! + + Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though + The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain + Loosen the nails—we shall come down I know, + Staunch the red wounds—we shall be whole again, + No need have we of hyssop-laden rod, + That which is purely human, that is godlike, that is God. + + + +LOUIS NAPOLEON + + + EAGLE of Austerlitz! where were thy wings + When far away upon a barbarous strand, + In fight unequal, by an obscure hand, + Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings! + + Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red, + Or ride in state through Paris in the van + Of thy returning legions, but instead + Thy mother France, free and republican, + + Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place + The better laurels of a soldier’s crown, + That not dishonoured should thy soul go down + To tell the mighty Sire of thy race + + That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty, + And found it sweeter than his honied bees, + And that the giant wave Democracy + Breaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease. + + + +ENDYMION +(FOR MUSIC) + + + THE apple trees are hung with gold, + And birds are loud in Arcady, + The sheep lie bleating in the fold, + The wild goat runs across the wold, + But yesterday his love he told, + I know he will come back to me. + O rising moon! O Lady moon! + Be you my lover’s sentinel, + You cannot choose but know him well, + For he is shod with purple shoon, + You cannot choose but know my love, + For he a shepherd’s crook doth bear, + And he is soft as any dove, + And brown and curly is his hair. + + The turtle now has ceased to call + Upon her crimson-footed groom, + The grey wolf prowls about the stall, + The lily’s singing seneschal + Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all + The violet hills are lost in gloom. + O risen moon! O holy moon! + Stand on the top of Helice, + And if my own true love you see, + Ah! if you see the purple shoon, + The hazel crook, the lad’s brown hair, + The goat-skin wrapped about his arm, + Tell him that I am waiting where + The rushlight glimmers in the Farm. + + The falling dew is cold and chill, + And no bird sings in Arcady, + The little fauns have left the hill, + Even the tired daffodil + Has closed its gilded doors, and still + My lover comes not back to me. + False moon! False moon! O waning moon! + Where is my own true lover gone, + Where are the lips vermilion, + The shepherd’s crook, the purple shoon? + Why spread that silver pavilion, + Why wear that veil of drifting mist? + Ah! thou hast young Endymion + Thou hast the lips that should be kissed! + + + +LE JARDIN + + + THE lily’s withered chalice falls + Around its rod of dusty gold, + And from the beech-trees on the wold + The last wood-pigeon coos and calls. + + The gaudy leonine sunflower + Hangs black and barren on its stalk, + And down the windy garden walk + The dead leaves scatter,—hour by hour. + + Pale privet-petals white as milk + Are blown into a snowy mass: + The roses lie upon the grass + Like little shreds of crimson silk. + + + +LA MER + + + A WHITE mist drifts across the shrouds, + A wild moon in this wintry sky + Gleams like an angry lion’s eye + Out of a mane of tawny clouds. + + The muffled steersman at the wheel + Is but a shadow in the gloom;— + And in the throbbing engine-room + Leap the long rods of polished steel. + + The shattered storm has left its trace + Upon this huge and heaving dome, + For the thin threads of yellow foam + Float on the waves like ravelled lace. + + + +LE PANNEAU + + + UNDER the rose-tree’s dancing shade + There stands a little ivory girl, + Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl + With pale green nails of polished jade. + + The red leaves fall upon the mould, + The white leaves flutter, one by one, + Down to a blue bowl where the sun, + Like a great dragon, writhes in gold. + + The white leaves float upon the air, + The red leaves flutter idly down, + Some fall upon her yellow gown, + And some upon her raven hair. + + She takes an amber lute and sings, + And as she sings a silver crane + Begins his scarlet neck to strain, + And flap his burnished metal wings. + + She takes a lute of amber bright, + And from the thicket where he lies + Her lover, with his almond eyes, + Watches her movements in delight. + + And now she gives a cry of fear, + And tiny tears begin to start: + A thorn has wounded with its dart + The pink-veined sea-shell of her ear. + + And now she laughs a merry note: + There has fallen a petal of the rose + Just where the yellow satin shows + The blue-veined flower of her throat. + + With pale green nails of polished jade, + Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl, + There stands a little ivory girl + Under the rose-tree’s dancing shade. + + + +LES BALLONS + + + AGAINST these turbid turquoise skies + The light and luminous balloons + Dip and drift like satin moons + Drift like silken butterflies; + + Reel with every windy gust, + Rise and reel like dancing girls, + Float like strange transparent pearls, + Fall and float like silver dust. + + Now to the low leaves they cling, + Each with coy fantastic pose, + Each a petal of a rose + Straining at a gossamer string. + + Then to the tall trees they climb, + Like thin globes of amethyst, + Wandering opals keeping tryst + With the rubies of the lime. + + + +CANZONET + + + I HAVE no store + Of gryphon-guarded gold; + Now, as before, + Bare is the shepherd’s fold. + Rubies nor pearls + Have I to gem thy throat; + Yet woodland girls + Have loved the shepherd’s note. + + Then pluck a reed + And bid me sing to thee, + For I would feed + Thine ears with melody, + Who art more fair + Than fairest fleur-de-lys, + More sweet and rare + Than sweetest ambergris. + + What dost thou fear? + Young Hyacinth is slain, + Pan is not here, + And will not come again. + No horned Faun + Treads down the yellow leas, + No God at dawn + Steals through the olive trees. + + Hylas is dead, + Nor will he e’er divine + Those little red + Rose-petalled lips of thine. + On the high hill + No ivory dryads play, + Silver and still + Sinks the sad autumn day. + + + +LE JARDIN DES TUILERIES + + + THIS winter air is keen and cold, + And keen and cold this winter sun, + But round my chair the children run + Like little things of dancing gold. + + Sometimes about the painted kiosk + The mimic soldiers strut and stride, + Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide + In the bleak tangles of the bosk. + + And sometimes, while the old nurse cons + Her book, they steal across the square, + And launch their paper navies where + Huge Triton writhes in greenish bronze. + + And now in mimic flight they flee, + And now they rush, a boisterous band— + And, tiny hand on tiny hand, + Climb up the black and leafless tree. + + Ah! cruel tree! if I were you, + And children climbed me, for their sake + Though it be winter I would break + Into spring blossoms white and blue! + + + +PAN +DOUBLE VILLANELLE + + + I. + + O GOAT-FOOT God of Arcady! + This modern world is grey and old, + And what remains to us of thee? + + No more the shepherd lads in glee + Throw apples at thy wattled fold, + O goat-foot God of Arcady! + + Nor through the laurels can one see + Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold + And what remains to us of thee? + + And dull and dead our Thames would be, + For here the winds are chill and cold, + O goat-loot God of Arcady! + + Then keep the tomb of Helice, + Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold, + And what remains to us of thee? + + Though many an unsung elegy + Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold, + O goat-foot God of Arcady! + Ah, what remains to us of thee? + + II. + + AH, leave the hills of Arcady, + Thy satyrs and their wanton play, + This modern world hath need of thee. + + No nymph or Faun indeed have we, + For Faun and nymph are old and grey, + Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! + + This is the land where liberty + Lit grave-browed Milton on his way, + This modern world hath need of thee! + + A land of ancient chivalry + Where gentle Sidney saw the day, + Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! + + This fierce sea-lion of the sea, + This England lacks some stronger lay, + This modern world hath need of thee! + + Then blow some trumpet loud and free, + And give thine oaten pipe away, + Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! + This modern world hath need of thee! + + + +IN THE FOREST + + + OUT of the mid-wood’s twilight + Into the meadow’s dawn, + Ivory limbed and brown-eyed, + Flashes my Faun! + + He skips through the copses singing, + And his shadow dances along, + And I know not which I should follow, + Shadow or song! + + O Hunter, snare me his shadow! + O Nightingale, catch me his strain! + Else moonstruck with music and madness + I track him in vain! + + + +SYMPHONY IN YELLOW + + + AN omnibus across the bridge + Crawls like a yellow butterfly + And, here and there, a passer-by + Shows like a little restless midge. + + Big barges full of yellow hay + Are moored against the shadowy wharf, + And, like a yellow silken scarf, + The thick fog hangs along the quay. + + The yellow leaves begin to fade + And flutter from the Temple elms, + And at my feet the pale green Thames + Lies like a rod of rippled jade. + + + + +SONNETS + + +HÉLAS! + + + TO drift with every passion till my soul + Is a stringed lute on which can winds can play, + Is it for this that I have given away + Mine ancient wisdom and austere control? + Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll + Scrawled over on some boyish holiday + With idle songs for pipe and virelay, + Which do but mar the secret of the whole. + Surely there was a time I might have trod + The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance + Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God: + Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod + I did but touch the honey of romance— + And must I lose a soul’s inheritance? + + + +TO MILTON + + + MILTON! I think thy spirit hath passed away + From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers; + This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours + Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey, + And the age changed unto a mimic play + Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours: + For all our pomp and pageantry and powers + We are but fit to delve the common clay, + Seeing this little isle on which we stand, + This England, this sea-lion of the sea, + By ignorant demagogues is held in fee, + Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land + Which bare a triple empire in her hand + When Cromwell spake the word Democracy! + + + +ON THE MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA + + + CHRIST, dost Thou live indeed? or are Thy bones + Still straitened in their rock-hewn sepulchre? + And was Thy Rising only dreamed by her + Whose love of Thee for all her sin atones? + For here the air is horrid with men’s groans, + The priests who call upon Thy name are slain, + Dost Thou not hear the bitter wail of pain + From those whose children lie upon the stones? + Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom + Curtains the land, and through the starless night + Over Thy Cross a Crescent moon I see! + If Thou in very truth didst burst the tomb + Come down, O Son of Man! and show Thy might + Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee! + + + +HOLY WEEK AT GENOA + + + I WANDERED through Scoglietto’s far retreat, + The oranges on each o’erhanging spray + Burned as bright lamps of gold to shame the day; + Some startled bird with fluttering wings and fleet + Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet + Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay: + And the curved waves that streaked the great green bay + Laughed i’ the sun, and life seemed very sweet. + Outside the young boy-priest passed singing clear, + ‘Jesus the son of Mary has been slain, + O come and fill His sepulchre with flowers.’ + Ah, God! Ah, God! those dear Hellenic hours + Had drowned all memory of Thy bitter pain, + The Cross, the Crown, the Soldiers and the Spear. + + + +URBS SACRA ÆTERNA + + + ROME! what a scroll of History thine has been; + In the first days thy sword republican + Ruled the whole world for many an age’s span: + Then of the peoples wert thou royal Queen, + Till in thy streets the bearded Goth was seen; + And now upon thy walls the breezes fan + (Ah, city crowned by God, discrowned by man!) + The hated flag of red and white and green. + When was thy glory! when in search for power + Thine eagles flew to greet the double sun, + And the wild nations shuddered at thy rod? + Nay, but thy glory tarried for this hour, + When pilgrims kneel before the Holy One, + The prisoned shepherd of the Church of God. + MONTRE MARIO + + + +E TENEBRIS + + + COME down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand, + For I am drowning in a stormier sea + Than Simon on Thy lake of Galilee: + The wine of life is spilt upon the sand, + My heart is as some famine-murdered land + Whence all good things have perished utterly, + And well I know my soul in Hell must lie + If I this night before God’s throne should stand. + ‘He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase, + Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name + From morn to noon on Carmel’s smitten height.’ + Nay, peace, I shall behold, before the night, + The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame, + The wounded hands, the weary human face. + + + +AT VERONA + + + HOW steep the stairs within King’s houses are + For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread, + And O how salt and bitter is the bread + Which falls from this Hound’s table,—better far + That I had died in the red ways of war, + Or that the gate of Florence bare my head, + Than to live thus, by all things comraded + Which seek the essence of my soul to mar. + + ‘Curse God and die: what better hope than this? + He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss + Of his gold city, and eternal day’— + Nay peace: behind my prison’s blinded bars + I do possess what none can take away, + My love and all the glory of the stars. + + + +ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’ LOVE LETTERS + + + THESE are the letters which Endymion wrote + To one he loved in secret, and apart. + And now the brawlers of the auction mart + Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note, + Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote + The merchant’s price. I think they love not art + Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart + That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat. + + Is it not said that many years ago, + In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran + With torches through the midnight, and began + To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw + Dice for the garments of a wretched man, + Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe? + + + +THE NEW REMORSE + + + THE sin was mine; I did not understand. + So now is music prisoned in her cave, + Save where some ebbing desultory wave + Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand. + And in the withered hollow of this land + Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave, + That hardly can the leaden willow crave + One silver blossom from keen Winter’s hand. + + But who is this who cometh by the shore? + (Nay, love, look up and wonder!) Who is this + Who cometh in dyed garments from the South? + It is thy new-found Lord, and he shall kiss + The yet unravished roses of thy mouth, + And I shall weep and worship, as before. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARMIDES AND OTHER POEMS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1031-0.txt or 1031-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/3/1031 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1032-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1032-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..06099ba9 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1032-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2233 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pupil, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Pupil + + +Author: Henry James + + + +Release Date: December 24, 2010 [eBook #1032] +First released: July 27, 1997 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PUPIL*** + + +Transcribed from the 1916 Le Roy Phillips edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + THE PUPIL + + + BY HENRY JAMES + + * * * * * + + LE ROY PHILLIPS + BOSTON + + * * * * * + + This edition first published 1916 + + The text follows that of the + Definitive Edition + + * * * * * + + _Printed in Great Britain_ + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +The poor young man hesitated and procrastinated: it cost him such an +effort to broach the subject of terms, to speak of money to a person who +spoke only of feelings and, as it were, of the aristocracy. Yet he was +unwilling to take leave, treating his engagement as settled, without some +more conventional glance in that direction than he could find an opening +for in the manner of the large affable lady who sat there drawing a pair +of soiled gants de Suède through a fat jewelled hand and, at once +pressing and gliding, repeated over and over everything but the thing he +would have liked to hear. He would have liked to hear the figure of his +salary; but just as he was nervously about to sound that note the little +boy came back—the little boy Mrs. Moreen had sent out of the room to +fetch her fan. He came back without the fan, only with the casual +observation that he couldn’t find it. As he dropped this cynical +confession he looked straight and hard at the candidate for the honour of +taking his education in hand. This personage reflected somewhat grimly +that the thing he should have to teach his little charge would be to +appear to address himself to his mother when he spoke to her—especially +not to make her such an improper answer as that. + +When Mrs. Moreen bethought herself of this pretext for getting rid of +their companion Pemberton supposed it was precisely to approach the +delicate subject of his remuneration. But it had been only to say some +things about her son that it was better a boy of eleven shouldn’t catch. +They were extravagantly to his advantage save when she lowered her voice +to sigh, tapping her left side familiarly, “And all overclouded by +_this_, you know; all at the mercy of a weakness—!” Pemberton gathered +that the weakness was in the region of the heart. He had known the poor +child was not robust: this was the basis on which he had been invited to +treat, through an English lady, an Oxford acquaintance, then at Nice, who +happened to know both his needs and those of the amiable American family +looking out for something really superior in the way of a resident tutor. + +The young man’s impression of his prospective pupil, who had come into +the room as if to see for himself the moment Pemberton was admitted, was +not quite the soft solicitation the visitor had taken for granted. +Morgan Moreen was somehow sickly without being “delicate,” and that he +looked intelligent—it is true Pemberton wouldn’t have enjoyed his being +stupid—only added to the suggestion that, as with his big mouth and big +ears he really couldn’t be called pretty, he might too utterly fail to +please. Pemberton was modest, was even timid; and the chance that his +small scholar might prove cleverer than himself had quite figured, to his +anxiety, among the dangers of an untried experiment. He reflected, +however, that these were risks one had to run when one accepted a +position, as it was called, in a private family; when as yet one’s +university honours had, pecuniarily speaking, remained barren. At any +rate when Mrs. Moreen got up as to intimate that, since it was understood +he would enter upon his duties within the week she would let him off now, +he succeeded, in spite of the presence of the child, in squeezing out a +phrase about the rate of payment. It was not the fault of the conscious +smile which seemed a reference to the lady’s expensive identity, it was +not the fault of this demonstration, which had, in a sort, both vagueness +and point, if the allusion didn’t sound rather vulgar. This was exactly +because she became still more gracious to reply: “Oh I can assure you +that all that will be quite regular.” + +Pemberton only wondered, while he took up his hat, what “all that” was to +amount to—people had such different ideas. Mrs. Moreen’s words, however, +seemed to commit the family to a pledge definite enough to elicit from +the child a strange little comment in the shape of the mocking foreign +ejaculation “Oh la-la!” + +Pemberton, in some confusion, glanced at him as he walked slowly to the +window with his back turned, his hands in his pockets and the air in his +elderly shoulders of a boy who didn’t play. The young man wondered if he +should be able to teach him to play, though his mother had said it would +never do and that this was why school was impossible. Mrs. Moreen +exhibited no discomfiture; she only continued blandly: “Mr. Moreen will +be delighted to meet your wishes. As I told you, he has been called to +London for a week. As soon as he comes back you shall have it out with +him.” + +This was so frank and friendly that the young man could only reply, +laughing as his hostess laughed: “Oh I don’t imagine we shall have much +of a battle.” + +“They’ll give you anything you like,” the boy remarked unexpectedly, +returning from the window. “We don’t mind what anything costs—we live +awfully well.” + +“My darling, you’re too quaint!” his mother exclaimed, putting out to +caress him a practised but ineffectual hand. He slipped out of it, but +looked with intelligent innocent eyes at Pemberton, who had already had +time to notice that from one moment to the other his small satiric face +seemed to change its time of life. At this moment it was infantine, yet +it appeared also to be under the influence of curious intuitions and +knowledges. Pemberton rather disliked precocity and was disappointed to +find gleams of it in a disciple not yet in his teens. Nevertheless he +divined on the spot that Morgan wouldn’t prove a bore. He would prove on +the contrary a source of agitation. This idea held the young man, in +spite of a certain repulsion. + +“You pompous little person! We’re not extravagant!” Mrs. Moreen gaily +protested, making another unsuccessful attempt to draw the boy to her +side. “You must know what to expect,” she went on to Pemberton. + +“The less you expect the better!” her companion interposed. “But we +_are_ people of fashion.” + +“Only so far as _you_ make us so!” Mrs. Moreen tenderly mocked. “Well +then, on Friday—don’t tell me you’re superstitious—and mind you don’t +fail us. Then you’ll see us all. I’m so sorry the girls are out. I +guess you’ll like the girls. And, you know, I’ve another son, quite +different from this one.” + +“He tries to imitate me,” Morgan said to their friend. + +“He tries? Why he’s twenty years old!” cried Mrs. Moreen. + +“You’re very witty,” Pemberton remarked to the child—a proposition his +mother echoed with enthusiasm, declaring Morgan’s sallies to be the +delight of the house. + +The boy paid no heed to this; he only enquired abruptly of the visitor, +who was surprised afterwards that he hadn’t struck him as offensively +forward: “Do you _want_ very much to come?” + +“Can you doubt it after such a description of what I shall hear?” +Pemberton replied. Yet he didn’t want to come at all; he was coming +because he had to go somewhere, thanks to the collapse of his fortune at +the end of a year abroad spent on the system of putting his scant +patrimony into a single full wave of experience. He had had his full +wave but couldn’t pay the score at his inn. Moreover he had caught in +the boy’s eyes the glimpse of a far-off appeal. + +“Well, I’ll do the best I can for you,” said Morgan; with which he turned +away again. He passed out of one of the long windows; Pemberton saw him +go and lean on the parapet of the terrace. He remained there while the +young man took leave of his mother, who, on Pemberton’s looking as if he +expected a farewell from him, interposed with: “Leave him, leave him; +he’s so strange!” Pemberton supposed her to fear something he might say. +“He’s a genius—you’ll love him,” she added. “He’s much the most +interesting person in the family.” And before he could invent some +civility to oppose to this she wound up with: “But we’re all good, you +know!” + +“He’s a genius—you’ll love him!” were words that recurred to our aspirant +before the Friday, suggesting among many things that geniuses were not +invariably loveable. However, it was all the better if there was an +element that would make tutorship absorbing: he had perhaps taken too +much for granted it would only disgust him. As he left the villa after +his interview he looked up at the balcony and saw the child leaning over +it. “We shall have great larks!” he called up. + +Morgan hung fire a moment and then gaily returned: “By the time you come +back I shall have thought of something witty!” + +This made Pemberton say to himself “After all he’s rather nice.” + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +On the Friday he saw them all, as Mrs. Moreen had promised, for her +husband had come back and the girls and the other son were at home. Mr. +Moreen had a white moustache, a confiding manner and, in his buttonhole, +the ribbon of a foreign order—bestowed, as Pemberton eventually learned, +for services. For what services he never clearly ascertained: this was a +point—one of a large number—that Mr. Moreen’s manner never confided. +What it emphatically did confide was that he was even more a man of the +world than you might first make out. Ulick, the firstborn, was in +visible training for the same profession—under the disadvantage as yet, +however, of a buttonhole but feebly floral and a moustache with no +pretensions to type. The girls had hair and figures and manners and +small fat feet, but had never been out alone. As for Mrs. Moreen +Pemberton saw on a nearer view that her elegance was intermittent and her +parts didn’t always match. Her husband, as she had promised, met with +enthusiasm Pemberton’s ideas in regard to a salary. The young man had +endeavoured to keep these stammerings modest, and Mr. Moreen made it no +secret that _he_ found them wanting in “style.” He further mentioned +that he aspired to be intimate with his children, to be their best +friend, and that he was always looking out for them. That was what he +went off for, to London and other places—to look out; and this vigilance +was the theory of life, as well as the real occupation, of the whole +family. They all looked out, for they were very frank on the subject of +its being necessary. They desired it to be understood that they were +earnest people, and also that their fortune, though quite adequate for +earnest people, required the most careful administration. Mr. Moreen, as +the parent bird, sought sustenance for the nest. Ulick invoked support +mainly at the club, where Pemberton guessed that it was usually served on +green cloth. The girls used to do up their hair and their frocks +themselves, and our young man felt appealed to to be glad, in regard to +Morgan’s education, that, though it must naturally be of the best, it +didn’t cost too much. After a little he _was_ glad, forgetting at times +his own needs in the interest inspired by the child’s character and +culture and the pleasure of making easy terms for him. + +During the first weeks of their acquaintance Morgan had been as puzzling +as a page in an unknown language—altogether different from the obvious +little Anglo-Saxons who had misrepresented childhood to Pemberton. +Indeed the whole mystic volume in which the boy had been amateurishly +bound demanded some practice in translation. To-day, after a +considerable interval, there is something phantasmagoria, like a +prismatic reflexion or a serial novel, in Pemberton’s memory of the +queerness of the Moreens. If it were not for a few tangible tokens—a +lock of Morgan’s hair cut by his own hand, and the half-dozen letters +received from him when they were disjoined—the whole episode and the +figures peopling it would seem too inconsequent for anything but +dreamland. Their supreme quaintness was their success—as it appeared to +him for a while at the time; since he had never seen a family so +brilliantly equipped for failure. Wasn’t it success to have kept him so +hatefully long? Wasn’t it success to have drawn him in that first +morning at déjeuner, the Friday he came—it was enough to _make_ one +superstitious—so that he utterly committed himself, and this not by +calculation or on a signal, but from a happy instinct which made them, +like a band of gipsies, work so neatly together? They amused him as much +as if they had really been a band of gipsies. He was still young and had +not seen much of the world—his English years had been properly arid; +therefore the reversed conventions of the Moreens—for they had _their_ +desperate proprieties—struck him as topsy-turvy. He had encountered +nothing like them at Oxford; still less had any such note been struck to +his younger American ear during the four years at Yale in which he had +richly supposed himself to be reacting against a Puritan strain. The +reaction of the Moreens, at any rate, went ever so much further. He had +thought himself very sharp that first day in hitting them all off in his +mind with the “cosmopolite” label. Later it seemed feeble and +colourless—confessedly helplessly provisional. + +He yet when he first applied it felt a glow of joy—for an instructor he +was still empirical—rise from the apprehension that living with them +would really be to see life. Their sociable strangeness was an +intimation of that—their chatter of tongues, their gaiety and good +humour, their infinite dawdling (they were always getting themselves up, +but it took forever, and Pemberton had once found Mr. Moreen shaving in +the drawing-room), their French, their Italian and, cropping up in the +foreign fluencies, their cold tough slices of American. They lived on +macaroni and coffee—they had these articles prepared in perfection—but +they knew recipes for a hundred other dishes. They overflowed with music +and song, were always humming and catching each other up, and had a sort +of professional acquaintance with Continental cities. They talked of +“good places” as if they had been pickpockets or strolling players. They +had at Nice a villa, a carriage, a piano and a banjo, and they went to +official parties. They were a perfect calendar of the “days” of their +friends, which Pemberton knew them, when they were indisposed, to get out +of bed to go to, and which made the week larger than life when Mrs. +Moreen talked of them with Paula and Amy. Their initiations gave their +new inmate at first an almost dazzling sense of culture. Mrs. Moreen had +translated something at some former period—an author whom it made +Pemberton feel borné never to have heard of. They could imitate Venetian +and sing Neapolitan, and when they wanted to say something very +particular communicated with each other in an ingenious dialect of their +own, an elastic spoken cipher which Pemberton at first took for some +patois of one of their countries, but which he “caught on to” as he would +not have grasped provincial development of Spanish or German. + +“It’s the family language—Ultramoreen,” Morgan explained to him drolly +enough; but the boy rarely condescended to use it himself, though he +dealt in colloquial Latin as if he had been a little prelate. + +Among all the “days” with which Mrs. Moreen’s memory was taxed she +managed to squeeze in one of her own, which her friends sometimes forgot. +But the house drew a frequented air from the number of fine people who +were freely named there and from several mysterious men with foreign +titles and English clothes whom Morgan called the princes and who, on +sofas with the girls, talked French very loud—though sometimes with some +oddity of accent—as if to show they were saying nothing improper. +Pemberton wondered how the princes could ever propose in that tone and so +publicly: he took for granted cynically that this was what was desired of +them. Then he recognised that even for the chance of such an advantage +Mrs. Moreen would never allow Paula and Amy to receive alone. These +young ladies were not at all timid, but it was just the safeguards that +made them so candidly free. It was a houseful of Bohemians who wanted +tremendously to be Philistines. + +In one respect, however, certainly they achieved no rigour—they were +wonderfully amiable and ecstatic about Morgan. It was a genuine +tenderness, an artless admiration, equally strong in each. They even +praised his beauty, which was small, and were as afraid of him as if they +felt him of finer clay. They spoke of him as a little angel and a +prodigy—they touched on his want of health with long vague faces. +Pemberton feared at first an extravagance that might make him hate the +boy, but before this happened he had become extravagant himself. Later, +when he had grown rather to hate the others, it was a bribe to patience +for him that they were at any rate nice about Morgan, going on tiptoe if +they fancied he was showing symptoms, and even giving up somebody’s “day” +to procure him a pleasure. Mixed with this too was the oddest wish to +make him independent, as if they had felt themselves not good enough for +him. They passed him over to the new members of their circle very much +as if wishing to force some charity of adoption on so free an agent and +get rid of their own charge. They were delighted when they saw Morgan +take so to his kind playfellow, and could think of no higher praise for +the young man. It was strange how they contrived to reconcile the +appearance, and indeed the essential fact, of adoring the child with +their eagerness to wash their hands of him. Did they want to get rid of +him before he should find them out? Pemberton was finding them out month +by month. The boy’s fond family, however this might be, turned their +backs with exaggerated delicacy, as if to avoid the reproach of +interfering. Seeing in time how little he had in common with them—it was +by _them_ he first observed it; they proclaimed it with complete +humility—his companion was moved to speculate on the mysteries of +transmission, the far jumps of heredity. Where his detachment from most +of the things they represented had come from was more than an observer +could say—it certainly had burrowed under two or three generations. + +As for Pemberton’s own estimate of his pupil, it was a good while before +he got the point of view, so little had he been prepared for it by the +smug young barbarians to whom the tradition of tutorship, as hitherto +revealed to him, had been adjusted. Morgan was scrappy and surprising, +deficient in many properties supposed common to the genus and abounding +in others that were the portion only of the supernaturally clever. One +day his friend made a great stride: it cleared up the question to +perceive that Morgan _was_ supernaturally clever and that, though the +formula was temporarily meagre, this would be the only assumption on +which one could successfully deal with him. He had the general quality +of a child for whom life had not been simplified by school, a kind of +homebred sensibility which might have been as bad for himself but was +charming for others, and a whole range of refinement and +perception—little musical vibrations as taking as picked-up airs—begotten +by wandering about Europe at the tail of his migratory tribe. This might +not have been an education to recommend in advance, but its results with +so special a subject were as appreciable as the marks on a piece of fine +porcelain. There was at the same time in him a small strain of stoicism, +doubtless the fruit of having had to begin early to bear pain, which +counted for pluck and made it of less consequence that he might have been +thought at school rather a polyglot little beast. Pemberton indeed +quickly found himself rejoicing that school was out of the question: in +any million of boys it was probably good for all but one, and Morgan was +that millionth. It would have made him comparative and superior—it might +have made him really require kicking. Pemberton would try to be school +himself—a bigger seminary than five hundred grazing donkeys, so that, +winning no prizes, the boy would remain unconscious and irresponsible and +amusing—amusing, because, though life was already intense in his childish +nature, freshness still made there a strong draught for jokes. It turned +out that even in the still air of Morgan’s various disabilities jokes +flourished greatly. He was a pale lean acute undeveloped little +cosmopolite, who liked intellectual gymnastics and who also, as regards +the behaviour of mankind, had noticed more things than you might suppose, +but who nevertheless had his proper playroom of superstitions, where he +smashed a dozen toys a day. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +At Nice once, toward evening, as the pair rested in the open air after a +walk, and looked over the sea at the pink western lights, he said +suddenly to his comrade: “Do you like it, you know—being with us all in +this intimate way?” + +“My dear fellow, why should I stay if I didn’t?” + +“How do I know you’ll stay? I’m almost sure you won’t, very long.” + +“I hope you don’t mean to dismiss me,” said Pemberton. + +Morgan debated, looking at the sunset. “I think if I did right I ought +to.” + +“Well, I know I’m supposed to instruct you in virtue; but in that case +don’t do right.” + +“’You’re very young—fortunately,” Morgan went on, turning to him again. + +“Oh yes, compared with you!” + +“Therefore it won’t matter so much if you do lose a lot of time.” + +“That’s the way to look at it,” said Pemberton accommodatingly. + +They were silent a minute; after which the boy asked: “Do you like my +father and my mother very much?” + +“Dear me, yes. They’re charming people.” + +Morgan received this with another silence; then unexpectedly, familiarly, +but at the same time affectionately, he remarked: “You’re a jolly old +humbug!” + +For a particular reason the words made our young man change colour. The +boy noticed in an instant that he had turned red, whereupon he turned red +himself and pupil and master exchanged a longish glance in which there +was a consciousness of many more things than are usually touched upon, +even tacitly, in such a relation. It produced for Pemberton an +embarrassment; it raised in a shadowy form a question—this was the first +glimpse of it—destined to play a singular and, as he imagined, owing to +the altogether peculiar conditions, an unprecedented part in his +intercourse with his little companion. Later, when he found himself +talking with the youngster in a way in which few youngsters could ever +have been talked with, he thought of that clumsy moment on the bench at +Nice as the dawn of an understanding that had broadened. What had added +to the clumsiness then was that he thought it his duty to declare to +Morgan that he might abuse him, Pemberton, as much as he liked, but must +never abuse his parents. To this Morgan had the easy retort that he +hadn’t dreamed of abusing them; which appeared to be true: it put +Pemberton in the wrong. + +“Then why am I a humbug for saying _I_ think them charming?” the young +man asked, conscious of a certain rashness. + +“Well—they’re not your parents.” + +“They love you better than anything in the world—never forget that,” said +Pemberton. + +“Is that why you like them so much?” + +“They’re very kind to me,” Pemberton replied evasively. + +“You _are_ a humbug!” laughed Morgan, passing an arm into his tutor’s. +He leaned against him looking oft at the sea again and swinging his long +thin legs. + +“Don’t kick my shins,” said Pemberton while he reflected “Hang it, I +can’t complain of them to the child!” + +“There’s another reason, too,” Morgan went on, keeping his legs still. + +“Another reason for what?” + +“Besides their not being your parents.” + +“I don’t understand you,” said Pemberton. + +“Well, you will before long. All right!” + +He did understand fully before long, but he made a fight even with +himself before he confessed it. He thought it the oddest thing to have a +struggle with the child about. He wondered he didn’t hate the hope of +the Moreens for bringing the struggle on. But by the time it began any +such sentiment for that scion was closed to him. Morgan was a special +case, and to know him was to accept him on his own odd terms. Pemberton +had spent his aversion to special cases before arriving at knowledge. +When at last he did arrive his quandary was great. Against every +interest he had attached himself. They would have to meet things +together. Before they went home that evening at Nice the boy had said, +clinging to his arm: + +“Well, at any rate you’ll hang on to the last.” + +“To the last?” + +“Till you’re fairly beaten.” + +“_You_ ought to be fairly beaten!” cried the young man, drawing him +closer. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +A year after he had come to live with them Mr. and Mrs. Moreen suddenly +gave up the villa at Nice. Pemberton had got used to suddenness, having +seen it practised on a considerable scale during two jerky little +tours—one in Switzerland the first summer, and the other late in the +winter, when they all ran down to Florence and then, at the end of ten +days, liking it much less than they had intended, straggled back in +mysterious depression. They had returned to Nice “for ever,” as they +said; but this didn’t prevent their squeezing, one rainy muggy May night, +into a second-class railway-carriage—you could never tell by which class +they would travel—where Pemberton helped them to stow away a wonderful +collection of bundles and bags. The explanation of this manœuvre was +that they had determined to spend the summer “in some bracing place”; but +in Paris they dropped into a small furnished apartment—a fourth floor in +a third-rate avenue, where there was a smell on the staircase and the +portier was hateful—and passed the next four months in blank indigence. + +The better part of this baffled sojourn was for the preceptor and his +pupil, who, visiting the Invalides and Notre Dame, the Conciergerie and +all the museums, took a hundred remunerative rambles. They learned to +know their Paris, which was useful, for they came back another year for a +longer stay, the general character of which in Pemberton’s memory to-day +mixes pitiably and confusedly with that of the first. He sees Morgan’s +shabby knickerbockers—the everlasting pair that didn’t match his blouse +and that as he grew longer could only grow faded. He remembers the +particular holes in his three or four pair of coloured stockings. + +Morgan was dear to his mother, but he never was better dressed than was +absolutely necessary—partly, no doubt, by his own fault, for he was as +indifferent to his appearance as a German philosopher. “My dear fellow, +you _are_ coming to pieces,” Pemberton would say to him in sceptical +remonstrance; to which the child would reply, looking at him serenely up +and down: “My dear fellow, so are you! I don’t want to cast you in the +shade.” Pemberton could have no rejoinder for this—the assertion so +closely represented the fact. If however the deficiencies of his own +wardrobe were a chapter by themselves he didn’t like his little charge to +look too poor. Later he used to say “Well, if we’re poor, why, after +all, shouldn’t we look it?” and he consoled himself with thinking there +was something rather elderly and gentlemanly in Morgan’s disrepair—it +differed from the untidiness of the urchin who plays and spoils his +things. He could trace perfectly the degrees by which, in proportion as +her little son confined himself to his tutor for society, Mrs. Moreen +shrewdly forbore to renew his garments. She did nothing that didn’t +show, neglected him because he escaped notice, and then, as he +illustrated this clever policy, discouraged at home his public +appearances. Her position was logical enough—those members of her family +who did show had to be showy. + +During this period and several others Pemberton was quite aware of how he +and his comrade might strike people; wandering languidly through the +Jardin des Plantes as if they had nowhere to go, sitting on the winter +days in the galleries of the Louvre, so splendidly ironical to the +homeless, as if for the advantage of the calorifère. They joked about it +sometimes: it was the sort of joke that was perfectly within the boy’s +compass. They figured themselves as part of the vast vague hand-to-mouth +multitude of the enormous city and pretended they were proud of their +position in it—it showed them “such a lot of life” and made them +conscious of a democratic brotherhood. If Pemberton couldn’t feel a +sympathy in destitution with his small companion—for after all Morgan’s +fond parents would never have let him really suffer—the boy would at +least feel it with him, so it came to the same thing. He used sometimes +to wonder what people would think they were—to fancy they were looked +askance at, as if it might be a suspected case of kidnapping. Morgan +wouldn’t be taken for a young patrician with a preceptor—he wasn’t smart +enough; though he might pass for his companion’s sickly little brother. +Now and then he had a five-franc piece, and except once, when they bought +a couple of lovely neckties, one of which he made Pemberton accept, they +laid it out scientifically in old books. This was sure to be a great +day, always spent on the quays, in a rummage of the dusty boxes that +garnish the parapets. Such occasions helped them to live, for their +books ran low very soon after the beginning of their acquaintance. +Pemberton had a good many in England, but he was obliged to write to a +friend and ask him kindly to get some fellow to give him something for +them. + +If they had to relinquish that summer the advantage of the bracing +climate the young man couldn’t but suspect this failure of the cup when +at their very lips to have been the effect of a rude jostle of his own. +This had represented his first blow-out, as he called it, with his +patrons; his first successful attempt—though there was little other +success about it—to bring them to a consideration of his impossible +position. As the ostensible eve of a costly journey the moment had +struck him as favourable to an earnest protest, the presentation of an +ultimatum. Ridiculous as it sounded, he had never yet been able to +compass an uninterrupted private interview with the elder pair or with +either of them singly. They were always flanked by their elder children, +and poor Pemberton usually had his own little charge at his side. He was +conscious of its being a house in which the surface of one’s delicacy got +rather smudged; nevertheless he had preserved the bloom of his scruple +against announcing to Mr. and Mrs. Moreen with publicity that he +shouldn’t be able to go on longer without a little money. He was still +simple enough to suppose Ulick and Paula and Amy might not know that +since his arrival he had only had a hundred and forty francs; and he was +magnanimous enough to wish not to compromise their parents in their eyes. +Mr. Moreen now listened to him, as he listened to every one and to every +thing, like a man of the world, and seemed to appeal to him—though not of +course too grossly—to try and be a little more of one himself. Pemberton +recognised in fact the importance of the character—from the advantage it +gave Mr. Moreen. He was not even confused or embarrassed, whereas the +young man in his service was more so than there was any reason for. +Neither was he surprised—at least any more than a gentleman had to be who +freely confessed himself a little shocked—though not perhaps strictly at +Pemberton. + +“We must go into this, mustn’t we, dear?” he said to his wife. He +assured his young friend that the matter should have his very best +attention; and he melted into space as elusively as if, at the door, he +were taking an inevitable but deprecatory precedence. When, the next +moment, Pemberton found himself alone with Mrs. Moreen it was to hear her +say “I see, I see”—stroking the roundness of her chin and looking as if +she were only hesitating between a dozen easy remedies. If they didn’t +make their push Mr. Moreen could at least disappear for several days. +During his absence his wife took up the subject again spontaneously, but +her contribution to it was merely that she had thought all the while they +were getting on so beautifully. Pemberton’s reply to this revelation was +that unless they immediately put down something on account he would leave +them on the spot and for ever. He knew she would wonder how he would get +away, and for a moment expected her to enquire. She didn’t, for which he +was almost grateful to her, so little was he in a position to tell. + +“You won’t, you _know_ you won’t—you’re too interested,” she said. “You +are interested, you know you are, you dear kind man!” She laughed with +almost condemnatory archness, as if it were a reproach—though she +wouldn’t insist; and flirted a soiled pocket-handkerchief at him. + +Pemberton’s mind was fully made up to take his step the following week. +This would give him time to get an answer to a letter he had despatched +to England. If he did in the event nothing of the sort—that is if he +stayed another year and then went away only for three months—it was not +merely because before the answer to his letter came (most unsatisfactory +when it did arrive) Mr. Moreen generously counted out to him, and again +with the sacrifice to “form” of a marked man of the world, three hundred +francs in elegant ringing gold. He was irritated to find that Mrs. +Moreen was right, that he couldn’t at the pinch bear to leave the child. +This stood out clearer for the very reason that, the night of his +desperate appeal to his patrons, he had seen fully for the first time +where he was. Wasn’t it another proof of the success with which those +patrons practised their arts that they had managed to avert for so long +the illuminating flash? It descended on our friend with a breadth of +effect which perhaps would have struck a spectator as comical, after he +had returned to his little servile room, which looked into a close court +where a bare dirty opposite wall took, with the sound of shrill clatter, +the reflexion of lighted back windows. He had simply given himself away +to a band of adventurers. The idea, the word itself, wore a romantic +horror for him—he had always lived on such safe lines. Later it assumed +a more interesting, almost a soothing, sense: it pointed a moral, and +Pemberton could enjoy a moral. The Moreens were adventurers not merely +because they didn’t pay their debts, because they lived on society, but +because their whole view of life, dim and confused and instinctive, like +that of clever colour-blind animals, was speculative and rapacious and +mean. Oh they were “respectable,” and that only made them more immondes. +The young man’s analysis, while he brooded, put it at last very +simply—they were adventurers because they were toadies and snobs. That +was the completest account of them—it was the law of their being. Even +when this truth became vivid to their ingenious inmate he remained +unconscious of how much his mind had been prepared for it by the +extraordinary little boy who had now become such a complication in his +life. Much less could he then calculate on the information he was still +to owe the extraordinary little boy. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +But it was during the ensuing time that the real problem came up—the +problem of how far it was excusable to discuss the turpitude of parents +with a child of twelve, of thirteen, of fourteen. Absolutely inexcusable +and quite impossible it of course at first appeared; and indeed the +question didn’t press for some time after Pemberton had received his +three hundred francs. They produced a temporary lull, a relief from the +sharpest pressure. The young man frugally amended his wardrobe and even +had a few francs in his pocket. He thought the Moreens looked at him as +if he were almost too smart, as if they ought to take care not to spoil +him. If Mr. Moreen hadn’t been such a man of the world he would perhaps +have spoken of the freedom of such neckties on the part of a subordinate. +But Mr. Moreen was always enough a man of the world to let things pass—he +had certainly shown that. It was singular how Pemberton guessed that +Morgan, though saying nothing about it, knew something had happened. But +three hundred francs, especially when one owed money, couldn’t last for +ever; and when the treasure was gone—the boy knew when it had +failed—Morgan did break ground. The party had returned to Nice at the +beginning of the winter, but not to the charming villa. They went to an +hotel, where they stayed three months, and then moved to another +establishment, explaining that they had left the first because, after +waiting and waiting, they couldn’t get the rooms they wanted. These +apartments, the rooms they wanted, were generally very splendid; but +fortunately they never _could_ get them—fortunately, I mean, for +Pemberton, who reflected always that if they had got them there would +have been a still scantier educational fund. What Morgan said at last +was said suddenly, irrelevantly, when the moment came, in the middle of a +lesson, and consisted of the apparently unfeeling words: “You ought to +filer, you know—you really ought.” + +Pemberton stared. He had learnt enough French slang from Morgan to know +that to filer meant to cut sticks. “Ah my dear fellow, don’t turn me +off!” + +Morgan pulled a Greek lexicon toward him—he used a Greek-German—to look +out a word, instead of asking it of Pemberton. “You can’t go on like +this, you know.” + +“Like what, my boy?” + +“You know they don’t pay you up,” said Morgan, blushing and turning his +leaves. + +“Don’t pay me?” Pemberton stared again and feigned amazement. “What on +earth put that into your head?” + +“It has been there a long time,” the boy replied rummaging his book. + +Pemberton was silent, then he went on: “I say, what are you hunting for? +They pay me beautifully.” + +“I’m hunting for the Greek for awful whopper,” Morgan dropped. + +“Find that rather for gross impertinence and disabuse your mind. What do +I want of money?” + +“Oh that’s another question!” + +Pemberton wavered—he was drawn in different ways. The severely correct +thing would have been to tell the boy that such a matter was none of his +business and bid him go on with his lines. But they were really too +intimate for that; it was not the way he was in the habit of treating +him; there had been no reason it should be. On the other hand Morgan had +quite lighted on the truth—he really shouldn’t be able to keep it up much +longer; therefore why not let him know one’s real motive for forsaking +him? At the same time it wasn’t decent to abuse to one’s pupil the +family of one’s pupil; it was better to misrepresent than to do that. So +in reply to his comrade’s last exclamation he just declared, to dismiss +the subject, that he had received several payments. + +“I say—I say!” the boy ejaculated, laughing. + +“That’s all right,” Pemberton insisted. “Give me your written +rendering.” + +Morgan pushed a copybook across the table, and he began to read the page, +but with something running in his head that made it no sense. Looking up +after a minute or two he found the child’s eyes fixed on him and felt in +them something strange. Then Morgan said: “I’m not afraid of the stern +reality.” + +“I haven’t yet seen the thing you _are_ afraid of—I’ll do you that +justice!” + +This came out with a jump—it was perfectly true—and evidently gave Morgan +pleasure. “I’ve thought of it a long time,” he presently resumed. + +“Well, don’t think of it any more.” + +The boy appeared to comply, and they had a comfortable and even an +amusing hour. They had a theory that they were very thorough, and yet +they seemed always to be in the amusing part of lessons, the intervals +between the dull dark tunnels, where there were waysides and jolly views. +Yet the morning was brought to a violent as end by Morgan’s suddenly +leaning his arms on the table, burying his head in them and bursting into +tears: at which Pemberton was the more startled that, as it then came +over him, it was the first time he had ever seen the boy cry and that the +impression was consequently quite awful. + +The next day, after much thought, he took a decision and, believing it to +be just, immediately acted on it. He cornered Mr. and Mrs. Moreen again +and let them know that if on the spot they didn’t pay him all they owed +him he wouldn’t only leave their house but would tell Morgan exactly what +had brought him to it. + +“Oh you _haven’t_ told him?” cried Mrs. Moreen with a pacifying hand on +her well-dressed bosom. + +“Without warning you? For what do you take me?” the young man returned. + +Mr. and Mrs. Moreen looked at each other; he could see that they +appreciated, as tending to their security, his superstition of delicacy, +and yet that there was a certain alarm in their relief. “My dear +fellow,” Mr. Moreen demanded, “what use can you have, leading the quiet +life we all do, for such a lot of money?”—a question to which Pemberton +made no answer, occupied as he was in noting that what passed in the mind +of his patrons was something like: “Oh then, if we’ve felt that the +child, dear little angel, has judged us and how he regards us, and we +haven’t been betrayed, he must have guessed—and in short it’s _general_!” +an inference that rather stirred up Mr. and Mrs. Moreen, as Pemberton had +desired it should. At the same time, if he had supposed his threat would +do something towards bringing them round, he was disappointed to find +them taking for granted—how vulgar their perception _had_ been!—that he +had already given them away. There was a mystic uneasiness in their +parental breasts, and that had been the inferior sense of it. None the +less however, his threat did touch them; for if they had escaped it was +only to meet a new danger. Mr. Moreen appealed to him, on every +precedent, as a man of the world; but his wife had recourse, for the +first time since his domestication with them, to a fine hauteur, +reminding him that a devoted mother, with her child, had arts that +protected her against gross misrepresentation. + +“I should misrepresent you grossly if I accused you of common honesty!” +our friend replied; but as he closed the door behind him sharply, +thinking he had not done himself much good, while Mr. Moreen lighted +another cigarette, he heard his hostess shout after him more touchingly: + +“Oh you do, you _do_, put the knife to one’s throat!” + +The next morning, very early, she came to his room. He recognised her +knock, but had no hope she brought him money; as to which he was wrong, +for she had fifty francs in her hand. She squeezed forward in her +dressing-gown, and he received her in his own, between his bath-tub and +his bed. He had been tolerably schooled by this time to the “foreign +ways” of his hosts. Mrs. Moreen was ardent, and when she was ardent she +didn’t care what she did; so she now sat down on his bed, his clothes +being on the chairs, and, in her preoccupation, forgot, as she glanced +round, to be ashamed of giving him such a horrid room. What Mrs. +Moreen’s ardour now bore upon was the design of persuading him that in +the first place she was very good-natured to bring him fifty francs, and +that in the second, if he would only see it, he was really too absurd to +expect to be paid. Wasn’t he paid enough without perpetual money—wasn’t +he paid by the comfortable luxurious home he enjoyed with them all, +without a care, an anxiety, a solitary want? Wasn’t he sure of his +position, and wasn’t that everything to a young man like him, quite +unknown, with singularly little to show, the ground of whose exorbitant +pretensions it had never been easy to discover? Wasn’t he paid above all +by the sweet relation he had established with Morgan—quite ideal as from +master to pupil—and by the simple privilege of knowing and living with so +amazingly gifted a child; than whom really (and she meant literally what +she said) there was no better company in Europe? Mrs. Moreen herself +took to appealing to him as a man of the world; she said “Voyons, mon +cher,” and “My dear man, look here now”; and urged him to be reasonable, +putting it before him that it was truly a chance for him. She spoke as +if, according as he _should_ be reasonable, he would prove himself worthy +to be her son’s tutor and of the extraordinary confidence they had placed +in him. + +After all, Pemberton reflected, it was only a difference of theory and +the theory didn’t matter much. They had hitherto gone on that of +remunerated, as now they would go on that of gratuitous, service; but why +should they have so many words about it? Mrs. Moreen at all events +continued to be convincing; sitting there with her fifty francs she +talked and reiterated, as women reiterate, and bored and irritated him, +while he leaned against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his +wrapper, drawing it together round his legs and looking over the head of +his visitor at the grey negations of his window. She wound up with +saying: “You see I bring you a definite proposal.” + +“A definite proposal?” + +“To make our relations regular, as it were—to put them on a comfortable +footing.” + +“I see—it’s a system,” said Pemberton. “A kind of organised blackmail.” + +Mrs. Moreen bounded up, which was exactly what he wanted. “What do you +mean by that?” + +“You practise on one’s fears—one’s fears about the child if one should go +away.” + +“And pray what would happen to him in that event?” she demanded, with +majesty. + +“Why he’d be alone with _you_.” + +“And pray with whom _should_ a child be but with those whom he loves +most?” + +“If you think that, why don’t you dismiss me?” + +“Do you pretend he loves you more than he loves _us_?” cried Mrs. Moreen. + +“I think he ought to. I make sacrifices for him. Though I’ve heard of +those _you_ make I don’t see them.” + +Mrs. Moreen stared a moment; then with emotion she grasped her inmate’s +hand. “_Will_ you make it—the sacrifice?” + +He burst out laughing. “I’ll see. I’ll do what I can. I’ll stay a +little longer. Your calculation’s just—I _do_ hate intensely to give him +up; I’m fond of him and he thoroughly interests me, in spite of the +inconvenience I suffer. You know my situation perfectly. I haven’t a +penny in the world and, occupied as you see me with Morgan, am unable to +earn money.” + +Mrs. Moreen tapped her undressed arm with her folded bank-note. “Can’t +you write articles? Can’t you translate as _I_ do?” + +“I don’t know about translating; it’s wretchedly paid.” + +“I’m glad to earn what I can,” said Mrs. Moreen with prodigious virtue. + +“You ought to tell me who you do it for.” Pemberton paused a moment, and +she said nothing; so he added: “I’ve tried to turn off some little +sketches, but the magazines won’t have them—they’re declined with +thanks.” + +“You see then you’re not such a phœnix,” his visitor pointedly smiled—“to +pretend to abilities you’re sacrificing for our sake.” + +“I haven’t time to do things properly,” he ruefully went on. Then as it +came over him that he was almost abjectly good-natured to give these +explanations he added: “If I stay on longer it must be on one +condition—that Morgan shall know distinctly on what footing I am.” + +Mrs. Moreen demurred. “Surely you don’t want to show off to a child?” + +“To show _you_ off, do you mean?” + +Again she cast about, but this time it was to produce a still finer +flower. “And _you_ talk of blackmail!” + +“You can easily prevent it,” said Pemberton. + +“And _you_ talk of practising on fears,” she bravely pushed on. + +“Yes, there’s no doubt I’m a great scoundrel.” + +His patroness met his eyes—it was clear she was in straits. Then she +thrust out her money at him. “Mr. Moreen desired me to give you this on +account.” + +“I’m much obliged to Mr. Moreen, but we _have_ no account.” + +“You won’t take it?” + +“That leaves me more free,” said Pemberton. + +“To poison my darling’s mind?” groaned Mrs. Moreen. + +“Oh your darling’s mind—!” the young man laughed. + +She fixed him a moment, and he thought she was going to break out +tormentedly, pleadingly: “For God’s sake, tell me what _is_ in it!” But +she checked this impulse—another was stronger. She pocketed the +money—the crudity of the alternative was comical—and swept out of the +room with the desperate concession: “You may tell him any horror you +like!” + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +A couple of days after this, during which he had failed to profit by so +free a permission, he had been for a quarter of an hour walking with his +charge in silence when the boy became sociable again with the remark: +“I’ll tell you how I know it; I know it through Zénobie.” + +“Zénobie? Who in the world is _she_?” + +“A nurse I used to have—ever so many years ago. A charming woman. I +liked her awfully, and she liked me.” + +“There’s no accounting for tastes. What is it you know through her?” + +“Why what their idea is. She went away because they didn’t fork out. +She did like me awfully, and she stayed two years. She told me all about +it—that at last she could never get her wages. As soon as they saw how +much she liked me they stopped giving her anything. They thought she’d +stay for nothing—just _because_, don’t you know?” And Morgan had a queer +little conscious lucid look. “She did stay ever so long—as long an she +could. She was only a poor girl. She used to send money to her mother. +At last she couldn’t afford it any longer, and went away in a fearful +rage one night—I mean of course in a rage against _them_. She cried over +me tremendously, she hugged me nearly to death. She told me all about +it,” the boy repeated. “She told me it was their idea. So I guessed, +ever so long ago, that they have had the same idea with you.” + +“Zénobie was very sharp,” said Pemberton. “And she made you so.” + +“Oh that wasn’t Zénobie; that was nature. And experience!” Morgan +laughed. + +“Well, Zénobie was a part of your experience.” + +“Certainly I was a part of hers, poor dear!” the boy wisely sighed. “And +I’m part of yours.” + +“A very important part. But I don’t see how you know that I’ve been +treated like Zénobie.” + +“Do you take me for the biggest dunce you’ve known?” Morgan asked. +“Haven’t I been conscious of what we’ve been through together?” + +“What we’ve been through?” + +“Our privations—our dark days.” + +“Oh our days have been bright enough.” + +Morgan went on in silence for a moment. Then he said: “My dear chap, +you’re a hero!” + +“Well, you’re another!” Pemberton retorted. + +“No I’m not, but I ain’t a baby. I won’t stand it any longer. You must +get some occupation that pays. I’m ashamed, I’m ashamed!” quavered the +boy with a ring of passion, like some high silver note from a small +cathedral cloister, that deeply touched his friend. + +“We ought to go off and live somewhere together,” the young man said. + +“I’ll go like a shot if you’ll take me.” + +“I’d get some work that would keep us both afloat,” Pemberton continued. + +“So would I. Why shouldn’t I work? I ain’t such a beastly little muff +as that comes to.” + +“The difficulty is that your parents wouldn’t hear of it. They’d never +part with you; they worship the ground you tread on. Don’t you see the +proof of it?” Pemberton developed. “They don’t dislike me; they wish me +no harm; they’re very amiable people; but they’re perfectly ready to +expose me to any awkwardness in life for your sake.” + +The silence in which Morgan received his fond sophistry struck Pemberton +somehow as expressive. After a moment the child repeated: “You are a +hero!” Then he added: “They leave me with you altogether. You’ve all +the responsibility. They put me off on you from morning till night. Why +then should they object to my taking up with you completely? I’d help +you.” + +“They’re not particularly keen about my being helped, and they delight in +thinking of you as _theirs_. They’re tremendously proud of you.” + +“I’m not proud of _them_. But you know that,” Morgan returned. + +“Except for the little matter we speak of they’re charming people,” said +Pemberton, not taking up the point made for his intelligence, but +wondering greatly at the boy’s own, and especially at this fresh reminder +of something he had been conscious of from the first—the strangest thing +in his friend’s large little composition, a temper, a sensibility, even a +private ideal, which made him as privately disown the stuff his people +were made of. Morgan had in secret a small loftiness which made him +acute about betrayed meanness; as well as a critical sense for the +manners immediately surrounding him that was quite without precedent in a +juvenile nature, especially when one noted that it had not made this +nature “old-fashioned,” as the word is of children—quaint or wizened or +offensive. It was as if he had been a little gentleman and had paid the +penalty by discovering that he was the only such person in his family. +This comparison didn’t make him vain, but it could make him melancholy +and a trifle austere. While Pemberton guessed at these dim young things, +shadows of shadows, he was partly drawn on and partly checked, as for a +scruple, by the charm of attempting to sound the little cool shallows +that were so quickly growing deeper. When he tried to figure to himself +the morning twilight of childhood, so as to deal with it safely, he saw +it was never fixed, never arrested, that ignorance, at the instant he +touched it, was already flushing faintly into knowledge, that there was +nothing that at a given moment you could say an intelligent child didn’t +know. It seemed to him that he himself knew too much to imagine Morgan’s +simplicity and too little to disembroil his tangle. + +The boy paid no heed to his last remark; he only went on: “I’d have +spoken to them about their idea, as I call it, long ago, if I hadn’t been +sure what they’d say.” + +“And what would they say?” + +“Just what they said about what poor Zénobie told me—that it was a horrid +dreadful story, that they had paid her every penny they owed her.” + +“Well, perhaps they had,” said Pemberton. + +“Perhaps they’ve paid you!” + +“Let us pretend they have, and n’en parlons plus.” + +“They accused her of lying and cheating”—Morgan stuck to historic truth. +“That’s why I don’t want to speak to them.” + +“Lest they should accuse me, too?” To this Morgan made no answer, and +his companion, looking down at him—the boy turned away his eyes, which +had filled—saw what he couldn’t have trusted himself to utter. “You’re +right. Don’t worry them,” Pemberton pursued. “Except for that, they +_are_ charming people.” + +“Except for _their_ lying and _their_ cheating?” + +“I say—I say!” cried Pemberton, imitating a little tone of the lad’s +which was itself an imitation. + +“We must be frank, at the last; we _must_ come to an understanding,” said +Morgan with the importance of the small boy who lets himself think he is +arranging great affairs—almost playing at shipwreck or at Indians. “I +know all about everything.” + +“I dare say your father has his reasons,” Pemberton replied, but too +vaguely, as he was aware. + +“For lying and cheating?” + +“For saving and managing and turning his means to the best account. He +has plenty to do with his money. You’re an expensive family.” + +“Yes, I’m very expensive,” Morgan concurred in a manner that made his +preceptor burst out laughing. + +“He’s saving for _you_,” said Pemberton. “They think of you in +everything they do.” + +“He might, while he’s about it, save a little—” The boy paused, and his +friend waited to hear what. Then Morgan brought out oddly: “A little +reputation.” + +“Oh there’s plenty of that. That’s all right!” + +“Enough of it for the people they know, no doubt. The people they know +are awful.” + +“Do you mean the princes? We mustn’t abuse the princes.” + +“Why not? They haven’t married Paula—they haven’t married Amy. They +only clean out Ulick.” + +“You _do_ know everything!” Pemberton declared. + +“No, I don’t, after all. I don’t know what they live on, or how they +live, or _why_ they live! What have they got and how did they get it? +Are they rich, are they poor, or have they a modeste aisance? Why are +they always chiveying me about—living one year like ambassadors and the +next like paupers? Who are they, any way, and what are they? I’ve +thought of all that—I’ve thought of a lot of things. They’re so beastly +worldly. That’s what I hate most—oh, I’ve _seen_ it! All they care +about is to make an appearance and to pass for something or other. What +the dickens do they want to pass for? What _do_ they, Mr. Pemberton?” + +“You pause for a reply,” said Pemberton, treating the question as a joke, +yet wondering too and greatly struck with his mate’s intense if imperfect +vision. “I haven’t the least idea.” + +“And what good does it do? Haven’t I seen the way people treat them—the +‘nice’ people, the ones they want to know? They’ll take anything from +them—they’ll lie down and be trampled on. The nice ones hate that—they +just sicken them. You’re the only really nice person we know.” + +“Are you sure? They don’t lie down for me!” + +“Well, you shan’t lie down for them. You’ve got to go—that’s what you’ve +got to do,” said Morgan. + +“And what will become of you?” + +“Oh I’m growing up. I shall get off before long. I’ll see you later.” + +“You had better let me finish you,” Pemberton urged, lending himself to +the child’s strange superiority. + +Morgan stopped in their walk, looking up at him. He had to look up much +less than a couple of years before—he had grown, in his loose leanness, +so long and high. “Finish me?” he echoed. + +“There are such a lot of jolly things we can do together yet. I want to +turn you out—I want you to do me credit.” + +Morgan continued to look at him. “To give you credit—do you mean?” + +“My dear fellow, you’re too clever to live.” + +“That’s just what I’m afraid you think. No, no; it isn’t fair—I can’t +endure it. We’ll separate next week. The sooner it’s over the sooner to +sleep.” + +“If I hear of anything—any other chance—I promise to go,” Pemberton said. + +Morgan consented to consider this. “But you’ll be honest,” he demanded; +“you won’t pretend you haven’t heard?” + +“I’m much more likely to pretend I have.” + +“But what can you hear of, this way, stuck in a hole with us? You ought +to be on the spot, to go to England—you ought to go to America.” + +“One would think you were _my_ tutor!” said Pemberton. + +Morgan walked on and after a little had begun again: “Well, now that you +know I know and that we look at the facts and keep nothing back—it’s much +more comfortable, isn’t it?” + +“My dear boy, it’s so amusing, so interesting, that it will surely be +quite impossible for me to forego such hours as these.” + +This made Morgan stop once more. “You _do_ keep something back. Oh +you’re not straight—_I_ am!” + +“How am I not straight?” + +“Oh you’ve got your idea!” + +“My idea?” + +“Why that I probably shan’t make old—make older—bones, and that you can +stick it out till I’m removed.” + +“You _are_ too clever to live!” Pemberton repeated. + +“I call it a mean idea,” Morgan pursued. “But I shall punish you by the +way I hang on.” + +“Look out or I’ll poison you!” Pemberton laughed. + +“I’m stronger and better every year. Haven’t you noticed that there +hasn’t been a doctor near me since you came?” + +“_I’m_ your doctor,” said the young man, taking his arm and drawing him +tenderly on again. + +Morgan proceeded and after a few steps gave a sigh of mingled weariness +and relief. “Ah now that we look at the facts it’s all right!” + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +They looked at the facts a good deal after this and one of the first +consequences of their doing so was that Pemberton stuck it out, in his +friend’s parlance, for the purpose. Morgan made the facts so vivid and +so droll, and at the same time so bald and so ugly, that there was +fascination in talking them over with him, just as there would have been +heartlessness in leaving him alone with them. Now that the pair had such +perceptions in common it was useless for them to pretend they didn’t +judge such people; but the very judgement and the exchange of perceptions +created another tie. Morgan had never been so interesting as now that he +himself was made plainer by the sidelight of these confidences. What +came out in it most was the small fine passion of his pride. He had +plenty of that, Pemberton felt—so much that one might perhaps wisely wish +for it some early bruises. He would have liked his people to have a +spirit and had waked up to the sense of their perpetually eating +humble-pie. His mother would consume any amount, and his father would +consume even more than his mother. He had a theory that Ulick had +wriggled out of an “affair” at Nice: there had once been a flurry at +home, a regular panic, after which they all went to bed and took +medicine, not to be accounted for on any other supposition. Morgan had a +romantic imagination, led by poetry and history, and he would have liked +those who “bore his name”—as he used to say to Pemberton with the humour +that made his queer delicacies manly—to carry themselves with an air. +But their one idea was to get in with people who didn’t want them and to +take snubs as it they were honourable scars. Why people didn’t want them +more he didn’t know—that was people’s own affair; after all they weren’t +superficially repulsive, they were a hundred times cleverer than most of +the dreary grandees, the “poor swells” they rushed about Europe to catch +up with. “After all they _are_ amusing—they are!” he used to pronounce +with the wisdom of the ages. To which Pemberton always replied: +“Amusing—the great Moreen troupe? Why they’re altogether delightful; and +if it weren’t for the hitch that you and I (feeble performers!) make in +the ensemble they’d carry everything before them.” + +What the boy couldn’t get over was the fact that this particular blight +seemed, in a tradition of self-respect, so undeserved and so arbitrary. +No doubt people had a right to take the line they liked; but why should +his people have liked the line of pushing and toadying and lying and +cheating? What had their forefathers—all decent folk, so far as he +knew—done to them, or what had he done to them? Who had poisoned their +blood with the fifth-rate social ideal, the fixed idea of making smart +acquaintances and getting into the monde chic, especially when it was +foredoomed to failure and exposure? They showed so what they were after; +that was what made the people they wanted not want _them_. And never a +wince for dignity, never a throb of shame at looking each other in the +face, never any independence or resentment or disgust. If his father or +his brother would only knock some one down once or twice a year! Clever +as they were they never guessed the impression they made. They were +good-natured, yes—as good-natured as Jews at the doors of clothing-shops! +But was that the model one wanted one’s family to follow? Morgan had dim +memories of an old grandfather, the maternal, in New York, whom he had +been taken across the ocean at the age of five to see: a gentleman with a +high neck-cloth and a good deal of pronunciation, who wore a dress-coat +in the morning, which made one wonder what he wore in the evening, and +had, or was supposed to have “property” and something to do with the +Bible Society. It couldn’t have been but that he was a good type. +Pemberton himself remembered Mrs. Clancy, a widowed sister of Mr. +Moreen’s, who was as irritating as a moral tale and had paid a +fortnight’s visit to the family at Nice shortly after he came to live +with them. She was “pure and refined,” as Amy said over the banjo, and +had the air of not knowing what they meant when they talked, and of +keeping something rather important back. Pemberton judged that what she +kept back was an approval of many of their ways; therefore it was to be +supposed that she too was of a good type, and that Mr. and Mrs. Moreen +and Ulick and Paula and Amy might easily have been of a better one if +they would. + +But that they wouldn’t was more and more perceptible from day to day. +They continued to “chivey,” as Morgan called it, and in due time became +aware of a variety of reasons for proceeding to Venice. They mentioned a +great many of them—they were always strikingly frank and had the +brightest friendly chatter, at the late foreign breakfast in especial, +before the ladies had made up their faces, when they leaned their arms on +the table, had something to follow the demitasse, and, in the heat of +familiar discussion as to what they “really ought” to do, fell inevitably +into the languages in which they could tutoyer. Even Pemberton liked +them then; he could endure even Ulick when he heard him give his little +flat voice for the “sweet sea-city.” That was what made him have a +sneaking kindness for them—that they were so out of the workaday world +and kept him so out of it. The summer had waned when, with cries of +ecstasy, they all passed out on the balcony that overhung the Grand +Canal. The sunsets then were splendid and the Dorringtons had arrived. +The Dorringtons were the only reason they hadn’t talked of at breakfast; +but the reasons they didn’t talk of at breakfast always came out in the +end. The Dorringtons on the other hand came out very little; or else +when they did they stayed—as was natural—for hours, during which periods +Mrs. Moreen and the girls sometimes called at their hotel (to see if they +had returned) as many as three times running. The gondola was for the +ladies, as in Venice too there were “days,” which Mrs. Moreen knew in +their order an hour after she arrived. She immediately took one herself, +to which the Dorringtons never came, though on a certain occasion when +Pemberton and his pupil were together at St. Mark’s—where, taking the +best walks they had ever had and haunting a hundred churches, they spent +a great deal of time—they saw the old lord turn up with Mr. Moreen and +Ulick, who showed him the dim basilica as if it belonged to them. +Pemberton noted how much less, among its curiosities, Lord Dorrington +carried himself as a man of the world; wondering too whether, for such +services, his companions took a fee from him. The autumn at any rate +waned, the Dorringtons departed, and Lord Verschoyle, the eldest son, had +proposed neither for Amy nor for Paula. + +One sad November day, while the wind roared round the old palace and the +rain lashed the lagoon, Pemberton, for exercise and even somewhat for +warmth—the Moreens were horribly frugal about fires; it was a cause of +suffering to their inmate—walked up and down the big bare sala with his +pupil. The scagliola floor was cold, the high battered casements shook +in the storm, and the stately decay of the place was unrelieved by a +particle of furniture. Pemberton’s spirits were low, and it came over +him that the fortune of the Moreens was now even lower. A blast of +desolation, a portent of disgrace and disaster, seemed to draw through +the comfortless hall. Mr. Moreen and Ulick were in the Piazza, looking +out for something, strolling drearily, in mackintoshes, under the +arcades; but still, in spite of mackintoshes, unmistakeable men of the +world. Paula and Amy were in bed—it might have been thought they were +staying there to keep warm. Pemberton looked askance at the boy at his +side, to see to what extent he was conscious of these dark omens. But +Morgan, luckily for him, was now mainly conscious of growing taller and +stronger and indeed of being in his fifteenth year. This fact was +intensely interesting to him and the basis of a private theory—which, +however, he had imparted to his tutor—that in a little while he should +stand on his own feet. He considered that the situation would +change—that in short he should be “finished,” grown up, producible in the +world of affairs and ready to prove himself of sterling ability. Sharply +as he was capable at times of analysing, as he called it, his life, there +were happy hours when he remained, as he also called it—and as the name, +really, of their right ideal—“jolly” superficial; the proof of which was +his fundamental assumption that he should presently go to Oxford, to +Pemberton’s college, and, aided and abetted by Pemberton, do the most +wonderful things. It depressed the young man to see how little in such a +project he took account of ways and means: in other connexions he mostly +kept to the measure. Pemberton tried to imagine the Moreens at Oxford +and fortunately failed; yet unless they were to adopt it as a residence +there would be no modus vivendi for Morgan. How could he live without an +allowance, and where was the allowance to come from? He, Pemberton, +might live on Morgan; but how could Morgan live on _him_? What was to +become of him anyhow? Somehow the fact that he was a big boy now, with +better prospects of health, made the question of his future more +difficult. So long as he was markedly frail the great consideration he +inspired seemed enough of an answer to it. But at the bottom of +Pemberton’s heart was the recognition of his probably being strong enough +to live and not yet strong enough to struggle or to thrive. Morgan +himself at any rate was in the first flush of the rosiest consciousness +of adolescence, so that the beating of the tempest seemed to him after +all but the voice of life and the challenge of fate. He had on his +shabby little overcoat, with the collar up, but was enjoying his walk. + +It was interrupted at last by the appearance of his mother at the end of +the sala. She beckoned him to come to her, and while Pemberton saw him, +complaisant, pass down the long vista and over the damp false marble, he +wondered what was in the air. Mrs. Moreen said a word to the boy and +made him go into the room she had quitted. Then, having closed the door +after him, she directed her steps swiftly to Pemberton. There was +something in the air, but his wildest flight of fancy wouldn’t have +suggested what it proved to be. She signified that she had made a +pretext to get Morgan out of the way, and then she enquired—without +hesitation—if the young man could favour her with the loan of three +louis. While, before bursting into a laugh, he stared at her with +surprise, she declared that she was awfully pressed for the money; she +was desperate for it—it would save her life. + +“Dear lady, c’est trop fort!” Pemberton laughed in the manner and with +the borrowed grace of idiom that marked the best colloquial, the best +anecdotic, moments of his friends themselves. “Where in the world do you +suppose I should get three louis, du train dont vous allez?” + +“I thought you worked—wrote things. Don’t they pay you?” + +“Not a penny.” + +“Are you such a fool as to work for nothing?” + +“You ought surely to know that.” + +Mrs. Moreen stared, then she coloured a little. Pemberton saw she had +quite forgotten the terms—if “terms” they could be called—that he had +ended by accepting from herself; they had burdened her memory as little +as her conscience. “Oh yes, I see what you mean—you’ve been very nice +about that; but why drag it in so often?” She had been perfectly urbane +with him ever since the rough scene of explanation in his room the +morning he made her accept _his_ “terms”—the necessity of his making his +case known to Morgan. She had felt no resentment after seeing there was +no danger Morgan would take the matter up with her. Indeed, attributing +this immunity to the good taste of his influence with the boy, she had +once said to Pemberton “My dear fellow, it’s an immense comfort you’re a +gentleman.” She repeated this in substance now. “Of course you’re a +gentleman—that’s a bother the less!” Pemberton reminded her that he had +not “dragged in” anything that wasn’t already in as much as his foot was +in his shoe; and she also repeated her prayer that, somewhere and +somehow, he would find her sixty francs. He took the liberty of hinting +that if he could find them it wouldn’t be to lend them to _her_—as to +which he consciously did himself injustice, knowing that if he had them +he would certainly put them at her disposal. He accused himself, at +bottom and not unveraciously, of a fantastic, a demoralised sympathy with +her. If misery made strange bedfellows it also made strange sympathies. +It was moreover a part of the abasement of living with such people that +one had to make vulgar retorts, quite out of one’s own tradition of good +manners. “Morgan, Morgan, to what pass have I come for you?” he groaned +while Mrs. Moreen floated voluminously down the sala again to liberate +the boy, wailing as she went that everything was too odious. + +Before their young friend was liberated there came a thump at the door +communicating with the staircase, followed by the apparition of a +dripping youth who poked in his head. Pemberton recognised him as the +bearer of a telegram and recognised the telegram as addressed to himself. +Morgan came back as, after glancing at the signature—that of a relative +in London—he was reading the words: “Found a jolly job for you, +engagement to coach opulent youth on own terms. Come at once.” The +answer happily was paid and the messenger waited. Morgan, who had drawn +near, waited too and looked hard at Pemberton; and Pemberton, after a +moment, having met his look, handed him the telegram. It was really by +wise looks—they knew each other so well now—that, while the +telegraph-boy, in his waterproof cape, made a great puddle on the floor, +the thing was settled between them. Pemberton wrote the answer with a +pencil against the frescoed wall, and the messenger departed. When he +had gone the young man explained himself. + +“I’ll make a tremendous charge; I’ll earn a lot of money in a short time, +and we’ll live on it.” + +“Well, I hope the opulent youth will be a dismal dunce—he probably will—” +Morgan parenthesised—“and keep you a long time a-hammering of it in.” + +“Of course the longer he keeps me the more we shall have for our old +age.” + +“But suppose _they_ don’t pay you!” Morgan awfully suggested. + +“Oh there are not two such—!” But Pemberton pulled up; he had been on +the point of using too invidious a term. Instead of this he said “Two +such fatalities.” + +Morgan flushed—the tears came to his eyes. “Dites toujours two such +rascally crews!” Then in a different tone he added: “Happy opulent +youth!” + +“Not if he’s a dismal dunce.” + +“Oh they’re happier then. But you can’t have everything, can you?” the +boy smiled. + +Pemberton held him fast, hands on his shoulders—he had never loved him +so. “What will become of you, what will you do?” He thought of Mrs. +Moreen, desperate for sixty francs. + +“I shall become an homme fait.” And then as if he recognised all the +bearings of Pemberton’s allusion: “I shall get on with them better when +you’re not here.” + +“Ah don’t say that—it sounds as if I set you against them!” + +“You do—the sight of you. It’s all right; you know what I mean. I shall +be beautiful. I’ll take their affairs in hand; I’ll marry my sisters.” + +“You’ll marry yourself!” joked Pemberton; as high, rather tense +pleasantry would evidently be the right, or the safest, tone for their +separation. + +It was, however, not purely in this strain that Morgan suddenly asked: +“But I say—how will you get to your jolly job? You’ll have to telegraph +to the opulent youth for money to come on.” + +Pemberton bethought himself. “They won’t like that, will they?” + +“Oh look out for them!” + +Then Pemberton brought out his remedy. “I’ll go to the American Consul; +I’ll borrow some money of him—just for the few days, on the strength of +the telegram.” + +Morgan was hilarious. “Show him the telegram—then collar the money and +stay!” + +Pemberton entered into the joke sufficiently to reply that for Morgan he +was really capable of that; but the boy, growing more serious, and to +prove he hadn’t meant what he said, not only hurried him off to the +Consulate—since he was to start that evening, as he had wired to his +friend—but made sure of their affair by going with him. They splashed +through the tortuous perforations and over the humpbacked bridges, and +they passed through the Piazza, where they saw Mr. Moreen and Ulick go +into a jeweller’s shop. The Consul proved accommodating—Pemberton said +it wasn’t the letter, but Morgan’s grand air—and on their way back they +went into Saint Mark’s for a hushed ten minutes. Later they took up and +kept up the fun of it to the very end; and it seemed to Pemberton a part +of that fun that Mrs. Moreen, who was very angry when he had announced +her his intention, should charge him, grotesquely and vulgarly and in +reference to the loan she had vainly endeavoured to effect, with bolting +lest they should “get something out” of him. On the other hand he had to +do Mr. Moreen and Ulick the justice to recognise that when on coming in +they heard the cruel news they took it like perfect men of the world. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +When he got at work with the opulent youth, who was to be taken in hand +for Balliol, he found himself unable to say if this aspirant had really +such poor parts or if the appearance were only begotten of his own long +association with an intensely living little mind. From Morgan he heard +half a dozen times: the boy wrote charming young letters, a patchwork of +tongues, with indulgent postscripts in the family Volapuk and, in little +squares and rounds and crannies of the text, the drollest +illustrations—letters that he was divided between the impulse to show his +present charge as a vain, a wasted incentive, and the sense of something +in them that publicity would profane. The opulent youth went up in due +course and failed to pass; but it seemed to add to the presumption that +brilliancy was not expected of him all at once that his parents, +condoning the lapse, which they good-naturedly treated as little as +possible as if it were Pemberton’s, should have sounded the rally again, +begged the young coach to renew the siege. + +The young coach was now in a position to lend Mrs. Moreen three louis, +and he sent her a post-office order even for a larger amount. In return +for this favour he received a frantic scribbled line from her: “Implore +you to come back instantly—Morgan dreadfully ill.” They were on there +rebound, once more in Paris—often as Pemberton had seen them depressed he +had never seen them crushed—and communication was therefore rapid. He +wrote to the boy to ascertain the state of his health, but awaited the +answer in vain. He accordingly, after three days, took an abrupt leave +of the opulent youth and, crossing the Channel, alighted at the small +hotel, in the quarter of the Champs Elysées, of which Mrs. Moreen had +given him the address. A deep if dumb dissatisfaction with this lady and +her companions bore him company: they couldn’t be vulgarly honest, but +they could live at hotels, in velvety entresols, amid a smell of burnt +pastilles, surrounded by the most expensive city in Europe. When he had +left them in Venice it was with an irrepressible suspicion that something +was going to happen; but the only thing that could have taken place was +again their masterly retreat. “How is he? where is he?” he asked of Mrs. +Moreen; but before she could speak these questions were answered by the +pressure round hid neck of a pair of arms, in shrunken sleeves, which +still were perfectly capable of an effusive young foreign squeeze. + +“Dreadfully ill—I don’t see it!” the young man cried. And then to +Morgan: “Why on earth didn’t you relieve me? Why didn’t you answer my +letter?” + +Mrs. Moreen declared that when she wrote he was very bad, and Pemberton +learned at the same time from the boy that he had answered every letter +he had received. This led to the clear inference that Pemberton’s note +had been kept from him so that the game practised should not be +interfered with. Mrs. Moreen was prepared to see the fact exposed, as +Pemberton saw the moment he faced her that she was prepared for a good +many other things. She was prepared above all to maintain that she had +acted from a sense of duty, that she was enchanted she had got him over, +whatever they might say, and that it was useless of him to pretend he +didn’t know in all his bones that his place at such a time was with +Morgan. He had taken the boy away from them and now had no right to +abandon him. He had created for himself the gravest responsibilities and +must at least abide by what he had done. + +“Taken him away from you?” Pemberton exclaimed indignantly. + +“Do it—do it for pity’s sake; that’s just what I want. I can’t stand +_this_—and such scenes. They’re awful frauds—poor dears!” These words +broke from Morgan, who had intermitted his embrace, in a key which made +Pemberton turn quickly to him and see that he had suddenly seated +himself, was breathing in great pain, and was very pale. + +“_Now_ do you say he’s not in a state, my precious pet?” shouted his +mother, dropping on her knees before him with clasped hands, but touching +him no more than if he had been a gilded idol. “It will pass—it’s only +for an instant; but don’t say such dreadful things!” + +“I’m all right—all right,” Morgan panted to Pemberton, whom he sat +looking up at with a strange smile, his hands resting on either side of +the sofa. + +“Now do you pretend I’ve been dishonest, that I’ve deceived?” Mrs. Moreen +flashed at Pemberton as she got up. + +“It isn’t _he_ says it, it’s I!” the boy returned, apparently easier, but +sinking back against the wall; while his restored friend, who had sat +down beside him, took his hand and bent over him. + +“Darling child, one does what one can; there are so many things to +consider,” urged Mrs. Moreen. “It’s his _place_—his only place. You see +_you_ think it is now.” + +“Take me away—take me away,” Morgan went on, smiling to Pemberton with +his white face. + +“Where shall I take you, and how—oh _how_, my boy?” the young man +stammered, thinking of the rude way in which his friends in London held +that, for his convenience, with no assurance of prompt return, he had +thrown them over; of the just resentment with which they would already +have called in a successor, and of the scant help to finding fresh +employment that resided for him in the grossness of his having failed to +pass his pupil. + +“Oh we’ll settle that. You used to talk about it,” said Morgan. “If we +can only go all the rest’s a detail.” + +“Talk about it as much as you like, but don’t think you can attempt it. +Mr. Moreen would never consent—it would be so _very_ hand-to-mouth,” +Pemberton’s hostess beautifully explained to him. Then to Morgan she +made it clearer: “It would destroy our peace, it would break our hearts. +Now that he’s back it will be all the same again. You’ll have your life, +your work and your freedom, and we’ll all be happy as we used to be. +You’ll bloom and grow perfectly well, and we won’t have any more silly +experiments, will we? They’re too absurd. It’s Mr. Pemberton’s +place—every one in his place. You in yours, your papa in his, me in +mine—n’est-ce pas, chéri? We’ll all forget how foolish we’ve been and +have lovely times.” + +She continued to talk and to surge vaguely about the little draped stuffy +salon while Pemberton sat with the boy, whose colour gradually came back; +and she mixed up her reasons, hinting that there were going to be +changes, that the other children might scatter (who knew?—Paula had her +ideas) and that then it might be fancied how much the poor old +parent-birds would want the little nestling. Morgan looked at Pemberton, +who wouldn’t let him move; and Pemberton knew exactly how he felt at +hearing himself called a little nestling. He admitted that he had had +one or two bad days, but he protested afresh against the wrong of his +mother’s having made them the ground of an appeal to poor Pemberton. +Poor Pemberton could laugh now, apart from the comicality of Mrs. +Moreen’s mustering so much philosophy for her defence—she seemed to shake +it out of her agitated petticoats, which knocked over the light gilt +chairs—so little did their young companion, _marked_, unmistakeably +marked at the best, strike him as qualified to repudiate any advantage. + +He himself was in for it at any rate. He should have Morgan on his hands +again indefinitely; though indeed he saw the lad had a private theory to +produce which would be intended to smooth this down. He was obliged to +him for it in advance; but the suggested amendment didn’t keep his heart +rather from sinking, any more than it prevented him from accepting the +prospect on the spot, with some confidence moreover that he should do so +even better if he could have a little supper. Mrs. Moreen threw out more +hints about the changes that were to be looked for, but she was such a +mixture of smiles and shudders—she confessed she was very nervous—that he +couldn’t tell if she were in high feather or only in hysterics. If the +family was really at last going to pieces why shouldn’t she recognise the +necessity of pitching Morgan into some sort of lifeboat? This +presumption was fostered by the fact that they were established in +luxurious quarters in the capital of pleasure; that was exactly where +they naturally _would_ be established in view of going to pieces. +Moreover didn’t she mention that Mr. Moreen and the others were enjoying +themselves at the opera with Mr. Granger, and wasn’t _that_ also +precisely where one would look for them on the eve of a smash? Pemberton +gathered that Mr. Granger was a rich vacant American—a big bill with a +flourishy heading and no items; so that one of Paula’s “ideas” was +probably that this time she hadn’t missed fire—by which straight shot +indeed she would have shattered the general cohesion. And if the +cohesion was to crumble what would become of poor Pemberton? He felt +quite enough bound up with them to figure to his alarm as a dislodged +block in the edifice. + +It was Morgan who eventually asked if no supper had been ordered for him; +sitting with him below, later, at the dim delayed meal, in the presence +of a great deal of corded green plush, a plate of ornamental biscuit and +an aloofness marked on the part of the waiter. Mrs. Moreen had explained +that they had been obliged to secure a room for the visitor out of the +house; and Morgan’s consolation—he offered it while Pemberton reflected +on the nastiness of lukewarm sauces—proved to be, largely, that his +circumstance would facilitate their escape. He talked of their +escape—recurring to it often afterwards—as if they were making up a +“boy’s book” together. But he likewise expressed his sense that there +was something in the air, that the Moreens couldn’t keep it up much +longer. In point of fact, as Pemberton was to see, they kept it up for +five or six months. All the while, however, Morgan’s contention was +designed to cheer him. Mr. Moreen and Ulick, whom he had met the day +after his return, accepted that return like perfect men of the world. If +Paula and Amy treated it even with less formality an allowance was to be +made for them, inasmuch as Mr. Granger hadn’t come to the opera after +all. He had only placed his box at their service, with a bouquet for +each of the party; there was even one apiece, embittering the thought of +his profusion, for Mr. Moreen and Ulick. “They’re all like that,” was +Morgan’s comment; “at the very last, just when we think we’ve landed them +they’re back in the deep sea!” + +Morgan’s comments in these days were more and more free; they even +included a large recognition of the extraordinary tenderness with which +he had been treated while Pemberton was away. Oh yes, they couldn’t do +enough to be nice to him, to show him they had him on their mind and make +up for his loss. That was just what made the whole thing so sad and +caused him to rejoice after all in Pemberton’s return—he had to keep +thinking of their affection less, had less sense of obligation. +Pemberton laughed out at this last reason, and Morgan blushed and said: +“Well, dash it, you know what I mean.” Pemberton knew perfectly what he +meant; but there were a good many things that—dash it too!—it didn’t make +any clearer. This episode of his second sojourn in Paris stretched +itself out wearily, with their resumed readings and wanderings and +maunderings, their potterings on the quays, their hauntings of the +museums, their occasional lingerings in the Palais Royal when the first +sharp weather came on and there was a comfort in warm emanations, before +Chevet’s wonderful succulent window. Morgan wanted to hear all about the +opulent youth—he took an immense interest in him. Some of the details of +his opulence—Pemberton could spare him none of them—evidently fed the +boy’s appreciation of all his friend had given up to come back to him; +but in addition to the greater reciprocity established by that heroism he +had always his little brooding theory, in which there was a frivolous +gaiety too, that their long probation was drawing to a close. Morgan’s +conviction that the Moreens couldn’t go on much longer kept pace with the +unexpended impetus with which, from month to month, they did go on. +Three weeks after Pemberton had rejoined them they went on to another +hotel, a dingier one than the first; but Morgan rejoiced that his tutor +had at least still not sacrificed the advantage of a room outside. He +clung to the romantic utility of this when the day, or rather the night, +should arrive for their escape. + +For the first time, in this complicated connexion, our friend felt his +collar gall him. It was, as he had said to Mrs. Moreen in Venice, trop +fort—everything was trop fort. He could neither really throw off his +blighting burden nor find in it the benefit of a pacified conscience or +of a rewarded affection. He had spent all the money accruing to him in +England, and he saw his youth going and that he was getting nothing back +for it. It was all very well of Morgan to count it for reparation that +he should now settle on him permanently—there was an irritating flaw in +such a view. He saw what the boy had in his mind; the conception that as +his friend had had the generosity to come back he must show his gratitude +by giving him his life. But the poor friend didn’t desire the gift—what +could he do with Morgan’s dreadful little life? Of course at the same +time that Pemberton was irritated he remembered the reason, which was +very honourable to Morgan and which dwelt simply in his making one so +forget that he was no more than a patched urchin. If one dealt with him +on a different basis one’s misadventures were one’s own fault. So +Pemberton waited in a queer confusion of yearning and alarm for the +catastrophe which was held to hang over the house of Moreen, of which he +certainly at moments felt the symptoms brush his cheek and as to which he +wondered much in what form it would find its liveliest effect. + +Perhaps it would take the form of sudden dispersal—a frightened sauve qui +peut, a scuttling into selfish corners. Certainly they were less elastic +than of yore; they were evidently looking for something they didn’t find. +The Dorringtons hadn’t re-appeared, the princes had scattered; wasn’t +that the beginning of the end? Mrs. Moreen had lost her reckoning of the +famous “days”; her social calendar was blurred—it had turned its face to +the wall. Pemberton suspected that the great, the cruel discomfiture had +been the unspeakable behaviour of Mr. Granger, who seemed not to know +what he wanted, or, what was much worse, what they wanted. He kept +sending flowers, as if to bestrew the path of his retreat, which was +never the path of a return. Flowers were all very well, but—Pemberton +could complete the proposition. It was now positively conspicuous that +in the long run the Moreens were a social failure; so that the young man +was almost grateful the run had not been short. Mr. Moreen indeed was +still occasionally able to get away on business and, what was more +surprising, was likewise able to get back. Ulick had no club but you +couldn’t have discovered it from his appearance, which was as much as +ever that of a person looking at life from the window of such an +institution; therefore Pemberton was doubly surprised at an answer he +once heard him make his mother in the desperate tone of a man familiar +with the worst privations. Her question Pemberton had not quite caught; +it appeared to be an appeal for a suggestion as to whom they might get to +take Amy. “Let the Devil take her!” Ulick snapped; so that Pemberton +could see that they had not only lost their amiability but had ceased to +believe in themselves. He could also see that if Mrs. Moreen was trying +to get people to take her children she might be regarded as closing the +hatches for the storm. But Morgan would be the last she would part with. + +One winter afternoon—it was a Sunday—he and the boy walked far together +in the Bois de Boulogne. The evening was so splendid, the cold +lemon-coloured sunset so clear, the stream of carriages and pedestrians +so amusing and the fascination of Paris so great, that they stayed out +later than usual and became aware that they should have to hurry home to +arrive in time for dinner. They hurried accordingly, arm-in-arm, +good-humoured and hungry, agreeing that there was nothing like Paris +after all and that after everything too that had come and gone they were +not yet sated with innocent pleasures. When they reached the hotel they +found that, though scandalously late, they were in time for all the +dinner they were likely to sit down to. Confusion reigned in the +apartments of the Moreens—very shabby ones this time, but the best in the +house—and before the interrupted service of the table, with objects +displaced almost as if there had been a scuffle and a great wine-stain +from an overturned bottle, Pemberton couldn’t blink the fact that there +had been a scene of the last proprietary firmness. The storm had +come—they were all seeking refuge. The hatches were down, Paula and Amy +were invisible—they had never tried the most casual art upon Pemberton, +but he felt they had enough of an eye to him not to wish to meet him as +young ladies whose frocks had been confiscated—and Ulick appeared to have +jumped overboard. The host and his staff, in a word, had ceased to “go +on” at the pace of their guests, and the air of embarrassed detention, +thanks to a pile of gaping trunks in the passage, was strangely +commingled with the air of indignant withdrawal. When Morgan took all +this in—and he took it in very quickly—he coloured to the roots of his +hair. He had walked from his infancy among difficulties and dangers, but +he had never seen a public exposure. Pemberton noticed in a second +glance at him that the tears had rushed into his eyes and that they were +tears of a new and untasted bitterness. He wondered an instant, for the +boy’s sake, whether he might successfully pretend not to understand. Not +successfully, he felt, as Mr. and Mrs. Moreen, dinnerless by their +extinguished hearth, rose before him in their little dishonoured salon, +casting about with glassy eyes for the nearest port in such a storm. +They were not prostrate but were horribly white, and Mrs. Moreen had +evidently been crying. Pemberton quickly learned however that her grief +was not for the loss of her dinner, much as she usually enjoyed it, but +the fruit of a blow that struck even deeper, as she made all haste to +explain. He would see for himself, so far as that went, how the great +change had come, the dreadful bolt had fallen, and how they would now all +have to turn themselves about. Therefore cruel as it was to them to part +with their darling she must look to him to carry a little further the +influence he had so fortunately acquired with the boy—to induce his young +charge to follow him into some modest retreat. They depended on him—that +was the fact—to take their delightful child temporarily under his +protection; it would leave Mr. Moreen and herself so much more free to +give the proper attention (too little, alas! had been given) to the +readjustment of their affairs. + +“We trust you—we feel we _can_,” said Mrs. Moreen, slowly rubbing her +plump white hands and looking with compunction hard at Morgan, whose +chin, not to take liberties, her husband stroked with a paternal +forefinger. + +“Oh yes—we feel that we _can_. We trust Mr. Pemberton fully, Morgan,” +Mr. Moreen pursued. + +Pemberton wondered again if he might pretend not to understand; but +everything good gave way to the intensity of Morgan’s understanding. “Do +you mean he may take me to live with him for ever and ever?” cried the +boy. “May take me away, away, anywhere he likes?” + +“For ever and ever? Comme vous-y-allez!” Mr. Moreen laughed indulgently. +“For as long as Mr. Pemberton may be so good.” + +“We’ve struggled, we’ve suffered,” his wife went on; “but you’ve made him +so your own that we’ve already been through the worst of the sacrifice.” + +Morgan had turned away from his father—he stood looking at Pemberton with +a light in his face. His sense of shame for their common humiliated +state had dropped; the case had another side—the thing was to clutch at +_that_. He had a moment of boyish joy, scarcely mitigated by the +reflexion that with this unexpected consecration of his hope—too sudden +and too violent; the turn taken was away from a _good_ boy’s book—the +“escape” was left on their hands. The boyish joy was there an instant, +and Pemberton was almost scared at the rush of gratitude and affection +that broke through his first abasement. When he stammered “My dear +fellow, what do you say to _that_?” how could one not say something +enthusiastic? But there was more need for courage at something else that +immediately followed and that made the lad sit down quietly on the +nearest chair. He had turned quite livid and had raised his hand to his +left side. They were all three looking at him, but Mrs. Moreen suddenly +bounded forward. “Ah his darling little heart!” she broke out; and this +time, on her knees before him and without respect for the idol, she +caught him ardently in her arms. “You walked him too far, you hurried +him too fast!” she hurled over her shoulder at Pemberton. Her son made +no protest, and the next instant, still holding him, she sprang up with +her face convulsed and with the terrified cry “Help, help! he’s going, +he’s gone!” Pemberton saw with equal horror, by Morgan’s own stricken +face, that he was beyond their wildest recall. He pulled him half out of +his mother’s hands, and for a moment, while they held him together, they +looked all their dismay into each other’s eyes, “He couldn’t stand it +with his weak organ,” said Pemberton—“the shock, the whole scene, the +violent emotion.” + +“But I thought he _wanted_ to go to you!”, wailed Mrs. Moreen. + +“I _told_ you he didn’t, my dear,” her husband made answer. Mr. Moreen +was trembling all over and was in his way as deeply affected as his wife. +But after the very first he took his bereavement as a man of the world. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PUPIL*** + + +******* This file should be named 1032-0.txt or 1032-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/3/1032 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1033-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1033-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..87f697ee --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1033-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2850 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1033 *** + +[Illustration: ROSE O' THE RIVER] + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +ROSE O' THE RIVER +BY +KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN + +ILLUSTRATED BY +GEORGE WRIGHT + +NEW YORK +GROSSET & DUNLAP +PUBLISHERS + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +COPYRIGHT 1905 BY THE CENTURY COMPANY +COPYRIGHT 1905 BY KATE DOUGLAS RIGGS +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + +_Published September 1905_ + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + +The Pine And The Rose 1 +Old Kennebec 13 +The Edgewood "Drive" 28 +"Blasphemious Swearin'" 40 +The Game Of Jackstraws 50 +Hearts And Other Hearts 67 +The Little House 81 +The Garden Of Eden 93 +The Serpent 102 +The Turquoise Ring 114 +Gold And Pinchbeck 135 +A Country Chevalier 145 +Housebreaking 160 +The Dream Room 168 + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +Rose O' The River Frontispiece +"She's Up!" 6 +"He's A Turrible Smart Driver" 20 +He Had Certainly "Taken Chances" 32 +In A Twinkling He Was In The Water 64 +"Rose, I'll Take You Safely" 76 +Hiding Her Face As He Flung It Down The River-Bank 116 +She Had Gone With Maude To Claude's Store 128 +"As Long As Stephen Waterman's Alive, Rose Wiley Can Have Him" 158 +"Don't Speak, Stephen, Till You Hear What I Have To Say" 174 + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + +THE PINE AND THE ROSE + + +It was not long after sunrise, and Stephen Waterman, fresh from his dip +in the river, had scrambled up the hillside from the hut in the +alder-bushes where he had made his morning toilet. + +An early ablution of this sort was not the custom of the farmers along +the banks of the Saco, but the Waterman house was hardly a stone's throw +from the water, and there was a clear, deep swimming-hole in the Willow +Cove that would have tempted the busiest man, or the least cleanly, in +York County. Then, too, Stephen was a child of the river, born, reared, +schooled on its very brink, never happy unless he were on it, or in it, +or beside it, or at least within sight or sound of it. + +The immensity of the sea had always silenced and overawed him, left him +cold in feeling. The river wooed him, caressed him, won his heart. It +was just big enough to love. It was full of charms and changes, of +varying moods and sudden surprises. Its voice stole in upon his ear with +a melody far sweeter and more subtle than the boom of the ocean. Yet it +was not without strength, and when it was swollen with the freshets of +the spring and brimming with the bounty of its sister streams, it could +dash and roar, boom and crash, with the best of them. + +Stephen stood on the side porch, drinking in the glory of the sunrise, +with the Saco winding like a silver ribbon through the sweet loveliness +of the summer landscape. + +And the river rolled on toward the sea, singing its morning song, +creating and nourishing beauty at every step of its onward path. Cradled +in the heart of a great mountain-range, it pursued its gleaming way, +here lying silent in glassy lakes, there rushing into tinkling little +falls, foaming great falls, and thundering cataracts. Scores of bridges +spanned its width, but no steamers flurried its crystal depths. Here and +there a rough little rowboat, tethered to a willow, rocked to and fro in +some quiet bend of the shore. Here the silver gleam of a rising perch, +chub, or trout caught the eye; there a pickerel lay rigid in the clear +water, a fish carved in stone: here eels coiled in the muddy bottom of +some pool; and there, under the deep shadows of the rocks, lay fat, +sleepy bass, old, and incredibly wise, quite untempted by, and wholly +superior to, the rural fisherman's worm. + +The river lapped the shores of peaceful meadows; it flowed along banks +green with maple, beech, sycamore, and birch; it fell tempestuously over +dams and fought its way between rocky cliffs crowned with stately firs. +It rolled past forests of pine and hemlock and spruce, now gentle, now +terrible; for there is said to be an Indian curse upon the Saco, +whereby, with every great sun, the child of a paleface shall be drawn +into its cruel depths. Lashed into fury by the stony reefs that impeded +its progress, the river looked now sapphire, now gold, now white, now +leaden gray; but always it was hurrying, hurrying on its appointed way +to the sea. + +After feasting his eyes and filling his heart with a morning draught of +beauty, Stephen went in from the porch and, pausing at the stairway, +called in stentorian tones: "Get up and eat your breakfast, Rufus! The +boys will be picking the side jams to-day, and I'm going down to work on +the logs. If you come along, bring your own pick-pole and peavey." Then, +going to the kitchen pantry, he collected, from the various shelves, a +pitcher of milk, a loaf of bread, half an apple-pie, and a bowl of +blueberries, and, with the easy methods of a household unswayed by +feminine rule, moved toward a seat under an apple-tree and took his +morning meal in great apparent content. Having finished, and washed his +dishes with much more thoroughness than is common to unsuperintended +man, and having given Rufus the second call to breakfast with the vigor +and acrimony that usually marks that unpleasant performance, he strode +to a high point on the river-bank and, shading his eyes with his hand, +gazed steadily down stream. + +Patches of green fodder and blossoming potatoes melted into soft fields +that had been lately mown, and there were glimpses of tasseling corn +rising high to catch the sun. Far, far down on the opposite bank of the +river was the hint of a brown roof, and the tip of a chimney that sent a +slender wisp of smoke into the clear air. Beyond this, and farther back +from the water, the trees apparently hid a cluster of other chimneys, +for thin spirals of smoke ascended here and there. The little brown roof +could never have revealed itself to any but a lover's eye; and that +discerned something even smaller, something like a pinkish speck, that +moved hither and thither on a piece of greensward that sloped to the +waterside. + +"She's up!" Stephen exclaimed under his breath, his eyes shining, his +lips smiling. His voice had a note of hushed exaltation about it, as if +"she," whoever she might be, had, in condescending to rise, conferred a +priceless boon upon a waiting universe. If she were indeed a "up" (so +his tone implied), then the day, somewhat falsely heralded by the +sunrise, had really begun, and the human race might pursue its appointed +tasks, inspired and uplifted by the consciousness of her existence. It +might properly be grateful for the fact of her birth; that she had grown +to woman's estate; and, above all, that, in common with the sun, the +lark, the morning-glory, and other beautiful things of the early day, +she was up and about her lovely, cheery, heart-warming business. + +[Illustration: "SHE'S UP!"] + +The handful of chimneys and the smoke spirals rising here and there +among the trees on the river-bank belonged to what was known as the +Brier Neighborhood. There were only a few houses in all, scattered along +a side road leading from the river up to Liberty Centre. There were no +great signs of thrift or prosperity, but the Wiley cottage, the only one +near the water, was neat and well cared for, and Nature had done her +best to conceal man's indolence, poverty, or neglect. + +Bushes of sweetbrier grew in fragrant little forests as tall as the +fences. Clumps of wild roses sprang up at every turn, and over all the +stone walls, as well as on every heap of rocks by the wayside, prickly +blackberry vines ran and clambered and clung, yielding fruit and thorns +impartially to the neighborhood children. + +The pinkish speck that Stephen Waterman had spied from his side of the +river was Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood on the Edgewood side. As +there was another of her name on Brigadier Hill, the Edgewood minister +called one of them the climbing Rose and the other the brier Rose, or +sometimes Rose of the river. She was well named, the pinkish speck. She +had not only some of the sweetest attributes of the wild rose, but the +parallel might have been extended as far as the thorns, for she had +wounded her scores,--hearts, be it understood, not hands. The wounding +was, on the whole, very innocently done; and if fault could be imputed +anywhere, it might rightly have been laid at the door of the kind powers +who had made her what she was, since the smile that blesses a single +heart is always destined to break many more. + +She had not a single silk gown, but she had what is far better, a figure +to show off a cotton one. Not a brooch nor a pair of earrings was +numbered among her possessions, but any ordinary gems would have looked +rather dull and trivial when compelled to undergo comparison with her +bright eyes. As to her hair, the local milliner declared it impossible +for Rose Wiley to get an unbecoming hat; that on one occasion, being in +a frolicsome mood, Rose had tried on all the headgear in the village +emporium,--children's gingham "Shakers," mourning bonnets for aged +dames, men's haying hats and visored caps,--and she proved superior to +every test, looking as pretty as a pink in the best ones and simply +ravishing in the worst. In fact, she had been so fashioned and finished +by Nature that, had she been set on a revolving pedestal in a +show-window, the bystanders would have exclaimed, as each new charm came +into view: "Look at her waist!" "See her shoulders!" "And her neck and +chin!" "And her hair!" While the children, gazing with raptured +admiration, would have shrieked, in unison, "I choose her for mine." + +All this is as much as to say that Rose of the river was a beauty, yet +it quite fails to explain, nevertheless, the secret of her power. When +she looked her worst the spell was as potent as when she looked her +best. Hidden away somewhere was a vital spark which warmed every one who +came in contact with it. Her lovely little person was a trifle below +medium height, and it might as well be confessed that her soul, on the +morning when Stephen Waterman saw her hanging out the clothes on the +river bank, was not large enough to be at all out of proportion; but +when eyes and dimples, lips and cheeks, enslave the onlooker, the soul +is seldom subjected to a close or critical scrutiny. Besides, Rose Wiley +was a nice girl, neat as wax, energetic, merry, amiable, economical. She +was a dutiful granddaughter to two of the most irritating old people in +the county; she never patronized her pug-nosed, pasty-faced girl +friends; she made wonderful pies and doughnuts; and besides, small +souls, if they are of the right sort, sometimes have a way of growing, +to the discomfiture of cynics and the gratification of the angels. + +So, on one bank of the river grew the brier rose, a fragile thing, +swaying on a slender stalk and looking at its pretty reflection in the +water; and on the other a sturdy pine tree, well rooted against wind and +storm. And the sturdy pine yearned for the wild rose; and the rose, so +far as it knew, yearned for nothing at all, certainly not for rugged +pine trees standing tall and grim in rocky soil. If, in its present +stage of development, it gravitated toward anything in particular, it +would have been a well-dressed white birch growing on an irreproachable +lawn. + +And the river, now deep, now shallow, now smooth, now tumultuous, now +sparkling in sunshine, now gloomy under clouds, rolled on to the +engulfing sea. It could not stop to concern itself with the petty +comedies and tragedies that were being enacted along its shores, else it +would never have reached its destination. Only last night, under a full +moon, there had been pairs of lovers leaning over the rails of all the +bridges along its course; but that was a common sight, like that of the +ardent couples sitting on its shady banks these summer days, looking +only into each other's eyes, but exclaiming about the beauty of the +water. Lovers would come and go, sometimes reappearing with successive +installments of loves in a way wholly mysterious to the river. Meantime +it had its own work to do and must be about it, for the side jams were +to be broken and the boom "let out" at the Edgewood bridge. + + + + +OLD KENNEBEC + + +It was just seven o'clock that same morning when Rose Wiley smoothed the +last wrinkle from her dimity counterpane, picked up a shred of corn-husk +from the spotless floor under the bed, slapped a mosquito on the +window-sill, removed all signs of murder with a moist towel, and before +running down to breakfast cast a frowning look at her pincushion. +Almira, otherwise "Mite," Shapley had been in her room the afternoon +before and disturbed with her careless hand the pattern of Rose's pins. +They were kept religiously in the form of a Maltese cross; and if, while +she was extricating one from her clothing, there had been an alarm of +fire, Rose would have stuck the pin in its appointed place in the +design, at the risk of losing her life. + +Entering the kitchen with her light step, she brought the morning +sunshine with her. The old people had already engaged in differences of +opinion, but they commonly suspended open warfare in her presence. There +were the usual last things to be done for breakfast, offices that +belonged to her as her grandmother's assistant. She took yesterday's +soda biscuits out of the steamer where they were warming and softening; +brought an apple pie and a plate of seed cakes from the pantry; settled +the coffee with a piece of dried fish skin and an egg shell; and +transferred some fried potatoes from the spider to a covered dish. + +"Did you remember the meat, grandpa? We're all out," she said, as she +began buttoning a stiff collar around his reluctant neck. + +"Remember? Land, yes! I wish't I ever could forgit anything! The butcher +says he's 'bout tired o' travelin' over the country lookin' for critters +to kill, but if he finds anything he'll be up along in the course of a +week. He ain't a real smart butcher, Cyse Higgins ain't.--Land, Rose, +don't button that dickey clean through my epperdummis! I have to sport +starched collars in this life on account o' you and your gran'mother +bein' so chock full o' style; but I hope to the Lord I shan't have to +wear 'em in another world!" + +"You won't," his wife responded with the snap of a dish towel, "or if +you do, they'll wilt with the heat." + +Rose smiled, but the soft hand with which she tied the neck-cloth about +the old man's withered neck pacified his spirit, and he smiled knowingly +back at her as she took her seat at the breakfast table spread near the +open kitchen door. She was a dazzling Rose, and, it is to be feared, a +wasted one, for there was no one present to observe her clean pink +calico and the still more subtle note struck in the green ribbon which +was tied round her throat,--the ribbon that formed a sort of calyx, out +of which sprang the flower of her face, as fresh and radiant as if it +had bloomed that morning. + +"Give me my coffee turrible quick," said Mr. Wiley; "I must be down the +bridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam." + +"I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days," remarked +his spouse, testily. + +"'Taint me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the old man. +"The boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air ricked up jest +like Rose's jackstraws; I never see'em so turrible ricked up in all my +exper'ence; an' Lije Dennett don' know no more 'bout pickin' a jam than +Cooper's cow. Turrible sot in his ways, too; can't take a mite of +advice. I was tellin' him how to go to work on that bung that's formed +between the gre't gray rock an' the shore,--the awfullest place to bung +that there is between this an' Biddeford,--and says he: 'Look here, +I've be'n boss on this river for twelve year, an' I'll be doggoned if +I'm goin' to be taught my business by any man!' 'This ain't no river,' +says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on the Kennebec.' +'Pity you hedn't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land I hed,' says +I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry an' sarcustic +that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up strife. There's +some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year out, as if there +wan't good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's one of +'em, when it comes to river drivin'." + +"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their own +business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared a +soda-biscuit with her fork. + +"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded her +husband loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what you +are,--partic'larly if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd ought, +as a Kennebec man an' a Christian, to set him on the right track, though +it's always a turrible risky thing to do." + +Rose's grandfather was called, by the irreverent younger generation, +sometimes "Turrible Wiley" and sometimes "Old Kennebec," because of the +frequency with which these words appeared in his conversation. There +were not wanting those of late who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for reasons +too obvious to mention. After a long, indolent, tolerably truthful, and +useless life, he had, at seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing line +between fact and fancy, and drew on his imagination to such an extent +that he almost staggered himself when he began to indulge in +reminiscence. He was a feature of the Edgewood "drive," being always +present during the five or six days that it was in progress, sometimes +sitting on the river-bank, sometimes leaning over the bridge, sometimes +reclining against the butt-end of a huge log, but always chewing +tobacco and expectorating to incredible distances as he criticized and +damned impartially all the expedients in use at the particular moment. + +"I want to stay down by the river this afternoon," said Rose. "Ever so +many of the girls will be there, and all my sewing is done up. If +grandpa will leave the horse for me, I'll take the drivers' lunch to +them at noon, and bring the dishes back in time to wash them before +supper." + +"I suppose you can go, if the rest do," said her grandmother, "though +it's an awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I was a girl there +was no such dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you. Nobody thought o' lookin' +at the river in them days; there wasn't time." + +"But it's such fun to watch the logs!" Rose exclaimed. "Next to dancing, +the greatest fun in the world." + +"'Specially as all the young men in town will be there, watchin', too," +was the grandmother's reply. "Eben Brooks an' Richard Bean got home +yesterday with their doctors' diplomas in their pockets. Mrs. Brooks +says Eben stood forty-nine in a class o' fifty-five, an' seemed +consid'able proud of him; an' I guess it is the first time he ever stood +anywheres but at the foot. I tell you when these fifty-five new doctors +git scattered over the country there'll be consid'able many folks +keepin' house under ground. Dick Bean's goin' to stop a spell with Rufe +an' Steve Waterman. That'll make one more to play in the river." + +"Rufus ain't hardly got his workin' legs on yit," allowed Mr. Wiley, "but +Steve's all right. He's a turrible smart driver, an' turrible reckless, +too. He'll take all the chances there is, though to a man that's lived +on the Kennebec there ain't what can rightly be called any turrible +chances on the Saco." + +"He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm," objected Mrs. Wiley. + +[Illustration: "HE'S A TURRIBLE SMART DRIVER"] + +"His hay is all in," Rose spoke up quickly, "and he only helps on the +river when the farm work isn't pressing. Besides, though it's all play +to him, he earns his two dollars and a half a day." + +"He don't keer about the two and a half," said her grandfather. "He jest +can't keep away from the logs. There's some that can't. When I first +moved here from Gard'ner, where the climate never suited me"-- + +"The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did an' never +will suit you," remarked the old man's wife; but the interruption +received no comment: such mistaken views of his character were too +frequent to make any impression. + +"As I was sayin', Rose," he continued, "when we first moved here from +Gard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an' Rufus was little +boys then, always playin' with a couple o' wild cousins o' theirn, +consid'able older. Steve would scare his mother pretty nigh to death +stealin' away to the mill to ride on the 'carriage,' 'side o' the log +that was bein' sawed, hitchin' clean out over the river an' then jerkin' +back 'most into the jaws o' the machinery." + +"He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young one," +remarked Mrs. Wiley; "and I don't see as all the 'cademy education his +father throwed away on him has changed him much." And with this +observation she rose from the table and went to the sink. + +"Steve ain't nobody's fool," dissented the old man; "but he's kind o' +daft about the river. When he was little he was allers buildin' dams in +the brook, an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the logs; allers choppin' +up stickins an' raftin' 'em together in the pond. I cal'late Mis' +Waterman died consid'able afore her time, jest from fright, lookin' out +the winders and seein' her boys slippin' between the logs an' gittin' +their daily dousin'. She couldn't understand it, an' there's a heap o' +things women-folks never do an' never can understand,--jest because they +air women-folks." + +"One o' the things is men, I s'pose," interrupted Mrs. Wiley. + +"Men in general, but more partic'larly husbands," assented Old Kennebec; +"howsomever, there's another thing they don't an' can't never take in, +an' that's sport. Steve does river drivin' as he would horseracin' or +tiger-shootin' or tight-rope dancin'; an' he always did from a boy. +When he was about twelve or fifteen, he used to help the river-drivers +spring and fall, reg'lar. He couldn't do nothin' but shin up an' down +the rocks after hammers an' hatchets an' ropes, but he was turrible +pleased with his job. 'Stepanfetchit,' they used to call him them +days,--Stephanfetchit Waterman." + +"Good name for him yet," came in acid tones from the sink. "He's still +steppin' an' fetchin', only it's Rose that's doin' the drivin' now." + +"I'm not driving anybody, that I know of," answered Rose, with +heightened color, but with no loss of her habitual self-command. + +"Then, when he graduated from errants," went on the crafty old man, who +knew that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin, "Steve used to get +seventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the river--if you can call +this here silv'ry streamlet a river. He'd pick off a log here an' there +an' send it afloat, an' dig out them that hed got ketched in the rocks, +and tidy up the banks jest like spring house-cleanin'. If he'd hed any +kind of a boss, an' hed be'n trained on the Kennebec, he'd 'a' made a +turrible smart driver, Steve would." + +"He'll be drownded, that's what'll become o' him," prophesied Mrs. +Wiley; "'specially if Rose encourages him in such silly foolishness as +ridin' logs from his house down to ourn, dark nights." + +"Seein' as how Steve built ye a nice pig pen last month, 'pears to me +you might have a good word for him now an' then, mother," remarked Old +Kennebec, reaching for his second piece of pie. + +"I wa'n't a mite deceived by that pig pen, no more'n I was by Jed +Towle's hen coop, nor Ivory Dunn's well-curb, nor Pitt Packard's +shed-steps. If you hed ever kep' up your buildin's yourself, Rose's +beaux wouldn't hev to do their courtin' with carpenters' tools." + +"It's the pigpen an' the hencoop you want to keep your eye on, mother, +not the motives of them as made 'em. It's turrible onsettlin' to inspeck +folks' motives too turrible close." + +"Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he says," +interposed Rose, to change the subject; "but I tell him that a horse +doesn't revolve under you, and go sideways at the same time that it is +going forwards." + +"Log-ridin' ain't no trick at all to a man of sperit," said Mr. Wiley. +"There's a few places in the Kennebec where the water's too shaller to +let the logs float, so we used to build a flume, an' the logs would whiz +down like arrers shot from a bow. The boys used to collect by the side +o' that there flume to see me ride a log down, an' I've watched 'em drop +in a dead faint when I spun by the crowd; but land! you can't drownd +some folks, not without you tie nail-kags to their head an' feet an' +drop 'em in the falls; I 've rid logs down the b'ilin'est rapids o' the +Kennebec an' never lost my head. I remember well the year o' the gre't +freshet, I rid a log from"-- + +"There, there, father, that'll do," said Mrs. Wiley, decisively. "I'll +put the cream in the churn, an' you jest work off some o' your steam by +bringin' the butter for us afore you start for the bridge. It don't do +no good to brag afore your own women-folks; work goes consid'able +better'n stories at every place 'cept the loafers' bench at the +tavern." + +And the baffled raconteur, who had never done a piece of work cheerfully +in his life, dragged himself reluctantly to the shed, where, before +long, one could hear him moving the dasher up and down sedately to his +favorite "churning tune" of-- + + Broad is the road that leads to death, + And thousands walk together there; + But Wisdom shows a narrow path, + With here and there a traveler. + + + + +THE EDGEWOOD "DRIVE" + + +Just where the bridge knits together the two little villages of Pleasant +River and Edgewood, the glassy mirror of the Saco broadens suddenly, +sweeping over the dam in a luminous torrent. Gushes of pure amber mark +the middle of the dam, with crystal and silver at the sides, and from +the seething vortex beneath the golden cascade the white spray dashes up +in fountains. In the crevices and hollows of the rocks the mad water +churns itself into snowy froth, while the foam-flecked torrent, deep, +strong, and troubled to its heart, sweeps majestically under the bridge, +then dashes between wooded shores piled high with steep masses of rock, +or torn and riven by great gorges. + +There had been much rain during the summer, and the Saco was very high, +so on the third day of the Edgewood drive there was considerable +excitement at the bridge, and a goodly audience of villagers from both +sides of the river. There were some who never came, some who had no +fancy for the sight, some to whom it was an old story, some who were too +busy, but there were many to whom it was the event of events, a +never-ending source of interest. + +Above the fall, covering the placid surface of the river, thousands of +logs lay quietly "in boom" until the "turning out" process, on the last +day of the drive, should release them and give them their chance of +display, their brief moment of notoriety, their opportunity of +interesting, amusing, exciting, and exasperating the onlookers by their +antics. + +Heaps of logs had been cast up on the rocks below the dam, where they +lay in hopeless confusion, adding nothing, however, to the problem of +the moment, for they too bided their time. If they had possessed wisdom, +discretion, and caution, they might have slipped gracefully over the +falls and, steering clear of the hidden ledges (about which it would +seem they must have heard whispers from the old pine trees along the +river), have kept a straight course and reached their destination +without costing the Edgewood Lumber Company a small fortune. Or, if they +had inclined toward a jolly and adventurous career, they could have +joined one of the various jams or "bungs," stimulated by the thought +that any one of them might be a key-log, holding for a time the entire +mass in its despotic power. But they had been stranded early in the +game, and, after lying high and dry for weeks, would be picked off one +by one and sent down-stream. + +In the tumultuous boil, the foaming hubbub and flurry at the foot of the +falls, one enormous peeled log wallowed up and down like a huge +rhinoceros, greatly pleasing the children by its clumsy cavortings. Some +conflict of opposing forces kept it ever in motion, yet never set it +free. Below the bridge were always the real battle-grounds, the scenes +of the first and the fiercest conflicts. A ragged ledge of rock, +standing well above the yeasty torrent, marked the middle of the river. +Stephen had been stranded there once, just at dusk, on a stormy +afternoon in spring. A jam had broken under the men, and Stephen, having +taken too great risks, had been caught on the moving mass, and, leaping +from log to log, his only chance for life had been to find a footing on +Gray Rock, which was nearer than the shore. + +Rufus was ill at the time, and Mrs. Waterman so anxious and nervous that +processions of boys had to be sent up to the River Farm, giving the +frightened mother the latest bulletins of her son's welfare. Luckily, +the river was narrow just at the Gray Rock, and it was a quite possible +task, though no easy one, to lash two ladders together and make a narrow +bridge on which the drenched and shivering man could reach the shore. +There were loud cheers when Stephen ran lightly across the slender +pathway that led to safety--ran so fast that the ladders had scarce time +to bend beneath his weight. He had certainly "taken chances," but when +did he not do that? The logger's life is one of "moving accidents by +flood and field," and Stephen welcomed with wildqq exhilaration every +hazard that came in his path. To him there was never a dull hour from +the moment that the first notch was cut in the tree (for he sometimes +joined the boys in the lumber camp just for a frolic) till the later one +when the hewn log reached its final destination. He knew nothing of +"tooling" a four-in-hand through narrow lanes or crowded +thoroughfares,--nothing of guiding a horse over the hedges and through +the pitfalls of a stiff bit of hunting country; his steed was the +rearing, plunging, kicking log, and he rode it like a river god. + +[Illustration: HE HAD CERTAINLY "TAKEN CHANCES"] + +The crowd loves daring, and so it welcomed Stephen with braves, but it +knew, as he knew, that he was only doing his duty by the Company, only +showing the Saco that man was master, only keeping the old Waterman name +in good repute. + +"Ye can't drownd some folks," Old Kennebec had said, as he stood in a +group on the shore; "not without you tie sand-bags to'em an' drop 'em in +the Great Eddy. I'm the same kind; I remember when I was stranded on +jest sech a rock in the Kennebec, only they left me there all night for +dead, an' I had to swim the rapids when it come daylight." + +"We're well acquainted with that rock and them rapids," exclaimed one of +the river-drivers, to the delight of the company. + +Rose had reason to remember Stephen's adventure, for he had clambered +up the bank, smiling and blushing under the hurrahs of the boys, and, +coming to the wagon where she sat waiting for her grandfather, had +seized a moment to whisper: "Did you care whether I came across safe, +Rose? Say you did!" + +Stephen recalled that question, too, on this August morning; perhaps +because this was to be a red-letter day, and sometime, when he had a +free moment,--sometime before supper, when he and Rose were sitting +apart from the others, watching the logs,--he intended again to ask her +to marry him. This thought trembled in him, stirring the deeps of his +heart like a great wave, almost sweeping him off his feet when he held +it too close and let it have full sway. It would be the fourth time that +he had asked Rose this question of all questions, but there was no +perceptible difference in his excitement, for there was always the +possible chance that she might change her mind and say yes, if only for +variety. Wanting a thing continuously, unchangingly, unceasingly, year +after year, he thought,--longing to reach it as the river longed to +reach the sea,--such wanting might, in course of time, mean having. + +Rose drove up to the bridge with the men's luncheon, and the under boss +came up to take the baskets and boxes from the back of the wagon. + +"We've had a reg'lar tussle this mornin', Rose," he said. "The logs are +determined not to move. Ike Billings, that's the han'somest and +fluentest all-round swearer on the Saco, has tried his best on the side +jam. He's all out o' cuss-words and there hain't a log budged. Now, stid +o' dog-warpin' this afternoon, an' lettin' the oxen haul off all them +stubborn logs by main force, we're goin' to ask you to set up on the +bank and smile at the jam. 'Land! she can do it!' says Ike a minute ago. +'When Rose starts smilin',' he says, 'there ain't a jam nor a bung in me +that don't melt like wax and jest float right off same as the logs do +when they get into quiet, sunny water.'" + +Rose blushed and laughed, and drove up the hill to Mite Shapley's, where +she put up the horse and waited till the men had eaten their luncheon. +The drivers slept and had breakfast and supper at the Billings house, a +mile down river, but for several years Mrs. Wiley had furnished the noon +meal, sending it down piping hot on the stroke of twelve. The boys +always said that up or down the whole length of the Saco there was no +such cooking as the Wileys', and much of this praise was earned by +Rose's serving. It was the old grandmother who burnished the tin plates +and dippers till they looked like silver; for crotchety and +sharp-tongued as she was--she never allowed Rose to spoil her hands with +soft soap and sand: but it was Rose who planned and packed, Rose who +hemmed squares of old white tablecloths and sheets to line the baskets +and keep things daintily separate, Rose, also, whose tarts and cakes +were the pride and admiration of church sociables and sewing societies. + +Where could such smoking pots of beans be found? A murmur of ecstatic +approval ran through the crowd when the covers were removed. Pieces of +sweet home-fed pork glistened like varnished mahogany on the top of the +beans, and underneath were such deeps of fragrant juice as come only +from slow fires and long, quiet hours in brick ovens. Who else could +steam and bake such mealy leaves of brown bread, brown as plum-pudding, +yet with no suspicion of sogginess? Who such soda-biscuits, big, +feathery, tasting of cream, and hardly needing butter? And green-apple +pies! Could such candied lower crusts be found elsewhere, or more +delectable filling? Or such rich, nutty doughnuts?--doughnuts that had +spurned the hot fat which is the ruin of so many, and risen from its +waves like golden-brown Venuses. + +"By the great seleckmen!" ejaculated Jed Towle, as he swallowed his +fourth, "I'd like to hev a wife, two daughters, and four sisters like +them Wileys, and jest set still on the river-bank an' hev 'em cook +victuals for me. I'd hev nothin' to wish for then but a mouth as big as +the Saco's." + +"And I wish this custard pie was the size o' Bonnie Eagle Pond," said +Ike Billings. "I'd like to fall into the middle of it and eat my way +out!" + +"Look at that bunch o' Chiny asters tied on t' the bail o' that +biscuit-pail!" said Ivory Dunn. "That's the girl's doin's, you bet +women-folks don't seem to make no bo'quets after they git married. Let's +divide 'em up an' wear 'em drivin' this afternoon; mebbe they'll ketch +the eye so't our rags won't show so bad. Land! it's lucky my hundred +days is about up! If I don't git home soon, I shall be arrested for +goin' without clo'es. I set up'bout all night puttin' these blue patches +in my pants an' tryin' to piece together a couple of old red-flannel +shirts to make one whole one. That's the worst o' drivin' in these +places where the pretty girls make a habit of comin' down to the bridge +to see the fun. You hev to keep rigged up jest so stylish; you can't git +no chance at the rum bottle, an' you even hev to go a leetle mite light +on swearin'." + + + + +"BLASPHEMIOUS SWEARIN'" + + +"Steve Waterman's an awful nice feller," exclaimed Ivory Dunn just then. +Stephen had been looking intently across the river, watching the +Shapleys' side door, from which Rose might issue at any moment; and at +this point in the discussion he had lounged away from the group, and, +moving toward the bridge, began to throw pebbles idly into the water. + +"He's an awful smart driver for one that don't foiler drivin' the year +round," continued Ivory; "and he's the awfullest clean-spoken, +soft-spoken feller I ever see." + +"There's be'n two black sheep in his family a'ready, an' Steve kind o' +feels as if he'd ought to be extry white," remarked Jed Towle. "You +fellers that belonged to the old drive remember Pretty Quick Waterman +well enough? Steve's mother brought him up." + +Yes; most of them remembered the Waterman twins, Stephen's cousins, now +both dead,--Slow Waterman, so moderate in his steps and actions that you +had to fix a landmark somewhere near him to see if he moved; and Pretty +Quick, who shone by comparison with his twin. + +"I'd kind o' forgot that Pretty Quick Waterman was cousin to Steve," +said the under boss; "he never worked with me much, but he wa'n't cut +off the same piece o' goods as the other Watermans. Great hemlock! but +he kep' a cussin' dictionary, Pretty Quick did! Whenever he heard any +new words he must 'a' writ 'em down, an' then studied 'em all up in the +winter-time, to use in the spring drive." + +"Swearin' 's a habit that hed ought to be practiced with turrible +caution," observed old Mr. Wiley, when the drivers had finished +luncheon and taken out their pipes. "There's three kinds o' +swearin',--plain swearin', profane swearin', an' blasphemious swearin'. +Logs air jest like mules: there's times when a man can't seem to rip up +a jam in good style 'thout a few words that's too strong for the infant +classes in Sunday-schools; but a man hedn't ought to tempt Providence. +When he's ridin' a log near the falls at high water, or cuttin' the +key-log in a jam, he ain't in no place for blasphemious swearin'; jest a +little easy, perlite 'damn' is 'bout all he can resk, if he don't want to +git drownded an' hev his ghost walkin' the river-banks till kingdom +come. + +"You an' I, Long, was the only ones that seen Pretty Quick go, wa'n't +we?" continued Old Kennebec, glancing at Long Abe Dennett (cousin to +Short Abe), who lay on his back in the grass, the smoke-wreaths rising +from his pipe, and the steel spikes in his heavy, calked-sole boots +shining in the sun. + +"There was folks on the bridge," Long answered, "but we was the only +ones near enough to see an' hear. It was so onexpected, an' so soon +over, that them as was watchin' upstream, where the men was to work on +the falls, wouldn't 'a' hed time to see him go down. But I did, an' +nobody ain't heard me swear sence, though it's ten years ago. I allers +said it was rum an' bravadder that killed Pretty Quick Waterman that +day. The boys hedn't give him a 'dare' that he hedn't took up. He seemed +like he was possessed, an' the logs was the same way; they was fairly +wild, leapin' around in the maddest kind o' water you ever see. The +river was b'ilin' high that spring; it was an awful stubborn jam, an' +Pretty Quick, he'd be'n workin' on it sence dinner." + +"He clumb up the bank more'n once to have a pull at the bottle that was +hid in the bushes," interpolated Mr. Wiley. + +"Like as not; that was his failin'. Well, most o' the boys were on the +other side o' the river, workin' above the bridge, an' the boss hed +called Pretty Quick to come off an' leave the jam till mornin', when +they'd get horses an' dog-warp it off, log by log. But when the boss got +out o' sight, Pretty Quick jest stood right still, swingin' his axe, an' +blasphemin' so 't would freeze your blood, vowin' he wouldn't move till +the logs did, if he stayed there till the crack o' doom. Jest then a +great, ponderous log that hed be'n churnin' up an' down in the falls for +a week, got free an' come blunderin' an' thunderin' down-river. Land! it +was chockfull o' water, an' looked 'bout as big as a church! It come +straight along, butt-end foremost, an' struck that jam, full force, so't +every log in it shivered. There was a crack,--the crack o' doom, sure +enough, for Pretty Quick,--an' one o' the logs le'p' right out an' +struck him jest where he stood, with his axe in the air, blasphemin'. +The jam kind o' melted an' crumbled up, an' in a second Pretty Quick +was whirlin' in the white water. He never riz,--at least where we could +see him,--an' we didn't find him for a week. That's the whole story, an' +I guess Steve takes it as a warnin'. Any way, he ain't no friend to rum +nor swearin', Steve ain't. He knows Pretty Quick's ways shortened his +mother's life, an' you notice what a sharp lookout he keeps on Rufus." + +"He needs it," Ike Billings commented tersely. + +"Some men seem to lose their wits when they're workin' on logs," +observed Mr. Wiley, who had deeply resented Long Dennett's telling of a +story which he knew fully as well and could have told much better. "Now, +nat'rally, I've seen things on the Kennebec "-- + +"Three cheers for the Saco! Hats off, boys!" shouted Jed Towle, and his +directions were followed with a will. + +"As I was sayin'," continued the old man, peacefully, "I've seen things +on the Kennebec that wouldn't happen on a small river, an' I've be'n in +turrible places an' taken turrible resks--resks that would 'a' turned a +Saco River man's hair white; but them is the times when my wits work the +quickest. I remember once I was smokin' my pipe when a jam broke under +me. 'T was a small jam, or what we call a small jam on the +Kennebec,--only about three hundred thousand pine logs. The first thing +I knowed, I was shootin' back an' forth in the b'ilin' foam, hangin' on +t' the end of a log like a spider. My hands was clasped round the log, +and I never lost control o' my pipe. They said I smoked right along, +jest as cool an' placid as a pond-lily." + +"Why'd you quit drivin'?" inquired Ivory. + +"My strength wa'n't ekal to it," Mr. Wiley responded sadly. "I was all +skin, bones, an' nerve. The Comp'ny wouldn't part with me altogether, +so they give me a place in the office down on the wharves." + +"That wa'n't so bad," said Jed Towle; "why didn't you hang on to it, +so's to keep in sight o' the Kennebec?" + +"I found I couldn't be confined under cover. My liver give all out, my +appetite failed me, an' I wa'n't wuth a day's wages. I'd learned +engineerin' when I was a boy, an' I thought I'd try runnin' on the road +a spell, but it didn't suit my constitution. My kidneys ain't turrible +strong, an' the doctors said I'd have Bright's disease if I didn't git +some kind o' work where there wa'n't no vibrations." + +"Hard to find, Mr. Wiley; hard to find!" said Jed Towle. + +"You're right," responded the old man feelingly. "I've tried all kinds +o' labor. Some of 'em don't suit my liver, some disagrees with my +stomach, and the rest of 'em has vibrations; so here I set, high an' +dry on the banks of life, you might say, like a stranded log." + +As this well-known simile fell upon the ear, there was a general stir in +the group, for Turrible Wiley, when rhetorical, sometimes grew tearful, +and this was a mood not to be encouraged. + +"All right, boss," called Ike Billings, winking to the boys; "we'll be +there in a jiffy!" for the luncheon hour had flown, and the work of the +afternoon was waiting for them. "You make a chalk-mark where you left +off, Mr. Wiley, an' we'll hear the rest to-morrer; only don't you forgit +nothin'! Remember't was the Kennebec you was talkin' about." + +"I will, indeed," responded the old man. "As I was sayin' when +interrupted, I may be a stranded log, but I'm proud that the mark o' the +Gard'ner Lumber Comp'ny is on me, so't when I git to my journey's end +they'll know where I belong and send me back to the Kennebec. Before I'm +sawed up I'd like to forgit this triflin' brook in the sight of a +good-sized river, an' rest my eyes on some full-grown logs, 'stead o' +these little damn pipestems you boys are playin' with!" + + + + +THE GAME OF JACKSTRAWS + + +There was a roar of laughter at the old man's boast, but in a moment all +was activity. The men ran hither and thither like ants, gathering their +tools. There were some old-fashioned pick-poles, straight, heavy levers +without any "dog," and there were modern pick-poles and peaveys, for +every river has its favorite equipment in these things. There was no +dynamite in those days to make the stubborn jams yield, and the dog-warp +was in general use. Horses or oxen, sometimes a line of men, stood on +the river-bank. A long rope was attached by means of a steel spike to +one log after another, and it was dragged from the tangled mass. +Sometimes, after unloading the top logs, those at the bottom would rise +and make the task easier; sometimes the work would go on for hours with +no perceptible progress, and Mr. Wiley would have opportunity to tell +the bystanders of a "turrible jam" on the Kennebec that had cost the +Lumber Company ten thousand dollars to break. + +There would be great arguments on shore, among the villagers as well as +among the experts, as to the particular log which might be a key to the +position. The boss would study the problem from various standpoints, and +the drivers themselves would pass from heated discussion into long +consultations. + +"They're paid by the day," Old Kennebec would philosophize to the +doctor; "an' when they're consultin' they don't hev to be doggin', which +is a turrible sight harder work." + +Rose had created a small sensation, on one occasion, by pointing out to +the under boss the key-log in a jam. She was past mistress of the +pretty game of jackstraws, much in vogue at that time. The delicate +little lengths of polished wood or bone were shaken together and emptied +on the table. Each jackstraw had one of its ends fashioned in the shape +of some sort of implement,--a rake, hoe, spade, fork, or mallet. All the +pieces were intertwined by the shaking process, and they lay as they +fell, in a hopeless tangle. The task consisted in taking a tiny +pick-pole, scarcely bigger than a match, and with the bit of curved wire +on the end lifting off the jackstraws one by one without stirring the +pile or making it tremble. When this occurred, you gave place to your +opponent, who relinquished his turn to you when ill fortune descended +upon him, the game, which was a kind of river-driving and jam-picking in +miniature, being decided by the number of pieces captured and their +value. No wonder that the under boss asked Rose's advice as to the +key-log. She had a fairy's hand, and her cunning at deciding the pieces +to be moved, and her skill at extricating and lifting them from the +heap, were looked upon in Edgewood as little less than supernatural. It +was a favorite pastime; and although a man's hand is ill adapted to it, +being over-large and heavy; the game has obvious advantages for a lover +in bringing his head very close to that of his beloved adversary. The +jackstraws have to be watched with a hawk's eagerness, since the +"trembling" can be discerned only by a keen eye; but there were moments +when Stephen was willing to risk the loss of a battle if he could watch +Rose's drooping eyelashes, the delicate down on her pink cheek, and the +feathery curls that broke away from her hair. + +He was looking at her now from a distance, for she and Mite Shapley were +assisting Jed Towle to pile up the tin plates and tie the tin dippers +together. Next she peered into one of the bean-pots, and seemed pleased +that there was still something in its depths; then she gathered the +fragments neatly together in a basket, and, followed by her friend, +clambered down the banks to a shady spot where the Boomshers, otherwise +known as the Crambry family, were "lined up" expectantly. + +It is not difficult to find a single fool in any community, however +small; but a family of fools is fortunately somewhat rarer. Every +county, however, can boast of one fool-family, and York County is +always in the fashion, with fools as with everything else. The unique, +much-quoted, and undesirable Boomshers could not be claimed as +indigenous to the Saco valley, for this branch was an offshoot of a +still larger tribe inhabiting a distant township. Its beginnings were +shrouded in mystery. There was a French-Canadian ancestor somewhere, and +a Gipsy or Indian grandmother. They had always intermarried from time +immemorial. When one of the selectmen of their native place had been +asked why the Boomshers always married cousins, and why the habit was +not discouraged, he replied that he really didn't know; he s'posed they +felt it would be kind of odd to go right out and marry a stranger. + +Lest "Boomsher" seem an unusual surname, it must be explained that the +actual name was French and could not be coped with by Edgewood or +Pleasant River, being something quite as impossible to spell as to +pronounce. As the family had lived for the last few years somewhere near +the Killick Cranberry Meadows, they were called--and completely +described in the calling--the Crambry fool-family. A talented and much +traveled gentleman who once stayed over night at the Edgewood tavern, +proclaimed it his opinion that Boomsher had been gradually corrupted +from Beaumarchais. When he wrote the word on his visiting card and +showed it to Mr. Wiley, Old Kennebec had replied, that in the judgment +of a man who had lived in large places and seen a turrible lot o' life, +such a name could never have been given either to a Christian or a +heathen family,--that the way in which the letters was thrown together +into it, and the way in which they was sounded when read out loud, was +entirely ag'in reason. It was true, he said, that Beaumarchais, bein' +such a fool name, might 'a' be'n invented a-purpose for a fool family, +but he wouldn't hold even with callin' 'em Boomsher; Crambry was well +enough for'em an' a sight easier to speak. + +Stephen knew a good deal about the Crambrys, for he passed their +so-called habitation in going to one of his wood-lots. It was only a +month before that he had found them all sitting outside their +broken-down fence, surrounded by decrepit chairs, sofas, tables, +bedsteads, bits of carpet, and stoves. + +"What's the matter?" he called out from his wagon. "There ain't nothin' +the matter," said Alcestis Crambry. "Father's dead, an we're dividin' up +the furnerchure." + +Alcestis was the pride of the Crambrys, and the list of his attainments +used often to be on his proud father's lips. It was he who was the +largest, "for his size," in the family; he who could tell his brothers +Paul and Arcadus "by their looks;" he who knew a sour apple from a sweet +one the minute he bit it; he who, at the early age of ten, was bright +enough to point to the cupboard and say, "Puddin', dad!" + +Alcestis had enjoyed, in consequence of his unusual intellectual powers, +some educational privileges, and the Killick schoolmistress well +remembered his first day at the village seat of learning. Reports of +what took place in this classic temple from day to day may have been +wafted to the dull ears of the boy, who was not thought ready for school +until he had attained the ripe age of twelve. It may even have been +that specific rumors of the signs, symbols, and hieroglyphics used in +educational institutions had reached him in the obscurity of his +cranberry meadows. At all events, when confronted by the alphabet chart, +whose huge black capitals were intended to capture the wandering eyes of +the infant class, Alcestis exhibited unusual, almost unnatural, +excitement. + +"That is 'A,' my boy," said the teacher genially, as she pointed to the +first character on the chart. + +"Good God, is that 'A'!" exclaimed Alcestis, sitting down heavily on +the nearest bench. And neither teacher nor scholars could discover +whether he was agreeably surprised or disappointed in the +letter,--whether he had expected, if he ever encountered it, to find it +writhing in coils on the floor of a cage, or whether it simply bore no +resemblance to the ideal already established in his mind. + +Mrs. Wiley had once tried to make something of Mercy, the oldest +daughter of the family, but at the end of six weeks she announced that a +girl who couldn't tell whether the clock was going "forrards or +backwards," and who rubbed a pocket handkerchief as long as she did a +sheet, would be no help in her household. + +The Crambrys had daily walked the five or six miles from their home to +the Edgewood bridge during the progress of the drive, not only for the +social and intellectual advantages to be gained from the company +present, but for the more solid compensation of a good meal. They all +adored Rose, partly because she gave them food, and partly because she +was sparkling and pretty and wore pink dresses that caught their dull +eyes. + +The afternoon proved a lively one. In the first place, one of the +younger men slipped into the water between two logs, part of a lot +chained together waiting to be let out of the boom. The weight of the +mass higher up and the force of the current wedged him in rather +tightly, and when he had been "pried" out he declared that he felt like +an apple after it had been squeezed in the cider-mill, so he drove home, +and Rufus Waterman took his place. + +Two hours' hard work followed this incident, and at the end of that time +the "bung" that reached from the shore to Waterman's Ledge (the rock +where Pretty Quick met his fate) was broken up, and the logs that +composed it were started down river. There remained now only the great +side-jam at Gray Rock. This had been allowed to grow, gathering logs as +they drifted past, thus making higher water and a stronger current on +the other side of the rock, and allowing an easier passage for the logs +at that point. + +All was excitement now, for, this particular piece of work accomplished, +the boom above the falls would be "turned out," and the river would +once more be clear and clean at the Edgewood bridge. + +Small boys, perching on the rocks with their heels hanging, hands and +mouths full of red Astrakhan apples, cheered their favorites to the +echo, while the drivers shouted to one another and watched the signs and +signals of the boss, who could communicate with them only in that way, +so great was the roar of the water. + +The jam refused to yield to ordinary measures. It was a difficult +problem, for the rocky river-bed held many a snare and pitfall. There +was a certain ledge under the water, so artfully placed that every log +striking under its projecting edges would wedge itself firmly there, +attracting others by its evil example. + +"That galoot-boss ought to hev shoved his crew down to that jam this +mornin'," grumbled Old Kennebec to Alcestis Crambry, who was always his +most loyal and attentive listener. "But he wouldn't take no advice, not +if Pharaoh nor Boat nor Herod nor Nicodemus come right out o' the Bible +an' give it to him. The logs air contrary to-day. Sometimes they'll go +along as easy as an old shoe, an' other times they'll do nothin' but +bung, bung, bung! There's a log nestlin' down in the middle o' that jam +that I've be'n watchin' for a week. It's a cur'ous one, to begin with; +an' then it has a mark on it that you can reco'nize it by. Did ye ever +hear tell o' George the Third, King of England, Alcestis, or ain't he +known over to the crambry medders? Well, once upon a time men used to go +through the forests over here an' slash a mark on the trunks o' the +biggest trees. That was the royal sign, as you might say, an' meant that +the tree was to be taken over to England to make masts an' yard-arms for +the King's ships. What made me think of it now is that the King's mark +was an arrer, an' it's an arrer that's on that there log I'm showin' ye. +Well, sir, I seen it fust at Milliken's Mills a Monday. It was in +trouble then, an'it's be'n in trouble ever sence. That's allers the way; +there'll be one pesky, crooked, contrary, consarn'ed log that can't go +anywheres without gittin' into difficulties. You can yank it out an' set +it afloat, an' before you hardly git your doggin' iron off of it, it'll +be snarled up agin in some new place. From the time it's chopped down to +the day it gets to Saco, it costs the Comp'ny 'bout ten times its pesky +valler as lumber. Now they've sent over to Benson's for a team of +horses, an' I bate ye they can't git 'em. I wish I was the boss on this +river, Alcestis." + +"I wish I was," echoed the boy. + +"Well, your head-fillin' ain't the right kind for a boss, Alcestis, an' +you'd better stick to dry land. You set right down here while I go back +a piece an' git the pipe out o' my coat pocket. I guess nothin' ain't +goin' to happen for a few minutes." + +The surmise about the horses, unlike most of Old Kennebec's, proved to +be true. Benson's pair had gone to Portland with a load of hay; +accordingly the tackle was brought, the rope was adjusted to a log, and +five of the drivers, standing on the river-bank, attempted to drag it +from its intrenched position. It refused to yield the fraction of an +inch. Rufus and Stephen joined the five men, and the augmented crew of +seven were putting all their strength on the rope when a cry went up +from the watchers on the bridge. The "dog" had loosened suddenly, and +the men were flung violently to the ground. For a second they were +stunned both by the surprise and by the shock of the blow, but in the +same moment the cry of the crowd swelled louder. Alcestis Crambry had +stolen, all unnoticed, to the rope and had attempted to use his feeble +powers for the common good. When then blow came he fell backward, and, +making no effort to control the situation, slid over the bank and into +the water. + +[Illustration: IN A TWINKLING HE WAS IN THE WATER] + +The other Crambrys, not realizing the danger, laughed, audibly, but +there was no jeering from the bridge. + +Stephen had seen Alcestis slip, and in the fraction of a moment had +taken off his boots and was coasting down the slippery rocks behind him +in a twinkling he was in the water, almost as soon as the boy himself. + +"Doggoned idjut!" exclaimed Old Kennebec, tearfully. "Wuth the hull fool +family! If I hedn't 'a' be'n so old, I'd 'a' jumped in myself, for you +can't drownd a Wiley, not without you tie nail-kegs to their head an' +feet an' drop 'em in the falls." + +Alcestis, who had neither brains, courage, nor experience, had, better +still, the luck that follows the witless. He was carried swiftly down +the current; but, only fifty feet away, a long, slender, log, wedged +between two low rocks on the shore, jutted out over the water, almost +touching its surface. The boy's clothes were admirably adapted to the +situation, being full of enormous rents. In some way the end of the log +caught in the rags of Alcestis's coat and held him just seconds enough +to enable Stephen to swim to him, to seize him by the nape of the neck, +to lift him on the log, and thence to the shore. It was a particularly +bad place for a landing, and there was nothing to do but to lower ropes +and drag the drenched men to the high ground above. + +Alcestis came to his senses in ten or fifteen minutes, and seemed as +bright as usual: with a kind of added swagger at being the central +figure in a dramatic situation. + +"I wonder you hedn't stove your brains out, when you landed so turrible +suddent on that rock at the foot of the bank," said Mr. Wiley to him. + +"I should, but I took good care to light on my head," responded +Alcestis; a cryptic remark which so puzzled Old Kennebec that he mused +over it for some hours. + + + + +HEARTS AND OTHER HEARTS + + +Stephen had brought a change of clothes, as he had a habit of being +ducked once at least during the day; and since there was a halt in the +proceedings and no need of his services for an hour or two, he found +Rose and walked with her to a secluded spot where they could watch the +logs and not be seen by the people. + +"You frightened everybody almost to death, jumping into the river," +chided Rose. + +Stephen laughed. "They thought I was a fool to save a fool, I suppose." + +"Perhaps not as bad as that, but it did seem reckless." + +"I know; and the boy, no doubt, would be better off dead; but so should +I be, if I could have let him die." + +Rose regarded this strange point of view for a moment, and then silently +acquiesced in it. She was constantly doing this, and she often felt that +her mental horizon broadened in the act; but she could not be sure that +Stephen grew any dearer to her because of his moral altitudes. + +"Besides," Stephen argued, "I happened to be nearest to the river, and +it was my job." + +"How do you always happen to be nearest to the people in trouble, and +why is it always your 'job'!" + +"If there are any rewards for good conduct being distributed, I'm right +in line with my hand stretched out," Stephen replied, with meaning in +his voice. + +Rose blushed under her flowery hat as he led the way to a bench under a +sycamore tree that overhung the water. + +She had almost convinced herself that she was as much in love with +Stephen Waterman as it was in her nature to be with anybody. He was +handsome in his big way, kind, generous, temperate, well educated, and +well-to-do. No fault could be found with his family, for his mother had +been a teacher, and his father, though a farmer, a college graduate. +Stephen himself had had one year at Bowdoin, but had been recalled, as +the head of the house, when his father died. That was a severe blow; but +his mother's death, three years after, was a grief never to be quite +forgotten. Rose, too, was the child of a gently bred mother, and all her +instincts were refined. Yes; Stephen in himself satisfied her in all the +larger wants of her nature, but she had an unsatisfied hunger for the +world,--the world of Portland, where her cousins lived; or, better +still, the world of Boston, of which she heard through Mrs. Wealthy +Brooks, whose nephew Claude often came to visit her in Edgewood. Life on +a farm a mile and a half distant from post-office and stores; life in +the house with Rufus, who was rumored to be somewhat wild and +unsteady,--this prospect seemed a trifle dull and uneventful to the +trivial part of her, though to the better part it was enough. The better +part of her loved Stephen Waterman, dimly feeling the richness of his +nature, the tenderness of his affection, the strength of his character. +Rose was not destitute either of imagination or sentiment. She did not +relish this constant weighing of Stephen in the balance: he was too good +to be weighed and considered. She longed to be carried out of herself on +a wave of rapturous assent, but something seemed to hold her back,--some +seed of discontent with the man's environment and circumstances, some +germ of longing for a gayer, brighter, more varied life. No amount of +self-searching or argument could change the situation. She always loved +Stephen more or less: more when he was away from her, because she never +approved his collars nor the set of his shirt bosom; and as he +naturally wore these despised articles of apparel whenever he proposed +to her, she was always lukewarm about marrying him and settling down on +the River Farm. Still, to-day she discovered in herself, with positive +gratitude, a warmer feeling for him than she had experienced before. He +wore a new and becoming gray flannel shirt, with the soft turnover +collar that belonged to it, and a blue tie, the color of his kind eyes. +She knew that he had shaved his beard at her request not long ago, and +that when she did not like the effect as much as she had hoped, he had +meekly grown a mustache for her sake; it did seem as if a man could +hardly do more to please an exacting lady-love. + +And she had admired him unreservedly when he pulled off his boots and +jumped into the river to save Alcestis Crambry's life, without giving a +single thought to his own. + +And was there ever, after all, such a noble, devoted, unselfish fellow, +or a better brother? And would she not despise herself for rejecting him +simply because he was countrified, and because she longed to see the +world of the fashion-plates in the magazines? + +"The logs are so like people!" she exclaimed, as they sat down. "I could +name nearly every one of them for somebody in the village. Look at Mite +Shapley, that dancing little one, slipping over the falls and skimming +along the top of the water, keeping out of all the deep places, and +never once touching the rocks." + +Stephen fell into her mood. "There's Squire Anderson coming down +crosswise and bumping everything in reach. You know he's always buying +lumber and logs without knowing what he is going to do with them. They +just lie and rot by the roadside. The boys always say that a toad-stool +is the old Squire's 'mark' on a log." + +"And that stout, clumsy one is Short Dennett.--What are you doing, +Stephen!" + +"Only building a fence round this clump of harebells," Stephen replied. +"They've just got well rooted, and if the boys come skidding down the +bank with their spiked shoes, the poor things will never hold up their +heads again. Now they're safe.--Oh, look, Rose! There come the minister +and his wife!" + +A portly couple of peeled logs, exactly matched in size, came +ponderously over the falls together, rose within a second of each other, +joined again, and swept under the bridge side by side. + +"And--oh! oh! Dr. and Mrs. Cram just after them! Isn't that funny?" +laughed Rose, as a very long, slender pair of pines swam down, as close +to each other as if they had been glued in that position. Rose thought, +as she watched them, who but Stephen would have cared what became of the +clump of delicate harebells. How gentle such a man would be to a woman! +How tender his touch would be if she were ill or in trouble! + +Several single logs followed,--crooked ones, stolid ones, adventurous +ones, feeble swimmers, deep divers. Some of them tried to start a small +jam on their own account; others stranded themselves for good and all, +as Rose and Stephen sat there side by side, with little Dan Cupid for an +invisible third on the bench. + +"There never was anything so like people," Rose repeated, leaning +forward excitedly. "And, upon my word, the minister and doctor couples +are still together. I wonder if they'll get as far as the falls at +Union? That would be an odd place to part, wouldn't it--Union?" Stephen +saw his opportunity, and seized it. + +"There's a reason, Rose, why two logs go down stream better than one, +and get into less trouble. They make a wider path, create more force +and a better current. It's the same way with men and women. Oh, Rose, +there isn't a man in the world that's loved you as long, or knows how to +love you any better than I do. You're just like a white birch sapling, +and I'm a great, clumsy fir tree; but if you'll only trust yourself to +me, Rose, I'll take you safely down river." + +Stephen's big hand closed on Rose's little one she returned its pressure +softly and gave him the kiss that with her, as with him, meant a promise +for all the years to come. The truth and passion in the man had broken +the girl's bonds for the moment. Her vision was clearer, and, realizing +the treasures of love and fidelity that were being offered her, she +accepted them, half unconscious that she was not returning them in kind. +How is the belle of two villages to learn that she should "thank Heaven, +fasting, for a good man's love"? + +And Stephen? He went home in the dusk, not knowing whether his feet were +touching the solid earth or whether he was treading upon rainbows. + +Rose's pink calico seemed to brush him as he walked in the path that was +wide enough only for one. His solitude was peopled again when he fed the +cattle, for Rose's face smiled at him from the haymow; and when he +strained the milk, Rose held the pans. + +His nightly tasks over, he went out and took his favorite seat under the +apple tree. All was still, save for the crickets' ceaseless chirp, the +soft thud of an August sweeting dropping in the grass, and the +swish-swash of the water against his boat, tethered in the Willow Cove. + +He remembered when he first saw Rose, for that must have been when he +began to love her, though he was only fourteen and quite unconscious +that the first seed had been dropped in the rich soil of his boyish +heart. + +[Illustration: "ROSE, I'LL TAKE YOU SAFELY"] + +He was seated on the kerosene barrel in the Edgewood post-office, which +was also the general country store, where newspapers, letters, molasses, +nails, salt codfish, hairpins, sugar, liver pills, canned goods, beans, +and ginghams dwelt in genial proximity. When she entered, just a little +pink-and-white slip of a thing with a tin pail in her hand and a +sunbonnet falling off her wavy hair, Stephen suddenly stopped swinging +his feet. She gravely announced her wants, reading them from a bit of +paper,--1 quart molasses, 1 package ginger, 1 lb. cheese, 2 pairs shoe +laces, 1 card shirt buttons. + +While the storekeeper drew off the molasses she exchanged shy looks with +Stephen, who, clean, well-dressed, and carefully mothered as he was, +felt all at once uncouth and awkward, rather as if he were some clumsy +lout pitchforked into the presence of a fairy queen. He offered her the +little bunch of bachelor's buttons he held in his hand, augury of the +future, had he known it,--and she accepted them with a smile. She +dropped her memorandum; he picked it up, and she smiled again, doing +still more fatal damage than in the first instance. No words were +spoken, but Rose, even at ten, had less need of them than most of her +sex, for her dimples, aided by dancing eyes, length of lashes, and curve +of lips, quite took the place of conversation. The dimples tempted, +assented, denied, corroborated, deplored, protested, sympathized, while +the intoxicated beholder cudgeled his brain for words or deeds which +should provoke and evoke more and more dimples. + +The storekeeper hung the molasses pail over Rose's right arm and tucked +the packages under her left, and as he opened the mosquito netting door +to let her pass out she looked back at Stephen, perched on the kerosene +barrel. Just a little girl, a little glance, a little dimple, and +Stephen was never quite the same again. The years went on, and the boy +became man, yet no other image had ever troubled the deep, placid waters +of his heart. Now, after many denials, the hopes and longings of his +nature had been answered, and Rose had promised to marry him. He would +sacrifice his passion for logging and driving in the future, and become +a staid farmer and man of affairs, only giving himself a river holiday +now and then. How still and peaceful it was under the trees, and how +glad his mother would be to think that the old farm would wake from its +sleep, and a woman's light foot be heard in the sunny kitchen! + +Heaven was full of silent stars, and there was a moonglade on the water +that stretched almost from him to Rose. His heart embarked on that +golden pathway and sailed on it to the farther shore. The river was free +of logs, and under the light of the moon it shone like a silver mirror. +The soft wind among the fir branches breathed Rose's name; the river, +rippling against the shore, sang, "Rose;" and as Stephen sat there +dreaming of the future, his dreams, too, could have been voiced in one +word, and that word "Rose." + + + + +THE LITTLE HOUSE + + +The autumn days flew past like shuttles in a loom. The river reflected +the yellow foliage of the white birch and the scarlet of the maples. The +wayside was bright with goldenrod, with the red tassels of the sumac, +with the purple frost-flower and feathery clematis. + +If Rose was not as happy as Stephen, she was quietly content, and felt +that she had more to be grateful for than most girls, for Stephen +surprised her with first one evidence and then another of thoughtful +generosity. In his heart of hearts he felt that Rose was not wholly his, +that she reserved, withheld something; and it was the subjugation of +this rebellious province that he sought. He and Rose had agreed to wait +a year for their marriage, in which time Rose's cousin would finish +school and be ready to live with the old people; meanwhile Stephen had +learned that his maiden aunt would be glad to come and keep house for +Rufus. The work at the River Farm was too hard for a girl, so he had +persuaded himself of late, and the house was so far from the village +that Rose was sure to be lonely. He owned a couple of acres between his +place and the Edgewood bridge, and here, one afternoon only a month +after their engagement, he took Rose to see the foundations of a little +house he was building for her. It was to be only a story-and-a-half +cottage of six small rooms, the two upper chambers to be finished off +later on. Stephen had placed it well back from the road, leaving space +in front for what was to be a most wonderful arrangement of flower-beds, +yet keeping a strip at the back, on the river-brink, for a small +vegetable garden. There had been a house there years before--so many +years that the blackened ruins were entirely overgrown; but a few elms +and an old apple-orchard remained to shade the new dwelling and give +welcome to the coming inmates. + +Stephen had fifteen hundred dollars in bank, he could turn his hand to +almost anything, and his love was so deep that Rose's plumb-line had +never sounded bottom; accordingly he was able, with the help of two +steady workers, to have the roof on before the first of November. The +weather was clear and fine, and by Thanksgiving clapboards, shingles, +two coats of brown paint, and even the blinds had all been added. This +exhibition of reckless energy on Stephen's part did not wholly commend +itself to the neighborhood. + +"Steve's too turrible spry," said Rose's grandfather; "he'll trip +himself up some o' these times." + +"You never will," remarked his better half, sagely. + +"The resks in life come along fast enough, without runnin' to meet 'em," +continued the old man. "There's good dough in Rose, but it ain't more'n +half riz. Let somebody come along an' drop in a little more yeast, or +set the dish a little mite nearer the stove, an' you'll see what'll +happen." + +"Steve's kept house for himself some time, an' I guess he knows more +about bread-makin' than you do." + +"There don't nobody know more'n I do about nothin', when my pipe's +drawin' real good an' nobody's thornin' me to go to work," replied Mr. +Wiley; "but nobody's willin' to take the advice of a man that's seen the +world an' lived in large places, an' the risin' generation is in a +turrible hurry. I don' know how 't is: young folks air allers settin' +the clock forrard an' the old ones puttin' it back." + +"Did you ketch anything for dinner when you was out this mornin'?" asked +his wife. "No, I fished an' fished, till I was about ready to drop, an' +I did git a few shiners, but land, they wa'n't as big as the worms I was +ketchin' 'em with, so I pitched 'em back in the water an' quit." + +During the progress of these remarks Mr. Wiley opened the door under the +sink, and from beneath a huge iron pot drew a round tray loaded with a +glass pitcher and half a dozen tumblers, which he placed carefully on +the kitchen table. + +"This is the last day's option I've got on this lemonade-set," he said, +"an' if I'm goin'to Biddeford to-morrer I've got to make up my mind here +an' now." + +With this observation he took off his shoes, climbed in his stocking +feet to the vantage ground of a kitchen chair, and lifted a stone china +pitcher from a corner of the highest cupboard shelf where it had been +hidden. + +"This lemonade's gittin' kind o' dusty," he complained, "I cal'lated to +hev a kind of a spree on it when I got through choosin' Rose's weddin' +present, but I guess the pig'll he v to help me out." + +The old man filled one of the glasses from the pitcher, pulled up the +kitchen shades to the top, put both hands in his pockets, and walked +solemnly round the table, gazing at his offering from every possible +point of view. + +There had been three lemonade sets in the window of a Biddeford crockery +store when Mr. Wiley chanced to pass by, and he had brought home the +blue and green one on approval. + +To the casual eye it would have appeared as quite uniquely hideous until +the red and yellow or the purple and orange ones had been seen; after +that, no human being could have made a decision, where each was so +unparalleled in its ugliness, and Old Kennebec's confusion of mind would +have been perfectly understood by the connoisseur. + +"How do you like it with the lemonade in, mother?" he inquired eagerly. +"The thing that plagues me most is that the red an' yaller one I hed +home last week lights up better'n this, an' I believe I'll settle on +that; for as I was thinkin' last night in bed, lemonade is mostly an +evenin' drink an' Rose won't be usin' the set much by daylight. Root +beer looks the han'somest in this purple set, but Rose loves lemonade +better'n beer, so I guess I'll pack up this one an' change it to-morrer. +Mebbe when I get it out o' sight an' give the lemonade to the pig I'll +be easier in my mind." + +In the opinion of the community at large Stephen's forehandedness in the +matter of preparations for his marriage was imprudence, and his desire +for neatness and beauty flagrant extravagance. The house itself was a +foolish idea, it was thought, but there were extenuating circumstances, +for the maiden aunt really needed a home, and Rufus was likely to marry +before long and take his wife to the River Farm. It was to be hoped in +his case that he would avoid the snares of beauty and choose a good +stout girl who would bring the dairy back to what it was in Mrs. +Waterman's time. + +All winter long Stephen labored on the inside of the cottage, mostly by +himself. He learned all trades in succession, Love being his only +master. He had many odd days to spare from his farm work, and if he had +not found days he would have taken nights. Scarcely a nail was driven +without Rose's advice; and when the plastering was hard and dry, the +wall-papers were the result of weeks of consultation. + +Among the quiet joys of life there is probably no other so deep, so +sweet, so full of trembling hope and delight, as the building and making +of a home,--a home where two lives are to be merged in one and flow on +together, a home full of mysterious and delicious possibilities, hidden +in a future which is always rose-colored. + +Rose's sweet little nature broadened under Stephen's influence; but she +had her moments of discontent and unrest, always followed quickly by +remorse. + +At the Thanksgiving sociable some one had observed her turquoise +engagement ring,--some one who said that such a hand was worthy of a +diamond, that turquoises were a pretty color, but that there was only +one stone for an engagement ring, and that was a diamond. At the +Christmas dance the same some one had said her waltzing would make her +"all the rage" in Boston. She wondered if it were true, and wondered +whether, if she had not promised to marry Stephen, some splendid being +from a city would have descended from his heights, bearing diamonds in +his hand. Not that she would have accepted them; she only wondered. +These disloyal thoughts came seldom, and she put them resolutely away, +devoting herself with all the greater assiduity to her muslin curtains +and ruffled pillow-shams. Stephen, too, had his momentary pangs. There +were times when he could calm his doubts only by working on the little +house. The mere sight of the beloved floors and walls and ceilings +comforted his heart, and brought him good cheer. + +The winter was a cold one, so bitterly cold that even the rapid water at +the Gray Rock was a mass of curdled yellow ice, something that had only +occurred once or twice before within the memory of the oldest +inhabitant. + +It was also a very gay season for Pleasant River and Edgewood. Never had +there been so many card-parties, sleigh rides and tavern dances, and +never such wonderful skating. The river was one gleaming, glittering +thoroughfare of ice from Milliken's Mills to the dam at the Edgewood +bridge. At sundown bonfires were built here and there on the mirror like +surface, and all the young people from the neighboring villages gathered +on the ice; while detachments of merry, rosy-cheeked boys and girls, +those who preferred coasting, met at the top of Brigadier Hill, from +which one could get a longer and more perilous slide than from any other +point in the township. + +Claude Merrill, in his occasional visits from Boston, was very much in +evidence at the Saturday evening ice parties. He was not an artist at +the sport himself, but he was especially proficient in the art of +strapping on a lady's skates, and murmuring--as he adjusted the last +buckle,--"The prettiest foot and ankle on the river!" It cannot be +denied that this compliment gave secret pleasure to the fair village +maidens who received it, but it was a pleasure accompanied by electric +shocks of excitement. A girl's foot might perhaps be mentioned, if a +fellow were daring enough, but the line was rigidly drawn at the ankle, +which was not a part of the human frame ever alluded to in the polite +society of Edgewood at that time. + +Rose, in her red linsey-woolsey dress and her squirrel furs and cap, was +the life of every gathering, and when Stephen took her hand and they +glided up stream, alone together in the crowd, he used to wish that they +might skate on and on up the crystal ice-path of the river, to the moon +itself, whither it seemed to lead them. + + + + +THE GARDEN OF EDEN + + +But the Saco all this time was meditating of its surprises. The snapping +cold weather and the depth to which the water was frozen were aiding it +in its preparation for the greatest event of the season. On a certain +gray Saturday in March, after a week of mild temperature, it began to +rain as if, after months of snowing, it really enjoyed a new form of +entertainment. Sunday dawned with the very flood-gates of heaven +opening, so it seemed. All day long the river was rising under its miles +of unbroken ice, rising at the threatening rate of four inches an hour. + +Edgewood went to bed as usual that night, for the bridge at that point +was set too high to be carried away by freshets, but at other villages +whose bridges were in less secure position there was little sleep and +much anxiety. + +At midnight a cry was heard from the men watching at Milliken's Mills. +The great ice jam had parted from Rolfe's Island and was swinging out +into the open, pushing everything before it. All the able-bodied men in +the village turned out of bed, and with lanterns in hand began to clear +the stores and mills, for it seemed that everything near the river banks +must go before that avalanche of ice. + +Stephen and Rufus were there helping to save the property of their +friends and neighbors; Rose and Mite Shapley had stayed the night with a +friend, and all three girls were shivering with fear and excitement as +they stood near the bridge, watching the never-to-be-forgotten sight. It +is needless to say that the Crambry family was on hand, for whatever +instincts they may have lacked, the instinct for being on the spot when +anything was happening, was present in them to the most remarkable +extent. The town was supporting them in modest winter quarters somewhat +nearer than Killick to the centre of civilization, and the first alarm +brought them promptly to the scene, Mrs. Crambry remarking at intervals: +"If I'd known there'd be so many out I'd ought to have worn my bunnit; +but I ain't got no bunnit, an' if I had they say I ain't got no head to +wear it on!" + +By the time the jam neared the falls it had grown with its +accumulations, until it was made up of tier after tier of huge ice +cakes, piled side by side and one upon another, with heaps of trees and +branches and drifting lumber holding them in place. Some of the blocks +stood erect and towered like icebergs, and these, glittering in the +lights of the twinkling lanterns, pushed solemnly forward, cracking, +crushing, and cutting everything in their way. When the great mass +neared the planing mill on the east shore the girls covered their eyes, +expecting to hear the crash of the falling building; but, impelled by +the force of some mysterious current, it shook itself ponderously, and +then, with one magnificent movement, slid up the river bank, tier +following tier in grand confusion. This left a water way for the main +drift; the ice broke in every direction, and down, down, down, from +Bonnie Eagle and Moderation swept the harvest of the winter freezing. It +came thundering over the dam, bringing boats, farming implements, posts, +supports, and every sort of floating lumber with it; and cutting under +the flour mill, tipped it cleverly over on its side and went crashing on +its way down river. At Edgewood it pushed colossal blocks of ice up the +banks into the roadway, piling them end upon end ten feet in air. Then, +tearing and rumbling and booming through the narrows, it covered the +intervale at Pleasant Point and made a huge ice bridge below Union +Falls, a bridge so solid that it stood there for days, a sight for all +the neighboring villages. + +This exciting event would have forever set apart this winter from all +others in Stephen's memory, even had it not been also the winter when he +was building a house for his future wife. But afterwards, in looking +back on the wild night of the ice freshet, Stephen remembered that +Rose's manner was strained and cold and evasive, and that when he had +seen her talking with Claude Merrill, it had seemed to him that that +whippersnapper had looked at her as no honorable man in Edgewood ever +looked at an engaged girl. He recalled his throb of gratitude that +Claude lived at a safe distance, and his subsequent pang of remorse at +doubting, for an instant, Rose's fidelity. + +So at length April came, the Saco was still high, turbid, and angry, and +the boys were waiting at Limington Falls for the "Ossipee drive" to +begin. Stephen joined them there, for he was restless, and the river +called him, as it did every spring. Each stubborn log that he +encountered gave him new courage and power of overcoming. The rush of +the water, the noise and roar and dash, the exposure and danger, all +made the blood run in his veins like new wine. When he came back to the +farm, all the cobwebs had been blown from his brain, and his first +interview with Rose was so intoxicating that he went immediately to +Portland, and bought, in a kind of secret penitence for his former +fears, a pale pink-flowered wall-paper for the bedroom in the new home. +It had once been voted down by the entire advisory committee. Mrs. Wiley +said pink was foolish and was always sure to fade; and the border, being +a mass of solid roses, was five cents a yard, virtually a prohibitive +price. Mr. Wiley said he "should hate to hev a spell of sickness an' lay +abed in a room where there was things growin' all over the place." He +thought "rough-plastered walls, where you could lay an' count the spots +where the roof leaked, was the most entertainin' in sickness." Rose had +longed for the lovely pattern, but had sided dutifully with the prudent +majority, so that it was with a feeling of unauthorized and illegitimate +joy that Stephen papered the room at night, a few strips at a time. + +On the third evening, when he had removed all signs of his work, he +lighted two kerosene lamps and two candles, finding the effect, under +this illumination, almost too brilliant and beautiful for belief. Rose +should never see it now, he determined, until the furniture was in +place. They had already chosen the kitchen and bedroom things, though +they would not be needed for some months; but the rest was to wait until +summer, when there would be the hay-money to spend. + +Stephen did not go back to the River Farm till one o'clock that night; +the pink bedroom held him in fetters too powerful to break. It looked +like the garden of Eden, he thought. To be sure, it was only fifteen +feet square; Eden might have been a little larger, possibly, but +otherwise the pink bedroom had every advantage. The pattern of roses +growing on a trellis was brighter than any flower-bed in June; and the +border--well, if the border had been five dollars a foot Stephen would +not have grudged the money when he saw the twenty running yards of rosy +bloom rioting under the white ceiling. + +Before he blew out the last light he raised it high above his head and +took one fond, final look. "It's the only place I ever saw," he thought, +"that is pretty enough for her. She will look just as if she was growing +here with all the other flowers, and I shall always think of it as the +garden of Eden. I wonder, if I got the license and the ring and took her +by surprise, whether she'd be married in June instead of August? I +could be all ready if I could only persuade her." + +At this moment Stephen touched the summit of happiness; and it is a +curious coincidence that as he was dreaming in his garden of Eden, the +serpent, having just arrived at Edgewood, was sleeping peacefully at the +house of Mrs. Brooks. + +It was the serpent's fourth visit that season, and he explained to +inquiring friends that his former employer had sold the business, and +that the new management, while reorganizing, had determined to enlarge +the premises, the three clerks who had been retained having two weeks' +vacation with half pay. + +It is extraordinary how frequently "wise serpents" are retained by the +management on half, or even full, salary, while the services of the +"harmless doves" are dispensed with, and they are set free to flutter +where they will. + + + + +THE SERPENT + + +Rose Wiley had the brightest eyes in Edgewood. It was impossible to look +at her without realizing that her physical sight was perfect. What +mysterious species of blindness is it that descends, now and then, upon +human creatures, and renders them incapable of judgment or +discrimination? + +Claude Merrill was a glove salesman in a Boston fancy-goods store. The +calling itself is undoubtedly respectable, and it is quite conceivable +that a man can sell gloves and still be a man; but Claude Merrill was a +manikin. He inhabited a very narrow space behind a very short counter, +but to him it seemed the earth and the fullness thereof. + +When, irreproachably neat and even exquisite in dress, he gave a +Napoleonic glance at his array of glove-boxes to see if the female +assistant had put them in proper order for the day; when, with that +wonderful eye for detail that had wafted him to his present height of +power, he pounced upon the powder-sprinklers and found them, as he +expected, empty; when, with masterly judgment, he had made up and +ticketed a basket of misfits and odd sizes to attract the eyes of women +who were their human counterparts, he felt himself bursting with the +pride and pomp of circumstance. His cambric handkerchief adjusted in his +coat with the monogram corner well displayed, a last touch to the +carefully trained lock on his forehead, and he was ready for his +customers. + +"Six, did you say, miss? I should have thought five and three +quarters--Attend to that gentleman, Miss Dix, please; I am very busy. + +"Six-and-a-half gray suede? Here they are, an exquisite shade. Shall I +try them on? The right hand, if you will. Perhaps you'd better remove +your elegant ring; I shouldn't like to have anything catch in the +setting." + +"Miss Dix! Six-and-a-half black glace--upper shelf, third box--for this +lady. She's in a hurry. We shall see you often after this, I hope, +madam." + +"No; we don't keep silk or lisle gloves. We have no call for them; our +customers prefer kid." + +Oh, but he was in his element, was Claude Merrill; though the glamour +that surrounded him in the minds of the Edgewood girls did not emanate +wholly from his finicky little person: something of it was the glamour +that belonged to Boston,--remote, fashionable, gay, rich, almost +inaccessible Boston, which none could see without the expenditure of +five or six dollars in railway fare, with the added extravagance of a +night in a hotel, if one would explore it thoroughly and come home +possessed of all its illimitable treasures of wisdom and experience. + +When Claude came to Edgewood for a Sunday, or to spend a vacation with +his aunt, he brought with him something of the magic of a metropolis. +Suddenly, to Rose's eye, Stephen looked larger and clumsier, his shoes +were not the proper sort, his clothes were ordinary, his neckties were +years behind the fashion. Stephen's dancing, compared with Claude's, was +as the deliberate motion of an ox to the hopping of a neat little robin. +When Claude took a girl's hand in the "grand right-and-left," it was as +if he were about to try on a delicate glove; the manner in which he +"held his lady" in the polka or schottische made her seem a queen. Mite +Shapley was so affected by it that when Rufus attempted to encircle her +for the mazurka she exclaimed, "Don't act as if you were spearing logs, +Rufus!" + +Of the two men, Stephen had more to say, but Claude said more. He was +thought brilliant in conversation; but what wonder, when one considered +his advantages and his dazzling experiences! He had customers who were +worth their thousands; ladies whose fingers never touched dish-water; +ladies who wouldn't buy a glove of anybody else if they went bare-handed +to the grave. He lived with his sister Maude Arthurlena in a house where +there were twenty-two other boarders who could be seated at meals all at +the same time, so immense was the dining-room. He ate his dinner at a +restaurant daily, and expended twenty-five cents for it without +blenching. He went to the theatre once a week, and was often accompanied +by "lady friends" who were "elegant dressers." + +In a moment of wrath Stephen had called him a "counter-jumper," but it +was a libel. So short and rough a means of exit from his place of power +was wholly beneath Claude's dignity. It was with a "Pardon me, Miss +Dix," that, the noon hour having arrived, he squeezed by that slave and +victim, and raising the hinged board that separated his kingdom from +that of the ribbon department, passed out of the store, hat in hand, +serene in the consciousness that though other clerks might nibble +luncheon from a brown paper bag, he would speedily be indulging in an +expensive repast; and Miss Dix knew it, and it was a part of his almost +invincible attraction for her. + +It seemed flying in the face of Providence to decline the attentions of +such a gorgeous butterfly of fashion simply because one was engaged to +marry another man at some distant day. + +All Edgewood femininity united in saying that there never was such a +perfect gentleman as Claude Merrill; and during the time when his +popularity was at its height Rose lost sight of the fact that Stephen +could have furnished the stuff for a dozen Claudes and have had enough +left for an ordinary man besides. + +April gave place to May, and a veil hung between the lovers,--an +intangible, gossamer-like thing, not to be seen with the naked eye, but, +oh! so plainly to be felt. Rose hid herself thankfully behind it, while +Stephen had not courage to lift a corner. She had twice been seen +driving with Claude Merrill--that Stephen knew; but she had explained +that there were errands to be done, that her grandfather had taken the +horse, and that Mr. Merrill's escort had been both opportune and +convenient for these practical reasons. Claude was everywhere present, +the centre of attraction, the observed of all observers. He was +irresistible, contagious, almost epidemic. Rose was now gay, now silent; +now affectionate, now distant, now coquettish; in fine, everything that +was capricious, mysterious, agitating, incomprehensible. + +One morning Alcestis Crambry went to the post-office for Stephen and +brought him back the newspapers and letters. He had hung about the River +Farm so much that Stephen finally gave him bed and food in exchange for +numberless small errands. Rufus was temporarily confined in a dark room +with some strange pain and trouble in his eyes, and Alcestis proved of +use in many ways. He had always been Rose's slave, and had often brought +messages and notes from the Brier Neighborhood, so that when Stephen saw +a folded note among the papers his heart gave a throb of anticipation. + +The note was brief, and when he had glanced through it he said: "This is +not mine, Alcestis; it belongs to Miss Rose. Go straight back and give +it to her as you were told; and another time keep your wits about you, +or I'll send you back to Killick." + +Alcestis Crambry's ideas on all subjects were extremely vague. Claude +Merrill had given him a letter for Rose, but his notion was that +anything that belonged to her belonged to Stephen, and the Waterman +place was much nearer than the Wileys', particularly at dinner-time! + +When the boy had slouched away, Stephen sat under the apple tree, now a +mass of roseate bloom, and buried his face in his hands. + +It was not precisely a love-letter that he had read, nevertheless it +blackened the light of the sun for him. Claude asked Rose to meet him +anywhere on the road to the station and to take a little walk, as he was +leaving that afternoon and could not bear to say good-by to her in the +presence of her grandmother. "Under the circumstances," he wrote, deeply +underlining the words, "I cannot remain a moment longer in Edgewood, +where I have been so happy and so miserable!" He did not refer to the +fact that the time limit on his return-ticket expired that day, for his +dramatic instinct told him that such sordid matters have no place in +heroics. + +Stephen sat motionless under the tree for an hour, deciding on some plan +of action. + +He had work at the little house, but he did not dare go there lest he +should see the face of dead Love looking from the windows of the pink +bedroom; dead Love, cold, sad, merciless. His cheeks burned as he +thought of the marriage license and the gold ring hidden away upstairs +in the drawer of his shaving stand. What a romantic fool he had been, to +think he could hasten the glad day by a single moment! What a piece of +boyish folly it had been, and how it shamed him in his own eyes! + +When train time drew near he took his boat and paddled down stream. If +for the Finland lover's reindeer there was but one path in all the +world, and that the one that led to Her, so it was for Stephen's canoe, +which, had it been set free on the river by day or by night, might have +floated straight to Rose. + +He landed at the usual place, a bit of sandy shore near the Wiley house, +and walked drearily up the bank through the woods. Under the shade of +the pines the white stars of the hepatica glistened and the pale +anemones were coming into bloom. Partridge-berries glowed red under +their glossy leaves, and clumps of violets sweetened the air. Squirrels +chattered, woodpeckers tapped, thrushes sang; but Stephen was blind and +deaf to all the sweet harbingers of spring. + +Just then he heard voices, realizing with a throb of delight that, at +any rate, Rose had not left home to meet Claude, as he had asked her to +do. Looking through the branches, he saw the two standing together, Mrs. +Brooks's horse; with the offensive trunk in the back of the wagon, being +hitched to a tree near by. There was nothing in the tableau to stir +Stephen to fury, but he read between the lines and suffered as he +read--suffered and determined to sacrifice himself if he must, so that +Rose could have what she wanted, this miserable apology for a man. He +had never been the husband for Rose; she must take her place in a larger +community, worthy of her beauty and charm. + +Claude was talking and gesticulating ardently. Rose's head was bent and +the tears were rolling down her cheeks. Suddenly Claude raised his hat, +and with a passionate gesture of renunciation walked swiftly to the +wagon, and looking back once, drove off with the utmost speed of which +the Brooks's horse was capable,--Rose waving him a farewell with one +hand and wiping her eyes with the other. + + + + +THE TURQUOISE RING + + +Stephen stood absolutely still in front of the opening in the trees, and +as Rose turned she met him face to face. She had never dreamed his eyes +could be so stern, his mouth so hard, and she gave a sob like a child. + +"You seem to be in trouble," Stephen said in a voice so cold she thought +it could not be his. + +"I am not in trouble, exactly," Rose stammered, concealing her +discomfiture as well as possible. "I am a little unhappy because I have +made some one else unhappy; and now that you know it, you will be +unhappy too, and angry besides, I suppose, though you've seen everything +there was to see." + +"There is no occasion for sorrow," Stephen said. "I didn't mean to break +in on any interview; I came over to give you back your freedom. If you +ever cared enough for me to marry me, the time has gone by. I am willing +to own that I over-persuaded you, but I am not the man to take a girl +against her inclinations, so we will say good-by and end the thing here +and now. I can only wish"--here his smothered rage at fate almost choked +him--"that, when you were selecting another husband, you had chosen a +whole man!" + +Rose quivered with the scorn of his tone. "Size isn't everything!" she +blazed. + +"Not in bodies, perhaps; but it counts for something in hearts and +brains, and it is convenient to have a sense of honor that's at least as +big as a grain of mustard-seed." + +"Claude Merrill is not dishonorable," Rose exclaimed impetuously; "or at +least he isn't as bad as you think: he has never asked me to marry him." + +"Then he probably was not quite ready to speak, or perhaps you were not +quite ready to hear," retorted Stephen, bitterly; "but don't let us have +words,--there'll be enough to regret without adding those. I have seen, +ever since New Year's, that you were not really happy or contented; only +I wouldn't allow it to myself: I kept hoping against hope that I was +mistaken. There have been times when I would have married you, willing +or unwilling, but I didn't love you so well then; and now that there's +another man in the case, it's different, and I'm strong enough to do the +right thing. Follow your heart and be happy; in a year or two I shall be +glad I had the grit to tell you so. Good-by, Rose!" + +Rose, pale with amazement, summoned all her pride, and drawing the +turquoise engagement ring from her finger, handed it silently to +Stephen, hiding her face as he flung it vehemently down the river-bank. +His dull eyes followed it and half uncomprehendingly saw it settle and +glisten in a nest of brown pine-needles. Then he put out his hand for a +last clasp and strode away without a word. + +[Illustration: HIDING HER FACE AS HE FLUNG IT DOWN THE RIVER-BANK] + +Presently Rose heard first the scrape of his boat on the sand, then the +soft sound of his paddles against the water, then nothing but the +squirrels and the woodpeckers and the thrushes, then not even +these,--nothing but the beating of her own heart. + +She sat down heavily, feeling as if she were wide awake for the first +time in many weeks. How had things come to this pass with her? + +Claude Merrill had flattered her vanity and given her some moments of +restlessness and dissatisfaction with her lot; but he had not until +to-day really touched her heart or tempted her, even momentarily, from +her allegiance to Stephen. His eyes had always looked unspeakable +things; his voice had seemed to breathe feelings that he had never dared +put in words; but to-day he had really stirred her, for although he had +still been vague, it was easy to see that his love for her had passed +all bounds of discretion. She remembered his impassioned farewells, his +despair, his doubt as to whether he could forget her by plunging into +the vortex of business, or whether he had better end it all in the +river, as so many other broken-hearted fellows had done. She had been +touched by his misery, even against her better judgment; and she had +intended to confess it all to Stephen sometime, telling him that she +should never again accept attentions from a stranger, lest a tragedy +like this should happen twice in a lifetime. + +She had imagined that Stephen would be his large-minded, great-hearted, +magnanimous self, and beg her to forget this fascinating will-o'the-wisp +by resting in his deeper, serener love. She had meant to be contrite and +faithful, praying nightly that poor Claude might live down his present +anguish, of which she had been the innocent cause. + +Instead, what had happened? She had been put altogether in the wrong. +Stephen had almost cast her off, and that, too, without argument. He had +given her her liberty before she had asked for it, taking it for +granted, without question, that she desired to be rid of him. Instead of +comforting her in her remorse, or sympathizing with her for so nobly +refusing to shine in Claude's larger world of Boston, Stephen had +assumed that she was disloyal in every particular. + +And pray how was she to cope with such a disagreeable and complicated +situation? + +It would not be long before the gossips rolled under their tongues the +delicious morsel of a broken engagement, and sooner or later she must +brave the displeasure of her grandmother. + +And the little house--that was worse than anything. Her tears flowed +faster as she thought of Stephen's joy in it, of his faithful labor, of +the savings he had invested in it. She hated and despised her self when +she thought of the house, and for the first time in her life she +realized the limitations of her nature, the poverty of her ideals. + +What should she do? She had lost Stephen and ruined his life. Now, in +order that she need not blight a second career, must she contrive to +return Claude's love! To be sure, she thought, it seemed indecent to +marry any other man than Stephen, when they had built a house together, +and chosen wall-papers, and a kitchen stove, and dining-room chairs; but +was it not the only way to evade the difficulties? + +Suppose that Stephen, in a fit of pique, should ask somebody else to +share the new cottage? + +As this dreadful possibility came into view, Rose's sobs actually +frightened the birds and the squirrels. She paced back and forth under +the trees, wondering how she could have been engaged to a man for eight +months and know so little about him as she seemed to know about Stephen +Waterman to-day. Who would have believed he could be so autocratic, so +severe, so unapproachable! Who could have foreseen that she, Rose Wiley, +would ever be given up to another man,--handed over as coolly as if she +had been a bale of cotton? She wanted to return Claude Merrill's love +because it was the only way out of the tangle; but at the moment she +almost hated him for making so much trouble, for hurting Stephen, for +abasing her in her own eyes, and, above all, for giving her rustic lover +the chance of impersonating an injured emperor. + +It did not simplify the situation to have Mite Shapley come in during +the evening and run upstairs, uninvited, to sit on the toot of her bed +and chatter. + +Rose had closed her blinds and lay in the dark, pleading a headache. + +Mite was in high feather. She had met Claude Merrill going to the +station that afternoon. He was much too early for the train, which the +station agent reported to be behind time, so he had asked her to take a +drive. She didn't know how it happened, for he looked at his watch every +now and then; but, anyway, they got to laughing and "carrying on," and +when they came back to the station the train had gone. Wasn't that the +greatest joke of the season? What did Rose suppose they did next? + +Rose didn't know and didn't care; her head ached too badly. + +Well, they had driven to Wareham, and Claude had hired a livery team +there, and had been taken into Portland with his trunk, and she had +brought Mrs. Brooks's horse back to Edgewood. Wasn't that ridiculous? +And hadn't she cut out Rose where she least expected? + +Rose was distinctly apathetic, and Mite Shapley departed after a very +brief call, leaving behind her an entirely new train of thought. + +If Claude Merrill were so love-blighted that he could only by the +greatest self-control keep from flinging himself into the river, how +could he conceal his sufferings so completely from Mite Shapley,--little +shallow-pated, scheming coquette? + +"So that pretty Merrill feller has gone, has he, mother?" inquired Old +Kennebec that night, as he took off his wet shoes and warmed his feet at +the kitchen oven. "Well, it ain't a mite too soon. I allers distrust +that pink-an'-white, rosy-posy kind of a man. One of the most turrible +things that ever happened in Gard'ner was brought about by jest sech a +feller. Mothers hedn't hardly ought to name their boy babies Claude +without they expect 'em to play the dickens with the girls. I don' know +nothin' 'bout the fust Claude, there ain't none of 'em in the Bible, +air they, but whoever he was, I bate ye he hed a deceivin' tongue. If it +hedn't be'n for me, that Claude in Gard'ner would 'a' run away with my +brother's fust wife; an' I'll tell ye jest how I contrived to put a +spoke in his wheel." + +But Mrs. Wiley, being already somewhat familiar with the circumstances, +had taken her candle and retired to her virtuous couch. + + + + +ROSE SEES THE WORLD + + +Was this the world, after all? Rose asked herself; and, if so, what was +amiss with it, and where was the charm, the bewilderment, the +intoxication, the glamour? + +She had been glad to come to Boston, for the last two weeks in Edgewood +had proved intolerable. She had always been a favorite heretofore, from +the days when the boys fought for the privilege of dragging her sled up +the hills, and filling her tiny mitten with peppermints, down to the +year when she came home from the Wareham Female Seminary, an +acknowledged belle and beauty. Suddenly she had felt her popularity +dwindling. There was no real change in the demeanor of her +acquaintances, but there was a certain subtle difference of atmosphere. +Everybody sympathized tacitly with Stephen, and she did not wonder, for +there were times when she secretly took his part against herself. Only a +few candid friends had referred to the rupture openly in conversation, +but these had been blunt in their disapproval. + +It seemed part of her ill fortune that just at this time Rufus should be +threatened with partial blindness, and that Stephen's heart, already +sore, should be torn with new anxieties. She could hardly bear to see +the doctor's carriage drive by day after day, and hear night after night +that Rufus was unresigned, melancholy, half mad; while Stephen, as the +doctor said, was brother, mother, and father in one, as gentle as a +woman, as firm as Gibraltar. + +These foes to her peace of mind all came from within; but without was +the hourly reproach of her grandmother, whose scorching tongue touched +every sensitive spot in the girl's nature and burned it like fire. + +Finally a way of escape opened. Mrs. Wealthy Brooks, who had always been +rheumatic, grew suddenly worse. She had heard of a "magnetic" physician +in Boston, also of one who used electricity with wonderful effect, and +she announced her intention of taking both treatments impartially and +alternately. The neighbors were quite willing that Wealthy Ann Brooks +should spend the deceased Ezra's money in any way she pleased,--she had +earned it, goodness knows, by living with him for twenty-five +years,--but before the day for her departure arrived her right arm and +knee became so much more painful that it was impossible for her to +travel alone. + +At this juncture Rose was called upon to act as nurse and companion in a +friendly way. She seized the opportunity hungrily as a way out of her +present trouble; but, knowing what Mrs. Brooks's temper was in time of +health, she could see clearly what it was likely to prove when pain and +anguish wrung the brow. + +Rose had been in Boston now for some weeks, and she was sitting in the +Joy Street boarding-house,--Joy Street, forsooth! It was nearly bedtime, +and she was looking out upon a huddle of roofs and back yards, upon a +landscape filled with clothes-lines, ash-barrels, and ill-fed cats. +There were no sleek country tabbies, with the memory in their eyes of +tasted cream, nothing but city-born, city-bred, thin, despairing cats of +the pavement, cats no more forlorn than Rose herself. + +[Illustration: SHE HAD GONE WITH MAUDE TO CLAUDE'S STORE] + +She had "seen Boston," for she had accompanied Mrs. Brooks in the +horse-cars daily to the two different temples of healing where that lady +worshipped and offered sacrifices. She had also gone with Maude +Arthurlena to Claude Merrill's store to buy pair of gloves, and had +overheard Miss Dix (the fashionable "lady-assistant" before mentioned) +say to Miss Brackett of the ribbon department, that she thought Mr. +Merrill must have worn his blinders that time he stayed so long in +Edgewood. This bit of polished irony was unintelligible to Rose at +first, but she mastered it after an hour's reflection. She wasn't +looking her best that day, she knew; the cotton dresses that seemed so +pretty at home were common and countrified here, and her best black +cashmere looked cheap and shapeless beside Miss Dix's brilliantine. Miss +Dix's figure was her strong point, and her dressmaker was particularly +skillful in the arts of suggestion, concealment, and revelation. Beauty +has its chosen backgrounds. Rose in white dimity, standing knee deep in +her blossoming brier bushes, the river running at her feet, dark pine +trees behind her graceful head, sounded depths and touched heights of +harmony forever beyond the reach of the modish Miss Dix, but she was +out of her element and suffered accordingly. + +Rose had gone to walk with Claude one evening when she first arrived. He +had shown her the State House and the Park Street Church, and sat with +her on one of the benches in the Common until nearly ten. She knew that +Mrs. Brooks had told her nephew of the broken engagement, but he made no +reference to the matter, save to congratulate her that she was rid of a +man who was so clumsy, so dull and behind the times, as Stephen +Waterman, saying that he had always marveled she could engage herself to +anybody who could insult her by offering her a turquoise ring. + +Claude was very interesting that evening, Rose thought, but rather +gloomy and unlike his former self. He referred to his grave +responsibilities, to the frail health of Maude Arthurlena, and to the +vicissitudes of business. He vaguely intimated that his daily life in +the store was not so pleasant as it had been formerly; that there were +"those" (he would speak no more plainly) who embarrassed him with +undesired attentions, "those" who, without the smallest shadow of right, +vexed him with petty jealousies. + +Rose dared not ask questions on so delicate a topic, but she remembered +in a flash Miss Dix's heavy eyebrows, snapping eyes, and high color. +Claude seemed very happy that Rose had come to Boston, though he was +surprised, knowing what a trial his aunt must be, now that she was so +helpless. It was unfortunate, also, that Rose could not go on excursions +without leaving his aunt alone, or he should have been glad to offer his +escort. He pressed her hand when he left her at her door, telling her +she could never realize what a comfort her friendship was to him; could +never imagine how thankful he was that she had courageously freed +herself from ties that in time would have made her wretched. His heart +was full, he said, of feelings he dared not utter; but in the near +future, when certain clouds had rolled by, he would unlock its +treasures, and then--but no more to-night: he could not trust himself. + +Rose felt as if she were assuming one of the characters in a mysterious +romance, such as unfolded itself only in books or in Boston; but, +thrilling as it was, it was nevertheless extremely unsatisfactory. + +Convinced that Claude Merrill was passionately in love with her, one of +her reasons for coming to Boston had been to fall more deeply in love +with him, and thus heal some, at least, of the wounds she had inflicted. +It may have been a foolish idea, but after three weeks it seemed still +worse,--a useless one; for after several interviews she felt herself +drifting farther and farther from Claude; and if he felt any burning +ambition to make her his own, he certainly concealed it with admirable +art. Given up, with the most offensive magnanimity, by Stephen, and not +greatly desired by Claude,--that seemed the present status of proud Rose +Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood. + +It was June, she remembered, as she leaned out of the open window; at +least it was June in Edgewood, and she supposed for convenience's sake +they called it June in Boston. Not that it mattered much what the poor +city prisoners called it. How beautiful the river would be at home, with +the trees along the banks in full leaf! How she hungered and thirsted +for the river,--to see it sparkle in the sunlight; to watch the +moonglade stretching from one bank to the other; to hear the soft lap of +the water on the shore, and the distant murmur of the falls at the +bridge! And the Brier Neighborhood would be at its loveliest, for the +wild roses were in blossom by now. And the little house! How sweet it +must look under the shade of the elms, with the Saco rippling at the +back! Was poor Rufus still lying in a darkened room, and was Stephen +nursing him,--disappointed Stephen,--dear, noble old Stephen? + + + + +GOLD AND PINCHBECK + + +Just then Mrs. Brooks groaned in the next room and called Rose, who went +in to minister to her real needs, or to condole with her fancied ones, +whichever course of action appeared to be the more agreeable at the +moment. + +Mrs. Brooks desired conversation, it seemed, or at least she desired an +audience for a monologue, for she recognized no antiphonal obligations +on the part of her listeners. The doctors were not doing her a speck of +good, and she was just squandering money in a miserable boarding-house, +when she might be enjoying poor health in her own home; and she didn't +believe her hens were receiving proper care, and she had forgotten to +pull down the shades in the spare room, and the sun would fade the +carpet out all white before she got back, and she didn't believe Dr. +Smith's magnetism was any more use than a cat's foot, nor Dr. Robinson's +electricity any better than a bumblebee's buzz, and she had a great mind +to go home and try Dr. Lord from Bonnie Eagle; and there was a letter +for Rose on the bureau, which had come before supper, but the shiftless, +lazy, worthless landlady had forgotten to send it up till just now. + +The letter was from Mite Shapley, but Rose could read only half of it to +Mrs. Brooks,--little beside the news that the Waterman barn, the finest +barn in the whole township, had been struck by lightning and burned to +the ground. Stephen was away at the time, having taken Rufus to +Portland, where an operation on his eyes would shortly be performed at +the hospital, and one of the neighbors was sleeping at the River Farm +and taking care of the cattle; still the house might not have been +saved but for one of Alcestis Crambry's sudden bursts of common sense, +which occurred now quite regularly. He succeeded not only in getting the +horses out of the stalls, but gave the alarm so promptly that the whole +neighborhood was soon on the scene of action. Stephen was the only man, +Mite reminded Rose, who ever had any patience with, or took any pains to +teach, Alcestis, but he never could have expected to be rewarded in this +practical way. The barn was only partly insured; and when she had met +Stephen at the station next day, and condoled with him on his loss, he +had said: "Oh, well, Mite, a little more or less doesn't make much +difference just now." + +"The rest wouldn't interest you, Mrs. Brooks," said Rose, precipitately +preparing to leave the room. + +"Something about Claude, I suppose," ventured that astute lady. "I think +Mite kind of fancied him. I don't believe he ever gave her any real +encouragement; but he'd make love to a pump, Claude Merrill would; and +so would his father before him. How my sister Abby made out to land him +we never knew, for they said he'd proposed to every woman in the town of +Bingham, not excepting the wooden Indian girl in front of the cigar +store, and not one of 'em but our Abby ever got a chance to name the +day. Abby was as set as the everlastin' hills, and if she'd made up her +mind to have a man he couldn't wriggle away from her nohow in the world. +It beats all how girls do run after these slick-haired, sweet-tongued, +Miss Nancy kind o' fellers, that ain't but little good as beaux an' +worth less than nothing as husbands." + +Rose scarcely noticed what Mrs. Brooks said, she was too anxious to read +the rest of Mite Shapley's letter in the quiet of her own room. + + "Stephen looks thin and pale [so it ran on], but he does not allow + anybody to sympathize with him. I think you ought to know something + that I haven't told you before for fear of hurting your feelings; + but if I were in your place I'd like to hear everything, and then + you'll know how to act when you come home. Just after you left, + Stephen plowed up all the land in front of your new house,--every + inch of it, all up and down the road, between the fence and the + front door-step,--and then he planted corn where you were going to + have your flower-beds. + + "He has closed all the blinds and hung a 'To Let' sign on the large + elm at the gate. Stephen never was spiteful in his life, but this + looks a little like spite. Perhaps he only wanted to save his + self-respect and let people know, that everything between you was + over forever. Perhaps he thought it would stop talk once and for + all. But you won't mind, you lucky girl, staying nearly three months + in Boston! [So Almira purled on in violet ink, with shaded letters.] + How I wish it had come my way, though I'm not good at rubbing + rheumatic patients, even when they are his aunt. Is he as devoted as + ever? And when will it be? How do you like the theatre? Mother + thinks you won't attend; but, by what he used to say, I am sure + church members in Boston always go to amusements. + + "Your loving friend, + "Almira Shapley. + + "P.S. They say Rufus's doctor's bills here, and the operation and + hospital expenses in Portland, will mount up to five hundred + dollars. Of course Stephen will be dreadfully hampered by the loss + of his barn, and maybe he wants to let your house that was to be, + because he really needs money. In that case the dooryard won't be + very attractive to tenants, with corn planted right up to the steps + and no path left! It's two feet tall now, and by August (just when + you were intending to move in) it will hide the front windows. Not + that you'll care, with a diamond on your engagement finger!" + +The letter was more than flesh and blood could stand, and Rose flung +herself on her bed to think and regret and repent, and, if possible, to +sob herself to sleep. + +She knew now that she had never admired and respected Stephen so much as +at the moment when, under the reproach of his eyes, she had given him +back his ring. When she left Edgewood and parted with him forever she +had really loved him better than when she had promised to marry him. + +Claude Merrill, on his native Boston heath, did not appear the romantic, +inspiring figure he had once been in her eyes. A week ago she distrusted +him; to-night she despised him. + +What had happened to Rose was the dilation of her vision. She saw +things under a wider sky and in a clearer light. Above all, her heart +was wrung with pity for Stephen--Stephen, with no comforting woman's +hand to help him in his sore trouble; Stephen, bearing his losses alone, +his burdens and anxieties alone, his nursing and daily work alone. Oh, +how she felt herself needed! Needed! that was the magic word that +unlocked her better nature. "Darkness is the time for making roots and +establishing plants, whether of the soil or of the soul," and all at +once Rose had become a woman: a little one, perhaps, but a whole +woman--and a bit of an angel, too, with healing in her wings. When and +how had this metamorphosis come about? Last summer the fragile +brier-rose had hung over the river and looked at its pretty reflection +in the placid surface of the water. Its few buds and blossoms were so +lovely, it sighed for nothing more. The changes in the plant had been +wrought secretly and silently. In some mysterious way, as common to soul +as to plant life, the roots had gathered in more nourishment from the +earth, they had stored up strength and force, and all at once there was +a marvelous fructifying of the plant, hardiness of stalk, new shoots +everywhere, vigorous leafage, and a shower of blossoms. + +But everything was awry: Boston was a failure; Claude was a weakling and +a flirt; her turquoise ring was lying on the river-bank; Stephen did not +love her any longer; her flower-beds were plowed up and planted in corn; +and the cottage that Stephen had built and she had furnished, that +beloved cottage, was to let. + +She was in Boston; but what did that amount to, after all? What was the +State House to a bleeding heart, or the Old South Church to a pride +wounded like hers? + +At last she fell asleep, but it was only by stopping her ears to the +noises of the city streets and making herself imagine the sound of the +river rippling under her bedroom windows at home. The back yards of +Boston faded, and in their place came the banks of the Saco, strewn with +pine needles, fragrant with wild flowers. Then there was the bit of +sunny beach, where Stephen moored his boat. She could hear the sound of +his paddle. Boston lovers came a-courting in the horse-cars, but hers +had floated down stream to her just at dusk in a birch-bark canoe, or +sometimes, in the moonlight, on a couple of logs rafted together. + +But it was all over now, and she could see only Stephen's stern face as +he flung the despised turquoise ring down the river bank. + + + + +A COUNTRY CHEVALIER + + +It was early in August when Mrs. Wealthy Brooks announced her speedy +return from Boston to Edgewood. + +"It's jest as well Rose is comin' back," said Mr. Wiley to his wife. "I +never favored her goin' to Boston, where that rosy-posy Claude feller is. +When he was down here he was kep' kind o' tied up in a boxstall, but +there he's caperin' loose round the pastur'." + +"I should think Rose would be ashamed to come back, after the way she's +carried on," remarked Mrs. Wiley, "but if she needed punishment I guess +she's got it bein' comp'ny-keeper to Wealthy Ann Brooks. Bein' a church +member in good an' reg'lar standin', I s'pose Wealthy Ann'll go to +heaven, but I can only say that it would be a sight pleasanter place for +a good many if she didn't." + +"Rose has be'n foolish an' flirty an' wrong-headed," allowed her +grandfather; "but it won't do no good to treat her like a hardened +criminile, same's you did afore she went away. She ain't hardly got her +wisdom teeth cut, in love affairs! She ain't broke the laws of the State +o' Maine, nor any o' the ten commandments; she ain't disgraced the +family, an' there's a chance for her to reform, seein' as how she ain't +twenty year old yet. I was turrible wild an' hot-headed myself afore you +ketched me an' tamed me down." + +"You ain't so tame now as I wish you was," Mrs. Wiley replied testily. + +"If you could smoke a clay pipe 't would calm your nerves, mother, an' +help you to git some philosophy inter you; you need a little philosophy +turrible bad." + +"I need patience consid'able more," was Mrs. Wiley's withering retort. + +"That's the way with folks," said Old Kennebec reflectively, as he went +on peacefully puffing. "If you try to indoose 'em to take an int'rest in +a bran'-new virtue, they won't look at it; but they'll run down a side +street an' buy half a yard more o' some turrible old shopworn trait o' +character that they've kep' in stock all their lives, an' that +everybody's sick to death of. There was a man in Gard'ner"-- + +But alas! the experiences of the Gardiner man, though told in the same +delightful fashion that had won Mrs. Wiley's heart many years before, +now fell upon the empty air. In these years of Old Kennebec's +"anecdotage," his pipe was his best listener and his truest confidant. + +Mr. Wiley's constant intercessions with his wife made Rose's home-coming +somewhat easier, and the sight of her own room and belongings soothed +her troubled spirit, but the days went on, and nothing happened to +change the situation. She had lost a lover, that was all, and there were +plenty more to choose from, or there always had been; but the only one +she wanted was the one who made no sign. She used to think that she +could twist Stephen around her little finger; that she had only to +beckon to him and he would follow her to the ends of the earth. Now fear +had entered her heart. She no longer felt sure, because she no longer +felt worthy, of him, and feeling both uncertainty and unworthiness, her +lips were sealed and she was rendered incapable of making any bid for +forgiveness. + +So the little world of Pleasant River went on, to all outward seeming, +as it had ever gone. On one side of the stream a girl's heart was +longing, and pining, and sickening, with hope deferred, and growing, +too, with such astonishing rapidity that the very angels marveled! And +on the other, a man's whole vision of life an duty was widening and +deepening under the fructifying influence of his sorrow. + +The corn waved high and green in front of the vacant riverside cottage, +but Stephen sent no word or message to Rose. He had seen her once, but +only from a distance. She seemed paler and thinner, he thought,--the +result; probably, of her metropolitan gayeties. He heard no rumor of any +engagement, and he wondered if it were possible that her love for Claude +Merrill had not, after all, been returned in kind. This seemed a wild +impossibility. His mind refused to entertain the supposition that any +man on earth could resist falling in love with Rose, or, having fallen +in, that he could ever contrive to climb out. So he worked on at his +farm harder than ever, and grew soberer and more careworn daily. Rufus +had never seemed so near and dear to him as in these weeks when he had +lived under the shadow of threatened blindness. The burning of the barn +and the strain upon their slender property brought the brothers +together shoulder to shoulder. + +"If you lose your girl, Steve," said the boy, "and I lose my eyesight, +and we both lose the barn, why, it'll be us two against the world, for a +spell!" + +The "To Let" sign on the little house was an arrant piece of hypocrisy. +Nothing but the direst extremity could have caused him to allow an alien +step on that sacred threshold. The plowing up of the flower-beds and +planting of the corn had served a double purpose. It showed the too +curious public the finality of his break with Rose and her absolute +freedom; it also prevented them from suspecting that he still entered +the place. His visits were not many, but he could not bear to let the +dust settle on the furniture that he and Rose had chosen together; and +whenever he locked the door and went back to the River Farm, he thought +of a verse in the Bible: "Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from +the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken." + +It was now Friday of the last week in August. The river was full of +logs, thousands upon thousands of them covering the surface of the water +from the bridge almost up to the Brier Neighborhood. + +The Edgewood drive was late, owing to a long drought and low water; but +it was to begin on the following Monday, and Lije Dennett and his under +boss were looking over the situation and planning the campaign. As they +leaned over the bridge-rail they saw Mr. Wiley driving down the river +road. When he caught sight of them he hitched the old white horse at the +corner and walked toward them, filling his pipe the while in his usual +leisurely manner. + +"We're not busy this forenoon," said Lije Dennett. "S'pose we stand +right here and let Old Kennebec have his say out for once. We've never +heard the end of one of his stories, an' he's be'n talkin' for twenty +years." + +"All right," rejoined his companion, with a broad grin at the idea. "I'm +willin', if you are; but who's goin' to tell our fam'lies the reason +we've deserted 'em! I bate yer we sha'n't budge till the crack o' doom. +The road commissioner'll come along once a year and mend the bridge +under our feet, but Old Kennebec'll talk straight on till the day o' +jedgment." + +Mr. Wiley had one of the most enjoyable mornings of his life, and felt +that after half a century of neglect his powers were at last appreciated +by his fellow-citizens. + +He proposed numerous strategic movements to be made upon the logs, +whereby they would move more swiftly than usual. He described several +successful drives on the Kennebec, when the logs had melted down the +river almost by magic, owing to his generalship; and he paid a tribute, +in passing, to the docility of the boss, who on that occasion had never +moved a single log without asking his advice. + +From this topic he proceeded genially to narrate the life-histories of +the boss, the under boss, and several Indians belonging to the +crew,--histories in which he himself played a gallant and conspicuous +part. The conversation then drifted naturally to the exploits of +river-drivers in general, and Mr. Wiley narrated the sorts of feats in +log-riding, pickpole-throwing, and the shooting of rapids that he had +done in his youth. These stories were such as had seldom been heard by +the ear of man; and, as they passed into circulation instantaneously, we +are probably enjoying some of them to this day. + +They were still being told when a Crambry child appeared on the bridge, +bearing a note for the old man. + +Upon reading it he moved off rapidly in the direction of the store, +ejaculating: + +"Bless my soul! I clean forgot that saleratus, and mother's settin' at +the kitchen table with the bowl in her lap, waitin' for it! Got so +int'rested in your list'nin' I never thought o' the time." + +The connubial discussion that followed this breach of discipline began +on the arrival of the saleratus, and lasted through supper; and Rose +went to bed almost immediately afterward for very dullness and apathy. +Her life stretched out before her in the most aimless and monotonous +fashion. She saw nothing but heartache in the future; and that she +richly deserved it made it none the easier to bear. + +Feeling feverish and sleepless, she slipped on her gray Shaker cloak and +stole quietly downstairs for a breath of air. Her grandfather and +grandmother were talking on the piazza, and good humor seemed to have +been restored. + +"I was over to the tavern to-night," she heard him say, as she sat down +at a little distance. "I was over to the tavern to-night, an' a feller +from Gorham got to talkin' an' braggin' 'bout what a stock o' goods they +kep' in the store over there. 'An',' says I, 'I bate ye dollars to +doughnuts that there hain't a darn thing ye can ask for at Bill Pike's +store at Pleasant River that he can't go down cellar, or up attic, or +out in the barn chamber an' git for ye.' Well, sir, he took me up, an' I +borrered the money of Joe Dennett, who held the stakes, an' we went +right over to Bill Pike's with all the boys follerin' on behind. An' the +Gorham man never let on what he was goin' to ask for till the hull crowd +of us got inside the store. Then says he, as p'lite as a basket o' +chips, 'Mr. Pike, I'd like to buy a pulpit if you can oblige me with +one.' + +"Bill scratched his head an' I held my breath. Then says he, 'Pears to +me I'd ought to hev a pulpit or two, if I can jest remember where I keep +'em. I don't never cal'late to be out o' pulpits, but I'm so plagued +for room I can't keep 'em in here with the groc'ries. Jim (that's his +new store boy), you jest take a lantern an' run out in the far corner o' +the shed, at the end o' the hickory woodpile, an' see how many pulpits +we've got in stock!' Well, Jim run out, an' when he come back he says, +'We've got two, Mr. Pike. Shall I bring one of 'em in?' + +"At that the boys all bust out laughin' an' hollerin' an' tauntin' the +Gorham man, an' he paid up with a good will, I tell ye!" + +"I don't approve of bettin'," said Mrs. Wiley grimly, "but I'll try to +sanctify the money by usin' it for a new wash-boiler." + +"The fact is," explained old Kennebec, somewhat confused, "that the boys +made me spend every cent of it then an' there." + +Rose heard her grandmother's caustic reply, and then paid no further +attention until her keen ear caught the sound of Stephen's name. It was +a part of her unhappiness that since her broken engagement no one would +ever allude to him, and she longed to hear him mentioned, so that +perchance she could get some inkling of his movements. + +[Illustration: "AS LONG AS STEPHEN WATERMAN'S ALIVE, ROSE WILEY CAN HAVE +HIM"] + +"I met Stephen to-night for the first time in a week," said Mr. Wiley. +"He kind o' keeps out o' my way lately. He's goin' to drive his span +into Portland tomorrow mornin' and bring Rufus home from the hospital +Sunday afternoon. The doctors think they've made a success of their job, +but Rufus has got to be bandaged up a spell longer. Stephen is goin' to +join the drive Monday mornin' at the bridge here, so I'll get the latest +news o' the boy. Land! I'll be turrible glad if he gets out with his +eyesight, if it's only for Steve's sake. He's a turrible good fellow, +Steve is! He said something to-night that made me set more store by him +than ever. I told you I hedn't heard an unkind word ag'in' Rose sence +she come home from Boston, an' no more I hev till this evenin: There +was two or three fellers talkin' in the post-office, an' they didn't +suspicion I was settin' on the steps outside the screen door. That Jim +Jenkins, that Rose so everlastin'ly snubbed at the tavern dance, spoke +up, an' says he: 'This time last year Rose Wiley could 'a' hed the +choice of any man on the river, an' now I bet ye she can't get nary +one.' + +"Steve was there, jest goin' out the door, with some bags o' coffee an' +sugar under his arm. + +"'I guess you're mistaken about that,' he says, speakin' up jest like +lightnin'; 'so long as Stephen Waterman's alive, Rose Wiley can have +him, for one; and that everybody's welcome to know.' + +"He spoke right out, loud an' plain, jest as if he was readin' the +Declaration of Independence. I expected the boys would everlastin'ly +poke fun at him, but they never said a word. I guess his eyes flashed, +for he come out the screen door, slammin' it after him, and stalked by +me as if he was too worked up to notice anything or anybody. I didn't +foiler him, for his long legs git over the ground too fast for me, but +thinks I, 'Mebbe I'll hev some use for my lemonade-set after all.'" + +"I hope to the land you will," responded Mrs. Wiley, "for I'm about sick +o' movin' it round when I sweep under my bed. And I shall be glad if +Rose an' Stephen do make it up, for Wealthy Ann Brooks's gossip is too +much for a Christian woman to stand." + + + + +HOUSEBREAKING + + +Where was the pale Rose, the faded Rose, that crept noiselessly down +from her room, wanting neither to speak nor to be spoken to? Nobody ever +knew. She vanished forever, and in her place a thing of sparkles and +dimples flashed up the stairway and closed the door softly. There was a +streak of moonshine lying across the bare floor, and a merry ghost, with +dressing-gown held prettily away from bare feet, danced a gay fandango +among the yellow moonbeams. There were breathless flights to the open +window, and kisses thrown in the direction of the River Farm. There were +impressive declamations at the looking-glass, where a radiant creature +pointed to her reflection and whispered, "Worthless little pig, he +loves you, after all!" + +Then, when quiet joy had taken the place of mad delight, there was a +swoop down upon the floor, an impetuous hiding of brimming eyes in the +white counterpane, and a dozen impassioned promises to herself and to +something higher than herself, to be a better girl. + +The mood lasted, and deepened, and still Rose did not move. Her heart +was on its knees before Stephen's faithful love, his chivalry, his +strength. Her troubled spirit, like a frail boat tossed about in the +rapids, seemed entering a quiet harbor, where there were protecting +shores and a still, still evening star. Her sails were all torn and +drooping, but the harbor was in sight, and the poor little +weather-beaten craft could rest in peace. + +A period of grave reflection now ensued,--under the bedclothes, where +one could think better. Suddenly an inspiration seized her,--an +inspiration so original, so delicious, and above all so humble and +praiseworthy, that it brought her head from her pillow, and she sat bolt +upright, clapping her hands like a child. + +"The very thing!" she whispered to herself gleefully. "It will take +courage, but I'm sure of my ground after what he said before them all, +and I'll do it. Grandma in Biddeford buying church carpets, Stephen in +Portland--was ever such a chance?" + +The same glowing Rose came downstairs, two steps at a time, next +morning, bade her grandmother good-by with suspicious pleasure, and sent +her grandfather away on an errand which, with attendant conversation, +would consume half the day. Then bundles after bundles and baskets after +baskets were packed into the wagon,--behind the seat, beneath the seat, +and finally under the lap-robe. She gave a dramatic flourish to the +whip, drove across the bridge, went through Pleasant River village, and +up the leafy road to the little house, stared the "To Let" sign +scornfully in the eye, alighted, and ran like a deer through the aisles +of waving corn, past the kitchen windows, to the back door. + +"If he has kept the big key in the old place under the stone, where we +both used to find it, then he hasn't forgotten me--or anything," thought +Rose. + +The key was there, and Rose lifted it with a sob of gratitude. It was +but five minutes' work to carry all the bundles from the wagon to the +back steps, and another five to lead old Tom across the road into the +woods and tie him to a tree quite out of the sight of any passer-by. + +When, after running back, she turned the key in the lock, her heart gave +a leap almost of terror, and she started at the sound of her own +footfall. Through the open door the sunlight streamed into the dark +room. She flew to tables and chairs, and gave a rapid sweep of the hand +over their surfaces. + +"He has been dusting here,--and within a few days, too," she thought +triumphantly. + +The kitchen was perfection, as she always knew it would be, with one +door opening to the shaded road and the other looking on the river; +windows, too, framing the apple-orchard and the elms. She had chosen the +furniture, but how differently it looked now that it was actually in +place! The tiny shed had piles of split wood, with great boxes of +kindlings and shavings, all in readiness for the bride, who would do her +own cooking. Who but Stephen would have made the very wood ready for a +woman's home-coming; and why had he done so much in May, when they were +not to be married until August? Then the door of the bedroom was +stealthily opened, and here Rose sat down and cried for joy and shame +and hope and fear. The very flowered paper she had refused as too +expensive! How lovely it looked with the white chamber set! She brought +in her simple wedding outfit of blankets, bed-linen, and counterpanes, +and folded them softly in the closet; and then for the rest of the +morning she went from room to room, doing all that could remain +undiscovered, even to laying a fire in the new kitchen stove. + +This was the plan. Stephen must pass the house on his way from the River +Farm to the bridge, where he was to join the river-drivers on Monday +morning. She would be out of bed by the earliest peep of dawn, put on +Stephen's favorite pink calico, leave a note for her grandmother, run +like a hare down her side of the river and up Stephen's, steal into the +house, open blinds and windows, light the fire, and set the kettle +boiling. Then with a sharp knife she would cut down two rows of corn, +and thus make a green pathway from the front kitchen steps to the road. +Next, the false and insulting "To Let" sign would be forcibly tweaked +from the tree and thrown into the grass. She would then lay the table in +the kitchen, and make ready the nicest breakfast that two people ever +sat down to. And oh, would two people sit down to it; or would one go +off in a rage and the other die of grief and disappointment? + +Then, having done all, she would wait and palpitate, and palpitate and +wait, until Stephen came. Surely no property-owner in the universe could +drive along a road, observe his corn leveled to the earth, his sign +removed, his house open, and smoke issuing from his chimney, without +going in to surprise the rogue and villain who could be guilty of such +vandalism. + +And when he came in? + +Oh, she had all day Sunday in which to forecast, with mingled dread and +gladness and suspense, that all-important, all-decisive first moment! +All day Sunday to frame and unframe penitent speeches. All day Sunday! +Would it ever be Monday? If so, what would Tuesday bring? Would the sun +rise on happy Mrs. Stephen Waterman of Pleasant River, or on miserable +Miss Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood? + + + + +THE DREAM ROOM + + +Long ago, when Stephen was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, he had gone +with his father to a distant town to spend the night. After an early +breakfast next morning his father had driven off for a business +interview, and left the boy to walk about during his absence. He +wandered aimlessly along a quiet side street, and threw himself down on +the grass outside a pretty garden to amuse himself as best he could. + +After a few minutes he heard voices, and, turning, peeped through the +bars of the gate in idle, boyish curiosity. It was a small brown house; +the kitchen door was open, and a table spread with a white cloth was set +in the middle of the room. There was a cradle in a far corner, and a +man was seated at the table as though he might be waiting for his +breakfast. + +There is a kind of sentiment about the kitchen in New England, a kind of +sentiment not provoked by other rooms. Here the farmer drops in to spend +a few minutes when he comes back from the barn or field on an errand. +Here, in the great, clean, sweet, comfortable place, the busy housewife +lives, sometimes rocking the cradle, sometimes opening and shutting the +oven door, sometimes stirring the pot, darning stockings, paring +vegetables, or mixing goodies in a yellow bowl. The children sit on the +steps, stringing beans, shelling peas, or hulling berries; the cat +sleeps on the floor near the wood-box; and the visitor feels exiled if +he stays in sitting-room or parlor, for here, where the mother is always +busy, is the heart of the farm-house. + +There was an open back door to this kitchen, a door framed in +morning-glories, and the woman (or was she only girl?) standing at the +stove was pretty,--oh, so pretty in Stephen's eyes! His boyish heart +went out to her on the instant. She poured a cup of coffee and walked +with it to the table; then an unexpected, interesting thing +happened--something the boy ought not to have seen, and never forgot. +The man, putting out his hand to take the cup, looked up at the pretty +woman with a smile, and she stooped and kissed him. + +Stephen was fifteen. As he looked, on the instant he became a man, with +a man's hopes, desires, ambitions. He looked eagerly, hungrily, and the +scene burned itself on the sensitive plate of his young heart, so that, +as he grew older, he could take the picture out in the dark, from time +to time, and look at it again. When he first met Rose, he did not know +precisely what she was to mean to him; but before long, when he closed +his eyes and the old familiar picture swam into his field of vision, +behold, by some spiritual chemistry, the pretty woman's face had given +place to that of Rose! + +All such teasing visions had been sternly banished during this sorrowful +summer, and it was a thoughtful, sober Stephen who drove along the road +on this mellow August morning. The dust was deep; the goldenrod waved +its imperial plumes, making the humble waysides gorgeous; the river +chattered and sparkled till it met the logs at the Brier Neighorhood, +and then, lapsing into silence, flowed steadily under them till it found +a vent for its spirits in the dashing and splashing of the falls. + +Haying was over; logging was to begin that day; then harvesting; then +wood-cutting; then eternal successions of plowing, sowing, reaping, +haying, logging, harvesting, and so on, to the endless end of his days. +Here and there a red or a yellow branch, painted only yesterday, caught +his eye and made him shiver. He was not ready for winter; his heart +still craved the summer it had missed. + +Hello! What was that? Corn-stalks prone on the earth? Sign torn down and +lying flat in the grass? Blinds open, fire in the chimney? + +He leaped from the wagon, and, flinging the reins to Alcestis Crambry, +said, "Stay right here out of sight, and don't you move till I call +you!" and striding up the green pathway, flung open the kitchen door. + +A forest of corn waving in the doorway at the back, morning-glories +clambering round and round the window-frames, table with shining white +cloth, kettle humming and steaming, something bubbling in a pan on the +stove, fire throwing out sweet little gleams of welcome through the open +damper. All this was taken in with one incredulous, rapturous twinkle of +an eye; but something else, too: Rose of all roses, Rose of the river, +Rose of the world, standing behind a chair, her hand pressed against +her heart, her lips parted, her breath coming and going! She was +glowing like a jewel, glowing with the extraordinary brilliancy that +emotion gives to some women. She used to be happy in a gay, sparkling +way, like the shallow part of the stream as it chatters over white +pebbles and bright sands. Now it was a broad, steady, full happiness +like the deeps of the river under the sun. + +"Don't speak, Stephen, till you hear what I have to say. It takes a good +deal of courage for a girl to do as I am doing; but I want to show how +sorry I am, and it's the only way." She was trembling, and the words +came faster and faster. "I've been very wrong and foolish, and made you +very unhappy, but I haven't done what you would have hated most. I +haven't been engaged to Claude Merrill; he hasn't so much as asked me. I +am here to beg you to forgive me, to eat breakfast with me, to drive me +to the minister's and marry me quickly, quickly, before anything +happens to prevent us, and then to bring me home here to live all the +days of my life. Oh, Stephen dear, honestly, honestly, you haven't lost +anything in all this long, miserable summer. I've suffered, too, and I'm +better worth loving than I was. Will you take me back?" + +Rose had a tremendous power of provoking and holding love, and Stephen +of loving. His was too generous a nature for revilings and complaints +and reproaches. + +The shores of his heart were strewn with the wreckage of the troubled +summer, but if the tide of love is high enough, it washes such things +out of remembrance. He just opened his arms and took Rose to his heart, +faults and all, with joy and gratitude; and she was as happy as a child +who has escaped the scolding it richly deserved, and who determines, for +very thankfulness' sake, never to be naughty again. + +[Illustration: "DON'T SPEAK, STEPHEN, TILL YOU HEAR WHAT I HAVE TO SAY"] + +"You don't know what you've done for me, Stephen," she whispered, with +her face hidden on his shoulder. "I was just a common little prickly +rosebush when you came along like a good gardener and 'grafted in' +something better; the something better was your love, Stephen dear, and +it's made everything different. The silly Rose you were engaged to long +ago has disappeared somewhere; I hope you won't be able to find her +under the new leaves." + +"She was all I wanted," said Stephen. + +"You thought she was," the girl answered, "because you didn't see the +prickles, but you'd have felt them sometime. The old Rose was a selfish +thing, not good enough for you; the new Rose is going to be your wife, +and Rufus's sister, and your mother's daughter, all in one." + +Then such a breakfast was spread as Stephen, in his sorry years of +bachelor existence, had forgotten could exist; but before he broke his +fast he ran out to the wagon and served the astonished Alcestis with his +wedding refreshments then and there, bidding him drive back to the River +Farm and bring him a package that lay in the drawer of his +shaving-stand,--a package placed there when hot youth and love and longing +had inspired him to hurry on the marriage day. + +"There's an envelope, Alcestis," he cried, "a long envelope way, way +back in the corner, and a small box on top of it. Bring them both, and +my wallet too, and if you find them all and get them to me safely you +shall be bridesmaid and groomsman and best man and usher and maid of +honor at a wedding, in less than an hour! Off with you! Drive straight +and use the whip on Dolly!" + +When he reentered the kitchen, flushed with joy and excitement, Rose put +the various good things on the table and he almost tremblingly took his +seat, fearing that contact with the solid wood might wake him from this +entrancing vision. + +"I'd like to put you in your chair like a queen and wait on you," he +said with a soft boyish stammer; "but I am too dazed with happiness to +be of any use." + +"It's my turn to wait upon you, and I--Oh! how I love to have you +dazed," Rose answered. "I'll be at the table presently myself; but we +have been housekeeping only three minutes, and we have nothing but the +tin coffee-pot this morning, so I'll pour the coffee from the stove." + +She filled a cup with housewifely care and brought it to Stephen's side. +As she set it down and was turning, she caught his look,--a look so full +of longing that no loving woman, however busy, could have resisted it; +then she stooped and kissed him fondly, fervently. + +Stephen put his arm about her, and, drawing her down to his knee, rested +his head against her soft shoulder with a sigh of comfort, like that of +a tired child. He had waited for it ten years, and at last the +dream-room had come true. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Rose O' the River, by Kate Douglas Wiggin + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1033 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1034-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1034-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6ce66ed3 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1034-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1290 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1034 *** + +POEMS + + +by Wilfred Owen + + +With an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon + + + + +[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized. +Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation +is indented two spaces.] + + + + +Introduction + + +In writing an Introduction such as this it is good to be brief. The +poems printed in this book need no preliminary commendations from me or +anyone else. The author has left us his own fragmentary but impressive +Foreword; this, and his Poems, can speak for him, backed by the +authority of his experience as an infantry soldier, and sustained by +nobility and originality of style. All that was strongest in Wilfred +Owen survives in his poems; any superficial impressions of his +personality, any records of his conversation, behaviour, or appearance, +would be irrelevant and unseemly. The curiosity which demands such +morsels would be incapable of appreciating the richness of his work. + +The discussion of his experiments in assonance and dissonance (of which +'Strange Meeting' is the finest example) may be left to the professional +critics of verse, the majority of whom will be more preoccupied with +such technical details than with the profound humanity of the self- +revelation manifested in such magnificent lines as those at the end of +his 'Apologia pro Poemate Meo', and in that other poem which he named +'Greater Love'. + +The importance of his contribution to the literature of the War cannot +be decided by those who, like myself, both admired him as a poet and +valued him as a friend. His conclusions about War are so entirely in +accordance with my own that I cannot attempt to judge his work with any +critical detachment. I can only affirm that he was a man of absolute +integrity of mind. He never wrote his poems (as so many war-poets did) +to make the effect of a personal gesture. He pitied others; he did not +pity himself. In the last year of his life he attained a clear vision +of what he needed to say, and these poems survive him as his true and +splendid testament. + +Wilfred Owen was born at Oswestry on 18th March 1893. He was educated +at the Birkenhead Institute, and matriculated at London University in +1910. In 1913 he obtained a private tutorship near Bordeaux, where he +remained until 1915. During this period he became acquainted with the +eminent French poet, Laurent Tailhade, to whom he showed his early +verses, and from whom he received considerable encouragement. In 1915, +in spite of delicate health, he joined the Artists' Rifles O.T.C., was +gazetted to the Manchester Regiment, and served with their 2nd Battalion +in France from December 1916 to June 1917, when he was invalided home. +Fourteen months later he returned to the Western Front and served with +the same Battalion, ultimately commanding a Company. + +He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry while taking part in +some heavy fighting on 1st October. He was killed on 4th November 1918, +while endeavouring to get his men across the Sambre Canal. + +A month before his death he wrote to his mother: "My nerves are in +perfect order. I came out again in order to help these boys; directly, +by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their +sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can." Let his +own words be his epitaph:-- + + "Courage was mine, and I had mystery; + Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery." + + Siegfried Sassoon. + + + + +POEMS + + + + +Preface + + + +This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak +of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, +honour, dominion or power, + + except War. + Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry. + The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. + The Poetry is in the pity. + Yet these elegies are not to this generation, + This is in no sense consolatory. + + They may be to the next. + All the poet can do to-day is to warn. + That is why the true Poets must be truthful. + If I thought the letter of this book would last, + I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives + Prussia,--my ambition and those names will be content; for they will + have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders. + + + Note.--This Preface was found, in an unfinished condition, + among Wilfred Owen's papers. + + + +Contents: + + Preface + Strange Meeting + Greater Love + Apologia pro Poemate Meo + The Show + Mental Cases + Parable of the Old Men and the Young + Arms and the Boy + Anthem for Doomed Youth + The Send-off + Insensibility + Dulce et Decorum est + The Sentry + The Dead-Beat + Exposure + Spring Offensive + The Chances + S. I. W. + Futility + Smile, Smile, Smile + Conscious + A Terre + Wild with all Regrets + Disabled + The End + + + + + +Strange Meeting + + + + It seemed that out of the battle I escaped + Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped + Through granites which Titanic wars had groined. + Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, + Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred. + Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared + With piteous recognition in fixed eyes, + Lifting distressful hands as if to bless. + And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall; + With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained; + Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground, + And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan. + "Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn." + "None," said the other, "Save the undone years, + The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours, + Was my life also; I went hunting wild + After the wildest beauty in the world, + Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair, + But mocks the steady running of the hour, + And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here. + For by my glee might many men have laughed, + And of my weeping something has been left, + Which must die now. I mean the truth untold, + The pity of war, the pity war distilled. + Now men will go content with what we spoiled. + Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled. + They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress, + None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress. + Courage was mine, and I had mystery; + Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery; + To miss the march of this retreating world + Into vain citadels that are not walled. + Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels + I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, + Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. + I would have poured my spirit without stint + But not through wounds; not on the cess of war. + Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were. + I am the enemy you killed, my friend. + I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned + Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed. + I parried; but my hands were loath and cold. + Let us sleep now . . ." + + + (This poem was found among the author's papers. + It ends on this strange note.) + + + *Another Version* + + Earth's wheels run oiled with blood. Forget we that. + Let us lie down and dig ourselves in thought. + Beauty is yours and you have mastery, + Wisdom is mine, and I have mystery. + We two will stay behind and keep our troth. + Let us forego men's minds that are brute's natures, + Let us not sup the blood which some say nurtures, + Be we not swift with swiftness of the tigress. + Let us break ranks from those who trek from progress. + Miss we the march of this retreating world + Into old citadels that are not walled. + Let us lie out and hold the open truth. + Then when their blood hath clogged the chariot wheels + We will go up and wash them from deep wells. + What though we sink from men as pitchers falling + Many shall raise us up to be their filling + Even from wells we sunk too deep for war + And filled by brows that bled where no wounds were. + + + *Alternative line--* + + Even as One who bled where no wounds were. + + + + +Greater Love + + + + Red lips are not so red + As the stained stones kissed by the English dead. + Kindness of wooed and wooer + Seems shame to their love pure. + O Love, your eyes lose lure + When I behold eyes blinded in my stead! + + Your slender attitude + Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed, + Rolling and rolling there + Where God seems not to care; + Till the fierce Love they bear + Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude. + + Your voice sings not so soft,-- + Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,-- + Your dear voice is not dear, + Gentle, and evening clear, + As theirs whom none now hear + Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed. + + Heart, you were never hot, + Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot; + And though your hand be pale, + Paler are all which trail + Your cross through flame and hail: + Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not. + + + + +Apologia pro Poemate Meo + + + + I, too, saw God through mud-- + The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled. + War brought more glory to their eyes than blood, + And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child. + + Merry it was to laugh there-- + Where death becomes absurd and life absurder. + For power was on us as we slashed bones bare + Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder. + + I, too, have dropped off fear-- + Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon, + And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear + Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn; + + And witnessed exultation-- + Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl, + Shine and lift up with passion of oblation, + Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul. + + I have made fellowships-- + Untold of happy lovers in old song. + For love is not the binding of fair lips + With the soft silk of eyes that look and long, + + By Joy, whose ribbon slips,-- + But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong; + Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips; + Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong. + + I have perceived much beauty + In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight; + Heard music in the silentness of duty; + Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate. + + Nevertheless, except you share + With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell, + Whose world is but the trembling of a flare, + And heaven but as the highway for a shell, + + You shall not hear their mirth: + You shall not come to think them well content + By any jest of mine. These men are worth + Your tears: You are not worth their merriment. + + + November 1917. + + + + +The Show + + + + My soul looked down from a vague height with Death, + As unremembering how I rose or why, + And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth, + Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe, + And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques. + + Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire, + There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled. + It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs + Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed. + + By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped + Round myriad warts that might be little hills. + + From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept, + And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes. + + (And smell came up from those foul openings + As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.) + + On dithering feet upgathered, more and more, + Brown strings towards strings of gray, with bristling spines, + All migrants from green fields, intent on mire. + + Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns, + Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten. + + I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten, + I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten. + + Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean, + I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather. + + And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan. + And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid + Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further, + Showed me its feet, the feet of many men, + And the fresh-severed head of it, my head. + + + + +Mental Cases + + + + Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? + Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, + Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, + Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked? + Stroke on stroke of pain,--but what slow panic, + Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? + Ever from their hair and through their hand palms + Misery swelters. Surely we have perished + Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish? + + --These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished. + Memory fingers in their hair of murders, + Multitudinous murders they once witnessed. + Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander, + Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter. + Always they must see these things and hear them, + Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles, + Carnage incomparable and human squander + Rucked too thick for these men's extrication. + + Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented + Back into their brains, because on their sense + Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black; + Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh + --Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous, + Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses. + --Thus their hands are plucking at each other; + Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging; + Snatching after us who smote them, brother, + Pawing us who dealt them war and madness. + + + + +Parable of the Old Men and the Young + + + + So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, + And took the fire with him, and a knife. + And as they sojourned both of them together, + Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, + Behold the preparations, fire and iron, + But where the lamb for this burnt-offering? + Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, + And builded parapets and trenches there, + And stretch\ed forth the knife to slay his son. + When lo! an angel called him out of heaven, + Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, + Neither do anything to him. Behold, + A ram caught in a thicket by its horns; + Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him. + But the old man would not so, but slew his son. . . . + + + + +Arms and the Boy + + + + Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade + How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; + Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash; + And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh. + + Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads + Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads. + Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth, + Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death. + + For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple. + There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple; + And God will grow no talons at his heels, + Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls. + + + + +Anthem for Doomed Youth + + + + What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? + Only the monstrous anger of the guns. + Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle + Can patter out their hasty orisons. + No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, + Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-- + The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; + And bugles calling for them from sad shires. + + What candles may be held to speed them all? + Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes + Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. + The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; + Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, + And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. + + + + +The Send-off + + + + Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way + To the siding-shed, + And lined the train with faces grimly gay. + + Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray + As men's are, dead. + + Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp + Stood staring hard, + Sorry to miss them from the upland camp. + Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp + Winked to the guard. + + So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went. + They were not ours: + We never heard to which front these were sent. + + Nor there if they yet mock what women meant + Who gave them flowers. + + Shall they return to beatings of great bells + In wild trainloads? + A few, a few, too few for drums and yells, + May creep back, silent, to still village wells + Up half-known roads. + + + + +Insensibility + + + + I + + Happy are men who yet before they are killed + Can let their veins run cold. + Whom no compassion fleers + Or makes their feet + Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers. + The front line withers, + But they are troops who fade, not flowers + For poets' tearful fooling: + Men, gaps for filling + Losses who might have fought + Longer; but no one bothers. + + + II + + And some cease feeling + Even themselves or for themselves. + Dullness best solves + The tease and doubt of shelling, + And Chance's strange arithmetic + Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling. + They keep no check on Armies' decimation. + + + III + + Happy are these who lose imagination: + They have enough to carry with ammunition. + Their spirit drags no pack. + Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache. + Having seen all things red, + Their eyes are rid + Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever. + And terror's first constriction over, + Their hearts remain small drawn. + Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle + Now long since ironed, + Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned. + + + IV + + Happy the soldier home, with not a notion + How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack, + And many sighs are drained. + Happy the lad whose mind was never trained: + His days are worth forgetting more than not. + He sings along the march + Which we march taciturn, because of dusk, + The long, forlorn, relentless trend + From larger day to huger night. + + + V + + We wise, who with a thought besmirch + Blood over all our soul, + How should we see our task + But through his blunt and lashless eyes? + Alive, he is not vital overmuch; + Dying, not mortal overmuch; + Nor sad, nor proud, + Nor curious at all. + He cannot tell + Old men's placidity from his. + + + VI + + But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns, + That they should be as stones. + Wretched are they, and mean + With paucity that never was simplicity. + By choice they made themselves immune + To pity and whatever mourns in man + Before the last sea and the hapless stars; + Whatever mourns when many leave these shores; + Whatever shares + The eternal reciprocity of tears. + + + + +Dulce et Decorum est + + + + Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, + Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, + Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, + And towards our distant rest began to trudge. + Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, + But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; + Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots + Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. + + Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling + Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, + But someone still was yelling out and stumbling + And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.-- + Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, + As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. + + In all my dreams before my helpless sight + He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. + + If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace + Behind the wagon that we flung him in, + And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, + His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, + If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood + Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs + Bitter as the cud + Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- + My friend, you would not tell with such high zest + To children ardent for some desperate glory, + The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est + Pro patria mori. + + + + +The Sentry + + + + We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew, + And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell + Hammered on top, but never quite burst through. + Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime + Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour, + Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb. + What murk of air remained stank old, and sour + With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men + Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den, + If not their corpses. . . . + There we herded from the blast + Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last. + Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles. + And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping + And splashing in the flood, deluging muck-- + The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles + Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck. + We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined + "O sir, my eyes--I'm blind--I'm blind, I'm blind!" + Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids + And said if he could see the least blurred light + He was not blind; in time he'd get all right. + "I can't," he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids + Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there + In posting next for duty, and sending a scout + To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about + To other posts under the shrieking air. + + Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed, + And one who would have drowned himself for good,-- + I try not to remember these things now. + Let dread hark back for one word only: how + Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps, + And the wild chattering of his broken teeth, + Renewed most horribly whenever crumps + Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath-- + Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout + "I see your lights!" But ours had long died out. + + + + +The Dead-Beat + + + + He dropped,--more sullenly than wearily, + Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat, + And none of us could kick him to his feet; + Just blinked at my revolver, blearily; + --Didn't appear to know a war was on, + Or see the blasted trench at which he stared. + "I'll do 'em in," he whined, "If this hand's spared, + I'll murder them, I will." + + A low voice said, + "It's Blighty, p'raps, he sees; his pluck's all gone, + Dreaming of all the valiant, that AREN'T dead: + Bold uncles, smiling ministerially; + Maybe his brave young wife, getting her fun + In some new home, improved materially. + It's not these stiffs have crazed him; nor the Hun." + + We sent him down at last, out of the way. + Unwounded;--stout lad, too, before that strafe. + Malingering? Stretcher-bearers winked, "Not half!" + + Next day I heard the Doc.'s well-whiskied laugh: + "That scum you sent last night soon died. Hooray!" + + + + +Exposure + + + + I + + Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . . + Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . . + Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . . + Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, + But nothing happens. + + Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire. + Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. + Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles, + Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war. + What are we doing here? + + The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . . + We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy. + Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army + Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray, + But nothing happens. + + Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence. + Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow, + With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew, + We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance, + But nothing happens. + + + II + + Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces-- + We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed, + Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed, + Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. + Is it that we are dying? + + Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires glozed + With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there; + For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs; + Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed-- + We turn back to our dying. + + Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn; + Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit. + For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid; + Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born, + For love of God seems dying. + + To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us, + Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp. + The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp, + Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice, + But nothing happens. + + + + +Spring Offensive + + + + Halted against the shade of a last hill, + They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease + And, finding comfortable chests and knees + Carelessly slept. But many there stood still + To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge, + Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world. + + Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled + By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge, + For though the summer oozed into their veins + Like the injected drug for their bones' pains, + Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass, + Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass. + + Hour after hour they ponder the warm field-- + And the far valley behind, where the buttercups + Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up, + Where even the little brambles would not yield, + But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands; + They breathe like trees unstirred. + + Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word + At which each body and its soul begird + And tighten them for battle. No alarms + Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste-- + Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced + The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done. + O larger shone that smile against the sun,-- + Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned. + + So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together + Over an open stretch of herb and heather + Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned + With fury against them; and soft sudden cups + Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes + Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space. + + Of them who running on that last high place + Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up + On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge, + Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge, + Some say God caught them even before they fell. + + But what say such as from existence' brink + Ventured but drave too swift to sink. + The few who rushed in the body to enter hell, + And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames + With superhuman inhumanities, + Long-famous glories, immemorial shames-- + And crawling slowly back, have by degrees + Regained cool peaceful air in wonder-- + Why speak they not of comrades that went under? + + + + +The Chances + + + + I mind as 'ow the night afore that show + Us five got talking,--we was in the know, + "Over the top to-morrer; boys, we're for it, + First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that's tore it." + "Ah well," says Jimmy,--an' 'e's seen some scrappin'-- + "There ain't more nor five things as can 'appen; + Ye get knocked out; else wounded--bad or cushy; + Scuppered; or nowt except yer feeling mushy." + + One of us got the knock-out, blown to chops. + T'other was hurt, like, losin' both 'is props. + An' one, to use the word of 'ypocrites, + 'Ad the misfortoon to be took by Fritz. + Now me, I wasn't scratched, praise God Almighty + (Though next time please I'll thank 'im for a blighty), + But poor young Jim, 'e's livin' an' 'e's not; + 'E reckoned 'e'd five chances, an' 'e's 'ad; + 'E's wounded, killed, and pris'ner, all the lot-- + The ruddy lot all rolled in one. Jim's mad. + + + + +S. I. W. + + "I will to the King, + And offer him consolation in his trouble, + For that man there has set his teeth to die, + And being one that hates obedience, + Discipline, and orderliness of life, + I cannot mourn him." + W. B. Yeats. + + + + Patting goodbye, doubtless they told the lad + He'd always show the Hun a brave man's face; + Father would sooner him dead than in disgrace,-- + Was proud to see him going, aye, and glad. + Perhaps his Mother whimpered how she'd fret + Until he got a nice, safe wound to nurse. + Sisters would wish girls too could shoot, charge, curse, . . . + Brothers--would send his favourite cigarette, + Each week, month after month, they wrote the same, + Thinking him sheltered in some Y.M. Hut, + Where once an hour a bullet missed its aim + And misses teased the hunger of his brain. + His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand + Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, as sand + From the best sandbags after years of rain. + But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock, + Untrapped the wretch. And death seemed still withheld + For torture of lying machinally shelled, + At the pleasure of this world's Powers who'd run amok. + + He'd seen men shoot their hands, on night patrol, + Their people never knew. Yet they were vile. + "Death sooner than dishonour, that's the style!" + So Father said. + + One dawn, our wire patrol + Carried him. This time, Death had not missed. + We could do nothing, but wipe his bleeding cough. + Could it be accident?--Rifles go off . . . + Not sniped? No. (Later they found the English ball.) + + It was the reasoned crisis of his soul. + Against the fires that would not burn him whole + But kept him for death's perjury and scoff + And life's half-promising, and both their riling. + + With him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed, + And truthfully wrote the Mother "Tim died smiling." + + + + +Futility + + + + Move him into the sun-- + Gently its touch awoke him once, + At home, whispering of fields unsown. + Always it woke him, even in France, + Until this morning and this snow. + If anything might rouse him now + The kind old sun will know. + + Think how it wakes the seeds-- + Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. + Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides + Full-nerved,--still warm,--too hard to stir? + Was it for this the clay grew tall? + --O what made fatuous sunbeams toil + To break earth's sleep at all? + + + + +Smile, Smile, Smile + + + + Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned + Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small) + And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul. + Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned; + For, said the paper, "When this war is done + The men's first instinct will be making homes. + Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes, + It being certain war has just begun. + Peace would do wrong to our undying dead,-- + The sons we offered might regret they died + If we got nothing lasting in their stead. + We must be solidly indemnified. + Though all be worthy Victory which all bought, + We rulers sitting in this ancient spot + Would wrong our very selves if we forgot + The greatest glory will be theirs who fought, + Who kept this nation in integrity." + Nation?--The half-limbed readers did not chafe + But smiled at one another curiously + Like secret men who know their secret safe. + This is the thing they know and never speak, + That England one by one had fled to France + (Not many elsewhere now save under France). + Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week, + And people in whose voice real feeling rings + Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things. + + + 23rd September 1918. + + + + +Conscious + + + + His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed. + His eyes come open with a pull of will, + Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head. + A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill . . . + How smooth the floor of the ward is! what a rug! + And who's that talking, somewhere out of sight? + Why are they laughing? What's inside that jug? + "Nurse! Doctor!" "Yes; all right, all right." + + But sudden dusk bewilders all the air-- + There seems no time to want a drink of water. + Nurse looks so far away. And everywhere + Music and roses burnt through crimson slaughter. + Cold; cold; he's cold; and yet so hot: + And there's no light to see the voices by-- + No time to dream, and ask--he knows not what. + + + + +A Terre + + (Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.) + + + + Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell, + Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall. + Both arms have mutinied against me--brutes. + My fingers fidget like ten idle brats. + + I tried to peg out soldierly--no use! + One dies of war like any old disease. + This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes. + I have my medals?--Discs to make eyes close. + My glorious ribbons?--Ripped from my own back + In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.) + + A short life and a merry one, my brick! + We used to say we'd hate to live dead old,-- + Yet now . . . I'd willingly be puffy, bald, + And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys + At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose + Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting, + Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting. + Well, that's what I learnt,--that, and making money. + Your fifty years ahead seem none too many? + Tell me how long I've got? God! For one year + To help myself to nothing more than air! + One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long? + Spring wind would work its own way to my lung, + And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots. + My servant's lamed, but listen how he shouts! + When I'm lugged out, he'll still be good for that. + Here in this mummy-case, you know, I've thought + How well I might have swept his floors for ever, + I'd ask no night off when the bustle's over, + Enjoying so the dirt. Who's prejudiced + Against a grimed hand when his own's quite dust, + Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn, + Less warm than dust that mixes with arms' tan? + I'd love to be a sweep, now, black as Town, + Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load? + + O Life, Life, let me breathe,--a dug-out rat! + Not worse than ours the existences rats lead-- + Nosing along at night down some safe vat, + They find a shell-proof home before they rot. + Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, + Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys, + And subdivide, and never come to death, + Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth. + "I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone." + Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned; + The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now. + "Pushing up daisies," is their creed, you know. + To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap, + For all the usefulness there is in soap. + D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup? + Some day, no doubt, if . . . + Friend, be very sure + I shall be better off with plants that share + More peaceably the meadow and the shower. + Soft rains will touch me,--as they could touch once, + And nothing but the sun shall make me ware. + Your guns may crash around me. I'll not hear; + Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince. + Don't take my soul's poor comfort for your jest. + Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds, + But here the thing's best left at home with friends. + + My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest, + To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased + On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds. + + Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned + To do without what blood remained these wounds. + + + + +Wild with all Regrets + + (Another version of "A Terre".) + + To Siegfried Sassoon + + + + My arms have mutinied against me--brutes! + My fingers fidget like ten idle brats, + My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours. + Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease. + I can't read. There: it's no use. Take your book. + A short life and a merry one, my buck! + We said we'd hate to grow dead old. But now, + Not to live old seems awful: not to renew + My boyhood with my boys, and teach 'em hitting, + Shooting and hunting,--all the arts of hurting! + --Well, that's what I learnt. That, and making money. + Your fifty years in store seem none too many; + But I've five minutes. God! For just two years + To help myself to this good air of yours! + One Spring! Is one too hard to spare? Too long? + Spring air would find its own way to my lung, + And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots. + + Yes, there's the orderly. He'll change the sheets + When I'm lugged out, oh, couldn't I do that? + Here in this coffin of a bed, I've thought + I'd like to kneel and sweep his floors for ever,-- + And ask no nights off when the bustle's over, + For I'd enjoy the dirt; who's prejudiced + Against a grimed hand when his own's quite dust,-- + Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn? + Dear dust,--in rooms, on roads, on faces' tan! + I'd love to be a sweep's boy, black as Town; + Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load? + A flea would do. If one chap wasn't bloody, + Or went stone-cold, I'd find another body. + + Which I shan't manage now. Unless it's yours. + I shall stay in you, friend, for some few hours. + You'll feel my heavy spirit chill your chest, + And climb your throat on sobs, until it's chased + On sighs, and wiped from off your lips by wind. + + I think on your rich breathing, brother, I'll be weaned + To do without what blood remained me from my wound. + + + 5th December 1917. + + + + +Disabled + + + + He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, + And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey, + Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park + Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, + Voices of play and pleasure after day, + Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him. + + About this time Town used to swing so gay + When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees + And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim, + --In the old times, before he threw away his knees. + Now he will never feel again how slim + Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands, + All of them touch him like some queer disease. + + There was an artist silly for his face, + For it was younger than his youth, last year. + Now he is old; his back will never brace; + He's lost his colour very far from here, + Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry, + And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race, + And leap of purple spurted from his thigh. + One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg, + After the matches carried shoulder-high. + It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg, + He thought he'd better join. He wonders why . . . + Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts. + + That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg, + Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts, + He asked to join. He didn't have to beg; + Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years. + Germans he scarcely thought of; and no fears + Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts + For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes; + And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears; + Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits. + And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers. + + Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal. + Only a solemn man who brought him fruits + Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul. + Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes, + And do what things the rules consider wise, + And take whatever pity they may dole. + To-night he noticed how the women's eyes + Passed from him to the strong men that were whole. + How cold and late it is! Why don't they come + And put him into bed? Why don't they come? + + + + +The End + + + + After the blast of lightning from the east, + The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot throne, + After the drums of time have rolled and ceased + And from the bronze west long retreat is blown, + + Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth + All death will he annul, all tears assuage? + Or fill these void veins full again with youth + And wash with an immortal water age? + + When I do ask white Age, he saith not so,-- + "My head hangs weighed with snow." + And when I hearken to the Earth she saith + My fiery heart sinks aching. It is death. + Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified + Nor my titanic tears the seas be dried." + + + + + +[End of original text.] + + + + + +Appendix + + + +General Notes:-- + + +Due to the general circumstances surrounding Wilfred Owen, and his death +one week before the war ended, it should be noted that these poems are +not all in their final form. Owen had only had a few of his poems +published during his lifetime, and his papers were in a state of +disarray when Siegfried Sassoon, his friend and fellow poet, put +together this volume. The 1920 edition was the first edition of Owen's +poems, the 1921 reprint (of which this is a transcript) added one +more--and nothing else happened until Edmund Blunden's 1931 edition. +Even with that edition, there remained gaps, and several more editions +added more and more poems and fragments, in various forms, as it was +difficult to tell which of Owen's drafts were his final ones, until Jon +Stallworthy's "Complete Poems and Fragments" (1983) included all that +could be found, and tried to put them in chronological order, with the +latest revisions, etc. + +Therefore, it should not be surprising if some or most of these poems +differ from later editions. + + +After Owen's death, his writings gradually gained pre-eminence, so that, +although virtually unknown during the war, he came into high regard. +Benjamin Britten, the British composer who set nine of Owen's works as +the text of his "War Requiem" (shortly after the Second World War), +called Owen "by far our greatest war poet, and one of the most original +poets of this century." (Owen is especially noted for his use of +pararhyme.) Five of those nine texts are some form of poems included +here, to wit: 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', 'Futility', 'Parable of the Old +Men and the Young', 'The End', and 'Strange Meeting'. The other four +were '[Bugles Sang]', 'The Next War', 'Sonnet [Be slowly lifted up]' and +'At a Calvary Near the Ancre'--all of which the reader may wish to +pursue, being some of Owen's finest work. Fortunately, the poem which I +consider his best, and which is one of his most quoted--'Dulce et +Decorum est', is included in this volume. + + +Transcriber's Specific Notes:-- + +Blighty: England, or a wound that would take a soldier home (to England). + +S. I. W.: Self Inflicted Wound. + +Parable of the Old Men and the Young: A retold story from the Bible, +but with a different ending. The phrase "Abram bound the youth with +belts and straps" refers to the youth who went to war, with all their +equipment belted and strapped on. Other versions of this poem have an +additional line. + +Dulce et Decorum est: The phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" +is a Latin phrase from Horace, and translates literally something like +"Sweet and proper it is for your country (fatherland) to die." The poem +was originally intended to be addressed to an author who had written war +poems for children. "Dim through the misty panes . . ." should be +understood by anyone who has worn a gas mask. + +Alan R. Light. Monroe, North Carolina, July, 1997. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Wilfred Owen + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1034 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1035-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1035-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1f2815d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1035-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2651 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1035 *** + +THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY + +A Book of Poems + +by Edwin Arlington Robinson + + + +[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized. +Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation +is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.] + + + + To + the memory of + WILLIAM EDWARD BUTLER + + + + + +Several of the poems included in this book are reprinted +from American periodicals, as follows: "The Gift of God", +"Old King Cole", "Another Dark Lady", and "The Unforgiven"; +"Flammonde" and "The Poor Relation"; "The Clinging Vine"; +"Eros Turannos" and "Bokardo"; "The Voice of Age"; "Cassandra"; +"The Burning Book"; "Theophilus"; "Ben Jonson Entertains +a Man from Stratford". + + + + +Contents + + + + Flammonde + The Gift of God + The Clinging Vine + Cassandra + John Gorham + Stafford's Cabin + Hillcrest + Old King Cole + Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford + Eros Turannos + Old Trails + The Unforgiven + Theophilus + Veteran Sirens + Siege Perilous + Another Dark Lady + The Voice of Age + The Dark House + The Poor Relation + The Burning Book + Fragment + Lisette and Eileen + Llewellyn and the Tree + Bewick Finzer + Bokardo + The Man against the Sky + + + + + +THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY + + + + + +Flammonde + + + + The man Flammonde, from God knows where, + With firm address and foreign air, + With news of nations in his talk + And something royal in his walk, + With glint of iron in his eyes, + But never doubt, nor yet surprise, + Appeared, and stayed, and held his head + As one by kings accredited. + + Erect, with his alert repose + About him, and about his clothes, + He pictured all tradition hears + Of what we owe to fifty years. + His cleansing heritage of taste + Paraded neither want nor waste; + And what he needed for his fee + To live, he borrowed graciously. + + He never told us what he was, + Or what mischance, or other cause, + Had banished him from better days + To play the Prince of Castaways. + Meanwhile he played surpassing well + A part, for most, unplayable; + In fine, one pauses, half afraid + To say for certain that he played. + + For that, one may as well forego + Conviction as to yes or no; + Nor can I say just how intense + Would then have been the difference + To several, who, having striven + In vain to get what he was given, + Would see the stranger taken on + By friends not easy to be won. + + Moreover, many a malcontent + He soothed and found munificent; + His courtesy beguiled and foiled + Suspicion that his years were soiled; + His mien distinguished any crowd, + His credit strengthened when he bowed; + And women, young and old, were fond + Of looking at the man Flammonde. + + There was a woman in our town + On whom the fashion was to frown; + But while our talk renewed the tinge + Of a long-faded scarlet fringe, + The man Flammonde saw none of that, + And what he saw we wondered at-- + That none of us, in her distress, + Could hide or find our littleness. + + There was a boy that all agreed + Had shut within him the rare seed + Of learning. We could understand, + But none of us could lift a hand. + The man Flammonde appraised the youth, + And told a few of us the truth; + And thereby, for a little gold, + A flowered future was unrolled. + + There were two citizens who fought + For years and years, and over nought; + They made life awkward for their friends, + And shortened their own dividends. + The man Flammonde said what was wrong + Should be made right; nor was it long + Before they were again in line, + And had each other in to dine. + + And these I mention are but four + Of many out of many more. + So much for them. But what of him-- + So firm in every look and limb? + What small satanic sort of kink + Was in his brain? What broken link + Withheld him from the destinies + That came so near to being his? + + What was he, when we came to sift + His meaning, and to note the drift + Of incommunicable ways + That make us ponder while we praise? + Why was it that his charm revealed + Somehow the surface of a shield? + What was it that we never caught? + What was he, and what was he not? + + How much it was of him we met + We cannot ever know; nor yet + Shall all he gave us quite atone + For what was his, and his alone; + Nor need we now, since he knew best, + Nourish an ethical unrest: + Rarely at once will nature give + The power to be Flammonde and live. + + We cannot know how much we learn + From those who never will return, + Until a flash of unforeseen + Remembrance falls on what has been. + We've each a darkening hill to climb; + And this is why, from time to time + In Tilbury Town, we look beyond + Horizons for the man Flammonde. + + + + +The Gift of God + + + + Blessed with a joy that only she + Of all alive shall ever know, + She wears a proud humility + For what it was that willed it so,-- + That her degree should be so great + Among the favored of the Lord + That she may scarcely bear the weight + Of her bewildering reward. + + As one apart, immune, alone, + Or featured for the shining ones, + And like to none that she has known + Of other women's other sons,-- + The firm fruition of her need, + He shines anointed; and he blurs + Her vision, till it seems indeed + A sacrilege to call him hers. + + She fears a little for so much + Of what is best, and hardly dares + To think of him as one to touch + With aches, indignities, and cares; + She sees him rather at the goal, + Still shining; and her dream foretells + The proper shining of a soul + Where nothing ordinary dwells. + + Perchance a canvass of the town + Would find him far from flags and shouts, + And leave him only the renown + Of many smiles and many doubts; + Perchance the crude and common tongue + Would havoc strangely with his worth; + But she, with innocence unwrung, + Would read his name around the earth. + + And others, knowing how this youth + Would shine, if love could make him great, + When caught and tortured for the truth + Would only writhe and hesitate; + While she, arranging for his days + What centuries could not fulfill, + Transmutes him with her faith and praise, + And has him shining where she will. + + She crowns him with her gratefulness, + And says again that life is good; + And should the gift of God be less + In him than in her motherhood, + His fame, though vague, will not be small, + As upward through her dream he fares, + Half clouded with a crimson fall + Of roses thrown on marble stairs. + + + + +The Clinging Vine + + + + "Be calm? And was I frantic? + You'll have me laughing soon. + I'm calm as this Atlantic, + And quiet as the moon; + I may have spoken faster + Than once, in other days; + For I've no more a master, + And now--'Be calm,' he says. + + "Fear not, fear no commotion,-- + I'll be as rocks and sand; + The moon and stars and ocean + Will envy my command; + No creature could be stiller + In any kind of place + Than I... No, I'll not kill her; + Her death is in her face. + + "Be happy while she has it, + For she'll not have it long; + A year, and then you'll pass it, + Preparing a new song. + And I'm a fool for prating + Of what a year may bring, + When more like her are waiting + For more like you to sing. + + "You mock me with denial, + You mean to call me hard? + You see no room for trial + When all my doors are barred? + You say, and you'd say dying, + That I dream what I know; + And sighing, and denying, + You'd hold my hand and go. + + "You scowl--and I don't wonder; + I spoke too fast again; + But you'll forgive one blunder, + For you are like most men: + You are,--or so you've told me, + So many mortal times, + That heaven ought not to hold me + Accountable for crimes. + + "Be calm? Was I unpleasant? + Then I'll be more discreet, + And grant you, for the present, + The balm of my defeat: + What she, with all her striving, + Could not have brought about, + You've done. Your own contriving + Has put the last light out. + + "If she were the whole story, + If worse were not behind, + I'd creep with you to glory, + Believing I was blind; + I'd creep, and go on seeming + To be what I despise. + You laugh, and say I'm dreaming, + And all your laughs are lies. + + "Are women mad? A few are, + And if it's true you say-- + If most men are as you are-- + We'll all be mad some day. + Be calm--and let me finish; + There's more for you to know. + I'll talk while you diminish, + And listen while you grow. + + "There was a man who married + Because he couldn't see; + And all his days he carried + The mark of his degree. + But you--you came clear-sighted, + And found truth in my eyes; + And all my wrongs you've righted + With lies, and lies, and lies. + + "You've killed the last assurance + That once would have me strive + To rouse an old endurance + That is no more alive. + It makes two people chilly + To say what we have said, + But you--you'll not be silly + And wrangle for the dead. + + "You don't? You never wrangle? + Why scold then,--or complain? + More words will only mangle + What you've already slain. + Your pride you can't surrender? + My name--for that you fear? + Since when were men so tender, + And honor so severe? + + "No more--I'll never bear it. + I'm going. I'm like ice. + My burden? You would share it? + Forbid the sacrifice! + Forget so quaint a notion, + And let no more be told; + For moon and stars and ocean + And you and I are cold." + + + + +Cassandra + + + + I heard one who said: "Verily, + What word have I for children here? + Your Dollar is your only Word, + The wrath of it your only fear. + + "You build it altars tall enough + To make you see, but you are blind; + You cannot leave it long enough + To look before you or behind. + + "When Reason beckons you to pause, + You laugh and say that you know best; + But what it is you know, you keep + As dark as ingots in a chest. + + "You laugh and answer, 'We are young; + O leave us now, and let us grow.'-- + Not asking how much more of this + Will Time endure or Fate bestow. + + "Because a few complacent years + Have made your peril of your pride, + Think you that you are to go on + Forever pampered and untried? + + "What lost eclipse of history, + What bivouac of the marching stars, + Has given the sign for you to see + Millenniums and last great wars? + + "What unrecorded overthrow + Of all the world has ever known, + Or ever been, has made itself + So plain to you, and you alone? + + "Your Dollar, Dove and Eagle make + A Trinity that even you + Rate higher than you rate yourselves; + It pays, it flatters, and it's new. + + "And though your very flesh and blood + Be what your Eagle eats and drinks, + You'll praise him for the best of birds, + Not knowing what the Eagle thinks. + + "The power is yours, but not the sight; + You see not upon what you tread; + You have the ages for your guide, + But not the wisdom to be led. + + "Think you to tread forever down + The merciless old verities? + And are you never to have eyes + To see the world for what it is? + + "Are you to pay for what you have + With all you are?"--No other word + We caught, but with a laughing crowd + Moved on. None heeded, and few heard. + + + + +John Gorham + + + + "Tell me what you're doing over here, John Gorham, + Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you're not; + Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight + Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot."-- + + "I'm over here to tell you what the moon already + May have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago; + I'm over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland, + And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so."-- + + "Tell me what you're saying to me now, John Gorham, + Or you'll never see as much of me as ribbons any more; + I'll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers, + And you'll not follow far for one where flocks have been before."-- + + "I'm sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland, + But you're the one to make of them as many as you need. + And then about the vanishing. It's I who mean to vanish; + And when I'm here no longer you'll be done with me indeed."-- + + "That's a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham! + How am I to know myself until I make you smile? + Try to look as if the moon were making faces at you, + And a little more as if you meant to stay a little while."-- + + "You are what it is that over rose-blown gardens + Makes a pretty flutter for a season in the sun; + You are what it is that with a mouse, Jane Wayland, + Catches him and lets him go and eats him up for fun."-- + + "Sure I never took you for a mouse, John Gorham; + All you say is easy, but so far from being true + That I wish you wouldn't ever be again the one to think so; + For it isn't cats and butterflies that I would be to you."-- + + "All your little animals are in one picture-- + One I've had before me since a year ago to-night; + And the picture where they live will be of you, Jane Wayland, + Till you find a way to kill them or to keep them out of sight."-- + + "Won't you ever see me as I am, John Gorham, + Leaving out the foolishness and all I never meant? + Somewhere in me there's a woman, if you know the way to find her. + Will you like me any better if I prove it and repent?" + + "I doubt if I shall ever have the time, Jane Wayland; + And I dare say all this moonlight lying round us might as well + Fall for nothing on the shards of broken urns that are forgotten, + As on two that have no longer much of anything to tell." + + + + +Stafford's Cabin + + + + Once there was a cabin here, and once there was a man; + And something happened here before my memory began. + Time has made the two of them the fuel of one flame + And all we have of them is now a legend and a name. + + All I have to say is what an old man said to me, + And that would seem to be as much as there will ever be. + "Fifty years ago it was we found it where it sat."-- + And forty years ago it was old Archibald said that. + + "An apple tree that's yet alive saw something, I suppose, + Of what it was that happened there, and what no mortal knows. + Some one on the mountain heard far off a master shriek, + And then there was a light that showed the way for men to seek. + + "We found it in the morning with an iron bar behind, + And there were chains around it; but no search could ever find, + Either in the ashes that were left, or anywhere, + A sign to tell of who or what had been with Stafford there. + + "Stafford was a likely man with ideas of his own-- + Though I could never like the kind that likes to live alone; + And when you met, you found his eyes were always on your shoes, + As if they did the talking when he asked you for the news. + + "That's all, my son. Were I to talk for half a hundred years + I'd never clear away from there the cloud that never clears. + We buried what was left of it,--the bar, too, and the chains; + And only for the apple tree there's nothing that remains." + + Forty years ago it was I heard the old man say, + "That's all, my son."--And here again I find the place to-day, + Deserted and told only by the tree that knows the most, + And overgrown with golden-rod as if there were no ghost. + + + + +Hillcrest + + (To Mrs. Edward MacDowell) + + + + No sound of any storm that shakes + Old island walls with older seas + Comes here where now September makes + An island in a sea of trees. + + Between the sunlight and the shade + A man may learn till he forgets + The roaring of a world remade, + And all his ruins and regrets; + + And if he still remembers here + Poor fights he may have won or lost,-- + If he be ridden with the fear + Of what some other fight may cost,-- + + If, eager to confuse too soon, + What he has known with what may be, + He reads a planet out of tune + For cause of his jarred harmony,-- + + If here he venture to unroll + His index of adagios, + And he be given to console + Humanity with what he knows,-- + + He may by contemplation learn + A little more than what he knew, + And even see great oaks return + To acorns out of which they grew. + + He may, if he but listen well, + Through twilight and the silence here, + Be told what there are none may tell + To vanity's impatient ear; + + And he may never dare again + Say what awaits him, or be sure + What sunlit labyrinth of pain + He may not enter and endure. + + Who knows to-day from yesterday + May learn to count no thing too strange: + Love builds of what Time takes away, + Till Death itself is less than Change. + + Who sees enough in his duress + May go as far as dreams have gone; + Who sees a little may do less + Than many who are blind have done; + + Who sees unchastened here the soul + Triumphant has no other sight + Than has a child who sees the whole + World radiant with his own delight. + + Far journeys and hard wandering + Await him in whose crude surmise + Peace, like a mask, hides everything + That is and has been from his eyes; + + And all his wisdom is unfound, + Or like a web that error weaves + On airy looms that have a sound + No louder now than falling leaves. + + + + +Old King Cole + + + + In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole + A wise old age anticipate, + Desiring, with his pipe and bowl, + No Khan's extravagant estate. + No crown annoyed his honest head, + No fiddlers three were called or needed; + For two disastrous heirs instead + Made music more than ever three did. + + Bereft of her with whom his life + Was harmony without a flaw, + He took no other for a wife, + Nor sighed for any that he saw; + And if he doubted his two sons, + And heirs, Alexis and Evander, + He might have been as doubtful once + Of Robert Burns and Alexander. + + Alexis, in his early youth, + Began to steal--from old and young. + Likewise Evander, and the truth + Was like a bad taste on his tongue. + Born thieves and liars, their affair + Seemed only to be tarred with evil-- + The most insufferable pair + Of scamps that ever cheered the devil. + + The world went on, their fame went on, + And they went on--from bad to worse; + Till, goaded hot with nothing done, + And each accoutred with a curse, + The friends of Old King Cole, by twos, + And fours, and sevens, and elevens, + Pronounced unalterable views + Of doings that were not of heaven's. + + And having learned again whereby + Their baleful zeal had come about, + King Cole met many a wrathful eye + So kindly that its wrath went out-- + Or partly out. Say what they would, + He seemed the more to court their candor; + But never told what kind of good + Was in Alexis and Evander. + + And Old King Cole, with many a puff + That haloed his urbanity, + Would smoke till he had smoked enough, + And listen most attentively. + He beamed as with an inward light + That had the Lord's assurance in it; + And once a man was there all night, + Expecting something every minute. + + But whether from too little thought, + Or too much fealty to the bowl, + A dim reward was all he got + For sitting up with Old King Cole. + "Though mine," the father mused aloud, + "Are not the sons I would have chosen, + Shall I, less evilly endowed, + By their infirmity be frozen? + + "They'll have a bad end, I'll agree, + But I was never born to groan; + For I can see what I can see, + And I'm accordingly alone. + With open heart and open door, + I love my friends, I like my neighbors; + But if I try to tell you more, + Your doubts will overmatch my labors. + + "This pipe would never make me calm, + This bowl my grief would never drown. + For grief like mine there is no balm + In Gilead, or in Tilbury Town. + And if I see what I can see, + I know not any way to blind it; + Nor more if any way may be + For you to grope or fly to find it. + + "There may be room for ruin yet, + And ashes for a wasted love; + Or, like One whom you may forget, + I may have meat you know not of. + And if I'd rather live than weep + Meanwhile, do you find that surprising? + Why, bless my soul, the man's asleep! + That's good. The sun will soon be rising." + + + + +Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford + + + + You are a friend then, as I make it out, + Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us + Will put an ass's head in Fairyland + As he would add a shilling to more shillings, + All most harmonious,--and out of his + Miraculous inviolable increase + Fills Ilion, Rome, or any town you like + Of olden time with timeless Englishmen; + And I must wonder what you think of him-- + All you down there where your small Avon flows + By Stratford, and where you're an Alderman. + Some, for a guess, would have him riding back + To be a farrier there, or say a dyer; + Or maybe one of your adept surveyors; + Or like enough the wizard of all tanners. + Not you--no fear of that; for I discern + In you a kindling of the flame that saves-- + The nimble element, the true phlogiston; + I see it, and was told of it, moreover, + By our discriminate friend himself, no other. + Had you been one of the sad average, + As he would have it,--meaning, as I take it, + The sinew and the solvent of our Island, + You'd not be buying beer for this Terpander's + Approved and estimated friend Ben Jonson; + He'd never foist it as a part of his + Contingent entertainment of a townsman + While he goes off rehearsing, as he must, + If he shall ever be the Duke of Stratford. + And my words are no shadow on your town-- + Far from it; for one town's as like another + As all are unlike London. Oh, he knows it,-- + And there's the Stratford in him; he denies it, + And there's the Shakespeare in him. So, God help him! + I tell him he needs Greek; but neither God + Nor Greek will help him. Nothing will help that man. + You see the fates have given him so much, + He must have all or perish,--or look out + Of London, where he sees too many lords; + They're part of half what ails him: I suppose + There's nothing fouler down among the demons + Than what it is he feels when he remembers + The dust and sweat and ointment of his calling + With his lords looking on and laughing at him. + King as he is, he can't be king de facto, + And that's as well, because he wouldn't like it; + He'd frame a lower rating of men then + Than he has now; and after that would come + An abdication or an apoplexy. + He can't be king, not even king of Stratford,-- + Though half the world, if not the whole of it, + May crown him with a crown that fits no king + Save Lord Apollo's homesick emissary: + Not there on Avon, or on any stream + Where Naiads and their white arms are no more, + Shall he find home again. It's all too bad. + But there's a comfort, for he'll have that House-- + The best you ever saw; and he'll be there + Anon, as you're an Alderman. Good God! + He makes me lie awake o' nights and laugh. + And you have known him from his origin, + You tell me; and a most uncommon urchin + He must have been to the few seeing ones-- + A trifle terrifying, I dare say, + Discovering a world with his man's eyes, + Quite as another lad might see some finches, + If he looked hard and had an eye for nature. + But this one had his eyes and their foretelling, + And he had you to fare with, and what else? + He must have had a father and a mother-- + In fact I've heard him say so--and a dog, + As a boy should, I venture; and the dog, + Most likely, was the only man who knew him. + A dog, for all I know, is what he needs + As much as anything right here to-day, + To counsel him about his disillusions, + Old aches, and parturitions of what's coming,-- + A dog of orders, an emeritus, + To wag his tail at him when he comes home, + And then to put his paws up on his knees + And say, "For God's sake, what's it all about?" + + I don't know whether he needs a dog or not-- + Or what he needs. I tell him he needs Greek; + I'll talk of rules and Aristotle with him, + And if his tongue's at home he'll say to that, + "I have your word that Aristotle knows, + And you mine that I don't know Aristotle." + He's all at odds with all the unities, + And what's yet worse, it doesn't seem to matter; + He treads along through Time's old wilderness + As if the tramp of all the centuries + Had left no roads--and there are none, for him; + He doesn't see them, even with those eyes,-- + And that's a pity, or I say it is. + Accordingly we have him as we have him-- + Going his way, the way that he goes best, + A pleasant animal with no great noise + Or nonsense anywhere to set him off-- + Save only divers and inclement devils + Have made of late his heart their dwelling place. + A flame half ready to fly out sometimes + At some annoyance may be fanned up in him, + But soon it falls, and when it falls goes out; + He knows how little room there is in there + For crude and futile animosities, + And how much for the joy of being whole, + And how much for long sorrow and old pain. + On our side there are some who may be given + To grow old wondering what he thinks of us + And some above us, who are, in his eyes, + Above himself,--and that's quite right and English. + Yet here we smile, or disappoint the gods + Who made it so: the gods have always eyes + To see men scratch; and they see one down here + Who itches, manor-bitten to the bone, + Albeit he knows himself--yes, yes, he knows-- + The lord of more than England and of more + Than all the seas of England in all time + Shall ever wash. D'ye wonder that I laugh? + He sees me, and he doesn't seem to care; + And why the devil should he? I can't tell you. + + I'll meet him out alone of a bright Sunday, + Trim, rather spruce, and quite the gentleman. + "What ho, my lord!" say I. He doesn't hear me; + Wherefore I have to pause and look at him. + He's not enormous, but one looks at him. + A little on the round if you insist, + For now, God save the mark, he's growing old; + He's five and forty, and to hear him talk + These days you'd call him eighty; then you'd add + More years to that. He's old enough to be + The father of a world, and so he is. + "Ben, you're a scholar, what's the time of day?" + Says he; and there shines out of him again + An aged light that has no age or station-- + The mystery that's his--a mischievous + Half-mad serenity that laughs at fame + For being won so easy, and at friends + Who laugh at him for what he wants the most, + And for his dukedom down in Warwickshire;-- + By which you see we're all a little jealous.... + Poor Greene! I fear the color of his name + Was even as that of his ascending soul; + And he was one where there are many others,-- + Some scrivening to the end against their fate, + Their puppets all in ink and all to die there; + And some with hands that once would shade an eye + That scanned Euripides and Aeschylus + Will reach by this time for a pot-house mop + To slush their first and last of royalties. + Poor devils! and they all play to his hand; + For so it was in Athens and old Rome. + But that's not here or there; I've wandered off. + Greene does it, or I'm careful. Where's that boy? + + Yes, he'll go back to Stratford. And we'll miss him? + Dear sir, there'll be no London here without him. + We'll all be riding, one of these fine days, + Down there to see him--and his wife won't like us; + And then we'll think of what he never said + Of women--which, if taken all in all + With what he did say, would buy many horses. + Though nowadays he's not so much for women: + "So few of them," he says, "are worth the guessing." + But there's a work at work when he says that, + And while he says it one feels in the air + A deal of circumambient hocus-pocus. + They've had him dancing till his toes were tender, + And he can feel 'em now, come chilly rains. + There's no long cry for going into it, + However, and we don't know much about it. + The Fitton thing was worst of all, I fancy; + And you in Stratford, like most here in London, + Have more now in the 'Sonnets' than you paid for; + He's put her there with all her poison on, + To make a singing fiction of a shadow + That's in his life a fact, and always will be. + But she's no care of ours, though Time, I fear, + Will have a more reverberant ado + About her than about another one + Who seems to have decoyed him, married him, + And sent him scuttling on his way to London,-- + With much already learned, and more to learn, + And more to follow. Lord! how I see him now, + Pretending, maybe trying, to be like us. + Whatever he may have meant, we never had him; + He failed us, or escaped, or what you will,-- + And there was that about him (God knows what,-- + We'd flayed another had he tried it on us) + That made as many of us as had wits + More fond of all his easy distances + Than one another's noise and clap-your-shoulder. + But think you not, my friend, he'd never talk! + Talk? He was eldritch at it; and we listened-- + Thereby acquiring much we knew before + About ourselves, and hitherto had held + Irrelevant, or not prime to the purpose. + And there were some, of course, and there be now, + Disordered and reduced amazedly + To resignation by the mystic seal + Of young finality the gods had laid + On everything that made him a young demon; + And one or two shot looks at him already + As he had been their executioner; + And once or twice he was, not knowing it,-- + Or knowing, being sorry for poor clay + And saying nothing.... Yet, for all his engines, + You'll meet a thousand of an afternoon + Who strut and sun themselves and see around 'em + A world made out of more that has a reason + Than his, I swear, that he sees here to-day; + Though he may scarcely give a Fool an exit + But we mark how he sees in everything + A law that, given we flout it once too often, + Brings fire and iron down on our naked heads. + To me it looks as if the power that made him, + For fear of giving all things to one creature, + Left out the first,--faith, innocence, illusion, + Whatever 'tis that keeps us out o' Bedlam,-- + And thereby, for his too consuming vision, + Empowered him out of nature; though to see him, + You'd never guess what's going on inside him. + He'll break out some day like a keg of ale + With too much independent frenzy in it; + And all for cellaring what he knows won't keep, + And what he'd best forget--but that he can't. + You'll have it, and have more than I'm foretelling; + And there'll be such a roaring at the Globe + As never stunned the bleeding gladiators. + He'll have to change the color of its hair + A bit, for now he calls it Cleopatra. + Black hair would never do for Cleopatra. + + But you and I are not yet two old women, + And you're a man of office. What he does + Is more to you than how it is he does it,-- + And that's what the Lord God has never told him. + They work together, and the Devil helps 'em; + They do it of a morning, or if not, + They do it of a night; in which event + He's peevish of a morning. He seems old; + He's not the proper stomach or the sleep-- + And they're two sovran agents to conserve him + Against the fiery art that has no mercy + But what's in that prodigious grand new House. + I gather something happening in his boyhood + Fulfilled him with a boy's determination + To make all Stratford 'ware of him. Well, well, + I hope at last he'll have his joy of it, + And all his pigs and sheep and bellowing beeves, + And frogs and owls and unicorns, moreover, + Be less than hell to his attendant ears. + Oh, past a doubt we'll all go down to see him. + + He may be wise. With London two days off, + Down there some wind of heaven may yet revive him; + But there's no quickening breath from anywhere + Shall make of him again the poised young faun + From Warwickshire, who'd made, it seems, already + A legend of himself before I came + To blink before the last of his first lightning. + Whatever there be, they'll be no more of that; + The coming on of his old monster Time + Has made him a still man; and he has dreams + Were fair to think on once, and all found hollow. + He knows how much of what men paint themselves + Would blister in the light of what they are; + He sees how much of what was great now shares + An eminence transformed and ordinary; + He knows too much of what the world has hushed + In others, to be loud now for himself; + He knows now at what height low enemies + May reach his heart, and high friends let him fall; + But what not even such as he may know + Bedevils him the worst: his lark may sing + At heaven's gate how he will, and for as long + As joy may listen; but HE sees no gate, + Save one whereat the spent clay waits a little + Before the churchyard has it, and the worm. + Not long ago, late in an afternoon, + I came on him unseen down Lambeth way, + And on my life I was afear'd of him: + He gloomed and mumbled like a soul from Tophet, + His hands behind him and his head bent solemn. + "What is it now," said I,--"another woman?" + That made him sorry for me, and he smiled. + "No, Ben," he mused; "it's Nothing. It's all Nothing. + We come, we go; and when we're done, we're done; + Spiders and flies--we're mostly one or t'other-- + We come, we go; and when we're done, we're done." + "By God, you sing that song as if you knew it!" + Said I, by way of cheering him; "what ails ye?" + "I think I must have come down here to think," + Says he to that, and pulls his little beard; + "Your fly will serve as well as anybody, + And what's his hour? He flies, and flies, and flies, + And in his fly's mind has a brave appearance; + And then your spider gets him in her net, + And eats him out, and hangs him up to dry. + That's Nature, the kind mother of us all. + And then your slattern housemaid swings her broom, + And where's your spider? And that's Nature, also. + It's Nature, and it's Nothing. It's all Nothing. + It's all a world where bugs and emperors + Go singularly back to the same dust, + Each in his time; and the old, ordered stars + That sang together, Ben, will sing the same + Old stave to-morrow." + + When he talks like that, + There's nothing for a human man to do + But lead him to some grateful nook like this + Where we be now, and there to make him drink. + He'll drink, for love of me, and then be sick; + A sad sign always in a man of parts, + And always very ominous. The great + Should be as large in liquor as in love,-- + And our great friend is not so large in either: + One disaffects him, and the other fails him; + Whatso he drinks that has an antic in it, + He's wondering what's to pay in his insides; + And while his eyes are on the Cyprian + He's fribbling all the time with that damned House. + We laugh here at his thrift, but after all + It may be thrift that saves him from the devil; + God gave it, anyhow,--and we'll suppose + He knew the compound of his handiwork. + To-day the clouds are with him, but anon + He'll out of 'em enough to shake the tree + Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard-of,-- + And, throwing in the bruised and whole together, + Prepare a wine to make us drunk with wonder; + And if he live, there'll be a sunset spell + Thrown over him as over a glassed lake + That yesterday was all a black wild water. + + God send he live to give us, if no more, + What now's a-rampage in him, and exhibit, + With a decent half-allegiance to the ages + An earnest of at least a casual eye + Turned once on what he owes to Gutenberg, + And to the fealty of more centuries + Than are as yet a picture in our vision. + "There's time enough,--I'll do it when I'm old, + And we're immortal men," he says to that; + And then he says to me, "Ben, what's 'immortal'? + Think you by any force of ordination + It may be nothing of a sort more noisy + Than a small oblivion of component ashes + That of a dream-addicted world was once + A moving atomy much like your friend here?" + Nothing will help that man. To make him laugh, + I said then he was a mad mountebank,-- + And by the Lord I nearer made him cry. + I could have eat an eft then, on my knees, + Tail, claws, and all of him; for I had stung + The king of men, who had no sting for me, + And I had hurt him in his memories; + And I say now, as I shall say again, + I love the man this side idolatry. + + He'll do it when he's old, he says. I wonder. + He may not be so ancient as all that. + For such as he, the thing that is to do + Will do itself,--but there's a reckoning; + The sessions that are now too much his own, + The roiling inward of a stilled outside, + The churning out of all those blood-fed lines, + The nights of many schemes and little sleep, + The full brain hammered hot with too much thinking, + The vexed heart over-worn with too much aching,-- + This weary jangling of conjoined affairs + Made out of elements that have no end, + And all confused at once, I understand, + Is not what makes a man to live forever. + O no, not now! He'll not be going now: + There'll be time yet for God knows what explosions + Before he goes. He'll stay awhile. Just wait: + Just wait a year or two for Cleopatra, + For she's to be a balsam and a comfort; + And that's not all a jape of mine now, either. + For granted once the old way of Apollo + Sings in a man, he may then, if he's able, + Strike unafraid whatever strings he will + Upon the last and wildest of new lyres; + Nor out of his new magic, though it hymn + The shrieks of dungeoned hell, shall he create + A madness or a gloom to shut quite out + A cleaving daylight, and a last great calm + Triumphant over shipwreck and all storms. + He might have given Aristotle creeps, + But surely would have given him his 'katharsis'. + + He'll not be going yet. There's too much yet + Unsung within the man. But when he goes, + I'd stake ye coin o' the realm his only care + For a phantom world he sounded and found wanting + Will be a portion here, a portion there, + Of this or that thing or some other thing + That has a patent and intrinsical + Equivalence in those egregious shillings. + And yet he knows, God help him! Tell me, now, + If ever there was anything let loose + On earth by gods or devils heretofore + Like this mad, careful, proud, indifferent Shakespeare! + Where was it, if it ever was? By heaven, + 'Twas never yet in Rhodes or Pergamon-- + In Thebes or Nineveh, a thing like this! + No thing like this was ever out of England; + And that he knows. I wonder if he cares. + Perhaps he does.... O Lord, that House in Stratford! + + + + +Eros Turannos + + + + She fears him, and will always ask + What fated her to choose him; + She meets in his engaging mask + All reasons to refuse him; + But what she meets and what she fears + Are less than are the downward years, + Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs + Of age, were she to lose him. + + Between a blurred sagacity + That once had power to sound him, + And Love, that will not let him be + The Judas that she found him, + Her pride assuages her almost, + As if it were alone the cost.-- + He sees that he will not be lost, + And waits and looks around him. + + A sense of ocean and old trees + Envelops and allures him; + Tradition, touching all he sees, + Beguiles and reassures him; + And all her doubts of what he says + Are dimmed of what she knows of days-- + Till even prejudice delays + And fades, and she secures him. + + The falling leaf inaugurates + The reign of her confusion; + The pounding wave reverberates + The dirge of her illusion; + And home, where passion lived and died, + Becomes a place where she can hide, + While all the town and harbor side + Vibrate with her seclusion. + + We tell you, tapping on our brows, + The story as it should be,-- + As if the story of a house + Were told, or ever could be; + We'll have no kindly veil between + Her visions and those we have seen,-- + As if we guessed what hers have been, + Or what they are or would be. + + Meanwhile we do no harm; for they + That with a god have striven, + Not hearing much of what we say, + Take what the god has given; + Though like waves breaking it may be, + Or like a changed familiar tree, + Or like a stairway to the sea + Where down the blind are driven. + + + + +Old Trails + + (Washington Square) + + + + I met him, as one meets a ghost or two, + Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel. + "King Solomon was right, there's nothing new," + Said he. "Behold a ruin who meant well." + + He led me down familiar steps again, + Appealingly, and set me in a chair. + "My dreams have all come true to other men," + Said he; "God lives, however, and why care? + + "An hour among the ghosts will do no harm." + He laughed, and something glad within me sank. + I may have eyed him with a faint alarm, + For now his laugh was lost in what he drank. + + "They chill things here with ice from hell," he said; + "I might have known it." And he made a face + That showed again how much of him was dead, + And how much was alive and out of place, + + And out of reach. He knew as well as I + That all the words of wise men who are skilled + In using them are not much to defy + What comes when memory meets the unfulfilled. + + What evil and infirm perversity + Had been at work with him to bring him back? + Never among the ghosts, assuredly, + Would he originate a new attack; + + Never among the ghosts, or anywhere, + Till what was dead of him was put away, + Would he attain to his offended share + Of honor among others of his day. + + "You ponder like an owl," he said at last; + "You always did, and here you have a cause. + For I'm a confirmation of the past, + A vengeance, and a flowering of what was. + + "Sorry? Of course you are, though you compress, + With even your most impenetrable fears, + A placid and a proper consciousness + Of anxious angels over my arrears. + + "I see them there against me in a book + As large as hope, in ink that shines by night. + For sure I see; but now I'd rather look + At you, and you are not a pleasant sight. + + "Forbear, forgive. Ten years are on my soul, + And on my conscience. I've an incubus: + My one distinction, and a parlous toll + To glory; but hope lives on clamorous. + + "'Twas hope, though heaven I grant you knows of what-- + The kind that blinks and rises when it falls, + Whether it sees a reason why or not-- + That heard Broadway's hard-throated siren-calls; + + "'Twas hope that brought me through December storms, + To shores again where I'll not have to be + A lonely man with only foreign worms + To cheer him in his last obscurity. + + "But what it was that hurried me down here + To be among the ghosts, I leave to you. + My thanks are yours, no less, for one thing clear: + Though you are silent, what you say is true. + + "There may have been the devil in my feet, + For down I blundered, like a fugitive, + To find the old room in Eleventh Street. + God save us!--I came here again to live." + + We rose at that, and all the ghosts rose then, + And followed us unseen to his old room. + No longer a good place for living men + We found it, and we shivered in the gloom. + + The goods he took away from there were few, + And soon we found ourselves outside once more, + Where now the lamps along the Avenue + Bloomed white for miles above an iron floor. + + "Now lead me to the newest of hotels," + He said, "and let your spleen be undeceived: + This ruin is not myself, but some one else; + I haven't failed; I've merely not achieved." + + Whether he knew or not, he laughed and dined + With more of an immune regardlessness + Of pits before him and of sands behind + Than many a child at forty would confess; + + And after, when the bells in 'Boris' rang + Their tumult at the Metropolitan, + He rocked himself, and I believe he sang. + "God lives," he crooned aloud, "and I'm the man!" + + He was. And even though the creature spoiled + All prophecies, I cherish his acclaim. + Three weeks he fattened; and five years he toiled + In Yonkers,--and then sauntered into fame. + + And he may go now to what streets he will-- + Eleventh, or the last, and little care; + But he would find the old room very still + Of evenings, and the ghosts would all be there. + + I doubt if he goes after them; I doubt + If many of them ever come to him. + His memories are like lamps, and they go out; + Or if they burn, they flicker and are dim. + + A light of other gleams he has to-day + And adulations of applauding hosts; + A famous danger, but a safer way + Than growing old alone among the ghosts. + + But we may still be glad that we were wrong: + He fooled us, and we'd shrivel to deny it; + Though sometimes when old echoes ring too long, + I wish the bells in 'Boris' would be quiet. + + + + +The Unforgiven + + + + When he, who is the unforgiven, + Beheld her first, he found her fair: + No promise ever dreamt in heaven + Could then have lured him anywhere + That would have been away from there; + And all his wits had lightly striven, + Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair. + + There's nothing in the saints and sages + To meet the shafts her glances had, + Or such as hers have had for ages + To blind a man till he be glad, + And humble him till he be mad. + The story would have many pages, + And would be neither good nor bad. + + And, having followed, you would find him + Where properly the play begins; + But look for no red light behind him-- + No fumes of many-colored sins, + Fanned high by screaming violins. + God knows what good it was to blind him, + Or whether man or woman wins. + + And by the same eternal token, + Who knows just how it will all end?-- + This drama of hard words unspoken, + This fireside farce, without a friend + Or enemy to comprehend + What augurs when two lives are broken, + And fear finds nothing left to mend. + + He stares in vain for what awaits him, + And sees in Love a coin to toss; + He smiles, and her cold hush berates him + Beneath his hard half of the cross; + They wonder why it ever was; + And she, the unforgiving, hates him + More for her lack than for her loss. + + He feeds with pride his indecision, + And shrinks from what will not occur, + Bequeathing with infirm derision + His ashes to the days that were, + Before she made him prisoner; + And labors to retrieve the vision + That he must once have had of her. + + He waits, and there awaits an ending, + And he knows neither what nor when; + But no magicians are attending + To make him see as he saw then, + And he will never find again + The face that once had been the rending + Of all his purpose among men. + + He blames her not, nor does he chide her, + And she has nothing new to say; + If he were Bluebeard he could hide her, + But that's not written in the play, + And there will be no change to-day; + Although, to the serene outsider, + There still would seem to be a way. + + + + +Theophilus + + + + By what serene malevolence of names + Had you the gift of yours, Theophilus? + Not even a smeared young Cyclops at his games + Would have you long,--and you are one of us. + + Told of your deeds I shudder for your dreams, + And they, no doubt, are few and innocent. + Meanwhile, I marvel; for in you, it seems, + Heredity outshines environment. + + What lingering bit of Belial, unforeseen, + Survives and amplifies itself in you? + What manner of devilry has ever been + That your obliquity may never do? + + Humility befits a father's eyes, + But not a friend of us would have him weep. + Admiring everything that lives and dies, + Theophilus, we like you best asleep. + + Sleep--sleep; and let us find another man + To lend another name less hazardous: + Caligula, maybe, or Caliban, + Or Cain,--but surely not Theophilus. + + + + +Veteran Sirens + + + + The ghost of Ninon would be sorry now + To laugh at them, were she to see them here, + So brave and so alert for learning how + To fence with reason for another year. + + Age offers a far comelier diadem + Than theirs; but anguish has no eye for grace, + When time's malicious mercy cautions them + To think a while of number and of space. + + The burning hope, the worn expectancy, + The martyred humor, and the maimed allure, + Cry out for time to end his levity, + And age to soften its investiture; + + But they, though others fade and are still fair, + Defy their fairness and are unsubdued; + Although they suffer, they may not forswear + The patient ardor of the unpursued. + + Poor flesh, to fight the calendar so long; + Poor vanity, so quaint and yet so brave; + Poor folly, so deceived and yet so strong, + So far from Ninon and so near the grave. + + + + +Siege Perilous + + + + Long warned of many terrors more severe + To scorch him than hell's engines could awaken, + He scanned again, too far to be so near, + The fearful seat no man had ever taken. + + So many other men with older eyes + Than his to see with older sight behind them + Had known so long their one way to be wise,-- + Was any other thing to do than mind them? + + So many a blasting parallel had seared + Confusion on his faith,--could he but wonder + If he were mad and right, or if he feared + God's fury told in shafted flame and thunder? + + There fell one day upon his eyes a light + Ethereal, and he heard no more men speaking; + He saw their shaken heads, but no long sight + Was his but for the end that he went seeking. + + The end he sought was not the end; the crown + He won shall unto many still be given. + Moreover, there was reason here to frown: + No fury thundered, no flame fell from heaven. + + + + +Another Dark Lady + + + + Think not, because I wonder where you fled, + That I would lift a pin to see you there; + You may, for me, be prowling anywhere, + So long as you show not your little head: + No dark and evil story of the dead + Would leave you less pernicious or less fair-- + Not even Lilith, with her famous hair; + And Lilith was the devil, I have read. + I cannot hate you, for I loved you then. + The woods were golden then. There was a road + Through beeches; and I said their smooth feet showed + Like yours. Truth must have heard me from afar, + For I shall never have to learn again + That yours are cloven as no beech's are. + + + + +The Voice of Age + + + + She'd look upon us, if she could, + As hard as Rhadamanthus would; + Yet one may see,--who sees her face, + Her crown of silver and of lace, + Her mystical serene address + Of age alloyed with loveliness,-- + That she would not annihilate + The frailest of things animate. + + She has opinions of our ways, + And if we're not all mad, she says,-- + If our ways are not wholly worse + Than others, for not being hers,-- + There might somehow be found a few + Less insane things for us to do, + And we might have a little heed + Of what Belshazzar couldn't read. + + She feels, with all our furniture, + Room yet for something more secure + Than our self-kindled aureoles + To guide our poor forgotten souls; + But when we have explained that grace + Dwells now in doing for the race, + She nods--as if she were relieved; + Almost as if she were deceived. + + She frowns at much of what she hears, + And shakes her head, and has her fears; + Though none may know, by any chance, + What rose-leaf ashes of romance + Are faintly stirred by later days + That would be well enough, she says, + If only people were more wise, + And grown-up children used their eyes. + + + + +The Dark House + + + + Where a faint light shines alone, + Dwells a Demon I have known. + Most of you had better say + "The Dark House", and go your way. + Do not wonder if I stay. + + For I know the Demon's eyes, + And their lure that never dies. + Banish all your fond alarms, + For I know the foiling charms + Of her eyes and of her arms, + + And I know that in one room + Burns a lamp as in a tomb; + And I see the shadow glide, + Back and forth, of one denied + Power to find himself outside. + + There he is who is my friend, + Damned, he fancies, to the end-- + Vanquished, ever since a door + Closed, he thought, for evermore + On the life that was before. + + And the friend who knows him best + Sees him as he sees the rest + Who are striving to be wise + While a Demon's arms and eyes + Hold them as a web would flies. + + All the words of all the world, + Aimed together and then hurled, + Would be stiller in his ears + Than a closing of still shears + On a thread made out of years. + + But there lives another sound, + More compelling, more profound; + There's a music, so it seems, + That assuages and redeems, + More than reason, more than dreams. + + There's a music yet unheard + By the creature of the word, + Though it matters little more + Than a wave-wash on a shore-- + Till a Demon shuts a door. + + So, if he be very still + With his Demon, and one will, + Murmurs of it may be blown + To my friend who is alone + In a room that I have known. + + After that from everywhere + Singing life will find him there; + Then the door will open wide, + And my friend, again outside, + Will be living, having died. + + + + +The Poor Relation + + + + No longer torn by what she knows + And sees within the eyes of others, + Her doubts are when the daylight goes, + Her fears are for the few she bothers. + She tells them it is wholly wrong + Of her to stay alive so long; + And when she smiles her forehead shows + A crinkle that had been her mother's. + + Beneath her beauty, blanched with pain, + And wistful yet for being cheated, + A child would seem to ask again + A question many times repeated; + But no rebellion has betrayed + Her wonder at what she has paid + For memories that have no stain, + For triumph born to be defeated. + + To those who come for what she was-- + The few left who know where to find her-- + She clings, for they are all she has; + And she may smile when they remind her, + As heretofore, of what they know + Of roses that are still to blow + By ways where not so much as grass + Remains of what she sees behind her. + + They stay a while, and having done + What penance or the past requires, + They go, and leave her there alone + To count her chimneys and her spires. + Her lip shakes when they go away, + And yet she would not have them stay; + She knows as well as anyone + That Pity, having played, soon tires. + + But one friend always reappears, + A good ghost, not to be forsaken; + Whereat she laughs and has no fears + Of what a ghost may reawaken, + But welcomes, while she wears and mends + The poor relation's odds and ends, + Her truant from a tomb of years-- + Her power of youth so early taken. + + Poor laugh, more slender than her song + It seems; and there are none to hear it + With even the stopped ears of the strong + For breaking heart or broken spirit. + The friends who clamored for her place, + And would have scratched her for her face, + Have lost her laughter for so long + That none would care enough to fear it. + + None live who need fear anything + From her, whose losses are their pleasure; + The plover with a wounded wing + Stays not the flight that others measure; + So there she waits, and while she lives, + And death forgets, and faith forgives, + Her memories go foraging + For bits of childhood song they treasure. + + And like a giant harp that hums + On always, and is always blending + The coming of what never comes + With what has past and had an ending, + The City trembles, throbs, and pounds + Outside, and through a thousand sounds + The small intolerable drums + Of Time are like slow drops descending. + + Bereft enough to shame a sage + And given little to long sighing, + With no illusion to assuage + The lonely changelessness of dying,-- + Unsought, unthought-of, and unheard, + She sings and watches like a bird, + Safe in a comfortable cage + From which there will be no more flying. + + + + +The Burning Book + + Or the Contented Metaphysician + + + + To the lore of no manner of men + Would his vision have yielded + When he found what will never again + From his vision be shielded,-- + Though he paid with as much of his life + As a nun could have given, + And to-night would have been as a knife, + Devil-drawn, devil-driven. + + For to-night, with his flame-weary eyes + On the work he is doing, + He considers the tinder that flies + And the quick flame pursuing. + In the leaves that are crinkled and curled + Are his ashes of glory, + And what once were an end of the world + Is an end of a story. + + But he smiles, for no more shall his days + Be a toil and a calling + For a way to make others to gaze + On God's face without falling. + He has come to the end of his words, + And alone he rejoices + In the choiring that silence affords + Of ineffable voices. + + To a realm that his words may not reach + He may lead none to find him; + An adept, and with nothing to teach, + He leaves nothing behind him. + For the rest, he will have his release, + And his embers, attended + By the large and unclamoring peace + Of a dream that is ended. + + + + +Fragment + + + + Faint white pillars that seem to fade + As you look from here are the first one sees + Of his house where it hides and dies in a shade + Of beeches and oaks and hickory trees. + Now many a man, given woods like these, + And a house like that, and the Briony gold, + Would have said, "There are still some gods to please, + And houses are built without hands, we're told." + + There are the pillars, and all gone gray. + Briony's hair went white. You may see + Where the garden was if you come this way. + That sun-dial scared him, he said to me; + "Sooner or later they strike," said he, + And he never got that from the books he read. + Others are flourishing, worse than he, + But he knew too much for the life he led. + + And who knows all knows everything + That a patient ghost at last retrieves; + There's more to be known of his harvesting + When Time the thresher unbinds the sheaves; + And there's more to be heard than a wind that grieves + For Briony now in this ageless oak, + Driving the first of its withered leaves + Over the stones where the fountain broke. + + + + +Lisette and Eileen + + + + "When he was here alive, Eileen, + There was a word you might have said; + So never mind what I have been, + Or anything,--for you are dead. + + "And after this when I am there + Where he is, you'll be dying still. + Your eyes are dead, and your black hair,-- + The rest of you be what it will. + + "'Twas all to save him? Never mind, + Eileen. You saved him. You are strong. + I'd hardly wonder if your kind + Paid everything, for you live long. + + "You last, I mean. That's what I mean. + I mean you last as long as lies. + You might have said that word, Eileen,-- + And you might have your hair and eyes. + + "And what you see might be Lisette, + Instead of this that has no name. + Your silence--I can feel it yet, + Alive and in me, like a flame. + + "Where might I be with him to-day, + Could he have known before he heard? + But no--your silence had its way, + Without a weapon or a word. + + "Because a word was never told, + I'm going as a worn toy goes. + And you are dead; and you'll be old; + And I forgive you, I suppose. + + "I'll soon be changing as all do, + To something we have always been; + And you'll be old... He liked you, too. + I might have killed you then, Eileen. + + "I think he liked as much of you + As had a reason to be seen,-- + As much as God made black and blue. + He liked your hair and eyes, Eileen." + + + + +Llewellyn and the Tree + + + + Could he have made Priscilla share + The paradise that he had planned, + Llewellyn would have loved his wife + As well as any in the land. + + Could he have made Priscilla cease + To goad him for what God left out, + Llewellyn would have been as mild + As any we have read about. + + Could all have been as all was not, + Llewellyn would have had no story; + He would have stayed a quiet man + And gone his quiet way to glory. + + But howsoever mild he was + Priscilla was implacable; + And whatsoever timid hopes + He built--she found them, and they fell. + + And this went on, with intervals + Of labored harmony between + Resounding discords, till at last + Llewellyn turned--as will be seen. + + Priscilla, warmer than her name, + And shriller than the sound of saws, + Pursued Llewellyn once too far, + Not knowing quite the man he was. + + The more she said, the fiercer clung + The stinging garment of his wrath; + And this was all before the day + When Time tossed roses in his path. + + Before the roses ever came + Llewellyn had already risen. + The roses may have ruined him, + They may have kept him out of prison. + + And she who brought them, being Fate, + Made roses do the work of spears,-- + Though many made no more of her + Than civet, coral, rouge, and years. + + You ask us what Llewellyn saw, + But why ask what may not be given? + To some will come a time when change + Itself is beauty, if not heaven. + + One afternoon Priscilla spoke, + And her shrill history was done; + At any rate, she never spoke + Like that again to anyone. + + One gold October afternoon + Great fury smote the silent air; + And then Llewellyn leapt and fled + Like one with hornets in his hair. + + Llewellyn left us, and he said + Forever, leaving few to doubt him; + And so, through frost and clicking leaves, + The Tilbury way went on without him. + + And slowly, through the Tilbury mist, + The stillness of October gold + Went out like beauty from a face. + Priscilla watched it, and grew old. + + He fled, still clutching in his flight + The roses that had been his fall; + The Scarlet One, as you surmise, + Fled with him, coral, rouge, and all. + + Priscilla, waiting, saw the change + Of twenty slow October moons; + And then she vanished, in her turn + To be forgotten, like old tunes. + + So they were gone--all three of them, + I should have said, and said no more, + Had not a face once on Broadway + Been one that I had seen before. + + The face and hands and hair were old, + But neither time nor penury + Could quench within Llewellyn's eyes + The shine of his one victory. + + The roses, faded and gone by, + Left ruin where they once had reigned; + But on the wreck, as on old shells, + The color of the rose remained. + + His fictive merchandise I bought + For him to keep and show again, + Then led him slowly from the crush + Of his cold-shouldered fellow men. + + "And so, Llewellyn," I began-- + "Not so," he said; "not so, at all: + I've tried the world, and found it good, + For more than twenty years this fall. + + "And what the world has left of me + Will go now in a little while." + And what the world had left of him + Was partly an unholy guile. + + "That I have paid for being calm + Is what you see, if you have eyes; + For let a man be calm too long, + He pays for much before he dies. + + "Be calm when you are growing old + And you have nothing else to do; + Pour not the wine of life too thin + If water means the death of you. + + "You say I might have learned at home + The truth in season to be strong? + Not so; I took the wine of life + Too thin, and I was calm too long. + + "Like others who are strong too late, + For me there was no going back; + For I had found another speed, + And I was on the other track. + + "God knows how far I might have gone + Or what there might have been to see; + But my speed had a sudden end, + And here you have the end of me." + + The end or not, it may be now + But little farther from the truth + To say those worn satiric eyes + Had something of immortal youth. + + He may among the millions here + Be one; or he may, quite as well, + Be gone to find again the Tree + Of Knowledge, out of which he fell. + + He may be near us, dreaming yet + Of unrepented rouge and coral; + Or in a grave without a name + May be as far off as a moral. + + + + +Bewick Finzer + + + + Time was when his half million drew + The breath of six per cent; + But soon the worm of what-was-not + Fed hard on his content; + And something crumbled in his brain + When his half million went. + + Time passed, and filled along with his + The place of many more; + Time came, and hardly one of us + Had credence to restore, + From what appeared one day, the man + Whom we had known before. + + The broken voice, the withered neck, + The coat worn out with care, + The cleanliness of indigence, + The brilliance of despair, + The fond imponderable dreams + Of affluence,--all were there. + + Poor Finzer, with his dreams and schemes, + Fares hard now in the race, + With heart and eye that have a task + When he looks in the face + Of one who might so easily + Have been in Finzer's place. + + He comes unfailing for the loan + We give and then forget; + He comes, and probably for years + Will he be coming yet,-- + Familiar as an old mistake, + And futile as regret. + + + + +Bokardo + + + + Well, Bokardo, here we are; + Make yourself at home. + Look around--you haven't far + To look--and why be dumb? + Not the place that used to be, + Not so many things to see; + But there's room for you and me. + And you--you've come. + + Talk a little; or, if not, + Show me with a sign + Why it was that you forgot + What was yours and mine. + Friends, I gather, are small things + In an age when coins are kings; + Even at that, one hardly flings + Friends before swine. + + Rather strong? I knew as much, + For it made you speak. + No offense to swine, as such, + But why this hide-and-seek? + You have something on your side, + And you wish you might have died, + So you tell me. And you tried + One night last week? + + You tried hard? And even then + Found a time to pause? + When you try as hard again, + You'll have another cause. + When you find yourself at odds + With all dreamers of all gods, + You may smite yourself with rods-- + But not the laws. + + Though they seem to show a spite + Rather devilish, + They move on as with a might + Stronger than your wish. + Still, however strong they be, + They bide man's authority: + Xerxes, when he flogged the sea, + May've scared a fish. + + It's a comfort, if you like, + To keep honor warm, + But as often as you strike + The laws, you do no harm. + To the laws, I mean. To you-- + That's another point of view, + One you may as well indue + With some alarm. + + Not the most heroic face + To present, I grant; + Nor will you insure disgrace + By fearing what you want. + Freedom has a world of sides, + And if reason once derides + Courage, then your courage hides + A deal of cant. + + Learn a little to forget + Life was once a feast; + You aren't fit for dying yet, + So don't be a beast. + Few men with a mind will say, + Thinking twice, that they can pay + Half their debts of yesterday, + Or be released. + + There's a debt now on your mind + More than any gold? + And there's nothing you can find + Out there in the cold? + Only--what's his name?--Remorse? + And Death riding on his horse? + Well, be glad there's nothing worse + Than you have told. + + Leave Remorse to warm his hands + Outside in the rain. + As for Death, he understands, + And he will come again. + Therefore, till your wits are clear, + Flourish and be quiet--here. + But a devil at each ear + Will be a strain? + + Past a doubt they will indeed, + More than you have earned. + I say that because you need + Ablution, being burned? + Well, if you must have it so, + Your last flight went rather low. + Better say you had to know + What you have learned. + + And that's over. Here you are, + Battered by the past. + Time will have his little scar, + But the wound won't last. + Nor shall harrowing surprise + Find a world without its eyes + If a star fades when the skies + Are overcast. + + God knows there are lives enough, + Crushed, and too far gone + Longer to make sermons of, + And those we leave alone. + Others, if they will, may rend + The worn patience of a friend + Who, though smiling, sees the end, + With nothing done. + + But your fervor to be free + Fled the faith it scorned; + Death demands a decency + Of you, and you are warned. + But for all we give we get + Mostly blows? Don't be upset; + You, Bokardo, are not yet + Consumed or mourned. + + There'll be falling into view + Much to rearrange; + And there'll be a time for you + To marvel at the change. + They that have the least to fear + Question hardest what is here; + When long-hidden skies are clear, + The stars look strange. + + + + +The Man against the Sky + + + + Between me and the sunset, like a dome + Against the glory of a world on fire, + Now burned a sudden hill, + Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher, + With nothing on it for the flame to kill + Save one who moved and was alone up there + To loom before the chaos and the glare + As if he were the last god going home + Unto his last desire. + Dark, marvelous, and inscrutable he moved on + Till down the fiery distance he was gone,-- + Like one of those eternal, remote things + That range across a man's imaginings + When a sure music fills him and he knows + What he may say thereafter to few men,-- + The touch of ages having wrought + An echo and a glimpse of what he thought + A phantom or a legend until then; + For whether lighted over ways that save, + Or lured from all repose, + If he go on too far to find a grave, + Mostly alone he goes. + + Even he, who stood where I had found him, + On high with fire all round him,-- + Who moved along the molten west, + And over the round hill's crest + That seemed half ready with him to go down, + Flame-bitten and flame-cleft,-- + As if there were to be no last thing left + Of a nameless unimaginable town,-- + Even he who climbed and vanished may have taken + Down to the perils of a depth not known, + From death defended though by men forsaken, + The bread that every man must eat alone; + He may have walked while others hardly dared + Look on to see him stand where many fell; + And upward out of that, as out of hell, + He may have sung and striven + To mount where more of him shall yet be given, + Bereft of all retreat, + To sevenfold heat,-- + As on a day when three in Dura shared + The furnace, and were spared + For glory by that king of Babylon + Who made himself so great that God, who heard, + Covered him with long feathers, like a bird. + + Again, he may have gone down easily, + By comfortable altitudes, and found, + As always, underneath him solid ground + Whereon to be sufficient and to stand + Possessed already of the promised land, + Far stretched and fair to see: + A good sight, verily, + And one to make the eyes of her who bore him + Shine glad with hidden tears. + Why question of his ease of who before him, + In one place or another where they left + Their names as far behind them as their bones, + And yet by dint of slaughter toil and theft, + And shrewdly sharpened stones, + Carved hard the way for his ascendency + Through deserts of lost years? + Why trouble him now who sees and hears + No more than what his innocence requires, + And therefore to no other height aspires + Than one at which he neither quails nor tires? + He may do more by seeing what he sees + Than others eager for iniquities; + He may, by seeing all things for the best, + Incite futurity to do the rest. + + Or with an even likelihood, + He may have met with atrabilious eyes + The fires of time on equal terms and passed + Indifferently down, until at last + His only kind of grandeur would have been, + Apparently, in being seen. + He may have had for evil or for good + No argument; he may have had no care + For what without himself went anywhere + To failure or to glory, and least of all + For such a stale, flamboyant miracle; + He may have been the prophet of an art + Immovable to old idolatries; + He may have been a player without a part, + Annoyed that even the sun should have the skies + For such a flaming way to advertise; + He may have been a painter sick at heart + With Nature's toiling for a new surprise; + He may have been a cynic, who now, for all + Of anything divine that his effete + Negation may have tasted, + Saw truth in his own image, rather small, + Forbore to fever the ephemeral, + Found any barren height a good retreat + From any swarming street, + And in the sun saw power superbly wasted; + And when the primitive old-fashioned stars + Came out again to shine on joys and wars + More primitive, and all arrayed for doom, + He may have proved a world a sorry thing + In his imagining, + And life a lighted highway to the tomb. + + Or, mounting with infirm unsearching tread, + His hopes to chaos led, + He may have stumbled up there from the past, + And with an aching strangeness viewed the last + Abysmal conflagration of his dreams,-- + A flame where nothing seems + To burn but flame itself, by nothing fed; + And while it all went out, + Not even the faint anodyne of doubt + May then have eased a painful going down + From pictured heights of power and lost renown, + Revealed at length to his outlived endeavor + Remote and unapproachable forever; + And at his heart there may have gnawed + Sick memories of a dead faith foiled and flawed + And long dishonored by the living death + Assigned alike by chance + To brutes and hierophants; + And anguish fallen on those he loved around him + May once have dealt the last blow to confound him, + And so have left him as death leaves a child, + Who sees it all too near; + And he who knows no young way to forget + May struggle to the tomb unreconciled. + Whatever suns may rise or set + There may be nothing kinder for him here + Than shafts and agonies; + And under these + He may cry out and stay on horribly; + Or, seeing in death too small a thing to fear, + He may go forward like a stoic Roman + Where pangs and terrors in his pathway lie,-- + Or, seizing the swift logic of a woman, + Curse God and die. + + Or maybe there, like many another one + Who might have stood aloft and looked ahead, + Black-drawn against wild red, + He may have built, unawed by fiery gules + That in him no commotion stirred, + A living reason out of molecules + Why molecules occurred, + And one for smiling when he might have sighed + Had he seen far enough, + And in the same inevitable stuff + Discovered an odd reason too for pride + In being what he must have been by laws + Infrangible and for no kind of cause. + Deterred by no confusion or surprise + He may have seen with his mechanic eyes + A world without a meaning, and had room, + Alone amid magnificence and doom, + To build himself an airy monument + That should, or fail him in his vague intent, + Outlast an accidental universe-- + To call it nothing worse-- + Or, by the burrowing guile + Of Time disintegrated and effaced, + Like once-remembered mighty trees go down + To ruin, of which by man may now be traced + No part sufficient even to be rotten, + And in the book of things that are forgotten + Is entered as a thing not quite worth while. + He may have been so great + That satraps would have shivered at his frown, + And all he prized alive may rule a state + No larger than a grave that holds a clown; + He may have been a master of his fate, + And of his atoms,--ready as another + In his emergence to exonerate + His father and his mother; + He may have been a captain of a host, + Self-eloquent and ripe for prodigies, + Doomed here to swell by dangerous degrees, + And then give up the ghost. + Nahum's great grasshoppers were such as these, + Sun-scattered and soon lost. + + Whatever the dark road he may have taken, + This man who stood on high + And faced alone the sky, + Whatever drove or lured or guided him,-- + A vision answering a faith unshaken, + An easy trust assumed of easy trials, + A sick negation born of weak denials, + A crazed abhorrence of an old condition, + A blind attendance on a brief ambition,-- + Whatever stayed him or derided him, + His way was even as ours; + And we, with all our wounds and all our powers, + Must each await alone at his own height + Another darkness or another light; + And there, of our poor self dominion reft, + If inference and reason shun + Hell, Heaven, and Oblivion, + May thwarted will (perforce precarious, + But for our conservation better thus) + Have no misgiving left + Of doing yet what here we leave undone? + Or if unto the last of these we cleave, + Believing or protesting we believe + In such an idle and ephemeral + Florescence of the diabolical,-- + If, robbed of two fond old enormities, + Our being had no onward auguries, + What then were this great love of ours to say + For launching other lives to voyage again + A little farther into time and pain, + A little faster in a futile chase + For a kingdom and a power and a Race + That would have still in sight + A manifest end of ashes and eternal night? + Is this the music of the toys we shake + So loud,--as if there might be no mistake + Somewhere in our indomitable will? + Are we no greater than the noise we make + Along one blind atomic pilgrimage + Whereon by crass chance billeted we go + Because our brains and bones and cartilage + Will have it so? + If this we say, then let us all be still + About our share in it, and live and die + More quietly thereby. + + Where was he going, this man against the sky? + You know not, nor do I. + But this we know, if we know anything: + That we may laugh and fight and sing + And of our transience here make offering + To an orient Word that will not be erased, + Or, save in incommunicable gleams + Too permanent for dreams, + Be found or known. + No tonic and ambitious irritant + Of increase or of want + Has made an otherwise insensate waste + Of ages overthrown + A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste + Of other ages that are still to be + Depleted and rewarded variously + Because a few, by fate's economy, + Shall seem to move the world the way it goes; + No soft evangel of equality, + Safe cradled in a communal repose + That huddles into death and may at last + Be covered well with equatorial snows-- + And all for what, the devil only knows-- + Will aggregate an inkling to confirm + The credit of a sage or of a worm, + Or tell us why one man in five + Should have a care to stay alive + While in his heart he feels no violence + Laid on his humor and intelligence + When infant Science makes a pleasant face + And waves again that hollow toy, the Race; + No planetary trap where souls are wrought + For nothing but the sake of being caught + And sent again to nothing will attune + Itself to any key of any reason + Why man should hunger through another season + To find out why 'twere better late than soon + To go away and let the sun and moon + And all the silly stars illuminate + A place for creeping things, + And those that root and trumpet and have wings, + And herd and ruminate, + Or dive and flash and poise in rivers and seas, + Or by their loyal tails in lofty trees + Hang screeching lewd victorious derision + Of man's immortal vision. + + Shall we, because Eternity records + Too vast an answer for the time-born words + We spell, whereof so many are dead that once + In our capricious lexicons + Were so alive and final, hear no more + The Word itself, the living word no man + Has ever spelt, + And few have ever felt + Without the fears and old surrenderings + And terrors that began + When Death let fall a feather from his wings + And humbled the first man? + Because the weight of our humility, + Wherefrom we gain + A little wisdom and much pain, + Falls here too sore and there too tedious, + Are we in anguish or complacency, + Not looking far enough ahead + To see by what mad couriers we are led + Along the roads of the ridiculous, + To pity ourselves and laugh at faith + And while we curse life bear it? + And if we see the soul's dead end in death, + Are we to fear it? + What folly is here that has not yet a name + Unless we say outright that we are liars? + What have we seen beyond our sunset fires + That lights again the way by which we came? + Why pay we such a price, and one we give + So clamoringly, for each racked empty day + That leads one more last human hope away, + As quiet fiends would lead past our crazed eyes + Our children to an unseen sacrifice? + If after all that we have lived and thought, + All comes to Nought,-- + If there be nothing after Now, + And we be nothing anyhow, + And we know that,--why live? + 'Twere sure but weaklings' vain distress + To suffer dungeons where so many doors + Will open on the cold eternal shores + That look sheer down + To the dark tideless floods of Nothingness + Where all who know may drown. + +[End of text.] + +From the original advertisements: + +By the same author + + +Captain Craig, A Book of Poems + + Revised edition with additional poems, 12mo, cloth, $1.25 + + + +"There are few poets writing in English to-day whose work is so +permeated by individual charm as is Mr. Robinson's. Always one feels the +presence of a man behind the poet--a man who knows life and people and +things and writes of them clearly, with a subtle poetic insight that is +not visible in the work of any other living writer."--'Brooklyn Daily +Eagle'. + +"The 'Book of Annandale', a splendid poem included in this collection, +is one of the most moving emotional narratives found in modern poetry." +--'Review of Reviews'. + +"... His handling of Greek themes reveals him as a lyrical poet of +inimitable charm and skill."--'Reedy's Mirror'. + +"A poem that must endure; if things that deserve long life get it."-- +'N. Y. Evening Sun'. + +"Wherever you hear people who know speak of American poets... they +assume that you take the genius and place of Edwin Arlington Robinson as +granted.... A man with something to say that has value and beauty. +His thought is deep and his ideas are high and stimulating."--'Boston +Transcript'. + + + + +By the same author-------------- + +The Porcupine: A Drama in Three Acts + +Cloth, 12mo, $1.25 + + + +Edwin Arlington Robinson's comedy "Van Zorn" proved him to be one of the +most accomplished of the younger generation of American dramatists. Of +this play the 'Boston Transcript' said, "It is an effective presentation +of modern life in New York City, in which a poet shows his skill of +playwrighting... he brings to the American drama to-day a thing it +sadly lacks, and that is character." In manner and technique Mr. +Robinson's new play, "The Porcupine", recalls some of the work of Ibsen. +Written adroitly and with the literary cleverness exhibited in "Van +Zorn", it tells a story of a domestic entanglement in a dramatic fashion +well calculated to hold the reader's attention. + +"Contains all of the qualities that are said to be conspicuously lacking +in American Drama."--'N. Y. Evening Sun'. + + + + +Van Zorn: A Comedy in Three Acts + +Cloth, 12mo, $1.25 + + + +Mr. Robinson is known as the leader of present-day American poets. In +this delightful play he tells with a biting humor the story of the +salvation of a soul. By clever arrangement of incident and skillful +characterization he arouses strongly the reader's curiosity, and the +suspense is admirably sustained. The dialogue is bright, and the +construction of the plot shows the work of one well versed in the +technique of the drama. + + + + + +Notes on the etext: + + + + John Gorham: + + Catches him and let's him go and eats him up for fun."-- + changed to: + Catches him and lets him go and eats him up for fun."-- + + + Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford: + + Whatever there be, they'll be no more of that; + not changed, but noted as possibly incorrect--should it be?: + Whatever there be, there'll be no more of that; + + Then are as yet a picture in our vision. + changed to: + Than are as yet a picture in our vision. + + + + + +About the author: Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1869-1935. + + + +From the Biographical Notes of "The Second Book of Modern Verse" (1919, +1920), edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse: + +Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Born at Head Tide, Maine, Dec. 22, 1869. +Educated at Harvard University. Mr. Robinson is a psychological poet of +great subtlety; his poems are usually studies of types and he has given +us a remarkable series of portraits. He is recognized as one of the +finest and most distinguished poets of our time. His successive volumes +are: "Children of the Night", 1897; "Captain Craig", 1902; "The Town +Down the River", 1910; "The Man against the Sky", 1916; "Merlin", 1917; +and "Launcelot", 1920. The last-named volume was awarded a prize of five +hundred dollars, given by The Lyric Society for the best book manuscript +offered to it in 1919. In addition to his work in poetry, Mr. Robinson +has written two prose plays, "Van Zorn", and "The Porcupine". + + + +In "American Poetry Since 1900", Louis Untermeyer notes, "his name was +known only to a few of the literati until Theodore Roosevelt... +acclaimed and aided him." Rittenhouse's Biographical Notes (above +quoted) contain this entry immediately before Edwin Arlington +Robinson's: "Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt.... Mrs. Robinson, who is a +sister to Col. Theodore Roosevelt,... has written several volumes of +verse...." It is always interesting to see the coincidence of events +in history, and it is worth asking if this was not even a causal +relationship.--A. L. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Against the Sky, by +Edwin Arlington Robinson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1035 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1036-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1036-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2d5db79b --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1036-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9280 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1036 *** + +JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES + +by Henry Lawson + + +Transcriber’s Note: This etext was entered twice (manually) and +electronically compared, by Alan R. Light This method assures a low rate +of errors in the text--often lower than in the original. Special thanks +go to Gary M. Johnson, of Takoma Park, Maryland, for his assistance in +procuring a copy of the original text, and to the readers of +soc.culture.australian and rec.arts.books (USENET newsgroups) for their +help in preparing the glossary. Italicized words or phrases are +capitalized. Some obvious errors may have been corrected. + + +***** + + +An incomplete glossary of Australian, British, or antique terms and +concepts which may prove helpful to understanding this book: + + +“A house where they took in cards on a tray” (from Joe Wilson’s +Courtship): An upper class house, with servants who would take a +visitor’s card (on a tray) to announce their presence, or, if the family +was out, to keep a record of the visit. + +Anniversary Day: Mentioned in the text, is now known as Australia Day. +It commemorates the establishment of the first English settlement in +Australia, at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour), on 26 January 1788. + +Gin: An obvious abbreviation of “aborigine”, it only refers to *female* +aborigines, and is now considered derogatory. It was not considered +derogatory at the time Lawson wrote. + +Jackaroo: At the time Lawson wrote, a Jackaroo was a “new chum” or +newcomer to Australia, who sought work on a station to gain experience. +The term now applies to any young man working as a station hand. A +female station hand is a Jillaroo. Variant: Jackeroo. + +Old-fashioned child: A child that acts old for their age. Americans +would say ‘Precocious’. + +‘Possum: In Australia, a class of marsupials that were originally +mistaken for possums. They are not especially related to the possums of +North and South America, other than both being marsupials. + +Public/Pub.: The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel with a +“public” bar--hence the name. The modern pub has often (not always) +dispensed with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar. + +Tea: In addition to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean a light snack +or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served). In particular, Morning Tea (about +10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM) are nothing more than a snack, but +Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal. When just “Tea” is used, it usually +means the evening meal. Variant: Tea-time. + +Tucker: Food. + +Shout: In addition to the regular meaning, it also refers to buying +drinks for all the members of a group, etc. The use of this term can be +confusing, so the first instance is footnoted in the text. + +Sly-grog-shop: An unlicensed bar or liquor-store. + +Station: A farm or ranch, especially one devoted to cattle or sheep. + +Store Bullock: Lawson makes several references to these. A bullock is +a castrated bull. Bullocks were used in Australia for work that was +too heavy for horses. ‘Store’ may refer to those cattle, and their +descendants, brought to Australia by the British government, and sold to +settlers from the ‘Store’--hence, the standard draft animal. + +Also: a hint with the seasons--remember that the seasons are reversed +from those in the northern hemisphere, hence June may be hot, but +December is even hotter. Australia is at a lower latitude than the +United States, so the winters are not harsh by US standards, and are not +even mild in the north. In fact, large parts of Australia are governed +more by “dry” versus “wet” than by Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter. + +--A. L. + + + + + +JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES + + +Author of “While the Billy Boils”, “On the Track and Over the +Sliprails”, “When the World was Wide, and other verses”, “Verses, +Popular and Humorous”, “Children of the Bush”, “When I was King, and +other verses”, etc. + + + + +The Author’s Farewell to the Bushmen. + + + + Some carry their swags in the Great North-West + Where the bravest battle and die, + And a few have gone to their last long rest, + And a few have said “Good-bye!” + The coast grows dim, and it may be long + Ere the Gums again I see; + So I put my soul in a farewell song + To the chaps who barracked for me. + + Their days are hard at the best of times, + And their dreams are dreams of care-- + God bless them all for their big soft hearts, + And the brave, brave grins they wear! + God keep me straight as a man can go, + And true as a man may be! + For the sake of the hearts that were always so, + Of the men who had faith in me! + + And a ship-side word I would say, you chaps + Of the blood of the Don’t-give-in! + The world will call it a boast, perhaps-- + But I’ll win, if a man can win! + And not for gold nor the world’s applause-- + Though ways to the end they be-- + I’ll win, if a man might win, because + Of the men who believed in me. + + + + + +Contents. + + + Prefatory Verses-- + + The Author’s Farewell to the Bushmen. + + + Part I. + + Joe Wilson’s Courtship. + Brighten’s Sister-In-Law. + ‘Water Them Geraniums’. + I. A Lonely Track. + II. ‘Past Carin’’. + A Double Buggy at Lahey’s Creek. + I. Spuds, and a Woman’s Obstinacy. + II. Joe Wilson’s Luck. + III. The Ghost of Mary’s Sacrifice. + IV. The Buggy Comes Home. + + + Part II. + + The Golden Graveyard. + The Chinaman’s Ghost. + The Loaded Dog. + Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left. + I. Dave Regan’s Yarn. + II. Told by One of the Other Drovers. + The Ghostly Door. + A Wild Irishman. + The Babies in the Bush. + A Bush Dance. + The Buck-Jumper. + Jimmy Grimshaw’s Wooing. + At Dead Dingo. + Telling Mrs Baker. + A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs. + The Little World Left Behind. + + + Concluding Verses-- + The Never-Never Country. + + + + + +Part I. + + + + +Joe Wilson’s Courtship. + + + +There are many times in this world when a healthy boy is happy. When he +is put into knickerbockers, for instance, and ‘comes a man to-day,’ as +my little Jim used to say. When they’re cooking something at home that +he likes. When the ‘sandy-blight’ or measles breaks out amongst the +children, or the teacher or his wife falls dangerously ill--or dies, it +doesn’t matter which--‘and there ain’t no school.’ When a boy is naked +and in his natural state for a warm climate like Australia, with three +or four of his schoolmates, under the shade of the creek-oaks in the +bend where there’s a good clear pool with a sandy bottom. When his +father buys him a gun, and he starts out after kangaroos or ‘possums. +When he gets a horse, saddle, and bridle, of his own. When he has his +arm in splints or a stitch in his head--he’s proud then, the proudest +boy in the district. + +I wasn’t a healthy-minded, average boy: I reckon I was born for a poet +by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman, and didn’t know what was the +matter with me--or the world--but that’s got nothing to do with it. + +There are times when a man is happy. When he finds out that the girl +loves him. When he’s just married. When he’s a lawful father for the +first time, and everything is going on all right: some men make fools +of themselves then--I know I did. I’m happy to-night because I’m out of +debt and can see clear ahead, and because I haven’t been easy for a long +time. + +But I think that the happiest time in a man’s life is when he’s courting +a girl and finds out for sure that she loves him and hasn’t a thought +for any one else. Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps, +and keep them clean, for they’re about the only days when there’s a +chance of poetry and beauty coming into this life. Make the best of them +and you’ll never regret it the longest day you live. They’re the days +that the wife will look back to, anyway, in the brightest of times as +well as in the blackest, and there shouldn’t be anything in those days +that might hurt her when she looks back. Make the most of your courting +days, you young chaps, for they will never come again. + +A married man knows all about it--after a while: he sees the woman world +through the eyes of his wife; he knows what an extra moment’s pressure +of the hand means, and, if he has had a hard life, and is inclined to be +cynical, the knowledge does him no good. It leads him into awful messes +sometimes, for a married man, if he’s inclined that way, has three times +the chance with a woman that a single man has--because the married man +knows. He is privileged; he can guess pretty closely what a woman means +when she says something else; he knows just how far he can go; he can go +farther in five minutes towards coming to the point with a woman than an +innocent young man dares go in three weeks. Above all, the married man +is more decided with women; he takes them and things for granted. In +short he is--well, he is a married man. And, when he knows all this, how +much better or happier is he for it? Mark Twain says that he lost all +the beauty of the river when he saw it with a pilot’s eye,--and there +you have it. + +But it’s all new to a young chap, provided he hasn’t been a young +blackguard. It’s all wonderful, new, and strange to him. He’s a +different man. He finds that he never knew anything about women. He sees +none of woman’s little ways and tricks in his girl. He is in heaven one +day and down near the other place the next; and that’s the sort of thing +that makes life interesting. He takes his new world for granted. And, +when she says she’ll be his wife----! + +Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps, for they’ve got a +lot of influence on your married life afterwards--a lot more than you’d +think. Make the best of them, for they’ll never come any more, unless +we do our courting over again in another world. If we do, I’ll make the +most of mine. + +But, looking back, I didn’t do so badly after all. I never told you +about the days I courted Mary. The more I look back the more I come to +think that I made the most of them, and if I had no more to regret in +married life than I have in my courting days, I wouldn’t walk to and fro +in the room, or up and down the yard in the dark sometimes, or lie awake +some nights thinking.... Ah well! + +I was between twenty-one and thirty then: birthdays had never been any +use to me, and I’d left off counting them. You don’t take much stock in +birthdays in the Bush. I’d knocked about the country for a few years, +shearing and fencing and droving a little, and wasting my life without +getting anything for it. I drank now and then, and made a fool of +myself. I was reckoned ‘wild’; but I only drank because I felt less +sensitive, and the world seemed a lot saner and better and kinder when +I had a few drinks: I loved my fellow-man then and felt nearer to him. +It’s better to be thought ‘wild’ than to be considered eccentric +or ratty. Now, my old mate, Jack Barnes, drank--as far as I could +see--first because he’d inherited the gambling habit from his father +along with his father’s luck: he’d the habit of being cheated and losing +very bad, and when he lost he drank. Till drink got a hold on him. Jack +was sentimental too, but in a different way. I was sentimental about +other people--more fool I!--whereas Jack was sentimental about himself. +Before he was married, and when he was recovering from a spree, he’d +write rhymes about ‘Only a boy, drunk by the roadside’, and that sort of +thing; and he’d call ‘em poetry, and talk about signing them and sending +them to the ‘Town and Country Journal’. But he generally tore them up +when he got better. The Bush is breeding a race of poets, and I don’t +know what the country will come to in the end. + +Well. It was after Jack and I had been out shearing at Beenaway shed in +the Big Scrubs. Jack was living in the little farming town of Solong, +and I was hanging round. Black, the squatter, wanted some fencing done +and a new stable built, or buggy and harness-house, at his place +at Haviland, a few miles out of Solong. Jack and I were good Bush +carpenters, so we took the job to keep us going till something else +turned up. ‘Better than doing nothing,’ said Jack. + +‘There’s a nice little girl in service at Black’s,’ he said. ‘She’s more +like an adopted daughter, in fact, than a servant. She’s a real good +little girl, and good-looking into the bargain. I hear that young Black +is sweet on her, but they say she won’t have anything to do with him. I +know a lot of chaps that have tried for her, but they’ve never had any +luck. She’s a regular little dumpling, and I like dumplings. They call +her ‘Possum. You ought to try a bear up in that direction, Joe.’ + +I was always shy with women--except perhaps some that I should have +fought shy of; but Jack wasn’t--he was afraid of no woman, good, bad, or +indifferent. I haven’t time to explain why, but somehow, whenever a girl +took any notice of me I took it for granted that she was only playing +with me, and felt nasty about it. I made one or two mistakes, but--ah +well! + +‘My wife knows little ‘Possum,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll get her to ask her out +to our place and let you know.’ + +I reckoned that he wouldn’t get me there then, and made a note to be on +the watch for tricks. I had a hopeless little love-story behind me, of +course. I suppose most married men can look back to their lost love; few +marry the first flame. Many a married man looks back and thinks it was +damned lucky that he didn’t get the girl he couldn’t have. Jack had been +my successful rival, only he didn’t know it--I don’t think his wife knew +it either. I used to think her the prettiest and sweetest little girl in +the district. + +But Jack was mighty keen on fixing me up with the little girl at +Haviland. He seemed to take it for granted that I was going to fall in +love with her at first sight. He took too many things for granted as far +as I was concerned, and got me into awful tangles sometimes. + +‘You let me alone, and I’ll fix you up, Joe,’ he said, as we rode up +to the station. ‘I’ll make it all right with the girl. You’re rather +a good-looking chap. You’ve got the sort of eyes that take with girls, +only you don’t know it; you haven’t got the go. If I had your eyes along +with my other attractions, I’d be in trouble on account of a woman about +once a-week.’ + +‘For God’s sake shut up, Jack,’ I said. + +Do you remember the first glimpse you got of your wife? Perhaps not in +England, where so many couples grow up together from childhood; but it’s +different in Australia, where you may hail from two thousand miles away +from where your wife was born, and yet she may be a countrywoman of +yours, and a countrywoman in ideas and politics too. I remember the +first glimpse I got of Mary. + +It was a two-storey brick house with wide balconies and verandahs all +round, and a double row of pines down to the front gate. Parallel at the +back was an old slab-and-shingle place, one room deep and about eight +rooms long, with a row of skillions at the back: the place was used for +kitchen, laundry, servants’ rooms, &c. This was the old homestead before +the new house was built. There was a wide, old-fashioned, brick-floored +verandah in front, with an open end; there was ivy climbing up the +verandah post on one side and a baby-rose on the other, and a grape-vine +near the chimney. We rode up to the end of the verandah, and Jack called +to see if there was any one at home, and Mary came trotting out; so it +was in the frame of vines that I first saw her. + +More than once since then I’ve had a fancy to wonder whether the +rose-bush killed the grape-vine or the ivy smothered ‘em both in the +end. I used to have a vague idea of riding that way some day to see. You +do get strange fancies at odd times. + +Jack asked her if the boss was in. He did all the talking. I saw a +little girl, rather plump, with a complexion like a New England or Blue +Mountain girl, or a girl from Tasmania or from Gippsland in Victoria. +Red and white girls were very scarce in the Solong district. She had the +biggest and brightest eyes I’d seen round there, dark hazel eyes, as I +found out afterwards, and bright as a ‘possum’s. No wonder they called +her ‘’Possum’. I forgot at once that Mrs Jack Barnes was the prettiest +girl in the district. I felt a sort of comfortable satisfaction in the +fact that I was on horseback: most Bushmen look better on horseback. It +was a black filly, a fresh young thing, and she seemed as shy of girls +as I was myself. I noticed Mary glanced in my direction once or twice +to see if she knew me; but, when she looked, the filly took all my +attention. Mary trotted in to tell old Black he was wanted, and after +Jack had seen him, and arranged to start work next day, we started back +to Solong. + +I expected Jack to ask me what I thought of Mary--but he didn’t. He +squinted at me sideways once or twice and didn’t say anything for a long +time, and then he started talking of other things. I began to feel wild +at him. He seemed so damnably satisfied with the way things were going. +He seemed to reckon that I was a gone case now; but, as he didn’t say +so, I had no way of getting at him. I felt sure he’d go home and +tell his wife that Joe Wilson was properly gone on little ‘Possum at +Haviland. That was all Jack’s way. + +Next morning we started to work. We were to build the buggy-house at +the back near the end of the old house, but first we had to take down +a rotten old place that might have been the original hut in the Bush +before the old house was built. There was a window in it, opposite the +laundry window in the old place, and the first thing I did was to take +out the sash. I’d noticed Jack yarning with ‘Possum before he started +work. While I was at work at the window he called me round to the other +end of the hut to help him lift a grindstone out of the way; and when +we’d done it, he took the tips of my ear between his fingers and thumb +and stretched it and whispered into it-- + +‘Don’t hurry with that window, Joe; the strips are hardwood and hard to +get off--you’ll have to take the sash out very carefully so as not to +break the glass.’ Then he stretched my ear a little more and put his +mouth closer-- + +‘Make a looking-glass of that window, Joe,’ he said. + +I was used to Jack, and when I went back to the window I started to +puzzle out what he meant, and presently I saw it by chance. + +That window reflected the laundry window: the room was dark inside and +there was a good clear reflection; and presently I saw Mary come to the +laundry window and stand with her hands behind her back, thoughtfully +watching me. The laundry window had an old-fashioned hinged sash, and I +like that sort of window--there’s more romance about it, I think. There +was thick dark-green ivy all round the window, and Mary looked prettier +than a picture. I squared up my shoulders and put my heels together and +put as much style as I could into the work. I couldn’t have turned round +to save my life. + +Presently Jack came round, and Mary disappeared. + +‘Well?’ he whispered. + +‘You’re a fool, Jack,’ I said. ‘She’s only interested in the old house +being pulled down.’ + +‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the business +round the corner, and she ain’t interested when I’M round this end.’ + +‘You seem mighty interested in the business,’ I said. + +‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘This sort of thing just suits a man of my rank in +times of peace.’ + +‘What made you think of the window?’ I asked. + +‘Oh, that’s as simple as striking matches. I’m up to all those dodges. +Why, where there wasn’t a window, I’ve fixed up a piece of looking-glass +to see if a girl was taking any notice of me when she thought I wasn’t +looking.’ + +He went away, and presently Mary was at the window again, and this +time she had a tray with cups of tea and a plate of cake and +bread-and-butter. I was prizing off the strips that held the sash, +very carefully, and my heart suddenly commenced to gallop, without any +reference to me. I’d never felt like that before, except once or +twice. It was just as if I’d swallowed some clockwork arrangement, +unconsciously, and it had started to go, without warning. I reckon it +was all on account of that blarsted Jack working me up. He had a +quiet way of working you up to a thing, that made you want to hit him +sometimes--after you’d made an ass of yourself. + +I didn’t hear Mary at first. I hoped Jack would come round and help me +out of the fix, but he didn’t. + +‘Mr--Mr Wilson!’ said Mary. She had a sweet voice. + +I turned round. + +‘I thought you and Mr Barnes might like a cup of tea.’ + +‘Oh, thank you!’ I said, and I made a dive for the window, as if hurry +would help it. I trod on an old cask-hoop; it sprang up and dinted my +shin and I stumbled--and that didn’t help matters much. + +‘Oh! did you hurt yourself, Mr Wilson?’ cried Mary. + +‘Hurt myself! Oh no, not at all, thank you,’ I blurted out. ‘It takes +more than that to hurt me.’ + +I was about the reddest shy lanky fool of a Bushman that was ever taken +at a disadvantage on foot, and when I took the tray my hands shook so +that a lot of the tea was spilt into the saucers. I embarrassed her too, +like the damned fool I was, till she must have been as red as I was, and +it’s a wonder we didn’t spill the whole lot between us. I got away +from the window in as much of a hurry as if Jack had cut his leg with a +chisel and fainted, and I was running with whisky for him. I blundered +round to where he was, feeling like a man feels when he’s just made an +ass of himself in public. The memory of that sort of thing hurts you +worse and makes you jerk your head more impatiently than the thought of +a past crime would, I think. + +I pulled myself together when I got to where Jack was. + +‘Here, Jack!’ I said. ‘I’ve struck something all right; here’s some tea +and brownie--we’ll hang out here all right.’ + +Jack took a cup of tea and a piece of cake and sat down to enjoy it, +just as if he’d paid for it and ordered it to be sent out about that +time. + +He was silent for a while, with the sort of silence that always made me +wild at him. Presently he said, as if he’d just thought of it-- + +‘That’s a very pretty little girl, ‘Possum, isn’t she, Joe? Do you +notice how she dresses?--always fresh and trim. But she’s got on her +best bib-and-tucker to-day, and a pinafore with frills to it. And it’s +ironing-day, too. It can’t be on your account. If it was Saturday or +Sunday afternoon, or some holiday, I could understand it. But perhaps +one of her admirers is going to take her to the church bazaar in Solong +to-night. That’s what it is.’ + +He gave me time to think over that. + +‘But yet she seems interested in you, Joe,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you +offer to take her to the bazaar instead of letting another chap get in +ahead of you? You miss all your chances, Joe.’ + +Then a thought struck me. I ought to have known Jack well enough to have +thought of it before. + +‘Look here, Jack,’ I said. ‘What have you been saying to that girl about +me?’ + +‘Oh, not much,’ said Jack. ‘There isn’t much to say about you.’ + +‘What did you tell her?’ + +‘Oh, nothing in particular. She’d heard all about you before.’ + +‘She hadn’t heard much good, I suppose,’ I said. + +‘Well, that’s true, as far as I could make out. But you’ve only got +yourself to blame. I didn’t have the breeding and rearing of you. I +smoothed over matters with her as much as I could.’ + +‘What did you tell her?’ I said. ‘That’s what I want to know.’ + +‘Well, to tell the truth, I didn’t tell her anything much. I only +answered questions.’ + +‘And what questions did she ask?’ + +‘Well, in the first place, she asked if your name wasn’t Joe Wilson; and +I said it was, as far as I knew. Then she said she heard that you wrote +poetry, and I had to admit that that was true.’ + +‘Look here, Jack,’ I said, ‘I’ve two minds to punch your head.’ + +‘And she asked me if it was true that you were wild,’ said Jack, ‘and I +said you was, a bit. She said it seemed a pity. She asked me if it was +true that you drank, and I drew a long face and said that I was sorry +to say it was true. She asked me if you had any friends, and I said none +that I knew of, except me. I said that you’d lost all your friends; they +stuck to you as long as they could, but they had to give you best, one +after the other.’ + +‘What next?’ + +‘She asked me if you were delicate, and I said no, you were as tough as +fencing-wire. She said you looked rather pale and thin, and asked me if +you’d had an illness lately. And I said no--it was all on account of +the wild, dissipated life you’d led. She said it was a pity you hadn’t +a mother or a sister to look after you--it was a pity that something +couldn’t be done for you, and I said it was, but I was afraid that +nothing could be done. I told her that I was doing all I could to keep +you straight.’ + +I knew enough of Jack to know that most of this was true. And so she +only pitied me after all. I felt as if I’d been courting her for six +months and she’d thrown me over--but I didn’t know anything about women +yet. + +‘Did you tell her I was in jail?’ I growled. + +‘No, by Gum! I forgot that. But never mind I’ll fix that up all right. +I’ll tell her that you got two years’ hard for horse-stealing. That +ought to make her interested in you, if she isn’t already.’ + +We smoked a while. + +‘And was that all she said?’ I asked. + +‘Who?--Oh! ‘Possum,’ said Jack rousing himself. ‘Well--no; let me +think---- We got chatting of other things--you know a married man’s +privileged, and can say a lot more to a girl than a single man can. I +got talking nonsense about sweethearts, and one thing led to another +till at last she said, “I suppose Mr Wilson’s got a sweetheart, Mr +Barnes?”’ + +‘And what did you say?’ I growled. + +‘Oh, I told her that you were a holy terror amongst the girls,’ said +Jack. ‘You’d better take back that tray, Joe, and let us get to work.’ + +I wouldn’t take back the tray--but that didn’t mend matters, for Jack +took it back himself. + +I didn’t see Mary’s reflection in the window again, so I took the window +out. I reckoned that she was just a big-hearted, impulsive little thing, +as many Australian girls are, and I reckoned that I was a fool for +thinking for a moment that she might give me a second thought, except +by way of kindness. Why! young Black and half a dozen better men than me +were sweet on her, and young Black was to get his father’s station and +the money--or rather his mother’s money, for she held the stuff (she +kept it close too, by all accounts). Young Black was away at the time, +and his mother was dead against him about Mary, but that didn’t make +any difference, as far as I could see. I reckoned that it was only +just going to be a hopeless, heart-breaking, stand-far-off-and-worship +affair, as far as I was concerned--like my first love affair, that I +haven’t told you about yet. I was tired of being pitied by good girls. +You see, I didn’t know women then. If I had known, I think I might have +made more than one mess of my life. + +Jack rode home to Solong every night. I was staying at a pub some +distance out of town, between Solong and Haviland. There were three or +four wet days, and we didn’t get on with the work. I fought shy of Mary +till one day she was hanging out clothes and the line broke. It was the +old-style sixpenny clothes-line. The clothes were all down, but it was +clean grass, so it didn’t matter much. I looked at Jack. + +‘Go and help her, you capital Idiot!’ he said, and I made the plunge. + +‘Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!’ said Mary, when I came to help. She had the +broken end of the line and was trying to hold some of the clothes off +the ground, as if she could pull it an inch with the heavy wet sheets +and table-cloths and things on it, or as if it would do any good if she +did. But that’s the way with women--especially little women--some of ‘em +would try to pull a store bullock if they got the end of the rope on +the right side of the fence. I took the line from Mary, and accidentally +touched her soft, plump little hand as I did so: it sent a thrill right +through me. She seemed a lot cooler than I was. + +Now, in cases like this, especially if you lose your head a bit, you get +hold of the loose end of the rope that’s hanging from the post with one +hand, and the end of the line with the clothes on with the other, and +try to pull ‘em far enough together to make a knot. And that’s about +all you do for the present, except look like a fool. Then I took off +the post end, spliced the line, took it over the fork, and pulled, while +Mary helped me with the prop. I thought Jack might have come and taken +the prop from her, but he didn’t; he just went on with his work as if +nothing was happening inside the horizon. + +She’d got the line about two-thirds full of clothes, it was a bit short +now, so she had to jump and catch it with one hand and hold it down +while she pegged a sheet she’d thrown over. I’d made the plunge now, +so I volunteered to help her. I held down the line while she threw +the things over and pegged out. As we got near the post and higher I +straightened out some ends and pegged myself. Bushmen are handy at most +things. We laughed, and now and again Mary would say, ‘No, that’s not +the way, Mr Wilson; that’s not right; the sheet isn’t far enough over; +wait till I fix it,’ &c. I’d a reckless idea once of holding her up +while she pegged, and I was glad afterwards that I hadn’t made such a +fool of myself. + +‘There’s only a few more things in the basket, Miss Brand,’ I said. ‘You +can’t reach--I’ll fix ‘em up.’ + +She seemed to give a little gasp. + +‘Oh, those things are not ready yet,’ she said, ‘they’re not rinsed,’ +and she grabbed the basket and held it away from me. The things looked +the same to me as the rest on the line; they looked rinsed enough and +blued too. I reckoned that she didn’t want me to take the trouble, or +thought that I mightn’t like to be seen hanging out clothes, and was +only doing it out of kindness. + +‘Oh, it’s no trouble,’ I said, ‘let me hang ‘em out. I like it. I’ve +hung out clothes at home on a windy day,’ and I made a reach into the +basket. But she flushed red, with temper I thought, and snatched the +basket away. + +‘Excuse me, Mr Wilson,’ she said, ‘but those things are not ready yet!’ +and she marched into the wash-house. + +‘Ah well! you’ve got a little temper of your own,’ I thought to myself. + +When I told Jack, he said that I’d made another fool of myself. He said +I’d both disappointed and offended her. He said that my line was to +stand off a bit and be serious and melancholy in the background. + +That evening when we’d started home, we stopped some time yarning with +a chap we met at the gate; and I happened to look back, and saw Mary +hanging out the rest of the things--she thought that we were out of +sight. Then I understood why those things weren’t ready while we were +round. + +For the next day or two Mary didn’t take the slightest notice of me, +and I kept out of her way. Jack said I’d disillusioned her--and hurt her +dignity--which was a thousand times worse. He said I’d spoilt the thing +altogether. He said that she’d got an idea that I was shy and poetic, +and I’d only shown myself the usual sort of Bush-whacker. + +I noticed her talking and chatting with other fellows once or twice, and +it made me miserable. I got drunk two evenings running, and then, as it +appeared afterwards, Mary consulted Jack, and at last she said to him, +when we were together-- + +‘Do you play draughts, Mr Barnes?’ + +‘No,’ said Jack. + +‘Do you, Mr Wilson?’ she asked, suddenly turning her big, bright eyes on +me, and speaking to me for the first time since last washing-day. + +‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do a little.’ Then there was a silence, and I had to +say something else. + +‘Do you play draughts, Miss Brand?’ I asked. + +‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I can’t get any one to play with me here of an +evening, the men are generally playing cards or reading.’ Then she said, +‘It’s very dull these long winter evenings when you’ve got nothing to +do. Young Mr Black used to play draughts, but he’s away.’ + +I saw Jack winking at me urgently. + +‘I’ll play a game with you, if you like,’ I said, ‘but I ain’t much of a +player.’ + +‘Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson! When shall you have an evening to spare?’ + +We fixed it for that same evening. We got chummy over the draughts. I +had a suspicion even then that it was a put-up job to keep me away from +the pub. + +Perhaps she found a way of giving a hint to old Black without committing +herself. Women have ways--or perhaps Jack did it. Anyway, next day the +Boss came round and said to me-- + +‘Look here, Joe, you’ve got no occasion to stay at the pub. Bring along +your blankets and camp in one of the spare rooms of the old house. You +can have your tucker here.’ + +He was a good sort, was Black the squatter: a squatter of the old +school, who’d shared the early hardships with his men, and couldn’t see +why he should not shake hands and have a smoke and a yarn over old times +with any of his old station hands that happened to come along. But he’d +married an Englishwoman after the hardships were over, and she’d never +got any Australian notions. + +Next day I found one of the skillion rooms scrubbed out and a bed fixed +up for me. I’m not sure to this day who did it, but I supposed that +good-natured old Black had given one of the women a hint. After tea +I had a yarn with Mary, sitting on a log of the wood-heap. I don’t +remember exactly how we both came to be there, or who sat down +first. There was about two feet between us. We got very chummy and +confidential. She told me about her childhood and her father. + +He’d been an old mate of Black’s, a younger son of a well-to-do English +family (with blue blood in it, I believe), and sent out to Australia +with a thousand pounds to make his way, as many younger sons are, with +more or less. They think they’re hard done by; they blue their thousand +pounds in Melbourne or Sydney, and they don’t make any more nowadays, +for the Roarin’ Days have been dead these thirty years. I wish I’d had a +thousand pounds to start on! + +Mary’s mother was the daughter of a German immigrant, who selected +up there in the old days. She had a will of her own as far as I could +understand, and bossed the home till the day of her death. Mary’s +father made money, and lost it, and drank--and died. Mary remembered +him sitting on the verandah one evening with his hand on her head, and +singing a German song (the ‘Lorelei’, I think it was) softly, as if to +himself. Next day he stayed in bed, and the children were kept out of +the room; and, when he died, the children were adopted round (there was +a little money coming from England). + +Mary told me all about her girlhood. She went first to live with a sort +of cousin in town, in a house where they took in cards on a tray, and +then she came to live with Mrs Black, who took a fancy to her at first. +I’d had no boyhood to speak of, so I gave her some of my ideas of what +the world ought to be, and she seemed interested. + +Next day there were sheets on my bed, and I felt pretty cocky until +I remembered that I’d told her I had no one to care for me; then I +suspected pity again. + +But next evening we remembered that both our fathers and mothers were +dead, and discovered that we had no friends except Jack and old Black, +and things went on very satisfactorily. + +And next day there was a little table in my room with a crocheted cover +and a looking-glass. + +I noticed the other girls began to act mysterious and giggle when I was +round, but Mary didn’t seem aware of it. + +We got very chummy. Mary wasn’t comfortable at Haviland. Old Black +was very fond of her and always took her part, but she wanted to be +independent. She had a great idea of going to Sydney and getting into +the hospital as a nurse. She had friends in Sydney, but she had no +money. There was a little money coming to her when she was twenty-one--a +few pounds--and she was going to try and get it before that time. + +‘Look here, Miss Brand,’ I said, after we’d watched the moon rise. ‘I’ll +lend you the money. I’ve got plenty--more than I know what to do with.’ + +But I saw I’d hurt her. She sat up very straight for a while, looking +before her; then she said it was time to go in, and said ‘Good-night, Mr +Wilson.’ + +I reckoned I’d done it that time; but Mary told me afterwards that she +was only hurt because it struck her that what she said about money might +have been taken for a hint. She didn’t understand me yet, and I didn’t +know human nature. I didn’t say anything to Jack--in fact about this +time I left off telling him about things. He didn’t seem hurt; he worked +hard and seemed happy. + +I really meant what I said to Mary about the money. It was pure good +nature. I’d be a happier man now, I think, and richer man perhaps, if +I’d never grown any more selfish than I was that night on the wood-heap +with Mary. I felt a great sympathy for her--but I got to love her. I +went through all the ups and downs of it. One day I was having tea in +the kitchen, and Mary and another girl, named Sarah, reached me a clean +plate at the same time: I took Sarah’s plate because she was first, and +Mary seemed very nasty about it, and that gave me great hopes. But all +next evening she played draughts with a drover that she’d chummed up +with. I pretended to be interested in Sarah’s talk, but it didn’t seem +to work. + +A few days later a Sydney Jackaroo visited the station. He had a good +pea-rifle, and one afternoon he started to teach Mary to shoot at a +target. They seemed to get very chummy. I had a nice time for three or +four days, I can tell you. I was worse than a wall-eyed bullock with +the pleuro. The other chaps had a shot out of the rifle. Mary called ‘Mr +Wilson’ to have a shot, and I made a worse fool of myself by sulking. If +it hadn’t been a blooming Jackaroo I wouldn’t have minded so much. + +Next evening the Jackaroo and one or two other chaps and the girls went +out ‘possum-shooting. Mary went. I could have gone, but I didn’t. I +mooched round all the evening like an orphan bandicoot on a burnt ridge, +and then I went up to the pub and filled myself with beer, and damned +the world, and came home and went to bed. I think that evening was +the only time I ever wrote poetry down on a piece of paper. I got so +miserable that I enjoyed it. + +I felt better next morning, and reckoned I was cured. I ran against Mary +accidentally and had to say something. + +‘How did you enjoy yourself yesterday evening, Miss Brand?’ I asked. + +‘Oh, very well, thank you, Mr Wilson,’ she said. Then she asked, ‘How +did you enjoy yourself, Mr Wilson?’ + +I puzzled over that afterwards, but couldn’t make anything out of it. +Perhaps she only said it for the sake of saying something. But about +this time my handkerchiefs and collars disappeared from the room and +turned up washed and ironed and laid tidily on my table. I used to keep +an eye out, but could never catch anybody near my room. I straightened +up, and kept my room a bit tidy, and when my handkerchief got too dirty, +and I was ashamed of letting it go to the wash, I’d slip down to the +river after dark and wash it out, and dry it next day, and rub it up to +look as if it hadn’t been washed, and leave it on my table. I felt +so full of hope and joy that I worked twice as hard as Jack, till one +morning he remarked casually-- + +‘I see you’ve made a new mash, Joe. I saw the half-caste cook tidying +up your room this morning and taking your collars and things to the +wash-house.’ + +I felt very much off colour all the rest of the day, and I had such +a bad night of it that I made up my mind next morning to look the +hopelessness square in the face and live the thing down. + + +It was the evening before Anniversary Day. Jack and I had put in a good +day’s work to get the job finished, and Jack was having a smoke and a +yarn with the chaps before he started home. We sat on an old log along +by the fence at the back of the house. There was Jimmy Nowlett the +bullock-driver, and long Dave Regan the drover, and big Jim Bullock the +fencer, and one or two others. Mary and the station girls and one or +two visitors were sitting under the old verandah. The Jackaroo was +there too, so I felt happy. It was the girls who used to bring the chaps +hanging round. They were getting up a dance party for Anniversary night. +Along in the evening another chap came riding up to the station: he was +a big shearer, a dark, handsome fellow, who looked like a gipsy: it was +reckoned that there was foreign blood in him. He went by the name of +Romany. He was supposed to be shook after Mary too. He had the nastiest +temper and the best violin in the district, and the chaps put up with +him a lot because they wanted him to play at Bush dances. The moon had +risen over Pine Ridge, but it was dusky where we were. We saw Romany +loom up, riding in from the gate; he rode round the end of the +coach-house and across towards where we were--I suppose he was going to +tie up his horse at the fence; but about half-way across the grass he +disappeared. It struck me that there was something peculiar about the +way he got down, and I heard a sound like a horse stumbling. + +‘What the hell’s Romany trying to do?’ said Jimmy Nowlett. ‘He couldn’t +have fell off his horse--or else he’s drunk.’ + +A couple of chaps got up and went to see. Then there was that waiting, +mysterious silence that comes when something happens in the dark and +nobody knows what it is. I went over, and the thing dawned on me. I’d +stretched a wire clothes-line across there during the day, and had +forgotten all about it for the moment. Romany had no idea of the line, +and, as he rode up, it caught him on a level with his elbows and scraped +him off his horse. He was sitting on the grass, swearing in a surprised +voice, and the horse looked surprised too. Romany wasn’t hurt, but the +sudden shock had spoilt his temper. He wanted to know who’d put up that +bloody line. He came over and sat on the log. The chaps smoked a while. + +‘What did you git down so sudden for, Romany?’ asked Jim Bullock +presently. ‘Did you hurt yerself on the pommel?’ + +‘Why didn’t you ask the horse to go round?’ asked Dave Regan. + +‘I’d only like to know who put up that bleeding wire!’ growled Romany. + +‘Well,’ said Jimmy Nowlett, ‘if we’d put up a sign to beware of the line +you couldn’t have seen it in the dark.’ + +‘Unless it was a transparency with a candle behind it,’ said Dave Regan. +‘But why didn’t you get down on one end, Romany, instead of all along? +It wouldn’t have jolted yer so much.’ + +All this with the Bush drawl, and between the puffs of their pipes. +But I didn’t take any interest in it. I was brooding over Mary and the +Jackaroo. + +‘I’ve heard of men getting down over their horse’s head,’ said +Dave presently, in a reflective sort of way--‘in fact I’ve done it +myself--but I never saw a man get off backwards over his horse’s rump.’ + +But they saw that Romany was getting nasty, and they wanted him to play +the fiddle next night, so they dropped it. + +Mary was singing an old song. I always thought she had a sweet voice, +and I’d have enjoyed it if that damned Jackaroo hadn’t been listening +too. We listened in silence until she’d finished. + +‘That gal’s got a nice voice,’ said Jimmy Nowlett. + +‘Nice voice!’ snarled Romany, who’d been waiting for a chance to be +nasty. ‘Why, I’ve heard a tom-cat sing better.’ + +I moved, and Jack, he was sitting next me, nudged me to keep quiet. The +chaps didn’t like Romany’s talk about ‘Possum at all. They were all fond +of her: she wasn’t a pet or a tomboy, for she wasn’t built that way, +but they were fond of her in such a way that they didn’t like to hear +anything said about her. They said nothing for a while, but it meant a +lot. Perhaps the single men didn’t care to speak for fear that it would +be said that they were gone on Mary. But presently Jimmy Nowlett gave a +big puff at his pipe and spoke-- + +‘I suppose you got bit too in that quarter, Romany?’ + +‘Oh, she tried it on, but it didn’t go,’ said Romany. ‘I’ve met her sort +before. She’s setting her cap at that Jackaroo now. Some girls will run +after anything with trousers on,’ and he stood up. + +Jack Barnes must have felt what was coming, for he grabbed my arm, and +whispered, ‘Sit still, Joe, damn you! He’s too good for you!’ but I was +on my feet and facing Romany as if a giant hand had reached down and +wrenched me off the log and set me there. + +‘You’re a damned crawler, Romany!’ I said. + +Little Jimmy Nowlett was between us and the other fellows round us +before a blow got home. ‘Hold on, you damned fools!’ they said. ‘Keep +quiet till we get away from the house!’ There was a little clear flat +down by the river and plenty of light there, so we decided to go down +there and have it out. + +Now I never was a fighting man; I’d never learnt to use my hands. I +scarcely knew how to put them up. Jack often wanted to teach me, but I +wouldn’t bother about it. He’d say, ‘You’ll get into a fight some day, +Joe, or out of one, and shame me;’ but I hadn’t the patience to learn. +He’d wanted me to take lessons at the station after work, but he used to +get excited, and I didn’t want Mary to see him knocking me about. Before +he was married Jack was always getting into fights--he generally tackled +a better man and got a hiding; but he didn’t seem to care so long as +he made a good show--though he used to explain the thing away from a +scientific point of view for weeks after. To tell the truth, I had a +horror of fighting; I had a horror of being marked about the face; I +think I’d sooner stand off and fight a man with revolvers than fight him +with fists; and then I think I would say, last thing, ‘Don’t shoot me +in the face!’ Then again I hated the idea of hitting a man. It seemed +brutal to me. I was too sensitive and sentimental, and that was what +the matter was. Jack seemed very serious on it as we walked down to the +river, and he couldn’t help hanging out blue lights. + +‘Why didn’t you let me teach you to use your hands?’ he said. ‘The +only chance now is that Romany can’t fight after all. If you’d waited +a minute I’d have been at him.’ We were a bit behind the rest, and Jack +started giving me points about lefts and rights, and ‘half-arms’, and +that sort of thing. ‘He’s left-handed, and that’s the worst of it,’ said +Jack. ‘You must only make as good a show as you can, and one of us will +take him on afterwards.’ + +But I just heard him and that was all. It was to be my first fight since +I was a boy, but, somehow, I felt cool about it--sort of dulled. If the +chaps had known all they would have set me down as a cur. I thought of +that, but it didn’t make any difference with me then; I knew it was a +thing they couldn’t understand. I knew I was reckoned pretty soft. But +I knew one thing that they didn’t know. I knew that it was going to be +a fight to a finish, one way or the other. I had more brains and +imagination than the rest put together, and I suppose that that was the +real cause of most of my trouble. I kept saying to myself, ‘You’ll have +to go through with it now, Joe, old man! It’s the turning-point of your +life.’ If I won the fight, I’d set to work and win Mary; if I lost, I’d +leave the district for ever. A man thinks a lot in a flash sometimes; I +used to get excited over little things, because of the very paltriness +of them, but I was mostly cool in a crisis--Jack was the reverse. I +looked ahead: I wouldn’t be able to marry a girl who could look back and +remember when her husband was beaten by another man--no matter what sort +of brute the other man was. + +I never in my life felt so cool about a thing. Jack kept whispering +instructions, and showing with his hands, up to the last moment, but it +was all lost on me. + +Looking back, I think there was a bit of romance about it: Mary singing +under the vines to amuse a Jackaroo dude, and a coward going down to the +river in the moonlight to fight for her. + +It was very quiet in the little moonlit flat by the river. We took off +our coats and were ready. There was no swearing or barracking. It seemed +an understood thing with the men that if I went out first round Jack +would fight Romany; and if Jack knocked him out somebody else would +fight Jack to square matters. Jim Bullock wouldn’t mind obliging for +one; he was a mate of Jack’s, but he didn’t mind who he fought so long +as it was for the sake of fair play--or ‘peace and quietness’, as he +said. Jim was very good-natured. He backed Romany, and of course Jack +backed me. + +As far as I could see, all Romany knew about fighting was to jerk one +arm up in front of his face and duck his head by way of a feint, and +then rush and lunge out. But he had the weight and strength and length +of reach, and my first lesson was a very short one. I went down early +in the round. But it did me good; the blow and the look I’d seen +in Romany’s eyes knocked all the sentiment out of me. Jack said +nothing,--he seemed to regard it as a hopeless job from the first. +Next round I tried to remember some things Jack had told me, and made a +better show, but I went down in the end. + +I felt Jack breathing quick and trembling as he lifted me up. + +‘How are you, Joe?’ he whispered. + +‘I’m all right,’ I said. + +‘It’s all right,’ whispered Jack in a voice as if I was going to be +hanged, but it would soon be all over. ‘He can’t use his hands much more +than you can--take your time, Joe--try to remember something I told you, +for God’s sake!’ + +When two men fight who don’t know how to use their hands, they stand a +show of knocking each other about a lot. I got some awful thumps, +but mostly on the body. Jimmy Nowlett began to get excited and jump +round--he was an excitable little fellow. + +‘Fight! you----!’ he yelled. ‘Why don’t you fight? That ain’t fightin’. +Fight, and don’t try to murder each other. Use your crimson hands or, by +God, I’ll chip you! Fight, or I’ll blanky well bullock-whip the pair of +you;’ then his language got awful. They said we went like windmills, and +that nearly every one of the blows we made was enough to kill a bullock +if it had got home. Jimmy stopped us once, but they held him back. + +Presently I went down pretty flat, but the blow was well up on the head +and didn’t matter much--I had a good thick skull. And I had one good eye +yet. + +‘For God’s sake, hit him!’ whispered Jack--he was trembling like a leaf. +‘Don’t mind what I told you. I wish I was fighting him myself! Get a +blow home, for God’s sake! Make a good show this round and I’ll stop the +fight.’ + +That showed how little even Jack, my old mate, understood me. + +I had the Bushman up in me now, and wasn’t going to be beaten while +I could think. I was wonderfully cool, and learning to fight. There’s +nothing like a fight to teach a man. I was thinking fast, and learning +more in three seconds than Jack’s sparring could have taught me in three +weeks. People think that blows hurt in a fight, but they don’t--not +till afterwards. I fancy that a fighting man, if he isn’t altogether an +animal, suffers more mentally than he does physically. + +While I was getting my wind I could hear through the moonlight and still +air the sound of Mary’s voice singing up at the house. I thought hard +into the future, even as I fought. The fight only seemed something that +was passing. + +I was on my feet again and at it, and presently I lunged out and felt +such a jar in my arm that I thought it was telescoped. I thought I’d put +out my wrist and elbow. And Romany was lying on the broad of his back. + +I heard Jack draw three breaths of relief in one. He said nothing as +he straightened me up, but I could feel his heart beating. He said +afterwards that he didn’t speak because he thought a word might spoil +it. + +I went down again, but Jack told me afterwards that he FELT I was all +right when he lifted me. + +Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated +us. I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy the +novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped. + +‘I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I’ve twisted my ankle.’ He’d caught his heel +against a tuft of grass. + +‘Shake hands,’ yelled Jimmy Nowlett. + +I stepped forward, but Romany took his coat and limped to his horse. + +‘If yer don’t shake hands with Wilson, I’ll lamb yer!’ howled Jimmy; but +Jack told him to let the man alone, and Romany got on his horse somehow +and rode off. + +I saw Jim Bullock stoop and pick up something from the grass, and heard +him swear in surprise. There was some whispering, and presently Jim +said-- + +‘If I thought that, I’d kill him.’ + +‘What is it?’ asked Jack. + +Jim held up a butcher’s knife. It was common for a man to carry a +butcher’s knife in a sheath fastened to his belt. + +‘Why did you let your man fight with a butcher’s knife in his belt?’ +asked Jimmy Nowlett. + +But the knife could easily have fallen out when Romany fell, and we +decided it that way. + +‘Any way,’ said Jimmy Nowlett, ‘if he’d stuck Joe in hot blood before us +all it wouldn’t be so bad as if he sneaked up and stuck him in the back +in the dark. But you’d best keep an eye over yer shoulder for a year or +two, Joe. That chap’s got Eye-talian blood in him somewhere. And now the +best thing you chaps can do is to keep your mouth shut and keep all this +dark from the gals.’ + +Jack hurried me on ahead. He seemed to act queer, and when I glanced +at him I could have sworn that there was water in his eyes. I said that +Jack had no sentiment except for himself, but I forgot, and I’m sorry I +said it. + +‘What’s up, Jack?’ I asked. + +‘Nothing,’ said Jack. + +‘What’s up, you old fool?’ I said. + +‘Nothing,’ said Jack, ‘except that I’m damned proud of you, Joe, you +old ass!’ and he put his arm round my shoulders and gave me a shake. +‘I didn’t know it was in you, Joe--I wouldn’t have said it before, +or listened to any other man say it, but I didn’t think you had the +pluck--God’s truth, I didn’t. Come along and get your face fixed up.’ + +We got into my room quietly, and Jack got a dish of water, and told one +of the chaps to sneak a piece of fresh beef from somewhere. + +Jack was as proud as a dog with a tin tail as he fussed round me. +He fixed up my face in the best style he knew, and he knew a good +many--he’d been mended himself so often. + +While he was at work we heard a sudden hush and a scraping of feet +amongst the chaps that Jack had kicked out of the room, and a girl’s +voice whispered, ‘Is he hurt? Tell me. I want to know,--I might be able +to help.’ + +It made my heart jump, I can tell you. Jack went out at once, and there +was some whispering. When he came back he seemed wild. + +‘What is it, Jack?’ I asked. + +‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, ‘only that damned slut of a half-caste cook +overheard some of those blanky fools arguing as to how Romany’s knife +got out of the sheath, and she’s put a nice yarn round amongst the +girls. There’s a regular bobbery, but it’s all right now. Jimmy +Nowlett’s telling ‘em lies at a great rate.’ + +Presently there was another hush outside, and a saucer with vinegar and +brown paper was handed in. + +One of the chaps brought some beer and whisky from the pub, and we had +a quiet little time in my room. Jack wanted to stay all night, but I +reminded him that his little wife was waiting for him in Solong, so he +said he’d be round early in the morning, and went home. + +I felt the reaction pretty bad. I didn’t feel proud of the affair at +all. I thought it was a low, brutal business all round. Romany was a +quiet chap after all, and the chaps had no right to chyack him. Perhaps +he’d had a hard life, and carried a big swag of trouble that we didn’t +know anything about. He seemed a lonely man. I’d gone through enough +myself to teach me not to judge men. I made up my mind to tell him how I +felt about the matter next time we met. Perhaps I made my usual mistake +of bothering about ‘feelings’ in another party that hadn’t any feelings +at all--perhaps I didn’t; but it’s generally best to chance it on the +kind side in a case like this. Altogether I felt as if I’d made another +fool of myself and been a weak coward. I drank the rest of the beer and +went to sleep. + +About daylight I woke and heard Jack’s horse on the gravel. He came +round the back of the buggy-shed and up to my door, and then, suddenly, +a girl screamed out. I pulled on my trousers and ‘lastic-side boots and +hurried out. It was Mary herself, dressed, and sitting on an old stone +step at the back of the kitchen with her face in her hands, and Jack was +off his horse and stooping by her side with his hand on her shoulder. +She kept saying, ‘I thought you were----! I thought you were----!’ I +didn’t catch the name. An old single-barrel, muzzle-loader shot-gun was +lying in the grass at her feet. It was the gun they used to keep loaded +and hanging in straps in a room of the kitchen ready for a shot at a +cunning old hawk that they called ‘’Tarnal Death’, and that used to be +always after the chickens. + +When Mary lifted her face it was as white as note-paper, and her eyes +seemed to grow wilder when she caught sight of me. + +‘Oh, you did frighten me, Mr Barnes,’ she gasped. Then she gave a little +ghost of a laugh and stood up, and some colour came back. + +‘Oh, I’m a little fool!’ she said quickly. ‘I thought I heard old +‘Tarnal Death at the chickens, and I thought it would be a great thing +if I got the gun and brought him down; so I got up and dressed quietly +so as not to wake Sarah. And then you came round the corner and +frightened me. I don’t know what you must think of me, Mr Barnes.’ + +‘Never mind,’ said Jack. ‘You go and have a sleep, or you won’t be +able to dance to-night. Never mind the gun--I’ll put that away.’ And he +steered her round to the door of her room off the brick verandah where +she slept with one of the other girls. + +‘Well, that’s a rum start!’ I said. + +‘Yes, it is,’ said Jack; ‘it’s very funny. Well, how’s your face this +morning, Joe?’ + +He seemed a lot more serious than usual. + +We were hard at work all the morning cleaning out the big wool-shed and +getting it ready for the dance, hanging hoops for the candles, making +seats, &c. I kept out of sight of the girls as much as I could. One side +of my face was a sight and the other wasn’t too classical. I felt as if +I had been stung by a swarm of bees. + +‘You’re a fresh, sweet-scented beauty now, and no mistake, Joe,’ said +Jimmy Nowlett--he was going to play the accordion that night. ‘You ought +to fetch the girls now, Joe. But never mind, your face’ll go down +in about three weeks. My lower jaw is crooked yet; but that fight +straightened my nose, that had been knocked crooked when I was a boy--so +I didn’t lose much beauty by it.’ + +When we’d done in the shed, Jack took me aside and said-- + +‘Look here, Joe! if you won’t come to the dance to-night--and I can’t +say you’d ornament it--I tell you what you’ll do. You get little Mary +away on the quiet and take her out for a stroll--and act like a man. The +job’s finished now, and you won’t get another chance like this.’ + +‘But how am I to get her out?’ I said. + +‘Never you mind. You be mooching round down by the big peppermint-tree +near the river-gate, say about half-past ten.’ + +‘What good’ll that do?’ + +‘Never you mind. You just do as you’re told, that’s all you’ve got to +do,’ said Jack, and he went home to get dressed and bring his wife. + +After the dancing started that night I had a peep in once or twice. The +first time I saw Mary dancing with Jack, and looking serious; and the +second time she was dancing with the blarsted Jackaroo dude, and looking +excited and happy. I noticed that some of the girls, that I could see +sitting on a stool along the opposite wall, whispered, and gave Mary +black looks as the Jackaroo swung her past. It struck me pretty forcibly +that I should have taken fighting lessons from him instead of from poor +Romany. I went away and walked about four miles down the river road, +getting out of the way into the Bush whenever I saw any chap riding +along. I thought of poor Romany and wondered where he was, and thought +that there wasn’t much to choose between us as far as happiness was +concerned. Perhaps he was walking by himself in the Bush, and feeling +like I did. I wished I could shake hands with him. + +But somehow, about half-past ten, I drifted back to the river slip-rails +and leant over them, in the shadow of the peppermint-tree, looking at +the rows of river-willows in the moonlight. I didn’t expect anything, in +spite of what Jack said. + +I didn’t like the idea of hanging myself: I’d been with a party who +found a man hanging in the Bush, and it was no place for a woman round +where he was. And I’d helped drag two bodies out of the Cudgeegong river +in a flood, and they weren’t sleeping beauties. I thought it was a pity +that a chap couldn’t lie down on a grassy bank in a graceful position in +the moonlight and die just by thinking of it--and die with his eyes +and mouth shut. But then I remembered that I wouldn’t make a beautiful +corpse, anyway it went, with the face I had on me. + +I was just getting comfortably miserable when I heard a step behind me, +and my heart gave a jump. And I gave a start too. + +‘Oh, is that you, Mr Wilson?’ said a timid little voice. + +‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Is that you, Mary?’ + +And she said yes. It was the first time I called her Mary, but she did +not seem to notice it. + +‘Did I frighten you?’ I asked. + +‘No--yes--just a little,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know there was any +one----’ then she stopped. + +‘Why aren’t you dancing?’ I asked her. + +‘Oh, I’m tired,’ she said. ‘It was too hot in the wool-shed. I thought +I’d like to come out and get my head cool and be quiet a little while.’ + +‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it must be hot in the wool-shed.’ + +She stood looking out over the willows. Presently she said, ‘It must be +very dull for you, Mr Wilson--you must feel lonely. Mr Barnes said----’ +Then she gave a little gasp and stopped--as if she was just going to put +her foot in it. + +‘How beautiful the moonlight looks on the willows!’ she said. + +‘Yes,’ I said, ‘doesn’t it? Supposing we have a stroll by the river.’ + +‘Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson. I’d like it very much.’ + +I didn’t notice it then, but, now I come to think of it, it was a +beautiful scene: there was a horseshoe of high blue hills round behind +the house, with the river running round under the slopes, and in front +was a rounded hill covered with pines, and pine ridges, and a soft blue +peak away over the ridges ever so far in the distance. + +I had a handkerchief over the worst of my face, and kept the best side +turned to her. We walked down by the river, and didn’t say anything for +a good while. I was thinking hard. We came to a white smooth log in a +quiet place out of sight of the house. + +‘Suppose we sit down for a while, Mary,’ I said. + +‘If you like, Mr Wilson,’ she said. + +There was about a foot of log between us. + +‘What a beautiful night!’ she said. + +‘Yes,’ I said, ‘isn’t it?’ + +Presently she said, ‘I suppose you know I’m going away next month, Mr +Wilson?’ + +I felt suddenly empty. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that.’ + +‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I thought you knew. I’m going to try and get into the +hospital to be trained for a nurse, and if that doesn’t come off I’ll +get a place as assistant public-school teacher.’ + +We didn’t say anything for a good while. + +‘I suppose you won’t be sorry to go, Miss Brand?’ I said. + +‘I--I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Everybody’s been so kind to me here.’ + +She sat looking straight before her, and I fancied her eyes glistened. +I put my arm round her shoulders, but she didn’t seem to notice it. In +fact, I scarcely noticed it myself at the time. + +‘So you think you’ll be sorry to go away?’ I said. + +‘Yes, Mr Wilson. I suppose I’ll fret for a while. It’s been my home, you +know.’ + +I pressed my hand on her shoulder, just a little, so as she couldn’t +pretend not to know it was there. But she didn’t seem to notice. + +‘Ah, well,’ I said, ‘I suppose I’ll be on the wallaby again next week.’ + +‘Will you, Mr Wilson?’ she said. Her voice seemed very soft. + +I slipped my arm round her waist, under her arm. My heart was going like +clockwork now. + +Presently she said-- + +‘Don’t you think it’s time to go back now, Mr Wilson?’ + +‘Oh, there’s plenty of time!’ I said. I shifted up, and put my arm +farther round, and held her closer. She sat straight up, looking right +in front of her, but she began to breathe hard. + +‘Mary,’ I said. + +‘Yes,’ she said. + +‘Call me Joe,’ I said. + +‘I--I don’t like to,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it would be right.’ + +So I just turned her face round and kissed her. She clung to me and +cried. + +‘What is it, Mary?’ I asked. + +She only held me tighter and cried. + +‘What is it, Mary?’ I said. ‘Ain’t you well? Ain’t you happy?’ + +‘Yes, Joe,’ she said, ‘I’m very happy.’ Then she said, ‘Oh, your poor +face! Can’t I do anything for it?’ + +‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s all right. My face doesn’t hurt me a bit now.’ + +But she didn’t seem right. + +‘What is it, Mary?’ I said. ‘Are you tired? You didn’t sleep last +night----’ Then I got an inspiration. + +‘Mary,’ I said, ‘what were you doing out with the gun this morning?’ + +And after some coaxing it all came out, a bit hysterical. + +‘I couldn’t sleep--I was frightened. Oh! I had such a terrible dream +about you, Joe! I thought Romany came back and got into your room and +stabbed you with his knife. I got up and dressed, and about daybreak +I heard a horse at the gate; then I got the gun down from the +wall--and--and Mr Barnes came round the corner and frightened me. He’s +something like Romany, you know.’ + +Then I got as much of her as I could into my arms. + +And, oh, but wasn’t I happy walking home with Mary that night! She was +too little for me to put my arm round her waist, so I put it round +her shoulder, and that felt just as good. I remember I asked her who’d +cleaned up my room and washed my things, but she wouldn’t tell. + +She wouldn’t go back to the dance yet; she said she’d go into her room +and rest a while. There was no one near the old verandah; and when she +stood on the end of the floor she was just on a level with my shoulder. + +‘Mary,’ I whispered, ‘put your arms round my neck and kiss me.’ + +She put her arms round my neck, but she didn’t kiss me; she only hid her +face. + +‘Kiss me, Mary!’ I said. + +‘I--I don’t like to,’ she whispered. + +‘Why not, Mary?’ + +Then I felt her crying or laughing, or half crying and half laughing. +I’m not sure to this day which it was. + +‘Why won’t you kiss me, Mary? Don’t you love me?’ + +‘Because,’ she said, ‘because--because I--I don’t--I don’t think it’s +right for--for a girl to--to kiss a man unless she’s going to be his +wife.’ + +Then it dawned on me! I’d forgot all about proposing. + +‘Mary,’ I said, ‘would you marry a chap like me?’ + +And that was all right. + + ***** + +Next morning Mary cleared out my room and sorted out my things, and +didn’t take the slightest notice of the other girls’ astonishment. + +But she made me promise to speak to old Black, and I did the same +evening. I found him sitting on the log by the fence, having a yarn on +the quiet with an old Bushman; and when the old Bushman got up and went +away, I sat down. + +‘Well, Joe,’ said Black, ‘I see somebody’s been spoiling your face for +the dance.’ And after a bit he said, ‘Well, Joe, what is it? Do you want +another job? If you do, you’ll have to ask Mrs Black, or Bob’ (Bob was +his eldest son); ‘they’re managing the station for me now, you know.’ He +could be bitter sometimes in his quiet way. + +‘No,’ I said; ‘it’s not that, Boss.’ + +‘Well, what is it, Joe?’ + +‘I--well the fact is, I want little Mary.’ + +He puffed at his pipe for a long time, then I thought he spoke. + +‘What did you say, Boss?’ I said. + +‘Nothing, Joe,’ he said. ‘I was going to say a lot, but it wouldn’t be +any use. My father used to say a lot to me before I was married.’ + +I waited a good while for him to speak. + +‘Well, Boss,’ I said, ‘what about Mary?’ + +‘Oh! I suppose that’s all right, Joe,’ he said. ‘I--I beg your pardon. I +got thinking of the days when I was courting Mrs Black.’ + + + + +Brighten’s Sister-In-Law. + + +Jim was born on Gulgong, New South Wales. We used to say ‘on’ +Gulgong--and old diggers still talked of being ‘on th’ Gulgong’--though +the goldfield there had been worked out for years, and the place was +only a dusty little pastoral town in the scrubs. Gulgong was about the +last of the great alluvial ‘rushes’ of the ‘roaring days’--and dreary +and dismal enough it looked when I was there. The expression ‘on’ came +from being on the ‘diggings’ or goldfield--the workings or the goldfield +was all underneath, of course, so we lived (or starved) ON them--not in +nor at ‘em. + +Mary and I had been married about two years when Jim came----His name +wasn’t ‘Jim’, by the way, it was ‘John Henry’, after an uncle godfather; +but we called him Jim from the first--(and before it)--because Jim was a +popular Bush name, and most of my old mates were Jims. The Bush is full +of good-hearted scamps called Jim. + +We lived in an old weather-board shanty that had been a sly-grog-shop, +and the Lord knows what else! in the palmy days of Gulgong; and I did +a bit of digging [‘fossicking’, rather), a bit of shearing, a bit of +fencing, a bit of Bush-carpentering, tank-sinking,--anything, just to +keep the billy boiling. + +We had a lot of trouble with Jim with his teeth. He was bad with every +one of them, and we had most of them lanced--couldn’t pull him through +without. I remember we got one lanced and the gum healed over before +the tooth came through, and we had to get it cut again. He was a plucky +little chap, and after the first time he never whimpered when the doctor +was lancing his gum: he used to say ‘tar’ afterwards, and want to bring +the lance home with him. + +The first turn we got with Jim was the worst. I had had the wife and Jim +out camping with me in a tent at a dam I was making at Cattle Creek; I +had two men working for me, and a boy to drive one of the tip-drays, +and I took Mary out to cook for us. And it was lucky for us that the +contract was finished and we got back to Gulgong, and within reach of +a doctor, the day we did. We were just camping in the house, with our +goods and chattels anyhow, for the night; and we were hardly back home +an hour when Jim took convulsions for the first time. + +Did you ever see a child in convulsions? You wouldn’t want to see it +again: it plays the devil with a man’s nerves. I’d got the beds fixed up +on the floor, and the billies on the fire--I was going to make some tea, +and put a piece of corned beef on to boil over night--when Jim +(he’d been queer all day, and his mother was trying to hush him to +sleep)--Jim, he screamed out twice. He’d been crying a good deal, and +I was dog-tired and worried (over some money a man owed me) or I’d have +noticed at once that there was something unusual in the way the child +cried out: as it was I didn’t turn round till Mary screamed ‘Joe! +Joe!’ You know how a woman cries out when her child is in danger or +dying--short, and sharp, and terrible. ‘Joe! Look! look! Oh, my God! our +child! Get the bath, quick! quick! it’s convulsions!’ + +Jim was bent back like a bow, stiff as a bullock-yoke, in his mother’s +arms, and his eyeballs were turned up and fixed--a thing I saw twice +afterwards, and don’t want ever to see again. + +I was falling over things getting the tub and the hot water, when the +woman who lived next door rushed in. She called to her husband to run +for the doctor, and before the doctor came she and Mary had got Jim into +a hot bath and pulled him through. + +The neighbour woman made me up a shake-down in another room, and stayed +with Mary that night; but it was a long while before I got Jim and +Mary’s screams out of my head and fell asleep. + +You may depend I kept the fire in, and a bucket of water hot over it, +for a good many nights after that; but (it always happens like this) +there came a night, when the fright had worn off, when I was too tired +to bother about the fire, and that night Jim took us by surprise. Our +wood-heap was done, and I broke up a new chair to get a fire, and had +to run a quarter of a mile for water; but this turn wasn’t so bad as the +first, and we pulled him through. + +You never saw a child in convulsions? Well, you don’t want to. It must +be only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes; and half an +hour afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you, +or stretched out dead. It shook me up a lot. I was always pretty +high-strung and sensitive. After Jim took the first fit, every time he +cried, or turned over, or stretched out in the night, I’d jump: I was +always feeling his forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish, or +feeling his limbs to see if he was ‘limp’ yet. Mary and I often laughed +about it--afterwards. I tried sleeping in another room, but for nights +after Jim’s first attack I’d be just dozing off into a sound sleep, +when I’d hear him scream, as plain as could be, and I’d hear Mary cry, +‘Joe!--Joe!’--short, sharp, and terrible--and I’d be up and into their +room like a shot, only to find them sleeping peacefully. Then I’d feel +Jim’s head and his breathing for signs of convulsions, see to the fire +and water, and go back to bed and try to sleep. For the first few nights +I was like that all night, and I’d feel relieved when daylight came. +I’d be in first thing to see if they were all right; then I’d sleep till +dinner-time if it was Sunday or I had no work. But then I was run down +about that time: I was worried about some money for a wool-shed I put up +and never got paid for; and, besides, I’d been pretty wild before I met +Mary. + +I was fighting hard then--struggling for something better. Both Mary and +I were born to better things, and that’s what made the life so hard for +us. + +Jim got on all right for a while: we used to watch him well, and have +his teeth lanced in time. + +It used to hurt and worry me to see how--just as he was getting fat +and rosy and like a natural happy child, and I’d feel proud to take him +out--a tooth would come along, and he’d get thin and white and pale and +bigger-eyed and old-fashioned. We’d say, ‘He’ll be safe when he gets his +eye-teeth’: but he didn’t get them till he was two; then, ‘He’ll be safe +when he gets his two-year-old teeth’: they didn’t come till he was going +on for three. + +He was a wonderful little chap--Yes, I know all about parents thinking +that their child is the best in the world. If your boy is small for his +age, friends will say that small children make big men; that he’s a +very bright, intelligent child, and that it’s better to have a bright, +intelligent child than a big, sleepy lump of fat. And if your boy is +dull and sleepy, they say that the dullest boys make the cleverest +men--and all the rest of it. I never took any notice of that sort of +clatter--took it for what it was worth; but, all the same, I don’t +think I ever saw such a child as Jim was when he turned two. He was +everybody’s favourite. They spoilt him rather. I had my own ideas about +bringing up a child. I reckoned Mary was too soft with Jim. She’d say, +‘Put that’ (whatever it was) ‘out of Jim’s reach, will you, Joe?’ and +I’d say, ‘No! leave it there, and make him understand he’s not to have +it. Make him have his meals without any nonsense, and go to bed at a +regular hour,’ I’d say. Mary and I had many a breeze over Jim. She’d +say that I forgot he was only a baby: but I held that a baby could be +trained from the first week; and I believe I was right. + +But, after all, what are you to do? You’ll see a boy that was brought up +strict turn out a scamp; and another that was dragged up anyhow (by the +hair of the head, as the saying is) turn out well. Then, again, when +a child is delicate--and you might lose him any day--you don’t like to +spank him, though he might be turning out a little fiend, as delicate +children often do. Suppose you gave a child a hammering, and the same +night he took convulsions, or something, and died--how’d you feel about +it? You never know what a child is going to take, any more than you can +tell what some women are going to say or do. + +I was very fond of Jim, and we were great chums. Sometimes I’d sit +and wonder what the deuce he was thinking about, and often, the way he +talked, he’d make me uneasy. When he was two he wanted a pipe above all +things, and I’d get him a clean new clay and he’d sit by my side, on the +edge of the verandah, or on a log of the wood-heap, in the cool of the +evening, and suck away at his pipe, and try to spit when he saw me do +it. He seemed to understand that a cold empty pipe wasn’t quite the +thing, yet to have the sense to know that he couldn’t smoke tobacco +yet: he made the best he could of things. And if he broke a clay pipe +he wouldn’t have a new one, and there’d be a row; the old one had to be +mended up, somehow, with string or wire. If I got my hair cut, he’d +want his cut too; and it always troubled him to see me shave--as if he +thought there must be something wrong somewhere, else he ought to have +to be shaved too. I lathered him one day, and pretended to shave him: +he sat through it as solemn as an owl, but didn’t seem to appreciate +it--perhaps he had sense enough to know that it couldn’t possibly be the +real thing. He felt his face, looked very hard at the lather I scraped +off, and whimpered, ‘No blood, daddy!’ + +I used to cut myself a good deal: I was always impatient over shaving. + +Then he went in to interview his mother about it. She understood his +lingo better than I did. + +But I wasn’t always at ease with him. Sometimes he’d sit looking into +the fire, with his head on one side, and I’d watch him and wonder what +he was thinking about (I might as well have wondered what a Chinaman +was thinking about) till he seemed at least twenty years older than me: +sometimes, when I moved or spoke, he’d glance round just as if to see +what that old fool of a dadda of his was doing now. + +I used to have a fancy that there was something Eastern, or +Asiatic--something older than our civilisation or religion--about +old-fashioned children. Once I started to explain my idea to a woman I +thought would understand--and as it happened she had an old-fashioned +child, with very slant eyes--a little tartar he was too. I suppose +it was the sight of him that unconsciously reminded me of my infernal +theory, and set me off on it, without warning me. Anyhow, it got me +mixed up in an awful row with the woman and her husband--and all their +tribe. It wasn’t an easy thing to explain myself out of it, and the row +hasn’t been fixed up yet. There were some Chinamen in the district. + +I took a good-size fencing contract, the frontage of a ten-mile paddock, +near Gulgong, and did well out of it. The railway had got as far as the +Cudgeegong river--some twenty miles from Gulgong and two hundred +from the coast--and ‘carrying’ was good then. I had a couple of +draught-horses, that I worked in the tip-drays when I was tank-sinking, +and one or two others running in the Bush. I bought a broken-down waggon +cheap, tinkered it up myself--christened it ‘The Same Old Thing’--and +started carrying from the railway terminus through Gulgong and along the +bush roads and tracks that branch out fanlike through the scrubs to the +one-pub towns and sheep and cattle stations out there in the howling +wilderness. It wasn’t much of a team. There were the two heavy horses +for ‘shafters’; a stunted colt, that I’d bought out of the pound for +thirty shillings; a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with +points like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with the +grit of an old washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along +in Cob & Co.’s mail-coach in his time. I had a couple there that didn’t +belong to me: I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather. +And I had all sorts of harness, that I mended and fixed up myself. It +was a mixed team, but I took light stuff, got through pretty quick, and +freight rates were high. So I got along. + +Before this, whenever I made a few pounds I’d sink a shaft somewhere, +prospecting for gold; but Mary never let me rest till she talked me out +of that. + +I made up my mind to take on a small selection farm--that an old mate of +mine had fenced in and cleared, and afterwards chucked up--about thirty +miles out west of Gulgong, at a place called Lahey’s Creek. (The places +were all called Lahey’s Creek, or Spicer’s Flat, or Murphy’s Flat, or +Ryan’s Crossing, or some such name--round there.) I reckoned I’d have +a run for the horses and be able to grow a bit of feed. I always had a +dread of taking Mary and the children too far away from a doctor--or a +good woman neighbour; but there were some people came to live on Lahey’s +Creek, and besides, there was a young brother of Mary’s--a young scamp +(his name was Jim, too, and we called him ‘Jimmy’ at first to make room +for our Jim--he hated the name ‘Jimmy’ or James). He came to live with +us--without asking--and I thought he’d find enough work at Lahey’s +Creek to keep him out of mischief. He wasn’t to be depended on much--he +thought nothing of riding off, five hundred miles or so, ‘to have a look +at the country’--but he was fond of Mary, and he’d stay by her till I +got some one else to keep her company while I was on the road. He would +be a protection against ‘sundowners’ or any shearers who happened to +wander that way in the ‘D.T.’s’ after a spree. Mary had a married sister +come to live at Gulgong just before we left, and nothing would suit her +and her husband but we must leave little Jim with them for a month or +so--till we got settled down at Lahey’s Creek. They were newly married. + +Mary was to have driven into Gulgong, in the spring-cart, at the end +of the month, and taken Jim home; but when the time came she wasn’t too +well--and, besides, the tyres of the cart were loose, and I hadn’t time +to get them cut, so we let Jim’s time run on a week or so longer, till I +happened to come out through Gulgong from the river with a small load of +flour for Lahey’s Creek way. The roads were good, the weather grand--no +chance of it raining, and I had a spare tarpaulin if it did--I would +only camp out one night; so I decided to take Jim home with me. + +Jim was turning three then, and he was a cure. He was so old-fashioned +that he used to frighten me sometimes--I’d almost think that there was +something supernatural about him; though, of course, I never took any +notice of that rot about some children being too old-fashioned to live. +There’s always the ghoulish old hag (and some not so old nor haggish +either) who’ll come round and shake up young parents with such croaks +as, ‘You’ll never rear that child--he’s too bright for his age.’ To the +devil with them! I say. + +But I really thought that Jim was too intelligent for his age, and I +often told Mary that he ought to be kept back, and not let talk too much +to old diggers and long lanky jokers of Bushmen who rode in and hung +their horses outside my place on Sunday afternoons. + +I don’t believe in parents talking about their own children +everlastingly--you get sick of hearing them; and their kids are +generally little devils, and turn out larrikins as likely as not. + +But, for all that, I really think that Jim, when he was three years old, +was the most wonderful little chap, in every way, that I ever saw. + +For the first hour or so, along the road, he was telling me all about +his adventures at his auntie’s. + +‘But they spoilt me too much, dad,’ he said, as solemn as a native bear. +‘An’ besides, a boy ought to stick to his parrans!’ + +I was taking out a cattle-pup for a drover I knew, and the pup took up a +good deal of Jim’s time. + +Sometimes he’d jolt me, the way he talked; and other times I’d have +to turn away my head and cough, or shout at the horses, to keep from +laughing outright. And once, when I was taken that way, he said-- + +‘What are you jerking your shoulders and coughing, and grunting, and +going on that way for, dad? Why don’t you tell me something?’ + +‘Tell you what, Jim?’ + +‘Tell me some talk.’ + +So I told him all the talk I could think of. And I had to brighten up, +I can tell you, and not draw too much on my imagination--for Jim was a +terror at cross-examination when the fit took him; and he didn’t think +twice about telling you when he thought you were talking nonsense. Once +he said-- + +‘I’m glad you took me home with you, dad. You’ll get to know Jim.’ + +‘What!’ I said. + +‘You’ll get to know Jim.’ + +‘But don’t I know you already?’ + +‘No, you don’t. You never has time to know Jim at home.’ + +And, looking back, I saw that it was cruel true. I had known in my heart +all along that this was the truth; but it came to me like a blow from +Jim. You see, it had been a hard struggle for the last year or so; and +when I was home for a day or two I was generally too busy, or too tired +and worried, or full of schemes for the future, to take much notice of +Jim. Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes. ‘You never take notice +of the child,’ she’d say. ‘You could surely find a few minutes of an +evening. What’s the use of always worrying and brooding? Your brain will +go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it, it will teach you a +lesson. You’ll be an old man, and Jim a young one, before you realise +that you had a child once. Then it will be too late.’ + +This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with +her, because I knew it all too well. I never worried for myself--only +for Mary and the children. And often, as the days went by, I said to +myself, ‘I’ll take more notice of Jim and give Mary more of my time, +just as soon as I can see things clear ahead a bit.’ And the hard days +went on, and the weeks, and the months, and the years---- Ah, well! + +Mary used to say, when things would get worse, ‘Why don’t you talk +to me, Joe? Why don’t you tell me your thoughts, instead of shutting +yourself up in yourself and brooding--eating your heart out? It’s hard +for me: I get to think you’re tired of me, and selfish. I might be cross +and speak sharp to you when you are in trouble. How am I to know, if you +don’t tell me?’ + +But I didn’t think she’d understand. + +And so, getting acquainted, and chumming and dozing, with the gums +closing over our heads here and there, and the ragged patches of +sunlight and shade passing up, over the horses, over us, on the front of +the load, over the load, and down on to the white, dusty road again--Jim +and I got along the lonely Bush road and over the ridges, some fifteen +miles before sunset, and camped at Ryan’s Crossing on Sandy Creek for +the night. I got the horses out and took the harness off. Jim wanted +badly to help me, but I made him stay on the load; for one of the +horses--a vicious, red-eyed chestnut--was a kicker: he’d broken a +man’s leg. I got the feed-bags stretched across the shafts, and the +chaff-and-corn into them; and there stood the horses all round with +their rumps north, south, and west, and their heads between the shafts, +munching and switching their tails. We use double shafts, you know, for +horse-teams--two pairs side by side,--and prop them up, and stretch bags +between them, letting the bags sag to serve as feed-boxes. I threw the +spare tarpaulin over the wheels on one side, letting about half of +it lie on the ground in case of damp, and so making a floor and a +break-wind. I threw down bags and the blankets and ‘possum rug against +the wheel to make a camp for Jim and the cattle-pup, and got a gin-case +we used for a tucker-box, the frying-pan and billy down, and made a good +fire at a log close handy, and soon everything was comfortable. Ryan’s +Crossing was a grand camp. I stood with my pipe in my mouth, my hands +behind my back, and my back to the fire, and took the country in. + +Reedy Creek came down along a western spur of the range: the banks here +were deep and green, and the water ran clear over the granite bars, +boulders, and gravel. Behind us was a dreary flat covered with those +gnarled, grey-barked, dry-rotted ‘native apple-trees’ (about as much +like apple-trees as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit +of sand-dusty road that I was always glad to get over in wet weather. +To the left on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs +croaking, and across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended +in steep ‘sidings’ coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road +that skirted them, running on west up over a ‘saddle’ in the ridges and +on towards Dubbo. The road by Lahey’s Creek to a place called Cobborah +branched off, through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats, to the +left, just beyond the crossing: all these fanlike branch tracks from the +Cudgeegong were inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line, and +so they gave small carriers a chance, now that Cob & Co.’s coaches and +the big teams and vans had shifted out of the main western terminus. +There were tall she-oaks all along the creek, and a clump of big ones +over a deep water-hole just above the crossing. The creek oaks have +rough barked trunks, like English elms, but are much taller, and higher +to the branches--and the leaves are reedy; Kendel, the Australian +poet, calls them the ‘she-oak harps Aeolian’. Those trees are always +sigh-sigh-sighing--more of a sigh than a sough or the ‘whoosh’ of +gum-trees in the wind. You always hear them sighing, even when you can’t +feel any wind. It’s the same with telegraph wires: put your head against +a telegraph-post on a dead, still day, and you’ll hear and feel the +far-away roar of the wires. But then the oaks are not connected with the +distance, where there might be wind; and they don’t ROAR in a gale, only +sigh louder and softer according to the wind, and never seem to go above +or below a certain pitch,--like a big harp with all the strings the +same. I used to have a theory that those creek oaks got the wind’s voice +telephoned to them, so to speak, through the ground. + +I happened to look down, and there was Jim (I thought he was on the +tarpaulin, playing with the pup): he was standing close beside me with +his legs wide apart, his hands behind his back, and his back to the +fire. + +He held his head a little on one side, and there was such an old, old, +wise expression in his big brown eyes--just as if he’d been a child for +a hundred years or so, or as though he were listening to those oaks and +understanding them in a fatherly sort of way. + +‘Dad!’ he said presently--‘Dad! do you think I’ll ever grow up to be a +man?’ + +‘Wh--why, Jim?’ I gasped. + +‘Because I don’t want to.’ + +I couldn’t think of anything against this. It made me uneasy. But I +remembered *I* used to have a childish dread of growing up to be a man. + +‘Jim,’ I said, to break the silence, ‘do you hear what the she-oaks +say?’ + +‘No, I don’t. Is they talking?’ + +‘Yes,’ I said, without thinking. + +‘What is they saying?’ he asked. + +I took the bucket and went down to the creek for some water for tea. I +thought Jim would follow with a little tin billy he had, but he didn’t: +when I got back to the fire he was again on the ‘possum rug, comforting +the pup. I fried some bacon and eggs that I’d brought out with me. Jim +sang out from the waggon-- + +‘Don’t cook too much, dad--I mightn’t be hungry.’ + +I got the tin plates and pint-pots and things out on a clean new +flour-bag, in honour of Jim, and dished up. He was leaning back on the +rug looking at the pup in a listless sort of way. I reckoned he was +tired out, and pulled the gin-case up close to him for a table and put +his plate on it. But he only tried a mouthful or two, and then he said-- + +‘I ain’t hungry, dad! You’ll have to eat it all.’ + +It made me uneasy--I never liked to see a child of mine turn from his +food. They had given him some tinned salmon in Gulgong, and I was afraid +that that was upsetting him. I was always against tinned muck. + +‘Sick, Jim?’ I asked. + +‘No, dad, I ain’t sick; I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’ + +‘Have some tea, sonny?’ + +‘Yes, dad.’ + +I gave him some tea, with some milk in it that I’d brought in a bottle +from his aunt’s for him. He took a sip or two and then put the pint-pot +on the gin-case. + +‘Jim’s tired, dad,’ he said. + +I made him lie down while I fixed up a camp for the night. It had turned +a bit chilly, so I let the big tarpaulin down all round--it was made to +cover a high load, the flour in the waggon didn’t come above the rail, +so the tarpaulin came down well on to the ground. I fixed Jim up a +comfortable bed under the tail-end of the waggon: when I went to lift +him in he was lying back, looking up at the stars in a half-dreamy, +half-fascinated way that I didn’t like. Whenever Jim was extra +old-fashioned, or affectionate, there was danger. + +‘How do you feel now, sonny?’ + +It seemed a minute before he heard me and turned from the stars. + +‘Jim’s better, dad.’ Then he said something like, ‘The stars are looking +at me.’ I thought he was half asleep. I took off his jacket and boots, +and carried him in under the waggon and made him comfortable for the +night. + +‘Kiss me ‘night-night, daddy,’ he said. + +I’d rather he hadn’t asked me--it was a bad sign. As I was going to the +fire he called me back. + +‘What is it, Jim?’ + +‘Get me my things and the cattle-pup, please, daddy.’ + +I was scared now. His things were some toys and rubbish he’d brought +from Gulgong, and I remembered, the last time he had convulsions, he +took all his toys and a kitten to bed with him. And ‘’night-night’ and +‘daddy’ were two-year-old language to Jim. I’d thought he’d forgotten +those words--he seemed to be going back. + +‘Are you quite warm enough, Jim?’ + +‘Yes, dad.’ + +I started to walk up and down--I always did this when I was extra +worried. + +I was frightened now about Jim, though I tried to hide the fact from +myself. Presently he called me again. + +‘What is it, Jim?’ + +‘Take the blankets off me, fahver--Jim’s sick!’ (They’d been teaching +him to say father.) + +I was scared now. I remembered a neighbour of ours had a little girl die +(she swallowed a pin), and when she was going she said-- + +‘Take the blankets off me, muvver--I’m dying.’ + +And I couldn’t get that out of my head. + +I threw back a fold of the ‘possum rug, and felt Jim’s head--he seemed +cool enough. + +‘Where do you feel bad, sonny?’ + +No answer for a while; then he said suddenly, but in a voice as if he +were talking in his sleep-- + +‘Put my boots on, please, daddy. I want to go home to muvver!’ + +I held his hand, and comforted him for a while; then he slept--in a +restless, feverish sort of way. + +I got the bucket I used for water for the horses and stood it over the +fire; I ran to the creek with the big kerosene-tin bucket and got +it full of cold water and stood it handy. I got the spade (we always +carried one to dig wheels out of bogs in wet weather) and turned a +corner of the tarpaulin back, dug a hole, and trod the tarpaulin down +into the hole, to serve for a bath, in case of the worst. I had a tin of +mustard, and meant to fight a good round for Jim, if death came along. + +I stooped in under the tail-board of the waggon and felt Jim. His head +was burning hot, and his skin parched and dry as a bone. + +Then I lost nerve and started blundering backward and forward between +the waggon and the fire, and repeating what I’d heard Mary say the last +time we fought for Jim: ‘God! don’t take my child! God! don’t take my +boy!’ I’d never had much faith in doctors, but, my God! I wanted one +then. The nearest was fifteen miles away. + +I threw back my head and stared up at the branches, in desperation; +and--Well, I don’t ask you to take much stock in this, though most old +Bushmen will believe anything of the Bush by night; and--Now, it might +have been that I was all unstrung, or it might have been a patch of sky +outlined in the gently moving branches, or the blue smoke rising up. But +I saw the figure of a woman, all white, come down, down, nearly to the +limbs of the trees, point on up the main road, and then float up and up +and vanish, still pointing. I thought Mary was dead! Then it flashed on +me---- + +Four or five miles up the road, over the ‘saddle’, was an old shanty +that had been a half-way inn before the Great Western Line got round as +far as Dubbo and took the coach traffic off those old Bush roads. A man +named Brighten lived there. He was a selector; did a little farming, +and as much sly-grog selling as he could. He was married--but it wasn’t +that: I’d thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out, spiritless +woman, and both were pretty ‘ratty’ from hardship and loneliness--they +weren’t likely to be of any use to me. But it was this: I’d heard talk, +among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten’s wife who’d gone +out to live with them lately: she’d been a hospital matron in the city, +they said; and there were yarns about her. Some said she got the sack +for exposing the doctors--or carrying on with them--I didn’t remember +which. The fact of a city woman going out to live in such a place, with +such people, was enough to make talk among women in a town twenty miles +away, but then there must have been something extra about her, else +Bushmen wouldn’t have talked and carried her name so far; and I wanted +a woman out of the ordinary now. I even reasoned this way, thinking +like lightning, as I knelt over Jim between the big back wheels of the +waggon. + +I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack, following the +team. In a minute I had her saddled and bridled; I tied the end of a +half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end and dumped it on to +the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim; I wrapped him in a blanket, +and scrambled into the saddle with him. + +The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank, clattering and +splashing over the crossing, and struggling up the opposite bank to the +level. The mare, as I told you, was an old racer, but broken-winded--she +must have run without wind after the first half mile. She had the old +racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company I’d have +to pull her hard else she’d race the other horse or burst. She ran low +fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode. She ran like +wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then--like a railway +carriage--when she settled down to it. + +The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose, and I let the +bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way. Let the +strongest man, who isn’t used to it, hold a baby in one position for +five minutes--and Jim was fairly heavy. But I never felt the ache in my +arms that night--it must have gone before I was in a fit state of mind +to feel it. And at home I’d often growled about being asked to hold the +baby for a few minutes. I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby +at the same time. It was a ghostly moonlight night. There’s no timber in +the world so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight--or just about +daybreak. The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged, +twisted boughs; the ghostly blue-white bark of the ‘white-box’ trees; a +dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out here +and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road that +made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked +corpse laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by +moonlight--every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one: +you have to trust to your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk of +a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off, would +start out like a ghost from the dark Bush. And dew or frost glistening +on these things, according to the season. Now and again a great grey +kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch down by the road, would +start with a ‘thump-thump’, and away up the siding. + +The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night--all going my way--and being +left behind by the mare. Once I stopped to look at Jim: I just sat +back and the mare ‘propped’--she’d been a stock-horse, and was used +to ‘cutting-out’. I felt Jim’s hands and forehead; he was in a burning +fever. I bent forward, and the old mare settled down to it again. I kept +saying out loud--and Mary and me often laughed about it (afterwards): +‘He’s limp yet!--Jim’s limp yet!’ (the words seemed jerked out of me by +sheer fright)--‘He’s limp yet!’ till the mare’s feet took it up. Then, +just when I thought she was doing her best and racing her hardest, she +suddenly started forward, like a cable tram gliding along on its own and +the grip put on suddenly. It was just what she’d do when I’d be riding +alone and a strange horse drew up from behind--the old racing instinct. +I FELT the thing too! I felt as if a strange horse WAS there! And +then--the words just jerked out of me by sheer funk--I started saying, +‘Death is riding to-night!... Death is racing to-night!... Death is +riding to-night!’ till the hoofs took that up. And I believe the old +mare felt the black horse at her side and was going to beat him or break +her heart. + +I was mad with anxiety and fright: I remember I kept saying, ‘I’ll be +kinder to Mary after this! I’ll take more notice of Jim!’ and the rest +of it. + +I don’t know how the old mare got up the last ‘pinch’. She must have +slackened pace, but I never noticed it: I just held Jim up to me and +gripped the saddle with my knees--I remember the saddle jerked from the +desperate jumps of her till I thought the girth would go. We topped the +gap and were going down into a gully they called Dead Man’s Hollow, and +there, at the back of a ghostly clearing that opened from the road +where there were some black-soil springs, was a long, low, oblong +weatherboard-and-shingle building, with blind, broken windows in the +gable-ends, and a wide steep verandah roof slanting down almost to the +level of the window-sills--there was something sinister about it, I +thought--like the hat of a jail-bird slouched over his eyes. The place +looked both deserted and haunted. I saw no light, but that was because +of the moonlight outside. The mare turned in at the corner of the +clearing to take a short cut to the shanty, and, as she struggled across +some marshy ground, my heart kept jerking out the words, ‘It’s deserted! +They’ve gone away! It’s deserted!’ The mare went round to the back and +pulled up between the back door and a big bark-and-slab kitchen. Some +one shouted from inside-- + +‘Who’s there?’ + +‘It’s me. Joe Wilson. I want your sister-in-law--I’ve got the boy--he’s +sick and dying!’ + +Brighten came out, pulling up his moleskins. ‘What boy?’ he asked. + +‘Here, take him,’ I shouted, ‘and let me get down.’ + +‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked Brighten, and he seemed to hang +back. And just as I made to get my leg over the saddle, Jim’s head went +back over my arm, he stiffened, and I saw his eyeballs turned up and +glistening in the moonlight. + +I felt cold all over then and sick in the stomach--but CLEAR-HEADED in +a way: strange, wasn’t it? I don’t know why I didn’t get down and rush +into the kitchen to get a bath ready. I only felt as if the worst had +come, and I wished it were over and gone. I even thought of Mary and the +funeral. + +Then a woman ran out of the house--a big, hard-looking woman. She had +on a wrapper of some sort, and her feet were bare. She laid her hand on +Jim, looked at his face, and then snatched him from me and ran into the +kitchen--and me down and after her. As great good luck would have it, +they had some dirty clothes on to boil in a kerosene tin--dish-cloths or +something. + +Brighten’s sister-in-law dragged a tub out from under the table, +wrenched the bucket off the hook, and dumped in the water, dish-cloths +and all, snatched a can of cold water from a corner, dashed that in, +and felt the water with her hand--holding Jim up to her hip all the +time--and I won’t say how he looked. She stood him in the tub and +started dashing water over him, tearing off his clothes between the +splashes. + +‘Here, that tin of mustard--there on the shelf!’ she shouted to me. + +She knocked the lid off the tin on the edge of the tub, and went on +splashing and spanking Jim. + +It seemed an eternity. And I? Why, I never thought clearer in my life. I +felt cold-blooded--I felt as if I’d like an excuse to go outside till +it was all over. I thought of Mary and the funeral--and wished that that +was past. All this in a flash, as it were. I felt that it would be a +great relief, and only wished the funeral was months past. I felt--well, +altogether selfish. I only thought for myself. + +Brighten’s sister-in-law splashed and spanked him hard--hard enough to +break his back I thought, and--after about half an hour it seemed--the +end came: Jim’s limbs relaxed, he slipped down into the tub, and the +pupils of his eyes came down. They seemed dull and expressionless, like +the eyes of a new baby, but he was back for the world again. + +I dropped on the stool by the table. + +‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s all over now. I wasn’t going to let +him die.’ I was only thinking, ‘Well it’s over now, but it will come on +again. I wish it was over for good. I’m tired of it.’ + +She called to her sister, Mrs Brighten, a washed-out, helpless little +fool of a woman, who’d been running in and out and whimpering all the +time-- + +‘Here, Jessie! bring the new white blanket off my bed. And you, +Brighten, take some of that wood off the fire, and stuff something in +that hole there to stop the draught.’ + +Brighten--he was a nuggety little hairy man with no expression to be +seen for whiskers--had been running in with sticks and back logs from +the wood-heap. He took the wood out, stuffed up the crack, and went +inside and brought out a black bottle--got a cup from the shelf, and put +both down near my elbow. + +Mrs Brighten started to get some supper or breakfast, or whatever it +was, ready. She had a clean cloth, and set the table tidily. I noticed +that all the tins were polished bright (old coffee- and mustard-tins +and the like, that they used instead of sugar-basins and tea-caddies and +salt-cellars), and the kitchen was kept as clean as possible. She was +all right at little things. I knew a haggard, worked-out Bushwoman who +put her whole soul--or all she’d got left--into polishing old tins till +they dazzled your eyes. + +I didn’t feel inclined for corned beef and damper, and post-and-rail +tea. So I sat and squinted, when I thought she wasn’t looking, at +Brighten’s sister-in-law. She was a big woman, her hands and feet were +big, but well-shaped and all in proportion--they fitted her. She was a +handsome woman--about forty I should think. She had a square chin, and +a straight thin-lipped mouth--straight save for a hint of a turn down +at the corners, which I fancied (and I have strange fancies) had been a +sign of weakness in the days before she grew hard. There was no sign +of weakness now. She had hard grey eyes and blue-black hair. She hadn’t +spoken yet. She didn’t ask me how the boy took ill or I got there, or +who or what I was--at least not until the next evening at tea-time. + +She sat upright with Jim wrapped in the blanket and laid across her +knees, with one hand under his neck and the other laid lightly on him, +and she just rocked him gently. + +She sat looking hard and straight before her, just as I’ve seen a tired +needlewoman sit with her work in her lap, and look away back into the +past. And Jim might have been the work in her lap, for all she seemed to +think of him. Now and then she knitted her forehead and blinked. + +Suddenly she glanced round and said--in a tone as if I was her husband +and she didn’t think much of me-- + +‘Why don’t you eat something?’ + +‘Beg pardon?’ + +‘Eat something!’ + +I drank some tea, and sneaked another look at her. I was beginning to +feel more natural, and wanted Jim again, now that the colour was coming +back into his face, and he didn’t look like an unnaturally stiff and +staring corpse. I felt a lump rising, and wanted to thank her. I sneaked +another look at her. + +She was staring straight before her,--I never saw a woman’s face change +so suddenly--I never saw a woman’s eyes so haggard and hopeless. Then +her great chest heaved twice, I heard her draw a long shuddering breath, +like a knocked-out horse, and two great tears dropped from her wide +open eyes down her cheeks like rain-drops on a face of stone. And in the +firelight they seemed tinged with blood. + +I looked away quick, feeling full up myself. And presently (I hadn’t +seen her look round) she said-- + +‘Go to bed.’ + +‘Beg pardon?’ (Her face was the same as before the tears.) + +‘Go to bed. There’s a bed made for you inside on the sofa.’ + +‘But--the team--I must----’ + +‘What?’ + +‘The team. I left it at the camp. I must look to it.’ + +‘Oh! Well, Brighten will ride down and bring it up in the morning--or +send the half-caste. Now you go to bed, and get a good rest. The boy +will be all right. I’ll see to that.’ + +I went out--it was a relief to get out--and looked to the mare. Brighten +had got her some corn* and chaff in a candle-box, but she couldn’t eat +yet. She just stood or hung resting one hind-leg and then the other, +with her nose over the box--and she sobbed. I put my arms round her neck +and my face down on her ragged mane, and cried for the second time since +I was a boy. + + * Maize or Indian corn--wheat is never called corn in + Australia.-- + +As I started to go in I heard Brighten’s sister-in-law say, suddenly and +sharply-- + +‘Take THAT away, Jessie.’ + +And presently I saw Mrs Brighten go into the house with the black +bottle. + +The moon had gone behind the range. I stood for a minute between the +house and the kitchen and peeped in through the kitchen window. + +She had moved away from the fire and sat near the table. She bent over +Jim and held him up close to her and rocked herself to and fro. + +I went to bed and slept till the next afternoon. I woke just in time +to hear the tail-end of a conversation between Jim and Brighten’s +sister-in-law. He was asking her out to our place and she promising to +come. + +‘And now,’ says Jim, ‘I want to go home to “muffer” in “The Same Ol’ +Fling”.’ + +‘What?’ + +Jim repeated. + +‘Oh! “The Same Old Thing”,--the waggon.’ + +The rest of the afternoon I poked round the gullies with old Brighten, +looking at some ‘indications’ (of the existence of gold) he had found. +It was no use trying to ‘pump’ him concerning his sister-in-law; +Brighten was an ‘old hand’, and had learned in the old Bush-ranging and +cattle-stealing days to know nothing about other people’s business. And, +by the way, I noticed then that the more you talk and listen to a bad +character, the more you lose your dislike for him. + +I never saw such a change in a woman as in Brighten’s sister-in-law +that evening. She was bright and jolly, and seemed at least ten years +younger. She bustled round and helped her sister to get tea ready. She +rooted out some old china that Mrs Brighten had stowed away somewhere, +and set the table as I seldom saw it set out there. She propped Jim up +with pillows, and laughed and played with him like a great girl. She +described Sydney and Sydney life as I’d never heard it described before; +and she knew as much about the Bush and old digging days as I did. She +kept old Brighten and me listening and laughing till nearly midnight. +And she seemed quick to understand everything when I talked. If she +wanted to explain anything that we hadn’t seen, she wouldn’t say that it +was ‘like a--like a’--and hesitate (you know what I mean); she’d hit the +right thing on the head at once. A squatter with a very round, flaming +red face and a white cork hat had gone by in the afternoon: she said +it was ‘like a mushroom on the rising moon.’ She gave me a lot of good +hints about children. + +But she was quiet again next morning. I harnessed up, and she dressed +Jim and gave him his breakfast, and made a comfortable place for him +on the load with the ‘possum rug and a spare pillow. She got up on the +wheel to do it herself. Then was the awkward time. I’d half start to +speak to her, and then turn away and go fixing up round the horses, and +then make another false start to say good-bye. At last she took Jim up +in her arms and kissed him, and lifted him on the wheel; but he put his +arms tight round her neck, and kissed her--a thing Jim seldom did +with anybody, except his mother, for he wasn’t what you’d call an +affectionate child,--he’d never more than offer his cheek to me, in his +old-fashioned way. I’d got up the other side of the load to take him +from her. + +‘Here, take him,’ she said. + +I saw his mouth twitching as I lifted him. Jim seldom cried nowadays--no +matter how much he was hurt. I gained some time fixing Jim comfortable. + +‘You’d better make a start,’ she said. ‘You want to get home early with +that boy.’ + +I got down and went round to where she stood. I held out my hand and +tried to speak, but my voice went like an ungreased waggon wheel, and I +gave it up, and only squeezed her hand. + +‘That’s all right,’ she said; then tears came into her eyes, and she +suddenly put her hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek. ‘You be +off--you’re only a boy yourself. Take care of that boy; be kind to your +wife, and take care of yourself.’ + +‘Will you come to see us?’ + +‘Some day,’ she said. + +I started the horses, and looked round once more. She was looking up at +Jim, who was waving his hand to her from the top of the load. And I saw +that haggard, hungry, hopeless look come into her eyes in spite of the +tears. + + +I smoothed over that story and shortened it a lot, when I told it to +Mary--I didn’t want to upset her. But, some time after I brought Jim +home from Gulgong, and while I was at home with the team for a few days, +nothing would suit Mary but she must go over to Brighten’s shanty and +see Brighten’s sister-in-law. So James drove her over one morning in the +spring-cart: it was a long way, and they stayed at Brighten’s overnight +and didn’t get back till late the next afternoon. I’d got the place in a +pig-muck, as Mary said, ‘doing for’ myself, and I was having a snooze +on the sofa when they got back. The first thing I remember was some one +stroking my head and kissing me, and I heard Mary saying, ‘My poor boy! +My poor old boy!’ + +I sat up with a jerk. I thought that Jim had gone off again. But it +seems that Mary was only referring to me. Then she started to pull grey +hairs out of my head and put ‘em in an empty match-box--to see how many +she’d get. She used to do this when she felt a bit soft. I don’t +know what she said to Brighten’s sister-in-law or what Brighten’s +sister-in-law said to her, but Mary was extra gentle for the next few +days. + + + + +‘Water Them Geraniums’. + + + + +I. A Lonely Track. + + +The time Mary and I shifted out into the Bush from Gulgong to ‘settle on +the land’ at Lahey’s Creek. + +I’d sold the two tip-drays that I used for tank-sinking and dam-making, +and I took the traps out in the waggon on top of a small load of rations +and horse-feed that I was taking to a sheep-station out that way. Mary +drove out in the spring-cart. You remember we left little Jim with +his aunt in Gulgong till we got settled down. I’d sent James (Mary’s +brother) out the day before, on horseback, with two or three cows and +some heifers and steers and calves we had, and I’d told him to clean up +a bit, and make the hut as bright and cheerful as possible before Mary +came. + +We hadn’t much in the way of furniture. There was the four-poster cedar +bedstead that I bought before we were married, and Mary was rather proud +of it: it had ‘turned’ posts and joints that bolted together. There was +a plain hardwood table, that Mary called her ‘ironing-table’, upside +down on top of the load, with the bedding and blankets between the +legs; there were four of those common black kitchen-chairs--with apples +painted on the hard board backs--that we used for the parlour; there was +a cheap batten sofa with arms at the ends and turned rails between the +uprights of the arms (we were a little proud of the turned rails); and +there was the camp-oven, and the three-legged pot, and pans and buckets, +stuck about the load and hanging under the tail-board of the waggon. + +There was the little Wilcox & Gibb’s sewing-machine--my present to Mary +when we were married (and what a present, looking back to it!). There +was a cheap little rocking-chair, and a looking-glass and some +pictures that were presents from Mary’s friends and sister. She had her +mantel-shelf ornaments and crockery and nick-nacks packed away, in the +linen and old clothes, in a big tub made of half a cask, and a box +that had been Jim’s cradle. The live stock was a cat in one box, and in +another an old rooster, and three hens that formed cliques, two against +one, turn about, as three of the same sex will do all over the world. I +had my old cattle-dog, and of course a pup on the load--I always had a +pup that I gave away, or sold and didn’t get paid for, or had ‘touched’ +(stolen) as soon as it was old enough. James had his three spidery, +sneaking, thieving, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs with him. I was taking +out three months’ provisions in the way of ration-sugar, tea, flour, and +potatoes, &c. + +I started early, and Mary caught up to me at Ryan’s Crossing on Sandy +Creek, where we boiled the billy and had some dinner. + +Mary bustled about the camp and admired the scenery and talked too much, +for her, and was extra cheerful, and kept her face turned from me as +much as possible. I soon saw what was the matter. She’d been crying +to herself coming along the road. I thought it was all on account of +leaving little Jim behind for the first time. She told me that she +couldn’t make up her mind till the last moment to leave him, and that, +a mile or two along the road, she’d have turned back for him, only that +she knew her sister would laugh at her. She was always terribly anxious +about the children. + +We cheered each other up, and Mary drove with me the rest of the way +to the creek, along the lonely branch track, across native-apple-tree +flats. It was a dreary, hopeless track. There was no horizon, nothing +but the rough ashen trunks of the gnarled and stunted trees in all +directions, little or no undergrowth, and the ground, save for the +coarse, brownish tufts of dead grass, as bare as the road, for it was +a dry season: there had been no rain for months, and I wondered what I +should do with the cattle if there wasn’t more grass on the creek. + +In this sort of country a stranger might travel for miles without +seeming to have moved, for all the difference there is in the scenery. +The new tracks were ‘blazed’--that is, slices of bark cut off from both +sides of trees, within sight of each other, in a line, to mark the track +until the horses and wheel-marks made it plain. A smart Bushman, with +a sharp tomahawk, can blaze a track as he rides. But a Bushman a little +used to the country soon picks out differences amongst the trees, half +unconsciously as it were, and so finds his way about. + +Mary and I didn’t talk much along this track--we couldn’t have heard +each other very well, anyway, for the ‘clock-clock’ of the waggon and +the rattle of the cart over the hard lumpy ground. And I suppose we +both began to feel pretty dismal as the shadows lengthened. I’d noticed +lately that Mary and I had got out of the habit of talking to each +other--noticed it in a vague sort of way that irritated me (as vague +things will irritate one) when I thought of it. But then I thought, ‘It +won’t last long--I’ll make life brighter for her by-and-by.’ + +As we went along--and the track seemed endless--I got brooding, of +course, back into the past. And I feel now, when it’s too late, that +Mary must have been thinking that way too. I thought of my early +boyhood, of the hard life of ‘grubbin’’ and ‘milkin’’ and ‘fencin’’ and +‘ploughin’’ and ‘ring-barkin’’, &c., and all for nothing. The few months +at the little bark-school, with a teacher who couldn’t spell. The cursed +ambition or craving that tortured my soul as a boy--ambition or craving +for--I didn’t know what for! For something better and brighter, anyhow. +And I made the life harder by reading at night. + +It all passed before me as I followed on in the waggon, behind Mary in +the spring-cart. I thought of these old things more than I thought of +her. She had tried to help me to better things. And I tried too--I had +the energy of half-a-dozen men when I saw a road clear before me, +but shied at the first check. Then I brooded, or dreamed of making a +home--that one might call a home--for Mary--some day. Ah, well!---- + +And what was Mary thinking about, along the lonely, changeless miles? I +never thought of that. Of her kind, careless, gentleman father, perhaps. +Of her girlhood. Of her homes--not the huts and camps she lived in with +me. Of our future?--she used to plan a lot, and talk a good deal of our +future--but not lately. These things didn’t strike me at the time--I was +so deep in my own brooding. Did she think now--did she begin to feel +now that she had made a great mistake and thrown away her life, but must +make the best of it? This might have roused me, had I thought of it. But +whenever I thought Mary was getting indifferent towards me, I’d think, +‘I’ll soon win her back. We’ll be sweethearts again--when things +brighten up a bit.’ + +It’s an awful thing to me, now I look back to it, to think how far apart +we had grown, what strangers we were to each other. It seems, now, as +though we had been sweethearts long years before, and had parted, and +had never really met since. + +The sun was going down when Mary called out-- + +‘There’s our place, Joe!’ + +She hadn’t seen it before, and somehow it came new and with a shock to +me, who had been out here several times. Ahead, through the trees to +the right, was a dark green clump of the oaks standing out of the creek, +darker for the dead grey grass and blue-grey bush on the barren ridge in +the background. Across the creek (it was only a deep, narrow gutter--a +water-course with a chain of water-holes after rain), across on the +other bank, stood the hut, on a narrow flat between the spur and the +creek, and a little higher than this side. The land was much better than +on our old selection, and there was good soil along the creek on both +sides: I expected a rush of selectors out here soon. A few acres round +the hut was cleared and fenced in by a light two-rail fence of timber +split from logs and saplings. The man who took up this selection left it +because his wife died here. + +It was a small oblong hut built of split slabs, and he had roofed it +with shingles which he split in spare times. There was no verandah, but +I built one later on. At the end of the house was a big slab-and-bark +shed, bigger than the hut itself, with a kitchen, a skillion for tools, +harness, and horse-feed, and a spare bedroom partitioned off with sheets +of bark and old chaff-bags. The house itself was floored roughly, with +cracks between the boards; there were cracks between the slabs all +round--though he’d nailed strips of tin, from old kerosene-tins, over +some of them; the partitioned-off bedroom was lined with old chaff-bags +with newspapers pasted over them for wall-paper. There was no ceiling, +calico or otherwise, and we could see the round pine rafters and +battens, and the under ends of the shingles. But ceilings make a hut hot +and harbour insects and reptiles--snakes sometimes. There was one +small glass window in the ‘dining-room’ with three panes and a sheet +of greased paper, and the rest were rough wooden shutters. There was a +pretty good cow-yard and calf-pen, and--that was about all. There was +no dam or tank (I made one later on); there was a water-cask, with the +hoops falling off and the staves gaping, at the corner of the house, and +spouting, made of lengths of bent tin, ran round under the eaves. Water +from a new shingle roof is wine-red for a year or two, and water from +a stringy-bark roof is like tan-water for years. In dry weather the +selector had got his house water from a cask sunk in the gravel at +the bottom of the deepest water-hole in the creek. And the longer the +drought lasted, the farther he had to go down the creek for his water, +with a cask on a cart, and take his cows to drink, if he had any. Four, +five, six, or seven miles--even ten miles to water is nothing in some +places. + + +James hadn’t found himself called upon to do more than milk old ‘Spot’ +(the grandmother cow of our mob), pen the calf at night, make a fire +in the kitchen, and sweep out the house with a bough. He helped me +unharness and water and feed the horses, and then started to get the +furniture off the waggon and into the house. James wasn’t lazy--so +long as one thing didn’t last too long; but he was too uncomfortably +practical and matter-of-fact for me. Mary and I had some tea in the +kitchen. The kitchen was permanently furnished with a table of split +slabs, adzed smooth on top, and supported by four stakes driven into the +ground, a three-legged stool and a block of wood, and two long +stools made of half-round slabs (sapling trunks split in halves) with +auger-holes bored in the round side and sticks stuck into them for legs. +The floor was of clay; the chimney of slabs and tin; the fireplace +was about eight feet wide, lined with clay, and with a blackened pole +across, with sooty chains and wire hooks on it for the pots. + +Mary didn’t seem able to eat. She sat on the three-legged stool near the +fire, though it was warm weather, and kept her face turned from me. +Mary was still pretty, but not the little dumpling she had been: she was +thinner now. She had big dark hazel eyes that shone a little too much +when she was pleased or excited. I thought at times that there was +something very German about her expression; also something aristocratic +about the turn of her nose, which nipped in at the nostrils when she +spoke. There was nothing aristocratic about me. Mary was German in +figure and walk. I used sometimes to call her ‘Little Duchy’ and ‘Pigeon +Toes’. She had a will of her own, as shown sometimes by the obstinate +knit in her forehead between the eyes. + +Mary sat still by the fire, and presently I saw her chin tremble. + +‘What is it, Mary?’ + +She turned her face farther from me. I felt tired, disappointed, and +irritated--suffering from a reaction. + +‘Now, what is it, Mary?’ I asked; ‘I’m sick of this sort of thing. +Haven’t you got everything you wanted? You’ve had your own way. What’s +the matter with you now?’ + +‘You know very well, Joe.’ + +‘But I DON’T know,’ I said. I knew too well. + +She said nothing. + +‘Look here, Mary,’ I said, putting my hand on her shoulder, ‘don’t go on +like that; tell me what’s the matter?’ + +‘It’s only this,’ she said suddenly, ‘I can’t stand this life here; it +will kill me!’ + +I had a pannikin of tea in my hand, and I banged it down on the table. + +‘This is more than a man can stand!’ I shouted. ‘You know very well that +it was you that dragged me out here. You run me on to this! Why weren’t +you content to stay in Gulgong?’ + +‘And what sort of a place was Gulgong, Joe?’ asked Mary quietly. + +(I thought even then in a flash what sort of a place Gulgong was. A +wretched remnant of a town on an abandoned goldfield. One street, each +side of the dusty main road; three or four one-storey square brick +cottages with hip roofs of galvanised iron that glared in the heat--four +rooms and a passage--the police-station, bank-manager and schoolmaster’s +cottages, &c. Half-a-dozen tumble-down weather-board shanties--the three +pubs., the two stores, and the post-office. The town tailing off into +weather-board boxes with tin tops, and old bark huts--relics of the +digging days--propped up by many rotting poles. The men, when at home, +mostly asleep or droning over their pipes or hanging about the verandah +posts of the pubs., saying, ‘’Ullo, Bill!’ or ‘’Ullo, Jim!’--or +sometimes drunk. The women, mostly hags, who blackened each other’s and +girls’ characters with their tongues, and criticised the aristocracy’s +washing hung out on the line: ‘And the colour of the clothes! Does that +woman wash her clothes at all? or only soak ‘em and hang ‘em out?’--that +was Gulgong.) + +‘Well, why didn’t you come to Sydney, as I wanted you to?’ I asked Mary. + +‘You know very well, Joe,’ said Mary quietly. + +(I knew very well, but the knowledge only maddened me. I had had an idea +of getting a billet in one of the big wool-stores--I was a fair wool +expert--but Mary was afraid of the drink. I could keep well away from it +so long as I worked hard in the Bush. I had gone to Sydney twice since +I met Mary, once before we were married, and she forgave me when I came +back; and once afterwards. I got a billet there then, and was going to +send for her in a month. After eight weeks she raised the money somehow +and came to Sydney and brought me home. I got pretty low down that +time.) + +‘But, Mary,’ I said, ‘it would have been different this time. You would +have been with me. I can take a glass now or leave it alone.’ + +‘As long as you take a glass there is danger,’ she said. + +‘Well, what did you want to advise me to come out here for, if you can’t +stand it? Why didn’t you stay where you were?’ I asked. + +‘Well,’ she said, ‘why weren’t you more decided?’ + +I’d sat down, but I jumped to my feet then. + +‘Good God!’ I shouted, ‘this is more than any man can stand. I’ll chuck +it all up! I’m damned well sick and tired of the whole thing.’ + +‘So am I, Joe,’ said Mary wearily. + +We quarrelled badly then--that first hour in our new home. I know now +whose fault it was. + +I got my hat and went out and started to walk down the creek. I didn’t +feel bitter against Mary--I had spoken too cruelly to her to feel that +way. Looking back, I could see plainly that if I had taken her advice +all through, instead of now and again, things would have been all right +with me. I had come away and left her crying in the hut, and James +telling her, in a brotherly way, that it was all her fault. The trouble +was that I never liked to ‘give in’ or go half-way to make it up--not +half-way--it was all the way or nothing with our natures. + +‘If I don’t make a stand now,’ I’d say, ‘I’ll never be master. I gave up +the reins when I got married, and I’ll have to get them back again.’ + +What women some men are! But the time came, and not many years after, +when I stood by the bed where Mary lay, white and still; and, amongst +other things, I kept saying, ‘I’ll give in, Mary--I’ll give in,’ and +then I’d laugh. They thought that I was raving mad, and took me from the +room. But that time was to come. + +As I walked down the creek track in the moonlight the question rang in +my ears again, as it had done when I first caught sight of the house +that evening-- + +‘Why did I bring her here?’ + +I was not fit to ‘go on the land’. The place was only fit for some +stolid German, or Scotsman, or even Englishman and his wife, who had no +ambition but to bullock and make a farm of the place. I had only drifted +here through carelessness, brooding, and discontent. + +I walked on and on till I was more than half-way to the only +neighbours--a wretched selector’s family, about four miles down the +creek,--and I thought I’d go on to the house and see if they had any +fresh meat. + +A mile or two farther I saw the loom of the bark hut they lived in, on +a patchy clearing in the scrub, and heard the voice of the selector’s +wife--I had seen her several times: she was a gaunt, haggard Bushwoman, +and, I supposed, the reason why she hadn’t gone mad through hardship +and loneliness was that she hadn’t either the brains or the memory to go +farther than she could see through the trunks of the ‘apple-trees’. + +‘You, An-nay!’ (Annie.) + +‘Ye-es’ (from somewhere in the gloom). + +‘Didn’t I tell yer to water them geraniums!’ + +‘Well, didn’t I?’ + +‘Don’t tell lies or I’ll break yer young back!’ + +‘I did, I tell yer--the water won’t soak inter the ashes.’ + +Geraniums were the only flowers I saw grow in the drought out there. +I remembered this woman had a few dirty grey-green leaves behind some +sticks against the bark wall near the door; and in spite of the sticks +the fowls used to get in and scratch beds under the geraniums, and +scratch dust over them, and ashes were thrown there--with an idea of +helping the flower, I suppose; and greasy dish-water, when fresh water +was scarce--till you might as well try to water a dish of fat. + +Then the woman’s voice again-- + +‘You, Tom-may!’ (Tommy.) + +Silence, save for an echo on the ridge. + +‘Y-o-u, T-o-m-MAY!’ + +‘Ye-e-s!’ shrill shriek from across the creek. + +‘Didn’t I tell you to ride up to them new people and see if they want +any meat or any think?’ in one long screech. + +‘Well--I karnt find the horse.’ + +‘Well-find-it-first-think-in-the-morning and. +And-don’t-forgit-to-tell-Mrs-Wi’son-that-mother’ll-be-up-as-soon-as-she-can.’ + + +I didn’t feel like going to the woman’s house that night. I felt--and +the thought came like a whip-stroke on my heart--that this was what Mary +would come to if I left her here. + +I turned and started to walk home, fast. I’d made up my mind. I’d take +Mary straight back to Gulgong in the morning--I forgot about the load I +had to take to the sheep station. I’d say, ‘Look here, Girlie’ (that’s +what I used to call her), ‘we’ll leave this wretched life; we’ll leave +the Bush for ever! We’ll go to Sydney, and I’ll be a man! and work my +way up.’ And I’d sell waggon, horses, and all, and go. + +When I got to the hut it was lighted up. Mary had the only kerosene +lamp, a slush lamp, and two tallow candles going. She had got both rooms +washed out--to James’s disgust, for he had to move the furniture and +boxes about. She had a lot of things unpacked on the table; she had +laid clean newspapers on the mantel-shelf--a slab on two pegs over the +fireplace--and put the little wooden clock in the centre and some of +the ornaments on each side, and was tacking a strip of vandyked American +oil-cloth round the rough edge of the slab. + +‘How does that look, Joe? We’ll soon get things ship-shape.’ + +I kissed her, but she had her mouth full of tacks. I went out in the +kitchen, drank a pint of cold tea, and sat down. + +Somehow I didn’t feel satisfied with the way things had gone. + + + + +II. ‘Past Carin’’. + + +Next morning things looked a lot brighter. Things always look brighter +in the morning--more so in the Australian Bush, I should think, than in +most other places. It is when the sun goes down on the dark bed of the +lonely Bush, and the sunset flashes like a sea of fire and then fades, +and then glows out again, like a bank of coals, and then burns away to +ashes--it is then that old things come home to one. And strange, new-old +things too, that haunt and depress you terribly, and that you can’t +understand. I often think how, at sunset, the past must come home to +new-chum blacksheep, sent out to Australia and drifted into the Bush. +I used to think that they couldn’t have much brains, or the loneliness +would drive them mad. + +I’d decided to let James take the team for a trip or two. He could drive +alright; he was a better business man, and no doubt would manage better +than me--as long as the novelty lasted; and I’d stay at home for a +week or so, till Mary got used to the place, or I could get a girl from +somewhere to come and stay with her. The first weeks or few months of +loneliness are the worst, as a rule, I believe, as they say the first +weeks in jail are--I was never there. I know it’s so with tramping or +hard graft*: the first day or two are twice as hard as any of the rest. +But, for my part, I could never get used to loneliness and dulness; the +last days used to be the worst with me: then I’d have to make a move, or +drink. When you’ve been too much and too long alone in a lonely place, +you begin to do queer things and think queer thoughts--provided you have +any imagination at all. You’ll sometimes sit of an evening and watch the +lonely track, by the hour, for a horseman or a cart or some one that’s +never likely to come that way--some one, or a stranger, that you can’t +and don’t really expect to see. I think that most men who have been +alone in the Bush for any length of time--and married couples too--are +more or less mad. With married couples it is generally the husband who +is painfully shy and awkward when strangers come. The woman seems to +stand the loneliness better, and can hold her own with strangers, as a +rule. It’s only afterwards, and looking back, that you see how queer you +got. Shepherds and boundary-riders, who are alone for months, MUST have +their periodical spree, at the nearest shanty, else they’d go raving +mad. Drink is the only break in the awful monotony, and the yearly or +half-yearly spree is the only thing they’ve got to look forward to: it +keeps their minds fixed on something definite ahead. + + * ‘Graft’, work. The term is now applied, in Australia, to + all sorts of work, from bullock-driving to writing poetry. + +But Mary kept her head pretty well through the first months of +loneliness. WEEKS, rather, I should say, for it wasn’t as bad as it +might have been farther up-country: there was generally some one came +of a Sunday afternoon--a spring-cart with a couple of women, or maybe +a family,--or a lanky shy Bush native or two on lanky shy horses. On +a quiet Sunday, after I’d brought Jim home, Mary would dress him and +herself--just the same as if we were in town--and make me get up on one +end and put on a collar and take her and Jim for a walk along the creek. +She said she wanted to keep me civilised. She tried to make a gentleman +of me for years, but gave it up gradually. + +Well. It was the first morning on the creek: I was greasing the +waggon-wheels, and James out after the horse, and Mary hanging out +clothes, in an old print dress and a big ugly white hood, when I heard +her being hailed as ‘Hi, missus!’ from the front slip-rails. + +It was a boy on horseback. He was a light-haired, very much freckled boy +of fourteen or fifteen, with a small head, but with limbs, especially +his bare sun-blotched shanks, that might have belonged to a grown +man. He had a good face and frank grey eyes. An old, nearly black +cabbage-tree hat rested on the butts of his ears, turning them out at +right angles from his head, and rather dirty sprouts they were. He wore +a dirty torn Crimean shirt; and a pair of man’s moleskin trousers rolled +up above the knees, with the wide waistband gathered under a greenhide +belt. I noticed, later on, that, even when he wore trousers short enough +for him, he always rolled ‘em up above the knees when on horseback, for +some reason of his own: to suggest leggings, perhaps, for he had them +rolled up in all weathers, and he wouldn’t have bothered to save them +from the sweat of the horse, even if that horse ever sweated. + +He was seated astride a three-bushel bag thrown across the ridge-pole of +a big grey horse, with a coffin-shaped head, and built astern something +after the style of a roughly put up hip-roofed box-bark humpy.* His +colour was like old box-bark, too, a dirty bluish-grey; and, one time, +when I saw his rump looming out of the scrub, I really thought it was +some old shepherd’s hut that I hadn’t noticed there before. When he +cantered it was like the humpy starting off on its corner-posts. + + * ‘Humpy’, a rough hut. + +‘Are you Mrs Wilson?’ asked the boy. + +‘Yes,’ said Mary. + +‘Well, mother told me to ride acrost and see if you wanted anythink. We +killed lars’ night, and I’ve fetched a piece er cow.’ + +‘Piece of WHAT?’ asked Mary. + +He grinned, and handed a sugar-bag across the rail with something heavy +in the bottom of it, that nearly jerked Mary’s arm out when she took +it. It was a piece of beef, that looked as if it had been cut off with a +wood-axe, but it was fresh and clean. + +‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ cried Mary. She was always impulsive, save to me +sometimes. ‘I was just wondering where we were going to get any fresh +meat. How kind of your mother! Tell her I’m very much obliged to her +indeed.’ And she felt behind her for a poor little purse she had. ‘And +now--how much did your mother say it would be?’ + +The boy blinked at her, and scratched his head. + +‘How much will it be,’ he repeated, puzzled. ‘Oh--how much does it weigh +I-s’pose-yer-mean. Well, it ain’t been weighed at all--we ain’t got no +scales. A butcher does all that sort of think. We just kills it, and +cooks it, and eats it--and goes by guess. What won’t keep we salts down +in the cask. I reckon it weighs about a ton by the weight of it if yer +wanter know. Mother thought that if she sent any more it would go bad +before you could scoff it. I can’t see----’ + +‘Yes, yes,’ said Mary, getting confused. ‘But what I want to know is, +how do you manage when you sell it?’ + +He glared at her, and scratched his head. ‘Sell it? Why, we only goes +halves in a steer with some one, or sells steers to the butcher--or +maybe some meat to a party of fencers or surveyors, or tank-sinkers, or +them sorter people----’ + +‘Yes, yes; but what I want to know is, how much am I to send your mother +for this?’ + +‘How much what?’ + +‘Money, of course, you stupid boy,’ said Mary. ‘You seem a very stupid +boy.’ + +Then he saw what she was driving at. He began to fling his heels +convulsively against the sides of his horse, jerking his body backward +and forward at the same time, as if to wind up and start some clockwork +machinery inside the horse, that made it go, and seemed to need +repairing or oiling. + +‘We ain’t that sorter people, missus,’ he said. ‘We don’t sell meat +to new people that come to settle here.’ Then, jerking his thumb +contemptuously towards the ridges, ‘Go over ter Wall’s if yer wanter buy +meat; they sell meat ter strangers.’ (Wall was the big squatter over the +ridges.) + +‘Oh!’ said Mary, ‘I’m SO sorry. Thank your mother for me. She IS kind.’ + +‘Oh, that’s nothink. She said to tell yer she’ll be up as soon as she +can. She’d have come up yisterday evening--she thought yer’d feel lonely +comin’ new to a place like this--but she couldn’t git up.’ + +The machinery inside the old horse showed signs of starting. You +almost heard the wooden joints CREAK as he lurched forward, like an old +propped-up humpy when the rotting props give way; but at the sound of +Mary’s voice he settled back on his foundations again. It must have been +a very poor selection that couldn’t afford a better spare horse than +that. + +‘Reach me that lump er wood, will yer, missus?’ said the boy, and he +pointed to one of my ‘spreads’ (for the team-chains) that lay inside the +fence. ‘I’ll fling it back agin over the fence when I git this ole cow +started.’ + +‘But wait a minute--I’ve forgotten your mother’s name,’ said Mary. + +He grabbed at his thatch impatiently. ‘Me mother--oh!--the old woman’s +name’s Mrs Spicer. (Git up, karnt yer!)’ He twisted himself round, and +brought the stretcher down on one of the horse’s ‘points’ (and he had +many) with a crack that must have jarred his wrist. + +‘Do you go to school?’ asked Mary. There was a three-days-a-week school +over the ridges at Wall’s station. + +‘No!’ he jerked out, keeping his legs going. ‘Me--why I’m going on fur +fifteen. The last teacher at Wall’s finished me. I’m going to Queensland +next month drovin’.’ (Queensland border was over three hundred miles +away.) + +‘Finished you? How?’ asked Mary. + +‘Me edgercation, of course! How do yer expect me to start this horse +when yer keep talkin’?’ + +He split the ‘spread’ over the horse’s point, threw the pieces over the +fence, and was off, his elbows and legs flinging wildly, and the old +saw-stool lumbering along the road like an old working bullock trying a +canter. That horse wasn’t a trotter. + +And next month he DID start for Queensland. He was a younger son and a +surplus boy on a wretched, poverty-stricken selection; and as there was +‘northin’ doin’’ in the district, his father (in a burst of fatherly +kindness, I suppose) made him a present of the old horse and a new +pair of Blucher boots, and I gave him an old saddle and a coat, and he +started for the Never-Never Country. + +And I’ll bet he got there. But I’m doubtful if the old horse did. + +Mary gave the boy five shillings, and I don’t think he had anything more +except a clean shirt and an extra pair of white cotton socks. + +‘Spicer’s farm’ was a big bark humpy on a patchy clearing in the native +apple-tree scrub. The clearing was fenced in by a light ‘dog-legged’ +fence (a fence of sapling poles resting on forks and X-shaped uprights), +and the dusty ground round the house was almost entirely covered with +cattle-dung. There was no attempt at cultivation when I came to live on +the creek; but there were old furrow-marks amongst the stumps of another +shapeless patch in the scrub near the hut. There was a wretched sapling +cow-yard and calf-pen, and a cow-bail with one sheet of bark over it for +shelter. There was no dairy to be seen, and I suppose the milk was set +in one of the two skillion rooms, or lean-to’s behind the hut,--the +other was ‘the boys’ bedroom’. The Spicers kept a few cows and steers, +and had thirty or forty sheep. Mrs Spicer used to drive down the creek +once a-week, in her rickety old spring-cart, to Cobborah, with butter +and eggs. The hut was nearly as bare inside as it was out--just a frame +of ‘round-timber’ (sapling poles) covered with bark. The furniture was +permanent (unless you rooted it up), like in our kitchen: a rough slab +table on stakes driven into the ground, and seats made the same +way. Mary told me afterwards that the beds in the bag-and-bark +partitioned-off room [‘mother’s bedroom’) were simply poles laid side +by side on cross-pieces supported by stakes driven into the ground, with +straw mattresses and some worn-out bed-clothes. Mrs Spicer had an old +patchwork quilt, in rags, and the remains of a white one, and Mary said +it was pitiful to see how these things would be spread over the beds--to +hide them as much as possible--when she went down there. A packing-case, +with something like an old print skirt draped round it, and a cracked +looking-glass (without a frame) on top, was the dressing-table. +There were a couple of gin-cases for a wardrobe. The boys’ beds were +three-bushel bags stretched between poles fastened to uprights. The +floor was the original surface, tramped hard, worn uneven with much +sweeping, and with puddles in rainy weather where the roof leaked. Mrs +Spicer used to stand old tins, dishes, and buckets under as many of +the leaks as she could. The saucepans, kettles, and boilers were old +kerosene-tins and billies. They used kerosene-tins, too, cut longways in +halves, for setting the milk in. The plates and cups were of tin; +there were two or three cups without saucers, and a crockery plate or +two--also two mugs, cracked and without handles, one with ‘For a Good +Boy’ and the other with ‘For a Good Girl’ on it; but all these were kept +on the mantel-shelf for ornament and for company. They were the only +ornaments in the house, save a little wooden clock that hadn’t gone for +years. Mrs Spicer had a superstition that she had ‘some things packed +away from the children.’ + +The pictures were cut from old copies of the ‘Illustrated Sydney News’ +and pasted on to the bark. I remember this, because I remembered, long +ago, the Spencers, who were our neighbours when I was a boy, had the +walls of their bedroom covered with illustrations of the American Civil +War, cut from illustrated London papers, and I used to ‘sneak’ into +‘mother’s bedroom’ with Fred Spencer whenever we got the chance, and +gloat over the prints. I gave him a blade of a pocket-knife once, for +taking me in there. + +I saw very little of Spicer. He was a big, dark, dark-haired and +whiskered man. I had an idea that he wasn’t a selector at all, only a +‘dummy’ for the squatter of the Cobborah run. You see, selectors were +allowed to take up land on runs, or pastoral leases. The squatters +kept them off as much as possible, by all manner of dodges and paltry +persecution. The squatter would get as much freehold as he could afford, +‘select’ as much land as the law allowed one man to take up, and then +employ dummies (dummy selectors) to take up bits of land that he fancied +about his run, and hold them for him. + +Spicer seemed gloomy and unsociable. He was seldom at home. He was +generally supposed to be away shearin’, or fencin’, or workin’ on +somebody’s station. It turned out that the last six months he was away +it was on the evidence of a cask of beef and a hide with the brand cut +out, found in his camp on a fencing contract up-country, and which he +and his mates couldn’t account for satisfactorily, while the squatter +could. Then the family lived mostly on bread and honey, or bread and +treacle, or bread and dripping, and tea. Every ounce of butter and every +egg was needed for the market, to keep them in flour, tea, and sugar. +Mary found that out, but couldn’t help them much--except by ‘stuffing’ +the children with bread and meat or bread and jam whenever they came up +to our place--for Mrs Spicer was proud with the pride that lies down in +the end and turns its face to the wall and dies. + +Once, when Mary asked Annie, the eldest girl at home, if she was +hungry, she denied it--but she looked it. A ragged mite she had with her +explained things. The little fellow said-- + +‘Mother told Annie not to say we was hungry if yer asked; but if yer +give us anythink to eat, we was to take it an’ say thenk yer, Mrs +Wilson.’ + +‘I wouldn’t ‘a’ told yer a lie; but I thought Jimmy would split on me, +Mrs Wilson,’ said Annie. ‘Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.’ + +She was not a big woman. She was gaunt and flat-chested, and her face +was ‘burnt to a brick’, as they say out there. She had brown eyes, +nearly red, and a little wild-looking at times, and a sharp face--ground +sharp by hardship--the cheeks drawn in. She had an expression +like--well, like a woman who had been very curious and suspicious at one +time, and wanted to know everybody’s business and hear everything, and +had lost all her curiosity, without losing the expression or the quick +suspicious movements of the head. I don’t suppose you understand. I +can’t explain it any other way. She was not more than forty. + +I remember the first morning I saw her. I was going up the creek to look +at the selection for the first time, and called at the hut to see if she +had a bit of fresh mutton, as I had none and was sick of ‘corned beef’. + +‘Yes--of--course,’ she said, in a sharp nasty tone, as if to say, ‘Is +there anything more you want while the shop’s open?’ I’d met just the +same sort of woman years before while I was carrying swag between the +shearing-sheds in the awful scrubs out west of the Darling river, so I +didn’t turn on my heels and walk away. I waited for her to speak again. + +‘Come--inside,’ she said, ‘and sit down. I see you’ve got the waggon +outside. I s’pose your name’s Wilson, ain’t it? You’re thinkin’ about +takin’ on Harry Marshfield’s selection up the creek, so I heard. Wait +till I fry you a chop and boil the billy.’ + +Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice coming out of +a phonograph--I heard one in Sydney the other day--and not like a voice +coming out of her. But sometimes when she got outside her everyday +life on this selection she spoke in a sort of--in a sort of lost +groping-in-the-dark kind of voice. + +She didn’t talk much this time--just spoke in a mechanical way of the +drought, and the hard times, ‘an’ butter ‘n’ eggs bein’ down, an’ her +husban’ an’ eldest son bein’ away, an’ that makin’ it so hard for her.’ + +I don’t know how many children she had. I never got a chance to count +them, for they were nearly all small, and shy as piccaninnies, and used +to run and hide when anybody came. They were mostly nearly as black as +piccaninnies too. She must have averaged a baby a-year for years--and +God only knows how she got over her confinements! Once, they said, she +only had a black gin with her. She had an elder boy and girl, but she +seldom spoke of them. The girl, ‘Liza’, was ‘in service in Sydney.’ I’m +afraid I knew what that meant. The elder son was ‘away’. He had been a +bit of a favourite round there, it seemed. + +Some one might ask her, ‘How’s your son Jack, Mrs Spicer?’ or, ‘Heard of +Jack lately? and where is he now?’ + +‘Oh, he’s somewheres up country,’ she’d say in the ‘groping’ voice, or +‘He’s drovin’ in Queenslan’,’ or ‘Shearin’ on the Darlin’ the last time +I heerd from him.’ ‘We ain’t had a line from him since--les’ see--since +Chris’mas ‘fore last.’ + +And she’d turn her haggard eyes in a helpless, hopeless sort of way +towards the west--towards ‘up-country’ and ‘Out-Back’.* + + + * ‘Out-Back’ is always west of the Bushman, no matter how + far out he be. + + +The eldest girl at home was nine or ten, with a little old face and +lines across her forehead: she had an older expression than her mother. +Tommy went to Queensland, as I told you. The eldest son at home, Bill +(older than Tommy), was ‘a bit wild.’ + +I’ve passed the place in smothering hot mornings in December, when the +droppings about the cow-yard had crumpled to dust that rose in the +warm, sickly, sunrise wind, and seen that woman at work in the cow-yard, +‘bailing up’ and leg-roping cows, milking, or hauling at a rope round +the neck of a half-grown calf that was too strong for her (and she was +tough as fencing-wire), or humping great buckets of sour milk to the +pigs or the ‘poddies’ (hand-fed calves) in the pen. I’d get off the +horse and give her a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old +cow that wouldn’t ‘bail-up’ and threatened her with her horns. She’d +say-- + +‘Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. Do yer think we’re ever goin’ to have any rain?’ + +I’ve ridden past the place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or +July, and seen her trudging about the yard--that was ankle-deep in black +liquid filth--with an old pair of Blucher boots on, and an old coat of +her husband’s, or maybe a three-bushel bag over her shoulders. I’ve seen +her climbing on the roof by means of the water-cask at the corner, and +trying to stop a leak by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark. And +when I’d fixed the leak-- + +‘Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. This drop of rain’s a blessin’! Come in and have +a dry at the fire and I’ll make yer a cup of tea.’ And, if I was in a +hurry, ‘Come in, man alive! Come in! and dry yerself a bit till the rain +holds up. Yer can’t go home like this! Yer’ll git yer death o’ cold.’ + +I’ve even seen her, in the terrible drought, climbing she-oaks and +apple-trees by a makeshift ladder, and awkwardly lopping off boughs to +feed the starving cattle. + +‘Jist tryin’ ter keep the milkers alive till the rain comes.’ + +They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district and amongst +her cattle she bled and physicked them herself, and fed those that were +down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins (from a crop that had failed). + +‘An’, one day,’ she told Mary, ‘there was a big barren heifer (that we +called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer. She’d been down +for four days and hadn’t moved, when one mornin’ I dumped some wheaten +chaff--we had a few bags that Spicer brought home--I dumped it in front +of her nose, an’--would yer b’lieve me, Mrs Wilson?--she stumbled onter +her feet an’ chased me all the way to the house! I had to pick up me +skirts an’ run! Wasn’t it redic’lus?’ + +They had a sense of the ridiculous, most of those poor sun-dried +Bushwomen. I fancy that that helped save them from madness. + +‘We lost nearly all our milkers,’ she told Mary. ‘I remember one day +Tommy came running to the house and screamed: ‘Marther! [mother] there’s +another milker down with the ploorer!’ Jist as if it was great news. +Well, Mrs Wilson, I was dead-beat, an’ I giv’ in. I jist sat down +to have a good cry, and felt for my han’kerchief--it WAS a rag of a +han’kerchief, full of holes (all me others was in the wash). Without +seein’ what I was doin’ I put me finger through one hole in the +han’kerchief an’ me thumb through the other, and poked me fingers into +me eyes, instead of wipin’ them. Then I had to laugh.’ + +There’s a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were +out all along the creek on Spicer’s side, Wall’s station hands were up +above our place, trying to keep the fire back from the boundary, and +towards evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers: they +saw smoke down that way. Spicer was away from home, and they had a small +crop of wheat, nearly ripe, on the selection. + +‘My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain’t +already!’ shouted young Billy Wall. ‘Come along, three or four of you +chaps’--(it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the +station). + +They raced down the creek to Spicer’s, and were just in time to save the +wheat. She had her sleeves tucked up, and was beating out the burning +grass with a bough. She’d been at it for an hour, and was as black as a +gin, they said. She only said when they’d turned the fire: ‘Thenk yer! +Wait an’ I’ll make some tea.’ + + ***** + +After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked-- + +‘Don’t you feel lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?’ + +‘Well--no, Mrs Wilson,’ she said in the groping sort of voice. ‘I uster, +once. I remember, when we lived on the Cudgeegong river--we lived in +a brick house then--the first time Spicer had to go away from home I +nearly fretted my eyes out. And he was only goin’ shearin’ for a month. +I muster bin a fool; but then we were only jist married a little while. +He’s been away drovin’ in Queenslan’ as long as eighteen months at a +time since then. But’ (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more +than ever) ‘I don’t mind,--I somehow seem to have got past carin’. +Besides--besides, Spicer was a very different man then to what he is +now. He’s got so moody and gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.’ + +Mary sat silent for a minute thinking. Then Mrs Spicer roused herself-- + +‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! You mustn’t take any notice of +me, Mrs Wilson,--I don’t often go on like this. I do believe I’m gittin’ +a bit ratty at times. It must be the heat and the dulness.’ + +But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time ‘when Spicer was a +different man to what he was now.’ + +I walked home with her a piece along the creek. She said nothing for +a long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way. Then she said +suddenly-- + +‘What-did-you-bring-her-here-for? She’s only a girl.’ + +‘I beg pardon, Mrs Spicer.’ + +‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! I b’lieve I’m gittin’ ratty. +You mustn’t take any notice of me, Mr Wilson.’ + +She wasn’t much company for Mary; and often, when she had a child with +her, she’d start taking notice of the baby while Mary was talking, which +used to exasperate Mary. But poor Mrs Spicer couldn’t help it, and she +seemed to hear all the same. + +Her great trouble was that she ‘couldn’t git no reg’lar schoolin’ for +the children.’ + +‘I learns ‘em at home as much as I can. But I don’t git a minute to +call me own; an’ I’m ginerally that dead-beat at night that I’m fit for +nothink.’ + +Mary had some of the children up now and then later on, and taught them +a little. When she first offered to do so, Mrs Spicer laid hold of the +handiest youngster and said-- + +‘There--do you hear that? Mrs Wilson is goin’ to teach yer, an’ +it’s more than yer deserve!’ (the youngster had been ‘cryin’’ over +something). ‘Now, go up an’ say “Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.” And if yer +ain’t good, and don’t do as she tells yer, I’ll break every bone in yer +young body!’ + +The poor little devil stammered something, and escaped. + +The children were sent by turns over to Wall’s to Sunday-school. When +Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots, and there was +no end of rows about them in the family--for the mother made him lend +them to his sister Annie, to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn. There +were only about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the family, and +these were saved for great occasions. The children were always as clean +and tidy as possible when they came to our place. + +And I think the saddest and most pathetic sight on the face of God’s +earth is the children of very poor people made to appear well: the +broken worn-out boots polished or greased, the blackened (inked) pieces +of string for laces; the clean patched pinafores over the wretched +threadbare frocks. Behind the little row of children hand-in-hand--and +no matter where they are--I always see the worn face of the mother. + +Towards the end of the first year on the selection our little girl came. +I’d sent Mary to Gulgong for four months that time, and when she came +back with the baby Mrs Spicer used to come up pretty often. She came up +several times when Mary was ill, to lend a hand. She wouldn’t sit down +and condole with Mary, or waste her time asking questions, or talking +about the time when she was ill herself. She’d take off her hat--a +shapeless little lump of black straw she wore for visiting--give +her hair a quick brush back with the palms of her hands, roll up her +sleeves, and set to work to ‘tidy up’. She seemed to take most pleasure +in sorting out our children’s clothes, and dressing them. Perhaps she +used to dress her own like that in the days when Spicer was a different +man from what he was now. She seemed interested in the fashion-plates +of some women’s journals we had, and used to study them with an interest +that puzzled me, for she was not likely to go in for fashion. She never +talked of her early girlhood; but Mary, from some things she noticed, +was inclined to think that Mrs Spicer had been fairly well brought up. +For instance, Dr Balanfantie, from Cudgeegong, came out to see Wall’s +wife, and drove up the creek to our place on his way back to see how +Mary and the baby were getting on. Mary got out some crockery and some +table-napkins that she had packed away for occasions like this; and +she said that the way Mrs Spicer handled the things, and helped set the +table (though she did it in a mechanical sort of way), convinced her +that she had been used to table-napkins at one time in her life. + +Sometimes, after a long pause in the conversation, Mrs Spicer would say +suddenly-- + +‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll come up next week, Mrs Wilson.’ + +‘Why, Mrs Spicer?’ + +‘Because the visits doesn’t do me any good. I git the dismals +afterwards.’ + +‘Why, Mrs Spicer? What on earth do you mean?’ + +‘Oh,-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-talkin’-about. You mustn’t take any notice +of me.’ And she’d put on her hat, kiss the children--and Mary too, +sometimes, as if she mistook her for a child--and go. + +Mary thought her a little mad at times. But I seemed to understand. + +Once, when Mrs Spicer was sick, Mary went down to her, and down again +next day. As she was coming away the second time, Mrs Spicer said-- + +‘I wish you wouldn’t come down any more till I’m on me feet, Mrs Wilson. +The children can do for me.’ + +‘Why, Mrs Spicer?’ + +‘Well, the place is in such a muck, and it hurts me.’ + +We were the aristocrats of Lahey’s Creek. Whenever we drove down on +Sunday afternoon to see Mrs Spicer, and as soon as we got near enough +for them to hear the rattle of the cart, we’d see the children running +to the house as fast as they could split, and hear them screaming-- + +‘Oh, marther! Here comes Mr and Mrs Wilson in their spring-cart.’ + +And we’d see her bustle round, and two or three fowls fly out the +front door, and she’d lay hold of a broom (made of a bound bunch of +‘broom-stuff’--coarse reedy grass or bush from the ridges--with a stick +stuck in it) and flick out the floor, with a flick or two round in front +of the door perhaps. The floor nearly always needed at least one flick +of the broom on account of the fowls. Or she’d catch a youngster and +scrub his face with a wet end of a cloudy towel, or twist the towel +round her finger and dig out his ears--as if she was anxious to have him +hear every word that was going to be said. + +No matter what state the house would be in she’d always say, ‘I was jist +expectin’ yer, Mrs Wilson.’ And she was original in that, anyway. + +She had an old patched and darned white table-cloth that she used to +spread on the table when we were there, as a matter of course [‘The +others is in the wash, so you must excuse this, Mrs Wilson’), but I saw +by the eyes of the children that the cloth was rather a wonderful thing +to them. ‘I must really git some more knives an’ forks next time I’m in +Cobborah,’ she’d say. ‘The children break an’ lose ‘em till I’m ashamed +to ask Christians ter sit down ter the table.’ + +She had many Bush yarns, some of them very funny, some of them rather +ghastly, but all interesting, and with a grim sort of humour about them. +But the effect was often spoilt by her screaming at the children to +‘Drive out them fowls, karnt yer,’ or ‘Take yer maulies [hands] outer +the sugar,’ or ‘Don’t touch Mrs Wilson’s baby with them dirty maulies,’ +or ‘Don’t stand starin’ at Mrs Wilson with yer mouth an’ ears in that +vulgar way.’ + +Poor woman! she seemed everlastingly nagging at the children. It was +a habit, but they didn’t seem to mind. Most Bushwomen get the nagging +habit. I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most +willing, and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged +that child from daylight till dark--and after it. Taking it all round, +I think that the nagging habit in a mother is often worse on ordinary +children, and more deadly on sensitive youngsters, than the drinking +habit in a father. + +One of the yarns Mrs Spicer told us was about a squatter she knew who +used to go wrong in his head every now and again, and try to commit +suicide. Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him, had his eye +off him for a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable. The +men ran in and found him hanging and kicking. ‘They let him hang for +a while,’ said Mrs Spicer, ‘till he went black in the face and stopped +kicking. Then they cut him down and threw a bucket of water over him.’ + +‘Why! what on earth did they let the man hang for?’ asked Mary. + +‘To give him a good bellyful of it: they thought it would cure him of +tryin’ to hang himself again.’ + +‘Well, that’s the coolest thing I ever heard of,’ said Mary. + +‘That’s jist what the magistrate said, Mrs Wilson,’ said Mrs Spicer. + +‘One morning,’ said Mrs Spicer, ‘Spicer had gone off on his horse +somewhere, and I was alone with the children, when a man came to the +door and said-- + +‘“For God’s sake, woman, give me a drink!” + +‘Lord only knows where he came from! He was dressed like a new chum--his +clothes was good, but he looked as if he’d been sleepin’ in them in the +Bush for a month. He was very shaky. I had some coffee that mornin’, +so I gave him some in a pint pot; he drank it, and then he stood on his +head till he tumbled over, and then he stood up on his feet and said, +“Thenk yer, mum.” + +‘I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to say, so I jist said, +“Would you like some more coffee?” + +‘“Yes, thenk yer,” he said--“about two quarts.” + +‘I nearly filled the pint pot, and he drank it and stood on his head +as long as he could, and when he got right end up he said, “Thenk yer, +mum--it’s a fine day,” and then he walked off. He had two saddle-straps +in his hands.’ + +‘Why, what did he stand on his head for?’ asked Mary. + +‘To wash it up and down, I suppose, to get twice as much taste of the +coffee. He had no hat. I sent Tommy across to Wall’s to tell them that +there was a man wanderin’ about the Bush in the horrors of drink, and +to get some one to ride for the police. But they was too late, for he +hanged himself that night.’ + +‘O Lord!’ cried Mary. + +‘Yes, right close to here, jist down the creek where the track to Wall’s +branches off. Tommy found him while he was out after the cows. Hangin’ +to the branch of a tree with the two saddle-straps.’ + +Mary stared at her, speechless. + +‘Tommy came home yellin’ with fright. I sent him over to Wall’s at once. +After breakfast, the minute my eyes was off them, the children slipped +away and went down there. They came back screamin’ at the tops of their +voices. I did give it to them. I reckon they won’t want ter see a dead +body again in a hurry. Every time I’d mention it they’d huddle together, +or ketch hold of me skirts and howl. + +‘“Yer’ll go agen when I tell yer not to,” I’d say. + +‘“Oh no, mother,” they’d howl. + +‘“Yer wanted ter see a man hangin’,” I said. + +‘“Oh, don’t, mother! Don’t talk about it.” + +‘“Yer wouldn’t be satisfied till yer see it,” I’d say; “yer had to see +it or burst. Yer satisfied now, ain’t yer?” + +‘“Oh, don’t, mother!” + +‘“Yer run all the way there, I s’pose?” + +‘“Don’t, mother!” + +‘“But yer run faster back, didn’t yer?” + +‘“Oh, don’t, mother.” + +‘But,’ said Mrs Spicer, in conclusion, ‘I’d been down to see it myself +before they was up.’ + +‘And ain’t you afraid to live alone here, after all these horrible +things?’ asked Mary. + +‘Well, no; I don’t mind. I seem to have got past carin’ for anythink +now. I felt it a little when Tommy went away--the first time I felt +anythink for years. But I’m over that now.’ + +‘Haven’t you got any friends in the district, Mrs Spicer?’ + +‘Oh yes. There’s me married sister near Cobborah, and a married brother +near Dubbo; he’s got a station. They wanted to take me an’ the children +between them, or take some of the younger children. But I couldn’t bring +my mind to break up the home. I want to keep the children together as +much as possible. There’s enough of them gone, God knows. But it’s a +comfort to know that there’s some one to see to them if anythink happens +to me.’ + + ***** + +One day--I was on my way home with the team that day--Annie Spicer came +running up the creek in terrible trouble. + +‘Oh, Mrs Wilson! something terribl’s happened at home! A trooper’ +(mounted policeman--they called them ‘mounted troopers’ out there), ‘a +trooper’s come and took Billy!’ Billy was the eldest son at home. + +‘What?’ + +‘It’s true, Mrs Wilson.’ + +‘What for? What did the policeman say?’ + +‘He--he--he said, “I--I’m very sorry, Mrs Spicer; but--I--I want +William.”’ + +It turned out that William was wanted on account of a horse missed from +Wall’s station and sold down-country. + +‘An’ mother took on awful,’ sobbed Annie; ‘an’ now she’ll only sit +stock-still an’ stare in front of her, and won’t take no notice of any +of us. Oh! it’s awful, Mrs Wilson. The policeman said he’d tell Aunt +Emma’ (Mrs Spicer’s sister at Cobborah), ‘and send her out. But I had to +come to you, an’ I’ve run all the way.’ + +James put the horse to the cart and drove Mary down. + +Mary told me all about it when I came home. + +‘I found her just as Annie said; but she broke down and cried in my +arms. Oh, Joe! it was awful! She didn’t cry like a woman. I heard a man +at Haviland cry at his brother’s funeral, and it was just like that. She +came round a bit after a while. Her sister’s with her now.... Oh, Joe! +you must take me away from the Bush.’ + +Later on Mary said-- + +‘How the oaks are sighing to-night, Joe!’ + + ***** + +Next morning I rode across to Wall’s station and tackled the old man; +but he was a hard man, and wouldn’t listen to me--in fact, he ordered +me off the station. I was a selector, and that was enough for him. But +young Billy Wall rode after me. + +‘Look here, Joe!’ he said, ‘it’s a blanky shame. All for the sake of a +horse! And as if that poor devil of a woman hasn’t got enough to put up +with already! I wouldn’t do it for twenty horses. I’LL tackle the boss, +and if he won’t listen to me, I’ll walk off the run for the last time, +if I have to carry my swag.’ + +Billy Wall managed it. The charge was withdrawn, and we got young Billy +Spicer off up-country. + +But poor Mrs Spicer was never the same after that. She seldom came up to +our place unless Mary dragged her, so to speak; and then she would talk +of nothing but her last trouble, till her visits were painful to look +forward to. + +‘If it only could have been kep’ quiet--for the sake of the other +children; they are all I think of now. I tried to bring ‘em all up +decent, but I s’pose it was my fault, somehow. It’s the disgrace that’s +killin’ me--I can’t bear it.’ + +I was at home one Sunday with Mary and a jolly Bush-girl named Maggie +Charlsworth, who rode over sometimes from Wall’s station (I must tell +you about her some other time; James was ‘shook after her’), and we got +talkin’ about Mrs Spicer. Maggie was very warm about old Wall. + +‘I expected Mrs Spicer up to-day,’ said Mary. ‘She seems better lately.’ + +‘Why!’ cried Maggie Charlsworth, ‘if that ain’t Annie coming running up +along the creek. Something’s the matter!’ + +We all jumped up and ran out. + +‘What is it, Annie?’ cried Mary. + +‘Oh, Mrs Wilson! Mother’s asleep, and we can’t wake her!’ + +‘What?’ + +‘It’s--it’s the truth, Mrs Wilson.’ + +‘How long has she been asleep?’ + +‘Since lars’ night.’ + +‘My God!’ cried Mary, ‘SINCE LAST NIGHT?’ + +‘No, Mrs Wilson, not all the time; she woke wonst, about daylight this +mornin’. She called me and said she didn’t feel well, and I’d have to +manage the milkin’.’ + +‘Was that all she said?’ + +‘No. She said not to go for you; and she said to feed the pigs and +calves; and she said to be sure and water them geraniums.’ + +Mary wanted to go, but I wouldn’t let her. James and I saddled our +horses and rode down the creek. + + ***** + +Mrs Spicer looked very little different from what she did when I last +saw her alive. It was some time before we could believe that she was +dead. But she was ‘past carin’’ right enough. + + + + +A Double Buggy at Lahey’s Creek. + + + + +I. Spuds, and a Woman’s Obstinacy. + + +Ever since we were married it had been Mary’s great ambition to have a +buggy. The house or furniture didn’t matter so much--out there in the +Bush where we were--but, where there were no railways or coaches, and +the roads were long, and mostly hot and dusty, a buggy was the great +thing. I had a few pounds when we were married, and was going to get +one then; but new buggies went high, and another party got hold of a +second-hand one that I’d had my eye on, so Mary thought it over and at +last she said, ‘Never mind the buggy, Joe; get a sewing-machine and I’ll +be satisfied. I’ll want the machine more than the buggy, for a while. +Wait till we’re better off.’ + +After that, whenever I took a contract--to put up a fence or wool-shed, +or sink a dam or something--Mary would say, ‘You ought to knock a buggy +out of this job, Joe;’ but something always turned up--bad weather or +sickness. Once I cut my foot with the adze and was laid up; and, another +time, a dam I was making was washed away by a flood before I finished +it. Then Mary would say, ‘Ah, well--never mind, Joe. Wait till we are +better off.’ But she felt it hard the time I built a wool-shed and +didn’t get paid for it, for we’d as good as settled about another +second-hand buggy then. + +I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools. I made +a spring-cart--body and wheels--in spare time, out of colonial hardwood, +and got Little the blacksmith to do the ironwork; I painted the cart +myself. It wasn’t much lighter than one of the tip-drays I had, but it +WAS a spring-cart, and Mary pretended to be satisfied with it: anyway, I +didn’t hear any more of the buggy for a while. + +I sold that cart, for fourteen pounds, to a Chinese gardener who wanted +a strong cart to carry his vegetables round through the Bush. It was +just before our first youngster came: I told Mary that I wanted the +money in case of extra expense--and she didn’t fret much at losing +that cart. But the fact was, that I was going to make another try for +a buggy, as a present for Mary when the child was born. I thought of +getting the turn-out while she was laid up, keeping it dark from her +till she was on her feet again, and then showing her the buggy standing +in the shed. But she had a bad time, and I had to have the doctor +regularly, and get a proper nurse, and a lot of things extra; so the +buggy idea was knocked on the head. I was set on it, too: I’d thought of +how, when Mary was up and getting strong, I’d say one morning, ‘Go round +and have a look in the shed, Mary; I’ve got a few fowls for you,’ or +something like that--and follow her round to watch her eyes when she saw +the buggy. I never told Mary about that--it wouldn’t have done any good. + +Later on I got some good timber--mostly scraps that were given to +me--and made a light body for a spring-cart. Galletly, the coach-builder +at Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American hickory wheels up from +Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair for cost price +and carriage. I got him to iron the cart, and he put it through +the paint-shop for nothing. He sent it out, too, at the tail of Tom +Tarrant’s big van--to increase the surprise. We were swells then for +a while; I heard no more of a buggy until after we’d been settled at +Lahey’s Creek for a couple of years. + +I told you how I went into the carrying line, and took up a selection at +Lahey’s Creek--for a run for the horses and to grow a bit of feed--and +shifted Mary and little Jim out there from Gulgong, with Mary’s young +scamp of a brother James to keep them company while I was on the road. +The first year I did well enough carrying, but I never cared for it--it +was too slow; and, besides, I was always anxious when I was away from +home. The game was right enough for a single man--or a married one whose +wife had got the nagging habit (as many Bushwomen have--God help ‘em!), +and who wanted peace and quietness sometimes. Besides, other small +carriers started (seeing me getting on); and Tom Tarrant, the +coach-driver at Cudgeegong, had another heavy spring-van built, and put +it on the roads, and he took a lot of the light stuff. + +The second year I made a rise--out of ‘spuds’, of all the things in the +world. It was Mary’s idea. Down at the lower end of our selection--Mary +called it ‘the run’--was a shallow watercourse called Snake’s Creek, dry +most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two; and, just above +the junction, where it ran into Lahey’s Creek, was a low piece of good +black-soil flat, on our side--about three acres. The flat was fairly +clear when I came to the selection--save for a few logs that had been +washed up there in some big ‘old man’ flood, way back in black-fellows’ +times; and one day, when I had a spell at home, I got the horses and +trace-chains and dragged the logs together--those that wouldn’t split +for fencing timber--and burnt them off. I had a notion to get the flat +ploughed and make a lucern-paddock of it. There was a good water-hole, +under a clump of she-oak in the bend, and Mary used to take her stools +and tubs and boiler down there in the spring-cart in hot weather, and +wash the clothes under the shade of the trees--it was cooler, and +saved carrying water to the house. And one evening after she’d done the +washing she said to me-- + +‘Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea: they +don’t seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand what the market is +going to be like--they just go on farming the same old way and putting +in the same old crops year after year. They sow wheat, and, if it comes +on anything like the thing, they reap and thresh it; if it doesn’t, +they mow it for hay--and some of ‘em don’t have the brains to do that in +time. Now, I was looking at that bit of flat you cleared, and it struck +me that it wouldn’t be a half bad idea to get a bag of seed-potatoes, +and have the land ploughed--old Corny George would do it cheap--and +get them put in at once. Potatoes have been dear all round for the last +couple of years.’ + +I told her she was talking nonsense, that the ground was no good for +potatoes, and the whole district was too dry. ‘Everybody I know has +tried it, one time or another, and made nothing of it,’ I said. + +‘All the more reason why you should try it, Joe,’ said Mary. ‘Just try +one crop. It might rain for weeks, and then you’ll be sorry you didn’t +take my advice.’ + +‘But I tell you the ground is not potato-ground,’ I said. + +‘How do you know? You haven’t sown any there yet.’ + +‘But I’ve turned up the surface and looked at it. It’s not rich enough, +and too dry, I tell you. You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes. Do +you think I don’t know land when I see it?’ + +‘But you haven’t TRIED to grow potatoes there yet, Joe. How do you +know----’ + +I didn’t listen to any more. Mary was obstinate when she got an idea +into her head. It was no use arguing with her. All the time I’d be +talking she’d just knit her forehead and go on thinking straight ahead, +on the track she’d started,--just as if I wasn’t there,--and it used to +make me mad. She’d keep driving at me till I took her advice or lost my +temper,--I did both at the same time, mostly. + +I took my pipe and went out to smoke and cool down. + +A couple of days after the potato breeze, I started with the team down +to Cudgeegong for a load of fencing-wire I had to bring out; and after +I’d kissed Mary good-bye, she said-- + +‘Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed-potatoes, James and I +will slice them, and old Corny George down the creek would bring his +plough up in the dray and plough the ground for very little. We could +put the potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only ploughed.’ + +I thought she’d forgotten all about it. There was no time to argue--I’d +be sure to lose my temper, and then I’d either have to waste an hour +comforting Mary or go off in a ‘huff’, as the women call it, and be +miserable for the trip. So I said I’d see about it. She gave me another +hug and a kiss. ‘Don’t forget, Joe,’ she said as I started. ‘Think it +over on the road.’ I reckon she had the best of it that time. + +About five miles along, just as I turned into the main road, I heard +some one galloping after me, and I saw young James on his hack. I got a +start, for I thought that something had gone wrong at home. I remember, +the first day I left Mary on the creek, for the first five or six miles +I was half-a-dozen times on the point of turning back--only I thought +she’d laugh at me. + +‘What is it, James?’ I shouted, before he came up--but I saw he was +grinning. + +‘Mary says to tell you not to forget to bring a hoe out with you.’ + +‘You clear off home!’ I said, ‘or I’ll lay the whip about your young +hide; and don’t come riding after me again as if the run was on fire.’ + +‘Well, you needn’t get shirty with me!’ he said. ‘*I* don’t want to have +anything to do with a hoe.’ And he rode off. + +I DID get thinking about those potatoes, though I hadn’t meant to. I +knew of an independent man in that district who’d made his money out +of a crop of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring +‘Fifties--‘54--when spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a +hundredweight (in Sydney), on account of the gold rush. We might get +good rain now, and, anyway, it wouldn’t cost much to put the potatoes +in. If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket; if the +crop was a failure, I’d have a better show with Mary next time she was +struck by an idea outside housekeeping, and have something to grumble +about when I felt grumpy. + +I got a couple of bags of potatoes--we could use those that were +left over; and I got a small iron plough and a harrow that Little the +blacksmith had lying in his yard and let me have cheap--only about +a pound more than I told Mary I gave for them. When I took advice, I +generally made the mistake of taking more than was offered, or adding +notions of my own. It was vanity, I suppose. If the crop came on well I +could claim the plough-and-harrow part of the idea, anyway. (It didn’t +strike me that if the crop failed Mary would have the plough and harrow +against me, for old Corny would plough the ground for ten or fifteen +shillings.) Anyway, I’d want a plough and harrow later on, and I might +as well get it now; it would give James something to do. + +I came out by the western road, by Guntawang, and up the creek home; and +the first thing I saw was old Corny George ploughing the flat. And +Mary was down on the bank superintending. She’d got James with the +trace-chains and the spare horses, and had made him clear off every +stick and bush where another furrow might be squeezed in. Old Corny +looked pretty grumpy on it--he’d broken all his ploughshares but one, in +the roots; and James didn’t look much brighter. Mary had an old felt +hat and a new pair of ‘lastic-side boots of mine on, and the boots were +covered with clay, for she’d been down hustling James to get a rotten +old stump out of the way by the time Corny came round with his next +furrow. + +‘I thought I’d make the boots easy for you, Joe,’ said Mary. + +‘It’s all right, Mary,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to growl.’ Those boots +were a bone of contention between us; but she generally got them off +before I got home. + +Her face fell a little when she saw the plough and harrow in the waggon, +but I said that would be all right--we’d want a plough anyway. + +‘I thought you wanted old Corny to plough the ground,’ she said. + +‘I never said so.’ + +‘But when I sent Jim after you about the hoe to put the spuds in, you +didn’t say you wouldn’t bring it,’ she said. + +I had a few days at home, and entered into the spirit of the thing. When +Corny was done, James and I cross-ploughed the land, and got a stump or +two, a big log, and some scrub out of the way at the upper end and added +nearly an acre, and ploughed that. James was all right at most Bushwork: +he’d bullock so long as the novelty lasted; he liked ploughing or +fencing, or any graft he could make a show at. He didn’t care for +grubbing out stumps, or splitting posts and rails. We sliced the +potatoes of an evening--and there was trouble between Mary and James +over cutting through the ‘eyes’. There was no time for the hoe--and +besides it wasn’t a novelty to James--so I just ran furrows and they +dropped the spuds in behind me, and I turned another furrow over them, +and ran the harrow over the ground. I think I hilled those spuds, too, +with furrows--or a crop of Indian corn I put in later on. + +It rained heavens-hard for over a week: we had regular showers all +through, and it was the finest crop of potatoes ever seen in the +district. I believe at first Mary used to slip down at daybreak to see +if the potatoes were up; and she’d write to me about them, on the road. +I forget how many bags I got; but the few who had grown potatoes in the +district sent theirs to Sydney, and spuds went up to twelve and fifteen +shillings a hundredweight in that district. I made a few quid out of +mine--and saved carriage too, for I could take them out on the waggon. +Then Mary began to hear (through James) of a buggy that some one had for +sale cheap, or a dogcart that somebody else wanted to get rid of--and +let me know about it, in an offhand way. + + + + +II. Joe Wilson’s Luck. + + +There was good grass on the selection all the year. I’d picked up +a small lot--about twenty head--of half-starved steers for next to +nothing, and turned them on the run; they came on wonderfully, and my +brother-in-law (Mary’s sister’s husband), who was running a butchery +at Gulgong, gave me a good price for them. His carts ran out twenty or +thirty miles, to little bits of gold-rushes that were going on at th’ +Home Rule, Happy Valley, Guntawang, Tallawang, and Cooyal, and those +places round there, and he was doing well. + +Mary had heard of a light American waggonette, when the steers went--a +tray-body arrangement, and she thought she’d do with that. ‘It would +be better than the buggy, Joe,’ she said--‘there’d be more room for +the children, and, besides, I could take butter and eggs to Gulgong, +or Cobborah, when we get a few more cows.’ Then James heard of a small +flock of sheep that a selector--who was about starved off his selection +out Talbragar way--wanted to get rid of. James reckoned he could get +them for less than half-a-crown a-head. We’d had a heavy shower of rain, +that came over the ranges and didn’t seem to go beyond our boundaries. +Mary said, ‘It’s a pity to see all that grass going to waste, Joe. +Better get those sheep and try your luck with them. Leave some money +with me, and I’ll send James over for them. Never mind about the +buggy--we’ll get that when we’re on our feet.’ + +So James rode across to Talbragar and drove a hard bargain with that +unfortunate selector, and brought the sheep home. There were about two +hundred, wethers and ewes, and they were young and looked a good breed +too, but so poor they could scarcely travel; they soon picked up, +though. The drought was blazing all round and Out-Back, and I think that +my corner of the ridges was the only place where there was any grass to +speak of. We had another shower or two, and the grass held out. Chaps +began to talk of ‘Joe Wilson’s luck’. + +I would have liked to shear those sheep; but I hadn’t time to get a shed +or anything ready--along towards Christmas there was a bit of a boom +in the carrying line. Wethers in wool were going as high as thirteen +to fifteen shillings at the Homebush yards at Sydney, so I arranged to +truck the sheep down from the river by rail, with another small lot that +was going, and I started James off with them. He took the west road, and +down Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James with the sheep (and who +was speculating, or adding to his stock, or took a fancy to the wool) +offered James as much for them as he reckoned I’d get in Sydney, after +paying the carriage and the agents and the auctioneer. James put the +sheep in a paddock and rode back to me. He was all there where riding +was concerned. I told him to let the sheep go. James made a Greener +shot-gun, and got his saddle done up, out of that job. + +I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks--one in James’s name, to +encourage him with the fencing. There was a good slice of land in an +angle between the range and the creek, farther down, which everybody +thought belonged to Wall, the squatter, but Mary got an idea, and went +to the local land office and found out that it was ‘unoccupied Crown +land’, and so I took it up on pastoral lease, and got a few more +sheep--I’d saved some of the best-looking ewes from the last lot. + +One evening--I was going down next day for a load of fencing-wire for +myself--Mary said,-- + +‘Joe! do you know that the Matthews have got a new double buggy?’ + +The Matthews were a big family of cockatoos, along up the main road, and +I didn’t think much of them. The sons were all ‘bad-eggs’, though the +old woman and girls were right enough. + +‘Well, what of that?’ I said. ‘They’re up to their neck in debt, and +camping like black-fellows in a big bark humpy. They do well to go +flashing round in a double buggy.’ + +‘But that isn’t what I was going to say,’ said Mary. ‘They want to sell +their old single buggy, James says. I’m sure you could get it for six or +seven pounds; and you could have it done up.’ + +‘I wish James to the devil!’ I said. ‘Can’t he find anything better to +do than ride round after cock-and-bull yarns about buggies?’ + +‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘it was James who got the steers and the sheep.’ + +Well, one word led to another, and we said things we didn’t mean--but +couldn’t forget in a hurry. I remember I said something about Mary +always dragging me back just when I was getting my head above water and +struggling to make a home for her and the children; and that hurt her, +and she spoke of the ‘homes’ she’d had since she was married. And that +cut me deep. + +It was about the worst quarrel we had. When she began to cry I got my +hat and went out and walked up and down by the creek. I hated anything +that looked like injustice--I was so sensitive about it that it made +me unjust sometimes. I tried to think I was right, but I couldn’t--it +wouldn’t have made me feel any better if I could have thought so. I got +thinking of Mary’s first year on the selection and the life she’d had +since we were married. + +When I went in she’d cried herself to sleep. I bent over and, ‘Mary,’ I +whispered. + +She seemed to wake up. + +‘Joe--Joe!’ she said. + +‘What is it Mary?’ I said. + +‘I’m pretty well sure that old Spot’s calf isn’t in the pen. Make James +go at once!’ + +Old Spot’s last calf was two years old now; so Mary was talking in her +sleep, and dreaming she was back in her first year. + +We both laughed when I told her about it afterwards; but I didn’t feel +like laughing just then. + +Later on in the night she called out in her sleep,-- + +‘Joe--Joe! Put that buggy in the shed, or the sun will blister the +varnish!’ + +I wish I could say that that was the last time I ever spoke unkindly to +Mary. + +Next morning I got up early and fried the bacon and made the tea, and +took Mary’s breakfast in to her--like I used to do, sometimes, when we +were first married. She didn’t say anything--just pulled my head down +and kissed me. + +When I was ready to start Mary said,-- + +‘You’d better take the spring-cart in behind the dray and get the tyres +cut and set. They’re ready to drop off, and James has been wedging them +up till he’s tired of it. The last time I was out with the children +I had to knock one of them back with a stone: there’ll be an accident +yet.’ + +So I lashed the shafts of the cart under the tail of the waggon, and +mean and ridiculous enough the cart looked, going along that way. It +suggested a man stooping along handcuffed, with his arms held out and +down in front of him. + +It was dull weather, and the scrubs looked extra dreary and endless--and +I got thinking of old things. Everything was going all right with me, +but that didn’t keep me from brooding sometimes--trying to hatch out +stones, like an old hen we had at home. I think, taking it all round, I +used to be happier when I was mostly hard-up--and more generous. When I +had ten pounds I was more likely to listen to a chap who said, ‘Lend me +a pound-note, Joe,’ than when I had fifty; THEN I fought shy of careless +chaps--and lost mates that I wanted afterwards--and got the name of +being mean. When I got a good cheque I’d be as miserable as a miser over +the first ten pounds I spent; but when I got down to the last I’d buy +things for the house. And now that I was getting on, I hated to spend +a pound on anything. But then, the farther I got away from poverty the +greater the fear I had of it--and, besides, there was always before us +all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and +dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the +barren creeks. + +I had a long yarn with Mary’s sister and her husband that night in +Gulgong, and it brightened me up. I had a fancy that that sort of a +brother-in-law made a better mate than a nearer one; Tom Tarrant had +one, and he said it was sympathy. But while we were yarning I couldn’t +help thinking of Mary, out there in the hut on the Creek, with no one to +talk to but the children, or James, who was sulky at home, or Black +Mary or Black Jimmy (our black boy’s father and mother), who weren’t +oversentimental. Or maybe a selector’s wife (the nearest was five +miles away), who could talk only of two or three things--‘lambin’’ and +‘shearin’’ and ‘cookin’ for the men’, and what she said to her old man, +and what he said to her--and her own ailments--over and over again. + +It’s a wonder it didn’t drive Mary mad!--I know I could never listen to +that woman more than an hour. Mary’s sister said,-- + +‘Now if Mary had a comfortable buggy, she could drive in with the +children oftener. Then she wouldn’t feel the loneliness so much.’ + +I said ‘Good night’ then and turned in. There was no getting away from +that buggy. Whenever Mary’s sister started hinting about a buggy, I +reckoned it was a put-up job between them. + + + + +III. The Ghost of Mary’s Sacrifice. + + +When I got to Gudgeegong I stopped at Galletly’s coach-shop to leave the +cart. The Galletlys were good fellows: there were two brothers--one was +a saddler and harness-maker. Big brown-bearded men--the biggest men in +the district, ‘twas said. + +Their old man had died lately and left them some money; they had men, +and only worked in their shops when they felt inclined, or there was a +special work to do; they were both first-class tradesmen. I went into +the painter’s shop to have a look at a double buggy that Galletly had +built for a man who couldn’t pay cash for it when it was finished--and +Galletly wouldn’t trust him. + +There it stood, behind a calico screen that the coach-painters used to +keep out the dust when they were varnishing. It was a first-class piece +of work--pole, shafts, cushions, whip, lamps, and all complete. If you +only wanted to drive one horse you could take out the pole and put in +the shafts, and there you were. There was a tilt over the front seat; +if you only wanted the buggy to carry two, you could fold down the back +seat, and there you had a handsome, roomy, single buggy. It would go +near fifty pounds. + +While I was looking at it, Bill Galletly came in, and slapped me on the +back. + +‘Now, there’s a chance for you, Joe!’ he said. ‘I saw you rubbing your +head round that buggy the last time you were in. You wouldn’t get a +better one in the colonies, and you won’t see another like it in the +district again in a hurry--for it doesn’t pay to build ‘em. Now you’re a +full-blown squatter, and it’s time you took little Mary for a fly round +in her own buggy now and then, instead of having her stuck out there in +the scrub, or jolting through the dust in a cart like some old Mother +Flourbag.’ + +He called her ‘little Mary’ because the Galletly family had known her +when she was a girl. + +I rubbed my head and looked at the buggy again. It was a great +temptation. + +‘Look here, Joe,’ said Bill Galletly in a quieter tone. ‘I’ll tell you +what I’ll do. I’ll let YOU have the buggy. You can take it out and send +along a bit of a cheque when you feel you can manage it, and the rest +later on,--a year will do, or even two years. You’ve had a hard pull, +and I’m not likely to be hard up for money in a hurry.’ + +They were good fellows the Galletlys, but they knew their men. I +happened to know that Bill Galletly wouldn’t let the man he built the +buggy for take it out of the shop without cash down, though he was a +big-bug round there. But that didn’t make it easier for me. + +Just then Robert Galletly came into the shop. He was rather quieter than +his brother, but the two were very much alike. + +‘Look here, Bob,’ said Bill; ‘here’s a chance for you to get rid of your +harness. Joe Wilson’s going to take that buggy off my hands.’ + +Bob Galletly put his foot up on a saw-stool, took one hand out of his +pockets, rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on the palm of his +hand, and bunched up his big beard with his fingers, as he always did +when he was thinking. Presently he took his foot down, put his hand +back in his pocket, and said to me, ‘Well, Joe, I’ve got a double set of +harness made for the man who ordered that damned buggy, and if you like +I’ll let you have it. I suppose when Bill there has squeezed all he +can out of you I’ll stand a show of getting something. He’s a regular +Shylock, he is.’ + +I pushed my hat forward and rubbed the back of my head and stared at the +buggy. + +‘Come across to the Royal, Joe,’ said Bob. + +But I knew that a beer would settle the business, so I said I’d get the +wool up to the station first and think it over, and have a drink when I +came back. + +I thought it over on the way to the station, but it didn’t seem good +enough. I wanted to get some more sheep, and there was the new run to +be fenced in, and the instalments on the selections. I wanted lots of +things that I couldn’t well do without. Then, again, the farther I got +away from debt and hard-upedness the greater the horror I had of it. I +had two horses that would do; but I’d have to get another later on, and +altogether the buggy would run me nearer a hundred than fifty pounds. +Supposing a dry season threw me back with that buggy on my hands. +Besides, I wanted a spell. If I got the buggy it would only mean an +extra turn of hard graft for me. No, I’d take Mary for a trip to Sydney, +and she’d have to be satisfied with that. + +I’d got it settled, and was just turning in through the big white +gates to the goods-shed when young Black, the squatter, dashed past the +station in his big new waggonette, with his wife and a driver and a lot +of portmanteaus and rugs and things. They were going to do the grand +in Sydney over Christmas. Now it was young Black who was so shook after +Mary when she was in service with the Blacks before the old man died, +and if I hadn’t come along--and if girls never cared for vagabonds--Mary +would have been mistress of Haviland homestead, with servants to wait on +her; and she was far better fitted for it than the one that was there. +She would have been going to Sydney every holiday and putting up at the +old Royal, with every comfort that a woman could ask for, and seeing +a play every night. And I’d have been knocking around amongst the big +stations Out-Back, or maybe drinking myself to death at the shanties. + +The Blacks didn’t see me as I went by, ragged and dusty, and with an +old, nearly black, cabbage-tree hat drawn over my eyes. I didn’t care +a damn for them, or any one else, at most times, but I had moods when I +felt things. + +One of Black’s big wool teams was just coming away from the shed, and +the driver, a big, dark, rough fellow, with some foreign blood in him, +didn’t seem inclined to wheel his team an inch out of the middle of the +road. I stopped my horses and waited. He looked at me and I looked at +him--hard. Then he wheeled off, scowling, and swearing at his horses. +I’d given him a hiding, six or seven years before, and he hadn’t +forgotten it. And I felt then as if I wouldn’t mind trying to give some +one a hiding. + +The goods clerk must have thought that Joe Wilson was pretty grumpy that +day. I was thinking of Mary, out there in the lonely hut on a barren +creek in the Bush--for it was little better--with no one to speak to +except a haggard, worn-out Bushwoman or two, that came to see her +on Sunday. I thought of the hardships she went through in the first +year--that I haven’t told you about yet; of the time she was ill, and I +away, and no one to understand; of the time she was alone with James and +Jim sick; and of the loneliness she fought through out there. I thought +of Mary, outside in the blazing heat, with an old print dress and a +felt hat, and a pair of ‘lastic-siders of mine on, doing the work of +a station manager as well as that of a housewife and mother. And her +cheeks were getting thin, and her colour was going: I thought of the +gaunt, brick-brown, saw-file voiced, hopeless and spiritless Bushwomen I +knew--and some of them not much older than Mary. + +When I went back down into the town, I had a drink with Bill Galletly at +the Royal, and that settled the buggy; then Bob shouted,* and I took the +harness. Then I shouted, to wet the bargain. When I was going, Bob said, +‘Send in that young scamp of a brother of Mary’s with the horses: if +the collars don’t fit I’ll fix up a pair of makeshifts, and alter the +others.’ I thought they both gripped my hand harder than usual, but that +might have been the beer. + + * ‘Shout’, to buy a round of drinks.--A. L., 1997. + + + + +IV. The Buggy Comes Home. + + +I ‘whipped the cat’ a bit, the first twenty miles or so, but then, I +thought, what did it matter? What was the use of grinding to save money +until we were too old to enjoy it. If we had to go down in the world +again, we might as well fall out of a buggy as out of a dray--there’d be +some talk about it, anyway, and perhaps a little sympathy. When Mary had +the buggy she wouldn’t be tied down so much to that wretched hole in the +Bush; and the Sydney trips needn’t be off either. I could drive down to +Wallerawang on the main line, where Mary had some people, and leave the +buggy and horses there, and take the train to Sydney; or go right on, by +the old coach-road, over the Blue Mountains: it would be a grand drive. +I thought best to tell Mary’s sister at Gulgong about the buggy; I told +her I’d keep it dark from Mary till the buggy came home. She entered +into the spirit of the thing, and said she’d give the world to be able +to go out with the buggy, if only to see Mary open her eyes when she saw +it; but she couldn’t go, on account of a new baby she had. I was rather +glad she couldn’t, for it would spoil the surprise a little, I thought. +I wanted that all to myself. + +I got home about sunset next day, and, after tea, when I’d finished +telling Mary all the news, and a few lies as to why I didn’t bring the +cart back, and one or two other things, I sat with James, out on a log +of the wood-heap, where we generally had our smokes and interviews, and +told him all about the buggy. He whistled, then he said-- + +‘But what do you want to make it such a Bushranging business for? +Why can’t you tell Mary now? It will cheer her up. She’s been pretty +miserable since you’ve been away this trip.’ + +‘I want it to be a surprise,’ I said. + +‘Well, I’ve got nothing to say against a surprise, out in a hole like +this; but it ‘ud take a lot to surprise me. What am I to say to Mary +about taking the two horses in? I’ll only want one to bring the cart +out, and she’s sure to ask.’ + +‘Tell her you’re going to get yours shod.’ + +‘But he had a set of slippers only the other day. She knows as much +about horses as we do. I don’t mind telling a lie so long as a chap has +only got to tell a straight lie and be done with it. But Mary asks so +many questions.’ + +‘Well, drive the other horse up the creek early, and pick him up as you +go.’ + +‘Yes. And she’ll want to know what I want with two bridles. But I’ll fix +her--YOU needn’t worry.’ + +‘And, James,’ I said, ‘get a chamois leather and sponge--we’ll want ‘em +anyway--and you might give the buggy a wash down in the creek, coming +home. It’s sure to be covered with dust.’ + +‘Oh!--orlright.’ + +‘And if you can, time yourself to get here in the cool of the evening, +or just about sunset.’ + +‘What for?’ + +I’d thought it would be better to have the buggy there in the cool +of the evening, when Mary would have time to get excited and get over +it--better than in the blazing hot morning, when the sun rose as hot as +at noon, and we’d have the long broiling day before us. + +‘What do you want me to come at sunset for?’ asked James. ‘Do you want +me to camp out in the scrub and turn up like a blooming sundowner?’ + +‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘get here at midnight if you like.’ + +We didn’t say anything for a while--just sat and puffed at our pipes. +Then I said,-- + +‘Well, what are you thinking about?’ + +I’m thinking it’s time you got a new hat, the sun seems to get in +through your old one too much,’ and he got out of my reach and went to +see about penning the calves. Before we turned in he said,-- + +‘Well, what am I to get out of the job, Joe?’ + +He had his eye on a double-barrel gun that Franca the gunsmith in +Cudgeegong had--one barrel shot, and the other rifle; so I said,-- + +‘How much does Franca want for that gun?’ + +‘Five-ten; but I think he’d take my single barrel off it. Anyway, I can +squeeze a couple of quid out of Phil Lambert for the single barrel.’ +(Phil was his bosom chum.) + +‘All right,’ I said. ‘Make the best bargain you can.’ + +He got his own breakfast and made an early start next morning, to get +clear of any instructions or messages that Mary might have forgotten to +give him overnight. He took his gun with him. + +I’d always thought that a man was a fool who couldn’t keep a secret +from his wife--that there was something womanish about him. I found out. +Those three days waiting for the buggy were about the longest I ever +spent in my life. It made me scotty with every one and everything; +and poor Mary had to suffer for it. I put in the time patching up the +harness and mending the stockyard and the roof, and, the third morning, +I rode up the ridges to look for trees for fencing-timber. I remember I +hurried home that afternoon because I thought the buggy might get there +before me. + +At tea-time I got Mary on to the buggy business. + +‘What’s the good of a single buggy to you, Mary?’ I asked. ‘There’s only +room for two, and what are you going to do with the children when we go +out together?’ + +‘We can put them on the floor at our feet, like other people do. I can +always fold up a blanket or ‘possum rug for them to sit on.’ + +But she didn’t take half so much interest in buggy talk as she would +have taken at any other time, when I didn’t want her to. Women are +aggravating that way. But the poor girl was tired and not very well, and +both the children were cross. She did look knocked up. + +‘We’ll give the buggy a rest, Joe,’ she said. (I thought I heard it +coming then.) ‘It seems as far off as ever. I don’t know why you want to +harp on it to-day. Now, don’t look so cross, Joe--I didn’t mean to hurt +you. We’ll wait until we can get a double buggy, since you’re so set on +it. There’ll be plenty of time when we’re better off.’ + +After tea, when the youngsters were in bed, and she’d washed up, we sat +outside on the edge of the verandah floor, Mary sewing, and I smoking +and watching the track up the creek. + +‘Why don’t you talk, Joe?’ asked Mary. ‘You scarcely ever speak to me +now: it’s like drawing blood out of a stone to get a word from you. What +makes you so cross, Joe?’ + +‘Well, I’ve got nothing to say.’ + +‘But you should find something. Think of me--it’s very miserable for me. +Have you anything on your mind? Is there any new trouble? Better tell +me, no matter what it is, and not go worrying and brooding and making +both our lives miserable. If you never tell one anything, how can you +expect me to understand?’ + +I said there was nothing the matter. + +‘But there must be, to make you so unbearable. Have you been drinking, +Joe--or gambling?’ + +I asked her what she’d accuse me of next. + +‘And another thing I want to speak to you about,’ she went on. ‘Now, +don’t knit up your forehead like that, Joe, and get impatient----’ + +‘Well, what is it?’ + +‘I wish you wouldn’t swear in the hearing of the children. Now, little +Jim to-day, he was trying to fix his little go-cart and it wouldn’t run +right, and--and----’ + +‘Well, what did he say?’ + +‘He--he’ (she seemed a little hysterical, trying not to laugh)--‘he said +“damn it!”’ + +I had to laugh. Mary tried to keep serious, but it was no use. + +‘Never mind, old woman,’ I said, putting an arm round her, for her +mouth was trembling, and she was crying more than laughing. ‘It won’t be +always like this. Just wait till we’re a bit better off.’ + +Just then a black boy we had (I must tell you about him some other time) +came sidling along by the wall, as if he were afraid somebody was going +to hit him--poor little devil! I never did. + +‘What is it, Harry?’ said Mary. + +‘Buggy comin’, I bin thinkit.’ + +‘Where?’ + +He pointed up the creek. + +‘Sure it’s a buggy?’ + +‘Yes, missus.’ + +‘How many horses?’ + +‘One--two.’ + +We knew that he could hear and see things long before we could. Mary +went and perched on the wood-heap, and shaded her eyes--though the sun +had gone--and peered through between the eternal grey trunks of the +stunted trees on the flat across the creek. Presently she jumped down +and came running in. + +‘There’s some one coming in a buggy, Joe!’ she cried, excitedly. ‘And +both my white table-cloths are rough dry. Harry! put two flat-irons down +to the fire, quick, and put on some more wood. It’s lucky I kept those +new sheets packed away. Get up out of that, Joe! What are you sitting +grinning like that for? Go and get on another shirt. Hurry--Why! It’s +only James--by himself.’ + +She stared at me, and I sat there, grinning like a fool. + +‘Joe!’ she said, ‘whose buggy is that?’ + +‘Well, I suppose it’s yours,’ I said. + +She caught her breath, and stared at the buggy and then at me again. +James drove down out of sight into the crossing, and came up close to +the house. + +‘Oh, Joe! what have you done?’ cried Mary. ‘Why, it’s a new double +buggy!’ Then she rushed at me and hugged my head. ‘Why didn’t you tell +me, Joe? You poor old boy!--and I’ve been nagging at you all day!’ and +she hugged me again. + +James got down and started taking the horses out--as if it was an +everyday occurrence. I saw the double-barrel gun sticking out from under +the seat. He’d stopped to wash the buggy, and I suppose that’s what made +him grumpy. Mary stood on the verandah, with her eyes twice as big as +usual, and breathing hard--taking the buggy in. + +James skimmed the harness off, and the horses shook themselves and +went down to the dam for a drink. ‘You’d better look under the seats,’ +growled James, as he took his gun out with great care. + +Mary dived for the buggy. There was a dozen of lemonade and ginger-beer +in a candle-box from Galletly--James said that Galletly’s men had a +gallon of beer, and they cheered him, James (I suppose he meant they +cheered the buggy), as he drove off; there was a ‘little bit of a +ham’ from Pat Murphy, the storekeeper at Home Rule, that he’d ‘cured +himself’--it was the biggest I ever saw; there were three loaves of +baker’s bread, a cake, and a dozen yards of something ‘to make up for +the children’, from Aunt Gertrude at Gulgong; there was a fresh-water +cod, that long Dave Regan had caught the night before in the Macquarie +river, and sent out packed in salt in a box; there was a holland suit +for the black boy, with red braid to trim it; and there was a jar of +preserved ginger, and some lollies (sweets) [‘for the lil’ boy’), and +a rum-looking Chinese doll and a rattle [‘for lil’ girl’) from Sun Tong +Lee, our storekeeper at Gulgong--James was chummy with Sun Tong Lee, +and got his powder and shot and caps there on tick when he was short of +money. And James said that the people would have loaded the buggy with +‘rubbish’ if he’d waited. They all seemed glad to see Joe Wilson getting +on--and these things did me good. + +We got the things inside, and I don’t think either of us knew what we +were saying or doing for the next half-hour. Then James put his head in +and said, in a very injured tone,-- + +‘What about my tea? I ain’t had anything to speak of since I left +Cudgeegong. I want some grub.’ + +Then Mary pulled herself together. + +‘You’ll have your tea directly,’ she said. ‘Pick up that harness at +once, and hang it on the pegs in the skillion; and you, Joe, back +that buggy under the end of the verandah, the dew will be on it +presently--and we’ll put wet bags up in front of it to-morrow, to +keep the sun off. And James will have to go back to Cudgeegong for the +cart,--we can’t have that buggy to knock about in.’ + +‘All right,’ said James--‘anything! Only get me some grub.’ + +Mary fried the fish, in case it wouldn’t keep till the morning, and +rubbed over the tablecloths, now the irons were hot--James growling +all the time--and got out some crockery she had packed away that had +belonged to her mother, and set the table in a style that made James +uncomfortable. + +‘I want some grub--not a blooming banquet!’ he said. And he growled a +lot because Mary wanted him to eat his fish without a knife, ‘and that +sort of Tommy-rot.’ When he’d finished he took his gun, and the black +boy, and the dogs, and went out ‘possum-shooting. + +When we were alone Mary climbed into the buggy to try the seat, and +made me get up alongside her. We hadn’t had such a comfortable seat for +years; but we soon got down, in case any one came by, for we began to +feel like a pair of fools up there. + +Then we sat, side by side, on the edge of the verandah, and talked +more than we’d done for years--and there was a good deal of ‘Do you +remember?’ in it--and I think we got to understand each other better +that night. + +And at last Mary said, ‘Do you know, Joe, why, I feel to-night +just--just like I did the day we were married.’ + +And somehow I had that strange, shy sort of feeling too. + + + + +The Writer Wants to Say a Word. + + +In writing the first sketch of the Joe Wilson series, which happened +to be ‘Brighten’s Sister-in-law’, I had an idea of making Joe Wilson a +strong character. Whether he is or not, the reader must judge. It seems +to me that the man’s natural sentimental selfishness, good-nature, +‘softness’, or weakness--call it which you like--developed as I wrote +on. + +I know Joe Wilson very well. He has been through deep trouble since the +day he brought the double buggy to Lahey’s Creek. I met him in Sydney +the other day. Tall and straight yet--rather straighter than he had +been--dressed in a comfortable, serviceable sac suit of ‘saddle-tweed’, +and wearing a new sugar-loaf, cabbage-tree hat, he looked over the +hurrying street people calmly as though they were sheep of which he was +not in charge, and which were not likely to get ‘boxed’ with his. Not +the worst way in which to regard the world. + +He talked deliberately and quietly in all that roar and rush. He is a +young man yet, comparatively speaking, but it would take little Mary a +long while now to pick the grey hairs out of his head, and the process +would leave him pretty bald. + +In two or three short sketches in another book I hope to complete the +story of his life. + + + + +Part II. + + + + +The Golden Graveyard. + + +Mother Middleton was an awful woman, an ‘old hand’ (transported convict) +some said. The prefix ‘mother’ in Australia mostly means ‘old hag’, +and is applied in that sense. In early boyhood we understood, from +old diggers, that Mother Middleton--in common with most other ‘old +hands’--had been sent out for ‘knocking a donkey off a hen-roost.’ We +had never seen a donkey. She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper +when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees, and swore on +most occasions. There was a fearsome yarn, which impressed us greatly +as boys, to the effect that once, in her best (or worst) days, she had +pulled a mounted policeman off his horse, and half-killed him with a +heavy pick-handle, which she used for poking down clothes in her boiler. +She said that he had insulted her. + +She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any +Bushman; she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy’s; she had +often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband, when he’d be +putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate, as he often had to +do--because of her mainly. Old diggers said that it was lovely to see +how she’d spin up a heavy green-hide bucket full of clay and ‘tailings’, +and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist. Most men were afraid of +her, and few diggers’ wives were strong-minded enough to seek a second +row with Mother Middleton. Her voice could be heard right across Golden +Gully and Specimen Flat, whether raised in argument or in friendly +greeting. She came to the old Pipeclay diggings with the ‘rough crowd’ +(mostly Irish), and when the old and new Pipeclays were worked out, she +went with the rush to Gulgong (about the last of the great alluvial or +‘poor-man’s’ goldfields) and came back to Pipeclay when the Log Paddock +goldfield ‘broke out’, adjacent to the old fields, and so helped prove +the truth of the old digger’s saying, that no matter how thoroughly +ground has been worked, there is always room for a new Ballarat. + +Jimmy Middleton died at Log Paddock, and was buried, about the last, +in the little old cemetery--appertaining to the old farming town on the +river, about four miles away--which adjoined the district racecourse, in +the Bush, on the far edge of Specimen Flat. She conducted the funeral. +Some said she made the coffin, and there were alleged jokes to the +effect that her tongue had provided the corpse; but this, I think, was +unfair and cruel, for she loved Jimmy Middleton in her awful way, and +was, for all I ever heard to the contrary, a good wife to him. She then +lived in a hut in Log Paddock, on a little money in the bank, and did +sewing and washing for single diggers. + +I remember hearing her one morning in neighbourly conversation, carried +on across the gully, with a selector, Peter Olsen, who was hopelessly +slaving to farm a dusty patch in the scrub. + +‘Why don’t you chuck up that dust-hole and go up country and settle on +good land, Peter Olsen? You’re only slaving your stomach out here.’ (She +didn’t say stomach.) + +*Peter Olsen* (mild-whiskered little man, afraid of his wife). ‘But then +you know my wife is so delicate, Mrs Middleton. I wouldn’t like to take +her out in the Bush.’ + +*Mrs Middleton*. ‘Delicate, be damned! she’s only shamming!’ (at her +loudest.) ‘Why don’t you kick her off the bed and the book out of her +hand, and make her go to work? She’s as delicate as I am. Are you a man, +Peter Olsen, or a----?’ + +This for the edification of the wife and of all within half a mile. + +Long Paddock was ‘petering’. There were a few claims still being worked +down at the lowest end, where big, red-and-white waste-heaps of clay and +gravel, rising above the blue-grey gum-bushes, advertised deep sinking; +and little, yellow, clay-stained streams, running towards the creek over +the drought-parched surface, told of trouble with the water below--time +lost in baling and extra expense in timbering. And diggers came up with +their flannels and moleskins yellow and heavy, and dripping with wet +‘mullock’. + +Most of the diggers had gone to other fields, but there were a few +prospecting, in parties and singly, out on the flats and amongst the +ridges round Pipeclay. Sinking holes in search of a new Ballarat. + +Dave Regan--lanky, easy-going Bush native; Jim Bently--a bit of a ‘Flash +Jack’; and Andy Page--a character like what ‘Kit’ (in the ‘Old Curiosity +Shop’) might have been after a voyage to Australia and some Colonial +experience. These three were mates from habit and not necessity, for +it was all shallow sinking where they worked. They were poking down +pot-holes in the scrub in the vicinity of the racecourse, where the +sinking was from ten to fifteen feet. + +Dave had theories--‘ideers’ or ‘notions’ he called them; Jim Bently laid +claim to none--he ran by sight, not scent, like a kangaroo-dog. Andy +Page--by the way, great admirer and faithful retainer of Dave Regan--was +simple and trusting, but, on critical occasions, he was apt to be +obstinately, uncomfortably, exasperatingly truthful, honest, and he had +reverence for higher things. + +Dave thought hard all one quiet drowsy Sunday afternoon, and next +morning he, as head of the party, started to sink a hole as close to the +cemetery fence as he dared. It was a nice quiet spot in the thick scrub, +about three panels along the fence from the farthest corner post +from the road. They bottomed here at nine feet, and found encouraging +indications. They ‘drove’ (tunnelled) inwards at right angles to the +fence, and at a point immediately beneath it they were ‘making tucker’; +a few feet farther and they were making wages. The old alluvial bottom +sloped gently that way. The bottom here, by the way, was shelving, +brownish, rotten rock. + +Just inside the cemetery fence, and at right angles to Dave’s drive, +lay the shell containing all that was left of the late fiercely lamented +James Middleton, with older graves close at each end. A grave +was supposed to be six feet deep, and local gravediggers had been +conscientious. The old alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet +here. + +Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft, +timbering--i.e., putting in a sapling prop--here and there where he +worked wide; but the ‘payable dirt’ ran in under the cemetery, and in no +other direction. + +Dave, Jim, and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes +after tea, as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag, +sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim, and started to +tramp Out-Back to look for work on a sheep-station. + +This was Dave’s theory--drawn from a little experience and many long +yarns with old diggers:-- + +He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course, covered with +clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains to the depth of +from nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter running +into the bed of the old buried creek, and carrying patches and streaks +of ‘wash’ or gold-bearing dirt. If he went on he might strike it rich +at any stroke of his pick; he might strike the rich ‘lead’ which was +supposed to exist round there. (There was always supposed to be a rich +lead round there somewhere. ‘There’s gold in them ridges yet--if a man +can only git at it,’ says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.) + +Dave might strike a ledge, ‘pocket’, or ‘pot-hole’ holding wash rich +with gold. He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery, found +no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard. He had +prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few ‘colours’, and the +bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery towards +which all indications were now leading him. He had sunk shafts across +the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking twenty +feet and not a colour of gold. Probably the whole of the ground under +the cemetery was rich--maybe the richest in the district. The old +gravediggers had not been gold-diggers--besides, the graves, being six +feet, would, none of them, have touched the alluvial bottom. There +was nothing strange in the fact that none of the crowd of experienced +diggers who rushed the district had thought of the cemetery and +racecourse. Old brick chimneys and houses, the clay for the bricks of +which had been taken from sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put +through the crushing-mill in subsequent years and had yielded ‘payable +gold’. Fossicking Chinamen were said to have been the first to detect a +case of this kind. + +Dave reckoned to strike the ‘lead’, or a shelf or ledge with a good +streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet within the +cemetery. But a theory in alluvial gold-mining was much like a theory +in gambling, in some respects. The theory might be right enough, but old +volcanic disturbances--‘the shrinkage of the earth’s surface,’ and that +sort of old thing--upset everything. You might follow good gold along +a ledge, just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the +continuation might be a hundred feet or so under your nose. + +Had the ‘ground’ in the cemetery been ‘open’ Dave would have gone to the +point under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and +worked the ground. It would have been the quickest and easiest way--it +would have saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets +of dirt along a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence. But +it was very doubtful if the Government could have been moved to open +the cemetery even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich +goldfield under it, and backed by the influence of a number of diggers +and their backers--which last was what Dave wished for least of all. He +wanted, above all things, to keep the thing shady. Then, again, the old +clannish local spirit of the old farming town, rooted in years way back +of the goldfields, would have been too strong for the Government, or +even a rush of wild diggers. + +‘We’ll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,’ said Dave. + +He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent. Jim +grumbled, in conclusion,-- + +‘Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton. It’s the shortest and +straightest, and Jimmy’s the freshest, anyway.’ + +Then there was another trouble. How were they to account for the size of +the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be the result of such +an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel for shallow sinkings? Dave +had an idea of carrying some of the dirt away by night and putting it +down a deserted shaft close by; but that would double the labour, and +might lead to detection sooner than anything else. There were boys +‘possum-hunting on those flats every night. Then Dave got an idea. + +There was supposed to exist--and it has since been proved--another, a +second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field, and several had tried +for it. One, the town watchmaker, had sunk all his money in ‘duffers’, +trying for the second bottom. It was supposed to exist at a depth +of from eighty to a hundred feet--on solid rock, I suppose. This +watchmaker, an Italian, would put men on to sink, and superintend in +person, and whenever he came to a little ‘colour’-showing shelf, or +false bottom, thirty or forty feet down--he’d go rooting round and spoil +the shaft, and then start to sink another. It was extraordinary that +he hadn’t the sense to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second +bottom, and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other +bottoms, or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them. +He was living in a lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him. And the +last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground like a +sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place to put down a +deep shaft, and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore. But I’m +right off the line again. + +‘Old Pinter’, Ballarat digger--his theory on second and other bottoms +ran as follows:-- + +‘Ye see, THIS here grass surface--this here surface with trees an’ grass +on it, that we’re livin’ on, has got nothin’ to do with us. This here +bottom in the shaller sinkin’s that we’re workin’ on is the slope to the +bed of the NEW crick that was on the surface about the time that men was +missin’ links. The false bottoms, thirty or forty feet down, kin be said +to have been on the surface about the time that men was monkeys. The +SECON’ bottom--eighty or a hundred feet down--was on the surface about +the time when men was frogs. Now----’ + +But it’s with the missing-link surface we have to do, and had the +friends of the local departed known what Dave and Jim were up to they +would have regarded them as something lower than missing-links. + +‘We’ll give out we’re tryin’ for the second bottom,’ said Dave Regan. +‘We’ll have to rig a fan for air, anyhow, and you don’t want air in +shallow sinkings.’ + +‘And some one will come poking round, and look down the hole and see the +bottom,’ said Jim Bently. + +‘We must keep ‘em away,’ said Dave. ‘Tar the bottom, or cover it with +tarred canvas, to make it black. Then they won’t see it. There’s not +many diggers left, and the rest are going; they’re chucking up the +claims in Log Paddock. Besides, I could get drunk and pick rows with the +rest and they wouldn’t come near me. The farmers ain’t in love with +us diggers, so they won’t bother us. No man has a right to come poking +round another man’s claim: it ain’t ettykit--I’ll root up that old +ettykit and stand to it--it’s rather worn out now, but that’s no matter. +We’ll shift the tent down near the claim and see that no one comes +nosing round on Sunday. They’ll think we’re only some more second-bottom +lunatics, like Francea [the mining watchmaker]. We’re going to get our +fortune out from under that old graveyard, Jim. You leave it all to me +till you’re born again with brains.’ + +Dave’s schemes were always elaborate, and that was why they so often +came to the ground. He logged up his windlass platform a little higher, +bent about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass, which was a +new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party (that is +to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down about forty feet of +rope and then wind, with simulated exertion, until the slack was taken +up and the rope lifted the bucket from the shallow bottom. + +‘It would look better to have a whip-pole and a horse, but we can’t +afford them just yet,’ said Dave. + +But I’m a little behind. They drove straight in under the cemetery, +finding good wash all the way. The edge of Jimmy Middleton’s box +appeared in the top corner of the ‘face’ (the working end) of the drive. +They went under the butt-end of the grave. They shoved up the end of the +shell with a prop, to prevent the possibility of an accident which might +disturb the mound above; they puddled--i.e., rammed--stiff clay up round +the edges to keep the loose earth from dribbling down; and having given +the bottom of the coffin a good coat of tar, they got over, or rather +under, an unpleasant matter. + +Jim Bently smoked and burnt paper during his shift below, and grumbled a +good deal. ‘Blowed if I ever thought I’d be rooting for gold down among +the blanky dead men,’ he said. But the dirt panned out better every +dish they washed, and Dave worked the ‘wash’ out right and left as they +drove. + +But, one fine morning, who should come along but the very last man +whom Dave wished to see round there--‘Old Pinter’ (James Poynton), +Californian and Victorian digger of the old school. He’d been +prospecting down the creek, carried his pick over his shoulder--threaded +through the eye in the heft of his big-bladed, short-handled shovel that +hung behind--and his gold-dish under his arm. + +I mightn’t get a chance again to explain what a gold-dish and what +gold-washing is. A gold washing-dish is a flat dish--nearer the shape +of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or the +dish we used for setting milk--I don’t know whether the same is used +here: the gold-dish measures, say, eighteen inches across the top. You +get it full of wash dirt, squat down at a convenient place at the edge +of the water-hole, where there is a rest for the dish in the water just +below its own depth. You sink the dish and let the clay and gravel soak +a while, then you work and rub it up with your hands, and as the clay +dissolves, dish it off as muddy water or mullock. You are careful to +wash the pebbles in case there is any gold sticking to them. And so till +all the muddy or clayey matter is gone, and there is nothing but clean +gravel in the bottom of the dish. You work this off carefully, turning +the dish about this way and that and swishing the water round in it. It +requires some practice. The gold keeps to the bottom of the dish, by +its own weight. At last there is only a little half-moon of sand or fine +gravel in the bottom lower edge of the dish--you work the dish slanting +from you. Presently the gold, if there was any in the dirt, appears in +‘colours’, grains, or little nuggets along the base of the half-moon of +sand. The more gold there is in the dirt, or the coarser the gold is, +the sooner it appears. A practised digger can work off the last speck of +gravel, without losing a ‘colour’, by just working the water round and +off in the dish. Also a careful digger could throw a handful of gold +in a tub of dirt, and, washing it off in dishfuls, recover practically +every colour. + +The gold-washing ‘cradle’ is a box, shaped something like a boot, and +the size of a travelling trunk, with rockers on, like a baby’s cradle, +and a stick up behind for a handle; on top, where you’ll put your foot +into the boot, is a tray with a perforated iron bottom; the clay and +gravel is thrown on the tray, water thrown on it, and the cradle rocked +smartly. The finer gravel and the mullock goes through and down over a +sloping board covered with blanket, and with ledges on it to catch the +gold. The dish was mostly used for prospecting; large quantities of wash +dirt was put through the horse-power ‘puddling-machine’, which there +isn’t room to describe here. + +‘’Ello, Dave!’ said Pinter, after looking with mild surprise at the size +of Dave’s waste-heap. ‘Tryin’ for the second bottom?’ + +‘Yes,’ said Dave, guttural. + +Pinter dropped his tools with a clatter at the foot of the waste-heap +and scratched under his ear like an old cockatoo, which bird he +resembled. Then he went to the windlass, and resting his hands on his +knees, he peered down, while Dave stood by helpless and hopeless. + +Pinter straightened himself, blinking like an owl, and looked carelessly +over the graveyard. + +‘Tryin’ for a secon’ bottom,’ he reflected absently. ‘Eh, Dave?’ + +Dave only stood and looked black. + +Pinter tilted back his head and scratched the roots of his +chin-feathers, which stuck out all round like a dirty, ragged fan held +horizontally. + +‘Kullers is safe,’ reflected Pinter. + +‘All right?’ snapped Dave. ‘I suppose we must let him into it.’ + +‘Kullers’ was a big American buck nigger, and had been Pinter’s mate for +some time--Pinter was a man of odd mates; and what Pinter meant was that +Kullers was safe to hold his tongue. + +Next morning Pinter and his coloured mate appeared on the ground early, +Pinter with some tools and the nigger with a windlass-bole on his +shoulders. Pinter chose a spot about three panels or thirty feet along +the other fence, the back fence of the cemetery, and started his hole. +He lost no time for the sake of appearances, he sunk his shaft and +started to drive straight for the point under the cemetery for which +Dave was making; he gave out that he had bottomed on good ‘indications’ +running in the other direction, and would work the ground outside the +fence. Meanwhile Dave rigged a fan--partly for the sake of appearances, +but mainly because his and Jim’s lively imaginations made the air in the +drive worse than it really was. A ‘fan’ is a thing like a paddle-wheel +rigged in a box, about the size of a cradle, and something the shape of +a shoe, but rounded over the top. There is a small grooved wheel on the +axle of the fan outside, and an endless line, like a clothes-line, is +carried over this wheel and a groove in the edge of a high light wooden +driving-wheel rigged between two uprights in the rear and with a handle +to turn. That’s how the thing is driven. A wind-chute, like an endless +pillow-slip, made of calico, with the mouth tacked over the open toe of +the fan-box, and the end taken down the shaft and along the drive--this +carries the fresh air into the workings. + +Dave was working the ground on each side as he went, when one morning +a thought struck him that should have struck him the day Pinter went to +work. He felt mad that it hadn’t struck him sooner. + +Pinter and Kullers had also shifted their tent down into a nice quiet +place in the Bush close handy; so, early next Sunday morning, while +Pinter and Kullers were asleep, Dave posted Jim Bently to watch their +tent, and whistle an alarm if they stirred, and then dropped down into +Pinter’s hole and saw at a glance what he was up to. + +After that Dave lost no time: he drove straight on, encouraged by the +thuds of Pinter’s and Kullers’ picks drawing nearer. They would strike +his tunnel at right angles. Both parties worked long hours, only +knocking off to fry a bit of steak in the pan, boil the billy, and throw +themselves dressed on their bunks to get a few hours’ sleep. Pinter had +practical experience and a line clear of graves, and he made good time. +The two parties now found it more comfortable to be not on speaking +terms. Individually they grew furtive, and began to feel criminal +like--at least Dave and Jim did. They’d start if a horse stumbled +through the Bush, and expected to see a mounted policeman ride up at +any moment and hear him ask questions. They had driven about thirty-five +feet when, one Saturday afternoon, the strain became too great, and Dave +and Jim got drunk. The spree lasted over Sunday, and on Monday morning +they felt too shaky to come to work and had more drink. On Monday +afternoon, Kullers, whose shift it was below, stuck his pick through the +face of his drive into the wall of Dave’s, about four feet from the end +of it: the clay flaked away, leaving a hole as big as a wash-hand basin. +They knocked off for the day and decided to let the other party take the +offensive. + +Tuesday morning Dave and Jim came to work, still feeling shaky. Jim +went below, crawled along the drive, lit his candle, and stuck it in the +spiked iron socket and the spike in the wall of the drive, quite close +to the hole, without noticing either the hole or the increased freshness +in the air. He started picking away at the ‘face’ and scraping the clay +back from under his feet, and didn’t hear Kullers come to work. Kullers +came in softly and decided to try a bit of cheerful bluff. He stuck his +great round black face through the hole, the whites of his eyes rolling +horribly in the candle-light, and said, with a deep guffaw-- + +‘’Ullo! you dar’?’ + +No bandicoot ever went into his hole with the dogs after him quicker +than Jim came out of his. He scrambled up the shaft by the foot-holes, +and sat on the edge of the waste-heap, looking very pale. + +‘What’s the matter?’ asked Dave. ‘Have you seen a ghost?’ + +‘I’ve seen the--the devil!’ gasped Jim. ‘I’m--I’m done with this here +ghoul business.’ + +The parties got on speaking terms again. Dave was very warm, but Jim’s +language was worse. Pinter scratched his chin-feathers reflectively till +the other party cooled. There was no appealing to the Commissioner for +goldfields; they were outside all law, whether of the goldfields or +otherwise--so they did the only thing possible and sensible, they joined +forces and became ‘Poynton, Regan, & Party’. They agreed to work the +ground from the separate shafts, and decided to go ahead, irrespective +of appearances, and get as much dirt out and cradled as possible before +the inevitable exposure came along. They found plenty of ‘payable dirt’, +and soon the drive ended in a cluster of roomy chambers. They timbered +up many coffins of various ages, burnt tarred canvas and brown +paper, and kept the fan going. Outside they paid the storekeeper with +difficulty and talked of hard times. + +But one fine sunny morning, after about a week of partnership, they got +a bad scare. Jim and Kullers were below, getting out dirt for all they +were worth, and Pinter and Dave at their windlasses, when who should +march down from the cemetery gate but Mother Middleton herself. She was +a hard woman to look at. She still wore the old-fashioned crinoline and +her hair in a greasy net; and on this as on most other sober occasions, +she wore the expression of a rough Irish navvy who has just enough drink +to make him nasty and is looking out for an excuse for a row. She had +a stride like a grenadier. A digger had once measured her step by her +footprints in the mud where she had stepped across a gutter: it measured +three feet from toe to heel. + +She marched to the grave of Jimmy Middleton, laid a dingy bunch of +flowers thereon, with the gesture of an angry man banging his fist down +on the table, turned on her heel, and marched out. The diggers were dirt +beneath her feet. Presently they heard her drive on in her spring-cart +on her way into town, and they drew breaths of relief. + +It was afternoon. Dave and Pinter were feeling tired, and were just +deciding to knock off work for that day when they heard a scuffling in +the direction of the different shafts, and both Jim and Kullers dropped +down and bundled in in a great hurry. Jim chuckled in a silly way, as if +there was something funny, and Kullers guffawed in sympathy. + +‘What’s up now?’ demanded Dave apprehensively. + +‘Mother Middleton,’ said Jim; ‘she’s blind mad drunk, and she’s got a +bottle in one hand and a new pitchfork in the other, that she’s bringing +out for some one.’ + +‘How the hell did she drop to it?’ exclaimed Pinter. + +‘Dunno,’ said Jim. ‘Anyway she’s coming for us. Listen to her!’ + +They didn’t have to listen hard. The language which came down the +shaft--they weren’t sure which one--and along the drives was enough to +scare up the dead and make them take to the Bush. + +‘Why didn’t you fools make off into the Bush and give us a chance, +instead of giving her a lead here?’ asked Dave. + +Jim and Kullers began to wish they had done so. + +Mrs Middleton began to throw stones down the shaft--it was Pinter’s--and +they, even the oldest and most anxious, began to grin in spite of +themselves, for they knew she couldn’t hurt them from the surface, and +that, though she had been a working digger herself, she couldn’t fill +both shafts before the fumes of liquor overtook her. + +‘I wonder which shaf’ she’ll come down,’ asked Kullers in a tone +befitting the place and occasion. + +‘You’d better go and watch your shaft, Pinter,’ said Dave, ‘and Jim and +I’ll watch mine.’ + +‘I--I won’t,’ said Pinter hurriedly. ‘I’m--I’m a modest man.’ + +Then they heard a clang in the direction of Pinter’s shaft. + +‘She’s thrown her bottle down,’ said Dave. + +Jim crawled along the drive a piece, urged by curiosity, and returned +hurriedly. + +‘She’s broke the pitchfork off short, to use in the drive, and I believe +she’s coming down.’ + +‘Her crinoline’ll handicap her,’ said Pinter vacantly, ‘that’s a +comfort.’ + +‘She’s took it off!’ said Dave excitedly; and peering along Pinter’s +drive, they saw first an elastic-sided boot, then a red-striped +stocking, then a section of scarlet petticoat. + +‘Lemme out!’ roared Pinter, lurching forward and making a swimming +motion with his hands in the direction of Dave’s drive. Kullers +was already gone, and Jim well on the way. Dave, lanky and awkward, +scrambled up the shaft last. Mrs Middleton made good time, considering +she had the darkness to face and didn’t know the workings, and when Dave +reached the top he had a tear in the leg of his moleskins, and the blood +ran from a nasty scratch. But he didn’t wait to argue over the price of +a new pair of trousers. He made off through the Bush in the direction of +an encouraging whistle thrown back by Jim. + +‘She’s too drunk to get her story listened to to-night,’ said Dave. ‘But +to-morrow she’ll bring the neighbourhood down on us.’ + +‘And she’s enough, without the neighbourhood,’ reflected Pinter. + +Some time after dark they returned cautiously, reconnoitred their camp, +and after hiding in a hollow log such things as they couldn’t carry, +they rolled up their tents like the Arabs, and silently stole away. + + + + +The Chinaman’s Ghost. + + +‘Simple as striking matches,’ said Dave Regan, Bushman; ‘but it gave me +the biggest scare I ever had--except, perhaps, the time I stumbled in +the dark into a six-feet digger’s hole, which might have been eighty +feet deep for all I knew when I was falling. (There was an eighty-feet +shaft left open close by.) + +‘It was the night of the day after the Queen’s birthday. I was sinking a +shaft with Jim Bently and Andy Page on the old Redclay goldfield, and +we camped in a tent on the creek. Jim and me went to some races that was +held at Peter Anderson’s pub., about four miles across the ridges, on +Queen’s birthday. Andy was a quiet sort of chap, a teetotaller, and +we’d disgusted him the last time he was out for a holiday with us, so he +stayed at home and washed and mended his clothes, and read an arithmetic +book. (He used to keep the accounts, and it took him most of his spare +time.) + +‘Jim and me had a pretty high time. We all got pretty tight after the +races, and I wanted to fight Jim, or Jim wanted to fight me--I don’t +remember which. We were old chums, and we nearly always wanted to fight +each other when we got a bit on, and we’d fight if we weren’t stopped. I +remember once Jim got maudlin drunk and begged and prayed of me to fight +him, as if he was praying for his life. Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver, +used to say that Jim and me must be related, else we wouldn’t hate each +other so much when we were tight and truthful. + +‘Anyway, this day, Jim got the sulks, and caught his horse and went home +early in the evening. My dog went home with him too; I must have been +carrying on pretty bad to disgust the dog. + +‘Next evening I got disgusted with myself, and started to walk home. I’d +lost my hat, so Peter Anderson lent me an old one of his, that he’d worn +on Ballarat he said: it was a hard, straw, flat, broad-brimmed affair, +and fitted my headache pretty tight. Peter gave me a small flask of +whisky to help me home. I had to go across some flats and up a long dark +gully called Murderer’s Gully, and over a gap called Dead Man’s Gap, +and down the ridge and gullies to Redclay Creek. The lonely flats +were covered with blue-grey gum bush, and looked ghostly enough in the +moonlight, and I was pretty shaky, but I had a pull at the flask and a +mouthful of water at a creek and felt right enough. I began to whistle, +and then to sing: I never used to sing unless I thought I was a couple +of miles out of earshot of any one. + +‘Murderer’s Gully was deep and pretty dark most times, and of course it +was haunted. Women and children wouldn’t go through it after dark; and +even me, when I’d grown up, I’d hold my back pretty holler, and whistle, +and walk quick going along there at night-time. We’re all afraid of +ghosts, but we won’t let on. + +‘Some one had skinned a dead calf during the day and left it on the +track, and it gave me a jump, I promise you. It looked like two corpses +laid out naked. I finished the whisky and started up over the gap. All +of a sudden a great ‘old man’ kangaroo went across the track with a +thud-thud, and up the siding, and that startled me. Then the naked, +white glistening trunk of a stringy-bark tree, where some one had +stripped off a sheet of bark, started out from a bend in the track in a +shaft of moonlight, and that gave me a jerk. I was pretty shaky before +I started. There was a Chinaman’s grave close by the track on the top +of the gap. An old chow had lived in a hut there for many years, and +fossicked on the old diggings, and one day he was found dead in the +hut, and the Government gave some one a pound to bury him. When I was a +nipper we reckoned that his ghost haunted the gap, and cursed in Chinese +because the bones hadn’t been sent home to China. It was a lonely, +ghostly place enough. + +‘It had been a smotheringly hot day and very close coming across the +flats and up the gully--not a breath of air; but now as I got higher I +saw signs of the thunderstorm we’d expected all day, and felt the breath +of a warm breeze on my face. When I got into the top of the gap the +first thing I saw was something white amongst the dark bushes over the +spot where the Chinaman’s grave was, and I stood staring at it with +both eyes. It moved out of the shadow presently, and I saw that it was +a white bullock, and I felt relieved. I’d hardly felt relieved when, all +at once, there came a “pat-pat-pat” of running feet close behind me! +I jumped round quick, but there was nothing there, and while I stood +staring all ways for Sunday, there came a “pat-pat”, then a pause, and +then “pat-pat-pat-pat” behind me again: it was like some one dodging and +running off that time. I started to walk down the track pretty fast, +but hadn’t gone a dozen yards when “pat-pat-pat”, it was close behind me +again. I jerked my eyes over my shoulder but kept my legs going. There +was nothing behind, but I fancied I saw something slip into the Bush to +the right. It must have been the moonlight on the moving boughs; there +was a good breeze blowing now. I got down to a more level track, and +was making across a spur to the main road, when “pat-pat!” “pat-pat-pat, +pat-pat-pat!” it was after me again. Then I began to run--and it began +to run too! “pat-pat-pat” after me all the time. I hadn’t time to look +round. Over the spur and down the siding and across the flat to the road +I went as fast as I could split my legs apart. I had a scared idea that +I was getting a touch of the “jim-jams”, and that frightened me more +than any outside ghost could have done. I stumbled a few times, and +saved myself, but, just before I reached the road, I fell slithering +on to my hands on the grass and gravel. I thought I’d broken both +my wrists. I stayed for a moment on my hands and knees, quaking and +listening, squinting round like a great gohana; I couldn’t hear nor +see anything. I picked myself up, and had hardly got on one end, when +“pat-pat!” it was after me again. I must have run a mile and a half +altogether that night. It was still about three-quarters of a mile to +the camp, and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked up +in my throat. I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster. The +footsteps stopped, then something about the hat touched my fingers, and +I stared at it--and the thing dawned on me. I hadn’t noticed at Peter +Anderson’s--my head was too swimmy to notice anything. It was an old hat +of the style that the first diggers used to wear, with a couple of loose +ribbon ends, three or four inches long, from the band behind. As long +as I walked quietly through the gully, and there was no wind, the tails +didn’t flap, but when I got up into the breeze, they flapped or were +still according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flat +on the brim. And when I ran they tapped all the time; and the hat being +tight on my head, the tapping of the ribbon ends against the straw +sounded loud of course. + +‘I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool +down, and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had a long +drink of water. + +‘“You seem to be a bit winded, Dave,” said Jim Bently, “and mighty +thirsty. Did the Chinaman’s ghost chase you?” + +‘I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on my +bunk, and had a good rest.’ + + + + +The Loaded Dog. + + +Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony +Creek in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist +in the vicinity. There is always a rich reef supposed to exist in the +vicinity; the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds +beneath the surface, and in which direction. They had struck some +pretty solid rock, also water which kept them baling. They used the +old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse. They’d make a sausage or +cartridge of blasting-powder in a skin of strong calico or canvas, the +mouth sewn and bound round the end of the fuse; they’d dip the cartridge +in melted tallow to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as +possible, drop in the cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram with +stiff clay and broken brick. Then they’d light the fuse and get out of +the hole and wait. The result was usually an ugly pot-hole in the bottom +of the shaft and half a barrow-load of broken rock. + +There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish, +and tailers. The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing. +Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged by a ‘nibble’ +or a ‘bite’ now and then--say once in twenty minutes. The butcher was +always willing to give meat in exchange for fish when they caught more +than they could eat; but now it was winter, and these fish wouldn’t +bite. However, the creek was low, just a chain of muddy water-holes, +from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it to the sizable pool with an +average depth of six or seven feet, and they could get fish by baling +out the smaller holes or muddying up the water in the larger ones +till the fish rose to the surface. There was the cat-fish, with spikes +growing out of the sides of its head, and if you got pricked you’d know +it, as Dave said. Andy took off his boots, tucked up his trousers, and +went into a hole one day to stir up the mud with his feet, and he knew +it. Dave scooped one out with his hand and got pricked, and he knew it +too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed up into his shoulder, and +down into his stomach too, he said, like a toothache he had once, and +kept him awake for two nights--only the toothache pain had a ‘burred +edge’, Dave said. + +Dave got an idea. + +‘Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a cartridge?’ he +said. ‘I’ll try it.’ + +He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out. Andy usually put +Dave’s theories into practice if they were practicable, or bore the +blame for the failure and the chaffing of his mates if they weren’t. + +He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the +rock. Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the +river. The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a +six-foot piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of +the bag firmly to it with whipcord. The idea was to sink the cartridge +in the water with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on +the surface, ready for lighting. Andy dipped the cartridge in melted +bees’-wax to make it water-tight. ‘We’ll have to leave it some time +before we light it,’ said Dave, ‘to give the fish time to get over their +scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again; so we’ll want it +well water-tight.’ + +Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave’s suggestion, bound a strip of sail +canvas--that they used for making water-bags--to increase the force of +the explosion, and round that he pasted layers of stiff brown paper--on +the plan of the sort of fireworks we called ‘gun-crackers’. He let the +paper dry in the sun, then he sewed a covering of two thicknesses +of canvas over it, and bound the thing from end to end with stout +fishing-line. Dave’s schemes were elaborate, and he often worked his +inventions out to nothing. The cartridge was rigid and solid enough +now--a formidable bomb; but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure. Andy sewed +on another layer of canvas, dipped the cartridge in melted tallow, +twisted a length of fencing-wire round it as an afterthought, dipped it +in tallow again, and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he’d +know where to find it, and wound the fuse loosely round it. Then he +went to the camp-fire to try some potatoes which were boiling in their +jackets in a billy, and to see about frying some chops for dinner. Dave +and Jim were at work in the claim that morning. + +They had a big black young retriever dog--or rather an overgrown pup, a +big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them +and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a +stock-whip. Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin +of appreciation of his own silliness. He seemed to take life, the world, +his two-legged mates, and his own instinct as a huge joke. He’d retrieve +anything: he carted back most of the camp rubbish that Andy threw +away. They had a cat that died in hot weather, and Andy threw it a good +distance away in the scrub; and early one morning the dog found the cat, +after it had been dead a week or so, and carried it back to camp, +and laid it just inside the tent-flaps, where it could best make +its presence known when the mates should rise and begin to sniff +suspiciously in the sickly smothering atmosphere of the summer sunrise. +He used to retrieve them when they went in swimming; he’d jump in after +them, and take their hands in his mouth, and try to swim out with them, +and scratch their naked bodies with his paws. They loved him for his +good-heartedness and his foolishness, but when they wished to enjoy a +swim they had to tie him up in camp. + +He watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the +cartridge, and hindered him considerably, trying to help; but about noon +he went off to the claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on, and to +come home to dinner with them. Andy saw them coming, and put a panful of +mutton-chops on the fire. Andy was cook to-day; Dave and Jim stood with +their backs to the fire, as Bushmen do in all weathers, waiting till +dinner should be ready. The retriever went nosing round after something +he seemed to have missed. + +Andy’s brain still worked on the cartridge; his eye was caught by the +glare of an empty kerosene-tin lying in the bushes, and it struck him +that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to sink the cartridge packed with clay, +sand, or stones in the tin, to increase the force of the explosion. He +may have been all out, from a scientific point of view, but the notion +looked all right to him. Jim Bently, by the way, wasn’t interested in +their ‘damned silliness’. Andy noticed an empty treacle-tin--the +sort with the little tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the +convenience of pouring out the treacle--and it struck him that this +would have made the best kind of cartridge-case: he would only have had +to pour in the powder, stick the fuse in through the neck, and cork and +seal it with bees’-wax. He was turning to suggest this to Dave, when +Dave glanced over his shoulder to see how the chops were doing--and +bolted. He explained afterwards that he thought he heard the pan +spluttering extra, and looked to see if the chops were burning. Jim +Bently looked behind and bolted after Dave. Andy stood stock-still, +staring after them. + +‘Run, Andy! run!’ they shouted back at him. ‘Run!!! Look behind you, you +fool!’ Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him, was +the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth--wedged into his broadest +and silliest grin. And that wasn’t all. The dog had come round the fire +to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse had trailed and waggled over the +burning sticks into the blaze; Andy had slit and nicked the firing end +of the fuse well, and now it was hissing and spitting properly. + +Andy’s legs started with a jolt; his legs started before his brain did, +and he made after Dave and Jim. And the dog followed Andy. + +Dave and Jim were good runners--Jim the best--for a short distance; Andy +was slow and heavy, but he had the strength and the wind and could last. +The dog leapt and capered round him, delighted as a dog could be to find +his mates, as he thought, on for a frolic. Dave and Jim kept shouting +back, ‘Don’t foller us! don’t foller us, you coloured fool!’ but Andy +kept on, no matter how they dodged. They could never explain, any +more than the dog, why they followed each other, but so they ran, Dave +keeping in Jim’s track in all its turnings, Andy after Dave, and the +dog circling round Andy--the live fuse swishing in all directions and +hissing and spluttering and stinking. Jim yelling to Dave not to follow +him, Dave shouting to Andy to go in another direction--to ‘spread out’, +and Andy roaring at the dog to go home. Then Andy’s brain began to work, +stimulated by the crisis: he tried to get a running kick at the dog, but +the dog dodged; he snatched up sticks and stones and threw them at the +dog and ran on again. The retriever saw that he’d made a mistake about +Andy, and left him and bounded after Dave. Dave, who had the presence of +mind to think that the fuse’s time wasn’t up yet, made a dive and a grab +for the dog, caught him by the tail, and as he swung round snatched +the cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he could: the dog +immediately bounded after it and retrieved it. Dave roared and cursed at +the dog, who seeing that Dave was offended, left him and went after Jim, +who was well ahead. Jim swung to a sapling and went up it like a native +bear; it was a young sapling, and Jim couldn’t safely get more than ten +or twelve feet from the ground. The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully +as if it was a kitten, at the foot of the sapling, and capered and +leaped and whooped joyously round under Jim. The big pup reckoned that +this was part of the lark--he was all right now--it was Jim who was out +for a spree. The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute. Jim +tried to climb higher and the sapling bent and cracked. Jim fell on his +feet and ran. The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed. It all took +but a very few moments. Jim ran to a digger’s hole, about ten feet deep, +and dropped down into it--landing on soft mud--and was safe. The dog +grinned sardonically down on him, over the edge, for a moment, as if he +thought it would be a good lark to drop the cartridge down on Jim. + +‘Go away, Tommy,’ said Jim feebly, ‘go away.’ + +The dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now; Andy +had dropped behind a log, where he lay flat on his face, having suddenly +remembered a picture of the Russo-Turkish war with a circle of +Turks lying flat on their faces (as if they were ashamed) round a +newly-arrived shell. + +There was a small hotel or shanty on the creek, on the main road, not +far from the claim. Dave was desperate, the time flew much faster in +his stimulated imagination than it did in reality, so he made for the +shanty. There were several casual Bushmen on the verandah and in the +bar; Dave rushed into the bar, banging the door to behind him. ‘My dog!’ +he gasped, in reply to the astonished stare of the publican, ‘the blanky +retriever--he’s got a live cartridge in his mouth----’ + +The retriever, finding the front door shut against him, had bounded +round and in by the back way, and now stood smiling in the doorway +leading from the passage, the cartridge still in his mouth and the fuse +spluttering. They burst out of that bar. Tommy bounded first after one +and then after another, for, being a young dog, he tried to make friends +with everybody. + +The Bushmen ran round corners, and some shut themselves in the stable. +There was a new weather-board and corrugated-iron kitchen and wash-house +on piles in the back-yard, with some women washing clothes inside. +Dave and the publican bundled in there and shut the door--the publican +cursing Dave and calling him a crimson fool, in hurried tones, and +wanting to know what the hell he came here for. + +The retriever went in under the kitchen, amongst the piles, but, luckily +for those inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking +and nursing his nastiness under there--a sneaking, fighting, thieving +canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison. Tommy +saw his danger--he’d had experience from this dog--and started out and +across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge. Half-way across +the yard the yellow dog caught him and nipped him. Tommy dropped the +cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the Bush. The yellow dog +followed him to the fence and then ran back to see what he had dropped. + +Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the +buildings--spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel sheep- +and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs--that slip after you in +the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining--and yapping, +yelping small fry. They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty +yellow dog, for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had +found something which might be good for a dog to eat. He sniffed at the +cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniff when---- + +It was very good blasting powder--a new brand that Dave had recently got +up from Sydney; and the cartridge had been excellently well made. Andy +was very patient and painstaking in all he did, and nearly as handy as +the average sailor with needles, twine, canvas, and rope. + +Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again. When +the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog +were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had +been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust +under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance. +Several saddle-horses, which had been ‘hanging-up’ round the verandah, +were galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust, with broken +bridle-reins flying; and from a circle round the outskirts, from every +point of the compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs. Two of them +went home, to the place where they were born, thirty miles away, and +reached it the same night and stayed there; it was not till towards +evening that the rest came back cautiously to make inquiries. One was +trying to walk on two legs, and most of ‘em looked more or less singed; +and a little, singed, stumpy-tailed dog, who had been in the habit of +hopping the back half of him along on one leg, had reason to be glad +that he’d saved up the other leg all those years, for he needed it +now. There was one old one-eyed cattle-dog round that shanty for years +afterwards, who couldn’t stand the smell of a gun being cleaned. He it +was who had taken an interest, only second to that of the yellow dog, in +the cartridge. Bushmen said that it was amusing to slip up on his blind +side and stick a dirty ramrod under his nose: he wouldn’t wait to bring +his solitary eye to bear--he’d take to the Bush and stay out all night. + +For half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen +round behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall, or +rolled gently on the dust, trying to laugh without shrieking. There +were two white women in hysterics at the house, and a half-caste rushing +aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water. The publican was holding +his wife tight and begging her between her squawks, to ‘hold up for my +sake, Mary, or I’ll lam the life out of ye.’ + +Dave decided to apologise later on, ‘when things had settled a bit,’ and +went back to camp. And the dog that had done it all, ‘Tommy’, the great, +idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave and lashing his +legs with his tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest, +longest, and reddest smile of amiability, and apparently satisfied for +one afternoon with the fun he’d had. + +Andy chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops, while Dave +went to help Jim out of the hole. + +And most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going +Bushmen, riding lazily past Dave’s camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl and +with just a hint of the nasal twang-- + +‘’El-lo, Da-a-ve! How’s the fishin’ getting on, Da-a-ve?’ + + + + +Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left. + + + + +I. Dave Regan’s Yarn. + + +‘When we got tired of digging about Mudgee-Budgee, and getting no gold,’ +said Dave Regan, Bushman, ‘me and my mate, Jim Bently, decided to take a +turn at droving; so we went with Bob Baker, the drover, overland with a +big mob of cattle, way up into Northern Queensland. + +‘We couldn’t get a job on the home track, and we spent most of our +money, like a pair of fools, at a pub. at a town way up over the border, +where they had a flash barmaid from Brisbane. We sold our pack-horses +and pack-saddles, and rode out of that town with our swags on our +riding-horses in front of us. We had another spree at another place, and +by the time we got near New South Wales we were pretty well stumped. + +‘Just the other side of Mulgatown, near the border, we came on a big mob +of cattle in a paddock, and a party of drovers camped on the creek. They +had brought the cattle down from the north and were going no farther +with them; their boss had ridden on into Mulgatown to get the cheques to +pay them off, and they were waiting for him. + +‘“And Poisonous Jimmy is waiting for us,” said one of them. + +‘Poisonous Jimmy kept a shanty a piece along the road from their camp +towards Mulgatown. He was called “Poisonous Jimmy” perhaps on account +of his liquor, or perhaps because he had a job of poisoning dingoes on a +station in the Bogan scrubs at one time. He was a sharp publican. He had +a girl, and they said that whenever a shearing-shed cut-out on his side +and he saw the shearers coming along the road, he’d say to the girl, +“Run and get your best frock on, Mary! Here’s the shearers comin’.” And +if a chequeman wouldn’t drink he’d try to get him into his bar and shout +for him till he was too drunk to keep his hands out of his pockets. + +‘“But he won’t get us,” said another of the drovers. “I’m going to ride +straight into Mulgatown and send my money home by the post as soon as I +get it.” + +‘“You’ve always said that, Jack,” said the first drover. + +‘We yarned a while, and had some tea, and then me and Jim got on our +horses and rode on. We were burned to bricks and ragged and dusty and +parched up enough, and so were our horses. We only had a few shillings +to carry us four or five hundred miles home, but it was mighty hot and +dusty, and we felt that we must have a drink at the shanty. This was +west of the sixpenny-line at that time--all drinks were a shilling along +here. + +‘Just before we reached the shanty I got an idea. + +‘“We’ll plant our swags in the scrub,” I said to Jim. + +‘“What for?” said Jim. + +‘“Never mind--you’ll see,” I said. + +‘So we unstrapped our swags and hid them in the mulga scrub by the +side of the road; then we rode on to the shanty, got down, and hung our +horses to the verandah posts. + +‘“Poisonous” came out at once, with a smile on him that would have made +anybody home-sick. + +‘He was a short nuggety man, and could use his hands, they said; he +looked as if he’d be a nasty, vicious, cool customer in a fight--he +wasn’t the sort of man you’d care to try and swindle a second time. +He had a monkey shave when he shaved, but now it was all frill and +stubble--like a bush fence round a stubble-field. He had a broken nose, +and a cunning, sharp, suspicious eye that squinted, and a cold stony eye +that seemed fixed. If you didn’t know him well you might talk to him for +five minutes, looking at him in the cold stony eye, and then discover +that it was the sharp cunning little eye that was watching you all the +time. It was awful embarrassing. It must have made him awkward to deal +with in a fight. + +‘“Good day, mates,” he said. + +‘“Good day,” we said. + +‘“It’s hot.” + +‘“It’s hot.” + +‘We went into the bar, and Poisonous got behind the counter. + +‘“What are you going to have?” he asked, rubbing up his glasses with a +rag. + +‘We had two long-beers. + +‘“Never mind that,” said Poisonous, seeing me put my hand in my pocket; +“it’s my shout. I don’t suppose your boss is back yet? I saw him go in +to Mulgatown this morning.” + +‘“No, he ain’t back,” I said; “I wish he was. We’re getting tired of +waiting for him. We’ll give him another hour, and then some of us will +have to ride in to see whether he’s got on the boose, and get hold of +him if he has.” + +‘“I suppose you’re waiting for your cheques?” he said, turning to fix +some bottles on the shelf. + +‘“Yes,” I said, “we are;” and I winked at Jim, and Jim winked back as +solemn as an owl. + +‘Poisonous asked us all about the trip, and how long we’d been on the +track, and what sort of a boss we had, dropping the questions offhand +now an’ then, as for the sake of conversation. We could see that he +was trying to get at the size of our supposed cheques, so we answered +accordingly. + +‘“Have another drink,” he said, and he filled the pewters up again. +“It’s up to me,” and he set to work boring out the glasses with his rag, +as if he was short-handed and the bar was crowded with customers, and +screwing up his face into what I suppose he considered an innocent or +unconscious expression. The girl began to sidle in and out with a smart +frock and a see-you-after-dark smirk on. + +‘“Have you had dinner?” she asked. We could have done with a good meal, +but it was too risky--the drovers’ boss might come along while we were +at dinner and get into conversation with Poisonous. So we said we’d had +dinner. + +‘Poisonous filled our pewters again in an offhand way. + +‘“I wish the boss would come,” said Jim with a yawn. “I want to get into +Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things before I go +in. I ain’t got a decent rag to me back. I don’t suppose there’s ten bob +amongst the lot of us.” + +‘There was a general store back on the creek, near the drovers’ camp. + +‘“Oh, go to the store and get what you want,” said Poisonous, taking a +sovereign from the till and tossing it on to the counter. “You can fix +it up with me when your boss comes. Bring your mates along.” + +‘“Thank you,” said Jim, taking up the sovereign carelessly and dropping +it into his pocket. + +‘“Well, Jim,” I said, “suppose we get back to camp and see how the chaps +are getting on?” + +‘“All right,” said Jim. + +‘“Tell them to come down and get a drink,” said Poisonous; “or, wait, +you can take some beer along to them if you like,” and he gave us half +a gallon of beer in a billy-can. He knew what the first drink meant with +Bushmen back from a long dry trip. + +‘We got on our horses, I holding the billy very carefully, and rode back +to where our swags were. + +‘“I say,” said Jim, when we’d strapped the swags to the saddles, +“suppose we take the beer back to those chaps: it’s meant for them, and +it’s only a fair thing, anyway--we’ve got as much as we can hold till we +get into Mulgatown.” + +‘“It might get them into a row,” I said, “and they seem decent chaps. +Let’s hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that’s coming along +will think there’s angels in the Bush.” + +‘“Oh! what’s a row?” said Jim. “They can take care of themselves; +they’ll have the beer anyway and a lark with Poisonous when they take +the can back and it comes to explanations. I’ll ride back to them.” + +‘So Jim rode back to the drovers’ camp with the beer, and when he came +back to me he said that the drovers seemed surprised, but they drank +good luck to him. + +‘We rode round through the mulga behind the shanty and came out on the +road again on the Mulgatown side: we only stayed at Mulgatown to buy +some tucker and tobacco, then we pushed on and camped for the night +about seven miles on the safe side of the town.’ + + + + +II. Told by One of the Other Drovers. + + +‘Talkin’ o’ Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him. We’d +brought a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown. +We camped about seven miles the other side of the town, waitin’ for the +station hands to come and take charge of the stock, while the boss rode +on into town to draw our money. Some of us was goin’ back, though in +the end we all went into Mulgatown and had a boose up with the boss. But +while we was waitin’ there come along two fellers that had been drovin’ +up north. They yarned a while, an’ then went on to Poisonous Jimmy’s +place, an’ in about an hour one on ‘em come ridin’ back with a can of +beer that he said Poisonous had sent for us. We all knew Jimmy’s little +games--the beer was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place; but we +drunk the beer, and reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards. When +the boss come back, an’ the station hands to take the bullocks, we +started into Mulgatown. We stopped outside Poisonous’s place an’ handed +the can to the girl that was grinnin’ on the verandah. Poisonous come +out with a grin on him like a parson with a broken nose. + +‘“Good day, boys!” he says. + +‘“Good day, Poisonous,” we says. + +‘“It’s hot,” he says. + +‘“It’s blanky hot,” I says. + +‘He seemed to expect us to get down. “Where are you off to?” he says. + +‘“Mulgatown,” I says. “It will be cooler there,” and we sung out, +“So-long, Poisonous!” and rode on. + +‘He stood starin’ for a minute; then he started shoutin’, “Hi! hi +there!” after us, but we took no notice, an’ rode on. When we looked +back last he was runnin’ into the scrub with a bridle in his hand. + +‘We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown, when +we heard somebody gallopin’ after us, an’ lookin’ back we saw it was +Poisonous. + +‘He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode along with +us a bit gasping: then he burst out. + +‘“Where’s them other two carnal blanks?” he shouted. + +‘“What other two?” I asked. “We’re all here. What’s the matter with you +anyway?” + +‘“All here!” he yelled. “You’re a lurid liar! What the flamin’ sheol do +you mean by swiggin’ my beer an’ flingin’ the coloured can in me face? +without as much as thank yer! D’yer think I’m a flamin’----!” + +‘Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild. + +‘“Well, we’ll pay for your dirty beer,” says one of the chaps, puttin’ +his hand in his pocket. “We didn’t want yer slush. It tasted as if it +had been used before.” + +‘“Pay for it!” yelled Jimmy. “I’ll----well take it out of one of yer +bleedin’ hides!” + +‘We stopped at once, and I got down an’ obliged Jimmy for a few rounds. +He was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands, and was cool +as a cucumber as soon as he took his coat off: besides, he had one +squirmy little business eye, and a big wall-eye, an’, even if you knowed +him well, you couldn’t help watchin’ the stony eye--it was no good +watchin’ his eyes, you had to watch his hands, and he might have +managed me if the boss hadn’t stopped the fight. The boss was a big, +quiet-voiced man, that didn’t swear. + +‘“Now, look here, Myles,” said the boss (Jimmy’s name was Myles)--“Now, +look here, Myles,” sez the boss, “what’s all this about?” + +‘“What’s all this about?” says Jimmy, gettin’ excited agen. “Why, two +fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place an’ put up +half-a-dozen drinks, an’ borrered a sovereign, an’ got a can o’ beer on +the strength of their cheques. They sez they was waitin’ for you--an’ I +want my crimson money out o’ some one!” + +‘“What was they like?” asks the boss. + +‘“Like?” shouted Poisonous, swearin’ all the time. “One was a blanky +long, sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with +black hair. Your blanky men knows all about them because they had the +blanky billy o’ beer.” + +‘“Now, what’s this all about, you chaps?” sez the boss to us. + +‘So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers. + +‘I’ve heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin’-shed, but I +never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw how he’d been +left. It was enough to split stumps. He said he wanted to see those +fellers, just once, before he died. + +‘He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an’ started out along +the road with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark +feller; but two mounted police went after him an’ fetched him back. He +said he only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two +fellers till he could give ‘em in charge. + +‘They fined him ten bob.’ + + + + +The Ghostly Door. + +Told by one of Dave’s mates. + + + +Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand, making +for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught in one +of those three-days’ gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough to +cut off a man’s legs. Camping out was not to be thought of, so we +just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between our +shoulder-blades--from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags--and +our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the +track. We were settled to it--to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working +bullocks till we came to somewhere--when, just before darkness settled +down, we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a +tussock hill, back from the road, and we made for it, without holding a +consultation. + +It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill, and was +either a deserted settler’s home or a hut attached to an abandoned +sawmill round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up. We dumped +our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door, to make +sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in: +there was light enough to see that the place was empty. Dave pulled +off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane, clicked the +catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in. I handed in the +swags to him. The room was very draughty; the wind came in through +the broken window and the cracks between the slabs, so we tried the +partitioned-off room--the bedroom--and that was better. It had been +lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left by some +timber-getters or other Bush contractors who’d camped there last; and +there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools. + +We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire, and put +the billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets on the +stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire +to dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed. I +hadn’t shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in +it like an ill-used fibre brush--a beard that got redder the longer it +grew; he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw +a man so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head), +and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked a +weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools, with +the billy and the tucker on the box between us, and ate our bread and +meat with clasp-knives. + +‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ says Dave, ‘but this is the “whare” * where the +murder was that we heard about along the road. I suppose if any one was +to come along now and look in he’d get scared.’ Then after a while he +looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet, and scratched +his ear, and said, ‘That looks very much like a blood-stain under your +stool, doesn’t it, Jim?’ + + * ‘Whare’, ‘whorrie’, Maori name for house. + +I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the +fire--it was too hot. + +I wouldn’t have liked to camp there by myself, but I don’t think Dave +would have minded--he’d knocked round too much in the Australian Bush to +mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything; besides, he was more +than half murdered once by a man who said afterwards that he’d mistook +him for some one else: he must have been a very short-sighted murderer. + +Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had, on the two +stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in, and filled up and smoked +comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again about nothing in +particular. Once I happened to look across at Dave, and saw him sitting +up a bit and watching the door. The door opened very slowly, wide, and +a black cat walked in, looked first at me, then at Dave, and walked out +again; and the door closed behind it. + +Dave scratched his ear. ‘That’s rum,’ he said. ‘I could have sworn I +fastened that door. They must have left the cat behind.’ + +‘It looks like it,’ I said. ‘Neither of us has been on the boose +lately.’ + +He got out of bed and up on his long hairy spindle-shanks. + +The door had the ordinary, common black oblong lock with a brass knob. +Dave tried the latch and found it fast; he turned the knob, opened the +door, and called, ‘Puss--puss--puss!’ but the cat wouldn’t come. He shut +the door, tried the knob to see that the catch had caught, and got into +bed again. + +He’d scarcely settled down when the door opened slowly, the black cat +walked in, stared hard at Dave, and suddenly turned and darted out as +the door closed smartly. + +I looked at Dave and he looked at me--hard; then he scratched the back +of his head. I never saw a man look so puzzled in the face and scared +about the head. + +He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand, +sneaked up to the door, and snatched it open. There was no one there. +Dave took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn’t see the +cat. He came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presently +the cat answered him and came in from somewhere--she’d been outside +the window, I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbed +against his hairy shin. Dave could generally bring a cat that way. +He had a weakness for cats. I’d seen him kick a dog, and hammer a +horse--brutally, I thought--but I never saw him hurt a cat or let any +one else do it. Dave was good to cats: if a cat had a family where Dave +was round, he’d see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fair +surplus. He said once to me, ‘I can understand a man kicking a dog, or +hammering a horse when it plays up, but I can’t understand a man hurting +a cat.’ + +He gave this cat something to eat. Then he went and held the light close +to the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it. He found a +key on the mantel-shelf and locked the door. He got into bed again, and +the cat jumped up and curled down at the foot and started her old drum +going, like shot in a sieve. Dave bent down and patted her, to tell her +he’d meant no harm when he stretched out his legs, and then he settled +down again. + +We had some books of the ‘Deadwood Dick’ school. Dave was reading ‘The +Grisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch’, and I had ‘The Dismembered Hand’, +or ‘The Disembowelled Corpse’, or some such names. They were first-class +preparation for a ghost. + +I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement and +saw Dave’s frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it on +the wall. He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes. +And that door was opening again--slowly--and Dave had locked it! I never +felt anything so creepy: the foot of my bunk was behind the door, and +I drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so. We +waited, for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe, watching +for the door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly, and up on one +end, and went to the door like a cat on wet bricks. + +‘You shot the bolt OUTSIDE the catch,’ I said, as he caught hold of the +door--like one grabs a craw-fish. + +‘I’ll swear I didn’t,’ said Dave. But he’d already turned the key a +couple of times, so he couldn’t be sure. He shut and locked the door +again. ‘Now, get out and see for yourself,’ he said. + +I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right. +Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked. + +I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struck +him. He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against the +door. + +‘What are you doing that for?’ I asked. + +‘If there’s a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying any of +his funny business, we’ll hear him if he tries to come in while we’re +asleep,’ says Dave. Then he got back into bed. We composed our nerves +with the ‘Haunted Gulch’ and ‘The Disembowelled Corpse’, and after a +while I heard Dave snore, and was just dropping off when the stick fell +from the door against my big toe and then to the ground with tremendous +clatter. I snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk, and so did +Dave--the cat went over the partition. That door opened, only a little +way this time, paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick, +skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob as if it were a nettle, +and the door wouldn’t come!--it was fast and locked! Then Dave’s face +began to look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire, +and asked me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we went into the +other room, Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his way +slow with his feet. The room was empty; we tried the outer door and +found it locked. + +‘It muster gone by the winder,’ whispered Dave. I noticed that he said +‘it’ instead of ‘he’. I saw that he himself was shook up, and it only +needed that to scare me bad. + +We went back to the bedroom, had a drink of cold tea, and lit our pipes. +Then Dave took the waterproof cover off his bunk, spread it on the +floor, laid his blankets on top of it, his spare clothes, &c., on top of +them, and started to roll up his swag. + +‘What are you going to do, Dave?’ I asked. + +‘I’m going to take the track,’ says Dave, ‘and camp somewhere farther +on. You can stay here, if you like, and come on in the morning.’ + +I started to roll up my swag at once. We dressed and fastened on the +tucker-bags, took up the billies, and got outside without making any +noise. We held our backs pretty hollow till we got down on to the road. + +‘That comes of camping in a deserted house,’ said Dave, when we were +safe on the track. No Australian Bushman cares to camp in an abandoned +homestead, or even near it--probably because a deserted home looks +ghostlier in the Australian Bush than anywhere else in the world. + +It was blowing hard, but not raining so much. + +We went on along the track for a couple of miles and camped on the +sheltered side of a round tussock hill, in a hole where there had been a +landslip. We used all our candle-ends to get a fire alight, but once we +got it started we knocked the wet bark off ‘manuka’ sticks and logs and +piled them on, and soon had a roaring fire. When the ground got a little +drier we rigged a bit of shelter from the showers with some sticks and +the oil-cloth swag-covers; then we made some coffee and got through the +night pretty comfortably. In the morning Dave said, ‘I’m going back to +that house.’ + +‘What for?’ I said. + +‘I’m going to find out what’s the matter with that crimson door. If I +don’t I’ll never be able to sleep easy within a mile of a door so long +as I live.’ + +So we went back. It was still blowing. The thing was simple enough by +daylight--after a little watching and experimenting. The house was built +of odds and ends and badly fitted. It ‘gave’ in the wind in almost any +direction--not much, not more than an inch or so, but just enough to +throw the door-frame out of plumb and out of square in such a way as to +bring the latch and bolt of the lock clear of the catch (the door-frame +was of scraps joined). Then the door swung open according to the hang of +it; and when the gust was over the house gave back, and the door swung +to--the frame easing just a little in another direction. I suppose +it would take Edison to invent a thing like that, that came about by +accident. The different strengths and directions of the gusts of wind +must have accounted for the variations of the door’s movements--and +maybe the draught of our big fire had helped. + +Dave scratched his head a good bit. + +‘I never lived in a house yet,’ he said, as we came away--‘I never lived +in a house yet without there was something wrong with it. Gimme a good +tent.’ + + + + +A Wild Irishman. + + +About seven years ago I drifted from Out-Back in Australia to +Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and up country to a little town +called Pahiatua, which meaneth the ‘home of the gods’, and is situated +in the Wairarappa (rippling or sparkling water) district. They have a +pretty little legend to the effect that the name of the district was not +originally suggested by its rivers, streams, and lakes, but by the +tears alleged to have been noticed, by a dusky squire, in the eyes of +a warrior chief who was looking his first, or last--I don’t remember +which--upon the scene. He was the discoverer, I suppose, now I come to +think of it, else the place would have been already named. Maybe the +scene reminded the old cannibal of the home of his childhood. + +Pahiatua was not the home of my god; and it rained for five weeks. +While waiting for a remittance, from an Australian newspaper--which, I +anxiously hoped, would arrive in time for enough of it to be left (after +paying board) to take me away somewhere--I spent many hours in the +little shop of a shoemaker who had been a digger; and he told me yarns +of the old days on the West Coast of Middle Island. And, ever and anon, +he returned to one, a hard-case from the West Coast, called ‘The Flour +of Wheat’, and his cousin, and his mate, Dinny Murphy, dead. And ever +and again the shoemaker (he was large, humorous, and good-natured) made +me promise that, when I dropped across an old West Coast digger--no +matter who or what he was, or whether he was drunk or sober--I’d ask him +if he knew the ‘Flour of Wheat’, and hear what he had to say. + +I make no attempt to give any one shade of the Irish brogue--it can’t be +done in writing. + + +‘There’s the little red Irishman,’ said the shoemaker, who was Irish +himself, ‘who always wants to fight when he has a glass in him; and +there’s the big sarcastic dark Irishman who makes more trouble and +fights at a spree than half-a-dozen little red ones put together; +and there’s the cheerful easy-going Irishman. Now the Flour was a +combination of all three and several other sorts. He was known from the +first amongst the boys at Th’ Canary as the Flour o’ Wheat, but no one +knew exactly why. Some said that the right name was the F-l-o-w-e-r, not +F-l-o-u-r, and that he was called that because there was no flower on +wheat. The name might have been a compliment paid to the man’s character +by some one who understood and appreciated it--or appreciated it without +understanding it. Or it might have come of some chance saying of the +Flour himself, or his mates--or an accident with bags of flour. He might +have worked in a mill. But we’ve had enough of that. It’s the man--not +the name. He was just a big, dark, blue-eyed Irish digger. He worked +hard, drank hard, fought hard--and didn’t swear. No man had ever heard +him swear (except once); all things were ‘lovely’ with him. He was +always lucky. He got gold and threw it away. + +‘The Flour was sent out to Australia (by his friends) in connection with +some trouble in Ireland in eighteen-something. The date doesn’t matter: +there was mostly trouble in Ireland in those days; and nobody, that +knew the man, could have the slightest doubt that he helped the +trouble--provided he was there at the time. I heard all this from a man +who knew him in Australia. The relatives that he was sent out to were +soon very anxious to see the end of him. He was as wild as they made +them in Ireland. When he had a few drinks, he’d walk restlessly to and +fro outside the shanty, swinging his right arm across in front of him +with elbow bent and hand closed, as if he had a head in chancery, and +muttering, as though in explanation to himself-- + +‘“Oi must be walkin’ or foightin’!--Oi must be walkin’ or foightin’!--Oi +must be walkin’ or foightin’!” + +‘They say that he wanted to eat his Australian relatives before he was +done; and the story goes that one night, while he was on the spree, they +put their belongings into a cart and took to the Bush. + +‘There’s no floury record for several years; then the Flour turned up on +the west coast of New Zealand and was never very far from a pub. kept +by a cousin (that he had tracked, unearthed, or discovered somehow) at a +place called “Th’ Canary”. I remember the first time I saw the Flour. + +‘I was on a bit of a spree myself, at Th’ Canary, and one evening I was +standing outside Brady’s (the Flour’s cousin’s place) with Tom Lyons and +Dinny Murphy, when I saw a big man coming across the flat with a swag on +his back. + +‘“B’ God, there’s the Flour o’ Wheat comin’ this minute,” says Dinny +Murphy to Tom, “an’ no one else.” + +‘“B’ God, ye’re right!” says Tom. + +‘There were a lot of new chums in the big room at the back, drinking and +dancing and singing, and Tom says to Dinny-- + +‘“Dinny, I’ll bet you a quid an’ the Flour’ll run against some of those +new chums before he’s an hour on the spot.” + +‘But Dinny wouldn’t take him up. He knew the Flour. + +‘“Good day, Tom! Good day, Dinny!” + +‘“Good day to you, Flour!” + +‘I was introduced. + +‘“Well, boys, come along,” says the Flour. + +‘And so we went inside with him. The Flour had a few drinks, and then +he went into the back-room where the new chums were. One of them was +dancing a jig, and so the Flour stood up in front of him and commenced +to dance too. And presently the new chum made a step that didn’t please +the Flour, so he hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down--fair +an’ flat on his back. + +‘“Take that,” he says. “Take that, me lovely whipper-snapper, an’ lay +there! You can’t dance. How dare ye stand up in front of me face to +dance when ye can’t dance?” + +‘He shouted, and drank, and gambled, and danced, and sang, and fought +the new chums all night, and in the morning he said-- + +‘“Well, boys, we had a grand time last night. Come and have a drink with +me.” + +‘And of course they went in and had a drink with him. + + ***** + +‘Next morning the Flour was walking along the street, when he met a +drunken, disreputable old hag, known among the boys as the “Nipper”. + +‘“Good MORNING, me lovely Flour o’ Wheat!” says she. + +‘“Good MORNING, me lovely Nipper!” says the Flour. + +‘And with that she outs with a bottle she had in her dress, and smashed +him across the face with it. Broke the bottle to smithereens! + +‘A policeman saw her do it, and took her up; and they had the Flour as a +witness, whether he liked it or not. And a lovely sight he looked, with +his face all done up in bloody bandages, and only one damaged eye and a +corner of his mouth on duty. + +‘“It’s nothing at all, your Honour,” he said to the S.M.; “only a +pin-scratch--it’s nothing at all. Let it pass. I had no right to speak +to the lovely woman at all.” + +‘But they didn’t let it pass,--they fined her a quid. + +‘And the Flour paid the fine. + +‘But, alas for human nature! It was pretty much the same even in those +days, and amongst those men, as it is now. A man couldn’t do a woman +a good turn without the dirty-minded blackguards taking it for granted +there was something between them. It was a great joke amongst the boys +who knew the Flour, and who also knew the Nipper; but as it was carried +too far in some quarters, it got to be no joke to the Flour--nor to +those who laughed too loud or grinned too long. + + ***** + +‘The Flour’s cousin thought he was a sharp man. The Flour got “stiff”. +He hadn’t any money, and his credit had run out, so he went and got +a blank summons from one of the police he knew. He pretended that he +wanted to frighten a man who owed him some money. Then he filled it up +and took it to his cousin. + +‘“What d’ye think of that?” he says, handing the summons across the bar. +“What d’ye think of me lovely Dinny Murphy now?” + +‘“Why, what’s this all about?” + +‘“That’s what I want to know. I borrowed a five-pound-note off of him a +fortnight ago when I was drunk, an’ now he sends me that.” + +‘“Well, I never would have dream’d that of Dinny,” says the cousin, +scratching his head and blinking. “What’s come over him at all?” + +‘“That’s what I want to know.” + +‘“What have you been doing to the man?” + +‘“Divil a thing that I’m aware of.” + +‘The cousin rubbed his chin-tuft between his forefinger and thumb. + +‘“Well, what am I to do about it?” asked the Flour impatiently. + +‘“Do? Pay the man, of course?” + +‘“How can I pay the lovely man when I haven’t got the price of a drink +about me?” + +‘The cousin scratched his chin. + +‘“Well--here, I’ll lend you a five-pound-note for a month or two. Go and +pay the man, and get back to work.” + +‘And the Flour went and found Dinny Murphy, and the pair of them had a +howling spree together up at Brady’s, the opposition pub. And the cousin +said he thought all the time he was being had. + + . . . . . + +‘He was nasty sometimes, when he was about half drunk. For instance, +he’d come on the ground when the Orewell sports were in full swing and +walk round, soliloquising just loud enough for you to hear; and just +when a big event was coming off he’d pass within earshot of some +committee men--who had been bursting themselves for weeks to work the +thing up and make it a success--saying to himself-- + +‘“Where’s the Orewell sports that I hear so much about? I don’t see +them! Can any one direct me to the Orewell sports?” + +‘Or he’d pass a raffle, lottery, lucky-bag, or golden-barrel business of +some sort,-- + +‘“No gamblin’ for the Flour. I don’t believe in their little shwindles. +It ought to be shtopped. Leadin’ young people ashtray.” + +‘Or he’d pass an Englishman he didn’t like,-- + +‘“Look at Jinneral Roberts! He’s a man! He’s an Irishman! England has +to come to Ireland for its Jinnerals! Luk at Jinneral Roberts in the +marshes of Candyhar!” + + ***** + +‘They always had sports at Orewell Creek on New Year’s Day--except +once--and old Duncan was always there,--never missed it till the day he +died. He was a digger, a humorous and good-hearted “hard-case”. They all +knew “old Duncan”. + +‘But one New Year’s Eve he didn’t turn up, and was missed at once. +“Where’s old Duncan? Any one seen old Duncan?” “Oh, he’ll turn up +alright.” They inquired, and argued, and waited, but Duncan didn’t come. + +‘Duncan was working at Duffers. The boys inquired of fellows who came +from Duffers, but they hadn’t seen him for two days. They had fully +expected to find him at the creek. He wasn’t at Aliaura nor Notown. They +inquired of men who came from Nelson Creek, but Duncan wasn’t there. + +‘“There’s something happened to the lovely man,” said the Flour of Wheat +at last. “Some of us had better see about it.” + +‘Pretty soon this was the general opinion, and so a party started out +over the hills to Duffers before daylight in the morning, headed by the +Flour. + + +‘The door of Duncan’s “whare” was closed--BUT NOT PADLOCKED. The Flour +noticed this, gave his head a jerk, opened the door, and went in. The +hut was tidied up and swept out--even the fireplace. Duncan had “lifted +the boxes” and “cleaned up”, and his little bag of gold stood on a +shelf by his side--all ready for his spree. On the table lay a clean +neckerchief folded ready to tie on. The blankets had been folded neatly +and laid on the bunk, and on them was stretched Old Duncan, with his +arms lying crossed on his chest, and one foot--with a boot on--resting +on the ground. He had his “clean things” on, and was dressed except for +one boot, the necktie, and his hat. Heart disease. + +‘“Take your hats off and come in quietly, lads,” said the Flour. “Here’s +the lovely man lying dead in his bunk.” + +‘There were no sports at Orewell that New Year. Some one said that the +crowd from Nelson Creek might object to the sports being postponed on +old Duncan’s account, but the Flour said he’d see to that. + +‘One or two did object, but the Flour reasoned with them and there were +no sports. + +‘And the Flour used to say, afterwards, “Ah, but it was a grand time we +had at the funeral when Duncan died at Duffers.” + + . . . . . + +‘The Flour of Wheat carried his mate, Dinny Murphy, all the way in from +Th’ Canary to the hospital on his back. Dinny was very bad--the man was +dying of the dysentery or something. The Flour laid him down on a spare +bunk in the reception-room, and hailed the staff. + +‘“Inside there--come out!” + +‘The doctor and some of the hospital people came to see what was the +matter. The doctor was a heavy swell, with a big cigar, held up in front +of him between two fat, soft, yellow-white fingers, and a dandy little +pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses nipped onto his nose with a spring. + +‘“There’s me lovely mate lying there dying of the dysentry,” says the +Flour, “and you’ve got to fix him up and bring him round.” + +‘Then he shook his fist in the doctor’s face and said-- + +‘“If you let that lovely man die--look out!” + +‘The doctor was startled. He backed off at first; then he took a puff at +his cigar, stepped forward, had a careless look at Dinny, and gave some +order to the attendants. The Flour went to the door, turned half round +as he went out, and shook his fist at them again, and said-- + +‘“If you let that lovely man die--mind!” + +‘In about twenty minutes he came back, wheeling a case of whisky in a +barrow. He carried the case inside, and dumped it down on the floor. + +‘“There,” he said, “pour that into the lovely man.” + +‘Then he shook his fist at such members of the staff as were visible, +and said-- + +‘“If you let that lovely man die--look out!” + +‘They were used to hard-cases, and didn’t take much notice of him, but +he had the hospital in an awful mess; he was there all hours of the day +and night; he would go down town, have a few drinks and a fight maybe, +and then he’d say, “Ah, well, I’ll have to go up and see how me lovely +mate’s getting on.” + +‘And every time he’d go up he’d shake his fist at the hospital in +general and threaten to murder ‘em all if they let Dinny Murphy die. + +‘Well, Dinny Murphy died one night. The next morning the Flour met the +doctor in the street, and hauled off and hit him between the eyes, and +knocked him down before he had time to see who it was. + +‘“Stay there, ye little whipper-snapper,” said the Flour of Wheat; “you +let that lovely man die!” + +‘The police happened to be out of town that day, and while they were +waiting for them the Flour got a coffin and carried it up to the +hospital, and stood it on end by the doorway. + +‘“I’ve come for me lovely mate!” he said to the scared staff--or as much +of it as he baled up and couldn’t escape him. “Hand him over. He’s going +back to be buried with his friends at Th’ Canary. Now, don’t be sneaking +round and sidling off, you there; you needn’t be frightened; I’ve +settled with the doctor.” + +‘But they called in a man who had some influence with the Flour, and +between them--and with the assistance of the prettiest nurse on the +premises--they persuaded him to wait. Dinny wasn’t ready yet; there were +papers to sign; it wouldn’t be decent to the dead; he had to be +prayed over; he had to be washed and shaved, and fixed up decent and +comfortable. Anyway, they’d have him ready in an hour, or take the +consequences. + +‘The Flour objected on the ground that all this could be done equally as +well and better by the boys at Th’ Canary. “However,” he said, “I’ll +be round in an hour, and if you haven’t got me lovely mate ready--look +out!” Then he shook his fist sternly at them once more and said-- + +‘“I know yer dirty tricks and dodges, and if there’s e’er a pin-scratch +on me mate’s body--look out! If there’s a pairin’ of Dinny’s toe-nail +missin’--look out!” + +‘Then he went out--taking the coffin with him. + +‘And when the police came to his lodgings to arrest him, they found the +coffin on the floor by the side of the bed, and the Flour lying in it on +his back, with his arms folded peacefully on his bosom. He was as +dead drunk as any man could get to be and still be alive. They knocked +air-holes in the coffin-lid, screwed it on, and carried the coffin, the +Flour, and all to the local lock-up. They laid their burden down on the +bare, cold floor of the prison-cell, and then went out, locked the door, +and departed several ways to put the “boys” up to it. And about midnight +the “boys” gathered round with a supply of liquor, and waited, and +somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl, as of a strong +Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour was heard to +plead in changed and awful tones-- + +‘“Pray for me soul, boys--pray for me soul! Let bygones be bygones +between us, boys, and pray for me lovely soul! The lovely Flour’s in +Purgatory!” + +‘Then silence for a while; and then a sound like a dray-wheel passing +over a packing-case.... That was the only time on record that the Flour +was heard to swear. And he swore then. + +‘They didn’t pray for him--they gave him a month. And, when he came +out, he went half-way across the road to meet the doctor, and he--to his +credit, perhaps--came the other half. They had a drink together, and +the Flour presented the doctor with a fine specimen of coarse gold for a +pin. + +‘“It was the will o’ God, after all, doctor,” said the Flour. “It was +the will o’ God. Let bygones be bygones between us; gimme your hand, +doctor.... Good-bye.” + +‘Then he left for Th’ Canary.’ + + + + +The Babies in the Bush. + + + ‘Oh, tell her a tale of the fairies bright-- + That only the Bushmen know-- + Who guide the feet of the lost aright, + Or carry them up through the starry night, + Where the Bush-lost babies go.’ + + +He was one of those men who seldom smile. There are many in the +Australian Bush, where drift wrecks and failures of all stations and +professions (and of none), and from all the world. Or, if they do smile, +the smile is either mechanical or bitter as a rule--cynical. They seldom +talk. The sort of men who, as bosses, are set down by the majority--and +without reason or evidence--as being proud, hard, and selfish,--‘too +mean to live, and too big for their boots.’ + +But when the Boss did smile his expression was very, very gentle, and +very sad. I have seen him smile down on a little child who persisted in +sitting on his knee and prattling to him, in spite of his silence and +gloom. He was tall and gaunt, with haggard grey eyes--haunted grey eyes +sometimes--and hair and beard thick and strong, but grey. He was not +above forty-five. He was of the type of men who die in harness, with +their hair thick and strong, but grey or white when it should be brown. +The opposite type, I fancy, would be the soft, dark-haired, blue-eyed +men who grow bald sooner than they grow grey, and fat and contented, and +die respectably in their beds. + +His name was Head--Walter Head. He was a boss drover on the overland +routes. I engaged with him at a place north of the Queensland border to +travel down to Bathurst, on the Great Western Line in New South Wales, +with something over a thousand head of store bullocks for the Sydney +market. I am an Australian Bushman (with city experience)--a rover, of +course, and a ne’er-do-well, I suppose. I was born with brains and a +thin skin--worse luck! It was in the days before I was married, and I +went by the name of ‘Jack Ellis’ this trip,--not because the police +were after me, but because I used to tell yarns about a man named Jack +Ellis--and so the chaps nicknamed me. + +The Boss spoke little to the men: he’d sit at tucker or with his pipe +by the camp-fire nearly as silently as he rode his night-watch round the +big, restless, weird-looking mob of bullocks camped on the dusky +starlit plain. I believe that from the first he spoke oftener and more +confidentially to me than to any other of the droving party. There was a +something of sympathy between us--I can’t explain what it was. It seemed +as though it were an understood thing between us that we understood each +other. He sometimes said things to me which would have needed a deal of +explanation--so I thought--had he said them to any other of the party. +He’d often, after brooding a long while, start a sentence, and break off +with ‘You know, Jack.’ And somehow I understood, without being able to +explain why. We had never met before I engaged with him for this trip. +His men respected him, but he was not a popular boss: he was too gloomy, +and never drank a glass nor ‘shouted’ on the trip: he was reckoned a +‘mean boss’, and rather a nigger-driver. + +He was full of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the English-Australian poet who +shot himself, and so was I. I lost an old copy of Gordon’s poems on the +route, and the Boss overheard me inquiring about it; later on he asked +me if I liked Gordon. We got to it rather sheepishly at first, but +by-and-by we’d quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp. +‘Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers, aren’t +they, Jack?’ he’d say, after chewing his cud, or rather the stem of his +briar, for a long while without a word. (He had his pipe in his mouth as +often as any of us, but somehow I fancied he didn’t enjoy it: an empty +pipe or a stick would have suited him just as well, it seemed to me.) +‘Those are great lines,’ he’d say-- + + ‘“In Collins Street standeth a statue tall-- + A statue tall on a pillar of stone-- + Telling its story to great and small + Of the dust reclaimed from the sand-waste lone. + + ***** + + Weary and wasted, worn and wan, + Feeble and faint, and languid and low, + He lay on the desert a dying man, + Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go.” + + That’s a grand thing, Jack. How does it go?-- + “With a pistol clenched in his failing hand, + And the film of death o’er his fading eyes, + He saw the sun go down on the sand,”’-- + + The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn-- + ‘“And he slept and never saw it rise,”’ + --speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time. + Then maybe he’d stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings, + with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain. + + ‘“What mattered the sand or the whit’ning chalk, + The blighted herbage or blackened log, + The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk, + Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?” + +They don’t matter much, do they, Jack?’ + +‘Damned if I think they do, Boss!’ I’d say. + + ‘“The couch was rugged, those sextons rude, + But, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know + That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms’ food + Where once they have gone where we all must go.”’ + +Once he repeated the poem containing the lines-- + + ‘“Love, when we wandered here together, + Hand in hand through the sparkling weather-- + God surely loved us a little then.” + +Beautiful lines those, Jack. + + “Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer, + And the blue sea over the white sand rolled-- + Babble and prattle, and prattle and murmur’-- + +How does it go, Jack?’ He stood up and turned his face to the light, but +not before I had a glimpse of it. I think that the saddest eyes on earth +are mostly women’s eyes, but I’ve seen few so sad as the Boss’s were +just then. + +It seemed strange that he, a Bushman, preferred Gordon’s sea poems to +his horsey and bushy rhymes; but so he did. I fancy his favourite poem +was that one of Gordon’s with the lines-- + + ‘I would that with sleepy soft embraces + The sea would fold me, would find me rest + In the luminous depths of its secret places, + Where the wealth of God’s marvels is manifest!’ + +He usually spoke quietly, in a tone as though death were in camp; but +after we’d been on Gordon’s poetry for a while he’d end it abruptly +with, ‘Well, it’s time to turn in,’ or, ‘It’s time to turn out,’ or he’d +give me an order in connection with the cattle. He had been a well-to-do +squatter on the Lachlan river-side, in New South Wales, and had been +ruined by the drought, they said. One night in camp, and after smoking +in silence for nearly an hour, he asked-- + +‘Do you know Fisher, Jack--the man that owns these bullocks?’ + +‘I’ve heard of him,’ I said. Fisher was a big squatter, with stations +both in New South Wales and in Queensland. + +‘Well, he came to my station on the Lachlan years ago without a penny in +his pocket, or decent rag to his back, or a crust in his tucker-bag, and +I gave him a job. He’s my boss now. Ah, well! it’s the way of Australia, +you know, Jack.’ + +The Boss had one man who went on every droving trip with him; he +was ‘bred’ on the Boss’s station, they said, and had been with him +practically all his life. His name was ‘Andy’. I forget his other name, +if he really had one. Andy had charge of the ‘droving-plant’ (a tilted +two-horse waggonette, in which we carried the rations and horse-feed), +and he did the cooking and kept accounts. The Boss had no head for +figures. Andy might have been twenty-five or thirty-five, or anything in +between. His hair stuck up like a well-made brush all round, and his big +grey eyes also had an inquiring expression. His weakness was girls, or +he theirs, I don’t know which (half-castes not barred). He was, I think, +the most innocent, good-natured, and open-hearted scamp I ever met. +Towards the middle of the trip Andy spoke to me one night alone in camp +about the Boss. + +‘The Boss seems to have taken to you, Jack, all right.’ + +‘Think so?’ I said. I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer. + +‘I’m sure of it. It’s very seldom HE takes to any one.’ + +I said nothing. + +Then after a while Andy said suddenly-- + +‘Look here, Jack, I’m glad of it. I’d like to see him make a chum of +some one, if only for one trip. And don’t you make any mistake about the +Boss. He’s a white man. There’s precious few that know him--precious few +now; but I do, and it’ll do him a lot of good to have some one to yarn +with.’ And Andy said no more on the subject for that trip. + +The long, hot, dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains--big +clearings rather--and through the sweltering hot scrubs, and we reached +Bathurst at last; and then the hot dusty days and weeks and months that +we’d left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,--as I +suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it. + +The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney. We were all one +long afternoon getting them into the trucks, and when we’d finished the +boss said to me-- + +‘Look here, Jack, you’re going on to Sydney, aren’t you?’ + +‘Yes; I’m going down to have a fly round.’ + +‘Well, why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning? He’s going +down in charge of the cattle. The cattle-train starts about daylight. It +won’t be so comfortable as the passenger; but you’ll save your fare, and +you can give Andy a hand with the cattle. You’ve only got to have a +look at ‘em every other station, and poke up any that fall down in the +trucks. You and Andy are mates, aren’t you?’ + +I said it would just suit me. Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed +anxious to have my company for one more evening, and, to tell the truth, +I felt really sorry to part with him. I’d had to work as hard as any +of the other chaps; but I liked him, and I believed he liked me. He’d +struck me as a man who’d been quietened down by some heavy trouble, and +I felt sorry for him without knowing what the trouble was. + +‘Come and have a drink, Boss,’ I said. The agent had paid us off during +the day. + +He turned into a hotel with me. + +‘I don’t drink, Jack,’ he said; ‘but I’ll take a glass with you.’ + +‘I didn’t know you were a teetotaller, Boss,’ I said. I had not been +surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink on the trip; but now +that it was over it was a different thing. + +‘I’m not a teetotaller, Jack,’ he said. ‘I can take a glass or leave +it.’ And he called for a long beer, and we drank ‘Here’s luck!’ to each +other. + +‘Well,’ I said, ‘I wish I could take a glass or leave it.’ And I meant +it. + +Then the Boss spoke as I’d never heard him speak before. I thought for +the moment that the one drink had affected him; but I understood before +the night was over. He laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip like a +man who has suddenly made up his mind to lend you five pounds. ‘Jack!’ +he said, ‘there’s worse things than drinking, and there’s worse things +than heavy smoking. When a man who smokes gets such a load of trouble on +him that he can find no comfort in his pipe, then it’s a heavy load. +And when a man who drinks gets so deep into trouble that he can find no +comfort in liquor, then it’s deep trouble. Take my tip for it, Jack.’ + +He broke off, and half turned away with a jerk of his head, as if +impatient with himself; then presently he spoke in his usual quiet +tone-- + +‘But you’re only a boy yet, Jack. Never mind me. I won’t ask you to take +the second drink. You don’t want it; and, besides, I know the signs.’ + +He paused, leaning with both hands on the edge of the counter, and +looking down between his arms at the floor. He stood that way thinking +for a while; then he suddenly straightened up, like a man who’d made up +his mind to something. + +‘I want you to come along home with me, Jack,’ he said; ‘we’ll fix you a +shake-down.’ + +I forgot to tell you that he was married and lived in Bathurst. + +‘But won’t it put Mrs Head about?’ + +‘Not at all. She’s expecting you. Come along; there’s nothing to see in +Bathurst, and you’ll have plenty of knocking round in Sydney. Come on, +we’ll just be in time for tea.’ + +He lived in a brick cottage on the outskirts of the town--an +old-fashioned cottage, with ivy and climbing roses, like you see in some +of those old settled districts. There was, I remember, the stump of a +tree in front, covered with ivy till it looked like a giant’s club with +the thick end up. + +When we got to the house the Boss paused a minute with his hand on the +gate. He’d been home a couple of days, having ridden in ahead of the +bullocks. + +‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I must tell you that Mrs Head had a great trouble at +one time. We--we lost our two children. It does her good to talk to a +stranger now and again--she’s always better afterwards; but there’s very +few I care to bring. You--you needn’t notice anything strange. And agree +with her, Jack. You know, Jack.’ + +‘That’s all right, Boss,’ I said. I’d knocked about the Bush too long, +and run against too many strange characters and things, to be surprised +at anything much. + +The door opened, and he took a little woman in his arms. I saw by the +light of a lamp in the room behind that the woman’s hair was grey, and +I reckoned that he had his mother living with him. And--we do have odd +thoughts at odd times in a flash--and I wondered how Mrs Head and her +mother-in-law got on together. But the next minute I was in the room, +and introduced to ‘My wife, Mrs Head,’ and staring at her with both +eyes. + +It was his wife. I don’t think I can describe her. For the first minute +or two, coming in out of the dark and before my eyes got used to the +lamp-light, I had an impression as of a little old woman--one of those +fresh-faced, well-preserved, little old ladies--who dressed young, wore +false teeth, and aped the giddy girl. But this was because of Mrs Head’s +impulsive welcome of me, and her grey hair. The hair was not so grey as +I thought at first, seeing it with the lamp-light behind it: it was like +dull-brown hair lightly dusted with flour. She wore it short, and +it became her that way. There was something aristocratic about her +face--her nose and chin--I fancied, and something that you couldn’t +describe. She had big dark eyes--dark-brown, I thought, though they +might have been hazel: they were a bit too big and bright for me, and +now and again, when she got excited, the white showed all round the +pupils--just a little, but a little was enough. + +She seemed extra glad to see me. I thought at first that she was a bit +of a gusher. + +‘Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come, Mr Ellis,’ she said, giving my hand a +grip. ‘Walter--Mr Head--has been speaking to me about you. I’ve been +expecting you. Sit down by the fire, Mr Ellis; tea will be ready +presently. Don’t you find it a bit chilly?’ She shivered. It was a bit +chilly now at night on the Bathurst plains. The table was set for tea, +and set rather in swell style. The cottage was too well furnished +even for a lucky boss drover’s home; the furniture looked as if it had +belonged to a tony homestead at one time. I felt a bit strange at first, +sitting down to tea, and almost wished that I was having a comfortable +tuck-in at a restaurant or in a pub. dining-room. But she knew a lot +about the Bush, and chatted away, and asked questions about the trip, +and soon put me at my ease. You see, for the last year or two I’d +taken my tucker in my hands,--hunk of damper and meat and a clasp-knife +mostly,--sitting on my heel in the dust, or on a log or a tucker-box. + +There was a hard, brown, wrinkled old woman that the Heads called +‘Auntie’. She waited at the table; but Mrs Head kept bustling round +herself most of the time, helping us. Andy came in to tea. + +Mrs Head bustled round like a girl of twenty instead of a woman of +thirty-seven, as Andy afterwards told me she was. She had the figure and +movements of a girl, and the impulsiveness and expression too--a womanly +girl; but sometimes I fancied there was something very childish about +her face and talk. After tea she and the Boss sat on one side of the +fire and Andy and I on the other--Andy a little behind me at the corner +of the table. + +‘Walter--Mr Head--tells me you’ve been out on the Lachlan river, Mr +Ellis?’ she said as soon as she’d settled down, and she leaned forward, +as if eager to hear that I’d been there. + +‘Yes, Mrs Head. I’ve knocked round all about out there.’ + +She sat up straight, and put the tips of her fingers to the side of her +forehead and knitted her brows. This was a trick she had--she often did +it during the evening. And when she did that she seemed to forget what +she’d said last. + +She smoothed her forehead, and clasped her hands in her lap. + +‘Oh, I’m so glad to meet somebody from the back country, Mr Ellis,’ +she said. ‘Walter so seldom brings a stranger here, and I get tired of +talking to the same people about the same things, and seeing the same +faces. You don’t know what a relief it is, Mr Ellis, to see a new face +and talk to a stranger.’ + +‘I can quite understand that, Mrs Head,’ I said. And so I could. I never +stayed more than three months in one place if I could help it. + +She looked into the fire and seemed to try to think. The Boss +straightened up and stroked her head with his big sun-browned hand, and +then put his arm round her shoulders. This brought her back. + +‘You know we had a station out on the Lachlan, Mr Ellis. Did Walter ever +tell you about the time we lived there?’ + +‘No,’ I said, glancing at the Boss. ‘I know you had a station there; +but, you know, the Boss doesn’t talk much.’ + +‘Tell Jack, Maggie,’ said the Boss; ‘I don’t mind.’ + +She smiled. ‘You know Walter, Mr Ellis,’ she said. ‘You won’t mind him. +He doesn’t like me to talk about the children; he thinks it upsets me, +but that’s foolish: it always relieves me to talk to a stranger.’ She +leaned forward, eagerly it seemed, and went on quickly: ‘I’ve been +wanting to tell you about the children ever since Walter spoke to me +about you. I knew you would understand directly I saw your face. These +town people don’t understand. I like to talk to a Bushman. You know we +lost our children out on the station. The fairies took them. Did Walter +ever tell you about the fairies taking the children away?’ + +This was a facer. ‘I--I beg pardon,’ I commenced, when Andy gave me a +dig in the back. Then I saw it all. + +‘No, Mrs Head. The Boss didn’t tell me about that.’ + +‘You surely know about the Bush Fairies, Mr Ellis,’ she said, her big +eyes fixed on my face--‘the Bush Fairies that look after the little ones +that are lost in the Bush, and take them away from the Bush if they are +not found? You’ve surely heard of them, Mr Ellis? Most Bushmen have that +I’ve spoken to. Maybe you’ve seen them? Andy there has?’ Andy gave me +another dig. + +‘Of course I’ve heard of them, Mrs Head,’ I said; ‘but I can’t swear +that I’ve seen one.’ + +‘Andy has. Haven’t you, Andy?’ + +‘Of course I have, Mrs Head. Didn’t I tell you all about it the last +time we were home?’ + +‘And didn’t you ever tell Mr Ellis, Andy?’ + +‘Of course he did!’ I said, coming to Andy’s rescue; ‘I remember it now. +You told me that night we camped on the Bogan river, Andy.’ + +‘Of course!’ said Andy. + +‘Did he tell you about finding a lost child and the fairy with it?’ + +‘Yes,’ said Andy; ‘I told him all about that.’ + +‘And the fairy was just going to take the child away when Andy found it, +and when the fairy saw Andy she flew away.’ + +‘Yes,’ I said; ‘that’s what Andy told me.’ + +‘And what did you say the fairy was like, Andy?’ asked Mrs Head, fixing +her eyes on his face. + +‘Like. It was like one of them angels you see in Bible pictures, Mrs +Head,’ said Andy promptly, sitting bolt upright, and keeping his big +innocent grey eyes fixed on hers lest she might think he was telling +lies. ‘It was just like the angel in that Christ-in-the-stable picture +we had at home on the station--the right-hand one in blue.’ + +She smiled. You couldn’t call it an idiotic smile, nor the foolish +smile you see sometimes in melancholy mad people. It was more of a happy +childish smile. + +‘I was so foolish at first, and gave poor Walter and the doctors a lot +of trouble,’ she said. ‘Of course it never struck me, until afterwards, +that the fairies had taken the children.’ + +She pressed the tips of the fingers of both hands to her forehead, and +sat so for a while; then she roused herself again-- + +‘But what am I thinking about? I haven’t started to tell you about the +children at all yet. Auntie! bring the children’s portraits, will you, +please? You’ll find them on my dressing-table.’ + +The old woman seemed to hesitate. + +‘Go on, Auntie, and do what I ask you,’ said Mrs Head. ‘Don’t be +foolish. You know I’m all right now.’ + +‘You mustn’t take any notice of Auntie, Mr Ellis,’ she said with a +smile, while the old woman’s back was turned. ‘Poor old body, she’s a +bit crotchety at times, as old women are. She doesn’t like me to get +talking about the children. She’s got an idea that if I do I’ll start +talking nonsense, as I used to do the first year after the children were +lost. I was very foolish then, wasn’t I, Walter?’ + +‘You were, Maggie,’ said the Boss. ‘But that’s all past. You mustn’t +think of that time any more.’ + +‘You see,’ said Mrs Head, in explanation to me, ‘at first nothing would +drive it out of my head that the children had wandered about until they +perished of hunger and thirst in the Bush. As if the Bush Fairies would +let them do that.’ + +‘You were very foolish, Maggie,’ said the Boss; ‘but don’t think about +that.’ + +The old woman brought the portraits, a little boy and a little girl: +they must have been very pretty children. + +‘You see,’ said Mrs Head, taking the portraits eagerly, and giving them +to me one by one, ‘we had these taken in Sydney some years before the +children were lost; they were much younger then. Wally’s is not a good +portrait; he was teething then, and very thin. That’s him standing on +the chair. Isn’t the pose good? See, he’s got one hand and one little +foot forward, and an eager look in his eyes. The portrait is very dark, +and you’ve got to look close to see the foot. He wants a toy rabbit that +the photographer is tossing up to make him laugh. In the next portrait +he’s sitting on the chair--he’s just settled himself to enjoy the fun. +But see how happy little Maggie looks! You can see my arm where I was +holding her in the chair. She was six months old then, and little Wally +had just turned two.’ + +She put the portraits up on the mantel-shelf. + +‘Let me see; Wally (that’s little Walter, you know)--Wally was five and +little Maggie three and a half when we lost them. Weren’t they, Walter?’ + +‘Yes, Maggie,’ said the Boss. + +‘You were away, Walter, when it happened.’ + +‘Yes, Maggie,’ said the Boss--cheerfully, it seemed to me--‘I was away.’ + +‘And we couldn’t find you, Walter. You see,’ she said to me, ‘Walter--Mr +Head--was away in Sydney on business, and we couldn’t find his address. +It was a beautiful morning, though rather warm, and just after the +break-up of the drought. The grass was knee-high all over the run. It +was a lonely place; there wasn’t much bush cleared round the homestead, +just a hundred yards or so, and the great awful scrubs ran back from the +edges of the clearing all round for miles and miles--fifty or a hundred +miles in some directions without a break; didn’t they, Walter?’ + +‘Yes, Maggie.’ + +‘I was alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had, who +used to help me with the housework and the children. Andy was out on the +run with the men, mustering sheep; weren’t you, Andy?’ + +‘Yes, Mrs Head.’ + +‘I used to watch the children close as they got to run about, because +if they once got into the edge of the scrub they’d be lost; but this +morning little Wally begged hard to be let take his little sister down +under a clump of blue-gums in a corner of the home paddock to gather +buttercups. You remember that clump of gums, Walter?’ + +‘I remember, Maggie.’ + +‘“I won’t go through the fence a step, mumma,” little Wally said. I +could see Old Peter--an old shepherd and station-hand we had--I could +see him working on a dam we were making across a creek that ran down +there. You remember Old Peter, Walter?’ + +‘Of course I do, Maggie.’ + +‘I knew that Old Peter would keep an eye to the children; so I told +little Wally to keep tight hold of his sister’s hand and go straight +down to Old Peter and tell him I sent them.’ + +She was leaning forward with her hands clasping her knee, and telling me +all this with a strange sort of eagerness. + +‘The little ones toddled off hand in hand, with their other hands +holding fast their straw hats. “In case a bad wind blowed,” as little +Maggie said. I saw them stoop under the first fence, and that was the +last that any one saw of them.’ + +‘Except the fairies, Maggie,’ said the Boss quickly. + +‘Of course, Walter, except the fairies.’ + +She pressed her fingers to her temples again for a minute. + +‘It seems that Old Peter was going to ride out to the musterers’ camp +that morning with bread for the men, and he left his work at the dam +and started into the Bush after his horse just as I turned back into the +house, and before the children got near him. They either followed +him for some distance or wandered into the Bush after flowers or +butterflies----’ She broke off, and then suddenly asked me, ‘Do you +think the Bush Fairies would entice children away, Mr Ellis?’ + +The Boss caught my eye, and frowned and shook his head slightly. + +‘No. I’m sure they wouldn’t, Mrs Head,’ I said--‘at least not from what +I know of them.’ + +She thought, or tried to think, again for a while, in her helpless +puzzled way. Then she went on, speaking rapidly, and rather +mechanically, it seemed to me-- + +‘The first I knew of it was when Peter came to the house about an hour +afterwards, leading his horse, and without the children. I said--I +said, “O my God! where’s the children?”’ Her fingers fluttered up to her +temples. + +‘Don’t mind about that, Maggie,’ said the Boss, hurriedly, stroking her +head. ‘Tell Jack about the fairies.’ + +‘You were away at the time, Walter?’ + +‘Yes, Maggie.’ + +‘And we couldn’t find you, Walter?’ + +‘No, Maggie,’ very gently. He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin +on his hand, and looked into the fire. + +‘It wasn’t your fault, Walter; but if you had been at home do you think +the fairies would have taken the children?’ + +‘Of course they would, Maggie. They had to: the children were lost.’ + +‘And they’re bringing the children home next year?’ + +‘Yes, Maggie--next year.’ + +She lifted her hands to her head in a startled way, and it was some time +before she went on again. There was no need to tell me about the lost +children. I could see it all. She and the half-caste rushing towards +where the children were seen last, with Old Peter after them. The +hurried search in the nearer scrub. The mother calling all the time +for Maggie and Wally, and growing wilder as the minutes flew past. Old +Peter’s ride to the musterers’ camp. Horsemen seeming to turn up in no +time and from nowhere, as they do in a case like this, and no matter +how lonely the district. Bushmen galloping through the scrub in all +directions. The hurried search the first day, and the mother mad with +anxiety as night came on. Her long, hopeless, wild-eyed watch through +the night; starting up at every sound of a horse’s hoof, and reading +the worst in one glance at the rider’s face. The systematic work of the +search-parties next day and the days following. How those days do fly +past. The women from the next run or selection, and some from the town, +driving from ten or twenty miles, perhaps, to stay with and try to +comfort the mother. [‘Put the horse to the cart, Jim: I must go to that +poor woman!’) Comforting her with improbable stories of children who had +been lost for days, and were none the worse for it when they were +found. The mounted policemen out with the black trackers. Search-parties +cooeeing to each other about the Bush, and lighting signal-fires. The +reckless break-neck rides for news or more help. And the Boss himself, +wild-eyed and haggard, riding about the Bush with Andy and one or two +others perhaps, and searching hopelessly, days after the rest had given +up all hope of finding the children alive. All this passed before me as +Mrs Head talked, her voice sounding the while as if she were in another +room; and when I roused myself to listen, she was on to the fairies +again. + +‘It was very foolish of me, Mr Ellis. Weeks after--months after, I +think--I’d insist on going out on the verandah at dusk and calling for +the children. I’d stand there and call “Maggie!” and “Wally!” until +Walter took me inside; sometimes he had to force me inside. Poor Walter! +But of course I didn’t know about the fairies then, Mr Ellis. I was +really out of my mind for a time.’ + +‘No wonder you were, Mrs Head,’ I said. ‘It was terrible trouble.’ + +‘Yes, and I made it worse. I was so selfish in my trouble. But it’s all +right now, Walter,’ she said, rumpling the Boss’s hair. ‘I’ll never be +so foolish again.’ + +‘Of course you won’t, Maggie.’ + +‘We’re very happy now, aren’t we, Walter?’ + +‘Of course we are, Maggie.’ + +‘And the children are coming back next year.’ + +‘Next year, Maggie.’ + +He leaned over the fire and stirred it up. + +‘You mustn’t take any notice of us, Mr Ellis,’ she went on. ‘Poor Walter +is away so much that I’m afraid I make a little too much of him when he +does come home.’ + +She paused and pressed her fingers to her temples again. Then she said +quickly-- + +‘They used to tell me that it was all nonsense about the fairies, but +they were no friends of mine. I shouldn’t have listened to them, Walter. +You told me not to. But then I was really not in my right mind.’ + +‘Who used to tell you that, Mrs Head?’ I asked. + +‘The Voices,’ she said; ‘you know about the Voices, Walter?’ + +‘Yes, Maggie. But you don’t hear the Voices now, Maggie?’ he asked +anxiously. ‘You haven’t heard them since I’ve been away this time, have +you, Maggie?’ + +‘No, Walter. They’ve gone away a long time. I hear voices now sometimes, +but they’re the Bush Fairies’ voices. I hear them calling Maggie and +Wally to come with them.’ She paused again. ‘And sometimes I think I +hear them call me. But of course I couldn’t go away without you, Walter. +But I’m foolish again. I was going to ask you about the other voices, Mr +Ellis. They used to say that it was madness about the fairies; but then, +if the fairies hadn’t taken the children, Black Jimmy, or the black +trackers with the police, could have tracked and found them at once.’ + +‘Of course they could, Mrs Head,’ I said. + +‘They said that the trackers couldn’t track them because there was rain +a few hours after the children were lost. But that was ridiculous. It +was only a thunderstorm.’ + +‘Why!’ I said, ‘I’ve known the blacks to track a man after a week’s +heavy rain.’ + +She had her head between her fingers again, and when she looked up it +was in a scared way. + +‘Oh, Walter!’ she said, clutching the Boss’s arm; ‘whatever have I been +talking about? What must Mr Ellis think of me? Oh! why did you let me +talk like that?’ + +He put his arm round her. Andy nudged me and got up. + +‘Where are you going, Mr Ellis?’ she asked hurriedly. ‘You’re not going +to-night. Auntie’s made a bed for you in Andy’s room. You mustn’t mind +me.’ + +‘Jack and Andy are going out for a little while,’ said the Boss. +‘They’ll be in to supper. We’ll have a yarn, Maggie.’ + +‘Be sure you come back to supper, Mr Ellis,’ she said. ‘I really don’t +know what you must think of me,--I’ve been talking all the time.’ + +‘Oh, I’ve enjoyed myself, Mrs Head,’ I said; and Andy hooked me out. + +‘She’ll have a good cry and be better now,’ said Andy when we got away +from the house. ‘She might be better for months. She has been fairly +reasonable for over a year, but the Boss found her pretty bad when he +came back this time. It upset him a lot, I can tell you. She has turns +now and again, and always ends up like she did just now. She gets a +longing to talk about it to a Bushman and a stranger; it seems to do her +good. The doctor’s against it, but doctors don’t know everything.’ + +‘It’s all true about the children, then?’ I asked. + +‘It’s cruel true,’ said Andy. + +‘And were the bodies never found?’ + +‘Yes;’ then, after a long pause, ‘I found them.’ + +‘You did!’ + +‘Yes; in the scrub, and not so very far from home either--and in a +fairly clear space. It’s a wonder the search-parties missed it; but it +often happens that way. Perhaps the little ones wandered a long way and +came round in a circle. I found them about two months after they were +lost. They had to be found, if only for the Boss’s sake. You see, in +a case like this, and when the bodies aren’t found, the parents never +quite lose the idea that the little ones are wandering about the Bush +to-night (it might be years after) and perishing from hunger, thirst, +or cold. That mad idea haunts ‘em all their lives. It’s the same, I +believe, with friends drowned at sea. Friends ashore are haunted for a +long while with the idea of the white sodden corpse tossing about and +drifting round in the water.’ + +‘And you never told Mrs Head about the children being found?’ + +‘Not for a long time. It wouldn’t have done any good. She was raving +mad for months. He took her to Sydney and then to Melbourne--to the best +doctors he could find in Australia. They could do no good, so he sold +the station--sacrificed everything, and took her to England.’ + +‘To England?’ + +‘Yes; and then to Germany to a big German doctor there. He’d offer a +thousand pounds where they only wanted fifty. It was no good. She +got worse in England, and raved to go back to Australia and find the +children. The doctors advised him to take her back, and he did. He spent +all his money, travelling saloon, and with reserved cabins, and a +nurse, and trying to get her cured; that’s why he’s droving now. She was +restless in Sydney. She wanted to go back to the station and wait there +till the fairies brought the children home. She’d been getting the fairy +idea into her head slowly all the time. The Boss encouraged it. But the +station was sold, and he couldn’t have lived there anyway without going +mad himself. He’d married her from Bathurst. Both of them have got +friends and relations here, so he thought best to bring her here. He +persuaded her that the fairies were going to bring the children here. +Everybody’s very kind to them. I think it’s a mistake to run away from a +town where you’re known, in a case like this, though most people do it. +It was years before he gave up hope. I think he has hopes yet--after +she’s been fairly well for a longish time.’ + +‘And you never tried telling her that the children were found?’ + +‘Yes; the Boss did. The little ones were buried on the Lachlan river at +first; but the Boss got a horror of having them buried in the Bush, so +he had them brought to Sydney and buried in the Waverley Cemetery near +the sea. He bought the ground, and room for himself and Maggie when they +go out. It’s all the ground he owns in wide Australia, and once he had +thousands of acres. He took her to the grave one day. The doctors were +against it; but he couldn’t rest till he tried it. He took her out, and +explained it all to her. She scarcely seemed interested. She read the +names on the stone, and said it was a nice stone, and asked questions +about how the children were found and brought here. She seemed quite +sensible, and very cool about it. But when he got her home she was back +on the fairy idea again. He tried another day, but it was no use; so +then he let it be. I think it’s better as it is. Now and again, at her +best, she seems to understand that the children were found dead, and +buried, and she’ll talk sensibly about it, and ask questions in a quiet +way, and make him promise to take her to Sydney to see the grave +next time he’s down. But it doesn’t last long, and she’s always worse +afterwards.’ + +We turned into a bar and had a beer. It was a very quiet drink. Andy +‘shouted’ in his turn, and while I was drinking the second beer a +thought struck me. + +‘The Boss was away when the children were lost?’ + +‘Yes,’ said Andy. + +‘Strange you couldn’t find him.’ + +‘Yes, it was strange; but HE’LL have to tell you about that. Very likely +he will; it’s either all or nothing with him.’ + +‘I feel damned sorry for the Boss,’ I said. + +‘You’d be sorrier if you knew all,’ said Andy. ‘It’s the worst trouble +that can happen to a man. It’s like living with the dead. It’s--it’s +like a man living with his dead wife.’ + +When we went home supper was ready. We found Mrs Head, bright and +cheerful, bustling round. You’d have thought her one of the happiest and +brightest little women in Australia. Not a word about children or the +fairies. She knew the Bush, and asked me all about my trips. She told +some good Bush stories too. It was the pleasantest hour I’d spent for a +long time. + +‘Good night, Mr Ellis,’ she said brightly, shaking hands with me when +Andy and I were going to turn in. ‘And don’t forget your pipe. Here it +is! I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two when they turn +in. Walter smokes in bed. I don’t mind. You can smoke all night if you +like.’ + +‘She seems all right,’ I said to Andy when we were in our room. + +He shook his head mournfully. We’d left the door ajar, and we could hear +the Boss talking to her quietly. Then we heard her speak; she had a very +clear voice. + +‘Yes, I’ll tell you the truth, Walter. I’ve been deceiving you, Walter, +all the time, but I did it for the best. Don’t be angry with me, Walter! +The Voices did come back while you were away. Oh, how I longed for you +to come back! They haven’t come since you’ve been home, Walter. You +must stay with me a while now. Those awful Voices kept calling me, and +telling me lies about the children, Walter! They told me to kill myself; +they told me it was all my own fault--that I killed the children. They +said I was a drag on you, and they’d laugh--Ha! ha! ha!--like that. +They’d say, “Come on, Maggie; come on, Maggie.” They told me to come to +the river, Walter.’ + +Andy closed the door. His face was very miserable. + +We turned in, and I can tell you I enjoyed a soft white bed after months +and months of sleeping out at night, between watches, on the hard ground +or the sand, or at best on a few boughs when I wasn’t too tired to pull +them down, and my saddle for a pillow. + +But the story of the children haunted me for an hour or two. I’ve never +since quite made up my mind as to why the Boss took me home. Probably +he really did think it would do his wife good to talk to a stranger; +perhaps he wanted me to understand--maybe he was weakening as he grew +older, and craved for a new word or hand-grip of sympathy now and then. + +When I did get to sleep I could have slept for three or four days, but +Andy roused me out about four o’clock. The old woman that they called +Auntie was up and had a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and coffee +ready in the detached kitchen at the back. We moved about on tiptoe and +had our breakfast quietly. + +‘The wife made me promise to wake her to see to our breakfast and say +Good-bye to you; but I want her to sleep this morning, Jack,’ said the +Boss. ‘I’m going to walk down as far as the station with you. She made +up a parcel of fruit and sandwiches for you and Andy. Don’t forget it.’ + +Andy went on ahead. The Boss and I walked down the wide silent street, +which was also the main road; and we walked two or three hundred yards +without speaking. He didn’t seem sociable this morning, or any way +sentimental; when he did speak it was something about the cattle. + +But I had to speak; I felt a swelling and rising up in my chest, and at +last I made a swallow and blurted out-- + +‘Look here, Boss, old chap! I’m damned sorry!’ + +Our hands came together and gripped. The ghostly Australian daybreak was +over the Bathurst plains. + +We went on another hundred yards or so, and then the Boss said quietly-- + +‘I was away when the children were lost, Jack. I used to go on a howling +spree every six or nine months. Maggie never knew. I’d tell her I had to +go to Sydney on business, or Out-Back to look after some stock. When +the children were lost, and for nearly a fortnight after, I was beastly +drunk in an out-of-the-way shanty in the Bush--a sly grog-shop. The old +brute that kept it was too true to me. He thought that the story of the +lost children was a trick to get me home, and he swore that he hadn’t +seen me. He never told me. I could have found those children, Jack. They +were mostly new chums and fools about the run, and not one of the three +policemen was a Bushman. I knew those scrubs better than any man in the +country.’ + +I reached for his hand again, and gave it a grip. That was all I could +do for him. + +‘Good-bye, Jack!’ he said at the door of the brake-van. ‘Good-bye, +Andy!--keep those bullocks on their feet.’ + +The cattle-train went on towards the Blue Mountains. Andy and I sat +silent for a while, watching the guard fry three eggs on a plate over a +coal-stove in the centre of the van. + +‘Does the boss never go to Sydney?’ I asked. + +‘Very seldom,’ said Andy, ‘and then only when he has to, on business. +When he finishes his business with the stock agents, he takes a run out +to Waverley Cemetery perhaps, and comes home by the next train.’ + +After a while I said, ‘He told me about the drink, Andy--about his being +on the spree when the children were lost.’ + +‘Well, Jack,’ said Andy, ‘that’s the thing that’s been killing him ever +since, and it happened over ten years ago.’ + + + + +A Bush Dance. + + + +‘Tap, tap, tap, tap.’ + +The little schoolhouse and residence in the scrub was lighted brightly +in the midst of the ‘close’, solid blackness of that moonless December +night, when the sky and stars were smothered and suffocated by drought +haze. + +It was the evening of the school children’s ‘Feast’. That is to say that +the children had been sent, and ‘let go’, and the younger ones ‘fetched’ +through the blazing heat to the school, one day early in the holidays, +and raced--sometimes in couples tied together by the legs--and caked, +and bunned, and finally improved upon by the local Chadband, and got +rid of. The schoolroom had been cleared for dancing, the maps rolled and +tied, the desks and blackboards stacked against the wall outside. Tea +was over, and the trestles and boards, whereon had been spread better +things than had been provided for the unfortunate youngsters, had been +taken outside to keep the desks and blackboards company. + +On stools running end to end along one side of the room sat about twenty +more or less blooming country girls of from fifteen to twenty odd. + +On the rest of the stools, running end to end along the other wall, sat +about twenty more or less blooming chaps. + +It was evident that something was seriously wrong. None of the girls +spoke above a hushed whisper. None of the men spoke above a hushed oath. +Now and again two or three sidled out, and if you had followed them you +would have found that they went outside to listen hard into the darkness +and to swear. + +‘Tap, tap, tap.’ + +The rows moved uneasily, and some of the girls turned pale faces +nervously towards the side-door, in the direction of the sound. + +‘Tap--tap.’ + +The tapping came from the kitchen at the rear of the teacher’s +residence, and was uncomfortably suggestive of a coffin being made: it +was also accompanied by a sickly, indescribable odour--more like that of +warm cheap glue than anything else. + +In the schoolroom was a painful scene of strained listening. Whenever +one of the men returned from outside, or put his head in at the door, +all eyes were fastened on him in the flash of a single eye, and then +withdrawn hopelessly. At the sound of a horse’s step all eyes and ears +were on the door, till some one muttered, ‘It’s only the horses in the +paddock.’ + +Some of the girls’ eyes began to glisten suspiciously, and at last the +belle of the party--a great, dark-haired, pink-and-white Blue Mountain +girl, who had been sitting for a full minute staring before her, with +blue eyes unnaturally bright, suddenly covered her face with her hands, +rose, and started blindly from the room, from which she was steered in +a hurry by two sympathetic and rather ‘upset’ girl friends, and as she +passed out she was heard sobbing hysterically-- + +‘Oh, I can’t help it! I did want to dance! It’s a sh-shame! I can’t help +it! I--I want to dance! I rode twenty miles to dance--and--and I want to +dance!’ + +A tall, strapping young Bushman rose, without disguise, and followed the +girl out. The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses, and +other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl from +the outside--being man comforted-- + +‘I can’t help it, Jack! I did want to dance! I--I had such--such--a +job--to get mother--and--and father to let me come--and--and now!’ + +The two girl friends came back. ‘He sez to leave her to him,’ they +whispered, in reply to an interrogatory glance from the schoolmistress. + +‘It’s--it’s no use, Jack!’ came the voice of grief. ‘You don’t know +what--what father and mother--is. I--I won’t--be able--to ge-get +away--again--for--for--not till I’m married, perhaps.’ + +The schoolmistress glanced uneasily along the row of girls. ‘I’ll take +her into my room and make her lie down,’ she whispered to her sister, +who was staying with her. ‘She’ll start some of the other girls +presently--it’s just the weather for it,’ and she passed out quietly. +That schoolmistress was a woman of penetration. + +A final ‘tap-tap’ from the kitchen; then a sound like the squawk of a +hurt or frightened child, and the faces in the room turned quickly in +that direction and brightened. But there came a bang and a sound like +‘damn!’ and hopelessness settled down. + +A shout from the outer darkness, and most of the men and some of the +girls rose and hurried out. Fragments of conversation heard in the +darkness-- + +‘It’s two horses, I tell you!’ + +‘It’s three, you----!’ + +‘Lay you----!’ + +‘Put the stuff up!’ + +A clack of gate thrown open. + +‘Who is it, Tom?’ + +Voices from gatewards, yelling, ‘Johnny Mears! They’ve got Johnny +Mears!’ + +Then rose yells, and a cheer such as is seldom heard in scrub-lands. + +Out in the kitchen long Dave Regan grabbed, from the far side of the +table, where he had thrown it, a burst and battered concertina, which +he had been for the last hour vainly trying to patch and make air-tight; +and, holding it out towards the back-door, between his palms, as a +football is held, he let it drop, and fetched it neatly on the toe of +his riding-boot. It was a beautiful kick, the concertina shot out into +the blackness, from which was projected, in return, first a short, +sudden howl, then a face with one eye glaring and the other covered by +an enormous brick-coloured hand, and a voice that wanted to know who +shot ‘that lurid loaf of bread?’ + +But from the schoolroom was heard the loud, free voice of Joe Matthews, +M.C.,-- + +‘Take yer partners! Hurry up! Take yer partners! They’ve got Johnny +Mears with his fiddle!’ + + + + +The Buck-Jumper. + +Saturday afternoon. + +There were about a dozen Bush natives, from anywhere, most of them lanky +and easy-going, hanging about the little slab-and-bark hotel on the +edge of the scrub at Capertee Camp (a teamster’s camp) when Cob & Co.’s +mail-coach and six came dashing down the siding from round Crown Ridge, +in all its glory, to the end of the twelve-mile stage. Some wiry, +ill-used hacks were hanging to the fence and to saplings about the +place. The fresh coach-horses stood ready in a stock-yard close to the +shanty. As the coach climbed the nearer bank of the creek at the foot of +the ridge, six of the Bushmen detached themselves from verandah posts, +from their heels, from the clay floor of the verandah and the rough slab +wall against which they’d been resting, and joined a group of four or +five who stood round one. He stood with his back to the corner post +of the stock-yard, his feet well braced out in front of him, and +contemplated the toes of his tight new ‘lastic-side boots and whistled +softly. He was a clean-limbed, handsome fellow, with riding-cords, +leggings, and a blue sash; he was Graeco-Roman-nosed, blue-eyed, and +his glossy, curly black hair bunched up in front of the brim of a new +cabbage-tree hat, set well back on his head. + +‘Do it for a quid, Jack?’ asked one. + +‘Damned if I will, Jim!’ said the young man at the post. ‘I’ll do it for +a fiver--not a blanky sprat less.’ + +Jim took off his hat and ‘shoved’ it round, and ‘bobs’ were ‘chucked’ +into it. The result was about thirty shillings. + +Jack glanced contemptuously into the crown of the hat. + +‘Not me!’ he said, showing some emotion for the first time. ‘D’yer think +I’m going to risk me blanky neck for your blanky amusement for thirty +blanky bob. I’ll ride the blanky horse for a fiver, and I’ll feel the +blanky quids in my pocket before I get on.’ + +Meanwhile the coach had dashed up to the door of the shanty. There +were about twenty passengers aboard--inside, on the box-seat, on the +tail-board, and hanging on to the roof--most of them Sydney men going up +to the Mudgee races. They got down and went inside with the driver for +a drink, while the stablemen changed horses. The Bushmen raised their +voices a little and argued. + +One of the passengers was a big, stout, hearty man--a good-hearted, +sporting man and a racehorse-owner, according to his brands. He had +a round red face and a white cork hat. ‘What’s those chaps got on +outside?’ he asked the publican. + +‘Oh, it’s a bet they’ve got on about riding a horse,’ replied the +publican. ‘The flash-looking chap with the sash is Flash Jack, the +horse-breaker; and they reckon they’ve got the champion outlaw in the +district out there--that chestnut horse in the yard.’ + +The sporting man was interested at once, and went out and joined the +Bushmen. + +‘Well, chaps! what have you got on here?’ he asked cheerily. + +‘Oh,’ said Jim carelessly, ‘it’s only a bit of a bet about ridin’ +that blanky chestnut in the corner of the yard there.’ He indicated an +ungroomed chestnut horse, fenced off by a couple of long sapling poles +in a corner of the stock-yard. ‘Flash Jack there--he reckons he’s the +champion horse-breaker round here--Flash Jack reckons he can take it out +of that horse first try.’ + +‘What’s up with the horse?’ inquired the big, red-faced man. ‘It looks +quiet enough. Why, I’d ride it myself.’ + +‘Would yer?’ said Jim, who had hair that stood straight up, and an +innocent, inquiring expression. ‘Looks quiet, does he? YOU ought to know +more about horses than to go by the looks of ‘em. He’s quiet enough just +now, when there’s no one near him; but you should have been here an +hour ago. That horse has killed two men and put another chap’s shoulder +out--besides breaking a cove’s leg. It took six of us all the morning to +run him in and get the saddle on him; and now Flash Jack wants to back +out of it.’ + +‘Euraliar!’ remarked Flash Jack cheerfully. ‘I said I’d ride that blanky +horse out of the yard for a fiver. I ain’t goin’ to risk my blanky neck +for nothing and only to amuse you blanks.’ + +‘He said he’d ride the horse inside the yard for a quid,’ said Jim. + +‘And get smashed against the rails!’ said Flash Jack. ‘I would be a +fool. I’d rather take my chance outside in the scrub--and it’s rough +country round here.’ + +‘Well, how much do you want?’ asked the man in the mushroom hat. + +‘A fiver, I said,’ replied Jack indifferently. ‘And the blanky stuff in +my pocket before I get on the blanky horse.’ + +‘Are you frightened of us running away without paying you?’ inquired one +of the passengers who had gathered round. + +‘I’m frightened of the horse bolting with me without me being paid,’ +said Flash Jack. ‘I know that horse; he’s got a mouth like iron. I might +be at the bottom of the cliff on Crown Ridge road in twenty minutes with +my head caved in, and then what chance for the quids?’ + +‘You wouldn’t want ‘em then,’ suggested a passenger. ‘Or, say!--we’d +leave the fiver with the publican to bury you.’ + +Flash Jack ignored that passenger. He eyed his boots and softly whistled +a tune. + +‘All right!’ said the man in the cork hat, putting his hand in his +pocket. ‘I’ll start with a quid; stump up, you chaps.’ + +The five pounds were got together. + +‘I’ll lay a quid to half a quid he don’t stick on ten minutes!’ shouted +Jim to his mates as soon as he saw that the event was to come off. The +passengers also betted amongst themselves. Flash Jack, after putting the +money in his breeches-pocket, let down the rails and led the horse into +the middle of the yard. + +‘Quiet as an old cow!’ snorted a passenger in disgust. ‘I believe it’s a +sell!’ + +‘Wait a bit,’ said Jim to the passenger, ‘wait a bit and you’ll see.’ + +They waited and saw. + +Flash Jack leisurely mounted the horse, rode slowly out of the yard, and +trotted briskly round the corner of the shanty and into the scrub, which +swallowed him more completely than the sea might have done. + +Most of the other Bushmen mounted their horses and followed Flash Jack +to a clearing in the scrub, at a safe distance from the shanty; then +they dismounted and hung on to saplings, or leaned against their horses, +while they laughed. + +At the hotel there was just time for another drink. The driver climbed +to his seat and shouted, ‘All aboard!’ in his usual tone. The passengers +climbed to their places, thinking hard. A mile or so along the road the +man with the cork hat remarked, with much truth-- + +‘Those blanky Bushmen have got too much time to think.’ + + ***** + +The Bushmen returned to the shanty as soon as the coach was out of +sight, and proceeded to ‘knock down’ the fiver. + + + + +Jimmy Grimshaw’s Wooing. + + +The Half-way House at Tinned Dog (Out-Back in Australia) kept Daniel +Myers--licensed to retail spirituous and fermented liquors--in drink and +the horrors for upward of five years, at the end of which time he lay +hidden for weeks in a back skillion, an object which no decent man would +care to see--or hear when it gave forth sound. ‘Good accommodation +for man and beast’; but few shanties save his own might, for a +consideration, have accommodated the sort of beast which the man Myers +had become towards the end of his career. But at last the eccentric Bush +doctor, ‘Doc’ Wild’ (who perhaps could drink as much as Myers without +its having any further effect upon his temperament than to keep him +awake and cynical), pronounced the publican dead enough to be buried +legally; so the widow buried him, had the skillion cleaned out, and the +sign altered to read, ‘Margaret Myers, licensed, &c.’, and continued to +conduct the pub. just as she had run it for over five years, with the +joyful and blessed exception that there was no longer a human pig and +pigstye attached, and that the atmosphere was calm. Most of the regular +patrons of the Half-way House could have their horrors decently, and, +comparatively, quietly--or otherwise have them privately--in the Big +Scrub adjacent; but Myers had not been one of that sort. + +Mrs Myers settled herself to enjoy life comfortably and happily, at +the fixed age of thirty-nine, for the next seven years or so. She was +a pleasant-faced dumpling, who had been baked solid in the droughts of +Out-Back without losing her good looks, and had put up with a hard life, +and Myers, all those years without losing her good humour and nature. +Probably, had her husband been the opposite kind of man, she would have +been different--haggard, bad-tempered, and altogether impossible--for +of such is woman. But then it might be taken into consideration that she +had been practically a widow during at least the last five years of her +husband’s alleged life. + +Mrs Myers was reckoned a good catch in the district, but it soon seemed +that she was not to be caught. + +‘It would be a grand thing,’ one of the periodical boozers of Tinned Dog +would say to his mates, ‘for one of us to have his name up on a pub.; it +would save a lot of money.’ + +‘It wouldn’t save you anything, Bill, if I got it,’ was the retort. ‘You +needn’t come round chewing my lug then. I’d give you one drink and no +more.’ + +The publican at Dead Camel, station managers, professional shearers, +even one or two solvent squatters and promising cockatoos, tried their +luck in vain. In answer to the suggestion that she ought to have a man +to knock round and look after things, she retorted that she had had one, +and was perfectly satisfied. Few trav’lers on those tracks but tried +‘a bit of bear-up’ in that direction, but all to no purpose. Chequemen +knocked down their cheques manfully at the Half-way House--to get +courage and goodwill and ‘put it off’ till, at the last moment, they +offered themselves abjectly to the landlady; which was worse than bad +judgment on their part--it was very silly, and she told them so. + +One or two swore off, and swore to keep straight; but she had no faith +in them, and when they found that out, it hurt their feelings so much +that they ‘broke out’ and went on record-breaking sprees. + +About the end of each shearing the sign was touched up, with an extra +coat of paint on the ‘Margaret’, whereat suitors looked hopeless. + +One or two of the rejected died of love in the horrors in the Big +Scrub--anyway, the verdict was that they died of love aggravated by the +horrors. But the climax was reached when a Queensland shearer, seizing +the opportunity when the mate, whose turn it was to watch him, fell +asleep, went down to the yard and hanged himself on the butcher’s +gallows--having first removed his clothes, with some drink-lurid idea of +leaving the world as naked as he came into it. He climbed the pole, sat +astride on top, fixed the rope to neck and bar, but gave a yell--a yell +of drunken triumph--before he dropped, and woke his mates. + +They cut him down and brought him to. Next day he apologised to Mrs +Myers, said, ‘Ah, well! So long!’ to the rest, and departed--cured of +drink and love apparently. The verdict was that the blanky fool should +have dropped before he yelled; but she was upset and annoyed, and it +began to look as though, if she wished to continue to live on happily +and comfortably for a few years longer at the fixed age of thirty-nine, +she would either have to give up the pub. or get married. + +Her fame was carried far and wide, and she became a woman whose name was +mentioned with respect in rough shearing-sheds and huts, and round the +camp-fire. + +About thirty miles south of Tinned Dog one James Grimshaw, +widower--otherwise known as ‘Old Jimmy’, though he was little past +middle age--had a small selection which he had worked, let, given up, +and tackled afresh (with sinews of war drawn from fencing contracts) +ever since the death of his young wife some fifteen years agone. He was +a practical, square-faced, clean-shaven, clean, and tidy man, with a +certain ‘cleanness’ about the shape of his limbs which suggested the +old jockey or hostler. There were two strong theories in connection with +Jimmy--one was that he had had a university education, and the other +that he couldn’t write his own name. Not nearly such a ridiculous nor +simple case Out-Back as it might seem. + +Jimmy smoked and listened without comment to the ‘heard tells’ in +connection with Mrs Myers, till at last one night, at the end of his +contract and over a last pipe, he said quietly, ‘I’ll go up to Tinned +Dog next week and try my luck.’ + +His mates and the casual Jims and Bills were taken too suddenly to +laugh, and the laugh having been lost, as Bland Holt, the Australian +actor would put it in a professional sense, the audience had time to +think, with the result that the joker swung his hand down through an +imaginary table and exclaimed-- + +‘By God! Jimmy’ll do it.’ (Applause.) + + ***** + +So one drowsy afternoon at the time of the year when the breathless day +runs on past 7 P.M., Mrs Myers sat sewing in the bar parlour, when a +clean-shaved, clean-shirted, clean-neckerchiefed, clean-moleskinned, +greased-bluchered--altogether a model or stage swagman came up, was +served in the bar by the half-caste female cook, and took his way to the +river-bank, where he rigged a small tent and made a model camp. + +A couple of hours later he sat on a stool on the verandah, smoking a +clean clay pipe. Just before the sunset meal Mrs Myers asked, ‘Is that +trav’ler there yet, Mary?’ + +‘Yes, missus. Clean pfellar that.’ + +The landlady knitted her forehead over her sewing, as women do when +limited for ‘stuff’ or wondering whether a section has been cut +wrong--or perhaps she thought of that other who hadn’t been a ‘clean +pfellar’. She put her work aside, and stood in the doorway, looking out +across the clearing. + +‘Good-day, mister,’ she said, seeming to become aware of him for the +first time. + +‘Good-day, missus!’ + +‘Hot!’ + +‘Hot!’ + +Pause. + +‘Trav’lin’?’ + +‘No, not particular!’ + +She waited for him to explain. Myers was always explaining when he +wasn’t raving. But the swagman smoked on. + +‘Have a drink?’ she suggested, to keep her end up. + +‘No, thank you, missus. I had one an hour or so ago. I never take more +than two a-day--one before breakfast, if I can get it, and a night-cap.’ + +What a contrast to Myers! she thought. + +‘Come and have some tea; it’s ready.’ + +‘Thank you. I don’t mind if I do.’ + +They got on very slowly, but comfortably. She got little out of him +except the facts that he had a selection, had finished a contract, +and was ‘just having a look at the country.’ He politely declined a +‘shake-down’, saying he had a comfortable camp, and preferred being out +this weather. She got his name with a ‘by-the-way’, as he rose to leave, +and he went back to camp. + +He caught a cod, and they had it for breakfast next morning, and +got along so comfortable over breakfast that he put in the forenoon +pottering about the gates and stable with a hammer, a saw, and a box of +nails. + +And, well--to make it short--when the big Tinned Dog shed had cut-out, +and the shearers struck the Half-way House, they were greatly impressed +by a brand-new sign whereon glistened the words-- + + HALF-WAY HOUSE HOTEL, + BY + JAMES GRIMSHAW. + Good Stabling. + +The last time I saw Mrs Grimshaw she looked about thirty-five. + + + + +At Dead Dingo. + + +It was blazing hot outside and smothering hot inside the weather-board +and iron shanty at Dead Dingo, a place on the Cleared Road, where +there was a pub. and a police-station, and which was sometimes called +‘Roasted’, and other times ‘Potted Dingo’--nicknames suggested by the +everlasting drought and the vicinity of the one-pub. township of Tinned +Dog. + +From the front verandah the scene was straight-cleared road, running +right and left to Out-Back, and to Bourke (and ankle-deep in the red +sand dust for perhaps a hundred miles); the rest blue-grey bush, dust, +and the heat-wave blazing across every object. + +There were only four in the bar-room, though it was New Year’s Day. +There weren’t many more in the county. The girl sat behind the bar--the +coolest place in the shanty--reading ‘Deadwood Dick’. On a worn and torn +and battered horse-hair sofa, which had seen cooler places and better +days, lay an awful and healthy example, a bearded swagman, with his arms +twisted over his head and his face to the wall, sleeping off the death +of the dead drunk. Bill and Jim--shearer and rouseabout--sat at a table +playing cards. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and they had +been gambling since nine--and the greater part of the night before--so +they were, probably, in a worse condition morally (and perhaps +physically) than the drunken swagman on the sofa. + +Close under the bar, in a dangerous place for his legs and tail, lay a +sheep-dog with a chain attached to his collar and wound round his neck. + +Presently a thump on the table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an +oath that would have been savage if it hadn’t been drawled. + +‘Stumped?’ inquired Jim. + +‘Not a blanky, lurid deener!’ drawled Bill. + +Jim drew his reluctant hands from the cards, his eyes went slowly and +hopelessly round the room and out the door. There was something in the +eyes of both, except when on the card-table, of the look of a man waking +in a strange place. + +‘Got anything?’ asked Jim, fingering the cards again. + +Bill sucked in his cheeks, collecting the saliva with difficulty, and +spat out on to the verandah floor. + +‘That’s all I got,’ he drawled. ‘It’s gone now.’ + +Jim leaned back in his chair, twisted, yawned, and caught sight of the +dog. + +‘That there dog yours?’ he asked, brightening. + +They had evidently been strangers the day before, or as strange to each +other as Bushmen can be. + +Bill scratched behind his ear, and blinked at the dog. The dog woke +suddenly to a flea fact. + +‘Yes,’ drawled Bill, ‘he’s mine.’ + +‘Well, I’m going Out-Back, and I want a dog,’ said Jim, gathering the +cards briskly. ‘Half a quid agin the dog?’ + +‘Half a quid be----!’ drawled Bill. ‘Call it a quid?’ + +‘Half a blanky quid!’ + +‘A gory, lurid quid!’ drawled Bill desperately, and he stooped over his +swag. + +But Jim’s hands were itching in a ghastly way over the cards. + +‘Alright. Call it a---- quid.’ + +The drunkard on the sofa stirred, showed signs of waking, but died +again. Remember this, it might come in useful. + +Bill sat down to the table once more. + +Jim rose first, winner of the dog. He stretched, yawned ‘Ah, well!’ and +shouted drinks. Then he shouldered his swag, stirred the dog up with his +foot, unwound the chain, said ‘Ah, well--so long!’ and drifted out and +along the road toward Out-Back, the dog following with head and tail +down. + +Bill scored another drink on account of girl-pity for bad luck, +shouldered his swag, said, ‘So long, Mary!’ and drifted out and along +the road towards Tinned Dog, on the Bourke side. + + ***** + +A long, drowsy, half hour passed--the sort of half hour that is as long +as an hour in the places where days are as long as years, and years hold +about as much as days do in other places. + +The man on the sofa woke with a start, and looked scared and wild for a +moment; then he brought his dusty broken boots to the floor, rested his +elbows on his knees, took his unfortunate head between his hands, and +came back to life gradually. + +He lifted his head, looked at the girl across the top of the bar, and +formed with his lips, rather than spoke, the words-- + +‘Put up a drink?’ * + + * ‘Put up a drink’--i.e., ‘Give me a drink on credit’, or + ‘Chalk it up’. + +She shook her head tightly and went on reading. + +He staggered up, and, leaning on the bar, made desperate distress +signals with hand, eyes, and mouth. + +‘No!’ she snapped. ‘I means no when I says no! You’ve had too many last +drinks already, and the boss says you ain’t to have another. If you +swear again, or bother me, I’ll call him.’ + +He hung sullenly on the counter for a while, then lurched to his +swag, and shouldered it hopelessly and wearily. Then he blinked round, +whistled, waited a moment, went on to the front verandah, peered round, +through the heat, with bloodshot eyes, and whistled again. He turned and +started through to the back-door. + +‘What the devil do you want now?’ demanded the girl, interrupted in her +reading for the third time by him. ‘Stampin’ all over the house. You +can’t go through there! It’s privit! I do wish to goodness you’d git!’ + +‘Where the blazes is that there dog o’ mine got to?’ he muttered. ‘Did +you see a dog?’ + +‘No! What do I want with your dog?’ + +He whistled out in front again, and round each corner. Then he came back +with a decided step and tone. + +‘Look here! that there dog was lyin’ there agin the wall when I went +to sleep. He wouldn’t stir from me, or my swag, in a year, if he wasn’t +dragged. He’s been blanky well touched [stolen], and I wouldn’ter lost +him for a fiver. Are you sure you ain’t seen a dog?’ then suddenly, as +the thought struck him: ‘Where’s them two chaps that was playin’ cards +when I wenter sleep?’ + +‘Why!’ exclaimed the girl, without thinking, ‘there was a dog, now I +come to think of it, but I thought it belonged to one of them chaps. +Anyway, they played for it, and the other chap won it and took it away.’ + +He stared at her blankly, with thunder gathering in the blankness. + +‘What sort of a dog was it?’ + +Dog described; the chain round the neck settled it. + +He scowled at her darkly. + +‘Now, look here,’ he said; ‘you’ve allowed gamblin’ in this bar--your +boss has. You’ve got no right to let spielers gamble away a man’s dog. +Is a customer to lose his dog every time he has a doze to suit your +boss? I’ll go straight across to the police camp and put you away, and +I don’t care if you lose your licence. I ain’t goin’ to lose my dog. I +wouldn’ter taken a ten-pound note for that blanky dog! I----’ + +She was filling a pewter hastily. + +‘Here! for God’s sake have a drink an’ stop yer row.’ + +He drank with satisfaction. Then he hung on the bar with one elbow and +scowled out the door. + +‘Which blanky way did them chaps go?’ he growled. + +‘The one that took the dog went towards Tinned Dog.’ + +‘And I’ll haveter go all the blanky way back after him, and most likely +lose me shed! Here!’ jerking the empty pewter across the bar, ‘fill that +up again; I’m narked properly, I am, and I’ll take twenty-four blanky +hours to cool down now. I wouldn’ter lost that dog for twenty quid.’ + +He drank again with deeper satisfaction, then he shuffled out, +muttering, swearing, and threatening louder every step, and took the +track to Tinned Dog. + + ***** + +Now the man, girl, or woman, who told me this yarn has never quite +settled it in his or her mind as to who really owned the dog. I leave it +to you. + + + + +Telling Mrs Baker. + + +Most Bushmen who hadn’t ‘known Bob Baker to speak to’, had ‘heard tell +of him’. He’d been a squatter, not many years before, on the Macquarie +river in New South Wales, and had made money in the good seasons, and +had gone in for horse-racing and racehorse-breeding, and long trips to +Sydney, where he put up at swell hotels and went the pace. So after a +pretty severe drought, when the sheep died by thousands on his runs, Bob +Baker went under, and the bank took over his station and put a manager +in charge. + +He’d been a jolly, open-handed, popular man, which means that he’d been +a selfish man as far as his wife and children were concerned, for +they had to suffer for it in the end. Such generosity is often born of +vanity, or moral cowardice, or both mixed. It’s very nice to hear the +chaps sing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’, but you’ve mostly got to pay +for it twice--first in company, and afterwards alone. I once heard the +chaps singing that I was a jolly good fellow, when I was leaving a place +and they were giving me a send-off. It thrilled me, and brought a warm +gush to my eyes; but, all the same, I wished I had half the money I’d +lent them, and spent on ‘em, and I wished I’d used the time I’d wasted +to be a jolly good fellow. + +When I first met Bob Baker he was a boss-drover on the great +north-western route, and his wife lived at the township of Solong on +the Sydney side. He was going north to new country round by the Gulf of +Carpentaria, with a big mob of cattle, on a two years’ trip; and I and +my mate, Andy M’Culloch, engaged to go with him. We wanted to have a +look at the Gulf Country. + +After we had crossed the Queensland border it seemed to me that the Boss +was too fond of going into wayside shanties and town pubs. Andy had been +with him on another trip, and he told me that the Boss was only going +this way lately. Andy knew Mrs Baker well, and seemed to think a deal of +her. ‘She’s a good little woman,’ said Andy. ‘One of the right stuff. I +worked on their station for a while when I was a nipper, and I know. +She was always a damned sight too good for the Boss, but she believed in +him. When I was coming away this time she says to me, “Look here, Andy, +I’m afraid Robert is drinking again. Now I want you to look after him +for me, as much as you can--you seem to have as much influence with him +as any one. I want you to promise me that you’ll never have a drink with +him.” + +‘And I promised,’ said Andy, ‘and I’ll keep my word.’ Andy was a chap +who could keep his word, and nothing else. And, no matter how the Boss +persuaded, or sneered, or swore at him, Andy would never drink with him. + +It got worse and worse: the Boss would ride on ahead and get drunk at a +shanty, and sometimes he’d be days behind us; and when he’d catch up to +us his temper would be just about as much as we could stand. At last he +went on a howling spree at Mulgatown, about a hundred and fifty miles +north of the border, and, what was worse, he got in tow with a flash +barmaid there--one of those girls who are engaged, by the publicans up +country, as baits for chequemen. + +He went mad over that girl. He drew an advance cheque from the +stock-owner’s agent there, and knocked that down; then he raised some +more money somehow, and spent that--mostly on the girl. + +We did all we could. Andy got him along the track for a couple of +stages, and just when we thought he was all right, he slipped us in the +night and went back. + +We had two other men with us, but had the devil’s own bother on account +of the cattle. It was a mixed-up job all round. You see it was all big +runs round there, and we had to keep the bullocks moving along the route +all the time, or else get into trouble for trespass. The agent wasn’t +going to go to the expense of putting the cattle in a paddock until +the Boss sobered up; there was very little grass on the route or the +travelling-stock reserves or camps, so we had to keep travelling for +grass. + +The world might wobble and all the banks go bung, but the cattle have +to go through--that’s the law of the stock-routes. So the agent wired +to the owners, and, when he got their reply, he sacked the Boss and sent +the cattle on in charge of another man. The new Boss was a drover coming +south after a trip; he had his two brothers with him, so he didn’t want +me and Andy; but, anyway, we were full up of this trip, so we arranged, +between the agent and the new Boss, to get most of the wages due to +us--the Boss had drawn some of our stuff and spent it. + +We could have started on the back track at once, but, drunk or sober, +mad or sane, good or bad, it isn’t Bush religion to desert a mate in a +hole; and the Boss was a mate of ours; so we stuck to him. + +We camped on the creek, outside the town, and kept him in the camp with +us as much as possible, and did all we could for him. + +‘How could I face his wife if I went home without him?’ asked Andy, ‘or +any of his old mates?’ + +The Boss got himself turned out of the pub. where the barmaid was, and +then he’d hang round the other pubs., and get drink somehow, and fight, +and get knocked about. He was an awful object by this time, wild-eyed +and gaunt, and he hadn’t washed or shaved for days. + +Andy got the constable in charge of the police station to lock him up +for a night, but it only made him worse: we took him back to the camp +next morning and while our eyes were off him for a few minutes he +slipped away into the scrub, stripped himself naked, and started to hang +himself to a leaning tree with a piece of clothes-line rope. We got to +him just in time. + +Then Andy wired to the Boss’s brother Ned, who was fighting the drought, +the rabbit-pest, and the banks, on a small station back on the border. +Andy reckoned it was about time to do something. + +Perhaps the Boss hadn’t been quite right in his head before he started +drinking--he had acted queer some time, now we came to think of +it; maybe he’d got a touch of sunstroke or got brooding over his +troubles--anyway he died in the horrors within the week. + +His brother Ned turned up on the last day, and Bob thought he was the +devil, and grappled with him. It took the three of us to hold the Boss +down sometimes. + +Sometimes, towards the end, he’d be sensible for a few minutes and talk +about his ‘poor wife and children’; and immediately afterwards he’d +fall a-cursing me, and Andy, and Ned, and calling us devils. He cursed +everything; he cursed his wife and children, and yelled that they were +dragging him down to hell. He died raving mad. It was the worst case of +death in the horrors of drink that I ever saw or heard of in the Bush. + +Ned saw to the funeral: it was very hot weather, and men have to be +buried quick who die out there in the hot weather--especially men who +die in the state the Boss was in. Then Ned went to the public-house +where the barmaid was and called the landlord out. It was a desperate +fight: the publican was a big man, and a bit of a fighting man; but +Ned was one of those quiet, simple-minded chaps who will carry a thing +through to death when they make up their minds. He gave that publican +nearly as good a thrashing as he deserved. The constable in charge of +the station backed Ned, while another policeman picked up the publican. +Sounds queer to you city people, doesn’t it? + +Next morning we three started south. We stayed a couple of days at +Ned Baker’s station on the border, and then started on our +three-hundred-mile ride down-country. The weather was still very hot, so +we decided to travel at night for a while, and left Ned’s place at dusk. +He parted from us at the homestead gate. He gave Andy a small packet, +done up in canvas, for Mrs Baker, which Andy told me contained Bob’s +pocket-book, letters, and papers. We looked back, after we’d gone a +piece along the dusty road, and saw Ned still standing by the gate; and +a very lonely figure he looked. Ned was a bachelor. ‘Poor old Ned,’ said +Andy to me. ‘He was in love with Mrs Bob Baker before she got married, +but she picked the wrong man--girls mostly do. Ned and Bob were together +on the Macquarie, but Ned left when his brother married, and he’s been +up in these God-forsaken scrubs ever since. Look, I want to tell you +something, Jack: Ned has written to Mrs Bob to tell her that Bob died of +fever, and everything was done for him that could be done, and that he +died easy--and all that sort of thing. Ned sent her some money, and she +is to think that it was the money due to Bob when he died. Now I’ll have +to go and see her when we get to Solong; there’s no getting out of it, +I’ll have to face her--and you’ll have to come with me.’ + +‘Damned if I will!’ I said. + +‘But you’ll have to,’ said Andy. ‘You’ll have to stick to me; you’re +surely not crawler enough to desert a mate in a case like this? I’ll +have to lie like hell--I’ll have to lie as I never lied to a woman +before; and you’ll have to back me and corroborate every lie.’ + +I’d never seen Andy show so much emotion. + +‘There’s plenty of time to fix up a good yarn,’ said Andy. He said no +more about Mrs Baker, and we only mentioned the Boss’s name casually, +until we were within about a day’s ride of Solong; then Andy told me the +yarn he’d made up about the Boss’s death. + +‘And I want you to listen, Jack,’ he said, ‘and remember every word--and +if you can fix up a better yarn you can tell me afterwards. Now it +was like this: the Boss wasn’t too well when he crossed the border. He +complained of pains in his back and head and a stinging pain in the back +of his neck, and he had dysentery bad,--but that doesn’t matter; it’s +lucky I ain’t supposed to tell a woman all the symptoms. The Boss stuck +to the job as long as he could, but we managed the cattle and made it as +easy as we could for him. He’d just take it easy, and ride on from camp +to camp, and rest. One night I rode to a town off the route (or you did, +if you like) and got some medicine for him; that made him better for a +while, but at last, a day or two this side of Mulgatown, he had to give +up. A squatter there drove him into town in his buggy and put him up +at the best hotel. The publican knew the Boss and did all he could for +him--put him in the best room and wired for another doctor. We wired for +Ned as soon as we saw how bad the Boss was, and Ned rode night and day +and got there three days before the Boss died. The Boss was a bit off +his head some of the time with the fever, but was calm and quiet towards +the end and died easy. He talked a lot about his wife and children, and +told us to tell the wife not to fret but to cheer up for the children’s +sake. How does that sound?’ + +I’d been thinking while I listened, and an idea struck me. + +‘Why not let her know the truth?’ I asked. ‘She’s sure to hear of +it sooner or later; and if she knew he was only a selfish, drunken +blackguard she might get over it all the sooner.’ + +‘You don’t know women, Jack,’ said Andy quietly. ‘And, anyway, even if +she is a sensible woman, we’ve got a dead mate to consider as well as a +living woman.’ + +‘But she’s sure to hear the truth sooner or later,’ I said, ‘the Boss +was so well known.’ + +‘And that’s just the reason why the truth might be kept from her,’ said +Andy. ‘If he wasn’t well known--and nobody could help liking him, after +all, when he was straight--if he wasn’t so well known the truth might +leak out unawares. She won’t know if I can help it, or at least not yet +a while. If I see any chaps that come from the North I’ll put them up +to it. I’ll tell M’Grath, the publican at Solong, too: he’s a straight +man--he’ll keep his ears open and warn chaps. One of Mrs Baker’s sisters +is staying with her, and I’ll give her a hint so that she can warn off +any women that might get hold of a yarn. Besides, Mrs Baker is sure to +go and live in Sydney, where all her people are--she was a Sydney girl; +and she’s not likely to meet any one there that will tell her the truth. +I can tell her that it was the last wish of the Boss that she should +shift to Sydney.’ + +We smoked and thought a while, and by-and-by Andy had what he called a +‘happy thought’. He went to his saddle-bags and got out the small canvas +packet that Ned had given him: it was sewn up with packing-thread, and +Andy ripped it open with his pocket-knife. + +‘What are you doing, Andy?’ I asked. + +‘Ned’s an innocent old fool, as far as sin is concerned,’ said Andy. ‘I +guess he hasn’t looked through the Boss’s letters, and I’m just going to +see that there’s nothing here that will make liars of us.’ + +He looked through the letters and papers by the light of the fire. There +were some letters from Mrs Baker to her husband, also a portrait of her +and the children; these Andy put aside. But there were other letters +from barmaids and women who were not fit to be seen in the same street +with the Boss’s wife; and there were portraits--one or two flash ones. +There were two letters from other men’s wives too. + +‘And one of those men, at least, was an old mate of his!’ said Andy, in +a tone of disgust. + +He threw the lot into the fire; then he went through the Boss’s +pocket-book and tore out some leaves that had notes and addresses on +them, and burnt them too. Then he sewed up the packet again and put it +away in his saddle-bag. + +‘Such is life!’ said Andy, with a yawn that might have been half a sigh. + +We rode into Solong early in the day, turned our horses out in a +paddock, and put up at M’Grath’s pub. until such time as we made up our +minds as to what we’d do or where we’d go. We had an idea of waiting +until the shearing season started and then making Out-Back to the big +sheds. + +Neither of us was in a hurry to go and face Mrs Baker. ‘We’ll go after +dinner,’ said Andy at first; then after dinner we had a drink, and felt +sleepy--we weren’t used to big dinners of roast-beef and vegetables and +pudding, and, besides, it was drowsy weather--so we decided to have a +snooze and then go. When we woke up it was late in the afternoon, so we +thought we’d put it off till after tea. ‘It wouldn’t be manners to walk +in while they’re at tea,’ said Andy--‘it would look as if we only came +for some grub.’ + +But while we were at tea a little girl came with a message that Mrs +Baker wanted to see us, and would be very much obliged if we’d call +up as soon as possible. You see, in those small towns you can’t move +without the thing getting round inside of half an hour. + +‘We’ll have to face the music now!’ said Andy, ‘and no get out of it.’ +He seemed to hang back more than I did. There was another pub. opposite +where Mrs Baker lived, and when we got up the street a bit I said to +Andy-- + +‘Suppose we go and have another drink first, Andy? We might be kept in +there an hour or two.’ + +‘You don’t want another drink,’ said Andy, rather short. ‘Why, you seem +to be going the same way as the Boss!’ But it was Andy that edged off +towards the pub. when we got near Mrs Baker’s place. ‘All right!’ he +said. ‘Come on! We’ll have this other drink, since you want it so bad.’ + +We had the drink, then we buttoned up our coats and started across the +road--we’d bought new shirts and collars, and spruced up a bit. Half-way +across Andy grabbed my arm and asked-- + +‘How do you feel now, Jack?’ + +‘Oh, I’M all right,’ I said. + +‘For God’s sake!’ said Andy, ‘don’t put your foot in it and make a mess +of it.’ + +‘I won’t, if you don’t.’ + +Mrs Baker’s cottage was a little weather-board box affair back in a +garden. When we went in through the gate Andy gripped my arm again and +whispered-- + +‘For God’s sake stick to me now, Jack!’ + +‘I’ll stick all right,’ I said--‘you’ve been having too much beer, +Andy.’ + +I had seen Mrs Baker before, and remembered her as a cheerful, contented +sort of woman, bustling about the house and getting the Boss’s shirts +and things ready when we started North. Just the sort of woman that is +contented with housework and the children, and with nothing particular +about her in the way of brains. But now she sat by the fire looking like +the ghost of herself. I wouldn’t have recognised her at first. I never +saw such a change in a woman, and it came like a shock to me. + +Her sister let us in, and after a first glance at Mrs Baker I had eyes +for the sister and no one else. She was a Sydney girl, about twenty-four +or twenty-five, and fresh and fair--not like the sun-browned women we +were used to see. She was a pretty, bright-eyed girl, and seemed quick +to understand, and very sympathetic. She had been educated, Andy had +told me, and wrote stories for the Sydney ‘Bulletin’ and other Sydney +papers. She had her hair done and was dressed in the city style, and +that took us back a bit at first. + +‘It’s very good of you to come,’ said Mrs Baker in a weak, weary voice, +when we first went in. ‘I heard you were in town.’ + +‘We were just coming when we got your message,’ said Andy. ‘We’d have +come before, only we had to see to the horses.’ + +‘It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Baker. + +They wanted us to have tea, but we said we’d just had it. Then Miss +Standish (the sister) wanted us to have tea and cake; but we didn’t feel +as if we could handle cups and saucers and pieces of cake successfully +just then. + +There was something the matter with one of the children in a back-room, +and the sister went to see to it. Mrs Baker cried a little quietly. + +‘You mustn’t mind me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right presently, and then +I want you to tell me all about poor Bob. It’s seeing you, that saw the +last of him, that set me off.’ + +Andy and I sat stiff and straight, on two chairs against the wall, +and held our hats tight, and stared at a picture of Wellington meeting +Blucher on the opposite wall. I thought it was lucky that that picture +was there. + +The child was calling ‘mumma’, and Mrs Baker went in to it, and her +sister came out. ‘Best tell her all about it and get it over,’ she +whispered to Andy. ‘She’ll never be content until she hears all about +poor Bob from some one who was with him when he died. Let me take your +hats. Make yourselves comfortable.’ + +She took the hats and put them on the sewing-machine. I wished she’d let +us keep them, for now we had nothing to hold on to, and nothing to do +with our hands; and as for being comfortable, we were just about as +comfortable as two cats on wet bricks. + +When Mrs Baker came into the room she brought little Bobby Baker, about +four years old; he wanted to see Andy. He ran to Andy at once, and Andy +took him up on his knee. He was a pretty child, but he reminded me too +much of his father. + +‘I’m so glad you’ve come, Andy!’ said Bobby. + +‘Are you, Bobby?’ + +‘Yes. I wants to ask you about daddy. You saw him go away, didn’t you?’ +and he fixed his great wondering eyes on Andy’s face. + +‘Yes,’ said Andy. + +‘He went up among the stars, didn’t he?’ + +‘Yes,’ said Andy. + +‘And he isn’t coming back to Bobby any more?’ + +‘No,’ said Andy. ‘But Bobby’s going to him by-and-by.’ + +Mrs Baker had been leaning back in her chair, resting her head on her +hand, tears glistening in her eyes; now she began to sob, and her sister +took her out of the room. + +Andy looked miserable. ‘I wish to God I was off this job!’ he whispered +to me. + +‘Is that the girl that writes the stories?’ I asked. + +‘Yes,’ he said, staring at me in a hopeless sort of way, ‘and poems +too.’ + +‘Is Bobby going up among the stars?’ asked Bobby. + +‘Yes,’ said Andy--‘if Bobby’s good.’ + +‘And auntie?’ + +‘Yes.’ + +‘And mumma?’ + +‘Yes.’ + +‘Are you going, Andy?’ + +‘Yes,’ said Andy hopelessly. + +‘Did you see daddy go up amongst the stars, Andy?’ + +‘Yes,’ said Andy, ‘I saw him go up.’ + +‘And he isn’t coming down again any more?’ + +‘No,’ said Andy. + +‘Why isn’t he?’ + +‘Because he’s going to wait up there for you and mumma, Bobby.’ + +There was a long pause, and then Bobby asked-- + +‘Are you going to give me a shilling, Andy?’ with the same expression of +innocent wonder in his eyes. + +Andy slipped half-a-crown into his hand. ‘Auntie’ came in and told him +he’d see Andy in the morning and took him away to bed, after he’d kissed +us both solemnly; and presently she and Mrs Baker settled down to hear +Andy’s story. + +‘Brace up now, Jack, and keep your wits about you,’ whispered Andy to me +just before they came in. + +‘Poor Bob’s brother Ned wrote to me,’ said Mrs Baker, ‘but he scarcely +told me anything. Ned’s a good fellow, but he’s very simple, and never +thinks of anything.’ + +Andy told her about the Boss not being well after he crossed the border. + +‘I knew he was not well,’ said Mrs Baker, ‘before he left. I didn’t want +him to go. I tried hard to persuade him not to go this trip. I had a +feeling that I oughtn’t to let him go. But he’d never think of anything +but me and the children. He promised he’d give up droving after this +trip, and get something to do near home. The life was too much for +him--riding in all weathers and camping out in the rain, and living like +a dog. But he was never content at home. It was all for the sake of me +and the children. He wanted to make money and start on a station again. +I shouldn’t have let him go. He only thought of me and the children! Oh! +my poor, dear, kind, dead husband!’ She broke down again and sobbed, and +her sister comforted her, while Andy and I stared at Wellington meeting +Blucher on the field of Waterloo. I thought the artist had heaped up the +dead a bit extra, and I thought that I wouldn’t like to be trod on by +horses, even if I was dead. + +‘Don’t you mind,’ said Miss Standish, ‘she’ll be all right presently,’ +and she handed us the ‘Illustrated Sydney Journal’. This was a great +relief,--we bumped our heads over the pictures. + +Mrs Baker made Andy go on again, and he told her how the Boss broke down +near Mulgatown. Mrs Baker was opposite him and Miss Standish opposite +me. Both of them kept their eyes on Andy’s face: he sat, with his hair +straight up like a brush as usual, and kept his big innocent grey eyes +fixed on Mrs Baker’s face all the time he was speaking. I watched Miss +Standish. I thought she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen; it was a +bad case of love at first sight, but she was far and away above me, and +the case was hopeless. I began to feel pretty miserable, and to think +back into the past: I just heard Andy droning away by my side. + +‘So we fixed him up comfortable in the waggonette with the blankets +and coats and things,’ Andy was saying, ‘and the squatter started into +Mulgatown.... It was about thirty miles, Jack, wasn’t it?’ he asked, +turning suddenly to me. He always looked so innocent that there were +times when I itched to knock him down. + +‘More like thirty-five,’ I said, waking up. + +Miss Standish fixed her eyes on me, and I had another look at Wellington +and Blucher. + +‘They were all very good and kind to the Boss,’ said Andy. ‘They thought +a lot of him up there. Everybody was fond of him.’ + +‘I know it,’ said Mrs Baker. ‘Nobody could help liking him. He was one +of the kindest men that ever lived.’ + +‘Tanner, the publican, couldn’t have been kinder to his own brother,’ +said Andy. ‘The local doctor was a decent chap, but he was only a young +fellow, and Tanner hadn’t much faith in him, so he wired for an older +doctor at Mackintyre, and he even sent out fresh horses to meet the +doctor’s buggy. Everything was done that could be done, I assure you, +Mrs Baker.’ + +‘I believe it,’ said Mrs Baker. ‘And you don’t know how it relieves me +to hear it. And did the publican do all this at his own expense?’ + +‘He wouldn’t take a penny, Mrs Baker.’ + +‘He must have been a good true man. I wish I could thank him.’ + +‘Oh, Ned thanked him for you,’ said Andy, though without meaning more +than he said. + +‘I wouldn’t have fancied that Ned would have thought of that,’ said Mrs +Baker. ‘When I first heard of my poor husband’s death, I thought perhaps +he’d been drinking again--that worried me a bit.’ + +‘He never touched a drop after he left Solong, I can assure you, Mrs +Baker,’ said Andy quickly. + +Now I noticed that Miss Standish seemed surprised or puzzled, once or +twice, while Andy was speaking, and leaned forward to listen to him; +then she leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands behind her head +and looked at him, with half-shut eyes, in a way I didn’t like. Once or +twice she looked at me as if she was going to ask me a question, but I +always looked away quick and stared at Blucher and Wellington, or into +the empty fireplace, till I felt that her eyes were off me. Then she +asked Andy a question or two, in all innocence I believe now, but it +scared him, and at last he watched his chance and winked at her sharp. +Then she gave a little gasp and shut up like a steel trap. + +The sick child in the bedroom coughed and cried again. Mrs Baker went +to it. We three sat like a deaf-and-dumb institution, Andy and I staring +all over the place: presently Miss Standish excused herself, and went +out of the room after her sister. She looked hard at Andy as she left +the room, but he kept his eyes away. + +‘Brace up now, Jack,’ whispered Andy to me, ‘the worst is coming.’ + +When they came in again Mrs Baker made Andy go on with his story. + +‘He--he died very quietly,’ said Andy, hitching round, and resting his +elbows on his knees, and looking into the fireplace so as to have his +face away from the light. Miss Standish put her arm round her sister. +‘He died very easy,’ said Andy. ‘He was a bit off his head at times, but +that was while the fever was on him. He didn’t suffer much towards the +end--I don’t think he suffered at all.... He talked a lot about you and +the children.’ (Andy was speaking very softly now.) ‘He said that you +were not to fret, but to cheer up for the children’s sake.... It was the +biggest funeral ever seen round there.’ + +Mrs Baker was crying softly. Andy got the packet half out of his pocket, +but shoved it back again. + +‘The only thing that hurts me now,’ says Mrs Baker presently, ‘is to +think of my poor husband buried out there in the lonely Bush, so far +from home. It’s--cruel!’ and she was sobbing again. + +‘Oh, that’s all right, Mrs Baker,’ said Andy, losing his head a little. +‘Ned will see to that. Ned is going to arrange to have him brought down +and buried in Sydney.’ Which was about the first thing Andy had told her +that evening that wasn’t a lie. Ned had said he would do it as soon as +he sold his wool. + +‘It’s very kind indeed of Ned,’ sobbed Mrs Baker. ‘I’d never have +dreamed he was so kind-hearted and thoughtful. I misjudged him all +along. And that is all you have to tell me about poor Robert?’ + +‘Yes,’ said Andy--then one of his ‘happy thoughts’ struck him. ‘Except +that he hoped you’d shift to Sydney, Mrs Baker, where you’ve got friends +and relations. He thought it would be better for you and the children. +He told me to tell you that.’ + +‘He was thoughtful up to the end,’ said Mrs Baker. ‘It was just like +poor Robert--always thinking of me and the children. We are going to +Sydney next week.’ + +Andy looked relieved. We talked a little more, and Miss Standish wanted +to make coffee for us, but we had to go and see to our horses. We got up +and bumped against each other, and got each other’s hats, and promised +Mrs Baker we’d come again. + +‘Thank you very much for coming,’ she said, shaking hands with us. ‘I +feel much better now. You don’t know how much you have relieved me. Now, +mind, you have promised to come and see me again for the last time.’ + +Andy caught her sister’s eye and jerked his head towards the door to let +her know he wanted to speak to her outside. + +‘Good-bye, Mrs Baker,’ he said, holding on to her hand. ‘And don’t you +fret. You’ve--you’ve got the children yet. It’s--it’s all for the best; +and, besides, the Boss said you wasn’t to fret.’ And he blundered out +after me and Miss Standish. + +She came out to the gate with us, and Andy gave her the packet. + +‘I want you to give that to her,’ he said; ‘it’s his letters and papers. +I hadn’t the heart to give it to her, somehow.’ + +‘Tell me, Mr M’Culloch,’ she said. ‘You’ve kept something back--you +haven’t told her the truth. It would be better and safer for me to know. +Was it an accident--or the drink?’ + +‘It was the drink,’ said Andy. ‘I was going to tell you--I thought it +would be best to tell you. I had made up my mind to do it, but, somehow, +I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t asked me.’ + +‘Tell me all,’ she said. ‘It would be better for me to know.’ + +‘Come a little farther away from the house,’ said Andy. She came along +the fence a piece with us, and Andy told her as much of the truth as he +could. + +‘I’ll hurry her off to Sydney,’ she said. ‘We can get away this week as +well as next.’ Then she stood for a minute before us, breathing quickly, +her hands behind her back and her eyes shining in the moonlight. She +looked splendid. + +‘I want to thank you for her sake,’ she said quickly. ‘You are good men! +I like the Bushmen! They are grand men--they are noble! I’ll probably +never see either of you again, so it doesn’t matter,’ and she put her +white hand on Andy’s shoulder and kissed him fair and square on the +mouth. ‘And you, too!’ she said to me. I was taller than Andy, and had +to stoop. ‘Good-bye!’ she said, and ran to the gate and in, waving her +hand to us. We lifted our hats again and turned down the road. + +I don’t think it did either of us any harm. + + + + +A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs. + + +This is a story--about the only one--of Job Falconer, Boss of the +Talbragar sheep-station up country in New South Wales in the early +Eighties--when there were still runs in the Dingo-Scrubs out of the +hands of the banks, and yet squatters who lived on their stations. + +Job would never tell the story himself, at least not complete, and as +his family grew up he would become as angry as it was in his easy-going +nature to become if reference were made to the incident in his presence. +But his wife--little, plump, bright-eyed Gerty Falconer--often told the +story (in the mysterious voice which women use in speaking of private +matters amongst themselves--but with brightening eyes) to women friends +over tea; and always to a new woman friend. And on such occasions she +would be particularly tender towards the unconscious Job, and ruffle his +thin, sandy hair in a way that embarrassed him in company--made him look +as sheepish as an old big-horned ram that has just been shorn and turned +amongst the ewes. And the woman friend on parting would give Job’s hand +a squeeze which would surprise him mildly, and look at him as if she +could love him. + +According to a theory of mine, Job, to fit the story, should have been +tall, and dark, and stern, or gloomy and quick-tempered. But he wasn’t. +He was fairly tall, but he was fresh-complexioned and sandy (his skin +was pink to scarlet in some weathers, with blotches of umber), and his +eyes were pale-grey; his big forehead loomed babyishly, his arms were +short, and his legs bowed to the saddle. Altogether he was an awkward, +unlovely Bush bird--on foot; in the saddle it was different. He hadn’t +even a ‘temper’. + +The impression on Job’s mind which many years afterwards brought about +the incident was strong enough. When Job was a boy of fourteen he saw +his father’s horse come home riderless--circling and snorting up by the +stockyard, head jerked down whenever the hoof trod on one of the snapped +ends of the bridle-reins, and saddle twisted over the side with bruised +pommel and knee-pad broken off. + +Job’s father wasn’t hurt much, but Job’s mother, an emotional woman, and +then in a delicate state of health, survived the shock for three months +only. ‘She wasn’t quite right in her head,’ they said, ‘from the day +the horse came home till the last hour before she died.’ And, strange to +say, Job’s father (from whom Job inherited his seemingly placid nature) +died three months later. The doctor from the town was of the opinion +that he must have ‘sustained internal injuries’ when the horse threw +him. ‘Doc. Wild’ (eccentric Bush doctor) reckoned that Job’s father was +hurt inside when his wife died, and hurt so badly that he couldn’t pull +round. But doctors differ all over the world. + + +Well, the story of Job himself came about in this way. He had been +married a year, and had lately started wool-raising on a pastoral lease +he had taken up at Talbragar: it was a new run, with new slab-and-bark +huts on the creek for a homestead, new shearing-shed, yards--wife and +everything new, and he was expecting a baby. Job felt brand-new himself +at the time, so he said. It was a lonely place for a young woman; +but Gerty was a settler’s daughter. The newness took away some of the +loneliness, she said, and there was truth in that: a Bush home in the +scrubs looks lonelier the older it gets, and ghostlier in the twilight, +as the bark and slabs whiten, or rather grow grey, in fierce summers. +And there’s nothing under God’s sky so weird, so aggressively lonely, as +a deserted old home in the Bush. + +Job’s wife had a half-caste gin for company when Job was away on the +run, and the nearest white woman (a hard but honest Lancashire woman +from within the kicking radius in Lancashire--wife of a selector) was +only seven miles away. She promised to be on hand, and came over two or +three times a-week; but Job grew restless as Gerty’s time drew near, and +wished that he had insisted on sending her to the nearest town (thirty +miles away), as originally proposed. Gerty’s mother, who lived in town, +was coming to see her over her trouble; Job had made arrangements with +the town doctor, but prompt attendance could hardly be expected of a +doctor who was very busy, who was too fat to ride, and who lived thirty +miles away. + +Job, in common with most Bushmen and their families round there, had +more faith in Doc. Wild, a weird Yankee who made medicine in a saucepan, +and worked more cures on Bushmen than did the other three doctors of +the district together--maybe because the Bushmen had faith in him, or +he knew the Bush and Bush constitutions--or, perhaps, because he’d do +things which no ‘respectable practitioner’ dared do. I’ve described him +in another story. Some said he was a quack, and some said he wasn’t. +There are scores of wrecks and mysteries like him in the Bush. He drank +fearfully, and ‘on his own’, but was seldom incapable of performing an +operation. Experienced Bushmen preferred him three-quarters drunk: when +perfectly sober he was apt to be a bit shaky. He was tall, gaunt, had +a pointed black moustache, bushy eyebrows, and piercing black eyes. His +movements were eccentric. He lived where he happened to be--in a town +hotel, in the best room of a homestead, in the skillion of a sly-grog +shanty, in a shearer’s, digger’s, shepherd’s, or boundary-rider’s hut; +in a surveyor’s camp or a black-fellows’ camp--or, when the horrors were +on him, by a log in the lonely Bush. It seemed all one to him. He lost +all his things sometimes--even his clothes; but he never lost a pigskin +bag which contained his surgical instruments and papers. Except once; +then he gave the blacks 5 Pounds to find it for him. + +His patients included all, from the big squatter to Black Jimmy; and he +rode as far and fast to a squatter’s home as to a swagman’s camp. When +nothing was to be expected from a poor selector or a station hand, and +the doctor was hard up, he went to the squatter for a few pounds. He +had on occasions been offered cheques of 50 Pounds and 100 Pounds by +squatters for ‘pulling round’ their wives or children; but such offers +always angered him. When he asked for 5 Pounds he resented being offered +a 10 Pound cheque. He once sued a doctor for alleging that he held no +diploma; but the magistrate, on reading certain papers, suggested a +settlement out of court, which both doctors agreed to--the other doctor +apologising briefly in the local paper. It was noticed thereafter +that the magistrate and town doctors treated Doc. Wild with great +respect--even at his worst. The thing was never explained, and the case +deepened the mystery which surrounded Doc. Wild. + +As Job Falconer’s crisis approached Doc. Wild was located at a shanty +on the main road, about half-way between Job’s station and the town. +(Township of Come-by-Chance--expressive name; and the shanty was the +‘Dead Dingo Hotel’, kept by James Myles--known as ‘Poisonous Jimmy’, +perhaps as a compliment to, or a libel on, the liquor he sold.) Job’s +brother Mac. was stationed at the Dead Dingo Hotel with instructions +to hang round on some pretence, see that the doctor didn’t either drink +himself into the ‘D.T.’s’ or get sober enough to become restless; to +prevent his going away, or to follow him if he did; and to bring him +to the station in about a week’s time. Mac. (rather more careless, +brighter, and more energetic than his brother) was carrying out these +instructions while pretending, with rather great success, to be himself +on the spree at the shanty. + +But one morning, early in the specified week, Job’s uneasiness was +suddenly greatly increased by certain symptoms, so he sent the black boy +for the neighbour’s wife and decided to ride to Come-by-Chance to hurry +out Gerty’s mother, and see, by the way, how Doc. Wild and Mac. were +getting on. On the arrival of the neighbour’s wife, who drove over in a +spring-cart, Job mounted his horse (a freshly broken filly) and started. + +‘Don’t be anxious, Job,’ said Gerty, as he bent down to kiss her. ‘We’ll +be all right. Wait! you’d better take the gun--you might see those +dingoes again. I’ll get it for you.’ + +The dingoes (native dogs) were very bad amongst the sheep; and Job and +Gerty had started three together close to the track the last time they +were out in company--without the gun, of course. Gerty took the loaded +gun carefully down from its straps on the bedroom wall, carried it out, +and handed it up to Job, who bent and kissed her again and then rode +off. + +It was a hot day--the beginning of a long drought, as Job found to his +bitter cost. He followed the track for five or six miles through the +thick, monotonous scrub, and then turned off to make a short cut to the +main road across a big ring-barked flat. The tall gum-trees had been +ring-barked (a ring of bark taken out round the butts), or rather +‘sapped’--that is, a ring cut in through the sap--in order to kill them, +so that the little strength in the ‘poor’ soil should not be drawn out +by the living roots, and the natural grass (on which Australian stock +depends) should have a better show. The hard, dead trees raised their +barkless and whitened trunks and leafless branches for three or four +miles, and the grey and brown grass stood tall between, dying in the +first breaths of the coming drought. All was becoming grey and ashen +here, the heat blazing and dancing across objects, and the pale brassy +dome of the sky cloudless over all, the sun a glaring white disc with +its edges almost melting into the sky. Job held his gun carelessly ready +(it was a double-barrelled muzzle-loader, one barrel choke-bore for +shot, and the other rifled), and he kept an eye out for dingoes. He was +saving his horse for a long ride, jogging along in the careless Bush +fashion, hitched a little to one side--and I’m not sure that he didn’t +have a leg thrown up and across in front of the pommel of the saddle--he +was riding along in the careless Bush fashion, and thinking +fatherly thoughts in advance, perhaps, when suddenly a great black, +greasy-looking iguana scuttled off from the side of the track amongst +the dry tufts of grass and shreds of dead bark, and started up a +sapling. ‘It was a whopper,’ Job said afterwards; ‘must have been over +six feet, and a foot across the body. It scared me nearly as much as the +filly.’ + +The filly shied off like a rocket. Job kept his seat instinctively, +as was natural to him; but before he could more than grab at the +rein--lying loosely on the pommel--the filly ‘fetched up’ against a dead +box-tree, hard as cast-iron, and Job’s left leg was jammed from stirrup +to pocket. ‘I felt the blood flare up,’ he said, ‘and I knowed that +that’--(Job swore now and then in an easy-going way)--‘I knowed that +that blanky leg was broken alright. I threw the gun from me and freed +my left foot from the stirrup with my hand, and managed to fall to the +right, as the filly started off again.’ + +What follows comes from the statements of Doc. Wild and Mac. Falconer, +and Job’s own ‘wanderings in his mind’, as he called them. ‘They took +a blanky mean advantage of me,’ he said, ‘when they had me down and I +couldn’t talk sense.’ + +The filly circled off a bit, and then stood staring--as a mob of +brumbies, when fired at, will sometimes stand watching the smoke. Job’s +leg was smashed badly, and the pain must have been terrible. But he +thought then with a flash, as men do in a fix. No doubt the scene at +the lonely Bush home of his boyhood started up before him: his father’s +horse appeared riderless, and he saw the look in his mother’s eyes. + +Now a Bushman’s first, best, and quickest chance in a fix like this is +that his horse go home riderless, the home be alarmed, and the horse’s +tracks followed back to him; otherwise he might lie there for days, for +weeks--till the growing grass buries his mouldering bones. Job was on an +old sheep-track across a flat where few might have occasion to come for +months, but he did not consider this. He crawled to his gun, then to a +log, dragging gun and smashed leg after him. How he did it he doesn’t +know. Half-lying on one side, he rested the barrel on the log, took aim +at the filly, pulled both triggers, and then fell over and lay with his +head against the log; and the gun-barrel, sliding down, rested on his +neck. He had fainted. The crows were interested, and the ants would come +by-and-by. + + +Now Doc. Wild had inspirations; anyway, he did things which seemed, +after they were done, to have been suggested by inspiration and in no +other possible way. He often turned up where and when he was wanted +above all men, and at no other time. He had gipsy blood, they said; but, +anyway, being the mystery he was, and having the face he had, and living +the life he lived--and doing the things he did--it was quite probable +that he was more nearly in touch than we with that awful invisible world +all round and between us, of which we only see distorted faces and hear +disjointed utterances when we are ‘suffering a recovery’--or going mad. + +On the morning of Job’s accident, and after a long brooding silence, +Doc. Wild suddenly said to Mac. Falconer-- + +‘Git the hosses, Mac. We’ll go to the station.’ + +Mac., used to the doctor’s eccentricities, went to see about the horses. + +And then who should drive up but Mrs Spencer--Job’s mother-in-law--on +her way from the town to the station. She stayed to have a cup of tea +and give her horses a feed. She was square-faced, and considered a +rather hard and practical woman, but she had plenty of solid flesh, good +sympathetic common-sense, and deep-set humorous blue eyes. She lived +in the town comfortably on the interest of some money which her husband +left in the bank. She drove an American waggonette with a good width +and length of ‘tray’ behind, and on this occasion she had a pole and two +horses. In the trap were a new flock mattress and pillows, a generous +pair of new white blankets, and boxes containing necessaries, +delicacies, and luxuries. All round she was an excellent mother-in-law +for a man to have on hand at a critical time. + +And, speaking of mother-in-law, I would like to put in a word for her +right here. She is universally considered a nuisance in times of peace +and comfort; but when illness or serious trouble comes home! Then it’s +‘Write to Mother! Wire for Mother! Send some one to fetch Mother! I’ll +go and bring Mother!’ and if she is not near: ‘Oh, I wish Mother were +here! If Mother were only near!’ And when she is on the spot, the +anxious son-in-law: ‘Don’t YOU go, Mother! You’ll stay, won’t you, +Mother?--till we’re all right? I’ll get some one to look after your +house, Mother, while you’re here.’ But Job Falconer was fond of his +mother-in-law, all times. + +Mac. had some trouble in finding and catching one of the horses. Mrs +Spencer drove on, and Mac. and the doctor caught up to her about a mile +before she reached the homestead track, which turned in through the +scrubs at the corner of the big ring-barked flat. + +Doc. Wild and Mac. followed the cart-road, and as they jogged along in +the edge of the scrub the doctor glanced once or twice across the flat +through the dead, naked branches. Mac. looked that way. The crows were +hopping about the branches of a tree way out in the middle of the flat, +flopping down from branch to branch to the grass, then rising hurriedly +and circling. + +‘Dead beast there!’ said Mac. out of his Bushcraft. + +‘No--dying,’ said Doc. Wild, with less Bush experience but more +intellect. + +‘There’s some steers of Job’s out there somewhere,’ muttered Mac. Then +suddenly, ‘It ain’t drought--it’s the ploorer at last! or I’m blanked!’ + +Mac. feared the advent of that cattle-plague, pleuro-pneumonia, which +was raging on some other stations, but had been hitherto kept clear of +Job’s run. + +‘We’ll go and see, if you like,’ suggested Doc. Wild. + +They turned out across the flat, the horses picking their way amongst +the dried tufts and fallen branches. + +‘Theer ain’t no sign o’ cattle theer,’ said the doctor; ‘more likely a +ewe in trouble about her lamb.’ + +‘Oh, the blanky dingoes at the sheep,’ said Mac. ‘I wish we had a +gun--might get a shot at them.’ + +Doc. Wild hitched the skirt of a long China silk coat he wore, free of +a hip-pocket. He always carried a revolver. ‘In case I feel obliged to +shoot a first person singular one of these hot days,’ he explained once, +whereat Bushmen scratched the backs of their heads and thought feebly, +without result. + +‘We’d never git near enough for a shot,’ said the doctor; then he +commenced to hum fragments from a Bush song about the finding of a lost +Bushman in the last stages of death by thirst,-- + + ‘“The crows kept flyin’ up, boys! + The crows kept flyin’ up! + The dog, he seen and whimpered, boys, + Though he was but a pup.”’ + +‘It must be something or other,’ muttered Mac. ‘Look at them blanky +crows!’ + + ‘“The lost was found, we brought him round, + And took him from the place, + While the ants was swarmin’ on the ground, + And the crows was sayin’ grace!”’ + +‘My God! what’s that?’ cried Mac., who was a little in advance and rode +a tall horse. + +It was Job’s filly, lying saddled and bridled, with a rifle-bullet (as +they found on subsequent examination) through shoulders and chest, and +her head full of kangaroo-shot. She was feebly rocking her head against +the ground, and marking the dust with her hoof, as if trying to write +the reason of it there. + +The doctor drew his revolver, took a cartridge from his waistcoat +pocket, and put the filly out of her misery in a very scientific manner; +then something--professional instinct or the something supernatural +about the doctor--led him straight to the log, hidden in the grass, +where Job lay as we left him, and about fifty yards from the dead filly, +which must have staggered off some little way after being shot. Mac. +followed the doctor, shaking violently. + +‘Oh, my God!’ he cried, with the woman in his voice--and his face so +pale that his freckles stood out like buttons, as Doc. Wild said--‘oh, +my God! he’s shot himself!’ + +‘No, he hasn’t,’ said the doctor, deftly turning Job into a healthier +position with his head from under the log and his mouth to the air: then +he ran his eyes and hands over him, and Job moaned. ‘He’s got a +broken leg,’ said the doctor. Even then he couldn’t resist making a +characteristic remark, half to himself: ‘A man doesn’t shoot himself +when he’s going to be made a lawful father for the first time, unless he +can see a long way into the future.’ Then he took out his whisky-flask +and said briskly to Mac., ‘Leave me your water-bag’ (Mac. carried a +canvas water-bag slung under his horse’s neck), ‘ride back to the track, +stop Mrs Spencer, and bring the waggonette here. Tell her it’s only a +broken leg.’ + +Mac. mounted and rode off at a break-neck pace. + +As he worked the doctor muttered: ‘He shot his horse. That’s what gits +me. The fool might have lain there for a week. I’d never have suspected +spite in that carcass, and I ought to know men.’ + +But as Job came round a little Doc. Wild was enlightened. + +‘Where’s the filly?’ cried Job suddenly between groans. + +‘She’s all right,’ said the doctor. + +‘Stop her!’ cried Job, struggling to rise--‘stop her!--oh God! my leg.’ + +‘Keep quiet, you fool!’ + +‘Stop her!’ yelled Job. + +‘Why stop her?’ asked the doctor. ‘She won’t go fur,’ he added. + +‘She’ll go home to Gerty,’ shouted Job. ‘For God’s sake stop her!’ + +‘O--h!’ drawled the doctor to himself. ‘I might have guessed that. And I +ought to know men.’ + +‘Don’t take me home!’ demanded Job in a semi-sensible interval. ‘Take me +to Poisonous Jimmy’s and tell Gerty I’m on the spree.’ + +When Mac. and Mrs Spencer arrived with the waggonette Doc. Wild was in +his shirt-sleeves, his Chinese silk coat having gone for bandages. The +lower half of Job’s trouser-leg and his ‘lastic-side boot lay on the +ground, neatly cut off, and his bandaged leg was sandwiched between +two strips of bark, with grass stuffed in the hollows, and bound by +saddle-straps. + +‘That’s all I kin do for him for the present.’ + +Mrs Spencer was a strong woman mentally, but she arrived rather pale and +a little shaky: nevertheless she called out, as soon as she got within +earshot of the doctor-- + +‘What’s Job been doing now?’ (Job, by the way, had never been remarkable +for doing anything.) + +‘He’s got his leg broke and shot his horse,’ replied the doctor. ‘But,’ +he added, ‘whether he’s been a hero or a fool I dunno. Anyway, it’s a +mess all round.’ + +They unrolled the bed, blankets, and pillows in the bottom of the trap, +backed it against the log, to have a step, and got Job in. It was a +ticklish job, but they had to manage it: Job, maddened by pain and heat, +only kept from fainting by whisky, groaning and raving and yelling to +them to stop his horse. + +‘Lucky we got him before the ants did,’ muttered the doctor. Then he had +an inspiration-- + +‘You bring him on to the shepherd’s hut this side the station. We must +leave him there. Drive carefully, and pour brandy into him now and then; +when the brandy’s done pour whisky, then gin--keep the rum till the +last’ (the doctor had put a supply of spirits in the waggonette at +Poisonous Jimmy’s). ‘I’ll take Mac.’s horse and ride on and send Peter’ +(the station hand) ‘back to the hut to meet you. I’ll be back myself if +I can. THIS BUSINESS WILL HURRY UP THINGS AT THE STATION.’ + +Which last was one of those apparently insane remarks of the doctor’s +which no sane nor sober man could fathom or see a reason for--except in +Doc. Wild’s madness. + +He rode off at a gallop. The burden of Job’s raving, all the way, rested +on the dead filly-- + +‘Stop her! She must not go home to Gerty!... God help me shoot!... +Whoa!--whoa, there!... “Cope--cope--cope”--Steady, Jessie, old girl.... +Aim straight--aim straight! Aim for me, God!--I’ve missed!... Stop her!’ +&c. + +‘I never met a character like that,’ commented the doctor afterwards, +‘inside a man that looked like Job on the outside. I’ve met men behind +revolvers and big mustarshes in Califo’nia; but I’ve met a derned sight +more men behind nothing but a good-natured grin, here in Australia. +These lanky sawney Bushmen will do things in an easy-going way some day +that’ll make the old world sit up and think hard.’ + +He reached the station in time, and twenty minutes or half an hour +later he left the case in the hands of the Lancashire woman--whom he saw +reason to admire--and rode back to the hut to help Job, whom they soon +fixed up as comfortably as possible. + +They humbugged Mrs Falconer first with a yarn of Job’s alleged +phenomenal shyness, and gradually, as she grew stronger, and the truth +less important, they told it to her. And so, instead of Job being +pushed, scarlet-faced, into the bedroom to see his first-born, Gerty +Falconer herself took the child down to the hut, and so presented Uncle +Job with my first and favourite cousin and Bush chum. + +Doc. Wild stayed round until he saw Job comfortably moved to the +homestead, then he prepared to depart. + +‘I’m sorry,’ said Job, who was still weak--‘I’m sorry for that there +filly. I was breaking her in to side-saddle for Gerty when she should +get about. I wouldn’t have lost her for twenty quid.’ + +‘Never mind, Job,’ said the doctor. ‘I, too, once shot an animal I was +fond of--and for the sake of a woman--but that animal walked on two legs +and wore trousers. Good-bye, Job.’ + +And he left for Poisonous Jimmy’s. + + + + +The Little World Left Behind. + + +I lately revisited a western agricultural district in Australia after +many years. The railway had reached it, but otherwise things were +drearily, hopelessly, depressingly unchanged. There was the same old +grant, comprising several thousands of acres of the richest land in the +district, lying idle still, except for a few horses allowed to run there +for a shilling a-head per week. + +There were the same old selections--about as far off as ever from +becoming freeholds--shoved back among the barren ridges; dusty little +patches in the scrub, full of stones and stumps, and called farms, +deserted every few years, and tackled again by some little dried-up +family, or some old hatter, and then given best once more. There was +the cluster of farms on the flat, and in the foot of the gully, owned by +Australians of Irish or English descent, with the same number of stumps +in the wheat-paddock, the same broken fences and tumble-down huts and +yards, and the same weak, sleepy attempt made every season to scratch up +the ground and raise a crop. And along the creek the German farmers--the +only people there worthy of the name--toiling (men, women, and children) +from daylight till dark, like slaves, just as they always had done; the +elder sons stoop-shouldered old men at thirty. + +The row about the boundary fence between the Sweeneys and the Joneses +was unfinished still, and the old feud between the Dunderblitzens +and the Blitzendunders was more deadly than ever--it started three +generations ago over a stray bull. The O’Dunn was still fighting for his +great object in life, which was not to be ‘onneighborly’, as he put it. +‘I DON’T want to be onneighborly,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be aven wid some +of ‘em yit. It’s almost impossible for a dacent man to live in sich a +neighborhood and not be onneighborly, thry how he will. But I’ll be aven +wid some of ‘em yit, marruk my wurrud.’ + +Jones’s red steer--it couldn’t have been the same red steer--was +continually breaking into Rooney’s ‘whate an’ bringin’ ivery head av +the other cattle afther him, and ruinin’ him intirely.’ The Rooneys and +M’Kenzies were at daggers drawn, even to the youngest child, over the +impounding of a horse belonging to Pat Rooney’s brother-in-law, by a +distant relation of the M’Kenzies, which had happened nine years ago. + +The same sun-burned, masculine women went past to market twice a-week +in the same old carts and driving much the same quality of carrion. The +string of overloaded spring-carts, buggies, and sweating horses went +whirling into town, to ‘service’, through clouds of dust and broiling +heat, on Sunday morning, and came driving cruelly out again at noon. +The neighbours’ sons rode over in the afternoon, as of old, and hung up +their poor, ill-used little horses to bake in the sun, and sat on their +heels about the verandah, and drawled drearily concerning crops, fruit, +trees, and vines, and horses and cattle; the drought and ‘smut’ and +‘rust’ in wheat, and the ‘ploorer’ (pleuro-pneumonia) in cattle, +and other cheerful things; that there colt or filly, or that there +cattle-dog (pup or bitch) o’ mine (or ‘Jim’s’). They always talked +most of farming there, where no farming worthy of the name was +possible--except by Germans and Chinamen. Towards evening the old local +relic of the golden days dropped in and announced that he intended to +‘put down a shaft’ next week, in a spot where he’d been going to put +it down twenty years ago--and every week since. It was nearly time that +somebody sunk a hole and buried him there. + +An old local body named Mrs Witherly still went into town twice a-week +with her ‘bit av prodjuce’, as O’Dunn called it. She still drove a long, +bony, blind horse in a long rickety dray, with a stout sapling for a +whip, and about twenty yards of clothes-line reins. The floor of the +dray covered part of an acre, and one wheel was always ahead of the +other--or behind, according to which shaft was pulled. She wore, to all +appearances, the same short frock, faded shawl, men’s ‘lastic sides, and +white hood that she had on when the world was made. She still stopped +just twenty minutes at old Mrs Leatherly’s on the way in for a yarn and +a cup of tea--as she had always done, on the same days and at the same +time within the memory of the hoariest local liar. However, she had a +new clothes-line bent on to the old horse’s front end--and we fancy that +was the reason she didn’t recognise us at first. She had never looked +younger than a hard hundred within the memory of man. Her shrivelled +face was the colour of leather, and crossed and recrossed with lines +till there wasn’t room for any more. But her eyes were bright yet, and +twinkled with humour at times. + +She had been in the Bush for fifty years, and had fought fires, +droughts, hunger and thirst, floods, cattle and crop diseases, and all +the things that God curses Australian settlers with. She had had two +husbands, and it could be said of neither that he had ever done an +honest day’s work, or any good for himself or any one else. She had +reared something under fifteen children, her own and others; and there +was scarcely one of them that had not given her trouble. Her sons had +brought disgrace on her old head over and over again, but she held up +that same old head through it all, and looked her narrow, ignorant world +in the face--and ‘lived it down’. She had worked like a slave for fifty +years; yet she had more energy and endurance than many modern city women +in her shrivelled old body. She was a daughter of English aristocrats. + +And we who live our weak lives of fifty years or so in the cities--we +grow maudlin over our sorrows (and beer), and ask whether life is worth +living or not. + +I sought in the farming town relief from the general and particular +sameness of things, but there was none. The railway station was about +the only new building in town. The old signs even were as badly in need +of retouching as of old. I picked up a copy of the local ‘Advertiser’, +which newspaper had been started in the early days by a brilliant +drunkard, who drank himself to death just as the fathers of our nation +were beginning to get educated up to his style. He might have made +Australian journalism very different from what it is. There was nothing +new in the ‘Advertiser’--there had been nothing new since the last time +the drunkard had been sober enough to hold a pen. There was the same +old ‘enjoyable trip’ to Drybone (whereof the editor was the hero), and +something about an on-the-whole very enjoyable evening in some place +that was tastefully decorated, and where the visitors did justice to the +good things provided, and the small hours, and dancing, and our host and +hostess, and respected fellow-townsmen; also divers young ladies sang +very nicely, and a young Mr Somebody favoured the company with a comic +song. + +There was the same trespassing on the valuable space by the old +subscriber, who said that ‘he had said before and would say again’, and +he proceeded to say the same things which he said in the same paper when +we first heard our father reading it to our mother. Farther on the old +subscriber proceeded to ‘maintain’, and recalled attention to the fact +that it was just exactly as he had said. After which he made a few +abstract, incoherent remarks about the ‘surrounding district’, and +concluded by stating that he ‘must now conclude’, and thanking the +editor for trespassing on the aforesaid valuable space. + +There was the usual leader on the Government; and an agitation was still +carried on, by means of horribly-constructed correspondence to both +papers, for a bridge over Dry-Hole Creek at Dustbin--a place where no +sane man ever had occasion to go. + +I took up the ‘unreliable contemporary’, but found nothing there except +a letter from ‘Parent’, another from ‘Ratepayer’, a leader on the +Government, and ‘A Trip to Limeburn’, which latter I suppose was made in +opposition to the trip to Drybone. + +There was nothing new in the town. Even the almost inevitable gang of +city spoilers hadn’t arrived with the railway. They would have been +a relief. There was the monotonous aldermanic row, and the worse than +hopeless little herd of aldermen, the weird agricultural portion of whom +came in on council days in white starched and ironed coats, as we had +always remembered them. They were aggressively barren of ideas; but +on this occasion they had risen above themselves, for one of them had +remembered something his grandfather (old time English alderman) had +told him, and they were stirring up all the old local quarrels and +family spite of the district over a motion, or an amendment on a motion, +that a letter--from another enlightened body and bearing on an +equally important matter (which letter had been sent through the +post sufficiently stamped, delivered to the secretary, handed to the +chairman, read aloud in council, and passed round several times for +private perusal)--over a motion that such letter be received. + +There was a maintenance case coming on--to the usual well-ventilated +disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case +differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming +on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth +was not even brilliant in adultery. + +After I had been a week in that town the Governor decided to visit +it, and preparations were made to welcome him and present him with +an address. Then I thought that it was time to go, and slipped away +unnoticed in the general lunacy. + + + + +The Never-Never Country. + + + By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed, + By railroad, coach, and track-- + By lonely graves of our brave dead, + Up-Country and Out-Back: + To where ‘neath glorious clustered stars + The dreamy plains expand-- + My home lies wide a thousand miles + In the Never-Never Land. + + It lies beyond the farming belt, + Wide wastes of scrub and plain, + A blazing desert in the drought, + A lake-land after rain; + To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass, + Or whirls the scorching sand-- + A phantom land, a mystic land! + The Never-Never Land. + + Where lone Mount Desolation lies, + Mounts Dreadful and Despair-- + ‘Tis lost beneath the rainless skies + In hopeless deserts there; + It spreads nor’-west by No-Man’s Land-- + Where clouds are seldom seen-- + To where the cattle-stations lie + Three hundred miles between. + + The drovers of the Great Stock Routes + The strange Gulf country know-- + Where, travelling from the southern droughts, + The big lean bullocks go; + And camped by night where plains lie wide, + Like some old ocean’s bed, + The watchmen in the starlight ride + Round fifteen hundred head. + + And west of named and numbered days + The shearers walk and ride-- + Jack Cornstalk and the Ne’er-do-well, + And the grey-beard side by side; + They veil their eyes from moon and stars, + And slumber on the sand-- + Sad memories sleep as years go round + In Never-Never Land. + + By lonely huts north-west of Bourke, + Through years of flood and drought, + The best of English black-sheep work + Their own salvation out: + Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown-- + Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed-- + They live the Dead Past grimly down! + Where boundary-riders ride. + + The College Wreck who sunk beneath, + Then rose above his shame, + Tramps West in mateship with the man + Who cannot write his name. + ‘Tis there where on the barren track + No last half-crust’s begrudged-- + Where saint and sinner, side by side, + Judge not, and are not judged. + + Oh rebels to society! + The Outcasts of the West-- + Oh hopeless eyes that smile for me, + And broken hearts that jest! + The pluck to face a thousand miles-- + The grit to see it through! + The communism perfected!-- + And--I am proud of you! + + The Arab to true desert sand, + The Finn to fields of snow; + The Flax-stick turns to Maoriland, + Where the seasons come and go; + And this old fact comes home to me-- + And will not let me rest-- + However barren it may be, + Your own land is the best! + + And, lest at ease I should forget + True mateship after all, + My water-bag and billy yet + Are hanging on the wall; + And if my fate should show the sign, + I’d tramp to sunsets grand + With gaunt and stern-eyed mates of mine + In Never-Never Land. + + + +[End of original text.] + + + +***** + + + +A Note on the Author and the Text: + + +Henry Lawson was born near Grenfell, New South Wales, Australia on 17 +June 1867. Although he has since become the most acclaimed Australian +writer, in his own lifetime his writing was often “on the side”--his +“real” work was whatever he could find, often painting houses, or +doing rough carpentry. His writing was often taken from memories of his +childhood, especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee. In his autobiography, he +states that many of his characters were taken from the better class of +diggers and bushmen he knew there. His experiences at this time +deeply influenced his work, for it is interesting to note a number of +descriptions and phrases that are identical in his autobiography and in +his stories and poems. He died in Sydney, 2 September 1922. Much of his +writing was for periodicals, and even his regular publications were +so varied, including books originally released as one volume being +reprinted as two, and vice versa, that the multitude of permutations +cannot be listed here. However, the following should give a basic +outline of his major works. + + + Books of Short Stories: + While the Billy Boils (1896) + On the Track (1900) + Over the Sliprails (1900) + The Country I Come From (1901) | These works were first published + Joe Wilson and His Mates (1901) | in England, during or shortly after + Children of the Bush (1902) | Lawson’s stay there. + Send Round the Hat (1907) | These two books were first published + The Romance of the Swag (1907) | as “Children of the Bush”. + The Rising of the Court (1910) + + Poetry: + In the Days When the World Was Wide (1896) + Verses Popular and Humorous (1900) + When I Was King and Other Verses (1905) + The Skyline Riders (1910) + Selected Poems of Henry Lawson (1918) + + +Joe Wilson and His Mates was later published as two separate volumes, +“Joe Wilson” and “Joe Wilson’s Mates”, which correspond to Parts I & II +in Joe Wilson and His Mates. This work was first published in England, +which may be evident from some of Lawson’s comments in the text which +are directed at English readers. For example, Lawson writes in ‘The +Golden Graveyard’: “A gold washing-dish is a flat dish--nearer the shape +of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or the +dish we used for setting milk--I don’t know whether the same is used +here....” + +Alan Light, Monroe, North Carolina, June 1997. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg’s Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Henry Lawson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1036 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1037-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1037-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..af6cb79e --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1037-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,178 @@ + + + + + +404 | Project Gutenberg + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + +
+ +
+ +
+
+ + + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+
+ +
+ About Project Gutenberg + Contact Us + History & Philosophy + Kindle & eReaders + Help Pages + Offline Catalogs + Donate +
+
+ +
+ Frequently Downloaded + Main Categories + Reading Lists + Search Options +
+
+ +
+ Frequently Downloaded + Main Categories +
+
+
+ +

Error 404

+ +

Sorry, but our website does not have the page you requested.

+ +

Maybe you have just a wrong url. Go to www.gutenberg.org to see whether the error persists.

+ +

If you think something is broken, follow the “Contact Information” link at the bottom of this page if you would like to report it.

+ + +
+
+
+ + + ibiblio + +
+ + + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1038-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1038-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f76cd37b --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1038-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2690 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Style, by Walter Raleigh + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Style + + +Author: Walter Raleigh + + + +Release Date: April 14, 2013 [eBook #1038] +[This file was first posted on September 2, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STYLE*** + + +Transcribed from the 1904 Edward Arnold edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + STYLE + + + * * * * * + + BY + + WALTER RALEIGH + + AUTHOR OF ‘THE ENGLISH NOVEL,’ + AND ‘ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, A CRITICAL ESSAY’ + + * * * * * + + _FIFTH IMPRESSION_ + + * * * * * + + LONDON + EDWARD ARNOLD + Publisher to the India Office + 1904 + + * * * * * + + JOANNI SAMPSON + + BIBLIOTHECARIO OPTIMO + + VIRO OMNI SAPIENTIA ÆGYPTIORUM + + ERUDITO + + LABORUM ET ITINERUM SUORUM + + SOCIO + + HUNC LIBELLUM + + D · D · D + + AUCTOR + + + + +TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL MATTERS +CONTAINED IN THIS ESSAY + + PAGE +The Triumph of Letters 1 +The Problem of Style 3 +The Instrument and the Audience, with a Digression on the 4 +Actor +The Sense-Elements 8 +The Functions of Sense 10 +Picture 11 +Melody 14 +Meaning, Exampled in Negation 17 +The Weapons of Thought 21 +The Analogy from Architecture 23 +The Analogy Rectified. The Law of Change 24 +The Good Slang 27 +The Bad Slang 29 +Archaism 32 +Romantic and Classic 36 +The Palsy of Definition 39 +Distinction 43 +Assimilation 45 +Synonyms 46 +Variety of Expression 49 +Variety Justified 50 +Metaphor and Abstraction: Poetry and Science 55 +The Doctrine of the _Mot Propre_ 61 +The Instrument 65 +The Audience 65 +The Relation of the Author to his Audience 71 +The Poet and his Audience 71 +Public Caterers 77 +The Cautelous Man 78 +Sentimentalism and Jocularity 81 +The Tripe-Seller 83 +The Wag 85 +Social and Rhetorical Corruptions 87 +Sincerity 88 +Insincerity 93 +Austerity 94 +The Figurative Style 98 +Decoration 100 +Allusiveness 102 +Simplicity and Strength 104 +The Paradox of Letters 107 +Drama 108 +Implicit Drama 111 +Words Again 115 +Quotation 116 +Appropriation 119 +The World of Words 123 +The Teaching of Style 124 +The Conclusion 127 + + + + +STYLE + + +STYLE, the Latin name for an iron pen, has come to designate the art that +handles, with ever fresh vitality and wary alacrity, the fluid elements +of speech. By a figure, obvious enough, which yet might serve for an +epitome of literary method, the most rigid and simplest of instruments +has lent its name to the subtlest and most flexible of arts. Thence the +application of the word has been extended to arts other than literature, +to the whole range of the activities of man. The fact that we use the +word “style” in speaking of architecture and sculpture, painting and +music, dancing, play-acting, and cricket, that we can apply it to the +careful achievements of the housebreaker and the poisoner, and to the +spontaneous animal movements of the limbs of man or beast, is the noblest +of unconscious tributes to the faculty of letters. The pen, scratching +on wax or paper, has become the symbol of all that is expressive, all +that is intimate, in human nature; not only arms and arts, but man +himself, has yielded to it. His living voice, with its undulations and +inflexions, assisted by the mobile play of feature and an infinite +variety of bodily gesture, is driven to borrow dignity from the same +metaphor; the orator and the actor are fain to be judged by style. “It +is most true,” says the author of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, “_stylus +virum arguit_, our style bewrays us.” Other gestures shift and change +and flit, this is the ultimate and enduring revelation of personality. +The actor and the orator are condemned to work evanescent effects on +transitory material; the dust that they write on is blown about their +graves. The sculptor and the architect deal in less perishable ware, but +the stuff is recalcitrant and stubborn, and will not take the impress of +all states of the soul. Morals, philosophy, and æsthetic, mood and +conviction, creed and whim, habit, passion, and demonstration—what art +but the art of literature admits the entrance of all these, and guards +them from the suddenness of mortality? What other art gives scope to +natures and dispositions so diverse, and to tastes so contrarious? +Euclid and Shelley, Edmund Spenser and Herbert Spencer, King David and +David Hume, are all followers of the art of letters. + +In the effort to explain the principles of an art so bewildering in its +variety, writers on style have gladly availed themselves of analogy from +the other arts, and have spoken, for the most part, not without a +parable. It is a pleasant trick they put upon their pupils, whom they +gladden with the delusion of a golden age, and perfection to be sought +backwards, in arts less complex. The teacher of writing, past master in +the juggling craft of language, explains that he is only carrying into +letters the principles of counterpoint, or that it is all a matter of +colour and perspective, or that structure and ornament are the beginning +and end of his intent. Professor of eloquence and of thieving, his +winged shoes remark him as he skips from metaphor to metaphor, not daring +to trust himself to the partial and frail support of any single figure. +He lures the astonished novice through as many trades as were ever housed +in the central hall of the world’s fair. From his distracting account of +the business it would appear that he is now building a monument, anon he +is painting a picture (with brushes dipped in a gallipot made of an +earthquake); again he strikes a keynote, weaves a pattern, draws a wire, +drives a nail, treads a measure, sounds a trumpet, or hits a target; or +skirmishes around his subject; or lays it bare with a dissecting knife; +or embalms a thought; or crucifies an enemy. What is he really doing all +the time? + + * * * * * + +Besides the artist two things are to be considered in every art,—the +instrument and the audience; or, to deal in less figured phrase, the +medium and the public. From both of these the artist, if he would find +freedom for the exercise of all his powers, must sit decently aloof. It +is the misfortune of the actor, the singer, and the dancer, that their +bodies are their sole instruments. On to the stage of their activities +they carry the heart that nourishes them and the lungs wherewith they +breathe, so that the soul, to escape degradation, must seek a more remote +and difficult privacy. That immemorial right of the soul to make the +body its home, a welcome escape from publicity and a refuge for +sincerity, must be largely foregone by the actor, who has scant liberty +to decorate and administer for his private behoof an apartment that is +also a place of business. His ownership is limited by the necessities of +his trade; when the customers are gone, he eats and sleeps in the +bar-parlour. Nor is the instrument of his performances a thing of his +choice; the poorest skill of the violinist may exercise itself upon a +Stradivarius, but the actor is reduced to fiddle for the term of his +natural life upon the face and fingers that he got from his mother. The +serene detachment that may be achieved by disciples of greater arts can +hardly be his, applause touches his personal pride too nearly, the +mocking echoes of derision infest the solitude of his retired +imagination. In none of the world’s great polities has the practice of +this art been found consistent with noble rank or honourable estate. +Christianity might be expected to spare some sympathy for a calling that +offers prizes to abandonment and self-immolation, but her eye is fixed on +a more distant mark than the pleasure of the populace, and, as in +gladiatorial Rome of old, her best efforts have been used to stop the +games. Society, on the other hand, preoccupied with the art of life, has +no warmer gift than patronage for those whose skill and energy exhaust +themselves on the mimicry of life. The reward of social consideration is +refused, it is true, to all artists, or accepted by them at their +immediate peril. By a natural adjustment, in countries where the artist +has sought and attained a certain modest social elevation, the issue has +been changed, and the architect or painter, when his health is proposed, +finds himself, sorely against the grain, returning thanks for the +employer of labour, the genial host, the faithful husband, the tender +father, and other pillars of society. The risk of too great familiarity +with an audience which insists on honouring the artist irrelevantly, at +the expense of the art, must be run by all; a more clinging evil besets +the actor, in that he can at no time wholly escape from his phantasmal +second self. On this creature of his art he has lavished the last doit +of human capacity for expression; with what bearing shall he face the +exacting realities of life? Devotion to his profession has beggared him +of his personality; ague, old age and poverty, love and death, find in +him an entertainer who plies them with a feeble repetition of the +triumphs formerly prepared for a larger and less imperious audience. The +very journalist—though he, too, when his profession takes him by the +throat, may expound himself to his wife in phrases stolen from his own +leaders—is a miracle of detachment in comparison; he has not put his +laughter to sale. It is well for the soul’s health of the artist that a +definite boundary should separate his garden from his farm, so that when +he escapes from the conventions that rule his work he may be free to +recreate himself. But where shall the weary player keep holiday? Is not +all the world a stage? + +Whatever the chosen instrument of an art may be, its appeal to those +whose attention it bespeaks must be made through the senses. Music, +which works with the vibrations of a material substance, makes this +appeal through the ear; painting through the eye; it is of a piece with +the complexity of the literary art that it employs both channels,—as it +might seem to a careless apprehension, indifferently. + +For the writer’s pianoforte is the dictionary, words are the material in +which he works, and words may either strike the ear or be gathered by the +eye from the printed page. The alternative will be called delusive, for, +in European literature at least, there is no word-symbol that does not +imply a spoken sound, and no excellence without euphony. But the other +way is possible, the gulf between mind and mind may be bridged by +something which has a right to the name of literature although it exacts +no aid from the ear. The picture-writing of the Indians, the hieroglyphs +of Egypt, may be cited as examples of literary meaning conveyed with no +implicit help from the spoken word. Such an art, were it capable of high +development, would forsake the kinship of melody, and depend for its +sensual elements of delight on the laws of decorative pattern. In a land +of deaf-mutes it might come to a measure of perfection. But where human +intercourse is chiefly by speech, its connexion with the interests and +passions of daily life would perforce be of the feeblest, it would tend +more and more to cast off the fetters of meaning that it might do freer +service to the jealous god of visible beauty. The overpowering rivalry +of speech would rob it of all its symbolic intent and leave its bare +picture. Literature has favoured rather the way of the ear and has given +itself zealously to the tuneful ordering of sounds. Let it be repeated, +therefore, that for the traffic of letters the senses are but the +door-keepers of the mind; none of them commands an only way of +access,—the deaf can read by sight, the blind by touch. It is not amid +the bustle of the live senses, but in an under-world of dead impressions +that Poetry works her will, raising that in power which was sown in +weakness, quickening a spiritual body from the ashes of the natural body. +The mind of man is peopled, like some silent city, with a sleeping +company of reminiscences, associations, impressions, attitudes, emotions, +to be awakened into fierce activity at the touch of words. By one way or +another, with a fanfaronnade of the marching trumpets, or stealthily, by +noiseless passages and dark posterns, the troop of suggesters enters the +citadel, to do its work within. The procession of beautiful sounds that +is a poem passes in through the main gate, and forthwith the by-ways +resound to the hurry of ghostly feet, until the small company of +adventurers is well-nigh lost and overwhelmed in that throng of insurgent +spirits. + +To attempt to reduce the art of literature to its component +sense-elements is therefore vain. Memory, “the warder of the brain,” is +a fickle trustee, whimsically lavish to strangers, giving up to the +appeal of a spoken word or unspoken symbol, an odour or a touch, all that +has been garnered by the sensitive capacities of man. It is the part of +the writer to play upon memory, confusing what belongs to one sense with +what belongs to another, extorting images of colour at a word, raising +ideas of harmony without breaking the stillness of the air. He can lead +on the dance of words till their sinuous movements call forth, as if by +mesmerism, the likeness of some adamantine rigidity, time is converted +into space, and music begets sculpture. To see for the sake of seeing, +to hear for the sake of hearing, are subsidiary exercises of his complex +metaphysical art, to be counted among its rudiments. Picture and music +can furnish but the faint beginnings of a philosophy of letters. +Necessary though they be to a writer, they are transmuted in his service +to new forms, and made to further purposes not their own. + +The power of vision—hardly can a writer, least of all if he be a poet, +forego that part of his equipment. In dealing with the impalpable, dim +subjects that lie beyond the border-land of exact knowledge, the poetic +instinct seeks always to bring them into clear definition and bright +concrete imagery, so that it might seem for the moment as if painting +also could deal with them. Every abstract conception, as it passes into +the light of the creative imagination, acquires structure and firmness +and colour, as flowers do in the light of the sun. Life and Death, Love +and Youth, Hope and Time, become persons in poetry, not that they may +wear the tawdry habiliments of the studio, but because persons are the +objects of the most familiar sympathy and the most intimate knowledge. + + How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart + Still a young child’s with mine, or wilt thou stand + Full grown the helpful daughter of my heart, + What time with thee indeed I reach the strand + Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art, + And drink it in the hollow of thy hand? + +And as a keen eye for the imagery attendant on a word is essential to all +writing, whether prose or poetry, that attempts the heart, so languor of +the visual faculty can work disaster even in the calm periods of +philosophic expatiation. “It cannot be doubted,” says one whose daily +meditations enrich _The People’s Post-Bag_, “that Fear is, to a great +extent, the mother of Cruelty.” Alas, by the introduction of that brief +proviso, conceived in a spirit of admirably cautious self-defence, the +writer has unwittingly given himself to the horns of a dilemma whose +ferocity nothing can mitigate. These tempered and conditional truths are +not in nature, which decrees, with uncompromising dogmatism, that either +a woman is one’s mother, or she is not. The writer probably meant merely +that “fear is one of the causes of cruelty,” and had he used a colourless +abstract word the platitude might pass unchallenged. But a vague desire +for the emphasis and glamour of literature having brought in the word +“mother,” has yet failed to set the sluggish imagination to work, and a +word so glowing with picture and vivid with sentiment is damped and +dulled by the thumb-mark of besotted usage to mean no more than “cause” +or “occasion.” Only for the poet, perhaps, are words live winged things, +flashing with colour and laden with scent; yet one poor spark of +imagination might save them from this sad descent to sterility and +darkness. + +Of no less import is the power of melody which chooses, rejects, and +orders words for the satisfaction that a cunningly varied return of sound +can give to the ear. Some critics have amused themselves with the hope +that here, in the laws and practices regulating the audible cadence of +words, may be found the first principles of style, the form which +fashions the matter, the apprenticeship to beauty which alone can make an +art of truth. And it may be admitted that verse, owning, as it does, a +professed and canonical allegiance to music, sometimes carries its +devotion so far that thought swoons into melody, and the thing said seems +a discovery made by the way in the search for tuneful expression. + + What thing unto mine ear + Wouldst thou convey,—what secret thing, + O wandering water ever whispering? + Surely thy speech shall be of her, + Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer, + What message dost thou bring? + +In this stanza an exquisitely modulated tune is played upon the syllables +that make up the word “wandering,” even as, in the poem from which it is +taken, there is every echo of the noise of waters laughing in sunny +brooks, or moaning in dumb hidden caverns. Yet even here it would be +vain to seek for reason why each particular sound of every line should be +itself and no other. For melody holds no absolute dominion over either +verse or prose; its laws, never to be disregarded, prohibit rather than +prescribe. Beyond the simple ordinances that determine the place of the +rhyme in verse, and the average number of syllables, or rhythmical beats, +that occur in the line, where shall laws be found to regulate the +sequence of consonants and vowels from syllable to syllable? Those few +artificial restrictions, which verse invents for itself, once agreed on, +a necessary and perilous license makes up the rest of the code. +Literature can never conform to the dictates of pure euphony, while +grammar, which has been shaped not in the interests of prosody, but for +the service of thought, bars the way with its clumsy inalterable +polysyllables and the monotonous sing-song of its inflexions. On the +other hand, among a hundred ways of saying a thing, there are more than +ninety that a care for euphony may reasonably forbid. All who have +consciously practised the art of writing know what endless and painful +vigilance is needed for the avoidance of the unfit or untuneful phrase, +how the meaning must be tossed from expression to expression, mutilated +and deceived, ere it can find rest in words. The stupid accidental +recurrence of a single broad vowel; the cumbrous repetition of a +particle; the emphatic phrase for which no emphatic place can be found +without disorganising the structure of the period; the pert intrusion on +a solemn thought of a flight of short syllables, twittering like a flock +of sparrows; or that vicious trick of sentences whereby each, unmindful +of its position and duties, tends to imitate the deformities of its +predecessor;—these are a select few of the difficulties that the nature +of language and of man conspire to put upon the writer. He is well +served by his mind and ear if he can win past all such traps and +ambuscades, robbed of only a little of his treasure, indemnified by the +careless generosity of his spoilers, and still singing. + +Besides their chime in the ear, and the images that they put before the +mind’s eye, words have, for their last and greatest possession, a +meaning. They carry messages and suggestions that, in the effect +wrought, elude all the senses equally. For the sake of this, their prime +office, the rest is many times forgotten or scorned, the tune is +disordered and havoc played with the lineaments of the picture, because +without these the word can still do its business. The refutation of +those critics who, in their analysis of the power of literature, make +much of music and picture, is contained in the most moving passages that +have found utterance from man. Consider the intensity of a saying like +that of St. Paul:—“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor +angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to +come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to +separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” + +Do these verses draw their power from a skilful arrangement of vowel and +consonant? But they are quoted from a translation, and can be translated +otherwise, well or ill or indifferently, without losing more than a +little of their virtue. Do they impress the eye by opening before it a +prospect of vast extent, peopled by vague shapes? On the contrary, the +visual embodiment of the ideas suggested kills the sense of the passage, +by lowering the cope of the starry heavens to the measure of a +poplar-tree. Death and life, height and depth, are conceived by the +apostle, and creation thrown in like a trinket, only that they may lend +emphasis to the denial that is the soul of his purpose. Other arts can +affirm, or seem to affirm, with all due wealth of circumstance and +detail; they can heighten their affirmation by the modesty of reserve, +the surprises of a studied brevity, and the erasure of all impertinence; +literature alone can deny, and honour the denial with the last resources +of a power that has the universe for its treasury. It is this negative +capability of words, their privative force, whereby they can impress the +minds with a sense of “vacuity, darkness, solitude, and silence,” that +Burke celebrates in the fine treatise of his younger days. In such a +phrase as “the angel of the Lord” language mocks the positive rivalry of +the pictorial art, which can offer only the poor pretence of an +equivalent in a young man painted with wings. But the difference between +the two arts is even better marked in the matter of negative suggestion; +it is instanced by Burke from the noble passage where Virgil describes +the descent of Æneas and the Sibyl to the shades of the nether world. +Here are amassed all “the images of a tremendous dignity” that the poet +could forge from the sublime of denial. The two most famous lines are a +procession of negatives:— + + _Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram_, + _Perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna_. + + Through hollow kingdoms, emptied of the day, + And dim, deserted courts where Dis bears sway, + Night-foundered, and uncertain of the path, + Darkling they took their solitary way. + +Here is the secret of some of the cardinal effects of literature; strong +epithets like “lonely,” “supreme,” “invisible,” “eternal,” “inexorable,” +with the substantives that belong to them, borrow their force from the +vastness of what they deny. And not these alone, but many other words, +less indebted to logic for the magnificence of reach that it can lend, +bring before the mind no picture, but a dim emotional framework. Such +words as “ominous,” “fantastic,” “attenuated,” “bewildered,” +“justification,” are atmospheric rather than pictorial; they infect the +soul with the passion-laden air that rises from humanity. It is +precisely in his dealings with words like these, “heated originally by +the breath of others,” that a poet’s fine sense and knowledge most avail +him. The company a word has kept, its history, faculties, and +predilections, endear or discommend it to his instinct. How hardly will +poetry consent to employ such words as “congratulation” or +“philanthropist,”—words of good origin, but tainted by long immersion in +fraudulent rejoicings and pallid, comfortable, theoretic loves. How +eagerly will the poetic imagination seize on a word like “control,” which +gives scope by its very vagueness, and is fettered by no partiality of +association. All words, the weak and the strong, the definite and the +vague, have their offices to perform in language, but the loftiest +purposes of poetry are seldom served by those explicit hard words which, +like tiresome explanatory persons, say all that they mean. Only in the +focus and centre of man’s knowledge is there place for the hammer-blows +of affirmation, the rest is a flickering world of hints and half-lights, +echoes and suggestions, to be come at in the dusk or not at all. + +The combination of these powers in words, of song and image and meaning, +has given us the supreme passages of our romantic poetry. In +Shakespeare’s work, especially, the union of vivid definite presentment +with immense reach of metaphysical suggestion seems to intertwine the +roots of the universe with the particular fact; tempting the mind to +explore that other side of the idea presented to it, the side turned away +from it, and held by something behind. + + It will have blood; they say blood win have blood: + Stones have been known to move and trees to speak; + Augurs and understood relations have + By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth + The secret’st man of blood. + +This meeting of concrete and abstract, of sense and thought, keeps the +eye travelling along the utmost skyline of speculation, where the heavens +are interfused with the earth. In short, the third and greatest virtue +of words is no other than the virtue that belongs to the weapons of +thought,—a deep, wide, questioning thought that discovers analogies and +pierces behind things to a half-perceived unity of law and essence. In +the employ of keen insight, high feeling, and deep thinking, language +comes by its own; the prettinesses that may be imposed on a passive +material are as nothing to the splendour and grace that transfigure even +the meanest instrument when it is wielded by the energy of thinking +purpose. The contempt that is cast, by the vulgar phrase, on “mere +words” bears witness to the rarity of this serious consummation. Yet by +words the world was shaped out of chaos, by words the Christian religion +was established among mankind. Are these terrific engines fit +play-things for the idle humours of a sick child? + +And now it begins to be apparent that no adequate description of the art +of language can be drawn from the technical terminology of the other +arts, which, like proud debtors, would gladly pledge their substance to +repay an obligation that they cannot disclaim. Let one more attempt to +supply literature with a parallel be quoted from the works of a writer on +style, whose high merit it is that he never loses sight, either in theory +or in practice, of the fundamental conditions proper to the craft of +letters. Robert Louis Stevenson, pondering words long and lovingly, was +impressed by their crabbed individuality, and sought to elucidate the +laws of their arrangement by a reference to the principles of +architecture. “The sister arts,” he says, “enjoy the use of a plastic +and ductile material, like the modeller’s clay; literature alone is +condemned to work in mosaic with finite and quite rigid words. You have +seen those blocks, dear to the nursery: this one a pillar, that a +pediment, a third a window or a vase. It is with blocks of just such +arbitrary size and figure that the literary architect is condemned to +design the palace of his art. Nor is this all; for since these blocks or +words are the acknowledged currency of our daily affairs, there are here +possible none of those suppressions by which other arts obtain relief, +continuity, and vigour: no hieroglyphic touch, no smoothed impasto, no +inscrutable shadow, as in painting; no blank wall, as in architecture; +but every word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph must move in a logical +progression, and convey a definite conventional import.” + +It is an acute comparison, happily indicative of the morose angularity +that words offer to whoso handles them, admirably insistent on the chief +of the incommodities imposed upon the writer, the necessity, at all times +and at all costs, to mean something. The boon of the recurring +monotonous expanse, that an apprentice may fill, the breathing-space of +restful mechanical repetition, are denied to the writer, who must needs +shoulder the hod himself, and lay on the mortar, in ever varying +patterns, with his own trowel. This is indeed the ordeal of the master, +the canker-worm of the penny-a-liner, who, poor fellow, means nothing, +and spends his life in the vain effort to get words to do the same. But +if in this respect architecture and literature are confessed to differ, +there remains the likeness that Mr. Stevenson detects in the building +materials of the two arts, those blocks of “arbitrary size and figure; +finite and quite rigid.” There is truth enough in the comparison to make +it illuminative, but he would be a rash dialectician who should attempt +to draw from it, by way of inference, a philosophy of letters. Words are +piled on words, and bricks on bricks, but of the two you are invited to +think words the more intractable. Truly, it was a man of letters who +said it, avenging himself on his profession for the never-ending toil it +imposed, by miscalling it, with grim pleasantry, the architecture of the +nursery. Finite and quite rigid words are not, in any sense that holds +good of bricks. They move and change, they wax and wane, they wither and +burgeon; from age to age, from place to place, from mouth to mouth, they +are never at a stay. They take on colour, intensity, and vivacity from +the infection of neighbourhood; the same word is of several shapes and +diverse imports in one and the same sentence; they depend on the building +that they compose for the very chemistry of the stuff that composes them. +The same epithet is used in the phrases “a fine day” and “fine irony,” in +“fair trade” and “a fair goddess.” Were different symbols to be invented +for these sundry meanings the art of literature would perish. For words +carry with them all the meanings they have worn, and the writer shall be +judged by those that he selects for prominence in the train of his +thought. A slight technical implication, a faint tinge of archaism, in +the common turn of speech that you employ, and in a moment you have +shaken off the mob that scours the rutted highway, and are addressing a +select audience of ticket-holders with closed doors. A single natural +phrase of peasant speech, a direct physical sense given to a word that +genteel parlance authorises readily enough in its metaphorical sense, and +at a touch you have blown the roof off the drawing-room of the villa, and +have set its obscure inhabitants wriggling in the unaccustomed sun. In +choosing a sense for your words you choose also an audience for them. + +To one word, then, there are many meanings, according as it falls in the +sentence, according as its successive ties and associations are broken or +renewed. And here, seeing that the stupidest of all possible meanings is +very commonly the slang meaning, it will be well to treat briefly of +slang. For slang, in the looser acceptation of the term, is of two +kinds, differing, and indeed diametrically opposite, in origin and worth. +Sometimes it is the technical diction that has perforce been coined to +name the operations, incidents, and habits of some way of life that +society despises or deliberately elects to disregard. This sort of +slang, which often invents names for what would otherwise go nameless, is +vivid, accurate, and necessary, an addition of wealth to the world’s +dictionaries and of compass to the world’s range of thought. Society, +mistily conscious of the sympathy that lightens in any habitual name, +seems to have become aware, by one of those wonderful processes of chary +instinct which serve the great, vulnerable, timid organism in lieu of a +brain, that to accept of the pickpocket his names for the mysteries of +his trade is to accept also a new moral stand-point and outlook on the +question of property. For this reason, and by no special masonic +precautions of his own, the pickpocket is allowed to keep the admirable +devices of his nomenclature for the familiar uses of himself and his +mates, until a Villon arrives to prove that this language, too, was +awaiting the advent of its bully and master. In the meantime, what +directness and modest sufficiency of utterance distinguishes the dock +compared with the fumbling prolixity of the old gentleman on the bench! +It is the trite story,—romanticism forced to plead at the bar of +classicism fallen into its dotage, Keats judged by _Blackwood_, +Wordsworth exciting the pained astonishment of Miss Anna Seward. Accuser +and accused alike recognise that a question of diction is part of the +issue between them; hence the picturesque confession of the culprit, made +in proud humility, that he “clicked a red ’un” must needs be interpreted, +to save the good faith of the court, into the vaguer and more general +speech of the classic convention. Those who dislike to have their +watches stolen find that the poorest language of common life will serve +their simple turn, without the rich technical additions of a vocabulary +that has grown around an art. They can abide no rendering of the fact +that does not harp incessantly on the disapproval of watch-owners. They +carry their point of morals at the cost of foregoing all glitter and +finish in the matter of expression. + +This sort of slang, therefore, technical in origin, the natural +efflorescence of highly cultivated agilities of brain, and hand, and eye, +is worthy of all commendation. But there is another kind that goes under +the name of slang, the offspring rather of mental sloth, and current +chiefly among those idle, jocular classes to whom all art is a bugbear +and a puzzle. There is a public for every one; the pottle-headed lout +who in a moment of exuberance strikes on a new sordid metaphor for any +incident in the beaten round of drunkenness, lubricity, and debt, can set +his fancy rolling through the music-halls, and thence into the street, +secure of applause and a numerous sodden discipleship. Of the same lazy +stamp, albeit more amiable in effect, are the thought-saying contrivances +whereby one word is retained to do the work of many. For the language of +social intercourse ease is the first requisite; the average talker, who +would be hard put to it if he were called on to describe or to define, +must constantly be furnished with the materials of emphasis, wherewith to +drive home his likes and dislikes. Why should he alienate himself from +the sympathy of his fellows by affecting a singularity in the expression +of his emotions? What he craves is not accuracy, but immediacy of +expression, lest the tide of talk should flow past him, leaving him +engaged in a belated analysis. Thus the word of the day is on all lips, +and what was “vastly fine” last century is “awfully jolly” now; the +meaning is the same, the expression equally inappropriate. Oaths have +their brief periods of ascendency, and philology can boast its +fashion-plates. The tyrant Fashion, who wields for whip the fear of +solitude, is shepherd to the flock of common talkers, as they run hither +and thither pursuing, not self-expression, the prize of letters, but +unanimity and self-obliteration, the marks of good breeding. Like those +famous modern poets who are censured by the author of _Paradise Lost_, +the talkers of slang are “carried away by custom, to express many things +otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have exprest +them.” The poverty of their vocabulary makes appeal to the brotherly +sympathy of a partial and like-minded auditor, who can fill out their +paltry conventional sketches from his own experience of the same events. +Within the limits of a single school, or workshop, or social circle, +slang may serve; just as, between friends, silence may do the work of +talk. There are few families, or groups of familiars, that have not some +small coinage of this token-money, issued and accepted by affection, +passing current only within those narrow and privileged boundaries. This +wealth is of no avail to the travelling mind, save as a memorial of home, +nor is its material such “as, buried once, men want dug up again.” A few +happy words and phrases, promoted, for some accidental fitness, to the +wider world of letters, are all that reach posterity; the rest pass into +oblivion with the other perishables of the age. + +A profusion of words used in an ephemeral slang sense is evidence, then, +that the writer addresses himself merely to the uneducated and +thoughtless of his own day; the revival of bygone meanings, on the other +hand, and an archaic turn given to language is the mark rather of authors +who are ambitious of a hearing from more than one age. The accretions of +time bring round a word many reputable meanings, of which the oldest is +like to be the deepest in grain. It is a counsel of perfection—some will +say, of vainglorious pedantry—but that shaft flies furthest which is +drawn to the head, and he who desires to be understood in the +twenty-fourth century will not be careless of the meanings that his words +inherit from the fourteenth. To know them is of service, if only for the +piquancy of avoiding them. But many times they cannot wisely be avoided, +and the auspices under which a word began its career when first it was +imported from the French or Latin overshadow it and haunt it to the end. + +Popular modern usage will often rob common words, like “nice,” “quaint,” +or “silly,” of all flavour of their origin, as if it were of no moment to +remember that these three words, at the outset of their history, bore the +older senses of “ignorant,” “noted,” and “blessed.” It may be granted +that any attempt to return to these older senses, regardless of later +implications, is stark pedantry; but a delicate writer will play shyly +with the primitive significance in passing, approaching it and circling +it, taking it as a point of reference or departure. The early faith of +Christianity, its beautiful cult of childhood, and its appeal to +unlearned simplicity, have left their mark on the meaning of “silly”; the +history of the word is contained in that cry of St. Augustine, _Indocti +surgunt et rapiunt coelum_, or in the fervent sentence of the author of +the _Imitation_, _Oportet fieri stultum_. And if there is a later +silliness, altogether unblest, the skilful artificer of words, while +accepting this last extension, will show himself conscious of his +paradox. So also he will shun the grossness that employs the epithet +“quaint” to put upon subtlety and the devices of a studied workmanship an +imputation of eccentricity; or, if he falls in with the populace in this +regard, he will be careful to justify his innuendo. The slipshod use of +“nice” to connote any sort of pleasurable emotion he will take care, in +his writings at least, utterly to abhor. From the daintiness of elegance +to the arrogant disgust of folly the word carries meanings numerous and +diverse enough; it must not be cruelly burdened with all the laudatory +occasions of an undiscriminating egotism. + +It would be easy to cite a hundred other words like these, saved only by +their nobler uses in literature from ultimate defacement. The higher +standard imposed upon the written word tends to raise and purify speech +also, and since talkers owe the same debt to writers of prose that these, +for their part, owe to poets, it is the poets who must be accounted chief +protectors, in the last resort, of our common inheritance. Every page of +the works of that great exemplar of diction, Milton, is crowded with +examples of felicitous and exquisite meaning given to the infallible +word. Sometimes he accepts the secondary and more usual meaning of a +word only to enrich it by the interweaving of the primary and +etymological meaning. Thus the seraph Abdiel, in the passage that +narrates his offer of combat to Satan, is said to “explore” his own +undaunted heart, and there is no sense of “explore” that does not +heighten the description and help the thought. Thus again, when the poet +describes those + + Eremites and friars, + White, Black, and Gray, with all their trumpery, + +who inhabit, or are doomed to inhabit, the Paradise of Fools, he seems to +invite the curious reader to recall the derivation of “trumpery,” and so +supplement the idea of worthlessness with that other idea, equally +grateful to the author, of deceit. The strength that extracts this +multiplex resonance of meaning from a single note is matched by the grace +that gives to Latin words like “secure,” “arrive,” “obsequious,” +“redound,” “infest,” and “solemn” the fine precision of intent that art +can borrow from scholarship. + +Such an exactitude is consistent with vital change; Milton himself is +bold to write “stood praying” for “continued kneeling in prayer,” and +deft to transfer the application of “schism” from the rent garment of the +Church to those necessary “dissections made in the quarry and in the +timber ere the house of God can be built.” Words may safely veer to +every wind that blows, so they keep within hail of their cardinal +meanings, and drift not beyond the scope of their central employ, but +when once they lose hold of that, then, indeed, the anchor has begun to +drag, and the beach-comber may expect his harvest. + +Fixity in the midst of change, fluctuation at the heart of sameness, such +is the estate of language. According as they endeavour to reduce letters +to some large haven and abiding-place of civility, or prefer to throw in +their lot with the centrifugal tendency and ride on the flying crest of +change, are writers dubbed Classic or Romantic. The Romantics are +individualist, anarchic; the strains of their passionate incantation +raise no cities to confront the wilderness in guarded symmetry, but +rather bring the stars shooting from their spheres, and draw wild things +captive to a voice. To them Society and Law seem dull phantoms, by the +light cast from a flaming soul. They dwell apart, and torture their +lives in the effort to attain to self-expression. All means and modes +offered them by language they seize on greedily, and shape them to this +one end; they ransack the vocabulary of new sciences, and appropriate or +invent strange jargons. They furbish up old words or weld together new +indifferently, that they may possess the machinery of their speech and +not be possessed by it. They are at odds with the idiom of their country +in that it serves the common need, and hunt it through all its +metamorphoses to subject it to their private will. Heretics by +profession, they are everywhere opposed to the party of the Classics, who +move by slower ways to ends less personal, but in no wise easier of +attainment. The magnanimity of the Classic ideal has had scant justice +done to it by modern criticism. To make literature the crowning symbol +of a world-wide civilisation; to roof in the ages, and unite the elect of +all time in the courtesy of one shining assembly, paying duty to one +unquestioned code; to undo the work of Babel, and knit together in a +single community the scattered efforts of mankind towards order and +reason;—this was surely an aim worthy of labour and sacrifice. Both have +been freely given, and the end is yet to seek. The self-assertion of the +recusants has found eulogists in plenty, but who has celebrated the +self-denial that was thrown away on this other task, which is farther +from fulfilment now than it was when the scholars of the Renaissance gave +up their patriotism and the tongue of their childhood in the name of +fellow-citizenship with the ancients and the œcumenical authority of +letters? Scholars, grammarians, wits, and poets were content to bury the +lustre of their wisdom and the hard-won fruits of their toil in the +winding-sheet of a dead language, that they might be numbered with the +family of Cicero, and added to the pious train of Virgil. It was a noble +illusion, doomed to failure, the versatile genius of language cried out +against the monotony of their Utopia, and the crowds who were to people +the unbuilded city of their dreams went straying after the feathered +chiefs of the rebels, who, when the fulness of time was come, themselves +received apotheosis and the honours of a new motley pantheon. The tomb +of that great vision bears for epitaph the ironical inscription which +defines a Classic poet as “a dead Romantic.” + +In truth the Romantics are right, and the serenity of the classic ideal +is the serenity of paralysis and death. A universal agreement in the use +of words facilitates communication, but, so inextricably is expression +entangled with feeling, it leaves nothing to communicate. Inanity dogs +the footsteps of the classic tradition, which is everywhere lackeyed, +through a long decline, by the pallor of reflected glories. Even the +irresistible novelty of personal experience is dulled by being cast in +the old matrix, and the man who professes to find the whole of himself in +the Bible or in Shakespeare had as good not be. He is a replica and a +shadow, a foolish libel on his Creator, who, from the beginning of time, +was never guilty of tautology. This is the error of the classical creed, +to imagine that in a fleeting world, where the quickest eye can never see +the same thing twice, and a deed once done can never be repeated, +language alone should be capable of fixity and finality. Nature avenges +herself on those who would thus make her prisoner, their truths +degenerate to truisms, and feeling dies in the ice-palaces that they +build to house it. In their search for permanence they become unreal, +abstract, didactic, lovers of generalisation, cherishers of the dry bones +of life; their art is transformed into a science, their expression into +an academic terminology. Immutability is their ideal, and they find it +in the arms of death. Words must change to live, and a word once fixed +becomes useless for the purposes of art. Whosoever would make +acquaintance with the goal towards which the classic practice tends, +should seek it in the vocabulary of the Sciences. There words are fixed +and dead, a botanical collection of colourless, scentless, dried weeds, a +_hortus siccus_ of proper names, each individual symbol poorly tethered +to some single object or idea. No wind blows through that garden, and no +sun shines on it, to discompose the melancholy workers at their task of +tying Latin labels on to withered sticks. Definition and division are +the watchwords of science, where art is all for composition and creation. +Not that the exact definable sense of a word is of no value to the +stylist; he profits by it as a painter profits by a study of anatomy, or +an architect by a knowledge of the strains and stresses that may be put +on his material. The exact logical definition is often necessary for the +structure of his thought and the ordering of his severer argument. But +often, too, it is the merest beginning; when a word is once defined he +overlays it with fresh associations and buries it under new-found moral +significances, which may belie the definition they conceal. This is the +burden of Jeremy Bentham’s quarrel with “question-begging appellatives.” +A clear-sighted and scrupulously veracious philosopher, abettor of the +age of reason, apostle of utility, god-father of the panopticon, and +donor to the English dictionary of such unimpassioned vocables as +“codification” and “international,” Bentham would have been glad to +purify the language by purging it of those “affections of the soul” +wherein Burke had found its highest glory. Yet in censuring the ordinary +political usage of such a word as “innovation,” it was hardly prejudice +in general that he attacked, but the particular and deep-seated prejudice +against novelty. The surprising vivacity of many of his own +figures,—although he had the courage of his convictions, and laboured, +throughout the course of a long life, to desiccate his style,—bears +witness to a natural skill in the use of loaded weapons. He will pack +his text with grave argument on matters ecclesiastical, and indulge +himself and literature, in the notes with a pleasant description of the +flesh and the spirit playing leap-frog, now one up, now the other, around +the holy precincts of the Church. Lapses like these show him far enough +from his own ideal of a geometric fixity in the use of words. The claim +of reason and logic to enslave language has a more modern advocate in the +philosopher who denies all utility to a word while it retains traces of +its primary sensuous employ. The tickling of the senses, the raising of +the passions, these things do indeed interfere with the arid business of +definition. None the less they are the life’s breath of literature, and +he is a poor stylist who cannot beg half-a-dozen questions in a single +epithet, or state the conclusion he would fain avoid in terms that +startle the senses into clamorous revolt. + +The two main processes of change in words are Distinction and +Assimilation. Endless fresh distinction, to match the infinite +complexity of things, is the concern of the writer, who spends all his +skill on the endeavour to cloth the delicacies of perception and thought +with a neatly fitting garment. So words grow and bifurcate, diverge and +dwindle, until one root has many branches. Grammarians tell how “royal” +and “regal” grew up by the side of “kingly,” how “hospital,” “hospice,” +“hostel” and “hotel” have come by their several offices. The inventor of +the word “sensuous” gave to the English people an opportunity of +reconsidering those headstrong moral preoccupations which had already +ruined the meaning of “sensual” for the gentler uses of a poet. Not only +the Puritan spirit, but every special bias or interest of man seizes on +words to appropriate them to itself. Practical men of business transfer +such words as “debenture” or “commodity” from debt or comfort in general +to the palpable concrete symbols of debt or comfort; and in like manlier +doctors, soldiers, lawyers, shipmen,—all whose interest and knowledge are +centred on some particular craft or profession, drag words from the +general store and adapt them to special uses. Such words are sometimes +reclaimed from their partial applications by the authority of men of +letters, and pass back into their wider meanings enhanced by a new +element of graphic association. Language never suffers by answering to +an intelligent demand; it is indebted not only to great authors, but to +all whom any special skill or taste has qualified to handle it. The good +writer may be one who disclaims all literary pretension, but there he is, +at work among words,—binding the vagabond or liberating the prisoner, +exalting the humble or abashing the presumptuous, incessantly alert to +amend their implications, break their lazy habits, and help them to +refinement or scope or decision. He educates words, for he knows that +they are alive. + +Compare now the case of the ruder multitude. In the regard of +literature, as a great critic long ago remarked, “all are the multitude; +only they differ in clothes, not in judgment or understanding,” and the +poorest talkers do not inhabit the slums. Wherever thought and taste +have fallen to be menials, there the vulgar dwell. How should they gain +mastery over language? They are introduced to a vocabulary of some +hundred thousand words, which quiver through a million of meanings; the +wealth is theirs for the taking, and they are encouraged to be +spendthrift by the very excess of what they inherit. The resources of +the tongue they speak are subtler and more various than ever their ideas +can put to use. So begins the process of assimilation, the edge put upon +words by the craftsman is blunted by the rough treatment of the confident +booby, who is well pleased when out of many highly-tempered swords he has +manufactured a single clumsy coulter. A dozen expressions to serve one +slovenly meaning inflate him with the sense of luxury and pomp. “Vast,” +“huge,” “immense,” “gigantic,” “enormous,” “tremendous,” “portentous,” +and such-like groups of words, lose all their variety of sense in a +barren uniformity of low employ. The reign of this democracy annuls +differences of status, and insults over differences of ability or +disposition. Thus do synonyms, or many words ill applied to one purpose, +begin to flourish, and, for a last indignity, dictionaries of synonyms. + +Let the truth be said outright: there are no synonyms, and the same +statement can never be repeated in a changed form of words. Where the +ignorance of one writer has introduced an unnecessary word into the +language, to fill a place already occupied, the quicker apprehension of +others will fasten upon it, drag it apart from its fellows, and find new +work for it to do. Where a dull eye sees nothing but sameness, the +trained faculty of observation will discern a hundred differences worthy +of scrupulous expression. The old foresters had different names for a +buck during each successive year of its life, distinguishing the fawn +from the pricket, the pricket from the sore, and so forth, as its age +increased. Thus it is also in that illimitable but not trackless forest +of moral distinctions. Language halts far behind the truth of things, +and only a drowsy perception can fail to devise a use for some new +implement of description. Every strange word that makes its way into a +language spins for itself a web of usage and circumstance, relating +itself from whatsoever centre to fresh points in the circumference. No +two words ever coincide throughout their whole extent. If sometimes good +writers are found adding epithet to epithet for the same quality, and +name to name for the same thing, it is because they despair of capturing +their meaning at a venture, and so practise to get near it by a maze of +approximations. Or, it may be, the generous breadth of their purpose +scorns the minuter differences of related terms, and includes all of one +affinity, fearing only lest they be found too few and too weak to cover +the ground effectively. Of this sort are the so-called synonyms of the +Prayer-Book, wherein we “acknowledge and confess” the sins we are +forbidden to “dissemble or cloke;” and the bead-roll of the lawyer, who +huddles together “give, devise, and bequeath,” lest the cunning of +litigants should evade any single verb. The works of the poets yield +still better instances. When Milton praises the _Virtuous Young Lady_ of +his sonnet in that the spleen of her detractors moves her only to “pity +and ruth,” it is not for the idle filling of the line that he joins the +second of these nouns to the first. Rather he is careful to enlarge and +intensify his meaning by drawing on the stores of two nations, the one +civilised, the other barbarous; and ruth is a quality as much more +instinctive and elemental than pity as pitilessness is keener, harder, +and more deliberate than the inborn savagery of ruthlessness. + +It is not chiefly, however, for the purposes of this accumulated and +varied emphasis that the need of synonyms is felt. There is no more +curious problem in the philosophy of style than that afforded by the +stubborn reluctance of writers, the good as well as the bad, to repeat a +word or phrase. When the thing is, they may be willing to abide by the +old rule and say the word, but when the thing repeats itself they will +seldom allow the word to follow suit. A kind of interdict, not removed +until the memory of the first occurrence has faded, lies on a once used +word. The causes of this anxiety for a varied expression are manifold. +Where there is merely a column to fill, poverty of thought drives the +hackney author into an illicit fulness, until the trick of verbiage +passes from his practice into his creed, and makes him the dupe of his +own puppets. A commonplace book, a dictionary of synonyms, and another +of phrase and fable equip him for his task; if he be called upon to +marshal his ideas on the question whether oysters breed typhoid, he will +acquit himself voluminously, with only one allusion (it is a point of +pride) to the oyster by name. He will compare the succulent bivalve to +Pandora’s box, and lament that it should harbour one of the direst of +ills that flesh is heir to. He will find a paradox and an epigram in the +notion that the darling of Apicius should suffer neglect under the frowns +of Æsculapius. Question, hypothesis, lamentation, and platitude dance +their allotted round and fill the ordained space, while Ignorance +masquerades in the garb of criticism, and Folly proffers her ancient +epilogue of chastened hope. When all is said, nothing is said; and +Montaigne’s _Que sçais-je_, besides being briefer and wittier, was +infinitely more informing. + +But we dwell too long with disease; the writer nourished on thought, +whose nerves are braced and his loins girt to struggle with a real +meaning, is not subject to these tympanies. He feels no idolatrous dread +of repetition when the theme requires, it, and is urged by no necessity +of concealing real identity under a show of change. Nevertheless he, +too, is hedged about by conditions that compel him, now and again, to +resort to what seems a synonym. The chief of these is the indispensable +law of euphony, which governs the sequence not only of words, but also of +phrases. In proportion as a phrase is memorable, the words that compose +it become mutually adhesive, losing for a time something of their +individual scope, bringing with them, if they be torn away too quickly, +some cumbrous fragments of their recent association. That he may avoid +this, a sensitive writer is often put to his shifts, and extorts, if he +be fortunate, a triumph from the accident of his encumbrance. By a +slight stress laid on the difference of usage the unshapeliness may be +done away with, and a new grace found where none was sought. Addison and +Landor accuse Milton, with reason, of too great a fondness for the pun, +yet surely there is something to please the mind, as well as the ear, in +the description of the heavenly judgment, + + That brought into this world a world of woe. + +Where words are not fitted with a single hard definition, rigidly +observed, all repetition is a kind of delicate punning, bringing slight +differences of application into clear relief. The practice has its +dangers for the weak-minded lover of ornament, yet even so it may be +preferable to the flat stupidity of one identical intention for a word or +phrase in twenty several contexts. For the law of incessant change is +not so much a counsel of perfection to be held up before the apprentice, +as a fundamental condition of all writing whatsoever; if the change be +not ordered by art it will order itself in default of art. The same +statement can never be repeated even in the same form of words, and it is +not the old question that is propounded at the third time of asking. +Repetition, that is to say, is the strongest generator of emphasis known +to language. Take the exquisite repetitions in these few lines:— + + Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear + Compels me to disturb your season due; + For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, + Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. + +Here the tenderness of affection returns again to the loved name, and the +grief of the mourner repeats the word “dead.” But this monotony of +sorrow is the least part of the effect, which lies rather in the +prominence given by either repetition to the most moving circumstance of +all—the youthfulness of the dead poet. The attention of the discursive +intellect, impatient of reiteration, is concentrated on the idea which +these repeated and exhausted words throw into relief. Rhetoric is +content to borrow force from simpler methods; a good orator will often +bring his hammer down, at the end of successive periods, on the same +phrase; and the mirthless refrain of a comic song, or the catchword of a +buffoon, will raise laughter at last by its brazen importunity. Some +modern writers, admiring the easy power of the device, have indulged +themselves with too free a use of it; Matthew Arnold particularly, in his +prose essays, falls to crying his text like a hawker, + + Beating it in upon our weary brains, + As tho’ it were the burden of a song, + +clattering upon the iron of the Philistine giant in the effort to bring +him to reason. These are the ostentatious violences of a missionary, who +would fain save his enemy alive, where a grimmer purpose is glad to +employ a more silent weapon and strike but once. The callousness of a +thick-witted auditory lays the need for coarse method on the gentlest +soul resolved to stir them. But he whose message is for minds attuned +and tempered will beware of needless reiteration, as of the noisiest way +of emphasis. Is the same word wanted again, he will examine carefully +whether the altered incidence does not justify and require an altered +term, which the world is quick to call a synonym. The right dictionary +of synonyms would give the context of each variant in the usage of the +best authors. To enumerate all the names applied by Milton to the hero +of _Paradise Lost_, without reference to the passages in which they +occur, would be a foolish labour; with such reference, the task is made a +sovereign lesson in style. At Hell gates, where he dallies in speech +with his leman Sin to gain a passage from the lower World, Satan is “the +subtle Fiend,” in the garden of Paradise he is “the Tempter” and “the +Enemy of Mankind,” putting his fraud upon Eve he is the “wily Adder,” +leading her in full course to the tree he is “the dire Snake,” springing +to his natural height before the astonished gaze of the cherubs he is +“the grisly King.” Every fresh designation elaborates his character and +history, emphasises the situation, and saves a sentence. So it is with +all variable appellations of concrete objects; and even in the stricter +and more conventional region of abstract ideas the same law runs. Let a +word be changed or repeated, it brings in either case its contribution of +emphasis, and must be carefully chosen for the part it is to play, lest +it should upset the business of the piece by irrelevant clownage in the +midst of high matter, saying more or less than is set down for it in the +author’s purpose. + +The chameleon quality of language may claim yet another illustration. Of +origins we know nothing certainly, nor how words came by their meanings +in the remote beginning, when speech, like the barnacle-goose of the +herbalist, was suspended over an expectant world, ripening on a tree. +But this we know, that language in its mature state is fed and fattened +on metaphor. Figure is not a late device of the rhetorician, but the +earliest principle of change in language. The whole process of speech is +a long series of exhilarating discoveries, whereby words, freed from the +swaddling bands of their nativity, are found capable of new relations and +a wider metaphorical employ. Then, with the growth of exact knowledge, +the straggling associations that attended the word on its travels are +straitened and confined, its meaning is settled, adjusted, and balanced, +that it may bear its part in the scrupulous deposition of truth. Many +are the words that have run this double course, liberated from their +first homely offices and transformed by poetry, reclaimed in a more +abstract sense, and appropriated to a new set of facts by science. Yet a +third chance awaits them when the poet, thirsty for novelty, passes by +the old simple founts of figure to draw metaphor from the latest +technical applications of specialised terms. Everywhere the intuition of +poetry, impatient of the sturdy philosophic cripple that lags so far +behind, is busy in advance to find likenesses not susceptible of +scientific demonstration, to leap to comparisons that satisfy the heart +while they leave the colder intellect only half convinced. When an +elegant dilettante like Samuel Rogers is confronted with the principle of +gravitation he gives voice to science in verse:— + + That very law which moulds a tear, + And bids it trickle from its source, + That law preserves the earth a sphere, + And guides the planets in their course. + +But a seer like Wordsworth will never be content to write tunes for a +text-book of physics, he boldly confounds the arbitrary limits of matter +and morals in one splendid apostrophe to Duty:— + + Flowers laugh before thee on their beds; + And fragrance in thy footing treads; + Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; + And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. + +Poets, it is said, anticipate science; here in these four lines is work +for a thousand laboratories for a thousand years. But the truth has been +understated; every writer and every speaker works ahead of science, +expressing analogies and contrasts, likenesses and differences, that will +not abide the apparatus of proof. The world of perception and will, of +passion and belief, is an uncaptured virgin, airily deriding from afar +the calculated advances and practised modesty of the old bawd Science; +turning again to shower a benediction of unexpected caresses on the most +cavalier of her wooers, Poetry. This world, the child of Sense and +Faith, shy, wild, and provocative, for ever lures her lovers to the +chase, and the record of their hopes and conquests is contained in the +lover’s language, made up wholly of parable and figure of speech. There +is nothing under the sun nor beyond it that does not concern man, and it +is the unceasing effort of humanity, whether by letters or by science, to +bring “the commerce of the mind and of things” to terms of nearer +correspondence. But Literature, ambitious to touch life on all its +sides, distrusts the way of abstraction, and can hardly be brought to +abandon the point of view whence things are seen in their immediate +relation to the individual soul. This kind of research is the work of +letters; here are facts of human life to be noted that are never like to +be numerically tabulated, changes and developments that defy all metrical +standards to be traced and described. The greater men of science have +been cast in so generous a mould that they have recognised the partial +nature of their task; they have known how to play with science as a +pastime, and to win and wear her decorations for a holiday favour. They +have not emaciated the fulness of their faculties in the name of +certainty, nor cramped their humanity for the promise of a future good. +They have been the servants of Nature, not the slaves of method. But the +grammarian of the laboratory is often the victim of his trade. He +staggers forth from his workshop, where prolonged concentration on a +mechanical task, directed to a provisional and doubtful goal, has dimmed +his faculties; the glaring motley of the world, bathed in sunlight, +dazzles him; the questions, moral, political, and personal, that his +method has relegated to some future of larger knowledge, crowd upon him, +clamorous for solution, not to be denied, insisting on a settlement +to-day. He is forced to make a choice, and may either forsake the +divinity he serves, falling back, for the practical and æsthetic conduct +of life, on those common instincts of sensuality which oscillate between +the conventicle and the tavern as the poles of duty and pleasure, or, +more pathetically still, he may attempt to bring the code of the +observatory to bear immediately on the vagaries of the untameable world, +and suffer the pedant’s disaster. A martyr to the good that is to be, he +has voluntarily maimed himself “for the kingdom of Heaven’s sake”—if, +perchance, the kingdom of Heaven might come by observation. The +enthusiasm of his self-denial shows itself in his unavailing struggle to +chain language also to the bare rock of ascertained fact. Metaphor, the +poet’s right-hand weapon, he despises; all that is tentative, individual, +struck off at the urging of a mood, he disclaims and suspects. Yet the +very rewards that science promises have their parallel in the domain of +letters. The discovery of likeness in the midst of difference, and of +difference in the midst of likeness, is the keenest pleasure of the +intellect; and literary expression, as has been said, is one long series +of such discoveries, each with its thrill of incommunicable happiness, +all unprecedented, and perhaps unverifiable by later experiment. The +finest instrument of these discoveries is metaphor, the spectroscope of +letters. + +Enough has been said of change; it remains to speak of one more of those +illusions of fixity wherein writers seek exemption from the general lot. +Language, it has been shown, is to be fitted to thought; and, further, +there are no synonyms. What more natural conclusion could be drawn by +the enthusiasm of the artist than that there is some kind of preordained +harmony between words and things, whereby expression and thought tally +exactly, like the halves of a puzzle? This illusion, called in France +the doctrine of the _mot propre_, is a will o’ the wisp which has kept +many an artist dancing on its trail. That there is one, and only one way +of expressing one thing has been the belief of other writers besides +Gustave Flaubert, inspiriting them to a desperate and fruitful industry. +It is an amiable fancy, like the dream of Michael Angelo, who loved to +imagine that the statue existed already in the block of marble, and had +only to be stripped of its superfluous wrappings, or like the indolent +fallacy of those economic soothsayers to whom Malthus brought rough +awakening, that population and the means of subsistence move side by side +in harmonious progress. But hunger does not imply food, and there may +hover in the restless heads of poets, as themselves testify— + + One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, + Which into words no virtue can digest. + +Matter and form are not so separable as the popular philosophy would have +them; indeed, the very antithesis between them is a cardinal instance of +how language reacts on thought, modifying and fixing a cloudy truth. The +idea pursues form not only that it may be known to others, but that it +may know itself, and the body in which it becomes incarnate is not to be +distinguished from the informing soul. It is recorded of a famous Latin +historian how he declared that he would have made Pompey win the battle +of Pharsalia had the effective turn of the sentence required it. He may +stand for the true type of the literary artist. The business of letters, +howsoever simple it may seem to those who think truth-telling a gift of +nature, is in reality two-fold, to find words for a meaning, and to find +a meaning for words. Now it is the words that refuse to yield, and now +the meaning, so that he who attempts to wed them is at the same time +altering his words to suit his meaning, and modifying and shaping his +meaning to satisfy the requirements of his words. The humblest processes +of thought have had their first education from language long before they +took shape in literature. So subtle is the connexion between the two +that it is equally possible to call language the form given to the matter +of thought, or, inverting the application of the figure, to speak of +thought as the formal principle that shapes the raw material of language. +It is not until the two become one that they can be known for two. The +idea to be expressed is a kind of mutual recognition between thought and +language, which here meet and claim each other for the first time, just +as in the first glance exchanged by lovers, the unborn child opens its +eyes on the world, and pleads for life. But thought, although it may +indulge itself with the fancy of a predestined affiance, is not confined +to one mate, but roves free and is the father of many children. A belief +in the inevitable word is the last refuge of that stubborn mechanical +theory of the universe which has been slowly driven from science, +politics, and history. Amidst so much that is undulating, it has pleased +writers to imagine that truth persists and is provided by heavenly +munificence with an imperishable garb of language. But this also is +vanity, there is one end appointed alike to all, fact goes the way of +fiction, and what is known is no more perdurable than what is made. Not +words nor works, but only that which is formless endures, the vitality +that is another name for change, the breath that fills and shatters the +bubbles of good and evil, of beauty and deformity, of truth and untruth. + +No art is easy, least of all the art of letters. Apply the musical +analogy once more to the instrument whereon literature performs its +voluntaries. With a living keyboard of notes which are all incessantly +changing in value, so that what rang true under Dr. Johnson’s hand may +sound flat or sharp now, with a range of a myriad strings, some falling +mute and others being added from day to day, with numberless permutations +and combinations, each of which alters the tone and pitch of the units +that compose it, with fluid ideas that never have an outlined existence +until they have found their phrases and the improvisation is complete, is +it to be wondered at that the art of style is eternally elusive, and that +the attempt to reduce it to rule is the forlorn hope of academic +infatuation? + + * * * * * + +These difficulties and complexities of the instrument are, nevertheless, +the least part of the ordeal that is to be undergone by the writer. The +same musical note or phrase affects different ears in much the same way; +not so the word or group of words. The pure idea, let us say, is +translated into language by the literary composer; who is to be +responsible for the retranslation of the language into idea? Here begins +the story of the troubles and weaknesses that are imposed upon literature +by the necessity it lies under of addressing itself to an audience, by +its liability to anticipate the corruptions that mar the understanding of +the spoken or written word. A word is the operative symbol of a relation +between two minds, and is chosen by the one not without regard to the +quality of the effect actually produced upon the other. Men must be +spoken to in their accustomed tongue, and persuaded that the unknown God +proclaimed by the poet is one whom aforetime they ignorantly worshipped. +The relation of great authors to the public may be compared to the war of +the sexes, a quiet watchful antagonism between two parties mutually +indispensable to each other, at one time veiling itself in endearments, +at another breaking out into open defiance. He who has a message to +deliver must wrestle with his fellows before he shall be permitted to ply +them with uncomfortable or unfamiliar truths. The public, like the +delicate Greek Narcissus, is sleepily enamoured of itself; and the name +of its only other perfect lover is Echo. Yet even great authors must lay +their account with the public, and it is instructive to observe how +different are the attitudes they have adopted, how uniform the +disappointment they have felt. Some, like Browning and Mr. Meredith in +our own day, trouble themselves little about the reception given to their +work, but are content to say on, until the few who care to listen have +expounded them to the many, and they are applauded, in the end, by a +generation whom they have trained to appreciate them. Yet this noble and +persevering indifference is none of their choice, and long years of +absolution from criticism must needs be paid for in faults of style. +“Writing for the stage,” Mr. Meredith himself has remarked, “would be a +corrective of a too-incrusted scholarly style into which some great ones +fall at times.” Denied such a corrective, the great one is apt to sit +alone and tease his meditations into strange shapes, fortifying himself +against obscurity and neglect with the reflection that most of the words +he uses are to be found, after all, in the dictionary. It is not, +however, from the secluded scholar that the sharpest cry of pain is wrung +by the indignities of his position, but rather from genius in the act of +earning a full meed of popular applause. Both Shakespeare and Ben Jonson +wrote for the stage, both were blown by the favouring breath of their +plebeian patrons into reputation and a competence. Each of them passed +through the thick of the fight, and well knew that ugly corner where the +artist is exposed to cross fires, his own idea of masterly work on the +one hand and the necessity for pleasing the rabble on the other. When +any man is awake to the fact that the public is a vile patron, when he is +conscious also that his bread and his fame are in their gift—it is a +stern passage for his soul, a touchstone for the strength and gentleness +of his spirit. Jonson, whose splendid scorn took to itself lyric wings +in the two great Odes to Himself, sang high and aloof for a while, then +the frenzy caught him, and he flung away his lyre to gird himself for +deeds of mischief among nameless and noteless antagonists. Even Chapman, +who, in _The Tears of Peace_, compares “men’s refuse ears” to those gates +in ancient cities which were opened only when the bodies of executed +malefactors were to be cast away, who elsewhere gives utterance, in round +terms, to his belief that + + No truth of excellence was ever seen + But bore the venom of the vulgar’s spleen, + +—even the violences of this great and haughty spirit must pale beside the +more desperate violences of the dramatist who commended his play to the +public in the famous line, + + By God, ’tis good, and if you like’t, you may. + +This stormy passion of arrogant independence disturbs the serenity of +atmosphere necessary for creative art. A greater than Jonson donned the +suppliant’s robes, like Coriolanus, and with the inscrutable honeyed +smile about his lips begged for the “most sweet voices” of the journeymen +and gallants who thronged the Globe Theatre. Only once does the wail of +anguish escape him— + + Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there, + And made myself a motley to the view, + Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear. + +And again— + + Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, + And almost thence my nature is subdued + To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand, + Pity me then, and wish I were renewed. + +Modern vulgarity, speaking through the mouths of Shakesperian +commentators, is wont to interpret these lines as a protest against the +contempt wherewith Elizabethan society regarded the professions of +playwright and actor. We are asked to conceive that Shakespeare humbly +desires the pity of his bosom friend because he is not put on the same +level of social estimation with a brocaded gull or a prosperous stupid +goldsmith of the Cheap. No, it is a cry, from the depth of his nature, +for forgiveness because he has sacrificed a little on the altar of +popularity. Jonson would have boasted that he never made this sacrifice. +But he lost the calm of his temper and the clearness of his singing +voice, he degraded his magnanimity by allowing it to engage in +street-brawls, and he endangered the sanctuary of the inviolable soul. + +At least these great artists of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries +are agreed upon one thing, that the public, even in its most gracious +mood, makes an ill task-master for the man of letters. It is worth the +pains to ask why, and to attempt to show how much of an author’s literary +quality is involved in his attitude towards his audience. Such an +inquiry will take us, it is true, into bad company, and exhibit the +vicious, the fatuous, and the frivolous posturing to an admiring crowd. +But style is a property of all written and printed matter, so that to +track it to its causes and origins is a task wherein literary criticism +may profit by the humbler aid of anthropological research. + +Least of all authors is the poet subject to the tyranny of his audience. +“Poetry and eloquence,” says John Stuart Mill, “are both alike the +expression or utterance of feeling. But if we may be excused the +antithesis, we should say that eloquence is heard, poetry is overheard. +Eloquence supposes an audience; the peculiarity of poetry appears to us +to lie in the poet’s utter unconsciousness of a listener.” Poetry, +according to this discerning criticism, is an inspired soliloquy; the +thoughts rise unforced and unchecked, taking musical form in obedience +only to the law of their being, giving pleasure to an audience only as +the mountain spring may chance to assuage the thirst of a passing +traveller. In lyric poetry, language, from being a utensil, or a medium +of traffic and barter, passes back to its place among natural sounds; its +affinity is with the wind among the trees and the stream among the rocks; +it is the cry of the heart, as simple as the breath we draw, and as +little ordered with a view to applause. Yet speech grew up in society, +and even in the most ecstatic of its uses may flag for lack of +understanding and response. It were rash to say that the poets need no +audience; the loneliest have promised themselves a tardy recognition, and +some among the greatest came to their maturity in the warm atmosphere of +a congenial society. Indeed the ratification set upon merit by a living +audience, fit though few, is necessary for the development of the most +humane and sympathetic genius; and the memorable ages of literature, in +Greece or Rome, in France or England, have been the ages of a literary +society. The nursery of our greatest dramatists must be looked for, not, +it is true, in the transfigured bear-gardens of the Bankside, but in +those enchanted taverns, islanded and bastioned by the protective decree— + + _Idiota_, _insulsus_, _tristis_, _turpis_, _abesto_. + +The poet seems to be soliloquising because he is addressing himself, with +the most entire confidence, to a small company of his friends, who may +even, in unhappy seasons, prove to be the creatures of his imagination. +Real or imaginary, they are taken by him for his equals; he expects from +them a quick intelligence and a perfect sympathy, which may enable him to +despise all concealment. He never preaches to them, nor scolds, nor +enforces the obvious. Content that what he has spoken he has spoken, he +places a magnificent trust on a single expression. He neither explains, +nor falters, nor repents; he introduces his work with no preface, and +cumbers it with no notes. He will not lower nor raise his voice for the +sake of the profane and idle who may chance to stumble across his +entertainment. His living auditors, unsolicited for the tribute of +worship or an alms, find themselves conceived of in the likeness of what +he would have them to be, raised to a companion pinnacle of friendship, +and constituted peers and judges, if they will, of his achievement. +Sometimes they come late. + +This blend of dignity and intimacy, of candour and self-respect, is +unintelligible to the vulgar, who understand by intimacy mutual +concession to a base ideal, and who are so accustomed to deal with masks, +that when they see a face they are shocked as by some grotesque. Now a +poet, like Montaigne’s naked philosopher, is all face; and the +bewilderment of his masked and muffled critics is the greater. Wherever +he attracts general attention he cannot but be misunderstood. The +generality of modern men and women who pretend to literature are not +hypocrites, or they might go near to divine him,—for hypocrisy, though +rooted in cowardice, demands for its flourishing a clear intellectual +atmosphere, a definite aim, and a certain detachment of the directing +mind. But they are habituated to trim themselves by the cloudy mirror of +opinion, and will mince and temporise, as if for an invisible audience, +even in their bedrooms. Their masks have, for the most part, grown to +their faces, so that, except in some rare animal paroxysm of emotion, it +is hardly themselves that they express. The apparition of a poet +disquiets them, for he clothes himself with the elements, and apologises +to no idols. His candour frightens them: they avert their eyes from it; +or they treat it as a licensed whim; or, with a sudden gleam of insight, +and apprehension of what this means for them and theirs, they scream +aloud for fear. A modern instance may be found in the angry +protestations launched against Rossetti’s Sonnets, at the time of their +first appearance, by a writer who has since matched himself very exactly +with an audience of his own kind. A stranger freak of burgess criticism +is everyday fare in the odd world peopled by the biographers of Robert +Burns. The nature of Burns, one would think, was simplicity itself; it +could hardly puzzle a ploughman, and two sailors out of three would call +him brother. But he lit up the whole of that nature by his marvellous +genius for expression, and grave personages have been occupied ever since +in discussing the dualism of his character, and professing to find some +dark mystery in the existence of this, that, or the other trait—a love of +pleasure, a hatred of shams, a deep sense of religion. It is common +human nature, after all, that is the mystery, but they seem never to have +met with it, and treat it as if it were the poet’s eccentricity. They +are all agog to worship him, and when they have made an image of him in +their own likeness, and given it a tin-pot head that exactly hits their +taste, they break into noisy lamentation over the discovery that the +original was human, and had feet of clay. They deem “Mary in Heaven” so +admirable that they could find it in their hearts to regret that she was +ever on earth. This sort of admirers constantly refuses to bear a part +in any human relationship; they ask to be fawned on, or trodden on, by +the poet while he is in life; when he is dead they make of him a +candidate for godship, and heckle him. It is a misfortune not wholly +without its compensations that most great poets are dead before they are +popular. + +If great and original literary artists—here grouped together under the +title of poets—will not enter into transactions with their audience, +there is no lack of authors who will. These are not necessarily +charlatans; they may have by nature a ready sympathy with the grossness +of the public taste, and thus take pleasure in studying to gratify it. +But man loses not a little of himself in crowds, and some degradation +there must be where the one adapts himself to the many. The British +public is not seen at its best when it is enjoying a holiday in a foreign +country, nor when it is making excursions into the realm of imaginative +literature: those who cater for it in these matters must either study its +tastes or share them. Many readers bring the worst of themselves to a +novel; they want lazy relaxation, or support for their nonsense, or +escape from their creditors, or a free field for emotions that they dare +not indulge in life. The reward of an author who meets them half-way in +these respects, who neither puzzles nor distresses them, who asks nothing +from them, but compliments them on their great possessions and sends them +away rejoicing, is a full measure of acceptance, and editions unto +seventy times seven. + +The evils caused by the influence of the audience on the writer are many. +First of all comes a fault far enough removed from the characteristic +vices of the charlatan—to wit, sheer timidity and weakness. There is a +kind of stage-fright that seizes on a man when he takes pen in hand to +address an unknown body of hearers, no less than when he stands up to +deliver himself to a sea of expectant faces. This is the true panic +fear, that walks at mid-day, and unmans those whom it visits. Hence come +reservations, qualifications, verbosity, and the see-saw of a wavering +courage, which apes progress and purpose, as soldiers mark time with +their feet. The writing produced under these auspices is of no greater +moment than the incoherent loquacity of a nervous patient. All +self-expression is a challenge thrown down to the world, to be taken up +by whoso will; and the spirit of timidity, when it touches a man, suborns +him with the reminder that he holds his life and goods by the sufferance +of his fellows. Thereupon he begins to doubt whether it is worth while +to court a verdict of so grave possibilities, or to risk offending a +judge—whose customary geniality is merely the outcome of a fixed habit of +inattention. In doubt whether to speak or keep silence, he takes a +middle course, and while purporting to speak for himself, is careful to +lay stress only on the points whereon all are agreed, to enlarge +eloquently on the doubtfulness of things, and to give to words the very +least meaning that they will carry. Such a procedure, which glides over +essentials, and handles truisms or trivialities with a fervour of +conviction, has its functions in practice. It will win for a politician +the coveted and deserved repute of a “safe” man—safe, even though the +cause perish. Pleaders and advocates are sometimes driven into it, +because to use vigorous, clean, crisp English in addressing an ordinary +jury or committee is like flourishing a sword in a drawing-room: it will +lose the case. Where the weakest are to be convinced speech must stoop: +a full consideration of the velleities and uncertainties, a little +bombast to elevate the feelings without committing the judgment, some +vague effusion of sentiment, an inapposite blandness, a meaningless +rodomontade—these are the by-ways to be travelled by the style that is a +willing slave to its audience. The like is true of those +documents—petitions, resolutions, congratulatory addresses, and so +forth—that are written to be signed by a multitude of names. Public +occasions of this kind, where all and sundry are to be satisfied, have +given rise to a new parliamentary dialect, which has nothing of the +freshness of individual emotion, is powerless to deal with realities, and +lacks all resonance, vitality, and nerve. There is no cure for this, +where the feelings and opinions of a crowd are to be expressed. But +where indecision is the ruling passion of the individual, he may cease to +write. Popularity was never yet the prize of those whose only care is to +avoid offence. + +For hardier aspirants, the two main entrances to popular favour are by +the twin gates of laughter and tears. Pathos knits the soul and braces +the nerves, humour purges the eyesight and vivifies the sympathies; the +counterfeits of these qualities work the opposite effects. It is +comparatively easy to appeal to passive emotions, to play upon the +melting mood of a diffuse sensibility, or to encourage the narrow mind to +dispense a patron’s laughter from the vantage-ground of its own small +preconceptions. Our annual crop of sentimentalists and mirth-makers +supplies the reading public with food. Tragedy, which brings the naked +soul face to face with the austere terrors of Fate, Comedy, which turns +the light inward and dissipates the mists of self-affection and +self-esteem, have long since given way on the public stage to the +flattery of Melodrama, under many names. In the books he reads and in +the plays he sees the average man recognises himself in the hero, and +vociferates his approbation. + +The sensibility that came into vogue during the eighteenth century was of +a finer grain than its modern counterpart. It studied delicacy, and +sought a cultivated enjoyment in evanescent shades of feeling, and the +fantasies of unsubstantial grief. The real Princess of Hans Andersen’s +story, who passed a miserable night because there was a small bean +concealed beneath the twenty eider-down beds on which she slept, might +stand for a type of the aristocracy of feeling that took a pride in these +ridiculous susceptibilities. The modern sentimentalist works in a +coarser material. That ancient, subtle, and treacherous affinity among +the emotions, whereby religious exaltation has before now been made the +ally of the unpurified passions, is parodied by him in a simpler and more +useful device. By alleging a moral purpose he is enabled to gratify the +prurience of his public and to raise them in their own muddy conceit at +one and the same time. The plea serves well with those artless readers +who have been accustomed to consider the moral of a story as something +separable from imagination, expression, and style—a quality, it may be, +inherent in the plot, or a kind of appendix, exercising a retrospective +power of jurisdiction and absolution over the extravagances of the piece +to which it is affixed. Let virtue be rewarded, and they are content +though it should never be vitally imagined or portrayed. If their eyes +were opened they might cry with Brutus—“O miserable Virtue! Thou art but +a phrase, and I have followed thee as though thou wert a reality.” + +It is in quite another kind, however, that the modern purveyor of +sentiment exercises his most characteristic talent. There are certain +real and deeply-rooted feelings, common to humanity, concerning which, in +their normal operation, a grave reticence is natural. They are universal +in their appeal, men would be ashamed not to feel them, and it is no +small part of the business of life to keep them under strict control. +Here is the sentimental hucksters most valued opportunity. He tears +these primary instincts from the wholesome privacy that shelters them in +life, and cries them up from his booth in the market-place. The +elemental forces of human life, which beget shyness in children, and +touch the spirits of the wise to solemn acquiescence, awaken him to +noisier declamation. He patronises the stern laws of love and pity, +hawking them like indulgences, cheapening and commanding them like the +medicines of a mountebank. The censure of his critics he impudently +meets by pointing to his wares: are not some of the most sacred +properties of humanity—sympathy with suffering, family affection, filial +devotion, and the rest—displayed upon his stall? Not thus shall he evade +the charges brought against him. It is the sensual side of the tender +emotions that he exploits for the comfort of the million. All the +intricacies which life offers to the will and the intellect he lards and +obliterates by the timely effusion of tearful sentiment. His +humanitarianism is a more popular, as it is an easier, ideal than +humanity—it asks no expense of thought. There is a scanty public in +England for tragedy or for comedy: the characters and situations handled +by the sentimentalist might perchance furnish comedy with a theme; but he +stilts them for a tragic performance, and they tumble into watery bathos, +where a numerous public awaits them. + +A similar degradation of the intellectual elements that are present in +all good literature is practised by those whose single aim is to provoke +laughter. In much of our so-called comic writing a superabundance of +boisterous animal spirits, restrained from more practical expression by +the ordinances of civil society, finds outlet and relief. The grimaces +and caperings of buffoonery, the gymnastics of the punster and the +parodist, the revels of pure nonsense may be, at their best, a +refreshment and delight, but they are not comedy, and have proved in +effect not a little hostile to the existence of comedy. The prevalence +of jokers, moreover, spoils the game of humour; the sputter and sparkle +of their made jokes interferes with that luminous contemplation of the +incongruities of life and the universe which is humour’s essence. All +that is ludicrous depends on some disproportion: Comedy judges the actual +world by contrasting it with an ideal of sound sense, Humour reveals it +in its true dimensions by turning on it the light of imagination and +poetry. The perception of these incongruities, which are eternal, +demands some expense of intellect; a cheaper amusement may be enjoyed by +him who is content to take his stand on his own habits and prejudices and +to laugh at all that does not square with them. This was the method of +the age which, in the abysmal profound of waggery, engendered that +portentous birth, the comic paper. Foreigners, it is said, do not laugh +at the wit of these journals, and no wonder, for only a minute study of +the customs and preoccupations of certain sections of English society +could enable them to understand the point of view. From time to time one +or another of the writers who are called upon for their weekly tale of +jokes seems struggling upward to the free domain of Comedy; but in vain, +his public holds him down, and compels him to laugh in chains. Some day, +perchance, a literary historian, filled with the spirit of Cervantes or +of Molière, will give account of the Victorian era, and, not disdaining +small things, will draw a picture of the society which inspired and +controlled so resolute a jocularity. Then, at last, will the spirit of +Comedy recognise that these were indeed what they claimed to be—comic +papers. + +“The style is the man;” but the social and rhetorical influences +adulterate and debase it, until not one man in a thousand achieves his +birthright, or claims his second self. The fire of the soul burns all +too feebly, and warms itself by the reflected heat from the society +around it. We give back words of tepid greeting, without improvement. +We talk to our fellows in the phrases we learn from them, which come to +mean less and less as they grow worn with use. Then we exaggerate and +distort, heaping epithet upon epithet in the endeavour to get a little +warmth out of the smouldering pile. The quiet cynicism of our everyday +demeanour is open and shameless, we callously anticipate objections +founded on the well-known vacuity of our seeming emotions, and assure our +friends that we are “truly” grieved or “sincerely” rejoiced at their +hap—as if joy or grief that really exists were some rare and precious +brand of joy or grief. In its trivial conversational uses so simple and +pure a thing as joy becomes a sandwich-man—humanity degraded to an +advertisement. The poor dejected word shuffles along through the mud in +the service of the sleek trader who employs it, and not until it meets +with a poet is it rehabilitated and restored to dignity. + +This is no indictment of society, which came into being before +literature, and, in all the distraction of its multifarious concerns, can +hardly keep a school for Style. It is rather a demonstration of the +necessity, amid the wealthy disorder of modern civilisation, for poetic +diction. One of the hardest of a poet’s tasks is the search for his +vocabulary. Perhaps in some idyllic pasture-land of Utopia there may +have flourished a state where division of labour was unknown, where +community of ideas, as well as of property, was absolute, and where the +language of every day ran clear into poetry without the need of a +refining process. They say that Cædmon was a cow-keeper: but the +shepherds of Theocritus and Virgil are figments of a courtly brain, and +Wordsworth himself, in his boldest flights of theory, was forced to allow +of selection. Even by selection from among the chaos of implements that +are in daily use around him, a poet can barely equip himself with a +choice of words sufficient for his needs; he must have recourse to his +predecessors; and so it comes about that the poetry of the modern world +is a store-house of obsolete diction. The most surprising characteristic +of the right poetic diction, whether it draw its vocabulary from near at +hand, or avail itself of the far-fetched inheritance preserved by the +poets, is its matchless sincerity. Something of extravagance there may +be in those brilliant clusters of romantic words that are everywhere +found in the work of Shakespeare, or Spenser, or Keats, but they are the +natural leafage and fruitage of a luxuriant imagination, which, lacking +these, could not attain to its full height. Only by the energy of the +arts can a voice be given to the subtleties and raptures of emotional +experience; ordinary social intercourse affords neither opportunity nor +means for this fervour of self-revelation. And if the highest reach of +poetry is often to be found in the use of common colloquialisms, charged +with the intensity of restrained passion, this is not due to a greater +sincerity of expression, but to the strength derived from dramatic +situation. Where speech spends itself on its subject, drama stands idle; +but where the dramatic stress is at its greatest, three or four words may +enshrine all the passion of the moment. Romeo’s apostrophe from under +the balcony— + + O, speak again, bright Angel! for thou art + As glorious to this night, being o’er my head, + As is a winged messenger of heaven + Unto the white-upturned wond’ring eyes + Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him, + When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds, + And sails upon the bosom of the air— + +though it breathe the soul of romance, must yield, for sheer effect, to +his later soliloquy, spoken when the news of Juliet’s death is brought to +him, + + Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. + +And even the constellated glories of _Paradise Lost_ are less moving than +the plain words wherein Samson forecasts his approaching end— + + So much I feel my genial spirits droop, + My hopes all flat; Nature within me seems + In all her functions weary of herself; + My race of glory run and race of shame, + And I shall shortly be with them that rest. + +Here are simple words raised to a higher power and animated with a purer +intention than they carry in ordinary life. It is this unfailing note of +sincerity, eloquent or laconic, that has made poetry the teacher of +prose. Phrases which, to all seeming, might have been hit on by the +first comer, are often cut away from their poetical context and robbed of +their musical value that they may be transferred to the service of prose. +They bring with them, down to the valley, a wafted sense of some region +of higher thought and purer feeling. They bear, perhaps, no marks of +curious diction to know them by. Whence comes the irresistible pathos of +the lines— + + I cannot but remember such things were + That were most precious to me? + +The thought, the diction, the syntax, might all occur in prose. Yet when +once the stamp of poetry has been put upon a cry that is as old as +humanity, prose desists from rivalry, and is content to quote. Some of +the greatest prose-writers have not disdained the help of these borrowed +graces for the crown of their fabric. In this way De Quincey widens the +imaginative range of his prose, and sets back the limits assigned to +prose diction. So too, Charles Lamb, interweaving the stuff of +experience with phrases quoted or altered from the poets, illuminates +both life and poetry, letting his sympathetic humour play now on the warp +of the texture, and now on the woof. The style of Burke furnishes a +still better example, for the spontaneous evolution of his prose might be +thought to forbid the inclusion of borrowed fragments. Yet whenever he +is deeply stirred, memories of Virgil, Milton, or the English Bible rise +to his aid, almost as if strong emotion could express itself in no other +language. Even the poor invectives of political controversy gain a +measure of dignity from the skilful application of some famous line; the +touch of the poet’s sincerity rests on them for a moment, and seems to +lend them an alien splendour. It is like the blessing of a priest, +invoked by the pious, or by the worldly, for the good success of whatever +business they have in hand. Poetry has no temporal ends to serve, no +livelihood to earn, and is under no temptation to cog and lie: wherefore +prose pays respect to that loftier calling, and that more unblemished +sincerity. + +Insincerity, on the other hand, is the commonest vice of style. It is +not to be avoided, except in the rarest cases, by those to whom the +written use of language is unfamiliar; so that a shepherd who talks +pithy, terse sense will be unable to express himself in a letter without +having recourse to the _Ready Letter-writer_—“This comes hoping to find +you well, as it also leaves me at present”—and a soldier, without the +excuse of ignorance, will describe a successful advance as having been +made against “a thick hail of bullets.” It permeates ordinary +journalism, and all writing produced under commercial pressure. It +taints the work of the young artist, caught by the romantic fever, who +glories in the wealth of vocabulary discovered to him by the poets, and +seeks often in vain for a thought stalwart enough to wear that glistering +armour. Hence it is that the masters of style have always had to preach +restraint, self-denial, austerity. His style is a man’s own; yet how +hard it is to come by! It is a man’s bride, to be won by labours and +agonies that bespeak a heroic lover. If he prove unable to endure the +trial, there are cheaper beauties, nearer home, easy to be conquered, and +faithless to their conqueror. Taking up with them, he may attain a brief +satisfaction, but he will never redeem his quest. + +As a body of practical rules, the negative precepts of asceticism bring +with them a certain chill. The page is dull; it is so easy to lighten it +with some flash of witty irrelevance: the argument is long and tedious, +why not relieve it by wandering into some of those green enclosures that +open alluring doors upon the wayside? To roam at will, spring-heeled, +high-hearted, and catching at all good fortunes, is the ambition of the +youth, ere yet he has subdued himself to a destination. The principle of +self-denial seems at first sight a treason done to genius, which was +always privileged to be wilful. In this view literature is a fortuitous +series of happy thoughts and heaven-sent findings. But the end of that +plan is beggary. Sprightly talk about the first object that meets the +eye and the indulgence of vagabond habits soon degenerate to a +professional garrulity, a forced face of dismal cheer, and a settled +dislike of strenuous exercise. The economies and abstinences of +discipline promise a kinder fate than this. They test and strengthen +purpose, without which no great work comes into being. They save the +expenditure of energy on those pastimes and diversions which lead no +nearer to the goal. To reject the images and arguments that proffer a +casual assistance yet are not to be brought under the perfect control of +the main theme is difficult; how should it be otherwise, for if they were +not already dear to the writer they would not have volunteered their aid. + +It is the more difficult, in that to refuse the unfit is no warrant of +better help to come. But to accept them is to fall back for good upon a +makeshift, and to hazard the enterprise in a hubbub of disorderly claims. +No train of thought is strengthened by the addition of those arguments +that, like camp-followers, swell the number and the noise, without +bearing a part in the organisation. The danger that comes in with the +employment of figures of speech, similes, and comparisons is greater +still. The clearest of them may be attended by some element of grotesque +or paltry association, so that while they illumine the subject they +cannot truly be said to illustrate it. The noblest, including those +time-honoured metaphors that draw their patent of nobility from war, +love, religion, or the chase, in proportion as they are strong and of a +vivid presence, are also domineering—apt to assume command of the theme +long after their proper work is done. So great is the headstrong power +of the finest metaphors, that an author may be incommoded by one that +does his business for him handsomely, as a king may suffer the oppression +of a powerful ally. When a lyric begins with the splendid lines, + + Love still has something of the sea + From whence his mother rose, + +the further development of that song is already fixed and its knell +rung—to the last line there is no escaping from the dazzling influences +that presided over the first. Yet to carry out such a figure in detail, +as Sir Charles Sedley set himself to do, tarnishes the sudden glory of +the opening. The lady whom Burns called Clarinda put herself in a like +quandary by beginning a song with this stanza— + + Talk not of Love, it gives me pain, + For Love has been my foe; + He bound me in an iron chain, + And plunged me deep in woe. + +The last two lines deserve praise—even the praise they obtained from a +great lyric poet. But how is the song to be continued? Genius might +answer the question; to Clarinda there came only the notion of a valuable +contrast to be established between love and friendship, and a tribute to +be paid to the kindly offices of the latter. The verses wherein she gave +effect to this idea make a poor sequel; friendship, when it is +personified and set beside the tyrant god, wears very much the air of a +benevolent county magistrate, whose chief duty is to keep the peace. + +Figures of this sort are in no sense removable decorations, they are at +one with the substance of the thought to be expressed, and are entitled +to the large control they claim. Imagination, working at white heat, can +fairly subdue the matter of the poem to them, or fuse them with others of +the like temper, striking unity out of the composite mass. One thing +only is forbidden, to treat these substantial and living metaphors as if +they were elegant curiosities, ornamental excrescences, to be passed over +abruptly on the way to more exacting topics. The mystics, and the +mystical poets, knew better than to countenance this frivolity. +Recognising that there is a profound and intimate correspondence between +all physical manifestations and the life of the soul, they flung the +reins on the neck of metaphor in the hope that it might carry them over +that mysterious frontier. Their failures and misadventures, familiarly +despised as “conceits,” left them floundering in absurdity. Yet not +since the time of Donne and Crashaw has the full power and significance +of figurative language been realised in English poetry. These poets, +like some of their late descendants, were tortured by a sense of hidden +meaning, and were often content with analogies that admit of no rigorous +explanation. They were convinced that all intellectual truth is a +parable, though its inner meaning be dark or dubious. The philosophy of +friendship deals with those mathematical and physical conceptions of +distance, likeness, and attraction—what if the law of bodies govern souls +also, and the geometer’s compasses measure more than it has entered into +his heart to conceive? Is the moon a name only for a certain tonnage of +dead matter, and is the law of passion parochial while the law of +gravitation is universal? Mysticism will observe no such partial +boundaries. + + O more than Moon! + Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere, + Weep me not dead in thine arms, but forbear + To teach the sea what it may do too soon. + +The secret of these sublime intuitions, undivined by many of the greatest +poets, has been left to the keeping of transcendental religion and the +Catholic Church. + +Figure and ornament, therefore, are not interchangeable terms; the +loftiest figurative style most conforms to the precepts of gravity and +chastity. None the less there is a decorative use of figure, whereby a +theme is enriched with imaginations and memories that are foreign to the +main purpose. Under this head may be classed most of those allusions to +the world’s literature, especially to classical and Scriptural lore, +which have played so considerable, yet on the whole so idle, a part in +modern poetry. It is here that an inordinate love of decoration finds +its opportunity and its snare. To keep the most elaborate comparison in +harmony with its occasion, so that when it is completed it shall fall +back easily into the emotional key of the narrative, has been the study +of the great epic poets. Milton’s description of the rebel legions +adrift on the flaming sea is a fine instance of the difficulty felt and +conquered: + + Angel forms, who lay entranced + Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks + In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades + High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge + Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed + Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew + Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, + While with perfidious hatred they pursued + The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld + From the safe shore their floating carcases + And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown, + Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, + Under amazement of their hideous change. + +The comparison seems to wander away at random, obedient to the slightest +touch of association. Yet in the end it is brought back, its majesty +heightened, and a closer element of likeness introduced by the skilful +turn that substitutes the image of the shattered Egyptian army for the +former images of dead leaves and sea-weed. The incidental pictures, of +the roof of shades, of the watchers from the shore, and the very name +“Red Sea,” fortuitous as they may seem, all lend help to the imagination +in bodying forth the scene described. An earlier figure in the same book +of _Paradise Lost_, because it exhibits a less conspicuous technical +cunning, may even better show a poet’s care for unity of tone and +impression. Where Satan’s prostrate bulk is compared to + + that sea-beast + Leviathan, which God of all his works + Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream, + +the picture that follows of the Norse-pilot mooring his boat under the +lee of the monster is completed in a line that attunes the mind once more +to all the pathos and gloom of those infernal deeps: + + while night + Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays. + +So masterly a handling of the figures which usage and taste prescribe to +learned writers is rare indeed. The ordinary small scholar disposes of +his baggage less happily. Having heaped up knowledge as a successful +tradesman heaps up money, he is apt to believe that his wealth makes him +free of the company of letters, and a fellow craftsman of the poets. The +mark of his style is an excessive and pretentious allusiveness. It was +he whom the satirist designed in that taunt, _Scire tuum nihil est nisi +te scire hoc sciat alter_—“My knowledge of thy knowledge is the knowledge +thou covetest.” His allusions and learned periphrases elucidate nothing; +they put an idle labour on the reader who understands them, and extort +from baffled ignorance, at which, perhaps, they are more especially +aimed, a foolish admiration. These tricks and vanities, the very +corruption of ornament, will always be found while the power to acquire +knowledge is more general than the strength to carry it or the skill to +wield it. The collector has his proper work to do in the commonwealth of +learning, but the ownership of a museum is a poor qualification for the +name of artist. Knowledge has two good uses; it may be frankly +communicated for the benefit of others, or it may minister matter to +thought; an allusive writer often robs it of both these functions. He +must needs display his possessions and his modesty at one and the same +time, producing his treasures unasked, and huddling them in uncouth +fashion past the gaze of the spectator, because, forsooth, he would not +seem to make a rarity of them. The subject to be treated, the groundwork +to be adorned, becomes the barest excuse for a profitless haphazard +ostentation. This fault is very incident to the scholarly style, which +often sacrifices emphasis and conviction to a futile air of encyclopædic +grandeur. + +Those who are repelled by this redundance of ornament, from which even +great writers are not wholly exempt, have sometimes been driven by the +force of reaction into a singular fallacy. The futility of these +literary quirks and graces has induced them to lay art under the same +interdict with ornament. Style and stylists, one will say, have no +attraction for him, he had rather hear honest men utter their thoughts +directly, clearly, and simply. The choice of words, says another, and +the conscious manipulation of sentences, is literary foppery; the word +that first offers is commonly the best, and the order in which the +thoughts occur is the order to be followed. Be natural, be +straightforward, they urge, and what you have to say will say itself in +the best possible manner. It is a welcome lesson, no doubt, that these +deluded Arcadians teach. A simple and direct style—who would not give +his all to purchase that! But is it in truth so easy to be compassed? +The greatest writers, when they are at the top of happy hours, attain to +it, now and again. Is all this tangled contrariety of things a kind of +fairyland, and does the writer, alone among men, find that a beaten +foot-path opens out before him as he goes, to lead him, straight through +the maze, to the goal of his desires? To think so is to build a childish +dream out of facts imperfectly observed, and worthy of a closer +observation. Sometimes the cry for simplicity is the reverse of what it +seems, and is uttered by those who had rather hear words used in their +habitual vague acceptations than submit to the cutting directness of a +good writer. Habit makes obscurity grateful, and the simple style, in +this view, is the style that allows thought to run automatically into its +old grooves and burrows. The original writers who have combined real +literary power with the heresy of ease and nature are of another kind. A +brutal personality, excellently muscular, snatching at words as the +handiest weapons wherewith to inflict itself, and the whole body of its +thoughts and preferences, on suffering humanity, is likely enough to +deride the daintiness of conscious art. Such a writer is William +Cobbett, who has often been praised for the manly simplicity of his +style, which he raised into a kind of creed. His power is undeniable; +his diction, though he knew it not, both choice and chaste; yet page +after page of his writing suggests only the reflection that here is a +prodigal waste of good English. He bludgeons all he touches, and spends +the same monotonous emphasis on his dislike of tea and on his hatred of +the Government. His is the simplicity of a crude and violent mind, +concerned only with giving forcible expression to its unquestioned +prejudices. Irrelevance, the besetting sin of the ill-educated, he +glories in, so that his very weakness puts on the semblance of strength, +and helps to wield the hammer. + +It is not to be denied that there is a native force of temperament which +can make itself felt even through illiterate carelessness. “Literary +gentlemen, editors, and critics,” says Thoreau, himself by no means a +careless writer, “think that they know how to write, because they have +studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The +_art_ of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a +rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind +them.” This true saying introduces us to the hardest problem of +criticism, the paradox of literature, the stumbling-block of +rhetoricians. To analyse the precise method whereby a great personality +can make itself felt in words, even while it neglects and contemns the +study of words, would be to lay bare the secrets of religion and life—it +is beyond human competence. Nevertheless a brief and diffident +consideration of the matter may bring thus much comfort, that the seeming +contradiction is no discredit cast on letters, but takes its origin +rather from too narrow and pedantic a view of the scope of letters. + +Words are things: it is useless to try to set them in a world apart. +They exist in books only by accident, and for one written there are a +thousand, infinitely more powerful, spoken. They are deeds: the man who +brings word of a lost battle can work no comparable effect with the +muscles of his arm; Iago’s breath is as truly laden with poison and +murder as the fangs of the cobra and the drugs of the assassin. Hence +the sternest education in the use of words is least of all to be gained +in the schools, which cultivate verbiage in a highly artificial state of +seclusion. A soldier cares little for poetry, because it is the exercise +of power that he loves, and he is accustomed to do more with his words +than give pleasure. To keep language in immediate touch with reality, to +lade it with action and passion, to utter it hot from the heart of +determination, is to exhibit it in the plenitude of power. All this may +be achieved without the smallest study of literary models, and is +consistent with a perfect neglect of literary canons. It is not the +logical content of the word, but the whole mesh of its conditions, +including the character, circumstances, and attitude of the speaker, that +is its true strength. “Damn” is often the feeblest of expletives, and +“as you please” may be the dirge of an empire. Hence it is useless to +look to the grammarian, or the critic, for a lesson in strength of style; +the laws that he has framed, good enough in themselves, are current only +in his own abstract world. A breath of hesitancy will sometimes make +trash of a powerful piece of eloquence; and even in writing, a thing +three times said, and each time said badly, may be of more effect than +that terse, full, and final expression which the doctors rightly commend. +The art of language, regarded as a question of pattern and cadence, or +even as a question of logic and thought-sequence, is a highly abstract +study; for although, as has been said, you can do almost anything with +words, with words alone you can do next to nothing. The realm where +speech holds sway is a narrow shoal or reef, shaken, contorted, and +upheaved by volcanic action, beaten upon, bounded, and invaded by the +ocean of silence: whoso would be lord of the earth must first tame the +fire and the sea. Dramatic and narrative writing are happy in this, that +action and silence are a part of their material; the story-teller or the +playwright can make of words a background and definition for deeds, a +framework for those silences that are more telling than any speech. Here +lies an escape from the poverty of content and method to which +self-portraiture and self-expression are liable; and therefore are epic +and drama rated above all other kinds of poetry. The greater force of +the objective treatment is witnessed by many essayists and lyrical poets, +whose ambition has led them, sooner or later, to attempt the novel or the +play. There are weaknesses inherent in all direct self-revelation; the +thing, perhaps, is greatly said, yet there is no great occasion for the +saying of it; a fine reticence is observed, but it is, after all, an easy +reticence, with none of the dramatic splendours of reticence on the rack. +In the midst of his pleasant confidences the essayist is brought up short +by the question, “Why must you still be talking?” Even the passionate +lyric feels the need of external authorisation, and some of the finest of +lyrical poems, like the Willow Song of Desdemona, or Wordsworth’s +_Solitary Reaper_, are cast in a dramatic mould, that beauty of diction +may be vitalised by an imagined situation. More than others the dramatic +art is an enemy to the desultory and the superfluous, sooner than others +it will cast away all formal grace of expression that it may come home +more directly to the business and bosoms of men. Its great power and +scope are shown well in this, that it can find high uses for the +commonest stuff of daily speech and the emptiest phrases of daily +intercourse. + +Simplicity and strength, then, the vigorous realistic quality of +impromptu utterance, and an immediate relation with the elementary facts +of life, are literary excellences best known in the drama, and in its +modern fellow and rival, the novel. The dramatist and novelist create +their own characters, set their own scenes, lay their own plots, and when +all has been thus prepared, the right word is born in the purple, an +inheritor of great opportunities, all its virtues magnified by the +glamour of its high estate. Writers on philosophy, morals, or æsthetics, +critics, essayists, and dealers in soliloquy generally, cannot hope, with +their slighter means, to attain to comparable effects. They work at two +removes from life; the terms that they handle are surrounded by the +vapours of discussion, and are rewarded by no instinctive response. +Simplicity, in its most regarded sense, is often beyond their reach; the +matter of their discourse is intricate, and the most they can do is to +employ patience, care, and economy of labour; the meaning of their words +is not obvious, and they must go aside to define it. The strength of +their writing has limits set for it by the nature of the chosen task, and +any transgression of these limits is punished by a fall into sheer +violence. All writing partakes of the quality of the drama, there is +always a situation involved, the relation, namely, between the speaker +and the hearer. A gentleman in black, expounding his views, or narrating +his autobiography to the first comer, can expect no such warmth of +response as greets the dying speech of the baffled patriot; yet he too +may take account of the reasons that prompt speech, may display sympathy +and tact, and avoid the faults of senility. The only character that can +lend strength to his words is his own, and he sketches it while he states +his opinions; the only attitude that can ennoble his sayings is implied +in the very arguments he uses. Who does not know the curious blank +effect of eloquence overstrained or out of place? The phrasing may be +exquisite, the thought well-knit, the emotion genuine, yet all is, as it +were, dumb-show where no community of feeling exists between the speaker +and his audience. A similar false note is struck by any speaker or +writer who misapprehends his position or forgets his disqualifications, +by newspaper writers using language that is seemly only in one who stakes +his life on his words, by preachers exceeding the license of fallibility, +by moralists condemning frailty, by speculative traders deprecating frank +ways of hazard, by Satan rebuking sin. + +“How many things are there,” exclaims the wise Verulam, “which a man +cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself! A man’s person +hath many proper relations which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak +to his son but as a father; to his wife, but as a husband; to his enemy +but upon terms; whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not +as it sorteth with the person.” The like “proper relations” govern +writers, even where their audience is unknown to them. It has often been +remarked how few are the story-tellers who can introduce themselves, so +much as by a passing reflection or sentiment, without a discordant +effect. The friend who saves the situation is found in one and another +of the creatures of their art. + +For those who must play their own part the effort to conceal themselves +is of no avail. The implicit attitude of a writer makes itself felt; an +undue swelling of his subject to heroic dimensions, an unwarrantable +assumption of sympathy, a tendency to truck with friends or with enemies +by the way, are all possible indications of weakness, which move even the +least skilled of readers to discount what is said, as they catch here and +there a glimpse of the old pot-companion, or the young dandy, behind the +imposing literary mask. Strong writers are those who, with every reserve +of power, seek no exhibition of strength. It is as if language could not +come by its full meaning save on the lips of those who regard it as an +evil necessity. Every word is torn from them, as from a reluctant +witness. They come to speech as to a last resort, when all other ways +have failed. The bane of a literary education is that it induces +talkativeness, and an overweening confidence in words. But those whose +words are stark and terrible seem almost to despise words. + +With words literature begins, and to words it must return. Coloured by +the neighbourhood of silence, solemnised by thought or steeled by action, +words are still its only means of rising above words. “_Accedat verbum +ad elementum_,” said St. Ambrose, “_et fiat sacramentum_.” So the +elementary passions, pity and love, wrath and terror, are not in +themselves poetical; they must be wrought upon by the word to become +poetry. In no other way can suffering be transformed to pathos, or +horror reach its apotheosis in tragedy. + +When all has been said, there remains a residue capable of no formal +explanation. Language, this array of conventional symbols loosely strung +together, and blown about by every wandering breath, is miraculously +vital and expressive, justifying not a few of the myriad superstitions +that have always attached to its use. The same words are free to all, +yet no wealth or distinction of vocabulary is needed for a group of words +to take the stamp of an individual mind and character. “As a quality of +style” says Mr. Pater, “soul is a fact.” To resolve how words, like +bodies, become transparent when they are inhabited by that luminous +reality, is a higher pitch than metaphysic wit can fly. Ardent +persuasion and deep feeling enkindle words, so that the weakest take on +glory. The humblest and most despised of common phrases may be the +chosen vessel for the next avatar of the spirit. It is the old problem, +to be met only by the old solution of the Platonist, that + + Soul is form, and doth the body make. + +The soul is able to inform language by some strange means other than the +choice and arrangement of words and phrases. Real novelty of vocabulary +is impossible; in the matter of language we lead a parasitical existence, +and are always quoting. Quotations, conscious or unconscious, vary in +kind according as the mind is active to work upon them and make them its +own. In its grossest and most servile form quotation is a lazy folly; a +thought has received some signal or notorious expression, and as often as +the old sense, or something like it, recurs, the old phrase rises to the +lips. This degenerates to simple phrase-mongering, and those who +practise it are not vigilantly jealous of their meaning. Such an +expression as “fine by degrees and beautifully less” is often no more +than a bloated equivalent for a single word—say “diminishing” or +“shrinking.” Quotations like this are the warts and excremental parts of +language; the borrowings of good writers are never thus superfluous, +their quotations are appropriations. Whether it be by some witty turn +given to a well-known line, by an original setting for an old saw, or by +a new and unlooked-for analogy, the stamp of the borrower is put upon the +goods he borrows, and he becomes part owner. Plagiarism is a crime only +where writing is a trade; expression need never be bound by the law of +copyright while it follows thought, for thought, as some great thinker +has observed, is free. The words were once Shakespeare’s; if only you +can feel them as he did, they are yours now no less than his. The best +quotations, the best translations, the best thefts, are all equally new +and original works. From quotation, at least, there is no escape, +inasmuch as we learn language from others. All common phrases that do +the dirty work of the world are quotations—poor things, and not our own. +Who first said that a book would “repay perusal,” or that any gay scene +was “bright with all the colours of the rainbow”? There is no need to +condemn these phrases, for language has a vast deal of inferior work to +do. The expression of thought, temperament, attitude, is not the whole +of its business. It is only a literary fop or doctrinaire who will +attempt to remint all the small defaced coinage that passes through his +hands, only a lisping young fantastico who will refuse all conventional +garments and all conventional speech. At a modern wedding the frock-coat +is worn, the presents are “numerous and costly,” and there is an “ovation +accorded to the happy pair.” These things are part of our public +civilisation, a decorous and accessible uniform, not to be lightly set +aside. But let it be a friend of your own who is to marry, a friend of +your own who dies, and you are to express yourself—the problem is +changed, you feel all the difficulties of the art of style, and fathom +something of the depth of your unskill. Forbidden silence, we should be +in a poor way indeed. + +Single words too we plagiarise when we use them without realisation and +mastery of their meaning. The best argument for a succinct style is +this, that if you use words you do not need, or do not understand, you +cannot use them well. It is not what a word means, but what it means to +you, that is of the deepest import. Let it be a weak word, with a poor +history behind it, if you have done good thinking with it, you may yet +use it to surprising advantage. But if, on the other hand, it be a +strong word that has never aroused more than a misty idea and a +flickering emotion in your mind, here lies your danger. You may use it, +for there is none to hinder; and it will betray you. The commonest Saxon +words prove explosive machines in the hands of rash impotence. It is +perhaps a certain uneasy consciousness of danger, a suspicion that +weakness of soul cannot wield these strong words, that makes debility +avoid them, committing itself rather, as if by some pre-established +affinity, to the vaguer Latinised vocabulary. Yet they are not all to be +avoided, and their quality in practice will depend on some occult ability +in their employer. For every living person, if the material were +obtainable, a separate historical dictionary might be compiled, recording +where each word was first heard or seen, where and how it was first used. +The references are utterly beyond recovery; but such a register would +throw a strange light on individual styles. The eloquent trifler, whose +stock of words has been accumulated by a pair of light fingers, would +stand denuded of his plausible pretences as soon as it were seen how +roguishly he came by his eloquence. There may be literary quality, it is +well to remember, in the words of a parrot, if only its cage has been +happily placed; meaning and soul there cannot be. Yet the voice will +sometimes be mistaken, by the carelessness of chance listeners, for a +genuine utterance of humanity; and the like is true in literature. But +writing cannot be luminous and great save in the hands of those whose +words are their own by the indefeasible title of conquest. Life is spent +in learning the meaning of great words, so that some idle proverb, known +for years and accepted perhaps as a truism, comes home, on a day, like a +blow. “If there were not a God,” said Voltaire, “it would be necessary +to invent him.” Voltaire had therefore a right to use the word, but some +of those who use it most, if they would be perfectly sincere, should +enclose it in quotation marks. Whole nations go for centuries without +coining names for certain virtues; is it credible that among other +peoples, where the names exists the need for them is epidemic? The +author of the _Ecclesiastial Polity_ puts a bolder and truer face on the +matter. “Concerning that Faith, Hope, and Charity,” he writes, “without +which there can be no salvation, was there ever any mention made saving +only in that Law which God himself hath from Heaven revealed? There is +not in the world a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any of +these three, more than hath been supernaturally received from the mouth +of the eternal God.” Howsoever they came to us, we have the words; they, +and many other terms of tremendous import, are bandied about from mouth +to mouth and alternately enriched or impoverished in meaning. Is the +“Charity” of St. Paul’s Epistle one with the charity of +“charity-blankets”? Are the “crusades” of Godfrey and of the great St. +Louis, where knightly achievement did homage to the religious temper, +essentially the same as that process of harrying the wretched and the +outcast for which the muddle-headed, greasy citizen of to-day invokes the +same high name? Of a truth, some kingly words fall to a lower estate +than Nebuchadnezzar. + +Here, among words, our lot is cast, to make or mar. It is in this +obscure thicket, overgrown with weeds, set with thorns, and haunted by +shadows, this World of Words, as the Elizabethans finely called it, that +we wander, eternal pioneers, during the course of our mortal lives. To +be overtaken by a master, one who comes along with the gaiety of assured +skill and courage, with the gravity of unflinching purpose, to make the +crooked ways straight and the rough places plain, is to gain fresh +confidence from despair. He twines wreaths of the entangling ivy, and +builds ramparts of the thorns. He blazes his mark upon the secular oaks, +as a guidance to later travellers, and coaxes flame from heaps of +mouldering rubbish. There is no sense of cheer like this. Sincerity, +clarity, candour, power, seem real once more, real and easy. In the +light of great literary achievement, straight and wonderful, like the +roads of the ancient Romans, barbarism torments the mind like a riddle. +Yet there are the dusky barbarians!—fleeing from the harmonious tread of +the ordered legions, running to hide themselves in the morass of vulgar +sentiment, to ambush their nakedness in the sand-pits of low thought. + + * * * * * + +It is a venerable custom to knit up the speculative consideration of any +subject with the counsels of practical wisdom. The words of this essay +have been vain indeed if the idea that style may be imparted by tuition +has eluded them, and survived. There is a useful art of Grammar, which +takes for its province the right and the wrong in speech. Style deals +only with what is permissible to all, and even revokes, on occasion, the +rigid laws of Grammar or countenances offences against them. Yet no one +is a better judge of equity for ignorance of the law, and grammatical +practice offers a fair field wherein to acquire ease, accuracy and +versatility. The formation of sentences, the sequence of verbs, the +marshalling of the ranks of auxiliaries are all, in a sense, to be +learned. There is a kind of inarticulate disorder to which writers are +liable, quite distinct from a bad style, and caused chiefly by lack of +exercise. An unpractised writer will sometimes send a beautiful and +powerful phrase jostling along in the midst of a clumsy sentence—like a +crowned king escorted by a mob. + +But Style cannot be taught. Imitation of the masters, or of some one +chosen master, and the constant purging of language by a severe +criticism, have their uses, not to be belittled; they have also their +dangers. The greater part of what is called the teaching of style must +always be negative, bad habits may be broken down, old malpractices +prohibited. The pillory and the stocks are hardly educational agents, +but they make it easier for honest men to enjoy their own. If style +could really be taught, it is a question whether its teachers should not +be regarded as mischief-makers and enemies of mankind. The Rosicrucians +professed to have found the philosopher’s stone, and the shadowy sages of +modern Thibet are said, by those who speak for them, to have compassed +the instantaneous transference of bodies from place to place. In either +case, the holders of these secrets have laudably refused to publish them, +lest avarice and malice should run amuck in human society. A similar +fear might well visit the conscience of one who should dream that he had +divulged to the world at large what can be done with language. Of this +there is no danger; rhetoric, it is true, does put fluency, emphasis, and +other warlike equipments at the disposal of evil forces, but style, like +the Christian religion, is one of those open secrets which are most +easily and most effectively kept by the initiate from age to age. +Divination is the only means of access to these mysteries. The formal +attempt to impart a good style is like the melancholy task of the teacher +of gesture and oratory; some palpable faults are soon corrected; and, for +the rest, a few conspicuous mannerisms, a few theatrical postures, not +truly expressive, and a high tragical strut, are all that can be +imparted. The truth of the old Roman teachers of rhetoric is here +witnessed afresh, to be a good orator it is first of all necessary to be +a good man. Good style is the greatest of revealers,—it lays bare the +soul. The soul of the cheat shuns nothing so much. “Always be ready to +speak your minds” said Blake, “and a base man will avoid you.” But to +insist that he also shall speak his mind is to go a step further, it is +to take from the impostor his wooden leg, to prohibit his lucrative +whine, his mumping and his canting, to force the poor silly soul to stand +erect among its fellows and declare itself. His occupation is gone, and +he does not love the censor who deprives him of the weapons of his +mendicity. + +All style is gesture, the gesture of the mind and of the soul. Mind we +have in common, inasmuch as the laws of right reason are not different +for different minds. Therefore clearness and arrangement can be taught, +sheer incompetence in the art of expression can be partly remedied. But +who shall impose laws upon the soul? It is thus of common note that one +may dislike or even hate a particular style while admiring its facility, +its strength, its skilful adaptation to the matter set forth. Milton, a +chaster and more unerring master of the art than Shakespeare, reveals no +such lovable personality. While persons count for much, style, the index +to persons, can never count for little. “Speak,” it has been said, “that +I may know you”—voice-gesture is more than feature. Write, and after you +have attained to some control over the instrument, you write yourself +down whether you will or no. There is no vice, however unconscious, no +virtue, however shy, no touch of meanness or of generosity in your +character, that will not pass on to the paper. You anticipate the Day of +Judgment and furnish the recording angel with material. The Art of +Criticism in literature, so often decried and given a subordinate place +among the arts, is none other than the art of reading and interpreting +these written evidences. Criticism has been popularly opposed to +creation, perhaps because the kind of creation that it attempts is rarely +achieved, and so the world forgets that the main business of Criticism, +after all, is not to legislate, nor to classify, but to raise the dead. +Graves, at its command, have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them +forth. It is by the creative power of this art that the living man is +reconstructed from the litter of blurred and fragmentary paper documents +that he has left to posterity. + + * * * * * + + THE END + + * * * * * + + _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_ + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STYLE*** + + +******* This file should be named 1038-0.txt or 1038-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/3/1038 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1039-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1039-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2b1215bf --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1039-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,27740 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1039 *** + +MISSIONARY TRAVELS AND RESEARCHES IN SOUTH AFRICA. + +Also called, Travels and Researches in South Africa; + +or, Journeys and Researches in South Africa. + +By David Livingstone + +[British (Scot) Missionary and Explorer--1813-1873.] + + + + [NOTE by the Project Gutenberg Contributor of this file: + + This etext was prepared by Alan. R. Light To assure a high quality text, + the original was typed in (manually) twice and electronically compared. + Italicized words or phrases are CAPITALIZED. + + David Livingstone was born in Scotland, received his medical degree from + the University of Glasgow, and was sent to South Africa by the London + Missionary Society. Circumstances led him to try to meet the material + needs as well as the spiritual needs of the people he went to, and while + promoting trade and trying to end slavery, he became the first European + to cross the continent of Africa, which story is related in this book. + Two appendixes have been added to this etext, one of which is simply + notes on the minor changes made to make this etext more readable, (old + vs. new forms of words, names, etc.); the other is a review from the + February, 1858 edition of Harper's Magazine, which is included both for + those readers who want to see a brief synopsis, and more importantly to + give an example of how Livingstone's accomplishments were seen in + his own time. The unnamed reviewer was by no means as enlightened as + Livingstone, yet he was not entirely in the dark, either. + + The casual reader, who may not be familiar with the historical period, + should note that a few things that Livingstone wrote, which might be + seen as racist by today's standards, was not considered so in his + own time. Livingstone simply uses the terms and the science of his + day--these were no doubt flawed, as is also seen elsewhere, in his + references to malaria, for example. Which all goes to show that it was + the science of the day which was flawed, and not so much Livingstone. + + I will also add that the Rev. Livingstone has a fine sense of humour, + which I hope the reader will enjoy. His description of a Makololo dance + is classic. + + Lastly, I will note that what I love most about Livingstone's + descriptions is not only that he was not polluted by the racism of his + day, but that he was not polluted by the anti-racism of our own. He + states things as he sees them, and notes that the Africans are, like all + other men, a curious mixture of good and evil. This, to me, demonstrates + his good faith better than any other description could. You see, David + Livingstone does not write about Africa as a missionary, nor as an + explorer, nor yet as a scientist, but as a man meeting fellow men. I + hope you will enjoy his writings as much as I did. + + Alan R. Light + + Monroe, N.C., 1997.] + + + + + +MISSIONARY TRAVELS AND RESEARCHES IN SOUTH AFRICA; + +Including a Sketch of Sixteen Years' Residence in the Interior of +Africa, and a Journey from the Cape of Good Hope to Loanda on the West +Coast; Thence Across the Continent, Down the River Zambesi, to the +Eastern Ocean. + +By David Livingstone, LL.D., D.C.L., Fellow of the Faculty of Physicians +and Surgeons, Glasgow; Corresponding Member of the Geographical and +Statistical Society of New York; Gold Medalist and Corresponding Member +of the Royal Geographical Societies of London and Paris F.S.A., Etc., +Etc. + + + + + +Dedication. + + + +To + +SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, + +President Royal Geographical Society, F.R.S., V.P.G.S., + +Corr. Inst. of France, and Member of the Academies of St. Petersburg, + +Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Brussels, Etc., + + +This Work + +is affectionately offered as a Token of Gratitude for the kind interest +he has always taken in the Author's pursuits and welfare; and to express +admiration of his eminent scientific attainments, nowhere more strongly +evidenced than by the striking hypothesis respecting the physical +conformation of the African continent, promulgated in his Presidential +Address to the Royal Geographic Society in 1852, and verified three +years afterward by the Author of these Travels. + +DAVID LIVINGSTONE. London, Oct., 1857. + + + + + +Preface. + +When honored with a special meeting of welcome by the Royal Geographical +Society a few days after my arrival in London in December last, Sir +Roderick Murchison, the President, invited me to give the world a +narrative of my travels; and at a similar meeting of the Directors of +the London Missionary Society I publicly stated my intention of sending +a book to the press, instead of making many of those public appearances +which were urged upon me. The preparation of this narrative* has +taken much longer time than, from my inexperience in authorship, I had +anticipated. + + * Several attempts having been made to impose upon the public, + as mine, spurious narratives of my travels, I beg to tender my + thanks to the editors of the 'Times' and of the 'Athenaeum' + for aiding to expose them, and to the booksellers of London + for refusing to SUBSCRIBE for any copies. + +Greater smoothness of diction and a saving of time might have been +secured by the employment of a person accustomed to compilation; but my +journals having been kept for my own private purposes, no one else +could have made use of them, or have entered with intelligence into the +circumstances in which I was placed in Africa, far from any European +companion. Those who have never carried a book through the press +can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves. The process has +increased my respect for authors and authoresses a thousand-fold. + +I can not refrain from referring, with sentiments of admiration +and gratitude, to my friend Thomas Maclear, Esq., the accomplished +Astronomer Royal at the Cape. I shall never cease to remember his +instructions and help with real gratitude. The intercourse I had the +privilege to enjoy at the Observatory enabled me to form an idea of the +almost infinite variety of acquirements necessary to form a true and +great astronomer, and I was led to the conviction that it will be long +before the world becomes overstocked with accomplished members of that +profession. Let them be always honored according to their deserts; and +long may Maclear, Herschel, Airy, and others live to make known the +wonders and glory of creation, and to aid in rendering the pathway of +the world safe to mariners, and the dark places of the earth open to +Christians! + +I beg to offer my hearty thanks to my friend Sir Roderick Murchison, +and also to Dr. Norton Shaw, the secretary of the Royal Geographical +Society, for aiding my researches by every means in their power. + +His faithful majesty Don Pedro V., having kindly sent out orders to +support my late companions until my return, relieved my mind of anxiety +on their account. But for this act of liberality, I should certainly +have been compelled to leave England in May last; and it has afforded me +the pleasure of traveling over, in imagination, every scene again, +and recalling the feelings which actuated me at the time. I have much +pleasure in acknowledging my deep obligations to the hospitality and +kindness of the Portuguese on many occasions. + +I have not entered into the early labors, trials, and successes of the +missionaries who preceded me in the Bechuana country, because that has +been done by the much abler pen of my father-in-law, Rev. Robert Moffat, +of Kuruman, who has been an energetic and devoted actor in the scene for +upward of forty years. A slight sketch only is given of my own attempts, +and the chief part of the book is taken up with a detail of the efforts +made to open up a new field north of the Bechuana country to the +sympathies of Christendom. The prospects there disclosed are fairer than +I anticipated, and the capabilities of the new region lead me to hope +that by the production of the raw materials of our manufactures, African +and English interests will become more closely linked than heretofore, +that both countries will be eventually benefited, and that the cause of +freedom throughout the world will in some measure be promoted. + +Dr. Hooker, of Kew, has had the kindness to name and classify for me, +as far as possible, some of the new botanical specimens which I brought +over; Dr. Andrew Smith (himself an African traveler) has aided me in +the zoology; and Captain Need has laid open for my use his portfolio +of African sketches, for all which acts of liberality my thanks are +deservedly due, as well as to my brother, who has rendered me willing +aid as an amanuensis. + +Although I can not profess to be a draughtsman, I brought home with me +a few rough diagram-sketches, from one of which the view of the Falls of +the Zambesi has been prepared by a more experienced artist. + +October, 1857. + + + + + +Contents. + + + Introduction. Personal Sketch--Highland Ancestors--Family + Traditions--Grandfather removes to the Lowlands--Parents-- + Early Labors and Efforts--Evening School--Love of Reading-- + Religious Impressions--Medical Education--Youthful Travels-- + Geology--Mental Discipline--Study in Glasgow--London + Missionary Society--Native Village--Medical Diploma-- + Theological Studies--Departure for Africa--No Claim to + Literary Accomplishments. + + Chapter 1. The Bakwain Country--Study of the Language--Native + Ideas regarding Comets--Mabotsa Station--A Lion Encounter-- + Virus of the Teeth of Lions--Names of the Bechuana Tribes-- + Sechele--His Ancestors--Obtains the Chieftainship--His + Marriage and Government--The Kotla--First public Religious + Services--Sechele's Questions--He Learns to Read--Novel mode + for Converting his Tribe--Surprise at their Indifference-- + Polygamy--Baptism of Sechele--Opposition of the Natives-- + Purchase Land at Chonuane--Relations with the People--Their + Intelligence--Prolonged Drought--Consequent Trials--Rain- + medicine--God's Word blamed--Native Reasoning--Rain-maker-- + Dispute between Rain Doctor and Medical Doctor--The Hunting + Hopo--Salt or animal Food a necessary of Life--Duties of a + Missionary. + + Chapter 2. The Boers--Their Treatment of the Natives--Seizure + of native Children for Slaves--English Traders--Alarm of the + Boers--Native Espionage--The Tale of the Cannon--The Boers + threaten Sechele--In violation of Treaty, they stop English + Traders and expel Missionaries--They attack the Bakwains-- + Their Mode of Fighting--The Natives killed and the School- + children carried into Slavery--Destruction of English + Property--African Housebuilding and Housekeeping--Mode of + Spending the Day--Scarcity of Food--Locusts--Edible Frogs-- + Scavenger Beetle--Continued Hostility of the Boers--The + Journey north--Preparations--Fellow-travelers--The Kalahari + Desert--Vegetation--Watermelons--The Inhabitants--The Bushmen- + -Their nomad Mode of Life--Appearance--The Bakalahari--Their + Love for Agriculture and for domestic Animals--Timid + Character--Mode of obtaining Water--Female Water-suckers--The + Desert--Water hidden. + + Chapter 3. Departure from Kolobeng, 1st June, 1849-- + Companions--Our Route--Abundance of Grass--Serotli, a Fountain + in the Desert--Mode of digging Wells--The Eland--Animals of + the Desert--The Hyaena--The Chief Sekomi--Dangers--The + wandering Guide--Cross Purposes--Slow Progress--Want of Water-- + Capture of a Bushwoman--The Salt-pan at Nchokotsa--The + Mirage--Reach the River Zouga--The Quakers of Africa-- + Discovery of Lake Ngami, 1st August, 1849--Its Extent--Small + Depth of Water--Position as the Reservoir of a great River + System--The Bamangwato and their Chief--Desire to visit + Sebituane, the Chief of the Makololo--Refusal of Lechulatebe + to furnish us with Guides--Resolve to return to the Cape--The + Banks of the Zouga--Pitfalls--Trees of the District-- + Elephants--New Species of Antelope--Fish in the Zouga. + + Chapter 4. Leave Kolobeng again for the Country of Sebituane-- + Reach the Zouga--The Tsetse--A Party of Englishmen--Death of + Mr. Rider--Obtain Guides--Children fall sick with Fever-- + Relinquish the Attempt to reach Sebituane--Mr. Oswell's + Elephant-hunting--Return to Kolobeng--Make a third Start + thence--Reach Nchokotsa--Salt-pans--"Links", or Springs-- + Bushmen--Our Guide Shobo--The Banajoa--An ugly Chief--The + Tsetse--Bite fatal to domestic Animals, but harmless to wild + Animals and Man--Operation of the Poison--Losses caused by it-- + The Makololo--Our Meeting with Sebituane--Sketch of his + Career--His Courage and Conquests--Manoeuvres of the Batoka-- + He outwits them--His Wars with the Matebele--Predictions of a + native Prophet--Successes of the Makololo--Renewed Attacks of + the Matebele--The Island of Loyelo--Defeat of the Matebele-- + Sebituane's Policy--His Kindness to Strangers and to the Poor-- + His sudden Illness and Death--Succeeded by his Daughter--Her + Friendliness to us--Discovery, in June, 1851, of the Zambesi + flowing in the Centre of the Continent--Its Size--The Mambari-- + The Slave-trade--Determine to send Family to England--Return + to the Cape in April, 1852--Safe Transit through the Caffre + Country during Hostilities--Need of a "Special Correspondent" + --Kindness of the London Missionary Society--Assistance + afforded by the Astronomer Royal at the Cape. + + Chapter 5. Start in June, 1852, on the last and longest + Journey from Cape Town--Companions--Wagon-traveling--Physical + Divisions of Africa--The Eastern, Central, and Western Zones-- + The Kalahari Desert--Its Vegetation--Increasing Value of the + Interior for Colonization--Our Route--Dutch Boers--Their + Habits--Sterile Appearance of the District--Failure of Grass-- + Succeeded by other Plants--Vines--Animals--The Boers as + Farmers--Migration of Springbucks--Wariness of Animals--The + Orange River--Territory of the Griquas and Bechuanas--The + Griquas--The Chief Waterboer--His wise and energetic + Government--His Fidelity--Ill-considered Measures of the + Colonial Government in regard to Supplies of Gunpowder-- + Success of the Missionaries among the Griquas and Bechuanas-- + Manifest Improvement of the native Character--Dress of the + Natives--A full-dress Costume--A Native's Description of the + Natives--Articles of Commerce in the Country of the Bechuanas-- + Their Unwillingness to learn, and Readiness to criticise. + + Chapter 6. Kuruman--Its fine Fountain--Vegetation of the + District--Remains of ancient Forests--Vegetable Poison--The + Bible translated by Mr. Moffat--Capabilities of the Language-- + Christianity among the Natives--The Missionaries should extend + their Labors more beyond the Cape Colony--Model Christians-- + Disgraceful Attack of the Boers on the Bakwains--Letter from + Sechele--Details of the Attack--Numbers of School-children + carried away into Slavery--Destruction of House and Property + at Kolobeng--The Boers vow Vengeance against me--Consequent + Difficulty of getting Servants to accompany me on my Journey-- + Start in November, 1852--Meet Sechele on his way to England to + obtain Redress from the Queen--He is unable to proceed beyond + the Cape--Meet Mr. Macabe on his Return from Lake Ngami--The + hot Wind of the Desert--Electric State of the Atmosphere-- + Flock of Swifts--Reach Litubaruba--The Cave Lepelole-- + Superstitions regarding it--Impoverished State of the + Bakwains--Retaliation on the Boers--Slavery--Attachment of the + Bechuanas to Children--Hydrophobia unknown--Diseases of the + Bakwains few in number--Yearly Epidemics--Hasty Burials-- + Ophthalmia--Native Doctors--Knowledge of Surgery at a very low + Ebb--Little Attendance given to Women at their Confinements-- + The "Child Medicine"--Salubrity of the Climate well adapted + for Invalids suffering from pulmonary Complaints. + + Chapter 7. Departure from the Country of the Bakwains--Large + black Ant--Land Tortoises--Diseases of wild Animals--Habits of + old Lions--Cowardice of the Lion--Its Dread of a Snare--Major + Vardon's Note--The Roar of the Lion resembles the Cry of the + Ostrich--Seldom attacks full-grown Animals--Buffaloes and + Lions--Mice--Serpents--Treading on one--Venomous and harmless + Varieties--Fascination--Sekomi's Ideas of Honesty--Ceremony of + the Sechu for Boys--The Boyale for young Women--Bamangwato + Hills--The Unicorn's Pass--The Country beyond--Grain--Scarcity + of Water--Honorable Conduct of English Gentlemen--Gordon + Cumming's hunting Adventures--A Word of Advice for young + Sportsmen--Bushwomen drawing Water--Ostrich--Silly Habit-- + Paces--Eggs--Food. + + Chapter 8. Effects of Missionary Efforts--Belief in the Deity-- + Ideas of the Bakwains on Religion--Departure from their + Country--Salt-pans--Sour Curd--Nchokotsa--Bitter Waters-- + Thirst suffered by the wild Animals--Wanton Cruelty in + Hunting--Ntwetwe--Mowana-trees--Their extraordinary Vitality-- + The Mopane-tree--The Morala--The Bushmen--Their Superstitions-- + Elephant-hunting--Superiority of civilized over barbarous + Sportsmen--The Chief Kaisa--His Fear of Responsibility--Beauty + of the Country at Unku--The Mohonono Bush--Severe Labor in + cutting our Way--Party seized with Fever--Escape of our + Cattle--Bakwain Mode of recapturing them--Vagaries of sick + Servants--Discovery of grape-bearing Vines--An Ant-eater-- + Difficulty of passing through the Forest--Sickness of my + Companion--The Bushmen--Their Mode of destroying Lions-- + Poisons--The solitary Hill--A picturesque Valley--Beauty of + the Country--Arrive at the Sanshureh River--The flooded + Prairies--A pontooning Expedition--A night Bivouac--The Chobe-- + Arrive at the Village of Moremi--Surprise of the Makololo at + our sudden Appearance--Cross the Chobe on our way to Linyanti. + + Chapter 9. Reception at Linyanti--The court Herald--Sekeletu + obtains the Chieftainship from his Sister--Mpepe's Plot-- + Slave-trading Mambari--Their sudden Flight--Sekeletu narrowly + escapes Assassination--Execution of Mpepe--The Courts of Law-- + Mode of trying Offenses--Sekeletu's Reason for not learning to + read the Bible--The Disposition made of the Wives of a + deceased Chief--Makololo Women--They work but little--Employ + Serfs--Their Drink, Dress, and Ornaments--Public Religious + Services in the Kotla--Unfavorable Associations of the place-- + Native Doctors--Proposals to teach the Makololo to read-- + Sekeletu's Present--Reason for accepting it--Trading in Ivory-- + Accidental Fire--Presents for Sekeletu--Two Breeds of native + Cattle--Ornamenting the Cattle--The Women and the Looking- + glass--Mode of preparing the Skins of Oxen for Mantles and for + Shields--Throwing the Spear. + + Chapter 10. The Fever--Its Symptoms--Remedies of the native + Doctors--Hospitality of Sekeletu and his People--One of their + Reasons for Polygamy--They cultivate largely--The Makalaka or + subject Tribes--Sebituane's Policy respecting them--Their + Affection for him--Products of the Soil--Instrument of + Culture--The Tribute--Distributed by the Chief--A warlike + Demonstration--Lechulatebe's Provocations--The Makololo + determine to punish him--The Bechuanas--Meaning of the Term-- + Three Divisions of the great Family of South Africans. + + Chapter 11. Departure from Linyanti for Sesheke--Level + Country--Ant-hills--Wild Date-trees--Appearance of our + Attendants on the March--The Chief's Guard--They attempt to + ride on Ox-back--Vast Herds of the new Antelopes, Leches, and + Nakongs--The native way of hunting them--Reception at the + Villages--Presents of Beer and Milk--Eating with the Hand--The + Chief provides the Oxen for Slaughter--Social Mode of Eating-- + The Sugar-cane--Sekeletu's novel Test of Character-- + Cleanliness of Makololo Huts--Their Construction and + Appearance--The Beds--Cross the Leeambye--Aspect of this part + of the Country--The small Antelope Tianyane unknown in the + South--Hunting on foot--An Eland. + + Chapter 12. Procure Canoes and ascend the Leeambye--Beautiful + Islands--Winter Landscape--Industry and Skill of the Banyeti-- + Rapids--Falls of Gonye--Tradition--Annual Inundations-- + Fertility of the great Barotse Valley--Execution of two + Conspirators--The Slave-dealer's Stockade--Naliele, the + Capital, built on an artificial Mound--Santuru, a great + Hunter--The Barotse Method of commemorating any remarkable + Event--Better Treatment of Women--More religious Feeling-- + Belief in a future State, and in the Existence of spiritual + Beings--Gardens--Fish, Fruit, and Game--Proceed to the Limits + of the Barotse Country--Sekeletu provides Rowers and a Herald-- + The River and Vicinity--Hippopotamus-hunters--No healthy + Location--Determine to go to Loanda--Buffaloes, Elands, and + Lions above Libonta--Interview with the Mambari--Two Arabs + from Zanzibar--Their Opinion of the Portuguese and the English + --Reach the Town of Ma-Sekeletu--Joy of the People at the + first Visit of their Chief--Return to Sesheke--Heathenism. + + Chapter 13. Preliminary Arrangements for the Journey--A Picho-- + Twenty-seven Men appointed to accompany me to the West-- + Eagerness of the Makololo for direct Trade with the Coast-- + Effects of Fever--A Makololo Question--The lost Journal-- + Reflections--The Outfit for the Journey--11th November, 1853, + leave Linyanti, and embark on the Chobe--Dangerous + Hippopotami--Banks of Chobe--Trees--The Course of the River-- + The Island Mparia at the Confluence of the Chobe and the + Leeambye--Anecdote--Ascend the Leeambye--A Makalaka Mother + defies the Authority of the Makololo Head Man at Sesheke-- + Punishment of Thieves--Observance of the new Moon--Public + Addresses at Sesheke--Attention of the People--Results-- + Proceed up the River--The Fruit which yields 'Nux vomica'-- + Other Fruits--The Rapids--Birds--Fish--Hippopotami and their + Young. + + Chapter 14. Increasing Beauty of the Country--Mode of spending + the Day--The People and the Falls of Gonye--A Makololo Foray-- + A second prevented, and Captives delivered up--Politeness and + Liberality of the People--The Rains--Present of Oxen--The + fugitive Barotse--Sekobinyane's Misgovernment--Bee-eaters and + other Birds--Fresh-water Sponges--Current--Death from a Lion's + Bite at Libonta--Continued Kindness--Arrangements for spending + the Night during the Journey--Cooking and Washing--Abundance + of animal Life--Different Species of Birds--Water-fowl-- + Egyptian Geese--Alligators--Narrow Escape of one of my Men-- + Superstitious Feelings respecting the Alligator--Large Game-- + The most vulnerable Spot--Gun Medicine--A Sunday--Birds of + Song--Depravity; its Treatment--Wild Fruits--Green Pigeons-- + Shoals of Fish--Hippopotami. + + Chapter 15. Message to Masiko, the Barotse Chief, regarding + the Captives--Navigation of the Leeambye--Capabilities of this + District--The Leeba--Flowers and Bees--Buffalo-hunt--Field for + a Botanist--Young Alligators; their savage Nature--Suspicion + of the Balonda--Sekelenke's Present--A Man and his two Wives-- + Hunters--Message from Manenko, a female Chief--Mambari + Traders--A Dream--Sheakondo and his People--Teeth-filing-- + Desire for Butter--Interview with Nyamoana, another female + Chief--Court Etiquette--Hair versus Wool--Increase of + Superstition--Arrival of Manenko; her Appearance and Husband-- + Mode of Salutation--Anklets--Embassy, with a Present from + Masiko--Roast Beef--Manioc--Magic Lantern--Manenko an + accomplished Scold: compels us to wait--Unsuccessful Zebra- + hunt. + + Chapter 16. Nyamoana's Present--Charms--Manenko's pedestrian + Powers--An Idol--Balonda Arms--Rain--Hunger--Palisades--Dense + Forests--Artificial Beehives--Mushrooms--Villagers lend the + Roofs of their Houses--Divination and Idols--Manenko's Whims-- + A night Alarm--Shinte's Messengers and Present--The proper + Way to approach a Village--A Merman--Enter Shinte's Town: its + Appearance--Meet two half-caste Slave-traders--The Makololo + scorn them--The Balonda real Negroes--Grand Reception from + Shinte--His Kotla--Ceremony of Introduction--The Orators-- + Women--Musicians and Musical Instruments--A disagreeable + Request--Private Interviews with Shinte--Give him an Ox-- + Fertility of Soil--Manenko's new Hut--Conversation with + Shinte--Kolimbota's Proposal--Balonda's Punctiliousness-- + Selling Children--Kidnapping--Shinte's Offer of a Slave--Magic + Lantern--Alarm of Women--Delay--Sambanza returns intoxicated-- + The last and greatest Proof of Shinte's Friendship. + + Chapter 17. Leave Shinte--Manioc Gardens--Mode of preparing + the poisonous kind--Its general Use--Presents of Food-- + Punctiliousness of the Balonda--Their Idols and Superstition-- + Dress of the Balonda--Villages beyond Lonaje--Cazembe--Our + Guides and the Makololo--Night Rains--Inquiries for English + cotton Goods--Intemese's Fiction--Visit from an old Man-- + Theft--Industry of our Guide--Loss of Pontoon--Plains covered + with Water--Affection of the Balonda for their Mothers--A + Night on an Island--The Grass on the Plains--Source of the + Rivers--Loan of the Roofs of Huts--A Halt--Fertility of the + Country through which the Lokalueje flows--Omnivorous Fish-- + Natives' Mode of catching them--The Village of a Half-brother + of Katema, his Speech and Present--Our Guide's Perversity-- + Mozenkwa's pleasant Home and Family--Clear Water of the + flooded Rivers--A Messenger from Katema--Quendende's Village: + his Kindness--Crop of Wool--Meet People from the Town of + Matiamvo--Fireside Talk--Matiamvo's Character and Conduct-- + Presentation at Katema's Court: his Present, good Sense, and + Appearance--Interview on the following Day--Cattle--A Feast + and a Makololo Dance--Arrest of a Fugitive--Dignified old + Courtier--Katema's lax Government--Cold Wind from the North-- + Canaries and other singing Birds--Spiders, their Nests and + Webs--Lake Dilolo--Tradition--Sagacity of Ants. + + Chapter 18. The Watershed between the northern and southern + Rivers--A deep Valley--Rustic Bridge--Fountains on the Slopes + of the Valleys--Village of Kabinje--Good Effects of the Belief + in the Power of Charms--Demand for Gunpowder and English + Calico--The Kasai--Vexatious Trick--Want of Food--No Game-- + Katende's unreasonable Demand--A grave Offense--Toll-bridge + Keeper--Greedy Guides--Flooded Valleys--Swim the Nyuana Loke-- + Prompt Kindness of my Men--Makololo Remarks on the rich + uncultivated Valleys--Difference in the Color of Africans-- + Reach a Village of the Chiboque--The Head Man's impudent + Message--Surrounds our Encampment with his Warriors--The + Pretense--Their Demand--Prospect of a Fight--Way in which it + was averted--Change our Path--Summer--Fever--Beehives and the + Honey-guide--Instinct of Trees--Climbers--The Ox Sinbad-- + Absence of Thorns in the Forests--Plant peculiar to a forsaken + Garden--Bad Guides--Insubordination suppressed--Beset by + Enemies--A Robber Party--More Troubles--Detained by Ionga + Panza--His Village--Annoyed by Bangala Traders--My Men + discouraged--Their Determination and Precaution. + + Chapter 19. Guides prepaid--Bark Canoes--Deserted by Guides-- + Mistakes respecting the Coanza--Feelings of freed Slaves-- + Gardens and Villages--Native Traders--A Grave--Valley of the + Quango--Bamboo--White Larvae used as Food--Bashinje Insolence-- + A posing Question--The Chief Sansawe--His Hostility--Pass him + safely--The River Quango--Chief's mode of dressing his Hair-- + Opposition--Opportune Aid by Cypriano--His generous + Hospitality--Ability of Half-castes to read and write--Books + and Images--Marauding Party burned in the Grass--Arrive at + Cassange--A good Supper--Kindness of Captain Neves-- + Portuguese Curiosity and Questions--Anniversary of the + Resurrection--No Prejudice against Color--Country around + Cassange--Sell Sekeletu's Ivory--Makololo's Surprise at the + high Price obtained--Proposal to return Home, and Reasons-- + Soldier-guide--Hill Kasala--Tala Mungongo, Village of-- + Civility of Basongo--True Negroes--A Field of Wheat--Carriers-- + Sleeping-places--Fever--Enter District of Ambaca--Good Fruits + of Jesuit Teaching--The 'Tampan'; its Bite--Universal + Hospitality of the Portuguese--A Tale of the Mambari-- + Exhilarating Effects of Highland Scenery--District of Golungo + Alto--Want of good Roads--Fertility--Forests of gigantic + Timber--Native Carpenters--Coffee Estate--Sterility of Country + near the Coast--Mosquitoes--Fears of the Makololo--Welcome by + Mr. Gabriel to Loanda. + + Chapter 20. Continued Sickness--Kindness of the Bishop of + Angola and her Majesty's Officers--Mr. Gabriel's unwearied + Hospitality--Serious Deportment of the Makololo--They visit + Ships of War--Politeness of the Officers and Men--The Makololo + attend Mass in the Cathedral--Their Remarks--Find Employment + in collecting Firewood and unloading Coal--Their superior + Judgment respecting Goods--Beneficial Influence of the Bishop + of Angola--The City of St. Paul de Loanda--The Harbor--Custom- + house--No English Merchants--Sincerity of the Portuguese + Government in suppressing the Slave-trade--Convict Soldiers-- + Presents from Bishop and Merchants for Sekeletu--Outfit--Leave + Loanda 20th September, 1854--Accompanied by Mr. Gabriel as far + as Icollo i Bengo--Sugar Manufactory--Geology of this part of + the Country--Women spinning Cotton--Its Price--Native Weavers-- + Market-places--Cazengo; its Coffee Plantations--South + American Trees--Ruins of Iron Foundry--Native Miners--The + Banks of the Lucalla--Cottages with Stages--Tobacco-plants-- + Town of Massangano--Sugar and Rice--Superior District for + Cotton--Portuguese Merchants and foreign Enterprise--Ruins-- + The Fort and its ancient Guns--Former Importance of + Massangano--Fires--The Tribe Kisama--Peculiar Variety of + Domestic Fowl--Coffee Plantations--Return to Golungo Alto-- + Self-complacency of the Makololo--Fever--Jaundice--Insanity. + + Chapter 21. Visit a deserted Convent--Favorable Report of + Jesuits and their Teaching--Gradations of native Society-- + Punishment of Thieves--Palm-toddy; its baneful Effects-- + Freemasons--Marriages and Funerals--Litigation--Mr. Canto's + Illness--Bad Behavior of his Slaves--An Entertainment--Ideas + on Free Labor--Loss of American Cotton-seed--Abundance of + Cotton in the country--Sickness of Sekeletu's Horse--Eclipse + of the Sun--Insects which distill Water--Experiments with + them--Proceed to Ambaca--Sickly Season--Office of Commandant-- + Punishment of official Delinquents--Present from Mr. Schut of + Loanda--Visit Pungo Andongo--Its good Pasturage, Grain, Fruit, + etc.--The Fort and columnar Rocks--The Queen of Jinga-- + Salubrity of Pungo Andongo--Price of a Slave--A Merchant- + prince--His Hospitality--Hear of the Loss of my Papers in + "Forerunner"--Narrow Escape from an Alligator--Ancient Burial- + places--Neglect of Agriculture in Angola--Manioc the staple + Product--Its Cheapness--Sickness--Friendly Visit from a + colored Priest--The Prince of Congo--No Priests in the + Interior of Angola. + + Chapter 22. Leave Pungo Andongo--Extent of Portuguese Power-- + Meet Traders and Carriers--Red Ants; their fierce Attack; + Usefulness; Numbers--Descend the Heights of Tala Mungongo-- + Fruit-trees in the Valley of Cassange--Edible Muscle--Birds-- + Cassange Village--Quinine and Cathory--Sickness of Captain + Neves' Infant--A Diviner thrashed--Death of the Child-- + Mourning--Loss of Life from the Ordeal--Wide-spread + Superstitions--The Chieftainship--Charms--Receive Copies of + the "Times"--Trading Pombeiros--Present for Matiamvo--Fever + after westerly Winds--Capabilities of Angola for producing the + raw Materials of English Manufacture--Trading Parties with + Ivory--More Fever--A Hyaena's Choice--Makololo Opinion of the + Portuguese--Cypriano's Debt--A Funeral--Dread of disembodied + Spirits--Beautiful Morning Scenes--Crossing the Quango-- + Ambakistas called "The Jews of Angola"--Fashions of the + Bashinje--Approach the Village of Sansawe--His Idea of + Dignity--The Pombeiros' Present--Long Detention--A Blow on the + Beard--Attacked in a Forest--Sudden Conversion of a fighting + Chief to Peace Principles by means of a Revolver--No Blood + shed in consequence--Rate of Traveling--Slave Women--Way of + addressing Slaves--Their thievish Propensities--Feeders of the + Congo or Zaire--Obliged to refuse Presents--Cross the Loajima-- + Appearance of People; Hair Fashions. + + Chapter 23. Make a Detour southward--Peculiarities of the + Inhabitants--Scarcity of Animals--Forests--Geological + Structure of the Country--Abundance and Cheapness of Food near + the Chihombo--A Slave lost--The Makololo Opinion of + Slaveholders--Funeral Obsequies in Cabango--Send a Sketch of + the Country to Mr. Gabriel--Native Information respecting the + Kasai and Quango--The Trade with Luba--Drainage of Londa-- + Report of Matiamvo's Country and Government--Senhor Faria's + Present to a Chief--The Balonda Mode of spending Time-- + Faithless Guide--Makololo lament the Ignorance of the Balonda-- + Eagerness of the Villagers for Trade--Civility of a Female + Chief--The Chief Bango and his People--Refuse to eat Beef-- + Ambition of Africans to have a Village--Winters in the + Interior--Spring at Kolobeng--White Ants: "Never could desire + to eat any thing better"--Young Herbage and Animals--Valley of + the Loembwe--The white Man a Hobgoblin--Specimen of + Quarreling--Eager Desire for Calico--Want of Clothing at + Kawawa's--Funeral Observances--Agreeable Intercourse with + Kawawa--His impudent Demand--Unpleasant Parting--Kawawa tries + to prevent our crossing the River Kasai--Stratagem. + + Chapter 24. Level Plains--Vultures and other Birds--Diversity + of Color in Flowers of the same Species--The Sundew--Twenty- + seventh Attack of Fever--A River which flows in opposite + Directions--Lake Dilolo the Watershed between the Atlantic and + Indian Oceans--Position of Rocks--Sir Roderick Murchison's + Explanation--Characteristics of the Rainy Season in connection + with the Floods of the Zambesi and the Nile--Probable Reason + of Difference in Amount of Rain South and North of the + Equator--Arab Reports of Region east of Londa--Probable + Watershed of the Zambesi and the Nile--Lake Dilolo--Reach + Katema's Town: his renewed Hospitality; desire to appear like + a White Man; ludicrous Departure--Jackdaws--Ford southern + Branch of Lake Dilolo--Small Fish--Project for a Makololo + Village near the Confluence of the Leeba and the Leeambye-- + Hearty Welcome from Shinte--Kolimbota's Wound--Plant-seeds and + Fruit-trees brought from Angola--Masiko and Limboa's Quarrel-- + Nyamoana now a Widow--Purchase Canoes and descend the Leeba-- + Herds of wild Animals on its Banks--Unsuccessful Buffalo- + hunt--Frogs--Sinbad and the Tsetse--Dispatch a Message to + Manenko--Arrival of her Husband Sambanza--The Ceremony called + Kasendi--Unexpected Fee for performing a surgical Operation-- + Social Condition of the Tribes--Desertion of Mboenga-- + Stratagem of Mambowe Hunters--Water-turtles--Charged by a + Buffalo--Reception from the People of Libonta--Explain the + Causes of our long Delay--Pitsane's Speech--Thanksgiving + Services--Appearance of my "Braves"--Wonderful Kindness of the + People. + + Chapter 25. Colony of Birds called Linkololo--The Village of + Chitlane--Murder of Mpololo's Daughter--Execution of the + Murderer and his Wife--My Companions find that their Wives + have married other Husbands--Sunday--A Party from Masiko-- + Freedom of Speech--Canoe struck by a Hippopotamus--Gonye-- + Appearance of Trees at the end of Winter--Murky Atmosphere-- + Surprising Amount of organic Life--Hornets--The Packages + forwarded by Mr. Moffat--Makololo Suspicions and Reply to the + Matebele who brought them--Convey the Goods to an Island and + build a Hut over them--Ascertain that Sir R. Murchison had + recognized the true Form of African Continent--Arrival at + Linyanti--A grand Picho--Shrewd Inquiry--Sekeletu in his + Uniform--A Trading-party sent to Loanda with Ivory--Mr. + Gabriel's Kindness to them--Difficulties in Trading--Two + Makololo Forays during our Absence--Report of the Country to + the N.E.--Death of influential Men--The Makololo desire to be + nearer the Market--Opinions upon a Change of Residence-- + Climate of Barotse Valley--Diseases--Author's Fevers not a + fair Criterion in the Matter--The Interior an inviting Field + for the Philanthropist--Consultations about a Path to the East + Coast--Decide on descending North Bank of Zambesi--Wait for + the Rainy Season--Native way of spending Time during the + period of greatest Heat--Favorable Opening for Missionary + Enterprise--Ben Habib wishes to marry--A Maiden's Choice-- + Sekeletu's Hospitality--Sulphureted Hydrogen and Malaria-- + Conversations with Makololo--Their moral Character and + Conduct--Sekeletu wishes to purchase a Sugar-mill, etc.--The + Donkeys--Influence among the Natives--"Food fit for a Chief"-- + Parting Words of Mamire--Motibe's Excuses. + + Chapter 26. Departure from Linyanti--A Thunder-storm--An Act + of genuine Kindness--Fitted out a second time by the Makololo-- + Sail down the Leeambye--Sekote's Kotla and human Skulls; his + Grave adorned with Elephants' Tusks--Victoria Falls--Native + Names--Columns of Vapor--Gigantic Crack--Wear of the Rocks-- + Shrines of the Barimo--"The Pestle of the Gods"--Second Visit + to the Falls--Island Garden--Store-house Island--Native + Diviners--A European Diviner--Makololo Foray--Marauder to be + fined--Mambari--Makololo wish to stop Mambari Slave-trading-- + Part with Sekeletu--Night Traveling--River Lekone--Ancient + fresh-water Lakes--Formation of Lake Ngami--Native Traditions-- + Drainage of the Great Valley--Native Reports of the Country + to the North--Maps--Moyara's Village--Savage Customs of the + Batoka--A Chain of Trading Stations--Remedy against Tsetse-- + "The Well of Joy"--First Traces of Trade with Europeans-- + Knocking out the front Teeth--Facetious Explanation-- + Degradation of the Batoka--Description of the Traveling Party-- + Cross the Unguesi--Geological Formation--Ruins of a large + Town--Productions of the Soil similar to those in Angola-- + Abundance of Fruit. + + Chapter 27. Low Hills--Black Soldier-Ants; their Cannibalism-- + The Plasterer and its Chloroform--White Ants; their + Usefulness--Mutokwane-smoking; its Effects--Border Territory-- + Healthy Table-lands--Geological Formation--Cicadae--Trees-- + Flowers--River Kalomo--Physical Conformation of Country-- + Ridges, sanatoria--A wounded Buffalo assisted--Buffalo-bird-- + Rhinoceros-bird--Leaders of Herds--The Honey-guide--The White + Mountain--Mozuma River--Sebituane's old Home--Hostile Village-- + Prophetic Phrensy--Food of the Elephant--Ant-hills--Friendly + Batoka--Clothing despised--Method of Salutation--Wild Fruits-- + The Captive released--Longings for Peace--Pingola's Conquests-- + The Village of Monze--Aspect of the Country--Visit from the + Chief Monze and his Wife--Central healthy Locations--Friendly + Feelings of the People in reference to a white Resident-- + Fertility of the Soil--Bashukulompo Mode of dressing their + Hair--Gratitude of the Prisoner we released--Kindness and + Remarks of Monze's Sister--Dip of the Rocks--Vegetation-- + Generosity of the Inhabitants--Their Anxiety for Medicine-- + Hooping-cough--Birds and Rain. + + Chapter 28. Beautiful Valley--Buffalo--My young Men kill two + Elephants--The Hunt--Mode of measuring Height of live + Elephants--Wild Animals smaller here than in the South, though + their Food is more abundant--The Elephant a dainty Feeder-- + Semalembue--His Presents--Joy in prospect of living in Peace-- + Trade--His People's way of wearing their Hair--Their Mode of + Salutation--Old Encampment--Sebituane's former Residence--Ford + of Kafue--Hippopotami--Hills and Villages--Geological + Formation--Prodigious Quantities of large Game--Their + Tameness--Rains--Less Sickness than in the Journey to Loanda-- + Reason--Charge from an Elephant--Vast Amount of animal Life on + the Zambesi--Water of River discolored--An Island with + Buffaloes and Men on it--Native Devices for killing Game-- + Tsetse now in Country--Agricultural Industry--An Albino + murdered by his Mother--"Guilty of Tlolo"--Women who make + their Mouths "like those of Ducks"--First Symptom of the + Slave-trade on this side--Selole's Hostility--An armed Party + hoaxed--An Italian Marauder slain--Elephant's Tenacity of + Life--A Word to young Sportsmen--Mr. Oswell's Adventure with + an Elephant; narrow Escape--Mburuma's Village--Suspicious + Conduct of his People--Guides attempt to detain us--The + Village and People of Ma Mburuma--Character our Guides give of + us. + + Chapter 29. Confluence of Loangwa and Zambesi--Hostile + Appearances--Ruins of a Church--Turmoil of Spirit--Cross the + River--Friendly Parting--Ruins of stone Houses--The Situation + of Zumbo for Commerce--Pleasant Gardens--Dr. Lacerda's Visit + to Cazembe--Pereira's Statement--Unsuccessful Attempt to + establish Trade with the People of Cazembe--One of my Men + tossed by a Buffalo--Meet a Man with Jacket and Hat on--Hear + of the Portuguese and native War--Holms and Terraces on the + Banks of a River--Dancing for Corn--Beautiful Country-- + Mpende's Hostility--Incantations--A Fight anticipated--Courage + and Remarks of my Men--Visit from two old Councilors of + Mpende--Their Opinion of the English--Mpende concludes not to + fight us--His subsequent Friendship--Aids us to cross the + River--The Country--Sweet Potatoes--Bakwain Theory of Rain + confirmed--Thunder without Clouds--Desertion of one of my Men-- + Other Natives' Ideas of the English--Dalama (gold)-- + Inhabitants dislike Slave-buyers--Meet native Traders with + American Calico--Game-laws--Elephant Medicine--Salt from the + Sand--Fertility of Soil--Spotted Hyaena--Liberality and + Politeness of the People--Presents--A stingy white Trader-- + Natives' Remarks about him--Effect on their Minds--Rain and + Wind now from an opposite Direction--Scarcity of Fuel--Trees + for Boat-building--Boroma--Freshets--Leave the River--Chicova, + its Geological Features--Small Rapid near Tete--Loquacious + Guide--Nyampungo, the Rain-charmer--An old Man--No Silver-- + Gold-washing--No Cattle. + + Chapter 30. An Elephant-hunt--Offering and Prayers to the + Barimo for Success--Native Mode of Expression--Working of + Game-laws--A Feast--Laughing Hyaenas--Numerous Insects-- + Curious Notes of Birds of Song--Caterpillars--Butterflies-- + Silica--The Fruit Makoronga and Elephants--Rhinoceros + Adventure--Korwe Bird--Its Nest--A real Confinement--Honey and + Beeswax--Superstitious Reverence for the Lion--Slow Traveling-- + Grapes--The Ue--Monina's Village--Native Names--Government of + the Banyai--Electing a Chief--Youths instructed in "Bonyai"-- + Suspected of Falsehood--War-dance--Insanity and Disappearance + of Monahin--Fruitless Search--Monina's Sympathy--The Sand- + river Tangwe--The Ordeal Muavi: its Victims--An unreasonable + Man--"Woman's Rights"--Presents--Temperance--A winding Course + to shun Villages--Banyai Complexion and Hair--Mushrooms--The + Tubers, Mokuri--The Tree Shekabakadzi--Face of the Country-- + Pot-holes--Pursued by a Party of Natives--Unpleasant Threat-- + Aroused by a Company of Soldiers--A civilized Breakfast-- + Arrival at Tete. + + Chapter 31. Kind Reception from the Commandant--His Generosity + to my Men--The Village of Tete--The Population--Distilled + Spirits--The Fort--Cause of the Decadence of Portuguese Power-- + Former Trade--Slaves employed in Gold-washing--Slave-trade + drained the Country of Laborers--The Rebel Nyaude's Stockade-- + He burns Tete--Kisaka's Revolt and Ravages--Extensive Field of + Sugar-cane--The Commandant's good Reputation among the + Natives--Providential Guidance--Seams of Coal--A hot Spring-- + Picturesque Country--Water-carriage to the Coal-fields-- + Workmen's Wages--Exports--Price of Provisions--Visit Gold- + washings--The Process of obtaining the precious Metal--Coal + within a Gold-field--Present from Major Sicard--Natives raise + Wheat, etc.--Liberality of the Commandant--Geographical + Information from Senhor Candido--Earthquakes--Native Ideas of + a Supreme Being--Also of the Immortality and Transmigration of + Souls--Fondness for Display at Funerals--Trade Restrictions-- + Former Jesuit Establishment--State of Religion and Education + at Tete--Inundation of the Zambesi--Cotton cultivated--The + fibrous Plants Conge and Buaze--Detained by Fever--The + Kumbanzo Bark--Native Medicines--Iron, its Quality--Hear of + Famine at Kilimane--Death of a Portuguese Lady--The Funeral-- + Disinterested Kindness of the Portuguese. + + Chapter 32. Leave Tete and proceed down the River--Pass the + Stockade of Bonga--Gorge of Lupata--"Spine of the World"-- + Width of River--Islands--War Drum at Shiramba--Canoe + Navigation--Reach Senna--Its ruinous State--Landeens levy + Fines upon the Inhabitants--Cowardice of native Militia--State + of the Revenue--No direct Trade with Portugal--Attempts to + revive the Trade of Eastern Africa--Country round Senna-- + Gorongozo, a Jesuit Station--Manica, the best Gold Region in + Eastern Africa--Boat-building at Senna--Our Departure--Capture + of a Rebel Stockade--Plants Alfacinya and Njefu at the + Confluence of the Shire--Landeen Opinion of the Whites-- + Mazaro, the point reached by Captain Parker--His Opinion + respecting the Navigation of the River from this to the Ocean-- + Lieutenant Hoskins' Remarks on the same subject--Fever, its + Effects--Kindly received into the House of Colonel Nunes at + Kilimane--Forethought of Captain Nolloth and Dr. Walsh--Joy + imbittered--Deep Obligations to the Earl of Clarendon, etc.-- + On developing Resources of the Interior--Desirableness of + Missionary Societies selecting healthy Stations--Arrangements + on leaving my Men--Retrospect--Probable Influence of the + Discoveries on Slavery--Supply of Cotton, Sugar, etc., by Free + Labor--Commercial Stations--Development of the Resources of + Africa a Work of Time--Site of Kilimane--Unhealthiness--Death + of a shipwrecked Crew from Fever--The Captain saved by + Quinine--Arrival of H. M. Brig "Frolic"--Anxiety of one of my + Men to go to England--Rough Passage in the Boats to the Ship-- + Sekwebu's Alarm--Sail for Mauritius--Sekwebu on board; he + becomes insane; drowns himself--Kindness of Major-General C. + M. Hay--Escape Shipwreck--Reach Home. + + Appendix.--Latitudes and Longitudes of Positions. + + Appendix.--Book Review in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, + February, 1858. + + Appendix.--Notes to etext. + +-------------------------------------------------- + +Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. + +-------------------------------------------------- + + + + +Introduction. + + +Personal Sketch--Highland Ancestors--Family Traditions--Grandfather +removes to the Lowlands--Parents--Early Labors and Efforts +--Evening School--Love of Reading--Religious Impressions--Medical +Education--Youthful Travels--Geology--Mental Discipline--Study +in Glasgow--London Missionary Society--Native Village--Medical +Diploma--Theological Studies--Departure for Africa--No Claim to Literary +Accomplishments. + + + +My own inclination would lead me to say as little as possible about +myself; but several friends, in whose judgment I have confidence, have +suggested that, as the reader likes to know something about the author, +a short account of his origin and early life would lend additional +interest to this book. Such is my excuse for the following egotism; and, +if an apology be necessary for giving a genealogy, I find it in the fact +that it is not very long, and contains only one incident of which I have +reason to be proud. + +Our great-grandfather fell at the battle of Culloden, fighting for the +old line of kings; and our grandfather was a small farmer in Ulva, +where my father was born. It is one of that cluster of the Hebrides thus +alluded to by Walter Scott: + + "And Ulva dark, and Colonsay, + And all the group of islets gay + That guard famed Staffa round."* + + * Lord of the Isles, canto 4. + +Our grandfather was intimately acquainted with all the traditionary +legends which that great writer has since made use of in the "Tales of a +Grandfather" and other works. As a boy I remember listening to him with +delight, for his memory was stored with a never-ending stock of stories, +many of which were wonderfully like those I have since heard while +sitting by the African evening fires. Our grandmother, too, used to +sing Gaelic songs, some of which, as she believed, had been composed by +captive islanders languishing hopelessly among the Turks. + +Grandfather could give particulars of the lives of his ancestors for +six generations of the family before him; and the only point of the +tradition I feel proud of is this: One of these poor hardy islanders +was renowned in the district for great wisdom and prudence; and it is +related that, when he was on his death-bed, he called all his children +around him and said, "Now, in my lifetime, I have searched most +carefully through all the traditions I could find of our family, and +I never could discover that there was a dishonest man among our +forefathers. If, therefore, any of you or any of your children should +take to dishonest ways, it will not be because it runs in our blood: it +does not belong to you. I leave this precept with you: Be honest." If, +therefore, in the following pages I fall into any errors, I hope they +will be dealt with as honest mistakes, and not as indicating that I have +forgotten our ancient motto. This event took place at a time when the +Highlanders, according to Macaulay, were much like the Cape Caffres, +and any one, it was said, could escape punishment for cattle-stealing by +presenting a share of the plunder to his chieftain. Our ancestors were +Roman Catholics; they were made Protestants by the laird coming round +with a man having a yellow staff, which would seem to have attracted +more attention than his teaching, for the new religion went long +afterward, perhaps it does so still, by the name of "the religion of the +yellow stick". + +Finding his farm in Ulva insufficient to support a numerous family, my +grandfather removed to Blantyre Works, a large cotton manufactory on +the beautiful Clyde, above Glasgow; and his sons, having had the best +education the Hebrides afforded, were gladly received as clerks by +the proprietors, Monteith and Co. He himself, highly esteemed for his +unflinching honesty, was employed in the conveyance of large sums of +money from Glasgow to the works, and in old age was, according to the +custom of that company, pensioned off, so as to spend his declining +years in ease and comfort. + +Our uncles all entered his majesty's service during the last French +war, either as soldiers or sailors; but my father remained at home, and, +though too conscientious ever to become rich as a small tea-dealer, by +his kindliness of manner and winning ways he made the heart-strings +of his children twine around him as firmly as if he had possessed, and +could have bestowed upon them, every worldly advantage. He reared +his children in connection with the Kirk of Scotland--a religious +establishment which has been an incalculable blessing to that +country--but he afterward left it, and during the last twenty years of +his life held the office of deacon of an independent church in Hamilton, +and deserved my lasting gratitude and homage for presenting me, from +my infancy, with a continuously consistent pious example, such as that +ideal of which is so beautifully and truthfully portrayed in Burns's +"Cottar's Saturday Night". He died in February, 1856, in peaceful hope +of that mercy which we all expect through the death of our Lord and +Savior. I was at the time on my way below Zumbo, expecting no greater +pleasure in this country than sitting by our cottage fire and telling +him my travels. I revere his memory. + +The earliest recollection of my mother recalls a picture so often seen +among the Scottish poor--that of the anxious housewife striving to +make both ends meet. At the age of ten I was put into the factory as a +"piecer", to aid by my earnings in lessening her anxiety. With a part of +my first week's wages I purchased Ruddiman's "Rudiments of Latin", +and pursued the study of that language for many years afterward, with +unabated ardor, at an evening school, which met between the hours of +eight and ten. The dictionary part of my labors was followed up till +twelve o'clock, or later, if my mother did not interfere by jumping up +and snatching the books out of my hands. I had to be back in the +factory by six in the morning, and continue my work, with intervals for +breakfast and dinner, till eight o'clock at night. I read in this way +many of the classical authors, and knew Virgil and Horace better at +sixteen than I do now. Our schoolmaster--happily still alive--was +supported in part by the company; he was attentive and kind, and so +moderate in his charges that all who wished for education might have +obtained it. Many availed themselves of the privilege; and some of my +schoolfellows now rank in positions far above what they appeared ever +likely to come to when in the village school. If such a system were +established in England, it would prove a never-ending blessing to the +poor. + +In reading, every thing that I could lay my hands on was devoured except +novels. Scientific works and books of travels were my especial delight; +though my father, believing, with many of his time who ought to have +known better, that the former were inimical to religion, would have +preferred to have seen me poring over the "Cloud of Witnesses", or +Boston's "Fourfold State". Our difference of opinion reached the point +of open rebellion on my part, and his last application of the rod was +on my refusal to peruse Wilberforce's "Practical Christianity". This +dislike to dry doctrinal reading, and to religious reading of every +sort, continued for years afterward; but having lighted on those +admirable works of Dr. Thomas Dick, "The Philosophy of Religion" and +"The Philosophy of a Future State", it was gratifying to find my own +ideas, that religion and science are not hostile, but friendly to each +other, fully proved and enforced. + +Great pains had been taken by my parents to instill the doctrines of +Christianity into my mind, and I had no difficulty in understanding the +theory of our free salvation by the atonement of our Savior, but it was +only about this time that I really began to feel the necessity and value +of a personal application of the provisions of that atonement to my own +case. The change was like what may be supposed would take place were it +possible to cure a case of "color blindness". The perfect freeness with +which the pardon of all our guilt is offered in God's book drew forth +feelings of affectionate love to Him who bought us with his blood, and +a sense of deep obligation to Him for his mercy has influenced, in some +small measure, my conduct ever since. But I shall not again refer to +the inner spiritual life which I believe then began, nor do I intend to +specify with any prominence the evangelistic labors to which the love of +Christ has since impelled me. This book will speak, not so much of what +has been done, as of what still remains to be performed, before the +Gospel can be said to be preached to all nations. + +In the glow of love which Christianity inspires, I soon resolved to +devote my life to the alleviation of human misery. Turning this idea +over in my mind, I felt that to be a pioneer of Christianity in China +might lead to the material benefit of some portions of that immense +empire; and therefore set myself to obtain a medical education, in order +to be qualified for that enterprise. + +In recognizing the plants pointed out in my first medical book, that +extraordinary old work on astrological medicine, Culpeper's "Herbal", +I had the guidance of a book on the plants of Lanarkshire, by Patrick. +Limited as my time was, I found opportunities to scour the whole +country-side, "collecting simples". Deep and anxious were my studies on +the still deeper and more perplexing profundities of astrology, and I +believe I got as far into that abyss of phantasies as my author said he +dared to lead me. It seemed perilous ground to tread on farther, for the +dark hint seemed to my youthful mind to loom toward "selling soul and +body to the devil", as the price of the unfathomable knowledge of the +stars. These excursions, often in company with brothers, one now in +Canada, and the other a clergyman in the United States, gratified my +intense love of nature; and though we generally returned so unmercifully +hungry and fatigued that the embryo parson shed tears, yet we +discovered, to us, so many new and interesting things, that he was +always as eager to join us next time as he was the last. + +On one of these exploring tours we entered a limestone quarry--long +before geology was so popular as it is now. It is impossible to describe +the delight and wonder with which I began to collect the shells found +in the carboniferous limestone which crops out in High Blantyre and +Cambuslang. A quarry-man, seeing a little boy so engaged, looked with +that pitying eye which the benevolent assume when viewing the insane. +Addressing him with, "How ever did these shells come into these rocks?" +"When God made the rocks, he made the shells in them," was the damping +reply. What a deal of trouble geologists might have saved themselves by +adopting the Turk-like philosophy of this Scotchman! + +My reading while at work was carried on by placing the book on a portion +of the spinning-jenny, so that I could catch sentence after sentence as +I passed at my work; I thus kept up a pretty constant study undisturbed +by the roar of the machinery. To this part of my education I owe my +present power of completely abstracting the mind from surrounding +noises, so as to read and write with perfect comfort amid the play +of children or near the dancing and songs of savages. The toil of +cotton-spinning, to which I was promoted in my nineteenth year, was +excessively severe on a slim, loose-jointed lad, but it was well paid +for; and it enabled me to support myself while attending medical and +Greek classes in Glasgow in winter, as also the divinity lectures of Dr. +Wardlaw, by working with my hands in summer. I never received a farthing +of aid from any one, and should have accomplished my project of going to +China as a medical missionary, in the course of time, by my own efforts, +had not some friends advised my joining the London Missionary Society +on account of its perfectly unsectarian character. It "sends neither +Episcopacy, nor Presbyterianism, nor Independency, but the Gospel of +Christ to the heathen." This exactly agreed with my ideas of what a +missionary society ought to do; but it was not without a pang that I +offered myself, for it was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to work +his own way to become in a measure dependent on others; and I would not +have been much put about though my offer had been rejected. + +Looking back now on that life of toil, I can not but feel thankful +that it formed such a material part of my early education; and, were +it possible, I should like to begin life over again in the same lowly +style, and to pass through the same hardy training. + +Time and travel have not effaced the feelings of respect I imbibed for +the humble inhabitants of my native village. For morality, honesty, +and intelligence, they were, in general, good specimens of the Scottish +poor. In a population of more than two thousand souls, we had, of +course, a variety of character. In addition to the common run of men, +there were some characters of sterling worth and ability, who exerted +a most beneficial influence on the children and youth of the place by +imparting gratuitous religious instruction.* Much intelligent interest +was felt by the villagers in all public questions, and they furnished a +proof that the possession of the means of education did not render them +an unsafe portion of the population. They felt kindly toward each other, +and much respected those of the neighboring gentry who, like the late +Lord Douglas, placed some confidence in their sense of honor. Through +the kindness of that nobleman, the poorest among us could stroll at +pleasure over the ancient domains of Bothwell, and other spots hallowed +by the venerable associations of which our school-books and local +traditions made us well aware; and few of us could view the dear +memorials of the past without feeling that these carefully kept +monuments were our own. The masses of the working-people of Scotland +have read history, and are no revolutionary levelers. They rejoice in +the memories of "Wallace and Bruce and a' the lave," who are still much +revered as the former champions of freedom. And while foreigners imagine +that we want the spirit only to overturn capitalists and aristocracy, we +are content to respect our laws till we can change them, and hate those +stupid revolutions which might sweep away time-honored institutions, +dear alike to rich and poor. + + * The reader will pardon my mentioning the names of two of + these most worthy men--David Hogg, who addressed me on his + death-bed with the words, "Now, lad, make religion the every- + day business of your life, and not a thing of fits and starts; + for if you do not, temptation and other things will get the + better of you;" and Thomas Burke, an old Forty-second + Peninsula soldier, who has been incessant and never weary in + good works for about forty years. I was delighted to find him + still alive; men like these are an honor to their country and + profession. + +Having finished the medical curriculum and presented a thesis on a +subject which required the use of the stethoscope for its diagnosis, I +unwittingly procured for myself an examination rather more severe +and prolonged than usual among examining bodies. The reason was, that +between me and the examiners a slight difference of opinion existed as +to whether this instrument could do what was asserted. The wiser +plan would have been to have had no opinion of my own. However, I was +admitted a Licentiate of Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons. It was +with unfeigned delight I became a member of a profession which is +pre-eminently devoted to practical benevolence, and which with unwearied +energy pursues from age to age its endeavors to lessen human woe. + +But though now qualified for my original plan, the opium war was then +raging, and it was deemed inexpedient for me to proceed to China. I had +fondly hoped to have gained access to that then closed empire by means +of the healing art; but there being no prospect of an early peace with +the Chinese, and as another inviting field was opening out through the +labors of Mr. Moffat, I was induced to turn my thoughts to Africa; and +after a more extended course of theological training in England than +I had enjoyed in Glasgow, I embarked for Africa in 1840, and, after a +voyage of three months, reached Cape Town. Spending but a short time +there, I started for the interior by going round to Algoa Bay, and soon +proceeded inland, and have spent the following sixteen years of my +life, namely, from 1840 to 1856, in medical and missionary labors there +without cost to the inhabitants. + +As to those literary qualifications which are acquired by habits of +writing, and which are so important to an author, my African life has +not only not been favorable to the growth of such accomplishments, but +quite the reverse; it has made composition irksome and laborious. I +think I would rather cross the African continent again than undertake to +write another book. It is far easier to travel than to write about it. +I intended on going to Africa to continue my studies; but as I could not +brook the idea of simply entering into other men's labors made ready to +my hands, I entailed on myself, in addition to teaching, manual labor +in building and other handicraft work, which made me generally as much +exhausted and unfit for study in the evenings as ever I had been when +a cotton-spinner. The want of time for self-improvement was the only +source of regret that I experienced during my African career. The +reader, remembering this, will make allowances for the mere gropings for +light of a student who has the vanity to think himself "not yet too old +to learn". More precise information on several subjects has necessarily +been omitted in a popular work like the present; but I hope to give such +details to the scientific reader through some other channel. + + + + +Chapter 1. + +The Bakwain Country--Study of the Language--Native Ideas regarding +Comets--Mabotsa Station--A Lion Encounter--Virus of the Teeth of +Lions--Names of the Bechuana Tribes--Sechele--His Ancestors--Obtains +the Chieftainship--His Marriage and Government--The Kotla--First public +Religious Services--Sechele's Questions--He Learns to Read--Novel +mode for Converting his Tribe--Surprise at their Indifference-- +Polygamy--Baptism of Sechele--Opposition of the Natives--Purchase Land +at Chonuane--Relations with the People--Their Intelligence--Prolonged +Drought--Consequent Trials--Rain-medicine--God's Word blamed--Native +Reasoning--Rain-maker--Dispute between Rain Doctor and Medical +Doctor--The Hunting Hopo--Salt or animal Food a necessary of +Life--Duties of a Missionary. + + + +The general instructions I received from the Directors of the London +Missionary Society led me, as soon as I reached Kuruman or Lattakoo, +then, as it is now, their farthest inland station from the Cape, to turn +my attention to the north. Without waiting longer at Kuruman than was +necessary to recruit the oxen, which were pretty well tired by the long +journey from Algoa Bay, I proceeded, in company with another missionary, +to the Bakuena or Bakwain country, and found Sechele, with his tribe, +located at Shokuane. We shortly after retraced our steps to Kuruman; but +as the objects in view were by no means to be attained by a temporary +excursion of this sort, I determined to make a fresh start into the +interior as soon as possible. Accordingly, after resting three months at +Kuruman, which is a kind of head station in the country, I returned to +a spot about fifteen miles south of Shokuane, called Lepelole (now +Litubaruba). Here, in order to obtain an accurate knowledge of the +language, I cut myself off from all European society for about six +months, and gained by this ordeal an insight into the habits, ways of +thinking, laws, and language of that section of the Bechuanas called +Bakwains, which has proved of incalculable advantage in my intercourse +with them ever since. + +In this second journey to Lepelole--so called from a cavern of that +name--I began preparations for a settlement, by making a canal to +irrigate gardens, from a stream then flowing copiously, but now quite +dry. When these preparations were well advanced, I went northward to +visit the Bakaa and Bamangwato, and the Makalaka, living between 22 +Degrees and 23 Degrees south latitude. The Bakaa Mountains had been +visited before by a trader, who, with his people, all perished from +fever. In going round the northern part of these basaltic hills near +Letloche I was only ten days distant from the lower part of the Zouga, +which passed by the same name as Lake Ngami;* and I might then (in 1842) +have discovered that lake, had discovery alone been my object. Most part +of this journey beyond Shokuane was performed on foot, in consequence +of the draught oxen having become sick. Some of my companions who had +recently joined us, and did not know that I understood a little of their +speech, were overheard by me discussing my appearance and powers: "He +is not strong; he is quite slim, and only appears stout because he puts +himself into those bags (trowsers); he will soon knock up." This caused +my Highland blood to rise, and made me despise the fatigue of keeping +them all at the top of their speed for days together, and until I heard +them expressing proper opinions of my pedestrian powers. + + * Several words in the African languages begin with the ringing sound + heard in the end of the word "comING". If the reader puts an 'i' + to the beginning of the name of the lake, as Ingami, + and then sounds the 'i' as little as possible, he will have + the correct pronunciation. The Spanish n [ny] is employed + to denote this sound, and Ngami is spelt nyami--naka means a tusk, + nyaka a doctor. Every vowel is sounded in all native words, + and the emphasis in pronunciation is put upon the penultimate. + +Returning to Kuruman, in order to bring my luggage to our proposed +settlement, I was followed by the news that the tribe of Bakwains, +who had shown themselves so friendly toward me, had been driven from +Lepelole by the Barolongs, so that my prospects for the time of forming +a settlement there were at an end. One of those periodical outbreaks +of war, which seem to have occurred from time immemorial, for the +possession of cattle, had burst forth in the land, and had so changed +the relations of the tribes to each other, that I was obliged to set out +anew to look for a suitable locality for a mission station. + +In going north again, a comet blazed on our sight, exciting the +wonder of every tribe we visited. That of 1816 had been followed by an +irruption of the Matebele, the most cruel enemies the Bechuanas ever +knew, and this they thought might portend something as bad, or it might +only foreshadow the death of some great chief. On this subject of comets +I knew little more than they did themselves, but I had that confidence +in a kind, overruling Providence, which makes such a difference between +Christians and both the ancient and modern heathen. + +As some of the Bamangwato people had accompanied me to Kuruman, I was +obliged to restore them and their goods to their chief Sekomi. This made +a journey to the residence of that chief again necessary, and, for the +first time, I performed a distance of some hundred miles on ox-back. + +Returning toward Kuruman, I selected the beautiful valley of Mabotsa +(lat. 25d 14' south, long. 26d 30'?) as the site of a missionary +station, and thither I removed in 1843. Here an occurrence took place +concerning which I have frequently been questioned in England, and +which, but for the importunities of friends, I meant to have kept in +store to tell my children when in my dotage. The Bakatla of the village +Mabotsa were much troubled by lions, which leaped into the cattle-pens +by night, and destroyed their cows. They even attacked the herds in open +day. This was so unusual an occurrence that the people believed that +they were bewitched--"given," as they said, "into the power of the lions +by a neighboring tribe." They went once to attack the animals, but, +being rather a cowardly people compared to Bechuanas in general on such +occasions, they returned without killing any. + +It is well known that if one of a troop of lions is killed, the others +take the hint and leave that part of the country. So, the next time the +herds were attacked, I went with the people, in order to encourage them +to rid themselves of the annoyance by destroying one of the marauders. +We found the lions on a small hill about a quarter of a mile in length, +and covered with trees. A circle of men was formed round it, and they +gradually closed up, ascending pretty near to each other. Being down +below on the plain with a native schoolmaster, named Mebalwe, a most +excellent man, I saw one of the lions sitting on a piece of rock within +the now closed circle of men. Mebalwe fired at him before I could, and +the ball struck the rock on which the animal was sitting. He bit at +the spot struck, as a dog does at a stick or stone thrown at him; then +leaping away, broke through the opening circle and escaped unhurt. The +men were afraid to attack him, perhaps on account of their belief in +witchcraft. When the circle was re-formed, we saw two other lions in +it; but we were afraid to fire lest we should strike the men, and they +allowed the beasts to burst through also. If the Bakatla had acted +according to the custom of the country, they would have speared the +lions in their attempt to get out. Seeing we could not get them to kill +one of the lions, we bent our footsteps toward the village; in going +round the end of the hill, however, I saw one of the beasts sitting on +a piece of rock as before, but this time he had a little bush in front. +Being about thirty yards off, I took a good aim at his body through the +bush, and fired both barrels into it. The men then called out, "He is +shot, he is shot!" Others cried, "He has been shot by another man too; +let us go to him!" I did not see any one else shoot at him, but I saw +the lion's tail erected in anger behind the bush, and, turning to the +people, said, "Stop a little, till I load again." When in the act of +ramming down the bullets, I heard a shout. Starting, and looking half +round, I saw the lion just in the act of springing upon me. I was upon +a little height; he caught my shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to +the ground below together. Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook +me as a terrier dog does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to +that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat. +It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor +feeling of terror, though quite conscious of all that was happening. +It was like what patients partially under the influence of chloroform +describe, who see all the operation, but feel not the knife. This +singular condition was not the result of any mental process. The shake +annihilated fear, and allowed no sense of horror in looking round at the +beast. This peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed +by the carnivora; and if so, is a merciful provision by our benevolent +Creator for lessening the pain of death. Turning round to relieve myself +of the weight, as he had one paw on the back of my head, I saw his eyes +directed to Mebalwe, who was trying to shoot him at a distance of ten +or fifteen yards. His gun, a flint one, missed fire in both barrels; the +lion immediately left me, and, attacking Mebalwe, bit his thigh. Another +man, whose life I had saved before, after he had been tossed by a +buffalo, attempted to spear the lion while he was biting Mebalwe. He +left Mebalwe and caught this man by the shoulder, but at that moment the +bullets he had received took effect, and he fell down dead. The whole +was the work of a few moments, and must have been his paroxysms of +dying rage. In order to take out the charm from him, the Bakatla on the +following day made a huge bonfire over the carcass, which was declared +to be that of the largest lion they had ever seen. Besides crunching the +bone into splinters, he left eleven teeth wounds on the upper part of my +arm. + +A wound from this animal's tooth resembles a gun-shot wound; it is +generally followed by a great deal of sloughing and discharge, and pains +are felt in the part periodically ever afterward. I had on a tartan +jacket on the occasion, and I believe that it wiped off all the virus +from the teeth that pierced the flesh, for my two companions in this +affray have both suffered from the peculiar pains, while I have escaped +with only the inconvenience of a false joint in my limb. The man whose +shoulder was wounded showed me his wound actually burst forth afresh on +the same month of the following year. This curious point deserves the +attention of inquirers. + +The different Bechuana tribes are named after certain animals, showing +probably that in former times they were addicted to animal-worship like +the ancient Egyptians. The term Bakatla means "they of the monkey"; +Bakuena, "they of the alligator"; Batlapi, "they of the fish": each +tribe having a superstitious dread of the animal after which it is +called. They also use the word "bina", to dance, in reference to the +custom of thus naming themselves, so that, when you wish to ascertain +what tribe they belong to, you say, "What do you dance?" It would seem +as if that had been a part of the worship of old. A tribe never eats the +animal which is its namesake, using the term "ila", hate or dread, in +reference to killing it. We find traces of many ancient tribes in the +country in individual members of those now extinct, as the Batau, "they +of the lion"; the Banoga, "they of the serpent"; though no such tribes +now exist. The use of the personal pronoun they, Ba-Ma, Wa, Va or Ova, +Am-Ki, &c., prevails very extensively in the names of tribes in Africa. +A single individual is indicated by the terms Mo or Le. Thus Mokwain is +a single person of the Bakwain tribe, and Lekoa is a single white man or +Englishman--Makoa being Englishmen. + +I attached myself to the tribe called Bakuena or Bakwains, the chief of +which, named Sechele, was then living with his people at a place called +Shokuane. I was from the first struck by his intelligence, and by +the marked manner in which we both felt drawn to each other. As this +remarkable man has not only embraced Christianity, but expounds its +doctrines to his people, I will here give a brief sketch of his career. + +His great-grandfather Mochoasele was a great traveler, and the first +that ever told the Bakwains of the existence of white men. In his +father's lifetime two white travelers, whom I suppose to have been Dr. +Cowan and Captain Donovan, passed through the country (in 1808), and, +descending the River Limpopo, were, with their party, all cut off by +fever. The rain-makers there, fearing lest their wagons might drive away +the rain, ordered them to be thrown into the river. This is the true +account of the end of that expedition, as related to me by the son of +the chief at whose village they perished. He remembered, when a boy, +eating part of one of the horses, and said it tasted like zebra's flesh. +Thus they were not killed by the Bangwaketse, as reported, for they +passed the Bakwains all well. The Bakwains were then rich in cattle; and +as one of the many evidences of the desiccation of the country, streams +are pointed out where thousands and thousands of cattle formerly drank, +but in which water now never flows, and where a single herd could not +find fluid for its support. + +When Sechele was still a boy, his father, also called Mochoasele, was +murdered by his own people for taking to himself the wives of his +rich under-chiefs. The children being spared, their friends invited +Sebituane, the chief of the Makololo, who was then in those parts, to +reinstate them in the chieftainship. Sebituane surrounded the town +of the Bakwains by night; and just as it began to dawn, his herald +proclaimed in a loud voice that he had come to revenge the death of +Mochoasele. This was followed by Sebituane's people beating loudly on +their shields all round the town. The panic was tremendous, and the rush +like that from a theatre on fire, while the Makololo used their javelins +on the terrified Bakwains with a dexterity which they alone can employ. +Sebituane had given orders to his men to spare the sons of the chief; +and one of them, meeting Sechele, put him in ward by giving him such a +blow on the head with a club as to render him insensible. The usurper +was put to death; and Sechele, reinstated in his chieftainship, felt +much attached to Sebituane. The circumstances here noticed ultimately +led me, as will be seen by-and-by, into the new, well-watered country to +which this same Sebituane had preceded me by many years. + +Sechele married the daughters of three of his under-chiefs, who had, on +account of their blood relationship, stood by him in his adversity. This +is one of the modes adopted for cementing the allegiance of a tribe. The +government is patriarchal, each man being, by virtue of paternity, chief +of his own children. They build their huts around his, and the greater +the number of children, the more his importance increases. Hence +children are esteemed one of the greatest blessings, and are always +treated kindly. Near the centre of each circle of huts there is a spot +called a "kotla", with a fireplace; here they work, eat, or sit and +gossip over the news of the day. A poor man attaches himself to the +kotla of a rich one, and is considered a child of the latter. An +under-chief has a number of these circles around his; and the collection +of kotlas around the great one in the middle of the whole, that of the +principal chief, constitutes the town. The circle of huts immediately +around the kotla of the chief is composed of the huts of his wives and +those of his blood relations. He attaches the under-chiefs to himself +and his government by marrying, as Sechele did, their daughters, or +inducing his brothers to do so. They are fond of the relationship to +great families. If you meet a party of strangers, and the head man's +relationship to some uncle of a certain chief is not at once proclaimed +by his attendants, you may hear him whispering, "Tell him who I am." +This usually involves a counting on the fingers of a part of his +genealogical tree, and ends in the important announcement that the head +of the party is half-cousin to some well-known ruler. + +Sechele was thus seated in his chieftainship when I made his +acquaintance. On the first occasion in which I ever attempted to hold +a public religious service, he remarked that it was the custom of his +nation, when any new subject was brought before them, to put questions +on it; and he begged me to allow him to do the same in this case. On +expressing my entire willingness to answer his questions, he inquired if +my forefathers knew of a future judgment. I replied in the affirmative, +and began to describe the scene of the "great white throne, and Him who +shall sit on it, from whose face the heaven and earth shall flee away," +&c. He said, "You startle me: these words make all my bones to shake; I +have no more strength in me; but my forefathers were living at the same +time yours were, and how is it that they did not send them word about +these terrible things sooner? They all passed away into darkness +without knowing whither they were going." I got out of the difficulty +by explaining the geographical barriers in the North, and the gradual +spread of knowledge from the South, to which we first had access by +means of ships; and I expressed my belief that, as Christ had said, +the whole world would yet be enlightened by the Gospel. Pointing to the +great Kalahari desert, he said, "You never can cross that country to the +tribes beyond; it is utterly impossible even for us black men, except in +certain seasons, when more than the usual supply of rain falls, and +an extraordinary growth of watermelons follows. Even we who know the +country would certainly perish without them." Reasserting my belief +in the words of Christ, we parted; and it will be seen farther on that +Sechele himself assisted me in crossing that desert which had previously +proved an insurmountable barrier to so many adventurers. + +As soon as he had an opportunity of learning, he set himself to read +with such close application that, from being comparatively thin, the +effect of having been fond of the chase, he became quite corpulent from +want of exercise. Mr. Oswell gave him his first lesson in figures, and +he acquired the alphabet on the first day of my residence at Chonuane. +He was by no means an ordinary specimen of the people, for I never went +into the town but I was pressed to hear him read some chapters of the +Bible. Isaiah was a great favorite with him; and he was wont to use the +same phrase nearly which the professor of Greek at Glasgow, Sir D. +K. Sandford, once used respecting the Apostle Paul, when reading his +speeches in the Acts: "He was a fine fellow, that Paul!" "He was a fine +man, that Isaiah; he knew how to speak." Sechele invariably offered me +something to eat on every occasion of my visiting him. + +Seeing me anxious that his people should believe the words of Christ, he +once said, "Do you imagine these people will ever believe by your merely +talking to them? I can make them do nothing except by thrashing them; +and if you like, I shall call my head men, and with our litupa (whips of +rhinoceros hide) we will soon make them all believe together." The idea +of using entreaty and persuasion to subjects to become Christians--whose +opinion on no other matter would he condescend to ask--was especially +surprising to him. He considered that they ought only to be too happy to +embrace Christianity at his command. During the space of two years and +a half he continued to profess to his people his full conviction of the +truth of Christianity; and in all discussions on the subject he took +that side, acting at the same time in an upright manner in all the +relations of life. He felt the difficulties of his situation long before +I did, and often said, "Oh, I wish you had come to this country before +I became entangled in the meshes of our customs!" In fact, he could not +get rid of his superfluous wives, without appearing to be ungrateful to +their parents, who had done so much for him in his adversity. + +In the hope that others would be induced to join him in his attachment +to Christianity, he asked me to begin family worship with him in +his house. I did so; and by-and-by was surprised to hear how well he +conducted the prayer in his own simple and beautiful style, for he was +quite a master of his own language. At this time we were suffering from +the effects of a drought, which will be described further on, and none +except his family, whom he ordered to attend, came near his meeting. +"In former times," said he, "when a chief was fond of hunting, all +his people got dogs, and became fond of hunting too. If he was fond of +dancing or music, all showed a liking to these amusements too. If the +chief loved beer, they all rejoiced in strong drink. But in this case +it is different. I love the Word of God, and not one of my brethren will +join me." One reason why we had no volunteer hypocrites was the hunger +from drought, which was associated in their minds with the presence of +Christian instruction; and hypocrisy is not prone to profess a creed +which seems to insure an empty stomach. + +Sechele continued to make a consistent profession for about three years; +and perceiving at last some of the difficulties of his case, and also +feeling compassion for the poor women, who were by far the best of our +scholars, I had no desire that he should be in any hurry to make a +full profession by baptism, and putting away all his wives but one. His +principal wife, too, was about the most unlikely subject in the tribe +ever to become any thing else than an out-and-out greasy disciple of +the old school. She has since become greatly altered, I hear, for the +better; but again and again have I seen Sechele send her out of church +to put her gown on, and away she would go with her lips shot out, the +very picture of unutterable disgust at his new-fangled notions. + +When he at last applied for baptism, I simply asked him how he, having +the Bible in his hand, and able to read it, thought he ought to act. He +went home, gave each of his superfluous wives new clothing, and all his +own goods, which they had been accustomed to keep in their huts for him, +and sent them to their parents with an intimation that he had no fault +to find with them, but that in parting with them he wished to follow +the will of God. On the day on which he and his children were baptized, +great numbers came to see the ceremony. Some thought, from a stupid +calumny circulated by enemies to Christianity in the south, that the +converts would be made to drink an infusion of "dead men's brains", +and were astonished to find that water only was used at baptism. Seeing +several of the old men actually in tears during the service, I asked +them afterward the cause of their weeping; they were crying to see their +father, as the Scotch remark over a case of suicide, "SO FAR LEFT TO +HIMSELF". They seemed to think that I had thrown the glamour over him, +and that he had become mine. Here commenced an opposition which we had +not previously experienced. All the friends of the divorced wives became +the opponents of our religion. The attendance at school and church +diminished to very few besides the chief's own family. They all treated +us still with respectful kindness, but to Sechele himself they said +things which, as he often remarked, had they ventured on in former +times, would have cost them their lives. It was trying, after all we had +done, to see our labors so little appreciated; but we had sown the good +seed, and have no doubt but it will yet spring up, though we may not +live to see the fruits. + +Leaving this sketch of the chief, I proceed to give an equally rapid one +of our dealing with his people, the Bakena, or Bakwains. A small piece +of land, sufficient for a garden, was purchased when we first went to +live with them, though that was scarcely necessary in a country where +the idea of buying land was quite new. It was expected that a request +for a suitable spot would have been made, and that we should have +proceeded to occupy it as any other member of the tribe would. But we +explained to them that we wished to avoid any cause of future dispute +when land had become more valuable; or when a foolish chief began to +reign, and we had erected large or expensive buildings, he might wish +to claim the whole. These reasons were considered satisfactory. About 5 +Pounds worth of goods were given for a piece of land, and an arrangement +was come to that a similar piece should be allotted to any other +missionary, at any other place to which the tribe might remove. The +particulars of the sale sounded strangely in the ears of the tribe, but +were nevertheless readily agreed to. + +In our relations with this people we were simply strangers exercising +no authority or control whatever. Our influence depended entirely on +persuasion; and having taught them by kind conversation as well as by +public instruction, I expected them to do what their own sense of right +and wrong dictated. We never wished them to do right merely because it +would be pleasing to us, nor thought ourselves to blame when they did +wrong, although we were quite aware of the absurd idea to that effect. +We saw that our teaching did good to the general mind of the people by +bringing new and better motives into play. Five instances are positively +known to me in which, by our influence on public opinion, war was +prevented; and where, in individual cases, we failed, the people did +no worse than they did before we came into the country. In general they +were slow, like all the African people hereafter to be described, in +coming to a decision on religious subjects; but in questions affecting +their worldly affairs they were keenly alive to their own interests. +They might be called stupid in matters which had not come within the +sphere of their observation, but in other things they showed more +intelligence than is to be met with in our own uneducated peasantry. +They are remarkably accurate in their knowledge of cattle, sheep, and +goats, knowing exactly the kind of pasturage suited to each; and +they select with great judgment the varieties of soil best suited to +different kinds of grain. They are also familiar with the habits of wild +animals, and in general are well up in the maxims which embody their +ideas of political wisdom. + +The place where we first settled with the Bakwains is called Chonuane, +and it happened to be visited, during the first year of our residence +there, by one of those droughts which occur from time to time in even +the most favored districts of Africa. + +The belief in the gift or power of RAIN-MAKING is one of the most +deeply-rooted articles of faith in this country. The chief Sechele was +himself a noted rain-doctor, and believed in it implicitly. He has often +assured me that he found it more difficult to give up his faith in that +than in any thing else which Christianity required him to abjure. I +pointed out to him that the only feasible way of watering the gardens +was to select some good, never-failing river, make a canal, and irrigate +the adjacent lands. This suggestion was immediately adopted, and soon +the whole tribe was on the move to the Kolobeng, a stream about forty +miles distant. The experiment succeeded admirably during the first +year. The Bakwains made the canal and dam in exchange for my labor in +assisting to build a square house for their chief. They also built their +own school under my superintendence. Our house at the River Kolobeng, +which gave a name to the settlement, was the third which I had reared +with my own hands. A native smith taught me to weld iron; and having +improved by scraps of information in that line from Mr. Moffat, and also +in carpentering and gardening, I was becoming handy at almost any trade, +besides doctoring and preaching; and as my wife could make candles, +soap, and clothes, we came nearly up to what may be considered as +indispensable in the accomplishments of a missionary family in Central +Africa, namely, the husband to be a jack-of-all-trades without doors, +and the wife a maid-of-all-work within. But in our second year again no +rain fell. In the third the same extraordinary drought followed. Indeed, +not ten inches of water fell during these two years, and the Kolobeng +ran dry; so many fish were killed that the hyaenas from the whole +country round collected to the feast, and were unable to finish the +putrid masses. A large old alligator, which had never been known to +commit any depredations, was found left high and dry in the mud among +the victims. The fourth year was equally unpropitious, the fall of rain +being insufficient to bring the grain to maturity. Nothing could be more +trying. We dug down in the bed of the river deeper and deeper as the +water receded, striving to get a little to keep the fruit-trees alive +for better times, but in vain. Needles lying out of doors for months did +not rust; and a mixture of sulphuric acid and water, used in a galvanic +battery, parted with all its water to the air, instead of imbibing more +from it, as it would have done in England. The leaves of indigenous +trees were all drooping, soft, and shriveled, though not dead; and those +of the mimosae were closed at midday, the same as they are at night. +In the midst of this dreary drought, it was wonderful to see those tiny +creatures, the ants, running about with their accustomed vivacity. I put +the bulb of a thermometer three inches under the soil, in the sun, at +midday, and found the mercury to stand at 132 Deg. to 134 Deg.; and if +certain kinds of beetles were placed on the surface, they ran about +a few seconds and expired. But this broiling heat only augmented the +activity of the long-legged black ants: they never tire; their organs of +motion seem endowed with the same power as is ascribed by physiologists +to the muscles of the human heart, by which that part of the frame never +becomes fatigued, and which may be imparted to all our bodily organs in +that higher sphere to which we fondly hope to rise. Where do these +ants get their moisture? Our house was built on a hard ferruginous +conglomerate, in order to be out of the way of the white ant, but they +came in despite the precaution; and not only were they, in this sultry +weather, able individually to moisten soil to the consistency of mortar +for the formation of galleries, which, in their way of working, is done +by night (so that they are screened from the observation of birds by day +in passing and repassing toward any vegetable matter they may wish to +devour), but, when their inner chambers were laid open, these were also +surprisingly humid. Yet there was no dew, and, the house being placed on +a rock, they could have no subterranean passage to the bed of the river, +which ran about three hundred yards below the hill. Can it be that they +have the power of combining the oxygen and hydrogen of their vegetable +food by vital force so as to form water?* + + * When we come to Angola, I shall describe an insect there + which distills several pints of water every night. + +Rain, however, would not fall. The Bakwains believed that I had bound +Sechele with some magic spell, and I received deputations, in the +evenings, of the old counselors, entreating me to allow him to make only +a few showers: "The corn will die if you refuse, and we shall become +scattered. Only let him make rain this once, and we shall all, men, +women, and children, come to the school, and sing and pray as long as +you please." It was in vain to protest that I wished Sechele to act just +according to his own ideas of what was right, as he found the law laid +down in the Bible, and it was distressing to appear hard-hearted to +them. The clouds often collected promisingly over us, and rolling +thunder seemed to portend refreshing showers, but next morning the +sun would rise in a clear, cloudless sky; indeed, even these lowering +appearances were less frequent by far than days of sunshine are in +London. + +The natives, finding it irksome to sit and wait helplessly until God +gives them rain from heaven, entertain the more comfortable idea that +they can help themselves by a variety of preparations, such as +charcoal made of burned bats, inspissated renal deposit of the mountain +cony--'Hyrax capensis'--(which, by the way, is used, in the form of +pills, as a good antispasmodic, under the name of "stone-sweat"*), the +internal parts of different animals--as jackals' livers, baboons' and +lions' hearts, and hairy calculi from the bowels of old cows--serpents' +skins and vertebrae, and every kind of tuber, bulb, root, and plant +to be found in the country. Although you disbelieve their efficacy +in charming the clouds to pour out their refreshing treasures, yet, +conscious that civility is useful every where, you kindly state that +you think they are mistaken as to their power. The rain-doctor selects a +particular bulbous root, pounds it, and administers a cold infusion to +a sheep, which in five minutes afterward expires in convulsions. Part of +the same bulb is converted into smoke, and ascends toward the sky; +rain follows in a day or two. The inference is obvious. Were we as much +harassed by droughts, the logic would be irresistible in England in +1857. + + * The name arises from its being always voided on one spot, + in the manner practiced by others of the rhinocerontine family; + and, by the action of the sun, it becomes a black, pitchy substance. + +As the Bakwains believed that there must be some connection between +the presence of "God's Word" in their town and these successive and +distressing droughts, they looked with no good will at the church bell, +but still they invariably treated us with kindness and respect. I am not +aware of ever having had an enemy in the tribe. The only avowed cause of +dislike was expressed by a very influential and sensible man, the uncle +of Sechele. "We like you as well as if you had been born among us; you +are the only white man we can become familiar with (thoaela); but we +wish you to give up that everlasting preaching and praying; we can not +become familiar with that at all. You see we never get rain, while those +tribes who never pray as we do obtain abundance." This was a fact; and +we often saw it raining on the hills ten miles off, while it would not +look at us "even with one eye". If the Prince of the power of the air +had no hand in scorching us up, I fear I often gave him the credit of +doing so. + +As for the rain-makers, they carried the sympathies of the people along +with them, and not without reason. With the following arguments they +were all acquainted, and in order to understand their force, we must +place ourselves in their position, and believe, as they do, that all +medicines act by a mysterious charm. The term for cure may be translated +"charm" ('alaha'). + +MEDICAL DOCTOR. Hail, friend! How very many medicines you have about you +this morning! Why, you have every medicine in the country here. + +RAIN DOCTOR. Very true, my friend; and I ought; for the whole country +needs the rain which I am making. + +M. D. So you really believe that you can command the clouds? I think +that can be done by God alone. + +R. D. We both believe the very same thing. It is God that makes the +rain, but I pray to him by means of these medicines, and, the rain +coming, of course it is then mine. It was I who made it for the Bakwains +for many years, when they were at Shokuane; through my wisdom, too, +their women became fat and shining. Ask them; they will tell you the +same as I do. + +M. D. But we are distinctly told in the parting words of our Savior that +we can pray to God acceptably in his name alone, and not by means of +medicines. + +R. D. Truly! but God told us differently. He made black men first, and +did not love us as he did the white men. He made you beautiful, and gave +you clothing, and guns, and gunpowder, and horses, and wagons, and many +other things about which we know nothing. But toward us he had no heart. +He gave us nothing except the assegai, and cattle, and rain-making; and +he did not give us hearts like yours. We never love each other. Other +tribes place medicines about our country to prevent the rain, so that we +may be dispersed by hunger, and go to them, and augment their power. We +must dissolve their charms by our medicines. God has given us one little +thing, which you know nothing of. He has given us the knowledge of +certain medicines by which we can make rain. WE do not despise those +things which you possess, though we are ignorant of them. We don't +understand your book, yet we don't despise it. YOU ought not to despise +our little knowledge, though you are ignorant of it. + +M. D. I don't despise what I am ignorant of; I only think you are +mistaken in saying that you have medicines which can influence the rain +at all. + +R. D. That's just the way people speak when they talk on a subject of +which they have no knowledge. When we first opened our eyes, we found +our forefathers making rain, and we follow in their footsteps. You, who +send to Kuruman for corn, and irrigate your garden, may do without rain; +WE can not manage in that way. If we had no rain, the cattle would have +no pasture, the cows give no milk, our children become lean and die, our +wives run away to other tribes who do make rain and have corn, and the +whole tribe become dispersed and lost; our fire would go out. + +M. D. I quite agree with you as to the value of the rain; but you can +not charm the clouds by medicines. You wait till you see the clouds +come, then you use your medicines, and take the credit which belongs to +God only. + +R. D. I use my medicines, and you employ yours; we are both doctors, and +doctors are not deceivers. You give a patient medicine. Sometimes God is +pleased to heal him by means of your medicine; sometimes not--he dies. +When he is cured, you take the credit of what God does. I do the same. +Sometimes God grants us rain, sometimes not. When he does, we take the +credit of the charm. When a patient dies, you don't give up trust in +your medicine, neither do I when rain fails. If you wish me to leave off +my medicines, why continue your own? + +M. D. I give medicine to living creatures within my reach, and can see +the effects, though no cure follows; you pretend to charm the clouds, +which are so far above us that your medicines never reach them. The +clouds usually lie in one direction, and your smoke goes in another. God +alone can command the clouds. Only try and wait patiently; God will give +us rain without your medicines. + +R. D. Mahala-ma-kapa-a-a!! Well, I always thought white men were wise +till this morning. Who ever thought of making trial of starvation? Is +death pleasant, then? + +M. D. Could you make it rain on one spot and not on another? + +R. D. I wouldn't think of trying. I like to see the whole country green, +and all the people glad; the women clapping their hands, and giving me +their ornaments for thankfulness, and lullilooing for joy. + +M. D. I think you deceive both them and yourself. + +R. D. Well, then, there is a pair of us (meaning both are rogues). + +The above is only a specimen of their way of reasoning, in which, when +the language is well understood, they are perceived to be remarkably +acute. These arguments are generally known, and I never succeeded in +convincing a single individual of their fallacy, though I tried to do +so in every way I could think of. Their faith in medicines as charms is +unbounded. The general effect of argument is to produce the impression +that you are not anxious for rain at all; and it is very undesirable +to allow the idea to spread that you do not take a generous interest +in their welfare. An angry opponent of rain-making in a tribe would be +looked upon as were some Greek merchants in England during the Russian +war. + +The conduct of the people during this long-continued drought was +remarkably good. The women parted with most of their ornaments to +purchase corn from more fortunate tribes. The children scoured the +country in search of the numerous bulbs and roots which can sustain +life, and the men engaged in hunting. Very great numbers of the large +game, buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, tsessebes, kamas or hartebeests, +kokongs or gnus, pallahs, rhinoceroses, etc., congregated at some +fountains near Kolobeng, and the trap called "hopo" was constructed, +in the lands adjacent, for their destruction. The hopo consists of two +hedges in the form of the letter V, which are very high and thick near +the angle. Instead of the hedges being joined there, they are made to +form a lane of about fifty yards in length, at the extremity of which +a pit is formed, six or eight feet deep, and about twelve or fifteen in +breadth and length. Trunks of trees are laid across the margins of the +pit, and more especially over that nearest the lane where the animals +are expected to leap in, and over that farthest from the lane where it +is supposed they will attempt to escape after they are in. The trees +form an overlapping border, and render escape almost impossible. The +whole is carefully decked with short green rushes, making the pit like +a concealed pitfall. As the hedges are frequently about a mile long, and +about as much apart at their extremities, a tribe making a circle three +or four miles round the country adjacent to the opening, and gradually +closing up, are almost sure to inclose a large body of game. Driving it +up with shouts to the narrow part of the hopo, men secreted there throw +their javelins into the affrighted herds, and on the animals rush to the +opening presented at the converging hedges, and into the pit, till that +is full of a living mass. Some escape by running over the others, as +a Smithfield market-dog does over the sheep's backs. It is a frightful +scene. The men, wild with excitement, spear the lovely animals with mad +delight; others of the poor creatures, borne down by the weight of their +dead and dying companions, every now and then make the whole mass heave +in their smothering agonies. + +The Bakwains often killed between sixty and seventy head of large game +at the different hopos in a single week; and as every one, both rich and +poor, partook of the prey, the meat counteracted the bad effects of an +exclusively vegetable diet. When the poor, who had no salt, were forced +to live entirely on roots, they were often troubled with indigestion. +Such cases we had frequent opportunities of seeing at other times, for, +the district being destitute of salt, the rich alone could afford to +buy it. The native doctors, aware of the cause of the malady, usually +prescribed some of that ingredient with their medicines. The doctors +themselves had none, so the poor resorted to us for aid. We took the +hint, and henceforth cured the disease by giving a teaspoonful of salt, +minus the other remedies. Either milk or meat had the same effect, +though not so rapidly as salt. Long afterward, when I was myself +deprived of salt for four months, at two distinct periods, I felt no +desire for that condiment, but I was plagued by very great longing for +the above articles of food. This continued as long as I was confined +to an exclusively vegetable diet, and when I procured a meal of flesh, +though boiled in perfectly fresh rain-water, it tasted as pleasantly +saltish as if slightly impregnated with the condiment. Milk or meat, +obtained in however small quantities, removed entirely the excessive +longing and dreaming about roasted ribs of fat oxen, and bowls of cool +thick milk gurgling forth from the big-bellied calabashes; and I could +then understand the thankfulness to Mrs. L. often expressed by poor +Bakwain women, in the interesting condition, for a very little of +either. + +In addition to other adverse influences, the general uncertainty, though +not absolute want of food, and the necessity of frequent absence for the +purpose of either hunting game or collecting roots and fruits, proved +a serious barrier to the progress of the people in knowledge. Our own +education in England is carried on at the comfortable breakfast and +dinner table, and by the cosy fire, as well as in the church and school. +Few English people with stomachs painfully empty would be decorous at +church any more than they are when these organs are overcharged. Ragged +schools would have been a failure had not the teachers wisely provided +food for the body as well as food for the mind; and not only must we +show a friendly interest in the bodily comfort of the objects of our +sympathy as a Christian duty, but we can no more hope for healthy +feelings among the poor, either at home or abroad, without feeding them +into them, than we can hope to see an ordinary working-bee reared into a +queen-mother by the ordinary food of the hive. + +Sending the Gospel to the heathen must, if this view be correct, include +much more than is implied in the usual picture of a missionary, namely, +a man going about with a Bible under his arm. The promotion of commerce +ought to be specially attended to, as this, more speedily than any thing +else, demolishes that sense of isolation which heathenism engenders, +and makes the tribes feel themselves mutually dependent on, and mutually +beneficial to each other. With a view to this, the missionaries at +Kuruman got permission from the government for a trader to reside at +the station, and a considerable trade has been the result; the trader +himself has become rich enough to retire with a competence. Those laws +which still prevent free commercial intercourse among the civilized +nations seem to be nothing else but the remains of our own heathenism. +My observations on this subject make me extremely desirous to promote +the preparation of the raw materials of European manufactures in Africa, +for by that means we may not only put a stop to the slave-trade, but +introduce the negro family into the body corporate of nations, no one +member of which can suffer without the others suffering with it. Success +in this, in both Eastern and Western Africa, would lead, in the course +of time, to a much larger diffusion of the blessings of civilization +than efforts exclusively spiritual and educational confined to any one +small tribe. These, however, it would of course be extremely desirable +to carry on at the same time at large central and healthy stations, for +neither civilization nor Christianity can be promoted alone. In fact, +they are inseparable. + + + + +Chapter 2. + +The Boers--Their Treatment of the Natives--Seizure of native Children +for Slaves--English Traders--Alarm of the Boers--Native Espionage--The +Tale of the Cannon--The Boers threaten Sechele--In violation of Treaty, +they stop English Traders and expel Missionaries--They attack +the Bakwains--Their Mode of Fighting--The Natives killed and +the School-children carried into Slavery--Destruction of English +Property--African Housebuilding and Housekeeping--Mode of Spending +the Day--Scarcity of Food--Locusts--Edible Frogs--Scavenger +Beetle--Continued Hostility of the Boers--The Journey +north--Preparations--Fellow-travelers--The Kalahari Desert-- +Vegetation--Watermelons--The Inhabitants--The Bushmen--Their nomad Mode +of Life--Appearance--The Bakalahari--Their Love for Agriculture and +for domestic Animals--Timid Character--Mode of obtaining Water--Female +Water-suckers--The Desert--Water hidden. + + + +Another adverse influence with which the mission had to contend was +the vicinity of the Boers of the Cashan Mountains, otherwise named +"Magaliesberg". These are not to be counfounded with the Cape colonists, +who sometimes pass by the name. The word Boer simply means "farmer", and +is not synonymous with our word boor. Indeed, to the Boers generally +the latter term would be quite inappropriate, for they are a sober, +industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry. Those, however, who +have fled from English law on various pretexts, and have been joined +by English deserters and every other variety of bad character in their +distant localities, are unfortunately of a very different stamp. The +great objection many of the Boers had, and still have, to English law, +is that it makes no distinction between black men and white. They +felt aggrieved by their supposed losses in the emancipation of their +Hottentot slaves, and determined to erect themselves into a republic, in +which they might pursue, without molestation, the "proper treatment of +the blacks". It is almost needless to add that the "proper treatment" +has always contained in it the essential element of slavery, namely, +compulsory unpaid labor. + +One section of this body, under the late Mr. Hendrick Potgeiter, +penetrated the interior as far as the Cashan Mountains, whence a Zulu +or Caffre chief, named Mosilikatze, had been expelled by the well-known +Caffre Dingaan; and a glad welcome was given them by the Bechuana +tribes, who had just escaped the hard sway of that cruel chieftain. They +came with the prestige of white men and deliverers; but the Bechuanas +soon found, as they expressed it, "that Mosilikatze was cruel to his +enemies, and kind to those he conquered; but that the Boers destroyed +their enemies, and made slaves of their friends." The tribes who still +retain the semblance of independence are forced to perform all the labor +of the fields, such as manuring the land, weeding, reaping, building, +making dams and canals, and at the same time to support themselves. +I have myself been an eye-witness of Boers coming to a village, and, +according to their usual custom, demanding twenty or thirty women to +weed their gardens, and have seen these women proceed to the scene of +unrequited toil, carrying their own food on their heads, their children +on their backs, and instruments of labor on their shoulders. Nor have +the Boers any wish to conceal the meanness of thus employing unpaid +labor; on the contrary, every one of them, from Mr. Potgeiter and Mr. +Gert Krieger, the commandants, downward, lauded his own humanity and +justice in making such an equitable regulation. "We make the people work +for us, in consideration of allowing them to live in our country." + +I can appeal to the Commandant Krieger if the foregoing is not a fair +and impartial statement of the views of himself and his people. I am +sensible of no mental bias toward or against these Boers; and during the +several journeys I made to the poor enslaved tribes, I never avoided +the whites, but tried to cure and did administer remedies to their sick, +without money and without price. It is due to them to state that I was +invariably treated with respect; but it is most unfortunate that +they should have been left by their own Church for so many years to +deteriorate and become as degraded as the blacks, whom the stupid +prejudice against color leads them to detest. + +This new species of slavery which they have adopted serves to supply the +lack of field-labor only. The demand for domestic servants must be met +by forays on tribes which have good supplies of cattle. The Portuguese +can quote instances in which blacks become so degraded by the love of +strong drink as actually to sell themselves; but never in any one case, +within the memory of man, has a Bechuana chief sold any of his people, +or a Bechuana man his child. Hence the necessity for a foray to seize +children. And those individual Boers who would not engage in it for the +sake of slaves can seldom resist the two-fold plea of a well-told +story of an intended uprising of the devoted tribe, and the prospect of +handsome pay in the division of the captured cattle besides. + +It is difficult for a person in a civilized country to conceive that +any body of men possessing the common attributes of humanity (and these +Boers are by no means destitute of the better feelings of our nature) +should with one accord set out, after loading their own wives and +children with caresses, and proceed to shoot down in cold blood men +and women, of a different color, it is true, but possessed of domestic +feelings and affections equal to their own. I saw and conversed with +children in the houses of Boers who had, by their own and their masters' +account, been captured, and in several instances I traced the parents +of these unfortunates, though the plan approved by the long-headed among +the burghers is to take children so young that they soon forget their +parents and their native language also. It was long before I could give +credit to the tales of bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had I +received no other testimony but theirs I should probably have continued +skeptical to this day as to the truth of the accounts; but when I found +the Boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others glorying in +the bloody scenes in which they had been themselves the actors, I was +compelled to admit the validity of the testimony, and try to account for +the cruel anomaly. They are all traditionally religious, tracing their +descent from some of the best men (Huguenots and Dutch) the world ever +saw. Hence they claim to themselves the title of "Christians", and all +the colored race are "black property" or "creatures". They being the +chosen people of God, the heathen are given to them for an inheritance, +and they are the rod of divine vengeance on the heathen, as were the +Jews of old. Living in the midst of a native population much larger than +themselves, and at fountains removed many miles from each other, they +feel somewhat in the same insecure position as do the Americans in +the Southern States. The first question put by them to strangers is +respecting peace; and when they receive reports from disaffected or +envious natives against any tribe, the case assumes all the appearance +and proportions of a regular insurrection. Severe measures then appear +to the most mildly disposed among them as imperatively called for, and, +however bloody the massacre that follows, no qualms of conscience ensue: +it is a dire necessity for the sake of peace. Indeed, the late Mr. +Hendrick Potgeiter most devoutly believed himself to be the great +peacemaker of the country. + +But how is it that the natives, being so vastly superior in numbers to +the Boers, do not rise and annihilate them? The people among whom they +live are Bechuanas, not Caffres, though no one would ever learn that +distinction from a Boer; and history does not contain one single +instance in which the Bechuanas, even those of them who possess +fire-arms, have attacked either the Boers or the English. If there is +such an instance, I am certain it is not generally known, either beyond +or in the Cape Colony. They have defended themselves when attacked, as +in the case of Sechele, but have never engaged in offensive war with +Europeans. We have a very different tale to tell of the Caffres, and the +difference has always been so evident to these border Boers that, ever +since those "magnificent savages"* obtained possession of fire-arms, not +one Boer has ever attempted to settle in Caffreland, or even face them +as an enemy in the field. The Boers have generally manifested a marked +antipathy to any thing but "long-shot" warfare, and, sidling away in +their emigrations toward the more effeminate Bechuanas, have left their +quarrels with the Caffres to be settled by the English, and their wars +to be paid for by English gold. + + * The "United Service Journal" so styles them. + +The Bakwains at Kolobeng had the spectacle of various tribes enslaved +before their eyes--the Bakatla, the Batlokua, the Bahukeng, the +Bamosetla, and two other tribes of Bakwains were all groaning under +the oppression of unrequited labor. This would not have been felt as so +great an evil but that the young men of those tribes, anxious to obtain +cattle, the only means of rising to respectability and importance among +their own people, were in the habit of sallying forth, like our Irish +and Highland reapers, to procure work in the Cape Colony. After laboring +there three or four years, in building stone dikes and dams for the +Dutch farmers, they were well content if at the end of that time they +could return with as many cows. On presenting one to their chief, they +ranked as respectable men in the tribe ever afterward. These volunteers +were highly esteemed among the Dutch, under the name of Mantatees. They +were paid at the rate of one shilling a day and a large loaf of bread +between six of them. Numbers of them, who had formerly seen me about +twelve hundred miles inland from the Cape, recognized me with the loud +laughter of joy when I was passing them at their work in the Roggefelt +and Bokkefelt, within a few days of Cape Town. I conversed with them and +with elders of the Dutch Church, for whom they were working, and found +that the system was thoroughly satisfactory to both parties. I do not +believe that there is one Boer, in the Cashan or Magaliesberg country, +who would deny that a law was made, in consequence of this labor passing +to the colony, to deprive these laborers of their hardly-earned cattle, +for the very cogent reason that, "if they want to work, let them work +for us their masters," though boasting that in their case it would not +be paid for. I can never cease to be most unfeignedly thankful that I +was not born in a land of slaves. No one can understand the effect of +the unutterable meanness of the slave-system on the minds of those +who, but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the +degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered, +would be equal in virtue to ourselves. Fraud becomes as natural to them +as "paying one's way" is to the rest of mankind. + +Wherever a missionary lives, traders are sure to come; they are mutually +dependent, and each aids in the work of the other; but experience shows +that the two employments can not very well be combined in the same +person. Such a combination would not be morally wrong, for nothing would +be more fair, and apostolical too, than that the man who devotes +his time to the spiritual welfare of a people should derive temporal +advantage from upright commerce, which traders, who aim exclusively at +their own enrichment, modestly imagine ought to be left to them. But, +though it is right for missionaries to trade, the present system of +missions renders it inexpedient to spend time in so doing. No missionary +with whom I ever came in contact, traded; and while the traders, whom +we introduced and rendered secure in the country, waxed rich, the +missionaries have invariably remained poor, and have died so. The +Jesuits, in Africa at least, were wiser in their generation than we; +theirs were large, influential communities, proceeding on the system of +turning the abilities of every brother into that channel in which he +was most likely to excel; one, fond of natural history, was allowed to +follow his bent; another, fond of literature, found leisure to pursue +his studies; and he who was great in barter was sent in search of ivory +and gold-dust; so that while in the course of performing the religious +acts of his mission to distant tribes, he found the means of aiding +effectually the brethren whom he had left in the central settlement.* We +Protestants, with the comfortable conviction of superiority, have sent +out missionaries with a bare subsistence only, and are unsparing in our +laudations of some for not being worldly-minded whom our niggardliness +made to live as did the prodigal son. I do not speak of myself, nor need +I to do so, but for that very reason I feel at liberty to interpose a +word in behalf of others. I have before my mind at this moment facts and +instances which warrant my putting the case in this way: The command to +"go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature" must be +obeyed by Christians either personally or by substitute. Now it is quite +possible to find men whose love for the heathen and devotion to the work +will make them ready to go forth on the terms "bare subsistence", but +what can be thought of the justice, to say nothing of the generosity, +of Christians and churches who not only work their substitutes at the +lowest terms, but regard what they give as charity! The matter is the +more grave in respect to the Protestant missionary, who may have a wife +and family. The fact is, there are many cases in which it is right, +virtuous, and praiseworthy for a man to sacrifice every thing for a +great object, but in which it would be very wrong for others, interested +in the object as much as he, to suffer or accept the sacrifice, if they +can prevent it. + + * The Dutch clergy, too, are not wanting in worldly wisdom. A + fountain is bought, and the lands which it can irrigate + parceled out and let to villagers. As they increase in + numbers, the rents rise and the church becomes rich. With 200 + Pounds per annum in addition from government, the salary + amounts to 400 or 500 Pounds a year. The clergymen then preach + abstinence from politics as a Christian duty. It is quite + clear that, with 400 Pounds a year, but little else except + pure spirituality is required. + +English traders sold those articles which the Boers most dread, namely, +arms and ammunition; and when the number of guns amounted to five, so +much alarm was excited among our neighbors that an expedition of several +hundred Boers was seriously planned to deprive the Bakwains of their +guns. Knowing that the latter would rather have fled to the Kalahari +Desert than deliver up their weapons and become slaves, I proceeded to +the commandant, Mr. Gert Krieger, and, representing the evils of any +such expedition, prevailed upon him to defer it; but that point being +granted, the Boer wished to gain another, which was that I should act as +a spy over the Bakwains. + +I explained the impossibility of my complying with his wish, even though +my principles as an Englishman had not stood in the way, by referring to +an instance in which Sechele had gone with his whole force to punish +an under-chief without my knowledge. This man, whose name was Kake, +rebelled, and was led on in his rebellion by his father-in-law, who +had been regicide in the case of Sechele's father. Several of those who +remained faithful to that chief were maltreated by Kake while passing +to the Desert in search of skins. We had just come to live with the +Bakwains when this happened, and Sechele consulted me. I advised mild +measures, but the messengers he sent to Kake were taunted with the +words, "He only pretends to wish to follow the advice of the teacher: +Sechele is a coward; let him come and fight if he dare." The next +time the offense was repeated, Sechele told me he was going to hunt +elephants; and as I knew the system of espionage which prevails among +all the tribes, I never made inquiries that would convey the opinion +that I distrusted them. I gave credit to his statement. He asked +the loan of a black-metal pot to cook with, as theirs of pottery are +brittle. I gave it and a handful of salt, and desired him to send back +two tit-bits, the proboscis and fore-foot of the elephant. He set off, +and I heard nothing more until we saw the Bakwains carrying home their +wounded, and heard some of the women uttering the loud wail of sorrow +for the dead, and others pealing forth the clear scream of victory. It +was then clear that Sechele had attacked and driven away the rebel. + +Mentioning this to the commandant in proof of the impossibility of +granting his request, I had soon an example how quickly a story can grow +among idle people. The five guns were, within one month, multiplied into +a tale of five hundred, and the cooking-pot, now in a museum at Cape +Town, was magnified into a cannon; "I had myself confessed to the loan." +Where the five hundred guns came from, it was easy to divine; for, +knowing that I used a sextant, my connection with government was a +thing of course; and, as I must know all her majesty's counsels, I was +questioned on the subject of the indistinct rumors which had reached +them of Lord Rosse's telescope. "What right has your government to +set up that large glass at the Cape to look after us behind the Cashan +Mountains?" + +Many of the Boers visited us afterward at Kolobeng, some for medical +advice, and others to trade in those very articles which their own laws +and policy forbid. When I happened to stumble upon any of them in the +town, with his muskets and powder displayed, he would begin an apology, +on the ground that he was a poor man, etc., which I always cut short by +frankly saying that I had nothing to do with either the Boers or their +laws. Many attempts were made during these visits to elicit the truth +about the guns and cannon; and ignorant of the system of espionage which +prevails, eager inquiries were made by them among those who could jabber +a little Dutch. It is noticeable that the system of espionage is as well +developed among the savage tribes as in Austria or Russia. It is a proof +of barbarism. Every man in a tribe feels himself bound to tell the +chief every thing that comes to his knowledge, and, when questioned by +a stranger, either gives answers which exhibit the utmost stupidity, or +such as he knows will be agreeable to his chief. I believe that in this +way have arisen tales of their inability to count more than ten, as +was asserted of the Bechuanas about the very time when Sechele's father +counted out one thousand head of cattle as a beginning of the stock of +his young son. + +In the present case, Sechele, knowing every question put to his people, +asked me how they ought to answer. My reply was, "Tell the truth." Every +one then declared that no cannon existed there; and our friends, judging +the answer by what they themselves would in the circumstances have +said, were confirmed in the opinion that the Bakwains actually possessed +artillery. This was in some degree beneficial to us, inasmuch as fear +prevented any foray in our direction for eight years. During that time +no winter passed without one or two tribes in the East country being +plundered of both cattle and children by the Boers. The plan pursued +is the following: one or two friendly tribes are forced to accompany a +party of mounted Boers, and these expeditions can be got up only in the +winter, when horses may be used without danger of being lost by disease. +When they reach the tribe to be attacked, the friendly natives are +ranged in front, to form, as they say, "a shield"; the Boers then coolly +fire over their heads till the devoted people flee and leave cattle, +wives, and children to the captors. This was done in nine cases during +my residence in the interior, and on no occasion was a drop of Boer's +blood shed. News of these deeds spread quickly among the Bakwains, and +letters were repeatedly sent by the Boers to Sechele, ordering him to +come and surrender himself as their vassal, and stop English traders +from proceeding into the country with fire-arms for sale. But the +discovery of Lake Ngami, hereafter to be described, made the traders +come in five-fold greater numbers, and Sechele replied, "I was made an +independent chief and placed here by God, and not by you. I was never +conquered by Mosilikatze, as those tribes whom you rule over; and the +English are my friends. I get every thing I wish from them. I can not +hinder them from going where they like." Those who are old enough to +remember the threatened invasion of our own island may understand the +effect which the constant danger of a Boerish invasion had on the +minds of the Bakwains; but no others can conceive how worrying were the +messages and threats from the endless self-constituted authorities of +the Magaliesberg Boers; and when to all this harassing annoyance was +added the scarcity produced by the drought, we could not wonder at, +though we felt sorry for, their indisposition to receive instruction. + +The myth of the black pot assumed serious proportions. I attempted to +benefit the tribes among the Boers of Magaliesberg by placing native +teachers at different points. "You must teach the blacks," said Mr. +Hendrick Potgeiter, the commandant in chief, "that they are not equal +to us." Other Boers told me, "I might as well teach the baboons on the +rocks as the Africans," but declined the test which I proposed, namely, +to examine whether they or my native attendants could read best. Two of +their clergymen came to baptize the children of the Boers; so, supposing +these good men would assist me in overcoming the repugnance of their +flock to the education of the blacks, I called on them; but my visit +ended in a 'ruse' practiced by the Boerish commandant, whereby I was +led, by professions of the greatest friendship, to retire to Kolobeng, +while a letter passed me by another way to the other missionaries in +the south, demanding my instant recall "for lending a cannon to their +enemies." The colonial government was also gravely informed that the +story was true, and I came to be looked upon as a most suspicious +character in consequence. + +These notices of the Boers are not intended to produce a sneer at their +ignorance, but to excite the compassion of their friends. They are +perpetually talking about their laws; but practically theirs is only the +law of the strongest. The Bechuanas could never understand the changes +which took place in their commandants. "Why, one can never know who is +the chief among these Boers. Like the Bushmen, they have no king--they +must be the Bushmen of the English." The idea that any tribe of men +could be so senseless as not to have an hereditary chief was so absurd +to these people, that, in order not to appear equally stupid, I was +obliged to tell them that we English were so anxious to preserve the +royal blood, that we had made a young lady our chief. This seemed to +them a most convincing proof of our sound sense. We shall see farther on +the confidence my account of our queen inspired. + +The Boers, encouraged by the accession of Mr. Pretorius, determined at +last to put a stop to English traders going past Kolobeng, by dispersing +the tribe of Bakwains, and expelling all the missionaries. Sir George +Cathcart proclaimed the independence of the Boers, the best thing that +could have been done had they been between us and the Caffres. A treaty +was entered into with these Boers; an article for the free passage of +Englishmen to the country beyond, and also another, that no slavery +should be allowed in the independent territory, were duly inserted, as +expressive of the views of her majesty's government at home. "But what +about the missionaries?" inquired the Boers. "YOU MAY DO AS YOU PLEASE +WITH THEM," is said to have been the answer of the "Commissioner". This +remark, if uttered at all, was probably made in joke: designing men, +however, circulated it, and caused the general belief in its accuracy +which now prevails all over the country, and doubtless led to the +destruction of three mission stations immediately after. The Boers, four +hundred in number, were sent by the late Mr. Pretorius to attack the +Bakwains in 1852. Boasting that the English had given up all the blacks +into their power, and had agreed to aid them in their subjugation by +preventing all supplies of ammunition from coming into the Bechuana +country, they assaulted the Bakwains, and, besides killing a +considerable number of adults, carried off two hundred of our school +children into slavery. The natives under Sechele defended themselves +till the approach of night enabled them to flee to the mountains; and +having in that defense killed a number of the enemy, the very first +ever slain in this country by Bechuanas, I received the credit of having +taught the tribe to kill Boers! My house, which had stood perfectly +secure for years under the protection of the natives, was plundered in +revenge. English gentlemen, who had come in the footsteps of Mr. Cumming +to hunt in the country beyond, and had deposited large quantities of +stores in the same keeping, and upward of eighty head of cattle as +relays for the return journeys, were robbed of all, and, when they came +back to Kolobeng, found the skeletons of the guardians strewed all over +the place. The books of a good library--my solace in our solitude--were +not taken away, but handfuls of the leaves were torn out and scattered +over the place. My stock of medicines was smashed; and all our furniture +and clothing carried off and sold at public auction to pay the expenses +of the foray. + +I do not mention these things by way of making a pitiful wail over my +losses, nor in order to excite commiseration; for, though I do feel +sorry for the loss of lexicons, dictionaries, &c., which had been the +companions of my boyhood, yet, after all, the plundering only set me +entirely free for my expedition to the north, and I have never since had +a moment's concern for any thing I left behind. The Boers resolved to +shut up the interior, and I determined to open the country, and we shall +see who have been most successful in resolution, they or I. + +A short sketch of African housekeeping may not prove uninteresting to +the reader. The entire absence of shops led us to make every thing we +needed from the raw materials. You want bricks to build a house, and +must forthwith proceed to the field, cut down a tree, and saw it into +planks to make the brick-moulds; the materials for doors and windows, +too, are standing in the forest; and, if you want to be respected by +the natives, a house of decent dimensions, costing an immense amount of +manual labor, must be built. The people can not assist you much; for, +though most willing to labor for wages, the Bakwains have a curious +inability to make or put things square: like all Bechuanas, their +dwellings are made round. In the case of three large houses, erected by +myself at different times, every brick and stick had to be put square by +my own right hand. + +Having got the meal ground, the wife proceeds to make it into bread; an +extempore oven is often constructed by scooping out a large hole in an +anthill, and using a slab of stone for a door. Another plan, which might +be adopted by the Australians to produce something better than their +"dampers", is to make a good fire on a level piece of ground, and, +when the ground is thoroughly heated, place the dough in a small, +short-handled frying-pan, or simply on the hot ashes; invert any sort of +metal pot over it, draw the ashes around, and then make a small fire +on the top. Dough, mixed with a little leaven from a former baking, and +allowed to stand an hour or two in the sun, will by this process become +excellent bread. + +We made our own butter, a jar serving as a churn; and our own candles +by means of moulds; and soap was procured from the ashes of the plant +salsola, or from wood-ashes, which in Africa contain so little alkaline +matter that the boiling of successive leys has to be continued for +a month or six weeks before the fat is saponified. There is not much +hardship in being almost entirely dependent on ourselves; there is +something of the feeling which must have animated Alexander Selkirk on +seeing conveniences springing up before him from his own ingenuity; and +married life is all the sweeter when so many comforts emanate directly +from the thrifty striving housewife's hands. + +To some it may appear quite a romantic mode of life; it is one of active +benevolence, such as the good may enjoy at home. Take a single day as +a sample of the whole. We rose early, because, however hot the day may +have been, the evening, night, and morning at Kolobeng were deliciously +refreshing; cool is not the word, where you have neither an increase of +cold nor heat to desire, and where you can sit out till midnight with no +fear of coughs or rheumatism. After family worship and breakfast between +six and seven, we went to keep school for all who would attend--men, +women, and children being all invited. School over at eleven o'clock, +while the missionary's wife was occupied in domestic matters, the +missionary himself had some manual labor as a smith, carpenter, or +gardener, according to whatever was needed for ourselves or for the +people; if for the latter, they worked for us in the garden, or at some +other employment; skilled labor was thus exchanged for the unskilled. +After dinner and an hour's rest, the wife attended her infant-school, +which the young, who were left by their parents entirely to their own +caprice, liked amazingly, and generally mustered a hundred strong; or +she varied that with a sewing-school, having classes of girls to learn +the art; this, too, was equally well relished. During the day every +operation must be superintended, and both husband and wife must labor +till the sun declines. After sunset the husband went into the town to +converse with any one willing to do so, sometimes on general subjects, +at other times on religion. On three nights of the week, as soon as the +milking of the cows was over and it had become dark, we had a public +religious service, and one of instruction on secular subjects, aided +by pictures and specimens. These services were diversified by attending +upon the sick and prescribing for them, giving food, and otherwise +assisting the poor and wretched. We tried to gain their affections by +attending to the wants of the body. The smallest acts of friendship, an +obliging word and civil look, are, as St. Xavier thought, no despicable +part of the missionary armor. Nor ought the good opinion of the most +abject to be uncared for, when politeness may secure it. Their good +word in the aggregate forms a reputation which may be well employed +in procuring favor for the Gospel. Show kind attention to the reckless +opponents of Christianity on the bed of sickness and pain, and they +never can become your personal enemies. Here, if any where, love begets +love. + +When at Kolobeng, during the droughts we were entirely dependent on +Kuruman for supplies of corn. Once we were reduced to living on bran, +to convert which into fine meal we had to grind it three times over. We +were much in want of animal food, which seems to be a greater necessary +of life there than vegetarians would imagine. Being alone, we could +not divide the butcher-meat of a slaughtered animal with a prospect +of getting a return with regularity. Sechele had, by right of +chieftainship, the breast of every animal slaughtered either at home or +abroad, and he most obligingly sent us a liberal share during the whole +period of our sojourn. But these supplies were necessarily so irregular +that we were sometimes fain to accept a dish of locusts. These are quite +a blessing in the country, so much so that the RAIN-DOCTORS sometimes +promised to bring them by their incantations. The locusts are strongly +vegetable in taste, the flavor varying with the plants on which they +feed. There is a physiological reason why locusts and honey should be +eaten together. Some are roasted and pounded into meal, which, eaten +with a little salt, is palatable. It will keep thus for months. Boiled, +they are disagreeable; but when they are roasted I should much prefer +locusts to shrimps, though I would avoid both if possible. + +In traveling we sometimes suffered considerably from scarcity of meat, +though not from absolute want of food. This was felt more especially by +my children; and the natives, to show their sympathy, often gave them +a large kind of caterpillar, which they seemed to relish; these insects +could not be unwholesome, for the natives devoured them in large +quantities themselves. + +Another article of which our children partook with eagerness was a very +large frog, called "Matlametlo".* + + * The Pyxicephalus adspersus of Dr. Smith. + Length of head and body, 5-1/2 inches; + fore legs, 3 inches; + hind legs, 6 inches. + Width of head posteriorly, 3 inches; + of body, 4-1/2 inches. + +These enormous frogs, which, when cooked, look like chickens, are +supposed by the natives to fall down from thunder-clouds, because after +a heavy thunder-shower the pools, which are filled and retain water a +few days, become instantly alive with this loud-croaking, pugnacious +game. This phenomenon takes place in the driest parts of the desert, and +in places where, to an ordinary observer, there is not a sign of life. +Having been once benighted in a district of the Kalahari where there +was no prospect of getting water for our cattle for a day or two, I +was surprised to hear in the fine still evening the croaking of frogs. +Walking out until I was certain that the musicians were between me +and our fire, I found that they could be merry on nothing else but +a prospect of rain. From the Bushmen I afterward learned that the +matlametlo makes a hole at the root of certain bushes, and there +ensconces himself during the months of drought. As he seldom emerges, a +large variety of spider takes advantage of the hole, and makes its +web across the orifice. He is thus furnished with a window and screen +gratis; and no one but a Bushman would think of searching beneath +a spider's web for a frog. They completely eluded my search on the +occasion referred to; and as they rush forth into the hollows filled by +the thunder-shower when the rain is actually falling, and the Bechuanas +are cowering under their skin garments, the sudden chorus struck up +simultaneously from all sides seems to indicate a descent from the +clouds. + +The presence of these matlametlo in the desert in a time of drought was +rather a disappointment, for I had been accustomed to suppose that the +note was always emitted by them when they were chin-deep in water. Their +music was always regarded in other spots as the most pleasant sound that +met the ear after crossing portions of the thirsty desert; and I could +fully appreciate the sympathy for these animals shown by Aesop, himself +an African, in his fable of the "Boys and the Frogs". + +It is remarkable that attempts have not been made to any extent to +domesticate some of the noble and useful creatures of Africa in England. +The eland, which is the most magnificent of all antelopes, would +grace the parks of our nobility more than deer. This animal, from the +excellence of its flesh, would be appropriate to our own country; and as +there is also a splendid esculent frog nearly as large as a chicken, it +would no doubt tend to perpetuate the present alliance if we made a gift +of that to France. + +The scavenger beetle is one of the most useful of all insects, as it +effectually answers the object indicated by the name. Where they abound, +as at Kuruman, the villages are sweet and clean, for no sooner are +animal excretions dropped than, attracted by the scent, the scavengers +are heard coming booming up the wind. They roll away the droppings of +cattle at once, in round pieces often as large as billiard-balls; and +when they reach a place proper by its softness for the deposit of their +eggs and the safety of their young, they dig the soil out from beneath +the ball till they have quite let it down and covered it: they then lay +their eggs within the mass. While the larvae are growing, they devour +the inside of the ball before coming above ground to begin the world for +themselves. The beetles with their gigantic balls look like Atlas with +the world on his back; only they go backward, and, with their heads +down, push with the hind legs, as if a boy should roll a snow-ball with +his legs while standing on his head. As we recommend the eland to John +Bull, and the gigantic frog to France, we can confidently recommend this +beetle to the dirty Italian towns and our own Sanitary Commissioners. + +In trying to benefit the tribes living under the Boers of the Cashan +Mountains, I twice performed a journey of about three hundred miles to +the eastward of Kolobeng. Sechele had become so obnoxious to the Boers +that, though anxious to accompany me in my journey, he dared not +trust himself among them. This did not arise from the crime of +cattle-stealing; for that crime, so common among the Caffres, was never +charged against his tribe, nor, indeed, against any Bechuana tribe. It +is, in fact, unknown in the country, except during actual warfare. His +independence and love of the English were his only faults. In my last +journey there, of about two hundred miles, on parting at the River +Marikwe he gave me two servants, "to be," as he said, "his arms to serve +me," and expressed regret that he could not come himself. "Suppose we +went north," I said, "would you come?" He then told me the story +of Sebituane having saved his life, and expatiated on the far-famed +generosity of that really great man. This was the first time I had +thought of crossing the Desert to Lake Ngami. + +The conduct of the Boers, who, as will be remembered, had sent a letter +designed to procure my removal out of the country, and their well-known +settled policy which I have already described, became more fully +developed on this than on any former occasion. When I spoke to Mr. +Hendrick Potgeiter of the danger of hindering the Gospel of Christ among +these poor savages, he became greatly excited, and called one of his +followers to answer me. He threatened to attack any tribe that might +receive a native teacher, yet he promised to use his influence to +prevent those under him from throwing obstacles in our way. I could +perceive plainly that nothing more could be done in that direction, so I +commenced collecting all the information I could about the desert, with +the intention of crossing it, if possible. Sekomi, the chief of the +Bamangwato, was acquainted with a route which he kept carefully to +himself, because the Lake country abounded in ivory, and he drew large +quantities thence periodically at but small cost to himself. + +Sechele, who valued highly every thing European, and was always fully +alive to his own interest, was naturally anxious to get a share of that +inviting field. He was most anxious to visit Sebituane too, partly, +perhaps, from a wish to show off his new acquirements, but chiefly, I +believe, from having very exalted ideas of the benefits he would derive +from the liberality of that renowned chieftain. In age and family +Sechele is the elder and superior of Sekomi; for when the original +tribe broke up into Bamangwato, Bangwaketse, and Bakwains, the Bakwains +retained the hereditary chieftainship; so their chief, Sechele, +possesses certain advantages over Sekomi, the chief of the Bamangwato. +If the two were traveling or hunting together, Sechele would take, by +right, the heads of the game shot by Sekomi. + +There are several vestiges, besides, of very ancient partitions and +lordships of tribes. The elder brother of Sechele's father, becoming +blind, gave over the chieftainship to Sechele's father. The descendants +of this man pay no tribute to Sechele, though he is the actual ruler, +and superior to the head of that family; and Sechele, while in every +other respect supreme, calls him Kosi, or Chief. The other tribes will +not begin to eat the early pumpkins of a new crop until they hear that +the Bahurutse have "bitten it", and there is a public ceremony on the +occasion--the son of the chief being the first to taste of the new +harvest. + +Sechele, by my advice, sent men to Sekomi, asking leave for me to pass +along his path, accompanying the request with the present of an ox. +Sekomi's mother, who possesses great influence over him, refused +permission, because she had not been propitiated. This produced a +fresh message; and the most honorable man in the Bakwain tribe, next to +Sechele, was sent with an ox for both Sekomi and his mother. This, too, +was met by refusal. It was said, "The Matebele, the mortal enemies of +the Bechuanas, are in the direction of the lake, and, should they kill +the white man, we shall incur great blame from all his nation." + +The exact position of the Lake Ngami had, for half a century at least, +been correctly pointed out by the natives, who had visited it when rains +were more copious in the Desert than in more recent times, and many +attempts had been made to reach it by passing through the Desert in the +direction indicated; but it was found impossible, even for Griquas, +who, having some Bushman blood in them, may be supposed more capable of +enduring thirst than Europeans. It was clear, then, that our only chance +of success was by going round, instead of through, the Desert. The best +time for the attempt would have been about the end of the rainy season, +in March or April, for then we should have been likely to meet with +pools of rain-water, which always dry up during the rainless winter. I +communicated my intention to an African traveler, Colonel Steele, then +aid-de-camp to the Marquis of Tweedale at Madras, and he made it known +to two other gentlemen, whose friendship we had gained during their +African travel, namely, Major Vardon and Mr. Oswell. All of these +gentlemen were so enamored with African hunting and African discovery +that the two former must have envied the latter his good fortune in +being able to leave India to undertake afresh the pleasures and pains of +desert life. I believe Mr. Oswell came from his high position at a very +considerable pecuniary sacrifice, and with no other end in view but to +extend the boundaries of geographical knowledge. Before I knew of his +coming, I had arranged that the payment for the guides furnished by +Sechele should be the loan of my wagon, to bring back whatever ivory he +might obtain from the chief at the lake. When, at last, Mr. Oswell came, +bringing Mr. Murray with him, he undertook to defray the entire expenses +of the guides, and fully executed his generous intention. + +Sechele himself would have come with us, but, fearing that the +much-talked-of assault of the Boers might take place during our absence, +and blame be attached to me for taking him away, I dissuaded him against +it by saying that he knew Mr. Oswell "would be as determined as himself +to get through the Desert." + +Before narrating the incidents of this journey, I may give some account +of the great Kalahari Desert, in order that the reader may understand in +some degree the nature of the difficulties we had to encounter. + +The space from the Orange River in the south, lat. 29 Degrees, to Lake +Ngami in the north, and from about 24 Degrees east long. to near the +west coast, has been called a desert simply because it contains no +running water, and very little water in wells. It is by no means +destitute of vegetation and inhabitants, for it is covered with grass +and a great variety of creeping plants; besides which there are +large patches of bushes, and even trees. It is remarkably flat, but +interesected in different parts by the beds of ancient rivers; and +prodigious herds of certain antelopes, which require little or no water, +roam over the trackless plains. The inhabitants, Bushmen and Bakalahari, +prey on the game and on the countless rodentia and small species of +the feline race which subsist on these. In general, the soil is +light-colored soft sand, nearly pure silica. The beds of the ancient +rivers contain much alluvial soil; and as that is baked hard by the +burning sun, rain-water stands in pools in some of them for several +months in the year. + +The quantity of grass which grows on this remarkable region is +astonishing, even to those who are familiar with India. It usually rises +in tufts with bare spaces between, or the intervals are occupied by +creeping plants, which, having their roots buried far beneath the soil, +feel little the effects of the scorching sun. The number of these which +have tuberous roots is very great; and their structure is intended to +supply nutriment and moisture, when, during the long droughts, they +can be obtained nowhere else. Here we have an example of a plant, not +generally tuber-bearing, becoming so under circumstances where that +appendage is necessary to act as a reservoir for preserving its life; +and the same thing occurs in Angola to a species of grape-bearing vine, +which is so furnished for the same purpose. The plant to which I +at present refer is one of the cucurbitaceae, which bears a small, +scarlet-colored, eatable cucumber. Another plant, named Leroshua, is +a blessing to the inhabitants of the Desert. We see a small plant with +linear leaves, and a stalk not thicker than a crow's quill; on digging +down a foot or eighteen inches beneath, we come to a tuber, often as +large as the head of a young child; when the rind is removed, we find it +to be a mass of cellular tissue, filled with fluid much like that in a +young turnip. Owing to the depth beneath the soil at which it is found, +it is generally deliciously cool and refreshing. Another kind, named +Mokuri, is seen in other parts of the country, where long-continued +heat parches the soil. This plant is an herbaceous creeper, and deposits +under ground a number of tubers, some as large as a man's head, at spots +in a circle a yard or more, horizontally, from the stem. The natives +strike the ground on the circumference of the circle with stones, till, +by hearing a difference of sound, they know the water-bearing tuber to +be beneath. They then dig down a foot or so, and find it. + +But the most surprising plant of the Desert is the "Kengwe or Keme" +('Cucumis caffer'), the watermelon. In years when more than the usual +quantity of rain falls, vast tracts of the country are literally covered +with these melons; this was the case annually when the fall of rain was +greater than it is now, and the Bakwains sent trading parties every year +to the lake. It happens commonly once every ten or eleven years, and +for the last three times its occurrence has coincided with an +extraordinarily wet season. Then animals of every sort and name, +including man, rejoice in the rich supply. The elephant, true lord of +the forest, revels in this fruit, and so do the different species of +rhinoceros, although naturally so diverse in their choice of pasture. +The various kinds of antelopes feed on them with equal avidity, and +lions, hyaenas, jackals, and mice, all seem to know and appreciate the +common blessing. These melons are not, however, all of them eatable; +some are sweet, and others so bitter that the whole are named by the +Boers the "bitter watermelon". The natives select them by striking +one melon after another with a hatchet, and applying the tongue to the +gashes. They thus readily distinguish between the bitter and sweet. +The bitter are deleterious, but the sweet are quite wholesome. This +peculiarity of one species of plant bearing both sweet and bitter fruits +occurs also in a red, eatable cucumber, often met with in the country. +It is about four inches long, and about an inch and a half in diameter. +It is of a bright scarlet color when ripe. Many are bitter, others quite +sweet. Even melons in a garden may be made bitter by a few bitter kengwe +in the vicinity. The bees convey the pollen from one to the other. + +The human inhabitants of this tract of country consist of Bushmen and +Bakalahari. The former are probably the aborigines of the southern +portion of the continent, the latter the remnants of the first +emigration of Bechuanas. The Bushmen live in the Desert from choice, the +Bakalahari from compulsion, and both possess an intense love of liberty. +The Bushmen are exceptions in language, race, habits, and appearance. +They are the only real nomads in the country; they never cultivate +the soil, nor rear any domestic animal save wretched dogs. They are so +intimately acquainted with the habits of the game that they follow them +in their migrations, and prey upon them from place to place, and thus +prove as complete a check upon their inordinate increase as the other +carnivora. The chief subsistence of the Bushmen is the flesh of game, +but that is eked out by what the women collect of roots and beans, and +fruits of the Desert. Those who inhabit the hot sandy plains of the +Desert possess generally thin, wiry forms, capable of great exertion and +of severe privations. Many are of low stature, though not dwarfish; +the specimens brought to Europe have been selected, like costermongers' +dogs, on account of their extreme ugliness; consequently, English +ideas of the whole tribe are formed in the same way as if the ugliest +specimens of the English were exhibited in Africa as characteristic of +the entire British nation. That they are like baboons is in some degree +true, just as these and other simiae are in some points frightfully +human. + +The Bakalahari are traditionally reported to be the oldest of the +Bechuana tribes, and they are said to have possessed enormous herds of +the large horned cattle mentioned by Bruce, until they were despoiled +of them and driven into the Desert by a fresh migration of their own +nation. Living ever since on the same plains with the Bushmen, subjected +to the same influences of climate, enduring the same thirst, and +subsisting on similar food for centuries, they seem to supply a standing +proof that locality is not always sufficient of itself to account for +difference in races. The Bakalahari retain in undying vigor the Bechuana +love for agriculture and domestic animals. They hoe their gardens +annually, though often all they can hope for is a supply of melons and +pumpkins. And they carefully rear small herds of goats, though I have +seen them lift water for them out of small wells with a bit of ostrich +egg-shell, or by spoonfuls. They generally attach themselves to +influential men in the different Bechuana tribes living adjacent to +their desert home, in order to obtain supplies of spears, knives, +tobacco, and dogs, in exchange for the skins of the animals they may +kill. These are small carnivora of the feline species, including two +species of jackal, the dark and the golden; the former, "motlose" +('Megalotis capensis' or 'Cape fennec'), has the warmest fur the country +yields; the latter, "pukuye" ('Canis mesomelas' and 'C. aureus'), is +very handsome when made into the skin mantle called kaross. Next in +value follow the "tsipa" or small ocelot ('Felis nigripes'), the "tuane" +or lynx, the wild cat, the spotted cat, and other small animals. Great +numbers of 'puti' ('duiker') and 'puruhuru' ('steinbuck') skins are got +too, besides those of lions, leopards, panthers, and hyaenas. During the +time I was in the Bechuana country, between twenty and thirty thousand +skins were made up into karosses; part of them were worn by the +inhabitants, and part sold to traders: many, I believe, find their way +to China. The Bakwains bought tobacco from the eastern tribes, then +purchased skins with it from the Bakalahari, tanned them, and sewed them +into karosses, then went south to purchase heifer-calves with them, cows +being the highest form of riches known, as I have often noticed from +their asking "if Queen Victoria had many cows." The compact they +enter into is mutually beneficial, but injustice and wrong are often +perpetrated by one tribe of Bechuanas going among the Bakalahari of +another tribe, and compelling them to deliver up the skins which they +may be keeping for their friends. They are a timid race, and in bodily +development often resemble the aborigines of Australia. They have thin +legs and arms, and large, protruding abdomens, caused by the coarse, +indigestible food they eat. Their children's eyes lack lustre. I never +saw them at play. A few Bechuanas may go into a village of Bakalahari, +and domineer over the whole with impunity; but when these same +adventurers meet the Bushmen, they are fain to change their manners +to fawning sycophancy; they know that, if the request for tobacco is +refused, these free sons of the Desert may settle the point as to its +possession by a poisoned arrow. + +The dread of visits from Bechuanas of strange tribes causes the +Bakalahari to choose their residences far from water; and they not +unfrequently hide their supplies by filling the pits with sand and +making a fire over the spot. When they wish to draw water for use, the +women come with twenty or thirty of their water-vessels in a bag or net +on their backs. These water-vessels consist of ostrich egg-shells, with +a hole in the end of each, such as would admit one's finger. The women +tie a bunch of grass to one end of a reed about two feet long, and +insert it in a hole dug as deep as the arm will reach; then ram down +the wet sand firmly round it. Applying the mouth to the free end of +the reed, they form a vacuum in the grass beneath, in which the water +collects, and in a short time rises into the mouth. An egg-shell is +placed on the ground alongside the reed, some inches below the mouth of +the sucker. A straw guides the water into the hole of the vessel, as +she draws mouthful after mouthful from below. The water is made to pass +along the outside, not through the straw. If any one will attempt to +squirt water into a bottle placed some distance below his mouth, he will +soon perceive the wisdom of the Bushwoman's contrivance for giving the +stream direction by means of a straw. The whole stock of water is thus +passed through the woman's mouth as a pump, and, when taken home, +is carefully buried. I have come into villages where, had we acted a +domineering part, and rummaged every hut, we should have found nothing; +but by sitting down quietly, and waiting with patience until the +villagers were led to form a favorable opinion of us, a woman would +bring out a shellful of the precious fluid from I know not where. + +The so-called Desert, it may be observed, is by no means a useless +tract of country. Besides supporting multitudes of both small and large +animals, it sends something to the market of the world, and has proved +a refuge to many a fugitive tribe--to the Bakalahari first, and to the +other Bechuanas in turn--as their lands were overrun by the tribe of +true Caffres, called Matebele. The Bakwains, the Bangwaketze, and the +Bamangwato all fled thither; and the Matebele marauders, who came from +the well-watered east, perished by hundreds in their attempts to follow +them. One of the Bangwaketze chiefs, more wily than the rest, sent false +guides to lead them on a track where, for hundreds of miles, not a drop +of water could be found, and they perished in consequence. Many Bakwains +perished too. Their old men, who could have told us ancient stories, +perished in these flights. An intelligent Mokwain related to me how the +Bushmen effectually balked a party of his tribe which lighted on their +village in a state of burning thirst. Believing, as he said, that +nothing human could subsist without water, they demanded some, but were +coolly told by these Bushmen that they had none, and never drank any. +Expecting to find them out, they resolved to watch them night and day. +They persevered for some days, thinking that at last the water must +come forth; but, notwithstanding their watchfulness, kept alive by most +tormenting thirst, the Bakwains were compelled to exclaim, "Yak! yak! +these are not men; let us go." Probably the Bushmen had been subsisting +on a store hidden under ground, which had eluded the vigilance of their +visitors. + + + + +Chapter 3. + +Departure from Kolobeng, 1st June, 1849--Companions--Our Route-- +Abundance of Grass--Serotli, a Fountain in the Desert--Mode of +digging Wells--The Eland--Animals of the Desert--The Hyaena--The +Chief Sekomi--Dangers--The wandering Guide--Cross Purposes--Slow +Progress--Want of Water--Capture of a Bushwoman--The Salt-pan +at Nchokotsa--The Mirage--Reach the River Zouga--The Quakers of +Africa--Discovery of Lake Ngami, 1st August, 1849--Its Extent--Small +Depth of Water--Position as the Reservoir of a great River System--The +Bamangwato and their Chief--Desire to visit Sebituane, the Chief of the +Makololo--Refusal of Lechulatebe to furnish us with Guides--Resolve +to return to the Cape--The Banks of the Zouga--Pitfalls--Trees of the +District--Elephants--New Species of Antelope--Fish in the Zouga. + + + +Such was the desert which we were now preparing to cross--a region +formerly of terror to the Bechuanas from the numbers of serpents which +infested it and fed on the different kinds of mice, and from the intense +thirst which these people often endured when their water-vessels were +insufficient for the distances to be traveled over before reaching the +wells. + +Just before the arrival of my companions, a party of the people of the +lake came to Kolobeng, stating that they were sent by Lechulatebe, +the chief, to ask me to visit that country. They brought such flaming +accounts of the quantities of ivory to be found there (cattle-pens +made of elephants' tusks of enormous size, &c.), that the guides of the +Bakwains were quite as eager to succeed in reaching the lake as any one +of us could desire. This was fortunate, as we knew the way the strangers +had come was impassable for wagons. + +Messrs. Oswell and Murray came at the end of May, and we all made a +fair start for the unknown region on the 1st of June, 1849. Proceeding +northward, and passing through a range of tree-covered hills to +Shokuane, formerly the residence of the Bakwains, we soon after entered +on the high road to the Bamangwato, which lies generally in the bed of +an ancient river or wady that must formerly have flowed N. to S. The +adjacent country is perfectly flat, but covered with open forest and +bush, with abundance of grass; the trees generally are a kind of acacia +called "Monato", which appears a little to the south of this region, and +is common as far as Angola. A large caterpillar, called "Nato", feeds by +night on the leaves of these trees, and comes down by day to bury itself +at the root in the sand, in order to escape the piercing rays of the +sun. The people dig for it there, and are fond of it when roasted, on +account of its pleasant vegetable taste. When about to pass into the +chrysalis state, it buries itself in the soil, and is sometimes +sought for as food even then. If left undisturbed, it comes forth as a +beautiful butterfly: the transmutation was sometimes employed by me with +good effect when speaking with the natives, as an illustration of our +own great change and resurrection. + +The soil is sandy, and there are here and there indications that at +spots which now afford no water whatever there were formerly wells and +cattle stations. + +Boatlanama, our next station, is a lovely spot in the otherwise dry +region. The wells from which we had to lift out the water for our cattle +are deep, but they were well filled. A few villages of Bakalahari were +found near them, and great numbers of pallahs, springbucks, Guinea-fowl, +and small monkeys. + +Lopepe came next. This place afforded another proof of the desiccation +of the country. The first time I passed it, Lopepe was a large pool with +a stream flowing out of it to the south; now it was with difficulty we +could get our cattle watered by digging down in the bottom of a well. + +At Mashue--where we found a never-failing supply of pure water in a +sandstone rocky hollow--we left the road to the Bamangwato hills, and +struck away to the north into the Desert. Having watered the cattle at +a well called Lobotani, about N.W. of Bamangwato, we next proceeded to +a real Kalahari fountain, called Serotli. The country around is covered +with bushes and trees of a kind of leguminosae, with lilac flowers. The +soil is soft white sand, very trying to the strength of the oxen, as +the wheels sink into it over the felloes and drag heavily. At Serotli we +found only a few hollows like those made by the buffalo and rhinoceros +when they roll themselves in the mud. In a corner of one of these there +appeared water, which would have been quickly lapped up by our dogs, had +we not driven them away. And yet this was all the apparent supply for +some eighty oxen, twenty horses, and about a score of men. Our guide, +Ramotobi, who had spent his youth in the Desert, declared that, though +appearances were against us, there was plenty of water at hand. We +had our misgivings, for the spades were soon produced; but our guides, +despising such new-fangled aid, began in good earnest to scrape out the +sand with their hands. The only water we had any promise of for the next +seventy miles--that is, for a journey of three days with the wagons--was +to be got here. By the aid of both spades and fingers two of the holes +were cleared out, so as to form pits six feet deep and about as many +broad. Our guides were especially earnest in their injunctions to us not +to break through the hard stratum of sand at the bottom, because they +knew, if it were broken through, "the water would go away." They are +quite correct, for the water seems to lie on this flooring of incipient +sandstone. The value of the advice was proved in the case of an +Englishman whose wits were none of the brightest, who, disregarding +it, dug through the sandy stratum in the wells at Mohotluani: the water +immediately flowed away downward, and the well became useless. When +we came to the stratum, we found that the water flowed in on all sides +close to the line where the soft sand came in contact with it. Allowing +it to collect, we had enough for the horses that evening; but as there +was not sufficient for the oxen, we sent them back to Lobotani, where, +after thirsting four full days (ninety-six hours), they got a good +supply. The horses were kept by us as necessary to procure game for the +sustenance of our numerous party. Next morning we found the water +had flowed in faster than at first, as it invariably does in these +reservoirs, owing to the passages widening by the flow. Large quantities +of the sand come into the well with the water, and in the course of a +few days the supply, which may be equal to the wants of a few men +only, becomes sufficient for oxen as well. In these sucking-places the +Bakalahari get their supplies; and as they are generally in the hollows +of ancient river-beds, they are probably the deposits from rains +gravitating thither; in some cases they may be the actual fountains, +which, though formerly supplying the river's flow, now no longer rise to +the surface. + +Here, though the water was perfectly inaccessible to elands, large +numbers of these fine animals fed around us; and, when killed, they +were not only in good condition, but their stomachs actually contained +considerable quantities of water. + +I examined carefully the whole alimentary canal, in order to see if +there were any peculiarity which might account for the fact that this +animal can subsist for months together without drinking, but found +nothing. Other animals, such as the duiker ('Cephalopus mergens') +or puti (of the Bechuanas), the steinbuck ('Tragulus rupestris') or +puruhuru, the gemsbuck ('Oryx capensis') or kukama, and the porcupine +('Hystrix cristata'), are all able to subsist without water for many +months at a time by living on bulbs and tubers containing moisture. They +have sharp-pointed hoofs well adapted for digging, and there is little +difficulty in comprehending their mode of subsistence. Some animals, +on the other hand, are never seen but in the vicinity of water. The +presence of the rhinoceros, of the buffalo and gnu ('Catoblepas gnu'), +of the giraffe, the zebra, and pallah ('Antilope melampus'), is always +a certain indication of water being within a distance of seven or +eight miles; but one may see hundreds of elands ('Boselaphus oreas'), +gemsbuck, the tolo or koodoo ('Strepsiceros capensis'), also springbucks +('Gazella euchore') and ostriches, without being warranted thereby in +inferring the presence of water within thirty or forty miles. Indeed, +the sleek, fat condition of the eland in such circumstances would not +remove the apprehension of perishing by thirst from the mind of even a +native. I believe, however, that these animals can subsist only where +there is some moisture in the vegetation on which they feed; for in one +year of unusual drought we saw herds of elands and flocks of ostriches +crowding to the Zouga from the Desert, and very many of the latter were +killed in pitfalls on the banks. As long as there is any sap in the +pasturage they seldom need water. But should a traveler see the "spoor" +of a rhinoceros, or buffalo, or zebra, he would at once follow it up, +well assured that before he had gone many miles he would certainly reach +water. + +In the evening of our second day at Serotli, a hyaena, appearing +suddenly among the grass, succeeded in raising a panic among our cattle. +This false mode of attack is the plan which this cowardly animal always +adopts. His courage resembles closely that of a turkey-cock. He will +bite, if an animal is running away; but if the animal stand still, so +does he. Seventeen of our draught oxen ran away, and in their flight +went right into the hands of Sekomi, whom, from his being unfriendly to +our success, we had no particular wish to see. Cattle-stealing, such as +in the circumstances might have occurred in Caffraria, is here unknown; +so Sekomi sent back our oxen, and a message strongly dissuading us +against attempting the Desert. "Where are you going? You will be killed +by the sun and thirst, and then all the white men will blame me for not +saving you." This was backed by a private message from his mother. "Why +do you pass me? I always made the people collect to hear the word that +you have got. What guilt have I, that you pass without looking at me?" +We replied by assuring the messengers that the white men would attribute +our deaths to our own stupidity and "hard-headedness" (tlogo, e thata), +"as we did not intend to allow our companions and guides to return till +they had put us into our graves." We sent a handsome present to Sekomi, +and a promise that, if he allowed the Bakalahari to keep the wells open +for us, we would repeat the gift on our return. + +After exhausting all his eloquence in fruitless attempts to persuade us +to return, the under-chief, who headed the party of Sekomi's messengers, +inquired, "Who is taking them?" Looking round, he exclaimed, with a face +expressive of the most unfeigned disgust, "It is Ramotobi!" Our guide +belonged to Sekomi's tribe, but had fled to Sechele; as fugitives in +this country are always well received, and may even afterward visit the +tribe from which they had escaped, Ramotobi was in no danger, though +doing that which he knew to be directly opposed to the interests of his +own chief and tribe. + +All around Serotli the country is perfectly flat, and composed of +soft white sand. There is a peculiar glare of bright sunlight from a +cloudless sky over the whole scene; and one clump of trees and bushes, +with open spaces between, looks so exactly like another, that if you +leave the wells, and walk a quarter of a mile in any direction, it is +difficult to return. Oswell and Murray went out on one occasion to get +an eland, and were accompanied by one of the Bakalahari. The perfect +sameness of the country caused even this son of the Desert to lose his +way; a most puzzling conversation forthwith ensued between them and +their guide. One of the most common phrases of the people is "Kia +itumela", I thank you, or I am pleased; and the gentlemen were both +quite familiar with it, and with the word "metse", water. But there is a +word very similar in sound, "Kia timela", I am wandering; its perfect +is "Ki timetse", I have wandered. The party had been roaming about, +perfectly lost, till the sun went down; and, through their mistaking the +verb "wander" for "to be pleased", and "water", the colloquy went on at +intervals during the whole bitterly cold night in somewhat the following +style: + +"Where are the wagons?" + +REAL ANSWER. "I don't know. I have wandered. I never wandered before. I +am quite lost." + +SUPPOSED ANSWER. "I don't know. I want water. I am glad, I am quite +pleased. I am thankful to you." + +"Take us to the wagons, and you will get plenty of water." + +REAL ANSWER (looking vacantly around). "How did I wander? Perhaps the +well is there, perhaps not. I don't know. I have wandered." + +SUPPOSED ANSWER. "Something about thanks; he says he is pleased, and +mentions water again." The guide's vacant stare while trying to remember +is thought to indicate mental imbecility, and the repeated thanks were +supposed to indicate a wish to deprecate their wrath. + +"Well, Livingstone HAS played us a pretty trick, giving us in charge of +an idiot. Catch us trusting him again. What can this fellow mean by his +thanks and talk about water? Oh, you born fool! take us to the wagons, +and you will get both meat and water. Wouldn't a thrashing bring him to +his senses again?" "No, no, for then he will run away, and we shall be +worse off than we are now." + +The hunters regained the wagons next day by their own sagacity, which +becomes wonderfully quickened by a sojourn in the Desert; and we enjoyed +a hearty laugh on the explanation of their midnight colloquies. Frequent +mistakes of this kind occur. A man may tell his interpreter to say that +he is a member of the family of the chief of the white men; "YES, YOU +SPEAK LIKE A CHIEF," is the reply, meaning, as they explain it, that a +chief may talk nonsense without any one daring to contradict him. +They probably have ascertained, from that same interpreter, that this +relative of the white chief is very poor, having scarcely any thing in +his wagon. + +I sometimes felt annoyed at the low estimation in which some of my +hunting friends were held; for, believing that the chase is eminently +conducive to the formation of a brave and noble character, and that the +contest with wild beasts is well adapted for fostering that coolness +in emergencies, and active presence of mind, which we all admire, I +was naturally anxious that a higher estimate of my countrymen should be +formed in the native mind. "Have these hunters, who come so far and +work so hard, no meat at home?"--"Why, these men are rich, and could +slaughter oxen every day of their lives."--"And yet they come here, and +endure so much thirst for the sake of this dry meat, none of which is +equal to beef?"--"Yes, it is for the sake of play besides" (the idea of +sport not being in the language). This produces a laugh, as much as to +say, "Ah! you know better;" or, "Your friends are fools." When they can +get a man to kill large quantities of game for them, whatever HE may +think of himself or of his achievements, THEY pride themselves in having +adroitly turned to good account the folly of an itinerant butcher. + +The water having at last flowed into the wells we had dug in sufficient +quantity to allow a good drink to all our cattle, we departed from +Serotli in the afternoon; but as the sun, even in winter, which it now +was, is always very powerful by day, the wagons were dragged but slowly +through the deep, heavy sand, and we advanced only six miles before +sunset. We could only travel in the mornings and evenings, as a single +day in the hot sun and heavy sand would have knocked up the oxen. Next +day we passed Pepacheu (white tufa), a hollow lined with tufa, in which +water sometimes stands, but it was now dry; and at night our trocheamer* +showed that we had made but twenty-five miles from Serotli. + + * This is an instrument which, when fastened on the wagon-wheel, + records the number of revolutions made. By multiplying this number + by the circumference of the wheel, the actual distance traveled over + is at once ascertained. + +Ramotobi was angry at the slowness of our progress, and told us that, +as the next water was three days in front, if we traveled so slowly we +should never get there at all. The utmost endeavors of the servants, +cracking their whips, screaming and beating, got only nineteen miles out +of the poor beasts. We had thus proceeded forty-four miles from Serotli; +and the oxen were more exhausted by the soft nature of the country, and +the thirst, than if they had traveled double the distance over a hard +road containing supplies of water: we had, as far as we could judge, +still thirty miles more of the same dry work before us. At this season +the grass becomes so dry as to crumble to powder in the hands; so +the poor beasts stood wearily chewing, without taking a single fresh +mouthful, and lowing painfully at the smell of water in our vessels in +the wagons. We were all determined to succeed; so we endeavored to save +the horses by sending them forward with the guide, as a means of making +a desperate effort in case the oxen should fail. Murray went forward +with them, while Oswell and I remained to bring the wagons on their +trail as far as the cattle could drag them, intending then to send the +oxen forward too. + +The horses walked quickly away from us; but, on the morning of the third +day, when we imagined the steeds must be near the water, we discovered +them just alongside the wagons. The guide, having come across the fresh +footprints of some Bushmen who had gone in an opposite direction to that +which we wished to go, turned aside to follow them. An antelope had been +ensnared in one of the Bushmen's pitfalls. Murray followed Ramotobi most +trustingly along the Bushmen's spoor, though that led them away from +the water we were in search of; witnessed the operation of slaughtering, +skinning, and cutting up the antelope; and then, after a hard day's +toil, found himself close upon the wagons! The knowledge still retained +by Ramotobi of the trackless waste of scrub, through which we were now +passing, seemed admirable. For sixty or seventy miles beyond Serotli, +one clump of bushes and trees seemed exactly like another; but, as we +walked together this morning, he remarked, "When we come to that hollow +we shall light upon the highway of Sekomi; and beyond that again +lies the River Mokoko;" which, though we passed along it, I could not +perceive to be a river-bed at all. + +After breakfast, some of the men, who had gone forward on a little path +with some footprints of water-loving animals upon it, returned with the +joyful tidings of "metse", water, exhibiting the mud on their knees in +confirmation of the news being true. It does one's heart good to see the +thirsty oxen rush into a pool of delicious rain-water, as this was. In +they dash until the water is deep enough to be nearly level with their +throat, and then they stand drawing slowly in the long, refreshing +mouthfuls, until their formerly collapsed sides distend as if they would +burst. So much do they imbibe, that a sudden jerk, when they come out on +the bank, makes some of the water run out again from their mouths; but, +as they have been days without food too, they very soon commence to +graze, and of grass there is always abundance every where. This pool was +called Mathuluani; and thankful we were to have obtained so welcome a +supply of water. + +After giving the cattle a rest at this spot, we proceeded down the dry +bed of the River Mokoko. The name refers to the water-bearing stratum +before alluded to; and in this ancient bed it bears enough of water +to admit of permanent wells in several parts of it. We had now the +assurance from Ramotobi that we should suffer no more from thirst. Twice +we found rain-water in the Mokoko before we reached Mokokonyani, where +the water, generally below ground elsewhere, comes to the surface in a +bed of tufa. The adjacent country is all covered with low, thorny scrub, +with grass, and here and there clumps of the "wait-a-bit thorn", or +'Acacia detinens'. At Lotlakani (a little reed), another spring three +miles farther down, we met with the first Palmyra trees which we had +seen in South Africa; they were twenty-six in number. + +The ancient Mokoko must have been joined by other rivers below this, for +it becomes very broad, and spreads out into a large lake, of which the +lake we were now in search of formed but a very small part. We observed +that, wherever an ant-eater had made his hole, shells were thrown out +with the earth, identical with those now alive in the lake. + +When we left the Mokoko, Ramotobi seemed, for the first time, to be at a +loss as to which direction to take. He had passed only once away to the +west of the Mokoko, the scenes of his boyhood. Mr. Oswell, while riding +in front of the wagons, happened to spy a Bushwoman running away in a +bent position, in order to escape observation. Thinking it to be a +lion, he galloped up to her. She thought herself captured, and began to +deliver up her poor little property, consisting of a few traps made of +cords; but, when I explained that we only wanted water, and would pay +her if she led us to it, she consented to conduct us to a spring. It was +then late in the afternoon, but she walked briskly before our horses for +eight miles, and showed us the water of Nchokotsa. After leading us to +the water, she wished to go away home, if indeed she had any--she had +fled from a party of her countrymen, and was now living far from all +others with her husband--but as it was now dark, we wished her to +remain. As she believed herself still a captive, we thought she might +slip away by night; so, in order that she should not go away with the +impression that we were dishonest, we gave her a piece of meat and a +good large bunch of beads; at the sight of the latter she burst into a +merry laugh, and remained without suspicion. + +At Nchokotsa we came upon the first of a great number of salt-pans, +covered with an efflorescence of lime, probably the nitrate. A thick +belt of mopane-trees (a 'Bauhinia') hides this salt-pan, which is twenty +miles in circumference, entirely from the view of a person coming from +the southeast; and, at the time the pan burst upon our view, the setting +sun was casting a beautiful blue haze over the white incrustations, +making the whole look exactly like a lake. Oswell threw his hat up +in the air at the sight, and shouted out a huzza which made the poor +Bushwoman and the Bakwains think him mad. I was a little behind him, and +was as completely deceived by it as he; but, as we had agreed to allow +each other to behold the lake at the same instant, I felt a little +chagrined that he had, unintentionally, got the first glance. We had +no idea that the long-looked-for lake was still more than three hundred +miles distant. One reason of our mistake was, that the River Zouga was +often spoken of by the same name as the lake, viz., Noka ea Batletli +("River of the Batletli"). + +The mirage on these salinas was marvelous. It is never, I believe, +seen in perfection, except over such saline incrustations. Here not a +particle of imagination was necessary for realizing the exact picture +of large collections of water; the waves danced along above, and the +shadows of the trees were vividly reflected beneath the surface in such +an admirable manner, that the loose cattle, whose thirst had not been +slaked sufficiently by the very brackish water of Nchokotsa, with the +horses, dogs, and even the Hottentots ran off toward the deceitful +pools. A herd of zebras in the mirage looked so exactly like elephants +that Oswell began to saddle a horse in order to hunt them; but a sort +of break in the haze dispelled the illusion. Looking to the west and +northwest from Nchokotsa, we could see columns of black smoke, exactly +like those from a steam-engine, rising to the clouds, and were assured +that these arose from the burning reeds of the Noka ea Batletli. + +On the 4th of July we went forward on horseback toward what we supposed +to be the lake, and again and again did we seem to see it; but at last +we came to the veritable water of the Zouga, and found it to be a river +running to the N.E. A village of Bakurutse lay on the opposite bank; +these live among Batletli, a tribe having a click in their language, and +who were found by Sebituane to possess large herds of the great horned +cattle. They seem allied to the Hottentot family. Mr. Oswell, in +trying to cross the river, got his horse bogged in the swampy bank. Two +Bakwains and I managed to get over by wading beside a fishing-weir. The +people were friendly, and informed us that this water came out of the +Ngami. This news gladdened all our hearts, for we now felt certain of +reaching our goal. We might, they said, be a moon on the way; but we had +the River Zouga at our feet, and by following it we should at last reach +the broad water. + +Next day, when we were quite disposed to be friendly with every one, +two of the Bamangwato, who had been sent on before us by Sekomi to drive +away all the Bushmen and Bakalahari from our path, so that they should +not assist or guide us, came and sat down by our fire. We had seen their +footsteps fresh in the way, and they had watched our slow movements +forward, and wondered to see how we, without any Bushmen, found our way +to the waters. This was the first time they had seen Ramotobi. "You have +reached the river now," said they; and we, quite disposed to laugh at +having won the game, felt no ill-will to any one. They seemed to feel +no enmity to us either; but, after an apparently friendly conversation, +proceeded to fulfill to the last the instructions of their chief. +Ascending the Zouga in our front, they circulated the report that our +object was to plunder all the tribes living on the river and lake; but +when they had got half way up the river, the principal man sickened of +fever, turned back some distance, and died. His death had a good effect, +for the villagers connected it with the injury he was attempting to do +to us. They all saw through Sekomi's reasons for wishing us to fail in +our attempt; and though they came to us at first armed, kind and fair +treatment soon produced perfect confidence. + +When we had gone up the bank of this beautiful river about ninety-six +miles from the point where we first struck it, and understood that we +were still a considerable distance from the Ngami, we left all the oxen +and wagons, except Mr. Oswell's, which was the smallest, and one team, +at Ngabisane, in the hope that they would be recruited for the home +journey, while we made a push for the lake. The Bechuana chief of the +Lake region, who had sent men to Sechele, now sent orders to all the +people on the river to assist us, and we were received by the Bakoba, +whose language clearly shows that they bear an affinity to the tribes +in the north. They call themselves Bayeiye, i.e., men; but the Bechuanas +call them Bakoba, which contains somewhat of the idea of slaves. They +have never been known to fight, and, indeed, have a tradition that their +forefathers, in their first essays at war, made their bows of the Palma +Christi, and, when these broke, they gave up fighting altogether. They +have invariably submitted to the rule of every horde which has overrun +the countries adjacent to the rivers on which they specially love to +dwell. They are thus the Quakers of the body politic in Africa. + +A long time after the period of our visit, the chief of the Lake, +thinking to make soldiers of them, took the trouble to furnish them +with shields. "Ah! we never had these before; that is the reason we have +always succumbed. Now we will fight." But a marauding party came from +the Makololo, and our "Friends" at once paddled quickly, night and day, +down the Zouga, never daring to look behind them till they reached the +end of the river, at the point where we first saw it. + +The canoes of these inland sailors are truly primitive craft: they are +hollowed out of the trunks of single trees by means of iron adzes; and +if the tree has a bend, so has the canoe. I liked the frank and manly +bearing of these men, and, instead of sitting in the wagon, preferred a +seat in one of the canoes. I found they regarded their rude vessels +as the Arab does his camel. They have always fires in them, and prefer +sleeping in them while on a journey to spending the night on shore. "On +land you have lions," say they, "serpents, hyaenas, and your enemies; +but in your canoe, behind a bank of reed, nothing can harm you." Their +submissive disposition leads to their villages being frequently visited +by hungry strangers. We had a pot on the fire in the canoe by the way, +and when we drew near the villages devoured the contents. When fully +satisfied ourselves, I found we could all look upon any intruders with +perfect complacency, and show the pot in proof of having devoured the +last morsel. + +While ascending in this way the beautifully-wooded river, we came to a +large stream flowing into it. This was the River Tamunak'le. I inquired +whence it came. "Oh, from a country full of rivers--so many no one +can tell their number--and full of large trees." This was the first +confirmation of statements I had heard from the Bakwains who had +been with Sebituane, that the country beyond was not "the large sandy +plateau" of the philosophers. The prospect of a highway capable of being +traversed by boats to an entirely unexplored and very populous region, +grew from that time forward stronger and stronger in my mind; so much so +that, when we actually came to the lake, this idea occupied such a large +portion of my mental vision that the actual discovery seemed of but +little importance. I find I wrote, when the emotions caused by the +magnificent prospects of the new country were first awakened in my +breast, that they "might subject me to the charge of enthusiasm, a +charge which I wished I deserved, as nothing good or great had ever been +accomplished in the world without it."* + + * Letters published by the Royal Geographical Society. + Read 11th February and 8th April, 1850. + +Twelve days after our departure from the wagons at Ngabisane we came to +the northeast end of Lake Ngami; and on the 1st of August, 1849, we +went down together to the broad part, and, for the first time, this +fine-looking sheet of water was beheld by Europeans. The direction of +the lake seemed to be N.N.E. and S.S.W. by compass. The southern portion +is said to bend round to the west, and to receive the Teoughe from the +north at its northwest extremity. We could detect no horizon where we +stood looking S.S.W., nor could we form any idea of the extent of the +lake, except from the reports of the inhabitants of the district; and, +as they professed to go round it in three days, allowing twenty-five +miles a day would make it seventy-five, or less than seventy +geographical miles in circumference. Other guesses have been made since +as to its circumference, ranging between seventy and one hundred miles. +It is shallow, for I subsequently saw a native punting his canoe over +seven or eight miles of the northeast end; it can never, therefore, +be of much value as a commercial highway. In fact, during the months +preceding the annual supply of water from the north, the lake is so +shallow that it is with difficulty cattle can approach the water through +the boggy, reedy banks. These are low on all sides, but on the west +there is a space devoid of trees, showing that the waters have retired +thence at no very ancient date. This is another of the proofs of +desiccation met with so abundantly throughout the whole country. A +number of dead trees lie on this space, some of them imbedded in the +mud, right in the water. We were informed by the Bayeiye, who live on +the lake, that when the annual inundation begins, not only trees of +great size, but antelopes, as the springbuck and tsessebe ('Acronotus +lunata'), are swept down by its rushing waters; the trees are gradually +driven by the winds to the opposite side, and become imbedded in mud. + +The water of the lake is perfectly fresh when full, but brackish when +low; and that coming down the Tamunak'le we found to be so clear, cold, +and soft, the higher we ascended, that the idea of melting snow was +suggested to our minds. We found this region, with regard to that from +which we had come, to be clearly a hollow, the lowest point being +Lake Kumadau; the point of the ebullition of water, as shown by one of +Newman's barometric thermometers, was only between 207-1/2 Deg. and 206 +Deg., giving an elevation of not much more than two thousand feet above +the level of the sea. We had descended above two thousand feet in coming +to it from Kolobeng. It is the southern and lowest part of the great +river system beyond, in which large tracts of country are inundated +annually by tropical rains, hereafter to be described. A little of that +water, which in the countries farther north produces inundation, comes +as far south as 20d 20', the latitude of the upper end of the lake, +and instead of flooding the country, falls into the lake as into a +reservoir. It begins to flow down the Embarrah, which divides into the +rivers Tzo and Teoughe. The Tzo divides into the Tamunak'le and Mababe; +the Tamunak'le discharges itself into the Zouga, and the Teoughe into +the lake. The flow begins either in March or April, and the descending +waters find the channels of all these rivers dried out, except in +certain pools in their beds, which have long dry spaces between them. +The lake itself is very low. The Zouga is but a prolongation of the +Tamunak'le, and an arm of the lake reaches up to the point where the +one ends and the other begins. The last is narrow and shallow, while the +Zouga is broad and deep. The narrow arm of the lake, which on the map +looks like a continuation of the Zouga, has never been observed to flow +either way. It is as stagnant as the lake itself. + +The Teoughe and Tamunak'le, being essentially the same river, and +receiving their supplies from the same source (the Embarrah or Varra), +can never outrun each other. If either could, or if the Teoughe could +fill the lake--a thing which has never happened in modern times--then +this little arm would prove a convenient escapement to prevent +inundation. If the lake ever becomes lower than the bed of the Zouga, a +little of the water of the Tamunak'le might flow into it instead of down +the Zouga; we should then have the phenomenon of a river flowing two +ways; but this has never been observed to take place here, and it is +doubtful if it ever can occur in this locality. The Zouga is broad and +deep when it leaves the Tamunak'le, but becomes gradually narrower as +you descend about two hundred miles; there it flows into Kumadau, a +small lake about three or four miles broad and twelve long. The water, +which higher up begins to flow in April, does not make much progress in +filling this lake till the end of June. In September the rivers cease +to flow. When the supply has been more than usually abundant, a little +water flows beyond Kumadau, in the bed first seen by us on the 4th of +July; if the quantity were larger, it might go further in the dry rocky +bed of the Zouga, since seen still further to the east. The water +supply of this part of the river system, as will be more fully explained +further on, takes place in channels prepared for a much more copious +flow. It resembles a deserted Eastern garden, where all the embankments +and canals for irrigation can be traced, but where, the main dam and +sluices having been allowed to get out of repair, only a small portion +can be laid under water. In the case of the Zouga the channel is +perfect, but water enough to fill the whole channel never comes down; +and before it finds its way much beyond Kumadau, the upper supply ceases +to run and the rest becomes evaporated. The higher parts of its bed even +are much broader and more capacious than the lower toward Kumadau. The +water is not absorbed so much as lost in filling up an empty channel, +from which it is to be removed by the air and sun. There is, I am +convinced, no such thing in the country as a river running into sand and +becoming lost. The phenomenon, so convenient for geographers, haunted +my fancy for years; but I have failed in discovering any thing except a +most insignificant approach to it. + +My chief object in coming to the lake was to visit Sebituane, the great +chief of the Makololo, who was reported to live some two hundred miles +beyond. We had now come to a half-tribe of the Bamangwato, called +Batauana. Their chief was a young man named Lechulatebe. Sebituane +had conquered his father Moremi, and Lechulatebe received part of his +education while a captive among the Bayeiye. His uncle, a sensible +man, ransomed him; and, having collected a number of families together, +abdicated the chieftainship in favor of his nephew. As Lechulatebe had +just come into power, he imagined that the proper way of showing his +abilities was to act directly contrary to every thing that his uncle +advised. When we came, the uncle recommended him to treat us handsomely, +therefore the hopeful youth presented us with a goat only. It ought to +have been an ox. So I proposed to my companions to loose the animal +and let him go, as a hint to his master. They, however, did not wish to +insult him. I, being more of a native, and familiar with their customs, +knew that this shabby present was an insult to us. We wished to purchase +some goats or oxen; Lechulatebe offered us elephants' tusks. "No, we can +not eat these; we want something to fill our stomachs." "Neither can I; +but I hear you white men are all very fond of these bones, so I offer +them; I want to put the goats into my own stomach." A trader, who +accompanied us, was then purchasing ivory at the rate of ten good large +tusks for a musket worth thirteen shillings. They were called "bones"; +and I myself saw eight instances in which the tusks had been left to rot +with the other bones where the elephant fell. The Batauana never had +a chance of a market before; but, in less than two years after our +discovery, not a man of them could be found who was not keenly alive to +the great value of the article. + +On the day after our arrival at the lake, I applied to Lechulatebe for +guides to Sebituane. As he was much afraid of that chief, he objected, +fearing lest other white men should go thither also, and give Sebituane +guns; whereas, if the traders came to him alone, the possession of +fire-arms would give him such a superiority that Sebituane would be +afraid of him. It was in vain to explain that I would inculcate peace +between them--that Sebituane had been a father to him and Sechele, and +was as anxious to see me as he, Lechulatebe, had been. He offered to +give me as much ivory as I needed without going to that chief; but when +I refused to take any, he unwillingly consented to give me guides. Next +day, however, when Oswell and I were prepared to start, with the horses +only, we received a senseless refusal; and like Sekomi, who had thrown +obstacles in our way, he sent men to the Bayeiye with orders to refuse +us a passage across the river. Trying hard to form a raft at a narrow +part, I worked many hours in the water; but the dry wood was so +worm-eaten it would not bear the weight of a single person. I was not +then aware of the number of alligators which exist in the Zouga, and +never think of my labor in the water without feeling thankful that I +escaped their jaws. The season was now far advanced; and as Mr. Oswell, +with his wonted generous feelings, volunteered, on the spot, to go +down to the Cape and bring up a boat, we resolved to make our way south +again. + +Coming down the Zouga, we had now time to look at its banks. These are +very beautiful, resembling closely many parts of the River Clyde above +Glasgow. The formation is soft calcareous tufa, such as forms the bottom +of all this basin. The banks are perpendicular on the side to which +the water swings, and sloping and grassy on the other. The slopes are +selected for the pitfalls designed by the Bayeiye to entrap the animals +as they come to drink. These are about seven or eight feet deep, three +or four feet wide at the mouth, and gradually decrease till they are +only about a foot wide at the bottom. The mouth is an oblong square (the +only square thing made by the Bechuanas, for every thing else is round), +and the long diameter at the surface is about equal to the depth. The +decreasing width toward the bottom is intended to make the animal wedge +himself more firmly in by his weight and struggles. The pitfalls are +usually in pairs, with a wall a foot thick left uncut between the ends +of each, so that if the beast, when it feels its fore legs descending, +should try to save itself from going in altogether by striding the hind +legs, he would spring forward and leap into the second with a force +which insures the fall of his whole body into the trap. They are covered +with great care. All the excavated earth is removed to a distance, so as +not to excite suspicion in the minds of the animals. Reeds and grass are +laid across the top; above this the sand is thrown, and watered so as to +appear exactly like the rest of the spot. Some of our party plumped into +these pitfalls more than once, even when in search of them, in order to +open them to prevent the loss of our cattle. If an ox sees a hole, he +carefully avoids it; and old elephants have been known to precede the +herd and whisk off the coverings of the pitfalls on each side all the +way down to the water. We have known instances in which the old among +these sagacious animals have actually lifted the young out of the trap. + +The trees which adorn the banks are magnificent. Two enormous baobabs +('Adansonia digitata'), or mowanas, grow near its confluence with the +lake where we took the observations for the latitude (20d 20' S.). We +were unable to ascertain the longitude of the lake, as our watches were +useless; it may be between 22 Deg. and 23 Deg. E. The largest of the two +baobabs was 76 feet in girth. The palmyra appears here and there among +trees not met with in the south. The mokuchong, or moshoma, bears an +edible fruit of indifferent quality, but the tree itself would be a fine +specimen of arboreal beauty in any part of the world. The trunk is often +converted into canoes. The motsouri, which bears a pink plum containing +a pleasant acid juice, resembles an orange-tree in its dark evergreen +foliage, and a cypress in its form. It was now winter-time, and we saw +nothing of the flora. The plants and bushes were dry; but wild indigo +abounded, as indeed it does over large tracts of Africa. It is called +mohetolo, or the "changer", by the boys, who dye their ornaments of +straw with the juice. There are two kinds of cotton in the country, and +the Mashona, who convert it into cloth, dye it blue with this plant. + +We found the elephants in prodigious numbers on the southern bank. They +come to drink by night, and after having slaked their thirst--in doing +which they throw large quantities of water over themselves, and are +heard, while enjoying the refreshment, screaming with delight--they +evince their horror of pitfalls by setting off in a straight line to the +desert, and never diverge till they are eight or ten miles off. They are +smaller here than in the countries farther south. At the Limpopo, +for instance, they are upward of twelve feet high; here, only eleven: +farther north we shall find them nine feet only. The koodoo, or tolo, +seemed smaller, too, than those we had been accustomed to see. We +saw specimens of the kuabaoba, or straight-horned rhinoceros ('R. +Oswellii'), which is a variety of the white ('R. simus'); and we found +that, from the horn being projected downward, it did not obstruct the +line of vision, so that this species is able to be much more wary than +its neighbors. + +We discovered an entirely new species of antelope, called leche or +lechwi. It is a beautiful water-antelope of a light brownish-yellow +color. Its horns--exactly like those of the 'Aigoceros ellipsiprimnus', +the waterbuck, or tumogo, of the Bechuanas--rise from the head with +a slight bend backward, then curve forward at the points. The chest, +belly, and orbits are nearly white, the front of the legs and ankles +deep brown. From the horns, along the nape to the withers, the male has +a small mane of the same yellowish color with the rest of the skin, and +the tail has a tuft of black hair. It is never found a mile from water; +islets in marshes and rivers are its favorite haunts, and it is quite +unknown except in the central humid basin of Africa. Having a good deal +of curiosity, it presents a noble appearance as it stands gazing, with +head erect, at the approaching stranger. When it resolves to decamp, it +lowers its head, and lays its horns down to a level with the withers; +it then begins with a waddling trot, which ends in its galloping and +springing over bushes like the pallahs. It invariably runs to the water, +and crosses it by a succession of bounds, each of which appears to be +from the bottom. We thought the flesh good at first, but soon got tired +of it. + +Great shoals of excellent fish come down annually with the access of +waters. The mullet ('Mugil Africanus') is the most abundant. They are +caught in nets. + +The 'Glanis siluris', a large, broad-headed fish, without scales, and +barbed--called by the natives "mosala"--attains an enormous size and +fatness. They are caught so large that when a man carries one over his +shoulder the tail reaches the ground. It is a vegetable feeder, and in +many of its habits resembles the eel. Like most lophoid fishes, it has +the power of retaining a large quantity of water in a part of its great +head, so that it can leave the river, and even be buried in the mud of +dried-up pools, without being destroyed. Another fish closely resembling +this, and named 'Clarias capensis' by Dr. Smith, is widely diffused +throughout the interior, and often leaves the rivers for the sake of +feeding in pools. As these dry up, large numbers of them are entrapped +by the people. A water-snake, yellow-spotted and dark brown, is often +seen swimming along with its head above the water: it is quite harmless, +and is relished as food by the Bayeiye. + +They mention ten kinds of fish in their river; and, in their songs of +praise to the Zouga, say, "The messenger sent in haste is always forced +to spend the night on the way by the abundance of food you place before +him." The Bayeiye live much on fish, which is quite an abomination to +the Bechuanas of the south; and they catch them in large numbers by +means of nets made of the fine, strong fibres of the hibiscus, which +grows abundantly in all moist places. Their float-ropes are made of +the ife, or, as it is now called, the 'Sanseviere Angolensis', a +flag-looking plant, having a very strong fibre, that abounds from +Kolobeng to Angola; and the floats themselves are pieces of a +water-plant containing valves at each joint, which retain the air in +cells about an inch long. The mode of knotting the nets is identical +with our own. + +They also spear the fish with javelins having a light handle, which +readily floats on the surface. They show great dexterity in harpooning +the hippopotamus; and, the barbed blade of the spear being attached to +a rope made of the young leaves of the palmyra, the animal can not +rid himself of the canoe, attached to him in whale fashion, except by +smashing it, which he not unfrequently does by his teeth or by a stroke +of his hind foot. + +On returning to the Bakurutse, we found that their canoes for fishing +were simply large bundles of reeds tied together. Such a canoe would +be a ready extemporaneous pontoon for crossing any river that had reedy +banks. + + + + +Chapter 4. + +Leave Kolobeng again for the Country of Sebituane--Reach the Zouga-- +The Tsetse--A Party of Englishmen--Death of Mr. Rider--Obtain +Guides--Children fall sick with Fever--Relinquish the Attempt to reach +Sebituane--Mr. Oswell's Elephant-hunting--Return to Kolobeng--Make +a third Start thence--Reach Nchokotsa--Salt-pans--"Links", or +Springs--Bushmen--Our Guide Shobo--The Banajoa--An ugly Chief--The +Tsetse--Bite fatal to domestic Animals, but harmless to wild Animals +and Man--Operation of the Poison--Losses caused by it--The Makololo-- +Our Meeting with Sebituane--Sketch of his Career--His Courage and +Conquests--Manoeuvres of the Batoka--He outwits them--His Wars with +the Matebele--Predictions of a native Prophet--Successes of the +Makololo--Renewed Attacks of the Matebele--The Island of Loyelo--Defeat +of the Matebele--Sebituane's Policy--His Kindness to Strangers and to +the Poor--His sudden Illness and Death--Succeeded by his Daughter--Her +Friendliness to us--Discovery, in June, 1851, of the Zambesi flowing +in the Centre of the Continent--Its Size--The Mambari--The +Slave-trade--Determine to send Family to England--Return to the Cape +in April, 1852--Safe Transit through the Caffre Country during +Hostilities--Need of a "Special Correspondent"--Kindness of the London +Missionary Society--Assistance afforded by the Astronomer Royal at the +Cape. + + + +Having returned to Kolobeng, I remained there till April, 1850, and then +left in company with Mrs. Livingstone, our three children, and the chief +Sechele--who had now bought a wagon of his own--in order to go across +the Zouga at its lower end, with the intention of proceeding up the +northern bank till we gained the Tamunak'le, and of then ascending that +river to visit Sebituane in the north. Sekomi had given orders to fill +up the wells which we had dug with so much labor at Serotli, so we took +the more eastern route through the Bamangwato town and by Letloche. That +chief asked why I had avoided him in our former journeys. I replied that +my reason was that I knew he did not wish me to go to the lake, and I +did not want to quarrel with him. "Well," he said, "you beat me then, +and I am content." + +Parting with Sechele at the ford, as he was eager to visit Lechulatebe, +we went along the northern woody bank of the Zouga with great labor, +having to cut down very many trees to allow the wagons to pass. Our +losses by oxen falling into pitfalls were very heavy. The Bayeiye kindly +opened the pits when they knew of our approach; but when that was not +the case, we could blame no one on finding an established custom of the +country inimical to our interests. On approaching the confluence of the +Tamunak'le we were informed that the fly called tsetse* abounded on its +banks. This was a barrier we never expected to meet; and, as it might +have brought our wagons to a complete stand-still in a wilderness, where +no supplies for the children could be obtained, we were reluctantly +compelled to recross the Zouga. + + * 'Glossina morsitans', the first specimens of which were + brought to England in 1848 by my friend Major Vardon, from the + banks of the Limpopo. + +From the Bayeiye we learned that a party of Englishmen, who had come to +the lake in search of ivory, were all laid low by fever, so we traveled +hastily down about sixty miles to render what aid was in our power. +We were grieved to find, as we came near, that Mr. Alfred Rider, an +enterprising young artist who had come to make sketches of this country +and of the lake immediately after its discovery, had died of fever +before our arrival; but by the aid of medicines and such comforts as +could be made by the only English lady who ever visited the lake, the +others happily recovered. The unfinished drawing of Lake Ngami was made +by Mr. Rider just before his death, and has been kindly lent for this +work by his bereaved mother. + +Sechele used all his powers of eloquence with Lechulatebe to induce him +to furnish guides that I might be able to visit Sebituane on ox-back, +while Mrs. Livingstone and the children remained at Lake Ngami. He +yielded at last. I had a very superior London-made gun, the gift of +Lieutenant Arkwright, on which I placed the greatest value, both +on account of the donor and the impossibility of my replacing it. +Lechulatebe fell violently in love with it, and offered whatever +number of elephants' tusks I might ask for it. I too was enamored with +Sebituane; and as he promised in addition that he would furnish Mrs. +Livingstone with meat all the time of my absence, his arguments made me +part with the gun. Though he had no ivory at the time to pay me, I felt +the piece would be well spent on those terms, and delivered it to him. +All being ready for our departure, I took Mrs. Livingstone about six +miles from the town, that she might have a peep at the broad part of the +lake. Next morning we had other work to do than part, for our little boy +and girl were seized with fever. On the day following, all our servants +were down too with the same complaint. As nothing is better in these +cases than change of place, I was forced to give up the hope of seeing +Sebituane that year; so, leaving my gun as part payment for guides next +year, we started for the pure air of the Desert. + +Some mistake had happened in the arrangement with Mr. Oswell, for we met +him on the Zouga on our return, and he devoted the rest of this season +to elephant-hunting, at which the natives universally declare he is the +greatest adept that ever came into the country. He hunted without dogs. +It is remarkable that this lordly animal is so completely harassed by +the presence of a few yelping curs as to be quite incapable of attending +to man. He makes awkward attempts to crush them by falling on his knees; +and sometimes places his forehead against a tree ten inches in diameter; +glancing on one side of the tree and then on the other, he pushes it +down before him, as if he thought thereby to catch his enemies. The only +danger the huntsman has to apprehend is the dogs running toward him, and +thereby leading the elephant to their master. Mr. Oswell has been known +to kill four large old male elephants a day. The value of the ivory in +these cases would be one hundred guineas. We had reason to be proud of +his success, for the inhabitants conceived from it a very high idea of +English courage; and when they wished to flatter me would say, "If you +were not a missionary you would just be like Oswell; you would not hunt +with dogs either." When, in 1852, we came to the Cape, my black coat +eleven years out of fashion, and without a penny of salary to draw, +we found that Mr. Oswell had most generously ordered an outfit for the +half-naked children, which cost about 200 Pounds, and presented it to +us, saying he thought Mrs. Livingstone had a right to the game of her +own preserves. + +Foiled in this second attempt to reach Sebituane, we returned again to +Kolobeng, whither we were soon followed by a number of messengers from +that chief himself. When he heard of our attempts to visit him, he +dispatched three detachments of his men with thirteen brown cows to +Lechulatebe, thirteen white cows to Sekomi, and thirteen black cows to +Sechele, with a request to each to assist the white men to reach him. +Their policy, however, was to keep him out of view, and act as his +agents in purchasing with his ivory the goods he wanted. This is +thoroughly African; and that continent being without friths and arms +of the sea, the tribes in the centre have always been debarred from +European intercourse by its universal prevalence among all the people +around the coasts. + +Before setting out on our third journey to Sebituane, it was necessary +to visit Kuruman; and Sechele, eager, for the sake of the commission +thereon, to get the ivory of that chief into his own hands, allowed all +the messengers to leave before our return. Sekomi, however, was more +than usually gracious, and even furnished us with a guide, but no one +knew the path beyond Nchokotsa which we intended to follow. When we +reached that point, we found that the main spring of the gun of another +of his men, who was well acquainted with the Bushmen, through whose +country we should pass, had opportunely broken. I never undertook +to mend a gun with greater zest than this; for, under promise of his +guidance, we went to the north instead of westward. All the other guides +were most liberally rewarded by Mr. Oswell. + +We passed quickly over a hard country, which is perfectly flat. A little +soil lying on calcareous tufa, over a tract of several hundreds of +miles, supports a vegetation of fine sweet short grass, and mopane and +baobab trees. On several parts of this we found large salt-pans, one +of which, Ntwetwe, is fifteen miles broad and one hundred long. The +latitude might have been taken on its horizon as well as upon the sea. + +Although these curious spots seem perfectly level, all those in this +direction have a gentle slope to the northeast: thither the rain-water, +which sometimes covers them, gently gravitates. This, it may be +recollected, is the direction of the Zouga. The salt dissolved in +the water has by this means all been transferred to one pan in that +direction, named Chuantsa; on it we see a cake of salt and lime an inch +and a half thick. All the others have an efflorescence of lime and one +of the nitrates only, and some are covered thickly with shells. These +shells are identical with those of the mollusca of Lake Ngami and the +Zouga. There are three varieties, spiral, univalve, and bivalve. + +In every salt-pan in the country there is a spring of water on one side. +I can remember no exception to this rule. The water of these springs is +brackish, and contains the nitrate of soda. In one instance there are +two springs, and one more saltish than the other. If this supply came +from beds of rock salt the water would not be drinkable, as it generally +is, and in some instances, where the salt contained in the pan in which +these springs appear has been removed by human agency, no fresh deposit +occurs. It is therefore probable that these deposits of salt are the +remains of the very slightly brackish lakes of antiquity, large portions +of which must have been dried out in the general desiccation. We see an +instance in Lake Ngami, which, when low, becomes brackish, and this view +seems supported by the fact that the largest quantities of salt have +been found in the deepest hollows or lowest valleys, which have no +outlet or outgoing gorge; and a fountain, about thirty miles south of +the Bamangwato--the temperature of which is upward of 100 Deg.--while +strongly impregnated with pure salt, being on a flat part of the +country, is accompanied by no deposit. + +When these deposits occur in a flat tufaceous country like the present, +a large space is devoid of vegetation, on account of the nitrates +dissolving the tufa, and keeping it in a state unfavorable to the growth +of plants. + +We found a great number of wells in this tufa. A place called +Matlomagan-yana, or the "Links", is quite a chain of these never-failing +springs. As they occasionally become full in seasons when no rain +falls, and resemble somewhat in this respect the rivers we have already +mentioned, it is probable they receive some water by percolation from +the river system in the country beyond. Among these links we found many +families of Bushmen; and, unlike those on the plains of the Kalahari, +who are generally of short stature and light yellow color, these were +tall, strapping fellows, of dark complexion. Heat alone does not produce +blackness of skin, but heat with moisture seems to insure the deepest +hue. + +One of these Bushmen, named Shobo, consented to be our guide over the +waste between these springs and the country of Sebituane. Shobo gave us +no hope of water in less than a month. Providentially, however, we came +sooner than we expected to some supplies of rain-water in a chain of +pools. It is impossible to convey an idea of the dreary scene on which +we entered after leaving this spot: the only vegetation was a low scrub +in deep sand; not a bird or insect enlivened the landscape. It was, +without exception, the most uninviting prospect I ever beheld; and, +to make matters worse, our guide Shobo wandered on the second day. We +coaxed him on at night, but he went to all points of the compass on the +trails of elephants which had been here in the rainy season, and then +would sit down in the path, and in his broken Sichuana say, "No water, +all country only; Shobo sleeps; he breaks down; country only;" and then +coolly curl himself up and go to sleep. The oxen were terribly fatigued +and thirsty; and on the morning of the fourth day, Shobo, after +professing ignorance of every thing, vanished altogether. We went on in +the direction in which we last saw him, and about eleven o'clock began +to see birds; then the trail of a rhinoceros. At this we unyoked the +oxen, and they, apparently knowing the sign, rushed along to find the +water in the River Mahabe, which comes from the Tamunak'le, and lay to +the west of us. The supply of water in the wagons had been wasted by one +of our servants, and by the afternoon only a small portion remained for +the children. This was a bitterly anxious night; and next morning the +less there was of water, the more thirsty the little rogues became. The +idea of their perishing before our eyes was terrible. It would almost +have been a relief to me to have been reproached with being the entire +cause of the catastrophe; but not one syllable of upbraiding was uttered +by their mother, though the tearful eye told the agony within. In the +afternoon of the fifth day, to our inexpressible relief, some of the men +returned with a supply of that fluid of which we had never before felt +the true value. + +The cattle, in rushing along to the water in the Mahabe, probably +crossed a small patch of trees containing tsetse, an insect which was +shortly to become a perfect pest to us. Shobo had found his way to the +Bayeiye, and appeared, when we came up to the river, at the head of a +party; and, as he wished to show his importance before his friends, he +walked up boldly and commanded our whole cavalcade to stop, and to bring +forth fire and tobacco, while he coolly sat down and smoked his pipe. It +was such an inimitably natural way of showing off, that we all stopped +to admire the acting, and, though he had left us previously in the +lurch, we all liked Shobo, a fine specimen of that wonderful people, the +Bushmen. + +Next day we came to a village of Banajoa, a tribe which extends far to +the eastward. They were living on the borders of a marsh in which the +Mahabe terminates. They had lost their crop of corn ('Holcus sorghum'), +and now subsisted almost entirely on the root called "tsitla", a kind of +aroidoea, which contains a very large quantity of sweet-tasted starch. +When dried, pounded into meal, and allowed to ferment, it forms a not +unpleasant article of food. The women shave all the hair off their +heads, and seem darker than the Bechuanas. Their huts were built on +poles, and a fire is made beneath by night, in order that the smoke may +drive away the mosquitoes, which abound on the Mababe and Tamunak'le +more than in any other part of the country. The head man of this +village, Majane, seemed a little wanting in ability, but had had wit +enough to promote a younger member of the family to the office. This +person, the most like the ugly negro of the tobacconists' shops I ever +saw, was called Moroa Majane, or son of Majane, and proved an active +guide across the River Sonta, and to the banks of the Chobe, in the +country of Sebituane. We had come through another tsetse district +by night, and at once passed our cattle over to the northern bank to +preserve them from its ravages. + +A few remarks on the Tsetse, or 'Glossina morsitans', may here be +appropriate. It is not much larger than the common house-fly, and is +nearly of the same brown color as the common honey-bee; the after part +of the body has three or four yellow bars across it; the wings project +beyond this part considerably, and it is remarkably alert, avoiding +most dexterously all attempts to capture it with the hand at common +temperatures; in the cool of the mornings and evenings it is less agile. +Its peculiar buzz when once heard can never be forgotten by the traveler +whose means of locomotion are domestic animals; for it is well known +that the bite of this poisonous insect is certain death to the ox, +horse, and dog. In this journey, though we were not aware of any great +number having at any time lighted on our cattle, we lost forty-three +fine oxen by its bite. We watched the animals carefully, and believe +that not a score of flies were ever upon them. + +A most remarkable feature in the bite of the tsetse is its perfect +harmlessness in man and wild animals, and even calves, so long as they +continue to suck the cows. We never experienced the slightest injury +from them ourselves, personally, although we lived two months in their +HABITAT, which was in this case as sharply defined as in many others, +for the south bank of the Chobe was infested by them, and the northern +bank, where our cattle were placed, only fifty yards distant, contained +not a single specimen. This was the more remarkable, as we often saw +natives carrying over raw meat to the opposite bank with many tsetse +settled upon it. + +The poison does not seem to be injected by a sting, or by ova placed +beneath the skin; for, when one is allowed to feed freely on the hand, +it is seen to insert the middle prong of three portions, into which the +proboscis divides, somewhat deeply into the true skin; it then draws it +out a little way, and it assumes a crimson color as the mandibles come +into brisk operation. The previously shrunken belly swells out, and, +if left undisturbed, the fly quietly departs when it is full. A slight +itching irritation follows, but not more than in the bite of a mosquito. +In the ox this same bite produces no more immediate effects than in man. +It does not startle him as the gad-fly does; but a few days afterward +the following symptoms supervene: the eye and nose begin to run, the +coat stares as if the animal were cold, a swelling appears under the +jaw, and sometimes at the navel; and, though the animal continues to +graze, emaciation commences, accompanied with a peculiar flaccidity +of the muscles, and this proceeds unchecked until, perhaps months +afterward, purging comes on, and the animal, no longer able to graze, +perishes in a state of extreme exhaustion. Those which are in good +condition often perish soon after the bite is inflicted with staggering +and blindness, as if the brain were affected by it. Sudden changes of +temperature produced by falls of rain seem to hasten the progress of the +complaint; but, in general, the emaciation goes on uninterruptedly for +months, and, do what we will, the poor animals perish miserably. + +When opened, the cellular tissue on the surface of the body beneath the +skin is seen to be injected with air, as if a quantity of soap-bubbles +were scattered over it, or a dishonest, awkward butcher had been trying +to make it look fat. The fat is of a greenish-yellow color and of an +oily consistence. All the muscles are flabby, and the heart often so +soft that the fingers may be made to meet through it. The lungs and +liver partake of the disease. The stomach and bowels are pale and empty, +and the gall-bladder is distended with bile. + +These symptoms seem to indicate what is probably the case, a poison in +the blood, the germ of which enters when the proboscis is inserted to +draw blood. The poison-germ, contained in a bulb at the root of +the proboscis, seems capable, although very minute in quantity, of +reproducing itself, for the blood after death by tsetse is very small +in quantity, and scarcely stains the hands in dissection. I shall +have by-and-by to mention another insect, which by the same operation +produces in the human subject both vomiting and purging. + +The mule, ass, and goat enjoy the same immunity from the tsetse as man +and the game. Many large tribes on the Zambesi can keep no domestic +animals except the goat, in consequence of the scourge existing in their +country. Our children were frequently bitten, yet suffered no harm; and +we saw around us numbers of zebras, buffaloes, pigs, pallahs and other +antelopes, feeding quietly in the very habitat of the tsetse, yet as +undisturbed by its bite as oxen are when they first receive the fatal +poison. There is not so much difference in the natures of the horse +and zebra, the buffalo and ox, the sheep and antelope, as to afford +any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. Is a man not as much +a domestic animal as a dog? The curious feature in the case, that dogs +perish though fed on milk, whereas the calves escape so long as they +continue sucking, made us imagine that the mischief might be produced by +some plant in the locality, and not by tsetse; but Major Vardon, of the +Madras Army, settled that point by riding a horse up to a small hill +infested by the insect without allowing him time to graze, and, though +he only remained long enough to take a view of the country and catch +some specimens of tsetse on the animal, in ten days afterward the horse +was dead. + +The well-known disgust which the tsetse shows to animal excreta, as +exhibited when a village is placed in its habitat, has been observed and +turned to account by some of the doctors. They mix droppings of animals, +human milk, and some medicines together, and smear the animals that are +about to pass through a tsetse district; but this, though it proves a +preventive at the time, is not permanent. There is no cure yet known for +the disease. A careless herdsman allowing a large number of cattle to +wander into a tsetse district loses all except the calves; and Sebituane +once lost nearly the entire cattle of his tribe, very many thousands, +by unwittingly coming under its influence. Inoculation does not insure +immunity, as animals which have been slightly bitten in one year may +perish by a greater number of bites in the next; but it is probable that +with the increase of guns the game will perish, as has happened in +the south, and the tsetse, deprived of food, may become extinct +simultaneously with the larger animals. + +The Makololo whom we met on the Chobe were delighted to see us; and as +their chief Sebituane was about twenty miles down the river, Mr. Oswell +and I proceeded in canoes to his temporary residence. He had come from +the Barotse town of Naliele down to Sesheke as soon as he heard of white +men being in search of him, and now came one hundred miles more to +bid us welcome into his country. He was upon an island, with all his +principal men around him, and engaged in singing when we arrived. It +was more like church music than the sing-song ee ee ee, ae ae ae, of +the Bechuanas of the south, and they continued the tune for some +seconds after we approached. We informed him of the difficulties we had +encountered, and how glad we were that they were all at an end by at +last reaching his presence. He signified his own joy, and added, "Your +cattle are all bitten by the tsetse, and will certainly die; but never +mind, I have oxen, and will give you as many as you need." We, in our +ignorance, then thought that as so few tsetse had bitten them no great +mischief would follow. He then presented us with an ox and a jar of +honey as food, and handed us over to the care of Mahale, who had headed +the party to Kolobeng, and would now fain appropriate to himself the +whole credit of our coming. Prepared skins of oxen, as soft as cloth, +were given to cover us through the night; and, as nothing could be +returned to this chief, Mahale became the owner of them. Long before it +was day Sebituane came, and sitting down by the fire, which was +lighted for our benefit behind the hedge where we lay, he narrated the +difficulties he had himself experienced, when a young man, in crossing +that same desert which we had mastered long afterward. As he has been +most remarkable in his career, and was unquestionably the greatest man +in all that country, a short sketch of his life may prove interesting to +the reader. + +Sebituane was about forty-five years of age; of a tall and wiry form, +an olive or coffee-and-milk color, and slightly bald; in manner cool +and collected, and more frank in his answers than any other chief I ever +met. He was the greatest warrior ever heard of beyond the colony; for, +unlike Mosilikatse, Dingaan, and others, he always led his men +into battle himself. When he saw the enemy, he felt the edge of his +battle-axe, and said, "Aha! it is sharp, and whoever turns his back on +the enemy will feel its edge." So fleet of foot was he, that all his +people knew there was no escape for the coward, as any such would be +cut down without mercy. In some instances of skulking he allowed the +individual to return home; then calling him, he would say, "Ah! you +prefer dying at home to dying in the field, do you? You shall have your +desire." This was the signal for his immediate execution. + +He came from the country near the sources of the Likwa and Namagari +rivers in the south, so we met him eight hundred or nine hundred miles +from his birth-place. He was not the son of a chief, though related +closely to the reigning family of the Basutu; and when, in an attack by +Sikonyele, the tribe was driven out of one part, Sebituane was one in +that immense horde of savages driven back by the Griquas from Kuruman in +1824.* He then fled to the north with an insignificant party of men and +cattle. At Melita the Bangwaketse collected the Bakwains, Bakatla, and +Bahurutse, to "eat them up". Placing his men in front, and the women +behind the cattle, he routed the whole of his enemies at one blow. +Having thus conquered Makabe, the chief of the Bangwaketse, he took +immediate possession of his town and all his goods. + + * See an account of this affair in Moffat's "Missionary + Enterprise in Africa". + +Sebituane subsequently settled at the place called Litubaruba, where +Sechele now dwells, and his people suffered severely in one of those +unrecorded attacks by white men, in which murder is committed and +materials laid up in the conscience for a future judgment. + +A great variety of fortune followed him in the northern part of the +Bechuana country; twice he lost all his cattle by the attacks of the +Matabele, but always kept his people together, and retook more than he +lost. He then crossed the Desert by nearly the same path that we did. +He had captured a guide, and, as it was necessary to travel by night in +order to reach water, the guide took advantage of this and gave him the +slip. After marching till morning, and going as they thought right, +they found themselves on the trail of the day before. Many of his +cattle burst away from him in the phrensy of thirst, and rushed back +to Serotli, then a large piece of water, and to Mashue and Lopepe, the +habitations of their original owners. He stocked himself again among the +Batletli, on Lake Kumadau, whose herds were of the large-horned species +of cattle.* Conquering all around the lake, he heard of white men living +at the west coast; and, haunted by what seems to have been the dream +of his whole life, a desire to have intercourse with the white man, he +passed away to the southwest, into the parts opened up lately by Messrs. +Galton and Andersson. There, suffering intensely from thirst, he and +his party came to a small well. He decided that the men, not the cattle, +should drink it, the former being of most value, as they could fight +for more should these be lost. In the morning they found the cattle had +escaped to the Damaras. + + * We found the Batauana in possession of this breed when we + discovered Lake Ngami. One of these horns, brought to England + by Major Vardon, will hold no less than twenty-one imperial + pints of water; and a pair, brought by Mr. Oswell, and now in + the possession of Colonel Steele, measures from tip to tip + eight and a half feet. + +Returning to the north poorer than he started, he ascended the Teoughe +to the hill Sorila, and crossed over a swampy country to the eastward. +Pursuing his course onward to the low-lying basin of the Leeambye, he +saw that it presented no attraction to a pastoral tribe like his, so +he moved down that river among the Bashubia and Batoka, who were +then living in all their glory. His narrative resembled closely the +"Commentaries of Caesar", and the history of the British in India. He +was always forced to attack the different tribes, and to this day his +men justify every step he took as perfectly just and right. The +Batoka lived on large islands in the Leeambye or Zambesi, and, feeling +perfectly secure in their fastnesses, often allured fugitive or +wandering tribes on to uninhabited islets on pretense of ferrying them +across, and there left them to perish for the sake of their goods. +Sekomi, the chief of the Bamangwato, was, when a child, in danger of +meeting this fate; but a man still living had compassion on him, and +enabled his mother to escape with him by night. The river is so large +that the sharpest eye can not tell the difference between an island and +the bend of the opposite bank; but Sebituane, with his usual foresight, +requested the island chief who ferried him across to take his seat in +the canoe with him, and detained him by his side till all his people +and cattle were safely landed. The whole Batoka country was then densely +peopled, and they had a curious taste for ornamenting their villages +with the skulls of strangers. When Sebituane appeared near the great +falls, an immense army collected to make trophies of the Makololo +skulls; but, instead of succeeding in this, they gave him a good excuse +for conquering them, and capturing so many cattle that his people were +quite incapable of taking any note of the sheep and goats. He overran +all the high lands toward the Kafue, and settled in what is called a +pastoral country, of gently undulating plains, covered with short grass +and but little forest. The Makololo have never lost their love for this +fine, healthy region. + +But the Matebele, a Caffre or Zulu tribe, under Mosilikatse, crossed +the Zambesi, and, attacking Sebituane in this choice spot, captured +his cattle and women. Rallying his men, he followed and recaptured the +whole. A fresh attack was also repulsed, and Sebituane thought of going +farther down the Zambesi, to the country of the white men. He had an +idea, whence imbibed I never could learn, that if he had a cannon he +might live in peace. He had led a life of war, yet no one apparently +desired peace more than he did. A prophet induced him to turn his +face again to the westward. This man, by name Tlapane, was called a +"senoga"--one who holds intercourse with the gods. He probably had +a touch of insanity, for he was in the habit of retiring no one knew +whither, but perhaps into some cave, to remain in a hypnotic or mesmeric +state until the moon was full. Then, returning to the tribe quite +emaciated, he excited himself, as others do who pretend to the prophetic +AFFLATUS, until he was in a state of ecstasy. These pretended prophets +commence their operations by violent action of the voluntary muscles. +Stamping, leaping, and shouting in a peculiarly violent manner, or +beating the ground with a club, they induce a kind of fit, and while +in it pretend that their utterances are unknown to themselves. Tlapane, +pointing eastward, said, "There, Sebituane, I behold a fire: shun it; +it is a fire which may scorch thee. The gods say, go not thither." +Then, turning to the west, he said, "I see a city and a nation of black +men--men of the water; their cattle are red; thine own tribe, Sebituane, +is perishing, and will be all consumed; thou wilt govern black men, +and, when thy warriors have captured red cattle, let not the owners be +killed; they are thy future tribe--they are thy city; let them be spared +to cause thee to build. And thou, Ramosinii, thy village will perish +utterly. If Mokari removes from that village he will perish first, and +thou, Ramosinii, wilt be the last to die." Concerning himself he added, +"The gods have caused other men to drink water, but to me they have +given bitter water of the chukuru (rhinoceros). They call me away +myself. I can not stay much longer." + +This vaticination, which loses much in the translation, I have given +rather fully, as it shows an observant mind. The policy recommended was +wise, and the deaths of the "senoga" and of the two men he had named, +added to the destruction of their village, having all happened soon +after, it is not wonderful that Sebituane followed implicitly the +warning voice. The fire pointed to was evidently the Portuguese +fire-arms, of which he must have heard. The black men referred to were +the Barotse, or, as they term themselves, Baloiana; and Sebituane spared +their chiefs, even though they attacked him first. He had ascended the +Barotse valley, but was pursued by the Matebele, as Mosilikatse never +could forgive his former defeats. They came up the river in a very large +body. Sebituane placed some goats on one of the large islands of the +Zambesi as a bait to the warriors, and some men in canoes to co-operate +in the manoeuvre. When they were all ferried over to the island, the +canoes were removed, and the Matebele found themselves completely in a +trap, being perfectly unable to swim. They subsisted for some time on +the roots of grass after the goats were eaten, but gradually became so +emaciated that, when the Makololo landed, they had only to perform the +part of executioners on the adults, and to adopt the rest into their own +tribe. Afterward Mosilikatse was goaded on by his warriors to revenge +this loss; so he sent an immense army, carrying canoes with them, in +order that no such mishap might occur again. Sebituane had by this time +incorporated the Barotse, and taught his young men to manage canoes; so +he went from island to island, and watched the Matebele on the main land +so closely that they could not use their canoes to cross the river any +where without parting their forces. At last all the Makololo and their +cattle were collected on the island of Loyelo, and lay all around, +keeping watch night and day over the enemy. After some time spent in +this way, Sebituane went in a canoe toward them, and, addressing them by +an interpreter, asked why they wished to kill him; he had never attacked +them, never harmed their chief: "Au!" he continued, "the guilt is on +your side." The Matebele made no reply; but the Makololo next day saw +the canoes they had carried so far lying smashed, and the owners gone. +They returned toward their own country, and fever, famine, and +the Batoka completed their destruction; only five men returned to +Mosilikatse. + +Sebituane had now not only conquered all the black tribes over an +immense tract of country, but had made himself dreaded even by the +terrible Mosilikatse. He never could trust this ferocious chief, +however; and, as the Batoka on the islands had been guilty of ferrying +his enemies across the Zambesi, he made a rapid descent upon them, +and swept them all out of their island fastnesses. He thus unwittingly +performed a good service to the country by completely breaking down the +old system which prevented trade from penetrating into the great central +valley. Of the chiefs who escaped, he said, "They love Mosilikatse, let +them live with him: the Zambesi is my line of defense;" and men were +placed all along it as sentinels. When he heard of our wish to visit +him, he did all he could to assist our approach. Sechele, Sekomi, and +Lechulatebe owed their lives to his clemency; and the latter might have +paid dearly for his obstructiveness. Sebituane knew every thing that +happened in the country, for he had the art of gaining the affections +both of his own people and of strangers. When a party of poor men came +to his town to sell their hoes or skins, no matter how ungainly they +might be, he soon knew them all. A company of these indigent strangers, +sitting far apart from the Makololo gentlemen around the chief, would be +surprised to see him come alone to them, and, sitting down, inquire if +they were hungry. He would order an attendant to bring meal, milk, and +honey, and, mixing them in their sight, in order to remove any suspicion +from their minds, make them feast, perhaps for the first time in their +lives, on a lordly dish. Delighted beyond measure with his affability +and liberality, they felt their hearts warm toward him, and gave him +all the information in their power; and as he never allowed a party of +strangers to go away without giving every one of them, servants and all, +a present, his praises were sounded far and wide. "He has a heart! he is +wise!" were the usual expressions we heard before we saw him. + +He was much pleased with the proof of confidence we had shown in +bringing our children, and promised to take us to see his country, so +that we might choose a part in which to locate ourselves. Our plan was, +that I should remain in the pursuit of my objects as a missionary, while +Mr. Oswell explored the Zambesi to the east. Poor Sebituane, however, +just after realizing what he had so long ardently desired, fell sick of +inflammation of the lungs, which originated in and extended from an old +wound got at Melita. I saw his danger, but, being a stranger, I feared +to treat him medically, lest, in the event of his death, I should be +blamed by his people. I mentioned this to one of his doctors, who said, +"Your fear is prudent and wise; this people would blame you." He had +been cured of this complaint, during the year before, by the Barotse +making a large number of free incisions in the chest. The Makololo +doctors, on the other hand, now scarcely cut the skin. On the Sunday +afternoon in which he died, when our usual religious service was over, I +visited him with my little boy Robert. "Come near," said Sebituane, "and +see if I am any longer a man. I am done." He was thus sensible of the +dangerous nature of his disease, so I ventured to assent, and added a +single sentence regarding hope after death. "Why do you speak of death?" +said one of a relay of fresh doctors; "Sebituane will never die." If I +had persisted, the impression would have been produced that by speaking +about it I wished him to die. After sitting with him some time, and +commending him to the mercy of God, I rose to depart, when the dying +chieftain, raising himself up a little from his prone position, called +a servant, and said, "Take Robert to Maunku (one of his wives), and tell +her to give him some milk." These were the last words of Sebituane. + +We were not informed of his death until the next day. The burial of a +Bechuana chief takes place in his cattle-pen, and all the cattle are +driven for an hour or two around and over the grave, so that it may be +quite obliterated. We went and spoke to the people, advising them to +keep together and support the heir. They took this kindly; and in turn +told us not to be alarmed, for they would not think of ascribing the +death of their chief to us; that Sebituane had just gone the way of his +fathers; and though the father had gone, he had left children, and they +hoped that we would be as friendly to his children as we intended to +have been to himself. + +He was decidedly the best specimen of a native chief I ever met. I +never felt so much grieved by the loss of a black man before; and it was +impossible not to follow him in thought into the world of which he had +just heard before he was called away, and to realize somewhat of the +feelings of those who pray for the dead. The deep, dark question of what +is to become of such as he, must, however, be left where we find it, +believing that, assuredly, the "Judge of all the earth will do right." + +At Sebituane's death the chieftainship devolved, as her father intended, +on a daughter named Ma-mochisane. He had promised to show us his country +and to select a suitable locality for our residence. We had now to look +to the daughter, who was living twelve days to the north, at Naliele. +We were obliged, therefore, to remain until a message came from her; +and when it did, she gave us perfect liberty to visit any part of the +country we chose. Mr. Oswell and I then proceeded one hundred and thirty +miles to the northeast, to Sesheke; and in the end of June, 1851, we +were rewarded by the discovery of the Zambesi, in the centre of the +continent. This was a most important point, for that river was not +previously known to exist there at all. The Portuguese maps all +represent it as rising far to the east of where we now were; and if +ever any thing like a chain of trading stations had existed across +the country between the latitudes 12 Deg. and 18 Deg. south, this +magnificent portion of the river must have been known before. We saw it +at the end of the dry season, at the time when the river is about at its +lowest, and yet there was a breadth of from three hundred to six hundred +yards of deep flowing water. Mr. Oswell said he had never seen such a +fine river, even in India. At the period of its annual inundation it +rises fully twenty feet in perpendicular height, and floods fifteen or +twenty miles of lands adjacent to its banks. + +The country over which we had traveled from the Chobe was perfectly +flat, except where there were large ant-hills, or the remains of former +ones, which had left mounds a few feet high. These are generally covered +with wild date-trees and palmyras, and in some parts there are forests +of mimosae and mopane. Occasionally the country between the Chobe and +Zambesi is flooded, and there are large patches of swamps lying near the +Chobe or on its banks. The Makololo were living among these swamps for +the sake of the protection the deep reedy rivers afforded them against +their enemies. + +Now, in reference to a suitable locality for a settlement for myself, +I could not conscientiously ask them to abandon their defenses for my +convenience alone. The healthy districts were defenseless, and the safe +localities were so deleterious to human life, that the original Basutos +had nearly all been cut off by the fever; I therefore feared to subject +my family to the scourge. + +As we were the very first white men the inhabitants had ever seen, we +were visited by prodigious numbers. Among the first who came to see us +was a gentleman who appeared in a gaudy dressing-gown of printed calico. +Many of the Makololo, besides, had garments of blue, green, and red +baize, and also of printed cottons; on inquiry, we learned that these +had been purchased, in exchange for boys, from a tribe called Mambari, +which is situated near Bihe. This tribe began the slave-trade with +Sebituane only in 1850, and but for the unwillingness of Lechulatebe +to allow us to pass, we should have been with Sebituane in time to have +prevented it from commencing at all. The Mambari visited in ancient +times the chief of the Barotse, whom Sebituane conquered, and he refused +to allow any one to sell a child. They never came back again till 1850; +and as they had a number of old Portuguese guns marked "Legitimo +de Braga", which Sebituane thought would be excellent in any future +invasion of Matebele, he offered to purchase them with cattle or ivory, +but the Mambari refused every thing except boys about fourteen years of +age. The Makololo declare they never heard of people being bought and +sold till then, and disliked it, but the desire to possess the guns +prevailed, and eight old guns were exchanged for as many boys; these +were not their own children, but captives of the black races they had +conquered. I have never known in Africa an instance of a parent selling +his own offspring. The Makololo were afterward incited to make a foray +against some tribes to the eastward; the Mambari bargaining to use their +guns in the attack for the captives they might take, and the Makololo +were to have all the cattle. They went off with at least two hundred +slaves that year. During this foray the Makololo met some Arabs from +Zanzibar, who presented them with three English muskets, and in return +received about thirty of their captives. + +In talking with my companions over these matters, the idea was suggested +that, if the slave-market were supplied with articles of European +manufacture by legitimate commerce, the trade in slaves would become +impossible. It seemed more feasible to give the goods, for which the +people now part with their servants, in exchange for ivory and other +products of the country, and thus prevent the trade at the beginning, +than to try to put a stop to it at any of the subsequent steps. This +could only be effected by establishing a highway from the coast into the +centre of the country. + +As there was no hope of the Boers allowing the peaceable instruction +of the natives at Kolobeng, I at once resolved to save my family from +exposure to this unhealthy region by sending them to England, and +to return alone, with a view to exploring the country in search of a +healthy district that might prove a centre of civilization, and open up +the interior by a path to either the east or west coast. This resolution +led me down to the Cape in April, 1852, being the first time during +eleven years that I had visited the scenes of civilization. Our route +to Cape Town led us to pass through the centre of the colony during +the twentieth month of a Caffre war; and if those who periodically pay +enormous sums for these inglorious affairs wish to know how our little +unprotected party could quietly travel through the heart of the colony +to the capital with as little sense or sign of danger as if we had been +in England, they must engage a "'Times' Special Correspondent" for +the next outbreak to explain where the money goes, and who have been +benefited by the blood and treasure expended. + +Having placed my family on board a homeward-bound ship, and promised +to rejoin them in two years, we parted, for, as it subsequently proved, +nearly five years. The Directors of the London Missionary Society +signified their cordial approval of my project by leaving the matter +entirely to my own discretion; and I have much pleasure in acknowledging +my obligations to the gentlemen composing that body for always acting in +an enlightened spirit, and with as much liberality as their constitution +would allow. + +I have the like pleasure in confessing my thankfulness to the Astronomer +Royal at the Cape, Thomas Maclear, Esq., for enabling me to recall +the little astronomical knowledge which constant manual labor and the +engrossing nature of missionary duties had effaced from my memory, +and in adding much that I did not know before. The promise he made on +parting, that he would examine and correct all my observations, had +more effect in making me persevere in overcoming the difficulties of an +unassisted solitary observer than any thing else; so whatever credit may +be attached to the geographical positions laid down in my route must +be attributed to the voluntary aid of the excellent and laborious +astronomer of the Cape observatory. + +Having given the reader as rapid a sketch as possible of events which +attracted notice between 1840 and 1852, I now proceed to narrate the +incidents of the last and longest journey of all, performed in 1852-6. + + + + +Chapter 5. + +Start in June, 1852, on the last and longest Journey from Cape Town-- +Companions--Wagon-traveling--Physical Divisions of Africa--The +Eastern, Central, and Western Zones--The Kalahari Desert--Its +Vegetation--Increasing Value of the Interior for Colonization-- +Our Route--Dutch Boers--Their Habits--Sterile Appearance of +the District--Failure of Grass--Succeeded by other Plants-- +Vines--Animals--The Boers as Farmers--Migration of Springbucks-- +Wariness of Animals--The Orange River--Territory of the Griquas and +Bechuanas--The Griquas--The Chief Waterboer--His wise and energetic +Government--His Fidelity--Ill-considered Measures of the Colonial +Government in regard to Supplies of Gunpowder--Success of the +Missionaries among the Griquas and Bechuanas--Manifest Improvement of +the native Character--Dress of the Natives--A full-dress Costume--A +Native's Description of the Natives--Articles of Commerce in the +Country of the Bechuanas--Their Unwillingness to learn, and Readiness +to criticise. + + + +Having sent my family home to England, I started in the beginning of +June, 1852, on my last journey from Cape Town. This journey extended +from the southern extremity of the continent to St. Paul de Loando, the +capital of Angola, on the west coast, and thence across South Central +Africa in an oblique direction to Kilimane (Quilimane) in Eastern +Africa. I proceeded in the usual conveyance of the country, the heavy, +lumbering Cape wagon drawn by ten oxen, and was accompanied by two +Christian Bechuanas from Kuruman--than whom I never saw better servants +any where--by two Bakwain men, and two young girls, who, having come as +nurses with our children to the Cape, were returning to their home at +Kolobeng. Wagon-traveling in Africa has been so often described that +I need say no more than that it is a prolonged system of picnicking, +excellent for the health, and agreeable to those who are not +over-fastidious about trifles, and who delight in being in the open air. + +Our route to the north lay near the centre of the cone-shaped mass of +land which constitutes the promontory of the Cape. If we suppose this +cone to be divided into three zones or longitudinal bands, we find each +presenting distinct peculiarities of climate, physical appearance and +population. These are more marked beyond than within the colony. At +some points one district seems to be continued in and to merge into the +other, but the general dissimilarity warrants the division, as an aid to +memory. The eastern zone is often furnished with mountains, well wooded +with evergreen succulent trees, on which neither fire nor droughts can +have the smallest effect ('Strelitzia', 'Zamia horrida', 'Portulacaria +afra', 'Schotia speciosa', 'Euphorbias', and 'Aloes arborescens'); +and its seaboard gorges are clad with gigantic timber. It is also +comparatively well watered with streams and flowing rivers. The annual +supply of rain is considerable, and the inhabitants (Caffres or Zulus) +are tall, muscular, and well made; they are shrewd, energetic, and +brave; altogether they merit the character given them by military +authorities, of being "magnificent savages". Their splendid physical +development and form of skull show that, but for the black skin and +woolly hair, they would take rank among the foremost Europeans. + +The next division, that which embraces the centre of the continent, +can scarcely be called hilly, for what hills there are are very low. +It consists for the most part of extensive, slightly undulating plains. +There are no lofty mountains, but few springs, and still fewer flowing +streams. Rain is far from abundant, and droughts may be expected every +few years. Without artificial irrigation no European grain can be +raised, and the inhabitants (Bechuanas), though evidently of the same +stock, originally, with those already mentioned, and closely resembling +them in being an agricultural as well as a pastoral people, are a +comparatively timid race, and inferior to the Caffres in physical +development. + +The western division is still more level than the middle one, being +rugged only near the coast. It includes the great plain called +the Kalahari Desert, which is remarkable for little water and very +considerable vegetation. + +The reason, probably, why so little rain falls on this extensive +plain is that the prevailing winds of most of the interior country +are easterly, with a little southing. The moisture taken up by the +atmosphere from the Indian Ocean is deposited on the eastern hilly +slope; and when the moving mass of air reaches its greatest elevation, +it is then on the verge of the great valley, or, as in the case of +the Kalahari, the great heated inland plains; there, meeting with the +rarefied air of that hot, dry surface, the ascending heat gives it +greater capacity for retaining all its remaining humidity, and few +showers can be given to the middle and western lands in consequence of +the increased hygrometric power. + +This is the same phenomenon, on a gigantic scale, as that which takes +place on Table Mountain, at the Cape, in what is called the spreading of +the "table-cloth". The southeast wind causes a mass of air, equal to +the diameter of the mountain, suddenly to ascend at least three thousand +feet; the dilatation produced by altitude, with its attendant cold, +causes the immediate formation of a cloud on the summit; the water in +the atmosphere becomes visible; successive masses of gliding-up and +passing-over air cause the continual formation of clouds, but the top of +the vapory mass, or "table-cloth", is level, and seemingly motionless; +on the lee side, however, the thick volumes of vapor curl over and +descend, but when they reach the point below, where greater density and +higher temperature impart enlarged capacity for carrying water, they +entirely disappear. + +Now if, instead of a hollow on the lee side of Table Mountain, we had +an elevated heated plain, the clouds which curl over that side, and +disappear as they do at present when a "southeaster" is blowing, might +deposit some moisture on the windward ascent and top; but the heat would +then impart the increased capacity the air now receives at the lower +level in its descent to leeward, and, instead of an extended country +with a flora of the 'Disa grandiflora', 'gladiolus', 'rushes', and +'lichens', which now appear on Table Mountain, we should have only the +hardy vegetation of the Kalahari. + +Why there should be so much vegetation on the Kalahari may be explained +by the geological formation of the country. There is a rim or fringe of +ancient rocks round a great central valley, which, dipping inward, form +a basin, the bottom of which is composed of the oldest silurian rocks. +This basin has been burst through and filled up in many parts by +eruptive traps and breccias, which often bear in their substances +angular fragments of the more ancient rocks, as shown in the fossils +they contain. Now, though large areas have been so dislocated that but +little trace of the original valley formation appears, it is highly +probable that the basin shape prevails over large tracts of the country; +and as the strata on the slopes, where most of the rain falls, dip in +toward the centre, they probably guide water beneath the plains but +ill supplied with moisture from the clouds. The phenomenon of stagnant +fountains becoming by a new and deeper outlet never-failing streams may +be confirmatory of the view that water is conveyed from the sides of the +country into the bottom of the central valley; and it is not beyond +the bounds of possibility that the wonderful river system in the north, +which, if native information be correct, causes a considerable increase +of water in the springs called Matlomagan-yana (the Links), extends its +fertilizing influence beneath the plains of the Kalahari. + +The peculiar formation of the country may explain why there is such +a difference in the vegetation between the 20th and 30th parallels of +latitude in South Africa and the same latitudes in Central Australia. +The want of vegetation is as true of some parts too in the centre of +South America as of Australia; and the cause of the difference holds out +a probability for the success of artesian wells in extensive tracts of +Africa now unpeopled solely on account of the want of surface water. +We may be allowed to speculate a little at least on the fact of much +greater vegetation, which, from whatever source it comes, presents for +South Africa prospects of future greatness which we can not hope for +in Central Australia. As the interior districts of the Cape Colony +are daily becoming of higher value, offering to honest industry a fair +remuneration for capital, and having a climate unequaled in salubrity +for consumptive patients, I should unhesitatingly recommend any farmer +at all afraid of that complaint in his family to try this colony. With +the means of education already possessed, and the onward and upward +movement of the Cape population, he need entertain no apprehensions of +his family sinking into barbarism. + +The route we at this time followed ran along the middle, or skirted the +western zone before alluded to, until we reached the latitude of Lake +Ngami, where a totally different country begins. While in the colony, +we passed through districts inhabited by the descendants of Dutch and +French refugees who had fled from religious persecution. Those living +near the capital differ but little from the middle classes in +English counties, and are distinguished by public spirit and general +intelligence; while those situated far from the centres of civilization +are less informed, but are a body of frugal, industrious, and hospitable +peasantry. A most efficient system of public instruction was established +in the time of Governor Sir George Napier, on a plan drawn up in a great +measure by that accomplished philosopher, Sir John Herschel. The system +had to contend with less sectarian rancor than elsewhere; indeed, until +quite recently, that spirit, except in a mild form, was unknown. + +The population here described ought not to be confounded with some +Boers who fled from British rule on account of the emancipation of their +Hottentot slaves, and perhaps never would have been so had not every now +and then some Rip Van Winkle started forth at the Cape to justify in the +public prints the deeds of blood and slave-hunting in the far interior. +It is therefore not to be wondered at if the whole race is confounded +and held in low estimation by those who do not know the real composition +of the Cape community. + +Population among the Boers increases rapidly; they marry soon, are +seldom sterile, and continue to have children late. I once met a worthy +matron whose husband thought it right to imitate the conduct of Abraham +while Sarah was barren; she evidently agreed in the propriety of the +measure, for she was pleased to hear the children by a mother of what +has been thought an inferior race address her as their mother. Orphans +are never allowed to remain long destitute; and instances are frequent +in which a tender-hearted farmer has adopted a fatherless child, and +when it came of age portioned it as his own. + +Two centuries of the South African climate have not had much effect upon +the physical condition of the Boers. They are a shade darker, or +rather ruddier, than Europeans, and are never cadaverous-looking, as +descendants of Europeans are said to be elsewhere. There is a tendency +to the development of steatopyga, so characteristic of Arabs and other +African tribes; and it is probable that the interior Boers in another +century will become in color what the learned imagine our progenitors, +Adam and Eve, to have been. + +The parts of the colony through which we passed were of sterile aspect; +and, as the present winter had been preceded by a severe drought, +many farmers had lost two thirds of their stock. The landscape was +uninviting; the hills, destitute of trees, were of a dark brown color, +and the scanty vegetation on the plains made me feel that they deserved +the name of Desert more than the Kalahari. When first taken possession +of, these parts are said to have been covered with a coating of grass, +but that has disappeared with the antelopes which fed upon it, and +a crop of mesembryanthemums and crassulas occupies its place. It is +curious to observe how, in nature, organizations the most dissimilar +are mutually dependent on each other for their perpetuation. Here the +original grasses were dependent for dissemination on the grass-feeding +animals, which scattered the seeds. When, by the death of the antelopes, +no fresh sowing was made, the African droughts proved too much for +this form of vegetation. But even this contingency was foreseen by +the Omniscient One; for, as we may now observe in the Kalahari Desert, +another family of plants, the mesembryanthemums, stood ready to +neutralize the aridity which must otherwise have followed. This family +of plants possesses seed-vessels which remain firmly shut on their +contents while the soil is hot and dry, and thus preserve the vegetative +power intact during the highest heat of the torrid sun; but when rain +falls, the seed-vessel opens and sheds its contents just when there is +the greatest probability of their vegetating. In other plants heat and +drought cause the seed-vessels to burst and shed their charge. + +One of this family is edible ('Mesembryanthemum edule'); another +possesses a tuberous root, which may be eaten raw; and all are furnished +with thick, fleshy leaves, having pores capable of imbibing and +retaining moisture from a very dry atmosphere and soil, so that, if +a leaf is broken during a period of the greatest drought, it shows +abundant circulating sap. The plants of this family are found much +farther north, but the great abundance of the grasses prevents them from +making any show. There, however, they stand ready to fill up any gap +which may occur in the present prevailing vegetation; and should the +grasses disappear, animal life would not necessarily be destroyed, +because a reserve supply, equivalent to a fresh act of creative power, +has been provided. + +One of this family, 'M. turbiniforme', is so colored as to blend in well +with the hue of the soil and stones around it; and a 'gryllus' of the +same color feeds on it. In the case of the insect, the peculiar color +is given as compensation for the deficiency of the powers of motion to +enable it to elude the notice of birds. The continuation of the species +is here the end in view. In the case of the plant the same device is +adopted for a sort of double end, viz., perpetuation of the plant by +hiding it from animals, with the view that ultimately its extensive +appearance will sustain that race. + +As this new vegetation is better adapted for sheep and goats in a dry +country than grass, the Boers supplant the latter by imitating the +process by which graminivorous antelopes have so abundantly disseminated +the seed of grasses. A few wagon-loads of mesembryanthemum plants, in +seed, are brought to a farm covered with a scanty crop of coarse grass, +and placed on a spot to which the sheep have access in the evenings. As +they eat a little every night, the seeds are dropped over the grazing +grounds in this simple way, with a regularity which could not be matched +except at the cost of an immense amount of labor. The place becomes in +the course of a few years a sheep-farm, as these animals thrive on such +herbage. As already mentioned, some plants of this family are furnished +with an additional contrivance for withstanding droughts, viz., +oblong tubers, which, buried deep enough beneath the soil for complete +protection from the scorching sun, serve as reservoirs of sap and +nutriment during those rainless periods which recur perpetually in even +the most favored spots of Africa. I have adverted to this peculiarity +as often seen in the vegetation of the Desert; and, though rather out of +place, it may be well--while noticing a clever imitation of one +process in nature by the Cape farmers--to suggest another for their +consideration. The country beyond south lat. 18 Deg. abounds in three +varieties of grape-bearing vines, and one of these is furnished with +oblong tubers every three or four inches along the horizontal root. +They resemble closely those of the asparagus. This increase of power to +withstand the effects of climate might prove of value in the more arid +parts of the Cape colony, grapes being well known to be an excellent +restorative in the debility produced by heat: by ingrafting, or by some +of those curious manipulations which we read of in books on gardening, a +variety might be secured better adapted to the country than the foreign +vines at present cultivated. The Americans find that some of their +native vines yield wines superior to those made from the very best +imported vines from France and Portugal. What a boon a vine of the sort +contemplated would have been to a Rhenish missionary I met at a part in +the west of the colony called Ebenezer, whose children had never seen +flowers, though old enough to talk about them! + +The slow pace at which we wound our way through the colony made almost +any subject interesting. The attention is attracted to the names +of different places, because they indicate the former existence of +buffaloes, elands, and elephants, which are now to be found only +hundreds of miles beyond. A few blesbucks ('Antilope pygarga'), gnus, +bluebucks ('A. cerulea'), steinbucks, and the ostrich ('Struthio +camelus'), continue, like the Bushmen, to maintain a precarious +existence when all the rest are gone. The elephant, the most sagacious, +flees the sound of fire-arms first; the gnu and ostrich, the most wary +and the most stupid, last. The first emigrants found the Hottentots in +possession of prodigious herds of fine cattle, but no horses, asses, or +camels. The original cattle, which may still be seen in some parts of +the frontier, must have been brought south from the north-northeast, +for from this point the natives universally ascribe their original +migration. They brought cattle, sheep, goats, and dogs; why not the +horse, the delight of savage hordes? Horses thrive well in the Cape +Colony when imported. Naturalists point out certain mountain ranges +as limiting the habitat of certain classes of animals; but there is +no Cordillera in Africa to answer that purpose, there being no visible +barrier between the northeastern Arabs and the Hottentot tribes to +prevent the different hordes, as they felt their way southward, from +indulging their taste for the possession of this noble animal. + +I am here led to notice an invisible barrier, more insurmountable than +mountain ranges, but which is not opposed to the southern progress of +cattle, goats, and sheep. The tsetse would prove a barrier only until +its well-defined habitat was known, but the disease passing under the +term of horse-sickness (peripneumonia) exists in such virulence over +nearly seven degrees of latitude that no precaution would be sufficient +to save these animals. The horse is so liable to this disease, that only +by great care in stabling can he be kept any where between 20 Deg. +and 27 Deg. S. during the time between December and April. The winter, +beginning in the latter month, is the only period in which Englishmen +can hunt on horseback, and they are in danger of losing all their studs +some months before December. To this disease the horse is especially +exposed, and it is almost always fatal. One attack, however, seems to +secure immunity from a second. Cattle, too, are subject to it, but only +at intervals of a few, sometimes many years; but it never makes a clean +sweep of the whole cattle of a village, as it would do of a troop of +fifty horses. This barrier, then, seems to explain the absence of the +horse among the Hottentots, though it is not opposed to the southern +migration of cattle, sheep, and goats. + +When the flesh of animals that have died of this disease is eaten, it +causes a malignant carbuncle, which, when it appears over any important +organ, proves rapidly fatal. It is more especially dangerous over the +pit of the stomach. The effects of the poison have been experienced +by missionaries who had eaten properly cooked food, the flesh of sheep +really but not visibly affected by the disease. The virus in the flesh +of the animal is destroyed neither by boiling nor roasting. This fact, +of which we have had innumerable examples, shows the superiority of +experiments on a large scale to those of acute and able physiologists +and chemists in the laboratory, for a well known physician of Paris, +after careful investigation, considered that the virus in such cases was +completely neutralized by boiling. + +This disease attacks wild animals too. During our residence at Chonuan +great numbers of tolos, or koodoos, were attracted to the gardens of the +Bakwains, abandoned at the usual period of harvest because there was no +prospect of the corn ('Holcus sorghum') bearing that year. The koodoo is +remarkably fond of the green stalks of this kind of millet. Free feeding +produced that state of fatness favorable for the development of this +disease, and no fewer than twenty-five died on the hill opposite our +house. Great numbers of gnus and zebras perished from the same cause, +but the mortality produced no sensible diminution in the numbers of the +game, any more than the deaths of many of the Bakwains who persisted, +in spite of every remonstrance, in eating the dead meat, caused any +sensible decrease in the strength of the tribe. + +The farms of the Boers consist generally of a small patch of cultivated +land in the midst of some miles of pasturage. They are thus less an +agricultural than a pastoral people. Each farm must have its fountain; +and where no such supply of water exists, the government lands are +unsalable. An acre in England is thus generally more valuable than a +square mile in Africa. But the country is prosperous, and capable of +great improvement. The industry of the Boers augurs well for the future +formation of dams and tanks, and for the greater fruitfulness that would +certainly follow. + +As cattle and sheep farmers the colonists are very successful. Larger +and larger quantities of wool are produced annually, and the value of +colonial farms increases year by year. But the system requires that +with the increase of the population there should be an extension of +territory. Wide as the country is, and thinly inhabited, the farmers +feel it to be too limited, and they are gradually spreading to the +north. This movement proves prejudicial to the country behind, for +labor, which would be directed to the improvement of the colony, is +withdrawn and expended in a mode of life little adapted to the exercise +of industrial habits. That, however, does not much concern the rest of +mankind. Nor does it seem much of an evil for men who cultivate the soil +to claim a right to appropriate lands for tillage which other men only +hunt over, provided some compensation for the loss of sustenance be +awarded. The original idea of a title seems to have been that "subduing" +or cultivating gave that right. But this rather Chartist principle must +be received with limitations, for its recognition in England would lead +to the seizure of all our broad ancestral acres by those who are +willing to cultivate them. And, in the case under consideration, the +encroachments lead at once to less land being put under the plow than +is subjected to the native hoe, for it is a fact that the Basutos and +Zulus, or Caffres of Natal, cultivate largely, and undersell our farmers +wherever they have a fair field and no favor. + +Before we came to the Orange River we saw the last portion of a +migration of springbucks ('Gazella euchore', or tsepe). They come from +the great Kalahari Desert, and, when first seen after crossing the +colonial boundary, are said often to exceed forty thousand in number. I +can not give an estimate of their numbers, for they appear spread over +a vast expanse of country, and make a quivering motion as they feed, and +move, and toss their graceful horns. They feed chiefly on grass; and as +they come from the north about the time when the grass most abounds, +it can not be want of food that prompts the movement. Nor is it want of +water, for this antelope is one of the most abstemious in that respect. +Their nature prompts them to seek as their favorite haunts level plains +with short grass, where they may be able to watch the approach of an +enemy. The Bakalahari take advantage of this feeling, and burn off large +patches of grass, not only to attract the game by the new crop when it +comes up, but also to form bare spots for the springbuck to range over. + +It is not the springbuck alone that manifests this feeling. When oxen +are taken into a country of high grass, they are much more ready to be +startled; their sense of danger is increased by the increased power +of concealment afforded to an enemy by such cover, and they will often +start off in terror at the ill-defined outlines of each other. The +springbuck, possessing this feeling in an intense degree, and being +eminently gregarious, becomes uneasy as the grass of the Kalahari +becomes tall. The vegetation being more sparse in the more arid south, +naturally induces the different herds to turn in that direction. As they +advance and increase in numbers, the pasturage becomes more scarce; it +is still more so the further they go, until they are at last obliged, in +order to obtain the means of subsistence, to cross the Orange River, and +become the pest of the sheep-farmer in a country which contains scarcely +any of their favorite grassy food. If they light on a field of wheat +in their way, an army of locusts could not make a cleaner sweep of the +whole than they will do. It is questionable whether they ever return, as +they have never been seen as a returning body. Many perish from want of +food, the country to which they have migrated being unable to support +them; the rest become scattered over the colony; and in such a +wide country there is no lack of room for all. It is probable that, +notwithstanding the continued destruction by fire-arms, they will +continue long to hold their place. + +On crossing the Orange River we come into independent territory +inhabited by Griquas and Bechuanas. By Griquas is meant any mixed race +sprung from natives and Europeans. Those in question were of Dutch +extraction, through association with Hottentot and Bushwomen. +Half-castes of the first generation consider themselves superior to +those of the second, and all possess in some degree the characteristics +of both parents. They were governed for many years by an elected chief, +named Waterboer, who, by treaty, received a small sum per annum from +the colonial government for the support of schools in his country, and +proved a most efficient guard of our northwest boundary. Cattle-stealing +was totally unknown during the whole period of this able chief's +reign; and he actually drove back, single-handed, a formidable force of +marauding Mantatees that threatened to invade the colony.* But for that +brave Christian man, Waterboer, there is every human probability that +the northwest would have given the colonists as much trouble as the +eastern frontier; for large numbers among the original Griquas had +as little scruple about robbing farmers of cattle as the Caffres are +reputed to have. On the election of Waterboer to the chieftainship, +he distinctly declared THAT NO MARAUDING SHOULD BE ALLOWED. As the +government of none of these tribes is despotic, some of his principal +men, in spite of this declaration, plundered some villages of Corannas +living to the south of the Orange River. He immediately seized six of +the ringleaders, and, though the step put his own position in jeopardy, +he summoned his council, tried, condemned, and publicly executed the +whole six. This produced an insurrection, and the insurgents twice +attacked his capital, Griqua Town, with the intention of deposing him; +but he bravely defeated both attempts, and from that day forth, during +his long reign of thirty years, not a single plundering expedition ever +left his territory. Having witnessed the deleterious effects of the +introduction of ardent spirits among his people, he, with characteristic +energy, decreed that any Boer or Griqua bringing brandy into the country +should have his property in ardent spirits confiscated and poured out on +the ground. The Griqua chiefs living farther east were unable to carry +this law into effect as he did, hence the greater facility with which +Boers in that direction got the Griquas to part with their farms. + + * For an account of this, see Moffat's "Scenes and Labors in + South Africa". + +Ten years after he was firmly established in power he entered into a +treaty with the colonial government, and during the twenty years which +followed not a single charge was ever brought against either him or +his people; on the contrary, his faithful adherence to the stipulated +provisions elicited numerous expressions of approbation from successive +governments. A late governor, however, of whom it is impossible to speak +without respect, in a paroxysm of generalship which might have been +good, had it not been totally inappropriate to the case, set about +conciliating a band of rebellious British subjects (Boers), who murdered +the Honorable Captain Murray, by proclaiming their independence while +still in open rebellion, and not only abrogated the treaty with the +Griquas, but engaged to stop the long-accustomed supplies of gunpowder +for the defense of the frontier, and even to prevent them from +purchasing it for their own defense by lawful trade. + +If it had been necessary to prevent supplies of ammunition from finding +their way into the country, as it probably was, one might imagine that +the exception should not have been made in favor of either Boers or +Caffres, our openly-avowed enemies; but, nevertheless, the exception was +made, and is still continued in favor of the Boers, while the Bechuanas +and Griquas, our constant friends, are debarred from obtaining a +single ounce for either defense or trade; indeed, such was the state of +ignorance as to the relation of the border tribes with the English, even +at Cape Town, that the magistrates, though willing to aid my researches, +were sorely afraid to allow me to purchase more than ten pounds of +gunpowder, lest the Bechuanas should take it from me by force. As it +turned out, I actually left more than that quantity for upward of two +years in an open box in my wagon at Linyanti. + +The lamented Sir George Cathcart, apparently unconscious of what he was +doing, entered into a treaty with the Transvaal Boers, in which articles +were introduced for the free passage of English traders to the north, +and for the entire prohibition of slavery in the free state. Then passed +the "gunpowder ordinance", by which the Bechuanas, whom alone the Boers +dare attempt to enslave, were rendered quite defenseless. The Boers +never attempt to fight with Caffres, nor to settle in Caffreland. We +still continue to observe the treaty. The Boers never did, and +never intended to abide by its provisions; for, immediately on the +proclamation of their independence, a slave-hunt was undertaken against +the Bechuanas of Sechele by four hundred Boers, under Mr. Peit Scholz, +and the plan was adopted which had been cherished in their hearts +ever since the emancipation of the Hottentots. Thus, from unfortunate +ignorance of the country he had to govern, an able and sagacious +governor adopted a policy proper and wise had it been in front of our +enemies, but altogether inappropriate for our friends against whom it +has been applied. Such an error could not have been committed by a man +of local knowledge and experience, such as that noble of colonial birth, +Sir Andries Stockenstrom; and such instances of confounding friend and +foe, in the innocent belief of thereby promoting colonial interests, +will probably lead the Cape community, the chief part of which by no +means feels its interest to lie in the degradation of the native tribes, +to assert the right of choosing their own governors. This, with colonial +representation in the Imperial Parliament, in addition to the local +self-government already so liberally conceded, would undoubtedly secure +the perpetual union of the colony to the English crown. + +Many hundreds of both Griquas and Bechuanas have become Christians and +partially civilized through the teaching of English missionaries. My +first impressions of the progress made were that the accounts of the +effects of the Gospel among them had been too highly colored. I expected +a higher degree of Christian simplicity and purity than exists either +among them or among ourselves. I was not anxious for a deeper insight +in detecting shams than others, but I expected character, such as +we imagine the primitive disciples had--and was disappointed.* When, +however, I passed on to the true heathen in the countries beyond the +sphere of missionary influence, and could compare the people there with +the Christian natives, I came to the conclusion that, if the question +were examined in the most rigidly severe or scientific way, the change +effected by the missionary movement would be considered unquestionably +great. + + * The popular notion, however, of the primitive Church is + perhaps not very accurate. Those societies especially which + consisted of converted Gentiles--men who had been accustomed + to the vices and immoralities of heathenism--were certainly + any thing but pure. In spite of their conversion, some of + them carried the stains and vestiges of their former state + with them when they passed from the temple to the church. If + the instructed and civilized Greek did not all at once rise + out of his former self, and understand and realize the high + ideal of his new faith, we should be careful, in judging of + the work of missionaries among savage tribes, not to apply to + their converts tests and standards of too great severity. If + the scoffing Lucian's account of the impostor Peregrinus may + be believed, we find a church probably planted by the apostles + manifesting less intelligence even than modern missionary + churches. Peregrinus, a notoriously wicked man, was elected + to the chief place among them, while Romish priests, backed by + the power of France, could not find a place at all in the + mission churches of Tahiti and Madagascar. + +We can not fairly compare these poor people with ourselves, who have an +atmosphere of Christianity and enlightened public opinion, the growth of +centuries, around us, to influence our deportment; but let any one +from the natural and proper point of view behold the public morality of +Griqua Town, Kuruman, Likatlong, and other villages, and remember what +even London was a century ago, and he must confess that the Christian +mode of treating aborigines is incomparably the best. + +The Griquas and Bechuanas were in former times clad much like the +Caffres, if such a word may be used where there is scarcely any clothing +at all. A bunch of leather strings about eighteen inches long hung from +the lady's waist in front, and a prepared skin of a sheep or antelope +covered the shoulders, leaving the breast and abdomen bare: the men wore +a patch of skin, about the size of the crown of one's hat, which barely +served for the purposes of decency, and a mantle exactly like that +of the women. To assist in protecting the pores of the skin from the +influence of the sun by day and of the cold by night, all smeared +themselves with a mixture of fat and ochre; the head was anointed with +pounded blue mica schist mixed with fat; and the fine particles of +shining mica, falling on the body and on strings of beads and brass +rings, were considered as highly ornamental, and fit for the most +fastidious dandy. Now these same people come to church in decent though +poor clothing, and behave with a decorum certainly superior to what +seems to have been the case in the time of Mr. Samuel Pepys in London. +Sunday is well observed, and, even in localities where no missionary +lives, religious meetings are regularly held, and children and adults +taught to read by the more advanced of their own fellow-countrymen; and +no one is allowed to make a profession of faith by baptism unless he +knows how to read, and understands the nature of the Christian religion. + +The Bechuana Mission has been so far successful that, when coming from +the interior, we always felt, on reaching Kuruman, that we had returned +to civilized life. But I would not give any one to understand by this +that they are model Christians--we can not claim to be model Christians +ourselves--or even in any degree superior to the members of our country +churches. They are more stingy and greedy than the poor at home; but in +many respects the two are exactly alike. On asking an intelligent chief +what he thought of them, he replied, "You white men have no idea of how +wicked we are; we know each other better than you; some feign belief to +ingratiate themselves with the missionaries; some profess Christianity +because they like the new system, which gives so much more importance to +the poor, and desire that the old system may pass away; and the rest--a +pretty large number--profess because they are really true believers." +This testimony may be considered as very nearly correct. + +There is not much prospect of this country ever producing much of the +materials of commerce except wool. At present the chief articles of +trade are karosses or mantles--the skins of which they are composed come +from the Desert; next to them, ivory, the quantity of which can not +now be great, inasmuch as the means of shooting elephants is sedulously +debarred entrance into the country. A few skins and horns, and some +cattle, make up the remainder of the exports. English goods, sugar, tea, +and coffee are the articles received in exchange. All the natives +of these parts soon become remarkably fond of coffee. The acme of +respectability among the Bechuanas is the possession of cattle and +a wagon. It is remarkable that, though these latter require frequent +repairs, none of the Bechuanas have ever learned to mend them. Forges +and tools have been at their service, and teachers willing to aid them, +but, beyond putting together a camp-stool, no effort has ever been made +to acquire a knowledge of the trades. They observe most carefully a +missionary at work until they understand whether a tire is well welded +or not, and then pronounce upon its merits with great emphasis, but +there their ambition rests satisfied. It is the same peculiarity among +ourselves which leads us in other matters, such as book-making, to +attain the excellence of fault-finding without the wit to indite a page. +It was in vain I tried to indoctrinate the Bechuanas with the idea +that criticism did not imply any superiority over the workman, or even +equality with him. + + + + +Chapter 6. + +Kuruman--Its fine Fountain--Vegetation of the District--Remains +of ancient Forests--Vegetable Poison--The Bible translated by +Mr. Moffat--Capabilities of the Language--Christianity among the +Natives--The Missionaries should extend their Labors more beyond the +Cape Colony--Model Christians--Disgraceful Attack of the Boers on +the Bakwains--Letter from Sechele--Details of the Attack--Numbers of +School-children carried away into Slavery--Destruction of House and +Property at Kolobeng--The Boers vow Vengeance against me--Consequent +Difficulty of getting Servants to accompany me on my Journey--Start in +November, 1852--Meet Sechele on his way to England to obtain Redress +from the Queen--He is unable to proceed beyond the Cape--Meet Mr. +Macabe on his Return from Lake Ngami--The hot Wind of the +Desert--Electric State of the Atmosphere--Flock of Swifts--Reach +Litubaruba--The Cave Lepelole--Superstitions regarding it--Impoverished +State of the Bakwains--Retaliation on the Boers--Slavery--Attachment +of the Bechuanas to Children--Hydrophobia unknown--Diseases of +the Bakwains few in number--Yearly Epidemics--Hasty +Burials--Ophthalmia--Native Doctors--Knowledge of Surgery at a very low +Ebb--Little Attendance given to Women at their Confinements--The "Child +Medicine"--Salubrity of the Climate well adapted for Invalids suffering +from pulmonary Complaints. + + + +The permanence of the station called Kuruman depends entirely on the +fine ever-flowing fountain of that name. It comes from beneath the +trap-rock, of which I shall have to speak when describing the geology of +the entire country; and as it usually issues at a temperature of 72 Deg. +Fahr., it probably comes from the old silurian schists, which formed the +bottom of the great primeval valley of the continent. I could not detect +any diminution in the flow of this gushing fountain during my residence +in the country; but when Mr. Moffat first attempted a settlement here, +thirty-five years ago, he made a dam six or seven miles below the +present one, and led out the stream for irrigation, where not a drop of +the fountain-water ever now flows. Other parts, fourteen miles below the +Kuruman gardens, are pointed out as having contained, within the memory +of people now living, hippopotami, and pools sufficient to drown both +men and cattle. This failure of water must be chiefly ascribed to the +general desiccation of the country, but partly also to the amount of +irrigation carried on along both banks of the stream at the mission +station. This latter circumstance would have more weight were it not +coincident with the failure of fountains over a wide extent of country. + +Without at present entering minutely into this feature of the climate, +it may be remarked that the Kuruman district presents evidence of +this dry southern region having, at no very distant date, been as well +watered as the country north of Lake Ngami is now. Ancient river-beds +and water-courses abound, and the very eyes of fountains long since +dried up may be seen, in which the flow of centuries has worn these +orifices from a slit to an oval form, having on their sides the tufa +so abundantly deposited from these primitive waters; and just where the +splashings, made when the stream fell on the rock below, may be supposed +to have reached and evaporated, the same phenomenon appears. Many of +these failing fountains no longer flow, because the brink over which +they ran is now too high, or because the elevation of the western side +of the country lifts the land away from the water supply below; but let +a cutting be made from a lower level than the brink, and through it to +a part below the surface of the water, and water flows perennially. +Several of these ancient fountains have been resuscitated by the +Bechuanas near Kuruman, who occasionally show their feelings of +self-esteem by laboring for months at deep cuttings, which, having +once begun, they feel bound in honor to persevere in, though told by a +missionary that they can never force water to run up hill. + +It is interesting to observe the industry of many Boers in this region +in making long and deep canals from lower levels up to spots destitute +of the slightest indication of water existing beneath except a few +rushes and a peculiar kind of coarse, reddish-colored grass growing in a +hollow, which anciently must have been the eye of a fountain, but is now +filled up with soft tufa. In other instances, the indication of water +below consists of the rushes growing on a long, sandy ridge a foot or +two in height instead of in a furrow. A deep transverse cutting made +through the higher part of this is rewarded by a stream of running +water. The reason why the ground covering this water is higher than the +rest of the locality is that the winds carry quantities of fine dust and +sand about the country, and hedges, bushes, and trees cause its deposit. +The rushes in this case perform the part of the hedges, and the moisture +rising as dew by night fixes the sand securely among the roots, and a +height, instead of a hollow, is the result. While on this subject it may +be added that there is no perennial fountain in this part of the +country except those that come from beneath the quartzose trap, which +constitutes the "filling up" of the ancient valley; and as the water +supply seems to rest on the old silurian schists which form its bottom, +it is highly probable that Artesian wells would in several places +perform the part which these deep cuttings now do. + +The aspect of this part of the country during most of the year is of a +light yellow color; for some months during the rainy season it is of a +pleasant green mixed with yellow. Ranges of hills appear in the west, +but east of them we find hundreds of miles of grass-covered plains. +Large patches of these flats are covered with white calcareous tufa +resting on perfectly horizontal strata of trap. There the vegetation +consists of fine grass growing in tufts among low bushes of the +"wait-a-bit" thorn ('Acacia detinens'), with its annoying fish-hook-like +spines. Where these rocks do not appear on the surface, the soil +consists of yellow sand and tall, coarse grasses, growing among +berry-yielding bushes, named moretloa ('Grewia flava') and mohatla +('Tarchonanthus'), which has enough of aromatic resinous matter to burn +brightly, though perfectly green. In more sheltered spots we come +on clumps of the white-thorned mimosa ('Acacia horrida', also 'A. +atomiphylla'), and great abundance of wild sage ('Salvia Africana'), and +various leguminosae, ixias, and large-flowering bulbs: the 'Amaryllis +toxicaria' and 'A. Brunsvigia multiflora' (the former a poisonous bulb) +yield in the decayed lamellae a soft, silky down, a good material for +stuffing mattresses. + +In some few parts of the country the remains of ancient forests of wild +olive-trees ('Olea similis') and of the camel-thorn ('Acacia giraffe') +are still to be met with; but when these are leveled in the proximity of +a Bechuana village, no young trees spring up to take their places. This +is not because the wood has a growth so slow as not to be appreciable +in its increase during the short period that it can be observed by man, +which might be supposed from its being so excessively hard; for having +measured a young tree of this species growing in the corner of Mr. +Moffat's garden near the water, I found that it increased at the rate +of a quarter of an inch in diameter annually during a number of years. +Moreover, the larger specimens, which now find few or no successors, if +they had more rain in their youth, can not be above two or three hundred +years old. + +It is probable that this is the tree of which the Ark of the Covenant +and the Tabernacle were constructed, as it is reported to be found where +the Israelites were at the time these were made. It is an imperishable +wood, while that usually pointed out as the "shittim" (or 'Acacia +nilotica') soon decays and wants beauty. + +In association with it we always observe a curious plant, named +ngotuane, which bears such a profusion of fine yellow strong-scented +flowers as quite to perfume the air. This plant forms a remarkable +exception to the general rule, that nearly all the plants in the dry +parts of Africa are scentless, or emit only a disagreeable odor. It, +moreover, contains an active poison; a French gentleman, having imbibed +a mouthful or two of an infusion of its flowers as tea, found himself +rendered nearly powerless. Vinegar has the peculiar property of +rendering this poison perfectly inert, whether in or out of the body. +When mixed with vinegar, the poison may be drunk with safety, while, if +only tasted by itself, it causes a burning sensation in the throat. +This gentleman described the action of the vinegar, when he was nearly +deprived of power by the poison imbibed, to have been as if electricity +had run along his nerves as soon as he had taken a single glassful. +The cure was instantaneous and complete. I had always to regret want of +opportunity for investigating this remarkable and yet controllable agent +on the nervous system. Its usual proximity to camel-thorn-trees may be +accounted for by the PROBABILITY that the giraffe, which feeds on this +tree, MAY make use of the plant as a medicine. + +During the period of my visit at Kuruman, Mr. Moffat, who has been a +missionary in Africa during upward of forty years, and is well known by +his interesting work, "Scenes and Labors in South Africa", was busily +engaged in carrying through the press, with which his station is +furnished, the Bible in the language of the Bechuanas, which is called +Sichuana. This has been a work of immense labor; and as he was the first +to reduce their speech to a written form, and has had his attention +directed to the study for at least thirty years, he may be supposed to +be better adapted for the task than any man living. Some idea of the +copiousness of the language may be formed from the fact that even he +never spends a week at his work without discovering new words; the +phenomenon, therefore, of any man who, after a few months' or years' +study of a native tongue, cackles forth a torrent of vocables, may well +be wondered at, if it is meant to convey instruction. In my own case, +though I have had as much intercourse with the purest idiom as most +Englishmen, and have studied the language carefully, yet I can never +utter an important statement without doing so very slowly, and repeating +it too, lest the foreign accent, which is distinctly perceptible in all +Europeans, should render the sense unintelligible. In this I follow the +example of the Bechuana orators, who, on important matters, always speak +slowly, deliberately, and with reiteration. The capabilities of this +language may be inferred from the fact that the Pentateuch is fully +expressed in Mr. Moffat's translation in fewer words than in the Greek +Septuagint, and in a very considerably smaller number than in our +own English version. The language is, however, so simple in its +construction, that its copiousness by no means requires the explanation +that the people have fallen from a former state of civilization and +culture. Language seems to be an attribute of the human mind and +thought; and the inflections, various as they are in the most barbarous +tongues, as that of the Bushmen, are probably only proofs of the +race being human, and endowed with the power of thinking; the fuller +development of language taking place as the improvement of our other +faculties goes on. It is fortunate that the translation of the Bible has +been effected before the language became adulterated with half-uttered +foreign words, and while those who have heard the eloquence of the +native assemblies are still living; for the young, who are brought up +in our schools, know less of the language than the missionaries; and +Europeans born in the country, while possessed of the idiom perfectly, +if not otherwise educated, can not be referred to for explanation of any +uncommon word. A person who acted as interpreter to Sir George Cathcart +actually told his excellency that the language of the Basutos was not +capable of expressing the substance of a chief's diplomatic paper, while +every one acquainted with Moshesh, the chief who sent it, well knows +that he could in his own tongue have expressed it without study all over +again in three or four different ways. The interpreter could scarcely +have done as much in English. + +This language both rich and poor speak correctly; there is no vulgar +style; but children have a 'patois' of their own, using many words in +their play which men would scorn to repeat. The Bamapela have adopted +a click into their dialect, and a large infusion of the ringing "ny", +which seems to have been for the purpose of preventing others from +understanding them. + +The fact of the complete translation of the Bible at a station seven +hundred miles inland from the Cape naturally suggests the question +whether it is likely to be permanently useful, and whether Christianity, +as planted by modern missions, is likely to retain its vitality without +constant supplies of foreign teaching? It would certainly be no cause +for congratulation if the Bechuana Bible seemed at all likely to meet +the fate of Elliot's Choctaw version, a specimen of which may be seen in +the library of one of the American colleges--as God's word in a language +which no living tongue can articulate, nor living mortal understand; but +a better destiny seems in store for this, for the Sichuana language has +been introduced into the new country beyond Lake Ngami. There it is the +court language, and will take a stranger any where through a district +larger than France. The Bechuanas, moreover, in all probability possess +that imperishability which forms so remarkable a feature in the entire +African race. + +When converts are made from heathenism by modern missionaries, it +becomes an interesting question whether their faith possesses +the elements of permanence, or is only an exotic too tender for +self-propagation when the fostering care of the foreign cultivators +is withdrawn. If neither habits of self-reliance are cultivated, nor +opportunities given for the exercise of that virtue, the most promising +converts are apt to become like spoiled children. In Madagascar, a few +Christians were left with nothing but the Bible in their hands; and +though exposed to persecution, and even death itself, as the penalty of +adherence to their profession, they increased ten-fold in numbers, and +are, if possible, more decided believers now than they were when, by +an edict of the queen of that island, the missionaries ceased their +teaching. + +In South Africa such an experiment could not be made, for such a variety +of Christian sects have followed the footsteps of the London Missionary +Society's successful career, that converts of one denomination, if left +to their own resources, are eagerly adopted by another, and are thus +more likely to become spoiled than trained to the manly Christian +virtues. + +Another element of weakness in this part of the missionary field is the +fact of the missionary societies considering the Cape Colony itself as +a proper sphere for their peculiar operations. In addition to a +well-organized and efficient Dutch Reformed Established Church, and +schools for secular instruction, maintained by government, in every +village of any extent in the colony, we have a number of other sects, +as the Wesleyans, Episcopalians, Moravians, all piously laboring at the +same good work. Now it is deeply to be regretted that so much honest +zeal should be so lavishly expended in a district wherein there is so +little scope for success. When we hear an agent of one sect urging his +friends at home to aid him quickly to occupy some unimportant nook, +because, if it is not speedily laid hold of, he will "not have room for +the sole of his foot," one can not help longing that both he and his +friends would direct their noble aspirations to the millions of untaught +heathen in the regions beyond, and no longer continue to convert the +extremity of the continent into, as it were, a dam of benevolence. + +I would earnestly recommend all young missionaries to go at once to the +real heathen, and never to be content with what has been made ready +to their hands by men of greater enterprise. The idea of making model +Christians of the young need not be entertained by any one who is +secretly convinced, as most men who know their own hearts are, that he +is not a model Christian himself. The Israelitish slaves brought out of +Egypt by Moses were not converted and elevated in one generation, though +under the direct teaching of God himself. Notwithstanding the numbers of +miracles he wrought, a generation had to be cut off because of +unbelief. Our own elevation, also, has been the work of centuries, and, +remembering this, we should not indulge in overwrought expectations as +to the elevation which those who have inherited the degradation of ages +may attain in our day. The principle might even be adopted by missionary +societies, that one ordinary missionary's lifetime of teaching should +be considered an ample supply of foreign teaching for any tribe in a +thinly-peopled country, for some never will receive the Gospel at all, +while in other parts, when Christianity is once planted, the work is +sure to go on. A missionary is soon known to be supported by his friends +at home; and though the salary is but a bare subsistence, to Africans +it seems an enormous sum; and, being unable to appreciate the motives +by which he is actuated, they consider themselves entitled to various +services at his hands, and defrauded if these are not duly rendered. +This feeling is all the stronger when a young man, instead of going +boldly to the real heathen, settles down in a comfortable house and +garden prepared by those into whose labors he has entered. A remedy for +this evil might be found in appropriating the houses and gardens raised +by the missionaries' hands to their own families. It is ridiculous +to call such places as Kuruman, for instance, "Missionary Society's +property". This beautiful station was made what it is, not by English +money, but by the sweat and toil of fathers whose children have, +notwithstanding, no place on earth which they can call a home. The +Society's operations may be transferred to the north, and then the +strong-built mission premises become the home of a Boer, and the stately +stone church his cattle-pen. This place has been what the monasteries +of Europe are said to have been when pure. The monks did not disdain to +hold the plow. They introduced fruit-trees, flowers, and vegetables, in +addition to teaching and emancipating the serfs. Their monasteries were +mission stations, which resembled ours in being dispensaries for the +sick, almshouses for the poor, and nurseries of learning. Can we learn +nothing from them in their prosperity as the schools of Europe, and see +naught in their history but the pollution and laziness of their decay? +Can our wise men tell us why the former mission stations (primitive +monasteries) were self-supporting, rich, and flourishing as pioneers of +civilization and agriculture, from which we even now reap benefits, and +modern mission stations are mere pauper establishments, without that +permanence or ability to be self-supporting which they possessed? + +Protestant missionaries of every denomination in South Africa all agree +in one point, that no mere profession of Christianity is sufficient +to entitle the converts to the Christian name. They are all anxious to +place the Bible in the hands of the natives, and, with ability to +read that, there can be little doubt as to the future. We believe +Christianity to be divine, and equal to all it has to perform; then let +the good seed be widely sown, and, no matter to what sect the converts +may belong, the harvest will be glorious. Let nothing that I have +said be interpreted as indicative of feelings inimical to any body +of Christians, for I never, as a missionary, felt myself to be either +Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Independent, or called upon in any way +to love one denomination less than another. My earnest desire is, that +those who really have the best interests of the heathen at heart should +go to them; and assuredly, in Africa at least, self-denying labors among +real heathen will not fail to be appreciated. Christians have never yet +dealt fairly by the heathen and been disappointed. + +When Sechele understood that we could no longer remain with him +at Kolobeng, he sent his children to Mr. Moffat, at Kuruman, for +instruction in all the knowledge of the white men. Mr. Moffat very +liberally received at once an accession of five to his family, with +their attendants. + +Having been detained at Kuruman about a fortnight by the breaking of a +wagon-wheel, I was thus providentially prevented from being present +at the attack of the Boers on the Bakwains, news of which was brought, +about the end of that time, by Masebele, the wife of Sechele. She had +herself been hidden in a cleft of a rock, over which a number of Boers +were firing. Her infant began to cry, and, terrified lest this should +attract the attention of the men, the muzzles of whose guns appeared at +every discharge over her head, she took off her armlets as playthings +to quiet the child. She brought Mr. Moffat a letter, which tells its own +tale. Nearly literally translated it was as follows: + + +"Friend of my heart's love, and of all the confidence of my heart, I +am Sechele. I am undone by the Boers, who attacked me, though I had no +guilt with them. They demanded that I should be in their kingdom, and +I refused. They demanded that I should prevent the English and Griquas +from passing (northward). I replied, These are my friends, and I can +prevent no one (of them). They came on Saturday, and I besought them not +to fight on Sunday, and they assented. They began on Monday morning at +twilight, and fired with all their might, and burned the town with fire, +and scattered us. They killed sixty of my people, and captured women, +and children, and men. And the mother of Baleriling (a former wife of +Sechele) they also took prisoner. They took all the cattle and all the +goods of the Bakwains; and the house of Livingstone they plundered, +taking away all his goods. The number of wagons they had was +eighty-five, and a cannon; and after they had stolen my own wagon and +that of Macabe, then the number of their wagons (counting the cannon +as one) was eighty-eight. All the goods of the hunters (certain English +gentlemen hunting and exploring in the north) were burned in the town; +and of the Boers were killed twenty-eight. Yes, my beloved friend, now +my wife goes to see the children, and Kobus Hae will convey her to you. +I am, SECHELE, The Son of Mochoasele." + + +This statement is in exact accordance with the account given by +the native teacher Mebalwe, and also that sent by some of the Boers +themselves to the public colonial papers. The crime of cattle-stealing, +of which we hear so much near Caffreland, was never alleged against +these people, and, if a single case had occurred when I was in the +country, I must have heard of it, and would at once say so. But the only +crime imputed in the papers was that "Sechele was getting too saucy." +The demand made for his subjection and service in preventing the English +traders passing to the north was kept out of view. + +Very soon after Pretorius had sent the marauding party against Kolobeng, +he was called away to the tribunal of infinite justice. His policy is +justified by the Boers generally from the instructions given to the +Jewish warriors in Deuteronomy 20:10-14. Hence, when he died, the +obituary notice ended with "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." I +wish he had not "forbidden us to preach unto the Gentiles that they may +be saved." + +The report of this outrage on the Bakwains, coupled with denunciations +against myself for having, as it was alleged, taught them to kill Boers, +produced such a panic in the country, that I could not engage a single +servant to accompany me to the north. I have already alluded to their +mode of warfare, and in all previous Boerish forays the killing had all +been on one side; now, however, that a tribe where an Englishman had +lived had begun to shed THEIR blood as well, it was considered the +strongest presumptive evidence against me. Loud vows of vengeance were +uttered against my head, and threats of instant pursuit by a large party +on horseback, should I dare to go into or beyond their country; and as +these were coupled with the declaration that the English government +had given over the whole of the native tribes to their rule, and would +assist in their entire subjection by preventing fire-arms and ammunition +from entering the country, except for the use of the Boers, it was not +to be wondered at that I was detained for months at Kuruman from sheer +inability to get wagon-drivers. The English name, from being honored and +respected all over the country, had become somewhat more than suspected; +and as the policy of depriving those friendly tribes of the means of +defense was represented by the Boers as proof positive of the wish of +the English that they should be subjugated, the conduct of a government +which these tribes always thought the paragon of justice and friendship +was rendered totally incomprehensible to them; they could neither defend +themselves against their enemies, nor shoot the animals in the produce +of which we wished them to trade. + +At last I found three servants willing to risk a journey to the north; +and a man of color named George Fleming, who had generously been +assisted by Mr. H. E. Rutherford, a mercantile gentleman of Cape Town, +to endeavor to establish a trade with the Makololo, had also managed +to get a similar number; we accordingly left Kuruman on the 20th of +November, and proceeded on our journey. Our servants were the worst +possible specimens of those who imbibe the vices without the virtues of +Europeans, but we had no choice, and were glad to get away on any terms. + +When we reached Motito, forty miles off, we met Sechele on his way, as +he said, "to the Queen of England." Two of his own children, and their +mother, a former wife, were among the captives seized by the Boers; and +being strongly imbued with the then very prevalent notion of England's +justice and generosity, he thought that in consequence of the violated +treaty he had a fair case to lay before her majesty. He employed all his +eloquence and powers of persuasion to induce me to accompany him, but I +excused myself on the ground that my arrangements were already made +for exploring the north. On explaining the difficulties of the way, +and endeavoring to dissuade him from the attempt, on account of the +knowledge I possessed of the governor's policy, he put the pointed +question, "Will the queen not listen to me, supposing I should reach +her?" I replied, "I believe she would listen, but the difficulty is +to get to her." "Well, I shall reach her," expressed his final +determination. Others explained the difficulties more fully, but nothing +could shake his resolution. When he reached Bloemfontein he found the +English army just returning from a battle with the Basutos, in which +both parties claimed the victory, and both were glad that a second +engagement was not tried. Our officers invited Sechele to dine with +them, heard his story, and collected a handsome sum of money to enable +him to pursue his journey to England. The commander refrained from +noticing him, as a single word in favor of the restoration of the +children of Sechele would have been a virtual confession of the failure +of his own policy at the very outset. Sechele proceeded as far as the +Cape; but his resources being there expended, he was obliged to return +to his own country, one thousand miles distant, without accomplishing +the object of his journey. + +On his return he adopted a mode of punishment which he had seen in the +colony, namely, making criminals work on the public roads. And he has +since, I am informed, made himself the missionary to his own people. +He is tall, rather corpulent, and has more of the negro feature than +common, but has large eyes. He is very dark, and his people swear by +"Black Sechele". He has great intelligence, reads well, and is a fluent +speaker. Great numbers of the tribes formerly living under the Boers +have taken refuge under his sway, and he is now greater in power than he +was before the attack on Kolobeng. + +Having parted with Sechele, we skirted along the Kalahari Desert, and +sometimes within its borders, giving the Boers a wide berth. A +larger fall of rain than usual had occurred in 1852, and that was the +completion of a cycle of eleven or twelve years, at which the same +phenomenon is reported to have happened on three occasions. An unusually +large crop of melons had appeared in consequence. We had the pleasure +of meeting with Mr. J. Macabe returning from Lake Ngami, which he had +succeeded in reaching by going right across the Desert from a point +a little to the south of Kolobeng. The accounts of the abundance of +watermelons were amply confirmed by this energetic traveler; for, having +these in vast quantities, his cattle subsisted on the fluid contained in +them for a period of no less than twenty-one days; and when at last +they reached a supply of water, they did not seem to care much about it. +Coming to the lake from the southeast, he crossed the Teoughe, and went +round the northern part of it, and is the only European traveler who had +actually seen it all. His estimate of the extent of the lake is higher +than that given by Mr. Oswell and myself, or from about ninety to one +hundred miles in circumference. Before the lake was discovered, Macabe +wrote a letter in one of the Cape papers recommending a certain route +as likely to lead to it. The Transvaal Boers fined him 500 dollars for +writing about "ouze felt", OUR country, and imprisoned him, too, till +the fine was paid. I now learned from his own lips that the public +report of this is true. Mr. Macabe's companion, Mahar, was mistaken by a +tribe of Barolongs for a Boer, and shot as he approached their village. +When Macabe came up and explained that he was an Englishman, they +expressed the utmost regret, and helped to bury him. This was the first +case in recent times of an Englishman being slain by the Bechuanas. +We afterward heard that there had been some fighting between these +Barolongs and the Boers, and that there had been capturing of cattle on +both sides. If this was true, I can only say that it was the first time +that I ever heard of cattle being taken by Bechuanas. This was a Caffre +war in stage the second; the third stage in the development is when both +sides are equally well armed and afraid of each other; the fourth, when +the English take up a quarrel not their own, and the Boers slip out of +the fray. + +Two other English gentlemen crossed and recrossed the Desert about the +same time, and nearly in the same direction. On returning, one of them, +Captain Shelley, while riding forward on horseback, lost himself, and +was obliged to find his way alone to Kuruman, some hundreds of miles +distant. Reaching that station shirtless, and as brown as a Griqua, +he was taken for one by Mrs. Moffat, and was received by her with a +salutation in Dutch, that being the language spoken by this people. +His sufferings must have been far more severe than any we endured. The +result of the exertions of both Shelley and Macabe is to prove that +the general view of the Desert always given by the natives has been +substantially correct. + +Occasionally, during the very dry seasons which succeed our winter and +precede our rains, a hot wind blows over the Desert from north to south. +It feels somewhat as if it came from an oven, and seldom blows longer at +a time than three days. It resembles in its effects the harmattan of the +north of Africa, and at the time the missionaries first settled in the +country, thirty-five years ago, it came loaded with fine reddish-colored +sand. Though no longer accompanied by sand, it is so devoid of moisture +as to cause the wood of the best seasoned English boxes and furniture to +shrink, so that every wooden article not made in the country is warped. +The verls of ramrods made in England are loosened, and on returning to +Europe fasten again. This wind is in such an electric state that a bunch +of ostrich feathers held a few seconds against it becomes as strongly +charged as if attached to a powerful electrical machine, and clasps the +advancing hand with a sharp crackling sound. + +When this hot wind is blowing, and even at other times, the peculiarly +strong electrical state of the atmosphere causes the movement of a +native in his kaross to produce therein a stream of small sparks. The +first time I noticed this appearance was while a chief was traveling +with me in my wagon. Seeing part of the fur of his mantle, which was +exposed to slight friction by the movement of the wagon, assume quite +a luminous appearance, I rubbed it smartly with the hand, and found it +readily gave out bright sparks, accompanied with distinct cracks. "Don't +you see this?" said I. "The white men did not show us this," he replied; +"we had it long before white men came into the country, we and our +forefathers of old." Unfortunately, I never inquired the name which they +gave to this appearance, but I have no doubt there is one for it in the +language. Otto von Guerrike is said, by Baron Humboldt, to have been the +first that ever observed this effect in Europe, but the phenomenon had +been familiar to the Bechuanas for ages. Nothing came of that, however, +for they viewed the sight as if with the eyes of an ox. The human mind +has remained here as stagnant to the present day, in reference to the +physical operations of the universe, as it once did in England. No +science has been developed, and few questions are ever discussed except +those which have an intimate connection with the wants of the stomach. + +Very large flocks of swifts ('Cypselus apus') were observed flying over +the plains north of Kuruman. I counted a stream of them, which, by the +time it took to pass toward the reeds of that valley, must have numbered +upward of four thousand. Only a few of these birds breed at any time in +this country. I have often observed them, and noticed that there was no +appearance of their having paired; there was no chasing of each other, +nor any playing together. There are several other birds which continue +in flocks, and move about like wandering gipsies, even during the +breeding season, which in this country happens in the intervals between +the cold and hot seasons, cold acting somewhat in the same way here +as the genial warmth of spring does in Europe. Are these the migratory +birds of Europe, which return there to breed and rear their young? + +On the 31st of December, 1852, we reached the town of Sechele, called, +from the part of the range on which it is situated, Litubaruba. Near +the village there exists a cave named Lepelole; it is an interesting +evidence of the former existence of a gushing fountain. No one dared to +enter the Lohaheng, or cave, for it was the common belief that it was +the habitation of the Deity. As we never had a holiday from January to +December, and our Sundays were the periods of our greatest exertions in +teaching, I projected an excursion into the cave on a week-day to see +the god of the Bakwains. The old men said that every one who went in +remained there forever, adding, "If the teacher is so mad as to kill +himself, let him do so alone, we shall not be to blame." The declaration +of Sechele, that he would follow where I led, produced the greatest +consternation. It is curious that in all their pretended dreams or +visions of their god he has always a crooked leg, like the Egyptian +Thau. Supposing that those who were reported to have perished in this +cave had fallen over some precipice, we went well provided with lights, +ladder, lines, &c.; but it turned out to be only an open cave, with +an entrance about ten feet square, which contracts into two water-worn +branches, ending in round orifices through which the water once flowed. +The only inhabitants it seems ever to have had were baboons. I left +at the end of the upper branch one of Father Mathew's leaden teetotal +tickets. + +I never saw the Bakwains looking so haggard and lean as at this time. +Most of their cattle had been swept away by the Boers, together with +about eighty fine draught oxen; and much provision left with them by +two officers, Captains Codrington and Webb, to serve for their return +journey south, had been carried off also. On their return these officers +found the skeletons of the Bakwains where they expected to find their +own goods. All the corn, clothing, and furniture of the people, too, +had been consumed in the flames which the Boers had forced the subject +tribes to apply to the town during the fight, so that its inhabitants +were now literally starving. + +Sechele had given orders to his people not to commit any act of revenge +pending his visit to the Queen of England; but some of the young men +ventured to go to meet a party of Boers returning from hunting, and, +as the Boers became terrified and ran off, they brought their wagons to +Litubaruba. This seems to have given the main body of Boers an idea that +the Bakwains meant to begin a guerrilla war upon them. This "Caffre war" +was, however, only in embryo, and not near that stage of development in +which the natives have found out that the hide-and-seek system is the +most successful. + +The Boers, in alarm, sent four of their number to ask for peace! I, +being present, heard the condition: "Sechele's children must be restored +to him." I never saw men so completely and unconsciously in a trap as +these four Boers were. Strong parties of armed Bakwains occupied every +pass in the hills and gorges around; and had they not promised much more +than they intended, or did perform, that day would have been their last. +The commandant Scholz had appropriated the children of Sechele to be his +own domestic slaves. I was present when one little boy, Khari, son of +Sechele, was returned to his mother; the child had been allowed to +roll into the fire, and there were three large unbound open sores on +different parts of his body. His mother and the women received him with +a flood of silent tears. + +Slavery is said to be mild and tender-hearted in some places. The Boers +assert that they are the best of masters, and that, if the English had +possessed the Hottentot slaves, they would have received much worse +treatment than they did: what that would have been it is difficult to +imagine. I took down the names of some scores of boys and girls, many of +whom I knew as our scholars; but I could not comfort the weeping mothers +by any hope of their ever returning from slavery. + +The Bechuanas are universally much attached to children. A little child +toddling near a party of men while they are eating is sure to get +a handful of the food. This love of children may arise, in a great +measure, from the patriarchal system under which they dwell. Every +little stranger forms an increase of property to the whole community, +and is duly reported to the chief--boys being more welcome than girls. +The parents take the name of the child, and often address their children +as Ma (mother), or Ra (father). Our eldest boy being named Robert, Mrs. +Livingstone was, after his birth, always addressed as Ma-Robert, instead +of Mary, her Christian name. + +I have examined several cases in which a grandmother has taken upon +herself to suckle a grandchild. Masina of Kuruman had no children after +the birth of her daughter Sina, and had no milk after Sina was weaned, +an event which usually is deferred till the child is two or three years +old. Sina married when she was seventeen or eighteen, and had twins; +Masina, after at least fifteen years' interval since she had suckled +a child, took possession of one of them, applied it to her breast, and +milk flowed, so that she was able to nurse the child entirely. Masina +was at this time at least forty years of age. I have witnessed several +other cases analogous to this. A grandmother of forty, or even less, +for they become withered at an early age, when left at home with a young +child, applies it to her own shriveled breast, and milk soon follows. +In some cases, as that of Ma-bogosing, the chief wife of Mahure, who was +about thirty-five years of age, the child was not entirely dependent on +the grandmother's breast, as the mother suckled it too. I had witnessed +the production of milk so frequently by the simple application of the +lips of the child, that I was not therefore surprised when told by +the Portuguese in Eastern Africa of a native doctor who, by applying +a poultice of the pounded larvae of hornets to the breast of a woman, +aided by the attempts of the child, could bring back the milk. Is it not +possible that the story in the "Cloud of Witnesses" of a man, during the +time of persecution in Scotland, putting his child to his own breast, +and finding, to the astonishment of the whole country, that milk +followed the act, may have been literally true? It was regarded and is +quoted as a miracle; but the feelings of the father toward the child of +a murdered mother must have been as nearly as possible analogous to the +maternal feeling; and, as anatomists declare the structure of both +male and female breasts to be identical, there is nothing physically +impossible in the alleged result. The illustrious Baron Humboldt quotes +an instance of the male breast yielding milk; and, though I am not +conscious of being over-credulous, the strange instances I have examined +in the opposite sex make me believe that there is no error in that +philosopher's statement. + +The Boers know from experience that adult captives may as well be +left alone, for escape is so easy in a wild country that no +fugitive-slave-law can come into operation; they therefore adopt the +system of seizing only the youngest children, in order that these may +forget their parents and remain in perpetual bondage. I have seen mere +infants in their houses repeatedly. This fact was formerly denied; and +the only thing which was wanting to make the previous denial of the +practice of slavery and slave-hunting by the Transvaal Boers no longer +necessary was the declaration of their independence. + +In conversation with some of my friends here I learned that Maleke, a +chief of the Bakwains, who formerly lived on the hill Litubaruba, had +been killed by the bite of a mad dog. My curiosity was strongly excited +by this statement, as rabies is so rare in this country. I never heard +of another case, and could not satisfy myself that even this was real +hydrophobia. While I was at Mabotsa, some dogs became affected by a +disease which led them to run about in an incoherent state; but I doubt +whether it was any thing but an affection of the brain. No individual +or animal got the complaint by inoculation from the animals' teeth; +and from all that I could hear, the prevailing idea of hydrophobia not +existing within the tropics seems to be quite correct. + +The diseases known among the Bakwains are remarkably few. There is +no consumption nor scrofula, and insanity and hydrocephalus are rare. +Cancer and cholera are quite unknown. Small-pox and measles passed +through the country about twenty years ago, and committed great ravages; +but, though the former has since broken out on the coast repeatedly, +neither disease has since traveled inland. For small-pox, the natives +employed, in some parts, inoculation in the forehead with some animal +deposit; in other parts, they employed the matter of the small-pox +itself; and in one village they seem to have selected a virulent case +for the matter used in the operation, for nearly all the village was +swept off by the disease in a malignant confluent form. Where the idea +came from I can not conceive. It was practiced by the Bakwains at a +time when they had no intercourse, direct or indirect, with the southern +missionaries. They all adopt readily the use of vaccine virus when it is +brought within their reach. + +A certain loathsome disease, which decimates the North American Indians, +and threatens extirpation to the South Sea Islanders, dies out in the +interior of Africa without the aid of medicine; and the Bangwaketse, who +brought it from the west coast, lost it when they came into their own +land southwest of Kolobeng. It seems incapable of permanence in any form +in persons of pure African blood any where in the centre of the country. +In persons of mixed blood it is otherwise; and the virulence of the +secondary symptoms seemed to be, in all the cases that came under my +care, in exact proportion to the greater or less amount of European +blood in the patient. Among the Corannas and Griquas of mixed breed it +produces the same ravages as in Europe; among half-blood Portuguese it +is equally frightful in its inroads on the system; but in the pure Negro +of the central parts it is quite incapable of permanence. Among the +Barotse I found a disease called manassah, which closely resembles that +of the 'foeda mulier' of history. + +Equally unknown is stone in the bladder and gravel. I never met with a +case, though the waters are often so strongly impregnated with sulphate +of lime that kettles quickly become incrusted internally with the salt; +and some of my patients, who were troubled with indigestion, believed +that their stomachs had got into the same condition. This freedom from +calculi would appear to be remarkable in the negro race, even in the +United States; for seldom indeed have the most famed lithotomists there +ever operated on a negro. + +The diseases most prevalent are the following: pneumonia, produced +by sudden changes of temperature, and other inflammations, as of the +bowels, stomach, and pleura; rheumatism; disease of the heart--but these +become rare as the people adopt the European dress--various forms of +indigestion and ophthalmia; hooping-cough comes frequently; and every +year the period preceding the rains is marked by some sort of epidemic. +Sometimes it is general ophthalmia, resembling closely the Egyptian. In +another year it is a kind of diarrhoea, which nothing will cure until +there is a fall of rain, and any thing acts as a charm after that. +One year the epidemic period was marked by a disease which looked like +pneumonia, but had the peculiar symptom strongly developed of great pain +in the seventh cervical process. Many persons died of it, after being +in a comatose state for many hours or days before their decease. No +inspection of the body being ever allowed by these people, and the place +of sepulture being carefully concealed, I had to rest satisfied with +conjecture. Frequently the Bakwains buried their dead in the huts where +they died, for fear lest the witches (Baloi) should disinter their +friends, and use some part of the body in their fiendish arts. Scarcely +is the breath out of the body when the unfortunate patient is hurried +away to be buried. An ant-eater's hole is often selected, in order to +save the trouble of digging a grave. On two occasions while I was there +this hasty burial was followed by the return home of the men, who had +been buried alive, to their affrighted relatives. They had recovered, +while in their graves, from prolonged swoons. + +In ophthalmia the doctors cup on the temples, and apply to the eyes the +pungent smoke of certain roots, the patient, at the same time, taking +strong draughts of it up his nostrils. We found the solution of nitrate +of silver, two or three grains to the ounce of rain-water, answer +the same end so much more effectually, that every morning numbers +of patients crowded round our house for the collyrium. It is a good +preventive of an acute attack when poured into the eyes as soon as +the pain begins, and might prove valuable for travelers. Cupping is +performed with the horn of a goat or antelope, having a little hole +pierced in the small end. In some cases a small piece of wax is +attached, and a temporary hole made through it to the horn. When the +air is well withdrawn, and kept out by touching the orifice, at every +inspiration, with the point of the tongue, the wax is at last pressed +together with the teeth, and the little hole in it closed up, leaving a +vacuum within the horn for the blood to flow from the already scarified +parts. The edges of the horn applied to the surface are wetted, and +cupping is well performed, though the doctor occasionally, by separating +the fibrine from the blood in a basin of water by his side, and +exhibiting it, pretends that he has extracted something more than blood. +He can thus explain the rationale of the cure by his own art, and the +ocular demonstration given is well appreciated. + +Those doctors who have inherited their profession as an heirloom +from their fathers and grandfathers generally possess some valuable +knowledge, the result of long and close observation; but if a man can +not say that the medical art is in his family, he may be considered +a quack. With the regular practitioners I always remained on the best +terms, by refraining from appearing to doubt their skill in the presence +of their patients. Any explanation in private was thankfully received +by them, and wrong treatment changed into something more reasonable with +cordial good-will, if no one but the doctor and myself were present at +the conversation. English medicines were eagerly asked for and accepted +by all; and we always found medical knowledge an important aid in +convincing the people that we were really anxious for their welfare. +We can not accuse them of ingratitude; in fact, we shall remember the +kindness of the Bakwains to us as long as we live. + +The surgical knowledge of the native doctors is rather at a low ebb. No +one ever attempted to remove a tumor except by external applications. +Those with which the natives are chiefly troubled are fatty and fibrous +tumors; and as they all have the 'vis medicatrix naturae' in remarkable +activity, I safely removed an immense number. In illustration of their +want of surgical knowledge may be mentioned the case of a man who had a +tumor as large as a child's head. This was situated on the nape of his +neck, and prevented his walking straight. He applied to his chief, and +he got some famous strange doctor from the East Coast to cure him. He +and his assistants attempted to dissolve it by kindling on it a little +fire made of a few small pieces of medicinal roots. I removed it for +him, and he always walked with his head much more erect than he needed +to do ever afterward. Both men and women submit to an operation without +wincing, or any of that shouting which caused young students to faint in +the operating theatre before the introduction of chloroform. The women +pride themselves on their ability to bear pain. A mother will address +her little girl, from whose foot a thorn is to be extracted, with, "Now, +ma, you are a woman; a woman does not cry." A man scorns to shed tears. +When we were passing one of the deep wells in the Kalahari, a boy, +the son of an aged father, had been drowned in it while playing on its +brink. When all hope was gone, the father uttered an exceedingly great +and bitter cry. It was sorrow without hope. This was the only instance I +ever met with of a man weeping in this country. + +Their ideas on obstetrics are equally unscientific, and a medical man +going near a woman at her confinement appeared to them more out of place +than a female medical student appears to us in a dissecting-room. A case +of twins, however, happening, and the ointment of all the doctors of +the town proving utterly insufficient to effect the relief which a few +seconds of English art afforded, the prejudice vanished at once. As it +would have been out of the question for me to have entered upon this +branch of the profession--as indeed it would be inexpedient for any +medical man to devote himself exclusively, in a thinly-peopled country, +to the practice of medicine--I thereafter reserved myself for the +difficult cases only, and had the satisfaction of often conferring great +benefits on poor women in their hour of sorrow. The poor creatures are +often placed in a little hut built for the purpose, and are left without +any assistance whatever, and the numbers of umbilical herniae which are +met with in consequence is very great. The women suffer less at their +confinement than is the case in civilized countries; perhaps from their +treating it, not as a disease, but as an operation of nature, requiring +no change of diet except a feast of meat and abundance of fresh air. The +husband on these occasions is bound to slaughter for his lady an ox, or +goat, or sheep, according to his means. + +My knowledge in the above line procured for me great fame in a +department in which I could lay no claim to merit. A woman came a +distance of one hundred miles for relief in a complaint which seemed to +have baffled the native doctors; a complete cure was the result. Some +twelve months after she returned to her husband, she bore a son. Her +husband having previously reproached her for being barren, she sent me a +handsome present, and proclaimed all over the country that I possessed +a medicine for the cure of sterility. The consequence was, that I was +teased with applications from husbands and wives from all parts of the +country. Some came upward of two hundred miles to purchase the great +boon, and it was in vain for me to explain that I had only cured the +disease of the other case. The more I denied, the higher their offers +rose; they would give any money for the "child medicine"; and it was +really heart-rending to hear the earnest entreaty, and see the tearful +eye, which spoke the intense desire for offspring: "I am getting old; +you see gray hairs here and there on my head, and I have no child; you +know how Bechuana husbands cast their old wives away; what can I do? I +have no child to bring water to me when I am sick," etc. + +The whole of the country adjacent to the Desert, from Kuruman to +Kolobeng, or Litubaruba, and beyond up to the latitude of Lake Ngami, is +remarkable for its great salubrity of climate. Not only the natives, but +Europeans whose constitutions have been impaired by an Indian climate, +find the tract of country indicated both healthy and restorative. The +health and longevity of the missionaries have always been fair, though +mission-work is not very conducive to either elsewhere. Cases have been +known in which patients have come from the coast with complaints closely +resembling, if they were not actually, those of consumption; and they +have recovered by the influence of the climate alone. It must always be +borne in mind that the climate near the coast, from which we received +such very favorable reports of the health of the British troops, is +actually inferior for persons suffering from pulmonary complaints to +that of any part not subjected to the influence of sea-air. I have +never seen the beneficial effects of the inland climate on persons of +shattered constitutions, nor heard their high praises of the benefit +they have derived from traveling, without wishing that its bracing +effects should become more extensively known in England. No one who +has visited the region I have above mentioned fails to remember with +pleasure the wild, healthful gipsy life of wagon-traveling. + +A considerable proportion of animal diet seems requisite here. +Independent of the want of salt, we required meat in as large +quantity daily as we do in England, and no bad effects, in the way of +biliousness, followed the free use of flesh, as in other hot climates. A +vegetable diet causes acidity and heartburn. + +Mr. Oswell thought this climate much superior to that of Peru, as far as +pleasure is concerned; the want of instruments unfortunately prevented +my obtaining accurate scientific data for the medical world on this +subject; and were it not for the great expense of such a trip, I should +have no hesitation in recommending the borders of the Kalahari Desert as +admirably suited for all patients having pulmonary complaints. It is +the complete antipodes to our cold, damp, English climate. The winter +is perfectly dry; and as not a drop of rain falls during that period, +namely, from the beginning of May to the end of August, damp and cold +are never combined. However hot the day may have been at Kolobeng--and +the thermometer sometimes rose, previous to a fall of rain, up to 96 +Deg. in the coolest part of our house--yet the atmosphere never has that +steamy feeling nor those debilitating effects so well known in India +and on the coast of Africa itself. In the evenings the air becomes +deliciously cool, and a pleasant refreshing night follows the hottest +day. The greatest heat ever felt is not so oppressive as it is when +there is much humidity in the air; and the great evaporation consequent +on a fall of rain makes the rainy season the most agreeable for +traveling. Nothing can exceed the balmy feeling of the evenings and +mornings during the whole year. You wish for an increase neither of +cold nor heat; and you can sit out of doors till midnight without ever +thinking of colds or rheumatism; or you may sleep out at night, looking +up to the moon till you fall asleep, without a thought or sign of +moon-blindness. Indeed, during many months there is scarcely any dew. + + + + +Chapter 7. + +Departure from the Country of the Bakwains--Large black Ant--Land +Tortoises--Diseases of wild Animals--Habits of old Lions--Cowardice of +the Lion--Its Dread of a Snare--Major Vardon's Note--The Roar of +the Lion resembles the Cry of the Ostrich--Seldom attacks full-grown +Animals--Buffaloes and Lions--Mice--Serpents--Treading on +one--Venomous and harmless Varieties--Fascination--Sekomi's Ideas +of Honesty--Ceremony of the Sechu for Boys--The Boyale for +young Women--Bamangwato Hills--The Unicorn's Pass--The Country +beyond--Grain--Scarcity of Water--Honorable Conduct of English +Gentlemen--Gordon Cumming's hunting Adventures--A Word of Advice +for young Sportsmen--Bushwomen drawing Water--Ostrich--Silly +Habit--Paces--Eggs--Food. + + + +Having remained five days with the wretched Bakwains, seeing the effects +of war, of which only a very inadequate idea can ever be formed by those +who have not been eye-witnesses of its miseries, we prepared to depart +on the 15th of January, 1853. Several dogs, in better condition by far +than any of the people, had taken up their residence at the water. No +one would own them; there they had remained, and, coming on the trail +of the people, long after their departure from the scene of conflict, it +was plain they had + +"Held o'er the dead their carnival." + +Hence the disgust with which they were viewed. + +On our way from Khopong, along the ancient river-bed which forms the +pathway to Boatlanama, I found a species of cactus, being the third I +have seen in the country, namely, one in the colony with a bright red +flower, one at Lake Ngami, the flower of which was liver-colored, and +the present one, flower unknown. That the plant is uncommon may be +inferred from the fact that the Bakwains find so much difficulty in +recognizing the plant again after having once seen it, that they believe +it has the power of changing its locality. + +On the 21st of January we reached the wells of Boatlanama, and found +them for the first time empty. Lopepe, which I had formerly seen a +stream running from a large reedy pool, was also dry. The hot salt +spring of Serinane, east of Lopepe, being undrinkable, we pushed on to +Mashue for its delicious waters. In traveling through this country, the +olfactory nerves are frequently excited by a strong disagreeable odor. +This is caused by a large jet-black ant named "Leshonya". It is nearly +an inch in length, and emits a pungent smell when alarmed, in the same +manner as the skunk. The scent must be as volatile as ether, for, on +irritating the insect with a stick six feet long, the odor is instantly +perceptible. + +Occasionally we lighted upon land tortoises, which, with their unlaid +eggs, make a very agreeable dish. We saw many of their trails leading +to the salt fountain; they must have come great distances for this +health-giving article. In lieu thereof they often devour wood-ashes. It +is wonderful how this reptile holds its place in the country. When seen, +it never escapes. The young are taken for the sake of their shells; +these are made into boxes, which, filled with sweet-smelling roots, the +women hang around their persons. When older it is used as food, and the +shell converted into a rude basin to hold food or water. It owes its +continuance neither to speed nor cunning. Its color, yellow and dark +brown, is well adapted, by its similarity to the surrounding grass +and brushwood, to render it indistinguishable; and, though it makes an +awkward attempt to run on the approach of man, its trust is in its bony +covering, from which even the teeth of a hyaena glance off foiled. When +this long-lived creature is about to deposit her eggs, she lets herself +into the ground by throwing the earth up round her shell, until only +the top is visible; then covering up the eggs, she leaves them until the +rains begin to fall and the fresh herbage appears; the young ones then +come out, their shells still quite soft, and, unattended by their dam, +begin the world for themselves. Their food is tender grass and a plant +named thotona, and they frequently resort to heaps of ashes and places +containing efflorescence of the nitrates for the salts these contain. + +Inquiries among the Bushmen and Bakalahari, who are intimately +acquainted with the habits of the game, lead to the belief that many +diseases prevail among wild animals. I have seen the kokong or gnu, kama +or hartebeest, the tsessebe, kukama, and the giraffe, so mangy as to be +uneatable even by the natives. Reference has already been made to the +peripneumonia which cuts off horses, tolos or koodoos. Great numbers +also of zebras are found dead with masses of foam at the nostrils, +exactly as occurs in the common "horse-sickness". The production of the +malignant carbuncle called kuatsi, or selonda, by the flesh when eaten, +is another proof of the disease of the tame and wild being identical. +I once found a buffalo blind from ophthalmia standing by the fountain +Otse; when he attempted to run he lifted up his feet in the manner +peculiar to blind animals. The rhinoceros has often worms on the +conjunction of his eyes; but these are not the cause of the dimness of +vision which will make him charge past a man who has wounded him, if +he stands perfectly still, in the belief that his enemy is a tree. +It probably arises from the horn being in the line of vision, for the +variety named kuabaoba, which has a straight horn directed downward away +from that line, possesses acute eyesight, and is much more wary. + +All the wild animals are subject to intestinal worms besides. I have +observed bunches of a tape-like thread and short worms of enlarged sizes +in the rhinoceros. The zebra and elephants are seldom without them, and +a thread-worm may often be seen under the peritoneum of these animals. +Short red larvae, which convey a stinging sensation to the hand, are +seen clustering round the orifice of the windpipe (trachea) of this +animal at the back of the throat; others are seen in the frontal sinus +of antelopes; and curious flat, leech-like worms, with black eyes, are +found in the stomachs of leches. The zebra, giraffe, eland, and kukama +have been seen mere skeletons from decay of their teeth as well as from +disease. + +The carnivora, too, become diseased and mangy; lions become lean and +perish miserably by reason of the decay of the teeth. When a lion +becomes too old to catch game, he frequently takes to killing goats in +the villages; a woman or child happening to go out at night falls a prey +too; and as this is his only source of subsistence now, he continues it. +From this circumstance has arisen the idea that the lion, when he has +once tasted human flesh, loves it better than any other. A man-eater is +invariably an old lion; and when he overcomes his fear of man so far as +to come to villages for goats, the people remark, "His teeth are worn, +he will soon kill men." They at once acknowledge the necessity of +instant action, and turn out to kill him. When living far away from +population, or when, as is the case in some parts, he entertains a +wholesome dread of the Bushmen and Bakalahari, as soon as either disease +or old age overtakes him, he begins to catch mice and other small +rodents, and even to eat grass; the natives, observing undigested +vegetable matter in his droppings, follow up his trail in the certainty +of finding him scarcely able to move under some tree, and dispatch him +without difficulty. The grass may have been eaten as medicine, as is +observed in dogs. + +That the fear of man often remains excessively strong in the carnivora +is proved from well-authenticated cases in which the lioness, in the +vicinity of towns where the large game had been unexpectedly driven +away by fire-arms, has been known to assuage the paroxysms of hunger by +devouring her own young. It must be added, that, though the effluvium +which is left by the footsteps of man is in general sufficient to induce +lions to avoid a village, there are exceptions; so many came about our +half-deserted houses at Chonuane while we were in the act of removing +to Kolobeng, that the natives who remained with Mrs. Livingstone were +terrified to stir out of doors in the evenings. Bitches, also, have been +known to be guilty of the horridly unnatural act of eating their +own young, probably from the great desire for animal food, which is +experienced by the inhabitants as well. + +When a lion is met in the daytime, a circumstance by no means unfrequent +to travelers in these parts, if preconceived notions do not lead them +to expect something very "noble" or "majestic", they will see merely an +animal somewhat larger than the biggest dog they ever saw, and partaking +very strongly of the canine features; the face is not much like the +usual drawings of a lion, the nose being prolonged like a dog's; not +exactly such as our painters make it--though they might learn better at +the Zoological Gardens--their ideas of majesty being usually shown by +making their lions' faces like old women in nightcaps. When encountered +in the daytime, the lion stands a second or two, gazing, then turns +slowly round, and walks as slowly away for a dozen paces, looking over +his shoulder; then begins to trot, and, when he thinks himself out of +sight, bounds off like a greyhound. By day there is not, as a rule, the +smallest danger of lions which are not molested attacking man, nor +even on a clear moonlight night, except when they possess the breeding +storgh* (natural affection); this makes them brave almost any danger; +and if a man happens to cross to the windward of them, both lion and +lioness will rush at him, in the manner of a bitch with whelps. This +does not often happen, as I only became aware of two or three instances +of it. In one case a man, passing where the wind blew from him to the +animals, was bitten before he could climb a tree; and occasionally a man +on horseback has been caught by the leg under the same circumstances. So +general, however, is the sense of security on moonlight nights, that we +seldom tied up our oxen, but let them lie loose by the wagons; while on +a dark, rainy night, if a lion is in the neighborhood, he is almost sure +to venture to kill an ox. His approach is always stealthy, except when +wounded; and any appearance of a trap is enough to cause him to refrain +from making the last spring. This seems characteristic of the feline +species; when a goat is picketed in India for the purpose of enabling +the huntsmen to shoot a tiger by night, if on a plain, he would whip off +the animal so quickly by a stroke of the paw that no one could take aim; +to obviate this, a small pit is dug, and the goat is picketed to a stake +in the bottom; a small stone is tied in the ear of the goat, which makes +him cry the whole night. When the tiger sees the appearance of a trap, +he walks round and round the pit, and allows the hunter, who is lying in +wait, to have a fair shot. + + * (Greek) sigma-tau-omicron-rho-gamma-eta. + +When a lion is very hungry, and lying in wait, the sight of an animal +may make him commence stalking it. In one case a man, while stealthily +crawling towards a rhinoceros, happened to glance behind him, and found +to his horror a lion STALKING HIM; he only escaped by springing up a +tree like a cat. At Lopepe a lioness sprang on the after quarter of Mr. +Oswell's horse, and when we came up to him we found the marks of the +claws on the horse, and a scratch on Mr. O.'s hand. The horse, on +feeling the lion on him, sprang away, and the rider, caught by a +wait-a-bit thorn, was brought to the ground and rendered insensible. +His dogs saved him. Another English gentleman (Captain Codrington) was +surprised in the same way, though not hunting the lion at the time, +but turning round he shot him dead in the neck. By accident a horse +belonging to Codrington ran away, but was stopped by the bridle catching +a stump; there he remained a prisoner two days, and when found the whole +space around was marked by the footprints of lions. They had evidently +been afraid to attack the haltered horse from fear that it was a trap. +Two lions came up by night to within three yards of oxen tied to a +wagon, and a sheep tied to a tree, and stood roaring, but afraid to make +a spring. On another occasion one of our party was lying sound asleep +and unconscious of danger between two natives behind a bush at Mashue; +the fire was nearly out at their feet in consequence of all being +completely tired out by the fatigues of the previous day; a lion came up +to within three yards of the fire, and there commenced roaring instead +of making a spring: the fact of their riding-ox being tied to the bush +was the only reason the lion had for not following his instinct, and +making a meal of flesh. He then stood on a knoll three hundred yards +distant, and roared all night, and continued his growling as the party +moved off by daylight next morning. + +Nothing that I ever learned of the lion would lead me to attribute to +it either the ferocious or noble character ascribed to it elsewhere. It +possesses none of the nobility of the Newfoundland or St. Bernard dogs. +With respect to its great strength there can be no doubt. The immense +masses of muscle around its jaws, shoulders, and forearms proclaim +tremendous force. They would seem, however, to be inferior in power to +those of the Indian tiger. Most of those feats of strength that I have +seen performed by lions, such as the taking away of an ox, were not +carrying, but dragging or trailing the carcass along the ground: they +have sprung on some occasions on to the hind-quarters of a horse, but no +one has ever seen them on the withers of a giraffe. They do not mount on +the hind-quarters of an eland even, but try to tear him down with their +claws. Messrs. Oswell and Vardon once saw three lions endeavoring to +drag down a buffalo, and they were unable to do so for a time, though he +was then mortally wounded by a two-ounce ball.* + + * This singular encounter, in the words of an eye-witness, + happened as follows: + + "My South African Journal is now before me, and I have got + hold of the account of the lion and buffalo affair; here it + is: '15th September, 1846. Oswell and I were riding this + afternoon along the banks of the Limpopo, when a waterbuck + started in front of us. I dismounted, and was following it + through the jungle, when three buffaloes got up, and, after + going a little distance, stood still, and the nearest bull + turned round and looked at me. A ball from the two-ouncer + crashed into his shoulder, and they all three made off. + Oswell and I followed as soon as I had reloaded, and when we + were in sight of the buffalo, and gaining on him at every + stride, three lions leaped on the unfortunate brute; he + bellowed most lustily as he kept up a kind of running fight, + but he was, of course, soon overpowered and pulled down. We + had a fine view of the struggle, and saw the lions on their + hind legs tearing away with teeth and claws in most ferocious + style. We crept up within thirty yards, and, kneeling down, + blazed away at the lions. My rifle was a single barrel, and I + had no spare gun. One lion fell dead almost ON the buffalo; he + had merely time to turn toward us, seize a bush with his + teeth, and drop dead with the stick in his jaws. The second + made off immediately; and the third raised his head, coolly + looked round for a moment, then went on tearing and biting at + the carcass as hard as ever. We retired a short distance to + load, then again advanced and fired. The lion made off, but a + ball that he received OUGHT to have stopped him, as it went + clean through his shoulder-blade. He was followed up and + killed, after having charged several times. Both lions were + males. It is not often that one BAGS a brace of lions and a + bull buffalo in about ten minutes. It was an exciting + adventure, and I shall never forget it.' + + "Such, my dear Livingstone, is the plain unvarnished account. + The buffalo had, of course, gone close to where the lions were + lying down for the day; and they, seeing him lame and + bleeding, thought the opportunity too good a one to be lost. + + "Ever yours, Frank Vardon." + +In general the lion seizes the animal he is attacking by the flank near +the hind leg, or by the throat below the jaw. It is questionable whether +he ever attempts to seize an animal by the withers. The flank is the +most common point of attack, and that is the part he begins to feast +on first. The natives and lions are very similar in their tastes in the +selection of tit-bits: an eland may be seen disemboweled by a lion so +completely that he scarcely seems cut up at all. The bowels and fatty +parts form a full meal for even the largest lion. The jackal comes +sniffing about, and sometimes suffers for his temerity by a stroke from +the lion's paw laying him dead. When gorged, the lion falls fast asleep, +and is then easily dispatched. Hunting a lion with dogs involves very +little danger as compared with hunting the Indian tiger, because the +dogs bring him out of cover and make him stand at bay, giving the hunter +plenty of time for a good deliberate shot. + +Where game is abundant, there you may expect lions in proportionately +large numbers. They are never seen in herds, but six or eight, probably +one family, occasionally hunt together. One is in much more danger of +being run over when walking in the streets of London, than he is of +being devoured by lions in Africa, unless engaged in hunting the animal. +Indeed, nothing that I have seen or heard about lions would constitute a +barrier in the way of men of ordinary courage and enterprise. + +The same feeling which has induced the modern painter to caricature the +lion, has led the sentimentalist to consider the lion's roar the most +terrific of all earthly sounds. We hear of the "majestic roar of the +king of beasts." It is, indeed, well calculated to inspire fear if +you hear it in combination with the tremendously loud thunder of that +country, on a night so pitchy dark that every flash of the intensely +vivid lightning leaves you with the impression of stone-blindness, while +the rain pours down so fast that your fire goes out, leaving you without +the protection of even a tree, or the chance of your gun going off. +But when you are in a comfortable house or wagon, the case is very +different, and you hear the roar of the lion without any awe or alarm. +The silly ostrich makes a noise as loud, yet he never was feared by man. +To talk of the majestic roar of the lion is mere majestic twaddle. On +my mentioning this fact some years ago, the assertion was doubted, so I +have been careful ever since to inquire the opinions of Europeans, who +have heard both, if they could detect any difference between the roar +of a lion and that of an ostrich; the invariable answer was, that they +could not when the animal was at any distance. The natives assert that +they can detect a variation between the commencement of the noise of +each. There is, it must be admitted, considerable difference between +the singing noise of a lion when full, and his deep, gruff growl when +hungry. In general the lion's voice seems to come deeper from the chest +than that of the ostrich, but to this day I can distinguish between them +with certainty only by knowing that the ostrich roars by day and the +lion by night. + +The African lion is of a tawny color, like that of some mastiffs. The +mane in the male is large, and gives the idea of great power. In some +lions the ends of the hair of the mane are black; these go by the name +of black-maned lions, though as a whole all look of the yellow tawny +color. At the time of the discovery of the lake, Messrs. Oswell and +Wilson shot two specimens of another variety. One was an old lion, whose +teeth were mere stumps, and his claws worn quite blunt; the other was +full grown, in the prime of life, with white, perfect teeth; both were +entirely destitute of mane. The lions in the country near the lake give +tongue less than those further south. We scarcely ever heard them roar +at all. + +The lion has other checks on inordinate increase besides man. He seldom +attacks full-grown animals; but frequently, when a buffalo calf is +caught by him, the cow rushes to the rescue, and a toss from her often +kills him. One we found was killed thus; and on the Leeambye another, +which died near Sesheke, had all the appearance of having received his +death-blow from a buffalo. It is questionable if a single lion ever +attacks a full-grown buffalo. The amount of roaring heard at night, on +occasions when a buffalo is killed, seems to indicate there are always +more than one lion engaged in the onslaught. + +On the plain, south of Sebituane's ford, a herd of buffaloes kept a +number of lions from their young by the males turning their heads to +the enemy. The young and the cows were in the rear. One toss from a bull +would kill the strongest lion that ever breathed. I have been informed +that in one part of India even the tame buffaloes feel their superiority +to some wild animals, for they have been seen to chase a tiger up the +hills, bellowing as if they enjoyed the sport. Lions never go near any +elephants except the calves, which, when young, are sometimes torn +by them; every living thing retires before the lordly elephant, yet a +full-grown one would be an easier prey than the rhinoceros; the lion +rushes off at the mere sight of this latter beast. + +In the country adjacent to Mashue great numbers of different kinds of +mice exist. The ground is often so undermined with their burrows that +the foot sinks in at every step. Little haycocks, about two feet high, +and rather more than that in breadth, are made by one variety of these +little creatures. The same thing is done in regions annually covered +with snow for obvious purposes, but it is difficult here to divine the +reason of the haymaking in the climate of Africa.* + + * 'Euryotis unisulcatus' (F. Cuvier), 'Mus pumelio' (Spar.), + and 'Mus lehocla' (Smith), all possess this habit in a greater + or less degree. The first-named may be seen escaping danger + with its young hanging to the after-part of its body. + +Wherever mice abound, serpents may be expected, for the one preys on +the other. A cat in a house is therefore a good preventive against +the entrance of these noxious reptiles. Occasionally, however, +notwithstanding every precaution, they do find their way in, but even +the most venomous sorts bite only when put in bodily fear themselves, or +when trodden upon, or when the sexes come together. I once found a coil +of serpents' skins, made by a number of them twisting together in the +manner described by the Druids of old. When in the country, one feels +nothing of that alarm and loathing which we may experience when sitting +in a comfortable English room reading about them; yet they are nasty +things, and we seem to have an instinctive feeling against them. In +making the door for our Mabotsa house, I happened to leave a small +hole at the corner below. Early one morning a man came to call for some +article I had promised. I at once went to the door, and, it being dark, +trod on a serpent. The moment I felt the cold scaly skin twine round a +part of my leg, my latent instinct was roused, and I jumped up higher +than I ever did before or hope to do again, shaking the reptile off +in the leap. I probably trod on it near the head, and so prevented it +biting me, but did not stop to examine. + +Some of the serpents are particularly venomous. One was killed at +Kolobeng of a dark brown, nearly black color, 8 feet 3 inches long. This +species (picakholu) is so copiously supplied with poison that, when a +number of dogs attack it, the first bitten dies almost instantaneously, +the second in about five minutes, the third in an hour or so, while +the fourth may live several hours. In a cattle-pen it produces great +mischief in the same way. The one we killed at Kolobeng continued to +distill clear poison from the fangs for hours after its head was cut +off. This was probably that which passes by the name of the "spitting +serpent", which is believed to be able to eject its poison into the eyes +when the wind favors its forcible expiration. They all require water, +and come long distances to the Zouga, and other rivers and pools, in +search of it. We have another dangerous serpent, the puff adder, and +several vipers. One, named by the inhabitants "Noga-put-sane", or +serpent of a kid, utters a cry by night exactly like the bleating of +that animal. I heard one at a spot where no kid could possibly have +been. It is supposed by the natives to lure travelers to itself by this +bleating. Several varieties, when alarmed, emit a peculiar odor, by +which the people become aware of their presence in a house. We have +also the cobra ('Naia haje', Smith) of several colors or varieties. When +annoyed, they raise their heads up about a foot from the ground, and +flatten the neck in a threatening manner, darting out the tongue and +retracting it with great velocity, while their fixed glassy eyes +glare as if in anger. There are also various species of the genus +'Dendrophis', as the 'Bucephalus viridis', or green tree-climber. They +climb trees in search of birds and eggs, and are soon discovered by all +the birds in the neighborhood collecting and sounding an alarm.* Their +fangs are formed not so much for injecting poison on external objects +as for keeping in any animal or bird of which they have got hold. In +the case of the 'Dasypeltis inornatus' (Smith), the teeth are small, and +favorable for the passage of thin-shelled eggs without breaking. The egg +is taken in unbroken till it is within the gullet, or about two inches +behind the head. The gular teeth placed there break the shell without +spilling the contents, as would be the case if the front teeth were +large. The shell is then ejected. Others appear to be harmless, and even +edible. Of the latter sort is the large python, metse pallah, or tari. +The largest specimens of this are about 15 or 20 feet in length. They +are perfectly harmless, and live on small animals, chiefly the rodentia; +occasionally the steinbuck and pallah fall victims, and are sucked into +its comparatively small mouth in boa-constrictor fashion. One we shot +was 11 feet 10 inches long, and as thick as a man's leg. When shot +through the spine, it was capable of lifting itself up about five feet +high, and opened its mouth in a threatening manner, but the poor thing +was more inclined to crawl away. The flesh is much relished by the +Bakalahari and Bushmen. They carry away each his portion, like logs of +wood, over their shoulders. + + * "As this snake, 'Bucephalus Capensis', in our opinion, is + not provided with a poisonous fluid to instill into wounds + which these fangs may inflict, they must consequently be + intended for a purpose different to those which exist in + poisonous reptiles. Their use seems to be to offer obstacles + to the retrogression of animals, such as birds, etc., while + they are only partially within the mouth; and from the + circumstance of these fangs being directed backward, and not + admitting of being raised so as to form an angle with the edge + of the jaw, they are well fitted to act as powerful holders + when once they penetrate the skin and soft parts of the prey + which their possessors may be in the act of swallowing. + Without such fangs escapes would be common; with such they are + rare. + + "The natives of South Africa regard the 'Bucephalus Capensis' + as poisonous; but in their opinion we can not concur, as we + have not been able to discover the existence of any glands + manifestly organized for the secretion of poison. The fangs + are inclosed in a soft, pulpy sheath, the inner surface of + which is commonly coated with a thin glairy secretion. This + secretion possibly may have something acrid and irritating in + its qualities, which may, when it enters a wound, cause pain + and even swelling, but nothing of greater importance. + + "The 'Bucephalus Capensis' is generally found on trees, to + which it resorts for the purpose of catching birds, upon which + it delights to feed. The presence of a specimen in a tree is + generally soon discovered by the birds of the neighborhood, + who collect around it and fly to and fro, uttering the most + piercing cries, until some one, more terror-struck than the + rest, actually scans its lips, and, almost without resistance, + becomes a meal for its enemy. During such a proceeding the + snake is generally observed with its head raised about ten or + twelve inches above the branch round which its body and tail + are entwined, with its mouth open and its neck inflated, as if + anxiously endeavoring to increase the terror which it would + almost appear it was aware would sooner or later bring within + its grasp some one of the feathered group. + + "Whatever may be said in ridicule of fascination, it is + nevertheless true that birds, and even quadrupeds, are, under + certain circumstances, unable to retire from the presence of + certain of their enemies; and, what is even more + extraordinary, unable to resist the propensity to advance from + a situation of actual safety into one of the most imminent + danger. This I have often seen exemplified in the case of + birds and snakes; and I have heard of instances equally + curious, in which antelopes and other quadrupeds have been so + bewildered by the sudden appearance of crocodiles, and by the + grimaces and contortions they practiced, as to be unable to + fly or even move from the spot toward which they were + approaching to seize them."--Dr. Andrew Smith's "Reptilia". + + In addition to these interesting statements of the most able + naturalist from whom I have taken this note, it may be added + that fire exercises a fascinating effect on some kinds of + toads. They may be seen rushing into it in the evenings + without ever starting back on feeling pain. Contact with the + hot embers rather increases the energy with which they strive + to gain the hottest parts, and they never cease their + struggles for the centre even when their juices are + coagulating and their limbs stiffening in the roasting heat. + Various insects, also, are thus fascinated; but the scorpions + may be seen coming away from the fire in fierce disgust, and + they are so irritated as to inflict at that time their most + painful stings. + +Some of the Bayeiye we met at Sebituane's Ford pretended to be +unaffected by the bite of serpents, and showed the feat of lacerating +their arms with the teeth of such as are unfurnished with the +poison-fangs. They also swallow the poison, by way of gaining notoriety; +but Dr. Andrew Smith put the sincerity of such persons to the test by +offering them the fangs of a really poisonous variety, and found they +shrank from the experiment. + +When we reached the Bamangwato, the chief, Sekomi, was particularly +friendly, collected all his people to the religious services we held, +and explained his reasons for compelling some Englishmen to pay him a +horse. "They would not sell him any powder, though they had plenty; so +he compelled them to give it and the horse for nothing. He would not +deny the extortion to me; that would be 'boherehere' (swindling)." He +thus thought extortion better than swindling. I could not detect any +difference in the morality of the two transactions, but Sekomi's ideas +of honesty are the lowest I have met with in any Bechuana chief, and +this instance is mentioned as the only approach to demanding payment for +leave to pass that I have met with in the south. In all other cases the +difficulty has been to get a chief to give us men to show the way, +and the payment has only been for guides. Englishmen have always very +properly avoided giving that idea to the native mind which we shall +hereafter find prove troublesome, that payment ought to be made for +passage through a country. + +All the Bechuana and Caffre tribes south of the Zambesi practice +circumcision ('boguera'), but the rites observed are carefully +concealed. The initiated alone can approach, but in this town I was +once a spectator of the second part of the ceremony of the circumcision, +called "sechu". Just at the dawn of day, a row of boys of nearly +fourteen years of age stood naked in the kotla, each having a pair of +sandals as a shield on his hands. Facing them stood the men of the +town in a similar state of nudity, all armed with long thin wands, of a +tough, strong, supple bush called moretloa ('Grewia flava'), and engaged +in a dance named "koha", in which questions are put to the boys, as +"Will you guard the chief well?" "Will you herd the cattle well?" and, +while the latter give an affirmative response, the men rush forward to +them, and each aims a full-weight blow at the back of one of the boys. +Shielding himself with the sandals above his head, he causes the supple +wand to descend and bend into his back, and every stroke inflicted thus +makes the blood squirt out of a wound a foot or eighteen inches long. At +the end of the dance, the boys' backs are seamed with wounds and weals, +the scars of which remain through life. This is intended to harden +the young soldiers, and prepare them for the rank of men. After this +ceremony, and after killing a rhinoceros, they may marry a wife. + +In the "koha" the same respect is shown to age as in many other of their +customs. A younger man, rushing from the ranks to exercise his wand on +the backs of the youths, may be himself the object of chastisement by +the older, and, on the occasion referred to, Sekomi received a severe +cut on the leg from one of his gray-haired people. On my joking with +some of the young men on their want of courage, notwithstanding all the +beatings of which they bore marks, and hinting that our soldiers were +brave without suffering so much, one rose up and said, "Ask him if, when +he and I were compelled by a lion to stop and make a fire, I did not lie +down and sleep as well as himself." In other parts a challenge to try +a race would have been given, and you may frequently see grown men +adopting that means of testing superiority, like so many children. + +The sechu is practiced by three tribes only. Boguera is observed by all +the Bechuanas and Caffres, but not by the negro tribes beyond 20 Deg. +south. The "boguera" is a civil rather than a religious rite. All the +boys of an age between ten and fourteen or fifteen are selected to be +the companions for life of one of the sons of the chief. They are taken +out to some retired spot in the forest, and huts are erected for their +accommodation; the old men go out and teach them to dance, initiating +them, at the same time, into all the mysteries of African politics and +government. Each one is expected to compose an oration in praise of +himself, called a "leina" or name, and to be able to repeat it with +sufficient fluency. A good deal of beating is required to bring them +up to the required excellency in different matters, so that, when +they return from the close seclusion in which they are kept, they have +generally a number of scars to show on their backs. These bands or +regiments, named mepato in the plural and mopato in the singular, +receive particular appellations; as, the Matsatsi--the suns; the +Mabusa--the rulers; equivalent to our Coldstreams or Enniskillens; and, +though living in different parts of the town, they turn out at the call, +and act under the chief's son as their commander. They recognize a sort +of equality and partial communism ever afterward, and address each other +by the title of molekane or comrade. In cases of offence against their +rules, as eating alone when any of their comrades are within call, or in +cases of cowardice or dereliction of duty, they may strike one another, +or any member of a younger mopato, but never any one of an older band; +and when three or four companies have been made, the oldest no longer +takes the field in time of war, but remains as a guard over the women +and children. When a fugitive comes to a tribe, he is directed to the +mopato analogous to that to which in his own tribe he belongs, and does +duty as a member. No one of the natives knows how old he is. If asked +his age, he answers by putting another question, "Does a man remember +when he was born?" Age is reckoned by the number of mepato they have +seen pass through the formulae of admission. When they see four or five +mepato younger than themselves, they are no longer obliged to bear arms. +The oldest individual I ever met boasted he had seen eleven sets of boys +submit to the boguera. Supposing him to have been fifteen when he saw +his own, and fresh bands were added every six or seven years, he must +have been about forty when he saw the fifth, and may have attained +seventy-five or eighty years, which is no great age; but it seemed so to +them, for he had now doubled the age for superannuation among them. +It is an ingenious plan for attaching the members of the tribe to the +chief's family, and for imparting a discipline which renders the tribe +easy of command. On their return to the town from attendance on the +ceremonies of initiation, a prize is given to the lad who can run +fastest, the article being placed where all may see the winner run up +to snatch it. They are then considered men (banona, viri), and can sit +among the elders in the kotla. Formerly they were only boys (basimane, +pueri). The first missionaries set their faces against the boguera, on +account of its connection with heathenism, and the fact that the youths +learned much evil, and became disobedient to their parents. From +the general success of these men, it is perhaps better that younger +missionaries should tread in their footsteps; for so much evil may +result from breaking down the authority on which, to those who can not +read, the whole system of our influence appears to rest, that innovators +ought to be made to propose their new measures as the Locrians did new +laws--with ropes around their necks. + +Probably the "boguera" was only a sanitary and political measure; and +there being no continuous chain of tribes practicing the rite between +the Arabs and the Bechuanas, or Caffres, and as it is not a religious +ceremony, it can scarcely be traced, as is often done, to a Mohammedan +source. + +A somewhat analogous ceremony (boyale) takes place for young women, and +the protegees appear abroad drilled under the surveillance of an old +lady to the carrying of water. They are clad during the whole time in a +dress composed of ropes made of alternate pumpkin-seeds and bits of reed +strung together, and wound round the body in a figure-of-eight fashion. +They are inured in this way to bear fatigue, and carry large pots of +water under the guidance of the stern old hag. They have often scars +from bits of burning charcoal having been applied to the forearm, which +must have been done to test their power of bearing pain. + +The Bamangwato hills are part of the range called Bakaa. The Bakaa +tribe, however, removed to Kolobeng, and is now joined to that of +Sechele. The range stands about 700 or 800 feet above the plains, and +is composed of great masses of black basalt. It is probably part of +the latest series of volcanic rocks in South Africa. At the eastern end +these hills have curious fungoid or cup-shaped hollows, of a size +which suggests the idea of craters. Within these are masses of the rock +crystallized in the columnar form of this formation. The tops of the +columns are quite distinct, of the hexagonal form, like the bottom of +the cells of a honeycomb, but they are not parted from each other as in +the Cave of Fingal. In many parts the lava-streams may be recognized, +for there the rock is rent and split in every direction, but no soil is +yet found in the interstices. When we were sitting in the evening, after +a hot day, it was quite common to hear these masses of basalt split and +fall among each other with the peculiar ringing sound which makes people +believe that this rock contains much iron. Several large masses, in +splitting thus by the cold acting suddenly on parts expanded by the heat +of the day, have slipped down the sides of the hills, and, impinging +against each other, have formed cavities in which the Bakaa took refuge +against their enemies. The numerous chinks and crannies left by these +huge fragments made it quite impossible for their enemies to smoke them +out, as was done by the Boers to the people of Mankopane. + +This mass of basalt, about six miles long, has tilted up the rocks on +both the east and west; these upheaved rocks are the ancient silurian +schists which formed the bottom of the great primaeval valley, and, like +all the recent volcanic rocks of this country, have a hot fountain in +their vicinity, namely, that of Serinane. + +In passing through these hills on our way north we enter a pass named +Manakalongwe, or Unicorn's Pass. The unicorn here is a large edible +caterpillar, with an erect, horn-like tail. The pass was also called +Porapora (or gurgling of water), from a stream having run through it. +The scene must have been very different in former times from what it is +now. This is part of the River Mahalapi, which so-called river scarcely +merits the name, any more than the meadows of Edinburgh deserve the +title of North Loch. These hills are the last we shall see for months. +The country beyond consisted of large patches of trap-covered tufa, +having little soil or vegetation except tufts of grass and wait-a-bit +thorns, in the midst of extensive sandy, grass-covered plains. These +yellow-colored, grassy plains, with moretloa and mahatla bushes, form +quite a characteristic feature of the country. The yellow or dun-color +prevails during a great part of the year. The Bakwain hills are an +exception to the usual flat surface, for they are covered with green +trees to their tops, and the valleys are often of the most lovely green. +The trees are larger too, and even the plains of the Bakwain country +contain trees instead of bushes. If you look north from the hills we are +now leaving, the country partakes of this latter character. It appears +as if it were a flat covered with a forest of ordinary-sized trees from +20 to 30 feet high, but when you travel over it they are not so closely +planted but that a wagon with care may be guided among them. The grass +grows in tufts of the size of one's hat, with bare soft sand between. +Nowhere here have we an approach to English lawns, or the pleasing +appearance of English greensward. + +In no part of this country could European grain be cultivated without +irrigation. The natives all cultivate the dourrha or holcus sorghum, +maize, pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, and different kinds of beans; and +they are entirely dependent for the growth of these on rains. Their +instrument of culture is the hoe, and the chief labor falls on the +female portion of the community. In this respect the Bechuanas closely +resemble the Caffres. The men engage in hunting, milk the cows, and +have the entire control of the cattle; they prepare the skins, make the +clothing, and in many respects may be considered a nation of tailors. + +When at Sekomi's we generally have heard his praises sounded by a +man who rises at break of day, and utters at the top of his voice the +oration which that ruler is said to have composed at his boguera. This +repetition of his "leina", or oration, is so pleasing to a chief, that +he generally sends a handsome present to the man who does it. + +JANUARY 28TH. Passing on to Letloche, about twenty miles beyond the +Bamangwato, we found a fine supply of water. This is a point of so much +interest in that country that the first question we ask of passers +by is, "Have you had water?" the first inquiry a native puts to a +fellow-countryman is, "Where is the rain?" and, though they are by +no means an untruthful nation, the answer generally is, "I don't +know--there is none--we are killed with hunger and by the sun." If news +is asked for, they commence with, "There is no news: I heard some lies +only," and then tell all they know. + +This spot was Mr. Gordon Cumming's furthest station north. Our house +at Kolobeng having been quite in the hunting-country, rhinoceros and +buffaloes several times rushed past, and I was able to shoot the latter +twice from our own door. We were favored by visits from this famous +hunter during each of the five years of his warfare with wild animals. +Many English gentlemen following the same pursuits paid their guides and +assistants so punctually that in making arrangements for them we had to +be careful that four did not go where two only were wanted: they knew so +well that an Englishman would pay that they depended implicitly on +his word of honor, and not only would they go and hunt for five or six +months in the north, enduring all the hardships of that trying mode +of life, with little else but meat of game to subsist on, but they +willingly went seven hundred or eight hundred miles to Graham's Town, +receiving for wages only a musket worth fifteen shillings. + +No one ever deceived them except one man; and as I believed that he was +afflicted with a slight degree of the insanity of greediness, I upheld +the honor of the English name by paying his debts. As the guides of Mr. +Cumming were furnished through my influence, and usually got some strict +charges as to their behavior before parting, looking upon me in the +light of a father, they always came to give me an account of their +service, and told most of those hunting adventures which have since been +given to the world, before we had the pleasure of hearing our friend +relate them himself by our own fireside. I had thus a tolerably good +opportunity of testing their accuracy, and I have no hesitation in +saying that for those who love that sort of thing Mr. Cumming's book +conveys a truthful idea of South African hunting. Some things in it +require explanation, but the numbers of animals said to have been met +with and killed are by no means improbable, considering the amount of +large game then in the country. Two other gentlemen hunting in the same +region destroyed in one season no fewer than seventy-eight rhinoceroses +alone. Sportsmen, however, would not now find an equal number, for as +guns are introduced among the tribes all these fine animals melt away +like snow in spring. In the more remote districts, where fire-arms have +not yet been introduced, with the single exception of the rhinoceros, +the game is to be found in numbers much greater than Mr. Cumming ever +saw. The tsetse is, however, an insuperable barrier to hunting with +horses there, and Europeans can do nothing on foot. The step of the +elephant when charging the hunter, though apparently not quick, is so +long that the pace equals the speed of a good horse at a canter. A young +sportsman, no matter how great among pheasants, foxes, and hounds, would +do well to pause before resolving to brave fever for the excitement +of risking such a terrific charge; the scream or trumpeting of this +enormous brute when infuriated is more like what the shriek of a French +steam-whistle would be to a man standing on the dangerous part of +a rail-road than any other earthly sound: a horse unused to it will +sometimes stand shivering instead of taking his rider out of danger. It +has happened often that the poor animal's legs do their duty so badly +that he falls and causes his rider to be trodden into a mummy; or, +losing his presence of mind, the rider may allow the horse to dash under +a tree and crack his cranium against a branch. As one charge from +an elephant has made embryo Nimrods bid a final adieu to the chase, +incipient Gordon Cummings might try their nerves by standing on railways +till the engines were within a few yards of them. Hunting elephants on +foot would be not less dangerous,* unless the Ceylon mode of killing +them by one shot could be followed: it has never been tried in Africa. + + * Since writing the above statement, it has received + confirmation in the reported death of Mr. Wahlberg while + hunting elephants on foot at Lake Ngami. + +Advancing to some wells beyond Letloche, at a spot named Kanne, we +found them carefully hedged round by the people of a Bakalahari village +situated near the spot. We had then sixty miles of country in front +without water, and very distressing for the oxen, as it is generally +deep soft sand. There is one sucking-place, around which were +congregated great numbers of Bushwomen with their egg-shells and reeds. +Mathuluane now contained no water, and Motlatsa only a small supply, so +we sent the oxen across the country to the deep well Nkauane, and half +were lost on the way. When found at last they had been five whole days +without water. Very large numbers of elands were met with as usual, +though they seldom can get a sip of drink. Many of the plains here have +large expanses of grass without trees, but you seldom see a treeless +horizon. The ostrich is generally seen quietly feeding on some spot +where no one can approach him without being detected by his wary eye. As +the wagon moves along far to the windward he thinks it is intending to +circumvent him, so he rushes up a mile or so from the leeward, and so +near to the front oxen that one sometimes gets a shot at the silly bird. +When he begins to run all the game in sight follow his example. I have +seen this folly taken advantage of when he was feeding quietly in a +valley open at both ends. A number of men would commence running, as +if to cut off his retreat from the end through which the wind came; and +although he had the whole country hundreds of miles before him by going +to the other end, on he madly rushed to get past the men, and so was +speared. He never swerves from the course he once adopts, but only +increases his speed. + +When the ostrich is feeding his pace is from twenty to twenty-two +inches; when walking, but not feeding, it is twenty-six inches; and +when terrified, as in the case noticed, it is from eleven and a half to +thirteen and even fourteen feet in length. Only in one case was I at all +satisfied of being able to count the rate of speed by a stop-watch, and, +if I am not mistaken, there were thirty in ten seconds; generally +one's eye can no more follow the legs than it can the spokes of a +carriage-wheel in rapid motion. If we take the above number, and twelve +feet stride as the average pace, we have a speed of twenty-six miles an +hour. It can not be very much above that, and is therefore slower than +a railway locomotive. They are sometimes shot by the horseman making a +cross cut to their undeviating course, but few Englishmen ever succeed +in killing them. + +The ostrich begins to lay her eggs before she has fixed on a spot for a +nest, which is only a hollow a few inches deep in the sand, and about a +yard in diameter. Solitary eggs, named by the Bechuanas "lesetla", are +thus found lying forsaken all over the country, and become a prey to the +jackal. She seems averse to risking a spot for a nest, and often lays +her eggs in that of another ostrich, so that as many as forty-five +have been found in one nest. Some eggs contain small concretions of the +matter which forms the shell, as occurs also in the egg of the common +fowl: this has given rise to the idea of stones in the eggs. Both male +and female assist in the incubations; but the numbers of females being +always greatest, it is probable that cases occur in which the females +have the entire charge. Several eggs lie out of the nest, and are +thought to be intended as food for the first of the newly-hatched brood +till the rest come out and enable the whole to start in quest of food. +I have several times seen newly-hatched young in charge of the cock, +who made a very good attempt at appearing lame in the plover fashion, +in order to draw off the attention of pursuers. The young squat down +and remain immovable when too small to run far, but attain a wonderful +degree of speed when about the size of common fowls. It can not be +asserted that ostriches are polygamous, though they often appear to +be so. When caught they are easily tamed, but are of no use in their +domesticated state. + +The egg is possessed of very great vital power. One kept in a room +during more than three months, in a temperature about 60 Deg., when +broken was found to have a partially-developed live chick in it. The +Bushmen carefully avoid touching the eggs, or leaving marks of human +feet near them, when they find a nest. They go up the wind to the +spot, and with a long stick remove some of them occasionally, and, by +preventing any suspicion, keep the hen laying on for months, as we do +with fowls. The eggs have a strong, disagreeable flavor, which only the +keen appetite of the Desert can reconcile one to. The Hottentots use +their trowsers to carry home the twenty or twenty-five eggs usually +found in a nest; and it has happened that an Englishman, intending to +imitate this knowing dodge, comes to the wagons with blistered legs, +and, after great toil, finds all the eggs uneatable, from having been +some time sat upon. Our countrymen invariably do best when they continue +to think, speak, and act in their own proper character. + +The food of the ostrich consists of pods and seeds of different kinds +of leguminous plants, with leaves of various plants; and, as these are +often hard and dry, he picks up a great quantity of pebbles, many of +which are as large as marbles. He picks up also some small bulbs, and +occasionally a wild melon to afford moisture, for one was found with a +melon which had choked him by sticking in his throat. It requires the +utmost address of the Bushmen, crawling for miles on their stomachs, to +stalk them successfully; yet the quantity of feathers collected annually +shows that the numbers slain must be considerable, as each bird has +only a few in the wings and tail. The male bird is of a jet black +glossy color, with the single exception of the white feathers, which +are objects of trade. Nothing can be finer than the adaptation of those +flossy feathers for the climate of the Kalahari, where these birds +abound; for they afford a perfect shade to the body, with free +ventilation beneath them. The hen ostrich is of a dark brownish-gray +color, and so are the half-grown cocks. + +The organs of vision in this bird are placed so high that he can detect +an enemy at a great distance, but the lion sometimes kills him. The +flesh is white and coarse, though, when in good condition, it resembles +in some degree that of a tough turkey. It seeks safety in flight; but +when pursued by dogs it may be seen to turn upon them and inflict a +kick, which is vigorously applied, and sometimes breaks the dog's back. + + + + +Chapter 8. + +Effects of Missionary Efforts--Belief in the Deity--Ideas of the +Bakwains on Religion--Departure from their Country--Salt-pans--Sour +Curd--Nchokotsa--Bitter Waters--Thirst suffered by the wild +Animals--Wanton Cruelty in Hunting--Ntwetwe--Mowana-trees--Their +extraordinary Vitality--The Mopane-tree--The Morala--The Bushmen--Their +Superstitions--Elephant-hunting--Superiority of civilized +over barbarous Sportsmen--The Chief Kaisa--His Fear of +Responsibility--Beauty of the Country at Unku--The Mohonono Bush--Severe +Labor in cutting our Way--Party seized with Fever--Escape of our +Cattle--Bakwain Mode of recapturing them--Vagaries of sick Servants-- +Discovery of grape-bearing Vines--An Ant-eater--Difficulty of passing +through the Forest--Sickness of my Companion--The Bushmen--Their +Mode of destroying Lions--Poisons--The solitary Hill--A picturesque +Valley--Beauty of the Country--Arrive at the Sanshureh River--The +flooded Prairies--A pontooning Expedition--A night Bivouac--The Chobe-- +Arrive at the Village of Moremi--Surprise of the Makololo at our sudden +Appearance--Cross the Chobe on our way to Linyanti. + + + +The Bakalahari, who live at Motlatsa wells, have always been very +friendly to us, and listen attentively to instruction conveyed to them +in their own tongue. It is, however, difficult to give an idea to a +European of the little effect teaching produces, because no one can +realize the degradation to which their minds have been sunk by centuries +of barbarism and hard struggling for the necessaries of life: like most +others, they listen with respect and attention, but, when we kneel down +and address an unseen Being, the position and the act often appear +to them so ridiculous that they can not refrain from bursting into +uncontrollable laughter. After a few services they get over this +tendency. I was once present when a missionary attempted to sing among a +wild heathen tribe of Bechuanas, who had no music in their composition; +the effect on the risible faculties of the audience was such that the +tears actually ran down their cheeks. Nearly all their thoughts are +directed to the supply of their bodily wants, and this has been the case +with the race for ages. If asked, then, what effect the preaching of the +Gospel has at the commencement on such individuals, I am unable to tell, +except that some have confessed long afterward that they then first +began to pray in secret. Of the effects of a long-continued course of +instruction there can be no reasonable doubt, as mere nominal belief +has never been considered sufficient proof of conversion by any body of +missionaries; and, after the change which has been brought about by this +agency, we have good reason to hope well for the future--those I have +myself witnessed behaving in the manner described, when kindly treated +in sickness often utter imploring words to Jesus, and I believe +sometimes really do pray to him in their afflictions. As that great +Redeemer of the guilty seeks to save all he can, we may hope that they +find mercy through His blood, though little able to appreciate the +sacrifice He made. The indirect and scarcely appreciable blessings of +Christian missionaries going about doing good are thus probably not so +despicable as some might imagine; there is no necessity for beginning to +tell even the most degraded of these people of the existence of a God +or of a future state, the facts being universally admitted. Every thing +that can not be accounted for by common causes is ascribed to the Deity, +as creation, sudden death, etc. "How curiously God made these things!" +is a common expression; as is also, "He was not killed by disease, he +was killed by God." And, when speaking of the departed--though there +is naught in the physical appearance of the dead to justify the +expression--they say, "He has gone to the gods," the phrase being +identical with "abiit ad plures". + +On questioning intelligent men among the Bakwains as to their former +knowledge of good and evil, of God and the future state, they have +scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a tolerably +clear conception on all these subjects. Respecting their sense of right +and wrong, they profess that nothing we indicate as sin ever appeared to +them as otherwise, except the statement that it was wrong to have more +wives than one; and they declare that they spoke in the same way of the +direct influence exercised by God in giving rain in answer to prayers +of the rain-makers, and in granting deliverances in times of danger, as +they do now, before they ever heard of white men. The want, however, +of any form of public worship, or of idols, or of formal prayers or +sacrifice, make both Caffres and Bechuanas appear as among the most +godless races of mortals known any where. But, though they all possess a +distinct knowledge of a deity and of a future state, they show so little +reverence, and feel so little connection with either, that it is +not surprising that some have supposed them entirely ignorant on the +subject. At Lotlakani we met an old Bushman who at first seemed to have +no conception of morality whatever; when his heart was warmed by our +presents of meat, he sat by the fire relating his early adventures: +among these was killing five other Bushmen. "Two," said he, counting on +his fingers, "were females, one a male, and the other two calves." "What +a villain you are, to boast of killing women and children of your own +nation! what will God say when you appear before him?" "He will say," +replied he, "that I was a very clever fellow." This man now appeared to +me as without any conscience, and, of course, responsibility; but, on +trying to enlighten him by further conversation, I discovered that, +though he was employing the word that is used among the Bakwains when +speaking of the Deity, he had only the idea of a chief, and was all +the while referring to Sekomi, while his victims were a party of rebel +Bushmen against whom he had been sent. If I had known the name of God +in the Bushman tongue the mistake could scarcely have occurred. It must, +however, be recollected, while reflecting on the degradation of the +natives of South Africa, that the farther north, the more distinct do +the native ideas on religious subjects become, and I have not had any +intercourse with either Caffres or Bushmen in their own tongues. + +Leaving Motlatsa on the 8th of February, 1853, we passed down the +Mokoko, which, in the memory of persons now living, was a flowing +stream. We ourselves once saw a heavy thunder-shower make it assume +its ancient appearance of running to the north. Between Lotlakani and +Nchokotsa we passed the small well named Orapa; and another called +Thutsa lay a little to our right--its water is salt and purgative; +the salt-pan Chuantsa, having a cake of salt one inch and a half in +thickness, is about ten miles to the northeast of Orapa. This deposit +contains a bitter salt in addition, probably the nitrate of lime; the +natives, in order to render it palatable and wholesome, mix the salt +with the juice of a gummy plant, then place it in the sand and bake it +by making a fire over it; the lime then becomes insoluble and tasteless. + +The Bamangwato keep large flocks of sheep and goats at various spots on +this side of the Desert. They thrive wonderfully well wherever salt +and bushes are to be found. The milk of goats does not coagulate with +facility, like that of cows, on account of its richness; but the natives +have discovered that the infusion of the fruit of a solanaceous plant, +Toluane, quickly produces the effect. The Bechuanas put their milk into +sacks made of untanned hide, with the hair taken off. Hung in the sun, +it soon coagulates; the whey is then drawn off by a plug at the bottom, +and fresh milk added, until the sack is full of a thick, sour curd, +which, when one becomes used to it, is delicious. The rich mix this +in the porridge into which they convert their meal, and, as it is thus +rendered nutritious and strength-giving, an expression of scorn is +sometimes heard respecting the poor or weak, to the effect that "they +are water-porridge men." It occupies the place of our roast beef. + +At Nchokotsa, the rainy season having this year been delayed beyond the +usual time, we found during the day the thermometer stand at 96 Deg. +in the coolest possible shade. This height at Kolobeng always portended +rain at hand. At Kuruman, when it rises above 84 Deg., the same +phenomenon may be considered near; while farther north it rises above +100 Deg. before the cooling influence of the evaporation from rain may +be expected. Here the bulb of the thermometer, placed two inches beneath +the soil, stood at 128 Deg. All around Nchokotsa the country looked +parched, and the glare from the white efflorescence which covers the +extensive pans on all sides was most distressing to the eyes. The water +of Nchokotsa was bitter, and presented indications not to be mistaken +of having passed through animal systems before. All these waters contain +nitrates, which stimulate the kidneys and increase the thirst. The fresh +additions of water required in cooking meat, each imparting its own +portion of salt, make one grumble at the cook for putting too much +seasoning in, while in fact he has put in none at all, except that +contained in the water. Of bitter, bad, disgusting waters I have drunk +not a few nauseous draughts; you may try alum, vitriol, boiling, etc., +etc., to convince yourself that you are not more stupid than travelers +you will meet at home, but the ammonia and other salts are there still; +and the only remedy is to get away as quickly as possible to the north. + +We dug out several wells; and as we had on each occasion to wait till +the water flowed in again, and then allow our cattle to feed a day or +two and slake their thirst thoroughly, as far as that could be done, +before starting, our progress was but slow. At Koobe there was such a +mass of mud in the pond, worked up by the wallowing rhinoceros to the +consistency of mortar, that only by great labor could we get a space +cleared at one side for the water to ooze through and collect in for the +oxen. Should the rhinoceros come back, a single roll in the great mass +we had thrown on one side would have rendered all our labor vain. It was +therefore necessary for us to guard the spot at night. On these great +flats all around we saw in the white sultry glare herds of zebras, gnus, +and occasionally buffaloes, standing for days, looking wistfully toward +the wells for a share of the nasty water. It is mere wanton cruelty to +take advantage of the necessities of these poor animals, and shoot them +down one after another, without intending to make the smallest use of +either the flesh, skins, or horns. In shooting by night, animals are +more frequently wounded than killed; the flowing life-stream increases +the thirst, so that in desperation they come slowly up to drink in spite +of the danger, "I must drink, though I die." The ostrich, even when not +wounded, can not, with all his wariness, resist the excessive desire to +slake his burning thirst. It is Bushman-like practice to take advantage +of its piteous necessities, for most of the feathers they obtain +are procured in this way; but they eat the flesh, and are so far +justifiable. + +I could not order my men to do what I would not do myself, but, though I +tried to justify myself on the plea of necessity, I could not adopt this +mode of hunting. If your object is to secure the best specimens for +a museum, it may be allowable, and even deserving of commendation, as +evincing a desire to kill only those really wanted; but if, as has been +practiced by some Griquas and others who came into the country after Mr. +Cumming, and fired away indiscriminately, great numbers of animals are +wounded and allowed to perish miserably, or are killed on the spot +and left to be preyed on by vultures and hyenas, and all for the sole +purpose of making a "bag", then I take it to be evident that such +sportsmen are pretty far gone in the hunting form of insanity. + +My men shot a black rhinoceros in this way, and I felt glad to get away +from the only place in which I ever had any share in night-hunting. +We passed over the immense pan Ntwetwe, on which the latitude could +be taken as at sea. Great tracts of this part of the country are of +calcareous tufa, with only a thin coating of soil; numbers of "baobab" +and "mopane" trees abound all over this hard, smooth surface. About +two miles beyond the northern bank of the pan we unyoked under a fine +specimen of the baobab, here called, in the language of Bechuanas, +Mowana; it consisted of six branches united into one trunk. At three +feet from the ground it was eighty-five feet in circumference. + +These mowana-trees are the most wonderful examples of vitality in the +country; it was therefore with surprise that we came upon a dead one +at Tlomtla, a few miles beyond this spot. It is the same as those which +Adamson and others believed, from specimens seen in Western Africa, +to have been alive before the flood. Arguing with a peculiar mental +idiosyncracy resembling color-blindness, common among the French of the +time, these savans came to the conclusion that "therefore there never +was any flood at all." I would back a true mowana against a dozen +floods, provided you do not boil it in hot sea-water; but I can not +believe that any of those now alive had a chance of being subjected to +the experiment of even the Noachian deluge. The natives make a strong +cord from the fibres contained in the pounded bark. The whole of the +trunk, as high as they can reach, is consequently often quite denuded of +its covering, which in the case of almost any other tree would cause its +death, but this has no effect on the mowana except to make it throw out +a new bark, which is done in the way of granulation. This stripping of +the bark is repeated frequently, so that it is common to see the lower +five or six feet an inch or two less in diameter than the parts above; +even portions of the bark which have broken in the process of being +taken off, but remain separated from the parts below, though still +connected with the tree above, continue to grow, and resemble closely +marks made in the necks of the cattle of the island of Mull and of +Caffre oxen, where a piece of skin is detached and allowed to hang down. +No external injury, not even a fire, can destroy this tree from without; +nor can any injury be done from within, as it is quite common to find it +hollow; and I have seen one in which twenty or thirty men could lie down +and sleep as in a hut. Nor does cutting down exterminate it, for I saw +instances in Angola in which it continued to grow in length after it +was lying on the ground. Those trees called exogenous grow by means +of successive layers on the outside. The inside may be dead, or even +removed altogether, without affecting the life of the tree. This is the +case with most of the trees of our climate. The other class is called +endogenous, and increases by layers applied to the inside; and when +the hollow there is full, the growth is stopped--the tree must die. +Any injury is felt most severely by the first class on the bark; by the +second on the inside; while the inside of the exogenous may be removed, +and the outside of the endogenous may be cut, without stopping the +growth in the least. The mowana possesses the powers of both. The reason +is that each of the laminae possesses its own independent vitality; in +fact, the baobab is rather a gigantic bulb run up to seed than a tree. +Each of eighty-four concentric rings had, in the case mentioned, grown +an inch after the tree had been blown over. The roots, which may often +be observed extending along the surface of the ground forty or fifty +yards from the trunk, also retain their vitality after the tree is laid +low; and the Portuguese now know that the best way to treat them is to +let them alone, for they occupy much more room when cut down than when +growing. + +The wood is so spongy and soft that an axe can be struck in so far with +a good blow that there is great difficulty in pulling it out again. +In the dead mowana mentioned the concentric rings were well seen. The +average for a foot at three different places was eighty-one and a half +of these rings. Each of the laminae can be seen to be composed of two, +three, or four layers of ligneous tubes; but supposing each ring the +growth of one year, and the semidiameter of a mowana of one hundred feet +in circumference about seventeen feet, if the central point were in the +centre of the tree, then its age would lack some centuries of being as +old as the Christian era (1400). Though it possesses amazing vitality, +it is difficult to believe that this great baby-looking bulb or tree is +as old as the Pyramids. + +The mopane-tree ('bauhinia') is remarkable for the little shade its +leaves afford. They fold together and stand nearly perpendicular during +the heat of the day, so that only the shadow of their edges comes to +the ground. On these leaves the small larvae of a winged insect appear +covered over with a sweet, gummy substance. The people collect this +in great quantities, and use it as food;* and the lopane--large +caterpillars three inches long, which feed on the leaves, and are seen +strung together--share the same fate. + + * I am favored with Mr. Westwood's remarks on this insect as + follows: + + "Taylor Institution, Oxford, July 9, 1857. + + "The insect (and its secretion) on the leaves of the bauhinia, + and which is eaten by the Africans, proves to be a species of + Psylla, a genus of small, very active Homoptera, of which we + have one very common species in the box; but our species, + Psylla buxi, emits its secretion in the shape of very long, + white, cotton-like filaments. But there is a species in New + Holland, found on the leaves of the Eucalyptus, which emits a + secretion very similar to that of Dr. Livingstone's species. + This Australian secretion (and its insect originator) is known + by the name of wo-me-la, and, like Dr. Livingstone's, it is + scraped off the leaves and eaten by the aborigines as a + saccharine dainty. The insects found beneath the secretion, + brought home by Dr. Livingstone, are in the pupa state, being + flattened, with large scales at the sides of the body, + inclosing the future wings of the insect. The body is pale + yellowish-colored, with dark-brown spots. It will be + impossible to describe the species technically until we + receive the perfect insect. The secretion itself is flat and + circular, apparently deposited in concentric rings, gradually + increasing in size till the patches are about a quarter or a + third of an inch in diameter. + + Jno. O. Westwood." + +In passing along we see every where the power of vegetation in breaking +up the outer crust of tufa. A mopane-tree, growing in a small chink, as +it increases in size rends and lifts up large fragments of the rock +all around it, subjecting them to the disintegrating influence of the +atmosphere. The wood is hard, and of a fine red color, and is named +iron-wood by the Portuguese. The inhabitants, observing that the +mopane is more frequently struck by lightning than other trees, +caution travelers never to seek its shade when a thunder-storm is +near--"Lightning hates it;" while another tree, the "Morala", which has +three spines opposite each other on the branches, and has never been +known to be touched by lightning, is esteemed, even as far as Angola, a +protection against the electric fluid. Branches of it may be seen placed +on the houses of the Portuguese for the same purpose. The natives, +moreover, believe that a man is thoroughly protected from an enraged +elephant if he can get into the shade of this tree. There may not be +much in this, but there is frequently some foundation of truth in their +observations. + +At Rapesh we came among our old friends the Bushmen, under Horoye. This +man, Horoye, a good specimen of that tribe, and his son Mokantsa and +others, were at least six feet high, and of a darker color than the +Bushmen of the south. They have always plenty of food and water; and as +they frequent the Zouga as often as the game in company with which they +live, their life is very different from that of the inhabitants of the +thirsty plains of the Kalahari. The animal they refrain from eating is +the goat, which fact, taken in connection with the superstitious dread +which exists in every tribe toward a particular animal, is significant +of their feelings to the only animals they could have domesticated in +their desert home. They are a merry laughing set, and do not tell lies +wantonly. They have in their superstitious rites more appearance of +worship than the Bechuanas; and at a Bushman's grave we once came to on +the Zouga, the observances showed distinctly that they regarded the +dead as still in another state of being; for they addressed him, and +requested him not to be offended even though they wished still to remain +a little while longer in this world. + +Those among whom we now were kill many elephants, and when the moon is +full choose that time for the chase, on account of its coolness. Hunting +this animal is the best test of courage this country affords. The +Bushmen choose the moment succeeding a charge, when the elephant is out +of breath, to run in and give him a stab with their long-bladed spears. +In this case the uncivilized have the advantage over us, but I believe +that with half their training Englishmen would beat the Bushmen. Our +present form of civilization does not necessarily produce effeminacy, +though it unquestionably increases the beauty, courage, and physical +powers of the race. When at Kolobeng I took notes of the different +numbers of elephants killed in the course of the season by the various +parties which went past our dwelling, in order to form an idea of the +probable annual destruction of this noble animal. There were parties of +Griquas, Bechuanas, Boers, and Englishmen. All were eager to distinguish +themselves, and success depended mainly on the courage which leads the +huntsman to go close to the animal, and not waste the force of his shot +on the air. It was noticeable that the average for the natives was under +one per man, for the Griquas one per man, for the Boers two, and for +the English officers twenty each. This was the more remarkable, as the +Griquas, Boers, and Bechuanas employed both dogs and natives to assist +them, while the English hunters generally had no assistance from either. +They approached to within thirty yards of the animal, while the others +stood at a distance of a hundred yards, or even more, and of course +spent all the force of their bullets on the air. One elephant was found +by Mr. Oswell with quite a crowd of bullets in his side, all evidently +fired in this style, and they had not gone near the vital parts. + +It would thus appear that our more barbarous neighbors do not possess +half the courage of the civilized sportsman. And it is probable that in +this respect, as well as in physical development, we are superior to our +ancestors. The coats of mail and greaves of the Knights of Malta, and +the armor from the Tower exhibited at the Eglinton tournament, may be +considered decisive as to the greater size attained by modern civilized +men. + +At Maila we spent a Sunday with Kaisa, the head man of a village of +Mashona, who had fled from the iron sway of Mosilikatse, whose country +lies east of this. I wished him to take charge of a packet of letters +for England, to be forwarded when, as is the custom of the Bamangwato, +the Bechuanas come hither in search of skins and food among the Bushmen; +but he could not be made to comprehend that there was no danger in the +consignment. He feared the responsibility and guilt if any thing should +happen to them; so I had to bid adieu to all hope of letting my family +hear of my welfare till I should reach the west coast. + +At Unku we came into a tract of country which had been visited by +refreshing showers long before, and every spot was covered with grass +run up to seed, and the flowers of the forest were in full bloom. +Instead of the dreary prospect around Koobe and Nchokotsa, we had here a +delightful scene, all the ponds full of water, and the birds twittering +joyfully. As the game can now obtain water every where, they become very +shy, and can not be found in their accustomed haunts. + +1ST MARCH. The thermometer in the shade generally stood at 98 Degrees +from 1 to 3 P.M., but it sank as low as 65 Deg. by night, so that the +heat was by no means exhausting. At the surface of the ground, in the +sun, the thermometer marked 125 Deg., and three inches below it 138 Deg. +The hand can not be held on the ground, and even the horny soles of the +feet of the natives must be protected by sandals of hide; yet the ants +were busy working on it. The water in the ponds was as high as 100 Deg.; +but as water does not conduct heat readily downward, deliciously cool +water may be obtained by any one walking into the middle and lifting up +the water from the bottom to the surface with his hands. + +Proceeding to the north, from Kama-kama, we entered into dense Mohonono +bush, which required the constant application of the axe by three of our +party for two days. This bush has fine silvery leaves, and the bark has +a sweet taste. The elephant, with his usual delicacy of taste, feeds +much on it. On emerging into the plains beyond, we found a number of +Bushmen, who afterward proved very serviceable. The rains had been +copious, but now great numbers of pools were drying up. Lotus-plants +abounded in them, and a low, sweet-scented plant covered their banks. +Breezes came occasionally to us from these drying-up pools, but the +pleasant odor they carried caused sneezing in both myself and people; +and on the 10th of March (when in lat. 19d 16' 11" S., long. 24d 24' E.) +we were brought to a stand by four of the party being seized with fever. +I had seen this disease before, but did not at once recognize it as the +African fever; I imagined it was only a bilious attack, arising from +full feeding on flesh, for, the large game having been very abundant, we +always had a good supply; but instead of the first sufferers recovering +soon, every man of our party was in a few days laid low, except a +Bakwain and myself. He managed the oxen, while I attended to the wants +of the patients, and went out occasionally with the Bushmen to get a +zebra or buffalo, so as to induce them to remain with us. + +Here for the first time I had leisure to follow the instructions of my +kind teacher, Mr. Maclear, and calculated several longitudes from lunar +distances. The hearty manner in which that eminent astronomer and frank, +friendly man had promised to aid me in calculating and verifying my +work, conduced more than any thing else to inspire me with perseverance +in making astronomical observations throughout the journey. + +The grass here was so tall that the oxen became uneasy, and one night +the sight of a hyaena made them rush away into the forest to the east +of us. On rising on the morning of the 19th, I found that my Bakwain +lad had run away with them. This I have often seen with persons of this +tribe, even when the cattle are startled by a lion. Away go the young +men in company with them, and dash through bush and brake for miles, +till they think the panic is a little subsided; they then commence +whistling to the cattle in the manner they do when milking the cows: +having calmed them, they remain as a guard till the morning. The men +generally return with their shins well peeled by the thorns. Each +comrade of the Mopato would expect his fellow to act thus, without +looking for any other reward than the brief praise of the chief. Our +lad, Kibopechoe, had gone after the oxen, but had lost them in the rush +through the flat, trackless forest. He remained on their trail all the +next day and all the next night. On Sunday morning, as I was setting off +in search of him, I found him near the wagon. He had found the oxen late +in the afternoon of Saturday, and had been obliged to stand by them all +night. It was wonderful how he managed without a compass, and in such +a country, to find his way home at all, bringing about forty oxen with +him. + +The Bechuanas will keep on the sick-list as long as they feel any +weakness; so I at last began to be anxious that they should make +a little exertion to get forward on our way. One of them, however, +happening to move a hundred yards from the wagon, fell down, and, +being unobserved, remained the whole night in the pouring rain totally +insensible; another was subjected to frequent swooning; but, making beds +in the wagons for these our worst cases, with the help of the Bakwain +and the Bushmen, we moved slowly on. We had to nurse the sick like +children; and, like children recovering from illness, the better they +became the more impudent they grew. This was seen in the peremptory +orders they would give with their now piping voices. Nothing that we did +pleased them; and the laughter with which I received their ebullitions, +though it was only the real expression of gladness at their recovery, +and amusement at the ridiculous part they acted, only increased their +chagrin. The want of power in the man who guided the two front oxen, or, +as he was called, the "leader", caused us to be entangled with trees, +both standing and fallen, and the labor of cutting them down was even +more severe than ordinary; but, notwithstanding an immense amount of +toil, my health continued good. + +We wished to avoid the tsetse of our former path, so kept a course on +the magnetic meridian from Lurilopepe. The necessity of making a new +path much increased our toil. We were, however, rewarded in lat. 18 +Degrees with a sight we had not enjoyed the year before, namely, large +patches of grape-bearing vines. There they stood before my eyes; but the +sight was so entirely unexpected that I stood some time gazing at the +clusters of grapes with which they were loaded, with no more thought of +plucking than if I had been beholding them in a dream. The Bushmen know +and eat them; but they are not well flavored on account of the great +astringency of the seeds, which are in shape and size like split peas. +The elephants are fond of the fruit, plant, and root alike. I here found +an insect which preys on ants; it is about an inch and a quarter long, +as thick as a crow-quill, and covered with black hair. It puts its head +into a little hole in the ground, and quivers its tail rapidly; the ants +come near to see it, and it snaps up each as he comes within the range +of the forceps on its tail. As its head is beneath the ground, it +becomes a question how it can guide its tail to the ants. It is probably +a new species of ant-lion ('Myrmeleon formicaleo'), great numbers of +which, both in the larvae and complete state, are met with. The ground +under every tree is dotted over with their ingenious pitfalls, and the +perfect insect, the form of which most persons are familiar with in the +dragon-fly, may be seen using its tail in the same active manner as +this insect did. Two may be often seen joined in their flight, the +one holding on by the tail-forceps to the neck of the other. On first +observing this imperfect insect, I imagined the forceps were on its +head; but when the insect moved, their true position was seen. + +The forest, through which we were slowly toiling, daily became more +dense, and we were kept almost constantly at work with the axe; there +was much more leafiness in the trees here than farther south. The leaves +are chiefly of the pinnate and bi-pinnate forms, and are exceedingly +beautiful when seen against the sky; a great variety of the +papilionaceous family grow in this part of the country. + +Fleming had until this time always assisted to drive his own wagon, but +about the end of March he knocked up, as well as his people. As I could +not drive two wagons, I shared with him the remaining water, half a +caskful, and went on, with the intention of coming back for him as +soon as we should reach the next pool. Heavy rain now commenced; I was +employed the whole day in cutting down trees, and every stroke of the +axe brought down a thick shower on my back, which in the hard work was +very refreshing, as the water found its way down into my shoes. In the +evening we met some Bushmen, who volunteered to show us a pool; and +having unyoked, I walked some miles in search of it. As it became dark +they showed their politeness--a quality which is by no means confined +entirely to the civilized--by walking in front, breaking the branches +which hung across the path, and pointing out the fallen trees. On +returning to the wagon, we found that being left alone had brought out +some of Fleming's energy, for he had managed to come up. + +As the water in this pond dried up, we were soon obliged to move again. +One of the Bushmen took out his dice, and, after throwing them, said +that God told him to go home. He threw again in order to show me the +command, but the opposite result followed; so he remained and was +useful, for we lost the oxen again by a lion driving them off to a very +great distance. The lions here are not often heard. They seem to have +a wholesome dread of the Bushmen, who, when they observe evidence of a +lion's having made a full meal, follow up his spoor so quietly that +his slumbers are not disturbed. One discharges a poisoned arrow from a +distance of only a few feet, while his companion simultaneously throws +his skin cloak on the beast's head. The sudden surprise makes the lion +lose his presence of mind, and he bounds away in the greatest confusion +and terror. Our friends here showed me the poison which they use on +these occasions. It is the entrails of a caterpillar called N'gwa, half +an inch long. They squeeze out these, and place them all around the +bottom of the barb, and allow the poison to dry in the sun. They are +very careful in cleaning their nails after working with it, as a small +portion introduced into a scratch acts like morbid matter in dissection +wounds. The agony is so great that the person cuts himself, calls for +his mother's breast as if he were returned in idea to his childhood +again, or flies from human habitations a raging maniac. The effects +on the lion are equally terrible. He is heard moaning in distress, and +becomes furious, biting the trees and ground in rage. + +As the Bushmen have the reputation of curing the wounds of this poison, +I asked how this was effected. They said that they administer the +caterpillar itself in combination with fat; they also rub fat into the +wound, saying that "the N'gwa wants fat, and, when it does not find +it in the body, kills the man: we give it what it wants, and it is +content:" a reason which will commend itself to the enlightened among +ourselves. + +The poison more generally employed is the milky juice of the tree +Euphorbia ('E. arborescens'). This is particularly obnoxious to the +equine race. When a quantity is mixed with the water of a pond a whole +herd of zebras will fall dead from the effects of the poison before they +have moved away two miles. It does not, however, kill oxen or men. On +them it acts as a drastic purgative only. This substance is used all +over the country, though in some places the venom of serpents and a +certain bulb, 'Amaryllis toxicaria', are added, in order to increase the +virulence. + +Father Pedro, a Jesuit, who lived at Zumbo, made a balsam, containing a +number of plants and CASTOR OIL, as a remedy for poisoned arrow-wounds. +It is probable that he derived his knowledge from the natives as I +did, and that the reputed efficacy of the balsam is owing to its fatty +constituent. + +In cases of the bites of serpents a small key ought to be pressed +down firmly on the wound, the orifice of the key being applied to the +puncture, until a cupping-glass can be got from one of the natives. A +watch-key pressed firmly on the point stung by a scorpion extracts the +poison, and a mixture of fat or oil and ipecacuanha relieves the pain. + +The Bushmen of these districts are generally fine, well-made men, and +are nearly independent of every one. We observed them to be fond of +a root somewhat like a kidney potato, and the kernel of a nut, which +Fleming thought was a kind of betel; the tree is a fine, large-spreading +one, and the leaves palmate. From the quantities of berries and the +abundance of game in these parts, the Bushmen can scarcely ever be +badly off for food. As I could, without much difficulty, keep them well +supplied with meat, and wished them to remain, I proposed that they +should bring their wives to get a share, but they remarked that the +women could always take care of themselves. + +None of the men of our party had died, but two seemed unlikely to +recover; and Kibopechoe, my willing Mokwain, at last became troubled +with boils, and then got all the symptoms of fever. As he lay down, the +others began to move about, and complained of weakness only. Believing +that frequent change of place was conducive to their recovery, we moved +along as much as we could, and came to the hill N'gwa (lat. 18d 27' 20" +S., long. 24d 13' 36" E.). This being the only hill we had seen since +leaving Bamangwato, we felt inclined to take off our hats to it. It +is three or four hundred feet high, and covered with trees. Its +geographical position is pretty accurately laid down from occultation +and other observations. I may mention that the valley on its northern +side, named Kandehy or Kandehai, is as picturesque a spot as is to be +seen in this part of Africa. The open glade, surrounded by forest trees +of various hues, had a little stream meandering in the centre. A herd +of reddish-colored antelopes (pallahs) stood on one side, near a +large baobab, looking at us, and ready to run up the hill; while gnus, +tsessebes, and zebras gazed in astonishment at the intruders. Some fed +carelessly, and others put on the peculiar air of displeasure which +these animals sometimes assume before they resolve on flight. A large +white rhinoceros came along the bottom of the valley with his slow +sauntering gait without noticing us; he looked as if he meant to indulge +in a mud bath. Several buffaloes, with their dark visages, stood under +the trees on the side opposite to the pallahs. It being Sunday, all was +peace, and, from the circumstances in which our party was placed, we +could not but reflect on that second stage of our existence which we +hope will lead us into scenes of perfect beauty. If pardoned in that +free way the Bible promises, death will be a glorious thing; but to be +consigned to wait for the Judgment-day, with nothing else to ponder on +but sins we would rather forget, is a cheerless prospect. + +Our Bushmen wished to leave us, and, as there was no use in trying to +thwart these independent gentlemen, I paid them, and allowed them to go. +The payment, however, acted as a charm on some strangers who happened to +be present, and induced them to volunteer their aid. + +The game hereabouts is very tame. Koodoos and giraffes stood gazing +at me as a strange apparition when I went out with the Bushmen. On one +occasion a lion came at daybreak, and went round and round the oxen. I +could only get a glimpse of him occasionally from the wagon-box; but, +though barely thirty yards off, I could not get a shot. He then began to +roar at the top of his voice; but the oxen continuing to stand still, he +was so disgusted that he went off, and continued to use his voice for a +long time in the distance. I could not see that he had a mane; if he +had not, then even the maneless variety can use their tongues. We heard +others also roar; and, when they found they could not frighten the oxen, +they became equally angry. This we could observe in their tones. + +As we went north the country became very lovely; many new trees +appeared; the grass was green, and often higher than the wagons; the +vines festooned the trees, among which appeared the real banian ('Ficus +Indica'), with its drop-shoots, and the wild date and palmyra, and +several other trees which were new to me; the hollows contained large +patches of water. Next came water-courses, now resembling small rivers, +twenty yards broad and four feet deep. The further we went, the broader +and deeper these became; their bottoms contained great numbers of deep +holes, made by elephants wading in them; in these the oxen floundered +desperately, so that our wagon-pole broke, compelling us to work up to +the breast in water for three hours and a half; yet I suffered no harm. + +We at last came to the Sanshureh, which presented an impassable barrier, +so we drew up under a magnificent baobab-tree, (lat. 18d 4' 27" S., +long. 24d 6' 20" E.), and resolved to explore the river for a ford. The +great quantity of water we had passed through was part of the annual +inundation of the Chobe; and this, which appeared a large, deep river, +filled in many parts with reeds, and having hippopotami in it, is only +one of the branches by which it sends its superabundant water to the +southeast. From the hill N'gwa a ridge of higher land runs to the +northeast, and bounds its course in that direction. We, being ignorant +of this, were in the valley, and the only gap in the whole country +destitute of tsetse. In company with the Bushmen I explored all the +banks of the Sanshureh to the west till we came into tsetse on that +side. We waded a long way among the reeds in water breast deep, but +always found a broad, deep space free from vegetation and unfordable. A +peculiar kind of lichen, which grows on the surface of the soil, becomes +detached and floats on the water, giving out a very disagreeable odor, +like sulphureted hydrogen, in some of these stagnant waters. + +We made so many attempts to get over the Sanshureh, both to the west and +east of the wagon, in the hope of reaching some of the Makololo on the +Chobe, that my Bushmen friends became quite tired of the work. By means +of presents I got them to remain some days; but at last they slipped +away by night, and I was fain to take one of the strongest of my still +weak companions and cross the river in a pontoon, the gift of Captains +Codrington and Webb. We each carried some provisions and a blanket, and +penetrated about twenty miles to the westward, in the hope of striking +the Chobe. It was much nearer to us in a northerly direction, but this +we did not then know. The plain, over which we splashed the whole of +the first day, was covered with water ankle deep, and thick grass which +reached above the knees. In the evening we came to an immense wall +of reeds, six or eight feet high, without any opening admitting of a +passage. When we tried to enter, the water always became so deep that we +were fain to desist. We concluded that we had come to the banks of the +river we were in search of, so we directed our course to some trees +which appeared in the south, in order to get a bed and a view of the +adjacent locality. Having shot a leche, and made a glorious fire, we +got a good cup of tea and had a comfortable night. While collecting +wood that evening, I found a bird's nest consisting of live leaves sewn +together with threads of the spider's web. Nothing could exceed the +airiness of this pretty contrivance; the threads had been pushed through +small punctures and thickened to resemble a knot. I unfortunately +lost it. This was the second nest I had seen resembling that of the +tailor-bird of India. + +Next morning, by climbing the highest trees, we could see a fine large +sheet of water, but surrounded on all sides by the same impenetrable +belt of reeds. This is the broad part of the River Chobe, and is called +Zabesa. Two tree-covered islands seemed to be much nearer to the water +than the shore on which we were, so we made an attempt to get to them +first. It was not the reeds alone we had to pass through; a peculiar +serrated grass, which at certain angles cut the hands like a razor, was +mingled with the reed, and the climbing convolvulus, with stalks which +felt as strong as whipcord, bound the mass together. We felt like +pigmies in it, and often the only way we could get on was by both of us +leaning against a part and bending it down till we could stand upon +it. The perspiration streamed off our bodies, and as the sun rose high, +there being no ventilation among the reeds, the heat was stifling, and +the water, which was up to the knees, felt agreeably refreshing. After +some hours' toil we reached one of the islands. Here we met an old +friend, the bramble-bush. My strong moleskins were quite worn through +at the knees, and the leather trowsers of my companion were torn and his +legs bleeding. Tearing my handkerchief in two, I tied the pieces round +my knees, and then encountered another difficulty. We were still forty +or fifty yards from the clear water, but now we were opposed by great +masses of papyrus, which are like palms in miniature, eight or ten feet +high, and an inch and a half in diameter. These were laced together by +twining convolvulus, so strongly that the weight of both of us could not +make way into the clear water. At last we fortunately found a passage +prepared by a hippopotamus. Eager as soon as we reached the island to +look along the vista to clear water, I stepped in and found it took me +at once up to the neck. + +Returning nearly worn out, we proceeded up the bank of the Chobe till we +came to the point of departure of the branch Sanshureh; we then went in +the opposite direction, or down the Chobe, though from the highest trees +we could see nothing but one vast expanse of reed, with here and there +a tree on the islands. This was a hard day's work; and when we came to a +deserted Bayeiye hut on an ant-hill, not a bit of wood or any thing +else could be got for a fire except the grass and sticks of the dwelling +itself. I dreaded the "Tampans", so common in all old huts; but +outside of it we had thousands of mosquitoes, and cold dew began to be +deposited, so we were fain to crawl beneath its shelter. + +We were close to the reeds, and could listen to the strange sounds which +are often heard there. By day I had seen water-snakes putting up their +heads and swimming about. There were great numbers of otters ('Lutra +inunguis', F. Cuvier), which have made little spoors all over the plains +in search of the fishes, among the tall grass of these flooded prairies; +curious birds, too, jerked and wriggled among these reedy masses, and we +heard human-like voices and unearthly sounds, with splash, guggle, +jupp, as if rare fun were going on in their uncouth haunts. At one +time something came near us, making a splashing like that of a canoe or +hippopotamus; thinking it to be the Makololo, we got up, listened, and +shouted; then discharged a gun several times; but the noise continued +without intermission for an hour. After a damp, cold night we set to, +early in the morning, at our work of exploring again, but left the +pontoon in order to lighten our labor. The ant-hills are here very high, +some thirty feet, and of a base so broad that trees grow on them; while +the lands, annually flooded, bear nothing but grass. From one of these +ant-hills we discovered an inlet to the Chobe; and, having gone back for +the pontoon, we launched ourselves on a deep river, here from eighty to +one hundred yards wide. I gave my companion strict injunctions to stick +by the pontoon in case a hippopotamus should look at us; nor was this +caution unnecessary, for one came up at our side and made a desperate +plunge off. We had passed over him. The wave he made caused the pontoon +to glide quickly away from him. + +We paddled on from midday till sunset. There was nothing but a wall of +reed on each bank, and we saw every prospect of spending a supperless +night in our float; but just as the short twilight of these parts was +commencing, we perceived on the north bank the village of Moremi, one of +the Makololo, whose acquaintance I had made on our former visit, and +who was now located on the island Mahonta (lat. 17d 58' S., long. 24d 6' +E.). The villagers looked as we may suppose people do who see a ghost, +and in their figurative way of speaking said, "He has dropped among +us from the clouds, yet came riding on the back of a hippopotamus! We +Makololo thought no one could cross the Chobe without our knowledge, but +here he drops among us like a bird." + +Next day we returned in canoes across the flooded lands, and found that, +in our absence, the men had allowed the cattle to wander into a very +small patch of wood to the west containing the tsetse; this carelessness +cost me ten fine large oxen. After remaining a few days, some of the +head men of the Makololo came down from Linyanti, with a large party +of Barotse, to take us across the river. This they did in fine style, +swimming and diving among the oxen more like alligators than men, and +taking the wagons to pieces and carrying them across on a number of +canoes lashed together. We were now among friends; so going about thirty +miles to the north, in order to avoid the still flooded lands on the +north of the Chobe, we turned westward toward Linyanti (lat. 18d 17' 20" +S., long. 23d 50' 9" E.), where we arrived on the 23d of May, 1853. This +is the capital town of the Makololo, and only a short distance from our +wagon-stand of 1851 (lat. 18d 20' S., long. 23d 50' E.). + + + + +Chapter 9. + +Reception at Linyanti--The court Herald--Sekeletu obtains the +Chieftainship from his Sister--Mpepe's Plot--Slave-trading Mambari +--Their sudden Flight--Sekeletu narrowly escapes Assassination-- +Execution of Mpepe--The Courts of Law--Mode of trying Offenses-- +Sekeletu's Reason for not learning to read the Bible--The Disposition +made of the Wives of a deceased Chief--Makololo Women--They work +but little--Employ Serfs--Their Drink, Dress, and Ornaments--Public +Religious Services in the Kotla--Unfavorable Associations of +the place--Native Doctors--Proposals to teach the Makololo to +read--Sekeletu's Present--Reason for accepting it--Trading in +Ivory--Accidental Fire--Presents for Sekeletu--Two Breeds of native +Cattle--Ornamenting the Cattle--The Women and the Looking-glass--Mode +of preparing the Skins of Oxen for Mantles and for Shields--Throwing +the Spear. + + + +The whole population of Linyanti, numbering between six and seven +thousand souls, turned out en masse to see the wagons in motion. They +had never witnessed the phenomenon before, we having on the former +occasion departed by night. Sekeletu, now in power, received us in what +is considered royal style, setting before us a great number of pots of +boyaloa, the beer of the country. These were brought by women, and each +bearer takes a good draught of the beer when she sets it down, by way of +"tasting", to show that there is no poison. + +The court herald, an old man who occupied the post also in Sebituane's +time, stood up, and after some antics, such as leaping, and shouting at +the top of his voice, roared out some adulatory sentences, as, "Don't I +see the white man? Don't I see the comrade of Sebituane? Don't I see the +father of Sekeletu?"--"We want sleep."--"Give your son sleep, my lord," +etc., etc. The perquisites of this man are the heads of all the cattle +slaughtered by the chief, and he even takes a share of the tribute +before it is distributed and taken out of the kotla. He is expected to +utter all the proclamations, call assemblies, keep the kotla clean, and +the fire burning every evening, and when a person is executed in public +he drags away the body. + +I found Sekeletu a young man of eighteen years of age, of that dark +yellow or coffee-and-milk color, of which the Makololo are so proud, +because it distinguishes them considerably from the black tribes on +the rivers. He is about five feet seven in height, and neither so +good looking nor of so much ability as his father was, but is equally +friendly to the English. Sebituane installed his daughter Mamochisane +into the chieftainship long before his death, but, with all his +acuteness, the idea of her having a husband who should not be her lord +did not seem to enter his mind. He wished to make her his successor, +probably in imitation of some of the negro tribes with whom he had come +into contact; but, being of the Bechuana race, he could not look upon +the husband except as the woman's lord; so he told her all the men +were hers--she might take any one, but ought to keep none. In fact, he +thought she might do with the men what he could do with the women; but +these men had other wives; and, according to a saying in the country, +"the tongues of women can not be governed," they made her miserable by +their remarks. One man whom she chose was even called her wife, and +her son the child of Mamochisane's wife; but the arrangement was so +distasteful to Mamochisane herself that, as soon as Sebituane died, she +said she never would consent to govern the Makololo so long as she had a +brother living. Sekeletu, being afraid of another member of the family, +Mpepe, who had pretensions to the chieftainship, urged his sister +strongly to remain as she had always been, and allow him to support her +authority by leading the Makololo when they went forth to war. Three +days were spent in public discussion on the point. Mpepe insinuated that +Sekeletu was not the lawful son of Sebituane, on account of his +mother having been the wife of another chief before her marriage with +Sebituane; Mamochisane, however, upheld Sekeletu's claims, and at last +stood up in the assembly and addressed him with a womanly gush of tears: +"I have been a chief only because my father wished it. I always would +have preferred to be married and have a family like other women. You, +Sekeletu, must be chief, and build up your father's house." This was a +death-blow to the hopes of Mpepe. + +As it will enable the reader to understand the social and political +relations of these people, I will add a few more particulars respecting +Mpepe. Sebituane, having no son to take the leadership of the "Mopato" +of the age of his daughter, chose him, as the nearest male relative, to +occupy that post; and presuming from Mpepe's connection with his family +that he would attend to his interests and relieve him from care, he +handed his cattle over to his custody. Mpepe removed to the chief +town, "Naliele", and took such effectual charge of all the cattle that +Sebituane saw he could only set matters on their former footing by the +severe measure of Mpepe's execution. Being unwilling to do this, and +fearing the enchantments which, by means of a number of Barotse doctors, +Mpepe now used in a hut built for the purpose, and longing for peaceful +retirement after thirty years' fighting, he heard with pleasure of our +arrival at the lake, and came down as far as Sesheke to meet us. He had +an idea, picked up from some of the numerous strangers who visited him, +that white men had a "pot (a cannon) in their towns which would burn up +any attacking party;" and he thought if he could only get this he would +be able to "sleep" the remainder of his days in peace. This he hoped to +obtain from the white men. Hence the cry of the herald, "Give us sleep." +It is remarkable how anxious for peace those who have been fighting all +their lives appear to be. + +When Sekeletu was installed in the chieftainship, he felt his position +rather insecure, for it was believed that the incantations of Mpepe had +an intimate connection with Sebituane's death. Indeed, the latter had +said to his son, "That hut of incantation will prove fatal to either you +or me." + +When the Mambari, in 1850, took home a favorable report of this new +market to the west, a number of half-caste Portuguese slave-traders +were induced to come in 1853; and one, who resembled closely a real +Portuguese, came to Linyanti while I was there. This man had no +merchandise, and pretended to have come in order to inquire "what sort +of goods were necessary for the market." He seemed much disconcerted by +my presence there. Sekeletu presented him with an elephant's tusk and +an ox; and when he had departed about fifty miles to the westward, +he carried off an entire village of the Bakalahari belonging to the +Makololo. He had a number of armed slaves with him; and as all the +villagers--men, women, and children--were removed, and the fact was +unknown until a considerable time afterward, it is not certain whether +his object was obtained by violence or by fair promises. In either case, +slavery must have been the portion of these poor people. He was carried +in a hammock, slung between two poles, which appearing to be a bag, the +Makololo named him "Father of the Bag". + +Mpepe favored these slave-traders, and they, as is usual with them, +founded all their hopes of influence on his successful rebellion. My +arrival on the scene was felt to be so much weight in the scale against +their interests. A large party of Mambari had come to Linyanti when I +was floundering on the prairies south of the Chobe. As the news of my +being in the neighborhood reached them their countenances fell; and when +some Makololo, who had assisted us to cross the river, returned +with hats which I had given them, the Mambari betook themselves to +precipitate flight. It is usual for visitors to ask formal permission +before attempting to leave a chief, but the sight of the hats made the +Mambari pack up at once. The Makololo inquired the cause of the hurry, +and were told that, if I found them there, I should take all their +slaves and goods from them; and, though assured by Sekeletu that I was +not a robber, but a man of peace, they fled by night, while I was still +sixty miles off. They went to the north, where, under the protection of +Mpepe, they had erected a stockade of considerable size. There, several +half-caste slave-traders, under the leadership of a native Portuguese, +carried on their traffic, without reference to the chief into whose +country they had unceremoniously introduced themselves; while Mpepe, +feeding them with the cattle of Sekeletu, formed a plan of raising +himself, by means of their fire-arms, to be the head of the Makololo. +The usual course which the slave-traders adopt is to take a part in the +political affairs of each tribe, and, siding with the strongest, +get well paid by captures made from the weaker party. Long secret +conferences were held by the slave-traders and Mpepe, and it was deemed +advisable for him to strike the first blow; so he provided himself with +a small battle-axe, with the intention of cutting Sekeletu down the +first time they met. + +My object being first of all to examine the country for a healthy +locality, before attempting to make a path to either the East or West +Coast, I proposed to Sekeletu the plan of ascending the great river +which we had discovered in 1851. He volunteered to accompany me, +and, when we got about sixty miles away, on the road to Sesheke, we +encountered Mpepe. The Makololo, though possessing abundance of cattle, +had never attempted to ride oxen until I advised it in 1851. The +Bechuanas generally were in the same condition, until Europeans +came among them and imparted the idea of riding. All their journeys +previously were performed on foot. Sekeletu and his companions were +mounted on oxen, though, having neither saddle nor bridle, they were +perpetually falling off. Mpepe, armed with his little axe, came along +a path parallel to, but a quarter of a mile distant from, that of our +party, and, when he saw Sekeletu, he ran with all his might toward us; +but Sekeletu, being on his guard, galloped off to an adjacent village. +He then withdrew somewhere till all our party came up. Mpepe had given +his own party to understand that he would cut down Sekeletu, either on +their first meeting, or at the breaking up of their first conference. +The former intention having been thus frustrated, he then determined to +effect his purpose after their first interview. I happened to sit down +between the two in the hut where they met. Being tired with riding +all day in the sun, I soon asked Sekeletu where I should sleep, and he +replied, "Come, I will show you." As we rose together, I unconsciously +covered Sekeletu's body with mine, and saved him from the blow of the +assassin. I knew nothing of the plot, but remarked that all Mpepe's +men kept hold of their arms, even after we had sat down--a thing quite +unusual in the presence of a chief; and when Sekeletu showed me the hut +in which I was to spend the night, he said to me, "That man wishes +to kill me." I afterward learned that some of Mpepe's attendants had +divulged the secret; and, bearing in mind his father's instructions, +Sekeletu put Mpepe to death that night. It was managed so quietly, that, +although I was sleeping within a few yards of the scene, I knew nothing +of it till the next day. Nokuane went to the fire, at which Mpepe sat, +with a handful of snuff, as if he were about to sit down and regale +himself therewith. Mpepe said to him, "Nsepisa" (cause me to take a +pinch); and, as he held out his hand, Nokuane caught hold of it, while +another man seized the other hand, and, leading him out a mile, speared +him. This is the common mode of executing criminals. They are not +allowed to speak; though on one occasion a man, feeling his wrist held +too tightly, said, "Hold me gently, can't you? you will soon be led out +in the same way yourselves." Mpepe's men fled to the Barotse, and, +it being unadvisable for us to go thither during the commotion which +followed on Mpepe's death, we returned to Linyanti. + +The foregoing may be considered as a characteristic specimen of their +mode of dealing with grave political offenses. In common cases there +is a greater show of deliberation. The complainant asks the man against +whom he means to lodge his complaint to come with him to the chief. This +is never refused. When both are in the kotla, the complainant stands +up and states the whole case before the chief and the people usually +assembled there. He stands a few seconds after he has done this, to +recollect if he has forgotten any thing. The witnesses to whom he has +referred then rise up and tell all they themselves have seen or heard, +but not any thing that they have heard from others. The defendant, after +allowing some minutes to elapse so that he may not interrupt any of the +opposite party, slowly rises, folds his cloak around him, and, in the +most quiet, deliberate way he can assume--yawning, blowing his nose, +etc.--begins to explain the affair, denying the charge, or admitting +it, as the case may be. Sometimes, when galled by his remarks, the +complainant utters a sentence of dissent; the accused turns quietly to +him, and says, "Be silent: I sat still while you were speaking; can't +you do the same? Do you want to have it all to yourself?" And as the +audience acquiesce in this bantering, and enforce silence, he goes on +till he has finished all he wishes to say in his defense. If he has +any witnesses to the truth of the facts of his defense, they give their +evidence. No oath is administered; but occasionally, when a statement is +questioned, a man will say, "By my father," or "By the chief, it is +so." Their truthfulness among each other is quite remarkable; but their +system of government is such that Europeans are not in a position to +realize it readily. A poor man will say, in his defense against a +rich one, "I am astonished to hear a man so great as he make a false +accusation;" as if the offense of falsehood were felt to be one against +the society which the individual referred to had the greatest interest +in upholding. + +If the case is one of no importance, the chief decides it at once; if +frivolous, he may give the complainant a scolding, and put a stop to the +case in the middle of the complaint, or he may allow it to go on without +paying any attention to it whatever. Family quarrels are often treated +in this way, and then a man may be seen stating his case with great +fluency, and not a soul listening to him. But if it is a case between +influential men, or brought on by under-chiefs, then the greatest +decorum prevails. If the chief does not see his way clearly to a +decision, he remains silent; the elders then rise one by one and give +their opinions, often in the way of advice rather than as decisions; +and when the chief finds the general sentiment agreeing in one view, he +delivers his judgment accordingly. He alone speaks sitting; all others +stand. + +No one refuses to acquiesce in the decision of the chief, as he has the +power of life and death in his hands, and can enforce the law to +that extent if he chooses; but grumbling is allowed, and, when marked +favoritism is shown to any relative of the chief, the people generally +are not so astonished at the partiality as we would be in England. + +This system was found as well developed among the Makololo as among +the Bakwains, or even better, and is no foreign importation. When at +Cassange, my men had a slight quarrel among themselves, and came to me, +as to their chief, for judgment. This had occurred several times before, +so without a thought I went out of the Portuguese merchant's house in +which I was a guest, sat down, and heard the complaint and defense in +the usual way. When I had given my decision in the common admonitory +form, they went off apparently satisfied. Several Portuguese, who had +been viewing the proceedings with great interest, complimented me on the +success of my teaching them how to act in litigation; but I could not +take any credit to myself for the system which I had found ready-made to +my hands. + +Soon after our arrival at Linyanti, Sekeletu took me aside, and pressed +me to mention those things I liked best and hoped to get from him. Any +thing, either in or out of his town, should be freely given if I would +only mention it. I explained to him that my object was to elevate him +and his people to be Christians; but he replied he did not wish to learn +to read the Book, for he was afraid "it might change his heart, and make +him content with only one wife, like Sechele." It was of little use to +urge that the change of heart implied a contentment with one wife equal +to his present complacency in polygamy. Such a preference after the +change of mind could not now be understood by him any more than the +real, unmistakable pleasure of religious services can by those who have +not experienced what is known by the term the "new heart". I assured him +that nothing was expected but by his own voluntary decision. "No, no; +he wanted always to have five wives at least." I liked the frankness of +Sekeletu, for nothing is so wearying to the spirit as talking to those +who agree with every thing advanced. + +Sekeletu, according to the system of the Bechuanas, became possessor of +his father's wives, and adopted two of them; the children by these women +are, however, in these cases, termed brothers. When an elder brother +dies, the same thing occurs in respect of his wives; the brother next in +age takes them, as among the Jews, and the children that may be born +of those women he calls brothers also. He thus raises up seed to his +departed relative. An uncle of Sekeletu, being a younger brother of +Sebituane, got that chieftain's head-wife or queen: there is always +one who enjoys this title. Her hut is called the great house, and her +children inherit the chieftainship. If she dies, a new wife is selected +for the same position, and enjoys the same privileges, though she may +happen to be a much younger woman than the rest. + +The majority of the wives of Sebituane were given to influential +under-chiefs; and, in reference to their early casting off the widow's +weeds, a song was sung, the tenor of which was that the men alone felt +the loss of their father Sebituane, the women were so soon supplied with +new husbands that their hearts had not time to become sore with grief. + +The women complain because the proportions between the sexes are so +changed now that they are not valued as they deserve. The majority of +the real Makololo have been cut off by fever. Those who remain are +a mere fragment of the people who came to the north with Sebituane. +Migrating from a very healthy climate in the south, they were more +subject to the febrile diseases of the valley in which we found them +than the black tribes they conquered. In comparison with the Barotse, +Batoka, and Banyeti, the Makololo have a sickly hue. They are of a light +brownish-yellow color, while the tribes referred to are very dark, with +a slight tinge of olive. The whole of the colored tribes consider that +beauty and fairness are associated, and women long for children of light +color so much, that they sometimes chew the bark of a certain tree in +hopes of producing that effect. To my eye the dark color is much more +agreeable than the tawny hue of the half-caste, which that of the +Makololo ladies closely resembles. The women generally escaped the +fever, but they are less fruitful than formerly, and, to their complaint +of being undervalued on account of the disproportion of the sexes, they +now add their regrets at the want of children, of whom they are all +excessively fond. + +The Makololo women work but little. Indeed, the families of that nation +are spread over the country, one or two only in each village, as +the lords of the land. They all have lordship over great numbers of +subjected tribes, who pass by the general name Makalaka, and who are +forced to render certain services, and to aid in tilling the soil; but +each has his own land under cultivation, and otherwise lives nearly +independent. They are proud to be called Makololo, but the other term +is often used in reproach, as betokening inferiority. This species of +servitude may be termed serfdom, as it has to be rendered in consequence +of subjection by force of arms, but it is necessarily very mild. It is +so easy for any one who is unkindly treated to make his escape to +other tribes, that the Makololo are compelled to treat them, to a great +extent, rather as children than slaves. Some masters, who fail from +defect of temper or disposition to secure the affections of the +conquered people, frequently find themselves left without a single +servant, in consequence of the absence and impossibility of enforcing +a fugitive-slave law, and the readiness with which those who are +themselves subjected assist the fugitives across the rivers in canoes. +The Makololo ladies are liberal in their presents of milk and other +food, and seldom require to labor, except in the way of beautifying +their own huts and court-yards. They drink large quantities of boyaloa +or o-alo, the buza of the Arabs, which, being made of the grain called +holcus sorghum or "durasaifi", in a minute state of subdivision, is +very nutritious, and gives that plumpness of form which is considered +beautiful. They dislike being seen at their potations by persons of the +opposite sex. They cut their woolly hair quite short, and delight in +having the whole person shining with butter. Their dress is a kilt +reaching to the knees; its material is ox-hide, made as soft as cloth. +It is not ungraceful. A soft skin mantle is thrown across the shoulders +when the lady is unemployed, but when engaged in any sort of labor +she throws this aside, and works in the kilt alone. The ornaments most +coveted are large brass anklets as thick as the little finger, and +armlets of both brass and ivory, the latter often an inch broad. The +rings are so heavy that the ankles are often blistered by the weight +pressing down; but it is the fashion, and is borne as magnanimously as +tight lacing and tight shoes among ourselves. Strings of beads are hung +around the neck, and the fashionable colors being light green and pink, +a trader could get almost any thing he chose for beads of these colors. + +At our public religious services in the kotla, the Makololo women always +behaved with decorum from the first, except at the conclusion of +the prayer. When all knelt down, many of those who had children, in +following the example of the rest, bent over their little ones; the +children, in terror of being crushed to death, set up a simultaneous +yell, which so tickled the whole assembly there was often a subdued +titter, to be turned into a hearty laugh as soon as they heard Amen. +This was not so difficult to overcome in them as similar peccadilloes +were in the case of the women farther south. Long after we had settled +at Mabotsa, when preaching on the most solemn subjects, a woman might be +observed to look round, and, seeing a neighbor seated on her dress, give +her a hunch with the elbow to make her move off; the other would return +it with interest, and perhaps the remark, "Take the nasty thing away, +will you?" Then three or four would begin to hustle the first offenders, +and the men to swear at them all, by way of enforcing silence. + +Great numbers of little trifling things like these occur, and would +not be worth the mention but that one can not form a correct idea of +missionary work except by examination of the minutiae. At the risk +of appearing frivolous to some, I shall continue to descend to mere +trifles. + +The numbers who attended at the summons of the herald, who acted as +beadle, were often from five to seven hundred. The service consisted of +reading a small portion of the Bible and giving an explanatory address, +usually short enough to prevent weariness or want of attention. So long +as we continue to hold services in the kotla, the associations of the +place are unfavorable to solemnity; hence it is always desirable to have +a place of worship as soon as possible; and it is of importance, too, +to treat such place with reverence, as an aid to secure that serious +attention which religious subjects demand. This will appear more evident +when it is recollected that, in the very spot where we had been engaged +in acts of devotion, half an hour after a dance would be got up; and +these habits can not be at first opposed without the appearance of +assuming too much authority over them. It is always unwise to hurt +their feelings of independence. Much greater influence will be gained by +studying how you may induce them to act aright, with the impression +that they are doing it of their own free will. Our services having +necessarily been all in the open air, where it is most difficult to +address large bodies of people, prevented my recovering so entirely from +the effects of clergyman's sore throat as I expected, when my uvula was +excised at the Cape. + +To give an idea of the routine followed for months together, on other +days as well as on Sundays, I may advert to my habit of treating the +sick for complaints which seemed to surmount the skill of their own +doctors. I refrained from going to any one unless his own doctor wished +it, or had given up the case. This led to my having a selection of +the severer cases only, and prevented the doctors being offended at my +taking their practice out of their hands. When attacked by fever myself, +and wishing to ascertain what their practices were, I could safely +intrust myself in their hands on account of their well-known friendly +feelings. + +The plan of showing kindness to the natives in their bodily ailments +secures their friendship; this is not the case to the same degree in +old missions, where the people have learned to look upon relief as a +right--a state of things which sometimes happens among ourselves at +home. Medical aid is therefore most valuable in young missions, though +at all stages it is an extremely valuable adjunct to other operations. + +I proposed to teach the Makololo to read, but, for the reasons +mentioned, Sekeletu at first declined; after some weeks, however, +Motibe, his father-in-law, and some others, determined to brave the +mysterious book. To all who have not acquired it, the knowledge of +letters is quite unfathomable; there is naught like it within the +compass of their observation; and we have no comparison with any thing +except pictures, to aid them in comprehending the idea of signs of +words. It seems to them supernatural that we see in a book things +taking place, or having occurred at a distance. No amount of explanation +conveys the idea unless they learn to read. Machinery is equally +inexplicable, and money nearly as much so until they see it in actual +use. They are familiar with barter alone; and in the centre of the +country, where gold is totally unknown, if a button and sovereign were +left to their choice, they would prefer the former on account of its +having an eye. + +In beginning to learn, Motibe seemed to himself in the position of the +doctor, who was obliged to drink his potion before the patient, to +show that it contained nothing detrimental; after he had mastered the +alphabet, and reported the thing so far safe, Sekeletu and his young +companions came forward to try for themselves. He must have resolved to +watch the effects of the book against his views on polygamy, and abstain +whenever he perceived any tendency, in reading it, toward enforcing him +to put his wives away. A number of men learned the alphabet in a short +time and were set to teach others, but before much progress could be +made I was on my way to Loanda. + +As I had declined to name any thing as a present from Sekeletu, except a +canoe to take me up the river, he brought ten fine elephants' tusks and +laid them down beside my wagon. He would take no denial, though I told +him I should prefer to see him trading with Fleming, a man of color from +the West Indies, who had come for the purpose. I had, during the eleven +years of my previous course, invariably abstained from taking presents +of ivory, from an idea that a religious instructor degraded himself by +accepting gifts from those whose spiritual welfare he professed to seek. +My precedence of all traders in the line of discovery put me often in +the way of very handsome offers, but I always advised the donors to sell +their ivory to traders, who would be sure to follow, and when at some +future time they had become rich by barter, they might remember me or my +children. When Lake Ngami was discovered I might have refused permission +to a trader who accompanied us; but when he applied for leave to form +part of our company, knowing that Mr. Oswell would no more trade than +myself, and that the people of the lake would be disappointed if they +could not dispose of their ivory, I willingly granted a sanction, +without which his people would not at that time have ventured so far. +This was surely preferring the interest of another to my own. The return +I got for this was a notice in one of the Cape papers that this "man was +the true discoverer of the lake!" + +The conclusion I had come to was, that it is quite lawful, though +perhaps not expedient, for missionaries to trade; but barter is the only +means by which a missionary in the interior can pay his way, as money +has no value. In all the journeys I had previously undertaken for wider +diffusion of the Gospel, the extra expenses were defrayed from my salary +of 100 Pounds per annum. This sum is sufficient to enable a missionary +to live in the interior of South Africa, supposing he has a garden +capable of yielding corn and vegetables; but should he not, and still +consider that six or eight months can not lawfully be spent simply +in getting goods at a lower price than they can be had from itinerant +traders, the sum mentioned is barely sufficient for the poorest fare +and plainest apparel. As we never felt ourselves justified in making +journeys to the colony for the sake of securing bargains, the most +frugal living was necessary to enable us to be a little charitable to +others; but when to this were added extra traveling expenses, the wants +of an increasing family, and liberal gifts to chiefs, it was difficult +to make both ends meet. The pleasure of missionary labor would be +enhanced if one could devote his life to the heathen, without drawing +a salary from a society at all. The luxury of doing good from one's own +private resources, without appearing to either natives or Europeans +to be making a gain of it, is far preferable, and an object worthy +the ambition of the rich. But few men of fortune, however, now devote +themselves to Christian missions, as of old. Presents were always given +to the chiefs whom we visited, and nothing accepted in return; but when +Sebituane (in 1851) offered some ivory, I took it, and was able by its +sale to present his son with a number of really useful articles of a +higher value than I had ever been able to give before to any chief. In +doing this, of course, I appeared to trade, but, feeling I had a right +to do so, I felt perfectly easy in my mind; and, as I still held the +view of the inexpediency of combining the two professions, I was glad of +the proposal of one of the most honorable merchants of Cape Town, Mr. H. +E. Rutherford, that he should risk a sum of money in Fleming's hands for +the purpose of attempting to develop a trade with the Makololo. It was +to this man I suggested Sekeletu should sell the tusks which he had +presented for my acceptance, but the chief refused to take them back +from me. The goods which Fleming had brought were ill adapted for the +use of the natives, but he got a pretty good load of ivory in exchange; +and though it was his first attempt at trading, and the distance +traveled over made the expenses enormous, he was not a loser by the +trip. Other traders followed, who demanded 90 lbs. of ivory for a +musket. The Makololo, knowing nothing of steelyards, but supposing that +they were meant to cheat them, declined to trade except by exchanging +one bull and one cow elephant's tusk for each gun. This would average +70 lbs. of ivory, which sells at the Cape for 5s. per pound, for a +second-hand musket worth 10s. I, being sixty miles distant, did not +witness this attempt at barter, but, anxious to enable my countrymen to +drive a brisk trade, told the Makololo to sell my ten tusks on their own +account for whatever they would bring. Seventy tusks were for sale, +but, the parties not understanding each other's talk, no trade was +established; and when I passed the spot some time afterward, I found +that the whole of that ivory had been destroyed by an accidental fire, +which broke out in the village when all the people were absent. Success +in trade is as much dependent on knowledge of the language as success in +traveling. + +I had brought with me as presents an improved breed of goats, fowls, and +a pair of cats. A superior bull was bought, also as a gift to Sekeletu, +but I was compelled to leave it on account of its having become +foot-sore. As the Makololo are very fond of improving the breed of their +domestic animals, they were much pleased with my selection. I endeavored +to bring the bull, in performance of a promise made to Sebituane before +he died. Admiring a calf which we had with us, he proposed to give me a +cow for it, which in the native estimation was offering three times its +value. I presented it to him at once, and promised to bring him another +and a better one. Sekeletu was much gratified by my attempt to keep my +word given to his father. + +They have two breeds of cattle among them. One, called the Batoka, +because captured from that tribe, is of diminutive size, but very +beautiful, and closely resembles the short-horns of our own country. +The little pair presented by the King of Portugal to H.R.H. the prince +consort, is of this breed. They are very tame, and remarkably playful; +they may be seen lying on their sides by the fires in the evening; and, +when the herd goes out, the herdsman often precedes them, and has only +to commence capering to set them all a gamboling. The meat is superior +to that of the large animal. The other, or Barotse ox, is much larger, +and comes from the fertile Barotse Valley. They stand high on their +legs, often nearly six feet at the withers; and they have large horns. +Those of one of a similar breed that we brought from the lake measured +from tip to tip eight and a half feet. + +The Makololo are in the habit of shaving off a little from one side of +the horns of these animals when still growing, in order to make them +curve in that direction and assume fantastic shapes. The stranger the +curvature, the more handsome the ox is considered to be, and the longer +this ornament of the cattle-pen is spared to beautify the herd. This is +a very ancient custom in Africa, for the tributary tribes of Ethiopia +are seen, on some of the most ancient Egyptian monuments, bringing +contorted-horned cattle into Egypt. + +All are remarkably fond of their cattle, and spend much time in +ornamenting and adorning them. Some are branded all over with a hot +knife, so as to cause a permanent discoloration of the hair, in lines +like the bands on the hide of a zebra. Pieces of skin two or three +inches long and broad are detached, and allowed to heal in a dependent +position around the head--a strange style of ornament; indeed, it is +difficult to conceive in what their notion of beauty consists. The +women have somewhat the same ideas with ourselves of what constitutes +comeliness. They came frequently and asked for the looking-glass; and +the remarks they made--while I was engaged in reading, and apparently +not attending to them--on first seeing themselves therein, were +amusingly ridiculous. "Is that me?" "What a big mouth I have!" "My ears +are as big as pumpkin-leaves." "I have no chin at all." Or, "I would +have been pretty, but am spoiled by these high cheek-bones." "See how +my head shoots up in the middle!" laughing vociferously all the time +at their own jokes. They readily perceive any defect in each other, and +give nicknames accordingly. One man came alone to have a quiet gaze at +his own features once, when he thought I was asleep; after twisting his +mouth about in various directions, he remarked to himself, "People say I +am ugly, and how very ugly I am indeed!" + +The Makololo use all the skins of their oxen for making either mantles +or shields. For the former, the hide is stretched out by means of pegs, +and dried. Ten or a dozen men then collect round it with small adzes, +which, when sharpened with an iron bodkin, are capable of shaving off +the substance of the skin on the fleshy side until it is quite thin; +when sufficiently thin, a quantity of brain is smeared over it, and +some thick milk. Then an instrument made of a number of iron spikes tied +round a piece of wood, so that the points only project beyond it, is +applied to it in a carding fashion, until the fibres of the bulk of it +are quite loose. Milk or butter is applied to it again, and it forms a +garment nearly as soft as cloth. + +The shields are made of hides partially dried in the sun, and then +beaten with hammers until they are stiff and dry. Two broad belts of a +differently-colored skin are sewed into them longitudinally, and sticks +inserted to make them rigid and not liable to bend easily. The shield is +a great protection in their way of fighting with spears, but they +also trust largely to their agility in springing aside from the coming +javelin. The shield assists when so many spears are thrown that it is +impossible not to receive some of them. Their spears are light javelins; +and, judging from what I have seen them do in elephant-hunting, I +believe, when they have room to make a run and discharge them with the +aid of the jerk of stopping, they can throw them between forty and fifty +yards. They give them an upward direction in the discharge, so that +they come down on the object with accelerated force. I saw a man who +in battle had received one in the shin; the excitement of the moment +prevented his feeling any pain; but, when the battle was over, the blade +was found to have split the bone, and become so impacted in the cleft +that no force could extract it. It was necessary to take an axe and +press the split bone asunder before the weapon could be taken out. + + + + +Chapter 10. + +The Fever--Its Symptoms--Remedies of the native Doctors--Hospitality +of Sekeletu and his People--One of their Reasons for Polygamy--They +cultivate largely--The Makalaka or subject Tribes--Sebituane's +Policy respecting them--Their Affection for him--Products of the +Soil--Instrument of Culture--The Tribute--Distributed by the Chief--A +warlike Demonstration--Lechulatebe's Provocations--The Makololo +determine to punish him--The Bechuanas--Meaning of the Term--Three +Divisions of the great Family of South Africans. + + + +On the 30th of May I was seized with fever for the first time. We +reached the town of Linyanti on the 23d; and as my habits were +suddenly changed from great exertion to comparative inactivity, at +the commencement of the cold season I suffered from a severe attack of +stoppage of the secretions, closely resembling a common cold. Warm baths +and drinks relieved me, and I had no idea but that I was now recovering +from the effects of a chill, got by leaving the warm wagon in the +evening in order to conduct family worship at my people's fire. But on +the 2d of June a relapse showed to the Makololo, who knew the complaint, +that my indisposition was no other than the fever, with which I have +since made a more intimate acquaintance. Cold east winds prevail at this +time; and as they come over the extensive flats inundated by the Chobe, +as well as many other districts where pools of rain-water are now drying +up, they may be supposed to be loaded with malaria and watery vapor, and +many cases of fever follow. The usual symptoms of stopped secretion +are manifested--shivering and a feeling of coldness, though the skin +is quite hot to the touch of another. The heat in the axilla, over the +heart and region of the stomach, was in my case 100 Deg.; but along the +spine and at the nape of the neck 103 Deg. The internal processes were +all, with the exception of the kidneys and liver, stopped; the latter, +in its efforts to free the blood of noxious particles, often secretes +enormous quantities of bile. There were pains along the spine, and +frontal headache. Anxious to ascertain whether the natives possessed +the knowledge of any remedy of which we were ignorant, I requested the +assistance of one of Sekeletu's doctors. He put some roots into a pot +with water, and, when it was boiling, placed it on a spot beneath a +blanket thrown around both me and it. This produced no immediate effect; +he then got a small bundle of different kinds of medicinal woods, and, +burning them in a potsherd nearly to ashes, used the smoke and hot vapor +arising from them as an auxiliary to the other in causing diaphoresis. +I fondly hoped that they had a more potent remedy than our own medicines +afford; but after being stewed in their vapor-baths, smoked like a red +herring over green twigs, and charmed 'secundem artem', I concluded that +I could cure the fever more quickly than they can. If we employ a wet +sheet and a mild aperient in combination with quinine, in addition to +the native remedies, they are an important aid in curing the fever, as +they seem to have the same stimulating effects on the alimentary +canal as these means have on the external surface. Purgatives, general +bleedings, or indeed any violent remedies, are injurious; and the +appearance of a herpetic eruption near the mouth is regarded as an +evidence that no internal organ is in danger. There is a good deal in +not "giving in" to this disease. He who is low-spirited, and apt to +despond at every attack, will die sooner than the man who is not of such +a melancholic nature. + +The Makololo had made a garden and planted maize for me, that, as they +remarked when I was parting with them to proceed to the Cape, I might +have food to eat when I returned, as well as other people. The maize was +now pounded by the women into fine meal. This they do in large wooden +mortars, the counterpart of which may be seen depicted on the Egyptian +monuments.* Sekeletu added to this good supply of meal ten or twelve +jars of honey, each of which contained about two gallons. Liberal +supplies of ground-nuts ('Arachis hypogoea') were also furnished every +time the tributary tribes brought their dues to Linyanti, and an ox was +given for slaughter every week or two. Sekeletu also appropriated +two cows to be milked for us every morning and evening. This was in +accordance with the acknowledged rule throughout this country, that the +chief should feed all strangers who come on any special business to +him and take up their abode in his kotla. A present is usually given in +return for the hospitality, but, except in cases where their aboriginal +customs have been modified, nothing would be asked. Europeans spoil the +feeling that hospitality is the sacred duty of the chiefs by what in +other circumstances is laudable conduct. No sooner do they arrive than +they offer to purchase food, and, instead of waiting till a meal is +prepared for them in the evening, cook for themselves, and then often +decline even to partake of that which has been made ready for their use. +A present is also given, and before long the natives come to expect a +gift without having offered any equivalent. + + * Unfortunately, the illustration shown with this paragraph + cannot be shown in this ASCII file. It has the following + caption: 'Egyptian Pestle and Mortar, Sieves, Corn Vessels, + and Kilt, identical with those in use by the Makololo and + Makalaka.--From Sir G. Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians".'--A. + L., 1997. + +Strangers frequently have acquaintances among the under-chiefs, to whose +establishments they turn aside, and are treated on the same principle +that others are when they are the guests of the chief. So generally is +the duty admitted, that one of the most cogent arguments for polygamy is +that a respectable man with only one wife could not entertain strangers +as he ought. This reason has especial weight where the women are the +chief cultivators of the soil, and have the control over the corn, as +at Kolobeng. The poor, however, who have no friends, often suffer much +hunger, and the very kind attention Sebituane lavished on all such was +one of the reasons of his great popularity in the country. + +The Makololo cultivate a large extent of land around their villages. +Those of them who are real Basutos still retain the habits of that +tribe, and may be seen going out with their wives with their hoes in +hand--a state of things never witnessed at Kolobeng, or among any other +Bechuana or Caffre tribe. The great chief Moshesh affords an example to +his people annually by not only taking the hoe in hand, but working hard +with it on certain public occasions. His Basutos are of the same family +with the Makololo to whom I refer. The younger Makololo, who have been +accustomed from their infancy to lord it over the conquered Makalaka, +have unfortunately no desire to imitate the agricultural tastes of their +fathers, and expect their subjects to perform all the manual labor. They +are the aristocracy of the country, and once possessed almost unlimited +power over their vassals. Their privileges were, however, much abridged +by Sebituane himself. + +I have already mentioned that the tribes which Sebituane subjected in +this great country pass by the general name of Makalaka. The Makololo +were composed of a great number of other tribes, as well as of these +central negroes. The nucleus of the whole were Basuto, who came with +Sebituane from a comparatively cold and hilly region in the south. When +he conquered various tribes of the Bechuanas, as Bakwains, Bangwaketze, +Bamangwato, Batauana, etc., he incorporated the young of these tribes +into his own. Great mortality by fever having taken place in the +original stock, he wisely adopted the same plan of absorption on a +large scale with the Makalaka. So we found him with even the sons of the +chiefs of the Barotse closely attached to his person; and they say to +this day, if any thing else but natural death had assailed their father, +every one of them would have laid down his life in his defense. One +reason for their strong affection was their emancipation by the decree +of Sebituane, "all are children of the chief." + +The Makalaka cultivate the 'Holcus sorghum', or dura, as the principal +grain, with maize, two kinds of beans, ground-nuts ('Arachis hypogoea'), +pumpkins, watermelons, and cucumbers. They depend for success entirely +upon rain. Those who live in the Barotse valley cultivate in addition +the sugar-cane, sweet potato, and manioc ('Jatropha manihot'). The +climate there, however, is warmer than at Linyanti, and the Makalaka +increase the fertility of their gardens by rude attempts at artificial +irrigation. + +The instrument of culture over all this region is a hoe, the iron of +which the Batoka and Banyeti obtain from the ore by smelting. The amount +of iron which they produce annually may be understood when it is known +that most of the hoes in use at Linyanti are the tribute imposed on the +smiths of those subject tribes. + +Sekeletu receives tribute from a great number of tribes in corn or +dura, ground-nuts, hoes, spears, honey, canoes, paddles, wooden vessels, +tobacco, mutokuane ('Cannabis sativa'), various wild fruits (dried), +prepared skins, and ivory. When these articles are brought into the +kotla, Sekeletu has the honor of dividing them among the loungers who +usually congregate there. A small portion only is reserved for himself. +The ivory belongs nominally to him too, but this is simply a way of +making a fair distribution of the profits. The chief sells it only with +the approbation of his counselors, and the proceeds are distributed in +open day among the people as before. He has the choice of every thing; +but if he is not more liberal to others than to himself, he loses in +popularity. I have known instances in this and other tribes in which +individuals aggrieved, because they had been overlooked, fled to +other chiefs. One discontented person, having fled to Lechulatebe, was +encouraged to go to a village of the Bapalleng, on the River Cho or Tso, +and abstracted the tribute of ivory thence which ought to have come to +Sekeletu. This theft enraged the whole of the Makololo, because they all +felt it to be a personal loss. Some of Lechulatebe's people having come +on a visit to Linyanti, a demonstration was made, in which about five +hundred Makololo, armed, went through a mimic fight; the principal +warriors pointed their spears toward the lake where Lechulatebe lives, +and every thrust in that direction was answered by all with the shout, +"Ho-o!" while every stab on the ground drew out a simultaneous "Huzz!" +On these occasions all capable of bearing arms, even the old, must turn +out at the call. In the time of Sebituane, any one remaining in his +house was searched for and killed without mercy. + +This offense of Lechulatebe was aggravated by repetition, and by a song +sung in his town accompanying the dances, which manifested joy at the +death of Sebituane. He had enjoined his people to live in peace with +those at the lake, and Sekeletu felt disposed to follow his advice; but +Lechulatebe had now got possession of fire-arms, and considered himself +more than a match for the Makololo. His father had been dispossessed of +many cattle by Sebituane, and, as forgiveness is not considered among +the virtues by the heathen, Lechulatebe thought he had a right to +recover what he could. As I had a good deal of influence with the +Makololo, I persuaded them that, before they could have peace, they must +resolve to give the same blessing to others, and they never could do +that without forgiving and forgetting ancient feuds. It is hard to make +them feel that shedding of human blood is a great crime; they must be +conscious that it is wrong, but, having been accustomed to bloodshed +from infancy, they are remarkably callous to the enormity of the crime +of destroying human life. + +I sent a message at the same time to Lechulatebe advising him to give +up the course he had adopted, and especially the song; because, though +Sebituane was dead, the arms with which he had fought were still alive +and strong. + +Sekeletu, in order to follow up his father's instructions and promote +peace, sent ten cows to Lechulatebe to be exchanged for sheep; these +animals thrive well in a bushy country like that around the lake, but +will scarcely live in the flat prairies between the net-work of waters +north of the Chobe. The men who took the cows carried a number of hoes +to purchase goats besides. Lechulatebe took the cows and sent back an +equal number of sheep. Now, according to the relative value of sheep and +cows in these parts, he ought to have sent sixty or seventy. + +One of the men who had hoes was trying to purchase in a village without +formal leave from Lechulatebe; this chief punished him by making him sit +some hours on the broiling hot sand (at least 130 Deg.). This farther +offense put a stop to amicable relations between the two tribes +altogether. It was a case in which a very small tribe, commanded by +a weak and foolish chief, had got possession of fire-arms, and felt +conscious of ability to cope with a numerous and warlike race. Such +cases are the only ones in which the possession of fire-arms does evil. +The universal effect of the diffusion of the more potent instruments of +warfare in Africa is the same as among ourselves. Fire-arms render wars +less frequent and less bloody. It is indeed exceedingly rare to hear of +two tribes having guns going to war with each other; and, as nearly all +the feuds, in the south at least, have been about cattle, the risk which +must be incurred from long shots generally proves a preventive to the +foray. + +The Makololo were prevailed upon to keep the peace during my residence +with them, but it was easy to perceive that public opinion was against +sparing a tribe of Bechuanas for whom the Makololo entertained the most +sovereign contempt. The young men would remark, "Lechulatebe is herding +our cows for us; let us only go, we shall 'lift' the price of them in +sheep," etc. + +As the Makololo are the most northerly of the Bechuanas, we may glance +back at this family of Africans before entering on the branch of the +negro family which the Makololo distinguish by the term Makalaka. The +name Bechuana seems derived from the word Chuana--alike, or equal--with +the personal pronoun Ba (they) prefixed, and therefore means fellows +or equals. Some have supposed the name to have arisen from a mistake of +some traveler, who, on asking individuals of this nation concerning the +tribes living beyond them, received the answer, Bachuana, "they (are) +alike"; meaning, "They are the same as we are"; and that this nameless +traveler, who never wrote a word about them, managed to ingraft his +mistake as a generic term on a nation extending from the Orange River to +18 Deg. south latitude.* + + * The Makololo have conquered the country as far as 14 Deg. + south, but it is still peopled chiefly by the black tribes + named Makalaka. + +As the name was found in use among those who had no intercourse with +Europeans, before we can receive the above explanation we must believe +that the unknown traveler knew the language sufficiently well to ask a +question, but not to understand the answer. We may add, that the way in +which they still continue to use the word seems to require no fanciful +interpretation. When addressed with any degree of scorn, they reply, "We +are Bachuana, or equals--we are not inferior to any of our nation," +in exactly the same sense as Irishmen or Scotchmen, in the same +circumstances, would reply, "We are Britons," or "We are Englishmen." +Most other tribes are known by the terms applied to them by strangers +only, as the Caffres, Hottentots, and Bushmen. The Bechuanas alone use +the term to themselves as a generic one for the whole nation. They have +managed, also, to give a comprehensive name to the whites, viz., Makoa, +though they can not explain the derivation of it any more than of their +own. It seems to mean "handsome", from the manner in which they use +it to indicate beauty; but there is a word so very like it meaning +"infirm", or "weak", that Burchell's conjecture is probably the right +one. "The different Hottentot tribes were known by names terminating in +'kua', which means 'man', and the Bechuanas simply added the prefix +Ma, denoting a nation." They themselves were first known as Briquas, or +"goat-men". The language of the Bechuanas is termed Sichuana; that of +the whites (or Makoa) is called Sekoa. + +The Makololo, or Basuto, have carried their powers of generalization +still farther, and arranged the other parts of the same great family +of South Africans into three divisions: 1st. The Matebele, or +Makonkobi--the Caffre family living on the eastern side of the country; +2d. The Bakoni, or Basuto; and, 3d. The Bakalahari, or Bechuanas, living +in the central parts, which includes all those tribes living in or +adjacent to the great Kalahari Desert. + +1st. The Caffres are divided by themselves into various subdivisions, as +Amakosa, Amapanda, and other well-known titles. They consider the name +Caffre as an insulting epithet. + +The Zulus of Natal belong to the same family, and they are as famed +for their honesty as their brethren who live adjacent to our colonial +frontier are renowned for cattle-lifting. The Recorder of Natal declared +of them that history does not present another instance in which so +much security for life and property has been enjoyed, as has been +experienced, during the whole period of English occupation, by ten +thousand colonists, in the midst of one hundred thousand Zulus. + +The Matebele of Mosilikatse, living a short distance south of the +Zambesi, and other tribes living a little south of Tete and Senna, +are members of this same family. They are not known beyond the Zambesi +River. This was the limit of the Bechuana progress north too, until +Sebituane pushed his conquests farther. + +2d. The Bakoni and Basuto division contains, in the south, all those +tribes which acknowledge Moshesh as their paramount chief. Among them +we find the Batau, the Baputi, Makolokue, etc., and some mountaineers on +the range Maluti, who are believed, by those who have carefully sifted +the evidence, to have been at one time guilty of cannibalism. This +has been doubted, but their songs admit the fact to this day, and they +ascribe their having left off the odious practice of entrapping human +prey to Moshesh having given them cattle. They are called Marimo and +Mayabathu, men-eaters, by the rest of the Basuto, who have various +subdivisions, as Makatla, Bamakakana, Matlapatlapa, etc. + +The Bakoni farther north than the Basuto are the Batlou, Baperi, Bapo, +and another tribe of Bakuena, Bamosetla, Bamapela or Balaka, Babiriri, +Bapiri, Bahukeng, Batlokua, Baakhahela, etc., etc.; the whole of which +tribes are favored with abundance of rain, and, being much attached +to agriculture, raise very large quantities of grain. It is on their +industry that the more distant Boers revel in slothful abundance, and +follow their slave-hunting and cattle-stealing propensities quite beyond +the range of English influence and law. The Basuto under Moshesh are +equally fond of cultivating the soil. The chief labor of hoeing, driving +away birds, reaping, and winnowing, falls to the willing arms of the +hard-working women; but as the men, as well as their wives, as already +stated, always work, many have followed the advice of the missionaries, +and now use plows and oxen instead of the hoe. + +3d. The Bakalahari, or western branch of the Bechuana family, consists +of Barolong, Bahurutse, Bakuena, Bangwaketse, Bakaa, Bamangwato, +Bakurutse, Batauana, Bamatlaro, and Batlapi. Among the last the success +of missionaries has been greatest. They were an insignificant and filthy +people when first discovered; but, being nearest to the colony, they +have had opportunities of trading; and the long-continued peace they +have enjoyed, through the influence of religious teaching, has enabled +them to amass great numbers of cattle. The young, however, who do +not realize their former degradation, often consider their present +superiority over the less-favored tribes in the interior to be entirely +owing to their own greater wisdom and more intellectual development. + + + + +Chapter 11. + +Departure from Linyanti for Sesheke--Level Country--Ant-hills--Wild +Date-trees--Appearance of our Attendants on the March--The Chief's +Guard--They attempt to ride on Ox-back--Vast Herds of the +new Antelopes, Leches, and Nakongs--The native way of hunting +them--Reception at the Villages--Presents of Beer and Milk--Eating with +the Hand--The Chief provides the Oxen for Slaughter--Social Mode +of Eating--The Sugar-cane--Sekeletu's novel Test of Character-- +Cleanliness of Makololo Huts--Their Construction and Appearance--The +Beds--Cross the Leeambye--Aspect of this part of the Country--The small +Antelope Tianyane unknown in the South--Hunting on foot--An Eland. + + + +Having waited a month at Linyanti (lat. 18d 17' 20" S., long. 23d 50' +9" E.), we again departed, for the purpose of ascending the river from +Sesheke (lat. 17d 31' 38" S., long. 25d 13' E.). To the Barotse country, +the capital of which is Nariele or Naliele (lat. 15d 24' 17" S., long. +23d 5' 54" E.), I went in company with Sekeletu and about one hundred +and sixty attendants. We had most of the young men with us, and many of +the under-chiefs besides. The country between Linyanti and Sesheke +is perfectly flat, except patches elevated only a few feet above +the surrounding level. There are also many mounds where the gigantic +ant-hills of the country have been situated or still appear: these +mounds are evidently the work of the termites. No one who has not +seen their gigantic structures can fancy the industry of these little +laborers; they seem to impart fertility to the soil which has once +passed through their mouths, for the Makololo find the sides of +ant-hills the choice spots for rearing early maize, tobacco, or any +thing on which they wish to bestow especial care. In the parts through +which we passed the mounds are generally covered with masses of wild +date-trees; the fruit is small, and no tree is allowed to stand long, +for, having abundance of food, the Makololo have no inclination to +preserve wild fruit-trees; accordingly, when a date shoots up to seed, +as soon as the fruit is ripe they cut down the tree rather than be at +the trouble of climbing it. The other parts of the more elevated land +have the camel-thorn ('Acacia giraffae'), white-thorned mimosa ('Acacia +horrida'), and baobabs. In sandy spots there are palmyras somewhat +similar to the Indian, but with a smaller seed. The soil on all the flat +parts is a rich, dark, tenacious loam, known as the "cotton-ground" in +India; it is covered with a dense matting of coarse grass, common on +all damp spots in this country. We had the Chobe on our right, with its +scores of miles of reed occupying the horizon there. It was pleasant to +look back on the long-extended line of our attendants, as it twisted and +bent according to the curves of the footpath, or in and out behind the +mounds, the ostrich feathers of the men waving in the wind. Some had the +white ends of ox-tails on their heads, Hussar fashion, and others great +bunches of black ostrich feathers, or caps made of lions' manes. Some +wore red tunics, or various-colored prints which the chief had bought +from Fleming; the common men carried burdens; the gentlemen walked with +a small club of rhinoceros-horn in their hands, and had servants to +carry their shields; while the "Machaka", battle-axe men, carried their +own, and were liable at any time to be sent off a hundred miles on an +errand, and expected to run all the way. + +Sekeletu is always accompanied by his own Mopato, a number of young men +of his own age. When he sits down they crowd around him; those who +are nearest eat out of the same dish, for the Makololo chiefs pride +themselves on eating with their people. He eats a little, then beckons +his neighbors to partake. When they have done so, he perhaps beckons +to some one at a distance to take a share; that person starts forward, +seizes the pot, and removes it to his own companions. The comrades of +Sekeletu, wishing to imitate him in riding on my old horse, leaped +on the backs of a number of half-broken Batoka oxen as they ran, but, +having neither saddle nor bridle, the number of tumbles they met with +was a source of much amusement to the rest. Troops of leches, or, as +they are here called, "lechwes", appeared feeding quite heedlessly +all over the flats; they exist here in prodigious herds, although the +numbers of them and of the "nakong" that are killed annually must be +enormous. Both are water antelopes, and, when the lands we now tread +upon are flooded, they betake themselves to the mounds I have alluded +to. The Makalaka, who are most expert in the management of their small, +thin, light canoes, come gently toward them; the men stand upright in +the canoe, though it is not more than fifteen or eighteen inches wide +and about fifteen feet long; their paddles, ten feet in height, are of +a kind of wood called molompi, very light, yet as elastic as ash. With +these they either punt or paddle, according to the shallowness or depth +of the water. When they perceive the antelopes beginning to move they +increase their speed, and pursue them with great velocity. They make the +water dash away from the gunwale, and, though the leche goes off by a +succession of prodigious bounds, its feet appearing to touch the bottom +at each spring, they manage to spear great numbers of them. + +The nakong often shares a similar fate. This is a new species, rather +smaller than the leche, and in shape has more of paunchiness than any +antelope I ever saw. Its gait closely resembles the gallop of a dog +when tired. The hair is long and rather sparse, so that it is never +sleek-looking. It is of a grayish-brown color, and has horns twisted +in the manner of a koodoo, but much smaller, and with a double ridge +winding round each of them. + +Its habitat is the marsh and the muddy bogs; the great length of its +foot between the point of the toe and supplemental hoofs enables it to +make a print about a foot in length; it feeds by night, and lies hid +among the reeds and rushes by day; when pursued, it dashes into sedgy +places containing water, and immerses the whole body, leaving only the +point of the nose and ends of the horns exposed. The hunters burn +large patches of reed in order to drive the nakong out of his lair; +occasionally the ends of the horns project above the water; but when it +sees itself surrounded by enemies in canoes, it will rather allow +its horns to be scorched in the burning reed than come forth from its +hiding-place. + +When we arrived at any village the women all turned out to lulliloo +their chief. Their shrill voices, to which they give a tremulous sound +by a quick motion of the tongue, peal forth, "Great lion!" "Great +chief!" "Sleep, my lord!" etc. The men utter similar salutations; and +Sekeletu receives all with becoming indifference. After a few minutes' +conversation and telling the news, the head man of the village, who is +almost always a Makololo, rises, and brings forth a number of large pots +of beer. Calabashes, being used as drinking-cups, are handed round, and +as many as can partake of the beverage do so, grasping the vessels so +eagerly that they are in danger of being broken. + +They bring forth also large pots and bowls of thick milk; some contain +six or eight gallons; and each of these, as well as of the beer, is +given to a particular person, who has the power to divide it with +whom he pleases. The head man of any section of the tribe is generally +selected for this office. Spoons not being generally in fashion, the +milk is conveyed to the mouth with the hand. I often presented my +friends with iron spoons, and it was curious to observe how their habit +of hand-eating prevailed, though they were delighted with the spoons. +They lifted out a little with the utensil, then put it on the left hand, +and ate it out of that. + +As the Makololo have great abundance of cattle, and the chief is +expected to feed all who accompany him, he either selects an ox or +two of his own from the numerous cattle stations that he possesses at +different spots all over the country, or is presented by the head men of +the villages he visits with as many as he needs by way of tribute. The +animals are killed by a thrust from a small javelin in the region of +the heart, the wound being purposely small in order to avoid any loss +of blood, which, with the internal parts, are the perquisites of the +men who perform the work of the butcher; hence all are eager to render +service in that line. Each tribe has its own way of cutting up and +distributing an animal. Among the Makololo the hump and ribs belong to +the chief; among the Bakwains the breast is his perquisite. After the +oxen are cut up, the different joints are placed before Sekeletu, and he +apportions them among the gentlemen of the party. The whole is rapidly +divided by their attendants, cut into long strips, and so many of these +are thrown into the fires at once that they are nearly put out. Half +broiled and burning hot, the meat is quickly handed round; every one +gets a mouthful, but no one except the chief has time to masticate. It +is not the enjoyment of eating they aim at, but to get as much of the +food into the stomach as possible during the short time the others are +cramming as well as themselves, for no one can eat more than a mouthful +after the others have finished. They are eminently gregarious in their +eating; and, as they despise any one who eats alone, I always poured out +two cups of coffee at my own meals, so that the chief, or some one of +the principal men, might partake along with me. They all soon become +very fond of coffee; and, indeed, some of the tribes attribute greater +fecundity to the daily use of this beverage. They were all well +acquainted with the sugar-cane, as they cultivate it in the Barotse +country, but knew nothing of the method of extracting the sugar from it. +They use the cane only for chewing. Sekeletu, relishing the sweet coffee +and biscuits, of which I then had a store, said "he knew my heart loved +him by finding his own heart warming to my food." He had been visited +during my absence at the Cape by some traders and Griquas, and "their +coffee did not taste half so nice as mine, because they loved his ivory +and not himself." This was certainly an original mode of discerning +character. + +Sekeletu and I had each a little gipsy-tent in which to sleep. The +Makololo huts are generally clean, while those of the Makalaka are +infested with vermin. The cleanliness of the former is owing to the +habit of frequently smearing the floors with a plaster composed of +cowdung and earth. If we slept in the tent in some villages, the mice +ran over our faces and disturbed our sleep, or hungry prowling dogs +would eat our shoes and leave only the soles. When they were guilty of +this and other misdemeanors, we got the loan of a hut. The best sort +of Makololo huts consist of three circular walls, with small holes as +doors, each similar to that in a dog-house; and it is necessary to bend +down the body to get in, even when on all-fours. The roof is formed of +reeds or straight sticks, in shape like a Chinaman's hat, bound firmly +together with circular bands, which are lashed with the strong inner +bark of the mimosa-tree. When all prepared except the thatch, it is +lifted on to the circular wall, the rim resting on a circle of poles, +between each of which the third wall is built. The roof is thatched with +fine grass, and sewed with the same material as the lashings; and, as +it projects far beyond the walls, and reaches within four feet of the +ground, the shade is the best to be found in the country. These huts are +very cool in the hottest day, but are close and deficient in ventilation +by night. + +The bed is a mat made of rushes sewn together with twine; the hip-bone +soon becomes sore on the hard flat surface, as we are not allowed to +make a hole in the floor to receive the prominent part called trochanter +by anatomists, as we do when sleeping on grass or sand. + +Our course at this time led us to a part above Sesheke, called +Katonga, where there is a village belonging to a Bashubia man named +Sekhosi--latitude 17d 29' 13", longitude 24d 33'. The river here is +somewhat broader than at Sesheke, and certainly not less than six +hundred yards. It flows somewhat slowly in the first part of its eastern +course. When the canoes came from Sekhosi to take us over, one of the +comrades of Sebituane rose, and, looking to Sekeletu, called out, "The +elders of a host always take the lead in an attack." This was understood +at once; and Sekeletu, with all the young men, were obliged to give the +elders the precedence, and remain on the southern bank and see that all +went orderly into the canoes. It took a considerable time to ferry over +the whole of our large party, as, even with quick paddling, from six to +eight minutes were spent in the mere passage from bank to bank. + +Several days were spent in collecting canoes from different villages on +the river, which we now learned is called by the whole of the Barotse +the Liambai or Leeambye. This we could not ascertain on our first visit, +and, consequently, called the river after the town "Sesheke". This term +Sesheke means "white sand-banks", many of which exist at this part. +There is another village in the valley of the Barotse likewise called +Sesheke, and for the same reason; but the term Leeambye means "the +large river", or the river PAR EXCELLENCE. Luambeji, Luambesi, Ambezi, +Ojimbesi, and Zambesi, etc., are names applied to it at different +parts of its course, according to the dialect spoken, and all possess a +similar signification, and express the native idea of this magnificent +stream being the main drain of the country. + +In order to assist in the support of our large party, and at the same +time to see the adjacent country, I went several times, during our stay, +to the north of the village for game. The country is covered with clumps +of beautiful trees, among which fine open glades stretch away in every +direction; when the river is in flood these are inundated, but the +tree-covered elevated spots are much more numerous here than in the +country between the Chobe and the Leeambye. The soil is dark loam, as it +is every where on spots reached by the inundation, while among the trees +it is sandy, and not covered so densely with grass as elsewhere. A sandy +ridge covered with trees, running parallel to, and about eight miles +from the river, is the limit of the inundation on the north; there are +large tracts of this sandy forest in that direction, till you come to +other districts of alluvial soil and fewer trees. The latter soil is +always found in the vicinity of rivers which either now overflow their +banks annually, or formerly did so. The people enjoy rain in sufficient +quantity to raise very large supplies of grain and ground-nuts. + +This district contains great numbers of a small antelope named Tianyane, +unknown in the south. It stands about eighteen inches high, is very +graceful in its movements, and utters a cry of alarm not unlike that of +the domestic fowl; it is of a brownish-red color on the sides and back, +with the belly and lower part of the tail white; it is very timid, but +the maternal affection that the little thing bears to its young will +often induce it to offer battle even to a man approaching it. When the +young one is too tender to run about with the dam, she puts one foot +on the prominence about the seventh cervical vertebra, or withers; the +instinct of the young enables it to understand that it is now required +to kneel down, and to remain quite still till it hears the bleating of +its dam. If you see an otherwise gregarious she-antelope separated from +the herd, and going alone any where, you may be sure she has laid her +little one to sleep in some cozy spot. The color of the hair in the +young is better adapted for assimilating it with the ground than that of +the older animals, which do not need to be screened from the observation +of birds of prey. I observed the Arabs at Aden, when making their camels +kneel down, press the thumb on the withers in exactly the same way the +antelopes do with their young; probably they have been led to the custom +by seeing this plan adopted by the gazelle of the Desert. + +Great numbers of buffaloes, zebras, tsessebes, tahaetsi, and eland, or +pohu, grazed undisturbed on these plains, so that very little exertion +was required to secure a fair supply of meat for the party during the +necessary delay. Hunting on foot, as all those who have engaged in it in +this country will at once admit, is very hard work indeed. The heat of +the sun by day is so great, even in winter, as it now was, that, had +there been any one on whom I could have thrown the task, he would have +been most welcome to all the sport the toil is supposed to impart. But +the Makololo shot so badly, that, in order to save my powder, I was +obliged to go myself. + +We shot a beautiful cow-eland, standing in the shade of a fine tree. It +was evident that she had lately had her calf killed by a lion, for there +were five long deep scratches on both sides of her hind-quarters, as +if she had run to the rescue of her calf, and the lion, leaving it, had +attacked herself, but was unable to pull her down. When lying on the +ground, the milk flowing from the large udder showed that she must have +been seeking the shade, from the distress its non-removal in the natural +manner caused. She was a beautiful creature, and Lebeole, a Makololo +gentleman who accompanied me, speaking in reference to its size and +beauty, said, "Jesus ought to have given us these instead of cattle." It +was a new, undescribed variety of this splendid antelope. It was marked +with narrow white bands across the body, exactly like those of the +koodoo, and had a black patch of more than a handbreadth on the outer +side of the fore-arm. + + + + +Chapter 12. + +Procure Canoes and ascend the Leeambye--Beautiful Islands--Winter +Landscape--Industry and Skill of the Banyeti--Rapids--Falls of +Gonye--Tradition--Annual Inundations--Fertility of the great +Barotse Valley--Execution of two Conspirators--The Slave-dealer's +Stockade--Naliele, the Capital, built on an artificial Mound--Santuru, +a great Hunter--The Barotse Method of commemorating any remarkable +Event--Better Treatment of Women--More religious Feeling--Belief in a +future State, and in the Existence of spiritual Beings--Gardens--Fish, +Fruit, and Game--Proceed to the Limits of the Barotse Country-- +Sekeletu provides Rowers and a Herald--The River and Vicinity-- +Hippopotamus-hunters--No healthy Location--Determine to go to Loanda-- +Buffaloes, Elands, and Lions above Libonta--Interview with the Mambari-- +Two Arabs from Zanzibar--Their Opinion of the Portuguese and the English +--Reach the Town of Ma-Sekeletu--Joy of the People at the first Visit of +their Chief--Return to Sesheke--Heathenism. + + + +Having at last procured a sufficient number of canoes, we began to +ascend the river. I had the choice of the whole fleet, and selected the +best, though not the largest; it was thirty-four feet long by twenty +inches wide. I had six paddlers, and the larger canoe of Sekeletu had +ten. They stand upright, and keep the stroke with great precision, +though they change from side to side as the course demands. The men at +the head and stern are selected from the strongest and most expert of +the whole. The canoes, being flat bottomed, can go into very shallow +water; and whenever the men can feel the bottom they use the paddles, +which are about eight feet long, as poles to punt with. Our fleet +consisted of thirty-three canoes, and about one hundred and sixty men. +It was beautiful to see them skimming along so quickly, and keeping +the time so well. On land the Makalaka fear the Makololo; on water +the Makololo fear them, and can not prevent them from racing with +each other, dashing along at the top of their speed, and placing +their masters' lives in danger. In the event of a capsize, many of the +Makololo would sink like stones. A case of this kind happened on the +first day of our voyage up. The wind, blowing generally from the east, +raises very large waves on the Leeambye. An old doctor of the Makololo +had his canoe filled by one of these waves, and, being unable to swim, +was lost. The Barotse who were in the canoe with him saved themselves +by swimming, and were afraid of being punished with death in the evening +for not saving the doctor as well. Had he been a man of more influence, +they certainly would have suffered death. + +We proceeded rapidly up the river, and I felt the pleasure of looking +on lands which had never been seen by a European before. The river is, +indeed, a magnificent one, often more than a mile broad, and adorned +with many islands of from three to five miles in length. Both islands +and banks are covered with forest, and most of the trees on the brink of +the water send down roots from their branches like the banian, or 'Ficus +Indica'. The islands at a little distance seem great rounded masses of +sylvan vegetation reclining on the bosom of the glorious stream. The +beauty of the scenery of some of the islands is greatly increased by the +date-palm, with its gracefully curved fronds and refreshing light green +color, near the bottom of the picture, and the lofty palmyra towering +far above, and casting its feathery foliage against a cloudless sky. It +being winter, we had the strange coloring on the banks which many parts +of African landscape assume. The country adjacent to the river is rocky +and undulating, abounding in elephants and all other large game, except +leches and nakongs, which seem generally to avoid stony ground. The soil +is of a reddish color, and very fertile, as is attested by the great +quantity of grain raised annually by the Banyeti. A great many villages +of this poor and very industrious people are situated on both banks of +the river: they are expert hunters of the hippopotami and other animals, +and very proficient in the manufacture of articles of wood and iron. The +whole of this part of the country being infested with the tsetse, they +are unable to rear domestic animals. This may have led to their skill +in handicraft works. Some make large wooden vessels with very neat lids, +and wooden bowls of all sizes; and since the idea of sitting on stools +has entered the Makololo mind, they have shown great taste in the +different forms given to the legs of these pieces of furniture. + +Other Banyeti, or Manyeti, as they are called, make neat and strong +baskets of the split roots of a certain tree, while others excel in +pottery and iron. I can not find that they have ever been warlike. +Indeed, the wars in the centre of the country, where no slave-trade +existed, have seldom been about any thing else but cattle. So well known +is this, that several tribes refuse to keep cattle because they tempt +their enemies to come and steal. Nevertheless, they have no objection to +eat them when offered, and their country admits of being well stocked. +I have heard of but one war having occurred from another cause. Three +brothers, Barolongs, fought for the possession of a woman who was +considered worth a battle, and the tribe has remained permanently +divided ever since. + +From the bend up to the north, called Katima-molelo (I quenched fire), +the bed of the river is rocky, and the stream runs fast, forming a +succession of rapids and cataracts, which prevent continuous navigation +when the water is low. The rapids are not visible when the river is +full, but the cataracts of Nambwe, Bombwe, and Kale must always be +dangerous. The fall at each of these is between four and six feet. But +the falls of Gonye present a much more serious obstacle. There we were +obliged to take the canoes out of the water, and carry them more than +a mile by land. The fall is about thirty feet. The main body of water, +which comes over the ledge of rock when the river is low, is collected +into a space seventy or eighty yards wide before it takes the leap, and, +a mass of rock being thrust forward against the roaring torrent, a loud +sound is produced. Tradition reports the destruction in this place of +two hippopotamus-hunters, who, over-eager in the pursuit of a wounded +animal, were, with their intended prey, drawn down into the frightful +gulf. There is also a tradition of a man, evidently of a superior mind, +who left his own countrymen, the Barotse, and came down the river, took +advantage of the falls, and led out a portion of the water there for +irrigation. Such minds must have arisen from time to time in these +regions, as well as in our own country, but, ignorant of the use of +letters, they have left no memorial behind them. We dug out some of an +inferior kind of potato ('Sisinyane') from his garden, for when once +planted it never dies out. This root is bitter and waxy, though it +is cultivated. It was not in flower, so I can not say whether it is a +solanaceous plant or not. One never expects to find a grave nor a stone +of remembrance set up in Africa; the very rocks are illiterate, they +contain so few fossils. Those here are of reddish variegated, hardened +sandstone, with madrepore holes in it. This, and broad horizontal strata +of trap, sometimes a hundred miles in extent, and each layer having an +inch or so of black silicious matter on it, as if it had floated there +while in a state of fusion, form a great part of the bottom of the +central valley. These rocks, in the southern part of the country +especially, are often covered with twelve or fifteen feet of soft +calcareous tufa. At Bombwe we have the same trap, with radiated zeolite, +probably mesotype, and it again appears at the confluence of the Chobe, +farther down. + +As we passed up the river, the different villages of Banyeti turned out +to present Sekeletu with food and skins, as their tribute. One large +village is placed at Gonye, the inhabitants of which are required to +assist the Makololo to carry their canoes past the falls. The tsetse +here lighted on us even in the middle of the stream. This we crossed +repeatedly, in order to make short cuts at bends of the river. The +course is, however, remarkably straight among the rocks; and here the +river is shallow, on account of the great breadth of surface which it +covers. When we came to about 16d 16' S. latitude, the high wooded banks +seemed to leave the river, and no more tsetse appeared. Viewed from +the flat, reedy basin in which the river then flowed, the banks seemed +prolonged into ridges, of the same wooded character, two or three +hundred feet high, and stretched away to the N.N.E. and N.N.W. until +they were twenty or thirty miles apart. The intervening space, nearly +one hundred miles in length, with the Leeambye winding gently near the +middle, is the true Barotse valley. It bears a close resemblance to the +valley of the Nile, and is inundated annually, not by rains, but by the +Leeambye, exactly as Lower Egypt is flooded by the Nile. The villages +of the Barotse are built on mounds, some of which are said to have +been raised artificially by Santuru, a former chief of the Barotse, and +during the inundation the whole valley assumes the appearance of a large +lake, with the villages on the mounds like islands, just as occurs in +Egypt with the villages of the Egyptians. Some portion of the waters of +inundation comes from the northwest, where great floodings also occur, +but more comes from the north and northeast, descending the bed of the +Leeambye itself. There are but few trees in this valley: those which +stand on the mounds were nearly all transplanted by Santuru for shade. +The soil is extremely fertile, and the people are never in want of +grain, for, by taking advantage of the moisture of the inundation, they +can take two crops a year. The Barotse are strongly attached to this +fertile valley; they say, "Here hunger is not known." There are so many +things besides corn which a man can find in it for food, that it is no +wonder they desert from Linyanti to return to this place. + +The great valley is not put to a tithe of the use it might be. It is +covered with coarse succulent grasses, which afford ample pasturage for +large herds of cattle; these thrive wonderfully, and give milk copiously +to their owners. When the valley is flooded, the cattle are compelled to +leave it and go to the higher lands, where they fall off in condition; +their return is a time of joy. + +It is impossible to say whether this valley, which contains so much +moisture, would raise wheat as the valley of the Nile does. It is +probably too rich, and would make corn run entirely to straw, for one +species of grass was observed twelve feet high, with a stem as thick as +a man's thumb. At present the pasturage is never eaten off, though the +Makololo possess immense herds of cattle. + +There are no large towns, the mounds on which the towns and villages are +built being all small, and the people require to live apart on account +of their cattle. + +This visit was the first Sekeletu had made to these parts since he +attained the chieftainship. Those who had taken part with Mpepe were +consequently in great terror. When we came to the town of Mpepe's +father, as he and another man had counseled Mamochisane to put Sekeletu +to death and marry Mpepe, the two were led forth and tossed into the +river. Nokuane was again one of the executioners. When I remonstrated +against human blood being shed in the offhand way in which they were +proceeding, the counselors justified their acts by the evidence given by +Mamochisane, and calmly added, "You see we are still Boers; we are not +yet taught." + +Mpepe had given full permission to the Mambari slave-dealers to trade +in all the Batoka and Bashukulompo villages to the east of this. He had +given them cattle, ivory, and children, and had received in return +a large blunderbuss to be mounted as a cannon. When the slight +circumstance of my having covered the body of the chief with my own +deranged the whole conspiracy, the Mambari, in their stockade, were +placed in very awkward circumstances. It was proposed to attack them and +drive them out of the country at once; but, dreading a commencement of +hostilities, I urged the difficulties of that course, and showed that +a stockade defended by perhaps forty muskets would be a very serious +affair. "Hunger is strong enough for that," said an under-chief; "a very +great fellow is he." They thought of attacking them by starvation. As +the chief sufferers in case of such an attack would have been the poor +slaves chained in gangs, I interceded for them, and the result of an +intercession of which they were ignorant was that they were allowed to +depart in peace. + +Naliele, the capital of the Barotse, is built on a mound which was +constructed artificially by Santuru, and was his store-house for grain. +His own capital stood about five hundred yards to the south of that, in +what is now the bed of the river. All that remains of the largest mound +in the valley are a few cubic yards of earth, to erect which cost the +whole of the people of Santuru the labor of many years. The same thing +has happened to another ancient site of a town, Linangelo, also on the +left bank. It would seem, therefore, that the river in this part of the +valley must be wearing eastward. No great rise of the river is required +to submerge the whole valley; a rise of ten feet above the present +low-water mark would reach the highest point it ever attains, as seen in +the markings of the bank on which stood Santuru's ancient capital, +and two or three feet more would deluge all the villages. This never +happens, though the water sometimes comes so near the foundations of +the huts that the people can not move outside the walls of reeds which +encircle their villages. When the river is compressed among the high +rocky banks near Gonye, it rises sixty feet. + +The influence of the partial obstruction it meets with there is seen +in the more winding course of the river north of 16 Deg.; and when the +swell gets past Katima-molelo, it spreads out on the lands on both banks +toward Sesheke. + +Santuru, at whose ancient granary we are staying, was a great hunter, +and very fond of taming wild animals. His people, aware of his taste, +brought to him every young antelope they could catch, and, among other +things, two young hippopotami. These animals gamboled in the river +by day, but never failed to remember to come up to Naliele for their +suppers of milk and meal. They were the wonder of the country, till a +stranger, happening to come to visit Santuru, saw them reclining in the +sun, and speared one of them on the supposition that it was wild. The +same unlucky accident happened to one of the cats I had brought to +Sekeletu. A stranger, seeing an animal he had never viewed before, +killed it, and brought the trophy to the chief, thinking that he had +made a very remarkable discovery; we thereby lost the breed of cats, of +which, from the swarms of mice, we stood in great need. + +On making inquiries to ascertain whether Santuru, the Moloiana, had ever +been visited by white men, I could find no vestige of any such visit;* +there is no evidence of any of Santuru's people having ever seen a white +man before the arrival of Mr. Oswell and myself in 1851. The people +have, it is true, no written records; but any remarkable event here is +commemorated in names, as was observed by Park to be the case in the +countries he traversed. The year of our arrival is dignified by the name +of the year when the white men came, or of Sebituane's death; but they +prefer the former, as they avoid, if possible, any direct reference to +the departed. After my wife's first visit, great numbers of children +were named Ma-Robert, or mother of Robert, her eldest child; others were +named Gun, Horse, Wagon, Monare, Jesus, etc.; but though our names, and +those of the native Portuguese who came in 1853, were adopted, there is +not a trace of any thing of the sort having happened previously among +the Barotse: the visit of a white man is such a remarkable event, that, +had any taken place during the last three hundred years, there must have +remained some tradition of it. + + * The Barotse call themselves the Baloiana or little Baloi, as + if they had been an offset from Loi, or Lui, as it is often + spelt. As Lui had been visited by Portuguese, but its position + not well ascertained, my inquiries referred to the identity of + Naliele with Lui. On asking the head man of the Mambari + party, named Porto, whether he had ever heard of Naliele being + visited previously, he replied in the negative, and stated + that he "had himself attempted to come from Bihe three times, + but had always been prevented by the tribe called Ganguellas." + He nearly succeeded in 1852, but was driven back. He now (in + 1853) attempted to go eastward from Naliele, but came back to + the Barotse on being unable to go beyond Kainko's village, + which is situated on the Bashukulompo River, and eight days + distant. The whole party was anxious to secure a reward + believed to be promised by the Portuguese government. Their + want of success confirmed my impression that I ought to go + westward. Porto kindly offered to aid me, if I would go with + him to Bihe; but when I declined, he preceded me to Loanda, + and was publishing his Journal when I arrived at that city. + Ben Habib told me that Porto had sent letters to Mozambique by + the Arab, Ben Chombo, whom I knew; and he has since asserted, + in Portugal, that he himself went to Mozambique as well as his + letters! + +But Santuru was once visited by the Mambari, and a distinct recollection +of that visit is retained. They came to purchase slaves, and both +Santuru and his head men refused them permission to buy any of the +people. The Makololo quoted this precedent when speaking of the Mambari, +and said that they, as the present masters of the country, had as good +a right to expel them as Santuru. The Mambari reside near Bihe, under +an Ambonda chief named Kangombe. They profess to use the slaves for +domestic purposes alone. + +Some of these Mambari visited us while at Naliele. They are of the +Ambonda family, which inhabits the country southeast of Angola, and +speak the Bunda dialect, which is of the same family of languages with +the Barotse, Bayeiye, etc., or those black tribes comprehended under the +general term Makalaka. They plait their hair in three-fold cords, and +lay them carefully down around the sides of the head. They are quite as +dark as the Barotse, but have among them a number of half-castes, with +their peculiar yellow sickly hue. On inquiring why they had fled on my +approach to Linyanti, they let me know that they had a vivid idea of the +customs of English cruisers on the coast. They showed also their habits +in their own country by digging up and eating, even here where +large game abounds, the mice and moles which infest the country. The +half-castes, or native Portuguese, could all read and write, and the +head of the party, if not a real Portuguese, had European hair, and, +influenced probably by the letter of recommendation which I held from +the Chevalier Duprat, his most faithful majesty's Arbitrator in the +British and Portuguese Mixed Commission at Cape Town, was evidently +anxious to show me all the kindness in his power. These persons I feel +assured were the first individuals of Portuguese blood who ever saw the +Zambesi in the centre of the country, and they had reached it two years +after our discovery in 1851. + +The town or mound of Santuru's mother was shown to me; this was the +first symptom of an altered state of feeling with regard to the female +sex that I had observed. There are few or no cases of women being +elevated to the headships of towns further south. The Barotse also +showed some relics of their chief, which evinced a greater amount of the +religious feeling than I had ever known displayed among Bechuanas. His +more recent capital, Lilonda, built, too, on an artificial mound, +is covered with different kinds of trees, transplanted when young by +himself. They form a grove on the end of the mound, in which are to be +seen various instruments of iron just in the state he left them. One +looks like the guard of a basket-hilted sword; another has an upright +stem of the metal, on which are placed branches worked at the ends into +miniature axes, hoes, and spears; on these he was accustomed to present +offerings, according as he desired favors to be conferred in undertaking +hewing, agriculture, or fighting. The people still living there, in +charge of these articles, were supported by presents from the chief; and +the Makololo sometimes follow the example. This was the nearest approach +to a priesthood I met. When I asked them to part with one of these +relics, they replied, "Oh no, he refuses." "Who refuses?" "Santuru," was +their reply, showing their belief in a future state of existence. After +explaining to them, as I always did when opportunity offered, the nature +of true worship, and praying with them in the simple form which needs no +offering from the worshiper except that of the heart, and planting some +fruit-tree seeds in the grove, we departed. + +Another incident, which occurred at the confluence of the Leeba and +Leeambye, may be mentioned here, as showing a more vivid perception of +the existence of spiritual beings, and greater proneness to worship than +among the Bechuanas. Having taken lunar observations in the morning, +I was waiting for a meridian altitude of the sun for the latitude; my +chief boatman was sitting by, in order to pack up the instruments +as soon as I had finished; there was a large halo, about 20 Deg. in +diameter, round the sun; thinking that the humidity of the atmosphere, +which this indicated, might betoken rain, I asked him if his experience +did not lead him to the same view. "Oh no," replied he; "it is the +Barimo (gods or departed spirits), who have called a picho; don't you +see they have the Lord (sun) in the centre?" + +While still at Naliele I walked out to Katongo (lat. 15d 16' 33"), on +the ridge which bounds the valley of the Barotse in that direction, and +found it covered with trees. It is only the commencement of the lands +which are never inundated; their gentle rise from the dead level of the +valley much resembles the edge of the Desert in the valley of the Nile. +But here the Banyeti have fine gardens, and raise great quantities of +maize, millet, and native corn ('Holcus sorghum'), of large grain and +beautifully white. They grow, also, yams, sugar-cane, the Egyptian +arum, sweet potato ('Convolulus batata'), two kinds of manioc or cassava +('Jatropha manihot' and 'J. utilissima', a variety containing scarcely +any poison), besides pumpkins, melons, beans, and ground-nuts. These, +with plenty of fish in the river, its branches and lagoons, wild fruits +and water-fowl, always make the people refer to the Barotse as the land +of plenty. The scene from the ridge, on looking back, was beautiful. One +can not see the western side of the valley in a cloudy day, such as +that was when we visited the stockade, but we could see the great river +glancing out at different points, and fine large herds of cattle quietly +grazing on the green succulent herbage, among numbers of cattle-stations +and villages which are dotted over the landscape. Leches in hundreds +fed securely beside them, for they have learned only to keep out of +bow-shot, or two hundred yards. When guns come into a country the +animals soon learn their longer range, and begin to run at a distance of +five hundred yards. + +I imagined the slight elevation (Katongo) might be healthy, but was +informed that no part of this region is exempt from fever. When +the waters begin to retire from this valley, such masses of decayed +vegetation and mud are exposed to the torrid sun that even the natives +suffer severely from attacks of fever. The grass is so rank in its +growth that one can not see the black alluvial soil of the bottom of +this periodical lake. Even when the grass falls down in winter, or is +"laid" by its own weight, one is obliged to lift the feet so high, to +avoid being tripped up by it, as to make walking excessively fatiguing. +Young leches are hidden beneath it by their dams; and the Makololo youth +complain of being unable to run in the Barotse land on this account. +There was evidently no healthy spot in this quarter; and the current of +the river being about four and a half miles per hour (one hundred yards +in sixty seconds), I imagined we might find what we needed in the higher +lands, from which the river seemed to come. I resolved, therefore, to +go to the utmost limits of the Barotse country before coming to a final +conclusion. Katongo was the best place we had seen; but, in order to +accomplish a complete examination, I left Sekeletu at Naliele, and +ascended the river. He furnished me with men, besides my rowers, and +among the rest a herald, that I might enter his villages in what is +considered a dignified manner. This, it was supposed, would be effected +by the herald shouting out at the top of his voice, "Here comes the +lord; the great lion;" the latter phrase being "tau e tona", which, in +his imperfect way of pronunciation, became "Sau e tona", and so like +"the great sow" that I could not receive the honor with becoming +gravity, and had to entreat him, much to the annoyance of my party, to +be silent. + +In our ascent we visited a number of Makololo villages, and were always +received with a hearty welcome, as messengers to them of peace, which +they term "sleep". They behave well in public meetings, even on the +first occasion of attendance, probably from the habit of commanding the +Makalaka, crowds of whom swarm in every village, and whom the Makololo +women seem to consider as especially under their charge. + +The river presents the same appearance of low banks without trees as +we have remarked it had after we came to 16d 16', until we arrive at +Libonta (14d 59' S. lat.). Twenty miles beyond that, we find forest down +to the water's edge, and tsetse. Here I might have turned back, as no +locality can be inhabited by Europeans where that scourge exists; but +hearing that we were not far from the confluence of the River of Londa +or Lunda, named Leeba or Loiba, and the chiefs of that country being +reported to be friendly to strangers, and therefore likely to be of use +to me on my return from the west coast, I still pushed on to latitude +14d 11' 3" S. There the Leeambye assumes the name Kabompo, and seems to +be coming from the east. It is a fine large river, about three hundred +yards wide, and the Leeba two hundred and fifty. The Loeti, a branch of +which is called Langebongo, comes from W.N.W., through a level grassy +plain named Mango; it is about one hundred yards wide, and enters the +Leeambye from the west; the waters of the Loeti are of a light color, +and those of the Leeba of a dark mossy hue. After the Loeti joins +the Leeambye the different colored waters flow side by side for some +distance unmixed. + +Before reaching the Loeti we came to a number of people from the Lobale +region, hunting hippopotami. They fled precipitately as soon as they saw +the Makololo, leaving their canoes and all their utensils and clothing. +My own Makalaka, who were accustomed to plunder wherever they went, +rushed after them like furies, totally regardless of my shouting. As +this proceeding would have destroyed my character entirely at Lobale, I +took my stand on a commanding position as they returned, and forced them +to lay down all the plunder on a sand-bank, and leave it there for its +lawful owners. + +It was now quite evident that no healthy location could be obtained in +which the Makololo would be allowed to live in peace. I had thus a fair +excuse, if I had chosen to avail myself of it, of coming home and saying +that the "door was shut", because the Lord's time had not yet come. But +believing that it was my duty to devote some portion of my life to these +(to me at least) very confiding and affectionate Makololo, I resolved +to follow out the second part of my plan, though I had failed in +accomplishing the first. The Leeba seemed to come from the N. and by +W., or N.N.W.; so, having an old Portuguese map, which pointed out the +Coanza as rising from the middle of the continent in 9 Deg. S. lat., I +thought it probable that, when we had ascended the Leeba (from 14d 11') +two or three degrees, we should then be within one hundred and twenty +miles of the Coanza, and find no difficulty in following it down to the +coast near Loanda. This was the logical deduction; but, as is the +case with many a plausible theory, one of the premises was decidedly +defective. The Coanza, as we afterward found, does not come from any +where near the centre of the country. + +The numbers of large game above Libonta are prodigious, and they proved +remarkably tame. Eighty-one buffaloes defiled in slow procession before +our fire one evening, within gunshot; and herds of splendid elands stood +by day, without fear, at two hundred yards distance. They were all of +the striped variety, and with their forearm markings, large dewlaps, +and sleek skins, were a beautiful sight to see. The lions here roar much +more than in the country near the lake, Zouga, and Chobe. One evening +we had a good opportunity of hearing the utmost exertions the animal can +make in that line. We had made our beds on a large sand-bank, and could +be easily seen from all sides. A lion on the opposite shore amused +himself for hours by roaring as loudly as he could, putting, as is usual +in such cases, his mouth near the ground, to make the sound reverberate. +The river was too broad for a ball to reach him, so we let him enjoy +himself, certain that he durst not have been guilty of the impertinence +in the Bushman country. Wherever the game abounds, these animals exist +in proportionate numbers. Here they were very frequently seen, and two +of the largest I ever saw seemed about as tall as common donkeys; but +the mane made their bodies appear rather larger. + +A party of Arabs from Zanzibar were in the country at this time. +Sekeletu had gone from Naliele to the town of his mother before we +arrived from the north, but left an ox for our use, and instructions for +us to follow him thither. We came down a branch of the Leeambye called +Marile, which departs from the main river in latitude 15d 15' 43" S., +and is a fine deep stream about sixty yards wide. It makes the whole of +the country around Naliele an island. When sleeping at a village in the +same latitude as Naliele town, two of the Arabs mentioned made their +appearance. They were quite as dark as the Makololo, but, having +their heads shaved, I could not compare their hair with that of the +inhabitants of the country. When we were about to leave they came to bid +adieu, but I asked them to stay and help us to eat our ox. As they had +scruples about eating an animal not blooded in their own way, I gained +their good-will by saying I was quite of their opinion as to getting +quit of the blood, and gave them two legs of an animal slaughtered by +themselves. They professed the greatest detestation of the Portuguese, +"because they eat pigs;" and disliked the English, "because they thrash +them for selling slaves." I was silent about pork; though, had they seen +me at a hippopotamus two days afterward, they would have set me down as +being as much a heretic as any of that nation; but I ventured to tell +them that I agreed with the English, that it was better to let the +children grow up and comfort their mothers when they became old, than to +carry them away and sell them across the sea. This they never attempt +to justify; "they want them only to cultivate the land, and take care +of them as their children." It is the same old story, justifying a +monstrous wrong on pretense of taking care of those degraded portions of +humanity which can not take care of themselves; doing evil that good may +come. + +These Arabs, or Moors, could read and write their own language readily; +and, when speaking about our Savior, I admired the boldness with which +they informed me "that Christ was a very good prophet, but Mohammed was +far greater." And with respect to their loathing of pork, it may have +some foundation in their nature; for I have known Bechuanas, who had +no prejudice against the wild animal, and ate the tame without scruple, +yet, unconscious of any cause of disgust, vomit it again. The Bechuanas +south of the lake have a prejudice against eating fish, and allege a +disgust to eating any thing like a serpent. This may arise from the +remnants of serpent-worship floating in their minds, as, in addition +to this horror of eating such animals, they sometimes render a sort +of obeisance to living serpents by clapping their hands to them, and +refusing to destroy the reptiles; but in the case of the hog they are +conscious of no superstitious feeling. + +Having parted with our Arab friends, we proceeded down the Marile till +we re-entered the Leeambye, and went to the town of Ma-Sekeletu (mother +of Sekeletu), opposite the island of Loyela. Sekeletu had always +supplied me most liberally with food, and, as soon as I arrived, +presented me with a pot of boiled meat, while his mother handed me a +large jar of butter, of which they make great quantities for the purpose +of anointing their bodies. He had himself sometimes felt the benefit of +my way of putting aside a quantity of the meat after a meal, and had +now followed my example by ordering some to be kept for me. According +to their habits, every particle of an ox is devoured at one meal; and as +the chief can not, without a deviation from their customs, eat alone, he +is often compelled to suffer severely from hunger before another meal is +ready. We henceforth always worked into each other's hands by saving a +little for each other; and when some of the sticklers for use and custom +grumbled, I advised them to eat like men, and not like vultures. + +As this was the first visit which Sekeletu had paid to this part of his +dominions, it was to many a season of great joy. The head men of each +village presented oxen, milk, and beer, more than the horde which +accompanied him could devour, though their abilities in that line are +something wonderful. The people usually show their joy and work off +their excitement in dances and songs. The dance consists of the men +standing nearly naked in a circle, with clubs or small battle-axes in +their hands, and each roaring at the loudest pitch of his voice, while +they simultaneously lift one leg, stamp heavily twice with it, then lift +the other and give one stamp with that; this is the only movement +in common. The arms and head are often thrown about also in every +direction; and all this time the roaring is kept up with the utmost +possible vigor; the continued stamping makes a cloud of dust ascend, and +they leave a deep ring in the ground where they stood. If the scene were +witnessed in a lunatic asylum it would be nothing out of the way, +and quite appropriate even, as a means of letting off the excessive +excitement of the brain; but here gray-headed men joined in the +performance with as much zest as others whose youth might be an excuse +for making the perspiration stream off their bodies with the exertion. +Motibe asked what I thought of the Makololo dance. I replied, "It is +very hard work, and brings but small profit." "It is," replied he, "but +it is very nice, and Sekeletu will give us an ox for dancing for him." +He usually does slaughter an ox for the dancers when the work is over. + +The women stand by, clapping their hands, and occasionally one advances +into the circle, composed of a hundred men, makes a few movements, +and then retires. As I never tried it, and am unable to enter into +the spirit of the thing, I can not recommend the Makololo polka to the +dancing world, but I have the authority of no less a person than Motibe, +Sekeletu's father-in-law, for saying "it is very nice." They often asked +if white people ever danced. I thought of the disease called St. Vitus's +dance, but could not say that all our dancers were affected by it, and +gave an answer which, I ought to be ashamed to own, did not raise some +of our young countrywomen in the estimation of the Makololo. + +As Sekeletu had been waiting for me at his mother's, we left the town +as soon as I arrived, and proceeded down the river. Our speed with the +stream was very great, for in one day we went from Litofe to Gonye, +a distance of forty-four miles of latitude; and if we add to this the +windings of the river, in longitude the distance will not be much less +than sixty geographical miles. At this rate we soon reached Sesheke, and +then the town of Linyanti. + +I had been, during a nine weeks' tour, in closer contact with heathenism +than I had ever been before; and though all, including the chief, were +as kind and attentive to me as possible, and there was no want of +food (oxen being slaughtered daily, sometimes ten at a time, more than +sufficient for the wants of all), yet to endure the dancing, roaring, +and singing, the jesting, anecdotes, grumbling, quarreling, and +murdering of these children of nature, seemed more like a severe penance +than any thing I had before met with in the course of my missionary +duties. I took thence a more intense disgust at heathenism than I had +before, and formed a greatly elevated opinion of the latent effects of +missions in the south, among tribes which are reported to have been +as savage as the Makololo. The indirect benefits which, to a casual +observer, lie beneath the surface and are inappreciable, in reference +to the probable wide diffusion of Christianity at some future time, are +worth all the money and labor that have been expended to produce them. + + + + +Chapter 13. + +Preliminary Arrangements for the Journey--A Picho--Twenty-seven Men +appointed to accompany me to the West--Eagerness of the Makololo for +direct Trade with the Coast--Effects of Fever--A Makololo Question--The +lost Journal--Reflections--The Outfit for the Journey--11th +November, 1853, leave Linyanti, and embark on the Chobe--Dangerous +Hippopotami--Banks of Chobe--Trees--The Course of the River--The +Island Mparia at the Confluence of the Chobe and the Leeambye-- +Anecdote--Ascend the Leeambye--A Makalaka Mother defies the Authority of +the Makololo Head Man at Sesheke--Punishment of Thieves--Observance +of the new Moon--Public Addresses at Sesheke--Attention of the +People--Results--Proceed up the River--The Fruit which yields 'Nux +vomica'--Other Fruits--The Rapids--Birds--Fish--Hippopotami and their +Young. + + + +Linyanti, SEPTEMBER, 1853. The object proposed to the Makololo seemed so +desirable that it was resolved to proceed with it as soon as the cooling +influence of the rains should be felt in November. The longitude and +latitude of Linyanti (lat. 18d 17' 20" S., long. 23d 50' 9" E.) showed +that St. Philip de Benguela was much nearer to us than Loanda; and I +might have easily made arrangements with the Mambari to allow me to +accompany them as far as Bihe, which is on the road to that port; but it +is so undesirable to travel in a path once trodden by slave-traders that +I preferred to find out another line of march. + +Accordingly, men were sent at my suggestion to examine all the country +to the west, to see if any belt of country free from tsetse could be +found to afford us an outlet. The search was fruitless. The town +and district of Linyanti are surrounded by forests infested by this +poisonous insect, except at a few points, as that by which we entered +at Sanshureh and another at Sesheke. But the lands both east and west of +the Barotse valley are free from this insect plague. There, however, the +slave-trade had defiled the path, and no one ought to follow in its wake +unless well armed. The Mambari had informed me that many English lived +at Loanda, so I prepared to go thither. The prospect of meeting with +countrymen seemed to overbalance the toils of the longer march. + +A "picho" was called to deliberate on the steps proposed. In these +assemblies great freedom of speech is allowed; and on this occasion one +of the old diviners said, "Where is he taking you to? This white man is +throwing you away. Your garments already smell of blood." It is curious +to observe how much identity of character appears all over the world. +This man was a noted croaker. He always dreamed something dreadful in +every expedition, and was certain that an eclipse or comet betokened +the propriety of flight. But Sebituane formerly set his visions down to +cowardice, and Sekeletu only laughed at him now. The general voice was +in my favor; so a band of twenty-seven were appointed to accompany me to +the west. These men were not hired, but sent to enable me to accomplish +an object as much desired by the chief and most of his people as by me. +They were eager to obtain free and profitable trade with white men. The +prices which the Cape merchants could give, after defraying the great +expenses of a long journey hither, being very small, made it scarce +worth while for the natives to collect produce for that market; and the +Mambari, giving only a few bits of print and baize for elephants' tusks +worth more pounds than they gave yards of cloth, had produced the belief +that trade with them was throwing ivory away. The desire of the Makololo +for direct trade with the sea-coast coincided exactly with my own +conviction that no permanent elevation of a people can be effected +without commerce. Neither could there be a permanent mission here, +unless the missionaries should descend to the level of the Makololo, for +even at Kolobeng we found that traders demanded three or four times the +price of the articles we needed, and expected us to be grateful to them +besides for letting us have them at all. + +The three men whom I had brought from Kuruman had frequent relapses of +the fever; so, finding that instead of serving me I had to wait on them, +I decided that they should return to the south with Fleming as soon +as he had finished his trading. I was then entirely dependent on my +twenty-seven men, whom I might name Zambesians, for there were two +Makololo only, while the rest consisted of Barotse, Batoka, Bashubia, +and two of the Ambonda. + +The fever had caused considerable weakness in my own frame, and a +strange giddiness when I looked up suddenly to any celestial object, for +every thing seemed to rush to the left, and if I did not catch hold of +some object, I fell heavily on the ground: something resembling a gush +of bile along the duct from the liver caused the same fit to occur at +night, whenever I turned suddenly round. + +The Makololo now put the question, "In the event of your death, will +not the white people blame us for having allowed you to go away into +an unhealthy, unknown country of enemies?" I replied that none of my +friends would blame them, because I would leave a book with Sekeletu, to +be sent to Mr. Moffat in case I did not return, which would explain to +him all that had happened until the time of my departure. The book was +a volume of my Journal; and, as I was detained longer than I expected at +Loanda, this book, with a letter, was delivered by Sekeletu to a trader, +and I have been unable to trace it. I regret this now, as it contained +valuable notes on the habits of wild animals, and the request was made +in the letter to convey the volume to my family. The prospect of passing +away from this fair and beautiful world thus came before me in a pretty +plain, matter-of-fact form, and it did seem a serious thing to leave +wife and children--to break up all connection with earth, and enter on +an untried state of existence; and I find myself in my journal pondering +over that fearful migration which lands us in eternity, wondering +whether an angel will soothe the fluttering soul, sadly flurried as it +must be on entering the spirit world, and hoping that Jesus might +speak but one word of peace, for that would establish in the bosom an +everlasting calm. But as I had always believed that, if we serve God +at all, it ought to be done in a manly way, I wrote to my brother, +commending our little girl to his care, as I was determined to "succeed +or perish" in the attempt to open up this part of Africa. The Boers, by +taking possession of all my goods, had saved me the trouble of making +a will; and, considering the light heart now left in my bosom, and some +faint efforts to perform the duty of Christian forgiveness, I felt that +it was better to be the plundered party than one of the plunderers. + +When I committed the wagon and remaining goods to the care of the +Makololo, they took all the articles except one box into their huts; +and two warriors, Ponuane and Mahale, brought forward each a fine heifer +calf. After performing a number of warlike evolutions, they asked the +chief to witness the agreement made between them, that whoever of the +two should kill a Matebele warrior first, in defense of the wagon, +should possess both the calves. + +I had three muskets for my people, a rifle and double-barreled +smooth-bore for myself; and, having seen such great abundance of game in +my visit to the Leeba, I imagined that I could easily supply the wants +of my party. Wishing also to avoid the discouragement which would +naturally be felt on meeting any obstacles if my companions were obliged +to carry heavy loads, I took only a few biscuits, a few pounds of tea +and sugar, and about twenty of coffee, which, as the Arabs find, though +used without either milk or sugar, is a most refreshing beverage after +fatigue or exposure to the sun. We carried one small tin canister, about +fifteen inches square, filled with spare shirting, trowsers, and shoes, +to be used when we reached civilized life, and others in a bag, which +were expected to wear out on the way; another of the same size for +medicines; and a third for books, my stock being a Nautical Almanac, +Thomson's Logarithm Tables, and a Bible; a fourth box contained a magic +lantern, which we found of much use. The sextant and artificial horizon, +thermometer, and compasses were carried apart. My ammunition was +distributed in portions through the whole luggage, so that, if an +accident should befall one part, we could still have others to fall back +upon. Our chief hopes for food were upon that; but in case of failure, +I took about 20 lbs. of beads, worth 40s., which still remained of the +stock I brought from Cape Town, a small gipsy tent, just sufficient to +sleep in, a sheep-skin mantle as a blanket, and a horse-rug as a bed. As +I had always found that the art of successful travel consisted in taking +as few "impedimenta" as possible, and not forgetting to carry my wits +about me, the outfit was rather spare, and intended to be still more +so when we should come to leave the canoes. Some would consider it +injudicious to adopt this plan, but I had a secret conviction that if +I did not succeed, it would not be for want of the "knick-knacks" +advertised as indispensable for travelers, but from want of "pluck", +or because a large array of baggage excited the cupidity of the tribes +through whose country we wished to pass. + +The instruments I carried, though few, were the best of their kind. +A sextant, by the famed makers Troughton and Sims, of Fleet Street; +a chronometer watch, with a stop to the seconds hand--an admirable +contrivance for enabling a person to take the exact time of +observations: it was constructed by Dent, of the Strand (61), for +the Royal Geographical Society, and selected for the service by the +President, Admiral Smythe, to whose judgment and kindness I am in this +and other matters deeply indebted. It was pronounced by Mr. Maclear to +equal most chronometers in performance. For these excellent instruments +I have much pleasure in recording my obligations to my good friend +Colonel Steele, and at the same time to Mr. Maclear for much of my +ability to use them. Besides these, I had a thermometer by Dollond; a +compass from the Cape Observatory, and a small pocket one in addition; a +good small telescope with a stand capable of being screwed into a tree. + +11TH OF NOVEMBER, 1853. Left the town of Linyanti, accompanied by +Sekeletu and his principal men, to embark on the Chobe. The chief came +to the river in order to see that all was right at parting. We crossed +five branches of the Chobe before reaching the main stream: this +ramification must be the reason why it appeared so small to Mr. Oswell +and myself in 1851. When all the departing branches re-enter, it is +a large, deep river. The spot of embarkation was the identical island +where we met Sebituane, first known as the island of Maunku, one of +his wives. The chief lent me his own canoe, and, as it was broader than +usual, I could turn about in it with ease. + +The Chobe is much infested by hippopotami, and, as certain elderly +males are expelled the herd, they become soured in their temper, and so +misanthropic as to attack every canoe that passes near them. The herd +is never dangerous, except when a canoe passes into the midst of it +when all are asleep, and some of them may strike the canoe in terror. To +avoid this, it is generally recommended to travel by day near the bank, +and by night in the middle of the stream. As a rule, these animals +flee the approach of man. The "solitaires", however, frequent certain +localities well known to the inhabitants on the banks, and, like the +rogue elephants, are extremely dangerous. We came, at this time, to a +canoe which had been smashed to pieces by a blow from the hind foot of +one of them. I was informed by my men that, in the event of a similar +assault being made upon ours, the proper way was to dive to the +bottom of the river, and hold on there for a few seconds, because the +hippopotamus, after breaking a canoe, always looks for the people on +the surface, and, if he sees none, he soon moves off. I have seen +some frightful gashes made on the legs of the people who have had the +misfortune to be attacked, and were unable to dive. This animal uses his +teeth as an offensive weapon, though he is quite a herbivorous feeder. +One of these "bachelors", living near the confluence, actually came out +of his lair, and, putting his head down, ran after some of our men who +were passing with very considerable speed. + +The part of the river called Zabesa, or Zabenza, is spread out like a +little lake, surrounded on all sides by dense masses of tall reeds. The +river below that is always one hundred or one hundred and twenty yards +broad, deep, and never dries up so much as to become fordable. At +certain parts, where the partial absence of reeds affords a view of the +opposite banks, the Makololo have placed villages of observation against +their enemies the Matebele. We visited all these in succession, and +found here, as every where in the Makololo country, orders had preceded +us, "that Nake (nyake means doctor) must not be allowed to become +hungry." + +The banks of the Chobe, like those of the Zouga, are of soft calcareous +tufa, and the river has cut out for itself a deep, perpendicular-sided +bed. Where the banks are high, as at the spot where the wagons stood in +1851, they are covered with magnificent trees, the habitat of tsetse, +and the retreat of various antelopes, wild hogs, zebras, buffaloes, and +elephants. + +Among the trees may be observed some species of the 'Ficus Indica', +light-green colored acacias, the splendid motsintsela, and evergreen +cypress-shaped motsouri. The fruit of the last-named was ripe, and the +villagers presented many dishes of its beautiful pink-colored plums; +they are used chiefly to form a pleasant acid drink. The motsintsela is +a very lofty tree, yielding a wood of which good canoes are made; +the fruit is nutritious and good, but, like many wild fruits of this +country, the fleshy parts require to be enlarged by cultivation: it is +nearly all stone. + +The course of the river we found to be extremely tortuous; so much so, +indeed, as to carry us to all points of the compass every dozen miles. +Some of us walked from a bend at the village of Moremi to another nearly +due east of that point, in six hours, while the canoes, going at more +than double our speed, took twelve to accomplish the voyage between the +same two places. And though the river is from thirteen to fifteen feet +in depth at its lowest ebb, and broad enough to allow a steamer to ply +upon it, the suddenness of the bendings would prevent navigation; +but, should the country ever become civilized, the Chobe would be a +convenient natural canal. We spent forty-two and a half hours, paddling +at the rate of five miles an hour, in coming from Linyanti to the +confluence; there we found a dike of amygdaloid lying across the +Leeambye. + +This amygdaloid with analami and mesotype contains crystals, which +the water gradually dissolves, leaving the rock with a worm-eaten +appearance. It is curious to observe that the water flowing over certain +rocks, as in this instance, imbibes an appreciable, though necessarily +most minute, portion of the minerals they contain. The water of the +Chobe up to this point is of a dark mossy hue, but here it suddenly +assumes a lighter tint; and wherever this light color shows a greater +amount of mineral, there are not mosquitoes enough to cause serious +annoyance to any except persons of very irritable temperaments. + +The large island called Mparia stands at the confluence. This is +composed of trap (zeolite, probably mesotype) of a younger age than the +deep stratum of tufa in which the Chobe has formed its bed, for, at +the point where they come together, the tufa has been transformed into +saccharoid limestone. + +The actual point of confluence of these two rivers, the Chobe and the +Leeambye, is ill defined, on account of each dividing into several +branches as they inosculate; but when the whole body of water collects +into one bed, it is a goodly sight for one who has spent many years +in the thirsty south. Standing on one bank, even the keen eye of the +natives can not detect whether two large islands, a few miles east of +the junction, are main land or not. During a flight in former years, +when the present chief Sekomi was a child in his mother's arms, the +Bamangwato men were separated from their women, and inveigled on to +one of these islands by the Makalaka chief of Mparia, on pretense of +ferrying them across the Leeambye. They were left to perish after seeing +their wives taken prisoners by these cruel lords of the Leeambye, and +Sekomi owed his life to the compassion of one of the Bayeiye, who, +pitying the young chieftain, enabled his mother to make her escape by +night. + +After spending one night at the Makololo village on Mparia, we left the +Chobe, and, turning round, began to ascend the Leeambye; on the 19th of +November we again reached the town of Sesheke. It stands on the north +bank of the river, and contains a large population of Makalaka, under +Moriantsane, brother-in-law of Sebituane. There are parties of various +tribes here, assembled under their respective head men, but a few +Makololo rule over all. Their sway, though essentially despotic, is +considerably modified by certain customs and laws. One of the Makalaka +had speared an ox belonging to one of the Makololo, and, being unable to +extract the spear, was thereby discovered to be the perpetrator of the +deed. His object had been to get a share of the meat, as Moriantsane is +known to be liberal with any food that comes into his hands. The culprit +was bound hand and foot, and placed in the sun to force him to pay a +fine, but he continued to deny his guilt. His mother, believing in +the innocence of her son, now came forward, with her hoe in hand, and, +threatening to cut down any one who should dare to interfere, untied the +cords with which he had been bound and took him home. This open defiance +of authority was not resented by Moriantsane, but referred to Sekeletu +at Linyanti. + +The following circumstance, which happened here when I was present +with Sekeletu, shows that the simple mode of punishment, by forcing a +criminal to work out a fine, did not strike the Makololo mind until now. + +A stranger having visited Sesheke for the purpose of barter, was robbed +by one of the Makalaka of most of his goods. The thief, when caught, +confessed the theft, and that he had given the articles to a person who +had removed to a distance. The Makololo were much enraged at the idea of +their good name being compromised by this treatment of a stranger. Their +customary mode of punishing a crime which causes much indignation is to +throw the criminal into the river; but, as this would not restore +the lost property, they were sorely puzzled how to act. The case was +referred to me, and I solved the difficulty by paying for the loss +myself, and sentencing the thief to work out an equivalent with his hoe +in a garden. This system was immediately introduced, and thieves are +now sentenced to raise an amount of corn proportioned to their offenses. +Among the Bakwains, a woman who had stolen from the garden of another +was obliged to part with her own entirely: it became the property of her +whose field was injured by the crime. + +There is no stated day of rest in any part of this country, except the +day after the appearance of the new moon, and the people then refrain +only from going to their gardens. A curious custom, not to be found +among the Bechuanas, prevails among the black tribes beyond them. They +watch most eagerly for the first glimpse of the new moon, and, when they +perceive the faint outline after the sun has set deep in the west, they +utter a loud shout of "Kua!" and vociferate prayers to it. My men, for +instance, called out, "Let our journey with the white man be prosperous! +Let our enemies perish, and the children of Nake become rich! May he +have plenty of meat on this journey!" etc., etc. + +I gave many public addresses to the people of Sesheke under the +outspreading camel-thorn-tree, which serves as a shade to the kotla on +the high bank of the river. It was pleasant to see the long lines of +men, women, and children winding along from different quarters of the +town, each party following behind their respective head men. They often +amounted to between five and six hundred souls, and required an exertion +of voice which brought back the complaint for which I had got the uvula +excised at the Cape. They were always very attentive; and Moriantsane, +in order, as he thought, to please me, on one occasion rose up in the +middle of the discourse, and hurled his staff at the heads of some young +fellows whom he saw working with a skin instead of listening. My hearers +sometimes put very sensible questions on the subjects brought before +them; at other times they introduced the most frivolous nonsense +immediately after hearing the most solemn truths. Some begin to pray to +Jesus in secret as soon as they hear of the white man's God, with but +little idea of what they are about; and no doubt are heard by Him who, +like a father, pitieth his children. Others, waking by night, recollect +what has been said about the future world so clearly that they tell +next day what a fright they got by it, and resolve not to listen to the +teaching again; and not a few keep to the determination not to believe, +as certain villagers in the south, who put all their cocks to death +because they crowed the words, "Tlang lo rapeleng"--"Come along to +prayers". + +On recovering partially from a severe attack of fever which remained +upon me ever since our passing the village of Moremi on the Chobe, we +made ready for our departure up the river by sending messages before +us to the villages to prepare food. We took four elephants' tusks, +belonging to Sekeletu, with us, as a means of testing the difference of +prices between the Portuguese, whom we expected to reach, and the white +traders from the south. Moriantsane supplied us well with honey, milk, +and meal. The rains were just commencing in this district; but, though +showers sufficient to lay the dust had fallen, they had no influence +whatever on the amount of water in the river, yet never was there less +in any part than three hundred yards of a deep flowing stream. + +Our progress up the river was rather slow; this was caused by waiting +opposite different villages for supplies of food. We might have done +with much less than we got; but my Makololo man, Pitsane, knew of the +generous orders of Sekeletu, and was not at all disposed to allow them +to remain a dead letter. The villages of the Banyeti contributed large +quantities of mosibe, a bright red bean yielded by a large tree. The +pulp inclosing the seed is not much thicker than a red wafer, and is +the portion used. It requires the addition of honey to render it at all +palatable. + +To these were added great numbers of the fruit which yields a variety of +the nux vomica, from which we derive that virulent poison strychnia. The +pulp between the nuts is the part eaten, and it is of a pleasant juicy +nature, having a sweet acidulous taste. The fruit itself resembles a +large yellow orange, but the rind is hard, and, with the pips and bark, +contains much of the deadly poison. They evince their noxious qualities +by an intensely bitter taste. The nuts, swallowed inadvertently, cause +considerable pain, but not death; and to avoid this inconvenience, the +people dry the pulp before the fire, in order to be able the more easily +to get rid of the noxious seeds. + +A much better fruit, called mobola, was also presented to us. This +bears, around a pretty large stone, as much of the fleshy part as the +common date, and it is stripped off the seeds and preserved in bags in +a similar manner to that fruit. Besides sweetness, the mobola has the +flavor of strawberries, with a touch of nauseousness. We carried some of +them, dried as provisions, more than a hundred miles from this spot. + +The next fruit, named mamosho (mother of morning), is the most delicious +of all. It is about the size of a walnut, and, unlike most of the other +uncultivated fruits, has a seed no larger than that of a date. The +fleshy part is juicy, and somewhat like the cashew-apple, with a +pleasant acidity added. Fruits similar to those which are here found +on trees are found on the plains of the Kalahari, growing on mere +herbaceous plants. There are several other examples of a similar nature. +Shrubs, well known as such in the south, assume the rank of trees as +we go to the north; and the change is quite gradual as our latitude +decreases, the gradations being herbaceous plants, shrubs, bushes, +small, then large trees. But it is questionable if, in the cases of +mamosho, mobola, and mawa, the tree and shrub are identical, though the +fruits so closely resemble each other; for I found both the dwarf and +tree in the same latitude. There is also a difference in the leaves, and +they bear at different seasons. + +The banks of the river were at this time appearing to greater advantage +than before. Many trees were putting on their fresh green leaves, though +they had got no rain, their lighter green contrasting beautifully with +the dark motsouri, or moyela, now covered with pink plums as large +as cherries. The rapids, having comparatively little water in them, +rendered our passage difficult. The canoes must never be allowed to come +broadside on to the stream, for, being flat-bottomed, they would, in +that case, be at once capsized, and every thing in them be lost. The men +work admirably, and are always in good humor; they leap into the water +without the least hesitation, to save the canoe from being caught by +eddies or dashed against the rocks. Many parts were now quite shallow, +and it required great address and power in balancing themselves to keep +the vessel free from rocks, which lay just beneath the surface. We might +have got deeper water in the middle, but the boatmen always keep near +the banks, on account of danger from the hippopotami. But, though we +might have had deeper water farther out, I believe that no part of the +rapids is very deep. The river is spread out more than a mile, and +the water flows rapidly over the rocky bottom. The portions only three +hundred yards wide are very deep, and contain large volumes of flowing +water in narrow compass, which, when spread over the much larger surface +at the rapids, must be shallow. Still, remembering that this was the end +of the dry season, when such rivers as the Orange do not even contain a +fifth part of the water of the Chobe, the difference between the rivers +of the north and south must be sufficiently obvious. + +The rapids are caused by rocks of dark brown trap, or of hardened +sandstone, stretching across the stream. In some places they form miles +of flat rocky bottom, with islets covered with trees. At the cataracts +noted in the map, the fall is from four to six feet, and, in guiding up +the canoe, the stem goes under the water, and takes in a quantity before +it can attain the higher level. We lost many of our biscuits in the +ascent through this. + +These rocks are covered with a small, hard aquatic plant, which, when +the surface is exposed, becomes dry and crisp, crackling under the foot +as if it contained much stony matter in its tissue. It probably assists +in disintegrating the rocks; for, in parts so high as not to be much +exposed to the action of the water or the influence of the plant, the +rocks are covered with a thin black glaze. + +In passing along under the overhanging trees of the banks, we often +saw the pretty turtle-doves sitting peacefully on their nests above the +roaring torrent. An ibis* had perched her home on the end of a stump. +Her loud, harsh scream of "Wa-wa-wa", and the piping of the fish-hawk, +are sounds which can never be forgotten by any one who has sailed on +the rivers north of 20 Deg. south. If we step on shore, the 'Charadrius +caruncula', a species of plover, a most plaguy sort of "public-spirited +individual", follows you, flying overhead, and is most persevering in +its attempts to give fair warning to all the animals within hearing to +flee from the approaching danger. The alarm-note, "tinc-tinc-tinc", of +another variety of the same family ('Pluvianus armatus' of Burchell) has +so much of a metallic ring, that this bird is called "setula-tsipi", or +hammering-iron. It is furnished with a sharp spur on its shoulder, much +like that on the heel of a cock, but scarcely half an inch in length. +Conscious of power, it may be seen chasing the white-necked raven with +great fury, and making even that comparatively large bird call out +from fear. It is this bird which is famed for its friendship with the +crocodile of the Nile by the name 'siksak', and which Mr. St. John +actually saw performing the part of toothpicker to the ugly reptile. +They are frequently seen on the sand-banks with the alligator, and, to +one passing by, often appear as if on that reptile's back; but I never +had the good fortune to witness the operation described not only by +St. John and Geoffrey St. Hilaire, but also by Herodotus. However, that +which none of these authors knew my head boatman, Mashauana, stopped the +canoe to tell us, namely, that a water-turtle which, in trying to ascend +a steep bank to lay her eggs, had toppled on her back, thus enabling us +to capture her, was an infallible omen of good luck for our journey. + + * The 'Hagidash', Latham; or 'Tantalus capensis' of Lich. + +Among the forest-trees which line the banks of the rocky parts of the +Leeambye several new birds were observed. Some are musical, and the +songs are pleasant in contrast with the harsh voice of the little green, +yellow-shouldered parrots of the country. There are also great numbers +of jet-black weavers, with yellowish-brown band on the shoulders. + +Here we saw, for the first time, a pretty little bird, colored dark +blue, except the wings and tail, which were of a chocolate hue. From the +tail two feathers are prolonged beyond the rest six inches. Also, +little birds colored white and black, of great vivacity, and always in +companies of six or eight together, and various others. From want of +books of reference, I could not decide whether they were actually new to +science. + +Francolins and Guinea-fowl abound along the banks; and on every dead +tree and piece of rock may be seen one or two species of the web-footed +'Plotus', darter, or snake-bird. They sit most of the day sunning +themselves over the stream, sometimes standing erect with their wings +outstretched; occasionally they may be seen engaged in fishing by +diving, and, as they swim about, their bodies are so much submerged that +hardly any thing appears above the water but their necks. The chief time +of feeding is by night, and, as the sun declines, they may be seen in +flocks flying from their roosting-places to the fishing-grounds. This is +a most difficult bird to catch when disabled. It is thoroughly expert +in diving--goes down so adroitly and comes up again in the most unlikely +places, that the people, though most skillful in the management of the +canoes, can rarely secure them. The rump of the darter is remarkably +prolonged, and capable of being bent, so as to act both as a rudder in +swimming, and as a lever to lift the bird high enough out of the water +to give free scope to its wings. It can rise at will from the water by +means of this appendage. + +The fine fish-hawk, with white head and neck, and reddish-chocolate +colored body, may also frequently be seen perched on the trees, and fish +are often found dead which have fallen victims to its talons. One most +frequently seen in this condition is itself a destroyer of fish. It is +a stout-bodied fish, about fifteen or eighteen inches long, of a light +yellow color, and gayly ornamented with stripes and spots. It has a +most imposing array of sharp, conical teeth outside the lips--objects +of dread to the fisherman, for it can use them effectually. One which +we picked up dead had killed itself by swallowing another fish, which, +though too large for its stomach and throat, could not be disgorged. + +This fish-hawk generally kills more prey than it can devour. It eats a +portion of the back of the fish, and leaves the rest for the Barotse, +who often had a race across the river when they saw an abandoned morsel +lying on the opposite sand-banks. The hawk is, however, not always so +generous, for, as I myself was a witness on the Zouga, it sometimes +plunders the purse of the pelican. Soaring over head, and seeing this +large, stupid bird fishing beneath, it watches till a fine fish is safe +in the pelican's pouch; then descending, not very quickly, but with +considerable noise of wing, the pelican looks up to see what is the +matter, and, as the hawk comes near, he supposes that he is about to +be killed, and roars out "Murder!" The opening of his mouth enables the +hawk to whisk the fish out of the pouch, upon which the pelican does not +fly away, but commences fishing again, the fright having probably made +him forget he had any thing in his purse. + +A fish called mosheba, about the size of a minnow, often skims along the +surface for several yards, in order to get out of the way of the canoe. +It uses the pectoral fins, as the flying-fish do, but never makes a +clean flight. It is rather a succession of hops along the surface, made +by the aid of the side fins. It never becomes large. + +Numbers of iguanos (mpulu) sit sunning themselves on overhanging +branches of the trees, and splash into the water as we approach. They +are highly esteemed as an article of food, the flesh being tender and +gelatinous. The chief boatman, who occupies the stem, has in consequence +a light javelin always at hand to spear them if they are not quickly out +of sight. These, and large alligators gliding in from the banks with +a heavy plunge as we come round a sudden bend of the stream, were the +occurrences of every hour as we sped up the river. + +The rapids in the part of the river between Katima-molelo and Nameta +are relieved by several reaches of still, deep water, fifteen or twenty +miles long. In these very large herds of hippopotami are seen, and +the deep furrows they make, in ascending the banks to graze during the +nights, are every where apparent. They are guided back to the water by +the scent, but a long continued pouring rain makes it impossible for +them to perceive, by that means, in which direction the river lies, and +they are found bewildered on the land. The hunters take advantage of +their helplessness on these occasions to kill them. + +It is impossible to judge of the numbers in a herd, for they are almost +always hidden beneath the waters; but as they require to come up every +few minutes to breathe, when there is a constant succession of heads +thrown up, then the herd is supposed to be large. They love a still +reach of the stream, as in the more rapid parts of the channel they are +floated down so quickly that much exertion is necessary to regain the +distance lost by frequently swimming up again: such constant exertion +disturbs them in their nap. They prefer to remain by day in a drowsy, +yawning state, and, though their eyes are open, they take little notice +of things at a distance. The males utter a loud succession of snorting +grunts, which may be heard a mile off. The canoe in which I was, in +passing over a wounded one, elicited a distinct grunting, though the +animal lay entirely under water. + +The young, when very little, take their stand on the neck of the +dam, and the small head, rising above the large, comes soonest to the +surface. The dam, knowing the more urgent need of her calf, comes more +frequently to the surface when it is in her care. But in the rivers +of Londa, where they are much in danger of being shot, even the +hippopotamus gains wit by experience; for, while those in the Zambesi +put up their heads openly to blow, those referred to keep their noses +among water-plants, and breathe so quietly that one would not dream of +their existence in the river except by footprints on the banks. + + + + +Chapter 14. + +Increasing Beauty of the Country--Mode of spending the Day--The People +and the Falls of Gonye--A Makololo Foray--A second prevented, and +Captives delivered up--Politeness and Liberality of the People-- +The Rains--Present of Oxen--The fugitive Barotse--Sekobinyane's +Misgovernment--Bee-eaters and other Birds--Fresh-water +Sponges--Current--Death from a Lion's Bite at Libonta--Continued +Kindness--Arrangements for spending the Night during the +Journey--Cooking and Washing--Abundance of animal Life--Different +Species of Birds--Water-fowl--Egyptian Geese--Alligators--Narrow Escape +of one of my Men--Superstitious Feelings respecting the Alligator--Large +Game--The most vulnerable Spot--Gun Medicine--A Sunday--Birds of +Song--Depravity; its Treatment--Wild Fruits--Green Pigeons--Shoals of +Fish--Hippopotami. + + + +30TH OF NOVEMBER, 1853. At Gonye Falls. No rain has fallen here, so it +is excessively hot. The trees have put on their gayest dress, and many +flowers adorn the landscape, yet the heat makes all the leaves droop at +midday and look languid for want of rain. If the country increases as +much in beauty in front as it has done within the last four degrees of +latitude, it will be indeed a lovely land. + +We all felt great lassitude in traveling. The atmosphere is oppressive +both in cloud and sunshine. The evaporation from the river must be +excessively great, and I feel as if the fluids of the system joined in +the general motion of watery vapor upward, as enormous quantities of +water must be drunk to supply its place. + +When under way our usual procedure is this: We get up a little before +five in the morning; it is then beginning to dawn. While I am dressing, +coffee is made; and, having filled my pannikin, the remainder is handed +to my companions, who eagerly partake of the refreshing beverage. +The servants are busy loading the canoes, while the principal men are +sipping the coffee, and, that being soon over, we embark. The next two +hours are the most pleasant part of the day's sail. The men paddle away +most vigorously; the Barotse, being a tribe of boatmen, have large, +deeply-developed chests and shoulders, with indifferent lower +extremities. They often engage in loud scolding of each other in order +to relieve the tedium of their work. About eleven we land, and eat +any meat which may have remained from the previous evening meal, or a +biscuit with honey, and drink water. + +After an hour's rest we again embark and cower under an umbrella. The +heat is oppressive, and, being weak from the last attack of fever, I +can not land and keep the camp supplied with flesh. The men, being quite +uncovered in the sun, perspire profusely, and in the afternoon begin +to stop, as if waiting for the canoes which have been left behind. +Sometimes we reach a sleeping-place two hours before sunset, and, all +being troubled with languor, we gladly remain for the night. Coffee +again, and a biscuit, or a piece of coarse bread made of maize meal, +or that of the native corn, make up the bill of fare for the evening, +unless we have been fortunate enough to kill something, when we boil +a potful of flesh. This is done by cutting it up into long strips and +pouring in water till it is covered. When that is boiled dry, the meat +is considered ready. + +The people at Gonye carry the canoes over the space requisite to avoid +the falls by slinging them on poles tied on diagonally. They place these +on their shoulders, and, setting about the work with good humor, soon +accomplish the task. They are a merry set of mortals; a feeble joke sets +them off in a fit of laughter. Here, as elsewhere, all petitioned for +the magic lantern, and, as it is a good means of conveying instruction, +I willingly complied. + +The falls of Gonye have not been made by wearing back, like those of +Niagara, but are of a fissure form. For many miles below, the river is +confined in a narrow space of not more than one hundred yards wide. +The water goes boiling along, and gives the idea of great masses of it +rolling over and over, so that even the most expert swimmer would find +it difficult to keep on the surface. Here it is that the river, when in +flood, rises fifty or sixty feet in perpendicular height. The islands +above the falls are covered with foliage as beautiful as can be seen +any where. Viewed from the mass of rock which overhangs the fall, the +scenery was the loveliest I had seen. + +Nothing worthy of note occurred on our way up to Nameta. There we heard +that a party of the Makololo, headed by Lerimo, had made a foray to the +north and up the Leeba, in the very direction in which we were about to +proceed. Mpololo, the uncle of Sekeletu, is considered the head man of +the Barotse valley; and the perpetrators had his full sanction, because +Masiko, a son of Santuru, the former chief of the Barotse, had fled high +up the Leeambye, and, establishing himself there, had sent men down to +the vicinity of Naliele to draw away the remaining Barotse from their +allegiance. Lerimo's party had taken some of this Masiko's subjects +prisoners, and destroyed several villages of the Balonda, to whom we +were going. This was in direct opposition to the policy of Sekeletu, who +wished to be at peace with these northern tribes; and Pitsane, my head +man, was the bearer of orders to Mpololo to furnish us with presents +for the very chiefs they had attacked. Thus we were to get large pots of +clarified butter and bunches of beads, in confirmation of the message of +peace we were to deliver. + +When we reached Litofe, we heard that a fresh foray was in +contemplation, but I sent forward orders to disband the party +immediately. At Ma-Sekeletu's town we found the head offender, Mpololo +himself, and I gave him a bit of my mind, to the effect that, as I was +going with the full sanction of Sekeletu, if any harm happened to me +in consequence of his ill-advised expedition, the guilt would rest with +him. Ma-Sekeletu, who was present, heartily approved all I said, and +suggested that all the captives taken by Lerimo should be returned by +my hand, to show Masiko that the guilt of the foray lay not with the +superior persons of the Makololo, but with a mere servant. Her good +sense appeared in other respects besides, and, as this was exactly what +my own party had previously resolved to suggest, we were pleased to hear +Mpololo agree to do what he was advised. He asked me to lay the matter +before the under-chiefs of Naliele, and when we reached that place, +on the 9th of December, I did so in a picho, called expressly for +the purpose. Lerimo was present, and felt rather crestfallen when his +exploit was described by Mohorisi, one of my companions, as one of +extreme cowardice, he having made an attack upon the defenseless +villagers of Londa, while, as we had found on our former visit, a +lion had actually killed eight people of Naliele without his daring to +encounter it. The Makololo are cowardly in respect to animals, but brave +against men. Mpololo took all the guilt upon himself before the people, +and delivered up a captive child whom his wife had in her possession; +others followed his example, till we procured the release of five of the +prisoners. Some thought, as Masiko had tried to take their children by +stratagem, they ought to take his by force, as the two modes suited the +genius of each people--the Makalaka delight in cunning, and the Makololo +in fighting; and others thought, if Sekeletu meant them to be at peace +with Masiko, he ought to have told them so. + +It is rather dangerous to tread in the footsteps of a marauding party +with men of the same tribe as the aggressors, but my people were in +good spirits, and several volunteers even offered to join our ranks. +We, however, adhered strictly to the orders of Sekeletu as to our +companions, and refused all others. + +The people of every village treated us most liberally, presenting, +besides oxen, butter, milk, and meal, more than we could stow away in +our canoes. The cows in this valley are now yielding, as they frequently +do, more milk than the people can use, and both men and women present +butter in such quantity that I shall be able to refresh my men as we +move along. Anointing the skin prevents the excessive evaporation of +the fluids of the body, and acts as clothing in both sun and shade. They +always made their presents gracefully. When an ox was given, the owner +would say, "Here is a little bit of bread for you." This was pleasing, +for I had been accustomed to the Bechuanas presenting a miserable goat, +with the pompous exclamation, "Behold an ox!" The women persisted in +giving me copious supplies of shrill praises, or "lullilooing"; but, +though I frequently told them to modify their "great lords" and "great +lions" to more humble expressions, they so evidently intended to do +me honor that I could not help being pleased with the poor creatures' +wishes for our success. + +The rains began while we were at Naliele; this is much later than usual; +but, though the Barotse valley has been in need of rain, the people +never lack abundance of food. The showers are refreshing, but the air +feels hot and close; the thermometer, however, in a cool hut, stands +only at 84 Deg. The access of the external air to any spot at once +raises its temperature above 90 Deg. A new attack of fever here caused +excessive languor; but, as I am already getting tired of quoting my +fevers, and never liked to read travels myself where much was said about +the illnesses of the traveler, I shall henceforth endeavor to say little +about them. + +We here sent back the canoe of Sekeletu, and got the loan of others from +Mpololo. Eight riding oxen, and seven for slaughter, were, according to +the orders of that chief, also furnished; some were intended for our own +use, and others as presents to the chiefs of the Balonda. Mpololo was +particularly liberal in giving all that Sekeletu ordered, though, as +he feeds on the cattle he has in charge, he might have felt it so much +abstracted from his own perquisites. Mpololo now acts the great man, +and is followed every where by a crowd of toadies, who sing songs in +disparagement of Mpepe, of whom he always lived in fear. While Mpepe was +alive, he too was regaled with the same fulsome adulation, and now they +curse him. They are very foul-tongued; equals, on meeting, often greet +each other with a profusion of oaths, and end the volley with a laugh. + +In coming up the river to Naliele we met a party of fugitive Barotse +returning to their homes, and, as the circumstance illustrates the +social status of these subjects of the Makololo, I introduce it here. +The villagers in question were the children, or serfs, if we may use the +term, of a young man of the same age and tribe as Sekeletu, who, being +of an irritable temper, went by the nickname of Sekobinyane--a little +slavish thing. His treatment of his servants was so bad that most of +them had fled; and when the Mambari came, and, contrary to the orders of +Sekeletu, purchased slaves, Sekobinyane sold one or two of the Barotse +children of his village. The rest fled immediately to Masiko, and were +gladly received by that Barotse chief as his subjects. + +When Sekeletu and I first ascended the Leeambye, we met Sekobinyane +coming down, on his way to Linyanti. On being asked the news, he +remained silent about the loss of his village, it being considered a +crime among the Makololo for any one to treat his people so ill as to +cause them to run away from him. He then passed us, and, dreading the +vengeance of Sekeletu for his crime, secretly made his escape from +Linyanti to Lake Ngami. He was sent for, however, and the chief at the +lake delivered him up, on Sekeletu declaring that he had no intention +of punishing him otherwise than by scolding. He did not even do that, as +Sekobinyane was evidently terrified enough, and also became ill through +fear. + +The fugitive villagers remained only a few weeks with their new master +Masiko, and then fled back again, and were received as if they had done +nothing wrong. All united in abusing the conduct of Sekobinyane, and no +one condemned the fugitives; and the cattle, the use of which they had +previously enjoyed, never having been removed from their village, they +re-established themselves with apparent gladness. + +This incident may give some idea of the serfdom of the subject tribes, +and, except that they are sometimes punished for running away and other +offenses, I can add nothing more by way of showing the true nature of +this form of servitude. + +Leaving Naliele, amid abundance of good wishes for the success of +our expedition, and hopes that we might return accompanied with white +traders, we began again our ascent of the river. It was now beginning to +rise, though the rains had but just commenced in the valley. The banks +are low, but cleanly cut, and seldom sloping. At low water they are from +four to eight feet high, and make the river always assume very much the +aspect of a canal. They are in some parts of whitish, tenacious clay, +with strata of black clay intermixed, and black loam in sand, or pure +sand stratified. As the river rises it is always wearing to one side or +the other, and is known to have cut across from one bend to another, +and to form new channels. As we coast along the shore, pieces which are +undermined often fall in with a splash like that caused by the plunge of +an alligator, and endanger the canoe. + +These perpendicular banks afford building-places to a pretty bee-eater,* +which loves to breed in society. The face of the sand-bank is perforated +with hundreds of holes leading to their nests, each of which is about +a foot apart from the other; and as we pass they pour out of their +hiding-places, and float overhead. + + * 'Merops apiaster' and 'M. bullockoides' (Smith). + +A speckled kingfisher is seen nearly every hundred yards, which builds +in similar spots, and attracts the attention of herd-boys, who dig out +its nest for the sake of the young. This, and a most lovely little blue +and orange kingfisher, are seen every where along the banks, dashing +down like a shot into the water for their prey. A third, seen more +rarely, is as large as a pigeon, and is of a slaty color. + +Another inhabitant of the banks is the sand-martin, which also likes +company in the work of raising a family. They never leave this part of +the country. One may see them preening themselves in the very depth of +winter, while the swallows, of which we shall yet speak, take winter +trips. I saw sand-martins at the Orange River during a period of winter +frost; it is, therefore, probable that they do not migrate even from +thence. + +Around the reeds, which in some parts line the banks, we see fresh-water +sponges. They usually encircle the stalk, and are hard and brittle, +presenting numbers of small round grains near their circumference. + +The river was running at the rate of five miles an hour, and carried +bunches of reed and decaying vegetable matter on its surface; yet the +water was not discolored. It had, however, a slightly yellowish-green +tinge, somewhat deeper than its natural color. This arose from the +quantity of sand carried by the rising flood from sand-banks, which are +annually shifted from one spot to another, and from the pieces falling +in as the banks are worn; for when the water is allowed to stand in +a glass, a few seconds suffice for its deposit at the bottom. This is +considered an unhealthy period. When waiting, on one occasion, for the +other canoes to come up, I felt no inclination to leave the one I was +in; but my head boatman, Mashauana, told me never to remain on board +while so much vegetable matter was floating down the stream. + +17TH DECEMBER. At Libonta. We were detained for days together collecting +contributions of fat and butter, according to the orders of Sekeletu, as +presents to the Balonda chiefs. Much fever prevailed, and ophthalmia was +rife, as is generally the case before the rains begin. Some of my own +men required my assistance, as well as the people of Libonta. A lion had +done a good deal of mischief here, and when the people went to attack it +two men were badly wounded; one of them had his thigh-bone quite broken, +showing the prodigious power of this animal's jaws. The inflammation +produced by the teeth-wounds proved fatal to one of them. + +Here we demanded the remainder of the captives, and got our number +increased to nineteen. They consisted of women and children, and one +young man of twenty. One of the boys was smuggled away in the crowd as +we embarked. The Makololo under-chiefs often act in direct opposition +to the will of the head chief, trusting to circumstances and +brazenfacedness to screen themselves from his open displeasure; and as +he does not always find it convenient to notice faults, they often go to +considerable lengths in wrong-doing. + +Libonta is the last town of the Makololo; so, when we parted from it, we +had only a few cattle-stations and outlying hamlets in front, and then +an uninhabited border country till we came to Londa or Lunda. Libonta is +situated on a mound like the rest of the villages in the Barotse valley, +but here the tree-covered sides of the valley begin to approach nearer +the river. The village itself belongs to two of the chief wives of +Sebituane, who furnished us with an ox and abundance of other food. The +same kindness was manifested by all who could afford to give any thing; +and as I glance over their deeds of generosity recorded in my journal, +my heart glows with gratitude to them, and I hope and pray that God may +spare me to make them some return. + +Before leaving the villages entirely, we may glance at our way of +spending the nights. As soon as we land, some of the men cut a little +grass for my bed, while Mashauana plants the poles of the little tent. +These are used by day for carrying burdens, for the Barotse fashion is +exactly like that of the natives of India, only the burden is fastened +near the ends of the pole, and not suspended by long cords. The bed is +made, and boxes ranged on each side of it, and then the tent pitched +over all. Four or five feet in front of my tent is placed the principal +or kotla fire, the wood for which must be collected by the man who +occupies the post of herald, and takes as his perquisite the heads of +all the oxen slaughtered, and of all the game too. Each person knows the +station he is to occupy, in reference to the post of honor at the fire +in front of the door of the tent. The two Makololo occupy my right and +left, both in eating and sleeping, as long as the journey lasts. But +Mashauana, my head boatman, makes his bed at the door of the tent as +soon as I retire. The rest, divided into small companies according to +their tribes, make sheds all round the fire, leaving a horseshoe-shaped +space in front sufficient for the cattle to stand in. The fire gives +confidence to the oxen, so the men are always careful to keep them in +sight of it. The sheds are formed by planting two stout forked poles in +an inclined direction, and placing another over these in a horizontal +position. A number of branches are then stuck in the ground in the +direction to which the poles are inclined, the twigs drawn down to the +horizontal pole and tied with strips of bark. Long grass is then laid +over the branches in sufficient quantity to draw off the rain, and we +have sheds open to the fire in front, but secure from beasts behind. +In less than an hour we were usually all under cover. We never lacked +abundance of grass during the whole journey. It is a picturesque sight +at night, when the clear bright moon of these climates glances on the +sleeping forms around, to look out upon the attitudes of profound repose +both men and beasts assume. There being no danger from wild animals in +such a night, the fires are allowed almost to go out; and as there is +no fear of hungry dogs coming over sleepers and devouring the food, or +quietly eating up the poor fellows' blankets, which at best were but +greasy skins, which sometimes happened in the villages, the picture was +one of perfect peace. + +The cooking is usually done in the natives' own style, and, as they +carefully wash the dishes, pots, and the hands before handling food, +it is by no means despicable. Sometimes alterations are made at my +suggestion, and then they believe that they can cook in thorough white +man's fashion. The cook always comes in for something left in the pot, +so all are eager to obtain the office. + +I taught several of them to wash my shirts, and they did it well, though +their teacher had never been taught that work himself. Frequent changes +of linen and sunning of my blanket kept me more comfortable than +might have been anticipated, and I feel certain that the lessons of +cleanliness rigidly instilled by my mother in childhood helped to +maintain that respect which these people entertain for European ways. +It is questionable if a descent to barbarous ways ever elevates a man in +the eyes of savages. + +When quite beyond the inhabited parts, we found the country abounding in +animal life of every form. There are upward of thirty species of birds +on the river itself. Hundreds of the 'Ibis religiosa' come down the +Leeambye with the rising water, as they do on the Nile; then large white +pelicans, in flocks of three hundred at a time, following each other +in long extending line, rising and falling as they fly so regularly +all along as to look like an extended coil of birds; clouds of a black +shell-eating bird, called linongolo ('Anastomus lamelligerus'); also +plovers, snipes, curlews, and herons without number. + +There are, besides the more common, some strange varieties. The pretty +white 'ardetta' is seen in flocks, settling on the backs of large herds +of buffaloes, and following them on the wing when they run; while the +kala ('Textor erythrorhynchus') is a better horseman, for it sits on the +withers when the animal is at full speed. + +Then those strange birds, the scissor-bills, with snow-white breast, +jet-black coat, and red beak, sitting by day on the sand-banks, the very +picture of comfort and repose. Their nests are only little hollows made +on these same sand-banks, without any attempt of concealment; they watch +them closely, and frighten away the marabou and crows from their eggs +by feigned attacks at their heads. When man approaches their nests, they +change their tactics, and, like the lapwing and ostrich, let one wing +drop and make one leg limp, as if lame. The upper mandible being so much +shorter than the lower, the young are more helpless than the stork in +the fable with the flat dishes, and must have every thing conveyed into +the mouth by the parents till they are able to provide for themselves. +The lower mandible, as thin as a paper-knife, is put into the water +while the bird skims along the surface, and scoops up any little insects +it meets. It has great length of wing, and can continue its flight with +perfect ease, the wings acting, though kept above the level of the body. +The wonder is, how this plowing of the surface of the water can be so +well performed as to yield a meal, for it is usually done in the dark. +Like most aquatic feeders, they work by night, when insects and fishes +rise to the surface. They have great affection for their young, +its amount being increased in proportion to the helplessness of the +offspring. + +There are also numbers of spoonbills, nearly white in plumage; the +beautiful, stately flamingo; the Numidian crane, or demoiselle, some of +which, tamed at Government House, Cape Town, struck every one as most +graceful ornaments to a noble mansion, as they perched on its pillars. +There are two cranes besides--one light blue, the other also light blue, +but with a white neck; and gulls ('Procellaria') of different sizes +abound. + +One pretty little wader, an avoset, appears as if standing on stilts, +its legs are so long; and its bill seems bent the wrong way, or upward. +It is constantly seen wading in the shallows, digging up little slippery +insects, the peculiar form of the bill enabling it to work them easily +out of the sand. When feeding, it puts its head under the water to +seize the insect at the bottom, then lifts it up quickly, making a rapid +gobbling, as if swallowing a wriggling worm. + +The 'Parra Africana' runs about on the surface, as if walking on water, +catching insects. It too has long, thin legs, and extremely long toes, +for the purpose of enabling it to stand on the floating lotus-leaves +and other aquatic plants. When it stands on a lotus-leaf five inches in +diameter, the spread of the toes, acting on the principle of snow-shoes, +occupies all the surface, and it never sinks, though it obtains a +livelihood, not by swimming or flying, but by walking on the water. + +Water-birds, whose prey or food requires a certain aim or action in one +direction, have bills quite straight in form, as the heron and snipe; +while those which are intended to come in contact with hard substances, +as breaking shells, have the bills gently curved, in order that the +shock may not be communicated to the brain. + +The Barotse valley contains great numbers of large black geese.* They +may be seen every where walking slowly about, feeding. They have a +strong black spur on the shoulder, like the armed plover, and as strong +as that on the heel of a cock, but are never seen to use them, except +in defense of their young. They choose ant-hills for their nests, and +in the time of laying the Barotse consume vast quantities of their eggs. +There are also two varieties of geese, of somewhat smaller size, but +better eating. One of these, the Egyptian goose, or Vulpanser, can not +rise from the water, and during the floods of the river great numbers +are killed by being pursued in canoes. The third is furnished with +a peculiar knob on the beak. These, with myriads of ducks of three +varieties, abound every where on the Leeambye. On one occasion the canoe +neared a bank on which a large flock was sitting. Two shots furnished +our whole party with a supper, for we picked up seventeen ducks and a +goose. No wonder the Barotse always look back to this fruitful valley as +the Israelites did to the flesh-pots of Egypt. The poorest persons are +so well supplied with food from their gardens, fruits from the forest +trees, and fish from the river, that their children, when taken into +the service of the Makololo, where they have only one large meal a day, +become quite emaciated, and pine for a return to their parents. + + * 'Anser leucagaster' and 'melanogaster'. + +Part of our company marched along the banks with the oxen, and part went +in the canoes, but our pace was regulated by the speed of the men on +shore. Their course was rather difficult, on account of the numbers of +departing and re-entering branches of the Leeambye, which they had to +avoid or wait at till we ferried them over. The number of alligators is +prodigious, and in this river they are more savage than in some others. +Many children are carried off annually at Sesheke and other towns; for, +notwithstanding the danger, when they go down for water they almost +always must play a while. This reptile is said by the natives to strike +the victim with its tail, then drag him in and drown him. When lying +in the water watching for prey, the body never appears. Many calves +are lost also, and it is seldom that a number of cows can swim over at +Sesheke without some loss. I never could avoid shuddering on seeing my +men swimming across these branches, after one of them had been caught by +the thigh and taken below. He, however, retained, as nearly all of them +in the most trying circumstances do, his full presence of mind, and, +having a small, square, ragged-edged javelin with him, when dragged to +the bottom gave the alligator a stab behind the shoulder. The alligator, +writhing in pain, left him, and he came out with the deep marks of +the reptile's teeth on his thigh. Here the people have no antipathy to +persons who have met with such an adventure, but, in the Bamangwato and +Bakwain tribes, if a man is either bitten or even has had water splashed +over him by the reptile's tail, he is expelled his tribe. When on the +Zouga we saw one of the Bamangwato living among the Bayeiye, who had +the misfortune to have been bitten and driven out of his tribe in +consequence. Fearing that I would regard him with the same disgust which +his countrymen profess to feel, he would not tell me the cause of his +exile, but the Bayeiye informed me of it, and the scars of the teeth +were visible on his thigh. If the Bakwains happened to go near an +alligator they would spit on the ground, and indicate its presence by +saying "Boleo ki bo"--"There is sin". They imagine the mere sight of +it would give inflammation of the eyes; and though they eat the zebra +without hesitation, yet if one bites a man he is expelled the tribe, and +obliged to take his wife and family away to the Kalahari. These curious +relics of the animal-worship of former times scarcely exist among the +Makololo. Sebituane acted on the principle, "Whatever is food for men is +food for me;" so no man is here considered unclean. The Barotse appear +inclined to pray to alligators and eat them too, for when I wounded +a water-antelope, called mochose, it took to the water; when near the +other side of the river an alligator appeared at its tail, and then both +sank together. Mashauana, who was nearer to it than I, told me that, +"though he had called to it to let his meat alone, it refused to +listen." One day we passed some Barotse lads who had speared an +alligator, and were waiting in expectation of its floating soon after. +The meat has a strong musky odor, not at all inviting for any one except +the very hungry. + +When we had gone thirty or forty miles above Libonta we sent eleven +of our captives to the west, to the chief called Makoma, with an +explanatory message. This caused some delay; but as we were loaded +with presents of food from the Makololo, and the wild animals were in +enormous herds, we fared sumptuously. It was grievous, however, to +shoot the lovely creatures, they were so tame. With but little skill +in stalking, one could easily get within fifty or sixty yards of them. +There I lay, looking at the graceful forms and motions of beautiful +pokus,* leches, and other antelopes, often till my men, wondering what +was the matter, came up to see, and frightened them away. If we had been +starving, I could have slaughtered them with as little hesitation as I +should cut off a patient's leg; but I felt a doubt, and the antelopes +got the benefit of it. Have they a guardian spirit over them? I have +repeatedly observed, when I approached a herd lying beyond an ant-hill +with a tree on it, and viewed them with the greatest caution, they very +soon showed symptoms of uneasiness. They did not sniff danger in +the wind, for I was to leeward of them; but the almost invariable +apprehension of danger which arose, while unconscious of the direction +in which it lay, made me wonder whether each had what the ancient +physicians thought we all possessed, an archon, or presiding spirit. + + * I propose to name this new species 'Antilope Vardonii', + after the African traveler, Major Vardon. + +If we could ascertain the most fatal spot in an animal, we could +dispatch it with the least possible amount of suffering; but as that is +probably the part to which the greatest amount of nervous influence is +directed at the moment of receiving the shot, if we can not be sure of +the heart or brain, we are never certain of speedy death. Antelopes, +formed for a partially amphibious existence, and other animals of that +class, are much more tenacious of life than those which are purely +terrestrial. Most antelopes, when in distress or pursued, make for the +water. If hunted, they always do. A leche shot right through the body, +and no limb-bone broken, is almost sure to get away, while a zebra, with +a wound of no greater severity, will probably drop down dead. I have +seen a rhinoceros, while standing apparently chewing the cud, drop down +dead from a shot in the stomach, while others shot through one lung +and the stomach go off as if little hurt. But if one should crawl up +silently to within twenty yards either of the white or black rhinoceros, +throwing up a pinch of dust every now and then, to find out that the +anxiety to keep the body concealed by the bushes has not led him to +the windward side, then sit down, rest the elbow on the knees, and aim, +slanting a little upward, at a dark spot behind the shoulders, it falls +stone dead. + +To show that a shock on the part of the system to which much nervous +force is at the time directed will destroy life, it may be mentioned +that an eland, when hunted, can be dispatched by a wound which does +little more than injure the muscular system; its whole nervous force is +then imbuing the organs of motion; and a giraffe, when pressed hard by a +good horse only two or three hundred yards, has been known to drop down +dead, without any wound being inflicted at all. A full gallop by an +eland or giraffe quite dissipates its power, and the hunters, aware of +this, always try to press them at once to it, knowing that they have +but a short space to run before the animals are in their power. In doing +this, the old sportsmen are careful not to go too close to the giraffe's +tail, for this animal can swing his hind foot round in a way which would +leave little to choose between a kick with it and a clap from the arm of +a windmill. + +When the nervous force is entire, terrible wounds may be inflicted +without killing; a tsessebe having been shot through the neck while +quietly feeding, we went to him, and one of the men cut his throat deep +enough to bleed him largely. He started up after this and ran more than +a mile, and would have got clear off had not a dog brought him to bay +under a tree, where we found him standing. + +My men, having never had fire-arms in their hands before, found it so +difficult to hold the musket steady at the flash of fire in the pan, +that they naturally expected me to furnish them with "gun medicine", +without which, it is almost universally believed, no one can shoot +straight. Great expectations had been formed when I arrived among the +Makololo on this subject; but, having invariably declined to deceive +them, as some for their own profit have done, my men now supposed that I +would at last consent, and thereby relieve myself from the hard work of +hunting by employing them after due medication. This I was most willing +to do, if I could have done it honestly; for, having but little of the +hunting 'furore' in my composition, I always preferred eating the +game to killing it. Sulphur is the remedy most admired, and I remember +Sechele giving a large price for a very small bit. He also gave some +elephants' tusks, worth 30 Pounds, for another medicine which was to +make him invulnerable to musket balls. As I uniformly recommended that +these things should be tested by experiment, a calf was anointed with +the charm and tied to a tree. It proved decisive, and Sechele remarked +it was "pleasanter to be deceived than undeceived." I offered sulphur +for the same purpose, but that was declined, even though a person +came to the town afterward and rubbed his hands with a little before a +successful trial of shooting at a mark. + +I explained to my men the nature of a gun, and tried to teach them, but +they would soon have expended all the ammunition in my possession. I +was thus obliged to do all the shooting myself ever afterward. Their +inability was rather a misfortune; for, in consequence of working too +soon after having been bitten by the lion, the bone of my left arm +had not united well. Continual hard manual labor, and some falls from +ox-back, lengthened the ligament by which the ends of the bones were +united, and a false joint was the consequence. The limb has never been +painful, as those of my companions on the day of the rencounter with the +lion have been, but, there being a joint too many, I could not steady +the rifle, and was always obliged to shoot with the piece resting on +the left shoulder. I wanted steadiness of aim, and it generally happened +that the more hungry the party became, the more frequently I missed the +animals. + +We spent a Sunday on our way up to the confluence of the Leeba and +Leeambye. Rains had fallen here before we came, and the woods had put on +their gayest hue. Flowers of great beauty and curious forms grow every +where; they are unlike those in the south, and so are the trees. Many +of the forest-tree leaves are palmated and largely developed; the trunks +are covered with lichens, and the abundance of ferns which appear in the +woods shows we are now in a more humid climate than any to the south of +the Barotse valley. The ground begins to swarm with insect life; and in +the cool, pleasant mornings the welkin rings with the singing of birds, +which is not so delightful as the notes of birds at home, because I +have not been familiar with them from infancy. The notes here, however, +strike the mind by their loudness and variety, as the wellings forth +from joyous hearts of praise to Him who fills them with overflowing +gladness. All of us rise early to enjoy the luscious balmy air of the +morning. We then have worship; but, amid all the beauty and loveliness +with which we are surrounded, there is still a feeling of want in the +soul in viewing one's poor companions, and hearing bitter, impure words +jarring on the ear in the perfection of the scenes of Nature, and a +longing that both their hearts and ours might be brought into harmony +with the Great Father of Spirits. I pointed out, in, as usual, the +simplest words I could employ, the remedy which God has presented to +us, in the inexpressibly precious gift of His own Son, on whom the Lord +"laid the iniquity of us all." The great difficulty in dealing with +these people is to make the subject plain. The minds of the auditors +can not be understood by one who has not mingled much with them. They +readily pray for the forgiveness of sins, and then sin again; confess +the evil of it, and there the matter ends. + +I shall not often advert to their depravity. My practice has always been +to apply the remedy with all possible earnestness, but never allow my +own mind to dwell on the dark shades of men's characters. I have never +been able to draw pictures of guilt, as if that could awaken Christian +sympathy. The evil is there. But all around in this fair creation are +scenes of beauty, and to turn from these to ponder on deeds of sin can +not promote a healthy state of the faculties. I attribute much of the +bodily health I enjoy to following the plan adopted by most physicians, +who, while engaged in active, laborious efforts to assist the needy, +at the same time follow the delightful studies of some department of +natural history. The human misery and sin we endeavor to alleviate and +cure may be likened to the sickness and impurity of some of the back +slums of great cities. One contents himself by ministering to the sick +and trying to remove the causes, without remaining longer in the filth +than is necessary for his work; another, equally anxious for the public +good, stirs up every cesspool, that he may describe its reeking vapors, +and, by long contact with impurities, becomes himself infected, sickens, +and dies. + +The men went about during the day, and brought back wild fruits of +several varieties, which I had not hitherto seen. One, called mogametsa, +is a bean with a little pulp round it, which tastes like sponge-cake; +another, named mawa, grows abundantly on a low bush. There are many +berries and edible bulbs almost every where. The mamosho or moshomosho, +and milo (a medlar), were to be found near our encampment. These are +both good, if indeed one can be a fair judge who felt quite disposed to +pass a favorable verdict on every fruit which had the property of being +eatable at all. Many kinds are better than our crab-apple or sloe, and, +had they the care and culture these have enjoyed, might take high rank +among the fruits of the world. All that the Africans have thought of has +been present gratification; and now, as I sometimes deposit date-seeds +in the soil, and tell them I have no hope whatever of seeing the fruit, +it seems to them as the act of the South Sea Islanders appears to us, +when they planted in their gardens iron nails received from Captain +Cook. + +There are many fruits and berries in the forests, the uses of which are +unknown to my companions. Great numbers of a kind of palm I have never +met with before were seen growing at and below the confluence of the +Loeti and Leeambye; the seed probably came down the former river. It is +nearly as tall as the palmyra. The fruit is larger than of that species; +it is about four inches long, and has a soft yellow pulp round the +kernel or seed; when ripe, it is fluid and stringy, like the wild mango, +and not very pleasant to eat. + +Before we came to the junction of the Leeba and Leeambye we found +the banks twenty feet high, and composed of marly sandstone. They are +covered with trees, and the left bank has the tsetse and elephants. I +suspect the fly has some connection with this animal, and the Portuguese +in the district of Tete must think so too, for they call it the 'Musca +da elephant' (the elephant fly). + +The water of inundation covers even these lofty banks, but does not +stand long upon them; hence the crop of trees. Where it remains for any +length of time, trees can not live. On the right bank, or that in which +the Loeti flows, there is an extensive flat country called Manga, which, +though covered with grass, is destitute in a great measure of trees. + +Flocks of green pigeons rose from the trees as we passed along the +banks, and the notes of many birds told that we were now among strangers +of the feathered tribe. The beautiful trogon, with bright scarlet breast +and black back, uttered a most peculiar note, similar to that we read +of as having once been emitted by Memnon, and likened to the tuning of +a lyre. The boatmen answered it by calling "Nama, nama!"--meat, meat--as +if they thought that a repetition of the note would be a good omen for +our success in hunting. Many more interesting birds were met; but I +could make no collection, as I was proceeding on the plan of having as +little luggage as possible, so as not to excite the cupidity of those +through whose country we intended to pass. + +Vast shoals of fish come down the Leeambye with the rising waters, as +we observed they also do in the Zouga. They are probably induced to make +this migration by the increased rapidity of the current dislodging them +from their old pasture-grounds higher up the river. Insects constitute +but a small portion of the food of many fish. Fine vegetable matter, +like slender mosses, growing on the bottom, is devoured greedily; and +as the fishes are dislodged from the main stream by the force of the +current, and find abundant pasture on the flooded plains, the whole +community becomes disturbed and wanders. + +The mosala ('Clarias Capensis' and 'Glanis siluris'), the mullet ('Mugil +Africanus'), and other fishes, spread over the Barotse valley in such +numbers that when the waters retire all the people are employed in +cutting them up and drying them in the sun. The supply exceeds the +demand, and the land in numerous places is said to emit a most offensive +smell. Wherever you see the Zambesi in the centre of the country, it is +remarkable for the abundance of animal life in and upon its waters, and +on the adjacent banks. + +We passed great numbers of hippopotami. They are very numerous in the +parts of the river where they are never hunted. The males appear of a +dark color, the females of yellowish brown. There is not such a complete +separation of the sexes among them as among elephants. They spend most +of their time in the water, lolling about in a listless, dreamy manner. +When they come out of the river by night, they crop off the soft +succulent grasses very neatly. When they blow, they puff up the water +about three feet high. + + + + +Chapter 15. + +Message to Masiko, the Barotse Chief, regarding the Captives-- +Navigation of the Leeambye--Capabilities of this District--The +Leeba--Flowers and Bees--Buffalo-hunt--Field for a Botanist--Young +Alligators; their savage Nature--Suspicion of the Balonda--Sekelenke's +Present--A Man and his two Wives--Hunters--Message from Manenko, +a female Chief--Mambari Traders--A Dream--Sheakondo and his +People--Teeth-filing--Desire for Butter--Interview with Nyamoana, +another female Chief--Court Etiquette--Hair versus Wool--Increase of +Superstition--Arrival of Manenko; her Appearance and Husband--Mode +of Salutation--Anklets--Embassy, with a Present from Masiko--Roast +Beef--Manioc--Magic Lantern--Manenko an accomplished Scold: compels us +to wait--Unsuccessful Zebra-hunt. + + + +On the 27th of December we were at the confluence of the Leeba and +Leeambye (lat. 14d 10' 52" S., long. 23d 35' 40" E.). Masiko, the +Barotse chief, for whom we had some captives, lived nearly due east of +this point. They were two little boys, a little girl, a young man, and +two middle-aged women. One of these was a member of a Babimpe tribe, who +knock out both upper and lower front teeth as a distinction. As we had +been informed by the captives on the previous Sunday that Masiko was in +the habit of seizing all orphans, and those who have no powerful friend +in the tribe whose protection they can claim, and selling them for +clothing to the Mambari, we thought the objection of the women to go +first to his town before seeing their friends quite reasonable, and +resolved to send a party of our own people to see them safely among +their relatives. I told the captive young man to inform Masiko that he +was very unlike his father Santuru, who had refused to sell his people +to Mambari. He will probably be afraid to deliver such a message +himself, but it is meant for his people, and they will circulate it +pretty widely, and Masiko may yet feel a little pressure from without. +We sent Mosantu, a Batoka man, and his companions, with the captives. +The Barotse whom we had were unwilling to go to Masiko, since they owe +him allegiance as the son of Santuru, and while they continue with the +Makololo are considered rebels. The message by Mosantu was, that "I was +sorry to find that Santuru had not borne a wiser son. Santuru loved to +govern men, but Masiko wanted to govern wild beasts only, as he sold +his people to the Mambari;" adding an explanation of the return of the +captives, and an injunction to him to live in peace, and prevent +his people kidnapping the children and canoes of the Makololo, as a +continuance in these deeds would lead to war, which I wished to prevent. +He was also instructed to say, if Masiko wanted fuller explanation of my +views, he must send a sensible man to talk with me at the first town of +the Balonda, to which I was about to proceed. + +We ferried Mosantu over to the left bank of the Leeba. The journey +required five days, but it could not have been at a quicker rate than +ten or twelve miles per day; the children were between seven and eight +years of age, and unable to walk fast in a hot sun. + +Leaving Mosantu to pursue his course, we shall take but one glance down +the river, which we are now about to leave, for it comes at this point +from the eastward, and our course is to be directed to the northwest, +as we mean to go to Loanda in Angola. From the confluence, where we now +are, down to Mosioatunya, there are many long reaches, where a vessel +equal to the Thames steamers plying between the bridges could run as +freely as they do on the Thames. It is often, even here, as broad as +that river at London Bridge, but, without accurate measurement of the +depth, one could not say which contained most water. There are, however, +many and serious obstacles to a continued navigation for hundreds of +miles at a stretch. About ten miles below the confluence of the Loeti, +for instance, there are many large sand-banks in the stream; then you +have a hundred miles to the River Simah, where a Thames steamer could +ply at all times of the year; but, again, the space between Simah and +Katima-molelo has five or six rapids with cataracts, one of which, +Gonye, could not be passed at any time without portage. Between these +rapids there are reaches of still, deep water, of several miles in +length. Beyond Katima-molelo to the confluence of the Chobe you have +nearly a hundred miles again, of a river capable of being navigated in +the same way as in the Barotse valley. + +Now I do not say that this part of the river presents a very inviting +prospect for extemporaneous European enterprise; but when we have a +pathway which requires only the formation of portages to make it equal +to our canals for hundreds of miles, where the philosophers supposed +there was naught but an extensive sandy desert, we must confess that +the future partakes at least of the elements of hope. My deliberate +conviction was and is that the part of the country indicated is as +capable of supporting millions of inhabitants as it is of its thousands. +The grass of the Barotse valley, for instance, is such a densely-matted +mass that, when "laid", the stalks bear each other up, so that one feels +as if walking on the sheaves of a hay-stack, and the leches nestle under +it to bring forth their young. The soil which produces this, if placed +under the plow, instead of being mere pasturage, would yield grain +sufficient to feed vast multitudes. + +We now began to ascend the Leeba. The water is black in color as +compared with the main stream, which here assumes the name of Kabompo. +The Leeba flows placidly, and, unlike the parent river, receives numbers +of little rivulets from both sides. It winds slowly through the most +charming meadows, each of which has either a soft, sedgy centre, large +pond, or trickling rill down the middle. The trees are now covered with +a profusion of the freshest foliage, and seem planted in groups of such +pleasant, graceful outline that art could give no additional charm. The +grass, which had been burned off and was growing again after the +rains, was short and green, and all the scenery so like that of a +carefully-tended gentleman's park, that one is scarcely reminded that +the surrounding region is in the hands of simple nature alone. I suspect +that the level meadows are inundated annually, for the spots on which +the trees stand are elevated three or four feet above them, and these +elevations, being of different shapes, give the strange variety of +outline of the park-like woods. Numbers of a fresh-water shell are +scattered all over these valleys. The elevations, as I have observed +elsewhere, are of a soft, sandy soil, and the meadows of black, rich +alluvial loam. There are many beautiful flowers, and many bees to sip +their nectar. We found plenty of honey in the woods, and saw the stages +on which the Balonda dry their meat, when they come down to hunt and +gather the produce of the wild hives. In one part we came upon groups of +lofty trees as straight as masts, with festoons of orchilla-weed hanging +from the branches. This, which is used as a dye-stuff, is found nowhere +in the dry country to the south. It prefers the humid climate near the +west coast. + +A large buffalo was wounded, and ran into the thickest part of the +forest, bleeding profusely. The young men went on his trail; and, though +the vegetation was so dense that no one could have run more than a few +yards, most of them went along quite carelessly, picking and eating +a fruit of the melon family called Mponko. When the animal heard them +approach he always fled, shifting his stand and doubling on his course +in the most cunning manner. In other cases I have known them to turn +back to a point a few yards from their own trail, and then lie down in +a hollow waiting for the hunter to come up. Though a heavy, +lumbering-looking animal, his charge is then rapid and terrific. More +accidents happen by the buffalo and the black rhinoceros than by the +lion. Though all are aware of the mischievous nature of the buffalo when +wounded, our young men went after him quite carelessly. They never lose +their presence of mind, but, as a buffalo charges back in a forest, dart +dexterously out of his way behind a tree, and, wheeling round, stab him +as he passes. + +A tree in flower brought the pleasant fragrance of hawthorn hedges back +to memory; its leaves, flowers, perfumes, and fruit resembled those +of the hawthorn, only the flowers were as large as dog-roses, and the +"haws" like boys' marbles. Here the flowers smell sweetly, while few +in the south emit any scent at all, or only a nauseous odor. A botanist +would find a rich harvest on the banks of the Leeba. This would be his +best season, for the flowers all run rapidly to seed, and then insects +of every shape spring into existence to devour them. The climbing plants +display great vigor of growth, being not only thick in the trunk, but +also at the very point, in the manner of quickly-growing asparagus. The +maroro or malolo now appears, and is abundant in many parts between +this and Angola. It is a small bush with a yellow fruit, and in its +appearance a dwarf "anona". The taste is sweet, and the fruit is +wholesome: it is full of seeds, like the custard-apple. + +On the 28th we slept at a spot on the right bank from which had just +emerged two broods of alligators. We had seen many young ones as we came +up, so this seems to be their time of coming forth from the nests, for +we saw them sunning themselves on sand-banks in company with the old +ones. We made our fire in one of the deserted nests, which were strewed +all over with the broken shells. At the Zouga we saw sixty eggs taken +out of one such nest alone. They are about the size of those of a goose, +only the eggs of the alligator are of the same diameter at both ends, +and the white shell is partially elastic, from having a strong internal +membrane and but little lime in its composition. The distance from the +water was about ten feet, and there were evidences of the same place +having been used for a similar purpose in former years. A broad path +led up from the water to the nest, and the dam, it was said by my +companions, after depositing the eggs, covers them up, and returns +afterward to assist the young out of the place of confinement and out of +the egg. She leads them to the edge of the water, and then leaves them +to catch small fish for themselves. Assistance to come forth seems +necessary, for here, besides the tough membrane of the shell, they had +four inches of earth upon them; but they do not require immediate aid +for food, because they all retain a portion of yolk, equal to that of a +hen's egg, in a membrane in the abdomen, as a stock of nutriment, while +only beginning independent existence by catching fish. Fish is the +principal food of both small and large, and they are much assisted +in catching them by their broad, scaly tails. Sometimes an alligator, +viewing a man in the water from the opposite bank, rushes across the +stream with wonderful agility, as is seen by the high ripple he makes +on the surface caused by his rapid motion at the bottom; but in general +they act by stealth, sinking underneath as soon as they see man. They +seldom leave the water to catch prey, but often come out by day to enjoy +the pleasure of basking in the sun. In walking along the bank of the +Zouga once, a small one, about three feet long, made a dash at my feet, +and caused me to rush quickly in another direction; but this is unusual, +for I never heard of a similar case. A wounded leche, chased into any +of the lagoons in the Barotse valley, or a man or dog going in for the +purpose of bringing out a dead one, is almost sure to be seized, though +the alligators may not appear on the surface. When employed in looking +for food they keep out of sight; they fish chiefly by night. When +eating, they make a loud, champing noise, which when once heard is never +forgotten. + +The young, which had come out of the nests where we spent the night, did +not appear wary; they were about ten inches long, with yellow eyes, and +pupil merely a perpendicular slit. They were all marked with transverse +slips of pale green and brown, half an inch broad. When speared, +they bit the weapon savagely, though their teeth were but partially +developed, uttering at the same time a sharp bark like that of a whelp +when it first begins to use its voice. I could not ascertain whether +the dam devours them, as reported, or whether the ichneumon has the same +reputation here as in Egypt. Probably the Barotse and Bayeiye would not +look upon it as a benefactor; they prefer to eat the eggs themselves, +and be their own ichneumons. The white of the egg does not coagulate, +but the yolk does, and this is the only part eaten. + +As the population increases, the alligators will decrease, for their +nests will be oftener found; the principal check on their inordinate +multiplication seems to be man. They are more savage and commit more +mischief in the Leeambye than in any other river. After dancing long in +the moonlight nights, young men run down to the water to wash off the +dust and cool themselves before going to bed, and are thus often carried +away. One wonders they are not afraid; but the fact is, they have as +little sense of danger impending over them as the hare has when not +actually pursued by the hound, and in many rencounters, in which +they escape, they had not time to be afraid, and only laugh at the +circumstance afterward: there is a want of calm reflection. In many +cases, not referred to in this book, I feel more horror now in thinking +on dangers I have run than I did at the time of their occurrence. + +When we reached the part of the river opposite to the village of +Manenko, the first female chief whom we encountered, two of the people +called Balunda, or Balonda, came to us in their little canoe. From them +we learned that Kolimbota, one of our party, who had been in the habit +of visiting these parts, was believed by the Balonda to have acted as +a guide to the marauders under Lerimo, whose captives we were now +returning. They very naturally suspected this, from the facility with +which their villages had been found, and, as they had since removed them +to some distance from the river, they were unwilling to lead us to their +places of concealment. We were in bad repute, but, having a captive +boy and girl to show in evidence of Sekeletu and ourselves not being +partakers in the guilt of inferior men, I could freely express my desire +that all should live in peace. They evidently felt that I ought to have +taught the Makololo first, before coming to them, for they remarked that +what I advanced was very good, but guilt lay at the door of the Makololo +for disturbing the previously existing peace. They then went away to +report us to Manenko. + +When the strangers visited us again in the evening, they were +accompanied by a number of the people of an Ambonda chief named +Sekelenke. The Ambonda live far to the N.W.; their language, the Bonda, +is the common dialect in Angola. Sekelenke had fled, and was now living +with his village as a vassal of Masiko. As notices of such men will +perhaps convey the best idea of the state of the inhabitants to the +reader, I shall hereafter allude to the conduct of Sekelenke, whom I at +present only introduce. Sekelenke had gone with his villagers to hunt +elephants on the right bank of the Leeba, and was now on his way back to +Masiko. He sent me a dish of boiled zebra's flesh, and a request that I +should lend him a canoe to ferry his wives and family across the river +to the bank on which we were encamped. Many of Sekelenke's people came +to salute the first white man they ever had an opportunity of seeing; +but Sekelenke himself did not come near. We heard he was offended with +some of his people for letting me know he was among the company. He +said that I should be displeased with him for not coming and making +some present. This was the only instance in which I was shunned in this +quarter. + +As it would have been impolitic to pass Manenko, or any chief, without +at least showing so much respect as to call and explain the objects +of our passing through the country, we waited two entire days for the +return of the messengers to Manenko; and as I could not hurry matters, I +went into the adjacent country to search for meat for the camp. + +The country is furnished largely with forest, having occasionally open +lawns covered with grass, not in tufts as in the south, but so closely +planted that one can not see the soil. We came upon a man and his two +wives and children, burning coarse rushes and the stalks of tsitla, +growing in a brackish marsh, in order to extract a kind of salt from the +ashes. They make a funnel of branches of trees, and line it with grass +rope, twisted round until it is, as it were, a beehive-roof inverted. +The ashes are put into water, in a calabash, and then it is allowed to +percolate through the small hole in the bottom and through the grass. +When this water is evaporated in the sun, it yields sufficient salt to +form a relish with food. The women and children fled with precipitation, +but we sat down at a distance, and allowed the man time to gain courage +enough to speak. He, however, trembled excessively at the apparition +before him; but when we explained that our object was to hunt game, and +not men, he became calm, and called back his wives. We soon afterward +came to another party on the same errand with ourselves. The man had a +bow about six feet long, and iron-headed arrows about thirty inches in +length; he had also wooden arrows neatly barbed, to shoot in cases +where he might not be quite certain of recovering them again. We soon +afterward got a zebra, and gave our hunting acquaintances such a liberal +share that we soon became friends. All whom we saw that day then came +with us to the encampment to beg a little meat; and as they have so +little salt, I have no doubt they felt grateful for what we gave. + +Sekelenke and his people, twenty-four in number, defiled past our camp +carrying large bundles of dried elephants' meat. Most of them came to +say good-by, and Sekelenke himself sent to say that he had gone to visit +a wife living in the village of Manenko. It was a mere African manoeuvre +to gain information, and not commit himself to either one line of action +or another with respect to our visit. As he was probably in the party +before us, I replied that it was all right, and when my people came up +from Masiko I would go to my wife too. Another zebra came to our camp, +and, as we had friends near, it was shot. It was the 'Equus montanus', +though the country is perfectly flat, and was finely marked down to the +feet, as all the zebras are in these parts. + +To our first message, offering a visit of explanation to Manenko, we got +an answer, with a basket of manioc roots, that we must remain where we +were till she should visit us. Having waited two days already for her, +other messengers arrived with orders for me to come to her. After four +days of rains and negotiation, I declined going at all, and proceeded +up the river to the small stream Makondo (lat. 13d 23' 12" S.), which +enters the Leeba from the east, and is between twenty and thirty yards +broad. + +JANUARY 1ST, 1854. We had heavy rains almost every day; indeed, the +rainy season had fairly set in. Baskets of the purple fruit called mawa +were frequently brought to us by the villagers; not for sale, but from a +belief that their chiefs would be pleased to hear that they had treated +us well; we gave them pieces of meat in return. + +When crossing at the confluence of the Leeba and Makondo, one of my men +picked up a bit of a steel watch-chain of English manufacture, and we +were informed that this was the spot where the Mambari cross in +coming to Masiko. Their visits explain why Sekelenke kept his tusks so +carefully. These Mambari are very enterprising merchants: when they mean +to trade with a town, they deliberately begin the affair by building +huts, as if they knew that little business could be transacted without a +liberal allowance of time for palaver. They bring Manchester goods into +the heart of Africa; these cotton prints look so wonderful that the +Makololo could not believe them to be the work of mortal hands. On +questioning the Mambari they were answered that English manufactures +came out of the sea, and beads were gathered on its shore. To Africans +our cotton mills are fairy dreams. "How can the irons spin, weave, and +print so beautifully?" Our country is like what Taprobane was to our +ancestors--a strange realm of light, whence came the diamond, muslin, +and peacocks; an attempt at explanation of our manufactures usually +elicits the expression, "Truly ye are gods!" + +When about to leave the Makondo, one of my men had dreamed that Mosantu +was shut up a prisoner in a stockade: this dream depressed the spirits +of the whole party, and when I came out of my little tent in the +morning, they were sitting the pictures of abject sorrow. I asked if +we were to be guided by dreams, or by the authority I derived from +Sekeletu, and ordered them to load the boats at once; they seemed +ashamed to confess their fears; the Makololo picked up courage and +upbraided the others for having such superstitious views, and said this +was always their way; if even a certain bird called to them, they would +turn back from an enterprise, saying it was unlucky. They entered the +canoes at last, and were the better of a little scolding for being +inclined to put dreams before authority. It rained all the morning, +but about eleven we reached the village of Sheakondo, on a small stream +named Lonkonye. We sent a message to the head man, who soon appeared +with two wives, bearing handsome presents of manioc: Sheakondo could +speak the language of the Barotse well, and seemed awestruck when told +some of the "words of God". He manifested no fear, always spoke frankly, +and when he made an asseveration, did so by simply pointing up to the +sky above him. The Balonda cultivate the manioc or cassava extensively; +also dura, ground-nuts, beans, maize, sweet potatoes, and yams, here +called "lekoto", but as yet we see only the outlying villages. + +The people who came with Sheakondo to our bivouac had their teeth filed +to a point by way of beautifying them, though those which were left +untouched were always the whitest; they are generally tattooed in +various parts, but chiefly on the abdomen: the skin is raised in small +elevated cicatrices, each nearly half an inch long and a quarter of an +inch in diameter, so that a number of them may constitute a star, or +other device. The dark color of the skin prevents any coloring matter +being deposited in these figures, but they love much to have the whole +surface of their bodies anointed with a comfortable varnish of oil. In +their unassisted state they depend on supplies of oil from the Palma +Christi, or castor-oil plant, or from various other oliferous seeds, but +they are all excessively fond of clarified butter or ox fat. Sheakondo's +old wife presented some manioc roots, and then politely requested to +be anointed with butter: as I had been bountifully supplied by the +Makololo, I gave her as much as would suffice, and as they have little +clothing, I can readily believe that she felt her comfort greatly +enhanced thereby. + +The favorite wife, who was also present, was equally anxious for butter. +She had a profusion of iron rings on her ankles, to which were attached +little pieces of sheet iron, to enable her to make a tinkling as she +walked in her mincing African style; the same thing is thought pretty by +our own dragoons in walking jauntingly. + +We had so much rain and cloud that I could not get a single observation +for either longitude or latitude for a fortnight. Yet the Leeba does +not show any great rise, nor is the water in the least discolored. It +is slightly black, from the number of mossy rills which fall into it. It +has remarkably few birds and fish, while the Leeambye swarms with both. +It is noticeable that alligators here possess more of the fear of man +than in the Leeambye. The Balonda have taught them, by their poisoned +arrows, to keep out of sight. We did not see one basking in the sun. The +Balonda set so many little traps for birds that few appear. I observed, +however, many (to me) new small birds of song on its banks. More rain +has been falling in the east than here, for the Leeambye was rising fast +and working against the sandy banks so vigorously that a slight yellow +tinge was perceptible in it. + +One of our men was bitten by a non-venomous serpent, and of course felt +no harm. The Barotse concluded that this was owing to many of them being +present and seeing it, as if the sight of human eyes could dissolve the +poison and act as a charm. + +On the 6th of January we reached the village of another female chief, +named Nyamoana, who is said to be the mother of Manenko, and sister +of Shinte or Kabompo, the greatest Balonda chief in this part of the +country. Her people had but recently come to the present locality, and +had erected only twenty huts. Her husband, Samoana, was clothed in a +kilt of green and red baize, and was armed with a spear and a broadsword +of antique form, about eighteen inches long and three broad. The chief +and her husband were sitting on skins placed in the middle of a circle +thirty paces in diameter, a little raised above the ordinary level of +the ground, and having a trench round it. Outside the trench sat about a +hundred persons of all ages and both sexes. The men were well armed with +bows, arrows, spears, and broadswords. Beside the husband sat a rather +aged woman, having a bad outward squint in the left eye. We put down +our arms about forty yards off, and I walked up to the centre of the +circular bench, and saluted him in the usual way by clapping the hands +together in their fashion. He pointed to his wife, as much as to say, +the honor belongs to her. I saluted her in the same way, and a mat +having been brought, I squatted down in front of them. + +The talker was then called, and I was asked who was my spokesman. Having +pointed to Kolimbota, who knew their dialect best, the palaver began +in due form. I explained the real objects I had in view, without any +attempt to mystify or appear in any other character than my own, for +I have always been satisfied that, even though there were no other +considerations, the truthful way of dealing with the uncivilized is +unquestionably the best. Kolimbota repeated to Nyamoana's talker what +I had said to him. He delivered it all verbatim to her husband, who +repeated it again to her. It was thus all rehearsed four times over, +in a tone loud enough to be heard by the whole party of auditors. The +response came back by the same roundabout route, beginning at the lady +to her husband, etc. + +After explanations and re-explanations, I perceived that our new friends +were mixing up my message of peace and friendship with Makololo affairs, +and stated that it was not delivered on the authority of any one less +than that of their Creator, and that if the Makololo did again break His +laws and attack the Balonda, the guilt would rest with the Makololo and +not with me. The palaver then came to a close. + +By way of gaining their confidence, I showed them my hair, which is +considered a curiosity in all this region. They said, "Is that hair? +It is the mane of a lion, and not hair at all." Some thought that I +had made a wig of lion's mane, as they sometimes do with fibres of the +"ife", and dye it black, and twist it so as to resemble a mass of their +own wool. I could not return the joke by telling them that theirs was +not hair, but the wool of sheep, for they have none of these in the +country; and even though they had, as Herodotus remarked, "the African +sheep are clothed with hair, and men's heads with wool." So I had to +be content with asserting that mine was the real original hair, such as +theirs would have been had it not been scorched and frizzled by the sun. +In proof of what the sun could do, I compared my own bronzed face +and hands, then about the same in complexion as the lighter-colored +Makololo, with the white skin of my chest. They readily believed that, +as they go nearly naked and fully exposed to that influence, we might be +of common origin after all. Here, as every where, when heat and moisture +are combined, the people are very dark, but not quite black. There is +always a shade of brown in the most deeply colored. I showed my watch +and pocket compass, which are considered great curiosities; but, +though the lady was called on by her husband to look, she would not be +persuaded to approach near enough. + +These people are more superstitious than any we had yet encountered; +though still only building their village, they had found time to erect +two little sheds at the chief dwelling in it, in which were placed two +pots having charms in them. When asked what medicine they contained, +they replied, "Medicine for the Barimo;" but when I rose and looked into +them, they said they were medicine for the game. Here we saw the first +evidence of the existence of idolatry in the remains of an old idol at a +deserted village. It was simply a human head carved on a block of wood. +Certain charms mixed with red ochre and white pipe-clay are dotted over +them when they are in use; and a crooked stick is used in the same way +for an idol when they have no professional carver. + +As the Leeba seemed still to come from the direction in which we wished +to go, I was desirous of proceeding farther up with the canoes; but +Nyamoana was anxious that we should allow her people to conduct us +to her brother Shinte; and when I explained the advantage of +water-carriage, she represented that her brother did not live near the +river, and, moreover, there was a cataract in front, over which it +would be difficult to convey the canoes. She was afraid, too, that the +Balobale, whose country lies to the west of the river, not knowing the +objects for which we had come, would kill us. To my reply that I had +been so often threatened with death if I visited a new tribe that I was +now more afraid of killing any one than of being killed, she rejoined +that the Balobale would not kill me, but the Makololo would all be +sacrificed as their enemies. This produced considerable effect on my +companions, and inclined them to the plan of Nyamoana, of going to the +town of her brother rather than ascending the Leeba. The arrival of +Manenko herself on the scene threw so much weight into the scale on +their side that I was forced to yield the point. + +Manenko was a tall, strapping woman about twenty, distinguished by a +profusion of ornaments and medicines hung round her person; the latter +are supposed to act as charms. Her body was smeared all over with a +mixture of fat and red ochre, as a protection against the weather; a +necessary precaution, for, like most of the Balonda ladies, she was +otherwise in a state of frightful nudity. This was not from want of +clothing, for, being a chief, she might have been as well clad as any of +her subjects, but from her peculiar ideas of elegance in dress. When she +arrived with her husband, Sambanza, they listened for some time to +the statements I was making to the people of Nyamoana, after which the +husband, acting as spokesman, commenced an oration, stating the +reasons for their coming, and, during every two or three seconds of the +delivery, he picked up a little sand, and rubbed it on the upper part +of his arms and chest. This is a common mode of salutation in Londa; and +when they wish to be excessively polite, they bring a quantity of ashes +or pipe-clay in a piece of skin, and, taking up handfuls, rub it on the +chest and upper front part of each arm; others, in saluting, drum their +ribs with their elbows; while others still touch the ground with one +cheek after the other, and clap their hands. The chiefs go through the +manoeuvre of rubbing the sand on the arms, but only make a feint at +picking up some. When Sambanza had finished his oration, he rose up, +and showed his ankles ornamented with a bundle of copper rings; had they +been very heavy, they would have made him adopt a straggling walk. Some +chiefs have really so many as to be forced, by the weight and size, +to keep one foot apart from the other, the weight being a serious +inconvenience in walking. The gentlemen like Sambanza, who wish to +imitate their betters, do so in their walk; so you see men, with only +a few ounces of ornament on their legs, strutting along as if they +had double the number of pounds. When I smiled at Sambanza's walk, the +people remarked, "That is the way in which they show off their lordship +in these parts." + +Manenko was quite decided in the adoption of the policy of friendship +with the Makololo which we recommended; and, by way of cementing the +bond, she and her counselors proposed that Kolimbota should take a wife +among them. By this expedient she hoped to secure his friendship, and +also accurate information as to the future intentions of the Makololo. +She thought that he would visit the Balonda more frequently afterward, +having the good excuse of going to see his wife; and the Makololo would +never, of course, kill the villagers among whom so near a relative of +one of their own children dwells. Kolimbota, I found, thought favorably +of the proposition, and it afterward led to his desertion from us. + +On the evening of the day in which Manenko arrived, we were delighted +by the appearance of Mosantu and an imposing embassy from Masiko. It +consisted of all his under-chiefs, and they brought a fine elephant's +tusk, two calabashes of honey, and a large piece of blue baize, as a +present. The last was intended perhaps to show me that he was a truly +great chief, who had such stores of white men's goods at hand that he +could afford to give presents of them; it might also be intended for +Mosantu, for chiefs usually remember the servants; I gave it to him. +Masiko expressed delight, by his principal men, at the return of the +captives, and at the proposal of peace and alliance with the Makololo. +He stated that he never sold any of his own people to the Mambari, but +only captives whom his people kidnapped from small neighboring tribes. +When the question was put whether his people had been in the habit of +molesting the Makololo by kidnapping their servants and stealing canoes, +it was admitted that two of his men, when hunting, had gone to the +Makololo gardens, to see if any of their relatives were there. As the +great object in all native disputes is to get both parties to turn over +a new leaf, I explained the desirableness of forgetting past feuds, +accepting the present Makololo professions as genuine, and avoiding in +future to give them any cause for marauding. I presented Masiko with an +ox, furnished by Sekeletu as provision for ourselves. All these people +are excessively fond of beef and butter, from having been accustomed to +them in their youth, before the Makololo deprived them of cattle. They +have abundance of game, but I am quite of their opinion that, after all, +there is naught in the world equal to roast beef, and that in their +love for it the English show both good taste and sound sense. The ox was +intended for Masiko, but his men were very anxious to get my sanction +for slaughtering it on the spot. I replied that when it went out of +my hands I had no more to do with it. They, however, wished the +responsibility of slaughtering it to rest with me; if I had said they +might kill it, not many ounces would have remained in the morning. I +would have given permission, but had nothing else to offer in return for +Masiko's generosity. + +We were now without any provisions except a small dole of manioc roots +each evening from Nyamoana, which, when eaten raw, produce poisonous +effects. A small loaf, made from nearly the last morsel of maize-meal +from Libonta, was my stock, and our friends from Masiko were still more +destitute; yet we all rejoiced so much at their arrival that we resolved +to spend a day with them. The Barotse of our party, meeting with +relatives and friends among the Barotse of Masiko, had many old tales to +tell; and, after pleasant hungry converse by day, we regaled our friends +with the magic lantern by night, and, in order to make the thing of use +to all, we removed our camp up to the village of Nyamoana. This is a +good means of arresting the attention, and conveying important facts to +the minds of these people. + +When erecting our sheds at the village, Manenko fell upon our friends +from Masiko in a way that left no doubt on our minds but that she is +a most accomplished scold. Masiko had, on a former occasion, sent to +Samoana for a cloth, a common way of keeping up intercourse, and, after +receiving it, sent it back, because it had the appearance of having had +"witchcraft medicine" on it; this was a grave offense, and now Manenko +had a good excuse for venting her spleen, the embassadors having called +at her village, and slept in one of the huts without leave. If her +family was to be suspected of dealing in evil charms, why were Masiko's +people not to be thought guilty of leaving the same in her hut? She +advanced and receded in true oratorical style, belaboring her own +servants as well for allowing the offense, and, as usual in more +civilized feminine lectures, she leaned over the objects of her ire, and +screamed forth all their faults and failings ever since they were born, +and her despair of ever seeing them become better, until they were all +"killed by alligators". Masiko's people followed the plan of receiving +this torrent of abuse in silence, and, as neither we nor they had any +thing to eat, we parted next morning. In reference to Masiko selling +slaves to the Mambari, they promised to explain the relationship which +exists between even the most abject of his people and our common Father; +and that no more kidnapping ought to be allowed, as he ought to give +that peace and security to the smaller tribes on his eastern borders +which he so much desired to obtain himself from the Makololo. We +promised to return through his town when we came back from the +sea-coast. + +Manenko gave us some manioc roots in the morning, and had determined +to carry our baggage to her uncle's, Kabompo or Shinte. We had heard a +sample of what she could do with her tongue; and as neither my men nor +myself had much inclination to encounter a scolding from this black Mrs. +Caudle, we made ready the packages; but she came and said the men whom +she had ordered for the service had not yet come; they would arrive +to-morrow. Being on low and disagreeable diet, I felt annoyed at this +further delay, and ordered the packages to be put into the canoes to +proceed up the river without her servants; but Manenko was not to be +circumvented in this way; she came forward with her people, and said her +uncle would be angry if she did not carry forward the tusks and goods +of Sekeletu, seized the luggage, and declared that she would carry it in +spite of me. My men succumbed sooner to this petticoat government than +I felt inclined to do, and left me no power; and, being unwilling to +encounter her tongue, I was moving off to the canoes, when she gave me +a kind explanation, and, with her hand on my shoulder, put on a motherly +look, saying, "Now, my little man, just do as the rest have done." My +feelings of annoyance of course vanished, and I went out to try and get +some meat. + +The only game to be found in these parts are the ZEBRA, the KUALATA or +tahetsi ('Aigoceros equina'), kama ('Bubalus caama'), buffaloes, and the +small antelope hakitenwe ('Philantomba'). + +The animals can be seen here only by following on their trail for many +miles. Urged on by hunger, we followed that of some zebras during the +greater part of the day: when within fifty yards of them, in a dense +thicket, I made sure of one, but, to my infinite disgust, the gun missed +fire, and off they bounded. The climate is so very damp, from daily +heavy rains, that every thing becomes loaded with moisture, and the +powder in the gun-nipples can not be kept dry. It is curious to mark the +intelligence of the game; in districts where they are much annoyed by +fire-arms, they keep out on the most open spots of country they can +find, in order to have a widely-extended range of vision, and a man +armed is carefully shunned. From the frequency with which I have been +allowed to approach nearer without than with a gun, I believe they know +the difference between safety and danger in the two cases. But here, +where they are killed by the arrows of the Balonda, they select for +safety the densest forest, where the arrow can not be easily shot. +The variation in the selection of standing-spots during the day may, +however, be owing partly to the greater heat of the sun, for here it +is particularly sharp and penetrating. However accounted for, the wild +animals here do select the forests by day, while those farther south +generally shun these covers, and, on several occasions, I have observed +there was no sunshine to cause them to seek for shade. + + + + +Chapter 16. + +Nyamoana's Present--Charms--Manenko's pedestrian Powers--An Idol-- +Balonda Arms--Rain--Hunger--Palisades--Dense Forests--Artificial +Beehives--Mushrooms--Villagers lend the Roofs of their Houses +--Divination and Idols--Manenko's Whims--A night Alarm--Shinte's +Messengers and Present--The proper Way to approach a Village--A +Merman--Enter Shinte's Town: its Appearance--Meet two half-caste +Slave-traders--The Makololo scorn them--The Balonda real Negroes--Grand +Reception from Shinte--His Kotla--Ceremony of Introduction--The +Orators--Women--Musicians and Musical Instruments--A disagreeable +Request--Private Interviews with Shinte--Give him an Ox--Fertility +of Soil--Manenko's new Hut--Conversation with Shinte--Kolimbota's +Proposal--Balonda's Punctiliousness--Selling Children--Kidnapping-- +Shinte's Offer of a Slave--Magic Lantern--Alarm of Women-- +Delay--Sambanza returns intoxicated--The last and greatest Proof of +Shinte's Friendship. + + + +11TH OF JANUARY, 1854. On starting this morning, Samoana (or rather +Nyamoana, for the ladies are the chiefs here) presented a string of +beads, and a shell highly valued among them, as an atonement for having +assisted Manenko, as they thought, to vex me the day before. They seemed +anxious to avert any evil which might arise from my displeasure; but +having replied that I never kept my anger up all night, they were much +pleased to see me satisfied. We had to cross, in a canoe, a stream which +flows past the village of Nyamoana. Manenko's doctor waved some charms +over her, and she took some in her hand and on her body before she +ventured upon the water. One of my men spoke rather loudly when near the +doctor's basket of medicines. The doctor reproved him, and always spoke +in a whisper himself, glancing back to the basket as if afraid of being +heard by something therein. So much superstition is quite unknown in the +south, and is mentioned here to show the difference in the feelings of +this new people, and the comparative want of reverence on these points +among Caffres and Bechuanas. + +Manenko was accompanied by her husband and her drummer; the latter +continued to thump most vigorously until a heavy, drizzling mist set in +and compelled him to desist. Her husband used various incantations and +vociferations to drive away the rain, but down it poured incessantly, +and on our Amazon went, in the very lightest marching order, and at a +pace that few of the men could keep up with. Being on ox-back, I kept +pretty close to our leader, and asked her why she did not clothe herself +during the rain, and learned that it is not considered proper for a +chief to appear effeminate. He or she must always wear the appearance +of robust youth, and bear vicissitudes without wincing. My men, in +admiration of her pedestrian powers, every now and then remarked, +"Manenko is a soldier;" and thoroughly wet and cold, we were all glad +when she proposed a halt to prepare our night's lodging on the banks of +a stream. + +The country through which we were passing was the same succession of +forest and open lawns as formerly mentioned: the trees were nearly all +evergreens, and of good, though not very gigantic size. The lawns were +covered with grass, which, in thickness of crop, looked like ordinary +English hay. We passed two small hamlets surrounded by gardens of maize +and manioc, and near each of these I observed, for the first time, +an ugly idol common in Londa--the figure of an animal, resembling an +alligator, made of clay. It is formed of grass, plastered over with +soft clay; two cowrie-shells are inserted as eyes, and numbers of the +bristles from the tail of an elephant are stuck in about the neck. It is +called a lion, though, if one were not told so, he would conclude it to +be an alligator. It stood in a shed, and the Balonda pray and beat drums +before it all night in cases of sickness. + +Some of the men of Manenko's train had shields made of reeds, neatly +woven into a square shape, about five feet long and three broad. With +these, and short broadswords and sheaves of iron-headed arrows, they +appeared rather ferocious. But the constant habit of wearing arms is +probably only a substitute for the courage they do not possess. We +always deposited our fire-arms and spears outside a village before +entering it, while the Balonda, on visiting us at our encampment, always +came fully armed, until we ordered them either to lay down their weapons +or be off. Next day we passed through a piece of forest so dense that no +one could have penetrated it without an axe. It was flooded, not by +the river, but by the heavy rains which poured down every day, and kept +those who had clothing constantly wet. I observed, in this piece of +forest, a very strong smell of sulphureted hydrogen. This I had +observed repeatedly in other parts before. I had attacks of fever of the +intermittent type again and again, in consequence of repeated drenchings +in these unhealthy spots. + +On the 11th and 12th we were detained by incessant rains, and so heavy +I never saw the like in the south. I had a little tapioca and a small +quantity of Libonta meal, which I still reserved for worse times. The +patience of my men under hunger was admirable; the actual want of the +present is never so painful as the thought of getting nothing in the +future. We thought the people of some large hamlets very niggardly and +very independent of their chiefs, for they gave us and Manenko nothing, +though they had large fields of maize in an eatable state around them. +When she went and kindly begged some for me, they gave her five ears +only. They were subjects of her uncle; and, had they been Makololo, +would have been lavish in their gifts to the niece of their chief. I +suspected that they were dependents of some of Shinte's principal men, +and had no power to part with the maize of their masters. + +Each house of these hamlets has a palisade of thick stakes around it, +and the door is made to resemble the rest of the stockade; the door is +never seen open; when the owner wishes to enter, he removes a stake or +two, squeezes his body in, then plants them again in their places, so +that an enemy coming in the night would find it difficult to discover +the entrance. These palisades seem to indicate a sense of insecurity +in regard to their fellow-men, for there are no wild beasts to disturb +them; the bows and arrows have been nearly as efficacious in clearing +the country here as guns have in the country farther south. This was a +disappointment to us, for we expected a continuance of the abundance of +game in the north which we found when we first came up to the confluence +of the Leeba and Leeambye. + +A species of the silver-tree of the Cape ('Leucodendron argenteum') is +found in abundance in the parts through which we have traveled since +leaving Samoana's. As it grows at a height of between two and three +thousand feet above the level of the sea, on the Cape Table Mountain, +and again on the northern slope of the Cashan Mountains, and here at +considerably greater heights (four thousand feet), the difference of +climate prevents the botanical range being considered as affording a +good approximation to the altitude. The rapid flow of the Leeambye, +which once seemed to me evidence of much elevation of the country +from which it comes, I now found, by the boiling point of water, was +fallacious.* + + * On examining this subject when I returned to Linyanti, I + found that, according to Dr. Arnott, a declivity of three + inches per mile gives a velocity in a smooth, straight channel + of three miles an hour. The general velocity of the Zambesi is + three miles and three quarters per hour, though in the rocky + parts it is sometimes as much as four and a half. If, + however, we make allowances for roughness of bottom, bendings + of channel, and sudden descents at cataracts, and say the + declivity is even seven inches per mile, those 800 miles + between the east coast and the great falls would require less + than 500 feet to give the observed velocity, and the + additional distance to this point would require but 150 feet + of altitude more. If my observation of this altitude may be + depended on, we have a steeper declivity for the Zambesi than + for some other great rivers. The Ganges, for instance, is + said to be at 1800 miles from its mouth only 800 feet above + the level of the sea, and water requires a month to come that + distance. But there are so many modifying circumstances, it is + difficult to draw any reliable conclusion from the currents. + The Chobe is sometimes heard of as flooded, about 40 miles + above Linyanti, a fortnight before the inundation reaches that + point, but it is very tortuous. The great river Magdalena + falls only 500 feet in a thousand miles; other rivers much + more. + +The forests became more dense as we went north. We traveled much more in +the deep gloom of the forest than in open sunlight. No passage existed +on either side of the narrow path made by the axe. Large climbing plants +entwined themselves around the trunks and branches of gigantic trees +like boa constrictors, and they often do constrict the trees by which +they rise, and, killing them, stand erect themselves. The bark of a +fine tree found in abundance here, and called "motuia", is used by +the Barotse for making fish-lines and nets, and the "molompi", so well +adapted for paddles by its lightness and flexibility, was abundant. +There were other trees quite new to my companions; many of them ran up +to a height of fifty feet of one thickness, and without branches. + +In these forests we first encountered the artificial beehives so +commonly met with all the way from this to Angola. They consist of about +five feet of the bark of a tree fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter. +Two incisions are made right round the tree at points five feet apart, +then one longitudinal slit from one of these to the other; the workman +next lifts up the bark on each side of this slit, and detaches it from +the trunk, taking care not to break it, until the whole comes from the +tree. The elasticity of the bark makes it assume the form it had before; +the slit is sewed or pegged up with wooden pins, and ends made of coiled +grass-rope are inserted, one of which has a hole for the ingress of the +bees in the centre, and the hive is complete. These hives are placed in +a horizontal position on high trees in different parts of the forest, +and in this way all the wax exported from Benguela and Loanda is +collected. It is all the produce of free labor. A "piece of medicine" +is tied round the trunk of the tree, and proves sufficient protection +against thieves. The natives seldom rob each other, for all believe +that certain medicines can inflict disease and death; and though they +consider that these are only known to a few, they act on the principle +that it is best to let them all alone. The gloom of these forests +strengthens the superstitious feelings of the people. In other quarters, +where they are not subjected to this influence, I have heard the chiefs +issue proclamations to the effect that real witchcraft medicines had +been placed at certain gardens from which produce had been stolen, the +thieves having risked the power of the ordinary charms previously placed +there. + +This being the rainy season, great quantities of mushrooms were met +with, and were eagerly devoured by my companions: the edible variety is +always found growing out of ant-hills, and attains the diameter of the +crown of a hat; they are quite white, and very good, even when eaten +raw; they occupy an extensive region of the interior; some, not edible, +are of a brilliant red, and others are of the same light blue as the +paper used by apothecaries to put up their medicines. + +There was a considerable pleasure, in spite of rain and fever, in this +new scenery. The deep gloom contrasted strongly with the shadeless glare +of the Kalahari, which had left an indelible impression on my memory. +Though drenched day by day at this time, and for months afterward, it +was long before I could believe that we were getting too much of a good +thing. Nor could I look at water being thrown away without a slight, +quick impression flitting across the mind that we were guilty of wasting +it. Every now and then we emerged from the deep gloom into a pretty +little valley, having a damp portion in the middle; which, though now +filled with water, at other times contains moisture enough for wells +only. These wells have shades put over them in the form of little huts. + +We crossed, in canoes, a little never-failing stream, which passes +by the name of Lefuje, or "the rapid". It comes from a goodly high +mountain, called Monakadzi (the woman), which gladdened our eyes as +it rose to our sight about twenty or thirty miles to the east of our +course. It is of an oblong shape, and seemed at least eight hundred feet +above the plains. The Lefuje probably derives its name from the rapid +descent of the short course it has to flow from Monakadzi to the Leeba. + +The number of little villages seemed about equal to the number of +valleys. At some we stopped and rested, the people becoming more liberal +as we advanced. Others we found deserted, a sudden panic having seized +the inhabitants, though the drum of Manenko was kept beaten pretty +constantly, in order to give notice of the approach of great people. +When we had decided to remain for the night at any village, the +inhabitants lent us the roofs of their huts, which in form resemble +those of the Makololo, or a Chinaman's hat, and can be taken off the +walls at pleasure. They lifted them off, and brought them to the spot we +had selected as our lodging, and, when my men had propped them up with +stakes, they were then safely housed for the night. Every one who comes +to salute either Manenko or ourselves rubs the upper parts of the arms +and chest with ashes; those who wish to show profounder reverence put +some also on the face. + +We found that every village had its idols near it. This is the case all +through the country of the Balonda, so that, when we came to an idol in +the woods, we always knew that we were within a quarter of an hour of +human habitations. One very ugly idol we passed rested on a horizontal +beam placed on two upright posts. This beam was furnished with two loops +of cord, as of a chain, to suspend offerings before it. On remarking to +my companions that these idols had ears, but that they heard not, +etc., I learned that the Balonda, and even the Barotse, believe that +divination may be performed by means of these blocks of wood and clay; +and though the wood itself could not hear, the owners had medicines by +which it could be made to hear and give responses, so that if an enemy +were approaching they would have full information. Manenko having +brought us to a stand on account of slight indisposition and a desire +to send forward notice of our approach to her uncle, I asked why it was +necessary to send forward information of our movements, if Shinte had +idols who could tell him every thing. "She did it only,"* was the reply. +It is seldom of much use to show one who worships idols the folly +of idolatry without giving something else as an object of adoration +instead. They do not love them. They fear them, and betake themselves to +their idols only when in perplexity and danger. + + * This is a curious African idiom, by which a person implies + he had no particular reason for his act. + +While delayed, by Manenko's management, among the Balonda villages, a +little to the south of the town of Shinte, we were well supplied by +the villagers with sweet potatoes and green maize; Sambanza went to his +mother's village for supplies of other food. I was laboring under fever, +and did not find it very difficult to exercise patience with her whims; +but it being Saturday, I thought we might as well go to the town for +Sunday (15th). "No; her messenger must return from her uncle first." +Being sure that the answer of the uncle would be favorable, I thought we +might go on at once, and not lose two days in the same spot. "No, it +is our custom;" and every thing else I could urge was answered in the +genuine pertinacious lady style. She ground some meal for me with her +own hands, and when she brought it told me she had actually gone to a +village and begged corn for the purpose. She said this with an air as if +the inference must be drawn by even a stupid white man: "I know how to +manage, don't I?" It was refreshing to get food which could be eaten +without producing the unpleasantness described by the Rev. John Newton, +of St. Mary's, Woolnoth, London, when obliged to eat the same roots +while a slave in the West Indies. The day (January 14th), for a wonder, +was fair, and the sun shone, so as to allow us to dry our clothing +and other goods, many of which were mouldy and rotten from the +long-continued damp. The guns rusted, in spite of being oiled every +evening. + +During the night we were all awakened by a terrific shriek from one of +Manenko's ladies. She piped out so loud and long that we all imagined +she had been seized by a lion, and my men snatched up their arms, which +they always place so as to be ready at a moment's notice, and ran to +the rescue; but we found the alarm had been caused by one of the oxen +thrusting his head into her hut and smelling her: she had put her hand +on his cold, wet nose, and thought it was all over with her. + +On Sunday afternoon messengers arrived from Shinte, expressing his +approbation of the objects we had in view in our journey through the +country, and that he was glad of the prospect of a way being opened by +which white men might visit him, and allow him to purchase ornaments at +pleasure. Manenko now threatened in sport to go on, and I soon afterward +perceived that what now seemed to me the dilly-dallying way of this lady +was the proper mode of making acquaintance with the Balonda; and much of +the favor with which I was received in different places was owing to +my sending forward messengers to state the object of our coming before +entering each town and village. When we came in sight of a village we +sat down under the shade of a tree and sent forward a man to give notice +who we were and what were our objects. The head man of the village then +sent out his principal men, as Shinte now did, to bid us welcome and +show us a tree under which we might sleep. Before I had profited by the +rather tedious teaching of Manenko, I sometimes entered a village and +created unintentional alarm. The villagers would continue to look upon +us with suspicion as long as we remained. Shinte sent us two large +baskets of manioc and six dried fishes. His men had the skin of a +monkey, called in their tongue "poluma" ('Colobus guereza'), of a jet +black color, except the long mane, which is pure white: it is said to be +found in the north, in the country of Matiamvo, the paramount chief +of all the Balonda. We learned from them that they are in the habit of +praying to their idols when unsuccessful in killing game or in any other +enterprise. They behaved with reverence at our religious services. This +will appear important if the reader remembers the almost total want of +prayer and reverence we encountered in the south. + +Our friends informed us that Shinte would be highly honored by the +presence of three white men in his town at once. Two others had sent +forward notice of their approach from another quarter (the west); could +it be Barth or Krapf? How pleasant to meet with Europeans in such an +out-of-the-way region! The rush of thoughts made me almost forget my +fever. Are they of the same color as I am? "Yes; exactly so." And have +the same hair? "Is that hair? we thought it was a wig; we never saw the +like before; this white man must be of the sort that lives in the sea." +Henceforth my men took the hint, and always sounded my praises as a true +specimen of the variety of white men who live in the sea. "Only look at +his hair; it is made quite straight by the sea-water!" + +I explained to them again and again that, when it was said we came out +of the sea, it did not mean that we came from beneath the water; but the +fiction has been widely spread in the interior by the Mambari that the +real white men live in the sea, and the myth was too good not to be +taken advantage of by my companions; so, notwithstanding my injunctions, +I believe that, when I was out of hearing, my men always represented +themselves as led by a genuine merman: "Just see his hair!" If I +returned from walking to a little distance, they would remark of some to +whom they had been holding forth, "These people want to see your hair." + +As the strangers had woolly hair like themselves, I had to give up the +idea of meeting any thing more European than two half-caste Portuguese, +engaged in trading for slaves, ivory, and bees'-wax. + +16TH. After a short march we came to a most lovely valley about a mile +and a half wide, and stretching away eastward up to a low prolongation +of Monakadzi. A small stream meanders down the centre of this pleasant +green glen; and on a little rill, which flows into it from the western +side, stands the town of Kabompo, or, as he likes best to be called, +Shinte. (Lat. 12d 37' 35" S., long. 22d 47' E.) When Manenko thought the +sun was high enough for us to make a lucky entrance, we found the town +embowered in banana and other tropical trees having great expansion of +leaf; the streets are straight, and present a complete contrast to those +of the Bechuanas, which are all very tortuous. Here, too, we first saw +native huts with square walls and round roofs. The fences or walls of +the courts which surround the huts are wonderfully straight, and made +of upright poles a few inches apart, with strong grass or leafy bushes +neatly woven between. In the courts were small plantations of tobacco, +and a little solanaceous plant which the Balonda use as a relish; also +sugar-cane and bananas. Many of the poles have grown again, and trees of +the 'Ficus Indica' family have been planted around, in order to give to +the inhabitants a grateful shade: they regard this tree with some sort +of veneration as a medicine or charm. Goats were browsing about, and, +when we made our appearance, a crowd of negroes, all fully armed, ran +toward us as if they would eat us up; some had guns, but the manner in +which they were held showed that the owners were more accustomed to bows +and arrows than to white men's weapons. After surrounding and staring at +us for an hour, they began to disperse. + +The two native Portuguese traders of whom we had heard had erected a +little encampment opposite the place where ours was about to be made. +One of them, whose spine had been injured in youth--a rare sight in this +country--came and visited us. I returned the visit next morning. His +tall companion had that sickly yellow hue which made him look fairer +than myself, but his head was covered with a crop of unmistakable wool. +They had a gang of young female slaves in a chain, hoeing the ground +in front of their encampment to clear it of weeds and grass; these were +purchased recently in Lobale, whence the traders had now come. There +were many Mambari with them, and the establishment was conducted +with that military order which pervades all the arrangements of the +Portuguese colonists. A drum was beaten and trumpet sounded at certain +hours, quite in military fashion. It was the first time most of my men +had seen slaves in chains. "They are not men," they exclaimed (meaning +they are beasts), "who treat their children so." + +The Balonda are real negroes, having much more wool on their heads and +bodies than any of the Bechuana or Caffre tribes. They are generally +very dark in color, but several are to be seen of a lighter hue; many of +the slaves who have been exported to Brazil have gone from this region; +but while they have a general similarity to the typical negro, I never +could, from my own observation, think that our ideal negro, as seen +in tobacconists' shops, is the true type. A large proportion of the +Balonda, indeed, have heads somewhat elongated backward and upward, +thick lips, flat noses, elongated 'ossa calces', etc., etc.; but there +are also many good-looking, well-shaped heads and persons among them. + +17TH, TUESDAY. We were honored with a grand reception by Shinte about +eleven o'clock. Sambanza claimed the honor of presenting us, Manenko +being slightly indisposed. The native Portuguese and Mambari went fully +armed with guns, in order to give Shinte a salute; their drummer and +trumpeter making all the noise that very old instruments would produce. +The kotla, or place of audience, was about a hundred yards square, and +two graceful specimens of a species of banian stood near one end; under +one of these sat Shinte, on a sort of throne covered with a leopard's +skin. He had on a checked jacket, and a kilt of scarlet baize edged with +green; many strings of large beads hung from his neck, and his limbs +were covered with iron and copper armlets and bracelets; on his head he +wore a helmet made of beads woven neatly together, and crowned with a +great bunch of goose-feathers. Close to him sat three lads with large +sheaves of arrows over their shoulders. + +When we entered the kotla, the whole of Manenko's party saluted Shinte +by clapping their hands, and Sambanza did obeisance by rubbing his chest +and arms with ashes. One of the trees being unoccupied, I retreated to +it for the sake of the shade, and my whole party did the same. We were +now about forty yards from the chief, and could see the whole ceremony. +The different sections of the tribe came forward in the same way that we +did, the head man of each making obeisance with ashes which he carried +with him for the purpose; then came the soldiers, all armed to the +teeth, running and shouting toward us, with their swords drawn, and +their faces screwed up so as to appear as savage as possible, for the +purpose, I thought, of trying whether they could not make us take to our +heels. As we did not, they turned round toward Shinte and saluted him, +then retired. When all had come and were seated, then began the curious +capering usually seen in pichos. A man starts up, and imitates the most +approved attitudes observed in actual fight, as throwing one javelin, +receiving another on the shield, springing to one side to avoid a third, +running backward or forward, leaping, etc. This over, Sambanza and the +spokesman of Nyamoana stalked backward and forward in front of Shinte, +and gave forth, in a loud voice, all they had been able to learn, +either from myself or people, of my past history and connection with the +Makololo; the return of the captives; the wish to open the country to +trade; the Bible as a word from heaven; the white man's desire for +the tribes to live in peace: he ought to have taught the Makololo that +first, for the Balonda never attacked them, yet they had assailed the +Balonda: perhaps he is fibbing, perhaps not; they rather thought he was; +but as the Balonda had good hearts, and Shinte had never done harm to +any one, he had better receive the white man well, and send him on his +way. Sambanza was gayly attired, and, besides a profusion of beads, had +a cloth so long that a boy carried it after him as a train. + +Behind Shinte sat about a hundred women, clothed in their best, which +happened to be a profusion of red baize. The chief wife of Shinte, one +of the Matebele or Zulus, sat in front with a curious red cap on her +head. During the intervals between the speeches, these ladies burst +forth into a sort of plaintive ditty; but it was impossible for any of +us to catch whether it was in praise of the speaker, of Shinte, or of +themselves. This was the first time I had ever seen females present in +a public assembly. In the south the women are not permitted to enter the +kotla; and even when invited to come to a religious service there, would +not enter until ordered to do so by the chief; but here they expressed +approbation by clapping their hands, and laughing to different speakers; +and Shinte frequently turned round and spoke to them. + +A party of musicians, consisting of three drummers and four performers +on the piano, went round the kotla several times, regaling us with their +music. Their drums are neatly carved from the trunk of a tree, and have +a small hole in the side covered with a bit of spider's web: the ends +are covered with the skin of an antelope pegged on; and when they +wish to tighten it, they hold it to the fire to make it contract: the +instruments are beaten with the hands. + +The piano, named "marimba", consists of two bars of wood placed side +by side, here quite straight, but, farther north, bent round so as to +resemble half the tire of a carriage-wheel; across these are placed +about fifteen wooden keys, each of which is two or three inches broad, +and fifteen or eighteen inches long; their thickness is regulated +according to the deepness of the note required: each of the keys has a +calabash beneath it; from the upper part of each a portion is cut off to +enable them to embrace the bars, and form hollow sounding-boards to the +keys, which also are of different sizes, according to the note required; +and little drumsticks elicit the music. Rapidity of execution seems much +admired among them, and the music is pleasant to the ear. In Angola the +Portuguese use the marimba in their dances. + +When nine speakers had concluded their orations, Shinte stood up, and so +did all the people. He had maintained true African dignity of manner all +the while, but my people remarked that he scarcely ever took his eyes +off me for a moment. About a thousand people were present, according to +my calculation, and three hundred soldiers. The sun had now become hot; +and the scene ended by the Mambari discharging their guns. + +18TH. We were awakened during the night by a message from Shinte, +requesting a visit at a very unseasonable hour. As I was just in the +sweating stage of an intermittent, and the path to the town lay through +a wet valley, I declined going. Kolimbota, who knows their customs best, +urged me to go; but, independent of sickness, I hated words of the night +and deeds of darkness. "I was neither a hyaena nor a witch." Kolimbota +thought that we ought to conform to their wishes in every thing: I +thought we ought to have some choice in the matter as well, which put +him into high dudgeon. However, at ten next morning we went, and were +led into the courts of Shinte, the walls of which were woven rods, all +very neat and high. Many trees stood within the inclosure and afforded a +grateful shade. These had been planted, for we saw some recently put +in, with grass wound round the trunk to protect them from the sun. The +otherwise waste corners of the streets were planted with sugar-cane and +bananas, which spread their large light leaves over the walls. + +The Ficus Indica tree, under which we now sat, had very large leaves, +but showed its relationship to the Indian banian by sending down shoots +toward the ground. Shinte soon came, and appeared a man of upward of +fifty-five years of age, of frank and open countenance, and about +the middle height. He seemed in good humor, and said he had expected +yesterday "that a man who came from the gods would have approached +and talked to him." That had been my own intention in going to the +reception; but when we came and saw the formidable preparations, and all +his own men keeping at least forty yards off from him, I yielded to the +solicitations of my men, and remained by the tree opposite to that under +which he sat. His remark confirmed my previous belief that a frank, +open, fearless manner is the most winning with all these Africans. I +stated the object of my journey and mission, and to all I advanced the +old gentleman clapped his hands in approbation. He replied through a +spokesman; then all the company joined in the response by clapping of +hands too. + +After the more serious business was over, I asked if he had ever seen a +white man before. He replied, "Never; you are the very first I have seen +with a white skin and straight hair; your clothing, too, is different +from any we have ever seen." They had been visited by native Portuguese +and Mambari only. + +On learning from some of the people that "Shinte's mouth was bitter +for want of tasting ox-flesh," I presented him with an ox, to his great +delight; and, as his country is so well adapted for cattle, I advised +him to begin a trade in cows with the Makololo. He was pleased with the +idea, and when we returned from Loanda, we found that he had profited by +the hint, for he had got three, and one of them justified my opinion of +the country, for it was more like a prize heifer for fatness than any +we had seen in Africa. He soon afterward sent us a basket of green maize +boiled, another of manioc-meal, and a small fowl. The maize shows by +its size the fertility of the black soil of all the valleys here, and so +does the manioc, though no manure is ever applied. We saw manioc attain +a height of six feet and upward, and this is a plant which requires the +very best soil. + +During this time Manenko had been extremely busy with all her people +in getting up a very pretty hut and court-yard, to be, as she said, her +residence always when white men were brought by her along the same path. +When she heard that we had given an ox to her uncle, she came forward +to us with the air of one wronged, and explained that "this white man +belonged to her; she had brought him here, and therefore the ox was +hers, not Shinte's." She ordered her men to bring it, got it slaughtered +by them, and presented her uncle with a leg only. Shinte did not seem at +all annoyed at the occurrence. + +19TH. I was awakened at an early hour by a messenger from Shinte; but +the thirst of a raging fever being just assuaged by the bursting forth +of a copious perspiration, I declined going for a few hours. Violent +action of the heart all the way to the town did not predispose me to be +patient with the delay which then occurred, probably on account of +the divination being unfavorable: "They could not find Shinte." When I +returned to bed, another message was received, "Shinte wished to say all +he had to tell me at once." This was too tempting an offer, so we +went, and he had a fowl ready in his hand to present, also a basket +of manioc-meal, and a calabash of mead. Referring to the +constantly-recurring attacks of fever, he remarked that it was the only +thing which would prevent a successful issue to my journey, for he had +men to guide me who knew all the paths which led to the white men. +He had himself traveled far when a young man. On asking what he would +recommend for the fever, "Drink plenty of the mead, and as it gets in, +it will drive the fever out." It was rather strong, and I suspect he +liked the remedy pretty well, even though he had no fever. He had always +been a friend to Sebituane, and, now that his son Sekeletu was in his +place, Shinte was not merely a friend, but a father to him; and if a son +asks a favor, the father must give it. He was highly pleased with the +large calabashes of clarified butter and fat which Sekeletu had sent +him, and wished to detain Kolimbota, that he might send a present back +to Sekeletu by his hands. This proposition we afterward discovered +was Kolimbota's own, as he had heard so much about the ferocity of the +tribes through which we were to pass that he wished to save his skin. +It will be seen farther on that he was the only one of our party who +returned with a wound. + +We were particularly struck, in passing through the village, with the +punctiliousness of manners shown by the Balonda. The inferiors, on +meeting their superiors in the street, at once drop on their knees +and rub dust on their arms and chest; they continue the salutation of +clapping the hands until the great ones have passed. Sambanza knelt down +in this manner till the son of Shinte had passed him. + +We several times saw the woman who occupies the office of drawer of +water for Shinte; she rings a bell as she passes along to give warning +to all to keep out of her way; it would be a grave offense for any one +to come near her, and exercise an evil influence by his presence on the +drink of the chief. I suspect that offenses of the slightest character +among the poor are made the pretext for selling them or their children +to the Mambari. A young man of Lobale had fled into the country of +Shinte, and located himself without showing himself to the chief. This +was considered an offense sufficient to warrant his being seized and +offered for sale while we were there. He had not reported himself, so +they did not know the reason of his running away from his own chief, and +that chief might accuse them of receiving a criminal. It was curious +to notice the effect of the slave-trade in blunting the moral +susceptibility: no chief in the south would treat a fugitive in this +way. My men were horrified at the act, even though old Shinte and his +council had some show of reason on their side; and both the Barotse +and the Makololo declared that, if the Balonda only knew of the policy +pursued by them to fugitives, but few of the discontented would remain +long with Shinte. My men excited the wonder of his people by stating +that every one of them had one cow at least in his possession. + +Another incident, which occurred while we were here, may be mentioned, +as of a character totally unknown in the south. Two children, of seven +and eight years old, went out to collect firewood a short distance from +their parents' home, which was a quarter of a mile from the village, and +were kidnapped; the distracted parents could not find a trace of them. +This happened so close to the town, where there are no beasts of prey, +that we suspect some of the high men of Shinte's court were the guilty +parties: they can sell them by night. The Mambari erect large huts of a +square shape to stow these stolen ones in; they are well fed, but aired +by night only. The frequent kidnapping from outlying hamlets explains +the stockades we saw around them; the parents have no redress, for even +Shinte himself seems fond of working in the dark. One night he sent for +me, though I always stated I liked all my dealings to be aboveboard. +When I came he presented me with a slave girl about ten years old; he +said he had always been in the habit of presenting his visitors with a +child. On my thanking him, and saying that I thought it wrong to take +away children from their parents, that I wished him to give up this +system altogether, and trade in cattle, ivory, and bees'-wax, he urged +that she was "to be a child" to bring me water, and that a great man +ought to have a child for the purpose, yet I had none. As I replied that +I had four children, and should be very sorry if my chief were to take +my little girl and give her away, and that I would prefer this child to +remain and carry water for her own mother, he thought I was dissatisfied +with her size, and sent for one a head taller; after many explanations +of our abhorrence of slavery, and how displeasing it must be to God +to see his children selling one another, and giving each other so much +grief as this child's mother must feel, I declined her also. If I could +have taken her into my family for the purpose of instruction, and then +returned her as a free woman, according to a promise I should have made +to the parents, I might have done so; but to take her away, and probably +never be able to secure her return, would have produced no good effect +on the minds of the Balonda; they would not then have seen evidence of +our hatred to slavery, and the kind attentions of my friends would, as +it almost always does in similar cases, have turned the poor thing's +head. The difference in position between them and us is as great as +between the lowest and highest in England, and we know the effects of +sudden elevation on wiser heads than hers, whose owners had not been +born to it. + +Shinte was most anxious to see the pictures of the magic lantern; but +fever had so weakening an effect, and I had such violent action of the +heart, with buzzing in the ears, that I could not go for several days; +when I did go for the purpose, he had his principal men and the same +crowd of court beauties near him as at the reception. The first picture +exhibited was Abraham about to slaughter his son Isaac; it was shown +as large as life, and the uplifted knife was in the act of striking the +lad; the Balonda men remarked that the picture was much more like a god +than the things of wood or clay they worshiped. I explained that this +man was the first of a race to whom God had given the Bible we now held, +and that among his children our Savior appeared. The ladies listened +with silent awe; but, when I moved the slide, the uplifted dagger moving +toward them, they thought it was to be sheathed in their bodies instead +of Isaac's. "Mother! mother!" all shouted at once, and off they rushed +helter-skelter, tumbling pell-mell over each other, and over the little +idol-huts and tobacco-bushes: we could not get one of them back again. +Shinte, however, sat bravely through the whole, and afterward examined +the instrument with interest. An explanation was always added after +each time of showing its powers, so that no one should imagine there was +aught supernatural in it; and had Mr. Murray, who kindly brought it from +England, seen its popularity among both Makololo and Balonda, he would +have been gratified with the direction his generosity then took. It was +the only mode of instruction I was ever pressed to repeat. The people +came long distances for the express purpose of seeing the objects and +hearing the explanations. + +One can not get away quickly from these chiefs; they like to have the +honor of strangers residing in their villages. Here we had an additional +cause of delay in frequent rains; twenty-four hours never elapsed +without heavy showers; every thing is affected by the dampness; surgical +instruments become all rusty, clothing mildewed, and shoes mouldy; my +little tent was now so rotten and so full of small holes that every +smart shower caused a fine mist to descend on my blanket, and made me +fain to cover the head with it. Heavy dews lay on every thing in the +morning, even inside the tent; there is only a short time of sunshine in +the afternoon, and even that is so interrupted by thunder-showers that +we can not dry our bedding. + +The winds coming from the north always bring heavy clouds and rain; in +the south, the only heavy rains noticed are those which come from the +northeast or east. The thermometer falls as low as 72 Degrees when +there is no sunshine, though, when the weather is fair, the protected +thermometer generally rises as high as 82 Degrees, even in the mornings +and evenings. + +24TH. We expected to have started to-day, but Sambanza, who had been +sent off early in the morning for guides, returned at midday without +them, and drunk. This was the first case of real babbling intoxication +we had seen in this region. The boyaloa, or beer of the country, has +more of a stupefying than exciting nature; hence the beer-bibbers are +great sleepers; they may frequently be seen lying on their faces +sound asleep. This peculiarity of posture was ascribed, by no less an +authority than Aristotle, to wine, while those who were sent asleep by +beer were believed "to lie upon their backs." + +Sambanza had got into a state of inebriation from indulging in mead, +similar to that which Shinte presented to us, which is much more +powerful than boyaloa. As far as we could collect from his incoherent +sentences, Shinte had said the rain was too heavy for our departure, and +the guides still required time for preparation. Shinte himself was busy +getting some meal ready for my use in the journey. As it rained nearly +all day, it was no sacrifice to submit to his advice and remain. +Sambanza staggered to Manenko's hut; she, however, who had never +promised "to love, honor, and obey him," had not been "nursing her wrath +to keep it warm," so she coolly bundled him into the hut, and put him to +bed. + +As the last proof of friendship, Shinte came into my tent, though +it could scarcely contain more than one person, looked at all the +curiosities, the quicksilver, the looking-glass, books, hair-brushes, +comb, watch, etc., etc., with the greatest interest; then closing the +tent, so that none of his own people might see the extravagance of which +he was about to be guilty, he drew out from his clothing a string of +beads, and the end of a conical shell, which is considered, in regions +far from the sea, of as great value as the Lord Mayor's badge is in +London. He hung it round my neck, and said, "There, now you HAVE a proof +of my friendship." + +My men informed me that these shells are so highly valued in this +quarter, as evidences of distinction, that for two of them a slave +might be bought, and five would be considered a handsome price for +an elephant's tusk worth ten pounds. At our last interview old Shinte +pointed out our principal guide, Intemese, a man about fifty, who was, +he said, ordered to remain by us till we should reach the sea; that I +had now left Sekeletu far behind, and must henceforth look to Shinte +alone for aid, and that it would always be most cheerfully rendered. +This was only a polite way of expressing his wishes for my success. It +was the good words only of the guides which were to aid me from the next +chief, Katema, on to the sea; they were to turn back on reaching him; +but he gave a good supply of food for the journey before us, and, after +mentioning as a reason for letting us go even now that no one could say +we had been driven away from the town, since we had been several days +with him, he gave a most hearty salutation, and we parted with the wish +that God might bless him. + + + + +Chapter 17. + +Leave Shinte--Manioc Gardens--Mode of preparing the poisonous kind--Its +general Use--Presents of Food--Punctiliousness of the Balonda-- +Their Idols and Superstition--Dress of the Balonda--Villages beyond +Lonaje--Cazembe--Our Guides and the Makololo--Night Rains--Inquiries +for English cotton Goods--Intemese's Fiction--Visit from an old +Man--Theft--Industry of our Guide--Loss of Pontoon--Plains covered +with Water--Affection of the Balonda for their Mothers--A Night on an +Island--The Grass on the Plains--Source of the Rivers--Loan of the +Roofs of Huts--A Halt--Fertility of the Country through which the +Lokalueje flows--Omnivorous Fish--Natives' Mode of catching them-- +The Village of a Half-brother of Katema, his Speech and Present--Our +Guide's Perversity--Mozenkwa's pleasant Home and Family--Clear Water of +the flooded Rivers--A Messenger from Katema--Quendende's Village: his +Kindness--Crop of Wool--Meet People from the Town of Matiamvo--Fireside +Talk--Matiamvo's Character and Conduct--Presentation at Katema's Court: +his Present, good Sense, and Appearance--Interview on the following +Day--Cattle--A Feast and a Makololo Dance--Arrest of a Fugitive-- +Dignified old Courtier--Katema's lax Government--Cold Wind from the +North--Canaries and other singing Birds--Spiders, their Nests and +Webs--Lake Dilolo--Tradition--Sagacity of Ants. + + + +26TH. Leaving Shinte, with eight of his men to aid in carrying our +luggage, we passed, in a northerly direction, down the lovely valley +on which the town stands, then went a little to the west through pretty +open forest, and slept at a village of Balonda. In the morning we had +a fine range of green hills, called Saloisho, on our right, and were +informed that they were rather thickly inhabited by the people of +Shinte, who worked in iron, the ore of which abounds in these hills. + +The country through which we passed possessed the same general character +of flatness and forest that we noticed before. The soil is dark, with a +tinge of red--in some places it might be called red--and appeared very +fertile. Every valley contained villages of twenty or thirty huts, with +gardens of manioc, which here is looked upon as the staff of life. Very +little labor is required for its cultivation. The earth is drawn up into +oblong beds, about three feet broad and one in height, and in these are +planted pieces of the manioc stalk, at four feet apart. A crop of beans +or ground-nuts is sown between them, and when these are reaped the land +around the manioc is cleared of weeds. In from ten to eighteen months +after planting, according to the quality of the soil, the roots are fit +for food. There is no necessity for reaping soon, as the roots do not +become bitter and dry until after three years. When a woman takes up the +roots, she thrusts a piece or two of the upper stalks into the hole +she has made, draws back the soil, and a new crop is thereby begun. The +plant grows to a height of six feet, and every part of it is useful: the +leaves may be cooked as a vegetable. The roots are from three to four +inches in diameter, and from twelve to eighteen inches long. + +There are two varieties of the manioc or cassava--one sweet and +wholesome, the other bitter and containing poison, but much more +speedy in its growth than the former. This last property causes its +perpetuation. When we reached the village of Kapende, on the banks of +the rivulet Lonaje, we were presented with so much of the poisonous kind +that we were obliged to leave it. To get rid of the poison, the people +place it four days in a pool of water. It then becomes partially +decomposed, and is taken out, stripped of its skin, and exposed to the +sun. When dried, it is easily pounded into a fine white meal, closely +resembling starch, which has either a little of the peculiar taste +arising from decomposition, or no more flavor than starch. When intended +to be used as food, this meal is stirred into boiling water: they put +in as much as can be moistened, one man holding the vessel and the other +stirring the porridge with all his might. This is the common mess of the +country. Though hungry, we could just manage to swallow it with the aid +of a little honey, which I shared with my men as long as it lasted. It +is very unsavory (Scottice: wersh); and no matter how much one may eat, +two hours afterward he is as hungry as ever. When less meal is employed, +the mess is exactly like a basin of starch in the hands of a laundress; +and if the starch were made from diseased potatoes, some idea might be +formed of the Balonda porridge, which hunger alone forced us to +eat. Santuru forbade his nobles to eat it, as it caused coughing and +expectoration. + +Our chief guide, Intemese, sent orders to all the villages around our +route that Shinte's friends must have abundance of provisions. Our +progress was impeded by the time requisite for communicating the chief's +desire and consequent preparation of meal. We received far more food +from Shinte's people than from himself. Kapende, for instance, presented +two large baskets of meal, three of manioc roots steeped and dried in +the sun and ready to be converted into flour, three fowls, and seven +eggs, with three smoke-dried fishes; and others gave with similar +liberality. I gave to the head men small bunches of my stock of beads, +with an apology that we were now on our way to the market for these +goods. The present was always politely received. + +We had an opportunity of observing that our guides had much more +etiquette than any of the tribes farther south. They gave us food, but +would not partake of it when we had cooked it, nor would they eat their +own food in our presence. When it was cooked they retired into a thicket +and ate their porridge; then all stood up, and clapped their hands, and +praised Intemese for it. The Makololo, who are accustomed to the most +free and easy manners, held out handfuls of what they had cooked to +any of the Balonda near, but they refused to taste. They are very +punctilious in their manners to each other. Each hut has its own fire, +and when it goes out they make it afresh for themselves rather than take +it from a neighbor. I believe much of this arises from superstitious +fears. In the deep, dark forests near each village, as already +mentioned, you see idols intended to represent the human head or a +lion, or a crooked stick smeared with medicine, or simply a small pot of +medicine in a little shed, or miniature huts with little mounds of earth +in them. But in the darker recesses we meet with human faces cut in the +bark of trees, the outlines of which, with the beards, closely resemble +those seen on Egyptian monuments. Frequent cuts are made on the trees +along all the paths, and offerings of small pieces of manioc roots or +ears of maize are placed on branches. There are also to be seen every +few miles heaps of sticks, which are treated in cairn fashion, by every +one throwing a small branch to the heap in passing; or a few sticks are +placed on the path, and each passer-by turns from his course, and forms +a sudden bend in the road to one side. It seems as if their minds were +ever in doubt and dread in these gloomy recesses of the forest, and +that they were striving to propitiate, by their offerings, some superior +beings residing there. + +The dress of the Balonda men consists of the softened skins of small +animals, as the jackal or wild cat, hung before and behind from a girdle +round the loins. The dress of the women is of a nondescript character; +but they were not immodest. They stood before us as perfectly +unconscious of any indecorum as we could be with our clothes on. But, +while ignorant of their own deficiency, they could not maintain their +gravity at the sight of the nudity of my men behind. Much to the +annoyance of my companions, the young girls laughed outright whenever +their backs were turned to them. + +After crossing the Lonaje, we came to some pretty villages, embowered, +as the negro villages usually are, in bananas, shrubs, and manioc, +and near the banks of the Leeba we formed our encampment in a nest of +serpents, one of which bit one of our men, but the wound was harmless. +The people of the surrounding villages presented us with large +quantities of food, in obedience to the mandate of Shinte, without +expecting any equivalent. One village had lately been transferred hither +from the country of Matiamvo. They, of course, continue to acknowledge +him as paramount chief; but the frequent instances which occur of people +changing from one part of the country to another, show that the great +chiefs possess only a limited power. The only peculiarity we observed in +these people is the habit of plaiting the beard into a three-fold cord. + +The town of the Balonda chief Cazembe was pointed out to us as lying to +the N.E. and by E. from the town of Shinte, and great numbers of people +in this quarter have gone thither for the purpose of purchasing copper +anklets, made at Cazembe's, and report the distance to be about five +days' journey. I made inquiries of some of the oldest inhabitants of the +villages at which we were staying respecting the visit of Pereira and +Lacerda to that town. An old gray-headed man replied that they had often +heard of white men before, but never had seen one, and added that one +had come to Cazembe when our informant was young, and returned again +without entering this part of the country. The people of Cazembe are +Balonda or Baloi, and his country has been termed Londa, Lunda, or Lui, +by the Portuguese. + +It was always difficult to get our guides to move away from a place. +With the authority of the chief, they felt as comfortable as king's +messengers could, and were not disposed to forego the pleasure of living +at free quarters. My Makololo friends were but ill drilled as yet; and +since they had never left their own country before, except for purposes +of plunder, they did not take readily to the peaceful system we now +meant to follow. They either spoke too imperiously to strangers, or, +when reproved for that, were disposed to follow the dictation of every +one we met. When Intemese, our guide, refused to stir toward the Leeba +on the 31st of January, they would make no effort to induce him to go; +but, having ordered them to get ready, Intemese saw the preparations, +and soon followed the example. It took us about four hours to cross the +Leeba, which is considerably smaller here than where we left it--indeed, +only about a hundred yards wide. It has the same dark mossy hue. The +villagers lent us canoes to effect our passage; and, having gone to +a village about two miles beyond the river, I had the satisfaction of +getting observations for both longitude and latitude--for the former, +the distance between Saturn and the Moon, and for the latter a meridian +altitude of Canopus. Long. 22d 57' E., lat. 12d 6' 6" S. + +These were the only opportunities I had of ascertaining my whereabouts +in this part of Londa. Again and again did I take out the instruments, +and, just as all was right, the stars would be suddenly obscured by +clouds. I had never observed so great an amount of cloudiness in any +part of the south country; and as for the rains, I believe that years +at Kolobeng would not have made my little tent so rotten and thin as one +month had done in Londa. I never observed in the south the heavy night +and early morning rains we had in this country. They often continued all +night, then became heavier about an hour before dawn. Or if fair during +the night, as day drew nigh, an extremely heavy, still, pouring rain set +in without warning. Five out of every six days we had this pouring rain, +at or near break of day, for months together; and it soon beat my tent +so thin, that a mist fell through on my face and made every thing damp. +The rains were occasionally, but not always, accompanied with very loud +thunder. + +FEBRUARY 1ST. This day we had a fine view of two hills called Piri +(Peeri), meaning "two", on the side of the river we had left. The +country there is named Mokwankwa. And there Intemese informed us one of +Shinte's children was born, when he was in his progress southward from +the country of Matiamvo. This part of the country would thus seem not to +have been inhabited by the people of Shinte at any very remote period. +He told me himself that he had come into his present country by command +of Matiamvo. + +Here we were surprised to hear English cotton cloth much more eagerly +inquired after than beads and ornaments. They are more in need of +clothing than the Bechuana tribes living adjacent to the Kalahari +Desert, who have plenty of skins for the purpose. Animals of all kinds +are rare here, and a very small piece of calico is of great value. + +In the midst of the heavy rain, which continued all the morning, +Intemese sent to say he was laid up with pains in the stomach, and must +not be disturbed; but when it cleared up, about eleven, I saw our friend +walking off to the village, and talking with a very loud voice. On +reproaching him for telling an untruth, he turned it off with a laugh by +saying he really had a complaint in his stomach, which I might cure +by slaughtering one of the oxen and allowing him to eat beef. He was +evidently reveling in the abundance of good food the chief's orders +brought us; and he did not feel the shame I did when I gave a few beads +only in return for large baskets of meal. + +A very old man visited us here with a present of maize: like the others, +he had never before seen a white man, and, when conversing with him, +some of the young men remarked that they were the true ancients, for +they had now seen more wonderful things than their forefathers. + +One of Intemese's men stole a fowl given me by a lady of the village. +When charged with the theft, every one of Intemese's party vociferated +his innocence and indignation at being suspected, continuing their +loud asseverations and gesticulations for some minutes. One of my men, +Loyanke, went off to the village, brought the lady who had presented the +fowl to identify it, and then pointed to the hut in which it was hidden. +The Balonda collected round him, evincing great wrath; but Loyanke +seized his battle-axe in the proper manner for striking, and, placing +himself on a little hillock, soon made them moderate their tones. +Intemese then called on me to send one of my people to search the huts +if I suspected his people. The man sent soon found it, and brought it +out, to the confusion of Intemese and the laughter of our party. This +incident is mentioned to show that the greater superstition which exists +here does not lead to the practice of the virtues. We never met an +instance like this of theft from a white man among the Makololo, though +they complain of the Makalaka as addicted to pilfering. The honesty of +the Bakwains has been already noticed. Probably the estimation in which +I was held as a public benefactor, in which character I was not yet +known to the Balonda, may account for the sacredness with which my +property was always treated before. But other incidents which happened +subsequently showed, as well as this, that idolaters are not so virtuous +as those who have no idols. + +As the people on the banks of the Leeba were the last of Shinte's tribe +over which Intemese had power, he was naturally anxious to remain as +long as possible. He was not idle, but made a large wooden mortar and +pestle for his wife during our journey. He also carved many wooden +spoons and a bowl; then commenced a basket; but as what he considered +good living was any thing but agreeable to us, who had been accustomed +to milk and maize, we went forward on the 2d without him. He soon +followed, but left our pontoon, saying it would be brought by the head +man of the village. This was a great loss, as we afterward found; it +remained at this village more than a year, and when we returned a mouse +had eaten a hole in it. + +We entered on an extensive plain beyond the Leeba, at least twenty miles +broad, and covered with water, ankle deep in the shallowest parts. We +deviated somewhat from our N.W. course by the direction of Intemese, and +kept the hills Piri nearly on our right during a great part of the first +day, in order to avoid the still more deeply flooded plains of Lobale +(Luval?) on the west. These, according to Intemese, are at present +impassable on account of being thigh deep. The plains are so perfectly +level that rain-water, which this was, stands upon them for months +together. They were not flooded by the Leeba, for that was still far +within its banks. Here and there, dotted over the surface, are little +islands, on which grow stunted date-bushes and scraggy trees. The plains +themselves are covered with a thick sward of grass, which conceals +the water, and makes the flats appear like great pale yellow-colored +prairie-lands, with a clear horizon, except where interrupted here and +there by trees. The clear rain-water must have stood some time among the +grass, for great numbers of lotus-flowers were seen in full blow; and +the runs of water tortoises and crabs were observed; other animals also, +which prey on the fish that find their way to the plains. + +The continual splashing of the oxen keeps the feet of the rider +constantly wet, and my men complain of the perpetual moisture of the +paths by which we have traveled in Londa as softening their horny soles. +The only information we can glean is from Intemese, who points out the +different localities as we pass along, and among the rest "Mokala +a Mama", his "mamma's home". It was interesting to hear this tall +gray-headed man recall the memories of boyhood. All the Makalaka +children cleave to the mother in cases of separation, or removal from +one part of the country to another. This love for mothers does not argue +superior morality in other respects, or else Intemese has forgotten any +injunctions his mamma may have given him not to tell lies. The respect, +however, with which he spoke of her was quite characteristic of his +race. The Bechuanas, on the contrary, care nothing for their mothers, +but cling to their fathers, especially if they have any expectation of +becoming heirs to their cattle. Our Bakwain guide to the lake, Rachosi, +told me that his mother lived in the country of Sebituane, but, though +a good specimen of the Bechuanas, he laughed at the idea of going so +far as from the Lake Ngami to the Chobe merely for the purpose of seeing +her. Had he been one of the Makalaka, he never would have parted from +her. + +We made our beds on one of the islands, and were wretchedly supplied +with firewood. The booths constructed by the men were but sorry shelter, +for the rain poured down without intermission till midday. There is no +drainage for the prodigious masses of water on these plains, except slow +percolation into the different feeders of the Leeba, and into that +river itself. The quantity of vegetation has prevented the country +from becoming furrowed by many rivulets or "nullahs". Were it not so +remarkably flat, the drainage must have been effected by torrents, even +in spite of the matted vegetation. + +That these extensive plains are covered with grasses only, and the +little islands with but scraggy trees, may be accounted for by the fact, +observable every where in this country, that, where water stands for any +length of time, trees can not live. The want of speedy drainage destroys +them, and injures the growth of those that are planted on the islands, +for they have no depth of earth not subjected to the souring influence +of the stagnant water. The plains of Lobale, to the west of these, are +said to be much more extensive than any we saw, and their vegetation +possesses similar peculiarities. When the stagnant rain-water has all +soaked in, as must happen during the months in which there is no rain, +travelers are even put to straits for want of water. This is stated +on native testimony; but I can very well believe that level plains, in +which neither wells nor gullies are met with, may, after the dry season, +present the opposite extreme to what we witnessed. Water, however, could +always be got by digging, a proof of which we had on our return when +brought to a stand on this very plain by severe fever: about twelve +miles from the Kasai my men dug down a few feet, and found an abundant +supply; and we saw on one of the islands the garden of a man who, in +the dry season, had drunk water from a well in like manner. Plains +like these can not be inhabited while the present system of cultivation +lasts. The population is not yet so very large as to need them. They +find garden-ground enough on the gentle slopes at the sides of the +rivulets, and possess no cattle to eat off the millions of acres of fine +hay we were now wading through. Any one who has visited the Cape Colony +will understand me when I say that these immense crops resemble sown +grasses more than the tufty vegetation of the south. + +I would here request the particular attention of the reader to the +phenomena these periodically deluged plains present, because they have a +most important bearing on the physical geography of a very large portion +of this country. The plains of Lobale, to the west of this, give rise +to a great many streams, which unite, and form the deep, never-failing +Chobe. Similar extensive flats give birth to the Loeti and Kasai, and, +as we shall see further on, all the rivers of an extensive region owe +their origin to oozing bogs, and not to fountains. + +When released from our island by the rain ceasing, we marched on till +we came to a ridge of dry inhabited land in the N.W. The inhabitants, +according to custom, lent us the roofs of some huts to save the men the +trouble of booth-making. I suspect that the story in Park's "Travels", +of the men lifting up the hut to place it on the lion, referred to the +roof only. We leave them for the villagers to replace at their leisure. +No payment is expected for the use of them. By night it rained so +copiously that all our beds were flooded from below; and from this time +forth we always made a furrow round each booth, and used the earth to +raise our sleeping-places. My men turned out to work in the wet most +willingly; indeed, they always did. I could not but contrast their +conduct with that of Intemese. He was thoroughly imbued with the slave +spirit, and lied on all occasions without compunction. Untruthfulness is +a sort of refuge for the weak and oppressed. We expected to move on the +4th, but he declared that we were so near Katema's, if we did not send +forward to apprise that chief of our approach, he would certainly impose +a fine. It rained the whole day, so we were reconciled to the delay; but +on Sunday, the 5th, he let us know that we were still two days distant +from Katema. We unfortunately could not manage without him, for the +country was so deluged, we should have been brought to a halt before +we went many miles by some deep valley, every one of which was full of +water. Intemese continued to plait his basket with all his might, and +would not come to our religious service. He seemed to be afraid of our +incantations, but was always merry and jocular. + +6TH. Soon after starting we crossed a branch of the Lokalueje by means +of a canoe, and in the afternoon passed over the main stream by a like +conveyance. The former, as is the case with all branches of rivers +in this country, is called nyuana Kalueje (child of the Kalueje). +Hippopotami exist in the Lokalueje, so it may be inferred to be +perennial, as the inhabitants asserted. We can not judge of the size +of the stream from what we now saw. It had about forty yards of deep, +fast-flowing water, but probably not more than half that amount in the +dry season. Besides these, we crossed numerous feeders in our N.N.W. +course, and, there being no canoes, got frequently wet in the course of +the day. The oxen in some places had their heads only above water, and +the stream, flowing over their backs, wetted our blankets, which we used +as saddles. The arm-pit was the only safe spot for carrying the watch, +for there it was preserved from rains above and waters below. The men on +foot crossed these gullies holding up their burdens at arms' length. + +The Lokalueje winds from northeast to southwest into the Leeba. The +country adjacent to its banks is extremely fine and fertile, with +here and there patches of forest or clumps of magnificent trees. The +villagers through whose gardens we passed continue to sow and reap all +the year round. The grains, as maize, lotsa ('Pennisetum typhoideum'), +lokesh or millet, are to be seen at all stages of their growth--some +just ripe, while at this time the Makololo crops are not half grown. My +companions, who have a good idea of the different qualities of soils, +expressed the greatest admiration of the agricultural capabilities of +the whole of Londa, and here they were loud in their praises of the +pasturage. They have an accurate idea of the varieties of grasses best +adapted for different kinds of stock, and lament because here there +are no cows to feed off the rich green crop, which at this time imparts +special beauty to the landscape. + +Great numbers of the omnivorous feeding fish, 'Glanis siluris', or +mosala, spread themselves over the flooded plains, and, as the waters +retire, try to find their way back again to the rivers. The Balonda make +earthen dikes and hedges across the outlets of the retreating waters, +leaving only small spaces through which the chief part of the water +flows. In these open spaces they plant creels, similar in shape to our +own, into which the fish can enter, but can not return. They secure +large quantities of fish in this way, which, when smoke-dried, make a +good relish for their otherwise insipid food. They use also a weir of +mats made of reeds sewed together, with but half an inch between each. +Open spaces are left for the insertion of the creels as before. + +In still water, a fish-trap is employed of the same shape and plan as +the common round wire mouse-trap, which has an opening surrounded with +wires pointing inward. This is made of reeds and supple wands, and food +is placed inside to attract the fish. + +Besides these means of catching fish, they use a hook of iron without a +barb; the point is bent inward instead, so as not to allow the fish to +escape. Nets are not so common as in the Zouga and Leeambye, but they +kill large quantities of fishes by means of the bruised leaves of a +shrub, which may be seen planted beside every village in the country. + +On the 7th we came to the village of Soana Molopo, a half-brother of +Katema, a few miles beyond the Lokalueje. When we went to visit him, we +found him sitting with about one hundred men. He called on Intemese to +give some account of us, though no doubt it had been done in private +before. He then pronounced the following sentences: "The journey of the +white man is very proper, but Shinte has disturbed us by showing the +path to the Makololo who accompany him. He ought to have taken them +through the country without showing them the towns. We are afraid of +the Makololo." He then gave us a handsome present of food, and seemed +perplexed by my sitting down familiarly, and giving him a few of our +ideas. When we left, Intemese continued busily imparting an account +of all we had given to Shinte and Masiko, and instilling the hope that +Soana Molopo might obtain as much as they had received. Accordingly, +when we expected to move on the morning of the 8th, we got some hints +about the ox which Soana Molopo expected to eat, but we recommended him +to get the breed of cattle for himself, seeing his country was so well +adapted for rearing stock. Intemese also refused to move; he, moreover, +tried to frighten us into parting with an ox by saying that Soana Molopo +would send forward a message that we were a marauding party; but we +packed up and went on without him. We did not absolutely need him, but +he was useful in preventing the inhabitants of secluded villages from +betaking themselves to flight. We wished to be on good terms with +all, and therefore put up with our guide's peccadilloes. His good word +respecting us had considerable influence, and he was always asked if we +had behaved ourselves like men on the way. The Makololo are viewed as +great savages, but Intemese could not justly look with scorn on them, +for he has the mark of a large gash on his arm, got in fighting; and he +would never tell the cause of battle, but boasted of his powers as the +Makololo do, till asked about a scar on his back, betokening any thing +but bravery. + +Intemese was useful in cases like that of Monday, when we came upon +a whole village in a forest enjoying their noonday nap. Our sudden +appearance in their midst so terrified them that one woman nearly went +into convulsions from fear. When they saw and heard Intemese, their +terror subsided. + +As usual, we were caught by rains after leaving Soana Molopo's, and made +our booths at the house of Mozinkwa, a most intelligent and friendly man +belonging to Katema. He had a fine large garden in cultivation, and well +hedged round. He had made the walls of his compound, or court-yard, of +branches of the banian, which, taking root, had grown to be a live hedge +of that tree. Mozinkwa's wife had cotton growing all round her premises, +and several plants used as relishes to the insipid porridge of the +country. She cultivated also the common castor-oil plant, and a larger +shrub ('Jatropha curcas'), which also yields a purgative oil. Here, +however, the oil is used for anointing the heads and bodies alone. +We saw in her garden likewise the Indian bringalls, yams, and sweet +potatoes. Several trees were planted in the middle of the yard, and +in the deep shade they gave stood the huts of his fine family. His +children, all by one mother, very black, but comely to view, were the +finest negro family I ever saw. We were much pleased with the frank +friendship and liberality of this man and his wife. She asked me to +bring her a cloth from the white man's country; but, when we returned, +poor Mozinkwa's wife was in her grave, and he, as is the custom, had +abandoned trees, garden, and huts to ruin. They can not live on a spot +where a favorite wife has died, probably because unable to bear the +remembrance of the happy times they have spent there, or afraid to +remain in a spot where death has once visited the establishment. If ever +the place is revisited, it is to pray to her, or make some offering. +This feeling renders any permanent village in the country impossible. + +We learned from Mozinkwa that Soana Molopo was the elder brother of +Katema, but that he was wanting in wisdom; and Katema, by purchasing +cattle and receiving in a kind manner all the fugitives who came to +him, had secured the birthright to himself, so far as influence in the +country is concerned. Soana's first address to us did not savor much of +African wisdom. + +FRIDAY, 10TH. On leaving Mozinkwa's hospitable mansion we crossed +another stream, about forty yards wide, in canoes. While this tedious +process was going on, I was informed that it is called the Mona-Kalueje, +or brother of Kalueje, as it flows into that river; that both the +Kalueje and Livoa flow into the Leeba; and that the Chifumadze, swollen +by the Lotembwa, is a feeder of that river also, below the point where +we lately crossed it. It may be remarked here that these rivers were now +in flood, and that the water was all perfectly clear. The vegetation +on the banks is so thickly planted that the surface of the earth is not +abraded by the torrents. The grass is laid flat, and forms a protection +to the banks, which are generally a stiff black loam. The fact of canoes +being upon them shows that, though not large, they are not like the +southern rivulets, which dry up during most of the year, and render +canoes unnecessary. + +As we were crossing the river we were joined by a messenger from Katema, +called Shakatwala. This person was a sort of steward or factotum to his +chief. Every chief has one attached to his person, and, though generally +poor, they are invariably men of great shrewdness and ability. They +act the part of messengers on all important occasions, and possess +considerable authority in the chief's household. Shakatwala informed +us that Katema had not received precise information about us, but if we +were peaceably disposed, as he loved strangers, we were to come to his +town. We proceeded forthwith, but were turned aside, by the strategy of +our friend Intemese, to the village of Quendende, the father-in-law +of Katema. This fine old man was so very polite that we did not regret +being obliged to spend Sunday at his village. He expressed his pleasure +at having a share in the honor of a visit as well as Katema, though it +seemed to me that the conferring that pleasure required something like a +pretty good stock of impudence, in leading twenty-seven men through +the country without the means of purchasing food. My men did a little +business for themselves in the begging line; they generally commenced +every interview with new villagers by saying "I have come from afar; +give me something to eat." I forbade this at first, believing that, as +the Makololo had a bad name, the villagers gave food from fear. But, +after some time, it was evident that in many cases maize and manioc were +given from pure generosity. The first time I came to this conclusion was +at the house of Mozinkwa; scarcely any one of my men returned from +it without something in his hand; and as they protested they had not +begged, I asked himself, and found that it was the case, and that he had +given spontaneously. In other parts the chiefs attended to my wants, +and the common people gave liberally to my men. I presented some of my +razors and iron spoons to different head men, but my men had nothing to +give; yet every one tried to appropriate an individual in each village +as "Molekane", or comrade, and the villagers often assented; so, if the +reader remembers the molekane system of the Mopato, he may perceive that +those who presented food freely would expect the Makololo to treat them +in like manner, should they ever be placed in similar circumstances. +Their country is so fertile that they are in no want of food themselves; +however, their generosity was remarkable; only one woman refused to +give some of my men food, but her husband calling out to her to be more +liberal, she obeyed, scolding all the while. + +In this part of the country, buffaloes, elands, koodoos, and various +antelopes are to be found, but we did not get any, as they are +exceedingly wary from being much hunted. We had the same woodland and +meadow as before, with here and there pleasant negro villages; and being +all in good health, could enjoy the fine green scenery. + +Quendende's head was a good specimen of the greater crop of wool with +which the negroes of Londa are furnished. The front was parted in the +middle, and plaited into two thick rolls, which, falling down behind the +ears, reached the shoulders; the rest was collected into a large knot, +which lay on the nape of the neck. As he was an intelligent man, we had +much conversation together: he had just come from attending the funeral +of one of his people, and I found that the great amount of drum-beating +which takes place on these occasions was with the idea that the Barimo, +or spirits, could be drummed to sleep. There is a drum in every village, +and we often hear it going from sunset to sunrise. They seem to look +upon the departed as vindictive beings, and, I suspect, are more +influenced by fear than by love. In beginning to speak on religious +subjects with those who have never heard of Christianity, the great +fact of the Son of God having come down from heaven to die for us is the +prominent theme. No fact more striking can be mentioned. "He actually +came to men. He himself told us about his Father, and the dwelling-place +whither he has gone. We have his words in this book, and he really +endured punishment in our stead from pure love," etc. If this fails to +interest them, nothing else will succeed. + +We here met with some people just arrived from the town of Matiamvo +(Muata yanvo), who had been sent to announce the death of the late +chieftain of that name. Matiamvo is the hereditary title, muata meaning +lord or chief. The late Matiamvo seems, from the report of these men, to +have become insane, for he is said to have sometimes indulged the whim +of running a muck in the town and beheading whomsoever he met, until +he had quite a heap of human heads. Matiamvo explained this conduct by +saying that his people were too many, and he wanted to diminish them. +He had absolute power of life and death. On inquiring whether human +sacrifices were still made, as in the time of Pereira, at Cazembe's, we +were informed that these had never been so common as was represented +to Pereira, but that it occasionally happened, when certain charms were +needed by the chief, that a man was slaughtered for the sake of some +part of his body. He added that he hoped the present chief would not +act like his (mad) predecessor, but kill only those who were guilty of +witchcraft or theft. These men were very much astonished at the liberty +enjoyed by the Makololo; and when they found that all my people +held cattle, we were told that Matiamvo alone had a herd. One very +intelligent man among them asked, "If he should make a canoe, and take +it down the river to the Makololo, would he get a cow for it?" This +question, which my men answered in the affirmative, was important, +as showing the knowledge of a water communication from the country of +Matiamvo to the Makololo; and the river runs through a fertile country +abounding in large timber. If the tribes have intercourse with each +other, it exerts a good influence on their chiefs to hear what other +tribes think of their deeds. The Makololo have such a bad name, on +account of their perpetual forays, that they have not been known in +Londa except as ruthless destroyers. The people in Matiamvo's country +submit to much wrong from their chiefs, and no voice can be raised +against cruelty, because they are afraid to flee elsewhere. + +We left Quendende's village in company with Quendende himself, and the +principal man of the embassadors of Matiamvo, and after two or three +miles' march to the N.W., came to the ford of the Lotembwa, which flows +southward. A canoe was waiting to ferry us over, but it was very tedious +work; for, though the river itself was only eighty yards wide, the whole +valley was flooded, and we were obliged to paddle more than half a mile +to get free of the water. A fire was lit to warm old Quendende, and +enable him to dry his tobacco-leaves. The leaves are taken from the +plant, and spread close to the fire until they are quite dry and crisp; +they are then put into a snuff-box, which, with a little pestle, serves +the purpose of a mill to grind them into powder; it is then used +as snuff. As we sat by the fire, the embassadors communicated their +thoughts freely respecting the customs of their race. When a chief dies, +a number of servants are slaughtered with him to form his company in the +other world. The Barotse followed the same custom, and this and other +usages show them to be genuine negroes, though neither they nor the +Balonda resemble closely the typical form of that people. Quendende said +if he were present on these occasions he would hide his people, so that +they might not be slaughtered. As we go north, the people become more +bloodily superstitious. + +We were assured that if the late Matiamvo took a fancy to any thing, +such, for instance, as my watch-chain, which was of silver wire, and was +a great curiosity, as they had never seen metal plaited before, he would +order a whole village to be brought up to buy it from a stranger. When +a slave-trader visited him, he took possession of all his goods; then, +after ten days or a fortnight, he would send out a party of men to +pounce upon some considerable village, and, having killed the head +man, would pay for all the goods by selling the inhabitants. This has +frequently been the case, and nearly all the visitants he ever had were +men of color. On asking if Matiamvo did not know he was a man, and +would be judged, in company with those he destroyed, by a Lord who is no +respector of persons? the embassador replied, "We do not go up to God, +as you do; we are put into the ground." I could not ascertain that even +those who have such a distinct perception of the continued existence of +departed spirits had any notion of heaven; they appear to imagine the +souls to be always near the place of sepulture. + +After crossing the River Lotembwa we traveled about eight miles, and +came to Katema's straggling town (lat. 11d 35' 49" S., long. 22d 27' +E.). It is more a collection of villages than a town. We were led out +about half a mile from the houses, that we might make for ourselves the +best lodging we could of the trees and grass, while Intemese was taken +to Katema to undergo the usual process of pumping as to our past conduct +and professions. Katema soon afterward sent a handsome present of food. + +Next morning we had a formal presentation, and found Katema seated on a +sort of throne, with about three hundred men on the ground around, and +thirty women, who were said to be his wives, close behind him. The main +body of the people were seated in a semicircle, at a distance of fifty +yards. Each party had its own head man stationed at a little distance +in front, and, when beckoned by the chief, came near him as councilors. +Intemese gave our history, and Katema placed sixteen large baskets of +meal before us, half a dozen fowls, and a dozen eggs, and expressed +regret that we had slept hungry: he did not like any stranger to suffer +want in his town; and added, "Go home, and cook and eat, and you will +then be in a fit state to speak to me at an audience I will give you +to-morrow." He was busily engaged in hearing the statements of a large +body of fine young men who had fled from Kangenke, chief of Lobale, +on account of his selling their relatives to the native Portuguese who +frequent his country. Katema is a tall man, about forty years of age, +and his head was ornamented with a helmet of beads and feathers. He had +on a snuff-brown coat, with a broad band of tinsel down the arms, and +carried in his hand a large tail made of the caudal extremities of a +number of gnus. This has charms attached to it, and he continued waving +it in front of himself all the time we were there. He seemed in good +spirits, laughing heartily several times. This is a good sign, for a man +who shakes his sides with mirth is seldom difficult to deal with. When +we rose to take leave, all rose with us, as at Shinte's. + +Returning next morning, Katema addressed me thus: "I am the great Moene +(lord) Katema, the fellow of Matiamvo. There is no one in the country +equal to Matiamvo and me. I have always lived here, and my forefathers +too. There is the house in which my father lived. You found no human +skulls near the place where you are encamped. I never killed any of the +traders; they all come to me. I am the great Moene Katema, of whom you +have heard." He looked as if he had fallen asleep tipsy, and dreamed of +his greatness. On explaining my objects to him, he promptly pointed out +three men who would be our guides, and explained that the northwest path +was the most direct, and that by which all traders came, but that the +water at present standing on the plains would reach up to the loins; he +would therefore send us by a more northerly route, which no trader had +yet traversed. This was more suited to our wishes, for we never found a +path safe that had been trodden by slave-traders. + +We presented a few articles, which pleased him highly: a small shawl, +a razor, three bunches of beads, some buttons, and a powder-horn. +Apologizing for the insignificance of the gift, I wished to know what +I could bring him from Loanda, saying, not a large thing, but something +small. He laughed heartily at the limitation, and replied, "Every thing +of the white people would be acceptable, and he would receive any thing +thankfully; but the coat he then had on was old, and he would like +another." I introduced the subject of the Bible, but one of the old +councilors broke in, told all he had picked up from the Mambari, and +glided off into several other subjects. It is a misery to speak through +an interpreter, as I was now forced to do. With a body of men like mine, +composed as they were of six different tribes, and all speaking the +language of the Bechuanas, there was no difficulty in communicating on +common subjects with any tribe we came to; but doling out a story in +which they felt no interest, and which I understood only sufficiently +well to perceive that a mere abridgment was given, was uncommonly +slow work. Neither could Katema's attention be arrested, except by +compliments, of which they have always plenty to bestow as well as +receive. We were strangers, and knew that, as Makololo, we had not the +best of characters, yet his treatment of us was wonderfully good and +liberal. + +I complimented him on the possession of cattle, and pleased him by +telling him how he might milk the cows. He has a herd of about thirty, +really splendid animals, all reared from two which he bought from the +Balobale when he was young. They are generally of a white color, and are +quite wild, running off with graceful ease like a herd of elands on the +approach of a stranger. They excited the unbounded admiration of the +Makololo, and clearly proved that the country was well adapted for them. +When Katema wishes to slaughter one, he is obliged to shoot it as if +it were a buffalo. Matiamvo is said to possess a herd of cattle in a +similar state. I never could feel certain as to the reason why they do +not all possess cattle in a country containing such splendid pasturage. + +As Katema did not offer an ox, as would have been done by a Makololo +or Caffre chief, we slaughtered one of our own, and all of us were +delighted to get a meal of meat, after subsisting so long on the light +porridge and green maize of Londa. On occasions of slaughtering an +animal, some pieces of it are in the fire before the skin is all removed +from the body. A frying-pan full of these pieces having been got quickly +ready, my men crowded about their father, and I handed some all round. +It was a strange sight to the Balonda, who were looking on, wondering. +I offered portions to them too, but these were declined, though they +are excessively fond of a little animal food to eat with their vegetable +diet. They would not eat with us, but they would take the meat and cook +it in their own way, and then use it. I thought at one time that they +had imported something from the Mohammedans, and the more especially as +an exclamation of surprise, "Allah", sounds like the Illah of the +Arabs; but we found, a little farther on, another form of salutation, +of Christian (?) origin, "Ave-rie" (Ave Marie). The salutations probably +travel farther than the faith. My people, when satisfied with a meal +like that which they enjoy so often at home, amused themselves by an +uproarious dance. Katema sent to ask what I had given them to produce so +much excitement. Intemese replied it was their custom, and they meant no +harm. The companion of the ox we slaughtered refused food for two days, +and went lowing about for him continually. He seemed inconsolable for +his loss, and tried again and again to escape back to the Makololo +country. My men remarked, "He thinks they will kill me as well as my +friend." Katema thought it the result of art, and had fears of my skill +in medicine, and of course witchcraft. He refused to see the magic +lantern. + +One of the affairs which had been intrusted by Shinte to Intemese +was the rescue of a wife who had eloped with a young man belonging to +Katema. As this was the only case I have met with in the interior in +which a fugitive was sent back to a chief against his own will, I am +anxious to mention it. On Intemese claiming her as his master's wife, +she protested loudly against it, saying "she knew she was not going back +to be a wife again; she was going back to be sold to the Mambari." My +men formed many friendships with the people of Katema, and some of the +poorer classes said in confidence, "We wish our children could go back +with you to the Makololo country; here we are all in danger of being +sold." My men were of opinion that it was only the want of knowledge of +the southern country which prevented an exodus of all the lower portions +of Londa population thither. + +It is remarkable how little people living in a flat forest country like +this know of distant tribes. An old man, who said he had been born about +the same time as the late Matiamvo, and had been his constant companion +through life, visited us; and as I was sitting on some grass in front +of the little gipsy tent mending my camp stool, I invited him to take +a seat on the grass beside me. This was peremptorily refused: "he had +never sat on the ground during the late chief's reign, and he was not +going to degrade himself now." One of my men handed him a log of wood +taken from the fire, and helped him out of the difficulty. When I +offered him some cooked meat on a plate, he would not touch that either, +but would take it home. So I humored him by sending a servant to bear a +few ounces of meat to the town behind him. He mentioned the Lolo (Lulua) +as the branch of the Leeambye which flows southward or S.S.E.; but the +people of Matiamvo had never gone far down it, as their chief had always +been afraid of encountering a tribe whom, from the description given, +I could recognize as the Makololo. He described five rivers as falling +into the Lolo, viz., the Lishish, Liss or Lise, Kalileme, Ishidish, and +Molong. None of these are large, but when they are united in the Lolo +they form a considerable stream. The country through which the Lolo +flows is said to be flat, fertile, well peopled, and there are large +patches of forest. In this report he agreed perfectly with the people of +Matiamvo, whom we had met at Quendende's village. But we never could get +him, or any one in this quarter, to draw a map on the ground, as people +may readily be got to do in the south. + +Katema promised us the aid of some of his people as carriers, but his +rule is not very stringent or efficient, for they refused to turn out +for the work. They were Balobale; and he remarked on their disobedience +that, though he received them as fugitives, they did not feel grateful +enough to obey, and if they continued rebellious he must drive them back +whence they came; but there is little fear of that, as all the chiefs +are excessively anxious to collect men in great numbers around them. +These Balobale would not go, though our guide Shakatwala ran after some +of them with a drawn sword. This degree of liberty to rebel was very +striking to us, as it occurred in a country where people may be sold, +and often are so disposed of when guilty of any crime; and we well knew +that open disobedience like this among the Makololo would be punished +with death without much ceremony. + +On Sunday, the 19th, both I and several of our party were seized with +fever, and I could do nothing but toss about in my little tent, with the +thermometer above 90 Deg., though this was the beginning of winter, and +my men made as much shade as possible by planting branches of trees +all round and over it. We have, for the first time in my experience in +Africa, had a cold wind from the north. All the winds from that quarter +are hot, and those from the south are cold, but they seldom blow from +either direction. + +20TH. We were glad to get away, though not on account of any scarcity +of food; for my men, by giving small presents of meat as an earnest of +their sincerity, formed many friendships with the people of Katema. +We went about four or five miles in a N.N.W. direction, then two in a +westerly one, and came round the small end of Lake Dilolo. It seemed, as +far as we could at this time discern, to be like a river a quarter of +a mile wide. It is abundantly supplied with fish and hippopotami; the +broad part, which we did not this time see, is about three miles wide, +and the lake is almost seven or eight long. If it be thought strange +that I did not go a few miles to see the broad part, which, according +to Katema, had never been visited by any of the traders, it must be +remembered that in consequence of fever I had eaten nothing for two +entire days, and, instead of sleep, the whole of the nights were +employed in incessant drinking of water, and I was now so glad to get on +in the journey and see some of my fellow fever-patients crawling along, +that I could not brook the delay, which astronomical observations +for accurately determining the geographical position of this most +interesting spot would have occasioned. + +We observed among the people of Katema a love for singing-birds. One +pretty little songster, named "cabazo", a species of canary, is kept in +very neatly made cages, having traps on the top to entice its still free +companions. On asking why they kept them in confinement, "Because they +sing sweetly," was the answer. They feed them on the lotsa ('Pennisetum +typhoideum'), of which great quantities are cultivated as food for man, +and these canaries plague the gardeners here, very much in the same way +as our sparrows do at home. + +I was pleased to hear the long-forgotten cry of alarm of the canaries +in the woods, and observed one warbling forth its song, and keeping in +motion from side to side, as these birds do in the cage. We saw also +tame pigeons; and the Barotse, who always take care to exalt Santuru, +reminded us that this chief had many doves, and kept canaries which had +reddish heads when the birds attained maturity. Those we now see have +the real canary color on the breast, with a tinge of green; the back, +yellowish green, with darker longitudinal bands meeting in the centre; a +narrow dark band passes from the bill over the eye and back to the bill +again. + +The birds of song here set up quite a merry chorus in the mornings, and +abound most near the villages. Some sing as loudly as our thrushes, and +the king-hunter ('Halcyon Senegalensis') makes a clear whirring sound +like that of a whistle with a pea in it. During the heat of the day all +remain silent, and take their siesta in the shadiest parts of the +trees, but in the cool of the evening they again exert themselves in the +production of pleasant melody. It is remarkable that so many songbirds +abound where there is a general paucity of other animal life. As we went +forward we were struck by the comparative absence of game and the larger +kind of fowls. The rivers contain very few fish. Common flies are not +troublesome, as they are wherever milk is abundant; they are seen in +company with others of the same size and shape, but whose tiny feet do +not tickle the skin, as is the case with their companions. Mosquitoes +are seldom so numerous as to disturb the slumbers of a weary man. + +But, though this region is free from common insect plagues, and from +tsetse, it has others. Feeling something running across my forehead as +I was falling asleep, I put up the hand to wipe it off, and was sharply +stung both on the hand and head; the pain was very acute. On obtaining +a light, we found that it had been inflicted by a light-colored spider, +about half an inch in length, and, one of the men having crushed it with +his fingers, I had no opportunity of examining whether the pain had been +produced by poison from a sting or from its mandibles. No remedy was +applied, and the pain ceased in about two hours. The Bechuanas believe +that there is a small black spider in the country whose bite is fatal. +I have not met with an instance in which death could be traced to this +insect, though a very large black, hairy spider, an inch and a quarter +long and three quarters of an inch broad, is frequently seen, having a +process at the end of its front claws similar to that at the end of +the scorpion's tail, and when the bulbous portion of it is pressed, the +poison may be seen oozing out from the point. + +We have also spiders in the south which seize their prey by leaping +upon it from a distance of several inches. When alarmed, they can spring +about a foot away from the object of their own fear. Of this kind there +are several varieties. + +A large reddish spider ('Mygale') obtains its food in a different manner +than either patiently waiting in ambush or by catching it with a bound. +It runs about with great velocity in and out, behind and around every +object, searching for what it may devour, and, from its size and rapid +motions, excites the horror of every stranger. I never knew it to do any +harm except frightening the nervous, and I believe few could look upon +it for the first time without feeling himself in danger. It is named by +the natives "selali", and is believed to be the maker of a hinged cover +for its nest. You see a door, about the size of a shilling, lying beside +a deep hole of nearly similar diameter. The inside of the door lying +upward, and which attracts your notice, is of a pure white silky +substance, like paper. The outer side is coated over with earth, +precisely like that in which the hole is made. If you try to lift it, +you find it is fastened by a hinge on one side, and, if it is turned +over upon the hole, it fits it exactly, and the earthy side being then +uppermost, it is quite impossible to detect the situation of the nest. +Unfortunately, this cavity for breeding is never seen except when the +owner is out, and has left the door open behind her. + +In some parts of the country there are great numbers of a large, +beautiful yellow-spotted spider, the webs of which are about a yard in +diameter. The lines on which these webs are spun are suspended from one +tree to another, and are as thick as coarse thread. The fibres radiate +from a central point, where the insect waits for its prey. The webs are +placed perpendicularly, and a common occurrence in walking is to get the +face enveloped in them as a lady is in a veil. + +Another kind of spider lives in society, and forms so great a collection +of webs placed at every angle, that the trunk of a tree surrounded by +them can not be seen. A piece of hedge is often so hidden by this spider +that the branches are invisible. Another is seen on the inside of the +walls of huts among the Makololo in great abundance. It is round in +shape, spotted, brown in color, and the body half an inch in diameter; +the spread of the legs is an inch and a half. It makes a smooth spot +for itself on the wall, covered with the above-mentioned white silky +substance. There it is seen standing the whole day, and I never could +ascertain how it fed. It has no web, but a carpet, and is a harmless, +though an ugly neighbor. + +Immediately beyond Dilolo there is a large flat about twenty miles in +breadth. Here Shakatwala insisted on our remaining to get supplies of +food from Katema's subjects, before entering the uninhabited watery +plains. When asked the meaning of the name Dilolo, Shakatwala gave the +following account of the formation of the lake. A female chief, called +Moene (lord) Monenga, came one evening to the village of Mosogo, a man +who lived in the vicinity, but who had gone to hunt with his dogs. She +asked for a supply of food, and Mosogo's wife gave her a sufficient +quantity. Proceeding to another village standing on the spot now +occupied by the water, she preferred the same demand, and was not only +refused, but, when she uttered a threat for their niggardliness, was +taunted with the question, "What could she do though she were thus +treated?" In order to show what she could do, she began a song, in slow +time, and uttered her own name, Monenga-wo-o. As she prolonged the +last note, the village, people, fowls, and dogs sank into the space now +called Dilolo. When Kasimakate, the head man of this village, came home +and found out the catastrophe, he cast himself into the lake, and is +supposed to be in it still. The name is derived from "ilolo", despair, +because this man gave up all hope when his family was destroyed. Monenga +was put to death. This may be a faint tradition of the Deluge, and it is +remarkable as the only one I have met with in this country. + +Heavy rains prevented us from crossing the plain in front (N.N.W.) in +one day, and the constant wading among the grass hurt the feet of the +men. There is a footpath all the way across, but as this is worn down +beneath the level of the rest of the plain, it is necessarily the +deepest portion, and the men, avoiding it, make a new walk by its side. +A path, however narrow, is a great convenience, as any one who has +traveled on foot in Africa will admit. The virtual want of it here +caused us to make slow and painful progress. + +Ants surely are wiser than some men, for they learn by experience. They +have established themselves even on these plains, where water stands so +long annually as to allow the lotus, and other aqueous plants, to come +to maturity. When all the ant horizon is submerged a foot deep, they +manage to exist by ascending to little houses built of black tenacious +loam on stalks of grass, and placed higher than the line of inundation. +This must have been the result of experience; for, if they had waited +till the water actually invaded their terrestrial habitations, they +would not have been able to procure materials for their aerial quarters, +unless they dived down to the bottom for every mouthful of clay. Some of +these upper chambers are about the size of a bean, and others as large +as a man's thumb. They must have built in anticipation, and if so, let +us humbly hope that the sufferers by the late inundations in France may +be possessed of as much common sense as the little black ants of the +Dilolo plains. + + + + +Chapter 18. + +The Watershed between the northern and southern Rivers--A deep Valley-- +Rustic Bridge--Fountains on the Slopes of the Valleys--Village of +Kabinje--Good Effects of the Belief in the Power of Charms--Demand +for Gunpowder and English Calico--The Kasai--Vexatious Trick--Want +of Food--No Game--Katende's unreasonable Demand--A grave +Offense--Toll-bridge Keeper--Greedy Guides--Flooded Valleys--Swim the +Nyuana Loke--Prompt Kindness of my Men--Makololo Remarks on the rich +uncultivated Valleys--Difference in the Color of Africans--Reach a +Village of the Chiboque--The Head Man's impudent Message--Surrounds our +Encampment with his Warriors--The Pretense--Their Demand--Prospect of +a Fight--Way in which it was averted--Change our Path--Summer-- +Fever--Beehives and the Honey-guide--Instinct of Trees--Climbers--The +Ox Sinbad--Absence of Thorns in the Forests--Plant peculiar to a +forsaken Garden--Bad Guides--Insubordination suppressed--Beset by +Enemies--A Robber Party--More Troubles--Detained by Ionga Panza--His +Village--Annoyed by Bangala Traders--My Men discouraged--Their +Determination and Precaution. + + + +24TH OF FEBRUARY. On reaching unflooded lands beyond the plain, we +found the villages there acknowledged the authority of the chief named +Katende, and we discovered, also, to our surprise, that the almost +level plain we had passed forms the watershed between the southern and +northern rivers, for we had now entered a district in which the rivers +flowed in a northerly direction into the Kasai or Loke, near to which +we now were, while the rivers we had hitherto crossed were all running +southward. Having met with kind treatment and aid at the first +village, Katema's guides returned, and we were led to the N.N.W. by the +inhabitants, and descended into the very first really deep valley we had +seen since leaving Kolobeng. A stream ran along the bottom of a slope of +three or four hundred yards from the plains above. + +We crossed this by a rustic bridge at present submerged thigh-deep by +the rains. The trees growing along the stream of this lovely valley were +thickly planted and very high. Many had sixty or eighty feet of clean +straight trunk, and beautiful flowers adorned the ground beneath them. +Ascending the opposite side, we came, in two hours' time, to another +valley, equally beautiful, and with a stream also in its centre. It may +seem mere trifling to note such an unimportant thing as the occurrence +of a valley, there being so many in every country under the sun; but as +these were branches of that in which the Kasai or Loke flows, and both +that river and its feeders derive their water in a singular manner from +the valley sides, I may be excused for calling particular attention to +the more furrowed nature of the country. + +At different points on the slopes of these valleys which we now for the +first time entered, there are oozing fountains, surrounded by clumps of +the same evergreen, straight, large-leaved trees we have noticed along +the streams. These spots are generally covered with a mat of grassy +vegetation, and possess more the character of bogs than of fountains. +They slowly discharge into the stream below, and are so numerous along +both banks as to give a peculiar character to the landscape. These +groups of sylvan vegetation are generally of a rounded form, and the +trunks of the trees are tall and straight, while those on the level +plains above are low and scraggy in their growth. There can be little +doubt but that the water, which stands for months on the plains, soaks +in, and finds its way into the rivers and rivulets by percolating +through the soil, and out by these oozing bogs; and the difference +between the growth of these trees, though they be of different species, +may be a proof that the stuntedness of those on the plains is owing +to being, in the course of each year, more subjected to drought than +moisture. + +Reaching the village of Kabinje, in the evening he sent us a present of +tobacco, Mutokuane or "bang" ('Cannabis sativa'), and maize, by the +man who went forward to announce our arrival, and a message expressing +satisfaction at the prospect of having trade with the coast. The westing +we were making brought us among people who are frequently visited by the +Mambari as slave-dealers. This trade causes bloodshed; for when a poor +family is selected as the victims, it is necessary to get rid of the +older members of it, because they are supposed to be able to give +annoyance to the chief afterward by means of enchantments. The belief +in the power of charms for good or evil produces not only honesty, but +a great amount of gentle dealing. The powerful are often restrained in +their despotism from a fear that the weak and helpless may injure them +by their medical knowledge. They have many fears. A man at one of the +villages we came to showed us the grave of his child, and, with much +apparent feeling, told us she had been burned to death in her hut. He +had come with all his family, and built huts around it in order to weep +for her. He thought, if the grave were left unwatched, the witches would +come and bewitch them by putting medicines on the body. They have a more +decided belief in the continued existence of departed spirits than any +of the more southerly tribes. Even the Barotse possess it in a strong +degree, for one of my men of that tribe, on experiencing headache, said, +with a sad and thoughtful countenance, "My father is scolding me because +I do not give him any of the food I eat." I asked where his father was. +"Among the Barimo," was the reply. + +When we wished to move on, Kabinje refused a guide to the next village +because he was at war with it; but, after much persuasion, he consented, +provided that the guide should be allowed to return as soon as he came +in sight of the enemy's village. This we felt to be a misfortune, as the +people all suspect a man who comes telling his own tale; but there being +no help for it, we went on, and found the head man of a village on the +rivulet Kalomba, called Kangenke, a very different man from what his +enemy represented. We found, too, that the idea of buying and selling +took the place of giving for friendship. As I had nothing with which to +purchase food except a parcel of beads which were preserved for worse +times, I began to fear that we should soon be compelled to suffer more +from hunger than we had done. The people demanded gunpowder for every +thing. If we had possessed any quantity of that article, we should have +got on well, for here it is of great value. On our return, near +this spot we found a good-sized fowl was sold for a single charge of +gunpowder. Next to that, English calico was in great demand, and so were +beads; but money was of no value whatever. Gold is quite unknown; it +is thought to be brass; trade is carried on by barter alone. The people +know nothing of money. A purse-proud person would here feel the ground +move from beneath his feet. Occasionally a large piece of copper, in the +shape of a St. Andrew's cross, is offered for sale. + +FEBRUARY 27TH. Kangenke promptly furnished guides this morning, so +we went briskly on a short distance, and came to a part of the Kasye, +Kasai, or Loke, where he had appointed two canoes to convey us across. +This is a most beautiful river, and very much like the Clyde in +Scotland. The slope of the valley down to the stream is about five +hundred yards, and finely wooded. It is, perhaps, one hundred yards +broad, and was winding slowly from side to side in the beautiful green +glen, in a course to the north and northeast. In both the directions +from which it came and to which it went it seemed to be alternately +embowered in sylvan vegetation, or rich meadows covered with tall grass. +The men pointed out its course, and said, "Though you sail along it for +months, you will turn without seeing the end of it." + +While at the ford of the Kasai we were subjected to a trick, of which we +had been forewarned by the people of Shinte. A knife had been dropped by +one of Kangenke's people in order to entrap my men; it was put down near +our encampment, as if lost, the owner in the mean time watching till one +of my men picked it up. Nothing was said until our party was divided, +one half on this, and the other on that bank of the river. Then the +charge was made to me that one of my men had stolen a knife. Certain of +my people's honesty, I desired the man, who was making a great noise, to +search the luggage for it; the unlucky lad who had taken the bait then +came forward and confessed that he had the knife in a basket, which was +already taken over the river. When it was returned, the owner would not +receive it back unless accompanied with a fine. The lad offered beads, +but these were refused with scorn. A shell hanging round his neck, +similar to that which Shinte had given me, was the object demanded, and +the victim of the trick, as we all knew it to be, was obliged to part +with his costly ornament. I could not save him from the loss, as all had +been forewarned; and it is the universal custom among the Makololo and +many other tribes to show whatever they may find to the chief person of +their company, and make a sort of offer of it to him. This lad ought to +have done so to me; the rest of the party always observed this custom. I +felt annoyed at the imposition, but the order we invariably followed in +crossing a river forced me to submit. The head of the party remained to +be ferried over last; so, if I had not come to terms, I would have been, +as I always was in crossing rivers which we could not swim, completely +in the power of the enemy. It was but rarely we could get a head man so +witless as to cross a river with us, and remain on the opposite bank +in a convenient position to be seized as a hostage in case of my being +caught. + +This trick is but one of a number equally dishonorable which are +practiced by tribes that lie adjacent to the more civilized settlements. +The Balonda farther east told us, by way of warning, that many parties +of the more central tribes had at various periods set out, in order to +trade with the white men themselves, instead of through the Mambari, but +had always been obliged to return without reaching their destination, in +consequence of so many pretexts being invented by the tribes encountered +in the way for fining them of their ivory. + +This ford was in 11d 15' 47" S. latitude, but the weather was so +excessively cloudy we got no observation for longitude. + +We were now in want of food, for, to the great surprise of my +companions, the people of Kangenke gave nothing except by way of sale, +and charged the most exorbitant prices for the little meal and manioc +they brought. The only article of barter my men had was a little fat +saved from the ox we slaughtered at Katema's, so I was obliged to give +them a portion of the stock of beads. One day (29th) of westing brought +us from the Kasai to near the village of Katende, and we saw that we +were in a land where no hope could be entertained of getting supplies of +animal food, for one of our guides caught a light-blue colored mole and +two mice for his supper. The care with which he wrapped them up in a +leaf and slung them on his spear told that we could not hope to enjoy +any larger game. We saw no evidence of any animals besides; and, on +coming to the villages beyond this, we often saw boys and girls engaged +in digging up these tiny quadrupeds. + +Katende sent for me on the day following our arrival, and, being quite +willing to visit him, I walked, for this purpose, about three miles from +our encampment. When we approached the village we were desired to enter +a hut, and, as it was raining at the time, we did so. After a long time +spent in giving and receiving messages from the great man, we were told +that he wanted either a man, a tusk, beads, copper rings, or a shell, as +payment for leave to pass through his country. No one, we were assured, +was allowed that liberty, or even to behold him, without something of +the sort being presented. Having humbly explained our circumstances, and +that he could not expect to "catch a humble cow by the horns"--a proverb +similar to ours that "you can't draw milk out of a stone"--we were told +to go home, and he would speak again to us next day. I could not avoid +a hearty laugh at the cool impudence of the savage, and made the best +of my way home in the still pouring rain. My men were rather nettled at +this want of hospitality, but, after talking over the matter with one of +Katende's servants, he proposed that some small article should be given, +and an attempt made to please Katende. I turned out my shirts, and +selected the worst one as a sop for him, and invited Katende to come and +choose any thing else I had, but added that, when I should reach my own +chief naked, and was asked what I had done with my clothes, I should +be obliged to confess that I had left them with Katende. The shirt was +dispatched to him, and some of my people went along with the servant; +they soon returned, saying that the shirt had been accepted, and guides +and food too would be sent to us next day. The chief had, moreover, +expressed a hope to see me on my return. He is reported to be very +corpulent. The traders who have come here seem to have been very timid, +yielding to every demand made on the most frivolous pretenses. One of my +men, seeing another much like an acquaintance at home, addressed him by +the name of the latter in sport, telling him, at the same time, why +he did so; this was pronounced to be a grave offense, and a large fine +demanded; when the case came before me I could see no harm in what had +been done, and told my people not to answer the young fellow. The latter +felt himself disarmed, for it is chiefly in a brawl they have power; +then words are spoken in anger which rouse the passions of the +complainant's friends. In this case, after vociferating some time, the +would-be offended party came and said to my man that, if they exchanged +some small gift, all would be right, but, my man taking no notice of +him, he went off rather crestfallen. + +My men were as much astonished as myself at the demand for payment +for leave to pass, and the almost entire neglect of the rules of +hospitality. Katende gave us only a little meal and manioc, and a fowl. +Being detained two days by heavy rains, we felt that a good stock of +patience was necessary in traveling through this country in the rainy +season. + +Passing onward without seeing Katende, we crossed a small rivulet, the +Sengko, by which we had encamped, and after two hours came to another, +the Totelo, which was somewhat larger, and had a bridge over it. At the +farther end of this structure stood a negro, who demanded fees. He said +the bridge was his; the path his; the guides were his children; and +if we did not pay him he would prevent farther progress. This piece of +civilization I was not prepared to meet, and stood a few seconds looking +at our bold toll-keeper, when one of my men took off three copper +bracelets, which paid for the whole party. The negro was a better man +than he at first seemed, for he immediately went to his garden and +brought us some leaves of tobacco as a present. + +When we had got fairly away from the villages, the guides from Kangenke +sat down and told us that there were three paths in front, and, if we +did not at once present them with a cloth, they would leave us to take +whichever we might like best. As I had pointed out the direction in +which Loanda lay, and had only employed them for the sake of knowing the +paths between villages which lay along our route, and always objected +when they led us in any other than the Loanda direction, I wished my +men now to go on without the guides, trusting to ourselves to choose +the path which would seem to lead us in the direction we had always +followed. But Mashauana, fearing lest we might wander, asked leave to +give his own cloth, and when the guides saw that, they came forward +shouting "Averie, Averie!" + +In the afternoon of this day we came to a valley about a mile wide, +filled with clear, fast-flowing water. The men on foot were chin deep in +crossing, and we three on ox-back got wet to the middle, the weight of +the animals preventing them from swimming. A thunder-shower descending +completed the partial drenching of the plain, and gave a cold, +uncomfortable "packing in a wet blanket" that night. Next day we found +another flooded valley about half a mile wide, with a small and now +deep rivulet in its middle, flowing rapidly to the S.S.E., or toward +the Kasai. The middle part of this flood, being the bed of what at other +times is the rivulet, was so rapid that we crossed by holding on to the +oxen, and the current soon dashed them to the opposite bank; we then +jumped off, and, the oxen being relieved of their burdens, we could pull +them on to the shallower part. The rest of the valley was thigh deep and +boggy, but holding on by the belt which fastened the blanket to the ox, +we each floundered through the nasty slough as well as we could. These +boggy parts, lying parallel to the stream, were the most extensive we +had come to: those mentioned already were mere circumscribed patches; +these extended for miles along each bank; but even here, though the +rapidity of the current was very considerable, the thick sward of grass +was "laid" flat along the sides of the stream, and the soil was not +abraded so much as to discolor the flood. When we came to the opposite +side of this valley, some pieces of the ferruginous conglomerate, which +forms the capping to all other rocks in a large district around and +north of this, cropped out, and the oxen bit at them as if surprised +by the appearance of stone as much as we were; or it may have contained +some mineral of which they stood in need. We had not met with a stone +since leaving Shinte's. The country is covered with deep alluvial soil +of a dark color and very fertile. + +In the afternoon we came to another stream, nyuana Loke (or child of +Loke), with a bridge over it. The men had to swim off to each end of the +bridge, and when on it were breast deep; some preferred holding on by +the tails of the oxen the whole way across. I intended to do this too; +but, riding to the deep part, before I could dismount and seize the helm +the ox dashed off with his companions, and his body sank so deep that I +failed in my attempt even to catch the blanket belt, and if I pulled the +bridle the ox seemed as if he would come backward upon me, so I struck +out for the opposite bank alone. My poor fellows were dreadfully alarmed +when they saw me parted from the cattle, and about twenty of them made +a simultaneous rush into the water for my rescue, and just as I reached +the opposite bank one seized my arm, and another threw his around my +body. When I stood up, it was most gratifying to see them all struggling +toward me. Some had leaped off the bridge, and allowed their cloaks to +float down the stream. Part of my goods, abandoned in the hurry, were +brought up from the bottom after I was safe. Great was the pleasure +expressed when they found that I could swim, like themselves, without +the aid of a tail, and I did and do feel grateful to these poor heathens +for the promptitude with which they dashed in to save, as they thought, +my life. I found my clothes cumbersome in the water; they could swim +quicker from being naked. They swim like dogs, not frog-fashion, as we +do. + +In the evening we crossed the small rivulet Lozeze, and came to some +villages of the Kasabi, from whom we got some manioc in exchange for +beads. They tried to frighten us by telling of the deep rivers we should +have to cross in our way. I was drying my clothes by turning myself +round and round before the fire. My men laughed at the idea of being +frightened by rivers. "We can all swim: who carried the white man across +the river but himself?" I felt proud of their praise. + +SATURDAY, 4TH MARCH. Came to the outskirts of the territory of the +Chiboque. We crossed the Konde and Kaluze rivulets. The former is a +deep, small stream with a bridge, the latter insignificant; the valleys +in which these rivulets run are beautifully fertile. My companions +are continually lamenting over the uncultivated vales in such words as +these: "What a fine country for cattle! My heart is sore to see such +fruitful valleys for corn lying waste." At the time these words were +put down I had come to the belief that the reason why the inhabitants of +this fine country possess no herds of cattle was owing to the despotic +sway of their chiefs, and that the common people would not be allowed to +keep any domestic animals, even supposing they could acquire them; but +on musing on the subject since, I have been led to the conjecture that +the rich, fertile country of Londa must formerly have been infested by +the tsetse, but that, as the people killed off the game on which, in the +absence of man, the tsetse must subsist, the insect was starved out of +the country. It is now found only where wild animals abound, and the +Balonda, by the possession of guns, having cleared most of the country +of all the large game, we may have happened to come just when it was +possible to admit of cattle. Hence the success of Katema, Shinte, and +Matiamvo with their herds. It would not be surprising, though they +know nothing of the circumstance; a tribe on the Zambesi, which I +encountered, whose country was swarming with tsetse, believed that they +could not keep any cattle, because "no one loved them well enough to +give them the medicine of oxen;" and even the Portuguese at Loanda +accounted for the death of the cattle brought from the interior to the +sea-coast by the prejudicial influence of the sea air! One ox, which +I took down to the sea from the interior, died at Loanda, with all +the symptoms of the poison injected by tsetse, which I saw myself in a +district a hundred miles from the coast. + +While at the villages of the Kasabi we saw no evidences of want of food +among the people. Our beads were very valuable, but cotton cloth would +have been still more so; as we traveled along, men, women, and children +came running after us, with meal and fowls for sale, which we would +gladly have purchased had we possessed any English manufactures. When +they heard that we had no cloth, they turned back much disappointed. + +The amount of population in the central parts of the country may be +called large only as compared with the Cape Colony or the Bechuana +country. The cultivated land is as nothing compared with what might be +brought under the plow. There are flowing streams in abundance, which, +were it necessary, could be turned to the purpose of irrigation with but +little labor. Miles of fruitful country are now lying absolutely waste, +for there is not even game to eat off the fine pasturage, and to recline +under the evergreen, shady groves which we are ever passing in our +progress. The people who inhabit the central region are not all quite +black in color. Many incline to that of bronze, and others are as light +in hue as the Bushmen, who, it may be remembered, afford a proof that +heat alone does not cause blackness, but that heat and moisture combined +do very materially deepen the color. Wherever we find people who have +continued for ages in a hot, humid district, they are deep black, but to +this apparent law there are exceptions, caused by the migrations of both +tribes and individuals; the Makololo, for instance, among the tribes +of the humid central basin, appear of a sickly sallow hue when compared +with the aboriginal inhabitants; the Batoka also, who lived in an +elevated region, are, when seen in company with the Batoka of the +rivers, so much lighter in color, they might be taken for another tribe; +but their language, and the very marked custom of knocking out the upper +front teeth, leave no room for doubt that they are one people. + +Apart from the influences of elevation, heat, humidity, and degradation, +I have imagined that the lighter and darker colors observed in the +native population run in five longitudinal bands along the southern +portion of the continent. Those on the seaboard of both the east and +west are very dark; then two bands of lighter color lie about three +hundred miles from each coast, of which the westerly one, bending +round, embraces the Kalahari Desert and Bechuana countries; and then +the central basin is very dark again. This opinion is not given with +any degree of positiveness. It is stated just as it struck my mind in +passing across the country, and if incorrect, it is singular that the +dialects spoken by the different tribes have arranged themselves in a +fashion which seems to indicate migration along the lines of color. The +dialects spoken in the extreme south, whether Hottentot or Caffre, bear +a close affinity to those of the tribes living immediately on their +northern borders; one glides into the other, and their affinities are so +easily detected that they are at once recognized to be cognate. If the +dialects of extreme points are compared, as that of the Caffres and the +tribes near the equator, it is more difficult to recognize the fact, +which is really the case, that all the dialects belong to but two +families of languages. Examination of the roots of the words of the +dialects, arranged in geographical order, shows that they merge into +each other, and there is not nearly so much difference between the +extremes of east and west as between those of north and south, the +dialect spoken at Tete resembling closely that in Angola. + +Having, on the afore-mentioned date, reached the village of Njambi, one +of the chiefs of the Chiboque, we intended to pass a quiet Sunday; and +our provisions being quite spent, I ordered a tired riding-ox to be +slaughtered. As we wished to be on good terms with all, we sent the hump +and ribs to Njambi, with the explanation that this was the customary +tribute to chiefs in the part from which we had come, and that we always +honored men in his position. He returned thanks, and promised to send +food. Next morning he sent an impudent message, with a very small +present of meal; scorning the meat he had accepted, he demanded either +a man, an ox, a gun, powder, cloth, or a shell; and in the event of +refusal to comply with his demand, he intimated his intention to prevent +our further progress. We replied, we should have thought ourselves fools +if we had scorned his small present, and demanded other food instead; +and even supposing we had possessed the articles named, no black man +ought to impose a tribute on a party that did not trade in slaves. The +servants who brought the message said that, when sent to the Mambari, +they had always got a quantity of cloth from them for their master, and +now expected the same, or something else as an equivalent, from me. + +We heard some of the Chiboque remark, "They have only five guns;" +and about midday, Njambi collected all his people, and surrounded our +encampment. Their object was evidently to plunder us of every thing. My +men seized their javelins, and stood on the defensive, while the young +Chiboque had drawn their swords and brandished them with great fury. +Some even pointed their guns at me, and nodded to each other, as much as +to say, "This is the way we shall do with him." I sat on my camp-stool, +with my double-barreled gun across my knees, and invited the chief to +be seated also. When he and his counselors had sat down on the ground in +front of me, I asked what crime we had committed that he had come armed +in that way. He replied that one of my men, Pitsane, while sitting at +the fire that morning, had, in spitting, allowed a small quantity of the +saliva to fall on the leg of one of his men, and this "guilt" he wanted +to be settled by the fine of a man, ox, or gun. Pitsane admitted the +fact of a little saliva having fallen on the Chiboque, and in proof of +its being a pure accident, mentioned that he had given the man a piece +of meat, by way of making friends, just before it happened, and wiped it +off with his hand as soon as it fell. In reference to a man being given, +I declared that we were all ready to die rather than give up one of our +number to be a slave; that my men might as well give me as I give one +of them, for we were all free men. "Then you can give the gun with which +the ox was shot." As we heard some of his people remarking even now that +we had only "five guns", we declined, on the ground that, as they were +intent on plundering us, giving a gun would be helping them to do so. + +This they denied, saying they wanted the customary tribute only. I asked +what right they had to demand payment for leave to tread on the ground +of God, our common Father. If we trod on their gardens, we would pay, +but not for marching on land which was still God's, and not theirs. They +did not attempt to controvert this, because it is in accordance with +their own ideas, but reverted again to the pretended crime of the +saliva. + +My men now entreated me to give something; and after asking the chief +if he really thought the affair of the spitting a matter of guilt, and +receiving an answer in the affirmative, I gave him one of my shirts. +The young Chiboque were dissatisfied, and began shouting and brandishing +their swords for a greater fine. + +As Pitsane felt that he had been the cause of this disagreeable affair, +he asked me to add something else. I gave a bunch of beads, but the +counselors objected this time, so I added a large handkerchief. The +more I yielded, the more unreasonable their demands became, and at every +fresh demand a shout was raised by the armed party, and a rush made +around us with brandishing of arms. One young man made a charge at my +head from behind, but I quickly brought round the muzzle of my gun to +his mouth, and he retreated. I pointed him out to the chief, and he +ordered him to retire a little. I felt anxious to avoid the effusion +of blood; and though sure of being able, with my Makololo, who had been +drilled by Sebituane, to drive off twice the number of our assailants, +though now a large body, and well armed with spears, swords, arrows, and +guns, I strove to avoid actual collision. My men were quite unprepared +for this exhibition, but behaved with admirable coolness. The chief +and counselors, by accepting my invitation to be seated, had placed +themselves in a trap, for my men very quietly surrounded them, and made +them feel that there was no chance of escaping their spears. I then +said that, as one thing after another had failed to satisfy them, it +was evident that THEY wanted to fight, while WE only wanted to pass +peaceably through the country; that they must begin first, and bear +the guilt before God: we would not fight till they had struck the first +blow. I then sat silent for some time. It was rather trying for me, +because I knew that the Chiboque would aim at the white man first; but +I was careful not to appear flurried, and, having four barrels ready for +instant action, looked quietly at the savage scene around. The Chiboque +countenance, by no means handsome, is not improved by the practice +which they have adopted of filing the teeth to a point. The chief and +counselors, seeing that they were in more danger than I, did not choose +to follow our decision that they should begin by striking the first +blow, and then see what we could do, and were perhaps influenced by +seeing the air of cool preparation which some of my men displayed at the +prospect of a work of blood. + +The Chiboque at last put the matter before us in this way: "You come +among us in a new way, and say you are quite friendly: how can we know +it unless you give us some of your food, and you take some of ours? If +you give us an ox, we will give you whatever you may wish, and then we +shall be friends." In accordance with the entreaties of my men, I gave +an ox; and when asked what I should like in return, mentioned food as +the thing which we most needed. In the evening Njambi sent us a very +small basket of meal, and two or three pounds of the flesh of our own +ox! with the apology that he had no fowls, and very little of any other +food. It was impossible to avoid a laugh at the coolness of the generous +creatures. I was truly thankful, nevertheless, that, though resolved to +die rather than deliver up one of our number to be a slave, we had so +far gained our point as to be allowed to pass on without having shed +human blood. + +In the midst of the commotion, several Chiboque stole pieces of meat +out of the sheds of my people, and Mohorisi, one of the Makololo, went +boldly into the crowd and took back a marrow-bone from one of them. +A few of my Batoka seemed afraid, and would perhaps have fled had the +affray actually begun, but, upon the whole, I thought my men behaved +admirably. They lamented having left their shields at home by command +of Sekeletu, who feared that, if they carried these, they might be more +disposed to be overbearing in their demeanor to the tribes we should +meet. We had proceeded on the principles of peace and conciliation, and +the foregoing treatment shows in what light our conduct was viewed; in +fact, we were taken for interlopers trying to cheat the revenue of +the tribe. They had been accustomed to get a slave or two from every +slave-trader who passed them, and now that we disputed the right, they +viewed the infringement on what they considered lawfully due with most +virtuous indignation. + +MARCH 6TH. We were informed that the people on the west of the Chiboque +of Njambi were familiar with the visits of slave-traders; and it was the +opinion of our guides from Kangenke that so many of my companions would +be demanded from me, in the same manner as the people of Njambi had +done, that I should reach the coast without a single attendant; I +therefore resolved to alter our course and strike away to the N.N.E., +in the hope that at some point farther north I might find an exit to the +Portuguese settlement of Cassange. We proceeded at first due north, with +the Kasabi villages on our right, and the Kasau on our left. During +the first twenty miles we crossed many small, but now swollen streams, +having the usual boggy banks, and wherever the water had stood for any +length of time it was discolored with rust of iron. We saw a "nakong" +antelope one day, a rare sight in this quarter; and many new and pretty +flowers adorned the valleys. We could observe the difference in the +seasons in our northing in company with the sun. Summer was now nearly +over at Kuruman, and far advanced at Linyanti, but here we were in the +middle of it; fruits, which we had eaten ripe on the Leeambye, were here +quite green; but we were coming into the region where the inhabitants +are favored with two rainy seasons and two crops, i.e., when the sun is +going south, and when he comes back on his way to the north, as was the +case at present. + +On the 8th, one of the men had left an ounce or two of powder at our +sleeping-place, and went back several miles for it. My clothing being +wet from crossing a stream, I was compelled to wait for him; had I been +moving in the sun I should have felt no harm, but the inaction led to +a violent fit of fever. The continuance of this attack was a source of +much regret, for we went on next day to a small rivulet called Chihune, +in a lovely valley, and had, for a wonder, a clear sky and a clear moon; +but such was the confusion produced in my mind by the state of my body, +that I could scarcely manage, after some hours' trial, to get a lunar +observation in which I could repose confidence. The Chihune flows into +the Longe, and that into the Chihombo, a feeder of the Kasai. Those who +know the difficulties of taking altitudes, times, and distances, and +committing all of them to paper, will sympathize with me in this and +many similar instances. While at Chihune, the men of a village brought +wax for sale, and, on finding that we wished honey, went off and soon +brought a hive. All the bees in the country are in possession of the +natives, for they place hives sufficient for them all. After having +ascertained this, we never attended the call of the honey-guide, for +we were sure it would only lead us to a hive which we had no right to +touch. The bird continues its habit of inviting attention to the honey, +though its services in this district are never actually needed. My +Makololo lamented that they never knew before that wax could be sold for +any thing of value. + +As we traverse a succession of open lawns and deep forests, it is +interesting to observe something like instinct developed even in trees. +One which, when cut, emits a milky juice, if met with on the open lawns, +grows as an ordinary umbrageous tree, and shows no disposition to be +a climber; when planted in a forest it still takes the same form, then +sends out a climbing branch, which twines round another tree until it +rises thirty or forty feet, or to the level of the other trees, and +there spreads out a second crown where it can enjoy a fair share of +the sun's rays. In parts of the forest still more dense than this, it +assumes the form of a climber only, and at once avails itself of the +assistance of a tall neighbor by winding vigorously round it, without +attempting to form a lower head. It does not succeed so well as +parasites proper, but where forced to contend for space it may be +mistaken for one which is invariably a climber. The paths here were very +narrow and very much encumbered with gigantic creepers, often as thick +as a man's leg. There must be some reason why they prefer, in some +districts, to go up trees in the common form of the thread of a screw +rather than in any other. On the one bank of the Chihune they appeared +to a person standing opposite them to wind up from left to right, on +the other bank from right to left. I imagined this was owing to the sun +being at one season of the year on their north and at another on their +south. But on the Leeambye I observed creepers winding up on opposite +sides of the same reed, and making a figure like the lacings of a +sandal. + +In passing through these narrow paths I had an opportunity of observing +the peculiarities of my ox "Sinbad". He had a softer back than the +others, but a much more intractable temper. His horns were bent downward +and hung loosely, so he could do no harm with them; but as we wended our +way slowly along the narrow path, he would suddenly dart aside. A string +tied to a stick put through the cartilage of the nose serves instead of +a bridle: if you jerk this back, it makes him run faster on; if you +pull it to one side, he allows the nose and head to go, but keeps the +opposite eye directed to the forbidden spot, and goes in spite of you. +The only way he can be brought to a stand is by a stroke with a wand +across the nose. When Sinbad ran in below a climber stretched over the +path so low that I could not stoop under it, I was dragged off and came +down on the crown of my head; and he never allowed an opportunity of the +kind to pass without trying to inflict a kick, as if I neither had nor +deserved his love. + +A remarkable peculiarity in the forests of this country is the absence +of thorns: there are but two exceptions; one a tree bearing a species of +'nux vomica', and a small shrub very like the plant of the sarsaparilla, +bearing, in addition to its hooked thorns, bunches of yellow berries. +The thornlessness of the vegetation is especially noticeable to those +who have been in the south, where there is so great a variety of +thorn-bearing plants and trees. We have thorns of every size and shape; +thorns straight, thin and long, short and thick, or hooked, and so +strong as to be able to cut even leather like a knife. Seed-vessels are +scattered every where by these appendages. One lies flat as a shilling +with two thorns in its centre, ready to run into the foot of any animal +that treads upon it, and stick there for days together. Another (the +'Uncaria procumbens', or Grapple-plant) has so many hooked thorns as to +cling most tenaciously to any animal to which it may become attached; +when it happens to lay hold of the mouth of an ox, the animal stands and +roars with pain and a sense of helplessness. + +Whenever a part of the forest has been cleared for a garden, and +afterward abandoned, a species of plant, with leaves like those of +ginger, springs up, and contends for the possession of the soil with a +great crop of ferns. This is the case all the way down to Angola, and +shows the great difference of climate between this and the Bechuana +country, where a fern, except one or two hardy species, is never seen. +The plants above mentioned bear a pretty pink flower close to the +ground, which is succeeded by a scarlet fruit full of seeds, yielding, +as so many fruits in this country do, a pleasant acid juice, which, +like the rest, is probably intended as a corrective to the fluids of the +system in the hot climate. + +On leaving the Chihune we crossed the Longe, and, as the day was cloudy, +our guides wandered in a forest away to the west till we came to the +River Chihombo, flowing to the E.N.E. My men depended so much on the +sun for guidance that, having seen nothing of the luminary all day, they +thought we had wandered back to the Chiboque, and, as often happens when +bewildered, they disputed as to the point where the sun should rise next +morning. As soon as the rains would allow next day, we went off to the +N.E. It would have been better to have traveled by compass alone, for +the guides took advantage of any fears expressed by my people, and +threatened to return if presents were not made at once. But my men had +never left their own country before except for rapine and murder. +When they formerly came to a village they were in the habit of killing +numbers of the inhabitants, and then taking a few young men to serve as +guides to the next place. As this was their first attempt at an opposite +line of conduct, and as they were without their shields, they felt +defenseless among the greedy Chiboque, and some allowance must be made +for them on that account. + +SATURDAY, 11TH. Reached a small village on the banks of a narrow stream. +I was too ill to go out of my little covering except to quell a mutiny +which began to show itself among some of the Batoka and Ambonda of our +party. They grumbled, as they often do against their chiefs, when they +think them partial in their gifts, because they supposed that I had +shown a preference in the distribution of the beads; but the beads I +had given to my principal men were only sufficient to purchase a scanty +meal, and I had hastened on to this village in order to slaughter a +tired ox, and give them all a feast as well as a rest on Sunday, as +preparation for the journey before us. I explained this to them, and +thought their grumbling was allayed. I soon sank into a state of stupor, +which the fever sometimes produced, and was oblivious to all their noise +in slaughtering. On Sunday the mutineers were making a terrible din in +preparing a skin they had procured. I requested them twice, by the man +who attended me, to be more quiet, as the noise pained me; but as +they paid no attention to this civil request, I put out my head, and, +repeating it myself, was answered by an impudent laugh. Knowing that +discipline would be at an end if this mutiny were not quelled, and +that our lives depended on vigorously upholding authority, I seized a +double-barreled pistol, and darted forth from the domicile, looking, +I suppose, so savage as to put them to a precipitate flight. As some +remained within hearing, I told them that I must maintain discipline, +though at the expense of some of their limbs; so long as we traveled +together they must remember that I was master, and not they. There being +but little room to doubt my determination, they immediately became very +obedient, and never afterward gave me any trouble, or imagined that they +had any right to my property. + +13TH. We went forward some miles, but were brought to a stand by the +severity of my fever on the banks of a branch of the Loajima, another +tributary of the Kasai. I was in a state of partial coma until late at +night, when it became necessary for me to go out; and I was surprised +to find that my men had built a little stockade, and some of them took +their spears and acted as a guard. I found that we were surrounded by +enemies, and a party of Chiboque lay near the gateway, after having +preferred the demand of "a man, an ox, a gun, or a tusk." My men had +prepared for defense in case of a night attack, and when the Chiboque +wished to be shown where I lay sick, they very properly refused to point +me out. In the morning I went out to the Chiboque, and found that they +answered me civilly regarding my intentions in opening the country, +teaching them, etc., etc. They admitted that their chiefs would be +pleased with the prospect of friendship, and now only wished to exchange +tokens of good-will with me, and offered three pigs, which they hoped I +would accept. The people here are in the habit of making a present, and +then demanding whatever they choose in return. We had been forewarned of +this by our guides, so I tried to decline, by asking if they would eat +one of the pigs in company with us. To this proposition they said that +they durst not accede. I then accepted the present in the hope that +the blame of deficient friendly feeling might not rest with me, and +presented a razor, two bunches of beads, and twelve copper rings, +contributed by my men from their arms. They went off to report to their +chief; and as I was quite unable to move from excessive giddiness, we +continued in the same spot on Tuesday evening, when they returned with +a message couched in very plain terms, that a man, tusk, gun, or even +an ox, alone would be acceptable; that he had every thing else in his +possession but oxen, and that, whatever I should please to demand from +him, he would gladly give it. As this was all said civilly, and +there was no help for it if we refused but bloodshed, I gave a tired +riding-ox. My late chief mutineer, an Ambonda man, was now over-loyal, +for he armed himself and stood at the gateway. He would rather die than +see his father imposed on; but I ordered Mosantu to take him out of the +way, which he did promptly, and allowed the Chiboque to march off well +pleased with their booty. I told my men that I esteemed one of their +lives of more value than all the oxen we had, and that the only cause +which could induce me to fight would be to save the lives and liberties +of the majority. In the propriety of this they all agreed, and said +that, if the Chiboque molested us who behaved so peaceably, the +guilt would be on their heads. This is a favorite mode of expression +throughout the whole country. All are anxious to give explanation of any +acts they have performed, and conclude the narration with, "I have no +guilt or blame" ("molatu"). "They have the guilt." I never could be +positive whether the idea in their minds is guilt in the sight of the +Deity, or of mankind only. + +Next morning the robber party came with about thirty yards of strong +striped English calico, an axe, and two hoes for our acceptance, and +returned the copper rings, as the chief was a great man, and did not +need the ornaments of my men, but we noticed that they were taken back +again. I divided the cloth among my men, and pleased them a little by +thus compensating for the loss of the ox. I advised the chief, whose +name we did not learn, as he did not deign to appear except under the +alias Matiamvo, to get cattle for his own use, and expressed sorrow +that I had none wherewith to enable him to make a commencement. Rains +prevented our proceeding till Thursday morning, and then messengers +appeared to tell us that their chief had learned that all the cloth sent +by him had not been presented; that the copper rings had been secreted +by the persons ordered to restore them to us, and that he had stripped +the thievish emissaries of their property as a punishment. Our guides +thought these were only spies of a larger party, concealed in the forest +through which we were now about to pass. We prepared for defense by +marching in a compact body, and allowing no one to straggle far behind +the others. We marched through many miles of gloomy forest in gloomier +silence, but nothing disturbed us. We came to a village, and found +all the men absent, the guides thought, in the forest, with their +countrymen. I was too ill to care much whether we were attacked or not. +Though a pouring rain came on, as we were all anxious to get away out +of a bad neighborhood, we proceeded. The thick atmosphere prevented my +seeing the creeping plants in time to avoid them; so Pitsane, Mohorisi, +and I, who alone were mounted, were often caught; and as there is no +stopping the oxen when they have the prospect of giving the rider a +tumble, we came frequently to the ground. In addition to these mishaps, +Sinbad went off at a plunging gallop, the bridle broke, and I came down +backward on the crown of my head. He gave me a kick on the thigh at the +same time. I felt none the worse for this rough treatment, but would +not recommend it to others as a palliative in cases of fever! This +last attack of fever was so obstinate that it reduced me almost to a +skeleton. The blanket which I used as a saddle on the back of the ox, +being frequently wet, remained so beneath me even in the hot sun, and, +aided by the heat of the ox, caused extensive abrasion of the +skin, which was continually healing and getting sore again. To this +inconvenience was now added the chafing of my projecting bones on the +hard bed. + +On Friday we came to a village of civil people on the banks of the +Loajima itself, and we were wet all day in consequence of crossing it. +The bridges over it, and another stream which we crossed at midday, were +submerged, as we have hitherto invariably found, by a flood of perfectly +clear water. At the second ford we were met by a hostile party who +refused us further passage. I ordered my men to proceed in the same +direction we had been pursuing, but our enemies spread themselves out in +front of us with loud cries. Our numbers were about equal to theirs +this time, so I moved on at the head of my men. Some ran off to +other villages, or back to their own village, on pretense of getting +ammunition; others called out that all traders came to them, and that we +must do the same. As these people had plenty of iron-headed arrows and +some guns, when we came to the edge of the forest I ordered my men to +put the luggage in our centre; and, if our enemies did not fire, to cut +down some young trees and make a screen as quickly as possible, but do +nothing to them except in case of actual attack. I then dismounted, and, +advancing a little toward our principal opponent, showed him how easily +I could kill him, but pointed upward, saying, "I fear God." He did the +same, placing his hand on his heart, pointing upward, and saying, "I +fear to kill; but come to our village; come--do come." At this juncture, +the old head man, Ionga Panza, a venerable negro, came up, and I invited +him and all to be seated, that we might talk the matter over. Ionga +Panza soon let us know that he thought himself very ill treated in being +passed by. As most skirmishes arise from misunderstanding, this might +have been a serious one; for, like all the tribes near the Portuguese +settlements, people here imagine that they have a right to demand +payment from every one who passes through the country; and now, though +Ionga Panza was certainly no match for my men, yet they were determined +not to forego their right without a struggle. I removed with my men +to the vicinity of the village, thankful that no accident had as yet +brought us into actual collision. + +The reason why the people have imbibed the idea so strongly that they +have a right to demand payment for leave to pass through the country is +probably this. They have seen no traders except those either engaged +in purchasing slaves, or who have slaves in their employment. These +slave-traders have always been very much at the mercy of the chiefs +through whose country they have passed; for if they afforded a ready +asylum for runaway slaves, the traders might be deserted at any moment, +and stripped of their property altogether. They are thus obliged to +curry favor with the chiefs, so as to get a safe conduct from them. The +same system is adopted to induce the chiefs to part with their people, +whom all feel to be the real source of their importance in the country. +On the return of the traders from the interior with chains of slaves, +it is so easy for a chief who may be so disposed to take away a chain of +eight or ten unresisting slaves, that the merchant is fain to give any +amount of presents in order to secure the good-will of the rulers. The +independent chiefs, not knowing why their favor is so eagerly sought, +become excessively proud and supercilious in their demands, and look +upon white men with the greatest contempt. To such lengths did the +Bangala, a tribe near to which we had now approached, proceed a few +years ago, that they compelled the Portuguese traders to pay for water, +wood, and even grass, and every possible pretext was invented for +levying fines; and these were patiently submitted to so long as the +slave-trade continued to flourish. We had unconsciously come in contact +with a system which was quite unknown in the country from which my men +had set out. An English trader may there hear a demand for payment of +guides, but never, so far as I am aware, is he asked to pay for leave +to traverse a country. The idea does not seem to have entered the native +mind, except through slave-traders, for the aborigines all acknowledge +that the untilled land, not needed for pasturage, belongs to God alone, +and that no harm is done by people passing through it. I rather believe +that, wherever the slave-trade has not penetrated, the visits of +strangers are esteemed a real privilege. + +The village of old Ionga Panza (lat. 10d 25' S., long. 20d 15' E.) is +small, and embowered in lofty evergreen trees, which were hung around +with fine festoons of creepers. He sent us food immediately, and soon +afterward a goat, which was considered a handsome gift, there being but +few domestic animals, though the country is well adapted for them. I +suspect this, like the country of Shinte and Katema, must have been a +tsetse district, and only recently rendered capable of supporting +other domestic animals besides the goat, by the destruction of the game +through the extensive introduction of fire-arms. We might all have been +as ignorant of the existence of this insect plague as the Portuguese, +had it not been for the numerous migrations of pastoral tribes which +took place in the south in consequence of Zulu irruptions. + +During these exciting scenes I always forgot my fever, but a terrible +sense of sinking came back with the feeling of safety. The same demand +of payment for leave to pass was made on the 20th by old Ionga Panza +as by the other Chiboque. I offered the shell presented by Shinte, but +Ionga Panza said he was too old for ornaments. We might have succeeded +very well with him, for he was by no means unreasonable, and had but +a very small village of supporters; but our two guides from Kangenke +complicated our difficulties by sending for a body of Bangala traders, +with a view to force us to sell the tusks of Sekeletu, and pay them with +the price. We offered to pay them handsomely if they would perform their +promise of guiding us to Cassange, but they knew no more of the paths +than we did; and my men had paid them repeatedly, and tried to get rid +of them, but could not. They now joined with our enemies, and so did the +traders. Two guns and some beads belonging to the latter were standing +in our encampment, and the guides seized them and ran off. As my men +knew that we should be called upon to replace them, they gave chase, and +when the guides saw that they would be caught, they threw down the guns, +directed their flight to the village, and rushed into a hut. The doorway +is not much higher than that of a dog's kennel. One of the guides was +reached by one of my men as he was in the act of stooping to get in, and +a cut was inflicted on a projecting part of the body which would have +made any one in that posture wince. The guns were restored, but the +beads were lost in the flight. All I had remaining of my stock of beads +could not replace those lost; and though we explained that we had no +part in the guilt of the act, the traders replied that we had brought +the thieves into the country; these were of the Bangala, who had been +accustomed to plague the Portuguese in the most vexatious way. We were +striving to get a passage through the country, and, feeling anxious that +no crime whatever should be laid to our charge, tried the conciliatory +plan here, though we were not, as in the other instances, likely to be +overpowered by numbers. + +My men offered all their ornaments, and I offered all my beads and +shirts; but, though we had come to the village against our will, and the +guides had also followed us contrary to our desire, and had even sent +for the Bangala traders without our knowledge or consent, yet matters +could not be arranged without our giving an ox and one of the tusks. +We were all becoming disheartened, and could not wonder that native +expeditions from the interior to the coast had generally failed to reach +their destinations. My people were now so much discouraged that some +proposed to return home; the prospect of being obliged to return when +just on the threshold of the Portuguese settlements distressed me +exceedingly. After using all my powers of persuasion, I declared to them +that if they returned I would go on alone, and went into my little tent +with the mind directed to Him who hears the sighing of the soul, and was +soon followed by the head of Mohorisi, saying, "We will never leave you. +Do not be disheartened. Wherever you lead we will follow. Our remarks +were made only on account of the injustice of these people." Others +followed, and with the most artless simplicity of manner told me to be +comforted--"they were all my children; they knew no one but Sekeletu +and me, and they would die for me; they had not fought because I did +not wish it; they had just spoken in the bitterness of their spirit, and +when feeling that they could do nothing; but if these enemies begin you +will see what we can do." One of the oxen we offered to the Chiboque had +been rejected because he had lost part of his tail, as they thought that +it had been cut off and witchcraft medicine inserted; and some mirth was +excited by my proposing to raise a similar objection to all the oxen +we still had in our possession. The remaining four soon presented a +singular shortness of their caudal extremities, and though no one ever +asked whether they had medicine in the stumps or no, we were no more +troubled by the demand for an ox! We now slaughtered another ox, that +the spectacle might not be seen of the owners of the cattle fasting +while the Chiboque were feasting. + + + + +Chapter 19. + +Guides prepaid--Bark Canoes--Deserted by Guides--Mistakes respecting +the Coanza--Feelings of freed Slaves--Gardens and Villages--Native +Traders--A Grave--Valley of the Quango--Bamboo--White Larvae used as +Food--Bashinje Insolence--A posing Question--The Chief Sansawe--His +Hostility--Pass him safely--The River Quango--Chief's mode of +dressing his Hair--Opposition--Opportune Aid by Cypriano--His generous +Hospitality--Ability of Half-castes to read and write--Books and +Images--Marauding Party burned in the Grass--Arrive at Cassange--A good +Supper--Kindness of Captain Neves--Portuguese Curiosity and Questions-- +Anniversary of the Resurrection--No Prejudice against Color--Country +around Cassange--Sell Sekeletu's Ivory--Makololo's Surprise at the +high Price obtained--Proposal to return Home, and Reasons-- +Soldier-guide--Hill Kasala--Tala Mungongo, Village of--Civility +of Basongo--True Negroes--A Field of Wheat-- +Carriers--Sleeping-places--Fever--Enter District of Ambaca--Good Fruits +of Jesuit Teaching--The 'Tampan'; its Bite--Universal Hospitality of +the Portuguese--A Tale of the Mambari--Exhilarating Effects of +Highland Scenery--District of Golungo Alto--Want of good +Roads--Fertility--Forests of gigantic Timber--Native Carpenters--Coffee +Estate--Sterility of Country near the Coast--Mosquitoes--Fears of the +Makololo--Welcome by Mr. Gabriel to Loanda. + + + +24TH. Ionga Panza's sons agreed to act as guides into the territory of +the Portuguese if I would give them the shell given by Shinte. I was +strongly averse to this, and especially to give it beforehand, but +yielded to the entreaty of my people to appear as if showing confidence +in these hopeful youths. They urged that they wished to leave the +shell with their wives, as a sort of payment to them for enduring their +husbands' absence so long. Having delivered the precious shell, we went +west-by-north to the River Chikapa, which here (lat. 10d 22' S.) is +forty or fifty yards wide, and at present was deep; it was seen flowing +over a rocky, broken cataract with great noise about half a mile above +our ford. We were ferried over in a canoe, made out of a single piece +of bark sewed together at the ends, and having sticks placed in it at +different parts to act as ribs. The word Chikapa means bark or skin; and +as this is the only river in which we saw this kind of canoe used, and +we heard that this stream is so low during most of the year as to be +easily fordable, it probably derives its name from the use made of the +bark canoes when it is in flood. We now felt the loss of our pontoon, +for the people to whom the canoe belonged made us pay once when we began +to cross, then a second time when half of us were over, and a third time +when all were over but my principal man Pitsane and myself. Loyanke took +off his cloth and paid my passage with it. The Makololo always ferried +their visitors over rivers without pay, and now began to remark that +they must in future fleece the Mambari as these Chiboque had done to us; +they had all been loud in condemnation of the meanness, and when I asked +if they could descend to be equally mean, I was answered that they +would only do it in revenge. They like to have a plausible excuse for +meanness. + +Next morning our guides went only about a mile, and then told us they +would return home. I expected this when paying them beforehand, in +accordance with the entreaties of the Makololo, who are rather ignorant +of the world. Very energetic remonstrances were addressed to the guides, +but they slipped off one by one in the thick forest through which +we were passing, and I was glad to hear my companions coming to the +conclusion that, as we were now in parts visited by traders, we did not +require the guides, whose chief use had been to prevent misapprehension +of our objects in the minds of the villagers. The country was somewhat +more undulating now than it had been, and several fine small streams +flowed in deep woody dells. The trees are very tall and straight, and +the forests gloomy and damp; the ground in these solitudes is quite +covered with yellow and brown mosses, and light-colored lichens clothe +all the trees. The soil is extremely fertile, being generally a black +loam covered with a thick crop of tall grasses. We passed several +villages too. The head man of a large one scolded us well for passing, +when he intended to give us food. Where slave-traders have been in the +habit of coming, they present food, then demand three or four times its +value as a custom. We were now rather glad to get past villages without +intercourse with the inhabitants. + +We were traveling W.N.W., and all the rivulets we here crossed had a +northerly course, and were reported to fall into the Kasai or Loke; most +of them had the peculiar boggy banks of the country. As we were now in +the alleged latitude of the Coanza, I was much astonished at the +entire absence of any knowledge of that river among the natives of +this quarter. But I was then ignorant of the fact that the Coanza rises +considerably to the west of this, and has a comparatively short course +from its source to the sea. + +The famous Dr. Lacerda seems to have labored under the same mistake as +myself, for he recommended the government of Angola to establish a chain +of forts along the banks of that river, with a view to communication +with the opposite coast. As a chain of forts along its course would lead +southward instead of eastward, we may infer that the geographical data +within reach of that eminent man were no better than those according to +which I had directed my course to the Coanza where it does not exist. + +26TH. We spent Sunday on the banks of the Quilo or Kweelo, here a stream +of about ten yards wide. It runs in a deep glen, the sides of which are +almost five hundred yards of slope, and rocky, the rocks being hardened +calcareous tufa lying on clay shale and sandstone below, with a capping +of ferruginous conglomerate. The scenery would have been very +pleasing, but fever took away much of the joy of life, and severe daily +intermittents rendered me very weak and always glad to recline. + +As we were now in the slave-market, it struck me that the sense of +insecurity felt by the natives might account for the circumstance that +those who have been sold as slaves and freed again, when questioned, +profess to like the new state better than their primitive one. They +lived on rich, fertile plains, which seldom inspire that love of country +which the mountains do. If they had been mountaineers, they would have +pined for home. To one who has observed the hard toil of the poor in old +civilized countries, the state in which the inhabitants here live is one +of glorious ease. The country is full of little villages. Food abounds, +and very little labor is required for its cultivation; the soil is so +rich that no manure is required; when a garden becomes too poor for good +crops of maize, millet, etc., the owner removes a little farther into +the forest, applies fire round the roots of the larger trees to kill +them, cuts down the smaller, and a new, rich garden is ready for the +seed. The gardens usually present the appearance of a large number of +tall, dead trees standing without bark, and maize growing between them. +The old gardens continue to yield manioc for years after the owners +have removed to other spots for the sake of millet and maize. But, while +vegetable aliment is abundant, there is a want of salt and animal food, +so that numberless traps are seen, set for mice, in all the forests of +Londa. The vegetable diet leaves great craving for flesh, and I have no +doubt but that, when an ordinary quantity of mixed food is supplied to +freed slaves, they actually do feel more comfortable than they did at +home. Their assertions, however, mean but little, for they always try to +give an answer to please, and if one showed them a nugget of gold, they +would generally say that these abounded in their country. + +One could detect, in passing, the variety of character found among +the owners of gardens and villages. Some villages were the pictures of +neatness. We entered others enveloped in a wilderness of weeds, so high +that, when sitting on ox-back in the middle of the village, we could +only see the tops of the huts. If we entered at midday, the owners +would come lazily forth, pipe in hand, and leisurely puff away in dreamy +indifference. In some villages weeds are not allowed to grow; cotton, +tobacco, and different plants used as relishes are planted round the +huts; fowls are kept in cages, and the gardens present the pleasant +spectacle of different kinds of grain and pulse at various periods of +their growth. I sometimes admired the one class, and at times wished I +could have taken the world easy for a time like the other. Every village +swarms with children, who turn out to see the white man pass, and run +along with strange cries and antics; some run up trees to get a good +view: all are agile climbers throughout Londa. At friendly villages they +have scampered alongside our party for miles at a time. We usually made +a little hedge around our sheds; crowds of women came to the entrance of +it, with children on their backs, and long pipes in their mouths, gazing +at us for hours. The men, rather than disturb them, crawled through a +hole in the hedge, and it was common to hear a man in running off say +to them, "I am going to tell my mamma to come and see the white man's +oxen." + +In continuing our W.N.W. course, we met many parties of native traders, +each carrying some pieces of cloth and salt, with a few beads to +barter for bees'-wax. They are all armed with Portuguese guns, and have +cartridges with iron balls. When we meet we usually stand a few minutes. +They present a little salt, and we give a bit of ox-hide, or some other +trifle, and then part with mutual good wishes. The hide of the oxen we +slaughtered had been a valuable addition to our resources, for we found +it in so great repute for girdles all through Loanda that we cut up +every skin into strips about two inches broad, and sold them for meal +and manioc as we went along. As we came nearer Angola we found them of +less value, as the people there possess cattle themselves. + +The village on the Kweelo, at which we spent Sunday, was that of a +civil, lively old man, called Sakandala, who offered no objections to +our progress. We found we should soon enter on the territory of the +Bashinje (Chinge of the Portuguese), who are mixed with another tribe, +named Bangala, which have been at war with the Babindele or Portuguese. +Rains and fever, as usual, helped to impede our progress until we were +put on the path which leads from Cassange and Bihe to Matiamvo, by a +head man named Kamboela. This was a well-beaten footpath, and soon after +entering upon it we met a party of half-caste traders from Bihe, who +confirmed the information we had already got of this path leading +straight to Cassange, through which they had come on their way from Bihe +to Cabango. They kindly presented my men with some tobacco, and marveled +greatly when they found that I had never been able to teach myself to +smoke. On parting with them we came to a trader's grave. This was marked +by a huge cone of sticks placed in the form of the roof of a hut, with +a palisade around it. At an opening on the western side an ugly idol was +placed: several strings of beads and bits of cloth were hung around. We +learned that he had been a half-caste, who had died on his way back from +Matiamvo. + +As we were now alone, and sure of being on the way to the abodes of +civilization, we went on briskly. + +On the 30th we came to a sudden descent from the high land, indented +by deep, narrow valleys, over which we had lately been traveling. It is +generally so steep that it can only be descended at particular points, +and even there I was obliged to dismount, though so weak that I had to +be led by my companions to prevent my toppling over in walking down. It +was annoying to feel myself so helpless, for I never liked to see a man, +either sick or well, giving in effeminately. Below us lay the valley of +the Quango. If you sit on the spot where Mary Queen of Scots viewed the +battle of Langside, and look down on the vale of Clyde, you may see +in miniature the glorious sight which a much greater and richer valley +presented to our view. It is about a hundred miles broad, clothed with +dark forest, except where the light green grass covers meadow-lands on +the Quango, which here and there glances out in the sun as it wends its +way to the north. The opposite side of this great valley appears like a +range of lofty mountains, and the descent into it about a mile, which, +measured perpendicularly, may be from a thousand to twelve hundred feet. +Emerging from the gloomy forests of Londa, this magnificent prospect +made us all feel as if a weight had been lifted off our eyelids. A cloud +was passing across the middle of the valley, from which rolling thunder +pealed, while above all was glorious sunlight; and when we went down +to the part where we saw it passing, we found that a very heavy +thunder-shower had fallen under the path of the cloud; and the bottom +of the valley, which from above seemed quite smooth, we discovered to be +intersected and furrowed by great numbers of deep-cut streams. Looking +back from below, the descent appears as the edge of a table-land, with +numerous indented dells and spurs jutting out all along, giving it a +serrated appearance. Both the top and sides of the sierra are covered +with trees, but large patches of the more perpendicular parts are bare, +and exhibit the red soil, which is general over the region we have now +entered. + +The hollow affords a section of this part of the country; and we find +that the uppermost stratum is the ferruginous conglomerate already +mentioned. The matrix is rust of iron (or hydrous peroxide of iron and +hematite), and in it are imbedded water-worn pebbles of sandstone and +quartz. As this is the rock underlying the soil of a large part of +Londa, its formation must have preceded the work of denudation by an +arm of the sea, which washed away the enormous mass of matter required +before the valley of Cassange could assume its present form. The strata +under the conglomerate are all of red clay shale of different degrees of +hardness, the most indurated being at the bottom. This red clay shale +is named "keele" in Scotland, and has always been considered as an +indication of gold; but the only thing we discovered was that it had +given rise to a very slippery clay soil, so different from that which +we had just left that Mashauana, who always prided himself on being an +adept at balancing himself in the canoe on water, and so sure of foot on +land that he could afford to express contempt for any one less gifted, +came down in a very sudden and undignified manner, to the delight of all +whom he had previously scolded for falling. + +Here we met with the bamboo as thick as a man's arm, and many new trees. +Others, which we had lost sight of since leaving Shinte, now reappeared; +but nothing struck us more than the comparative scragginess of the +trees in this hollow. Those on the high lands we had left were tall +and straight; here they were stunted, and not by any means so closely +planted together. The only way I could account for this was by +supposing, as the trees were of different species, that the greater +altitude suited the nature of those above better than the lower altitude +did the other species below. + +SUNDAY, APRIL 2D. We rested beside a small stream, and our hunger being +now very severe, from having lived on manioc alone since leaving Ionza +Panza's, we slaughtered one of our four remaining oxen. The people of +this district seem to feel the craving for animal food as much as we +did, for they spend much energy in digging large white larvae out of the +damp soil adjacent to their streams, and use them as a relish to their +vegetable diet. The Bashinje refused to sell any food for the poor old +ornaments my men had now to offer. We could get neither meal nor manioc, +but should have been comfortable had not the Bashinje chief Sansawe +pestered us for the customary present. The native traders informed us +that a display of force was often necessary before they could pass this +man. + +Sansawe, the chief of a portion of the Bashinje, having sent the usual +formal demand for a man, an ox, or a tusk, spoke very contemptuously of +the poor things we offered him instead. We told his messengers that the +tusks were Sekeletu's: every thing was gone except my instruments, which +could be of no use to them whatever. One of them begged some meat, and, +when it was refused, said to my men, "You may as well give it, for we +shall take all after we have killed you to-morrow." The more humbly we +spoke, the more insolent the Bashinje became, till at last we were all +feeling savage and sulky, but continued to speak as civilly as we could. +They are fond of argument, and when I denied their right to demand +tribute from a white man, who did not trade in slaves, an old +white-headed negro put rather a posing question: "You know that God has +placed chiefs among us whom we ought to support. How is it that you, who +have a book that tells you about him, do not come forward at once to pay +this chief tribute like every one else?" I replied by asking, "How could +I know that this was a chief, who had allowed me to remain a day and a +half near him without giving me any thing to eat?" This, which to the +uninitiated may seem sophistry, was to the Central Africans quite a +rational question, for he at once admitted that food ought to have been +sent, and added that probably his chief was only making it ready for me, +and that it would come soon. + +After being wearied by talking all day to different parties sent by +Sansawe, we were honored by a visit from himself: he is quite a young +man, and of rather a pleasing countenance. There can not have been much +intercourse between real Portuguese and these people even here, so close +to the Quango, for Sansawe asked me to show him my hair, on the ground +that, though he had heard of it, and some white men had even passed +through his country, he had never seen straight hair before. This is +quite possible, as most of the slave-traders are not Portuguese, but +half-castes. The difference between their wool and our hair caused +him to burst into a laugh, and the contrast between the exposed and +unexposed parts of my skin, when exhibited in evidence of our all being +made of one stock originally, and the children of one Maker, seemed to +strike him with wonder. I then showed him my watch, and wished to win my +way into his confidence by conversation; but, when about to exhibit +my pocket compass, he desired me to desist, as he was afraid of my +wonderful things. I told him, if he knew my aims as the tribes in the +interior did, and as I hoped he would yet know them and me, he would be +glad to stay, and see also the pictures of the magic lantern; but, as +it was now getting dark, he had evidently got enough of my witchery, +and began to use some charms to dispel any kindly feelings he might have +found stealing round his heart. He asked leave to go, and when his party +moved off a little way, he sent for my spokesman, and told him that, "if +we did not add a red jacket and a man to our gift of a few copper rings +and a few pounds of meat, we must return by the way we had come." I +said in reply "that we should certainly go forward next day, and if he +commenced hostilities, the blame before God would be that of Sansawe;" +and my man added of his own accord, "How many white men have you killed +in this path?" which might be interpreted into, "You have never killed +any white man, and you will find ours more difficult to manage than you +imagine." It expressed a determination, which we had often repeated to +each other, to die rather than yield one of our party to be a slave. + +Hunger has a powerful effect on the temper. When we had got a good meal +of meat, we could all bear the petty annoyances of these borderers on +the more civilized region in front with equanimity; but having suffered +considerably of late, we were all rather soured in our feelings, and not +unfrequently I overheard my companions remark in their own tongue, in +answer to threats of attack, "That's what we want: only begin then;" or +with clenched teeth they would exclaim to each other, "These things have +never traveled, and do not know what men are." The worrying, of which +I give only a slight sketch, had considerable influence on my own mind, +and more especially as it was impossible to make any allowance for the +Bashinje, such as I was willing to award to the Chiboque. They saw that +we had nothing to give, nor would they be benefited in the least by +enforcing the impudent order to return whence we had come. They were +adding insult to injury, and this put us all into a fighting spirit, +and, as nearly as we could judge, we expected to be obliged to cut our +way through the Bashinje next morning. + +3D APRIL. As soon as day dawned we were astir, and, setting off in a +drizzling rain, passed close to the village. This rain probably damped +the ardor of the robbers. We, however, expected to be fired upon from +every clump of trees, or from some of the rocky hillocks among which we +were passing; and it was only after two hours' march that we began to +breathe freely, and my men remarked, in thankfulness, "We are children +of Jesus." We continued our course, notwithstanding the rain, across the +bottom of the Quango Valley, which we found broken by clay shale rocks +jutting out, though lying nearly horizontally. The grass in all the +hollows, at this time quite green, was about two feet higher than my +head while sitting on ox-back. This grass, wetted by the rain, acted as +a shower-bath on one side of our bodies; and some deep gullies, full of +DISCOLORED water, completed the cooling process. We passed many villages +during this drenching, one of which possessed a flock of sheep; and +after six hours we came to a stand near the River Quango (lat. 9d +53' S., long. 18d 37' E.), which may be called the boundary of the +Portuguese claims to territory on the west. As I had now no change of +clothing, I was glad to cower under the shelter of my blanket, thankful +to God for his goodness in bringing us so far without losing one of the +party. + +4TH APRIL. We were now on the banks of the Quango, a river one hundred +and fifty yards wide, and very deep. The water was discolored--a +circumstance which we had observed in no river in Londa or in the +Makololo country. This fine river flows among extensive meadows clothed +with gigantic grass and reeds, and in a direction nearly north. + +The Quango is said by the natives to contain many venomous water-snakes, +which congregate near the carcass of any hippopotamus that may be killed +in it. If this is true, it may account for all the villages we saw being +situated far from its banks. We were advised not to sleep near it; but, +as we were anxious to cross to the western side, we tried to induce some +of the Bashinje to lend us canoes for the purpose. This brought out the +chief of these parts, who informed us that all the canoe-men were his +children, and nothing could be done without his authority. He then made +the usual demand for a man, an ox, or a gun, adding that otherwise we +must return to the country from which we had come. As I did not believe +that this man had any power over the canoes of the other side, and +suspected that if I gave him my blanket--the only thing I now had in +reserve--he might leave us in the lurch after all, I tried to persuade +my men to go at once to the bank, about two miles off, and obtain +possession of the canoes before we gave up the blanket; but they thought +that this chief might attack us in the act of crossing, should we do so. +The chief came himself to our encampment and made his demand again. My +men stripped off the last of their copper rings and gave them; but he +was still intent on a man. He thought, as others did, that my men were +slaves. He was a young man, with his woolly hair elaborately dressed: +that behind was made up into a cone, about eight inches in diameter +at the base, carefully swathed round with red and black thread. As I +resisted the proposal to deliver up my blanket until they had placed us +on the western bank, this chief continued to worry us with his demands +till I was tired. My little tent was now in tatters, and having a wider +hole behind than the door in front, I tried in vain to lie down out of +sight of our persecutors. We were on a reedy flat, and could not follow +our usual plan of a small stockade, in which we had time to think over +and concoct our plans. As I was trying to persuade my men to move on +to the bank in spite of these people, a young half-caste Portuguese +sergeant of militia, Cypriano di Abreu, made his appearance, and gave +the same advice. He had come across the Quango in search of bees'-wax. +When we moved off from the chief who had been plaguing us, his people +opened a fire from our sheds, and continued to blaze away some time in +the direction we were going, but none of the bullets reached us. It +is probable that they expected a demonstration of the abundance of +ammunition they possessed would make us run; but when we continued +to move quietly to the ford, they proceeded no farther than our +sleeping-place. Cypriano assisted us in making a more satisfactory +arrangement with the ferrymen than parting with my blanket; and as soon +as we reached the opposite bank we were in the territory of the Bangala, +who are subjects of the Portuguese, and often spoken of as the Cassanges +or Cassantse; and happily all our difficulties with the border tribes +were at an end. + +Passing with light hearts through the high grass by a narrow footpath +for about three miles to the west of the river, we came to several neat +square houses, with many cleanly-looking half-caste Portuguese standing +in front of them to salute us. They are all enrolled in the militia, and +our friend Cypriano is the commander of a division established here. +The Bangala were very troublesome to the Portuguese traders, and at last +proceeded so far as to kill one of them; the government of Angola then +sent an expedition against them, which being successful, the Bangala +were dispersed, and are now returning to their former abodes as +vassals. The militia are quartered among them, and engage in trade and +agriculture for their support, as no pay is given to this branch of the +service by the government. + +We came to the dwelling of Cypriano after dark, and I pitched my little +tent in front of it for the night. We had the company of mosquitoes +here. We never found them troublesome on the banks of the pure streams +of Londa. On the morning of the 5th Cypriano generously supplied my +men with pumpkins and maize, and then invited me to breakfast, which +consisted of ground-nuts and roasted maize, then boiled manioc roots +and ground-nuts, with guavas and honey as a dessert. I felt sincerely +grateful for this magnificent breakfast. + +At dinner Cypriano was equally bountiful, and several of his friends +joined us in doing justice to his hospitality. Before eating, all had +water poured on the hands by a female slave to wash them. One of the +guests cut up a fowl with a knife and fork. Neither forks nor spoons +were used in eating. The repast was partaken of with decency and good +manners, and concluded by washing the hands as at first. + +All of them could read and write with ease. I examined the books they +possessed, and found a small work on medicine, a small cyclopaedia, and +a Portuguese dictionary, in which the definition of a "priest" seemed +strange to a Protestant, namely, "one who takes care of the conscience." +They had also a few tracts containing the Lives of the Saints, and +Cypriano had three small wax images of saints in his room. One of these +was St. Anthony, who, had he endured the privations he did in his cell +in looking after these lost sheep, would have lived to better purpose. +Neither Cypriano nor his companions knew what the Bible was, but they +had relics in German-silver cases hung round their necks, to act as +charms and save them from danger by land or by water, in the same way as +the heathen have medicines. It is a pity that the Church to which they +belong, when unable to attend to the wants of her children, does not +give them the sacred writings in their own tongue; it would surely be +better to see them good Protestants, if these would lead them to be so, +than entirely ignorant of God's message to man. For my part, I would +much prefer to see the Africans good Roman Catholics than idolatrous +heathen. + +Much of the civility shown to us here was, no doubt, owing to the +flattering letters of recommendation I carried from the Chevalier Du +Prat, of Cape Town; but I am inclined to believe that my friend Cypriano +was influenced, too, by feelings of genuine kindness, for he quite bared +his garden in feeding us during the few days which I remained, anxiously +expecting the clouds to disperse, so far as to allow of my taking +observations for the determination of the position of the Quango. He +slaughtered an ox for us, and furnished his mother and her maids with +manioc roots, to prepare farina for the four or five days of our journey +to Cassange, and never even hinted at payment. My wretched appearance +must have excited his compassion. The farina is prepared by washing +the roots well, then rasping them down to a pulp. Next, this is roasted +slightly on a metal plate over a fire, and is then used with meat as +a vegetable. It closely resembles wood-sawings, and on that account +is named "wood-meal". It is insipid, and employed to lick up any gravy +remaining on one's plate. Those who have become accustomed to it relish +it even after they have returned to Europe. + +The manioc cultivated here is of the sweet variety; the bitter, to which +we were accustomed in Londa, is not to be found very extensively in +this fertile valley. May is the beginning of winter, yet many of the +inhabitants were busy planting maize; that which we were now eating was +planted in the beginning of February. The soil is exceedingly fertile, +of a dark red color, and covered with such a dense, heavy crop of coarse +grass, that when a marauding party of Ambonda once came for plunder +while it was in a dried state, the Bangala encircled the common enemy +with a fire which completely destroyed them. This, which is related on +the authority of Portuguese who were then in the country, I can easily +believe to be true, for the stalks of the grass are generally as thick +as goose-quills, and no flight could be made through the mass of grass +in any direction where a footpath does not exist. Probably, in the case +mentioned, the direction of the wind was such as to drive the flames +across the paths, and prevent escape along them. On one occasion I +nearly lost my wagon by fire, in a valley where the grass was only about +three feet high. We were roused by the roar, as of a torrent, made by +the fire coming from the windward. I immediately set fire to that on our +leeward, and had just time to drag the wagon on to the bare space there +before the windward flames reached the place where it had stood. + +We were detained by rains and a desire to ascertain our geographical +position till Monday, the 10th, and only got the latitude 9d 50' S.; +and, after three days' pretty hard traveling through the long grass, +reached Cassange, the farthest inland station of the Portuguese in +Western Africa. We crossed several fine little streams running into +the Quango; and as the grass continued to tower about two feet over our +heads, it generally obstructed our view of the adjacent country, and +sometimes hung over the path, making one side of the body wet with the +dew every morning, or, when it rained, kept me wet during the whole day. +I made my entrance in a somewhat forlorn state as to clothing among our +Portuguese allies. The first gentleman I met in the village asked if +I had a passport, and said it was necessary to take me before the +authorities. As I was in the same state of mind in which individuals are +who commit a petty depredation in order to obtain the shelter and food +of a prison, I gladly accompanied him to the house of the commandant or +Chefe, Senhor de Silva Rego. Having shown my passport to this gentleman, +he politely asked me to supper, and, as we had eaten nothing except +the farina of Cypriano from the Quango to this, I suspect I appeared +particularly ravenous to the other gentlemen around the table. They +seemed, however, to understand my position pretty well, from having all +traveled extensively themselves; had they not been present, I might have +put some in my pocket to eat by night; for, after fever, the appetite +is excessively keen, and manioc is one of the most unsatisfying kinds of +food. Captain Antonio Rodrigues Neves then kindly invited me to take +up my abode in his house. Next morning this generous man arrayed me in +decent clothing, and continued during the whole period of my stay to +treat me as if I had been his brother. I feel deeply grateful to him for +his disinterested kindness. He not only attended to my wants, but also +furnished food for my famishing party free of charge. + +The village of Cassange (pronounced Kassanje) is composed of thirty or +forty traders' houses, scattered about without any regularity, on an +elevated flat spot in the great Quango or Cassange valley. They are +built of wattle and daub, and surrounded by plantations of manioc, +maize, etc. Behind them there are usually kitchen gardens, in which +the common European vegetables, as potatoes, peas, cabbages, onions, +tomatoes, etc., etc., grow. Guavas and bananas appear, from the size and +abundance of the trees, to have been introduced many years ago, while +the land was still in the possession of the natives; but pine-apples, +orange, fig, and cashew trees have but lately been tried. There are +about forty Portuguese traders in this district, all of whom are +officers in the militia, and many of them have become rich from adopting +the plan of sending out Pombeiros, or native traders, with large +quantities of goods, to trade in the more remote parts of the country. +Some of the governors of Loanda, the capital of this, the kingdom of +Angola, have insisted on the observance of a law which, from motives +of humanity, forbids the Portuguese themselves from passing beyond the +boundary. They seem to have taken it for granted that, in cases where +the white trader was killed, the aggression had been made by him, and +they wished to avoid the necessity of punishing those who had been +provoked to shed Portuguese blood. This indicates a much greater +impartiality than has obtained in our own dealings with the Caffres, for +we have engaged in most expensive wars with them without once inquiring +whether any of the fault lay with our frontier colonists. The Cassange +traders seem inclined to spread along the Quango, in spite of the desire +of their government to keep them on one spot, for mutual protection in +case of war. If I might judge from the week of feasting I passed among +them, they are generally prosperous. + +As I always preferred to appear in my own proper character, I was an +object of curiosity to these hospitable Portuguese. They evidently +looked upon me as an agent of the English government, engaged in some +new movement for the suppression of slavery. They could not divine what +a "missionario" had to do with the latitudes and longitudes, which I was +intent on observing. When we became a little familiar, the questions put +were rather amusing: "Is it common for missionaries to be doctors?" "Are +you a doctor of medicine and a 'doutor mathematico' too? You must be +more than a missionary to know how to calculate the longitude! Come, +tell us at once what rank you hold in the English army." They may have +given credit to my reason for wearing the mustache, as that explains why +men have beards and women have none; but that which puzzled many besides +my Cassange friends was the anomaly of my being a "sacerdote", with +a wife and four children! I usually got rid of the last question by +putting another: "Is it not better to have children with a wife, than +to have children without a wife?" But all were most kind and hospitable; +and as one of their festivals was near, they invited me to partake of +the feast. + +The anniversary of the Resurrection of our Savior was observed on the +16th of April as a day of rejoicing, though the Portuguese have no +priests at Cassange. The colored population dressed up a figure intended +to represent Judas Iscariot, and paraded him on a riding-ox about the +village; sneers and maledictions were freely bestowed on the poor wretch +thus represented. The slaves and free colored population, dressed in +their gayest clothing, made visits to all the principal merchants, and +wishing them "a good feast", expected a present in return. This, though +frequently granted in the shape of pieces of calico to make new dresses, +was occasionally refused, but the rebuff did not much affect the +petitioner. + +At ten A.M. we went to the residence of the commandant, and on a signal +being given, two of the four brass guns belonging to the government +commenced firing, and continued some time, to the great admiration of +my men, whose ideas of the power of a cannon are very exalted. The +Portuguese flag was hoisted and trumpets sounded, as an expression +of joy at the resurrection of our Lord. Captain Neves invited all the +principal inhabitants of the place, and did what he could to feast them +in a princely style. All manner of foreign preserved fruits and wine +from Portugal, biscuits from America, butter from Cork, and beer +from England, were displayed, and no expense spared in rendering the +entertainment joyous. After the feast was over they sat down to the +common amusement of card-playing, which continued till eleven o'clock at +night. As far as a mere traveler could judge, they seemed to be polite +and willing to aid each other. They live in a febrile district, and +many of them had enlarged spleens. They have neither doctor, apothecary, +school, nor priest, and, when taken ill, trust to each other and to +Providence. As men left in such circumstances must think for themselves, +they have all a good idea of what ought to be done in the common +diseases of the country, and what they have of either medicine or skill +they freely impart to each other. + +None of these gentlemen had Portuguese wives. They usually come to +Africa in order to make a little money, and return to Lisbon. Hence +they seldom bring their wives with them, and never can be successful +colonists in consequence. It is common for them to have families +by native women. It was particularly gratifying to me, who had been +familiar with the stupid prejudice against color, entertained only by +those who are themselves becoming tawny, to view the liberality with +which people of color were treated by the Portuguese. Instances, so +common in the South, in which half-caste children are abandoned, are +here extremely rare. They are acknowledged at table, and provided for by +their fathers as if European. The colored clerks of the merchants sit at +the same table with their employers without any embarrassment. The civil +manners of superiors to inferiors is probably the result of the position +they occupy--a few whites among thousands of blacks; but nowhere else in +Africa is there so much good-will between Europeans and natives as here. +If some border colonists had the absolute certainty of our government +declining to bear them out in their arrogance, we should probably hear +less of Caffre insolence. It is insolence which begets insolence. + +From the village of Cassange we have a good view of the surrounding +country: it is a gently undulating plain, covered with grass and patches +of forest. The western edge of the Quango valley appears, about twenty +miles off, as if it were a range of lofty mountains, and passes by the +name of Tala Mungongo, "Behold the Range". In the old Portuguese map, to +which I had been trusting in planning my route, it is indicated as Talla +Mugongo, or "Castle of Rocks!" and the Coanza is put down as rising +therefrom; but here I was assured that the Coanza had its source near +Bihe, far to the southwest of this, and we should not see that river +till we came near Pungo Andonga. It is somewhat remarkable that more +accurate information about this country has not been published. Captain +Neves and others had a correct idea of the courses of the rivers, and +communicated their knowledge freely; yet about this time maps were sent +to Europe from Angola representing the Quango and Coanza as the same +river, and Cassange placed about one hundred miles from its true +position. The frequent recurrence of the same name has probably helped +to increase the confusion. I have crossed several Quangos, but all +insignificant, except that which drains this valley. The repetition of +the favorite names of chiefs, as Catende, is also perplexing, as one +Catende may be mistaken for another. To avoid this confusion as much +as possible, I have refrained from introducing many names. Numerous +villages are studded all over the valley; but these possess no +permanence, and many more existed previous to the Portuguese expedition +of 1850 to punish the Bangala. + +This valley, as I have before remarked, is all fertile in the extreme. +My men could never cease admiring its capability for raising their corn +('Holcus sorghum'), and despising the comparatively limited cultivation +of the inhabitants. The Portuguese informed me that no manure is ever +needed, but that, the more the ground is tilled, the better it yields. +Virgin soil does not give such a heavy crop as an old garden, and, +judging from the size of the maize and manioc in the latter, I can +readily believe the statement. Cattle do well, too. Viewing the valley +as a whole, it may be said that its agricultural and pastoral riches +are lying waste. Both the Portuguese and their descendants turn their +attention almost exclusively to trade in wax and ivory, and though the +country would yield any amount of corn and dairy produce, the native +Portuguese live chiefly on manioc, and the Europeans purchase their +flour, bread, butter, and cheese from the Americans. + +As the traders of Cassange were the first white men we had come to, we +sold the tusks belonging to Sekeletu, which had been brought to test the +difference of prices in the Makololo and white men's country. The result +was highly satisfactory to my companions, as the Portuguese give much +larger prices for ivory than traders from the Cape can possibly give, +who labor under the disadvantage of considerable overland expenses and +ruinous restrictions. Two muskets, three small barrels of gunpowder, and +English calico and baize sufficient to clothe my whole party, with large +bunches of beads, all for one tusk, were quite delightful for those who +had been accustomed to give two tusks for one gun. With another tusk we +procured calico, which here is the chief currency, to pay our way down +to the coast. The remaining two were sold for money to purchase a horse +for Sekeletu at Loanda. + +The superiority of this new market was quite astounding to the Makololo, +and they began to abuse the traders by whom they had, while in their own +country, been visited, and, as they now declared, "cheated". They had +no idea of the value of time and carriage, and it was somewhat difficult +for me to convince them that the reason of the difference of prices lay +entirely in what they themselves had done in coming here, and that, if +the Portuguese should carry goods to their country, they would by no +means be so liberal in their prices. They imagined that, if the Cassange +traders came to Linyanti, they would continue to vend their goods at +Cassange prices. I believe I gave them at last a clear idea of the +manner in which prices were regulated by the expenses incurred; and when +we went to Loanda, and saw goods delivered at a still cheaper rate, they +concluded that it would be better for them to come to that city, than to +turn homeward at Cassange. + +It was interesting for me to observe the effects of the restrictive +policy pursued by the Cape government toward the Bechuanas. Like all +other restrictions on trade, the law of preventing friendly tribes from +purchasing arms and ammunition only injures the men who enforce it. The +Cape government, as already observed, in order to gratify a company of +independent Boers, whose well-known predilection for the practice of +slavery caused them to stipulate that a number of peaceable, honest +tribes should be kept defenseless, agreed to allow free trade in +arms and ammunition to the Boers, and prevent the same trade to the +Bechuanas. The Cape government thereby unintentionally aided, and +continues to aid, the Boers to enslave the natives. But arms and +ammunition flow in on all sides by new channels, and where formerly the +price of a large tusk procured but one musket, one tusk of the same size +now brings ten. The profits are reaped by other nations, and the only +persons really the losers, in the long run, are our own Cape merchants, +and a few defenseless tribes of Bechuanas on our immediate frontier. + +Mr. Rego, the commandant, very handsomely offered me a soldier as a +guard to Ambaca. My men told me that they had been thinking it would +be better to turn back here, as they had been informed by the people of +color at Cassange that I was leading them down to the sea-coast only to +sell them, and they would be taken on board ship, fattened, and eaten, +as the white men were cannibals. I asked if they had ever heard of an +Englishman buying or selling people; if I had not refused to take a +slave when she was offered to me by Shinte; but, as I had always behaved +as an English teacher, if they now doubted my intentions, they had +better not go to the coast; I, however, who expected to meet some of my +countrymen there, was determined to go on. They replied that they only +thought it right to tell me what had been told to them, but they did +not intend to leave me, and would follow wherever I should lead the way. +This affair being disposed of for the time, the commandant gave them +an ox, and me a friendly dinner before parting. All the merchants of +Cassange accompanied us, in their hammocks carried by slaves, to the +edge of the plateau on which their village stands, and we parted with +the feeling in my mind that I should never forget their disinterested +kindness. They not only did every thing they could to make my men and me +comfortable during our stay; but, there being no hotels in Loanda, they +furnished me with letters of recommendation to their friends in that +city, requesting them to receive me into their houses, for without these +a stranger might find himself a lodger in the streets. May God remember +them in their day of need! + +The latitude and longitude of Cassange, the most easterly station of the +Portuguese in Western Africa, is lat. 9d 37' 30" S., and long. 17d 49' +E.; consequently we had still about 300 miles to traverse before we +could reach the coast. We had a black militia corporal as a guide. He +was a native of Ambaca, and, like nearly all the inhabitants of that +district, known by the name of Ambakistas, could both read and write. +He had three slaves with him, and was carried by them in a "tipoia", or +hammock slung to a pole. His slaves were young, and unable to convey him +far at a time, but he was considerate enough to walk except when we came +near to a village. He then mounted his tipoia and entered the village +in state; his departure was made in the same manner, and he continued +in the hammock till the village was out of sight. It was interesting +to observe the manners of our soldier-guide. Two slaves were always +employed in carrying his tipoia, and the third carried a wooden box, +about three feet long, containing his writing materials, dishes, and +clothing. He was cleanly in all his ways, and, though quite black +himself, when he scolded any one of his own color, abused him as a +"negro". When he wanted to purchase any article from a village, he would +sit down, mix a little gunpowder as ink, and write a note in a neat +hand to ask the price, addressing it to the shopkeeper with the rather +pompous title, "Illustrissimo Senhor" (Most Illustrious Sir). This is +the invariable mode of address throughout Angola. The answer returned +would be in the same style, and, if satisfactory, another note followed +to conclude the bargain. There is so much of this note correspondence +carried on in Angola, that a very large quantity of paper is annually +consumed. Some other peculiarities of our guide were not so pleasing. +A land of slaves is a bad school for even the free; and I was sorry to +find less truthfulness and honesty in him than in my own people. We were +often cheated through his connivance with the sellers of food, and could +perceive that he got a share of the plunder from them. The food is very +cheap, but it was generally made dear enough, until I refused to allow +him to come near the place where we were bargaining. But he took us +safely down to Ambaca, and I was glad to see, on my return to Cassange, +that he was promoted to be sergeant-major of a company of militia. + +Having left Cassange on the 21st, we passed across the remaining portion +of this excessively fertile valley to the foot of Tala Mungongo. We +crossed a fine little stream called the Lui on the 22d, and another +named the Luare on the 24th, then slept at the bottom of the height, +which is from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet. The clouds came +floating along the valley, and broke against the sides of the ascent, +and the dripping rain on the tall grass made the slaps in the face it +gave, when the hand or a stick was not held up before it, any thing but +agreeable. This edge of the valley is exactly like the other; jutting +spurs and defiles give the red ascent the same serrated appearance as +that which we descended from the highlands of Londa. The whole of this +vast valley has been removed by denudation, for pieces of the plateau +which once filled the now vacant space stand in it, and present the same +structure of red horizontal strata of equal altitudes with those of +the acclivity which we are now about to ascend. One of these insulated +masses, named Kasala, bore E.S.E. from the place where we made our +exit from the valley, and about ten miles W.S.W. from the village of +Cassange. It is remarkable for its perpendicular sides; even the natives +find it extremely difficult, almost impossible, to reach its summit, +though there is the temptation of marabou-nests and feathers, which are +highly prized. There is a small lake reported to exist on its southern +end, and, during the rainy season, a sort of natural moat is formed +around the bottom. What an acquisition this would have been in feudal +times in England! There is land sufficient for considerable cultivation +on the top, with almost perpendicular sides more than a thousand feet in +height. + +We had not yet got a clear idea of the nature of Tala Mungongo. A +gentleman of Cassange described it as a range of very high mountains, +which it would take four hours to climb; so, though the rain and grass +had wetted us miserably, and I was suffering from an attack of fever +got while observing by night for the position of Cassange, I eagerly +commenced the ascent. The path was steep and slippery; deep gorges +appear on each side of it, leaving but a narrow path along certain spurs +of the sierra for the traveler; but we accomplished the ascent in an +hour, and when there, found we had just got on to a table-land similar +to that we had left before we entered the great Quango valley. We had +come among lofty trees again. One of these, bearing a fruit about the +size of a thirty-two pounder, is named Mononga-zambi. + +We took a glance back to this valley, which equals that of the +Mississippi in fertility, and thought of the vast mass of material which +had been scooped out and carried away in its formation. This naturally +led to reflection on the countless ages required for the previous +formation and deposition of that same material (clay shale), then of +the rocks, whose abrasion formed THAT, until the mind grew giddy in +attempting to ascend the steps which lead up through a portion of the +eternity before man. The different epochs of geology are like landmarks +in that otherwise shoreless sea. Our own epoch, or creation, is but +another added to the number of that wonderful series which presents a +grand display of the mighty power of God: every stage of progress in +the earth and its habitants is such a display. So far from this science +having any tendency to make men undervalue the power or love of God, +it leads to the probability that the exhibition of mercy we have in +the gift of his Son may possibly not be the only manifestation of +grace which has taken place in the countless ages during which works of +creation have been going on. + +Situated a few miles from the edge of the descent, we found the village +of Tala Mungongo, and were kindly accommodated with a house to sleep in, +which was very welcome, as we were all both wet and cold. We found that +the greater altitude and the approach of winter lowered the temperature +so much that many of my men suffered severely from colds. At this, as +at several other Portuguese stations, they have been provident enough to +erect travelers' houses on the same principle as khans or caravanserais +of the East. They are built of the usual wattle and daub, and have +benches of rods for the wayfarer to make his bed on; also chairs, and +a table, and a large jar of water. These benches, though far from +luxurious couches, were better than the ground under the rotten +fragments of my gipsy-tent, for we had still showers occasionally, and +the dews were very heavy. I continued to use them for the sake of the +shelter they afforded, until I found that they were lodgings also for +certain inconvenient bedfellows. + +27TH. Five hours' ride through a pleasant country of forest and meadow, +like those of Londa, brought us to a village of Basongo, a tribe living +in subjection to the Portuguese. We crossed several little streams, +which were flowing in the westerly direction in which we were marching, +and unite to form the Quize, a feeder of the Coanza. The Basongo were +very civil, as indeed all the tribes were who had been conquered by the +Portuguese. The Basongo and Bangala are yet only partially subdued. The +farther west we go from this, the less independent we find the black +population, until we reach the vicinity of Loanda, where the free +natives are nearly identical in their feelings toward the government +with the slaves. But the governors of Angola wisely accept the limited +allegiance and tribute rendered by the more distant tribes as better +than none. + +All the inhabitants of this region, as well as those of Londa, may be +called true negroes, if the limitations formerly made be borne in mind. +The dark color, thick lips, heads elongated backward and upward and +covered with wool, flat noses, with other negro peculiarities, are +general; but, while these characteristics place them in the true negro +family, the reader would imbibe a wrong idea if he supposed that all +these features combined are often met with in one individual. All have a +certain thickness and prominence of lip, but many are met with in every +village in whom thickness and projection are not more marked than +in Europeans. All are dark, but the color is shaded off in different +individuals from deep black to light yellow. As we go westward, we +observe the light color predominating over the dark, and then again, +when we come within the influence of damp from the sea air, we find the +shade deepen into the general blackness of the coast population. +The shape of the head, with its woolly crop, though general, is not +universal. The tribes on the eastern side of the continent, as the +Caffres, have heads finely developed and strongly European. Instances of +this kind are frequently seen, and after I became so familiar with the +dark color as to forget it in viewing the countenance, I was struck +by the strong resemblance some natives bore to certain of our own +notabilities. The Bushmen and Hottentots are exceptions to these +remarks, for both the shape of their heads and growth of wool are +peculiar; the latter, for instance, springs from the scalp in tufts with +bare spaces between, and when the crop is short, resembles a number of +black pepper-corns stuck on the skin, and very unlike the thick frizzly +masses which cover the heads of the Balonda and Maravi. With every +disposition to pay due deference to the opinions of those who have made +ethnology their special study, I have felt myself unable to believe that +the exaggerated features usually put forth as those of the typical negro +characterize the majority of any nation of south Central Africa. The +monuments of the ancient Egyptians seem to me to embody the ideal of the +inhabitants of Londa better than the figures of any work of ethnology I +have met with. + +Passing through a fine, fertile, and well-peopled country to Sanza, +we found the Quize River again touching our path, and here we had +the pleasure of seeing a field of wheat growing luxuriantly without +irrigation. The ears were upward of four inches long, an object of +great curiosity to my companions, because they had tasted my bread at +Linyanti, but had never before seen wheat growing. This small field was +cultivated by Mr. Miland, an agreeable Portuguese merchant. His garden +was interesting, as showing what the land at this elevation is capable +of yielding; for, besides wheat, we saw European vegetables in a +flourishing condition, and we afterward discovered that the coffee-plant +has propagated itself on certain spots of this same district. It may be +seen on the heights of Tala Mungongo, or nearly 300 miles from the west +coast, where it was first introduced by the Jesuit missionaries. + +We spent Sunday, the 30th of April, at Ngio, close to the ford of +the Quize as it crosses our path to fall into the Coanza. The country +becomes more open, but is still abundantly fertile, with a thick crop +of grass between two and three feet high. It is also well wooded +and watered. Villages of Basongo are dotted over the landscape, and +frequently a square house of wattle and daub, belonging to native +Portuguese, is placed beside them for the purposes of trade. The people +here possess both cattle and pigs. The different sleeping-places on our +path, from eight to ten miles apart, are marked by a cluster of sheds +made of sticks and grass. There is a constant stream of people going and +returning to and from the coast. The goods are carried on the head, or +on one shoulder, in a sort of basket attached to the extremities of two +poles between five and six feet long, and called Motete. When the basket +is placed on the head, the poles project forward horizontally, and when +the carrier wishes to rest himself, he plants them on the ground and +the burden against a tree, so he is not obliged to lift it up from the +ground to the level of the head. It stands against the tree propped up +by the poles at that level. The carrier frequently plants the poles on +the ground, and stands holding the burden until he has taken breath, +thus avoiding the trouble of placing the burden on the ground and +lifting it up again. + +When a company of these carriers, or our own party, arrives at one of +these sleeping-places, immediate possession is taken of the sheds. +Those who come late, and find all occupied, must then erect others for +themselves; but this is not difficult, for there is no lack of long +grass. No sooner do any strangers appear at the spot, than the women +may be seen emerging from their villages bearing baskets of manioc-meal, +roots, ground-nuts, yams, bird's-eye pepper, and garlic for sale. +Calico, of which we had brought some from Cassange, is the chief medium +of exchange. We found them all civil, and it was evident, from the +amount of talking and laughing in bargaining, that the ladies enjoyed +their occupation. They must cultivate largely, in order to be able to +supply the constant succession of strangers. Those, however, near to the +great line of road, purchase also much of the food from the more distant +villages for the sake of gain. + +Pitsane and another of the men had violent attacks of fever, and it +was no wonder, for the dampness and evaporation from the ground was +excessive. When at any time I attempted to get an observation of a star, +if the trough of mercury were placed on the ground, so much moisture +was condensed on the inside of the glass roof over it that it was with +difficulty the reflection of the star could be seen. When the trough was +placed on a box to prevent the moisture entering from below, so much dew +was deposited on the outside of the roof that it was soon necessary, for +the sake of distinct vision, to wipe the glass. This would not have been +of great consequence, but a short exposure to this dew was so sure to +bring on a fresh fever, that I was obliged to give up observations by +night altogether. The inside of the only covering I now had was not much +better, but under the blanket one is not so liable to the chill which +the dew produces. + +It would have afforded me pleasure to have cultivated a more intimate +acquaintance with the inhabitants of this part of the country, but the +vertigo produced by frequent fevers made it as much as I could do to +stick on the ox and crawl along in misery. In crossing the Lombe, my ox +Sinbad, in the indulgence of his propensity to strike out a new path for +himself, plunged overhead into a deep hole, and so soused me that I was +obliged to move on to dry my clothing, without calling on the Europeans +who live on the bank. This I regretted, for all the Portuguese were very +kind, and, like the Boers placed in similar circumstances, feel it a +slight to be passed without a word of salutation. But we went on to a +spot where orange-trees had been planted by the natives themselves, and +where abundance of that refreshing fruit was exposed for sale. + +On entering the district of Ambaca, we found the landscape enlivened +by the appearance of lofty mountains in the distance, the grass +comparatively short, and the whole country at this time looking gay and +verdant. On our left we saw certain rocks of the same nature with those +of Pungo Andongo, and which closely resemble the Stonehenge group on +Salisbury Plain, only the stone pillars here are of gigantic size. This +region is all wonderfully fertile, famed for raising cattle, and all +kinds of agricultural produce, at a cheap rate. The soil contains +sufficient ferruginous matter, to impart a red tinge to nearly the whole +of it. It is supplied with a great number of little flowing streams +which unite in the Lucalla. This river drains Ambaca, then falls into +the Coanza to the southwest at Massangano. We crossed the Lucalla by +means of a large canoe kept there by a man who farms the ferry from the +government, and charges about a penny per head. A few miles beyond the +Lucalla we came to the village of Ambaca, an important place in former +times, but now a mere paltry village, beautifully situated on a little +elevation in a plain surrounded on all hands by lofty mountains. It +has a jail, and a good house for the commandant, but neither fort nor +church, though the ruins of a place of worship are still standing. + +We were most kindly received by the commandant of Ambaca, Arsenio de +Carpo, who spoke a little English. He recommended wine for my debility, +and here I took the first glass of that beverage I had taken in Africa. +I felt much refreshed, and could then realize and meditate on the +weakening effects of the fever. They were curious even to myself; +for, though I had tried several times since we left Ngio to take lunar +observations, I could not avoid confusion of time and distance, neither +could I hold the instrument steady, nor perform a simple calculation; +hence many of the positions of this part of the route were left till +my return from Loanda. Often, on getting up in the mornings, I found my +clothing as wet from perspiration as if it had been dipped in water. +In vain had I tried to learn or collect words of the Bunda, or dialect +spoken in Angola. I forgot the days of the week and the names of my +companions, and, had I been asked, I probably could not have told +my own. The complaint itself occupied many of my thoughts. One day I +supposed that I had got the true theory of it, and would certainly cure +the next attack, whether in myself or companions; but some new symptoms +would appear, and scatter all the fine speculations which had sprung up, +with extraordinary fertility, in one department of my brain. + +This district is said to contain upward of 40,000 souls. Some ten or +twelve miles to the north of the village of Ambaca there once stood +the missionary station of Cahenda, and it is now quite astonishing to +observe the great numbers who can read and write in this district. This +is the fruit of the labors of the Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries, for +they taught the people of Ambaca; and ever since the expulsion of the +teachers by the Marquis of Pombal, the natives have continued to +teach each other. These devoted men are still held in high estimation +throughout the country to this day. All speak well of them (os padres +Jesuitas); and, now that they are gone from this lower sphere, I could +not help wishing that these our Roman Catholic fellow-Christians had +felt it to be their duty to give the people the Bible, to be a light to +their feet when the good men themselves were gone. + +When sleeping in the house of the commandant, an insect, well known in +the southern country by the name Tampan, bit my foot. It is a kind of +tick, and chooses by preference the parts between the fingers or toes +for inflicting its bite. It is seen from the size of a pin's head to +that of a pea, and is common in all the native huts in this country. It +sucks the blood until quite full, and is then of a dark blue color, and +its skin so tough and yielding that it is impossible to burst it by any +amount of squeezing with the fingers. I had felt the effects of its bite +in former years, and eschewed all native huts ever after; but as I was +here again assailed in a European house, I shall detail the effects of +the bite. These are a tingling sensation of mingled pain and itching, +which commences ascending the limb until the poison imbibed reaches the +abdomen, where it soon causes violent vomiting and purging. Where these +effects do not follow, as we found afterward at Tete, fever sets in; and +I was assured by intelligent Portuguese there that death has sometimes +been the result of this fever. The anxiety my friends at Tete manifested +to keep my men out of the reach of the tampans of the village made it +evident that they had seen cause to dread this insignificant insect. +The only inconvenience I afterward suffered from this bite was the +continuance of the tingling sensation in the point bitten for about a +week. + +MAY 12TH. As we were about to start this morning, the commandant, Senhor +Arsenio, provided bread and meat most bountifully for my use on the way +to the next station, and sent two militia soldiers as guides, instead +of our Cassange corporal, who left us here. About midday we asked for +shelter from the sun in the house of Senhor Mellot, at Zangu, and, +though I was unable to sit and engage in conversation, I found, on +rising from his couch, that he had at once proceeded to cook a fowl for +my use; and at parting he gave me a glass of wine, which prevented +the violent fit of shivering I expected that afternoon. The universal +hospitality of the Portuguese was most gratifying, as it was quite +unexpected; and even now, as I copy my journal, I remember it all with a +glow of gratitude. + +We spent Sunday, the 14th of May, at Cabinda, which is one of the +stations of the sub-commandants, who are placed at different points in +each district of Angola as assistants of the head-commandant, or chefe. +It is situated in a beautiful glen, and surrounded by plantations of +bananas and manioc. The country was gradually becoming more picturesque +the farther we proceeded west. The ranges of lofty blue mountains of +Libollo, which, in coming toward Ambaca, we had seen thirty or forty +miles to our south, were now shut from our view by others nearer at +hand, and the gray ranges of Cahenda and Kiwe, which, while we were in +Ambaca, stood clearly defined eight or ten miles off to the north, were +now close upon our right. As we looked back toward the open pastoral +country of Ambaca, the broad green gently undulating plains seemed in +a hollow surrounded on all sides by rugged mountains, and as we +went westward we were entering upon quite a wild-looking mountainous +district, called Golungo Alto. + +We met numbers of Mambari on their way back to Bihe. Some of them had +belonged to the parties which had penetrated as far as Linyanti, and +foolishly showed their displeasure at the prospect of the Makololo +preferring to go to the coast markets themselves to intrusting them +with their ivory. The Mambari repeated the tale of the mode in which +the white men are said to trade. "The ivory is left on the shore in the +evening, and next morning the seller finds a quantity of goods placed +there in its stead by the white men who live in the sea." "Now," added +they to my men, "how can you Makololo trade with these 'Mermen'? Can you +enter into the sea, and tell them to come ashore?" It was remarkable to +hear this idea repeated so near the sea as we now were. My men replied +that they only wanted to see for themselves; and, as they were now +getting some light on the nature of the trade carried on by the Mambari, +they were highly amused on perceiving the reasons why the Mambari would +rather have met them on the Zambesi than so near the sea-coast. + +There is something so exhilarating to one of Highland blood in being +near or on high mountains, that I forgot my fever as we wended our +way among the lofty tree-covered masses of mica schist which form the +highlands around the romantic residence of the chefe of Golungo Alto. +(Lat. 9d 8' 30" S., long. 15d 2' E.) The whole district is extremely +beautiful. The hills are all bedecked with trees of various hues of +foliage, and among them towers the graceful palm, which yields the +oil of commerce for making our soaps, and the intoxicating toddy. Some +clusters of hills look like the waves of the sea driven into a narrow +open bay, and have assumed the same form as if, when all were chopping +up perpendicularly, they had suddenly been congealed. The cottages of +the natives, perched on the tops of many of the hillocks, looked as if +the owners possessed an eye for the romantic, but they were probably +influenced more by the desire to overlook their gardens, and keep their +families out of the reach of the malaria, which is supposed to prevail +most on the banks of the numerous little streams which run among the +hills. + +We were most kindly received by the commandant, Lieutenant Antonio Canto +e Castro, a young gentleman whose whole subsequent conduct will ever +make me regard him with great affection. Like every other person of +intelligence whom I had met, he lamented deeply the neglect with which +this fine country has been treated. This district contained by the last +census 26,000 hearths or fires; and if to each hearth we reckon four +souls, we have a population of 104,000. The number of carregadores +(carriers) who may be ordered out at the pleasure of government to +convey merchandise to the coast is in this district alone about 6000, +yet there is no good road in existence. This system of compulsory +carriage of merchandise was adopted in consequence of the increase in +numbers and activity of our cruisers, which took place in 1845. Each +trader who went, previous to that year, into the interior, in the +pursuit of his calling, proceeded on the plan of purchasing ivory and +beeswax, and a sufficient number of slaves to carry these commodities. +The whole were intended for exportation as soon as the trader reached +the coast. But when the more stringent measures of 1845 came into +operation, and rendered the exportation of slaves almost impossible, +there being no roads proper for the employment of wheel conveyances, +this new system of compulsory carriage of ivory and beeswax to the coast +was resorted to by the government of Loanda. A trader who requires two +or three hundred carriers to convey his merchandise to the coast now +applies to the general government for aid. An order is sent to the +commandant of a district to furnish the number required. Each head man +of the villages to whom the order is transmitted must furnish from five +to twenty or thirty men, according to the proportion that his people +bear to the entire population of the district. For this accommodation +the trader must pay a tax to the government of 1000 reis, or about three +shillings per load carried. The trader is obliged to pay the carrier +also the sum of 50 reis, or about twopence a day, for his sustenance. +And as a day's journey is never more than from eight to ten miles, the +expense which must be incurred for this compulsory labor is felt to be +heavy by those who were accustomed to employ slave labor alone. Yet no +effort has been made to form a great line of road for wheel carriages. +The first great want of a country has not been attended to, and no +development of its vast resources has taken place. The fact, however, +of a change from one system of carriage to another, taken in connection +with the great depreciation in the price of slaves near this coast, +proves the effectiveness of our efforts at repressing the slave-trade on +the ocean. + +The latitude of Golungo Alto, as observed at the residence of the +commandant, was 9d 8' 30" S., longitude 15d 2' E. A few days' rest with +this excellent young man enabled me to regain much of my strength, and +I could look with pleasure on the luxuriant scenery before his door. We +were quite shut in among green hills, many of which were cultivated +up to their tops with manioc, coffee, cotton, ground-nuts, bananas, +pine-apples, guavas, papaws, custard-apples, pitangas, and jambos, +fruits brought from South America by the former missionaries. The high +hills all around, with towering palms on many points, made this spot +appear more like the Bay of Rio de Janeiro in miniature than any scene +I ever saw; and all who have seen that confess it to be unequaled in the +world beside. The fertility evident in every spot of this district was +quite marvelous to behold, but I shall reserve further notices of this +region till our return from Loanda. + +We left Golungo Alto on the 24th of May, the winter in these parts. +Every evening clouds come rolling in great masses over the mountains in +the west, and pealing thunder accompanies the fall of rain during the +night or early in the morning. The clouds generally remain on the hills +till the morning is well spent, so that we become familiar with morning +mists, a thing we never once saw at Kolobeng. The thermometer stands at +80 Degrees by day, but sinks as low as 76 Degrees by night. + +In going westward we crossed several fine little gushing streams which +never dry. They unite in the Luinha (pronounced Lueenya) and Lucalla. As +they flow over many little cascades, they might easily be turned to good +account, but they are all allowed to run on idly to the ocean. We passed +through forests of gigantic timber, and at an open space named Cambondo, +about eight miles from Golungo Alto, found numbers of carpenters +converting these lofty trees into planks, in exactly the same manner as +was followed by the illustrious Robinson Crusoe. A tree of three or four +feet in diameter, and forty or fifty feet up to the nearest branches, +was felled. It was then cut into lengths of a few feet, and split +into thick junks, which again were reduced to planks an inch thick by +persevering labor with the axe. The object of the carpenters was to make +little chests, and they drive a constant trade in them at Cambondo. When +finished with hinges, lock, and key, all of their own manufacture, one +costs only a shilling and eightpence. My men were so delighted with +them that they carried several of them on their heads all the way to +Linyanti. + +At Trombeta we were pleased to observe a great deal of taste displayed +by the sub-commandant in the laying out of his ground and adornment of +his house with flowers. This trifling incident was the more pleasing, +as it was the first attempt at neatness I had seen since leaving the +establishment of Mozinkwa in Londa. Rows of trees had been planted +along each side of the road, with pine-apples and flowers between. This +arrangement I had an opportunity of seeing in several other districts of +this country, for there is no difficulty in raising any plant or tree if +it is only kept from being choked by weeds. + +This gentleman had now a fine estate, which but a few years ago was +a forest, and cost him only 16 Pounds. He had planted about 900 +coffee-trees upon it, and as these begin to yield in three years from +being planted, and in six attain their maximum, I have no doubt but that +ere now his 16 Pounds yields him sixty fold. All sorts of fruit-trees +and grape-vines yield their fruit twice in each year, without any labor +or irrigation being bestowed on them. All grains and vegetables, if only +sown, do the same; and if advantage is taken of the mists of winter, +even three crops of pulse may be raised. Cotton was now standing in the +pods in his fields, and he did not seem to care about it. I understood +him to say that this last plant flourishes, but the wet of one of the +two rainy seasons with which this country is favored sometimes proves +troublesome to the grower. I am not aware whether wheat has ever been +tried, but I saw both figs and grapes bearing well. The great complaint +of all cultivators is the want of a good road to carry their produce to +market. Here all kinds of food are remarkably cheap. + +Farther on we left the mountainous country, and, as we descended toward +the west coast, saw the lands assuming a more sterile, uninviting +aspect. On our right ran the River Senza, which nearer the sea takes the +name of Bengo. It is about fifty yards broad, and navigable for canoes. +The low plains adjacent to its banks are protected from inundation by +embankments, and the population is entirely occupied in raising food +and fruits for exportation to Loanda by means of canoes. The banks are +infested by myriads of the most ferocious mosquitoes I ever met. Not one +of our party could get a snatch of sleep. I was taken into the house +of a Portuguese, but was soon glad to make my escape and lie across the +path on the lee side of the fire, where the smoke blew over my body. My +host wondered at my want of taste, and I at his want of feeling; for, to +our astonishment, he and the other inhabitants had actually become used +to what was at least equal to a nail through the heel of one's boot, or +the tooth-ache. + +As we were now drawing near to the sea, my companions were looking at +every thing in a serious light. One of them asked me if we should all +have an opportunity of watching each other at Loanda. "Suppose one went +for water, would the others see if he were kidnapped?" I replied, "I see +what you are driving at; and if you suspect me, you may return, for I +am as ignorant of Loanda as you are; but nothing will happen to you but +what happens to myself. We have stood by each other hitherto, and will +do so to the last." The plains adjacent to Loanda are somewhat elevated +and comparatively sterile. On coming across these we first beheld +the sea: my companions looked upon the boundless ocean with awe. On +describing their feelings afterward, they remarked that "we marched +along with our father, believing that what the ancients had always told +us was true, that the world has no end; but all at once the world +said to us, 'I am finished; there is no more of me!'" They had always +imagined that the world was one extended plain without limit. + +They were now somewhat apprehensive of suffering want, and I was unable +to allay their fears with any promise of supply, for my own mind was +depressed by disease and care. The fever had induced a state of chronic +dysentery, so troublesome that I could not remain on the ox more than +ten minutes at a time; and as we came down the declivity above the city +of Loanda on the 31st of May, I was laboring under great depression of +spirits, as I understood that, in a population of twelve thousand souls, +there was but one genuine English gentleman. I naturally felt anxious +to know whether he were possessed of good-nature, or was one of those +crusty mortals one would rather not meet at all. + +This gentleman, Mr. Gabriel, our commissioner for the suppression of the +slave-trade, had kindly forwarded an invitation to meet me on the way +from Cassange, but, unfortunately, it crossed me on the road. When we +entered his porch, I was delighted to see a number of flowers cultivated +carefully, and inferred from this circumstance that he was, what I soon +discovered him to be, a real whole-hearted Englishman. + +Seeing me ill, he benevolently offered me his bed. Never shall I forget +the luxurious pleasure I enjoyed in feeling myself again on a good +English couch, after six months' sleeping on the ground. I was soon +asleep; and Mr. Gabriel, coming in almost immediately, rejoiced at the +soundness of my repose. + + + + +Chapter 20. + +Continued Sickness--Kindness of the Bishop of Angola and her Majesty's +Officers--Mr. Gabriel's unwearied Hospitality--Serious Deportment of +the Makololo--They visit Ships of War--Politeness of the Officers and +Men--The Makololo attend Mass in the Cathedral--Their Remarks--Find +Employment in collecting Firewood and unloading Coal--Their superior +Judgment respecting Goods--Beneficial Influence of the Bishop of +Angola--The City of St. Paul de Loanda--The Harbor--Custom-house--No +English Merchants--Sincerity of the Portuguese Government in suppressing +the Slave-trade--Convict Soldiers--Presents from Bishop and Merchants +for Sekeletu--Outfit--Leave Loanda 20th September, 1854--Accompanied +by Mr. Gabriel as far as Icollo i Bengo--Sugar Manufactory--Geology +of this part of the Country--Women spinning Cotton--Its Price--Native +Weavers--Market-places--Cazengo; its Coffee Plantations--South American +Trees--Ruins of Iron Foundry--Native Miners--The Banks of the Lucalla-- +Cottages with Stages--Tobacco-plants--Town of Massangano--Sugar and +Rice--Superior District for Cotton--Portuguese Merchants and foreign +Enterprise--Ruins--The Fort and its ancient Guns--Former Importance +of Massangano--Fires--The Tribe Kisama--Peculiar Variety of Domestic +Fowl--Coffee Plantations--Return to Golungo Alto--Self-complacency of +the Makololo--Fever--Jaundice--Insanity. + + + +In the hope that a short enjoyment of Mr. Gabriel's generous hospitality +would restore me to my wonted vigor, I continued under his roof; but my +complaint having been caused by long exposure to malarious influences, +I became much more reduced than ever, even while enjoying rest. Several +Portuguese gentlemen called on me shortly after my arrival; and the +Bishop of Angola, the Right Reverend Joaquim Moreira Reis, then the +acting governor of the province, sent his secretary to do the same, and +likewise to offer the services of the government physician. + +Some of her majesty's cruisers soon came into the port, and, seeing the +emaciated condition to which I was reduced, offered to convey me to St. +Helena or homeward; but, though I had reached the coast, I had found +that, in consequence of the great amount of forest, rivers, and marsh, +there was no possibility of a highway for wagons, and I had brought +a party of Sekeletu's people with me, and found the tribes near the +Portuguese settlement so very unfriendly, that it would be altogether +impossible for my men to return alone. I therefore resolved to decline +the tempting offers of my naval friends, and take back my Makololo +companions to their chief, with a view of trying to make a path from +his country to the east coast by means of the great river Zambesi or +Leeambye. + +I, however, gladly availed myself of the medical assistance of Mr. +Cockin, the surgeon of the "Polyphemus", at the suggestion of his +commander, Captain Phillips. Mr. Cockin's treatment, aided by the +exhilarating presence of the warm-hearted naval officers, and Mr. +Gabriel's unwearied hospitality and care, soon brought me round again. +On the 14th I was so far well as to call on the bishop, in company with +my party, who were arrayed in new robes of striped cotton cloth and red +caps, all presented to them by Mr. Gabriel. He received us, as head of +the provisional government, in the grand hall of the palace. He put many +intelligent questions respecting the Makololo, and then gave them free +permission to come to Loanda as often as they pleased. This interview +pleased the Makololo extremely. + +Every one remarked the serious deportment of the Makololo. They viewed +the large stone houses and churches in the vicinity of the great +ocean with awe. A house with two stories was, until now, beyond their +comprehension. In explanation of this strange thing, I had always been +obliged to use the word for hut; and as huts are constructed by the +poles being let into the earth, they never could comprehend how the +poles of one hut could be founded upon the roof of another, or how men +could live in the upper story, with the conical roof of the lower one in +the middle. Some Makololo, who had visited my little house at Kolobeng, +in trying to describe it to their countrymen at Linyanti, said, "It is +not a hut; it is a mountain with several caves in it." + +Commander Bedingfeld and Captain Skene invited them to visit their +vessels, the "Pluto" and "Philomel". Knowing their fears, I told them +that no one need go if he entertained the least suspicion of foul play. +Nearly the whole party went; and when on deck, I pointed to the sailors, +and said, "Now these are all my countrymen, sent by our queen for the +purpose of putting down the trade of those that buy and sell black +men." They replied, "Truly! they are just like you!" and all their fears +seemed to vanish at once, for they went forward among the men, and +the jolly tars, acting much as the Makololo would have done in similar +circumstances, handed them a share of the bread and beef which they had +for dinner. The commander allowed them to fire off a cannon; and, having +the most exalted ideas of its power, they were greatly pleased when I +told them, "That is what they put down the slave-trade with." The size +of the brig-of-war amazed them. "It is not a canoe at all; it is a +town!" The sailors' deck they named "the Kotla"; and then, as a climax +to their description of this great ark, added, "And what sort of a town +is it that you must climb up into with a rope?" + +The effect of the politeness of the officers and men on their minds was +most beneficial. They had behaved with the greatest kindness to me all +the way from Linyanti, and I now rose rapidly in their estimation; +for, whatever they may have surmised before, they now saw that I was +respected among my own countrymen, and always afterward treated me with +the greatest deference. + +On the 15th there was a procession and service of the mass in the +Cathedral; and, wishing to show my men a place of worship, I took them +to the church, which now serves as the chief one of the see of Angola +and Congo. There is an impression on some minds that a gorgeous ritual +is better calculated to inspire devotional feelings than the simple +forms of the Protestant worship. But here the frequent genuflexions, +changing of positions, burning of incense, with the priests' back turned +to the people, the laughing, talking, and manifest irreverence of the +singers, with firing of guns, etc., did not convey to the minds of my +men the idea of adoration. I overheard them, in talking to each other, +remark that "they had seen the white men charming their demons;" a +phrase identical with one they had used when seeing the Balonda beating +drums before their idols. + +In the beginning of August I suffered a severe relapse, which reduced +me to a mere skeleton. I was then unable to attend to my men for a +considerable time; but when in convalescence from this last attack, I +was thankful to find that I was free from that lassitude which, in my +first recovery, showed the continuance of the malaria in the system. I +found that my men, without prompting, had established a brisk trade in +fire-wood. They sallied forth at cock-crowing in the mornings, and +by daylight reached the uncultivated parts of the adjacent country, +collected a bundle of fire-wood, and returned to the city. It was then +divided into smaller fagots, and sold to the inhabitants; and as they +gave larger quantities than the regular wood-carriers, they found no +difficulty in selling. A ship freighted with coal for the cruisers +having arrived from England, Mr. Gabriel procured them employment in +unloading her at sixpence a day. They continued at this work for upward +of a month, and nothing could exceed their astonishment at the vast +amount of cargo one ship contained. As they themselves always afterward +expressed it, they had labored every day from sunrise to sunset for +a moon and a half, unloading, as quickly as they could, "stones that +burn", and were tired out, still leaving plenty in her. With the money +so obtained they purchased clothing, beads, and other articles to take +back to their own country. Their ideas of the value of different kinds +of goods rather astonished those who had dealt only with natives on the +coast. Hearing it stated with confidence that the Africans preferred the +thinnest fabrics, provided they had gaudy colors and a large extent of +surface, the idea was so new to my experience in the interior that +I dissented, and, in order to show the superior good sense of the +Makololo, took them to the shop of Mr. Schut. When he showed them the +amount of general goods which they might procure at Loanda for a single +tusk, I requested them, without assigning any reason, to point out the +fabrics they prized most. They all at once selected the strongest pieces +of English calico and other cloths, showing that they had regard to +strength without reference to color. I believe that most of the Bechuana +nation would have done the same. But I was assured that the people +near the coast, with whom the Portuguese have to deal, have not so much +regard to durability. This probably arises from calico being the chief +circulating medium; quantity being then of more importance than quality. + +During the period of my indisposition, the bishop sent frequently to +make inquiries, and, as soon as I was able to walk, I went to thank him +for his civilities. His whole conversation and conduct showed him to be +a man of great benevolence and kindness of heart. Alluding to my being a +Protestant, he stated that he was a Catholic from conviction; and though +sorry to see others, like myself, following another path, he entertained +no uncharitable feelings, nor would he ever sanction persecuting +measures. He compared the various sects of Christians, in their way to +heaven, to a number of individuals choosing to pass down the different +streets of Loanda to one of the churches--all would arrive at the same +point at last. His good influence, both in the city and the country, is +universally acknowledged: he was promoting the establishment of schools, +which, though formed more on the monastic principle than Protestants +might approve, will no doubt be a blessing. He was likewise successfully +attempting to abolish the non-marriage custom of the country; and +several marriages had taken place in Loanda among those who, but for his +teaching, would have been content with concubinage. + +St. Paul de Loanda has been a very considerable city, but is now in a +state of decay. It contains about twelve thousand inhabitants, most of +whom are people of color.* There are various evidences of its former +magnificence, especially two cathedrals, one of which, once a Jesuit +college, is now converted into a workshop; and in passing the other, we +saw with sorrow a number of oxen feeding within its stately walls. Three +forts continue in a good state of repair. Many large stone houses are +to be found. The palace of the governor and government offices +are commodious structures, but nearly all the houses of the native +inhabitants are of wattle and daub. Trees are planted all over the town +for the sake of shade, and the city presents an imposing appearance from +the sea. It is provided with an effective police, and the custom-house +department is extremely well managed. All parties agree in representing +the Portuguese authorities as both polite and obliging; and if ever +any inconvenience is felt by strangers visiting the port, it must be +considered the fault of the system, and not of the men. + + * From the census of 1850-51 we find the population of this + city arranged thus: 830 whites, only 160 of whom are females. + This is the largest collection of whites in the country, for + Angola itself contains only about 1000 whites. There are 2400 + half-castes in Loanda, and only 120 of them slaves; and there + are 9000 blacks, more than 5000 of whom are slaves. + +The harbor is formed by the low, sandy island of Loanda, which is +inhabited by about 1300 souls, upward of 600 of whom are industrious +native fishermen, who supply the city with abundance of good fish daily. +The space between it and the main land, on which the city is built, is +the station for ships. When a high southwest wind blows, the waves of +the ocean dash over part of the island, and, driving large quantities of +sand before them, gradually fill up the harbor. Great quantities of soil +are also washed in the rainy season from the heights above the city, +so that the port, which once contained water sufficient to float the +largest ships close to the custom-house, is now at low water dry. The +ships are compelled to anchor about a mile north of their old station. +Nearly all the water consumed in Loanda is brought from the River Bengo +by means of launches, the only supply that the city affords being from +some deep wells of slightly brackish water. Unsuccessful attempts have +been made by different governors to finish a canal, which the Dutch, +while in possession of Loanda during the seven years preceding 1648, had +begun, to bring water from the River Coanza to the city. There is not +a single English merchant at Loanda, and only two American. This is the +more remarkable, as nearly all the commerce is carried on by means +of English calico brought hither via Lisbon. Several English houses +attempted to establish a trade about 1845, and accepted bills on Rio de +Janeiro in payment for their goods, but the increased activity of our +cruisers had such an effect upon the mercantile houses of that city that +most of them failed. The English merchants lost all, and Loanda got a +bad name in the commercial world in consequence. + +One of the arrangements of the custom-house may have had some influence +in preventing English trade. Ships coming here must be consigned to some +one on the spot; the consignee receives one hundred dollars per mast, +and he generally makes a great deal more for himself by putting a +percentage on boats and men hired for loading and unloading, and on +every item that passes through his hands. The port charges are also +rendered heavy by twenty dollars being charged as a perquisite of the +secretary of government, with a fee for the chief physician, something +for the hospital, custom-house officers, guards, etc., etc. But, with +all these drawbacks, the Americans carry on a brisk and profitable trade +in calico, biscuit, flour, butter, etc., etc. + +The Portuguese home government has not generally received the credit for +sincerity in suppressing the slave-trade which I conceive to be its due. +In 1839, my friend Mr. Gabriel saw 37 slave-ships lying in this harbor, +waiting for their cargoes, under the protection of the guns of the +forts. At that time slavers had to wait many months at a time for a +human freight, and a certain sum per head was paid to the government +for all that were exported. The duties derived from the exportation of +slaves far exceeded those from other commerce, and, by agreeing to +the suppression of this profitable traffic, the government actually +sacrificed the chief part of the export revenue. Since that period, +however, the revenue from lawful commerce has very much exceeded that on +slaves. The intentions of the home Portuguese government, however good, +can not be fully carried out under the present system. The pay of the +officers is so very small that they are nearly all obliged to engage +in trade; and, owing to the lucrative nature of the slave-trade, the +temptation to engage in it is so powerful, that the philanthropic +statesmen of Lisbon need hardly expect to have their humane and +enlightened views carried out. The law, for instance, lately promulgated +for the abolition of the carrier system (carregadores) is but one of +several equally humane enactments against this mode of compulsory labor, +but there is very little probability of the benevolent intentions of the +Legislature being carried into effect. + +Loanda is regarded somewhat as a penal settlement, and those who leave +their native land for this country do so with the hope of getting rich +in a few years, and then returning home. They have thus no motive +for seeking the permanent welfare of the country. The Portuguese law +preventing the subjects of any other nation from holding landed property +unless they become naturalized, the country has neither the advantage of +native nor foreign enterprise, and remains very much in the same state +as our allies found it in 1575. Nearly all the European soldiers sent +out are convicts, and, contrary to what might be expected from men in +their position, behave remarkably well. A few riots have occurred, +but nothing at all so serious as have taken place in our own penal +settlements. It is a remarkable fact that the whole of the arms of +Loanda are every night in the hands of those who have been convicts. +Various reasons for this mild behavior are assigned by the officers, +but none of these, when viewed in connection with our own experience in +Australia, appear to be valid. Religion seems to have no connection +with the change. Perhaps the climate may have some influence in subduing +their turbulent disposition, for the inhabitants generally are a timid +race; they are not half so brave as our Caffres. The people of Ambriz +ran away like a flock of sheep, and allowed the Portuguese to take +possession of their copper mines and country without striking a blow. If +we must have convict settlements, attention to the climate might be of +advantage in the selection. Here even bulls are much tamer than with us. +I never met with a ferocious one in this country, and the Portuguese use +them generally for riding; an ox is seldom seen. + +The objects which I had in view in opening up the country, as stated +in a few notes of my journey, published in the newspapers of Angola, so +commended themselves to the general government and merchants of Loanda, +that, at the instance of his excellency the bishop, a handsome present +for Sekeletu was granted by the Board of Public Works (Junta da Fazenda +Publica). It consisted of a colonel's complete uniform and a horse for +the chief, and suits of clothing for all the men who accompanied me. +The merchants also made a present, by public subscription, of handsome +specimens of all their articles of trade, and two donkeys, for the +purpose of introducing the breed into his country, as tsetse can not +kill this beast of burden. These presents were accompanied by letters +from the bishop and merchants; and I was kindly favored with letters of +recommendation to the Portuguese authorities in Eastern Africa. + +I took with me a good stock of cotton cloth, fresh supplies of +ammunition and beads, and gave each of my men a musket. As my companions +had amassed considerable quantities of goods, they were unable to carry +mine, but the bishop furnished me with twenty carriers, and sent forward +orders to all the commandants of the districts through which we were to +pass to render me every assistance in their power. Being now supplied +with a good new tent made by my friends on board the Philomel, we left +Loanda on the 20th of September, 1854, and passed round by sea to the +mouth of the River Bengo. Ascending this river, we went through the +district in which stand the ruins of the convent of St. Antonio; thence +into Icollo i Bengo, which contains a population of 6530 blacks, 172 +mulattoes, and 11 whites, and is so named from having been the residence +of a former native king. The proportion of slaves is only 3.38 per cent. +of the inhabitants. The commandant of this place, Laurence Jose Marquis, +is a frank old soldier and a most hospitable man; he is one of the few +who secure the universal approbation of their fellow-men for stern, +unflinching honesty, and has risen from the ranks to be a major in the +army. We were accompanied thus far by our generous host, Edmund Gabriel, +Esq., who, by his unwearied attentions to myself, and liberality in +supporting my men, had become endeared to all our hearts. My men were +strongly impressed with a sense of his goodness, and often spoke of him +in terms of admiration all the way to Linyanti. + +While here we visited a large sugar manufactory belonging to a lady, +Donna Anna da Sousa. The flat alluvial lands on the banks of the Senza +or Bengo are well adapted for raising sugar-cane, and this lady had a +surprising number of slaves, but somehow the establishment was far from +being in a flourishing condition. It presented such a contrast to the +free-labor establishments of the Mauritius, which I have since seen, +where, with not one tenth of the number of hands, or such good soil, +a man of color had, in one year, cleared 5000 Pounds by a single crop, +that I quote the fact, in hopes it may meet the eye of Donna Anna. + +The water of the river is muddy, and it is observed that such rivers +have many more mosquitoes than those which have clear water. It was +remarked to us here that these insects are much more numerous at +the period of new moon than at other times; at any rate, we were all +thankful to get away from the Senza and its insect plagues. + +The whole of this part of the country is composed of marly tufa, +containing the same kind of shells as those at present alive in the +seas. As we advanced eastward and ascended the higher lands, we found +eruptive trap, which had tilted up immense masses of mica and sandstone +schists. The mica schist almost always dipped toward the interior of the +country, forming those mountain ranges of which we have already spoken +as giving a highland character to the district of Golungo Alto. The trap +has frequently run through the gorges made in the upheaved rocks, and +at the points of junction between the igneous and older rocks there are +large quantities of strongly magnetic iron ore. The clayey soil formed +by the disintegration of the mica schist and trap is the favorite soil +for the coffee; and it is on these mountain sides, and others possessing +a similar red clay soil, that this plant has propagated itself so +widely. The meadow-lands adjacent to the Senza and Coanza being +underlaid by that marly tufa which abounds toward the coast, and +containing the same shells, show that, previous to the elevation of that +side of the country, this region possessed some deeply-indented bays. + +28TH SEPTEMBER, KALUNGWEMBO.--We were still on the same path by which we +had come, and, there being no mosquitoes, we could now better enjoy the +scenery. Ranges of hills occupy both sides of our path, and the fine +level road is adorned with a beautiful red flower named Bolcamaria. The +markets or sleeping-places are well supplied with provisions by great +numbers of women, every one of whom is seen spinning cotton with a +spindle and distaff, exactly like those which were in use among the +ancient Egyptians. A woman is scarcely ever seen going to the fields, +though with a pot on her head, a child on her back, and the hoe over her +shoulder, but she is employed in this way. The cotton was brought to the +market for sale, and I bought a pound for a penny. This was the price +demanded, and probably double what they ask from each other. We saw +the cotton growing luxuriantly all around the market-places from seeds +dropped accidentally. It is seen also about the native huts, and, so far +as I could learn, it was the American cotton, so influenced by climate +as to be perennial. We met in the road natives passing with bundles of +cops, or spindles full of cotton thread, and these they were carrying to +other parts to be woven into cloth. The women are the spinners, and the +men perform the weaving. Each web is about 5 feet long, and 15 or 18 +inches wide. The loom is of the simplest construction, being nothing but +two beams placed one over the other, the web standing perpendicularly. +The threads of the web are separated by means of a thin wooden lath, +and the woof passed through by means of the spindle on which it has been +wound in spinning. + +The mode of spinning and weaving in Angola, and, indeed, throughout +South Central Africa, is so very like the same occupations in the +hands of the ancient Egyptians, that I introduce a woodcut from the +interesting work of Sir Gardner Wilkinson. The lower figures are engaged +in spinning in the real African method, and the weavers in the left-hand +corner have their web in the Angolese fashion.* + + * Unfortunately, this woodcut can not be represented in this + ASCII text. The caption reads, 'Ancient Spinning and Weaving, + perpetuated in Africa at the present day. From Wilkinson's + "Ancient Egyptians", p. 85, 86.' The web, or cloth on the + loom, mentioned, has the vertical threads, or the warp, + hanging, perhaps five feet, from a horizontal beam. The woof + is passed through from side to side.--A. L., 1997. + +Numbers of other articles are brought for sale to these sleeping-places. +The native smiths there carry on their trade. I bought ten very good +table-knives, made of country iron, for twopence each. + +Labor is extremely cheap, for I was assured that even carpenters, +masons, smiths, etc., might be hired for fourpence a day, and +agriculturists would gladly work for half that sum.* + + * In order that the reader may understand the social position + of the people of this country, I here give the census of the + district of Golungo Alto for the year 1854, though the numbers + are evidently not all furnished: + + 238 householders or yeomen. + 4224 patrons, or head men of several hamlets. + 23 native chiefs or sovas. + 292 macotas or councilors. + 5838 carriers. + 126 carpenters. + 72 masons. + 300 shoemakers. + 181 potters. + 25 tailors. + 12 barbers. + 206 iron-founders. + 486 bellows-blowers. + 586 coke-makers. + 173 iron-miners. + 184 soldiers of militia. + 3603 privileged gentlemen, i.e., who may wear boots. + 18 vagabonds. + 717 old men. + 54 blind men and women. + 81 lame men and women. + 770 slave men. + 807 slave women. + 9578 free women. + 393 possessors of land. + 300 female gardeners. + 139 hunters of wild animals. + 980 smiths. + 314 mat-makers. + 4065 males under 7 years of age. + 6012 females under 7 years of age. + +These people possess 300 idol-houses, 600 sheep, 5000 goats, 500 oxen, +398 gardens, 25,120 hearths. The authorities find great difficulty in +getting the people to furnish a correct account of their numbers. This +census is quoted merely for the purpose of giving a general idea of the +employments of the inhabitants. + +The following is taken from the census of Icollo i Bengo, and is added +for a similar reason: + + 3232 living without the marriage tie. (All those who have + not been married by a priest are so distinguished.) + 4 orphans--2 black and 2 white. + 9 native chiefs. + 2 carpenters. + 21 potters. + 11 tailors. + 2 shoemakers. + 3 barbers. + 5 mat-makers. + 12 sack-makers. + 21 basket-makers. + + The cattle in the district are: 10 asses, 401 oxen, 492 cows, + 3933 sheep, 1699 goats, 909 swine; and as an annual tax is + levied of sixpence per head on all stock, it is probable that + the returns are less than the reality. + +Being anxious to obtain some more knowledge of this interesting country +and its ancient missionary establishments than the line of route by +which we had come afforded, I resolved to visit the town of Massangano, +which is situated to the south of Golungo Alto, and at the confluence of +the rivers Lucalla and Coanza. This led me to pass through the district +of Cazengo, which is rather famous for the abundance and excellence +of its coffee. Extensive coffee plantations were found to exist on the +sides of the several lofty mountains that compose this district. They +were not planted by the Portuguese. The Jesuit and other missionaries +are known to have brought some of the fine old Mocha seed, and these +have propagated themselves far and wide; hence the excellence of +the Angola coffee. Some have asserted that, as new plantations +were constantly discovered even during the period of our visit, the +coffee-tree was indigenous; but the fact that pine-apples, bananas, +yams, orange-trees, custard apple-trees, pitangas, guavas, and other +South American trees, were found by me in the same localities with the +recently-discovered coffee, would seem to indicate that all foreign +trees must have been introduced by the same agency. It is known that the +Jesuits also introduced many other trees for the sake of their timber +alone. Numbers of these have spread over the country, some have probably +died out, and others failed to spread, like a lonely specimen which +stands in what was the Botanic Garden of Loanda, and, though most useful +in yielding a substitute for frankincense, is the only one of the kind +in Africa. + +A circumstance which would facilitate the extensive propagation of the +coffee on the proper clay soil is this: The seed, when buried beneath +the soil, generally dies, while that which is sown broadcast, with no +covering except the shade of the trees, vegetates readily. The agent in +sowing in this case is a bird, which eats the outer rind, and throws +the kernel on the ground. This plant can not bear the direct rays of +the sun; consequently, when a number of the trees are discovered in the +forest, all that is necessary is to clear away the brushwood, and +leave as many of the tall forest-trees as will afford good shade to the +coffee-plants below. The fortunate discoverer has then a flourishing +coffee plantation. + +This district, small though it be, having only a population of 13,822, +of whom ten only are white, nevertheless yields an annual tribute to the +government of thirteen hundred cotton cloths, each 5 feet by 18 or 20 +inches, of their own growth and manufacture. + +Accompanied by the commandant of Cazengo, who was well acquainted with +this part of the country, I proceeded in a canoe down the River Lucalla +to Massangano. This river is about 85 yards wide, and navigable for +canoes from its confluence with the Coanza to about six miles above the +point where it receives the Luinha. Near this latter point stand the +strong, massive ruins of an iron foundry, erected in the times (1768) +and by the order of the famous Marquis of Pombal. The whole of the +buildings were constructed of stone, cemented with oil and lime. The dam +for water-power was made of the same materials, and 27 feet high. This +had been broken through by a flood, and solid blocks, many yards in +length, were carried down the stream, affording an instructive example +of the transporting power of water. There was nothing in the appearance +of the place to indicate unhealthiness; but eight Spanish and Swedish +workmen, being brought hither for the purpose of instructing the +natives in the art of smelting iron, soon fell victims to disease and +"irregularities". The effort of the marquis to improve the mode of +manufacturing iron was thus rendered abortive. Labor and subsistence +are, however, so very cheap that almost any amount of work can be +executed, at a cost that renders expensive establishments unnecessary. + +A party of native miners and smiths is still kept in the employment of +the government, who, working the rich black magnetic iron ore, produce +for the government from 480 to 500 bars of good malleable iron every +month. They are supported by the appropriation of a few thousands of +a small fresh-water fish, called "Cacusu", a portion of the tax levied +upon the fishermen of the Coanza. This fish is so much relished in the +country that those who do not wish to eat them can easily convert them +into money. The commandant of the district of Massangano, for instance, +has a right to a dish of three hundred every morning, as part of his +salary. Shell-fish are also found in the Coanza, and the "Peixemulher", +or woman-fish of the Portuguese, which is probably a Manatee. + +The banks of the Lucalla are very pretty, well planted with +orange-trees, bananas, and the palm ('Elaeis Guineensis') which yields +the oil of commerce. Large plantations of maize, manioc, and tobacco are +seen along both banks, which are enlivened by the frequent appearance +of native houses imbosomed in dense shady groves, with little boys and +girls playing about them. The banks are steep, the water having cut out +its bed in dark red alluvial soil. Before every cottage a small stage +is erected, to which the inhabitants may descend to draw water without +danger from the alligators. Some have a little palisade made in the +water for safety from these reptiles, and others use the shell of the +fruit of the baobab-tree attached to a pole about ten feet long, with +which, while standing on the high bank, they may draw water without fear +of accident. + +Many climbing plants run up the lofty silk, cotton, and baobab trees, +and hang their beautiful flowers in gay festoons on the branches. As we +approach Massangano, the land on both banks of the Lucalla becomes very +level, and large portions are left marshy after the annual floods; but +all is very fertile. As an illustration of the strength of the soil, +I may state that we saw tobacco-plants in gardens near the confluence +eight feet high, and each plant had thirty-six leaves, which were +eighteen inches long by six or eight inches broad. But it is not +a pastoral district. In our descent we observed the tsetse, and +consequently the people had no domestic animals save goats. + +We found the town of Massangano on a tongue of rather high land, formed +by the left bank of the Lucalla and right bank of the Coanza, and +received true Portuguese hospitality from Senhor Lubata. The town has +more than a thousand inhabitants; the district has 28,063, with only +315 slaves. It stands on a mound of calcareous tufa, containing great +numbers of fossil shells, the most recent of which resemble those found +in the marly tufa close to the coast. The fort stands on the south side +of the town, on a high perpendicular bank overhanging the Coanza. This +river is here a noble stream, about a hundred and fifty yards wide, +admitting navigation in large canoes from the bar at its mouth to +Cambambe, some thirty miles above this town. There, a fine waterfall +hinders farther ascent. Ten or twelve large canoes laden with country +produce pass Massangano every day. Four galleons were constructed here +as long ago as 1650, which must have been of good size, for they crossed +the ocean to Rio Janeiro. + +Massangano district is well adapted for sugar and rice, while Cambambe +is a very superior field for cotton; but the bar at the mouth of the +Coanza would prevent the approach of a steamer into this desirable +region, though a small one could ply on it with ease when once in. It +is probable that the objects of those who attempted to make a canal from +Calumbo to Loanda were not merely to supply that city with fresh water, +but to afford facilities for transportation. The remains of the canal +show it to have been made on a scale suited for the Coanza canoes. The +Portuguese began another on a smaller scale in 1811, and, after three +years' labor, had finished only 6000 yards. Nothing great or useful will +ever be effected here so long as men come merely to get rich, and then +return to Portugal. + +The latitude of the town and fort of Massangano is 9d 37' 46" S., being +nearly the same as that of Cassange. The country between Loanda and this +point being comparatively flat, a railroad might be constructed at small +expense. The level country is prolonged along the north bank of the +Coanza to the edge of the Cassange basin, and a railway carried thither +would be convenient for the transport of the products of the rich +districts of Cassange, Pungo Andongo, Ambaca, Cambambe, Golungo Alto, +Cazengo, Muchima, and Calumbo; in a word, the whole of Angola and +independent tribes adjacent to this kingdom. + +The Portuguese merchants generally look to foreign enterprise and to +their own government for the means by which this amelioration might +be effected; but, as I always stated to them when conversing on the +subject, foreign capitalists would never run the risk, unless they saw +the Angolese doing something for themselves, and the laws so altered +that the subjects of other nations should enjoy the same privileges in +the country with themselves. The government of Portugal has indeed shown +a wise and liberal policy by its permission for the alienation of the +crown lands in Angola; but the law giving it effect is so fenced round +with limitations, and so deluged with verbiage, that to plain people it +seems any thing but a straightforward license to foreigners to become +'bona fide' landholders and cultivators of the soil. At present the +tolls paid on the different lines of roads for ferries and bridges are +equal to the interest of large sums of money, though but a small amount +has been expended in making available roads. + +There are two churches and a hospital in ruins at Massangano; and the +remains of two convents are pointed out, one of which is said to have +been an establishment of black Benedictines, which, if successful, +considering the materials the brethren had to work on, must have been a +laborious undertaking. There is neither priest nor schoolmaster in the +town, but I was pleased to observe a number of children taught by one of +the inhabitants. The cultivated lands attached to all these conventual +establishments in Angola are now rented by the government of Loanda, +and thither the bishop lately removed all the gold and silver vessels +belonging to them. + +The fort of Massangano is small, but in good repair; it contains some +very ancient guns, which were loaded from the breech, and must have been +formidable weapons in their time. The natives of this country entertain +a remarkable dread of great guns, and this tends much to the permanence +of the Portuguese authority. They dread a cannon greatly, though the +carriage be so rotten that it would fall to pieces at the first shot; +the fort of Pungo Andongo is kept securely by cannon perched on cross +sticks alone! + +Massangano was a very important town at the time the Dutch held forcible +possession of Loanda and part of Angola; but when, in the year 1648, +the Dutch were expelled from this country by a small body of Portuguese, +under the Governor Salvador Correa de Sa Benevides, Massangano was left +to sink into its present decay. Since it was partially abandoned by the +Portuguese, several baobab-trees have sprung up and attained a diameter +of eighteen or twenty inches, and are about twenty feet high. No certain +conclusion can be drawn from these instances, as it is not known at what +time after 1648 they began to grow; but their present size shows that +their growth is not unusually slow. + +Several fires occurred during our stay, by the thatch having, through +long exposure to a torrid sun, become like tinder. The roofs became +ignited without any visible cause except the intense solar rays, and +excited terror in the minds of the inhabitants, as the slightest spark +carried by the wind would have set the whole town in a blaze. There is +not a single inscription on stone visible in Massangano. If destroyed +to-morrow, no one could tell where it and most Portuguese interior +villages stood, any more than we can do those of the Balonda. + +During the occupation of this town the Coanza was used for the purpose +of navigation, but their vessels were so frequently plundered by their +Dutch neighbors that, when they regained the good port of Loanda, they +no longer made use of the river. We remained here four days, in hopes +of obtaining an observation for the longitude, but at this season of the +year the sky is almost constantly overcast by a thick canopy of clouds +of a milk-and-water hue; this continues until the rainy season (which +was now close at hand) commences. + +The lands on the north side of the Coanza belong to the Quisamas +(Kisamas), an independent tribe, which the Portuguese have not been able +to subdue. The few who came under my observation possessed much of the +Bushman or Hottentot feature, and were dressed in strips of soft bark +hanging from the waist to the knee. They deal largely in salt, which +their country produces in great abundance. It is brought in crystals of +about 12 inches long and 1-1/2 in diameter. This is hawked about every +where in Angola, and, next to calico, is the most common medium of +barter. The Kisama are brave; and when the Portuguese army followed them +into their forests, they reduced the invaders to extremity by tapping +all the reservoirs of water, which were no other than the enormous +baobabs of the country hollowed into cisterns. As the Kisama country is +ill supplied with water otherwise, the Portuguese were soon obliged to +retreat. Their country, lying near to Massangano, is low and marshy, +but becomes more elevated in the distance, and beyond them lie the lofty +dark mountain ranges of the Libollo, another powerful and independent +people. Near Massangano I observed what seemed to be an effort of nature +to furnish a variety of domestic fowls, more capable than the common +kind of bearing the heat of the sun. This was a hen and chickens with +all their feathers curled upward, thus giving shade to the body +without increasing the heat. They are here named "Kisafu" by the native +population, who pay a high price for them when they wish to offer them +as a sacrifice, and by the Portuguese they are termed "Arripiada", or +shivering. There seems to be a tendency in nature to afford varieties +adapted to the convenience of man. A kind of very short-legged fowl +among the Boers was obtained, in consequence of observing that such +were more easily caught for transportation in their frequent removals +in search of pasture. A similar instance of securing a variety occurred +with the short-limbed sheep in America. + +Returning by ascending the Lucalla into Cazengo, we had an opportunity +of visiting several flourishing coffee plantations, and observed that +several men, who had begun with no capital but honest industry, had, in +the course of a few years, acquired a comfortable subsistence. One of +these, Mr. Pinto, generously furnished me with a good supply of his +excellent coffee, and my men with a breed of rabbits to carry to their +own country. Their lands, granted by government, yielded, without much +labor, coffee sufficient for all the necessaries of life. + +The fact of other avenues of wealth opening up so readily seems like a +providential invitation to forsake the slave-trade and engage in lawful +commerce. We saw the female population occupied, as usual, in the +spinning of cotton and cultivation of their lands. Their only instrument +for culture is a double-handled hoe, which is worked with a sort of +dragging motion. Many of the men were employed in weaving. The latter +appear to be less industrious than the former, for they require a +month to finish a single web. There is, however, not much inducement +to industry, for, notwithstanding the time consumed in its manufacture, +each web is sold for only two shillings. + +On returning to Golungo Alto I found several of my men laid up with +fever. One of the reasons for my leaving them there was that they might +recover from the fatigue of the journey from Loanda, which had much more +effect upon their feet than hundreds of miles had on our way westward. +They had always been accustomed to moisture in their own well-watered +land, and we certainly had a superabundance of that in Loanda. The +roads, however, from Loanda to Golungo Alto were both hard and dry, and +they suffered severely in consequence; yet they were composing songs to +be sung when they should reach home. The Argonauts were nothing to them; +and they remarked very impressively to me, "It was well you came with +Makololo, for no tribe could have done what we have accomplished in +coming to the white man's country: we are the true ancients, who can +tell wonderful things." Two of them now had fever in the continued form, +and became jaundiced, the whites or conjunctival membrane of their eyes +becoming as yellow as saffron; and a third suffered from an attack of +mania. He came to his companions one day, and said, "Remain well. I am +called away by the gods!" and set off at the top of his speed. The +young men caught him before he had gone a mile, and bound him. By gentle +treatment and watching for a few days he recovered. I have observed +several instances of this kind in the country, but very few cases of +idiocy, and I believe that continued insanity is rare. + + + + +Chapter 21. + +Visit a deserted Convent--Favorable Report of Jesuits and their Teaching +--Gradations of native Society--Punishment of Thieves--Palm-toddy; its +baneful Effects--Freemasons--Marriages and Funerals--Litigation--Mr. +Canto's Illness--Bad Behavior of his Slaves--An Entertainment--Ideas +on Free Labor--Loss of American Cotton-seed--Abundance of Cotton in +the country--Sickness of Sekeletu's Horse--Eclipse of the Sun--Insects +which distill Water--Experiments with them--Proceed to Ambaca--Sickly +Season--Office of Commandant--Punishment of official Delinquents-- +Present from Mr. Schut of Loanda--Visit Pungo Andongo--Its good +Pasturage, Grain, Fruit, etc.--The Fort and columnar Rocks--The +Queen of Jinga--Salubrity of Pungo Andongo--Price of a Slave--A +Merchant-prince--His Hospitality--Hear of the Loss of my Papers +in "Forerunner"--Narrow Escape from an Alligator--Ancient +Burial-places--Neglect of Agriculture in Angola--Manioc the staple +Product--Its Cheapness--Sickness--Friendly Visit from a colored +Priest--The Prince of Congo--No Priests in the Interior of Angola. + + + +While waiting for the recovery of my men, I visited, in company with my +friend Mr. Canto, the deserted convent of St. Hilarion, at Bango, a few +miles northwest of Golungo Alto. It is situated in a magnificent valley, +containing a population numbering 4000 hearths. This is the abode of +the Sova, or Chief Bango, who still holds a place of authority under the +Portuguese. The garden of the convent, the church, and dormitories of +the brethren are still kept in a good state of repair. I looked at the +furniture, couches, and large chests for holding the provisions of the +brotherhood with interest, and would fain have learned something of the +former occupants; but all the books and sacred vessels had lately been +removed to Loanda, and even the graves of the good men stand without any +record: their resting-places are, however, carefully tended. All speak +well of the Jesuits and other missionaries, as the Capuchins, etc., for +having attended diligently to the instruction of the children. They were +supposed to have a tendency to take the part of the people against the +government, and were supplanted by priests, concerning whom no regret +is expressed that they were allowed to die out. In viewing the present +fruits of former missions, it is impossible not to feel assured that, +if the Jesuit teaching has been so permanent, that of Protestants, +who leave the Bible in the hands of their converts, will not be less +abiding. The chief Bango has built a large two-story house close by the +convent, but superstitious fears prevent him from sleeping in it. +The Portuguese take advantage of all the gradations into which native +society has divided itself. This man, for instance, is still a sova +or chief, has his councilors, and maintains the same state as when the +country was independent. When any of his people are guilty of theft, he +pays down the amount of goods stolen at once, and reimburses himself out +of the property of the thief so effectually as to be benefited by the +transaction. The people under him are divided into a number of classes. +There are his councilors, as the highest, who are generally head men of +several villages, and the carriers, the lowest free men. One class above +the last obtains the privilege of wearing shoes from the chief by paying +for it; another, the soldiers or militia, pay for the privilege of +serving, the advantage being that they are not afterward liable to +be made carriers. They are also divided into gentlemen and little +gentlemen, and, though quite black, speak of themselves as white men, +and of the others, who may not wear shoes, as "blacks". The men of all +these classes trust to their wives for food, and spend most of their +time in drinking the palm-toddy. This toddy is the juice of the +palm-oil-tree ('Elaeis Guineensis'), which, when tapped, yields a sweet, +clear liquid, not at all intoxicating while fresh, but, when allowed +to stand till the afternoon, causes inebriation and many crimes. +This toddy, called malova, is the bane of the country. Culprits are +continually brought before the commandants for assaults committed +through its influence. Men come up with deep gashes on their heads; and +one, who had burned his father's house, I saw making a profound bow to +Mr. Canto, and volunteering to explain why he did the deed. + +There is also a sort of fraternity of freemasons, named Empacasseiros, +into which no one is admitted unless he is an expert hunter, and can +shoot well with the gun. They are distinguished by a fillet of buffalo +hide around their heads, and are employed as messengers in all cases +requiring express. They are very trustworthy, and, when on active +service, form the best native troops the Portuguese possess. The +militia are of no value as soldiers, but cost the country nothing, +being supported by their wives. Their duties are chiefly to guard the +residences of commandants, and to act as police. + +The chief recreations of the natives of Angola are marriages and +funerals. When a young woman is about to be married, she is placed in a +hut alone and anointed with various unguents, and many incantations +are employed in order to secure good fortune and fruitfulness. Here, as +almost every where in the south, the height of good fortune is to bear +sons. They often leave a husband altogether if they have daughters +only. In their dances, when any one may wish to deride another, in the +accompanying song a line is introduced, "So and so has no children, +and never will get any." She feels the insult so keenly that it is not +uncommon for her to rush away and commit suicide. After some days the +bride elect is taken to another hut, and adorned with all the richest +clothing and ornaments that the relatives can either lend or borrow. She +is then placed in a public situation, saluted as a lady, and presents +made by all her acquaintances are placed around her. After this she is +taken to the residence of her husband, where she has a hut for herself, +and becomes one of several wives, for polygamy is general. Dancing, +feasting, and drinking on such occasions are prolonged for several days. +In case of separation, the woman returns to her father's family, and the +husband receives back what he gave for her. In nearly all cases a man +gives a price for the wife, and in cases of mulattoes, as much as 60 +Pounds is often given to the parents of the bride. This is one of the +evils the bishop was trying to remedy. + +In cases of death the body is kept several days, and there is a grand +concourse of both sexes, with beating of drums, dances, and debauchery, +kept up with feasting, etc., according to the means of the relatives. +The great ambition of many of the blacks of Angola is to give their +friends an expensive funeral. Often, when one is asked to sell a pig, he +replies, "I am keeping it in case of the death of any of my friends." A +pig is usually slaughtered and eaten on the last day of the ceremonies, +and its head thrown into the nearest stream or river. A native will +sometimes appear intoxicated on these occasions, and, if blamed for his +intemperance, will reply, "Why! my mother is dead!" as if he thought it +a sufficient justification. The expenses of funerals are so heavy that +often years elapse before they can defray them. + +These people are said to be very litigious and obstinate: constant +disputes are taking place respecting their lands. A case came before the +weekly court of the commandant involving property in a palm-tree worth +twopence. The judge advised the pursuer to withdraw the case, as the +mere expenses of entering it would be much more than the cost of the +tree. "Oh no," said he; "I have a piece of calico with me for the clerk, +and money for yourself. It's my right; I will not forego it." The calico +itself cost three or four shillings. They rejoice if they can say of an +enemy, "I took him before the court." + +My friend Mr. Canto, the commandant, being seized with fever in a severe +form, it afforded me much pleasure to attend HIM in his sickness, who +had been so kind to ME in mine. He was for some time in a state of +insensibility, and I, having the charge of his establishment, had thus +an opportunity of observing the workings of slavery. When a master is +ill, the slaves run riot among the eatables. I did not know this until I +observed that every time the sugar-basin came to the table it was +empty. On visiting my patient by night, I passed along a corridor, and +unexpectedly came upon the washerwoman eating pine-apples and sugar. All +the sweetmeats were devoured, and it was difficult for me to get even +bread and butter until I took the precaution of locking the pantry door. +Probably the slaves thought that, as both they and the luxuries were +the master's property, there was no good reason why they should be kept +apart. + +Debarred by my precaution from these sources of enjoyment, they took to +killing the fowls and goats, and, when the animal was dead, brought it +to me, saying, "We found this thing lying out there." They then enjoyed +a feast of flesh. A feeling of insecurity prevails throughout this +country. It is quite common to furnish visitors with the keys of their +rooms. When called on to come to breakfast or dinner, each locks his +door and puts the key in his pocket. At Kolobeng we never locked our +doors by night or by day for months together; but there slavery is +unknown. The Portuguese do not seem at all bigoted in their attachment +to slavery, nor yet in their prejudices against color. Mr. Canto gave an +entertainment in order to draw all classes together and promote general +good-will. Two sovas or native chiefs were present, and took their +places without the least appearance of embarrassment. The Sova of +Kilombo appeared in the dress of a general, and the Sova of Bango was +gayly attired in a red coat, profusely ornamented with tinsel. The +latter had a band of musicians with him consisting of six trumpeters and +four drummers, who performed very well. These men are fond of titles, +and the Portuguese government humors them by conferring honorary +captaincies, etc.: the Sova of Bango was at present anxious to obtain +the title of "Major of all the Sovas". At the tables of other gentlemen +I observed the same thing constantly occurring. At this meeting Mr. +Canto communicated some ideas which I had written out on the dignity +of labor, and the superiority of free over slave labor. The Portuguese +gentlemen present were anxiously expecting an arrival of American +cotton-seed from Mr. Gabriel. They are now in the transition state from +unlawful to lawful trade, and turn eagerly to cotton, coffee, and sugar +as new sources of wealth. Mr. Canto had been commissioned by them to +purchase three sugar-mills. Our cruisers have been the principal agents +in compelling them to abandon the slave-trade; and our government, +in furnishing them with a supply of cotton-seed, showed a generous +intention to aid them in commencing a more honorable course. It can +scarcely be believed, however, that after Lord Clarendon had been at +the trouble of procuring fresh cotton-seed through our minister at +Washington, and had sent it out to the care of H. M. Commissioner at +Loanda, probably from having fallen into the hands of a few incorrigible +slave-traders, it never reached its destination. It was most likely cast +into the sea of Ambriz, and my friends at Golungo Alto were left without +the means of commencing a new enterprise. + +Mr. Canto mentioned that there is now much more cotton in the country +than can be consumed; and if he had possession of a few hundred pounds, +he would buy up all the oil and cotton at a fair price, and thereby +bring about a revolution in the agriculture of the country. These +commodities are not produced in greater quantity, because the people +have no market for those which now spring up almost spontaneously around +them. The above was put down in my journal when I had no idea that +enlarged supplies of cotton from new sources were so much needed at +home. + +It is common to cut down cotton-trees as a nuisance, and cultivate +beans, potatoes, and manioc sufficient only for their own consumption. +I have the impression that cotton, which is deciduous in America, is +perennial here; for the plants I saw in winter were not dead, though +going by the name Algodao Americana, or American cotton. The rents paid +for gardens belonging to the old convents are merely nominal, varying +from one shilling to three pounds per annum. The higher rents being +realized from those in the immediate vicinity of Loanda, none but +Portuguese or half-castes can pay them. + +When about to start, the horse which the governor had kindly presented +for Sekeletu was seized with inflammation, which delayed us some time +longer, and we ultimately lost it. We had been careful to watch it when +coming through the district of Matamba, where we had discovered the +tsetse, that no insect might light upon it. The change of diet here may +have had some influence in producing the disease; for I was informed by +Dr. Welweitsch, an able German naturalist, whom we found pursuing his +arduous labors here, and whose life we hope may be spared to give his +researches to the world, that, of fifty-eight kinds of grasses found +at Loanda, only three or four species exist here, and these of the most +diminutive kinds. The twenty-four different species of grass of Golungo +Alto are nearly all gigantic. Indeed, gigantic grasses, climbers, +shrubs and trees, with but few plants, constitute the vegetation of this +region. + +NOVEMBER 20TH. An eclipse of the sun, which I had anxiously hoped to +observe with a view of determining the longitude, happened this morning, +and, as often took place in this cloudy climate, the sun was covered +four minutes before it began. When it shone forth the eclipse was +in progress, and a few minutes before it should (according to my +calculations) have ended the sun was again completely obscured. The +greatest patience and perseverance are required, if one wishes to +ascertain his position when it is the rainy season. + +Before leaving, I had an opportunity of observing a curious insect, +which inhabits trees of the fig family ('Ficus'), upward of twenty +species of which are found here. Seven or eight of them cluster round +a spot on one of the smaller branches, and there keep up a constant +distillation of a clear fluid, which, dropping to the ground, forms a +little puddle below. If a vessel is placed under them in the evening, +it contains three or four pints of fluid in the morning. The natives +say that, if a drop falls into the eyes, it causes inflammation of these +organs. To the question whence is this fluid derived, the people reply +that the insects suck it out of the tree, and our own naturalists +give the same answer. I have never seen an orifice, and it is scarcely +possible that the tree can yield so much. A similar but much smaller +homopterous insect, of the family 'Cercopidae', is known in England as +the frog-hopper ('Aphrophora spumaria'), when full grown and +furnished with wings, but while still in the pupa state it is called +"Cuckoo-spit", from the mass of froth in which it envelops itself. +The circulation of sap in plants in our climate, especially of the +graminaceae, is not quick enough to yield much moisture. The African +species is five or six times the size of the English. In the case of +branches of the fig-tree, the point the insects congregate on is soon +marked by a number of incipient roots, such as are thrown out when a +cutting is inserted in the ground for the purpose of starting another +tree. I believe that both the English and African insects belong to the +same family, and differ only in size, and that the chief part of the +moisture is derived from the atmosphere. I leave it for naturalists to +explain how these little creatures distill both by night and day as +much water as they please, and are more independent than her majesty's +steam-ships, with their apparatus for condensing steam; for, without +coal, their abundant supplies of sea-water are of no avail. I tried +the following experiment: Finding a colony of these insects busily +distilling on a branch of the 'Ricinus communis', or castor-oil plant, I +denuded about 20 inches of the bark on the tree side of the insects, and +scraped away the inner bark, so as to destroy all the ascending vessels. +I also cut a hole in the side of the branch, reaching to the middle, and +then cut out the pith and internal vessels. The distillation was then +going on at the rate of one drop each 67 seconds, or about 2 ounces +5-1/2 drams in 24 hours. Next morning the distillation, so far from +being affected by the attempt to stop the supplies, supposing they had +come up through the branch from the tree, was increased to a drop every +5 seconds, or 12 drops per minute, making 1 pint (16 ounces) in every 24 +hours. I then cut the branch so much that, during the day, it broke; but +they still went on at the rate of a drop every 5 seconds, while another +colony on a branch of the same tree gave a drop every 17 seconds only, +or at the rate of about 10 ounces 4-4/5 drams in 24 hours. I finally +cut off the branch; but this was too much for their patience, for they +immediately decamped, as insects will do from either a dead branch or +a dead animal, which Indian hunters soon know, when they sit down on +a recently-killed bear. The presence of greater moisture in the air +increased the power of these distillers: the period of greatest activity +was in the morning, when the air and every thing else was charged with +dew. + +Having but one day left for experiment, I found again that another +colony on a branch denuded in the same way yielded a drop every 2 +seconds, or 4 pints 10 ounces in 24 hours, while a colony on a branch +untouched yielded a drop every 11 seconds, or 16 ounces 2-19/20 drams +in 24 hours. I regretted somewhat the want of time to institute another +experiment, namely, to cut a branch and place it in water, so as to keep +it in life, and then observe if there was any diminution of the quantity +of water in the vessel. This alone was wanting to make it certain that +they draw water from the atmosphere. I imagine that they have some power +of which we are not aware, besides that nervous influence which causes +constant motion to our own involuntary muscles, the power of life-long +action without fatigue. The reader will remember, in connection with +this insect, the case of the ants already mentioned. + +DECEMBER 14TH. Both myself and men having recovered from severe attacks +of fever, we left the hospitable residence of Mr. Canto with a deep +sense of his kindness to us all, and proceeded on our way to Ambaca. +(Lat. 9d 16' 35" S., long. 15d 23' E.) + +Frequent rains had fallen in October and November, which were nearly +always accompanied with thunder. Occasionally the quantity of moisture +in the atmosphere is greatly increased without any visible cause: +this imparts a sensation of considerable cold, though the thermometer +exhibits no fall of the mercury. The greater humidity in the air, +affording a better conducting medium for the radiation of heat from the +body, is as dangerous as a sudden fall of the thermometer: it causes +considerable disease among the natives, and this season is denominated +"Carneirado", as if by the disease they were slaughtered like sheep. The +season of these changes, which is the most favorable for Europeans, is +the most unhealthy for the native population; and this is by no means +a climate in which either natives or Europeans can indulge in +irregularities with impunity. + +Owing to the weakness of the men who had been sick, we were able to +march but short distances. Three hours and a half brought us to the +banks of the Caloi, a small stream which flows into the Senza. This +is one of the parts of the country reputed to yield petroleum, but the +geological formation, being mica schist, dipping toward the eastward, +did not promise much for our finding it. Our hospitable friend, Mr. +Mellot, accompanied us to another little river, called the Quango, where +I saw two fine boys, the sons of the sub-commandant, Mr. Feltao, who, +though only from six to eight years old, were subject to fever. We then +passed on in the bright sunlight, the whole country looking so fresh and +green after the rains, and every thing so cheering, one could not but +wonder to find it so feverish. + +We found, on reaching Ambaca, that the gallant old soldier, Laurence +Jose Marquis, had, since our passing Icollo i Bengo, been promoted, +on account of his stern integrity, to the government of this important +district. The office of commandant is much coveted by the officers +of the line who come to Angola, not so much for the salary as for the +perquisites, which, when managed skillfully, in the course of a few +years make one rich. An idea may be formed of the conduct of some of +these officials from the following extract from the Boletin of Loanda of +the 28th of October, 1854: + +"The acting governor-general of the province of Angola and its +dependencies determines as follows: + +"Having instituted an investigation (Syndecancia) against the commandant +of the fort of----, a captain of the army of Portugal in commission in +this province,----, on account of numerous complaints, which have come +before this government, of violences and extortions practiced by the +said commandant, and those complaints appearing by the result of the +investigation to be well founded, it will be convenient to exonerate the +captain referred to from the command of the fort of----, to which he had +been nominated by the portfolio of this general government, No. 41, of +27th December of the past year; and if not otherwise determined, the +same official shall be judged by a council of war for the criminal acts +which are to him attributed." + +Even this public mention of his crimes attaches no stigma to the man's +character. The council of war, by which these delinquents always prefer +to be judged, is composed of men who eagerly expect to occupy the post +of commandant themselves, and anticipate their own trial for similar +acts at some future time. The severest sentence a council of war awards +is a few weeks' suspension from office in his regiment. + +This want of official integrity, which is not at all attributable to the +home government of Portugal, would prove a serious impediment in the way +of foreign enterprise developing the resources of this rich province. +And to this cause, indeed, may be ascribed the failure of the Portuguese +laws for the entire suppression of the slave-trade. The officers ought +to receive higher pay, if integrity is expected from them. At present, +a captain's pay for a year will only keep him in good uniform. The high +pay our own officers receive has manifest advantages. + +Before leaving Ambaca we received a present of ten head of cattle from +Mr. Schut of Loanda, and, as it shows the cheapness of provisions here, +I may mention that the cost was only about a guinea per head. + +On crossing the Lucalla we made a detour to the south, in order to visit +the famous rocks of Pungo Andongo. As soon as we crossed the rivulet +Lotete, a change in the vegetation of the country was apparent. We found +trees identical with those to be seen south of the Chobe. The grass, +too, stands in tufts, and is of that kind which the natives consider to +be best adapted for cattle. Two species of grape-bearing vines abound +every where in this district, and the influence of the good pasturage is +seen in the plump condition of the cattle. In all my previous inquiries +respecting the vegetable products of Angola, I was invariably +directed to Pungo Andongo. Do you grow wheat? "Oh, yes, in Pungo +Andongo."--Grapes, figs, or peaches? "Oh, yes, in Pungo Andongo."--Do +you make butter, cheese, etc.? The uniform answer was, "Oh, yes, there +is abundance of all these in Pungo Andongo." But when we arrived here, +we found that the answers all referred to the activity of one man, +Colonel Manuel Antonio Pires. The presence of the wild grape shows that +vineyards might be cultivated with success; the wheat grows well without +irrigation; and any one who tasted the butter and cheese at the table of +Colonel Pires would prefer them to the stale produce of the Irish dairy, +in general use throughout that province. The cattle in this country are +seldom milked, on account of the strong prejudice which the Portuguese +entertain against the use of milk. They believe that it may be used with +safety in the morning, but, if taken after midday, that it will cause +fever. It seemed to me that there was not much reason for carefully +avoiding a few drops in their coffee, after having devoured ten times +the amount in the shape of cheese at dinner. + +The fort of Pungo Andongo (lat. 9d 42' 14" S., long. 15d 30' E.) is +situated in the midst of a group of curious columnar-shaped rocks, each +of which is upward of three hundred feet in height. They are composed of +conglomerate, made up of a great variety of rounded pieces in a matrix +of dark red sandstone. They rest on a thick stratum of this last rock, +with very few of the pebbles in its substance. On this a fossil palm has +been found, and if of the same age as those on the eastern side of the +continent, on which similar palms now lie, there may be coal underneath +this, as well as under that at Tete. The asserted existence of petroleum +springs at Dande, and near Cambambe, would seem to indicate the presence +of this useful mineral, though I am not aware of any one having actually +seen a seam of coal tilted up to the surface in Angola, as we have +at Tete. The gigantic pillars of Pungo Andongo have been formed by a +current of the sea coming from the S.S.E.; for, seen from the top, they +appear arranged in that direction, and must have withstood the surges of +the ocean at a period of our world's history, when the relations of land +and sea were totally different from what they are now, and long before +"the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for +joy to see the abodes prepared which man was soon to fill." The imbedded +pieces in the conglomerate are of gneiss, clay shale, mica and sandstone +schists, trap, and porphyry, most of which are large enough to give +the whole the appearance of being the only remaining vestiges of vast +primaeval banks of shingle. Several little streams run among these +rocks, and in the central part of the pillars stands the village, +completely environed by well-nigh inaccessible rocks. The pathways into +the village might be defended by a small body of troops against an army; +and this place was long the stronghold of the tribe called Jinga, the +original possessors of the country. + +We were shown a footprint carved on one of these rocks. It is spoken of +as that of a famous queen, who reigned over all this region. In looking +at these rude attempts at commemoration, one feels the value of letters. +In the history of Angola we find that the famous queen Donna Anna de +Souza came from the vicinity, as embassadress from her brother, Gola +Bandy, King of the Jinga, to Loanda, in 1621, to sue for peace, and +astonished the governor by the readiness of her answers. The governor +proposed, as a condition of peace, the payment by the Jinga of an annual +tribute. "People talk of tribute after they have conquered, and not +before it; we come to talk of peace, not of subjection," was the ready +answer. The governor was as much nonplussed as our Cape governors often +are when they tell the Caffres "to put it all down in writing, and they +will then be able to answer them." She remained some time in Loanda, +gained all she sought, and, after being taught by the missionaries, was +baptized, and returned to her own country with honor. She succeeded +to the kingdom on the death of her brother, whom it was supposed she +poisoned, but in a subsequent war with the Portuguese she lost nearly +all her army in a great battle fought in 1627. She returned to the +Church after a long period of apostasy, and died in extreme old age; and +the Jinga still live as an independent people to the north of this their +ancient country. No African tribe has ever been destroyed. + +In former times the Portuguese imagined that this place was particularly +unhealthy, and banishment to the black rocks of Pungo Andongo +was thought by their judges to be a much severer sentence than +transportation to any part of the coast; but this district is now well +known to be the most healthy part of Angola. The water is remarkably +pure, the soil is light, and the country open and undulating, with a +general slope down toward the River Coanza, a few miles distant. That +river is the southern boundary of the Portuguese, and beyond, to the S. +and S.W., we see the high mountains of the Libollo. On the S.E. we have +also a mountainous country, inhabited by the Kimbonda or Ambonda, who +are said by Colonel Pires to be a very brave and independent people, +but hospitable and fair in their dealings. They are rich in cattle, and +their country produces much beeswax, which is carefully collected, +and brought to the Portuguese, with whom they have always been on good +terms. + +The Ako (Haco), a branch of this family, inhabit the left bank of the +Coanza above this village, who, instead of bringing slaves for sale, as +formerly, now occasionally bring wax for the purchase of a slave from +the Portuguese. I saw a boy sold for twelve shillings: he said that he +belonged to the country of Matiamvo. Here I bought a pair of well-made +boots, of good tanned leather, which reached above the knee, for five +shillings and eightpence, and that was just the price given for one +pound of ivory by Mr. Pires; consequently, the boy was worth two pairs +of boots, or two pounds of ivory. The Libollo on the S. have not so +good a character, but the Coanza is always deep enough to form a line of +defense. Colonel Pires is a good example of what an honest industrious +man in this country may become. He came as a servant in a ship, and, by +a long course of persevering labor, has raised himself to be the richest +merchant in Angola. He possesses some thousands of cattle; and, on any +emergency, can appear in the field with several hundred armed slaves. + +While enjoying the hospitality of this merchant-prince in his commodious +residence, which is outside the rocks, and commands a beautiful view of +all the adjacent country, I learned that all my dispatches, maps, +and journal had gone to the bottom of the sea in the mail-packet +"Forerunner". I felt so glad that my friend Lieutenant Bedingfeld, to +whose care I had committed them, though in the most imminent danger, had +not shared a similar fate, that I was at once reconciled to the labor +of rewriting. I availed myself of the kindness of Colonel Pires, and +remained till the end of the year reproducing my lost papers. + +Colonel Pires having another establishment on the banks of the Coanza, +about six miles distant, I visited it with him about once a week for the +purpose of recreation. The difference of temperature caused by the lower +altitude was seen in the cashew-trees; for while, near the rocks, these +trees were but coming into flower, those at the lower station were +ripening their fruit. Cocoanut trees and bananas bear well at the lower +station, but yield little or no fruit at the upper. The difference +indicated by the thermometer was 7 Deg. The general range near the rocks +was 67 Deg. at 7 A.M., 74 Deg. at midday, and 72 Deg. in the evening. + +A slave-boy belonging to Colonel Pires, having stolen and eaten some +lemons in the evening, went to the river to wash his mouth, so as not to +be detected by the flavor. An alligator seized him and carried him to +an island in the middle of the stream; there the boy grasped hold of the +reeds, and baffled all the efforts of the reptile to dislodge him, +till his companions, attracted by his cries, came in a canoe to his +assistance. The alligator at once let go his hold; for, when out of his +own element, he is cowardly. The boy had many marks of the teeth in his +abdomen and thigh, and those of the claws on his legs and arms. + +The slaves in Colonel Pires' establishments appeared more like free +servants than any I had elsewhere seen. Every thing was neat and clean, +while generally, where slaves are the only domestics, there is an aspect +of slovenliness, as if they went on the principle of always doing as +little for their masters as possible. + +In the country near to this station were a large number of the ancient +burial-places of the Jinga. These are simply large mounds of stones, +with drinking and cooking vessels of rude pottery on them. Some are +arranged in a circular form, two or three yards in diameter, and shaped +like a haycock. There is not a single vestige of any inscription. The +natives of Angola generally have a strange predilection for bringing +their dead to the sides of the most frequented paths. They have a +particular anxiety to secure the point where cross-roads meet. On and +around the graves are planted tree euphorbias and other species of that +family. On the grave itself they also place water-bottles, broken pipes, +cooking vessels, and sometimes a little bow and arrow. + +The Portuguese government, wishing to prevent this custom, affixed a +penalty on any one burying in the roads, and appointed places of public +sepulture in every district in the country. The people persist, however, +in spite of the most stringent enforcement of the law, to follow their +ancient custom. + +The country between the Coanza and Pungo Andongo is covered with low +trees, bushes, and fine pasturage. In the latter, we were pleased to +see our old acquaintances, the gaudy gladiolus, Amaryllis toxicaria, +hymanthus, and other bulbs in as flourishing a condition as at the Cape. + +It is surprising that so little has been done in the way of agriculture +in Angola. Raising wheat by means of irrigation has never been tried; +no plow is ever used; and the only instrument is the native hoe, in the +hands of slaves. The chief object of agriculture is the manioc, which +does not contain nutriment sufficient to give proper stamina to the +people. The half-caste Portuguese have not so much energy as their +fathers. They subsist chiefly on the manioc, and, as that can be +eaten either raw, roasted, or boiled, as it comes from the ground; or +fermented in water, and then roasted or dried after fermentation, and +baked or pounded into fine meal; or rasped into meal and cooked as +farina; or made into confectionary with butter and sugar, it does not +so soon pall upon the palate as one might imagine, when told that it +constitutes their principal food. The leaves boiled make an excellent +vegetable for the table; and, when eaten by goats, their milk is much +increased. The wood is a good fuel, and yields a large quantity +of potash. If planted in a dry soil, it takes two years to come to +perfection, requiring, during that time, one weeding only. It bears +drought well, and never shrivels up, like other plants, when deprived of +rain. When planted in low alluvial soils, and either well supplied with +rain or annually flooded, twelve, or even ten months, are sufficient to +bring it to maturity. The root rasped while raw, placed upon a cloth, +and rubbed with the hands while water is poured upon it, parts with its +starchy glutinous matter, and this, when it settles at the bottom of the +vessel, and the water poured off, is placed in the sun till nearly dry, +to form tapioca. The process of drying is completed on an iron plate +over a slow fire, the mass being stirred meanwhile with a stick, and +when quite dry it appears agglutinated into little globules, and is in +the form we see the tapioca of commerce. This is never eaten by weevils, +and so little labor is required in its cultivation that on the spot it +is extremely cheap. Throughout the interior parts of Angola, fine manioc +meal, which could with ease have been converted either into superior +starch or tapioca, is commonly sold at the rate of about ten pounds for +a penny. All this region, however, has no means of transport to Loanda +other than the shoulders of the carriers and slaves over a footpath. + +Cambambe, to which the navigation of the Coanza reaches, is reported to +be thirty leagues below Pungo Andongo. A large waterfall is the limit on +that side; and another exists higher up, at the confluence of the Lombe +(lat. 9d 41' 26" S., and about long. 16d E.), over which hippopotami and +elephants are sometimes drawn and killed. The river between is rapid, +and generally rushes over a rocky bottom. Its source is pointed out +as S.E. or S.S.E. of its confluence with the Lombe, and near Bihe. The +situation of Bihe is not well known. When at Sanza we were assured +that it lies nearly south of that point, and eight days distant. This +statement seemed to be corroborated by our meeting many people going to +Matiamvo and to Loanda from Bihe. Both parties had come to Sanza, and +then branched off, one to the east, the other to the west. The source of +the Coanza is thus probably not far from Sanza. + +I had the happiness of doing a little good in the way of administering +to the sick, for there are no doctors in the interior of Angola. +Notwithstanding the general healthiness of this fine district and its +pleasant temperature, I was attacked by fever myself. While confined to +my room, a gentleman of color, a canon of the Church, kindly paid me +a visit. He was on a tour of visitation in the different interior +districts for the purpose of baptizing and marrying. He had lately been +on a visit to Lisbon in company with the Prince of Congo, and had +been invested with an order of honor by the King of Portugal as an +acknowledgment of his services. He had all the appearance of a true +negro, but commanded the respect of the people; and Colonel P., who had +known him for thirty years, pronounced him to be a good man. There are +only three or four priests in Loanda, all men of color, but educated for +the office. About the time of my journey in Angola, an offer was made +to any young men of ability who might wish to devote themselves to the +service of the Church, to afford them the requisite education at the +University of Coimbra in Portugal. I was informed, on what seemed good +authority, that the Prince of Congo is professedly a Christian, and that +there are no fewer than twelve churches in that kingdom, the fruits of +the mission established in former times at San Salvador, the capital. +These churches are kept in partial repair by the people, who also keep +up the ceremonies of the Church, pronouncing some gibberish over the +dead, in imitation of the Latin prayers which they had formerly heard. +Many of them can read and write. When a King of Congo dies, the body is +wrapped up in a great many folds of cloth until a priest can come from +Loanda to consecrate his successor. The King of Congo still retains +the title of Lord of Angola, which he had when the Jinga, the original +possessors of the soil, owed him allegiance; and, when he writes to the +Governor of Angola, he places his own name first, as if addressing his +vassal. The Jinga paid him tribute annually in cowries, which were found +on the island that shelters Loanda harbor, and, on refusing to continue +payment, the King of Congo gave over the island to the Portuguese, and +thus their dominion commenced in this quarter. + +There is not much knowledge of the Christian religion in either Congo +or Angola, yet it is looked upon with a certain degree of favor. The +prevalence of fever is probably the reason why no priest occupies a post +in any part of the interior. They come on tours of visitation like +that mentioned, and it is said that no expense is incurred, for all the +people are ready not only to pay for their services, but also to furnish +every article in their power gratuitously. In view of the desolate +condition of this fine missionary field, it is more than probable that +the presence of a few Protestants would soon provoke the priests, if not +to love, to good works. + + + + +Chapter 22. + +Leave Pungo Andongo--Extent of Portuguese Power--Meet Traders and +Carriers--Red Ants; their fierce Attack; Usefulness; Numbers--Descend +the Heights of Tala Mungongo--Fruit-trees in the Valley of +Cassange--Edible Muscle--Birds--Cassange Village--Quinine and Cathory-- +Sickness of Captain Neves' Infant--A Diviner thrashed--Death of +the Child--Mourning--Loss of Life from the Ordeal--Wide-spread +Superstitions--The Chieftainship--Charms--Receive Copies of the +"Times"--Trading Pombeiros--Present for Matiamvo--Fever after westerly +Winds--Capabilities of Angola for producing the raw Materials of +English Manufacture--Trading Parties with Ivory--More Fever--A +Hyaena's Choice--Makololo Opinion of the Portuguese--Cypriano's Debt--A +Funeral--Dread of disembodied Spirits--Beautiful Morning Scenes-- +Crossing the Quango--Ambakistas called "The Jews of Angola"--Fashions +of the Bashinje--Approach the Village of Sansawe--His Idea of +Dignity--The Pombeiros' Present--Long Detention--A Blow on the +Beard--Attacked in a Forest--Sudden Conversion of a fighting Chief +to Peace Principles by means of a Revolver--No Blood shed in +consequence--Rate of Traveling--Slave Women--Way of addressing +Slaves--Their thievish Propensities--Feeders of the Congo or +Zaire--Obliged to refuse Presents--Cross the Loajima--Appearance of +People; Hair Fashions. + + + +JANUARY 1, 1855. Having, through the kindness of Colonel Pires, +reproduced some of my lost papers, I left Pungo Andongo the first day of +this year, and at Candumba, slept in one of the dairy establishments of +my friend, who had sent forward orders for an ample supply of butter, +cheese, and milk. Our path lay along the right bank of the Coanza. This +is composed of the same sandstone rock, with pebbles, which forms the +flooring of the country. The land is level, has much open forest, and is +well adapted for pasturage. + +On reaching the confluence of the Lombe, we left the river, and +proceeded in a northeasterly direction, through a fine open green +country, to the village of Malange, where we struck into our former +path. A few miles to the west of this a path branches off to a new +district named the Duke Braganza. This path crosses the Lucalla and +several of its feeders. The whole of the country drained by these +is described as extremely fertile. The territory west of Braganza is +reported to be mountainous, well wooded and watered; wild coffee is +abundant, and the people even make their huts of coffee-trees. The +rivers Dande, Senza, and Lucalla are said to rise in one mountain +range. Numerous tribes inhabit the country to the north, who are all +independent. The Portuguese power extends chiefly over the tribes +through whose lands we have passed. It may be said to be firmly seated +only between the rivers Dande and Coanza. It extends inland about three +hundred miles to the River Quango; and the population, according to the +imperfect data afforded by the census, given annually by the commandants +of the fifteen or sixteen districts into which it is divided, can not be +under 600,000 souls. + +Leaving Malange, we passed quickly, without deviation, along the path +by which we had come. At Sanza (lat. 9d 37' 46" S., long. 16d 59' E.) we +expected to get a little seed-wheat, but this was not now to be found +in Angola. The underlying rock of the whole of this section is that same +sandstone which we have before noticed, but it gradually becomes finer +in the grain, with the addition of a little mica, the farther we go +eastward; we enter upon clay shale at Tala Mungongo (lat. 9d 42' 37" S., +long. 17d 27' E.), and find it dipping a little to the west. The general +geological structure is a broad fringe of mica and sandstone schist +(about 15 Deg. E.), dipping in toward the centre of the country, beneath +these horizontal and sedimentary rocks of more recent date, which form +an inland basin. The fringe is not, however, the highest in altitude, +though the oldest in age. + +While at this latter place we met a native of Bihe who has visited the +country of Shinte three times for the purposes of trade. He gave us some +of the news of that distant part, but not a word of the Makololo, +who have always been represented in the countries to the north as a +desperately savage race, whom no trader could visit with safety. The +half-caste traders whom we met at Shinte's had returned to Angola with +sixty-six slaves and upward of fifty tusks of ivory. As we came along +the path, we daily met long lines of carriers bearing large square +masses of beeswax, each about a hundred pounds weight, and numbers of +elephants' tusks, the property of Angolese merchants. Many natives were +proceeding to the coast also on their own account, carrying beeswax, +ivory, and sweet oil. They appeared to travel in perfect security; and +at different parts of the road we purchased fowls from them at a penny +each. My men took care to celebrate their own daring in having actually +entered ships, while the natives of these parts, who had endeavored to +frighten them on their way down, had only seen them at a distance. Poor +fellows! they were more than ever attentive to me; and, as they were not +obliged to erect sheds for themselves, in consequence of finding them +already built at the different sleeping-places, all their care was +bestowed in making me comfortable. Mashauana, as usual, made his bed +with his head close to my feet, and never during the entire journey did +I have to call him twice for any thing I needed. + +During our stay at Tala Mungongo, our attention was attracted to a +species of red ant which infests different parts of this country. It +is remarkably fond of animal food. The commandant of the village having +slaughtered a cow, slaves were obliged to sit up the whole night, +burning fires of straw around the meat, to prevent them from devouring +most of it. These ants are frequently met with in numbers like a small +army. At a little distance they appear as a brownish-red band, two or +three inches wide, stretched across the path, all eagerly pressing on in +one direction. If a person happens to tread upon them, they rush up his +legs and bite with surprising vigor. The first time I encountered this +by no means contemptible enemy was near Cassange. My attention being +taken up in viewing the distant landscape, I accidentally stepped +upon one of their nests. Not an instant seemed to elapse before a +simultaneous attack was made on various unprotected parts, up the +trowsers from below, and on my neck and breast above. The bites of these +furies were like sparks of fire, and there was no retreat. I jumped +about for a second or two, then in desperation tore off all my clothing, +and rubbed and picked them off seriatim as quickly as possible. Ugh! +they would make the most lethargic mortal look alive. Fortunately, no +one observed this rencounter, or word might have been taken back to the +village that I had become mad. I was once assaulted in a similar way +when sound asleep at night in my tent, and it was only by holding +my blanket over the fire that I could get rid of them. It is really +astonishing how such small bodies can contain so large an amount of +ill-nature. They not only bite, but twist themselves round after the +mandibles are inserted, to produce laceration and pain, more than would +be effected by the single wound. Frequently, while sitting on the ox, +as he happened to tread near a band, they would rush up his legs to the +rider, and soon let him know that he had disturbed their march. They +possess no fear, attacking with equal ferocity the largest as well as +the smallest animals. When any person has leaped over the band, numbers +of them leave the ranks and rush along the path, seemingly anxious for +a fight. They are very useful in ridding the country of dead animal +matter, and, when they visit a human habitation, clear it entirely of +the destructive white ants and other vermin. They destroy many noxious +insects and reptiles. The severity of their attack is greatly increased +by their vast numbers, and rats, mice, lizards, and even the 'Python +natalensis', when in a state of surfeit from recent feeding, fall +victims to their fierce onslaught. These ants never make hills like the +white ant. Their nests are but a short distance beneath the soil, which +has the soft appearance of the abodes of ants in England. Occasionally +they construct galleries over their path to the cells of the white ant, +in order to secure themselves from the heat of the sun during their +marauding expeditions. + +JANUARY 15TH, 1855. We descended in one hour from the heights of Tala +Mungongo. I counted the number of paces made on the slope downward, and +found them to be sixteen hundred, which may give a perpendicular height +of from twelve to fifteen hundred feet. Water boiled at 206 Degrees at +Tala Mungongo above, and at 208 Deg. at the bottom of the declivity, the +air being at 72 Deg. in the shade in the former case, and 94 Deg. in the +latter. The temperature generally throughout the day was from 94 Deg. to +97 Deg. in the coolest shade we could find. + +The rivulets which cut up the valley of Cassange were now dry, but the +Lui and Luare contained abundance of rather brackish water. The banks +are lined with palm, wild date-trees, and many guavas, the fruit of +which was now becoming ripe. A tree much like the mango abounds, but +it does not yield fruit. In these rivers a kind of edible muscle is +plentiful, the shells of which exist in all the alluvial beds of the +ancient rivers as far as the Kuruman. The brackish nature of the water +probably enables it to exist here. On the open grassy lawns great +numbers of a species of lark are seen. They are black, with +yellow shoulders. Another black bird, with a long tail ('Centropus +Senegalensis'), floats awkwardly, with its tail in a perpendicular +position, over the long grass. It always chooses the highest points, +and is caught on them with bird-lime, the long black tail-feathers +being highly esteemed by the natives for plumes. We saw here also the +"Lehututu" ('Tragopan Leadbeaterii'), a large bird strongly resembling +a turkey; it is black on the ground, but when it flies the outer half of +the wings are white. It kills serpents, striking them dexterously behind +the head. It derives its native name from the noise it makes, and it +is found as far as Kolobeng. Another species like it is called the +Abyssinian hornbill. + +Before we reached Cassange we were overtaken by the commandant, Senhor +Carvalho, who was returning, with a detachment of fifty men and a +field-piece, from an unsuccessful search after some rebels. The rebels +had fled, and all he could do was to burn their huts. He kindly invited +me to take up my residence with him; but, not wishing to pass by the +gentleman (Captain Neves) who had so kindly received me on my first +arrival in the Portuguese possessions, I declined. Senhor Rego had been +superseded in his command, because the Governor Amaral, who had come +into office since my departure from Loanda, had determined that the law +which requires the office of commandant to be exclusively occupied by +military officers of the line should once more come into operation. I +was again most kindly welcomed by my friend, Captain Neves, whom I found +laboring under a violent inflammation and abscess of the hand. There +is nothing in the situation of this village to indicate unhealthiness, +except, perhaps, the rank luxuriance of the vegetation. Nearly all +the Portuguese inhabitants suffer from enlargement of the spleen, +the effects of frequent intermittents, and have generally a sickly +appearance. Thinking that this affection of the hand was simply an +effort of nature to get rid of malarious matter from the system, I +recommended the use of quinine. He himself applied the leaf of a plant +called cathory, famed among the natives as an excellent remedy for +ulcers. The cathory leaves, when boiled, exude a gummy juice, which +effectually shuts out the external air. Each remedy, of course, claimed +the merit of the cure. + +Many of the children are cut off by fever. A fine boy of Captain Neves' +had, since my passage westward, shared a similar fate. Another child +died during the period of my visit. During his sickness, his mother, a +woman of color, sent for a diviner in order to ascertain what ought to +be done. The diviner, after throwing his dice, worked himself into the +state of ecstasy in which they pretend to be in communication with the +Barimo. He then gave the oracular response that the child was being +killed by the spirit of a Portuguese trader who once lived at Cassange. +The case was this: on the death of the trader, the other Portuguese +merchants in the village came together, and sold the goods of the +departed to each other, each man accounting for the portion received to +the creditors of the deceased at Loanda. The natives, looking on, +and not understanding the nature of written mercantile transactions, +concluded that the merchants of Cassange had simply stolen the dead +man's goods, and that now the spirit was killing the child of Captain +Neves for the part he had taken in the affair. The diviner, in his +response, revealed the impression made on his own mind by the sale, and +likewise the native ideas of departed souls. As they give the whites +credit for greater stupidity than themselves in all these matters, the +mother of the child came, and told the father that he ought to give a +slave to the diviner as a fee to make a sacrifice to appease the spirit +and save the life of the child. The father quietly sent for a neighbor, +and, though the diviner pretended to remain in his state of ecstasy, the +brisk application of two sticks to his back suddenly reduced him to his +senses and a most undignified flight. + +The mother of this child seemed to have no confidence in European +wisdom, and, though I desired her to keep the child out of currents of +wind, she preferred to follow her own custom, and even got it cupped +on the cheeks. The consequence was that the child was soon in a dying +state, and the father wishing it to be baptized, I commended its soul +to the care and compassion of Him who said, "Of such is the kingdom of +heaven." The mother at once rushed away, and commenced that doleful +wail which is so affecting, as it indicates sorrow without hope. She +continued it without intermission until the child was buried. In the +evening her female companions used a small musical instrument, which +produced a kind of screeching sound, as an accompaniment of the death +wail. + +In the construction of this instrument they make use of caoutchouc, +which, with a variety of other gums, is found in different parts of this +country. + +The intercourse which the natives have had with white men does not seem +to have much ameliorated their condition. A great number of persons are +reported to lose their lives annually in different districts of +Angola by the cruel superstitions to which they are addicted, and the +Portuguese authorities either know nothing of them, or are unable to +prevent their occurrence. The natives are bound to secrecy by those who +administer the ordeal, which generally causes the death of the victim. +A person, when accused of witchcraft, will often travel from distant +districts in order to assert her innocency and brave the test. They come +to a river on the Cassange called Dua, drink the infusion of a poisonous +tree, and perish unknown. + +A woman was accused by a brother-in-law of being the cause of his +sickness while we were at Cassange. She offered to take the ordeal, +as she had the idea that it would but prove her conscious innocence. +Captain Neves refused his consent to her going, and thus saved her life, +which would have been sacrificed, for the poison is very virulent. When +a strong stomach rejects it, the accuser reiterates his charge; the dose +is repeated, and the person dies. Hundreds perish thus every year in the +valley of Cassange. + +The same superstitious ideas being prevalent through the whole of the +country north of the Zambesi, seems to indicate that the people must +originally have been one. All believe that the souls of the departed +still mingle among the living, and partake in some way of the food they +consume. In sickness, sacrifices of fowls and goats are made to appease +the spirits. It is imagined that they wish to take the living away +from earth and all its enjoyments. When one man has killed another, +a sacrifice is made, as if to lay the spirit of the victim. A sect is +reported to exist who kill men in order to take their hearts and offer +them to the Barimo. + +The chieftainship is elective from certain families. Among the Bangalas +of the Cassange valley the chief is chosen from three families in +rotation. A chief's brother inherits in preference to his son. The sons +of a sister belong to her brother; and he often sells his nephews to pay +his debts. By this and other unnatural customs, more than by war, is the +slave-market supplied. + +The prejudices in favor of these practices are very deeply rooted in +the native mind. Even at Loanda they retire out of the city in order +to perform their heathenish rites without the cognizance of the +authorities. Their religion, if such it may be called, is one of dread. +Numbers of charms are employed to avert the evils with which they feel +themselves to be encompassed. Occasionally you meet a man, more cautious +or more timid than the rest, with twenty or thirty charms round his +neck. He seems to act upon the principle of Proclus, in his prayer to +all the gods and goddesses: among so many he surely must have the right +one. The disrespect which Europeans pay to the objects of their fear is +to their minds only an evidence of great folly. + +While here, I reproduced the last of my lost papers and maps; and +as there is a post twice a month from Loanda, I had the happiness to +receive a packet of the "Times", and, among other news, an account of +the Russian war up to the terrible charge of the light cavalry. The +intense anxiety I felt to hear more may be imagined by every true +patriot; but I was forced to brood on in silent thought, and utter my +poor prayers for friends who perchance were now no more, until I reached +the other side of the continent. + +A considerable trade is carried on by the Cassange merchants with all +the surrounding territory by means of native traders, whom they term +"Pombeiros". Two of these, called in the history of Angola "the trading +blacks" (os feirantes pretos), Pedro Joao Baptista and Antonio Jose, +having been sent by the first Portuguese trader that lived at Cassange, +actually returned from some of the Portuguese possessions in the East +with letters from the governor of Mozambique in the year 1815, proving, +as is remarked, "the possibility of so important a communication between +Mozambique and Loanda." This is the only instance of native Portuguese +subjects crossing the continent. No European ever accomplished +it, though this fact has lately been quoted as if the men had been +"PORTUGUESE". + +Captain Neves was now actively engaged in preparing a present, worth +about fifty pounds, to be sent by Pombeiros to Matiamvo. It consisted +of great quantities of cotton cloth, a large carpet, an arm-chair with +a canopy and curtains of crimson calico, an iron bedstead, mosquito +curtains, beads, etc., and a number of pictures rudely painted in oil by +an embryo black painter at Cassange. + +Matiamvo, like most of the natives in the interior of the country, has +a strong desire to possess a cannon, and had sent ten large tusks to +purchase one; but, being government property, it could not be sold: he +was now furnished with a blunderbuss, mounted as a cannon, which would +probably please him as well. + +Senhor Graca and some other Portuguese have visited this chief at +different times; but no European resides beyond the Quango; indeed, it +is contrary to the policy of the government of Angola to allow their +subjects to penetrate further into the interior. The present would have +been a good opportunity for me to have visited that chief, and I +felt strongly inclined to do so, as he had expressed dissatisfaction +respecting my treatment by the Chiboque, and even threatened to punish +them. As it would be improper to force my men to go thither, I +resolved to wait and see whether the proposition might not emanate from +themselves. When I can get the natives to agree in the propriety of any +step, they go to the end of the affair without a murmur. I speak to them +and treat them as rational beings, and generally get on well with them +in consequence. + +I have already remarked on the unhealthiness of Cassange; and Captain +Neves, who possesses an observing turn of mind, had noticed that always +when the west wind blows much fever immediately follows. As long as +easterly winds prevail, all enjoy good health; but in January, February, +March, and April, the winds are variable, and sickness is general. +The unhealthiness of the westerly winds probably results from malaria, +appearing to be heavier than common air, and sweeping down into the +valley of Cassange from the western plateau, somewhat in the same way +as the carbonic acid gas from bean-fields is supposed by colliers to do +into coal-pits. In the west of Scotland strong objections are made by +that body of men to farmers planting beans in their vicinity, from the +belief that they render the mines unhealthy. The gravitation of the +malaria from the more elevated land of Tala Mungongo toward Cassange +is the only way the unhealthiness of this spot on the prevalence of the +westerly winds can be accounted for. The banks of the Quango, though +much more marshy, and covered with ranker vegetation, are comparatively +healthy; but thither the westerly wind does not seem to convey the +noxious agent. + +FEB. 20TH. On the day of starting from Cassange, the westerly wind blew +strongly, and on the day following we were brought to a stand by several +of our party being laid up with fever. This complaint is the only +serious drawback Angola possesses. It is in every other respect an +agreeable land, and admirably adapted for yielding a rich abundance of +tropical produce for the rest of the world. Indeed, I have no hesitation +in asserting that, had it been in the possession of England, it would +now have been yielding as much or more of the raw material for her +manufactures as an equal extent of territory in the cotton-growing +states of America. A railway from Loanda to this valley would secure the +trade of most of the interior of South Central Africa.* + + * The following statistics may be of interest to mercantile + men. They show that since the repression of the slave-trade in + Angola the value of the exports in lawful commerce has + steadily augmented. We have no returns since 1850, but the + prosperity of legitimate trade has suffered no check. The + duties are noted in Portuguese money, "milreis", each of which + is about three shillings in value. + + + Return of the Quantities and Value of the Staple Articles, the + Produce of the Province of ANGOLA, exported from ST. PAUL DE + LOANDA between July 1, 1848, and June 30, 1849, specifying the + Quantities and Value of those exported in Portuguese Ships and + in Ships of other Nations. + + -------------------------------------------------------------------------- + | | In Portuguese Ships. || In Ships of other Nations. | + | Articles. |------------------------||----------------------------| + | | Amount. | Value. || Amount. | Value. | + |-----------------|---------|--------------||-------------|--------------| + | | | L. s. d. || | L. s. d. | + | Ivory. . . Cwt. | 1454 | 35,350 0 0 || 515 | 12,875 0 0 | + | Palm oil . " | 1440 | 2,160 0 0 || 6671 1 qr. | 10,036 17 6 | + | Coffee . . " | 152 | 304 0 0 || 684 | 1,368 0 0 | + | Hides. . . No. | 1837 | 633 17 6 || 849 | 318 17 6 | + | Gum. . . . Cwt. | 147 | 205 16 0 || 4763 | 6,668 4 0 | + | Beeswax. . " | 1109 | 6,654 0 0 || 544 | 3,264 0 0 | + | Orchella . Tons | 630 | 23,940 0 0 || .... | .... | + | | |--------------|| |--------------| + | | | 69,247 13 6 || | 34,530 19 0 | + -------------------------------------------------------------------------- + + TOTAL Quantity and Value of Exports from LOANDA. + + L. s. d. + Ivory . . . Cwt. 1969 . . . . 48,225 0 0 + Palm oil. . " 8111 1 qr. . . . . 12,196 17 6 + Coffee. . . " 836 . . . . 1,672 0 0 + Hides . . . No. 2686 . . . . 952 15 0 + Gum . . . . Cwt. 4910 . . . . 6,874 0 0 + Beeswax . . " 1653 . . . . 9,918 0 0 + Orchella. . Tons 630 . . . . 23,940 0 0 + ------------- + L. 103,778 12 6 + + ABSTRACT VIEW of the Net Revenue of the Customs at St. Paul de Loanda + in quinquennial periods from 1818-19 to 1843-44, both included; + and thence in each year to 1848-49. + + + ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- + | | | | | |Tonnage Dues,| + | | Duties on | Duties on |Duties on | Duties on |Store Rents, | + | Years. | Importation.|Exportation.|Re-export-| Slaves. | and other | + | | | | ation. | | incidental | + | | | | | | Receipts. | + |---------|-------------|------------|----------|------------|-------------| + | | Mil. reis.| Mil. reis.|Mil. reis.| Mil. reis.| Mil. reis.| + | 1818-19 | 573 876 | ... | .... |137,320 800 | 148,608 661 | + | 1823-24 | 3,490 752 | 460 420 | .... |120,843 000 | 133,446 892 | + | 1828-29 | 4,700 684 | 800 280 | .... |125,330 000 | 139,981 364 | + | 1833-34 | 7,490 000 | 1,590 000 | .... |139,280 000 | 158,978 640 | + | 1838-39 | 25,800 590 | 2,720 000 | .... |135,470 320 | 173,710 910 | + | 1843-44 | 53,240 000 | 4,320 000 | .... | 72,195 230 | 138,255 230 | + | 1844-45 | 99,380 264 | 6,995 095 | .... | 17,676 000 | 134,941 359 | + | 1845-46 | 150,233 789 | 9,610 735 | .... | 5,116 500 | 181,423 550 | + | 1846-47 | 122,501 186 | 8,605 821 | .... | 549 000 | 114,599 235 | + | 1847-48 | 119,246 826 | 9,718 676 | 4097 868 | 1,231 200 | 146,321 476 | + | 1848-49 | 131,105 453 | 9,969 960 | 1164 309 | 1,183 500 | 157,152 400 | + | |-------------|------------| |------------| | + | | 717,763 420*| 54,790 987 | |756,195 550 | | + | | = L.102,680 | = L.7827 | |= L.108,028 | | + ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- + * This figure was originally miscalculated as 718,763 420, + which probably affected its conversion into Pounds.--A. L., 1997. + + ------------------------------------------------------------------------- + | | Net Revenue | Revenue from | Total Net | Total Amount | + | Years. | of Customs. | other Sources. | Revenue. | of Charges. | + |---------|--------------|----------------|--------------|--------------| + | | L. s. d. | L. s. d. | L. s. d. | L. s. d. | + | 1844-45 | 26,988 5 5 | 9,701 10 8 | 36,689 16 1 | 53,542 5 4 | + | 1845-46 | 36,284 14 2 | 24,580 4 10 | 60,864 19 0 | 56,695 9 7 | + | 1846-47 | 28,919 16 11 | 23,327 9 11 | 52,247 6 10 | 52,180 9 7 | + | 1847-48 | 29,264 5 10 | 24,490 11 8 | 53,754 17 6 | 53,440 8 8 | + | 1848-49 | 31,430 9 7 | 18,868 3 10 | 51,298 13 5 | 50,686 3 3 | + ------------------------------------------------------------------------- + + + The above account exhibits the total revenue and charges of + the government of St. Paul de Loanda in each year, from 1844- + 45 to 1848-49, both included. The above three tables are + copied from the appendix to a dispatch sent by Mr. Gabriel to + Viscount Palmerston, dated the 5th of August, 1850, and, among + other facts of interest, show a very satisfactory diminution + in the duties upon slaves. + + The returns from 1818 to 1844 have been obtained from + different sources as the average revenue; those from 1844 to + 1849 are from the Custom-house records. + +As soon as we could move toward the Quango we did so, meeting in our +course several trading-parties, both native and Portuguese. We met two +of the latter carrying a tusk weighing 126 lbs. The owner afterward +informed us that its fellow on the left side of the same elephant was +130 lbs. It was 8 feet 6-1/2 inches long, and 21 inches in circumference +at the part on which the lip of the animal rests. The elephant was +rather a small one, as is common in this hot central region. Some idea +may be formed of the strength of his neck when it is recollected that +he bore a weight of 256 lbs. The ivory which comes from the east and +northeast of Cassange is very much larger than any to be found further +south. Captain Neves had one weighing 120 lbs., and this weight is by no +means uncommon. They have been found weighing even 158 lbs. + +Before reaching the Quango we were again brought to a stand by fever +in two of my companions, close to the residence of a Portuguese who +rejoiced in the name of William Tell, and who lived here in spite of the +prohibition of the government. We were using the water of a pond, and +this gentleman, having come to invite me to dinner, drank a little of +it, and caught fever in consequence. If malarious matter existed in +water, it would have been a wonder had we escaped; for, traveling in the +sun, with the thermometer from 96 Degrees to 98 Degrees in the shade, +the evaporation from our bodies causing much thirst, we generally +partook of every water we came to. We had probably thus more disease +than others might suffer who had better shelter. + +Mr. Tell remarked that his garden was rather barren, being still, as +he said, wild; but when more worked it would become better, though no +manure be applied. My men were busy collecting a better breed of fowls +and pigeons than those in their own country. Mr. Tell presented +them with some large specimens from Rio Janeiro. Of these they were +wonderfully proud, and bore the cock in triumph through the country +of the Balonda, as evidence of having been to the sea. But when at the +village of Shinte, a hyaena came into our midst when we were all sound +asleep, and picked out the giant in his basket from eighty-four others, +and he was lost, to the great grief of my men. The anxiety these people +have always shown to improve the breed of their domestic animals is, I +think, a favorable point in their character. On looking at the common +breeds in the possession of the Portuguese, which are merely native +cattle, and seeing them slaughter both heifer-calves and cows, which +they themselves never do, and likewise making no use of the milk, they +concluded that the Portuguese must be an inferior race of white men. +They never ceased remarking on the fine ground for gardens over which +we were passing; and when I happened to mention that most of the flour +which the Portuguese consumed came from another country, they exclaimed, +"Are they ignorant of tillage?" "They know nothing but buying and +selling: they are not men." I hope it may reach the ears of my Angolese +friends, and that they may be stirred up to develop the resources of +their fine country. + +On coming back to Cypriano's village on the 28th, we found that his +step-father had died after we had passed, and, according to the custom +of the country, he had spent more than his patrimony in funeral orgies. +He acted with his wonted kindness, though, unfortunately, drinking +has got him so deeply in debt that he now keeps out of the way of his +creditors. He informed us that the source of the Quango is eight days, +or one hundred miles, to the south of this, and in a range called +Mosamba, in the country of the Basongo. We can see from this a sort +of break in the high land which stretches away round to Tala Mongongo, +through which the river comes. + +A death had occurred in a village about a mile off, and the people were +busy beating drums and firing guns. The funeral rites are half festive, +half mourning, partaking somewhat of the character of an Irish wake. +There is nothing more heart-rending than their death wails. When the +natives turn their eyes to the future world, they have a view cheerless +enough of their own utter helplessness and hopelessness. They fancy +themselves completely in the power of the disembodied spirits, and look +upon the prospect of following them as the greatest of misfortunes. +Hence they are constantly deprecating the wrath of departed souls, +believing that, if they are appeased, there is no other cause of death +but witchcraft, which may be averted by charms. The whole of the colored +population of Angola are sunk in these gross superstitions, but have +the opinion, notwithstanding, that they are wiser in these matters than +their white neighbors. Each tribe has a consciousness of following its +own best interests in the best way. They are by no means destitute of +that self-esteem which is so common in other nations; yet they fear +all manner of phantoms, and have half-developed ideas and traditions of +something or other, they know not what. The pleasures of animal life +are ever present to their minds as the supreme good; and, but for the +innumerable invisibilities, they might enjoy their luxurious climate as +much as it is possible for man to do. I have often thought, in traveling +through their land, that it presents pictures of beauty which angels +might enjoy. How often have I beheld, in still mornings, scenes the very +essence of beauty, and all bathed in a quiet air of delicious warmth! +yet the occasional soft motion imparted a pleasing sensation of coolness +as of a fan. Green grassy meadows, the cattle feeding, the goats +browsing, the kids skipping, the groups of herd-boys with miniature +bows, arrows, and spears; the women wending their way to the river with +watering-pots poised jauntily on their heads; men sewing under the shady +banians; and old gray-headed fathers sitting on the ground, with staff +in hand, listening to the morning gossip, while others carry trees or +branches to repair their hedges; and all this, flooded with the bright +African sunshine, and the birds singing among the branches before the +heat of the day has become intense, form pictures which can never be +forgotten. + +We were informed that a chief named Gando, living on the other side of +the river, having been accused of witchcraft, was killed by the ordeal, +and his body thrown into the Quango. + +The ferrymen demanded thirty yards of calico, but received six +thankfully. The canoes were wretched, carrying only two persons at a +time; but my men being well acquainted with the water, we all got +over in about two hours and a half. They excited the admiration of the +inhabitants by the manner in which they managed the cattle and donkeys +in crossing. The most stubborn of beasts found himself powerless in +their hands. Five or six, seizing hold on one, bundled him at once into +the stream, and, in this predicament, he always thought it best policy +to give in and swim. The men sometimes swam along with the cattle, and +forced them to go on by dashing water at their heads. The difference +between my men and those of the native traders who accompanied us was +never more apparent than now; for, while my men felt an interest in +every thing we possessed in common, theirs were rather glad when the +oxen refused to cross, for, being obliged to slaughter them on such +occasions, the loss to their masters was a welcome feast to themselves. + +On the eastern side of the Quango we passed on, without visiting our +friend of the conical head-dress, to the residence of some Ambakistas +who had crossed the river in order to secure the first chances of trade +in wax. I have before remarked on the knowledge of reading and writing +that these Ambakistas possess; they are famed for their love of all +sorts of learning within their reach, a knowledge of the history of +Portugal, Portuguese law, etc., etc. They are remarkably keen in trade, +and are sometimes called the Jews of Angola. They are employed as clerks +and writers, their feminine delicacy of constitution enabling them to +write a fine lady's hand, a kind of writing much esteemed among the +Portuguese. They are not physically equal to the European Portuguese, +but possess considerable ability; and it is said that half-castes, +in the course of a few generations, return to the black color of the +maternal ancestor. The black population of Angola has become much +deteriorated. They are not so strongly formed as the independent tribes. +A large quantity of aguardiente, an inferior kind of spirit, is imported +into the country, which is most injurious in its effects. We saw many +parties carrying casks of this baneful liquor to the independent chiefs +beyond; and were informed that it is difficult for any trader to convey +it far, carriers being in the habit of helping themselves by means of a +straw, and then injecting an equal amount of water when near the point +of delivery. To prevent this, it is common to see large demijohns +with padlocks on the corks. These are frequently stolen. In fact, the +carriers are much addicted to both lying and thieving, as might be +expected from the lowest class of a people on whom the debasing slave +system has acted for two centuries. + +The Bashinje, in whose country we now are, seem to possess more of the +low negro character and physiognomy than either the Balonda or Basongo; +their color is generally dirty black, foreheads low and compressed, +noses flat and much expanded laterally, though this is partly owing to +the alae spreading over the cheeks, by the custom of inserting bits of +sticks or reeds in the septum; their teeth are deformed by being filed +to points; their lips are large. They make a nearer approach to a +general negro appearance than any tribes I met; but I did not notice +this on my way down. They cultivate pretty largely, and rely upon their +agricultural products for their supplies of salt, flesh, tobacco, etc., +from Bangalas. Their clothing consists of pieces of skin, hung +loosely from the girdle in front and behind. They plait their hair +fantastically. We saw some women coming with their hair woven into the +form of a European hat, and it was only by a closer inspection that its +nature was detected. Others had it arranged in tufts, with a threefold +cord along the ridge of each tuft; while others, again, follow the +ancient Egyptian fashion, having the whole mass of wool plaited into +cords, all hanging down as far as the shoulders. This mode, with the +somewhat Egyptian cast of countenance in other parts of Londa, reminded +me strongly of the paintings of that nation in the British Museum. + +We had now rain every day, and the sky seldom presented that cloudless +aspect and clear blue so common in the dry lands of the south. The +heavens are often overcast by large white motionless masses, which stand +for hours in the same position, and the intervening spaces are filled +with a milk-and-water-looking haze. Notwithstanding these unfavorable +circumstances, I obtained good observations for the longitude of this +important point on both sides of the Quango, and found the river running +in 9d 50' S. lat., 18d 33' E. long. + +On proceeding to our former station near Sansawe's village, he ran to +meet us with wonderful urbanity, asking if we had seen Moene Put, king +of the white men (or Portuguese); and added, on parting, that he would +come to receive his dues in the evening. I replied that, as he had +treated us so scurvily, even forbidding his people to sell us any food, +if he did not bring us a fowl and some eggs as part of his duty as a +chief, he should receive no present from me. When he came, it was in the +usual Londa way of showing the exalted position he occupies, mounted on +the shoulders of his spokesman, as schoolboys sometimes do in England, +and as was represented to have been the case in the southern islands +when Captain Cook visited them. My companions, amused at his idea of +dignity, greeted him with a hearty laugh. He visited the native traders +first, and then came to me with two cocks as a present. I spoke to him +about the impolicy of treatment we had received at his hands, and quoted +the example of the Bangalas, who had been conquered by the Portuguese, +for their extortionate demands of payment for firewood, grass, water, +etc., and concluded by denying his right to any payment for simply +passing through uncultivated land. To all this he agreed; and then I +gave him, as a token of friendship, a pannikin of coarse powder, two +iron spoons, and two yards of coarse printed calico. He looked rather +saucily at these articles, for he had just received a barrel containing +18 lbs. of powder, 24 yards of calico, and two bottles of brandy, from +Senhor Pascoal the Pombeiro. Other presents were added the next day, +but we gave nothing more; and the Pombeiros informed me that it was +necessary to give largely, because they are accompanied by slaves and +carriers who are no great friends to their masters; and if they did not +secure the friendship of these petty chiefs, many slaves and their loads +might be stolen while passing through the forests. It is thus a sort of +black-mail that these insignificant chiefs levy; and the native traders, +in paying, do so simply as a bribe to keep them honest. This chief was +a man of no power, but in our former ignorance of this he plagued us a +whole day in passing. + +Finding the progress of Senhor Pascoal and the other Pombeiros +excessively slow, I resolved to forego his company to Cabango after I +had delivered to him some letters to be sent back to Cassange. I went +forward with the intention of finishing my writing, and leaving a packet +for him at some village. We ascended the eastern acclivity that bounds +the Cassange valley, which has rather a gradual ascent up from the +Quango, and we found that the last ascent, though apparently not quite +so high as that at Tala Mungongo, is actually much higher. The top is +about 5000 feet above the level of the sea, and the bottom 3500 feet; +water boiling on the heights at 202 Deg., the thermometer in the air +showing 96 Deg.; and at the bottom at 205 Deg., the air being 75 Deg. We +had now gained the summit of the western subtending ridge, and began to +descend toward the centre of the country, hoping soon to get out of the +Chiboque territory, which, when we ascended from the Cassange valley, +we had entered; but, on the 19th of April, the intermittent, which had +begun on the 16th of March, was changed into an extremely severe attack +of rheumatic fever. This was brought on by being obliged to sleep on an +extensive plain covered with water. The rain poured down incessantly, +but we formed our beds by dragging up the earth into oblong mounds, +somewhat like graves in a country church-yard, and then placing grass +upon them. The rain continuing to deluge us, we were unable to leave +for two days, but as soon as it became fair we continued our march. The +heavy dew upon the high grass was so cold as to cause shivering, and I +was forced to lie by for eight days, tossing and groaning with violent +pain in the head. This was the most severe attack I had endured. It made +me quite unfit to move, or even know what was passing outside my little +tent. Senhor Pascoal, who had been detained by the severe rain at a +better spot, at last came up, and, knowing that leeches abounded in the +rivulets, procured a number, and applied some dozens to the nape of +the neck and the loins. This partially relieved the pain. He was then +obliged to move forward, in order to purchase food for his large party. +After many days I began to recover, and wished to move on, but my men +objected to the attempt on account of my weakness. When Senhor +Pascoal had been some time at the village in front, as he had received +instructions from his employer, Captain Neves, to aid me as much as +possible, and being himself a kindly-disposed person, he sent back two +messengers to invite me to come on, if practicable. + +It happened that the head man of the village where I had lain twenty-two +days, while bargaining and quarreling in my camp for a piece of meat, +had been struck on the mouth by one of my men. My principal men paid +five pieces of cloth and a gun as an atonement; but the more they +yielded, the more exorbitant he became, and he sent word to all the +surrounding villages to aid him in avenging the affront of a blow on the +beard. As their courage usually rises with success, I resolved to +yield no more, and departed. In passing through a forest in the country +beyond, we were startled by a body of men rushing after us. They began +by knocking down the burdens of the hindermost of my men, and several +shots were fired, each party spreading out on both sides of the path. I +fortunately had a six-barreled revolver, which my friend Captain Henry +Need, of her majesty's brig "Linnet", had considerately sent to Golungo +Alto after my departure from Loanda. Taking this in my hand, and +forgetting fever, I staggered quickly along the path with two or three +of my men, and fortunately encountered the chief. The sight of the six +barrels gaping into his stomach, with my own ghastly visage looking +daggers at his face, seemed to produce an instant revolution in his +martial feelings, for he cried out, "Oh! I have only come to speak to +you, and wish peace only." Mashauana had hold of him by the hand, and +found him shaking. We examined his gun, and found that it had been +discharged. Both parties crowded up to their chiefs. One of the opposite +party coming too near, one of mine drove him back with a battle-axe. The +enemy protested their amicable intentions, and my men asserted the fact +of having the goods knocked down as evidence of the contrary. Without +waiting long, I requested all to sit down, and Pitsane, placing his +hand upon the revolver, somewhat allayed their fears. I then said to the +chief, "If you have come with peaceable intentions, we have no other; go +away home to your village." He replied, "I am afraid lest you shoot me +in the back." I rejoined, "If I wanted to kill you, I could shoot you +in the face as well." Mosantu called out to me, "That's only a Makalaka +trick; don't give him your back." But I said, "Tell him to observe that +I am not afraid of him;" and, turning, mounted my ox. There was not much +danger in the fire that was opened at first, there being so many trees. +The enemy probably expected that the sudden attack would make us forsake +our goods, and allow them to plunder with ease. The villagers were no +doubt pleased with being allowed to retire unscathed, and we were +also glad to get away without having shed a drop of blood, or having +compromised ourselves for any future visit. My men were delighted with +their own bravery, and made the woods ring with telling each other +how "brilliant their conduct before the enemy" would have been, had +hostilities not been brought to a sudden close. + +I do not mention this little skirmish as a very frightful affair. The +negro character in these parts, and in Angola, is essentially cowardly, +except when influenced by success. A partial triumph over any body of +men would induce the whole country to rise in arms, and this is the +chief danger to be feared. These petty chiefs have individually but +little power, and with my men, now armed with guns, I could have easily +beaten them off singly; but, being of the same family, they would +readily unite in vast numbers if incited by prospects of successful +plunder. They are by no means equal to the Cape Caffres in any respect +whatever. + +In the evening we came to Moena Kikanje, and found him a sensible man. +He is the last of the Chiboque chiefs in this direction, and is in +alliance with Matiamvo, whose territory commences a short distance +beyond. His village is placed on the east bank of the Quilo, which is +here twenty yards wide, and breast deep. + +The country was generally covered with forest, and we slept every night +at some village. I was so weak, and had become so deaf from the effects +of the fever, that I was glad to avail myself of the company of Senhor +Pascoal and the other native traders. Our rate of traveling was only two +geographical miles per hour, and the average number of hours three and +a half per day, or seven miles. Two thirds of the month was spent +in stoppages, there being only ten traveling days in each month. The +stoppages were caused by sickness, and the necessity of remaining in +different parts to purchase food; and also because, when one carrier was +sick, the rest refused to carry his load. + +One of the Pombeiros had eight good-looking women in a chain whom he was +taking to the country of Matiamvo to sell for ivory. They always looked +ashamed when I happened to come near them, and must have felt keenly +their forlorn and degraded position. I believe they were captives taken +from the rebel Cassanges. The way in which slaves are spoken of in +Angola and eastern Africa must sound strangely even to the owners when +they first come from Europe. In Angola the common appellation is "o +diabo", or "brutu"; and it is quite usual to hear gentlemen call out, "O +diabo! bring fire." In eastern Africa, on the contrary, they apply the +term "bicho" (an animal), and you hear the phrase, "Call the ANIMAL to +do this or that." In fact, slave-owners come to regard their slaves +as not human, and will curse them as the "race of a dog". Most of the +carriers of my traveling companions were hired Basongo, and required +constant vigilance to prevent them stealing the goods they carried. +Salt, which is one of the chief articles conveyed into the country, +became considerably lighter as we went along, but the carriers shielded +themselves by saying that it had been melted by the rain. Their burdens +were taken from them every evening, and placed in security under the +guardianship of Senhor Pascoal's own slaves. It was pitiable to observe +the worrying life he led. There was the greatest contrast possible +between the conduct of his people and that of my faithful Makololo. + +We crossed the Loange, a deep but narrow stream, by a bridge. It becomes +much larger, and contains hippopotami, lower down. It is the boundary of +Londa on the west. We slept also on the banks of the Pezo, now flooded, +and could not but admire their capabilities for easy irrigation. On +reaching the River Chikapa (lat. 10d 10' S., long. 19d 42' E.), the 25th +of March, we found it fifty or sixty yards wide, and flowing E.N.E. into +the Kasai. The adjacent country is of the same level nature as that part +of Londa formerly described; but, having come farther to the eastward +than our previous course, we found that all the rivers had worn for +themselves much deeper valleys than at the points we had formerly +crossed them. + +Surrounded on all sides by large gloomy forests, the people of these +parts have a much more indistinct idea of the geography of their country +than those who live in hilly regions. It was only after long and patient +inquiry that I became fully persuaded that the Quilo runs into the +Chikapa. As we now crossed them both considerably farther down, and were +greatly to the eastward of our first route, there can be no doubt that +these rivers take the same course as the others, into the Kasai, and +that I had been led into a mistake in saying that any of them flowed to +the westward. Indeed, it was only at this time that I began to perceive +that all the western feeders of the Kasai, except the Quango, flow first +from the western side toward the centre of the country, then gradually +turn, with the Kasai itself, to the north; and, after the confluence of +the Kasai with the Quango, an immense body of water, collected from all +these branches, finds its way out of the country by means of the River +Congo or Zaire on the west coast. + +The people living along the path we are now following were quite +accustomed to the visits of native traders, and did not feel in any way +bound to make presents of food except for the purpose of cheating: thus, +a man gave me a fowl and some meal, and, after a short time, returned. +I offered him a handsome present of beads; but these he declined, and +demanded a cloth instead, which was far more than the value of his +gift. They did the same with my men, until we had to refuse presents +altogether. Others made high demands because I slept in a "house of +cloth", and must be rich. They seemed to think that they had a perfect +right to payment for simply passing through the country. + +Beyond the Chikapa we crossed the Kamaue, a small deep stream proceeding +from the S.S.W., and flowing into the Chikapa. + +On the 30th of April we reached the Loajima, where we had to form a +bridge to effect our passage. This was not so difficult an operation +as some might imagine; for a tree was growing in a horizontal position +across part of the stream, and, there being no want of the tough +climbing plants which admit of being knitted like ropes, Senhor P. soon +constructed a bridge. The Loajima was here about twenty-five yards wide, +but very much deeper than where I had crossed before on the shoulders of +Mashauana. The last rain of this season had fallen on the 28th, and +had suddenly been followed by a great decrease of the temperature. The +people in these parts seemed more slender in form, and their color a +lighter olive, than any we had hitherto met. The mode of dressing the +great masses of woolly hair which lay upon their shoulders, together +with their general features, again reminded me of the ancient Egyptians. +Several were seen with the upward inclination of the outer angles of +the eye, but this was not general. A few of the ladies adopt a curious +custom of attaching the hair to a hoop which encircles the head, giving +it somewhat the appearance of the glory round the head of the Virgin +(wood-cut No. 1*). Some have a small hoop behind that represented in the +wood-cut. Others wear an ornament of woven hair and hide adorned with +beads. The hair of the tails of buffaloes, which are to be found farther +east, is sometimes added. This is represented in No. 2. While others, +as in No. 3, weave their own hair on pieces of hide into the form +of buffalo horns; or, as in No. 4, make a single horn in front. The +features given are frequently met with, but they are by no means +universal. Many tattoo their bodies by inserting some black substance +beneath the skin, which leaves an elevated cicatrix about half an inch +long: these are made in the form of stars, and other figures of no +particular beauty. + + * Unfortunately these wood-cuts can not be represented in this + ASCII text. + + No. 1 appears like a wheel with spokes of hair + connecting it to the head. + + No. 2 appears somewhat like a tiara sloped forward, as the bow + of a ship. + + No. 3 appears like gently curving horns. There is a part in + the middle, and the hair, on leather frames, curls outward and + upward at the temples. + + No. 4 is likewise, but the single horn curves outward and + upward from the forehead--it is labelled "A Young Man's + Fashion". Except for No. 1, all are represented as having the + rest of their hair hanging in braids around the sides and + back. All of the faces, as Livingstone asserts, appear much + like paintings of ancient Egyptians, and could easily be + European except for the shading and the slanted eyes. They are + all handsome.--A. L., 1997. + + + + +Chapter 23. + +Make a Detour southward--Peculiarities of the Inhabitants--Scarcity of +Animals--Forests--Geological Structure of the Country--Abundance and +Cheapness of Food near the Chihombo--A Slave lost--The Makololo Opinion +of Slaveholders--Funeral Obsequies in Cabango--Send a Sketch of the +Country to Mr. Gabriel--Native Information respecting the Kasai and +Quango--The Trade with Luba--Drainage of Londa--Report of Matiamvo's +Country and Government--Senhor Faria's Present to a Chief--The Balonda +Mode of spending Time--Faithless Guide--Makololo lament the Ignorance +of the Balonda--Eagerness of the Villagers for Trade--Civility of +a Female Chief--The Chief Bango and his People--Refuse to eat +Beef--Ambition of Africans to have a Village--Winters in the +Interior--Spring at Kolobeng--White Ants: "Never could desire to eat +any thing better"--Young Herbage and Animals--Valley of the Loembwe-- +The white Man a Hobgoblin--Specimen of Quarreling--Eager Desire for +Calico--Want of Clothing at Kawawa's--Funeral Observances--Agreeable +Intercourse with Kawawa--His impudent Demand--Unpleasant +Parting--Kawawa tries to prevent our crossing the River +Kasai--Stratagem. + + + +We made a little detour to the southward in order to get provisions in +a cheaper market. This led us along the rivulet called Tamba, where +we found the people, who had not been visited so frequently by the +slave-traders as the rest, rather timid and very civil. It was agreeable +to get again among the uncontaminated, and to see the natives look at us +without that air of superciliousness which is so unpleasant and common +in the beaten track. The same olive color prevailed. They file their +teeth to a point, which makes the smile of the women frightful, as it +reminds one of the grin of an alligator. The inhabitants throughout this +country exhibit as great a variety of taste as appears on the surface +of society among ourselves. Many of the men are dandies; their shoulders +are always wet with the oil dropping from their lubricated hair, and +every thing about them is ornamented in one way or another. Some thrum +a musical instrument the livelong day, and, when they wake at night, +proceed at once to their musical performance. Many of these musicians +are too poor to have iron keys to their instrument, but make them of +bamboo, and persevere, though no one hears the music but themselves. +Others try to appear warlike by never going out of their huts except +with a load of bows and arrows, or a gun ornamented with a strip of hide +for every animal they have shot; and others never go any where without a +canary in a cage. Ladies may be seen carefully tending little lap-dogs, +which are intended to be eaten. Their villages are generally in forests, +and composed of groups of irregularly-planted brown huts, with banana +and cotton trees, and tobacco growing around. There is also at every +hut a high stage erected for drying manioc roots and meal, and elevated +cages to hold domestic fowls. Round baskets are laid on the thatch of +the huts for the hens to lay in, and on the arrival of strangers, men, +women, and children ply their calling as hucksters with a great deal of +noisy haggling; all their transactions are conducted with civil banter +and good temper. + +My men, having the meat of the oxen which we slaughtered from time to +time for sale, were entreated to exchange it for meal; no matter how +small the pieces offered were, it gave them pleasure to deal. + +The landscape around is green, with a tint of yellow, the grass long, +the paths about a foot wide, and generally worn deeply in the middle. +The tall overhanging grass, when brushed against by the feet and legs, +disturbed the lizards and mice, and occasionally a serpent, causing a +rustling among the herbage. There are not many birds; every animal is +entrapped and eaten. Gins are seen on both sides of the path every ten +or fifteen yards, for miles together. The time and labor required to dig +up moles and mice from their burrows would, if applied to cultivation, +afford food for any amount of fowls or swine, but the latter are seldom +met with. + +We passed on through forests abounding in climbing-plants, many of which +are so extremely tough that a man is required to go in front with a +hatchet; and when the burdens of the carriers are caught, they are +obliged to cut the climbers with their teeth, for no amount of tugging +will make them break. The paths in all these forests are so zigzag that +a person may imagine he has traveled a distance of thirty miles, which, +when reckoned as the crow flies, may not be fifteen. + +We reached the River Moamba (lat. 9d 38' S., long. 20d 13' 34" E.) on +the 7th May. This is a stream of thirty yards wide, and, like the Quilo, +Loange, Chikapa, and Loajima, contains both alligators and hippopotami. +We crossed it by means of canoes. Here, as on the slopes down to the +Quilo and Chikapa, we had an opportunity of viewing the geological +structure of the country--a capping of ferruginous conglomerate, which +in many parts looks as if it had been melted, for the rounded nodules +resemble masses of slag, and they have a smooth scale on the surface; +but in all probability it is an aqueous deposit, for it contains +water-worn pebbles of all sorts, and generally small. Below this +mass lies a pale red hardened sandstone, and beneath that a trap-like +whinstone. Lowest of all lies a coarse-grained sandstone containing +a few pebbles, and, in connection with it, a white calcareous rock is +occasionally met with, and so are banks of loose round quartz pebbles. +The slopes are longer from the level country above the further we go +eastward, and every where we meet with circumscribed bogs on them, +surrounded by clumps of straight, lofty evergreen trees, which look +extremely graceful on a ground of yellowish grass. Several of these +bogs pour forth a solution of iron, which exhibits on its surface the +prismatic colors. The level plateaus between the rivers, both east and +west of the Moamba, across which we traveled, were less woody than the +river glens. The trees on them are scraggy and wide apart. There are +also large open grass-covered spaces, with scarcely even a bush. On +these rather dreary intervals between the rivers it was impossible not +to be painfully struck with the absence of all animal life. Not a bird +was to be seen, except occasionally a tomtit, some of the 'Sylviadae' +and 'Drymoica', also a black bird ('Dicrurus Ludwigii', Smith) common +throughout the country. We were gladdened by the voice of birds only +near the rivers, and there they are neither numerous nor varied. The +Senegal longclaw, however, maintains its place, and is the largest bird +seen. We saw a butcher-bird in a trap as we passed. There are remarkably +few small animals, they having been hunted almost to extermination, +and few insects except ants, which abound in considerable number and +variety. There are scarcely any common flies to be seen, nor are we ever +troubled by mosquitoes. + +The air is still, hot, and oppressive; the intensely bright sunlight +glances peacefully on the evergreen forest leaves, and all feel glad +when the path comes into the shade. The want of life in the scenery made +me long to tread again the banks of the Zambesi, and see the graceful +antelopes feeding beside the dark buffaloes and sleek elands. Here +hippopotami are known to exist only by their footprints on the banks. +Not one is ever seen to blow or put his head up at all; they have +learned to breathe in silence and keep out of sight. We never heard one +uttering the snorting sound so common on the Zambesi. + +We crossed two small streams, the Kanesi and Fombeji, before reaching +Cabango, a village situated on the banks of the Chihombo. The country +was becoming more densely peopled as we proceeded, but it bears no +population compared to what it might easily sustain. Provisions were to +be had in great abundance; a fowl and basket of meal weighing 20 lbs. +were sold for a yard and a half of very inferior cotton cloth, worth +not more than threepence. An idea of the cheapness of food may be formed +from the fact that Captain Neves purchased 380 lbs. of tobacco from the +Bangalas for about two pounds sterling. This, when carried into central +Londa, might purchase seven thousand five hundred fowls, or feed with +meal and fowls seven thousand persons for one day, giving each a fowl +and 5 lbs. of meal. When food is purchased here with either salt or +coarse calico, four persons can be well fed with animal and vegetable +food at the rate of one penny a day. The chief vegetable food is the +manioc and lotsa meal. These contain a very large proportion of starch, +and, when eaten alone for any length of time produce most distressing +heartburn. As we ourselves experienced in coming north, they also cause +a weakness of vision, which occurs in the case of animals fed on pure +gluten or amylaceous matter only. I now discovered that when these +starchy substances are eaten along with a proportion of ground-nuts, +which contain a considerable quantity of oil, no injurious effects +follow. + +While on the way to Cabango we saw fresh tracks of elands, the first +we had observed in this country. A poor little slave girl, being ill, +turned aside in the path, and, though we waited all the next day making +search for her, she was lost. She was tall and slender for her age, as +if of too quick growth, and probably, unable to bear the fatigue of the +march, lay down and slept in the forest, then, waking in the dark, went +farther and farther astray. The treatment of the slaves witnessed by +my men certainly did not raise slaveholders in their estimation. Their +usual exclamation was "Ga ba na pelu" (They have no heart); and they +added, with reference to the slaves, "Why do they let them?" as if they +thought that the slaves had the natural right to rid the world of such +heartless creatures, and ought to do it. The uneasiness of the trader +was continually showing itself, and, upon the whole, he had reason to +be on the alert both day and night. The carriers perpetually stole the +goods intrusted to their care, and he could not openly accuse them, lest +they should plunder him of all, and leave him quite in the lurch. He +could only hope to manage them after getting all the remaining goods +safely into a house in Cabango; he might then deduct something from +their pay for what they had purloined on the way. + +Cabango (lat. 9d 31' S., long. 20d 31' or 32' E.) is the dwelling-place +of Muanzanza, one of Matiamvo's subordinate chiefs. His village consists +of about two hundred huts and ten or twelve square houses, constructed +of poles with grass interwoven. The latter are occupied by half-caste +Portuguese from Ambaca, agents for the Cassange traders. The cold in the +mornings was now severe to the feelings, the thermometer ranging from 58 +Deg. to 60 Deg., though, when protected, sometimes standing as high +as 64 Deg. at six A.M. When the sun is well up, the thermometer in the +shade rises to 80 Deg., and in the evenings it is about 78 Deg. + +A person having died in this village, we could transact no business with +the chief until the funeral obsequies were finished. These occupy about +four days, during which there is a constant succession of dancing, +wailing, and feasting. Guns are fired by day, and drums beaten by night, +and all the relatives, dressed in fantastic caps, keep up the ceremonies +with spirit proportionate to the amount of beer and beef expended. When +there is a large expenditure, the remark is often made afterward, "What +a fine funeral that was!" A figure, consisting chiefly of feathers and +beads, is paraded on these occasions, and seems to be regarded as an +idol. + +Having met with an accident to one of my eyes by a blow from a branch in +passing through a forest, I remained some days here, endeavoring, though +with much pain, to draw a sketch of the country thus far, to be sent +back to Mr. Gabriel at Loanda. I was always anxious to transmit an +account of my discoveries on every possible occasion, lest, any thing +happening in the country to which I was going, they should be entirely +lost. I also fondly expected a packet of letters and papers which my +good angel at Loanda would be sure to send if they came to hand, but I +afterward found that, though he had offered a large sum to any one who +would return with an assurance of having delivered the last packet he +sent, no one followed me with it to Cabango. The unwearied attentions +of this good Englishman, from his first welcome to me when, a weary, +dejected, and worn-down stranger, I arrived at his residence, and his +whole subsequent conduct, will be held in lively remembrance by me to my +dying day. + +Several of the native traders here having visited the country of Luba, +lying far to the north of this, and there being some visitors also from +the town of Mai, which is situated far down the Kasai, I picked up some +information respecting those distant parts. In going to the town of Mai +the traders crossed only two large rivers, the Loajima and Chihombo. The +Kasai flows a little to the east of the town of Mai, and near it there +is a large waterfall. They describe the Kasai as being there of very +great size, and that it thence bends round to the west. On asking an +old man, who was about to return to his chief Mai, to imagine himself +standing at his home, and point to the confluence of the Quango and +Kasai, he immediately turned, and, pointing to the westward, said, "When +we travel five days (thirty-five or forty miles) in that direction, we +come to it." He stated also that the Kasai received another river, named +the Lubilash. There is but one opinion among the Balonda respecting the +Kasai and Quango. They invariably describe the Kasai as receiving +the Quango, and, beyond the confluence, assuming the name of Zaire or +Zerezere. And the Kasai, even previous to the junction, is much larger +than the Quango, from the numerous branches it receives. Besides those +we have already crossed, there is the Chihombo at Cabango; and forty-two +miles beyond this, eastward, runs the Kasai itself; fourteen miles +beyond that, the Kaunguesi; then, forty-two miles farther east, flows +the Lolua; besides numbers of little streams, all of which contribute to +swell the Kasai. + +About thirty-four miles east of the Lolua, or a hundred and thirty-two +miles E.N.E. of Cabango, stands the town of Matiamvo, the paramount +chief of all the Balonda. The town of Mai is pointed out as to the +N.N.W. of Cabango, and thirty-two days or two hundred and twenty-four +miles distant, or about lat. S. 5d 45'. The chief town of Luba, another +independent chief, is eight days farther in the same direction, or lat. +S. 4d 50'. Judging from the appearance of the people who had come for +the purposes of trade from Mai, those in the north are in quite as +uncivilized a condition as the Balonda. They are clad in a kind of cloth +made of the inner bark of a tree. Neither guns nor native traders are +admitted into the country, the chief of Luba entertaining a dread of +innovation. If a native trader goes thither, he must dress like the +common people in Angola, in a loose robe resembling a kilt. The chief +trades in shells and beads only. His people kill the elephants by means +of spears, poisoned arrows, and traps. All assert that elephants' tusks +from that country are heavier and of greater length than any others. + +It is evident, from all the information I could collect both here and +elsewhere, that the drainage of Londa falls to the north and then runs +westward. The countries of Luba and Mai are evidently lower than this, +and yet this is of no great altitude--probably not much more than 3500 +feet above the level of the sea. Having here received pretty certain +information on a point in which I felt much interest, namely, that the +Kasai is not navigable from the coast, owing to the large waterfall near +the town of Mai, and that no great kingdom exists in the region beyond, +between this and the equator, I would fain have visited Matiamvo. This +seemed a very desirable step, as it is good policy as well as right +to acknowledge the sovereign of a country; and I was assured, both by +Balonda and native traders, that a considerable branch of the Zambesi +rises in the country east of his town, and flows away to the south. The +whole of this branch, extending down even to where it turns westward to +Masiko, is probably placed too far eastward on the map. It was put down +when I believed Matiamvo and Cazembe to be farther east than I have +since seen reason to believe them. All, being derived from native +testimony, is offered to the reader with diffidence, as needing +verification by actual explorers. The people of that part, named Kanyika +and Kanyoka, living on its banks, are represented as both numerous and +friendly, but Matiamvo will on no account permit any white person to +visit them, as his principal supplies of ivory are drawn from them. +Thinking that we might descend this branch of the Zambesi to Masiko, and +thence to the Barotse, I felt a strong inclination to make the attempt. +The goods, however, we had brought with us to pay our way, had, by the +long detention from fever and weakness in both myself and men, dwindled +to a mere fragment; and, being but slightly acquainted with the Balonda +dialect, I felt that I could neither use persuasion nor presents to +effect my object. From all I could hear of Matiamvo, there was no chance +of my being allowed to proceed through his country to the southward. If +I had gone merely to visit him, all the goods would have been expended +by the time I returned to Cabango; and we had not found mendicity so +pleasant on our way to the north as to induce us to desire to return to +it. + +The country of Matiamvo is said to be well peopled, but they have little +or no trade. They receive calico, salt, gunpowder, coarse earthenware, +and beads, and give in return ivory and slaves. They possess no cattle, +Matiamvo alone having a single herd, which he keeps entirely for +the sake of the flesh. The present chief is said to be mild in his +government, and will depose an under-chief for unjust conduct. He +occasionally sends the distance of a hundred miles or more to behead an +offending officer. But, though I was informed by the Portuguese that he +possesses absolute power, his name had less influence over his subjects +with whom I came in contact than that of Sekeletu has over his people +living at a much greater distance from the capital. + +As we thought it best to strike away to the S.E. from Cabango to our +old friend Katema, I asked a guide from Muanzanza as soon as the funeral +proceedings were over. He agreed to furnish one, and also accepted a +smaller present from me than usual, when it was represented to him by +Pascoal and Faria that I was not a trader. He seemed to regard these +presents as his proper dues; and as a cargo of goods had come by Senhor +Pascoal, he entered the house for the purpose of receiving his share, +when Senhor Faria gravely presented him with the commonest earthenware +vessel, of which great numbers are brought for this trade. The chief +received it with expressions of abundant gratitude, as these vessels are +highly valued, because from their depth they can hold so much food or +beer. The association of ideas is sometimes so very ludicrous that it is +difficult to maintain one's gravity. + +Several of the children of the late Matiamvo came to beg from me, but +never to offer any food. Having spoken to one young man named Liula +(Heavens) about their stinginess, he soon brought bananas and manioc. +I liked his appearance and conversation, and believe that the Balonda +would not be difficult to teach, but their mode of life would be a +drawback. The Balonda in this quarter are much more agreeable-looking +than any of the inhabitants nearer the coast. The women allow their +teeth to remain in their beautifully white state, and would be comely +but for the custom of inserting pieces of reed into the cartilage of the +nose. They seem generally to be in good spirits, and spend their time in +everlasting talk, funeral ceremonies, and marriages. This flow of animal +spirits must be one reason why they are such an indestructible race. The +habitual influence on their minds of the agency of unseen spirits may +have a tendency in the same direction, by preserving the mental quietude +of a kind of fatalism. + +We were forced to prepay our guide and his father too, and he went but +one day, although he promised to go with us to Katema. He was not in the +least ashamed at breaking his engagements, and probably no disgrace will +be attached to the deed by Muanzanza. Among the Bakwains he would have +been punished. My men would have stripped him of the wages which he wore +on his person, but thought that, as we had always acted on the mildest +principles, they would let him move off with his unearned gains. + +They frequently lamented the want of knowledge in these people, saying, +in their own tongue, "Ah! they don't know that we are men as well as +they, and that we are only bearing with their insolence with patience +because we are men." Then would follow a hearty curse, showing that the +patience was nearly expended; but they seldom quarreled in the language +of the Balonda. The only one who ever lost his temper was the man who +struck a head man of one of the villages on the mouth, and he was the +most abject individual in our company. + +The reason why we needed a guide at all was to secure the convenience +of a path, which, though generally no better than a sheep-walk, is much +easier than going straight in one direction, through tangled forests and +tropical vegetation. We knew the general direction we ought to follow, +and also if any deviation occurred from our proper route; but, to avoid +impassable forests and untreadable bogs, and to get to the proper +fords of the rivers, we always tried to procure a guide, and he always +followed the common path from one village to another when that lay in +the direction we were going. + +After leaving Cabango on the 21st, we crossed several little streams +running into the Chihombo on our left, and in one of them I saw tree +ferns ('Cyathea dregei') for the first time in Africa. The trunk was +about four feet high and ten inches in diameter. We saw also grass trees +of two varieties, which, in damp localities, had attained a height of +forty feet. On crossing the Chihombo, which we did about twelve miles +above Cabango, we found it waist-deep and rapid. We were delighted to +see the evidences of buffalo and hippopotami on its banks. As soon as we +got away from the track of the slave-traders, the more kindly spirit of +the southern Balonda appeared, for an old man brought a large present of +food from one of the villages, and volunteered to go as guide himself. +The people, however, of the numerous villages which we passed always +made efforts to detain us, that they might have a little trade in the +way of furnishing our suppers. At one village, indeed, they would not +show us the path at all unless we remained at least a day with them. +Having refused, we took a path in the direction we ought to go, but it +led us into an inextricable thicket. Returning to the village again, we +tried another footpath in a similar direction, but this led us into an +equally impassable and trackless forest. We were thus forced to come +back and remain. In the following morning they put us in the proper +path, which in a few hours led us through a forest that would otherwise +have taken us days to penetrate. + +Beyond this forest we found the village of Nyakalonga, a sister of the +late Matiamvo, who treated us handsomely. She wished her people to guide +us to the next village, but this they declined unless we engaged in +trade. She then requested us to wait an hour or two till she could get +ready a present of meal, manioc roots, ground-nuts, and a fowl. It was +truly pleasant to meet with people possessing some civility, after the +hauteur we had experienced on the slave-path. She sent her son to the +next village without requiring payment. The stream which ran past her +village was quite impassable there, and for a distance of about a mile +on either side, the bog being soft and shaky, and, when the crust was +broken through, about six feet deep. + +On the 28th we reached the village of the chief Bango (lat. 12d 22' 53" +S., long. 20d 58' E.), who brought us a handsome present of meal, and +the meat of an entire pallah. We here slaughtered the last of the cows +presented to us by Mr. Schut, which I had kept milked until it gave only +a teaspoonful at a time. My men enjoyed a hearty laugh when they found +that I had given up all hope of more, for they had been talking among +themselves about my perseverance. We offered a leg of the cow to Bango, +but he informed us that neither he nor his people ever partook of beef, +as they looked upon cattle as human, and living at home like men. None +of his people purchased any of the meat, which was always eagerly done +every where else. There are several other tribes who refuse to keep +cattle, though not to eat them when offered by others, because, say +they, oxen bring enemies and war; but this is the first instance I have +met with in which they have been refused as food. The fact of killing +the pallahs for food shows that the objection does not extend to meat in +general. + +The little streams in this part of the country did not flow in deep +dells, nor were we troubled with the gigantic grasses which annoyed our +eyes on the slopes of the streams before we came to Cabango. The country +was quite flat, and the people cultivated manioc very extensively. There +is no large collection of the inhabitants in any one spot. The ambition +of each seems to be to have his own little village; and we see many +coming from distant parts with the flesh of buffaloes and antelopes as +the tribute claimed by Bango. We have now entered again the country of +the game, but they are so exceedingly shy that we have not yet seen a +single animal. The arrangement into many villages pleases the Africans +vastly, for every one who has a few huts under him feels himself in +some measure to be a chief. The country at this time is covered with +yellowish grass quite dry. Some of the bushes and trees are green; +others are shedding their leaves, the young buds pushing off the old +foliage. Trees, which in the south stand bare during the winter months, +have here but a short period of leaflessness. Occasionally, however, a +cold north wind comes up even as far as Cabango, and spreads a wintry +aspect on all the exposed vegetation. The tender shoots of the evergreen +trees on the south side become as if scorched; the leaves of manioc, +pumpkins, and other tender plants are killed; while the same kinds, in +spots sheltered by forests, continue green through the whole year. All +the interior of South Africa has a distinct winter of cold, varying in +intensity with the latitudes. In the central parts of the Cape Colony +the cold in the winter is often severe, and the ground is covered with +snow. At Kuruman snow seldom falls, but the frost is keen. There is +frost even as far as the Chobe, and a partial winter in the Barotse +valley, but beyond the Orange River we never have cold and damp +combined. Indeed, a shower of rain seldom or never falls during winter, +and hence the healthiness of the Bechuana climate. From the Barotse +valley northward it is questionable if it ever freezes; but, during the +prevalence of the south wind, the thermometer sinks as low as 42 Deg., +and conveys the impression of bitter cold. + +Nothing can exceed the beauty of the change from the wintry appearance +to that of spring at Kolobeng. Previous to the commencement of the +rains, an easterly wind blows strongly by day, but dies away at night. +The clouds collect in increasing masses, and relieve in some measure +the bright glare of the southern sun. The wind dries up every thing, +and when at its greatest strength is hot, and raises clouds of dust. +The general temperature during the day rises above 96 Deg.: then showers +begin to fall; and if the ground is but once well soaked with a good +day's rain, the change produced is marvelous. In a day or two a tinge +of green is apparent all over the landscape, and in five or six days the +fresh leaves sprouting forth, and the young grass shooting up, give +an appearance of spring which it requires weeks of a colder climate to +produce. The birds, which in the hot, dry, windy season had been silent, +now burst forth into merry twittering songs, and are busy building their +nests. Some of them, indeed, hatch several times a year. The lowering of +the temperature, by rains or other causes, has much the same effect as +the increasing mildness of our own spring. The earth teems with myriads +of young insects; in some parts of the country hundreds of centipedes, +myriapedes, and beetles emerge from their hiding-places, somewhat as +our snails at home do; and in the evenings the white ants swarm by +thousands. A stream of them is seen to rush out of a hole, and, after +flying one or two hundred yards, they descend; and if they light upon a +piece of soil proper for the commencement of a new colony, they bend +up their tails, unhook their wings, and, leaving them on the surface, +quickly begin their mining operations. If an attempt is made to separate +the wings from the body by drawing them away backward, they seem as if +hooked into the body, and tear away large portions of the insect; but if +turned forward, as the ant itself does, they snap off with the greatest +ease. Indeed, they seem formed only to serve the insect in its short +flight to a new habitation, and then to be thrown aside. Nothing can +exceed the eagerness with which, at the proper time, they rush out from +their birth-place. Occasionally this occurs in a house, and then, in +order to prevent every corner from being filled with them, I have seen a +fire placed over the orifice; but they hesitate not even to pass through +the fire. While swarming they appear like snow-flakes floating about +in the air, and dogs, cats, hawks, and almost every bird, may be seen +busily devouring them. The natives, too, profit by the occasion, and +actively collect them for food, they being about half an inch long, as +thick as a crow-quill, and very fat. When roasted they are said to be +good, and somewhat resemble grains of boiled rice. An idea may be +formed of this dish by what once occurred on the banks of the Zouga. +The Bayeiye chief Palani visiting us while eating, I gave him a piece +of bread and preserved apricots; and as he seemed to relish it much, I +asked him if he had any food equal to that in his country. "Ah!" said +he, "did you ever taste white ants?" As I never had, he replied, "Well, +if you had, you never could have desired to eat any thing better." The +general way of catching them is to dig into the ant-hill, and wait +till the builders come forth to repair the damage, then brush them off +quickly into a vessel, as the ant-eater does into his mouth. + +The fall of the rain makes all the cattle look fresh and clean, and both +men and women proceed cheerily to their already hoed gardens, and sow +the seed. The large animals in the country leave the spots where they +had been compelled to congregate for the sake of water, and become much +wilder. Occasionally a herd of buffaloes or antelopes smell rain from +afar, and set off in a straight line toward the place. Sometimes they +make mistakes, and are obliged to return to the water they had left. + +Very large tracts of country are denuded of old grass during the winter +by means of fire, in order to attract the game to that which there +springs up unmixed with the older crop. This new herbage has a +renovating tendency, for as long as they feed on the dry grass of the +former season they continue in good condition; but no sooner are they +able to indulge their appetites on the fresh herbage, than even the +marrow in their bones becomes dissolved, and a red, soft, uneatable mass +is left behind. After this commences the work of regaining their former +plumpness. + +MAY 30TH. We left Bango, and proceeded to the River Loembwe, which flows +to the N.N.E., and abounds in hippopotami. It is about sixty yards wide, +and four feet deep, but usually contains much less water than this, for +there are fishing-weirs placed right across it. Like all the African +rivers in this quarter, it has morasses on each bank, yet the valley +in which it winds, when seen from the high lands above, is extremely +beautiful. This valley is about the fourth of a mile wide, and it was +easy to fancy the similarity of many spots on it to the goodly manors in +our own country, and feel assured that there was still ample territory +left for an indefinite increase of the world's population. The villages +are widely apart and difficult of access, from the paths being so +covered with tall grass that even an ox can scarcely follow the track. +The grass cuts the feet of the men; yet we met a woman with a little +child, and a girl, wending their way home with loads of manioc. The +sight of a white man always infuses a tremor into their dark bosoms, and +in every case of the kind they appeared immensely relieved when I had +fairly passed without having sprung upon them. In the villages the dogs +run away with their tails between their legs, as if they had seen a +lion. The women peer from behind the walls till he comes near them, and +then hastily dash into the house. When a little child, unconscious of +danger, meets you in the street, he sets up a scream at the apparition, +and conveys the impression that he is not far from going into fits. +Among the Bechuanas I have been obliged to reprove the women for making +a hobgoblin of the white man, and telling their children that they would +send for him to bite them. + +Having passed the Loembwe, we were in a more open country, with every +few hours a small valley, through which ran a little rill in the middle +of a bog. These were always difficult to pass, and being numerous, kept +the lower part of the person constantly wet. At different points in +our course we came upon votive offerings to the Barimo. These usually +consisted of food; and every deserted village still contained the idols +and little sheds with pots of medicine in them. One afternoon we +passed a small frame house with the head of an ox in it as an object +of worship. The dreary uniformity of gloomy forests and open flats must +have a depressing influence on the minds of the people. Some villages +appear more superstitious than others, if we may judge from the greater +number of idols they contain. + +Only on one occasion did we witness a specimen of quarreling. An old +woman, standing by our camp, continued to belabor a good-looking young +man for hours with her tongue. Irritated at last, he uttered some words +of impatience, when another man sprang at him, exclaiming, "How dare +you curse my 'Mama'?" They caught each other, and a sort of pushing, +dragging wrestling-match ensued. The old woman who had been the cause of +the affray wished us to interfere, and the combatants themselves hoped +as much; but we, preferring to remain neutral, allowed them to fight +it out. It ended by one falling under the other, both, from their +scuffling, being in a state of nudity. They picked up their clothing and +ran off in different directions, each threatening to bring his gun and +settle the dispute in mortal combat. Only one, however, returned, and +the old woman continued her scolding till my men, fairly tired of +her tongue, ordered her to be gone. This trifling incident was one of +interest to me, for, during the whole period of my residence in the +Bechuana country, I never saw unarmed men strike each other. Their +disputes are usually conducted with great volubility and noisy swearing, +but they generally terminate by both parties bursting into a laugh. + +At every village attempts were made to induce us to remain a night. +Sometimes large pots of beer were offered to us as a temptation. +Occasionally the head man would peremptorily order us to halt under a +tree which he pointed out. At other times young men volunteered to guide +us to the impassable part of the next bog, in the hope of bringing us +to a stand, for all are excessively eager to trade; but food was so very +cheap that we sometimes preferred paying them to keep it, and let us +part in good humor. A good-sized fowl could be had for a single charge +of gunpowder. Each native who owns a gun carries about with him a +measure capable of holding but one charge, in which he receives his +powder. Throughout this region the women are almost entirely naked, +their gowns being a patch of cloth frightfully narrow, with no flounces; +and nothing could exceed the eagerness with which they offered to +purchase strips of calico of an inferior description. They were +delighted with the large pieces we gave, though only about two feet +long, for a fowl and a basket of upward of 20 lbs. of meal. As we had +now only a small remnant of our stock, we were obliged to withstand +their importunity, and then many of their women, with true maternal +feelings, held up their little naked babies, entreating us to sell only +a little rag for them. The fire, they say, is their only clothing by +night, and the little ones derive heat by sticking closely to their +parents. Instead of a skin or cloth to carry their babies in, the women +plait a belt about four inches broad, of the inner bark of a tree, and +this, hung from the one shoulder to the opposite side, like a soldier's +belt, enables them to support the child by placing it on their side in +a sitting position. Their land is very fertile, and they can raise +ground-nuts and manioc in abundance. Here I observed no cotton, nor any +domestic animals except fowls and little dogs. The chief possessed a few +goats, and I never could get any satisfactory reason why the people also +did not rear them. + +On the evening of the 2d of June we reached the village of Kawawa, +rather an important personage in these parts. This village consists of +forty or fifty huts, and is surrounded by forest. Drums were beating +over the body of a man who had died the preceding day, and some women +were making a clamorous wail at the door of his hut, and addressing the +deceased as if alive. The drums continued beating the whole night, with +as much regularity as a steam-engine thumps on board ship. We observed +that a person dressed fantastically with a great number of feathers left +the people at the dance and wailing, and went away into the deep forest +in the morning, to return again to the obsequies in the evening; he is +intended to represent one of the Barimo. + +In the morning we had agreeable intercourse with Kawawa; he visited us, +and we sat and talked nearly the whole day with him and his people. When +we visited him in return, we found him in his large court-house, which, +though of a beehive shape, was remarkably well built. As I had shown him +a number of curiosities, he now produced a jug, of English ware, shaped +like an old man holding a can of beer in his hand, as the greatest +curiosity he had to exhibit. + +We had now an opportunity of hearing a case brought before him for +judgment. A poor man and his wife were accused of having bewitched the +man whose wake was now held in the village. Before Kawawa even heard the +defense, he said, "You have killed one of my children; bring all yours +before me, that I may choose which of them shall be mine instead." The +wife eloquently defended herself, but this availed little, for these +accusations are the means resorted to by some chiefs to secure subjects +for the slave-market. He probably thought that I had come to purchase +slaves, though I had already given a pretty full explanation of my +pursuits both to himself and his people. We exhibited the pictures of +the magic lantern in the evening, and all were delighted except Kawawa +himself. He showed symptoms of dread, and several times started up as +if to run away, but was prevented by the crowd behind. Some of the more +intelligent understood the explanations well, and expatiated eloquently +on them to the more obtuse. Nothing could exceed the civilities which +had passed between us during this day; but Kawawa had heard that the +Chiboque had forced us to pay an ox, and now thought he might do the +same. When, therefore, I sent next morning to let him know that we were +ready to start, he replied in his figurative way, "If an ox came in the +way of a man, ought he not to eat it? I had given one to the Chiboque, +and must give him the same, together with a gun, gunpowder, and a black +robe, like that he had seen spread out to dry the day before; that, if +I refused an ox, I must give one of my men, and a book by which he might +see the state of Matiamvo's heart toward him, and which would forewarn +him, should Matiamvo ever resolve to cut off his head." Kawawa came +in the coolest manner possible to our encampment after sending this +message, and told me he had seen all our goods, and must have all he +asked, as he had command of the Kasai in our front, and would prevent +us from passing it unless we paid this tribute. I replied that the goods +were my property and not his; that I would never have it said that a +white man had paid tribute to a black, and that I should cross the Kasai +in spite of him. He ordered his people to arm themselves, and when some +of my men saw them rushing for their bows, arrows, and spears, they +became somewhat panic-stricken. I ordered them to move away, and not to +fire unless Kawawa's people struck the first blow. I took the lead, and +expected them all to follow, as they usually had done, but many of my +men remained behind. When I knew this, I jumped off the ox, and made +a rush to them with the revolver in my hand. Kawawa ran away among his +people, and they turned their backs too. I shouted to my men to take up +their luggage and march; some did so with alacrity, feeling that they +had disobeyed orders by remaining; but one of them refused, and was +preparing to fire at Kawawa, until I gave him a punch on the head +with the pistol, and made him go too. I felt here, as elsewhere, that +subordination must be maintained at all risks. We all moved into the +forest, the people of Kawawa standing about a hundred yards off, gazing, +but not firing a shot or an arrow. It is extremely unpleasant to part +with these chieftains thus, after spending a day or two in the most +amicable intercourse, and in a part where the people are generally +civil. This Kawawa, however, is not a good specimen of the Balonda +chiefs, and is rather notorious in the neighborhood for his folly. We +were told that he has good reason to believe that Matiamvo will some day +cut off his head for his disregard of the rights of strangers. + +Kawawa was not to be balked of his supposed rights by the unceremonious +way in which we had left him; for, when we had reached the ford of the +Kasai, about ten miles distant, we found that he had sent four of his +men, with orders to the ferrymen to refuse us passage. We were here duly +informed that we must deliver up all the articles mentioned, and one of +our men besides. This demand for one of our number always nettled every +heart. The canoes were taken away before our eyes, and we were supposed +to be quite helpless without them, at a river a good hundred yards +broad, and very deep. Pitsane stood on the bank, gazing with apparent +indifference on the stream, and made an accurate observation of where +the canoes were hidden among the reeds. The ferrymen casually asked one +of my Batoka if they had rivers in his country, and he answered with +truth, "No, we have none." Kawawa's people then felt sure we could not +cross. I thought of swimming when they were gone; but after it was dark, +by the unasked loan of one of the hidden canoes, we soon were snug in +our bivouac on the southern bank of the Kasai. I left some beads as +payment for some meal which had been presented by the ferrymen; and, the +canoe having been left on their own side of the river, Pitsane and his +companions laughed uproariously at the disgust our enemies would feel, +and their perplexity as to who had been our paddler across. They were +quite sure that Kawawa would imagine that we had been ferried over by +his own people, and would be divining to find out who had done the deed. +When ready to depart in the morning, Kawawa's people appeared on the +opposite heights, and could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw +us prepared to start away to the south. At last one of them called out, +"Ah! ye are bad," to which Pitsane and his companions retorted, "Ah! ye +are good, and we thank you for the loan of your canoe." We were careful +to explain the whole of the circumstances to Katema and the other +chiefs, and they all agreed that we were perfectly justifiable under +the circumstances, and that Matiamvo would approve our conduct. When +any thing that might bear an unfavorable construction happens among +themselves, they send explanations to each other. The mere fact of +doing so prevents them from losing their character, for there is public +opinion even among them. + + + + +Chapter 24. + +Level Plains--Vultures and other Birds--Diversity of Color in Flowers of +the same Species--The Sundew--Twenty-seventh Attack of Fever--A River +which flows in opposite Directions--Lake Dilolo the Watershed between +the Atlantic and Indian Oceans--Position of Rocks--Sir Roderick +Murchison's Explanation--Characteristics of the Rainy Season in +connection with the Floods of the Zambesi and the Nile--Probable Reason +of Difference in Amount of Rain South and North of the Equator--Arab +Reports of Region east of Londa--Probable Watershed of the Zambesi and +the Nile--Lake Dilolo--Reach Katema's Town: his renewed Hospitality; +desire to appear like a White Man; ludicrous Departure--Jackdaws-- +Ford southern Branch of Lake Dilolo--Small Fish--Project for a Makololo +Village near the Confluence of the Leeba and the Leeambye--Hearty +Welcome from Shinte--Kolimbota's Wound--Plant-seeds and Fruit-trees +brought from Angola--Masiko and Limboa's Quarrel--Nyamoana now a +Widow--Purchase Canoes and descend the Leeba--Herds of wild Animals on +its Banks--Unsuccessful Buffalo-hunt--Frogs--Sinbad and the Tsetse-- +Dispatch a Message to Manenko--Arrival of her Husband Sambanza--The +Ceremony called Kasendi--Unexpected Fee for performing a +surgical Operation--Social Condition of the Tribes--Desertion of +Mboenga--Stratagem of Mambowe Hunters--Water-turtles--Charged by a +Buffalo--Reception from the People of Libonta--Explain the Causes of +our long Delay--Pitsane's Speech--Thanksgiving Services--Appearance of +my "Braves"--Wonderful Kindness of the People. + + + +After leaving the Kasai, we entered upon the extensive level plains +which we had formerly found in a flooded condition. The water on them +was not yet dried up, as it still remained in certain hollow spots. +Vultures were seen floating in the air, showing that carrion was to be +found; and, indeed, we saw several of the large game, but so exceedingly +wild as to be unapproachable. Numbers of caterpillars mounted the stalks +of grass, and many dragonflies and butterflies appeared, though this was +winter. The caprimulgus or goat-sucker, swifts, and different kinds of +swallows, with a fiery-red bee-eater in flocks, showed that the lowest +temperature here does not destroy the insects on which they feed. +Jet-black larks, with yellow shoulders, enliven the mornings with their +songs, but they do not continue so long on the wing as ours, nor soar +so high. We saw many of the pretty white ardea, and other water-birds, +flying over the spots not yet dried up; and occasionally wild ducks, but +these only in numbers sufficient to remind us that we were approaching +the Zambesi, where every water-fowl has a home. + +While passing across these interminable-looking plains, the eye rests +with pleasure on a small flower, which exists in such numbers as to give +its own hue to the ground. One broad band of yellow stretches across our +path. On looking at the flowers which formed this golden carpet, we +saw every variety of that color, from the palest lemon to the richest +orange. Crossing a hundred yards of this, we came upon another broad +band of the same flower, but blue, and this color is varied from the +lightest tint to dark blue, and even purple. I had before observed +the same flower possessing different colors in different parts of +the country, and once a great number of liver-colored flowers, which +elsewhere were yellow. Even the color of the birds changed with the +district we passed through; but never before did I see such a marked +change as from yellow to blue, repeated again and again on the same +plain. Another beautiful plant attracted my attention so strongly on +these plains that I dismounted to examine it. To my great delight I +found it to be an old home acquaintance, a species of Drosera, closely +resembling our own sundew ('Drosera Anglia'). The flower-stalk never +attains a height of more than two or three inches, and the leaves are +covered with reddish hairs, each of which has a drop of clammy fluid +at its tip, making the whole appear as if spangled over with small +diamonds. I noticed it first in the morning, and imagined the appearance +was caused by the sun shining on drops of dew; but, as it continued +to maintain its brilliancy during the heat of the day, I proceeded to +investigate the cause of its beauty, and found that the points of the +hairs exuded pure liquid, in, apparently, capsules of clear, glutinous +matter. They were thus like dewdrops preserved from evaporation. The +clammy fluid is intended to entrap insects, which, dying on the leaf, +probably yield nutriment to the plant. + +During our second day on this extensive plain I suffered from my +twenty-seventh attack of fever, at a part where no surface-water was to +be found. We never thought it necessary to carry water with us in this +region; and now, when I was quite unable to move on, my men soon found +water to allay my burning thirst by digging with sticks a few feet +beneath the surface. We had thus an opportunity of observing the state +of these remarkable plains at different seasons of the year. Next day +we pursued our way, and on the 8th of June we forded the Lotembwa to the +N.W. of Dilolo, and regained our former path. + +The Lotembwa here is about a mile wide, about three feet deep, and full +of the lotus, papyrus, arum, mat-rushes, and other aquatic plants. I did +not observe the course in which the water flowed while crossing; but, +having noticed before that the Lotembwa on the other side of the Lake +Dilolo flowed in a southerly direction, I supposed that this was simply +a prolongation of the same river beyond Dilolo, and that it rose in this +large marsh, which we had not seen in our progress to the N.W. But when +we came to the Southern Lotembwa, we were informed by Shakatwala that +the river we had crossed flowed in an opposite direction--not into +Dilolo, but into the Kasai. This phenomenon of a river running in +opposite directions struck even his mind as strange; and, though I did +not observe the current, simply from taking it for granted that it was +toward the lake, I have no doubt that his assertion, corroborated as it +was by others, is correct, and that the Dilolo is actually the watershed +between the river systems that flow to the east and west. + +I would have returned in order to examine more carefully this most +interesting point, but, having had my lower extremities chilled in +crossing the Northern Lotembwa, I was seized with vomiting of blood, +and, besides, saw no reason to doubt the native testimony. The distance +between Dilolo and the valleys leading to that of the Kasai is not more +than fifteen miles, and the plains between are perfectly level; and, had +I returned, I should only have found that this little lake Dilolo, by +giving a portion to the Kasai and another to the Zambesi, distributes +its waters to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. I state the fact exactly +as it opened to my own mind, for it was only now that I apprehended the +true form of the river systems and continent. I had seen the various +rivers of this country on the western side flowing from the subtending +ridges into the centre, and had received information from natives and +Arabs that most of the rivers on the eastern side of the same great +region took a somewhat similar course from an elevated ridge there, and +that all united in two main drains, the one flowing to the north and the +other to the south, and that the northern drain found its way out by the +Congo to the west, and the southern by the Zambesi to the east. I was +thus on the watershed, or highest point of these two great systems, but +still not more than 4000 feet above the level of the sea, and 1000 feet +lower than the top of the western ridge we had already crossed; yet, +instead of lofty snow-clad mountains appearing to verify the conjectures +of the speculative, we had extensive plains, over which one may travel a +month without seeing any thing higher than an ant-hill or a tree. I was +not then aware that any one else had discovered the elevated trough form +of the centre of Africa. + +I had observed that the old schistose rocks on the sides dipped in +toward the centre of the country, and their strike nearly corresponded +with the major axis of the continent; and also that where the later +erupted trap rocks had been spread out in tabular masses over the +central plateau, they had borne angular fragments of the older rocks in +their substance; but the partial generalization which the observations +led to was, that great volcanic action had taken place in ancient times, +somewhat in the same way it does now, at distances of not more than +three hundred miles from the sea, and that this igneous action, +extending along both sides of the continent, had tilted up the lateral +rocks in the manner they are now seen to lie. The greater energy and +more extended range of igneous action in those very remote periods when +Africa was formed, embracing all the flanks, imparted to it its present +very simple literal outline. This was the length to which I had come. + +The trap rocks, which now constitute the "filling up" of the great +valley, were always a puzzle to me till favored with Sir Roderick +Murchison's explanation of the original form of the continent, for then +I could see clearly why these trap rocks, which still lie in a perfectly +horizontal position on extensive areas, held in their substance angular +fragments, containing algae of the old schists, which form the bottom +of the original lacustrine basin: the traps, in bursting through, had +broken them off and preserved them. There are, besides, ranges of hills +in the central parts, composed of clay and sandstone schists, with +the ripple mark distinct, in which no fossils appear; but as they are +usually tilted away from the masses of horizontal trap, it is probable +that they too were a portion of the original bottom, and fossils may yet +be found in them.* + + * After dwelling upon the geological structure of the Cape + Colony as developed by Mr. A. Bain, and the existence in very + remote periods of lacustrine conditions in the central part of + South Africa, as proved by fresh-water and terrestrial + fossils, Sir Roderick Murchison thus writes: + + "Such as South Africa is now, such have been her main features + during countless past ages anterior to the creation of the + human race; for the old rocks which form her outer fringe + unquestionably circled round an interior marshy or lacustrine + country, in which the Dicynodon flourished, at a time when not + a single animal was similar to any living thing which now + inhabits the surface of our globe. The present central and + meridian zone of waters, whether lakes or marshes, extending + from Lake Tchad to Lake 'Ngami, with hippopotami on their + banks, are therefore but the great modern residual + geographical phenomena of those of a mesozoic age. The + differences, however, between the geological past of Africa + and her present state are enormous. Since that primeval time, + the lands have been much elevated above the sea-level-- + eruptive rocks piercing in parts through them; deep rents and + defiles have been suddenly formed in the subtending ridges + through which some rivers escape outward. + + "Travelers will eventually ascertain whether the basin-shaped + structure, which is here announced as having been the great + feature of the most ancient, as it is of the actual geography + of South Africa (i.e., from primeval times to the present + day), does, or does not, extend into Northern Africa. Looking + at that much broader portion of the continent, we have some + reason to surmise that the higher mountains also form, in a + general sense, its flanks only."--President's Address, Royal + Geographical Society, 1852, p. cxxiii. + +The characteristics of the rainy season in this wonderfully humid region +may account in some measure for the periodical floods of the Zambesi, +and perhaps the Nile. The rains seem to follow the course of the sun, +for they fall in October and November, when the sun passes over this +zone on his way south. On reaching the tropic of Capricorn in December, +it is dry; and December and January are the months in which injurious +droughts are most dreaded near that tropic (from Kolobeng to Linyanti). +As he returns again to the north in February, March, and April, we +have the great rains of the year; and the plains, which in October and +November were well moistened, and imbibed rain like sponges, now +become supersaturated, and pour forth those floods of clear water which +inundate the banks of the Zambesi. Somewhat the same phenomenon probably +causes the periodical inundations of the Nile. The two rivers rise +in the same region; but there is a difference in the period of flood, +possibly from their being on opposite sides of the equator. The waters +of the Nile are said to become turbid in June; and the flood attains +its greatest height in August, or the period when we may suppose the +supersaturation to occur. The subject is worthy the investigation of +those who may examine the region between the equator and 10 Deg. S.; +for the Nile does not show much increase when the sun is at its farthest +point north, or tropic of Cancer, but at the time of its returning to +the equator, exactly as in the other case when he is on Capricorn, and +the Zambesi is affected.* + + * The above is from my own observation, together with + information derived from the Portuguese in the interior of + Angola; and I may add that the result of many years' + observation by Messrs. Gabriel and Brand at Loanda, on the + west coast, is in accordance therewith. It rains there between + the 1st and 30th of November, but January and December are + usually both warm and dry. The heavier rains commence about + the 1st of February, and last until the 15th of May. Then no + rain falls between the 20th of May and the 1st of November. + The rain averages from 12 to 15 inches per annum. In 1852 it + was 12.034 inches; in 1853, 15.473 inches. Although I had no + means of measuring the amount of rain which fell in Londa, I + feel certain that the annual quantity exceeds very much that + which falls on the coast, because for a long time we noticed + that every dawn was marked by a deluging shower, which began + without warning-drops or thunder. I observed that the rain + ceased suddenly on the 28th of April, and the lesser rains + commenced about a fortnight before the beginning of November. + +From information derived from Arabs of Zanzibar, whom I met at Naliele +in the middle of the country, the region to the east of the parts of +Londa over which we have traveled resembles them in its conformation. +They report swampy steppes, some of which have no trees, where the +inhabitants use grass, and stalks of native corn, for fuel. A large +shallow lake is also pointed out in that direction, named Tanganyenka, +which requires three days for crossing in canoes. It is connected with +another named Kalagwe (Garague?), farther north, and may be the Nyanja +of the Maravim. From this lake is derived, by numerous small streams, +the River Loapula, the eastern branch of the Zambesi, which, coming from +the N.E., flows past the town of Cazembe. + +The southern end of this lake is ten days northeast of the town of +Cazembe; and as that is probably more than five days from Shinte, we +can not have been nearer to it than 150 miles. Probably this lake is +the watershed between the Zambesi and the Nile, as Lake Dilolo is that +between the Leeba and Kasai. But, however this may be, the phenomena of +the rainy season show that it is not necessary to assume the existence +of high snowy mountains until we get reliable information. This, it is +to be hoped, will be one of the results of the researches of Captain +Burton in his present journey. + +The original valley formation of the continent determined the northern +and southern course of the Zambesi in the centre, and also of the +ancient river which once flowed from the Linyanti basin to the Orange +River. It also gave direction to the southern and northern flow of the +Kasai and the Nile. We find that between the latitudes, say 6 Deg. and +12 Deg. S., from which, in all probability, the head waters of those +rivers diverge, there is a sort of elevated partition in the great +longitudinal valley. Presuming on the correctness of the native +information, which places the humid region to which the Nile and Zambesi +probably owe their origin within the latitudes indicated, why does +so much more rain fall there than in the same latitudes north of the +equator? Why does Darfur not give rise to great rivers, like Londa and +the country east of it? The prevailing winds in the ocean opposite the +territory pointed out are said to be from the N.E. and S.E. during a +great part of the year; they extend their currents on one side at least +of the equator quite beyond the middle of the continent, and even until +in Angola they meet the sea-breeze from the Atlantic. If the reader +remembers the explanation given at page 109,* that the comparative want +of rain on the Kalahari Desert is caused by the mass of air losing its +humidity as it passes up and glides over the subtending ridge, and will +turn to the map, he may perceive that the same cause is in operation +in an intense degree by the mountains of Abyssinia to render the region +about Darfur still more arid, and that the flanking ranges mentioned lie +much nearer the equator than those which rob the Kalahari of humidity. +The Nile, even while running through a part of that region, receives +remarkably few branches. Observing also that there is no known abrupt +lateral mountain-range between 6 Deg. and 12 Deg. S., but that there is +an elevated partition there, and that the southing and northing of the +southeasters and northeasters probably cause a confluence of the two +great atmospheric currents, he will perceive an accumulation of humidity +on the flanks and crown of the partition, instead of, as elsewhere, +opposite the Kalahari and Darfur, a deposition of the atmospheric +moisture on the eastern slopes of the subtending ridges. This +explanation is offered with all deference to those who have made +meteorology their special study, and as a hint to travelers who may have +opportunity to examine the subject more fully. I often observed, while +on a portion of the partition, that the air by night was generally quite +still, but as soon as the sun's rays began to shoot across the upper +strata of the atmosphere in the early morning, a copious discharge came +suddenly down from the accumulated clouds. It always reminded me of the +experiment of putting a rod into a saturated solution of a certain salt, +causing instant crystallization. This, too, was the period when I often +observed the greatest amount of cold. + + * Since the explanation in page 109 [Chapter 5 Paragraph 5] + was printed, I have been pleased to see the same explanation + given by the popular astronomer and natural philosopher, M. + Babinet, in reference to the climate of France. It is quoted + from a letter of a correspondent of the 'Times' in Paris: + + "In the normal meteorological state of France and Europe, the + west wind, which is the counter-current of the trade-winds + that constantly blow from the east under the tropics--the west + wind, I say, after having touched France and Europe by the + western shores, re-descends by Marseilles and the + Mediterranean, Constantinople and the Archipelago, Astrakan + and the Caspian Sea, in order to merge again into the great + circuit of the general winds, and be thus carried again into + the equatorial current. Whenever these masses of air, + impregnated with humidity during their passage over the ocean, + meet with an obstacle, such as a chain of mountains, for + example, they slide up the acclivity, and, when they reach the + crest, find themselves relieved from a portion of the column + of air which pressed upon them. Thus, dilating by reason of + their elasticity, they cause a considerable degree of cold, + and a precipitation of humidity in the form of fogs, clouds, + rain, or snow. A similar effect occurs whatever be the + obstacle they find in their way. Now this is what had + gradually taken place before 1856. By some cause or other + connected with the currents of the atmosphere, the warm + current from the west had annually ascended northward, so + that, instead of passing through France, it came from the + Baltic and the north of Germany, thus momentarily disturbing + the ordinary law of the temperatures of Europe. But in 1856 a + sudden change occurred. The western current again passed, as + before, through the centre of France. It met with an obstacle + in the air which had not yet found its usual outlet toward the + west and south. Hence a stoppage, a rising, a consequent + dilation and fall of temperature, extraordinary rains and + inundations. But, now that the natural state of things is + restored, nothing appears to prognosticate the return of + similar disasters. Were the western current found annually to + move further north, we might again experience meteorological + effects similar to those of 1856. Hence the regular seasons + may be considered re-established in France for several years + to come. The important meteorological communications which the + Imperial Observatory is daily establishing with the other + countries of Europe, and the introduction of apparatus for + measuring the velocity of the aerial currents and prevailing + winds, will soon afford prognostics sufficiently certain to + enable an enlightened government to provide in time against + future evils." + +After crossing the Northern Lotembwa we met a party of the people of +Kangenke, who had treated us kindly on our way to the north, and sent +him a robe of striped calico, with an explanation of the reason for not +returning through his village. We then went on to the Lake Dilolo. It +is a fine sheet of water, six or eight miles long, and one or two broad, +and somewhat of a triangular shape. A branch proceeds from one of the +angles, and flows into the Southern Lotembwa. Though laboring under +fever, the sight of the blue waters, and the waves lashing the shore, +had a most soothing influence on the mind, after so much of lifeless, +flat, and gloomy forest. The heart yearned for the vivid impressions +which are always created by the sight of the broad expanse of the grand +old ocean. That has life in it; but the flat uniformities over which we +had roamed made me feel as if buried alive. We found Moene Dilolo (Lord +of the Lake) a fat, jolly fellow, who lamented that when they had no +strangers they had plenty of beer, and always none when they came. He +gave us a handsome present of meal and putrid buffalo's flesh. Meat can +not be too far gone for them, as it is used only in small quantities, +as a sauce to their tasteless manioc. They were at this time hunting +antelopes, in order to send the skins as a tribute to Matiamvo. +Great quantities of fish are caught in the lake; and numbers of young +water-fowl are now found in the nests among the reeds. + +Our progress had always been slow, and I found that our rate of +traveling could only be five hours a day for five successive days. On +the sixth, both men and oxen showed symptoms of knocking up. We never +exceeded two and a half or three miles an hour in a straight line, +though all were anxious to get home. The difference in the rate of +traveling between ourselves and the slave-traders was our having a +rather quicker step, a longer day's journey, and twenty traveling days +a month instead of their ten. When one of my men became ill, but still +could walk, others parted his luggage among them; yet we had often to +stop one day a week, besides Sundays, simply for the sake of rest. The +latitude of Lake Dilolo is 11d 32' 1" S., long. 22d 27' E. + +JUNE 14TH. We reached the collection of straggling villages over +which Katema rules, and were thankful to see old familiar faces again. +Shakatwala performed the part of a chief by bringing forth abundant +supplies of food in his master's name. He informed us that Katema, too, +was out hunting skins for Matiamvo. + +In different parts of this country, we remarked that when old friends +were inquired for, the reply was, "Ba hola" (They are getting better); +or if the people of a village were inquired for, the answer was, "They +are recovering," as if sickness was quite a common thing. Indeed, many +with whom we had made acquaintance in going north we now found were +in their graves. On the 15th Katema came home from his hunting, having +heard of our arrival. He desired me to rest myself and eat abundantly, +for, being a great man, I must feel tired; and he took good care to give +the means of doing so. All the people in these parts are exceedingly +kind and liberal with their food, and Katema was not behindhand. When +he visited our encampment, I presented him with a cloak of red baize, +ornamented with gold tinsel, which cost thirty shillings, according to +the promise I had made in going to Londa; also a cotton robe, both large +and small beads, an iron spoon, and a tin pannikin containing a quarter +of a pound of powder. He seemed greatly pleased with the liberality +shown, and assured me that the way was mine, and that no one should +molest me in it if he could help it. We were informed by Shakatwala that +the chief never used any part of a present before making an offer of it +to his mother, or the departed spirit to whom he prayed. Katema asked if +I could not make a dress for him like the one I wore, so that he +might appear as a white man when any stranger visited him. One of the +councilors, imagining that he ought to second this by begging, Katema +checked him by saying, "Whatever strangers give, be it little or much, +I always receive it with thankfulness, and never trouble them for more." +On departing, he mounted on the shoulders of his spokesman, as the most +dignified mode of retiring. The spokesman being a slender man, and the +chief six feet high, and stout in proportion, there would have been a +break-down had he not been accustomed to it. We were very much pleased +with Katema; and next day he presented us with a cow, that we might +enjoy the abundant supplies of meal he had given with good animal food. +He then departed for the hunting-ground, after assuring me that the +town and every thing in it were mine, and that his factotum, Shakatwala, +would remain and attend to every want, and also conduct us to the Leeba. + +On attempting to slaughter the cow Katema had given, we found the herd +as wild as buffaloes; and one of my men having only wounded it, they +fled many miles into the forest, and were with great difficulty brought +back. Even the herdsman was afraid to go near them. The majority of them +were white, and they were all beautiful animals. After hunting it for +two days it was dispatched at last by another ball. Here we saw a flock +of jackdaws, a rare sight in Londa, busy with the grubs in the valley, +which are eaten by the people too. + +Leaving Katema's town on the 19th, and proceeding four miles to the +eastward, we forded the southern branch of Lake Dilolo. We found it a +mile and a quarter broad; and, as it flows into the Lotembwa, the lake +would seem to be a drain of the surrounding flats, and to partake of the +character of a fountain. The ford was waist-deep, and very difficult, +from the masses of arum and rushes through which we waded. Going to the +eastward about three miles, we came to the Southern Lotembwa itself, +running in a valley two miles broad. It is here eighty or ninety +yards wide, and contains numerous islands covered with dense sylvan +vegetation. In the rainy season the valley is flooded, and as the +waters dry up great multitudes of fish are caught. This happens very +extensively over the country, and fishing-weirs are met with every +where. A species of small fish, about the size of the minnow, is caught +in bagfuls and dried in the sun. The taste is a pungent aromatic bitter, +and it was partaken of freely by my people, although they had never met +with it before. On many of the paths which had been flooded a nasty sort +of slime of decayed vegetable matter is left behind, and much sickness +prevails during the drying up of the water. We did not find our friend +Mozinkwa at his pleasant home on the Lokaloeje; his wife was dead, +and he had removed elsewhere. He followed us some distance, but our +reappearance seemed to stir up his sorrows. We found the pontoon at +the village in which we left it. It had been carefully preserved, but a +mouse had eaten a hole in it and rendered it useless. + +We traversed the extended plain on the north bank of the Leeba, and +crossed this river a little farther on at Kanyonke's village, which is +about twenty miles west of the Peri hills, our former ford. The first +stage beyond the Leeba was at the rivulet Loamba, by the village +of Chebende, nephew of Shinte; and next day we met Chebende himself +returning from the funeral of Samoana, his father. He was thin and +haggard-looking compared to what he had been before, the probable effect +of the orgies in which he had been engaged. Pitsane and Mohorisi, having +concocted the project of a Makololo village on the banks of the Leeba, +as an approach to the white man's market, spoke to Chebende, as an +influential man, on the subject, but he cautiously avoided expressing +an opinion. The idea which had sprung up in their own minds of an +establishment somewhere near the confluence of the Leeba and Leeambye, +commended itself to my judgment at the time as a geographically suitable +point for civilization and commerce. The right bank of the Leeba there +is never flooded; and from that point there is communication by means +of canoes to the country of the Kanyika, and also to Cazembe and beyond, +with but one or two large waterfalls between. There is no obstruction +down to the Barotse valley; and there is probably canoe navigation down +the Kafue or Bashukulompo River, though it is reported to contain +many cataracts. It flows through a fertile country, well peopled with +Bamasasa, who cultivate the native produce largely. + +As this was the middle of winter, it may be mentioned that the +temperature of the water in the morning was 47 Deg., and that of the +air 50 Deg., which, being loaded with moisture, was very cold to the +feelings. Yet the sun was very hot by day, and the temperature in the +coolest shade from 88 Deg. to 90 Deg.; in the evenings from 76 Deg. to +78 Deg. + +Before reaching the town of Shinte we passed through many large villages +of the Balobale, who have fled from the chief Kangenke. The Mambari +from Bihe come constantly to him for trade; and, as he sells his people, +great numbers of them escape to Shinte and Katema, who refuse to give +them up. + +We reached our friend Shinte, and received a hearty welcome from this +friendly old man, and abundant provisions of the best he had. On hearing +the report of the journey given by my companions, and receiving a piece +of cotton cloth about two yards square, he said, "These Mambari cheat us +by bringing little pieces only; but the next time you pass I shall send +men with you to trade for me in Loanda." When I explained the use made +of the slaves he sold, and that he was just destroying his own tribe by +selling his people, and enlarging that of the Mambari for the sake +of these small pieces of cloth, it seemed to him quite a new idea. +He entered into a long detail of his troubles with Masiko, who had +prevented him from cultivating that friendship with the Makololo which +I had inculcated, and had even plundered the messengers he had sent +with Kolimbota to the Barotse valley. Shinte was particularly anxious +to explain that Kolimbota had remained after my departure of his own +accord, and that he had engaged in the quarrels of the country without +being invited; that, in attempting to capture one of the children of a +Balobale man, who had offended the Balonda by taking honey from a hive +which did not belong to him, Kolimbota had got wounded by a shot in the +thigh, but that he had cured the wound, given him a wife, and sent a +present of cloth to Sekeletu, with a full account of the whole affair. +From the statement of Shinte we found that Kolimbota had learned, before +we left his town, that the way we intended to take was so dangerous that +it would be better for him to leave us to our fate; and, as he had taken +one of our canoes with him, it seemed evident that he did not expect us +to return. Shinte, however, sent a recommendation to his sister Nyamoana +to furnish as many canoes as we should need for our descent of the Leeba +and Leeambye. + +As I had been desirous of introducing some of the fruit-trees of Angola, +both for my own sake and that of the inhabitants, we had carried a +pot containing a little plantation of orange, cashew-trees, +custard-apple-trees ('anona'), and a fig-tree, with coffee, aracas +('Araca pomifera'), and papaws ('Carica papaya'). Fearing that, if we +took them farther south at present, they might be killed by the cold, we +planted them out in an inclosure of one of Shinte's principal men, and, +at his request, promised to give Shinte a share when grown. They know +the value of fruits, but at present have none except wild ones. A wild +fruit we frequently met with in Londa is eatable, and, when boiled, +yields a large quantity of oil, which is much used in anointing +both head and body. He eagerly accepted some of the seeds of the +palm-oil-tree ('Elaeis Guineensis'), when told that this would produce +oil in much greater quantity than their native tree, which is not a +palm. There are very few palm-trees in this country, but near Bango +we saw a few of a peculiar palm, the ends of the leaf-stalks of which +remain attached to the trunk, giving it a triangular shape. + +It is pleasant to observe that all the tribes in Central Africa are fond +of agriculture. My men had collected quantities of seeds in Angola, +and now distributed them among their friends. Some even carried onions, +garlic, and bird's-eye pepper, growing in pannikins. The courts of the +Balonda, planted with tobacco, sugar-cane, and plants used as relishes, +led me to the belief that care would be taken of my little nursery. + +The thermometer early in the mornings ranged from 42 Deg. to 52 Deg., at +noon 94 Deg. to 96 Deg., and in the evening about 70 Deg. It was placed +in the shade of my tent, which was pitched under the thickest tree we +could find. The sensation of cold, after the heat of the day, was very +keen. The Balonda at this season never leave their fires till nine +or ten in the morning. As the cold was so great here, it was probably +frosty at Linyanti; I therefore feared to expose my young trees there. +The latitude of Shinte's town is 12d 37' 35" S., longitude 22d 47' E. + +We remained with Shinte till the 6th of July, he being unwilling to +allow us to depart before hearing in a formal manner, in the presence of +his greatest councilor Chebende, a message from Limboa, the brother of +Masiko. When Masiko fled from the Makololo country in consequence of a +dislike of being in a state of subjection to Sebituane, he came into the +territory of Shinte, who received him kindly, and sent orders to all +the villages in his vicinity to supply him with food. Limboa fled in a +westerly direction with a number of people, and also became a chief. +His country was sometimes called Nyenko, but by the Mambari and native +Portuguese traders "Mboela"--the place where they "turned again", +or back. As one of the fruits of polygamy, the children of different +mothers are always in a state of variance. Each son endeavors to gain +the ascendency by enticing away the followers of the others. The +mother of Limboa being of a high family, he felt aggrieved because +the situation chosen by Masiko was better than his. Masiko lived at a +convenient distance from the Saloisho hills, where there is abundance of +iron ore, with which the inhabitants manufacture hoes, knives, etc. They +are also skillful in making wooden vessels. Limboa felt annoyed because +he was obliged to apply for these articles through his brother, whom he +regarded as his inferior, and accordingly resolved to come into the same +district. As this was looked upon as an assertion of superiority which +Masiko would resist, it was virtually a declaration of war. Both Masiko +and Shinte pleaded my injunction to live in peace and friendship, but +Limboa, confident of success, now sent the message which I was about +to hear--"That he, too, highly approved of the 'word' I had given, but +would only for once transgress a little, and live at peace for ever +afterward." He now desired the aid of Shinte to subdue his brother. +Messengers came from Masiko at the same time, desiring assistance to +repel him. Shinte felt inclined to aid Limboa, but, as he had advised +them both to wait till I came, I now urged him to let the quarrel alone, +and he took my advice. + +We parted on the best possible terms with our friend Shinte, and +proceeded by our former path to the village of his sister Nyamoana, who +is now a widow. She received us with much apparent feeling, and said, +"We had removed from our former abode to the place where you found us, +and had no idea then that it was the spot where my husband was to die." +She had come to the River Lofuje, as they never remain in a place where +death has once visited them. We received the loan of five small canoes +from her, and also one of those we had left here before, to proceed down +the Leeba. After viewing the Coanza at Massangano, I thought the Leeba +at least a third larger, and upward of two hundred yards wide. We saw +evidence of its rise during its last flood having been upward of forty +feet in perpendicular height; but this is probably more than usual, as +the amount of rain was above the average. My companions purchased also +a number of canoes from the Balonda. These are very small, and can carry +only two persons. They are made quite thin and light, and as sharp as +racing-skiffs, because they are used in hunting animals in the water. +The price paid was a string of beads equal to the length of the canoe. +We advised them to bring canoes for sale to the Makololo, as they would +gladly give them cows in exchange. + +In descending the Leeba we saw many herds of wild animals, especially +the tahetsi ('Aigoceros equina'), one magnificent antelope, the +putokuane ('Antilope niger'), and two fine lions. The Balobale, however, +are getting well supplied with guns, and will soon thin out the large +game. At one of the villages we were entreated to attack some buffaloes +which grazed in the gardens every night and destroyed the manioc. As +we had had no success in shooting at the game we had seen, and we all +longed to have a meal of meat, we followed the footprints of a number +of old bulls. They showed a great amount of cunning by selecting the +densest parts of very closely-planted forests to stand or recline in +during the day. We came within six yards of them several times before +we knew that they were so near. We only heard them rush away among the +crashing branches, catching only a glimpse of them. It was somewhat +exciting to feel, as we trod on the dry leaves with stealthy steps, +that, for any thing we knew, we might next moment be charged by one of +the most dangerous beasts of the forest. We threaded out their doublings +for hours, drawn on by a keen craving for animal food, as we had been +entirely without salt for upward of two months, but never could get a +shot. + +In passing along the side of the water every where except in Londa, +green frogs spring out at your feet, and light in the water as if taking +a "header"; and on the Leeambye and Chobe we have great numbers of small +green frogs ('Rana fasciata', Boie), which light on blades of grass with +remarkable precision; but on coming along the Leeba I was struck by the +sight of a light green toad about an inch long. The leaf might be nearly +perpendicular, but it stuck to it like a fly. It was of the same size +as the 'Brachymerus bi-fasciatus' (Smith),* which I saw only once in the +Bakwain country. Though small, it was hideous, being colored jet black, +with vermilion spots. + + * The discovery of this last species is thus mentioned by that + accomplished naturalist, Dr. Smith: "On the banks of the + Limpopo River, close to the tropic of Capricorn, a massive + tree was cut down to obtain wood to repair a wagon. The + workman, while sawing the trunk longitudinally nearly along + its centre, remarked, on reaching a certain point, 'It is + hollow, and will not answer the purpose for which it is + wanted.' He persevered, however, and when a division into + equal halves was effected, it was discovered that the saw in + its course had crossed a large hole, in which were five + specimens of the species just described, each about an inch in + length. Every exertion was made to discover a means of + communication between the external air and the cavity, but + without success. Every part of the latter was probed with the + utmost care, and water was kept in each half for a + considerable time, without any passing into the wood. The + inner surface of the cavity was black, as if charred, and so + was likewise the adjoining wood for half an inch from the + cavity. The tree, at the part where the latter existed, was + 19 inches in diameter; the length of the trunk was 18 feet. + When the Batrachia above mentioned were discovered, they + appeared inanimate, but the influence of a warm sun to which + they were subjected soon imparted to them a moderate degree of + vigor. In a few hours from the time they were liberated they + were tolerably active, and able to move from place to place + apparently with great ease." + +Before reaching the Makondo rivulet, latitude 13d 23' 12" S., we came +upon the tsetse in such numbers that many bites were inflicted on my +poor ox, in spite of a man with a branch warding them off. The bite +of this insect does not affect the donkey as it does cattle. The next +morning, the spots on which my ox had been bitten were marked by patches +of hair about half an inch broad being wetted by exudation. Poor Sinbad +had carried me all the way from the Leeba to Golungo Alto, and all +the way back again, without losing any of his peculiarities, or ever +becoming reconciled to our perversity in forcing him away each morning +from the pleasant pasturage on which he had fed. I wished to give the +climax to his usefulness, and allay our craving for animal food at the +same time; but my men having some compunction, we carried him to end his +days in peace at Naliele. + +Having dispatched a message to our old friend Manenko, we waited a day +opposite her village, which was about fifteen miles from the river. Her +husband was instantly dispatched to meet us with liberal presents of +food, she being unable to travel in consequence of a burn on the foot. +Sambanza gave us a detailed account of the political affairs of the +country, and of Kolimbota's evil doings, and next morning performed +the ceremony called "Kasendi", for cementing our friendship. It is +accomplished thus: The hands of the parties are joined (in this case +Pitsane and Sambanza were the parties engaged); small incisions are made +on the clasped hands, on the pits of the stomach of each, and on the +right cheeks and foreheads. A small quantity of blood is taken off from +these points in both parties by means of a stalk of grass. The blood +from one person is put into a pot of beer, and that of the second into +another; each then drinks the other's blood, and they are supposed to +become perpetual friends or relations. During the drinking of the beer, +some of the party continue beating the ground with short clubs, and +utter sentences by way of ratifying the treaty. The men belonging +to each then finish the beer. The principals in the performance of +"Kasendi" are henceforth considered blood-relations, and are bound to +disclose to each other any impending evil. If Sekeletu should resolve to +attack the Balonda, Pitsane would be under obligation to give Sambanza +warning to escape, and so on the other side. They now presented each +other with the most valuable presents they had to bestow. Sambanza +walked off with Pitsane's suit of green baize faced with red, which had +been made in Loanda, and Pitsane, besides abundant supplies of food, +obtained two shells similar to that I had received from Shinte. + +On one occasion I became blood-relation to a young woman by accident. +She had a large cartilaginous tumor between the bones of the fore-arm, +which, as it gradually enlarged, so distended the muscles as to render +her unable to work. She applied to me to excise it. I requested her to +bring her husband, if he were willing to have the operation performed, +and, while removing the tumor, one of the small arteries squirted some +blood into my eye. She remarked, when I was wiping the blood out of it, +"You were a friend before, now you are a blood-relation; and when you +pass this way, always send me word, that I may cook food for you." In +creating these friendships, my men had the full intention of returning; +each one had his 'Molekane' (friend) in every village of the friendly +Balonda. Mohorisi even married a wife in the town of Katema, and Pitsane +took another in the town of Shinte. These alliances were looked upon +with great favor by the Balonda chiefs, as securing the good-will of the +Makololo. + +In order that the social condition of the tribes may be understood by +the reader, I shall mention that, while waiting for Sambanza, a party of +Barotse came from Nyenko, the former residence of Limboa, who had lately +crossed the Leeba on his way toward Masiko. The head man of this party +had brought Limboa's son to his father, because the Barotse at Nyenko +had, since the departure of Limboa, elected Nananko, another son +of Santuru, in his stead; and our visitor, to whom the boy had been +intrusted as a guardian, thinking him to be in danger, fled with him +to his father. The Barotse, whom Limboa had left behind at Nyenko, on +proceeding to elect Nananko, said, "No, it is quite too much for Limboa +to rule over two places." I would have gone to visit Limboa and Masiko +too, in order to prevent hostilities, but the state of my ox would +not allow it. I therefore sent a message to Limboa by some of his men, +protesting against war with his brother, and giving him formal notice +that the path up the Leeba had been given to us by the Balonda, the +owners of the country, and that no attempt must ever be made to obstruct +free intercourse. + +On leaving this place we were deserted by one of our party, Mboenga, an +Ambonda man, who had accompanied us all the way to Loanda and back. His +father was living with Masiko, and it was natural for him to wish to +join his own family again. He went off honestly, with the exception of +taking a fine "tari" skin given me by Nyamoana, but he left a parcel +of gun-flints which he had carried for me all the way from Loanda. I +regretted parting with him thus, and sent notice to him that he need not +have run away, and if he wished to come to Sekeletu again he would be +welcome. We subsequently met a large party of Barotse fleeing in +the same direction; but when I represented to them that there was a +probability of their being sold as slaves in Londa, and none in the +country of Sekeletu, they concluded to return. The grievance which the +Barotse most feel is being obliged to live with Sekeletu at Linyanti, +where there is neither fish nor fowl, nor any other kind of food, equal +in quantity to what they enjoy in their own fat valley. + +A short distance below the confluence of the Leeba and Leeambye we met a +number of hunters belonging to the tribe called Mambowe, who live under +Masiko. They had dried flesh of hippopotami, buffaloes, and alligators. +They stalk the animals by using the stratagem of a cap made of the +skin of a leche's or poku's head, having the horns still attached, and +another made so as to represent the upper white part of the crane called +jabiru ('Mycteru Senegalensis'), with its long neck and beak above. With +these on, they crawl through the grass; they can easily put up their +heads so far as to see their prey without being recognized until they +are within bow-shot. They presented me with three fine water-turtles,* +one of which, when cooked, had upward of forty eggs in its body. The +shell of the egg is flexible, and it is of the same size at both ends, +like those of the alligator. The flesh, and especially the liver, is +excellent. The hunters informed us that, when the message inculcating +peace among the tribes came to Masiko, the common people were so glad at +the prospect of "binding up the spears", that they ran to the river, and +bathed and plunged in it for joy. This party had been sent by Masiko to +the Makololo for aid to repel their enemy, but, afraid to go thither, +had spent the time in hunting. They have a dread of the Makololo, and +hence the joy they expressed when peace was proclaimed. The Mambowe +hunters were much alarmed until my name was mentioned. They then joined +our party, and on the following day discovered a hippopotamus dead, +which they had previously wounded. This was the first feast of flesh my +men had enjoyed, for, though the game was wonderfully abundant, I had +quite got out of the way of shooting, and missed perpetually. Once I +went with the determination of getting so close that I should not miss a +zebra. We went along one of the branches that stretch out from the +river in a small canoe, and two men, stooping down as low as they could, +paddled it slowly along to an open space near to a herd of zebras and +pokus. Peering over the edge of the canoe, the open space seemed like a +patch of wet ground, such as is often seen on the banks of a river, made +smooth as the resting-place of alligators. When we came within a few +yards of it, we found by the precipitate plunging of the reptile that +this was a large alligator itself. Although I had been most careful +to approach near enough, I unfortunately only broke the hind leg of +a zebra. My two men pursued it, but the loss of a hind leg does not +prevent this animal from a gallop. As I walked slowly after the men on +an extensive plain covered with a great crop of grass, which was 'laid' +by its own weight, I observed that a solitary buffalo, disturbed by +others of my own party, was coming to me at a gallop. I glanced around, +but the only tree on the plain was a hundred yards off, and there was +no escape elsewhere. I therefore cocked my rifle, with the intention +of giving him a steady shot in the forehead when he should come within +three or four yards of me. The thought flashed across my mind, "What if +your gun misses fire?" I placed it to my shoulder as he came on at +full speed, and that is tremendous, though generally he is a +lumbering-looking animal in his paces. A small bush and bunch of grass +fifteen yards off made him swerve a little, and exposed his shoulder. I +just heard the ball crack there as I fell flat on my face. The pain must +have made him renounce his purpose, for he bounded close past me on to +the water, where he was found dead. In expressing my thankfulness to +God among my men, they were much offended with themselves for not +being present to shield me from this danger. The tree near me was a +camel-thorn, and reminded me that we had come back to the land of thorns +again, for the country we had left is one of evergreens. + + * It is probably a species allied to the 'Sternotherus + sinuatus' of Dr. Smith, as it has no disagreeable smell. This + variety annually leaves the water with so much regularity for + the deposit of its eggs, that the natives decide on the time + of sowing their seed by its appearance. + +JULY 27TH. We reached the town of Libonta, and were received with +demonstrations of joy such as I had never witnessed before. The women +came forth to meet us, making their curious dancing gestures and loud +lulliloos. Some carried a mat and stick, in imitation of a spear and +shield. Others rushed forward and kissed the hands and cheeks of the +different persons of their acquaintance among us, raising such a dust +that it was quite a relief to get to the men assembled and sitting with +proper African decorum in the kotla. We were looked upon as men risen +from the dead, for the most skillful of their diviners had pronounced us +to have perished long ago. After many expressions of joy at meeting, I +arose, and, thanking them, explained the causes of our long delay, but +left the report to be made by their own countrymen. Formerly I had +been the chief speaker, now I would leave the task of speaking to them. +Pitsane then delivered a speech of upward of an hour in length, giving +a highly flattering picture of the whole journey, of the kindness of the +white men in general, and of Mr. Gabriel in particular. He concluded by +saying that I had done more for them than they expected; that I had not +only opened up a path for them to the other white men, but conciliated +all the chiefs along the route. The oldest man present rose and answered +this speech, and, among other things, alluded to the disgust I felt at +the Makololo for engaging in marauding expeditions against Lechulatebe +and Sebolamakwaia, of which we had heard from the first persons we met, +and which my companions most energetically denounced as "mashue hela", +entirely bad. He entreated me not to lose heart, but to reprove Sekeletu +as my child. Another old man followed with the same entreaties. The +following day we observed as our thanksgiving to God for his goodness in +bringing us all back in safety to our friends. My men decked themselves +out in their best, and I found that, although their goods were finished, +they had managed to save suits of European clothing, which, being white, +with their red caps, gave them rather a dashing appearance. They tried +to walk like the soldiers they had seen in Loanda, and called themselves +my "braves" (batlabani). During the service they all sat with their guns +over their shoulders, and excited the unbounded admiration of the women +and children. I addressed them all on the goodness of God in preserving +us from all the dangers of strange tribes and disease. We had a similar +service in the afternoon. The men gave us two fine oxen for slaughter, +and the women supplied us abundantly with milk, meal, and butter. It was +all quite gratuitous, and I felt ashamed that I could make no return. +My men explained the total expenditure of our means, and the Libontese +answered gracefully, "It does not matter; you have opened a path for us, +and we shall have sleep." Strangers came flocking from a distance, and +seldom empty-handed. Their presents I distributed among my men. + +Our progress down the Barotse valley was just like this. Every village +gave us an ox, and sometimes two. The people were wonderfully kind. I +felt, and still feel, most deeply grateful, and tried to benefit them in +the only way I could, by imparting the knowledge of that Savior who can +comfort and supply them in the time of need, and my prayer is that +he may send his good Spirit to instruct them and lead them into his +kingdom. Even now I earnestly long to return, and make some recompense +to them for their kindness. In passing them on our way to the north, +their liberality might have been supposed to be influenced by the hope +of repayment on our return, for the white man's land is imagined to be +the source of every ornament they prize most. But, though we set out +from Loanda with a considerable quantity of goods, hoping both to pay +our way through the stingy Chiboque, and to make presents to the kind +Balonda and still more generous Makololo, the many delays caused by +sickness made us expend all my stock, and all the goods my men procured +by their own labor at Loanda, and we returned to the Makololo as poor +as when we set out. Yet no distrust was shown, and my poverty did not +lessen my influence. They saw that I had been exerting myself for their +benefit alone, and even my men remarked, "Though we return as poor as we +went, we have not gone in vain." They began immediately to collect tusks +of hippopotami and other ivory for a second journey. + + + + +Chapter 25. + +Colony of Birds called Linkololo--The Village of Chitlane--Murder +of Mpololo's Daughter--Execution of the Murderer and his Wife--My +Companions find that their Wives have married other Husbands-- +Sunday--A Party from Masiko--Freedom of Speech--Canoe struck by a +Hippopotamus--Gonye--Appearance of Trees at the end of Winter--Murky +Atmosphere--Surprising Amount of organic Life--Hornets--The Packages +forwarded by Mr. Moffat--Makololo Suspicions and Reply to the Matebele +who brought them--Convey the Goods to an Island and build a Hut over +them--Ascertain that Sir R. Murchison had recognized the true Form of +African Continent--Arrival at Linyanti--A grand Picho--Shrewd Inquiry-- +Sekeletu in his Uniform--A Trading-party sent to Loanda with Ivory-- +Mr. Gabriel's Kindness to them--Difficulties in Trading--Two Makololo +Forays during our Absence--Report of the Country to the N.E.--Death of +influential Men--The Makololo desire to be nearer the Market +--Opinions upon a Change of Residence--Climate of Barotse Valley-- +Diseases--Author's Fevers not a fair Criterion in the Matter--The +Interior an inviting Field for the Philanthropist--Consultations about +a Path to the East Coast--Decide on descending North Bank of Zambesi-- +Wait for the Rainy Season--Native way of spending Time during the period +of greatest Heat--Favorable Opening for Missionary Enterprise--Ben +Habib wishes to marry--A Maiden's Choice--Sekeletu's Hospitality-- +Sulphureted Hydrogen and Malaria--Conversations with Makololo--Their +moral Character and Conduct--Sekeletu wishes to purchase a Sugar-mill, +etc.--The Donkeys--Influence among the Natives--"Food fit for a +Chief"--Parting Words of Mamire--Motibe's Excuses. + + + +On the 31st of July we parted with our kind Libonta friends. We planted +some of our palm-tree seeds in different villages of this valley. They +began to sprout even while we were there, but, unfortunately, they were +always destroyed by the mice which swarm in every hut. + +At Chitlane's village we collected the young of a colony of the +linkololo ('Anastomus lamalligerus'), a black, long-legged bird, +somewhat larger than a crow, which lives on shellfish ('Ampullaria'), +and breeds in society at certain localities among the reeds. These +places are well known, as they continue there from year to year, and +belong to the chiefs, who at particular times of the year gather most +of the young. The produce of this "harvest", as they call it, which was +presented to me, was a hundred and seventy-five unfledged birds. They +had been rather late in collecting them, in consequence of waiting for +the arrival of Mpololo, who acts the part of chief, but gave them to me, +knowing that this would be pleasing to him, otherwise this colony would +have yielded double the amount. The old ones appear along the Leeambye +in vast flocks, and look lean and scraggy. The young are very fat, and, +when roasted, are esteemed one of the dainties of the Barotse valley. In +presents of this kind, as well as of oxen, it is a sort of feast of joy, +the person to whom they are presented having the honor of distributing +the materials of the feast. We generally slaughtered every ox at the +village where it was presented, and then our friends and we rejoiced +together. + +The village of Chitlane is situated, like all others in the Barotse +valley, on an eminence, over which floods do not rise; but this last +year the water approached nearer to an entire submergence of the whole +valley than has been known in the memory of man. Great numbers of people +were now suffering from sickness, which always prevails when the waters +are drying up, and I found much demand for the medicines I had brought +from Loanda. The great variation of the temperature each day must have +a trying effect upon the health. At this village there is a real Indian +banian-tree, which has spread itself over a considerable space by means +of roots from its branches; it has been termed, in consequence, "the +tree with legs" (more oa maotu). It is curious that trees of this family +are looked upon with veneration, and all the way from the Barotse to +Loanda are thought to be preservatives from evil. + +On reaching Naliele on the 1st of August we found Mpololo in great +affliction on account of the death of his daughter and her child. She +had been lately confined; and her father naturally remembered her when +an ox was slaughtered, or when the tribute of other food, which he +receives in lieu of Sekeletu, came in his way, and sent frequent +presents to her. This moved the envy of one of the Makololo who hated +Mpololo, and, wishing to vex him, he entered the daughter's hut by +night, and strangled both her and her child. He then tried to make fire +in the hut and burn it, so that the murder might not be known; but +the squeaking noise of rubbing the sticks awakened a servant, and the +murderer was detected. Both he and his wife were thrown into the river; +the latter having "known of her husband's intentions, and not revealing +them." She declared she had dissuaded him from the crime, and, had any +one interposed a word, she might have been spared. + +Mpololo exerted himself in every way to supply us with other canoes, and +we left Shinte's with him. The Mambowe were well received, and departed +with friendly messages to their chief Masiko. My men were exceedingly +delighted with the cordial reception we met with every where; but a +source of annoyance was found where it was not expected. Many of their +wives had married other men during our two years' absence. Mashauana's +wife, who had borne him two children, was among the number. He wished +to appear not to feel it much, saying, "Why, wives are as plentiful as +grass, and I can get another: she may go;" but he would add, "If I had +that fellow, I would open his ears for him." As most of them had more +wives than one, I tried to console them by saying that they had still +more than I had, and that they had enough yet; but they felt the +reflection to be galling, that while they were toiling, another had been +devouring their corn. Some of their wives came with very young infants +in their arms. This excited no discontent; and for some I had to speak +to the chief to order the men, who had married the only wives some of my +companions ever had, to restore them. + +SUNDAY, AUGUST 5TH. A large audience listened most attentively to my +morning address. Surely some will remember the ideas conveyed, and pray +to our merciful Father, who would never have thought of Him but for this +visit. The invariably kind and respectful treatment I have received from +these, and many other heathen tribes in this central country, together +with the attentive observations of many years, have led me to the +belief that, if one exerts himself for their good, he will never be ill +treated. There may be opposition to his doctrine, but none to the man +himself. + +While still at Naliele, a party which had been sent after me by Masiko +arrived. He was much disappointed because I had not visited him. They +brought an elephant's tusk, two calabashes of honey, two baskets of +maize, and one of ground-nuts, as a present. Masiko wished to say that +he had followed the injunction which I had given as the will of God, and +lived in peace until his brother Limboa came, captured his women as they +went to their gardens, and then appeared before his stockade. Masiko +offered to lead his men out; but they objected, saying, "Let us servants +be killed, you must not be slain." Those who said this were young +Barotse who had been drilled to fighting by Sebituane, and used shields +of ox-hide. They beat off the party of Limboa, ten being wounded, and +ten slain in the engagement. Limboa subsequently sent three slaves as +a self-imposed fine to Masiko for attacking him. I succeeded in getting +the Makololo to treat the messengers of Masiko well, though, as they +regarded them as rebels, it was somewhat against the grain at first to +speak civilly to them. + +Mpololo, attempting to justify an opposite line of conduct, told me how +they had fled from Sebituane, even though he had given them numbers of +cattle after their subjection by his arms, and was rather surprised +to find that I was disposed to think more highly of them for having +asserted their independence, even at the loss of milk. For this food, +all who have been accustomed to it from infancy in Africa have an +excessive longing. I pointed out how they might be mutually beneficial +to each other by the exchange of canoes and cattle. + +There are some very old Barotse living here who were the companions of +the old chief Santuru. These men, protected by their age, were very free +in their comments on the "upstart" Makololo. One of them, for instance, +interrupted my conversation one day with some Makololo gentlemen with +the advice "not to believe them, for they were only a set of thieves;" +and it was taken in quite a good-natured way. It is remarkable that none +of the ancients here had any tradition of an earthquake having occurred +in this region. Their quick perception of events recognizable by +the senses, and retentiveness of memory, render it probable that no +perceptible movement of the earth has taken place between 7 Deg. and 27 +Deg. S. in the centre of the continent during the last two centuries at +least. There is no appearance of recent fracture or disturbance of rocks +to be seen in the central country, except the falls of Gonye; nor is +there any evidence or tradition of hurricanes. + +I left Naliele on the 13th of August, and, when proceeding along the +shore at midday, a hippopotamus struck the canoe with her forehead, +lifting one half of it quite out of the water, so as nearly to overturn +it. The force of the butt she gave tilted Mashauana out into the river; +the rest of us sprang to the shore, which was only about ten yards off. +Glancing back, I saw her come to the surface a short way off, and look +to the canoe, as if to see if she had done much mischief. It was a +female, whose young one had been speared the day before. No damage was +done except wetting person and goods. This is so unusual an occurrence, +when the precaution is taken to coast along the shore, that my men +exclaimed, "Is the beast mad?" There were eight of us in the canoe at +the time, and the shake it received shows the immense power of this +animal in the water. + +On reaching Gonye, Mokwala, the head man, having presented me with a +tusk, I gave it to Pitsane, as he was eagerly collecting ivory for the +Loanda market. The rocks of Gonye are reddish gray sandstone, nearly +horizontal, and perforated by madrepores, the holes showing the +course of the insect in different directions. The rock itself has +been impregnated with iron, and that hardened, forms a glaze on the +surface--an appearance common to many of the rocks of this country. + +AUGUST 22D. This is the end of winter. The trees which line the banks +begin to bud and blossom, and there is some show of the influence of the +new sap, which will soon end in buds that push off the old foliage by +assuming a very bright orange color. This orange is so bright that I +mistook it for masses of yellow blossom. There is every variety of shade +in the leaves--yellow, purple, copper, liver-color, and even inky black. + +Having got the loan of other canoes from Mpololo, and three oxen as +provision for the way, which made the number we had been presented with +in the Barotse valley amount to thirteen, we proceeded down the river +toward Sesheke, and were as much struck as formerly with the noble +river. The whole scenery is lovely, though the atmosphere is murky in +consequence of the continuance of the smoky tinge of winter. + +This peculiar tinge of the atmosphere was observed every winter at +Kolobeng, but it was not so observable in Londa as in the south, though +I had always considered that it was owing to the extensive burnings +of the grass, in which hundreds of miles of pasturage are annually +consumed. As the quantity burned in the north is very much greater than +in the south, and the smoky tinge of winter was not observed, some other +explanation than these burnings must be sought for. I have sometimes +imagined that the lowering of the temperature in the winter rendered +the vapor in the upper current of air visible, and imparted this hazy +appearance. + +The amount of organic life is surprising. At the time the river begins +to rise, the 'Ibis religiosa' comes down in flocks of fifties, with +prodigious numbers of other water-fowl. Some of the sand-banks appear +whitened during the day with flocks of pelicans--I once counted three +hundred; others are brown with ducks ('Anas histrionica')--I got +fourteen of these by one shot ('Querquedula Hottentota', Smith), and +other kinds. Great numbers of gulls ('Procellaria turtur', Smith), +and several others, float over the surface. The vast quantity of small +birds, which feed on insects, show that the river teems also with +specimens of minute organic life. In walking among bushes on the banks +we are occasionally stung by a hornet, which makes its nest in form +like that of our own wasp, and hangs it on the branches of trees. The +breeding storgh* is so strong in this insect that it pursues any one +twenty or thirty yards who happens to brush too closely past its nest. +The sting, which it tries to inflict near the eye, is more like a +discharge of electricity from a powerful machine, or a violent blow, +than aught else. It produces momentary insensibility, and is followed by +the most pungent pain. Yet this insect is quite timid when away from its +nest. It is named Murotuani by the Bechuanas. + + * (Greek) sigma-tau-omicron-rho-gamma-eta. + +We have tsetse between Nameta and Sekhosi. An insect of prey, about an +inch in length, long-legged and gaunt-looking, may be observed flying +about and lighting upon the bare ground. It is a tiger in its way, for +it springs upon tsetse and other flies, and, sucking out their blood, +throws the bodies aside. + +Long before reaching Sesheke we had been informed that a party of +Matebele, the people of Mosilikatse, had brought some packages of goods +for me to the south bank of the river, near the Victoria Falls, and, +though they declared that they had been sent by Mr. Moffat, the Makololo +had refused to credit the statement of their sworn enemies. They +imagined that the parcels were directed to me as a mere trick, whereby +to place witchcraft-medicine into the hands of the Makololo. When the +Matebele on the south bank called to the Makololo on the north to come +over in canoes and receive the goods sent by Moffat to "Nake", the +Makololo replied, "Go along with you, we know better than that; how +could he tell Moffat to send his things here, he having gone away to the +north?" The Matebele answered, "Here are the goods; we place them now +before you, and if you leave them to perish the guilt will be yours." +When they had departed the Makololo thought better of it, and, after +much divination, went over with fear and trembling, and carried the +packages carefully to an island in the middle of the stream; then, +building a hut over them to protect them from the weather, they left +them; and there I found they had remained from September, 1854, till +September, 1855, in perfect safety. Here, as I had often experienced +before, I found the news was very old, and had lost much of its interest +by keeping, but there were some good eatables from Mrs. Moffat. Among +other things, I discovered that my friend, Sir Roderick Murchison, while +in his study in London, had arrived at the same conclusion respecting +the form of the African continent as I had lately come to on the spot +(see note p. 512 [footnote to Chapter 24 Paragraph 7]); and that, +from the attentive study of the geological map of Mr. Bain and other +materials, some of which were furnished by the discoveries of Mr. +Oswell and myself, he had not only clearly enunciated the peculiar +configuration as an hypothesis in his discourse before the Geographical +Society in 1852, but had even the assurance to send me out a copy for my +information! There was not much use in nursing my chagrin at being +thus fairly "cut out" by the man who had foretold the existence of +the Australian gold before its discovery, for here it was in black and +white. In his easy-chair he had forestalled me by three years, though I +had been working hard through jungle, marsh, and fever, and, since the +light dawned on my mind at Dilolo, had been cherishing the pleasing +delusion that I should be the first to suggest the idea that the +interior of Africa was a watery plateau of less elevation than flanking +hilly ranges. + +Having waited a few days at Sesheke till the horses which we had left at +Linyanti should arrive, we proceeded to that town, and found the wagon, +and every thing we had left in November, 1853, perfectly safe. A grand +meeting of all the people was called to receive our report, and the +articles which had been sent by the governor and merchants of Loanda. I +explained that none of these were my property, but that they were sent +to show the friendly feelings of the white men, and their eagerness to +enter into commercial relations with the Makololo. I then requested my +companions to give a true account of what they had seen. The wonderful +things lost nothing in the telling, the climax always being that they +had finished the whole world, and had turned only when there was no more +land. One glib old gentleman asked, "Then you reached Ma Robert (Mrs. +L.)?" They were obliged to confess that she lived a little beyond the +world. The presents were received with expressions of great satisfaction +and delight; and on Sunday, when Sekeletu made his appearance at church +in his uniform, it attracted more attention than the sermon; and +the kind expressions they made use of respecting myself were so very +flattering that I felt inclined to shut my eyes. Their private opinion +must have tallied with their public report, for I very soon received +offers from volunteers to accompany me to the east coast. They said they +wished to be able to return and relate strange things like my recent +companions; and Sekeletu immediately made arrangements with the Arab Ben +Habib to conduct a fresh party with a load of ivory to Loanda. These, +he said, must go with him and learn to trade: they were not to have any +thing to do in the disposal of the ivory, but simply look and learn. My +companions were to remain and rest themselves, and then return to Loanda +when the others had come home. Sekeletu consulted me as to sending +presents back to the governor and merchants of Loanda, but, not +possessing much confidence in this Arab, I advised him to send a present +by Pitsane, as he knew who ought to receive it. + +Since my arrival in England, information has been received from Mr. +Gabriel that this party had arrived on the west coast, but that the +ivory had been disposed of to some Portuguese merchants in the interior, +and the men had been obliged to carry it down to Loanda. They had not +been introduced to Mr. Gabriel, but that gentleman, having learned that +they were in the city, went to them, and pronounced the names Pitsane, +Mashauana, when all started up and crowded round him. When Mr. G. +obtained an interpreter, he learned that they had been ordered by +Sekeletu to be sure and go to my brother, as he termed him. Mr. G. +behaved in the same liberal manner as he had done to my companions, +and they departed for their distant home after bidding him a formal and +affectionate adieu. + +It was to be expected that they would be imposed upon in their first +attempt at trading, but I believe that this could not be so easily +repeated. It is, however, unfortunate that in dealing with the natives +in the interior there is no attempt made at the establishment of fair +prices. The trader shows a quantity of goods, the native asks for more, +and more is given. The native, being ignorant of the value of the +goods or of his ivory, tries what another demand will bring. After some +haggling, an addition is made, and that bargain is concluded to the +satisfaction of both parties. Another trader comes, and perhaps offers +more than the first; the customary demand for an addition is made, and +he yields. The natives by this time are beginning to believe that the +more they ask the more they will get: they continue to urge, the trader +bursts into a rage, and the trade is stopped, to be renewed next day by +a higher offer. The natives naturally conclude that they were right +the day before, and a most disagreeable commercial intercourse is +established. A great amount of time is spent in concluding these +bargains. In other parts, it is quite common to see the natives going +from one trader to another till they have finished the whole village; +and some give presents of brandy to tempt their custom. Much of this +unpleasant state of feeling between natives and Europeans results from +the commencements made by those who were ignorant of the language, and +from the want of education being given at the same time. + +During the time of our absence at Loanda, the Makololo had made two +forays, and captured large herds of cattle. One, to the lake, was in +order to punish Lechulatebe for the insolence he had manifested after +procuring some fire-arms; and the other to Sebola Makwaia, a chief +living far to the N.E. This was most unjustifiable, and had been +condemned by all the influential Makololo. Ben Habib, however, had, in +coming from Zanzibar, visited Sebola Makwaia, and found that the chief +town was governed by an old woman of that name. She received him kindly, +and gave him a large quantity of magnificent ivory, sufficient to +set him up as a trader, at a very small cost; but, his party having +discharged their guns, Ben Habib observed that the female chief and her +people were extremely alarmed, and would have fled and left their cattle +in a panic, had he not calmed their fears. Ben Habib informed the uncle +of Sekeletu that he could easily guide him thither, and he might get +a large number of cattle without any difficulty. This uncle advised +Sekeletu to go; and, as the only greatness he knew was imitation of his +father's deeds, he went, but was not so successful as was anticipated. +Sebola Makwaia had fled on hearing of the approach of the Makololo; and, +as the country is marshy and intersected in every direction by rivers, +they could not easily pursue her. They captured canoes, and, pursuing up +different streams, came to a small lake called "Shuia". Having entered +the Loangwa, flowing to the eastward, they found it advisable to return, +as the natives in those parts became more warlike the further they went +in that direction. Before turning, the Arab pointed out an elevated +ridge in the distance, and said to the Makololo, "When we see that, +we always know that we are only ten or fifteen days from the sea." On +seeing him afterward, he informed me that on the same ridge, but much +further to the north, the Banyassa lived, and that the rivers flowed +from it toward the S.W. He also confirmed the other Arab's account that +the Loapula, which he had crossed at the town of Cazembe, flowed in the +same direction, and into the Leeambye. + +Several of the influential Makololo who had engaged in these marauding +expeditions had died before our arrival, and Nokwane had succumbed to +his strange disease. Ramosantane had perished through vomiting blood +from over-fatigue in the march, and Lerimo was affected by a leprosy +peculiar to the Barotse valley. In accordance with the advice of my +Libonta friends, I did not fail to reprove "my child Sekeletu" for his +marauding. This was not done in an angry manner, for no good is ever +achieved by fierce denunciations. Motibe, his father-in-law, said to me, +"Scold him much, but don't let others hear you." + +The Makololo expressed great satisfaction with the route we had opened +up to the west, and soon after our arrival a "picho" was called, in +order to discuss the question of removal to the Barotse valley, so +that they might be nearer the market. Some of the older men objected to +abandoning the line of defense afforded by the rivers Chobe and Zambesi +against their southern enemies the Matebele. The Makololo generally have +an aversion to the Barotse valley, on account of the fevers which are +annually engendered in it as the waters dry up. They prefer it only as +a cattle station; for, though the herds are frequently thinned by an +epidemic disease (peripneumonia), they breed so fast that the losses +are soon made good. Wherever else the Makololo go, they always leave +a portion of their stock in the charge of herdsmen in that prolific +valley. Some of the younger men objected to removal, because the +rankness of the grass at the Barotse did not allow of their running +fast, and because there "it never becomes cool." + +Sekeletu at last stood up, and, addressing me, said, "I am perfectly +satisfied as to the great advantages for trade of the path which you +have opened, and think that we ought to go to the Barotse, in order +to make the way from us to Loanda shorter; but with whom am I to live +there? If you were coming with us, I would remove to-morrow; but now you +are going to the white man's country to bring Ma Robert, and when you +return you will find me near to the spot on which you wish to dwell." +I had then no idea that any healthy spot existed in the country, and +thought only of a convenient central situation, adapted for intercourse +with the adjacent tribes and with the coast, such as that near to the +confluence of the Leeba and Leeambye. + +The fever is certainly a drawback to this otherwise important missionary +field. The great humidity produced by heavy rains and inundations, the +exuberant vegetation caused by fervid heat in rich moist soil, and the +prodigious amount of decaying vegetable matter annually exposed after +the inundations to the rays of a torrid sun, with a flat surface often +covered by forest through which the winds can not pass, all combine +to render the climate far from salubrious for any portion of the human +family. But the fever, thus caused and rendered virulent, is almost the +only disease prevalent in it. There is no consumption or scrofula, +and but little insanity. Smallpox and measles visited the country some +thirty years ago and cut off many, but they have since made no return, +although the former has been almost constantly in one part or another +of the coast. Singularly enough, the people used inoculation for this +disease; and in one village, where they seem to have chosen a malignant +case from which to inoculate the rest, nearly the whole village was cut +off. I have seen but one case of hydrocephalus, a few of epilepsy, none +of cholera or cancer, and many diseases common in England are here +quite unknown. It is true that I suffered severely from fever, but my +experience can not be taken as a fair criterion in the matter. Compelled +to sleep on the damp ground month after month, exposed to drenching +showers, and getting the lower extremities wetted two or three times +every day, living on native food (with the exception of sugarless +coffee, during the journey to the north and the latter half of the +return journey), and that food the manioc roots and meal, which contain +so much uncombined starch that the eyes become affected (as in the +case of animals fed for experiment on pure gluten or starch), and being +exposed during many hours each day in comparative inaction to the +direct rays of the sun, the thermometer standing above 96 Deg. in the +shade--these constitute a more pitiful hygiene than any missionaries who +may follow will ever have to endure. I do not mention these privations +as if I considered them to be "sacrifices", for I think that the word +ought never to be applied to any thing we can do for Him who came down +from heaven and died for us; but I suppose it is necessary to notice +them, in order that no unfavorable opinion may be formed from my +experience as to what that of others might be, if less exposed to the +vicissitudes of the weather and change of diet. + +I believe that the interior of this country presents a much more +inviting field for the philanthropist than does the west coast, where +missionaries of the Church Missionary, United Presbyterian, and other +societies have long labored with most astonishing devotedness and +never-flagging zeal. There the fevers are much more virulent and more +speedily fatal than here, for from 8 Deg. south they almost invariably +take the intermittent or least fatal type; and their effect being to +enlarge the spleen, a complaint which is best treated by change of +climate, we have the remedy at hand by passing the 20th parallel on our +way south. But I am not to be understood as intimating that any of the +numerous tribes are anxious for instruction: they are not the inquiring +spirits we read of in other countries; they do not desire the Gospel, +because they know nothing about either it or its benefits; but there is +no impediment in the way of instruction. Every head man would be proud +of a European visitor or resident in his territory, and there is perfect +security for life and property all over the interior country. The great +barriers which have kept Africa shut are the unhealthiness of the coast, +and the exclusive, illiberal disposition of the border tribes. It has +not within the historic period been cut into by deep arms of the sea, +and only a small fringe of its population have come into contact with +the rest of mankind. Race has much to do in the present circumstances of +nations; yet it is probable that the unhealthy coast-climate has reacted +on the people, and aided both in perpetuating their own degradation and +preventing those more inland from having intercourse with the rest of +the world. It is to be hoped that these obstacles will be overcome by +the more rapid means of locomotion possessed in the present age, if a +good highway can become available from the coast into the interior. + +Having found it impracticable to open up a carriage-path to the west, +it became a question as to which part of the east coast we should direct +our steps. The Arabs had come from Zanzibar through a peaceful country. +They assured me that the powerful chiefs beyond the Cazembe on the N.E., +viz., Moatutu, Moaroro, and Mogogo, chiefs of the tribes Batutu, Baroro, +and Bagogo, would have no objection to my passing through their country. +They described the population there as located in small villages like +the Balonda, and that no difficulty is experienced in traveling among +them. They mentioned also that, at a distance of ten days beyond +Cazembe, their path winds round the end of Lake Tanganyenka. But +when they reach this lake, a little to the northwest of its southern +extremity, they find no difficulty in obtaining canoes to carry them +over. They sleep on islands, for it is said to require three days in +crossing, and may thus be forty or fifty miles broad. Here they punt the +canoes the whole way, showing that it is shallow. There are many small +streams in the path, and three large rivers. This, then, appeared to me +to be the safest; but my present object being a path admitting of water +rather than land carriage, this route did not promise so much as that +by way of the Zambesi or Leeambye. The Makololo knew all the country +eastward as far as the Kafue, from having lived in former times near +the confluence of that river with the Zambesi, and they all advised this +path in preference to that by the way of Zanzibar. The only difficulty +that they assured me of was that in the falls of Victoria. Some +recommended my going to Sesheke, and crossing over in a N.E. direction +to the Kafue, which is only six days distant, and descending that river +to the Zambesi. Others recommended me to go on the south bank of the +Zambesi until I had passed the falls, then get canoes and proceed +farther down the river. All spoke strongly of the difficulties of +traveling on the north bank, on account of the excessively broken +and rocky nature of the country near the river on that side. And when +Ponuane, who had lately headed a foray there, proposed that I should +carry canoes along that side till we reached the spot where the +Leeambye becomes broad and placid again, others declared that, from +the difficulties he himself had experienced in forcing the men of his +expedition to do this, they believed that mine would be sure to desert +me if I attempted to impose such a task upon them. Another objection to +traveling on either bank of the river was the prevalence of the tsetse, +which is so abundant that the inhabitants can keep no domestic animals +except goats. + +While pondering over these different paths, I could not help regretting +my being alone. If I had enjoyed the company of my former companion, Mr. +Oswell, one of us might have taken the Zambesi, and the other gone by +way of Zanzibar. The latter route was decidedly the easiest, because all +the inland tribes were friendly, while the tribes in the direction of +the Zambesi were inimical, and I should now be obliged to lead a party, +which the Batoka of that country view as hostile invaders, through an +enemy's land; but, as the prospect of permanent water-conveyance was +good, I decided on going down the Zambesi, and keeping on the north +bank, because, in the map given by Bowditch, Tete, the farthest inland +station of the Portuguese, is erroneously placed on that side. Being +near the end of September, the rains were expected daily; the clouds +were collecting, and the wind blew strongly from the east, but it was +excessively hot. All the Makololo urged me strongly to remain till the +ground should be cooled by the rains; and as it was probable that I +should get fever if I commenced my journey now, I resolved to wait. The +parts of the country about 17 Deg. and 18 Deg. suffer from drought and +become dusty. It is but the commencement of the humid region to the +north, and partakes occasionally of the character of both the wet and +dry regions. Some idea may be formed of the heat in October by the fact +that the thermometer (protected) stood, in the shade of my wagon, at 100 +Deg. through the day. It rose to 110 Deg. if unprotected from the wind; +at dark it showed 89 Deg.; at 10 o'clock, 80 Deg.; and then gradually +sunk till sunrise, when it was 70 Deg. That is usually the period of +greatest cold in each twenty-four hours in this region. The natives, +during the period of greatest heat, keep in their huts, which are always +pleasantly cool by day, but close and suffocating by night. Those who +are able to afford it sit guzzling beer or boyaloa. The perspiration +produced by copious draughts seems to give enjoyment, the evaporation +causing a feeling of coolness. The attendants of the chief, on these +occasions, keep up a continuous roar of bantering, raillery, laughing, +and swearing. The dance is kept up in the moonlight till past midnight. +The women stand clapping their hands continuously, and the old men sit +admiringly, and say, "It is really very fine." As crowds came to see me, +I employed much of my time in conversation, that being a good mode of +conveying instruction. In the public meetings for worship the people +listened very attentively, and behaved with more decorum than formerly. +They really form a very inviting field for a missionary. Surely the +oft-told tale of the goodness and love of our heavenly Father, in giving +up his own Son to death for us sinners, will, by the power of his Holy +Spirit, beget love in some of these heathen hearts. + +1ST OCTOBER. Before Ben Habib started for Loanda, he asked the daughter +of Sebituane in marriage. This is the plan the Arabs adopt for +gaining influence in a tribe, and they have been known to proceed thus +cautiously to form connections, and gradually gain so much influence +as to draw all the tribe over to their religion. I never heard of any +persecution, although the Arabs with whom I came in contact seemed +much attached to their religion. This daughter of Sebituane, named +Manchunyane, was about twelve years of age. As I was the bosom-friend +of her father, I was supposed to have a voice in her disposal, and, on +being asked, objected to her being taken away, we knew not whither, and +where we might never see her again. As her name implies, she was only a +little black, and, besides being as fair as any of the Arabs, had quite +the Arab features; but I have no doubt that Ben Habib will renew +his suit more successfully on some other occasion. In these cases of +marriage, the consent of the young women is seldom asked. A maid-servant +of Sekeletu, however, pronounced by the Makololo to be good-looking, was +at this time sought in marriage by five young men. Sekeletu, happening +to be at my wagon when one of these preferred his suit, very coolly +ordered all five to stand in a row before the young woman, that she +might make her choice. Two refused to stand, apparently, because they +could not brook the idea of a repulse, although willing enough to take +her if Sekeletu had acceded to their petition without reference to +her will. Three dandified fellows stood forth, and she unhesitatingly +decided on taking one who was really the best looking. It was amusing to +see the mortification exhibited on the black faces of the unsuccessful +candidates, while the spectators greeted them with a hearty laugh. + +During the whole of my stay with the Makololo, Sekeletu supplied my +wants abundantly, appointing some cows to furnish me with milk, and, +when he went out to hunt, sent home orders for slaughtered oxen to be +given. That the food was not given in a niggardly spirit may be inferred +from the fact that, when I proposed to depart on the 20th of October, he +protested against my going off in such a hot sun. "Only wait," said he, +"for the first shower, and then I will let you go." This was reasonable, +for the thermometer, placed upon a deal box in the sun, rose to 138 Deg. +It stood at 108 Deg. in the shade by day, and 96 Deg. at sunset. If +my experiments were correct, the blood of a European is of a higher +temperature than that of an African. The bulb, held under my tongue, +stood at 100 Deg.; under that of the natives, at 98 Deg. There was much +sickness in the town, and no wonder, for part of the water left by the +inundation still formed a large pond in the centre. Even the plains +between Linyanti and Sesheke had not yet been freed from the waters of +the inundation. They had risen higher than usual, and for a long time +canoes passed from the one place to the other, a distance of upward of +120 miles, in nearly a straight line. We found many patches of stagnant +water, which, when disturbed by our passing through them, evolved strong +effluvia of sulphureted hydrogen. At other times these spots exhibit +an efflorescence of the nitrate of soda; they also contain abundance of +lime, probably from decaying vegetable matter, and from these may have +emanated the malaria which caused the present sickness. I have often +remarked this effluvium in sickly spots, and can not help believing but +that it has some connection with fever, though I am quite aware of Dr. +MacWilliams's unsuccessful efforts to discover sulphureted hydrogen, by +the most delicate tests, in the Niger expedition. + +I had plenty of employment, for, besides attending to the severer cases, +I had perpetual calls on my attention. The town contained at least 7000 +inhabitants, and every one thought that he might come, and at least look +at me. In talking with some of the more intelligent in the evenings, the +conversation having turned from inquiries respecting eclipses of the sun +and moon to that other world where Jesus reigns, they let me know that +my attempts to enlighten them had not been without some small effect. +"Many of the children," said they, "talk about the strange things you +bring to their ears, but the old men show a little opposition by saying, +'Do we know what he is talking about?'" Ntlaria and others complain of +treacherous memories, and say, "When we hear words about other things, +we hold them fast; but when we hear you tell much more wonderful things +than any we have ever heard before, we don't know how it is, they run +away from our hearts." These are the more intelligent of my Makololo +friends. On the majority the teaching produces no appreciable effect; +they assent to the truth with the most perplexing indifference, adding, +"But we don't know," or, "We do not understand." My medical intercourse +with them enabled me to ascertain their moral status better than a mere +religious teacher could do. They do not attempt to hide the evil, as +men often do, from their spiritual instructors; but I have found it +difficult to come to a conclusion on their character. They sometimes +perform actions remarkably good, and sometimes as strangely the +opposite. I have been unable to ascertain the motive for the good, or +account for the callousness of conscience with which they perpetrate the +bad. After long observation, I came to the conclusion that they are just +such a strange mixture of good and evil as men are every where +else. There is not among them an approach to that constant stream of +benevolence flowing from the rich to the poor which we have in England, +nor yet the unostentatious attentions which we have among our own poor +to each other. Yet there are frequent instances of genuine kindness and +liberality, as well as actions of an opposite character. The rich show +kindness to the poor in expectation of services, and a poor person who +has no relatives will seldom be supplied even with water in illness, +and, when dead, will be dragged out to be devoured by the hyaenas +instead of being buried. Relatives alone will condescend to touch a dead +body. It would be easy to enumerate instances of inhumanity which I have +witnessed. An interesting-looking girl came to my wagon one day in a +state of nudity, and almost a skeleton. She was a captive from another +tribe, and had been neglected by the man who claimed her. Having +supplied her wants, I made inquiry for him, and found that he had been +unsuccessful in raising a crop of corn, and had no food to give her. I +volunteered to take her; but he said he would allow me to feed her +and make her fat, and then take her away. I protested against his +heartlessness; and, as he said he could "not part with his child," I +was precluded from attending to her wants. In a day or two she was lost +sight of. She had gone out a little way from the town, and, being too +weak to return, had been cruelly left to perish. Another day I saw +a poor boy going to the water to drink, apparently in a starving +condition. This case I brought before the chief in council, and found +that his emaciation was ascribed to disease and want combined. He was +not one of the Makololo, but a member of a subdued tribe. I showed them +that any one professing to claim a child, and refusing proper nutriment, +would be guilty of his death. Sekeletu decided that the owner of this +boy should give up his alleged right rather than destroy the child. When +I took him he was so far gone as to be in the cold stage of starvation, +but was soon brought round by a little milk given three or four times a +day. On leaving Linyanti I handed him over to the charge of his chief, +Sekeletu, who feeds his servants very well. On the other hand, I have +seen instances in which both men and women have taken up little orphans +and carefully reared them as their own children. By a selection of cases +of either kind, it would not be difficult to make these people appear +excessively good or uncommonly bad. + +I still possessed some of the coffee which I had brought from Angola, +and some of the sugar which I had left in my wagon. So long as the sugar +lasted, Sekeletu favored me with his company at meals; but the sugar +soon came to a close. The Makololo, as formerly mentioned, were well +acquainted with the sugar-cane, as it is cultivated by the Barotse, but +never knew that sugar could be got from it. When I explained the process +by which it was produced, Sekeletu asked if I could not buy him an +apparatus for the purpose of making sugar. He said that he would plant +the cane largely if he only had the means of making the sugar from it. +I replied that I was unable to purchase a mill, when he instantly +rejoined, "Why not take ivory to buy it?" As I had been living at his +expense, I was glad of the opportunity to show my gratitude by serving +him; and when he and his principal men understood that I was willing to +execute a commission, Sekeletu gave me an order for a sugar-mill, and +for all the different varieties of clothing that he had ever seen, +especially a mohair coat, a good rifle, beads, brass-wire, etc., etc., +and wound up by saying, "And any other beautiful thing you may see in +your own country." As to the quantity of ivory required to execute the +commission, I said I feared that a large amount would be necessary. Both +he and his councilors replied, "The ivory is all your own; if you leave +any in the country it will be your own fault." He was also anxious for +horses. The two I had left with him when I went to Loanda were still +living, and had been of great use to him in hunting the giraffe and +eland, and he was now anxious to have a breed. This, I thought, might +be obtained at the Portuguese settlements. All were very much delighted +with the donkeys we had brought from Loanda. As we found that they were +not affected by the bite of the tsetse, and there was a prospect of the +breed being continued, it was gratifying to see the experiment of their +introduction so far successful. The donkeys came as frisky as kids all +the way from Loanda until we began to descend the Leeambye. There we +came upon so many interlacing branches of the river, and were obliged +to drag them through such masses of tangled aquatic plants, that we half +drowned them, and were at last obliged to leave them somewhat exhausted +at Naliele. They excited the unbounded admiration of my men by their +knowledge of the different kinds of plants, which, as they remarked, +"the animals had never before seen in their own country;" and when the +donkeys indulged in their music, they startled the inhabitants more than +if they had been lions. We never rode them, nor yet the horse which had +been given by the bishop, for fear of hurting them by any work. + +Although the Makololo were so confiding, the reader must not imagine +that they would be so to every individual who might visit them. Much of +my influence depended upon the good name given me by the Bakwains, and +that I secured only through a long course of tolerably good conduct. +No one ever gains much influence in this country without purity and +uprightness. The acts of a stranger are keenly scrutinized by both young +and old, and seldom is the judgment pronounced, even by the heathen, +unfair or uncharitable. I have heard women speaking in admiration of +a white man because he was pure, and never was guilty of any secret +immorality. Had he been, they would have known it, and, untutored +heathen though they be, would have despised him in consequence. Secret +vice becomes known throughout the tribe; and while one, unacquainted +with the language, may imagine a peccadillo to be hidden, it is as +patent to all as it would be in London had he a placard on his back. + +27TH OCTOBER, 1855. The first continuous rain of the season commenced +during the night, the wind being from the N.E., as it always was on like +occasions at Kolobeng. The rainy season was thus begun, and I made ready +to go. The mother of Sekeletu prepared a bag of ground-nuts, by frying +them in cream with a little salt, as a sort of sandwiches for my +journey. This is considered food fit for a chief. Others ground the +maize from my own garden into meal, and Sekeletu pointed out Sekwebu +and Kanyata as the persons who should head the party intended to form +my company. Sekwebu had been captured by the Matebele when a little boy, +and the tribe in which he was a captive had migrated to the country near +Tete; he had traveled along both banks of the Zambesi several times, and +was intimately acquainted with the dialects spoken there. I found him +to be a person of great prudence and sound judgment, and his subsequent +loss at the Mauritius has been, ever since, a source of sincere regret. +He at once recommended our keeping well away from the river, on account +of the tsetse and rocky country, assigning also as a reason for it that +the Leeambye beyond the falls turns round to the N.N.E. Mamire, who +had married the mother of Sekeletu, on coming to bid me farewell before +starting, said, "You are now going among people who can not be trusted +because we have used them badly; but you go with a different message +from any they ever heard before, and Jesus will be with you and help +you, though among enemies; and if he carries you safely, and brings you +and Ma Robert back again, I shall say he has bestowed a great favor upon +me. May we obtain a path whereby we may visit and be visited by other +tribes, and by white men!" On telling him my fears that he was +still inclined to follow the old marauding system, which prevented +intercourse, and that he, from his influential position, was especially +guilty in the late forays, he acknowledged all rather too freely for my +taste, but seemed quite aware that the old system was far from right. +Mentioning my inability to pay the men who were to accompany me, he +replied, "A man wishes, of course, to appear among his friends, after a +long absence, with something of his own to show; the whole of the +ivory in the country is yours, so you must take as much as you can, +and Sekeletu will furnish men to carry it." These remarks of Mamire +are quoted literally, in order to show the state of mind of the most +influential in the tribe. And as I wish to give the reader a fair idea +of the other side of the question as well, it may be mentioned that +Motibe parried the imputation of the guilt of marauding by every +possible subterfuge. He would not admit that they had done wrong, and +laid the guilt of the wars in which the Makololo had engaged on the +Boers, the Matebele, and every other tribe except his own. When quite +a youth, Motibe's family had been attacked by a party of Boers; he hid +himself in an ant-eater's hole, but was drawn out and thrashed with +a whip of hippopotamus hide. When enjoined to live in peace, he would +reply, "Teach the Boers to lay down their arms first." Yet Motibe, on +other occasions, seemed to feel the difference between those who +are Christians indeed and those who are so only in name. In all our +discussions we parted good friends. + + + + +Chapter 26. + +Departure from Linyanti--A Thunder-storm--An Act of genuine Kindness-- +Fitted out a second time by the Makololo--Sail down the Leeambye-- +Sekote's Kotla and human Skulls; his Grave adorned with Elephants' +Tusks--Victoria Falls--Native Names--Columns of Vapor--Gigantic Crack-- +Wear of the Rocks--Shrines of the Barimo--"The Pestle of the Gods"-- +Second Visit to the Falls--Island Garden--Store-house Island-- +Native Diviners--A European Diviner--Makololo Foray--Marauder to be +fined--Mambari--Makololo wish to stop Mambari Slave-trading--Part +with Sekeletu--Night Traveling--River Lekone--Ancient fresh-water +Lakes--Formation of Lake Ngami--Native Traditions--Drainage of +the Great Valley--Native Reports of the Country to the +North--Maps--Moyara's Village--Savage Customs of the Batoka--A Chain +of Trading Stations--Remedy against Tsetse--"The Well of Joy"--First +Traces of Trade with Europeans--Knocking out the front Teeth--Facetious +Explanation--Degradation of the Batoka--Description of the Traveling +Party--Cross the Unguesi--Geological Formation--Ruins of a large Town-- +Productions of the Soil similar to those in Angola--Abundance of Fruit. + + + +On the 3d of November we bade adieu to our friends at Linyanti, +accompanied by Sekeletu and about 200 followers. We were all fed at his +expense, and he took cattle for this purpose from every station we came +to. The principal men of the Makololo, Lebeole, Ntlarie, Nkwatlele, +etc., were also of the party. We passed through the patch of the tsetse, +which exists between Linyanti and Sesheke, by night. The majority of the +company went on by daylight, in order to prepare our beds. Sekeletu and +I, with about forty young men, waited outside the tsetse till dark. We +then went forward, and about ten o'clock it became so pitchy dark that +both horses and men were completely blinded. The lightning spread over +the sky, forming eight or ten branches at a time, in shape exactly like +those of a tree. This, with great volumes of sheet-lightning, enabled +us at times to see the whole country. The intervals between the flashes +were so densely dark as to convey the idea of stone-blindness. The +horses trembled, cried out, and turned round, as if searching for each +other, and every new flash revealed the men taking different directions, +laughing, and stumbling against each other. The thunder was of that +tremendously loud kind only to be heard in tropical countries, and which +friends from India have assured me is louder in Africa than any they +have ever heard elsewhere. Then came a pelting rain, which completed +our confusion. After the intense heat of the day, we soon felt miserably +cold, and turned aside to a fire we saw in the distance. This had been +made by some people on their march; for this path is seldom without +numbers of strangers passing to and from the capital. My clothing having +gone on, I lay down on the cold ground, expecting to spend a miserable +night; but Sekeletu kindly covered me with his own blanket, and lay +uncovered himself. I was much affected by this act of genuine kindness. +If such men must perish by the advance of civilization, as certain races +of animals do before others, it is a pity. God grant that ere this time +comes they may receive that Gospel which is a solace for the soul in +death! + +While at Sesheke, Sekeletu supplied me with twelve oxen--three of which +were accustomed to being ridden upon--hoes, and beads to purchase a +canoe when we should strike the Leeambye beyond the falls. He likewise +presented abundance of good fresh butter and honey, and did every thing +in his power to make me comfortable for the journey. I was entirely +dependent on his generosity, for the goods I originally brought from the +Cape were all expended by the time I set off from Linyanti to the west +coast. I there drew 70 Pounds of my salary, paid my men with it, and +purchased goods for the return journey to Linyanti. These being now all +expended, the Makololo again fitted me out, and sent me on to the east +coast. I was thus dependent on their bounty, and that of other Africans, +for the means of going from Linyanti to Loanda, and again from Linyanti +to the east coast, and I feel deeply grateful to them. Coin would have +been of no benefit, for gold and silver are quite unknown. We were here +joined by Moriantsane, uncle of Sekeletu and head man of Sesheke, +and, entering canoes on the 13th, some sailed down the river to the +confluence of the Chobe, while others drove the cattle along the banks, +spending one night at Mparia, the island at the confluence of the Chobe, +which is composed of trap, having crystals of quartz in it coated with a +pellicle of green copper ore. Attempting to proceed down the river next +day, we were detained some hours by a strong east wind raising waves so +large as to threaten to swamp the canoes. The river here is very large +and deep, and contains two considerable islands, which from either bank +seem to be joined to the opposite shore. While waiting for the wind to +moderate, my friends related the traditions of these islands, and, +as usual, praised the wisdom of Sebituane in balking the Batoka, +who formerly enticed wandering tribes to them, and starved them, by +compelling the chiefs to remain by his side till all his cattle and +people were ferried over. The Barotse believe that at certain parts of +the river a tremendous monster lies hid, and that it will catch a canoe, +and hold it fast and motionless, in spite of the utmost exertions of the +paddlers. While near Nameta they even objected to pass a spot supposed +to be haunted, and proceeded along a branch instead of the main stream. +They believe that some of them possess a knowledge of the proper prayer +to lay the monster. It is strange to find fables similar to those of +the more northern nations even in the heart of Africa. Can they be the +vestiges of traditions of animals which no longer exist? The fossil +bones which lie in the calcareous tufa of this region will yet, we hope, +reveal the ancient fauna. + +Having descended about ten miles, we came to the island of Nampene, at +the beginning of the rapids, where we were obliged to leave the canoes +and proceed along the banks on foot. The next evening we slept opposite +the island of Chondo, and, then crossing the Lekone or Lekwine, early +the following morning were at the island of Sekote, called Kalai. This +Sekote was the last of the Batoka chiefs whom Sebituane rooted out. The +island is surrounded by a rocky shore and deep channels, through which +the river rushes with great force. Sekote, feeling secure in his island +home, ventured to ferry over the Matebele enemies of Sebituane. When +they had retired, Sebituane made one of those rapid marches which he +always adopted in every enterprise. He came down the Leeambye from +Naliele, sailing by day along the banks, and during the night in the +middle of the stream, to avoid the hippopotami. When he reached Kalai, +Sekote took advantage of the larger canoes they employ in the rapids, +and fled during the night to the opposite bank. Most of his people were +slain or taken captive, and the island has ever since been under the +Makololo. It is large enough to contain a considerable town. On the +northern side I found the kotla of the elder Sekote, garnished with +numbers of human skulls mounted on poles: a large heap of the crania of +hippopotami, the tusks untouched except by time, stood on one side. At a +short distance, under some trees, we saw the grave of Sekote, ornamented +with seventy large elephants' tusks planted round it with the points +turned inward, and there were thirty more placed over the resting-places +of his relatives. These were all decaying from the effects of the sun +and weather; but a few, which had enjoyed the shade, were in a pretty +good condition. I felt inclined to take a specimen of the tusks of the +hippopotami, as they were the largest I had ever seen, but feared that +the people would look upon me as a "resurrectionist" if I did, and +regard any unfavorable event which might afterward occur as a punishment +for the sacrilege. The Batoka believe that Sekote had a pot of medicine +buried here, which, when opened, would cause an epidemic in the country. +These tyrants acted much on the fears of their people. + +As this was the point from which we intended to strike off to the +northeast, I resolved on the following day to visit the falls of +Victoria, called by the natives Mosioatunya, or more anciently Shongwe. +Of these we had often heard since we came into the country; indeed, one +of the questions asked by Sebituane was, "Have you smoke that sounds in +your country?" They did not go near enough to examine them, but, viewing +them with awe at a distance, said, in reference to the vapor and noise, +"Mosi oa tunya" (smoke does sound there). It was previously called +Shongwe, the meaning of which I could not ascertain. The word for a +"pot" resembles this, and it may mean a seething caldron, but I am not +certain of it. Being persuaded that Mr. Oswell and myself were the +very first Europeans who ever visited the Zambesi in the centre of the +country, and that this is the connecting link between the known and +unknown portions of that river, I decided to use the same liberty as the +Makololo did, and gave the only English name I have affixed to any part +of the country. No better proof of previous ignorance of this river +could be desired than that an untraveled gentleman, who had spent a +great part of his life in the study of the geography of Africa, and knew +every thing written on the subject from the time of Ptolemy downward, +actually asserted in the "Athenaeum", while I was coming up the Red Sea, +that this magnificent river, the Leeambye, had "no connection with the +Zambesi, but flowed under the Kalahari Desert, and became lost;" and +"that, as all the old maps asserted, the Zambesi took its rise in the +very hills to which we have now come." This modest assertion smacks +exactly as if a native of Timbuctoo should declare that the "Thames" and +the "Pool" were different rivers, he having seen neither the one nor the +other. Leeambye and Zambesi mean the very same thing, viz., the RIVER. + +Sekeletu intended to accompany me, but, one canoe only having come +instead of the two he had ordered, he resigned it to me. After twenty +minutes' sail from Kalai we came in sight, for the first time, of the +columns of vapor appropriately called "smoke", rising at a distance of +five or six miles, exactly as when large tracts of grass are burned in +Africa. Five columns now arose, and, bending in the direction of the +wind, they seemed placed against a low ridge covered with trees; the +tops of the columns at this distance appeared to mingle with the clouds. +They were white below, and higher up became dark, so as to simulate +smoke very closely. The whole scene was extremely beautiful; the banks +and islands dotted over the river are adorned with sylvan vegetation +of great variety of color and form. At the period of our visit several +trees were spangled over with blossoms. Trees have each their own +physiognomy. There, towering over all, stands the great burly baobab, +each of whose enormous arms would form the trunk of a large tree, beside +groups of graceful palms, which, with their feathery-shaped leaves +depicted on the sky, lend their beauty to the scene. As a hieroglyphic +they always mean "far from home", for one can never get over their +foreign air in a picture or landscape. The silvery mohonono, which in +the tropics is in form like the cedar of Lebanon, stands in pleasing +contrast with the dark color of the motsouri, whose cypress-form is +dotted over at present with its pleasant scarlet fruit. Some trees +resemble the great spreading oak, others assume the character of our own +elms and chestnuts; but no one can imagine the beauty of the view +from any thing witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by +European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by +angels in their flight. The only want felt is that of mountains in the +background. The falls are bounded on three sides by ridges 300 or +400 feet in height, which are covered with forest, with the red soil +appearing among the trees. When about half a mile from the falls, I left +the canoe by which we had come down thus far, and embarked in a lighter +one, with men well acquainted with the rapids, who, by passing down +the centre of the stream in the eddies and still places caused by many +jutting rocks, brought me to an island situated in the middle of the +river, and on the edge of the lip over which the water rolls. In coming +hither there was danger of being swept down by the streams which rushed +along on each side of the island; but the river was now low, and we +sailed where it is totally impossible to go when the water is high. But, +though we had reached the island, and were within a few yards of the +spot, a view from which would solve the whole problem, I believe that no +one could perceive where the vast body of water went; it seemed to +lose itself in the earth, the opposite lip of the fissure into which it +disappeared being only 80 feet distant. At least I did not comprehend it +until, creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent +which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambesi, and saw that +a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet, and then +became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen or twenty yards. The +entire falls are simply a crack made in a hard basaltic rock from the +right to the left bank of the Zambesi, and then prolonged from the left +bank away through thirty or forty miles of hills. If one imagines +the Thames filled with low, tree-covered hills immediately beyond the +tunnel, extending as far as Gravesend, the bed of black basaltic rock +instead of London mud, and a fissure made therein from one end of +the tunnel to the other down through the keystones of the arch, and +prolonged from the left end of the tunnel through thirty miles of hills, +the pathway being 100 feet down from the bed of the river instead of +what it is, with the lips of the fissure from 80 to 100 feet apart, +then fancy the Thames leaping bodily into the gulf, and forced there to +change its direction, and flow from the right to the left bank, and then +rush boiling and roaring through the hills, he may have some idea of +what takes place at this, the most wonderful sight I had witnessed in +Africa. In looking down into the fissure on the right of the island, one +sees nothing but a dense white cloud, which, at the time we visited the +spot, had two bright rainbows on it. (The sun was on the meridian, and +the declination about equal to the latitude of the place.) From this +cloud rushed up a great jet of vapor exactly like steam, and it mounted +200 or 300 feet high; there condensing, it changed its hue to that of +dark smoke, and came back in a constant shower, which soon wetted us to +the skin. This shower falls chiefly on the opposite side of the fissure, +and a few yards back from the lip there stands a straight hedge of +evergreen trees, whose leaves are always wet. From their roots a number +of little rills run back into the gulf, but, as they flow down the steep +wall there, the column of vapor, in its ascent, licks them up clean off +the rock, and away they mount again. They are constantly running down, +but never reach the bottom. + +On the left of the island we see the water at the bottom, a white +rolling mass moving away to the prolongation of the fissure, which +branches off near the left bank of the river. A piece of the rock has +fallen off a spot on the left of the island, and juts out from the water +below, and from it I judged the distance which the water falls to be +about 100 feet. The walls of this gigantic crack are perpendicular, and +composed of one homogeneous mass of rock. The edge of that side over +which the water falls is worn off two or three feet, and pieces have +fallen away, so as to give it somewhat of a serrated appearance. That +over which the water does not fall is quite straight, except at the left +corner, where a rent appears, and a piece seems inclined to fall off. +Upon the whole, it is nearly in the state in which it was left at the +period of its formation. The rock is dark brown in color, except about +ten feet from the bottom, which is discolored by the annual rise of the +water to that or a greater height. On the left side of the island we +have a good view of the mass of water which causes one of the columns of +vapor to ascend, as it leaps quite clear of the rock, and forms a thick +unbroken fleece all the way to the bottom. Its whiteness gave the idea +of snow, a sight I had not seen for many a day. As it broke into (if I +may use the term) pieces of water, all rushing on in the same direction, +each gave off several rays of foam, exactly as bits of steel, when +burned in oxygen gas, give off rays of sparks. The snow-white sheet +seemed like myriads of small comets rushing on in one direction, each of +which left behind its nucleus rays of foam. I never saw the appearance +referred to noticed elsewhere. It seemed to be the effect of the mass of +water leaping at once clear of the rock, and but slowly breaking up into +spray. + +I have mentioned that we saw five columns of vapor ascending from this +strange abyss. They are evidently formed by the compression suffered by +the force of the water's own fall into an unyielding wedge-shaped space. +Of the five columns, two on the right and one on the left of the island +were the largest, and the streams which formed them seemed each to +exceed in size the falls of the Clyde at Stonebyres when that river is +in flood. This was the period of low water in the Leeambye; but, as +far as I could guess, there was a flow of five or six hundred yards of +water, which, at the edge of the fall, seemed at least three feet deep. +I write in the hope that others, more capable of judging distances than +myself, will visit the scene, and I state simply the impressions made on +my mind at the time. I thought, and do still think, the river above the +falls to be one thousand yards broad; but I am a poor judge of distances +on water, for I showed a naval friend what I supposed to be four hundred +yards in the Bay of Loanda, and, to my surprise, he pronounced it to be +nine hundred. I tried to measure the Leeambye with a strong thread, +the only line I had in my possession, but, when the men had gone two +or three hundred yards, they got into conversation, and did not hear +us shouting that the line had become entangled. By still going on they +broke it, and, being carried away down the stream, it was lost on a +snag. In vain I tried to bring to my recollection the way I had been +taught to measure a river by taking an angle with the sextant. That +I once knew it, and that it was easy, were all the lost ideas I could +recall, and they only increased my vexation. However, I measured the +river farther down by another plan, and then I discovered that the +Portuguese had measured it at Tete, and found it a little over one +thousand yards. At the falls it is as broad as at Tete, if not more so. +Whoever may come after me will not, I trust, find reason to say I have +indulged in exaggeration.* With respect to the drawing, it must be +borne in mind that it was composed from a rude sketch as viewed from the +island, which exhibited the columns of vapor only, and a ground +plan. The artist has given a good idea of the scene, but, by way of +explanation, he has shown more of the depth of the fissure than is +visible except by going close to the edge. The left-hand column, and +that farthest off, are the smallest, and all ought to have been a little +more tapering at the tops. + + * The river is about one mile (1.6 km) wide at the falls, and + plunges over 350 feet at the centre. Livingstone greatly + underestimated both distances.--A. L., 1997. + +The fissure is said by the Makololo to be very much deeper farther to +the eastward; there is one part at which the walls are so sloping that +people accustomed to it can go down by descending in a sitting position. +The Makololo on one occasion, pursuing some fugitive Batoka, saw them, +unable to stop the impetus of their flight at the edge, literally dashed +to pieces at the bottom. They beheld the stream like a "white cord" at +the bottom, and so far down (probably 300 feet) that they became giddy, +and were fain to go away holding on to the ground. + +Now, though the edge of the rock over which the river falls does not +show wearing more than three feet, and there is no appearance of the +opposite wall being worn out at the bottom in the parts exposed to view, +yet it is probable that, where it has flowed beyond the walls, the sides +of the fissure may have given way, and the parts out of sight may be +broader than the "white cord" on the surface. There may even be some +ramifications of the fissure, which take a portion of the stream quite +beneath the rocks; but this I did not learn. + +If we take the want of much wear on the lip of hard basaltic rock as of +any value, the period when this rock was riven is not geologically very +remote. I regretted the want of proper means of measuring and marking +its width at the falls, in order that, at some future time, the question +whether it is progressive or not might be tested. It seemed as if +a palm-tree could be laid across it from the island. And if it is +progressive, as it would mark a great natural drainage being effected, +it might furnish a hope that Africa will one day become a healthy +continent. It is, at any rate, very much changed in respect to its lakes +within a comparatively recent period. + +At three spots near these falls, one of them the island in the middle, +on which we were, three Batoka chiefs offered up prayers and sacrifices +to the Barimo. They chose their places of prayer within the sound of the +roar of the cataract, and in sight of the bright bows in the cloud. +They must have looked upon the scene with awe. Fear may have induced +the selection. The river itself is to them mysterious. The words of the +canoe-song are, + + "The Leeambye! Nobody knows + Whence it comes and whither it goes." + +The play of colors of the double iris on the cloud, seen by them +elsewhere only as the rainbow, may have led them to the idea that this +was the abode of Deity. Some of the Makololo, who went with me near to +Gonye, looked upon the same sign with awe. When seen in the heavens +it is named "motse oa barimo"--the pestle of the gods. Here they could +approach the emblem, and see it stand steadily above the blustering +uproar below--a type of Him who sits supreme--alone unchangeable, though +ruling over all changing things. But, not aware of His true character, +they had no admiration of the beautiful and good in their bosoms. They +did not imitate His benevolence, for they were a bloody, imperious crew, +and Sebituane performed a noble service in the expulsion from their +fastnesses of these cruel "Lords of the Isles". + +Having feasted my eyes long on the beautiful sight, I returned to my +friends at Kalai, and saying to Sekeletu that he had nothing else worth +showing in his country, his curiosity was excited to visit it the next +day. I returned with the intention of taking a lunar observation from +the island itself, but the clouds were unfavorable, consequently all my +determinations of position refer to Kalai. (Lat. 17d 51' 54" S., long. +25d 41' E.) Sekeletu acknowledged to feeling a little nervous at the +probability* of being sucked into the gulf before reaching the island. +His companions amused themselves by throwing stones down, and wondered +to see them diminishing in size, and even disappearing, before they +reached the water at the bottom. + + * In modern American English, the word "possibility" is more + appropriate here, and elsewhere in the text where + "probability" is used.--A. L., 1997. + +I had another object in view in my return to the island. I observed that +it was covered with trees, the seeds of which had probably come down +with the stream from the distant north, and several of which I had seen +nowhere else, and every now and then the wind wafted a little of the +condensed vapor over it, and kept the soil in a state of moisture, +which caused a sward of grass, growing as green as on an English lawn. +I selected a spot--not too near the chasm, for there the constant +deposition of the moisture nourished numbers of polypi of a mushroom +shape and fleshy consistence, but somewhat back--and made a little +garden. I there planted about a hundred peach and apricot stones, and a +quantity of coffee-seeds. I had attempted fruit-trees before, but, +when left in charge of my Makololo friends, they were always allowed to +wither, after having vegetated, by being forgotten. I bargained for +a hedge with one of the Makololo, and if he is faithful, I have great +hopes of Mosioatunya's abilities as a nursery-man. My only source of +fear is the hippopotami, whose footprints I saw on the island. When the +garden was prepared, I cut my initials on a tree, and the date 1855. +This was the only instance in which I indulged in this piece of vanity. +The garden stands in front, and, were there no hippopotami, I have no +doubt but this will be the parent of all the gardens which may yet be in +this new country. We then went up to Kalai again. + +On passing up we had a view of the hut on the island where my goods had +lain so long in safety. It was under a group of palm-trees, and Sekeletu +informed me that, so fully persuaded were most of the Makololo of the +presence of dangerous charms in the packages, that, had I not returned +to tell them the contrary, they never would have been touched. Some of +the diviners had been so positive in their decisions on the point, +that the men who lifted a bag thought they felt a live kid in it. The +diviners always quote their predictions when they happen to tally with +the event. They declared that the whole party which went to Loanda had +perished; and as I always quoted the instances in which they failed, +many of them refused to throw the "bola" (instruments of divination) +when I was near. This was a noted instance of failure. It would have +afforded me equal if not greater pleasure to have exposed the failure, +if such it had been, of the European diviner whose paper lay a whole +year on this island, but I was obliged to confess that he had been +successful with his "bola", and could only comfort myself with the idea +that, though Sir Roderick Murchison's discourse had lain so long within +sight and sound of the magnificent falls, I had been "cut out" by no one +in their discovery. + +I saw the falls at low water, and the columns of vapor when five or six +miles distant. When the river is full, or in flood, the columns, it +is said, can be seen ten miles off, and the sound is quite distinct +somewhat below Kalai, or about an equal distance. No one can then go +to the island in the middle. The next visitor must bear these points in +mind in comparing his description with mine. + +We here got information of a foray which had been made by a Makololo man +in the direction we were going. This instance of marauding was so much +in accordance with the system which has been pursued in this country +that I did not wonder at it. But the man had used Sekeletu's name as +having sent him, and, the proof being convincing, he would undoubtedly +be fined. As that would be the first instance of a fine being levied +for marauding, I looked upon it as the beginning of a better state of +things. In tribes which have been accustomed to cattle-stealing, the act +is not considered immoral in the way that theft is. Before I knew the +language well, I said to a chief, "You stole the cattle of so and so." +"No, I did not steal them," was the reply, "I only LIFTED them." The +word "gapa" is identical with the Highland term for the same deed. + +Another point came to our notice here. Some Mambari had come down thus +far, and induced the Batoka to sell a very large tusk which belonged +to Sekeletu for a few bits of cloth. They had gone among the Batoka +who need hoes, and, having purchased some of these from the people near +Sesheke, induced the others living farther east to sell both ivory and +children. They would not part with children for clothing or beads, but +agriculture with wooden hoes is so laborious, that the sight of the hoes +prevailed. The Makololo proposed to knock the Mambari on the head as +the remedy the next time they came; but on my proposing that they should +send hoes themselves, and thereby secure the ivory in a quiet way, all +approved highly of the idea, and Pitsane and Mohorisi expatiated on the +value of the ivory, their own willingness to go and sell it at Loanda, +and the disgust with which the Mambari whom we met in Angola had looked +upon their attempt to reach the proper market. If nothing untoward +happens, I think there is a fair prospect of the trade in slaves being +abolished in a natural way in this quarter, Pitsane and Mohorisi having +again expressed their willingness to go away back to Loanda if Sekeletu +would give them orders. This was the more remarkable, as both have +plenty of food and leisure at home. + +20TH NOVEMBER. Sekeletu and his large party having conveyed me thus far, +and furnished me with a company of 114 men to carry the tusks to the +coast, we bade adieu to the Makololo, and proceeded northward to the +Lekone. The country around is very beautiful, and was once well peopled +with Batoka, who possessed enormous herds of cattle. When Sebituane came +in former times, with his small but warlike party of Makololo, to +this spot, a general rising took place of the Batoka through the whole +country, in order to "eat him up"; but his usual success followed him, +and, dispersing them, the Makololo obtained so many cattle that they +could not take any note of the herds of sheep and goats. The tsetse +has been brought by buffaloes into some districts where formerly cattle +abounded. This obliged us to travel the first few stages by night. We +could not well detect the nature of the country in the dim moonlight; +the path, however, seemed to lead along the high bank of what may have +been the ancient bed of the Zambesi before the fissure was made. The +Lekone now winds in it in an opposite direction to that in which the +ancient river must have flowed. + +Both the Lekone and Unguesi flow back toward the centre of the country, +and in an opposite direction to that of the main stream. It was plain, +then, that we were ascending the farther we went eastward. The level of +the lower portion of the Lekone is about two hundred feet above that +of the Zambesi at the falls, and considerably more than the altitude +of Linyanti; consequently, when the river flowed along this ancient +bed instead of through the rent, the whole country between this and the +ridge beyond Libebe westward, Lake Ngami and the Zouga southward, and +eastward beyond Nchokotsa, was one large fresh-water lake. There is +abundant evidence of the existence and extent of this vast lake in +the longitudes indicated, and stretching from 17 Deg. to 21 Deg. south +latitude. The whole of this space is paved with a bed of tufa, more +or less soft, according as it is covered with soil, or left exposed +to atmospheric influences. Wherever ant-eaters make deep holes in this +ancient bottom, fresh-water shells are thrown out, identical with those +now existing in the Lake Ngami and the Zambesi. The Barotse valley was +another lake of a similar nature; and one existed beyond Masiko, and a +fourth near the Orange River. The whole of these lakes were let out by +means of cracks or fissures made in the subtending sides by the upheaval +of the country. The fissure made at the Victoria Falls let out the water +of this great valley, and left a small patch in what was probably +its deepest portion, and is now called Lake Ngami. The Falls of Gonye +furnished an outlet to the lake of the Barotse valley, and so of the +other great lakes of remote times. The Congo also finds its way to the +sea through a narrow fissure, and so does the Orange River in the west; +while other rents made in the eastern ridge, as the Victoria Falls and +those to the east of Tanganyenka, allowed the central waters to drain +eastward. All the African lakes hitherto discovered are shallow, in +consequence of being the mere 'residua' of very much larger ancient +bodies of water. There can be no doubt that this continent was, in +former times, very much more copiously supplied with water than at +present, but a natural process of drainage has been going on for ages. +Deep fissures are made, probably by the elevation of the land, proofs +of which are seen in modern shells imbedded in marly tufa all round the +coast-line. Whether this process of desiccation is as rapid throughout +the continent as, in a letter to the late Dean Buckland, in 1843, I +showed to have been the case in the Bechuana country, it is not for me +to say; but, though there is a slight tradition of the waters having +burst through the low hills south of the Barotse, there is none of a +sudden upheaval accompanied by an earthquake. The formation of the +crack of Mosioatunya is perhaps too ancient for that; yet, although +information of any remarkable event is often transmitted in the native +names, and they even retain a tradition which looks like the story of +Solomon and the harlots, there is not a name like Tom Earthquake or Sam +Shake-the-ground in the whole country. They have a tradition which may +refer to the building of the Tower of Babel, but it ends in the bold +builders getting their crowns cracked by the fall of the scaffolding; +and that they came out of a cave called "Loey" (Noe?) in company with +the beasts, and all point to it in one direction, viz., the N.N.E. Loey, +too, is an exception in the language, as they use masculine instead of +neuter pronouns to it. + +If we take a glance back at the great valley, the form the rivers have +taken imparts the idea of a lake slowly drained out, for they have cut +out for themselves beds exactly like what we may see in the soft mud +of a shallow pool of rain-water, when that is let off by a furrow. +This idea would probably not strike a person on coming first into the +country, but more extensive acquaintance with the river system certainly +would convey the impression. None of the rivers in the valley of the +Leeambye have slopes down to their beds. Indeed, many parts are much +like the Thames at the Isle of Dogs, only the Leeambye has to rise +twenty or thirty feet before it can overflow some of its meadows. The +rivers have each a bed of low water--a simple furrow cut sharply out +of the calcareous tufa which lined the channel of the ancient lake--and +another of inundation. When the beds of inundation are filled, they +assume the appearance of chains of lakes. When the Clyde fills the holms +("haughs") above Bothwell Bridge and retires again into its channel, +it resembles the river we are speaking of, only here there are no high +lands sloping down toward the bed of inundation, for the greater part of +the region is not elevated fifty feet above them. Even the rocky banks +of the Leeambye below Gonye, and the ridges bounding the Barotse valley, +are not more than two or three hundred feet in altitude over the general +dead level. Many of the rivers are very tortuous in their course, the +Chobe and Simah particularly so; and, if we may receive the testimony of +the natives, they form what anatomists call 'anastamosis', or a network +of rivers. Thus, for instance, they assured me that if they go up the +Simah in a canoe, they can enter the Chobe, and descend that river to +the Leeambye; or they may go up the Kama and come down the Simah; and so +in the case of the Kafue. It is reputed to be connected in this way +with the Leeambye in the north, and to part with the Loangwa; and the +Makololo went from the one into the other in canoes. And even though the +interlacing may not be quite to the extent believed by the natives, +the country is so level and the rivers so tortuous that I see no +improbability in the conclusion that here is a network of waters of a +very peculiar nature. The reason why I am disposed to place a certain +amount of confidence in the native reports is this: when Mr. Oswell and +I discovered the Zambesi in the centre of the continent in 1851, being +unable to ascend it at the time ourselves, we employed the natives to +draw a map embodying their ideas of that river. We then sent the native +map home with the same view that I now mention their ideas of the +river system, namely, in order to be an aid to others in farther +investigations. When I was able to ascend the Leeambye to 14 Deg. south, +and subsequently descend it, I found, after all the care I could bestow, +that the alterations I was able to make in the original native plan were +very trifling. The general idea their map gave was wonderfully accurate; +and now I give, in the larger map appended, their views of the other +rivers, in the hope that they may prove helpful to any traveler who may +pursue the investigation farther. + +24TH. We remained a day at the village of Moyara. Here the valley in +which the Lekone flows trends away to the eastward, while our course is +more to the northeast. The country is rocky and rough, the soil +being red sand, which is covered with beautiful green trees, yielding +abundance of wild fruits. The father of Moyara was a powerful chief, but +the son now sits among the ruins of the town, with four or five wives +and very few people. At his hamlet a number of stakes are planted in +the ground, and I counted fifty-four human skulls hung on their points. +These were Matebele, who, unable to approach Sebituane on the island of +Loyela, had returned sick and famishing. Moyara's father took advantage +of their reduced condition, and after putting them to death, mounted +their heads in the Batoka fashion. The old man who perpetrated this deed +now lies in the middle of his son's huts, with a lot of rotten ivory +over his grave. One can not help feeling thankful that the reign of such +wretches is over. They inhabited the whole of this side of the country, +and were probably the barrier to the extension of the Portuguese +commerce in this direction. When looking at these skulls, I remarked to +Moyara that many of them were those of mere boys. He assented readily, +and pointed them out as such. I asked why his father had killed boys. +"To show his fierceness," was the answer. "Is it fierceness to kill +boys?" "Yes; they had no business here." When I told him that this +probably would insure his own death if the Matebele came again, he +replied, "When I hear of their coming I shall hide the bones." He was +evidently proud of these trophies of his father's ferocity, and I was +assured by other Batoka that few strangers ever returned from a visit +to this quarter. If a man wished to curry favor with a Batoka chief, +he ascertained when a stranger was about to leave, and waylaid him at a +distance from the town, and when he brought his head back to the chief, +it was mounted as a trophy, the different chiefs vieing with each other +as to which should mount the greatest number of skulls in his village. + +If, as has been asserted, the Portuguese ever had a chain of trading +stations across the country from Caconda to Tete, it must have passed +through these people; but the total ignorance of the Zambesi flowing +from north to south in the centre of the country, and the want of +knowledge of the astonishing falls of Victoria, which excite the wonder +of even the natives, together with the absence of any tradition of such +a chain of stations, compel me to believe that they existed only on +paper. This conviction is strengthened by the fact that when a late +attempt was made to claim the honor of crossing the continent for the +Portuguese, the only proof advanced was the journey of two black traders +formerly mentioned, adorned with the name of "Portuguese". If a chain of +stations had existed, a few hundred names of the same sort might easily +have been brought forward; and such is the love of barter among all the +central Africans, that, had there existed a market for ivory, its value +would have become known, and even that on the graves of the chiefs would +not have been safe. + +When about to leave Moyara on the 25th, he brought a root which, when +pounded and sprinkled over the oxen, is believed to disgust the tsetse, +so that it flies off without sucking the blood. He promised to show me +the plant or tree if I would give him an ox; but, as we were traveling, +and could not afford the time required for the experiment, so as not to +be cheated (as I had too often been by my medical friends), I deferred +the investigation till I returned. It is probably but an evanescent +remedy, and capable of rendering the cattle safe during one night only. +Moyara is now quite a dependent of the Makololo, and my new party, not +being thoroughly drilled, forced him to carry a tusk for them. When I +relieved him, he poured forth a shower of thanks at being allowed to go +back to sleep beneath his skulls. + +Next day we came to Namilanga, or "The Well of Joy". It is a small well +dug beneath a very large fig-tree, the shade of which renders the water +delightfully cool. The temperature through the day was 104 Deg. in the +shade and 94 Deg. after sunset, but the air was not at all oppressive. +This well received its name from the fact that, in former times, +marauding parties, in returning with cattle, sat down here and were +regaled with boyaloa, music, and the lullilooing of the women from the +adjacent towns. + +All the surrounding country was formerly densely peopled, though now +desolate and still. The old head man of the place told us that his +father once went to Bambala, where white traders lived, when our +informant was a child, and returned when he had become a boy of about +ten years. He went again, and returned when it was time to knock out +his son's teeth. As that takes place at the age of puberty, he must have +spent at least five years in each journey. He added that many who went +there never returned, because they liked that country better than this. +They had even forsaken their wives and children; and children had been +so enticed and flattered by the finery bestowed upon them there, that +they had disowned their parents and adopted others. The place to which +they had gone, which they named Bambala, was probably Dambarari, which +was situated close to Zumbo. This was the first intimation we had of +intercourse with the whites. The Barotse, and all the other tribes in +the central valley, have no such tradition as this, nor have either +the one or the other any account of a trader's visit to them in ancient +times. + +All the Batoka tribes follow the curious custom of knocking out the +upper front teeth at the age of puberty. This is done by both sexes; and +though the under teeth, being relieved from the attrition of the upper, +grow long and somewhat bent out, and thereby cause the under lip +to protrude in a most unsightly way, no young woman thinks herself +accomplished until she has got rid of the upper incisors. This custom +gives all the Batoka an uncouth, old-man-like appearance. Their laugh is +hideous, yet they are so attached to it that even Sebituane was unable +to eradicate the practice. He issued orders that none of the children +living under him should be subjected to the custom by their parents, and +disobedience to his mandates was usually punished with severity; but, +notwithstanding this, the children would appear in the streets without +their incisors, and no one would confess to the deed. When questioned +respecting the origin of this practice, the Batoka reply that their +object is to be like oxen, and those who retain their teeth they +consider to resemble zebras. Whether this is the true reason or not, it +is difficult to say; but it is noticeable that the veneration for oxen +which prevails in many tribes should here be associated with hatred to +the zebra, as among the Bakwains; that this operation is performed at +the same age that circumcision is in other tribes; and that here that +ceremony is unknown. The custom is so universal that a person who has +his teeth is considered ugly, and occasionally, when the Batoka borrowed +my looking-glass, the disparaging remark would be made respecting boys +or girls who still retained their teeth, "Look at the great teeth!" Some +of the Makololo give a more facetious explanation of the custom: they +say that the wife of a chief having in a quarrel bitten her husband's +hand, he, in revenge, ordered her front teeth to be knocked out, and all +the men in the tribe followed his example; but this does not explain why +they afterward knocked out their own. + +The Batoka of the Zambesi are generally very dark in color, and very +degraded and negro-like in appearance, while those who live on the high +lands we are now ascending are frequently of the color of coffee and +milk. We had a large number of the Batoka of Mokwine in our party, sent +by Sekeletu to carry his tusks. Their greater degradation was probably +caused by the treatment of their chiefs--the barbarians of the islands. +I found them more difficult to manage than any of the rest of my +companions, being much less reasonable and impressible than the others. +My party consisted of the head men aforementioned, Sekwebu, and Kanyata. +We were joined at the falls by another head man of the Makololo, named +Monahin, in command of the Batoka. We had also some of the Banajoa under +Mosisinyane, and, last of all, a small party of Bashubia and Barotse +under Tuba Mokoro, which had been furnished by Sekeletu because of +their ability to swim. They carried their paddles with them, and, as the +Makololo suggested, were able to swim over the rivers by night and steal +canoes, if the inhabitants should be so unreasonable as to refuse to +lend them. These different parties assorted together into messes; any +orders were given through their head man, and when food was obtained +he distributed it to the mess. Each party knew its own spot in the +encampment; and as this was always placed so that our backs should be to +the east, the direction from whence the prevailing winds came, no time +was lost in fixing the sheds of our encampment. They each took it in +turn to pull grass to make my bed, so I lay luxuriously. + +NOVEMBER 26TH. As the oxen could only move at night, in consequence of +a fear that the buffaloes in this quarter might have introduced the +tsetse, I usually performed the march by day on foot, while some of +the men brought on the oxen by night. On coming to the villages under +Marimba, an old man, we crossed the Unguesi, a rivulet which, like the +Lekone, runs backward. It falls into the Leeambye a little above +the commencement of the rapids. The stratified gneiss, which is the +underlying rock of much of this part of the country, dips toward the +centre of the continent, but the strata are often so much elevated as to +appear nearly on their edges. Rocks of augitic trap are found in various +positions on it; the general strike is north and south; but when the +gneiss was first seen, near to the basalt of the falls, it was easterly +and westerly, and the dip toward the north, as if the eruptive force of +the basalt had placed it in that position. + +We passed the remains of a very large town, which, from the only +evidence of antiquity afforded by ruins in this country, must have been +inhabited for a long period; the millstones of gneiss, trap, and +quartz were worn down two and a half inches perpendicularly. The ivory +grave-stones soon rot away. Those of Moyara's father, who must have +died not more than a dozen years ago, were crumbling into powder; and +we found this to be generally the case all over the Batoka country. The +region around is pretty well covered with forest; but there is abundance +of open pasturage, and, as we are ascending in altitude, we find the +grass to be short, and altogether unlike the tangled herbage of the +Barotse valley. + +It is remarkable that we now meet with the same trees we saw in +descending toward the west coast. A kind of sterculia, which is the +most common tree at Loanda, and the baobab, flourish here; and the tree +called moshuka, which we found near Tala Mungongo, was now yielding +its fruit, which resembles small apples. The people brought it to us in +large quantities: it tastes like a pear, but has a harsh rind, and four +large seeds within. We found prodigious quantities of this fruit as +we went along. The tree attains the height of 15 or 20 feet, and has +leaves, hard and glossy, as large as one's hand. The tree itself is +never found on the lowlands, but is mentioned with approbation at the +end of the work of Bowditch. My men almost lived upon the fruit for many +days. + +The rains had fallen only partially: in many parts the soil was +quite dry and the leaves drooped mournfully, but the fruit-trees are +unaffected by a drought, except when it happens at the time of their +blossoming. The Batoka of my party declared that no one ever dies of +hunger here. We obtained baskets of maneko, a curious fruit, with a +horny rind, split into five pieces: these sections, when chewed, are +full of a fine glutinous matter, and sweet like sugar. The seeds are +covered with a yellow silky down, and are not eaten: the entire fruit +is about the size of a walnut. We got also abundance of the motsouri +and mamosho. We saw the Batoka eating the beans called nju, which are +contained in a large square pod; also the pulp between the seeds of nux +vomica, and the motsintsela. Other fruits become ripe at other seasons, +as the motsikiri, which yields an oil, and is a magnificent tree, +bearing masses of dark evergreen leaves; so that, from the general +plenty, one can readily believe the statement made by the Batoka. We +here saw trees allowed to stand in gardens, and some of the Batoka even +plant them, a practice seen nowhere else among natives. A species of +leucodendron abounds. When we meet with it on a spot on which no rain +has yet fallen, we see that the young ones twist their leaves round +during the heat of the day, so that the edge only is exposed to the rays +of the sun; they have then a half twist on the petiole. The acacias in +the same circumstances, and also the mopane ('Bauhania'), fold their +leaves together, and, by presenting the smallest possible surface to the +sun, simulate the eucalypti of Australia. + + + + +Chapter 27. + +Low Hills--Black Soldier-Ants; their Cannibalism--The Plasterer and +its Chloroform--White Ants; their Usefulness--Mutokwane-smoking; +its Effects--Border Territory--Healthy Table-lands--Geological +Formation--Cicadae--Trees--Flowers--River Kalomo--Physical +Conformation of Country--Ridges, sanatoria--A wounded Buffalo +assisted--Buffalo-bird--Rhinoceros-bird--Leaders of Herds--The +Honey-guide--The White Mountain--Mozuma River--Sebituane's old +Home--Hostile Village--Prophetic Phrensy--Food of the Elephant-- +Ant-hills--Friendly Batoka--Clothing despised--Method of Salutation-- +Wild Fruits--The Captive released--Longings for Peace--Pingola's +Conquests--The Village of Monze--Aspect of the Country--Visit from the +Chief Monze and his Wife--Central healthy Locations--Friendly Feelings +of the People in reference to a white Resident--Fertility of the +Soil--Bashukulompo Mode of dressing their Hair--Gratitude of the +Prisoner we released--Kindness and Remarks of Monze's Sister--Dip of +the Rocks--Vegetation--Generosity of the Inhabitants--Their Anxiety for +Medicine--Hooping-cough--Birds and Rain. + + + +NOVEMBER 27TH. Still at Marimba's. In the adjacent country palms abound, +but none of that species which yields the oil; indeed, that is met +with only near the coast. There are numbers of flowers and bulbs +just shooting up from the soil. The surface is rough, and broken into +gullies; and, though the country is parched, it has not that appearance, +so many trees having put forth their fresh green leaves at the time the +rains ought to have come. Among the rest stands the mola, with its dark +brownish-green color and spreading oak-like form. In the distance there +are ranges of low hills. On the north we have one called Kanjele, and to +the east that of Kaonka, to which we proceed to-morrow. We have made a +considerable detour to the north, both on account of our wish to avoid +the tsetse and to visit the people. Those of Kaonka are the last Batoka +we shall meet, in friendship with the Makololo. + +Walking down to the forest, after telling these poor people, for the +first time in their lives, that the Son of God had so loved them as to +come down from heaven to save them, I observed many regiments of black +soldier-ants returning from their marauding expeditions. These I have +often noticed before in different parts of the country; and as we had, +even at Kolobeng, an opportunity of observing their habits, I may give a +short account of them here. They are black, with a slight tinge of gray, +about half an inch in length, and on the line of march appear three or +four abreast; when disturbed, they utter a distinct hissing or chirping +sound. They follow a few leaders who never carry any thing, and they +seem to be guided by a scent left on the path by the leaders; for, +happening once to throw the water from my basin behind a bush where +I was dressing, it lighted on the path by which a regiment had passed +before I began my toilette, and when they returned they were totally +at a loss to find the way home, though they continued searching for +it nearly half an hour. It was found only by one making a long circuit +round the wetted spot. The scent may have indicated also the propriety +of their going in one direction only. If a handful of earth is thrown +on the path at the middle of the regiment, either on its way home or +abroad, those behind it are completely at a loss as to their farther +progress. Whatever it may be that guides them, they seem only to know +that they are not to return, for they come up to the handful of earth, +but will not cross it, though not a quarter of an inch high. They wheel +round and regain their path again, but never think of retreating to the +nest, or to the place where they have been stealing. After a quarter of +an hour's confusion and hissing, one may make a circuit of a foot round +the earth, and soon all follow in that roundabout way. When on their +way to attack the abode of the white ants, the latter may be observed +rushing about in a state of great perturbation. The black leaders, +distinguished from the rest by their greater size, especially in the +region of the sting, then seize the white ants one by one, and inflict +a sting, which seems to inject a portion of fluid similar in effect to +chloroform, as it renders them insensible, but not dead, and only able +to move one or two front legs. As the leaders toss them on one side, the +rank and file seize them and carry them off. + +One morning I saw a party going forth on what has been supposed to be a +slave-hunting expedition. They came to a stick, which, being inclosed in +a white-ant gallery, I knew contained numbers of this insect; but I +was surprised to see the black soldiers passing without touching it. I +lifted up the stick and broke a portion of the gallery, and then laid +it across the path in the middle of the black regiment. The white ants, +when uncovered, scampered about with great celerity, hiding themselves +under the leaves, but attracted little attention from the black +marauders till one of the leaders caught them, and, applying his sting, +laid them in an instant on one side in a state of coma; the others then +promptly seized them and rushed off. On first observing these marauding +insects at Kolobeng, I had the idea, imbibed from a work of no less +authority than Brougham's Paley, that they seized the white ants in +order to make them slaves; but, having rescued a number of captives, I +placed them aside, and found that they never recovered from the state of +insensibility into which they had been thrown by the leaders. I supposed +then that the insensibility had been caused by the soldiers holding the +necks of the white ants too tightly with their mandibles, as that is +the way they seize them; but even the pupae which I took from the +soldier-ants, though placed in a favorable temperature, never became +developed. In addition to this, if any one examines the orifice by which +the black ant enters his barracks, he will always find a little heap of +hard heads and legs of white ants, showing that these black ruffians are +a grade lower than slave-stealers, being actually cannibals. Elsewhere I +have seen a body of them removing their eggs from a place in which they +were likely to be flooded by the rains; I calculated their numbers to be +1260; they carried their eggs a certain distance, then laid them down, +when others took them and carried them farther on. Every ant in the +colony seemed to be employed in this laborious occupation, yet there was +not a white slave-ant among them. One cold morning I observed a band of +another species of black ant returning each with a captive; there could +be no doubt of their cannibal propensities, for the "brutal soldiery" +had already deprived the white ants of their legs. The fluid in the +stings of this species is of an intensely acid taste. + +I had often noticed the stupefaction produced by the injection of a +fluid from the sting of certain insects before. It is particularly +observable in a hymenopterous insect called the "plasterer" ('Pelopaeus +Eckloni'), which in his habits resembles somewhat the mason-bee. It is +about an inch and a quarter in length, jet black in color, and may be +observed coming into houses, carrying in its fore legs a pellet of soft +plaster about the size of a pea. When it has fixed upon a convenient +spot for its dwelling, it forms a cell about the same length as its +body, plastering the walls so as to be quite thin and smooth inside. +When this is finished, all except a round hole, it brings seven or eight +caterpillars or spiders, each of which is rendered insensible, but not +killed, by the fluid from its sting. These it deposits in the cell, and +then one of its own larvae, which, as it grows, finds food quite +fresh. The insects are in a state of coma, but the presence of vitality +prevents putridity, or that drying up which would otherwise take place +in this climate. By the time the young insect is full grown and its +wings completely developed, the food is done. It then pierces the wall +of its cell at the former door, or place last filled up by its parent, +flies off, and begins life for itself. The plasterer is a most useful +insect, as it acts as a check on the inordinate increase of caterpillars +and spiders. It may often be seen with a caterpillar or even a cricket +much larger than itself, but they lie perfectly still after the +injection of chloroform, and the plasterer, placing a row of legs on +each side of the body, uses both legs and wings in trailing the +victim along. The fluid in each case is, I suppose, designed to cause +insensibility, and likewise act as an antiseptic, the death of the +victims being without pain. + +Without these black soldier-ants the country would be overrun by the +white ants; they are so extremely prolific, and nothing can exceed the +energy with which they work. They perform a most important part in the +economy of nature by burying vegetable matter as quickly beneath the +soil as the ferocious red ant does dead animal substances. The white ant +keeps generally out of sight, and works under galleries constructed +by night to screen them from the observation of birds. At some given +signal, however, I never could ascertain what, they rush out by +hundreds, and the sound of their mandibles cutting grass into lengths +may be heard like a gentle wind murmuring through the leaves of the +trees. They drag these pieces to the doors of their abodes, and after +some hours' toil leave off work, and many of the bits of grass may +be seen collected around the orifice. They continue out of sight for +perhaps a month, but they are never idle. On one occasion, a good bundle +of grass was laid down for my bed on a spot which was quite smooth and +destitute of plants. The ants at once sounded the call to a good supply +of grass. I heard them incessantly nibbling and carrying away all that +night; and they continued all next day (Sunday), and all that night too, +with unabated energy. They had thus been thirty-six hours at it, and +seemed as fresh as ever. In some situations, if we remained a day, they +devoured the grass beneath my mat, and would have eaten that too had we +not laid down more grass. At some of their operations they beat time in +a curious manner. Hundreds of them are engaged in building a large tube, +and they wish to beat it smooth. At a signal, they all give three or +four energetic beats on the plaster in unison. It produces a sound like +the dropping of rain off a bush when touched. These insects are the +chief agents employed in forming a fertile soil. But for their labors, +the tropical forests, bad as they are now with fallen trees, would be a +thousand times worse. They would be impassable on account of the heaps +of dead vegetation lying on the surface, and emitting worse effluvia +than the comparatively small unburied collections do now. When one +looks at the wonderful adaptations throughout creation, and the varied +operations carried on with such wisdom and skill, the idea of second +causes looks clumsy. We are viewing the direct handiwork of Him who is +the one and only Power in the universe; wonderful in counsel; in whom we +all live, and move, and have our being. + +The Batoka of these parts are very degraded in their appearance, and +are not likely to improve, either physically or mentally, while so much +addicted to smoking the mutokwane ('Cannabis sativa'). They like its +narcotic effects, though the violent fit of coughing which follows a +couple of puffs of smoke appears distressing, and causes a feeling of +disgust in the spectator. This is not diminished on seeing the usual +practice of taking a mouthful of water, and squirting it out together +with the smoke, then uttering a string of half-incoherent sentences, +usually in self-praise. This pernicious weed is extensively used in +all the tribes of the interior. It causes a species of phrensy, and +Sebituane's soldiers, on coming in sight of their enemies, sat down and +smoked it, in order that they might make an effective onslaught. I was +unable to prevail on Sekeletu and the young Makololo to forego its use, +although they can not point to an old man in the tribe who has been +addicted to this indulgence. I believe it was the proximate cause of +Sebituane's last illness, for it sometimes occasions pneumonia. Never +having tried it, I can not describe the pleasurable effects it is said +to produce, but the hashish in use among the Turks is simply an extract +of the same plant, and that, like opium, produces different effects on +different individuals. Some view every thing as if looking in through +the wide end of a telescope, and others, in passing over a straw, lift +up their feet as if about to cross the trunk of a tree. The Portuguese +in Angola have such a belief in its deleterious effects that the use of +it by a slave is considered a crime. + +NOVEMBER 28TH. The inhabitants of the last of Kaonka's villages +complained of being plundered by the independent Batoka. The tribes in +front of this are regarded by the Makololo as in a state of rebellion. +I promised to speak to the rebels on the subject, and enjoined on Kaonka +the duty of giving them no offense. According to Sekeletu's order, +Kaonka gave us the tribute of maize-corn and ground-nuts, which would +otherwise have gone to Linyanti. This had been done at every village, +and we thereby saved the people the trouble of a journey to the capital. +My own Batoka had brought away such loads of provisions from their homes +that we were in no want of food. + +After leaving Kaonka we traveled over an uninhabited, gently undulating, +and most beautiful district, the border territory between those who +accept and those who reject the sway of the Makololo. The face of the +country appears as if in long waves, running north and south. There are +no rivers, though water stands in pools in the hollows. We were now +come into the country which my people all magnify as a perfect paradise. +Sebituane was driven from it by the Matebele. It suited him exactly for +cattle, corn, and health. The soil is dry, and often a reddish sand; +there are few trees, but fine large shady ones stand dotted here and +there over the country where towns formerly stood. One of the fig family +I measured, and found to be forty feet in circumference; the heart had +been burned out, and some one had made a lodging in it, for we saw the +remains of a bed and a fire. The sight of the open country, with +the increased altitude we were attaining, was most refreshing to the +spirits. Large game abound. We see in the distance buffaloes, elands, +hartebeest, gnus, and elephants, all very tame, as no one disturbs them. +Lions, which always accompany other large animals, roared about us, but, +as it was moonlight, there was no danger. In the evening, while standing +on a mass of granite, one began to roar at me, though it was still +light. The temperature was pleasant, as the rains, though not universal, +had fallen in many places. It was very cloudy, preventing observations. +The temperature at 6 A.M. was 70 Deg., at midday 90 Deg., in the +evening 84 Deg. This is very pleasant on the high lands, with but little +moisture in the air. + +The different rocks to the westward of Kaonka's, talcose gneiss and +white mica schist, generally dip toward the west, but at Kaonka's, large +rounded masses of granite, containing black mica, began to appear. The +outer rind of it inclines to peel off, and large crystals project on the +exposed surface. + +In passing through some parts where a good shower of rain has fallen, +the stridulous piercing notes of the cicadae are perfectly deafening; a +drab-colored cricket joins the chorus with a sharp sound, which has +as little modulation as the drone of a Scottish bagpipe. I could not +conceive how so small a thing could raise such a sound; it seemed to +make the ground over it thrill. When cicadae, crickets, and frogs unite, +their music may be heard at the distance of a quarter of a mile. + +A tree attracted my attention as new, the leaves being like those of +an acacia, but the ends of the branches from which they grew resembled +closely oblong fir-cones. The corn-poppy was abundant, and many of the +trees, flowering bulbs, and plants were identical with those in Pungo +Andongo. A flower as white as the snowdrop now begins to appear, and +farther on it spots the whole sward with its beautiful pure white. A +fresh crop appears every morning, and if the day is cloudy they do not +expand till the afternoon. In an hour or so they droop and die. They are +named by the natives, from their shape, "Tlaku ea pitse", hoof of zebra. +I carried several of the somewhat bulbous roots of this pretty flower +till I reached the Mauritius. + +On the 30th we crossed the River Kalomo, which is about 50 yards broad, +and is the only stream that never dries up on this ridge. The current +is rapid, and its course is toward the south, as it joins the Zambesi +at some distance below the falls. The Unguesi and Lekone, with their +feeders, flow westward, this river to the south, and all those to which +we are about to come take an easterly direction. We were thus at the +apex of the ridge, and found that, as water boiled at 202 Deg., our +altitude above the level of the sea was over 5000 feet. Here the granite +crops out again in great rounded masses which change the dip of the +gneiss and mica schist rocks from the westward to the eastward. +In crossing the western ridge I mentioned the clay shale or keele +formation, a section of which we have in the valley of the Quango: the +strata there lie nearly horizontal, but on this ridge the granite seems +to have been the active agent of elevation, for the rocks, both on its +east and west, abut against it. Both eastern and western ridges are +known to be comparatively salubrious, and in this respect, as well as +in the general aspect of the country, they resemble that most healthy of +all healthy climates, the interior of South Africa, near and adjacent to +the Desert. This ridge has neither fountain nor marsh upon it, and east +of the Kalomo we look upon treeless undulating plains covered with short +grass. From a point somewhat near to the great falls, this ridge or +oblong mound trends away to the northeast, and there treeless elevated +plains again appear. Then again the ridge is said to bend away from the +falls to the southeast, the Mashona country, or rather their +mountains, appearing, according to Mr. Moffat, about four days east of +Matlokotloko, the present residence of Mosilikatse. In reference to +this ridge he makes the interesting remark, "I observed a number of +the Angora goat, most of them being white; and their long soft hair, +covering their entire bodies to the ground, made them look like animals +moving along without feet."* + + * Moffat's "Visit to Mosilikatse".--Royal Geographical + Society's Journal, vol. xxvi., p. 96. + +It is impossible to say how much farther to the north these subtending +ridges may stretch. There is reason to believe that, though the same +general form of country obtains, they are not flanked by abrupt hills +between the latitude 12 Deg. south and the equator. The inquiry is +worthy the attention of travelers. As they are known to be favorable to +health, the Makololo, who have been nearly all cut off by fevers in the +valley, declaring that here they never had a headache, they may even be +recommended as a sanatorium for those whose enterprise leads them into +Africa, either for the advancement of scientific knowledge, or for the +purposes of trade or benevolence. In the case of the eastern ridge, we +have water carriage, with only one short rapid as an obstruction, +right up to its base; and if a quick passage can be effected during the +healthy part of the year, there would be no danger of loss of health +during a long stay on these high lands afterward. How much farther do +these high ridges extend? The eastern one seems to bend in considerably +toward the great falls; and the strike of the rocks indicating that, +farther to the N.N.E. than my investigations extend, it may not, at a +few degrees of latitude beyond, be more than 300 or 350 miles from +the coast. They at least merit inquiry, for they afford a prospect to +Europeans of situations superior in point of salubrity to any of those +on the coast; and so on the western side of the continent; for it is +a fact that many parts in the interior of Angola, which were formerly +thought to be unhealthy on account of their distance inland, have been +found, as population advanced, to be the most healthy spots in the +country. Did the great Niger expedition turn back when near such a +desirable position for its stricken and prostrate members? + +The distances from top to top of the ridges may be about 10 Deg. of +longitude, or 600 geographical miles. I can not hear of a hill ON either +ridge, and there are scarcely any in the space inclosed by them. The +Monakadze is the highest, but that is not more than a thousand feet +above the flat valley. On account of this want of hills in the part of +the country which, by gentle undulations, leads one insensibly up to +an altitude of 5000 feet above the level of the sea, I have adopted the +agricultural term ridges, for they partake very much of the character of +the oblong mounds with which we are all familiar. And we shall yet see +that the mountains which are met with outside these ridges are only a +low fringe, many of which are not of much greater altitude than even the +bottom of the great central valley. If we leave out of view the greater +breadth of the central basin at other parts, and speak only of the +comparatively narrow part formed by the bend to the westward of the +eastern ridge, we might say that the form of this region is a broad +furrow in the middle, with an elevated ridge about 200 miles broad on +either side, the land sloping thence, on both sides, to the sea. If I am +right in believing the granite to be the cause of the elevation of this +ridge, the direction in which the strike of the rocks trends to the +N.N.E. may indicate that the same geological structure prevails farther +north, and two or three lakes which exist in that direction may be of +exactly the same nature with Lake Ngami, having been diminished to their +present size by the same kind of agency as that which formed the falls +of Victoria. + +We met an elephant on the Kalomo which had no tusks. This is as rare a +thing in Africa as it is to find them with tusks in Ceylon. As soon +as she saw us she made off. It is remarkable to see the fear of man +operating even on this huge beast. Buffaloes abound, and we see large +herds of them feeding in all directions by day. When much disturbed by +man they retire into the densest parts of the forest, and feed by night +only. We secured a fine large bull by crawling close to a herd. When +shot, he fell down, and the rest, not seeing their enemy, gazed about, +wondering where the danger lay. The others came back to it, and, when +we showed ourselves, much to the amusement of my companions, they lifted +him up with their horns, and, half supporting him in the crowd, bore him +away. All these wild animals usually gore a wounded companion, and +expel him from the herd; even zebras bite and kick an unfortunate or a +diseased one. It is intended by this instinct that none but the perfect +and healthy ones should propagate the species. In this case they +manifested their usual propensity to gore the wounded, but our +appearance at that moment caused them to take flight, and this, with the +goring being continued a little, gave my men the impression that they +were helping away their wounded companion. He was shot between the +fourth and fifth ribs; the ball passed through both lungs and a rib on +the opposite side, and then lodged beneath the skin. But, though it was +eight ounces in weight, yet he ran off some distance, and was secured +only by the people driving him into a pool of water and killing him +there with their spears. The herd ran away in the direction of our +camp, and then came bounding past us again. We took refuge on a +large ant-hill, and as they rushed by us at full gallop I had a good +opportunity of seeing that the leader of a herd of about sixty was an +old cow; all the others allowed her a full half-length in their front. +On her withers sat about twenty buffalo-birds ('Textor erythrorhynchus', +Smith), which act the part of guardian spirits to the animals. When the +buffalo is quietly feeding, this bird may be seen hopping on the ground +picking up food, or sitting on its back ridding it of the insects with +which their skins are sometimes infested. The sight of the bird being +much more acute than that of the buffalo, it is soon alarmed by the +approach of any danger, and, flying up, the buffaloes instantly raise +their heads to discover the cause which has led to the sudden flight of +their guardian. They sometimes accompany the buffaloes in their flight +on the wing, at other times they sit as above described. + +Another African bird, namely, the 'Buphaga Africana', attends the +rhinoceros for a similar purpose. It is called "kala" in the language of +the Bechuanas. When these people wish to express their dependence upon +another, they address him as "my rhinoceros", as if they were the birds. +The satellites of a chief go by the same name. This bird can not be said +to depend entirely on the insects on that animal, for its hard, hairless +skin is a protection against all except a few spotted ticks; but it +seems to be attached to the beast, somewhat as the domestic dog is to +man; and while the buffalo is alarmed by the sudden flying up of its +sentinel, the rhinoceros, not having keen sight, but an acute ear, +is warned by the cry of its associate, the 'Buphaga Africana'. The +rhinoceros feeds by night, and its sentinel is frequently heard in +the morning uttering its well-known call, as it searches for its bulky +companion. One species of this bird, observed in Angola, possesses a +bill of a peculiar scoop or stone forceps form, as if intended only to +tear off insects from the skin; and its claws are as sharp as needles, +enabling it to hang on to an animal's ear while performing a useful +service within it. This sharpness of the claws allows the bird to cling +to the nearly insensible cuticle without irritating the nerves of pain +on the true skin, exactly as a burr does to the human hand; but in +the case of the 'Buphaga Africana' and 'erythrorhyncha', other food is +partaken of, for we observed flocks of them roosting on the reeds, in +spots where neither tame nor wild animals were to be found. + +The most wary animal in a herd is generally the "leader". When it is +shot the others often seem at a loss what to do, and stop in a state of +bewilderment. I have seen them attempt to follow each other and appear +quite confused, no one knowing for half a minute or more where to direct +the flight. On one occasion I happened to shoot the leader, a young +zebra mare, which at some former time had been bitten on the hind leg +by a carnivorous animal, and, thereby made unusually wary, had, in +consequence, become a leader. If they see either one of their own herd +or any other animal taking to flight, wild animals invariably flee. +The most timid thus naturally leads the rest. It is not any other +peculiarity, but simply this provision, which is given them for the +preservation of the race. The great increase of wariness which is +seen to occur when the females bring forth their young, causes all the +leaders to be at that time females; and there is a probability that the +separation of sexes into distinct herds, which is annually observed in +many antelopes, arises from the simple fact that the greater caution of +the she antelopes is partaken of only by the young males, and their more +frequent flights now have the effect of leaving the old males behind. +I am inclined to believe this, because, though the antelopes, as the +pallahs, etc., are frequently in separate herds, they are never seen in +the act of expelling the males. There may be some other reason in the +case of the elephants; but the male and female elephants are never seen +in one herd. The young males remain with their dams only until they are +full grown; and so constantly is the separation maintained, that any +one familiar with them, on seeing a picture with the sexes mixed, would +immediately conclude that the artist had made it from his imagination, +and not from sight. + +DECEMBER 2, 1855. We remained near a small hill, called Maundo, where we +began to be frequently invited by the honey-guide ('Cuculus indicator'). +Wishing to ascertain the truth of the native assertion that this bird is +a deceiver, and by its call sometimes leads to a wild beast and not to +honey, I inquired if any of my men had ever been led by this friendly +little bird to any thing else than what its name implies. Only one of +the 114 could say he had been led to an elephant instead of a hive, like +myself with the black rhinoceros mentioned before. I am quite convinced +that the majority of people who commit themselves to its guidance are +led to honey, and to it alone. + +On the 3d we crossed the River Mozuma, or River of Dila, having traveled +through a beautifully undulating pastoral country. To the south, and +a little east of this, stands the hill Taba Cheu, or "White Mountain", +from a mass of white rock, probably dolomite, on its top. But none +of the hills are of any great altitude. When I heard this mountain +described at Linyanti I thought the glistening substance might be snow, +and my informants were so loud in their assertions of its exceeding +great altitude that I was startled with the idea; but I had quite +forgotten that I was speaking with men who had been accustomed to +plains, and knew nothing of very high mountains. When I inquired what +the white substance was, they at once replied it was a kind of rock. I +expected to have come nearer to it, and would have ascended it; but +we were led to go to the northeast. Yet I doubt not that the native +testimony of its being stone is true. The distant ranges of hills which +line the banks of the Zambesi on the southeast, and landscapes which +permit the eye to range over twenty or thirty miles at a time, with +short grass under our feet, were especially refreshing sights to those +who had traveled for months together over the confined views of the flat +forest, and among the tangled rank herbage of the great valley. + +The Mozuma, or River of Dila, was the first water-course which indicated +that we were now on the slopes toward the eastern coast. It contained no +flowing water, but revealed in its banks what gave me great pleasure +at the time--pieces of lignite, possibly indicating the existence of a +mineral, namely, coal, the want of which in the central country I had +always deplored. Again and again we came to the ruins of large towns, +containing the only hieroglyphics of this country, worn mill-stones, +with the round ball of quartz with which the grinding was effected. +Great numbers of these balls were lying about, showing that the +depopulation had been the result of war; for, had the people removed in +peace, they would have taken the balls with them. + +At the River of Dila we saw the spot where Sebituane lived, and Sekwebu +pointed out the heaps of bones of cattle which the Makololo had been +obliged to slaughter after performing a march with great herds captured +from the Batoka through a patch of the fatal tsetse. When Sebituane +saw the symptoms of the poison, he gave orders to his people to eat the +cattle. He still had vast numbers; and when the Matebele, crossing the +Zambesi opposite this part, came to attack him, he invited the Batoka to +take repossession of their herds, he having so many as to be unable to +guide them in their flight. The country was at that time exceedingly +rich in cattle, and, besides pasturage, it is all well adapted for the +cultivation of native produce. Being on the eastern slope of the ridge, +it receives more rain than any part of the westward. Sekwebu had been +instructed to point out to me the advantages of this position for a +settlement, as that which all the Makololo had never ceased to regret. +It needed no eulogy from Sekwebu; I admired it myself, and the enjoyment +of good health in fine open scenery had an exhilarating effect on my +spirits. The great want was population, the Batoka having all taken +refuge in the hills. We were now in the vicinity of those whom the +Makololo deem rebels, and felt some anxiety as to how we should be +received. + +On the 4th we reached their first village. Remaining at a distance of a +quarter of a mile, we sent two men to inform them who we were, and that +our purposes were peaceful. The head man came and spoke civilly, but, +when nearly dark, the people of another village arrived and behaved very +differently. They began by trying to spear a young man who had gone for +water. Then they approached us, and one came forward howling at the top +of his voice in the most hideous manner; his eyes were shot out, his +lips covered with foam, and every muscle of his frame quivered. He came +near to me, and, having a small battle-axe in his hand, alarmed my men +lest he might do violence; but they were afraid to disobey my previous +orders, and to follow their own inclination by knocking him on the +head. I felt a little alarmed too, but would not show fear before my own +people or strangers, and kept a sharp look-out on the little battle-axe. +It seemed to me a case of ecstasy or prophetic phrensy, voluntarily +produced. I felt it would be a sorry way to leave the world, to get my +head chopped by a mad savage, though that, perhaps, would be preferable +to hydrophobia or delirium tremens. Sekwebu took a spear in his hand, as +if to pierce a bit of leather, but in reality to plunge it into the man +if he offered violence to me. After my courage had been sufficiently +tested, I beckoned with the head to the civil head man to remove him, +and he did so by drawing him aside. This man pretended not to know what +he was doing. I would fain have felt his pulse, to ascertain whether the +violent trembling were not feigned, but had not much inclination to go +near the battle-axe again. There was, however, a flow of perspiration, +and the excitement continued fully half an hour, then gradually ceased. +This paroxysm is the direct opposite of hypnotism, and it is singular +that it has not been tried in Europe as well as clairvoyance. This +second batch of visitors took no pains to conceal their contempt for our +small party, saying to each other, in a tone of triumph, "They are quite +a Godsend!" literally, "God has apportioned them to us." "They are lost +among the tribes!" "They have wandered in order to be destroyed, and +what can they do without shields among so many?" Some of them asked if +there were no other parties. Sekeletu had ordered my men not to take +their shields, as in the case of my first company. We were looked upon +as unarmed, and an easy prey. We prepared against a night attack by +discharging and reloading our guns, which were exactly the same in +number (five) as on the former occasion, as I allowed my late companions +to retain those which I purchased at Loanda. We were not molested, but +some of the enemy tried to lead us toward the Bashukulompo, who are +considered to be the fiercest race in this quarter. As we knew our +direction to the confluence of the Kafue and Zambesi, we declined their +guidance, and the civil head man of the evening before then came along +with us. Crowds of natives hovered round us in the forest; but he ran +forward and explained, and we were not molested. That night we slept by +a little village under a low range of hills, which are called Chizamena. +The country here is more woody than on the high lands we had left, but +the trees are not in general large. Great numbers of them have been +broken off by elephants a foot or two from the ground: they thus seem +pollarded from that point. This animal never seriously lessens the +number of trees; indeed, I have often been struck by the very little +damage he does in a forest. His food consists more of bulbs, tubers, +roots, and branches, than any thing else. Where they have been feeding, +great numbers of trees, as thick as a man's body, are seen twisted down +or broken off, in order that they may feed on the tender shoots at the +tops. They are said sometimes to unite in wrenching down large trees. +The natives in the interior believe that the elephant never touches +grass, and I never saw evidence of his having grazed until we came near +to Tete, and then he had fed on grass in seed only; this seed contains +so much farinaceous matter that the natives collect it for their own +food. + +This part of the country abounds in ant-hills. In the open parts they +are studded over the surface exactly as haycocks are in harvest, or +heaps of manure in spring, rather disfiguring the landscape. In the +woods they are as large as round haystacks, 40 or 50 feet in diameter +at the base, and at least 20 feet high. These are more fertile than the +rest of the land, and here they are the chief garden-ground for maize, +pumpkins, and tobacco. + +When we had passed the outskirting villages, which alone consider +themselves in a state of war with the Makololo, we found the Batoka, or +Batonga, as they here call themselves, quite friendly. Great numbers of +them came from all the surrounding villages with presents of maize and +masuka, and expressed great joy at the first appearance of a white man, +and harbinger of peace. The women clothe themselves better than the +Balonda, but the men go 'in puris naturalibus'. They walk about without +the smallest sense of shame. They have even lost the tradition of the +"fig-leaf". I asked a fine, large-bodied old man if he did not think +it would be better to adopt a little covering. He looked with a pitying +leer, and laughed with surprise at my thinking him at all indecent; he +evidently considered himself above such weak superstition. I told them +that, on my return, I should have my family with me, and no one must +come near us in that state. "What shall we put on? we have no clothing." +It was considered a good joke when I told them that, if they had nothing +else, they must put on a bunch of grass. + +The farther we advanced, the more we found the country swarming with +inhabitants. Great numbers came to see the white man, a sight they had +never beheld before. They always brought presents of maize and masuka. +Their mode of salutation is quite singular. They throw themselves on +their backs on the ground, and, rolling from side to side, slap the +outside of their thighs as expressions of thankfulness and welcome, +uttering the words "Kina bomba." This method of salutation was to me +very disagreeable, and I never could get reconciled to it. I called out, +"Stop, stop; I don't want that;" but they, imagining I was dissatisfied, +only tumbled about more furiously, and slapped their thighs with greater +vigor. The men being totally unclothed, this performance imparted to my +mind a painful sense of their extreme degradation. My own Batoka were +much more degraded than the Barotse, and more reckless. We had to keep +a strict watch, so as not to be involved by their thieving from the +inhabitants, in whose country and power we were. We had also to watch +the use they made of their tongues, for some within hearing of the +villagers would say, "I broke all the pots of that village," or, "I +killed a man there." They were eager to recount their soldier deeds, +when they were in company with the Makololo in former times as a +conquering army. They were thus placing us in danger by their remarks. I +called them together, and spoke to them about their folly, and gave +them a pretty plain intimation that I meant to insist upon as complete +subordination as I had secured in my former journey, as being necessary +for the safety of the party. Happily, it never was needful to resort to +any other measure for their obedience, as they all believed that I would +enforce it. + +In connection with the low state of the Batoka, I was led to think on +the people of Kuruman, who were equally degraded and equally depraved. +There a man scorned to shed a tear. It would have been "tlolo", or +transgression. Weeping, such as Dr. Kane describes among the Esquimaux, +is therefore quite unknown in that country. But I have witnessed +instances like this: Baba, a mighty hunter--the interpreter who +accompanied Captain Harris, and who was ultimately killed by a +rhinoceros--sat listening to the Gospel in the church at Kuruman, and +the gracious words of Christ, made to touch his heart, evidently by the +Holy Spirit, melted him into tears; I have seen him and others sink down +to the ground weeping. When Baba was lying mangled by the furious beast +which tore him off his horse, he shed no tear, but quietly prayed as +long as he was conscious. I had no hand in his instruction: if these +Batoka ever become like him, and they may, the influence that effects it +must be divine. + +A very large portion of this quarter is covered with masuka-trees, +and the ground was so strewed with the pleasant fruit that my men kept +eating it constantly as we marched along. We saw a smaller kind of +the same tree, named Molondo, the fruit of which is about the size of +marbles, having a tender skin, and slight acidity of taste mingled with +its sweetness. Another tree which is said to yield good fruit is named +Sombo, but it was not ripe at this season. + +DECEMBER 6TH. We passed the night near a series of villages. Before we +came to a stand under our tree, a man came running to us with hands and +arms firmly bound with cords behind his back, entreating me to release +him. When I had dismounted, the head man of the village advanced, and +I inquired the prisoner's offense. He stated that he had come from the +Bashukulompo as a fugitive, and he had given him a wife and garden and +a supply of seed; but, on refusing a demand for more, the prisoner had +threatened to kill him, and had been seen the night before skulking +about the village, apparently with that intention. I declined +interceding unless he would confess to his father-in-law, and promise +amendment. He at first refused to promise to abstain from violence, but +afterward agreed. The father-in-law then said that he would take him to +the village and release him, but the prisoner cried out bitterly, "He +will kill me there; don't leave me, white man." I ordered a knife, and +one of the villagers released him on the spot. His arms were cut by the +cords, and he was quite lame from the blows he had received. + +These villagers supplied us abundantly with ground-nuts, maize, and +corn. All expressed great satisfaction on hearing my message, as I +directed their attention to Jesus as their Savior, whose word is "Peace +on earth, and good-will to men." They called out, "We are tired of +flight; give us rest and sleep." They of course did not understand +the full import of the message, but it was no wonder that they eagerly +seized the idea of peace. Their country has been visited by successive +scourges during the last half century, and they are now "a nation +scattered and peeled." When Sebituane came, the cattle were innumerable, +and yet these were the remnants only, left by a chief called Pingola, +who came from the northeast. He swept across the whole territory +inhabited by his cattle-loving countrymen, devouring oxen, cows, and +calves, without retaining a single head. He seems to have been actuated +by a simple love of conquest, and is an instance of what has occurred +two or three times in every century in this country, from time +immemorial. A man or more energy or ambition than his fellows rises +up and conquers a large territory, but as soon as he dies the power +he built up is gone, and his reign, having been one of terror, is +not perpetuated. This, and the want of literature, have prevented the +establishment of any great empire in the interior of Africa. Pingola +effected his conquests by carrying numbers of smith's bellows with him. +The arrow-heads were heated before shooting into a town, and when a +wound was inflicted on either man or beast, great confusion ensued. +After Pingola came Sebituane, and after him the Matebele of Mosilikatse; +and these successive inroads have reduced the Batoka to a state in which +they naturally rejoice at the prospect of deliverance and peace. + +We spent Sunday, the 10th, at Monze's village, who is considered the +chief of all the Batoka we have seen. He lives near the hill Kisekise, +whence we have a view of at least thirty miles of open undulating +country, covered with short grass, and having but few trees. These open +lawns would in any other land, as well as this, be termed pastoral, but +the people have now no cattle, and only a few goats and fowls. They +are located all over the country in small villages, and cultivate +large gardens. They are said to have adopted this wide-spread mode of +habitation in order to give alarm should any enemy appear. In former +times they lived in large towns. In the distance (southeast) we see +ranges of dark mountains along the banks of the Zambesi, and are told of +the existence there of the rapid named Kansala, which is said to impede +the navigation. The river is reported to be placid above that as far +as the territory of Sinamane, a Batoka chief, who is said to command it +after it emerges smooth again below the falls. Kansala is the only rapid +reported in the river until we come to Kebrabasa, twenty or thirty miles +above Tete. On the north we have mountains appearing above the horizon, +which are said to be on the banks of the Kafue. + +The chief Monze came to us on Sunday morning, wrapped in a large cloth, +and rolled himself about in the dust, screaming "Kina bomba," as they +all do. The sight of great naked men wallowing on the ground, though +intended to do me honor, was always very painful; it made me feel +thankful that my lot had been cast in such different circumstances from +that of so many of my fellow-men. One of his wives accompanied him; she +would have been comely if her teeth had been spared; she had a little +battle-axe in her hand, and helped her husband to scream. She was much +excited, for she had never seen a white man before. We rather liked +Monze, for he soon felt at home among us, and kept up conversation +during much of the day. One head man of a village after another arrived, +and each of them supplied us liberally with maize, ground-nuts, and +corn. Monze gave us a goat and a fowl, and appeared highly satisfied +with a present of some handkerchiefs I had got in my supplies left at +the island. Being of printed cotton, they excited great admiration; and +when I put a gaudy-colored one as a shawl about his child, he said that +he would send for all his people to make a dance about it. In telling +them that my object was to open up a path whereby they might, by getting +merchandise for ivory, avoid the guilt of selling their children, I +asked Monze, with about 150 of his men, if they would like a white man +to live among them and teach them. All expressed high satisfaction at +the prospect of the white man and his path: they would protect both him +and his property. I asked the question, because it would be of great +importance to have stations in this healthy region, whither agents +oppressed by sickness might retire, and which would serve, moreover, as +part of a chain of communication between the interior and the coast. The +answer does not mean much more than what I know, by other means, to be +the case--that a white man OF GOOD SENSE would be welcome and safe in +all these parts. By uprightness, and laying himself out for the good of +the people, he would be known all over the country as a BENEFACTOR of +the race. None desire Christian instruction, for of it they have +no idea. But the people are now humbled by the scourgings they have +received, and seem to be in a favorable state for the reception of the +Gospel. The gradual restoration of their former prosperity in cattle, +simultaneously with instruction, would operate beneficially upon their +minds. The language is a dialect of the other negro languages in the +great valley; and as many of the Batoka living under the Makololo +understand both it and the Sichuana, missionaries could soon acquire it +through that medium. + +Monze had never been visited by any white man, but had seen black native +traders, who, he said, came for ivory, not for slaves. He had heard +of white men passing far to the east of him to Cazembe, referring, no +doubt, to Pereira, Lacerda, and others, who have visited that chief. + +The streams in this part are not perennial; I did not observe one +suitable for the purpose of irrigation. There is but little wood; here +and there you see large single trees, or small clumps of evergreens, but +the abundance of maize and ground-nuts we met with shows that more rain +falls than in the Bechuana country, for there they never attempt to +raise maize except in damp hollows on the banks of rivers. The pasturage +is very fine for both cattle and sheep. My own men, who know the land +thoroughly, declare that it is all garden-ground together, and that the +more tender grains, which require richer soil than the native corn, need +no care here. It is seldom stony. + +The men of a village came to our encampment, and, as they followed +the Bashukulompo mode of dressing their hair, we had an opportunity +of examining it for the first time. A circle of hair at the top of the +head, eight inches or more in diameter, is woven into a cone eight or +ten inches high, with an obtuse apex, bent, in some cases, a little +forward, giving it somewhat the appearance of a helmet. Some have only +a cone, four or five inches in diameter at the base. It is said that the +hair of animals is added; but the sides of the cone are woven something +like basket-work. The head man of this village, instead of having his +brought to a point, had it prolonged into a wand, which extended a full +yard from the crown of his head. The hair on the forehead, above the +ears, and behind, is all shaven off, so they appear somewhat as if a cap +of liberty were cocked upon the top of the head. After the weaving is +performed it is said to be painful, as the scalp is drawn tightly up; +but they become used to it. Monze informed me that all his people were +formerly ornamented in this way, but he discouraged it. I wished him to +discourage the practice of knocking out the teeth too, but he smiled, as +if in that case the fashion would be too strong for him, as it was for +Sebituane. + +Monze came on Monday morning, and, on parting, presented us with a piece +of a buffalo which had been killed the day before by lions. We crossed +the rivulet Makoe, which runs westward into the Kafue, and went +northward in order to visit Semalembue, an influential chief there. +We slept at the village of Monze's sister, who also passes by the same +name. Both he and his sister are feminine in their appearance, but +disfigured by the foolish custom of knocking out the upper front teeth. + +It is not often that jail-birds turn out well, but the first person who +appeared to welcome us at the village of Monze's sister was the prisoner +we had released in the way. He came with a handsome present of corn +and meal, and, after praising our kindness to the villagers who had +assembled around us, asked them, "What do you stand gazing at? Don't +you know that they have mouths like other people?" He then set off and +brought large bundles of grass and wood for our comfort, and a pot to +cook our food in. + +DECEMBER 12TH. The morning presented the appearance of a continuous rain +from the north, the first time we had seen it set in from that quarter +in such a southern latitude. In the Bechuana country, continuous rains +are always from the northeast or east, while in Londa and Angola they +are from the north. At Pungo Andongo, for instance, the whitewash is all +removed from the north side of the houses. It cleared up, however, about +midday, and Monze's sister conducted us a mile or two upon the road. On +parting, she said that she had forwarded orders to a distant village to +send food to the point where we should sleep. In expressing her joy at +the prospect of living in peace, she said it would be so pleasant "to +sleep without dreaming of any one pursuing them with a spear." + +In our front we had ranges of hills called Chamai, covered with trees. +We crossed the rivulet Nakachinta, flowing westward into the Kafue, and +then passed over ridges of rocks of the same mica schist which we +found so abundant in Golungo Alto; here they were surmounted by reddish +porphyry and finely laminated felspathic grit with trap. The dip, +however, of these rocks is not toward the centre of the continent, as +in Angola, for ever since we passed the masses of granite on the +Kalomo, the rocks, chiefly of mica schist, dip away from them, taking +an easterly direction. A decided change of dip occurs again when we come +near the Zambesi, as will be noticed farther on. The hills which flank +that river now appeared on our right as a high dark range, while those +near the Kafue have the aspect of a low blue range, with openings +between. We crossed two never-failing rivulets also flowing into the +Kafue. The country is very fertile, but vegetation is nowhere rank. The +boiling-point of water being 204 Deg., showed that we were not yet as +low down as Linyanti; but we had left the masuka-trees behind us, and +many others with which we had become familiar. A feature common to the +forests of Angola and Benguela, namely, the presence of orchilla-weed +and lichens on the trees, with mosses on the ground, began to appear; +but we never, on any part of the eastern slope, saw the abundant crops +of ferns which are met with every where in Angola. The orchilla-weed and +mosses, too, were in but small quantities. + +As we passed along, the people continued to supply us with food in +great abundance. They had by some means or other got a knowledge that I +carried medicine, and, somewhat to the disgust of my men, who wished to +keep it all to themselves, brought their sick children for cure. Some of +them I found had hooping-cough, which is one of the few epidemics that +range through this country. + +In passing through the woods I for the first time heard the bird called +Mokwa reza, or "Son-in-law of God" (Micropogon sulphuratus?), utter its +cry, which is supposed by the natives to be "pula, pula" (rain, rain). +It is said to do this only before heavy falls of rain. It may be a +cuckoo, for it is said to throw out the eggs of the white-backed Senegal +crow, and lay its own instead. This, combined with the cry for rain, +causes the bird to be regarded with favor. The crow, on the other hand, +has a bad repute, and, when rain is withheld, its nest is sought for +and destroyed, in order to dissolve the charm by which it is supposed +to seal up the windows of heaven. All the other birds now join in full +chorus in the mornings, and two of them, at least, have fine loud notes. + + + + +Chapter 28. + +Beautiful Valley--Buffalo--My young Men kill two Elephants--The +Hunt--Mode of measuring Height of live Elephants--Wild Animals smaller +here than in the South, though their Food is more abundant--The Elephant +a dainty Feeder--Semalembue--His Presents--Joy in prospect of living +in Peace--Trade--His People's way of wearing their Hair--Their Mode +of Salutation--Old Encampment--Sebituane's former Residence--Ford +of Kafue--Hippopotami--Hills and Villages--Geological Formation-- +Prodigious Quantities of large Game--Their Tameness--Rains--Less +Sickness than in the Journey to Loanda--Reason--Charge from an +Elephant--Vast Amount of animal Life on the Zambesi--Water of River +discolored--An Island with Buffaloes and Men on it--Native Devices for +killing Game--Tsetse now in Country--Agricultural Industry--An Albino +murdered by his Mother--"Guilty of Tlolo"--Women who make their +Mouths "like those of Ducks"--First Symptom of the Slave-trade on this +side--Selole's Hostility--An armed Party hoaxed--An Italian Marauder +slain--Elephant's Tenacity of Life--A Word to young Sportsmen-- +Mr. Oswell's Adventure with an Elephant; narrow Escape--Mburuma's +Village--Suspicious Conduct of his People--Guides attempt to detain +us--The Village and People of Ma Mburuma--Character our Guides give of +us. + + + +13TH. The country is becoming very beautiful, and furrowed by deep +valleys; the underlying rocks, being igneous, have yielded fertile soil. +There is great abundance of large game. The buffaloes select open spots, +and often eminences, as standing-places through the day. We crossed the +Mbai, and found in its bed rocks of pink marble. Some little hills near +it are capped by marble of beautiful whiteness, the underlying rock +being igneous. Violent showers occur frequently on the hills, and cause +such sudden sweeping floods in these rivulets, that five of our men, who +had gone to the other side for firewood, were obliged to swim back. +The temperature of the air is lowered considerably by the daily rains. +Several times the thermometer at sunrise has been as low as 68 Deg., and +74 Deg. at sunset. Generally, however, it stood at from 72 Deg. to 74 +Deg. at sunrise, 90 Deg. to 96 Deg. at midday, and 80 Deg. to 84 Deg. +at sunset. The sensation, however, as before remarked, was not +disagreeable. + +14TH. We entered a most beautiful valley, abounding in large game. +Finding a buffalo lying down, I went to secure him for our food. Three +balls did not kill him, and, as he turned round as if for a charge, we +ran for the shelter of some rocks. Before we gained them, we found that +three elephants, probably attracted by the strange noise, had cut off +our retreat on that side; they, however, turned short off, and allowed +us to gain the rocks. We then saw that the buffalo was moving off quite +briskly, and, in order not to be entirely balked, I tried a long shot at +the last of the elephants, and, to the great joy of my people, broke his +fore leg. The young men soon brought him to a stand, and one shot in the +brain dispatched him. I was right glad to see the joy manifested at such +an abundant supply of meat. + +On the following day, while my men were cutting up the elephant, great +numbers of the villagers came to enjoy the feast. We were on the side +of a fine green valley, studded here and there with trees, and cut by +numerous rivulets. I had retired from the noise, to take an observation +among some rocks of laminated grit, when I beheld an elephant and her +calf at the end of the valley, about two miles distant. The calf was +rolling in the mud, and the dam was standing fanning herself with her +great ears. As I looked at them through my glass, I saw a long string +of my own men appearing on the other side of them, and Sekwebu came and +told me that these had gone off saying, "Our father will see to-day what +sort of men he has got." I then went higher up the side of the valley, +in order to have a distinct view of their mode of hunting. The goodly +beast, totally unconscious of the approach of an enemy, stood for some +time suckling her young one, which seemed about two years old; they then +went into a pit containing mud, and smeared themselves all over with it, +the little one frisking about his dam, flapping his ears and tossing his +trunk incessantly, in elephantine fashion. She kept flapping her ears +and wagging her tail, as if in the height of enjoyment. Then began the +piping of her enemies, which was performed by blowing into a tube, +or the hands closed together, as boys do into a key. They call out to +attract the animal's attention, + + "O chief! chief! we have come to kill you. + O chief! chief! many more will die besides you, etc. + The gods have said it," etc., etc. + +Both animals expanded their ears and listened, then left their bath as +the crowd rushed toward them. The little one ran forward toward the +end of the valley, but, seeing the men there, returned to his dam. She +placed herself on the danger side of her calf, and passed her proboscis +over it again and again, as if to assure it of safety. She frequently +looked back to the men, who kept up an incessant shouting, singing, +and piping; then looked at her young one and ran after it, sometimes +sideways, as if her feelings were divided between anxiety to protect her +offspring and desire to revenge the temerity of her persecutors. The men +kept about a hundred yards in her rear, and some that distance from her +flanks, and continued thus until she was obliged to cross a rivulet. +The time spent in descending and getting up the opposite bank allowed +of their coming up to the edge, and discharging their spears at about +twenty yards distance. After the first discharge she appeared with her +sides red with blood, and, beginning to flee for her own life, seemed +to think no more of her young. I had previously sent off Sekwebu with +orders to spare the calf. It ran very fast, but neither young nor old +ever enter into a gallop; their quickest pace is only a sharp walk. +Before Sekwebu could reach them, the calf had taken refuge in the water, +and was killed. The pace of the dam gradually became slower. She turned +with a shriek of rage, and made a furious charge back among the men. +They vanished at right angles to her course, or sideways, and, as she +ran straight on, she went through the whole party, but came near no one +except a man who wore a piece of cloth on his shoulders. Bright clothing +is always dangerous in these cases. She charged three or four times, +and, except in the first instance, never went farther than 100 yards. +She often stood after she had crossed a rivulet, and faced the men, +though she received fresh spears. It was by this process of spearing and +loss of blood that she was killed; for at last, making a short charge, +she staggered round and sank down dead in a kneeling posture. I did +not see the whole hunt, having been tempted away by both sun and moon +appearing unclouded. I turned from the spectacle of the destruction of +noble animals, which might be made so useful in Africa, with a feeling +of sickness, and it was not relieved by the recollection that the ivory +was mine, though that was the case. I regretted to see them killed, and +more especially the young one, the meat not being at all necessary at +that time; but it is right to add that I did not feel sick when my own +blood was up the day before. We ought, perhaps, to judge those deeds +more leniently in which we ourselves have no temptation to engage. Had +I not been previously guilty of doing the very same thing, I might have +prided myself on superior humanity when I experienced the nausea in +viewing my men kill these two. + +The elephant first killed was a male, not full grown; his height at the +withers, 8 feet 4 inches; circumference of the fore foot, 44 inches * 2 += 7 feet 4 inches. The female was full grown, and measured in height 8 +feet 8 inches; circumference of the fore foot, 48 inches * 2 = 8 feet +(96 inches). We afterward found that full-grown male elephants of this +region ranged in height at the withers from 9 feet 9 inches to 9 feet 10 +inches, and the circumference of the fore foot to be 4 feet 9-1/2 inches +* 2 = 9 feet 7 inches. These details are given because the general rule +has been observed that twice the circumference of the impression made +by the fore foot on the ground is the height of the animal. The print on +the ground, being a little larger than the foot itself, would thus seem +to be an accurate mode of measuring the size of any elephant that has +passed; but the above measurements show that it is applicable only to +full-grown animals. The greater size of the African elephant in the +south would at once distinguish it from the Indian one; but here they +approach more nearly to each other in bulk, a female being about as +large as a common Indian male. But the ear of the African is an external +mark which no one will mistake even in a picture. That of the female now +killed was 4 feet 5 inches in depth, and 4 feet in horizontal breadth. +I have seen a native creep under one so as to be quite covered from the +rain. The ear of the Indian variety is not more than a third of this +size. The representation of elephants on ancient coins shows that this +important characteristic was distinctly recognized of old. Indeed, +Cuvier remarked that it was better known by Aristotle than by Buffon. + +Having been anxious to learn whether the African elephant is capable +of being tamed, through the kindness of my friend Admiral Smythe I am +enabled to give the reader conclusive evidence on this point. In the two +medals furnished from his work, "A descriptive Catalogue of his Cabinet +of Roman and Imperial large brass Medals", the size of the ears will +be at once noted as those of the true African elephant.* They were even +more docile than the Asiatic, and were taught various feats, as walking +on ropes, dancing, etc. One of the coins is of Faustina senior, the +other of Severus the Seventh, and struck A.D. 197. These elephants were +brought from Africa to Rome. The attempt to tame this most useful animal +has never been made at the Cape, nor has one ever been exhibited in +England. There is only one very young calf of the species in the British +Museum. + + * Unfortunately these illustrations can not be presented in + this ASCII text. A. L., 1997. + +The abundance of food in this country, as compared with the south, would +lead one to suppose that animals here must attain a much greater size; +but actual measurement now confirms the impression made on my mind by +the mere sight of the animals, that those in the districts north of +20 Deg. were smaller than the same races existing southward of that +latitude. The first time that Mr. Oswell and myself saw full-grown male +elephants on the River Zouga, they seemed no larger than the females +(which are always smaller than males) we had met on the Limpopo. There +they attain a height of upward of 12 feet. At the Zouga the height of +one I measured was 11 feet 4 inches, and in this district 9 feet 10 +inches. There is, however, an increase in the size of the tusks as we +approach the equator. Unfortunately, I never made measurements of other +animals in the south; but the appearance of the animals themselves in +the north at once produced the impression on my mind referred to as to +their decrease in size. When we first saw koodoos, they were so much +smaller than those we had been accustomed to in the south that we +doubted whether they were not a new kind of antelope; and the leche, +seen nowhere south of 20 Deg., is succeeded by the poku as we go north. +This is, in fact, only a smaller species of that antelope, with a more +reddish color. A great difference in size prevails also among domestic +animals; but the influence of locality on them is not so well marked. +The cattle of the Batoka, for instance, are exceedingly small and very +beautiful, possessing generally great breadth between the eyes and a +very playful disposition. They are much smaller than the aboriginal +cattle in the south; but it must be added that those of the Barotse +valley, in the same latitudes as the Batoka, are large. The breed may +have come from the west, as the cattle within the influence of the sea +air, as at Little Fish Bay, Benguela, Ambriz, and along that coast, are +very large. Those found at Lake Ngami, with large horns and standing +six feet high, probably come from the same quarter. The goats are also +small, and domestic fowls throughout this country are of a very +small size, and even dogs, except where the inhabitants have had an +opportunity of improving the breed by importation from the Portuguese. +As the Barotse cattle are an exception to this general rule, so are +the Barotse dogs, for they are large, savage-looking animals, though in +reality very cowardly. It is a little remarkable that a decrease in size +should occur where food is the most abundant; but tropical climates seem +unfavorable for the full development of either animals or man. It is +not from want of care in the breeding, for the natives always choose the +larger and stronger males for stock, and the same arrangement prevails +in nature, for it is only by overcoming their weaker rivals that the +wild males obtain possession of the herd. Invariably they show the scars +received in battle. The elephant we killed yesterday had an umbilical +hernia as large as a child's head, probably caused by the charge of a +rival. The cow showed scars received from men; two of the wounds in her +side were still unhealed, and there was an orifice six inches long, and +open, in her proboscis, and, as it was about a foot from the point, it +must have interfered with her power of lifting water. + +In estimating the amount of food necessary for these and other large +animals, sufficient attention has not been paid to the kinds chosen. The +elephant, for instance, is a most dainty feeder, and particularly fond +of certain sweet-tasted trees and fruits. He chooses the mohonono, the +mimosa, and other trees which contain much saccharine matter, mucilage, +and gum. He may be seen putting his head to a lofty palmyra, and swaying +it to and fro to shake off the seeds; he then picks them up singly +and eats them. Or he may be seen standing by the masuka and other +fruit-trees patiently picking off the sweet fruits one by one. He also +digs up bulbs and tubers, but none of these are thoroughly digested. +Bruce remarked upon the undigested bits of wood seen in their droppings, +and he must have observed, too, that neither leaves nor seeds are +changed by passing through the alimentary canal. The woody fibre of +roots and branches is dropped in the state of tow, the nutritious +matter alone having been extracted. This capability of removing all +the nourishment, and the selection of those kinds of food which contain +great quantities of mucilage and gum, accounts for the fact that +herds of elephants produce but small effect upon the vegetation of +a country--quality being more requisite than quantity. The amount of +internal fat found in them makes them much prized by the inhabitants, +who are all very fond of it, both for food and ointment. + +After leaving the elephant valley we passed through a very beautiful +country, but thinly inhabited by man. The underlying rock is trap, and +dikes of talcose gneiss. The trap is often seen tilted on its edge, or +dipping a little either to the north or south. The strike is generally +to the northeast, the direction we are going. About Losito we found +the trap had given place to hornblende schist, mica schist, and various +schorly rocks. We had now come into the region in which the appearance +of the rocks conveys the impression of a great force having acted along +the bed of the Zambesi. Indeed, I was led to the belief from seeing the +manner in which the rocks have been thrust away on both sides from +its bed, that the power which formed the crack of the falls had given +direction to the river below, and opened a bed for it all the way from +the falls to beyond the gorge of Lupata. + +Passing the rivulet Losito, and through the ranges of hills, we reached +the residence of Semalembue on the 18th. His village is situated at the +bottom of ranges through which the Kafue finds a passage, and close +to the bank of that river. The Kafue, sometimes called Kahowhe or +Bashukulompo River, is upward of two hundred yards wide here, and full +of hippopotami, the young of which may be seen perched on the necks +of their dams. At this point we had reached about the same level as +Linyanti. + +Semalembue paid us a visit soon after our arrival, and said that he had +often heard of me, and now that he had the pleasure of seeing me, he +feared that I should sleep the first night at his village hungry. This +was considered the handsome way of introducing a present, for he then +handed five or six baskets of meal and maize, and an enormous one of +ground-nuts. Next morning he gave me about twenty baskets more of meal. +I could make but a poor return for his kindness, but he accepted my +apologies politely, saying that he knew there were no goods in the +country from which I had come, and, in professing great joy at the words +of peace I spoke, he said, "Now I shall cultivate largely, in the hope +of eating and sleeping in peace." It is noticeable that all whom we have +yet met eagerly caught up the idea of living in peace as the probable +effect of the Gospel. They require no explanation of the existence of +the Deity. Sekwebu makes use of the term "Reza", and they appear to +understand at once. Like negroes in general, they have a strong tendency +to worship, and I heard that Semalembue gets a good deal of ivory from +the surrounding tribes on pretense of having some supernatural power. +He transmits this to some other chiefs on the Zambesi, and receives +in return English cotton goods which come from Mozambique by Babisa +traders. My men here began to sell their beads and other ornaments for +cotton cloth. Semalembue was accompanied by about forty people, all +large men. They have much wool on their heads, which is sometimes drawn +all together up to the crown, and tied there in a large tapering bunch. +The forehead and round by the ears is shaven close to the base of this +tuft. Others draw out the hair on one side, and twist it into little +strings. The rest is taken over, and hangs above the ear, which gives +the appearance of having a cap cocked jauntily on the side of the head. + +The mode of salutation is by clapping the hands. Various parties of +women came from the surrounding villages to see the white man, but all +seemed very much afraid. Their fear, which I seldom could allay, made +them, when addressed, clap their hands with increasing vigor. Sekwebu +was the only one of the Makololo who knew this part of the country; and +this was the region which to his mind was best adapted for the residence +of a tribe. The natives generally have a good idea of the nature of the +soil and pasturage, and Sekwebu expatiated with great eloquence on the +capabilities of this part for supplying the wants of the Makololo. There +is certainly abundance of room at present in the country for thousands +and thousands more of population. + +We passed near the Losito, a former encampment of the Matebele, with +whom Sekwebu had lived. At the sight of the bones of the oxen they had +devoured, and the spot where savage dances had taken place, though all +deserted now, the poor fellow burst out into a wild Matebele song. +He pointed out also a district, about two days and a half west of +Semalembue, where Sebituane had formerly dwelt. There is a hot fountain +on the hills there named "Nakalombo", which may be seen at a distance +emitting steam. "There," said Sekwebu, "had your Molekane (Sebituane) +been alive, he would have brought you to live with him. You would be +on the bank of the river, and, by taking canoes, you would at once sail +down to the Zambesi, and visit the white people at the sea." + +This part is a favorite one with the Makololo, and probably it would be +a good one in which to form a centre of civilization. There is a +large, flat district of country to the north, said to be peopled by +the Bashukulompo and other tribes, who cultivate the ground to a great +extent, and raise vast quantities of grain, ground-nuts, sweet potatoes, +etc. They also grow sugar-cane. If they were certain of a market, I +believe they would not be unwilling to cultivate cotton too, but they +have not been accustomed to the peaceful pursuits of commerce. All are +fond of trade, but they have been taught none save that in ivory and +slaves. + +The Kafue enters a narrow gorge close by the village of Semalembue; as +the hill on the north is called Bolengwe, I apply that name to the gorge +(lat. 15d 48' 19" S., long. 28d 22' E.). Semalembue said that he ought +to see us over the river, so he accompanied us to a pass about a mile +south of his village, and when we entered among the hills we found the +ford of the Kafue. On parting with Semalembue I put on him a shirt, and +he went away with it apparently much delighted. + +The ford was at least 250 yards broad, but rocky and shallow. After +crossing it in a canoe, we went along the left bank, and were completely +shut in by high hills. Every available spot between the river and the +hills is under cultivation; and the residence of the people here is +intended to secure safety for themselves and their gardens from their +enemies; there is plenty of garden-ground outside the hills; here +they are obliged to make pitfalls to protect the grain against the +hippopotami. As these animals had not been disturbed by guns, they were +remarkably tame, and took no notice of our passing. We again saw numbers +of young ones, not much larger than terrier dogs, sitting on the necks +of their dams, the little saucy-looking heads cocking up between the +old one's ears; as they become a little older they sit on the withers. +Needing meat, we shot a full-grown cow, and found, as we had often done +before, the flesh to be very much like pork. The height of this animal +was 4 feet 10 inches, and from the point of the nose to the root of the +tail 10 feet 6. They seem quarrelsome, for both males and females are +found covered with scars, and young males are often killed by the elder +ones: we met an instance of this near the falls. + +We came to a great many little villages among the hills, as if the +inhabitants had reason to hide themselves from the observation of their +enemies. While detained cutting up the hippopotamus, I ascended a hill +called Mabue asula (stones smell badly), and, though not the highest in +sight, it was certainly not 100 feet lower than the most elevated. The +boiling-point of water showed it to be about 900 feet above the river, +which was of the level of Linyanti. These hills seemed to my men of +prodigious altitude, for they had been accustomed to ant-hills only. +The mention of mountains that pierced the clouds made them draw in their +breath and hold their hands to their mouths. And when I told them that +their previous description of Taba cheu had led me to expect something +of the sort, I found that the idea of a cloud-capped mountain had never +entered into their heads. The mountains certainly look high, from having +abrupt sides; but I had recognized the fact by the point of ebullition +of water, that they are of a considerably lower altitude than the top of +the ridge we had left. They constitute, in fact, a sort of low fringe +on the outside of the eastern ridge, exactly as the (apparently) high +mountains of Angola (Golungo Alto) form an outer low fringe to the +western ridge. I was much struck by the similarity of conformation +and nature of the rocks on both sides of the continent; but there is +a difference in the structure of the subtending ridges, as may be +understood by the annexed ideal geological section. + + +*[The ASCII edition cannot include the drawing of the cross-section, +but the comments are included in full.--A. L., 1997.] + + + IDEAL SECTION ACROSS SOUTH CENTRAL AFRICA, + INTENDED TO SHOW THE ELEVATED VALLEY FORM OF THAT PORTION OF THE CONTINENT. + -------------------------------------- + + WEST. + + [Terrain] [Remarks] + + Sea. CALCAREOUS TUFA. + + TRAP. With modern shells, and similar to those now found + in the sea adjacent, with strongly magnetic iron ore. + + MICA SCHIST. Dipping East. + + SANDSTONE (like that of East Africa). The rocks + Pungo Andongo. of Pungo Andongo are a conglomerate of rounded shingle in + Rocks 4000 feet. a matrix of sandstone, and stand on horizontal sandstone, + on which fossil palms appear. + + Fault. + + RED SHALES CAPPED BY FERRUGINOUS CONGLOMERATE. + Soft red shale or "keele". + + G| 5000 feet. + R| Water boils + E| at 202 Deg. + A| On top, ferruginous conglomerate; below that, red shale, + T| 4500 feet. with banks of gravel. + | Lake Dilolo. + C| TUFA AND TRAP. In Londa, the bottom of the valley + E| 2500 feet. is formed of ferruginous conglomerate on the surface; + N| Lake Ngami. hardened sandstone, with madrepore holes, + T| banks of gravel, and occasionally trap; + R| south of 12 Degrees, large patches of soft + A| TUFA. calcareous tufa, with pebbles of jasper, + L| agates, &c., lie on various horizontal traps, + | amygdaloids with analami and mesotype, which is + P| burst through by basaltic rocks forming hills, + L| and showing that the bottom of the valley + A| RADIATED ZEOLITE. consists of old silurian schists; + T| there are also various granitic rocks + E| cropping through the trap. + A| + U| BASALTIC ROCKS. Augitic porphyry and basalt, + .| with tufa over it. + + Place of Great Cataract. + + MICA SCHIST. White mica schist dipping west, and gneiss. + + 5000 feet. Kalomo. + Water boils GRANITE. With black mica. + at 202 Deg. + + MICA SCHIST. White mica schist and white marble. + + Hill tops TRAP. Hot fountain; conical hills of igneous rocks, + 4000 feet. containing much mica. + Bottoms 3500 feet. + + MICA SCHIST. Pink marble dolomite, + on hills of mica schist, of various colours, with trap, + schorl in gneiss, kyanite or disthene gneissose mica + in the schist. + + 1500 ft. COAL IN SANDSTONE. Specular and magnetic iron + on various igneous rocks; finely laminated porphyry; + granite; hot fountain. + + Sandstone overlying coal; trap dykes; + syenitic porphyry dykes; black vesicular trap, + penetrating in thin veins the clay shale of the country, + converting it into porcellanite, and partially + crystallizing the coal. On this sandstone + lie fossil palms, and coniferous trees + converted into silica, as on a similar rock in Angola. + + COMPACT SILICEOUS SCHIST. + + IGNEOUS ROCKS. Trappean rocks, with hot fountain. + + CALCAREOUS TUFA. Arkose, or granitic grit, + with modern shells covered by calcareous tufa. + Sea. + + EAST. + + +The heights are given as an approximation obtained from observing +the boiling point of water, they are drawn on a scale of 1/10 of an inch +per 1000 feet in altitude. The section is necessarily exaggerated +in longitude, as it was traversed in different latitudes, +the western side being in 8d-12d, the eastern 15d-18d S. + + +We can see from this hill five distinct ranges, of which Bolengo is the +most westerly, and Komanga is the most easterly. The second is named +Sekonkamena, and the third Funze. Very many conical hills appear among +them, and they are generally covered with trees. On their tops we have +beautiful white quartz rocks, and some have a capping of dolomite. +On the west of the second range we have great masses of kyanite or +disthene, and on the flanks of the third and fourth a great deal +of specular iron ore which is magnetic, and containing a very large +percentage of the metal. The sides of these ranges are generally very +precipitous, and there are rivulets between which are not perennial. +Many of the hills have been raised by granite, exactly like that of the +Kalomo. Dikes of this granite may be seen thrusting up immense masses of +mica schist and quartz or sandstone schist, and making the strata fold +over them on each side, as clothes hung upon a line. The uppermost +stratum is always dolomite or bright white quartz. Semalembue intended +that we should go a little to the northeast, and pass through the people +called Babimpe, and we saw some of that people, who invited us to come +that way on account of its being smoother; but, feeling anxious to get +back to the Zambesi again, we decided to cross the hills toward its +confluence with the Kafue. The distance, which in a straight line is but +small, occupied three days. The precipitous nature of the sides of this +mass of hills knocked up the oxen and forced us to slaughter two, one of +which, a very large one, and ornamented with upward of thirty pieces of +its own skin detached and hanging down, Sekeletu had wished us to take +to the white people as a specimen of his cattle. We saw many elephants +among the hills, and my men ran off and killed three. When we came to +the top of the outer range of the hills we had a glorious view. At +a short distance below us we saw the Kafue, wending away over a +forest-clad plain to the confluence, and on the other side of the +Zambesi, beyond that, lay a long range of dark hills. A line of fleecy +clouds appeared lying along the course of that river at their base. The +plain below us, at the left of the Kafue, had more large game on it than +any where else I had seen in Africa. Hundreds of buffaloes and zebras +grazed on the open spaces, and there stood lordly elephants feeding +majestically, nothing moving apparently but the proboscis. I wished that +I had been able to take a photograph of a scene so seldom beheld, and +which is destined, as guns increase, to pass away from earth. When we +descended we found all the animals remarkably tame. The elephants stood +beneath the trees, fanning themselves with their large ears, as if they +did not see us at 200 or 300 yards distance. The number of animals was +quite astonishing, and made me think that here I could realize an image +of that time when Megatheria fed undisturbed in the primeval forests. We +saw great numbers of red-colored pigs ('Potamochoerus') standing gazing +at us in wonder. The people live on the hills, and, having no guns, +seldom disturb the game. They have never been visited, even by +half-castes; but Babisa traders have come occasionally. Continuous rains +kept us for some time on the banks of the Chiponga, and here we were +unfortunate enough to come among the tsetse. Mr. J. N. Gray, of the +British Museum, has kindly obliged me with a drawing of the insect, +with the ravages of which I have unfortunately been too familiar. (For +description, see p. 94-96 [Chapter 4 Paragraphs 16-20].) No. 1 is the +insect somewhat smaller than life, from the specimen having contracted +in drying; they are a little larger than the common house-fly. No. 2 +is the insect magnified; and No. 3 shows the magnified proboscis and +poison-bulb at the root.* + + * Unfortunately, these illustrations can not be presented in + this ASCII text. Fortunately, information on the Tsetse is no + longer difficult to find. The "somewhat smaller than life" + drawing is about 1 cm from head to tail, not including wings + or proboscis.--A. L., 1997. + +We tried to leave one morning, but the rain coming on afresh brought us +to a stand, and after waiting an hour, wet to the skin, we were fain to +retrace our steps to our sheds. These rains were from the east, and the +clouds might be seen on the hills exactly as the "Table-cloth" on Table +Mountain. This was the first wetting we had got since we left Sesheke, +for I had gained some experience in traveling. In Londa we braved the +rain, and, as I despised being carried in our frequent passage through +running water, I was pretty constantly drenched; but now, when we saw a +storm coming, we invariably halted. The men soon pulled grass sufficient +to make a little shelter for themselves by placing it on a bush, and, +having got my camp-stool and umbrella, with a little grass under my +feet, I kept myself perfectly dry. We also lighted large fires, and the +men were not chilled by streams of water running down their persons, and +abstracting the heat, as they would have been had they been exposed to +the rain. When it was over they warmed themselves by the fires, and we +traveled on comfortably. The effect of this care was, that we had much +less sickness than with a smaller party in journeying to Loanda. Another +improvement made from my experience was avoiding an entire change of +diet. In going to Loanda I took little or no European food, in order not +to burden my men and make them lose spirit, but trusted entirely to what +might be got by the gun and the liberality of the Balonda; but on this +journey I took some flour which had been left in the wagon, with +some got on the island, and baked my own bread all the way in an +extemporaneous oven made by an inverted pot. With these precautions, +aided, no doubt, by the greater healthiness of the district over which +we passed, I enjoyed perfect health. + +When we left the Chipongo on the 30th we passed among the range of hills +on our left, which are composed of mica and clay slate. At the bottom we +found a forest of large silicified trees, all lying as if the elevation +of the range had made them fall away from it, and toward the river. An +ordinary-sized tree standing on end, measured 22 inches in diameter: +there were 12 laminae to the inch. These are easily counted, because +there is usually a scale of pure silica between each, which has not +been so much affected by the weather as the rest of the ring itself: the +edges of the rings thus stand out plainly. Mr. Quekett, having kindly +examined some specimens, finds that it is "silicified CONIFEROUS WOOD +of the ARAUCARIAN type; and the nearest allied wood that he knows of is +that found, also in a fossil state, in New South Wales." The numbers +of large game were quite astonishing. I never saw elephants so tame as +those near the Chiponga: they stood close to our path without being the +least afraid. This is different from their conduct where they have been +accustomed to guns, for there they take alarm at the distance of a mile, +and begin to run if a shot is fired even at a longer distance. My men +killed another here, and rewarded the villagers of the Chiponga for +their liberality in meal by loading them with flesh. We spent a night +at a baobab, which was hollow, and would hold twenty men inside. It had +been used as a lodging-house by the Babisa. + +As we approached nearer the Zambesi, the country became covered with +broad-leaved bushes, pretty thickly planted, and we had several times +to shout to elephants to get out of our way. At an open space, a herd +of buffaloes came trotting up to look at our oxen, and it was only by +shooting one that I made them retreat. The meat is very much like +that of an ox, and this one was very fine. The only danger we actually +encountered was from a female elephant, with three young ones of +different sizes. Charging through the centre of our extended line, +and causing the men to throw down their burdens in a great hurry, she +received a spear for her temerity. I never saw an elephant with more +than one calf before. We knew that we were near our Zambesi again, +even before the great river burst upon our sight, by the numbers of +water-fowl we met. I killed four geese with two shots, and, had I +followed the wishes of my men, could have secured a meal of water-fowl +for the whole party. I never saw a river with so much animal life around +and in it, and, as the Barotse say, "Its fish and fowl are always fat." +When our eyes were gladdened by a view of its goodly broad waters, we +found it very much larger than it is even above the falls. One might try +to make his voice heard across it in vain. Its flow was more rapid than +near Sesheke, being often four and a half miles an hour, and, what I +never saw before, the water was discolored and of a deep brownish-red. +In the great valley the Leeambye never becomes of this color. The +adjacent country, so far north as is known, is all level, and the soil, +being generally covered with dense herbage, is not abraded; but on +the eastern ridge the case is different; the grass is short, and, the +elevation being great, the soil is washed down by the streams, and hence +the discoloration which we now view. The same thing was observed on the +western ridge. We never saw discoloration till we reached the Quango; +that obtained its matter from the western slope of the western ridge, +just as this part of the Zambesi receives its soil from the eastern +slope of the eastern ridge. It carried a considerable quantity of wreck +of reeds, sticks, and trees. We struck upon the river about eight miles +east of the confluence with the Kafue, and thereby missed a sight of +that interesting point. The cloudiness of the weather was such that +but few observations could be made for determining our position; so, +pursuing our course, we went down the left bank, and came opposite the +island of Menye makaba. The Zambesi contains numerous islands; this was +about a mile and a half or two miles long, and upward of a quarter of +a mile broad. Besides human population, it has a herd of buffaloes that +never leave it. In the distance they seemed to be upward of sixty. The +human and brute inhabitants understand each other; for when the former +think they ought to avenge the liberties committed on their gardens, the +leaders of the latter come out boldly to give battle. They told us that +the only time in which they can thin them is when the river is full and +part of the island flooded. They then attack them from their canoes. The +comparatively small space to which they have confined themselves shows +how luxuriant the vegetation of this region is; for were they in want +of more pasture, as buffaloes can swim well, and the distance from this +bank to the island is not much more than 200 yards, they might easily +remove hither. The opposite bank is much more distant. + +Ranges of hills appear now to run parallel with the Zambesi, and are +about fifteen miles apart. Those on the north approach nearest to the +river. The inhabitants on that side are the Batonga, those on the south +bank are the Banyai. The hills abound in buffaloes, and elephants are +numerous, and many are killed by the people on both banks. They erect +stages on high trees overhanging the paths by which the elephants come, +and then use a large spear with a handle nearly as thick as a man's +wrist, and four or five feet long. When the animal comes beneath they +throw the spear, and if it enters between the ribs above, as the blade +is at least twenty inches long by two broad, the motion of the handle, +as it is aided by knocking against the trees, makes frightful gashes +within, and soon causes death. They kill them also by means of a spear +inserted in a beam of wood, which being suspended on the branch of a +tree by a cord attached to a latch fastened in the path, and intended to +be struck by the animal's foot, leads to the fall of the beam, and, the +spear being poisoned, causes death in a few hours. + +We were detained by continuous rains several days at this island. The +clouds rested upon the tops of the hills as they came from the eastward, +and then poured down plenteous showers on the valleys below. As soon as +we could move, Tomba Nyama, the head man of the island, volunteered the +loan of a canoe to cross a small river, called the Chongwe, which we +found to be about fifty or sixty yards broad and flooded. All this part +of the country was well known to Sekwebu, and he informed us that, when +he passed through it as a boy, the inhabitants possessed abundance of +cattle, and there were no tsetse. The existence of the insect now shows +that it may return in company with the larger game. The vegetation along +the bank was exceedingly rank, and the bushes so tangled that it was +difficult to get on. The paths had been made by the wild animals alone, +for the general pathway of the people is the river, in their canoes. We +usually followed the footpaths of the game, and of these there was no +lack. Buffaloes, zebras, pallahs, and waterbucks abound, and there is +also a great abundance of wild pigs, koodoos, and the black antelope. +We got one buffalo as he was rolling himself in a pool of mud. He had a +large piece of skin torn off his flank, it was believed by an alligator. + +We were struck by the fact that, as soon as we came between the ranges +of hills which flank the Zambesi, the rains felt warm. At sunrise the +thermometer stood at from 82 Deg. to 86 Deg.; at midday, in the coolest +shade, namely, in my little tent, under a shady tree, at 96 Deg. to 98 +Deg.; and at sunset it was 86 Deg. This is different from any thing +we experienced in the interior, for these rains always bring down the +mercury to 72 Deg. or even 68 Deg. There, too, we found a small black +coleopterous insect, which stung like the mosquito, but injected less +poison; it puts us in mind of that insect, which does not exist in the +high lands we had left. + +JANUARY 6TH, 1856. Each village we passed furnished us with a couple of +men to take us on to the next. They were useful in showing us the parts +least covered with jungle. When we came near a village, we saw men, +women, and children employed in weeding their gardens, they being great +agriculturists. Most of the men are muscular, and have large plowman +hands. Their color is the same admixture, from very dark to light olive, +that we saw in Londa. Though all have thick lips and flat noses, only +the more degraded of the population possess the ugly negro physiognomy. +They mark themselves by a line of little raised cicatrices, each of +which is a quarter of an inch long; they extend from the tip of the nose +to the root of the hair on the forehead. It is remarkable that I never +met with an Albino in crossing Africa, though, from accounts published +by the Portuguese, I was led to expect that they were held in favor as +doctors by certain chiefs. I saw several in the south: one at Kuruman +is a full-grown woman, and a man having this peculiarity of skin was met +with in the colony. Their bodies are always blistered on exposure to +the sun, as the skin is more tender than that of the blacks. The Kuruman +woman lived some time at Kolobeng, and generally had on her bosom and +shoulders the remains of large blisters. She was most anxious to be +made black, but nitrate of silver, taken internally, did not produce its +usual effect. During the time I resided at Mabotsa, a woman came to the +station with a fine boy, an Albino. The father had ordered her to +throw him away, but she clung to her offspring for many years. He was +remarkably intelligent for his age. The pupil of the eye was of a pink +color, and the eye itself was unsteady in vision. The hair, or +rather wool, was yellow, and the features were those common among the +Bechuanas. After I left the place the mother is said to have become +tired of living apart from the father, who refused to have her while she +retained the son. She took him out one day, and killed him close to the +village of Mabotsa, and nothing was done to her by the authorities. From +having met with no Albinos in Londa, I suspect they are there also put +to death. We saw one dwarf only in Londa, and brands on him showed he +had once been a slave; and there is one dwarf woman at Linyanti. The +general absence of deformed persons is partly owing to their destruction +in infancy, and partly to the mode of life being a natural one, so far +as ventilation and food are concerned. They use but few unwholesome +mixtures as condiments, and, though their undress exposes them to the +vicissitudes of the temperature, it does not harbor vomites. It was +observed that, when smallpox and measles visited the country, they were +most severe on the half-castes who were clothed. In several tribes, a +child which is said to "tlola", transgress, is put to death. "Tlolo", or +transgression, is ascribed to several curious cases. A child who cut +the upper front teeth before the under was always put to death among the +Bakaa, and, I believe, also among the Bakwains. In some tribes, a case +of twins renders one of them liable to death; and an ox, which, while +lying in the pen, beats the ground with its tail, is treated in the same +way. It is thought to be calling death to visit the tribe. When I was +coming through Londa, my men carried a great number of fowls, of a +larger breed than any they had at home. If one crowed before midnight, +it had been guilty of "tlolo", and was killed. The men often carried +them sitting on their guns, and, if one began to crow in a forest, the +owner would give it a beating, by way of teaching it not to be guilty of +crowing at unseasonable hours. + +The women here are in the habit of piercing the upper lip, and gradually +enlarging the orifice until they can insert a shell. The lip then +appears drawn out beyond the perpendicular of the nose, and gives them a +most ungainly aspect. Sekwebu remarked, "These women want to make their +mouths like those of ducks;" and, indeed, it does appear as if they +had the idea that female beauty of lip had been attained by the +'Ornithorhynchus paradoxus' alone. This custom prevails throughout the +country of the Maravi, and no one could see it without confessing that +fashion had never led women to a freak more mad. We had rains now every +day, and considerable cloudiness, but the sun often burst through with +scorching intensity. All call out against it then, saying, "O the sun! +that is rain again." It was worth noticing that my companions never +complained of the heat while on the highlands, but when we descended +into the lowlands of Angola, and here also, they began to fret on +account of it. I myself felt an oppressive steaminess in the atmosphere +which I had not experienced on the higher lands. + +As the game was abundant and my party very large, I had still to supply +their wants with the gun. We slaughtered the oxen only when unsuccessful +in hunting. We always entered into friendly relations with the head +men of the different villages, and they presented grain and other food +freely. One man gave a basinful of rice, the first we met with in the +country. It is never seen in the interior. He said he knew it was "white +man's corn", and when I wished to buy some more, he asked me to give him +a slave. This was the first symptom of the slave-trade on this side of +the country. The last of these friendly head men was named Mobala; and +having passed him in peace, we had no anticipation of any thing else; +but, after a few hours, we reached Selole or Chilole, and found that +he not only considered us enemies, but had actually sent an express to +raise the tribe of Mburuma against us. All the women of Selole had fled, +and the few people we met exhibited symptoms of terror. An armed party +had come from Mburuma in obedience to the call; but the head man of the +company, being Mburuma's brother, suspecting that it was a hoax, came to +our encampment and told us the whole. When we explained our objects, he +told us that Mburuma, he had no doubt, would receive us well. The reason +why Selole acted in this foolish manner we afterward found to be this: +an Italian named Simoens, and nicknamed Siriatomba (don't eat tobacco), +had married the daughter of a chief called Sekokole, living north of +Tete. He armed a party of fifty slaves with guns, and, ascending the +river in canoes some distance beyond the island Meya makaba, attacked +several inhabited islands beyond, securing a large number of prisoners, +and much ivory. On his return, the different chiefs, at the instigation +of his father-in-law, who also did not wish him to set up as a chief, +united, attacked and dispersed the party of Simoens, and killed him +while trying to escape on foot. Selole imagined that I was another +Italian, or, as he expressed it, "Siriatomba risen from the dead." In +his message to Mburuma he even said that Mobala, and all the villages +beyond, were utterly destroyed by our fire-arms, but the sight of Mobala +himself, who had come to the village of Selole, led the brother of +Mburuma to see at once that it was all a hoax. But for this, the foolish +fellow Selole might have given us trouble. + +We saw many of the liberated captives of this Italian among the villages +here, and Sekwebu found them to be Matebele. The brother of Mburuma had +a gun, which was the first we had seen in coming eastward. Before we +reached Mburuma my men went to attack a troop of elephants, as they were +much in need of meat. When the troop began to run, one of them fell +into a hole, and before he could extricate himself an opportunity was +afforded for all the men to throw their spears. When he rose he was like +a huge porcupine, for each of the seventy or eighty men had discharged +more than one spear at him. As they had no more, they sent for me to +finish him. In order to put him at once out of pain, I went to within +twenty yards, there being a bank between us which he could not readily +climb. I rested the gun upon an ant-hill so as to take a steady aim; +but, though I fired twelve two-ounce bullets, all I had, into different +parts, I could not kill him. As it was becoming dark, I advised my men +to let him stand, being sure of finding him dead in the morning; but, +though we searched all the next day, and went more than ten miles, we +never saw him again. I mention this to young men who may think that they +will be able to hunt elephants on foot by adopting the Ceylon practice +of killing them by one ball in the brain. I believe that in Africa the +practice of standing before an elephant, expecting to kill him with one +shot, would be certain death to the hunter; and I would add, for the +information of those who may think that, because I met with a great +abundance of game here, they also might find rare sport, that the tsetse +exists all along both banks of the Zambesi, and there can be no hunting +by means of horses. Hunting on foot in this climate is such excessively +hard work, that I feel certain the keenest sportsman would very soon +turn away from it in disgust. I myself was rather glad, when furnished +with the excuse that I had no longer any balls, to hand over all the +hunting to my men, who had no more love for the sport than myself, as +they never engaged in it except when forced by hunger. + +Some of them gave me a hint to melt down my plate by asking if it were +not lead. I had two pewter plates and a piece of zinc which I now melted +into bullets. I also spent the remainder of my handkerchiefs in buying +spears for them. My men frequently surrounded herds of buffaloes and +killed numbers of the calves. I, too, exerted myself greatly; but, as +I am now obliged to shoot with the left arm, I am a bad shot, and this, +with the lightness of the bullets, made me very unsuccessful. The more +the hunger, the less my success, invariably. + +I may here add an adventure with an elephant of one who has had more +narrow escapes than any man living, but whose modesty has always +prevented him from publishing any thing about himself. When we were on +the banks of the Zouga in 1850, Mr. Oswell pursued one of these animals +into the dense, thick, thorny bushes met with on the margin of that +river, and to which the elephant usually flees for safety. He followed +through a narrow pathway by lifting up some of the branches and +forcing his way through the rest; but, when he had just got over this +difficulty, he saw the elephant, whose tail he had but got glimpses +of before, now rushing toward him. There was then no time to lift up +branches, so he tried to force the horse through them. He could not +effect a passage; and, as there was but an instant between the attempt +and failure, the hunter tried to dismount, but in doing this one foot +was caught by a branch, and the spur drawn along the animal's flank; +this made him spring away and throw the rider on the ground with his +face to the elephant, which, being in full chase, still went on. Mr. +Oswell saw the huge fore foot about to descend on his legs, parted them, +and drew in his breath as if to resist the pressure of the other foot, +which he expected would next descend on his body. He saw the whole +length of the under part of the enormous brute pass over him; the horse +got away safely. I have heard of but one other authentic instance in +which an elephant went over a man without injury, and, for any one who +knows the nature of the bush in which this occurred, the very thought +of an encounter in it with such a foe is appalling. As the thorns are +placed in pairs on opposite sides of the branches, and these turn round +on being pressed against, one pair brings the other exactly into the +position in which it must pierce the intruder. They cut like knives. +Horses dread this bush extremely; indeed, most of them refuse to face +its thorns. + +On reaching Mburuma's village, his brother came to meet us. We explained +the reason of our delay, and he told us that we were looked upon with +alarm. He said that Siriatomba had been killed near the village of +Selole, and hence that man's fears. He added that the Italian had come +talking of peace, as we did, but had kidnapped children and bought ivory +with them, and that we were supposed to be following the same calling. I +pointed to my men, and asked if any of these were slaves, and if we had +any children among them, and I think we satisfied him that we were true +men. Referring to our ill success in hunting the day before, he said, +"The man at whose village you remained was in fault in allowing you to +want meat, for he had only to run across to Mburuma; he would have +given him a little meal, and, having sprinkled that on the ground as an +offering to the gods, you would have found your elephant." The chiefs in +these parts take upon themselves an office somewhat like the priesthood, +and the people imagine that they can propitiate the Deity through them. +In illustration of their ideas, it may be mentioned that, when we were +among the tribes west of Semalembue, several of the people came forward +and introduced themselves--one as a hunter of elephants, another as +a hunter of hippopotami, a third as a digger of pitfalls--apparently +wishing me to give them medicine for success in their avocations, as +well as to cure the diseases of those to whom I was administering the +drugs. I thought they attributed supernatural power to them, for, like +all Africans, they have unbounded faith in the efficacy of charms; but +I took pains to let them know that they must pray and trust to another +power than mine for aid. We never saw Mburuma himself, and the conduct +of his people indicated very strong suspicions, though he gave us +presents of meal, maize, and native corn. His people never came near us +except in large bodies and fully armed. We had to order them to place +their bows, arrows, and spears at a distance before entering our +encampment. We did not, however, care much for a little trouble now, as +we hoped that, if we could pass this time without much molestation, +we might yet be able to return with ease, and without meeting sour, +suspicious looks. + +The soil, glancing every where with mica, is very fertile, and all the +valleys are cultivated, the maize being now in ear and eatable. Ranges +of hills, which line both banks of the river above this, now come close +up to each bank, and form a narrow gorge, which, like all others of the +same nature, is called Mpata. There is a narrow pathway by the side of +the river, but we preferred a more open one in a pass among the hills to +the east, which is called Mohango. The hills rise to a height of 800 +or 1000 feet, and are all covered with trees. The rocks were of various +colored mica schist; and parallel with the Zambesi lay a broad band +of gneiss with garnets in it. It stood on edge, and several dikes of +basalt, with dolerite, had cut through it. + +Mburuma sent two men as guides to the Loangwa. These men tried to bring +us to a stand, at a distance of about six miles from the village, by the +notice, "Mburuma says you are to sleep under that tree." On declining +to do this, we were told that we must wait at a certain village for a +supply of corn. As none appeared in an hour, I proceeded on the march. +It is not quite certain that their intentions were hostile, but this +seemed to disarrange their plans, and one of them was soon observed +running back to Mburuma. They had first of all tried to separate our +party by volunteering the loan of a canoe to convey Sekwebu and me, +together with our luggage, by way of the river, and, as it was pressed +upon us, I thought that this was their design. The next attempt was to +detain us in the pass; but, betraying no suspicion, we civilly declined +to place ourselves in their power in an unfavorable position. We +afterward heard that a party of Babisa traders, who came from the +northeast, bringing English goods from Mozambique, had been plundered by +this same people. + +Elephants were still abundant, but more wild, as they fled with great +speed as soon as we made our appearance. The country between Mburuma's +and his mother's village was all hilly and very difficult, and prevented +us from traveling more than ten miles a day. At the village of Ma +Mburuma (mother of Mburuma), the guides, who had again joined us, gave a +favorable report, and the women and children did not flee. Here we +found that traders, called Bazunga, have been in the habit of coming +in canoes, and that I was named as one of them. These I supposed to be +half-caste Portuguese, for they said that the hair of their heads and +the skin beneath their clothing were different from mine. Ma Mburuma +promised us canoes to cross the Loangwa in our front. It was pleasant +to see great numbers of men, women, and boys come, without suspicion, +to look at the books, watch, looking-glass, revolver, etc. They are a +strong, muscular race, and both men and women are seen cultivating the +ground. The soil contains so much comminuted talc and mica from the +adjacent hills that it seems as if mixed with spermaceti. They generally +eat their corn only after it has begun to sprout from steeping it in +water. The deformed lips of the women make them look very ugly; I never +saw one smile. The people in this part seem to understand readily what +is spoken about God, for they listen with great attention, and tell in +return their own ideas of departed spirits. The position of the village +of Mburuma's mother was one of great beauty, quite inclosed by high, +steep hills; and the valleys are all occupied by gardens of native corn +and maize, which grow luxuriantly. We were obliged to hurry along, +for the oxen were bitten daily by the tsetse, which, as I have before +remarked, now inhabits extensive tracts which once supported herds +of cattle that were swept off by Mpakane and other marauders, whose +devastations were well known to Sekwebu, for he himself had been an +actor in the scenes. When he told me of them he always lowered his +voice, in order that the guides might not hear that he had been one of +their enemies. But that we were looked upon with suspicion, on account +of having come in the footsteps of invaders, was evident from our guides +remarking to men in the gardens through which we passed, "They have +words of peace--all very fine; but lies only, as the Bazunga are great +liars." They thought we did not understand them; but Sekwebu knew every +word perfectly; and, without paying any ostensible attention to these +complimentary remarks, we always took care to explain ever afterward +that we were not Bazunga, but Makoa (English). + + + + +Chapter 29. + +Confluence of Loangwa and Zambesi--Hostile Appearances--Ruins of a +Church--Turmoil of Spirit--Cross the River--Friendly Parting--Ruins of +stone Houses--The Situation of Zumbo for Commerce--Pleasant Gardens--Dr. +Lacerda's Visit to Cazembe--Pereira's Statement--Unsuccessful Attempt +to establish Trade with the People of Cazembe--One of my Men tossed by a +Buffalo--Meet a Man with Jacket and Hat on--Hear of the Portuguese and +native War--Holms and Terraces on the Banks of a River--Dancing for +Corn--Beautiful Country--Mpende's Hostility--Incantations--A Fight +anticipated--Courage and Remarks of my Men--Visit from two old +Councilors of Mpende--Their Opinion of the English--Mpende concludes +not to fight us--His subsequent Friendship--Aids us to cross +the River--The Country--Sweet Potatoes--Bakwain Theory of Rain +confirmed--Thunder without Clouds--Desertion of one of my Men--Other +Natives' Ideas of the English--Dalama (gold)--Inhabitants dislike +Slave-buyers--Meet native Traders with American Calico--Game-laws-- +Elephant Medicine--Salt from the Sand--Fertility of Soil--Spotted +Hyaena--Liberality and Politeness of the People--Presents--A stingy +white Trader--Natives' Remarks about him--Effect on their Minds--Rain +and Wind now from an opposite Direction--Scarcity of Fuel--Trees +for Boat-building--Boroma--Freshets--Leave the River--Chicova, +its Geological Features--Small Rapid near Tete--Loquacious +Guide--Nyampungo, the Rain-charmer--An old Man--No +Silver--Gold-washing--No Cattle. + + + +14TH. We reached the confluence of the Loangwa and the Zambesi, most +thankful to God for his great mercies in helping us thus far. Mburuma's +people had behaved so suspiciously, that, though we had guides from him, +we were by no means sure that we should not be attacked in crossing +the Loangwa. We saw them here collecting in large numbers, and, though +professing friendship, they kept at a distance from our camp. They +refused to lend us more canoes than two, though they have many. They +have no intercourse with Europeans except through the Babisa. They tell +us that this was formerly the residence of the Bazunga, and maintain +silence as to the cause of their leaving it. I walked about some ruins +I discovered, built of stone, and found the remains of a church, and on +one side lay a broken bell, with the letters I. H. S. and a cross, but +no date. There were no inscriptions on stone, and the people could not +tell what the Bazunga called their place. We found afterward it was +Zumbo. + +I felt some turmoil of spirit in the evening at the prospect of having +all my efforts for the welfare of this great region and its teeming +population knocked on the head by savages to-morrow, who might be said +to "know not what they do." It seemed such a pity that the important +fact of the existence of the two healthy ridges which I had discovered +should not become known in Christendom, for a confirmation would thereby +have been given to the idea that Africa is not open to the Gospel. But +I read that Jesus said, "All power is given unto me in heaven and on +earth; go ye, therefore, and teach all nations . . . and lo, I AM WITH +YOU ALWAY, EVEN UNTO THE END OF THE WORLD." I took this as His word +of honor, and then went out to take observations for latitude and +longitude, which, I think, were very successful. (The church: lat. 15d +37' 22" S., long. 30d 32' E.) + +15TH. The natives of the surrounding country collected around us this +morning, all armed. The women and children were sent away, and one of +Mburuma's wives, who lives in the vicinity, was not allowed to approach, +though she had come from her village to pay me a visit. Only one canoe +was lent to us, though we saw two others tied to the bank. The part +we crossed was about a mile from the confluence, and, as it was now +flooded, it seemed upward of half a mile in breadth. We passed all our +goods first on to an island in the middle, then the remaining cattle and +men; occupying the post of honor, I, as usual, was the last to enter +the canoe. A number of the inhabitants stood armed all the time we were +embarking. I showed them my watch, lens, and other things to keep them +amused, until there only remained those who were to enter the canoe with +me. I thanked them for their kindness, and wished them peace. After all, +they may have been influenced only by the intention to be ready in +case I should play them some false trick, for they have reason to be +distrustful of the whites. The guides came over to bid us adieu, and we +sat under a mango-tree fifteen feet in circumference. We found them more +communicative now. They said that the land on both sides belonged to the +Bazunga, and that they had left of old, on the approach of Changamera, +Ngaba, and Mpakane. Sekwebu was with the last named, but he maintained +that they never came to the confluence, though they carried off all the +cattle of Mburuma. The guides confirmed this by saying that the Bazunga +were not attacked, but fled in alarm on the approach of the enemy. This +mango-tree he knew by its proper name, and we found seven others and +several tamarinds, and were informed that the chief Mburuma sends men +annually to gather the fruit, but, like many Africans whom I have known, +has not had patience to propagate more trees. I gave them some little +presents for themselves, a handkerchief and a few beads, and they were +highly pleased with a cloth of red baize for Mburuma, which Sekeletu had +given me to purchase a canoe. We were thankful to part good friends. + +Next morning we passed along the bottom of the range, called Mazanzwe, +and found the ruins of eight or ten stone houses. They all faced the +river, and were high enough up the flanks of the hill Mazanzwe to +command a pleasant view of the broad Zambesi. These establishments +had all been built on one plan--a house on one side of a large court, +surrounded by a wall; both houses and walls had been built of soft gray +sandstone cemented together with mud. The work had been performed by +slaves ignorant of building, for the stones were not often placed so as +to cover the seams below. Hence you frequently find the joinings forming +one seam from the top to the bottom. Much mortar or clay had been used +to cover defects, and now trees of the fig family grow upon the walls, +and clasp them with their roots. When the clay is moistened, masses +of the walls come down by wholesale. Some of the rafters and beams had +fallen in, but were entire, and there were some trees in the middle of +the houses as large as a man's body. On the opposite or south bank of +the Zambesi we saw the remains of a wall on a height which was probably +a fort, and the church stood at a central point, formed by the right +bank of the Loangwa and the left of the Zambesi. + +The situation of Zumbo was admirably well chosen as a site for commerce. +Looking backward we see a mass of high, dark mountains, covered with +trees; behind us rises the fine high hill Mazanzwe, which stretches away +northward along the left bank of the Loangwa; to the S.E. lies an open +country, with a small round hill in the distance called Tofulo. The +merchants, as they sat beneath the verandahs in front of their houses, +had a magnificent view of the two rivers at their confluence; of their +church at the angle; and of all the gardens which they had on both sides +of the rivers. In these they cultivated wheat without irrigation, and, +as the Portuguese assert, of a grain twice the size of that at Tete. +From the guides we learned that the inhabitants had not imbibed much +idea of Christianity, for they used the same term for the church bell +which they did for a diviner's drum. From this point the merchants had +water communication in three directions beyond, namely, from the Loangwa +to the N.N.W., by the Kafue to the W., and by the Zambesi to the S.W. +Their attention, however, was chiefly attracted to the N. or Londa; +and the principal articles of trade were ivory and slaves. Private +enterprise was always restrained, for the colonies of the Portuguese +being strictly military, and the pay of the commandants being very +small, the officers have always been obliged to engage in trade; and +had they not employed their power to draw the trade to themselves by +preventing private traders from making bargains beyond the villages, +and only at regulated prices, they would have had no trade, as they +themselves were obliged to remain always at their posts. + +Several expeditions went to the north as far as to Cazembe, and Dr. +Lacerda, himself commandant of Tete, went to that chief's residence. +Unfortunately, he was cut off while there, and his papers, taken +possession of by a Jesuit who accompanied him, were lost to the world. +This Jesuit probably intended to act fairly and have them published; +but soon after his return he was called away by death himself, and the +papers were lost sight of. Dr. Lacerda had a strong desire to open up +communication with Angola, which would have been of importance then, as +affording a speedier mode of communication with Portugal than by the way +of the Cape; but since the opening of the overland passage to India, a +quicker transit is effected from Eastern Africa to Lisbon by way of the +Red Sea. Besides Lacerda, Cazembe was visited by Pereira, who gave a +glowing account of that chief's power, which none of my inquiries have +confirmed. The people of Matiamvo stated to me that Cazembe was a vassal +of their chief: and, from all the native visitors whom I have seen, +he appears to be exactly like Shinte and Katema, only a little more +powerful. The term "Emperor", which has been applied to him, seems +totally inappropriate. The statement of Pereira that twenty negroes were +slaughtered in a day, was not confirmed by any one else, though numbers +may have been killed on some particular occasion during the time of his +visit, for we find throughout all the country north of 20 Deg., which +I consider to be real negro, the custom of slaughtering victims to +accompany the departed soul of a chief, and human sacrifices are +occasionally offered, and certain parts of the bodies are used as +charms. It is on account of the existence of such rites, with the +similarity of the language, and the fact that the names of rivers are +repeated again and again from north to south through all that region, +that I consider them to have been originally one family. The last +expedition to Cazembe was somewhat of the same nature as the others, and +failed in establishing a commerce, because the people of Cazembe, who +had come to Tete to invite the Portuguese to visit them, had not been +allowed to trade with whom they might. As it had not been free-trade +there, Cazembe did not see why it should be free-trade at his town; he +accordingly would not allow his people to furnish the party with +food except at his price; and the expedition, being half starved in +consequence, came away voting unanimously that Cazembe was a great bore. + +When we left the Loangwa we thought we had got rid of the hills; but +there are some behind Mazanzwe, though five or six miles off from the +river. Tsetse and the hills had destroyed two riding oxen, and when the +little one that I now rode knocked up, I was forced to march on foot. +The bush being very dense and high, we were going along among the trees, +when three buffaloes, which we had unconsciously passed above the wind, +thought that they were surrounded by men, and dashed through our line. +My ox set off at a gallop, and when I could manage to glance back, I saw +one of the men up in the air about five feet above a buffalo, which was +tearing along with a stream of blood running down his flank. When I got +back to the poor fellow, I found that he had lighted on his face, and, +though he had been carried on the horns of the buffalo about twenty +yards before getting the final toss, the skin was not pierced nor was a +bone broken. When the beasts appeared, he had thrown down his load and +stabbed one in the side. It turned suddenly upon him, and, before he +could use a tree for defense, carried him off. We shampooed him well, +and then went on, and in about a week he was able to engage in the hunt +again. + +At Zumbo we had entered upon old gray sandstone, with shingle in it, +dipping generally toward the south, and forming the bed of the river. +The Zambesi is very broad here, but contains many inhabited islands. We +slept opposite one on the 16th called Shibanga. The nights are warm, the +temperature never falling below 80 Deg.; it was 91 Deg. even at sunset. +One can not cool the water by a wet towel round the vessel, and we feel +no pleasure in drinking warm water, though the heat makes us imbibe +large quantities. We often noticed lumps of a froth-like substance on +the bushes as large as cricket-balls, which we could not explain. + +On the morning of the 17th we were pleased to see a person coming from +the island of Shibanga with jacket and hat on. He was quite black, but +had come from the Portuguese settlement at Tete or Nyungwe; and now, for +the first time, we understood that the Portuguese settlement was on +the other bank of the river, and that they had been fighting with the +natives for the last two years. We had thus got into the midst of a +Caffre war, without any particular wish to be on either side. He advised +us to cross the river at once, as Mpende lived on this side. We had been +warned by the guides of Mburuma against him, for they said that if we +could get past Mpende we might reach the white men, but that he was +determined that no white man should pass him. Wishing to follow this +man's advice, we proposed to borrow his canoes; but, being afraid to +offend the lords of the river, he declined. The consequence was, we were +obliged to remain on the enemy's side. The next island belonged to a man +named Zungo, a fine, frank fellow, who brought us at once a present of +corn, bound in a peculiar way in grass. He freely accepted our apology +for having no present to give in return, as he knew that there were no +goods in the interior, and, besides, sent forward a recommendation to +his brother-in-law Pangola. The country adjacent to the river is covered +with dense bush, thorny and tangled, making one stoop or wait till the +men broke or held the branches on one side. There is much rank grass, +but it is not so high or rank as that of Angola. The maize, however, +which is grown here is equal in size to that which the Americans sell +for seed at the Cape. There is usually a holm adjacent to the river, +studded with villages and gardens. The holms are but partially +cultivated, and on the other parts grows rank and weedy grass. There is +then a second terrace, on which trees and bushes abound; and I thought +I could detect a third and higher steppe. But I never could discover +terraces on the adjacent country, such as in other countries show +ancient sea-beaches. The path runs sometimes on the one and sometimes on +the other of these river terraces. Canoes are essentially necessary; but +I find that they here cost too much for my means, and higher up, where +my hoes might have secured one, I was unwilling to enter into a canoe +and part with my men while there was danger of their being attacked. + +18TH. Yesterday we rested under a broad-spreading fig-tree. Large +numbers of buffaloes and water-antelopes were feeding quietly in the +meadows; the people have either no guns or no ammunition, or they would +not be so tame. Pangola visited us, and presented us with food. In +few other countries would one hundred and fourteen sturdy vagabonds be +supported by the generosity of the head men and villagers, and whatever +they gave be presented with politeness. My men got pretty well supplied +individually, for they went into the villages and commenced dancing. The +young women were especially pleased with the new steps they had to show, +though I suspect many of them were invented for the occasion, and would +say, "Dance for me, and I will grind corn for you." At every fresh +instance of liberality, Sekwebu said, "Did not I tell you that these +people had hearts, while we were still at Linyanti?" All agreed that the +character he had given was true, and some remarked, "Look! although we +have been so long away from home, not one of us has become lean." It was +a fact that we had been all well supplied either with meat by my gun or +their own spears, or food from the great generosity of the inhabitants. +Pangola promised to ferry us across the Zambesi, but failed to fulfill +his promise. He seemed to wish to avoid offending his neighbor Mpende +by aiding us to escape from his hands, so we proceeded along the bank. +Although we were in doubt as to our reception by Mpende, I could not +help admiring the beautiful country as we passed along. There is, +indeed, only a small part under cultivation in this fertile valley, but +my mind naturally turned to the comparison of it with Kolobeng, where we +waited anxiously during months for rain, and only a mere thunder-shower +followed. I shall never forget the dry, hot east winds of that region; +the yellowish, sultry, cloudless sky; the grass and all the plants +drooping from drought, the cattle lean, the people dispirited, and our +own hearts sick from hope deferred. There we often heard in the dead of +the night the shrill whistle of the rain-doctor calling for rain that +would not come, while here we listened to the rolling thunder by night, +and beheld the swelling valleys adorned with plenty by day. We have rain +almost daily, and every thing is beautifully fresh and green. I felt +somewhat as people do on coming ashore after a long voyage--inclined +to look upon the landscape in the most favorable light. The hills are +covered with forests, and there is often a long line of fleecy cloud +lying on them about midway up; they are very beautiful. Finding no one +willing to aid us in crossing the river, we proceeded to the village of +the chief Mpende. A fine large conical hill now appeared to the N.N.E.; +it is the highest I have seen in these parts, and at some points it +appears to be two cones joined together, the northern one being a little +lower than the southern. Another high hill stands on the same side to +the N.E., and, from its similarity in shape to an axe at the top, is +called Motemwa. Beyond it, eastward, lies the country of Kaimbwa, a +chief who has been engaged in actual conflict with the Bazunga, and +beat them too, according to the version of things here. The hills on +the north bank are named Kamoenja. When we came to Mpende's village, he +immediately sent to inquire who we were, and then ordered the guides +who had come with us from the last village to go back and call their +masters. He sent no message to us whatever. We had traveled very slowly +up to this point, the tsetse-stricken oxen being now unable to go two +miles an hour. We were also delayed by being obliged to stop at every +village, and send notice of our approach to the head man, who came and +received a little information, and gave some food. If we had passed +on without taking any notice of them, they would have considered it +impolite, and we should have appeared more as enemies than friends. +I consoled myself for the loss of time by the thought that these +conversations tended to the opening of our future path. + +23D. This morning, at sunrise, a party of Mpende's people came close +to our encampment, uttering strange cries and waving some bright red +substance toward us. They then lighted a fire with charms in it, and +departed, uttering the same hideous screams as before. This was intended +to render us powerless, and probably also to frighten us. Ever since +dawn, parties of armed men have been seen collecting from all quarters, +and numbers passed us while it was yet dark. Had we moved down the +river at once, it would have been considered an indication of fear or +defiance, and so would a retreat. I therefore resolved to wait, trusting +in Him who has the hearts of all men in His hands. They evidently +intended to attack us, for no friendly message was sent; and when three +of the Batoka the night before entered the village to beg food, a man +went round about each of them, making a noise like a lion. The villagers +then called upon them to do homage, and, when they complied, the chief +ordered some chaff to be given them, as if it had been food. Other +things also showed unmistakable hostility. As we were now pretty certain +of a skirmish, I ordered an ox to be slaughtered, as this is a means +which Sebituane employed for inspiring courage. I have no doubt that +we should have been victorious; indeed, my men, who were far better +acquainted with fighting than any of the people on the Zambesi, were +rejoicing in the prospect of securing captives to carry the tusks for +them. "We shall now," said they, "get both corn and clothes in plenty." +They were in a sad state, poor fellows; for the rains we had encountered +had made their skin-clothing drop off piecemeal, and they were looked +upon with disgust by the well-fed and well-clothed Zambesians. They +were, however, veterans in marauding, and the head men, instead of being +depressed by fear, as the people of Mpende intended should be the case +in using their charms, hinted broadly to me that I ought to allow them +to keep Mpende's wives. The roasting of meat went on fast and furious, +and some of the young men said to me, "You have seen us with elephants, +but you don't know yet what we can do with men." I believe that, had +Mpende struck the first blow, he would soon have found out that he never +made a greater mistake in his life. + +His whole tribe was assembled at about the distance of half a mile. As +the country is covered with trees, we did not see them; but every now +and then a few came about us as spies, and would answer no questions. I +handed a leg of the ox to two of these, and desired them to take it to +Mpende. After waiting a considerable time in suspense, two old men +made their appearance, and said they had come to inquire who I was. I +replied, "I am a Lekoa" (an Englishman). They said, "We don't know that +tribe. We suppose you are a Mozunga, the tribe with which we have been +fighting." As I was not yet aware that the term Mozunga was applied to +a Portuguese, and thought they meant half-castes, I showed them my hair +and the skin of my bosom, and asked if the Bazunga had hair and skin +like mine. As the Portuguese have the custom of cutting the hair close, +and are also somewhat darker than we are, they answered, "No; we never +saw skin so white as that;" and added, "Ah! you must be one of that +tribe that loves (literally, 'has heart to') the black men." I, of +course, gladly responded in the affirmative. They returned to the +village, and we afterward heard that there had been a long discussion +between Mpende and his councilors, and that one of the men with whom we +had remained to talk the day before had been our advocate. He was +named Sindese Oalea. When we were passing his village, after some +conversation, he said to his people, "Is that the man whom they wish to +stop after he has passed so many tribes? What can Mpende say to refusing +him a passage?" It was owing to this man, and the fact that I belonged +to the "friendly white tribe", that Mpende was persuaded to allow us to +pass. When we knew the favorable decision of the council, I sent Sekwebu +to speak about the purchase of a canoe, as one of my men had become very +ill, and I wished to relieve his companions by taking him in a canoe. +Before Sekwebu could finish his story, Mpende remarked, "That white man +is truly one of our friends. See how he lets me know his afflictions!" +Sekwebu adroitly took advantage of this turn in the conversation, and +said, "Ah! if you only knew him as well as we do who have lived with +him, you would understand that he highly values your friendship and that +of Mburuma, and, as he is a stranger, he trusts in you to direct him." +He replied, "Well, he ought to cross to the other side of the river, for +this bank is hilly and rough, and the way to Tete is longer on this than +on the opposite bank." "But who will take us across, if you do not?" +"Truly!" replied Mpende; "I only wish you had come sooner to tell me +about him; but you shall cross." Mpende said frequently he was sorry he +had not known me sooner, but that he had been prevented by his enchanter +from coming near me; and he lamented that the same person had kept him +from eating the meat which I had presented. He did every thing he could +afterward to aid us on our course, and our departure was as different +as possible from our approach to his village. I was very much pleased to +find the English name spoken of with such great respect so far from +the coast, and most thankful that no collision occurred to damage its +influence. + +24TH. Mpende sent two of his principal men to order the people of a +large island below to ferry us across. The river is very broad, and, +though my men were well acquainted with the management of canoes, we +could not all cross over before dark. It is 1200 yards from bank to +bank, and between 700 and 800 of deep water, flowing at the rate of +3-3/4 miles per hour. We landed first on an island; then, to prevent our +friends playing false with us, hauled the canoes up to our bivouac, and +slept in them. Next morning we all reached the opposite bank in safety. +We observed, as we came along the Zambesi, that it had fallen two feet +below the height at which we first found it, and the water, though still +muddy enough to deposit a film at the bottom of vessels in a few hours, +is not nearly so red as it was, nor is there so much wreck on its +surface. It is therefore not yet the period of the central Zambesi +inundation, as we were aware also from our knowledge of the interior. +The present height of the water has been caused by rains outside the +eastern ridge. The people here seem abundantly supplied with English +cotton goods. The Babisa are the medium of trade, for we were informed +that the Bazunga, who formerly visited these parts, have been prevented +by the war from coming for the last two years. The Babisa are said to be +so fond of a tusk that they will even sell a newly-married wife for one. +As we were now not far from the latitude of Mozambique, I was somewhat +tempted to strike away from the river to that port, instead of going to +the S.E., in the direction the river flows; but, the great object of my +journey being to secure water-carriage, I resolved to continue along the +Zambesi, though it did lead me among the enemies of the Portuguese. The +region to the north of the ranges of hills on our left is called Senga, +from being the country of the Basenga, who are said to be great workers +in iron, and to possess abundance of fine iron ore, which, when broken, +shows veins of the pure metal in its substance. It has been well roasted +in the operations of nature. Beyond Senga lies a range of mountains +called Mashinga, to which the Portuguese in former times went to wash +for gold, and beyond that are great numbers of tribes which pass under +the general term Maravi. To the northeast there are extensive plains +destitute of trees, but covered with grass, and in some places it is +marshy. The whole of the country to the north of the Zambesi is asserted +to be very much more fertile than that to the south. The Maravi, for +instance, raise sweet potatoes of immense size, but when these are +planted on the southern bank they soon degenerate. The root of this +plant ('Convolvulus batata') does not keep more than two or three days, +unless it is cut into thin slices and dried in the sun, but the Maravi +manage to preserve them for months by digging a pit and burying them +therein inclosed in wood-ashes. Unfortunately, the Maravi, and all the +tribes on that side of the country, are at enmity with the Portuguese, +and, as they practice night attacks in their warfare, it is dangerous to +travel among them. + +29TH. I was most sincerely thankful to find myself on the south bank of +the Zambesi, and, having nothing else, I sent back one of my two spoons +and a shirt as a thank-offering to Mpende. The different head men along +this river act very much in concert, and if one refuses passage they all +do, uttering the sage remark, "If so-and-so did not lend his canoes, he +must have had some good reason." The next island we came to was that +of a man named Mozinkwa. Here we were detained some days by continuous +rains, and thought we observed the confirmation of the Bakwain theory of +rains. A double tier of clouds floated quickly away to the west, and +as soon as they began to come in an opposite direction the rains poured +down. The inhabitants who live in a dry region like that of Kolobeng are +nearly all as weather-wise as the rain-makers, and any one living among +them for any length of time becomes as much interested in the motions of +the clouds as they are themselves. Mr. Moffat, who was as sorely tried +by droughts as we were, and had his attention directed in the same way, +has noted the curious phenomenon of thunder without clouds. Mrs. L. +heard it once, but I never had that good fortune. It is worth the +attention of the observant. Humboldt has seen rain without clouds, a +phenomenon quite as singular. I have been in the vicinity of the fall of +three aerolites, none of which I could afterward discover. One fell into +the lake Kumadau with a report somewhat like a sharp peal of thunder. +The women of the Bakurutse villages there all uttered a scream on +hearing it. This happened at midday, and so did another at what is +called the Great Chuai, which was visible in its descent, and was also +accompanied with a thundering noise. The third fell near Kuruman, and +at night, and was seen as a falling star by people at Motito and at +Daniel's Kuil, places distant forty miles on opposite sides of the +spot. It sounded to me like the report of a great gun, and a few seconds +after, a lesser sound, as if striking the earth after a rebound. Does +the passage of a few such aerolites through the atmosphere to the earth +by day cause thunder without clouds? + +We were detained here so long that my tent became again quite rotten. +One of my men, after long sickness, which I did not understand, died +here. He was one of the Batoka, and when unable to walk I had some +difficulty in making his companions carry him. They wished to leave +him to die when his case became hopeless. Another of them deserted to +Mozinkwa. He said that his motive for doing so was that the Makololo +had killed both his father and mother, and, as he had neither wife nor +child, there was no reason why he should continue longer with them. I +did not object to his statements, but said if he should change his mind +he would be welcome to rejoin us, and intimated to Mozinkwa that he must +not be sold as a slave. We are now among people inured to slave-dealing. +We were visited by men who had been as far as Tete or Nyungwe, and were +told that we were but ten days from that fort. One of them, a Mashona +man, who had come from a great distance to the southwest, was anxious to +accompany us to the country of the white men; he had traveled far, and +I found that he had also knowledge of the English tribe, and of their +hatred to the trade in slaves. He told Sekwebu that the "English +were men", an emphasis being put upon the term MEN, which leaves the +impression that others are, as they express it in speaking scornfully, +"only THINGS". Several spoke in the same manner, and I found that from +Mpende's downward I rose higher every day in the estimation of my own +people. Even the slaves gave a very high character to the English, and +I found out afterward that, when I was first reported at Tete, the +servants of my friend the commandant said to him in joke, "Ah! this is +our brother who is coming; we shall all leave you and go with him." We +had still, however, some difficulties in store for us before reaching +that point. + +The man who wished to accompany us came and told us before our departure +that his wife would not allow him to go, and she herself came to confirm +the decision. Here the women have only a small puncture in the upper +lip, in which they insert a little button of tin. The perforation is +made by degrees, a ring with an opening in it being attached to the +lip, and the ends squeezed gradually together. The pressure on the flesh +between the ends of the ring causes its absorption, and a hole is the +result. Children may be seen with the ring on the lip, but not yet +punctured. The tin they purchase from the Portuguese, and, although +silver is reported to have been found in former times in this district, +no one could distinguish it from tin. But they had a knowledge of gold, +and for the first time I heard the word "dalama" (gold) in the native +language. The word is quite unknown in the interior, and so is the +metal itself. In conversing with the different people, we found the idea +prevalent that those who had purchased slaves from them had done them +an injury. "All the slaves of Nyungwe," said one, "are our children; the +Bazunga have made a town at our expense." When I asked if they had +not taken the prices offered them, they at once admitted it, but still +thought that they had been injured by being so far tempted. From the +way in which the lands of Zumbo were spoken of as still belonging to the +Portuguese (and they are said to have been obtained by purchase), I was +inclined to conclude that the purchase of land is not looked upon by the +inhabitants in the same light as the purchase of slaves. + +FEBRUARY 1ST. We met some native traders, and, as many of my men were +now in a state of nudity, I bought some American calico marked "Lawrence +Mills, Lowell", with two small tusks, and distributed it among the most +needy. After leaving Mozinkwa's we came to the Zingesi, a sand-rivulet +in flood (lat. 15d 38' 34" S., long. 31d 1' E.). It was sixty or seventy +yards wide, and waist-deep. Like all these sand-rivers, it is for the +most part dry; but by digging down a few feet, water is to be found, +which is percolating along the bed on a stratum of clay. This is the +phenomenon which is dignified by the name of "a river flowing under +ground." In trying to ford this I felt thousands of particles of coarse +sand striking my legs, and the slight disturbance of our footsteps +caused deep holes to be made in the bed. The water, which is almost +always very rapid in them, dug out the sand beneath our feet in a second +or two, and we were all sinking by that means so deep that we were glad +to relinquish the attempt to ford it before we got half way over; the +oxen were carried away down into the Zambesi. These sand-rivers remove +vast masses of disintegrated rock before it is fine enough to form soil. +The man who preceded me was only thigh-deep, but the disturbance caused +by his feet made it breast-deep for me. The shower of particles and +gravel which struck against my legs gave me the idea that the amount of +matter removed by every freshet must be very great. In most rivers +where much wearing is going on, a person diving to the bottom may +hear literally thousands of stones knocking against each other. This +attrition, being carried on for hundreds of miles in different rivers, +must have an effect greater than if all the pestles and mortars and +mills of the world were grinding and wearing away the rocks. The +pounding to which I refer may be heard most distinctly in the Vaal +River, when that is slightly in flood. It was there I first heard it. +In the Leeambye, in the middle of the country, where there is no +discoloration, and little carried along but sand, it is not to be heard. + +While opposite the village of a head man called Mosusa, a number of +elephants took refuge on an island in the river. There were two males, +and a third not full grown; indeed, scarcely the size of a female. This +was the first instance I had ever seen of a comparatively young one with +the males, for they usually remain with the female herd till as large as +their dams. The inhabitants were very anxious that my men should attack +them, as they go into the gardens on the islands, and do much damage. +The men went, but the elephants ran about half a mile to the opposite +end of the island, and swam to the main land with their probosces above +the water, and, no canoe being near, they escaped. They swim strongly, +with the proboscis erect in the air. I was not very desirous to have one +of these animals killed, for we understood that when we passed Mpende we +came into a country where the game-laws are strictly enforced. The lands +of each chief are very well defined, the boundaries being usually marked +by rivulets, great numbers of which flow into the Zambesi from both +banks, and, if an elephant is wounded on one man's land and dies on that +of another, the under half of the carcass is claimed by the lord of the +soil; and so stringent is the law, that the hunter can not begin at once +to cut up his own elephant, but must send notice to the lord of the soil +on which it lies, and wait until that personage sends one authorized to +see a fair partition made. If the hunter should begin to cut up before +the agent of the landowner arrives, he is liable to lose both the tusks +and all the flesh. The hind leg of a buffalo must also be given to the +man on whose land the animal was grazing, and a still larger quantity +of the eland, which here and every where else in the country is esteemed +right royal food. In the country above Zumbo we did not find a vestige +of this law; and but for the fact that it existed in the country of +the Bamapela, far to the south of this, I should have been disposed to +regard it in the same light as I do the payment for leave to pass--an +imposition levied on him who is seen to be weak because in the hands +of his slaves. The only game-laws in the interior are, that the man who +first wounds an animal, though he has inflicted but a mere scratch, is +considered the killer of it; the second is entitled to a hind quarter, +and the third to a fore leg. The chiefs are generally entitled to a +share as tribute; in some parts it is the breast, in others the whole +of the ribs and one fore leg. I generally respected this law, although +exceptions are sometimes made when animals are killed by guns. The +knowledge that he who succeeds in reaching the wounded beast first is +entitled to a share stimulates the whole party to greater exertions in +dispatching it. One of my men, having a knowledge of elephant medicine, +was considered the leader in the hunt; he went before the others, +examined the animals, and on his decision all depended. If he decided to +attack a herd, the rest went boldly on; but if he declined, none of them +would engage. A certain part of the elephant belonged to him by right +of the office he held, and such was the faith in medicine held by the +slaves of the Portuguese whom we met hunting, that they offered to pay +this man handsomely if he would show them the elephant medicine. + +When near Mosusa's village we passed a rivulet called Chowe, now running +with rain-water. The inhabitants there extract a little salt from the +sand when it is dry, and all the people of the adjacent country come +to purchase it from them. This was the first salt we had met with since +leaving Angola, for none is to be found in either the country of the +Balonda or Barotse; but we heard of salt-pans about a fortnight west +of Naliele, and I got a small supply from Mpololo while there. That had +long since been finished, and I had again lived two months without salt, +suffering no inconvenience except an occasional longing for animal food +or milk. + +In marching along, the rich reddish-brown soil was so clammy that it +was very difficult to walk. It is, however, extremely fertile, and the +people cultivate amazing quantities of corn, maize, millet, ground-nuts, +pumpkins, and cucumbers. We observed that, when plants failed in one +spot, they were in the habit of transplanting them into another, and +they had also grown large numbers of young plants on the islands, where +they are favored by moisture from the river, and were now removing them +to the main land. The fact of their being obliged to do this shows that +there is less rain here than in Londa, for there we observed the grain +in all stages of its growth at the same time. + +The people here build their huts in gardens on high stages. This is +necessary on account of danger from the spotted hyaena, which is said +to be very fierce, and also as a protection against lions and elephants. +The hyaena is a very cowardly animal, but frequently approaches persons +lying asleep, and makes an ugly gash on the face. Mozinkwa had lost his +upper lip in this way, and I have heard of men being killed by them; +children, too, are sometimes carried off; for, though he is so cowardly +that the human voice will make him run away at once, yet, when his teeth +are in the flesh, he holds on, and shows amazing power of jaw. Leg-bones +of oxen, from which the natives have extracted the marrow and every +thing eatable, are by this animal crunched up with the greatest ease, +which he apparently effects by turning them round in his teeth till they +are in a suitable position for being split. + +We had now come among people who had plenty, and were really very +liberal. My men never returned from a village without some corn or maize +in their hands. The real politeness with which food is given by +nearly all the interior tribes, who have not had much intercourse with +Europeans, makes it a pleasure to accept. Again and again I have heard +an apology made for the smallness of the present, or regret expressed +that they had not received notice of my approach in time to grind more, +and generally they readily accepted our excuse at having nothing to give +in return by saying that they were quite aware that there are no white +men's goods in the interior. When I had it in my power, I always gave +something really useful. To Katema, Shinte, and others, I gave presents +which cost me about 2 Pounds each, and I could return to them at any +time without having a character for stinginess. How some men can offer +three buttons, or some other equally contemptible gift, while they have +abundance in their possession, is to me unaccountable. They surely do +not know, when they write it in their books, that they are declaring +they have compromised the honor of Englishmen. The people receive the +offering with a degree of shame, and ladies may be seen to hand it +quickly to the attendants, and, when they retire, laugh until the tears +stand in their eyes, saying to those about them, "Is that a white man? +then there are niggards among them too. Some of them are born without +hearts!" One white trader, having presented an OLD GUN to a chief, +became a standing joke in the tribe: "The white man who made a +present of a gun that was new when his grandfather was sucking his +great-grandmother." When these tricks are repeated, the natives come to +the conclusion that people who show such a want of sense must be told +their duty; they therefore let them know what they ought to give, +and travelers then complain of being pestered with their "shameless +begging". I was troubled by importunity on the confines of civilization +only, and when I first came to Africa. + +FEBRUARY 4TH. We were much detained by rains, a heavy shower without +wind falling every morning about daybreak; it often cleared up after +that, admitting of our moving on a few miles. A continuous rain of +several hours then set in. The wind up to this point was always from +the east, but both rain and wind now came so generally from the west, +or opposite direction to what we had been accustomed to in the interior, +that we were obliged to make our encampment face the east, in order to +have them in our backs. The country adjacent to the river abounds in +large trees; but the population is so numerous that, those left being +all green, it is difficult to get dry firewood. On coming to some +places, too, we were warned by the villagers not to cut the trees +growing in certain spots, as they contained the graves of their +ancestors. There are many tamarind-trees, and another very similar, +which yields a fruit as large as a small walnut, of which the elephants +are very fond. It is called Motondo, and the Portuguese extol its timber +as excellent for building boats, as it does not soon rot in water. + +On the 6th we came to the village of Boroma, which is situated among a +number of others, each surrounded by extensive patches of cultivation. +On the opposite side of the river we have a great cluster of conical +hills called Chorichori. Boroma did not make his appearance, but sent +a substitute who acted civilly. I sent Sekwebu in the morning to +state that we intended to move on; his mother replied that, as she had +expected that we should remain, no food was ready, but she sent a basket +of corn and a fowl. As an excuse why Boroma did not present himself, she +said that he was seized that morning by the Barimo, which probably meant +that his lordship was drunk. + +We marched along the river to a point opposite the hill Pinkwe (lat. 15d +39' 11" S., long. 32d 5' E.), but the late abundant rains now flooded +the Zambesi again, and great quantities of wreck appeared upon the +stream. It is probable that frequent freshets, caused by the rains on +this side of the ridge, have prevented the Portuguese near the coast +from recognizing the one peculiar flood of inundation observed in +the interior, and caused the belief that it is flooded soon after the +commencement of the rains. The course of the Nile being in the opposite +direction to this, it does not receive these subsidiary waters, and +hence its inundation is recognized all the way along its course. If the +Leeambye were prolonged southward into the Cape Colony, its flood would +be identical with that of the Nile. It would not be influenced by any +streams in the Kalahari, for there, as in a corresponding part of the +Nile, there would be no feeders. It is to be remembered that the great +ancient river which flowed to the lake at Boochap took this course +exactly, and probably flowed thither until the fissure of the falls was +made. + +This flood having filled the river, we found the numerous rivulets which +flow into it filled also, and when going along the Zambesi, we lost so +much time in passing up each little stream till we could find a ford +about waist deep, and then returning to the bank, that I resolved +to leave the river altogether, and strike away to the southeast. We +accordingly struck off when opposite the hill Pinkwe, and came into a +hard Mopane country. In a hole of one of the mopane-trees I noticed that +a squirrel ('Sciurus cepapi') had placed a great number of fresh leaves +over a store of seed. It is not against the cold of winter that they +thus lay up food, but it is a provision against the hot season, when the +trees have generally no seed. A great many silicified trees are met with +lying on the ground all over this part of the country; some are broken +off horizontally, and stand upright; others are lying prone, and broken +across into a number of pieces. One was 4 feet 8 inches in diameter, +and the wood must have been soft like that of the baobab, for there were +only six concentric rings to the inch. As the semidiameter was only 28 +inches, this large tree could have been but 168 years old. I found +also a piece of palm-tree transformed into oxide of iron, and the pores +filled with pure silica. These fossil trees lie upon soft gray sandstone +containing banks of shingle, which forms the underlying rock of the +country all the way from Zumbo to near Lupata. It is met with at +Litubaruba and in Angola, with similar banks of shingle imbedded exactly +like those now seen on the sea-beach, but I never could find a shell. +There are many nodules and mounds of hardened clay upon it, which seem +to have been deposited in eddies made round the roots of these ancient +trees, for they appear of different colors in wavy and twisted lines. +Above this we have small quantities of calcareous marl. + +As we were now in the district of Chicova, I examined the geological +structure of the country with interest, because here, it has been +stated, there once existed silver mines. The general rock is the gray +soft sandstone I have mentioned, but at the rivulet Bangue we come upon +a dike of basalt six yards wide, running north and south. When we +cross this, we come upon several others, some of which run more to the +eastward. The sandstone is then found to have been disturbed, and at +the rivulet called Nake we found it tilted up and exhibiting a section, +which was coarse sandstone above, sandstone-flag, shale, and, lastly, a +thin seam of coal. The section was only shown for a short distance, and +then became lost by a fault made by a dike of basalt, which ran to the +E.N.E. in the direction of Chicova. + +This Chicova is not a kingdom, as has been stated, but a level tract, a +part of which is annually overflowed by the Zambesi, and is well adapted +for the cultivation of corn. It is said to be below the northern end +of the hill Bungwe. I was very much pleased in discovering this small +specimen of such a precious mineral as coal. I saw no indication of +silver, and, if it ever was worked by the natives, it is remarkable that +they have entirely lost the knowledge of it, and can not distinguish +between silver and tin. In connection with these basaltic dikes, it may +be mentioned that when I reached Tete I was informed of the existence of +a small rapid in the river near Chicova; had I known this previously, +I certainly would not have left the river without examining it. It is +called Kebrabasa, and is described as a number of rocks which jut out +across the stream. I have no doubt but that it is formed by some of +the basaltic dikes which we now saw, for they generally ran toward that +point. I was partly influenced in leaving the river by a wish to avoid +several chiefs in that direction, who levy a heavy tribute on those +who pass up or down. Our path lay along the bed of the Nake for some +distance, the banks being covered with impenetrable thickets. The +villages are not numerous, but we went from one to the other, and were +treated kindly. Here they call themselves Bambiri, though the general +name of the whole nation is Banyai. One of our guides was an inveterate +talker, always stopping and asking for pay, that he might go on with +a merry heart. I thought that he led us in the most difficult paths in +order to make us feel his value, for, after passing through one thicket +after another, we always came into the bed of the Nake again, and as +that was full of coarse sand, and the water only ankle deep, and as hot +as a foot-bath from the powerful rays of the sun, we were all completely +tired out. He likewise gave us a bad character at every village we +passed, calling to them that they were to allow him to lead us astray, +as we were a bad set. Sekwebu knew every word he said, and, as he became +intolerable, I dismissed him, giving him six feet of calico I had bought +from native traders, and telling him that his tongue was a nuisance. +It is in general best, when a scolding is necessary, to give it in +combination with a present, and then end it by good wishes. This fellow +went off smiling, and my men remarked, "His tongue is cured now." The +country around the Nake is hilly, and the valleys covered with tangled +jungle. The people who live in this district have reclaimed their +gardens from the forest, and the soil is extremely fertile. The Nake +flows northerly, and then to the east. It is 50 or 60 yards wide, but +during most of the year is dry, affording water only by digging in the +sand. We found in its bed masses of volcanic rock, identical with those +I subsequently recognized as such at Aden. + +13TH. The head man of these parts is named Nyampungo. I sent the last +fragment of cloth we had, with a request that we should be furnished +with a guide to the next chief. After a long conference with his +council, the cloth was returned with a promise of compliance, and a +request for some beads only. This man is supposed to possess the charm +for rain, and other tribes send to him to beg it. This shows that what +we inferred before was correct, that less rain falls in this country +than in Londa. Nyampungo behaved in quite a gentlemanly manner, +presented me with some rice, and told my people to go among all the +villages and beg for themselves. An old man, father-in-law of the chief, +told me that he had seen books before, but never knew what they meant. +They pray to departed chiefs and relatives, but the idea of praying +to God seemed new, and they heard it with reverence. As this was +an intelligent old man, I asked him about the silver, but he was as +ignorant of it as the rest, and said, "We never dug silver, but we have +washed for gold in the sands of the rivers Mazoe and Luia, which unite +in the Luenya." I think that this is quite conclusive on the question of +no silver having been dug by the natives of this district. Nyampungo is +afflicted with a kind of disease called Sesenda, which I imagine to be +a species of leprosy common in this quarter, though they are a cleanly +people. They never had cattle. The chief's father had always lived in +their present position, and, when I asked him why he did not possess +these useful animals, he said, "Who would give us the medicine to enable +us to keep them?" I found out the reason afterward in the prevalence of +tsetse, but of this he was ignorant, having supposed that he could not +keep cattle because he had no medicine. + + + + +Chapter 30. + +An Elephant-hunt--Offering and Prayers to the Barimo for Success-- +Native Mode of Expression--Working of Game-laws--A Feast--Laughing +Hyaenas--Numerous Insects--Curious Notes of Birds of Song-- +Caterpillars--Butterflies--Silica--The Fruit Makoronga and Elephants +--Rhinoceros Adventure--Korwe Bird--Its Nest--A real Confinement-- +Honey and Beeswax--Superstitious Reverence for the Lion--Slow +Traveling--Grapes--The Ue--Monina's Village--Native Names--Government +of the Banyai--Electing a Chief--Youths instructed in +"Bonyai"--Suspected of Falsehood--War-dance--Insanity and Disappearance +of Monahin--Fruitless Search--Monina's Sympathy--The Sand-river +Tangwe--The Ordeal Muavi: its Victims--An unreasonable Man--"Woman's +Rights"--Presents--Temperance--A winding Course to shun Villages-- +Banyai Complexion and Hair--Mushrooms--The Tubers, Mokuri--The Tree +Shekabakadzi--Face of the Country--Pot-holes--Pursued by a Party +of Natives--Unpleasant Threat--Aroused by a Company of Soldiers--A +civilized Breakfast--Arrival at Tete. + + + +14TH. We left Nyampungo this morning. The path wound up the Molinge, +another sand-river which flows into the Nake. When we got clear of the +tangled jungle which covers the banks of these rivulets, we entered the +Mopane country, where we could walk with comfort. When we had gone on +a few hours, my men espied an elephant, and were soon in full pursuit. +They were in want of meat, having tasted nothing but grain for several +days. The desire for animal food made them all eager to slay him, and, +though an old bull, he was soon killed. The people of Nyampungo had +never seen such desperadoes before. One rushed up and hamstrung +the beast, while still standing, by a blow with an axe. Some Banyai +elephant-hunters happened to be present when my men were fighting with +him. One of them took out his snuff-box, and poured out all its contents +at the root of a tree as an offering to the Barimo for success. As soon +as the animal fell, the whole of my party engaged in a wild, savage +dance round the body, which quite frightened the Banyai, and he who made +the offering said to me, "I see you are traveling with people who don't +know how to pray: I therefore offered the only thing I had in their +behalf, and the elephant soon fell." One of Nyampungo's men, who +remained with me, ran a little forward, when an opening in the trees +gave us a view of the chase, and uttered loud prayers for success in +the combat. I admired the devout belief they all possessed in the actual +existence of unseen beings, and prayed that they might yet know that +benignant One who views us all as his own. My own people, who are rather +a degraded lot, remarked to me as I came up, "God gave it to us. He +said to the old beast, 'Go up there; men are come who will kill and eat +you.'" These remarks are quoted to give the reader an idea of the native +mode of expression. + +As we were now in the country of stringent game-laws, we were obliged +to send all the way back to Nyampungo, to give information to a certain +person who had been left there by the real owner of this district to +watch over his property, the owner himself living near the Zambesi. The +side upon which the elephant fell had a short, broken tusk; the upper +one, which was ours, was large and thick. The Banyai remarked on our +good luck. The men sent to give notice came back late in the afternoon +of the following day. They brought a basket of corn, a fowl, and a few +strings of handsome beads, as a sort of thank-offering for our having +killed it on their land, and said they had thanked the Barimo besides +for our success, adding, "There it is; eat it and be glad." Had we begun +to cut it up before we got this permission, we should have lost the +whole. They had brought a large party to eat their half, and they +divided it with us in a friendly way. My men were delighted with the +feast, though, by lying unopened a whole day, the carcass was pretty far +gone. An astonishing number of hyaenas collected round, and kept up a +loud laughter for two whole nights. Some of them do make a very good +imitation of a laugh. I asked my men what the hyaenas were laughing at, +as they usually give animals credit for a share of intelligence. They +said that they were laughing because we could not take the whole, and +that they would have plenty to eat as well as we. + +On coming to the part where the elephant was slain, we passed through +grass so tall that it reminded me of that in the valley of Cassange. +Insects are very numerous after the rains commence. While waiting by +the elephant, I observed a great number of insects, like grains of fine +sand, moving on my boxes. On examination with a glass, four species were +apparent; one of green and gold preening its wings, which glanced in the +sun with metallic lustre; another clear as crystal; a third of the color +of vermilion; and a fourth black. These are probably some of those which +consume the seeds of every plant that grows. Almost every kind has its +own peculiar insect, and when the rains are over very few seeds remain +untouched. The rankest poisons, as the Kongwhane and Euphorbia, are soon +devoured; the former has a scarlet insect; and even the fiery bird's-eye +pepper, which will keep off many others from their own seeds, is itself +devoured by a maggot. I observed here, what I had often seen before, +that certain districts abound in centipedes. Here they have light +reddish bodies and blue legs; great myriapedes are seen crawling +every where. Although they do no harm, they excite in man a feeling +of loathing. Perhaps our appearance produces a similar feeling in the +elephant and other large animals. Where they have been much disturbed, +they certainly look upon us with great distrust, as the horrid biped +that ruins their peace. In the quietest parts of the forest there is +heard a faint but distinct hum, which tells of insect joy. One may see +many whisking about in the clear sunshine in patches among the +green glancing leaves; but there are invisible myriads working with +never-tiring mandibles on leaves, and stalks, and beneath the soil. They +are all brimful of enjoyment. Indeed, the universality of organic life +may be called a mantle of happy existence encircling the world, and +imparts the idea of its being caused by the consciousness of our +benignant Father's smile on all the works of His hands. + +The birds of the tropics have been described as generally wanting in +power of song. I was decidedly of opinion that this was not applicable +to many parts in Londa, though birds there are remarkably scarce. Here +the chorus, or body of song, was not much smaller in volume than it is +in England. It was not so harmonious, and sounded always as if the birds +were singing in a foreign tongue. Some resemble the lark, and, indeed, +there are several of that family; two have notes not unlike those of the +thrush. One brought the chaffinch to my mind, and another the robin; but +their songs are intermixed with several curious abrupt notes unlike any +thing English. One utters deliberately "peek, pak, pok"; another has a +single note like a stroke on a violin-string. The mokwa reza gives +forth a screaming set of notes like our blackbird when disturbed, then +concludes with what the natives say is "pula, pula" (rain, rain), but +more like "weep, weep, weep". Then we have the loud cry of francolins, +the "pumpuru, pumpuru" of turtle-doves, and the "chiken, chiken, chik, +churr, churr" of the honey-guide. Occasionally, near villages, we have +a kind of mocking-bird, imitating the calls of domestic fowls. These +African birds have not been wanting in song; they have only lacked poets +to sing their praises, which ours have had from the time of Aristophanes +downward. Ours have both a classic and a modern interest to enhance +their fame. In hot, dry weather, or at midday when the sun is fierce, +all are still: let, however, a good shower fall, and all burst forth at +once into merry lays and loving courtship. The early mornings and +the cool evenings are their favorite times for singing. There are +comparatively few with gaudy plumage, being totally unlike, in this +respect, the birds of the Brazils. The majority have decidedly a sober +dress, though collectors, having generally selected the gaudiest as the +most valuable, have conveyed the idea that the birds of the tropics for +the most part possess gorgeous plumage. + +15TH. Several of my men have been bitten by spiders and other insects, +but no effect except pain has followed. A large caterpillar is +frequently seen, called lezuntabuea. It is covered with long gray hairs, +and, the body being dark, it resembles a porcupine in miniature. If one +touches it, the hairs run into the pores of the skin, and remain there, +giving sharp pricks. There are others which have a similar means of +defense; and when the hand is drawn across them, as in passing a bush on +which they happen to be, the contact resembles the stinging of nettles. +From the great number of caterpillars seen, we have a considerable +variety of butterflies. One particular kind flies more like a swallow +than a butterfly. They are not remarkable for the gaudiness of their +colors. + +In passing along we crossed the hills Vungue or Mvungwe, which we found +to be composed of various eruptive rocks. At one part we have breccia of +altered marl or slate in quartz, and various amygdaloids. It is curious +to observe the different forms which silica assumes. We have it in +claystone porphyry here, in minute round globules, no larger than +turnip-seed, dotted thickly over the matrix; or crystallized round the +walls of cavities, once filled with air or other elastic fluid; or it +may appear in similar cavities as tufts of yellow asbestos, or as red, +yellow, or green crystals, or in laminae so arranged as to appear like +fossil wood. Vungue forms the watershed between those sand rivulets +which run to the N.E., and others which flow southward, as the Kapopo, +Ue, and Due, which run into the Luia. + +We found that many elephants had been feeding on the fruit called +Mokoronga. This is a black-colored plum, having purple juice. We all ate +it in large quantities, as we found it delicious. The only defect it has +is the great size of the seed in comparison with the pulp. This is +the chief fault of all uncultivated wild fruits. The Mokoronga exists +throughout this part of the country most abundantly, and the natives +eagerly devour it, as it is said to be perfectly wholesome, or, as they +express it, "It is pure fat," and fat is by them considered the best +of food. Though only a little larger than a cherry, we found that the +elephants had stood picking them off patiently by the hour. We observed +the footprints of a black rhinoceros ('Rhinoceros bicornis', Linn.) and +her calf. We saw other footprints among the hills of Semalembue, but the +black rhinoceros is remarkably scarce in all the country north of the +Zambesi. The white rhinoceros ('Rhinoceros simus' of Burchell), or +Mohohu of the Bechuanas, is quite extinct here, and will soon become +unknown in the country to the south. It feeds almost entirely on +grasses, and is of a timid, unsuspecting disposition: this renders it an +easy prey, and they are slaughtered without mercy on the introduction +of fire-arms. The black possesses a more savage nature, and, like the +ill-natured in general, is never found with an ounce of fat in its +body. From its greater fierceness and wariness, it holds its place in +a district much longer than its more timid and better-conditioned +neighbor. Mr. Oswell was once stalking two of these beasts, and, as +they came slowly to him, he, knowing that there is but little chance +of hitting the small brain of this animal by a shot in the head, lay +expecting one of them to give his shoulder till he was within a few +yards. The hunter then thought that by making a rush to his side he +might succeed in escaping, but the rhinoceros, too quick for that, +turned upon him, and, though he discharged his gun close to the animal's +head, he was tossed in the air. My friend was insensible for some time, +and, on recovering, found large wounds on the thigh and body: I saw that +on the former part still open, and five inches long. The white, however, +is not always quite safe, for one, even after it was mortally wounded, +attacked Mr. Oswell's horse, and thrust the horn through to the saddle, +tossing at the time both horse and rider. I once saw a white rhinoceros +give a buffalo, which was gazing intently at myself, a poke in the +chest, but it did not wound it, and seemed only a hint to get out of the +way. Four varieties of the rhinoceros are enumerated by naturalists, but +my observation led me to conclude that there are but two, and that the +extra species have been formed from differences in their sizes, ages, +and the direction of the horns, as if we should reckon the short-horned +cattle a different species from the Alderneys or the Highland breed. +I was led to this from having once seen a black rhinoceros with a horn +bent downward like that of the kuabaoba, and also because the animals +of the two great varieties differ very much in appearance at different +stages of their growth. I find, however, that Dr. Smith, the best +judge in these matters, is quite decided as to the propriety of the +subdivision into three or four species. For common readers, it is +sufficient to remember that there are two well-defined species, that +differ entirely in appearance and food. The absence of both these +rhinoceroses among the reticulated rivers in the central valley may +easily be accounted for, they would be such an easy prey to the natives +in their canoes at the periods of inundation; but one can not so readily +account for the total absence of the giraffe and ostrich on the high +open lands of the Batoka, north of the Zambesi, unless we give credence +to the native report which bounds the country still farther north by +another network of waters near Lake Shuia, and suppose that it also +prevented their progress southward. The Batoka have no name for the +giraffe or the ostrich in their language; yet, as the former exists in +considerable numbers in the angle formed by the Leeambye and Chobe, they +may have come from the north along the western ridge. The Chobe would +seem to have been too narrow to act as an obstacle to the giraffe, +supposing it to have come into that district from the south; but the +broad river into which that stream flows seems always to have presented +an impassable barrier to both the giraffe and the ostrich, though they +abound on its southern border, both in the Kalahari Desert and the +country of Mashona. + +We passed through large tracts of Mopane country, and my men caught a +great many of the birds called Korwe ('Tockus erythrorhynchus') in their +breeding-places, which were in holes in the mopane-trees. On the 19th +we passed the nest of a korwe just ready for the female to enter; the +orifice was plastered on both sides, but a space was left of a heart +shape, and exactly the size of the bird's body. The hole in the tree +was in every case found to be prolonged some distance upward above the +opening, and thither the korwe always fled to escape being caught. In +another nest we found that one white egg, much like that of a pigeon, +was laid, and the bird dropped another when captured. She had four +besides in the ovarium. The first time that I saw this bird was at +Kolobeng, where I had gone to the forest for some timber. Standing by a +tree, a native looked behind me and exclaimed, "There is the nest of +a korwe." I saw a slit only, about half an inch wide and three or four +inches long, in a slight hollow of the tree. Thinking the word korwe +denoted some small animal, I waited with interest to see what he would +extract; he broke the clay which surrounded the slit, put his arm into +the hole, and brought out a 'Tockus', or 'red-beaked hornbill', which +he killed. He informed me that, when the female enters her nest, she +submits to a real confinement. The male plasters up the entrance, +leaving only a narrow slit by which to feed his mate, and which exactly +suits the form of his beak. The female makes a nest of her own feathers, +lays her eggs, hatches them, and remains with the young till they are +fully fledged. During all this time, which is stated to be two or +three months, the male continues to feed her and the young family. The +prisoner generally becomes quite fat, and is esteemed a very dainty +morsel by the natives, while the poor slave of a husband gets so lean +that, on the sudden lowering of the temperature which sometimes happens +after a fall of rain, he is benumbed, falls down, and dies. I never had +an opportunity of ascertaining the actual length of the confinement, but +on passing the same tree at Kolobeng about eight days afterward the hole +was plastered up again, as if, in the short time that had elapsed, the +disconsolate husband had secured another wife. We did not disturb her, +and my duties prevented me from returning to the spot. This is the month +in which the female enters the nest. We had seen one of these, as +before mentioned, with the plastering not quite finished; we saw many +completed; and we received the very same account here that we did at +Kolobeng, that the bird comes forth when the young are fully fledged, at +the period when the corn is ripe; indeed, her appearance abroad with her +young is one of the signs they have for knowing when it ought to be so. +As that is about the end of April, the time is between two and three +months. She is said sometimes to hatch two eggs, and, when the young of +these are full-fledged, other two are just out of the egg-shells: she +then leaves the nest with the two elder, the orifice is again plastered +up, and both male and female attend to the wants of the young which are +left. On several occasions I observed a branch bearing the marks of the +male having often sat upon it when feeding his mate, and the excreta had +been expelled a full yard from the orifice, and often proved a means of +discovering the retreat. + +The honey-guides were very assiduous in their friendly offices, and +enabled my men to get a large quantity of honey. But, though bees +abound, the wax of these parts forms no article of trade. In Londa it +may be said to be fully cared for, as you find hives placed upon trees +in the most lonesome forests. We often met strings of carriers laden +with large blocks of this substance, each 80 or 100 lbs. in weight, and +pieces were offered to us for sale at every village; but here we never +saw a single artificial hive. The bees were always found in the natural +cavities of mopane-trees. It is probable that the good market for +wax afforded to Angola by the churches of Brazil led to the gradual +development of that branch of commerce there. I saw even on the banks +of the Quango as much as sixpence paid for a pound. In many parts of +the Batoka country bees exist in vast numbers, and the tribute due to +Sekeletu is often paid in large jars of honey; but, having no market nor +use for the wax, it is thrown away. This was the case also with ivory at +the Lake Ngami, at the period of its discovery. The reports brought by +my other party from Loanda of the value of wax had induced some of my +present companions to bring small quantities of it to Tete, but, not +knowing the proper mode of preparing it, it was so dark colored that no +one would purchase it; I afterward saw a little at Kilimane which had +been procured from the natives somewhere in this region. + +Though we are now approaching the Portuguese settlement, the country is +still full of large game. My men killed six buffalo calves out of a herd +we met. The abundance of these animals, and also of antelopes, shows the +insufficiency of the bow and arrow to lessen their numbers. There are +also a great many lions and hyaenas, and there is no check upon the +increase of the former, for the people, believing that the souls of +their chiefs enter into them, never attempt to kill them; they even +believe that a chief may metamorphose himself into a lion, kill any one +he chooses, and then return to the human form; therefore, when they +see one, they commence clapping their hands, which is the usual mode +of salutation here. The consequence is, that lions and hyaenas are +so abundant that we see little huts made in the trees, indicating the +places where some of the inhabitants have slept when benighted in the +fields. As numbers of my men frequently left the line of march in order +to take out the korwes from their nests, or follow the honey-guides, +they excited the astonishment of our guides, who were constantly +warning them of the danger they thereby incurred from lions. I was often +considerably ahead of the main body of my men on this account, and was +obliged to stop every hour or two; but, the sun being excessively hot +by day, I was glad of the excuse for resting. We could make no such +prodigious strides as officers in the Arctic regions are able to do. Ten +or twelve miles a day were a good march for both the men and myself; and +it was not the length of the marches, but continuing day after day to +perform the same distance, that was so fatiguing. It was in this case +much longer than appears on the map, because we kept out of the way of +villages. I drank less than the natives when riding, but all my clothing +was now constantly damp from the moisture which was imbibed in large +quantities at every pond. One does not stay on these occasions to +prepare water with alum or any thing else, but drinks any amount without +fear. I never felt the atmosphere so steamy as on the low-lying lands +of the Zambesi, and yet it was becoming cooler than it was on the +highlands. + +We crossed the rivulets Kapopo and Ue, now running, but usually dry. +There are great numbers of wild grape-vines growing in this quarter; +indeed, they abound every where along the banks of the Zambesi. In +the Batoka country there is a variety which yields a black grape of +considerable sweetness. The leaves are very large and harsh, as if +capable of withstanding the rays of this hot sun; but the most common +kinds--one with a round leaf and a greenish grape, and another with a +leaf closely resembling that of the cultivated varieties, and with dark +or purple fruit--have large seeds, which are strongly astringent, and +render it a disagreeable fruit. The natives eat all the varieties; and +I tasted vinegar made by a Portuguese from these grapes. Probably a +country which yields the wild vines so very abundantly might be a fit +one for the cultivated species. At this part of the journey so many of +the vines had run across the little footpath we followed that one had +to be constantly on the watch to avoid being tripped. The ground was +covered with rounded shingle, which was not easily seen among the grass. +Pedestrianism may be all very well for those whose obesity requires much +exercise, but for one who was becoming as thin as a lath, through the +constant perspiration caused by marching day after day in the hot sun, +the only good I saw in it was that it gave an honest sort of man a vivid +idea of the tread-mill. + +Although the rains were not quite over, great numbers of pools were +drying up, and the ground was in many parts covered with small green +cryptogamous plants, which gave it a mouldy appearance and a strong +smell. As we sometimes pushed aside the masses of rank vegetation which +hung over our path, we felt a sort of hot blast on our faces. Every +thing looked unwholesome, but we had no fever. The Ue flows between high +banks of a soft red sandstone streaked with white, and pieces of tufa. +The crumbling sandstone is evidently alluvial, and is cut into 12 feet +deep. In this region, too, we met with pot-holes six feet deep and three +or four in diameter. In some cases they form convenient wells; in others +they are full of earth; and in others still the people have made them +into graves for their chiefs. + +On the 20th we came to Monina's village (close to the sand-river Tangwe, +latitude 16d 13' 38" south, longitude 32d 32' east). This man is +very popular among the tribes on account of his liberality. Boroma, +Nyampungo, Monina, Jira, Katolosa (Monomotapa), and Susa, all +acknowledge the supremacy of one called Nyatewe, who is reported to +decide all disputes respecting land. This confederation is exactly +similar to what we observed in Londa and other parts of Africa. Katolosa +is "the Emperor Monomotapa" of history, but he is a chief of no great +power, and acknowledges the supremacy of Nyatewe. The Portuguese +formerly honored Monomotapa with a guard, to fire off numbers of guns on +the occasion of any funeral, and he was also partially subsidized. The +only evidence of greatness possessed by his successor is his having +about a hundred wives. When he dies a disputed succession and much +fighting are expected. In reference to the term Monomotapa, it is to be +remembered that Mono, Moene, Mona, Mana, or Morena, mean simply 'chief', +and considerable confusion has arisen from naming different people by +making a plural of the chief's name. The names Monomoizes, spelled also +Monemuiges and Monomuizes, and Monomotapistas, when applied to these +tribes, are exactly the same as if we should call the Scotch the Lord +Douglases. Motape was the chief of the Bambiri, a tribe of the Banyai, +and is now represented in the person of Katolosa. He was probably a man +of greater energy than his successor, yet only an insignificant chief. +Monomoizes was formed from Moiza or Muiza, the singular of the word +Babisa or Aiza, the proper name of a large tribe to the north. In the +transformation of this name the same error has been committed as in the +others; and mistakes have occurred in many other names by inattention to +the meaning, and predilection for the letter R. The River Loangwa, for +instance, has been termed Arroangoa, and the Luenya the Ruanha. The +Bazizulu, or Mashona, are spoken of as the Morururus. + +The government of the Banyai is rather peculiar, being a sort of feudal +republicanism. The chief is elected, and they choose the son of the +deceased chief's sister in preference to his own offspring. When +dissatisfied with one candidate, they even go to a distant tribe for a +successor, who is usually of the family of the late chief, a brother, or +a sister's son, but never his own son or daughter. When first spoken to +on the subject, he answers as if he thought himself unequal to the +task and unworthy of the honor; but, having accepted it, all the wives, +goods, and children of his predecessor belong to him, and he takes care +to keep them in a dependent position. When any one of them becomes +tired of this state of vassalage and sets up his own village, it is not +unusual for the elected chief to send a number of the young men, who +congregate about himself, to visit him. If he does not receive them with +the usual amount of clapping of hands and humility, they, in obedience +to orders, at once burn his village. The children of the chief have +fewer privileges than common free men. They may not be sold, but, rather +than choose any one of them for a chief at any future time, the free men +would prefer to elect one of themselves, who bore only a very distant +relationship to the family. These free men are a distinct class who +can never be sold; and under them there is a class of slaves whose +appearance as well as position is very degraded. Monina had a great +number of young men about him from twelve to fifteen years of age. +These were all sons of free men, and bands of young men like them in the +different districts leave their parents about the age of puberty, and +live with such men as Monina for the sake of instruction. When I asked +the nature of the instruction, I was told "Bonyai", which I suppose may +be understood as indicating manhood, for it sounds as if we should say, +"to teach an American Americanism," or "an Englishman to be English." +While here they are kept in subjection to rather stringent regulations. +They must salute carefully by clapping their hands on approaching a +superior, and when any cooked food is brought, the young men may not +approach the dish, but an elder divides a portion to each. They remain +unmarried until a fresh set of youths is ready to occupy their place +under the same instruction. The parents send servants with their sons to +cultivate gardens to supply them with food, and also tusks to Monina to +purchase clothing for them. When the lads return to the village of their +parents, a case is submitted to them for adjudication, and if they speak +well on the point, the parents are highly gratified. + +When we told Monina that we had nothing to present but some hoes, he +replied that he was not in need of those articles, and that he had +absolute power over the country in front, and if he prevented us from +proceeding, no one would say any thing to him. His little boy Boromo +having come to the encampment to look at us, I gave him a knife, and +he went off and brought a pint of honey for me. The father came soon +afterward, and I offered him a shirt. He remarked to his councilors, "It +is evident that this man has nothing, for, if he had, his people +would be buying provisions, but we don't see them going about for that +purpose." His council did not agree in this. They evidently believed +that we had goods, but kept them hid, and we felt it rather hard to be +suspected of falsehood. It was probably at their suggestion that in the +evening a wardance was got up about a hundred yards from our encampment, +as if to put us in fear and force us to bring forth presents. Some +of Monina's young men had guns, but most were armed with large bows, +arrows, and spears. They beat their drums furiously, and occasionally +fired off a gun. As this sort of dance is never got up unless there is +an intention to attack, my men expected an assault. We sat and looked at +them for some time, and then, as it became dark, lay down, all ready +to give them a warm reception. But an hour or two after dark the dance +ceased, and, as we then saw no one approaching us, we went to sleep. +During the night, one of my head men, Monahin, was seen to get up, look +toward the village, and say to one who was half awake, "Don't you hear +what these people are saying? Go and listen." He then walked off in the +opposite direction, and never returned. We had no guard set, but every +one lay with his spear in his hand. The man to whom he spoke appears to +have been in a dreamy condition, for it did not strike him that he ought +to give the alarm. Next morning I found to my sorrow that Monahin was +gone, and not a trace of him could be discovered. He had an attack of +pleuritis some weeks before, and had recovered, but latterly complained +a little of his head. I observed him in good spirits on the way hither, +and in crossing some of the streams, as I was careful not to wet my +feet, he aided me, and several times joked at my becoming so light. +In the evening he sat beside my tent until it was dark, and did not +manifest any great alarm. It was probably either a sudden fit of +insanity, or, having gone a little way out from the camp, he may have +been carried off by a lion, as this part of the country is full of them. +I incline to the former opinion, because sudden insanity occurs when +there is any unusual strain upon their minds. Monahin was in command +of the Batoka of Mokwine in my party, and he was looked upon with great +dislike by all that chief's subjects. The only difficulties I had with +them arose in consequence of being obliged to give orders through him. +They said Mokwine is reported to have been killed by the Makololo, but +Monahin is the individual who put forth his hand and slew him. When +one of these people kills in battle, he seems to have no compunction +afterward; but when he makes a foray on his own responsibility, and +kills a man of note, the common people make remarks to each other, +which are reported to him, and bring the affair perpetually to his +remembrance. This iteration on the conscience causes insanity, and when +one runs away in a wide country like this, the fugitive is never heard +of. Monahin had lately become afraid of his own party from overhearing +their remarks, and said more than once to me, "They want to kill me." I +believe if he ran to any village they would take care of him. I felt +his loss greatly, and spent three days in searching for him. He was a +sensible and most obliging man. I sent in the morning to inform Monina +of this sad event, and he at once sent to all the gardens around, +desiring the people to look for him, and, should he come near, to bring +him home. He evidently sympathized with us in our sorrow, and, afraid +lest we might suspect him, added, "We never catch nor kidnap people +here. It is not our custom. It is considered as guilt among all the +tribes." I gave him credit for truthfulness, and he allowed us to move +on without farther molestation. + +After leaving his village we marched in the bed of a sand-river a +quarter of a mile broad, called Tangwe. Walking on this sand is as +fatiguing as walking on snow. The country is flat, and covered with low +trees, but we see high hills in the distance. A little to the south we +have those of the Lobole. This region is very much infested by lions, +and men never go any distance into the woods alone. Having turned aside +on one occasion at midday, and gone a short distance among grass a +little taller than myself, an animal sprung away from me which was +certainly not an antelope, but I could not distinguish whether it was a +lion or a hyaena. This abundance of carnivora made us lose all hope of +Monahin. We saw footprints of many black rhinoceroses, buffaloes, and +zebras. + +After a few hours we reached the village of Nyakoba. Two men, who +accompanied us from Monina to Nyakoba's, would not believe us when we +said that we had no beads. It is very trying to have one's veracity +doubted, but, on opening the boxes, and showing them that all I had +was perfectly useless to them, they consented to receive some beads off +Sekwebu's waist, and I promised to send four yards of calico from Tete. +As we came away from Monina's village, a witch-doctor, who had been sent +for, arrived, and all Monina's wives went forth into the fields that +morning fasting. There they would be compelled to drink an infusion of a +plant named "goho", which is used as an ordeal. This ceremony is called +"muavi", and is performed in this way. When a man suspects that any of +his wives has bewitched him, he sends for the witch-doctor, and all the +wives go forth into the field, and remain fasting till that person has +made an infusion of the plant. They all drink it, each one holding up +her hand to heaven in attestation of her innocency. Those who vomit +it are considered innocent, while those whom it purges are pronounced +guilty, and put to death by burning. The innocent return to their homes, +and slaughter a cock as a thank-offering to their guardian spirits. The +practice of ordeal is common among all the negro nations north of the +Zambesi. This summary procedure excited my surprise, for my intercourse +with the natives here had led me to believe that the women were held in +so much estimation that the men would not dare to get rid of them thus. +But the explanation I received was this. The slightest imputation makes +them eagerly desire the test; they are conscious of being innocent, and +have the fullest faith in the muavi detecting the guilty alone; hence +they go willingly, and even eagerly, to drink it. When in Angola, a +half-caste was pointed out to me who is one of the most successful +merchants in that country; and the mother of this gentleman, who was +perfectly free, went, of her own accord, all the way from Ambaca to +Cassange, to be killed by the ordeal, her rich son making no objection. +The same custom prevails among the Barotse, Bashubia, and Batoka, but +with slight variations. The Barotse, for instance, pour the medicine +down the throat of a cock or of a dog, and judge of the innocence or +guilt of the person accused according to the vomiting or purging of the +animal. I happened to mention to my own men the water-test for witches +formerly in use in Scotland: the supposed witch, being bound hand and +foot, was thrown into a pond; if she floated, she was considered +guilty, taken out, and burned; but if she sank and was drowned, she was +pronounced innocent. The wisdom of my ancestors excited as much wonder +in their minds as their custom did in mine. + +The person whom Nyakoba appointed to be our guide, having informed us +of the decision, came and bargained that his services should be rewarded +with a hoe. I had no objection to give it, and showed him the article; +he was delighted with it, and went off to show it to his wife. He soon +afterward returned, and said that, though he was perfectly willing to +go, his wife would not let him. I said, "Then bring back the hoe;" but +he replied, "I want it." "Well, go with us, and you shall have it." "But +my wife won't let me." I remarked to my men, "Did you ever hear such a +fool?" They answered, "Oh, that is the custom of these parts; the wives +are the masters." And Sekwebu informed me that he had gone to this man's +house, and heard him saying to his wife, "Do you think that I would ever +leave you?" then, turning to Sekwebu, he asked, "Do you think I would +leave this pretty woman? Is she not pretty?" Sekwebu had been making +inquiries among the people, and had found that the women indeed +possessed a great deal of influence. We questioned the guide whom we +finally got from Nyakoba, an intelligent young man, who had much of +the Arab features, and found the statements confirmed. When a young man +takes a liking for a girl of another village, and the parents have no +objection to the match, he is obliged to come and live at their village. +He has to perform certain services for the mother-in-law, such as +keeping her well supplied with firewood; and when he comes into her +presence he is obliged to sit with his knees in a bent position, as +putting out his feet toward the old lady would give her great offense. +If he becomes tired of living in this state of vassalage, and wishes +to return to his own family, he is obliged to leave all his children +behind--they belong to the wife. This is only a more stringent +enforcement of the law from which emanates the practice which prevails +so very extensively in Africa, known to Europeans as "buying wives". +Such virtually it is, but it does not appear quite in that light to the +actors. So many head of cattle or goats are given to the parents of the +girl "to give her up", as it is termed, i.e., to forego all claim on +her offspring, and allow an entire transference of her and her seed into +another family. If nothing is given, the family from which she has come +can claim the children as part of itself: the payment is made to sever +this bond. In the case supposed, the young man has not been able to +advance any thing for that purpose; and, from the temptations placed +here before my men, I have no doubt that some prefer to have their +daughters married in that way, as it leads to the increase of their own +village. My men excited the admiration of the Bambiri, who took them for +a superior breed on account of their bravery in elephant-hunting, and +wished to get them as sons-in-law on the conditions named, but none +yielded to the temptation. + +We were informed that there is a child belonging to a half-caste +Portuguese in one of these tribes, and the father had tried in vain to +get him from the mother's parents. We saw several things to confirm +the impression of the higher position which women hold here; and, being +anxious to discover if I were not mistaken, when we came among the +Portuguese I inquired of them, and was told that they had ascertained +the same thing; and that, if they wished a man to perform any service +for them, he would reply, "Well, I shall go and ask my wife." If she +consented, he would go, and perform his duty faithfully; but no amount +of coaxing or bribery would induce him to do it if she refused. The +Portuguese praised the appearance of the Banyai, and they certainly are +a fine race. + +We got on better with Nyakoba than we expected. He has been so much +affected by the sesenda that he is quite decrepit, and requires to be +fed. I at once showed his messenger that we had nothing whatever +to give. Nyakoba was offended with him for not believing me, and he +immediately sent a basket of maize and another of corn, saying that he +believed my statement, and would send men with me to Tete who would not +lead me to any other village. + +The birds here sing very sweetly, and I thought I heard the canary, +as in Londa. We had a heavy shower of rain, and I observed that the +thermometer sank 14 Deg. in one hour afterward. From the beginning of +February we experienced a sensible diminution of temperature. In January +the lowest was 75 Deg., and that at sunrise; the average at the same +hour (sunrise) being 79 Deg.; at 3 P.M., 90 Deg.; and at sunset, 82 Deg. +In February it fell as low as 70 Deg. in the course of the night, and +the average height was 88 Deg. Only once did it rise to 94 Deg., and a +thunder-storm followed this; yet the sensation of heat was greater now +than it had been at much higher temperatures on more elevated lands. + +We passed several villages by going roundabout ways through the forest. +We saw the remains of a lion that had been killed by a buffalo, and the +horns of a putokwane (black antelope), the finest I had ever seen, which +had met its death by a lion. The drums, beating all night in one village +near which we slept, showed that some person in it had finished his +course. On the occasion of the death of a chief, a trader is liable to +be robbed, for the people consider themselves not amenable to law until +a new one is elected. We continued a very winding course, in order to +avoid the chief Katolosa, who is said to levy large sums upon those who +fall into his hands. One of our guides was a fine, tall young man, the +very image of Ben Habib the Arab. They were carrying dried buffalo's +meat to the market at Tete as a private speculation. + +A great many of the Banyai are of a light coffee-and-milk color, and, +indeed, this color is considered handsome throughout the whole country, +a fair complexion being as much a test of beauty with them as with +us. As they draw out their hair into small cords a foot in length, and +entwine the inner bark of a certain tree round each separate cord, and +dye this substance of a reddish color, many of them put me in mind of +the ancient Egyptians. The great mass of dressed hair which they possess +reaches to the shoulders, but when they intend to travel they draw it up +to a bunch, and tie it on the top of the head. They are cleanly in their +habits. + +As we did not come near human habitations, and could only take short +stages on account of the illness of one of my men, I had an opportunity +of observing the expedients my party resorted to in order to supply +their wants. Large white edible mushrooms are found on the ant-hills, +and are very good. The mokuri, a tuber which abounds in the Mopane +country, they discovered by percussing the ground with stones; and +another tuber, about the size of a turnip, called "bonga", is found +in the same situations. It does not determine to the joints like the +mokuri, and in winter has a sensible amount of salt in it. A fruit +called "ndongo" by the Makololo, "dongolo" by the Bambiri, resembles +in appearance a small plum, which becomes black when ripe, and is good +food, as the seeds are small. Many trees are known by tradition, and one +receives curious bits of information in asking about different fruits +that are met with. A tree named "shekabakadzi" is superior to all others +for making fire by friction. As its name implies, women may even readily +make fire by it when benighted. + +The country here is covered over with well-rounded shingle and gravel of +granite, gneiss with much talc in it, mica schist, and other rocks which +we saw 'in situ' between the Kafue and Loangwa. There are great mounds +of soft red sand slightly coherent, which crumble in the hand with ease. +The gravel and the sand drain away the water so effectually that the +trees are exposed to the heat during a portion of the year without any +moisture; hence they are not large, like those on the Zambesi, and are +often scrubby. The rivers are all of the sandy kind, and we pass over +large patches between this and Tete in which, in the dry season, no +water is to be found. Close on our south, the hills of Lokole rise to +a considerable height, and beyond them flows the Mazoe with its golden +sands. The great numbers of pot-holes on the sides of sandstone ridges, +when viewed in connection with the large banks of rolled shingle and +washed sand which are met with on this side of the eastern ridge, may +indicate that the sea in former times rolled its waves along its flanks. +Many of the hills between the Kafue and Loangwa have their sides of +the form seen in mud banks left by the tide. The pot-holes appear +most abundant on low gray sandstone ridges here; and as the shingle is +composed of the same rocks as the hills west of Zumbo, it looks as if +a current had dashed along from the southeast in the line in which the +pot-holes now appear; and if the current was deflected by those hills +toward the Maravi country, north of Tete, it may have hollowed the +rounded, water-worn caverns in which these people store their corn, and +also hide themselves from their enemies. I could detect no terraces on +the land, but, if I am right in my supposition, the form of this part of +the continent must once have resembled the curves or indentations seen +on the southern extremity of the American continent. In the indentation +to the S.E., S., S.W., and W. of this, lie the principal gold-washings; +and the line of the current, supposing it to have struck against the +hills of Mburuma, shows the washings in the N. and N.E. of Tete. + +We were tolerably successful in avoiding the villages, and slept one +night on the flanks of the hill Zimika, where a great number of deep +pot-holes afforded an abundant supply of good rain-water. Here, for the +first time, we saw hills with bare, smooth, rocky tops, and we crossed +over broad dikes of gneiss and syenitic porphyry: the directions in +which they lay were N. and S. As we were now near to Tete, we were +congratulating ourselves on having avoided those who would only have +plagued us; but next morning some men saw us, and ran off to inform the +neighboring villages of our passing. A party immediately pursued us, +and, as they knew we were within call of Katolosa (Monomotapa), they +threatened to send information to that chief of our offense, in passing +through the country without leave. We were obliged to give them two +small tusks; for, had they told Katolosa of our supposed offense, we +should, in all probability, have lost the whole. We then went through a +very rough, stony country without any path. Being pretty well tired +out in the evening of the 2d of March, I remained at about eight miles +distance from Tete, Tette, or Nyungwe. My men asked me to go on; I felt +too fatigued to proceed, but sent forward to the commandant the letters +of recommendation with which I had been favored in Angola by the bishop +and others, and lay down to rest. Our food having been exhausted, my men +had been subsisting for some time on roots and honey. About two o'clock +in the morning of the 3d we were aroused by two officers and a company +of soldiers, who had been sent with the materials for a civilized +breakfast and a "masheela" to bring me to Tete. (Commandant's house: +lat. 16d 9' 3" S., long. 33d 28' E.) My companions thought that we were +captured by the armed men, and called me in alarm. When I understood +the errand on which they had come, and had partaken of a good breakfast, +though I had just before been too tired to sleep, all my fatigue +vanished. It was the most refreshing breakfast I ever partook of, and +I walked the last eight miles without the least feeling of weariness, +although the path was so rough that one of the officers remarked to +me, "This is enough to tear a man's life out of him." The pleasure +experienced in partaking of that breakfast was only equaled by the +enjoyment of Mr. Gabriel's bed on my arrival at Loanda. It was also +enhanced by the news that Sebastopol had fallen and the war was +finished. + + Note.--Having neglected, in referring to the footprints of the + rhinoceros, + to mention what may be interesting to naturalists, I add it here + in a note; + that wherever the footprints are seen, there are also marks of the + animal + having plowed up the ground and bushes with his horn. This has + been supposed + to indicate that he is subject to "fits of ungovernable rage"; + but, when seen, he appears rather to be rejoicing in his strength. + He acts as a bull sometimes does when he gores the earth with his + horns. + The rhinoceros, in addition to this, stands on a clump of bushes, + bends his back down, and scrapes the ground with his feet, + throwing it out backward, as if to stretch and clean his toes, + in the same way that a dog may be seen to do on a little grass: + this is certainly not rage. + + + + +Chapter 31. + +Kind Reception from the Commandant--His Generosity to my Men--The +Village of Tete--The Population--Distilled Spirits--The Fort--Cause +of the Decadence of Portuguese Power--Former Trade--Slaves employed +in Gold-washing--Slave-trade drained the Country of Laborers--The +Rebel Nyaude's Stockade--He burns Tete--Kisaka's Revolt and +Ravages--Extensive Field of Sugar-cane--The Commandant's good +Reputation among the Natives--Providential Guidance--Seams of Coal--A +hot Spring--Picturesque Country--Water-carriage to the Coal-fields-- +Workmen's Wages--Exports--Price of Provisions--Visit Gold-washings-- +The Process of obtaining the precious Metal--Coal within a Gold-field-- +Present from Major Sicard--Natives raise Wheat, etc.--Liberality of +the Commandant--Geographical Information from Senhor +Candido--Earthquakes--Native Ideas of a Supreme Being--Also of the +Immortality and Transmigration of Souls--Fondness for Display at +Funerals--Trade Restrictions--Former Jesuit Establishment--State of +Religion and Education at Tete--Inundation of the Zambesi--Cotton +cultivated--The fibrous Plants Conge and Buaze--Detained by Fever--The +Kumbanzo Bark--Native Medicines--Iron, its Quality--Hear of Famine +at Kilimane--Death of a Portuguese Lady--The Funeral--Disinterested +Kindness of the Portuguese. + + + +I was most kindly received by the commandant Tito Augusto d'Araujo +Sicard, who did every thing in his power to restore me from my emaciated +condition; and, as this was still the unhealthy period at Kilimane, +he advised me to remain with him until the following month. He also +generously presented my men with abundant provisions of millet; and, by +giving them lodgings in a house of his own until they could erect their +own huts, he preserved them from the bite of the tampans, here named +Carapatos.* We had heard frightful accounts of this insect while among +the Banyai, and Major Sicard assured me that to strangers its bite is +more especially dangerous, as it sometimes causes fatal fever. It may +please our homoeopathic friends to hear that, in curing the bite of +the tampan, the natives administer one of the insects bruised in the +medicine employed. + + * Another insect, resembling a maggot, burrows into the feet + of the natives and sucks their blood. Mr. Westwood says, "The + tampan is a large species of mite, closely allied to the + poisonous bug (as it is called) of Persia, 'Argos reflexus', + respecting which such marvelous accounts have been recorded, + and which the statement respecting the carapato or tampan + would partially confirm." Mr. W. also thinks that the poison- + yielding larva called N'gwa is a "species of chrysomelidae. + The larvae of the British species of that family exude a fetid + yellow thickish fluid when alarmed, but he has not heard that + any of them are at all poisonous." + +The village of Tete is built on a long slope down to the river, the fort +being close to the water. The rock beneath is gray sandstone, and has +the appearance of being crushed away from the river: the strata have +thus a crumpled form. The hollow between each crease is a street, the +houses being built upon the projecting fold. The rocks at the top of the +slope are much higher than the fort, and of course completely command +it. There is then a large valley, and beyond that an oblong hill called +Karueira. The whole of the adjacent country is rocky and broken, but +every available spot is under cultivation. The stone houses in Tete are +cemented with mud instead of lime, and thatched with reeds and grass. +The rains, having washed out the mud between the stones, give all the +houses a rough, untidy appearance. No lime was known to be found nearer +than Mozambique; some used in making seats in the verandas had actually +been brought all that distance. The Portuguese evidently knew nothing +of the pink and white marbles which I found at the Mbai, and another +rivulet, named the Unguesi, near it, and of which I brought home +specimens, nor yet of the dolomite which lies so near to Zumbo: +they might have burned the marble into lime without going so far as +Mozambique. There are about thirty European houses; the rest are native, +and of wattle and daub. A wall about ten feet high is intended to +inclose the village, but most of the native inhabitants prefer to live +on different spots outside. There are about twelve hundred huts in all, +which with European households would give a population of about four +thousand five hundred souls. Only a small proportion of these, however, +live on the spot; the majority are engaged in agricultural operations +in the adjacent country. Generally there are not more than two thousand +people resident, for, compared with what it was, Tete is now a ruin. The +number of Portuguese is very small; if we exclude the military, it is +under twenty. Lately, however, one hundred and five soldiers were sent +from Portugal to Senna, where in one year twenty-five were cut off by +fever. They were then removed to Tete, and here they enjoy much better +health, though, from the abundance of spirits distilled from various +plants, wild fruits, and grain, in which pernicious beverage they +largely indulge, besides partaking chiefly of unwholesome native food, +better health could scarcely have been expected. The natives here +understand the method of distillation by means of gun-barrels, and a +succession of earthen pots filled with water to keep them cool. The +general report of the fever here is that, while at Kilimane the fever +is continuous, at Tete a man recovers in about three days. The mildest +remedies only are used at first, and, if that period be passed, then the +more severe. + +The fort of Tete has been the salvation of the Portuguese power in this +quarter. It is a small square building, with a thatched apartment for +the residence of the troops; and, though there are but few guns, they +are in a much better state than those of any fort in the interior of +Angola. The cause of the decadence of the Portuguese power in this +region is simply this: In former times, considerable quantities of +grain, as wheat, millet, and maize, were exported; also coffee, sugar, +oil, and indigo, besides gold-dust and ivory. The cultivation of grain +was carried on by means of slaves, of whom the Portuguese possessed a +large number. The gold-dust was procured by washing at various points on +the north, south, and west of Tete. A merchant took all his slaves with +him to the washings, carrying as much calico and other goods as he could +muster. On arriving at the washing-place, he made a present to the chief +of the value of about a pound sterling. The slaves were then divided +into parties, each headed by a confidential servant, who not only had +the supervision of his squad while the washing went on, but bought +dust from the inhabitants, and made a weekly return to his master. When +several masters united at one spot, it was called a "Bara", and they +then erected a temporary church, in which a priest from one of the +missions performed mass. Both chiefs and people were favorable to these +visits, because the traders purchased grain for the sustenance of the +slaves with the goods they had brought. They continued at this labor +until the whole of the goods were expended, and by this means about +130 lbs. of gold were annually produced. Probably more than this was +actually obtained, but, as it was an article easily secreted, this alone +was submitted to the authorities for taxation. At present the whole +amount of gold obtained annually by the Portuguese is from 8 to 10 lbs. +only. When the slave-trade began, it seemed to many of the merchants a +more speedy mode of becoming rich to sell off the slaves than to pursue +the slow mode of gold-washing and agriculture, and they continued to +export them until they had neither hands to labor nor to fight for them. +It was just the story of the goose and the golden egg. The coffee and +sugar plantations and gold-washings were abandoned, because the labor +had been exported to the Brazils. Many of the Portuguese then followed +their slaves, and the government was obliged to pass a law to prevent +further emigration, which, had it gone on, would have depopulated the +Portuguese possessions altogether. A clever man of Asiatic (Goa) and +Portuguese extraction, called Nyaude, now built a stockade at the +confluence of the Luenya and Zambesi; and when the commandant of Tete +sent an officer with his company to summon him to his presence, Nyaude +asked permission of the officer to dress himself, which being granted, +he went into an inner apartment, and the officer ordered his men to pile +their arms. A drum of war began to beat a note which is well known to +the inhabitants. Some of the soldiers took the alarm on hearing this +note, but the officer, disregarding their warning, was, with his whole +party, in a few minutes disarmed and bound hand and foot. The commandant +of Tete then armed the whole body of slaves and marched against the +stockade of Nyaude, but when they came near to it there was the Luenya +still to cross. As they did not effect this speedily, Nyaude dispatched +a strong party under his son Bonga across the river below the stockade, +and up the left bank of the Zambesi until they came near to Tete. They +then attacked Tete, which was wholly undefended save by a few soldiers +in the fort, plundered and burned the whole town except the house of +the commandant and a few others, with the church and fort. The women and +children fled into the church; and it is a remarkable fact that none of +the natives of this region will ever attack a church. Having rendered +Tete a ruin, Bonga carried off all the cattle and plunder to his father. +News of this having been brought to the army before the stockade, a +sudden panic dispersed the whole; and as the fugitives took roundabout +ways in their flight, Katolosa, who had hitherto pretended to be +friendly with the Portuguese, sent out his men to capture as many of +them as they could. They killed many for the sake of their arms. This is +the account which both natives and Portuguese give of the affair. + +Another half-caste from Macao, called Kisaka or Choutama, on the +opposite bank of the river, likewise rebelled. His father having +died, he imagined that he had been bewitched by the Portuguese, and he +therefore plundered and burned all the plantations of the rich merchants +of Tete on the north bank. As I have before remarked, that bank is the +most fertile, and there the Portuguese had their villas and plantations +to which they daily retired from Tete. When these were destroyed the +Tete people were completely impoverished. An attempt was made to +punish this rebel, but it was also unsuccessful, and he has lately been +pardoned by the home government. One point in the narrative of this +expedition is interesting. They came to a field of sugar-cane so large +that 4000 men eating it during two days did not finish the whole. The +Portuguese were thus placed between two enemies, Nyaude on the right +bank and Kisaka on the left, and not only so, but Nyaude, having placed +his stockade on the point of land on the right banks of both the Luenya +and Zambesi, and washed by both these rivers, could prevent intercourse +with the sea. The Luenya rushes into the Zambesi with great force when +the latter is low, and, in coming up the Zambesi, boats must cross it +and the Luenya separately, even going a little way up that river, so +as not to be driven away by its current in the bed of the Zambesi, and +dashed on the rock which stands on the opposite shore. In coming up +to the Luenya for this purpose, all boats and canoes came close to the +stockade to be robbed. Nyaude kept the Portuguese shut up in their fort +at Tete during two years, and they could only get goods sufficient to +buy food by sending to Kilimane by an overland route along the north +bank of the Zambesi. The mother country did not in these "Caffre wars" +pay the bills, so no one either became rich or blamed the missionaries. + +The merchants were unable to engage in trade, and commerce, which the +slave-trade had rendered stagnant, was now completely obstructed. The +present commandant of Tete, Major Sicard, having great influence among +the natives, from his good character, put a stop to the war more than +once by his mere presence on the spot. We heard of him among the Banyai +as a man with whom they would never fight, because "he had a good +heart." Had I come down to this coast instead of going to Loanda in +1853, I should have come among the belligerents while the war was still +raging, and should probably have been cut off. My present approach was +just at the conclusion of the peace; and when the Portuguese authorities +here were informed, through the kind offices of Lord Clarendon and Count +de Lavradio, that I was expected to come this way, they all declared +that such was the existing state of affairs that no European could +possibly pass through the tribes. Some natives at last came down the +river to Tete and said, alluding to the sextant and artificial horizon, +that "the Son of God had come," and that he was "able to take the sun +down from the heavens and place it under his arm!" Major Sicard then +felt sure that this was the man mentioned in Lord Clarendon's dispatch. + +On mentioning to the commandant that I had discovered a small seam of +coal, he stated that the Portuguese were already aware of nine such +seams, and that five of them were on the opposite bank of the river. +As soon as I had recovered from my fatigue I went to examine them. We +proceeded in a boat to the mouth of the Lofubu or Revubu, which is about +two miles below Tete, and on the opposite or northern bank. Ascending +this about four miles against a strong current of beautifully clear +water, we landed near a small cataract, and walked about two miles +through very fertile gardens to the seam, which we found to be in one of +the feeders of the Lofubu, called Muatize or Motize. The seam is in +the perpendicular bank, and dips into the rivulet, or in a northerly +direction. There is, first of all, a seam 10 inches in diameter, then +some shale, below which there is another seam, 58 inches of which are +seen, and, as the bottom touches the water of the Muatize, it may be +more. This part of the seam is about 30 yards long. There is then a +fault. About 100 yards higher up the stream black vesicular trap +is seen, penetrating in thin veins the clay shale of the country, +converting it into porcellanite, and partially crystallizing the coal +with which it came into contact. On the right bank of the Lofubu there +is another feeder entering that river near its confluence with the +Muatize, which is called the Morongozi, in which there is another and +still larger bed of coal exposed. Farther up the Lofubu there are other +seams in the rivulets Inyavu and Makare; also several spots in the +Maravi country have the coal cropping out. This has evidently been +brought to the surface by volcanic action at a later period than the +coal formation. + +I also went up the Zambesi, and visited a hot spring called Nyamboronda, +situated in the bed of a small rivulet named Nyaondo, which shows that +igneous action is not yet extinct. We landed at a small rivulet called +Mokorozi, then went a mile or two to the eastward, where we found a hot +fountain at the bottom of a high hill. A little spring bubbles up on one +side of the rivulet Nyaondo, and a great quantity of acrid steam rises +up from the ground adjacent, about 12 feet square of which is so hot +that my companions could not stand on it with their bare feet. There are +several little holes from which the water trickles, but the principal +spring is in a hole a foot in diameter, and about the same in depth. +Numbers of bubbles are constantly rising. The steam feels acrid in the +throat, but is not inflammable, as it did not burn when I held a bunch +of lighted grass over the bubbles. The mercury rises to 158 Deg. when +the thermometer is put into the water in the hole, but after a few +seconds it stands steadily at 160 Deg. Even when flowing over the stones +the water is too hot for the hand. Little fish frequently leap out of +the stream in the bed of which the fountain rises, into the hot +water, and get scalded to death. We saw a frog which had performed the +experiment, and was now cooked. The stones over which the water flows +are incrusted with a white salt, and the water has a saline taste. The +ground has been dug out near the fountain by the natives, in order to +extract the salt it contains. It is situated among rocks of syenitic +porphyry in broad dikes, and gneiss tilted on edge, and having a +strike to the N.E. There are many specimens of half-formed pumice, with +greenstone and lava. Some of the sandstone strata are dislocated by a +hornblende rock and by basalt, the sandstone nearest to the basalt being +converted into quartz. + +The country around, as indeed all the district lying N. and N.W. of +Tete, is hilly, and, the hills being covered with trees, the scenery +is very picturesque. The soil of the valleys is very fruitful and well +cultivated. There would not be much difficulty in working the coal. The +Lofubu is about 60 yards broad; it flows perennially, and at its very +lowest period, which is after September, there is water about 18 inches +deep, which could be navigated in flat-bottomed boats. At the time of +my visit it was full, and the current was very strong. If the small +cataract referred to were to be avoided, the land-carriage beyond would +only be about two miles. The other seams farther up the river may, +after passing the cataract, be approached more easily than that in the +Muatize; as the seam, however, dips down into the stream, no drainage of +the mine would be required, for if water were come to it would run into +the stream. I did not visit the others, but I was informed that there +are seams in the independent native territory as well as in that of the +Portuguese. That in the Nake is in the Banyai country, and, indeed, I +have no doubt but that the whole country between Zumbo and Lupata is a +coal-field of at least 2-1/2 Deg. of latitude in breadth, having many +faults, made during the time of the igneous action. The gray sandstone +rock having silicified trees lying on it is of these dimensions. The +plantation in which the seam of coal exists would be valued among +the Portuguese at about 60 dollars or 12 Pounds, but much more would +probably be asked if a wealthy purchaser appeared. They could not, +however, raise the price very much higher, because estates containing +coal might be had from the native owners at a much cheaper rate. The +wages of free laborers, when employed in such work as gold-washing, +agriculture, or digging coal, is 2 yards of unbleached calico per day. +They might be got to work cheaper if engaged by the moon, or for about +16 yards per month. For masons and carpenters even, the ordinary rate is +2 yards per day. This is called 1 braca. Tradesmen from Kilimane demand +4 bracas, or 8 yards, per day. English or American unbleached calico is +the only currency used. The carriage of goods up the river to Tete adds +about 10 per cent. to their cost. The usual conveyance is by means of +very large canoes and launches built at Senna. + +The amount of merchandise brought up during the five months of peace +previous to my visit was of the value of 30,000 dollars, or about 6000 +Pounds. The annual supply of goods for trade is about 15,000 Pounds, +being calico, thick brass wire, beads, gunpowder, and guns. The quantity +of the latter is, however, small, as the government of Mozambique made +that article contraband after the commencement of the war. Goods, when +traded with in the tribes around the Portuguese, produce a profit +of only about 10 per cent., the articles traded in being ivory and +gold-dust. A little oil and wheat are exported, but nothing else. Trade +with the tribes beyond the exclusive ones is much better. Thirty brass +rings cost 10s. at Senna, 1 Pound at Tete, and 2 Pounds beyond the +tribes in the vicinity of Tete; these are a good price for a penful of +gold-dust of the value of 2 Pounds. The plantations of coffee, which, +previous to the commencement of the slave-trade, yielded one material +for exportation, are now deserted, and it is difficult to find a single +tree. The indigo ('Indigofera argentea', the common wild indigo of +Africa) is found growing every where, and large quantities of the +senna-plant* grow in the village of Tete and other parts, but neither +indigo nor senna is collected. Calumba-root, which is found in abundance +in some parts farther down the river, is bought by the Americans, it is +said, to use as a dye-stuff. A kind of sarsaparilla, or a plant which is +believed by the Portuguese to be such, is found from Londa to Senna, but +has never been exported. + + * These appear to belong to 'Cassia acutifolia', or true senna + of commerce, found in various parts of Africa and India.--Dr. + Hooker. + +The price of provisions is low, but very much higher than previous to +the commencement of the war. Two yards of calico are demanded for six +fowls; this is considered very dear, because, before the war, the same +quantity of calico was worth 24 fowls. Grain is sold in little bags made +from the leaves of the palmyra, like those in which we receive sugar. +They are called panjas, and each panja weighs between 30 and 40 lbs. The +panja of wheat at Tete is worth a dollar, or 5s.; but the native grain +may be obtained among the islands below Lupata at the rate of three +panjas for two yards of calico. The highest articles of consumption are +tea and coffee, the tea being often as high as 15s. a pound. Food is +cheaper down the river below Lupata, and, previous to the war, the +islands which stud the Zambesi were all inhabited, and, the soil being +exceedingly fertile, grain and fowls could be got to any amount. The +inhabitants disappeared before their enemies the Landeens, but are +beginning to return since the peace. They have no cattle, the only place +where we found no tsetse being the district of Tete itself; and the +cattle in the possession of the Portuguese are a mere remnant of what +they formerly owned. + +When visiting the hot fountain, I examined what were formerly the +gold-washings in the rivulet Mokoroze, which is nearly on the 16th +parallel of latitude. The banks are covered with large groves of fine +mango-trees, among which the Portuguese lived while superintending the +washing for the precious metal. The process of washing is very laborious +and tedious. A quantity of sand is put into a wooden bowl with water; +a half rotatory motion is given to the dish, which causes the coarser +particles of sand to collect on one side of the bottom. These are +carefully removed with the hand, and the process of rotation renewed +until the whole of the sand is taken away, and the gold alone remains. +It is found in very minute scales, and, unless I had been assured to the +contrary, I should have taken it to be mica, for, knowing the gold to be +of greater specific gravity than the sand, I imagined that a stream +of water would remove the latter and leave the former; but here the +practice is to remove the whole of the sand by the hand. This process +was, no doubt, a profitable one to the Portuguese, and it is probable +that, with the improved plan by means of mercury, the sands would +be lucrative. I had an opportunity of examining the gold-dust from +different parts to the east and northeast of Tete. There are six +well-known washing-places. These are called Mashinga, Shindundo, +Missala, Kapata, Mano, and Jawa. From the description of the rock I +received, I suppose gold is found both in clay shale and quartz. At the +range Mushinga to the N.N.W. the rock is said to be so soft that the +women pound it into powder in wooden mortars previous to washing. + +Round toward the westward, the old Portuguese indicate a station which +was near to Zumbo on the River Panyame, and called Dambarari, near which +much gold was found. Farther west lay the now unknown kingdom of Abutua, +which was formerly famous for the metal; and then, coming round toward +the east, we have the gold-washings of the Mashona, or Bazizulu, and, +farther east, that of Manica, where gold is found much more abundantly +than in any other part, and which has been supposed by some to be the +Ophir of King Solomon. I saw the gold from this quarter as large as +grains of wheat, that found in the rivers which run into the coal-field +being in very minute scales. If we place one leg of the compasses at +Tete, and extend the other three and a half degrees, bringing it round +from the northeast of Tete by west, and then to the southeast, we nearly +touch or include all the known gold-producing country. As the gold +on this circumference is found in coarser grains than in the streams +running toward the centre, or Tete, I imagine that the real gold-field +lies round about the coal-field; and, if I am right in the conjecture, +then we have coal encircled by a gold-field, and abundance of wood, +water, and provisions--a combination not often met with in the world. +The inhabitants are not unfavorable to washings, conducted on the +principle formerly mentioned. At present they wash only when in want of +a little calico. They know the value of gold perfectly well, for they +bring it for sale in goose-quills, and demand 24 yards of calico for one +penful. When the rivers in the district of Manica and other gold-washing +places have been flooded, they leave a coating of mud on the banks. The +natives observe the spots which dry soonest, and commence digging there, +in firm belief that gold lies beneath. They are said not to dig deeper +than their chins, believing that if they did so the ground would fall in +and kill them. When they find a 'piece' or flake of gold, they bury it +again, from the superstitious idea that this is the seed of the gold, +and, though they know the value of it well, they prefer losing it rather +than the whole future crop. This conduct seemed to me so very unlikely +in men who bring the dust in quills, and even put in a few seeds of a +certain plant as a charm to prevent their losing any of it on the way, +that I doubted the authority of my informant; but I found the report +verified by all the Portuguese who knew the native language and mode of +thinking, and give the statement for what it is worth. If it is really +practiced, the custom may have been introduced by some knowing one +who wished to defraud the chiefs of their due; for we are informed in +Portuguese history that in former times these pieces or flakes of gold +were considered the perquisites of the chiefs. + +Major Sicard, the commandant, whose kindness to me and my people was +unbounded, presented a rosary made of the gold of the country, the +workmanship of a native of Tete, to my little daughter; also specimens +of the gold-dust of three different places, which, with the coal of +Muatize and Morongoze, are deposited in the Museum of Practical Geology, +Jermyn Street, London. + +All the cultivation is carried on with hoes in the native manner, +and considerable quantities of 'Holcus sorghum', maize, 'Pennisetum +typhoideum', or lotsa of the Balonda, millet, rice, and wheat are +raised, as also several kinds of beans--one of which, called "litloo" by +the Bechuanas, yields under ground, as well as the 'Arachis hypogaea', +or ground-nut; with cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons. The wheat is sown +in low-lying places which are annually flooded by the Zambesi. When the +waters retire, the women drop a few grains in a hole made with a hoe, +then push back the soil with the foot. One weeding alone is required +before the grain comes to maturity. This simple process represents all +our subsoil plowing, liming, manuring, and harrowing, for in four months +after planting a good crop is ready for the sickle, and has been +known to yield a hundred-fold. It flourished still more at Zumbo. No +irrigation is required, because here there are gentle rains, almost +like mist, in winter, which go by the name of "wheat-showers", and are +unknown in the interior, where no winter rain ever falls. The rains +at Tete come from the east, though the prevailing winds come from the +S.S.E. The finest portion of the flour does not make bread nearly so +white as the seconds, and here the boyaloa (pombe), or native beer, +is employed to mix with the flour instead of yeast. It makes excellent +bread. At Kilimane, where the cocoanut palm abounds, the toddy from it, +called "sura", is used for the same purpose, and makes the bread still +lighter. + +As it was necessary to leave most of my men at this place, Major Sicard +gave them a portion of land on which to cultivate their own food, +generously supplying them with corn in the mean time. He also said that +my young men might go and hunt elephants in company with his servants, +and purchase goods with both the ivory and dried meat, in order that +they might have something to take with them on their return to Sekeletu. +The men were delighted with his liberality, and soon sixty or seventy of +them set off to engage in this enterprise. There was no calico to be +had at this time in Tete, but the commandant handsomely furnished my men +with clothing. I was in a state of want myself, and, though I pressed +him to take payment in ivory for both myself and men, he refused all +recompense. I shall ever remember his kindness with deep gratitude. He +has written me, since my arrival in England, that my men had killed four +elephants in the course of two months after my departure. + +On the day of my arrival I was visited by all the gentlemen of the +village, both white and colored, including the padre. Not one of them +had any idea as to where the source of the Zambesi lay. They sent for +the best traveled natives, but none of them knew the river even as +far as Kansala. The father of one of the rebels who had been fighting +against them had been a great traveler to the southwest, and had even +heard of our visit to Lake Ngami; but he was equally ignorant with all +the others that the Zambesi flowed in the centre of the country. They +had, however, more knowledge of the country to the north of Tete than I +had. One man, who had gone to Cazembe with Major Monteiro, stated +that he had seen the Luapura or Loapula flowing past the town of that +chieftain into the Luameji or Leeambye, but imagined that it found its +way, somehow or other, into Angola. The fact that sometimes rivers were +seen to flow like this toward the centre of the country, led geographers +to the supposition that inner Africa was composed of elevated sandy +plains, into which rivers ran and were lost. One of the gentlemen +present, Senhor Candido, had visited a lake 45 days to the N.N.W. of +Tete, which is probably the Lake Maravi of geographers, as in going +thither they pass through the people of that name. The inhabitants of +its southern coast are named Shiva; those on the north, Mujao; and they +call the lake Nyanja or Nyanje, which simply means a large water, or +bed of a large river. A high mountain stands in the middle of it, called +Murombo or Murombola, which is inhabited by people who have much cattle. +He stated that he crossed the Nyanja at a narrow part, and was 36 hours +in the passage. The canoes were punted the whole way, and, if we take +the rate about two miles per hour, it may be sixty or seventy miles in +breadth. The country all round was composed of level plains covered with +grass, and, indeed, in going thither they traveled seven or eight days +without wood, and cooked their food with grass and stalks of native +corn alone. The people sold their cattle at a very cheap rate. From the +southern extremity of the lake two rivers issue forth: one, named after +itself, the Nyanja, which passes into the sea on the east coast under +another name; and the Shire, which flows into the Zambesi a little below +Senna. The Shire is named Shirwa at its point of departure from the +lake, and Senhor Candido was informed, when there, that the lake was +simply an expansion of the River Nyanja, which comes from the north +and encircles the mountain Murombo, the meaning of which is junction +or union, in reference to the water having parted at its northern +extremity, and united again at its southern. The Shire flows through +a low, flat, marshy country, but abounding in population, and they are +said to be brave. The Portuguese are unable to navigate the Shire up to +the Lake Nyanja, because of the great abundance of a water-plant which +requires no soil, and which they name "alfacinya" ('Pistia stratiotes'), +from its resemblance to a lettuce. This completely obstructs the +progress of canoes. In confirmation of this I may state that, when I +passed the mouth of the Shire, great quantities of this same plant were +floating from it into the Zambesi, and many parts of the banks below +were covered with the dead plants. + +Senhor Candido stated that slight earthquakes have happened several +times in the country of the Maravi, and at no great distance from Tete. +The motion seems to come from the eastward, and never to have lasted +more than a few seconds. They are named in the Maravi tongue "shiwo", +and in that of the people of Tete "shitakoteko", or "shivering". This +agrees exactly with what has taken place in the coast of Mozambique--a +few slight shocks of short duration, and all appearing to come from the +east. At Senna, too, a single shock has been felt several times, which +shook the doors and windows, and made the glasses jingle. Both Tete and +Senna have hot springs in their vicinity, but the shocks seemed to come, +not from them, but from the east, and proceed to the west. They are +probably connected with the active volcanoes in the island of Bourbon. + +As Senhor Candido holds the office of judge in all the disputes of the +natives, and knows their language perfectly, his statement may be relied +on that all the natives of this region have a clear idea of a Supreme +Being, the maker and governor of all things. He is named "Morimo", +"Molungo", "Reza", "Mpambe", in the different dialects spoken. The +Barotse name him "Nyampi", and the Balonda "Zambi". All promptly +acknowledge him as the ruler over all. They also fully believe in the +soul's continued existence apart from the body, and visit the graves +of relatives, making offerings of food, beer, etc. When undergoing the +ordeal, they hold up their hands to the Ruler of Heaven, as if appealing +to him to assert their innocence. When they escape, or recover from +sickness, or are delivered from any danger, they offer a sacrifice of a +fowl or a sheep, pouring out the blood as a libation to the soul of some +departed relative. They believe in the transmigration of souls, and +also that while persons are still living they may enter into lions and +alligators, and then return again to their own bodies. + +While still at Tete the son of Monomotapa paid the commandant a visit. +He is named Mozungo, or "White Man", has a narrow tapering head, and +probably none of the ability or energy his father possessed. He was +the favorite of his father, who hoped that he would occupy his place. +A strong party, however, in the tribe placed Katalosa in the +chieftainship, and the son became, as they say, a child of this man. The +Portuguese have repeatedly received offers of territory if they would +only attend the interment of the departed chief with troops, fire off +many rounds of cartridges over the grave, and then give eclat to the +installment of the new chief. Their presence would probably influence +the election, for many would vote on the side of power, and a candidate +might feel it worth while to grant a good piece of land, if thereby he +could secure the chieftainship to himself. When the Portuguese traders +wish to pass into the country beyond Katalosa, they present him with +about thirty-two yards of calico and some other goods, and he then gives +them leave to pass in whatever direction they choose to go. They must, +however, give certain quantities of cloth to a number of inferior chiefs +beside, and they are subject to the game-laws. They have thus a body of +exclusive tribes around them, preventing direct intercourse between them +and the population beyond. It is strange that, when they had the power, +they did not insist on the free navigation of the Zambesi. I can only +account for this in the same way in which I accounted for a similar +state of things in the west. All the traders have been in the hands of +slaves, and have wanted that moral courage which a free man, with free +servants on whom he can depend, usually possesses. If the English had +been here, they would have insisted on the free navigation of this +pathway as an indispensable condition of friendship. The present system +is a serious difficulty in the way of developing the resources of +the country, and might prove fatal to an unarmed expedition. If this +desirable and most fertile field of enterprise is ever to be opened up, +men must proceed on a different plan from that which has been followed, +and I do not apprehend there would be much difficulty in commencing a +new system, if those who undertook it insisted that it is not our +custom to pay for a highway which has not been made by man. The natives +themselves would not deny that the river is free to those who do not +trade in slaves. If, in addition to an open, frank explanation, a small +subsidy were given to the paramount chief, the willing consent of all +the subordinates would soon be secured. + +On the 1st of April I went to see the site of a former establishment +of the Jesuits, called Micombo, about ten miles S.E. of Tete. Like all +their settlements I have seen, both judgment and taste had been employed +in the selection of the site. A little stream of mineral water had been +collected in a tank and conducted to their house, before which was a +little garden for raising vegetables at times of the year when no rain +falls. It is now buried in a deep shady grove of mango-trees. I was +accompanied by Captain Nunes, whose great-grandfather, also a captain in +the time of the Marquis of Pombal, received sealed orders, to be opened +only on a certain day. When that day arrived, he found the command to go +with his company, seize all the Jesuits of this establishment, and march +them as prisoners to the coast. The riches of the fraternity, which were +immense, were taken possession of by the state. Large quantities of gold +had often been sent to their superiors at Goa, inclosed in images. The +Jesuits here do not seem to have possessed the sympathies of the people +as their brethren in Angola did. They were keen traders in ivory and +gold-dust. All praise their industry. Whatever they did, they did it +with all their might, and probably their successful labors in securing +the chief part of the trade to themselves had excited the envy of the +laity. None of the natives here can read; and though the Jesuits are +said to have translated some of the prayers into the language of the +country, I was unable to obtain a copy. The only religious teachers now +in this part of the country are two gentlemen of color, natives of +Goa. The one who officiates at Tete, named Pedro Antonio d'Araujo, is +a graduate in Dogmatic Theology and Moral Philosophy. There is but a +single school in Tete, and it is attended only by the native Portuguese +children, who are taught to read and write. The black population is +totally uncared for. The soldiers are marched every Sunday to hear mass, +and but few others attend church. During the period of my stay, a kind +of theatrical representation of our Savior's passion and resurrection +was performed. The images and other paraphernalia used were of great +value, but the present riches of the Church are nothing to what it once +possessed. The commandant is obliged to lock up all the gold and silver +in the fort for safety, though not from any apprehension of its being +stolen by the people, for they have a dread of sacrilege. + +The state of religion and education is, I am sorry to say, as low as +that of commerce; but the European Portuguese value education highly, +and send their children to Goa and elsewhere for instruction in the +higher branches. There is not a single bookseller's shop, however, in +either eastern or western Africa. Even Loanda, with its 12,000 or 14,000 +souls, can not boast of one store for the sale of food for the mind. + +On the 2d the Zambesi suddenly rose several feet in height. Three such +floods are expected annually, but this year there were four. This last +was accompanied by discoloration, and must have been caused by another +great fall of rain east of the ridge. We had observed a flood of +discolored water when we reached the river at the Kafue; it then fell +two feet, and from subsequent rains again rose so high that we were +obliged to leave it when opposite the hill Pinkwe. About the 10th of +March the river rose several feet with comparatively clear water, and +it continued to rise until the 21st, with but very slight discoloration. +This gradual rise was the greatest, and was probably caused by the water +of inundation in the interior. The sudden rise which happened on the +2d, being deeply discolored, showed again the effect of rains at a +comparatively short distance. The fact of the river rising three or four +times annually, and the one flood of inundation being mixed with the +others, may account for the Portuguese not recognizing the phenomenon of +the periodical inundation, so well known in the central country. + +The independent natives cultivate a little cotton, but it is not at all +equal, either in quantity or quality, to what we found in Angola. The +pile is short, and it clings to the seed so much that they use an iron +roller to detach it. The soil, however, is equal to the production of +any tropical plant or fruit. The natives have never been encouraged to +cultivate cotton for sale, nor has any new variety been introduced. We +saw no palm-oil-trees, the oil which is occasionally exported being from +the ground-nut. One of the merchants of Tete had a mill of the rudest +construction for grinding this nut, which was driven by donkeys. It +was the only specimen of a machine I could exhibit to my men. A very +superior kind of salad oil is obtained from the seeds of cucumbers, and +is much used in native cookery. + +An offer, said to have been made by the "Times", having excited +attention even in this distant part, I asked the commandant if he knew +of any plant fit for the production of paper. He procured specimens of +the fibrous tissue of a species of aloe, named Conge, and some also from +the root of a wild date, and, lastly, of a plant named Buaze, the fibres +of which, though useless for the manufacture of paper, are probably +a suitable substitute for flax. I submitted a small quantity of these +fibres to Messrs. Pye, Brothers, of London, who have invented a superior +mode for the preparation of such tissues for the manufacturer. They most +politely undertook the examination, and have given a favorable opinion +of the Buaze, as may be seen in the note below.* + + * + 80 Lombard Street, 20th March, 1857. + + Dear Sir,--We have the pleasure to return you the specimens of + fibrous plants from the Zambesi River, on which you were + desirous to see the effects of our treatment; we therefore + inclose to you, + + No. 1. Buaze, in the state received from you. + 1 A. Do. as prepared by us. + 1 B. The tow which has come from it in hackling. + No. 2. Conge, as received from you. + 2 A. Do. as prepared by us. + + With regard to both these fibres, we must state that the VERY + MINUTE QUANTITY of each specimen has prevented our subjecting + them to any thing like the full treatment of our process, and + we can therefore only give you an APPROXIMATE idea of their + value. + + The Buaze evidently possesses a very strong and fine fibre, + assimilating to flax in its character, but we believe, when + treated IN QUANTITY by our process, it would show both a + stronger and finer fibre than flax; but being unable to apply + the rolling or pressing processes with any efficiency to so + very small a quantity, the gums are not yet so perfectly + extracted as they would be, nor the fibre opened out to so + fine a quality as it would then exhibit. + + This is even yet more the case with the Conge, which, being + naturally a harsh fibre, full of gums, wants exactly that + powerful treatment which our process is calculated to give it, + but which can not be applied to such miniature specimens. We + do not therefore consider this as more than half treated, its + fibre consequently remaining yet harsh, and coarse, and stiff, + as compared with what it would be if treated IN QUANTITY. + + Judging that it would be satisfactory to you to be in + possession of the best practical opinion to be obtained on + such a subject, we took the liberty of forwarding your little + specimens to Messrs. Marshall, of Leeds, who have kindly + favored us with the following observations on them: + + "We have examined the samples you sent us yesterday, and think + the Conge or aloe fibre would be of no use to us, but the + Buaze fibre appears to resemble flax, and as prepared by you + will be equal to flax worth 50 Pounds or 60 Pounds per ton, + but we could hardly speak positively to the value unless we + had 1 cwt. or 2 cwt. to try on our machinery. However, we + think the result is promising, and we hope further inquiry + will be made as to the probable supply of the material." + + We are, dear sir, your very obedient servants, Pye, Brothers. + + The Rev. Dr. Livingstone. + + +A representation of the plant is given in the annexed woodcut,* as a +help to its identification. I was unable to procure either the flowers +or fruit; but, as it is not recognized at sight by that accomplished +botanist and eminent traveler, Dr. J. D. Hooker, it may safely be +concluded that it is quite unknown to botanists. It is stated by the +Portuguese to grow in large quantities in the Maravi country north of +the Zambesi, but it is not cultivated, and the only known use it has +been put to is in making threads on which the natives string their +beads. Elsewhere the split tendons of animals are employed for this +purpose. This seems to be of equal strength, for a firm thread of it +feels like catgut in the hand, and would rather cut the fingers than +break. + + * Unfortunately, this woodcut can not be represented in this + ASCII text, but buaze, or bwazi, is 'Securidaca + longipedunculata'.--A. L., 1997. + +Having waited a month for the commencement of the healthy season at +Kilimane, I would have started at the beginning of April, but tarried a +few days in order that the moon might make her appearance, and enable me +to take lunar observations on my way down the river. A sudden change of +temperature happening on the 4th, simultaneously with the appearance of +the new moon, the commandant and myself, with nearly every person in the +house, were laid up with a severe attack of fever. I soon recovered by +the use of my wonted remedies, but Major Sicard and his little boy were +confined much longer. There was a general fall of 4 Deg. of temperature +from the middle of March, 84 Deg. at 9 A.M., and 87 Deg. at 9 P.M.; +the greatest heat being 90 Deg. at midday, and the lowest 81 Deg. +at sunrise. It afforded me pleasure to attend the invalids in their +sickness, though I was unable to show a tithe of the gratitude I felt +for the commandant's increasing kindness. My quinine and other remedies +were nearly all expended, and no fresh supply was to be found here, +there being no doctors at Tete, and only one apothecary with the +troops, whose stock of medicine was also small. The Portuguese, +however, informed me that they had the cinchona bark growing in their +country--that there was a little of it to be found at Tete--whole +forests of it at Senna and near the delta of Kilimane. It seems quite +a providential arrangement that the remedy for fever should be found in +the greatest abundance where it is most needed. On seeing the leaves, +I stated that it was not the 'Cinchona longifolia' from which it +is supposed the quinine of commerce is extracted, but the name and +properties of this bark made me imagine that it was a cinchonaceous +tree. I could not get the flower, but when I went to Senna I tried to +bring away a few small living trees with earth in a box. They, however, +all died when we came to Kilimane. Failing in this mode of testing +the point, I submitted a few leaves and seed-vessels to my friend, +Dr. Hooker, who kindly informs me that they belong "apparently to an +apocyneous plant, very nearly allied to the Malouetia Heudlotii (of +Decaisne), a native of Senegambia." Dr. H. adds, "Various plants of this +natural order are reputed powerful febrifuges, and some of them are +said to equal the cinchona in their effects." It is called in the native +tongue Kumbanzo. + +The flowers are reported to be white. The pods are in pairs, a foot or +fifteen inches in length, and contain a groove on their inner sides. +The thick soft bark of the root is the part used by the natives; the +Portuguese use that of the tree itself. I immediately began to use a +decoction of the bark of the root, and my men found it so efficacious +that they collected small quantities of it for themselves, and kept it +in little bags for future use. Some of them said that they knew it in +their own country, but I never happened to observe it. The decoction is +given after the first paroxysm of the complaint is over. The Portuguese +believe it to have the same effects as the quinine, and it may prove a +substitute for that invaluable medicine. + +There are numbers of other medicines in use among the natives, but I +have always been obliged to regret want of time to ascertain which were +useful and which of no value. We find a medicine in use by a tribe +in one part of the country, and the same plant employed by a tribe a +thousand miles distant. This surely must arise from some inherent virtue +in the plant. The Boers under Potgeiter visited Delgoa Bay for the first +time about ten years ago, in order to secure a port on the east coast +for their republic. They had come from a part of the interior where the +disease called croup occasionally prevails. There was no appearance of +the disease among them at the period of their visit, but the Portuguese +inhabitants of that bay found that they had left it among them, +and several adults were cut off by a form of the complaint called +'Laryngismus stridulus', the disease of which the great Washington died. +Similar cases have occurred in the South Sea Islands. Ships have left +diseases from which no one on board was suffering at the time of their +visit. Many of the inhabitants here were cut down, usually in three +days from their first attack, until a native doctor adopted the plan of +scratching the root of the tongue freely with a certain root, and giving +a piece of it to be chewed. The cure may have been effected by the +scarification only, but the Portuguese have the strongest faith in the +virtues of the root, and always keep some of it within reach. + +There are also other plants which the natives use in the treatment of +fever, and some of them produce 'diaphoresis' in a short space of +time. It is certain that we have got the knowledge of the most potent +febrifuge in our pharmacopoeia from the natives of another country. We +have no cure for cholera and some other diseases. It might be worth the +investigation of those who visit Africa to try and find other remedies +in a somewhat similar way to that in which we found the quinine.* + + * I add the native names of a few of their remedies in order + to assist the inquirer: Mupanda panda: this is used in fever + for producing perspiration; the leaves are named Chirussa; the + roots dye red, and are very astringent. Goho or Go-o: this is + the ordeal medicine; it is both purgative and emetic. Mutuva + or Mutumbue: this plant contains so much oil that it serves + as lights in Londa; it is an emollient drink for the cure of + coughs, and the pounded leaves answer as soap to wash the + head. Nyamucu ucu has a curious softening effect on old dry + grain. Mussakasi is believed to remove the effects of the Go- + o. Mudama is a stringent vermifuge. Mapubuza dyes a red + color. Musikizi yields an oil. Shinkondo: a virulent poison; + the Maravi use it in their ordeal, and it is very fatal. + Kanunka utare is said to expel serpents and rats by its + pungent smell, which is not at all disagreeable to man; this + is probably a kind of 'Zanthoxylon', perhaps the Z. + melancantha of Western Africa, as it is used to expel rats and + serpents there. Mussonzoa dyes cloth black. Mussio: the + beans of this also dye black. Kangome, with flowers and fruit + like Mocha coffee; the leaves are much like those of the sloe, + and the seeds are used as coffee or eaten as beans. Kanembe- + embe: the pounded leaves used as an extemporaneous glue for + mending broken vessels. Katunguru is used for killing fish. + Mutavea Nyerere: an active caustic. Mudiacoro: also an + external caustic, and used internally. Kapande: another + ordeal plant, but used to produce 'diaphoresis'. Karumgasura: + also diaphoretic. Munyazi yields an oil, and is one of the + ingredients for curing the wounds of poisoned arrows. Uombue: + a large root employed in killing fish. Kakumate: used in + intermittents. Musheteko: applied to ulcers, and the infusion + also internally in amenorrhoea. Inyakanyanya: this is seen in + small, dark-colored, crooked roots of pleasant aromatic smell + and slightly bitter taste, and is highly extolled in the + treatment of fever; it is found in Manica. Eskinencia: used + in croup and sore-throat. Itaca or Itaka: for diaphoresis in + fever; this root is brought as an article of barter by the + Arabs to Kilimane; the natives purchase it eagerly. + Mukundukundu: a decoction used as a febrifuge in the same way + as quinine; it grows plentifully at Shupanga, and the wood is + used as masts for launches. I may here add the recipe of + Brother Pedro of Zumbo for the cure of poisoned wounds, in + order to show the similarity of practice among the natives of + the Zambesi, from whom, in all probability, he acquired his + knowledge, and the Bushmen of the Kalahari. It consists of + equal parts of the roots of the Calumba, Musheteko, Abutua, + Batatinya, Paregekanto, Itaka, or Kapande, put into a bottle + and covered with common castor-oil. As I have before + observed, I believe the oily ingredient is the effectual one, + and ought to be tried by any one who has the misfortune to get + wounded by a Bushman's or Banyai arrow. + +The only other metal, besides gold, we have in abundance in this region, +is iron, and that is of excellent quality. In some places it is obtained +from what is called the specular iron ore, and also from black oxide. +The latter has been well roasted in the operations of nature, and +contains a large proportion of the metal. It occurs generally in tears +or rounded lumps, and is but slightly magnetic. When found in the beds +of rivers, the natives know of its existence by the quantity of oxide +on the surface, and they find no difficulty in digging it with pointed +sticks. They consider English iron as "rotten"; and I have seen, when a +javelin of their own iron lighted on the cranium of a hippopotamus, it +curled up like the proboscis of a butterfly, and the owner would prepare +it for future use by straightening it COLD with two stones. I brought +home some of the hoes which Sekeletu gave me to purchase a canoe, also +some others obtained in Kilimane, and they have been found of such good +quality that a friend of mine in Birmingham has made an Enfield rifle of +them.* + + * The following remarks are by a practical blacksmith, one of + the most experienced men in the gun-trade. In this trade + various qualities of iron are used, and close attention is + required to secure for each purpose the quality of iron + peculiarly adapted to it: + + The iron in the two spades strongly resembles Swedish or + Russian; it is highly carbonized. + + The same qualities are found in both spades. + + When chilled in water it has all the properties of steel: see + the piece marked I, chilled at one end, and left soft at the + other. + + When worked hot, it is very malleable: but cold, it breaks + quite short and brittle. + + The great irregularity found in the working of the iron + affords evidence that it has been prepared by inexperienced + hands. + + This is shown in the bending of the small spade; the thick + portion retains its crystallized nature, while the thin part + has been changed by the hammering it has undergone. + + The large spade shows a very brittle fracture. + + The iron is too brittle for gun-work; it would be liable to + break. + + This iron, if REPEATEDLY heated and hammered, would become + decarbonized, and would then possess the qualities found in + the spear-head, which, after being curled up by being struck + against a hard substance, was restored, by hammering, to its + original form without injury. + + The piece of iron marked II is a piece of gun-iron of fibrous + quality, such as will bend without breaking. + + The piece marked III is of crystalline quality; it has been + submitted to a process which has changed it to IIII; III and + IIII are cut from the same bar. The spade-iron has been + submitted to the same process, but no corresponding effect can + be produced. + +The iron ore exists in great abundance, but I did not find any limestone +in its immediate vicinity. So far as I could learn, there is neither +copper nor silver. Malachite is worked by the people of Cazembe, but, as +I did not see it, nor any other metal, I can say nothing about it. A +few precious stones are met with, and some parts are quite covered with +agates. The mineralogy of the district, however, has not been explored +by any one competent to the task. + +When my friend the commandant was fairly recovered, and I myself felt +strong again, I prepared to descend the Zambesi. A number of my men +were out elephant-hunting, and others had established a brisk trade in +firewood, as their countrymen did at Loanda. I chose sixteen of those +who could manage canoes to convey me down the river. Many more would +have come, but we were informed that there had been a failure of the +crops at Kilimane from the rains not coming at the proper time, and +thousands had died of hunger. I did not hear of a single effort having +been made to relieve the famishing by sending them food down the river. +Those who perished were mostly slaves, and others seemed to think that +their masters ought to pay for their relief. The sufferers were chiefly +among those natives who inhabit the delta, and who are subject to the +Portuguese. They are in a state of slavery, but are kept on farms and +mildly treated. Many yield a certain rental of grain only to their +owners, and are otherwise free. Eight thousand are said to have +perished. Major Sicard lent me a boat which had been built on the river, +and sent also Lieutenant Miranda to conduct me to the coast. + +A Portuguese lady who had come with her brother from Lisbon, having been +suffering for some days from a severe attack of fever, died about three +o'clock in the morning of the 20th of April. The heat of the body having +continued unabated till six o'clock, I was called in, and found her +bosom quite as warm as I ever did in a living case of fever. This +continued for three hours more. As I had never seen a case in which +fever-heat continued so long after death, I delayed the funeral until +unmistakable symptoms of dissolution occurred. She was a widow, only +twenty-two years of age, and had been ten years in Africa. I attended +the funeral in the evening, and was struck by the custom of the country. +A number of slaves preceded us, and fired off many rounds of gunpowder +in front of the body. When a person of much popularity is buried, all +the surrounding chiefs send deputations to fire over the grave. On one +occasion at Tete, more than thirty barrels of gunpowder were expended. +Early in the morning of the 21st the slaves of the deceased lady's +brother went round the village making a lamentation, and drums were +beaten all day, as they are at such times among the heathen. + +The commandant provided for the journey most abundantly, and gave orders +to Lieutenant Miranda that I should not be allowed to pay for any thing +all the way to the coast, and sent messages to his friends Senhors +Ferrao, Isidore, Asevedo, and Nunes, to treat me as they would himself. +From every one of these gentlemen I am happy to acknowledge that I +received most disinterested kindness, and I ought to speak well forever +of Portuguese hospitality. I have noted each little act of civility +received, because somehow or other we have come to hold the Portuguese +character in rather a low estimation. This may have arisen partly from +the pertinacity with which some of them have pursued the slave-trade, +and partly from the contrast which they now offer to their illustrious +ancestors--the foremost navigators of the world. If my specification of +their kindnesses will tend to engender a more respectful feeling to the +nation, I shall consider myself well rewarded. We had three large canoes +in the company which had lately come up with goods from Senna. They +are made very large and strong, much larger than any we ever saw in the +interior, and might strike with great force against a rock and not be +broken. The men sit at the stern when paddling, and there is usually a +little shed made over a part of the canoe to shade the passengers from +the sun. The boat in which I went was furnished with such a covering, so +I sat quite comfortably. + + + + +Chapter 32. + +Leave Tete and proceed down the River--Pass the Stockade of Bonga-- +Gorge of Lupata--"Spine of the World"--Width of River--Islands--War +Drum at Shiramba--Canoe Navigation--Reach Senna--Its ruinous +State--Landeens levy Fines upon the Inhabitants--Cowardice of native +Militia--State of the Revenue--No direct Trade with Portugal--Attempts +to revive the Trade of Eastern Africa--Country round Senna--Gorongozo, +a Jesuit Station--Manica, the best Gold Region in Eastern +Africa--Boat-building at Senna--Our Departure--Capture of a Rebel +Stockade--Plants Alfacinya and Njefu at the Confluence of the +Shire--Landeen Opinion of the Whites--Mazaro, the point reached by +Captain Parker--His Opinion respecting the Navigation of the River +from this to the Ocean--Lieutenant Hoskins' Remarks on the same +subject--Fever, its Effects--Kindly received into the House of Colonel +Nunes at Kilimane--Forethought of Captain Nolloth and Dr. Walsh--Joy +imbittered--Deep Obligations to the Earl of Clarendon, etc.--On +developing Resources of the Interior--Desirableness of Missionary +Societies selecting healthy Stations--Arrangements on leaving my Men-- +Retrospect--Probable Influence of the Discoveries on Slavery--Supply of +Cotton, Sugar, etc., by Free Labor--Commercial Stations--Development +of the Resources of Africa a Work of Time--Site of Kilimane-- +Unhealthiness--Death of a shipwrecked Crew from Fever--The Captain +saved by Quinine--Arrival of H. M. Brig "Frolic"--Anxiety of one of my +Men to go to England--Rough Passage in the Boats to the Ship--Sekwebu's +Alarm--Sail for Mauritius--Sekwebu on board; he becomes insane; drowns +himself--Kindness of Major-General C. M. Hay--Escape Shipwreck--Reach +Home. + + + +We left Tete at noon on the 22d, and in the afternoon arrived at the +garden of Senhor A. Manoel de Gomez, son-in-law and nephew of Bonga. The +Commandant of Tete had sent a letter to the rebel Bonga, stating that +he ought to treat me kindly, and he had deputed his son-in-law to be my +host. Bonga is not at all equal to his father Nyaude, who was a man of +great ability. He is also in bad odor with the Portuguese, because +he receives all runaway slaves and criminals. He does not trust the +Portuguese, and is reported to be excessively superstitious. I found his +son-in-law, Manoel, extremely friendly, and able to converse in a very +intelligent manner. He was in his garden when we arrived, but soon +dressed himself respectably, and gave us a good tea and dinner. After a +breakfast of tea, roasted eggs, and biscuits next morning, he presented +six fowls and three goats as provisions for the journey. When we parted +from him we passed the stockade of Bonga at the confluence of the +Luenya, but did not go near it, as he is said to be very suspicious. The +Portuguese advised me not to take any observation, as the instruments +might awaken fears in Bonga's mind, but Manoel said I might do so if I +wished; his garden, however, being above the confluence, could not avail +as a geographical point. There are some good houses in the stockade. The +trees of which it is composed seemed to me to be living, and could not +be burned. It was strange to see a stockade menacing the whole commerce +of the river in a situation where the guns of a vessel would have +full play on it, but it is a formidable affair for those who have only +muskets. On one occasion, when Nyaude was attacked by Kisaka, they +fought for weeks; and though Nyaude was reduced to cutting up his copper +anklets for balls, his enemies were not able to enter the stockade. + +On the 24th we sailed only about three hours, as we had done the day +before; but having come to a small island at the western entrance of the +gorge of Lupata, where Dr. Lacerda is said to have taken an astronomical +observation, and called it the island of Mozambique, because it was +believed to be in the same latitude, or 15d 1', I wished to verify +his position, and remained over night: my informants must have been +mistaken, for I found the island of Mozambique here to be lat. 16d 34' +46" S. + +Respecting this range, to which the gorge has given a name, some +Portuguese writers have stated it to be so high that snow lies on it +during the whole year, and that it is composed of marble. It is not +so high in appearance as the Campsie Hills when seen from the Vale of +Clyde. The western side is the most abrupt, and gives the idea of the +greatest height, as it rises up perpendicularly from the water six or +seven hundred feet. As seen from this island, it is certainly no higher +than Arthur's Seat appears from Prince's Street, Edinburgh. The rock +is compact silicious schist of a slightly reddish color, and in thin +strata; the island on which we slept looks as if torn off from the +opposite side of the gorge, for the strata are twisted and torn in every +direction. The eastern side of the range is much more sloping than the +western, covered with trees, and does not give the idea of altitude +so much as the western. It extends a considerable way into the Maganja +country in the north, and then bends round toward the river again, and +ends in the lofty mountain Morumbala, opposite Senna. On the other +or southern side it is straighter, but is said to end in Gorongozo, a +mountain west of the same point. The person who called this Lupata +"the spine of the world" evidently did not mean to say that it was +a translation of the word, for it means a defile or gorge having +perpendicular walls. This range does not deserve the name of either +Cordillera or Spine, unless we are willing to believe that the world has +a very small and very crooked "back-bone". + +We passed through the gorge in two hours, and found it rather tortuous, +and between 200 and 300 yards wide. The river is said to be here always +excessively deep; it seemed to me that a steamer could pass through +it at full speed. At the eastern entrance of Lupata stand two conical +hills; they are composed of porphyry, having large square crystals +therein. These hills are called Moenda en Goma, which means a footprint +of a wild beast. Another conical hill on the opposite bank is named +Kasisi (priest), from having a bald top. We sailed on quickly with the +current of the river, and found that it spread out to more than two +miles in breadth; it is, however, full of islands, which are generally +covered with reeds, and which, previous to the war, were inhabited, and +yielded vast quantities of grain. We usually landed to cook breakfast, +and then went on quickly. The breadth of water between the islands was +now quite sufficient for a sailing vessel to tack, and work her sails +in; the prevailing winds would blow her up the stream; but I regretted +that I had not come when the river was at its lowest rather than at +its highest. The testimony, however, of Captain Parker and Lieutenant +Hoskins, hereafter to be noticed, may be considered conclusive as to the +capabilities of this river for commercial purposes. The Portuguese state +that there is high water during five months of the year, and when it is +low there is always a channel of deep water. But this is very winding; +and as the river wears away some of the islands and forms others, the +course of the channel is often altered. I suppose that an accurate +chart of it made in one year would not be very reliable the next; but I +believe, from all that I can learn, that the river could be navigated in +a small flat-bottomed steamer during the whole year as far as Tete. At +this time a steamer of large size could have floated easily. The river +was measured at the latter place by the Portuguese, and found by them to +be 1050 yards broad. The body of water flowing past when I was there +was very great, and the breadth it occupied when among the islands had a +most imposing effect. I could not get a glimpse of either shore. All the +right bank beyond Lupata is low and flat: on the north, the ranges +of hills and dark lines below them are seen, but from the boat it is +impossible to see the shore. I only guess the breadth of the river to +be two miles; it is probably more. Next day we landed at Shiramba for +breakfast, having sailed 8-1/2 hours from Lupata. This was once the +residence of a Portuguese brigadier, who spent large sums of money in +embellishing his house and gardens: these we found in entire ruin, as +his half-caste son had destroyed all, and then rebelled against the +Portuguese, but with less success than either Nyaude or Kisaka, for he +had been seized and sent a prisoner to Mozambique a short time before +our visit. All the southern shore has been ravaged by the Caffres, +who are here named Landeens, and most of the inhabitants who remain +acknowledge the authority of Bonga, and not of the Portuguese. When at +breakfast, the people of Shiramba commenced beating the drum of war. +Lieutenant Miranda, who was well acquainted with the customs of the +country, immediately started to his feet, and got all the soldiers of +our party under arms; he then demanded of the natives why the drum was +beaten while we were there. They gave an evasive reply; and, as they +employ this means of collecting their neighbors when they intend to rob +canoes, our watchfulness may have prevented their proceeding farther. + +We spent the night of the 26th on the island called Nkuesi, opposite a +remarkable saddle-shaped mountain, and found that we were just on the +17th parallel of latitude. The sail down the river was very fine; the +temperature becoming low, it was pleasant to the feelings; but the +shores being flat and far from us, the scenery was uninteresting. We +breakfasted on the 27th at Pita, and found some half-caste Portuguese +had established themselves there, after fleeing from the opposite +bank to escape Kisaka's people, who were now ravaging all the Maganja +country. On the afternoon of the 27th we arrived at Senna. (Commandant +Isidore's house, 300 yards S.W. of the mud fort on the banks of the +river: lat. 17d 27' 1" S., long. 35d 10' E.) We found Senna to be +twenty-three and a half hours' sail from Tete. We had the current +entirely in our favor, but met various parties in large canoes toiling +laboriously against it. They use long ropes, and pull the boats from the +shore. They usually take about twenty days to ascend the distance we had +descended in about four. The wages paid to boatmen are considered high. +Part of the men who had accompanied me gladly accepted employment from +Lieutenant Miranda to take a load of goods in a canoe from Senna to +Tete. + +I thought the state of Tete quite lamentable, but that of Senna was ten +times worse. At Tete there is some life; here every thing is in a state +of stagnation and ruin. The fort, built of sun-dried bricks, has the +grass growing over the walls, which have been patched in some places by +paling. The Landeens visit the village periodically, and levy fines upon +the inhabitants, as they consider the Portuguese a conquered tribe, and +very rarely does a native come to trade. Senhor Isidore, the commandant, +a man of considerable energy, had proposed to surround the whole village +with palisades as a protection against the Landeens, and the villagers +were to begin this work the day after I left. It was sad to look at the +ruin manifest in every building, but the half-castes appear to be in +league with the rebels and Landeens; for when any attempt is made by +the Portuguese to coerce the enemy or defend themselves, information +is conveyed at once to the Landeen camp, and, though the commandant +prohibits the payment of tribute to the Landeens, on their approach +the half-castes eagerly ransom themselves. When I was there, a party of +Kisaka's people were ravaging the fine country on the opposite shore. +They came down with the prisoners they had captured, and forthwith +the half-castes of Senna went over to buy slaves. Encouraged by this, +Kisaka's people came over into Senna fully armed and beating their +drums, and were received into the house of a native Portuguese. They +had the village at their mercy, yet could have been driven off by half +a dozen policemen. The commandant could only look on with bitter sorrow. +He had soldiers, it is true, but it is notorious that the native +militia of both Senna and Kilimane never think of standing to fight, +but invariably run away, and leave their officers to be killed. They +are brave only among the peaceable inhabitants. One of them, sent from +Kilimane with a packet of letters or expresses, arrived while I was at +Senna. He had been charged to deliver them with all speed, but Senhor +Isidore had in the mean time gone to Kilimane, remained there a +fortnight, and reached Senna again before the courier came. He could not +punish him. We gave him a passage in our boat, but he left us in the way +to visit his wife, and, "on urgent private business," probably gave up +the service altogether, as he did not come to Kilimane all the time I +was there. It is impossible to describe the miserable state of decay +into which the Portuguese possessions here have sunk. The revenues are +not equal to the expenses, and every officer I met told the same tale, +that he had not received one farthing of pay for the last four years. +They are all forced to engage in trade for the support of their +families. Senhor Miranda had been actually engaged against the enemy +during these four years, and had been highly lauded in the commandant's +dispatches to the home government, but when he applied to the Governor +of Kilimane for part of his four years' pay, he offered him twenty +dollars only. Miranda resigned his commission in consequence. The common +soldiers sent out from Portugal received some pay in calico. They all +marry native women, and, the soil being very fertile, the wives find but +little difficulty in supporting their husbands. There is no direct trade +with Portugal. A considerable number of Banians, or natives of India, +come annually in small vessels with cargoes of English and Indian goods +from Bombay. It is not to be wondered at, then, that there have been +attempts made of late years by speculative Portuguese in Lisbon to +revive the trade of Eastern Africa by means of mercantile companies. One +was formally proposed, which was modeled on the plan of our East India +Company; and it was actually imagined that all the forts, harbors, +lands, etc., might be delivered over to a company, which would bind +itself to develop the resources of the country, build schools, make +roads, improve harbors, etc., and, after all, leave the Portuguese the +option of resuming possession. + +Another effort has been made to attract commercial enterprise to this +region by offering any mining company permission to search for the ores +and work them. Such a company, however, would gain but little in the way +of protection or aid from the government of Mozambique, as that can +but barely maintain a hold on its own small possessions; the condition +affixed of importing at the company's own cost a certain number of +Portuguese from the island of Madeira or the Azores, in order to +increase the Portuguese population in Africa, is impolitic. Taxes would +also be levied on the minerals exported. It is noticeable that all the +companies which have been proposed in Portugal have this put prominently +in the preamble, "and for the abolition of the inhuman slave-trade." +This shows either that the statesmen in Portugal are enlightened and +philanthropic, or it may be meant as a trap for English capitalists; I +incline to believe the former. If the Portuguese really wish to develop +the resources of the rich country beyond their possessions, they +ought to invite the co-operation of other nations on equal terms with +themselves. Let the pathway into the interior be free to all; and, +instead of wretched forts, with scarcely an acre of land around them +which can be called their own, let real colonies be made. If, instead of +military establishments, we had civil ones, and saw emigrants going out +with their wives, plows, and seeds, rather than military convicts with +bugles and kettle-drums, we might hope for a return of prosperity to +Eastern Africa. + +The village of Senna stands on the right bank of the Zambesi. There are +many reedy islands in front of it, and there is much bush in the country +adjacent. The soil is fertile, but the village, being in a state of +ruin, and having several pools of stagnant water, is very unhealthy. The +bottom rock is the akose of Brongniart, or granitic grit, and several +conical hills of trap have burst through it. One standing about half a +mile west of the village is called Baramuana, which has another behind +it; hence the name, which means "carry a child on the back". It is 300 +or 400 feet high, and on the top lie two dismounted cannon, which were +used to frighten away the Landeens, who, in one attack upon Senna, +killed 150 of the inhabitants. The prospect from Baramuana is very fine; +below, on the eastward, lies the Zambesi, with the village of Senna; and +some twenty or thirty miles beyond stands the lofty mountain Morumbala, +probably 3000 or 4000 feet high. It is of an oblong shape, and from its +physiognomy, which can be distinctly seen when the sun is in the west, +is evidently igneous. On the northern end there is a hot sulphurous +fountain, which my Portuguese friends refused to allow me to visit, +because the mountain is well peopled, and the mountaineers are +at present not friendly with the Portuguese. They have plenty of +garden-ground and running water on its summit. My friends at Senna +declined the responsibility of taking me into danger. To the north of +Morumbala we have a fine view of the mountains of the Maganja; they here +come close to the river, and terminate in Morumbala. Many of them are +conical, and the Shire is reported to flow among them, and to run on +the Senna side of Morumbala before joining the Zambesi. On seeing the +confluence afterward, close to a low range of hills beyond Morumbala, I +felt inclined to doubt the report, as the Shire must then flow parallel +with the Zambesi, from which Morumbala seems distant only twenty or +thirty miles. All around to the southeast the country is flat, and +covered with forest, but near Senna a number of little abrupt conical +hills diversify the scenery. To the west and north the country is also +flat forest, which gives it a sombre appearance; but just in the haze +of the horizon southwest by south, there rises a mountain range equal in +height to Morumbala, and called Nyamonga. In a clear day another range +beyond this may be seen, which is Gorongozo, once a station of the +Jesuits. Gorongozo is famed for its clear cold waters and healthiness, +and there are some inscriptions engraved on large square slabs on the +top of the mountain, which have probably been the work of the fathers. +As this lies in the direction of a district between Manica and Sofala, +which has been conjectured to be the Ophir of King Solomon, the idea +that first sprang up in my mind was, that these monuments might be more +ancient than the Portuguese; but, on questioning some persons who had +seen them, I found that they were in Roman characters, and did not +deserve a journey of six days to see them. + +Manica lies three days northwest of Gorongozo, and is the best gold +country known in Eastern Africa. The only evidence the Portuguese have +of its being the ancient Ophir is, that at Sofala, its nearest port, +pieces of wrought gold have been dug up near the fort and in the +gardens. They also report the existence of hewn stones in the +neighborhood, but these can not have been abundant, for all the stones +of the fort of Sofala are said to have been brought from Portugal. +Natives whom I met in the country of Sekeletu, from Manica, or Manoa, +as they call it, state that there are several caves in the country, +and walls of hewn stones, which they believe to have been made by their +ancestors; and there is, according to the Portuguese, a small tribe +of Arabs there, who have become completely like the other natives. Two +rivers, the Motirikwe and Sabia, or Sabe, run through their country into +the sea. The Portuguese were driven out of the country by the Landeens, +but now talk of reoccupying Manica. + +The most pleasant sight I witnessed at Senna was the negroes of Senhor +Isidore building boats after the European model, without any one to +superintend their operations. They had been instructed by a European +master, but now go into the forest and cut down the motondo-trees, lay +down the keel, fit in the ribs, and make very neat boats and launches, +valued at from 20 Pounds to 100 Pounds. Senhor Isidore had some of them +instructed also in carpentry at Rio Janeiro, and they constructed for +him the handsomest house in Kilimane, the woodwork being all of country +trees, some of which are capable of a fine polish, and very durable. A +medical opinion having been asked by the commandant respecting a better +site for the village, which, lying on the low bank of the Zambesi, is +very unhealthy, I recommended imitation of the Jesuits, who had chosen +the high, healthy mountain of Gorongozo, and to select a new site on +Morumbala, which is perfectly healthy, well watered, and where the Shire +is deep enough for the purpose of navigation at its base. As the next +resource, I proposed removal to the harbor of Mitilone, which is at +one of the mouths of the Zambesi, a much better port than Kilimane, and +where, if they must have the fever, they would be in the way of doing +more good to themselves and the country than they can do in their +present situation. Had the Portuguese possessed this territory as a real +colony, this important point would not have been left unoccupied; as it +is, there is not even a native village placed at the entrance of this +splendid river to show the way in. + +On the 9th of May sixteen of my men were employed to carry government +goods in canoes up to Tete. They were much pleased at getting this work. +On the 11th the whole of the inhabitants of Senna, with the commandant, +accompanied us to the boats. A venerable old man, son of a judge, said +they were in much sorrow on account of the miserable state of decay into +which they had sunk, and of the insolent conduct of the people of Kisaka +now in the village. We were abundantly supplied with provisions by +the commandant and Senhor Ferrao, and sailed pleasantly down the broad +river. About thirty miles below Senna we passed the mouth of the River +Zangwe on our right, which farther up goes by the name of Pungwe; and +about five miles farther on our left, close to the end of a low range +into which Morumbala merges, we crossed the mouth of the Shire, which +seemed to be about 200 yards broad. A little inland from the confluence +there is another rebel stockade, which was attacked by Ensign Rebeiro +with three European soldiers, and captured; they disarmed the rebels and +threw the guns into the water. This ensign and Miranda volunteered +to disperse the people of Kisaka who were riding roughshod over +the inhabitants of Senna; but the offer was declined, the few real +Portuguese fearing the disloyal half-castes among whom they dwelt. +Slavery and immorality have here done their work; nowhere else does +the European name stand at so low an ebb; but what can be expected? +Few Portuguese women are ever taken to the colonies, and here I did +not observe that honorable regard for the offspring which I noticed in +Angola. The son of a late governor of Tete was pointed out to me in the +condition and habit of a slave. There is neither priest nor school at +Senna, though there are ruins of churches and convents. + +On passing the Shire we observed great quantities of the plant +Alfacinya, already mentioned, floating down into the Zambesi. It is +probably the 'Pistia stratiotes', a gigantic "duck-weed". It was mixed +with quantities of another aquatic plant, which the Barotse named +"Njefu", containing in the petiole of the leaf a pleasant-tasted nut. +This was so esteemed by Sebituane that he made it part of his tribute +from the subjected tribes. Dr. Hooker kindly informs me that the njefu +"is probably a species of 'Trapa', the nuts of which are eaten in the +south of Europe and in India. Government derives a large revenue from +them in Kashmir, amounting to 12,000 Pounds per annum for 128,000 +ass-loads! The ancient Thracians are said to have eaten them largely. In +the south of France they are called water-chestnuts." The existence of +these plants in such abundance in the Shire may show that it flows from +large collections of still water. We found them growing in all the still +branches and lagoons of the Leeambye in the far north, and there also we +met a beautiful little floating plant, the 'Azolla Nilotica', which is +found in the upper Nile. They are seldom seen in flowing streams. + +A few miles beyond the Shire we left the hills entirely, and sailed +between extensive flats. The banks seen in the distance are covered +with trees. We slept on a large inhabited island, and then came to the +entrance of the River Mutu (latitude 18d 3' 37" S., longitude 35d 46' +E.): the point of departure is called Mazaro, or "mouth of the Mutu". +The people who live on the north are called Baroro, and their country +Bororo. The whole of the right bank is in subjection to the Landeens, +who, it was imagined, would levy a tribute upon us, for this they are +accustomed to do to passengers. I regret that we did not meet them, for, +though they are named Caffres, I am not sure whether they are of +the Zulu family or of the Mashona. I should have liked to form their +acquaintance, and to learn what they really think of white men. I +understood from Sekwebu, and from one of Changamera's people who lives +at Linyanti, and was present at the attack on Senna, that they consider +the whites as a conquered tribe. + +The Zambesi at Mazaro is a magnificent river, more than half a mile +wide, and without islands. The opposite bank is covered with forests of +fine timber; but the delta which begins here is only an immense flat, +covered with high, coarse grass and reeds, with here and there a few +mango and cocoanut trees. This was the point which was reached by +the late lamented Captain Parker, who fell at the Sulina mouth of +the Danube. I had a strong desire to follow the Zambesi farther, and +ascertain where this enormous body of water found its way into the sea; +but on hearing from the Portuguese that he had ascended to this point, +and had been highly pleased with the capabilities of the river, I felt +sure that his valuable opinion must be in possession of the Admiralty. +On my arrival in England I applied to Captain Washington, Hydrographer +to the Admiralty, and he promptly furnished the document for publication +by the Royal Geographical Society. + +The river between Mazaro and the sea must therefore be judged of from +the testimony of one more competent to decide on its merits than a mere +landsman like myself. + + +'On the Quilimane and Zambesi Rivers'. From the Journal of the late +Capt. HYDE PARKER, R.N., H. M. Brig "Pantaloon". + + +"The Luabo is the main outlet of the Great Zambesi. In the rainy +season--January and February principally--the whole country is +overflowed, and the water escapes by the different rivers as far up +as Quilimane; but in the dry season neither Quilimane nor Olinda +communicates with it. The position of the river is rather incorrect in +the Admiralty chart, being six miles too much to the southward, and +also considerably to the westward. Indeed, the coast from here up to +Tongamiara seems too far to the westward. The entrance to the Luabo +River is about two miles broad, and is easily distinguishable, when +abreast of it, by a bluff (if I may so term it) of high, straight trees, +very close together, on the western side of the entrance. The bar may +be said to be formed by two series of sand-banks; that running from the +eastern point runs diagonally across (opposite?) the entrance and nearly +across it. Its western extremity is about two miles outside the west +point. + +"The bank running out from the west point projects to the southward +three miles and a half, passing not one quarter of a mile from the +eastern or cross bank. This narrow passage is the BAR PASSAGE. It +breaks completely across at low water, except under very extraordinary +circumstances. At this time--low water--a great portion of the banks are +uncovered; in some places they are seven or eight feet above water. + +"On these banks there is a break at all times, but in fine weather, at +high water, a boat may cross near the east point. There is very little +water, and, in places, a nasty race and bubble, so that caution is +requisite. The best directions for going in over the regular bar +passage, according to my experience, are as follows: Steer down well to +the eastward of the bar passage, so as to avoid the outer part of the +western shoals, on which there is usually a bad sea. When you get near +the CROSS-BAR, keep along it till the bluff of trees on the west side of +the entrance bears N.E.; you may then steer straight for it. This will +clear the end of the CROSS-BAR, and, directly you are within that, +the water is smooth. The worst sea is generally just without the bar +passage. + +"Within the points the river widens at first and then contracts again. +About three miles from the Tree Bluff is an island; the passage up the +river is the right-hand side of it, and deep. The plan will best explain +it. The rise and fall of the tide at the entrance of the river being at +springs twenty feet, any vessel can get in at that time, but, with all +these conveniences for traffic, there is none here at present. The water +in the river is fresh down to the bar with the ebb tide, and in the +rainy season it is fresh at the surface quite outside. In the rainy +season, at the full and change of the moon, the Zambesi frequently +overflows its banks, making the country for an immense distance one +great lake, with only a few small eminences above the water. On the +banks of the river the huts are built on piles, and at these times the +communication is only in canoes; but the waters do not remain up more +than three or four days at a time. The first village is about eight +miles up the river, on the western bank, and is opposite to another +branch of the river called 'Muselo', which discharges itself into the +sea about five miles to the eastward. + +"The village is extensive, and about it there is a very large quantity +of land in cultivation; calavances, or beans, of different sorts, rice, +and pumpkins, are the principal things. I saw also about here some wild +cotton, apparently of very good quality, but none is cultivated. The +land is so fertile as to produce almost any (thing?) without much +trouble. + +"At this village is a very large house, mud-built, with a court-yard. +I believe it to have been used as a barracoon for slaves, several large +cargoes having been exported from this river. I proceeded up the river +as far as its junction with the Quilimane River, called 'Boca do +Rio', by my computation between 70 and 80 miles from the entrance. The +influence of the tides is felt about 25 or 30 miles up the river. Above +that, the stream, in the dry season, runs from 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 miles an +hour, but in the rains much stronger. The banks of the river, for +the first 30 miles, are generally thickly clothed with trees, with +occasional open glades. There are many huts and villages on both sides, +and a great deal of cultivation. At one village, about 17 miles up on +the eastern bank, and distinguished by being surrounded by an immense +number of bananas and plantain-trees, a great quantity of excellent peas +are cultivated; also cabbages, tomatoes, onions, etc. Above this there +are not many inhabitants on the left or west bank, although it is much +the finest country, being higher, and abounding in cocoanut palms, the +eastern bank being sandy and barren. The reason is, that some years back +the Landeens, or Caffres, ravaged all this country, killing the men and +taking the women as slaves, but they have never crossed the river; hence +the natives are afraid to settle on the west bank, and the Portuguese +owners of the different 'prasos' have virtually lost them. The banks of +the river continue mostly sandy, with few trees, except some cocoanut +palms, until the southern end of the large plantation of Nyangue, +formed by the river about 20 miles from Maruru. Here the country is more +populous and better cultivated, the natives a finer race, and the huts +larger and better constructed. Maruru belongs to Senor Asevedo, of +Quilimane, well known to all English officers on the east coast for his +hospitality. + +"The climate here is much cooler than nearer the sea, and Asevedo has +successfully cultivated most European as well as tropical vegetables. +The sugar-cane thrives, as also coffee and cotton, and indigo is a weed. +Cattle here are beautiful, and some of them might show with credit in +England. The natives are intelligent, and under a good government this +fine country might become very valuable. Three miles from Maruru is +Mesan, a very pretty village among palm and mango trees. There is here a +good house belonging to a Senor Ferrao; close by is the canal (Mutu) +of communication between the Quilimane and Zambesi rivers, which in the +rainy season is navigable (?). I visited it in the month of October, +which is about the dryest time of the year; it was then a dry canal, +about 30 or 40 yards wide, overgrown with trees and grass, and, at the +bottom, at least 16 or 17 feet above the level of the Zambesi, which was +running beneath. In the rains, by the marks I saw, the entrance rise +of the river must be very nearly 30 feet, and the volume of water +discharged by it (the Zambesi) enormous. + +"Above Maruru the country begins to become more hilly, and the high +mountains of Boruru are in sight; the first view of these is obtained +below Nyangue, and they must be of considerable height, as from this +they are distant above 40 miles. They are reported to contain great +mineral wealth; gold and copper being found in the range, as also COAL +(?). The natives (Landeens) are a bold, independent race, who do not +acknowledge the Portuguese authority, and even make them pay for leave +to pass unmolested. Throughout the whole course of the river hippopotami +were very abundant, and at one village a chase by the natives was +witnessed. They harpoon the animal with a barbed lance, to which is +attached, by a cord 3 or 4 fathoms long, an inflated bladder. The +natives follow in their canoes, and look out to fix more harpoons as +the animal rises to blow, and, when exhausted, dispatch him with their +lances. It is, in fact, nearly similar to a whale-hunt. Elephants and +lions are also abundant on the western side; the latter destroy many of +the blacks annually, and are much feared by them. Alligators are said to +be numerous, but I did not see any. + +"The voyage up to Maruru occupied seven days, as I did not work the men +at the oar, but it might be done in four; we returned to the bar in two +and a half days. + +"There is another mouth of the Zambesi seven miles to the westward of +Luabo, which was visited by the 'Castor's pinnace'; and I was assured by +Lieutenant Hoskins that the bar was better than the one I visited." + + +The conclusions of Captain Parker are strengthened by those of Lieut. A. +H. H. Hoskins, who was on the coast at the same time, and also visited +this spot. Having applied to my friend for his deliberate opinion on the +subject, he promptly furnished the following note in January last: + + +"The Zambesi appears to have five principal mouths, of which the Luabo +is the most southern and most navigable; Cumana, and two whose names +I do not know, not having myself visited it, lying between it and the +Quilimane, and the rise and fall at spring tides on the bar of the Luabo +is 22 feet; and as, in the passage, there is NEVER less than four feet +(I having crossed it at dead low-water--springs), this would give an +average depth sufficient for any commercial purposes. The rise and fall +is six feet greater, the passages narrow and more defined, consequently +deeper and more easily found than that of the Quilimane River. The river +above the bar is very tortuous, but deep; and it is observable that the +influence of the tide is felt much higher in this branch than in the +others; for whereas in the Catrina and Cumana I have obtained drinkable +water a very short distance from the mouth, in the Luabo I have ascended +seventy miles without finding the saltness perceptibly diminished. This +would facilitate navigation, and I have no hesitation in saying that +little difficulty would be experienced in conveying a steam-vessel of +the size and capabilities of the gunboat I lately commanded as high as +the branching off of the Quilimane River (Mazaro), which, in the dry +season, is observed many yards above the Luabo (main stream); though +I have been told by the Portuguese that the freshes which come down in +December and March fill it temporarily. These freshes deepen the river +considerably at that time of the year, and freshen the water many miles +from the coast. The population of the delta, except in the immediate +neighborhood of the Portuguese, appeared to be very sparse. Antelopes +and hippopotami were plentiful; the former tame and easily shot. I +inquired frequently of both natives and Portuguese if slavers were +in the habit of entering there to ship their cargoes, but could not +ascertain that they have ever done so in any except the Quilimane. With +common precaution the rivers are not unhealthy; for, during the whole +time I was employed in them (off and on during eighteen months), in open +boats and at all times of the year, frequently absent from the ship for +a month or six weeks at a time, I had not, in my boat's crew of fourteen +men, more than two, and those mild, cases of fever. Too much importance +can not be ascribed to the use of quinine, to which I attribute our +comparative immunity, and with which our judicious commander, Commodore +Wyvill, kept us amply supplied. I hope these few remarks may be of some +little use in confirming your views of the utility of that magnificent +river. + +A. H. H. Hoskins." + + +It ought to be remembered that the testimony of these gentlemen is all +the more valuable, because they visited the river when the water was at +its lowest, and the surface of the Zambesi was not, as it was now, on a +level with and flowing into the Mutu, but sixteen feet beneath its bed. +The Mutu, at the point of departure, was only ten or twelve yards broad, +shallow, and filled with aquatic plants. Trees and reeds along the banks +overhang it so much, that, though we had brought canoes and a boat +from Tete, we were unable to enter the Mutu with them, and left them +at Mazaro. During most of the year this part of the Mutu is dry, and we +were even now obliged to carry all our luggage by land for about fifteen +miles. As Kilimane is called, in all the Portuguese documents, the +capital of the rivers of Senna, it seemed strange to me that the capital +should be built at a point where there was no direct water conveyance +to the magnificent river whose name it bore; and, on inquiry, I was +informed that the whole of the Mutu was large in days of yore, and +admitted of the free passage of great launches from Kilimane all the +year round, but that now this part of the Mutu had been filled up. + +I was seized by a severe tertian fever at Mazaro, but went along the +right bank of the Mutu to the N.N.E. and E. for about fifteen miles. +We then found that it was made navigable by a river called the Pangazi, +which comes into it from the north. Another river, flowing from the same +direction, called the Luare, swells it still more; and, last of all, +the Likuare, with the tide, make up the river of Kilimane. The Mutu at +Mazaro is simply a connecting link, such as is so often seen in Africa, +and neither its flow nor stoppage affects the river of Kilimane. The +waters of the Pangazi were quite clear compared with those of the +Zambesi.* + + * I owe the following information, of a much later date, also + to the politeness of Captain Washington. H. M. sloop + "Grecian" visited the coast in 1852-3, and the master remarks + that "the entrance to the Luabo is in lat. 18d 51' S., long. + 36d 12' E., and may be known by a range of hummocks on its + eastern side, and very low land to the S.W. The entrance is + narrow, and, as with all the rivers on this coast, is fronted + by a bar, which renders the navigation, particularly for + boats, very dangerous with the wind to the south of east or + west. Our boats proceeded twenty miles up this river, 2 + fathoms on the bar, then 2-1/2--5--6--7 fathoms. It was + navigable farther up, but they did not proceed. It is quite + possible for a moderate-sized vessel to cross the bar at + spring tides, and be perfectly landlocked and hidden among the + trees. + + "The Maiudo, in 18d 52' S., 36d 12' E., IS NOT MENTIONED IN + HORSBURGH, NOR LAID DOWN IN THE ADMIRALTY CHART, but is, + nevertheless, one of some importance, and appears to be one of + the principal stations for shipping slaves, as the boats found + two barracoons, about 20 miles up, bearing every indication of + having been very recently occupied, and which had good + presumptive evidence that the 'Cauraigo', a brig under + American colors, had embarked a cargo from thence but a short + time before. The river is fronted by a portion of the + Elephant Shoals, at the distance of three or four miles + outside. The eastern bank is formed by level sea-cliffs (as + seen from the ship it has that appearance), high for this part + of the coast, and conspicuous. The western side is composed of + thick trees, and terminates in dead wood, from which we called + it 'Dead-wood Point'. After crossing the bar it branches off + in a W. and N.W. direction, the latter being the principal + arm, up which the boats went some 30 miles, or about 10 beyond + the barracoon. Fresh water can be obtained almost immediately + inside the entrance, as the stream runs down very rapidly with + the ebb tide. The least water crossing the bar (low-water-- + springs) was 1-1/2 fathom, one cast only therefrom from 2 to 5 + fathoms, another 7 fathoms nearly the whole way up. + + "The Catrina, latitude 18d 50' south, longitude 36d 24' east. + The external appearance of this river is precisely similar to + that of the Maiudo, so much so that it is difficult to + distinguish them by any feature of the land. The longitude is + the best guide, or, in the absence of observation, perhaps the + angles contained by the extremes of land will be serviceable. + Thus, at nine miles off the Maiudo the angle contained by the + above was seven points, the bearing being N.E. W. of N.W. (?); + while off the Catrina, at the same distance from shore (about + nine miles), the angle was only 3-1/2 to 4 points, being N. to + N.W. As we did not send the boats up this river, no + information was obtained." + +My fever became excessively severe in consequence of traveling in the +hot sun, and the long grass blocking up the narrow path so as to exclude +the air. The pulse beat with amazing force, and felt as if thumping +against the crown of the head. The stomach and spleen swelled +enormously, giving me, for the first time, an appearance which I had +been disposed to laugh at among the Portuguese. At Interra we met Senhor +Asevedo, a man who is well known by all who ever visited Kilimane, and +who was presented with a gold chronometer watch by the Admiralty for +his attentions to English officers. He immediately tendered his large +sailing launch, which had a house in the stern. This was greatly in my +favor, for it anchored in the middle of the stream, and gave me some +rest from the mosquitoes, which in the whole of the delta are something +frightful. Sailing comfortably in this commodious launch along the river +of Kilimane, we reached that village (latitude 17d 53' 8" S., longitude +36d 40' E.) on the 20th of May, 1856, which wanted only a few days of +being four years since I started from Cape Town. Here I was received +into the house of Colonel Galdino Jose Nunes, one of the best men in the +country. I had been three years without hearing from my family; letters +having frequently been sent, but somehow or other, with but a single +exception, they never reached me. I received, however, a letter from +Admiral Trotter, conveying information of their welfare, and some +newspapers, which were a treat indeed. Her majesty's brig the "Frolic" +had called to inquire for me in the November previous, and Captain +Nolluth, of that ship, had most considerately left a case of wine; and +his surgeon, Dr. James Walsh, divining what I should need most, left an +ounce of quinine. These gifts made my heart overflow. I had not tasted +any liquor whatever during the time I had been in Africa; but when +reduced in Angola to extreme weakness, I found much benefit from a +little wine, and took from Loanda one bottle of brandy in my medicine +chest, intending to use it if it were again required; but the boy who +carried it whirled the box upside down, and smashed the bottle, so I can +not give my testimony either in favor of or against the brandy. + +But my joy on reaching the east coast was sadly imbittered by the news +that Commander MacLune, of H. M. brigantine "Dart", on coming in to +Kilimane to pick me up, had, with Lieutenant Woodruffe and five men, +been lost on the bar. I never felt more poignant sorrow. It seemed as if +it would have been easier for me to have died for them, than that they +should all be cut off from the joys of life in generously attempting to +render me a service. I would here acknowledge my deep obligations to the +Earl of Clarendon, to the admiral at the Cape, and others, for the kind +interest they manifested in my safety; even the inquiries made were very +much to my advantage. I also refer with feelings of gratitude to +the Governor of Mozambique for offering me a passage in the schooner +"Zambesi", belonging to that province; and I shall never forget the +generous hospitality of Colonel Nunes and his nephew, with whom I +remained. One of the discoveries I have made is that there are vast +numbers of good people in the world, and I do most devoutly tender my +unfeigned thanks to that Gracious One who mercifully watched over me +in every position, and influenced the hearts of both black and white to +regard me with favor. + +With the united testimony of Captain Parker and Lieutenant Hoskins, +added to my own observation, there can be no reasonable doubt but that +the real mouth of the Zambesi is available for the purposes of commerce. +The delta is claimed by the Portuguese, and the southern bank of the +Luabo, or Cuama, as this part of the Zambesi is sometimes called, is +owned by independent natives of the Caffre family. The Portuguese are +thus near the main entrance to the new central region; and as they have +of late years shown, in an enlightened and liberal spirit, their desire +to develop the resources of Eastern Africa by proclaiming Mozambique +a free port, it is to be hoped that the same spirit will lead them to +invite mercantile enterprise up the Zambesi, by offering facilities to +those who may be led to push commerce into the regions lying far +beyond their territory. Their wish to co-operate in the noble work of +developing the resources of the rich country beyond could not be shown +better than by placing a village with Zambesian pilots at the harbor of +Mitilone, and erecting a light-house for the guidance of seafaring men. +If this were done, no nation would be a greater gainer by it than the +Portuguese themselves, and assuredly no other needs a resuscitation of +its commerce more. Their kindness to me personally makes me wish for a +return of their ancient prosperity; and the most liberal and generous +act of the enlightened young king H. M. Don Pedro, in sending out orders +to support my late companions at the public expense of the province +of Mozambique until my return to claim them, leads me to hope for +encouragement in every measure for either the development of commerce, +the elevation of the natives, or abolition of the trade in slaves. + +As far as I am myself concerned, the opening of the new central country +is a matter for congratulation only in so far as it opens up a prospect +for the elevation of the inhabitants. As I have elsewhere remarked, I +view the end of the geographical feat as the beginning of the missionary +enterprise. I take the latter term in its most extended signification, +and include every effort made for the amelioration of our race, the +promotion of all those means by which God in His providence is working, +and bringing all His dealings with man to a glorious consummation. Each +man in his sphere, either knowingly or unwittingly, is performing the +will of our Father in heaven. Men of science, searching after hidden +truths, which, when discovered, will, like the electric telegraph, +bind men more closely together--soldiers battling for the right against +tyranny--sailors rescuing the victims of oppression from the grasp of +heartless men-stealers--merchants teaching the nations lessons of mutual +dependence--and many others, as well as missionaries, all work in the +same direction, and all efforts are overruled for one glorious end. + +If the reader has accompanied me thus far, he may, perhaps, be disposed +to take an interest in the objects I propose to myself, should God +mercifully grant me the honor of doing something more for Africa. As the +highlands on the borders of the central basin are comparatively healthy, +the first object seems to be to secure a permanent path thither, +in order that Europeans may pass as quickly as possible through the +unhealthy region near the coast. The river has not been surveyed, but +at the time I came down there was abundance of water for a large vessel, +and this continues to be the case during four or five months of each +year. The months of low water still admit of navigation by launches, and +would permit small vessels equal to the Thames steamers to ply with ease +in the deep channel. If a steamer were sent to examine the Zambesi, +I would recommend one of the lightest draught, and the months of May, +June, and July for passing through the delta; and this not so much for +fear of want of water as the danger of being grounded on a sand or mud +bank, and the health of the crew being endangered by the delay. + +In the months referred to no obstruction would be incurred in the +channel below Tete. Twenty or thirty miles above that point we have +a small rapid, of which I regret my inability to speak, as (mentioned +already) I did not visit it. But, taking the distance below this point, +we have, in round numbers, 300 miles of navigable river. Above this +rapid we have another reach of 300 miles, with sand, but no mud banks +in it, which brings us to the foot of the eastern ridge. Let it not, +however, be thought that a vessel by going thither would return laden +with ivory and gold-dust. The Portuguese of Tete pick up all the +merchandise of the tribes in their vicinity, and, though I came out by +traversing the people with whom the Portuguese have been at war, it +does not follow that it will be perfectly safe for others to go in +whose goods may be a stronger temptation to cupidity than any thing I +possessed. When we get beyond the hostile population mentioned, we reach +a very different race. On the latter my chief hopes at present rest. All +of them, however, are willing and anxious to engage in trade, and, while +eager for this, none have ever been encouraged to cultivate the raw +materials of commerce. Their country is well adapted for cotton; and I +venture to entertain the hope that by distributing seeds of better kinds +than that which is found indigenous, and stimulating the natives to +cultivate it by affording them the certainty of a market for all they +may produce, we may engender a feeling of mutual dependence between them +and ourselves. I have a twofold object in view, and believe that, by +guiding our missionary labors so as to benefit our own country, we shall +thereby more effectually and permanently benefit the heathen. Seven +years were spent at Kolobeng in instructing my friends there; but the +country being incapable of raising materials for exportation, when the +Boers made their murderous attack and scattered the tribe for a season, +none sympathized except a few Christian friends. Had the people of +Kolobeng been in the habit of raising the raw materials of English +commerce, the outrage would have been felt in England; or, what is more +likely to have been the case, the people would have raised themselves +in the scale by barter, and have become, like the Basutos of Moshesh +and people of Kuruman, possessed of fire-arms, and the Boers would +never have made the attack at all. We ought to encourage the Africans +to cultivate for our markets, as the most effectual means, next to the +Gospel, of their elevation. + +It is in the hope of working out this idea that I propose the formation +of stations on the Zambesi beyond the Portuguese territory, but having +communication through them with the coast. A chain of stations admitting +of easy and speedy intercourse, such as might be formed along the flank +of the eastern ridge, would be in a favorable position for carrying out +the objects in view. The London Missionary Society has resolved to have +a station among the Makololo on the north bank, and another on the +south among the Matebele. The Church--Wesleyan, Baptist, and that most +energetic body, the Free Church--could each find desirable locations +among the Batoka and adjacent tribes. The country is so extensive there +is no fear of clashing. All classes of Christians find that sectarian +rancor soon dies out when they are working together among and for the +real heathen. Only let the healthy locality be searched for and fixed +upon, and then there will be free scope to work in the same cause +in various directions, without that loss of men which the system of +missions on the unhealthy coasts entails. While respectfully submitting +the plan to these influential societies, I can positively state that, +when fairly in the interior, there is perfect security for life and +property among a people who will at least listen and reason. + +Eight of my men begged to be allowed to come as far as Kilimane, and, +thinking that they would there see the ocean, I consented to their +coming, though the food was so scarce in consequence of a dearth that +they were compelled to suffer some hunger. They would fain have come +farther; for when Sekeletu parted with them, his orders were that none +of them should turn until they had reached Ma Robert and brought her +back with them. On my explaining the difficulty of crossing the sea, he +said, "Wherever you lead, they must follow." As I did not know well how +I should get home myself, I advised them to go back to Tete, where food +was abundant, and there await my return. I bought a quantity of calico +and brass wire with ten of the smaller tusks which we had in our charge, +and sent the former back as clothing to those who remained at Tete. As +there were still twenty tusks left, I deposited them with Colonel Nunes, +that, in the event of any thing happening to prevent my return, the +impression might not be produced in the country that I had made away +with Sekeletu's ivory. I instructed Colonel Nunes, in case of my death, +to sell the tusks and deliver the proceeds to my men; but I intended, if +my life should be prolonged, to purchase the goods ordered by Sekeletu +in England with my own money, and pay myself on my return out of +the price of the ivory. This I explained to the men fully, and they, +understanding the matter, replied, "Nay, father, you will not die; you +will return to take us back to Sekeletu." They promised to wait till I +came back, and, on my part, I assured them that nothing but death would +prevent my return. This I said, though while waiting at Kilimane a +letter came from the Directors of the London Missionary Society stating +that "they were restricted in their power of aiding plans connected +only remotely with the spread of the Gospel, and that the financial +circumstances of the society were not such as to afford any ground of +hope that it would be in a position, within any definite period, to +enter upon untried, remote, and difficult fields of labor." This has +been explained since as an effusion caused by temporary financial +depression; but, feeling perfect confidence in my Makololo friends, I +was determined to return and trust to their generosity. The old love of +independence, which I had so strongly before joining the society, again +returned. It was roused by a mistaken view of what this letter meant; +for the directors, immediately on my reaching home, saw the great +importance of the opening, and entered with enlightened zeal on the work +of sending the Gospel into the new field. It is to be hoped that their +constituents will not only enable them to begin, but to carry out their +plans, and that no material depression will ever again be permitted, nor +appearance of spasmodic benevolence recur. While I hope to continue the +same cordial co-operation and friendship which have always characterized +our intercourse, various reasons induce me to withdraw from pecuniary +dependence on any society. I have done something for the heathen, but +for an aged mother, who has still more sacred claims than they, I have +been able to do nothing, and a continuance of the connection would be +a perpetuation of my inability to make any provision for her declining +years. In addition to "clergyman's sore throat", which partially +disabled me from the work, my father's death imposed new obligations; +and a fresh source of income having been opened to me without my asking, +I had no hesitation in accepting what would enable me to fulfill my duty +to my aged parent as well as to the heathen. + +If the reader remembers the way in which I was led, while teaching the +Bakwains, to commence exploration, he will, I think, recognize the +hand of Providence. Anterior to that, when Mr. Moffat began to give +the Bible--the Magna Charta of all the rights and privileges of modern +civilization--to the Bechuanas, Sebituane went north, and spread the +language into which he was translating the sacred oracles in a new +region larger than France. Sebituane, at the same time, rooted out +hordes of bloody savages, among whom no white man could have gone +without leaving his skull to ornament some village. He opened up the +way for me--let us hope also for the Bible. Then, again, while I +was laboring at Kolobeng, seeing only a small arc of the cycle of +Providence, I could not understand it, and felt inclined to ascribe our +successive and prolonged droughts to the wicked one. But when forced by +these and the Boers to become explorer, and open a new country in the +north rather than set my face southward, where missionaries are not +needed, the gracious Spirit of God influenced the minds of the heathen +to regard me with favor; the Divine hand is again perceived. Then I +turned away westward rather than in the opposite direction, chiefly from +observing that some native Portuguese, though influenced by the hope of +a reward from their government to cross the continent, had been obliged +to return from the east without accomplishing their object. Had I +gone at first in the eastern direction, which the course of the great +Leeambye seemed to invite, I should have come among the belligerents +near Tete when the war was raging at its height, instead of, as it +happened, when all was over. And again, when enabled to reach Loanda, +the resolution to do my duty by going back to Linyanti probably saved me +from the fate of my papers in the "Forerunner". And then, last of all, +this new country is partially opened to the sympathies of Christendom, +and I find that Sechele himself has, though unbidden by man, been +teaching his own people. In fact, he has been doing all that I was +prevented from doing, and I have been employed in exploring--a work +I had no previous intention of performing. I think that I see the +operation of the unseen hand in all this, and I humbly hope that it will +still guide me to do good in my day and generation in Africa. + +Viewing the success awarded to opening up the new country as a +development of Divine Providence in relation to the African family, +the mind naturally turns to the probable influence it may have on negro +slavery, and more especially on the practice of it by a large portion of +our own race. We now demand increased supplies of cotton and sugar, +and then reprobate the means our American brethren adopt to supply our +wants. We claim a right to speak about this evil, and also to act in +reference to its removal, the more especially because we are of one +blood. It is on the Anglo-American race that the hopes of the world for +liberty and progress rest. Now it is very grievous to find one portion +of this race practicing the gigantic evil, and the other aiding, by +increased demands for the produce of slave labor, in perpetuating the +enormous wrong. The Mauritius, a mere speck on the ocean, yields sugar, +by means of guano, improved machinery, and free labor, equal in amount +to one fourth part of the entire consumption of Great Britain. On that +island land is excessively dear and far from rich: no crop can be raised +except by means of guano, and labor has to be brought all the way from +India. But in Africa the land is cheap, the soil good, and free labor +is to be found on the spot. Our chief hopes rest with the natives +themselves; and if the point to which I have given prominence, of +healthy inland commercial stations, be realized, where all the produce +raised may be collected, there is little doubt but that slavery among +our kinsmen across the Atlantic will, in the course of some years, cease +to assume the form of a necessity to even the slaveholders themselves. +Natives alone can collect produce from the more distant hamlets, and +bring it to the stations contemplated. This is the system pursued so +successfully in Angola. If England had possessed that strip of land, by +civilly declining to enrich her "frontier colonists" by "Caffre +wars", the inborn energy of English colonists would have developed its +resources, and the exports would not have been 100,000 Pounds as now, +but one million at least. The establishment of the necessary agency must +be a work of time, and greater difficulty will be experienced on the +eastern than on the western side of the continent, because in the one +region we have a people who know none but slave-traders, while in +the other we have tribes who have felt the influence of the coast +missionaries and of the great Niger expedition; one invaluable benefit +it conferred was the dissemination of the knowledge of English love of +commerce and English hatred of slavery, and it therefore was no failure. +But on the east there is a river which may become a good pathway to +a central population who are friendly to the English; and if we +can conciliate the less amicable people on the river, and introduce +commerce, an effectual blow will be struck at the slave-trade in that +quarter. By linking the Africans there to ourselves in the manner +proposed, it is hoped that their elevation will eventually be the +result. In this hope and proposed effort I am joined by my brother +Charles, who has come from America, after seventeen years' separation, +for the purpose. We expect success through the influence of that Spirit +who already aided the efforts to open the country, and who has since +turned the public mind toward it. A failure may be experienced by sudden +rash speculation overstocking the markets there, and raising the prices +against ourselves. But I propose to spend some more years of labor, and +shall be thankful if I see the system fairly begun in an open pathway +which will eventually benefit both Africa and England. + +The village of Kilimane stands on a great mud bank, and is surrounded by +extensive swamps and rice-grounds. The banks of the river are lined with +mangrove bushes, the roots of which, and the slimy banks on which they +grow, are alternately exposed to the tide and sun. The houses are well +built of brick and lime, the latter from Mozambique. If one digs down +two or three feet in any part of the site of the village, he comes to +water; hence the walls built on this mud bank gradually subside; pieces +are sometimes sawn off the doors below, because the walls in which they +are fixed have descended into the ground, so as to leave the floors +higher than the bottom of the doors. It is almost needless to say that +Kilimane is very unhealthy. A man of plethoric temperament is sure to +get fever, and concerning a stout person one may hear the remark, "Ah! +he will not live long; he is sure to die." + +A Hamburgh vessel was lost near the bar before we came down. The men +were much more regular in their habits than English sailors, so I had +an opportunity of observing the fever acting as a slow poison. They +felt "out of sorts" only, but gradually became pale, bloodless, and +emaciated, then weaker and weaker, till at last they sank more like oxen +bitten by tsetse than any disease I ever saw. The captain, a strong, +robust young man, remained in perfect health for about three months, +but was at last knocked down suddenly and made as helpless as a child +by this terrible disease. He had imbibed a foolish prejudice +against quinine, our sheet-anchor in the complaint. This is rather +a professional subject, but I introduce it here in order to protest +against the prejudice as almost entirely unfounded. Quinine is +invaluable in fever, and never produces any unpleasant effects in any +stage of the disease, IF EXHIBITED IN COMBINATION WITH AN APERIENT. The +captain was saved by it, without his knowledge, and I was thankful that +the mode of treatment, so efficacious among natives, promised so fair +among Europeans. + +After waiting about six weeks at this unhealthy spot, in which, however, +by the kind attentions of Colonel Nunes and his nephew, I partially +recovered from my tertian, H. M. brig "Frolic" arrived off Kilimane. As +the village is twelve miles from the bar, and the weather was rough, she +was at anchor ten days before we knew of her presence about seven miles +from the entrance to the port. She brought abundant supplies for all +my need, and 150 Pounds to pay my passage home, from my kind friend +Mr. Thompson, the Society's agent at the Cape. The admiral at the Cape +kindly sent an offer of a passage to the Mauritius, which I thankfully +accepted. Sekwebu and one attendant alone remained with me now. He was +very intelligent, and had been of the greatest service to me; indeed, +but for his good sense, tact, and command of the language of the tribes +through which we passed, I believe we should scarcely have succeeded in +reaching the coast. I naturally felt grateful to him; and as his chief +wished ALL my companions to go to England with me, and would probably be +disappointed if none went, I thought it would be beneficial for him to +see the effects of civilization, and report them to his countrymen; I +wished also to make some return for his very important services. Others +had petitioned to come, but I explained the danger of a change of +climate and food, and with difficulty restrained them. The only one +who now remained begged so hard to come on board ship that I greatly +regretted that the expense prevented my acceding to his wish to visit +England. I said to him, "You will die if you go to such a cold country +as mine." "That is nothing," he reiterated; "let me die at your feet." + +When we parted from our friends at Kilimane, the sea on the bar was +frightful even to the seamen. This was the first time Sekwebu had seen +the sea. Captain Peyton had sent two boats in case of accident. The +waves were so high that, when the cutter was in one trough, and we in +the pinnace in another, her mast was hid. We then mounted to the crest +of the wave, rushed down the slope, and struck the water again with +a blow which felt as if she had struck the bottom. Boats must be +singularly well constructed to be able to stand these shocks. Three +breakers swept over us. The men lift up their oars, and a wave comes +sweeping over all, giving the impression that the boat is going down, +but she only goes beneath the top of the wave, comes out on the other +side, and swings down the slope, and a man bales out the water with a +bucket. Poor Sekwebu looked at me when these terrible seas broke over, +and said, "Is this the way you go? Is this the way you go?" I smiled +and said, "Yes; don't you see it is?" and tried to encourage him. He was +well acquainted with canoes, but never had seen aught like this. When we +reached the ship--a fine, large brig of sixteen guns and a crew of one +hundred and thirty--she was rolling so that we could see a part of her +bottom. It was quite impossible for landsmen to catch the ropes and +climb up, so a chair was sent down, and we were hoisted in as ladies +usually are, and received so hearty an English welcome from Captain +Peyton and all on board that I felt myself at once at home in every +thing except my own mother tongue. I seemed to know the language +perfectly, but the words I wanted would not come at my call. When I +left England I had no intention of returning, and directed my +attention earnestly to the languages of Africa, paying none to English +composition. With the exception of a short interval in Angola, I had +been three and a half years without speaking English, and this, with +thirteen years of previous partial disuse of my native tongue, made me +feel sadly at a loss on board the "Frolic". + +We left Kilimane on the 12th of July, and reached the Mauritius on the +12th of August, 1856. Sekwebu was picking up English, and becoming a +favorite with both men and officers. He seemed a little bewildered, +every thing on board a man-of-war being so new and strange; but he +remarked to me several times, "Your countrymen are very agreeable," and, +"What a strange country this is--all water together!" He also said that +he now understood why I used the sextant. When we reached the Mauritius +a steamer came out to tow us into the harbor. The constant strain on +his untutored mind seemed now to reach a climax, for during the night +he became insane. I thought at first that he was intoxicated. He had +descended into a boat, and, when I attempted to go down and bring him +into the ship, he ran to the stern and said, "No! no! it is enough that +I die alone. You must not perish; if you come, I shall throw myself +into the water." Perceiving that his mind was affected, I said, "Now, +Sekwebu, we are going to Ma Robert." This struck a chord in his bosom, +and he said, "Oh yes; where is she, and where is Robert?" and he seemed +to recover. The officers proposed to secure him by putting him in irons; +but, being a gentleman in his own country, I objected, knowing that the +insane often retain an impression of ill treatment, and I could not +bear to have it said in Sekeletu's country that I had chained one of +his principal men as they had seen slaves treated. I tried to get him +on shore by day, but he refused. In the evening a fresh accession +of insanity occurred; he tried to spear one of the crew, then leaped +overboard, and, though he could swim well, pulled himself down hand +under hand by the chain cable. We never found the body of poor Sekwebu. + +At the Mauritius I was most hospitably received by Major General C. M. +Hay, and he generously constrained me to remain with him till, by the +influence of the good climate and quiet English comfort, I got rid of an +enlarged spleen from African fever. In November I came up the Red Sea; +escaped the danger of shipwreck through the admirable management of +Captain Powell, of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Company's ship +"Candia", and on the 12th of December was once more in dear old England. +The Company most liberally refunded my passage-money. I have not +mentioned half the favors bestowed, but I may just add that no one has +cause for more abundant gratitude to his fellow-men and to his Maker +than I have; and may God grant that the effect on my mind be such that +I may be more humbly devoted to the service of the Author of all our +mercies! + + + +Appendix.--Latitudes and Longitudes of Positions. + +[The "Remarks" column has been replaced, where needed, with remarks listed +below the corresponding line, and inclosed in square brackets.] + + + ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ + Positions. Latitude. Longitude. Date. No. of Sets + South. East. of Lunar + Distances. + ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ + d ' " d ' " W. E. + Manakalongwe Pass. 22 55 52 . . . 1853, Jan. 26 + Letloche. 22 38 0 . . . Jan. 28 + Kanne. 22 26 56 . . . Jan. 31 + Lotlokane, where the first 21 27 47 . . . Feb. 11, 12 + Palmyra-trees occur. + Hence path to Nchokotsa N.N.W., + thence to Kobe N.W. + Kobe (1st group). 20 53 14 24 52 0 Feb. 18, 19 + Kama Kama, from whence 19 52 31 . . . Mar. 2 + traveled in magnetic + meridian (1st group). + Fever Ponds (1st group). 19 15 53 24 55 0 Mar. 11, 28 + Ten miles S. of hill N'gwa 18 38 0 24 26 0 Apr. 14 + (1st group). + N'gwa Hill (a central 18 27 50 24 13 36 Apr. 15, 16 + occultation of + B.A.C. 2364 Gemini). + N'gwa Valley, half mile 18 27 20 24 13 36 Apr. 17 + N. of hill. + E. of and in parallel of 18 20 0 . . . Apr. 17 + Wagon Station of 1851. + Wagon Station on the Chobe, 18 20 0 23 50 0 . . . + three miles S. + of Sekeletu's Town. + Sekeletu's Town (1st group). 18 17 20 23 50 9 |June 13 | + |July 14, 17| + [ Boiling-point of water = 205-1/3 Deg.; Alt. = 3521 feet. ] + Island Mahonta. The Chobe 17 58 0 (24 6) Apr. 26 + runs here in 17d 58'. + Banks of Sanshureh River, 18 4 27 24 6 20 Apr. 26 + a branch of the Chobe + (1st group). + [ At a well-known Baobab-tree 9' south of Mahonta island. ] + Town of Sesheke 17 31 38 25 13 0 1855, Aug. 31 . 1 + on the Zambesi. + Sekhosi's Town on 17 29 13 . . . 1853, July 26, 27 + the Zambesi (about 25 miles + W. of Sesheke). + Cataract of Nambwe. 17 17 16 . . . July 31 + Confluence of 17 7 31 . . . 1855, Aug. 22 . 1 + Njoko and Zambesi. + Cataract of Bombwe. 16 56 33 . . . 1853, Aug. 1 + Kale Cataract. 16 49 52 . . . 1855, Aug. 21 . 1 + Falls of Gonye. 16 38 50 23 55 0 |1853, Aug. 2| + |1855, Aug. 19| 1 2 + Nameta. 16 12 9 . . . Aug. 17 . 2 + Seori sa Mei, 16 0 32 . . . 1853, Aug. 5 + or Island of Water. + Litofe Island, town of. 15 55 0 . . . Aug. 6 + Loyela, S. end of this 15 27 30 . . . Aug. 9 + island, town of Mamochisane. + Naliele or Nariele, 15 24 17 23 5 54 Aug. 10, 13 + chief town of Barotse + (occultation of Jupiter) + (1st group). + Linangelo, old town 15 18 40 . . . Aug. 19 + of Santuru (site nearly + swallowed up). + Katongo (near Slave 15 16 33 . . . Aug. 30 + Merchants' Stockade). + Point of Junction of Nariele 15 15 43 . . . Aug. 29 + Branch with the Main Stream. + Quando Village. 15 6 8 . . . Aug. 28 + Town of Libonta. 14 59 0 . . . Aug. 21 + Island of Tongane. 14 38 6 . . . Aug. 23 + Cowrie Island. 14 20 5 . . . Aug. 24 + Junction of the Loeti 14 18 57 . . . Aug. + with the Main Stream + (Leeambye, Zambesi). + [ Boiling-point of water = 203 Deg. = 4741 feet. ] + Confluence of the Leeba 14 10 52 23 35 40 Aug. 24, 25 + or Lonta with the Leeambye + (1st group). + Kabompo, near the Leeba. 12 37 35 22 47 0 |1854, Jan. 1| + |1855, July 3| . 3 + Village about 2' N.W. 12 6 6 22 57 0 1854, Feb. 1 + of the Leeba after leaving + Kabompo town: the hill Peeri, + or Piri, bearing S.S.E., + distant about 6'. + Village of Soana Molopo, 11 49 22 22 42 0 Feb. 7 + 3' from Lokalueje River. + Village of Quendende, 11 41 17 . . . Feb. 11 + about 2' S.E. of the ford + of the Lotembwa, and about + 9' from the town of Katema. + Banks of the Lovoa. 11 40 54 . . . 1855, June 20 2 . + Lofuje River flows into 12 52 35 22 49 0 July 7 . 3 + the Leeba; Nyamoana's village. + Confluence of the Makondo 13 23 12 . . . July 13 + and Leeba Rivers. + Katema's Town, 5' S. of Lake 11 35 49 22 27 0 1854, Feb. 17 . 2 + Dilolo, the source of the + Lotembwa, one of the principal + feeders of the Leeba. + Lake Dilolo (station about 11 32 1 . . . 1855, June 18 . 2 + half a mile S. of the lake). June 13 . . + [ Boiling-point of water = 203 Deg. = 4741 feet. ] + Village near the ford of 11 15 55 . . . 1854, Feb. 28 + the River Kasai, Kasye, + or Loke. The ford is + in latitude 11d 17'. + Bango's Village, about 10' 10 22 53 20 58 0 1855, May 28 3 . + W. of the Loembwe. + Banks of the Stream Chihune. 10 57 30 (20 53)*1* 1854, Mar. 8 + [ The longitude doubtful. ] + Ionga Panza's village. 10 25 0 20 15 0 *2* Mar. 20 + Ford of the River Quango. 9 50 0 (18 27 0) Apr. 5 + Cassange, about 40 or 50 9 37 30 17 49 0 Apr. 13, 17 3 2 + miles W. of the River Quango, + and situated in a deep valley. + Tala Mungongo, 2' E. 9 42 37 (17 27) Jan. 11, 14 + of following station. + [ Longitude not observed: Water boils-- + Top of = 206 Deg., height 3151 feet. + Bottom of descent = 208 Deg. = 2097 feet. + Bottom of east ascent = 205 Deg. = 3680 feet. + Top " " " = 202 Deg. = 5278 feet. ] + Banks of the Quinze, 9 42 37 17 25 0 1855, Jan. 10 . 1 + near the source, 2' W. of + the sudden descent which + forms the valley of Cassange. + Sanza, on the River Quize 9 37 46 16 59 0 Jan. 7 . 4 + (about 15 yards wide). + Pungo Andongo, 9 42 14 15 30 0 1854, Dec. 11 . 4 + on the River Coanza. + [ On the top of the rocks water boils at 204 Deg. = 4210 feet. ] + On the River Coanza, 9 47 2 . . . Dec. 22 + 2' W. of Pungo Andongo. + Candumba, 15 miles E. of 9 42 46 . . . 1855, Jan. 2 + Pungo Andongo, 300 yards + N. of the Coanza. + Confluence of the Lombe 9 41 26 . . . Jan. 3 + and Coanza, 8' or 10' E. + of Candumba, and at house + of M. Pires, taken at about + half a mile N. of confluence. + [ Here the Coanza takes its southern bend. ] + Golungo Alto, about midway 9 8 30 14 51 0 1854,|Oct. 27| + between Ambaca and Loanda. |May 14| + "Aguaes doces" in Cassange, 9 15 2 . . . Oct. 6, 7 . 2 + 10' W. of Golungo Alto. + [ At the confluence of the Luinha and Luce. ] + Confluence of the Luinha 9 26 23 . . . + and Lucalla. + Confluence of the Lucalla 9 37 46 . . . Oct. 11, 12 + and Coanza, Massangano + town and fort. + [ A prominent hill in Cazengo, called Zungo, is about 6' + S.S.W. of "Aguaes doces", and it bears N.E. by E. + from the house of the commandant at Massangano. ] + Ambaca, residence of the 9 16 35 15 23 0 Dec. 6 + commandant of the district. + Kalai, 17 51 54 25 41 0 1855, Nov. 18 2 3 + near the Mosioatunya Falls. + Lekone Rivulet. 17 45 6 25 55 0 Nov. 20 4 1 + [ Water boils at 204-1/2 Deg. = 3945 feet. Between Lekone and Kalomo, + Marimba 203-1/4 Deg. = 4608 feet. ] + Kalomo River. (17 3 0) . . . Nov. 30 . 1 + [ The lat. and long. doubtful. Top of ridge, water boils + at 202 Deg. = 5278 feet. ] + Rivulet of Dela, 16 56 0 26 45 0 Dec. 2 . 3 + called Mozuma. + Kise Kise Hills. 16 27 20 . . . Dec. 3 + Nakachinto Rivulet. 16 11 24 . . . Dec. 11 + [ On eastern descent from ridge, water boils at 204 Deg. = 4210 feet. ] + Elephant's Grave. (16 3 0) (28 10) Dec. 14 1 . + [ The latitude not observed. ] + Kenia Hills, Rivulet Losito (15 56 0) (28 1) Dec. 16 3 . + on their western flank. + [ The latitude not observed. ] + 6' E. of Bolengwe Gorge, 15 48 19 28 22 0 Dec. 18 3 3 + and on the banks of the Kafue. + 7' or 8' N.E. or E.N.E. (15 49 0) (28 34) *3* Dec. 29 . 4 + of the confluence of + the Kafue and Zambesi, + at a rivulet called Kambare. + [ The lat. not observed; water boils 205-1/2 Deg. = 3415 feet. + Top of the hills Semalembue, water boils 204-1/2 Deg. = 4078 feet. + Bottom of ditto, 205-3/4 Deg. = 3288 feet. ] + Confluence of Kafue 15 53 0 . . . + and Zambesi. + Banks of Zambesi, 15 50 49 . . . Dec. 30 + 8' or 10' below confluence. + [ Water boils at 209 Deg. = 1571 feet. ] + Village of Ma-Mburuma, 15 36 57 30 22 0 1856, Jan. 12 1 1 + about 10 miles from Zumbo. + Zumbo station, ruins of a 15 37 22 30 32 0 Jan. 13 2 3 + church on the right bank of + the Loangwa, about 300 yards + from confluence with Zambesi. + [ Water boils at 209-1/4 Deg. = 1440 feet. ] + Chilonda's Village, quarter 15 38 34 30 52 0 Jan. 20 3 . + of a mile N. of Zambesi, + near the Kabanka Hill. + Opposite Hill Pinkwe. 15 39 11 (32 5) *4* Feb. 7 . 1 + [ Long. doubtful; the moon's alt. only 4 Deg. ] + Moshua Rivulet. 15 45 33 32 22 0 *5* Feb. 9 1 2 + Tangwe Rivulet, or 16 13 38 32 29 0 Feb. 20 + Sand River, 1/4 mile broad. + Tete or Nyungwe station, 16 9 3 33 28 0 Mar. 2, 17 4 8 + house of commandant. + Hot Spring Makorozi, 15 59 35 . . . Mar. 13 + about 10 m. up the river. + Below Tete, island of 16 34 46 32 51 0 Apr. 23 1 . + Mozambique, on the Zambesi. + Island of Nkuesa. 17 1 6 . . . Apr. 25 + Senna, 300 yards S.W. 17 27 1 34 57 0 *6* |April 27| 2 6 + of the Mud Fort on the bank |May 8, 9| + of the river. + Islet of Shupanga. 17 51 38 . . . May 12 + Small islet in the middle of 17 59 21 . . . May 13 + the Zambesi, and six or eight + miles below Shupanga. + Mazaro or Mutu, 18 3 37 35 57 0 May 14 2 2 + where the Kilimane River + branches off the Zambesi. + Kilimane Village, 17 53 8 36 40 0 *7* June 13, 25, 27 1 6 + at the house of Senor + Galdino Jose Nunes, + colonel of militia. + ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ + Positions. Latitude. Longitude. Date. No. of Sets + South. East. of Lunar + Distances. + ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + *1* Probably 20d 25'.--I. A. + *2* Probably 20d 10'.--I. A. + *3* Probably 28d 56'.--I. A. + *4* Probably 31d 46' 30".--I. A. + *5* Probably 31d 56'.--I. A. + *6* Probably 35d 10' 15".--I. A. + *7* Probably 36d 56' 8".--I. A. + + +Appendix.--Book Review in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February, 1858. + +[This review is provided to allow the reader to view Livingstone's +achievement as it was seen by a contemporary.--A. L., 1997.] + + + +Livingstone's Travels in South Africa.* + + * 'Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa'. By + David Livingstone, LL.D., D.C.L. 1 vol. 8vo. With Maps and + numerous Illustrations. Harper and Brothers. + + 'Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa'. By + Henry Barth, Ph.D., D.C.L. 3 vols. 8vo. With Map and numerous + Illustrations. Harper and Brothers. + + +These two works, each embodying the results of years of travel and +research, entirely revolutionize all our theories as to the geographical +and physical character of Central Africa. Instead of lofty mountains and +sandy deserts, we have a wide basin, or rather series of basins, with +lakes and great rivers, and a soil fertile even when compared with the +abounding exuberance of our own Western valleys and prairies. + +Barth, traveling southward from the Mediterranean, explored this +region till within eight degrees of the equator. Livingstone, traveling +northward from the Cape of Good Hope, approached the equator from the +south as nearly as Barth did from the north. He then traversed the +whole breadth of the continent diagonally from the west to the east. +His special researches cover the entire space between the eighth and +fifteenth parallels of south latitude. Between the regions explored by +Barth and Livingstone lies an unexplored tract extending eight degrees +on each side of the equator, and occupying the whole breadth of +the continent from east to west. Lieutenant Burton, famous for his +expedition to Mecca and Medina, set out from Zanzibar a few months +since, with the design of traversing this very region. If he succeeds +in his purpose his explorations will fill up the void between those of +Barth and Livingstone. + +Dr. Livingstone, with whose travels we are at present specially +concerned, is no ordinary man. The son of a Presbyterian deacon and +small trader in Glasgow; set to work in a cotton factory at ten years +old; buying a Latin grammar with his first earnings; working from six in +the morning till eight at night, then attending evening-school till +ten, and pursuing his studies till midnight; at sixteen a fair classical +scholar, with no inconsiderable reading in books of science and travels, +gained, sentence by sentence, with the book open before him on his +spinning-jenny; botanizing and geologizing on holidays and at spare +hours; poring over books of astrology till he was startled by inward +suggestions to sell his soul to the Evil One as the price of the +mysterious knowledge of the stars; soundly flogged by the good deacon +his father by way of imparting to him a liking for Boston's "Fourfold +State" and Wilberforce's "Practical Christianity"; then convinced by the +writings of the worthy Thomas Dick that there was no hostility between +Science and Religion, embracing with heart and mind the doctrines of +evangelical Christianity, and resolving to devote his life to their +extension among the heathen--such are the leading features of the early +life of David Livingstone. + +He would equip himself for the warfare and afterward fight with the +powers of darkness at his own cost. So at the age of nineteen--a slim, +loose-jointed lad--he commenced the study of medicine and Greek, and +afterward of theology, in the University of Glasgow, attending lectures +in the winter, paying his expenses by working as a cotton-spinner during +the summer, without receiving a farthing of aid from any one. + +His purpose was to go to China as a medical missionary, and he would +have accomplished his object solely by his own efforts had not some +friends advised him to join the London Missionary Society. He offered +himself, with a half hope that his application would be rejected, for it +was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to work his own way to become +dependent in a measure upon others. + +By the time when his medical and theological studies were completed, +the Opium War had rendered it inexpedient to go to China, and his +destination was fixed for Southern Africa. + +He reached his field of labor in 1840. Having tarried for three months +at the head station at Kuruman, and taken to wife a daughter of the +well-known missionary Mr. Moffat, he pushed still farther into the +country, and attached himself to the band of Sechele, chief of the +Bakwains, or "Alligators", a Bechuana tribe. Here, cutting himself for +six months wholly off from all European society, he gained an insight +into the language, laws, modes of life, and habits of the Bechuanas, +which proved of incalculable advantage in all his subsequent intercourse +with them. + +Sechele gave a ready ear to the missionary's instructions. + +"Did your forefathers know of a future judgment?" he asked. + +"They knew of it," replied the missionary, who proceeded to describe the +scenes of the last great day. + +"You startle me: these words make all my bones to shake; I have no more +strength in me. But my forefathers were living at the same time yours +were; and how is it that they did not send them word about these +terrible things? They all passed away into darkness without knowing +whither they were going." + +Mr. Moffat had translated the Bible into the Bechuana language, which he +had reduced to writing, and Sechele set himself to learn to read, with +so much assiduity that he began to grow corpulent from lack of his +accustomed exercise. His great favorite was Isaiah. "He was a fine man, +that Isaiah; he knew how to speak," he was wont to say, using the very +words applied by the Glasgow Professor to the Apostle Paul. Having +become convinced of the truth of Christianity, he wished his people also +to become Christians. "I will call them together," he said, "and with +our rhinoceros-skin whips we will soon make them all believe together." +Livingstone, mindful, perhaps, of the ill success of his worthy father +in the matter of Wilberforce on "Practical Christianity", did not favor +the proposed line of argument. He was, in fact, in no great haste +to urge Sechele to make a full profession of faith by receiving the +ordinance of baptism; for the chief had, in accordance with the customs +of his people, taken a number of wives, of whom he must, in this case, +put away all except one. The head-wife was a greasy old jade, who was +in the habit of attending church without her gown, and when her husband +sent her home to make her toilet, she would pout out her thick lips in +unutterable disgust at his new-fangled notions, while some of the other +wives were the best scholars in the school. After a while Sechele took +the matter into his own hands, sent his supernumerary wives back to +their friends--not empty-handed--and was baptized. + +Mr. Livingstone's station was in the region since rendered famous by +the hunting exploits of Gordon Cumming. He vouches for the truth of +the wonderful stories told by that redoubtable Nimrod, who visited him +during each of his excursions. He himself, indeed, had an adventure with +a lion quite equal to any thing narrated by Cumming or Andersson, the +result of which was one dead lion, two Bechuanas fearfully wounded, his +own arm marked with eleven distinct teeth-marks, the bone crunched to +splinters, and the formation of a false joint, which marred his shooting +ever after. + +Mr. Livingstone has a republican contempt for the "King of Beasts". He +is nothing better than an overgrown hulking dog, not a match, in fair +fight, for a buffalo. If a traveler encounter him by daylight, he turns +tail and sneaks out of sight like a scared greyhound. All the talk about +his majestic roar is sheer twaddle. It takes a keen ear to distinguish +the voice of the lion from that of the silly ostrich. When he is gorged +he falls asleep, and a couple of natives approach him without fear. One +discharges an arrow, the point of which has been anointed with a subtle +poison, made of the dried entrails of a species of caterpillar, while +the other flings his skin cloak over his head. The beast bolts away +incontinently, but soon dies, howling and biting the ground in agony. +In the dark, or at all hours when breeding, the lion is an ugly enough +customer; but if a man will stay at home by night, and does not go out +of his way to attack him, he runs less risk in Africa of being devoured +by a lion than he does in our cities of being run over by an omnibus--so +says Mr. Livingstone. + +When the lion grows old he leads a miserable life. Unable to master the +larger game, he prowls about the villages in the hope of picking up a +stray goat. A woman of child venturing out at night does not then come +amiss. When the natives hear of one prowling about the villages, they +say, "His teeth are worn; he will soon kill men," and thereupon turn out +to kill him. This is the only foundation for the common belief that +when the lion has once tasted human flesh he will eat nothing else. A +"man-eater" is always an old lion, who takes to cannibalism to avoid +starvation. When he lives far from human habitations, and so can not get +goats or children, an old lion is often reduced to such straits as to be +obliged to live upon mice, and such small deer. + +Mr. Livingstone's strictly missionary life among the Bakwains lasted +eight or nine years. The family arose early, and, after prayers and +breakfast, went to the school-room, where men, women, and children were +assembled. School was over at eleven, when the husband set about his +work as gardener, smith, or carpenter, while his wife busied herself +with domestic matters--baking bread, a hollow in a deserted ant-hill +serving for an oven; churning butter in an earthen jar; running candles; +making soap from ashes containing so little alkaline matter that the +ley had to be kept boiling for a month or six weeks before it was +strong enough for use. The wife was maid-of-all-work in doors, while the +husband was Jack-at-all-trades outside. Three several times the tribe +removed their place of residence, and he was so many times compelled +to build for himself a house, every stick and brick of which was put in +place by his own hands. The heat of the day past, and dinner over, the +wife betook herself to the infant and sewing schools, while the husband +walked down to the village to talk with the natives. Three nights in +the week, after the cows had been milked, public meetings were held for +instruction in religious and secular matters. All these multifarious +duties were diversified by attendance upon the sick, and in various ways +aiding the poor and wretched. Being in so many ways helpful to them, +and having, besides, shown from the first that he could knock them up at +hard work or traveling, we can not wonder that Livingstone was popular +among the Bakwains, though conversions seem to have been of the rarest. +Indeed, we are not sure but Sechele's was the only case. + +A great drought set in the very first year of his residence among them, +which increased year by year. The river ran dry; the canals which he +had induced them to dig for the purpose of irrigating their gardens were +useless; the fish died in such numbers that the congregated hyenas of +the country were unable to devour the putrid masses. The rain-makers +tried their spells in vain. The clouds sometimes gathered promisingly +overhead, but only to roll away without discharging a drop upon the +scorched plains. The people began to suspect some connection between the +new religion and the drought. "We like you," they said, "but we wish you +would give up this everlasting preaching and praying. You see that we +never get any rain, while the tribes who never pray have an abundance." +Livingstone could not deny the fact, and he was sometimes disposed to +attribute it to the malevolence of the "Prince of the Power of the Air", +eager to frustrate the good work. + +The people behaved wonderfully well, though the scarcity amounted almost +to famine. The women sold their ornaments to buy corn from the more +fortunate tribes around; the children scoured the country for edible +roots; the men betook themselves to hunting. They constructed great +traps, called 'hopos', consisting of two lines of hedges, a mile long, +far apart at the extremities, but converging like the sides of the +letter V, with a deep pit at the narrow end. Then forming a circuit for +miles around, they drove the game--buffaloes, zebras, gnus, antelopes, +and the like--into the mouth of the hopo, and along its narrowing lane, +until they plunged pell-mell in one confused, writhing, struggling mass +into the pit, where they were speared at leisure. + +The precarious mode of life occasioned by the long drought interfered +sadly with the labors of the mission. Still worse was the conduct of +Boers who had pushed their way into the Bechuana country. Their theory +was very simple: "We are the people of God, and the heathen are given to +us for an inheritance." Of this inheritance they proceeded to make +the most. They compelled the natives to work for them without pay, in +consideration of the privilege of living in "their country". They made +regular forays, carrying off the women and children as slaves. They were +cowardly as well as brutal, compelling friendly tribes to accompany +them on their excursions, putting them in front as a shield, and coolly +firing over their heads, till the enemy fled in despair, leaving their +women, children, and cattle as a prey. + +So long as fire-arms could be kept from the natives the Boers were sure +of having it all their own way. But traders came in the train of the +missionaries, and sold guns and powder to the Bechuanas. Sechele's +tribe procured no less than five muskets. The Boers were alarmed, and +determined to drive missionaries and traders from the country. + +In course of time Mr. Livingstone became convinced that Bibles and +preaching were not all that was necessary. Civilization must accompany +Christianization; and commerce was essential to civilization; for +commerce, more speedily than any thing else, would break down the +isolation of the tribes, by making them mutually dependent upon and +serviceable to each other. + +It was well known that northward, beyond the desert, lay a great lake, +in the midst of a country rich in ivory and other articles of commerce. +In former years, when rains had been more abundant, the natives had +frequently crossed this desert; and somewhere near the lake dwelt a +famous chief, named Sebituane, who had once lived on friendly terms +in the neighborhood of Sechele, who was anxious to renew the old +acquaintance. Mr. Livingstone determined to open intercourse with this +region, in spite of the threats and opposition of the Boers. + +So the missionary became a traveler and explorer. While laying his plans +and gathering information, the opportune arrival of Messrs. Oswell and +Murray, two wealthy Englishmen who had become enamored with African +hunting, enabled him to undertake the proposed expedition, Mr. Oswell +agreeing to pay the guides, who were furnished by Sechele. + +This expedition, which resulted in the discovery of Lake Ngami, set out +from the missionary station at Kolobeng on the 1st of June, 1849. +The way lay across the great Kalahari desert, seven hundred miles in +breadth. This is a singular region. Though it has no running streams, +and few and scanty wells, it abounds in animal and vegetable life. Men, +animals, and plants accommodate themselves singularly to the scarcity of +water. Grass is abundant, growing in tufts; bulbous plants abound, among +which are the 'leroshua', which sends up a slender stalk not larger than +a crow quill, with a tuber, a foot or more below the surface, as large +as a child's head, consisting of a mass of cellular tissue filled with +a cool and refreshing fluid; and the 'mokuri', which deposits under +ground, within a circle of a yard from its stem, a mass of tubers of +the size of a man's head. During years when the rains are unusually +abundant, the Kalahari is covered with the 'kengwe', a species of +water-melon. Animals and men rejoice in the rich supply; antelopes, +lions, hyenas, jackals, mice, and men devour it with equal avidity. + +The people of the desert conceal their wells with jealous care. They +fill them with sand, and place their dwellings at a distance, that their +proximity may not betray the precious secret. The women repair to the +wells with a score or so of ostrich shells in a bag slung over their +shoulders. Digging down an arm's-length, they insert a hollow reed, with +a bunch of grass tied to the end, then ram the sand firmly around the +tube. The water slowly filters into the bunch of grass, and is sucked +up through the reed, and squirted mouthful by mouthful into the shells. +When all are filled, the women gather up their load and trudge homeward. + +Elands, springbucks, koodoos, and ostriches somehow seem to get along +very well without any moisture, except that contained in the grass which +they eat. They appear to live for months without drinking; but whenever +rhinoceroses, buffaloes, or gnus are seen, it is held to be certain +proof that water exists within a few miles. + +The passage of the Kalahari was effected, not without considerable +difficulty, in two months, the expedition reaching Lake Ngami on the 1st +of August. As they approached it, they came upon a considerable river. + +"Whence does this come?" asked Livingstone. + +"From a country full of rivers," was the reply; "so many that no man can +tell their number, and full of large trees." + +This was the first actual confirmation of the report of the Bakwains +that the country beyond was not the large "sandy plateau" of +geographers. The prospect of a highway capable of being traversed by +boats to an unexplored fertile region so filled the mind of Livingstone +that, when he came to the lake, this discovery seemed of comparatively +little importance. To us, indeed, whose ideas of a lake are formed from +Superior and Huron, the Ngami seems but an insignificant affair. Its +circumference may be seventy or a hundred miles, and its mean depth is +but a few feet. It lies two thousand feet above the level of the sea, +and as much below the southern border of the Kalahari, which slopes +gradually toward the interior. + +Their desire to visit Sebituane, whose residence was considerably +farther in the interior, was frustrated by the jealousy of Lechulatebe, +a chief near the lake, and the expedition returned to the station at +Kolobeng. The attempt was renewed the following year. Mrs. Livingstone, +their three children, and Sechele accompanied him. The lake was reached. +Lechulatebe, propitiated by the present of a valuable gun, agreed to +furnish guides to Sebituane's country; but the children and servants +fell ill, and the attempt was for the time abandoned. + +A third expedition was successful, although the whole party came near +perishing for want of water, and their cattle, which had been bitten by +the 'Tsetse', died. + +This insect--the 'Glossina moritans' of the naturalists--deserves a +special paragraph. It is a brown insect about as large as our common +house-fly, with three or four yellow bars across its hinder part. +A lively, buzzing, harmless-looking fellow is the tsetse. Its bite +produces a slight itching similar to that caused by the mosquito, and +in the case of men and some species of animals no further ill effects +follow. But woe to the horse, the ox, and the dog, when once bitten by +the tsetse. No immediate harm appears; the animal is not startled as by +the gad-fly; but in a few days the eyes and the nose begin to run; the +jaws and navel swell; the animal grazes for a while as usual, but grows +emaciated and weak, and dies, it may be, weeks or months after. When +dissected, the cellular tissue seems injected with air, the fat is green +and oily, the muscles are flabby, the heart is so soft that the finger +may be pushed through it. The antelope and buffalo, the zebra and goat, +are not affected by its bite; while to the ox, the horse, and the dog +it is certain death. The mule and donkey are not troubled by it, nor are +sucking calves, while dogs, though fed upon milk, perish. Such different +effects produced upon animals whose nature is similar, constitute one of +the most curious phenomena in natural history. + +Sebituane, who had heard of the approach of his visitors, came more +than a hundred miles to meet them. He was a tall, wiry, coffee-and-milk +colored man, of five-and-forty. His original home was a thousand miles +to the south, in the Bakwain country, whence he had been driven by the +Griquas a quarter of a century before. He fled northward, fighting his +way, sometimes reduced to the utmost straits, but still keeping his +people together. At length he crossed the desert, and conquered the +country around Lake Ngami; then having heard of white men living on the +west coast, he passed southwestward into the desert, hoping to be able +to open intercourse with them. There suffering from the thirst, he +came to a small well; the water was not sufficient for his men and his +cattle; one or the other must perish; he ordered the men to drink, for +if they survived they could fight for more cattle. In the morning his +cattle were all gone, and he returned to the north. Here a long course +of warfare awaited him, but in the end he triumphed over his enemies, +and established himself for a time on the great river Zambesi. Haunted +with a longing for intercourse with the whites, he proposed to descend +the river to the eastern coast. He was dissuaded from this purpose by +the warnings of a native prophet. "The gods say, Go not thither!" he +cried; then turning to the west, "I see a city and a nation of black +men--men of the water; their cattle are red; thine own tribe are +perishing, and will all be consumed; thou wilt govern black men, and +when thy warriors have captured the red cattle, let not their owners be +killed; they are thy future tribe; let them be spared to cause thee to +build." So Sebituane went westward, conquered the blacks of an immense +region, spared the lives of the men, and made them his subjects, ruling +them gently. His original people are called the Makololo; the subject +tribes are styled Makalaka. + +Sebituane, though the greatest warrior in the south, always leading his +men to battle in person, was still anxious for peace. He had heard of +cannon, and had somehow acquired the idea that if he could only procure +one he might live in quiet. He received his visitors with much favor. +"Your cattle have all been bitten by the tsetse," he said, "and will +die; but never mind, I will give you as many as you want." He offered +to conduct them through his country that they might choose a site for a +missionary station. But at this moment he fell ill of an inflammation of +the lungs, from which he soon died. + +"He was," writes Mr. Livingstone, "the best specimen of a native chief +I ever met; and it was impossible not to follow him in thought into the +world of which he had just heard when he was called away, and to realize +somewhat of the feeling of those who pray for the dead. The deep, dark +question of what is to become of such as he must be left where we find +it, believing that assuredly the Judge of all the earth will do right." + +Although he had sons, Sebituane left the chieftainship to his daughter +Mamochisane, who confirmed her father's permission that the missionaries +might visit her country. They proceeded a hundred and thirty miles +farther, and were rewarded by the discovery of the great river +Zambesi, the very existence of which, in Central Africa, had never been +suspected. It was the dry season, and the river was at its lowest; +but it was from three to six hundred yards broad, flowing with a deep +current toward the east. + +A grander idea than the mere founding of a missionary station now +developed itself in the mind of Mr. Livingstone. European goods had just +begun to be introduced into this region from the Portuguese settlements +on the coast; at present slaves were the only commodity received in +payment for them. Livingstone thought if a great highway could be +opened, ivory, and the other products of the country, might be bartered +for these goods, and the traffic in slaves would come to an end. + +He therefore resolved to take his family to Cape Town, and thence send +them to England, while he returned alone to the interior, with the +purpose of making his way either to the east or the west coast. + +He reached the Cape in April, 1852, being the first time during eleven +years that he had visited the scenes of civilization, and placed his +family on board a ship bound for England, promising to rejoin them in +two years. + +In June he set out from Cape Town upon that long journey which was to +occupy five years. When he approached the missionary stations in the +interior, he learned that the long-threatened attack by the Boers had +taken place. A letter from Sechele to Mr. Moffat told the story. Thus it +ran: + + +"Friend of my heart's love and of all the confidence of my heart, I +am Sechele. I am undone by the Boers, who attacked me, though I had no +guilt with them. They demanded that I should be in their kingdom, and +I refused. They demanded that I should prevent the English and Griquas +from passing. I replied, These are my friends, and I can not prevent +them. They came on Saturday, and I besought them not to fight on Sunday, +and they assented. They began on Monday morning at twilight, and fired +with all their might, and burned the town with fire, and scattered us. +They killed sixty of my people, and captured women, and children, and +men. They took all the cattle and all the goods of the Bakwains; and the +house of Livingstone they plundered, taking away all his goods. Of the +Boers we killed twenty-eight." + + +Two hundred children, who had been gathered into schools, were carried +away as slaves. Mr. Livingstone's library was wantonly destroyed, not +carried away; his stock of medicines was smashed, and his furniture +and clothing sold at auction to defray the expenses of the foray. Mr. +Pretorius, the leader of the marauding party, died not long after, and +an obituary notice of him was published, ending with the words, "Blessed +are the dead who die in the Lord." + +Leaving his desolate home, Livingstone proceeded on his journey. On the +way he met Sechele, who was going, he said, to see the Queen of England. +Livingstone tried to dissuade him. + +"Will not the Queen listen to me?" asked the chief. + +"I believe she would listen, but the difficulty is to get to her." + +"Well, I shall reach her." + +And so they parted. Sechele actually made his way to the Cape, a +distance of a thousand miles, but could get no farther, and returned to +his own country. The remnants of the tribes who had formerly lived among +the Boers gathered around him, and he is now more powerful than ever. + +It is slow traveling in Africa. Livingstone was almost a year in +accomplishing the 1500 miles between Cape Town and the country of the +Makololo. He found that Mamochisane, the daughter of Sebituane, had +voluntarily resigned the chieftainship to her younger brother, Sekeletu. +She wished to be married, she said, and have a family like other women. +The young chief Sekeletu was very friendly, but showed no disposition +to become a convert. He refused to learn to read the Bible, for fear it +might change his heart, and make him content with only one wife, like +Sechele. For his part he wanted at least five. + +Some months were passed in this country, which is described as fertile +and well-cultivated--producing millet, maize, yams, sweet potatoes, +cassava, beans, pumpkins, water-melons, and the like. The sugar-cane +grows plentifully, but the people had never learned the process of +making sugar. They have great numbers of cattle, and game of various +species abounds. On one occasion a troop of eighty-one buffaloes defiled +slowly before their evening fire, while herds of splendid elands stood, +without fear, at two hundred yards' distance. The country is rather +unhealthy, from the mass of decayed vegetation exposed to the torrid +sun. + +After due consideration, Livingstone resolved to make his way to Loanda, +a Portuguese settlement on the western coast. Sekeletu, anxious to open +a trade with the coast, appointed twenty-seven men to accompany the +traveler; and on the 11th of November, 1853, he set out on his journey. + +Three or four small boxes contained all the baggage of the party. The +only provisions were a few pounds of biscuits, coffee, tea, and sugar; +their main reliance being upon the game which they expected to kill, +and, this failing, upon the proceeds of about ten dollars' worth of +beads. They also took with them a few elephants' tusks, which Sekeletu +sent by way of a trading venture. + +The river up which they paddled abounds in hippopotami. These are in +general harmless, though now and then a solitary old bull who has been +expelled from the herd vents his spleen by pitching into every canoe +that passes. Once their canoe was attacked by a female whose calf had +been speared, and nearly overturned. The female carries her young upon +her back, its little round head first appearing above the surface when +she comes up to breathe. + +By the order of the chief the party had been furnished with eight oxen +for riding, and seven intended for slaughter. Some of the troop paddled +the canoes, while others drove the cattle along the bank. + +African etiquette requires that a company of travelers, when they come +in sight of a village, shall seat themselves under a tree, and send +forward a messenger to announce their arrival and state their object. +The chief then gives them a ceremonious reception, with abundance of +speech-making and drumming. It is no easy matter to get away from these +villages, for the chiefs esteem it an honor to have strangers with +them. These delays, and the frequent heavy rains, greatly retarded the +progress of the travelers. + +They had traveled four months, and accomplished half of their journey +before encountering any show of hostility from the tribes through which +they passed. A chief, named Njambi, then demanded tribute for passing +through his country; when this was refused he said that one of +Livingstone's men had spit on the leg of one of his people, and this +crime must be paid for by a fine of a man, an ox, or a gun. This +reasonable demand was likewise refused, and the natives seemed about +to commence hostilities; but changed their minds upon witnessing the +determined attitude of the strangers. Livingstone at last yielded to the +entreaties of his men and gave them an ox, upon the promise that food +should be sent in exchange. The niggardly chief sent them only a small +bag of meal, and two or three pounds of the meat of their own ox. + +From this time they were subject to frequent attempts at extortion. The +last of these was made on the banks of the River Quango, the boundary of +the Portuguese possessions. A Bashinje chief, whose portrait is given +by Mr. Livingstone, made the usual demand of a man, a gun, or an ox, +otherwise they must return the way they came. While negotiations were +in progress the opportune arrival of a Portuguese sergeant freed the +travelers from their troubles. The river was crossed, and once on +Portuguese territory their difficulties were over. + +At Cassange, the frontier settlement, they sold Sekeletu's ivory. The +Makololo, who had been accustomed to give two tusks for one gun, +were delighted at the prices they obtained. For one tusk they got two +muskets, three kegs of powder, large bunches of beads, and calico and +baize enough to clothe all the party. + +On the 31st of May, after more than six months' travel, Livingstone and +his companions reached the Portuguese sea-port of Loanda. The Makololo +were lost in wonder when they first caught sight of the sea. "We marched +along," they said, "believing that what the ancients had told us was +true, that the world has no end; but all at once the world said to us, +I am finished, there is no more of me." Still greater was their wonder +when they beheld the large stone houses of the town. "These are not +huts," they said, "but mountains with caves in them." Livingstone had in +vain tried to make them comprehend a house of two stories. They knew of +no dwellings except their own conical huts, made of poles stuck into the +ground, and could not conceive how one hut could be built on the top of +another, or how people could live in the upper story, with the pointed +roof of the lower one sticking up in the middle of the floor. The +vessels in the harbor were, they said, not canoes, but towns, into which +one must climb by a rope. + +At Loanda Livingstone was attacked by a fever, which reduced him to +a skeleton, and for a while rendered him unable to attend to his +companions. But they managed very well alone. Some went to the forest, +cut firewood, and brought it to town for sale; others unloaded a +coal-vessel in the harbor, at the magnificent wages of a sixpence a day. +The proceeds of their labor were shrewdly invested in cloth and beads +which they would take home with them in confirmation of the astounding +stories they would have to tell; "for," said they, "in coming to the +white man's country, we have accomplished what no other people in the +world could have done; we are the true ancients, who can tell wonderful +things." + +The two years, at the close of which Livingstone had promised to rejoin +his family, had almost expired, and he was offered a passage home +from Loanda. But the great object of his expedition was only partially +attained. Though he had reached the west coast in safety, he had found +that the forests, swamps, and rivers must render a wagon-road from the +interior impracticable. He feared also that his native attendants would +not be able to make their way alone back to their own country, through +the unfriendly tribes. So he resolved, feeble as he was, to return to +Sekeletu's dominions, and thence proceed to the eastern coast. + +In September he started on his return journey, bearing considerable +presents for Sekeletu from the Portuguese, who were naturally anxious +to open a trade with the rich ivory region of the interior. The Board of +Public Works sent a colonel's uniform and a horse, which unfortunately +died on the way. The merchants contributed specimens of all their +articles of trade, and a couple of donkeys, which would have a special +value on account of their immunity from the bite of the tsetse. The men +were made happy by the acquisition of a suit of European clothes and a +gun apiece, in addition to their own purchases. + +In the Bashinje country he again encountered hostile demonstrations. One +chief, who came riding into the camp upon the shoulders of an attendant, +was especially annoying in his demands for tribute. Another, who had +quarreled with one of Livingstone's attendants, waylaid and fired upon +the party. Livingstone, who was ill of a fever, staggered up to the +chief, revolver in hand. The sight of the six mouths of that convenient +implement gaping at his breast wrought an instant revolution in his +martial ideas; he fell into a fit of trembling, protesting that he had +just come to have a quiet talk, and wanted only peace. + +These Bashinje have more of the low negro character and physiognomy than +any tribe encountered by Livingstone. Their color is a dirty black; they +have low foreheads and flat noses, artificially enlarged by sticks +run through the septum, and file their teeth down to a point. A little +further to the south the complexion of the natives is much lighter, +and their features are strikingly like those depicted upon the Egyptian +monuments, the resemblance being still further increased by some of +their modes of wearing the hair. Livingstone indeed affirms that the +Egyptian paintings and sculptures present the best type of the general +physiognomy of the central tribes. + +The return journey was still slower than the advance had been; and it +was not till late in the summer of 1855 that they reached the villages +of the Makololo, having been absent more than eighteen months. They were +received as men risen from the dead, for the diviners had declared that +they had perished long ago. The returned adventurers were the lions of +the day. They strutted around in their gay European suits, with their +guns over their shoulders, to the abounding admiration of the women and +children, calling themselves Livingstone's "braves", who had gone over +the whole world, turning back only when there was no more land. To be +sure they returned about as poor as they went, for their gun and their +one suit of red and white cotton were all that they had saved, every +thing else having been expended during their long journey. "But never +mind," they said; "we have not gone in vain, you have opened a path for +us." + +There was one serious drawback from their happiness. Some of their +wives, like those of the companions of Ulysses of old, wearied by their +long absence, had married other husbands. They took this misfortune much +to heart. "Wives," said one of the bereaved husbands, "are as plenty as +grass--I can get another; but," he added bitterly, "if I had that fellow +I would slit his ears for him." Livingstone did the best he could for +them. He induced the chiefs to compel the men who had taken the only +wife of any one to give her up to her former husband. Those--and they +were the majority--who had still a number left, he consoled by telling +them that they had quite as many as was good for them--more than he +himself had. So, undeterred by this single untoward result of their +experiment, the adventurers one and all set about gathering ivory for +another adventure to the west. + +Livingstone had satisfied himself that the great River Leeambye, up +which he had paddled so many miles on his way to the west, was identical +with the Zambesi, which he had discovered four years previously. The two +names are indeed the same, both meaning simply "The River", in different +dialects spoken on its banks. This great river is an object of wonder to +the natives. They have a song which runs, + + "The Leeambye! Nobody knows + Whence it comes, and whither it goes." + +Livingstone had pursued it far up toward its source, and knew whence it +came; and now he resolved to follow it down to the sea, trusting that +it would furnish a water communication into the very heart of the +continent. + +It was now October--the close of the hot season. The thermometer stood +at 100 Deg. in the shade; in the sun it sometimes rose to 130 Deg. +During the day the people kept close in their huts, guzzling a kind +of beer called 'boyola', and seeming to enjoy the copious perspiration +which it induces. As evening set in the dance began, which was kept up +in the moonlight till long after midnight. Sekeletu, proud of his new +uniform, and pleased with the prospect of trade which had been opened, +entertained Livingstone hospitably, and promised to fit him out for his +eastern journey as soon as the rains had commenced, and somewhat cooled +the burning soil. + +He set out early in November, the chief with a large body of retainers +accompanying him as far as the Falls of Mosioatunye, the most remarkable +piece of natural scenery in all Africa, which no European had ever seen +or heard of. The Zambesi, here a thousand yards broad, seems all at +once to lose itself in the earth. It tumbles into a fissure in the hard +basaltic rock, running at a right-angle with the course of the stream, +and prolonged for thirty miles through the hills. This fissure, hardly +eighty feet broad, with sides perfectly perpendicular, is fully a +hundred feet in depth down to the surface of the water, which shows like +a white thread at its bottom. The noise made by the descent of such +a mass of water into this seething abyss is heard for miles, and five +distinct columns of vapor rise like pillars of smoke to an +enormous height. Hence the Makololo name for the cataract, 'Mosi oa +tunye'--"Smoke sounds there!"--for which Livingstone, with questionable +taste, proposes to substitute the name of "Victoria Falls"--a change +which we trust the world will not sanction. + +From these falls the country gradually ascends toward the east, the +river finding its way by this deep fissure through the hills. Every +thing shows that this whole region, for hundreds of miles, was once +the bed of an immense fresh-water lake. By some convulsion of nature, +occurring at a period geologically recent, this fissure was formed, and +through it the lake was drained, with the exception of its deepest part, +which constitutes the present Lake Ngami. Similar indications exist of +the former existence of other immense bodies of water, which have in +like manner been drained by fissures through the surrounding elevations, +leaving shallow lakes at the lowest points. Such are, undoubtedly, Tsad +at the north, Ngami at the south, Dilolo at the west, and Taganyika and +Nyanja, of which we have only vague reports, at the east. This great +lake region of former days seems to have extended 2500 miles from north +to south, with an average breadth, from east to west, of 600 or 700 +miles. + +The true theory of the African continent is, that it consists of +a well-watered trough, surrounded on all sides by an elevated rim, +composed in part of mountain ranges, and in part of high sandy deserts. +Livingstone, who had wrought out this theory from his own personal +observations, was almost disappointed when, on returning to England, +he found that the same theory had been announced on purely geological +grounds by Sir Roderick Murchison, the same philosopher who had averred +that gold must exist in Australia, long before the first diggings had +been discovered there. + +Sekeletu had commissioned Livingstone, when he reached his own country, +to purchase for him a sugar-mill, a good rifle, different kinds of +clothing, brass wire, beads, and, in a word, "any other beautiful thing +he might see," furnishing him with a considerable quantity of ivory to +pay for them. Their way lay through the country of the Batoka, a fierce +tribe who had a few years before attempted "to eat up" Sebituane, with +ill success, for he dispersed them and took away their cattle. Their +country, once populous, is now almost desolate. At one of their ruined +villages Livingstone saw five-and-forty human skulls bleaching upon +stakes stuck in the ground. In the old times the chiefs used to vie with +each other as to whose village should be ornamented with the greatest +number of these ghastly trophies; and a skull was the most acceptable +present from any one who wished to curry favor with a chief. The Batoka +have an odd custom of knocking out the front teeth from the upper jaw. +The lower ones, relieved from the attrition and pressure of the upper, +grow long and protruding, forcing the lower lip out in a hideous manner. +They say that they wish their mouths to be like those of oxen, and not +like those of zebras. No young Batoka female can lay any claim to being +a belle until she has thus acquired an "ox-mouth". "Look at the great +teeth!" is the disparaging criticism made upon those who neglect to +remove their incisors. The women wear a little clothing, but the men +disdain even the paradisiacal fig-leaf, and go about in a state of +absolute nudity. Livingstone told them that he should come back some +day with his family, when none of them must come near without at least +putting on a bunch of grass. They thought it a capital joke. Their mode +of salutation is to fling themselves flat on their backs, and roll from +side to side, slapping the outside of their naked thighs. + +The country abounds with game. Buffaloes and zebras by the hundred +grazed on the open spaces. At one time their procession was interrupted +by three buffaloes who came dashing through their ranks. Livingstone's +ox set off at a furious gallop. Looking back, he saw one of his men +flung up into the air by a toss from one of the beasts, who had carried +him on his horns for twenty yards before giving the final pitch. The +fellow came down flat on his face, but the skin was not pierced, and no +bone was broken. His comrades gave him a brisk shampooing, and in a week +he was as well as ever. + +The border country passed, the natives grew more friendly, and gladly +supplied all the wants of the travelers. About the middle of December, +when their journey was half over, they came upon the first traces of +Europeans--a deserted town, a ruined church, and a broken bell inscribed +with a cross and the letters I. H. S., but bearing no date. A few days +after they met a man wearing a hat and jacket. He had come from the +Portuguese settlement of Tete, far down the river. From him they learned +that a war was going on below, between the Portuguese and the natives. +A chief, named Mpende, showed signs of hostility. Livingstone's men, +who had become worn and ragged by their long journey, rejoiced at the +prospect of a fight. "Now," said they, "we shall get corn and clothes in +plenty. You have seen us with elephants, but you don't know what we can +do with men." After a while two old men made their appearance, to +find out who the strangers were. "I am a Lekoa (Englishman)," said +Livingstone. "We don't know that tribe," they replied; "we suppose you +are a Mozunga (Portuguese)." Upon Livingstone's showing them his long +hair and the white skin of his bosom they exclaimed, "We never saw so +white a skin as that. You must be one of that tribe that loves the black +men." Livingstone eagerly assured him that such was the case. Sekwebu, +the leader of his men, put in a word: "Ah, if you only knew him as well +as we do, who have lived with him, you would know how highly he values +your friendship; and as he is a stranger he trusts in you to direct +him." The chief, convinced that he was an Englishman, received the party +hospitably and forwarded them on their way. + +The frequent appearance of English goods showed that they were +approaching the coast, and not long afterward Livingstone met a couple +of native traders, from whom, for two small tusks, he bought a quantity +of American cotton marked "Lawrence Mills, Lowell", which he distributed +among his men. + +For another month they traveled slowly on through a fertile country, +abounding in animal life, bagging an elephant or a buffalo when short of +meat. Lions are numerous, but the natives, believing that the souls of +their dead chiefs enter the bodies of these animals, into which they +also have the power, when living, of transforming themselves at will, +never kill them. When they meet a lion they salute him by clapping their +hands--a courtesy which his Highness frequently returns by making a meal +of them. + +In this region the women are decidedly in the ascendant. The bridegroom +is obliged to come to the village of the bride to live. Here he must +perform certain services for his mother-in-law, such as keeping her +always supplied with fire-wood. Above all things, he must always, when +in her presence, sit with his legs bent under him, it being considered a +mark of disrespect to present his feet toward her. If he wishes to leave +the village, he must not take his children with him; they belong to his +wife, or, rather, to her family. He can, however, by the payment of a +certain number of cattle, "buy up" his wife and children. When a man is +desired to perform any service he always asks his wife's consent; if she +refuses, no amount of bribery or coaxing will induce him to disobey her. + +On the evening of March 2, Livingstone, tired and hungry, came within +eight miles of the Portuguese settlement of Tete. He sent forward the +letters of recommendation which he had received from the Portuguese on +the other side of the continent. Before daylight the following morning +he was aroused by two officers and a company of soldiers, who brought +the materials for a civilized breakfast--the first of which he had +partaken since he left Loanda, eighteen months before. "It was," he +says, "the most refreshing breakfast of which I ever partook." + +Tete stands on the Zambesi, three hundred miles from its mouth. The +commandant received Livingstone kindly, supplied his men with provisions +for immediate use, gave them land upon which to raise future supplies, +and granted them permission to hunt elephants in the neighborhood on +their own account. Before long they had established a brisk trade +in fire-wood, as their countrymen had done at Loanda. They certainly +manifested none of the laziness which has been said to be characteristic +of the African races. Thirty elephant tusks remained of those forwarded +by Sekeletu. Ten of these were sold for cotton cloth for the men. The +others were deposited with the authorities, with directions that in case +Livingstone should never return they should be sold, and the proceeds +given to the men. He told them that death alone should prevent him from +coming back. "Nay, father," said the men, "you will not die; you will +return, and take us back to Sekeletu." + +He remained at Tete a month, waiting for the close of the sickly season +in the low delta at the mouths of the river, and then descended to the +Portuguese town of Kilimane. Here he remained six weeks, when an English +vessel arrived with supplies and money for him. Two of his attendants +only had come down the river. They begged hard to be allowed to +accompany him to England. In vain Livingstone told them that they would +die if they went to so cold a country. "That is nothing," said one; "let +me die at your feet." He at last decided to take with him Sekwebu, the +leader of the party, to whose good sense, bravery, and tact he owed much +of his success. The sea-waves rose high, as the boat conveyed them to +the ship. Sekwebu, who had never seen a larger body of water than the +shallow Lake Ngami, was terrified. + +"Is this the way you go?" he inquired. + +"Yes; don't you see it is?" replied Livingstone, encouragingly. + +When Livingstone reached his countrymen on the ship he could scarcely +speak his native language; the words would not come at his call. He +had spoken it but little for thirteen years; and for three and a half, +except for a short time at Loanda, not at all. + +Sekwebu became a great favorite on shipboard, but he was bewildered +by the crowd of new ideas that rushed upon his mind. "What a strange +country this is," he said, "all water!" When they reached Mauritius, +he became insane, and tried to jump overboard. Livingstone's wife had, +during her visit to their country, become a great favorite with the +Makololo, who called her 'Ma Robert'--"Robert's Mother"--in honor of her +young son. + +"Come, Sekwebu," said Livingstone, "we are going to Ma Robert." This +struck a chord in his bosom. + +"Oh yes," said he; "where is she? Where is Robert?" And for the moment +he seemed to recover. + +But in the evening a fresh accession of insanity occurred. He attempted +to spear one of the crew, and then leaped overboard, and, though he +could swim well, pulled himself down, hand over hand, by the cable. His +body was never recovered. + +From Mauritius Livingstone sailed for England, which he reached on the +12th of December, 1856--four and a half years after he had parted from +his family at Cape Town. + +He was received with unwonted honors. The President of the Royal +Geographical Society, at a special meeting held to welcome him, formally +invited him to give to the world a narrative of his travels. Some +knavish booksellers paid him the less acceptable compliment of putting +forth spurious accounts of his adventures, one at least of which has +been republished in this country. Livingstone, so long accustomed to a +life of action, found the preparation of his book a harder task than he +had imagined. "I think," he says, "that I would rather cross the African +continent again than undertake to write another book." We trust that +he will yet do both. He would indeed have set out on another African +journey nearly a year ago to conduct his faithful Makololo attendants +back to their own country, had not the King of Portugal relieved him +from all anxiety on their account, by sending out directions that they +should be supported at Tete until his return. + +Our abstract does, at best, but scanty justice to the most interesting, +as well as most valuable, of modern works of travel. It has +revolutionized our ideas of African character as well as of African +geography. It shows that Central Africa is peopled by tribes barbarous, +indeed, but far from manifesting those savage and degrading traits which +we are wont to associate with the negro race. In all his long pilgrimage +Livingstone saw scarcely a trace of the brutal rites and bloody +superstitions of Dahomey and Ashanti. The natives every where long for +intercourse with the whites, and eagerly seek the products of civilized +labor. In regions where no white men had ever been seen the cottons +of Lowell and Manchester, passed from tribe to tribe, are even now the +standard currency. Civilized nations have an equal interest in opening +intercourse with these countries, for they are capable of supplying +those great tropical staples which the industrious temperate zones must +have, but can not produce. Livingstone found cotton growing wild all +along his route from Loanda to Kilimane; the sugar-cane flourishes +spontaneously in the valley of "The River"; coffee abounds on the west +coast; and indigo is a weed in the delta of the Zambesi. Barth also +finds these products abundant on the banks of the Benuwe and Shari, and +around Lake Tsad. The prevalent idea of the inherent laziness of the +Africans must be abandoned, for, scattered through the narratives +of both these intrepid explorers are abundant testimonies of the +industrious disposition of the natives. + +Livingstone, as befits his profession, regards his discoveries from a +religious stand-point. "The end of the geographical feat," he says, "is +the beginning of the missionary enterprise." But he is a philosopher as +well as a preacher, recognizing as true missionaries the man of science +who searches after hidden truths, the soldier who fights against +tyranny, the sailor who puts down the slave-trade, and the merchant who +teaches practically the mutual dependence of the nations of the earth. +His idea of missionary labor looks to this world as well as the next. +Had the Bakwains possessed rifles as well as Bibles--had they raised +cotton as well as attended prayer-meetings--it would have been better +for them. He is clearly of the opinion that decent clothing is of more +immediate use to the heathen than doctrinal sermons. "We ought," he +says, "to encourage the Africans to cultivate for our markets, as the +most effectual means, next to the Gospel, of their elevation." His +practical turn of mind suffers him to present no fancy pictures of +barbarous nations longing for the Gospel. His Makololo friends, indeed, +listened respectfully when he discoursed of the Saviour, but were all +earnestness when he spoke of cotton cloths and muskets. Sekeletu favored +the missionary, not as the man who could give him Bibles and tracts, +but as the one by whose help he hoped to sell his ivory for a rifle, a +sugar-mill, and brass wire. + +Livingstone's missionary scheme is accommodated to the actual state of +things. It rests quite as much upon traders as preachers. He would open +a communication by the Zambesi to the heart of the continent. Upon the +healthy, elevated region overlooking the low, fertile basin he would +establish trading posts, supplied with European wares. We can not wonder +that the directors of the Missionary Society looked coldly upon this +scheme, and wrote to him that they were "restricted in their power of +aiding plans connected only remotely with the spread of the Gospel;" +nor can we regret that Livingstone, feeling his old love of independence +revive, withdrew from his connection with the Society, for the purpose +of carrying out his own plans. With all respect for the worthy persons +who manage missionary societies, we can not but believe that the man who +led so large a party across the African continent will accomplish more +for the good cause when working out his own plans than he would do by +following out their ideas. + + + + +Appendix.--Notes to etext. + + + +Words: + + +The names Loanda and Zambesi are given in most modern texts as Luanda +and Zambezi. + +In three cases, the spelling used in the original was distracting enough +that it has been changed: musquito > mosquito, hachshish > hashish, and +nomade > nomad. + +In three other cases, two variant spellings of a word were used in the +text. These were made uniform in accordance with the modern standard. +They were: water-buck > waterbuck, Mosambique > Mozambique, and imbody > +embody. + +Other notes on terms: Livingstone often refers to ground-nuts--this is +the British term for a peanut. Mutokwane ('Cannabis sativa') must be +some variety of marijuana. + + + +Symbols: + + +As the symbols for the British Pound (a crossed L), Degrees (small +circle, in the upper half of the line of text), and fractions cannot be +represented in ASCII, the following standards have been used: + +Pounds: written out, and capitalized, AFTER the number of pounds, rather +than before it. Hence "L20" becomes 20 Pounds. (where L represents the +Pound symbol.) + +Degrees, Minutes, Seconds: "Degrees", when used alone, is either spelled +out or abbreviated "Deg."--but is always capitalized where it replaces +the symbol. When a location is given with a combination of degrees and +minutes, or degrees, minutes, and seconds, [d] is used to denote +the symbol for degrees, ['] represents minutes, and ["] represents +seconds--these latter two are the common symbols, or at least as similar +as ASCII can represent. For an example, lat. 9d 37' 30" S. would be +latitude 9 degrees 37 minutes 30 seconds south. All temperatures given +are in Fahrenheit. + +Fractions: Where whole numbers and fractions are combined, the whole +number is separated from the fraction with a dash. For example, in +Chapter 21: 16 ounces and 2-19/20 drams would translate as 16 ounces +and two-and-nineteen-twentieths drams. Incidentally, Livingstone uses +British measurements, which sometimes differ from the American. + + + +Corrected Errors: + +Errors in the original text were corrected when the context presented +compelling evidence that there was in fact an error. When possible, +proper names were checked against the index for extra surety. + + + Chapter 2, "All around Scroti the country is perfectly flat" changed to + "All around Serotli". + + Chapter 2, "one species of plants" changed to "one species of plant". + + Chapter 3, "a fire specimen of arboreal beauty" changed to "a fine + specimen". + + Chapter 12, "till a stranger, happening to come to visit Santaru" + changed to "to visit Santuru". + + Chapter 14, "the orders of Sekeletu as as to our companions" changed to + "the orders of Sekeletu as to our companions". + + Chapter 14, "while Mashuana plants the poles" changed to "while + Mashauana". + + Chapter 15, "In other cases I have known them turn back" changed to "In + other cases I have known them to turn back". + + Chapter 20, p. 438, "to make a canal from Calumbo to Loando" changed + to "from Calumbo to Loanda". (Loando, while correct, is otherwise only + given in the full Portuguese name.) + + Chapter 26, "we saw the Batoko" changed to "we saw the Batoka". + + Chapter 28, "with whom Lekwebu had lived" changed to "with whom + Sekwebu". + + + +Accented Characters in Words: + + +To maintain an easily searchable text, accented or special characters +have been discarded. The following is a pretty complete list of the +words in the text which were originally accented. They appear more or +less in the order in which they first appeared with the accent--often +the accents were dropped in the original. In each case, the accent +follows the appropriate letter, the "ae" and "oe" combinations are +represented as (ae) and (oe), [\], [/], [~], [^] and [-] represent +the accent that looks like them which would appear above the preceding +letter. [=] represents an accent that looks like the bottom half of +a circle, also appearing above the letter, ["] is an umlaut, and [,] +represents a cedilla. + + + Athen(ae)um > Athenaeum + Bakwa/in > Bakwain + Mabo/tsa > Mabotsa + Bechua/na > Bechuana + Seche/le > Sechele + Chonua/ne > Chonuane + Bakalaha/ri > Bakalahari + hy(ae)na > hyaena + tse/tse > tsetse + Banajo/a > Banajoa + man(oe)uvre > manoeuvre + Bato-ka > Batoka + Loye/lo > Loyelo + Mamba/ri > Mambari + mopane/ > mopane + Balo=nda > Balonda + Sekele/nke > Sekelenke + Mane/nko > Manenko + Sheako/ndo > Sheakondo + Nyamoa/na > Nyamoana + Kolimbo/ta > Kolimbota + Samba/nza > Sambanza + N~uana Loke/ > Nyuana Loke + larv(ae) > larvae + de/tour > detour + cicad(ae) > cicadae + Korwe/ > Korwe + Moni/na > Monina + Bonya/i > Bonyai + Conge/ > Conge + Bua/ze > Buaze + Leche/ > Leche + Bakue/na > Bakuena + Shokua/ne > Shokuane + Lepelo/le > Lepelole + Litubaru/ba > Litubaruba + Baka/a > Bakaa + Bamangwa/to > Bamangwato + Makala/ka > Makalaka + Letlo/che > Letloche + n~ami > nyami + n~aka > nyaka + Matebe/le > Matebele + Seko/mi > Sekomi + Baka/tla > Bakatla + Meba/lwe > Mebalwe + Batla/pi > Batlapi + Bata/u > Batau + Bano/ga > Banoga + Mokwa/in > Mokwain + Leko/a > Lekoa + Mako/a > Makoa + Mochoase/le > Mochoasele + Limpo/po > Limpopo + Bangwake/tse > Bangwaketse + Sebitua/ne > Sebituane + Makolo/lo > Makololo + Kalaha/ri > Kalahari + mimos(ae) > mimosae + vertebr(ae) > vertebrae + thoae/la > thoaela + tsesse/be > tsessebe + Mosilika/tze > Mosilikatze + Batlo/kua > Batlokua + Bahu/keng > Bahukeng + Bamose/tla > Bamosetla + Manta/tees > Mantatees + Ka-ke > Kake + Matlame/tlo > Matlametlo + (Ae)sop > Aesop + cucurbitace(ae) > cucurbitaceae + Leroshu/a > Leroshua + Ke-me > Keme + simi(ae) > simiae + du"iker > duiker + Mona/to > Monato + Boatlana/ma > Boatlanama + Lope/pe > Lopepe + Mashu"e > Mashue + Lobota/ni > Lobotani + leguminos(ae) > leguminosae + Ramoto/bi > Ramotobi + Mohotlua/ni > Mohotluani + "Kia itume/la" > "Kia itumela" + "Kia time/la" > "Kia timela" + "Ki time/tse" > "Ki timetse" + Moko/ko > Mokoko + Mathulua/ni > Mathuluani + Mokokonya/ni > Mokokonyani + Lotlaka/ni > Lotlakani + Ngabisa/ne > Ngabisane + Bako/ba > Bakoba + Tzo- > Tzo + Bataua/na > Batauana + Lechulate/be > Lechulatebe + More/mi > Moremi + moheto/lo > mohetolo + kuabao-ba > kuabaoba + tumo-go > tumogo + ife/ > ife + Bakuru/tse > Bakurutse + Ntwe/twe > Ntwetwe + Matlomagan-ya/na > Matlomagan-yana + Sichua/na > Sichuana + Maha/be > Mahabe + aroid(oe)a > aroidoea + Maja/ne > Majane + Moro/a > Moroa + Baro/tse > Barotse + Nalie/le > Naliele + Seshe/ke > Sesheke + e- e- e- > ee ee ee + (ae) (ae) (ae) > ae ae ae + Maha/le > Mahale + Namaga/ri > Namagari + Basu/tu > Basutu + Sikonye/le > Sikonyele + Maka/be > Makabe + Damara/s > Damaras + Bashubi/a > Bashubia + C(ae)sar > Caesar + Kafu/e > Kafue + Tlapa/ne > Tlapane + Ramosi/nii/ > Ramosinii + Baloia/na > Baloiana + Bihe/ > Bihe + tse/pe > tsepe + acme/ > acme + lamell(ae) > lamellae + ngotuane/ > ngotuane + diarrh(oe)a > diarrhoea + natur(ae) > naturae + herni(ae) > herniae + Serina/ne > Serinane + Lesho/nya > Leshonya + ka/ma > kama + ta-ri > tari + formul(ae) > formulae + prote/ge/es > protegees + prim(ae)val > primaeval + lamin(ae) > laminae + lopane/ > lopane + Kandeha/i > Kandehai + Mamochisa/ne > Mamochisane + Mpe/pe > Mpepe + Nokua/ne > Nokuane + "Nsepi/sa" > "Nsepisa" + Banye/ti > Banyeti + boya/loa > boyaloa + o-a/lo > o-alo + bu/za > buza + minuti(ae) > minutiae + Moti/be > Motibe + hypog(oe)a > hypogoea + Bapa/lleng > Bapalleng + Cho- > Cho + Tso- > Tso + "Ho-o-!" > "Ho-o!" + Mako-a > Makoa + Seko-a > Sekoa + Makolo/kue > Makolokue + Bape-ri > Baperi + Bapo- > Bapo + Narie/le > Nariele + giraff(ae) > giraffae + lechwe/s > lechwes + Luambe/ji > Luambeji + Luambe/si > Luambesi + Ambe/zi > Ambezi + Ojimbe/si > Ojimbesi + Zambe/si > Zambesi + Tianya/ne > Tianyane + Lebeo/le > Lebeole + Sisinya/ne > Sisinyane + Molo=iana > Moloiana + "tau e to=na" > "tau e tona" + "Sau e to=na" > "Sau e tona" + Lo=nda > Londa + Ambo=nda > Ambonda + n~ake > nyake + "Kua-!" > "Kua!" + moshe/ba > mosheba + Name/ta > Nameta + Masi/ko > Masiko + Pitsa/ne > Pitsane + Sekobinya/ne > Sekobinyane + Mashaua/na > Mashauana + mogame/tsa > mogametsa + mamo/sho > mamosho + moshomo/sho > moshomosho + Babi/mpe > Babimpe + Mosa/ntu > Mosantu + Mosioatu/nya > Mosioatunya + Sima/h > Simah + Bo=nda > Bonda + Lonko/nye > Lonkonye + leko/to > lekoto + Shinte/ > Shinte + Kabo/mpo > Kabompo + Samoa/na > Samoana + Baloba/le > Balobale + hakite/nwe > hakitenwe + polu/ma > poluma + Matia/mvo > Matiamvo + Monaka/dzi > Monakadzi + Inteme/se > Intemese + Saloi/sho > Saloisho + Scottice\ > Scottice + Mokwa/nkwa > Mokwankwa + "Moka/la a Ma/ma" > "Mokala a Mama" + n~uana Kalueje > nyuana Kalueje + typhoi"deum > typhoideum + loke/sh > lokesh + Soa/na Molo/po > Soana Molopo + Mozi/nkwa > Mozinkwa + Livo/a > Livoa + Chifuma/dze > Chifumadze + Shakatwa/la > Shakatwala + Quende/nde > Quendende + Muata ya/nvo > Muata yanvo + mua/ta > muata + Kange/nke > Kangenke + Moe/ne > Moene + Lo=lo= > Lolo + Lishi/sh > Lishish + Li/ss > Liss + Kalile/me > Kalileme + Ishidi/sh > Ishidish + Molo/ng > Molong + sela/li > selali + Mone/nga > Monenga + Moso/go > Mosogo + Monenga-wo-o- > Monenga-wo-o + Kasimaka/te > Kasimakate + ilo/lo > ilolo + Kate/nde > Katende + Loke/ > Loke + Kalo/mba > Kalomba + Tote/lo > Totelo + Averie/ > Averie + Loze/ze > Lozeze + Kasa/bi > Kasabi + Kalu/ze > Kaluze + Chihune/ > Chihune + Chiho/mbo > Chihombo + Banga/la > Bangala + Chika/pa > Chikapa + Loya/nke > Loyanke + Sakanda/la > Sakandala + Bashinje/ > Bashinje + Babinde/le > Babindele + Kamboe/la > Kamboela + Caba/ngo > Cabango + Qua/ngo > Quango + Sansa/we/ > Sansawe + cyclop(ae)dia > cyclopaedia + Kassanje/ > Kassanje + Catende/ > Catende + via^ > via + Laurence Jose/ Marquis > Laurence Jose Marquis + El(ae)is > Elaeis + Salvador Correa de Sa/ Benevides > Salvador Correa de Sa Benevides + Algoda~o Americana > Algodao Americana + Cercopid(ae) > Cercopidae + graminace(ae) > graminaceae + Pedro Joa~o Baptista > Pedro Joao Baptista + Antonio Jose/ > Antonio Jose + Senhor Grac,a > Senhor Graca + al(ae) > alae + Kama/ue > Kamaue + Sylviad(ae) > Sylviadae + Muanza/nza > Muanzanza + Zaire/ > Zaire + Zere/zere/ > Zerezere + alg(ae) > algae + Tanganye/nka > Tanganyenka + ae"rial > aerial + arac,a > araca + Limbo-a > Limboa + Lofuje/ > Lofuje + Boie/ > Boie + hygie\ne > hygiene + Sekwe/bu > Sekwebu + Ntlarie/ > Ntlarie + Nkwatle/le > Nkwatlele + Moriantsa/ne > Moriantsane + Nampe/ne > Nampene + Leko/ne > Lekone + Seko/te > Sekote + Kala/i > Kalai + "motse/ oa barimo" > "motse oa barimo" + Loye/la > Loyela + Mokwine/ > Mokwine + mane/ko > maneko + motsintse/la > motsintsela + pup(ae) > pupae + Pelop(ae)us > Pelopaeus + Mburu/ma > Mburuma + Nyungwe/ > Nyungwe + Sindese Oale/a > Sindese Oalea + ae"rolites > aerolites + Chowe/ > Chowe + Banya/i > Banyai + Moho/hu > Mohohu + Cho/be > Chobe + Boro/ma > Boroma + Nyampu/ngo > Nyampungo + Katolo/sa > Katolosa + Monomota/pa > Monomotapa + Su/sa > Susa + Nyate/we > Nyatewe + More/na > Morena + Monomoi/zes > Monomoizes + Monemui/ges > Monemuiges + Monomui/zes > Monomuizes + Monomota/pistas > Monomotapistas + Mota/pe > Motape + Babi/sa > Babisa + Bazizu/lu > Bazizulu + Masho/na > Mashona + Moruru/rus > Morururus + Boro/mo > Boromo + Nyako/ba > Nyakoba + moku/ri > mokuri + shekabaka/dzi > shekabakadzi + Loko/le > Lokole + Mazo/e > Mazoe + Te/te > Tete + Te/tte > Tette + hom(oe)opathic > homoeopathic + chrysomelid(ae) > chrysomelidae + Lofu/bu > Lofubu + Revu/bu > Revubu + Morongo/zi > Morongozi + Nyamboro/nda > Nyamboronda + brac,a > braca + Mashi/nga > Mashinga + Shindu/ndo > Shindundo + Missa/la > Missala + Kapa/ta > Kapata + Ma/no > Mano + Ja/wa > Jawa + Panya/me > Panyame + Dambara/ri > Dambarari + Abu/tua > Abutua + Mani/ca > Manica + hypog(ae)a > hypogaea + Kansa/la > Kansala + Luapu/ra > Luapura + Luame/ji > Luameji + Muro/mbo > Murombo + shitakote/ko > shitakoteko + Mpa/mbe > Mpambe + Nya/mpi > Nyampi + Za/mbi > Zambi + e/clat > eclat + pharmacop(oe)ia > pharmacopoeia + Goo- > Go-o + amenorrh(oe)a > amenorrhoea + Inya/kanya/nya > Inyakanyanya + Morumba/la > Morumbala + Nyamo/nga > Nyamonga + Gorongo/zo > Gorongozo + Sofa/la > Sofala + Sabi/a > Sabia + Senhor Ferra~o > Senhor Ferrao + Nje/fu > Njefu + Maza/ro > Mazaro + Baro/ro > Baroro + Lu/abo > Luabo + Muse/lo > Muselo + Nyangu/e > Nyangue + Sen~or > Senor + Aseve/do > Asevedo + Mu/tu > Mutu + Panga/zi > Pangazi + Lua/re > Luare + Likua/re > Likuare + Maiu"do > Maiudo + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Missionary Travels and Researches in +South Africa, by David Livingstone + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1039 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1040-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1040-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0b931059 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1040-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3142 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1040 *** + +[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are CAPITALIZED. +Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation +is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.] + + + + + + The Three Taverns + + A Book of Poems + + By Edwin Arlington Robinson + + Author of "The Man Against the Sky", "Merlin, A Poem", etc. + + [American (Maine) Poet. 1869-1935.] + + + + + To THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY and LILLA CABOT PERRY + + + + + Contents + + + + The Valley of the Shadow + The Wandering Jew + Neighbors + The Mill + The Dark Hills + The Three Taverns + Demos I + Demos II + The Flying Dutchman + Tact + On the Way + John Brown + The False Gods + Archibald's Example + London Bridge + Tasker Norcross + A Song at Shannon's + Souvenir + Discovery + Firelight + The New Tenants + Inferential + The Rat + Rahel to Varnhagen + Nimmo + Peace on Earth + Late Summer + An Evangelist's Wife + The Old King's New Jester + Lazarus + + +Several poems included in this book appeared originally +in American periodicals, as follows: The Three Taverns, London Bridge, +A Song at Shannon's, The New Tenants, Discovery, John Brown; +Archibald's Example, The Valley of the Shadow; Nimmo; The Wandering Jew, +Souvenir; Neighbors, Tact; Demos; The Mill, An Evangelist's Wife; +Firelight; Late Summer; Inferential; The Flying Dutchman; +On the Way, The False Gods; Peace on Earth; The Old King's New Jester. + + + + + + ------------------- + The Three Taverns + ------------------- + + + + + + The Valley of the Shadow + + There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow, + There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget; + There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes, + There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet. + For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation + At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus, + They were lost and unacquainted -- till they found themselves in others, + Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous. + + There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions + Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows; + There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions, + All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows. + There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water, + And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys: + There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley of the Shadow, + Where they suffered and still wondered why their wonder made no noise. + + There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken, + Demonstrating the fulfilment of unalterable schemes, + Which had been, before the cradle, Time's inexorable tenants + Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father's dreams. + There were these, and there were many who had stumbled up to manhood, + Where they saw too late the road they should have taken long ago: + There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the Valley of the Shadow, + The commemorative wreckage of what others did not know. + + And there were daughters older than the mothers who had borne them, + Being older in their wisdom, which is older than the earth; + And they were going forward only farther into darkness, + Unrelieved as were the blasting obligations of their birth; + And among them, giving always what was not for their possession, + There were maidens, very quiet, with no quiet in their eyes: + There were daughters of the silence in the Valley of the Shadow, + Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice. + + There were creepers among catacombs where dull regrets were torches, + Giving light enough to show them what was there upon the shelves -- + Where there was more for them to see than pleasure would remember + Of something that had been alive and once had been themselves. + There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid imprecation, + While as many fled repentance for the promise of despair: + There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley of the Shadow, + And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had led them there. + + There were some who knew the steps of Age incredibly beside them, + And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt the wheel; + And their last of empty trophies was a gilded cup of nothing, + Which a contemplating vagabond would not have come to steal. + Long and often had they figured for a larger valuation, + But the size of their addition was the balance of a doubt: + There were gentlemen of leisure in the Valley of the Shadow, + Not allured by retrospection, disenchanted, and played out. + + And among the dark endurances of unavowed reprisals + There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well; + And over beauty's aftermath of hazardous ambitions + There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell. + Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless, + There were some whose only passion was for Time who made them cold: + There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow, + Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when they were old. + + Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow, + There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile; + And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers, + Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while. + There were many by the presence of the many disaffected, + Whose exemption was included in the weight that others bore: + There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow, + And they alone were there to find what they were looking for. + + So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others, + And among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn; + And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer + May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn. + For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched, + Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed: + There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow, + And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed. + + + + + The Wandering Jew + + I saw by looking in his eyes + That they remembered everything; + And this was how I came to know + That he was here, still wandering. + For though the figure and the scene + Were never to be reconciled, + I knew the man as I had known + His image when I was a child. + + With evidence at every turn, + I should have held it safe to guess + That all the newness of New York + Had nothing new in loneliness; + Yet here was one who might be Noah, + Or Nathan, or Abimelech, + Or Lamech, out of ages lost, -- + Or, more than all, Melchizedek. + + Assured that he was none of these, + I gave them back their names again, + To scan once more those endless eyes + Where all my questions ended then. + I found in them what they revealed + That I shall not live to forget, + And wondered if they found in mine + Compassion that I might regret. + + Pity, I learned, was not the least + Of time's offending benefits + That had now for so long impugned + The conservation of his wits: + Rather it was that I should yield, + Alone, the fealty that presents + The tribute of a tempered ear + To an untempered eloquence. + + Before I pondered long enough + On whence he came and who he was, + I trembled at his ringing wealth + Of manifold anathemas; + I wondered, while he seared the world, + What new defection ailed the race, + And if it mattered how remote + Our fathers were from such a place. + + Before there was an hour for me + To contemplate with less concern + The crumbling realm awaiting us + Than his that was beyond return, + A dawning on the dust of years + Had shaped with an elusive light + Mirages of remembered scenes + That were no longer for the sight. + + For now the gloom that hid the man + Became a daylight on his wrath, + And one wherein my fancy viewed + New lions ramping in his path. + The old were dead and had no fangs, + Wherefore he loved them -- seeing not + They were the same that in their time + Had eaten everything they caught. + + The world around him was a gift + Of anguish to his eyes and ears, + And one that he had long reviled + As fit for devils, not for seers. + Where, then, was there a place for him + That on this other side of death + Saw nothing good, as he had seen + No good come out of Nazareth? + + Yet here there was a reticence, + And I believe his only one, + That hushed him as if he beheld + A Presence that would not be gone. + In such a silence he confessed + How much there was to be denied; + And he would look at me and live, + As others might have looked and died. + + As if at last he knew again + That he had always known, his eyes + Were like to those of one who gazed + On those of One who never dies. + For such a moment he revealed + What life has in it to be lost; + And I could ask if what I saw, + Before me there, was man or ghost. + + He may have died so many times + That all there was of him to see + Was pride, that kept itself alive + As too rebellious to be free; + He may have told, when more than once + Humility seemed imminent, + How many a lonely time in vain + The Second Coming came and went. + + Whether he still defies or not + The failure of an angry task + That relegates him out of time + To chaos, I can only ask. + But as I knew him, so he was; + And somewhere among men to-day + Those old, unyielding eyes may flash, + And flinch -- and look the other way. + + + + + Neighbors + + As often as we thought of her, + We thought of a gray life + That made a quaint economist + Of a wolf-haunted wife; + We made the best of all she bore + That was not ours to bear, + And honored her for wearing things + That were not things to wear. + + There was a distance in her look + That made us look again; + And if she smiled, we might believe + That we had looked in vain. + Rarely she came inside our doors, + And had not long to stay; + And when she left, it seemed somehow + That she was far away. + + At last, when we had all forgot + That all is here to change, + A shadow on the commonplace + Was for a moment strange. + Yet there was nothing for surprise, + Nor much that need be told: + Love, with his gift of pain, had given + More than one heart could hold. + + + + + The Mill + + The miller's wife had waited long, + The tea was cold, the fire was dead; + And there might yet be nothing wrong + In how he went and what he said: + "There are no millers any more," + Was all that she had heard him say; + And he had lingered at the door + So long that it seemed yesterday. + + Sick with a fear that had no form + She knew that she was there at last; + And in the mill there was a warm + And mealy fragrance of the past. + What else there was would only seem + To say again what he had meant; + And what was hanging from a beam + Would not have heeded where she went. + + And if she thought it followed her, + She may have reasoned in the dark + That one way of the few there were + Would hide her and would leave no mark: + Black water, smooth above the weir + Like starry velvet in the night, + Though ruffled once, would soon appear + The same as ever to the sight. + + + + + The Dark Hills + + Dark hills at evening in the west, + Where sunset hovers like a sound + Of golden horns that sang to rest + Old bones of warriors under ground, + Far now from all the bannered ways + Where flash the legions of the sun, + You fade -- as if the last of days + Were fading, and all wars were done. + + + + + The Three Taverns + + When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us + as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns. + (Acts 28:15) + + Herodion, Apelles, Amplias, + And Andronicus? Is it you I see -- + At last? And is it you now that are gazing + As if in doubt of me? Was I not saying + That I should come to Rome? I did say that; + And I said furthermore that I should go + On westward, where the gateway of the world + Lets in the central sea. I did say that, + But I say only, now, that I am Paul -- + A prisoner of the Law, and of the Lord + A voice made free. If there be time enough + To live, I may have more to tell you then + Of western matters. I go now to Rome, + Where Caesar waits for me, and I shall wait, + And Caesar knows how long. In Caesarea + There was a legend of Agrippa saying + In a light way to Festus, having heard + My deposition, that I might be free, + Had I stayed free of Caesar; but the word + Of God would have it as you see it is -- + And here I am. The cup that I shall drink + Is mine to drink -- the moment or the place + Not mine to say. If it be now in Rome, + Be it now in Rome; and if your faith exceed + The shadow cast of hope, say not of me + Too surely or too soon that years and shipwreck, + And all the many deserts I have crossed + That are not named or regioned, have undone + Beyond the brevities of our mortal healing + The part of me that is the least of me. + You see an older man than he who fell + Prone to the earth when he was nigh Damascus, + Where the great light came down; yet I am he + That fell, and he that saw, and he that heard. + And I am here, at last; and if at last + I give myself to make another crumb + For this pernicious feast of time and men -- + Well, I have seen too much of time and men + To fear the ravening or the wrath of either. + + Yes, it is Paul you see -- the Saul of Tarsus + That was a fiery Jew, and had men slain + For saying Something was beyond the Law, + And in ourselves. I fed my suffering soul + Upon the Law till I went famishing, + Not knowing that I starved. How should I know, + More then than any, that the food I had -- + What else it may have been -- was not for me? + My fathers and their fathers and their fathers + Had found it good, and said there was no other, + And I was of the line. When Stephen fell, + Among the stones that crushed his life away, + There was no place alive that I could see + For such a man. Why should a man be given + To live beyond the Law? So I said then, + As men say now to me. How then do I + Persist in living? Is that what you ask? + If so, let my appearance be for you + No living answer; for Time writes of death + On men before they die, and what you see + Is not the man. The man that you see not -- + The man within the man -- is most alive; + Though hatred would have ended, long ago, + The bane of his activities. I have lived, + Because the faith within me that is life + Endures to live, and shall, till soon or late, + Death, like a friend unseen, shall say to me + My toil is over and my work begun. + + How often, and how many a time again, + Have I said I should be with you in Rome! + He who is always coming never comes, + Or comes too late, you may have told yourselves; + And I may tell you now that after me, + Whether I stay for little or for long, + The wolves are coming. Have an eye for them, + And a more careful ear for their confusion + Than you need have much longer for the sound + Of what I tell you -- should I live to say + More than I say to Caesar. What I know + Is down for you to read in what is written; + And if I cloud a little with my own + Mortality the gleam that is immortal, + I do it only because I am I -- + Being on earth and of it, in so far + As time flays yet the remnant. This you know; + And if I sting men, as I do sometimes, + With a sharp word that hurts, it is because + Man's habit is to feel before he sees; + And I am of a race that feels. Moreover, + The world is here for what is not yet here + For more than are a few; and even in Rome, + Where men are so enamored of the Cross + That fame has echoed, and increasingly, + The music of your love and of your faith + To foreign ears that are as far away + As Antioch and Haran, yet I wonder + How much of love you know, and if your faith + Be the shut fruit of words. If so, remember + Words are but shells unfilled. Jews have at least + A Law to make them sorry they were born + If they go long without it; and these Gentiles, + For the first time in shrieking history, + Have love and law together, if so they will, + For their defense and their immunity + In these last days. Rome, if I know the name, + Will have anon a crown of thorns and fire + Made ready for the wreathing of new masters, + Of whom we are appointed, you and I, -- + And you are still to be when I am gone, + Should I go presently. Let the word fall, + Meanwhile, upon the dragon-ridden field + Of circumstance, either to live or die; + Concerning which there is a parable, + Made easy for the comfort and attention + Of those who preach, fearing they preach in vain. + You are to plant, and then to plant again + Where you have gathered, gathering as you go; + For you are in the fields that are eternal, + And you have not the burden of the Lord + Upon your mortal shoulders. What you have + Is a light yoke, made lighter by the wearing, + Till it shall have the wonder and the weight + Of a clear jewel, shining with a light + Wherein the sun and all the fiery stars + May soon be fading. When Gamaliel said + That if they be of men these things are nothing, + But if they be of God they are for none + To overthrow, he spoke as a good Jew, + And one who stayed a Jew; and he said all. + And you know, by the temper of your faith, + How far the fire is in you that I felt + Before I knew Damascus. A word here, + Or there, or not there, or not anywhere, + Is not the Word that lives and is the life; + And you, therefore, need weary not yourselves + With jealous aches of others. If the world + Were not a world of aches and innovations, + Attainment would have no more joy of it. + There will be creeds and schisms, creeds in creeds, + And schisms in schisms; myriads will be done + To death because a farthing has two sides, + And is at last a farthing. Telling you this, + I, who bid men to live, appeal to Caesar. + Once I had said the ways of God were dark, + Meaning by that the dark ways of the Law. + Such is the glory of our tribulations; + For the Law kills the flesh that kills the Law, + And we are then alive. We have eyes then; + And we have then the Cross between two worlds -- + To guide us, or to blind us for a time, + Till we have eyes indeed. The fire that smites + A few on highways, changing all at once, + Is not for all. The power that holds the world + Away from God that holds himself away -- + Farther away than all your works and words + Are like to fly without the wings of faith -- + Was not, nor ever shall be, a small hazard + Enlivening the ways of easy leisure + Or the cold road of knowledge. When our eyes + Have wisdom, we see more than we remember; + And the old world of our captivities + May then become a smitten glimpse of ruin, + Like one where vanished hewers have had their day + Of wrath on Lebanon. Before we see, + Meanwhile, we suffer; and I come to you, + At last, through many storms and through much night. + + Yet whatsoever I have undergone, + My keepers in this instance are not hard. + But for the chance of an ingratitude, + I might indeed be curious of their mercy, + And fearful of their leisure while I wait, + A few leagues out of Rome. Men go to Rome, + Not always to return -- but not that now. + Meanwhile, I seem to think you look at me + With eyes that are at last more credulous + Of my identity. You remark in me + No sort of leaping giant, though some words + Of mine to you from Corinth may have leapt + A little through your eyes into your soul. + I trust they were alive, and are alive + Today; for there be none that shall indite + So much of nothing as the man of words + Who writes in the Lord's name for his name's sake + And has not in his blood the fire of time + To warm eternity. Let such a man -- + If once the light is in him and endures -- + Content himself to be the general man, + Set free to sift the decencies and thereby + To learn, except he be one set aside + For sorrow, more of pleasure than of pain; + Though if his light be not the light indeed, + But a brief shine that never really was, + And fails, leaving him worse than where he was, + Then shall he be of all men destitute. + And here were not an issue for much ink, + Or much offending faction among scribes. + + The Kingdom is within us, we are told; + And when I say to you that we possess it + In such a measure as faith makes it ours, + I say it with a sinner's privilege + Of having seen and heard, and seen again, + After a darkness; and if I affirm + To the last hour that faith affords alone + The Kingdom entrance and an entertainment, + I do not see myself as one who says + To man that he shall sit with folded hands + Against the Coming. If I be anything, + I move a driven agent among my kind, + Establishing by the faith of Abraham, + And by the grace of their necessities, + The clamoring word that is the word of life + Nearer than heretofore to the solution + Of their tomb-serving doubts. If I have loosed + A shaft of language that has flown sometimes + A little higher than the hearts and heads + Of nature's minions, it will yet be heard, + Like a new song that waits for distant ears. + I cannot be the man that I am not; + And while I own that earth is my affliction, + I am a man of earth, who says not all + To all alike. That were impossible, + Even as it were so that He should plant + A larger garden first. But you today + Are for the larger sowing; and your seed, + A little mixed, will have, as He foresaw, + The foreign harvest of a wider growth, + And one without an end. Many there are, + And are to be, that shall partake of it, + Though none may share it with an understanding + That is not his alone. We are all alone; + And yet we are all parcelled of one order -- + Jew, Gentile, or barbarian in the dark + Of wildernesses that are not so much + As names yet in a book. And there are many, + Finding at last that words are not the Word, + And finding only that, will flourish aloft, + Like heads of captured Pharisees on pikes, + Our contradictions and discrepancies; + And there are many more will hang themselves + Upon the letter, seeing not in the Word + The friend of all who fail, and in their faith + A sword of excellence to cut them down. + + As long as there are glasses that are dark -- + And there are many -- we see darkly through them; + All which have I conceded and set down + In words that have no shadow. What is dark + Is dark, and we may not say otherwise; + Yet what may be as dark as a lost fire + For one of us, may still be for another + A coming gleam across the gulf of ages, + And a way home from shipwreck to the shore; + And so, through pangs and ills and desperations, + There may be light for all. There shall be light. + As much as that, you know. You cannot say + This woman or that man will be the next + On whom it falls; you are not here for that. + Your ministration is to be for others + The firing of a rush that may for them + Be soon the fire itself. The few at first + Are fighting for the multitude at last; + Therefore remember what Gamaliel said + Before you, when the sick were lying down + In streets all night for Peter's passing shadow. + Fight, and say what you feel; say more than words. + Give men to know that even their days of earth + To come are more than ages that are gone. + Say what you feel, while you have time to say it. + Eternity will answer for itself, + Without your intercession; yet the way + For many is a long one, and as dark, + Meanwhile, as dreams of hell. See not your toil + Too much, and if I be away from you, + Think of me as a brother to yourselves, + Of many blemishes. Beware of stoics, + And give your left hand to grammarians; + And when you seem, as many a time you may, + To have no other friend than hope, remember + That you are not the first, or yet the last. + + The best of life, until we see beyond + The shadows of ourselves (and they are less + Than even the blindest of indignant eyes + Would have them) is in what we do not know. + Make, then, for all your fears a place to sleep + With all your faded sins; nor think yourselves + Egregious and alone for your defects + Of youth and yesterday. I was young once; + And there's a question if you played the fool + With a more fervid and inherent zeal + Than I have in my story to remember, + Or gave your necks to folly's conquering foot, + Or flung yourselves with an unstudied aim, + Less frequently than I. Never mind that. + Man's little house of days will hold enough, + Sometimes, to make him wish it were not his, + But it will not hold all. Things that are dead + Are best without it, and they own their death + By virtue of their dying. Let them go, -- + But think you not the world is ashes yet, + And you have all the fire. The world is here + Today, and it may not be gone tomorrow; + For there are millions, and there may be more, + To make in turn a various estimation + Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps + Of its apparent wrath. Many with ears + That hear not yet, shall have ears given to them, + And then they shall hear strangely. Many with eyes + That are incredulous of the Mystery + Shall yet be driven to feel, and then to read + Where language has an end and is a veil, + Not woven of our words. Many that hate + Their kind are soon to know that without love + Their faith is but the perjured name of nothing. + I that have done some hating in my time + See now no time for hate; I that have left, + Fading behind me like familiar lights + That are to shine no more for my returning, + Home, friends, and honors, -- I that have lost all else + For wisdom, and the wealth of it, say now + To you that out of wisdom has come love, + That measures and is of itself the measure + Of works and hope and faith. Your longest hours + Are not so long that you may torture them + And harass not yourselves; and the last days + Are on the way that you prepare for them, + And was prepared for you, here in a world + Where you have sinned and suffered, striven and seen. + If you be not so hot for counting them + Before they come that you consume yourselves, + Peace may attend you all in these last days -- + And me, as well as you. Yes, even in Rome. + Well, I have talked and rested, though I fear + My rest has not been yours; in which event, + Forgive one who is only seven leagues + From Caesar. When I told you I should come, + I did not see myself the criminal + You contemplate, for seeing beyond the Law + That which the Law saw not. But this, indeed, + Was good of you, and I shall not forget; + No, I shall not forget you came so far + To meet a man so dangerous. Well, farewell. + They come to tell me I am going now -- + With them. I hope that we shall meet again, + But none may say what he shall find in Rome. + + + + + Demos I + + All you that are enamored of my name + And least intent on what most I require, + Beware; for my design and your desire, + Deplorably, are not as yet the same. + Beware, I say, the failure and the shame + Of losing that for which you now aspire + So blindly, and of hazarding entire + The gift that I was bringing when I came. + + Give as I will, I cannot give you sight + Whereby to see that with you there are some + To lead you, and be led. But they are dumb + Before the wrangling and the shrill delight + Of your deliverance that has not come, + And shall not, if I fail you -- as I might. + + + + + Demos II + + So little have you seen of what awaits + Your fevered glimpse of a democracy + Confused and foiled with an equality + Not equal to the envy it creates, + That you see not how near you are the gates + Of an old king who listens fearfully + To you that are outside and are to be + The noisy lords of imminent estates. + + Rather be then your prayer that you shall have + Your kingdom undishonored. Having all, + See not the great among you for the small, + But hear their silence; for the few shall save + The many, or the many are to fall -- + Still to be wrangling in a noisy grave. + + + + + The Flying Dutchman + + Unyielding in the pride of his defiance, + Afloat with none to serve or to command, + Lord of himself at last, and all by Science, + He seeks the Vanished Land. + + Alone, by the one light of his one thought, + He steers to find the shore from which we came, -- + Fearless of in what coil he may be caught + On seas that have no name. + + Into the night he sails; and after night + There is a dawning, though there be no sun; + Wherefore, with nothing but himself in sight, + Unsighted, he sails on. + + At last there is a lifting of the cloud + Between the flood before him and the sky; + And then -- though he may curse the Power aloud + That has no power to die -- + + He steers himself away from what is haunted + By the old ghost of what has been before, -- + Abandoning, as always, and undaunted, + One fog-walled island more. + + + + + Tact + + Observant of the way she told + So much of what was true, + No vanity could long withhold + Regard that was her due: + She spared him the familiar guile, + So easily achieved, + That only made a man to smile + And left him undeceived. + + Aware that all imagining + Of more than what she meant + Would urge an end of everything, + He stayed; and when he went, + They parted with a merry word + That was to him as light + As any that was ever heard + Upon a starry night. + + She smiled a little, knowing well + That he would not remark + The ruins of a day that fell + Around her in the dark: + He saw no ruins anywhere, + Nor fancied there were scars + On anyone who lingered there, + Alone below the stars. + + + + + On the Way + + (Philadelphia, 1794) + +Note. -- The following imaginary dialogue between Alexander Hamilton +and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon any specific incident +in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous +to Hamilton's retirement from Washington's Cabinet in 1795 +and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr -- +who has been characterized, without much exaggeration, +as the inventor of American politics -- began to be conspicuously formidable +to the Federalists. These activities on the part of Burr resulted, +as the reader will remember, in the Burr-Jefferson tie for the Presidency +in 1800, and finally in the Burr-Hamilton duel at Weehawken in 1804. + + + + BURR + + Hamilton, if he rides you down, remember + That I was here to speak, and so to save + Your fabric from catastrophe. That's good; + For I perceive that you observe him also. + A President, a-riding of his horse, + May dust a General and be forgiven; + But why be dusted -- when we're all alike, + All equal, and all happy. Here he comes -- + And there he goes. And we, by your new patent, + Would seem to be two kings here by the wayside, + With our two hats off to his Excellency. + Why not his Majesty, and done with it? + Forgive me if I shook your meditation, + But you that weld our credit should have eyes + To see what's coming. Bury me first if -I- do. + + + HAMILTON + + There's always in some pocket of your brain + A care for me; wherefore my gratitude + For your attention is commensurate + With your concern. Yes, Burr, we are two kings; + We are as royal as two ditch-diggers; + But owe me not your sceptre. These are the days + When first a few seem all; but if we live, + We may again be seen to be the few + That we have always been. These are the days + When men forget the stars, and are forgotten. + + + BURR + + But why forget them? They're the same that winked + Upon the world when Alcibiades + Cut off his dog's tail to induce distinction. + There are dogs yet, and Alcibiades + Is not forgotten. + + + HAMILTON + + Yes, there are dogs enough, + God knows; and I can hear them in my dreams. + + + BURR + + Never a doubt. But what you hear the most + Is your new music, something out of tune + With your intention. How in the name of Cain, + I seem to hear you ask, are men to dance, + When all men are musicians. Tell me that, + I hear you saying, and I'll tell you the name + Of Samson's mother. But why shroud yourself + Before the coffin comes? For all you know, + The tree that is to fall for your last house + Is now a sapling. You may have to wait + So long as to be sorry; though I doubt it, + For you are not at home in your new Eden + Where chilly whispers of a likely frost + Accumulate already in the air. + I think a touch of ermine, Hamilton, + Would be for you in your autumnal mood + A pleasant sort of warmth along the shoulders. + + + HAMILTON + + If so it is you think, you may as well + Give over thinking. We are done with ermine. + What I fear most is not the multitude, + But those who are to loop it with a string + That has one end in France and one end here. + I'm not so fortified with observation + That I could swear that more than half a score + Among us who see lightning see that ruin + Is not the work of thunder. Since the world + Was ordered, there was never a long pause + For caution between doing and undoing. + + + BURR + + Go on, sir; my attention is a trap + Set for the catching of all compliments + To Monticello, and all else abroad + That has a name or an identity. + + + HAMILTON + + I leave to you the names -- there are too many; + Yet one there is to sift and hold apart, + As now I see. There comes at last a glimmer + That is not always clouded, or too late. + But I was near and young, and had the reins + To play with while he manned a team so raw + That only God knows where the end had been + Of all that riding without Washington. + There was a nation in the man who passed us, + If there was not a world. I may have driven + Since then some restive horses, and alone, + And through a splashing of abundant mud; + But he who made the dust that sets you on + To coughing, made the road. Now it seems dry, + And in a measure safe. + + + BURR + + Here's a new tune + From Hamilton. Has your caution all at once, + And over night, grown till it wrecks the cradle? + I have forgotten what my father said + When I was born, but there's a rustling of it + Among my memories, and it makes a noise + About as loud as all that I have held + And fondled heretofore of your same caution. + But that's affairs, not feelings. If our friends + Guessed half we say of them, our enemies + Would itch in our friends' jackets. Howsoever, + The world is of a sudden on its head, + And all are spilled -- unless you cling alone + With Washington. Ask Adams about that. + + + HAMILTON + + We'll not ask Adams about anything. + We fish for lizards when we choose to ask + For what we know already is not coming, + And we must eat the answer. Where's the use + Of asking when this man says everything, + With all his tongues of silence? + + + BURR + + I dare say. + I dare say, but I won't. One of those tongues + I'll borrow for the nonce. He'll never miss it. + We mean his Western Majesty, King George. + + + HAMILTON + + I mean the man who rode by on his horse. + I'll beg of you the meed of your indulgence + If I should say this planet may have done + A deal of weary whirling when at last, + If ever, Time shall aggregate again + A majesty like his that has no name. + + + BURR + + Then you concede his Majesty? That's good, + And what of yours? Here are two majesties. + Favor the Left a little, Hamilton, + Or you'll be floundering in the ditch that waits + For riders who forget where they are riding. + If we and France, as you anticipate, + Must eat each other, what Caesar, if not yourself, + Do you see for the master of the feast? + There may be a place waiting on your head + For laurel thick as Nero's. You don't know. + I have not crossed your glory, though I might + If I saw thrones at auction. + + + HAMILTON + + Yes, you might. + If war is on the way, I shall be -- here; + And I've no vision of your distant heels. + + + BURR + + I see that I shall take an inference + To bed with me to-night to keep me warm. + I thank you, Hamilton, and I approve + Your fealty to the aggregated greatness + Of him you lean on while he leans on you. + + + HAMILTON + + This easy phrasing is a game of yours + That you may win to lose. I beg your pardon, + But you that have the sight will not employ + The will to see with it. If you did so, + There might be fewer ditches dug for others + In your perspective; and there might be fewer + Contemporary motes of prejudice + Between you and the man who made the dust. + Call him a genius or a gentleman, + A prophet or a builder, or what not, + But hold your disposition off the balance, + And weigh him in the light. Once (I believe + I tell you nothing new to your surmise, + Or to the tongues of towns and villages) + I nourished with an adolescent fancy -- + Surely forgivable to you, my friend -- + An innocent and amiable conviction + That I was, by the grace of honest fortune, + A savior at his elbow through the war, + Where I might have observed, more than I did, + Patience and wholesome passion. I was there, + And for such honor I gave nothing worse + Than some advice at which he may have smiled. + I must have given a modicum besides, + Or the rough interval between those days + And these would never have made for me my friends, + Or enemies. I should be something somewhere -- + I say not what -- but I should not be here + If he had not been there. Possibly, too, + You might not -- or that Quaker with his cane. + + + BURR + + Possibly, too, I should. When the Almighty + Rides a white horse, I fancy we shall know it. + + + HAMILTON + + It was a man, Burr, that was in my mind; + No god, or ghost, or demon -- only a man: + A man whose occupation is the need + Of those who would not feel it if it bit them; + And one who shapes an age while he endures + The pin pricks of inferiorities; + A cautious man, because he is but one; + A lonely man, because he is a thousand. + No marvel you are slow to find in him + The genius that is one spark or is nothing: + His genius is a flame that he must hold + So far above the common heads of men + That they may view him only through the mist + Of their defect, and wonder what he is. + It seems to me the mystery that is in him + That makes him only more to me a man + Than any other I have ever known. + + + BURR + + I grant you that his worship is a man. + I'm not so much at home with mysteries, + May be, as you -- so leave him with his fire: + God knows that I shall never put it out. + He has not made a cripple of himself + In his pursuit of me, though I have heard + His condescension honors me with parts. + Parts make a whole, if we've enough of them; + And once I figured a sufficiency + To be at least an atom in the annals + Of your republic. But I must have erred. + + + HAMILTON + + You smile as if your spirit lived at ease + With error. I should not have named it so, + Failing assent from you; nor, if I did, + Should I be so complacent in my skill + To comb the tangled language of the people + As to be sure of anything in these days. + Put that much in account with modesty. + + + BURR + + What in the name of Ahab, Hamilton, + Have you, in the last region of your dreaming, + To do with "people"? You may be the devil + In your dead-reckoning of what reefs and shoals + Are waiting on the progress of our ship + Unless you steer it, but you'll find it irksome + Alone there in the stern; and some warm day + There'll be an inland music in the rigging, + And afterwards on deck. I'm not affined + Or favored overmuch at Monticello, + But there's a mighty swarming of new bees + About the premises, and all have wings. + If you hear something buzzing before long, + Be thoughtful how you strike, remembering also + There was a fellow Naboth had a vineyard, + And Ahab cut his hair off and went softly. + + + HAMILTON + + I don't remember that he cut his hair off. + + + BURR + + Somehow I rather fancy that he did. + If so, it's in the Book; and if not so, + He did the rest, and did it handsomely. + + + HAMILTON + + Commend yourself to Ahab and his ways + If they inveigle you to emulation; + But where, if I may ask it, are you tending + With your invidious wielding of the Scriptures? + You call to mind an eminent archangel + Who fell to make him famous. Would you fall + So far as he, to be so far remembered? + + + BURR + + Before I fall or rise, or am an angel, + I shall acquaint myself a little further + With our new land's new language, which is not -- + Peace to your dreams -- an idiom to your liking. + I'm wondering if a man may always know + How old a man may be at thirty-seven; + I wonder likewise if a prettier time + Could be decreed for a good man to vanish + Than about now for you, before you fade, + And even your friends are seeing that you have had + Your cup too full for longer mortal triumph. + Well, you have had enough, and had it young; + And the old wine is nearer to the lees + Than you are to the work that you are doing. + + + HAMILTON + + When does this philological excursion + Into new lands and languages begin? + + + BURR + + Anon -- that is, already. Only Fortune + Gave me this afternoon the benefaction + Of your blue back, which I for love pursued, + And in pursuing may have saved your life -- + Also the world a pounding piece of news: + Hamilton bites the dust of Washington, + Or rather of his horse. For you alone, + Or for your fame, I'd wish it might have been so. + + + HAMILTON + + Not every man among us has a friend + So jealous for the other's fame. How long + Are you to diagnose the doubtful case + Of Demos -- and what for? Have you a sword + For some new Damocles? If it's for me, + I have lost all official appetite, + And shall have faded, after January, + Into the law. I'm going to New York. + + + BURR + + No matter where you are, one of these days + I shall come back to you and tell you something. + This Demos, I have heard, has in his wrist + A pulse that no two doctors have as yet + Counted and found the same, and in his mouth + A tongue that has the like alacrity + For saying or not for saying what most it is + That pullulates in his ignoble mind. + One of these days I shall appear again, + To tell you more of him and his opinions; + I shall not be so long out of your sight, + Or take myself so far, that I may not, + Like Alcibiades, come back again. + He went away to Phrygia, and fared ill. + + + HAMILTON + + There's an example in Themistocles: + He went away to Persia, and fared well. + + + BURR + + So? Must I go so far? And if so, why so? + I had not planned it so. Is this the road + I take? If so, farewell. + + + HAMILTON + + Quite so. Farewell. + + + + + John Brown + + Though for your sake I would not have you now + So near to me tonight as now you are, + God knows how much a stranger to my heart + Was any cold word that I may have written; + And you, poor woman that I made my wife, + You have had more of loneliness, I fear, + Than I -- though I have been the most alone, + Even when the most attended. So it was + God set the mark of his inscrutable + Necessity on one that was to grope, + And serve, and suffer, and withal be glad + For what was his, and is, and is to be, + When his old bones, that are a burden now, + Are saying what the man who carried them + Had not the power to say. Bones in a grave, + Cover them as they will with choking earth, + May shout the truth to men who put them there, + More than all orators. And so, my dear, + Since you have cheated wisdom for the sake + Of sorrow, let your sorrow be for you, + This last of nights before the last of days, + The lying ghost of what there is of me + That is the most alive. There is no death + For me in what they do. Their death it is + They should heed most when the sun comes again + To make them solemn. There are some I know + Whose eyes will hardly see their occupation, + For tears in them -- and all for one old man; + For some of them will pity this old man, + Who took upon himself the work of God + Because he pitied millions. That will be + For them, I fancy, their compassionate + Best way of saying what is best in them + To say; for they can say no more than that, + And they can do no more than what the dawn + Of one more day shall give them light enough + To do. But there are many days to be, + And there are many men to give their blood, + As I gave mine for them. May they come soon! + + May they come soon, I say. And when they come, + May all that I have said unheard be heard, + Proving at last, or maybe not -- no matter -- + What sort of madness was the part of me + That made me strike, whether I found the mark + Or missed it. Meanwhile, I've a strange content, + A patience, and a vast indifference + To what men say of me and what men fear + To say. There was a work to be begun, + And when the Voice, that I have heard so long, + Announced as in a thousand silences + An end of preparation, I began + The coming work of death which is to be, + That life may be. There is no other way + Than the old way of war for a new land + That will not know itself and is tonight + A stranger to itself, and to the world + A more prodigious upstart among states + Than I was among men, and so shall be + Till they are told and told, and told again; + For men are children, waiting to be told, + And most of them are children all their lives. + The good God in his wisdom had them so, + That now and then a madman or a seer + May shake them out of their complacency + And shame them into deeds. The major file + See only what their fathers may have seen, + Or may have said they saw when they saw nothing. + I do not say it matters what they saw. + Now and again to some lone soul or other + God speaks, and there is hanging to be done, -- + As once there was a burning of our bodies + Alive, albeit our souls were sorry fuel. + But now the fires are few, and we are poised + Accordingly, for the state's benefit, + A few still minutes between heaven and earth. + The purpose is, when they have seen enough + Of what it is that they are not to see, + To pluck me as an unripe fruit of treason, + And then to fling me back to the same earth + Of which they are, as I suppose, the flower -- + Not given to know the riper fruit that waits + For a more comprehensive harvesting. + + Yes, may they come, and soon. Again I say, + May they come soon! -- before too many of them + Shall be the bloody cost of our defection. + When hell waits on the dawn of a new state, + Better it were that hell should not wait long, -- + Or so it is I see it who should see + As far or farther into time tonight + Than they who talk and tremble for me now, + Or wish me to those everlasting fires + That are for me no fear. Too many fires + Have sought me out and seared me to the bone -- + Thereby, for all I know, to temper me + For what was mine to do. If I did ill + What I did well, let men say I was mad; + Or let my name for ever be a question + That will not sleep in history. What men say + I was will cool no cannon, dull no sword, + Invalidate no truth. Meanwhile, I was; + And the long train is lighted that shall burn, + Though floods of wrath may drench it, and hot feet + May stamp it for a slight time into smoke + That shall blaze up again with growing speed, + Until at last a fiery crash will come + To cleanse and shake a wounded hemisphere, + And heal it of a long malignity + That angry time discredits and disowns. + Tonight there are men saying many things; + And some who see life in the last of me + Will answer first the coming call to death; + For death is what is coming, and then life. + I do not say again for the dull sake + Of speech what you have heard me say before, + But rather for the sake of all I am, + And all God made of me. A man to die + As I do must have done some other work + Than man's alone. I was not after glory, + But there was glory with me, like a friend, + Throughout those crippling years when friends were few, + And fearful to be known by their own names + When mine was vilified for their approval. + Yet friends they are, and they did what was given + Their will to do; they could have done no more. + I was the one man mad enough, it seems, + To do my work; and now my work is over. + And you, my dear, are not to mourn for me, + Or for your sons, more than a soul should mourn + In Paradise, done with evil and with earth. + There is not much of earth in what remains + For you; and what there may be left of it + For your endurance you shall have at last + In peace, without the twinge of any fear + For my condition; for I shall be done + With plans and actions that have heretofore + Made your days long and your nights ominous + With darkness and the many distances + That were between us. When the silence comes, + I shall in faith be nearer to you then + Than I am now in fact. What you see now + Is only the outside of an old man, + Older than years have made him. Let him die, + And let him be a thing for little grief. + There was a time for service, and he served; + And there is no more time for anything + But a short gratefulness to those who gave + Their scared allegiance to an enterprise + That has the name of treason -- which will serve + As well as any other for the present. + There are some deeds of men that have no names, + And mine may like as not be one of them. + I am not looking far for names tonight. + The King of Glory was without a name + Until men gave him one; yet there He was, + Before we found Him and affronted Him + With numerous ingenuities of evil, + Of which one, with His aid, is to be swept + And washed out of the world with fire and blood. + + Once I believed it might have come to pass + With a small cost of blood; but I was dreaming -- + Dreaming that I believed. The Voice I heard + When I left you behind me in the north, -- + To wait there and to wonder and grow old + Of loneliness, -- told only what was best, + And with a saving vagueness, I should know + Till I knew more. And had I known even then -- + After grim years of search and suffering, + So many of them to end as they began -- + After my sickening doubts and estimations + Of plans abandoned and of new plans vain -- + After a weary delving everywhere + For men with every virtue but the Vision -- + Could I have known, I say, before I left you + That summer morning, all there was to know -- + Even unto the last consuming word + That would have blasted every mortal answer + As lightning would annihilate a leaf, + I might have trembled on that summer morning; + I might have wavered; and I might have failed. + + And there are many among men today + To say of me that I had best have wavered. + So has it been, so shall it always be, + For those of us who give ourselves to die + Before we are so parcelled and approved + As to be slaughtered by authority. + We do not make so much of what they say + As they of what our folly says of us; + They give us hardly time enough for that, + And thereby we gain much by losing little. + Few are alive to-day with less to lose + Than I who tell you this, or more to gain; + And whether I speak as one to be destroyed + For no good end outside his own destruction, + Time shall have more to say than men shall hear + Between now and the coming of that harvest + Which is to come. Before it comes, I go -- + By the short road that mystery makes long + For man's endurance of accomplishment. + I shall have more to say when I am dead. + + + + + The False Gods + + "We are false and evanescent, and aware of our deceit, + From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that is our feet. + You may serve us if you must, and you shall have your wage of ashes, -- + Though arrears due thereafter may be hard for you to meet. + + "You may swear that we are solid, you may say that we are strong, + But we know that we are neither and we say that you are wrong; + You may find an easy worship in acclaiming our indulgence, + But your large admiration of us now is not for long. + + "If your doom is to adore us with a doubt that's never still, + And you pray to see our faces -- pray in earnest, and you will. + You may gaze at us and live, and live assured of our confusion: + For the False Gods are mortal, and are made for you to kill. + + "And you may as well observe, while apprehensively at ease + With an Art that's inorganic and is anything you please, + That anon your newest ruin may lie crumbling unregarded, + Like an old shrine forgotten in a forest of new trees. + + "Howsoever like no other be the mode you may employ, + There's an order in the ages for the ages to enjoy; + Though the temples you are shaping and the passions you are singing + Are a long way from Athens and a longer way from Troy. + + "When we promise more than ever of what never shall arrive, + And you seem a little more than ordinarily alive, + Make a note that you are sure you understand our obligations -- + For there's grief always auditing where two and two are five. + + "There was this for us to say and there was this for you to know, + Though it humbles and it hurts us when we have to tell you so. + If you doubt the only truth in all our perjured composition, + May the True Gods attend you and forget us when we go." + + + + + Archibald's Example + + Old Archibald, in his eternal chair, + Where trespassers, whatever their degree, + Were soon frowned out again, was looking off + Across the clover when he said to me: + + "My green hill yonder, where the sun goes down + Without a scratch, was once inhabited + By trees that injured him -- an evil trash + That made a cage, and held him while he bled. + + "Gone fifty years, I see them as they were + Before they fell. They were a crooked lot + To spoil my sunset, and I saw no time + In fifty years for crooked things to rot. + + "Trees, yes; but not a service or a joy + To God or man, for they were thieves of light. + So down they came. Nature and I looked on, + And we were glad when they were out of sight. + + "Trees are like men, sometimes; and that being so, + So much for that." He twinkled in his chair, + And looked across the clover to the place + That he remembered when the trees were there. + + + + + London Bridge + + "Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing -- and what of it? + Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? + If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, + We might believe they made a noise. . . . What are you -- driving at!" + + "Well, be glad that you can hear them, and be glad they are so near us, -- + For I have heard the stars of heaven, and they were nearer still. + All within an hour it is that I have heard them calling, + And though I pray for them to cease, I know they never will; + For their music on my heart, though you may freeze it, will fall always, + Like summer snow that never melts upon a mountain-top. + Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead -- the children -- singing? + Do you hear the children singing? . . . God, will you make them stop!" + + "And what now in his holy name have you to do with mountains? + We're back to town again, my dear, and we've a dance tonight. + Frozen hearts and falling music? Snow and stars, and -- what the devil! + Say it over to me slowly, and be sure you have it right." + + "God knows if I be right or wrong in saying what I tell you, + Or if I know the meaning any more of what I say. + All I know is, it will kill me if I try to keep it hidden -- + Well, I met him. . . . Yes, I met him, and I talked with him -- today." + + "You met him? Did you meet the ghost of someone you had poisoned, + Long ago, before I knew you for the woman that you are? + Take a chair; and don't begin your stories always in the middle. + Was he man, or was he demon? Anyhow, you've gone too far + To go back, and I'm your servant. I'm the lord, but you're the master. + Now go on with what you know, for I'm excited." + + "Do you mean -- + Do you mean to make me try to think that you know less than I do?" + + "I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene. + Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven + Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for evermore." + + "Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt of every feeling, + Of hiding what you know and what you must have known before? + Is it worth a woman's torture to stand here and have you smiling, + With only your poor fetish of possession on your side? + No thing but one is wholly sure, and that's not one to scare me; + When I meet it I may say to God at last that I have tried. + And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my trials + Henceforward will be more for you to bear than are your own; + And you must give me keys of yours to rooms I have not entered. + Do you see me on your threshold all my life, and there alone? + Will you tell me where you see me in your fancy -- when it leads you + Far enough beyond the moment for a glance at the abyss?" + + "Will you tell me what intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense + You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you -- this? + Look around you and be sorry you're not living in an attic, + With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. + I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; + And I grant, if you insist, that I've a guess at what you meant." + + "Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met him? Are you trying + To be merry while you try to make me hate you?" + + "Think again, + My dear, before you tell me, in a language unbecoming + To a lady, what you plan to tell me next. If I complain, + If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention -- + Or imply, to be precise -- you may believe, or you may not, + That I'm a trifle more aware of what he wants than you are. + But I shouldn't throw that at you. Make believe that I forgot. + Make believe that he's a genius, if you like, -- but in the meantime + Don't go back to rocking-horses. There, there, there, now." + + "Make believe! + When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool, + Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe? + How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you + That I met him! What's to follow now may be for you to choose. + Do you hear me? Won't you listen? It's an easy thing to listen. . . ." + + "And it's easy to be crazy when there's everything to lose." + + "If at last you have a notion that I mean what I am saying, + Do I seem to tell you nothing when I tell you I shall try? + If you save me, and I lose him -- I don't know -- it won't much matter. + I dare say that I've lied enough, but now I do not lie." + + "Do you fancy me the one man who has waited and said nothing + While a wife has dragged an old infatuation from a tomb? + Give the thing a little air and it will vanish into ashes. + There you are -- piff! presto!" + + "When I came into this room, + It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at your table, + As you are now at this moment, for the last time in my life; + And I told myself before I came to find you, `I shall tell him, + If I can, what I have learned of him since I became his wife.' + And if you say, as I've no doubt you will before I finish, + That you have tried unceasingly, with all your might and main, + To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was I needed, + Don't think, with all you may have thought, that you have tried in vain; + For you have taught me more than hides in all the shelves of knowledge + Of how little you found that's in me and was in me all along. + I believed, if I intruded nothing on you that I cared for, + I'd be half as much as horses, -- and it seems that I was wrong; + I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all my nonsense + Over things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake; + But you taught me soon to read my book, and God knows I have read it -- + Ages longer than an angel would have read it for your sake. + I have said that you must open other doors than I have entered, + But I wondered while I said it if I might not be obscure. + Is there anything in all your pedigrees and inventories + With a value more elusive than a dollar's? Are you sure + That if I starve another year for you I shall be stronger + To endure another like it -- and another -- till I'm dead?" + + "Has your tame cat sold a picture? -- or more likely had a windfall? + Or for God's sake, what's broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head? + A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing. + Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won't. . . . + What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it, + And I'll say I never heard it. . . . Oh, you. . . . If you. . . ." + + "If I don't?" + + "There are men who say there's reason hidden somewhere in a woman, + But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung." + + "He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing. + I wonder if he makes believe that he is growing young; + I wonder if he makes believe that women who are giving + All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their lives + Are the wise ones who build houses in the Bible. . . ." + + "Stop -- you devil!" + + ". . . Or that souls are any whiter when their bodies are called wives. + If a dollar's worth of gold will hoop the walls of hell together, + Why need heaven be such a ruin of a place that never was? + And if at last I lied my starving soul away to nothing, + Are you sure you might not miss it? Have you come to such a pass + That you would have me longer in your arms if you discovered + That I made you into someone else. . . . Oh! . . . Well, there are + worse ways. + But why aim it at my feet -- unless you fear you may be sorry. . . . + There are many days ahead of you." + + "I do not see those days." + + "I can see them. Granted even I am wrong, there are the children. + And are they to praise their father for his insight if we die? + Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead -- the children -- singing? + Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?" + + "Damn the children!" + + "Why? + What have THEY done? . . . Well, then, -- do it. . . . Do it now, + and have it over." + + "Oh, you devil! . . . Oh, you. . . ." + + "No, I'm not a devil, I'm a prophet -- + One who sees the end already of so much that one end more + Would have now the small importance of one other small illusion, + Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before. + But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little farther + For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight. + Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitations + For the dancing after dinner. We shall have to shine tonight. + We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres, + On the grave of all the lies that we shall never have to tell; + We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of our endurance, + And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well. + There! -- I'm glad you've put it back; for I don't like it. + Shut the drawer now. + No -- no -- don't cancel anything. I'll dance until I drop. + I can't walk yet, but I'm going to. . . . Go away somewhere, + and leave me. . . . + Oh, you children! Oh, you children! . . . God, will they never stop!" + + + + + Tasker Norcross + + "Whether all towns and all who live in them -- + So long as they be somewhere in this world + That we in our complacency call ours -- + Are more or less the same, I leave to you. + I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile, + We've all two legs -- and as for that, we haven't -- + There were three kinds of men where I was born: + The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross. + Now there are two kinds." + + "Meaning, as I divine, + Your friend is dead," I ventured. + + Ferguson, + Who talked himself at last out of the world + He censured, and is therefore silent now, + Agreed indifferently: "My friends are dead -- + Or most of them." + + "Remember one that isn't," + I said, protesting. "Honor him for his ears; + Treasure him also for his understanding." + Ferguson sighed, and then talked on again: + "You have an overgrown alacrity + For saying nothing much and hearing less; + And I've a thankless wonder, at the start, + How much it is to you that I shall tell + What I have now to say of Tasker Norcross, + And how much to the air that is around you. + But given a patience that is not averse + To the slow tragedies of haunted men -- + Horrors, in fact, if you've a skilful eye + To know them at their firesides, or out walking, --" + + "Horrors," I said, "are my necessity; + And I would have them, for their best effect, + Always out walking." + + Ferguson frowned at me: + "The wisest of us are not those who laugh + Before they know. Most of us never know -- + Or the long toil of our mortality + Would not be done. Most of us never know -- + And there you have a reason to believe + In God, if you may have no other. Norcross, + Or so I gather of his infirmity, + Was given to know more than he should have known, + And only God knows why. See for yourself + An old house full of ghosts of ancestors, + Who did their best, or worst, and having done it, + Died honorably; and each with a distinction + That hardly would have been for him that had it, + Had honor failed him wholly as a friend. + Honor that is a friend begets a friend. + Whether or not we love him, still we have him; + And we must live somehow by what we have, + Or then we die. If you say chemistry, + Then you must have your molecules in motion, + And in their right abundance. Failing either, + You have not long to dance. Failing a friend, + A genius, or a madness, or a faith + Larger than desperation, you are here + For as much longer than you like as may be. + Imagining now, by way of an example, + Myself a more or less remembered phantom -- + Again, I should say less -- how many times + A day should I come back to you? No answer. + Forgive me when I seem a little careless, + But we must have examples, or be lucid + Without them; and I question your adherence + To such an undramatic narrative + As this of mine, without the personal hook." + + "A time is given in Ecclesiastes + For divers works," I told him. "Is there one + For saying nothing in return for nothing? + If not, there should be." I could feel his eyes, + And they were like two cold inquiring points + Of a sharp metal. When I looked again, + To see them shine, the cold that I had felt + Was gone to make way for a smouldering + Of lonely fire that I, as I knew then, + Could never quench with kindness or with lies. + I should have done whatever there was to do + For Ferguson, yet I could not have mourned + In honesty for once around the clock + The loss of him, for my sake or for his, + Try as I might; nor would his ghost approve, + Had I the power and the unthinking will + To make him tread again without an aim + The road that was behind him -- and without + The faith, or friend, or genius, or the madness + That he contended was imperative. + + After a silence that had been too long, + "It may be quite as well we don't," he said; + "As well, I mean, that we don't always say it. + You know best what I mean, and I suppose + You might have said it better. What was that? + Incorrigible? Am I incorrigible? + Well, it's a word; and a word has its use, + Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave. + It's a good word enough. Incorrigible, + May be, for all I know, the word for Norcross. + See for yourself that house of his again + That he called home: An old house, painted white, + Square as a box, and chillier than a tomb + To look at or to live in. There were trees -- + Too many of them, if such a thing may be -- + Before it and around it. Down in front + There was a road, a railroad, and a river; + Then there were hills behind it, and more trees. + The thing would fairly stare at you through trees, + Like a pale inmate out of a barred window + With a green shade half down; and I dare say + People who passed have said: `There's where he lives. + We know him, but we do not seem to know + That we remember any good of him, + Or any evil that is interesting. + There you have all we know and all we care.' + They might have said it in all sorts of ways; + And then, if they perceived a cat, they might + Or might not have remembered what they said. + The cat might have a personality -- + And maybe the same one the Lord left out + Of Tasker Norcross, who, for lack of it, + Saw the same sun go down year after year; + All which at last was my discovery. + And only mine, so far as evidence + Enlightens one more darkness. You have known + All round you, all your days, men who are nothing -- + Nothing, I mean, so far as time tells yet + Of any other need it has of them + Than to make sextons hardy -- but no less + Are to themselves incalculably something, + And therefore to be cherished. God, you see, + Being sorry for them in their fashioning, + Indemnified them with a quaint esteem + Of self, and with illusions long as life. + You know them well, and you have smiled at them; + And they, in their serenity, may have had + Their time to smile at you. Blessed are they + That see themselves for what they never were + Or were to be, and are, for their defect, + At ease with mirrors and the dim remarks + That pass their tranquil ears." + + "Come, come," said I; + "There may be names in your compendium + That we are not yet all on fire for shouting. + Skin most of us of our mediocrity, + We should have nothing then that we could scratch. + The picture smarts. Cover it, if you please, + And do so rather gently. Now for Norcross." + + Ferguson closed his eyes in resignation, + While a dead sigh came out of him. "Good God!" + He said, and said it only half aloud, + As if he knew no longer now, nor cared, + If one were there to listen: "Have I said nothing -- + Nothing at all -- of Norcross? Do you mean + To patronize him till his name becomes + A toy made out of letters? If a name + Is all you need, arrange an honest column + Of all the people you have ever known + That you have never liked. You'll have enough; + And you'll have mine, moreover. No, not yet. + If I assume too many privileges, + I pay, and I alone, for their assumption; + By which, if I assume a darker knowledge + Of Norcross than another, let the weight + Of my injustice aggravate the load + That is not on your shoulders. When I came + To know this fellow Norcross in his house, + I found him as I found him in the street -- + No more, no less; indifferent, but no better. + `Worse' were not quite the word: he was not bad; + He was not . . . well, he was not anything. + Has your invention ever entertained + The picture of a dusty worm so dry + That even the early bird would shake his head + And fly on farther for another breakfast?" + + "But why forget the fortune of the worm," + I said, "if in the dryness you deplore + Salvation centred and endured? Your Norcross + May have been one for many to have envied." + + "Salvation? Fortune? Would the worm say that? + He might; and therefore I dismiss the worm + With all dry things but one. Figures away, + Do you begin to see this man a little? + Do you begin to see him in the air, + With all the vacant horrors of his outline + For you to fill with more than it will hold? + If so, you needn't crown yourself at once + With epic laurel if you seem to fill it. + Horrors, I say, for in the fires and forks + Of a new hell -- if one were not enough -- + I doubt if a new horror would have held him + With a malignant ingenuity + More to be feared than his before he died. + You smile, as if in doubt. Well, smile again. + Now come into his house, along with me: + The four square sombre things that you see first + Around you are four walls that go as high + As to the ceiling. Norcross knew them well, + And he knew others like them. Fasten to that + With all the claws of your intelligence; + And hold the man before you in his house + As if he were a white rat in a box, + And one that knew himself to be no other. + I tell you twice that he knew all about it, + That you may not forget the worst of all + Our tragedies begin with what we know. + Could Norcross only not have known, I wonder + How many would have blessed and envied him! + Could he have had the usual eye for spots + On others, and for none upon himself, + I smile to ponder on the carriages + That might as well as not have clogged the town + In honor of his end. For there was gold, + You see, though all he needed was a little, + And what he gave said nothing of who gave it. + He would have given it all if in return + There might have been a more sufficient face + To greet him when he shaved. Though you insist + It is the dower, and always, of our degree + Not to be cursed with such invidious insight, + Remember that you stand, you and your fancy, + Now in his house; and since we are together, + See for yourself and tell me what you see. + Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise + Of recognition when you find a book + That you would not as lief read upside down + As otherwise, for example. If there you fail, + Observe the walls and lead me to the place, + Where you are led. If there you meet a picture + That holds you near it for a longer time + Than you are sorry, you may call it yours, + And hang it in the dark of your remembrance, + Where Norcross never sees. How can he see + That has no eyes to see? And as for music, + He paid with empty wonder for the pangs + Of his infrequent forced endurance of it; + And having had no pleasure, paid no more + For needless immolation, or for the sight + Of those who heard what he was never to hear. + To see them listening was itself enough + To make him suffer; and to watch worn eyes, + On other days, of strangers who forgot + Their sorrows and their failures and themselves + Before a few mysterious odds and ends + Of marble carted from the Parthenon -- + And all for seeing what he was never to see, + Because it was alive and he was dead -- + Here was a wonder that was more profound + Than any that was in fiddles and brass horns. + + "He knew, and in his knowledge there was death. + He knew there was a region all around him + That lay outside man's havoc and affairs, + And yet was not all hostile to their tumult, + Where poets would have served and honored him, + And saved him, had there been anything to save. + But there was nothing, and his tethered range + Was only a small desert. Kings of song + Are not for thrones in deserts. Towers of sound + And flowers of sense are but a waste of heaven + Where there is none to know them from the rocks + And sand-grass of his own monotony + That makes earth less than earth. He could see that, + And he could see no more. The captured light + That may have been or not, for all he cared, + The song that is in sculpture was not his, + But only, to his God-forgotten eyes, + One more immortal nonsense in a world + Where all was mortal, or had best be so, + And so be done with. `Art,' he would have said, + `Is not life, and must therefore be a lie;' + And with a few profundities like that + He would have controverted and dismissed + The benefit of the Greeks. He had heard of them, + As he had heard of his aspiring soul -- + Never to the perceptible advantage, + In his esteem, of either. `Faith,' he said, + Or would have said if he had thought of it, + `Lives in the same house with Philosophy, + Where the two feed on scraps and are forlorn + As orphans after war. He could see stars, + On a clear night, but he had not an eye + To see beyond them. He could hear spoken words, + But had no ear for silence when alone. + He could eat food of which he knew the savor, + But had no palate for the Bread of Life, + That human desperation, to his thinking, + Made famous long ago, having no other. + Now do you see? Do you begin to see?" + + I told him that I did begin to see; + And I was nearer than I should have been + To laughing at his malign inclusiveness, + When I considered that, with all our speed, + We are not laughing yet at funerals. + I see him now as I could see him then, + And I see now that it was good for me, + As it was good for him, that I was quiet; + For Time's eye was on Ferguson, and the shaft + Of its inquiring hesitancy had touched him, + Or so I chose to fancy more than once + Before he told of Norcross. When the word + Of his release (he would have called it so) + Made half an inch of news, there were no tears + That are recorded. Women there may have been + To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing, + The few there were to mourn were not for love, + And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least, + Was in the meagre legend that I gathered + Years after, when a chance of travel took me + So near the region of his nativity + That a few miles of leisure brought me there; + For there I found a friendly citizen + Who led me to his house among the trees + That were above a railroad and a river. + Square as a box and chillier than a tomb + It was indeed, to look at or to live in -- + All which had I been told. "Ferguson died," + The stranger said, "and then there was an auction. + I live here, but I've never yet been warm. + Remember him? Yes, I remember him. + I knew him -- as a man may know a tree -- + For twenty years. He may have held himself + A little high when he was here, but now . . . + Yes, I remember Ferguson. Oh, yes." + Others, I found, remembered Ferguson, + But none of them had heard of Tasker Norcross. + + + + + A Song at Shannon's + + Two men came out of Shannon's having known + The faces of each other for as long + As they had listened there to an old song, + Sung thinly in a wastrel monotone + By some unhappy night-bird, who had flown + Too many times and with a wing too strong + To save himself, and so done heavy wrong + To more frail elements than his alone. + + Slowly away they went, leaving behind + More light than was before them. Neither met + The other's eyes again or said a word. + Each to his loneliness or to his kind, + Went his own way, and with his own regret, + Not knowing what the other may have heard. + + + + + Souvenir + + A vanished house that for an hour I knew + By some forgotten chance when I was young + Had once a glimmering window overhung + With honeysuckle wet with evening dew. + Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew, + And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung + Ferociously; and over me, among + The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew. + + Somewhere within there were dim presences + Of days that hovered and of years gone by. + I waited, and between their silences + There was an evanescent faded noise; + And though a child, I knew it was the voice + Of one whose occupation was to die. + + + + + Discovery + + We told of him as one who should have soared + And seen for us the devastating light + Whereof there is not either day or night, + And shared with us the glamour of the Word + That fell once upon Amos to record + For men at ease in Zion, when the sight + Of ills obscured aggrieved him and the might + Of Hamath was a warning of the Lord. + + Assured somehow that he would make us wise, + Our pleasure was to wait; and our surprise + Was hard when we confessed the dry return + Of his regret. For we were still to learn + That earth has not a school where we may go + For wisdom, or for more than we may know. + + + + + Firelight + + Ten years together without yet a cloud, + They seek each other's eyes at intervals + Of gratefulness to firelight and four walls + For love's obliteration of the crowd. + Serenely and perennially endowed + And bowered as few may be, their joy recalls + No snake, no sword; and over them there falls + The blessing of what neither says aloud. + + Wiser for silence, they were not so glad + Were she to read the graven tale of lines + On the wan face of one somewhere alone; + Nor were they more content could he have had + Her thoughts a moment since of one who shines + Apart, and would be hers if he had known. + + + + + The New Tenants + + The day was here when it was his to know + How fared the barriers he had built between + His triumph and his enemies unseen, + For them to undermine and overthrow; + And it was his no longer to forego + The sight of them, insidious and serene, + Where they were delving always and had been + Left always to be vicious and to grow. + + And there were the new tenants who had come, + By doors that were left open unawares, + Into his house, and were so much at home + There now that he would hardly have to guess, + By the slow guile of their vindictiveness, + What ultimate insolence would soon be theirs. + + + + + Inferential + + Although I saw before me there the face + Of one whom I had honored among men + The least, and on regarding him again + Would not have had him in another place, + He fitted with an unfamiliar grace + The coffin where I could not see him then + As I had seen him and appraised him when + I deemed him unessential to the race. + + For there was more of him than what I saw. + And there was on me more than the old awe + That is the common genius of the dead. + I might as well have heard him: "Never mind; + If some of us were not so far behind, + The rest of us were not so far ahead." + + + + + The Rat + + As often as he let himself be seen + We pitied him, or scorned him, or deplored + The inscrutable profusion of the Lord + Who shaped as one of us a thing so mean -- + Who made him human when he might have been + A rat, and so been wholly in accord + With any other creature we abhorred + As always useless and not always clean. + + Now he is hiding all alone somewhere, + And in a final hole not ready then; + For now he is among those over there + Who are not coming back to us again. + And we who do the fiction of our share + Say less of rats and rather more of men. + + + + + Rahel to Varnhagen + +Note. -- Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, +after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriage -- so far +as he was concerned, at any rate -- appears to have been satisfactory. + + Now you have read them all; or if not all, + As many as in all conscience I should fancy + To be enough. There are no more of them -- + Or none to burn your sleep, or to bring dreams + Of devils. If these are not sufficient, surely + You are a strange young man. I might live on + Alone, and for another forty years, + Or not quite forty, -- are you happier now? -- + Always to ask if there prevailed elsewhere + Another like yourself that would have held + These aged hands as long as you have held them, + Not once observing, for all I can see, + How they are like your mother's. Well, you have read + His letters now, and you have heard me say + That in them are the cinders of a passion + That was my life; and you have not yet broken + Your way out of my house, out of my sight, -- + Into the street. You are a strange young man. + I know as much as that of you, for certain; + And I'm already praying, for your sake, + That you be not too strange. Too much of that + May lead you bye and bye through gloomy lanes + To a sad wilderness, where one may grope + Alone, and always, or until he feels + Ferocious and invisible animals + That wait for men and eat them in the dark. + Why do you sit there on the floor so long, + Smiling at me while I try to be solemn? + Do you not hear it said for your salvation, + When I say truth? Are you, at four and twenty, + So little deceived in us that you interpret + The humor of a woman to be noticed + As her choice between you and Acheron? + Are you so unscathed yet as to infer + That if a woman worries when a man, + Or a man-child, has wet shoes on his feet + She may as well commemorate with ashes + The last eclipse of her tranquillity? + If you look up at me and blink again, + I shall not have to make you tell me lies + To know the letters you have not been reading. + I see now that I may have had for nothing + A most unpleasant shivering in my conscience + When I laid open for your contemplation + The wealth of my worn casket. If I did, + The fault was not yours wholly. Search again + This wreckage we may call for sport a face, + And you may chance upon the price of havoc + That I have paid for a few sorry stones + That shine and have no light -- yet once were stars, + And sparkled on a crown. Little and weak + They seem; and they are cold, I fear, for you. + But they that once were fire for me may not + Be cold again for me until I die; + And only God knows if they may be then. + There is a love that ceases to be love + In being ourselves. How, then, are we to lose it? + You that are sure that you know everything + There is to know of love, answer me that. + Well? . . . You are not even interested. + + Once on a far off time when I was young, + I felt with your assurance, and all through me, + That I had undergone the last and worst + Of love's inventions. There was a boy who brought + The sun with him and woke me up with it, + And that was every morning; every night + I tried to dream of him, but never could, + More than I might have seen in Adam's eyes + Their fond uncertainty when Eve began + The play that all her tireless progeny + Are not yet weary of. One scene of it + Was brief, but was eternal while it lasted; + And that was while I was the happiest + Of an imaginary six or seven, + Somewhere in history but not on earth, + For whom the sky had shaken and let stars + Rain down like diamonds. Then there were clouds, + And a sad end of diamonds; whereupon + Despair came, like a blast that would have brought + Tears to the eyes of all the bears in Finland, + And love was done. That was how much I knew. + Poor little wretch! I wonder where he is + This afternoon. Out of this rain, I hope. + + At last, when I had seen so many days + Dressed all alike, and in their marching order, + Go by me that I would not always count them, + One stopped -- shattering the whole file of Time, + Or so it seemed; and when I looked again, + There was a man. He struck once with his eyes, + And then there was a woman. I, who had come + To wisdom, or to vision, or what you like, + By the old hidden road that has no name, -- + I, who was used to seeing without flying + So much that others fly from without seeing, + Still looked, and was afraid, and looked again. + And after that, when I had read the story + Told in his eyes, and felt within my heart + The bleeding wound of their necessity, + I knew the fear was his. If I had failed him + And flown away from him, I should have lost + Ingloriously my wings in scrambling back, + And found them arms again. If he had struck me + Not only with his eyes but with his hands, + I might have pitied him and hated love, + And then gone mad. I, who have been so strong -- + Why don't you laugh? -- might even have done all that. + I, who have learned so much, and said so much, + And had the commendations of the great + For one who rules herself -- why don't you cry? -- + And own a certain small authority + Among the blind, who see no more than ever, + But like my voice, -- I would have tossed it all + To Tophet for one man; and he was jealous. + I would have wound a snake around my neck + And then have let it bite me till I died, + If my so doing would have made me sure + That one man might have lived; and he was jealous. + I would have driven these hands into a cage + That held a thousand scorpions, and crushed them, + If only by so poisonous a trial + I could have crushed his doubt. I would have wrung + My living blood with mediaeval engines + Out of my screaming flesh, if only that + Would have made one man sure. I would have paid + For him the tiresome price of body and soul, + And let the lash of a tongue-weary town + Fall as it might upon my blistered name; + And while it fell I could have laughed at it, + Knowing that he had found out finally + Where the wrong was. But there was evil in him + That would have made no more of his possession + Than confirmation of another fault; + And there was honor -- if you call it honor + That hoods itself with doubt and wears a crown + Of lead that might as well be gold and fire. + Give it as heavy or as light a name + As any there is that fits. I see myself + Without the power to swear to this or that + That I might be if he had been without it. + Whatever I might have been that I was not, + It only happened that it wasn't so. + Meanwhile, you might seem to be listening: + If you forget yourself and go to sleep, + My treasure, I shall not say this again. + Look up once more into my poor old face, + Where you see beauty, or the Lord knows what, + And say to me aloud what else there is + Than ruins in it that you most admire. + + No, there was never anything like that; + Nature has never fastened such a mask + Of radiant and impenetrable merit + On any woman as you say there is + On this one. Not a mask? I thank you, sir, + But you see more with your determination, + I fear, than with your prudence or your conscience; + And you have never met me with my eyes + In all the mirrors I've made faces at. + No, I shall never call you strange again: + You are the young and inconvincible + Epitome of all blind men since Adam. + May the blind lead the blind, if that be so? + And we shall need no mirrors? You are saying + What most I feared you might. But if the blind, + Or one of them, be not so fortunate + As to put out the eyes of recollection, + She might at last, without her meaning it, + Lead on the other, without his knowing it, + Until the two of them should lose themselves + Among dead craters in a lava-field + As empty as a desert on the moon. + I am not speaking in a theatre, + But in a room so real and so familiar + That sometimes I would wreck it. Then I pause, + Remembering there is a King in Weimar -- + A monarch, and a poet, and a shepherd + Of all who are astray and are outside + The realm where they should rule. I think of him, + And save the furniture; I think of you, + And am forlorn, finding in you the one + To lavish aspirations and illusions + Upon a faded and forsaken house + Where love, being locked alone, was nigh to burning + House and himself together. Yes, you are strange, + To see in such an injured architecture + Room for new love to live in. Are you laughing? + No? Well, you are not crying, as you should be. + Tears, even if they told only gratitude + For your escape, and had no other story, + Were surely more becoming than a smile + For my unwomanly straightforwardness + In seeing for you, through my close gate of years + Your forty ways to freedom. Why do you smile? + And while I'm trembling at my faith in you + In giving you to read this book of danger + That only one man living might have written -- + These letters, which have been a part of me + So long that you may read them all again + As often as you look into my face, + And hear them when I speak to you, and feel them + Whenever you have to touch me with your hand, -- + Why are you so unwilling to be spared? + Why do you still believe in me? But no, + I'll find another way to ask you that. + I wonder if there is another way + That says it better, and means anything. + There is no other way that could be worse? + I was not asking you; it was myself + Alone that I was asking. Why do I dip + For lies, when there is nothing in my well + But shining truth, you say? How do you know? + Truth has a lonely life down where she lives; + And many a time, when she comes up to breathe, + She sinks before we seize her, and makes ripples. + Possibly you may know no more of me + Than a few ripples; and they may soon be gone, + Leaving you then with all my shining truth + Drowned in a shining water; and when you look + You may not see me there, but something else + That never was a woman -- being yourself. + You say to me my truth is past all drowning, + And safe with you for ever? You know all that? + How do you know all that, and who has told you? + You know so much that I'm an atom frightened + Because you know so little. And what is this? + You know the luxury there is in haunting + The blasted thoroughfares of disillusion -- + If that's your name for them -- with only ghosts + For company? You know that when a woman + Is blessed, or cursed, with a divine impatience + (Another name of yours for a bad temper) + She must have one at hand on whom to wreak it + (That's what you mean, whatever the turn you give it), + Sure of a kindred sympathy, and thereby + Effect a mutual calm? You know that wisdom, + Given in vain to make a food for those + Who are without it, will be seen at last, + And even at last only by those who gave it, + As one or more of the forgotten crumbs + That others leave? You know that men's applause + And women's envy savor so much of dust + That I go hungry, having at home no fare + But the same changeless bread that I may swallow + Only with tears and prayers? Who told you that? + You know that if I read, and read alone, + Too many books that no men yet have written, + I may go blind, or worse? You know yourself, + Of all insistent and insidious creatures, + To be the one to save me, and to guard + For me their flaming language? And you know + That if I give much headway to the whim + That's in me never to be quite sure that even + Through all those years of storm and fire I waited + For this one rainy day, I may go on, + And on, and on alone, through smoke and ashes, + To a cold end? You know so dismal much + As that about me? . . . Well, I believe you do. + + + + + Nimmo + + Since you remember Nimmo, and arrive + At such a false and florid and far drawn + Confusion of odd nonsense, I connive + No longer, though I may have led you on. + + So much is told and heard and told again, + So many with his legend are engrossed, + That I, more sorry now than I was then, + May live on to be sorry for his ghost. + + You knew him, and you must have known his eyes, -- + How deep they were, and what a velvet light + Came out of them when anger or surprise, + Or laughter, or Francesca, made them bright. + + No, you will not forget such eyes, I think, -- + And you say nothing of them. Very well. + I wonder if all history's worth a wink, + Sometimes, or if my tale be one to tell. + + For they began to lose their velvet light; + Their fire grew dead without and small within; + And many of you deplored the needless fight + That somewhere in the dark there must have been. + + All fights are needless, when they're not our own, + But Nimmo and Francesca never fought. + Remember that; and when you are alone, + Remember me -- and think what I have thought. + + Now, mind you, I say nothing of what was, + Or never was, or could or could not be: + Bring not suspicion's candle to the glass + That mirrors a friend's face to memory. + + Of what you see, see all, -- but see no more; + For what I show you here will not be there. + The devil has had his way with paint before, + And he's an artist, -- and you needn't stare. + + There was a painter and he painted well: + He'd paint you Daniel in the lions' den, + Beelzebub, Elaine, or William Tell. + I'm coming back to Nimmo's eyes again. + + The painter put the devil in those eyes, + Unless the devil did, and there he stayed; + And then the lady fled from paradise, + And there's your fact. The lady was afraid. + + She must have been afraid, or may have been, + Of evil in their velvet all the while; + But sure as I'm a sinner with a skin, + I'll trust the man as long as he can smile. + + I trust him who can smile and then may live + In my heart's house, where Nimmo is today. + God knows if I have more than men forgive + To tell him; but I played, and I shall pay. + + I knew him then, and if I know him yet, + I know in him, defeated and estranged, + The calm of men forbidden to forget + The calm of women who have loved and changed. + + But there are ways that are beyond our ways, + Or he would not be calm and she be mute, + As one by one their lost and empty days + Pass without even the warmth of a dispute. + + God help us all when women think they see; + God save us when they do. I'm fair; but though + I know him only as he looks to me, + I know him, -- and I tell Francesca so. + + And what of Nimmo? Little would you ask + Of him, could you but see him as I can, + At his bewildered and unfruitful task + Of being what he was born to be -- a man. + + Better forget that I said anything + Of what your tortured memory may disclose; + I know him, and your worst remembering + Would count as much as nothing, I suppose. + + Meanwhile, I trust him; and I know his way + Of trusting me, as always in his youth. + I'm painting here a better man, you say, + Than I, the painter; and you say the truth. + + + + + Peace on Earth + + He took a frayed hat from his head, + And "Peace on Earth" was what he said. + "A morsel out of what you're worth, + And there we have it: Peace on Earth. + Not much, although a little more + Than what there was on earth before. + I'm as you see, I'm Ichabod, -- + But never mind the ways I've trod; + I'm sober now, so help me God." + + I could not pass the fellow by. + "Do you believe in God?" said I; + "And is there to be Peace on Earth?" + + "Tonight we celebrate the birth," + He said, "of One who died for men; + The Son of God, we say. What then? + Your God, or mine? I'd make you laugh + Were I to tell you even half + That I have learned of mine today + Where yours would hardly seem to stay. + Could He but follow in and out + Some anthropoids I know about, + The God to whom you may have prayed + Might see a world He never made." + + "Your words are flowing full," said I; + "But yet they give me no reply; + Your fountain might as well be dry." + + "A wiser One than you, my friend, + Would wait and hear me to the end; + And for His eyes a light would shine + Through this unpleasant shell of mine + That in your fancy makes of me + A Christmas curiosity. + All right, I might be worse than that; + And you might now be lying flat; + I might have done it from behind, + And taken what there was to find. + Don't worry, for I'm not that kind. + `Do I believe in God?' Is that + The price tonight of a new hat? + Has He commanded that His name + Be written everywhere the same? + Have all who live in every place + Identified His hidden face? + Who knows but He may like as well + My story as one you may tell? + And if He show me there be Peace + On Earth, as there be fields and trees + Outside a jail-yard, am I wrong + If now I sing Him a new song? + Your world is in yourself, my friend, + For your endurance to the end; + And all the Peace there is on Earth + Is faith in what your world is worth, + And saying, without any lies, + Your world could not be otherwise." + + "One might say that and then be shot," + I told him; and he said: "Why not?" + I ceased, and gave him rather more + Than he was counting of my store. + "And since I have it, thanks to you, + Don't ask me what I mean to do," + Said he. "Believe that even I + Would rather tell the truth than lie -- + On Christmas Eve. No matter why." + + His unshaved, educated face, + His inextinguishable grace, + And his hard smile, are with me still, + Deplore the vision as I will; + For whatsoever he be at, + So droll a derelict as that + Should have at least another hat. + + + + + Late Summer + + (Alcaics) + + Confused, he found her lavishing feminine + Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable; + And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors + Be as they were, without end, her playthings? + + And why were dead years hungrily telling her + Lies of the dead, who told them again to her? + If now she knew, there might be kindness + Clamoring yet where a faith lay stifled. + + A little faith in him, and the ruinous + Past would be for time to annihilate, + And wash out, like a tide that washes + Out of the sand what a child has drawn there. + + God, what a shining handful of happiness, + Made out of days and out of eternities, + Were now the pulsing end of patience -- + Could he but have what a ghost had stolen! + + What was a man before him, or ten of them, + While he was here alive who could answer them, + And in their teeth fling confirmations + Harder than agates against an egg-shell? + + But now the man was dead, and would come again + Never, though she might honor ineffably + The flimsy wraith of him she conjured + Out of a dream with his wand of absence. + + And if the truth were now but a mummery, + Meriting pride's implacable irony, + So much the worse for pride. Moreover, + Save her or fail, there was conscience always. + + Meanwhile, a few misgivings of innocence, + Imploring to be sheltered and credited, + Were not amiss when she revealed them. + Whether she struggled or not, he saw them. + + Also, he saw that while she was hearing him + Her eyes had more and more of the past in them; + And while he told what cautious honor + Told him was all he had best be sure of, + + He wondered once or twice, inadvertently, + Where shifting winds were driving his argosies, + Long anchored and as long unladen, + Over the foam for the golden chances. + + "If men were not for killing so carelessly, + And women were for wiser endurances," + He said, "we might have yet a world here + Fitter for Truth to be seen abroad in; + + "If Truth were not so strange in her nakedness, + And we were less forbidden to look at it, + We might not have to look." He stared then + Down at the sand where the tide threw forward + + Its cold, unconquered lines, that unceasingly + Foamed against hope, and fell. He was calm enough, + Although he knew he might be silenced + Out of all calm; and the night was coming. + + "I climb for you the peak of his infamy + That you may choose your fall if you cling to it. + No more for me unless you say more. + All you have left of a dream defends you: + + "The truth may be as evil an augury + As it was needful now for the two of us. + We cannot have the dead between us. + Tell me to go, and I go." -- She pondered: + + "What you believe is right for the two of us + Makes it as right that you are not one of us. + If this be needful truth you tell me, + Spare me, and let me have lies hereafter." + + She gazed away where shadows were covering + The whole cold ocean's healing indifference. + No ship was coming. When the darkness + Fell, she was there, and alone, still gazing. + + + + + An Evangelist's Wife + + "Why am I not myself these many days, + You ask? And have you nothing more to ask? + I do you wrong? I do not hear your praise + To God for giving you me to share your task? + + "Jealous -- of Her? Because her cheeks are pink, + And she has eyes? No, not if she had seven. + If you should only steal an hour to think, + Sometime, there might be less to be forgiven. + + "No, you are never cruel. If once or twice + I found you so, I could applaud and sing. + Jealous of -- What? You are not very wise. + Does not the good Book tell you anything? + + "In David's time poor Michal had to go. + Jealous of God? Well, if you like it so." + + + + + The Old King's New Jester + + You that in vain would front the coming order + With eyes that meet forlornly what they must, + And only with a furtive recognition + See dust where there is dust, -- + Be sure you like it always in your faces, + Obscuring your best graces, + Blinding your speech and sight, + Before you seek again your dusty places + Where the old wrong seems right. + + Longer ago than cave-men had their changes + Our fathers may have slain a son or two, + Discouraging a further dialectic + Regarding what was new; + And after their unstudied admonition + Occasional contrition + For their old-fashioned ways + May have reduced their doubts, and in addition + Softened their final days. + + Farther away than feet shall ever travel + Are the vague towers of our unbuilded State; + But there are mightier things than we to lead us, + That will not let us wait. + And we go on with none to tell us whether + Or not we've each a tether + Determining how fast or far we go; + And it is well, since we must go together, + That we are not to know. + + If the old wrong and all its injured glamour + Haunts you by day and gives your night no peace, + You may as well, agreeably and serenely, + Give the new wrong its lease; + For should you nourish a too fervid yearning + For what is not returning, + The vicious and unfused ingredient + May give you qualms -- and one or two concerning + The last of your content. + + + + + Lazarus + + "No, Mary, there was nothing -- not a word. + Nothing, and always nothing. Go again + Yourself, and he may listen -- or at least + Look up at you, and let you see his eyes. + I might as well have been the sound of rain, + A wind among the cedars, or a bird; + Or nothing. Mary, make him look at you; + And even if he should say that we are nothing, + To know that you have heard him will be something. + And yet he loved us, and it was for love + The Master gave him back. Why did He wait + So long before He came? Why did He weep? + I thought He would be glad -- and Lazarus -- + To see us all again as He had left us -- + All as it was, all as it was before." + + Mary, who felt her sister's frightened arms + Like those of someone drowning who had seized her, + Fearing at last they were to fail and sink + Together in this fog-stricken sea of strangeness, + Fought sadly, with bereaved indignant eyes, + To find again the fading shores of home + That she had seen but now could see no longer. + Now she could only gaze into the twilight, + And in the dimness know that he was there, + Like someone that was not. He who had been + Their brother, and was dead, now seemed alive + Only in death again -- or worse than death; + For tombs at least, always until today, + Though sad were certain. There was nothing certain + For man or God in such a day as this; + For there they were alone, and there was he -- + Alone; and somewhere out of Bethany, + The Master -- who had come to them so late, + Only for love of them and then so slowly, + And was for their sake hunted now by men + Who feared Him as they feared no other prey -- + For the world's sake was hidden. "Better the tomb + For Lazarus than life, if this be life," + She thought; and then to Martha, "No, my dear," + She said aloud; "not as it was before. + Nothing is ever as it was before, + Where Time has been. Here there is more than Time; + And we that are so lonely and so far + From home, since he is with us here again, + Are farther now from him and from ourselves + Than we are from the stars. He will not speak + Until the spirit that is in him speaks; + And we must wait for all we are to know, + Or even to learn that we are not to know. + Martha, we are too near to this for knowledge, + And that is why it is that we must wait. + Our friends are coming if we call for them, + And there are covers we'll put over him + To make him warmer. We are too young, perhaps, + To say that we know better what is best + Than he. We do not know how old he is. + If you remember what the Master said, + Try to believe that we need have no fear. + Let me, the selfish and the careless one, + Be housewife and a mother for tonight; + For I am not so fearful as you are, + And I was not so eager." + + Martha sank + Down at her sister's feet and there sat watching + A flower that had a small familiar name + That was as old as memory, but was not + The name of what she saw now in its brief + And infinite mystery that so frightened her + That life became a terror. Tears again + Flooded her eyes and overflowed. "No, Mary," + She murmured slowly, hating her own words + Before she heard them, "you are not so eager + To see our brother as we see him now; + Neither is He who gave him back to us. + I was to be the simple one, as always, + And this was all for me." She stared again + Over among the trees where Lazarus, + Who seemed to be a man who was not there, + Might have been one more shadow among shadows, + If she had not remembered. Then she felt + The cool calm hands of Mary on her face, + And shivered, wondering if such hands were real. + + "The Master loved you as He loved us all, + Martha; and you are saying only things + That children say when they have had no sleep. + Try somehow now to rest a little while; + You know that I am here, and that our friends + Are coming if I call." + + Martha at last + Arose, and went with Mary to the door, + Where they stood looking off at the same place, + And at the same shape that was always there + As if it would not ever move or speak, + And always would be there. "Mary, go now, + Before the dark that will be coming hides him. + I am afraid of him out there alone, + Unless I see him; and I have forgotten + What sleep is. Go now -- make him look at you -- + And I shall hear him if he stirs or whispers. + Go! -- or I'll scream and bring all Bethany + To come and make him speak. Make him say once + That he is glad, and God may say the rest. + Though He say I shall sleep, and sleep for ever, + I shall not care for that . . . Go!" + + Mary, moving + Almost as if an angry child had pushed her, + Went forward a few steps; and having waited + As long as Martha's eyes would look at hers, + Went forward a few more, and a few more; + And so, until she came to Lazarus, + Who crouched with his face hidden in his hands, + Like one that had no face. Before she spoke, + Feeling her sister's eyes that were behind her + As if the door where Martha stood were now + As far from her as Egypt, Mary turned + Once more to see that she was there. Then, softly, + Fearing him not so much as wondering + What his first word might be, said, "Lazarus, + Forgive us if we seemed afraid of you;" + And having spoken, pitied her poor speech + That had so little seeming gladness in it, + So little comfort, and so little love. + + There was no sign from him that he had heard, + Or that he knew that she was there, or cared + Whether she spoke to him again or died + There at his feet. "We love you, Lazarus, + And we are not afraid. The Master said + We need not be afraid. Will you not say + To me that you are glad? Look, Lazarus! + Look at my face, and see me. This is Mary." + + She found his hands and held them. They were cool, + Like hers, but they were not so calm as hers. + Through the white robes in which his friends had wrapped him + When he had groped out of that awful sleep, + She felt him trembling and she was afraid. + At last he sighed; and she prayed hungrily + To God that she might have again the voice + Of Lazarus, whose hands were giving her now + The recognition of a living pressure + That was almost a language. When he spoke, + Only one word that she had waited for + Came from his lips, and that word was her name. + + "I heard them saying, Mary, that He wept + Before I woke." The words were low and shaken, + Yet Mary knew that he who uttered them + Was Lazarus; and that would be enough + Until there should be more . . . "Who made Him come, + That He should weep for me? . . . Was it you, Mary?" + The questions held in his incredulous eyes + Were more than she would see. She looked away; + But she had felt them and should feel for ever, + She thought, their cold and lonely desperation + That had the bitterness of all cold things + That were not cruel. "I should have wept," he said, + "If I had been the Master. . . ." + + Now she could feel + His hands above her hair -- the same black hair + That once he made a jest of, praising it, + While Martha's busy eyes had left their work + To flash with laughing envy. Nothing of that + Was to be theirs again; and such a thought + Was like the flying by of a quick bird + Seen through a shadowy doorway in the twilight. + For now she felt his hands upon her head, + Like weights of kindness: "I forgive you, Mary. . . . + You did not know -- Martha could not have known -- + Only the Master knew. . . . Where is He now? + Yes, I remember. They came after Him. + May the good God forgive Him. . . . I forgive Him. + I must; and I may know only from Him + The burden of all this. . . . Martha was here -- + But I was not yet here. She was afraid. . . . + Why did He do it, Mary? Was it -- you? + Was it for you? . . . Where are the friends I saw? + Yes, I remember. They all went away. + I made them go away. . . . Where is He now? . . . + What do I see down there? Do I see Martha -- + Down by the door? . . . I must have time for this." + + Lazarus looked about him fearfully, + And then again at Mary, who discovered + Awakening apprehension in his eyes, + And shivered at his feet. All she had feared + Was here; and only in the slow reproach + Of his forgiveness lived his gratitude. + Why had he asked if it was all for her + That he was here? And what had Martha meant? + Why had the Master waited? What was coming + To Lazarus, and to them, that had not come? + What had the Master seen before He came, + That He had come so late? + + "Where is He, Mary?" + Lazarus asked again. "Where did He go?" + Once more he gazed about him, and once more + At Mary for an answer. "Have they found Him? + Or did He go away because He wished + Never to look into my eyes again? . . . + That, I could understand. . . . Where is He, Mary?" + + "I do not know," she said. "Yet in my heart + I know that He is living, as you are living -- + Living, and here. He is not far from us. + He will come back to us and find us all -- + Lazarus, Martha, Mary -- everything -- + All as it was before. Martha said that. + And He said we were not to be afraid." + Lazarus closed his eyes while on his face + A tortured adumbration of a smile + Flickered an instant. "All as it was before," + He murmured wearily. "Martha said that; + And He said you were not to be afraid . . . + Not you . . . Not you . . . Why should you be afraid? + Give all your little fears, and Martha's with them, + To me; and I will add them unto mine, + Like a few rain-drops to Gennesaret." + + "If you had frightened me in other ways, + Not willing it," Mary said, "I should have known + You still for Lazarus. But who is this? + Tell me again that you are Lazarus; + And tell me if the Master gave to you + No sign of a new joy that shall be coming + To this house that He loved. Are you afraid? + Are you afraid, who have felt everything -- + And seen . . . ?" + + But Lazarus only shook his head, + Staring with his bewildered shining eyes + Hard into Mary's face. "I do not know, + Mary," he said, after a long time. + "When I came back, I knew the Master's eyes + Were looking into mine. I looked at His, + And there was more in them than I could see. + At first I could see nothing but His eyes; + Nothing else anywhere was to be seen -- + Only His eyes. And they looked into mine -- + Long into mine, Mary, as if He knew." + + Mary began to be afraid of words + As she had never been afraid before + Of loneliness or darkness, or of death, + But now she must have more of them or die: + "He cannot know that there is worse than death," + She said. "And you . . ." + + "Yes, there is worse than death." + Said Lazarus; "and that was what He knew; + And that is what it was that I could see + This morning in his eyes. I was afraid, + But not as you are. There is worse than death, + Mary; and there is nothing that is good + For you in dying while you are still here. + Mary, never go back to that again. + You would not hear me if I told you more, + For I should say it only in a language + That you are not to learn by going back. + To be a child again is to go forward -- + And that is much to know. Many grow old, + And fade, and go away, not knowing how much + That is to know. Mary, the night is coming, + And there will soon be darkness all around you. + Let us go down where Martha waits for us, + And let there be light shining in this house." + + He rose, but Mary would not let him go: + "Martha, when she came back from here, said only + That she heard nothing. And have you no more + For Mary now than you had then for Martha? + Is Nothing, Lazarus, all you have for me? + Was Nothing all you found where you have been? + If that be so, what is there worse than that -- + Or better -- if that be so? And why should you, + With even our love, go the same dark road over?" + + "I could not answer that, if that were so," + Said Lazarus, -- "not even if I were God. + Why should He care whether I came or stayed, + If that were so? Why should the Master weep -- + For me, or for the world, -- or save Himself + Longer for nothing? And if that were so, + Why should a few years' more mortality + Make Him a fugitive where flight were needless, + Had He but held his peace and given his nod + To an old Law that would be new as any? + I cannot say the answer to all that; + Though I may say that He is not afraid, + And that it is not for the joy there is + In serving an eternal Ignorance + Of our futility that He is here. + Is that what you and Martha mean by Nothing? + Is that what you are fearing? If that be so, + There are more weeds than lentils in your garden. + And one whose weeds are laughing at his harvest + May as well have no garden; for not there + Shall he be gleaning the few bits and orts + Of life that are to save him. For my part, + I am again with you, here among shadows + That will not always be so dark as this; + Though now I see there's yet an evil in me + That made me let you be afraid of me. + No, I was not afraid -- not even of life. + I thought I was . . . I must have time for this; + And all the time there is will not be long. + I cannot tell you what the Master saw + This morning in my eyes. I do not know. + I cannot yet say how far I have gone, + Or why it is that I am here again, + Or where the old road leads. I do not know. + I know that when I did come back, I saw + His eyes again among the trees and faces -- + Only His eyes; and they looked into mine -- + Long into mine -- long, long, as if He knew." + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Three Taverns, by Edwin Arlington Robinson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1040 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1041-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1041-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..595f162a --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1041-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2627 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1041 *** +THE SONNETS + +by William Shakespeare + + + + +I + +From fairest creatures we desire increase, +That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, +But as the riper should by time decease, +His tender heir might bear his memory: +But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, +Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel, +Making a famine where abundance lies, +Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel: +Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament, +And only herald to the gaudy spring, +Within thine own bud buriest thy content, +And tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding: + Pity the world, or else this glutton be, + To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee. + +II + +When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, +And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, +Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now, +Will be a tatter’d weed of small worth held: +Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies, +Where all the treasure of thy lusty days; +To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes, +Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise. +How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use, +If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine +Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’ +Proving his beauty by succession thine! + This were to be new made when thou art old, + And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold. + +III + +Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest +Now is the time that face should form another; +Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, +Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. +For where is she so fair whose unear’d womb +Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? +Or who is he so fond will be the tomb, +Of his self-love to stop posterity? +Thou art thy mother’s glass and she in thee +Calls back the lovely April of her prime; +So thou through windows of thine age shalt see, +Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time. + But if thou live, remember’d not to be, + Die single and thine image dies with thee. + +IV + +Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend +Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy? +Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, +And being frank she lends to those are free: +Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse +The bounteous largess given thee to give? +Profitless usurer, why dost thou use +So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? +For having traffic with thyself alone, +Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive: +Then how when nature calls thee to be gone, +What acceptable audit canst thou leave? + Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee, + Which, used, lives th’ executor to be. + +V + +Those hours, that with gentle work did frame +The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, +Will play the tyrants to the very same +And that unfair which fairly doth excel; +For never-resting time leads summer on +To hideous winter, and confounds him there; +Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone, +Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness every where: +Then were not summer’s distillation left, +A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, +Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft, +Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was: + But flowers distill’d, though they with winter meet, + Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet. + + +VI + +Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface, +In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d: +Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place +With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-kill’d. +That use is not forbidden usury, +Which happies those that pay the willing loan; +That’s for thyself to breed another thee, +Or ten times happier, be it ten for one; +Ten times thyself were happier than thou art, +If ten of thine ten times refigur’d thee: +Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart, +Leaving thee living in posterity? + Be not self-will’d, for thou art much too fair + To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir. + +VII + +Lo! in the orient when the gracious light +Lifts up his burning head, each under eye +Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, +Serving with looks his sacred majesty; +And having climb’d the steep-up heavenly hill, +Resembling strong youth in his middle age, +Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still, +Attending on his golden pilgrimage: +But when from highmost pitch, with weary car, +Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day, +The eyes, ’fore duteous, now converted are +From his low tract, and look another way: + So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon: + Unlook’d, on diest unless thou get a son. + +VIII + +Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? +Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy: +Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly, +Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy? +If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, +By unions married, do offend thine ear, +They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds +In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. +Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, +Strikes each in each by mutual ordering; +Resembling sire and child and happy mother, +Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing: + Whose speechless song being many, seeming one, + Sings this to thee: ‘Thou single wilt prove none.’ + +IX + +Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye, +That thou consum’st thyself in single life? +Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die, +The world will wail thee like a makeless wife; +The world will be thy widow and still weep +That thou no form of thee hast left behind, +When every private widow well may keep +By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind: +Look! what an unthrift in the world doth spend +Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; +But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end, +And kept unused the user so destroys it. + No love toward others in that bosom sits + That on himself such murd’rous shame commits. + +X + +For shame! deny that thou bear’st love to any, +Who for thyself art so unprovident. +Grant, if thou wilt, thou art belov’d of many, +But that thou none lov’st is most evident: +For thou art so possess’d with murderous hate, +That ’gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire, +Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate +Which to repair should be thy chief desire. +O! change thy thought, that I may change my mind: +Shall hate be fairer lodg’d than gentle love? +Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind, +Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove: + Make thee another self for love of me, + That beauty still may live in thine or thee. + +XI + +As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st, +In one of thine, from that which thou departest; +And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st, +Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest, +Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase; +Without this folly, age, and cold decay: +If all were minded so, the times should cease +And threescore year would make the world away. +Let those whom nature hath not made for store, +Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish: +Look, whom she best endow’d, she gave thee more; +Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish: + She carv’d thee for her seal, and meant thereby, + Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die. + +XII + +When I do count the clock that tells the time, +And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; +When I behold the violet past prime, +And sable curls, all silvered o’er with white; +When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, +Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, +And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves, +Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, +Then of thy beauty do I question make, +That thou among the wastes of time must go, +Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake +And die as fast as they see others grow; + And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defence + Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. + +XIII + +O! that you were your self; but, love you are +No longer yours, than you yourself here live: +Against this coming end you should prepare, +And your sweet semblance to some other give: +So should that beauty which you hold in lease +Find no determination; then you were +Yourself again, after yourself’s decease, +When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear. +Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, +Which husbandry in honour might uphold, +Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day +And barren rage of death’s eternal cold? + O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know, + You had a father: let your son say so. + +XIV + +Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck; +And yet methinks I have astronomy, +But not to tell of good or evil luck, +Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality; +Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell, +Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind, +Or say with princes if it shall go well +By oft predict that I in heaven find: +But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive, +And constant stars in them I read such art +As ‘Truth and beauty shall together thrive, +If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert’; + Or else of thee this I prognosticate: + ‘Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.’ + +XV + +When I consider everything that grows +Holds in perfection but a little moment, +That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows +Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; +When I perceive that men as plants increase, +Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky, +Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, +And wear their brave state out of memory; +Then the conceit of this inconstant stay +Sets you most rich in youth before my sight, +Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay +To change your day of youth to sullied night, + And all in war with Time for love of you, + As he takes from you, I engraft you new. + +XVI + +But wherefore do not you a mightier way +Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time? +And fortify yourself in your decay +With means more blessed than my barren rhyme? +Now stand you on the top of happy hours, +And many maiden gardens, yet unset, +With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers, +Much liker than your painted counterfeit: +So should the lines of life that life repair, +Which this, Time’s pencil, or my pupil pen, +Neither in inward worth nor outward fair, +Can make you live yourself in eyes of men. + To give away yourself, keeps yourself still, + And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill. + +XVII + +Who will believe my verse in time to come, +If it were fill’d with your most high deserts? +Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb +Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts. +If I could write the beauty of your eyes, +And in fresh numbers number all your graces, +The age to come would say ‘This poet lies; +Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.’ +So should my papers, yellow’d with their age, +Be scorn’d, like old men of less truth than tongue, +And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage +And stretched metre of an antique song: + But were some child of yours alive that time, + You should live twice,—in it, and in my rhyme. + +XVIII + +Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? +Thou art more lovely and more temperate: +Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, +And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: +Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, +And often is his gold complexion dimm’d, +And every fair from fair sometime declines, +By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d: +But thy eternal summer shall not fade, +Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, +Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, +When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st, + So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, + So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. + +XIX + +Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws, +And make the earth devour her own sweet brood; +Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws, +And burn the long-liv’d phoenix, in her blood; +Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, +And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, +To the wide world and all her fading sweets; +But I forbid thee one most heinous crime: +O! carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow, +Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; +Him in thy course untainted do allow +For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men. + Yet do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong, + My love shall in my verse ever live young. + +XX + +A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted, +Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion; +A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted +With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion: +An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, +Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; +A man in hue all ‘hues’ in his controlling, +Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth. +And for a woman wert thou first created; +Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, +And by addition me of thee defeated, +By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. + But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure, + Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure. + +XXI + +So is it not with me as with that Muse, +Stirr’d by a painted beauty to his verse, +Who heaven itself for ornament doth use +And every fair with his fair doth rehearse, +Making a couplement of proud compare. +With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems, +With April’s first-born flowers, and all things rare, +That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems. +O! let me, true in love, but truly write, +And then believe me, my love is as fair +As any mother’s child, though not so bright +As those gold candles fix’d in heaven’s air: + Let them say more that like of hearsay well; + I will not praise that purpose not to sell. + +XXII + +My glass shall not persuade me I am old, +So long as youth and thou are of one date; +But when in thee time’s furrows I behold, +Then look I death my days should expiate. +For all that beauty that doth cover thee, +Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, +Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me: +How can I then be elder than thou art? +O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary +As I, not for myself, but for thee will; +Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary +As tender nurse her babe from faring ill. + Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain, + Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again. + +XXIII + +As an unperfect actor on the stage, +Who with his fear is put beside his part, +Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage, +Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart; +So I, for fear of trust, forget to say +The perfect ceremony of love’s rite, +And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay, +O’ercharg’d with burthen of mine own love’s might. +O! let my looks be then the eloquence +And dumb presagers of my speaking breast, +Who plead for love, and look for recompense, +More than that tongue that more hath more express’d. + O! learn to read what silent love hath writ: + To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit. + +XXIV + +Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d, +Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart; +My body is the frame wherein ’tis held, +And perspective it is best painter’s art. +For through the painter must you see his skill, +To find where your true image pictur’d lies, +Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still, +That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes. +Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done: +Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me +Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun +Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee; + Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art, + They draw but what they see, know not the heart. + +XXV + +Let those who are in favour with their stars +Of public honour and proud titles boast, +Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars +Unlook’d for joy in that I honour most. +Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread +But as the marigold at the sun’s eye, +And in themselves their pride lies buried, +For at a frown they in their glory die. +The painful warrior famoused for fight, +After a thousand victories once foil’d, +Is from the book of honour razed quite, +And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d: + Then happy I, that love and am belov’d, + Where I may not remove nor be remov’d. + +XXVI + +Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage +Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, +To thee I send this written embassage, +To witness duty, not to show my wit: +Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine +May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, +But that I hope some good conceit of thine +In thy soul’s thought, all naked, will bestow it: +Till whatsoever star that guides my moving, +Points on me graciously with fair aspect, +And puts apparel on my tatter’d loving, +To show me worthy of thy sweet respect: + Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee; + Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me. + +XXVII + +Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, +The dear respose for limbs with travel tir’d; +But then begins a journey in my head +To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired: +For then my thoughts, from far where I abide, +Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, +And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, +Looking on darkness which the blind do see: +Save that my soul’s imaginary sight +Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, +Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, +Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new. + Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, + For thee, and for myself, no quiet find. + +XXVIII + +How can I then return in happy plight, +That am debarre’d the benefit of rest? +When day’s oppression is not eas’d by night, +But day by night and night by day oppress’d, +And each, though enemies to either’s reign, +Do in consent shake hands to torture me, +The one by toil, the other to complain +How far I toil, still farther off from thee. +I tell the day, to please him thou art bright, +And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven: +So flatter I the swart-complexion’d night, +When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even. + But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer, + And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger. + +XXIX + +When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes +I all alone beweep my outcast state, +And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, +And look upon myself, and curse my fate, +Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, +Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d, +Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, +With what I most enjoy contented least; +Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising, +Haply I think on thee, and then my state, +Like to the lark at break of day arising +From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; + For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings + That then I scorn to change my state with kings. + +XXX + +When to the sessions of sweet silent thought +I summon up remembrance of things past, +I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, +And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste: +Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, +For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, +And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe, +And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight: +Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, +And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er +The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, +Which I new pay as if not paid before. + But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, + All losses are restor’d and sorrows end. + +XXXI + +Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts, +Which I by lacking have supposed dead; +And there reigns Love, and all Love’s loving parts, +And all those friends which I thought buried. +How many a holy and obsequious tear +Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye, +As interest of the dead, which now appear +But things remov’d that hidden in thee lie! +Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, +Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, +Who all their parts of me to thee did give, +That due of many now is thine alone: + Their images I lov’d, I view in thee, + And thou, all they, hast all the all of me. + +XXXII + +If thou survive my well-contented day, +When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover +And shalt by fortune once more re-survey +These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, +Compare them with the bett’ring of the time, +And though they be outstripp’d by every pen, +Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, +Exceeded by the height of happier men. +O! then vouchsafe me but this loving thought: +‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age, +A dearer birth than this his love had brought, +To march in ranks of better equipage: + But since he died and poets better prove, + Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love’. + +XXXIII + +Full many a glorious morning have I seen +Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, +Kissing with golden face the meadows green, +Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; +Anon permit the basest clouds to ride +With ugly rack on his celestial face, +And from the forlorn world his visage hide, +Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: +Even so my sun one early morn did shine, +With all triumphant splendour on my brow; +But out! alack! he was but one hour mine, +The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now. + Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; + Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth. + +XXXIV + +Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, +And make me travel forth without my cloak, +To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way, +Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke? +’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break, +To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face, +For no man well of such a salve can speak, +That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace: +Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief; +Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss: +The offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief +To him that bears the strong offence’s cross. + Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, + And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds. + +XXXV + +No more be griev’d at that which thou hast done: +Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud: +Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, +And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. +All men make faults, and even I in this, +Authorizing thy trespass with compare, +Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss, +Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are; +For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense; +Thy adverse party is thy advocate, +And ’gainst myself a lawful plea commence: +Such civil war is in my love and hate, + That I an accessary needs must be, + To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me. + +XXXVI + +Let me confess that we two must be twain, +Although our undivided loves are one: +So shall those blots that do with me remain, +Without thy help, by me be borne alone. +In our two loves there is but one respect, +Though in our lives a separable spite, +Which though it alter not love’s sole effect, +Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight. +I may not evermore acknowledge thee, +Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, +Nor thou with public kindness honour me, +Unless thou take that honour from thy name: + But do not so, I love thee in such sort, + As thou being mine, mine is thy good report. + +XXXVII + +As a decrepit father takes delight +To see his active child do deeds of youth, +So I, made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite, +Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth; +For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, +Or any of these all, or all, or more, +Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit, +I make my love engrafted, to this store: +So then I am not lame, poor, nor despis’d, +Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give +That I in thy abundance am suffic’d, +And by a part of all thy glory live. + Look what is best, that best I wish in thee: + This wish I have; then ten times happy me! + +XXXVIII + +How can my Muse want subject to invent, +While thou dost breathe, that pour’st into my verse +Thine own sweet argument, too excellent +For every vulgar paper to rehearse? +O! give thyself the thanks, if aught in me +Worthy perusal stand against thy sight; +For who’s so dumb that cannot write to thee, +When thou thyself dost give invention light? +Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth +Than those old nine which rhymers invocate; +And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth +Eternal numbers to outlive long date. + If my slight Muse do please these curious days, + The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise. + +XXXIX + +O! how thy worth with manners may I sing, +When thou art all the better part of me? +What can mine own praise to mine own self bring? +And what is’t but mine own when I praise thee? +Even for this, let us divided live, +And our dear love lose name of single one, +That by this separation I may give +That due to thee which thou deserv’st alone. +O absence! what a torment wouldst thou prove, +Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave, +To entertain the time with thoughts of love, +Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, + And that thou teachest how to make one twain, + By praising him here who doth hence remain. + +XL + +Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all; +What hast thou then more than thou hadst before? +No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call; +All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more. +Then, if for my love, thou my love receivest, +I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest; +But yet be blam’d, if thou thyself deceivest +By wilful taste of what thyself refusest. +I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, +Although thou steal thee all my poverty: +And yet, love knows it is a greater grief +To bear love’s wrong, than hate’s known injury. + Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, + Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes. + +XLI + +Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, +When I am sometime absent from thy heart, +Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits, +For still temptation follows where thou art. +Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, +Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail’d; +And when a woman woos, what woman’s son +Will sourly leave her till he have prevail’d? +Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear, +And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, +Who lead thee in their riot even there +Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth: + Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, + Thine by thy beauty being false to me. + +XLII + +That thou hast her it is not all my grief, +And yet it may be said I loved her dearly; +That she hath thee is of my wailing chief, +A loss in love that touches me more nearly. +Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye: +Thou dost love her, because thou know’st I love her; +And for my sake even so doth she abuse me, +Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her. +If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain, +And losing her, my friend hath found that loss; +Both find each other, and I lose both twain, +And both for my sake lay on me this cross: + But here’s the joy; my friend and I are one; + Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone. + +XLIII + +When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see, +For all the day they view things unrespected; +But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, +And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed. +Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright, +How would thy shadow’s form form happy show +To the clear day with thy much clearer light, +When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so! +How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made +By looking on thee in the living day, +When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade +Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay! + All days are nights to see till I see thee, + And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me. + +XLIV + +If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, +Injurious distance should not stop my way; +For then despite of space I would be brought, +From limits far remote, where thou dost stay. +No matter then although my foot did stand +Upon the farthest earth remov’d from thee; +For nimble thought can jump both sea and land, +As soon as think the place where he would be. +But, ah! thought kills me that I am not thought, +To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone, +But that so much of earth and water wrought, +I must attend time’s leisure with my moan; + Receiving nought by elements so slow + But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe. + +XLV + +The other two, slight air, and purging fire +Are both with thee, wherever I abide; +The first my thought, the other my desire, +These present-absent with swift motion slide. +For when these quicker elements are gone +In tender embassy of love to thee, +My life, being made of four, with two alone +Sinks down to death, oppress’d with melancholy; +Until life’s composition be recur’d +By those swift messengers return’d from thee, +Who even but now come back again, assur’d, +Of thy fair health, recounting it to me: + This told, I joy; but then no longer glad, + I send them back again, and straight grow sad. + +XLVI + +Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, +How to divide the conquest of thy sight; +Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar, +My heart mine eye the freedom of that right. +My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie, +A closet never pierced with crystal eyes; +But the defendant doth that plea deny, +And says in him thy fair appearance lies. +To side this title is impannelled +A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart; +And by their verdict is determined +The clear eye’s moiety, and the dear heart’s part: + As thus; mine eye’s due is thy outward part, + And my heart’s right, thy inward love of heart. + +XLVII + +Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took, +And each doth good turns now unto the other: +When that mine eye is famish’d for a look, +Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother, +With my love’s picture then my eye doth feast, +And to the painted banquet bids my heart; +Another time mine eye is my heart’s guest, +And in his thoughts of love doth share a part: +So, either by thy picture or my love, +Thyself away, art present still with me; +For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move, +And I am still with them, and they with thee; + Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight + Awakes my heart, to heart’s and eye’s delight. + +XLVIII + +How careful was I when I took my way, +Each trifle under truest bars to thrust, +That to my use it might unused stay +From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust! +But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are, +Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief, +Thou best of dearest, and mine only care, +Art left the prey of every vulgar thief. +Thee have I not lock’d up in any chest, +Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art, +Within the gentle closure of my breast, +From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part; + And even thence thou wilt be stol’n I fear, + For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear. + +XLIX + +Against that time, if ever that time come, +When I shall see thee frown on my defects, +When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum, +Call’d to that audit by advis’d respects; +Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass, +And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye, +When love, converted from the thing it was, +Shall reasons find of settled gravity; +Against that time do I ensconce me here, +Within the knowledge of mine own desert, +And this my hand, against my self uprear, +To guard the lawful reasons on thy part: + To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws, + Since why to love I can allege no cause. + +L + +How heavy do I journey on the way, +When what I seek, my weary travel’s end, +Doth teach that ease and that repose to say, +‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!’ +The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, +Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me, +As if by some instinct the wretch did know +His rider lov’d not speed, being made from thee: +The bloody spur cannot provoke him on, +That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide, +Which heavily he answers with a groan, +More sharp to me than spurring to his side; + For that same groan doth put this in my mind, + My grief lies onward, and my joy behind. + +LI + +Thus can my love excuse the slow offence +Of my dull bearer when from thee I speed: +From where thou art why should I haste me thence? +Till I return, of posting is no need. +O! what excuse will my poor beast then find, +When swift extremity can seem but slow? +Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind, +In winged speed no motion shall I know, +Then can no horse with my desire keep pace; +Therefore desire, of perfect’st love being made, +Shall neigh no dull flesh in his fiery race, +But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade: + ‘Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow, + Towards thee I’ll run, and give him leave to go.’ + +LII + +So am I as the rich, whose blessed key, +Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure, +The which he will not every hour survey, +For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. +Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, +Since, seldom coming in that long year set, +Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, +Or captain jewels in the carcanet. +So is the time that keeps you as my chest, +Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide, +To make some special instant special-blest, +By new unfolding his imprison’d pride. + Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope, + Being had, to triumph; being lacked, to hope. + +LIII + +What is your substance, whereof are you made, +That millions of strange shadows on you tend? +Since every one, hath every one, one shade, +And you but one, can every shadow lend. +Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit +Is poorly imitated after you; +On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set, +And you in Grecian tires are painted new: +Speak of the spring, and foison of the year, +The one doth shadow of your beauty show, +The other as your bounty doth appear; +And you in every blessed shape we know. + In all external grace you have some part, + But you like none, none you, for constant heart. + +LIV + +O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem +By that sweet ornament which truth doth give. +The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem +For that sweet odour, which doth in it live. +The canker blooms have full as deep a dye +As the perfumed tincture of the roses. +Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly +When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses: +But, for their virtue only is their show, +They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade; +Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; +Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made: + And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, + When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth. + +LV + +Not marble, nor the gilded monuments +Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; +But you shall shine more bright in these contents +Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time. +When wasteful war shall statues overturn, +And broils root out the work of masonry, +Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn +The living record of your memory. +’Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity +Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room +Even in the eyes of all posterity +That wear this world out to the ending doom. + So, till the judgement that yourself arise, + You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes. + +LVI + +Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said +Thy edge should blunter be than appetite, +Which but to-day by feeding is allay’d, +To-morrow sharpened in his former might: +So, love, be thou, although to-day thou fill +Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness, +To-morrow see again, and do not kill +The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness. +Let this sad interim like the ocean be +Which parts the shore, where two contracted new +Come daily to the banks, that when they see +Return of love, more blest may be the view; + Or call it winter, which being full of care, + Makes summer’s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare. + +LVII + +Being your slave what should I do but tend, +Upon the hours, and times of your desire? +I have no precious time at all to spend; +Nor services to do, till you require. +Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour, +Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, +Nor think the bitterness of absence sour, +When you have bid your servant once adieu; +Nor dare I question with my jealous thought +Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, +But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought +Save, where you are, how happy you make those. + So true a fool is love, that in your will, + Though you do anything, he thinks no ill. + +LVIII + +That god forbid, that made me first your slave, +I should in thought control your times of pleasure, +Or at your hand the account of hours to crave, +Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure! +O! let me suffer, being at your beck, +The imprison’d absence of your liberty; +And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check, +Without accusing you of injury. +Be where you list, your charter is so strong +That you yourself may privilage your time +To what you will; to you it doth belong +Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime. + I am to wait, though waiting so be hell, + Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well. + +LIX + +If there be nothing new, but that which is +Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d, +Which labouring for invention bear amiss +The second burthen of a former child! +O! that record could with a backward look, +Even of five hundred courses of the sun, +Show me your image in some antique book, +Since mind at first in character was done! +That I might see what the old world could say +To this composed wonder of your frame; +Wh’r we are mended, or wh’r better they, +Or whether revolution be the same. + O! sure I am the wits of former days, + To subjects worse have given admiring praise. + +LX + +Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, +So do our minutes hasten to their end; +Each changing place with that which goes before, +In sequent toil all forwards do contend. +Nativity, once in the main of light, +Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d, +Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight, +And Time that gave doth now his gift confound. +Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth +And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow, +Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth, +And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow: + And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand. + Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. + +LXI + +Is it thy will, thy image should keep open +My heavy eyelids to the weary night? +Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, +While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? +Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee +So far from home into my deeds to pry, +To find out shames and idle hours in me, +The scope and tenure of thy jealousy? +O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great: +It is my love that keeps mine eye awake: +Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat, +To play the watchman ever for thy sake: + For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, + From me far off, with others all too near. + +LXII + +Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye +And all my soul, and all my every part; +And for this sin there is no remedy, +It is so grounded inward in my heart. +Methinks no face so gracious is as mine, +No shape so true, no truth of such account; +And for myself mine own worth do define, +As I all other in all worths surmount. +But when my glass shows me myself indeed +Beated and chopp’d with tanned antiquity, +Mine own self-love quite contrary I read; +Self so self-loving were iniquity. + ’Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise, + Painting my age with beauty of thy days. + +LXIII + +Against my love shall be as I am now, +With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’erworn; +When hours have drain’d his blood and fill’d his brow +With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn +Hath travell’d on to age’s steepy night; +And all those beauties whereof now he’s king +Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight, +Stealing away the treasure of his spring; +For such a time do I now fortify +Against confounding age’s cruel knife, +That he shall never cut from memory +My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life: + His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, + And they shall live, and he in them still green. + +LXIV + +When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d +The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age; +When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d, +And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; +When I have seen the hungry ocean gain +Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, +And the firm soil win of the watery main, +Increasing store with loss, and loss with store; +When I have seen such interchange of state, +Or state itself confounded, to decay; +Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate: +That Time will come and take my love away. + This thought is as a death which cannot choose + But weep to have, that which it fears to lose. + +LXV + +Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, +But sad mortality o’ersways their power, +How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, +Whose action is no stronger than a flower? +O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out, +Against the wrackful siege of battering days, +When rocks impregnable are not so stout, +Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays? +O fearful meditation! where, alack, +Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid? +Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? +Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? + O! none, unless this miracle have might, + That in black ink my love may still shine bright. + +LXVI + +Tired with all these, for restful death I cry: +As to behold desert a beggar born, +And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity, +And purest faith unhappily forsworn, +And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d, +And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, +And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d, +And strength by limping sway disabled +And art made tongue-tied by authority, +And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill, +And simple truth miscall’d simplicity, +And captive good attending captain ill: + Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone, + Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. + +LXVII + +Ah! wherefore with infection should he live, +And with his presence grace impiety, +That sin by him advantage should achieve, +And lace itself with his society? +Why should false painting imitate his cheek, +And steel dead seeming of his living hue? +Why should poor beauty indirectly seek +Roses of shadow, since his rose is true? +Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is, +Beggar’d of blood to blush through lively veins? +For she hath no exchequer now but his, +And proud of many, lives upon his gains. + O! him she stores, to show what wealth she had + In days long since, before these last so bad. + +LXVIII + +Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, +When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, +Before these bastard signs of fair were born, +Or durst inhabit on a living brow; +Before the golden tresses of the dead, +The right of sepulchres, were shorn away, +To live a second life on second head; +Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay: +In him those holy antique hours are seen, +Without all ornament, itself and true, +Making no summer of another’s green, +Robbing no old to dress his beauty new; + And him as for a map doth Nature store, + To show false Art what beauty was of yore. + +LXIX + +Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view +Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend; +All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, +Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend. +Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown’d; +But those same tongues, that give thee so thine own, +In other accents do this praise confound +By seeing farther than the eye hath shown. +They look into the beauty of thy mind, +And that in guess they measure by thy deeds; +Then churls their thoughts, although their eyes were kind, +To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds: + But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, + The soil is this, that thou dost common grow. + +LXX + +That thou art blam’d shall not be thy defect, +For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair; +The ornament of beauty is suspect, +A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air. +So thou be good, slander doth but approve +Thy worth the greater being woo’d of time; +For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love, +And thou present’st a pure unstained prime. +Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days +Either not assail’d, or victor being charg’d; +Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, +To tie up envy, evermore enlarg’d, + If some suspect of ill mask’d not thy show, + Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe. + +LXXI + +No longer mourn for me when I am dead +Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell +Give warning to the world that I am fled +From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell: +Nay, if you read this line, remember not +The hand that writ it, for I love you so, +That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, +If thinking on me then should make you woe. +O if, I say, you look upon this verse, +When I perhaps compounded am with clay, +Do not so much as my poor name rehearse; +But let your love even with my life decay; + Lest the wise world should look into your moan, + And mock you with me after I am gone. + +LXXII + +O! lest the world should task you to recite +What merit lived in me, that you should love +After my death, dear love, forget me quite, +For you in me can nothing worthy prove; +Unless you would devise some virtuous lie, +To do more for me than mine own desert, +And hang more praise upon deceased I +Than niggard truth would willingly impart: +O! lest your true love may seem false in this +That you for love speak well of me untrue, +My name be buried where my body is, +And live no more to shame nor me nor you. + For I am shamed by that which I bring forth, + And so should you, to love things nothing worth. + +LXXIII + +That time of year thou mayst in me behold +When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang +Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, +Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. +In me thou see’st the twilight of such day +As after sunset fadeth in the west; +Which by and by black night doth take away, +Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest. +In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire, +That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, +As the death-bed, whereon it must expire, +Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by. + This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, + To love that well, which thou must leave ere long. + +LXXIV + +But be contented: when that fell arrest +Without all bail shall carry me away, +My life hath in this line some interest, +Which for memorial still with thee shall stay. +When thou reviewest this, thou dost review +The very part was consecrate to thee: +The earth can have but earth, which is his due; +My spirit is thine, the better part of me: +So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, +The prey of worms, my body being dead; +The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife, +Too base of thee to be remembered. + The worth of that is that which it contains, + And that is this, and this with thee remains. + +LXXV + +So are you to my thoughts as food to life, +Or as sweet-season’d showers are to the ground; +And for the peace of you I hold such strife +As ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found. +Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon +Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure; +Now counting best to be with you alone, +Then better’d that the world may see my pleasure: +Sometime all full with feasting on your sight, +And by and by clean starved for a look; +Possessing or pursuing no delight, +Save what is had, or must from you be took. + Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, + Or gluttoning on all, or all away. + +LXXVI + +Why is my verse so barren of new pride, +So far from variation or quick change? +Why with the time do I not glance aside +To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? +Why write I still all one, ever the same, +And keep invention in a noted weed, +That every word doth almost tell my name, +Showing their birth, and where they did proceed? +O! know sweet love I always write of you, +And you and love are still my argument; +So all my best is dressing old words new, +Spending again what is already spent: + For as the sun is daily new and old, + So is my love still telling what is told. + +LXXVII + +Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, +Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste; +These vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear, +And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste. +The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show +Of mouthed graves will give thee memory; +Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know +Time’s thievish progress to eternity. +Look! what thy memory cannot contain, +Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find +Those children nursed, deliver’d from thy brain, +To take a new acquaintance of thy mind. + These offices, so oft as thou wilt look, + Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book. + +LXXVIII + +So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse, +And found such fair assistance in my verse +As every alien pen hath got my use +And under thee their poesy disperse. +Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing +And heavy ignorance aloft to fly, +Have added feathers to the learned’s wing +And given grace a double majesty. +Yet be most proud of that which I compile, +Whose influence is thine, and born of thee: +In others’ works thou dost but mend the style, +And arts with thy sweet graces graced be; + But thou art all my art, and dost advance + As high as learning, my rude ignorance. + +LXXIX + +Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid, +My verse alone had all thy gentle grace; +But now my gracious numbers are decay’d, +And my sick Muse doth give an other place. +I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument +Deserves the travail of a worthier pen; +Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent +He robs thee of, and pays it thee again. +He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word +From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give, +And found it in thy cheek: he can afford +No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live. + Then thank him not for that which he doth say, + Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay. + +LXXX + +O how I faint when I of you do write, +Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, +And in the praise thereof spends all his might, +To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame! +But since your worth, wide as the ocean is, +The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, +My saucy bark, inferior far to his, +On your broad main doth wilfully appear. +Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, +Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride; +Or, being wrack’d, I am a worthless boat, +He of tall building, and of goodly pride: + Then if he thrive and I be cast away, + The worst was this: my love was my decay. + +LXXXI + +Or I shall live your epitaph to make, +Or you survive when I in earth am rotten; +From hence your memory death cannot take, +Although in me each part will be forgotten. +Your name from hence immortal life shall have, +Though I, once gone, to all the world must die: +The earth can yield me but a common grave, +When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie. +Your monument shall be my gentle verse, +Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read; +And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse, +When all the breathers of this world are dead; + You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen, + Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men. + +LXXXII + +I grant thou wert not married to my Muse, +And therefore mayst without attaint o’erlook +The dedicated words which writers use +Of their fair subject, blessing every book. +Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue, +Finding thy worth a limit past my praise; +And therefore art enforced to seek anew +Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days. +And do so, love; yet when they have devis’d, +What strained touches rhetoric can lend, +Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz’d +In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend; + And their gross painting might be better us’d + Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus’d. + +LXXXIII + +I never saw that you did painting need, +And therefore to your fair no painting set; +I found, or thought I found, you did exceed +That barren tender of a poet’s debt: +And therefore have I slept in your report, +That you yourself, being extant, well might show +How far a modern quill doth come too short, +Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. +This silence for my sin you did impute, +Which shall be most my glory being dumb; +For I impair not beauty being mute, +When others would give life, and bring a tomb. + There lives more life in one of your fair eyes + Than both your poets can in praise devise. + +LXXXIV + +Who is it that says most, which can say more, +Than this rich praise: that you alone are you, +In whose confine immured is the store +Which should example where your equal grew. +Lean penury within that pen doth dwell +That to his subject lends not some small glory; +But he that writes of you, if he can tell +That you are you, so dignifies his story, +Let him but copy what in you is writ, +Not making worse what nature made so clear, +And such a counterpart shall fame his wit, +Making his style admired every where. + You to your beauteous blessings add a curse, + Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse. + +LXXXV + +My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still, +While comments of your praise richly compil’d, +Reserve their character with golden quill, +And precious phrase by all the Muses fil’d. +I think good thoughts, whilst others write good words, +And like unlettered clerk still cry ‘Amen’ +To every hymn that able spirit affords, +In polish’d form of well-refined pen. +Hearing you praised, I say ‘’tis so, ’tis true,’ +And to the most of praise add something more; +But that is in my thought, whose love to you, +Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before. + Then others, for the breath of words respect, + Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect. + +LXXXVI + +Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, +Bound for the prize of all too precious you, +That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, +Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? +Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write, +Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? +No, neither he, nor his compeers by night +Giving him aid, my verse astonished. +He, nor that affable familiar ghost +Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, +As victors of my silence cannot boast; +I was not sick of any fear from thence: + But when your countenance fill’d up his line, + Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine. + +LXXXVII + +Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, +And like enough thou know’st thy estimate, +The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing; +My bonds in thee are all determinate. +For how do I hold thee but by thy granting? +And for that riches where is my deserving? +The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, +And so my patent back again is swerving. +Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing, +Or me to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking; +So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, +Comes home again, on better judgement making. + Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, + In sleep a king, but waking no such matter. + +LXXXVIII + +When thou shalt be dispos’d to set me light, +And place my merit in the eye of scorn, +Upon thy side, against myself I’ll fight, +And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn. +With mine own weakness, being best acquainted, +Upon thy part I can set down a story +Of faults conceal’d, wherein I am attainted; +That thou in losing me shalt win much glory: +And I by this will be a gainer too; +For bending all my loving thoughts on thee, +The injuries that to myself I do, +Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me. + Such is my love, to thee I so belong, + That for thy right, myself will bear all wrong. + +LXXXIX + +Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, +And I will comment upon that offence: +Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt, +Against thy reasons making no defence. +Thou canst not love disgrace me half so ill, +To set a form upon desired change, +As I’ll myself disgrace; knowing thy will, +I will acquaintance strangle, and look strange; +Be absent from thy walks; and in my tongue +Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell, +Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong, +And haply of our old acquaintance tell. + For thee, against my self I’ll vow debate, + For I must ne’er love him whom thou dost hate. + +XC + +Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now; +Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, +Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, +And do not drop in for an after-loss: +Ah! do not, when my heart hath ’scap’d this sorrow, +Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe; +Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, +To linger out a purpos’d overthrow. +If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, +When other petty griefs have done their spite, +But in the onset come: so shall I taste +At first the very worst of fortune’s might; + And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, + Compar’d with loss of thee, will not seem so. + +XCI + +Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, +Some in their wealth, some in their body’s force, +Some in their garments though new-fangled ill; +Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse; +And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure, +Wherein it finds a joy above the rest: +But these particulars are not my measure, +All these I better in one general best. +Thy love is better than high birth to me, +Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ costs, +Of more delight than hawks and horses be; +And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast: + Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take + All this away, and me most wretched make. + +XCII + +But do thy worst to steal thyself away, +For term of life thou art assured mine; +And life no longer than thy love will stay, +For it depends upon that love of thine. +Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs, +When in the least of them my life hath end. +I see a better state to me belongs +Than that which on thy humour doth depend: +Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind, +Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie. +O! what a happy title do I find, +Happy to have thy love, happy to die! + But what’s so blessed-fair that fears no blot? + Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not. + +XCIII + +So shall I live, supposing thou art true, +Like a deceived husband; so love’s face +May still seem love to me, though alter’d new; +Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place: +For there can live no hatred in thine eye, +Therefore in that I cannot know thy change. +In many’s looks, the false heart’s history +Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange. +But heaven in thy creation did decree +That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell; +Whate’er thy thoughts, or thy heart’s workings be, +Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell. + How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow, + If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show! + +XCIV + +They that have power to hurt, and will do none, +That do not do the thing they most do show, +Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, +Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow; +They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces, +And husband nature’s riches from expense; +They are the lords and owners of their faces, +Others, but stewards of their excellence. +The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet, +Though to itself, it only live and die, +But if that flower with base infection meet, +The basest weed outbraves his dignity: + For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; + Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds. + +XCV + +How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame +Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, +Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name! +O! in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose. +That tongue that tells the story of thy days, +Making lascivious comments on thy sport, +Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise; +Naming thy name, blesses an ill report. +O! what a mansion have those vices got +Which for their habitation chose out thee, +Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot +And all things turns to fair that eyes can see! + Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege; + The hardest knife ill-us’d doth lose his edge. + +XCVI + +Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; +Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; +Both grace and faults are lov’d of more and less: +Thou mak’st faults graces that to thee resort. +As on the finger of a throned queen +The basest jewel will be well esteem’d, +So are those errors that in thee are seen +To truths translated, and for true things deem’d. +How many lambs might the stern wolf betray, +If like a lamb he could his looks translate! +How many gazers mightst thou lead away, +If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! + But do not so; I love thee in such sort, + As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. + +XCVII + +How like a winter hath my absence been +From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! +What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! +What old December’s bareness everywhere! +And yet this time removed was summer’s time; +The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, +Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, +Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease: +Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me +But hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit; +For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, +And, thou away, the very birds are mute: + Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer, + That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near. + +XCVIII + +From you have I been absent in the spring, +When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim, +Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, +That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him. +Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell +Of different flowers in odour and in hue, +Could make me any summer’s story tell, +Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: +Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white, +Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; +They were but sweet, but figures of delight, +Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. + Yet seem’d it winter still, and you away, + As with your shadow I with these did play. + +XCIX + +The forward violet thus did I chide: +Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, +If not from my love’s breath? The purple pride +Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells +In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dy’d. +The lily I condemned for thy hand, +And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair; +The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, +One blushing shame, another white despair; +A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both, +And to his robbery had annex’d thy breath; +But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth +A vengeful canker eat him up to death. + More flowers I noted, yet I none could see, + But sweet, or colour it had stol’n from thee. + +C + +Where art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long, +To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? +Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song, +Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? +Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem, +In gentle numbers time so idly spent; +Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem +And gives thy pen both skill and argument. +Rise, resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey, +If Time have any wrinkle graven there; +If any, be a satire to decay, +And make time’s spoils despised every where. + Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life, + So thou prevent’st his scythe and crooked knife. + +CI + +O truant Muse what shall be thy amends +For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy’d? +Both truth and beauty on my love depends; +So dost thou too, and therein dignified. +Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say, +‘Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix’d; +Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay; +But best is best, if never intermix’d’? +Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb? +Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee +To make him much outlive a gilded tomb +And to be prais’d of ages yet to be. + Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how + To make him seem long hence as he shows now. + +CII + +My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming; +I love not less, though less the show appear; +That love is merchandiz’d, whose rich esteeming, +The owner’s tongue doth publish every where. +Our love was new, and then but in the spring, +When I was wont to greet it with my lays; +As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing, +And stops her pipe in growth of riper days: +Not that the summer is less pleasant now +Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, +But that wild music burthens every bough, +And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. + Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue: + Because I would not dull you with my song. + +CIII + +Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth, +That having such a scope to show her pride, +The argument, all bare, is of more worth +Than when it hath my added praise beside! +O! blame me not, if I no more can write! +Look in your glass, and there appears a face +That over-goes my blunt invention quite, +Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace. +Were it not sinful then, striving to mend, +To mar the subject that before was well? +For to no other pass my verses tend +Than of your graces and your gifts to tell; + And more, much more, than in my verse can sit, + Your own glass shows you when you look in it. + +CIV + +To me, fair friend, you never can be old, +For as you were when first your eye I ey’d, +Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold, +Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride, +Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d, +In process of the seasons have I seen, +Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d, +Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. +Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand, +Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d; +So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, +Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d: + For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred: + Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead. + +CV + +Let not my love be call’d idolatry, +Nor my beloved as an idol show, +Since all alike my songs and praises be +To one, of one, still such, and ever so. +Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, +Still constant in a wondrous excellence; +Therefore my verse to constancy confin’d, +One thing expressing, leaves out difference. +‘Fair, kind, and true,’ is all my argument, +‘Fair, kind, and true,’ varying to other words; +And in this change is my invention spent, +Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. + Fair, kind, and true, have often liv’d alone, + Which three till now, never kept seat in one. + +CVI + +When in the chronicle of wasted time +I see descriptions of the fairest wights, +And beauty making beautiful old rime, +In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, +Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, +Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, +I see their antique pen would have express’d +Even such a beauty as you master now. +So all their praises are but prophecies +Of this our time, all you prefiguring; +And for they looked but with divining eyes, +They had not skill enough your worth to sing: + For we, which now behold these present days, + Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. + +CVII + +Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul +Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, +Can yet the lease of my true love control, +Supposed as forfeit to a confin’d doom. +The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d, +And the sad augurs mock their own presage; +Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d, +And peace proclaims olives of endless age. +Now with the drops of this most balmy time, +My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, +Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rime, +While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes: + And thou in this shalt find thy monument, + When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent. + +CVIII + +What’s in the brain, that ink may character, +Which hath not figur’d to thee my true spirit? +What’s new to speak, what now to register, +That may express my love, or thy dear merit? +Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine, +I must each day say o’er the very same; +Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, +Even as when first I hallow’d thy fair name. +So that eternal love in love’s fresh case, +Weighs not the dust and injury of age, +Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, +But makes antiquity for aye his page; + Finding the first conceit of love there bred, + Where time and outward form would show it dead. + +CIX + +O! never say that I was false of heart, +Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify, +As easy might I from my self depart +As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie: +That is my home of love: if I have rang’d, +Like him that travels, I return again; +Just to the time, not with the time exchang’d, +So that myself bring water for my stain. +Never believe though in my nature reign’d, +All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, +That it could so preposterously be stain’d, +To leave for nothing all thy sum of good; + For nothing this wide universe I call, + Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all. + +CX + +Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there, +And made my self a motley to the view, +Gor’d mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, +Made old offences of affections new; +Most true it is, that I have look’d on truth +Askance and strangely; but, by all above, +These blenches gave my heart another youth, +And worse essays prov’d thee my best of love. +Now all is done, save what shall have no end: +Mine appetite I never more will grind +On newer proof, to try an older friend, +A god in love, to whom I am confin’d. + Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, + Even to thy pure and most most loving breast. + +CXI + +O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide, +The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, +That did not better for my life provide +Than public means which public manners breeds. +Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, +And almost thence my nature is subdu’d +To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand: +Pity me, then, and wish I were renew’d; +Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink, +Potions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection; +No bitterness that I will bitter think, +Nor double penance, to correct correction. + Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye, + Even that your pity is enough to cure me. + +CXII + +Your love and pity doth the impression fill, +Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow; +For what care I who calls me well or ill, +So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow? +You are my all-the-world, and I must strive +To know my shames and praises from your tongue; +None else to me, nor I to none alive, +That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong. +In so profound abysm I throw all care +Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense +To critic and to flatterer stopped are. +Mark how with my neglect I do dispense: + You are so strongly in my purpose bred, + That all the world besides methinks are dead. + +CXIII + +Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind; +And that which governs me to go about +Doth part his function and is partly blind, +Seems seeing, but effectually is out; +For it no form delivers to the heart +Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch: +Of his quick objects hath the mind no part, +Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch; +For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight, +The most sweet favour or deformed’st creature, +The mountain or the sea, the day or night: +The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature. + Incapable of more, replete with you, + My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue. + +CXIV + +Or whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you, +Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery? +Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true, +And that your love taught it this alchemy, +To make of monsters and things indigest +Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, +Creating every bad a perfect best, +As fast as objects to his beams assemble? +O! ’tis the first, ’tis flattery in my seeing, +And my great mind most kingly drinks it up: +Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ’greeing, +And to his palate doth prepare the cup: + If it be poison’d, ’tis the lesser sin + That mine eye loves it and doth first begin. + +CXV + +Those lines that I before have writ do lie, +Even those that said I could not love you dearer: +Yet then my judgement knew no reason why +My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. +But reckoning Time, whose million’d accidents +Creep in ’twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, +Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents, +Divert strong minds to the course of altering things; +Alas! why fearing of Time’s tyranny, +Might I not then say, ‘Now I love you best,’ +When I was certain o’er incertainty, +Crowning the present, doubting of the rest? + Love is a babe, then might I not say so, + To give full growth to that which still doth grow? + +CXVI + +Let me not to the marriage of true minds +Admit impediments. Love is not love +Which alters when it alteration finds, +Or bends with the remover to remove: +O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, +That looks on tempests and is never shaken; +It is the star to every wandering bark, +Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. +Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks +Within his bending sickle’s compass come; +Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, +But bears it out even to the edge of doom. + If this be error and upon me prov’d, + I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d. + +CXVII + +Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all, +Wherein I should your great deserts repay, +Forgot upon your dearest love to call, +Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day; +That I have frequent been with unknown minds, +And given to time your own dear-purchas’d right; +That I have hoisted sail to all the winds +Which should transport me farthest from your sight. +Book both my wilfulness and errors down, +And on just proof surmise, accumulate; +Bring me within the level of your frown, +But shoot not at me in your waken’d hate; + Since my appeal says I did strive to prove + The constancy and virtue of your love. + +CXVIII + +Like as, to make our appetite more keen, +With eager compounds we our palate urge; +As, to prevent our maladies unseen, +We sicken to shun sickness when we purge; +Even so, being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness, +To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding; +And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness +To be diseas’d, ere that there was true needing. +Thus policy in love, to anticipate +The ills that were not, grew to faults assur’d, +And brought to medicine a healthful state +Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur’d; + But thence I learn and find the lesson true, + Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you. + +CXIX + +What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, +Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within, +Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, +Still losing when I saw myself to win! +What wretched errors hath my heart committed, +Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never! +How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted, +In the distraction of this madding fever! +O benefit of ill! now I find true +That better is, by evil still made better; +And ruin’d love, when it is built anew, +Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. + So I return rebuk’d to my content, + And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent. + +CXX + +That you were once unkind befriends me now, +And for that sorrow, which I then did feel, +Needs must I under my transgression bow, +Unless my nerves were brass or hammer’d steel. +For if you were by my unkindness shaken, +As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time; +And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken +To weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime. +O! that our night of woe might have remember’d +My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits, +And soon to you, as you to me, then tender’d +The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits! + But that your trespass now becomes a fee; + Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me. + +CXXI + +’Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d, +When not to be receives reproach of being; +And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem’d +Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing: +For why should others’ false adulterate eyes +Give salutation to my sportive blood? +Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, +Which in their wills count bad what I think good? +No, I am that I am, and they that level +At my abuses reckon up their own: +I may be straight though they themselves be bevel; +By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown; + Unless this general evil they maintain, + All men are bad and in their badness reign. + +CXXII + +Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain +Full character’d with lasting memory, +Which shall above that idle rank remain, +Beyond all date; even to eternity: +Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart +Have faculty by nature to subsist; +Till each to raz’d oblivion yield his part +Of thee, thy record never can be miss’d. +That poor retention could not so much hold, +Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score; +Therefore to give them from me was I bold, +To trust those tables that receive thee more: + To keep an adjunct to remember thee + Were to import forgetfulness in me. + +CXXIII + +No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change: +Thy pyramids built up with newer might +To me are nothing novel, nothing strange; +They are but dressings of a former sight. +Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire +What thou dost foist upon us that is old; +And rather make them born to our desire +Than think that we before have heard them told. +Thy registers and thee I both defy, +Not wondering at the present nor the past, +For thy records and what we see doth lie, +Made more or less by thy continual haste. + This I do vow and this shall ever be; + I will be true despite thy scythe and thee. + +CXXIV + +If my dear love were but the child of state, +It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d, +As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate, +Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d. +No, it was builded far from accident; +It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls +Under the blow of thralled discontent, +Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls: +It fears not policy, that heretic, +Which works on leases of short-number’d hours, +But all alone stands hugely politic, +That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers. + To this I witness call the fools of time, + Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime. + +CXXV + +Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy, +With my extern the outward honouring, +Or laid great bases for eternity, +Which proves more short than waste or ruining? +Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour +Lose all and more by paying too much rent +For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour, +Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent? +No; let me be obsequious in thy heart, +And take thou my oblation, poor but free, +Which is not mix’d with seconds, knows no art, +But mutual render, only me for thee. + Hence, thou suborned informer! a true soul + When most impeach’d, stands least in thy control. + +CXXVI + +O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power +Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his fickle hour; +Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st +Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st. +If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, +As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, +She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill +May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill. +Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure! +She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure: + Her audit (though delayed) answered must be, + And her quietus is to render thee. + +CXXVII + +In the old age black was not counted fair, +Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name; +But now is black beauty’s successive heir, +And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame: +For since each hand hath put on Nature’s power, +Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face, +Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, +But is profan’d, if not lives in disgrace. +Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black, +Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem +At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, +Sland’ring creation with a false esteem: + Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe, + That every tongue says beauty should look so. + +CXXVIII + +How oft when thou, my music, music play’st, +Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds +With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st +The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, +Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap, +To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, +Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap, +At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand! +To be so tickled, they would change their state +And situation with those dancing chips, +O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, +Making dead wood more bless’d than living lips. + Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, + Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. + +CXXIX + +The expense of spirit in a waste of shame +Is lust in action: and till action, lust +Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame, +Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; +Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight; +Past reason hunted; and no sooner had, +Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait, +On purpose laid to make the taker mad: +Mad in pursuit and in possession so; +Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme; +A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; +Before, a joy propos’d; behind a dream. + All this the world well knows; yet none knows well + To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. + +CXXX + +My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; +Coral is far more red, than her lips red: +If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; +If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. +I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, +But no such roses see I in her cheeks; +And in some perfumes is there more delight +Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. +I love to hear her speak, yet well I know +That music hath a far more pleasing sound: +I grant I never saw a goddess go; +My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: + And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare, + As any she belied with false compare. + +CXXXI + +Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, +As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel; +For well thou know’st to my dear doting heart +Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel. +Yet, in good faith, some say that thee behold, +Thy face hath not the power to make love groan; +To say they err I dare not be so bold, +Although I swear it to myself alone. +And to be sure that is not false I swear, +A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face, +One on another’s neck, do witness bear +Thy black is fairest in my judgement’s place. + In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds, + And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds. + +CXXXII + +Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me, +Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain, +Have put on black and loving mourners be, +Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain. +And truly not the morning sun of heaven +Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east, +Nor that full star that ushers in the even, +Doth half that glory to the sober west, +As those two mourning eyes become thy face: +O! let it then as well beseem thy heart +To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace, +And suit thy pity like in every part. + Then will I swear beauty herself is black, + And all they foul that thy complexion lack. + +CXXXIII + +Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan +For that deep wound it gives my friend and me! +Is’t not enough to torture me alone, +But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be? +Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken, +And my next self thou harder hast engross’d: +Of him, myself, and thee I am forsaken; +A torment thrice three-fold thus to be cross’d: +Prison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward, +But then my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail; +Whoe’er keeps me, let my heart be his guard; +Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail: + And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee, + Perforce am thine, and all that is in me. + +CXXXIV + +So, now I have confess’d that he is thine, +And I my self am mortgag’d to thy will, +Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine +Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still: +But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, +For thou art covetous, and he is kind; +He learn’d but surety-like to write for me, +Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. +The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, +Thou usurer, that putt’st forth all to use, +And sue a friend came debtor for my sake; +So him I lose through my unkind abuse. + Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me: + He pays the whole, and yet am I not free. + +CXXXV + +Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy ‘Will,’ +And ‘Will’ to boot, and ‘Will’ in over-plus; +More than enough am I that vex’d thee still, +To thy sweet will making addition thus. +Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, +Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine? +Shall will in others seem right gracious, +And in my will no fair acceptance shine? +The sea, all water, yet receives rain still, +And in abundance addeth to his store; +So thou, being rich in ‘Will,’ add to thy ‘Will’ +One will of mine, to make thy large will more. + Let no unkind ‘No’ fair beseechers kill; + Think all but one, and me in that one ‘Will.’ + +CXXXVI + +If thy soul check thee that I come so near, +Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy ‘Will’, +And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there; +Thus far for love, my love-suit, sweet, fulfil. +‘Will’, will fulfil the treasure of thy love, +Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one. +In things of great receipt with ease we prove +Among a number one is reckon’d none: +Then in the number let me pass untold, +Though in thy store’s account I one must be; +For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold +That nothing me, a something sweet to thee: + Make but my name thy love, and love that still, + And then thou lov’st me for my name is ‘Will.’ + +CXXXVII + +Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes, +That they behold, and see not what they see? +They know what beauty is, see where it lies, +Yet what the best is take the worst to be. +If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks, +Be anchor’d in the bay where all men ride, +Why of eyes’ falsehood hast thou forged hooks, +Whereto the judgement of my heart is tied? +Why should my heart think that a several plot, +Which my heart knows the wide world’s common place? +Or mine eyes, seeing this, say this is not, +To put fair truth upon so foul a face? + In things right true my heart and eyes have err’d, + And to this false plague are they now transferr’d. + +CXXXVIII + +When my love swears that she is made of truth, +I do believe her though I know she lies, +That she might think me some untutor’d youth, +Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties. +Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, +Although she knows my days are past the best, +Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue: +On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed: +But wherefore says she not she is unjust? +And wherefore say not I that I am old? +O! love’s best habit is in seeming trust, +And age in love, loves not to have years told: + Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, + And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be. + +CXXXIX + +O! call not me to justify the wrong +That thy unkindness lays upon my heart; +Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue: +Use power with power, and slay me not by art, +Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight, +Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside: +What need’st thou wound with cunning, when thy might +Is more than my o’erpress’d defence can bide? +Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows +Her pretty looks have been mine enemies; +And therefore from my face she turns my foes, +That they elsewhere might dart their injuries: + Yet do not so; but since I am near slain, + Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain. + + +CXL + +Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press +My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain; +Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express +The manner of my pity-wanting pain. +If I might teach thee wit, better it were, +Though not to love, yet love to tell me so, +As testy sick men, when their deaths be near, +No news but health from their physicians know. +For, if I should despair, I should grow mad, +And in my madness might speak ill of thee; +Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, +Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be. + That I may not be so, nor thou belied, + Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide. + +CXLI + +In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes, +For they in thee a thousand errors note; +But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise, +Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote. +Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted; +Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone, +Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited +To any sensual feast with thee alone: +But my five wits nor my five senses can +Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee, +Who leaves unsway’d the likeness of a man, +Thy proud heart’s slave and vassal wretch to be: + Only my plague thus far I count my gain, + That she that makes me sin awards me pain. + +CXLII + +Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate, +Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving: +O! but with mine compare thou thine own state, +And thou shalt find it merits not reproving; +Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine, +That have profan’d their scarlet ornaments +And seal’d false bonds of love as oft as mine, +Robb’d others’ beds’ revenues of their rents. +Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov’st those +Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee: +Root pity in thy heart, that, when it grows, +Thy pity may deserve to pitied be. + If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, + By self-example mayst thou be denied! + +CXLIII + +Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch +One of her feather’d creatures broke away, +Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch +In pursuit of the thing she would have stay; +Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, +Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent +To follow that which flies before her face, +Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent; +So runn’st thou after that which flies from thee, +Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind; +But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me, +And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind; + So will I pray that thou mayst have thy ‘Will,’ + If thou turn back and my loud crying still. + +CXLIV + +Two loves I have of comfort and despair, +Which like two spirits do suggest me still: +The better angel is a man right fair, +The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill. +To win me soon to hell, my female evil, +Tempteth my better angel from my side, +And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, +Wooing his purity with her foul pride. +And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend, +Suspect I may, yet not directly tell; +But being both from me, both to each friend, +I guess one angel in another’s hell: + Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt, + Till my bad angel fire my good one out. + +CXLV + +Those lips that Love’s own hand did make, +Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’, +To me that languish’d for her sake: +But when she saw my woeful state, +Straight in her heart did mercy come, +Chiding that tongue that ever sweet +Was us’d in giving gentle doom; +And taught it thus anew to greet; +‘I hate’ she alter’d with an end, +That followed it as gentle day, +Doth follow night, who like a fiend +From heaven to hell is flown away. + ‘I hate’, from hate away she threw, + And sav’d my life, saying ‘not you’. + +CXLVI + +Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, +My sinful earth these rebel powers array, +Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, +Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? +Why so large cost, having so short a lease, +Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? +Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, +Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end? +Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss, +And let that pine to aggravate thy store; +Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; +Within be fed, without be rich no more: + So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, + And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then. + +CXLVII + +My love is as a fever longing still, +For that which longer nurseth the disease; +Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, +The uncertain sickly appetite to please. +My reason, the physician to my love, +Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, +Hath left me, and I desperate now approve +Desire is death, which physic did except. +Past cure I am, now Reason is past care, +And frantic-mad with evermore unrest; +My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are, +At random from the truth vainly express’d; + For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, + Who art as black as hell, as dark as night. + +CXLVIII + +O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head, +Which have no correspondence with true sight; +Or, if they have, where is my judgement fled, +That censures falsely what they see aright? +If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote, +What means the world to say it is not so? +If it be not, then love doth well denote +Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s: no, +How can it? O! how can Love’s eye be true, +That is so vexed with watching and with tears? +No marvel then, though I mistake my view; +The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears. + O cunning Love! with tears thou keep’st me blind, + Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find. + +CXLIX + +Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not, +When I against myself with thee partake? +Do I not think on thee, when I forgot +Am of my self, all tyrant, for thy sake? +Who hateth thee that I do call my friend, +On whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon, +Nay, if thou lour’st on me, do I not spend +Revenge upon myself with present moan? +What merit do I in my self respect, +That is so proud thy service to despise, +When all my best doth worship thy defect, +Commanded by the motion of thine eyes? + But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind; + Those that can see thou lov’st, and I am blind. + +CL + +O! from what power hast thou this powerful might, +With insufficiency my heart to sway? +To make me give the lie to my true sight, +And swear that brightness doth not grace the day? +Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, +That in the very refuse of thy deeds +There is such strength and warrantise of skill, +That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds? +Who taught thee how to make me love thee more, +The more I hear and see just cause of hate? +O! though I love what others do abhor, +With others thou shouldst not abhor my state: + If thy unworthiness rais’d love in me, + More worthy I to be belov’d of thee. + +CLI + +Love is too young to know what conscience is, +Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? +Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, +Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove: +For, thou betraying me, I do betray +My nobler part to my gross body’s treason; +My soul doth tell my body that he may +Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason, +But rising at thy name doth point out thee, +As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride, +He is contented thy poor drudge to be, +To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. + No want of conscience hold it that I call + Her ‘love,’ for whose dear love I rise and fall. + +CLII + +In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn, +But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing; +In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn, +In vowing new hate after new love bearing: +But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee, +When I break twenty? I am perjur’d most; +For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee, +And all my honest faith in thee is lost: +For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness, +Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy; +And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness, +Or made them swear against the thing they see; + For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I, + To swear against the truth so foul a lie. + +CLIII + +Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep: +A maid of Dian’s this advantage found, +And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep +In a cold valley-fountain of that ground; +Which borrow’d from this holy fire of Love, +A dateless lively heat, still to endure, +And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove +Against strange maladies a sovereign cure. +But at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired, +The boy for trial needs would touch my breast; +I, sick withal, the help of bath desired, +And thither hied, a sad distemper’d guest, + But found no cure, the bath for my help lies + Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress’ eyes. + +CLIV + +The little Love-god lying once asleep, +Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand, +Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keep +Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand +The fairest votary took up that fire +Which many legions of true hearts had warm’d; +And so the general of hot desire +Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarm’d. +This brand she quenched in a cool well by, +Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual, +Growing a bath and healthful remedy, +For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall, + Came there for cure and this by that I prove, + Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love. +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1041 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1042-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1042-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d4b72fdf --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1042-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2645 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Reading of Life, by George Meredith + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: A Reading of Life + with Other Poems + + +Author: George Meredith + + + +Release Date: April 18, 2013 [eBook #1042] +[This file was first posted on September 25, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A READING OF LIFE*** + + +Transcribed from the 1901 Archibald Constable and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + A READING OF LIFE + WITH OTHER POEMS + + + BY GEORGE MEREDITH + + * * * * * + + WESTMINSTER + ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD + 2 WHITEHALL GARDENS + 1901 + + * * * * * + + BUTLER & TANNER, + THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS, + FROME, AND LONDON + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +A READING OF LIFE + THE VITAL CHOICE 1 + WITH THE HUNTRESS 3 + WITH THE PERSUADER 8 + THE TEST OF MANHOOD 28 +THE CAGEING OF ARES 45 +THE NIGHT-WALK 55 +THE HUELESS LOVE 60 +SONG IN THE SONGLESS 63 +UNION IN DISSEVERANCE 64 +THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH 65 +THE MAIN REGRET 66 +ALTERNATION 68 +HAWARDEN 69 +AT THE CLOSE 70 +FOREST HISTORY 71 +A GARDEN IDYL 81 +FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE 88 +FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS +VERSE-- + THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES 109 + ,, ,, ,, ,, 112 + MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS 114 + AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT 117 + PARIS AND DIOMEDES 119 + HYPNOS ON IDA 121 + CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS 122 + THE HORSES OF ACHILLES 123 +THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE-- + FROM THE _MIREIO_ 126 + + + + + +A READING OF LIFE + + +THE VITAL CHOICE + + +I + + + OR shall we run with Artemis + Or yield the breast to Aphrodite? + Both are mighty; + Both give bliss; + Each can torture if divided; + Each claims worship undivided, + In her wake would have us wallow. + + +II + + + Youth must offer on bent knees + Homage unto one or other; + Earth, the mother, + This decrees; + And unto the pallid Scyther + Either points us shun we either + Shun or too devoutly follow. + + + +WITH THE HUNTRESS + + + THROUGH the water-eye of night, + Midway between eve and dawn, + See the chase, the rout, the flight + In deep forest; oread, faun, + Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck; + Ravenous all the line for speed. + See yon wavy sparkle beck + Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead. + Down her course a serpent star + Coils and shatters at her heels; + Peals the horn exulting, peals + Plaintive, is it near or far. + Huntress, arrowy to pursue, + In and out of woody glen, + Under cliffs that tear the blue, + Over torrent, over fen, + She and forest, where she skims + Feathery, darken and relume: + Those are her white-lightning limbs + Cleaving loads of leafy gloom. + Mountains hear her and call back, + Shrewd with night: a frosty wail + Distant: her the emerald vale + Folds, and wonders in her track. + Now her retinue is lean, + Many rearward; streams the chase + Eager forth of covert; seen + One hot tide the rapturous race. + Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned, + Up on a flash the lighted mound + Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft + Strung to barb with archer's craft, + Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet + Songs to see, past pitch of sweet. + Fearful swiftness they outrun, + Shaggy wildness, grey or dun, + Challenge, charge of tusks elude: + Theirs the dance to tame the rude; + Beast, and beast in manhood tame, + Follow we their silver flame. + Pride of flesh from bondage free, + Reaping vigour of its waste, + Marks her servitors, and she + Sanctifies the unembraced. + Nought of perilous she reeks; + Valour clothes her open breast; + Sweet beyond the thrill of sex; + Hallowed by the sex confessed. + Huntress arrowy to pursue, + Colder she than sunless dew, + She, that breath of upper air; + Ay, but never lyrist sang, + Draught of Bacchus never sprang + Blood the bliss of Gods to share, + High o'er sweep of eagle wings, + Like the run with her, when rings + Clear her rally, and her dart, + In the forest's cavern heart, + Tells of her victorious aim. + Then is pause and chatter, cheer, + Laughter at some satyr lame, + Looks upon the fallen deer, + Measuring his noble crest; + Here a favourite in her train, + Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed; + All applauded. Shall she reign + Worshipped? O to be with her there! + She, that breath of nimble air, + Lifts the breast to giant power. + Maid and man, and man and maid, + Who each other would devour + Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed, + There are comrades, led by her, + Maid-preserver, man-maker. + + + +WITH THE PERSUADER + + + WHO murmurs, hither, hither: who + Where nought is audible so fills the ear? + Where nought is visible can make appear + A veil with eyes that waver through, + Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come, + Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb, + She breathes, she moves, inviting flees, + Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire + To clasp and strike a slackened lyre, + Till over smiles of hyacinth seas, + Flame in a crystal vessel sails + Beneath a dome of jewelled spray, + For land that drops the rosy day + On nights of throbbing nightingales. + + Landward did the wonder flit, + Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it. + We saw the heavens fling down their rose; + On rapturous waves we saw her glide; + The pearly sea-shell half enclose; + The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide; + And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more + Behold than tracks along a startled shore, + With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign + An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain. + + More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she, + The very she called forth by ripened blood + For its next breath of being, murmurs; she, + Allurement; she, fulfilment; she, + The stream within us urged to flood; + Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she, + Maid, woman and divinity; + Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate + Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit + Untasted; she our written fate + Unread; Life's flowering, Life's root: + Unread, divined; unseen, beheld; + The evanescent, ever-present she, + Great Nature's stern necessity + In radiance clothed, to softness quelled; + With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take + Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break. + + The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent. + Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent, + Her form is given to pardoned sight, + And lets our mortal eyes receive + The sovereign loveliness of celestial white; + Adored by them who solitarily pace, + In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve, + The paths among the meadow asphodel, + Remembering. Never there her face + Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell + Around such whiteness the enamoured air + Of noon that clothes her, never there. + Daughter of light, the joyful light, + She stands unveiled to nuptial sight, + Sweet in her disregard of aid + Divine to conquer or persuade. + A fountain jets from moss; a flower + Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower. + By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen + With eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen. + + Shorn of attendant Graces she can use + Her natural snares to make her will supreme. + A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse + Before the leader foot shall dip in stream: + One arm at curve along a rounded thigh; + Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way + A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy, + Where innocence, not nature, signals nay. + The bud of fresh virginity awaits + The wooer, and all roseate will she burst: + She touches on the hour of happy mates; + Still is she unaware she wakens thirst. + + And while commanding blissful sight believe + It holds her as a body strained to breast, + Down on the underworld's perpetual eve + She plunges the possessor dispossessed; + And bids believe that image, heaving warm, + Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame; + The phantom any breeze blows out of form; + A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim. + + The rapture shed the torture weaves; + The direst blow on human heart she deals: + The pain to know the seen deceives; + Nought true but what insufferably feels. + And stabs of her delicious note, + That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard + Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat, + We answer as the midnight's morning's bird. + + She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries; + In her delicious laughter part revealed; + Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs, + For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed. + Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless: + Yon folded couples, passing under shade, + Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress, + Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed. + We dolorous complainers had a dream, + Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire, + We saw stand bare of her celestial beam + The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire. + + Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips + Of upward curl to meanings half obscure; + And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips + She nods: at once that creature wears her lure. + Blush of our being between birth and death: + Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath: + Her wily semblance nought of her denies; + Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies, + The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm + Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm; + Benevolent as Earth to feed her own. + Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech. + But scorn she has for them that walk alone; + Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach. + The men as chief of criminals she disdains, + And holds the reason in perceptive thought. + More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains, + Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought. + Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed, + Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed, + In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths: + Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes + For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew. + Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn + Across her garden from the insaner crew, + She darkens to malignity of scorn. + A shiver courses through her garden-grounds: + Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds, + The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring + Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring. + These, the irreverent of Life's design, + Division between natural and divine + Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best, + In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest; + And these because the roses flood their cheeks, + Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks. + With them is war; and well the Goddess knows + What undermines the race who mount the rose; + How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours, + Enkindled by persuasion overpowers: + Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds, + The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs, + And timely guile unguarded finds them lie. + They who her sway withstand a sea defy, + At every point of juncture must be proof; + Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge + Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge + For the one whelming wave to spring aloof. + She, tenderness, is pitiless to them + Resisting in her godhead nature's truth. + No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem; + Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth. + These miserably disinclined, + The lamentably unembraced, + Insult the Pleasures Earth designed + To people and beflower the waste. + Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by: + For death they live, in life they die. + + Her head the Goddess from them turns, + As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns. + She views her quivering couples unconsoled, + And of her beauty mirror they become, + Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum, + Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold. + Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew, + Her couples whirl, sun-satiated, + Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed, + They play the music made of two: + Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end: + Cunninger than the numbered strings, + For melodies, for harmonies, + For mastered discords, and the things + Not vocable, whose mysteries + Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend. + + Is it an anguish overflowing shame + And the tongue's pudency confides to her, + With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh, + The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name, + Then is the Goddess tenderness + Maternal, and she has a sister's tones + Benign to soothe intemperate distress, + Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans. + Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease + To those of her milk-bearer votaries + As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source + Direct; erratic but in heart's excess; + Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force; + Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress. + And pray they under skies less overcast, + That swiftly may her star of eve descend, + Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast, + To lengthen blissful night will she befriend. + + Unfailing her reply to woman's voice + In supplication instant. Is it man's, + She hears, approves his words, her garden scans, + And him: the flowers are various, he has choice. + Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long; + Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song; + And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise + Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys. + + She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps + To her invoked: distraction is implored. + A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps + Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored. + His tales of her declare she condescends; + Can share his fires, not always goads and rends: + Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose + A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose. + She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs + Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse; + Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings. + 'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse + Rarely the music made of two ascends, + And Beauty's Queen some other way is won. + Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends + Herself to all, and yields herself to none, + Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised + In hot assurance under shade of doubt: + And numerous are the images bepraised + As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout. + + Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo + Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue. + That is her garden's precept, seen where shines + Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines. + Daughter of light, the joyful light, + She bids her couples face full East, + Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast + Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite, + The lion-haunted thickets hold apart. + In love the ruddy hue declares great heart; + High confidence in her whose aid is lent + To lovers lifting the tuned instrument, + Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone. + And doth the man pursue a tightened zone, + Then be it as the Laurel God he runs, + Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's. + + Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe + He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show. + For him requiring woman's arts to please + Infantile tastes with babe reluctances, + No race of giants! In the woman's veins + Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains. + Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod, + Aspiring blends the Titan with the God; + Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss + In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss; + And is it needed that Love's daintier brute + Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit. + She is great Nature's ever intimate + In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait, + Until perverted by her senseless male, + She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail, + The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame, + Elusive to allure, since he grew tame. + + Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power, + And greatest and most present, with her dower + Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute + For meditated guile. She laughs to hear + A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute, + Her garden's histories tell of to all near. + Let it be said, But less upon her guile + Doth she rely for her immortal smile. + Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens + To push her conquests by the simplest means. + While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves + From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves. + + Her spacious garden and her garden's grant + She offers in reward for handsome cheer: + Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant + The secret down a dewy leer + Of corner eyelids into haze: + Many a fair Aphrosyne + Like flower-bell to honey-bee: + And here they flicker round the maze + Bewildering him in heart and head: + And here they wear the close demure, + With subtle peeps to reassure: + Others parade where love has bled, + And of its crimson weave their mesh: + Others to snap of fingers leap, + As bearing breast with love asleep. + These are her laughters in the flesh. + Or would she fit a warrior mood, + She lights her seeming unsubdued, + And indicates the fortress-key. + Or is it heart for heart that craves, + She flecks along a run of waves + The one to promise deeper sea. + + Bands of her limpid primitives, + Or patterned in the curious braid, + Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives, + For what he gives is he repaid. + Good is it if by him 'tis held + He wins the fairest ever welled + From Nature's founts: she whispers it: Even I + Not fairer! and forbids him to deny, + Else little is he lover. Those he clasps, + Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer,-- + And be they doves or be they asps,-- + Must seem to him the sovereignty fair; + Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed. + Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed, + Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned + The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound, + He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests, + Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he. + Doth man divide divine Necessity + From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's breasts + A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain + Present her; armed to bless and to constrain. + Of this he perishes; not she, the throned + On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts. + A loftier Reason out of deeper founts + Earth's chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned + While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts, + And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky; + Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry, + Uplifted by the innumerable hosts. + + Quickened of Nature's eye and ear, + When the wild sap at high tide smites + Within us; or benignly clear + To vision; or as the iris lights + On fluctuant waters; she is ours + Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen; + Flushing the world with odorous flowers: + A soft compulsion on terrene + By heavenly: and the world is hers + While hunger after Beauty spurs. + + So is it sung in any space + She fills, with laugh at shallow laws + Forbidding love's devised embrace, + The music Beauty from it draws. + + + +THE TEST OF MANHOOD + + + LIKE a flood river whirled at rocky banks, + An army issues out of wilderness, + With battle plucking round its ragged flanks; + Obstruction in the van; insane excess + Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress + Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks, + And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone, + The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay. + They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone; + A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they. + Then was the gracious birth of man's new day; + Divided from the haunted night it shone. + + That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang + Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide. + Another sun had risen to clasp his bride: + It was another earth unto him sang. + + Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights? + From the Persuader came it, in those vales + Whereunto she melodiously invites, + Her troops of eager servitors regales? + Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed + Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead; + Nor either points for us the way of flame. + From him predestined mightier it came; + His task to hold them both in breast, and yield + Their dues to each, and of their war be field. + + The foes that in repulsion never ceased, + Must he, who once has been the goodly beast + Of one or other, at whose beck he ran, + Constrain to make him serviceable man; + Offending neither, nor the natural claim + Each pressed, denying, for his true man's name. + + Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife + To hold them fast conjoined within him still; + Submissive to his will + Along the road of life! + And marvel not he wavered if at whiles + The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles. + For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain; + Repentance offered ecstasy in pain. + Delicious licence called it Nature's cry; + Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh; + A tread on shingle timed his lame advance + Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance, + He of the troubled marching army leaned + On godhead visible, on godhead screened; + The radiant roseate, the curtained white; + Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night. + + He drank of fictions, till celestial aid + Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed; + Sagely the generous Giver circumspect, + To choose for grants the egregious, his elect; + And ever that imagined succour slew + The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew. + + In fellowship religion has its founts: + The solitary his own God reveres: + Ascend no sacred Mounts + Our hungers or our fears. + As only for the numbers Nature's care + Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds, + So to Divinity the spring of prayer + From brotherhood the one way upward leads. + Like the sustaining air + Are both for flowers and weeds. + But he who claims in spirit to be flower, + Will find them both an air that doth devour. + + Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored + External gifts bestowed but on the sword; + Beheld himself, with less and less disguise, + Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes, + His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail; + See a black adversary's ghost prevail; + Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win + While still the conflict tore his breast within. + + Out of that agony, misread for those + Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased, + The ghost of his black adversary rose, + To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased. + And long with him was wrestling ere emerged + A mind to read in him the reflex shade + Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged; + By craven compromises hourly swayed. + + Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried, + The man's mind opened under weight of cloud. + To penetrate the dark was it endowed; + Stood day before a vision shooting wide. + Whereat the spectral enemy lost form; + The traversed wilderness exposed its track. + He felt the far advance in looking back; + Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm. + + Under the low-browed tempest's eye of ire, + That ere it lightened smote a coward heart, + Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart + All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire; + A stranger still, religiously divined; + Not yet with understanding read aright. + But when the mind, the cherishable mind, + The multitude's grave shepherd, took full flight, + Himself as mirror raised among his kind, + He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight: + Knew that his force to fly, his will to see, + His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain, + Had come of many a grip in mastery, + Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain, + And of his bosom made him lord, to keep + The starry roof of his unruffled frame + Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep + Below, above, aye with a wistful aim. + + The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown, + By traitor inmates baited, upward burned; + Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned, + The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown. + To whom unwittingly did he aspire + In wilderness, where bitter was his need: + To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed + For light and air, he struck through crimson mire. + But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp, + And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed, + All choral in its fruitful garden camp, + The spiritual the palpable illumed. + + This gift of penetration and embrace, + His prize from tidal battles lost or won, + Reveals the scheme to animate his race: + How that it is a warfare but begun; + Unending; with no Power to interpose; + No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground, + Heard of the Highest; never battle's close, + The victory complete and victor crowned: + Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense + Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed. + In manhood must he find his competence; + In his clear mind the spiritual food: + God being there while he his fight maintains; + Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there, + While he rejects the suicide despair; + Accepts the spur of explicable pains; + Obedient to Nature, not her slave: + Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows; + Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave, + And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:-- + Whence Evil in a world unread before; + That mystery to simple springs resolved. + His God the Known, diviner to adore, + Shows Nature's savage riddles kindly solved. + Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns + In iron laws, though rapturous fair her face. + Back to the primal brute shall he retrace + His path, doth he permit to force her chains + A soft Persuader coursing through his veins, + An icy Huntress stringing to the chase: + What one the flash disdains; + What one so gives it grace. + + But is he rightly manful in her eyes, + A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies, + A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs, + Desireing and desireable he shines; + As peaches, that have caught the sun's uprise + And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines. + Earth fills him with her juices, without fear + That she will cast him drunken down the steeps. + All woman is she to this man most dear; + He sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps: + She conscient, she sensitive, in him; + With him enwound, his brave ambition hers: + By him humaner made; by his keen spurs + Pricked to race past the pride in giant limb, + Her crazy adoration of big thews, + Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled, + Were thunder spitting lightnings on the world + In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse. + + This man, this hero, works not to destroy; + This godlike--as the rock in ocean stands;-- + He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands + Creative; in his edifice has joy. + How strength may serve for purity is shown + When he himself can scourge to make it clean. + Withal his pitch of pride would not disown + A sober world that walks the balanced mean + Between its tempters, rarely overthrown: + And such at times his army's march has been. + + Near is he to great Nature in the thought + Each changing Season intimately saith, + That nought save apparition knows the death; + To the God-lighted mind of man 'tis nought. + She counts not loss a word of any weight; + It may befal his passions and his greeds + To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds, + But life gone breathless will she reinstate. + + Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats, + When he the mandate lodged in it obeys, + Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze, + Strike camp, and onward, like the wind's cloud-fleets. + Unresting she, unresting he, from change + To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain; + She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain, + Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range. + + No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod, + She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute; + But he, the flower at head and soil at root, + Is miracle, guides he the brute to God. + And that way seems he bound; that way the road, + With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone, + Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown, + He travels, urged by some internal goad. + + Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing + He would become is in his mind its child; + Astir, demanding birth to light and wing; + For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled. + So moves he forth in faith, if he has made + His mind God's temple, dedicate to truth. + Earth's nourishing delights, no more gainsaid, + He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth. + Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls; + The star of sky upon his footway cast; + Then match in him who holds his tempters fast, + The body's love and mind's, whereof the soul's. + Then Earth her man for woman finds at last, + To speed the pair unto her goal of goals. + + Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate? + Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood; + The sly Persuader snaky in his blood; + With her the barren Huntress alternate; + His rough refractory off on kicking heels + To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed; + And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed, + His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels? + May not his aspect, like her own so fair + Reflexively, the central force belie, + And he, the once wild ocean storming sky, + Be rebel at the core? What hope is there? + + 'Tis that in each recovery he preserves, + Between his upper and his nether wit, + Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit; + He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves; + With such a grasp upon his brute as tells + Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun. + A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun + Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels. + + + + +THE CAGEING OF ARES + + + ILIAD, v. V. 385 + + [_Dedicated to the Council at The Hague_.] + + HOW big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed + At sight of her boy Giants on the leap + Each over other as they neighboured home, + Fronting the day's descent across green slopes, + And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced. + Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess, + Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft, + It signalled some adventurous master-trick + To set Olympians buzzing in debate, + Lest it might be their godhead undermined, + The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high + On shoulders of his brother Otos waved + For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news, + Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar + While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees, + With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls; + Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched, + And both upon her bosom shaken to speech, + Burst the hot story out of throats of both, + Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut + The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm + Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon + A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam + Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils, + Signification marvellous she caught, + Through gurglings of triumphant jollity, + Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last + Subsided, and the serious naked deed, + With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around, + Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe + That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized, + These two made up of lion, bear and fox, + Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy, + Still by the reckoning infants among men, + Had done the deed to strike the Titan host + In envy dumb, in envious heart elate: + These two combining strength and craft had snared, + Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged + The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War; + Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes; + The barren furrower of anointed fields; + The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky, + Her hated enemy, too long her scourge: + Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth + When they had seized on his implacable spear, + Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite + His godlike fury startled from amaze. + For he had eyed them nearing him in play, + The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled, + Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount + Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there + On Earth's original fisticuffs they called + For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God, + Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms, + Good servitors of Ares they would be, + And ply the pointed spear to dominate + Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood + Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced + Amusedly he watched them, and as one + The lusty twain were on him and they had him. + Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud! + Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes! + Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes! + Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him, + Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste; + A desolating fire to blind the sight + With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes; + The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice; + Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, + Heard from the babe as from the broken crone. + Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, + And tumbled down the cave. But rather look-- + Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, + Of all the Gods to let her secret fly, + Hermes, after the thirteen songful months! + Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts, + And shatter earth's delirious holiday, + Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream, + Resolving to composure on its throbs. + But see her in the Seasons through that year; + That one glad year and the fair opening month. + Had never our Great Mother such sweet face! + War with her, gentle war with her, each day + Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung, + On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength + Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won, + From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids, + Her ready secret: the abounding life + Returned for valiant labour: she and they + Defeated and victorious turn by turn; + By loss enriched, by overthrow restored. + Exchange of powers of this conflict came; + Defacement none, nor ever squandered force. + Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned, + As music unto the hand that smote the strings; + And she the rosier from their showery brows, + They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast. + Back to the primal rational of those + Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp + Stability in hatred of the insane, + Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce + The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced + Above; those beautiful, those masterful, + Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend, + Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just? + Earth in her happy children asked that word, + Whereto within their breast was her reply. + Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless, + Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years; + Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspired + The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust, + Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar, + To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced, + And clap lame wings across a wintry haze, + Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still, + Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled + The Tyranny. This her voice within them told, + When softly the Great Mother chid her sons + Not of the giant brood, who did create + Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain + Set moving by an abject blood, that waked + To wanton under elements more benign, + And planted aliens on Olympian heights;-- + Imagination's cradle poesy + Become a monstrous pressure upon men;-- + Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed + By light from her, born of the love of her, + Their lordship the illumined brain rejects + For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law, + Her other name. So spake she in their heart, + Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath + Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth, + Confidently to cling. And when brown corn + Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song, + With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss; + When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil + Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape; + When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray, + Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth; + The very eye of passion drowsed by excess, + And yet a burning lion for the spring; + Then in that time of general cherishment, + Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side, + He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged, + Then did good Gaea's children gratefully + Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace, + Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's call + Harmoniously and images her Law; + Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives, + In memories made present on the brain + By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes; + The picture of an earth allied to heaven; + Between them the known smile behind black masks; + Rightly their various moods interpreted; + And frolic because toilful children borne + With larger comprehension of Earth's aim + At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid. + + + + +THE NIGHT-WALK + + + AWAKES for me and leaps from shroud + All radiantly the moon's own night + Of folded showers in streamer cloud; + Our shadows down the highway white + Or deep in woodland woven-boughed, + With yon and yon a stem alight. + + I see marauder runagates + Across us shoot their dusky wink; + I hear the parliament of chats + In haws beside the river's brink; + And drops the vole off alder-banks, + To push his arrow through the stream. + These busy people had our thanks + For tickling sight and sound, but theme + They were not more than breath we drew + Delighted with our world's embrace: + The moss-root smell where beeches grew, + And watered grass in breezy space; + The silken heights, of ghostly bloom + Among their folds, by distance draped. + 'Twas Youth, rapacious to consume, + That cried to have its chaos shaped: + Absorbing, little noting, still + Enriched, and thinking it bestowed; + With wistful looks on each far hill + For something hidden, something owed. + Unto his mantled sister, Day + Had given the secret things we sought + And she was grave and saintly gay; + At times she fluttered, spoke her thought; + She flew on it, then folded wings, + In meditation passing lone, + To breathe around the secret things, + Which have no word, and yet are known; + Of thirst for them are known, as air + Is health in blood: we gained enough + By this to feel it honest fare; + Impalpable, not barren, stuff. + + A pride of legs in motion kept + Our spirits to their task meanwhile, + And what was deepest dreaming slept: + The posts that named the swallowed mile; + Beside the straight canal the hut + Abandoned; near the river's source + Its infant chirp; the shortest cut; + The roadway missed; were our discourse; + At times dear poets, whom some view + Transcendent or subdued evoked + To speak the memorable, the true, + The luminous as a moon uncloaked; + For proof that there, among earth's dumb, + A soul had passed and said our best. + Or it might be we chimed on some + Historic favourite's astral crest, + With part to reverence in its gleam, + And part to rivalry the shout: + So royal, unuttered, is youth's dream + Of power within to strike without. + But most the silences were sweet, + Like mothers' breasts, to bid it feel + It lived in such divine conceit + As envies aught we stamp for real. + + To either then an untold tale + Was Life, and author, hero, we. + The chapters holding peaks to scale, + Or depths to fathom, made our glee; + For we were armed of inner fires, + Unbled in us the ripe desires; + And passion rolled a quiet sea, + Whereon was Love the phantom sail. + + + + +THE HUELESS LOVE + + + UNTO that love must we through fire attain, + Which those two held as breath of common air; + The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere; + Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain. + + Midway the road of our life's term they met, + And one another knew without surprise; + Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes; + Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret. + + To them it was revealed how they had found + The kindred nature and the needed mind; + The mate by long conspiracy designed; + The flower to plant in sanctuary ground. + + Avowed in vigilant solicitude + For either, what most lived within each breast + They let be seen: yet every human test + Demanding righteousness approved them good. + + She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared + Abandonment to help if heaved or sank + Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank, + Life rosier were she but less revered. + + An arm that never shook did not obscure + Her woman's intuition of the bliss-- + Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss, + Across the narrow plank--he could abjure. + + Then came a day that clipped for him the thread, + And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold, + Was all of earthly in their love untold, + Beyond all earthly known to them who wed. + + So has there come the gust at South-west flung + By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist, + When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed, + And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung. + + + + +SONG IN THE SONGLESS + + + THEY have no song, the sedges dry, + And still they sing. + It is within my breast they sing, + As I pass by. + Within my breast they touch a string, + They wake a sigh. + There is but sound of sedges dry; + In me they sing. + + + + +UNION IN DISSEVERANCE + + + SUNSET worn to its last vermilion he; + She that star overhead in slow descent: + That white star with the front of angel she; + He undone in his rays of glory spent + + Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise, + He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest + Incomplete, were the light for which he dies, + Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest. + + Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks; + Life's full throb over breathless and abased: + Yet stand they, though impalpable the links, + One, more one than the bridally embraced. + + + + +THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH + + + IF that thou hast the gift of strength, then know + Thy part is to uplift the trodden low; + Else in a giant's grasp until the end + A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend. + + + + +THE MAIN REGRET + + + WRITTEN FOR THE CHARING CROSS ALBUM + + + +I + + + SEEN, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission + Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare. + They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician; + Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair. + + + +II + + + Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered + Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone. + Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered + Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone. + + + + +ALTERNATION + + + BETWEEN the fountain and the rill + I passed, and saw the mighty will + To leap at sky; the careless run, + As earth would lead her little son. + + Beneath them throbs an urgent well, + That here is play, and there is war. + I know not which had most to tell + Of whence we spring and what we are. + + + + +HAWARDEN + + + WHEN comes the lighted day for men to read + Life's meaning, with the work before their hands + Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed, + Earth will not hear her children's wailful bands + Deplore the chieftain fall'n in sob and dirge; + Nor they look where is darkness, but on high. + The sun that dropped down our horizon's verge, + Illumes his labours through the travelled sky, + Now seen in sum, most glorious; and 'tis known + By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast. + A splendid image built of man has flown; + His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past. + Ours the great privilege to have had one + Among us who celestial tasks has done. + + + + +AT THE CLOSE + + + TO Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal, + Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st; + And that black spot in each embattled host, + Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal. + Now is it red artillery and white steel; + Till on a day will ring the victor's boast, + That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost, + Where Thy rejected grovels under heel. + So in all times of man's descent insane + To brute, did strength and craft combining strike, + Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow. + But at the close he entered Thy domain, + Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like + He tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe. + + + + +FOREST HISTORY + + +I + + + BENEATH the vans of doom did men pass in. + Heroic who came out; for round them hung + A wavering phantom's red volcano tongue, + With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin: + + + +II + + + Old Earth's original Dragon; there retired + To his last fastness; overthrown by few. + Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew. + Then man to play devorant straight was fired. + + + +III + + + More intimate became the forest fear + While pillared darkness hatched malicious life + At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife + And wary slid the glance from ear to ear. + + + +IV + + + In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray, + The forest's heart of fog on mossed morass, + On purple pool and silky cotton-grass, + Revealed where lured the swallower byway. + + + +V + + + Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound + Off walls of distance, left each mounted height. + It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite + Of humble human being, held the ground. + + + +VI + + + Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow + The feet sustained by track of feet pursued + Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood + By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe. + + + +VII + + + Anon a mason's work amazed the sight, + And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode. + They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed; + Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight. + + + +VIII + + + What words they taught were nails to scratch the head. + Benignant works explained the chanting brood. + Their monastery lit black solitude, + As one might think a star that heavenward led. + + + +IX + + + Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet, + Like some gold flower nightly inward curled, + Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world, + Or played with it, and had their white retreat. + + + +X + + + Into big books of metal clasps they pored. + They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays. + The treasures women are whose aim is praise, + Was shown in them: the Garden half restored. + + + +XI + + + A deluge billow scoured the land off seas, + With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam. + For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home, + The lesser savage offered bogs and trees. + + + +XII + + + Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew: + And inmost spots of ancient horror shone + As temples under beams of trials bygone; + For in them sang brave times with God in view. + + + +XIII + + + Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green, + Like night's first little stars through clearing showers. + Was rumoured how a castle's falcon towers + The wilderness commanded with fierce mien. + + + +XIV + + + Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance; + For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout. + Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout, + Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance. + + + +XV + + + It might be that two errant lords across + The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry + They charged forthwith, the better man to try. + One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss. + + + +XVI + + + Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain, + The robbers into gruesome durance drew. + Swift should her hero come, like lightning's blue! + She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain. + + + +XVII + + + As we, that ere the worst her hero haps, + Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den: + A toady cave beside an ague fen, + Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps. + + + +XVIII + + + By daylight now the forest fear could read + Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went. + Straight for the roebuck's neck the bowman spent + A dart that laughed at distance and at speed. + + + +XIX + + + Right loud the bugle's hallali elate + Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors; + And deftest hand was he from foreign wars, + But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate. + + + +XX + + + Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke; + At dawn the deer's wet nostrils blew their last. + To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast, + With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke. + + + +XXI + + + The city urchin mooned on forest air, + On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick + As swallows o'er smooth streams, and sighed him sick + For thinking that his dearer home was there. + + + +XXII + + + Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang + An old-world echo, like no mortal thing. + The hunter's horn might wind a jocund ring, + But held in ear it had a chilly clang. + + + +XXIII + + + Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time; + Some warning haunted any sound prolonged, + As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged + To hear an axe and see a township climb. + + + +XXIV + + + The forest's erewhile emperor at eve + Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales. + At midnight a small people danced the dales, + So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve + + + +XXV + + + Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats, + Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much. + The pensioned forester beside his crutch, + Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes. + + + +XXVI + + + Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart; + Devourer, and insensibly devoured; + In whom the city over forest flowered, + The forest wreathed the city's drama-mart. + + + +XXVII + + + There found he in new form that Dragon old, + From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught + How blindly each its antidote besought; + For either's breath the needs of either told. + + + +XXVIII + + + Now deep in woods, with song no sermon's drone, + He showed what charm the human concourse works: + Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks + Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone. + + + +XXIX + + + Our conquest these: if haply we retain + The reverence that ne'er will overrun + Due boundaries of realms from Nature won, + Nor let the poet's awe in rapture wane. + + + + +A GARDEN IDYL + + + WITH sagest craft Arachne worked + Her web, and at a corner lurked, + Awaiting what should plump her soon, + To case it in the death-cocoon. + Sagaciously her home she chose + For visits that would never close; + Inside my chalet-porch her feast + Plucked all the winds but chill North-east. + + The finished structure, bar on bar, + Had snatched from light to form a star, + And struck on sight, when quick with dews, + Like music of the very Muse. + Great artists pass our single sense; + We hear in seeing, strung to tense; + Then haply marvel, groan mayhap, + To think such beauty means a trap. + But Nature's genius, even man's + At best, is practical in plans; + Subservient to the needy thought, + However rare the weapon wrought. + As long as Nature holds it good + To urge her creatures' quest for food + Will beauty stamp the just intent + Of weapons upon service bent. + For beauty is a flower of roots + Embedded lower than our boots; + Out of the primal strata springs, + And shows for crown of useful things + + Arachne's dream of prey to size + Aspired; so she could nigh despise + The puny specks the breezes round + Supplied, and let them shake unwound; + Assured of her fat fly to come; + Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum; + Who takes the fatal odds in fight, + And gives repast an appetite, + By plunging, whizzing, till his wings + Are webbed, and in the lists he swings, + A shrouded lump, for her to see + Her banquet in her victory. + + This matron of the unnumbered threads, + One day of dandelions' heads + Distributing their gray perruques + Up every gust, I watched with looks + Discreet beside the chalet-door; + And gracefully a light wind bore, + Direct upon my webster's wall, + A monster in the form of ball; + The mildest captive ever snared, + That neither struggled nor despaired, + On half the net invading hung, + And plain as in her mother tongue, + While low the weaver cursed her lures, + Remarked, "You have me; I am yours." + + Thrice magnified, in phantom shape, + Her dream of size she saw, agape. + Midway the vast round-raying beard + A desiccated midge appeared; + Whose body pricked the name of meal, + Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal; + Provocative of dread and wrath, + Contempt and horror, in one froth, + Inextricable, insensible, + His poison presence there would dwell, + Declaring him her dream fulfilled, + A catch to compliment the skilled; + And she reduced to beaky skin, + Disgraceful among kith and kin + + Against her corner, humped and aged, + Arachne wrinkled, past enraged, + Beyond disgust or hope in guile. + Ridiculously volatile + He seemed to her last spark of mind; + And that in pallid ash declined + Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt, + Wherein throughout her frame she felt + That he, the light wind's libertine, + Without a scoff, without a grin, + And mannered like the courtly few, + Who merely danced when light winds blew, + Impervious to beak and claws, + Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was; + Of whom, as actors in old scenes, + Had grannam weavers warned their weans, + With word, that less than feather-weight, + He smote the web like bolt of Fate. + + This muted drama, hour by hour, + I watched amid a world in flower, + Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid + Their gray-blue o'er the grass's blade, + And still along the garden-run + The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun. + Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance + Her visitor performed a dance; + She puckered thinner; he the same + As when on that light wind he came. + + Next day was told what deeds of night + Were done; the web had vanished quite; + With it the strange opposing pair; + And listless waved on vacant air, + For her adieu to heart's content, + A solitary filament. + + + + +FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE + + + SPRUNG of the father blood, the mother brain, + Are they who point our pathway and sustain. + They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired. + When they do meet, it is our earth inspired. + + To see Life's formless offspring and subdue + Desire of times unripe, we have these two, + Whose union is right reason: join they hands, + The world shall know itself and where it stands; + What cowering angel and what upright beast + Make man, behold, nor count the low the least, + Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers. + When these two meet, a point of time is ours. + + As in a land of waterfalls, that flow + Smooth for the leap on their great voice below, + Some eddies near the brink borne swift along, + Will capture hearing with the liquid song, + So, while the headlong world's imperious force + Resounded under, heard I these discourse. + + First words, where down my woodland walk she led, + To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said: + + --Your faith in me appals, to shake my own, + When still I find you in this mire alone. + + --The few steps taken at a funeral pace + By men had slain me but for those you trace. + + --Look I once back, a broken pinion I: + Black as the rebel angels rained from sky! + + --Needs must you drink of me while here you live, + And make me rich in feeling I can give. + + --A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow: + Yet must I read my sister for the How. + My daisy better knows her God of beams + Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems. + She hath the secret never fieriest reach + Of wing shall master till men hear her teach. + + --Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough, + My semblance when I have you not as now. + The quiet creatures who escape mishap + Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap: + A picture of the settled peace desired + By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired. + I listen at their breasts: is there no jar + Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are, + And such a picture as the piercing mind + Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned + Are my true pupils while the world is brute. + What edict of the stronger keeps me mute, + Stronger impels the motion of my heart. + I am not Resignation's counterpart. + If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word, + Content, but how to savour hope deferred. + We come of earth, and rich of earth may be; + Soon carrion if very earth are we! + The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use + Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce; + Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat, + And pass despised; "a-cold for lack of heat," + Like other corpses, but without death's plea. + + --My sister calls for battle; is it she? + + --Rather a world of pressing men in arms, + Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms + Each drowsy malady and coiling vice + With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price! + No home is here for peace while evil breeds, + While error governs, none; and must the seeds + You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain, + Lie barren at the doorway of the brain, + Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood + Moisten, and make new channels of its flood! + + --My sober little maid, when we meet first, + Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst. + So can I not of her till circumstance + Drugs cravings. Here we see how men advance + A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred, + Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the word + Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march, + As to band-music under Victory's arch. + Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then + The beauty of frank animals had men. + + --Observe them, and down rearward for a term, + Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm. + Thence look this way, across the fields that show + Men's early form of speech for Yes and No. + My sister a bruised infant's utterance had; + And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad. + I knew my home where I had choice to feel + The toad beneath a harrow or a heel. + + --Speak of this Age. + + --When you it shall discern + Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn. + + --For neither of us has it any care; + Its learning is through Science to despair. + + --Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not + With evil, casts the burden of its lot. + This Age climbs earth. + + --To challenge heaven. + + --Not less + The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness! + That know I, though the echoes of it wail, + For one step upward on the crags you scale. + Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust, + Which means our soul asleep or body's lust, + Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat + A temperate common music, sunlike heat + The happiness not predatory sheds! + + --But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads, + Now rages to outdo a horny Past. + Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast + Are thrown by every novel light upraised. + The world's whole round smokes ominously, amazed + And trembling as its pregnant AEtna swells. + Combustibles on hot combustibles + Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire + The mountain-torrent of infernal ire + And leave the track of devils where men built. + Perceptive of a doom, the sinner's guilt + Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud, + If drops the chillness of a passing cloud, + To conscience, reason, human love; in vain: + None save they but the souls which them contain. + No extramural God, the God within + Alone gives aid to city charged with sin. + A world that for the spur of fool and knave, + Sweats in its laboratory, what shall save? + But men who ply their wits in such a school, + Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool. + + --Much have I studied hard Necessity! + To know her Wisdom's mother, and that we + May deem the harshness of her later cries + In labour a sure goad to prick the wise, + If men among the warnings which convulse, + Can gravely dread without the craven's pulse. + Long ere the rising of this Age of ours, + The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers. + Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring, + And are as lasting as the parent thing. + Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill, + They might o'ermatch and have mankind at will. + + Behold such army gathering: ours the spur, + No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer. + Not fool or knave is now the enemy + O'ershadowing men, 'tis Folly, Knavery! + A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach. + Now must the brother soul alive in each, + His traitorous individual devildom + Hold subject lest the grand destruction come. + Dimly men see it menacing apace + To overthrow, perchance uproot the race. + Within, without, they are a field of tares: + Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares, + And wherefore warrior service they must yield, + Shines visible as life on either field. + That is my comfort, following shock on shock, + Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock. + Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night, + Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight, + Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect, + The human and Satanic intellect, + Determined for their uses to control + What forces on the earth and under roll, + Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand + Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land. + They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are: + Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war. + + --My sister, as I read them in my glass, + Their field of tares they take for pasture grass. + How waken them that have not any bent + Save browsing--the concrete indifferent! + Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff: + They fear not for the race when full the trough. + They have much fear of giving up the ghost; + And these are of mankind the unnumbered host. + + --If I could see with you, and did not faint + In beating wing, the future I would paint. + Those massed indifferents will learn to quake: + Now meanwhile is another mass awake, + Once denser than the grunters of the sty. + If I could see with you! Could I but fly! + + --The length of days that you with them have housed, + An outcast else, approves their cause espoused. + + --O true, they have a cause, and woe for us, + While still they have a cause too piteous! + Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined, + They walk no longer with a stumbler blind, + And quicken in the virtue of their cause, + To think me a poor mouther of old saws! + I wait the issue of a battling Age; + The toilers with your "troughsters" now engage; + Instructing them through their acutest sense, + How close the dangers of indifference! + Already have my people shown their worth, + More love they light, which folds the love of Earth. + That love to love of labour leads: thence love + Of humankind--earth's incense flung above. + + --Admit some other features: Faithless, mean; + Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene; + Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells + On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles; + And if I bid it face what _I_ observe, + Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve! + + --Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil, + Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil: + Disowned them as the unholiest of Time, + Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime. + Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry: + As little as Time's earliest knew the sky. + Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame + At intervals, in proof of whom they came. + To strengthen our foundations is the task + Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask, + Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves + The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves. + My sister sees no round beyond her mood; + To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood. + Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves, + It moves: O much for me to say it moves! + About his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile, + Though not the stream of the paternal smile: + And where his tide of nourishment he drives, + An Abyssinian wantonness revives. + Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims; + He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs, + The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills; + Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills. + + To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers, + He is the vast Insensate who devours + His golden promise over leagues of seed, + Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed. + The races which on barbarous force begin, + Inherit onward of their origin, + And cancelled blessings will the current length + Reveal till they know need of shaping strength. + 'Tis not in men to recognize the need + Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed. + Then may sharp suffering their nature grind; + Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind. + Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed, + For tens up the safe mountains at his head. + Few would be fed, not far his course prolong, + Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong. + + --That rings of truth! More do your people thrive; + Your Many are more merrily alive + Than erewhile when I gloried in the page + Of radiant singer and anointed sage. + Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil; + Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil! + All structures built upon a narrow space + Must fall, from having not your hosts for base. + O thrice must one be you, to see them shift + Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift; + With faith, that of privations and spilt blood, + Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood! + And thrice must one be you, to wait release + From duress in the swamp of their increase. + At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest, + A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed, + Philosophers behold; desponding view. + Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few; + Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins, + Dive down the fumy AEtna of their brains. + Belated vessels on a rising sea, + They seem: they pass! + + --But not Philosophy! + + --Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise + Nought but the coward in us! That way lies + The wisdom making passage through our slough. + Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow; + Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait. + Philosophy is Life's one match for Fate. + That photosphere of our high fountain One, + Our spirit's Lord and Reason's fostering sun, + Philosophy, shall light us in the shade, + Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid. + Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed, + Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good! + Advantage to the Many: that we name + God's voice; have there the surety in our aim. + This thought unto my sister do I owe, + And irony and satire off me throw. + They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds, + Where numbers crave their sustenance in words. + Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen, + Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene. + Who never yet of scattered lamps was born + To speed a world, a marching world to warn, + But sunward from the vivid Many springs, + Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings. + + + + +FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETER VERSE + + +THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES + + + ILIAD, B. I. V. 149 + + "HEIGH me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one, + Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians, + Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen? + I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armed Trojans, + Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done; + Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen; + Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests + Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome + Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters. + O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justice + Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed! + Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest. + Worse, it is thou whose threat 'tis to ravish my prize from me, + portion + Won with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of Achaia. + Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when Achaians + Gave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage. + Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the combat, + Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us, + Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessed thing bore + Off to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the bloodshed! + So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems me + Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in prospect, + I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and wealth-store." + + + +V. 225 + + + "Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, thou! + Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict, + Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia + Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a + death-stroke. + Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians, + Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against + thee. + Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects; + Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one. + Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise: + Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-buds + Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the + mountains, + No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal clipped + off + Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia, + Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement, + Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent; + Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia + Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in an anguish, + How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying Hector + Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy + heart-strings, + Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of + Achaians." + + + +MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS + + + ILIAD, B. II V. 455 + + LIKE as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous, + Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far, + So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the + splendour + Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault. + They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks, + Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the + wild-swans, + Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaistros; + Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions, + Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them + resoundeth; + So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings poured + forth + On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath them + Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the + horse-hooves. + Stopped they then on the fair-flower'd field of Scamander, their + thousands + Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season. + Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse, + Clouds of them, under some herdsman's wonning, where then are the + milk-pails + Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time; + Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held, + Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush + them. + Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of goats, + know + Easily one from the other when all get mixed o'er the pasture, + So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for + onslaught, + Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon, + He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his thunder, + He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon. + + + +AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT + + + ILIAD, B. XI. V. 148 + + THESE, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the + thickest, + Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved Achaians. + Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion, + Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust-cloud, + Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering + horse-hooves) + Hewed with the sword's sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon + Followed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the Argives. + + Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclipped woodland, + This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the + scrubwood + Stretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire's fury rageing, + So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered + Trojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened, + Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field, + Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were + outstretched + Flat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates. + + + +PARIS AND DIOMEDES + + + ILIAD; B. XI V. 378 + + SO he, with a clear shout of laughter, + Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise: + "Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had + pierced thee + Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath! + Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their direst, + They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a lion." + Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes: + "Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins! + If that thou dared'st face me here out in the open with weapons, + Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows. + Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole; + Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant. + Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that's emasculate, noughtworth! + Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the + slightest, + My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway. + Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen + slaughtered, + Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his + blood-drops, + Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women." + + + +HYPNOS ON IDA + + + ILIAD, B. XIV. V. 283 + + THEY then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts, + Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos, + Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland. + There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant, + Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida + Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether. + There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for + concealment, + That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the + mountains, + Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis. + + + +CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS + + + ILIAD, B. XIV. V. 394 + + NOT the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle, + Whipped from the sea's deeps up by the terrible blast of the + Northwind; + Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire's rush so arousing, + Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland; + Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees' + Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost; + As rose then stupendous the Trojan's cry and Achaians', + Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the conflict. + + + +THE HORSES OF ACHILLES + + + ILIAD, B. XVII. V. 426 + + SO now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground, + Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown there, + Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector. + Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores, + Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and + oft, too, + Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten. + Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont spacious, + Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians. + Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone, + Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under; + Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car, + Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting incessant + Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids, + Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted, + Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the + yoke-bow. + Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shook + Pitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his bosom; + "Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal + Master; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless! + Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have + heart-grief? + 'Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder nowhere + Aught over earth's range found that is gifted with breath and has + movement." + + + +THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE + + + FROM THE _Mireio_ OF MISTRAL + + A HUNDRED mares, all white! their manes + Like mace-reed of the marshy plains + Thick-tufted, wavy, free o' the shears: + And when the fiery squadron rears + Bursting at speed, each mane appears + Even as the white scarf of a fay + Floating upon their necks along the heavens away. + + O race of humankind, take shame! + For never yet a hand could tame, + Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue + The mares of the Camargue. I have known, + By treason snared, some captives shown; + Expatriate from their native Rhone, + Led off, their saline pastures far from view: + + And on a day, with prompt rebound, + They have flung their riders to the ground, + And at a single gallop, scouring free, + Wide-nostril'd to the wind, twice ten + Of long marsh-leagues devour'd, and then, + Back to the Vacares again, + After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea + + For of this savage race unbent, + The ocean is the element. + Of old escaped from Neptune's car, full sure, + Still with the white foam fleck'd are they, + And when the sea puffs black from grey, + And ships part cables, loudly neigh + The stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar; + + And keen as a whip they lash and crack + Their tails that drag the dust, and back + Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he, + The God, drives deep his trident teeth, + Who in one horror, above, beneath, + Bids storm and watery deluge seethe, + And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea. + + _Cant._ iv. + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + Butler and Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A READING OF LIFE*** + + +******* This file should be named 1042-0.txt or 1042-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/4/1042 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1043-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1043-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1b6c4d62 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1043-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10028 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1043 *** + +THE STORY OF EVOLUTION + +By Joseph McCabe + +1912 + + + + +PREFACE + +An ingenious student of science once entertained his generation with a +theory of how one might behold again all the stirring chapters that make +up the story of the earth. The living scene of our time is lit by the +light of the sun, and for every few rays that enter the human eye, and +convey the image of it to the human mind, great floods of the reflected +light pour out, swiftly and indefinitely, into space. Imagine, then, +a man moving out into space more rapidly than light, his face turned +toward the earth. Flashing through the void at, let us say, a million +miles a second, he would (if we can overlook the dispersion of the +rays of light) overtake in succession the light that fell on the French +Revolution, the Reformation, the Norman Conquest, and the faces of the +ancient empires. He would read, in reverse order, the living history of +man and whatever lay before the coming of man. + +Few thought, as they smiled over this fairy tale of science, that +some such panoramic survey of the story of the earth, and even of the +heavens, might one day be made in a leisure hour by ordinary mortals; +that in the soil on which they trod were surer records of the past than +in its doubtful literary remains, and in the deeper rocks were records +that dimly lit a vast abyss of time of which they never dreamed. It +is the supreme achievement of modern science to have discovered and +deciphered these records. The picture of the past which they afford is, +on the whole, an outline sketch. Here and there the details, the colour, +the light and shade, may be added; but the greater part of the canvas is +left to the more skilful hand of a future generation, and even the +broad lines are at times uncertain. Yet each age would know how far its +scientific men have advanced in constructing that picture of the growth +of the heavens and the earth, and the aim of the present volume is to +give, in clear and plain language, as full an account of the story as +the present condition of our knowledge and the limits of the volume will +allow. The author has been for many years interested in the evolution +of things, or the way in which suns and atoms, fishes and flowers, hills +and elephants, even man and his institutions, came to be what they +are. Lecturing and writing on one or other phase of the subject have, +moreover, taught him a language which the inexpert seem to understand, +although he is not content merely to give a superficial description of +the past inhabitants of the earth. + +The particular features which, it is hoped, may give the book a +distinctive place in the large literature of evolution are, first, that +it includes the many evolutionary discoveries of the last few years, +gathers its material from the score of sciences which confine themselves +to separate aspects of the universe, and blends all these facts and +discoveries in a more or less continuous chronicle of the life of the +heavens and the earth. Then the author has endeavoured to show, not +merely how, but why, scene succeeds scene in the chronicle of the earth, +and life slowly climbs from level to level. He has taken nature in the +past as we find it to-day: an interconnected whole, in which the changes +of land and sea, of heat and cold, of swamp and hill, are faithfully +reflected in the forms of its living population. And, finally, he has +written for those who are not students of science, or whose knowledge +may be confined to one branch of science, and used a plain speech which +assumes no previous knowledge on the reader's part. + +For the rest, it will be found that no strained effort is made to trace +pedigrees of animals and plants when the material is scanty; that, if on +account of some especial interest disputable or conjectural speculations +are admitted, they are frankly described as such; and that the more +important differences of opinion which actually divide astronomers, +geologists, biologists, and anthropologists are carefully taken into +account and briefly explained. A few English and American works are +recommended for the convenience of those who would study particular +chapters more closely, but it has seemed useless, in such a work, +to give a bibliography of the hundreds of English, American, French, +German, and Italian works which have been consulted. + + +CONTENTS + + I. THE DISCOVERY OF THE UNIVERSE + II. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE UNIVERSE + III. THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF WORLDS + IV. THE PREPARATION OF THE EARTH + V. THE BEGINNING OF LIFE + VI. THE INFANCY OF THE EARTH + VII. THE PASSAGE TO THE LAND + VIII. THE COAL-FOREST + IX. THE ANIMALS OF THE COAL-FOREST + X. THE PERMIAN REVOLUTION + XI. THE MIDDLE AGES OF THE EARTH + XII. THE AGE OF REPTILES + XIII. THE BIRD AND THE MAMMAL + XIV. IN THE DAYS OF THE CHALK + XV. THE TERTIARY ERA + XVI. THE FLOWER AND THE INSECT + XVII. THE ORIGIN OF OUR MAMMALS + XVIII. THE EVOLUTION OF MAN + XIX. MAN AND THE GREAT ICE-AGE + XX. THE DAWN OF CIVILISATION + XXI. EVOLUTION IN HISTORY INDEX + + + + + +THE STORY OF EVOLUTION + + + +CHAPTER I. THE DISCOVERY OF THE UNIVERSE + +The beginning of the victorious career of modern science was very +largely due to the making of two stimulating discoveries at the close +of the Middle Ages. One was the discovery of the earth: the other the +discovery of the universe. Men were confined, like molluscs in their +shells, by a belief that they occupied the centre of a comparatively +small disk--some ventured to say a globe--which was poised in a +mysterious way in the middle of a small system of heavenly bodies. The +general feeling was that these heavenly bodies were lamps hung on a not +too remote ceiling for the purpose of lighting their ways. Then certain +enterprising sailors--Vasco da Gama, Maghalaes, Columbus--brought home +the news that the known world was only one side of an enormous globe, +and that there were vast lands and great peoples thousands of miles +across the ocean. The minds of men in Europe had hardly strained +their shells sufficiently to embrace this larger earth when the second +discovery was reported. The roof of the world, with its useful little +system of heavenly bodies, began to crack and disclose a profound +and mysterious universe surrounding them on every side. One cannot +understand the solidity of the modern doctrine of the formation of the +heavens and the earth until one appreciates this revolution. + +Before the law of gravitation had been discovered it was almost +impossible to regard the universe as other than a small and compact +system. We shall see that a few daring minds pierced the veil, and +peered out wonderingly into the real universe beyond, but for the +great mass of men it was quite impossible. To them the modern idea of +a universe consisting of hundreds of millions of bodies, each weighing +billions of tons, strewn over billions of miles of space, would have +seemed the dream of a child or a savage. Material bodies were "heavy," +and would "fall down" if they were not supported. The universe, they +said, was a sensible scientific structure; things were supported in +their respective places. A great dome, of some unknown but compact +material, spanned the earth, and sustained the heavenly bodies. It might +rest on the distant mountains, or be borne on the shoulders of an Atlas; +or the whole cosmic scheme might be laid on the back of a gigantic +elephant, and--if you pressed--the elephant might stand on the hard +shell of a tortoise. But you were not encouraged to press. + +The idea of the vault had come from Babylon, the first home of science. +No furnaces thickened that clear atmosphere, and the heavy-robed priests +at the summit of each of the seven-staged temples were astronomers. +Night by night for thousands of years they watched the stars and +planets tracing their undeviating paths across the sky. To explain their +movements the priest-astronomers invented the solid firmament. Beyond +the known land, encircling it, was the sea, and beyond the sea was a +range of high mountains, forming another girdle round the earth. On +these mountains the dome of the heavens rested, much as the dome of +St. Paul's rests on its lofty masonry. The sun travelled across its +under-surface by day, and went back to the east during the night through +a tunnel in the lower portion of the vault. To the common folk the +priests explained that this framework of the world was the body of an +ancient and disreputable goddess. The god of light had slit her in two, +"as you do a dried fish," they said, and made the plain of the earth +with one half and the blue arch of the heavens with the other. + +So Chaldaea lived out its 5000 years without discovering the universe. +Egypt adopted the idea from more scientific Babylon. Amongst the +fragments of its civilisation we find representations of the firmament +as a goddess, arching over the earth on her hands and feet, condemned to +that eternal posture by some victorious god. The idea spread amongst the +smaller nations which were lit by the civilisation of Babylon and Egypt. +Some blended it with coarse old legends; some, like the Persians and +Hebrews, refined it. The Persians made fire a purer and lighter spirit, +so that the stars would need no support. But everywhere the blue vault +hemmed in the world and the ideas of men. It was so close, some said, +that the birds could reach it. At last the genius of Greece brooded over +the whole chaos of cosmical speculations. + +The native tradition of Greece was a little more helpful than the +Babylonian teaching. First was chaos; then the heavier matter sank to +the bottom, forming the disk of the earth, with the ocean poured round +it, and the less coarse matter floated as an atmosphere above it, +and the still finer matter formed an "aether" above the atmosphere. +A remarkably good guess, in its very broad outline; but the solid +firmament still arched the earth, and the stars were little undying +fires in the vault. The earth itself was small and flat. It stretched +(on the modern map) from about Gibraltar to the Caspian, and from +Central Germany--where the entrance to the lower world was located--to +the Atlas mountains. But all the varied and conflicting culture of the +older empires was now passing into Greece, lighting up in succession the +civilisations of Asia Minor, the Greek islands, and then Athens and its +sister states. Men began to think. + +The first genius to have a glimpse of the truth seems to have been +the grave and mystical Pythagorus (born about 582 B.C.). He taught his +little school that the earth was a globe, not a disk, and that it turned +on its axis in twenty-four hours. The earth and the other planets +were revolving round the central fire of the system; but the sun was a +reflection of this central fire, not the fire itself. Even Pythagoras, +moreover, made the heavens a solid sphere revolving, with its stars, +round the central fire; and the truth he discovered was mingled with so +much mysticism, and confined to so small and retired a school, that it +was quickly lost again. In the next generation Anaxagoras taught that +the sun was a vast globe of white-hot iron, and that the stars were +material bodies made white-hot by friction with the ether. A generation +later the famous Democritus came nearer than any to the truth. The +universe was composed of an infinite number of indestructible particles, +called "atoms," which had gradually settled from a state of chaotic +confusion to their present orderly arrangement in large masses. The sun +was a body of enormous size, and the points of light in the Milky Way +were similar suns at a tremendous distance from the earth. Our universe, +moreover, was only one of an infinite number of universes, and an +eternal cycle of destruction and re-formation was running through these +myriads of worlds. + +By sheer speculation Greece was well on the way of discovery. Then the +mists of philosophy fell between the mind of Greece and nature, and +the notions of Democritus were rejected with disdain; and then, very +speedily, the decay of the brilliant nation put an end to its feverish +search for truth. Greek culture passed to Alexandria, where it met the +remains of the culture of Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia, and one more +remarkable effort was made to penetrate the outlying universe before the +night of the Middle Ages fell on the old world. + +Astronomy was ardently studied at Alexandria, and was fortunately +combined with an assiduous study of mathematics. Aristarchus (about +320-250 B.C.) calculated that the sun was 84,000,000 miles away; a vast +expansion of the solar system and, for the time, a remarkable approach +to the real figure (92,000,000) Eratosthenes (276-196 B.C.) made an +extremely good calculation of the size of the earth, though he held it +to be the centre of a small universe. He concluded that it was a globe +measuring 27,000 (instead of 23,700) miles in circumference. Posidonius +(135-51 B.C.) came even nearer with a calculation that the circumference +was between 25,000 and 19,000 miles; and he made a fairly correct +estimate of the diameter, and therefore distance, of the sun. Hipparchus +(190-120 B.C.) made an extremely good calculation of the distance of the +moon. + +By the brilliant work of the Alexandrian astronomers the old world +seemed to be approaching the discovery of the universe. Men were +beginning to think in millions, to gaze boldly into deep abysses of +space, to talk of vast fiery globes that made the earth insignificant +But the splendid energy gradually failed, and the long line was closed +by Ptolemaeus, who once more put the earth in the centre of the system, +and so imposed what is called the Ptolemaic system on Europe. The keen +school-life of Alexandria still ran on, and there might have been a +return to the saner early doctrines, but at last Alexandrian culture was +extinguished in the blood of the aged Hypatia, and the night fell. +Rome had had no genius for science; though Lucretius gave an immortal +expression to the views of Democritus and Epicurus, and such writers +as Cicero and Pliny did great service to a later age in preserving +fragments of the older discoveries. The curtains were once more drawn +about the earth. The glimpses which adventurous Greeks had obtained of +the great outlying universe were forgotten for a thousand years. The +earth became again the little platform in the centre of a little world, +on which men and women played their little parts, preening themselves on +their superiority to their pagan ancestors. + +I do not propose to tell the familiar story of the revival at any +length. As far as the present subject is concerned, it was literally +a Renascence, or re-birth, of Greek ideas. Constantinople having been +taken by the Turks (1453), hundreds of Greek scholars, with their old +literature, sought refuge in Europe, and the vigorous brain of the young +nations brooded over the ancient speculations, just as the vigorous +young brain of Greece had done two thousand years before. Copernicus +(1473-1543) acknowledges that he found the secret of the movements +of the heavenly bodies in the speculations of the old Greek thinkers. +Galilei (1564-1642) enlarged the Copernican system with the aid of the +telescope; and the telescope was an outcome of the new study of optics +which had been inspired in Roger Bacon and other medieval scholars by +the optical works, directly founded on the Greek, of the Spanish Moors. +Giordano Bruno still further enlarged the system; he pictured the +universe boldly as an infinite ocean of liquid ether, in which the +stars, with retinues of inhabited planets, floated majestically. Bruno +was burned at the stake (1600); but the curtains that had so long been +drawn about the earth were now torn aside for ever, and men looked +inquiringly into the unfathomable depths beyond. Descartes (1596-1650) +revived the old Greek idea of a gradual evolution of the heavens and the +earth from a primitive chaos of particles, taught that the stars stood +out at unimaginable distances in the ocean of ether, and imagined the +ether as stirring in gigantic whirlpools, which bore cosmic bodies in +their orbits as the eddy in the river causes the cork to revolve. + +These stimulating conjectures made a deep impression on the new age. +A series of great astronomers had meantime been patiently and +scientifically laying the foundations of our knowledge. Kepler +(1571-1630) formulated the laws of the movement of the planets; Newton +(1642-1727) crowned the earlier work with his discovery of the real +agency that sustains cosmic bodies in their relative positions. The +primitive notion of a material frame and the confining dome of the +ancients were abandoned. We know now that a framework of the most +massive steel would be too frail to hold together even the moon and the +earth. It would be rent by the strain. The action of gravitation is the +all-sustaining power. Once introduce that idea, and the great ocean of +ether might stretch illimitably on every side, and the vastest bodies +might be scattered over it and traverse it in stupendous paths. Thus it +came about that, as the little optic tube of Galilei slowly developed +into the giant telescope of Herschel, and then into the powerful +refracting telescopes of the United States of our time; as the new +science of photography provided observers with a new eye--a sensitive +plate that will register messages, which the human eye cannot detect, +from far-off regions; and as a new instrument, the spectroscope, endowed +astronomers with a power of perceiving fresh aspects of the inhabitants +of space, the horizon rolled backward, and the mind contemplated a +universe of colossal extent and power. + +Let us try to conceive this universe before we study its evolution. I +do not adopt any of the numerous devices that have been invented for the +purpose of impressing on the imagination the large figures we must +use. One may doubt if any of them are effective, and they are at least +familiar. Our solar system--the family of sun and planets which had been +sheltered under a mighty dome resting on the hill-tops--has turned out +to occupy a span of space some 16,000,000,000 miles in diameter. That is +a very small area in the new universe. Draw a circle, 100 billion miles +in diameter, round the sun, and you will find that it contains only +three stars besides the sun. In other words, a sphere of space measuring +300 billion miles in circumference--we will not venture upon the number +of cubic miles--contains only four stars (the sun, alpha Centauri, +21,185 Lalande, and 61 Cygni). However, this part of space seems to be +below the average in point of population, and we must adopt a different +way of estimating the magnitude of the universe from the number of its +stellar citizens. + +Beyond the vast sphere of comparatively empty space immediately +surrounding our sun lies the stellar universe into which our great +telescopes are steadily penetrating. Recent astronomers give various +calculations, ranging from 200,000,000 to 2,000,000,000, of the number +of stars that have yet come within our faintest knowledge. Let us accept +the modest provisional estimate of 500,000,000. Now, if we had reason to +think that these stars were of much the same size and brilliance as our +sun, we should be able roughly to calculate their distance from their +faintness. We cannot do this, as they differ considerably in size and +intrinsic brilliance. Sirius is more than twice the size of our sun and +gives out twenty times as much light. Canopus emits 20,000 times as much +light as the sun, but we cannot say, in this case, how much larger it is +than the sun. Arcturus, however, belongs to the same class of stars as +our sun, and astronomers conclude that it must be thousands of times +larger than the sun. A few stars are known to be smaller than the sun. +Some are, intrinsically, far more brilliant; some far less brilliant. + +Another method has been adopted, though this also must be regarded +with great reserve. The distance of the nearer stars can be positively +measured, and this has been done in a large number of cases. The +proportion of such cases to the whole is still very small, but, as far +as the results go, we find that stars of the first magnitude are, on the +average, nearly 200 billion miles away; stars of the second magnitude +nearly 300 billion; and stars of the third magnitude 450 billion. If +this fifty per cent increase of distance for each lower magnitude of +stars were certain and constant, the stars of the eighth magnitude would +be 3000 billion miles away, and stars of the sixteenth magnitude would +be 100,000 billion miles away; and there are still two fainter classes +of stars which are registered on long-exposure photographs. The mere +vastness of these figures is immaterial to the astronomer, but he warns +us that the method is uncertain. We may be content to conclude that the +starry universe over which our great telescopes keep watch stretches for +thousands, and probably tens of thousands, of billions of miles. There +are myriads of stars so remote that, though each is a vast incandescent +globe at a temperature of many thousand degrees, and though their +light is concentrated on the mirrors or in the lenses of our largest +telescopes and directed upon the photographic plate at the rate of more +than 800 billion waves a second, they take several hours to register the +faintest point of light on the plate. + +When we reflect that the universe has grown with the growth of our +telescopes and the application of photography we wonder whether we may +as yet see only a fraction of the real universe, as small in comparison +with the whole as the Babylonian system was in comparison with ours. We +must be content to wonder. Some affirm that the universe is infinite; +others that it is limited. We have no firm ground in science for either +assertion. Those who claim that the system is limited point out that, as +the stars decrease in brightness, they increase so enormously in number +that the greater faintness is more than compensated, and therefore, if +there were an infinite series of magnitudes, the midnight sky would be a +blaze of light. But this theoretical reasoning does not allow for dense +regions of space that may obstruct the light, or vast regions of vacancy +between vast systems of stars. Even apart from the evidence that dark +nebulae or other special light-absorbing regions do exist, the question +is under discussion in science at the present moment whether light is +not absorbed in the passage through ordinary space. There is reason to +think that it is. Let us leave precarious speculations about finiteness +and infinity to philosophers, and take the universe as we know it. + +Picture, then, on the more moderate estimate, these 500,000,000 suns +scattered over tens of thousands of billions of miles. Whether they form +one stupendous system, and what its structure may be, is too obscure a +subject to be discussed here. Imagine yourself standing at a point +from which you can survey the whole system and see into the depths and +details of it. At one point is a single star (like our sun), billions +of miles from its nearest neighbour, wearing out its solitary life in a +portentous discharge of energy. Commonly the stars are in pairs, turning +round a common centre in periods that may occupy hundreds of days or +hundreds of years. Here and there they are gathered into clusters, +sometimes to the number of thousands in a cluster, travelling together +over the desert of space, or trailing in lines like luminous caravans. +All are rushing headlong at inconceivable speeds. Few are known to be so +sluggish as to run, like our sun, at only 8000 miles an hour. One of +the "fixed" stars of the ancients, the mighty Arcturus, darts along at +a rate of more than 250 miles a second. As they rush, their surfaces +glowing at a temperature anywhere between 1000 and 20,000 degrees C., +they shake the environing space with electric waves from every tiny +particle of their body at a rate of from 400 billion to 800 billion +waves a second. And somewhere round the fringe of one of the smaller +suns there is a little globe, more than a million times smaller than the +solitary star it attends, lost in the blaze of its light, on which human +beings find a home during a short and late chapter of its history. + +Look at it again from another aspect. Every colour of the rainbow is +found in the stars. Emerald, azure, ruby, gold, lilac, topaz, fawn--they +shine with wonderful and mysterious beauty. But, whether these more +delicate shades be really in the stars or no, three colours are +certainly found in them. The stars sink from bluish white to yellow, and +on to deep red. The immortal fires of the Greeks are dying. Piercing the +depths with a dull red glow, here and there, are the dying suns; and if +you look closely you will see, flitting like ghosts across the light +of their luminous neighbours, the gaunt frames of dead worlds. Here and +there are vast stretches of loose cosmic dust that seems to be gathering +into embryonic stars; here and there are stars in infancy or in +strenuous youth. You detect all the chief phases of the making of a +world in the forms and fires of these colossal aggregations of matter. +Like the chance crowd on which you may look down in the square of a +great city, they range from the infant to the worn and sinking aged. +There is this difference, however, that the embryos of worlds sprawl, +gigantic and luminous, across the expanse; that the dark and mighty +bodies of the dead rush, like the rest, at twenty or fifty miles a +second; and that at intervals some appalling blaze, that dims even the +fearful furnaces of the living, seems to announce the resurrection of +the dead. And there is this further difference, that, strewn about the +intermediate space between the gigantic spheres, is a mass of cosmic +dust--minute grains, or large blocks, or shoals consisting of myriads of +pieces, or immeasurable clouds of fine gas--that seems to be the rubbish +left over after the making of worlds, or the material gathering for the +making of other worlds. + +This is the universe that the nineteenth century discovered and the +twentieth century is interpreting. Before we come to tell the fortunes +of our little earth we have to see how matter is gathered into these +stupendous globes of fire, how they come sometimes to have smaller +bodies circling round them on which living things may appear, how they +supply the heat and light and electricity that the living things need, +and how the story of life on a planet is but a fragment of a larger +story. We have to study the birth and death of worlds, perhaps the most +impressive of all the studies that modern science offers us. Indeed, if +we would read the whole story of evolution, there is an earlier chapter +even than this; the latest chapter to be opened by science, the first to +be read. We have to ask where the matter, which we are going to gather +into worlds, itself came from; to understand more clearly what is the +relation to it of the forces or energies--gravitation, electricity, +etc.--with which we glibly mould it into worlds, or fashion it into +living things; and, above all, to find out its relation to this +mysterious ocean of ether in which it is found. + +Less than half a century ago the making of worlds was, in popular +expositions of science, a comparatively easy business. Take an +indefinite number of atoms of various gases and metals, scatter them +in a fine cloud over some thousands of millions of miles of space, let +gravitation slowly compress the cloud into a globe, its temperature +rising through the compression, let it throw off a ring of matter, which +in turn gravitation will compress into a globe, and you have your earth +circulating round the sun. It is not quite so simple; in any case, +serious men of science wanted to know how these convenient and assorted +atoms happened to be there at all, and what was the real meaning of this +equally convenient gravitation. There was a greater truth than he knew +in the saying of an early physicist, that the atom had the look of a +"manufactured article." It was increasingly felt, as the nineteenth +century wore on, that the atoms had themselves been evolved out of some +simpler material, and that ether might turn out to be the primordial +chaos. There were even those who felt that ether would prove to be the +one source of all matter and energy. And just before the century closed +a light began to shine in those deeper abysses of the submaterial world, +and the foundations of the universe began to appear. + + + +CHAPTER II. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE UNIVERSE + +To the mind of the vast majority of earlier observers the phrase +"foundations of the universe" would have suggested something enormously +massive and solid. From what we have already seen we are prepared, on +the contrary, to pass from the inconceivably large to the inconceivably +small. Our sun is, as far as our present knowledge goes, one of modest +dimensions. Arcturus and Canopus must be thousands of times larger than +it. Yet our sun is 320,000 times heavier than the earth, and the earth +weighs some 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. But it is only in +resolving these stupendous masses into their tiniest elements that we +can reach the ultimate realities, or foundations, of the whole. + +Modern science rediscovered the atoms of Democritus, analysed the +universe into innumerable swarms of these tiny particles, and then +showed how the infinite variety of things could be built up by their +combinations. For this it was necessary to suppose that the atoms were +not all alike, but belonged to a large number of different classes. From +twenty-six letters of the alphabet we could make millions of different +words. From forty or fifty different "elements" the chemist could +construct the most varied objects in nature, from the frame of a man to +a landscape. But improved methods of research led to the discovery +of new elements, and at last the chemist found that he had seventy or +eighty of these "ultimate realities," each having its own very definite +and very different characters. As it is the experience of science to +find unity underlying variety, this was profoundly unsatisfactory, and +the search began for the great unity which underlay the atoms of matter. +The difficulty of the search may be illustrated by a few figures. Very +delicate methods were invented for calculating the size of the atoms. +Laymen are apt to smile--it is a very foolish smile--at these figures, +but it is enough to say that the independent and even more delicate +methods suggested by recent progress in physics have quite confirmed +them. + +Take a cubic millimetre of hydrogen. As a millimetre is less than 1/25th +of an inch, the reader must imagine a tiny bubble of gas that would fit +comfortably inside the letter "o" as it is printed here. The various +refined methods of the modern physicist show that there are 40,000 +billion molecules (each consisting of two atoms of the gas) in this tiny +bubble. It is a little universe, repeating on an infinitesimal scale the +numbers and energies of the stellar universe. These molecules are not +packed together, moreover, but are separated from each other by spaces +which are enormous in proportion to the size of the atoms. Through these +empty spaces the atoms dash at an average speed of more than a thousand +miles an hour, each passing something like 6,000,000,000 of its +neighbours in the course of every second. Yet this particle of gas is +a thinly populated world in comparison with a particle of metal. Take +a cubic centimetre of copper. In that very small square of solid matter +(each side of the cube measuring a little more than a third of an inch) +there are about a quadrillion atoms. It is these minute and elusive +particles that modern physics sets out to master. + +At first it was noticed that the atom of hydrogen was the smallest or +lightest of all, and the other atoms seemed to be multiples of it. +A Russian chemist, Mendeleeff, drew up a table of the elements in +illustration of this, grouping them in families, which seemed to point +to hydrogen as the common parent, or ultimate constituent, of each. When +newly discovered elements fell fairly into place in this scheme the idea +was somewhat confidently advanced that the evolution of the elements was +discovered. Thus an atom of carbon seemed to be a group of 12 atoms of +hydrogen, an atom of oxygen 16, an atom of sulphur 32, an atom of copper +64, an atom of silver 108, an atom of gold 197, and so on. But more +correct measurements showed that these figures were not quite exact, and +the fraction of inexactness killed the theory. + +Long before the end of the nineteenth century students were looking +wistfully to the ether for some explanation of the mystery. It was the +veiled statue of Isis in the scientific world, and it resolutely kept +its veil in spite of all progress. The "upper and limpid air" of the +Greeks, the cosmic ocean of Giordano Bruno, was now an established +reality. It was the vehicle that bore the terrific streams of energy +from star to planet across the immense reaches of space. As the atoms of +matter lay in it, one thought of the crystal forming in its mother-lye, +or the star forming in the nebula, and wondered whether the atom was not +in some such way condensed out of the ether. By the last decade of the +century the theory was confidently advanced--notably by Lorentz and +Larmor--though it was still without a positive basis. How the basis was +found, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, may be told very +briefly. + +Sir William Crookes had in 1874 applied himself to the task of creating +something more nearly like a vacuum than the old air-pumps afforded. +When he had found the means of reducing the quantity of gas in a tube +until it was a million times thinner than the atmosphere, he made the +experiment of sending an electric discharge through it, and found a very +curious result. From the cathode (the negative electric point) certain +rays proceeded which caused a green fluorescence on the glass of the +tube. Since the discharge did not consist of the atoms of the gas, he +concluded that it was a new and mysterious substance, which he called +"radiant matter." But no progress was made in the interpretation of +this strange material. The Crookes tube became one of the toys of +science--and the lamp of other investigators. + +In 1895 Rontgen drew closer attention to the Crookes tube by discovering +the rays which he called X-rays, but which now bear his name. They +differ from ordinary light-waves in their length, their irregularity, +and especially their power to pass through opaque bodies. A number of +distinguished physicists now took up the study of the effect of sending +an electric discharge through a vacuum, and the particles of "radiant +matter" were soon identified. Sir J. J. Thomson, especially, was +brilliantly successful in his interpretation. He proved that they were +tiny corpuscles, more than a thousand times smaller than the atom of +hydrogen, charged with negative electricity, and travelling at the +rate of thousands of miles a second. They were the "electrons" in which +modern physics sees the long-sought constituents of the atom. + +No sooner had interest been thoroughly aroused than it was announced +that a fresh discovery had opened a new shaft into the underworld. Sir +J. J. Thomson, pursuing his research, found in 1896 that compounds of +uranium sent out rays that could penetrate black paper and affect the +photographic plate; though in this case the French physicist, Becquerel, +made the discovery simultaneously' and was the first to publish it. An +army of investigators turned into the new field, and sought to penetrate +the deep abyss that had almost suddenly disclosed itself. The quickening +of astronomy by Galilei, or of zoology by Darwin, was slight in +comparison with the stirring of our physical world by these increasing +discoveries. And in 1898 M. and Mme. Curie made the further discovery +which, in the popular mind, obliterated all the earlier achievements. +They succeeded in isolating the new element, radium, which exhibits the +actual process of an atom parting with its minute constituents. + +The story of radium is so recent that a few lines will suffice to recall +as much as is needed for the purpose of this chapter. In their study of +the emanations from uranium compounds the Curies were led to isolate +the various elements of the compounds until they discovered that the +discharge was predominantly due to one specific element, radium. Radium +is itself probably a product of the disintegration of uranium, the +heaviest of known metals, with an atomic weight some 240 times greater +than that of hydrogen. But this massive atom of uranium has a life that +is computed in thousands of millions of years. It is in radium and its +offspring that we see most clearly the constitution of matter. + +A gramme (less than 15 1/2 grains) of radium contains--we will economise +our space--4x10 (superscript)21 atoms. This tiny mass is, by its +discharge, parting with its substance at the rate of one atom per second +for every 10,000,000,000 atoms; in other words, the "indestructible" +atom has, in this case, a term of life not exceeding 2500 years. In the +discharge from the radium three elements have been distinguished. The +first consists of atoms of the gas helium, which are hurled off at +between 10,000 and 20,000 miles a second. The third element (in the +order of classification) consists of waves analogous to the Rontgen +rays. But the second element is a stream of electrons, which are +expelled from the atom at the appalling speed of about 100,000 miles +a second. Professor Le Bon has calculated that it would take 340,000 +barrels of powder to discharge a bullet at that speed. But we shall see +more presently of the enormous energy displayed within the little system +of the atom. We may add that after its first transformation the radium +passes, much more quickly, through a further series of changes. The +frontiers of the atomic systems were breaking down. + +The next step was for students (notably Soddy and Rutherford) to find +that radio-activity, or spontaneous discharge out of the atomic systems, +was not confined to radium. Not only are other rare metals conspicuously +active, but it is found that such familiar surfaces as damp cellars, +rain, snow, etc., emit a lesser discharge. The value of the new +material thus provided for the student of physics may be shown by +one illustration. Sir J. J. Thomson observes that before these recent +discoveries the investigator could not detect a gas unless about a +billion molecules of it were present, and it must be remembered that the +spectroscope had already gone far beyond ordinary chemical analysis in +detecting the presence of substances in minute quantities. Since these +discoveries we can recognise a single molecule, bearing an electric +charge. + +With these extraordinary powers the physicist is able to penetrate +a world that lies immeasurably below the range of the most powerful +microscope, and introduce us to systems more bewildering than those of +the astronomer. We pass from a portentous Brobdingnagia to a still more +portentous Lilliputia. It has been ascertained that the mass of the +electron is the 1/1700th part of that of an atom of hydrogen, of which, +as we saw, billions of molecules have ample space to execute their +terrific movements within the limits of the letter "o." It has been +further shown that these electrons are identical, from whatever source +they are obtained. The physicist therefore concludes--warning us that +on this further point he is drawing a theoretical conclusion--that the +atoms of ordinary matter are made up of electrons. If that is the case, +the hydrogen atom, the lightest of all, must be a complex system of some +1700 electrons, and as we ascend the scale of atomic weight the clusters +grow larger and larger, until we come to the atoms of the heavier metals +with more than 250,000 electrons in each atom. + +But this is not the most surprising part of the discovery. Tiny as the +dimensions of the atom are, they afford a vast space for the movement of +these energetic little bodies. The speed of the stars in their courses +is slow compared with the flight of the electrons. Since they fly out of +the system, in the conditions we have described, at a speed of between +90,000 and 100,000 miles a second, they must be revolving with terrific +rapidity within it. Indeed, the most extraordinary discovery of all is +that of the energy imprisoned within these tiny systems, which men have +for ages regarded as "dead" matter. Sir J. J. Thomson calculates that, +allowing only one electron to each atom in a gramme of hydrogen, the +tiny globule of gas will contain as much energy as would be obtained by +burning thirty-five tons of coal. If, he says, an appreciable fraction +of the energy that is contained in ordinary matter were to be set free, +the earth would explode and return to its primitive nebulous condition. +Mr. Fournier d'Albe tells us that the force with which electrons repel +each other is a quadrillion times greater than the force of gravitation +that brings atoms together; and that if two grammes of pure electrons +could be placed one centimetre apart they would repel each other with a +force equal to 320 quadrillion tons. The inexpert imagination reels, +but it must be remembered that the speed of the electron is a measured +quantity, and it is within the resources of science to estimate the +force necessary to project it at that speed. [*] + + * See Sir J. J. Thomson, "The Corpuscular Theory of Matter" + (1907) and--for a more elementary presentment--"Light + Visible and Invisible" (1911); and Mr. Fournier d'Albe, "The + Electron Theory" (2nd. ed., 1907). + + +Such are the discoveries of the last fifteen years and a few of the +mathematical deductions from them. We are not yet in a position to say +positively that the atoms are composed of electrons, but it is clear +that the experts are properly modest in claiming only that this is +highly probable. The atom seems to be a little universe in which, in +combination with positive electricity (the nature of which is still +extremely obscure), from 1700 to 300,000 electrons revolve at a speed +that reaches as high as 100,000 miles a second. Instead of being +crowded together, however, in their minute system, each of them has, in +proportion to its size, as ample a space to move in as a single speck of +dust would have in a moderate-sized room (Thomson). This theory not only +meets all the facts that have been discovered in an industrious decade +of research, not only offers a splendid prospect of introducing unity +into the eighty-one different elements of the chemist, but it opens out +a still larger prospect of bringing a common measure into the diverse +forces of the universe. + +Light is already generally recognised as a rapid series of +electro-magnetic waves or pulses in ether. Magnetism becomes +intelligible as a condition of a body in which the electrons revolve +round the atom in nearly the same plane. The difference between positive +and negative electricity is at least partly illuminated. An atom will +repel an atom when its equilibrium is disturbed by the approach of an +additional electron; the physicist even follows the movement of the +added electron, and describes it revolving 2200 billion times a second +round the atom, to escape being absorbed in it. The difference between +good and bad conductors of electricity becomes intelligible. The atoms +of metals are so close together that the roaming electrons pass freely +from one atom to another, in copper, it is calculated, the electron +combines with an atom and is liberated again a hundred million times a +second. Even chemical action enters the sphere of explanation. + +However these hypotheses may fare, the electron is a fact, and the atom +is very probably a more or less stable cluster of electrons. But when +we go further, and attempt to trace the evolution of the electron out +of ether, we enter a region of pure theory. Some of the experts conceive +the electron as a minute whirlpool or vortex in the ocean of ether; +some hold that it is a centre of strain in ether; some regard ether as +a densely packed mass of infinitely small grains, and think that the +positive and negative corpuscles, as they seem to us, are tiny areas +in which the granules are unequally distributed. Each theory has its +difficulties. We do not know the origin of the electron, because we do +not know the nature of ether. To some it is an elastic solid, quivering +in waves at every movement of the particles; to others it is a +continuous fluid, every cubic millimetre of which possesses "an energy +equivalent to the output of a million-horse-power station for 40.000,000 +years" (Lodge); to others it is a close-packed granular mass with a +pressure of 10,000 tons per square centimetre. We must wait. It is +little over ten years since the vaults were opened and physicists began +to peer into the sub-material world. The lower, perhaps lowest, depth is +reserved for another generation. + +But it may be said that the research of the last ten years has given +us a glimpse of the foundations of the universe. Every theory of the +electron assumes it to be some sort of nodule or disturbed area in the +ether. It is sometimes described as "a particle of negative electricity" +and associated with "a particle of positive electricity" in building up +the atom. The phrase is misleading for those who regard electricity as a +force or energy, and it gives rise to speculation as to whether "matter" +has not been resolved into "force." Force or energy is not conceived +by physicists as a substantial reality, like matter, but an abstract +expression of certain relations of matter or electrons. + +In any case, the ether, whether solid or fluid or granular, remains the +fundamental reality. The universe does not float IN an ocean of ether: +it IS an ocean of ether. But countless myriads of minute disturbances +are found in this ocean, and set it quivering with the various pulses +which we classify as forces or energies. These points of disturbance +cluster together in systems (atoms) of from 1000 to 250,000 members, +and the atoms are pressed together until they come in the end to form +massive worlds. It remains only to reduce gravitation itself, which +brings the atoms together, to a strain or stress in ether, and we have +a superb unity. That has not yet been done, but every theory of +gravitation assumes that it is a stress in the ether corresponding to +the formation of the minute disturbances which we call electrons. + +But, it may be urged, he who speaks of foundations speaks of a beginning +of a structure; he who speaks of evolution must have a starting-point. +Was there a time when the ether was a smooth, continuous fluid, without +electrons or atoms, and did they gradually appear in it, like crystals +in the mother-lye? In science we know nothing of a beginning. The +question of the eternity or non-eternity of matter (or ether) is as +futile as the question about its infinity or finiteness. We shall see in +the next chapter that science can trace the processes of nature back +for hundreds, if not thousands, of millions of years, and has ground to +think that the universe then presented much the same aspect as it does +now, and will in thousands of millions of years to come. But if these +periods were quadrillions, instead of millions, of years, they would +still have no relation to the idea of eternity. All that we can say is +that we find nothing in nature that points to a beginning or an end. [*] + + * A theory has been advanced by some physicists that there + is evidence of a beginning. WITHIN OUR EXPERIENCE energy is + being converted into heat more abundantly than heat is being + converted into other energy. This would hold out a prospect + of a paralysed universe, and that stage would have been + reached long ago if the system had not had a definite + beginning. But what knowledge have we of conversions of + energy in remote regions of space, in the depths of stars or + nebulae, or in the sub-material world of which we have just + caught a glimpse? Roundly, none. The speculation is + worthless. + + +One point only need be mentioned in conclusion. Do we anywhere perceive +the evolution of the material elements out of electrons, just as we +perceive the devolution, or disintegration, of atoms into electrons? +There is good ground for thinking that we do. The subject will be +discussed more fully in the next chapter. In brief, the spectroscope, +which examines the light of distant stars and discovers what chemical +elements emitted it, finds matter, in the hottest stars, in an unusual +condition, and seems to show the elements successively emerging from +their fierce alchemy. Sir J. Norman Lockyer has for many years conducted +a special investigation of the subject at the Solar Physics Observatory, +and he declares that we can trace the evolution of the elements out of +the fiery chaos of the young star. The lightest gases emerge first, the +metals later, and in a special form. But here we pass once more from +Lilliputia to Brobdingnagia, and must first explain the making of the +star itself. + + + +CHAPTER III. THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF WORLDS + +The greater part of this volume will be occupied with the things that +have happened on one small globe in the universe during a certain number +of millions of years. It cannot be denied that this has a somewhat +narrow and parochial aspect. The earth is, you remember, a million times +smaller than the sun, and the sun itself is a very modest citizen of +the stellar universe. Our procedure is justified, however, both on the +ground of personal interest, and because our knowledge of the earth's +story is so much more ample and confident. Yet we must preface the story +of the earth with at least a general outline of the larger story of the +universe. No sensible man is humbled or dismayed by the vastness of +the universe. When the human mind reflects on its wonderful scientific +mastery of this illimitable ocean of being, it has no sentiment of being +dwarfed or degraded. It looks out with cold curiosity over the mighty +scattering of worlds, and asks how they, including our own world, came +into being. + +We now approach this subject with a clearer perception of the work we +have to do. The universe is a vast expanse of ether, and somehow or +other this ether gives rise to atoms of matter. We may imagine it as a +spacious chamber filled with cosmic dust; recollecting that the chamber +has no walls, and that the dust arises in the ether itself. The problem +we now approach is, in a word: How are these enormous stretches of +cosmic dust, which we call matter, swept together and compressed +into suns and planets? The most famous answer to this question is the +"nebular hypothesis." Let us see, briefly, how it came into modern +science. + +We saw that some of the ancient Greek speculators imagined their +infinite number of atoms as scattered originally, like dust, throughout +space and gradually coming together, as dust does, to form worlds. The +way in which they brought their atoms together was wrong, but the genius +of Democritus had provided the germ of another sound theory to the +students of a more enlightened age. Descartes (1596-1650) recalled the +idea, and set out a theory of the evolution of stars and planets from a +diffused chaos of particles. He even ventured to say that the earth was +at one time a small white-hot sun, and that a solid crust had gradually +formed round its molten core. Descartes had taken refuge in Sweden from +his persecutors, and it is therefore not surprising that that strange +genius Swedenborg shortly afterwards developed the same idea. In the +middle of the eighteenth century the great French naturalist, Buffon, +followed and improved upon Descartes and Swedenborg. From Buffon's work +it was learned by the German philosopher Kant, who published (1755) +a fresh theory of the concentration of scattered particles into fiery +worlds. Then Laplace (1749-1827) took up the speculation, and gave +it the form in which it practically ruled astronomy throughout the +nineteenth century. That is the genealogy of the famous nebular +hypothesis. It did not spring full-formed from the brain of either Kant +or Laplace, like Athene from the brain of Zeus. + +Laplace had one great advantage over the early speculators. Not only was +he an able astronomer and mathematician, but by his time it was known +that nebulae, or vast clouds of dispersed matter, actually existed in +the heavens. Here was a solid basis for the speculation. Sir William +Herschel, the most assiduous explorer of the heavens, was a contemporary +of Laplace. Laplace therefore took the nebula as his starting-point. + +A quarter of an ounce of solid matter (say, tobacco) will fill a vast +space when it is turned into smoke, and if it were not for the pressure +of the atmosphere it would expand still more. Laplace imagined the +billions of tons of matter which constitute our solar system similarly +dispersed, converted into a fine gas, immeasurably thinner than +the atmosphere. This nebula would be gradually drawn in again by +gravitation, just as the dust falls to the floor of a room. The +collisions of its particles as they fell toward the centre would raise +its temperature and give it a rotating movement. A time would come when +the centrifugal force at the outer ring of the rotating disk would equal +the centripetal (or inward) pull of gravity, and this ring would be +detached, still spinning round the central body. The material of the +ring would slowly gather, by gravitation, round some denser area in it; +the ring would become a sphere; we should have the first, and outermost, +planet circling round the sun. Other rings would successively be +detached, and form the rest of the planets; and the sun is the shrunken +and condensed body of the nebula. + +So simple and beautiful a theory of the solar system could not fail +to captivate astronomers, but it is generally rejected to-day, in the +precise form which Laplace gave it. What the difficulties are which +it has encountered, and the modifications it must suffer, we shall see +later; as well as the new theories which have largely displaced it. It +will be better first to survey the universe from the evolutionary point +of view. But I may observe, in passing, that the sceptical remarks one +hears at times about scientific theories contradicting and superseding +each other are frivolous. One great idea pervades all the theories of +the evolution of worlds, and that idea is firmly established. The +stars and their planets are enormous aggregations of cosmic dust, swept +together and compressed by the action of gravitation. The precise nature +of this cosmic dust--whether it was gas, meteorites and gas, or other +particles--is open to question. + +As we saw in the first chapter, the universe has the word evolution +written, literally, in letters of fire across it. The stars are of all +ages, from sturdy youth to decrepit age, and even to the darkness of +death. We saw that this can be detected on the superficial test of +colour. The colours of the stars are, it is true, an unsafe ground to +build upon. The astronomer still puzzles over the gorgeous colours +he finds at times, especially in double stars: the topaz and azure +companions in beta Cygni, the emerald and red of alpha Herculis, the +yellow and rose of eta Cassiopeiae, and so on. It is at the present time +under discussion in astronomy how far these colours are objective at +all, or whether, if they are real, they may not be due to causes other +than temperature. Yet the significance of the three predominating +colours--blue-white, yellow, and red--has been sustained by the +spectroscope. It is the series of colours through which a white-hot bar +of iron passes as it cools. And the spectroscope gives us good ground to +conclude that the stars are cooling. + +When a glowing gas (not under great pressure) is examined by the +spectroscope, it yields a few vertical lines or bars of light on a +dark background; when a glowing liquid or solid is examined, it gives a +continuous rainbow-like stretch of colour. Some of the nebulae give the +former type of spectrum, and are thus known to be masses of luminous +gas; many of the nebulae and the stars have the latter type of +spectrum. But the stretch of light in the spectrum of a star is crossed, +vertically, by a number of dark lines, and experiment in the laboratory +has taught us how to interpret these. They mean that there is some +light-absorbing vapour between the source of light and the instrument. +In the case of the stars they indicate the presence of an atmosphere +of relatively cool vapours, and an increase in the density of that +atmosphere--which is shown by a multiplication and broadening of +the dark lines on the spectrum--means an increase of age, a loss of +vitality, and ultimately death. So we get the descending scale of +spectra. The dark lines are thinnest and least numerous in the blue +stars, more numerous in the yellow, heavy and thick in the red. As the +body of the star sinks in temperature dense masses of cool vapour gather +about it. Its light, as we perceive it, turns yellow, then red. The next +step, which the spectroscope cannot follow, will be the formation of +a scum on the cooling surface, ending, after ages of struggle, in the +imprisonment of the molten interior under a solid, dark crust. Let us +see how our sun illustrates this theory. + +It is in the yellow, or what we may call the autumnal, stage. Miss +Clerke and a few others have questioned this, but the evidence is too +strong to-day. The vast globe, 867,000 miles in diameter, seems to be a +mass of much the same material as the earth--about forty elements have +been identified in it--but at a terrific temperature. The light-giving +surface is found, on the most recent calculations, to have a temperature +of about 6700 degrees C. This surface is an ocean of liquid or vaporised +metals, several thousand miles in depth; some think that the brilliant +light comes chiefly from clouds of incandescent carbon. Overlying it is +a deep layer of the vapours of the molten metals, with a temperature +of about 5500 degrees C.; and to this comparatively cool and +light-absorbing layer we owe the black lines of the solar spectrum. +Above it is an ocean of red-hot hydrogen, and outside this again is +an atmosphere stretching for some hundreds of thousands of miles into +space. + +The significant feature, from our point of view, is the "sun-spot"; +though the spot may be an area of millions of square miles. These areas +are, of course, dark only by comparison with the intense light of the +rest of the disk. The darkest part of them is 5000 times brighter than +the full moon. It will be seen further, on examining a photograph of +the sun, that a network or veining of this dark material overspreads the +entire surface at all times. There is still some difference of opinion +as to the nature of these areas, but the evidence of the spectroscope +has convinced most astronomers that they are masses of cooler vapour +lying upon, and sinking into, the ocean of liquid fire. Round their +edges, as if responding to the pressure of the more condensed mass, +gigantic spurts and mountains of the white-hot matter of the sun rush +upwards at a rate of fifty or a hundred miles a second, Sometimes they +reach a height of a hundred, and even two hundred, thousand miles, +driving the red-hot hydrogen before them in prodigious and fantastic +flames. Between the black veins over the disk, also, there rise domes +and columns of the liquid fire, some hundreds of miles in diameter, +spreading and sinking at from five to twenty miles a second. The surface +of the sun--how much more the interior!--is an appalling cauldron of +incandescent matter from pole to pole. Every yard of the surface is +a hundred times as intense as the open furnace of a Titanic. From the +depths and from the surface of this fiery ocean, as, on a small scale, +from the surface of the tropical sea, the vapours rise high into the +extensive atmosphere, discharge some of their heat into space, and sink +back, cooler and heavier, upon the disk. + +This is a star in its yellow age, as are Capella and Arcturus and other +stars. The red stars carry the story further, as we should expect. The +heavier lines in their spectrum indicate more absorption of light, and +tell us that the vapours are thickening about the globe; while compounds +like titanium oxide make their appearance, announcing a fall of +temperature. Below these, again, is a group of dark red or "carbon" +stars, in which the process is carried further. Thick, broad, dark lines +in the red end of the spectrum announce the appearance of compounds +of carbon, and a still lower fall of temperature. The veil is growing +thicker; the life is ebbing from the great frame. Then the star sinks +below the range of visibility, and one would think that we can follow +the dying world no farther. Fortunately, in the case of Algol and some +thirty or forty other stars, an extinct sun betrays its existence by +flitting across the light of a luminous sun, and recent research has +made it probable that the universe is strewn with dead worlds. Some of +them may be still in the condition which we seem to find in Jupiter, +hiding sullen fires under a dense shell of cloud; some may already be +covered with a crust, like the earth. There are even stars in which +one is tempted to see an intermediate stage: stars which blaze out +periodically from dimness, as if the Cyclops were spending his last +energy in spasms that burst the forming roof of his prison. But these +variable stars are still obscure, and we do not need their aid. The +downward course of a star is fairly plain. + +When we turn to the earlier chapters in the life of a star, the story +is less clear. It is at least generally agreed that the blue-white stars +exhibit an earlier and hotter stage. They show comparatively little +absorption, and there is an immense preponderance of the lighter gases, +hydrogen and helium. They (Sirius, Vega, etc.) are, in fact, known as +"hydrogen stars," and their temperature is generally computed at between +20,000 and 30,000 degrees C. A few stars, such as Procyon and Canopus, +seem to indicate a stage between them and the yellow or solar type. +But we may avoid finer shades of opinion and disputed classes, and +be content with these clear stages. We begin with stars in which only +hydrogen and helium, the lightest Of elements, can be traced; and the +hydrogen is in an unfamiliar form, implying terrific temperature. In +the next stage we find the lines of oxygen, nitrogen, magnesium, and +silicon. Metals such as iron and copper come later, at first in a +primitive and unusual form. Lastly we get the compounds of titanium +and carbon, and the densely shaded spectra which tell of the thickly +gathering vapours. The intense cold of space is slowly prevailing in the +great struggle. + +What came before the star? It is now beyond reasonable doubt that the +nebula--taking the word, for the moment, in the general sense of a +loose, chaotic mass of material--was the first stage. Professor Keeler +calculated that there are at least 120,000 nebulae within range of +our telescopes, and the number is likely to be increased. A German +astronomer recently counted 1528 on one photographic plate. Many of +them, moreover, are so vast that they must contain the material for +making a great number of worlds. Examine a good photograph of the nebula +in Orion. Recollect that each one of the points of light that are +dotted over the expanse is a star of a million miles or more in diameter +(taking our sun as below the average), and that the great cloud that +sprawls across space is at least 10,000 billion miles away; how much +more no man knows. It is futile to attempt to calculate the extent of +that vast stretch of luminous gas. We can safely say that it is at least +a million times as large as the whole area of our solar system; but it +may run to trillions or quadrillions of miles. + +Nearly a hundred other nebulae are known, by the spectroscope, to be +clouds of luminous gas. It does not follow that they are white-hot, and +that the nebula is correctly called a "fire-mist." Electrical and other +agencies may make gases luminous, and many astronomers think that the +nebulae are intensely cold. However, the majority of the nebulae that +have been examined are not gaseous, and have a very different structure +from the loose and diffused clouds of gas. They show two (possibly more, +but generally two) great spiral arms starting from the central part and +winding out into space. As they are flat or disk-shaped, we see this +structure plainly when they turn full face toward the earth, as does the +magnificent nebula in Canes Venatici. In it, and many others, we clearly +trace a condensed central mass, with two great arms, each apparently +having smaller centres of condensation, sprawling outward like the +broken spring of a watch. The same structure can be traced in the mighty +nebula in Andromeda, which is visible to the naked eye, and it is said +that more than half the nebulae in the heavens are spiral. Knowing that +they are masses of solid or liquid fire, we are tempted to see in them +gigantic Catherine-wheels, the fireworks of the gods. What is their +relation to the stars? + +In the first place, their mere existence has provided a solid basis for +the nebular hypothesis, and their spiral form irresistibly suggests +that they are whirling round on their central axis and concentrating. +Further, we find in some of the gaseous nebulae (Orion) comparatively +void spaces occupied by stars, which seem to have absorbed the nebulous +matter in their formation. On the other hand, we find (in the Pleiades) +wisps and streamers of nebulous matter clinging about great clusters of +stars, suggesting that they are material left over when these clustered +worlds crystallised out of some vast nebula; and enormous stretches of +nebulous material covering regions (as in Perseus) where the stars are +as thick as grains of silver. More important still, we find a type of +cosmic body which seems intermediate between the star and the nebula. +It is a more or less imperfectly condensed star, surrounded by nebular +masses. But one of the most instructive links of all is that at times a +nebula is formed from a star, and a recent case of this character may be +briefly described. + +In February, 1901, a new star appeared in the constellation Perseus. +Knowing what a star is, the reader will have some dim conception of the +portentous blaze that lit up that remote region of space (at least 600 +billion miles away) when he learns that the light of this star increased +4000-fold in twenty-eight hours. It reached a brilliance 8000 times +greater than that of the sun. Telescopes and spectroscopes were turned +on it from all parts of the earth, and the spectroscope showed that +masses of glowing hydrogen were rushing out from it at a rate of nearly +a thousand miles a second. Its light gradually flickered and +fell, however, and the star sank back into insignificance. But the +photographic plate now revealed a new and most instructive feature. +Before the end of the year there was a nebula, of enormous extent, +spreading out on both sides from the centre of the eruption. It was +suggested at the time that the bursting of a star may merely have lit up +a previously dark nebula, but the spectroscope does not support this. A +dim star had dissolved, wholly or partially, into a nebula, as a result +of some mighty cataclysm. What the nature of the catastrophe was we will +inquire presently. + +These are a few of the actual connections that we find between stars and +nebulae. Probably, however, the consideration that weighs most with +the astronomer is that the condensation of such a loose, far-stretched +expanse of matter affords an admirable explanation of the enormous heat +of the stars. Until recently there was no other conceivable source that +would supply the sun's tremendous outpour of energy for tens of millions +of years except the compression of its substance. It is true that the +discovery of radio-activity has disclosed a new source of energy within +the atoms themselves, and there are scientific men, like Professor +Arrhenius, who attach great importance to this source. But, although it +may prolong the limited term of life which physicists formerly allotted +to the sun and other stars, it is still felt that the condensation of a +nebula offers the best explanation of the origin of a sun, and we have +ample evidence for the connection. We must, therefore, see what the +nebula is, and how it develops. + +"Nebula" is merely the Latin word for cloud. Whatever the nature of +these diffused stretches of matter may be, then, the name applies fitly +to them, and any theory of the development of a star from them is still +a "nebular hypothesis." But the three theories which divide astronomers +to-day differ as to the nature of the nebula. The older theory, pointing +to the gaseous nebulae as the first stage, holds that the nebula is a +cloud of extremely attenuated gas. The meteoritic hypothesis (Sir N. +Lockyer, Sir G. Darwin, etc.), observing that space seems to swarm +with meteors and that the greater part of the nebulae are not gaseous, +believes that the starting-point is a colossal swarm of meteors, +surrounded by the gases evolved and lit up by their collisions. The +planetesimal hypothesis, advanced in recent years by Professor Moulton +and Professor Chamberlin, contends that the nebula is a vast cloud of +liquid or solid (but not gaseous) particles. This theory is based mainly +on the dynamical difficulties of the other two, which we will notice +presently. + +The truth often lies between conflicting theories, or they may apply to +different cases. It is not improbable that this will be our experience +in regard to the nature of the initial nebula. The gaseous nebulae, +and the formation of such nebulae from disrupted stars, are facts +that cannot be ignored. The nebulae with a continuous spectrum, and +therefore--in part, at least--in a liquid or solid condition, may very +well be regarded as a more advanced stage of condensation of the same; +their spiral shape and conspicuous nuclei are consistent with this. +Moreover, a condensing swarm of meteors would, owing to the heat +evolved, tend to pass into a gaseous condition. On the tether hand, a +huge expanse of gas stretched over billions of miles of space would be +a net for the wandering particles, meteors, and comets that roam +through space. If it be true, as is calculated, that our 24,000 miles +of atmosphere capture a hundred million meteors a day, what would the +millions or billions of times larger net of a nebula catch, even if the +gas is so much thinner? In other words, it is not wise to draw too fine +a line between a gaseous nebula and one consisting of solid particles +with gas. + +The more important question is: How do astronomers conceive the +condensation of this mixed mass of cosmic dust? It is easy to reply that +gravitation, or the pressure of the surrounding ether, slowly drives the +particles centre-ward, and compresses the dust into globes, as the boy +squeezes the flocculent snow into balls; and it is not difficult for the +mathematician to show that this condensation would account for the +shape and temperature of the stars. But we must go a little beyond this +superficial statement, and see, to some extent, how the deeper students +work out the process. [*] + + * See, especially, Dr. P. Lowell, "The Evolution of Worlds" + (1909). Professor S. Arrhenius, "Worlds in the Making" + (1908), Sir N. Lockyer, "The Meteorite Hypothesis" (1890), + Sir R. Ball, "The Earth's Beginning" (1909), Professor + Moulton, "The Astrophysical Journal (October, 1905), and + Chamberlin and Salisbury, "Geology," Vol. II. (1903). + + +Taking a broad view of the whole field, one may say that the two chief +difficulties are as follows: First, how to get the whole chaotic mass +whirling round in one common direction; secondly, how to account for the +fact that in our solar system the outermost planets and satellites do +not rotate in the same direction as the rest. There is a widespread idea +that these difficulties have proved fatal to the old nebular hypothesis, +and there are distinguished astronomers who think so. But Sir R. Ball +(see note), Professor Lowell (see note), Professor Pickering (Annals of +Harvard College Observatory, 53, III), and other high authorities deny +this, and work out the newly discovered movements on the lines of the +old theory. They hold that all the bodies in the solar system once +turned in the same direction as Uranus and Neptune, and the tidal +influence of the sun has changed the rotation of most of them. The +planets farthest from the sun would naturally not be so much affected +by it. The same principle would explain the retrograde movement of the +outer satellites of Saturn and Jupiter. Sir R. Ball further works out +the principles on which the particles of the condensing nebula would +tend to form a disk rotating on its central axis. The ring-theory of +Laplace is practically abandoned. The spiral nebula is evidently the +standard type, and the condensing nebula must conform to it. In this +we are greatly helped by the current theory of the origin of spiral +nebulae. + +We saw previously that new stars sometimes appear in the sky, and the +recent closer scrutiny of the heavens shows this occurrence to be fairly +frequent. It is still held by a few astronomers that such a cataclysm +means that two stars collided. Even a partial or "grazing" collision +between two masses, each weighing billions of tons, travelling (on the +average) forty or fifty miles a second--a movement that would increase +enormously as they approach each other--would certainly liquefy or +vaporise their substance; but the astronomer, accustomed to see cosmic +bodies escape each other by increasing their speed, is generally +disinclined to believe in collisions. Some have made the new star plunge +into the heart of a dense and dark nebula; some have imagined a shock of +two gigantic swarms of meteors; some have regarded the outflame as the +effect of a prodigious explosion. In one or other new star each or any +of these things may have occurred, but the most plausible and accepted +theory for the new star of 1901 and some others is that two stars had +approached each other too closely in their wandering. Suppose that, +in millions of years to come, when our sun is extinct and a firm crust +surrounds the great molten ball, some other sun approaches within a few +million miles of it. The two would rush past each other at a terrific +speed, but the gravitational effect of the approaching star would tear +open the solid shell of the sun, and, in a mighty flame, its molten and +gaseous entrails would be flung out into space. It has long been one +of the arguments against a molten interior of the earth that the sun's +gravitational influence would raise it in gigantic tides and rend the +solid shell of rock. It is even suspected now that our small earth +is not without a tidal influence on the sun. The comparatively near +approach of two suns would lead to a terrific cataclysm. + +If we accept this theory, the origin of the spiral nebula becomes +intelligible. As the sun from which it is formed is already rotating +on its axis, we get a rotation of the nebula from the first. The mass +poured out from the body of the sun would, even if it were only a small +fraction of its mass, suffice to make a planetary system; all our sun's +planets and their satellites taken together amount to only 1/100th of +the mass of the solar system. We may assume, further, that the outpoured +matter would be a mixed cloud of gases and solid and liquid particles; +and that it would stream out, possibly in successive waves, from more +than one part of the disrupted sun, tending to form great spiral trails +round the parent mass. Some astronomers even suggest that, as there are +tidal waves raised by the moon at opposite points of the earth, similar +tidal outbursts would occur at opposite points on the disk of the +disrupted star, and thus give rise to the characteristic arms starting +from opposite sides of the spiral nebula. This is not at all clear, +as the two tidal waves of the earth are due to the fact that it has a +liquid ocean rolling on, not under, a solid bed. + +In any case, we have here a good suggestion of the origin of the spiral +nebula and of its further development. As soon as the outbursts are +over, and the scattered particles have reached the farthest limit to +which they are hurled, the concentrating action of gravitation will +slowly assert itself. If we conceive this gravitational influence as the +pressure of the surrounding ether we get a wider understanding of the +process. Much of the dispersed matter may have been shot far enough into +space to escape the gravitational pull of the parent mass, and will be +added to the sum of scattered cosmic dust, meteors, and close shoals +of meteors (comets) wandering in space. Much of the rest will fall +back upon the central body But in the great spiral arms themselves the +distribution of the matter will be irregular, and the denser areas will +slowly gather in the surrounding material. In the end we would thus get +secondary spheres circling round a large primary. + +This is the way in which astronomers now generally conceive the +destruction and re-formation of worlds. On one point the new +planetesimal theory differs from the other theories. It supposes that, +since the particles of the whirling nebula are all travelling in the +same general direction, they overtake each other with less violent +impact than the other theories suppose, and therefore the condensation +of the material into planets would not give rise to the terrific heat +which is generally assumed. We will consider this in the next chapter, +when we deal with the formation of the planets. As far as the central +body, the sun, is concerned, there can be no hesitation. The 500,000,000 +incandescent suns in the heavens are eloquent proof of the appalling +heat that is engendered by the collisions of the concentrating +particles. + +In general outline we now follow the story of a star with some +confidence. An internal explosion, a fatal rush into some dense nebula +or swarm of meteors, a collision with another star, or an approach +within a few million miles of another star, scatters, in part or whole, +the solid or liquid globe in a cloud of cosmic dust. When the violent +outrush is over, the dust is gathered together once more into a star. At +first cold and attenuated, its temperature rises as the particles come +together, and we have, after a time, an incandescent nucleus shining +through a thin veil of gas--a nebulous star. The temperature rises still +further, and we have the blue-hot star, in which the elements seem to +be dissociated, and slowly re-forming as the temperature falls. After, +perhaps, hundreds of millions of years it reaches the "yellow" stage, +and, if it has planets with the conditions of life, there may be a +temporary opportunity for living things to enjoy its tempered energy. +But the cooler vapours are gathering round it, and at length its +luminous body is wholly imprisoned. It continues its terrific course +through space, until some day, perhaps, it again encounters the mighty +cataclysm which will make it begin afresh the long and stormy chapters +of its living history. + +Such is the suggestion of the modern astronomer, and, although we seem +to find every phase of the theory embodied in the varied contents of +the heavens, we must not forget that it is only a suggestion. The +spectroscope and telescopic photography, which are far more important +than the visual telescope, are comparatively recent, and the field to be +explored is enormous. The mist is lifting from the cosmic landscape, but +there is still enough to blur our vision. Very puzzling questions remain +unanswered. What is the origin of the great gaseous nebulae? What is +the origin of the triple or quadruple star? What is the meaning of stars +whose light ebbs and flows in periods of from a few to several hundred +days? We may even point to the fact that some, at least, of the spiral +nebulae are far too vast to be the outcome of the impact or approach of +two stars. + +We may be content to think that we have found out some truths, by no +means the whole truth, about the evolution of worlds. Throughout this +immeasurable ocean of ether the particles of matter are driven together +and form bodies. These bodies swarm throughout space, like fish in the +sea; travelling singly (the "shooting star"), or in great close shoals +(the nucleus of a comet), or lying scattered in vast clouds. But the +inexorable pressure urges them still, until billions of tons of +material are gathered together. Then, either from the sheer heat of the +compression, or from the formation of large and unstable atomic systems +(radium, etc.), or both, the great mass becomes a cauldron of fire, +mantled in its own vapours, and the story of a star is run. It dies out +in one part of space to begin afresh in another. We see nothing in +the nature of a beginning or an end for the totality of worlds, the +universe. The life of all living things on the earth, from the formation +of the primitive microbes to the last struggles of the superman, is a +small episode of that stupendous drama, a fraction of a single scene. +But our ampler knowledge of it, and our personal interest in it, magnify +that episode, and we turn from the cosmic picture to study the formation +of the earth and the rise of its living population. + + + +CHAPTER IV. THE PREPARATION OF THE EARTH + +The story of the evolution of our solar system is, it will now be seen, +a local instance of the great cosmic process we have studied in the last +chapter. We may take one of the small spiral nebulae that abound in the +heavens as an illustration of the first stage. If a still earlier stage +is demanded, we may suppose that some previous sun collided with, or +approached too closely, another mighty body, and belched out a large +part of its contents in mighty volcanic outpours. Mathematical reasoning +can show that this erupted material would gather into a spiral nebula; +but, as mathematical calculations cannot be given here, and are less +safe than astronomical facts, we will be content to see the early shape +of our solar system in a relatively small spiral nebula, its outermost +arm stretching far beyond the present orbit of Neptune, and its great +nucleus being our present sun in more diffused form. + +We need not now attempt to follow the shrinking of the central part of +the nebula until it becomes a rounded fiery sun. That has been done in +tracing the evolution of a star. Here we have to learn how the planets +were formed from the spiral arms of the nebula. The principle of their +formation is already clear. The same force of gravitation, or the same +pressure of the surrounding ether, which compresses the central mass +into a fiery globe, will act upon the loose material of the arms and +compress it into smaller globes. But there is an interesting and acute +difference of opinion amongst modern experts as to whether these smaller +globes, the early planets, would become white-hot bodies. + +The general opinion, especially among astronomers, is that the +compression of the nebulous material of the arms into globes would +generate enormous heat, as in the case of the sun. On that view the +various planets would begin their careers as small suns, and would pass +through those stages of cooling and shrinking which we have traced in +the story of the stars. A glance at the photograph of one of the spiral +nebulae strongly confirms this. Great luminous knots, or nuclei, are +seen at intervals in the arms. Smaller suns seem to be forming in them, +each gathering into its body the neighbouring material of the arm, +and rising in temperature as the mass is compressed into a globe. The +spectroscope shows that these knots are condensing masses of white-hot +liquid or solid matter. It therefore seems plain that each planet will +first become a liquid globe of fire, coursing round the central sun, and +will gradually, as its heat is dissipated and the supply begins to fail, +form a solid crust. + +This familiar view is challenged by the new "planetesimal hypothesis," +which has been adopted by many distinguished geologists (Chamberlin, +Gregory, Coleman, etc.). In their view the particles in the arms of +the nebula are all moving in the same direction round the sun. They +therefore quietly overtake the nucleus to which they are attracted, +instead of violently colliding with each other, and much less heat +is generated at the surface. In that case the planets would not pass +through a white-hot, or even red-hot, stage at all. They are formed by +a slow ingathering of the scattered particles, which are called +"planetesimals" round the larger or denser masses of stuff which were +discharged by the exploding sun. Possibly these masses were prevented +from falling back into the sun by the attraction of the colliding body, +or the body which caused the eruption. They would revolve round the +parent body, and the shoals of smaller particles would gather about them +by gravitation. If there were any large region in the arm of the nebula +which had no single massive nucleus, the cosmic dust would gather about +a number of smaller centres. Thus might be explained the hundreds of +planetoids, or minor planets, which we find between Mars and Jupiter. If +these smaller bodies came within the sphere of influence of one of +the larger planets, yet were travelling quickly enough to resist its +attraction, they would be compelled to revolve round it, and we could +thus explain the ten satellites of Saturn and the eight of Jupiter. Our +moon, we shall see, had a different origin. + +We shall find this new hypothesis crossing the familiar lines at +many points in the next few chapters. We will consider those further +consequences as they arise, but may say at once that, while the new +theory has greatly helped us in tracing the formation of the planetary +system, astronomers are strongly opposed to its claim that the planets +did not pass through an incandescent stage. The actual features of our +spiral nebulae seem clearly to exhibit that stage. The shape of the +planets--globular bodies, flattened at the poles--strongly suggests that +they were once liquid. The condition in which we find Saturn and Jupiter +very forcibly confirms this suggestion; the latest study of those +planets supports the current opinion that they are still red-hot, and +even seems to detect the glow of their surfaces in their mantles of +cloud. These points will be considered more fully presently. For +the moment it is enough to note that, as far as the early stages of +planetary development are concerned, the generally accepted theory +rests on a mass of positive evidence, while the new hypothesis is +purely theoretical. We therefore follow the prevailing view with some +confidence. + +Those of the spiral nebulae which face the earth squarely afford an +excellent suggestion of the way in which planets are probably formed. In +some of these nebulae the arms consist of almost continuous streams +of faintly luminous matter; in others the matter is gathering about +distinct centres; in others again the nebulous matter is, for the most +part, collected in large glowing spheres. They seem to be successive +stages, and to reveal to us the origin of our planets. The position +of each planet in our solar system would be determined by the chance +position of the denser stuff shot out by the erupting sun. I have seen +Vesuvius hurl up into the sky, amongst its blasts of gas and steam, +white-hot masses of rock weighing fifty tons. In the far fiercer +outburst of the erupting sun there would be at least thinner and denser +masses, and they must have been hurled so far into space that their +speed in travelling round the central body, perhaps seconded by the +attraction of the second star, overcame the gravitational pull back to +the centre. Recollect the force which, in the new star in Perseus, drove +masses of hydrogen for millions of miles at a speed of a thousand miles +a second. + +These denser nuclei or masses would, when the eruption was over, begin +to attract to themselves all the lighter nebulous material within their +sphere of gravitational influence. Naturally, there would at first be a +vast confusion of small and large centres of condensation in the arms +of the nebula, moving in various directions, but a kind of natural +selection--and, in this case, survival of the biggest--would ensue. The +conflicting movements would be adjusted by collisions and gravitation, +the smaller bodies would be absorbed in the larger or enslaved as +their satellites, and the last state would be a family of smaller suns +circling at vast distances round the parent body. The planets, moreover, +would be caused to rotate on their axes, besides revolving round the +sun, as the particles at their inner edge (nearer the sun) would move +at a different speed from those at the outer edge. In the course of time +the smaller bodies, having less heat to lose and less (or no) atmosphere +to check the loss, would cool down, and become dark solid spheres, lit +only by the central fire. + +While the first stage of this theory of development is seen in the +spiral nebula, the later stages seem to be well exemplified in the +actual condition of our planets. Following, chiefly, the latest research +of Professor Lowell and his colleagues, which marks a considerable +advance on our previous knowledge, we shall find it useful to glance at +the sister-planets before we approach the particular story of our earth. + +Mercury, the innermost and smallest of the planets, measuring only some +3400 miles in diameter, is, not unexpectedly, an airless wilderness. +Small bodies are unable to retain the gases at their surface, on account +of their feebler gravitation. We find, moreover, that Mercury always +presents the same face to the sun, as it turns on its axis in the same +period (eighty-eight days) in which it makes a revolution round the sun. +While, therefore, one half of the globe is buried in eternal darkness, +the other half is eternally exposed to the direct and blistering rays +of the sun, which is only 86,000,000 miles away. To Professor Lowell it +presents the appearance of a bleached and sun-cracked desert, or "the +bones of a dead world." Its temperature must be at least 300 degrees C. +above that of the earth. Its features are what we should expect on the +nebular hypothesis. The slowness of its rotation is accounted for by +the heavy tidal influence of the sun. In the same way our moon has been +influenced by the earth, and our earth by the sun, in their movement of +rotation. + +Venus, as might be expected in the case of so large a globe (nearly +as large as the earth), has an atmosphere, but it seems, like Mercury, +always to present the same face to the sun. Its comparative nearness +to the sun (67,000,000 miles) probably explains this advanced effect of +tidal action. The consequences that the observers deduce from the fact +are interesting. The sun-baked half of Venus seems to be devoid of water +or vapour, and it is thought that all its water is gathered into a rigid +ice-field on the dark side of the globe, from which fierce hurricanes +must blow incessantly. It is a Sahara, or a desert far hotter than the +Sahara, on one side; an arctic region on the other. It does not seem +to be a world fitted for the support of any kind of life that we can +imagine. + +When we turn to the consideration of Mars, we enter a world of unending +controversy. With little more than half the diameter of the earth, Mars +ought to be in a far more advanced stage of either life or decay, but +its condition has not yet been established. Some hold that it has a +considerable atmosphere; others that it is too small a globe to +have retained a layer of gas. Professor Poynting believes that its +temperature is below the freezing-point of water all over the globe; +many others, if not the majority of observers, hold that the white cap +we see at its poles is a mass of ice and snow, or at least a thick coat +of hoar-frost, and that it melts at the edges as the springtime of Mars +comes round. In regard to its famous canals we are no nearer agreement. +Some maintain that the markings are not really an objective feature; +some hold that they are due to volcanic activity, and that similar +markings are found on the moon; some believe that they are due to +clouds; while Professor Lowell and others stoutly adhere to the familiar +view that they are artificial canals, or the strips of vegetation along +such canals. The question of the actual habitation of Mars is still +open. We can say only that there is strong evidence of its possession of +the conditions of life in some degree, and that living things, even on +the earth, display a remarkable power of adaptation to widely differing +conditions. + +Passing over the 700 planetoids, which circulate between Mars and +Jupiter, and for which we may account either by the absence of one +large nucleus in that part of the nebulous stream or by the disturbing +influence of Jupiter, we come to the largest planet of the system. Here +we find a surprising confirmation of the theory of planetary development +which we are following. Three hundred times heavier than the earth +(or more than a trillion tons in weight), yet a thousand times less +in volume than the sun, Jupiter ought, if our theory is correct, to be +still red-hot. All the evidence conspires to suggest that it is. It has +long been recognised that the shining disk of the planet is not a solid, +but a cloud, surface. This impenetrable mass of cloud or vapour is drawn +out in streams or belts from side to side, as the giant globe turns on +its axis once in every ten hours. We cannot say if, or to what extent, +these clouds consist of water-vapour. We can conclude only that this +mantle of Jupiter is "a seething cauldron of vapours" (Lowell), and +that, if the body beneath is solid, it must be very hot. A large red +area, at one time 30,000 miles long, has more or less persisted on the +surface for several decades, and it is generally interpreted, either as +a red-hot surface, or as a vast volcanic vent, reflecting its glow upon +the clouds. Indeed, the keen American observers, with their powerful +telescopes, have detected a cherry-red glow on the edges of the +cloud-belts across the disk; and more recent observation with the +spectroscope seems to prove that Jupiter emits light from its surface +analogous to that of the red stars. The conspicuous flattening of its +poles is another feature that science would expect in a rapidly rotating +liquid globe. In a word, Jupiter seems to be in the last stage of +stellar development. Such, at some remote time, was our earth; such one +day will be the sun. + +The neighbouring planet Saturn supports the conclusion. Here again we +have a gigantic globe, 28,000 miles in diameter, turning on its axis +in the short space of ten hours; and here again we find the conspicuous +flattening of the poles, the trailing belts of massed vapour across +the disk, the red glow lighting the edges of the belts, and the +spectroscopic evidence of an emission of light. Once more it is +difficult to doubt that a highly heated body is wrapped in that thick +mantle of vapour. With its ten moons and its marvellous ring-system--an +enormous collection of fragments, which the influence of the planet +or of its nearer satellites seems to have prevented from +concentrating--Saturn has always been a beautiful object to observe; it +is not less interesting in those features which we faintly detect in its +disk. + +The next planet, Uranus, 32,000 miles in diameter, seems to be another +cloud-wrapt, greatly heated globe, if not, as some think, a sheer mass +of vapours without a liquid core. Neptune is too dim and distant for +profitable examination. It may be added, however, that the dense masses +of gas which are found to surround the outer planets seem to confirm the +nebular theory, which assumes that they were developed in the outer and +lighter part of the material hurled from the sun. + +From this encouraging survey of the sister-planets we return with more +confidence to the story of the earth. I will not attempt to follow +an imaginative scheme in regard to its early development. Take four +photographs--one of a spiral nebula without knots in its arms, one of +a nebula like that in Canes Venatici, one of the sun, and one of +Jupiter--and you have an excellent illustration of the chief stages in +its formation. In the first picture a section of the luminous arm of the +nebula stretches thinly across millions of miles of space. In the next +stage this material is largely collected in a luminous and hazy sphere, +as we find in the nebula in Canes Venatici. The sun serves to illustrate +a further stage in the condensation of this sphere. Jupiter represents +a later chapter, in which the cooler vapours are wrapped close about the +red-hot body of the planet. That seems to have been the early story of +the earth. Some 6,000,000,000 billion tons of the nebulous matter were +attracted to a common centre. As the particles pressed centreward, the +temperature rose, and for a time the generation of heat was greater than +its dissipation. Whether the earth ever shone as a small white star we +cannot say. We must not hastily conclude that such a relatively small +mass would behave like the far greater mass of a star, but we may, +without attempting to determine its temperature, assume that it runs an +analogous course. + +One of the many features which I have indicated as pointing to a former +fluidity of the earth may be explained here. We shall see in the course +of this work that the mountain chains and other great irregularities of +the earth's surface appear at a late stage in its development. Even +as we find them to-day, they are seen to be merely slight ridges and +furrows on the face of the globe, when we reflect on its enormous +diameter, but there is good reason to think that in the beginning the +earth was much nearer to a perfectly globular form. This points to +a liquid or gaseous condition at one time, and the flattening of the +sphere at the poles confirms the impression. We should hardly expect +so perfect a rotundity in a body formed by the cool accretion of solid +fragments and particles. It is just what we should expect in a fluid +body, and the later irregularities of the surface are accounted for by +the constant crumpling and wearing of its solid crust. Many would find +a confirmation of this in the phenomena of volcanoes, geysers, and +earthquakes, and the increase of the temperature as we descend the +crust. But the interior condition of the earth, and the nature of these +phenomena, are much disputed at present, and it is better not to rely on +any theory of them. It is suggested that radium may be responsible for +this subterraneous heat. + +The next stage in the formation of the earth is necessarily one that we +can reach only by conjecture. Over the globe of molten fire the vapours +and gases would be suspended like a heavy canopy, as we find in Jupiter +and Saturn to-day. When the period of maximum heat production was +passed, however, the radiation into space would cause a lowering of +the temperature, and a scum would form on the molten surface. As may be +observed on the surface of any cooling vessel of fluid, the scum would +stretch and crack; the skin would, so to say, prove too small for the +body. The molten ocean below would surge through the crust, and bury it +under floods of lava. Some hold that the slabs would sink in the ocean +of metal, and thus the earth would first solidify in its deeper layers. +There would, in any case, be an age-long struggle between the molten +mass and the confining crust, until at length--to employ the old Roman +conception of the activity of Etna--the giant was imprisoned below the +heavy roof of rock. + +Here again we seem to find evidence of the general correctness of the +theory. The objection has been raised that the geologist does not find +any rocks which he can identify as portions of the primitive crust +of the earth. It seems to me that it would be too much to expect the +survival at the surface of any part of the first scum that cooled on +that fiery ocean. It is more natural to suppose that millions of years +of volcanic activity on a prodigious scale would characterise this +early stage, and the "primitive crust" would be buried in fragments, or +dissolved again, under deep seas of lava. Now, this is precisely what we +find, The oldest rocks known to the geologist--the Archaean rocks--are +overwhelmingly volcanic, especially in their lower part. Their +thickness, as we know them, is estimated at 50,000 feet; a thickness +which must represent many millions of years. But we do not know how much +thicker than this they may be. They underlie the oldest rocks that have +ever been exposed to the gaze of the geologist. They include sedimentary +deposits, showing the action of water, and even probable traces of +organic remains, but they are, especially in their deeper and older +sections, predominantly volcanic. They evince what we may call a +volcanic age in the early story of the planet. + +But before we pursue this part of the story further we must interpolate +a remarkable event in the record--the birth of the moon. It is now +generally believed, on a theory elaborated by Sir G. Darwin, that when +the formation of the crust had reached a certain depth--something over +thirty miles, it is calculated--it parted with a mass of matter, which +became the moon. The size of our moon, in comparison with the earth, +is so exceptional among the satellites which attend the planets of our +solar system that it is assigned an exceptional origin. It is calculated +that at that time the earth turned on its axis in the space of four or +five hours, instead of twenty-four. We have already seen that the tidal +influence of the sun has the effect of moderating the rotation of the +planets. Now, this very rapid rotation of a liquid mass, with a thin +crust, would (together with the instability occasioned by its cooling) +cause it to bulge at the equator. The bulge would increase until the +earth became a pear-shaped body. The small end of the pear would draw +further and further away from the rest--as a drop of water does on the +mouth of a tap--and at last the whole mass (some 5,000,000,000 cubic +miles of matter) was broken off, and began to pursue an independent +orbit round the earth. + +There are astronomers who think that other cosmic bodies, besides our +moon, may have been formed in this way. Possibly it is true of some of +the double stars, but we will not return to that question. The further +story of the moon, as it is known to astronomers, may be given in a few +words. The rotational movement of the earth is becoming gradually slower +on account of tidal influence; our day, in fact, becomes an hour longer +every few million years. It can be shown that this had the effect of +increasing the speed, and therefore enlarging the orbit, of the moon, +as it revolved round the earth. As a result, the moon drew further and +further away from the earth until it reached its present position, about +240,000 miles away. At the same time the tidal influence of the earth +was lessening the rotational movement of the moon. This went on until +it turned on its axis in the same period in which it revolves round +the earth, and on this account it always presents the same face to the +earth. + +Through what chapters of life the moon may have passed in the meantime +it is impossible to say. Its relatively small mass may have been unable +to keep the lighter gases at its surface, or its air and water may, as +some think, have been absorbed. It is to-day practically an airless and +waterless desert, alternating between the heat of its long day and the +intense cold of its long night. Careful observers, such as Professor +Pickering, think that it may still have a shallow layer of heavy gases +at its surface, and that this may permit the growth of some stunted +vegetation during the day. Certain changes of colour, which are observed +on its surface, have been interpreted in that sense. We can hardly +conceive any other kind of life on it. In the dark even the gases will +freeze on its surface, as there is no atmosphere to retain the heat. +Indeed, some students of the moon (Fauth, etc.) believe that it is an +unchanging desert of ice, bombarded by the projectiles of space. + +An ingenious speculation as to the effect on the earth of this +dislodgment of 5,000,000,000 cubic miles of its substance is worth +noting. It supposes that the bed of the Pacific Ocean represents the +enormous gap torn in its side by the delivery of the moon. At each side +of this chasm the two continents, the Old World and the New, would +be left floating on their molten ocean; and some have even seen a +confirmation of this in the lines of crustal weakness which we trace, by +volcanoes and earthquakes, on either side of the Pacific. Others, again, +connect the shape of our great masses of land, which generally run to +a southern point, with this early catastrophe. But these interesting +speculations have a very slender basis, and we will return to the story +of the development of the earth. + +The last phase in preparation for the appearance of life would be the +formation of the ocean. On the lines of the generally received nebular +hypothesis this can easily be imagined, in broad outline. The gases +would form the outer shell of the forming planet, since the heavier +particles would travel inward. In this mixed mass of gas the oxygen and +hydrogen would combine, at a fitting temperature, and form water. +For ages the molten crust would hold this water suspended aloft as a +surrounding shell of cloud, but when the surface cooled to about 380 +degrees C. (Sollas), the liquid would begin to pour on it. A period of +conflict would ensue, the still heated crust and the frequent volcanic +outpours sending the water back in hissing steam to the clouds. At +length, and now more rapidly, the temperature of the crust would sink +still lower, and a heated ocean would settle upon it, filling the +hollows of its irregular surface, and washing the bases of its +outstanding ridges. From that time begins the age-long battle of the +land and the water which, we shall see, has had a profound influence on +the development of life. + +In deference to the opinion of a number of geologists we must glance +once more at the alternative view of the planetesimal school. In their +opinion the molecules of water were partly attracted to the surface out +of the disrupted matter, and partly collected within the porous outer +layers of the globe. As the latter quantity grew, it would ooze upwards, +fill the smaller depressions in the crust, and at length, with the +addition of the attracted water, spread over the irregular surface. +There is an even more important difference of opinion in regard to the +formation of the atmosphere, but we may defer this until the question +of climate interests us. We have now made our globe, and will pass on +to that early chapter of its story in which living things make their +appearance. + +To some it will seem that we ought not to pass from the question of +origin without a word on the subject of the age of the earth. All that +one can do, however, is to give a number of very divergent estimates. +Physicists have tried to calculate the age of the sun from the rate +of its dissipation of heat, and have assigned, at the most, a hundred +million years to our solar system; but the recent discovery of a source +of heat in the disintegration of such metals as radium has made their +calculations useless. Geologists have endeavoured, from observation of +the action of geological agencies to-day, to estimate how long it will +have taken them to form the stratified crust of the earth; but even the +best estimates vary between twenty-five and a hundred million years, and +we have reason to think that the intensity of these geological agencies +may have varied in different ages. Chemists have calculated how long it +would take the ocean, which was originally fresh water, to take up from +the rocks and rivers the salt which it contains to-day; Professor Joly +has on this ground assigned a hundred million years since the waters +first descended upon the crust. We must be content to know that the +best recent estimates, based on positive data, vary between fifty and a +hundred million years for the story which we are now about to narrate. +The earlier or astronomical period remains quite incalculable. Sir G. +Darwin thinks that it was probably at least a thousand million years +since the moon was separated from the earth. Whatever the period of time +may be since some cosmic cataclysm scattered the material of our solar +system in the form of a nebula, it is only a fraction of that larger and +illimitable time which the evolution of the stars dimly suggests to the +scientific imagination. + + + +THE GEOLOGICAL SERIES + +[The scale of years adopted--50,000,000 for the stratified rocks--is +merely an intermediate between conflicting estimates.] + + ERA. PERIOD. RELATIVE LENGTH. + + Quaternary Holocene 500,000 years + Pleistocene + + + Tertiary Pliocene 5,500,000 years + or Miocene + Cenozoic Oligocene + Eocene + + + Secondary Cretaceous 7,200,000 years + or Jurassic 3,600,000 " + Mesozoic Triassic 2,500,000 " + + + Primary Permian 2,800,000 years + or Carboniferous 6,200,000 " + Palaeozoic Devonian 8,000,000 " + Silurian 5,400,000 " + Ordovician 5,400,000 " + Cambrian 8,000,000 " + + Archaean Keweenawan Unknown (probably + Animikie at least + Huronian 50,000,000 years) + Keewatin + Laurentian + + + +CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNING OF LIFE + +There is, perhaps, no other chapter in the chronicle of the earth that +we approach with so lively an interest as the chapter which should +record the first appearance of life. Unfortunately, as far as the +authentic memorials of the past go, no other chapter is so impenetrably +obscure as this. The reason is simple. It is a familiar saying that life +has written its own record, the long-drawn record of its dynasties and +its deaths, in the rocks. But there were millions of years during which +life had not yet learned to write its record, and further millions of +years the record of which has been irremediably destroyed. The first +volume of the geological chronicle of the earth is the mass of the +Archaean (or "primitive") rocks. What the actual magnitude of that +volume, and the span of time it covers, may be, no geologist can say. +The Archaean rocks still solidly underlie the lowest depth he has ever +reached. It is computed, however, that these rocks, as far as they are +known to us, have a total depth of nearly ten miles, and seem therefore +to represent at least half the story of the earth from the time when it +rounded into a globe, or cooled sufficiently to endure the presence of +oceans. + +Yet all that we read of the earth's story during those many millions of +years could be told in a page or two. That section of geology is still +in its infancy, it is true. A day may come when science will decipher a +long and instructive narrative in the masses of quartz and gneiss, and +the layers of various kinds, which it calls the Archaean rocks. But we +may say with confidence that it will not discover in them more than +a few stray syllables of the earlier part, and none whatever of the +earliest part, of the epic of living nature. A few fossilised remains of +somewhat advanced organisms, such as shell-fish and worms, are found +in the higher and later rocks of the series, and more of the same +comparatively high types will probably appear. In the earlier strata, +representing an earlier stage of life, we find only thick seams of black +shale, limestone, and ironstone, in which we seem to see the ashes of +primitive organisms, cremated in the appalling fires of the volcanic +age, or crushed out of recognition by the superimposed masses. Even if +some wizardry of science were ever to restore the forms that have been +reduced to ashes in this Archaean crematorium, it would be found that +they are more or less advanced forms, far above the original level of +life. No trace will ever be found in the rocks of the first few million +years in the calendar of life. + +The word impossible or unknowable is not lightly uttered in science +to-day, but there is a very plain reason for admitting it here. The +earliest living things were at least as primitive of nature as the +lowest animals and plants we know to-day, and these, up to a fair level +of organisation, are so soft of texture that, when they die, they leave +no remains which may one day be turned into fossils. Some of them, +indeed, form tiny shells of flint or lime, or, like the corals, make for +themselves a solid bed; but this is a relatively late and higher stage +of development. Many thousands of species of animals and plants lie +below that level. We are therefore forced to conclude, from the aspect +of living nature to-day, that for ages the early organisms had no hard +and preservable parts. In thus declaring the impotence of geology, +however, we are at the same time introducing another science, biology, +which can throw appreciable light on the evolution of life. Let us first +see what geology tells us about the infancy of the earth. + +The distribution of the early rocks suggests that there was +comparatively little dry land showing above the surface of the Archaean +ocean. Our knowledge of these rocks is not at all complete, and we must +remember that some of this primitive land may be now under the sea or +buried in unsuspected regions. It is significant, however, that, up to +the present, exploration seems to show that in those remote ages only +about one-fifth of our actual land-surface stood above the level of the +waters. Apart from a patch of some 20,000 square miles of what is now +Australia, and smaller patches in Tasmania, New Zealand, and India, +nearly the whole of this land was in the far North. A considerable area +of eastern Canada had emerged, with lesser islands standing out to the +west and south of North America. Another large area lay round the basin +of the Baltic; and as Greenland, the Hebrides, and the extreme tip of +Scotland, belong to the same age, it is believed that a continent, of +which they are fragments, united America and Europe across the North +Atlantic. Of the rest of what is now Europe there were merely large +islands--one on the border of England and Wales, others in France, +Spain, and Southern Germany. Asia was represented by a large area in +China and Siberia, and an island or islands on the site of India. Very +little of Africa or South America existed. + +It will be seen at a glance that the physical story of the earth +from that time is a record of the emergence from the waters of larger +continents and the formation of lofty chains of mountains. Now this +world-old battle of land and sea has been waged with varying fortune +from age to age, and it has been one of the most important factors +in the development of life. We are just beginning to realise what a +wonderful light it throws on the upward advance of animals and plants. +No one in the scientific world to-day questions that, however imperfect +the record may be, there has been a continuous development of life from +the lowest level to the highest. But why there was advance at all, why +the primitive microbe climbs the scale of being, during millions +of years, until it reaches the stature of humanity, seems to many a +profound mystery. The solution of this mystery begins to break upon us +when we contemplate, in the geological record, the prolonged series of +changes in the face of the earth itself, and try to realise how these +changes must have impelled living things to fresh and higher adaptations +to their changing surroundings. + +Imagine some early continent with its population of animals and plants. +Each bay, estuary, river, and lake, each forest and marsh and solid +plain, has its distinctive inhabitants. Imagine this continent slowly +sinking into the sea, until the advancing arms of the salt water meet +across it, mingling their diverse populations in a common world, making +the fresh-water lake brackish or salt, turning the dry land into swamp, +and flooding the forest. Or suppose, on the other hand, that the land +rises, the marsh is drained, the genial climate succeeded by an icy +cold, the luscious vegetation destroyed, the whole animal population +compelled to change its habits and its food. But this is no imaginary +picture. It is the actual story of the earth during millions of years, +and it is chiefly in the light of these vast and exacting changes in the +environment that we are going to survey the panorama of the advance of +terrestrial life. + +For the moment it will be enough to state two leading principles. The +first is that there is no such thing as a "law of evolution" in +the sense in which many people understand that phrase. It is now +sufficiently well known that, when science speaks of a law, it does not +mean that there is some rule that things MUST act in such and such a +way. The law is a mere general expression of the fact that they DO act +in that way. But many imagine that there is some principle within +the living organism which impels it onward to a higher level of +organisation. That is entirely an error. There is no "law of progress." +If an animal is fitted to secure its livelihood and breed posterity +in certain surroundings, it may remain unchanged indefinitely if these +surroundings do not materially change. So the duckmole of Australia and +the tuatara of New Zealand have retained primitive features for millions +of years; so the aboriginal Australian and the Fuegian have remained +stagnant, in their isolation, for a hundred thousand years or more; so +the Chinaman, in his geographical isolation, has remained unchanged +for two thousand years. There is no more a "conservative instinct" +in Chinese than there is a "progressive instinct" in Europeans. The +difference is one of history and geography, as we shall see. + +To make this important principle still clearer, let us imagine some +primitive philosopher observing the advance of the tide over a level +beach. He must discover two things: why the water comes onward at all, +and why it advances along those particular channels. We shall see later +how men of science explain or interpret the mechanism in a living thing +which enables it to advance, when it does advance. For the present it +is enough to say that new-born animals and plants are always tending to +differ somewhat from their parents, and we now know, by experiment, that +when some exceptional influence is brought to bear on the parent, the +young may differ considerably from her. But, if the parents were already +in harmony with their environment, these variations on the part of the +young are of no consequence. Let the environment alter, however, and +some of these variations may chance to make the young better fitted than +the parent was. The young which happen to have the useful variation will +have an advantage over their brothers or sisters, and be more likely to +survive and breed the next generation. If the change in the environment +(in the food or climate, for instance) is prolonged and increased for +hundreds of thousands of years, we shall expect to find a corresponding +change in the animals and plants. + +We shall find such changes occurring throughout the story of the earth. +At one important point in the story we shall find so grave a revolution +in the face of nature that twenty-nine out of every thirty species of +animals and plants on the earth are annihilated. Less destructive and +extreme changes have been taking place during nearly the whole of the +period we have to cover, entailing a more gradual alteration of the +structure of animals and plants; but we shall repeatedly find them +culminating in very great changes of climate, or of the distribution of +land and water, which have subjected the living population of the earth +to the most searching tests and promoted every variation toward a more +effective organisation. [*] + + * This is a very simple expression of "Darwinism," and will + be enlarged later. The reader should ignore the occasional + statement of non-scientific writers that Darwinism is "dead" + or superseded. The questions which are actually in dispute + relate to the causes of the variation of the young from + their parents, the magnitude of these variations' and the + transmission of changes acquired by an animal during its own + life. We shall see this more fully at a later stage. The + importance of the environment as I have described it, is + admitted by all schools. + + +And the second guiding principle I wish to lay down in advance is that +these great changes in the face of the earth, which explain the progress +of organisms, may very largely be reduced to one simple agency--the +battle of the land and the sea. When you gaze at some line of cliffs +that is being eaten away by the waves, or reflect on the material +carried out to sea by the flooded river, you are--paradoxical as it may +seem--beholding a material process that has had a profound influence on +the development of life. The Archaean continent that we described was +being reduced constantly by the wash of rain, the scouring of rivers, +and the fretting of the waves on the coast. It is generally thought that +these wearing agencies were more violent in early times, but that is +disputed, and we will not build on it. In any case, in the course of +time millions of tons of matter were scraped off the Archaean continent +and laid on the floor of the sea by its rivers. This meant a very +serious alteration of pressure or weight on the surface of the globe, +and was bound to entail a reaction or restoration of the balance. + +The rise of the land and formation of mountains used to be ascribed +mainly to the cooling and shrinking of the globe of the earth. The skin +(crust), it was thought, would become too large for the globe as it +shrank, and would wrinkle outwards, or pucker up into mountain-chains. +The position of our greater mountain-chains sprawling across half the +earth (the Pyrenees to the Himalaya, and the Rocky Mountains to the +Andes), seems to confirm this, but the question of the interior of the +earth is obscure and disputed, and geologists generally conceive the +rise of land and formation of mountains in a different way. They are due +probably to the alteration of pressure on the crust in combination with +the instability of the interior. The floors of the seas would sink still +lower under their colossal burdens, and this would cause some draining +of the land-surface. At the same time the heavy pressure below the seas +and the lessening of pressure over the land would provoke a reaction. +Enormous masses of rock would be forced toward and underneath the +land-surface, bending, crumpling, and upheaving it as if its crust were +but a leather coat. As a result, masses of land would slowly rise above +the plain, to be shaped into hills and valleys by the hand of later +time, and fresh surfaces would be dragged out of the deep, enlarging the +fringes of the primitive continents, to be warped and crumpled in their +turn at the next era of pressure. + +In point of geological fact, the story of the earth has been one +prolonged series of changes in the level of land and water, and in their +respective limits. These changes have usually been very gradual, but +they have always entailed changes (in climate, etc. ) of the greatest +significance in the evolution of life. What was the swampy soil of +England in the Carboniferous period is now sometimes thousands of feet +beneath us; and what was the floor of a deep ocean over much of Europe +and Asia at another time is now to be found on the slopes of lofty Alps, +or 20,000 feet above the sea-level in Thibet. Our story of terrestrial +life will be, to a great extent, the story of how animals and plants +changed their structure in the long series of changes which this endless +battle of land and sea brought over the face of the earth. + +As we have no recognisable remains of the animals and plants of the +earliest age, we will not linger over the Archaean rocks. Starting from +deep and obscure masses of volcanic matter, the geologist, as he +travels up the series of Archaean rocks, can trace only a dim and +most unsatisfactory picture of those remote times. Between outpours of +volcanic floods he finds, after a time, traces that an ocean and rivers +are wearing away the land. He finds seams of carbon among the rocks of +the second division of the Archaean (the Keewatin), and deduces from +this that a dense sea-weed population already covered the floor of +the ocean. In the next division (the Huronian) he finds the traces of +extensive ice-action strangely lying between masses of volcanic rock, +and sees that thousands of square miles of eastern North America were +then covered with an ice-sheet. Then fresh floods of molten matter are +poured out from the depths below; then the sea floods the land for a +time; and at last it makes its final emergence as the first definitive +part of the North American continent, to enlarge, by successive fringes, +to the continent of to-day. [*] + + * I am quoting Professor Coleman's summary of Archaean + research in North America (Address to the Geological Section + of the British Association, 1909). Europe, as a continent, + has had more "ups and downs" than America in the course of + geological time. + + +This meagre picture of the battle of land and sea, with interludes of +great volcanic activity and even of an ice age, represents nearly all +we know of the first half of the world's story from geology. It is +especially disappointing in regard to the living population. The very +few fossils we find in the upper Archaean rocks are so similar to those +we shall discuss in the next chapter that we may disregard them, and the +seams of carbon-shales, iron-ore, and limestone, suggest only, at the +most, that life was already abundant. We must turn elsewhere for some +information on the origin and early development of life. + +The question of the origin of life I will dismiss with a brief account +of the various speculations of recent students of science. Broadly +speaking, their views fall into three classes. Some think that the germs +of life may have come to the earth from some other body in the universe; +some think that life was evolved out of non-living matter in the early +ages of the earth, under exceptional conditions which we do not at +present know, or can only dimly conjecture; and some think that life +is being evolved from non-life in nature to-day, and always has been so +evolving. The majority of scientific men merely assume that the earliest +living things were no exception to the general process of evolution, but +think that we have too little positive knowledge to speculate profitably +on the manner of their origin. + +The first view, that the germs of life may have come to this planet on a +meteoric visitor from some other world, as a storm-driven bird may take +its parasites to some distant island, is not without adherents to-day. +It was put forward long ago by Lord Kelvin and others; it has been +revived by the distinguished Swede, Professor Svante Arrhenius. The +scientific objection to it is that the more intense (ultra-violet) rays +of the sun would frill such germs as they pass through space. But a +broader objection, and one that may dispense us from dwelling on it, is +that we gain nothing by throwing our problems upon another planet. We +have no ground for supposing that the earth is less capable of evolving +life than other planets. + +The second view is that, when the earth had passed through its white-hot +stage, great masses of very complex chemicals, produced by the great +heat, were found on its surface. There is one complex chemical substance +in particular, called cyanogen, which is either an important constituent +of living matter, or closely akin to it. Now we need intense heat to +produce this substance in the laboratory. May we not suppose that masses +of it were produced during the incandescence of the earth, and that, +when the waters descended, they passed through a series of changes which +culminated in living plasm? Such is the "cyanogen hypothesis" of +the origin of life, advocated by able physiologists such as Pfluger, +Verworn, and others. It has the merit of suggesting a reason why life +may not be evolving from non-life in nature to-day, although it may have +so evolved in the Archaean period. + +Other students suggest other combinations of carbon-compounds and water +in the early days. Some suggest that electric action was probably far +more intense in those ages; others think that quantities of radium +may have been left at the surface. But the most important of these +speculations on the origin of life in early times, and one that has the +merit of not assuming any essentially different conditions then than we +find now, is contained in a recent pronouncement of one of the greatest +organic chemists in Europe, Professor Armstrong. He says that such +great progress has been made in his science--the science of the chemical +processes in living things--that "their cryptic character seems to have +disappeared almost suddenly." On the strength of this new knowledge of +living matter, he ventures to say that "a series of lucky accidents" +could account for the first formation of living things out of non-living +matter in Archaean times. Indeed, he goes further. He names certain +inorganic substances, and says that the blowing of these into pools by +the wind on the primitive planet would set afoot chemical combinations +which would issue in the production of living matter. [*] + + * See his address in Nature, vol. 76, p. 651. For other + speculations see Verworn's "General Physiology," Butler + Burke's "Origin of Life" (1906), and Dr. Bastian's "Origin + of Life" (1911). + + +It is evident that the popular notion that scientific men have declared +that life cannot be evolved from non-life is very far astray. This +blunder is usually due to a misunderstanding of the dogmatic statement +which one often reads in scientific works that "every living thing comes +from a living thing." This principle has no reference to remote ages, +when the conditions may have been different. It means that to-day, +within our experience, the living thing is always born of a living +parent. However, even this is questioned by some scientific men of +eminence, and we come to the third view. + +Professor Nageli, a distinguished botanist, and Professor Haeckel, +maintain that our experience, as well as the range of our microscopes, +is too limited to justify the current axiom. They believe that life may +be evolving constantly from inorganic matter. Professor J. A. Thomson +also warns us that our experience is very limited, and, for all we know, +protoplasm may be forming naturally in our own time. Mr. Butler Burke +has, under the action of radium, caused the birth of certain minute +specks which strangely imitate the behaviour of bacteria. Dr. Bastian +has maintained for years that he has produced living things from +non-living matter. In his latest experiments, described in the book +quoted, purely inorganic matter is used, and it is previously subjected, +in hermetically sealed tubes, to a heat greater than what has been found +necessary to kill any germs whatever. + +Evidently the problem of the origin of life is not hopeless, but our +knowledge of the nature of living matter is still so imperfect that we +may leave detailed speculation on its origin to a future generation. +Organic chemistry is making such strides that the day may not be far +distant when living matter will be made by the chemist, and the secret +of its origin revealed. For the present we must be content to choose the +more plausible of the best-informed speculations on the subject. + +But while the origin of life is obscure, the early stages of its +evolution come fairly within the range of our knowledge. To the inexpert +it must seem strange that, whereas we must rely on pure speculation +in attempting to trace the origin of life, we can speak with more +confidence of those early developments of plants and animals which are +equally buried in the mists of the Archaean period. Have we not said +that nothing remains of the procession of organisms during half the +earth's story but a shapeless seam of carbon or limestone? + +A simple illustration will serve to justify the procedure we are +about to adopt. Suppose that the whole of our literary and pictorial +references to earlier stages in the development of the bicycle, the +locomotive, or the loom, were destroyed. We should still be able to +retrace the phases of their evolution, because we should discover +specimens belonging to those early phases lingering in our museums, in +backward regions, and elsewhere. They might yet be useful in certain +environments into which the higher machines have not penetrated. In the +same way, if all the remains of prehistoric man and early civilisation +were lost, we could still fairly retrace the steps of the human race, by +gathering the lower tribes and races, and arranging them in the order +of their advancement. They are so many surviving illustrations of the +stages through which mankind as a whole has passed. + +Just in the same way we may marshal the countless species of animals and +plants to-day in such order that they will, in a general way, exhibit +to us the age-long procession of life. From the very start of living +evolution certain forms dropped out of the onward march, and have +remained, to our great instruction, what their ancestors were millions +of years ago. People create a difficulty for themselves by imagining +that, if evolution is true, all animals must evolve. A glance at our own +fellows will show the error of this. Of one family of human beings, as +a French writer has said, one only becomes a Napoleon; the others remain +Lucien, Jerome, or Joseph. Of one family of animals or trees, some +advance in one or other direction; some remain at the original level. +There is no "law of progress." The accidents of the world and hereditary +endowment impel some onward, and do not impel others. Hence at nearly +every great stage in the upward procession through the ages some +regiment of plants or animals has dropped out, and it represents to-day +the stage of life at which it ceased to progress. In other words, when +we survey the line of the hundreds of thousands of species which we +find in nature to-day, we can trace, amid their countless variations and +branches, the line of organic evolution in the past; just as we could, +from actual instances, study the evolution of a British house, from +the prehistoric remains in Devonshire to a mansion in Park Lane or a +provincial castle. + +Another method of retracing the lost early chapters in the development +of life is furnished by embryology. The value of this method is not +recognised by all embryologists, but there are now few authorities who +question the substantial correctness of it, and we shall, as we proceed, +see some remarkable applications of it. In brief, it is generally +admitted that an animal or plant is apt to reproduce, during its +embryonic development, some of the stages of its ancestry in past time. +This does not mean that a higher animal, whose ancestors were at one +time worms, at another time fishes, and at a later time reptiles, will +successively take the form of a little worm, a little fish, and a little +reptile. The embryonic life itself has been subject to evolution, and +this reproduction of ancestral forms has been proportionately disturbed. +Still, we shall find that animals will tend, in their embryonic +development, to reproduce various structural features which can only be +understood as reminiscences of ancestral organs. In the lower animals +the reproduction is much less disturbed than in the higher, but even in +the case of man this law is most strikingly verified. We shall find +it useful sometimes at least in confirming our conclusions as to the +ancestry of a particular group. + +We have, therefore, two important clues to the missing chapters in the +story of evolution. Just as the scheme of the evolution of worlds is +written broadly across the face of the heavens to-day, so the scheme of +the evolution of life is written on the face of living nature; and it +is written again, in blurred and broken characters, in the embryonic +development of each individual. With these aids we set out to restore +the lost beginning of the epic of organic evolution. + + + +CHAPTER VI. THE INFANCY OF THE EARTH + +The long Archaean period, into which half the story of the earth is so +unsatisfactorily packed, came to a close with a considerable uplift of +the land. We have seen that the earth at times reaches critical stages +owing to the transfer of millions of tons of matter from the land to the +depths of the ocean, and the need to readjust the pressure on the crust. +Apparently this stage is reached at the end of the Archaean, and a great +rise of the land--probably protracted during hundreds of thousands of +years--takes place. The shore-bottoms round the primitive continent are +raised above the water, their rocks crumpling like plates of lead +under the overpowering pressure. The sea retires with its inhabitants, +mingling their various provinces, transforming their settled homes. A +larger continent spans the northern ocean of the earth. + +In the shore-waters of this early continent are myriads of living +things, representing all the great families of the animal world below +the level of the fish and the insect. The mud and sand in which their +frames are entombed, as they die, will one day be the "Cambrian" rocks +of the geologist, and reveal to him their forms and suggest their +habits. No great volcanic age will reduce them to streaks of shapeless +carbon. The earth now buries its dead, and from their petrified remains +we conjure up a picture of the swarming life of the Cambrian ocean. + +A strange, sluggish population burrows in the mud, crawls over the sand, +adheres to the rocks, and swims among the thickets of sea-weed. The +strangest and most formidable, though still too puny a thing to survive +in a more strenuous age, is the familiar Trilobite of the geological +museum; a flattish animal with broad, round head, like a shovel, its +back covered with a three-lobed shell, and a number of fine legs or +swimmers below. It burrows in the loose bottom, or lies in it with +its large compound eyes peeping out in search of prey. It is the chief +representative of the hard-cased group (Crustacea) which will later +replace it with the lobster, the shrimp, the crab, and the water-flea. +Its remains form from a third to a fourth of all the buried Cambrian +skeletons. With it, swimming in the water, are smaller members of the +same family, which come nearer to our familiar small Crustacea. + +Shell-fish are the next most conspicuous inhabitants. Molluscs are +already well represented, but the more numerous are the more elementary +Brachiopods ("lampshells"), which come next to the Trilobites in number +and variety. Worms (or Annelids) wind in and out of the mud, leaving +their tracks and tubes for later ages. Strange ball or cup-shaped little +animals, with a hard frame, mounted on stony stalks and waving irregular +arms to draw in the food-bearing water, are the earliest representatives +of the Echinoderms. Some of these Cystids will presently blossom into +the wonderful sea-lily population of the next age, some are already +quitting their stalks, to become the free-moving star-fish, of which +a primitive specimen has been found in the later Cambrian. Large +jelly-fishes (of which casts are preserved) swim in the water; +coral-animals lay their rocky foundations, but do not as yet form reefs; +coarse sponges rise from the floor; and myriads of tiny Radiolaria and +Thalamophores, with shells of flint and lime, float at the surface or at +various depths. + +This slight sketch of the Cambrian population shows us that living +things had already reached a high level of development. Their story +evidently goes back, for millions of years, deep into those mists of the +Archaean age which we were unable to penetrate. We turn therefore to +the zoologist to learn what he can tell us of the origin and +family-relations of these Cambrian animals, and will afterwards see how +they are climbing to higher levels under the eye of the geologist. + +At the basis of the living world of to-day is a vast population of +minute, generally microscopic, animals and plants, which are popularly +known as "microbes." Each consists, in scientific language, of one cell. +It is now well known that the bodies of the larger animals and plants +are made up of millions of these units of living matter, or cells--the +atoms of the organic world--and I need not enlarge on it. But even a +single cell lends itself to infinite variety of shape, and we have to +penetrate to the very lowest level of this luxuriant world of one-celled +organisms to obtain some idea of the most primitive living things. +Properly speaking, there were no "first living things." It cannot be +doubted by any student of nature that the microbe developed so gradually +that it is as impossible to fix a precise term for the beginning of life +as it is to say when the night ends and the day begins. In the course of +time little one-celled living units appeared in the waters of the earth, +whether in the shallow shore waters or on the surface of the deep is a +matter of conjecture. + +We are justified in concluding that they were at least as rudimentary +in structure and life as the lowest inhabitants of nature to-day. The +distinction of being the lowest known living organisms should, I think, +be awarded to certain one-celled vegetal organisms which are very common +in nature. Minute simple specks of living matter, sometimes less than +the five-thousandth of an inch in diameter, these lowly Algae are so +numerous that it is they, in their millions, which cover moist surfaces +with the familiar greenish or bluish coat. They have no visible +organisation, though, naturally, they must have some kind of structure +below the range of the microscope. Their life consists in the absorption +of food-particles, at any point of their surface, and in dividing into +two living microbes, instead of dying, when their bulk increases. A very +lowly branch of the Bacteria (Nitrobacteria) sometimes dispute their +claim to the lowest position in the hierarchy of living nature, but +there is reason to suspect that these Bacteria may have degenerated from +a higher level. + +Here we have a convenient starting-point for the story of life, and +may now trace the general lines of upward development. The first great +principle to be recognised is the early division of these primitive +organisms into two great classes, the moving and the stationary. The +clue to this important divergence is found in diet. With exceptions +on both sides, we find that the non-moving microbes generally feed on +inorganic matter, which they convert into plasm; the moving microbes +generally feed on ready-made plasm--on the living non-movers, on each +other, or on particles of dead organic matter. Now, inorganic food is +generally diffused in the waters, so that the vegetal feeders have no +incentive to develop mobility. On the other hand, the power to move +in search of their food, which is not equally diffused, becomes a most +important advantage to the feeders on other organisms. They therefore +develop various means of locomotion. Some flow or roll slowly along +like tiny drops of oil on an inclined surface; others develop minute +outgrowths of their substance, like fine hairs, which beat the water as +oars do. Some of them have one strong oar, like the gondolier (but in +front of the boat); others have two or more oars; while some have their +little flanks bristling with fine lashes, like the flanks of a Roman +galley. + +If we imagine this simple principle at work for ages among the primitive +microbes, we understand the first great division of the living world, +into plants and animals. There must have been a long series of earlier +stages below the plant and animal. In fact, some writers insist that the +first organisms were animal in nature, feeding on the more elementary +stages of living matter. At last one type develops chlorophyll (the +green matter in leaves), and is able to build up plasm out of inorganic +matter; another type develops mobility, and becomes a parasite on the +plant world. There is no rigid distinction of the two worlds. Many +microscopic plants move about just as animals do, and many animals live +on fixed stalks; while many plants feed on organic matter. There is so +little "difference of nature" between the plant and the animal that the +experts differ in classifying some of these minute creatures. In fact, +we shall often find plants and animals crossing the line of division. We +shall find animals rooting themselves to the floor, like plants, though +they will generally develop arms or streamers for bringing the food to +them; and we shall find plants becoming insect-catchers. All this +merely shows that the difference is a natural tendency, which special +circumstances may overrule. It remains true that the great division +of the organic world is due to a simple principle of development; +difference of diet leads to difference of mobility. + +But this simple principle will have further consequences of a most +important character. It will lead to the development of mind in one half +of living nature and leave it undeveloped in the other. Mind, as we know +it in the lower levels of life, is not confined to the animal at +all. Many even of the higher plants are very delicately sensitive +to stimulation, and at the lowest level many plants behave just like +animals. In other words, this sensitiveness to stimuli, which is +the first form of mind, is distributed according to mobility. To the +motionless organism it is no advantage; to the pursuing and pursued +organism it is an immense advantage, and is one of the chief qualities +for natural selection to foster. + +For the moment, however, we must glance at the operation of this and +other natural principles in the evolution of the one-celled animals +and plants, which we take to represent the primitive population of +the earth. As there are tens of thousands of different species even of +"microbes," it is clear that we must deal with them in a very summary +way. The evolution of the plant I reserve for a later chapter, and I +must be content to suggest the development of one-celled animals on +very broad lines. When some of the primitive cells began to feed on each +other, and develop mobility, it is probable that at least two distinct +types were evolved, corresponding to the two lowest animal organisms in +nature to-day. One of these is a very minute and very common (in vases +of decaying flowers, for instance) speck of plasm, which moves about by +lashing the water with a single oar (flagellum), or hair-like extension +of its substance. This type, however, which is known as the Flagellate, +may be derived from the next, which we will take as the primitive and +fundamental animal type. It is best seen in the common and familiar +Amoeba, a minute sac of liquid or viscid plasm, often not more than a +hundredth of an inch in diameter. As its "skin" is merely a finer kind +of the viscous plasm, not an impenetrable membrane, it takes in food at +any part of its surface, makes little "stomachs," or temporary cavities, +round the food at any part of its interior, ejects the useless matter at +any point, and thrusts out any part of its body as temporary "arms" or +"feet." + +Now it is plain that in an age of increasing microbic cannibalism the +toughening of the skin would be one of the first advantages to secure +survival, and this is, in point of fact, almost the second leading +principle in early development. Naturally, as the skin becomes firmer, +the animal can no longer, like the Amoeba, take food at, or make limbs +of, any part of it. There must be permanent pores in the membrane to +receive food or let out rays of the living substance to act as oars +or arms. Thus we get an immense variety amongst these Protozoa, as the +one-celled animals are called. Some (the Flagellates) have one or two +stout oars; some (the Ciliates) have numbers of fine hairs (or cilia). +Some have a definite mouth-funnel, but no stomach, and cilia drawing +the water into it. Some (Vorticella, etc.), shrinking from the open +battlefield, return to the plant-principle, live on stalks, and have +wreaths of cilia round the open mouth drawing the water to them. Some +(the Heliozoa) remain almost motionless, shooting out sticky rays of +their matter on every side to catch the food. Some form tubes to live +in; some (Coleps) develop horny plates for armour; and others develop +projectiles to pierce their prey (stinging threads). + +This miniature world is full of evolutionary interest, but it is too +vast for detailed study here. We will take one group, which we know +to have been already developed in the Cambrian, and let a study of its +development stand for all. In every lecture or book on "the beauties of +the microscope" we find, and are generally greatly puzzled by, minute +shells of remarkable grace and beauty that are formed by some of these +very elementary animals They are the Radiolaria (with flinty shells, as +a rule) and the Thalamophora (with chalk frames). Evolution furnishes a +simple key to their remarkable structure. + +As we saw, one of the early requirements to be fostered by natural +selection in the Archaean struggle for life was a "thick skin," and +the thick skin had to be porous to let the animal shoot out its viscid +substance in rays and earn its living. This stage above the Amoeba +is beautifully illustrated in the sun-animalcules (Heliozoa). Now the +lowest types of Radiolaria are of this character. They have no shell +or framework at all. The next stage is for the little animal to develop +fine irregular threads of flint in its skin, a much better security +against the animal-eater. These animalcules, it must be recollected, +are bits of almost pure plasm, and, as they live in crowds, dividing +and subdividing, but never dying, make excellent mouthfuls for a small +feeder. Those with the more flint in their skins were the more apt to +survive and "breed." The threads of flint increase until they form a +sort of thorn-thicket round a little social group, or a complete lattice +round an individual body. Next, spikes or spines jut out from the +lattice, partly for additional protection, partly to keep the little +body afloat at the surface of the sea. In this way we get a bewildering +variety and increasing complexity of forms, ascending in four divergent +lines from the naked ancestral type to the extreme grace and intricacy +of the Calocyclas monumentum or the Lychnaspis miranda. These, however, +are rare specimens in the 4000 species of Radiolaria. I have hundreds of +them, on microscopic slides, which have no beauty and little regularity +of form. We see a gradual evolution, on utilitarian principles, as +we run over the thousands of forms; and, when we recollect the +inconceivable numbers in which these little animals have lived and +struggled for life--passively--during tens of millions of years, we are +not surprised at the elaborate protective frames of the higher types. + +The Thalamophores, the sister-group of one-celled animals which largely +compose our chalk and much of our limestone, are developed on the same +principle. The earlier forms seem to have lived in a part of the ocean +where silica was scarce, and they absorbed and built their protective +frames of lime. In the simpler types the frame is not unlike a +wide-necked bottle, turned upside-down. In later forms it takes the +shape of a spirally coiled series of chambers, sometimes amounting to +several thousand. These wonderful little houses are not difficult to +understand. The original tiny animal covers itself with a coat of lime. +It feeds, grows, and bulges out of its chamber. The new part of its +flesh must have a fresh coat, and the process goes on until scores, or +hundreds, or even thousands, of these tiny chambers make up the spiral +shell of the morsel of living matter. + +With this brief indication of the mechanical principles which have +directed the evolution of two of the most remarkable groups of the +one-celled animals we must be content, or the dimensions of this volume +will not enable us even to reach the higher and more interesting types. +We must advance at once to the larger animals, whose bodies are composed +of myriads of cells. + +The social tendency which pervades the animal world, and the evident use +of that tendency, prepare us to understand that the primitive +microbes would naturally come in time to live in clusters. Union means +effectiveness in many ways, even when it does not mean strength. We +have still many loose associations of one-celled animals in nature, +illustrating the approach to a community life. Numbers of the Protozoa +are social; they live either in a common jelly-like matrix, or on a +common stalk. In fact, we have a singularly instructive illustration of +the process in the evolution of the sponges. + +It is well known that the horny texture to which we commonly give +the name of sponge is the former tenement and shelter of a colony of +one-celled animals, which are the real Sponges. In other groups the +structure is of lime; in others, again, of flinty material. Now, the +Sponges, as we have them to-day, are so varied, and start from so low +a level, that no other group of animals "illustrates so strikingly the +theory of evolution," as Professor Minchin says. We begin with colonies +in which the individuals are (as in Proterospongia) irregularly +distributed in their jelly-like common bed, each animal lashing the +water, as stalked Flagellates do, and bringing the food to it. Such a +colony would be admirable food for an early carnivore, and we soon find +the protective principle making it less pleasant for the devourer. The +first stage may be--at least there are such Sponges even now--that the +common bed is strewn or sown with the cast shells of Radiolaria. However +that may be, the Sponges soon begin to absorb the silica or lime of +the sea-water, and deposit it in needles or fragments in their bed. The +deposit goes on until at last an elaborate framework of thorny, or limy, +or flinty material is constructed by the one-celled citizens. In the +higher types a system of pores or canals lets the food-bearing water +pass through, as the animals draw it in with their lashes; in the +highest types the animals come still closer together, lining the walls +of little chambers in the interior. + +Here we have a very clear evolutionary transition from the solitary +microbe to a higher level, but, unfortunately, it does not take us far. +The Sponges are a side-issue, or cul de sac, from the Protozoic world, +and do not lead on to the higher. Each one-celled unit remains an +animal; it is a colony of unicellulars, not a many-celled body. We +may admire it as an instructive approach toward the formation of +a many-celled body, but we must look elsewhere for the true upward +advance. + +The next stage is best illustrated in certain spherical colonies of +cells like the tiny green Volvox (now generally regarded as vegetal) +of our ponds, or Magosphoera. Here the constituent cells merge +their individuality in the common action. We have the first definite +many-celled body. It is the type to which a moving close colony of +one-celled microbes would soon come. The round surface is well adapted +for rolling or spinning along in the water, and, as each little cell +earns its own living, it must be at the surface, in contact with the +water. Thus a hollow, or fluid-filled, little sphere, like the Volvox, +is the natural connecting-link between the microbe and the many-celled +body, and may be taken to represent the first important stage in its +development. + +The next important stage is also very clearly exhibited in nature, and +is more or less clearly reproduced in the embryonic development of all +animals. We may imagine that the age of microbes was succeeded by an age +of these many-celled larger bodies, and the struggle for life entered +upon a new phase. The great principle we have already recognised came +into play once more. Large numbers of the many-celled bodies shrank from +the field of battle, and adopted the method of the plant. They rooted +themselves to the floor of the ocean, and developed long arms or lashes +for creating a whirlpool movement in the water, and thus bringing the +food into their open mouths. Forfeiting mobility, they have, like the +plant, forfeited the greater possibilities of progress, and they remain +flowering to-day on the floors of our waters, recalling the next phase +in the evolution of early life. Such are the hydra, the polyp, the +coral, and the sea-anemone. It is not singular that earlier observers +could not detect that they were animals, and they were long known in +science as "animal-plants" (Zoophytes). + +When we look to the common structure of these animals, to find the +ancestral type, we must ignore the nerve and muscle-cells which they +have developed in some degree. Fundamentally, their body consists of a +pouch, with an open mouth, the sides of the pouch consisting of a double +layer of cells. In this we have a clue to the next stage of animal +development. Take a soft india-rubber ball to represent the first +many-celled animal. Press in one half of the ball close upon the other, +narrow the mouth, and you have something like the body-structure of the +coral and hydra. As this is the course of embryonic development, and as +it is so well retained in the lowest groups of the many-celled animals, +we take it to be the next stage. The reason for it will become clear on +reflection. Division of labour naturally takes place in a colony, and in +that way certain cells in the primitive body were confined to the work +of digestion. It would be an obvious advantage for these to retire into +the interior, leaving the whole external surface free for the adjustment +of the animal's relations to the outer world. + +Again we must refrain from following in detail the development of +this new world of life which branches off in the Archaean ocean. The +evolution of the Corals alone would be a lengthy and interesting +story. But a word must be said about the jelly-fish, partly because the +inexpert will be puzzled at the inclusion of so active an animal, and +partly because its story admirably illustrates the principle we are +studying. The Medusa really descends from one of the plant-like animals +of the early Archaean period, but it has abandoned the ancestral stalk, +turned upside down, and developed muscular swimming organs. Its past is +betrayed in its embryonic development. As a rule the germ develops into +a stalked polyp, out of which the free-swimming Medusa is formed. This +return to active and free life must have occurred early, as we find +casts of large Medusae in the Cambrian beds. In complete harmony with +the principle we laid down, the jelly-fish has gained in nerve and +sensitiveness in proportion to its return to an active career. + +But this principle is best illustrated in the other branch of the early +many-celled animals, which continued to move about in search of food. +Here, as will be expected, we have the main stem of the animal world, +and, although the successive stages of development are obscure, certain +broad lines that it followed are clear and interesting. + +It is evident that in a swarming population of such animals the most +valuable qualities will be speed and perception. The sluggish Coral +needs only sensitiveness enough, and mobility enough, to shrink behind +its protecting scales at the approach of danger. In the open water the +most speedy and most sensitive will be apt to escape destruction, +and have the larger share in breeding the next generation. Imagine a +selection on this principle going on for millions of years, and the +general result can be conjectured. A very interesting analogy is found +in the evolution of the boat. From the clumsy hollowed tree of Neolithic +man natural selection, or the need of increasing speed, has developed +the elongated, evenly balanced modern boat, with its distinct stem and +stern. So in the Archaean ocean the struggle to overtake food, or escape +feeders, evolved an elongated two-sided body, with head and tail, and +with the oars (cilia) of the one-celled ancestor spread thickly along +its flanks. In other words, a body akin to that of the lower water-worms +would be the natural result; and this is, in point of fact, the next +stage we find in the hierarchy of living nature. + +Probably myriads of different types of this worm-like organisation were +developed, but such animals leave no trace in the rocks, and we can +only follow the development by broad analogies. The lowest flat-worms +of to-day may represent some of these early types, and as we ascend +the scale of what is loosely called "worm" organisation, we get some +instructive suggestions of the way in which the various organs develop. +Division of labour continues among the colony of cells which make up +the body, and we get distinct nerve-cells, muscle-cells, and digestive +cells. The nerve-cells are most useful at the head of an organism which +moves through the water, just as the look-out peers from the head of the +ship, and there they develop most thickly. By a fresh division of labour +some of these cells become especially sensitive to light, some to the +chemical qualities of matter, some to movements of the water; we have +the beginning of the eyes, the nose, and the ears, as simple little +depressions in the skin of the head, lined with these sensitive cells. A +muscular gullet arises to protect the digestive tube; a simple drainage +channel for waste matter forms under the skin; other channels permit +the passage of the fluid food, become (in the higher worms) muscular +blood-vessels, and begin to contract--somewhat erratically at first--and +drive the blood through the system. + +Here, perhaps, are millions of years of development compressed into +a paragraph. But the purpose of this work is chiefly to describe the +material record of the advance of life in the earth's strata, and show +how it is related to great geological changes. We must therefore abstain +from endeavouring to trace the genealogy of the innumerable types of +animals which were, until recently, collected in zoology under the +heading "Worms." It is more pertinent to inquire how the higher classes +of animals, which we found in the Cambrian seas, can have arisen from +this primitive worm-like population. + +The struggle for life in the Archaean ocean would become keener and more +exacting with the appearance of each new and more effective type. That +is a familiar principle in our industrial world to-day, and we shall +find it illustrated throughout our story. We therefore find the various +processes of evolution, which we have already seen, now actively at +work among the swarming Archaean population, and producing several +very distinct types. In some of these struggling organisms speed is +developed, together with offensive and defensive weapons, and a line +slowly ascends toward the fish, which we will consider later. In others +defensive armour is chiefly developed, and we get the lines of the +heavy sluggish shell-fish, the Molluscs and Brachiopods, and, by a +later compromise between speed and armour, the more active tough-coated +Arthropods. In others the plant-principle reappears; the worm-like +creature retires from the free-moving life, attaches itself to a +fixed base, and becomes the Bryozoan or the Echinoderm. To trace the +development of these types in any detail is impossible. The early +remains are not preserved. But some clues are found in nature or in +embryonic development, and, when the types do begin to be preserved in +the rocks, we find the process of evolution plainly at work in them. We +will therefore say a few words about the general evolution of each type, +and then return to the geological record in the Cambrian rocks. + +The starfish, the most familiar representative of the Echinoderms, +seems very far removed from the kind of worm-like ancestor we have been +imagining, but, fortunately, the very interesting story of the starfish +is easily learned from the geological chronicle. Reflect on the +flower-like expansion of its arms, and then imagine it mounted on a +stalk, mouth side upward, with those arms--more tapering than they +now are--waving round the mouth. That, apparently, was the past of the +starfish and its cousins. We shall see that the earliest Echinoderms we +know are cup-shaped structures on stalks, with a stiff, limy frame and +(as in all sessile animals) a number of waving arms round the mouth. +In the next geological age the stalk will become a long and flexible +arrangement of muscles and plates of chalk, the cup will be more +perfectly compacted of chalky plates, and the five arms will taper and +branch until they have an almost feathery appearance; and the animal +will be considered a "sea-lily" by the early geologist. + +The evidence suggests that both the free-moving and the stalked +Echinoderms descend from a common stalked Archaean ancestor. Some +primitive animal abandoned the worm-like habit, and attached itself, +like a polyp, to the floor. Like all such sessile animals, it developed +a wreath of arms round the open mouth. The "sea-cucumber" (Holothurian) +seems to be a type that left the stalk, retaining the little wreath of +arms, before the body was heavily protected and deformed. In the others +a strong limy skeleton was developed, and the nerves and other organs +were modified in adaptation to the bud-like or flower-like structure. +Another branch of the family then abandoned the stalk, and, spreading +its arms flat, and gradually developing in them numbers of little "feet" +(water-tubes), became the starfish. In the living Comatula we find a +star passing through the stalked stage in its early development, when it +looks like a tiny sea-lily. The sea-urchin has evolved from the star by +folding the arms into a ball. [*] + + * See the section on Echinoderms, by Professor MacBride, in + the "Cambridge Natural History," I. + + +The Bryozoa (sea-mats, etc.) are another and lower branch of the +primitive active organisms which have adopted a sessile life. In the +shell-fish, on the other hand, the principle of armour-plating has its +greatest development. It is assuredly a long and obscure way that +leads from the ancestral type of animal we have been describing to +the headless and shapeless mussel or oyster. Such a degeneration is, +however, precisely what we should expect to find in the circumstances. +Indeed, the larva, of many of the headless Molluscs have a mouth and +eyes, and there is a very common type of larva--the trochosphere--in the +Mollusc world which approaches the earlier form of some of the +higher worms. The Molluscs, as we shall see, provide some admirable +illustrations of the process of evolution. In some of the later +fossilised specimens (Planorbis, Paludina, etc.) we can trace the animal +as it gradually passes from one species to another. The freshening of +the Caspian Sea, which was an outlying part of the Mediterranean quite +late in the geological record, seems to have evolved several new genera +of Molluscs. + +Although, therefore, the remains are not preserved of those primitive +Molluscs in which we might see the protecting shell gradually +thickening, and deforming the worm-like body, we are not without +indications of the process. Two unequal branches of the early wormlike +organisms shrank into strong protective shells. The lower branch became +the Brachiopods; the more advanced branch the Molluscs. In the Mollusc +world, in turn, there are several early types developed. In the +Pelecypods (or Lamellibranchs--the mussel, oyster, etc.) the animal +retires wholly within its fortress, and degenerates. The Gastropods +(snails, etc.) compromise, and retain a certain amount of freedom, so +that they degenerate less. The highest group, the Cephalopods, "keep +their heads," in the literal sense, and we shall find them advancing +from form to form until, in the octopus of a later age, they discard the +ancestral shell, and become the aristocrats of the Mollusc kingdom. + +The last and most important line that led upward from the chaos of +Archaean worms is that of the Arthropods. Its early characteristic was +the acquisition of a chitinous coat over the body. Embryonic indications +show that this was at first a continuous shield, but a type arose in +which the coat broke into sections covering each segment of the body, +giving greater freedom of movement. The shield, in fact, became a fine +coat of mail. The Trilobite is an early and imperfect experiment of the +class, and the larva of the modern king-crab bears witness that it has +not perished without leaving descendants. How later Crustacea increase +the toughness of the coat by deposits of lime, and lead on to the +crab and lobster, and how one early branch invades the land, develops +air-breathing apparatus, and culminates in the spiders and insects, will +be considered later. We shall see that there is most remarkable evidence +connecting the highest of the Arthropods, the insect, with a remote +Annelid ancestor. + +We are thus not entirely without clues to the origin of the more +advanced animals we find when the fuller geological record begins. +Further embryological study, and possibly the discovery of surviving +primitive forms, of which Central Africa may yet yield a number, may +enlarge our knowledge, but it is likely to remain very imperfect. +The fossil records of the long ages during which the Mollusc, the +Crustacean, and the Echinoderm slowly assumed their characteristic forms +are hopelessly lost. But we are now prepared to return to the record +which survives, and we shall find the remaining story of the earth a +very ample and interesting chronicle of evolution. + + + +CHAPTER VII. THE PASSAGE TO THE LAND + +Slender as our knowledge is of the earlier evolution of the Invertebrate +animals, we return to our Cambrian population with greater interest. +The uncouth Trilobite and its livelier cousins, the sluggish, skulking +Brachiopod and Mollusc, the squirming Annelids, and the plant-like +Cystids, Corals, and Sponges are the outcome of millions of years of +struggle. Just as men, when their culture and their warfare advanced, +clothed themselves with armour, and the most completely mailed +survived the battle, so, generation after generation, the thicker and +harder-skinned animals survived in the Archaean battlefield, and the +Cambrian age opened upon the various fashions of armour that we there +described. But, although half the story of life is over, organisation +is still imperfect and sluggish. We have now to see how it advances to +higher levels, and how the drama is transferred from the ocean to a new +and more stimulating environment. + +The Cambrian age begins with a vigorous move on the part of the land. +The seas roll back from the shores of the "lost Atlantis," and vast +regions are laid bare to the sun and the rains. In the bays and hollows +of the distant shores the animal survivors of the great upheaval adapt +themselves to their fresh homes and continue the struggle. But the +rivers and the waves are at work once more upon the land, and, as the +Cambrian age proceeds, the fringes of the continents are sheared, and +the shore-life steadily advances upon the low-lying land. By the end of +the Cambrian age a very large proportion of the land is covered with +a shallow sea, in which the debris of its surface is deposited. The +levelling continues through the next (Ordovician) period. Before its +close nearly the whole of the United States and the greater part of +Canada are under water, and the new land that had appeared on the site +of Europe is also for the most part submerged. The present British Isles +are almost reduced to a strip of north-eastern Ireland, the northern +extremity of Scotland, and large islands in the south-west and centre of +England. + +We have already seen that these victories of the sea are just as +stimulating, in a different way, to animals as the victories of the +land. American geologists are tracing, in a very instructive way, the +effect on that early population of the encroachment of the sea. In each +arm of the sea is a distinctive fauna. Life is still very parochial; the +great cosmopolitans, the fishes, have not yet arrived. As the land is +revelled, the arms of the sea approach each other, and at last mingle +their waters and their populations, with stimulating effect. Provincial +characters are modified, and cosmopolitan characters increase in the +great central sea of America. The vast shallow waters provide a greatly +enlarged theatre for the life of the time, and it flourishes enormously. +Then, at the end of the Ordovician, the land begins to rise once more. +Whether it was due to a fresh shrinking of the crust, or to the simple +process we have described, or both, we need not attempt to determine; +but both in Europe and America there is a great emergence of land. +The shore-tracts and the shallow water are narrowed, the struggle is +intensified in them, and we pass into the Silurian age with a greatly +reduced number but more advanced variety of animals. In the Silurian +age the sea advances once more, and the shore-waters expand. There is +another great "expansive evolution" of life. But the Silurian age closes +with a fresh and very extensive emergence of the land, and this time +it will have the most important consequences. For two new things have +meantime appeared on the earth. The fish has evolved in the waters, and +the plant, at least, has found a footing on the land. + +These geological changes which we have summarised and which have been +too little noticed until recently in evolutionary studies, occupied +7,000,000 years, on the lowest estimate, and probably twice that period. +The impatient critic of evolutionary hypotheses is apt to forget the +length of these early periods. We shall see that in the last two or +three million years of the earth's story most extraordinary progress +has been made in plant and animal development, and can be very fairly +traced. How much advance should we allow for these seven or fourteen +million years of swarming life and changing environments? + +We cannot nearly cover the whole ground of paleontology for the period, +and must be content to notice some of the more interesting advances, and +then deal more fully with the evolution of the fish, the forerunner of +the great land animals. + +The Trilobite was the most arresting figure in the Cambrian sea, and its +fortunes deserve a paragraph. It reaches its climax in the Ordovician +sea, and then begins to decline, as more powerful animals come upon the +scene. At first (apparently) an eyeless organism, it gradually develops +compound eyes, and in some species the experts have calculated that +there were 15,000 facets to each eye. As time goes on, also, the eye +stands out from the head on a kind of stalk, giving a wider range of +vision. Some of the more sluggish species seem to have been able to +roll themselves up, like hedgehogs, in their shells, when an enemy +approached. But another branch of the same group (Crustacea) has +meantime advanced, and it gradually supersedes the dwindling Trilobites. +Toward the close of the Silurian great scorpion-like Crustaceans +(Pterygotus, Eurypterus, etc.) make their appearance. Their development +is obscure, but it must be remembered that the rocks only give the +record of shore-life, and only a part of that is as yet opened by +geology. Some experts think that they were developed in inland waters. +Reaching sometimes a length of five or six feet, with two large compound +eyes and some smaller eye-spots (ocelli), they must have been the giants +of the Silurian ocean until the great sharks and other fishes appeared. + +The quaint stalked Echinoderm which also we noticed in the Cambrian +shallows has now evolved into a more handsome creature, the sea-lily. +The cup-shaped body is now composed of a large number of limy plates, +clothed with flesh; the arms are long, tapering, symmetrical, and richly +fringed; the stalk advances higher and higher, until the flower-like +animal sometimes waves its feathery arms from the top of a flexible +pedestal composed of millions of tiny chalk disks. Small forests of +these sea-lilies adorn the floor of the Silurian ocean, and their broken +and dead frames form whole beds of limestone. The primitive Cystids +dwindle and die out in the presence of such powerful competitors. Of +250 species only a dozen linger in the Silurian strata, though a new and +more advanced type--the Blastoid--holds the field for a time. It is the +age of the Crinoids or sea-lilies. The starfish, which has abandoned the +stalk, does not seem to prosper as yet, and the brittle-star appears. +Their age will come later. No sea-urchins or sea-cucumbers (which would +hardly be preserved) are found as yet. It is precisely the order of +appearance which our theory of their evolution demands. + +The Brachiopods have passed into entirely new and more advanced species +in the many advances and retreats of the shores, but the Molluscs show +more interesting progress. The commanding group from the start is that +of the Molluscs which have "kept their head," the Cephalopods, and +their large shells show a most instructive evolution. The first great +representative of the tribe is a straight-shelled Cephalopod, which +becomes "the tyrant and scavenger of the Silurian ocean" (Chamberlin). +Its tapering, conical shell sometimes runs to a length of fifteen +feet, and a diameter of one foot. It would of itself be an important +evolutionary factor in the primitive seas, and might explain more than +one advance in protective armour or retreat into heavy shells. As the +period advances the shell begins to curve, and at last it forms a +close spiral coil. This would be so great an advantage that we are not +surprised to find the coiled type (Goniatites) gain upon and gradually +replace the straight-shelled types (Orthoceratites). The Silurian +ocean swarms with these great shelled Cephalopods, of which the little +Nautilus is now the only survivor. + +We will not enlarge on the Sponges and Corals, which are slowly +advancing toward the higher modern types. Two new and very powerful +organisms have appeared, and merit the closest attention. One is the +fish, the remote ancestor of the birds and mammals that will one day +rule the earth. The other may be the ancestor of the fish itself, or it +may be one of the many abortive outcomes and unsuccessful experiments of +the stirring life of the time. And while these new types are themselves +a result of the great and stimulating changes which we have reviewed +and the incessant struggle for food and safety, they in turn enormously +quicken the pace of development. The Dreadnought appears in the +primitive seas; the effect on the fleets of the world of the evolution +of our latest type of battleship gives us a faint idea of the effect, on +all the moving population, of the coming of these monsters of the deep. +The age had not lacked incentives to progress; it now obtains a more +terrible and far-reaching stimulus. + +To understand the situation let us see how the battle of land and sea +had proceeded. The Devonian Period had opened with a fresh emergence of +the land, especially in Europe, and great inland seas or lakes were left +in the hollows. The tincture of iron which gives a red colour to our +characteristic Devonian rocks, the Old Red Sandstone, shows us that +the sand was deposited in inland waters. The fish had already been +developed, and the Devonian rocks show it swarming, in great numbers and +variety, in the enclosed seas and round the fringe of the continents. + +The first generation was a group of strange creatures, half fish and +half Crustacean, which are known as the Ostracoderms. They had large +armour-plated heads, which recall the Trilobite, and suggest that they +too burrowed in the mud of the sea or (as many think) of the inland +lakes, making havoc among the shell-fish, worms, and small Crustacea. +The hind-part of their bodies was remarkably fish-like in structure. But +they had no backbone--though we cannot say whether they may not have +had a rod of cartilage along the back--and no articulated jaws like the +fish. Some regard them as a connecting link between the Crustacea +and the fishes, but the general feeling is that they were an abortive +development in the direction of the fish. The sharks and other large +fishes, which have appeared in the Silurian, easily displace these +clumsy and poor-mouthed competitors One almost thinks of the aeroplane +superseding the navigable balloon. + +Of the fishes the Arthrodirans dominated the inland seas (apparently), +while the sharks commanded the ocean. One of the Arthrodirans, the +Dinichthys ("terrible fish"), is the most formidable fish known to +science. It measured twenty feet from snout to tail. Its monstrous head, +three feet in width, was heavily armoured, and, instead of teeth, its +great jaws, two feet in length, were sharpened, and closed over the +victim like a gigantic pair of clippers. The strongly plated heads of +these fishes were commonly a foot or two feet in width. Life in the +waters became more exacting than ever. But the Arthrodirans were +unwieldy and sluggish, and had to give way before more progressive +types. The toothed shark gradually became the lord of the waters. + +The early shark ate, amongst other things, quantities of Molluscs and +Brachiopods. Possibly he began with Crustacea; in any case the practice +of crunching shellfish led to a stronger and stronger development of the +hard plate which lined his mouth. The prickles of the plate grew +larger and harder, until--as may be seen to-day in the mouth of a young +shark--the cavity was lined with teeth. In the bulk of the Devonian +sharks these developed into what are significantly called "pavement +teeth." They were solid plates of enamel, an inch or an inch and a half +in width, with which the monster ground its enormous meals of Molluscs, +Crustacea, sea-weed, etc. A new and stimulating element had come into +the life of the invertebrate world. Other sharks snapped larger victims, +and developed the teeth on the edges of their jaws, to the sacrifice +of the others, until we find these teeth in the course of time solid +triangular masses of enamel, four or five inches long, with saw-like +edges. Imagine these terrible mouths--the shears of the Arthrodiran, +and the grindstones and terrible crescents of the giant sharks--moving +speedily amongst the crowded inhabitants of the waters, and it is easy +to see what a stimulus to the attainment of speed and of protective +devices was given to the whole world of the time. + +What was the origin of the fish? Here we are in much the same position +as we were in regard to the origin of the higher Invertebrates. Once +the fish plainly appears upon the scene it is found to be undergoing a +process of evolution like all other animals. The vast majority of our +fishes have bony frames (or are Teleosts); the fishes of the Devonian +age nearly all have frames of cartilage, and we know from embryonic +development that cartilage is the first stage in the formation of bone. +In the teeth and tails, also, we find a gradual evolution toward the +higher types. But the earlier record is, for reasons I have already +given, obscure; and as my purpose is rather to discover the agencies +of evolution than to strain slender evidence in drawing up pedigrees, I +need only make brief reference to the state of the problem. + +Until comparatively recent times the animal world fell into two clearly +distinct halves, the Vertebrates and the Invertebrates. There were +several anatomical differences between the two provinces, but the most +conspicuous and most puzzling was the backbone. Nowhere in living nature +or in the rocks was any intermediate type known between the backboned +and the non-backboned animal. In the course of the nineteenth century, +however, several animals of an intermediate type were found. The +sea-squirt has in its early youth the line of cartilage through the +body which, in embryonic development, represents the first stage of the +backbone; the lancelet and the Appendicularia have a rod of cartilage +throughout life; the "acorn-headed worm" shows traces of it. These are +regarded as surviving specimens of various groups of animals which, in +early times, fell between the Invertebrate and Vertebrate worlds, and +illustrate the transition. + +With their aid a genealogical tree was constructed for the fish. It was +assumed that some Cambrian or Silurian Annelid obtained this stiffening +rod of cartilage. The next advantage--we have seen it in many cases--was +to combine flexibility with support. The rod was divided into connected +sections (vertebrae), and hardened into bone. Besides stiffening the +body, it provided a valuable shelter for the spinal cord, and its upper +part expanded into a box to enclose the brain. The fins were formed of +folds of skin which were thrown off at the sides and on the back, as +the animal wriggled through the water. They were of use in swimming, and +sections of them were stiffened with rods of cartilage, and became the +pairs of fins. Gill slits (as in some of the highest worms) appeared in +the throat, the mouth was improved by the formation of jaws, and--the +worm culminated in the shark. + +Some experts think, however, that the fish developed directly from a +Crustacean, and hold that the Ostracoderms are the connecting link. A +close discussion of the anatomical details would be out of place here, +[*] and the question remains open for the present. Directly or +indirectly, the fish is a descendant of some Archaean Annelid. It is +most probable that the shark was the first true fish-type. There are +unrecognisable fragments of fishes in the Ordovician and Silurian rocks, +but the first complete skeletons (Lanarkia, etc.) are of small shark- +like creatures, and the low organisation of the group to which the shark +belongs, the Elasmobranchs, makes it probable that they are the most +primitive. Other remains (Palaeospondylus) show that the fish-like +lampreys had already developed. + + * See, especially, Dr. Gaskell's "Origin of Vertebrates" + (1908). + + +Two groups were developed from the primitive fish, which have great +interest for us. Our next step, in fact, is to trace the passage of the +fish from the water to the land, one of the most momentous chapters in +the story of life. To that incident or accident of primitive life we +owe our own existence and the whole development of the higher types of +animals. The advance of natural history in modern times has made this +passage to the land easy to understand. Not only does every frog reenact +it in the course of its development, but we know many fishes that +can live out of water. There is an Indian perch--called the "climbing +perch," but it has only once been seen by a European to climb a +tree--which crosses the fields in search of another pool, when its own +pool is evaporating. An Indian marine fish (Periophthalmus) remains +hunting on the shore when the tide goes out. More important still, +several fishes have lungs as well as gills. The Ceratodus of certain +Queensland rivers has one lung; though, I was told by the experts in +Queensland, it is not a "mud-fish," and never lives in dry mud. However, +the Protopterus of Africa and the Lepidosiren of South America have two +lungs, as well as gills, and can live either in water or, in the dry +season, on land. + +When the skeletons of fishes of the Ceratodus type were discovered in +the Devonian rocks, it was felt that we had found the fish-ancestor of +the land Vertebrates, but a closer anatomical examination has made this +doubtful. The Devonian lung-fish has characters which do not seem to +lead on to the Amphibia. The same general cause probably led many groups +to leave the water, or adapt themselves to living on land as well as in +water, and the abundant Dipoi or Dipneusts ("double-breathers") of the +Devonian lakes are one of the chief of these groups, which have +luckily left descendants to our time. The ancestors of the Amphibia +are generally sought amongst the Crossopterygii, a very large group of +fishes in Devonian times, with very few representatives to-day. + +It is more profitable to investigate the process itself than to make a +precarious search for the actual fish, and, fortunately, this inquiry +is more hopeful. The remains that we find make it probable that the fish +left the water about the beginning of the Devonian or the end of the +Silurian. Now this period coincides with two circumstances which throw a +complete light on the step; one is the great rise of the land, catching +myriads of fishes in enclosed inland seas, and the other is the +appearance of formidable carnivores in the waters. As the seas +evaporated [*] and the great carnage proceeded, the land, which was +already covered with plants and inhabited by insects, offered a safe +retreat for such as could adopt it. Emigration to the land had been +going on for ages, as we shall see. Curious as it must seem to the +inexpert, the fishes, or some of them, were better prepared than most +other animals to leave the water. The chief requirement was a lung, or +interior bag, by which the air could be brought into close contact with +the absorbing blood vessels. Such a bag, broadly speaking, most of the +fishes possess in their floating-bladder: a bag of gas, by compressing +or expanding which they alter their specific gravity in the water. In +some fishes it is double; in some it is supplied with blood-vessels; in +some it is connected by a tube with the gullet, and therefore with the +atmosphere. + + * It is now usually thought that the inland seas were the + theatre of the passage to land. I must point out, however, + that the wide distribution of our Dipneusts, in Australia, + tropical Africa, and South America, suggests that they were + marine though they now live in fresh water. But we shall see + that a continent united the three regions at one time, and + it may afford some explanation. + + +Thus we get very clear suggestions of the transition from water to land. +We must, of course, conceive it as a slow and gradual adaptation. +At first there may have been a rough contrivance for deriving oxygen +directly and partially from the atmosphere, as the water of the lake +became impure. So important an advantage would be fostered, and, as +the inland sea became smaller, or its population larger or fiercer, the +fishes with a sufficiently developed air-breathing apparatus passed to +the land, where, as yet, they would find no serious enemy. The fact is +beyond dispute; the theory of how it occurred is plausible enough; the +consequences were momentous. Great changes were preparing on the land, +and in a comparatively short time we shall find its new inhabitant +subjected to a fierce test of circumstances that will carry it to an +enormously higher level than life had yet reached. + +I have said that the fact of this transition to the land is beyond +dispute. The evidence is very varied, but need not all be enlarged upon +here. The widespread Dipneust fishes of the Devonian rocks bear +strong witness to it, and the appearance of the Amphibian immediately +afterwards makes it certain. The development of the frog is a +reminiscence of it, on the lines of the embryonic law which we saw +earlier. An animal, in its individual development, more or less +reproduces the past phases of its ancestry. So the free-swimming +jelly-fish begins life as a fixed polyp; a kind of star-fish (Comatula) +opens its career as a stalked sea-lily; the gorgeous dragon-fly is at +first an uncouth aquatic animal, and the ethereal butterfly a worm-like +creature. But the most singular and instructive of all these embryonic +reminiscences of the past is found in the fact that all the higher +land-animals of to-day clearly reproduce a fish-stage in their embryonic +development. + +In the third and fourth weeks of development the human embryo shows four +(closed) slits under the head, with corresponding arches. The bird, the +dog, the horse--all the higher land animals, in a word, pass through the +same phase. The suggestion has been made that these structures do not +recall the gill-slits and gill-arches of the fish, but are folds due +to the packing of the embryo in the womb. In point of fact, they appear +just at the time when the human embryo is only a fifth of an inch +long, and there is no such compression. But all doubt as to their +interpretation is dispelled when we remove the skin and examine the +heart and blood-vessels. The heart is up in the throat, as in the fish, +and has only two chambers, as in the fish (not four, as in the bird +and mammal); and the arteries rise in five pairs of arches over the +swellings in the throat, as they do in the lower fish, but do not in +the bird and mammal. The arrangement is purely temporary--lasting only +a couple of weeks in the human embryo--and purposeless. Half these +arteries will disappear again. They quite plainly exist to supply fine +blood-vessels for breathing at the gill-clefts, and are never used, for +the embryo does not breathe, except through the mother. They are a most +instructive reminder of the Devonian fish which quitted its element and +became the ancestor of all the birds and mammals of a later age. + +Several other features of man's embryonic development--the budding of +the hind limbs high up, instead of at the base of, the vertebral column, +the development of the ears, the nose, the jaws, etc.--have the same +lesson, but the one detailed illustration will suffice. The millions of +years of stimulating change and struggle which we have summarised have +resulted in the production of a fish which walks on four limbs (as the +South American mud-fish does to-day), and breathes the atmosphere. + +We have been quite unable to follow the vast changes which have meantime +taken place in its organisation. The eyes, which were mere pits in +the skin, lined with pigment cells, in the early worm, now have a +crystalline lens to concentrate the light and define objects on the +nerve. The ears, which were at first similar sensitive pits in the skin, +on which lay a little stone whose movements gave the animal some sense +of direction, are now closed vesicles in the skull, and begin to be +sensitive to waves of sound. The nose, which was at first two blind, +sensitive pits in the skin of the head, now consists of two nostrils +opening into the mouth, with an olfactory nerve spreading richly +over the passages. The brain, which was a mere clump of nerve-cells +connecting the rough sense-impressions, is now a large and intricate +structure, and already exhibits a little of that important region (the +cerebrum) in which the varied images of the outside world are combined. +The heart, which was formerly was a mere swelling of a part of one of +the blood-vessels, now has two chambers. + +We cannot pursue these detailed improvements of the mechanism, as we +might, through the ascending types of animals. Enough if we see more or +less clearly how the changes in the face of the earth and the rise of +its successive dynasties of carnivores have stimulated living things to +higher and higher levels in the primitive ocean. We pass to the clearer +and far more important story of life on land, pursuing the fish through +its continuous adaptations to new conditions until, throwing out +side-branches as it progresses, it reaches the height of bird and mammal +life. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. THE COAL-FOREST + +With the beginning of life on land we open a new and more important +volume of the story of life, and we may take the opportunity to make +clearer certain principles or processes of development which we may seem +hitherto to have taken for granted. The evolutionary work is too often +a mere superficial description of the strange and advancing classes of +plants and animals which cross the stage of geology. Why they change and +advance is not explained. I have endeavoured to supply this explanation +by putting the successive populations of the earth in their respective +environments, and showing the continuous and stimulating effect on them +of changes in those environments. We have thus learned to decipher +some lines of the decalogue of living nature. "Thou shalt have a thick +armour," "Thou shalt be speedy," "Thou shalt shelter from the more +powerful," are some of the laws of primeval life. The appearance of each +higher and more destructive type enforces them with more severity; and +in their observance animals branch outward and upward into myriads of +temporary or permanent forms. + +But there is no consciousness of law and no idea of evading danger. +There is not even some mysterious instinct "telling" the animal, as +it used to be said, to do certain things. It is, in fact, not strictly +accurate to say that a certain change in the environment stimulates +animals to advance. Generally speaking, it does not act on the advancing +at all, but on the non-advancing, which it exterminates. The procedure +is simple, tangible, and unconscious. Two invading arms of the sea meet +and pour together their different waters and populations. The habits, +the foods, and the enemies of many types of animals are changed; the +less fit for the new environment die first, the more fit survive longest +and breed most of the new generation. It is so with men when they +migrate to a more exacting environment, whether a dangerous trade or +a foreign clime. Again, take the case of the introduction of a giant +Cephalopod or fish amongst a population of Molluscs and Crustacea. The +toughest, the speediest, the most alert, the most retiring, or the least +conspicuous, will be the most apt to survive and breed. In hundreds or +thousands of generations there will be an enormous improvement in the +armour, the speed, the sensitiveness, the hiding practices, and the +protective colours, of the animals which are devoured. The "natural +selection of the fittest" really means the "natural destruction of the +less fit." + +The only point assumed in this is that the young of an animal or plant +tend to differ from each other and from their parents. Darwin was +content to take this as a fact of common observation, as it obviously +is, but later science has thrown some light on the causes of these +variations. In the first place, the germs in the parent's body may +themselves be subject to struggle and natural selection, and not share +equally in the food-supply. Then, in the case of the higher animals (or +the majority of animals), there is a clear source of variation in +the fact that the mature germ is formed of certain elements from two +different parents, four grandparents, and so on. In the case of the +lower animals the germs and larvae float independently in the water, +and are exposed to many influences. Modern embryologists have found, +by experiment, that an alteration of the temperature or the chemical +considerable effect on eggs and larvae. Some recent experiments have +shown that such changes may even affect the eggs in the mother's +ovary. These discoveries are very important and suggestive, because the +geological changes which we are studying are especially apt to bring +about changes of temperature and changes in the freshness or saltiness +of water. + +Evolution is, therefore, not a "mere description" of the procession of +living things; it is to a great extent an explanation of the procession. +When, however, we come to apply these general principles to certain +aspects of the advance in organisation we find fundamental differences +of opinion among biologists, which must be noted. As Sir E. Ray +Lankester recently said, it is not at all true that Darwinism is +questioned in zoology to-day. It is true only that Darwin was not +omniscient or infallible, and some of his opinions are disputed. + +Let me introduce the subject with a particular instance of evolution, +the flat-fish. This animal has been fitted to survive the terrible +struggle in the seas by acquiring such a form that it can lie almost +unseen upon the floor of the ocean. The eye on the under side of the +body would thus be useless, but a glance at a sole or plaice in a +fishmonger's shop will show that this eye has worked upward to the top +of the head. Was the eye shifted by the effort and straining of the +fish, inherited and increased slightly in each generation? Is the +explanation rather that those fishes in each generation survived and +bred which happened from birth to have a slight variation in that +direction, though they did not inherit the effect of the parent's effort +to strain the eye? Or ought we to regard this change of structure as +brought about by a few abrupt and considerable variations on the part +of the young? There you have the three great schools which divide modern +evolutionists: Lamarckism, Weismannism, and Mendelism (or Mutationism). +All are Darwinians. No one doubts that the flat-fish was evolved from an +ordinary fish--the flat-fish is an ordinary fish in its youth--or that +natural selection (enemies) killed off the old and transitional types +and overlooked (and so favoured) the new. It will be seen that the +language used in this volume is not the particular language of any +one of these schools. This is partly because I wish to leave seriously +controverted questions open, and partly from a feeling of compromise, +which I may explain. [*] + + * Of recent years another compromise has been proposed + between the Lamarckians and Weismannists. It would say that + the efforts of the parent and their effect on the position + of the eye--in our case--are not inherited, but might be of + use in sheltering an embryonic variation in the direction of + a displaced eye. + + +First, the plain issue between the Mendelians and the other two +schools--whether the passage from species to species is brought about +by a series of small variations during a long period or by a few large +variations (or "mutations") in a short period--is open to an obvious +compromise. It is quite possible that both views are correct, in +different cases, and quite impossible to find the proportion of each +class of cases. We shall see later that in certain instances where the +conditions of preservation were good we can sometimes trace a perfectly +gradual advance from species to species. Several shellfish have been +traced in this way, and a sea-urchin in the chalk has been followed, +quite gradually, from one end of a genus to the other. It is significant +that the advance of research is multiplying these cases. There is no +reason why we may not assume most of the changes of species we have +yet seen to have occurred in this way. In fact, in some of the lower +branches of the animal world (Radiolaria, Sponges, etc.) there is often +no sharp division of species at all, but a gradual series of living +varieties. + +On the other hand we know many instances of very considerable sudden +changes. The cases quoted by Mendelists generally belong to the plant +world, but instances are not unknown in the animal world. A shrimp +(Artemia) was made to undergo considerable modification, by altering the +proportion of salt in the water in which it was kept. Butterflies have +been made to produce young quite different from their normal young by +subjecting them to abnormal temperature, electric currents, and so on; +and, as I said, the most remarkable effects have been produced on eggs +and embryos by altering the chemical and physical conditions. Rats--I +was informed by the engineer in charge of the refrigerating room on +an Australian liner--very quickly became adapted to the freezing +temperature by developing long hair. All that we have seen of the past +changes in the environment of animals makes it probable that these +larger variations often occur. I would conclude, therefore, that +evolution has proceeded continuously (though by no means universally) +through the ages, but there were at times periods of more acute change +with correspondingly larger changes in the animal and plant worlds. + +In regard to the issue between the Lamarckians and Weismannists--whether +changes acquired by the parent are inherited by the young--recent +experiments again suggest something of a compromise. Weismann says that +the body of the parent is but the case containing the germ-plasm, so +that all modifications of the living parent body perish with it, and do +not affect the germ, which builds the next generation. Certainly, when +we reflect that the 70,000 ova in the human mother's ovary seem to have +been all formed in the first year of her life, it is difficult to see +how modifications of her muscles or nerves can affect them. Thus we +cannot hope to learn anything, either way, by cutting off the tails of +cows, and experiments of that kind. But it is acknowledged that certain +diseases in the blood, which nourishes the germs, may affect them, and +recent experimenters have found that they can reach and affect the germs +in the body by other agencies, and so produce inherited modifications +in the parent. [*] If this claim is sustained and enlarged, it may be +concluded that the greater changes of environment which we find in the +geological chronicle may have had a considerable influence of this kind. + + * See a paper read by Professor Bourne to the Zoological + Section of the British Association, 1910. It must be + understood that when I speak of Weismannism I do not refer + to this whole theory of heredity, which, he acknowledges, + has few supporters. The Lamarckian view is represented in + Britain by Sir W. Turner and Professor Darwin. In other + countries it has a larger proportion of distinguished + supporters. On the whole subject see Professor J. A. + Thomson's "Heredity" (1909), Dewar and Finn's "Making of + Species" (1909--a Mendelian work), and, for essays by the + leaders of each school, "Darwinism and Modern Science" + (1909). + + +The general issue, however, must remain open. The Lamarckian and +Weismannist theories are rival interpretations of past events, and we +shall not find it necessary to press either. When the fish comes to +live on land, for instance, it develops a bony limb out of its fin. The +Lamarckian says that the throwing of the weight of the body on the main +stem of the fin strengthens it, as practice strengthens the boxer's arm, +and the effect is inherited and increased in each generation, until +at last the useless paddle of the fin dies away and the main stem +has become a stout, bony column. Weismann says that the individual +modification, by use in walking, is not inherited, but those young are +favoured which have at birth a variation in the strength of the stem of +the fin. As each of these interpretations is, and must remain, purely +theoretical, we will be content to tell the facts in such cases. But +these brief remarks will enable the reader to understand in what precise +sense the facts we record are open to controversy. + +Let us return to the chronicle of the earth. We had reached the Devonian +age, when large continents, with great inland seas, existed in North +America, north-west Europe, and north Asia, probably connected by a +continent across the North Atlantic and the Arctic region. South America +and South Africa were emerging, and a continent was preparing to stretch +from Brazil, through South Africa and the Antarctic, to Australia and +India. The expanse of land was, with many oscillations, gaining on the +water, and there was much emigration to it from the over-populated seas. +When the fish went on land in the Devonian, it must have found a diet +(insects, etc.) there, and the insects must have been preceded by a +plant population. We have first, therefore, to consider the evolution of +the plant, and see how it increases in form and number until it covers +the earth with the luxuriant forests of the Carboniferous period. + +The plant world, we saw, starts, like the animal world, with a great +kingdom of one-celled microscopic representatives, and the same +principles of development, to a great extent, shape it into a large +variety of forms. Armour-plating has a widespread influence among them. +The graceful Diatom is a morsel of plasm enclosed in a flinty box, often +with a very pretty arrangement of the pores and markings. The Desmid has +a coat of cellulose, and a less graceful coat of cellulose encloses the +Peridinean. Many of these minute plants develop locomotion and a degree +of sensitiveness (Diatoms, Peridinea, Euglena, etc.). Some (Bacteria) +adopt animal diet, and rise in power of movement and sensitiveness until +it is impossible to make any satisfactory distinction between them +and animals. Then the social principle enters. First we have loose +associations of one-celled plants in a common bed, then closer clusters +or many-celled bodies. In some cases (Volvox) the cluster, or the +compound plant, is round and moves briskly in the water, closely +resembling an animal. In most cases, the cells are connected in chains, +and we begin to see the vague outline of the larger plant. + +When we had reached this stage in the development of animal life, we +found great difficulty in imagining how the chief lines of the +higher Invertebrates took their rise from the Archaean chaos of early +many-celled forms. We have an even greater difficulty here, as plant +remains are not preserved at all until the Devonian period. We can only +conclude, from the later facts, that these primitive many-celled plants +branched out in several different directions. One section (at a quite +unknown date) adopted an organic diet, and became the Fungi; and a later +co-operation, or life-partnership, between a Fungus and a one-celled +Alga led to the Lichens. Others remained at the Alga-level, and grew in +great thickets along the sea bottoms, no doubt rivalling or surpassing +the giant sea-weeds, sometimes 400 feet long, off the American coast +to-day. Other lines which start from the level of the primitive +many-celled Algae develop into the Mosses (Bryophyta), Ferns +(Pteridophyta), Horsetails (Equisetalia), and Club-mosses +(Lycopodiales). The mosses, the lowest group, are not preserved in the +rocks; from the other three classes will come the great forests of the +Carboniferous period. + +The early record of plant-life is so poor that it is useless to +speculate when the plant first left the water. We have somewhat obscure +and disputed traces of ferns in the Ordovician, and, as they and the +Horsetails and Club-mosses are well developed in the Devonian, we may +assume that some of the sea-weeds had become adapted to life on land, +and evolved into the early forms of the ferns, at least in the Cambrian +period. From that time they begin to weave a mantle of sombre green over +the exposed land, and to play a most important part in the economy of +nature. + +We saw that at the beginning of the Devonian there was a considerable +rise of the land both in America and Europe, but especially in Europe. +A distant spectator at that time would have observed the rise of a chain +of mountains in Scotland and a general emergence of land north-western +Europe. A continent stretched from Ireland to Scandinavia and North +Russia, while most of the rest of Europe, except large areas of Russia, +France, Germany, and Turkey, was under the sea. Where we now find our +Alps and Pyrenees towering up to the snow-line there were then level +stretches of ocean. Even the north-western continent was scooped +into great inland seas or lagoons, which stretched from Ireland to +Scandinavia, and, as we saw, fostered the development of the fishes. + +As the Devonian period progressed the sea gained on the land, and must +have restricted the growth of vegetation, but as the lake deposits now +preserve the remains of the plants which grow down to their shores, or +are washed into them, we are enabled to restore the complexion of the +landscape. Ferns, generally of a primitive and generalised character, +abound, and include the ferns such as we find in warm countries to-day. +Horsetails and Club-mosses already grow into forest-trees. There are +even seed-bearing ferns, which give promise of the higher plants to +come, but as yet nothing approaching our flower and fruit-bearing trees +has appeared. There is as yet no certain indication of the presence of +Conifers. It is a sombre and monotonous vegetation, unlike any to be +found in any climate to-day. + +We will look more closely into its nature presently. First let us see +how these primitive types of plants come to form the immense forests +which are recorded in our coal-beds. Dr. Russel Wallace has lately +represented these forests, which have, we shall see, had a most +important influence on the development of life, as somewhat mysterious +in their origin. If, however, we again consult the geologist as to the +changes which were taking place in the distribution of land and water, +we find a quite natural explanation. Indeed, there are now distinguished +geologists (e.g. Professor Chamberlin) who doubt if the Coal-forests +were so exceptionally luxuriant as is generally believed. They think +that the vegetation may not have been more dense than in some other +ages, but that there may have been exceptionally good conditions for +preserving the dead trees. We shall see that there were; but, on the +whole, it seems probable that during some hundreds of thousands of +years remarkably dense forests covered enormous stretches of the earth's +surface, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. + +The Devonian period had opened with a rise of the land, but the sea eat +steadily into it once more, and, with some inconsiderable oscillations +of the land, regained its territory. The latter part of the Devonian +and earlier part of the Carboniferous were remarkable for their great +expanses of shallow water and low-lying land. Except the recent chain +of hills in Scotland we know of no mountains. Professor Chamberlin +calculates that 20,000,000, or 30,000,000 square miles of the present +continental surface of Europe and America were covered with a +shallow sea. In the deeper and clearer of these waters the earliest +Carboniferous rocks, of limestone, were deposited. The "millstone grit," +which succeeds the "limestone," indicates shallower water, which is +being rapidly filled up with the debris of the land. In a word, all the +indications suggest the early and middle Carboniferous as an age of vast +swamps, of enormous stretches of land just above or below the sea-level, +and changing repeatedly from one to the other. Further, the climate +was at the time--we will consider the general question of climate +later--moist and warm all over the earth, on account of the great +proportion of sea-surface and the absence of high land (not to speak of +more disputable causes). + +These were ideal conditions for the primitive vegetation, and it spread +over the swamps with great vigour. To say that the Coal-forests +were masses of Ferns, Horsetails, and Club-mosses is a lifeless and +misleading expression. The Club-mosses, or Lycopodiales, were massive +trees, rising sometimes to a height of 120 feet, and probably averaging +about fifty feet in height and one or two feet in diameter. The largest +and most abundant of them, the Sigillaria, sent up a scarred and fluted +trunk to a height of seventy or a hundred feet, without a branch, +and was crowned with a bunch of its long, tapering leaves. The +Lepidodendron, its fellow monarch of the forest, branched at the summit, +and terminated in clusters of its stiff, needle-like leaves, six' or +seven inches long, like enormous exaggerations of the little cones at +the ends of our Club-mosses to-day. The Horsetails, which linger +in their dwarfed descendants by our streams to-day, and at their +exceptional best (in a part of South America) form slender stems +about thirty feet high, were then forest-trees, four to six feet in +circumference and sometimes ninety feet in height. These Calamites +probably rose in dense thickets from the borders of the lakes, their +stumpy leaves spreading in whorls at every joint in their hollow +stems. Another extinct tree, the Cordaites, rivalled the Horsetails and +Club-mosses in height, and its showers of long and extraordinary leaves, +six feet long and six inches in width, pointed to the higher plant +world that was to come. Between these gaunt towering trunks the graceful +tree-ferns spread their canopies at heights of twenty, forty, and even +sixty feet from the ground, and at the base was a dense undergrowth +of ferns and fern-like seed-plants. Mosses may have carpeted the moist +ground, but nothing in the nature of grass or flowers had yet appeared. + +Imagine this dense assemblage of dull, flowerless trees pervaded by a +hot, dank atmosphere, with no change of seasons, with no movement +but the flying of large and primitive insects among the trees and the +stirring of the ferns below by some passing giant salamander, with no +song of bird and no single streak of white or red or blue drawn across +the changeless sombre green, and you have some idea of the character of +the forests that are compressed into our seams of coal. Imagine these +forests spread from Spitzbergen to Australia and even, according to the +south polar expeditions, to the Antarctic, and from the United States to +Europe, to Siberia, and to China, and prolonged during some hundreds +of thousands of years, and you begin to realise that the Carboniferous +period prepared the land for the coming dynasties of animals. Let some +vast and terrible devastation fall upon this luxuriant world, entombing +the great multitude of its imperfect forms and selecting the higher +types for freer life, and the earth will pass into a new age. + +But before we describe the animal inhabitants of these forests, the +part that the forests play in the story of life, and the great cataclysm +which selects the higher types from the myriads of forms which the +warm womb of the earth has poured out, we must at least glance at the +evolutionary position of the Carboniferous plants themselves. Do they +point downward to lower forms, and upward to higher forms, as the theory +of evolution requires? A close inquiry into this would lead us deep into +the problems of the modern botanist, but we may borrow from him a few +of the results of the great labour he has expended on the subject within +the last decade. + +Just as the animal world is primarily divided into Invertebrates and +Vertebrates, the plant world is primarily divided into a lower kingdom +of spore-bearing plants (the Cryptogams) and an upper kingdom of +seed-bearing plants (the Phanerogams). Again, just as the first half of +the earth's story is the age of Invertebrate animals, so it is the age +of Cryptogamous plants. So far evolution was always justified in the +plant record. But there is a third parallel, of much greater interest. +We saw that at one time the evolutionist was puzzled by the clean +division of animals into Invertebrate and Vertebrate, and the sudden +appearance of the backbone in the chronicle: he was just as much puzzled +by the sharp division of our plants into Cryptogams and Phanerogams, and +the sudden appearance of the latter on the earth during the Coal-forest +period. And the issue has been a fresh and recent triumph for evolution. + +Plants are so well preserved in the coal that many years of microscopic +study of the remains, and patient putting-together of the crushed and +scattered fragments, have shown the Carboniferous plants in quite a new +light. Instead of the Coal-forest being a vast assemblage of Cryptogams, +upon which the higher type of the Phanerogam is going suddenly to +descend from the clouds, it is, to a very great extent, a world of +plants that are struggling upward, along many paths, to the higher +level. The characters of the Cryptogam and Phanerogam are so mixed up +in it that, although the special lines of development are difficult to +trace, it is one massive testimony to the evolution of the higher +from the lower. The reproductive bodies of the great Lepidodendra are +sometimes more like seeds than spores, while both the wood and the +leaves of the Sigillaria have features which properly belong to the +Phanerogam. In another group (called the Sphenophyllales) the characters +of these giant Club-mosses are blended with the characters of the giant +Horsetails, and there is ground to think that the three groups have +descended from an earlier common ancestor. + +Further, it is now believed that a large part of what were believed to +be Conifers, suddenly entering from the unknown, are not Conifers at +all, but Cordaites. The Cordaites is a very remarkable combination of +features that are otherwise scattered among the Cryptogams, Cycads, and +Conifers. On the other hand, a very large part of what the geologist had +hitherto called "Ferns" have turned out to be seed-bearing plants, half +Cycad and half Fern. Numbers of specimens of this interesting group--the +Cycadofilices (cycad-ferns) or Pteridosperms (seed-ferns)--have been +beautifully restored by our botanists. [*] They have afforded a new and +very plausible ancestor for the higher trees which come on the scene +toward the close of the Coal-forests, while their fern-like characters +dispose botanists to think that they and the Ferns may be traced to a +common ancestor. This earlier stage is lost in those primitive ages from +which not a single leaf has survived in the rocks. We can only say +that it is probable that the Mosses, Ferns, Lycopods, etc., arose +independently from the primitive level. But the higher and more +important development is now much clearer. The Coal-forest is not simply +a kingdom of Cryptogams. It is a world of aspiring and mingled types. +Let it be subjected to some searching test, some tremendous spell of +adversity, and we shall understand the emergence of the higher types out +of the luxuriant profusion and confusion of forms. + + * See, especially, D. H. Scott, "Studies of Fossil Botany" + (2nd ed., 1908), and "The Evolution of Plants" (1910--small + popular manual). + + + +CHAPTER IX. THE ANIMALS OF THE COAL-FOREST + +We have next to see that when this period of searching adversity +comes--as it will in the next chapter--the animal world also offers a +luxuriant variety of forms from which the higher types may be selected. +This, it need hardly be said, is just what we find in the geological +record. The fruitful, steaming, rich-laden earth now offered tens of +millions of square miles of pasture to vegetal feeders; the waters, on +the other hand, teemed with gigantic sharks, huge Cephalopods, large +scorpion-like and lobster-like animals, and shoals of armour-plated, +hard-toothed fishes. Successive swarms of vegetarians--Worms, Molluscs, +etc.--followed the plant on to the land; and swarms of carnivores +followed the vegetarians, and assumed strange, new forms in adaptation +to land-life. The migration had probably proceeded throughout the +Devonian period, especially from the calmer shores of the inland seas. +By the middle of the Coal-forest period there was a very large and +varied animal population on the land. Like the plants, moreover, +these animals were of an intermediate and advancing nature. No bird or +butterfly yet flits from tree to tree; no mammal rears its young in the +shelter of the ferns. But among the swarming population are many types +that show a beginning of higher organisation, and there is a rich and +varied material provided for the coming selection. + +The monarch of the Carboniferous forest is the Amphibian. In that age +of spreading swamps and "dim, watery woodlands," the stupid and sluggish +Amphibian finds his golden age, and, except perhaps the scorpion, +there is no other land animal competent to dispute his rule. Even the +scorpion, moreover, would not find the Carboniferous Amphibian very +vulnerable. We must not think of the smooth-skinned frogs and toads and +innocent newts which to-day represent the fallen race of the Amphibia. +They were then heavily armoured, powerfully armed, and sometimes as +large as alligators or young crocodiles. It is a characteristic of +advancing life that a new type of organism has its period of triumph, +grows to enormous proportions, and spreads into many different types, +until the next higher stage of life is reached, and it is dethroned by +the new-comers. + +The first indication--apart from certain disputed impressions in the +Devonian--of the land-vertebrate is the footprint of an Amphibian on an +early Carboniferous mud-flat. Hardened by the sun, and then covered with +a fresh deposit when it sank beneath the waters, it remains to-day +to witness the arrival of the five-toed quadruped who was to rule the +earth. As the period proceeds, remains are found in great abundance, +and we see that there must have been a vast and varied population of the +Amphibia on the shores of the Carboniferous lagoons and swamps. There +were at least twenty genera of them living in what is now the island of +Britain, and was then part of the British-Scandinavian continent. Some +of them were short and stumpy creatures, a few inches long, with weak +limbs and short tails, and broad, crescent-shaped heads, their +bodies clothed in the fine scaly armour of their fish-ancestor (the +Branchiosaurs). Some (the Aistopods) were long, snake-like creatures, +with shrunken limbs and bodies drawn out until, in some cases, the +backbone had 150 vertebrae. They seem to have taken to the thickets, in +the growing competition, as the serpents did later, and lost the use of +their limbs, which would be merely an encumbrance in winding among +the roots and branches. Some (the Microsaurs) were agile little +salamander-like organisms, with strong, bony frames and relatively long +and useful legs; they look as if they may even have climbed the trees in +pursuit of snails and insects. A fourth and more formidable sub-order, +the Labyrinthodonts--which take their name from the labyrinthine folds +of the enamel in their strong teeth--were commonly several feet in +length. Some of them attained a length of seven or eight feet, and had +plates of bone over their heads and bellies, while the jaws in their +enormous heads were loaded with their strong, labyrinthine teeth. Life +on land was becoming as eventful and stimulating as life in the waters. + +The general characteristic of these early Amphibia is that they very +clearly retain the marks of their fish ancestry. All of them have tails; +all of them have either scales or (like many of the fishes) plates of +bone protecting the body. In some of the younger specimens the gills can +still be clearly traced, but no doubt they were mainly lung-animals. We +have seen how the fish obtained its lungs, and need add only that this +change in the method of obtaining oxygen for the blood involved certain +further changes of a very important nature. Following the fossil +record, we do not observe the changes which are taking place in the +soft internal organs, but we must not lose sight of them. The heart, for +instance, which began as a simple muscular expansion or distension of +one of the blood-vessels of some primitive worm, then doubled and +became a two-chambered pump in the fish, now develops a partition in +the auricle (upper chamber), so that the aerated blood is to some extent +separated from the venous blood. This approach toward the warm-blooded +type begins in the "mud-fish," and is connected with the development +of the lungs. Corresponding changes take place in the arteries, and we +shall find that this change in structure is of very great importance in +the evolution of the higher types of land-life. The heart of the higher +land-animals, we may add, passes through these stages in its embryonic +development. + +Externally the chief change in the Amphibian is the appearance of +definite legs. The broad paddle of the fin is now useless, and its main +stem is converted into a jointed, bony limb, with a five-toed foot, +spreading into a paddle, at the end. But the legs are still feeble, +sprawling supports, letting the heavy body down almost to the ground. +The Amphibian is an imperfect, but necessary, stage in evolution. It is +an improvement on the Dipneust fish, which now begins to dwindle very +considerably in the geological record, but it is itself doomed to give +way speedily before one of its more advanced descendants, the Reptile. +Probably the giant salamander of modern Japan affords the best +suggestion of the large and primitive salamanders of the Coal-forest, +while the Caecilia--snake-like Amphibia with scaly skins, which live +underground in South America--may not impossibly be degenerate survivors +of the curious Aistopods. + +Our modern tailless Amphibia, frogs and toads, appear much later in the +story of the earth, but they are not without interest here on account of +the remarkable capacity which they show to adapt themselves to different +surroundings. There are frogs, like the tree-frog of Martinique, and +others in regions where water is scarce, which never pass through the +tadpole stage; or, to be quite accurate, they lose the gills and tail in +the egg, as higher land-animals do. On the other hand, there is a modern +Amphibian, the axolotl of Mexico, which retains the gills throughout +life, and never lives on land. Dr. Gadow has shown that the lake in +which it lives is so rich in food that it has little inducement to leave +it for the land. Transferred to a different environment, it may pass to +the land, and lose its gills. These adaptations help us to understand +the rich variety of Amphibian forms that appeared in the changing +conditions of the Carboniferous world. + +When we think of the diet of the Amphibia we are reminded of the other +prominent representatives of land life at the time. Snails, spiders, and +myriapods crept over the ground or along the stalks of the trees, and a +vast population of insects filled the air. We find a few stray wings in +the Silurian, and a large number of wings and fragments in the Devonian, +but it is in the Coal-forest that we find the first great expansion of +insect life, with a considerable development of myriapods, spiders, and +scorpions. Food was enormously abundant, and the insect at least had no +rival in the air, for neither bird nor flying reptile had yet appeared. +Hence we find the same generous growth as amongst the Amphibia. +Large primitive "may-flies" had wings four or five inches long; great +locust-like creatures had fat bodies sometimes twenty inches in length, +and soared on wings of remarkable breadth, or crawled on their six long, +sprawling legs. More than a thousand species of insects, and nearly +a hundred species of spiders and fifty of myriapods, are found in the +remains of the Coal-forests. + +From the evolutionary point of view these new classes are as obscure in +their origin, yet as manifestly undergoing evolution when they do +fully appear, as the earlier classes we have considered. All are of a +primitive and generalised character; that is to say, characters +which are to-day distributed among widely different groups were then +concentrated and mingled in one common ancestor, out of which the later +groups will develop. All belong to the lowest orders of their class. No +Hymenopters (ants, bees, and wasps) or Coleopters (beetles) are found +in the Coal-forest; and it will be many millions of years before the +graceful butterfly enlivens the landscapes of the earth. The early +insects nearly all belong to the lower orders of the Orthopters +(cockroaches, crickets, locusts, etc.) and Neuropters (dragon-flies, +may-flies, etc.). A few traces of Hemipters (now mainly represented by +the degenerate bugs) are found, but nine-tenths of the Carboniferous +insects belong to the lowest orders of their class, the Orthopters and +Neuropters. In fact, they are such primitive and generalised insects, +and so frequently mingle the characteristics of the two orders, that +one of the highest authorities, Scudder, groups them in a special +and extinct order, the Palmodictyoptera; though this view is not now +generally adopted. We shall find the higher orders of insects making +their appearance in succession as the story proceeds. + +Thus far, then, the insects of the Coal-forest are in entire harmony +with the principle of evolution, but when we try to trace their origin +and earlier relations our task is beset with difficulties. It goes +without saying that such delicate frames as those of the earlier insects +had very little chance of being preserved in the rocks until the special +conditions of the forest-age set in. We are, therefore, quite prepared +to hear that the geologist cannot give us the slenderest information. +He finds the wing of what he calls "the primitive bug" (Protocimex), +an Hemipterous insect, in the later Ordovician, and the wing of a +"primitive cockroach" (Palaeoblattina) in the Silurian. From these we +can merely conclude that insects were already numerous and varied. But +we have already, in similar difficulties, received assistance from the +science of zoology, and we now obtain from that science a most important +clue to the evolution of the insect. + +In South America, South Africa, and Australasia, which were at one +time connected by a great southern continent, we find a little +caterpillar-like creature which the zoologist regards with profound +interest. It is so curious that he has been obliged to create a special +class for it alone--a distinction which will be appreciated when I +mention that the neighbouring class of the insects contains more than a +quarter of a million living species. This valuable little animal, with +its tiny head, round, elongated body, and many pairs of caterpillar-like +legs, was until a few decades ago regarded as an Annelid (like the +earth-worm). It has, in point of fact, the peculiar kidney-structures +(nephridia) and other features of the Annelid, but a closer study +discovered in it a character that separated it far from any worm-group. +It was found to breathe the air by means of tracheae (little tubes +running inward from the surface of the body), as the myriapods, spiders, +and insects do. It was, in other words, "a kind of half-way animal +between the Arthropods and the Annelids" ("Cambridge Natural History," +iv, p. 5), a surviving kink in the lost chain of the ancestry of the +insect. Through millions of years it has preserved a primitive frame +that really belongs to the Cambrian, if not an earlier, age. It is one +of the most instructive "living fossils" in the museum of nature. + +Peripatus, as the little animal is called, points very clearly to an +Annelid ancestor of all the Tracheates (the myriapods, spiders, and +insects), or all the animals that breathe by means of trachere. To +understand its significance we must glance once more at an early chapter +in the story of life. We saw that a vast and varied wormlike population +must have filled the Archaean ocean, and that all the higher lines of +animal development start from one or other point in this broad kingdom. +The Annelids, in which the body consists of a long series of connected +rings or segments, as in the earth-worm, are one of the highest groups +of these worm-like creatures, and some branch of them developed a pair +of feet (as in the caterpillar) on each segment of the body and a +tough, chitinous coat. Thus arose the early Arthropods, on tough-coated, +jointed, articulated animals. Some of these remained in the water, +breathing by means of gills, and became the Crustacea. Some, +however, migrated to the land and developed what we may almost call +"lungs"--little tubes entering the body at the skin and branching +internally, to bring the air into contact with the blood, the tracheae. + +In Peripatus we have a strange survivor of these primitive +Annelid-Tracheates of many million years ago. The simple nature of its +breathing apparatus suggests that the trachere were developed out of +glands in the skin; just as the fish, when it came on land, probably +developed lungs from its swimming bladders. The primitive Tracheates, +delivered from the increasing carnivores of the waters, grew into +a large and varied family, as all such new types do in favourable +surroundings. From them in the course of time were evolved the three +great classes of the Myriapods (millipedes and centipedes), the +Arachnids (scorpions, spiders, and mites), and the Insects. I will +not enter into the much-disputed and Obscure question of their nearer +relationship. Some derive the Insects from the Myriapods, some the +Myriapods from the Insects, and some think they evolved independently; +while the rise of the spiders and scorpions is even more obscure. + +But how can we see any trace of an Annelid ancestor in the vastly +different frames of these animals which are said to descend from it? It +is not so difficult as it seems to be at first sight. In the Myriapod +we still have the elongated body and successive pairs of legs. In +the Arachnid the legs are reduced in number and lengthened, while the +various segments of the body are fused in two distinct body-halves, the +thorax and the abdomen. In the Insect we have a similar concentration +of the primitive long body. The abdomen is composed of a large number +(usually nine or ten) of segments which have lost their legs and fused +together. In the thorax three segments are still distinctly traceable, +with three pairs of legs--now long jointed limbs--as in the caterpillar +ancestor; in the Carboniferous insect these three joints in the thorax +are particularly clear. In the head four or five segments are fused +together. Their limbs have been modified into the jaws or other +mouth-appendages, and their separate nerve-centres have combined to form +the large ring of nerve-matter round the gullet which represents the +brain of the insect. + +How, then, do we account for the wings of the insect? Here we can +offer nothing more than speculation, but the speculation is not without +interest. It may be laid down in principle that the flying animal begins +as a leaping animal. The "flying fish" may serve to suggest an early +stage in the development of wings; it is a leaping fish, its extended +fins merely buoying it, like the surfaces of an aeroplane, and so +prolonging its leap away from its pursuer. But the great difficulty is +to imagine any part of the smooth-coated primitive insect, apart from +the limbs (and the wings of the insect are not developed from legs, +like those of the bird), which might have even an initial usefulness in +buoying the body as it leaped. It has been suggested, therefore, that +the primitive insect returned to the water, as the whale and seal did +in the struggle for life of a later period. The fact that the mayfly and +dragon-fly spend their youth in the water is thought to confirm this. +Returning to the water, the primitive insects would develop gills, like +the Crustacea. After a time the stress of life in the water drove them +back to the land, and the gills became useless. But the folds or +scales of the tough coat, which had covered the gills, would remain as +projecting planes, and are thought to have been the rudiment from +which a long period of selection evolved the huge wings of the early +dragon-flies and mayflies. It is generally believed that the wingless +order of insects (Aptera) have not lost, but had never developed, wings, +and that the insects with only one or two pairs all descend from an +ancestor with three pairs. + +The early date of their origin, the delicacy of their structure, and +the peculiar form which their larval development has generally assumed, +combine to obscure the evolution of the insect, and we must be content +for the present with these general indications. The vast unexplored +regions of Africa, South America, and Central Australia, may yet yield +further clues, and the riddle of insect-metamorphosis may some day +betray the secrets which it must hold. For the moment the Carboniferous +insects interest us as a rich material for the operation of a coming +natural selection. On them, as on all other Carboniferous life, a great +trial is about to fall. A very small proportion of them will survive +that trial, and they trill be the better organised to maintain +themselves and rear their young in the new earth. + +The remaining land-life of the Coal-forest is confined to worm-like +organisms whose remains are not preserved, and land-snails which do +not call for further discussion. We may, in conclusion, glance at the +progress of life in the waters. Apart from the appearance of the +great fishes and Crustacea, the Carboniferous period was one of great +stimulation to aquatic life. Constant changes were taking place in the +level and the distribution of land and water. The aspect of our coal +seams to-day, alternating between thick layers of sand and mud, shows +a remarkable oscillation of the land. Many recent authorities have +questioned whether the trees grew on the sites where we find them +to-day, and were not rather washed down into the lagoons and shallow +waters from higher ground. In that case we could not too readily imagine +the forest-clad region sinking below the waves, being buried under the +deposits of the rivers, and then emerging, thousands of years later, to +receive once more the thick mantle of sombre vegetation. Probably +there was less rising and falling of the crust than earlier geologists +imagined. But, as one of the most recent and most critical authorities, +Professor Chamberlin, observes, the comparative purity of the coal, the +fairly uniform thickness of the seams, the bed of clay representing +soil at their base, the frequency with which the stumps are still found +growing upright (as in the remarkable exposed Coal-forest surface in +Glasgow, at the present ground-level), [*] the perfectly preserved fronds +and the general mixture of flora, make it highly probable that the +coal-seam generally marks the actual site of a Coal-forest, and there +were considerable vicissitudes in the distribution of land and water. +Great areas of land repeatedly passed beneath the waters, instead of a +re-elevation of the land, however, we may suppose that the shallow water +was gradually filled with silt and debris from the land, and a fresh +forest grew over it. + + * The civic authorities of Glasgow have wisely exposed and + protected this instructive piece of Coal-forest in one of + their parks. I noticed, however that in the admirable + printed information they supply to the public, they describe + the trees as "at least several hundred thousand years old." + There is no authority in the world who would grant less than + ten million years since the Coal-forest period. + + +These changes are reflected in the progress of marine life, though their +influence is probably less than that of the great carnivorous monsters +which now fill the waters. The heavy Arthrodirans languish and +disappear. The "pavement-toothed" sharks, which at first represent +three-fourths of the Elasmobranchs, dwindle in turn, and in the +formidable spines which develop on them we may see evidence of the great +struggle with the sharp-toothed sharks which are displacing them. The +Ostracoderms die out in the presence of these competitors. The smaller +fishes (generally Crossopterygii) seem to live mainly in the inland and +shore waters, and advance steadily toward the modern types, but none of +our modern bony fishes have yet appeared. + +More evident still is the effect of the new conditions upon the +Crustacea. The Trilobite, once the master of the seas, slowly yields +to the stronger competitors, and the latter part of the Carboniferous +period sees the last genus of Trilobites finally extinguished. The +Eurypterids (large scorpion-like Crustacea, several feet long) suffer +equally, and are represented by a few lingering species. The stress +favours the development of new and more highly organised Crustacea. One +is the Limulus or "king-crab," which seems to be a descendant, or near +relative, of the Trilobite, and has survived until modern times. Others +announce the coming of the long-tailed Crustacea, of the lobster and +shrimp type. They had primitive representatives in the earlier periods, +but seem to have been overshadowed by the Trilobites and Eurypterids. As +these in turn are crushed, the more highly organised Malacostraca take +the lead, and primitive specimens of the shrimp and lobster make their +appearance. + +The Echinoderms are still mainly represented by the sea-lilies. The +rocks which are composed of their remains show that vast areas of the +sea-floor must have been covered with groves of sea-lilies, bending on +their long, flexible stalks and waving their great flower-like arms in +the water to attract food. With them there is now a new experiment in +the stalked Echinoderm, the Blastoid, an armless type; but it seems to +have been a failure. Sea-urchins are now found in the deposits, +and, although their remains are not common, we may conclude that the +star-fishes were scattered over the floor of the sea. + +For the rest we need only observe that progress and rich diversity of +forms characterise the other groups of animals. The Corals now form +great reefs, and the finer Corals are gaining upon the coarser. The +Foraminifers (the chalk-shelled, one-celled animals) begin to form thick +rocks with their dead skeletons; the Radiolaria (the flinty-shelled +microbes) are so abundant that more than twenty genera of them have been +distinguished in Cornwall and Devonshire. The Brachiopods and Molluscs +still abound, but the Molluscs begin to outnumber the lower type of +shell-fish. In the Cephalopods we find an increasing complication of the +structure of the great spiral-shelled types. + +Such is the life of the Carboniferous period. The world rejoices in a +tropical luxuriance. Semi-tropical vegetation is found in Spitzbergen +and the Antarctic, as well as in North Europe, Asia, and America, and in +Australasia; corals and sea-lilies flourish at any part of the earth's +surface. Warm, dank, low-lying lands, bathed by warm oceans and steeped +in their vapours, are the picture suggested--as we shall see more +closely--to the minds of all geologists. In those happy conditions the +primitive life of the earth erupts into an abundance and variety that +are fitly illustrated in the well-preserved vegetation of the forest. +And when the earth has at length flooded its surface with this seething +tide of life; when the air is filled with a thousand species of insects, +and the forest-floor feels the heavy tread of the giant salamander and +the light feet of spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and snails, and the +lagoons and shores teem with animals, the Golden Age begins to close, +and all the semi-tropical luxuriance is banished. A great doom is +pronounced on the swarming life of the Coal-forest period, and from +every hundred species of its animals and plants only two or three will +survive the searching test. + + + +CHAPTER X. THE PERMIAN REVOLUTION + +In an earlier chapter it was stated that the story of life is a story +of gradual and continuous advance, with occasional periods of more rapid +progress. Hitherto it has been, in these pages, a slow and even advance +from one geological age to another, one level of organisation to +another. This, it is true, must not be taken too literally. Many +a period of rapid change is probably contained, and blurred out of +recognition, in that long chronicle of geological events. When a region +sinks slowly below the waves, no matter how insensible the subsidence +may be, there will often come a time of sudden and vast inundations, as +the higher ridges of the coast just dip below the water-level and the +lower interior is flooded. When two invading arms of the sea meet at +last in the interior of the sinking continent, or when a land-barrier +that has for millions of years separated two seas and their populations +is obliterated, we have a similar occurrence of sudden and far-reaching +change. The whole story of the earth is punctuated with small +cataclysms. But we now come to a change so penetrating, so widespread, +and so calamitous that, in spite of its slowness, we may venture to call +it a revolution. + +Indeed, we may say of the remaining story of the earth that it is +characterised by three such revolutions, separated by millions of years, +which are very largely responsible for the appearance of higher types of +life. The facts are very well illustrated by an analogy drawn from the +recent and familiar history of Europe. + +The socio-political conditions of Europe in the eighteenth century, +which were still tainted with feudalism, were changed into the +socio-political conditions of the modern world, partly by a slow and +continuous evolution, but much more by three revolutionary movements. +First there was the great upheaval at the end of the eighteenth century, +the tremors of which were felt in the life of every country in Europe. +Then, although, as Freeman says, no part of Europe ever returned +entirely to its former condition, there was a profound and almost +universal reaction. In the 'thirties and 'forties, differing in +different countries, a second revolutionary disturbance shook Europe. +The reaction after this upheaval was far less severe, and the conditions +were permanently changed to a great extent, but a third revolutionary +movement followed in the next generation, and from that time the +evolution of socio-political conditions has proceeded more evenly. + +The story of life on the earth since the Coal-forest period is +similarly quickened by three revolutions. The first, at the close of +the Carboniferous period, is the subject of this chapter. It is the most +drastic and devastating of the three, but its effect, at least on the +animal world, will be materially checked by a profound and protracted +reaction. At the end of the Chalk period, some millions of years later, +there will be a second revolution, and it will have a far more enduring +and conspicuous result, though it seem less drastic at the time. Yet +there will be something of a reaction after a time, and at length +a third revolution will inaugurate the age of man. If it is clearly +understood that instead of a century we are contemplating a period of at +least ten million years, and instead of a decade of revolution we have +a change spread over a hundred thousand years or more, this analogy will +serve to convey a most important truth. + +The revolutionary agency that broke into the comparatively even +chronicle of life near the close of the Carboniferous period, dethroned +its older types of organisms, and ushered new types to the lordship of +the earth, was cold. The reader will begin to understand why I dwelt +on the aspect of the Coal-forest and its surrounding waters. There +was, then, a warm, moist earth from pole to pole, not even temporarily +chilled and stiffened by a few months of winter, and life spread +luxuriantly in the perpetual semi-tropical summer. Then a spell of cold +so severe and protracted grips the earth that glaciers glitter on the +flanks of Indian and Australian hills, and fields of ice spread over +what are now semitropical regions. In some degree the cold penetrates +the whole earth. The rich forests shrink slowly into thin tracts of +scrubby, poverty-stricken vegetation. The loss of food and the bleak and +exacting conditions of the new earth annihilate thousands of species +of the older organisms, and the more progressive types are moulded into +fitness for the new environment. It is a colossal application of natural +selection, and amongst its results are some of great moment. + +In various recent works one reads that earlier geologists, led astray by +the nebular theory of the earth's origin, probably erred very materially +in regard to the climate of primordial times, and that climate has +varied less than used to be supposed. It must not be thought that, in +speaking of a "Permian revolution," I am ignoring or defying this view +of many distinguished geologists. I am taking careful account of it. +There is no dispute, however, about the fact that the Permian age +witnessed an immense carnage of Carboniferous organisms, and a very +considerable modification of those organisms which survived the +catastrophe, and that the great agency in this annihilation and +transformation was cold. To prevent misunderstanding, nevertheless, it +will be useful to explain the controversy about the climate of the earth +in past ages which divides modern geologists. + +The root of the difference of opinion and the character of the +conflicting parties have already been indicated. It is a protest of the +"Planetesimalists" against the older, and still general, view of the +origin of the earth. As we saw, that view implies that, as the heavier +elements penetrated centreward in the condensing nebula, the gases were +left as a surrounding shell of atmosphere. It was a mixed mass of gases, +chiefly oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon-dioxide (popularly known +as "carbonic acid gas"). When the water-vapour settled as ocean on the +crust, the atmosphere remained a very dense mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, +and carbon-dioxide--to neglect the minor gases. This heavy proportion of +carbon-dioxide would cause the atmosphere to act as a glass-house over +the surface of the earth, as it does still to some extent. Experiment +has shown that an atmosphere containing much vapour and carbon-dioxide +lets the heat-rays pass through when they are accompanied by strong +light, but checks them when they are separated from the light. In other +words, the primitive atmosphere would allow the heat of the sun to +penetrate it, and then, as the ground absorbed the light, would retain +a large proportion of the heat. Hence the semi-tropical nature of the +primitive earth, the moisture, the dense clouds and constant rains that +are usually ascribed to it. This condition lasted until the rocks and +the forests of the Carboniferous age absorbed enormous quantities of +carbon-dioxide, cleared the atmosphere, and prepared an age of chill and +dryness such as we find in the Permian. + +But the planetesimal hypothesis has no room for this enormous percentage +of carbon-dioxide in the primitive atmosphere. Hinc illoe lachrymoe: in +plain English, hence the acute quarrel about primitive climate, and +the close scanning of the geological chronicle for indications that the +earth was not moist and warm until the end of the Carboniferous period. +Once more I do not wish to enfeeble the general soundness of this +account of the evolution of life by relying on any controverted theory, +and we shall find it possible to avoid taking sides. + +I have not referred to the climate of the earth in earlier ages, except +to mention that there are traces of a local "ice-age" about the middle +of the Archaean and the beginning of the Cambrian. As these are many +millions of years removed from each other and from the Carboniferous, +it is possible that they represent earlier periods more or less +corresponding to the Permian. But the early chronicle is so compressed +and so imperfectly studied as yet that it is premature to discuss the +point. It is, moreover, unnecessary because we know of no life on land +in those remote periods, and it is only in connection with life on land +that we are interested in changes of climate here. In other words, as +far as the present study is concerned, we need only regard the climate +of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. As to this there is no +dispute; nor, in fact, about the climate from the Cambrian to the +Permian. + +As the new school is most brilliantly represented by Professor +Chamberlin, [*] it will be enough to quote him. He says of the Cambrian +that, apart from the glacial indications in its early part, "the +testimony of the fossils, wherever gathered, implies nearly uniform +climatic conditions... throughout all the earth wherever records of the +Cambrian period are preserved" (ii, 273). Of the Ordovician he says: +"All that is known of the life of this era would seem to indicate that +the climate was much more uniform than now throughout the areas where +the strata of the period are known" (ii, 342). In the Silurian we have +"much to suggest uniformity of climate"--in fact, we have just the same +evidence for it--and in the Devonian, when land-plants abound and afford +better evidence, we find the same climatic equality of living things +in the most different latitudes. Finally, "most of the data at hand +indicate that the climate of the Lower Carboniferous was essentially +uniform, and on the whole both genial and moist" (ii, 518). The "data," +we may recall, are in this case enormously abundant, and indicate the +climate of the earth from the Arctic regions to the Antarctic. Another +recent and critical geologist, Professor Walther ("Geschichte der +Erde und des Lebens," 1908), admits that the coal-vegetation shows +a uniformly warm climate from Spitzbergen to Africa. Mr. Drew ("The +Romance of Modern Geology," 1909) says that "nearly all over the globe +the climate was the same--hot, close, moist, muggy" (p. 219). + + * An apology is due here in some measure. The work which I + quote as of Professor Chamberlin ("Geology," 1903) is really + by two authors, Professors Chamberlin and Salisbury. I + merely quote Professor Chamberlin for shortness, and because + the particular ideas I refer to are expounded by him in + separate papers. The work is the finest manual in modern + geological literature. I have used it much, in conjunction + with the latest editions of Geikie, Le Conte, and Lupparent, + and such recent manuals as Walther, De Launay, Suess, etc., + and the geological magazines. + + +The exception which Professor Chamberlin has in mind when he says "most +of the data" is that we find deposits of salt and gypsum in the Silurian +and Lower Carboniferous, and these seem to point to the evaporation +of lakes in a dry climate. He admits that these indicate, at the most, +local areas or periods of dryness in an overwhelmingly moist and warm +earth. It is thus not disputed that the climate of the earth was, during +a period of at least fifteen million years (from the Cambrian to the +Carboniferous), singularly uniform, genial, and moist. During that vast +period there is no evidence whatever that the earth was divided into +climatic zones, or that the year was divided into seasons. To such an +earth was the prolific life of the Coal-forest adapted. + +It is, further, not questioned that the temperature of the earth fell in +the latter part of the Carboniferous age, and that the cold reached +its climax in the Permian. As we turn over the pages of the geological +chronicle, an extraordinary change comes over the vegetation of the +earth. The great Lepidodendra gradually disappear before the close of +the Permian period; the Sigillariae dwindle into a meagre and expiring +race; the giant Horsetails (Calamites) shrink, and betray the adverse +conditions in their thin, impoverished leaves. New, stunted, hardy +trees make their appearance: the Walchia, a tree something like the low +Araucarian conifers in the texture of its wood, and the Voltzia, the +reputed ancestor of the cypresses. Their narrow, stunted leaves suggest +to the imagination the struggle of a handful of pines on a bleak +hill-side. The rich fern-population is laid waste. The seed-ferns +die out, and a new and hardy type of fern, with compact leaves, the +Glossopteris, spreads victoriously over the globe; from Australia it +travels northward to Russia, which it reaches in the early Permian, and +westward, across the southern continent, to South America. A profoundly +destructive influence has fallen on the earth, and converted its rich +green forests, in which the mighty Club-mosses had reared their crowns +above a sea of waving ferns, into severe and poverty-stricken deserts. + +No botanist hesitates to say that it is the coming of a cold, dry +climate that has thus changed the face of the earth. The geologist finds +more direct evidence. In the Werribee Gorge in Victoria I have seen the +marks which Australian geologists have discovered of the ice-age which +put an end to their Coal-forests. From Tasmania to Queensland they +find traces of the rivers and fields of ice which mark the close of the +Carboniferous and beginning of the Permian on the southern continent. +In South Africa similar indications are found from the Cape to the +Transvaal. Stranger still, the geologists of India have discovered +extensive areas of glaciation, belonging to this period, running down +into the actual tropics. And the strangest feature of all is that the +glaciers of India and Australia flowed, not from the temperate zones +toward the tropics, but in the opposite direction. Two great zones of +ice-covered land lay north and south of the equator. The total area was +probably greater than the enormous area covered with ice in Europe and +America during the familiar ice-age of the latest geological period. + +Thus the central idea of this chapter, the destructive inroad of a +colder climate upon the genial Carboniferous world, is an accepted fact. +Critical geologists may suggest that the temperature of the Coal-forest +has been exaggerated, and the temperature of the Permian put too low. +We are not concerned with the dispute. Whatever the exact change of +temperature was, in degrees of the thermometer, it was admittedly +sufficient to transform the face of the earth, and bring a mantle of ice +over millions of square miles of our tropical and subtropical regions. +It remains for us to inquire into the causes of this transformation. + +It at once occurs to us that these facts seem to confirm the prevalent +idea, that the Coal-forests stripped the air of its carbon-dioxide until +the earth shivered in an atmosphere thinner than that of to-day. +On reflection, however, it will be seen that, if this were all that +happened, we might indeed expect to find enormous ice-fields extending +from the poles--which we do not find--but not glaciation in the tropics. +Others may think of astronomical theories, and imagine a shrinking or +clouding of the sun, or a change in the direction of the earth's axis. +But these astronomical theories are now little favoured, either +by astronomers or geologists. Professor Lowell bluntly calls them +"astrocomic" theories. Geologists think them superfluous. There is +another set of facts to be considered in connection with the Permian +cold. + +As we have seen several times, there are periods when, either owing to +the shrinking of the earth or the overloading of the sea-bottoms, or a +combination of the two, the land regains its lost territory and emerges +from the ocean. Mountain chains rise; new continental surfaces are +exposed to the sun and rain. One of the greatest of these upheavals of +the land occurs in the latter half of the Carboniferous and the Permian. +In the middle of the Carboniferous, when Europe is predominantly a flat, +low-lying land, largely submerged, a chain of mountains begins to rise +across its central part. From Brittany to the east of Saxony the great +ridge runs, and by the end of the Carboniferous it becomes a chain of +lofty mountains (of which fragments remain in the Vosges, Black Forest, +and Hartz mountains), dragging Central Europe high above the water, and +throwing the sea back upon Russia to the north and the Mediterranean +region to the south. Then the chain of the Ural Mountains begins to +rise on the Russian frontier. By the beginning of the Permian Europe was +higher above the water than it had ever yet been; there was only a sea +in Russia and a southern sea with narrow arms trailing to the northwest. +The continent of North America also had meantime emerged. The rise of +the Appalachia and Ouachita mountains completes the emergence of the +eastern continent, and throws the sea to the west. The Asiatic continent +also is greatly enlarged, and in the southern hemisphere there is a +further rise, culminating in the Permian, of the continent ("Gondwana +Land") which united South America, South Africa, the Antarctic land, +Australia and New Zealand, with an arm to India. + +In a word, we have here a physical revolution in the face of the earth. +The changes were generally gradual, though they seem in some places to +have been rapid and abrupt (Chamberlin); but in summary they amounted +to a vast revolution in the environment of animals and plants. The +low-lying, swampy, half-submerged continents reared themselves upward +from the sea-level, shook the marshes and lagoons from their face, and +drained the vast areas that had fostered the growth of the Coal-forests. +It is calculated (Chamberlin) that the shallow seas which had covered +twenty or thirty million square miles of our continental surfaces in the +early Carboniferous were reduced to about five million square miles in +the Permian. Geologists believe, in fact, that the area of exposed land +was probably greater than it is now. + +This lifting and draining of so much land would of itself have a +profound influence on life-conditions, and then we must take account of +its indirect influence. The moisture of the earlier period was probably +due in the main to the large proportion of sea-surface and the absence +of high land to condense it. In both respects there is profound +alteration, and the atmosphere must have become very much drier. As this +vapour had been one of the atmosphere's chief elements for retaining +heat at the surface of the earth, the change will involve a great +lowering of temperature. The slanting of the raised land would aid this, +as, in speeding the rivers, it would promote the circulation of water. +Another effect would be to increase the circulation of the atmosphere. +The higher and colder lands would create currents of air that had not +been formed before. Lastly, the ocean currents would be profoundly +modified; but the effect of this is obscure, and may be disregarded for +the moment. + +Here, therefore, we have a massive series of causes and effects, all +connected with the great emergence of the land, which throw a broad +light on the change in the face of the earth. We must add the lessening +of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Quite apart from theories of +the early atmosphere, this process must have had a great influence, +and it is included by Professor Chamberlin among the causes of the +world-wide change. The rocks and forests of the Carboniferous period are +calculated to have absorbed two hundred times as much carbon as there is +in the whole of our atmosphere to-day. Where the carbon came from we may +leave open. The Planetesimalists look for its origin mainly in volcanic +eruptions, but, though there was much volcanic activity in the later +Carboniferous and the Permian, there is little trace of it before the +Coal-forests (after the Cambrian). However that may be, there was a +considerable lessening of the carbon-dioxide of the atmosphere, and +this in turn had most important effects. First, the removal of so much +carbon-dioxide and vapour would be a very effective reason for a general +fall in the temperature of the earth. The heat received from the sun +could now radiate more freely into space. Secondly, it has been shown by +experiment that a richness in carbon-dioxide favours Cryptogamous plants +(though it is injurious to higher plants), and a reduction of it would +therefore be hurtful to the Cryptogams of the Coal-forest. One may +almost put it that, in their greed, they exhausted their store. Thirdly, +it meant a great purification of the atmosphere, and thus a most +important preparation of the earth for higher land animals and plants. + +The reader will begin to think that we have sufficiently "explained" +the Permian revolution. Far from it. Some of its problems are as yet +insoluble. We have given no explanation at all why the ice-sheets, which +we would in a general way be prepared to expect, appear in India and +Australia, instead of farther north and south. Professor Chamberlin, +in a profound study of the period (appendix to vol. ii, "Geology"), +suggests that the new land from New Zealand to Antarctica may have +diverted the currents (sea and air) up the Indian Ocean, and caused a +low atmospheric pressure, much precipitation of moisture, and perpetual +canopies of clouds to shield the ice from the sun. Since the outer polar +regions themselves had been semi-tropical up to that time, it is very +difficult to see how this will account for a freezing temperature in +such latitudes as Australia and India. There does not seem to have been +any ice at the Poles up to that time, or for ages afterwards, so that +currents from the polar regions would be very different from what +they are today. If, on the other hand, we may suppose that the rise of +"Gondwana Land" (from Brazil to India) was attended by the formation +of high mountains in those latitudes, we have the basis, at least, of +a more plausible explanation. Professor Chamberlin rejects this +supposition on the ground that the traces of ice-action are at or near +the sea-level, since we find with them beds containing marine fossils. +But this only shows, at the most, that the terminations of the glaciers +reached the sea. We know nothing of the height of the land from which +they started. + +For our main purpose, however, it is fortunately not necessary to clear +up these mysteries. It is enough for us that the Carboniferous land +rises high above the surface of the ocean over the earth generally. +The shallow seas are drained off its surface; its swamps and lagoons +generally disappear; its waters run in falling rivers to the ocean. The +dense, moist, warm atmosphere that had so long enveloped it is changed +into a thinner mantle of gas, through which, night by night, the +sun-soaked ground can discharge its heat into space. Cold winds blow +over it from the new mountains; probably vast regions of it are swept by +icy blasts from the glaciated lands. As these conditions advance in the +Permian period, the forests wither and shrink. Of the extraordinarily +mixed vegetation which we found in the Coal-forests some few types are +fitted to meet the severe conditions. The seed-bearing trees, the thin, +needle-leafed trees, the trees with stronger texture of the wood, are +slowly singled out by the deepening cold. The golden age of Cryptogams +is over. The age of the Cycad and the Conifers is opening. Survivors +of the old order linger in the warmer valleys, as one may see to-day +tree-ferns lingering in nooks of southern regions while an Antarctic +wind is whistling on the hills above them; but over the broad earth +the luscious pasturage of the Coal-forest has changed into what is +comparatively a cold desert. We must not, of course, imagine too abrupt +a change. The earth had been by no means all swamp in the Carboniferous +age. The new types were even then developing in the cooler and drier +localities. But their hour has come, and there is great devastation +among the lower plant population of the earth. + +It follows at once that there would be, on land, an equal devastation +and a similar selection in the animal world. The vegetarians suffered an +appalling reduction of their food; the carnivores would dwindle in +the same proportion. Both types, again, would suffer from the enormous +changes in their physical surroundings. Vast stretches of marsh, with +teeming populations, were drained, and turned into firm, arid plains or +bleak hill-sides. The area of the Amphibia, for instance, was no less +reduced than their food. The cold, in turn, would exercise a most +formidable selection. Before the Permian period there was not on the +whole earth an animal with a warm-blooded (four-chambered) heart or a +warm coat of fur or feathers; nor was there a single animal that gave +any further care to the eggs it discharged, and left to the natural +warmth of the earth to develop. The extermination of species in the egg +alone must have been enormous. + +It is impossible to convey any just impression of the carnage which this +Permian revolution wrought among the population of the earth. We can but +estimate how many species of animals and plants were exterminated, and +the reader must dimly imagine the myriads of living things that are +comprised in each species. An earlier American geologist, Professor Le +Conte, said that not a single Carboniferous species crossed the line +of the Permian revolution. This has proved to be an exaggeration, but +Professor Chamberlin seems to fall into an exaggeration on the other +side when he says that 300 out of 10,000 species survived. There are +only about 300 species of animals and plants known in the whole of the +Permian rocks (Geikie), and most of these are new. For instance, of the +enormous plant-population of the Coal-forests, comprising many thousands +of species, only fifty species survived unchanged in the Permian. We +may say that, as far as our knowledge goes, of every thirty species +of animals and plants in the Carboniferous period, twenty-eight were +blotted out of the calendar of life for ever; one survived by undergoing +such modifications that it became a new species, and one was found +fit to endure the new conditions for a time. We must leave it to the +imagination to appreciate the total devastation of individuals entailed +in this appalling application of what we call natural selection. + +But what higher types of life issued from the womb of nature after so +long and painful a travail? The annihilation of the unfit is the seamy +side, though the most real side, of natural selection. We ignore it, or +extenuate it, and turn rather to consider the advances in organisation +by which the survivors were enabled to outlive the great chill and +impoverishment. + +Unfortunately, if the Permian period is an age of death, it is not an +age of burials. The fossil population of its cemeteries is very scanty. +Not only is the living population enormously reduced, but the areas that +were accustomed to entomb and preserve organisms--the lake and shore +deposits--are also greatly reduced. The frames of animals and plants now +rot on the dry ground on which they live. Even in the seas, where life +must have been much reduced by the general disturbance of conditions, +the record is poor. Molluscs and Brachiopods and small fishes fill the +list, but are of little instructiveness for us, except that they show a +general advance of species. Among the Cephalopods, it is true, we find +a notable arrival. On the one hand, a single small straight-shelled +Cephalopod lingers for a time with the ancestral form; on the other +hand, a new and formidable competitor appears among the coiled-shell +Cephalopods. It is the first appearance of the famous Ammonite, but +we may defer the description of it until we come to the great age of +Ammonites. + +Of the insects and their fortunes in the great famine we have no direct +knowledge; no insect remains have yet been found in Permian rocks. We +shall, however, find them much advanced in the next period, and must +conclude that the selection acted very effectively among their thousand +Carboniferous species. + +The most interesting outcome of the new conditions is the rise and +spread of the reptiles. No other sign of the times indicates so clearly +the dawn of a new era as the appearance of these primitive, clumsy +reptiles, which now begin to oust the Amphibia. The long reign of +aquatic life is over; the ensign of progress passes to the land animals. +The half-terrestrial, half-aquatic Amphibian deserts the water entirely +(in one or more of its branches), and a new and fateful dynasty is +founded. Although many of the reptiles will return to the water, when +the land sinks once more, the type of the terrestrial quadruped is now +fully evolved, and from its early reptilian form will emerge the lords +of the air and the lords of the land, the birds and the mammals. + +To the uninformed it may seem that no very great advance is made when +the reptile is evolved from the Amphibian. In reality the change implies +a profound modification of the frame and life of the vertebrate. Partly, +we may suppose, on account of the purification of the air, partly on +account of the decrease in water surface, the gills are now entirely +discarded. The young reptile loses them during its embryonic life--as +man and all the mammals and birds do to-day--and issues from the egg a +purely lung-breathing creature. A richer blood now courses through the +arteries, nourishing the brain and nerves as well as the muscles. The +superfluous tissue of the gill-structures is used in the improvement of +the ear and mouth-parts; a process that had begun in the Amphibian. The +body is raised up higher from the ground, on firmer limbs; the ribs and +the shoulder and pelvic bones--the saddles by which the weight of the +body is adjusted between the limbs and the backbone--are strengthened +and improved. Finally, two important organs for the protection and +nurture of the embryo (the amnion and the allantois) make their +appearance for the first time in the reptile. In grade of organisation +the reptile is really nearer to the bird than it is to the salamander. + +Yet these Permian reptiles are so generalised in character and so +primitive in structure that they point back unmistakably to an Amphibian +ancestry. The actual line of descent is obscure. When the reptiles first +appear in the rocks, they are already divided into widely different +groups, and must have been evolved some time before. Probably they +started from some group or groups of the Amphibia in the later +Carboniferous, when, as we saw, the land began to rise considerably. +We have not yet recovered, and may never recover, the region where the +early forms lived, and therefore cannot trace the development in detail. +The fossil archives, we cannot repeat too often, are not a continuous, +but a fragmentary, record of the story of life. The task of the +evolutionist may be compared to the work of tracing the footsteps of a +straying animal across the country. Here and there its traces will be +amply registered on patches of softer ground, but for the most part they +will be entirely lost on the firmer ground. So it is with the fossil +record of life. Only in certain special conditions are the passing forms +buried and preserved. In this case we can say only that the Permian +reptiles fall into two great groups, and that one of these shows +affinities to the small salamander-like Amphibia of the Coal-forest (the +Microsaurs), while the other has affinities to the Labyrinthodonts. + +A closer examination of these early reptiles may be postponed until we +come to speak of the "age of reptiles." We shall see that it is probable +that an even higher type of animal, the mammal, was born in the throes +of the Permian revolution. But enough has been said in vindication of +the phrase which stands at the head of this chapter; and to show how +the great Primary age of terrestrial life came to a close. With its new +inhabitants the earth enters upon a fresh phase, and thousands of its +earlier animals and plants are sealed in their primordial tombs, to +await the day when man will break the seals and put flesh once more on +the petrified bones. + + + +CHAPTER XI. THE MIDDLE AGES OF THE EARTH + +The story of the earth from the beginning of the Cambrian period to the +present day was long ago divided by geologists into four great eras. +The periods we have already covered--the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, +Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian--form the Primary or Palaeozoic +Era, to which the earlier Archaean rocks were prefixed as a barren +and less interesting introduction. The stretch of time on which we now +enter, at the close of the Permian, is the Secondary or Mesozoic Era. +It will be closed by a fresh upheaval of the earth and disturbance of +life-conditions in the Chalk period, and followed by a Tertiary Era, in +which the earth will approach its modern aspect. At its close there will +be another series of upheavals, culminating in a great Ice-age, and the +remaining stretch of the earth's story, in which we live, will form the +Quaternary Era. + +In point of duration these four eras differ enormously from each other. +If the first be conceived as comprising sixteen million years--a very +moderate estimate--the second will be found to cover less than eight +million years, the third less than three million years, and the fourth, +the Age of Man, much less than one million years; while the Archaean +Age was probably as long as all these put together. But the division +is rather based on certain gaps, or "unconformities," in the geological +record; and, although the breaches are now partially filled, we saw that +they correspond to certain profound and revolutionary disturbances in +the face of the earth. We retain them, therefore, as convenient and +logical divisions of the biological as well as the geological chronicle, +and, instead of passing from one geological period to another, we may, +for the rest of the story, take these three eras as wholes, and devote +a few chapters to the chief advances made by living things in each era. +The Mesozoic Era will be a protracted reaction between two revolutions: +a period of low-lying land, great sea-invasions, and genial climate, +between two upheavals of the earth. The Tertiary Era will represent a +less sharply defined depression, with genial climate and luxuriant life, +between two such upheavals. + +The Mesozaic ("middle life") Era may very fitly be described as the +Middle Ages of life on the earth. It by no means occupies a central +position in the chronicle of life from the point of view of time or +antiquity, just as the Middle Ages of Europe are by no means the centre +of the chronicle of mankind, but its types of animals and plants are +singularly transitional between the extinct ancient and the actual +modern types. Life has been lifted to a higher level by the Permian +revolution. Then, for some millions of years, the sterner process of +selection relaxes, the warm bosom of the earth swarms again with a +teeming and varied population, and a rich material is provided for the +next great application of drastic selective agencies. To a poet it might +seem that nature indulges each succeeding and imperfect type of living +thing with a golden age before it is dismissed to make place for the +higher. + +The Mesozoic opens in the middle of the great revolution described in +the last chapter. Its first section, the Triassic period, is at first a +mere continuation of the Permian. A few hundred species of animals and +hardy plants are scattered over a relatively bleak and inhospitable +globe. Then the land begins to sink once more. The seas spread in great +arms over the revelled continents, the plant world rejoices in the +increasing warmth and moisture, and the animals increase in number and +variety. We pass into the Jurassic period under conditions of great +geniality. Warm seas are found as far north and south as our present +polar regions, and the low-lying fertile lands are covered again with +rich, if less gigantic, forests, in which hordes of stupendous animals +find ample nourishment. The mammal and the bird are already on the +stage, but their warm coats and warm blood offer no advantage in that +perennial summer, and they await in obscurity the end of the golden age +of the reptiles. At the end of the Jurassic the land begins to rise once +more. The warm, shallow seas drain off into the deep oceans, and the +moist, swampy lands are dried. The emergence continues throughout the +Cretaceous (Chalk) period. Chains of vast mountains rise slowly into the +air in many parts of the earth, and a new and comparatively rapid +change in the vegetation--comparable to that at the close of the +Carboniferous--announces the second great revolution. The Mesozoic +closes with the dismissal of the great reptiles and the plants on which +they fed, and the earth is prepared for its new monarchs, the flowering +plants, the birds, and the mammals. + +How far this repeated levelling of the land after its repeated upheavals +is due to a real sinking of the crust we cannot as yet determine. The +geologist of our time is disposed to restrict these mysterious rises +and falls of the crust as much as possible. A much more obvious and +intelligible agency has to be considered. The vast upheaval of nearly +all parts of the land during the Permian period would naturally lead to +a far more vigorous scouring of its surface by the rains and rivers. The +higher the land, the more effectively it would be worn down. The cooler +summits would condense the moisture, and the rains would sweep more +energetically down the slopes of the elevated continents. There would +thus be a natural process of levelling as long as the land stood out +high above the water-line, but it seems probable that there was also +a real sinking of the crust. Such subsidences have been known within +historic times. + +By the end of the Triassic--a period of at least two million years--the +sea had reconquered a vast proportion of the territory wrested from it +in the Permian revolution. Most of Europe, west of a line drawn from the +tip of Norway to the Black Sea, was under water--generally open sea +in the south and centre, and inland seas or lagoons in the west. The +invasion of the sea continued, and reached its climax, in the Jurassic +period. The greater part of Europe was converted into an archipelago. +A small continent stood out in the Baltic region. Large areas remained +above the sea-level in Austria, Germany, and France. Ireland, Wales, +and much of Scotland were intact, and it is probable that a land bridge +still connected the west of Europe with the east of America. Europe +generally was a large cluster of islands and ridges, of various sizes, +in a semi-tropical sea. Southern Asia was similarly revelled, and it +is probable that the seas stretched, with little interruption, from the +west of Europe to the Pacific. The southern continent had deep wedges +of the sea driven into it. India, New Zealand, and Australia were +successively detached from it, and by the end of the Mesozoic it was +much as we find it to-day. The Arctic continent (north of Europe) was +flooded, and there was a great interior sea in the western part of the +North American continent. + +This summary account of the levelling process which went on during the +Triassic and Jurassic will prepare us to expect a return of warm climate +and luxurious life, and this the record abundantly evinces. The enormous +expansion of the sea--a great authority, Neumayr, believes that it was +the greatest extension of the sea that is known in geology--and lowering +of the land would of itself tend to produce this condition, and it +may be that the very considerable volcanic activity, of which we find +evidence in the Permian and Triassic, had discharged great volumes of +carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. + +Whatever the causes were, the earth has returned to paradisiacal +conditions. The vast ice-fields have gone, the scanty and scrubby +vegetation is replaced by luscious forests of cycads, conifers, and +ferns, and warmth-loving animals penetrate to what are now the Arctic +and Antarctic regions. Greenland and Spitzbergen are fragments of a +continent that then bore a luxuriant growth of ferns and cycads, and +housed large reptiles that could not now live thousands of miles +south of it. England, and a large part of Europe, was a tranquil blue +coral-ocean, the fringes of its islands girt with reefs such as we +find now only three thousand miles further south, with vast shoals +of Ammonites, sometimes of gigantic size, preying upon its living +population or evading its monstrous sharks; while the sunlit lands were +covered with graceful, palmlike cycads and early yews and pines and +cypresses, and quaint forms of reptiles throve on the warm earth or in +the ample swamps, or rushed on outstretched wings through the purer air. + +It was an evergreen world, a world, apparently, of perpetual summer. +No trace is found until the next period of an alternation of summer and +winter--no trees that shed their leaves annually, or show annual rings +of growth in the wood--and there is little trace of zones of climate as +yet. It is true that the sensitive Ammonites differ in the northern and +the southern latitudes, but, as Professor Chamberlin says, it is not +clear that the difference points to a diversity of climate. We may +conclude that the absence of corals higher than the north of England +implies a more temperate climate further north, but what Sir A. Geikie +calls (with slight exaggeration) "the almost tropical aspect" of +Greenland warns us to be cautious. The climate of the mid-Jurassic was +very much warmer and more uniform than the climate of the earth to-day. +It was an age of great vital expansion. And into this luxuriant world we +shall presently find a fresh period of elevation, disturbance, and cold +breaking with momentous evolutionary results. Meantime, we may take a +closer look at these interesting inhabitants of the Middle Ages of the +earth, before they pass away or are driven, in shrunken regiments, into +the shelter of the narrowing tropics. + +The principal change in the aspect of the earth, as the cold, arid +plains and slopes of the Triassic slowly yield the moist and warm +ow-lying lands of the Jurassic, to consists in the character of the +vegetation. It is wholly intermediate in its forms between that of the +primitive forests and that of the modern world. The great Cryptogams of +the Carboniferous world--the giant Club-mosses and their kindred--have +been slain by the long period of cold and drought. Smaller Horsetails +(sometimes of a great size, but generally of the modern type) and +Club-mosses remain, but are not a conspicuous feature in the landscape. +On the other hand, there is as yet--apart from the Conifers--no trace of +the familiar trees and flowers and grasses of the later world. The vast +majority of the plants are of the cycad type. These--now confined to +tropical and subtropical regions--with the surviving ferns, the new +Conifers, and certain trees of the ginkgo type, form the characteristic +Mesozoic vegetation. + +A few words in the language of the modern botanist will show how this +vegetation harmonises with the story of evolution. Plants are broadly +divided into the lower kingdom of the Cryptogams (spore-bearing) and the +upper kingdom of the Phanerogams (seed-bearing). As we saw, the Primary +Era was predominantly the age of Cryptogams; the later periods witness +the rise and supremacy of the Phanerogams. But these in turn are broadly +divided into a less advanced group, the Gymnosperms, and a more advanced +group, the Angiosperms or flowering plants. And, just as the Primary Era +is the age of Cryptogams, the Secondary is the age of Gymnosperms, and +the Tertiary (and present) is the age of Angiosperms. Of about 180,000 +species of plants in nature to-day more than 100,000 are Angiosperms; +yet up to the end of the Jurassic not a single true Angiosperm is found +in the geological record. + +This is a broad manifestation of evolution, but it is not quite an +accurate statement, and its inexactness still more strongly confirms the +theory of evolution. Though the Primary Era was predominantly the age of +Cryptogams, we saw that a very large number of seed-bearing plants, with +very mixed characters, appeared before its close. It thus prepares the +way for the cycads and conifers and ginkgoes of the Mesozoic, which +we may conceive as evolved from one or other branch of the mixed +Carboniferous vegetation. We next find that the Mesozoic is by no means +purely an age of Gymnosperms. I do not mean merely that the Angiosperms +appear in force before its close, and were probably evolved much +earlier. The fact is that the Gymnosperms of the Mesozoic are often of +a curiously mixed character, and well illustrate the transition to the +Angiosperms, though they may not be their actual ancestors. This will be +clearer if we glance in succession at the various types of plant which +adorned and enriched the Jurassic world. + +The European or American landscape--indeed, the aspect of the earth +generally, for there are no pronounced zones of climate--is still +utterly different from any that we know to-day. No grass carpets the +plains; none of the flowers or trees with which we are familiar, except +conifers, are found in any region. Ferns grow in great abundance, +and have now reached many of the forms with which we are acquainted. +Thickets of bracken spread over the plains; clumps of Royal ferns and +Hartstongues spring up in moister parts. The trees are conifers, cycads, +and trees akin to the ginkgo, or Maidenhair Tree, of modern Japan. +Cypresses, yews, firs, and araucarias (the Monkey Puzzle group) grow +everywhere, though the species are more primitive than those of today. +The broad, fan-like leaves and plum-like fruit of the ginkgoales, of +which the temple-gardens of Japan have religiously preserved a solitary +descendant, are found in the most distant regions. But the most frequent +and characteristic tree of the Jurassic landscape is the cycad. + +The cycads--the botanist would say Cycadophyta or Cycadales, to mark +them off from the cycads of modern times--formed a third of the whole +Jurassic vegetation, while to-day they number only about a hundred +species in 180,000, and are confined to warm latitudes. All over +the earth, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, their palm-like foliage +showered from the top of their generally short stems in the Jurassic. +But the most interesting point about them is that a very large branch of +them (the Bennettiteae) went far beyond the modern Gymnosperm in their +flowers and fruit, and approached the Angiosperms. Their fructifications +"rivalled the largest flowers of the present day in structure and +modelling" (Scott), and possibly already gave spots of sober colour to +the monotonous primitive landscape. On the other hand, they approached +the ferns so much more closely than modern cycads do that it is often +impossible to say whether Jurassic remains must be classed as ferns or +cycads. + +We have here, therefore, a most interesting evolutionary group. The +botanist finds even more difficulty than the zoologist in drawing up the +pedigrees of his plants, but the general features of the larger groups +which he finds in succession in the chronicle of the earth point very +decisively to evolution. The seed-bearing ferns of the Coal-forest point +upward to the later stage, and downward to a common origin with the +ordinary spore-bearing ferns. Some of them are "altogether of a +cycadean type" (Scott) in respect of the seed. On the other hand, the +Bennettiteae of the Jurassic have the mixed characters of ferns, cycads, +and flowering plants, and thus, in their turn, point downward to a lower +ancestry and upward to the next great stage in plant-development. It +is not suggested that the seed-ferns we know evolved into the cycads we +know, and these in turn into our flowering plants. It is enough for the +student of evolution to see in them so many stages in the evolution of +plants up to the Angiosperm level. The gaps between the various groups +are less rigid than scientific men used to think. + +Taller than the cycads, firmer in the structure of the wood, and +destined to survive in thousands of species when the cycads would be +reduced to a hundred, were the pines and yews and other conifers of the +Jurassic landscape. We saw them first appearing, in the stunted Walchias +and Voltzias, during the severe conditions of the Permian period. Like +the birds and mammals they await the coming of a fresh period of cold +to give them a decided superiority over the cycads. Botanists look +for their ancestors in some form related to the Cordaites of the +Coal-forest. The ginkgo trees seem to be even more closely related to +the Cordaites, and evolved from an early and generalised branch of that +group. The Cordaites, we may recall, more or less united in one tree +the characters of the conifer (in their wood) and the cycad (in their +fruit). + +So much for the evolutionary aspect of the Jurassic vegetation in +itself. Slender as the connecting links are, it points clearly enough +to a selection of higher types during the Permian revolution from +the varied mass of the Carboniferous flora, and it offers in turn a +singularly varied and rich group from which a fresh selection may choose +yet higher types. We turn now to consider the animal population which, +directly or indirectly, fed upon it, and grew with its growth. To the +reptiles, the birds, and the mammals, we must devote special chapters. +Here we may briefly survey the less conspicuous animals of the Mesozoic +Epoch. + +The insects would be one of the chief classes to benefit by the renewed +luxuriance of the vegetation. The Hymenopters (butterflies) have not yet +appeared. They will, naturally, come with the flowers in the next +great phase of organic life. But all the other orders of insects are +represented, and many of our modern genera are fully evolved. The giant +insects of the Coal-forest, with their mixed patriarchal features, have +given place to more definite types. Swarms of dragon-flies, may-flies, +termites (with wings), crickets, and cockroaches, may be gathered from +the preserved remains. The beetles (Coleopters) have come on the scene +in the Triassic, and prospered exceedingly. In some strata three-fourths +of the insects are beetles, and as we find that many of them +are wood-eaters, we are not surprised. Flies (Dipters) and ants +(Hymenopters) also are found, and, although it is useless to expect to +find the intermediate forms of such frail creatures, the record is of +some evolutionary interest. The ants are all winged. Apparently there +is as yet none of the remarkable division of labour which we find in the +ants to-day, and we may trust that some later period of change may throw +light on its origin. + +Just as the growth of the forests--for the Mesozoic vegetation has +formed immense coal-beds in many parts of the world, even in Yorkshire +and Scotland--explains this great development of the insects, they would +in their turn supply a rich diet to the smaller land animals and flying +animals of the time. We shall see this presently. Let us first glance at +the advances among the inhabitants of the seas. + +The most important and stimulating event in the seas is the arrival of +the Ammonite. One branch of the early shell-fish, it will be remembered, +retained the head of its naked ancestor, and lived at the open mouth of +its shell, thus giving birth to the Cephalopods. The first form was +a long, straight, tapering shell, sometimes several feet long. In the +course of time new forms with curved shells appeared, and began to +displace the straight-shelled. Then Cephalopods with close-coiled +shells, like the nautilus, came, and--such a shell being an obvious +advantage--displaced the curved shells. In the Permian, we saw, a new +and more advanced type of the coiled-shell animal, the Ammonite, made +its appearance, and in the Triassic and Jurassic it becomes the ogre or +tyrant of the invertebrate world. Sometimes an inch or less in diameter, +it often attained a width of three feet or more across the shell, at the +aperture of which would be a monstrous and voracious mouth. + +The Ammonites are not merely interesting as extinct monsters of the +earth's Middle Ages, and stimulating terrors of the deep to the animals +on which they fed. They have an especial interest for the evolutionist. +The successive chambers which the animal adds, as it grows, to the +habitation of its youth, leave the earlier chambers intact. By removing +them in succession in the adult form we find an illustration of the +evolution of the elaborate shell of the Jurassic Ammonite. It is an +admirable testimony to the validity of the embryonic law we have often +quoted--that the young animal is apt to reproduce the past stages of +its ancestry--that the order of the building of the shell in the late +Ammonite corresponds to the order we trace in its development in +the geological chronicle. About a thousand species of Ammonites were +developed in the Mesozoic, and none survived the Mesozoic. Like the +Trilobites of the Primary Era, like the contemporary great reptiles +on land, the Ammonites were an abortive growth, enjoying their hour of +supremacy until sterner conditions bade them depart. The pretty +nautilus is the only survivor to-day of the vast Mesozoic population of +coiled-shell Cephalopods. + +A rival to the Ammonite appeared in the Triassic seas, a formidable +forerunner of the cuttle-fish type of Cephalopod. The animal now boldly +discards the protecting and confining shell, or spreads over the outside +of it, and becomes a "shell-fish" with the shell inside. The octopus of +our own time has advanced still further, and become the most powerful of +the invertebrates. The Belemnite, as the Mesozoic cuttle-fish is called, +attained so large a size that the internal bone, or pen (the part +generally preserved), is sometimes two feet in length. The ink-bags of +the Belemnite also are sometimes preserved, and we see how it could balk +a pursuer by darkening the waters. It was a compensating advantage for +the loss of the shell. + +In all the other classes of aquatic animals we find corresponding +advances. In the remaining Molluscs the higher or more effective types +are displacing the older. It is interesting to note that the oyster is +fully developed, and has a very large kindred, in the Mesozoic seas. +Among the Brachiopods the higher sloping-shoulder type displaces the +square-shoulder shells. In the Crustacea the Trilobites and Eurypterids +have entirely disappeared; prawns and lobsters abound, and the earliest +crab makes its appearance in the English Jurassic rocks. This sudden +arrival of a short-tailed Crustacean surprises us less when we learn +that the crab has a long tail in its embryonic form, but the actual +line of its descent is not clear. Among the Echinoderms we find that the +Cystids and Blastoids have gone, and the sea-lilies reach their climax +in beauty and organisation, to dwindle and almost disappear in the last +part of the Mesozoic. One Jurassic sea-lily was found to have 600,000 +distinct ossicles in its petrified frame. The free-moving Echinoderms +are now in the ascendant, the sea-urchins being especially abundant. +The Corals are, as we saw, extremely abundant, and a higher type (the +Hexacoralla) is superseding the earlier and lower (Tetracoralla). + +Finally, we find a continuous and conspicuous advance among the fishes. +At the close of the Triassic and during the Jurassic they seem to +undergo profound and comparatively rapid changes. The reason will, +perhaps, be apparent in the next chapter, when we describe the gigantic +reptiles which feed on them in the lakes and shore-waters. A greater +terror than the shark had appeared in their environment. The Ganoids and +Dipneusts dwindle, and give birth to their few modern representatives. +The sharks with crushing teeth diminish in number, and the sharp-toothed +modern shark attains the supremacy in its class, and evolves into forms +far more terrible than any that we know to-day. Skates and rays of a +more or less modern type, and ancestral gar-pikes and sturgeons, +enter the arena. But the most interesting new departure is the first +appearance, in the Jurassic, of bony-framed fishes (Teleosts). Their +superiority in organisation soon makes itself felt, and they enter upon +the rapid evolution which will, by the next period, give them the first +place in the fish world. + +Over the whole Mesozoic world, therefore, we find advance and the +promise of greater advance. The Permian stress has selected the fittest +types to survive from the older order; the Jurassic luxuriance is +permitting a fresh and varied expansion of life, in preparation for the +next great annihilation of the less fit and selection of the more fit. +Life pauses before another leap. The Mesozoic earth--to apply to it the +phrase which a geologist has given to its opening phase--welcomes the +coming and speeds the parting guest. In the depths of the ocean a new +movement is preparing, but we have yet to study the highest forms of +Mesozoic life before we come to the Cretaceous disturbances. + + + +CHAPTER XII. THE AGE OF REPTILES + +From one point of view the advance of life on the earth seems to proceed +not with the even flow of a river, but in the successive waves of an +oncoming tide. It is true that we have detected a continuous advance +behind all these rising and receding waves, yet their occurrence is a +fact of some interest, and not a little speculation has been expended on +it. When the great procession of life first emerges out of the darkness +of Archaean times, it deploys into a spreading world of strange +Crustaceans, and we have the Age of Trilobites. Later there is the +Age of Fishes, then of Cryptogams and Amphibia, and then of Cycads and +Reptiles, and there will afterwards be an Age of Birds and Mammals, and +finally an Age of Man. But there is no ground for mystic speculation on +this circumstance of a group of organisms fording the earth for a few +million years, and then perishing or dwindling into insignificance. We +shall see that a very plain and substantial process put an end to the +Age of the Cycads, Ammonites, and Reptiles, and we have seen how the +earlier dynasties ended. + +The phrase, however, the Age of Reptiles, is a fitting and true +description of the greater part of the Mesozoic Era, which lies, like +a fertile valley, between the Permian and the Chalk upheavals. From the +bleak heights of the Permian period, or--more probably--from its more +sheltered regions, in which they have lingered with the ferns and +cycads, the reptiles spread out over the earth, as the summer of the +Triassic period advances. In the full warmth and luxuriance of the +Jurassic they become the most singular and powerful army that ever trod +the earth. They include small lizard-like creatures and monsters more +than a hundred feet in length. They swim like whales in the shallow +seas; they shrink into the shell of the giant turtle; they rear +themselves on towering hind limbs, like colossal kangaroos; they even +rise into the air, and fill it with the dragons of the fairy tale. They +spread over the whole earth from Australia to the Arctic circle. Then +the earth seems to grow impatient of their dominance, and they shrink +towards the south, and struggle in a diminished territory. The colossal +monsters and the formidable dragons go the way of all primitive life, +and a ragged regiment of crocodiles, turtles, and serpents in the +tropics, with a swarm of smaller creatures in the fringes of the warm +zone, is all that remains, by the Tertiary Era, of the world-conquering +army of the Mesozoic reptiles. + +They had appeared, as we said, in the Permian period. Probably they +had been developed during the later Carboniferous, since we find +them already branched into three orders, with many sub-orders, in the +Permian. The stimulating and selecting disturbances which culminated in +the Permian revolution had begun in the Carboniferous. Their origin is +not clear, as the intermediate forms between them and the amphibia are +not found. This is not surprising, if we may suppose that some of the +amphibia had, in the growing struggle, pushed inland, or that, as the +land rose and the waters were drained in certain regions, they had +gradually adopted a purely terrestrial life, as some of the frogs have +since done. In the absence of water their frames would not be preserved +and fossilised. We can, therefore, understand the gap in the record +between the amphibia and the reptiles. From their structure we gather +that they sprang from at least two different branches of the amphibia. +Their remains fall into two great groups, which are known as the Diapsid +and the Synapsid reptiles. The former seem to be more closely related to +the Microsauria, or small salamander-like amphibia of the Coal-forest; +the latter are nearer to the Labyrinthodonts. It is not suggested that +these were their actual ancestors, but that they came from the same +early amphibian root. + +We find both these groups, in patriarchal forms, in Europe, North +America, and South Africa during the Permian period. They are usually +moderate in size, but in places they seem to have found good conditions +and prospered. A few years ago a Permian bed in Russia yielded a most +interesting series of remains of Synapsid reptiles. Some of them were +large vegetarian animals, more than twelve feet in length; others were +carnivores with very powerful heads and teeth as formidable as those +of the tiger. Another branch of the same order lived on the southern +continent, Gondwana Land, and has left numerous remains in South Africa. +We shall see that they are connected by many authorities with the origin +of the mammals. [*] The other branch, the Diapsids, are represented +to-day by the curiously primitive lizard of New Zealand, the tuatara +(Sphenodon, or Hatteria), of which I have seen specimens, nearly two +feet in length, that one did not care to approach too closely. The +Diapsids are chiefly interesting, however, as the reputed ancestors of +the colossal reptiles of the Jurassic age and the birds. + + * These Synapsid reptiles are more commonly known as + Pareiasauria or Theromorpha. + + +The purified air of the Permian world favoured the reptiles' being +lung-breathers, but the cold would check their expansion for a time. +The reptile, it is important to remember' usually leaves its eggs to +be hatched by the natural warmth of the ground. But as the cold of the +Permian yielded to a genial climate and rich vegetation in the course of +the Triassic, the reptiles entered upon their memorable development. The +amphibia were now definitely ousted from their position of dominance. +The increase of the waters had at first favoured them, and we find more +than twenty genera, and some very large individuals, of the amphibia +in the Triassic. One of them, the Mastodonsaurus, had a head three feet +long and two feet wide. But the spread of the reptiles checked them, and +they shrank rapidly into the poor and defenceless tribe which we find +them in nature to-day. + +To follow the prolific expansion of the reptiles in the semi-tropical +conditions of the Jurassic age is a task that even the highest +authorities approach with great diffidence. Science is not yet wholly +agreed in the classification of the vast numbers of remains which the +Mesozoic rocks have yielded, and the affinities of the various groups +are very uncertain. We cannot be content, however, merely to throw on +the screen, as it were, a few of the more quaint and monstrous types out +of the teeming Mesozoic population, and describe their proportions and +peculiarities. They fall into natural and intelligible groups or orders, +and their features are closely related to the differing regions of +the Jurassic world. While, therefore, we must abstain from drawing +up settled genealogical trees, we may, as we review in succession the +monsters of the land, the waters, and the air, glance at the most recent +and substantial conjectures of scientific men as to their origin and +connections. + +The Deinosaurs (or "terrible reptiles"), the monarchs of the land and +the swamps, are the central and outstanding family of the Mesozoic +reptiles. As the name implies, this group includes most of the colossal +animals, such as the Diplodocus, which the illustrated magazine has made +familiar to most people. Fortunately the assiduous research of American +geologists and their great skill and patience in restoring the dead +forms enable us to form a very fair picture of this family of medieval +giants and its remarkable ramifications. [*] + + * See, besides the usual authorities, a valuable paper by + Dr. R. S. Lull, "Dinosaurian Distribution" (1910). + + +The Diapsid reptiles of the Permian had evolved a group with horny, +parrot-like beaks, the Rhyncocephalia (or "beak-headed" reptiles), of +which the tuatara of New Zealand is a lingering representative. New +Zealand seems to have been cut off from the southern continent at the +close of the Permian or beginning of the Triassic, and so preserved +for us that very interesting relic of Permian life. From some primitive +level of this group, it is generally believed, the great Deinosaurs +arose. Two different orders seem to have arisen independently, or +diverged rapidly from each other, in different parts of the world. One +group seems to have evolved on the "lost Atlantis," the land between +Western Europe and America, whence they spread westward to America, +eastward over Europe, and southward to the continent which still united +Africa and Australia. We find their remains in all these regions. +Another stock is believed to have arisen in America. + +Both these groups seem to have been more or less biped, rearing +themselves on large and powerful hind limbs, and (in some cases, at +least) probably using their small front limbs to hold or grasp their +food. The first group was carnivorous, the second herbivorous; and, as +the reptiles of the first group had four or five toes on each foot, +they are known as the Theropods (or "beast-footed" ), while those of +the second order, which had three toes, are called the Ornithopods (or +"bird-footed"). Each of them then gave birth to an order of quadrupeds. +In the spreading waters and rich swamps of the later Triassic some of +the Theropods were attracted to return to an amphibious life, and became +the vast, sprawling, ponderous Sauropods, the giants in a world of +giants. On the other hand, a branch of the vegetarian Ornithopods +developed heavy armour, for defence against the carnivores, and +became, under the burden of its weight, the quadrupedal and monstrous +Stegosauria and Ceratopsia. Taking this instructive general view of the +spread of the Deinosaurs as the best interpretation of the material we +have, we may now glance at each of the orders in succession. + +The Theropods varied considerably in size and agility. The Compsognathus +was a small, active, rabbit-like creature, standing about two feet high +on its hind limbs, while the Megalosaurs stretched to a length of +thirty feet, and had huge jaws armed with rows of formidable teeth. The +Ceratosaur, a seventeen-foot-long reptile, had hollow bones, and we find +this combination of lightness and strength in several members of the +group. In many respects the group points more or less significantly +toward the birds. The brain is relatively large, the neck long, and +the fore limbs might be used for grasping, but had apparently ceased to +serve as legs. Many of the Theropods were evidently leaping reptiles, +like colossal kangaroos, twenty or more feet in length when they were +erect. It is the general belief that the bird began its career as a +leaping reptile, and the feathers, or expanded scales, on the front +limbs helped at first to increase the leap. Some recent authorities +hold, however, that the ancestor of the bird was an arboreal reptile. + +To the order of the Sauropods belong most of the monsters whose +discovery has attracted general attention in recent years. Feeding +on vegetal matter in the luscious swamps, and having their vast bulk +lightened by their aquatic life, they soon attained the most formidable +proportions. The admirer of the enormous skeleton of Diplodocus (which +ran to eighty feet) in the British Museum must wonder how even such +massive limbs could sustain the mountain of flesh that must have +covered those bones. It probably did not walk so firmly as the skeleton +suggests, but sprawled in the swamps or swam like a hippopotamus. But +the Diplodocus is neither the largest nor heaviest of its family. The +Brontosaur, though only sixty feet long, probably weighed twenty tons. +We have its footprints in the rocks to-day, each impression measuring +about a square yard. Generally, it is the huge thigh-bones of these +monsters that have survived, and give us an idea of their size. The +largest living elephant has a femur scarcely four feet long, but the +femur of the Atlantosaur measures more than seventy inches, and the +femur of the Brachiosaur more than eighty. Many of these Deinosaurs must +have measured more than a hundred feet from the tip of the snout to the +end of the tail, and stood about thirty feet high from the ground. The +European Sauropods did not, apparently, reach the size of their American +cousins--so early did the inferiority of Europe begin--but our Ceteosaur +seems to have been about fifty feet long and ten feet in height. +Its thigh-bone was sixty-four inches long and twenty-seven inches in +circumference at the shaft. And in this order of reptiles, it must be +remembered, the bones are solid. + +To complete the picture of the Sauropods, we must add that the whole +class is characterised by the extraordinary smallness of the brain. +The twenty-ton Brontosaur had a brain no larger than that of a new-born +human infant. Quite commonly the brain of one of these enormous animals +is no larger than a man's fist. It is true that, as far as the muscular +and sexual labour was concerned, the brain was supplemented by a great +enlargement of the spinal cord in the sacral region (at the top of the +thighs). This inferior "brain" was from ten to twenty times as large as +the brain in the skull. It would, however, be fully occupied with the +movement of the monstrous limbs and tail, and the sex-life, and does +not add in the least to the "mental" power of the Sauropods. They were +stupid, sluggish, unwieldy creatures, swollen parasites upon a luxuriant +vegetation, and we shall easily understand their disappearance at the +end of the Mesozoic Era, when the age of brawn will yield to an age of +brain. + +The next order of the Deinosaurs is that of the biped vegetarians, the +Ornithopods, which gradually became heavily armoured and quadrupedal. +The familiar Iguanodon is the chief representative of this order in +Europe. Walking on its three-toed hind limbs, its head would be +fourteen or fifteen feet from the ground. The front part of its jaws was +toothless and covered with horn. It had, in fact, a kind of beak, and it +also approached the primitive bird in the structure of its pelvis and in +having five toes on its small front limbs. Some of the Ornithopods, such +as the Laosaur, were small (three or four feet in height) and +active, but many of the American specimens attained a great size. The +Camptosaur, which was closely related to the Iguanodon in structure, was +thirty feet from the snout to the end of the tail, and the head +probably stood eighteen feet from the ground. One of the last great +representatives of the group in America, the Trachodon, about thirty +feet in length, had a most extraordinary head. It was about three and +a half feet in length, and had no less than 2000 teeth lining the mouth +cavity. It is conjectured that it fed on vegetation containing a large +proportion of silica. + +In the course of the Jurassic, as we saw, a branch of these biped, +bird-footed vegetarians developed heavy armour, and returned to the +quadrupedal habit. We find them both in Europe and America, and must +suppose that the highway across the North Atlantic still existed. + +The Stegosaur is one of the most singular and most familiar +representatives of the group in the Jurassic. It ran to a length of +thirty feet, and had a row of bony plates, from two to three feet in +height, standing up vertically along the ridge of its back, while its +tail was armed with formidable spikes. The Scleidosaur, an earlier +and smaller (twelve-foot) specimen, also had spines and bony plates to +protect it. The Polacanthus and Ankylosaur developed a most effective +armour-plating over the rear. As we regard their powerful armour, we +seem to see the fierce-toothed Theropods springing from the rear upon +the poor-mouthed vegetarians. The carnivores selected the vegetarians, +and fitted them to survive. Before the end of the Mesozoic, in fact, the +Ornithopods became aggressive as well as armoured. The Triceratops had +not only an enormous skull with a great ridged collar round the neck, +but a sharp beak, a stout horn on the nose, and two large and sharp +horns on the top of the head. We will see something later of the +development of horns. The skulls of members of the Ceratops family +sometimes measured eight feet from the snout to the ridge of the collar. +They were, however, sluggish and stupid monsters, with smaller brains +even than the Sauropods. + +Such, in broad outline, was the singular and powerful family of the +Mesozoic Deinosaurs. Further geological research in all parts of the +world will, no doubt, increase our knowledge of them, until we can fully +understand them as a great family throwing out special branches to meet +the different conditions of the crowded Jurassic age. Even now they +afford a most interesting page in the story of evolution, and their +total disappearance from the face of the earth in the next geological +period will not be unintelligible. We turn from them to the remaining +orders of the Jurassic reptiles. + +In the popular mind, perhaps, the Ichthyosaur and Plesiosaur are the +typical representatives of that extinct race. The two animals, however, +belong to very different branches of the reptile world, and are by no +means the most formidable of the Mesozoic reptiles. Many orders of the +land reptiles sent a branch into the waters in an age which, we saw, was +predominantly one of water-surface. The Ichthyosauria ("fish-reptiles") +and Thalattosauria ("sea-reptiles") invaded the waters at their first +expansion in the later Triassic. The latter groups soon became extinct, +but the former continued for some millions of years, and became +remarkably adapted to marine life, like the whale at a later period. + +The Ichthyosaur of the Jurassic is a remarkably fish-like animal. Its +long tapering frame--sometimes forty feet in length, but generally less +than half that length--ends in a dip of the vertebral column and an +expansion of the flesh into a strong tail-fin. The terminal bones of the +limbs depart more and more from the quadruped type, until at last they +are merely rows of circular bony plates embedded in the broad paddle +into which the limb has been converted. The head is drawn out, sometimes +to a length of five feet, and the long narrow jaws are set with two +formidable rows of teeth; one specimen has about two hundred teeth. In +some genera the teeth degenerate in the course of time, but this +merely indicates a change of diet. One fossilised Ichthyosaur of the +weaker-toothed variety has been found with the remains of two hundred +Belemnites in its stomach. It is a flash of light on the fierce struggle +and carnage which some recent writers have vainly striven to attenuate. +The eyes, again, which may in the larger animals be fifteen inches in +diameter, are protected by a circle of radiating bony plates. In fine, +the discovery of young developed skeletons inside the adult frames has +taught us that the Ichthgosaur had become viviparous, like the mammal. +Cutting its last connection with the land, on which it originated it +ceased to lay eggs, and developed the young within its body. + +The Ichthyosaur came of the reptile group which we have called the +Diapsids. The Plesiosaur seems to belong to the Synapsid branch. In the +earlier Mesozoic we find partially aquatic representatives of the line, +like the Nothosaur, and in the later Plesiosaur the adaptation to a +marine life is complete. The skin has lost its scales, and the front +limbs are developed into powerful paddles, sometimes six feet in length. +The neck is drawn out until, in some specimens, it is found to consist +of seventy-six vertebrae: the longest neck in the animal world. It is +now doubted, however, if the neck was very flexible, and, as the jaws +were imperfectly joined, the common picture of the Plesiosaur darting +its snake-like neck in all directions to seize its prey is probably +wrong. It seems to have lived on small food, and been itself a rich diet +to the larger carnivores. We find it in all the seas of the Mesozoic +world, varying in length from six to forty feet, but it is one of the +sluggish and unwieldy forms that are destined to perish in the coming +crisis. + +The last, and perhaps the most interesting, of the doomed monsters +of the Mesozoic was the Pterosaur, or "flying reptile." It is not +surprising that in the fierce struggle which is reflected in the arms +and armour of the great reptiles, a branch of the family escaped into +the upper region. We have seen that there were leaping reptiles with +hollow bones, and although the intermediate forms are missing, there +is little doubt that the Pterosaur developed from one or more of these +leaping Deinosaurs. As it is at first small, when it appears in the +early Jurassic--it is disputed in the late Triassic--it probably came +from a small and agile Deinosaur, hunted by the carnivores, which relied +on its leaping powers for escape. A flapperlike broadening of the fore +limbs would help to lengthen the leap, and we must suppose that this +membrane increased until the animal could sail through the air, like the +flying-fish, and eventually sustain its weight in the air. The wing +is, of course, not a feathery frame, as in the bird, but a special skin +spreading between the fore limb and the side of the body. In the bat +this skin is supported by four elongated fingers of the hand, but in +the Pterosaur the fifth (or fourth) finger alone--which is enormously +elongated and strengthened--forms its outer frame. It is as if, in +flying experiments, a man were to have a web of silk stretching from his +arm and an extension of his little finger to the side of his body. + +From the small early specimens in the early Jurassic the flying reptiles +grow larger and larger until the time of their extinction in the +stresses of the Chalk upheaval. Small Pterosaurs continue throughout the +period, but from these bat-like creatures we rise until we come to such +dragons as the American Pteranodon, with a stretch of twenty-two feet +between its extended wings and jaws about four feet long. There were +long-tailed Pterosaurs (Ramphorhyncus), sometimes with a rudder-like +expansion of the end of the tail, and short-tailed Pterosaurs +(Pterodactyl), with compact bodies and keeled breasts, like the bird. In +the earlier part of the period they all have the heavy jaws and numerous +teeth of the reptile, with four or five well-developed fingers on the +front limbs. In the course of time they lose the teeth--an advantage +in the distribution of the weight of the body while flying--and develop +horny beaks. In the gradual shaping of the breast-bone and head, also, +they illustrate the evolution of the bird-form. + +But the birds were meantime developing from a quite different stock, +and would replace the Pterosaurs at the first change in the environment. +There is ground for thinking that these flying reptiles were +warm-blooded like the birds. Their hollow bones seem to point to the +effective breathing of a warm-blooded animal, and the great vitality +they would need in flying points toward the same conclusion. Their +brain, too, approached that of the bird, and was much superior to that +of the other reptiles. But they had no warm coats to retain their heat, +no clavicle to give strength to the wing machinery, and, especially in +the later period, they became very weak in the hind limbs (and therefore +weak or slow in starting their flight). The coming selection will +therefore dismiss them from the scene, with the Deinosaurs and +Ammonites, and retain the better organised bird as the lord of the air. + +There remain one or two groups of the Mesozoic reptiles which are still +represented in nature. The turtle-group (Chelonia) makes its appearance +in the Triassic and thrives in the Jurassic. Its members are extinct and +primitive forms of the thick-shelled reptiles, but true turtles, both +of marine and fresh water, abound before the close of the Mesozoic. +The sea-turtles attain an enormous size. Archelon, one of the primitive +types, measured about twelve feet across the shell. Another was thirteen +feet long and fifteen feet from one outstretched flipper to the other. +In the Chalk period they form more than a third of the reptile remains +in some regions. They are extremely interesting in that they show, to +some extent, the evolution of their characteristic shell. In some of the +larger specimens the ribs have not yet entirely coalesced. + +The Crocodilians also appear in the later Triassic, abound in the +Jurassic, and give way before the later types, the true Crocodiles, in +the Cretaceous. They were marine animals with naked skin, a head and +neck something like that of the Ichthyosaur, and paddles like those of +the Plesiosaur. Their back limbs, however, were not much changed after +their adaptation to life in the sea, and it is concluded that they +visited the land to lay their eggs. The Teleosaur was a formidable +narrow-spouted reptile, somewhat resembling the crocodiles of the Ganges +in the external form of the jaws. The modern crocodiles, which replaced +this ancient race of sea-crocodiles, have a great advantage over them +in the fact that their nostrils open into the mouth in its lower depths. +They can therefore close their teeth on their prey under water and +breathe through the nose. + +Snakes are not found until the close of the Mesozoic, and do not figure +in its characteristic reptile population. We will consider them later. +But there was a large group of reptiles in the later Mesozoic seas which +more or less correspond to the legendary idea of a sea-serpent. These +Dolichosaurs ("long reptiles") appear at the beginning of the Chalk +period, and develop into a group, the Mososaurians, which must have +added considerably to the terrors of the shore-waters. Their slender +scale-covered bodies were commonly twenty to thirty feet in length. The +supreme representative of the order, the Mososaur, of which about forty +species are known, was sometimes seventy-five feet long. It had two +pairs of paddles--so that the name of sea-serpent is very imperfectly +applicable--and four rows of formidable teeth on the roof of its mouth. +Like the Deinosaurs and Pterosaurs, the order was doomed to be entirely +extinguished after a brief supremacy in its environment. + +From this short and summary catalogue the reader will be able to form +some conception of the living inhabitants of the Mesozoic world. It is +assuredly the Age of Reptiles. Worms, snails, and spiders were, we may +assume, abundant enough, and a great variety of insects flitted from +tree to tree or sheltered in the fern brakes. But the characteristic +life, in water and on land, was the vast and diversified family of +the reptiles. In the western and the eastern continent, and along the +narrowing bridge that still united them, in the northern hemisphere and +the southern, and along every ridge of land that connected them, these +sluggish but formidable monsters filled the stage. Every conceivable +device in the way of arms and armour, brute strength and means of +escape, seemed to be adopted in their development, as if they were the +final and indestructible outcome of the life-principle. And within a +single geological period the overwhelming majority of them, especially +the larger and more formidable of them, were ruthlessly slain, leaving +not a single descendant on the earth. Let us see what types of animals +were thus preferred to them in the next great application of selective +processes. + + + +CHAPTER XIII. THE BIRD AND THE MAMMAL + +In one of his finest stories, Sur La Pierre Blanche, Anatole France +has imagined a group of Roman patricians discussing the future of their +Empire. The Christians, who are about to rise to power on their ruin, +they dismiss with amiable indifference as one of the little passing +eccentricities of the religious life of their time. They have not the +dimmest prevision, even as the dream of a possibility, that in a century +or two the Empire of Rome will lie in the dust, and the cross will tower +above all its cities from York to Jerusalem. If we might for a moment +endow the animals of the Mesozoic world with AEsopian wisdom, we could +imagine some such discussion taking place between a group of Deinosaur +patricians. They would reflect with pride on the unshakable empire of +the reptiles, and perhaps glance with disdain at two types of animals +which hid in the recesses or fled to the hills of the Jurassic world. +And before another era of the earth's story opened, the reptile +race would be dethroned, and these hunted and despised and feeble +eccentricities of Mesozoic life would become the masters of the globe. + +These two types of organisms were the bird and the mammal. Both existed +in the Jurassic, and the mammals at least had many representatives +in the Triassic. In other words, they existed, with all their higher +organisation, during several million years without attaining power. The +mammals remained, during at least 3,000,000 years, a small and obscure +caste, immensely overshadowed by the small-brained reptiles. The birds, +while making more progress, apparently, than the mammals, were far +outnumbered by the flying reptiles until the last part of the Mesozoic. +Then there was another momentous turn of the wheel of fate, and they +emerged from their obscurity to assume the lordship of the globe. + +In earlier years, when some serious hesitation was felt by many to +accept the new doctrine of evolution, a grave difficulty was found in +the circumstance that new types--not merely new species and new genera, +but new orders and even sub-classes--appeared in the geological record +quite suddenly. Was it not a singular coincidence that in ALL cases the +intermediate organisms between one type and another should have wholly +escaped preservation? The difficulty was generally due to an imperfect +acquaintance with the conditions of the problem. The fossil population +of a period is only that fraction of its living population which +happened to be buried in a certain kind of deposit under water of a +certain depth. We shall read later of insects being preserved in resin +(amber), and we have animals (and even bacteria) preserved in trees from +the Coal-forests. Generally speaking, however, the earth has buried only +a very minute fraction of its land-population. Moreover, only a fraction +of the earth's cemeteries have yet been opened. When we further reflect +that the new type of organism, when it first appears, is a small and +local group, we see what the chances are of our finding specimens of +it in a few scattered pages of a very fragmentary record of the earth's +life. We shall see that we have discovered only about ten skeletons +or fragments of skeletons of the men who lived on the earth before the +Neolithic period; a stretch of some hundreds of thousands of years, +recorded in the upper strata of the earth. + +Whatever serious difficulty there ever was in this scantiness of +intermediate types is amply met by the fact that every fresh decade of +search in the geological tombs brings some to light. We have seen many +instances of this--the seed-bearing ferns and flower-bearing cycads, for +example, found in the last decade--and will see others. But one of the +most remarkable cases of the kind now claims our attention. The bird was +probably evolved in the late Triassic or early Jurassic. It appears in +abundance, divided into several genera, in the Chalk period. Luckily, +two bird-skeletons have been found in the intermediate period, the +Jurassic, and they are of the intermediate type, between the reptile +and the bird, which the theory of evolution would suggest. But for +the fortunate accident of these two birds being embedded in an ancient +Bavarian mud-layer, which happened to be opened, for commercial +purposes, in the second half of the nineteenth century, critics of +evolution--if there still were any in the world of science--might be +repeating to-day that the transition from the reptile to the bird was +unthinkable in theory and unproven in fact. + +The features of the Archaeopteryx ("primitive bird") have been described +so often, and such excellent pictorial restorations of its appearance +may now be seen, that we may deal with it briefly. We have in it a most +instructive combination of the characters of the bird and the reptile. +The feathers alone, the imprint of which is excellently preserved in +the fine limestone, would indicate its bird nature, but other anatomical +distinctions are clearly seen in it. "There is," says Dr. Woodward, "a +typical bird's 'merrythought' between the wings, and the hind leg +is exactly that of a perching bird." In other words, it has the +shoulder-girdle and four-toed foot, as well as the feathers, of a bird. +On the other hand, it has a long tail (instead of a terminal tuft of +feathers as in the bird) consisting of twenty-one vertebrae, with +the feathers springing in pairs from either side; it has biconcave +vertebrae, like the fishes, amphibia, and reptiles; it has teeth in its +jaws; and it has three complete fingers, free and clawed, on its front +limbs. + +As in the living Peripatus, therefore, we have here a very valuable +connecting link between two very different types of organisms. It is +clear that one of the smaller reptiles--the Archaeopteryx is between a +pigeon and a crow in size--of the Triassic period was the ancestor of +the birds. Its most conspicuous distinction was that it developed a +coat of feathers. A more important difference between the bird and the +reptile is that the heart of the bird is completely divided into four +chambers, but, as we saw, this probably occurred also in the other +flying reptiles. It may be said to be almost a condition of the greater +energy of a flying animal. When the heart has four complete chambers, +the carbonised blood from the tissues of the body can be conveyed direct +to the lungs for purification, and the aerated blood taken direct to the +tissues, without any mingling of the two. In the mud-fish and amphibian, +we saw, the heart has two chambers (auricles) above, but one (ventricle) +below, in which the pure and impure blood mingle. In the reptiles a +partition begins to form in the lower chamber. In the turtle it is +so nearly complete that the venous and the arterial blood are fairly +separated; in the crocodile it is quite complete, though the arteries +are imperfectly arranged. Thus the four-chambered heart of the bird and +mammal is not a sudden and inexplicable development. Its advantage is +enormous in a cold climate. The purer supply of blood increases the +combustion in the tissues, and the animal maintains its temperature and +vitality when the surrounding air falls in temperature. It ceases to be +"cold-blooded." + +But the bird secures a further advantage, and here it outstrips the +flying reptile. The naked skin of the Pterosaur would allow the heat to +escape so freely when the atmosphere cooled that a great strain would be +laid on its vitality. A man lessens the demand on his vitality in cold +regions by wearing clothing. The bird somehow obtained clothing, in +the shape of a coat of feathers, and had more vitality to spare for +life-purposes in a falling temperature. The reptile is strictly limited +to one region, the bird can pass from region to region as food becomes +scarce. + +The question of the origin of the feathers can be discussed only from +the speculative point of view, as they are fully developed in the +Archaeopteryx, and there is no approach toward them in any other living +or fossil organism. But a long discussion of the problem has convinced +scientific men that the feathers are evolved from the scales of the +reptile ancestor. The analogy between the shedding of the coat in a +snake and the moulting of a bird is not uninstructive. In both cases the +outer skin or epidermis is shedding an old growth, to be replaced by +a new one. The covering or horny part of the scale and the feather are +alike growths from the epidermis, and the initial stages of the growth +have certain analogies. But beyond this general conviction that the +feather is a development of the scale, we cannot proceed with any +confidence. Nor need we linger in attempting to trace the gradual +modification of the skeleton, owing to the material change in habits. +The horny beak and the reduction of the toes are features we have +already encountered in the reptile, and the modification of the pelvis, +breast-bone, and clavicle are a natural outcome of flight. + +In the Chalk period we find a large number of bird remains, of about +thirty different species, and in some respects they resume the story of +the evolution of the bird. They are widely removed from our modern types +of birds, and still have teeth in the jaws. They are of two leading +types, of which the Ichthyornis and Hesperornis are the standard +specimens. The Ichthyornis was a small, tern-like bird with the power of +flight strongly developed, as we may gather from the frame of its wings +and the keel-shaped structure of its breast-bone. Its legs and feet were +small and slender, and its long, slender jaws had about twenty teeth on +each side at the bottom. No modern bird has teeth; though the fact that +in some modern species we find the teeth appearing in a rudimentary +form is another illustration of the law that animals tend to reproduce +ancestral features in their development. A more reptilian character in +the Ichthyornis group is the fact that, unlike any modern bird, but like +their reptile ancestors, they had biconcave vertebrae. The brain was +relatively poor. We are still dealing with a type intermediate in +some respects between the reptile and the modern bird. The gannets, +cormorants, and pelicans are believed to descend from some branch of +this group. + +The other group of Cretaceous birds, of the Hesperornis type, show an +actual degeneration of the power of flight through adaptation to an +environment in which it was not needed, as happened, later, in the kiwi +of New Zealand, and is happening in the case of the barn-yard fowl. +These birds had become divers. Their wings had shrunk into an abortive +bone, while their powerful legs had been peculiarly fitted for diving. +They stood out at right angles to the body, and seem to have developed +paddles. The whole frame suggests that the bird could neither walk nor +fly, but was an excellent diver and swimmer. Not infrequently as large +as an ostrich (five to six feet high), with teeth set in grooves in +its jaws, and the jaws themselves joined as in the snake, with a great +capacity of bolting its prey, the Hesperornis would become an important +element in the life of the fishes. The wing-fingers have gone, and the +tail is much shortened, but the grooved teeth and loosely jointed jaws +still point back to a reptilian ancestry. + +These are the only remains of bird-life that we find in the Mesozoic +rocks. Admirably as they illustrate the evolution of the bird from the +reptile, they seem to represent a relatively poor development and spread +of one of the most advanced organisms of the time. It must be understood +that, as we shall see, the latter part of the Chalk period does not +belong to the depression, the age of genial climate, which I call the +Middle Ages of the earth, but to the revolutionary period which closes +it. We may say that the bird, for all its advances in organisation, +remains obscure and unprosperous as long as the Age of Reptiles +lasts. It awaits the next massive uplift of the land and lowering of +temperature. + +In an earlier chapter I hinted that the bird and the mammal may have +been the supreme outcomes of the series of disturbances which closed +the Primary Epoch and devastated its primitive population. As far as +the bird is concerned, this may be doubted on the ground that it first +appears in the upper or later Jurassic, and is even then still largely +reptilian in character. We must remember, however, that the elevation +of the land and the cold climate lasted until the second part of the +Triassic, and it is generally agreed that the bird may have been evolved +in the Triassic. Its slow progress after that date is not difficult to +understand. The advantage of a four-chambered heart and warm coat would +be greatly reduced when the climate became warmer. The stimulus to +advance would relax. The change from a coat of scales to a coat of +feathers obviously means adaptation to a low temperature, and there is +nothing to prevent us from locating it in the Triassic, and indeed no +later known period of cold in which to place it. + +It is much clearer that the mammals were a product of the Permian +revolution. They not only abound throughout the Jurassic, in which they +are distributed in more than thirty genera, but they may be traced into +the Triassic itself. Both in North America and Europe we find the +teeth and fragments of the jaws of small animals which are generally +recognised as mammals. We cannot, of course, from a few bones deduce +that there already, in the Triassic, existed an animal with a fully +developed coat of fur and an apparatus, however crude, in the breast for +suckling the young. But these bones so closely resemble the bones of the +lowest mammals of to-day that this seems highly probable. In the latter +part of the long period of cold it seems that some reptile exchanged its +scales for tufts of hair, developed a four-chambered heart, and began +the practice of nourishing the young from its own blood which would give +the mammals so great an ascendancy in a colder world. + +Nor can we complain of any lack of evidence connecting the mammal with a +reptile ancestor. The earliest remains we find are of such a nature that +the highest authorities are still at variance as to whether they should +be classed as reptilian or mammalian. A skull and a fore limb from +the Triassic of South Africa (Tritylodon and Theriodesmus) are in +this predicament. It will be remembered that we divided the primitive +reptiles of the Permian period into two great groups, the Diapsids and +Synapsids (or Theromorphs). The former group have spread into the +great reptiles of the Jurassic; the latter have remained in comparative +obscurity. One branch of these Theromorph reptiles approach the mammals +so closely in the formation of the teeth that they have received the +name "of the Theriodonts", or "beast-toothed" reptiles. Their teeth are, +like those of the mammals, divided into incisors, canines (sometimes +several inches long), and molars; and the molars have in some cases +developed cusps or tubercles. As the earlier remains of mammals which +we find are generally teeth and jaws, the resemblance of the two groups +leads to some confusion in classifying them, but from our point of view +it is not unwelcome. It narrows the supposed gulf between the reptile +and the mammal, and suggests very forcibly the particular branch of the +reptiles to which we may look for the ancestry of the mammals. We cannot +say that these Theriodont reptiles were the ancestors of the mammals. +But we may conclude with some confidence that they bring us near to the +point of origin, and probably had at least a common ancestor with the +mammals. + +The distribution of the Theriodonts suggests a further idea of interest +in regard to the origin of the mammals. It would be improper to press +this view in the present state of our knowledge, yet it offers a +plausible theory of the origin of the mammals. The Theriodonts seem to +have been generally confined to the southern continent, Gondwana Land +(Brazil to Australia), of which an area survives in South Africa. It is +there also that we find the early disputed remains of mammals. Now we +saw that, during the Permian, Gondwana Land was heavily coated with ice, +and it seems natural to suppose that the severe cold which the glacial +fields would give to the whole southern continent was the great agency +in the evolution of the highest type of the animal world. From this +southern land the new-born mammals spread northward and eastward with +great rapidity. Fitted as they were to withstand the rigorous conditions +which held the reptiles and amphibia in check, they seemed destined to +attain at once the domination of the earth. Then, as we saw, the +land was revelled once more until its surface broke into a fresh +semi-tropical luxuriance, and the Deinosaurs advanced to their triumph. +The mammals shrank into a meagre and insignificant population, a +scattered tribe of small insect-eating animals, awaiting a fresh +refrigeration of the globe. + +The remains of these interesting early mammals, restricted, as they +generally are, to jaws and teeth and a few other bones that cannot +in themselves be too confidently distinguished from those of certain +reptiles, may seem insufficient to enable us to form a picture of their +living forms. In this, however, we receive a singular and fortunate +assistance. Some of them are found living in nature to-day, and their +distinctly reptilian features would, even if no fossil remains were in +existence, convince us of the evolution of the mammals. + +The southern continent on which we suppose the mammals to have +originated had its eastern termination in Australia. New Zealand seems +to have been detached early in the Mesozoic, and was never reached by +the mammals. Tasmania was still part of the Australian continent. To +this extreme east of the southern continent the early mammals spread, +and then, during either the Jurassic or the Cretaceous, the sea +completed its inroad, and severed Australia permanently from the rest of +the earth. The obvious result of this was to shelter the primitive life +of Australia from invasion by higher types, especially from the great +carnivorous mammals which would presently develop. Australia became, in +other words, a "protected area," in which primitive types of life were +preserved from destruction, and were at the same time sheltered from +those stimulating agencies which compelled the rest of the world to +advance. "Advance Australia" is the fitting motto of the present human +inhabitants of that promising country; but the standard of progress has +been set up in a land which had remained during millions of years the +Chinese Empire of the living world. Australia is a fragment of the +Middle Ages of the earth, a province fenced round by nature at least +three million years ago and preserving, amongst its many invaluable +types of life, representatives of that primitive mammal population which +we are seeking to understand. + +It is now well known that the Duckbill or Platypus (Ornithorhyncus) +and the Spiny Anteater (Echidna) of Australia and Tasmania--with one +representative of the latter in New Guinea, which seems to have been +still connected--are semi-reptilian survivors of the first animals to +suckle their young. Like the reptiles they lay tough-coated eggs +and have a single outlet for the excreta, and they have a reptilian +arrangement of the bones of the shoulder-girdle; like the mammals, they +have a coat of hair and a four-chambered heart, and they suckle the +young. Even in their mammalian features they are, as the careful +research of Australian zoologists has shown, of a transitional type. +They are warm-blooded, but their temperature is much lower than that +of other mammals, and varies appreciably with the temperature of their +surroundings. [*] Their apparatus for suckling the young is primitive. +There are no teats, and the milk is forced by the mother through simple +channels upon the breast, from which it is licked by the young. The +Anteater develops her eggs in a pouch. They illustrate a very early +stage in the development of a mammal from a reptile; and one is almost +tempted to see in their timorous burrowing habits a reminiscence of the +impotence of the early mammals after their premature appearance in the +Triassic. + + * See Lucas and Le Soulf's Animals of Australia, 1909. + + +The next level of mammal life, the highest level that it attains in +Australia (apart from recent invasions), is the Marsupial. The pouched +animals (kangaroo, wallaby, etc.) are the princes of pre-human life in +Australia, and represent the highest point that life had reached when +that continent was cut off from the rest of the world. A few words on +the real significance of the pouch, from which they derive their name, +will suffice to explain their position in the story of evolution. + +Among the reptiles the task of the mother ends, as a rule, with the +laying of the egg. One or two modern reptiles hatch the eggs, or show +some concern for them, but the characteristic of the reptile is to +discharge its eggs upon the warm earth and trouble no further about its +young. It is a reminiscence of the warm primitive earth. The bird and +mammal, born of the cooling of the earth, exhibit the beginning of +that link between mother and offspring which will prove so important an +element in the higher and later life of the globe. The bird assists the +development of the eggs with the heat of her own body, and feeds the +young. The mammal develops the young within the body, and then feeds +them at the breast. + +But there is a gradual advance in this process. The Duckbill lays its +eggs just like the reptile, but provides a warm nest for them at the +bottom of its burrow. The Anteater develops a temporary pouch in its +body, when it lays an egg, and hatches the egg in it. The Marsupial +retains the egg in its womb until the young is advanced in development, +then transfers the young to the pouch, and forces milk into its mouth +from its breasts. The real reason for this is that the Marsupial falls +far short of the higher mammals in the structure of the womb, and cannot +fully develop its young therein. It has no placenta, or arrangement by +which the blood-vessels of the mother are brought into connection with +the blood-vessels of the foetus, in order to supply it with food until +it is fully developed. The Marsupial, in fact, only rises above the +reptile in hatching the egg within its own body, and then suckling the +young at the breast. + +These primitive mammals help us to reconstruct the mammal life of +the Mesozoic Epoch. The bones that we have are variously described +in geological manuals as the remains of Monotremes, Marsupials, and +Insectivores. Many of them, if not most, were no doubt insect-eating +animals, but there is no ground for supposing that what are technically +known as Insectivores (moles and shrews) existed in the Mesozoic. On +the other hand, the lower jaw of the Marsupial is characterised by a +peculiar hooklike process, and this is commonly found in Mesozoic jaws. +This circumstance, and the witness of Australia, permit us, perhaps, +to regard the Jurassic mammals as predominantly marsupial. It is more +difficult to identify Monotreme remains, but the fact that Monotremes +have survived to this day in Australia, and the resemblance of some +of the Mesozoic teeth to those found for a time in the young Duckbill +justify us in assuming that a part of the Mesozoic mammals correspond to +the modern Monotremes. Not single specimen of any higher, or placental, +mammal has yet been found in the whole Mesozoic Era. + +We must, however, beware of simply transferring to the Mesozoic world +the kinds of Monotremes and Marsupials which we know in nature to-day. +In some of the excellent "restorations" of Mesozoic life which are found +in recent illustrated literature the early mammal is represented with an +external appearance like that of the Duckbill. This is an error, as the +Duckbill has been greatly modified in its extremities and mouth-parts +by its aquatic and burrowing habits. As we have no complete skeletons +of these early mammals we must abstain from picturing their external +appearance. It is enough that the living Monotreme and Marsupial so +finely illustrate the transition from a reptilian to a mammalian form. +There may have been types more primitive than the Duckbill, and others +between the Duckbill and the Marsupial. It seems clear, at least, +that two main branches, the Monotremes and Marsupials, arose from the +primitive mammalian root. Whether either of these became in turn the +parent of the higher mammals we will inquire later. We must first +consider the fresh series of terrestrial disturbances which, like some +gigantic sieve, weeded out the grosser types of organisms, and cleared +the earth for a rapid and remarkable expansion of these primitive birds +and mammals. + +We have attended only to a few prominent characters in tracing the line +of evolution, but it will be understood that an advance in many organs +of the body is implied in these changes. In the lower mammals the +diaphragm, or complete partition between the organs of the breast and +those of the abdomen, is developed. It is not a sudden and mysterious +growth, and its development in the embryo to-day corresponds to the +suggestion of its development which the zoologist gathers from the +animal series. The ear also is now fully developed. How far the fish +has a sense of hearing is not yet fully determined, but the amphibian +certainly has an organ for the perception of waves of sound. Parts of +the discarded gill-arches are gradually transformed into the three bones +of the mammal's internal ear; just as other parts are converted into +mouth cartilages, and as--it is believed--one of the gill clefts is +converted into the Eustachian tube. In the Monotreme and Marsupial the +ear-hole begins to be covered with a shell of cartilage; we have the +beginning of the external ear. The jaws, which are first developed +in the fish, now articulate more perfectly with the skull. Fat-glands +appear in the skin, and it is probably from a group of these that the +milk-glands are developed. The origin of the hairs is somewhat obscure. +They are not thought to be, like the bird's feathers, modifications of +the reptile's scales, but to have been evolved from other structures in +the skin, possibly under the protection of the scales. + +My purpose is, however, rather to indicate the general causes of +the onward advance of life than to study organs in detail--a vast +subject--or construct pedigrees. We therefore pass on to consider the +next great stride that is taken by the advancing life of the earth. +Millions of years of genial climate and rich vegetation have filled +the earth with a prolific and enormously varied population. Over this +population the hand of natural selection is outstretched, as it were, +and we are about to witness another gigantic removal of older types of +life and promotion of those which contain the germs of further advance. +As we have already explained, natural selection is by no means inactive +during these intervening periods of warmth. We have seen the ammonites +and reptiles, and even the birds and mammals, evolve into hundreds +of species during the Jurassic period. The constant evolution of more +effective types of carnivores and their spread into new regions, the +continuous changes in the distribution of land and water, the struggle +for food in a growing population, and a dozen other causes, are ever at +work. But the great and comprehensive changes in the face of the earth +which close the eras of the geologist seem to give a deeper and quicker +stimulus to its population and result in periods of especially rapid +evolution. Such a change now closes the Mesozoic Era, and inaugurates +the age of flowering plants, of birds, and of mammals. + + + +CHAPTER XIV. IN THE DAYS OF THE CHALK + +In accordance with the view of the later story of the earth which was +expressed on an earlier page, we now come to the second of the three +great revolutions which have quickened the pulse of life on the earth. +Many men of science resent the use of the word revolution, and it is +not without some danger. It was once thought that the earth was really +shaken at times by vast and sudden cataclysms, which destroyed its +entire living population, so that new kingdoms of plants and animals +had to be created. But we have interpreted the word revolution in a very +different sense. The series of changes and disturbances to which we give +the name extended over a period of hundreds of thousands of years, +and they were themselves, in some sense, the creators of new types +of organisms. Yet they are periods that stand out peculiarly in +the comparatively even chronicle of the earth. The Permian period +transformed the face of the earth; it lifted the low-lying land into +a massive relief, drew mantles of ice over millions of miles of its +surface, set volcanoes belching out fire and fumes in many parts, +stripped it of its great forests, and slew the overwhelming majority +of its animals. On the scale of geological time it may be called a +revolution. + +It must be confessed that the series of disturbances which close the +Secondary and inaugurate the Tertiary Era cannot so conveniently be +summed up in a single formula. They begin long before the end of the +Mesozoic, and they continue far into the Tertiary, with intervals of +ease and tranquillity. There seems to have been no culminating point in +the series when the uplifted earth shivered in a mantle of ice and +snow. Yet I propose to retain for this period--beginning early in the +Cretaceous (Chalk) period and extending into the Tertiary--the name of +the Cretaceous Revolution. I drew a fanciful parallel between the three +revolutions which have quickened the earth since the sluggish days of +the Coal-forest and the three revolutionary movements which have changed +the life of modern Europe. It will be remembered that, whereas the first +of these European revolutions was a sharp and massive upheaval, +the second consisted in a more scattered and irregular series of +disturbances, spread over the fourth and fifth decades of the nineteenth +century; but they amounted, in effect, to a revolution. + +So it is with the Cretaceous Revolution. In effect it corresponds very +closely to the Permian Revolution. On the physical side it includes a +very considerable rise of the land over the greater part of the globe, +and the formation of lofty chains of mountains; on the botanical side +it means the reduction of the rich Mesozoic flora to a relatively +insignificant population, and the appearance and triumphant spread of +the flowering plants, on the zoological side it witnesses the complete +extinction of the Ammonites, Deinosaurs, and Pterosaurs, an immense +reduction of the reptile world generally, and a victorious expansion of +the higher insects, birds, and mammals; on the climatic side it provides +the first definite evidence of cold zones of the earth and cold seasons +of the year, and seems to represent a long, if irregular, period of +comparative cold. Except, to some extent, the last of these points, +there is no difference of opinion, and therefore, from the evolutionary +point of view, the Cretaceous period merits the title of a revolution. +All these things were done before the Tertiary period opened. + +Let us first consider the fundamental and physical aspect of this +revolution, the upheaval of the land. It began about the close of the +Jurassic period. Western and Central Europe emerged considerably from +the warm Jurassic sea, which lay on it and had converted it into an +archipelago. In North-western America also there was an emergence of +large areas of land, and the Sierra and Cascade ranges of mountains were +formed about the same time. For reasons which will appear later we must +note carefully this rise of land at the very beginning of the Cretaceous +period. + +However, the sea recovered its lost territory, or compensation for it, +and the middle of the Cretaceous period witnessed a very considerable +extension of the waters over America, Europe, and southern Asia. The +thick familiar beds of chalk, which stretch irregularly from Ireland to +the Crimea, and from the south of Sweden to the south of France, plainly +tell of an overlying sea. As is well known, the chalk consists mainly +of the shells or outer frames of minute one-celled creatures +(Thalamophores) which float in the ocean, and form a deep ooze at its +bottom with their discarded skeletons. What depth this ocean must have +been is disputed, and hardly concerns us. It is clear that it must have +taken an enormous period for microscopic shells to form the thick masses +of chalk which cover so much of southern and eastern England. On the +lowest estimates the Cretaceous period, which includes the deposit of +other strata besides chalk, lasted about three million years. And as +people like to have some idea of the time since these things happened, +I may add that, on the lowest estimate (which most geologists would at +least double), it is about three million years since the last stretches +of the chalk-ocean disappeared from the surface of Europe. + +But while our chalk cliffs conjure up a vision of England lying deep--at +least twenty or thirty fathoms deep--below a warm ocean, in which +gigantic Ammonites and Belemnites and sharks ply their deadly trade, +they also remind us of the last phase of the remarkable life of the +earth's Middle Ages. In the latter part of the Cretaceous the land +rises. The chalk ocean of Europe is gradually reduced to a series of +inland seas, separated by masses and ridges of land, and finally to a +series of lakes of brackish water. The masses of the Pyrenees and Alps +begin to rise; though it will not be until a much later date that they +reach anything like their present elevation. In America the change is +even greater. A vast ridge rises along the whole western front of the +continent, lifting and draining it, from Alaska to Cape Horn. It is +the beginning of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes. Even during the +Cretaceous period there had been rich forests of Mesozoic vegetation +covering about a hundred thousand square miles in the Rocky Mountains +region. Europe and America now begin to show their modern contours. + +It is important to notice that this great uprise of the land and the +series of disturbances it entails differ from those which we summed +up in the phrase Permian Revolution. The differences may help us to +understand some of the changes in the living population. The chief +difference is that the disturbances are more local, and not nearly +simultaneous. There is a considerable emergence of land at the end of +the Jurassic, then a fresh expansion of the sea, then a great rise of +mountains at the end of the Cretaceous, and so on. We shall find our +great mountain-masses (the Pyrenees, Alps, Himalaya, etc.) rising at +intervals throughout the whole of the Tertiary Era. However, it suffices +for the moment to observe that in the latter part of the Mesozoic and +early part of the Tertiary there were considerable upheavals of the land +in various regions, and that the Mesozoic Era closed with a very much +larger proportion of dry land, and a much higher relief of the +land, than there had been during the Jurassic period. The series of +disturbances was, says Professor Chamberlin, "greater than any that had +occurred since the close of the Palaeozoic." + +From the previous effect of the Permian upheaval, and from the fact that +the living population is now similarly annihilated or reduced, we should +at once expect to find a fresh change in the climate of the earth. Here, +however, our procedure is not so easy. In the Permian age we had +solid proof in the shape of vast glaciated regions. It is claimed by +continental geologists that certain early Tertiary beds in Bavaria +actually prove a similar, but smaller, glaciation in Europe, but this is +disputed. Other beds may yet be found, but we saw that there was not +a general upheaval, as there had been in the Permian, and it is quite +possible that there were few or no ice-fields. We do not, in fact, know +the causes of the Permian icefields. We are thrown upon the plant +and animal remains, and seem to be in some danger of inferring a cold +climate from the organic remains, and then explaining the new types of +organisms by the cold climate. This, of course, we shall not do. The +difficulty is made greater by the extreme disinclination of many recent +geologists, and some recent botanists who have too easily followed the +geologists, to admit a plain climatic interpretation of the facts. Let +us first see what the facts are. + +In the latter part of the Jurassic we find three different zones of +Ammonites: one in the latitude of the Mediterranean, one in the latitude +of Central Europe, and one further north. Most geologists conclude that +these differences indicate zones of climate (not hitherto indicated), +but it cannot be proved, and we may leave the matter open. At the same +time the warm-loving corals disappear from Europe, with occasional +advances. It is said that they are driven out by the disturbance of the +waters, and, although this would hardly explain why they did not spread +again in the tranquil chalk-ocean, we may again leave the point open. + +In the early part of the Cretaceous, however, the Angiosperms (flowering +plants) suddenly break into the chronicle of the earth, and spread with +great rapidity. They appear abruptly in the east of the North American +continent, in the region of Virginia and Maryland. They are small in +stature and primitive in structure. Some are of generalised forms that +are now unknown; some have leaves approaching those of the oak, willow, +elm, maple, and walnut; some may be definitely described as fig, +sassafras, aralia, myrica, etc. Eastern America, it may be recalled, is +much higher than western until the close of the Cretaceous period. The +Angiosperms do not spread much westward; they appear next in Greenland, +and, before the middle of the Cretaceous, in Portugal. They have +travelled over the North Atlantic continent, or what remains of it. The +process seems very rapid as we write it, but it must be remembered that +the first half of the Cretaceous period means a million or a million and +a half years. + +The cycads, and even the conifers, shrink before the higher type of +tree. The landscape, in Europe and America, begins to wear a modern +aspect. Long before the end of the Cretaceous most of the modern genera +of Angiosperm trees have developed. To the fig and sassafras are now +added the birch, beech, oak, poplar, walnut, willow, ivy, mulberry, +holly, laurel, myrtle, maple, oleander, magnolia, plane, bread-fruit, +and sweet-gum. Most of the American trees of to-day are known. The +sequoias (the giant Californian trees) still represent the conifers in +great abundance, with the eucalyptus and other plants that are now found +only much further south. The ginkgoes struggle on for a time. The cycads +dwindle enormously. Of 700 specimens in one early Cretaceous deposit +only 96 are Angiosperms; of 460 species in a later deposit about 400 are +Angiosperms. They oust the cycads in Europe and America, as the cycads +and conifers had ousted the Cryptogams. The change in the face of the +earth would be remarkable. Instead of the groves of palm-like cycads, +with their large and flower-like fructifications, above which the pines +and firs and cypresses reared their sombre forms, there were now forests +of delicate-leaved maples, beeches, and oaks, bearing nutritious fruit +for the coming race of animals. Grasses also and palms begin in the +Cretaceous; though the grasses would at first be coarse and isolated +tufts. Even flowers, of the lily family (apparently), are still detected +in the crushed and petrified remains. + +We will give some consideration later to the evolution of the +Angiosperms. For the moment it is chiefly important to notice a feature +of them to which the botanist pays less attention. In his technical view +the Angiosperm is distinguished by the structure of its reproductive +apparatus, its flowers, and some recent botanists wonder whether the +key to this expansion of the flowering plants may not be found in a +development of the insect world and of its relation to vegetation. In +point of fact, we have no geological indication of any great development +of the insects until the Tertiary Era, when we shall find them deploying +into a vast army and producing their highest types. In any case, such +a view leaves wholly unexplained the feature of the Angiosperms which +chiefly concerns us. This is that most of them shed the whole of their +leaves periodically, as the winter approaches. No such trees had yet +been known on the earth. All trees hitherto had been evergreen, and we +need a specific and adequate explanation why the earth is now covered, +in the northern region, with forests of trees which show naked boughs +and branches during a part of the year. + +The majority of palaeontologists conclude at once, and quite +confidently, from this rise and spread of the deciduous trees, that a +winter season has at length set in on the earth, and that this new type +of vegetation appears in response to an appreciable lowering of the +climate. The facts, however, are somewhat complex, and we must proceed +with caution. It would seem that any general lowering of the temperature +of the earth ought to betray itself first in Greenland, but the flora +of Greenland remains far "warmer," so to say, than the flora of Central +Europe is to-day. Even toward the close of the Cretaceous its plants +are much the same as those of America or of Central Europe. Its fossil +remains of that time include forty species of ferns, as well as cycads, +ginkgoes, figs, bamboos, and magnolias. Sir A. Geikie ventures to say +that it must then have enjoyed a climate like that of the Cape or of +Australia to-day. Professor Chamberlin finds its flora like that of +"warm temperate" regions, and says that plants which then flourished in +latitude 72 degrees are not now found above latitude 30 degrees. + +There are, however, various reasons to believe that it is unsafe to draw +deductions from the climate of Greenland. There is, it is true, some +exaggeration in the statement that its climate was equivalent to that +of Central Europe. The palms which flourished in Central Europe did not +reach Greenland, and there are differences in the northern Molluscs +and Echinoderms which--like the absence of corals above the north of +England--point to a diversity of temperature. But we have no right to +expect that there would be the same difference in temperature between +Greenland and Central Europe as we find to-day. If the warm current +which is now diverted to Europe across the Atlantic--the Gulf +Stream--had then continued up the coast of America, and flowed along +the coast of the land that united America and Europe, the climatic +conditions would be very different from what they are. There is a more +substantial reason. We saw that during the Mesozoic the Arctic continent +was very largely submerged, and, while Europe and America rise again at +the end of the Cretaceous, we find no rise of the land further north. A +difference of elevation would, in such a world, make a great difference +in temperature and moisture. + +Let us examine the animal record, however, before we come to any +conclusion. The chronicle of the later Cretaceous is a story of +devastation. The reduction of the cyeads is insignificant beside the +reduction or annihilation of the great animals of the Mesozoic world. +The skeletons of the Deinosaurs become fewer and fewer as we ascend the +upper Cretaceous strata. In the uppermost layer (Laramie) we find +traces of a last curious expansion--the group of horned reptiles, of the +Triceratops type, which we described as the last of the great +reptiles. The Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs vanish from the waters. The +"sea-serpents" (Mososaurs) pass away without a survivor. The flying +dragons, large and small, become entirely extinct. Only crocodiles, +lizards, turtle, and snakes cross the threshold of the Tertiary Era. In +one single region of America (Puerco beds) some of the great reptiles +seem to be making a last stand against the advancing enemy in the dawn +of the Tertiary Era, but the exact date of the beds is disputed, and +in any case their fight is soon over. Something has slain the most +formidable race that the earth had yet known, in spite of its marvellous +adaptation to different environments in its innumerable branches. + +We turn to the seas, and find an equal carnage among some of its most +advanced inhabitants. The great cuttlefish-like Belemnites and the whole +race of the Ammonites, large and small, are banished from the earth. The +fall of the Ammonites is particularly interesting, and has inspired +much more or less fantastic speculation. The shells begin to assume such +strange forms that observers speak occasionally of the "convulsions" or +"death-contortions" of the expiring race. Some of the coiled shells take +on a spiral form, like that of a snail's shell. Some uncoil the shell, +and seem to be returning toward the primitive type. A rich eccentricity +of frills and ornamentation is found more or less throughout the whole +race. But every device--if we may so regard these changes--is useless, +and the devastating agency of the Cretaceous, whatever it was, removes +the Ammonites and Belemnites from the scene. The Mollusc world, like the +world of plants and of reptiles, approaches its modern aspect. + +In the fish world, too, there is an effective selection in the course of +the Cretaceous. All the fishes of modern times, except the large +family of the sharks, rays, skates, and dog-fishes (Elasmobranchs), the +sturgeon and chimaera, the mud-fishes, and a very few other types, are +Teleosts, or bony-framed fishes--the others having cartilaginous frames. +None of the Teleosts had appeared until the end of the Jurassic. They +now, like the flowering plants on land, not only herald the new age, +but rapidly oust the other fishes, except the unconquerable shark. They +gradually approach the familiar types of Teleosts, so that we may say +that before the end of the Cretaceous the waters swarmed with primitive +and patriarchal cod, salmon, herring, perch, pike, bream, eels, and +other fishes. Some of them grew to an enormous size. The Portheus, +an American pike, seems to have been about eight feet long; and the +activity of an eight-foot pike may be left to the angler's imagination. +All, however, are, as evolution demands, of a generalised and unfamiliar +type: the material out of which our fishes will be evolved. + +Of the insects we have very little trace in the Cretaceous. We shall +find them developing with great richness in the following period, but, +imperfect as the record is, we may venture to say that they were checked +in the Cretaceous. There were good conditions for preserving them, but +few are preserved. And of the other groups of invertebrates we need only +say that they show a steady advance toward modern types. The sea-lily +fills the rocks no longer; the sea-urchin is very abundant. The Molluscs +gain on the more lowly organised Brachiopods. + +To complete the picture we must add that higher types probably arose +in the later Cretaceous which do not appear in the records. This is +particularly true of the birds and mammals. We find them spreading +so early in the Tertiary that we must put back the beginning of the +expansion to the Cretaceous. As yet, however, the only mammal remains +we find are such jaws and teeth of primitive mammals as we have already +described. The birds we described (after the Archaeopteryx) also belong +to the Cretaceous, and they form another of the doomed races. Probably +the modern birds were already developing among the new vegetation on the +higher ground. + +These are the facts of Cretaceous life, as far as the record has yielded +them, and it remains for us to understand them. Clearly there has been +a great selective process analogous to, if not equal to, the winnowing +process at the end of the Palaeozoic. As there has been a similar, if +less considerable, upheaval of the land, we are at once tempted to think +that the great selective agency was a lowering of the temperature. When +we further find that the most important change in the animal world is +the destruction of the cold-blooded reptiles, which have no concern for +the young, and the luxuriant spread of the warm-blooded animals, which +do care for their young, the idea is greatly confirmed. When we add +that the powerful Molluscs which are slain, while the humbler Molluscs +survive, are those which--to judge from the nautilus and octopus--love +warm seas, the impression is further confirmed. And when we finally +reflect that the most distinctive phenomenon of the period is the rapid +spread of deciduous trees, it would seem that there is only one possible +interpretation of the Cretaceous Revolution. + +This interpretation--that cold was the selecting agency--is a familiar +idea in geological literature, but, as I said, there are recent writers +who profess reserve in regard to it, and it is proper to glance at, or +at least look for, the alternatives. + +Before doing so let us be quite clear that here we have nothing to +do with theories of the origin of the earth. The Permian cold--which, +however, is universally admitted--is more or less entangled in that +controversy; the Cretaceous cold has no connection with it. Whatever +excess of carbon-dioxide there may have been in the early atmosphere +was cleared by the Coal-forests. We must set aside all these theories in +explaining the present facts. + +It is also useful to note that the fact that there have been great +changes in the climate of the earth in past time is beyond dispute. +There is no denying the fact that the climate of the earth was warm from +the Arctic to the Antarctic in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods: +that it fell considerably in the Permian: that it again became at least +"warm temperate" (Chamberlin) from the Arctic to the Antarctic in the +Jurassic, and again in the Eocene: that some millions of square miles +of Europe and North America were covered with ice and snow in the +Pleistocene, so that the reindeer wandered where palms had previously +flourished and the vine flourishes to-day; and that the pronounced zones +of climate which we find today have no counterpart in any earlier +age. In view of these great and admitted fluctuations of the earth's +temperature one does not see any reason for hesitating to admit a fall +of temperature in the Cretaceous, if the facts point to it. + +On the other hand, the alternative suggestions are not very convincing. +We have noticed one of these suggestions in connection with the origin +of the Angiosperms. It hints that this may be related to developments +of the insect world. Most probably the development of the characteristic +flowers of the Angiosperms is connected with an increasing relation +to insects, but what we want to understand especially is the deciduous +character of their leaves. Many of the Angiosperms are evergreen, so +that it cannot be said that the one change entailed the other. In fact, +a careful study of the leaves preserved in the rocks seems to show +the deciduous Angiosperms gaining on the evergreens at the end of the +Cretaceous. The most natural, it not the only, interpretation of this is +that the temperature is falling. Deciduous trees shed their leaves so as +to check their transpiration when a season comes on in which they cannot +absorb the normal amount of moisture. This may occur either at the +on-coming of a hot, dry season or of a cold season (in which the roots +absorb less). Everything suggests that the deciduous tree evolved to +meet an increase of cold, not of heat. + +Another suggestion is that animals and plants were not "climatically +differentiated" until the Cretaceous period; that is to say, that they +were adapted to all climates before that time, and then began to be +sensitive to differences of climate, and live in different latitudes. +But how and why they should suddenly become differentiated in this way +is so mysterious that one prefers to think that, as the animal remains +also suggest, there were no appreciable zones of climate until the +Cretaceous. The magnolia, for instance, flourished in Greenland in the +early Tertiary, and has to live very far south of it to-day. It is much +simpler to assume that Greenland changed--as a vast amount of evidence +indicates--than that the magnolia changed. + +Finally, to explain the disappearance of the Mesozoic reptiles without a +fall in temperature, it is suggested that they were exterminated by +the advancing mammals. It is assumed that the spreading world of the +Angiospermous plants somewhere met the spread of the advancing mammals, +and opened out a rich new granary to them. This led to so powerful +a development of the mammals that they succeeded in overthrowing the +reptiles. + +There are several serious difficulties in the way of this theory. The +first and most decisive is that the great reptiles have practically +disappeared before the mammals come on the scene. Only in one series of +beds (Puerco) in America, representing an early period of the Tertiary +Era, do we find any association of their remains; and even there it +is not clear that they were contemporary. Over the earth generally the +geological record shows the great reptiles dying from some invisible +scourge long before any mammal capable of doing them any harm appears; +even if we suppose that the mammal mainly attacked the eggs and the +young. We may very well believe that more powerful mammals than the +primitive Mesozoic specimens were already developed in some part of the +earth--say, Africa--and that the rise of the land gave them a bridge +across the Mediterranean to Europe. Probably this happened; but the +important point is that the reptiles were already almost extinct. The +difficulty is even greater when we reflect that it is precisely the +most powerful reptiles (Deinosaurs) and least accessible reptiles +(Pterosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, etc.) which disappear, while the smaller land +and water reptiles survive and retreat southward--where the mammals are +just as numerous. That assuredly is not the effect of an invasion of +carnivores, even if we could overlook the absence of such carnivores +from the record until after the extinction of the reptiles in most +places. + +I have entered somewhat fully into this point, partly because of +its great interest, but partly lest it be thought that I am merely +reproducing a tradition of geological literature without giving due +attention to the criticisms of recent writers. The plain and common +interpretation of the Cretaceous revolution--that a fall in temperature +was its chief devastating agency--is the only one that brings harmony +into all the facts. The one comprehensive enemy of that vast reptile +population was cold. It was fatal to the adult because he had a +three-chambered heart and no warm coat; it was fatal to the Mesozoic +vegetation on which, directly or indirectly, he fed; it was fatal to his +eggs and young because the mother did not brood over the one or care +for the other. It was fatal to the Pterosaurs, even if they were +warm-blooded, because they had no warm coats and did not (presumably) +hatch their eggs; and it was equally fatal to the viviparous +Ichthyosaurs. It is the one common fate that could slay all classes. +When we find that the surviving reptiles retreat southward, only +lingering in Europe during the renewed warmth of the Eocene and Miocene +periods, this interpretation is sufficiently confirmed. And when +we recollect that these things coincide with the extinction of the +Ammonites and Belemnites, and the driving of their descendants further +south, as well as the rise and triumph of deciduous trees, it is +difficult to see any ground for hesitating. + +But we need not, and must not, imagine a period of cold as severe, +prolonged, and general as that of the Permian period. The warmth of the +Jurassic period is generally attributed to the low relief of the land, +and the very large proportion of water-surface. The effect of this would +be to increase the moisture in the atmosphere. Whether this was assisted +by any abnormal proportion of carbon-dioxide, as in the Carboniferous, +we cannot confidently say. Professor Chamberlin observes that, since +the absorbing rock-surface was greatly reduced in the Jurassic, the +carbon-dioxide would tend to accumulate in its atmosphere, and help to +explain the high temperature. But the great spread of vegetation and the +rise of land in the later Jurassic and the Cretaceous would reduce this +density of the atmosphere, and help to lower the temperature. + +It is clear that the cold would at first be local. In fact, it must be +carefully realised that, when we speak of the Jurassic period as a time +of uniform warmth, we mean uniform at the same altitude. Everybody knows +the effect of rising from the warm, moist sea-level to the top of even +a small inland elevation. There would be such cooler regions throughout +the Jurassic, and we saw that there were considerable upheavals of +land towards its close. To these elevated lands we may look for the +development of the Angiosperms, the birds, and the mammals. When +the more massive rise of land came at the end of the Cretaceous, the +temperature would fall over larger areas, and connecting ridges would +be established between one area and another. The Mesozoic plants and +animals would succumb to this advancing cold. What precise degree of +cold was necessary to kill the reptiles and Cephalopods, yet allow +certain of the more delicate flowering plants to live, is yet to be +determined. The vast majority of the new plants, with their winter +sleep, would thrive in the cooler air, and, occupying the ground of +the retreating cycads and ginkgoes would prepare a rich harvest for the +coming birds and mammals. + + + +CHAPTER XV. THE TERTIARY ERA + +We have already traversed nearly nine-tenths of the story of terrestrial +life, without counting the long and obscure Archaean period, and still +find ourselves in a strange and unfamiliar earth. With the close of the +Chalk period, however, we take a long stride in the direction of the +modern world. The Tertiary Era will, in the main, prove a fresh period +of genial warmth and fertile low-lying regions. During its course our +deciduous trees and grasses will mingle with the palms and pines over +the land, our flowers will begin to brighten the landscape, and the +forms of our familiar birds and mammals, even the form of man, will be +discernible in the crowds of animals. At its close another mighty period +of selection will clear the stage for its modern actors. + +A curious reflection is prompted in connection with this division of +the earth's story into periods of relative prosperity and quiescence, +separated by periods of disturbance. There was--on the most modest +estimate--a stretch of some fifteen million years between the Cambrian +and the Permian upheavals. On the same chronological scale the interval +between the Permian and Cretaceous revolutions was only about seven +million years, and the Tertiary Era will comprise only about three +million years. One wonders if the Fourth (Quaternary) Era in which we +live will be similarly shortened. Further, whereas the earth returned +after each of the earlier upheavals to what seems to have been its +primitive condition of equable and warm climate, it has now entirely +departed from that condition, and exhibits very different zones of +climate and a succession of seasons in the year. One wonders what the +climate of the earth will become long before the expiration of those ten +million years which are usually assigned as the minimum period during +which the globe will remain habitable. + +It is premature to glance at the future, when we are still some millions +of years from the present, but it will be useful to look more closely +at the facts which inspire this reflection. From what we have seen, +and shall further see, it is clear that, in spite of all the recent +controversy about climate among our geologists, there has undeniably +been a progressive refrigeration of the globe. Every geologist, indeed, +admits "oscillations of climate," as Professor Chamberlin puts it. +But amidst all these oscillations we trace a steady lowering of +the temperature. Unless we put a strained and somewhat arbitrary +interpretation on the facts of the geological record, earlier ages knew +nothing of our division of the year into pronounced seasons and of +the globe into very different climatic zones. It might plausibly be +suggested that we are still living in the last days of the Ice-Age, +and that the earth may be slowly returning to a warmer condition. +Shackleton, it might be observed, found that there has been a +considerable shrinkage of the south polar ice within the period of +exploration. But we shall find that a difference of climate, as compared +with earlier ages, was already evident in the middle of the Tertiary +Era, and it is far more noticeable to-day. + +We do not know the causes of this climatic evolution--the point will be +considered more closely in connection with the last Ice-Age--but we see +that it throws a flood of light on the evolution of organisms. It is +one of the chief incarnations of natural selection. Changes in the +distribution of land and water and in the nature of the land-surface, +the coming of powerful carnivores, and other agencies which we have +seen, have had their share in the onward impulsion of life, but the most +drastic agency seems to have been the supervention of cold. The higher +types of both animals and plants appear plainly in response to a +lowering of temperature. This is the chief advantage of studying the +story of evolution in strict connection with the geological record. We +shall find that the record will continue to throw light on our path to +the end, but, as we are now about to approach the most important era +of evolution, and as we have now seen so much of the concrete story of +evolution, it will be interesting to examine briefly some other ways of +conceiving that story. + +We need not return to the consideration of the leading schools of +evolution, as described in a former chapter. Nothing that we have seen +will enable us to choose between the Lamarckian and the Weismannist +hypothesis; and I doubt if anything we are yet to see will prove +more decisive. The dispute is somewhat academic, and not vital to a +conception of evolution. We shall, for instance, presently follow the +evolution of the horse, and see four of its toes shrink and disappear, +while the fifth toe is enormously strengthened. In the facts themselves +there is nothing whatever to decide whether this evolution took place +on the lines suggested by Weismann, or on the lines suggested by Lamarck +and accepted by Darwin. It will be enough for us merely to establish +the fact that the one-toed horse is an evolved descendant of a primitive +five-toed mammal, through the adaptation of its foot to running on firm +ground, its teeth and neck to feeding on grasses, and so on. + +On the other hand, the facts we have already seen seem to justify the +attitude of compromise I adopted in regard to the Mutationist theory. It +would be an advantage in many ways if we could believe that new species +arose by sudden and large variations (mutations) of the young from the +parental type. In the case of many organs and habits it is extremely +difficult to see how a gradual development, by a slow accentuation of +small variations, is possible. When we further find that experimenters +on living species can bring about such mutations, and when we reflect +that there must have been acute disturbances in the surroundings of +animals and plants sometimes, we are disposed to think that many a +new species may have arisen in this way. On the other hand, while +the palaeontological record can never prove that a species arose by +mutations, it does sometimes show that species arise by very gradual +modification. The Chalk period, which we have just traversed, affords +a very clear instance. One of our chief investigators of the English +Chalk, Dr. Rowe, paid particular attention to the sea-urchins it +contains, as they serve well to identify different levels of chalk. He +discovered, not merely that they vary from level to level, but that +in at least one genus (Micraster) he could trace the organism very +gradually passing from one species to another, without any leap or +abruptness. It is certainly significant that we find such cases as this +precisely where the conditions of preservation are exceptionally good. +We must conclude that species arise, probably, both by mutations and +small variations, and that it is impossible to say which class of +species has been the more numerous. + +There remain one or two conceptions of evolution which we have not +hitherto noticed, as it was advisable to see the facts first. One of +these is the view--chiefly represented in this country by Professor +Henslow--that natural selection has had no part in the creation of +species; that the only two factors are the environment and the organism +which responds to its changes. This is true enough in the sense that, as +we saw, natural selection is not an action of nature on the "fit," but +on the unfit or less fit. But this does not in the least lessen the +importance of natural selection. If there were not in nature this body +of destructive agencies, to which we apply the name natural selection, +there would be little--we cannot say no--evolution. But the rising +carnivores, the falls of temperature, etc., that we have studied, have +had so real, if indirect, an influence on the development of life that +we need not dwell on this. + +Another school, or several schools, while admitting the action of +natural selection, maintain that earlier evolutionists have made nature +much too red in tooth and claw. Dr. Russel Wallace from one motive, and +Prince Krapotkin from another, have insisted that the triumphs of +war have been exaggerated, and the triumphs of peace, or of social +co-operation, far too little appreciated. It will be found that such +writers usually base their theory on life as we find it in nature +to-day, where the social principle is highly developed in many groups +of animals. This is most misleading, since social co-operation among +animals, as an instrument of progress, is (geologically speaking) quite +a recent phenomenon. Nearly every group of animals in which it is found +belongs, to put it moderately, to the last tenth of the story of life, +and in some of the chief instances the animals have only gradually +developed social life. [*] The first nine-tenths of the chronicle of +evolution contain no indication of social life, except--curiously +enough--in such groups as the Sponges, Corals, and Bryozoa, which are +amongst the least progressive in nature. We have seen plainly that +during the overwhelmingly greater part of the story of life the +predominant agencies of evolution were struggle against adverse +conditions and devouring carnivores; and we shall find them the +predominant agencies throughout the Tertiary Era. + + * Thus the social nature of man is sometimes quoted as one + of the chief causes of his development. It is true that it + has much to do with his later development, but we shall see + that the statement that man was from the start a social + being is not at all warranted by the facts. On the other + hand, it may be pointed out that the ants and termites had + appeared in the Mesozoic. We shall see some evidence that + the remarkable division of labour which now characterises + their life did not begin until a much later period, so that + we have no evidence of social life in the early stages. + + +Yet we must protest against the exaggerated estimate of the conscious +pain which so many read into these millions of years of struggle. +Probably there was no consciousness at all during the greater part +of the time. The wriggling of the worm on which you have accidentally +trodden is no proof whatever that you have caused conscious pain. The +nervous system of an animal has been so evolved as to respond with great +disturbance of its tissue to any dangerous or injurious assault. It is +the selection of a certain means of self-preservation. But at what level +of life the animal becomes conscious of this disturbance, and "feels +pain," it is very difficult to determine. The subject is too vast to be +opened here. In a special investigation of it. [*] I concluded that there is +no proof of the presence of any degree of consciousness in the +invertebrate world even in the higher insects; that there is probably +only a dull, blurred, imperfect consciousness below the level of the +higher mammals and birds; and that even the consciousness of an ape is +something very different from what educated Europeans, on the ground of +their own experience, call consciousness. It is too often forgotten that +pain is in proportion to consciousness. We must beware of such fallacies +as transferring our experience of pain to a Mesozoic reptile, with an +ounce or two of cerebrum to twenty tons of muscle and bone. + + * "The Evolution of Mind" (Black), 1911. + + +One other view of evolution, which we find in some recent and reputable +works (such as Professor Geddes and Thomson's "Evolution," 1911), calls +for consideration. In the ordinary Darwinian view the variations of the +young from their parents are indefinite, and spread in all directions. +They may continue to occur for ages without any of them proving an +advantage to their possessors. Then the environment may change, and +a certain variation may prove an advantage, and be continuously and +increasingly selected. Thus these indefinite variations may be so +controlled by the environment during millions of years that the fish at +last becomes an elephant or a man. The alternative view, urged by a few +writers, is that the variations were "definitely directed." The phrase +seems merely to complicate the story of evolution with a fresh and +superfluous mystery. The nature and precise action of this "definite +direction" within the organism are quite unintelligible, and the facts +seem explainable just as well--or not less imperfectly--without as with +this mystic agency. Radiolaria, Sponges, Corals, Sharks, Mudfishes, +Duckbills, etc., do not change (except within the limits of their +family) during millions of years, because they keep to an environment +to which they are fitted. On the other hand, certain fishes, reptiles, +etc., remain in a changing environment, and they must change with it. +The process has its obscurities, but we make them darker, it seems to +me, with these semi-metaphysical phrases. + +It has seemed advisable to take this further glance at the general +principles and current theories of evolution before we extend our own +procedure into the Tertiary Era. The highest types of animals and plants +are now about to appear on the stage of the earth; the theatre itself is +about to take on a modern complexion. The Middle Ages are over; the new +age is breaking upon the planet. We will, as before, first survey the +Tertiary Era as a whole, with the momentous changes it introduces, and +then examine, in separate chapters, the more important phases of its +life. + +It opens, like the preceding and the following era, with "the area +of land large and its relief pronounced." This is the outcome of the +Cretaceous revolution. Southern Europe and Southern Asia have risen, and +shaken the last masses of the Chalk ocean from their faces; the whole +western fringe of America has similarly emerged from the sea that had +flooded it. In many parts, as in England (at that time a part of the +Continent), there is so great a gap between the latest Cretaceous +and the earliest Tertiary strata that these newly elevated lands must +evidently have stood out of the waters for a prolonged period. On their +cooler plains the tragedy of the extinction of the great reptiles comes +to an end. The cyeads and ginkgoes have shrunk into thin survivors of +the luxuriant Mesozoic groves. The oak and beech and other deciduous +trees spread slowly over the successive lands, amid the glare and +thunder of the numerous volcanoes which the disturbance of the crust has +brought into play. New forms of birds fly from tree to tree, or linger +by the waters; and strange patriarchal types of mammals begin to move +among the bones of the stricken reptiles. + +But the seas and the rains and rivers are acting with renewed vigour +on the elevated lands, and the Eocene period closes in a fresh age of +levelling. Let us put the work of a million years or so in a sentence. +The southern sea, which has been confined almost to the limits of our +Mediterranean by the Cretaceous upheaval, gradually enlarges once more. +It floods the north-west of Africa almost as far as the equator; it +covers most of Italy, Turkey, Austria, and Southern Russia; it spreads +over Asia Minor, Persia, and Southern Asia, until it joins the Pacific; +and it sends a long arm across the Franco-British region, and up the +great valley which is now the German Ocean. + +From earlier chapters we now expect to find a warmer climate, and the +record gives abundant proof of it. To this period belongs the "London +Clay," in whose thick and--to the unskilled eye--insignificant bed the +geologist reads the remarkable story of what London was two or three +million years ago. It tells us that a sea, some 500 or 600 feet deep, +then lay over that part of England, and fragments of the life of the +period are preserved in its deposit. The sea lay at the mouth of +a sub-tropical river on whose banks grew palms, figs, ginkgoes, +eucalyptuses, almonds, and magnolias, with the more familiar oaks and +pines and laurels. Sword-fishes and monstrous sharks lived in the sea. +Large turtles and crocodiles and enormous "sea-serpents" lingered +in this last spell of warmth that Central Europe would experience. +A primitive whale appeared in the seas, and strange large +tapir-like mammals--remote ancestors of our horses and more familiar +beasts--wandered heavily on the land. Gigantic primitive birds, +sometimes ten feet high, waded by the shore. Deposits of the period at +Bournemouth and in the Isle of Wight tell the same story of a land +that bore figs, vines, palms, araucarias, and aralias, and waters that +sheltered turtles and crocodiles. The Parisian region presented the same +features. + +In fact, one of the most characteristic traces of the southern sea which +then stretched from England to Africa in the south and India in the +east indicates a warm climate. It will be remembered that the Cretaceous +ocean over Southern Europe had swarmed with the animalcules whose dead +skeletons largely compose our chalk-beds. In the new southern ocean +another branch of these Thalamophores, the Nummulites, spreads with such +portentous abundance that its shells--sometimes alone, generally with +other material--make beds of solid limestone several thousand feet in +thickness. The pyramids are built of this nummulitic limestone. The +one-celled animal in its shell is, however, no longer a microscopic +grain. It sometimes forms wonderful shells, an inch or more in diameter, +in which as many as a thousand chambers succeed each other, in spiral +order, from the centre. The beds containing it are found from the +Pyrenees to Japan. + +That this vast warm ocean, stretching southward over a large part +of what is now the Sahara, should give a semitropical aspect even to +Central Europe and Asia is not surprising. But this genial climate was +still very general over the earth. Evergreens which now need the warmth +of Italy or the Riviera then flourished in Lapland and Spitzbergen. +The flora of Greenland--a flora that includes magnolias, figs, and +bamboos--shows us that its temperature in the Eocene period must have +been about 30 degrees higher than it is to-day. [*] The temperature of the +cool Tyrol of modern Europe is calculated to have then been between 74 +and 81 degrees F. Palms, cactuses, aloes, gum-trees, cinnamon trees, +etc., flourished in the latitude of Northern France. The forests that +covered parts of Switzerland which are now buried in snow during a great +part of the year were like the forests one finds in parts of India and +Australia to-day. The climate of North America, and of the land which +still connected it with Europe, was correspondingly genial. + + * The great authority on Arctic geology, Heer, who makes + this calculation, puts this flora in the Miocene. It is now + usually considered that these warmer plants belong to the + earlier part of the Tertiary era. + + +This indulgent period (the Oligocene, or later part of the Eocene), +scattering a rich and nutritious vegetation with great profusion over +the land, led to a notable expansion of animal life. Insects, birds, and +mammals spread into vast and varied groups in every land. Had any of the +great Mesozoic reptiles survived, the warmer age might have enabled them +to dispute the sovereignty of the advancing mammals. But nothing more +formidable than the turtle, the snake, and the crocodile (confined +to the waters) had crossed the threshold of the Tertiary Era, and the +mammals and birds had the full advantage of the new golden age. The +fruits of the new trees, the grasses which now covered the plains, and +the insects which multiplied with the flowers afforded a magnificent +diet. The herbivorous mammals became a populous world, branching into +numerous different types according to their different environments. +The horse, the elephant, the camel, the pig, the deer, the rhinoceros +gradually emerge out of the chaos of evolving forms. Behind them, +hastening the course of their evolution, improving their speed, arms, +and armour, is the inevitable carnivore. He, too, in the abundance of +food, grows into a vast population, and branches out toward familiar +types. We will devote a chapter presently to this remarkable phase of +the story of evolution. + +But the golden age closes, as all golden ages had done before it, and +for the same reason. The land begins to rise, and cast the warm shallow +seas from its face. The expansion of life has been more rapid and +remarkable than it had ever been before, in corresponding periods of +abundant food and easy conditions; the contraction comes more quickly +than it had ever done before. Mountain masses begin to rise in nearly +all parts of the world. The advance is slow and not continuous, but as +time goes on the Atlas, Alps, Pyrenees, Apennines, Caucasus, Himalaya, +Rocky Mountains, and Andes rise higher and higher. When the geologist +looks to-day for the floor of the Eocene ocean, which he recognises +by the shells of the Nummulites, he finds it 10,000 feet above the +sea-level in the Alps, 16,000 feet above the sea-level in the Himalaya, +and 20,000 feet above the sea-level in Thibet. One need not ask why the +regions of London and Paris fostered palms and magnolias and turtles in +Tertiary times, and shudder in their dreary winter to-day. + +The Tertiary Era is divided by geologists into four periods: the +Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene. "Cene" is our barbaric way of +expressing the Greek word for "new," and the classification is meant +to mark the increase of new (or modern and actual) types of life in +the course of the Tertiary Era. Many geologists, however, distrust +the classification, and are disposed to divide the Tertiary into two +periods. From our point of view, at least, it is advisable to do this. +The first and longer half of the Tertiary is the period in which the +temperature rises until Central Europe enjoys the climate of South +Africa; the second half is the period in which the land gradually +rises, and the temperature falls, until glaciers and sheets of ice cover +regions where the palm and fig had flourished. + +The rise of the land had begun in the first half of the Tertiary, but +had been suspended. The Pyrenees and Apennines had begun to rise at +the end of the Eocene, straining the crust until it spluttered with +volcanoes, casting the nummulitic sea off large areas of Southern +Europe. The Nummulites become smaller and less abundant. There is also +some upheaval in North America, and a bridge of land begins to +connect the north and south, and permit an effective mingling of their +populations. But the advance is, as I said, suspended, and the Oligocene +period maintains the golden age. With the Miocene period the land +resumes its rise. A chill is felt along the American coast, showing a +fall in the temperature of the Atlantic. In Europe there is a similar +chill, and a more obvious reason for it. There is an ascending movement +of the whole series of mountains from Morocco and the Pyrenees, through +the Alps, the Caucasus, and the Carpathians, to India and China. Large +lakes still lie over Western Europe, but nearly the whole of it emerges +from the ocean. The Mediterranean still sends an arm up France, and with +another arm encircles the Alpine mass; but the upheaval continues, and +the great nummulitic sea is reduced to a series of extensive lakes, cut +off both from the Atlantic and Pacific. The climate of Southern Europe +is probably still as genial as that of the Canaries to-day. Palms still +linger in the landscape in reduced numbers. + +The last part of the Tertiary, the Pliocene, opens with a slight return +of the sea. The upheaval is once more suspended, and the waters +are eating into the land. There is some foundering of land at the +south-western tip of Europe; the "Straits of Gibraltar" begin to connect +the Mediterranean with the Atlantic, and the Balearic Islands, Corsica, +and Sardinia remain as the mountain summits of a submerged land. Then +the upheaval is resumed, in nearly every part of the earth. + +Nearly every great mountain chain that the geologist has studied +shared in this remarkable movement at the end of the Tertiary Era. The +Pyrenees, Alps, Himalaya, etc., made their last ascent, and attained +their present elevation. And as the land rose, the aspect of Europe +and America slowly altered. The palms, figs, bamboos, and magnolias +disappeared; the turtles, crocodiles, flamingoes, and hippopotamuses +retreated toward the equator. The snow began to gather thick on the +rising heights; then the glaciers began to glitter on their flanks. As +the cold increased, the rivers of ice which flowed down the hills +of Switzerland, Spain, Scotland, or Scandinavia advanced farther and +farther over the plains. The regions of green vegetation shrank before +the oncoming ice, the animals retreated south, or developed Arctic +features. Europe and America were ushering in the great Ice-Age, which +was to bury five or six million square miles of their territory under a +thick mantle of ice. + +Such is the general outline of the story of the Tertiary Era. We +approach the study of its types of life and their remarkable development +more intelligently when we have first given careful attention to this +extraordinary series of physical changes. Short as the Era is, compared +with its predecessors, it is even more eventful and stimulating than +they, and closes with what Professor Chamberlin calls "the greatest +deformative movements in post-Cambrian history." In the main it has, +from the evolutionary point of view, the same significant character +as the two preceding eras. Its middle portion is an age of expansion, +indulgence, exuberance, in which myriads of varied forms are thrown upon +the scene, its later part is an age of contraction, of annihilation, +of drastic test, in which the more effectively organised will be chosen +from the myriads of types. Once more nature has engendered a vast brood, +and is about to select some of her offspring to people the modern world. +Among the types selected will be Man. + + + +CHAPTER XVI. THE FLOWER AND THE INSECT + +AS we approach the last part of the geological record we must neglect +the lower types of life, which have hitherto occupied so much of +our attention, so that we may inquire more fully into the origin and +fortunes of the higher forms which now fill the stage. It may be noted, +in general terms, that they shared the opulence of the mid-Tertiary +period, produced some gigantic specimens of their respective families, +and evolved into the genera, and often the species, which we find living +to-day. A few illustrations will suffice to give some idea of the later +development of the lower invertebrates and vertebrates. + +Monstrous oysters bear witness to the prosperity of that ancient and +interesting family of the Molluscs. In some species the shells were +commonly ten inches long; the double shell of one of these Tertiary +bivalves has been found which measured thirteen inches in length, eight +in width, and six in thickness. In the higher branch of the Mollusc +world the naked Cephalopods (cuttle-fish, etc.) predominate over the +nautiloids--the shrunken survivors of the great coiled-shell race. Among +the sharks, the modern Squalodonts entirely displace the older types, +and grow to an enormous size. Some of the teeth we find in Tertiary +deposits are more than six inches long and six inches broad at the base. +This is three times the size of the teeth of the largest living shark, +and it is therefore believed that the extinct possessor of these +formidable teeth (Carcharodon megalodon) must have been much more than +fifty, and was possibly a hundred, feet in length. He flourished in +the waters of both Europe and America during the halcyon days of the +Tertiary Era. Among the bony fishes, all our modern and familiar types +appear. + +The amphibia and reptiles also pass into their modern types, after a +period of generous expansion. Primitive frogs and toads make their first +appearance in the Tertiary, and the remains are found in European beds +of four-foot-long salamanders. More than fifty species of Tertiary +turtles are known, and many of them were of enormous size. One carapace +that has been found in a Tertiary bed measures twelve feet in length, +eight feet in width, and seven feet in height to the top of the back. +The living turtle must have been nearly twenty feet long. Marine +reptiles, of a snake-like structure, ran to fifteen feet in length. +Crocodiles and alligators swarmed in the rivers of Europe until the +chilly Pliocene bade them depart to Africa. + +In a word, it was the seven years of plenty for the whole living world, +and the expansive development gave birth to the modern types, which were +to be selected from the crowd in the subsequent seven years of famine. +We must be content to follow the evolution of the higher types of +organisms. I will therefore first describe the advance of the Tertiary +vegetation, the luxuriance of which was the first condition of the great +expansion of animal life; then we will glance at the grand army of +the insects which followed the development of the flowers, and at the +accompanying expansion and ramification of the birds. The long and +interesting story of the mammals must be told in a separate chapter, +and a further chapter must be devoted to the appearance of the human +species. + +We saw that the Angiosperms, or flowering plants, appeared at the +beginning of the Cretaceous period, and were richly developed before the +Tertiary Era opened. We saw also that their precise origin is unknown. +They suddenly invade a part of North America where there were conditions +for preserving some traces of them, but we have as yet no remains +of their early forms or clue to their place of development. We may +conjecture that their ancestors had been living in some elevated inland +region during the warmth of the Jurassic period. + +As it is now known that many of the cycad-like Mesozoic plants bore +flowers--as the modern botanist scarcely hesitates to call them--the +gap between the Gymnosperms and Angiosperms is very much lessened. There +are, however, structural differences which forbid us to regard any of +these flowering cycads, which we have yet found, as the ancestors of the +Angiosperms. The most reasonable view seems to be that a small and local +branch of these primitive flowering plants was evolved, like the rest, +in the stress of the Permian-Triassic cold; that, instead of descending +to the warm moist levels with the rest at the end of the Triassic, and +developing the definite characters of the cycad, it remained on the +higher and cooler land; and that the rise of land at the end of the +Jurassic period stimulated the development of its Angiosperm features, +enlarged the area in which it was especially fitted to thrive, and so +permitted it to spread and suddenly break into the geological record as +a fully developed Angiosperm. + +As the cycads shrank in the Cretaceous period, the Angiosperms deployed +with great rapidity, and, spreading at various levels and in different +kinds of soils and climates, branched into hundreds of different types. +We saw that the oak, beech, elm, maple, palm, grass, etc., were well +developed before the end of the Cretaceous period. The botanist divides +the Angiosperms into two leading groups, the Monocotyledons (palms, +grasses, lilies, orchises, irises, etc.) and Dicotyledons (the vast +majority), and it is now generally believed that the former were +developed from an early and primitive branch of the latter. But it is +impossible to retrace the lines of development of the innumerable types +of Angiosperms. The geologist has mainly to rely on a few stray leaves +that were swept into the lakes and preserved in the mud, and the +evidence they afford is far too slender for the construction of +genealogical trees. The student of living plants can go a little +further in discovering relationships, and, when we find him tracing such +apparently remote plants as the apple and the strawberry to a common +ancestor with the rose, we foresee interesting possibilities on the +botanical side. But the evolution of the Angiosperms is a recent and +immature study, and we will be content with a few reflections on the +struggle of the various types of trees in the changing conditions of +the Tertiary, the development of the grasses, and the evolution of +the flower. In other words, we will be content to ask how the modern +landscape obtained its general vegetal features. + +Broadly speaking, the vegetation of the first part of the Tertiary Era +was a mixture of sub-tropical and temperate forms, a confused mass of +Ferns, Conifers, Ginkgoales, Monocotyledons, and Dicotyledons. Here is +a casual list of plants that then grew in the latitude of London and +Paris: the palm, magnolia, myrtle, Banksia, vine, fig, aralea, sequoia, +eucalyptus, cinnamon tree, cactus, agave, tulip tree, apple, plum, +bamboo, almond, plane, maple, willow, oak, evergreen oak, laurel, beech, +cedar, etc. The landscape must have been extraordinarily varied and +beautiful and rich. To one botanist it suggests Malaysia, to another +India, to another Australia. + +It is really the last gathering of the plants, before the great +dispersion. Then the cold creeps slowly down from the Arctic regions, +and begins to reduce the variety. We can clearly trace its gradual +advance. In the Carboniferous and Jurassic the vegetation of the Arctic +regions had been the same as that of England; in the Eocene palms can +flourish in England, but not further north; in the Pliocene the palms +and bamboos and semi-tropical species are driven out of Europe; in the +Pleistocene the ice-sheet advances to the valleys of the Thames and the +Danube (and proportionately in the United States), every warmth-loving +species is annihilated, and our grasses, oaks, beeches, elms, apples, +plums, etc., linger on the green southern fringe of the Continent, and +in a few uncovered regions, ready to spread north once more as the ice +creeps back towards the Alps or the Arctic circle. Thus, in few words, +did Europe and North America come to have the vegetation we find in them +to-day. + +The next broad characteristic of our landscape is the spreading carpet +of grass. The interest of the evolution of the grasses will be seen +later, when we shall find the evolution of the horse, for instance, +following very closely upon it. So striking, indeed, is the connection +between the advance of the grasses and the advance of the mammals that +Dr. Russel Wallace has recently claimed ("The World of Life," 1910) +that there is a clear purposive arrangement in the whole chain of +developments which leads to the appearance of the grasses. He says that +"the very puzzling facts" of the immense reptilian development in +the Mesozoic can only be understood on the supposition that they were +evolved "to keep down the coarser vegetation, to supply animal food for +the larger Carnivora, and thus give time for higher forms to obtain a +secure foothold and a sufficient amount of varied form and structure" +(p. 284). + +Every insistence on the close connection of the different strands in the +web of life is welcome, but Dr. Wallace does not seem to have learned +the facts accurately. There is nothing "puzzling" about the Mesozoic +reptilian development; the depression of the land, the moist warmth, +and the luscious vegetation of the later Triassic and the Jurassic +amply explain it. Again, the only carnivores to whom they seem to have +supplied food were reptiles of their own race. Nor can the feeding of +the herbivorous reptiles be connected with the rise of the Angiosperms. +We do not find the flowering plants developing anywhere in those vast +regions where the great reptiles abounded; they invade them from some +single unknown region, and mingle with the pines and ginkgoes, while the +cyeads alone are destroyed. + +The grasses, in particular, do not appear until the Cretaceous, and do +not show much development until the mid-Tertiary; and their development +seems to be chiefly connected with physical conditions. The meandering +rivers and broad lakes of the mid-Tertiary would have their fringes +of grass and sedge, and, as the lakes dried up in the vicissitudes of +climate, large areas of grass would be left on their sites. To these +primitive prairies the mammal (not reptile) herbivores would be +attracted, with important results. The consequences to the animals +we will consider presently. The effect on the grasses may be well +understood on the lines so usefully indicated in Dr. Wallace's book. The +incessant cropping, age after age, would check the growth of the larger +and coarser grasses give opportunity to the smaller and finer, and lead +in time to the development of the grassy plains of the modern world. +Thus one more familiar feature was added to the landscape in the +Tertiary Era. + +As this fresh green carpet spread over the formerly naked plains, +it began to be enriched with our coloured flowers. There were large +flowers, we saw, on some of the Mesozoic cycads, but their sober yellows +and greens--to judge from their descendants--would do little to brighten +the landscape. It is in the course of the Tertiary Era that the mantle +of green begins to be embroidered with the brilliant hues of our +flowers. + +Grant Allen put forward in 1882 ("The Colours of Flowers") an +interesting theory of the appearance of the colours of flowers, and it +is regarded as probable. He observed that most of the simplest flowers +are yellow; the more advanced flowers of simple families, and the +simpler flowers of slightly advanced families, are generally white or +pink; the most advanced flowers of all families, and almost all the +flowers of the more advanced families, are red, purple, or blue; and the +most advanced flowers of the most advanced families are always +either blue or variegated. Professor Henslow adds a number of equally +significant facts with the same tendency, so that we have strong reason +to conceive the floral world as passing through successive phases of +colour in the Tertiary Era. At first it would be a world of yellows +and greens, like that of the Mesozoic vegetation, but brighter. In time +splashes of red and white would lie on the face of the landscape; and +later would come the purples, the rich blues, and the variegated colours +of the more advanced flowers. + +Why the colours came at all is a question closely connected with the +general story of the evolution of the flower, at which we must glance. +The essential characteristic of the flower, in the botanist's judgment, +is the central green organ which you find--say, in a lily--standing out +in the middle of the floral structure, with a number of yellow-coated +rods round it. The yellow rods bear the male germinal elements (pollen); +the central pistil encloses the ovules, or female elements. "Angiosperm" +means "covered-seed plant," and its characteristic is this protection +of the ovules within a special chamber, to which the pollen alone may +penetrate. Round these essential organs are the coloured petals of the +corolla (the chief part of the flower to the unscientific mind) and the +sepals, often also coloured, of the calyx. + +There is no doubt that all these parts arose from modifications of the +leaves or stems of the primitive plant; though whether the bright +leaves of the corolla are directly derived from ordinary leaves, or are +enlarged and flattened stamens, has been disputed. And to the question +why these bright petals, whose colour and variety of form lend such +charm to the world of flowers, have been developed at all, most +botanists will give a prompt and very interesting reply. As both male +and female elements are usually in one flower, it may fertilise itself, +the pollen falling directly on the pistil. But fertilisation is more +sure and effective if the pollen comes from a different individual--if +there is "cross fertilisation." This may be accomplished by the simple +agency of the wind blowing the pollen broadcast, but it is done much +better by insects, which brush against the stamens, and carry grains of +the pollen to the next flower they visit. + +We have here a very fertile line of development among the primitive +flowers. The insects begin to visit them, for their pollen or juices, +and cross-fertilise them. If this is an advantage, attractiveness to +insects will become so important a feature that natural selection will +develop it more and more. In plain English, what is meant is that those +flowers which are more attractive to insects will be the most surely +fertilised and breed most, and the prolonged application of this +principle during hundreds of thousands of years will issue in the +immense variety of our flowers. They will be enriched with little stores +of honey and nectar; not so mysterious an advantage, when we reflect on +the concentration of the juices in the neighbourhood of the seed. Then +they must "advertise" their stores, and the strong perfumes and bright +colours begin to develop, and ensure posterity to their possessors. The +shape of the corolla will be altered in hundreds of ways, to accommodate +and attract the useful visitor and shut out the mere robber. These +utilities, together with the various modifying agencies of different +environments, are generally believed to have led to the bewildering +variety and great beauty of our floral world. + +It is proper to add that this view has been sharply challenged by a +number of recent writers. It is questioned if colours and scents do +attract insects; though several recent series of experiments seem to +show that bees are certainly attracted by colours. It is questioned if +cross-fertilisation has really the importance ascribed to it since the +days of Darwin. Some of these writers believe that the colours and the +peculiar shape which the petals take in some flowers (orchises, for +instance) have been evolved to deter browsing animals from eating them. +The theory is thus only a different application of natural selection; +Professor Henslow, on the other hand, stands alone in denying the +selection, and believing that the insects directly developed the scents, +honeys, colours, and shapes by mechanical irritation. The great majority +of botanists adhere to the older view, and see in the wonderful Tertiary +expansion of the flowers a manifold adaptation to the insect friends and +insect foes which then became very abundant and varied. + +Resisting the temptation to glance at the marvellous adaptations +which we find to-day in our plant world--the insect-eating plants, the +climbers, the parasites, the sensitive plants, the water-storing plants +in dry regions, and so on--we must turn to the consideration of the +insects themselves. We have already studied the evolution of the insect +in general, and seen its earlier forms. The Tertiary Era not only +witnessed a great deployment of the insects, but was singularly rich in +means of preserving them. The "fly in amber" has ceased to be a puzzle +even to the inexpert. Amber is the resin that exuded from pine-like +trees, especially in the Baltic region, in the Eocene and Oligocene +periods. Insects stuck in the resin, and were buried under fresh layers +of it, and we find them embalmed in it as we pick up the resin on the +shores of the Baltic to-day. The Tertiary lakes were also important +cemeteries of insects. A great bed at Florissart, in Colorado, is +described by one of the American experts who examined it as "a Tertiary +Pompeii." It has yielded specimens of about a thousand species of +Tertiary insects. Near the large ancient lake, of which it marks the +site, was a volcano, and the fine ash yielded from the cone seems to +have buried myriads of insects in the water. At Oeningen a similar +lake-deposit has, although only a few feet thick, yielded 900 species of +insects. + +Yet these rich and numerous finds throw little light on the evolution of +the insect, except in the general sense that they show species and even +genera quite different from those of to-day. No new families of insects +have appeared since the Eocene, and the ancient types had by that time +disappeared. Since the Eocene, however, the species have been almost +entirely changed, so that the insect record, from its commencement +in the Primary Era, has the stamp of evolution on every page of it. +Unfortunately, insects, especially the higher and later insects, +are such frail structures that they are only preserved in very rare +conditions. The most important event of the insect-world in the Tertiary +is the arrival of the butterflies, which then appear for the first time. +We may assume that they spread with great rapidity and abundance in +the rich floral world of the mid-Jurassic. More than 13,000 species of +Lepidoptera are known to-day, and there are probably twice that number +yet to be classified by the entomologist. But so far the Tertiary +deposits have yielded only the fragmentary remains of about twenty +individual butterflies. + +The evolutionary study of the insects is, therefore, not so much +concerned with the various modifications of the three pairs of jaws, +inherited from the primitive Tracheate, and the wings, which have +given us our vast variety of species. It is directed rather to the more +interesting questions of what are called the "instincts" of the insects, +the remarkable metamorphosis by which the young of the higher orders +attain the adult form, and the extraordinary colouring and marking of +bees, wasps, and butterflies. Even these questions, however, are so +large that only a few words can be said here on the tendencies of recent +research. + +In regard to the psychic powers of insects it may be said, in the +first place, that it is seriously disputed among the modern authorities +whether even the highest insects (the ant, bee, and wasp) have any +degree whatever of the intelligence which an earlier generation +generously bestowed on them. Wasmann and Bethe, two of the leading +authorities on ants, take the negative view; Forel claims that they show +occasional traces of intelligence. It is at all events clear that the +enormous majority of, if not all, their activities--and especially +those activities of the ant and the bee which chiefly impress the +imagination--are not intelligent, but instinctive actions. And the +second point to be noted is that the word "instinct," in the old sense +of some innate power or faculty directing the life of an animal, has +been struck out of the modern scientific dictionary. The ant or bee +inherits a certain mechanism of nerves and muscles which will, in +certain circumstances, act in the way we call "instinctive." The problem +is to find how this mechanism and its remarkable actions were slowly +evolved. + +In view of the innumerable and infinitely varied forms of "instinct" +in the insect world we must restrict ourselves to a single +illustration--say, the social life of the ants and the bees. We are not +without indications of the gradual development of this social life. In +the case of the ant we find that the Tertiary specimens--and about a +hundred species are found in Switzerland alone, whereas there are only +fifty species in the whole of Europe to-day--all have wings and are, +apparently, of the two sexes, not neutral. This seems to indicate +that even in the mid-Tertiary some millions of years after the first +appearance of the ant, the social life which we admire in the ants today +had not yet been developed. The Tertiary bees, on the other hand, are +said to show some traces of the division of labour (and modification +of structure) which make the bees so interesting; but in this case the +living bees, rising from a solitary life through increasing stages of +social co-operation, give us some idea of the gradual development of +this remarkable citizenship. + +It seems to me that the great selective agency which has brought about +these, and many other remarkable activities of the insects (such as the +storing of food with their eggs by wasps), was probably the occurrence +of periods of cold, and especially the beginning of a winter season in +the Cretaceous or Tertiary age. In the periods of luxuriant life (the +Carboniferous, the Jurassic, or the Oligocene), when insects swarmed and +varied in every direction, some would vary in the direction of a more +effective placing of the eggs; and the supervening period of cold and +scarcity would favour them. When a regular winter season set in, this +tendency would be enormously increased. It is a parallel case to the +evolution of the birds and mammals from the reptiles. Those that varied +most in the direction of care for the egg and the young would have the +largest share in the next generation. When we further reflect that since +the Tertiary the insect world has passed through the drastic disturbance +of the climate in the great Ice-Age, we seem to have an illuminating +clue to one of the most remarkable features of higher insect life. + +The origin of the colour marks' and patterns on so many of the higher +insects, with which we may join the origin of the stick-insects, +leaf-insects, etc., is a subject of lively controversy in science +to-day. The protective value of the appearance of insects which +look almost exactly like dried twigs or decaying leaves, and of an +arrangement of the colours of the wings of butterflies which makes them +almost invisible when at rest, is so obvious that natural selection was +confidently invoked to explain them. In other cases certain colours +or marks seemed to have a value as "warning colours," advertising the +nauseousness of their possessors to the bird, which had learned to +recognise them; in other cases these colours and marks seemed to be +borrowed by palatable species, whose unconscious "mimicry" led to their +survival; in other cases, again, the patterns and spots were regarded as +"recognition marks," by which the male could find his mate. + +Science is just now passing through a phase of acute criticism--as +the reader will have realised by this time--and many of the positions +confidently adopted in the earlier constructive stage are challenged. +This applies to the protective colours, warning colours, mimicry, etc., +of insects. Probably some of the affirmations of the older generation of +evolutionists were too rigid and extensive; and probably the denials of +the new generation are equally exaggerated. When all sound criticism has +been met, there remains a vast amount of protective colouring, shaping, +and marking in the insect world of which natural selection gives us the +one plausible explanation. But the doctrine of natural selection does +not mean that every feature of an animal shall have a certain utility. +It will destroy animals with injurious variations and favour animals +with useful variations; but there may be a large amount of variation, +especially in colour, to which it is quite indifferent. In this way much +colour-marking may develop, either from ordinary embryonic variations +or (as experiment on butterflies shows) from the direct influence of +surroundings which has no vital significance. In this way, too, small +variations of no selective value may gradually increase until they +chance to have a value to the animal. [*] + + * For a strong statement of the new critical position see + Dewar and Finn's "Making of Species," 1909, ch. vi. + + +The origin of the metamorphosis, or pupa-stage, of the higher +insects, with all its wonderful protective devices, is so obscure and +controverted that we must pass over it. Some authorities think that +the sleep-stage has been evolved for the protection of the helpless +transforming insect; some believe that it occurs because movement would +be injurious to the insect in that stage; some say that the muscular +system is actually dissolved in its connections; and some recent experts +suggest that it is a reminiscence of the fact that the ancestors of the +metamorphosing insects were addicted to internal parasitism in their +youth. It is one of the problems of the future. At present we have no +fossil pupa-remains (though we have one caterpillar) to guide us. We +must leave these fascinating but difficult problems of insect life, and +glance at the evolution of the birds. + +To the student of nature whose interest is confined to one branch +of science the record of life is a mysterious Succession of waves. A +comprehensive view of nature, living and non-living, past and present, +discovers scores of illuminating connections, and even sees at times +the inevitable sequence of events. Thus if the rise of the Angiospermous +vegetation on the ruins of the Mesozoic world is understood in the light +of geological and climatic changes, and the consequent deploying of +the insects, especially the suctorial insects, is a natural result, the +simultaneous triumph of the birds is not unintelligible. The grains +and fruits of the Angiosperms and the vast swarms of insects provided +immense stores of food; the annihilation of the Pterosaurs left a whole +stratum of the earth free for their occupation. + +We saw that a primitive bird, with very striking reptilian features, was +found in the Jurassic rocks, suggesting very clearly the evolution of +the bird from the reptile in the cold of the Permian or Triassic period. +In the Cretaceous we found the birds distributed in a number of genera, +but of two leading types. The Ichthyornis type was a tern-like flying +bird, with socketed teeth and biconcave vertebrae like the reptile, but +otherwise fully evolved into a bird. Its line is believed to survive in +the gannets, cormorants, pelicans, and frigate-birds of to-day. The less +numerous Hesperornis group were large and powerful divers. Then there +is a blank in the record, representing the Cretaceous upheaval, and it +unfortunately conceals the first great ramification of the bird world. +When the light falls again on the Eocene period we find great numbers +of our familiar types quite developed. Primitive types of gulls, herons, +pelicans, quails, ibises, flamingoes, albatrosses, buzzards, hornbills, +falcons, eagles, owls, plovers, and woodcocks are found in the Eocene +beds; the Oligocene beds add parrots, trogons, cranes, marabouts, +secretary-birds, grouse, swallows, and woodpeckers. We cannot suppose +that every type has been preserved, but we see that our bird-world was +virtually created in the early part of the Tertiary Era. + +With these more or less familiar types were large ostrich-like survivors +of the older order. In the bed of the sea which covered the site +of London in the Eocene are found the remains of a toothed bird +(Odontopteryx), though the teeth are merely sharp outgrowths of the +edge of the bill. Another bird of the same period and region (Gastornis) +stood about ten feet high, and must have looked something like a wading +ostrich. Other large waders, even more ostrich-like in structure, lived +in North America; and in Patagonia the remains have been found of a +massive bird, about eight feet high, with a head larger than that of +any living animal except the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus +(Chamberlin). + +The absence of early Eocene remains prevents us from tracing the lines +of our vast and varied bird-kingdom to their Mesozoic beginnings. +And when we appeal to the zoologist to supply the missing links of +relationship, by a comparison of the structures of living birds, we +receive only uncertain and very general suggestions. [*] He tells us that +the ostrich-group (especially the emus and cassowaries) are one of the +most primitive stocks of the bird world, and that the ancient Dinornis +group and the recently extinct moas seem to be offshoots of that stock. +The remaining many thousand species of Carinate birds (or flying birds +with a keel [carina]-shaped breast-bone for the attachment of the flying +muscles) are then gathered into two great branches, which are "traceable +to a common stock" (Pycraft), and branch in their turn along the later +lines of development. One of these lines--the pelicans, cormorants, +etc.--seems to be a continuation of the Ichthyornis type of the +Cretaceous, with the Odontopteryx as an Eocene offshoot; the divers, +penguins, grebes, and petrels represent another ancient stock, which +may be related to the Hesperornis group of the Cretaceous. Dr. Chalmers +Mitchell thinks that the "screamers" of South America are the nearest +representatives of the common ancestor of the keel-breasted birds. But +even to give the broader divisions of the 19,000 species of living birds +would be of little interest to the general reader. + + * The best treatment of the subject will be found in W. P. + Pycraft's History of Birds, 1910. + + +The special problems of bird-evolution are as numerous and unsettled +as those of the insects. There is the same dispute as to "protective +colours" and "recognition marks", the same uncertainty as to the origin +of such instinctive practices as migration and nesting. The general +feeling is that the annual migration had its origin in the overcrowding +of the regions in which birds could live all the year round. They +therefore pushed northward in the spring and remained north until the +winter impoverishment drove them south again. On this view each group +would be returning to its ancestral home, led by the older birds, in the +great migration flights. The curious paths they follow are believed by +some authorities to mark the original lines of their spread, preserved +from generation to generation through the annual lead of the older +birds. If we recollect the Ice-Age which drove the vast majority of the +birds south at the end of the Tertiary, and imagine them later following +the northward retreat of the ice, from their narrowed and overcrowded +southern territory, we may not be far from the secret of the annual +migration. + +A more important controversy is conducted in regard to the gorgeous +plumage and other decorations and weapons of the male birds. Darwin, as +is known, advanced a theory of "sexual selection" to explain these. +The male peacock, to take a concrete instance, would have developed its +beautiful tail because, through tens of thousands of generations, the +female selected the more finely tailed male among the various suitors. +Dr. Wallace and other authorities always disputed this aesthetic +sentiment and choice on the part of the female. The general opinion +today is that Darwin's theory could not be sustained in the range and +precise sense he gave to it. Some kind of display by the male in the +breeding season would be an advantage, but to suppose that the females +of any species of birds or mammals had the definite and uniform taste +necessary for the creation of male characters by sexual selection is +more than difficult. They seem to be connected in origin rather with the +higher vitality of the male, but the lines on which they were selected +are not yet understood. + +This general sketch of the enrichment of the earth with flowering +plants, insects, and birds in the Tertiary Era is all that the limits of +the present work permit us to give. It is an age of exuberant life +and abundant food; the teeming populations overflow their primitive +boundaries, and, in adapting themselves to every form of diet, every +phase of environment, and every device of capture or escape, the +spreading organisms are moulded into tens of thousands of species. We +shall see this more clearly in the evolution of the mammals. What we +chiefly learn from the present chapter is the vital interconnection of +the various parts of nature. Geological changes favour the spread of +a certain type of vegetation. Insects are attracted to its nutritious +seed-organs, and an age of this form of parasitism leads to a signal +modification of the jaws of the insects themselves and to the lavish +variety and brilliance of the flowers. Birds are attracted to the +nutritious matter enclosing the seeds, and, as it is an advantage to the +plant that its seeds be scattered beyond the already populated area, by +passing through the alimentary canal of the bird, and being discharged +with its excrements, a fresh line of evolution leads to the appearance +of the large and coloured fruits. The birds, again, turn upon the +swarming insects, and the steady selection they exercise leads to +the zigzag flight and the protective colour of the butterfly, the +concealment of the grub and the pupa, the marking of the caterpillar, +and so on. We can understand the living nature of to-day as the outcome +of that teeming, striving, changing world of the Tertiary Era, just as +it in turn was the natural outcome of the ages that had gone before. + + + +CHAPTER XVII. THE ORIGIN OF OUR MAMMALS + +In our study of the evolution of the plant, the insect, and the bird we +were seriously thwarted by the circumstance that their frames, +somewhat frail in themselves, were rarely likely to be entombed in good +conditions for preservation. Earlier critics of evolution used, when +they were imperfectly acquainted with the conditions of fossilisation, +to insinuate that this fragmentary nature of the geological record was a +very convenient refuge for the evolutionist who was pressed for positive +evidence. The complaint is no longer found in any serious work. Where +we find excellent conditions for preservation, and animals suitable +for preservation living in the midst of them, the record is quite +satisfactory. We saw how the chalk has yielded remains of sea-urchins +in the actual and gradual process of evolution. Tertiary beds which +represent the muddy bottoms of tranquil lakes are sometimes equally +instructive in their fossils, especially of shell-fish. The Paludina of +a certain Slavonian lake-deposit is a classical example. It changes +so greatly in the successive levels of the deposit that, if the +intermediate forms were not preserved, we should divide it into several +different species. The Planorbis is another well-known example. In this +case we have a species evolving along several distinct lines into forms +which differ remarkably from each other. + +The Tertiary mammals, living generally on the land and only coming by +accident into deposits suitable for preservation, cannot be expected to +reveal anything like this sensible advance from form to form. They were, +however, so numerous in the mid-Tertiary, and their bones are so well +calculated to survive when they do fall into suitable conditions, that +we can follow their development much more easily than that of the birds. +We find a number of strange patriarchal beasts entering the scene in the +early Eocene, and spreading into a great variety of forms in the genial +conditions of the Oligocene and Miocene. As some of these forms advance, +we begin to descry in them the features, remote and shadowy at first, of +the horse, the deer, the elephant, the whale, the tiger, and our other +familiar mammals. In some instances we can trace the evolution with a +wonderful fullness, considering the remoteness of the period and +the conditions of preservation. Then, one by one, the abortive, the +inelastic, the ill-fitted types are destroyed by changing conditions or +powerful carnivores, and the field is left to the mammals which filled +it when man in turn began his destructive career. + +The first point of interest is the origin of these Tertiary mammals. +Their distinctive advantage over the mammals of the Mesozoic Era was-the +possession by the mother of a placenta (the "after-birth" of the higher +mammals), or structure in the womb by which the blood-vessels of the +mother are brought into such association with those of the foetus that +her blood passes into its arteries, and it is fully developed within the +warm shelter of her womb. The mammals of the Mesozoic had been small and +primitive animals, rarely larger than a rat, and never rising above the +marsupial stage in organisation. They not only continued to exist, and +give rise to their modern representatives (the opossum, etc.) during +the Tertiary Era, but they shared the general prosperity. In Australia, +where they were protected from the higher carnivorous mammals, they +gave rise to huge elephant-like wombats (Diprotodon), with skulls two +or three feet in length. Over the earth generally, however, they were +superseded by the placental mammals, which suddenly break into the +geological record in the early Tertiary, and spread with great vigour +and rapidity over the four continents. + +Were they a progressive offshoot from the Mesozoic Marsupials, or +Monotremes, or do they represent a separate stock from the primitive +half-reptile and half-mammal family? The point is disputed; nor does the +scantiness of the record permit us to tell the place of their origin. +The placental structure would be so great an advantage in a cold and +unfavourable environment that some writers look to the northern land, +connecting Europe and America, for their development. We saw, however, +that this northern region was singularly warm until long after the +spread of the mammals. Other experts, impressed by the parallel +development of the mammals and the flowering plants, look to the +elevated parts of eastern North America. + +Such evidence as there is seems rather to suggest that South Africa +was the cradle of the placental mammals. We shall find that many of +our mammals originated in Africa; there, too, is found to-day the most +primitive representative of the Tertiary mammals, the hyrax; and there +we find in especial abundance the remains of the mammal-like reptiles +(Theromorphs) which are regarded as their progenitors. Further search +in the unexplored geological treasures and dense forests of Africa is +needed. We may provisionally conceive the placental mammals as a group +of the South African early mammals which developed a fortunate variation +in womb-structure during the severe conditions of the early Mesozoic. In +this new structure they would have no preponderant advantage as long as +the genial Jurassic age favoured the great reptiles, and they may have +remained as small and insignificant as the Marsupials. But with the +fresh upheaval and climatic disturbance at the end of the Jurassic, and +during the Cretaceous, they spread northward, and replaced the dying +reptiles, as the Angiosperms replaced the dying cycads. When they met +the spread of the Angiosperm vegetation they would receive another great +stimulus to development. + +They appear in Europe and North America in the earliest Cretaceous. The +rise of the land had connected many hitherto isolated regions, and +they seem to have poured over every bridge into all parts of the four +continents. The obscurity of their origin is richly compensated by their +intense evolutionary interest from the moment they enter the geological +record. We have seen this in the case of every important group of plants +and animals, and can easily understand it. The ancestral group was +small and local; the descendants are widely spread. While, therefore, +we discover remains of the later phases of development in our casual +cuttings and quarries, the ancestral tomb may remain for ages in some +unexplored province of the geological world. If this region is, as we +suspect, in Africa, our failure to discover it as yet is all the more +intelligible. + +But these mammals of the early Tertiary are still of such a patriarchal +or ancestral character that the student of evolution can dispense with +their earlier phase. They combine in their primitive frames, in an +elementary way, the features which we now find distributed in widely +removed groups of their descendants. Most of them fall into two large +orders: the Condylarthra, the ancestral herbivores from which we shall +find our horses, oxen, deer, elephants, and hogs gradually issuing, and +the Creodonta, the patriarchal carnivores, which will give birth to our +lions and tigers, wolves and foxes, and their various cousins. As yet +even the two general types of herbivore and carnivore are so imperfectly +separated that it is not always possible to distinguish between them. +Nearly all of them have the five-toed foot of the reptile ancestor; and +the flat nails on their toes are the common material out of which the +hoof of the ungulate and the claw of the carnivore will be presently +fashioned. Nearly all have forty-four simply constructed teeth, from +which will be evolved the grinders and tusks of the elephant or the +canines of the tiger. They answer in every respect to the theory that +some primitive local group was the common source of all our great +mammals. With them are ancestral forms of Edentates (sloths, etc.) and +Insectivores (moles, etc.), side-branches developing according to their +special habits; and before the end of the Eocene we find primitive +Rodents (squirrels, etc.) and Cheiroptera (bats). + +From the description of the Tertiary world which we have seen in the +last chapter we understand the rapid evolution of the herbivorous +Condylarthra. The rich vegetation which spreads over the northern +continents, to which they have penetrated, gives them an enormous +vitality and fecundity, and they break into groups, as they increase +in number, adapted to the different conditions of forest, marsh, or +grass-covered plain. Some of them, swelling lazily on the abundant food, +and secure for a time in their strength, become the Deinosaurs of their +age, mere feeding and breeding machines. They are massive, sluggish, +small-brained animals, their strong stumpy limbs terminating in broad +five-toed feet. Coryphodon, sometimes as large as an ox, is a typical +representative. It is a type fitted only for prosperous days, and these +Amblypoda, as they are called, will disappear as soon as the great +carnivores are developed. + +Another doomed race, or abortive experiment of early mammal life, were +the remarkable Deinocerata ("terrible-horned" mammals). They sometimes +measured thirteen feet in length, but had little use for brain in the +conditions in which they were developed. The brain of the Deinoceras was +only one-eighth the size of the brain of a rhinoceros of the same +bulk; and the rhinoceros is a poor-brained representative of the modern +mammals. To meet the growing perils of their race they seem to have +developed three pairs of horns on their long, flat skulls, as we find +on them three pairs of protuberances. A late specimen of the group, +Tinoceras, had a head four feet in length, armed with these six horns, +and its canine teeth were developed into tusks sometimes seven or +eight inches in length. They suggest a race of powerful but clumsy and +grotesque monsters, making a last stand, and developing such means of +protection as their inelastic nature permitted. But the horns seem to +have proved a futile protection against the advancing carnivores, and +the race was extinguished. The horns may, of course, have been mainly +developed by, or for, the mutual butting of the males. + +The extinction of these races will remind many readers of a theory on +which it is advisable to say a word. It will be remembered that the +last of the Deinosaurs and the Ammonites also exhibited some remarkable +developments in their last days. These facts have suggested to some +writers the idea that expiring races pass through a death-agony, and +seem to die a natural death of old age like individuals. The Trilobites +are quoted as another instance; and some ingenious writers add the +supposed eccentricities of the Roman Empire in its senile decay and a +number of other equally unsubstantial illustrations. + +There is not the least ground for this fantastic speculation. The +destruction of these "doomed races" is as clearly traceable to external +causes as is the destruction of the Roman Empire; nor, in fact, did the +Roman Empire develop any such eccentricities as are imagined in this +superficial theory. What seem to our eye the "eccentricities" and +"convulsions" of the Ceratopsia and Deinocerata are much more likely +to be defensive developments against a growing peril, but they were +as futile against the new carnivores as were the assegais of the Zulus +against the European. On the other hand, the eccentricities of many +of the later Trilobites--the LATEST Trilobites, it may be noted, +were chaste and sober specimens of their race, like the last Roman +patricians--and of the Ammonites may very well have been caused by +physical and chemical changes in the sea-water. We know from experiment +that such changes have a disturbing influence, especially on the +development of eggs and larvae; and we know from the geological record +that such changes occurred in the periods when the Trilobites and +Ammonites perished. In fine, the vast majority of extinct races passed +through no "convulsions" whatever. We may conclude that races do not +die; they are killed. + +The extinction of these races of the early Condylarthra, and the +survival of those races whose descendants share the earth with us +to-day, are quite intelligible. The hand of natural selection lay heavy +on the Tertiary herbivores. Apart from overpopulation, forcing groups +to adapt themselves to different regions and diets, and apart from the +geological disturbances and climatic changes which occurred in nearly +every period, the shadow of the advancing carnivores was upon them. +Primitive but formidable tigers, wolves, and hyenas were multiplying, +and a great selective struggle set in. Some groups shrank from the +battle by burrowing underground like the rabbit; some, like the squirrel +or the ape, took refuge in the trees; some, like the whale and seal, +returned to the water; some shrank into armour, like the armadillo, or +behind fences of spines, like the hedgehog; some, like the bat, escaped +into the air. Social life also was probably developed at this time, and +the great herds had their sentinels and leaders. But the most useful +qualities of the large vegetarians, which lived on grass and leaf, were +acuteness of perception to see the danger, and speed of limb to escape +it. In other words, increase of brain and sense-power and increase of +speed were the primary requisites. The clumsy early Condylarthra failed +to meet the tests, and perished; the other branches of the race were +more plastic, and, under the pressure of a formidable enemy, were +gradually moulded into the horse, the deer, the ox, the antelope, and +the elephant. + +We can follow the evolution of our mammals of this branch most easily +by studying the modification of the feet and limbs. In a running +attitude--the experiment may be tried--the weight of the body is shifted +from the flat sole of the foot, and thrown upon the toes, especially the +central toes. This indicates the line of development of the Ungulates +(hoofed animals) in the struggle of the Tertiary Era. In the early +Eocene we find the Condylarthra (such as Phenacodus) with flat five-toed +feet, and such a mixed combination of characters that they "might serve +very well for the ancestors of all the later Ungulata" (Woodward). +We then presently find this generalised Ungulate branching into three +types, one of which seems to be a patriarchal tapir, the second +is regarded as a very remote ancestor of the horse, and the third +foreshadows the rhinoceros. The feet have now only three or four toes; +one or two of the side-toes have disappeared. This evolution, however, +follows two distinct lines. In one group of these primitive Ungulates +the main axis of the limb, or the stress of the weight, passes through +the middle toe. This group becomes the Perissodactyla ("odd-toed" +Ungulates) of the zoologist, throwing out side-branches in the tapir +and the rhinoceros, and culminating in the one-toed horse. In the other +line, the Artiodactyla (the "even-toed" or cloven-hoofed Ungulates), the +main axis or stress passes between the third and fourth toes, and the +group branches into our deer, oxen, sheep, pigs, camels, giraffes, and +hippopotamuses. The elephant has developed along a separate and very +distinctive line, as we shall see, and the hyrax is a primitive survivor +of the ancestral group. + +Thus the evolutionist is able to trace a very natural order in the +immense variety of our Ungulates. He can follow them in theory as they +slowly evolve from their primitive Eocene ancestor according to their +various habits and environments; he has a very rich collection of fossil +remains illustrating the stages of their development; and in the hyrax +(or "coney") he has one more of those living fossils, or primitive +survivors, which still fairly preserve the ancestral form. The hyrax has +four toes on the front foot and three on the hind foot, and the feet are +flat. Its front teeth resemble those of a rodent, and its molars +those of the rhinoceros. In many respects it is a most primitive and +generalised little animal, preserving the ancestral form more or less +faithfully since Tertiary days in the shelter of the African Continent. + +The rest of the Ungulates continued to develop through the Tertiary, and +fortunately we are enabled to follow the development of two of the most +interesting of them, the horse and the elephant, in considerable detail. +As I said above, the primitive Ungulate soon branches into three types +which dimly foreshadow the tapir, the horse, and the rhinoceros, the +three forms of the Perissodactyl. The second of these types is the +Hyracotherium. It has no distinct equine features, and is known only +from the skull, but the authorities regard it as the progenitor (or +representative of the progenitors) of the horse-types. In size it must +have been something like the rabbit or the hyrax. Still early in the +Eocene, however, we find the remains of a small animal (Eohippus), about +the size of a fox, which is described as "undoubtedly horse-like." It +had only three toes on its hind feet, and four on its front feet; though +it had also a splint-bone, representing the shrunken and discarded fifth +toe, on its fore feet. Another form of the same period (Protorohippus) +shows the central of the three toes on the hind foot much enlarged, and +the lateral toes shrinking. The teeth, and the bones and joints of the +limbs, are also developing in the direction of the horse. + +In the succeeding geological period, the Oligocene, we find several +horse-types in which the adaptation of the limbs to running on the firm +grassy plains and of the teeth to eating the grass continues. Mesohippus +has lost the fourth toe of the fore foot, which is now reduced to a +splintbone, and the lateral toes of its hind foot are shrinking. In the +Miocene period there is a great development of the horse-like mammals. +We have the remains of more than forty species, some continuing the main +line of development on the firm and growing prairies of the Miocene, +some branching into the softer meadows or the forests, and giving rise +to types which will not outlive the Tertiary. They have three toes on +each foot, and have generally lost even the rudimentary trace of the +fourth toe. In most of them, moreover, the lateral toes--except in the +marsh-dwelling species, with spreading feet--scarcely touch the ground, +while the central toe is developing a strong hoof. The leg-bones are +longer, and have a new type of joint; the muscles are concentrated near +the body. The front teeth are now chopping incisors, and the grinding +teeth approach those of the modern horse in the distribution of the +enamel, dentine, and cement. They are now about the size of a donkey, +and must have had a distinctly horsy appearance, with their long necks +and heads and tapering limbs. One of them, Merychippus, was probably in +the direct line of the evolution of the horse. From Hipparion some +of the authorities believe that the zebras may have been developed. +Miohippus, Protohippus, and Hypohippus, varying in size from that of a +sheep to that of a donkey, are other branches of this spreading family. + +In the Pliocene period the evolution of the main stem culminates in +the appearance of the horse, and the collateral branches are destroyed. +Pliohippus is a further intermediate form. It has only one toe on each +foot, with two large splint bones, but its hoof is less round than that +of the horse, and it differs in the shape of the skull and the length +of the teeth. The true horse (Equus) at length appears, in Europe and +America, before the close of the Tertiary period. As is well known, it +still has the rudimentary traces of its second and fourth toes in the +shape of splint bones, and these bones are not only more definitely +toe-shaped in the foal before birth, but are occasionally developed and +give us a three-toed horse. + +From these successive remains we can confidently picture the evolution, +during two or three million years, of one of our most familiar mammals. +It must not, of course, be supposed that these fossil remains all +represent "ancestors of the horse." In some cases they may very well +do so; in others, as we saw, they represent sidebranches of the family +which have become extinct. But even such successive forms as the +Eohippus, Mesohippus, Miohippus, and Pliohippus must not be arranged +in a direct line as the pedigree of the horse. The family became most +extensive in the Miocene, and we must regard the casual fossil specimens +we have discovered as illustrations of the various phases in the +development of the horse from the primitive Ungulate. When we recollect +what we saw in an earlier chapter about the evolution of grassy plains +and the successive rises of the land during the Tertiary period, and +when we reflect on the simultaneous advance of the carnivores, we can +without difficulty realise this evolution of our familiar companion from +a hyrax-like little animal of two million years ago. + +We have not in many cases so rich a collection of intermediate forms as +in the case of the horse, but our fossil mammals are numerous enough +to suggest a similar development of all the mammals of to-day. The +primitive family which gave birth to the horse also gave us, as we saw, +the tapir and the rhinoceros. We find ancestral tapirs in Europe and +America during the Tertiary period, but the later cold has driven them +to the warm swamps of Brazil and Malaysia. The rhinoceros has had a long +and interesting history. From the primitive Hyrochinus of the Eocene, in +which it is dimly foreshadowed, we pass to a large and varied family +in the later periods. In the Oligocene it spreads into three great +branches, adapted, respectively, to life on the elevated lands, the +lowlands, and the water. The upland type (Hyracodon) was a light-limbed +running animal, well illustrating the close relation to the horse. The +aquatic representative (Metamynodon) was a stumpy and bulky animal. +The intermediate lowland type was probably the ancestor of the modern +animal. All three forms were yet hornless. In the Miocene the lowland +type (Leptaceratherium, Aceratherium, etc.) develops vigorously, while +the other branches die. The European types now have two horns, and in +one of the American species (Diceratherium) we see a commencement of +the horny growths from the skull. We shall see later that the rhinoceros +continued in Europe even during the severe conditions of the glacial +period, in a branch that developed a woolly coat. + +There were also in the early Tertiary several sidebranches of the +horse-tapir-rhinoceros family. The Palaeotheres were more or less +between the horse and the tapir in structure; the Anoplotheres between +the tapir and the ruminant. A third doomed branch, the Titanotheres, +flourished vigorously for a time, and begot some strange and monstrous +forms (Brontops, Titanops, etc.). In the larger specimens the body was +about fourteen feet long, and stood ten feet from the ground. The long, +low skull had a pair of horns over the snout. They perished like the +equally powerful but equally sluggish and stupid Deinocerata. The +Tertiary was an age of brain rather than of brawn. As compared with +their early Tertiary representatives' some of our modern mammals have +increased seven or eight-fold in brain-capacity. + +While the horses and tapirs and rhinoceroses were being gradually +evolved from the primitive types, the Artiodactyl branch of the +Ungulates--the pigs, deer, oxen, etc.--were also developing. We must +dismiss them briefly. We saw that the primitive herbivores divided early +in the Eocene into the "odd-toed" and "even-toed" varieties; the name +refers, it will be remembered, not to the number of toes, but to the +axis of stress. The Artiodactyl group must have quickly branched in +turn, as we find very primitive hogs and camels before the end of the +Eocene. The first hog-like creature (Homacodon) was much smaller than +the hog of to-day, and had strong canine teeth, but in the Oligocene +the family gave rise to a large and numerous race, the Elotheres. These +"giant-pigs," as they have been called, with two toes on each foot, +flourished vigorously for a time in Europe and America, but were +extinguished in the Miocene, when the true pigs made their appearance. +Another doomed race of the time is represented by the Hyopotamus, +an animal between the pig and the hippopotamus; and the Oreodontids, +between the hog and the deer, were another unsuccessful branch of the +early race. The hippopotamus itself was widespread in Europe, and +a familiar form in the rivers of Britain, in the latter part of the +Tertiary. + +The camel seems to be traceable to a group of primitive North American +Ungulates (Paebrotherium, etc.) in the later Eocene period. The +Paebrotherium, a small animal about two feet long, is followed by +Pliauchenia, which points toward the llamas and vicunas, and Procamelus, +which clearly foreshadows the true camel. In the Pliocene the one branch +went southward, to develop into the llamas and vicunas, and the other +branch crossed to Asia, to develop into the camels. Since that time they +have had no descendants in North America. + +The primitive giraffe appears suddenly in the later Tertiary deposits of +Europe and Asia. The evidence points to an invasion from Africa, and, +as the region of development is unknown and unexplored, the evolution of +the giraffe remains a matter of speculation. Chevrotains flourished in +Europe and North America in the Oligocene, and are still very primitive +in structure, combining features of the hog and the ruminants. Primitive +deer and oxen begin in the Miocene, and seem to have an earlier +representative in certain American animals (Protoceras), of which the +male has a pair of blunt outgrowths between the ears. The first true +deer are hornless (like the primitive muskdeer of Asia to-day), but by +the middle of the Miocene the males have small two-pronged antlers, and +as the period proceeds three or four more prongs are added. It is some +confirmation of the evolutionary embryonic law that we find the antlers +developing in this way in the individual stag to-day. A very +curious race of ruminants in the later Tertiary was a large antelope +(Sivatherium) with four horns. It had not only the dimensions, but +apparently some of the characters, of an elephant. + +The elephant itself, the last type of the Ungulates, has a clearer line +of developments. A chance discovery of fossils in the Fayum district in +Egypt led Dr. C. W. Andrews to make a special exploration, and on the +remains which he found he has constructed a remarkable story of the +evolution of the elephant. [*] It is clear that the elephant was developed +in Africa, and a sufficiently complete series of remains has been found +to give a good idea of the origin of its most distinctive features. +In the Eocene period there lived in the Egyptian region an animal, +something like the tapir in size and appearance, which had its second +incisors developed into small tusks and--to judge from the nasal opening +in the skull--a somewhat prolonged snout. This animal (Moeritherium) +only differed from the ordinary primitive Ungulate in these incipient +elephantine features. In the later Eocene a larger and more advanced +animal, the Palaeomastodon, makes its appearance. Its tusks are larger +(five or six inches long), its molars more elephantine, the air-cells +at the back of the head more developed. It would look like a small +elephant, except that it had a long snout, instead of a flexible trunk, +and a projecting lower jaw on which the snout rested. + + *See this short account, "Guide to the Elephants in the + British Museum," 1908. + + +Up to the beginning of the Miocene, Africa was, as we saw, cut off from +Europe and Asia by the sea which stretched from Spain to India. Then the +land rose, and the elephant passed by the new tracts into the north. Its +next representative, Tetrabelodon, is found in Asia and Europe, as +well as North Africa. The frame is as large as that of a medium-sized +elephant, and the increase of the air-cells at the back of the skull +shows that an increased weight has to be sustained by the muscles of the +neck. The nostrils are shifted further back. The tusks are from twenty +to thirty inches long, and round, and only differ from those of the +elephant in curving slightly downward, The chin projects as far as the +tusks. The neck is shorter and thicker, and, as the animal increases in +height, we can understand that the long snout--possibly prehensile at +its lower end--is necessary for the animal to reach the ground. But +the snout still lies on the projecting lower jaw, and is not a trunk. +Passing over the many collateral branches, which diverge in various +directions, we next kind that the chin is shortening (in Tetrabelodon +longirostris), and, through a long series of discovered intermediate +forms, we trace the evolution of the elephant from the mastodon. The +long supporting skin disappears, and the enormous snout becomes a +flexible trunk. Southern Asia seems to have been the province of this +final transformation, and we have remains of some of these primitive +elephants with tusks nine and a half feet long. A later species, which +wandered over Central and Southern Europe before the close of the +Tertiary, stood fifteen feet high at the shoulder, while the mammoth, +which superseded it in the days of early man, had at times tusks more +than ten feet in length. + +It is interesting to reflect that this light on the evolution of one of +our most specialised mammals is due to the chance opening of the soil +in an obscure African region. It suggests to us that as geological +exploration is extended, many similar discoveries may be made. The +slenderness of the geological record is a defect that the future may +considerably modify. + +From this summary review of the evolution of the Ungulates we must now +pass to an even briefer account of the evolution of the Carnivores. The +evidence is less abundant, but the characters of the Carnivores consist +so obviously of adaptations to their habits and diet that we have little +difficulty in imagining their evolution. Their early Eocene ancestors, +the Creodonts, gave rise in the Eocene to forms which we may regard as +the forerunners of the cat-family and dog-family, to which most of our +familiar Carnivores belong. Patriofelis, the "patriarchal cat," about +five or six feet in length (without the tail), curiously combines +the features of the cat and the seal-family. Cyonodon has a wolf-like +appearance, and Amphicyon rather suggests the fox. Primitive weasels, +civets, and hyaenas appear also in the Eocene. The various branches of +the Carnivore family are already roughly represented, but it is an age +of close relationships and generalised characters. + +In the Miocene we find the various groups diverging still further from +each other and from the extinct stocks. Definite wolves and foxes abound +in America, and the bear, civet, and hyaena are represented in Europe, +together with vague otter-like forms. The dog-family seems to have +developed chiefly in North America. As in the case of the Ungulates, +we find many strange side-branches which flourished for a time, but are +unknown to-day. Machoerodus, usually known as "the sabre-toothed tiger," +though not a tiger, was one of the most formidable of these transitory +races. Its upper canine teeth (the "sabres") were several inches in +length, and it had enormously distensible jaws to make them effective. +The great development of such animals, with large numbers of hyaenas, +civets, wolves, bears, and other Carnivores, in the middle and later +Tertiary was probably the most effective agency in the evolution of +the horse and deer and the extinction of the more sluggish races. The +aquatic branch of the Carnivores (seals, walruses, etc.) is little +represented in the Tertiary record. We saw, however, that the most +primitive representatives of the elephant-stock had also some characters +of the seal, and it is thought that the two had a common origin. + +The Moeritherium was a marsh-animal, and may very well have been cousin +to the branch of the family which pushed on to the seas, and developed +its fore limbs into paddles. + +The Rodents are represented in primitive form early in the Eocene +period. The teeth are just beginning to show the characteristic +modification for gnawing. A large branch of the family, the Tillodonts, +attained some importance a little later. They are described as combining +the head and claws of a bear with the teeth of a rodent and the general +characters of an ungulate. In the Oligocene we find primitive squirrels, +beavers, rabbits, and mice. The Insectivores also developed some of the +present types at an early date, and have since proved so unprogressive +that some regard them as the stock from which all the placental mammals +have arisen. + +The Cetacea (whales, porpoises, etc.) are already represented in the +Eocene by a primitive whale-like animal (Zeuglodon) of unknown origin. +Some specimens of it are seventy feet in length. It has large teeth, +sometimes six inches long, and is clearly a terrestrial mammal that +has returned to the waters. Some forms even of the modern whale develop +rudimentary teeth, and in all forms the bony structure of the fore limbs +and degenerate relic of a pelvis and back limbs plainly tell of the +terrestrial origin. Dolphins appear in the Miocene. + +Finally, the Edentates (sloths, anteaters, and armadilloes) are +represented in a very primitive form in the early Eocene. They are then +barely distinguishable from the Condylarthra and Creodonta, and seem +only recently to have issued from a common ancestor with those groups. +In the course of the Tertiary we find them--especially in South America, +which was cut off from the North and its invading Carnivores during +the Eocene and Miocene--developed into large sloths, armadilloes, and +anteaters. The reconnection with North America in the Pliocene allowed +the northern animals to descend, but gigantic sloths (Megatherium) and +armadilloes (Glyptodon) flourished long afterwards in South America. +The Megatherium attained a length of eighteen feet in one specimen +discovered, and the Glyptodon often had a dorsal shield (like that of +the armadillo) from six to eight feet long, and, in addition, a stoutly +armoured tail several feet long. + +The richness and rapidity of the mammalian development in the Tertiary, +of which this condensed survey will convey some impression, make it +impossible to do more here than glance over the vast field and indicate +the better-known connections. It will be seen that evolution not only +introduces a lucid order and arrangement into our thousands of species +of living and fossil mammals, but throws an admirable light on the +higher animal world of our time. The various orders into which the +zoologist puts our mammals are seen to be the branches of a living tree, +approaching more and more closely to each other in early Tertiary times, +in spite of the imperfectness of the geological record. We at last trace +these diverging lines to a few very primitive, generalised, patriarchal +groups, which in turn approach each other very closely in structure, +and plainly suggest a common Cretaceous ancestor. Whether that common +ancestor was an Edentate, an Insectivore, or Creodont, or something more +primitive than them all, is disputed. But the divergence of nearly all +the lines of our mammal world from those patriarchal types is admirably +clear. In the mutual struggle of carnivore and herbivore, in adaptation +to a hundred different environments (the water, the land, and the air, +the tree, the open plain, the underground, the marsh, etc.) and forms +of diet, we find the descendants of these patriarchal animals gradually +developing their distinctive characters. Then we find the destructive +agencies of living and inorganic nature blotting out type after type, +and the living things that spread over the land in the later Tertiary +are found to be broadly identical with the living things of to-day. The +last great selection, the northern Ice-Age, will give the last touches +of modernisation. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. THE EVOLUTION OF MAN + +We have reserved for a closer inquiry that order of the placental +mammals to which we ourselves belong, and on which zoologists have +bestowed the very proper and distinguishing name of the Primates. Since +the days of Darwin there has been some tendency to resent the term +"lower animals," which man applies to his poorer relations. But, though +there is no such thing as an absolute standard by which we may judge the +"higher" or "lower" status of animals or plants, the extraordinary power +which man has by his brain development attained over both animate and +inanimate nature fully justifies the phrase. The Primate order is, +therefore, of supreme interest as the family that gave birth to man, and +it is important to discover the agencies which impelled some primitive +member of it to enter upon the path which led to this summit of organic +nature. + +The order includes the femurs, a large and primitive family with +ape-like features--the Germans call them "half-apes"--the monkeys, +the man-like apes, and man. This classification according to structure +corresponds with the successive appearance of the various families in +the geological record. The femurs appear in the Eocene; the monkeys, and +afterwards the apes, in the Miocene, the first semi-human forms in the +Pleistocene, though they must have been developed before this. It is +hardly necessary to say that science does not regard man as a descendant +of the known anthropoid apes, or these as descended from the monkeys. +They are successive types or phases of development, diverging early from +each other. Just as the succeeding horse-types of the record are not +necessarily related to each other in a direct line, yet illustrate the +evolution of a type which culminates in the horse, so the spreading and +branching members of the Primate group illustrate the evolution of a +type of organism which culminates in man. The particular relationship of +the various families, living and dead, will need careful study. + +That there is a general blood-relationship, and that man is much +more closely related to the anthropoid apes than to any of the lower +Primates, is no longer a matter of controversy. In Rudolph Virchow there +died, a few years ago, the last authoritative man of science to express +any doubt about it. There are, however, non-scientific writers who, by +repeating the ambiguous phrase that it is "only a theory," convey the +impression to inexpert readers that it is still more or less an open +question. We will therefore indicate a few of the lines of evidence +which have overcome the last hesitations of scientific men, and closed +the discussion as to the fact. + +The very close analogy of structure between man and the ape at once +suggests that they had a common ancestor. There are cases in which two +widely removed animals may develop a similar organ independently, but +there is assuredly no possibility of their being alike in all organs, +unless by common inheritance. Yet the essential identity of structure in +man and the ape is only confirmed by every advance of science, and would +of itself prove the common parentage. Such minor differences as there +are between man and the higher ape--in the development of the cerebrum, +the number of the teeth or ribs, the distribution of the hair, and so +on--are quite explicable when we reflect that the two groups must have +diverged from each other more than a million years ago. + +Examining the structure of man more closely, we find this strong +suggestion of relationship greatly confirmed. It is now well known that +the human body contains a number of vestigial "organs"--organs of no +actual use, and only intelligible as vestiges of organs that were once +useful. Whatever view we take of the origin of man, each organ in +his frame must have a meaning; and, as these organs are vestigial and +useless even in the lowest tribes of men, who represent primitive man, +they must be vestiges of organs that were of use in a remote pre-human +ancestor. The one fact that the ape has the same vestigial organs as man +would, on a scientific standard of evidence, prove the common descent of +the two. But these interesting organs themselves point back far earlier +than a mixed ape-human ancestor in many cases. + +The shell of cartilage which covers the entrance to the ear--the gristly +appendage which is popularly called the ear--is one of the clearest and +most easily recognised of these organs. The "ear" of a horse or a cat is +an upright mobile shell for catching the waves of sound. The human ear +has the appearance of being the shrunken relic of such an organ, and, +when we remove the skin, and find seven generally useless muscles +attached to it, obviously intended to pull the shell in all directions +(as in the horse), there can be no doubt that the external ear is a +discarded organ, a useless legacy from an earlier ancestor. In cases +where it has been cut off it was found that the sense of hearing was +scarcely, if at all, affected. Now we know that it is similarly useless +in all tribes of men, and must therefore come from a pre-human ancestor. +It is also vestigial in the higher apes, and it is only when we descend +to the lower monkeys and femurs that we see it approaching its primitive +useful form. One may almost say that it is a reminiscence of the far-off +period when, probably in the early Tertiary, the ancestors of the +Primates took to the trees. The animals living on the plain needed +acute senses to detect the approach of their prey or their enemies; +the tree-dweller found less demand on his sense of hearing, the +"speaking-trumpet" was discarded, and the development of the internal +ear proceeded on the higher line of the perception of musical sounds. + +We might take a very large number of parts of the actual human body, and +discover that they are similar historical or archaeological monuments +surviving in a modern system, but we have space only for a few of the +more conspicuous. + +The hair on the body is a vestigial organ, of actual use to no race of +men, an evident relic of the thick warm coat of an earlier ancestor. It +in turn recalls the dwellers in the primeval forest. In most cases--not +all, because the wearing of clothes for ages has modified this +feature--it will be found that the hairs on the arm tend upward from the +wrist to the elbow, and downward from the shoulder to the elbow. This +very peculiar feature becomes intelligible when we find that some of the +apes also have it, and that it has a certain use in their case. They put +their hands over their heads as they sit in the trees during ram, and in +that position the sloping hair acts somewhat like the thatched roof of a +cottage. + +Again, it will be found that in the natural position of standing we are +not perfectly flat-footed, but tend to press much more on the outer than +on the inner edge of the foot. This tendency, surviving after ages +of living on the level ground, is a lingering effect of the far-off +arboreal days. + +A more curious reminiscence is seen in the fact that the very young +infant, flabby and powerless as it is in most of its muscles, is so +strong in the muscles of the hand and arm that it can hang on to a stick +by its hands, and sustain the whole weight of its body, for several +minutes. Finally, our vestigial tail--for we have a tail comparable to +that of the higher apes--must be mentioned. In embryonic development +the tail is much longer than the legs, and some children are born with +a real tail, which they move as the puppy does, according to their +emotional condition. Other features of the body point back to an even +earlier stage. The vermiform appendage--in which some recent medical +writers have vainly endeavoured to find a utility--is the shrunken +remainder of a large and normal intestine of a remote ancestor. This +interpretation of it would stand even if it were found to have a certain +use in the human body. Vestigial organs are sometimes pressed into a +secondary use when their original function has been lost. The danger of +this appendage in the human body to-day is due to the fact that it is +a blind alley leading off the alimentary canal, and has a very narrow +opening. In the ape the opening is larger, and, significantly enough, it +is still larger in the human foetus. When we examine some of the lower +mammals we discover the meaning of it. It is in them an additional +storage chamber in the alimentary system. It is believed that a change +to a more digestible diet has made this additional chamber superfluous +in the Primates, and the system is slowly suppressing it. + +Other reminiscences of this earlier phase are found in the many +vestigial muscles which are found in the body to-day. The head of the +quadruped hangs forward, and is held by powerful muscles and ligaments +in the neck. We still have the shrunken remainder of this arrangement. +Other vestigial muscles are found in the forehead, the scalp, the +nose--many people can twitch the nostrils and the scalp--and under the +skin in many parts of the body. These are enfeebled remnants of the +muscular coat by which the quadruped twitches its skin, and drives +insects away. A less obvious feature is found by the anatomist in +certain blood-vessels of the trunk. As the blood flows vertically in a +biped and horizontally in a quadruped, the arrangement of the valves in +the blood-vessels should be different in the two cases; but it is the +same in us as in the quadruped. Another trace of the quadruped ancestor +is found in the baby. It walks "on all fours" so long, not merely from +weakness of the limbs, but because it has the spine of a quadruped. + +A much more interesting fact, but one less easy to interpret, is that +the human male has, like the male ape, organs for suckling the young. +That there are real milk-glands, usually vestigial, underneath the teats +in the breast of the boy or the man is proved by the many known cases in +which men have suckled the young. Several friends of the present writer +have seen this done in India and Ceylon by male "wet-nurses." As there +is no tribe of men or species of ape in which the male suckles the young +normally, we seem to be thrown back once more upon an earlier ancestor. +The difficulty is that we know of no mammal of which both parents +suckle the young, and some authorities think that the breasts have been +transferred to the male by a kind of embryonic muddle. That is difficult +to believe, as no other feature has ever been similarly transferred to +the opposite sex. In any case the male breasts are vestigial organs. +Another peculiarity of the mammary system is that sometimes three, four, +or five pairs of breasts appear in a woman (and several have been known +even in a man). This is, apparently, an occasional reminiscence of an +early mammal ancestor which had large litters of young and several pairs +of breasts. + +But there are features of the human body which recall an ancestor even +earlier than the quadruped. The most conspicuous of these is the little +fleshy pad at the inner corner of each eye. It is a common feature in +mammals, and is always useless. When, however, we look lower down in the +animal scale we find that fishes and reptiles (and birds) have a third +eyelid, which is drawn across the eye from this corner. There is little +room to doubt that the little fleshy vestige in the mammal's eye is the +shrunken remainder of the lateral eyelid of a remote fish-ancestor. + +A similar reminiscence is found in the pineal body, a small and useless +object, about the size and shape of a hazel-nut, in the centre of the +brain. When we examine the reptile we find a third eye in the top of +the head. The skin has closed over it, but the skull is still, in +many cases, perforated as it is for the eyes in front. I have seen it +standing out like a ball on the head of a dead crocodile, and in the +living tuatara--the very primitive New Zealand lizard--it still has a +retina and optic nerve. As the only animal in nature to-day with an eye +in this position (the Pyrosome, a little marine animal of the sea-squirt +family) is not in the line of reptile and mammal ancestry, it is +difficult to locate the third eye definitely. But when we find the skin +closing over it in the amphibian and reptile, then the bone, and then +see it gradually atrophying and being buried under the growing brain, we +must refer it to some early fish-ancestor. This ancestor, we may recall, +is also reflected for a time in the gill-slits and arches, with their +corresponding fish-like heart and blood-vessels, during man's embryonic +development, as we saw in a former chapter. + +These are only a few of the more conspicuous instances of vestigial +structures in man. Metchnikoff describes about a hundred of them. Even +if there were no remains of primitive man pointing in the direction of +a common ancestry with the ape, no lower types of men in existence with +the same tendency, no apes found in nature to-day with a structure so +strikingly similar to that of man, and no fossil records telling of the +divergence of forms from primitive groups in past time, we should be +forced to postulate the evolution of man in order to explain his actual +features. The vestigial structures must be interpreted as we interpret +the buttons on the back of a man's coat. They are useless reminiscences +of an age in which they were useful. When their witness to the past +is supported by so many converging lines of evidence it becomes +irresistible. I will add only one further testimony which has been +brought into court in recent years. + +The blood consists of cells, or minute disk-shaped corpuscles, floating +in a watery fluid, or serum. It was found a few years ago, in the course +of certain experiments in mixing the blood of animals, that the serum of +one animal's blood sometimes destroyed the cells of the other animal's +blood, and at other times did not. When the experiments were multiplied, +it was found that the amount of destructive action exercised by one +specimen of blood upon another depended on the nearness or remoteness of +relationship between the animals. If the two are closely related, there +is no disturbance when their blood is mixed; when they are not closely +related, the serum of one destroys the cells of the other, and the +intensity of the action is in proportion to their remoteness from each +other. Another and more elaborate form of the experiment was devised, +and the law was confirmed. On both tests it was found by experiment that +the blood of man and of the anthropoid ape behaved in such a way as to +prove that they were closely related. The blood of the monkey showed a +less close relationship--a little more remote in the New World than in +the Old World monkeys; and the blood of the femur showed a faint and +distant relationship. + +The FACT of the evolution of man and the apes from a common ancestor is, +therefore, outside the range of controversy in science; we are concerned +only to retrace the stages of that evolution, and the agencies which +controlled it. Here, unfortunately, the geological record gives us +little aid. Tree-dwelling animals are amongst the least likely to +be buried in deposits which may preserve their bones for ages. The +distribution of femur and ape remains shows that the order of the +Primates has been widespread and numerous since the middle of the +Tertiary Era, yet singularly few remains of the various families have +been preserved. + +Hence the origin of the Primates is obscure. They are first foreshadowed +in certain femur-like forms of the Eocene period, which are said in some +cases (Adapis) to combine the characters of pachyderms and femurs, and +in others (Anaptomorphus) to unite the features of Insectivores and +femurs. Perhaps the more common opinion is that they were evolved from +a branch of the Insectivores, but the evidence is too slender to justify +an opinion. It was an age when the primitive placental mammals were just +beginning to diverge from each other, and had still many features in +common. For the present all we can say is that in the earliest spread +of the patriarchal mammal race one branch adopted arboreal life, and +evolved in the direction of the femurs and the apes. The generally +arboreal character of the Primates justifies this conclusion. + +In the Miocene period we find a great expansion of the monkeys. These in +turn enter the scene quite suddenly, and the authorities are reduced to +uncertain and contradictory conjectures as to their origin. Some think +that they develop not from the femurs, but along an independent line +from the Insectivores, or other ancestors of the Primates. We will not +linger over these early monkeys, nor engage upon the hopeless task of +tracing their gradual ramification into the numerous families of the +present age. It is clear only that they soon divided into two main +streams, one of which spread into the monkeys of America and the other +into the monkeys of the Old World. There are important anatomical +differences between the two. The monkeys remained in Central and +Southern Europe until near the end of the Tertiary. Gradually we +perceive that the advancing cold is driving them further south, and +the monkeys of Gibraltar to-day are the diminished remnant of the great +family that had previously wandered as far as Britain and France. + +A third wave, also spreading in the Miocene, equally obscure in its +connection with the preceding, introduces the man-like apes to the +geologist. Primitive gibbons (Pliopithecus and Pliobylobates), +primitive chimpanzees (Palaeopithecus), and other early anthropoid +apes (Oreopithecus, Dryopithecus, etc.), lived in the trees of Southern +Europe in the second part of the Tertiary Era. They are clearly +disconnected individuals of a large and flourishing family, but from the +half-dozen specimens we have yet discovered no conclusion can be drawn, +except that the family is already branching into the types of anthropoid +apes which are familiar to us. + +Of man himself we have no certain and indisputable trace in the Tertiary +Era. Some remains found in Java of an ape-man (Pithecanthropus), +which we will study later, are now generally believed, after a special +investigation on the spot, to belong to the Pleistocene period. Yet no +authority on the subject doubts that the human species was evolved in +the Tertiary Era, and very many, if not most, of the authorities believe +that we have definite proof of his presence. The early story of mankind +is gathered, not so much from the few fragments of human remains we +have, but from the stone implements which were shaped by his primitive +intelligence and remain, almost imperishable, in the soil over which he +wandered. The more primitive man was, the more ambiguous would be +the traces of his shaping of these stone implements, and the earliest +specimens are bound to be a matter of controversy. It is claimed by many +distinguished authorities that flints slightly touched by the hand of +man, or at least used as implements by man, are found in abundance +in England, France, and Germany, and belong to the Pliocene period. +Continental authorities even refer some of them to the Miocene and the +last part of the Oligocene. + +The question whether an implement-using animal, which nearly all would +agree to regard as in some degree human, wandered over what is now +the South of England (Kent, Essex, Dorsetshire, etc.) as many hundred +thousand years ago as this claim would imply, is certainly one of great +interest. But there would be little use in discussing here the question +of the "Eoliths," as these disputed implements are called. A very keen +controversy is still being conducted in regard to them, and some of the +highest authorities in England, France, and Germany deny that they show +any trace of human workmanship or usage. Although they have the support +of such high authorities as Sir J. Prestwich, Sir E. Ray Lankester, Lord +Avebury, Dr. Keane, Dr. Blackmore, Professor Schwartz, etc., they are +one of those controverted testimonies on which it would be ill-advised +to rely in such a work as this. + +We must say, then, that we have no undisputed traces of man in the +Tertiary Era. The Tertiary implements which have been at various times +claimed in France, Italy, and Portugal are equally disputed; the remains +which were some years ago claimed as Tertiary in the United States are +generally disallowed; and the recent claims from South America are under +discussion. Yet it is the general feeling of anthropologists that man +was evolved in the Tertiary Era. On the one hand, the anthropoid apes +were highly developed by the Miocene period, and it would be almost +incredible that the future human stock should linger hundreds of +thousands of years behind them. On the other hand, when we find the +first traces of man in the Pleistocene, this development has already +proceeded so far that its earlier phase evidently goes back into the +Tertiary. Let us pass beyond the Tertiary Era for a moment, and examine +the earliest and most primitive remains we have of human or semi-human +beings. + +The first appearance of man in the chronicle of terrestrial life is a +matter of great importance and interest. Even the least scientific of +readers stands, so to say, on tiptoe to catch a first glimpse of +the earliest known representative of our race, and half a century of +discussion of evolution has engendered a very wide interest in the early +history of man. [*] + + * A personal experience may not be without interest in this + connection. Among the many inquiries directed to me in + regard to evolution I received, in one month, a letter from + a negro in British Guiana and an extremely sensible query + from an inmate of an English asylum for the insane! The + problem that beset the latter of the two was whether the + Lemuranda preceded the Lemurogona in Eocene times. He had + found a contradiction in the statements of two scientific + writers. + + +Fortunately, although these patriarchal bones are very scanty--two +teeth, a thigh-bone, and the skull-cap--we are now in a position to form +some idea of the nature of their living owner. They have been subjected +to so searching a scrutiny and discussion since they were found in +Java in 1891 and 1892 that there is now a general agreement as to their +nature. At first some of the experts thought that they were the remains +of an abnormally low man, and others that they belonged to an abnormally +high ape. The majority held from the start that they belonged to a +member of a race almost midway between the highest family of apes and +the lowest known tribe of men, and therefore fully merited the name +of "Ape-Man" (Pithecanthropus). This is now the general view of +anthropologists. + +The Ape-Man of Java was in every respect entitled to that name. The +teeth suggest a lower part of the face in which the teeth and lips +projected more than in the most ape-like types of Central Africa. +The skull-cap has very heavy ridges over the eyes and a low receding +forehead, far less human than in any previously known prehistoric skull. +The thigh-bone is very much heavier than any known human femur of the +same length, and so appreciably curved that the owner was evidently in +a condition of transition from the semi-quadrupedal crouch of the ape +to the erect attitude of man. The Ape-Man, in other words, was a heavy, +squat, powerful, bestial-looking animal; of small stature, but above the +pygmy standard; erect in posture, but with clear traces of the proneness +of his ancestor; far removed from the highest ape in brainpower, but +almost equally far removed from the lowest savage that is known to +us. We shall see later that there is some recent criticism, by weighty +authorities, of the earlier statements in regard to the brain of +primitive man. This does not apply to the Ape-Man of Java. The average +cranial capacity (the amount of brain-matter the skull may contain) of +the chimpanzees, the highest apes, is about 600 cubic centimetres. +The average cranial capacity of the lowest races of men, of moderate +stature, is about 1200. And the cranial capacity of Ape-Man was about +900 + +It is immaterial whether or no these bones belong to the same +individual. If they do not, we have remains of two or three individuals +of the same intermediate species. Nor does it matter whether or no this +early race is a direct ancestor of the later races of men, or an extinct +offshoot from the advancing human stock. It is, in either case, an +illustration of the intermediate phase between the ape and man The more +important tasks are to trace the relationship of this early human stock +to the apes, and to discover the causes of its superior evolution. + +The first question has a predominantly technical interest, and the +authorities are not agreed in replying to it. We saw that, on the +blood-test, man showed a very close relationship to the anthropoid apes, +a less close affinity to the Old World monkeys, a more remote affinity +to the American monkeys, and a very faint and distant affinity to the +femurs. A comparison of their structures suggests the same conclusion. +It is, therefore, generally believed that the anthropoid apes and man +had a common ancestor in the early Miocene or Oligocene, that this group +was closely related to the ancestral group of the Old World monkeys, and +that all originally sprang from a primitive and generalised femur-group. +In other words, a branch of the earliest femur-like forms diverges, +before the specific femur-characters are fixed, in the direction of the +monkey; in this still vague and patriarchal group a branch diverges, +before the monkey-features are fixed, in the direction of the +anthropoids; and this group in turn spreads into a number of types, some +of which are the extinct apes of the Miocene, four become the gorilla, +chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon of to-day, and one is the group that will +become man. To put it still more precisely, if we found a whole series +of remains of man's ancestors during the Tertiary, we should probably +class them, broadly, as femur-remains in the Eocene, monkey-remains in +the Oligocene, and ape-remains in the Miocene. In that sense only man +"descends from a monkey." + +The far more important question is: How did this one particular group of +anthropoid animals of the Miocene come to surpass all its cousins, and +all the rest of the mammals, in brain-development? Let us first rid the +question of its supposed elements of mystery and make of it a simple +problem. Some imagine that a sudden and mysterious rise in intelligence +lifted the progenitor of man above its fellows. The facts very quickly +dispel this illusion. We may at least assume that the ancestor of man +was on a level with the anthropoid ape in the Miocene period, and we +know from their skulls that the apes were as advanced then as they are +now. But from the early Miocene to the Pleistocene is a stretch of +about a million years on the very lowest estimate. In other words, +man occupied about a million years in travelling from the level of the +chimpanzee to a level below that of the crudest savage ever discovered. +If we set aside the Java man, as a possible survivor of an earlier +phase, we should still have to say that, much more than a million years +after his departure from the chimpanzee level, man had merely advanced +far enough to chip stone implements; because we find no other trace +whatever of intelligence than this until near the close of the +Palaeolithic period. If there is any mystery, it is in the slowness of +man's development. + +Let us further recollect that it is a common occurrence in the calendar +of life for a particular organ to be especially developed in one +member of a particular group more than in the others. The trunk of the +elephant, the neck of the giraffe, the limbs of the horse or deer, the +canines of the satire-toothed tiger, the wings of the bat, the colouring +of the tiger, the horns of the deer, are so many examples in the mammal +world alone. The brain is a useful organ like any other, and it is easy +to conceive that the circumstances of one group may select it just as +the environment of another group may lead to the selection of speed, +weapons, or colouring. In fact, as we saw, there was so great and +general an evolution of brain in the Tertiary Era that our modern +mammals quite commonly have many times the brain of their Tertiary +ancestors. Can we suggest any reasons why brain should be especially +developed in the apes, and more particularly still in the ancestors of +man? + +The Primate group generally is a race of tree-climbers. The appearance +of fruit on early Tertiary trees and the multiplication of carnivores +explain this. The Primate is, except in a few robust cases, a +particularly defenceless animal. When its earliest ancestors came in +contact with fruit and nut-bearing trees, they developed climbing power +and other means of defence and offense were sacrificed. Keenness of +scent and range of hearing would now be of less moment, but sight would +be stimulated, especially when soft-footed climbing carnivores came on +the scene. There is, however, a much deeper significance in the adoption +of climbing, and we must borrow a page from the modern physiology of the +brain to understand it. + +The stress laid in the modern education of young children on the use of +the hands is not merely due to a feeling that they should handle objects +as well as read about them. It is partly due to the belief of many +distinguished physiologists that the training of the hands has a direct +stimulating effect on the thought-centres in the brain. The centre in +the cerebrum which controls the use of the hands is on the fringe of +the region which seems to be concerned in mental operations. For reasons +which will appear presently, we may add that the centres for controlling +the muscles of the face and head are in the same region. Any finer +training or the use of the hands will develop the centre for the fore +limbs, and, on the principles, may react on the more important region of +the cortex. Hence in turning the fore foot into a hand, for climbing +and grasping purposes, the primitive Primate entered upon the path +of brain-development. Even the earliest Primates show large brains in +comparison with the small brains of their contemporaries. + +It is a familiar fact in the animal world that when a certain group +enters upon a particular path of evolution, some members of the group +advance only a little way along it, some go farther, and some outstrip +all the others. The development of social life among the bees will +illustrate this. Hence we need not be puzzled by the fact that the +lemurs have remained at one mental level, the monkeys at another, and +the apes at a third. It is the common experience of life; and it is +especially clear among the various races of men. A group becomes fitted +to its environment, and, as long as its surroundings do not change, it +does not advance. A related group, in a different environment, receives +a particular stimulation, and advances. If, moreover, a group remains +unstimulated for ages, it may become so rigid in its type that it loses +the capacity to advance. It is generally believed that the lowest +races of men, and even some of the higher races like the Australian +aboriginals, are in this condition. We may expect this "unteachability" +in a far more stubborn degree in the anthropoid apes, which have been +adapted to an unchanging environment for a million years. + +All that we need further suppose is--and it is one of the commonest +episodes in terrestrial life--that one branch of the Miocene +anthropoids, which were spread over a large part of the earth, received +some stimulus to change which its cousins did not experience. It is +sometimes suggested that social life was the great advantage which led +to the superior development of mind in man. But such evidence as there +is would lead us to suppose that primitive man was solitary, not social. +The anthropoid apes are not social, but live in families, and are very +unprogressive. On the other hand, the earliest remains of prehistoric +man give no indication of social life. Fire-places, workshops, caves, +etc., enter the story in a later phase. Some authorities on prehistoric +man hold very strongly that during the greater part of the Old Stone +Age (two-thirds, at least, of the human period) man wandered only in the +company of his mate and children. [*] + + * The point will be more fully discussed later. This account + of prehistoric life is well seen in Mortillet's + Prehistorique (1900). The lowest races also have no tribal + life, and Professor Westermarck is of opinion that early man + was not social. + + +We seem to have the most plausible explanation of the divergence of man +from his anthropoid cousins in the fact that he left the trees of his +and their ancestors. This theory has the advantage of being a fact--for +the Ape-Man race of Java has already left the trees--and providing a +strong ground for brain-advance. A dozen reasons might be imagined for +his quitting the trees--migration, for instance, to a region in +which food was more abundant, and carnivores less formidable, on the +ground-level--but we will be content with the fact that he did. Such a +change would lead to a more consistent adoption of the upright attitude, +which is partly found in the anthropoid apes, especially the gibbons. +The fore limb would be no longer a support of the body; the hand would +be used more for grasping; and the hand-centre in the brain would be +proportionately stimulated. The adoption of the erect attitude would +further lead to a special development of the muscles of the head and +face, the centre for which is in the same important region in the +cortex. There would also be a direct stimulation of the brain, as, +having neither weapons nor speed, the animal would rely all the more on +sight and mind. If we further suppose that this primitive being extended +the range of his hunting, from insects and small or dead birds to small +land-animals, the stimulation would be all the greater. In a word, the +very fact of a change from the trees to the ground suggests a line of +brain-development which may plausibly be conceived, in the course of a +million years, to evolve an Ape-Man out of a man-like ape. And we are +not introducing any imaginary factor in this view of human origins. + +The problem of the evolution of man is often approached in a frame of +mind not far removed from that of the educated, but inexpert, European +who stands before the lowly figure of the chimpanzee, and wonders by +what miracle the gulf between it and himself was bridged. That is to lay +a superfluous strain on the imagination. The proper term of comparison +is the lowest type of human being known to us, since the higher types of +living men have confessedly evolved from the lower. But even the lowest +type of existing or recent savage is not the lowest level of humanity. +Whether or no the Tasmanian or the Yahgan is a primitive remnant of the +Old Stone Age, we have a far lower depth in the Java race. What we have +first to do is to explain the advance to that level, in the course of +many hundreds of thousands of years: a period fully a hundred times as +long as the whole history of civilisation. Time itself is no factor +in evolution, but in this case it is a significant condition. It means +that, on this view of the evolution of man, we are merely assuming that +an advance in brain-development took place between the Miocene and the +Pleistocene, not similar to, but immeasurably less than, the advance +which we know to have been made in the last fifty thousand years. In +point of fact, the most mysterious feature of the evolution of man was +its slowness. We shall see that, to meet the facts, we must suppose man +to have made little or no progress during most of this vast period, and +then to have received some new stimulation to develop. What it was we +have now to inquire. + + + +CHAPTER XIX. MAN AND THE GREAT ICE-AGE + +In discussing the development of plants and animals during the Tertiary +Era we have already perceived the shadow of the approaching Ice-Age. +We found that in the course of the Tertiary the types which were more +sensitive to cold gradually receded southward, and before its close +Europe, Asia, and North America presented a distinctly temperate aspect. +This is but the penumbra of the eclipse. When we pass the limits of +the Tertiary Era, and enter the Quaternary, the refrigeration steadily +proceeds, and, from temperate, the aspect of much of Europe and North +America becomes arctic. From six to eight million square miles of the +northern hemisphere are buried under fields of snow and ice, and even in +the southern regions smaller glacial sheets spread from the foot of the +higher ranges of mountains. + +It is unnecessary to-day to explain at any length the evidences by which +geologists trace this enormous glaciation of the northern hemisphere. +There are a few works still in circulation in which popular writers, +relying on the obstinacy of a few older geologists, speak lightly of the +"nightmare" of the Ice-Age. But the age has gone by in which it could +seriously be suggested that the boulders strewn along the east of +Scotland--fragments of rock whose home we must seek in Scandinavia--were +brought by the vikings as ballast for their ships. Even the more serious +controversy, whether the scratches and the boulders which we find on the +face of Northern Europe and America were due to floating or land ice, +is virtually settled. Several decades of research have detected the +unmistakable signs of glacial action over this vast area of the northern +hemisphere. Most of Europe north of the Thames and the Danube, nearly +all Canada and a very large part of the United States, and a somewhat +less expanse of Northern Asia, bear to this day the deep scars of +the thick, moving ice-sheets. Exposed rock-surfaces are ground and +scratched, beds of pebbles are twisted and contorted hollows are scooped +out, and moraines--the rubbish-heaps of the glaciers--are found on every +side. There is now not the least doubt that, where the great Deinosaurs +had floundered in semi-tropical swamps, where the figs and magnolias had +later flourished, where the most industrious and prosperous hives of +men are found to-day, there was, in the Pleistocene period, a country to +which no parallel can be found outside the polar circles to-day. + +The great revolution begins with the gathering of snows on the +mountains. The Alps and Pyrenees had now, we saw, reached their full +stature, and the gathering snows on their summits began to glide +down toward the plains in rivers of ice. The Apennines (and even the +mountains of Corsica), the Balkans, Carpathians, Caucasus, and Ural +Mountains, shone in similar mantles of ice and snow. The mountains of +Wales, the north of England, Scotland, and Scandinavia had even heavier +burdens, and, as the period advanced, their sluggish streams of +ice poured slowly over the plains. The trees struggled against the +increasing cold in the narrowing tracts of green; the animals died, +migrated to the south, or put on arctic coats. At length the ice-sheets +of Scandinavia met the spreading sheets from Scotland and Wales, and +crept over Russia and Germany, and an almost continuous mantle, from +which only a few large areas of arctic vegetation peeped out, was thrown +over the greater part of Europe. Ten thousand feet thick where it left +the hills of Norway and Sweden, several thousand feet thick even in +Scotland, the ice-sheet that resulted from the fusion of the glaciers +gradually thinned as it went south, and ended in an irregular fringe +across Central Europe. The continent at that time stretched westward +beyond the Hebrides and some two hundred miles beyond Ireland. The +ice-front followed this curve, casting icebergs into the Atlantic, then +probably advanced up what is now the Bristol Channel, and ran across +England and Europe, in a broken line, from Bristol to Poland. South +of this line there were smaller ice-fields round the higher mountains, +north of it almost the whole country presented the appearance that we +find in Greenland to-day. + +In North America the glaciation was even more extensive. About four +million square miles of the present temperate zone were buried under ice +and snow. From Greenland, Labrador, and the higher Canadian mountains +the glaciers poured south, until, in the east, the mass of ice +penetrated as far as the valley of the Mississippi. The great lakes of +North America are permanent memorials of its Ice-Age, and over more than +half the country we trace the imprint and the relics of the sheet. South +America, Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand had their glaciated areas. +North Asia was largely glaciated, but the range of the ice-sheet is not +yet determined in that continent. + +This summary statement will convey some idea of the extraordinary +phase through which the earth passed in the early part of the present +geological era. But it must be added that a singular circumstance +prolonged the glacial regime in the northern hemisphere. Modern +geologists speak rather of a series of successive ice-sheets than of one +definite Ice-Age. Some, indeed, speak of a series of Ice-Ages, but we +need not discuss the verbal question. It is now beyond question that the +ice-sheet advanced and retreated several times during the Glacial Epoch. +The American and some English geologists distinguished six ice-sheets, +with five intermediate periods of more temperate climate. The German +and many English and French geologists distinguish four sheets and +three interglacial epochs. The exact number does not concern us, but the +repeated spread of the ice is a point of some importance. The various +sheets differed considerably in extent. The wide range of the ice which +I have described represents the greatest extension of the glaciation, +and probably corresponds to the second or third of the six advances in +Dr. Geikie's (and the American) classification. + +Before we consider the biological effect of this great of refrigeration +of the globe, we must endeavour to understand the occurrence itself. +Here we enter a world of controversy, but a few suggestions at least may +be gathered from the large literature of the subject, which dispel much +of the mystery of the Great Ice-Age. + +It was at one time customary to look out beyond the earth itself for the +ultimate causes of this glaciation. Imagine the sheet of ice, which now +spreads widely round the North Pole, shifted to another position on +the surface of the planet, and you have a simple explanation of the +occurrence. In other words, if we suppose that the axis of the earth +does not consistently point in one direction--that the great ball does +not always present the same average angle in relation to the sun--the +poles will not always be where they are at present, and the Pleistocene +Ice-Age may represent a time when the north pole was in the latitude +of North Europe and North America. This opinion had to be abandoned. We +have no trace whatever of such a constant shifting of the polar regions +as it supposes, and, especially, we have no trace that the warm zone +correspondingly shifted in the Pleistocene. + +A much more elaborate theory was advanced by Dr. Croll, and is still +entertained by many. The path of the earth round the sun is not +circular, but elliptical, and there are times when the gravitational +pull of the other planets increases the eccentricity of the orbit. It +was assumed that there are periods of great length, separated from each +other by still longer periods, when this eccentricity of the orbit +is greatly exaggerated. The effect would be to prolong the winter and +shorten the summer of each hemisphere in turn. The total amount of heat +received would not alter, but there would be a long winter with less +heat per hour, and a short summer with more heat. The short summer would +not suffice to melt the enormous winter accumulations of ice and snow, +and an ice-age would result. To this theory, again, it is objected that +we do not find the regular succession of ice-ages in the story of the +earth which the theory demands, and that there is no evidence of an +alternation of the ice between the northern and southern hemispheres. + +More recent writers have appealed to the sun itself, and supposed that +some prolonged veiling of its photosphere greatly reduced the amount of +heat emitted by it. More recently still it has been suggested that an +accumulation of cosmic or meteoric dust in our atmosphere, or between +us and the sun, had, for a prolonged period, the effect of a colossal +"fire-screen." Neither of these suppositions would explain the +localisation of the ice. In any case we need not have recourse to purely +speculative accidents in the world beyond until it is clear that there +were no changes in the earth itself which afford some explanation. + +This is by no means clear. Some writers appeal to changes in the ocean +currents. It is certain that a change in the course of the cold and +warm currents of the ocean to-day might cause very extensive changes +of climate, but there seems to be some confusion of ideas in suggesting +that this might have had an equal, or even greater, influence in former +times. Our ocean currents differ so much in temperature because the +earth is now divided into very pronounced zones of climate. These zones +did not exist before the Pliocene period, and it is not at all clear +that any redistribution of currents in earlier times could have had such +remarkable consequences. The same difficulty applies to wind-currents. + +On the other hand, we have already, in discussing the Permian +glaciation, discovered two agencies which are very effective in lowering +the temperature of the earth. One is the rise of the land; the other is +the thinning of the atmosphere. These are closely related agencies, and +we found them acting in conjunction to bring about the Permian Ice-Age. +Do we find them at work in the Pleistocene? + +It is not disputed that there was a very considerable upheaval of the +land, especially in Europe and North America, at the end of the Tertiary +Era. Every mountain chain advanced, and our Alps, Pyrenees, Himalaya, +etc., attained, for the first time, their present, or an even greater +elevation. The most critical geologists admit that Europe, as a whole, +rose 4000 feet above its earlier level. Such an elevation would be bound +to involve a great lowering of the temperature. The geniality of the +Oligocene period was due, like that of the earlier warm periods, to the +low-lying land and very extensive water-surface. These conditions were +revolutionised before the end of the Tertiary. Great mountains towered +into the snow-line, and vast areas were elevated which had formerly been +sea or swamp. + +This rise of the land involved a great decrease in the proportion of +moisture in the atmosphere. The sea surface was enormously lessened, and +the mountains would now condense the moisture into snow or cloud to a +vastly greater extent than had ever been known before There would also +be a more active circulation of the atmosphere, the moist warm winds +rushing upward towards the colder elevations and parting with their +vapour. As the proportion of moisture in the atmosphere lessened +the surface-heat would escape more freely into space, the general +temperature would fall, and the evaporation--or production of moisture +would be checked, while the condensation would continue. The prolonging +of such conditions during a geological period can be understood to have +caused the accumulation of fields of snow and ice in the higher regions. +It seems further probable that these conditions would lead to a very +considerable formation of fog and cloud, and under this protecting +canopy the glaciers would creep further down toward the plains. + +We have then to consider the possibility of a reduction of the quantity +of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere The inexpert reader probably has a +very exaggerated idea of the fall in temperature that would be required +to give Europe an Ice-Age. If our average temperature fell about 5-8 +degrees C. below the average temperature of our time it would suffice; +and it is further calculated that if the quantity of carbon-dioxide in +our atmosphere were reduced by half, we should have this required fall +in temperature. So great a reduction would not be necessary in view +of the other refrigerating agencies. Now it is quite certain that the +proportion of carbon-dioxide was greatly reduced in the Pleistocene. The +forests of the Tertiary Era would steadily reduce it, but the extensive +upheaval of the land at its close would be even more important. The +newly exposed surfaces would absorb great quantities of carbon. The +ocean, also, as it became colder, would absorb larger and larger +quantities of carbon-dioxide. Thus the Pleistocene atmosphere, gradually +relieved of its vapours and carbon-dioxide, would no longer retain +the heat at the surface. We may add that the growth of reflective +surfaces--ice, snow, cloud, etc.--would further lessen the amount of +heat received from the sun. + +Here, then, we have a series of closely related causes and effects +which would go far toward explaining, if they do not wholly suffice to +explain, the general fall of the earth's temperature. The basic cause is +the upheaval of the land--a fact which is beyond controversy, the other +agencies are very plain and recognisable consequences of the upheaval. +There are, however, many geologists who do not think this explanation +adequate. + +It is pointed out, in the first place, that the glaciation seems to +have come long after the elevation. The difficulty does not seem to +be insurmountable. The reduction of the atmospheric vapour would be +a gradual process, beginning with the later part of the elevation and +culminating long afterwards. The reduction of the carbon-dioxide would +be even more gradual. It is impossible to say how long it would take +these processes to reach a very effective stage, but it is equally +impossible to show that the interval between the upheaval and the +glaciation is greater than the theory demands. + +It is also said that we cannot on these principles understand the +repeated advance and retreat of the ice-sheet. + +This objection, again, seems to fail. It is an established fact that +the land sank very considerably during the Ice-Age, and has risen again +since the ice disappeared. We find that the crust in places sank so low +that an arctic ocean bathed the slopes of some of the Welsh mountains; +and American geologists say that their land has risen in places from +2000 to 3000 feet (Chamberlin) since the burden of ice was lifted from +it. Here we have the possibility of an explanation of the advances and +retreats of the glaciers. The refrigerating agencies would proceed +until an enormous burden of ice was laid on the land of the northern +hemisphere. The land apparently sank under the burden, the ice and snow +melted at the lower level and there was a temperate interglacial period. +But the land, relieved of its burden, rose once more, the exposed +surface absorbed further quantities of carbon, and a fresh period of +refrigeration opened. This oscillation might continue until the two sets +of opposing forces were adjusted, and the crust reached a condition of +comparative stability. + +Finally, and this is the more serious difficulty, it is said that we +cannot in this way explain the localisation of the glacial sheets. Why +should Europe and North America in particular suffer so markedly from +a general thinning of the atmosphere? The simplest answer is to suggest +that they especially shared the rise of the land. Geology is not in +a position either to prove or disprove this, and it remains only a +speculative interpretation of the fact We know at least that there was +a great uprise of land in Europe and North America in the Pliocene and +Pleistocene and may leave the precise determination of the point to a +later age. At the same time other local causes are not excluded. There +may have been a large extension of the area of atmospheric depression +which we have in the region of Greenland to-day. + +When we turn to the question of chronology we have the same acute +difference of opinion as we have found in regard to all questions of +geological time. It used to be urged, on astronomical grounds, that the +Ice-Age began about 240,000 years ago, and ended about 60,000 years +ago, but the astronomical theory is, as I said, generally abandoned. +Geologists, on the other hand, find it difficult to give even +approximate figures. Reviewing the various methods of calculation, +Professor Chamberlin concludes that the time of the first spread of the +ice-sheet is quite unknown, the second and greatest extension of the +glaciation may have been between 300,000 and a million years ago, and +the last ice-extension from 20,000 to 60,000 years ago; but he himself +attaches "very little value" to the figures. The chief ice-age was some +hundreds of thousands of years ago, that is all we can say with any +confidence. + +In dismissing the question of climate, however, we should note that a +very serious problem remains unsolved. As far as present evidence +goes we seem to be free to hold that the ice-ages which have at long +intervals invaded the chronicle of the earth were due to rises of the +land. Upheaval is the one constant and clearly recognisable feature +associated with, or preceding, ice-ages. We saw this in the case of the +Cambrian, Permian, Eocene, and Pleistocene periods of cold, and may add +that there are traces of a rise of mountains before the glaciation +of which we find traces in the middle of the Archaean Era. There are +problems still to be solved in connection with each of these very +important ages, but in the rise of the land and consequent thinning of +the atmosphere we seem to have a general clue to their occurrence. Apart +from these special periods of cold, however, we have seen that there has +been, in recent geological times, a progressive cooling of the earth, +which we have not explained. Winter seems now to be a permanent feature +of the earth's life, and polar caps are another recent, and apparently +permanent, acquisition. I find no plausible reason assigned for this. + +The suggestion that the disk of the sun is appreciably smaller since +Tertiary days is absurd; and the idea that the earth has only recently +ceased to allow its internal heat to leak through the crust is hardly +more plausible. The cause remains to be discovered. + +We turn now to consider the effect of the great Ice-Age, and the +relation of man to it. The Permian revolution, to which the Pleistocene +Ice-Age comes nearest in importance, wrought such devastation that the +overwhelming majority of living things perished. Do we find a +similar destruction of life, and selection of higher types, after the +Pleistocene perturbation? In particular, had it any appreciable effect +upon the human species? + +A full description of the effect of the great Ice-Age would occupy +a volume. The modern landscape in Europe and North America was very +largely carved and modelled by the ice-sheet and the floods that ensued +upon its melting. Hills were rounded, valleys carved, lakes formed, +gravels and soils distributed, as we find them to-day. In its vegetal +aspect, also, as we saw, the modern landscape was determined by the +Pleistocene revolution. A great scythe slowly passed over the land. When +the ice and snow had ended, and the trees and flowers, crowded in the +southern area, slowly spread once more over the virgin soil, it was only +the temperate species that could pass the zone guarded by the Alps and +the Pyrenees. On the Alps themselves the Pleistocene population still +lingers, their successful adaptation to the cold now preventing them +from descending to the plains. + +The animal world in turn was winnowed by the Pleistocene episode. The +hippopotamus, crocodile, turtle, flamingo, and other warm-loving animals +were banished to the warm zone. The mammoth and the rhinoceros met the +cold by developing woolly coats, but the disappearance of the ice, which +had tempted them to this departure, seems to have ended their fitness. +Other animals which became adapted to the cold--arctic bears, foxes, +seals, etc.--have retreated north with the ice, as the sheet melted. +For hundreds of thousands of years Europe and North America, with their +alternating glacial and interglacial periods, witnessed extraordinary +changes and minglings of their animal population. At one time +the reindeer, the mammoth, and the glutton penetrate down to the +Mediterranean, in the next phase the elephant and hippopotamus again +advance nearly to Central Europe. It is impossible here to attempt +to unravel these successive changes and migrations. Great numbers of +species were destroyed, and at length, when the climatic condition +of the earth reached a state of comparative stability, the surviving +animals settled in the geographical regions in which we find them +to-day. + +The only question into which we may enter with any fullness is that +of the relation of human development to this grave perturbation of the +condition of the globe. The problem is sometimes wrongly conceived. The +chief point to be determined is not whether man did or did not precede +the Ice-Age. As it is the general belief that he was evolved in the +Tertiary, it is clear that he existed in some part of the earth before +the Ice-Age. Whether he had already penetrated as far north as Britain +and Belgium is an interesting point, but not one of great importance. +We may, therefore, refrain from discussing at any length those disputed +crude stone implements (Eoliths) which, in the opinion of many, prove +his presence in northern regions before the close of the Tertiary. +We may also now disregard the remains of the Java Ape-Man. There are +authorities, such as Deniker, who hold that even the latest research +shows these remains to be Pliocene, but it is disputed. The Java race +may be a surviving remnant of an earlier phase of human evolution. + +The most interesting subject for inquiry is the fortune of our human and +prehuman forerunners during the Pliocene and Pleistocene periods. It may +seem that if we set aside the disputable evidence of the Eoliths and the +Java remains we can say nothing whatever on this subject. In reality a +fact of very great interest can be established. It can be shown that +the progress made during this enormous lapse of time--at least a million +years--was remarkably slow. Instead of supposing that some extraordinary +evolution took place in that conveniently obscure past, to which we can +find no parallel within known times, it is precisely the reverse. +The advance that has taken place within the historical period is far +greater, comparatively to the span of time, than that which took place +in the past. + +To make this interesting fact clearer we must attempt to measure the +progress made in the Pliocene and Pleistocene. We may assume that the +precursor of man had arrived at the anthropoid-ape level by the middle +of the Miocene period. He is not at all likely to have been behind +the anthropoid apes, and we saw that they were well developed in the +mid-Tertiary. Now we have a good knowledge of man as he was in the +later stage of the Ice-Age--at least a million years later--and may thus +institute a useful comparison and form some idea of the advance made. + +In the later stages of the Pleistocene a race of men lived in Europe of +whom we have a number of skulls and skeletons, besides vast numbers of +stone implements. It is usually known as the Neanderthal race, as the +first skeleton was found, in 1856, at Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf. +Further skeletons were found at Spy, in Belgium, and Krapina, in +Croatia. A skull formerly found at Gibraltar is now assigned to the same +race. In the last five years a jaw of the same (or an earlier) age has +been found at Mauer, near Heidelberg, and several skeletons have been +found in France (La Vezere and Chapelle-aux-Saints). From these, and a +few earlier fragments, we have a confident knowledge of the features of +this early human race. + +The highest appreciation of the Neanderthal man--a somewhat flattering +appreciation, as we shall see--is that he had reached the level of the +Australian black of to-day. The massive frontal ridges over his eyes, +the very low, retreating forehead, the throwing of the mass of the brain +toward the back of the head, the outthrust of the teeth and jaws, and +the complete absence (in some cases) or very slight development of +the chin, combine to give the head what the leading authorities call +a "bestial" or "simian" aspect. The frame is heavy, powerful, and of +moderate height (usually from two to four inches over five feet). The +thigh-bones are much more curved than in modern man. We cannot enter +here into finer anatomical details, but all the features are consistent +and indicate a stage in the evolution from ape-man to savage man. + +One point only calls for closer inquiry. Until a year or two ago it was +customary to state that in cranial capacity also--that is to say, in +the volume of brain-matter that the skull might contain--the Neanderthal +race was intermediate between the Ape-Man and modern man. We saw +above that the cranial capacity of the highest ape is about 600 cubic +centimetres, and that of the Ape-Man (variously given as 850 and 950) is +about 900. It was then added that the capacity of the Neanderthal race +was about 1200, and that of civilised man (on the average) 1600. This +seemed to be an effective and convincing indication of evolution, but +recent writers have seriously criticised it. Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, +Professor Sollas, and Dr. Keith have claimed in recent publications that +the brain of Neanderthal man was as large as, if not larger than, that +of modern man. [*] Professor Sollas even observes that "the brain increases +in volume as we go backward." This is, apparently, so serious a reversal +of the familiar statement in regard to the evolution of man that we must +consider it carefully. + + *See especially an address by Professor Sollas in the + Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, Vol. LXVI. + (1910). + + +Largeness of brain in an individual is no indication of intelligence, +and smallness of brain no proof of low mentality. Some of the greatest +thinkers, such as Aristotle and Leibnitz, had abnormally small heads. +Further, the size of the brain is of no significance whatever except in +strict relation to the size and weight of the body. Woman has five or +six ounces less brain-matter than man, but in proportion to her average +size and the weight of the vital tissue of her body (excluding fat) she +has as respectable a brain as man. When, however, these allowances have +been made, it has usually been considered that the average brain of a +race is in proportion to its average intelligence. This is not strictly +true. The rabbit has a larger proportion of brain to body than +the elephant or horse, and the canary a larger proportion than the +chimpanzee. Professor Sollas says that the average cranial capacity of +the Eskimo is 1546 cubic centimetres, or nearly that assigned to the +average Parisian. + +Clearly the question is very complex, and some of these recent +authorities conclude that the cranial capacity, or volume of the +brain, has no relation to intelligence, and therefore the size of the +Neanderthal skull neither confirms nor disturbs the theory of evolution. +The wise man will suspend his judgment until the whole question has +been fully reconsidered. But I would point out that some of the +recent criticisms are exaggerated. The Gibraltar skull is estimated +by Professor Sollas himself to have a capacity of about 1260; and his +conclusion that it is an abnormal or feminine skull rests on no positive +grounds. The Chapelle-aux-Saints skull ALONE is proved to have the high +capacity of 1620; and it is as yet not much more than a supposition that +the earlier skulls had been wrongly measured. But, further, the +great French authority, M. Boule, who measured the capacity of the +Chapelle-aux Saints skull, observes [*] that "the anomaly disappears" on +careful study. He assures us that a modern skull of the same dimensions +would have a capacity of 1800-1900 cubic centimetres, and warns us that +we must take into account the robustness of the body of primitive man. +He concludes that the real volume of the Neanderthal brain (in this +highest known specimen) is "slight in comparison with the volume of the +brain lodged in the large heads of to-day," and that the "bestial or +ape-like characters" of the race are not neutralised by this gross +measurement. + + *See his article in Anthropologie, Vol. XX. (1909), p. 257. + As Professor Sollas mainly relies on Boule, it is important + to see that there is a very great difference between the + two. + + +We must therefore hesitate to accept the statement that primitive man +had as large a brain, if not a larger brain, than a modern race. The +basis is slender, and the proportion of brain to body-tissue has not +been taken into account. On the other hand, the remains of this early +race are, Professor Sollas says, "obviously more brutal than existing +men in all the other ascertainable characters by which they differ from +them." Nor are we confined to precarious measurements of skulls. We have +the remains of the culture of this early race, and in them we have a +surer trace of its mental development. + +Here again we must proceed with caution, and set aside confused and +exaggerated statements. Some refer us to the artistic work of primitive +man. We will consider his drawings and carvings presently, but they +belong to a later race, not the Neanderthal race. Some lay stress on +the fact, apparently indicated in one or two cases out of a dozen, that +primitive man buried his dead. Professor Sollas says that it indicates +that even Neanderthal man had reached "a comparatively high stage in the +evolution of religious ideas "; but the Australians bury their dead, +and the highest authorities are not agreed whether they have any idea +whatever of a supreme being or of morality. We must also disallow +appeals to the use of fire, the taming of animals, pottery, or +clothing. None of these things are clearly found in conjunction with the +Neanderthal race. + +The only certain relic of Neanderthal culture is the implement which the +primitive savage fashioned, by chipping or pressure, of flint or other +hard stone. The fineness of some of these implements is no indication of +great intelligence. The Neanderthal man inherited a stone culture which +was already of great antiquity. At least one, if not two or three, +prolonged phases of the Old Stone Age were already over when he +appeared. On the most modest estimate men had by that time been chipping +flints for several hundred thousand years, and it is no argument of +general intelligence that some skill in the one industry of the age had +been developed. The true measure of Neanderthal man's capacity is that, +a million years or so after passing the anthropoid-age level, he chipped +his stones more finely and gave them a better edge and contour. There +is no evidence that he as yet hefted them. It is flattering to him to +compare him with the Australian aboriginal. The native art, the shields +and spears and boomerangs, and the elaborate tribal and matrimonial +arrangements of the Australian black are not known to have had any +counterpart in his life. + +It would therefore seem that the precursors of man made singularly +little, if any, progress during the vast span of time between the +Miocene and the Ice-Age, and that then something occurred which +quickened the face of human evolution. From the Neanderthal level man +will advance to the height of modern civilisation in about one-tenth +the time that it took him to advance from the level of the higher ape to +that of the lowest savage. Something has broken into the long lethargy +of his primitive career, and set him upon a progressive path. Let us see +if a careful review of the stages of his culture confirms the +natural supposition that this "something" was the fall in the earth's +temperature, and how it may have affected him. + + + +CHAPTER XX. THE DAWN OF CIVILISATION + +The story of man before the discovery of metal and the attainment of +civilisation is notoriously divided into a Palaeolithic (Old Stone) Age, +and a Neolithic (New Stone) Age. Each of these ages is now subdivided +into stages, which we will review in succession. But it is important +to conceive the whole story of man in more correct proportion than this +familiar division suggests. The historical or civilised period is now +computed at about ten thousand years. The Neolithic Age, which preceded +civilisation, is usually believed to be about four or five times as +long, though estimates of its duration vary from about twenty to a +hundred thousand years. The Palaeolithic Age in turn is regarded as at +least three or four times as long as the Neolithic; estimates of time +vary from a hundred to five hundred thousand years. And before this +there is the vast stretch of time in which the ape slowly became a +primitive human. + +This long, early period is, as we saw, still wrapped in mist and +controversy. A few bones tell of a race living, in semi-human shape, in +the region of the Indian Ocean; a few crude stones are held by many to +indicate that a more advanced, but very lowly race, wandered over the +south of Europe and north of Africa before the Ice-Age set in. The +starting-point or cradle of the race is not known. The old idea of +seeking the patriarchal home on the plains to the north of India is +abandoned, and there is some tendency to locate it in the land which has +partly survived in the islands of the Indian Ocean. The finding of early +remains in Java is not enough to justify that conclusion, but it obtains +a certain probability when we notice the geographical distribution of +the Primates. The femurs and the apes are found to-day in Africa and +Asia alone; the monkeys have spread eastward to America and westward to +Europe and Africa; the human race has spread north-eastward into Asia +and America, northwestward into Europe, westward into Africa, and +southward to Australia and the islands. This distribution suggests +a centre in the Indian Ocean, where there was much more land in the +Tertiary Era than there is now. We await further exploration in that +region and Africa. + +There is nothing improbable in the supposition that man wandered into +Europe in the Tertiary, and has left in the Eoliths the memorials of his +lowly condition. The anthropoid apes certainly reached France. However +that may be, the Ice-Age would restrict all the Primates to the south. +It will be seen, on a glance at the map, that a line of ice-clad +mountains would set a stern barrier to man's advance in the early +Pleistocene, from the Pyrenees to the Himalaya, if not to the Pacific. +He therefore spread westward and southward. One branch wandered into +Australia, and was afterwards pressed by more advanced invaders (the +present blacks of Australia) into Tasmania, which seems to have been +still connected by land. Another branch, or branches, spread into +Africa, to be driven southward, or into the central forests, by later +and better equipped invaders. They survive, little changed (except by +recent contact with Europeans), in the Bushmen and in large populations +of Central Africa which are below the level of tribal organisation. +Others remained in the islands, and we seem to have remnants of them +in the Kalangs, Veddahs, etc. But these islands have been repeatedly +overrun by higher races, and the primitive life has been modified. + +Comparing the most isolated of these relics of early humanity, we obtain +many suggestions about the life of that remote age. The aboriginal +Tasmanians, who died out about forty years ago, were of great +evolutionary interest. It is sometimes said that man is distinguished +from all other animals by the possession of abstract ideas, but the very +imperfect speech of the Tasmanians expressed no abstract ideas. Their +mind seems to have been in an intermediate stage of development. They +never made fire, and, like the other surviving fragments of early +humanity, they had no tribal organisation, and no ideas of religion or +morality. + +The first effect of the Ice-Age on this primitive humanity would be to +lead to a beginning of the development of racial characters. The pigment +under the skin of the negro is a protection against the actinic rays +of the tropical sun; the white man, with his fair hair and eyes, is a +bleached product of the northern regions; and the yellow or brown skin +seems to be the outcome of living in dry regions with great extremes +of temperature. As the northern hemisphere divided into climatic zones +these physical characters were bound to develop. The men who went +southward developed, especially when fully exposed to the sun on open +plains, the layer of black pigment which marks the negroid type. There +is good reason, as we shall see to think that man did not yet wear +clothing, though he had a fairly conspicuous, if dwindling, coat +of hair. On the other hand the men who lingered further north, in +South-western Asia and North Africa, would lose what pigment they +had, and develop the lighter characters of the northerner. It has been +noticed that even a year in the arctic circle has a tendency to make +the eyes of explorers light blue. We may look for the genesis of +the vigorous, light-complexioned races along the fringe of the great +ice-sheet. It must be remembered that when the limit of the ice-sheet +was in Central Germany and Belgium, the climate even of North Africa +would be very much more temperate than it is to-day. + +As the ice-sheet melted, the men who were adapted to living in the +temperate zone to the south of it penetrated into Europe, and the long +story of the Old Stone Age opened. It must not, of course, be supposed +that this stage of human culture only began with the invasion of Europe. +Men would bring their rough art of fashioning implements with them, but +the southern regions are too little explored to inform us of the earlier +stage. But as man enters Europe he begins to drop his flints on a soil +that we have constant occasion to probe--although the floor on which +he trod is now sometimes forty or fifty feet below the surface--and we +obtain a surer glimpse of the fortunes of our race. + +Most European geologists count four distinct extensions of the +ice-sheet, with three interglacial periods. It is now generally believed +that man came north in the third interglacial period; though some high +authorities think that he came in the second. As far as England is +concerned, it has been determined, under the auspices of the British +Association, that our oldest implements (apart from the Eoliths) are +later than the great ice-sheet, but there is some evidence that they +precede the last extension of the ice. + +Two stages are distinguished in this first part of the Palaeolithic +Age--the Acheulean and Chellean--but it will suffice for our purpose to +take the two together as the earlier and longer section of the Old Stone +Age. It was a time of temperate, if not genial, climate. The elephant +(an extinct type), the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the hyaena, and +many other forms of animal life that have since retired southward, were +neighbours of the first human inhabitant of Europe. Unfortunately, we +have only one bone of this primitive race, the jaw found at Mauer in +1907, but its massive size and chinless contour suggest a being midway +between the Java man and the Neanderthal race. His culture confirms the +supposition. There is at this stage no clear trace of fire, clothing, +arrows, hefted weapons, spears, or social life. As the implements are +generally found on old river-banks or the open soil, not in caves, we +seem to see a squat and powerful race wandering, homeless and unclad, +by the streams and broad, marshy rivers of the time. The Thames and the +Seine had not yet scooped out the valleys on the slopes of which London +and Paris are built. + +This period seems, from the vast number of stone implements referred to +it, to have lasted a considerable time. There is a risk in venturing to +give figures, but it may be said that few authorities would estimate it +at less than a hundred thousand years. Man still advanced with very +slow and uncertain steps, his whole progress in that vast period being +measured by the invention of one or two new forms of stone implements +and a little more skill in chipping them. At its close a great +chill comes over Europe--the last ice-sheet is, it seems, spreading +southward--and we enter the Mousterian period and encounter the +Neanderthal race which we described in the preceding chapter. + +It must be borne in mind that the whole culture of primitive times is +crushed into a few feet of earth. The anthropologist is therefore quite +unable to show us the real succession of human stages, and has to be +content with a division of the whole long and gradual evolution into a +few well-marked phases. These phases, however, shade into each other, +and are merely convenient measurements of a continuous story. The +Chellean man has slowly advanced to a high level. There is no sudden +incoming of a higher culture or higher type of man. The most impressive +relics of the Mousterian period, which represent its later epoch, are +merely finely chipped implements. There is no art as yet, no pottery, +and no agriculture; and there is no clear trace of the use of fire or +clothing, though we should be disposed to put these inventions in the +chilly and damp Mousterian period. There is therefore no ground for +resenting the description, "the primeval savage," which has been applied +to early man. The human race is already old, yet, as we saw, it is +hardly up to the level of the Australian black. The skeleton found at +Chapelle-aux-Saints is regarded as the highest known type of the race, +yet the greatest authority on it, M. Boule, says emphatically: "In no +actual race do we find the characters of inferiority--that is to say, +the ape-like features--which we find in the Chapelle-aux-Saints head." +The largeness of the head is in proportion to the robust frame, but +in its specifically human part--the front--it is very low and bestial; +while the heavy ridges over the large eyes, the large flat stumpy nose, +the thick bulge of the lips and teeth, and the almost chinless jaw, show +that the traces of his ancestry cling close to man after some hundreds +of thousands of years of development. + +The cold increases as we pass to the last part of the Old Stone Age, the +Solutrean and Magdalenian periods; and nothing is clearer than that the +pace of development increases at the same time. Short as the period is, +in comparison with the preceding, it witnesses a far greater advance +than had been made in all the rest of the Old Stone Age. Beyond a doubt +men now live in caves, in large social groups, make clothing from the +skins of animals, have the use of fire, and greatly improve the quality +of their stone axes, scrapers, knives, and lance-heads. There is at +last some promise of the civilisation that is coming. In the soil of +the caverns in which man lived, especially in Southern France and the +Pyrenean region, we find the debris of a much larger and fuller life. +Even the fine bone needles with which primitive man sewed his skin +garments, probably with sinews for thread, survive in scores. In other +places we find the ashes of the fires round which he squatted, often +associated with the bones of the wild horses, deer, etc., on which he +lived. + +But the most remarkable indication of progress in the "cave-man" is his +artistic skill. Exaggerated conclusions are sometimes drawn from the +statuettes, carvings, and drawings which we find among the remains of +Magdalenian life. Most of them are crude, and have the limitations of a +rustic or a child artist. There is no perspective, no grouping. Animals +are jumbled together, and often left unfinished because the available +space was not measured. There are, however, some drawings--cut on bone +or horn or stone with a flint implement--which evince great skill in +line-drawing and, in a few cases, in composition. Some of the caves +also are more or less frescoed; the outlines of animals, sometimes of +life-size and in great numbers, are cut in the wall, and often filled in +with pigment. This skill does not imply any greater general intelligence +than the rest of the culture exhibits. It implies persistent and +traditional concentration upon the new artistic life. The men who drew +the "reindeer of Thayngen" and carved the remarkable statuettes of women +in ivory or stone, were ignorant of the simplest rudiments of pottery or +agriculture, which many savage tribes possess. + +Some writers compare them with the Eskimo of to-day, and even suggest +that the Eskimo are the survivors of the race, retreating northward with +the last ice-sheet, and possibly egged onward by a superior race from +the south. It is, perhaps, not a very extravagant claim that some +hundreds of thousands of years of development--we are now only a few +tens of thousands of years from the dawn of civilisation--had lifted +man to the level of the Eskimo, yet one must hesitate to admit +the comparison. Lord Avebury reproduces an Eskimo drawing, or +picture-message, in his "Prehistoric Times," to which it would be +difficult to find a parallel in Magdalenian remains. I do not mean +that the art is superior, but the complex life represented on the +picture-message, and the intelligence with which it is represented, are +beyond anything that we know of Palaeolithic man. I may add that nearly +all the drawings and statues of men and women which the Palaeolithic +artist has left us are marked by the intense sexual exaggeration--the +"obscenity," in modern phraseology--which we are apt to find in coarse +savages. + +Three races are traced in this period. One, identified by skeletons +found at Mentone and by certain statuettes, was negroid in character. +Probably there was an occasional immigration from Africa. Another race +(Cro-Magnon) was very tall, and seems to represent an invasion from some +other part of the earth toward the close of the Old Stone Age. The third +race, which is compared to the Eskimo, and had a stature of about five +feet, seem to be the real continuers of the Palaeolithic man of Europe. +Curiously enough, we have less authentic remains of this race than +of its predecessor, and can only say that, as we should expect, the +ape-like features--the low forehead, the heavy frontal ridges, the +bulging teeth, etc.--are moderating. The needles we have found--round, +polished, and pierced splinters of bone, sometimes nearly as fine as a +bodkin--show indisputably that man then had clothing, but it is curious +that the artist nearly always draws him nude. There is also generally a +series of marks round the contour of the body to indicate that he had a +conspicuous coat of hair. Unfortunately, the faces of the men are merely +a few unsatisfactory gashes in the bone or horn, and do not picture +this interesting race to us. The various statuettes of women generally +suggest a type akin to the wife of the Bushman. + +We have, in fine, a race of hunters, with fine stone knives and +javelins. Toward the close of the period we find a single representation +of an arrow, which was probably just coming into use, but it is not +generally known in the Old Stone Age. One of the drawings seems to +represent a kind of bridle on a horse, but we need more evidence than +this to convince us that the horse was already tamed, nor is there any +reason to suppose that the dog or reindeer had been tamed, or that the +ground was tilled even in the most rudimentary way. Artistic skill, the +use of clothing and fire, and a finer feeling in the shaping of weapons +and implements, are the highest certain indications of the progress made +by the end of the Old Stone Age. + +But there was probably an advance made which we do not find recorded, +or only equivocally recorded, in the memorials of the age. Speech was +probably the greatest invention of Magdalenian man. It has been pointed +out that the spine in the lower jaw, to which the tongue-muscle is +attached, is so poorly developed in Palaeolithic man that we may +infer from it the absence of articulate speech. The deduction has been +criticised, but a comparison of the Palaeolithic jaw with that of the +ape on one hand and modern man on the other gives weight to it. Whatever +may have been earlier man's power of expression, the closer social life +of the Magdalenian period would lead to a great development of it. Some +writers go so far as to suggest that certain obscure marks painted +on pebbles or drawn on the cavern-walls by men at the close of the +Palaeolithic Age may represent a beginning of written language, or +numbers, or conventional signs. The interpretation of these is obscure +and doubtful. It is not until ages afterwards that we find the first +clear traces of written language, and then they take the form of +pictographs (like the Egyptian hieroglyphics or the earliest Chinese +characters). + +We cannot doubt, however, that articulate speech would be rapidly +evolved in the social life of the later Magdalenian period, and the +importance of this acquisition can hardly be exaggerated. Imagine even a +modern community without the device of articulate language. A very large +proportion of the community, who are now maintained at a certain level +by the thought of others, communicated to them by speech, would sink +below the civilised standard, and the transmission and improvement of +ideas would be paralysed. It would not be paradoxical to regard the +social life and developing speech of Magdalenian man as the chief cause +of the rapid advance toward civilisation which will follow in the next +period. + +And it is not without interest to notice that a fall in the temperature +of the earth is the immediate cause of this social life. The building +of homes of any kind seems to be unknown to Magdalenian man. The artist +would have left us some sketchy representation of it if there had been +anything in the nature of a tent in his surroundings. The rock-shelter +and the cave are the homes which men seek from the advancing cold. As +these are relatively few in number, fixed in locality, and often of +large dimensions, the individualism of the earlier times is replaced by +collective life. Sociologists still dispute whether the clan arose +by the cohesion of families or the family arose within the clan. Such +evidence as is afforded by prehistoric remains is entirely in favour +of the opinion of Professor Westermarck, that the family preceded the +larger group. Families of common descent would now cling together and +occupy a common cavern, and, when the men gathered at night with the +women for the roasting and eating of the horse or deer they had hunted, +and the work of the artist and the woman was considered, the uncouth +muttering and gesticulating was slowly forged into the great instrument +of articulate speech. The first condition of more rapid progress was +instinctively gained. + +Our story of life has so often turned on this periodical lowering of the +climate of the earth that it is interesting to find this last and most +important advance so closely associated with it that we are forced +once more to regard it as the effective cause. The same may be said of +another fundamental advance of the men of the later Palaeolithic age, +the discovery of the art of making fire. It coincides with the oncoming +of the cold, either in the Mousterian or the Magdalenian. It was more +probably a chance discovery than an invention. Savages so commonly make +fire by friction--rubbing sticks, drills, etc.--that one is naturally +tempted to regard this as the primitive method. I doubt if this was the +case. When, in Neolithic times, men commonly bury the dead, and put some +of their personal property in the grave with them, the fire-kindling +apparatus we find is a flint and a piece of iron pyrites. Palaeolithic +man made his implements of any kind of hard and heavy stone, and it +is probable that he occasionally selected iron ore for the purpose. +An attempt to chip it with flint would cause sparks that might fall on +inflammable material, and set it alight. Little intelligence would be +needed to turn this discovery to account. + +Apart from these conjectures as to particular features in the life +of prehistoric man, it will be seen that we have now a broad and firm +conception of its evolution. From the ape-level man very slowly mounts +to the stage of human savagery. During long ages he seems to have made +almost no progress. There is nothing intrinsically progressive in his +nature. Let a group of men be isolated at any stage of human evolution, +and placed in an unchanging environment, and they will remain stationary +for an indefinite period. When Europeans began to traverse the globe in +the last few centuries, they picked up here and there little groups of +men who had, in their isolation, remained just where their fathers had +been when they quitted the main road of advance in the earlier stages +of the Old Stone Age. The evolution of man is guided by the same laws +as the evolution of any other species. Thus we can understand the long +period of stagnation, or of incalculably slow advance. Thus, too, we can +understand why, at length, the pace of man toward his unconscious goal +is quickened. He is an inhabitant of the northern hemisphere, and +the northern hemisphere is shaken by the last of the great geological +revolutions. From its first stress emerges the primeval savage of the +early part of the Old Stone Age, still bearing the deep imprint of his +origin, surpassing his fellow-animals only in the use of crude stone +implements. Then the stress of conditions relaxes--the great ice-sheet +disappears--and again during a vast period he makes very little +progress. The stress returns. The genial country is stripped and +impoverished, and the reindeer and mammoth spread to the south of +Europe. But once more the adversity has its use, and man, stimulated +in his hunt for food, invigorated by the cold, driven into social life, +advances to the culmination of the Old Stone Age. + +We are still very far from civilisation, but the few tens of thousands +of years that separate Magdalenian man from it will be traversed with +relative speed--though, we should always remember, with a speed far +less than the pace at which man is advancing to-day. A new principle now +enters into play: a specifically human law of evolution is formulated. +It has no element of mysticism, and is merely an expression of the fact +that the previous general agencies of development have created in man +an intelligence of a higher grade than that of any other animal. In his +larger and more plastic brain the impressions received from the outer +world are blended in ideas, and in his articulate speech he has a unique +means of entering the idea-world of his fellows. The new principle +of evolution, which arises from this superiority, is that man's chief +stimulus to advance will now come from his cultural rather than his +physical environment. Physical surroundings will continue to affect +him. One race will outstrip another because of its advantage in soil, +climate, or geographical position. But the chief key to the remaining +and more important progress of mankind, which we are about to review, is +the stimulating contact of the differing cultures of different races. + +This will be seen best in the history of civilisation, but the principle +may be recognised in the New Stone Age which leads from primeval +savagery to civilisation, or, to be more accurate and just, to the +beginning of the historical period. It used to be thought that there was +a mysterious blank or gulf between the Old and the New Stone Age. +The Palaeolithic culture seemed to come to an abrupt close, and the +Neolithic culture was sharply distinguished from it. It was suspected +that some great catastrophe had destroyed the Palaeolithic race in +Europe, and a new race entered as the adverse conditions were removed. +This was especially held to be the case in England. The old Palaeolithic +race had never reached Ireland, which seems to have been cut oft from +the Continent during the Ice-Age, and most of the authorities still +believe--in spite of some recent claims--that it never reached Scotland. +England itself was well populated, and the remains found in the caves +of Derbyshire show that even the artist--or his art--had reached that +district. This Palaeolithic race seemed to come to a mysterious end, +and Europe was then invaded by the higher Neolithic race. England was +probably detached from the Continent about the end of the Magdalenian +period. It was thought that some great devastation--the last ice-sheet, +a submersion of the land, or a plague--then set in, and men were unable +to retreat south. + +It is now claimed by many authorities that there are traces of a +Middle Stone (Mesolithic) period even in England, and nearly all the +authorities admit that such a transitional stage can be identified +in the Pyrenean region. This region had been the great centre of the +Magdalenian culture. Its large frescoed caverns exhibit the culmination +of the Old Stone life, and afford many connecting links with the new. +It is, however, a clearly established and outstanding fact that the +characteristic art of Magdalenian man comes to an abrupt and complete +close, and it does not seem possible to explain this without supposing +that the old race was destroyed or displaced. If we could accept +the view that it was the Eskimo-like race of the Palaeolithic that +cultivated this art, and that they retreated north with the reindeer +and the ice, and survive in our Eskimo, we should have a plausible +explanation. In point of fact, we find no trace whatever of this slow +migration from the south of Europe to the north. The more probable +supposition is that a new race, with more finished stone implements, +entered Europe, imposed its culture upon the older race, and gradually +exterminated or replaced it. We may leave it open whether a part of the +old race retreated to the north, and became the Eskimo. + +Whence came the new race and its culture? It will be seen on reflection +that we have so far been studying the evolution of man in Europe only, +because there alone are his remains known with any fullness. But the +important region which stretches from Morocco to Persia must have been +an equally, if not more, important theatre of development. While Europe +was shivering in the last stage of the Ice-Age, and the mammoth and +reindeer browsed in the snows down to the south of France, this +region would enjoy an excellent climate and a productive soil. We may +confidently assume that there was a large and stirring population of +human beings on it during the Magdalenian cold. We may, with many of the +authorities, look to this temperate and fertile region for the slight +advance made by early Neolithic man beyond his predecessor. As the cold +relaxed, and the southern fringe of dreary steppe w as converted once +more into genial country, the race would push north. There is evidence +that there were still land bridges across the Mediterranean. From Spain +and the south of France this early Neolithic race rapidly spread over +Europe. + +It must not be supposed that the New Stone Age at first goes much beyond +the Old in culture. Works on prehistoric man are apt to give as features +of "Neolithic man" all that we know him to have done or discovered +during the whole of the New Stone Age. We read that he not only gave a +finer finish to, and sometimes polished, his stone weapons, but built +houses, put imposing monuments over his dead, and had agriculture, tame +cattle, pottery, and weaving. This is misleading, as the more advanced +of these accomplishments appear only late in the New Stone Age. The +only difference we find at first is that the stone axes, etc., are more +finely chipped or flaked, and are frequently polished by rubbing on +stone moulds. There is no sudden leap in culture or intelligence in the +story of man. + +It would be supremely interesting to trace the evolution of human +industries and ideas during the few tens of thousands of years of the +New Stone Age. During that time moral and religious ideas are largely +developed, political or social forms are elaborated, and the arts of +civilised man have their first rude inauguration. The foundations of +civilisation are laid. Unfortunately, precisely because the period is +relatively so short and the advance so rapid, its remains are crushed +and mingled in a thin seam of the geological chronicle, and we cannot +restore the gradual course of its development with any confidence. +Estimates of its duration vary from 20,000 to 70,000 years; though +Sir W. Turner has recently concluded, from an examination of marks +on Scottish monuments, that Neolithic man probably came on foot from +Scandinavia to Scotland, and most geologists would admit that it must be +at least a hundred thousand years since one could cross from Norway +to Scotland on foot. As usual, we must leave open the question of +chronology, and be content with a modest provisional estimate of 40,000 +or 50,000 years. + +We dimly perceive the gradual advance of human culture in this important +period. During the Old Stone Age man had made more progress than he had +made in the preceding million years; during the New Stone Age--at least +one-fourth as long as the Old--he made even greater progress; and, we +may add, in the historical period, which is one-fourth the length of the +Neolithic Age, he will make greater progress still. The pace of advance +naturally increases as intelligence grows, but that is not the whole +explanation. The spread of the race, the gathering of its members into +tribes, and the increasing enterprise of men in hunting and migration, +lead to incessant contacts of different cultures and a progressive +stimulation. + +At first Neolithic man is content with finer weapons. His stone axe is +so finely shaped and polished that it sometimes looks like forged or +moulded metal. He also drills a clean hole through it--possibly by means +of a stick working in wet sand--and gives it a long wooden handle. He +digs in the earth for finer flints, and in some of his ancient shafts +(Grimes, Graves and Cissbury) we find picks of reindeer horn +and hollowed blocks of chalk in which he probably burned fat for +illumination underground. But in the later part of the Neolithic--to +which much of this finer work also may belong--we find him building +huts, rearing large stone monuments, having tame dogs and pigs and oxen, +growing corn and barley, and weaving primitive fabrics. He lives in +large and strong villages, round which we must imagine his primitive +cornfields growing and his cattle grazing, and in which there must have +been some political organisation under chiefs. + +When we wish to trace the beginning of these inventions we have the same +difficulty that we experienced in tracing the first stages of new animal +types. The beginning takes place in some restricted region, and our +casual scratching of the crust of the earth or the soil may not touch +it for ages, if it has survived at all. But for our literature and +illustrations a future generation would be equally puzzled to know how +we got the idea of the aeroplane or the electric light. In some cases we +can make a good guess at the origin of Neolithic man's institutions. Let +us take pottery. Palaeolithic man cooked his joint of horse or reindeer, +and, no doubt, scorched it. Suppose that some Palaeolithic Soyer had +conceived the idea of protecting the joint, and preserving its juices, +by daubing it with a coat of clay. He would accidentally make a clay +vessel. This is Mr. Clodd's ingenious theory of the origin of pottery. +The development of agriculture is not very puzzling. The seed of corn +would easily be discovered to have a food-value, and the discovery of +the growth of the plant from the seed would not require a very high +intelligence. Some ants, we may recall, have their fungus-beds. It would +be added by many that the ant gives us another parallel in its keeping +of droves of aphides, which it "milks." But it is now doubted if the ant +deliberately cultivates the aphides with this aim. Early weaving might +arise from the plaiting of grasses. If wild flax were used, it might be +noticed that part of it remained strong when the rest decayed, and so +the threads might be selected and woven. + +The building of houses, after living for ages in stone caverns, would +not be a very profound invention. The early houses were--as may be +gathered from the many remains in Devonshire and Cornwall--mere rings of +heaped stones, over which, most probably, was put a roof of branches or +reeds, plastered with mud. They belong to the last part of the New Stone +Age. In other places, chiefly Switzerland, Neolithic man lived in wooden +huts built on piles in the shallow shores of lakes. It is an evidence +that life on land is becoming as stimulating as we find it in the age of +Deinosaurs or early mammals. These pile-villages of Switzerland lasted +until the historical period, and the numerous remains in the mud of the +lake show the gradual passage into the age of metal. + +Before the metal age opened, however, there seem to have been fresh +invasions of Europe and changes of its culture. The movements of the +various early races of men are very obscure, and it would be useless +to give here even an outline of the controversy. Anthropologists have +generally taken the relative length and width of the skull as a standard +feature of a race, and distinguished long-headed (dolichocephalic), +short-headed (brachycephalic), and middle-headed (mesaticephalic) races. +Even on this test the most divergent conclusions were reached in regard +to early races, and now the test itself is seriously disputed. Some +authorities believe that there is no unchanging type of skull in a +particular race, but that, for instance, a long-headed race may become +short-headed by going to live in an elevated region. + +It may be said, in a few words, that it is generally believed that two +races invaded Europe and displaced the first Neolithic race. The race +which chiefly settled in the Swiss region is generally believed to have +come from Asia, and advanced across Europe by way of the valley of the +Danube. The native home of the wheat and barley and millet, which, as +we know, the lake-dwellers cultivated, is said to be Asia. On the other +hand, the Neolithic men who have left stone monuments on our soil are +said to be a different race, coming, by way of North Africa, from Asia, +and advancing along the west of Europe to Scandinavia. A map of the +earth, on which the distribution of these stone monuments--all probably +connected with the burial of the dead--is indicated, suggests such a +line of advance from India, with a slighter branch eastward. But the +whole question of these invasions is disputed, and there are many who +regard the various branches of the population of Europe as sections of +one race which spread upward from the shores of the Mediterranean. + +It is clear at least that there were great movements of population, much +mingling of types and commercial interchange of products, so that we +have the constant conditions of advance. A last invasion seems to have +taken place some two or three thousand years before the Christian era, +when the Aryans overspread Europe. After all the controversy about the +Aryans it seems clear that a powerful race, representing the ancestors +of most of the actual peoples of Europe and speaking the dialects which +have been modified into the related languages of the Greeks, Romans, +Germans, Celts, Lithuanians, etc., imposed its speech on nearly the +whole of the continent. Only in the Basques and Picts do we seem to find +some remnants of the earlier non-Aryan tongues. But whether these Aryans +really came from Asia, as it used to be thought, or developed in the +east of Europe, is uncertain. We seem justified in thinking that a very +robust race had been growing in numbers and power during the Neolithic +Age, somewhere in the region of South-east Europe and Southwest Asia, +and that a few thousand years before the Christian Era one branch of +it descended upon India, another upon the Persian region, and another +overspread Europe. We will return to the point later. Instead of being +the bearers of a higher civilisation, these primitive Aryans seem to +have been lower in culture than the peoples on whom they fell. + +The Neolithic Age had meantime passed into the Age of Metal. Copper was +probably the first metal to be used. It is easily worked, and is found +in nature. But the few copper implements we possess do not suggest a +"Copper Age" of any length or extent. It was soon found, apparently, +that an admixture of tin hardened the copper, and the Bronze Age +followed. The use of bronze was known in Egypt about 4800 B.C. (Flinders +Petrie), but little used until about 2000 B.C. By that time (or a few +centuries later) it had spread as far as Scandinavia and Britain. The +region of invention is not known, but we have large numbers of beautiful +specimens of bronze work--including brooches and hair-pins--in all parts +of Europe. Finally, about the thirteenth century B.C., we find the first +traces of the use of iron. The first great centre for the making of iron +weapons seems to have been Hallstatt, in the Austrian Alps, whence it +spread slowly over Europe, reaching Scandinavia and Britain between +500 and 300 B.C. But the story of man had long before this entered the +historical period, to which we now turn. + + + +CHAPTER XXI. EVOLUTION IN HISTORY + +In the preceding chapters I have endeavoured to show how, without +invoking any "definitely directed variations," which we seem to have +little chance of understanding, we may obtain a broad conception of the +way in which the earth and its living inhabitants came to be what they +are. No one is more conscious than the writer that this account is +extremely imperfect. The limits of the volume have permitted me to use +only a part of the material which modern science affords, but if the +whole of our discoveries were described the sketch would still remain +very imperfect. The evolutionary conception of the world is itself +undergoing evolution in the mind of man. Age by age the bits of fresh +discovery are fitted into the great mosaic. Large areas are still +left for the scientific artist of the future to fill. Yet even in +its imperfect state the evolutionary picture of the world is most +illuminating. The questions that have been on the lips of thoughtful men +since they first looked out with adult eyes on the panorama of nature +are partly answered. Whence and Why are no longer sheer riddles of the +sphinx. + +It remains to be seen if evolutionary principles will throw at least an +equal light on the progress of humanity in the historical period. +Here again the questions, Whence and Why, have been asked in vain for +countless ages. If man is a progressive animal, why has the progress +been confined to some of the race? If humanity shared at first a common +patrimony, why have the savages remained savages, and the barbarians +barbaric? Why has progress been incarnated so exceptionally in the white +section of the race, the Europeans? We approach these questions more +confidently after surveying the story of terrestrial life in the light +of evolutionary principles. Since the days of the primeval microbe it +has happened that a few were chosen and many were left behind. There was +no progressive element in the advancing few that was not shared by the +stagnant many. The difference lay in the environment. Let us see if this +principle applies to the history of civilisation. + +In the last chapter I observed that, with the rise of human +intelligence, the cultural environment becomes more important than the +physical. Since human progress is a progress in ideas and the emotions +which accompany them, this may seem to be a truism. In point of fact it +is assailed by more than one recent historical writer. The scepticism +is partly due to a misunderstanding. No one but a fanatical adherent of +extreme theories of heredity will deny that the physical surroundings of +a race continue to be of great importance. The progress of a particular +people may often be traced in part to its physical environment; +especially to changes of environment, by migration, for instance. +Further, it is not for a moment suggested that a race never evolves its +own culture, but has always to receive it from another. If we said that, +we should be ultimately driven to recognise culture, like the early +Chinese, as a gift of the gods. What is meant is that the chief key to +the progress of certain peoples, the arrest of progress in others, +and the entire absence of progress in others, is the study of their +relations with, or isolation from, other peoples. They make progress +chiefly according to the amount of stimulation they get by contact with +a diverse culture. + +Let us see if this furnishes a broad explanation of the position of the +various peoples of the world. The Ethnologist tells us that the +lowest peoples of the earth are the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, the +Hottentots, a number of little-understood peoples in Central Africa, +the wild Veddahs of Ceylon, the (extinct) Tasmanians, the Aetas in the +interior of the Philippines, and certain fragments of peoples on islands +of the Indian Ocean. There is not the least trace of a common element +in the environment of these peoples to explain why they have remained +at the level of primitive humanity. Many of them lived in the most +promising and resourceful surroundings. What is common to them all is +their isolation from the paths of later humanity. They represent the +first wave of human distribution, pressed to the tips of continents or +on islands by later waves, and isolated. The position of the Veddahs +is, to some extent, an exception; and it is interesting to find that the +latest German students of that curious people think that they have been +classed too low by earlier investigators. + +We cannot run over all the peoples of the earth in this way, but will +briefly glance at the lower races of the various continents. A branch +of the second phase of developing humanity, the negroid stock, spread +eastward over the Asiatic islands and Australia, and westward into +Africa. The extreme wing of this army, the Australian blacks, too +clearly illustrates the principle to need further reference. It has +retained for ages the culture of the middle Palaeolithic. The negritos +who penetrated to the Philippines are another extreme instance of +isolation. The Melanesians of the islands of the Indian and Pacific +Ocean are less low, because those islands have been slowly crossed by +a much higher race, the Polynesians. The Maoris of New Zealand, the +Tongans, Hawaians, etc., are people of our own (Caucasic) stock, +probably diverging to the south-east while our branch of the stock +pressed westward. This not only explains the higher condition of the +Maoris, etc., but also shows why they have not advanced like their +European cousins. Their environment is one of the finest in the world, +but--it lies far away from the highways of culture. + +In much the same way can we interpret the swarming peoples of Africa. +The more primitive peoples which arrived first, and were driven south or +into the central forests by the later and better equipped invaders from +the central zone, have remained the more primitive. The more northern +peoples, on the fringe of, or liable to invasion from, the central +zone, have made more advance, and have occasionally set up rudimentary +civilisations. But the movements from the north to the south in early +historical times are too obscure to enable us to trace the action of +the principle more clearly. The peoples of the Mediterranean fringe +of Africa, living in the central zone of stimulation, have proved very +progressive. Under the Romans North Africa was at least as civilised as +Britain, and an equally wise and humane European policy might lead to +their revival to-day. + +When we turn to Asia we encounter a mass of little-understood peoples +and a few civilisations with obscure histories, but we have a fairly +clear application of the principle. The northern, more isolated +peoples, are the more primitive; the north-eastern, whose isolation +is accentuated by a severe environment, are most primitive of all. The +Eskimo, whether they are the survivors of the Magdalenian race or a +regiment thrown off the Asiatic army as it entered America, remain at +the primitive level. The American peoples in turn accord with this view. +Those which penetrate furthest south remain stagnant or deteriorate; +those which remain in the far north remain below the level of +civilisation, because the land-bridge to Asia breaks down; but those +which settle in Central America evolve a civilisation. A large zone, +from Mexico to Peru, was overspread by this civilisation, and it was +advancing steadily when European invaders destroyed it, and reduced the +civilised Peruvians to the Quichas of to-day. + +There remain the civilisations of Asia, and here we have a new and +interesting aspect of the question. How did these civilisations develop +in Asia, and how is it that they have remained stagnant for ages, while +Europe advanced? The origin of the Asiatic civilisations is obscure. +The common idea of their vast antiquity has no serious ground. The +civilisation of Japan cannot be traced back beyond about the eighth +century B.C. Even then the population was probably a mixed flotsam from +neighbouring lands--Ainus, Koreans, Chinese, and Malays. What was the +character of the primitive civilisation resulting from the mixture +of these different cultures we do not know. But the chief elements +of Japanese civilisation came later from China. Japan had no written +language of any kind until it received one from China about the sixth +century of the Christian Era. + +The civilisation of China itself goes back at least to about 2300 +B.C., but we cannot carry it further back with any confidence. The +authorities, endeavouring to pick their steps carefully among old +Chinese legends, are now generally agreed that the primitive Chinese +were a nomadic tribe which slowly wandered across Asia from about the +shores of the Caspian Sea. In other words, they started from a region +close to the cradle of western civilisation. Some students, in +fact, make them akin to the Akkadians, who founded civilisation in +Mesopotamia. At all events, they seem to have conveyed a higher culture +to the isolated inhabitants of Western Asia, and a long era of progress +followed their settlement in a new environment. For more than two +thousand years, however, they have been enclosed in their walls and +mountains and seas, while the nations of the remote west clashed +unceasingly against each other. We need no other explanation of their +stagnation. To speak of the "unprogressiveness" of the Chinese is pure +mysticism. The next generation will see. + +The civilisation of India is also far later than the civilisation of the +west, and seems to be more clearly due to borrowing from the west. The +primitive peoples who live on the hills about India, or in the jungles, +are fragments, apparently, of the Stone Age inhabitants of India, or +their descendants. Their culture may have degenerated under the adverse +conditions of dislodgement from their home, but we may fairly conclude +that it was never high. On these primitive inhabitants of the plains +of India there fell, somewhere about or before 1000 B.C., the Asiatic +branch of the Aryan race. + +A very recent discovery (1908) has strongly confirmed and illumined this +view of the origin of Indian civilisation. Explorers in the ruins of the +ancient capital of the Hittite Empire (in North Syria and Cappadocia) +found certain treaties which had been concluded, about 1300 B.C., +between the Hittites and the king of the Aryans. The names of the +deities which are mentioned in the treaties seem to show that the +Persian and Indian branches of the Aryan race were not yet separated, +but formed a united kingdom on the banks of the Euphrates. They seem to +have come from Bactria (and possibly beyond), and introduced the horse +(hitherto unknown to the Babylonians) about 1800 B.C. It is surmised by +the experts that the Indian and Persian branches separated soon +after 1300 B.C., possibly on account of religious quarrels, and the +Sanscrit-speaking branch, with its Vedic hymns and its Hinduism, +wandered eastward and northward until it discovered and took possession +of the Indian peninsula. The long isolation of India, since the +cessation of its commerce with Rome until modern times, explains the +later stagnation of its civilisation. + +Thus the supposed "non-progressiveness" of the east, after once +establishing civilisation, turns out to be a question of geography and +history. We have now to see if the same intelligible principles will +throw light on the "progressiveness" of the western branch of the Aryan +race, and on the course of western civilisation generally. [*] + + * In speaking of Europeans as Aryans I am, of course, + allowing for an absorption of the conquered non-Aryans. A + European nation is no more Aryan, in strict truth, than the + English are Anglo-Saxon. + + +The first two centres of civilisation are found in the valley of the +Nile and the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates; the civilisations of +Egypt and Babylon, the oldest in the world. There is, however, a good +deal of evidence by which we may bring these civilisations nearer to +each other in their earliest stages, so that we must not confidently +speak of two quite independent civilisations. The civilisation which +developed on the Euphrates is found first at Susa, on the hills +overlooking the plains of Mesopotamia, about 6000 B.C. A people akin +to the Turkish or Chinese lives among the hills, and makes the vague +advance from higher Neolithic culture to primitive civilisation. About +the same time the historical or dynastic civilisation begins in Egypt, +and some high authorities, such as Mr. Flinders Petrie, believe that the +evidence suggests that the founders of this dynastic civilisation came +from "the mountainous region between Egypt and the Red Sea." From the +northern part of the same region, we saw, the ancestors of the Chinese +set out across Asia. + +We have here a very suggestive set of facts in connection with early +civilisation. The Syro-Arabian region seems to have been a thickly +populated centre of advancing tribes, which would be in striking accord +with the view of progress that I am following. But we need not press the +disputed and obscure theory of the origin of the historic Egyptians. The +remains are said to show that the lower valley of the Nile, which must +have been but recently formed by the river's annual deposit of mud, was +a theatre of contending tribes from about 8000 to 6000 B.C. The fertile +lands that had thus been provided attracted tribes from east, west, and +south, and there is a great confusion of primitive cultures on its soil. + +It is not certain that the race which eventually conquered and founded +the historical dynasties came from the mountainous lands to the east. It +is enough for us to know that the whole region fermented with jostling +peoples. Why it did so the previous chapters will explain. It is +the temperate zone into which men had been pressed by the northern +ice-sheet, and from Egypt to the Indian Ocean it remained a fertile +breeding-ground of nations. + +These early civilisations are merely the highest point of Neolithic +culture. The Egyptian remains show a very gradual development of +pottery, ornamentation, etc., into which copper articles are introduced +in time. The dawn of civilisation is as gradual as the dawn of the +day. The whole gamut of culture--Eolithic, Palaeolithic, Neolithic, and +civilised--is struck in the successive layers of Egyptian remains. +But to give even a summary of its historical development is neither +necessary nor possible here. The maintenance of its progress is as +intelligible as its initial advance. Unlike China, it lay in the main +region of human development, and we find that even before 6000 B.C. it +developed a system of shipping and commerce which kept it in touch with +other peoples over the entire region, and helped to promote development +both in them and itself. + +Equally intelligible is the development of civilisation in Mesopotamia. +The long and fertile valley which lies between the mountainous region +and the southern desert is, like the valley of the Nile, a quite recent +formation. The rivers have gradually formed it with their deposit in the +course of the last ten thousand years. As this rich soil became covered +with vegetation, it attracted the mountaineers from the north. As I +said, the earliest centre of the civilisation which was to culminate in +Babylon and Nineveh is traced at Susa, on the hills to the north, about +6000 B.C. The Akkadians (highlanders) or Sumerians, the Turanian people +who established this civilisation, descended upon the rivers, and, about +5000 B.C., set up the early cities of Mesopotamia. As in the case of +Egypt, again, more tribes were attracted to the fertile region, and +by about 4000 B.C. we find that Semitic tribes from the north have +superseded the Sumerians, and taken over their civilisation. + +In these ancient civilisations, developing in touch with each other, and +surrounded by great numbers of peoples at the high Neolithic level from +which they had themselves started, culture advanced rapidly. Not +only science, art, literature, commerce, law, and social forms were +developed, but moral idealism reached a height that compares well +even with that of modern times. The recovery in our time of the actual +remains of Egypt and Babylon has corrected much of the libellous legend, +which found its way into Greek and European literature, concerning +those ancient civilisations. But, as culture advances, human development +becomes so complex that we must refrain from attempting to pursue, even +in summary, its many outgrowths. The evolution of morality, of art, of +religion, of polity, and of literature would each require a whole volume +for satisfactory treatment. All that we can do here is to show how the +modern world and its progressive culture are related to these ancient +empires. + +The aphorism that "all light comes from the east" may at times be +pressed too literally. To suggest that western peoples have done no more +than receive and develop the culture of the older east would be at once +unscientific and unhistorical. By the close of the Neolithic age a great +number of peoples had reached the threshold of civilisation, and it +would be extremely improbable that in only two parts of the world the +conditions would be found of further progress. That the culture of +these older empires has enriched Europe and had a great share in its +civilisation, is one of the most obvious of historical truths. But we +must not seek to confine the action of later peoples to a mere borrowing +of arts or institutions. + +Yet some recent historical writers, in their eagerness to set up +indigenous civilisations apart from those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, pass +to the opposite extreme. We are prepared to find civilisation developing +wherever the situation of a people exposes it to sufficient stimulation, +and we do find advance made among many peoples apart from contact with +the great southern empires. It is uncertain whether the use of bronze +is due first to the southern nations or to some European people, but the +invention of iron weapons is most probably due to European initiative. +Again, it is now not believed that the alphabets of Europe are derived +from the hieroglyphics of Egypt, though it is an open question whether +they were not derived, through Phoenicia, from certain signs which we +find on ancient Egyptian pottery. + +If we take first a broad view of the later course of civilisation we see +at a glance the general relation of east and west. Some difficulty would +arise, if we pressed, as to the exact stage in which a nation may be +said to become "civilised," but we may follow the general usage of +archaeologists and historians. They tell us, then, that civilisation +first appears in Egypt about 8000 B.C. (settled civilisation about +6000 B.C.), and in the Mesopotamian region about 6000 B.C. We next find +Neolithic culture passing into what may be called civilisation in Crete +and the neighbouring islands some time between 4000 and 3000 B.C., or +two thousand years after the development of Egyptian commerce in that +region. We cannot say whether this civilisation in the AEgean sea +preceded others which we afterwards find on the Asiatic mainland. +The beginning of the Hittite Empire in Asia Minor, and of Phoenician +culture, is as yet unknown. But we can say that there was as yet no +civilisation in Europe. It is not until after 1600 that civilisation +is established in Greece (Mycenae and Tiryns) as an offshoot of AEgean +culture. Later still it appears among the Etruscans of Italy--to which, +as we know, both Egyptian and AEgean vessels sailed. In other words, the +course of civilisation is very plainly from east to west. + +But we must be careful not to imagine that this represents a mere +transplantation of southern culture on a rude northern stock. The whole +region to the east of the Mediterranean was just as fitted to develop a +civilisation as the valley of the Nile. It swarmed with peoples having +the latest Neolithic culture, and, as they advanced, and developed +navigation, the territory of many of them became the high road of more +advanced peoples. A glance at the map will show that the easiest line of +expansion for a growing people was westward. The ocean lay to the right +of the Babylonians, and the country north and south was not inviting. +The calmer Mediterranean with its fertile shores was the appointed field +of expansion. The land route from Egypt lay, not to the dreary west in +Africa, but along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, through Syria +and Asia Minor. The land route from Babylon lay across northern +Syria and Asia Minor. The sea route had Crete for its first and most +conspicuous station. Hence the gradual appearance of civilisation in +Phoenicia, Cappadocia, Lydia, and the Greek islands is a normal and +natural outcome of the geographical conditions. + +But we must dismiss the later Asiatic civilisations, whose remains are +fast coming to light, very briefly. Phoenicia probably had less part +in the general advance than was formerly supposed. Now that we have +discovered a powerful civilisation in the Greek islands themselves, we +see that it would keep Tyre and Sidon in check until it fell into decay +about 1000 B.C. After that date, for a few centuries, Phoenicia had a +great influence on the development of Europe. The Hittites, on the other +hand, are as yet imperfectly known. Their main region was Cappadocia, +where, at least as far back as 1500 B.C., they developed so +characteristic a civilisation, that its documents or inscriptions are +almost undecipherable. They at one time overran the whole of Asia Minor. +Other peoples such as the Elamites, represent similar offshoots of the +fermenting culture of the region. The Hebrews were probably a small and +unimportant group, settled close round Jerusalem, until a few centuries +before the Christian Era. They then assimilated the culture of the +more powerful nations which crossed and recrossed their territory. The +Persians were, as we saw, a branch of the Aryan family which slowly +advanced between 1500 and 700 B.C., and then inherited the empire of +dying Babylon. + +The most interesting, and one of the most recently discovered, of these +older civilisations, was the AEgean. Its chief centre was Crete, but it +spread over many of the neighbouring islands. Its art and its script are +so distinctive that we must recognise it as a native development, not +a transplantation of Egyptian culture. Its ruins show it gradually +emerging from the Neolithic stage about 4000 B.C., when Egyptian +commerce was well developed in its seas. Somewhere about 2500 B.C. +the whole of the islands seem to have been brought under the Cretan +monarchy, and the concentration of wealth and power led to a remarkable +artistic development, on native lines. We find in Crete the remains of +splendid palaces, with advanced sanitary systems and a great luxuriance +of ornamentation. It was this civilisation which founded the centre +at Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, about the middle of the second +millennium B.C. + +But our inquiry into the origin of European civilisation does not +demand any extensive description of the AEgean culture and its Mycenaean +offshoot. It was utterly destroyed between 1500 and 1000 B.C., and +this was probably done by the Aryan ancestors of the later Greeks or +Hellenes. About the time when one branch of the Aryans was descending +upon India and another preparing to rival decaying Babylonia, the third +branch overran Europe. It seems to have been a branch of these that +swept down the Greek peninsula, and crossed the sea to sack and destroy +the centres of AEgean culture. Another branch poured down the Italian +peninsula; another settled in the region of the Baltic, and would prove +the source of the Germanic nations; another, the Celtic, advanced to the +west of Europe. The mingling of this semi-barbaric population with +the earlier inhabitants provided the material of the nations of modern +Europe. Our last page in the story of the earth must be a short account +of its civilisation. + +The first branch to become civilised, and to carry culture to a greater +height than the older nations had ever done, was the Hellenes. There is +no need for us to speculate on the "genius" of the Hellenes, or even +to enlarge on the natural advantages of the lower part of the peninsula +which they occupied. A glance at the map will explain why European +civilisation began in Greece. The Hellenes had penetrated the region +in which there was constant contact with all the varied cultures of the +older world. Although they destroyed the AEgean culture, they could not +live amidst its ruins without receiving some influence. Then the traders +of Phoenicia, triumphing in the fall of their AEgean rivals, brought the +great pacific cultural influence of commerce to bear on them. After +some hundreds of years of internal trouble, barbaric quarrels, and fresh +arrivals from the north, Greece began to wear an aspect of civilisation. +Many of the Greeks passed to Asia Minor, as they increased, and, freed +from the despotism of tradition, in living contact with the luxury and +culture of Persia, which had advanced as far as Europe, they evolved the +fine civilisation of the Greek colonies, and reacted on the motherland. +Finally, there came the heroic struggle against the Persian invaders, +and from the ashes of their early civilisation arose the marble city +which will never die in the memory of Europe. + +The Romans had meantime been advancing. We may neglect the older Italian +culture, as it had far less to do with the making of Italy and Europe +than the influence of the east. By about 500 B.C. Rome was a small +kingdom with a primitive civilisation, busy in subduing the neighbouring +tribes who threatened its security, and unconsciously gathering the +seeds of culture which some of them contained. By about 300 B.C. the +vigour of the Romans had united all the tribes of Italy in a powerful +republic, and wealth began to accumulate at Rome. Not far to the east +was the glittering civilisation of Greece; to the south was Carthage, a +busy centre of commerce, navigation, and art; and from the Mediterranean +came processions of ships bringing stimulating fragments and stories +of the hoary culture of the east. Within another two hundred years Rome +annihilated Carthage, paralysed and overran Greece, and sent its legions +over the Asiatic provinces of the older empires. By the beginning of +the Christian Era all that remained of the culture of the old world was +gathered in Rome. All the philosophies of Greece, all the religions +of Persia and Judea and Egypt, all the luxuries and vices of the east, +found a home in it. Every stream of culture that had started from the +later and higher Neolithic age had ended in Rome. + +And in the meantime Rome had begun to disseminate its heritage over +Europe. Its legions poured over Spain and Gaul and Germany and Britain. +Its administrators and judges and teachers followed the eagles, and set +up schools and law-courts and theatres and baths and temples. It flung +broad roads to the north of Britain and the banks of the Rhine and +Danube. Under the shelter of the "Roman Peace" the peoples of Europe +could spare men from the plough and the sword for the cultivation of art +and letters. The civilisations of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, North +Africa, and Italy were ushered into the calendar of mankind, and were +ready to bear the burden when the mighty city on the Tiber let the +sceptre fall from its enfeebled hands. + +Rome fell. The more accurate historians of our time correct the old +legend of death from senile decay or from the effect of dissipation. +Races of men, like races of animals, do not die; they are killed. The +physical deterioration of the citizens of Rome was a small matter in its +fall. Fiscal and imperial blunders loosed the frame of its empire. The +resources were still there, but there was none to organise and unify +them. The imperial system--or chaos--ruined Rome. And just when the +demoralisation was greatest, and the Teutonic tribes at the frontiers +were most numerous and powerful, an accident shook the system. A fierce +and numerous people from Asia, the Huns, wandered into Europe, threw +themselves on the Teutonic tribes, and precipitated these tribes upon +the Empire. A Diocletian might still have saved the Empire, but there +was none to guide it. The northern barbarians trod its civilisation +underfoot, and Europe passed into the Dark Ages. + +One more application of the evolutionary principle, and we close the +story. The "barbarians"--the Goths and Vandals and their Germanic +cousins--were barbaric only in comparison with the art and letters +of Rome. They had law, polity, and ideals. European civilisation owes +elements to them, as well as to Rome. To say simply that the barbarians +destroyed the institutions of Rome is no adequate explanation of the +Dark Ages. Let us see rather how the Dark Ages were enlightened. + +It is now fully recognised that the reawakening of Europe in the twelfth +and thirteenth centuries was very largely due to a fresh culture-contact +with the older civilisations. The Arabs had, on becoming civilised, +learned from the Nestorians, who had been driven out of the Greek world +for their heresies, the ancient culture of Greece. They enshrined it +in a brilliant civilisation which it inspired them to establish. By the +ninth century this civilisation was exhibited in Spain by its Moorish +conquerors, and, as its splendour increased, it attracted the attention +of Europe. Some Christian scholars visited Spain, as time went on, but +the Jews were the great intermediaries in disseminating its culture +in Europe. There is now no question about the fact that the rebirth of +positive learning, especially of science, in Europe was very largely due +to the literature of the Moors, and their luxury and splendour gave an +impulse to European art. Europe entered upon the remarkable intellectual +period known as Scholasticism. Besides this stimulus, it must be +remembered, the scholars of Europe had at least a certain number of old +Latin writers whose works had survived the general wreck of culture. + +In the fifteenth century the awakening of Europe was completed. The +Turks took Constantinople, and drove large numbers of Greek scholars to +Italy. Out of this catastrophe issued the great Renaissance, or rebirth, +of art, science, and letters in Italy, and then in France, Germany, +and England. In the new intellectual ferment there appeared the great +artists, great thinkers and inventors, and great navigators who led the +race to fresh heights. The invention of printing alone would almost have +changed the face of Europe. But it was accompanied by a hundred +other inventions and discoveries, by great liberating and stimulating +movements like the Reformation, by the growth of free and wealthy +cities, and by the extension of peace over larger areas, and the +concentration of wealth and encouragement of art which the growth and +settlement of the chief European powers involved. Europe entered upon +the phase of evolution which we call modern times. + +***** + +The future of humanity cannot be seen even darkly, as in a glass. No +forecast that aspires beyond the immediate future is worth considering +seriously. If it be a forecast of material progress, it is rendered +worthless by the obvious consideration that if we knew what the future +will do, we would do it ourselves. If it is a forecast of intellectual +and social evolution, it is inevitably coloured by the intellectual +or social convictions of the prophet. I therefore abstain wholly from +carrying the story of evolution beyond realities. But I would add two +general considerations which may enable a reflective reader to answer +certain questions that will arise in his mind at the close of this +survey of the story of evolution. + +Are we evolving to-day? Is man the last word of evolution? These are +amongst the commonest questions put to me. Whether man is or is not the +last word of evolution is merely a verbal quibble. Now that language is +invented, and things have names, one may say that the name "man" will +cling to the highest and most progressive animal on earth, no matter how +much he may rise above the man of to-day. But if the question is +whether he WILL rise far above the civilisation of to-day, we can, in +my opinion, give a confident answer. There is no law of evolution, but +there is a fact of evolution. Ten million years ago the highest animal +on the earth was a reptile, or, at the most, a low, rat-like marsupial. +The authorities tell us that, unless some cosmic accident intervene, the +earth will remain habitable by man for at least ten million years. It +is safe to conclude that the man of that remote age will be lifted above +the man of to-day as much as we transcend the reptile in intelligence +and emotion. It is most probable that this is a quite inadequate +expression of the future advance. We are not only evolving, but evolving +more rapidly than living thing ever did before. The pace increases +every century. A calm and critical review of our development inspires a +conviction that a few centuries will bring about the realisation of the +highest dream that ever haunted the mind of the prophet. What splendours +lie beyond that, the most soaring imagination cannot have the dimmest +perception. + +And the last word must meet an anxiety that arises out of this very +confidence. Darwin was right. It is--not exclusively, but mainly--the +struggle for life that has begotten higher types. Must every step of +future progress be won by fresh and sustained struggle? At least we may +say that the notion that progress in the future depends, as in the past, +upon the pitting of flesh against flesh, and tooth against tooth, is +a deplorable illusion. Such physical struggle is indeed necessary to +evolve and maintain a type fit for the struggle. But a new thing has +come into the story of the earth--wisdom and fine emotion. The processes +which begot animal types in the past may be superseded; perhaps must be +superseded. The battle of the future lies between wit and wit, art and +art, generosity and generosity; and a great struggle and rivalry may +proceed that will carry the distinctive powers of man to undreamed-of +heights, yet be wholly innocent of the passion-lit, blood-stained +conflict that has hitherto been the instrument of progress. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Evolution, by Joseph McCabe + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1043 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1044-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1044-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bd58efcd --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1044-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2056 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to +Heaven, by Mark Twain, Illustrated by Albert Levering + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven + + +Author: Mark Twain + + + +Release Date: February 14, 2013 [eBook #1044] +[This file was first posted on September 26, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXTRACT FROM CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S +VISIT TO HEAVEN*** + + +Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + + + Extract from + Captain Stormfield’s + Visit to Heaven + + + BY + Mark Twain + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + NEW YORK AND LONDON + HARPER & BROTHERS + + * * * * * + + Copyright, 1909, by MARK TWAIN COMPANY + + * * * * * + + _Printed in the United States of America_ + + [Picture: Captain Stormfield] + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little +anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time, like a +comet. _Like_ a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them! Of +course there warn’t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you +know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso, +whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for the Hereafter; but I +happened on one every now and then that was going my way for an hour or +so, and then we had a bit of a brush together. But it was generally +pretty one-sided, because I sailed by them the same as if they were +standing still. An ordinary comet don’t make more than about 200,000 +miles a minute. Of course when I came across one of that sort—like +Encke’s and Halley’s comets, for instance—it warn’t anything but just a +flash and a vanish, you see. You couldn’t rightly call it a race. It +was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraph despatch. +But after I got outside of our astronomical system, I used to flush a +comet occasionally that was something _like_. _We_ haven’t got any such +comets—ours don’t begin. One night I was swinging along at a good round +gait, everything taut and trim, and the wind in my favor—I judged I was +going about a million miles a minute—it might have been more, it couldn’t +have been less—when I flushed a most uncommonly big one about three +points off my starboard bow. By his stern lights I judged he was bearing +about northeast-and-by-north-half-east. Well, it was so near my course +that I wouldn’t throw away the chance; so I fell off a point, steadied my +helm, and went for him. You should have heard me whiz, and seen the +electric fur fly! In about a minute and a half I was fringed out with an +electrical nimbus that flamed around for miles and miles and lit up all +space like broad day. The comet was burning blue in the distance, like a +sickly torch, when I first sighted him, but he begun to grow bigger and +bigger as I crept up on him. I slipped up on him so fast that when I had +gone about 150,000,000 miles I was close enough to be swallowed up in the +phosphorescent glory of his wake, and I couldn’t see anything for the +glare. Thinks I, it won’t do to run into him, so I shunted to one side +and tore along. By and by I closed up abreast of his tail. Do you know +what it was like? It was like a gnat closing up on the continent of +America. I forged along. By and by I had sailed along his coast for a +little upwards of a hundred and fifty million miles, and then I could see +by the shape of him that I hadn’t even got up to his waistband yet. Why, +Peters, _we_ don’t know anything about comets, down here. If you want to +see comets that _are_ comets, you’ve got to go outside of our solar +system—where there’s room for them, you understand. My friend, I’ve seen +comets out there that couldn’t even lay down inside the _orbits_ of our +noblest comets without their tails hanging over. + +Well, I boomed along another hundred and fifty million miles, and got up +abreast his shoulder, as you may say. I was feeling pretty fine, I tell +you; but just then I noticed the officer of the deck come to the side and +hoist his glass in my direction. Straight off I heard him sing +out—“Below there, ahoy! Shake her up, shake her up! Heave on a hundred +million billion tons of brimstone!” + +“Ay-ay, sir!” + +“Pipe the stabboard watch! All hands on deck!” + +“Ay-ay, sir!” + +“Send two hundred thousand million men aloft to shake out royals and +sky-scrapers!” + +“Ay-ay, sir!” + +“Hand the stuns’ls! Hang out every rag you’ve got! Clothe her from stem +to rudder-post!” + +“Ay-ay, sir!” + +In about a second I begun to see I’d woke up a pretty ugly customer, +Peters. In less than ten seconds that comet was just a blazing cloud of +red-hot canvas. It was piled up into the heavens clean out of sight—the +old thing seemed to swell out and occupy all space; the sulphur smoke +from the furnaces—oh, well, nobody can describe the way it rolled and +tumbled up into the skies, and nobody can half describe the way it smelt. +Neither can anybody begin to describe the way that monstrous craft begun +to crash along. And such another powwow—thousands of bo’s’n’s whistles +screaming at once, and a crew like the populations of a hundred thousand +worlds like ours all swearing at once. Well, I never heard the like of +it before. + +We roared and thundered along side by side, both doing our level best, +because I’d never struck a comet before that could lay over me, and so I +was bound to beat this one or break something. I judged I had some +reputation in space, and I calculated to keep it. I noticed I wasn’t +gaining as fast, now, as I was before, but still I was gaining. There +was a power of excitement on board the comet. Upwards of a hundred +billion passengers swarmed up from below and rushed to the side and begun +to bet on the race. Of course this careened her and damaged her speed. +My, but wasn’t the mate mad! He jumped at that crowd, with his trumpet +in his hand, and sung out— + +“Amidships! amidships, you—! {9} or I’ll brain the last idiot of you!” + +Well, sir, I gained and gained, little by little, till at last I went +skimming sweetly by the magnificent old conflagration’s nose. By this +time the captain of the comet had been rousted out, and he stood there in +the red glare for’ard, by the mate, in his shirt-sleeves and slippers, +his hair all rats’ nests and one suspender hanging, and how sick those +two men did look! I just simply couldn’t help putting my thumb to my +nose as I glided away and singing out: + +“Ta-ta! ta-ta! Any word to send to your family?” + +Peters, it was a mistake. Yes, sir, I’ve often regretted that—it was a +mistake. You see, the captain had given up the race, but that remark was +too tedious for him—he couldn’t stand it. He turned to the mate, and +says he— + +“Have we got brimstone enough of our own to make the trip?” + +“Yes, sir.” + +“Sure?” + +“Yes, sir—more than enough.” + +“How much have we got in cargo for Satan?” + +“Eighteen hundred thousand billion quintillions of kazarks.” + +“Very well, then, let his boarders freeze till the next comet comes. +Lighten ship! Lively, now, lively, men! Heave the whole cargo +overboard!” + +Peters, look me in the eye, and be calm. I found out, over there, that a +kazark is exactly the bulk of a _hundred and sixty-nine worlds like +ours_! They hove all that load overboard. When it fell it wiped out a +considerable raft of stars just as clean as if they’d been candles and +somebody blowed them out. As for the race, that was at an end. The +minute she was lightened the comet swung along by me the same as if I was +anchored. The captain stood on the stern, by the after-davits, and put +his thumb to his nose and sung out— + +“Ta-ta! ta-ta! Maybe _you’ve_ got some message to send your friends in +the Everlasting Tropics!” + +Then he hove up his other suspender and started for’ard, and inside of +three-quarters of an hour his craft was only a pale torch again in the +distance. Yes, it was a mistake, Peters—that remark of mine. I don’t +reckon I’ll ever get over being sorry about it. I’d ’a’ beat the bully +of the firmament if I’d kept my mouth shut. + + * * * * * + +But I’ve wandered a little off the track of my tale; I’ll get back on my +course again. Now you see what kind of speed I was making. So, as I +said, when I had been tearing along this way about thirty years I begun +to get uneasy. Oh, it was pleasant enough, with a good deal to find out, +but then it was kind of lonesome, you know. Besides, I wanted to get +somewhere. I hadn’t shipped with the idea of cruising forever. First +off, I liked the delay, because I judged I was going to fetch up in +pretty warm quarters when I got through; but towards the last I begun to +feel that I’d rather go to—well, most any place, so as to finish up the +uncertainty. + +Well, one night—it was always night, except when I was rushing by some +star that was occupying the whole universe with its fire and its +glare—light enough then, of course, but I necessarily left it behind in a +minute or two and plunged into a solid week of darkness again. The stars +ain’t so close together as they look to be. Where was I? Oh yes; one +night I was sailing along, when I discovered a tremendous long row of +blinking lights away on the horizon ahead. As I approached, they begun +to tower and swell and look like mighty furnaces. Says I to myself— + +“By George, I’ve arrived at last—and at the wrong place, just as I +expected!” + +Then I fainted. I don’t know how long I was insensible, but it must have +been a good while, for, when I came to, the darkness was all gone and +there was the loveliest sunshine and the balmiest, fragrantest air in its +place. And there was such a marvellous world spread out before me—such a +glowing, beautiful, bewitching country. The things I took for furnaces +were gates, miles high, made all of flashing jewels, and they pierced a +wall of solid gold that you couldn’t see the top of, nor yet the end of, +in either direction. I was pointed straight for one of these gates, and +a-coming like a house afire. Now I noticed that the skies were black +with millions of people, pointed for those gates. What a roar they made, +rushing through the air! The ground was as thick as ants with people, +too—billions of them, I judge. + +I lit. I drifted up to a gate with a swarm of people, and when it was my +turn the head clerk says, in a business-like way— + +“Well, quick! Where are you from?” + +“San Francisco,” says I. + +“San Fran—_what_?” says he. + +“San Francisco.” + +He scratched his head and looked puzzled, then he says— + +“Is it a planet?” + +By George, Peters, think of it! “_Planet_?” says I; “it’s a city. And +moreover, it’s one of the biggest and finest and—” + +“There, there!” says he, “no time here for conversation. We don’t deal +in cities here. Where are you from in a _general_ way?” + +“Oh,” I says, “I beg your pardon. Put me down for California.” + +I had him _again_, Peters! He puzzled a second, then he says, sharp and +irritable— + +“I don’t know any such planet—is it a constellation?” + +“Oh, my goodness!” says I. “Constellation, says you? No—it’s a State.” + +“Man, we don’t deal in States here. _Will_ you tell me where you are +from _in general—at large_, don’t you understand?” + +“Oh, now I get your idea,” I says. “I’m from America,—the United States +of America.” + +Peters, do you know I had him _again_? If I hadn’t I’m a clam! His face +was as blank as a target after a militia shooting-match. He turned to an +under clerk and says— + +“Where is America? _What_ is America?” + +The under clerk answered up prompt and says— + +“There ain’t any such orb.” + +“_Orb_?” says I. “Why, what are you talking about, young man? It ain’t +an orb; it’s a country; it’s a continent. Columbus discovered it; I +reckon likely you’ve heard of _him_, anyway. America—why, sir, America—” + +“Silence!” says the head clerk. “Once for all, where—are—you—_from_?” + +“Well,” says I, “I don’t know anything more to say—unless I lump things, +and just say I’m from the world.” + +“Ah,” says he, brightening up, “now that’s something like! _What_ +world?” + +Peters, he had _me_, that time. I looked at him, puzzled, he looked at +me, worried. Then he burst out— + +“Come, come, what world?” + +Says I, “Why, _the_ world, of course.” + +“_The_ world!” he says. “H’m! there’s billions of them! . . . Next!” + +That meant for me to stand aside. I done so, and a sky-blue man with +seven heads and only one leg hopped into my place. I took a walk. It +just occurred to me, then, that all the myriads I had seen swarming to +that gate, up to this time, were just like that creature. I tried to run +across somebody I was acquainted with, but they were out of acquaintances +of mine just then. So I thought the thing all over and finally sidled +back there pretty meek and feeling rather stumped, as you may say. + +“Well?” said the head clerk. + +“Well, sir,” I says, pretty humble, “I don’t seem to make out which world +it is I’m from. But you may know it from this—it’s the one the Saviour +saved.” + +He bent his head at the Name. Then he says, gently— + +“The worlds He has saved are like to the gates of heaven in number—none +can count them. What astronomical system is your world in?—perhaps that +may assist.” + +“It’s the one that has the sun in it—and the moon—and Mars”—he shook his +head at each name—hadn’t ever heard of them, you see—“and Neptune—and +Uranus—and Jupiter—” + +“Hold on!” says he—“hold on a minute! Jupiter . . . Jupiter . . . Seems +to me we had a man from there eight or nine hundred years ago—but people +from that system very seldom enter by this gate.” All of a sudden he +begun to look me so straight in the eye that I thought he was going to +bore through me. Then he says, very deliberate, “Did you come _straight +here_ from your system?” + +“Yes, sir,” I says—but I blushed the least little bit in the world when I +said it. + +He looked at me very stern, and says— + +“That is not true; and this is not the place for prevarication. You +wandered from your course. How did that happen?” + +Says I, blushing again— + +“I’m sorry, and I take back what I said, and confess. I raced a little +with a comet one day—only just the least little bit—only the tiniest +lit—” + +“So—so,” says he—and without any sugar in his voice to speak of. + +I went on, and says— + +“But I only fell off just a bare point, and I went right back on my +course again the minute the race was over.” + +“No matter—that divergence has made all this trouble. It has brought you +to a gate that is billions of leagues from the right one. If you had +gone to your own gate they would have known all about your world at once +and there would have been no delay. But we will try to accommodate you.” +He turned to an under clerk and says— + +“What system is Jupiter in?” + +“I don’t remember, sir, but I think there is such a planet in one of the +little new systems away out in one of the thinly worlded corners of the +universe. I will see.” + +He got a balloon and sailed up and up and up, in front of a map that was +as big as Rhode Island. He went on up till he was out of sight, and by +and by he came down and got something to eat and went up again. To cut a +long story short, he kept on doing this for a day or two, and finally he +came down and said he thought he had found that solar system, but it +might be fly-specks. So he got a microscope and went back. It turned +out better than he feared. He had rousted out our system, sure enough. +He got me to describe our planet and its distance from the sun, and then +he says to his chief— + +“Oh, I know the one he means, now, sir. It is on the map. It is called +the Wart.” + +Says I to myself, “Young man, it wouldn’t be wholesome for you to go down +_there_ and call it the Wart.” + +Well, they let me in, then, and told me I was safe forever and wouldn’t +have any more trouble. + +Then they turned from me and went on with their work, the same as if they +considered my case all complete and shipshape. I was a good deal +surprised at this, but I was diffident about speaking up and reminding +them. I did so hate to do it, you know; it seemed a pity to bother them, +they had so much on their hands. Twice I thought I would give up and let +the thing go; so twice I started to leave, but immediately I thought what +a figure I should cut stepping out amongst the redeemed in such a rig, +and that made me hang back and come to anchor again. People got to eying +me—clerks, you know—wondering why I didn’t get under way. I couldn’t +stand this long—it was too uncomfortable. So at last I plucked up +courage and tipped the head clerk a signal. He says— + +“What! you here yet? What’s wanting?” + +Says I, in a low voice and very confidential, making a trumpet with my +hands at his ear— + +“I beg pardon, and you mustn’t mind my reminding you, and seeming to +meddle, but hain’t you forgot something?” + +He studied a second, and says— + +“Forgot something? . . . No, not that I know of.” + +“Think,” says I. + +He thought. Then he says— + +“No, I can’t seem to have forgot anything. What is it?” + +“Look at me,” says I, “look me all over.” + +He done it. + +“Well?” says he. + +“Well,” says I, “you don’t notice anything? If I branched out amongst +the elect looking like this, wouldn’t I attract considerable +attention?—wouldn’t I be a little conspicuous?” + +“Well,” he says, “I don’t see anything the matter. What do you lack?” + +“Lack! Why, I lack my harp, and my wreath, and my halo, and my +hymn-book, and my palm branch—I lack everything that a body naturally +requires up here, my friend.” + +Puzzled? Peters, he was the worst puzzled man you ever saw. Finally he +says— + +“Well, you seem to be a curiosity every way a body takes you. I never +heard of these things before.” + +I looked at the man awhile in solid astonishment; then I says— + +“Now, I hope you don’t take it as an offence, for I don’t mean any, but +really, for a man that has been in the Kingdom as long as I reckon you +have, you do seem to know powerful little about its customs.” + +“Its customs!” says he. “Heaven is a large place, good friend. Large +empires have many and diverse customs. Even small dominions have, as you +doubtless know by what you have seen of the matter on a small scale in +the Wart. How can you imagine I could ever learn the varied customs of +the countless kingdoms of heaven? It makes my head ache to think of it. +I know the customs that prevail in those portions inhabited by peoples +that are appointed to enter by my own gate—and hark ye, that is quite +enough knowledge for one individual to try to pack into his head in the +thirty-seven millions of years I have devoted night and day to that +study. But the idea of learning the customs of the whole appalling +expanse of heaven—O man, how insanely you talk! Now I don’t doubt that +this odd costume you talk about is the fashion in that district of heaven +you belong to, but you won’t be conspicuous in this section without it.” + +I felt all right, if that was the case, so I bade him good-day and left. +All day I walked towards the far end of a prodigious hall of the office, +hoping to come out into heaven any moment, but it was a mistake. That +hall was built on the general heavenly plan—it naturally couldn’t be +small. At last I got so tired I couldn’t go any farther; so I sat down +to rest, and begun to tackle the queerest sort of strangers and ask for +information, but I didn’t get any; they couldn’t understand my language, +and I could not understand theirs. I got dreadfully lonesome. I was so +down-hearted and homesick I wished a hundred times I never had died. I +turned back, of course. About noon next day, I got back at last and was +on hand at the booking-office once more. Says I to the head clerk— + +“I begin to see that a man’s got to be in his own Heaven to be happy.” + +“Perfectly correct,” says he. “Did you imagine the same heaven would +suit all sorts of men?” + +“Well, I had that idea—but I see the foolishness of it. Which way am I +to go to get to my district?” + +He called the under clerk that had examined the map, and he gave me +general directions. I thanked him and started; but he says— + +“Wait a minute; it is millions of leagues from here. Go outside and +stand on that red wishing-carpet; shut your eyes, hold your breath, and +wish yourself there.” + +“I’m much obliged,” says I; “why didn’t you dart me through when I first +arrived?” + +“We have a good deal to think of here; it was your place to think of it +and ask for it. Good-by; we probably sha’n’t see you in this region for +a thousand centuries or so.” + +“In that case, _o revoor_,” says I. + +I hopped onto the carpet and held my breath and shut my eyes and wished I +was in the booking-office of my own section. The very next instant a +voice I knew sung out in a business kind of a way— + +“A harp and a hymn-book, pair of wings and a halo, size 13, for Cap’n Eli +Stormfield, of San Francisco!—make him out a clean bill of health, and +let him in.” + +I opened my eyes. Sure enough, it was a Pi Ute Injun I used to know in +Tulare County; mighty good fellow—I remembered being at his funeral, +which consisted of him being burnt and the other Injuns gauming their +faces with his ashes and howling like wildcats. He was powerful glad to +see me, and you may make up your mind I was just as glad to see him, and +feel that I was in the right kind of a heaven at last. + +Just as far as your eye could reach, there was swarms of clerks, running +and bustling around, tricking out thousands of Yanks and Mexicans and +English and Arabs, and all sorts of people in their new outfits; and when +they gave me my kit and I put on my halo and took a look in the glass, I +could have jumped over a house for joy, I was so happy. “Now _this_ is +something like!” says I. “Now,” says I, “I’m all right—show me a cloud.” + +Inside of fifteen minutes I was a mile on my way towards the cloud-banks +and about a million people along with me. Most of us tried to fly, but +some got crippled and nobody made a success of it. So we concluded to +walk, for the present, till we had had some wing practice. + +We begun to meet swarms of folks who were coming back. Some had harps +and nothing else; some had hymn-books and nothing else; some had nothing +at all; all of them looked meek and uncomfortable; one young fellow +hadn’t anything left but his halo, and he was carrying that in his hand; +all of a sudden he offered it to me and says— + +“Will you hold it for me a minute?” + +Then he disappeared in the crowd. I went on. A woman asked me to hold +her palm branch, and then _she_ disappeared. A girl got me to hold her +harp for her, and by George, _she_ disappeared; and so on and so on, till +I was about loaded down to the guards. Then comes a smiling old +gentleman and asked me to hold _his_ things. I swabbed off the +perspiration and says, pretty tart— + +“I’ll have to get you to excuse me, my friend,—_I_ ain’t no hat-rack.” + +About this time I begun to run across piles of those traps, lying in the +road. I just quietly dumped my extra cargo along with them. I looked +around, and, Peters, that whole nation that was following me were loaded +down the same as I’d been. The return crowd had got them to hold their +things a minute, you see. They all dumped their loads, too, and we went +on. + +When I found myself perched on a cloud, with a million other people, I +never felt so good in my life. Says I, “Now this is according to the +promises; I’ve been having my doubts, but now I am in heaven, sure +enough.” I gave my palm branch a wave or two, for luck, and then I +tautened up my harp-strings and struck in. Well, Peters, you can’t +imagine anything like the row we made. It was grand to listen to, and +made a body thrill all over, but there was considerable many tunes going +on at once, and that was a drawback to the harmony, you understand; and +then there was a lot of Injun tribes, and they kept up such another +war-whooping that they kind of took the tuck out of the music. By and by +I quit performing, and judged I’d take a rest. There was quite a nice +mild old gentleman sitting next me, and I noticed he didn’t take a hand; +I encouraged him, but he said he was naturally bashful, and was afraid to +try before so many people. By and by the old gentleman said he never +could seem to enjoy music somehow. The fact was, I was beginning to feel +the same way; but I didn’t say anything. Him and I had a considerable +long silence, then, but of course it warn’t noticeable in that place. +After about sixteen or seventeen hours, during which I played and sung a +little, now and then—always the same tune, because I didn’t know any +other—I laid down my harp and begun to fan myself with my palm branch. +Then we both got to sighing pretty regular. Finally, says he— + +“Don’t you know any tune but the one you’ve been pegging at all day?” + +“Not another blessed one,” says I. + +“Don’t you reckon you could learn another one?” says he. + +“Never,” says I; “I’ve tried to, but I couldn’t manage it.” + +“It’s a long time to hang to the one—eternity, you know.” + +“Don’t break my heart,” says I; “I’m getting low-spirited enough +already.” + +After another long silence, says he— + +“Are you glad to be here?” + +Says I, “Old man, I’ll be frank with you. This _ain’t_ just as near my +idea of bliss as I thought it was going to be, when I used to go to +church.” + +Says he, “What do you say to knocking off and calling it half a day?” + +“That’s me,” says I. “I never wanted to get off watch so bad in my +life.” + +So we started. Millions were coming to the cloud-bank all the time, +happy and hosannahing; millions were leaving it all the time, looking +mighty quiet, I tell you. We laid for the new-comers, and pretty soon +I’d got them to hold all my things a minute, and then I was a free man +again and most outrageously happy. Just then I ran across old Sam +Bartlett, who had been dead a long time, and stopped to have a talk with +him. Says I— + +“Now tell me—is this to go on forever? Ain’t there anything else for a +change?” + +Says he— + +“I’ll set you right on that point very quick. People take the figurative +language of the Bible and the allegories for literal, and the first thing +they ask for when they get here is a halo and a harp, and so on. Nothing +that’s harmless and reasonable is refused a body here, if he asks it in +the right spirit. So they are outfitted with these things without a +word. They go and sing and play just about one day, and that’s the last +you’ll ever see them in the choir. They don’t need anybody to tell them +that that sort of thing wouldn’t make a heaven—at least not a heaven that +a sane man could stand a week and remain sane. That cloud-bank is placed +where the noise can’t disturb the old inhabitants, and so there ain’t any +harm in letting everybody get up there and cure himself as soon as he +comes. + +“Now you just remember this—heaven is as blissful and lovely as it can +be; but it’s just the busiest place you ever heard of. There ain’t any +idle people here after the first day. Singing hymns and waving palm +branches through all eternity is pretty when you hear about it in the +pulpit, but it’s as poor a way to put in valuable time as a body could +contrive. It would just make a heaven of warbling ignoramuses, don’t you +see? Eternal Rest sounds comforting in the pulpit, too. Well, you try +it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands. Why, +Stormfield, a man like you, that had been active and stirring all his +life, would go mad in six months in a heaven where he hadn’t anything to +do. Heaven is the very last place to come to _rest_ in,—and don’t you be +afraid to bet on that!” + +Says I— + +“Sam, I’m as glad to hear it as I thought I’d be sorry. I’m glad I come, +now.” + +Says he— + +“Cap’n, ain’t you pretty physically tired?” + +Says I— + +“Sam, it ain’t any name for it! I’m dog-tired.” + +“Just so—just so. You’ve earned a good sleep, and you’ll get it. You’ve +earned a good appetite, and you’ll enjoy your dinner. It’s the same here +as it is on earth—you’ve got to earn a thing, square and honest, before +you enjoy it. You can’t enjoy first and earn afterwards. But there’s +this difference, here: you can choose your own occupation, and all the +powers of heaven will be put forth to help you make a success of it, if +you do your level best. The shoemaker on earth that had the soul of a +poet in him won’t have to make shoes here.” + +“Now that’s all reasonable and right,” says I. “Plenty of work, and the +kind you hanker after; no more pain, no more suffering—” + +“Oh, hold on; there’s plenty of pain here—but it don’t kill. There’s +plenty of suffering here, but it don’t last. You see, happiness ain’t a +_thing in itself_—it’s only a _contrast_ with something that ain’t +pleasant. That’s all it is. There ain’t a thing you can mention that is +happiness in its own self—it’s only so by contrast with the other thing. +And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast +dulled, it ain’t happiness any longer, and you have to get something +fresh. Well, there’s plenty of pain and suffering in heaven—consequently +there’s plenty of contrasts, and just no end of happiness.” + +Says I, “It’s the sensiblest heaven I’ve heard of yet, Sam, though it’s +about as different from the one I was brought up on as a live princess is +different from her own wax figger.” + + * * * * * + +Along in the first months I knocked around about the Kingdom, making +friends and looking at the country, and finally settled down in a pretty +likely region, to have a rest before taking another start. I went on +making acquaintances and gathering up information. I had a good deal of +talk with an old bald-headed angel by the name of Sandy McWilliams. He +was from somewhere in New Jersey. I went about with him, considerable. +We used to lay around, warm afternoons, in the shade of a rock, on some +meadow-ground that was pretty high and out of the marshy slush of his +cranberry-farm, and there we used to talk about all kinds of things, and +smoke pipes. One day, says I— + +“About how old might you be, Sandy?” + +“Seventy-two.” + +“I judged so. How long you been in heaven?” + +“Twenty-seven years, come Christmas.” + +“How old was you when you come up?” + +“Why, seventy-two, of course.” + +“You can’t mean it!” + +“Why can’t I mean it?” + +“Because, if you was seventy-two then, you are naturally ninety-nine +now.” + +“No, but I ain’t. I stay the same age I was when I come.” + +“Well,” says I, “come to think, there’s something just here that I want +to ask about. Down below, I always had an idea that in heaven we would +all be young, and bright, and spry.” + +“Well, you can be young if you want to. You’ve only got to wish.” + +“Well, then, why didn’t you wish?” + +“I did. They all do. You’ll try it, some day, like enough; but you’ll +get tired of the change pretty soon.” + +“Why?” + +“Well, I’ll tell you. Now you’ve always been a sailor; did you ever try +some other business?” + +“Yes, I tried keeping grocery, once, up in the mines; but I couldn’t +stand it; it was too dull—no stir, no storm, no life about it; it was +like being part dead and part alive, both at the same time. I wanted to +be one thing or t’other. I shut up shop pretty quick and went to sea.” + +“That’s it. Grocery people like it, but you couldn’t. You see you +wasn’t used to it. Well, I wasn’t used to being young, and I couldn’t +seem to take any interest in it. I was strong, and handsome, and had +curly hair,—yes, and wings, too!—gay wings like a butterfly. I went to +picnics and dances and parties with the fellows, and tried to carry on +and talk nonsense with the girls, but it wasn’t any use; I couldn’t take +to it—fact is, it was an awful bore. What I wanted was early to bed and +early to rise, and something to _do_; and when my work was done, I wanted +to sit quiet, and smoke and think—not tear around with a parcel of giddy +young kids. You can’t think what I suffered whilst I was young.” + +“How long was you young?” + +“Only two weeks. That was plenty for me. Laws, I was so lonesome! You +see, I was full of the knowledge and experience of seventy-two years; the +deepest subject those young folks could strike was only _a-b-c_ to me. +And to hear them argue—oh, my! it would have been funny, if it hadn’t +been so pitiful. Well, I was so hungry for the ways and the sober talk I +was used to, that I tried to ring in with the old people, but they +wouldn’t have it. They considered me a conceited young upstart, and gave +me the cold shoulder. Two weeks was a-plenty for me. I was glad to get +back my bald head again, and my pipe, and my old drowsy reflections in +the shade of a rock or a tree.” + +“Well,” says I, “do you mean to say you’re going to stand still at +seventy-two, forever?” + +“I don’t know, and I ain’t particular. But I ain’t going to drop back to +twenty-five any more—I know that, mighty well. I know a sight more than +I did twenty-seven years ago, and I enjoy learning, all the time, but I +don’t seem to get any older. That is, bodily—my mind gets older, and +stronger, and better seasoned, and more satisfactory.” + +Says I, “If a man comes here at ninety, don’t he ever set himself back?” + +“Of course he does. He sets himself back to fourteen; tries it a couple +of hours, and feels like a fool; sets himself forward to twenty; it ain’t +much improvement; tries thirty, fifty, eighty, and finally ninety—finds +he is more at home and comfortable at the same old figure he is used to +than any other way. Or, if his mind begun to fail him on earth at +eighty, that’s where he finally sticks up here. He sticks at the place +where his mind was last at its best, for there’s where his enjoyment is +best, and his ways most set and established.” + +“Does a chap of twenty-five stay always twenty-five, and look it?” + +“If he is a fool, yes. But if he is bright, and ambitious and +industrious, the knowledge he gains and the experiences he has, change +his ways and thoughts and likings, and make him find his best pleasure in +the company of people above that age; so he allows his body to take on +that look of as many added years as he needs to make him comfortable and +proper in that sort of society; he lets his body go on taking the look of +age, according as he progresses, and by and by he will be bald and +wrinkled outside, and wise and deep within.” + +“Babies the same?” + +“Babies the same. Laws, what asses we used to be, on earth, about these +things! We said we’d be always young in heaven. We didn’t say _how_ +young—we didn’t think of that, perhaps—that is, we didn’t all think +alike, anyway. When I was a boy of seven, I suppose I thought we’d all +be twelve, in heaven; when I was twelve, I suppose I thought we’d all be +eighteen or twenty in heaven; when I was forty, I begun to go back; I +remember I hoped we’d all be about _thirty_ years old in heaven. Neither +a man nor a boy ever thinks the age he _has_ is exactly the best one—he +puts the right age a few years older or a few years younger than he is. +Then he makes that ideal age the general age of the heavenly people. And +he expects everybody _to stick_ at that age—stand stock-still—and expects +them to enjoy it!—Now just think of the idea of standing still in heaven! +Think of a heaven made up entirely of hoop-rolling, marble-playing cubs +of seven years!—or of awkward, diffident, sentimental immaturities of +nineteen!—or of vigorous people of thirty, healthy-minded, brimming with +ambition, but chained hand and foot to that one age and its limitations +like so many helpless galley-slaves! Think of the dull sameness of a +society made up of people all of one age and one set of looks, habits, +tastes and feelings. Think how superior to it earth would be, with its +variety of types and faces and ages, and the enlivening attrition of the +myriad interests that come into pleasant collision in such a variegated +society.” + +“Look here,” says I, “do you know what you’re doing?” + +“Well, what am I doing?” + +“You are making heaven pretty comfortable in one way, but you are playing +the mischief with it in another.” + +“How d’you mean?” + +“Well,” I says, “take a young mother that’s lost her child, and—” + +“Sh!” he says. “Look!” + +It was a woman. Middle-aged, and had grizzled hair. She was walking +slow, and her head was bent down, and her wings hanging limp and droopy; +and she looked ever so tired, and was crying, poor thing! She passed +along by, with her head down, that way, and the tears running down her +face, and didn’t see us. Then Sandy said, low and gentle, and full of +pity: + +“_She’s_ hunting for her child! No, _found_ it, I reckon. Lord, how +she’s changed! But I recognized her in a minute, though it’s +twenty-seven years since I saw her. A young mother she was, about twenty +two or four, or along there; and blooming and lovely and sweet? oh, just +a flower! And all her heart and all her soul was wrapped up in her +child, her little girl, two years old. And it died, and she went wild +with grief, just wild! Well, the only comfort she had was that she’d see +her child again, in heaven—‘never more to part,’ she said, and kept on +saying it over and over, ‘never more to part.’ And the words made her +happy; yes, they did; they made her joyful, and when I was dying, +twenty-seven years ago, she told me to find her child the first thing, +and say she was coming—‘soon, soon, _very_ soon, she hoped and +believed!’” + +“Why, it’s pitiful, Sandy.” + +He didn’t say anything for a while, but sat looking at the ground, +thinking. Then he says, kind of mournful: + +“And now she’s come!” + +“Well? Go on.” + +“Stormfield, maybe she hasn’t found the child, but _I_ think she has. +Looks so to me. I’ve seen cases before. You see, she’s kept that child +in her head just the same as it was when she jounced it in her arms a +little chubby thing. But here it didn’t elect to _stay_ a child. No, it +elected to grow up, which it did. And in these twenty-seven years it has +learned all the deep scientific learning there is to learn, and is +studying and studying and learning and learning more and more, all the +time, and don’t give a damn for anything _but_ learning; just learning, +and discussing gigantic problems with people like herself.” + +“Well?” + +“Stormfield, don’t you see? Her mother knows _cranberries_, and how to +tend them, and pick them, and put them up, and market them; and not +another blamed thing! Her and her daughter can’t be any more company for +each other _now_ than mud turtle and bird o’ paradise. Poor thing, she +was looking for a baby to jounce; _I_ think she’s struck a +disapp’intment.” + +“Sandy, what will they do—stay unhappy forever in heaven?” + +“No, they’ll come together and get adjusted by and by. But not this +year, and not next. By and by.” + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +I had been having considerable trouble with my wings. The day after I +helped the choir I made a dash or two with them, but was not lucky. +First off, I flew thirty yards, and then fouled an Irishman and brought +him down—brought us both down, in fact. Next, I had a collision with a +Bishop—and bowled him down, of course. We had some sharp words, and I +felt pretty cheap, to come banging into a grave old person like that, +with a million strangers looking on and smiling to themselves. + +I saw I hadn’t got the hang of the steering, and so couldn’t rightly tell +where I was going to bring up when I started. I went afoot the rest of +the day, and let my wings hang. Early next morning I went to a private +place to have some practice. I got up on a pretty high rock, and got a +good start, and went swooping down, aiming for a bush a little over three +hundred yards off; but I couldn’t seem to calculate for the wind, which +was about two points abaft my beam. I could see I was going considerable +to looard of the bush, so I worked my starboard wing slow and went ahead +strong on the port one, but it wouldn’t answer; I could see I was going +to broach to, so I slowed down on both, and lit. I went back to the rock +and took another chance at it. I aimed two or three points to starboard +of the bush—yes, more than that—enough so as to make it nearly a +head-wind. I done well enough, but made pretty poor time. I could see, +plain enough, that on a head-wind, wings was a mistake. I could see that +a body could sail pretty close to the wind, but he couldn’t go in the +wind’s eye. I could see that if I wanted to go a-visiting any distance +from home, and the wind was ahead, I might have to wait days, maybe, for +a change; and I could see, too, that these things could not be any use at +all in a gale; if you tried to run before the wind, you would make a mess +of it, for there isn’t anyway to shorten sail—like reefing, you know—you +have to take it _all_ in—shut your feathers down flat to your sides. +That would _land_ you, of course. You could lay to, with your head to +the wind—that is the best you could do, and right hard work you’d find +it, too. If you tried any other game, you would founder, sure. + +I judge it was about a couple of weeks or so after this that I dropped +old Sandy McWilliams a note one day—it was a Tuesday—and asked him to +come over and take his manna and quails with me next day; and the first +thing he did when he stepped in was to twinkle his eye in a sly way, and +say,— + +“Well, Cap, what you done with your wings?” + +I saw in a minute that there was some sarcasm done up in that rag +somewheres, but I never let on. I only says,— + +“Gone to the wash.” + +“Yes,” he says, in a dry sort of way, “they mostly go to the wash—about +this time—I’ve often noticed it. Fresh angels are powerful neat. When +do you look for ’em back?” + +“Day after to-morrow,” says I. + +He winked at me, and smiled. + +Says I,— + +“Sandy, out with it. Come—no secrets among friends. I notice you don’t +ever wear wings—and plenty others don’t. I’ve been making an ass of +myself—is that it?” + +“That is about the size of it. But it is no harm. We all do it at +first. It’s perfectly natural. You see, on earth we jump to such +foolish conclusions as to things up here. In the pictures we always saw +the angels with wings on—and that was all right; but we jumped to the +conclusion that that was their way of getting around—and that was all +wrong. The wings ain’t anything but a uniform, that’s all. When they +are in the field—so to speak,—they always wear them; you never see an +angel going with a message anywhere without his wings, any more than you +would see a military officer presiding at a court-martial without his +uniform, or a postman delivering letters, or a policeman walking his +beat, in plain clothes. But they ain’t to _fly_ with! The wings are for +show, not for use. Old experienced angels are like officers of the +regular army—they dress plain, when they are off duty. New angels are +like the militia—never shed the uniform—always fluttering and floundering +around in their wings, butting people down, flapping here, and there, and +everywhere, always imagining they are attracting the admiring eye—well, +they just think they are the very most important people in heaven. And +when you see one of them come sailing around with one wing tipped up and +t’other down, you make up your mind he is saying to himself: ‘I wish Mary +Ann in Arkansaw could see me now. I reckon she’d wish she hadn’t shook +me.’ No, they’re just for show, that’s all—only just for show.” + +“I judge you’ve got it about right, Sandy,” says I. + +“Why, look at it yourself,” says he. “_You_ ain’t built for wings—no man +is. You know what a grist of years it took you to come here from the +earth—and yet you were booming along faster than any cannon-ball could +go. Suppose you had to fly that distance with your wings—wouldn’t +eternity have been over before you got here? Certainly. Well, angels +have to go to the earth every day—millions of them—to appear in visions +to dying children and good people, you know—it’s the heft of their +business. They appear with their wings, of course, because they are on +official service, and because the dying persons wouldn’t know they were +angels if they hadn’t wings—but do you reckon they fly with them? It +stands to reason they don’t. The wings would wear out before they got +half-way; even the pin-feathers would be gone; the wing frames would be +as bare as kite sticks before the paper is pasted on. The distances in +heaven are billions of times greater; angels have to go all over heaven +every day; could they do it with their wings alone? No, indeed; they +wear the wings for style, but they travel any distance in an instant by +_wishing_. The wishing-carpet of the Arabian Nights was a sensible +idea—but our earthly idea of angels flying these awful distances with +their clumsy wings was foolish. + +“Our young saints, of both sexes, wear wings all the time—blazing red +ones, and blue and green, and gold, and variegated, and rainbowed, and +ring-streaked-and-striped ones—and nobody finds fault. It is suitable to +their time of life. The things are beautiful, and they set the young +people off. They are the most striking and lovely part of their outfit—a +halo don’t _begin_.” + +“Well,” says I, “I’ve tucked mine away in the cupboard, and I allow to +let them lay there till there’s mud.” + +“Yes—or a reception.” + +“What’s that?” + +“Well, you can see one to-night if you want to. There’s a barkeeper from +Jersey City going to be received.” + +“Go on—tell me about it.” + +“This barkeeper got converted at a Moody and Sankey meeting, in New York, +and started home on the ferry-boat, and there was a collision and he got +drowned. He is of a class that think all heaven goes wild with joy when +a particularly hard lot like him is saved; they think all heaven turns +out hosannahing to welcome them; they think there isn’t anything talked +about in the realms of the blest but their case, for that day. This +barkeeper thinks there hasn’t been such another stir here in years, as +his coming is going to raise.—And I’ve always noticed this peculiarity +about a dead barkeeper—he not only expects all hands to turn out when he +arrives, but he expects to be received with a torchlight procession.” + +“I reckon he is disappointed, then.” + +“No, he isn’t. No man is allowed to be disappointed here. Whatever he +wants, when he comes—that is, any reasonable and unsacrilegious thing—he +can have. There’s always a few millions or billions of young folks +around who don’t want any better entertainment than to fill up their +lungs and swarm out with their torches and have a high time over a +barkeeper. It tickles the barkeeper till he can’t rest, it makes a +charming lark for the young folks, it don’t do anybody any harm, it don’t +cost a rap, and it keeps up the place’s reputation for making all comers +happy and content.” + +“Very good. I’ll be on hand and see them land the barkeeper.” + +“It is manners to go in full dress. You want to wear your wings, you +know, and your other things.” + +“Which ones?” + +“Halo, and harp, and palm branch, and all that.” + +“Well,” says I, “I reckon I ought to be ashamed of myself, but the fact +is I left them laying around that day I resigned from the choir. I +haven’t got a rag to wear but this robe and the wings.” + +“That’s all right. You’ll find they’ve been raked up and saved for you. +Send for them.” + +“I’ll do it, Sandy. But what was it you was saying about unsacrilegious +things, which people expect to get, and will be disappointed about?” + +“Oh, there are a lot of such things that people expect and don’t get. +For instance, there’s a Brooklyn preacher by the name of Talmage, who is +laying up a considerable disappointment for himself. He says, every now +and then in his sermons, that the first thing he does when he gets to +heaven, will be to fling his arms around Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and +kiss them and weep on them. There’s millions of people down there on +earth that are promising themselves the same thing. As many as sixty +thousand people arrive here every single day, that want to run straight +to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and hug them and weep on them. Now mind +you, sixty thousand a day is a pretty heavy contract for those old +people. If they were a mind to allow it, they wouldn’t ever have +anything to do, year in and year out, but stand up and be hugged and wept +on thirty-two hours in the twenty-four. They would be tired out and as +wet as muskrats all the time. What would heaven be, to _them_? It would +be a mighty good place to get out of—you know that, yourself. Those are +kind and gentle old Jews, but they ain’t any fonder of kissing the +emotional highlights of Brooklyn than you be. You mark my words, Mr. +T.’s endearments are going to be declined, with thanks. There are limits +to the privileges of the elect, even in heaven. Why, if Adam was to show +himself to every new comer that wants to call and gaze at him and strike +him for his autograph, he would never have time to do anything else but +just that. Talmage has said he is going to give Adam some of his +attentions, as well as A., I. and J. But he will have to change his mind +about that.” + +“Do you think Talmage will really come here?” + +“Why, certainly, he will; but don’t you be alarmed; he will run with his +own kind, and there’s plenty of them. That is the main charm of +heaven—there’s all kinds here—which wouldn’t be the case if you let the +preachers tell it. Anybody can find the sort he prefers, here, and he +just lets the others alone, and they let him alone. When the Deity +builds a heaven, it is built right, and on a liberal plan.” + +Sandy sent home for his things, and I sent for mine, and about nine in +the evening we begun to dress. Sandy says,— + +“This is going to be a grand time for you, Stormy. Like as not some of +the patriarchs will turn out.” + +“No, but will they?” + +“Like as not. Of course they are pretty exclusive. They hardly ever +show themselves to the common public. I believe they never turn out +except for an eleventh-hour convert. They wouldn’t do it then, only +earthly tradition makes a grand show pretty necessary on that kind of an +occasion.” + +“Do they an turn out, Sandy?” + +“Who?—all the patriarchs? Oh, no—hardly ever more than a couple. You +will be here fifty thousand years—maybe more—before you get a glimpse of +all the patriarchs and prophets. Since I have been here, Job has been to +the front once, and once Ham and Jeremiah both at the same time. But the +finest thing that has happened in my day was a year or so ago; that was +Charles Peace’s reception—him they called ‘the Bannercross Murderer’—an +Englishman. There were four patriarchs and two prophets on the Grand +Stand that time—there hasn’t been anything like it since Captain Kidd +came; Abel was there—the first time in twelve hundred years. A report +got around that Adam was coming; well, of course, Abel was enough to +bring a crowd, all by himself, but there is nobody that can draw like +Adam. It was a false report, but it got around, anyway, as I say, and it +will be a long day before I see the like of it again. The reception was +in the English department, of course, which is eight hundred and eleven +million miles from the New Jersey line. I went, along with a good many +of my neighbors, and it was a sight to see, I can tell you. Flocks came +from all the departments. I saw Esquimaux there, and Tartars, Negroes, +Chinamen—people from everywhere. You see a mixture like that in the +Grand Choir, the first day you land here, but you hardly ever see it +again. There were billions of people; when they were singing or +hosannahing, the noise was wonderful; and even when their tongues were +still the drumming of the wings was nearly enough to burst your head, for +all the sky was as thick as if it was snowing angels. Although Adam was +not there, it was a great time anyway, because we had three archangels on +the Grand Stand—it is a seldom thing that even one comes out.” + +“What did they look like, Sandy?” + +“Well, they had shining faces, and shining robes, and wonderful rainbow +wings, and they stood eighteen feet high, and wore swords, and held their +heads up in a noble way, and looked like soldiers.” + +“Did they have halos?” + +“No—anyway, not the hoop kind. The archangels and the upper-class +patriarchs wear a finer thing than that. It is a round, solid, splendid +glory of gold, that is blinding to look at. You have often seen a +patriarch in a picture, on earth, with that thing on—you remember it?—he +looks as if he had his head in a brass platter. That don’t give you the +right idea of it at all—it is much more shining and beautiful.” + +“Did you talk with those archangels and patriarchs, Sandy?” + +“Who—_I_? Why, what can you be thinking about, Stormy? I ain’t worthy +to speak to such as they.” + +“Is Talmage?” + +“Of course not. You have got the same mixed-up idea about these things +that everybody has down there. I had it once, but I got over it. Down +there they talk of the heavenly King—and that is right—but then they go +right on speaking as if this was a republic and everybody was on a dead +level with everybody else, and privileged to fling his arms around +anybody he comes across, and be hail-fellow-well-met with all the elect, +from the highest down. How tangled up and absurd that is! How are you +going to have a republic under a king? How are you going to have a +republic at all, where the head of the government is absolute, holds his +place forever, and has no parliament, no council to meddle or make in his +affairs, nobody voted for, nobody elected, nobody in the whole universe +with a voice in the government, nobody asked to take a hand in its +matters, and nobody _allowed_ to do it? Fine republic, ain’t it?” + +“Well, yes—it _is_ a little different from the idea I had—but I thought I +might go around and get acquainted with the grandees, anyway—not exactly +splice the main-brace with them, you know, but shake hands and pass the +time of day.” + +“Could Tom, Dick and Harry call on the Cabinet of Russia and do that?—on +Prince Gortschakoff, for instance?” + +“I reckon not, Sandy.” + +“Well, this is Russia—only more so. There’s not the shadow of a republic +about it anywhere. There are ranks, here. There are viceroys, princes, +governors, sub-governors, sub-sub-governors, and a hundred orders of +nobility, grading along down from grand-ducal archangels, stage by stage, +till the general level is struck, where there ain’t any titles. Do you +know what a prince of the blood is, on earth?” + +“No.” + +“Well, a prince of the blood don’t belong to the royal family exactly, +and he don’t belong to the mere nobility of the kingdom; he is lower than +the one, and higher than t’other. That’s about the position of the +patriarchs and prophets here. There’s some mighty high nobility +here—people that you and I ain’t worthy to polish sandals for—and _they_ +ain’t worthy to polish sandals for the patriarchs and prophets. That +gives you a kind of an idea of their rank, don’t it? You begin to see +how high up they are, don’t you? just to get a two-minute glimpse of one +of them is a thing for a body to remember and tell about for a thousand +years. Why, Captain, just think of this: if Abraham was to set his foot +down here by this door, there would be a railing set up around that +foot-track right away, and a shelter put over it, and people would flock +here from all over heaven, for hundreds and hundreds of years, to look at +it. Abraham is one of the parties that Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn, is +going to embrace, and kiss, and weep on, when he comes. He wants to lay +in a good stock of tears, you know, or five to one he will go dry before +he gets a chance to do it.” + +“Sandy,” says I, “I had an idea that _I_ was going to be equals with +everybody here, too, but I will let that drop. It don’t matter, and I am +plenty happy enough anyway.” + +“Captain, you are happier than you would be, the other way. These old +patriarchs and prophets have got ages the start of you; they know more in +two minutes than you know in a year. Did you ever try to have a sociable +improving-time discussing winds, and currents and variations of compass +with an undertaker?” + +“I get your idea, Sandy. He couldn’t interest me. He would be an +ignoramus in such things—he would bore me, and I would bore him.” + +“You have got it. You would bore the patriarchs when you talked, and +when they talked they would shoot over your head. By and by you would +say, ‘Good morning, your Eminence, I will call again’—but you wouldn’t. +Did you ever ask the slush-boy to come up in the cabin and take dinner +with you?” + +“I get your drift again, Sandy. I wouldn’t be used to such grand people +as the patriarchs and prophets, and I would be sheepish and tongue-tied +in their company, and mighty glad to get out of it. Sandy, which is the +highest rank, patriarch or prophet?” + +“Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs. The newest prophet, even, is +of a sight more consequence than the oldest patriarch. Yes, sir, Adam +himself has to walk behind Shakespeare.” + +“Was Shakespeare a prophet?” + +“Of course he was; and so was Homer, and heaps more. But Shakespeare and +the rest have to walk behind a common tailor from Tennessee, by the name +of Billings; and behind a horse-doctor named Sakka, from Afghanistan. +Jeremiah, and Billings and Buddha walk together, side by side, right +behind a crowd from planets not in our astronomy; next come a dozen or +two from Jupiter and other worlds; next come Daniel, and Sakka and +Confucius; next a lot from systems outside of ours; next come Ezekiel, +and Mahomet, Zoroaster, and a knife-grinder from ancient Egypt; then +there is a long string, and after them, away down toward the bottom, come +Shakespeare and Homer, and a shoemaker named Marais, from the back +settlements of France.” + +“Have they really rung in Mahomet and all those other heathens?” + +“Yes—they all had their message, and they all get their reward. The man +who don’t get his reward on earth, needn’t bother—he will get it here, +sure.” + +“But why did they throw off on Shakespeare, that way, and put him away +down there below those shoe-makers and horse-doctors and knife-grinders—a +lot of people nobody ever heard of?” + +“That is the heavenly justice of it—they warn’t rewarded according to +their deserts, on earth, but here they get their rightful rank. That +tailor Billings, from Tennessee, wrote poetry that Homer and Shakespeare +couldn’t begin to come up to; but nobody would print it, nobody read it +but his neighbors, an ignorant lot, and they laughed at it. Whenever the +village had a drunken frolic and a dance, they would drag him in and +crown him with cabbage leaves, and pretend to bow down to him; and one +night when he was sick and nearly starved to death, they had him out and +crowned him, and then they rode him on a rail about the village, and +everybody followed along, beating tin pans and yelling. Well, he died +before morning. He wasn’t ever expecting to go to heaven, much less that +there was going to be any fuss made over him, so I reckon he was a good +deal surprised when the reception broke on him.” + +“Was you there, Sandy?” + +“Bless you, no!” + +“Why? Didn’t you know it was going to come off?” + +“Well, I judge I did. It was the talk of these realms—not for a day, +like this barkeeper business, but for twenty years before the man died.” + +“Why the mischief didn’t you go, then?” + +“Now how you talk! The like of me go meddling around at the reception of +a prophet? A mudsill like me trying to push in and help receive an awful +grandee like Edward J. Billings? Why, I should have been laughed at for +a billion miles around. I shouldn’t ever heard the last of it.” + +“Well, who did go, then?” + +“Mighty few people that you and I will ever get a chance to see, Captain. +Not a solitary commoner ever has the luck to see a reception of a +prophet, I can tell you. All the nobility, and all the patriarchs and +prophets—every last one of them—and all the archangels, and all the +princes and governors and viceroys, were there,—and _no_ small fry—not a +single one. And mind you, I’m not talking about only the grandees from +_our_ world, but the princes and patriarchs and so on from _all_ the +worlds that shine in our sky, and from billions more that belong in +systems upon systems away outside of the one our sun is in. There were +some prophets and patriarchs there that ours ain’t a circumstance to, for +rank and illustriousness and all that. Some were from Jupiter and other +worlds in our own system, but the most celebrated were three poets, Saa, +Bo and Soof, from great planets in three different and very remote +systems. These three names are common and familiar in every nook and +corner of heaven, clear from one end of it to the other—fully as well +known as the eighty Supreme Archangels, in fact—where as our Moses, and +Adam, and the rest, have not been heard of outside of our world’s little +corner of heaven, except by a few very learned men scattered here and +there—and they always spell their names wrong, and get the performances +of one mixed up with the doings of another, and they almost always locate +them simply _in our solar system_, and think that is enough without going +into little details such as naming the particular world they are from. +It is like a learned Hindoo showing off how much he knows by saying +Longfellow lives in the United States—as if he lived all over the United +States, and as if the country was so small you couldn’t throw a brick +there without hitting him. Between you and me, it does gravel me, the +cool way people from those monster worlds outside our system snub our +little world, and even our system. Of course we think a good deal of +Jupiter, because our world is only a potato to it, for size; but then +there are worlds in other systems that Jupiter isn’t even a mustard-seed +to—like the planet Goobra, for instance, which you couldn’t squeeze +inside the orbit of Halley’s comet without straining the rivets. +Tourists from Goobra (I mean parties that lived and died there—natives) +come here, now and then, and inquire about our world, and when they find +out it is so little that a streak of lightning can flash clear around it +in the eighth of a second, they have to lean up against something to +laugh. Then they screw a glass into their eye and go to examining us, as +if we were a curious kind of foreign bug, or something of that sort. One +of them asked me how long our day was; and when I told him it was twelve +hours long, as a general thing, he asked me if people where I was from +considered it worth while to get up and wash for such a day as that. +That is the way with those Goobra people—they can’t seem to let a chance +go by to throw it in your face that their day is three hundred and +twenty-two of our years long. This young snob was just of age—he was six +or seven thousand of his days old—say two million of our years—and he had +all the puppy airs that belong to that time of life—that turning-point +when a person has got over being a boy and yet ain’t quite a man exactly. +If it had been anywhere else but in heaven, I would have given him a +piece of my mind. Well, anyway, Billings had the grandest reception that +has been seen in thousands of centuries, and I think it will have a good +effect. His name will be carried pretty far, and it will make our system +talked about, and maybe our world, too, and raise us in the respect of +the general public of heaven. Why, look here—Shakespeare walked +backwards before that tailor from Tennessee, and scattered flowers for +him to walk on, and Homer stood behind his chair and waited on him at the +banquet. Of course that didn’t go for much _there_, amongst all those +big foreigners from other systems, as they hadn’t heard of Shakespeare or +Homer either, but it would amount to considerable down there on our +little earth if they could know about it. I wish there was something in +that miserable spiritualism, so we could send them word. That Tennessee +village would set up a monument to Billings, then, and his autograph +would outsell Satan’s. Well, they had grand times at that reception—a +small-fry noble from Hoboken told me all about it—Sir Richard Duffer, +Baronet.” + +“What, Sandy, a nobleman from Hoboken? How is that?” + +“Easy enough. Duffer kept a sausage-shop and never saved a cent in his +life because he used to give all his spare meat to the poor, in a quiet +way. Not tramps,—no, the other sort—the sort that will starve before +they will beg—honest square people out of work. Dick used to watch +hungry-looking men and women and children, and track them home, and find +out all about them from the neighbors, and then feed them and find them +work. As nobody ever saw him give anything to anybody, he had the +reputation of being mean; he died with it, too, and everybody said it was +a good riddance; but the minute he landed here, they made him a baronet, +and the very first words Dick the sausage-maker of Hoboken heard when he +stepped upon the heavenly shore were, ‘Welcome, Sir Richard Duffer!’ It +surprised him some, because he thought he had reasons to believe he was +pointed for a warmer climate than this one.” + + * * * * * + +All of a sudden the whole region fairly rocked under the crash of eleven +hundred and one thunder blasts, all let off at once, and Sandy says,— + +“There, that’s for the barkeep.” + +I jumped up and says,— + +“Then let’s be moving along, Sandy; we don’t want to miss any of this +thing, you know.” + +“Keep your seat,” he says; “he is only just telegraphed, that is all.” + +“How?” + +“That blast only means that he has been sighted from the signal-station. +He is off Sandy Hook. The committees will go down to meet him, now, and +escort him in. There will be ceremonies and delays; they won’t he coming +up the Bay for a considerable time, yet. It is several billion miles +away, anyway.” + +“_I_ could have been a barkeeper and a hard lot just as well as not,” +says I, remembering the lonesome way I arrived, and how there wasn’t any +committee nor anything. + +“I notice some regret in your voice,” says Sandy, “and it is natural +enough; but let bygones be bygones; you went according to your lights, +and it is too late now to mend the thing.” + +“No, let it slide, Sandy, I don’t mind. But you’ve got a Sandy Hook +_here_, too, have you?” + +“We’ve got everything here, just as it is below. All the States and +Territories of the Union, and all the kingdoms of the earth and the +islands of the sea are laid out here just as they are on the globe—all +the same shape they are down there, and all graded to the relative size, +only each State and realm and island is a good many billion times bigger +here than it is below. There goes another blast.” + +“What is that one for?” + +“That is only another fort answering the first one. They each fire +eleven hundred and one thunder blasts at a single dash—it is the usual +salute for an eleventh-hour guest; a hundred for each hour and an extra +one for the guest’s sex; if it was a woman we would know it by their +leaving off the extra gun.” + +“How do we know there’s eleven hundred and one, Sandy, when they all go +off at once?—and yet we certainly do know.” + +“Our intellects are a good deal sharpened up, here, in some ways, and +that is one of them. Numbers and sizes and distances are so great, here, +that we have to be made so we can _feel_ them—our old ways of counting +and measuring and ciphering wouldn’t ever give us an idea of them, but +would only confuse us and oppress us and make our heads ache.” + +After some more talk about this, I says: “Sandy, I notice that I hardly +ever see a white angel; where I run across one white angel, I strike as +many as a hundred million copper-colored ones—people that can’t speak +English. How is that?” + +“Well, you will find it the same in any State or Territory of the +American corner of heaven you choose to go to. I have shot along, a +whole week on a stretch, and gone millions and millions of miles, through +perfect swarms of angels, without ever seeing a single white one, or +hearing a word I could understand. You see, America was occupied a +billion years and more, by Injuns and Aztecs, and that sort of folks, +before a white man ever set his foot in it. During the first three +hundred years after Columbus’s discovery, there wasn’t ever more than one +good lecture audience of white people, all put together, in America—I +mean the whole thing, British Possessions and all; in the beginning of +our century there were only 6,000,000 or 7,000,000—say seven; 12,000,000 +or 14,000,000 in 1825; say 23,000,000 in 1850; 40,000,000 in 1875. Our +death-rate has always been 20 in 1000 per annum. Well, 140,000 died the +first year of the century; 280,000 the twenty-fifth year; 500,000 the +fiftieth year; about a million the seventy-fifth year. Now I am going to +be liberal about this thing, and consider that fifty million whites have +died in America from the beginning up to to-day—make it sixty, if you +want to; make it a hundred million—it’s no difference about a few +millions one way or t’other. Well, now, you can see, yourself, that when +you come to spread a little dab of people like that over these hundreds +of billions of miles of American territory here in heaven, it is like +scattering a ten-cent box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and +expecting to find them again. You can’t expect us to amount to anything +in heaven, and we _don’t_—now that is the simple fact, and we have got to +do the best we can with it. The learned men from other planets and other +systems come here and hang around a while, when they are touring around +the Kingdom, and then go back to their own section of heaven and write a +book of travels, and they give America about five lines in it. And what +do they say about us? They say this wilderness is populated with a +scattering few hundred thousand billions of red angels, with now and then +a curiously complected _diseased_ one. You see, they think we whites and +the occasional nigger are Injuns that have been bleached out or blackened +by some leprous disease or other—for some peculiarly rascally _sin_, mind +you. It is a mighty sour pill for us all, my friend—even the modestest +of us, let alone the other kind, that think they are going to be received +like a long-lost government bond, and hug Abraham into the bargain. I +haven’t asked you any of the particulars, Captain, but I judge it goes +without saying—if my experience is worth anything—that there wasn’t much +of a hooraw made over you when you arrived—now was there?” + +“Don’t mention it, Sandy,” says I, coloring up a little; “I wouldn’t have +had the family see it for any amount you are a mind to name. Change the +subject, Sandy, change the subject.” + +“Well, do you think of settling in the California department of bliss?” + +“I don’t know. I wasn’t calculating on doing anything really definite in +that direction till the family come. I thought I would just look around, +meantime, in a quiet way, and make up my mind. Besides, I know a good +many dead people, and I was calculating to hunt them up and swap a little +gossip with them about friends, and old times, and one thing or another, +and ask them how they like it here, as far as they have got. I reckon my +wife will want to camp in the California range, though, because most all +her departed will be there, and she likes to be with folks she knows.” + +“Don’t you let her. You see what the Jersey district of heaven is, for +whites; well, the Californian district is a thousand times worse. It +swarms with a mean kind of leather-headed mud-colored angels—and your +nearest white neighbor is likely to be a million miles away. _What a man +mostly misses_, _in heaven_, _is company_—company of his own sort and +color and language. I have come near settling in the European part of +heaven once or twice on that account.” + +“Well, why didn’t you, Sandy?” + +“Oh, various reasons. For one thing, although you _see_ plenty of whites +there, you can’t understand any of them, hardly, and so you go about as +hungry for talk as you do here. I like to look at a Russian or a German +or an Italian—I even like to look at a Frenchman if I ever have the luck +to catch him engaged in anything that ain’t indelicate—but _looking_ +don’t cure the hunger—what you want is talk.” + +“Well, there’s England, Sandy—the English district of heaven.” + +“Yes, but it is not so very much better than this end of the heavenly +domain. As long as you run across Englishmen born this side of three +hundred years ago, you are all right; but the minute you get back of +Elizabeth’s time the language begins to fog up, and the further back you +go the foggier it gets. I had some talk with one Langland and a man by +the name of Chaucer—old-time poets—but it was no use, I couldn’t quite +understand them, and they couldn’t quite understand me. I have had +letters from them since, but it is such broken English I can’t make it +out. Back of those men’s time the English are just simply foreigners, +nothing more, nothing less; they talk Danish, German, Norman French, and +sometimes a mixture of all three; back of _them_, they talk Latin, and +ancient British, Irish, and Gaelic; and then back of these come billions +and billions of pure savages that talk a gibberish that Satan himself +couldn’t understand. The fact is, where you strike one man in the +English settlements that you can understand, you wade through awful +swarms that talk something you can’t make head nor tail of. You see, +every country on earth has been overlaid so often, in the course of a +billion years, with different kinds of people and different sorts of +languages, that this sort of mongrel business was bound to be the result +in heaven.” + +“Sandy,” says I, “did you see a good many of the great people history +tells about?” + +“Yes—plenty. I saw kings and all sorts of distinguished people.” + +“Do the kings rank just as they did below?” + +“No; a body can’t bring his rank up here with him. Divine right is a +good-enough earthly romance, but it don’t go, here. Kings drop down to +the general level as soon as they reach the realms of grace. I knew +Charles the Second very well—one of the most popular comedians in the +English section—draws first rate. There are better, of course—people +that were never heard of on earth—but Charles is making a very good +reputation indeed, and is considered a rising man. Richard the +Lion-hearted is in the prize-ring, and coming into considerable favor. +Henry the Eighth is a tragedian, and the scenes where he kills people are +done to the very life. Henry the Sixth keeps a religious-book stand.” + +“Did you ever see Napoleon, Sandy?” + +“Often—sometimes in the Corsican range, sometimes in the French. He +always hunts up a conspicuous place, and goes frowning around with his +arms folded and his field-glass under his arm, looking as grand, gloomy +and peculiar as his reputation calls for, and very much bothered because +he don’t stand as high, here, for a soldier, as he expected to.” + +“Why, who stands higher?” + +“Oh, a _lot_ of people _we_ never heard of before—the shoemaker and +horse-doctor and knife-grinder kind, you know—clodhoppers from goodness +knows where that never handled a sword or fired a shot in their lives—but +the soldiership was in them, though they never had a chance to show it. +But here they take their right place, and Cæsar and Napoleon and +Alexander have to take a back seat. The greatest military genius our +world ever produced was a brick-layer from somewhere back of Boston—died +during the Revolution—by the name of Absalom Jones. Wherever he goes, +crowds flock to see him. You see, everybody knows that if he had had a +chance he would have shown the world some generalship that would have +made all generalship before look like child’s play and ’prentice work. +But he never got a chance; he tried heaps of times to enlist as a +private, but he had lost both thumbs and a couple of front teeth, and the +recruiting sergeant wouldn’t pass him. However, as I say, everybody +knows, now, what he _would_ have been,—and so they flock by the million +to get a glimpse of him whenever they hear he is going to be anywhere. +Cæsar, and Hannibal, and Alexander, and Napoleon are all on his staff, +and ever so many more great generals; but the public hardly care to look +at _them_ when _he_ is around. Boom! There goes another salute. The +barkeeper’s off quarantine now.” + + * * * * * + +Sandy and I put on our things. Then we made a wish, and in a second we +were at the reception-place. We stood on the edge of the ocean of space, +and looked out over the dimness, but couldn’t make out anything. Close +by us was the Grand Stand—tier on tier of dim thrones rising up toward +the zenith. From each side of it spread away the tiers of seats for the +general public. They spread away for leagues and leagues—you couldn’t +see the ends. They were empty and still, and hadn’t a cheerful look, but +looked dreary, like a theatre before anybody comes—gas turned down. +Sandy says,— + +“We’ll sit down here and wait. We’ll see the head of the procession come +in sight away off yonder pretty soon, now.” + +Says I,— + +“It’s pretty lonesome, Sandy; I reckon there’s a hitch somewheres. +Nobody but just you and me—it ain’t much of a display for the barkeeper.” + +“Don’t you fret, it’s all right. There’ll be one more gun-fire—then +you’ll see.” + +In a little while we noticed a sort of a lightish flush, away off on the +horizon. + +“Head of the torchlight procession,” says Sandy. + +It spread, and got lighter and brighter: soon it had a strong glare like +a locomotive headlight; it kept on getting brighter and brighter till it +was like the sun peeping above the horizon-line at sea—the big red rays +shot high up into the sky. + +“Keep your eyes on the Grand Stand and the miles of seats—sharp!” says +Sandy, “and listen for the gun-fire.” + +Just then it burst out, “Boom-boom-boom!” like a million thunderstorms in +one, and made the whole heavens rock. Then there was a sudden and awful +glare of light all about us, and in that very instant every one of the +millions of seats was occupied, and as far as you could see, in both +directions, was just a solid pack of people, and the place was all +splendidly lit up! It was enough to take a body’s breath away. Sandy +says,— + +“That is the way we do it here. No time fooled away; nobody straggling +in after the curtain’s up. Wishing is quicker work than travelling. A +quarter of a second ago these folks were millions of miles from here. +When they heard the last signal, all they had to do was to wish, and here +they are.” + +The prodigious choir struck up,— + + We long to hear thy voice, + To see thee face to face. + +It was noble music, but the uneducated chipped in and spoilt it, just as +the congregations used to do on earth. + +The head of the procession began to pass, now, and it was a wonderful +sight. It swept along, thick and solid, five hundred thousand angels +abreast, and every angel carrying a torch and singing—the whirring +thunder of the wings made a body’s head ache. You could follow the line +of the procession back, and slanting upward into the sky, far away in a +glittering snaky rope, till it was only a faint streak in the distance. +The rush went on and on, for a long time, and at last, sure enough, along +comes the barkeeper, and then everybody rose, and a cheer went up that +made the heavens shake, I tell you! He was all smiles, and had his halo +tilted over one ear in a cocky way, and was the most satisfied-looking +saint I ever saw. While he marched up the steps of the Grand Stand, the +choir struck up,— + + “The whole wide heaven groans, + And waits to hear that voice.” + +There were four gorgeous tents standing side by side in the place of +honor, on a broad railed platform in the centre of the Grand Stand, with +a shining guard of honor round about them. The tents had been shut up +all this time. As the barkeeper climbed along up, bowing and smiling to +everybody, and at last got to the platform, these tents were jerked up +aloft all of a sudden, and we saw four noble thrones of gold, all caked +with jewels, and in the two middle ones sat old white-whiskered men, and +in the two others a couple of the most glorious and gaudy giants, with +platter halos and beautiful armor. All the millions went down on their +knees, and stared, and looked glad, and burst out into a joyful kind of +murmurs. They said,— + +“Two archangels!—that is splendid. Who can the others be?” + +The archangels gave the barkeeper a stiff little military bow; the two +old men rose; one of them said, “Moses and Esau welcome thee!” and then +all the four vanished, and the thrones were empty. + +The barkeeper looked a little disappointed, for he was calculating to hug +those old people, I judge; but it was the gladdest and proudest multitude +you ever saw—because they had seen Moses and Esau. Everybody was saying, +“Did you see them?—I did—Esau’s side face was to me, but I saw Moses full +in the face, just as plain as I see you this minute!” + +The procession took up the barkeeper and moved on with him again, and the +crowd broke up and scattered. As we went along home, Sandy said it was a +great success, and the barkeeper would have a right to be proud of it +forever. And he said we were in luck, too; said we might attend +receptions for forty thousand years to come, and not have a chance to see +a brace of such grand moguls as Moses and Esau. We found afterwards that +we had come near seeing another patriarch, and likewise a genuine prophet +besides, but at the last moment they sent regrets. Sandy said there +would be a monument put up there, where Moses and Esau had stood, with +the date and circumstances, and all about the whole business, and +travellers would come for thousands of years and gawk at it, and climb +over it, and scribble their names on it. + + + + +Footnotes: + + +{9} The captain could not remember what this word was. He said it was +in a foreign tongue. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXTRACT FROM CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S +VISIT TO HEAVEN*** + + +******* This file should be named 1044-0.txt or 1044-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/4/1044 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1045-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1045-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..56e36af8 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1045-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1438 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1045 *** + + VENUS AND ADONIS + + + by William Shakespeare + + + _Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo + Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua._ + + +TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE + +HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, + +and Baron of Titchfield. + + +Right Honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my +unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me +for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen: only, if +your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow +to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some +graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I +shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so +barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it +to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart’s content; +which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world’s hopeful +expectation. + + +Your honour’s in all duty, + + +WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. + + + VENUS AND ADONIS + + +Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face +Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn, +Rose-cheek’d Adonis hied him to the chase; +Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn; 4 + Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him, + And like a bold-fac’d suitor ’gins to woo him. + +“Thrice fairer than myself,” thus she began, +“The field’s chief flower, sweet above compare, 8 +Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man, +More white and red than doves or roses are: + Nature that made thee, with herself at strife, + Saith that the world hath ending with thy life. 12 + +“Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed, +And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow; +If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed +A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know: 16 + Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses, + And being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses. + +“And yet not cloy thy lips with loath’d satiety, +But rather famish them amid their plenty, 20 +Making them red, and pale, with fresh variety: +Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty: + A summer’s day will seem an hour but short, + Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.” 24 + +With this she seizeth on his sweating palm, +The precedent of pith and livelihood, +And trembling in her passion, calls it balm, +Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good: 28 + Being so enrag’d, desire doth lend her force + Courageously to pluck him from his horse. + +Over one arm the lusty courser’s rein, +Under her other was the tender boy, 32 +Who blush’d and pouted in a dull disdain, +With leaden appetite, unapt to toy; + She red and hot as coals of glowing fire, + He red for shame, but frosty in desire. 36 + +The studded bridle on a ragged bough +Nimbly she fastens;—O! how quick is love!— +The steed is stalled up, and even now +To tie the rider she begins to prove: 40 + Backward she push’d him, as she would be thrust, + And govern’d him in strength, though not in lust. + +So soon was she along, as he was down, +Each leaning on their elbows and their hips: 44 +Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown, +And ’gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips, + And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken, + “If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.” 48 + +He burns with bashful shame, she with her tears +Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks; +Then with her windy sighs and golden hairs +To fan and blow them dry again she seeks. 52 + He saith she is immodest, blames her miss; + What follows more, she murders with a kiss. + +Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast, +Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone, 56 +Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste, +Till either gorge be stuff’d or prey be gone: + Even so she kiss’d his brow, his cheek, his chin, + And where she ends she doth anew begin. 60 + +Forc’d to content, but never to obey, +Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face. +She feedeth on the steam, as on a prey, +And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace, 64 + Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers + So they were dew’d with such distilling showers. + +Look how a bird lies tangled in a net, +So fasten’d in her arms Adonis lies; 68 +Pure shame and aw’d resistance made him fret, +Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes: + Rain added to a river that is rank + Perforce will force it overflow the bank. 72 + +Still she entreats, and prettily entreats, +For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale. +Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets, +’Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy pale; 76 + Being red she loves him best, and being white, + Her best is better’d with a more delight. + +Look how he can, she cannot choose but love; +And by her fair immortal hand she swears, 80 +From his soft bosom never to remove, +Till he take truce with her contending tears, + Which long have rain’d, making her cheeks all wet; + And one sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt. + +Upon this promise did he raise his chin, 85 +Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave, +Who, being look’d on, ducks as quickly in; +So offers he to give what she did crave, 88 + But when her lips were ready for his pay, + He winks, and turns his lips another way. + +Never did passenger in summer’s heat +More thirst for drink than she for this good turn. 92 +Her help she sees, but help she cannot get; +She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn: + “O! pity,” ’gan she cry, “flint-hearted boy, + ’Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy? 96 + +“I have been woo’d as I entreat thee now, +Even by the stern and direful god of war, +Whose sinewy neck in battle ne’er did bow, +Who conquers where he comes in every jar; 100 + Yet hath he been my captive and my slave, + And begg’d for that which thou unask’d shalt have. + +“Over my altars hath he hung his lance, +His batter’d shield, his uncontrolled crest, 104 +And for my sake hath learn’d to sport and dance, +To toy, to wanton, dally, smile, and jest; + Scorning his churlish drum and ensign red + Making my arms his field, his tent my bed. 108 + +“Thus he that overrul’d I oversway’d, +Leading him prisoner in a red rose chain: +Strong-temper’d steel his stronger strength obey’d, +Yet was he servile to my coy disdain. 112 + Oh be not proud, nor brag not of thy might, + For mast’ring her that foil’d the god of fight. + +“Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine, +Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red, 116 +The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine: +What see’st thou in the ground? hold up thy head, + Look in mine eyeballs, there thy beauty lies; + Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes? 120 + +“Art thou asham’d to kiss? then wink again, +And I will wink; so shall the day seem night. +Love keeps his revels where there are but twain; +Be bold to play, our sport is not in sight, 124 + These blue-vein’d violets whereon we lean + Never can blab, nor know not what we mean. + +“The tender spring upon thy tempting lip 127 +Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted, +Make use of time, let not advantage slip; +Beauty within itself should not be wasted, + Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime + Rot, and consume themselves in little time. 132 + +“Were I hard-favour’d, foul, or wrinkled old, +Ill-nurtur’d, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice, +O’erworn, despised, rheumatic, and cold, +Thick-sighted, barren, lean, and lacking juice, 136 + Then mightst thou pause, for then I were not for thee; + But having no defects, why dost abhor me? + +“Thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow, 139 +Mine eyes are grey and bright, and quick in turning; +My beauty as the spring doth yearly grow, +My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning, + My smooth moist hand, were it with thy hand felt, + Would in thy palm dissolve, or seem to melt. 144 + +“Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear, +Or like a fairy, trip upon the green, +Or like a nymph, with long dishevell’d hair, +Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen. 148 + Love is a spirit all compact of fire, + Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire. + +“Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie: 151 +These forceless flowers like sturdy trees support me; +Two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky, +From morn till night, even where I list to sport me. + Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be + That thou shouldst think it heavy unto thee? 156 + +“Is thine own heart to thine own face affected? +Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left? +Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected, +Steal thine own freedom, and complain on theft. 160 + Narcissus so himself himself forsook, + And died to kiss his shadow in the brook. + +“Torches are made to light, jewels to wear, +Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use, 164 +Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear; +Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse, + Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty; + Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty. 168 + +“Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed, +Unless the earth with thy increase be fed? +By law of nature thou art bound to breed, +That thine may live when thou thyself art dead; 172 + And so in spite of death thou dost survive, + In that thy likeness still is left alive.” + +By this the love-sick queen began to sweat, +For where they lay the shadow had forsook them, 176 +And Titan, tired in the midday heat, +With burning eye did hotly overlook them, + Wishing Adonis had his team to guide, + So he were like him and by Venus’ side. 180 + +And now Adonis with a lazy spright, +And with a heavy, dark, disliking eye, +His louring brows o’erwhelming his fair sight, +Like misty vapours when they blot the sky, 184 + Souring his cheeks, cries, “Fie, no more of love: + The sun doth burn my face; I must remove.” + +“Ay me,” quoth Venus, “young, and so unkind! +What bare excuses mak’st thou to be gone! 188 +I’ll sigh celestial breath, whose gentle wind +Shall cool the heat of this descending sun: + I’ll make a shadow for thee of my hairs; + If they burn too, I’ll quench them with my tears. 192 + +“The sun that shines from heaven shines but warm, +And lo I lie between that sun and thee: +The heat I have from thence doth little harm, +Thine eye darts forth the fire that burneth me; 196 + And were I not immortal, life were done, + Between this heavenly and earthly sun. + +“Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel? +Nay more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth: 200 +Art thou a woman’s son and canst not feel +What ’tis to love, how want of love tormenteth? + O had thy mother borne so hard a mind, + She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind. 204 + +“What am I that thou shouldst contemn me this? +Or what great danger dwells upon my suit? +What were thy lips the worse for one poor kiss? +Speak, fair; but speak fair words, or else be mute: 208 + Give me one kiss, I’ll give it thee again, + And one for int’rest, if thou wilt have twain. + +“Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone, +Well-painted idol, image dull and dead, 212 +Statue contenting but the eye alone, +Thing like a man, but of no woman bred: + Thou art no man, though of a man’s complexion, + For men will kiss even by their own direction.” 216 + +This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue, +And swelling passion doth provoke a pause; +Red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth her wrong; +Being judge in love, she cannot right her cause. 220 + And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak, + And now her sobs do her intendments break. + +Sometimes she shakes her head, and then his hand, +Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground; 224 +Sometimes her arms infold him like a band: +She would, he will not in her arms be bound; + And when from thence he struggles to be gone, + She locks her lily fingers one in one. 228 + +“Fondling,” she saith, “since I have hemm’d thee here +Within the circuit of this ivory pale, +I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer; +Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale: 232 + Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry, + Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie. + +“Within this limit is relief enough, +Sweet bottom grass and high delightful plain, 236 +Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough, +To shelter thee from tempest and from rain: + Then be my deer, since I am such a park, 239 + No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.” + +At this Adonis smiles as in disdain, +That in each cheek appears a pretty dimple; +Love made those hollows, if himself were slain, +He might be buried in a tomb so simple; 244 + Foreknowing well, if there he came to lie, + Why there love liv’d, and there he could not die. + +These lovely caves, these round enchanting pits, +Open’d their mouths to swallow Venus’ liking. 248 +Being mad before, how doth she now for wits? +Struck dead at first, what needs a second striking? + Poor queen of love, in thine own law forlorn, + To love a cheek that smiles at thee in scorn! 252 + +Now which way shall she turn? what shall she say? +Her words are done, her woes the more increasing; +The time is spent, her object will away, +And from her twining arms doth urge releasing: 256 + “Pity,” she cries; “some favour, some remorse!” + Away he springs, and hasteth to his horse. + +But lo from forth a copse that neighbours by, +A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud, 260 +Adonis’ tramping courser doth espy, +And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud: + The strong-neck’d steed, being tied unto a tree, + Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he. 264 + +Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds, +And now his woven girths he breaks asunder; +The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds, +Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven’s thunder; + The iron bit he crusheth ’tween his teeth, 269 + Controlling what he was controlled with. + +His ears up-prick’d; his braided hanging mane +Upon his compass’d crest now stand on end; 272 +His nostrils drink the air, and forth again, +As from a furnace, vapours doth he send: + His eye, which scornfully glisters like fire, + Shows his hot courage and his high desire. 276 + +Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps, +With gentle majesty and modest pride; +Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps, +As who should say, “Lo thus my strength is tried; + And this I do to captivate the eye 281 + Of the fair breeder that is standing by.” + +What recketh he his rider’s angry stir, +His flattering “Holla”, or his “Stand, I say”? 284 +What cares he now for curb or pricking spur? +For rich caparisons or trappings gay? + He sees his love, and nothing else he sees, + For nothing else with his proud sight agrees. 288 + +Look when a painter would surpass the life, +In limning out a well-proportion’d steed, +His art with nature’s workmanship at strife, +As if the dead the living should exceed: 292 + So did this horse excel a common one, + In shape, in courage, colour, pace and bone. + +Round-hoof’d, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, +Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide, +High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, +Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide: + Look, what a horse should have he did not lack, + Save a proud rider on so proud a back. 300 + +Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares; +Anon he starts at stirring of a feather: +To bid the wind a base he now prepares, +And where he run or fly they know not whether; 304 + For through his mane and tail the high wind sings, + Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather’d wings. + +He looks upon his love, and neighs unto her; +She answers him as if she knew his mind, 308 +Being proud, as females are, to see him woo her, +She puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind, + Spurns at his love and scorns the heat he feels, + Beating his kind embracements with her heels. 312 + +Then like a melancholy malcontent, +He vails his tail that like a falling plume, +Cool shadow to his melting buttock lent: +He stamps, and bites the poor flies in his fume. 316 + His love, perceiving how he was enrag’d, + Grew kinder, and his fury was assuag’d. + +His testy master goeth about to take him, +When lo the unback’d breeder, full of fear, 320 +Jealous of catching, swiftly doth forsake him, +With her the horse, and left Adonis there: + As they were mad, unto the wood they hie them, + Outstripping crows that strive to overfly them. 324 + +All swoln with chafing, down Adonis sits, +Banning his boisterous and unruly beast; +And now the happy season once more fits +That love-sick love by pleading may be blest; 328 + For lovers say, the heart hath treble wrong, + When it is barr’d the aidance of the tongue. + +An oven that is stopp’d, or river stay’d, +Burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage: 332 +So of concealed sorrow may be said, +Free vent of words love’s fire doth assuage; + But when the heart’s attorney once is mute, + The client breaks, as desperate in his suit. 336 + +He sees her coming, and begins to glow, +Even as a dying coal revives with wind, +And with his bonnet hides his angry brow, +Looks on the dull earth with disturbed mind, 340 + Taking no notice that she is so nigh, + For all askance he holds her in his eye. + +O what a sight it was, wistly to view +How she came stealing to the wayward boy, 344 +To note the fighting conflict of her hue, +How white and red each other did destroy: + But now her cheek was pale, and by and by + It flash’d forth fire, as lightning from the sky. 348 + +Now was she just before him as he sat, +And like a lowly lover down she kneels; +With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat, +Her other tender hand his fair cheek feels: 352 + His tend’rer cheek receives her soft hand’s print, + As apt as new-fall’n snow takes any dint. + +Oh what a war of looks was then between them, +Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing, 356 +His eyes saw her eyes, as they had not seen them, +Her eyes woo’d still, his eyes disdain’d the wooing: + And all this dumb play had his acts made plain + With tears, which, chorus-like, her eyes did rain. + +Full gently now she takes him by the hand, 361 +A lily prison’d in a gaol of snow, +Or ivory in an alabaster band, +So white a friend engirts so white a foe: 364 + This beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling, + Show’d like two silver doves that sit a-billing. + +Once more the engine of her thoughts began: +“O fairest mover on this mortal round, 368 +Would thou wert as I am, and I a man, +My heart all whole as thine, thy heart my wound, + For one sweet look thy help I would assure thee, + Though nothing but my body’s bane would cure thee.” + +“Give me my hand,” saith he, “why dost thou feel it?” +“Give me my heart,” saith she, “and thou shalt have it. +O give it me lest thy hard heart do steel it, +And being steel’d, soft sighs can never grave it. 376 + Then love’s deep groans I never shall regard, + Because Adonis’ heart hath made mine hard.” + +“For shame,” he cries, “let go, and let me go, +My day’s delight is past, my horse is gone, 380 +And ’tis your fault I am bereft him so, +I pray you hence, and leave me here alone, + For all my mind, my thought, my busy care, + Is how to get my palfrey from the mare.” 384 + +Thus she replies: “Thy palfrey as he should, +Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire, +Affection is a coal that must be cool’d; +Else, suffer’d, it will set the heart on fire, 388 + The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none; + Therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone. + +“How like a jade he stood tied to the tree, +Servilely master’d with a leathern rein! 392 +But when he saw his love, his youth’s fair fee, +He held such petty bondage in disdain; + Throwing the base thong from his bending crest, + Enfranchising his mouth, his back, his breast. 396 + +“Who sees his true-love in her naked bed, +Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white, +But when his glutton eye so full hath fed, +His other agents aim at like delight? 400 + Who is so faint that dare not be so bold + To touch the fire, the weather being cold? + +“Let me excuse thy courser, gentle boy, +And learn of him, I heartily beseech thee, 404 +To take advantage on presented joy, +Though I were dumb, yet his proceedings teach thee. + O learn to love, the lesson is but plain, + And once made perfect, never lost again.” 408 + +“I know not love,” quoth he, “nor will not know it, +Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it; +’Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it; +My love to love is love but to disgrace it; 412 + For I have heard, it is a life in death, + That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath. + +“Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish’d? +Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth? 416 +If springing things be any jot diminish’d, +They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth; + The colt that’s back’d and burden’d being young, + Loseth his pride, and never waxeth strong. 420 + +“You hurt my hand with wringing. Let us part, +And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat: +Remove your siege from my unyielding heart, +To love’s alarms it will not ope the gate: 424 + Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flatt’ry; + For where a heart is hard they make no batt’ry.” + +“What! canst thou talk?” quoth she, “hast thou a tongue? +O would thou hadst not, or I had no hearing; 428 +Thy mermaid’s voice hath done me double wrong; +I had my load before, now press’d with bearing: + Melodious discord, heavenly tune, harsh-sounding, + Ear’s deep sweet music, and heart’s deep sore wounding. + +“Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love 433 +That inward beauty and invisible; +Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move +Each part in me that were but sensible: 436 + Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see, + Yet should I be in love by touching thee. + +“Say that the sense of feeling were bereft me, +And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch, 440 +And nothing but the very smell were left me, +Yet would my love to thee be still as much; + For from the stillitory of thy face excelling + Comes breath perfum’d, that breedeth love by smelling. + +“But oh what banquet wert thou to the taste, 445 +Being nurse and feeder of the other four; +Would they not wish the feast might ever last, +And bid suspicion double-lock the door, + Lest jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest, + Should by his stealing in disturb the feast?” 448 + +Once more the ruby-colour’d portal open’d, +Which to his speech did honey passage yield, 452 +Like a red morn that ever yet betoken’d +Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field, + Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds, + Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds. 456 + +This ill presage advisedly she marketh: +Even as the wind is hush’d before it raineth, +Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh, +Or as the berry breaks before it staineth, 460 + Or like the deadly bullet of a gun, + His meaning struck her ere his words begun. + +And at his look she flatly falleth down +For looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth; 464 +A smile recures the wounding of a frown; +But blessed bankrout, that by love so thriveth! + The silly boy, believing she is dead, + Claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red. 468 + +And all amaz’d brake off his late intent, +For sharply he did think to reprehend her, +Which cunning love did wittily prevent: +Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her! 472 + For on the grass she lies as she were slain, + Till his breath breatheth life in her again. + +He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks, +He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard, 476 +He chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks +To mend the hurt that his unkindness marr’d: + He kisses her; and she, by her good will, + Will never rise, so he will kiss her still. 480 + +The night of sorrow now is turn’d to day: +Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth, +Like the fair sun when in his fresh array +He cheers the morn, and all the world relieveth: 484 + And as the bright sun glorifies the sky, + So is her face illumin’d with her eye. + +Whose beams upon his hairless face are fix’d, +As if from thence they borrow’d all their shine. 488 +Were never four such lamps together mix’d, +Had not his clouded with his brow’s repine; + But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light + Shone like the moon in water seen by night. 492 + +“O where am I?” quoth she, “in earth or heaven? +Or in the ocean drench’d, or in the fire? +What hour is this? or morn or weary even? +Do I delight to die, or life desire? 496 + But now I liv’d, and life was death’s annoy; + But now I died, and death was lively joy. + +“O thou didst kill me; kill me once again: +Thy eyes’ shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine, 500 +Hath taught them scornful tricks, and such disdain, +That they have murder’d this poor heart of mine; + And these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen, + But for thy piteous lips no more had seen. 504 + +“Long may they kiss each other for this cure! +Oh never let their crimson liveries wear, +And as they last, their verdure still endure, +To drive infection from the dangerous year: 508 + That the star-gazers, having writ on death, + May say, the plague is banish’d by thy breath. + +“Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, +What bargains may I make, still to be sealing? 512 +To sell myself I can be well contented, +So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing; + Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips, + Set thy seal manual on my wax-red lips. 516 + +“A thousand kisses buys my heart from me; +And pay them at thy leisure, one by one, +What is ten hundred touches unto thee? +Are they not quickly told and quickly gone? 520 + Say, for non-payment that the debt should double, + Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?” + +“Fair queen,” quoth he, “if any love you owe me, +Measure my strangeness with my unripe years: 524 +Before I know myself, seek not to know me; +No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears: + The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, + Or being early pluck’d, is sour to taste. 528 + +“Look the world’s comforter, with weary gait +His day’s hot task hath ended in the west; +The owl, night’s herald, shrieks, ’tis very late; +The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest, 532 + And coal-black clouds that shadow heaven’s light + Do summon us to part, and bid good night. + +“Now let me say good night, and so say you; +If you will say so, you shall have a kiss.” 536 +“Good night,” quoth she; and ere he says adieu, +The honey fee of parting tender’d is: + Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace; + Incorporate then they seem, face grows to face. 540 + +Till breathless he disjoin’d, and backward drew +The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth, +Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew, +Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth, 544 + He with her plenty press’d, she faint with dearth, + Their lips together glued, fall to the earth. + +Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey, +And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth; 548 +Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey, +Paying what ransom the insulter willeth; + Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high, + That she will draw his lips’ rich treasure dry. 552 + +And having felt the sweetness of the spoil, +With blindfold fury she begins to forage; +Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil, +And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage, 556 + Planting oblivion, beating reason back, + Forgetting shame’s pure blush and honour’s wrack. + +Hot, faint, and weary, with her hard embracing, +Like a wild bird being tam’d with too much handling, +Or as the fleet-foot roe that’s tir’d with chasing, 561 +Or like the froward infant still’d with dandling: + He now obeys, and now no more resisteth, + While she takes all she can, not all she listeth. 564 + +What wax so frozen but dissolves with temp’ring, +And yields at last to every light impression? +Things out of hope are compass’d oft with vent’ring, +Chiefly in love, whose leave exceeds commission: 568 + Affection faints not like a pale-fac’d coward, + But then woos best when most his choice is froward. + +When he did frown, O had she then gave over, +Such nectar from his lips she had not suck’d. 572 +Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover; +What though the rose have prickles, yet ’tis pluck’d. + Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast, + Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last. + +For pity now she can no more detain him; 577 +The poor fool prays her that he may depart: +She is resolv’d no longer to restrain him, +Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart, 580 + The which by Cupid’s bow she doth protest, + He carries thence encaged in his breast. + +“Sweet boy,” she says, “this night I’ll waste in sorrow, +For my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch. 584 +Tell me, love’s master, shall we meet tomorrow +Say, shall we? shall we? wilt thou make the match?” + He tells her no, tomorrow he intends + To hunt the boar with certain of his friends. 588 + +“The boar!” quoth she; whereat a sudden pale, +Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose, +Usurps her cheek, she trembles at his tale, +And on his neck her yoking arms she throws. 592 + She sinketh down, still hanging by his neck, + He on her belly falls, she on her back. + +Now is she in the very lists of love, +Her champion mounted for the hot encounter: 596 +All is imaginary she doth prove, +He will not manage her, although he mount her; + That worse than Tantalus’ is her annoy, + To clip Elysium and to lack her joy. 600 + +Even as poor birds, deceiv’d with painted grapes, +Do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw: +Even so she languisheth in her mishaps, +As those poor birds that helpless berries saw. 604 + The warm effects which she in him finds missing, + She seeks to kindle with continual kissing. + +But all in vain, good queen, it will not be, +She hath assay’d as much as may be prov’d; 608 +Her pleading hath deserv’d a greater fee; +She’s love, she loves, and yet she is not lov’d. + “Fie, fie,” he says, “you crush me; let me go; + You have no reason to withhold me so.” 612 + +“Thou hadst been gone,” quoth she, “sweet boy, ere this, +But that thou told’st me thou wouldst hunt the boar. +Oh be advis’d; thou know’st not what it is, +With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore, 616 + Whose tushes never sheath’d he whetteth still, + Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill. + +“On his bow-back he hath a battle set +Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes; 620 +His eyes like glow-worms shine when he doth fret; +His snout digs sepulchres where’er he goes; + Being mov’d, he strikes whate’er is in his way, + And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay. 624 + +“His brawny sides, with hairy bristles armed, +Are better proof than thy spear’s point can enter; +His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed; +Being ireful, on the lion he will venture: 628 + The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, + As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes. + +“Alas! he naught esteems that face of thine, +To which love’s eyes pay tributary gazes; 632 +Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips, and crystal eyne, +Whose full perfection all the world amazes; + But having thee at vantage, wondrous dread! + Would root these beauties as he roots the mead. + +“Oh let him keep his loathsome cabin still, 637 +Beauty hath naught to do with such foul fiends: +Come not within his danger by thy will; +They that thrive well, take counsel of their friends. + When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble, + I fear’d thy fortune, and my joints did tremble. + +“Didst thou not mark my face, was it not white? +Saw’st thou not signs of fear lurk in mine eye? 644 +Grew I not faint, and fell I not downright? +Within my bosom, whereon thou dost lie, + My boding heart pants, beats, and takes no rest, + But like an earthquake, shakes thee on my breast. + +“For where love reigns, disturbing jealousy 649 +Doth call himself affection’s sentinel; +Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny, +And in a peaceful hour doth cry “Kill, kill!” 652 + Distemp’ring gentle love in his desire, + As air and water do abate the fire. + +“This sour informer, this bate-breeding spy, +This canker that eats up love’s tender spring, 656 +This carry-tale, dissentious jealousy, +That sometime true news, sometime false doth bring, + Knocks at my heart, and whispers in mine ear, + That if I love thee, I thy death should fear. 660 + +“And more than so, presenteth to mine eye +The picture of an angry chafing boar, +Under whose sharp fangs on his back doth lie +An image like thyself, all stain’d with gore; 664 + Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed, + Doth make them droop with grief and hang the head. + +“What should I do, seeing thee so indeed, +That tremble at th’imagination? 668 +The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed, +And fear doth teach it divination: + I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow, + If thou encounter with the boar tomorrow. 672 + +“But if thou needs wilt hunt, be rul’d by me; +Uncouple at the timorous flying hare, +Or at the fox which lives by subtilty, +Or at the roe which no encounter dare: 676 + Pursue these fearful creatures o’er the downs, + And on thy well-breath’d horse keep with thy hounds. + +“And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, +Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles 680 +How he outruns the wind, and with what care +He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles: + The many musits through the which he goes + Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes. 684 + +“Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep, +To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell, +And sometime where earth-delving conies keep, +To stop the loud pursuers in their yell, 688 + And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer; + Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear. + +“For there his smell with others being mingled, 691 +The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, +Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled +With much ado the cold fault cleanly out; + Then do they spend their mouths: echo replies, + As if another chase were in the skies. 696 + +“By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill, +Stands on his hinder legs with list’ning ear, +To hearken if his foes pursue him still. +Anon their loud alarums he doth hear; 700 + And now his grief may be compared well + To one sore sick that hears the passing bell. + +“Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch +Turn, and return, indenting with the way, 704 +Each envious briar his weary legs do scratch, +Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay: + For misery is trodden on by many, + And being low never reliev’d by any. 708 + +“Lie quietly, and hear a little more; +Nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise: +To make thee hate the hunting of the boar, +Unlike myself thou hear’st me moralize, 712 + Applying this to that, and so to so, + For love can comment upon every woe. + +“Where did I leave?” “No matter where,” quoth he +“Leave me, and then the story aptly ends: 716 +The night is spent.” “Why, what of that?” quoth she. +“I am,” quoth he, “expected of my friends; + And now ’tis dark, and going I shall fall.” + “In night,” quoth she, “desire sees best of all. 720 + +But if thou fall, oh then imagine this, +The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips, +And all is but to rob thee of a kiss. 723 +Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips + Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn, + Lest she should steal a kiss and die forsworn." + +“Now of this dark night I perceive the reason: +Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine 728 +Till forging nature be condemn’d of treason, +For stealing moulds from heaven, that were divine; + Wherein she fram’d thee, in high heaven’s despite, + To shame the sun by day and her by night. 732 + +“And therefore hath she brib’d the destinies, +To cross the curious workmanship of nature, +To mingle beauty with infirmities, +And pure perfection with impure defeature, 736 + Making it subject to the tyranny + Of mad mischances and much misery. + +“As burning fevers, agues pale and faint, +Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood, 740 +The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint +Disorder breeds by heating of the blood; + Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn’d despair, + Swear nature’s death, for framing thee so fair. 744 + +“And not the least of all these maladies +But in one minute’s fight brings beauty under: +Both favour, savour, hue and qualities, +Whereat th’impartial gazer late did wonder, 748 + Are on the sudden wasted, thaw’d and done, + As mountain snow melts with the midday sun. + +“Therefore despite of fruitless chastity, +Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns, 752 +That on the earth would breed a scarcity +And barren dearth of daughters and of sons, + Be prodigal: the lamp that burns by night + Dries up his oil to lend the world his light. 756 + +“What is thy body but a swallowing grave, +Seeming to bury that posterity, +Which by the rights of time thou needs must have, +If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity? 760 + If so, the world will hold thee in disdain, + Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain. + +“So in thyself thyself art made away; +A mischief worse than civil home-bred strife, 764 +Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay, +Or butcher sire that reeves his son of life. + Foul cank’ring rust the hidden treasure frets, + But gold that’s put to use more gold begets.” 768 + +“Nay then,” quoth Adon, “you will fall again +Into your idle over-handled theme; +The kiss I gave you is bestow’d in vain, +And all in vain you strive against the stream; 772 + For by this black-fac’d night, desire’s foul nurse, + Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse. + +“If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues, +And every tongue more moving than your own, 776 +Bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s songs, +Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown; + For know, my heart stands armed in mine ear, + And will not let a false sound enter there. 780 + +“Lest the deceiving harmony should run +Into the quiet closure of my breast, +And then my little heart were quite undone, +In his bedchamber to be barr’d of rest. 784 + No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan, + But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone. + +“What have you urg’d that I cannot reprove? +The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger; 790 +I hate not love, but your device in love +That lends embracements unto every stranger. + You do it for increase: O strange excuse! + When reason is the bawd to lust’s abuse. 792 + +“Call it not love, for love to heaven is fled, +Since sweating lust on earth usurp’d his name; +Under whose simple semblance he hath fed +Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame; 796 + Which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves, + As caterpillars do the tender leaves. + +“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, +But lust’s effect is tempest after sun; 800 +Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain, +Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done. + Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies; + Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies. 804 + +“More I could tell, but more I dare not say; +The text is old, the orator too green. +Therefore, in sadness, now I will away; +My face is full of shame, my heart of teen, 808 + Mine ears, that to your wanton talk attended + Do burn themselves for having so offended.” + +With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace 811 +Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast, +And homeward through the dark laund runs apace; +Leaves love upon her back deeply distress’d. + Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky, + So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye. 816 + +Which after him she darts, as one on shore +Gazing upon a late embarked friend, +Till the wild waves will have him seen no more, +Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend: 820 + So did the merciless and pitchy night + Fold in the object that did feed her sight. + +Whereat amaz’d, as one that unaware +Hath dropp’d a precious jewel in the flood, 824 +Or ’stonish’d as night-wanderers often are, +Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood; + Even so confounded in the dark she lay, + Having lost the fair discovery of her way. 828 + +And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans, +That all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled, +Make verbal repetition of her moans; +Passion on passion deeply is redoubled: 832 + “Ay me!” she cries, and twenty times, “Woe, woe!” + And twenty echoes twenty times cry so. + +She marking them, begins a wailing note, +And sings extemporally a woeful ditty; 836 +How love makes young men thrall, and old men dote, +How love is wise in folly foolish witty: + Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe, + And still the choir of echoes answer so. 840 + +Her song was tedious, and outwore the night, +For lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short, +If pleas’d themselves, others they think, delight +In such like circumstance, with such like sport: 844 + Their copious stories oftentimes begun, + End without audience, and are never done. + +For who hath she to spend the night withal, +But idle sounds resembling parasites; 848 +Like shrill-tongu’d tapsters answering every call, +Soothing the humour of fantastic wits? + She says, “’Tis so:” they answer all, “’Tis so;” + And would say after her, if she said “No.” 852 + +Lo here the gentle lark, weary of rest, +From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, +And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast +The sun ariseth in his majesty; 856 + Who doth the world so gloriously behold, + That cedar tops and hills seem burnish’d gold. + +Venus salutes him with this fair good morrow: +“Oh thou clear god, and patron of all light, 860 +From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow +The beauteous influence that makes him bright, + There lives a son that suck’d an earthly mother, + May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other.” + +This said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove, 865 +Musing the morning is so much o’erworn, +And yet she hears no tidings of her love; +She hearkens for his hounds and for his horn. 868 + Anon she hears them chant it lustily, + And all in haste she coasteth to the cry. + +And as she runs, the bushes in the way +Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face, 872 +Some twine about her thigh to make her stay: +She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace, + Like a milch doe, whose swelling dugs do ache, + Hasting to feed her fawn hid in some brake. 876 + +By this she hears the hounds are at a bay, +Whereat she starts like one that spies an adder +Wreath’d up in fatal folds just in his way, +The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder; 880 + Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds + Appals her senses, and her spirit confounds. + +For now she knows it is no gentle chase, +But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud, 884 +Because the cry remaineth in one place, +Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud, + Finding their enemy to be so curst, + They all strain court’sy who shall cope him first. 888 + +This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear, +Through which it enters to surprise her heart; +Who overcome by doubt and bloodless fear, +With cold-pale weakness numbs each feeling part; 892 + Like soldiers when their captain once doth yield, + They basely fly and dare not stay the field. + +Thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy, +Till cheering up her senses sore dismay’d, 896 +She tells them ’tis a causeless fantasy, +And childish error, that they are afraid; + Bids them leave quaking, bids them fear no more: + And with that word, she spied the hunted boar. 900 + +Whose frothy mouth bepainted all with red, +Like milk and blood being mingled both together, +A second fear through all her sinews spread, +Which madly hurries her she knows not whither: 904 + This way she runs, and now she will no further, + But back retires, to rate the boar for murther. + +A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways, +She treads the path that she untreads again; 908 +Her more than haste is mated with delays, +Like the proceedings of a drunken brain, + Full of respects, yet naught at all respecting, + In hand with all things, naught at all effecting. + +Here kennel’d in a brake she finds a hound, 913 +And asks the weary caitiff for his master, +And there another licking of his wound, +’Gainst venom’d sores the only sovereign plaster. 916 + And here she meets another sadly scowling, + To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling. + +When he hath ceas’d his ill-resounding noise, +Another flap-mouth’d mourner, black and grim, 920 +Against the welkin volleys out his voice; +Another and another answer him, + Clapping their proud tails to the ground below, + Shaking their scratch’d ears, bleeding as they go. + +Look how the world’s poor people are amazed 925 +At apparitions, signs, and prodigies, +Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed, +Infusing them with dreadful prophecies; 928 + So she at these sad signs draws up her breath, + And sighing it again, exclaims on death. + +“Hard-favour’d tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, 931 +Hateful divorce of love,” thus chides she death, +“Grim-grinning ghost, earth’s worm, what dost thou mean? +To stifle beauty and to steal his breath, + Who when he liv’d, his breath and beauty set + Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet. 936 + +“If he be dead, O no, it cannot be, +Seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it, +O yes, it may, thou hast no eyes to see, +But hatefully at random dost thou hit. 940 + Thy mark is feeble age, but thy false dart + Mistakes that aim, and cleaves an infant’s heart. + +“Hadst thou but bid beware, then he had spoke, +And hearing him, thy power had lost his power. 944 +The destinies will curse thee for this stroke; +They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck’st a flower. + Love’s golden arrow at him should have fled, + And not death’s ebon dart to strike him dead. 948 + +“Dost thou drink tears, that thou provok’st such weeping? +What may a heavy groan advantage thee? +Why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping +Those eyes that taught all other eyes to see? 952 + Now nature cares not for thy mortal vigour, + Since her best work is ruin’d with thy rigour.” + +Here overcome, as one full of despair, +She vail’d her eyelids, who like sluices stopp’d 956 +The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair +In the sweet channel of her bosom dropp’d + But through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain, + And with his strong course opens them again. 960 + +O how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow; +Her eyes seen in the tears, tears in her eye; +Both crystals, where they view’d each other’s sorrow, +Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry; 964 + But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain, + Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again. + +Variable passions throng her constant woe, +As striving who should best become her grief; 968 +All entertain’d, each passion labours so, +That every present sorrow seemeth chief, + But none is best, then join they all together, + Like many clouds consulting for foul weather. 972 + +By this, far off she hears some huntsman holla; +A nurse’s song ne’er pleas’d her babe so well: +The dire imagination she did follow +This sound of hope doth labour to expel; 976 + For now reviving joy bids her rejoice, + And flatters her it is Adonis’ voice. + +Whereat her tears began to turn their tide, +Being prison’d in her eye, like pearls in glass; 980 +Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside, +Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass + To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground, + Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown’d. + +O hard-believing love, how strange it seems 985 +Not to believe, and yet too credulous; +Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes; +Despair and hope make thee ridiculous, 988 + The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely, + In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly. + +Now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought, +Adonis lives, and death is not to blame; 992 +It was not she that call’d him all to naught; +Now she adds honours to his hateful name. + She clepes him king of graves, and grave for kings, + Imperious supreme of all mortal things. 996 + +“No, no,” quoth she, “sweet death, I did but jest; +Yet pardon me, I felt a kind of fear +Whenas I met the boar, that bloody beast, +Which knows no pity, but is still severe; 1000 + Then, gentle shadow,—truth I must confess— + I rail’d on thee, fearing my love’s decease. + +“’Tis not my fault, the boar provok’d my tongue; +Be wreak’d on him, invisible commander; 1004 +’Tis he, foul creature, that hath done thee wrong; +I did but act, he’s author of my slander. + Grief hath two tongues, and never woman yet, + Could rule them both, without ten women’s wit.” + +Thus hoping that Adonis is alive, 1009 +Her rash suspect she doth extenuate; +And that his beauty may the better thrive, +With death she humbly doth insinuate; 1012 + Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs and stories + His victories, his triumphs and his glories. + +“O love!” quoth she, “how much a fool was I, +To be of such a weak and silly mind, 1016 +To wail his death who lives, and must not die +Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind; + For he being dead, with him is beauty slain, + And beauty dead, black Chaos comes again. 1020 + +“Fie, fie, fond love, thou art as full of fear +As one with treasure laden, hemm’d with thieves, +Trifles unwitnessed with eye or ear, +Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves.” 1024 + Even at this word she hears a merry horn, + Whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn. + +As falcon to the lure, away she flies; +The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light, 1028 +And in her haste unfortunately spies +The foul boar’s conquest on her fair delight; + Which seen, her eyes, as murder’d with the view, + Like stars asham’d of day, themselves withdrew. + +Or as the snail, whose tender horns being hit, 1033 +Shrinks backwards in his shelly cave with pain, +And there all smother’d up, in shade doth sit, +Long after fearing to creep forth again: 1036 + So at his bloody view her eyes are fled + Into the deep dark cabins of her head. + +Where they resign their office and their light +To the disposing of her troubled brain, 1040 +Who bids them still consort with ugly night, +And never wound the heart with looks again; + Who like a king perplexed in his throne, + By their suggestion gives a deadly groan. 1044 + +Whereat each tributary subject quakes, +As when the wind imprison’d in the ground, +Struggling for passage, earth’s foundation shakes, +Which with cold terror doth men’s minds confound. + This mutiny each part doth so surprise 1049 + That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes. + +And being open’d, threw unwilling light +Upon the wide wound that the boar had trench’d +In his soft flank, whose wonted lily white 1053 +With purple tears that his wound wept, was drench’d. + No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf or weed, + But stole his blood and seem’d with him to bleed. + +This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth, 1057 +Over one shoulder doth she hang her head, +Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth; +She thinks he could not die, he is not dead: 1060 + Her voice is stopp’d, her joints forget to bow, + Her eyes are mad, that they have wept till now. + +Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly, +That her sight dazzling makes the wound seem three; +And then she reprehends her mangling eye, 1065 +That makes more gashes, where no breach should be: + His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled, + For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled. + +“My tongue cannot express my grief for one, 1069 +And yet,” quoth she, “behold two Adons dead! +My sighs are blown away, my salt tears gone, +Mine eyes are turn’d to fire, my heart to lead: 1072 + Heavy heart’s lead, melt at mine eyes’ red fire! + So shall I die by drops of hot desire. + +“Alas poor world, what treasure hast thou lost! +What face remains alive that’s worth the viewing? +Whose tongue is music now? what canst thou boast +Of things long since, or anything ensuing? 1078 + The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim, + But true sweet beauty liv’d and died with him. + +“Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear! 1081 +Nor sun nor wind will ever strive to kiss you: +Having no fair to lose, you need not fear; +The sun doth scorn you, and the wind doth hiss you. + But when Adonis liv’d, sun and sharp air 1085 + Lurk’d like two thieves, to rob him of his fair. + +“And therefore would he put his bonnet on, +Under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep; 1088 +The wind would blow it off, and being gone, +Play with his locks; then would Adonis weep; + And straight, in pity of his tender years, + They both would strive who first should dry his tears. + +“To see his face the lion walk’d along 1093 +Behind some hedge, because he would not fear him; +To recreate himself when he hath sung, +The tiger would be tame and gently hear him. 1096 + If he had spoke, the wolf would leave his prey, + And never fright the silly lamb that day. + +“When he beheld his shadow in the brook, +The fishes spread on it their golden gills; 1100 +When he was by, the birds such pleasure took, +That some would sing, some other in their bills + Would bring him mulberries and ripe-red cherries, + He fed them with his sight, they him with berries. + +“But this foul, grim, and urchin-snouted boar, 1105 +Whose downward eye still looketh for a grave, +Ne’er saw the beauteous livery that he wore; +Witness the entertainment that he gave. 1108 + If he did see his face, why then I know + He thought to kiss him, and hath kill’d him so. + +“’Tis true, ’tis true; thus was Adonis slain: +He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear, 1112 +Who did not whet his teeth at him again, +But by a kiss thought to persuade him there; + And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine + Sheath’d unaware the tusk in his soft groin. 1116 + +“Had I been tooth’d like him, I must confess, +With kissing him I should have kill’d him first; +But he is dead, and never did he bless +My youth with his; the more am I accurst.” 1120 + With this she falleth in the place she stood, + And stains her face with his congealed blood. + +She looks upon his lips, and they are pale; +She takes him by the hand, and that is cold, 1124 +She whispers in his ears a heavy tale, +As if they heard the woeful words she told; +She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes, +Where lo, two lamps burnt out in darkness lies. + +Two glasses where herself herself beheld 1129 +A thousand times, and now no more reflect; +Their virtue lost, wherein they late excell’d, +And every beauty robb’d of his effect. 1132 + “Wonder of time,” quoth she, “this is my spite, + That thou being dead, the day should yet be light. + +“Since thou art dead, lo here I prophesy, +Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend: 1136 +It shall be waited on with jealousy, +Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end; + Ne’er settled equally, but high or low, + That all love’s pleasure shall not match his woe. + +“It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud, 1141 +Bud, and be blasted in a breathing while; +The bottom poison, and the top o’erstraw’d +With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile. 1144 + The strongest body shall it make most weak, + Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak. + +“It shall be sparing, and too full of riot, +Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures; 1148 +The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet, +Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures; + It shall be raging mad, and silly mild, + Make the young old, the old become a child. 1152 + +“It shall suspect where is no cause of fear, +It shall not fear where it should most mistrust; +It shall be merciful, and too severe, +And most deceiving when it seems most just; 1156 + Perverse it shall be, where it shows most toward, + Put fear to valour, courage to the coward. + +“It shall be cause of war and dire events, +And set dissension ’twixt the son and sire; 1160 +Subject and servile to all discontents, +As dry combustious matter is to fire, + Sith in his prime death doth my love destroy, + They that love best their love shall not enjoy.” 1164 + +By this the boy that by her side lay kill’d +Was melted like a vapour from her sight, +And in his blood that on the ground lay spill’d, +A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white, 1168 + Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood + Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood. + +She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell, +Comparing it to her Adonis’ breath; 1172 +And says within her bosom it shall dwell, +Since he himself is reft from her by death; + She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears + Green-dropping sap, which she compares to tears. + +“Poor flower,” quoth she, “this was thy father’s guise, +Sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire, +For every little grief to wet his eyes, +To grow unto himself was his desire, 1180 + And so ’tis thine; but know, it is as good + To wither in my breast as in his blood. + +“Here was thy father’s bed, here in my breast; +Thou art the next of blood, and ’tis thy right: 1184 +Lo in this hollow cradle take thy rest, +My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night: + There shall not be one minute in an hour + Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flower.” + +Thus weary of the world, away she hies, 1189 +And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aid +Their mistress mounted through the empty skies, +In her light chariot quickly is convey’d; 1192 + Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen + Means to immure herself and not be seen. + + + FINIS + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1045 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1046-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1046-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c3f81116 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1046-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4008 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1046 *** + +GOD THE INVISIBLE KING + +by H. G. Wells + + + +CONTENTS + + +PREFACE + +1. THE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION + +2. HERESIES; OR THE THINGS THAT GOD IS NOT + +3. THE LIKENESS OF GOD + +4. THE RELIGION OF ATHEISTS + +5. THE INVISIBLE KING + +6. MODERN IDEAS OF SIN AND DAMNATION + +7. THE IDEA OF A CHURCH + +THE ENVOY + + + + +PREFACE + + +This book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious +belief of the writer. That belief is not orthodox Christianity; it is +not, indeed, Christianity at all; its core nevertheless is a profound +belief in a personal and intimate God. There is nothing in its +statements that need shock or offend anyone who is prepared for the +expression of a faith different from and perhaps in several particulars +opposed to his own. The writer will be found to be sympathetic with +all sincere religious feeling. Nevertheless it is well to prepare the +prospective reader for statements that may jar harshly against deeply +rooted mental habits. It is well to warn him at the outset that the +departure from accepted beliefs is here no vague scepticism, but a quite +sharply defined objection to dogmas very widely revered. Let the writer +state the most probable occasion of trouble forthwith. An issue upon +which this book will be found particularly uncompromising is the dogma +of the Trinity. The writer is of opinion that the Council of Nicaea, +which forcibly crystallised the controversies of two centuries and +formulated the creed upon which all the existing Christian churches are +based, was one of the most disastrous and one of the least venerable of +all religious gatherings, and he holds that the Alexandrine speculations +which were then conclusively imposed upon Christianity merit only +disrespectful attention at the present time. There you have a chief +possibility of offence. He is quite unable to pretend any awe for what +he considers the spiritual monstrosities established by that undignified +gathering. He makes no attempt to be obscure or propitiatory in this +connection. He criticises the creeds explicitly and frankly, because he +believes it is particularly necessary to clear them out of the way of +those who are seeking religious consolation at this present time of +exceptional religious need. He does little to conceal his indignation at +the role played by these dogmas in obscuring, perverting, and preventing +the religious life of mankind. After this warning such readers from +among the various Christian churches and sects as are accessible +to storms of theological fear or passion to whom the Trinity is an +ineffable mystery and the name of God almost unspeakably awful, read on +at their own risk. This is a religious book written by a believer, +but so far as their beliefs and religion go it may seem to them more +sceptical and more antagonistic than blank atheism. That the writer +cannot tell. He is not simply denying their God. He is declaring that +there is a living God, different altogether from that Triune God and +nearer to the heart of man. The spirit of this book is like that of a +missionary who would only too gladly overthrow and smash some Polynesian +divinity of shark’s teeth and painted wood and mother-of-pearl. To the +writer such elaborations as “begotten of the Father before all worlds” + are no better than intellectual shark’s teeth and oyster shells. His +purpose, like the purpose of that missionary, is not primarily to shock +and insult; but he is zealous to liberate, and he is impatient with a +reverence that stands between man and God. He gives this fair warning +and proceeds with his matter. + +His matter is modern religion as he sees it. It is only incidentally and +because it is unavoidable that he attacks doctrinal Christianity. + +In a previous book, “First and Last Things” (Constable and Co.), he has +stated his convictions upon certain general ideas of life and thought +as clearly as he could. All of philosophy, all of metaphysics that +is, seems to him to be a discussion of the relations of class and +individual. The antagonism of the Nominalist and the Realist, the +opposition of the One and the Many, the contrast of the Ideal and the +Actual, all these oppositions express a certain structural and essential +duality in the activity of the human mind. From an imperfect recognition +of that duality ensue great masses of misconception. That was the +substance of “First and Last Things.” In this present book there is no +further attack on philosophical or metaphysical questions. Here we +work at a less fundamental level and deal with religious feeling and +religious ideas. But just as the writer was inclined to attribute a +whole world of disputation and inexactitudes to confused thinking about +the exact value of classes and terms, so here he is disposed to think +that interminable controversies and conflicts arise out of a confusion +of intention due to a double meaning of the word “God”; that the word +“God” conveys not one idea or set of ideas, but several essentially +different ideas, incompatible one with another, and falling mainly into +one or other of two divergent groups; and that people slip carelessly +from one to the other of these groups of ideas and so get into +ultimately inextricable confusions. + +The writer believes that the centuries of fluid religious thought that +preceded the violent ultimate crystallisation of Nicaea, was essentially +a struggle--obscured, of course, by many complexities--to reconcile and +get into a relationship these two separate main series of God-ideas. + +Putting the leading idea of this book very roughly, these two +antagonistic typical conceptions of God may be best contrasted by +speaking of one of them as God-as-Nature or the Creator, and of the +other as God-as-Christ or the Redeemer. One is the great Outward God; +the other is the Inmost God. The first idea was perhaps developed most +highly and completely in the God of Spinoza. It is a conception of God +tending to pantheism, to an idea of a comprehensive God as ruling +with justice rather than affection, to a conception of aloofness and +awestriking worshipfulness. The second idea, which is opposed to this +idea of an absolute God, is the God of the human heart. The writer would +suggest that the great outline of the theological struggles of that +phase of civilisation and world unity which produced Christianity, was a +persistent but unsuccessful attempt to get these two different ideas +of God into one focus. It was an attempt to make the God of Nature +accessible and the God of the Heart invincible, to bring the former into +a conception of love and to vest the latter with the beauty of stars and +flowers and the dignity of inexorable justice. There could be no finer +metaphor for such a correlation than Fatherhood and Sonship. But the +trouble is that it seems impossible to most people to continue to +regard the relations of the Father to the Son as being simply a mystical +metaphor. Presently some materialistic bias swings them in a moment of +intellectual carelessness back to the idea of sexual filiation. + +And it may further be suggested that the extreme aloofness and +inhumanity, which is logically necessary in the idea of a Creator God, +of an Infinite God, was the reason, so to speak, for the invention of a +Holy Spirit, as something proceeding from him, as something bridging the +great gulf, a Comforter, a mediator descending into the sphere of the +human understanding. That, and the suggestive influence of the Egyptian +Trinity that was then being worshipped at the Serapeum, and which had +saturated the thought of Alexandria with the conception of a trinity in +unity, are probably the realities that account for the Third Person of +the Christian Trinity. At any rate the present writer believes that the +discussions that shaped the Christian theology we know were dominated +by such natural and fundamental thoughts. These discussions were, +of course, complicated from the outset; and particularly were they +complicated by the identification of the man Jesus with the theological +Christ, by materialistic expectations of his second coming, by +materialistic inventions about his “miraculous” begetting, and by the +morbid speculations about virginity and the like that arose out of +such grossness. They were still further complicated by the idea of the +textual inspiration of the scriptures, which presently swamped thought +in textual interpretation. That swamping came very early in the +development of Christianity. The writer of St. John’s gospel appears +still to be thinking with a considerable freedom, but Origen is already +hopelessly in the net of the texts. The writer of St. John’s gospel +was a free man, but Origen was a superstitious man. He was emasculated +mentally as well as bodily through his bibliolatry. He quotes; his +predecessor thinks. + +But the writer throws out these guesses at the probable intentions of +early Christian thought in passing. His business here is the definition +of a position. The writer’s position here in this book is, firstly, +complete Agnosticism in the matter of God the Creator, and secondly, +entire faith in the matter of God the Redeemer. That, so to speak, is +the key of his book. He cannot bring the two ideas under the same term +God. He uses the word God therefore for the God in our hearts only, +and he uses the term the Veiled Being for the ultimate mysteries of the +universe, and he declares that we do not know and perhaps cannot know in +any comprehensible terms the relation of the Veiled Being to that living +reality in our lives who is, in his terminology, the true God. Speaking +from the point of view of practical religion, he is restricting and +defining the word God, as meaning only the personal God of mankind, he +is restricting it so as to exclude all cosmogony and ideas of providence +from our religious thought and leave nothing but the essentials of the +religious life. + +Many people, whom one would class as rather liberal Christians of an +Arian or Arminian complexion, may find the larger part of this book +acceptable to them if they will read “the Christ God” where the writer +has written “God.” They will then differ from him upon little more than +the question whether there is an essential identity in aim and quality +between the Christ God and the Veiled Being, who answer to their +Creator God. This the orthodox post Nicaean Christians assert, and many +pre-Nicaeans and many heretics (as the Cathars) contradicted with its +exact contrary. The Cathars, Paulicians, Albigenses and so on held, with +the Manichaeans, that the God of Nature, God the Father, was evil. The +Christ God was his antagonist. This was the idea of the poet Shelley. +And passing beyond Christian theology altogether a clue can still be +found to many problems in comparative theology in this distinction +between the Being of Nature (cf. Kant’s “starry vault above”) and the +God of the heart (Kant’s “moral law within”). The idea of an antagonism +seems to have been cardinal in the thought of the Essenes and the +Orphic cult and in the Persian dualism. So, too, Buddhism seems to +be “antagonistic.” On the other hand, the Moslem teaching and modern +Judaism seem absolutely to combine and identify the two; God the creator +is altogether and without distinction also God the King of Mankind. +Christianity stands somewhere between such complete identification and +complete antagonism. It admits a difference in attitude between Father +and Son in its distinction between the Old Dispensation (of the Old +Testament) and the New. Every possible change is rung in the great +religions of the world between identification, complete separation, +equality, and disproportion of these Beings; but it will be found that +these two ideas are, so to speak, the basal elements of all theology in +the world. The writer is chary of assertion or denial in these +matters. He believes that they are speculations not at all necessary to +salvation. He believes that men may differ profoundly in their opinions +upon these points and still be in perfect agreement upon the essentials +of religion. The reality of religion he believes deals wholly and +exclusively with the God of the Heart. He declares as his own opinion, +and as the opinion which seems most expressive of modern thought, that +there is no reason to suppose the Veiled Being either benevolent or +malignant towards men. But if the reader believes that God is Almighty +and in every way Infinite the practical outcome is not very different. +For the purposes of human relationship it is impossible to deny that +God PRESENTS HIMSELF AS FINITE, as struggling and taking a part against +evil. + +The writer believes that these dogmas of relationship are not merely +extraneous to religion, but an impediment to religion. His aim in this +book is to give a statement of religion which is no longer entangled in +such speculations and disputes. + + +Let him add only one other note of explanation in this preface, and that +is to remark that except for one incidental passage (in Chapter IV., +1), nowhere does he discuss the question of personal immortality. [It +is discussed in “First and Last Things,” Book IV, 4.] He omits this +question because he does not consider that it has any more bearing upon +the essentials of religion, than have the theories we may hold about the +relation of God and the moral law to the starry universe. The latter is +a question for the theologian, the former for the psychologist. Whether +we are mortal or immortal, whether the God in our hearts is the Son of +or a rebel against the Universe, the reality of religion, the fact of +salvation, is still our self-identification with God, irrespective of +consequences, and the achievement of his kingdom, in our hearts and +in the world. Whether we live forever or die tomorrow does not affect +righteousness. Many people seem to find the prospect of a final personal +death unendurable. This impresses me as egotism. I have no such appetite +for a separate immortality. God is my immortality; what, of me, is +identified with God, is God; what is not is of no more permanent value +than the snows of yester-year. + +H. G. W. + +Dunmow, May, 1917. + + + + +GOD THE INVISIBLE KING + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +THE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION + + +1. MODERN RELIGION HAS NO FOUNDER + + +Perhaps all religions, unless the flaming onset of Mohammedanism be an +exception, have dawned imperceptibly upon the world. A little while ago +and the thing was not; and then suddenly it has been found in existence, +and already in a state of diffusion. People have begun to hear of the +new belief first here and then there. It is interesting, for example, +to trace how Christianity drifted into the consciousness of the Roman +world. But when a religion has been interrogated it has always had +hitherto a tale of beginnings, the name and story of a founder. The +renascent religion that is now taking shape, it seems, had no founder; +it points to no origins. It is the Truth, its believers declare; it has +always been here; it has always been visible to those who had eyes to +see. It is perhaps plainer than it was and to more people--that is all. + +It is as if it still did not realise its own difference. Many of those +who hold it still think of it as if it were a kind of Christianity. +Some, catching at a phrase of Huxley’s, speak of it as Christianity +without Theology. They do not know the creed they are carrying. It has, +as a matter of fact, a very fine and subtle theology, flatly opposed +to any belief that could, except by great stretching of charity and +the imagination, be called Christianity. One might find, perhaps, a +parallelism with the system ascribed to some Gnostics, but that is far +more probably an accidental rather than a sympathetic coincidence. Of +that the reader shall presently have an opportunity of judging. + +This indefiniteness of statement and relationship is probably only the +opening phase of the new faith. Christianity also began with an extreme +neglect of definition. It was not at first anything more than a sect +of Judaism. It was only after three centuries, amidst the uproar +and emotions of the council of Nicaea, when the more enthusiastic +Trinitarians stuffed their fingers in their ears in affected horror at +the arguments of old Arius, that the cardinal mystery of the Trinity +was established as the essential fact of Christianity. Throughout those +three centuries, the centuries of its greatest achievements and noblest +martyrdoms, Christianity had not defined its God. And even to-day it has +to be noted that a large majority of those who possess and repeat +the Christian creeds have come into the practice so insensibly from +unthinking childhood, that only in the slightest way do they realise the +nature of the statements to which they subscribe. They will speak +and think of both Christ and God in ways flatly incompatible with the +doctrine of the Triune deity upon which, theoretically, the entire +fabric of all the churches rests. They will show themselves as frankly +Arians as though that damnable heresy had not been washed out of the +world forever after centuries of persecution in torrents of blood. But +whatever the present state of Christendom in these matters may be, +there can be no doubt of the enormous pains taken in the past to give +Christian beliefs the exactest, least ambiguous statement possible. +Christianity knew itself clearly for what it was in its maturity, +whatever the indecisions of its childhood or the confusions of its +decay. The renascent religion that one finds now, a thing active and +sufficient in many minds, has still scarcely come to self-consciousness. +But it is so coming, and this present book is very largely an attempt +to state the shape it is assuming and to compare it with the beliefs +and imperatives and usages of the various Christian, pseudo-Christian, +philosophical, and agnostic cults amidst which it has appeared. + +The writer’s sympathies and convictions are entirely with this that he +speaks of as renascent or modern religion; he is neither atheist +nor Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian. He will make no pretence, +therefore, to impartiality and detachment. He will do his best to be as +fair as possible and as candid as possible, but the reader must reckon +with this bias. He has found this faith growing up in himself; he has +found it, or something very difficult to distinguish from it, growing +independently in the minds of men and women he has met. They have been +people of very various origins; English, Americans, Bengalis, Russians, +French, people brought up in a “Catholic atmosphere,” Positivists, +Baptists, Sikhs, Mohammedans. Their diversity of source is as remarkable +as their convergence of tendency. A miscellany of minds thinking upon +parallel lines has come out to the same light. The new teaching is also +traceable in many professedly Christian religious books and it is to be +heard from Christian pulpits. The phase of definition is manifestly at +hand. + + + +2. MODERN RELIGION HAS A FINITE GOD + + +Perhaps the most fundamental difference between this new faith and any +recognised form of Christianity is that, knowingly or unknowingly, it +worships A FINITE GOD. Directly the believer is fairly confronted with +the plain questions of the case, the vague identifications that are +still carelessly made with one or all of the persons of the Trinity +dissolve away. He will admit that his God is neither all-wise, nor +all-powerful, nor omnipresent; that he is neither the maker of heaven +nor earth, and that he has little to identify him with that hereditary +God of the Jews who became the “Father” in the Christian system. On the +other hand he will assert that his God is a god of salvation, that he is +a spirit, a person, a strongly marked and knowable personality, loving, +inspiring, and lovable, who exists or strives to exist in every human +soul. He will be much less certain in his denials that his God has a +close resemblance to the Pauline (as distinguished from the Trinitarian) +“Christ.” . . . + +The modern religious man will almost certainly profess a kind of +universalism; he will assert that whensoever men have called upon any +God and have found fellowship and comfort and courage and that sense +of God within them, that inner light which is the quintessence of the +religious experience, it was the True God that answered them. For the +True God is a generous God, not a jealous God; the very antithesis of +that bickering monopolist who “will have none other gods but Me”; and +when a human heart cries out--to what name it matters not--for a larger +spirit and a stronger help than the visible things of life can give, +straightway the nameless Helper is with it and the God of Man answers to +the call. The True God has no scorn nor hate for those who have accepted +the many-handed symbols of the Hindu or the lacquered idols of China. +Where there is faith, where there is need, there is the True God ready +to clasp the hands that stretch out seeking for him into the darkness +behind the ivory and gold. + +The fact that God is FINITE is one upon which those who think clearly +among the new believers are very insistent. He is, above everything +else, a personality, and to be a personality is to have characteristics, +to be limited by characteristics; he is a Being, not us but dealing +with us and through us, he has an aim and that means he has a past and +future; he is within time and not outside it. And they point out that +this is really what everyone who prays sincerely to God or gets help +from God, feels and believes. Our practice with God is better than our +theory. None of us really pray to that fantastic, unqualified danse a +trois, the Trinity, which the wranglings and disputes of the worthies +of Alexandria and Syria declared to be God. We pray to one single +understanding person. But so far the tactics of those Trinitarians at +Nicaea, who stuck their fingers in their ears, have prevailed in this +world; this was no matter for discussion, they declared, it was a Holy +Mystery full of magical terror, and few religious people have thought +it worth while to revive these terrors by a definite contradiction. The +truly religious have been content to lapse quietly into the comparative +sanity of an unformulated Arianism, they have left it to the scoffing +Atheist to mock at the patent absurdities of the official creed. But one +magnificent protest against this theological fantasy must have been +the work of a sincerely religious man, the cold superb humour of that +burlesque creed, ascribed, at first no doubt facetiously and then quite +seriously, to Saint Athanasius the Great, which, by an irony far beyond +its original intention, has become at last the accepted creed of the +church. + +The long truce in the criticism of Trinitarian theology is drawing to +its end. It is when men most urgently need God that they become least +patient with foolish presentations and dogmas. The new believers are +very definitely set upon a thorough analysis of the nature and growth +of the Christian creeds and ideas. There has grown up a practice of +assuming that, when God is spoken of, the Hebrew-Christian God of Nicaea +is meant. But that God trails with him a thousand misconceptions and +bad associations; his alleged infinite nature, his jealousy, his strange +preferences, his vindictive Old Testament past. These things do not even +make a caricature of the True God; they compose an altogether different +and antagonistic figure. + +It is a very childish and unphilosophical set of impulses that has led +the theologians of nearly every faith to claim infinite qualities for +their deity. One has to remember the poorness of the mental and moral +quality of the churchmen of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries who +saddled Christendom with its characteristic dogmas, and the extreme +poverty and confusion of the circle of ideas within which they thought. +Many of these makers of Christianity, like Saint Ambrose of Milan (who +had even to be baptised after his election to his bishopric), had been +pitchforked into the church from civil life; they lived in a time +of pitiless factions and personal feuds; they had to conduct their +disputations amidst the struggles of would-be emperors; court eunuchs +and favourites swayed their counsels, and popular rioting clinched their +decisions. There was less freedom of discussion then in the Christian +world than there is at present (1916) in Belgium, and the whole audience +of educated opinion by which a theory could be judged did not equal, +either in numbers or accuracy of information, the present population of +Constantinople. To these conditions we owe the claim that the Christian +God is a magic god, very great medicine in battle, “in hoc signo +vinces,” and the argument so natural to the minds of those days and so +absurd to ours, that since he had ALL power, all knowledge, and existed +for ever and ever, it was no use whatever to set up any other god +against him. . . . + +By the fifth century Christianity had adopted as its fundamental belief, +without which everyone was to be “damned everlastingly,” a conception +of God and of Christ’s relation to God, of which even by the Christian +account of his teaching, Jesus was either totally unaware or so +negligent and careless of the future comfort of his disciples as +scarcely to make mention. The doctrine of the Trinity, so far as the +relationship of the Third Person goes, hangs almost entirely upon one +ambiguous and disputed utterance in St. John’s gospel (XV. 26). Most of +the teachings of Christian orthodoxy resolve themselves to the attentive +student into assertions of the nature of contradiction and repartee. +Someone floats an opinion in some matter that has been hitherto vague, +in regard, for example, to the sonship of Christ or to the method of +his birth. The new opinion arouses the hostility and alarm of minds +unaccustomed to so definite a statement, and in the zeal of their recoil +they fly to a contrary proposition. The Christians would neither admit +that they worshipped more gods than one because of the Greeks, nor +deny the divinity of Christ because of the Jews. They dreaded to be +polytheistic; equally did they dread the least apparent detraction from +the power and importance of their Saviour. They were forced into the +theory of the Trinity by the necessity of those contrary assertions, +and they had to make it a mystery protected by curses to save it from a +reductio ad absurdam. The entire history of the growth of the Christian +doctrine in those disordered early centuries is a history of theology +by committee; a history of furious wrangling, of hasty compromises, and +still more hasty attempts to clinch matters by anathema. When the muddle +was at its very worst, the church was confronted by enormous political +opportunities. In order that it should seize these one chief thing +appeared imperative: doctrinal uniformity. The emperor himself, albeit +unbaptised and very ignorant of Greek, came and seated himself in the +midst of Christian thought upon a golden throne. At the end of it all +Eusebius, that supreme Trimmer, was prepared to damn everlastingly all +those who doubted that consubstantiality he himself had doubted at the +beginning of the conference. It is quite clear that Constantine did not +care who was damned or for what period, so long as the Christians ceased +to wrangle among themselves. The practical unanimity of Nicaea was +secured by threats, and then, turning upon the victors, he sought by +threats to restore Arius to communion. The imperial aim was a common +faith to unite the empire. The crushing out of the Arians and of the +Paulicians and suchlike heretics, and more particularly the systematic +destruction by the orthodox of all heretical writings, had about it none +of that quality of honest conviction which comes to those who have a +real knowledge of God; it was a bawling down of dissensions that, left +to work themselves out, would have spoilt good business; it was the fist +of Nicolas of Myra over again, except that after the days of Ambrose the +sword of the executioner and the fires of the book-burner were added to +the weapon of the human voice. Priscillian was the first human sacrifice +formally offered up under these improved conditions to the greater glory +of the reinforced Trinity. Thereafter the blood of the heretics was the +cement of Christian unity. + +It is with these things in mind that those who profess the new faith are +becoming so markedly anxious to distinguish God from the Trinitarian’s +deity. At present if anyone who has left the Christian communion +declares himself a believer in God, priest and parson swell with +self-complacency. There is no reason why they should do so. That many of +us have gone from them and found God is no concern of theirs. It is +not that we who went out into the wilderness which we thought to be +a desert, away from their creeds and dogmas, have turned back and are +returning. It is that we have gone on still further, and are beyond that +desolation. Never more shall we return to those who gather under the +cross. By faith we disbelieved and denied. By faith we said of that +stuffed scarecrow of divinity, that incoherent accumulation of antique +theological notions, the Nicene deity, “This is certainly no God.” And +by faith we have found God. . . . + + + +3. THE INFINITE BEING IS NOT GOD + + +There has always been a demand upon the theological teacher that he +should supply a cosmogony. It has always been an effective propagandist +thing to say: “OUR God made the whole universe. Don’t you think that +it would be wise to abandon YOUR deity, who did not, as you admit, do +anything of the sort?” + +The attentive reader of the lives of the Saints will find that this +style of argument did in the past bring many tribes and nations into +the Christian fold. It was second only to the claim of magic advantages, +demonstrated by a free use of miracles. Only one great religious system, +the Buddhist, seems to have resisted the temptation to secure for +its divinity the honour and title of Creator. Modern religion is like +Buddhism in that respect. It offers no theory whatever about the origin +of the universe. It does not reach behind the appearances of space +and time. It sees only a featureless presumption in that playing with +superlatives which has entertained so many minds from Plotinus to the +Hegelians with the delusion that such negative terms as the Absolute or +the Unconditioned, can assert anything at all. At the back of all known +things there is an impenetrable curtain; the ultimate of existence is +a Veiled Being, which seems to know nothing of life or death or good or +ill. Of that Being, whether it is simple or complex or divine, we +know nothing; to us it is no more than the limit of understanding, +the unknown beyond. It may be of practically limitless intricacy and +possibility. The new religion does not pretend that the God of its life +is that Being, or that he has any relation of control or association +with that Being. It does not even assert that God knows all or much more +than we do about that ultimate Being. + +For us life is a matter of our personalities in space and time. Human +analysis probing with philosophy and science towards the Veiled Being +reveals nothing of God, reveals space and time only as necessary forms +of consciousness, glimpses a dance of atoms, of whirls in the +ether. Some day in the endless future there may be a knowledge, an +understanding of relationship, a power and courage that will pierce into +those black wrappings. To that it may be our God, the Captain of Mankind +will take us. + +That now is a mere speculation. The veil of the unknown is set with +the stars; its outer texture is ether and atom and crystal. The Veiled +Being, enigmatical and incomprehensible, broods over the mirror upon +which the busy shapes of life are moving. It is as if it waited in a +great stillness. Our lives do not deal with it, and cannot deal with it. +It may be that they may never be able to deal with it. + + + +4. THE LIFE FORCE IS NOT GOD + + +So it is that comprehensive setting of the universe presents itself to +the modern mind. It is altogether outside good and evil and love and +hate. It is outside God, who is love and goodness. And coming out +of this veiled being, proceeding out of it in a manner altogether +inconceivable, is another lesser being, an impulse thrusting through +matter and clothing itself in continually changing material forms, +the maker of our world, Life, the Will to Be. It comes out of that +inscrutable being as a wave comes rolling to us from beyond the horizon. +It is as it were a great wave rushing through matter and possessed by +a spirit. It is a breeding, fighting thing; it pants through the jungle +track as the tiger and lifts itself towards heaven as the tree; it is +the rabbit bolting for its life and the dove calling to her mate; it +crawls, it flies, it dives, it lusts and devours, it pursues and eats +itself in order to live still more eagerly and hastily; it is every +living thing, of it are our passions and desires and fears. And it +is aware of itself not as a whole, but dispersedly as individual +self-consciousness, starting out dispersedly from every one of the +sentient creatures it has called into being. They look out for their +little moments, red-eyed and fierce, full of greed, full of the passions +of acquisition and assimilation and reproduction, submitting only to +brief fellowships of defence or aggression. They are beings of strain +and conflict and competition. They are living substance still mingled +painfully with the dust. The forms in which this being clothes itself +bear thorns and fangs and claws, are soaked with poison and bright with +threats or allurements, prey slyly or openly on one another, hold their +own for a little while, breed savagely and resentfully, and pass. . . . + +This second Being men have called the Life Force, the Will to Live, the +Struggle for Existence. They have figured it too as Mother Nature. We +may speculate whether it is not what the wiser among the Gnostics meant +by the Demiurge, but since the Christians destroyed all the Gnostic +books that must remain a mere curious guess. We may speculate whether +this heat and haste and wrath of life about us is the Dark God of the +Manichees, the evil spirit of the sun worshippers. But in contemporary +thought there is no conviction apparent that this Demiurge is either +good or evil; it is conceived of as both good and evil. If it gives all +the pain and conflict of life, it gives also the joy of the sunshine, +the delight and hope of youth, the pleasures. If it has elaborated a +hundred thousand sorts of parasite, it has also moulded the beautiful +limbs of man and woman; it has shaped the slug and the flower. And +in it, as part of it, taking its rewards, responding to its goads, +struggling against the final abandonment to death, do we all live, +as the beasts live, glad, angry, sorry, revengeful, hopeful, weary, +disgusted, forgetful, lustful, happy, excited, bored, in pain, mood +after mood but always fearing death, with no certainty and no coherence +within us, until we find God. And God comes to us neither out of the +stars nor out of the pride of life, but as a still small voice within. + + + +5. GOD IS WITHIN + + +God comes we know not whence, into the conflict of life. He works in men +and through men. He is a spirit, a single spirit and a single person; he +has begun and he will never end. He is the immortal part and leader of +mankind. He has motives, he has characteristics, he has an aim. He is +by our poor scales of measurement boundless love, boundless courage, +boundless generosity. He is thought and a steadfast will. He is our +friend and brother and the light of the world. That briefly is the +belief of the modern mind with regard to God. There is no very novel +idea about this God, unless it be the idea that he had a beginning. This +is the God that men have sought and found in all ages, as God or as +the Messiah or the Saviour. The finding of him is salvation from the +purposelessness of life. The new religion has but disentangled the idea +of him from the absolutes and infinities and mysteries of the Christian +theologians; from mythological virgin births and the cosmogonies and +intellectual pretentiousness of a vanished age. + +Modern religion appeals to no revelation, no authoritative teaching, +no mystery. The statement it makes is, it declares, a mere statement +of what we may all perceive and experience. We all live in the storm of +life, we all find our understandings limited by the Veiled Being; if +we seek salvation and search within for God, presently we find him. All +this is in the nature of things. If every one who perceives and states +it were to be instantly killed and blotted out, presently other people +would find their way to the same conclusions; and so on again and again. +To this all true religion, casting aside its hulls of misconception, +must ultimately come. To it indeed much religion is already coming. +Christian thought struggles towards it, with the millstones of Syrian +theology and an outrageous mythology of incarnation and resurrection +about its neck. When at last our present bench of bishops join the +early fathers of the church in heaven there will be, I fear, a note of +reproach in their greeting of the ingenious person who saddled them with +OMNIPOTENS. Still more disastrous for them has been the virgin birth, +with the terrible fascination of its detail for unpoetic minds. How rich +is the literature of authoritative Christianity with decisions upon the +continuing virginity of Mary and the virginity of Joseph--ideas that +first arose in Arabia as a Moslem gloss upon Christianity--and how +little have these peepings and pryings to do with the needs of the heart +and the finding of God! + +Within the last few years there have been a score or so of such volumes +as that recently compiled by Dr. Foakes Jackson, entitled “The Faith and +the War,” a volume in which the curious reader may contemplate deans and +canons, divines and church dignitaries, men intelligent and enquiring +and religiously disposed, all lying like overladen camels, panting +under this load of obsolete theological responsibility, groaning great +articles, outside the needle’s eye that leads to God. + + + +6. THE COMING OF GOD + + +Modern religion bases its knowledge of God and its account of God +entirely upon experience. It has encountered God. It does not argue +about God; it relates. It relates without any of those wrappings of awe +and reverence that fold so necessarily about imposture, it relates as +one tells of a friend and his assistance, of a happy adventure, of a +beautiful thing found and picked up by the wayside. + +So far as its psychological phases go the new account of personal +salvation tallies very closely with the account of “conversion” as it +is given by other religions. It has little to tell that is not already +familiar to the reader of William James’s “Varieties of Religious +Experience.” It describes an initial state of distress with the +aimlessness and cruelties of life, and particularly with the futility of +the individual life, a state of helpless self-disgust, of inability to +form any satisfactory plan of living. This is the common prelude known +to many sorts of Christian as “conviction of sin”; it is, at any rate, a +conviction of hopeless confusion. . . . Then in some way the idea of +God comes into the distressed mind, at first simply as an idea, without +substance or belief. It is read about or it is remembered; it is +expounded by some teacher or some happy convert. In the case of all +those of the new faith with whose personal experience I have any +intimacy, the idea of God has remained for some time simply as an idea +floating about in a mind still dissatisfied. God is not believed in, +but it is realised that if there were such a being he would supply the +needed consolation and direction, his continuing purpose would knit +together the scattered effort of life, his immortality would take +the sting from death. Under this realisation the idea is pursued and +elaborated. For a time there is a curious resistance to the suggestion +that God is truly a person; he is spoken of preferably by such phrases +as the Purpose in Things, as the Racial Consciousness, as the Collective +Mind. + +I believe that this resistance in so many contemporary minds to the idea +of God as a person is due very largely to the enormous prejudice against +divine personality created by the absurdities of the Christian teaching +and the habitual monopoly of the Christian idea. The picture of Christ +as the Good Shepherd thrusts itself before minds unaccustomed to the +idea that they are lambs. The cross in the twilight bars the way. It is +a novelty and an enormous relief to such people to realise that one may +think of God without being committed to think of either the Father, the +Son, or the Holy Ghost, or of all of them at once. That freedom had not +seemed possible to them. They had been hypnotised and obsessed by the +idea that the Christian God is the only thinkable God. They had heard so +much about that God and so little of any other. With that release their +minds become, as it were, nascent and ready for the coming of God. + +Then suddenly, in a little while, in his own time, God comes. This +cardinal experience is an undoubting, immediate sense of God. It is the +attainment of an absolute certainty that one is not alone in oneself. +It is as if one was touched at every point by a being akin to oneself, +sympathetic, beyond measure wiser, steadfast and pure in aim. It is +completer and more intimate, but it is like standing side by side with +and touching someone that we love very dearly and trust completely. It +is as if this being bridged a thousand misunderstandings and brought us +into fellowship with a great multitude of other people. . . . + +“Closer he is than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.” + +The moment may come while we are alone in the darkness, under the stars, +or while we walk by ourselves or in a crowd, or while we sit and muse. +It may come upon the sinking ship or in the tumult of the battle. There +is no saying when it may not come to us. . . . But after it has come +our lives are changed, God is with us and there is no more doubt of +God. Thereafter one goes about the world like one who was lonely and has +found a lover, like one who was perplexed and has found a solution. +One is assured that there is a Power that fights with us against the +confusion and evil within us and without. There comes into the heart an +essential and enduring happiness and courage. + +There is but one God, there is but one true religious experience, but +under a multitude of names, under veils and darknesses, God has in this +manner come into countless lives. There is scarcely a faith, however +mean and preposterous, that has not been a way to holiness. God who is +himself finite, who himself struggles in his great effort from strength +to strength, has no spite against error. Far beyond halfway he hastens +to meet the purblind. But God is against the darkness in their eyes. The +faith which is returning to men girds at veils and shadows, and would +see God plainly. It has little respect for mysteries. It rends the veil +of the temple in rags and tatters. It has no superstitious fear of +this huge friendliness, of this great brother and leader of our little +beings. To find God is but the beginning of wisdom, because then for all +our days we have to learn his purpose with us and to live our lives with +him. + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +HERESIES; OR THE THINGS THAT GOD IS NOT + + +1. HERESIES ARE MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOD + + +Religion is not a plant that has grown from one seed; it is like a lake +that has been fed by countless springs. It is a great pool of living +water, mingled from many sources and tainted with much impurity. It is +synthetic in its nature; it becomes simpler from original complexities; +the sediment subsides. + +A life perfectly adjusted to its surroundings is a life without +mentality; no judgment is called for, no inhibition, no disturbance +of the instinctive flow of perfect reactions. Such a life is bliss, or +nirvana. It is unconsciousness below dreaming. Consciousness is discord +evoking the will to adjust; it is inseparable from need. At every need +consciousness breaks into being. Imperfect adjustments, needs, are the +rents and tatters in the smooth dark veil of being through which the +light of consciousness shines--the light of consciousness and will of +which God is the sun. + +So that every need of human life, every disappointment and +dissatisfaction and call for help and effort, is a means whereby men may +and do come to the realisation of God. + +There is no cardinal need, there is no sort of experience in human life +from which there does not come or has not come a contribution to men’s +religious ideas. At every challenge men have to put forth effort, feel +doubt of adequacy, be thwarted, perceive the chill shadow of their +mortality. At every challenge comes the possibility of help from +without, the idea of eluding frustration, the aspiration towards +immortality. It is possible to classify the appeals men make for God +under the headings of their chief system of effort, their efforts to +understand, their fear and their struggles for safety and happiness, the +craving of their restlessness for peace, their angers against +disorder and their desire for the avenger; their sexual passions and +perplexities. . . . + +Each of these great systems of needs and efforts brings its own sort +of sediment into religion. Each, that is to say, has its own kind +of heresy, its distinctive misapprehension of God. It is only in the +synthesis and mutual correction of many divergent ideas that the idea of +God grows clear. The effort to understand completely, for example, +leads to the endless Heresies of Theory. Men trip over the inherent +infirmities of the human mind. But in these days one does not argue +greatly about dogma. Almost every conceivable error about unity, about +personality, about time and quantity and genus and species, about +begetting and beginning and limitation and similarity and every kink +in the difficult mind of man, has been thrust forward in some form of +dogma. Beside the errors of thought are the errors of emotion. Fear and +feebleness go straight to the Heresies that God is Magic or that God +is Providence; restless egotism at leisure and unchallenged by urgent +elementary realities breeds the Heresies of Mysticism, anger and hate +call for God’s Judgments, and the stormy emotions of sex gave mankind +the Phallic God. Those who find themselves possessed by the new spirit +in religion, realise very speedily the necessity of clearing the mind +of all these exaggerations, transferences, and overflows of feeling. The +search for divine truth is like gold washing; nothing is of any value +until most has been swept away. + + + +2. HERESIES OF SPECULATION + + +One sort of heresies stands apart from the rest. It is infinitely the +most various sort. It includes all those heresies which result from +wrong-headed mental elaboration, as distinguished from those which are +the result of hasty and imperfect apprehension, the heresies of the +clever rather than the heresies of the obtuse. The former are of endless +variety and complexity; the latter are in comparison natural, simple +confusions. The former are the errors of the study, the latter the +superstitions that spring by the wayside, or are brought down to us in +our social structure out of a barbaric past. + +To the heresies of thought and speculation belong the elaborate +doctrine of the Trinity, dogmas about God’s absolute qualities, such odd +deductions as the accepted Christian teachings about the virginity of +Mary and Joseph, and the like. All these things are parts of orthodox +Christianity. Yet none of them did Christ, even by the Christian +account, expound or recommend. He treated them as negligible. It was +left for the Alexandrians, for Alexander, for little, red-haired, +busy, wire-pulling Athanasius to find out exactly what their Master was +driving at, three centuries after their Master was dead. . . . + +Men still sit at little desks remote from God or life, and rack their +inadequate brains to meet fancied difficulties and state unnecessary +perfections. They seek God by logic, ignoring the marginal error +that creeps into every syllogism. Their conceit blinds them to the +limitations upon their thinking. They weave spider-like webs of muddle +and disputation across the path by which men come to God. It would not +matter very much if it were not that simpler souls are caught in these +webs. Every great religious system in the world is choked by such webs; +each system has its own. Of all the blood-stained tangled heresies which +make up doctrinal Christianity and imprison the mind of the western +world to-day, not one seems to have been known to the nominal founder +of Christianity. Jesus Christ never certainly claimed to be the Messiah; +never spoke clearly of the Trinity; was vague upon the scheme of +salvation and the significance of his martyrdom. We are asked to suppose +that he left his apostles without instructions, that were necessary to +their eternal happiness, that he could give them the Lord’s Prayer but +leave them to guess at the all-important Creed,* and that the Church +staggered along blindly, putting its foot in and out of damnation, +until the “experts” of Nicaea, that “garland of priests,” marshalled by +Constantine’s officials, came to its rescue. . . . From the conversion +of Paul onward, the heresies of the intellect multiplied about Christ’s +memory and hid him from the sight of men. We are no longer clear about +the doctrine he taught nor about the things he said and did. . . . + + * Even the “Apostles’ Creed” is not traceable earlier than + the fourth century. It is manifestly an old, patched + formulary. Rutinius explains that it was not written down + for a long time, but transmitted orally, kept secret, and + used as a sort of password among the elect. + +We are all so weary of this theology of the Christians, we are all at +heart so sceptical about their Triune God, that it is needless here to +spend any time or space upon the twenty thousand different formulae in +which the orthodox have attempted to believe in something of the sort. +There are several useful encyclopaedias of sects and heresies, compact, +but still bulky, to which the curious may go. There are ten thousand +different expositions of orthodoxy. No one who really seeks God thinks +of the Trinity, either the Trinity of the Trinitarian or the Trinity of +the Sabellian or the Trinity of the Arian, any more than one thinks of +those theories made stone, those gods with three heads and seven hands, +who sit on lotus leaves and flourish lingams and what not, in the +temples of India. Let us leave, therefore, these morbid elaborations of +the human intelligence to drift to limbo, and come rather to the natural +heresies that spring from fundamental weaknesses of the human character, +and which are common to all religions. Against these it is necessary to +keep constant watch. They return very insidiously. + + + +3. GOD IS NOT MAGIC + + +One of the most universal of these natural misconceptions of God is to +consider him as something magic serving the ends of men. + +It is not easy for us to grasp at first the full meaning of giving our +souls to God. The missionary and teacher of any creed is all too apt to +hawk God for what he will fetch; he is greedy for the poor triumph of +acquiescence; and so it comes about that many people who have been led +to believe themselves religious, are in reality still keeping back their +own souls and trying to use God for their own purposes. God is nothing +more for them as yet than a magnificent Fetish. They did not really want +him, but they have heard that he is potent stuff; their unripe souls +think to make use of him. They call upon his name, they do certain +things that are supposed to be peculiarly influential with him, such +as saying prayers and repeating gross praises of him, or reading in +a blind, industrious way that strange miscellany of Jewish and early +Christian literature, the Bible, and suchlike mental mortification, +or making the Sabbath dull and uncomfortable. In return for these +fetishistic propitiations God is supposed to interfere with the normal +course of causation in their favour. He becomes a celestial log-roller. +He remedies unfavourable accidents, cures petty ailments, contrives +unexpected gifts of medicine, money, or the like, he averts +bankruptcies, arranges profitable transactions, and does a thousand +such services for his little clique of faithful people. The pious are +represented as being constantly delighted by these little surprises, +these bouquets and chocolate boxes from the divinity. Or contrawise +he contrives spiteful turns for those who fail in their religious +attentions. He murders Sabbath-breaking children, or disorganises the +careful business schemes of the ungodly. He is represented as going +Sabbath-breakering on Sunday morning as a Staffordshire worker +goes ratting. Ordinary everyday Christianity is saturated with this +fetishistic conception of God. It may be disowned in THE HIBBERT +JOURNAL, but it is unblushingly advocated in the parish magazine. It is +an idea taken over by Christianity with the rest of the qualities of +the Hebrew God. It is natural enough in minds so self-centred that their +recognition of weakness and need brings with it no real self-surrender, +but it is entirely inconsistent with the modern conception of the true +God. + +There has dropped upon the table as I write a modest periodical called +THE NORTHERN BRITISH ISRAEL REVIEW, illustrated with portraits of +various clergymen of the Church of England, and of ladies and gentlemen +who belong to the little school of thought which this magazine +represents; it is, I should judge, a sub-sect entirely within the +Established Church of England, that is to say within the Anglican +communion of the Trinitarian Christians. It contains among other papers +a very entertaining summary by a gentleman entitled--I cite the unusual +title-page of the periodical--“Landseer Mackenzie, Esq.,” of the views +of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Obadiah upon the Kaiser William. They are +distinctly hostile views. Mr. Landseer Mackenzie discourses not only +upon these anticipatory condemnations but also upon the relations of the +weather to this war. He is convinced quite simply and honestly that God +has been persistently rigging the weather against the Germans. He points +out that the absence of mist on the North Sea was of great help to the +British in the autumn of 1914, and declares that it was the wet state of +the country that really held up the Germans in Flanders in the winter +of 1914-15. He ignores the part played by the weather in delaying the +relief of Kut-el-Amara, and he has not thought of the difficult question +why the Deity, having once decided upon intervention, did not, instead +of this comparatively trivial meteorological assistance, adopt the +more effective course of, for example, exploding or spoiling the German +stores of ammunition by some simple atomic miracle, or misdirecting +their gunfire by a sudden local modification of the laws of refraction +or gravitation. + +Since these views of God come from Anglican vicarages I can only +conclude that this kind of belief is quite orthodox and permissible in +the established church, and that I am charging orthodox Christianity +here with nothing that has ever been officially repudiated. I find +indeed the essential assumptions of Mr. Landseer Mackenzie repeated in +endless official Christian utterances on the part of German and British +and Russian divines. The Bishop of Chelmsford, for example, has recently +ascribed our difficulties in the war to our impatience with long +sermons--among other similar causes. Such Christians are manifestly +convinced that God can be invoked by ritual--for example by special +days of national prayer or an increased observance of Sunday--or made +malignant by neglect or levity. It is almost fundamental in their +idea of him. The ordinary Mohammedan seems as confident of this magic +pettiness of God, and the belief of China in the magic propitiations and +resentments of “Heaven” is at least equally strong. + +But the true God as those of the new religion know him is no such God +of luck and intervention. He is not to serve men’s ends or the ends of +nations or associations of men; he is careless of our ceremonies +and invocations. He does not lose his temper with our follies and +weaknesses. It is for us to serve Him. He captains us, he does not +coddle us. He has his own ends for which he needs us. . . . + + + +4. GOD IS NOT PROVIDENCE + + +Closely related to this heresy that God is magic, is the heresy that +calls him Providence, that declares the apparent adequacy of cause and +effect to be a sham, and that all the time, incalculably, he is pulling +about the order of events for our personal advantages. + +The idea of Providence was very gaily travested by Daudet in “Tartarin +in the Alps.” You will remember how Tartarin’s friend assured him that +all Switzerland was one great Trust, intent upon attracting tourists and +far too wise and kind to permit them to venture into real danger, +that all the precipices were netted invisibly, and all the loose rocks +guarded against falling, that avalanches were prearranged spectacles and +the crevasses at their worst slippery ways down into kindly catchment +bags. If the mountaineer tried to get into real danger he was turned +back by specious excuses. Inspired by this persuasion Tartarin behaved +with incredible daring. . . . That is exactly the Providence theory of +the whole world. There can be no doubt that it does enable many a timid +soul to get through life with a certain recklessness. And provided there +is no slip into a crevasse, the Providence theory works well. It would +work altogether well if there were no crevasses. + +Tartarin was reckless because of his faith in Providence, and escaped. +But what would have happened to him if he had fallen into a crevasse? + +There exists a very touching and remarkable book by Sir Francis +Younghusband called “Within.” [Williams and Norgate, 1912.] It is the +confession of a man who lived with a complete confidence in Providence +until he was already well advanced in years. He went through battles and +campaigns, he filled positions of great honour and responsibility, he +saw much of the life of men, without altogether losing his faith. The +loss of a child, an Indian famine, could shake it but not overthrow it. +Then coming back one day from some races in France, he was knocked down +by an automobile and hurt very cruelly. He suffered terribly in body and +mind. His sufferings caused much suffering to others. He did his utmost +to see the hand of a loving Providence in his and their disaster and +the torment it inflicted, and being a man of sterling honesty and a fine +essential simplicity of mind, he confessed at last that he could not do +so. His confidence in the benevolent intervention of God was altogether +destroyed. His book tells of this shattering, and how labouriously +he reconstructed his religion upon less confident lines. It is a book +typical of an age and of a very English sort of mind, a book well worth +reading. + +That he came to a full sense of the true God cannot be asserted, but how +near he came to God, let one quotation witness. + + +“The existence of an outside Providence,” he writes, “who created us, +who watches over us, and who guides our lives like a Merciful Father, +we have found impossible longer to believe in. But of the existence of a +Holy Spirit radiating upward through all animate beings, and finding its +fullest expression, in man in love, and in the flowers in beauty, we +can be as certain as of anything in the world. This fiery spiritual +impulsion at the centre and the source of things, ever burning in us, +is the supremely important factor in our existence. It does not always +attain to light. In many directions it fails; the conditions are too +hard and it is utterly blocked. In others it only partially succeeds. +But in a few it bursts forth into radiant light. There are few who +in some heavenly moment of their lives have not been conscious of its +presence. We may not be able to give it outward expression, but we know +that it is there.” . . . + + +God does not guide our feet. He is no sedulous governess restraining +and correcting the wayward steps of men. If you would fly into the air, +there is no God to bank your aeroplane correctly for you or keep an +ill-tended engine going; if you would cross a glacier, no God nor angel +guides your steps amidst the slippery places. He will not even mind your +innocent children for you if you leave them before an unguarded fire. +Cherish no delusions; for yourself and others you challenge danger and +chance on your own strength; no talisman, no God, can help you or those +you care for. Nothing of such things will God do; it is an idle dream. +But God will be with you nevertheless. In the reeling aeroplane or the +dark ice-cave God will be your courage. Though you suffer or are killed, +it is not an end. He will be with you as you face death; he will die +with you as he has died already countless myriads of brave deaths. He +will come so close to you that at the last you will not know whether it +is you or he who dies, and the present death will be swallowed up in his +victory. + + +5. THE HERESY OF QUIETISM + + +God comes to us within and takes us for his own. He releases us from +ourselves; he incorporates us with his own undying experience and +adventure; he receives us and gives himself. He is a stimulant; he +makes us live immortally and more abundantly. I have compared him to the +sensation of a dear, strong friend who comes and stands quietly beside +one, shoulder to shoulder. + +The finding of God is the beginning of service. It is not an escape from +life and action; it is the release of life and action from the prison of +the mortal self. Not to realise that, is the heresy of Quietism, of many +mystics. Commonly such people are people of some wealth, able to command +services for all their everyday needs. They make religion a method of +indolence. They turn their backs on the toil and stresses of existence +and give themselves up to a delicious reverie in which they flirt with +the divinity. They will recount their privileges and ecstasies, and how +ingeniously and wonderfully God has tried and proved them. But indeed +the true God was not the lover of Madame Guyon. The true God is not a +spiritual troubadour wooing the hearts of men and women to no purpose. +The true God goes through the world like fifes and drums and flags, +calling for recruits along the street. We must go out to him. We must +accept his discipline and fight his battle. The peace of God comes not +by thinking about it but by forgetting oneself in him. + + + +6. GOD DOES NOT PUNISH + + +Man is a social animal, and there is in him a great faculty for moral +indignation. Many of the early Gods were mainly Gods of Fear. They were +more often “wrath” than not. Such was the temperament of the Semitic +deity who, as the Hebrew Jehovah, proliferated, perhaps under the +influence of the Alexandrian Serapeum, into the Christian Trinity and +who became also the Moslem God.* The natural hatred of unregenerate men +against everything that is unlike themselves, against strange people +and cheerful people, against unfamiliar usages and things they do +not understand, embodied itself in this conception of a malignant and +partisan Deity, perpetually “upset” by the little things people did, +and contriving murder and vengeance. Now this God would be drowning +everybody in the world, now he would be burning Sodom and Gomorrah, +now he would be inciting his congenial Israelites to the most terrific +pogroms. This divine “frightfulness” is of course the natural +human dislike and distrust for queer practices or for too sunny a +carelessness, a dislike reinforced by the latent fierceness of the ape +in us, liberating the latent fierceness of the ape in us, giving it +an excuse and pressing permission upon it, handing the thing hated and +feared over to its secular arm. . . . + + * It is not so generally understood as it should be among + English and American readers that a very large proportion of + early Christians before the creeds established and + regularised the doctrine of the Trinity, denied absolutely + that Jehovah was God; they regarded Christ as a rebel + against Jehovah and a rescuer of humanity from him, just as + Prometheus was a rebel against Jove. These beliefs survived + for a thousand years throughout Christendom: they were held + by a great multitude of persecuted sects, from the + Albigenses and Cathars to the eastern Paulicians. The + catholic church found it necessary to prohibit the + circulation of the Old Testament among laymen very largely + on account of the polemics of the Cathars against the Hebrew + God. But in this book, be it noted, the word Christian, + when it is not otherwise defined, is used to indicate only + the Trinitarians who accept the official creeds. + +It is a human paradox that the desire for seemliness, the instinct +for restraints and fair disciplines, and the impulse to cherish sweet +familiar things, that these things of the True God should so readily +liberate cruelty and tyranny. It is like a woman going with a light to +tend and protect her sleeping child, and setting the house on fire. None +the less, right down to to-day, the heresy of God the Revengeful, God +the Persecutor and Avenger, haunts religion. It is only in quite recent +years that the growing gentleness of everyday life has begun to make men +a little ashamed of a Deity less tolerant and gentle than themselves. +The recent literature of the Anglicans abounds in the evidence of this +trouble. + +Bishop Colenso of Natal was prosecuted and condemned in 1863 for denying +the irascibility of his God and teaching “the Kaffirs of Natal” the +dangerous heresy that God is all mercy. “We cannot allow it to be said,” + the Dean of Cape Town insisted, “that God was not angry and was not +appeased by punishment.” He was angry “on account of Sin, which is a +great evil and a great insult to His Majesty.” The case of the Rev. +Charles Voysey, which occurred in 1870, was a second assertion of the +Church’s insistence upon the fierceness of her God. This case is not to +be found in the ordinary church histories nor is it even mentioned in +the latest edition of the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA; nevertheless it +appears to have been a very illuminating case. It is doubtful if the +church would prosecute or condemn either Bishop Colenso or Mr. Voysey +to-day. + + + +7. GOD AND THE NURSERY-MAID + + +Closely related to the Heresy of God the Avenger, is that kind of +miniature God the Avenger, to whom the nursery-maid and the overtaxed +parent are so apt to appeal. You stab your children with such a God and +he poisons all their lives. For many of us the word “God” first came +into our lives to denote a wanton, irrational restraint, as Bogey, +as the All-Seeing and quite ungenerous Eye. God Bogey is a great +convenience to the nursery-maid who wants to leave Fear to mind her +charges and enforce her disciplines, while she goes off upon her own +aims. But indeed, the teaching of God Bogey is an outrage upon the soul +of a child scarcely less dreadful than an indecent assault. The reason +rebels and is crushed under this horrible and pursuing suggestion. Many +minds never rise again from their injury. They remain for the rest of +life spiritually crippled and debased, haunted by a fear, stained with a +persuasion of relentless cruelty in the ultimate cause of all things. + +I, who write, was so set against God, thus rendered. He and his Hell +were the nightmare of my childhood; I hated him while I still believed +in him, and who could help but hate? I thought of him as a fantastic +monster, perpetually spying, perpetually listening, perpetually waiting +to condemn and to “strike me dead”; his flames as ready as a grill-room +fire. He was over me and about my feebleness and silliness and +forgetfulness as the sky and sea would be about a child drowning in +mid-Atlantic. When I was still only a child of thirteen, by the grace of +the true God in me, I flung this Lie out of my mind, and for many years, +until I came to see that God himself had done this thing for me, the +name of God meant nothing to me but the hideous scar in my heart where a +fearful demon had been. + +I see about me to-day many dreadful moral and mental cripples with this +bogey God of the nursery-maid, with his black, insane revenges, still +living like a horrible parasite in their hearts in the place where God +should be. They are afraid, afraid, afraid; they dare not be kindly to +formal sinners, they dare not abandon a hundred foolish observances; +they dare not look at the causes of things. They are afraid of sunshine, +of nakedness, of health, of adventure, of science, lest that old +watching spider take offence. The voice of the true God whispers in +their hearts, echoes in speech and writing, but they avert themselves, +fear-driven. For the true God has no lash of fear. And how the +foul-minded bigot, with his ill-shaven face, his greasy skin, his thick, +gesticulating hands, his bellowings and threatenings, loves to reap this +harvest of fear the ignorant cunning of the nursery girl has sown +for him! How he loves the importance of denunciation, and, himself +a malignant cripple, to rally the company of these crippled souls to +persecute and destroy the happy children of God! . . . + +Christian priestcraft turns a dreadful face to children. There is a real +wickedness of the priest that is different from other wickedness, and +that affects a reasonable mind just as cruelty and strange perversions +of instinct affect it. Let a former Archbishop of Canterbury speak +for me. This that follows is the account given by Archbishop Tait in a +debate in the Upper House of Convocation (July 3rd, 1877) of one of the +publications of a certain SOCIETY OF THE HOLY CROSS: + + +“I take this book, as its contents show, to be meant for the instruction +of very young children. I find, in one of the pages of it, the statement +that between the ages of six and six and a half years would be the +proper time for the inculcation of the teaching which is to be found in +the book. Now, six to six and a half is certainly a very tender age, and +to these children I find these statements addressed in the book: + +“‘It is to the priest, and to the priest only, that the child must +acknowledge his sins, if he desires that God should forgive him.’ + +“I hope and trust the person, the three clergymen, or however many there +were, did not exactly realise what they were writing; that they did not +mean to say that a child was not to confess its sins to God direct; that +it was not to confess its sins, at the age of six, to its mother, or to +its father, but was only to have recourse to the priest. But the +words, to say the least of them, are rash. Then comes the very obvious +question: + +“‘Do you know why? It is because God, when he was on earth, gave to +his priests, and to them alone, the Divine Power of forgiving men their +sins. It was to priests alone that Jesus said: “Receive ye the Holy +Ghost.” . . . Those who will not confess will not be cured. Sin is a +terrible sickness, and casts souls into hell.’ + +“That is addressed to a child six years of age. + +“‘I have known,’ the book continues, ‘poor children who concealed their +sins in confession for years; they were very unhappy, were tormented +with remorse, and if they had died in that state they would certainly +have gone to the everlasting fires of hell.’” . . . + + +Now here is something against nature, something that I have seen time +after time in the faces and bearing of priests and heard in their +preaching. It is a distinct lust. Much nobility and devotion there are +among priests, saintly lives and kindly lives, lives of real worship, +lives no man may better; this that I write is not of all, perhaps not +of many priests. But there has been in all ages that have known +sacerdotalism this terrible type of the priest; priestcraft and priestly +power release an aggressive and narrow disposition to a recklessness of +suffering and a hatred of liberty that surely exceeds the badness of any +other sort of men. + + + +8. THE CHILDREN’S GOD + + +Children do not naturally love God. They have no great capacity for +an idea so subtle and mature as the idea of God. While they are still +children in a home and cared for, life is too kind and easy for them to +feel any great need of God. All things are still something God-like. . . . + +The true God, our modern minds insist upon believing, can have no +appetite for unnatural praise and adoration. He does not clamour for +the attention of children. He is not like one of those senile uncles who +dream of glory in the nursery, who love to hear it said, “The children +adore him.” If children are loved and trained to truth, justice, and +mutual forbearance, they will be ready for the true God as their needs +bring them within his scope. They should be left to their innocence, and +to their trust in the innocence of the world, as long as they can be. +They should be told only of God as a Great Friend whom some day they +will need more and understand and know better. That is as much as most +children need. The phrases of religion put too early into their mouths +may become a cant, something worse than blasphemy. + +Yet children are sometimes very near to God. Creative passion stirs in +their play. At times they display a divine simplicity. But it does not +follow that therefore they should be afflicted with theological +formulae or inducted into ceremonies and rites that they may dislike +or misinterpret. If by any accident, by the death of a friend or a +distressing story, the thought of death afflicts a child, then he may +begin to hear of God, who takes those that serve him out of their slain +bodies into his shining immortality. Or if by some menial treachery, +through some prowling priest, the whisper of Old Bogey reaches our +children, then we may set their minds at ease by the assurance of his +limitless charity. . . . + +With adolescence comes the desire for God and to know more of God, and +that is the most suitable time for religious talk and teaching. + + + +9. GOD IS NOT SEXUAL + + +In the last two or three hundred years there has been a very +considerable disentanglement of the idea of God from the complex of +sexual thought and feeling. But in the early days of religion the two +things were inseparably bound together; the fury of the Hebrew prophets, +for example, is continually proclaiming the extraordinary “wrath” of +their God at this or that little dirtiness or irregularity or breach of +the sexual tabus. The ceremony of circumcision is clearly indicative +of the original nature of the Semitic deity who developed into the +Trinitarian God. So far as Christianity dropped this rite, so far +Christianity disavowed the old associations. But to this day the +representative Christian churches still make marriage into a mystical +sacrament, and, with some exceptions, the Roman communion exacts +the sacrifice of celibacy from its priesthood, regardless of the +mischievousness and maliciousness that so often ensue. Nearly every +Christian church inflicts as much discredit and injustice as it can +contrive upon the illegitimate child. They do not treat illegitimate +children as unfortunate children, but as children with a mystical and +an incurable taint of SIN. Kindly easy-going Christians may resent this +statement because it does not tally with their own attitudes, but let +them consult their orthodox authorities. + +One must distinguish clearly here between what is held to be sacred or +sinful in itself and what is held to be one’s duty or a nation’s duty +because it is in itself the wisest, cleanest, clearest, best thing to +do. By the latter tests and reasonable arguments most or all of our +institutions regulating the relations of the sexes may be justifiable. +But my case is not whether they can be justified by these tests but +that it is not by these tests that they are judged even to-day, by the +professors of the chief religions of the world. It is the temper and not +the conclusions of the religious bodies that I would criticise. These +sexual questions are guarded by a holy irascibility, and the most +violent efforts are made--with a sense of complete righteousness--to +prohibit their discussion. That fury about sexual things is only to be +explained on the hypothesis that the Christian God remains a sex God in +the minds of great numbers of his exponents. His disentanglement from +that plexus is incomplete. Sexual things are still to the orthodox +Christian, sacred things. + +Now the God whom those of the new faith are finding is only mediately +concerned with the relations of men and women. He is no more sexual +essentially than he is essentially dietetic or hygienic. The God of +Leviticus was all these things. He is represented as prescribing the +most petty and intimate of observances--many of which are now habitually +disregarded by the Christians who profess him. . . . It is part of the +evolution of the idea of God that we have now so largely disentangled +our conception of him from the dietary and regimen and meticulous sexual +rules that were once inseparably bound up with his majesty. Christ +himself was one of the chief forces in this disentanglement, there is +the clearest evidence in several instances of his disregard of the +rule and his insistence that his disciples should seek for the spirit +underlying and often masked by the rule. His Church, being made of baser +matter, has followed him as reluctantly as possible and no further +than it was obliged. But it has followed him far enough to admit his +principle that in all these matters there is no need for superstitious +fear, that the interpretation of the divine purpose is left to the +unembarrassed intelligence of men. The church has followed him far +enough to make the harsh threatenings of priests and ecclesiastics +against what they are pleased to consider impurity or sexual impiety, +a profound inconsistency. One seems to hear their distant protests when +one reads of Christ and the Magdalen, or of Christ eating with publicans +and sinners. The clergy of our own days play the part of the +New Testament Pharisees with the utmost exactness and complete +unconsciousness. One cannot imagine a modern ecclesiastic conversing +with a Magdalen in terms of ordinary civility, unless she was in a very +high social position indeed, or blending with disreputable characters +without a dramatic sense of condescension and much explanatory by-play. +Those who profess modern religion do but follow in these matters a +course entirely compatible with what has survived of the authentic +teachings of Christ, when they declare that God is not sexual, and that +religious passion and insult and persecution upon the score of sexual +things are a barbaric inheritance. + +But lest anyone should fling off here with some hasty assumption that +those who profess the religion of the true God are sexually anarchistic, +let stress be laid at once upon the opening sentence of the preceding +paragraph, and let me a little anticipate a section which follows. +We would free men and women from exact and superstitious rules and +observances, not to make them less the instruments of God but more +wholly his. The claim of modern religion is that one should give oneself +unreservedly to God, that there is no other salvation. The believer owes +all his being and every moment of his life to God, to keep mind and body +as clean, fine, wholesome, active and completely at God’s service as +he can. There is no scope for indulgence or dissipation in such +a consecrated life. It is a matter between the individual and his +conscience or his doctor or his social understanding what exactly he may +do or not do, what he may eat or drink or so forth, upon any occasion. +Nothing can exonerate him from doing his utmost to determine and perform +the right act. Nothing can excuse his failure to do so. But what is here +being insisted upon is that none of these things has immediately to do +with God or religious emotion, except only the general will to do right +in God’s service. The detailed interpretation of that “right” is for the +dispassionate consideration of the human intelligence. + +All this is set down here as distinctly as possible. Because of +the emotional reservoirs of sex, sexual dogmas are among the most +obstinately recurrent of all heresies, and sexual excitement is always +tending to leak back into religious feeling. Amongst the sex-tormented +priesthood of the Roman communion in particular, ignorant of the +extreme practices of the Essenes and of the Orphic cult and suchlike +predecessors of Christianity, there seems to be an extraordinary belief +that chastity was not invented until Christianity came, and that the +religious life is largely the propitiation of God by feats of sexual +abstinence. But a superstitious abstinence that scars and embitters +the mind, distorts the imagination, makes the body gross and keeps it +unclean, is just as offensive to God as any positive depravity. + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE LIKENESS OF GOD + + +1. GOD IS COURAGE + +Now having set down what those who profess the new religion regard as +the chief misconceptions of God, having put these systems of ideas aside +from our explanations, the path is cleared for the statement of what God +is. Since language springs entirely from material, spatial things, there +is always an element of metaphor in theological statement. So that I +have not called this chapter the Nature of God, but the Likeness of God. + +And firstly, GOD IS COURAGE. + + + +2. GOD IS A PERSON + + +And next GOD IS A PERSON. + +Upon this point those who are beginning to profess modern religion are +very insistent. It is, they declare, the central article, the axis, of +their religion. God is a person who can be known as one knows a friend, +who can be served and who receives service, who partakes of our nature; +who is, like us, a being in conflict with the unknown and the limitless +and the forces of death; who values much that we value and is against +much that we are pitted against. He is our king to whom we must be +loyal; he is our captain, and to know him is to have a direction in our +lives. He feels us and knows us; he is helped and gladdened by us. He +hopes and attempts. . . . God is no abstraction nor trick of words, no +Infinite. He is as real as a bayonet thrust or an embrace. + +Now this is where those who have left the old creeds and come asking +about the new realisations find their chief difficulty. They say, Show +us this person; let us hear him. (If they listen to the silences within, +presently they will hear him.) But when one argues, one finds oneself +suddenly in the net of those ancient controversies between species +and individual, between the one and the many, which arise out of the +necessarily imperfect methods of the human mind. Upon these matters +there has been much pregnant writing during the last half century. Such +ideas as this writer has to offer are to be found in a previous little +book of his, “First and Last Things,” in which, writing as one without +authority or specialisation in logic and philosophy, as an ordinary man +vividly interested, for others in a like case, he was at some pains to +elucidate the imperfections of this instrument of ours, this mind, by +which we must seek and explain and reach up to God. Suffice it here to +say that theological discussion may very easily become like the vision +of a man with cataract, a mere projection of inherent imperfections. If +we do not use our phraseology with a certain courage, and take that +of those who are trying to convey their ideas to us with a certain +politeness and charity, there is no end possible to any discussion in +so subtle and intimate a matter as theology but assertions, denials, and +wranglings. And about this word “person” it is necessary to be as clear +and explicit as possible, though perfect clearness, a definition of +mathematical sharpness, is by the very nature of the case impossible. + +Now when we speak of a person or an individual we think typically of a +man, and we forget that he was once an embryo and will presently decay; +we forget that he came of two people and may beget many, that he has +forgotten much and will forget more, that he can be confused, divided +against himself, delirious, drunken, drugged, or asleep. On the +contrary we are, in our hasty way of thinking of him, apt to suppose him +continuous, definite, acting consistently and never forgetting. But only +abstract and theoretical persons are like that. We couple with him the +idea of a body. Indeed, in the common use of the word “person” there is +more thought of body than of mind. We speak of a lover possessing the +person of his mistress. We speak of offences against the person as +opposed to insults, libels, or offences against property. And the +gods of primitive men and the earlier civilisations were quite of that +quality of person. They were thought of as living in very splendid +bodies and as acting consistently. If they were invisible in the +ordinary world it was because they were aloof or because their “persons” + were too splendid for weak human eyes. Moses was permitted a mitigated +view of the person of the Hebrew God on Mount Horeb; and Semele, who +insisted upon seeing Zeus in the glories that were sacred to Juno, +was utterly consumed. The early Islamic conception of God, like the +conception of most honest, simple Christians to-day, was clearly, in +spite of the theologians, of a very exalted anthropomorphic personality +away somewhere in Heaven. The personal appearance of the Christian God +is described in The Revelation, and however much that description may be +explained away by commentators as symbolical, it is certainly taken by +most straightforward believers as a statement of concrete reality. +Now if we are going to insist upon this primary meaning of person and +individual, then certainly God as he is now conceived is not a person +and not an individual. The true God will never promenade an Eden or a +Heaven, nor sit upon a throne. + +But current Christianity, modern developments of Islam, much Indian +theological thought--that, for instance, which has found such delicate +and attractive expression in the devotional poetry of Rabindranath +Tagore--has long since abandoned this anthropomorphic insistence upon +a body. From the earliest ages man’s mind has found little or no +difficulty in the idea of something essential to the personality, a soul +or a spirit or both, existing apart from the body and continuing after +the destruction of the body, and being still a person and an individual. +From this it is a small step to the thought of a person existing +independently of any existing or pre-existing body. That is the idea +of theological Christianity, as distinguished from the Christianity +of simple faith. The Triune Persons--omnipresent, omniscient, and +omnipotent--exist for all time, superior to and independent of matter. +They are supremely disembodied. One became incarnate--as a wind eddy +might take up a whirl of dust. . . . Those who profess modern +religion conceive that this is an excessive abstraction of the idea +of spirituality, a disembodiment of the idea of personality beyond the +limits of the conceivable; nevertheless they accept the conception that +a person, a spiritual individual, may be without an ordinary mortal +body. . . . They declare that God is without any specific body, that he +is immaterial, that he can affect the material universe--and that means +that he can only reach our sight, our hearing, our touch--through the +bodies of those who believe in him and serve him. + +His nature is of the nature of thought and will. Not only has he, in his +essence, nothing to do with matter, but nothing to do with space. He is +not of matter nor of space. He comes into them. Since the period when +all the great theologies that prevail to-day were developed, there have +been great changes in the ideas of men towards the dimensions of time +and space. We owe to Kant the release from the rule of these ideas as +essential ideas. Our modern psychology is alive to the possibility of +Being that has no extension in space at all, even as our speculative +geometry can entertain the possibility of dimensions--fourth, fifth, Nth +dimensions--outside the three-dimensional universe of our experience. +And God being non-spatial is not thereby banished to an infinite +remoteness, but brought nearer to us; he is everywhere immediately at +hand, even as a fourth dimension would be everywhere immediately at +hand. He is a Being of the minds and in the minds of men. He is in +immediate contact with all who apprehend him. . . . + +But modern religion declares that though he does not exist in matter or +space, he exists in time just as a current of thought may do; that +he changes and becomes more even as a man’s purpose gathers itself +together; that somewhere in the dawning of mankind he had a beginning, +an awakening, and that as mankind grows he grows. With our eyes he looks +out upon the universe he invades; with our hands, he lays hands upon +it. All our truth, all our intentions and achievements, he gathers to +himself. He is the undying human memory, the increasing human will. + +But this, you may object, is no more than saying that God is the +collective mind and purpose of the human race. You may declare that this +is no God, but merely the sum of mankind. But those who believe in the +new ideas very steadfastly deny that. God is, they say, not an aggregate +but a synthesis. He is not merely the best of all of us, but a Being in +himself, composed of that but more than that, as a temple is more than a +gathering of stones, or a regiment is more than an accumulation of men. +They point out that a man is made up of a great multitude of cells, each +equivalent to a unicellular organism. Not one of those cells is he, nor +is he simply just the addition of all of them. He is more than all of +them. You can take away these and these and these, and he still remains. +And he can detach part of himself and treat it as if it were not +himself, just as a man may beat his breast or, as Cranmer the martyr +did, thrust his hand into the flames. A man is none the less himself +because his hair is cut or his appendix removed or his leg amputated. + +And take another image. . . . Who bears affection for this or that +spadeful of mud in my garden? Who cares a throb of the heart for all the +tons of chalk in Kent or all the lumps of limestone in Yorkshire? But +men love England, which is made up of such things. + +And so we think of God as a synthetic reality, though he has neither +body nor material parts. And so too we may obey him and listen to +him, though we think but lightly of the men whose hands or voices he +sometimes uses. And we may think of him as having moods and aspects--as +a man has--and a consistency we call his character. + +These are theorisings about God. These are statements to convey this +modern idea of God. This, we say, is the nature of the person whose will +and thoughts we serve. No one, however, who understands the religious +life seeks conversion by argument. First one must feel the need of God, +then one must form or receive an acceptable idea of God. That much is no +more than turning one’s face to the east to see the coming of the sun. +One may still doubt if that direction is the east or whether the sun +will rise. The real coming of God is not that. It is a change, an +irradiation of the mind. Everything is there as it was before, only now +it is aflame. Suddenly the light fills one’s eyes, and one knows that +God has risen and that doubt has fled for ever. + + +3. GOD IS YOUTH + + +The third thing to be told of the true God is that GOD IS YOUTH. + +God, we hold, began and is always beginning. He looks forever into the +future. + +Most of the old religions derive from a patriarchal phase. God is in +those systems the Ancient of Days. I know of no Christian attempt to +represent or symbolise God the Father which is not a bearded, aged man. +White hair, beard, bearing, wrinkles, a hundred such symptoms of senile +decay are there. These marks of senility do not astonish our modern +minds in the picture of God, only because tradition and usage have +blinded our eyes to the absurdity of a time-worn immortal. Jove too and +Wotan are figures far past the prime of their vigour. These are gods +after the ancient habit of the human mind, that turned perpetually +backward for causes and reasons and saw all things to come as no more +than the working out of Fate,-- + + “Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit + Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste + Brought death into the world and all our woe.” + +But the God of this new age, we repeat, looks not to our past but our +future, and if a figure may represent him it must be the figure of +a beautiful youth, already brave and wise, but hardly come to his +strength. He should stand lightly on his feet in the morning time, eager +to go forward, as though he had but newly arisen to a day that was +still but a promise; he should bear a sword, that clean, discriminating +weapon, his eyes should be as bright as swords; his lips should fall +apart with eagerness for the great adventure before him, and he should +be in very fresh and golden harness, reflecting the rising sun. Death +should still hang like mists and cloud banks and shadows in the valleys +of the wide landscape about him. There should be dew upon the threads of +gossamer and little leaves and blades of the turf at his feet. . . . + + + +4. WHEN WE SAY GOD IS LOVE + + +One of the sayings about God that have grown at the same time most trite +and most sacred, is that God is Love. This is a saying that deserves +careful examination. Love is a word very loosely used; there are people +who will say they love new potatoes; there are a multitude of loves +of different colours and values. There is the love of a mother for her +child, there is the love of brothers, there is the love of youth and +maiden, and the love of husband and wife, there is illicit love and the +love one bears one’s home or one’s country, there are dog-lovers and the +loves of the Olympians, and love which is a passion of jealousy. Love +is frequently a mere blend of appetite and preference; it may be +almost pure greed; it may have scarcely any devotion nor be a whit +self-forgetful nor generous. It is possible so to phrase things that the +furtive craving of a man for another man’s wife may be made out to be +a light from God. Yet about all the better sorts of love, the sorts of +love that people will call “true love,” there is something of that same +exaltation out of the narrow self that is the essential quality of the +knowledge of God. + +Only while the exaltation of the love passion comes and goes, the +exaltation of religious passion comes to remain. Lovers are the windows +by which we may look out of the prison of self, but God is the open door +by which we freely go. And God never dies, nor disappoints, nor betrays. + +The love of a woman and a man has usually, and particularly in its +earlier phases of excitement, far too much desire, far too much +possessiveness and exclusiveness, far too much distrust or forced trust, +and far too great a kindred with jealousy to be like the love of God. +The former is a dramatic relationship that drifts to a climax, and then +again seeks presently a climax, and that may be satiated or fatigued. +But the latter is far more like the love of comrades, or like the +love of a man and a woman who have loved and been through much trouble +together, who have hurt one another and forgiven, and come to a complete +and generous fellowship. There is a strange and beautiful love that men +tell of that will spring up on battlefields between sorely wounded men, +and often they are men who have fought together, so that they will do +almost incredibly brave and tender things for one another, though but +recently they have been trying to kill each other. There is often a pure +exaltation of feeling between those who stand side by side manfully in +any great stress. These are the forms of love that perhaps come nearest +to what we mean when we speak of the love of God. + +That is man’s love of God, but there is also something else; there is +the love God bears for man in the individual believer. Now this is not +an indulgent, instinctive, and sacrificing love like the love of a woman +for her baby. It is the love of the captain for his men; God must love +his followers as a great captain loves his men, who are so foolish, so +helpless in themselves, so confiding, and yet whose faith alone makes +him possible. It is an austere love. The spirit of God will not hesitate +to send us to torment and bodily death. . . . + +And God waits for us, for all of us who have the quality to reach +him. He has need of us as we of him. He desires us and desires to make +himself known to us. When at last the individual breaks through the +limiting darknesses to him, the irradiation of that moment, the smile +and soul clasp, is in God as well as in man. He has won us from his +enemy. We come staggering through into the golden light of his kingdom, +to fight for his kingdom henceforth, until at last we are altogether +taken up into his being. + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +THE RELIGION OF ATHEISTS + + + +1. THE SCIENTIFIC ATHEIST + + +It is a curious thing that while most organised religions seem to drape +about and conceal and smother the statement of the true God, the +honest Atheist, with his passionate impulse to strip the truth bare, is +constantly and unwittingly reproducing the divine likeness. It will be +interesting here to call a witness or so to the extreme instability of +absolute negation. + +Here, for example, is a deliverance from Professor Metchnikoff, who was +a very typical antagonist of all religion. He died only the other day. +He was a very great physiologist indeed; he was a man almost of the rank +and quality of Pasteur or Charles Darwin. A decade or more ago he wrote +a book called “The Nature of Man,” in which he set out very plainly a +number of illuminating facts about life. They are facts so illuminating +that presently, in our discussion of sin, they will be referred to +again. But it is not Professor Metchnikoff’s intention to provide +material for a religious discussion. He sets out his facts in order to +overthrow theology as he conceives it. The remarkable thing about his +book, the thing upon which I would now lay stress, is that he betrays no +inkling of the fact that he has no longer the right to conceive theology +as he conceives it. The development of his science has destroyed that +right. + +He does not realise how profoundly modern biology has affected our ideas +of individuality and species, and how the import of theology is modified +through these changes. When he comes from his own world of modern +biology to religion and philosophy he goes back in time. He attacks +religion as he understood it when first he fell out with it fifty years +or more ago. + +Let us state as compactly as possible the nature of these changes that +biological science has wrought almost imperceptibly in the general +scheme and method of our thinking. + +The influence of biology upon thought in general consists essentially +in diminishing the importance of the individual and developing the +realisation of the species, as if it were a kind of super-individual, a +modifying and immortal super-individual, maintaining itself against the +outer universe by the birth and death of its constituent individuals. +Natural History, which began by putting individuals into species as if +the latter were mere classificatory divisions, has come to see that +the species has its adventures, its history and drama, far exceeding +in interest and importance the individual adventure. “The Origin of +Species” was for countless minds the discovery of a new romance in life. + +The contrast of the individual life and this specific life may be +stated plainly and compactly as follows. A little while ago we current +individuals, we who are alive now, were each of us distributed between +two parents, then between four grandparents, and so on backward, we are +temporarily assembled, as it were, out of an ancestral diffusion; we +stand our trial, and presently our individuality is dispersed and +mixed again with other individualities in an uncertain multitude of +descendants. But the species is not like this; it goes on steadily from +newness to newness, remaining still a unity. The drama of the individual +life is a mere episode, beneficial or abandoned, in this continuing +adventure of the species. And Metchnikoff finds most of the trouble of +life and the distresses of life in the fact that the species is still +very painfully adjusting itself to the fluctuating conditions under +which it lives. The conflict of life is a continual pursuit of +adjustment, and the “ills of life,” of the individual life that is, +are due to its “disharmonies.” Man, acutely aware of himself as an +individual adventure and unawakened to himself as a species, finds life +jangling and distressful, finds death frustration. He fails and falls as +a person in what may be the success and triumph of his kind. He does +not apprehend the struggle or the nature of victory, but only his own +gravitation to death and personal extinction. + +Now Professor Metchnikoff is anti-religious, and he is anti-religious +because to him as to so many Europeans religion is confused with +priest-craft and dogmas, is associated with disagreeable early +impressions of irrational repression and misguidance. How completely he +misconceives the quality of religion, how completely he sees it as an +individual’s affair, his own words may witness: + + +“Religion is still occupied with the problem of death. The solutions +which as yet it has offered cannot be regarded as satisfactory. A future +life has no single argument to support it, and the non-existence of life +after death is in consonance with the whole range of human knowledge. On +the other hand, resignation as preached by Buddha will fail to satisfy +humanity, which has a longing for life, and is overcome by the thought +of the inevitability of death.” + + +Now here it is clear that by death he means the individual death, and by +a future life the prolongation of individuality. But Buddhism does +not in truth appear ever to have been concerned with that, and modern +religious developments are certainly not under that preoccupation with +the narrower self. Buddhism indeed so far from “preaching resignation” + to death, seeks as its greater good a death so complete as to be +absolute release from the individual’s burthen of KARMA. Buddhism seeks +an ESCAPE FROM INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY. The deeper one pursues religious +thought the more nearly it approximates to a search for escape from the +self-centred life and over-individuation, and the more it diverges from +Professor Metchnikoff’s assertion of its aims. Salvation is indeed to +lose one’s self. But Professor Metchnikoff having roundly denied +that this is so, is then left free to take the very essentials of the +religious life as they are here conceived and present them as if +they were the antithesis of the religious life. His book, when it is +analysed, resolves itself into just that research for an escape from the +painful accidents and chagrins of individuation, which is the ultimate +of religion. + +At times, indeed, he seems almost wilfully blind to the true solution +round and about which his writing goes. He suggests as his most hopeful +satisfaction for the cravings of the human heart, such a scientific +prolongation of life that the instinct for self-preservation will be at +last extinct. If that is not the very “resignation” he imputes to the +Buddhist I do not know what it is. He believes that an individual which +has lived fully and completely may at last welcome death with the same +instinctive readiness as, in the days of its strength, it shows for the +embraces of its mate. We are to be glutted by living to six score and +ten. We are to rise from the table at last as gladly as we sat down. We +shall go to death as unresistingly as tired children go to bed. Men +are to have a life far beyond the range of what is now considered their +prime, and their last period (won by scientific self-control) will be a +period of ripe wisdom (from seventy to eighty to a hundred and twenty or +thereabouts) and public service! + +(But why, one asks, public service? Why not book-collecting or the +simple pleasure of reminiscence so dear to aged egotists? Metchnikoff +never faces that question. And again, what of the man who is challenged +to die for right at the age of thirty? What does the prolongation +of life do for him? And where are the consolations for accidental +misfortune, for the tormenting disease or the lost limb?) + +But in his peroration Professor Metchnikoff lapses into pure +religiosity. The prolongation of life gives place to sheer +self-sacrifice as the fundamental “remedy.” And indeed what other remedy +has ever been conceived for the general evil of life? + + +“On the other hand,” he writes, “the knowledge that the goal of human +life can be attained only by the development of a high degree of +solidarity amongst men will restrain actual egotism. The mere fact that +the enjoyment of life according to the precepts of Solomon (Ecelesiastes +ix. 7-10)* is opposed to the goal of human life, will lessen luxury and +the evil that comes from luxury. Conviction that science alone is able +to redress the disharmonies of the human constitution will lead directly +to the improvement of education and to the solidarity of mankind. + + * Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine + with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. Let + thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no + ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all + the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee + under the sun, all the days of thy vanity for that is thy + portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest + under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it + with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor + knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. + +“In progress towards the goal, nature will have to be consulted +continuously. Already, in the case of the ephemerids, nature has +produced a complete cycle of normal life ending in natural death. In +the problem of his own fate, man must not be content with the gifts of +nature; he must direct them by his own efforts. Just as he has been able +to modify the nature of animals and plants, man must attempt to modify +his own constitution, so as to readjust its disharmonies. . . . + +“To modify the human constitution, it will be necessary first, to frame +the ideal, and thereafter to set to work with all the resources of +science. + +“If there can be formed an ideal able to unite men in a kind of religion +of the future, this ideal must be founded on scientific principles. And +if it be true, as has been asserted so often, that man can live by faith +alone, the faith must be in the power of science.” + + +Now this, after all the flat repudiations that have preceded it of +“religion” and “philosophy” as remedies for human ills, is nothing less +than the fundamental proposition of the religious life translated into +terms of materialistic science, the proposition that damnation is really +over-individuation and that salvation is escape from self into the +larger being of life. . . . + +What can this “religion of the future” be but that devotion to the +racial adventure under the captaincy of God which we have already found, +like gold in the bottom of the vessel, when we have washed away the +confusions and impurities of dogmatic religion? By an inquiry setting +out from a purely religious starting-point we have already reached +conclusions identical with this ultimate refuge of an extreme +materialist. + +This altar to the Future of his, we can claim as an altar to our God--an +altar rather indistinctly inscribed. + + + +2. SACRIFICE IMPLIES GOD + + +Almost all Agnostic and Atheistical writings that show any fineness +and generosity of spirit, have this tendency to become as it were the +statement of an anonymous God. Everything is said that a religious +writer would say--except that God is not named. Religious metaphors +abound. It is as if they accepted the living body of religion but denied +the bones that held it together--as they might deny the bones of a +friend. It is true, they would admit, the body moves in a way that +implies bones in its every movement, but--WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THOSE +BONES. + +The disputes in theory--I do not say the difference in reality--between +the modern believer and the atheist or agnostic--becomes at times almost +as impalpable as that subtle discussion dear to students of physics, +whether the scientific “ether” is real or a formula. Every material +phenomenon is consonant with and helps to define this ether, which +permeates and sustains and is all things, which nevertheless is +perceptible to no sense, which is reached only by an intellectual +process. Most minds are disposed to treat this ether as a reality. But +the acutely critical mind insists that what is only so attainable by +inference is not real; it is no more than “a formula that satisfies all +phenomena.” + +But if it comes to that, am I anything more than the formula that +satisfies all my forms of consciousness? + +Intellectually there is hardly anything more than a certain will to +believe, to divide the religious man who knows God to be utterly real, +from the man who says that God is merely a formula to satisfy moral and +spiritual phenomena. The former has encountered him, the other has as +yet felt only unassigned impulses. One says God’s will is so; the other +that Right is so. One says God moves me to do this or that; the other +the Good Will in me which I share with you and all well-disposed men, +moves me to do this or that. But the former makes an exterior reference +and escapes a risk of self-righteousness. + +I have recently been reading a book by Mr. Joseph McCabe called “The +Tyranny of Shams,” in which he displays very typically this curious +tendency to a sort of religion with God “blacked out.” His is an +extremely interesting case. He is a writer who was formerly a Roman +Catholic priest, and in his reaction from Catholicism he displays a +resolution even sterner than Professor Metchnikoff’s, to deny that +anything religious or divine can exist, that there can be any aim +in life except happiness, or any guide but “science.” But--and here +immediately he turns east again--he is careful not to say “individual +happiness.” And he says “Pleasure is, as Epicureans insisted, only +a part of a large ideal of happiness.” So he lets the happiness of +devotion and sacrifice creep in. So he opens indefinite possibilities of +getting away from any merely materialistic rule of life. And he writes: + + +“In every civilised nation the mass of the people are inert and +indifferent. Some even make a pretence of justifying their inertness. +Why, they ask, should we stir at all? Is there such a thing as a duty to +improve the earth? What is the meaning or purpose of life? Or has it a +purpose? + +“One generally finds that this kind of reasoning is merely a piece of +controversial athletics or a thin excuse for idleness. People tell you +that the conflict of science and religion--it would be better to say, +the conflict of modern culture and ancient traditions--has robbed life +of its plain significance. The men who, like Tolstoi, seriously urge +this point fail to appreciate the modern outlook on life. Certainly +modern culture--science, history, philosophy, and art--finds no purpose +in life: that is to say, no purpose eternally fixed and to be discovered +by man. A great chemist said a few years ago that he could imagine ‘a +series of lucky accidents’--the chance blowing by the wind of certain +chemicals into pools on the primitive earth--accounting for the first +appearance of life; and one might not unjustly sum up the influences +which have lifted those early germs to the level of conscious beings as +a similar series of lucky accidents. + +“But it is sheer affectation to say that this demoralises us. If there +is no purpose impressed on the universe, or prefixed to the development +of humanity, it follows only that humanity may choose its own purpose +and set up its own goal; and the most elementary sense of order will +teach us that this choice must be social, not merely individual. In +whatever measure ill-controlled individuals may yield to personal +impulses or attractions, the aim of the race must be a collective aim. I +do not mean an austere demand of self-sacrifice from the individual, +but an adjustment--as genial and generous as possible--of individual +variations for common good. Otherwise life becomes discordant and +futile, and the pain and waste react on each individual. So we raise +again, in the twentieth century, the old question of ‘the greatest +good,’ which men discussed in the Stoa Poikile and the suburban groves +of Athens, in the cool atria of patrician mansions on the Palatine and +the Pincian, in the Museum at Alexandria, and the schools which Omar +Khayyam frequented, in the straw-strewn schools of the Middle Ages and +the opulent chambers of Cosimo dei Medici.” + + +And again: + + +“The old dream of a co-operative effort to improve life, to bring +happiness to as many minds of mortals as we can reach, shines above +all the mists of the day. Through the ruins of creeds and philosophies, +which have for ages disdained it, we are retracing our steps toward that +height--just as the Athenians did two thousand years ago. It rests on +no metaphysic, no sacred legend, no disputable tradition--nothing that +scepticism can corrode or advancing knowledge undermine. Its foundations +are the fundamental and unchanging impulses of our nature.” + + +And again: + + +“The revolt which burns in so much of the abler literature of our time +is an unselfish revolt, or non-selfish revolt: it is an outcome of +that larger spirit which conceives the self to be a part of the general +social organism, and it is therefore neither egoistic nor altruistic. +It finds a sanction in the new intelligence, and an inspiration in the +finer sentiments of our generation, but the glow which chiefly illumines +it is the glow of the great vision of a happier earth. It speaks of +the claims of truth and justice, and assails untruth and injustice, +for these are elemental principles of social life; but it appeals +more confidently to the warmer sympathy which is linking the scattered +children of the race, and it urges all to co-operate in the restriction +of suffering and the creation of happiness. The advance guard of the +race, the men and women in whom mental alertness is associated with fine +feeling, cry that they have reached Pisgah’s slope and in increasing +numbers men and women are pressing on to see if it be really the +Promised Land.” + + +“Pisgah--the Promised Land!” Mr. McCabe in that passage sounds as if he +were half-way to “Oh! Beulah Land!” and the tambourine. + +That “larger spirit,” we maintain, is God; those “impulses” are the +power of God, and Mr. McCabe serves a Master he denies. He has but to +realise fully that God is not necessarily the Triune God of the Catholic +Church, and banish his intense suspicion that he may yet be lured +back to that altar he abandoned, he has but to look up from that +preoccupation, and immediately he will begin to realise the presence of +Divinity. + + + +3. GOD IS AN EXTERNAL REALITY + + +It may be argued that if atheists and agnostics when they set themselves +to express the good will that is in them, do shape out God, that +if their conception of right living falls in so completely with the +conception of God’s service as to be broadly identical, then indeed God, +like the ether of scientific speculation, is no more than a theory, no +more than an imaginative externalisation of man’s inherent good will. +Why trouble about God then? Is not the declaration of a good disposition +a sufficient evidence of salvation? What is the difference between such +benevolent unbelievers as Professor Metchnikoff or Mr. McCabe and those +who have found God? + +The difference is this, that the benevolent atheist stands alone upon +his own good will, without a reference, without a standard, trusting +to his own impulse to goodness, relying upon his own moral strength. A +certain immodesty, a certain self-righteousness, hangs like a precipice +above him; incalculable temptations open like gulfs beneath his feet. He +has not really given himself or got away from himself. He has no one to +whom he can give himself. He is still a masterless man. His exaltation +is self-centred, is priggishness, his fall is unrestrained by any +exterior obligation. His devotion is only the good will in himself, a +disposition; it is a mood that may change. At any moment it may change. +He may have pledged himself to his own pride and honour, but who will +hold him to his bargain? He has no source of strength beyond his own +amiable sentiments, his conscience speaks with an unsupported voice, and +no one watches while he sleeps. He cannot pray; he can but ejaculate. He +has no real and living link with other men of good will. + +And those whose acquiescence in the idea of God is merely intellectual +are in no better case than those who deny God altogether. They may have +all the forms of truth and not divinity. The religion of the atheist +with a God-shaped blank at its heart and the persuasion of the +unconverted theologian, are both like lamps unlit. The lit lamp has no +difference in form from the lamp unlit. But the lit lamp is alive and +the lamp unlit is asleep or dead. + +The difference between the unconverted and the unbeliever and the +servant of the true God is this; it is that the latter has experienced +a complete turning away from self. This only difference is all the +difference in the world. It is the realisation that this goodness that +I thought was within me and of myself and upon which I rather prided +myself, is without me and above myself, and infinitely greater and +stronger than I. It is the immortal and I am mortal. It is invincible +and steadfast in its purpose, and I am weak and insecure. It is no +longer that I, out of my inherent and remarkable goodness, out of +the excellence of my quality and the benevolence of my heart, give a +considerable amount of time and attention to the happiness and welfare +of others--because I choose to do so. On the contrary I have come under +a divine imperative, I am obeying an irresistible call, I am a humble +and willing servant of the righteousness of God. That altruism which +Professor Metchnikoff and Mr. McCabe would have us regard as the goal +and refuge of a broad and free intelligence, is really the first simple +commandment in the religious life. + + + +4. ANOTHER RELIGIOUS MATERIALIST + + +Now here is a passage from a book, “Evolution and the War,” by Professor +Metchnikoff’s translator, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, which comes even closer +to our conception of God as an immortal being arising out of man, and +external to the individual man. He has been discussing that well-known +passage of Kant’s: “Two things fill my mind with ever-renewed wonder and +awe the more often and deeper I dwell on them--the starry vault above +me, and the moral law within me.” + +From that discussion, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell presently comes to this most +definite and interesting statement: + + +“Writing as a hard-shell Darwinian evolutionist, a lover of the scalpel +and microscope, and of patient, empirical observation, as one who +dislikes all forms of supernaturalism, and who does not shrink from the +implications even of the phrase that thought is a secretion of the brain +as bile is a secretion of the liver, I assert as a biological fact that +the moral law is as real and as external to man as the starry vault. It +has no secure seat in any single man or in any single nation. It is the +work of the blood and tears of long generations of men. It is not +in man, inborn or innate, but is enshrined in his traditions, in his +customs, in his literature and his religion. Its creation and sustenance +are the crowning glory of man, and his consciousness of it puts him in +a high place above the animal world. Men live and die; nations rise and +fall, but the struggle of individual lives and of individual nations +must be measured not by their immediate needs, but as they tend to the +debasement or perfection of man’s great achievement.” + + +This is the same reality. This is the same Link and Captain that this +book asserts. It seems to me a secondary matter whether we call Him +“Man’s Great Achievement” or “The Son of Man” or the “God of Mankind” or +“God.” So far as the practical and moral ends of life are concerned, it +does not matter how we explain or refuse to explain His presence in our +lives. + +There is but one possible gap left between the position of Dr. Chalmers +Mitchell and the position of this book. In this book it is asserted that +GOD RESPONDS, that he GIVES courage and the power of self-suppression to +our weakness. + + + +5. A NOTE ON A LECTURE BY PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY + + +Let me now quote and discuss a very beautiful passage from a lecture +upon Stoicism by Professor Gilbert Murray, which also displays the same +characteristic of an involuntary shaping out of God in the forms of +denial. It is a passage remarkable for its conscientious and resolute +Agnosticism. And it is remarkable too for its blindness to the +possibility of separating quite completely the idea of the Infinite +Being from the idea of God. It is another striking instance of that +obsession of modern minds by merely Christian theology of which I have +already complained. Professor Murray has quoted Mr. Bevan’s phrase for +God, “the Friend behind phenomena,” and he does not seem to realise that +that phrase carries with it no obligation whatever to believe that this +Friend is in control of the phenomena. He assumes that he is supposed to +be in control as if it were a matter of course: + + +“We do seem to find,” Professor Murray writes, “not only in all +religions, but in practically all philosophies, some belief that man is +not quite alone in the universe, but is met in his endeavours towards +the good by some external help or sympathy. We find it everywhere in the +unsophisticated man. We find it in the unguarded self-revelations of the +most severe and conscientious Atheists. Now, the Stoics, like many other +schools of thought, drew an argument from this consensus of all mankind. +It was not an absolute proof of the existence of the Gods or Providence, +but it was a strong indication. The existence of a common instinctive +belief in the mind of man gives at least a presumption that there must +be a good cause for that belief. + +“This is a reasonable position. There must be some such cause. But it +does not follow that the only valid cause is the truth of the content of +the belief. I cannot help suspecting that this is precisely one of those +points on which Stoicism, in company with almost all philosophy up to +the present time, has gone astray through not sufficiently realising its +dependence on the human mind as a natural biological product. For it is +very important in this matter to realise that the so-called belief is +not really an intellectual judgment so much as a craving of the whole +nature. + +“It is only of very late years that psychologists have begun to realise +the enormous dominion of those forces in man of which he is normally +unconscious. We cannot escape as easily as these brave men dreamed from +the grip of the blind powers beneath the threshold. Indeed, as I see +philosophy after philosophy falling into this unproven belief in the +Friend behind phenomena, as I find that I myself cannot, except for a +moment and by an effort, refrain from making the same assumption, it +seems to me that perhaps here too we are under the spell of a very old +ineradicable instinct. We are gregarious animals; our ancestors have +been such for countless ages. We cannot help looking out on the world as +gregarious animals do; we see it in terms of humanity and of fellowship. +Students of animals under domestication have shown us how the habits +of a gregarious creature, taken away from his kind, are shaped in +a thousand details by reference to the lost pack which is no longer +there--the pack which a dog tries to smell his way back to all the time +he is out walking, the pack he calls to for help when danger threatens. +It is a strange and touching thing, this eternal hunger of the +gregarious animal for the herd of friends who are not there. And it may +be, it may very possibly be, that, in the matter of this Friend behind +phenomena our own yearning and our own almost ineradicable instinctive +conviction, since they are certainly not founded on either reason or +observation, are in origin the groping of a lonely-souled gregarious +animal to find its herd or its herd-leader in the great spaces between +the stars. + +“At any rate, it is a belief very difficult to get rid of.” + + +There the passage and the lecture end. + +I would urge that here again is an inadvertent witness to the reality of +God. + +Professor Murray writes of gregarious animals as though there existed +solitary animals that are not gregarious, pure individualists, +“atheists” so to speak, and as though this appeal to a life beyond one’s +own was not the universal disposition of living things. His classical +training disposes him to a realistic exaggeration of individual +difference. But nearly every animal, and certainly every mentally +considerable animal, begins under parental care, in a nest or a litter, +mates to breed, and is associated for much of its life. Even the great +carnivores do not go alone except when they are old and have done with +the most of life. Every pack, every herd, begins at some point in a +couple, it is the equivalent of the tiger’s litter if that were to +remain undispersed. And it is within the memory of men still living +that in many districts the African lion has with a change of game and +conditions lapsed from a “solitary” to a gregarious, that is to say a +prolonged family habit of life. + +Man too, if in his ape-like phase he resembled the other higher apes, +is an animal becoming more gregarious and not less. He has passed +within the historical period from a tribal gregariousness to a nearly +cosmopolitan tolerance. And he has his tribe about him. He is not, as +Professor Murray seems to suggest, a solitary LOST gregarious beast. Why +should his desire for God be regarded as the overflow of an unsatisfied +gregarious instinct, when he has home, town, society, companionship, +trade union, state, INCREASINGLY at hand to glut it? Why should +gregariousness drive a man to God rather than to the third-class +carriage and the public-house? Why should gregariousness drive men out +of crowded Egyptian cities into the cells of the Thebaid? Schopenhauer +in a memorable passage (about the hedgehogs who assembled for warmth) is +flatly opposed to Professor Murray, and seems far more plausible when +he declares that the nature of man is insufficiently gregarious. The +parallel with the dog is not a valid one. + +Does not the truth lie rather in the supposition that it is not the +Friend that is the instinctive delusion but the isolation? Is not the +real deception, our belief that we are completely individualised, and +is it not possible that this that Professor Murray calls “instinct” + is really not a vestige but a new thing arising out of our increasing +understanding, an intellectual penetration to that greater being of the +species, that vine, of which we are the branches? Why should not the +soul of the species, many faceted indeed, be nevertheless a soul like +our own? + +Here, as in the case of Professor Metchnikoff, and in many other cases +of atheism, it seems to me that nothing but an inadequate understanding +of individuation bars the way to at least the intellectual recognition +of the true God. + + + +6. RELIGION AS ETHICS + + +And while I am dealing with rationalists, let me note certain recent +interesting utterances of Sir Harry Johnston’s. You will note that while +in this book we use the word “God” to indicate the God of the Heart, +Sir Harry uses “God” for that idea of God-of-the-Universe, which we have +spoken of as the Infinite Being. This use of the word “God” is of late +theological origin; the original identity of the words “good” and “god” + and all the stories of the gods are against him. But Sir Harry takes up +God only to define him away into incomprehensible necessity. Thus: + + +“We know absolutely nothing concerning the Force we call God; and, +assuming such an intelligent ruling force to be in existence, permeating +this universe of millions of stars and (no doubt) tens of millions of +planets, we do not know under what conditions and limitations It works. +We are quite entitled to assume that the end of such an influence is +intended to be order out of chaos, happiness and perfection out +of incompleteness and misery; and we are entitled to identify the +reactionary forces of brute Nature with the anthropomorphic Devil of +primitive religions, the power of darkness resisting the power of light. +But in these conjectures we must surely come to the conclusion that +the theoretical potency we call ‘God’ makes endless experiments, and +scrap-heaps the failures. Think of the Dinosaurs and the expenditure of +creative energy that went to their differentiation and their well-nigh +incredible physical development. . . . + +“To such a Divine Force as we postulate, the whole development and +perfecting of life on this planet, the whole production of man, may +seem little more than to any one of us would be the chipping out, the +cutting, the carving, and the polishing of a gem; and we should feel as +little remorse or pity for the scattered dust and fragments as must the +Creative Force of the immeasurably vast universe feel for the DISJECTA +MEMBRA of perfected life on this planet. . . .” + + +But thence he goes on to a curiously imperfect treatment of the God +of man as if he consisted in nothing more than some vague sort of +humanitarianism. Sir Harry’s ideas are much less thoroughly thought out +than those of any other of these sceptical writers I have quoted. On +that account they are perhaps more typical. He speaks as though Christ +were simply an eminent but ill-reported and abominably served teacher of +ethics--and yet of the only right ideal and ethics. He speaks as though +religions were nothing more than ethical movements, and as though +Christianity were merely someone remarking with a bright impulsiveness +that everything was simply horrid, and so, “Let us instal loving +kindness as a cardinal axiom.” He ignores altogether the fundamental +essential of religion, which is THE DEVELOPMENT AND SYNTHESIS OF THE +DIVERGENT AND CONFLICTING MOTIVES OF THE UNCONVERTED LIFE, AND THE +IDENTIFICATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE WITH THE IMMORTAL PURPOSE OF GOD. +He presents a conception of religion relieved of its “nonsense” as the +cheerful self-determination of a number of bright little individuals +(much stirred but by no means overcome by Cosmic Pity) to the Service +of Man. As he seems to present it, it is as outward a thing, it goes as +little into the intimacy of their lives, as though they had after proper +consideration agreed to send a subscription to a Red Cross Ambulance or +take part in a public demonstration against the Armenian Massacres, or +do any other rather nice-spirited exterior thing. This is what he says: + + +“I hope that the religion of the future will devote itself wholly to the +Service of Man. It can do so without departing from the Christian +ideal and Christian ethics. It need only drop all that is silly and +disputable, and ‘mattering not neither here nor there,’ of Christian +theology--a theology virtually absent from the direct teaching of +Christ--and all of Judaistic literature or prescriptions not made +immortal in their application by unassailable truth and by the +confirmation of science. An excellent remedy for the nonsense which +still clings about religion may be found in two books: Cotter Monson’s +‘Service of Man,’ which was published as long ago as 1887, and has since +been re-issued by the Rationalist Press Association in its well-known +sixpenny series, and J. Allanson Picton’s ‘Man and the Bible.’ +Similarly, those who wish to acquire a sane view of the relations +between man and God would do well to read Winwood Reade’s ‘Martyrdom of +Man.’” + + +Sir Harry in fact clears the ground for God very ably, and then makes a +well-meaning gesture in the vacant space. There is no help nor strength +in his gesture unless God is there. Without God, the “Service of Man” + is no better than a hobby or a sentimentality or an hypocrisy in the +undisciplined prison of the mortal life. + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH + +THE INVISIBLE KING + + +1. MODERN RELIGION A POLITICAL RELIGION + + +The conception of a young and energetic God, an Invisible Prince growing +in strength and wisdom, who calls men and women to his service and who +gives salvation from self and mortality only through self-abandonment to +his service, necessarily involves a demand for a complete revision and +fresh orientation of the life of the convert. + +God faces the blackness of the Unknown and the blind joys and confusions +and cruelties of Life, as one who leads mankind through a dark jungle +to a great conquest. He brings mankind not rest but a sword. It is plain +that he can admit no divided control of the world he claims. He concedes +nothing to Caesar. In our philosophy there are no human things that +are God’s and others that are Caesar’s. Those of the new thought cannot +render unto God the things that are God’s, and to Caesar the things that +are Caesar’s. Whatever claim Caesar may make to rule men’s lives and +direct their destinies outside the will of God, is a usurpation. No king +nor Caesar has any right to tax or to service or to tolerance, except +he claim as one who holds for and under God. And he must make good his +claim. The steps of the altar of the God of Youth are no safe place for +the sacrilegious figure of a king. Who claims “divine right” plays with +the lightning. + +The new conceptions do not tolerate either kings or aristocracies or +democracies. Its implicit command to all its adherents is to make plain +the way to the world theocracy. Its rule of life is the discovery and +service of the will of God, which dwells in the hearts of men, and the +performance of that will, not only in the private life of the believer +but in the acts and order of the state and nation of which he is a part. +I give myself to God not only because I am so and so but because I am +mankind. I become in a measure responsible for every evil in the world +of men. I become a knight in God’s service. I become my brother’s +keeper. I become a responsible minister of my King. I take sides against +injustice, disorder, and against all those temporal kings, emperors, +princes, landlords, and owners, who set themselves up against God’s rule +and worship. Kings, owners, and all who claim rule and decisions in the +world’s affairs, must either show themselves clearly the fellow-servants +of the believer or become the objects of his steadfast antagonism. + + + +2. THE WILL OF GOD + + +It is here that those who explain this modern religiosity will seem most +arbitrary to the inquirer. For they relate of God, as men will relate of +a close friend, his dispositions, his apparent intentions, the aims +of his kingship. And just as they advance no proof whatever of the +existence of God but their realisation of him, so with regard to these +qualities and dispositions they have little argument but profound +conviction. What they say is this; that if you do not feel God then +there is no persuading you of him; we cannot win over the incredulous. +And what they say of his qualities is this; that if you feel God then +you will know, you will realise more and more clearly, that thus and +thus and no other is his method and intention. + +It comes as no great shock to those who have grasped the full +implications of the statement that God is Finite, to hear it asserted +that the first purpose of God is the attainment of clear knowledge, of +knowledge as a means to more knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to +power. For that he must use human eyes and hands and brains. + +And as God gathers power he uses it to an end that he is only beginning +to apprehend, and that he will apprehend more fully as time goes on. But +it is possible to define the broad outlines of the attainment he seeks. +It is the conquest of death. + +It is the conquest of death; first the overcoming of death in the +individual by the incorporation of the motives of his life into an +undying purpose, and then the defeat of that death that seems to +threaten our species upon a cooling planet beneath a cooling sun. God +fights against death in every form, against the great death of the +race, against the petty death of indolence, insufficiency, baseness, +misconception, and perversion. He it is and no other who can deliver us +“from the body of this death.” This is the battle that grows plainer; +this is the purpose to which he calls us out of the animal’s round of +eating, drinking, lusting, quarrelling and laughing and weeping, fearing +and failing, and presently of wearying and dying, which is the +whole life that living without God can give us. And from these great +propositions there follow many very definite maxims and rules of life +for those who serve God. These we will immediately consider. + + + +3. THE CRUCIFIX + + +But first let me write a few words here about those who hold a kind +of intermediate faith between the worship of the God of Youth and the +vaguer sort of Christianity. There are a number of people closely in +touch with those who have found the new religion who, biased probably +by a dread of too complete a break with Christianity, have adopted a +theogony which is very reminiscent of Gnosticism and of the Paulician, +Catharist, and kindred sects to which allusion has already been made. +He, who is called in this book God, they would call God-the-Son or +Christ, or the Logos; and what is here called the Darkness or the Veiled +Being, they would call God-the-Father. And what we speak of here as +Life, they would call, with a certain disregard of the poor brutes that +perish, Man. And they would assert, what we of the new belief, pleading +our profound ignorance, would neither assert nor deny, that that +Darkness, out of which came Life and God, since it produced them must be +ultimately sympathetic and of like nature with them. And that ultimately +Man, being redeemed and led by Christ and saved from death by him, would +be reconciled with God the Father.* And this great adventurer out of the +hearts of man that we here call God, they would present as the same with +that teacher from Galilee who was crucified at Jerusalem. + + * This probably was the conception of Spinoza. Christ for + him is the wisdom of God manifested in all things, and + chiefly in the mind of man. Through him we reach the + blessedness of an intuitive knowledge of God. Salvation is + an escape from the “inadequate” ideas of the mortal human + personality to the “adequate” and timeless ideas of God. + +Now we of the modern way would offer the following criticisms upon this +apparent compromise between our faith and the current religion. Firstly, +we do not presume to theorise about the nature of the veiled being nor +about that being’s relations to God and to Life. We do not recognise any +consistent sympathetic possibilities between these outer beings and our +God. Our God is, we feel, like Prometheus, a rebel. He is unfilial. And +the accepted figure of Jesus, instinct with meek submission, is not in +the tone of our worship. It is not by suffering that God conquers death, +but by fighting. Incidentally our God dies a million deaths, but the +thing that matters is not the deaths but the immortality. It may be he +cannot escape in this person or that person being nailed to a cross +or chained to be torn by vultures on a rock. These may be necessary +sufferings, like hunger and thirst in a campaign; they do not in +themselves bring victory. They may be necessary, but they are not +glorious. The symbol of the crucifixion, the drooping, pain-drenched +figure of Christ, the sorrowful cry to his Father, “My God, my God, why +hast thou forsaken me?” these things jar with our spirit. We little men +may well fail and repent, but it is our faith that our God does not fail +us nor himself. We cannot accept the Christian’s crucifix, or pray to +a pitiful God. We cannot accept the Resurrection as though it were an +after-thought to a bitterly felt death. Our crucifix, if you must have +a crucifix, would show God with a hand or a foot already torn away from +its nail, and with eyes not downcast but resolute against the sky; a +face without pain, pain lost and forgotten in the surpassing glory of +the struggle and the inflexible will to live and prevail. . . . + +But we do not care how long the thorns are drawn, nor how terrible the +wounds, so long as he does not droop. God is courage. God is courage +beyond any conceivable suffering. + +But when all this has been said, it is well to add that it concerns the +figure of Christ only in so far as that professes to be the figure of +God, and the crucifix only so far as that stands for divine action. The +figure of Christ crucified, so soon as we think of it as being no +more than the tragic memorial of Jesus, of the man who proclaimed the +loving-kindness of God and the supremacy of God’s kingdom over +the individual life, and who, in the extreme agony of his pain and +exhaustion, cried out that he was deserted, becomes something altogether +distinct from a theological symbol. Immediately that we cease to +worship, we can begin to love and pity. Here was a being of extreme +gentleness and delicacy and of great courage, of the utmost tolerance +and the subtlest sympathy, a saint of non-resistance. . . . + +We of the new faith repudiate the teaching of non-resistance. We are +the militant followers of and participators in a militant God. We can +appreciate and admire the greatness of Christ, this gentle being upon +whose nobility the theologians trade. But submission is the remotest +quality of all from our God, and a moribund figure is the completest +inversion of his likeness as we know him. A Christianity which shows, +for its daily symbol, Christ risen and trampling victoriously upon a +broken cross, would be far more in the spirit of our worship.* + + * It is curious, after writing the above, to find in a + letter written by Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, to that + pertinacious correspondent, the late Lady Victoria Welby, + almost exactly the same sentiments I have here expressed. + “If I could fill the Crucifix with life as you do,” he says, + “I would gladly look on it, but the fallen Head and the + closed Eye exclude from my thought the idea of glorified + humanity. The Christ to whom we are led is One who ‘hath + been crucified,’ who hath passed the trial victoriously and + borne the fruits to heaven. I dare not then rest on this + side of the glory.” + +I find, too, a still more remarkable expression of the modern spirit +in a tract, “The Call of the Kingdom,” by that very able and subtle, +Anglican theologian, the Rev. W. Temple, who declares that under the +vitalising stresses of the war we are winning “faith in Christ as an +heroic leader. We have thought of Him so much as meek and gentle that +there is no ground in our picture of Him, for the vision which His +disciple had of Him: ‘His head and His hair were white, as white wool, +white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire: and His feet like +unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace; and His +voice was as the voice of many waters. And He had in His right hand +seven stars; and out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword; and +His countenance was as the sun shineth in its strength.’” + +These are both exceptional utterances, interesting as showing how +clearly parallel are the tendencies within and without Christianity. + + + +4. THE PRIMARY DUTIES + + +Now it follows very directly from the conception of God as a finite +intelligence of boundless courage and limitless possibilities of growth +and victory, who has pitted himself against death, who stands close to +our inmost beings ready to receive us and use us, to rescue us from the +chagrins of egotism and take us into his immortal adventure, that we +who have realised him and given ourselves joyfully to him, must needs be +equally ready and willing to give our energies to the task we share +with him, to do our utmost to increase knowledge, to increase order and +clearness, to fight against indolence, waste, disorder, cruelty, vice, +and every form of his and our enemy, death, first and chiefest in +ourselves but also in all mankind, and to bring about the establishment +of his real and visible kingdom throughout the world. + +And that idea of God as the Invisible King of the whole world means not +merely that God is to be made and declared the head of the world, but +that the kingdom of God is to be present throughout the whole fabric +of the world, that the Kingdom of God is to be in the teaching at the +village school, in the planning of the railway siding of the market +town, in the mixing of the mortar at the building of the workman’s +house. It means that ultimately no effigy of intrusive king or emperor +is to disfigure our coins and stamps any more; God himself and no +delegate is to be represented wherever men buy or sell, on our letters +and our receipts, a perpetual witness, a perpetual reminder. There is no +act altogether without significance, no power so humble that it may not +be used for or against God, no life but can orient itself to him. To +realise God in one’s heart is to be filled with the desire to serve him, +and the way of his service is neither to pull up one’s life by the +roots nor to continue it in all its essentials unchanged, but to turn it +about, to turn everything that there is in it round into his way. + +The outward duty of those who serve God must vary greatly with the +abilities they possess and the positions in which they find themselves, +but for all there are certain fundamental duties; a constant attempt +to be utterly truthful with oneself, a constant sedulousness to +keep oneself fit and bright for God’s service, and to increase one’s +knowledge and powers, and a hidden persistent watchfulness of one’s +baser motives, a watch against fear and indolence, against vanity, +against greed and lust, against envy, malice, and uncharitableness. To +have found God truly does in itself make God’s service one’s essential +motive, but these evils lurk in the shadows, in the lassitudes and +unwary moments. No one escapes them altogether, there is no need for +tragic moods on account of imperfections. We can no more serve God +without blunders and set-backs than we can win battles without losing +men. But the less of such loss the better. The servant of God must keep +his mind as wide and sound and his motives as clean as he can, just as +an operating surgeon must keep his nerves and muscles as fit and his +hands as clean as he can. Neither may righteously evade exercise and +regular washing--of mind as of hands. An incessant watchfulness of +one’s self and one’s thoughts and the soundness of one’s thoughts; +cleanliness, clearness, a wariness against indolence and prejudice, +careful truth, habitual frankness, fitness and steadfast work; these are +the daily fundamental duties that every one who truly comes to God will, +as a matter of course, set before himself. + + + +5. THE INCREASING KINGDOM + + +Now of the more intimate and personal life of the believer it will be +more convenient to write a little later. Let us for the present pursue +the idea of this world-kingdom of God, to whose establishment he calls +us. This kingdom is to be a peaceful and co-ordinated activity of all +mankind upon certain divine ends. These, we conceive, are first, +the maintenance of the racial life; secondly, the exploration of the +external being of nature as it is and as it has been, that is to +say history and science; thirdly, that exploration of inherent human +possibility which is art; fourthly, that clarification of thought and +knowledge which is philosophy; and finally, the progressive enlargement +and development of the racial life under these lights, so that God may +work through a continually better body of humanity and through better +and better equipped minds, that he and our race may increase for ever, +working unendingly upon the development of the powers of life and the +mastery of the blind forces of matter throughout the deeps of space. He +sets out with us, we are persuaded, to conquer ourselves and our world +and the stars. And beyond the stars our eyes can as yet see nothing, our +imaginations reach and fail. Beyond the limits of our understanding is +the veiled Being of Fate, whose face is hidden from us. . . . + +It may be that minds will presently appear among us of such a quality +that the face of that Unknown will not be altogether hidden. . . . + +But the business of such ordinary lives as ours is the setting up of +this earthly kingdom of God. That is the form into which our lives must +fall and our consciences adapt themselves. + +Belief in God as the Invisible King brings with it almost necessarily a +conception of this coming kingdom of God on earth. Each believer as he +grasps this natural and immediate consequence of the faith that has come +into his life will form at the same time a Utopian conception of this +world changed in the direction of God’s purpose. The vision will follow +the realisation of God’s true nature and purpose as a necessary +second step. And he will begin to develop the latent citizen of this +world-state in himself. He will fall in with the idea of the world-wide +sanities of this new order being drawn over the warring outlines of the +present, and of men falling out of relationship with the old order and +into relationship with the new. Many men and women are already working +to-day at tasks that belong essentially to God’s kingdom, tasks that +would be of the same essential nature if the world were now a theocracy; +for example, they are doing or sustaining scientific research or +education or creative art; they are making roads to bring men together, +they are doctors working for the world’s health, they are building +homes, they are constructing machinery to save and increase the powers +of men. . . . + +Such men and women need only to change their orientation as men will +change about at a work-table when the light that was coming in a little +while ago from the southern windows, begins presently to come in chiefly +from the west, to become open and confessed servants of God. This work +that they were doing for ambition, or the love of men or the love of +knowledge or what seemed the inherent impulse to the work itself, or for +money or honour or country or king, they will realise they are doing for +God and by the power of God. Self-transformation into a citizen of God’s +kingdom and a new realisation of all earthly politics as no more than +the struggle to define and achieve the kingdom of God in the earth, +follow on, without any need for a fresh spiritual impulse, from the +moment when God and the believer meet and clasp one another. + +This transfiguration of the world into a theocracy may seem a merely +fantastic idea to anyone who comes to it freshly without such general +theological preparation as the preceding pages have made. But to anyone +who has been at the pains to clear his mind even a little from the +obsession of existing but transitory things, it ceases to be a mere +suggestion and becomes more and more manifestly the real future of +mankind. From the phase of “so things should be,” the mind will pass +very rapidly to the realisation that “so things will be.” Towards this +the directive wills among men have been drifting more and more steadily +and perceptibly and with fewer eddyings and retardations, for many +centuries. The purpose of mankind will not be always thus confused and +fragmentary. This dissemination of will-power is a phase. The age of the +warring tribes and kingdoms and empires that began a hundred centuries +or so ago, draws to its close. The kingdom of God on earth is not a +metaphor, not a mere spiritual state, not a dream, not an uncertain +project; it is the thing before us, it is the close and inevitable +destiny of mankind. + +In a few score years the faith of the true God will be spreading about +the world. The few halting confessions of God that one hears here and +there to-day, like that little twittering of birds which comes before +the dawn, will have swollen to a choral unanimity. In but a few +centuries the whole world will be openly, confessedly, preparing for +the kingdom. In but a few centuries God will have led us out of the dark +forest of these present wars and confusions into the open brotherhood of +his rule. + + + +6. WHAT IS MY PLACE IN THE KINGDOM? + + +This conception of the general life of mankind as a transformation at +thousands of points of the confused, egotistical, proprietary, partisan, +nationalist, life-wasting chaos of human life to-day into the coherent +development of the world kingdom of God, provides the form into which +everyone who comes to the knowledge of God will naturally seek to fit +his every thought and activity. The material greeds, the avarice, +fear, rivalries, and ignoble ambitions of a disordered world will be +challenged and examined under one general question: “What am I in the +kingdom of God?” + +It has already been suggested that there is a great and growing number +of occupations that belong already to God’s kingdom, research, teaching, +creative art, creative administration, cultivation, construction, +maintenance, and the honest satisfaction of honest practical human +needs. For such people conversion to the intimacy of God means at most +a change in the spirit of their work, a refreshed energy, a clearer +understanding, a new zeal, a completer disregard of gains and praises +and promotion. Pay, honours, and the like cease to be the inducement of +effort. Service, and service alone, is the criterion that the quickened +conscience will recognise. + +Most of such people will find themselves in positions in which service +is mingled with activities of a baser sort, in which service is a little +warped and deflected by old traditions and usage, by mercenary and +commercial considerations, by some inherent or special degradation of +purpose. The spirit of God will not let the believer rest until his life +is readjusted and as far as possible freed from the waste of these base +diversions. For example a scientific investigator, lit and inspired by +great inquiries, may be hampered by the conditions of his professorship +or research fellowship, which exact an appearance of “practical” + results. Or he may be obliged to lecture or conduct classes. He may +be able to give but half his possible gift to the work of his real +aptitude, and that at a sacrifice of money and reputation among +short-sighted but influential contemporaries. Well, if he is by nature +an investigator he will know that the research is what God needs of him. +He cannot continue it at all if he leaves his position, and so he must +needs waste something of his gift to save the rest. But should a poorer +or a humbler post offer him better opportunity, there lies his work for +God. There one has a very common and simple type of the problems that +will arise in the lives of men when they are lit by sudden realisation +of the immediacy of God. + +Akin to that case is the perplexity of any successful physician between +the increase of knowledge and the public welfare on the one hand, and +the lucrative possibilities of his practice among wealthy people on the +other. He belongs to a profession that is crippled by a mediaeval code, +a profession which was blind to the common interest of the Public Health +and regarded its members merely as skilled practitioners employed to +“cure” individual ailments. Very slowly and tortuously do the methods of +the profession adapt themselves to the modern conception of an army of +devoted men working as a whole under God for the health of mankind as +a whole, broadening out from the frowsy den of the “leech,” with its +crocodile and bottles and hieroglyphic prescriptions, to a skilled and +illuminating co-operation with those who deal with the food and housing +and economic life of the community. + +And again quite parallel with these personal problems is the trouble of +the artist between the market and vulgar fame on the one hand and his +divine impulse on the other. + +The presence of God will be a continual light and help in every decision +that must be made by men and women in these more or less vitiated, but +still fundamentally useful and righteous, positions. + +The trouble becomes more marked and more difficult in the case of a man +who is a manufacturer or a trader, the financier of business enterprise +or the proprietor of great estates. The world is in need of manufactures +and that goods should be distributed; land must be administered and +new economic possibilities developed. The drift of things is in the +direction of state ownership and control, but in a great number of +cases the state is not ripe for such undertakings, it commands neither +sufficient integrity nor sufficient ability, and the proprietor of +factory, store, credit or land, must continue in possession, holding as +a trustee for God and, so far as lies in his power, preparing for his +supersession by some more public administration. Modern religion admits +of no facile flights from responsibility. It permits no headlong resort +to the wilderness and sterile virtue. It counts the recluse who fasts +among scorpions in a cave as no better than a deserter in hiding. It +unhesitatingly forbids any rich young man to sell all that he has and +give to the poor. Himself and all that he has must be alike dedicated to +God. + +The plain duty that will be understood by the proprietor of land and of +every sort of general need and service, so soon as he becomes aware of +God, is so to administer his possessions as to achieve the maximum of +possible efficiency, the most generous output, and the least private +profit. He may set aside a salary for his maintenance; the rest he must +deal with like a zealous public official. And if he perceives that the +affair could be better administered by other hands than his own, then it +is his business to get it into those hands with the smallest delay and +the least profit to himself. . . . + +The rights and wrongs of human equity are very different from right and +wrong in the sight of God. In the sight of God no landlord has a +RIGHT to his rent, no usurer has a RIGHT to his interest. A man is not +justified in drawing the profits from an advantageous agreement nor free +to spend the profits of a speculation as he will. God takes no heed of +savings nor of abstinence. He recognises no right to the “rewards of +abstinence,” no right to any rewards. Those profits and comforts and +consolations are the inducements that dangle before the eyes of the +spiritually blind. Wealth is an embarrassment to the religious, for God +calls them to account for it. The servant of God has no business with +wealth or power except to use them immediately in the service of God. +Finding these things in his hands he is bound to administer them in the +service of God. + +The tendency of modern religion goes far beyond the alleged communism +of the early Christians, and far beyond the tithes of the scribes and +Pharisees. God takes all. He takes you, blood and bones and house and +acres, he takes skill and influence and expectations. For all the rest +of your life you are nothing but God’s agent. If you are not prepared +for so complete a surrender, then you are infinitely remote from God. +You must go your way. Here you are merely a curious interloper. Perhaps +you have been desiring God as an experience, or coveting him as +a possession. You have not begun to understand. This that we are +discussing in this book is as yet nothing for you. + + + +7. ADJUSTING LIFE + + +This picturing of a human world more to the mind of God than this +present world and the discovery and realisation of one’s own place and +work in and for that kingdom of God, is the natural next phase in the +development of the believer. He will set about revising and adjusting +his scheme of life, his ways of living, his habits and his relationships +in the light of his new convictions. + +Most men and women who come to God will have already a certain +righteousness in their lives; these things happen like a thunderclap +only in strange exceptional cases, and the same movements of the mind +that have brought them to God will already have brought their lives into +a certain rightness of direction and conduct. Yet occasionally there +will be someone to whom the self-examination that follows conversion +will reveal an entirely wrong and evil way of living. It may be that the +light has come to some rich idler doing nothing but follow a pleasurable +routine. Or to someone following some highly profitable and amusing, +but socially useless or socially mischievous occupation. One may be an +advocate at the disposal of any man’s purpose, or an actor or actress +ready to fall in with any theatrical enterprise. Or a woman may +find herself a prostitute or a pet wife, a mere kept instrument of +indulgence. These are lives of prey, these are lives of futility; the +light of God will not tolerate such lives. Here religion can bring +nothing but a severance from the old way of life altogether, a break and +a struggle towards use and service and dignity. + +But even here it does not follow that because a life has been wrong +the new life that begins must be far as the poles asunder from the old. +Every sort of experience that has ever come to a human being is in the +self that he brings to God, and there is no reason why a knowledge +of evil ways should not determine the path of duty. No one can better +devise protections against vices than those who have practised them; +none know temptations better than those who have fallen. If a man has +followed an evil trade, it becomes him to use his knowledge of the +tricks of that trade to help end it. He knows the charities it may claim +and the remedies it needs. . . . + +A very interesting case to discuss in relation to this question of +adjustment is that of the barrister. A practising barrister under +contemporary conditions does indeed give most typically the opportunity +for examining the relation of an ordinary self-respecting worldly life, +to life under the dispensation of God discovered. A barrister is +usually a man of some energy and ambition, his honour is moulded by +the traditions of an ancient and antiquated profession, instinctively +self-preserving and yet with a real desire for consistency and respect. +As a profession it has been greedy and defensively conservative, but it +has never been shameless nor has it ever broken faith with its own large +and selfish, but quite definite, propositions. It has never for instance +had the shamelessness of such a traditionless and undisciplined class +as the early factory organisers. It has never had the dull incoherent +wickedness of the sort of men who exploit drunkenness and the turf. It +offends within limits. Barristers can be, and are, disbarred. But it is +now a profession extraordinarily out of date; its code of honour derives +from a time of cruder and lower conceptions of human relationship. It +apprehends the State as a mere “ring” kept about private disputations; +it has not begun to move towards the modern conception of the collective +enterprise as the determining criterion of human conduct. It sees its +business as a mere play upon the rules of a game between man and man, or +between men and men. They haggle, they dispute, they inflict and suffer +wrongs, they evade dues, and are liable or entitled to penalties and +compensations. The primary business of the law is held to be decision in +these wrangles, and as wrangling is subject to artistic elaboration, the +business of the barrister is the business of a professional wrangler; he +is a bravo in wig and gown who fights the duels of ordinary men because +they are incapable, very largely on account of the complexities of legal +procedure, of fighting for themselves. His business is never to explore +any fundamental right in the matter. His business is to say all that can +be said for his client, and to conceal or minimise whatever can be said +against his client. The successful promoted advocate, who in Britain +and the United States of America is the judge, and whose habits and +interests all incline him to disregard the realities of the case in +favour of the points in the forensic game, then adjudicates upon the +contest. . . . + +Now this condition of things is clearly incompatible with the modern +conception of the world as becoming a divine kingdom. When the world is +openly and confessedly the kingdom of God, the law court will exist only +to adjust the differing views of men as to the manner of their service +to God; the only right of action one man will have against another will +be that he has been prevented or hampered or distressed by the other in +serving God. The idea of the law court will have changed entirely from a +place of dispute, exaction and vengeance, to a place of adjustment. The +individual or some state organisation will plead ON BEHALF OF THE COMMON +GOOD either against some state official or state regulation, or against +the actions or inaction of another individual. This is the only sort of +legal proceedings compatible with the broad beliefs of the new faith. +. . . Every religion that becomes ascendant, in so far as it is not +otherworldly, must necessarily set its stamp upon the methods and +administration of the law. That this was not the case with Christianity +is one of the many contributory aspects that lead one to the conviction +that it was not Christianity that took possession of the Roman empire, +but an imperial adventurer who took possession of an all too complaisant +Christianity. + +Reverting now from these generalisations to the problem of the religious +from which they arose, it will have become evident that the essential +work of anyone who is conversant with the existing practice and +literature of the law and whose natural abilities are forensic, will lie +in the direction of reconstructing the theory and practice of the law +in harmony with modern conceptions, of making that theory and practice +clear and plain to ordinary men, of reforming the abuses of the +profession by working for the separation of bar and judiciary, for the +amalgamation of the solicitors and the barristers, and the like needed +reforms. These are matters that will probably only be properly set right +by a quickening of conscience among lawyers themselves. Of no class of +men is the help and service so necessary to the practical establishment +of God’s kingdom, as of men learned and experienced in the law. And +there is no reason why for the present an advocate should not continue +to plead in the courts, provided he does his utmost only to handle cases +in which he believes he can serve the right. Few righteous cases are +ill-served by a frank disposition on the part of lawyer and client +to put everything before the court. Thereby of course there arises a +difficult case of conscience. What if a lawyer, believing his client to +be in the right, discovers him to be in the wrong? He cannot throw up +the case unless he has been scandalously deceived, because so he would +betray the confidence his client has put in him to “see him through.” He +has a right to “give himself away,” but not to “give away” his client +in this fashion. If he has a chance of a private consultation I think he +ought to do his best to make his client admit the truth of the case and +give in, but failing this he has no right to be virtuous on behalf of +another. No man may play God to another; he may remonstrate, but that +is the limit of his right. He must respect a confidence, even if it is +purely implicit and involuntary. I admit that here the barrister is in a +cleft stick, and that he must see the business through according to the +confidence his client has put in him--and afterwards be as sorry as he +may be if an injustice ensues. And also I would suggest a lawyer +may with a fairly good conscience defend a guilty man as if he were +innocent, to save him from unjustly heavy penalties. . . . + +This comparatively full discussion of the barrister’s problem has been +embarked upon because it does bring in, in a very typical fashion, +just those uncertainties and imperfections that abound in real life. +Religious conviction gives us a general direction, but it stands aside +from many of these entangled struggles in the jungle of conscience. +Practice is often easier than a rule. In practice a lawyer will know +far more accurately than a hypothetical case can indicate, how far he is +bound to see his client through, and how far he may play the keeper of +his client’s conscience. And nearly every day there happens instances +where the most subtle casuistry will fail and the finger of conscience +point unhesitatingly. One may have worried long in the preparation and +preliminaries of the issue, one may bring the case at last into the +final court of conscience in an apparently hopeless tangle. Then +suddenly comes decision. + +The procedure of that silent, lit, and empty court in which a man states +his case to God, is very simple and perfect. The excuses and the special +pleading shrivel and vanish. In a little while the case lies bare and +plain. + + + +8. THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE + + +The question of oaths of allegiance, acts of acquiescence in existing +governments, and the like, is one that arises at once with the +acceptance of God as the supreme and real King of the Earth. At the +worst Caesar is a usurper, a satrap claiming to be sovereign; at the +best he is provisional. Modern casuistry makes no great trouble for the +believing public official. The chief business of any believer is to do +the work for which he is best fitted, and since all state affairs are +to become the affairs of God’s kingdom it is of primary importance that +they should come into the hands of God’s servants. It is scarcely less +necessary to a believing man with administrative gifts that he should be +in the public administration, than that he should breathe and eat. And +whatever oath or the like to usurper church or usurper king has been +set up to bar access to service, is an oath imposed under duress. If it +cannot be avoided it must be taken rather than that a man should become +unserviceable. All such oaths are unfair and foolish things. They +exclude no scoundrels; they are appeals to superstition. Whenever an +opportunity occurs for the abolition of an oath, the servant of God will +seize it, but where the oath is unavoidable he will take it. + +The service of God is not to achieve a delicate consistency of +statement; it is to do as much as one can of God’s work. + + + +9. THE PRIEST AND THE CREED + + +It may be doubted if this line of reasoning regarding the official and +his oath can be extended to excuse the priest or pledged minister of +religion who finds that faith in the true God has ousted his formal +beliefs. + +This has been a frequent and subtle moral problem in the intellectual +life of the last hundred years. It has been increasingly difficult for +any class of reading, talking, and discussing people such as are the +bulk of the priesthoods of the Christian churches to escape hearing and +reading the accumulated criticism of the Trinitarian theology and of the +popularly accepted story of man’s fall and salvation. Some have no doubt +defeated this universal and insidious critical attack entirely, and +honestly established themselves in a right-down acceptance of the +articles and disciplines to which they have subscribed and of the +creeds they profess and repeat. Some have recanted and abandoned their +positions in the priesthood. But a great number have neither resisted +the bacillus of criticism nor left the churches to which they are +attached. They have adopted compromises, they have qualified their +creeds with modifying footnotes of essential repudiation; they +have decided that plain statements are metaphors and have undercut, +transposed, and inverted the most vital points of the vulgarly accepted +beliefs. One may find within the Anglican communion, Arians, Unitarians, +Atheists, disbelievers in immortality, attenuators of miracles; there +is scarcely a doubt or a cavil that has not found a lodgment within the +ample charity of the English Establishment. I have been interested to +hear one distinguished Canon deplore that “they” did not identify the +Logos with the third instead of the second Person of the Trinity, and +another distinguished Catholic apologist declare his indifference to +the “historical Jesus.” Within most of the Christian communions one may +believe anything or nothing, provided only that one does not call too +public an attention to one’s eccentricity. The late Rev. Charles Voysey, +for example, preached plainly in his church at Healaugh against the +divinity of Christ, unhindered. It was only when he published his +sermons under the provocative title of “The Sling and the Stone,” and +caused an outcry beyond the limits of his congregation, that he was +indicted and deprived. + +Now the reasons why these men do not leave the ministry or priesthood in +which they find themselves are often very plausible. It is probable that +in very few cases is the retention of stipend or incumbency a conscious +dishonesty. At the worst it is mitigated by thought for wife or child. +It has only been during very exceptional phases of religious development +and controversy that beliefs have been really sharp. A creed, like a +coin, it may be argued, loses little in practical value because it is +worn, or bears the image of a vanished king. The religious life is a +reality that has clothed itself in many garments, and the concern of +the priest or minister is with the religious life and not with the poor +symbols that may indeed pretend to express, but do as a matter of fact +no more than indicate, its direction. It is quite possible to maintain +that the church and not the creed is the real and valuable instrument of +religion, that the religious life is sustained not by its propositions +but by its routines. Anyone who seeks the intimate discussion of +spiritual things with professional divines, will find this is the +substance of the case for the ecclesiastical sceptic. His church, he +will admit, mumbles its statement of truth, but where else is truth? +What better formulae are to be found for ineffable things? And +meanwhile--he does good. + +That may be a valid defence before a man finds God. But we who profess +the worship and fellowship of the living God deny that religion is a +matter of ineffable things. The way of God is plain and simple and easy +to understand. + +Therewith the whole position of the conforming sceptic is changed. If +a professional religious has any justification at all for his +professionalism it is surely that he proclaims the nearness and +greatness of God. And these creeds and articles and orthodoxies are not +proclamations but curtains, they are a darkening and confusion of what +should be crystal clear. What compensatory good can a priest pretend +to do when his primary business is the truth and his method a lie? The +oaths and incidental conformities of men who wish to serve God in the +state are on a different footing altogether from the falsehood and +mischief of one who knows the true God and yet recites to a trustful +congregation, foists upon a trustful congregation, a misleading and +ill-phrased Levantine creed. + +Such is the line of thought which will impose the renunciation of his +temporalities and a complete cessation of services upon every ordained +priest and minister as his first act of faith. Once that he has truly +realised God, it becomes impossible for him ever to repeat his creed +again. His course seems plain and clear. It becomes him to stand up +before the flock he has led in error, and to proclaim the being and +nature of the one true God. He must be explicit to the utmost of his +powers. Then he may await his expulsion. It may be doubted whether it is +sufficient for him to go away silently, making false excuses or none at +all for his retreat. He has to atone for the implicit acquiescences of +his conforming years. + + + +10. THE UNIVERSALISM OF GOD + + +Are any sorts of people shut off as if by inherent necessity from God? + +This is, so to speak, one of the standing questions of theology; it +reappears with slight changes of form at every period of religious +interest, it is for example the chief issue between the Arminian and the +Calvinist. From its very opening proposition modern religion sweeps past +and far ahead of the old Arminian teachings of Wesleyans and Methodists, +in its insistence upon the entirely finite nature of God. Arminians seem +merely to have insisted that God has conditioned himself, and by his +own free act left men free to accept or reject salvation. To the realist +type of mind--here as always I use “realist” in its proper sense as +the opposite of nominalist--to the old-fashioned, over-exact and +over-accentuating type of mind, such ways of thinking seem vague +and unsatisfying. Just as it distresses the more downright kind of +intelligence with a feeling of disloyalty to admit that God is not +Almighty, so it troubles the same sort of intelligence to hear that +there is no clear line to be drawn between the saved and the lost. +Realists like an exclusive flavour in their faith. Moreover, it is a +natural weakness of humanity to be forced into extreme positions by +argument. It is probable, as I have already suggested, that the absolute +attributes of God were forced upon Christianity under the stresses +of propaganda, and it is probable that the theory of a super-human +obstinancy beyond salvation arose out of the irritations natural to +theological debate. It is but a step from the realisation that there are +people absolutely unable or absolutely unwilling to see God as we see +him, to the conviction that they are therefore shut off from God by an +invincible soul blindness. + +It is very easy to believe that other people are essentially damned. + +Beyond the little world of our sympathies and comprehension there are +those who seem inaccessible to God by any means within our experience. +They are people answering to the “hard-hearted,” to the “stiff-necked +generation” of the Hebrew prophets. They betray and even confess +to standards that seem hopelessly base to us. They show themselves +incapable of any disinterested enthusiasm for beauty or truth or +goodness. They are altogether remote from intelligent sacrifice. To +every test they betray vileness of texture; they are mean, cold, wicked. +There are people who seem to cheat with a private self-approval, who are +ever ready to do harsh and cruel things, whose use for social feeling +is the malignant boycott, and for prosperity, monopolisation and +humiliating display; who seize upon religion and turn it into +persecution, and upon beauty to torment it on the altars of some joyless +vice. We cannot do with such souls; we have no use for them, and it is +very easy indeed to step from that persuasion to the belief that God has +no use for them. + +And besides these base people there are the stupid people and the people +with minds so poor in texture that they cannot even grasp the few broad +and simple ideas that seem necessary to the salvation we experience, who +lapse helplessly into fetishistic and fearful conceptions of God, +and are apparently quite incapable of distinguishing between what is +practically and what is spiritually good. + +It is an easy thing to conclude that the only way to God is our way to +God, that he is the privilege of a finer and better sort to which we +of course belong; that he is no more the God of the card-sharper or the +pickpocket or the “smart” woman or the loan-monger or the village +oaf than he is of the swine in the sty. But are we justified in +thus limiting God to the measure of our moral and intellectual +understandings? Because some people seem to me steadfastly and +consistently base or hopelessly and incurably dull and confused, does +it follow that there are not phases, albeit I have never chanced to see +them, of exaltation in the one case and illumination in the other? And +may I not be a little restricting my perception of Good? While I have +been ready enough to pronounce this or that person as being, so far as +I was concerned, thoroughly damnable or utterly dull, I find a curious +reluctance to admit the general proposition which is necessary for +these instances. It is possible that the difference between Arminian and +Calvinist is a difference of essential intellectual temperament rather +than of theoretical conviction. I am temperamentally Arminian as I am +temperamentally Nominalist. I feel that it must be in the nature of God +to attempt all souls. There must be accessibilities I can only suspect, +and accessibilities of which I know nothing. + +Yet here is a consideration pointing rather the other way. If you think, +as you must think, that you yourself can be lost to God and damned, then +I cannot see how you can avoid thinking that other people can be damned. +But that is not to believe that there are people damned at the outset by +their moral and intellectual insufficiency; that is not to make out that +there is a class of essential and incurable spiritual defectives. The +religious life preceded clear religious understanding and extends far +beyond its range. + +In my own case I perceive that in spite of the value I attach to true +belief, the reality of religion is not an intellectual thing. The +essential religious fact is in another than the mental sphere. I am +passionately anxious to have the idea of God clear in my own mind, and +to make my beliefs plain and clear to other people, and particularly +to other people who may seem to be feeling with me; I do perceive that +error is evil if only because a faith based on confused conceptions +and partial understandings may suffer irreparable injury through the +collapse of its substratum of ideas. I doubt if faith can be complete +and enduring if it is not secured by the definite knowledge of the true +God. Yet I have also to admit that I find the form of my own religious +emotion paralleled by people with whom I have no intellectual sympathy +and no agreement in phrase or formula at all. + +There is for example this practical identity of religious feeling and +this discrepancy of interpretation between such an inquirer as myself +and a convert of the Salvation Army. Here, clothing itself in phrases +and images of barbaric sacrifice, of slaughtered lambs and fountains of +precious blood, a most repulsive and incomprehensible idiom to me, and +expressing itself by shouts, clangour, trumpeting, gesticulations, and +rhythmic pacings that stun and dismay my nerves, I find, the same object +sought, release from self, and the same end, the end of identification +with the immortal, successfully if perhaps rather insecurely achieved. +I see God indubitably present in these excitements, and I see +personalities I could easily have misjudged as too base or too dense for +spiritual understandings, lit by the manifest reflection of divinity. +One may be led into the absurdest underestimates of religious +possibilities if one estimates people only coldly and in the light of +everyday life. There is a sub-intellectual religious life which, very +conceivably, when its utmost range can be examined, excludes nothing +human from religious cooperation, which will use any words to its tune, +which takes its phrasing ready-made from the world about it, as it takes +the street for its temple, and yet which may be at its inner point in +the directest contact with God. Religion may suffer from aphasia and +still be religion; it may utter misleading or nonsensical words and yet +intend and convey the truth. The methods of the Salvation Army are older +than doctrinal Christianity, and may long survive it. Men and women may +still chant of Beulah Land and cry out in the ecstasy of salvation; the +tambourine, that modern revival of the thrilling Alexandrine sistrum, +may still stir dull nerves to a first apprehension of powers and a call +beyond the immediate material compulsion of life, when the creeds of +Christianity are as dead as the lore of the Druids. + +The emancipation of mankind from obsolete theories and formularies may +be accompanied by great tides of moral and emotional release among types +and strata that by the standards of a trained and explicit intellectual, +may seem spiritually hopeless. It is not necessary to imagine the whole +world critical and lucid in order to imagine the whole world unified in +religious sentiment, comprehending the same phrases and coming together +regardless of class and race and quality, in the worship and service +of the true God. The coming kingship of God if it is to be more than +hieratic tyranny must have this universality of appeal. As the head +grows clear the body will turn in the right direction. To the mass of +men modern religion says, “This is the God it has always been in your +nature to apprehend.” + + + +11. GOD AND THE LOVE AND STATUS OF WOMEN + + +Now that we are discussing the general question of individual conduct, +it will be convenient to take up again and restate in that relationship, +propositions already made very plainly in the second and third chapters. +Here there are several excellent reasons for a certain amount of +deliberate repetition. . . . + +All the mystical relations of chastity, virginity, and the like with +religion, those questions of physical status that play so large a part +in most contemporary religions, have disappeared from modern faith. Let +us be as clear as possible upon this. God is concerned by the health and +fitness and vigour of his servants; we owe him our best and utmost; but +he has no special concern and no special preferences or commandments +regarding sexual things. + +Christ, it is manifest, was of the modern faith in these matters, he +welcomed the Magdalen, neither would he condemn the woman taken in +adultery. Manifestly corruption and disease were not to stand between +him and those who sought God in him. But the Christianity of the creeds, +in this as in so many respects, does not rise to the level of its +founder, and it is as necessary to repeat to-day as though the name +of Christ had not been ascendant for nineteen centuries, that sex is +a secondary thing to religion, and sexual status of no account in +the presence of God. It follows quite logically that God does not +discriminate between man and woman in any essential things. We leave our +individuality behind us when we come into the presence of God. Sex is +not disavowed but forgotten. Just as one’s last meal is forgotten--which +also is a difference between the religious moment of modern faith and +certain Christian sacraments. You are a believer and God is at hand +to you; heed not your state; reach out to him and he is there. In the +moment of religion you are human; it matters not what else you are, +male or female, clean or unclean, Hebrew or Gentile, bond or free. It +is AFTER the moment of religion that we become concerned about our state +and the manner in which we use ourselves. + +We have to follow our reason as our sole guide in our individual +treatment of all such things as food and health and sex. God is the +king of the whole world, he is the owner of our souls and bodies and all +things. He is not particularly concerned about any aspect, because he is +concerned about every aspect. We have to make the best use of ourselves +for his kingdom; that is our rule of life. That rule means neither +painful nor frantic abstinences nor any forced way of living. Purity, +cleanliness, health, none of these things are for themselves, they are +for use; none are magic, all are means. The sword must be sharp and +clean. That does not mean that we are perpetually to sharpen and clean +it--which would weaken and waste the blade. The sword must neither be +drawn constantly nor always rusting in its sheath. Those who have had +the wits and soul to come to God, will have the wits and soul to find +out and know what is waste, what is vanity, what is the happiness that +begets strength of body and spirit, what is error, where vice begins, +and to avoid and repent and recoil from all those things that degrade. +These are matters not of the rule of life but of the application +of life. They must neither be neglected nor made disproportionally +important. + +To the believer, relationship with God is the supreme relationship. It +is difficult to imagine how the association of lovers and friends can +be very fine and close and good unless the two who love are each also +linked to God, so that through their moods and fluctuations and +the changes of years they can be held steadfast by his undying +steadfastness. But it has been felt by many deep-feeling people that +there is so much kindred between the love and trust of husband and wife +and the feeling we have for God, that it is reasonable to consider the +former also as a sacred thing. They do so value that close love of mated +man and woman, they are so intent upon its permanence and completeness +and to lift the dear relationship out of the ruck of casual and +transitory things, that they want to bring it, as it were, into the very +presence and assent of God. There are many who dream and desire that +they are as deeply and completely mated as this, many more who would +fain be so, and some who are. And from this comes the earnest desire to +make marriage sacramental and the attempt to impose upon all the world +the outward appearance, the restrictions, the pretence at least of such +a sacramental union. + +There may be such a quasi-sacramental union in many cases, but only +after years can one be sure of it; it is not to be brought about by +vows and promises but by an essential kindred and cleaving of body and +spirit; and it concerns only the two who can dare to say they have it, +and God. And the divine thing in marriage, the thing that is most like +the love of God, is, even then, not the relationship of the man and +woman as man and woman but the comradeship and trust and mutual help +and pity that joins them. No doubt that from the mutual necessities of +bodily love and the common adventure, the necessary honesties and helps +of a joint life, there springs the stoutest, nearest, most enduring and +best of human companionship; perhaps only upon that root can the best of +mortal comradeship be got; but it does not follow that the mere ordinary +coming together and pairing off of men and women is in itself divine or +sacramental or anything of the sort. Being in love is a condition that +may have its moments of sublime exaltation, but it is for the most part +an experience far down the scale below divine experience; it is often +love only in so far as it shares the name with better things; it is +greed, it is admiration, it is desire, it is the itch for excitement, +it is the instinct for competition, it is lust, it is curiosity, it is +adventure, it is jealousy, it is hate. On a hundred scores ‘lovers’ +meet and part. Thereby some few find true love and the spirit of God in +themselves or others. + +Lovers may love God in one another; I do not deny it. That is no reason +why the imitation and outward form of this great happiness should be +made an obligation upon all men and women who are attracted by one +another, nor why it should be woven into the essentials of religion. +For women much more than for men is this confusion dangerous, lest a +personal love should shape and dominate their lives instead of God. “He +for God only; she for God in him,” phrases the idea of Milton and of +ancient Islam; it is the formula of sexual infatuation, a formula quite +easily inverted, as the end of Goethe’s Faust (“The woman soul leadeth +us upward and on”) may witness. The whole drift of modern religious +feeling is against this exaggeration of sexual feeling, these moods of +sexual slavishness, in spiritual things. Between the healthy love +of ordinary mortal lovers in love and the love of God, there is +an essential contrast and opposition in this, that preference, +exclusiveness, and jealousy seem to be in the very nature of the former +and are absolutely incompatible with the latter. The former is the +intensest realisation of which our individualities are capable; the +latter is the way of escape from the limitations of individuality. It +may be true that a few men and more women do achieve the completest +unselfishness and self-abandonment in earthly love. So the poets and +romancers tell us. If so, it is that by an imaginative perversion they +have given to some attractive person a worship that should be reserved +for God and a devotion that is normally evoked only by little children +in their mother’s heart. It is not the way between most of the men and +women one meets in this world. + +But between God and the believer there is no other way, there is nothing +else, but self-surrender and the ending of self. + + + +CHAPTER THE SIXTH + +MODERN IDEAS OF SIN AND DAMNATION + + + +1. THE BIOLOGICAL EQUIVALENT OF SIN + + +If the reader who is unfamiliar with scientific things will obtain and +read Metchnikoff’s “Nature of Man,” he will find there an interesting +summary of the biological facts that bear upon and destroy the delusion +that there is such a thing as individual perfection, that there is even +ideal perfection for humanity. With an abundance of convincing +instances Professor Metchnikoff demonstrates that life is a system of +“disharmonies,” capable of no perfect way, that there is no “perfect” + dieting, no “perfect” sexual life, no “perfect” happiness, no “perfect” + conduct. He releases one from the arbitrary but all too easy assumption +that there is even an ideal “perfection” in organic life. He sweeps out +of the mind with all the confidence and conviction of a physiological +specialist, any idea that there is a perfect man or a conceivable +perfect man. It is in the nature of every man to fall short at every +point from perfection. From the biological point of view we are as +individuals a series of involuntary “tries” on the part of an imperfect +species towards an unknown end. + +Our spiritual nature follows our bodily as a glove follows a hand. +We are disharmonious beings and salvation no more makes an end to the +defects of our souls than it makes an end to the decay of our teeth or +to those vestigial structures of our body that endanger our physical +welfare. Salvation leaves us still disharmonious, and adds not an inch +to our spiritual and moral stature. + + + +2. WHAT IS DAMNATION? + + +Let us now take up the question of what is Sin? and what we mean by the +term “damnation,” in the light of this view of human reality. Most of +the great world religions are as clear as Professor Metchnikoff that +life in the world is a tangle of disharmonies, and in most cases they +supply a more or less myth-like explanation, they declare that evil is +one side of the conflict between Ahriman and Ormazd, or that it is the +punishment of an act of disobedience, of the fall of man and world alike +from a state of harmony. Their case, like his, is that THIS world is +damned. + +We do not find the belief that superposed upon the miseries of this +world there are the still bitterer miseries of punishments after death, +so nearly universal. The endless punishments of hell appear to be +an exploit of theory; they have a superadded appearance even in the +Christian system; the same common tendency to superlatives and absolutes +that makes men ashamed to admit that God is finite, makes them seek to +enhance the merits of their Saviour by the device of everlasting fire. +Conquest over the sorrow of life and the fear of death do not seem to +them sufficient for Christ’s glory. + +Now the turning round of the modern mind from a conception of the +universe as something derived deductively from the past to a conception +of it as something gathering itself adventurously towards the future, +involves a release from the supposed necessity to tell a story and +explain why. Instead comes the inquiry, “To what end?” We can say +without mental discomfort, these disharmonies are here, this damnation +is here--inexplicably. We can, without any distressful inquiry into +ultimate origins, bring our minds to the conception of a spontaneous and +developing God arising out of those stresses in our hearts and in the +universe, and arising to overcome them. Salvation for the individual +is escape from the individual distress at disharmony and the individual +defeat by death, into the Kingdom of God. And damnation can be nothing +more and nothing less than the failure or inability or disinclination to +make that escape. + +Something of that idea of damnation as a lack of the will for salvation +has crept at a number of points into contemporary religious thought. It +was the fine fancy of Swedenborg that the damned go to their own hells +of their own accord. It underlies a queer poem, “Simpson,” by that +interesting essayist upon modern Christianity, Mr. Clutton Brock, which +I have recently read. Simpson dies and goes to hell--it is rather like +the Cromwell Road--and approves of it very highly, and then and then +only is he completely damned. Not to realise that one can be damned is +certainly to be damned; such is Mr. Brock’s idea. It is his definition +of damnation. Satisfaction with existing things is damnation. It is +surrender to limitation; it is acquiescence in “disharmony”; it is +making peace with that enemy against whom God fights for ever. + +(But whether there are indeed Simpsons who acquiesce always and for ever +remains for me, as I have already confessed in the previous chapter, +a quite open question. My Arminian temperament turns me from the +Calvinistic conclusion of Mr. Brock’s satire.) + + + +3. SIN IS NOT DAMNATION + + +Now the question of sin will hardly concern those damned and lost by +nature, if such there be. Sin is not the same thing as damnation, as +we have just defined damnation. Damnation is a state, but sin is an +incident. One is an essential and the other an incidental separation +from God. It is possible to sin without being damned; and to be +damned is to be in a state when sin scarcely matters, like ink upon a +blackamoor. You cannot have questions of more or less among absolute +things. + +It is the amazing and distressful discovery of every believer so soon as +the first exaltation of belief is past, that one does not remain always +in touch with God. At first it seems incredible that one should ever +have any motive again that is not also God’s motive. Then one +finds oneself caught unawares by a base impulse. We discover +that discontinuousness of our apparently homogeneous selves, the +unincorporated and warring elements that seemed at first altogether +absent from the synthesis of conversion. We are tripped up by +forgetfulness, by distraction, by old habits, by tricks of appearance. +There come dull patches of existence; those mysterious obliterations of +one’s finer sense that are due at times to the little minor poisons one +eats or drinks, to phases of fatigue, ill-health and bodily disorder, or +one is betrayed by some unanticipated storm of emotion, brewed deep in +the animal being and released by any trifling accident, such as personal +jealousy or lust, or one is relaxed by contentment into vanity. +All these rebel forces of our ill-coordinated selves, all these +“disharmonies,” of the inner being, snatch us away from our devotion to +God’s service, carry us off to follies, offences, unkindness, waste, and +leave us compromised, involved, and regretful, perplexed by a hundred +difficulties we have put in our own way back to God. + +This is the personal problem of Sin. Here prayer avails; here God can +help us. From God comes the strength to repent and make such reparation +as we can, to begin the battle again further back and lower down. From +God comes the power to anticipate the struggle with one’s rebel self, +and to resist and prevail over it. + + + +4. THE SINS OF THE INSANE + + +An extreme case is very serviceable in such a discussion as this. + +It happens that the author carries on a correspondence with several +lunatics in asylums. There is a considerable freedom of notepaper +in these institutions; the outgoing letters are no doubt censored or +selected in some way, but a proportion at any rate are allowed to go out +to their addresses. As a journalist who signs his articles and as the +author of various books of fiction, as a frequent NAME, that is, to any +one much forced back upon reading, the writer is particularly accessible +to this type of correspondent. The letters come, some manifesting +a hopeless disorder that permits of no reply, but some being the +expression of minds overlaid not at all offensively by a web of fantasy, +and some (and these are the more touching ones and the ones that most +concern us now) as sanely conceived and expressed as any letters could +be. They are written by people living lives very like the lives of us +who are called “sane,” except that they lift to a higher excitement and +fall to a lower depression, and that these extremer phases of mania or +melancholia slip the leash of mental consistency altogether and take +abnormal forms. They tap deep founts of impulse, such as we of the safer +ways of mediocrity do but glimpse under the influence of drugs, or in +dreams and rare moments of controllable extravagance. Then the insane +become “glorious,” or they become murderous, or they become suicidal. +All these letter-writers in confinement have convinced their +fellow-creatures by some extravagance that they are a danger to +themselves or others. + +The letters that come from such types written during their sane +intervals, are entirely sane. Some, who are probably unaware--I think +they should know--of the offences or possibilities that justify their +incarceration, write with a certain resentment at their position; others +are entirely acquiescent, but one or two complain of the neglect of +friends and relations. But all are as manifestly capable of religion and +of the religious life as any other intelligent persons during the +lucid interludes that make up nine-tenths perhaps of their lives. . . . +Suppose now one of these cases, and suppose that the infirmity takes +the form of some cruel, disgusting, or destructive disposition that may +become at times overwhelming, and you have our universal trouble with +sinful tendency, as it were magnified for examination. It is clear that +the mania which defines his position must be the primary if not the +cardinal business in the life of a lunatic, but his problem with that +is different not in kind but merely in degree from the problem of +lusts, vanities, and weaknesses in what we call normal lives. It is an +unconquered tract, a great rebel province in his being, which refuses to +serve God and tries to prevent him serving God, and succeeds at times in +wresting his capital out of his control. But his relationship to that +is the same relationship as ours to the backward and insubordinate +parishes, criminal slums, and disorderly houses in our own private +texture. + +It is clear that the believer who is a lunatic is, as it were, only the +better part of himself. He serves God with this unconquered disposition +in him, like a man who, whatever else he is and does, is obliged to be +the keeper of an untrustworthy and wicked animal. His beast gets loose. +His only resort is to warn those about him when he feels that jangling +or excitement of the nerves which precedes its escapes, to limit its +range, to place weapons beyond its reach. And there are plenty of human +beings very much in his case, whose beasts have never got loose or have +got caught back before their essential insanity was apparent. And there +are those uncertifiable lunatics we call men and women of “impulse” + and “strong passions.” If perhaps they have more self-control than the +really mad, yet it happens oftener with them that the whole intelligent +being falls under the dominion of evil. The passion scarcely less than +the obsession may darken the whole moral sky. Repentance and atonement; +nothing less will avail them after the storm has passed, and the +sedulous preparation of defences and palliatives against the return of +the storm. + +This discussion of the lunatic’s case gives us indeed, usefully coarse +and large, the lines for the treatment of every human weakness by the +servants of God. A “weakness,” just like the lunatic’s mania, becomes a +particular charge under God, a special duty for the person it affects. +He has to minimise it, to isolate it, to keep it out of mischief. If he +can he must adopt preventive measures. . . . + +These passions and weaknesses that get control of us hamper our +usefulness to God, they are an incessant anxiety and distress to us, +they wound our self-respect and make us incomprehensible to many who +would trust us, they discredit the faith we profess. If they break +through and break through again it is natural and proper that men and +women should cease to believe in our faith, cease to work with us or to +meet us frankly. . . . Our sins do everything evil to us and through us +except separate us from God. + +Yet let there be no mistake about one thing. Here prayer is a power. +Here God can indeed work miracles. A man with the light of God in his +heart can defeat vicious habits, rise again combative and undaunted +after a hundred falls, escape from the grip of lusts and revenges, make +head against despair, thrust back the very onset of madness. He is still +the same man he was before he came to God, still with his libidinous, +vindictive, boastful, or indolent vein; but now his will to prevail +over those qualities can refer to an exterior standard and an external +interest, he can draw upon a strength, almost boundless, beyond his own. + + + +5. BELIEVE, AND YOU ARE SAVED + + +But be a sin great or small, it cannot damn a man once he has found God. +You may kill and hang for it, you may rob or rape; the moment you truly +repent and set yourself to such atonement and reparation as is possible +there remains no barrier between you and God. Directly you cease to hide +or deny or escape, and turn manfully towards the consequences and the +setting of things right, you take hold again of the hand of God. Though +you sin seventy times seven times, God will still forgive the poor rest +of you. Nothing but utter blindness of the spirit can shut a man off +from God. + +There is nothing one can suffer, no situation so unfortunate, that it +can shut off one who has the thought of God, from God. If you but lift +up your head for a moment out of a stormy chaos of madness and cry to +him, God is there, God will not fail you. A convicted criminal, frankly +penitent, and neither obdurate nor abject, whatever the evil of his +yesterdays, may still die well and bravely on the gallows to the glory +of God. He may step straight from that death into the immortal being of +God. + +This persuasion is the very essence of the religion of the true God. +There is no sin, no state that, being regretted and repented of, can +stand between God and man. + + + +CHAPTER THE SEVENTH + +THE IDEA OF A CHURCH + + + +1. THE WORLD DAWN + + +As yet those who may be counted as belonging definitely to the new +religion are few and scattered and unconfessed, their realisations +are still uncertain and incomplete. But that is no augury for the +continuance of this state of affairs even for the next few decades. +There are many signs that the revival is coming very swiftly, it may be +coming as swiftly as the morning comes after a tropical night. It may +seem at present as though nothing very much were happening, except for +the fact that the old familiar constellations of theology have become +a little pallid and lost something of their multitude of points. But +nothing fades of itself. The deep stillness of the late night is broken +by a stirring, and the morning star of creedless faith, the last and +brightest of the stars, the star that owes its light to the coming sun +is in the sky. + +There is a stirring and a movement. There is a stir, like the stir +before a breeze. Men are beginning to speak of religion without the +bluster of the Christian formulae; they have begun to speak of God +without any reference to Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence. The +Deists and Theists of an older generation, be it noted, never did that. +Their “Supreme Being” repudiated nothing. He was merely the whittled +stump of the Trinity. It is in the last few decades that the western +mind has slipped loose from this absolutist conception of God that has +dominated the intelligence of Christendom at least, for many centuries. +Almost unconsciously the new thought is taking a course that will lead +it far away from the moorings of Omnipotence. It is like a ship that +has slipped its anchors and drifts, still sleeping, under the pale and +vanishing stars, out to the open sea. . . . + + + +2. CONVERGENT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS + + +In quite a little while the whole world may be alive with this renascent +faith. + +For emancipation from the Trinitarian formularies and from a belief in +an infinite God means not merely a great revivification of minds trained +under the decadence of orthodox Christianity, minds which have hitherto +been hopelessly embarrassed by the choice between pseudo-Christian +religion or denial, but also it opens the way towards the completest +understanding and sympathy and participation with the kindred movements +for release and for an intensification of the religious life, that are +going on outside the sphere of the Christian tradition and influence +altogether. Allusion has already been made to the sympathetic devotional +poetry of Rabindranath Tagore; he stands for a movement in Brahminism +parallel with and assimilable to the worship of the true God of mankind. + +It is too often supposed that the religious tendency of the East is +entirely towards other-worldness, to a treatment of this life as an evil +entanglement and of death as a release and a blessing. It is too easily +assumed that Eastern teaching is wholly concerned with renunciation, not +merely of self but of being, with the escape from all effort of any sort +into an exalted vacuity. This is indeed neither the spirit of China nor +of Islam nor of the every-day life of any people in the world. It is not +the spirit of the Sikh nor of these newer developments of Hindu thought. +It has never been the spirit of Japan. To-day less than ever does Asia +seem disposed to give up life and the effort of life. Just as readily as +Europeans, do the Asiatics reach out their arms to that fuller life we +can live, that greater intensity of existence, to which we can attain +by escaping from ourselves. All mankind is seeking God. There is not +a nation nor a city in the globe where men are not being urged at this +moment by the spirit of God in them towards the discovery of God. This +is not an age of despair but an age of hope in Asia as in all the world +besides. + +Islam is undergoing a process of revision closely parallel to that +which ransacks Christianity. Tradition and mediaeval doctrines are being +thrust aside in a similar way. There is much probing into the spirit and +intention of the Founder. The time is almost ripe for a heart-searching +Dialogue of the Dead, “How we settled our religions for ever and ever,” + between, let us say, Eusebius of Caesarea and one of Nizam-al-Mulk’s +tame theologians. They would be drawn together by the same tribulations; +they would be in the closest sympathy against the temerity of the +moderns; they would have a common courtliness. The Quran is but little +read by Europeans; it is ignorantly supposed to contain many things that +it does not contain; there is much confusion in people’s minds between +its text and the ancient Semitic traditions and usages retained by its +followers; in places it may seem formless and barbaric; but what it has +chiefly to tell of is the leadership of one individualised militant God +who claims the rule of the whole world, who favours neither rank nor +race, who would lead men to righteousness. It is much more free from +sacramentalism, from vestiges of the ancient blood sacrifice, and its +associated sacerdotalism, than Christianity. The religion that +will presently sway mankind can be reached more easily from that +starting-point than from the confused mysteries of Trinitarian theology. +Islam was never saddled with a creed. With the very name “Islam” + (submission to God) there is no quarrel for those who hold the new +faith. . . . + +All the world over there is this stirring in the dry bones of the old +beliefs. There is scarcely a religion that has not its Bahaism, its +Modernists, its Brahmo Somaj, its “religion without theology,” its +attempts to escape from old forms and hampering associations to that +living and world-wide spiritual reality upon which the human mind almost +instinctively insists. . . . + +It is the same God we all seek; he becomes more and more plainly the +same God. + +So that all this religious stir, which seems so multifold and incidental +and disconnected and confused and entirely ineffective to-day, may +be and most probably will be, in quite a few years a great flood +of religious unanimity pouring over and changing all human affairs, +sweeping away the old priesthoods and tabernacles and symbols and +shrines, the last crumb of the Orphic victim and the last rag of the +Serapeum, and turning all men about into one direction, as the ships and +houseboats swing round together in some great river with the uprush of +the tide. . . . + + + +3. CAN THERE BE A TRUE CHURCH? + + +Among those who are beginning to realise the differences and identities +of the revived religion that has returned to them, certain questions +of organisation and assembly are being discussed. Every new religious +development is haunted by the precedents of the religion it replaces, +and it was only to be expected that among those who have recovered their +faith there should be a search for apostles and disciples, an attempt to +determine sources and to form original congregations, especially among +people with European traditions. + +These dispositions mark a relapse from understanding. They are +imitative. This time there has been no revelation here or there; there +is no claim to a revelation but simply that God has become visible. Men +have thought and sought until insensibly the fog of obsolete theology +has cleared away. There seems no need therefore for special teachers +or a special propaganda, or any ritual or observances that will seem +to insist upon differences. The Christian precedent of a church +is particularly misleading. The church with its sacraments and its +sacerdotalism is the disease of Christianity. Save for a few doubtful +interpolations there is no evidence that Christ tolerated either blood +sacrifices or the mysteries of priesthood. All these antique grossnesses +were superadded after his martyrdom. He preached not a cult but a +gospel; he sent out not medicine men but apostles. + +No doubt all who believe owe an apostolic service to God. They become +naturally apostolic. As men perceive and realise God, each will be +disposed in his own fashion to call his neighbour’s attention to what +he sees. The necessary elements of religion could be written on a +post card; this book, small as it is, bulks large not by what it tells +positively but because it deals with misconceptions. We may (little +doubt have I that we do) need special propagandas and organisations to +discuss errors and keep back the jungle of false ideas, to maintain free +speech and restrain the enterprise of the persecutor, but we do not want +a church to keep our faith for us. We want our faith spread, but for +that there is no need for orthodoxies and controlling organisations of +statement. It is for each man to follow his own impulse, and to speak to +his like in his own fashion. + +Whatever religious congregations men may form henceforth in the name +of the true God must be for their own sakes and not to take charge of +religion. + +The history of Christianity, with its encrustation and suffocation +in dogmas and usages, its dire persecutions of the faithful by the +unfaithful, its desiccation and its unlovely decay, its invasion by +robes and rites and all the tricks and vices of the Pharisees whom +Christ detested and denounced, is full of warning against the dangers of +a church. Organisation is an excellent thing for the material needs +of men, for the draining of towns, the marshalling of traffic, the +collecting of eggs, and the carrying of letters, the distribution +of bread, the notification of measles, for hygiene and economics and +suchlike affairs. The better we organise such things, the freer and +better equipped we leave men’s minds for nobler purposes, for those +adventures and experiments towards God’s purpose which are the reality +of life. But all organisations must be watched, for whatever is +organised can be “captured” and misused. Repentance, moreover, is the +beginning and essential of the religious life, and organisations (acting +through their secretaries and officials) never repent. God deals +only with the individual for the individual’s surrender. He takes no +cognisance of committees. + +Those who are most alive to the realities of living religion are most +mistrustful of this congregating tendency. To gather together is to +purchase a benefit at the price of a greater loss, to strengthen one’s +sense of brotherhood by excluding the majority of mankind. Before you +know where you are you will have exchanged the spirit of God for ESPRIT +DE CORPS. You will have reinvented the SYMBOL; you will have begun to +keep anniversaries and establish sacramental ceremonies. The disposition +to form cliques and exclude and conspire against unlike people is all +too strong in humanity, to permit of its formal encouragement. Even such +organisation as is implied by a creed is to be avoided, for all living +faith coagulates as you phrase it. In this book I have not given so +much as a definite name to the faith of the true God. Organisation for +worship and collective exaltation also, it may be urged, is of little +manifest good. You cannot appoint beforehand a time and place for God to +irradiate your soul. + +All these are very valid objections to the church-forming disposition. + + + +4. ORGANISATIONS UNDER GOD + + +Yet still this leaves many dissatisfied. They want to shout out about +God. They want to share this great thing with all mankind. + +Why should they not shout and share? + +Let them express all that they desire to express in their own fashion +by themselves or grouped with their friends as they will. Let them shout +chorally if they are so disposed. Let them work in a gang if so they +can work the better. But let them guard themselves against the idea +that they can have God particularly or exclusively with them in any such +undertaking. Or that so they can express God rather than themselves. + +That I think states the attitude of the modern spirit towards the idea +of a church. Mankind passes for ever out of the idolatry of altars, +away from the obscene rites of circumcision and symbolical cannibalism, +beyond the sway of the ceremonial priest. But if the modern spirit holds +that religion cannot be organised or any intermediary thrust between God +and man, that does not preclude infinite possibilities of organisation +and collective action UNDER God and within the compass of religion. +There is no reason why religious men should not band themselves the +better to attain specific ends. To borrow a term from British politics, +there is no objection to AD HOC organisations. The objection lies not +against subsidiary organisations for service but against organisations +that may claim to be comprehensive. + +For example there is no reason why one should not--and in many cases +there are good reasons why one should--organise or join associations +for the criticism of religious ideas, an employment that may pass very +readily into propaganda. + +Many people feel the need of prayer to resist the evil in themselves and +to keep them in mind of divine emotion. And many want not merely prayer +but formal prayer and the support of others, praying in unison. The +writer does not understand this desire or need for collective prayer +very well, but there are people who appear to do so and there is no +reason why they should not assemble for that purpose. And there is +no doubt that divine poetry, divine maxims, religious thought +finely expressed, may be heard, rehearsed, collected, published, and +distributed by associations. The desire for expression implies a sort +of assembly, a hearer at least as well as a speaker. And expression has +many forms. People with a strong artistic impulse will necessarily want +to express themselves by art when religion touches them, and many arts, +architecture and the drama for example, are collective undertakings. I +do not see why there should not be, under God, associations for building +cathedrals and suchlike great still places urgent with beauty, into +which men and women may go to rest from the clamour of the day’s +confusions; I do not see why men should not make great shrines and +pictures expressing their sense of divine things, and why they should +not combine in such enterprises rather than work to fill heterogeneous +and chaotic art galleries. A wave of religious revival and religious +clarification, such as I foresee, will most certainly bring with it a +great revival of art, religious art, music, songs, and writings of +all sorts, drama, the making of shrines, praying places, temples and +retreats, the creation of pictures and sculptures. It is not necessary +to have priestcraft and an organised church for such ends. Such +enrichments of feeling and thought are part of the service of God. + +And again, under God, there may be associations and fraternities +for research in pure science; associations for the teaching and +simplification of languages; associations for promoting and watching +education; associations for the discussion of political problems and +the determination of right policies. In all these ways men may multiply +their use by union. Only when associations seek to control things +of belief, to dictate formulae, restrict religious activities or the +freedom of religious thought and teaching, when they tend to subdivide +those who believe and to set up jealousies or exclusions, do they become +antagonistic to the spirit of modern religion. + + + +5. THE STATE IS GOD’S INSTRUMENT + + +Because religion cannot be organised, because God is everywhere and +immediately accessible to every human being, it does not follow +that religion cannot organise every other human affair. It is indeed +essential to the idea that God is the Invisible King of this round +world and all mankind, that we should see in every government, great +and small, from the council of the world-state that is presently coming, +down to the village assembly, the instrument of God’s practical control. +Religion which is free, speaking freely through whom it will, subject to +a perpetual unlimited criticism, will be the life and driving power of +the whole organised world. So that if you prefer not to say that there +will be no church, if you choose rather to declare that the world-state +is God’s church, you may have it so if you will. Provided that you +leave conscience and speech and writing and teaching about divine things +absolutely free, and that you try to set no nets about God. + +The world is God’s and he takes it. But he himself remains freedom, and +we find our freedom in him. + + + +THE ENVOY + + +So I end this compact statement of the renascent religion which I +believe to be crystallising out of the intellectual, social, and +spiritual confusions of this time. It is an account rendered. It is a +statement and record; not a theory. There is nothing in all this that +has been invented or constructed by the writer; I have been but scribe +to the spirit of my generation; I have at most assembled and put +together things and thoughts that I have come upon, have transferred the +statements of “science” into religious terminology, rejected obsolescent +definitions, and re-coordinated propositions that had drifted into +opposition. Thus, I see, ideas are developing, and thus have I written +them down. It is a secondary matter that I am convinced that this trend +of intelligent opinion is a discovery of truth. The reader is told of my +own belief merely to avoid an affectation of impartiality and aloofness. + +The theogony here set forth is ancient; one can trace it appearing and +disappearing and recurring in the mutilated records of many different +schools of speculation; the conception of God as finite is one that has +been discussed very illuminatingly in recent years in the work of one I +am happy to write of as my friend and master, that very great American, +the late William James. It was an idea that became increasingly +important to him towards the end of his life. And it is the most +releasing idea in the system. + +Only in the most general terms can I trace the other origins of these +present views. I do not think modern religion owes much to what is +called Deism or Theism. The rather abstract and futile Deism of the +eighteenth century, of “votre Etre supreme” who bored the friends of +Robespierre, was a sterile thing, it has little relation to these modern +developments, it conceived of God as an infinite Being of no particular +character whereas God is a finite being of a very especial character. On +the other hand men and women who have set themselves, with unavoidable +theological preconceptions, it is true, to speculate upon the actual +teachings and quality of Christ, have produced interpretations that +have interwoven insensibly with thoughts more apparently new. There is a +curious modernity about very many of Christ’s recorded sayings. Revived +religion has also, no doubt, been the receiver of many religious +bankruptcies, of Positivism for example, which failed through its bleak +abstraction and an unspiritual texture. Religion, thus restated, must, +I think, presently incorporate great sections of thought that are still +attached to formal Christianity. The time is at hand when many of the +organised Christian churches will be forced to define their positions, +either in terms that will identify them with this renascence, or that +will lead to the release of their more liberal adherents. Its probable +obligations to Eastern thought are less readily estimated by a European +writer. + +Modern religion has no revelation and no founder; it is the privilege +and possession of no coterie of disciples or exponents; it is appearing +simultaneously round and about the world exactly as a crystallising +substance appears here and there in a super-saturated solution. It is +a process of truth, guided by the divinity in men. It needs no other +guidance, and no protection. It needs nothing but freedom, free speech, +and honest statement. Out of the most mixed and impure solutions a +growing crystal is infallibly able to select its substance. The diamond +arises bright, definite, and pure out of a dark matrix of structureless +confusion. + +This metaphor of crystallisation is perhaps the best symbol of the +advent and growth of the new understanding. It has no church, no +authorities, no teachers, no orthodoxy. It does not even thrust and +struggle among the other things; simply it grows clear. There will be +no putting an end to it. It arrives inevitably, and it will continue +to separate itself out from confusing ideas. It becomes, as it were the +Koh-i-noor; it is a Mountain of Light, growing and increasing. It is an +all-pervading lucidity, a brightness and clearness. It has no head to +smite, no body you can destroy; it overleaps all barriers; it breaks +out in despite of every enclosure. It will compel all things to orient +themselves to it. + +It comes as the dawn comes, through whatever clouds and mists may be +here or whatever smoke and curtains may be there. It comes as the day +comes to the ships that put to sea. + +It is the Kingdom of God at hand. + + +THE END + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg’s God The Invisible King, by Herbert George Wells + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1046 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1047-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1047-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f09c26f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1047-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15698 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1047 *** + +THE NEW MACHIAVELLI + +by H. G. Wells + + + +CONTENTS + + + BOOK THE FIRST + + THE MAKING OF A MAN + + I. CONCERNING A BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN + II. BROMSTEAD AND MY FATHER + III. SCHOLASTIC + IV. ADOLESCENCE + + + BOOK THE SECOND + + MARGARET + + I. MARGARET IN STAFFORDSHIRE + II. MARGARET IN LONDON + III. MARGARET IN VENICE + IV. THE HOUSE IN WESTMINSTER + + + BOOK THE THIRD + + THE HEART OF POLITICS + + I. THE RIDDLE FOR THE STATESMAN + II. SEEKING ASSOCIATES + III. SECESSION + IV. THE BESETTING OF SEX + + + BOOK THE FOURTH + + ISABEL + + I. LOVE AND SUCCESS + II. THE IMPOSSIBLE POSITION + III. THE BREAKING POINT + + + + + +BOOK THE FIRST: THE MAKING OF A MAN + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ CONCERNING A BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN + + +1 + +Since I came to this place I have been very restless, wasting my +energies in the futile beginning of ill-conceived books. One does not +settle down very readily at two and forty to a new way of living, and +I have found myself with the teeming interests of the life I have +abandoned still buzzing like a swarm of homeless bees in my head. My +mind has been full of confused protests and justifications. In any case +I should have found difficulties enough in expressing the complex thing +I have to tell, but it has added greatly to my trouble that I have a +great analogue, that a certain Niccolo Machiavelli chanced to fall out +of politics at very much the age I have reached, and wrote a book to +engage the restlessness of his mind, very much as I have wanted to do. +He wrote about the relation of the great constructive spirit in politics +to individual character and weaknesses, and so far his achievement lies +like a deep rut in the road of my intention. It has taken me far astray. +It is a matter of many weeks now--diversified indeed by some long drives +into the mountains behind us and a memorable sail to Genoa across the +blue and purple waters that drowned Shelley--since I began a laboured +and futile imitation of “The Prince.” I sat up late last night with the +jumbled accumulation; and at last made a little fire of olive twigs and +burnt it all, sheet by sheet--to begin again clear this morning. + +But incidentally I have re-read most of Machiavelli, not excepting those +scandalous letters of his to Vettori, and it seems to me, now that I +have released myself altogether from his literary precedent, that he +still has his use for me. In spite of his vast prestige I claim kindred +with him and set his name upon my title-page, in partial intimation of +the matter of my story. He takes me with sympathy not only by reason +of the dream he pursued and the humanity of his politics, but by the +mixture of his nature. His vices come in, essential to my issue. He is +dead and gone, all his immediate correlations to party and faction have +faded to insignificance, leaving only on the one hand his broad method +and conceptions, and upon the other his intimate living personality, +exposed down to its salacious corners as the soul of no contemporary can +ever be exposed. Of those double strands it is I have to write, of the +subtle protesting perplexing play of instinctive passion and desire +against too abstract a dream of statesmanship. But things that seemed to +lie very far apart in Machiavelli's time have come near to one another; +it is no simple story of white passions struggling against the red that +I have to tell. + +The state-making dream is a very old dream indeed in the world's +history. It plays too small a part in novels. Plato and Confucius +are but the highest of a great host of minds that have had a kindred +aspiration, have dreamt of a world of men better ordered, happier, +finer, securer. They imagined cities grown more powerful and peoples +made rich and multitudinous by their efforts, they thought in terms +of harbours and shining navies, great roads engineered marvellously, +jungles cleared and deserts conquered, the ending of muddle and +diseases and dirt and misery; the ending of confusions that waste human +possibilities; they thought of these things with passion and desire as +other men think of the soft lines and tender beauty of women. Thousands +of men there are to-day almost mastered by this white passion of +statecraft, and in nearly every one who reads and thinks you could find, +I suspect, some sort of answering response. But in every one it presents +itself extraordinarily entangled and mixed up with other, more intimate +things. + +It was so with Machiavelli. I picture him at San Casciano as he lived +in retirement upon his property after the fall of the Republic, perhaps +with a twinge of the torture that punished his conspiracy still lurking +in his limbs. Such twinges could not stop his dreaming. Then it was “The +Prince” was written. All day he went about his personal affairs, +saw homely neighbours, dealt with his family, gave vent to everyday +passions. He would sit in the shop of Donato del Corno gossiping +curiously among vicious company, or pace the lonely woods of his estate, +book in hand, full of bitter meditations. In the evening he returned +home and went to his study. At the entrance, he says, he pulled off his +peasant clothes covered with the dust and dirt of that immediate life, +washed himself, put on his “noble court dress,” closed the door on +the world of toiling and getting, private loving, private hating and +personal regrets, sat down with a sigh of contentment to those wider +dreams. + +I like to think of him so, with brown books before him lit by the light +of candles in silver candlesticks, or heading some new chapter of “The +Prince,” with a grey quill in his clean fine hand. + +So writing, he becomes a symbol for me, and the less none because of his +animal humour, his queer indecent side, and because of such lapses +into utter meanness as that which made him sound the note of the +begging-letter writer even in his “Dedication,” reminding His +Magnificence very urgently, as if it were the gist of his matter, of the +continued malignity of fortune in his affairs. These flaws complete him. +They are my reason for preferring him as a symbol to Plato, of whose +indelicate side we know nothing, and whose correspondence with Dionysius +of Syracuse has perished; or to Confucius who travelled China in search +of a Prince he might instruct, with lapses and indignities now lost +in the mists of ages. They have achieved the apotheosis of individual +forgetfulness, and Plato has the added glory of that acquired beauty, +that bust of the Indian Bacchus which is now indissolubly mingled with +his tradition. They have passed into the world of the ideal, and every +humbug takes his freedoms with their names. But Machiavelli, more recent +and less popular, is still all human and earthly, a fallen brother--and +at the same time that nobly dressed and nobly dreaming writer at the +desk. + +That vision of the strengthened and perfected state is protagonist in +my story. But as I re-read “The Prince” and thought out the manner of +my now abandoned project, I came to perceive how that stir and whirl of +human thought one calls by way of embodiment the French Revolution, has +altered absolutely the approach to such a question. Machiavelli, like +Plato and Pythagoras and Confucius two hundred odd decades before him, +saw only one method by which a thinking man, himself not powerful, might +do the work of state building, and that was by seizing the imagination +of a Prince. Directly these men turned their thoughts towards +realisation, their attitudes became--what shall I call it?--secretarial. +Machiavelli, it is true, had some little doubts about the particular +Prince he wanted, whether it was Caesar Borgia of Giuliano or Lorenzo, +but a Prince it had to be. Before I saw clearly the differences of our +own time I searched my mind for the modern equivalent of a Prince. At +various times I redrafted a parallel dedication to the Prince of +Wales, to the Emperor William, to Mr. Evesham, to a certain newspaper +proprietor who was once my schoolfellow at City Merchants', to Mr. J. D. +Rockefeller--all of them men in their several ways and circumstances and +possibilities, princely. Yet in every case my pen bent of its own accord +towards irony because--because, although at first I did not realise it, +I myself am just as free to be a prince. The appeal was unfair. The old +sort of Prince, the old little principality has vanished from the world. +The commonweal is one man's absolute estate and responsibility no more. +In Machiavelli's time it was indeed to an extreme degree one man's +affair. But the days of the Prince who planned and directed and was +the source and centre of all power are ended. We are in a condition of +affairs infinitely more complex, in which every prince and statesman is +something of a servant and every intelligent human being something of +a Prince. No magnificent pensive Lorenzos remain any more in this world +for secretarial hopes. + +In a sense it is wonderful how power has vanished, in a sense wonderful +how it has increased. I sit here, an unarmed discredited man, at a small +writing-table in a little defenceless dwelling among the vines, and no +human being can stop my pen except by the deliberate self-immolation of +murdering me, nor destroy its fruits except by theft and crime. No King, +no council, can seize and torture me; no Church, no nation silence me. +Such powers of ruthless and complete suppression have vanished. But that +is not because power has diminished, but because it has increased and +become multitudinous, because it has dispersed itself and specialised. +It is no longer a negative power we have, but positive; we cannot +prevent, but we can do. This age, far beyond all previous ages, is full +of powerful men, men who might, if they had the will for it, achieve +stupendous things. + +The things that might be done to-day! The things indeed that are being +done! It is the latter that give one so vast a sense of the former. When +I think of the progress of physical and mechanical science, of medicine +and sanitation during the last century, when I measure the increase in +general education and average efficiency, the power now available +for human service, the merely physical increment, and compare it with +anything that has ever been at man's disposal before, and when I think +of what a little straggling, incidental, undisciplined and uncoordinated +minority of inventors, experimenters, educators, writers and organisers +has achieved this development of human possibilities, achieved it in +spite of the disregard and aimlessness of the huge majority, and the +passionate resistance of the active dull, my imagination grows giddy +with dazzling intimations of the human splendours the justly organised +state may yet attain. I glimpse for a bewildering instant the heights +that may be scaled, the splendid enterprises made possible. + +But the appeal goes out now in other forms, in a book that catches at +thousands of readers for the eye of a Prince diffused. It is the +old appeal indeed for the unification of human effort, the ending of +confusions, but instead of the Machiavellian deference to a flattered +lord, a man cries out of his heart to the unseen fellowship about him. +The last written dedication of all those I burnt last night, was to no +single man, but to the socially constructive passion--in any man.... + +There is, moreover, a second great difference in kind between my world +and Machiavelli's. We are discovering women. It is as if they had come +across a vast interval since his time, into the very chamber of the +statesman. + + +2 + +In Machiavelli's outlook the interest of womanhood was in a region of +life almost infinitely remote from his statecraft. They were the vehicle +of children, but only Imperial Rome and the new world of to-day have +ever had an inkling of the significance that might give them in the +state. They did their work, he thought, as the ploughed earth bears its +crops. Apart from their function of fertility they gave a humorous twist +to life, stimulated worthy men to toil, and wasted the hours of Princes. +He left the thought of women outside with his other dusty things when +he went into his study to write, dismissed them from his mind. But +our modern world is burthened with its sense of the immense, now half +articulate, significance of women. They stand now, as it were, close +beside the silver candlesticks, speaking as Machiavelli writes, until he +stays his pen and turns to discuss his writing with them. + +It is this gradual discovery of sex as a thing collectively portentous +that I have to mingle with my statecraft if my picture is to be true +which has turned me at length from a treatise to the telling of my own +story. In my life I have paralleled very closely the slow realisations +that are going on in the world about me. I began life ignoring women, +they came to me at first perplexing and dishonouring; only very slowly +and very late in my life and after misadventure, did I gauge the power +and beauty of the love of man and woman and learnt how it must needs +frame a justifiable vision of the ordered world. Love has brought me +to disaster, because my career had been planned regardless of its +possibility and value. But Machiavelli, it seems to me, when he +went into his study, left not only the earth of life outside but its +unsuspected soul. + + +3 + +Like Machiavelli at San Casciano, if I may take this analogy one step +further, I too am an exile. Office and leading are closed to me. The +political career that promised so much for me is shattered and ended for +ever. + +I look out from this vine-wreathed veranda under the branches of a stone +pine; I see wide and far across a purple valley whose sides are terraced +and set with houses of pine and ivory, the Gulf of Liguria gleaming +sapphire blue, and cloud-like baseless mountains hanging in the sky, and +I think of lank and coaly steamships heaving on the grey rollers of the +English Channel and darkling streets wet with rain, I recall as if I +were back there the busy exit from Charing Cross, the cross and the +money-changers' offices, the splendid grime of giant London and the +crowds going perpetually to and fro, the lights by night and the urgency +and eventfulness of that great rain-swept heart of the modern world. + +It is difficult to think we have left that--for many years if not for +ever. In thought I walk once more in Palace Yard and hear the clink and +clatter of hansoms and the quick quiet whirr of motors; I go in vivid +recent memories through the stir in the lobbies, I sit again at eventful +dinners in those old dining-rooms like cellars below the House--dinners +that ended with shrill division bells, I think of huge clubs swarming +and excited by the bulletins of that electoral battle that was for me +the opening opportunity. I see the stencilled names and numbers go up on +the green baize, constituency after constituency, amidst murmurs or loud +shouting.... + +It is over for me now and vanished. That opportunity will come no more. +Very probably you have heard already some crude inaccurate version of +our story and why I did not take office, and have formed your partial +judgement on me. And so it is I sit now at my stone table, half out of +life already, in a warm, large, shadowy leisure, splashed with sunlight +and hung with vine tendrils, with paper before me to distil such wisdom +as I can, as Machiavelli in his exile sought to do, from the things I +have learnt and felt during the career that has ended now in my divorce. + +I climbed high and fast from small beginnings. I had the mind of my +party. I do not know where I might not have ended, but for this red +blaze that came out of my unguarded nature and closed my career for +ever. + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ BROMSTEAD AND MY FATHER + + +1 + +I dreamt first of states and cities and political things when I was a +little boy in knickerbockers. + +When I think of how such things began in my mind, there comes back to me +the memory of an enormous bleak room with its ceiling going up to heaven +and its floor covered irregularly with patched and defective oilcloth +and a dingy mat or so and a “surround” as they call it, of dark stained +wood. Here and there against the wall are trunks and boxes. There are +cupboards on either side of the fireplace and bookshelves with +books above them, and on the wall and rather tattered is a large +yellow-varnished geological map of the South of England. Over the mantel +is a huge lump of white coral rock and several big fossil bones, and +above that hangs the portrait of a brainy gentleman, sliced in half and +displaying an interior of intricate detail and much vigour of coloring. +It is the floor I think of chiefly; over the oilcloth of which, assumed +to be land, spread towns and villages and forts of wooden bricks; there +are steep square hills (geologically, volumes of Orr's CYCLOPAEDIA OF +THE SCIENCES) and the cracks and spaces of the floor and the bare brown +surround were the water channels and open sea of that continent of mine. + +I still remember with infinite gratitude the great-uncle to whom I +owe my bricks. He must have been one of those rare adults who have not +forgotten the chagrins and dreams of childhood. He was a prosperous west +of England builder; including my father he had three nephews, and for +each of them he caused a box of bricks to be made by an out-of-work +carpenter, not the insufficient supply of the toyshop, you understand, +but a really adequate quantity of bricks made out of oak and shaped +and smoothed, bricks about five inches by two and a half by one, and +half-bricks and quarter-bricks to correspond. There were hundreds of +them, many hundreds. I could build six towers as high as myself with +them, and there seemed quite enough for every engineering project I +could undertake. I could build whole towns with streets and houses and +churches and citadels; I could bridge every gap in the oilcloth and make +causeways over crumpled spaces (which I feigned to be morasses), and on +a keel of whole bricks it was possible to construct ships to push +over the high seas to the remotest port in the room. And a disciplined +population, that rose at last by sedulous begging on birthdays and +all convenient occasions to well over two hundred, of lead sailors and +soldiers, horse, foot and artillery, inhabited this world. + +Justice has never been done to bricks and soldiers by those who write +about toys. The praises of the toy theatre have been a common theme for +essayists, the planning of the scenes, the painting and cutting out of +the caste, penny plain twopence coloured, the stink and glory of the +performance and the final conflagration. I had such a theatre once, but +I never loved it nor hoped for much from it; my bricks and soldiers were +my perpetual drama. I recall an incessant variety of interests. There +was the mystery and charm of the complicated buildings one could make, +with long passages and steps and windows through which one peeped into +their intricacies, and by means of slips of card one could make slanting +ways in them, and send marbles rolling from top to base and thence out +into the hold of a waiting ship. Then there were the fortresses and gun +emplacements and covered ways in which one's soldiers went. And there +was commerce; the shops and markets and store-rooms full of nasturtium +seed, thrift seed, lupin beans and suchlike provender from the garden; +such stuff one stored in match-boxes and pill-boxes, or packed in sacks +of old glove fingers tied up with thread and sent off by waggons along +the great military road to the beleaguered fortress on the Indian +frontier beyond the worn places that were dismal swamps. And there were +battles on the way. + +That great road is still clear in my memory. I was given, I forget by +what benefactor, certain particularly fierce red Indians of lead--I have +never seen such soldiers since--and for these my father helped me to +make tepees of brown paper, and I settled them in a hitherto desolate +country under the frowning nail-studded cliffs of an ancient trunk. Then +I conquered them and garrisoned their land. (Alas! they died, no doubt +through contact with civilisation--one my mother trod on--and their +land became a wilderness again and was ravaged for a time by a clockwork +crocodile of vast proportions.) And out towards the coal-scuttle was a +region near the impassable thickets of the ragged hearthrug where lived +certain china Zulus brandishing spears, and a mountain country of +rudely piled bricks concealing the most devious and enchanting caves and +several mines of gold and silver paper. Among these rocks a number of +survivors from a Noah's Ark made a various, dangerous, albeit frequently +invalid and crippled fauna, and I was wont to increase the uncultivated +wildness of this region further by trees of privet-twigs from the garden +hedge and box from the garden borders. By these territories went +my Imperial Road carrying produce to and fro, bridging gaps in the +oilcloth, tunnelling through Encyclopaedic hills--one tunnel was three +volumes long--defended as occasion required by camps of paper tents +or brick blockhouses, and ending at last in a magnificently engineered +ascent to a fortress on the cliffs commanding the Indian reservation. + +My games upon the floor must have spread over several years and +developed from small beginnings, incorporating now this suggestion and +now that. They stretch, I suppose, from seven to eleven or twelve. I +played them intermittently, and they bulk now in the retrospect far more +significantly than they did at the time. I played them in bursts, and +then forgot them for long periods; through the spring and summer I was +mostly out of doors, and school and classes caught me early. And in +the retrospect I see them all not only magnified and transfigured, but +fore-shortened and confused together. A clockwork railway, I seem to +remember, came and went; one or two clockwork boats, toy sailing ships +that, being keeled, would do nothing but lie on their beam ends on the +floor; a detestable lot of cavalrymen, undersized and gilt all over, +given me by a maiden aunt, and very much what one might expect from +an aunt, that I used as Nero used his Christians to ornament my public +buildings; and I finally melted some into fratricidal bullets, and +therewith blew the rest to flat splashes of lead by means of a brass +cannon in the garden. + +I find this empire of the floor much more vivid and detailed in my +memory now than many of the owners of the skirts and legs and boots that +went gingerly across its territories. Occasionally, alas! they stooped +to scrub, abolishing in one universal destruction the slow growth of +whole days of civilised development. I still remember the hatred and +disgust of these catastrophes. Like Noah I was given warnings. Did I +disregard them, coarse red hands would descend, plucking garrisons +from fortresses and sailors from ships, jumbling them up in their wrong +boxes, clumsily so that their rifles and swords were broken, sweeping +the splendid curves of the Imperial Road into heaps of ruins, casting +the jungle growth of Zululand into the fire. + +“Well, Master Dick,” the voice of this cosmic calamity would say, “you +ought to have put them away last night. No! I can't wait until you've +sailed them all away in ships. I got my work to do, and do it I will.” + +And in no time all my continents and lands were swirling water and +swiping strokes of house-flannel. + +That was the worst of my giant visitants, but my mother too, dear lady, +was something of a terror to this microcosm. She wore spring-sided +boots, a kind of boot now vanished, I believe, from the world, with dull +bodies and shiny toes, and a silk dress with flounces that were very +destructive to the more hazardous viaducts of the Imperial Road. She +was always, I seem to remember, fetching me; fetching me for a meal, +fetching me for a walk or, detestable absurdity! fetching me for a wash +and brush up, and she never seemed to understand anything whatever of +the political systems across which she came to me. Also she forbade all +toys on Sundays except the bricks for church-building and the soldiers +for church parade, or a Scriptural use of the remains of the Noah's Ark +mixed up with a wooden Swiss dairy farm. But she really did not know +whether a thing was a church or not unless it positively bristled with +cannon, and many a Sunday afternoon have I played Chicago (with the fear +of God in my heart) under an infidel pretence that it was a new sort of +ark rather elaborately done. + +Chicago, I must explain, was based upon my father's description of the +pig slaughterings in that city and certain pictures I had seen. You made +your beasts--which were all the ark lot really, provisionally conceived +as pigs--go up elaborate approaches to a central pen, from which +they went down a cardboard slide four at a time, and dropped most +satisfyingly down a brick shaft, and pitter-litter over some steep steps +to where a head slaughterman (ne Noah) strung a cotton loop round their +legs and sent them by pin hooks along a wire to a second slaughterman +with a chipped foot (formerly Mrs. Noah) who, if I remember rightly, +converted them into Army sausage by means of a portion of the inside of +an old alarum clock. + +My mother did not understand my games, but my father did. He wore +bright-coloured socks and carpet slippers when he was indoors--my mother +disliked boots in the house--and he would sit down on my little chair +and survey the microcosm on the floor with admirable understanding and +sympathy. + +It was he who gave me most of my toys and, I more than suspect, most +of my ideas. “Here's some corrugated iron,” he would say, “suitable for +roofs and fencing,” and hand me a lump of that stiff crinkled paper that +is used for packing medicine bottles. Or, “Dick, do you see the tiger +loose near the Imperial Road?--won't do for your cattle ranch.” And I +would find a bright new lead tiger like a special creation at large in +the world, and demanding a hunting expedition and much elaborate effort +to get him safely housed in the city menagerie beside the captured +dragon crocodile, tamed now, and his key lost and the heart and spring +gone out of him. + +And to the various irregular reading of my father I owe the inestimable +blessing of never having a boy's book in my boyhood except those of +Jules Verne. But my father used to get books for himself and me from +the Bromstead Institute, Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid and illustrated +histories; one of the Russo-Turkish war and one of Napier's expedition +to Abyssinia I read from end to end; Stanley and Livingstone, lives +of Wellington, Napoleon and Garibaldi, and back volumes of PUNCH, from +which I derived conceptions of foreign and domestic politics it has +taken years of adult reflection to correct. And at home permanently we +had Wood's NATURAL HISTORY, a brand-new illustrated Green's HISTORY OF +THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, Irving's COMPANIONS OF COLUMBUS, a great number +of unbound parts of some geographical work, a VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD I +think it was called, with pictures of foreign places, and Clarke's NEW +TESTAMENT with a map of Palestine, and a variety of other informing +books bought at sales. There was a Sowerby's BOTANY also, with thousands +of carefully tinted pictures of British plants, and one or two other +important works in the sitting-room. I was allowed to turn these over +and even lie on the floor with them on Sundays and other occasions of +exceptional cleanliness. + +And in the attic I found one day a very old forgotten map after the +fashion of a bird's-eye view, representing the Crimea, that fascinated +me and kept me for hours navigating its waters with a pin. + + +2 + +My father was a lank-limbed man in easy shabby tweed clothes and with +his hands in his trouser pockets. He was a science teacher, taking +a number of classes at the Bromstead Institute in Kent under the old +Science and Art Department, and “visiting” various schools; and our +resources were eked out by my mother's income of nearly a hundred +pounds a year, and by his inheritance of a terrace of three palatial but +structurally unsound stucco houses near Bromstead Station. + +They were big clumsy residences in the earliest Victorian style, +interminably high and with deep damp basements and downstairs +coal-cellars and kitchens that suggested an architect vindictively +devoted to the discomfort of the servant class. If so, he had +overreached himself and defeated his end, for no servant would stay +in them unless for exceptional wages or exceptional tolerance of +inefficiency or exceptional freedom in repartee. Every storey in the +house was from twelve to fifteen feet high (which would have been cool +and pleasant in a hot climate), and the stairs went steeply up, to end +at last in attics too inaccessible for occupation. The ceilings had vast +plaster cornices of classical design, fragments of which would sometimes +fall unexpectedly, and the wall-papers were bold and gigantic in pattern +and much variegated by damp and ill-mended rents. + +As my father was quite unable to let more than one of these houses at a +time, and that for the most part to eccentric and undesirable tenants, +he thought it politic to live in one of the two others, and devote the +rent he received from the let one, when it was let, to the incessant +necessary repairing of all three. He also did some of the repairing +himself and, smoking a bull-dog pipe the while, which my mother would +not allow him to do in the house, he cultivated vegetables in a sketchy, +unpunctual and not always successful manner in the unoccupied gardens. +The three houses faced north, and the back of the one we occupied was +covered by a grape-vine that yielded, I remember, small green grapes +for pies in the spring, and imperfectly ripe black grapes in favourable +autumns for the purposes of dessert. The grape-vine played an important +part in my life, for my father broke his neck while he was pruning it, +when I was thirteen. + +My father was what is called a man of ideas, but they were not always +good ideas. My grandfather had been a private schoolmaster and one of +the founders of the College of Preceptors, and my father had assisted +him in his school until increasing competition and diminishing +attendance had made it evident that the days of small private schools +kept by unqualified persons were numbered. Thereupon my father had +roused himself and had qualified as a science teacher under the Science +and Art Department, which in these days had charge of the scientific and +artistic education of the mass of the English population, and had thrown +himself into science teaching and the earning of government grants +therefor with great if transitory zeal and success. + +I do not remember anything of my father's earlier and more energetic +time. I was the child of my parents' middle years; they married when my +father was thirty-five and my mother past forty, and I saw only the last +decadent phase of his educational career. + +The Science and Art Department has vanished altogether from the +world, and people are forgetting it now with the utmost readiness and +generosity. Part of its substance and staff and spirit survive, more or +less completely digested into the Board of Education. + +The world does move on, even in its government. It is wonderful how many +of the clumsy and limited governing bodies of my youth and early manhood +have given place now to more scientific and efficient machinery. When +I was a boy, Bromstead, which is now a borough, was ruled by a strange +body called a Local Board--it was the Age of Boards--and I still +remember indistinctly my father rejoicing at the breakfast-table over +the liberation of London from the corrupt and devastating control of a +Metropolitan Board of Works. Then there were also School Boards; I +was already practically in politics before the London School Board was +absorbed by the spreading tentacles of the London County Council. + +It gives a measure of the newness of our modern ideas of the State to +remember that the very beginnings of public education lie within my +father's lifetime, and that many most intelligent and patriotic people +were shocked beyond measure at the State doing anything of the sort. +When he was born, totally illiterate people who could neither read a +book nor write more than perhaps a clumsy signature, were to be found +everywhere in England; and great masses of the population were getting +no instruction at all. Only a few schools flourished upon the patronage +of exceptional parents; all over the country the old endowed grammar +schools were to be found sinking and dwindling; many of them had +closed altogether. In the new great centres of population multitudes of +children were sweated in the factories, darkly ignorant and wretched +and the under-equipped and under-staffed National and British schools, +supported by voluntary contributions and sectarian rivalries, made an +ineffectual fight against this festering darkness. It was a condition +of affairs clamouring for remedies, but there was an immense amount +of indifference and prejudice to be overcome before any remedies were +possible. Perhaps some day some industrious and lucid historian +will disentangle all the muddle of impulses and antagonisms, the +commercialism, utilitarianism, obstinate conservatism, humanitarian +enthusiasm, out of which our present educational organisation arose. +I have long since come to believe it necessary that all new social +institutions should be born in confusion, and that at first they should +present chiefly crude and ridiculous aspects. The distrust of government +in the Victorian days was far too great, and the general intelligence +far too low, to permit the State to go about the new business it was +taking up in a businesslike way, to train teachers, build and equip +schools, endow pedagogic research, and provide properly written +school-books. These things it was felt MUST be provided by individual +and local effort, and since it was manifest that it was individual +and local effort that were in default, it was reluctantly agreed to +stimulate them by money payments. The State set up a machinery of +examination both in Science and Art and for the elementary schools; and +payments, known technically as grants, were made in accordance with the +examination results attained, to such schools as Providence might see +fit to send into the world. In this way it was felt the Demand would +be established that would, according to the beliefs of that time, +inevitably ensure the Supply. An industry of “Grant earning” was +created, and this would give education as a necessary by-product. + +In the end this belief was found to need qualification, but +Grant-earning was still in full activity when I was a small boy. So far +as the Science and Art Department and my father are concerned, the task +of examination was entrusted to eminent scientific men, for the most +part quite unaccustomed to teaching. You see, if they also were teaching +similar classes to those they examined, it was feared that injustice +might be done. Year after year these eminent persons set questions +and employed subordinates to read and mark the increasing thousands of +answers that ensued, and having no doubt the national ideal of fairness +well developed in their minds, they were careful each year to re-read +the preceding papers before composing the current one, in order to see +what it was usual to ask. As a result of this, in the course of a +few years the recurrence and permutation of questions became almost +calculable, and since the practical object of the teaching was to teach +people not science, but how to write answers to these questions, the +industry of Grant-earning assumed a form easily distinguished from any +kind of genuine education whatever. + +Other remarkable compromises had also to be made with the spirit of the +age. The unfortunate conflict between Religion and Science prevalent at +this time was mitigated, if I remember rightly, by making graduates in +arts and priests in the established church Science Teachers EX OFFICIO, +and leaving local and private enterprise to provide schools, diagrams, +books, material, according to the conceptions of efficiency prevalent in +the district. Private enterprise made a particularly good thing of the +books. A number of competing firms of publishers sprang into existence +specialising in Science and Art Department work; they set themselves to +produce text-books that should supply exactly the quantity and quality +of knowledge necessary for every stage of each of five and twenty +subjects into which desirable science was divided, and copies and models +and instructions that should give precisely the method and gestures +esteemed as proficiency in art. Every section of each book was written +in the idiom found to be most satisfactory to the examiners, and test +questions extracted from papers set in former years were appended to +every chapter. By means of these last the teacher was able to train his +class to the very highest level of grant-earning efficiency, and very +naturally he cast all other methods of exposition aside. First he posed +his pupils with questions and then dictated model replies. + +That was my father's method of instruction. I attended his classes as an +elementary grant-earner from the age of ten until his death, and it is +so I remember him, sitting on the edge of a table, smothering a yawn +occasionally and giving out the infallible formulae to the industriously +scribbling class sitting in rows of desks before him. Occasionally he +would slide to his feet and go to a blackboard on an easel and draw on +that very slowly and deliberately in coloured chalks a diagram for the +class to copy in coloured pencils, and sometimes he would display a +specimen or arrange an experiment for them to see. The room in the +Institute in which he taught was equipped with a certain amount of +apparatus prescribed as necessary for subject this and subject that by +the Science and Art Department, and this my father would supplement with +maps and diagrams and drawings of his own. + +But he never really did experiments, except that in the class in +systematic botany he sometimes made us tease common flowers to pieces. +He did not do experiments if he could possibly help it, because in the +first place they used up time and gas for the Bunsen burner and good +material in a ruinous fashion, and in the second they were, in his +rather careless and sketchy hands, apt to endanger the apparatus of +the Institute and even the lives of his students. Then thirdly, real +experiments involved washing up. And moreover they always turned out +wrong, and sometimes misled the too observant learner very seriously +and opened demoralising controversies. Quite early in life I acquired an +almost ineradicable sense of the unscientific perversity of Nature and +the impassable gulf that is fixed between systematic science and elusive +fact. I knew, for example, that in science, whether it be subject XII., +Organic Chemistry, or subject XVII., Animal Physiology, when you blow +into a glass of lime-water it instantly becomes cloudy, and if you +continue to blow it clears again, whereas in truth you may blow into the +stuff from the lime-water bottle until you are crimson in the face and +painful under the ears, and it never becomes cloudy at all. And I knew, +too, that in science if you put potassium chlorate into a retort and +heat it over a Bunsen burner, oxygen is disengaged and may be collected +over water, whereas in real life if you do anything of the sort the +vessel cracks with a loud report, the potassium chlorate descends +sizzling upon the flame, the experimenter says “Oh! Damn!” with +astonishing heartiness and distinctness, and a lady student in the back +seats gets up and leaves the room. + +Science is the organised conquest of Nature, and I can quite understand +that ancient libertine refusing to co-operate in her own undoing. And I +can quite understand, too, my father's preference for what he called +an illustrative experiment, which was simply an arrangement of the +apparatus in front of the class with nothing whatever by way of +material, and the Bunsen burner clean and cool, and then a slow luminous +description of just what you did put in it when you were so ill-advised +as to carry the affair beyond illustration, and just exactly what ought +anyhow to happen when you did. He had considerable powers of vivid +expression, so that in this way he could make us see all he described. +The class, freed from any unpleasant nervous tension, could draw this +still life without flinching, and if any part was too difficult to draw, +then my father would produce a simplified version on the blackboard +to be copied instead. And he would also write on the blackboard any +exceptionally difficult but grant-earning words, such as “empyreumatic” + or “botryoidal.” + +Some words in constant use he rarely explained. I remember once sticking +up my hand and asking him in the full flow of description, “Please, sir, +what is flocculent?” + +“The precipitate is.” + +“Yes, sir, but what does it mean?” + +“Oh! flocculent!” said my father, “flocculent! Why--” he extended his +hand and arm and twiddled his fingers for a second in the air. “Like +that,” he said. + +I thought the explanation sufficient, but he paused for a moment after +giving it. “As in a flock bed, you know,” he added and resumed his +discourse. + + +3 + +My father, I am afraid, carried a natural incompetence in practical +affairs to an exceptionally high level. He combined practical +incompetence, practical enterprise and a thoroughly sanguine +temperament, in a manner that I have never seen paralleled in any human +being. He was always trying to do new things in the briskest manner, +under the suggestion of books or papers or his own spontaneous +imagination, and as he had never been trained to do anything whatever +in his life properly, his futilities were extensive and thorough. At one +time he nearly gave up his classes for intensive culture, so enamoured +was he of its possibilities; the peculiar pungency of the manure he got, +in pursuit of a chemical theory of his own, has scarred my olfactory +memories for a lifetime. The intensive culture phase is very clear in my +memory; it came near the end of his career and when I was between eleven +and twelve. I was mobilised to gather caterpillars on several occasions, +and assisted in nocturnal raids upon the slugs by lantern-light that +wrecked my preparation work for school next day. My father dug up both +lawns, and trenched and manured in spasms of immense vigour alternating +with periods of paralysing distaste for the garden. And for weeks he +talked about eight hundred pounds an acre at every meal. + +A garden, even when it is not exasperated by intensive methods, is a +thing as exacting as a baby, its moods have to be watched; it does +not wait upon the cultivator's convenience, but has times of its own. +Intensive culture greatly increases this disposition to trouble mankind; +it makes a garden touchy and hysterical, a drugged and demoralised and +over-irritated garden. My father got at cross purposes with our two +patches at an early stage. Everything grew wrong from the first to last, +and if my father's manures intensified nothing else, they certainly +intensified the Primordial Curse. The peas were eaten in the night +before they were three inches high, the beans bore nothing but blight, +the only apparent result of a spraying of the potatoes was to develop +a PENCHANT in the cat for being ill indoors, the cucumber frames were +damaged by the catapulting of boys going down the lane at the back, +and all your cucumbers were mysteriously embittered. That lane with its +occasional passers-by did much to wreck the intensive scheme, because my +father always stopped work and went indoors if any one watched him. +His special manure was apt to arouse a troublesome spirit of inquiry in +hardy natures. + +In digging his rows and shaping his patches he neglected the guiding +string and trusted to his eye altogether too much, and the consequent +obliquity and the various wind-breaks and scare-crows he erected, and +particularly an irrigation contrivance he began and never finished by +which everything was to be watered at once by means of pieces of gutter +from the roof and outhouses of Number 2, and a large and particularly +obstinate clump of elder-bushes in the abolished hedge that he had +failed to destroy entirely either by axe or by fire, combined to give +the gardens under intensive culture a singularly desolate and disorderly +appearance. He took steps towards the diversion of our house drain under +the influence of the Sewage Utilisation Society; but happily he stopped +in time. He hardly completed any of the operations he began; something +else became more urgent or simply he tired; a considerable area of the +Number 2 territory was never even dug up. + +In the end the affair irritated him beyond endurance. Never was a man +less horticulturally-minded. The clamour of these vegetables he had +launched into the world for his service and assistance, wore out his +patience. He would walk into the garden the happiest of men after a +day or so of disregard, talking to me of history perhaps or social +organisation, or summarising some book he had read. He talked to me +of anything that interested him, regardless of my limitations. Then he +would begin to note the growth of the weeds. “This won't do,” he would +say and pull up a handful. + +More weeding would follow and the talk would become fragmentary. His +hands would become earthy, his nails black, weeds would snap off in +his careless grip, leaving the roots behind. The world would darken. +He would look at his fingers with disgusted astonishment. “CURSE these +weeds!” he would say from his heart. His discourse was at an end. + +I have memories, too, of his sudden unexpected charges into the +tranquillity of the house, his hands and clothes intensively enriched. +He would come in like a whirlwind. “This damned stuff all over me and +the Agricultural Chemistry Class at six! Bah! AAAAAAH!” + +My mother would never learn not to attempt to break him of swearing +on such occasions. She would remain standing a little stiffly in the +scullery refusing to assist him to the adjectival towel he sought. + +“If you say such things--” + +He would dance with rage and hurl the soap about. “The towel!” he would +cry, flicking suds from big fingers in every direction; “the towel! I'll +let the blithering class slide if you don't give me the towel! I'll give +up everything, I tell you--everything!”... + +At last with the failure of the lettuces came the breaking point. I was +in the little arbour learning Latin irregular verbs when it happened. +I can see him still, his peculiar tenor voice still echoes in my brain, +shouting his opinion of intensive culture for all the world to hear, and +slashing away at that abominable mockery of a crop with a hoe. We had +tied them up with bast only a week or so before, and now half were +rotten and half had shot up into tall slender growths. He had the hoe in +both hands and slogged. Great wipes he made, and at each stroke he said, +“Take that!” + +The air was thick with flying fragments of abortive salad. It was a +fantastic massacre. It was the French Revolution of that cold tyranny, +the vindictive overthrow of the pampered vegetable aristocrats. After he +had assuaged his passion upon them, he turned for other prey; he kicked +holes in two of our noblest marrows, flicked off the heads of half a row +of artichokes, and shied the hoe with a splendid smash into the cucumber +frame. Something of the awe of that moment returns to me as I write of +it. + +“Well, my boy,” he said, approaching with an expression of beneficent +happiness, “I've done with gardening. Let's go for a walk like +reasonable beings. I've had enough of this”--his face was convulsed for +an instant with bitter resentment--“Pandering to cabbages.” + + +4 + +That afternoon's walk sticks in my memory for many reasons. One is +that we went further than I had ever been before; far beyond Keston and +nearly to Seven-oaks, coming back by train from Dunton Green, and the +other is that my father as he went along talked about himself, not so +much to me as to himself, and about life and what he had done with +it. He monologued so that at times he produced an effect of weird +world-forgetfulness. I listened puzzled, and at that time not +understanding many things that afterwards became plain to me. It is only +in recent years that I have discovered the pathos of that monologue; how +friendless my father was and uncompanioned in his thoughts and feelings, +and what a hunger he may have felt for the sympathy of the undeveloped +youngster who trotted by his side. + +“I'm no gardener,” he said, “I'm no anything. Why the devil did I start +gardening? + +“I suppose man was created to mind a garden... But the Fall let us out +of that! What was I created for? God! what was I created for?... + +“Slaves to matter! Minding inanimate things! It doesn't suit me, you +know. I've got no hands and no patience. I've mucked about with life. +Mucked about with life.” He suddenly addressed himself to me, and for +an instant I started like an eavesdropper discovered. “Whatever you do, +boy, whatever you do, make a Plan. Make a good Plan and stick to it. +Find out what life is about--I never have--and set yourself to do +whatever you ought to do. I admit it's a puzzle.... + +“Those damned houses have been the curse of my life. Stucco white +elephants! Beastly cracked stucco with stains of green--black and green. +Conferva and soot.... Property, they are!... Beware of Things, Dick, +beware of Things! Before you know where you are you are waiting on them +and minding them. They'll eat your life up. Eat up your hours and your +blood and energy! When those houses came to me, I ought to have +sold them--or fled the country. I ought to have cleared out. +Sarcophagi--eaters of men! Oh! the hours and days of work, the nights +of anxiety those vile houses have cost me! The painting! It worked up +my arms; it got all over me. I stank of it. It made me ill. It isn't +living--it's minding.... + +“Property's the curse of life. Property! Ugh! Look at this country all +cut up into silly little parallelograms, look at all those villas we +passed just now and those potato patches and that tarred shanty and the +hedge! Somebody's minding every bit of it like a dog tied to a cart's +tail. Patching it and bothering about it. Bothering! Yapping at every +passer-by. Look at that notice-board! One rotten worried little beast +wants to keep us other rotten little beasts off HIS patch,--God knows +why! Look at the weeds in it. Look at the mended fence!... There's no +property worth having, Dick, but money. That's only good to spend. +All these things. Human souls buried under a cartload of blithering +rubbish.... + +“I'm not a fool, Dick. I have qualities, imagination, a sort of go. I +ought to have made a better thing of life. + +“I'm sure I could have done things. Only the old people pulled my leg. +They started me wrong. They never started me at all. I only began to +find out what life was like when I was nearly forty. + +“If I'd gone to a university; if I'd had any sort of sound training, if +I hadn't slipped into the haphazard places that came easiest.... + +“Nobody warned me. Nobody. It isn't a world we live in, Dick; it's a +cascade of accidents; it's a chaos exasperated by policemen! YOU be +warned in time, Dick. You stick to a plan. Don't wait for any one to +show you the way. Nobody will. There isn't a way till you make one. Get +education, get a good education. Fight your way to the top. It's your +only chance. I've watched you. You'll do no good at digging and property +minding. There isn't a neighbour in Bromstead won't be able to skin you +at suchlike games. You and I are the brainy unstable kind, topside or +nothing. And if ever those blithering houses come to you--don't have +'em. Give them away! Dynamite 'em--and off! LIVE, Dick! I'll get rid of +them for you if I can, Dick, but remember what I say.”... + +So it was my father discoursed, if not in those particular words, yet +exactly in that manner, as he slouched along the southward road, with +resentful eyes becoming less resentful as he talked, and flinging out +clumsy illustrative motions at the outskirts of Bromstead as we passed +along them. That afternoon he hated Bromstead, from its foot-tiring +pebbles up. He had no illusions about Bromstead or himself. I have +the clearest impression of him in his garden-stained tweeds with a +deer-stalker hat on the back of his head and presently a pipe sometimes +between his teeth and sometimes in his gesticulating hand, as he became +diverted by his talk from his original exasperation.... + +This particular afternoon is no doubt mixed up in my memory with +many other afternoons; all sorts of things my father said and did at +different times have got themselves referred to it; it filled me at the +time with a great unprecedented sense of fellowship and it has become +the symbol now for all our intercourse together. If I didn't understand +the things he said, I did the mood he was in. He gave me two very broad +ideas in that talk and the talks I have mingled with it; he gave them +to me very clearly and they have remained fundamental in my mind; one a +sense of the extraordinary confusion and waste and planlessness of the +human life that went on all about us; and the other of a great ideal of +order and economy which he called variously Science and Civilisation, +and which, though I do not remember that he ever used that word, I +suppose many people nowadays would identify with Socialism,--as the +Fabians expound it. + +He was not very definite about this Science, you must understand, but +he seemed always to be waving his hand towards it,--just as his +contemporary Tennyson seems always to be doing--he belonged to his age +and mostly his talk was destructive of the limited beliefs of his time, +he led me to infer rather than actually told me that this Science was +coming, a spirit of light and order, to the rescue of a world groaning +and travailing in muddle for the want of it.... + + +5 + +When I think of Bromstead nowadays I find it inseparably bound up +with the disorders of my father's gardening, and the odd patchings and +paintings that disfigured his houses. It was all of a piece with that. + +Let me try and give something of the quality of Bromstead and something +of its history. It is the quality and history of a thousand places +round and about London, and round and about the other great centres of +population in the world. Indeed it is in a measure the quality of +the whole of this modern world from which we who have the statesman's +passion struggle to evolve, and dream still of evolving order. + +First, then, you must think of Bromstead a hundred and fifty years ago, +as a narrow irregular little street of thatched houses strung out on +the London and Dover Road, a little mellow sample unit of a social order +that had a kind of completeness, at its level, of its own. At that +time its population numbered a little under two thousand people, mostly +engaged in agricultural work or in trades serving agriculture. There was +a blacksmith, a saddler, a chemist, a doctor, a barber, a linen-draper +(who brewed his own beer); a veterinary surgeon, a hardware shop, +and two capacious inns. Round and about it were a number of pleasant +gentlemen's seats, whose owners went frequently to London town in their +coaches along the very tolerable high-road. The church was big enough +to hold the whole population, were people minded to go to church, and +indeed a large proportion did go, and all who married were married in +it, and everybody, to begin with, was christened at its font and buried +at last in its yew-shaded graveyard. Everybody knew everybody in the +place. It was, in fact, a definite place and a real human community in +those days. There was a pleasant old market-house in the middle of the +town with a weekly market, and an annual fair at which much cheerful +merry making and homely intoxication occurred; there was a pack of +hounds which hunted within five miles of London Bridge, and the local +gentry would occasionally enliven the place with valiant cricket matches +for a hundred guineas a side, to the vast excitement of the entire +population. It was very much the same sort of place that it had been for +three or four centuries. A Bromstead Rip van Winkle from 1550 returning +in 1750 would have found most of the old houses still as he had known +them, the same trades a little improved and differentiated one from the +other, the same roads rather more carefully tended, the Inns not very +much altered, the ancient familiar market-house. The occasional wheeled +traffic would have struck him as the most remarkable difference, next +perhaps to the swaggering painted stone monuments instead of brasses +and the protestant severity of the communion-table in the parish +church,--both from the material point of view very little things. A +Rip van Winkle from 1350, again, would have noticed scarcely greater +changes; fewer clergy, more people, and particularly more people of +the middling sort; the glass in the windows of many of the houses, the +stylish chimneys springing up everywhere would have impressed him, and +suchlike details. The place would have had the same boundaries, the same +broad essential features, would have been still itself in the way that +a man is still himself after he has “filled out” a little and grown a +longer beard and changed his clothes. + +But after 1750 something got hold of the world, something that was +destined to alter the scale of every human affair. + +That something was machinery and a vague energetic disposition to +improve material things. In another part of England ingenious people +were beginning to use coal in smelting iron, and were producing metal +in abundance and metal castings in sizes that had hitherto been +unattainable. Without warning or preparation, increment involving +countless possibilities of further increment was coming to the strength +of horses and men. “Power,” all unsuspected, was flowing like a drug +into the veins of the social body. + +Nobody seems to have perceived this coming of power, and nobody had +calculated its probable consequences. Suddenly, almost inadvertently, +people found themselves doing things that would have amazed their +ancestors. They began to construct wheeled vehicles much more easily and +cheaply than they had ever done before, to make up roads and move things +about that had formerly been esteemed too heavy for locomotion, to join +woodwork with iron nails instead of wooden pegs, to achieve all sorts +of mechanical possibilities, to trade more freely and manufacture on a +larger scale, to send goods abroad in a wholesale and systematic way, +to bring back commodities from overseas, not simply spices and fine +commodities, but goods in bulk. The new influence spread to agriculture, +iron appliances replaced wooden, breeding of stock became systematic, +paper-making and printing increased and cheapened. Roofs of slate and +tile appeared amidst and presently prevailed over the original Bromstead +thatch, the huge space of Common to the south was extensively enclosed, +and what had been an ill-defined horse-track to Dover, only passable +by adventurous coaches in dry weather, became the Dover Road, and was +presently the route first of one and then of several daily coaches. +The High Street was discovered to be too tortuous for these awakening +energies, and a new road cut off its worst contortions. Residential +villas appeared occupied by retired tradesmen and widows, who esteemed +the place healthy, and by others of a strange new unoccupied class of +people who had money invested in joint-stock enterprises. First one +and then several boys' boarding-schools came, drawing their pupils from +London,--my grandfather's was one of these. London, twelve miles to the +north-west, was making itself felt more and more. + +But this was only the beginning of the growth period, the first trickle +of the coming flood of mechanical power. Away in the north they were +casting iron in bigger and bigger forms, working their way to the +production of steel on a large scale, applying power in factories. +Bromstead had almost doubted in size again long before the railway came; +there was hardly any thatch left in the High Street, but instead were +houses with handsome brass-knockered front doors and several windows, +and shops with shop-fronts all of square glass panes, and the place was +lighted publicly now by oil lamps--previously only one flickering lamp +outside each of the coaching inns had broken the nocturnal darkness. +And there was talk, it long remained talk,--of gas. The gasworks came in +1834, and about that date my father's three houses must have been built +convenient for the London Road. They mark nearly the beginning of the +real suburban quality; they were let at first to City people still +engaged in business. + +And then hard on the gasworks had come the railway and cheap coal; there +was a wild outbreak of brickfields upon the claylands to the east, and +the Great Growth had begun in earnest. The agricultural placidities that +had formerly come to the very borders of the High Street were broken up +north, west and south, by new roads. This enterprising person and then +that began to “run up” houses, irrespective of every other enterprising +person who was doing the same thing. A Local Board came into existence, +and with much hesitation and penny-wise economy inaugurated drainage +works. Rates became a common topic, a fact of accumulating importance. +Several chapels of zinc and iron appeared, and also a white new church +in commercial Gothic upon the common, and another of red brick in the +residential district out beyond the brickfields towards Chessington. + +The population doubled again and doubled again, and became particularly +teeming in the prolific “working-class” district about the deep-rutted, +muddy, coal-blackened roads between the gasworks, Blodgett's laundries, +and the railway goods-yard. Weekly properties, that is to say small +houses built by small property owners and let by the week, sprang up +also in the Cage Fields, and presently extended right up the London +Road. A single national school in an inconvenient situation set itself +inadequately to collect subscriptions and teach the swarming, sniffing, +grimy offspring of this dingy new population to read. The villages of +Beckington, which used to be three miles to the west, and Blamely four +miles to the east of Bromstead, were experiencing similar distensions +and proliferations, and grew out to meet us. All effect of locality or +community had gone from these places long before I was born; hardly any +one knew any one; there was no general meeting place any more, the old +fairs were just common nuisances haunted by gypsies, van showmen, Cheap +Jacks and London roughs, the churches were incapable of a quarter of the +population. One or two local papers of shameless veniality reported the +proceedings of the local Bench and the local Board, compelled tradesmen +who were interested in these affairs to advertise, used the epithet +“Bromstedian” as one expressing peculiar virtues, and so maintained in +the general mind a weak tradition of some local quality that embraced +us all. Then the parish graveyard filled up and became a scandal, and +an ambitious area with an air of appetite was walled in by a Bromstead +Cemetery Company, and planted with suitably high-minded and sorrowful +varieties of conifer. A stonemason took one of the earlier villas with +a front garden at the end of the High Street, and displayed a supply +of urns on pillars and headstones and crosses in stone, marble, and +granite, that would have sufficed to commemorate in elaborate detail the +entire population of Bromstead as one found it in 1750. + +The cemetery was made when I was a little boy of five or six; I was in +the full tide of building and growth from the first; the second railway +with its station at Bromstead North and the drainage followed when I was +ten or eleven, and all my childish memories are of digging and wheeling, +of woods invaded by building, roads gashed open and littered with iron +pipes amidst a fearful smell of gas, of men peeped at and seen toiling +away deep down in excavations, of hedges broken down and replaced by +planks, of wheelbarrows and builders' sheds, of rivulets overtaken and +swallowed up by drain-pipes. Big trees, and especially elms, cleared +of undergrowth and left standing amid such things, acquired a peculiar +tattered dinginess rather in the quality of needy widow women who have +seen happier days. + +The Ravensbrook of my earlier memories was a beautiful stream. It came +into my world out of a mysterious Beyond, out of a garden, splashing +brightly down a weir which had once been the weir of a mill. (Above the +weir and inaccessible there were bulrushes growing in splendid clumps, +and beyond that, pampas grass, yellow and crimson spikes of hollyhock, +and blue suggestions of wonderland.) From the pool at the foot of +this initial cascade it flowed in a leisurely fashion beside a +footpath,--there were two pretty thatched cottages on the left, and here +were ducks, and there were willows on the right,--and so came to where +great trees grew on high banks on either hand and bowed closer, and at +last met overhead. This part was difficult to reach because of an old +fence, but a little boy might glimpse that long cavern of greenery by +wading. Either I have actually seen kingfishers there, or my father has +described them so accurately to me that he inserted them into my +memory. I remember them there anyhow. Most of that overhung part I never +penetrated at all, but followed the field path with my mother and met +the stream again, where beyond there were flat meadows, Roper's meadows. +The Ravensbrook went meandering across the middle of these, now between +steep banks, and now with wide shallows at the bends where the cattle +waded and drank. Yellow and purple loose-strife and ordinary rushes grew +in clumps along the bank, and now and then a willow. On rare occasions +of rapture one might see a rat cleaning his whiskers at the water's +edge. The deep places were rich with tangled weeds, and in them fishes +lurked--to me they were big fishes--water-boatmen and water-beetles +traversed the calm surface of these still deeps; in one pool were yellow +lilies and water-soldiers, and in the shoaly places hovering fleets of +small fry basked in the sunshine--to vanish in a flash at one's shadow. +In one place, too, were Rapids, where the stream woke with a start from +a dreamless brooding into foaming panic and babbled and hastened. Well +do I remember that half-mile of rivulet; all other rivers and cascades +have their reference to it for me. And after I was eleven, and before we +left Bromstead, all the delight and beauty of it was destroyed. + +The volume of its water decreased abruptly--I suppose the new drainage +works that linked us up with Beckington, and made me first acquainted +with the geological quality of the London clay, had to do with +that--until only a weak uncleansing trickle remained. That at first +did not strike me as a misfortune. An adventurous small boy might walk +dryshod in places hitherto inaccessible. But hard upon that came the +pegs, the planks and carts and devastation. Roper's meadows, being no +longer in fear of floods, were now to be slashed out into parallelograms +of untidy road, and built upon with rows of working-class cottages. The +roads came,--horribly; the houses followed. They seemed to rise in +the night. People moved into them as soon as the roofs were on, mostly +workmen and their young wives, and already in a year some of these raw +houses stood empty again from defaulting tenants, with windows broken +and wood-work warping and rotting. The Ravensbrook became a dump for +old iron, rusty cans, abandoned boots and the like, and was a river +only when unusual rains filled it for a day or so with an inky flood of +surface water.... + +That indeed was my most striking perception in the growth of Bromstead. +The Ravensbrook had been important to my imaginative life; that way +had always been my first choice in all my walks with my mother, and its +rapid swamping by the new urban growth made it indicative of all the +other things that had happened just before my time, or were still, at a +less dramatic pace, happening. I realised that building was the enemy. +I began to understand why in every direction out of Bromstead one walked +past scaffold-poles into litter, why fragments of broken brick and +cinder mingled in every path, and the significance of the universal +notice-boards, either white and new or a year old and torn and battered, +promising sites, proffering houses to be sold or let, abusing and +intimidating passers-by for fancied trespass, and protecting rights of +way. + +It is difficult to disentangle now what I understood at this time and +what I have since come to understand, but it seems to me that even +in those childish days I was acutely aware of an invading and growing +disorder. The serene rhythms of the old established agriculture, I see +now, were everywhere being replaced by cultivation under notice and +snatch crops; hedges ceased to be repaired, and were replaced by cheap +iron railings or chunks of corrugated iron; more and more hoardings +sprang up, and contributed more and more to the nomad tribes of filthy +paper scraps that flew before the wind and overspread the country. +The outskirts of Bromstead were a maze of exploitation roads that +led nowhere, that ended in tarred fences studded with nails (I don't +remember barbed wire in those days; I think the Zeitgeist did not +produce that until later), and in trespass boards that used vehement +language. Broken glass, tin cans, and ashes and paper abounded. Cheap +glass, cheap tin, abundant fuel, and a free untaxed Press had rushed +upon a world quite unprepared to dispose of these blessings when the +fulness of enjoyment was past. + +I suppose one might have persuaded oneself that all this was but the +replacement of an ancient tranquillity, or at least an ancient balance, +by a new order. Only to my eyes, quickened by my father's intimations, +it was manifestly no order at all. It was a multitude of incoordinated +fresh starts, each more sweeping and destructive than the last, and none +of them ever really worked out to a ripe and satisfactory completion. +Each left a legacy of products, houses, humanity, or what not, in its +wake. It was a sort of progress that had bolted; it was change out of +hand, and going at an unprecedented pace nowhere in particular. + +No, the Victorian epoch was not the dawn of a new era; it was a hasty, +trial experiment, a gigantic experiment of the most slovenly and +wasteful kind. I suppose it was necessary; I suppose all things are +necessary. I suppose that before men will discipline themselves to learn +and plan, they must first see in a hundred convincing forms the folly +and muddle that come from headlong, aimless and haphazard methods. +The nineteenth century was an age of demonstrations, some of them very +impressive demonstrations, of the powers that have come to mankind, but +of permanent achievement, what will our descendants cherish? It is hard +to estimate what grains of precious metal may not be found in a mud +torrent of human production on so large a scale, but will any one, a +hundred years from now, consent to live in the houses the Victorians +built, travel by their roads or railways, value the furnishings they +made to live among or esteem, except for curious or historical reasons, +their prevalent art and the clipped and limited literature that +satisfied their souls? + +That age which bore me was indeed a world full of restricted and +undisciplined people, overtaken by power, by possessions and great +new freedoms, and unable to make any civilised use of them whatever; +stricken now by this idea and now by that, tempted first by one +possession and then another to ill-considered attempts; it was my +father's exploitation of his villa gardens on the wholesale level. The +whole of Bromstead as I remember it, and as I saw it last--it is a year +ago now--is a dull useless boiling-up of human activities, an immense +clustering of futilities. It is as unfinished as ever; the builders' +roads still run out and end in mid-field in their old fashion; the +various enterprises jumble in the same hopeless contradiction, if +anything intensified. Pretentious villas jostle slums, and public-house +and tin tabernacle glower at one another across the cat-haunted lot that +intervenes. Roper's meadows are now quite frankly a slum; back doors and +sculleries gape towards the railway, their yards are hung with tattered +washing unashamed; and there seem to be more boards by the railway every +time I pass, advertising pills and pickles, tonics and condiments, and +suchlike solicitudes of a people with no natural health nor appetite +left in them.... + +Well, we have to do better. Failure is not failure nor waste wasted if +it sweeps away illusion and lights the road to a plan. + + +6 + +Chaotic indiscipline, ill-adjusted effort, spasmodic aims, these give +the quality of all my Bromstead memories. The crowning one of them all +rises to desolating tragedy. I remember now the wan spring sunshine of +that Sunday morning, the stiff feeling of best clothes and aggressive +cleanliness and formality, when I and my mother returned from church to +find my father dead. He had been pruning the grape vine. He had +never had a ladder long enough to reach the sill of the third-floor +windows--at house-painting times he had borrowed one from the plumber +who mixed his paint--and he had in his own happy-go-lucky way contrived +a combination of the garden fruit ladder with a battered kitchen table +that served all sorts of odd purposes in an outhouse. He had stayed up +this arrangement by means of the garden roller, and the roller had at +the critical moment--rolled. He was lying close by the garden door with +his head queerly bent back against a broken and twisted rainwater pipe, +an expression of pacific contentment on his face, a bamboo curtain rod +with a tableknife tied to end of it, still gripped in his hand. We had +been rapping for some time at the front door unable to make him hear, +and then we came round by the door in the side trellis into the garden +and so discovered him. + +“Arthur!” I remember my mother crying with the strangest break in her +voice, “What are you doing there? Arthur! And--SUNDAY!” + +I was coming behind her, musing remotely, when the quality of her voice +roused me. She stood as if she could not go near him. He had always +puzzled her so, he and his ways, and this seemed only another enigma. +Then the truth dawned on her, she shrieked as if afraid of him, ran a +dozen steps back towards the trellis door and stopped and clasped her +ineffectual gloved hands, leaving me staring blankly, too astonished for +feeling, at the carelessly flung limbs. + +The same idea came to me also. I ran to her. “Mother!” I cried, pale to +the depths of my spirit, “IS HE DEAD?” + +I had been thinking two minutes before of the cold fruit pie that +glorified our Sunday dinner-table, and how I might perhaps get into the +tree at the end of the garden to read in the afternoon. Now an immense +fact had come down like a curtain and blotted out all my childish world. +My father was lying dead before my eyes.... I perceived that my mother +was helpless and that things must be done. + +“Mother!” I said, “we must get Doctor Beaseley,--and carry him indoors.” + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ SCHOLASTIC + + +1 + +My formal education began in a small preparatory school in Bromstead. +I went there as a day boy. The charge for my instruction was mainly set +off by the periodic visits of my father with a large bag of battered +fossils to lecture to us upon geology. I was one of those fortunate +youngsters who take readily to school work, I had a good memory, +versatile interests and a considerable appetite for commendation, and +when I was barely twelve I got a scholarship at the City Merchants +School and was entrusted with a scholar's railway season ticket to +Victoria. After my father's death a large and very animated and solidly +built uncle in tweeds from Staffordshire, Uncle Minter, my mother's +sister's husband, with a remarkable accent and remarkable vowel sounds, +who had plunged into the Bromstead home once or twice for the night but +who was otherwise unknown to me, came on the scene, sold off the +three gaunt houses with the utmost gusto, invested the proceeds and my +father's life insurance money, and got us into a small villa at Penge +within sight of that immense facade of glass and iron, the Crystal +Palace. Then he retired in a mood of good-natured contempt to his native +habitat again. We stayed at Penge until my mother's death. + +School became a large part of the world to me, absorbing my time and +interest, and I never acquired that detailed and intimate knowledge of +Penge and the hilly villadom round about, that I have of the town and +outskirts of Bromstead. + +It was a district of very much the same character, but it was more +completely urbanised and nearer to the centre of things; there were +the same unfinished roads, the same occasional disconcerted hedges and +trees, the same butcher's horse grazing under a builder's notice-board, +the same incidental lapses into slum. The Crystal Palace grounds cut off +a large part of my walking radius to the west with impassable fences +and forbiddingly expensive turnstiles, but it added to the ordinary +spectacle of meteorology a great variety of gratuitous fireworks which +banged and flared away of a night after supper and drew me abroad to see +them better. Such walks as I took, to Croydon, Wembledon, West Wickham +and Greenwich, impressed upon me the interminable extent of London's +residential suburbs; mile after mile one went, between houses, villas, +rows of cottages, streets of shops, under railway arches, over railway +bridges. I have forgotten the detailed local characteristics--if there +were any--of much of that region altogether. I was only there two years, +and half my perambulations occurred at dusk or after dark. But with +Penge I associate my first realisations of the wonder and beauty of +twilight and night, the effect of dark walls reflecting lamplight, and +the mystery of blue haze-veiled hillsides of houses, the glare of shops +by night, the glowing steam and streaming sparks of railway trains and +railway signals lit up in the darkness. My first rambles in the evening +occurred at Penge--I was becoming a big and independent-spirited +boy--and I began my experience of smoking during these twilight prowls +with the threepenny packets of American cigarettes then just appearing +in the world. + +My life centred upon the City Merchants School. Usually I caught the +eight-eighteen for Victoria, I had a midday meal and tea; four nights a +week I stayed for preparation, and often I was not back home again until +within an hour of my bedtime. I spent my half holidays at school +in order to play cricket and football. This, and a pretty voracious +appetite for miscellaneous reading which was fostered by the Penge +Middleton Library, did not leave me much leisure for local topography. +On Sundays also I sang in the choir at St. Martin's Church, and my +mother did not like me to walk out alone on the Sabbath afternoon, she +herself slumbered, so that I wrote or read at home. I must confess I was +at home as little as I could contrive. + +Home, after my father's death, had become a very quiet and uneventful +place indeed. My mother had either an unimaginative temperament or her +mind was greatly occupied with private religious solicitudes, and I +remember her talking to me but little, and that usually upon topics +I was anxious to evade. I had developed my own view about low-Church +theology long before my father's death, and my meditation upon that +event had finished my secret estrangement from my mother's faith. My +reason would not permit even a remote chance of his being in hell, he +was so manifestly not evil, and this religion would not permit him a +remote chance of being out yet. When I was a little boy my mother had +taught me to read and write and pray and had done many things for me, +indeed she persisted in washing me and even in making my clothes until I +rebelled against these things as indignities. But our minds parted very +soon. She never began to understand the mental processes of my play, +she never interested herself in my school life and work, she could not +understand things I said; and she came, I think, quite insensibly to +regard me with something of the same hopeless perplexity she had felt +towards my father. + +Him she must have wedded under considerable delusions. I do not think +he deceived her, indeed, nor do I suspect him of mercenariness in +their union; but no doubt he played up to her requirements in the half +ingenuous way that was and still is the quality of most wooing, and +presented himself as a very brisk and orthodox young man. I wonder why +nearly all love-making has to be fraudulent. Afterwards he must have +disappointed her cruelly by letting one aspect after another of his +careless, sceptical, experimental temperament appear. Her mind was fixed +and definite, she embodied all that confidence in church and decorum and +the assurances of the pulpit which was characteristic of the large mass +of the English people--for after all, the rather low-Church section WAS +the largest single mass--in early Victorian times. She had dreams, I +suspect, of going to church with him side by side; she in a little +poke bonnet and a large flounced crinoline, all mauve and magenta and +starched under a little lace-trimmed parasol, and he in a tall silk hat +and peg-top trousers and a roll-collar coat, and looking rather like +the Prince Consort,--white angels almost visibly raining benedictions on +their amiable progress. Perhaps she dreamt gently of much-belaced babies +and an interestingly pious (but not too dissenting or fanatical) little +girl or boy or so, also angel-haunted. And I think, too, she must have +seen herself ruling a seemly “home of taste,” with a vivarium in the +conservatory that opened out of the drawing-room, or again, making +preserves in the kitchen. My father's science-teaching, his diagrams +of disembowelled humanity, his pictures of prehistoric beasts that +contradicted the Flood, his disposition towards soft shirts and loose +tweed suits, his inability to use a clothes brush, his spasmodic reading +fits and his bulldog pipes, must have jarred cruelly with her rather +unintelligent anticipations. His wild moments of violent temper when he +would swear and smash things, absurd almost lovable storms that passed +like summer thunder, must have been starkly dreadful to her. She +was constitutionally inadaptable, and certainly made no attempt to +understand or tolerate these outbreaks. She tried them by her standards, +and by her standards they were wrong. Her standards hid him from her. +The blazing things he said rankled in her mind unforgettably. + +As I remember them together they chafed constantly. Her attitude +to nearly all his moods and all his enterprises was a sceptical +disapproval. She treated him as something that belonged to me and not +to her. “YOUR father,” she used to call him, as though I had got him for +her. + +She had married late and she had, I think, become mentally +self-subsisting before her marriage. Even in those Herne Hill days +I used to wonder what was going on in her mind, and I find that old +speculative curiosity return as I write this. She took a considerable +interest in the housework that our generally servantless condition put +upon her--she used to have a charwoman in two or three times a week--but +she did not do it with any great skill. She covered most of our +furniture with flouncey ill-fitting covers, and she cooked plainly and +without very much judgment. The Penge house, as it contained nearly +all our Bromstead things, was crowded with furniture, and is chiefly +associated in my mind with the smell of turpentine, a condiment she used +very freely upon the veneered mahogany pieces. My mother had an equal +dread of “blacks” by day and the “night air,” so that our brightly clean +windows were rarely open. + +She took a morning paper, and she would open it and glance at the +headlines, but she did not read it until the afternoon and then, I +think, she was interested only in the more violent crimes, and in +railway and mine disasters and in the minutest domesticities of the +Royal Family. Most of the books at home were my father's, and I do not +think she opened any of them. She had one or two volumes that dated from +her own youth, and she tried in vain to interest me in them; there was +Miss Strickland's QUEENS OF ENGLAND, a book I remember with particular +animosity, and QUEECHY and the WIDE WIDE WORLD. She made these books of +hers into a class apart by sewing outer covers upon them of calico and +figured muslin. To me in these habiliments they seemed not so much books +as confederated old ladies. + +My mother was also very punctual with her religious duties, and rejoiced +to watch me in the choir. + +On winter evenings she occupied an armchair on the other side of the +table at which I sat, head on hand reading, and she would be darning +stockings or socks or the like. We achieved an effect of rather stuffy +comfortableness that was soporific, and in a passive way I think she +found these among her happy times. On such occasions she was wont to put +her work down on her knees and fall into a sort of thoughtless musing +that would last for long intervals and rouse my curiosity. For like most +young people I could not imagine mental states without definite forms. + +She carried on a correspondence with a number of cousins and friends, +writing letters in a slanting Italian hand and dealing mainly with +births, marriages and deaths, business starts (in the vaguest terms) and +the distresses of bankruptcy. + +And yet, you know, she did have a curious intimate life of her own that +I suspected nothing of at the time, that only now becomes credible +to me. She kept a diary that is still in my possession, a diary of +fragmentary entries in a miscellaneous collection of pocket books. She +put down the texts of the sermons she heard, and queer stiff little +comments on casual visitors,--“Miss G. and much noisy shrieking talk +about games and such frivolities and CROQUAY. A. delighted and VERY +ATTENTIVE.” Such little human entries abound. She had an odd way of +never writing a name, only an initial; my father is always “A.,” and I +am always “D.” It is manifest she followed the domestic events in the +life of the Princess of Wales, who is now Queen Mother, with peculiar +interest and sympathy. “Pray G. all may be well,” she writes in one such +crisis. + +But there are things about myself that I still find too poignant to tell +easily, certain painful and clumsy circumstances of my birth in very +great detail, the distresses of my infantile ailments. Then later I +find such things as this: “Heard D. s----.” The “s” is evidently “swear +“--“G. bless and keep my boy from evil.” And again, with the thin +handwriting shaken by distress: “D. would not go to church, and hardened +his heart and said wicked infidel things, much disrespect of the clergy. +The anthem is tiresome!!! That men should set up to be wiser than +their maker!!!” Then trebly underlined: “I FEAR HIS FATHER'S TEACHING.” + Dreadful little tangle of misapprehensions and false judgments! More +comforting for me to read, “D. very kind and good. He grows more +thoughtful every day.” I suspect myself of forgotten hypocrisies. + +At just one point my mother's papers seem to dip deeper. I think the +death of my father must have stirred her for the first time for many +years to think for herself. Even she could not go on living in any peace +at all, believing that he had indeed been flung headlong into hell. Of +this gnawing solicitude she never spoke to me, never, and for her diary +also she could find no phrases. But on a loose half-sheet of notepaper +between its pages I find this passage that follows, written very +carefully. I do not know whose lines they are nor how she came upon +them. They run:-- + + “And if there be no meeting past the grave; + If all is darkness, silence, yet 'tis rest. + Be not afraid ye waiting hearts that weep, + For God still giveth His beloved sleep, + And if an endless sleep He wills, so best.” + +That scrap of verse amazed me when I read it. I could even wonder if my +mother really grasped the import of what she had copied out. It affected +me as if a stone-deaf person had suddenly turned and joined in a +whispered conversation. It set me thinking how far a mind in its general +effect quite hopelessly limited, might range. After that I went through +all her diaries, trying to find something more than a conventional term +of tenderness for my father. But I found nothing. And yet somehow there +grew upon me the realisation that there had been love.... Her love for +me, on the other hand, was abundantly expressed. + +I knew nothing of that secret life of feeling at the time; such +expression as it found was all beyond my schoolboy range. I did not know +when I pleased her and I did not know when I distressed her. Chiefly +I was aware of my mother as rather dull company, as a mind thorny with +irrational conclusions and incapable of explication, as one believing +quite wilfully and irritatingly in impossible things. So I suppose it +had to be; life was coming to me in new forms and with new requirements. +It was essential to our situation that we should fail to understand. +After this space of years I have come to realisations and attitudes that +dissolve my estrangement from her, I can pierce these barriers, I +can see her and feel her as a loving and feeling and desiring and +muddle-headed person. There are times when I would have her alive again, +if only that I might be kind to her for a little while and give her +some return for the narrow intense affection, the tender desires, she +evidently lavished so abundantly on me. But then again I ask how I +could make that return? And I realise the futility of such dreaming. Her +demand was rigid, and to meet it I should need to act and lie. + +So she whose blood fed me, whose body made me, lies in my memory as I +saw her last, fixed, still, infinitely intimate, infinitely remote.... + +My own case with my mother, however, does not awaken the same regret I +feel when I think of how she misjudged and irked my father, and turned +his weaknesses into thorns for her own tormenting. I wish I could look +back without that little twinge to two people who were both in their +different quality so good. But goodness that is narrow is a pedestrian +and ineffectual goodness. Her attitude to my father seems to me one of +the essentially tragic things that have come to me personally, one of +those things that nothing can transfigure, that REMAIN sorrowful, that I +cannot soothe with any explanation, for as I remember him he was indeed +the most lovable of weak spasmodic men. But my mother had been trained +in a hard and narrow system that made evil out of many things not in +the least evil, and inculcated neither kindliness nor charity. All their +estrangement followed from that. + +These cramping cults do indeed take an enormous toll of human love +and happiness, and not only that but what we Machiavellians must needs +consider, they make frightful breaches in human solidarity. I suppose I +am a deeply religious man, as men of my quality go, but I hate more +and more, as I grow older, the shadow of intolerance cast by religious +organisations. All my life has been darkened by irrational intolerance, +by arbitrary irrational prohibitions and exclusions. Mahometanism +with its fierce proselytism, has, I suppose, the blackest record of +uncharitableness, but most of the Christian sects are tainted, tainted +to a degree beyond any of the anterior paganisms, with this same hateful +quality. It is their exclusive claim that sends them wrong, the vain +ambition that inspires them all to teach a uniform one-sided God and be +the one and only gateway to salvation. Deprecation of all outside the +household of faith, an organised undervaluation of heretical goodness +and lovableness, follows, necessarily. Every petty difference is +exaggerated to the quality of a saving grace or a damning defect. +Elaborate precautions are taken to shield the believer's mind against +broad or amiable suggestions; the faithful are deterred by dark +allusions, by sinister warnings, from books, from theatres, from +worldly conversation, from all the kindly instruments that mingle human +sympathy. For only by isolating its flock can the organisation survive. + +Every month there came to my mother a little magazine called, if I +remember rightly, the HOME CHURCHMAN, with the combined authority of +print and clerical commendation. It was the most evil thing that ever +came into the house, a very devil, a thin little pamphlet with +one woodcut illustration on the front page of each number; now the +uninviting visage of some exponent of the real and only doctrine and +attitudes, now some coral strand in act of welcoming the missionaries of +God's mysterious preferences, now a new church in the Victorian Gothic. +The vile rag it was! A score of vices that shun the policeman have +nothing of its subtle wickedness. It was an outrage upon the natural +kindliness of men. The contents were all admirably adjusted to keep a +spirit in prison. Their force of sustained suggestion was tremendous. +There would be dreadful intimations of the swift retribution that fell +upon individuals for Sabbath-breaking, and upon nations for weakening +towards Ritualism, or treating Roman Catholics as tolerable human +beings; there would be great rejoicings over the conversion of alleged +Jews, and terrible descriptions of the death-beds of prominent infidels +with boldly invented last words,--the most unscrupulous lying; there +would be the appallingly edifying careers of “early piety” lusciously +described, or stories of condemned criminals who traced their final ruin +unerringly to early laxities of the kind that leads people to give up +subscribing to the HOME CHURCHMAN. + +Every month that evil spirit brought about a slump in our mutual love. +My mother used to read the thing and become depressed and anxious for my +spiritual welfare, used to be stirred to unintelligent pestering.... + + +2 + +A few years ago I met the editor of this same HOME CHURCHMAN. It was +at one of the weekly dinners of that Fleet Street dining club, the +Blackfriars. + +I heard the paper's name with a queer little shock and surveyed the +man with interest. No doubt he was only a successor of the purveyor of +discords who darkened my boyhood. It was amazing to find an influence +so terrible embodied in a creature so palpably petty. He was seated some +way down a table at right angles to the one at which I sat, a man of +mean appearance with a greyish complexion, thin, with a square nose, +a heavy wiry moustache and a big Adam's apple sticking out between the +wings of his collar. He ate with considerable appetite and unconcealed +relish, and as his jaw was underhung, he chummed and made the moustache +wave like reeds in the swell of a steamer. It gave him a conscientious +look. After dinner he a little forced himself upon me. At that time, +though the shadow of my scandal was already upon me, I still seemed to +be shaping for great successes, and he was glad to be in conversation +with me and anxious to intimate political sympathy and support. I tried +to make him talk of the HOME CHURCHMAN and the kindred publications he +ran, but he was manifestly ashamed of his job so far as I was concerned. + +“One wants,” he said, pitching himself as he supposed in my key, “to put +constructive ideas into our readers, but they are narrow, you know, very +narrow. Very.” He made his moustache and lips express judicious regret. +“One has to consider them carefully, one has to respect their attitudes. +One dare not go too far with them. One has to feel one's way.” + +He chummed and the moustache bristled. + +A hireling, beyond question, catering for a demand. I gathered there +was a home in Tufnell Park, and three boys to be fed and clothed and +educated.... + +I had the curiosity to buy a copy of his magazine afterwards, and it +seemed much the same sort of thing that had worried my mother in my +boyhood. There was the usual Christian hero, this time with mutton-chop +whiskers and a long bare upper lip. The Jesuits, it seemed, were still +hard at it, and Heaven frightfully upset about the Sunday opening of +museums and the falling birth-rate, and as touchy and vindictive as +ever. There were two vigorous paragraphs upon the utter damnableness +of the Rev. R. J. Campbell, a contagious damnableness I gathered, one +wasn't safe within a mile of Holborn Viaduct, and a foul-mouthed +attack on poor little Wilkins the novelist--who was being baited by the +moralists at that time for making one of his big women characters, not +being in holy wedlock, desire a baby and say so.... + +The broadening of human thought is a slow and complex process. We do go +on, we do get on. But when one thinks that people are living and dying +now, quarrelling and sulking, misled and misunderstanding, vaguely +fearful, condemning and thwarting one another in the close darknesses of +these narrow cults--Oh, God! one wants a gale out of Heaven, one wants a +great wind from the sea! + + +3 + +While I lived at Penge two little things happened to me, trivial in +themselves and yet in their quality profoundly significant. They had +this in common, that they pierced the texture of the life I was quietly +taking for granted and let me see through it into realities--realities +I had indeed known about before but never realised. Each of these +experiences left me with a sense of shock, with all the values in +my life perplexingly altered, attempting readjustment. One of these +disturbing and illuminating events was that I was robbed of a new +pocket-knife and the other that I fell in love. It was altogether +surprising to me to be robbed. You see, as an only child I had always +been fairly well looked after and protected, and the result was an +amazing confidence in the practical goodness of the people one met in +the world. I knew there were robbers in the world, just as I knew there +were tigers; that I was ever likely to meet robber or tiger face to face +seemed equally impossible. + +The knife as I remember it was a particularly jolly one with all sorts +of instruments in it, tweezers and a thing for getting a stone out +of the hoof of a horse, and a corkscrew; it had cost me a carefully +accumulated half-crown, and amounted indeed to a new experience in +knives. I had had it for two or three days, and then one afternoon I +dropped it through a hole in my pocket on a footpath crossing a field +between Penge and Anerley. I heard it fall in the way one does without +at the time appreciating what had happened, then, later, before I got +home, when my hand wandered into my pocket to embrace the still dear +new possession I found it gone, and instantly that memory of something +hitting the ground sprang up into consciousness. I went back and +commenced a search. Almost immediately I was accosted by the leader of a +little gang of four or five extremely dirty and ragged boys of assorted +sizes and slouching carriage who were coming from the Anerley direction. + +“Lost anythink, Matey?” said he. + +I explained. + +“'E's dropped 'is knife,” said my interlocutor, and joined in the +search. + +“What sort of 'andle was it, Matey?” said a small white-faced sniffing +boy in a big bowler hat. + +I supplied the information. His sharp little face scrutinised the ground +about us. + +“GOT it,” he said, and pounced. + +“Give it 'ere,” said the big boy hoarsely, and secured it. + +I walked towards him serenely confident that he would hand it over to +me, and that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. + +“No bloomin' fear!” he said, regarding me obliquely. “Oo said it was +your knife?” + +Remarkable doubts assailed me. “Of course it's my knife,” I said. The +other boys gathered round me. + +“This ain't your knife,” said the big boy, and spat casually. + +“I dropped it just now.” + +“Findin's keepin's, I believe,” said the big boy. + +“Nonsense,” I said. “Give me my knife.” + +“'Ow many blades it got?” + +“Three.” + +“And what sort of 'andle?” + +“Bone.” + +“Got a corkscrew like?” + +“Yes.” + +“Ah! This ain't your knife no'ow. See?” + +He made no offer to show it to me. My breath went. + +“Look here!” I said. “I saw that kid pick it up. It IS my knife.” + +“Rot!” said the big boy, and slowly, deliberately put my knife into his +trouser pocket. + +I braced my soul for battle. All civilisation was behind me, but I doubt +if it kept the colour in my face. I buttoned my jacket and clenched my +fists and advanced on my antagonist--he had, I suppose, the advantage of +two years of age and three inches of height. “Hand over that knife,” I +said. + +Then one of the smallest of the band assailed me with extraordinary +vigour and swiftness from behind, had an arm round my neck and a knee in +my back before I had the slightest intimation of attack, and so got me +down. “I got 'im, Bill,” squeaked this amazing little ruffian. My nose +was flattened by a dirty hand, and as I struck out and hit something +like sacking, some one kicked my elbow. Two or three seemed to be at +me at the same time. Then I rolled over and sat up to discover them all +making off, a ragged flight, footballing my cap, my City Merchants' cap, +amongst them. I leapt to my feet in a passion of indignation and pursued +them. + +But I did not overtake them. We are beings of mixed composition, and I +doubt if mine was a single-minded pursuit. I knew that honour required +me to pursue, and I had a vivid impression of having just been down +in the dust with a very wiry and active and dirty little antagonist of +disagreeable odour and incredible and incalculable unscrupulousness, +kneeling on me and gripping my arm and neck. I wanted of course to be +even with him, but also I doubted if catching him would necessarily +involve that. They kicked my cap into the ditch at the end of the field, +and made off compactly along a cinder lane while I turned aside to +recover my dishonoured headdress. As I knocked the dust out of that and +out of my jacket, and brushed my knees and readjusted my very crumpled +collar, I tried to focus this startling occurrence in my mind. + +I had vague ideas of going to a policeman or of complaining at a police +station, but some boyish instinct against informing prevented that. No +doubt I entertained ideas of vindictive pursuit and murderous reprisals. +And I was acutely enraged whenever I thought of my knife. The thing +indeed rankled in my mind for weeks and weeks, and altered all the +flavour of my world for me. It was the first time I glimpsed the simple +brute violence that lurks and peeps beneath our civilisation. A certain +kindly complacency of attitude towards the palpably lower classes was +qualified for ever. + + +4 + +But the other experience was still more cardinal. It was the first clear +intimation of a new motif in life, the sex motif, that was to rise and +increase and accumulate power and enrichment and interweave with and at +last dominate all my life. + +It was when I was nearly fifteen this happened. It is inseparably +connected in my mind with the dusk of warm September evenings. I never +met the girl I loved by daylight, and I have forgotten her name. It was +some insignificant name. + +Yet the peculiar quality of the adventure keeps it shining darkly like +some deep coloured gem in the common setting of my memories. It came as +something new and strange, something that did not join on to anything +else in my life or connect with any of my thoughts or beliefs or habits; +it was a wonder, a mystery, a discovery about myself, a discovery +about the whole world. Only in after years did sexual feeling lose that +isolation and spread itself out to illuminate and pervade and at last +possess the whole broad vision of life. + +It was in that phase of an urban youth's development, the phase of the +cheap cigarette, that this thing happened. One evening I came by chance +on a number of young people promenading by the light of a row of shops +towards Beckington, and, with all the glory of a glowing cigarette +between my lips, I joined their strolling number. These twilight parades +of young people, youngsters chiefly of the lower middle-class, are one +of the odd social developments of the great suburban growths--unkindly +critics, blind to the inner meanings of things, call them, I believe, +Monkeys' Parades--the shop apprentices, the young work girls, the boy +clerks and so forth, stirred by mysterious intimations, spend their +first-earned money upon collars and ties, chiffon hats, smart lace +collars, walking-sticks, sunshades or cigarettes, and come valiantly +into the vague transfiguring mingling of gaslight and evening, to walk +up and down, to eye meaningly, even to accost and make friends. It is +a queer instinctive revolt from the narrow limited friendless homes in +which so many find themselves, a going out towards something, romance if +you will, beauty, that has suddenly become a need--a need that hitherto +has lain dormant and unsuspected. They promenade. + +Vulgar!--it is as vulgar as the spirit that calls the moth abroad in the +evening and lights the body of the glow-worm in the night. I made my +way through the throng, a little contemptuously as became a public +schoolboy, my hands in my pockets--none of your cheap canes for me!--and +very careful of the lie of my cigarette upon my lips. And two girls +passed me, one a little taller than the other, with dim warm-tinted +faces under clouds of dark hair and with dark eyes like pools reflecting +stars. + +I half turned, and the shorter one glanced back at me over her +shoulder--I could draw you now the pose of her cheek and neck and +shoulder--and instantly I was as passionately in love with the girl as +I have ever been before or since, as any man ever was with any woman. I +turned about and followed them, I flung away my cigarette ostentatiously +and lifted my school cap and spoke to them. + +The girl answered shyly with her dark eyes on my face. What I said +and what she said I cannot remember, but I have little doubt it was +something absolutely vapid. It really did not matter; the thing was we +had met. I felt as I think a new-hatched moth must feel when suddenly +its urgent headlong searching brings it in tremulous amazement upon its +mate. + +We met, covered from each other, with all the nets of civilisation +keeping us apart. We walked side by side. + +It led to scarcely more than that. I think we met four or five times +altogether, and always with her nearly silent elder sister on the other +side of her. We walked on the last two occasions arm in arm, furtively +caressing each other's hands, we went away from the glare of the shops +into the quiet roads of villadom, and there we whispered instead of +talking and looked closely into one another's warm and shaded face. +“Dear,” I whispered very daringly, and she answered, “Dear!” We had a +vague sense that we wanted more of that quality of intimacy and more. We +wanted each other as one wants beautiful music again or to breathe again +the scent of flowers. + +And that is all there was between us. The events are nothing, the thing +that matters is the way in which this experience stabbed through the +common stuff of life and left it pierced, with a light, with a huge new +interest shining through the rent. + +When I think of it I can recall even now the warm mystery of her face, +her lips a little apart, lips that I never kissed, her soft shadowed +throat, and I feel again the sensuous stir of her proximity.... + +Those two girls never told me their surname nor let me approach their +house. They made me leave them at the corner of a road of small houses +near Penge Station. And quite abruptly, without any intimation, they +vanished and came to the meeting place no more, they vanished as a +moth goes out of a window into the night, and left me possessed of an +intolerable want.... + +The affair pervaded my existence for many weeks. I could not do my work +and I could not rest at home. Night after night I promenaded up and down +that Monkeys' Parade full of an unappeasable desire, with a thwarted +sense of something just begun that ought to have gone on. I went +backwards and forwards on the way to the vanishing place, and at last +explored the forbidden road that had swallowed them up. But I never saw +her again, except that later she came to me, my symbol of womanhood, in +dreams. How my blood was stirred! I lay awake of nights whispering in +the darkness for her. I prayed for her. + +Indeed that girl, who probably forgot the last vestiges of me when her +first real kiss came to her, ruled and haunted me, gave a Queen to my +imagination and a texture to all my desires until I became a man. + +I generalised her at last. I suddenly discovered that poetry was about +her and that she was the key to all that had hitherto seemed nonsense +about love. I took to reading novels, and if the heroine could not +possibly be like her, dusky and warm and starlike, I put the book +aside.... + +I hesitate and add here one other confession. I want to tell this thing +because it seems to me we are altogether too restrained and secretive +about such matters. The cardinal thing in life sneaks in to us darkly +and shamefully like a thief in the night. + +One day during my Cambridge days--it must have been in my first year +before I knew Hatherleigh--I saw in a print-shop window near the Strand +an engraving of a girl that reminded me sharply of Penge and its dusky +encounter. It was just a half length of a bare-shouldered, bare-breasted +Oriental with arms akimbo, smiling faintly. I looked at it, went my way, +then turned back and bought it. I felt I must have it. The odd thing +is that I was more than a little shamefaced about it. I did not have it +framed and hung in my room open to the criticism of my friends, but I +kept it in the drawer of my writing-table. And I kept that drawer locked +for a year. It speedily merged with and became identified with the dark +girl of Penge. That engraving became in a way my mistress. Often when I +had sported my oak and was supposed to be reading, I was sitting with it +before me. + +Obeying some instinct I kept the thing very secret indeed. For a time +nobody suspected what was locked in my drawer nor what was locked in me. +I seemed as sexless as my world required. + + +5 + +These things stabbed through my life, intimations of things above and +below and before me. They had an air of being no more than incidents, +interruptions. + +The broad substance of my existence at this time was the City Merchants +School. Home was a place where I slept and read, and the mooning +explorations of the south-eastern postal district which occupied the +restless evenings and spare days of my vacations mere interstices, +giving glimpses of enigmatical lights and distant spaces between the +woven threads of a school-boy's career. School life began for me every +morning at Herne Hill, for there I was joined by three or four other +boys and the rest of the way we went together. Most of the streets and +roads we traversed in our morning's walk from Victoria are still intact, +the storms of rebuilding that have submerged so much of my boyhood's +London have passed and left them, and I have revived the impression of +them again and again in recent years as I have clattered dinnerward in a +hansom or hummed along in a motor cab to some engagement. The main gate +still looks out with the same expression of ancient well-proportioned +kindliness upon St. Margaret's Close. There are imposing new science +laboratories in Chambers Street indeed, but the old playing fields are +unaltered except for the big electric trams that go droning and spitting +blue flashes along the western boundary. I know Ratten, the new Head, +very well, but I have not been inside the school to see if it has +changed at all since I went up to Cambridge. + +I took all they put before us very readily as a boy, for I had a mind of +vigorous appetite, but since I have grown mentally to man's estate and +developed a more and more comprehensive view of our national process +and our national needs, I am more and more struck by the oddity of the +educational methods pursued, their aimless disconnectedness from the +constructive forces in the community. I suppose if we are to view the +public school as anything more than an institution that has just chanced +to happen, we must treat it as having a definite function towards the +general scheme of the nation, as being in a sense designed to take the +crude young male of the more or less responsible class, to correct +his harsh egotisms, broaden his outlook, give him a grasp of the +contemporary developments he will presently be called upon to influence +and control, and send him on to the university to be made a leading and +ruling social man. It is easy enough to carp at schoolmasters and set up +for an Educational Reformer, I know, but still it is impossible not +to feel how infinitely more effectually--given certain impossibilities +perhaps--the job might be done. + +My memory of school has indeed no hint whatever of that quality of +elucidation it seems reasonable to demand from it. Here all about me +was London, a vast inexplicable being, a vortex of gigantic forces, that +filled and overwhelmed me with impressions, that stirred my imagination +to a perpetual vague enquiry; and my school not only offered no key +to it, but had practically no comment to make upon it at all. We were +within three miles of Westminster and Charing Cross, the government +offices of a fifth of mankind were all within an hour's stroll, great +economic changes were going on under our eyes, now the hoardings flamed +with election placards, now the Salvation Army and now the unemployed +came trailing in procession through the winter-grey streets, now the +newspaper placards outside news-shops told of battles in strange places, +now of amazing discoveries, now of sinister crimes, abject squalor and +poverty, imperial splendour and luxury, Buckingham Palace, Rotten Row, +Mayfair, the slums of Pimlico, garbage-littered streets of bawling +costermongers, the inky silver of the barge-laden Thames--such was the +background of our days. We went across St. Margaret's Close and through +the school gate into a quiet puerile world apart from all these things. +We joined in the earnest acquirement of all that was necessary for Greek +epigrams and Latin verse, and for the rest played games. We dipped down +into something clear and elegantly proportioned and time-worn and for +all its high resolve of stalwart virility a little feeble, like our +blackened and decayed portals by Inigo Jones. + +Within, we were taught as the chief subjects of instruction, Latin and +Greek. We were taught very badly because the men who taught us did not +habitually use either of these languages, nobody uses them any more +now except perhaps for the Latin of a few Levantine monasteries. At the +utmost our men read them. We were taught these languages because long +ago Latin had been the language of civilisation; the one way of escape +from the narrow and localised life had lain in those days through Latin, +and afterwards Greek had come in as the vehicle of a flood of new and +amazing ideas. Once these two languages had been the sole means of +initiation to the detached criticism and partial comprehension of the +world. I can imagine the fierce zeal of our first Heads, Gardener and +Roper, teaching Greek like passionate missionaries, as a progressive +Chinaman might teach English to the boys of Pekin, clumsily, +impatiently, with rod and harsh urgency, but sincerely, patriotically, +because they felt that behind it lay revelations, the irresistible +stimulus to a new phase of history. That was long ago. A new great +world, a vaster Imperialism had arisen about the school, had assimilated +all these amazing and incredible ideas, had gone on to new and yet more +amazing developments of its own. But the City Merchants School still +made the substance of its teaching Latin and Greek, still, with no +thought of rotating crops, sowed in a dream amidst the harvesting. + +There is no fierceness left in the teaching now. Just after I went up +to Trinity, Gates, our Head, wrote a review article in defence of our +curriculum. In this, among other indiscretions, he asserted that it was +impossible to write good English without an illuminating knowledge of +the classic tongues, and he split an infinitive and failed to button up +a sentence in saying so. His main argument conceded every objection +a reasonable person could make to the City Merchants' curriculum. He +admitted that translation had now placed all the wisdom of the past at +a common man's disposal, that scarcely a field of endeavour remained +in which modern work had not long since passed beyond the ancient +achievement. He disclaimed any utility. But there was, he said, a +peculiar magic in these grammatical exercises no other subjects of +instruction possessed. Nothing else provided the same strengthening and +orderly discipline for the mind. + +He said that, knowing the Senior Classics he did, himself a Senior +Classic! + +Yet in a dim confused way I think he was making out a case. In schools +as we knew them, and with the sort of assistant available, the sort of +assistant who has been trained entirely on the old lines, he could +see no other teaching so effectual in developing attention, restraint, +sustained constructive effort and various yet systematic adjustment. And +that was as far as his imagination could go. + +It is infinitely easier to begin organised human affairs than end them; +the curriculum and the social organisation of the English public school +are the crowning instances of that. They go on because they have begun. +Schools are not only immortal institutions but reproductive ones. Our +founder, Jabez Arvon, knew nothing, I am sure, of Gates' pedagogic +values and would, I feel certain, have dealt with them disrespectfully. +But public schools and university colleges sprang into existence +correlated, the scholars went on to the universities and came back to +teach the schools, to teach as they themselves had been taught, before +they had ever made any real use of the teaching; the crowd of boys +herded together, a crowd perpetually renewed and unbrokenly the same, +adjusted itself by means of spontaneously developed institutions. In +a century, by its very success, this revolutionary innovation of +Renascence public schools had become an immense tradition woven closely +into the fabric of the national life. Intelligent and powerful people +ceased to talk Latin or read Greek, they had got what was wanted, but +that only left the schoolmaster the freer to elaborate his point. Since +most men of any importance or influence in the country had been through +the mill, it was naturally a little difficult to persuade them that +it was not quite the best and most ennobling mill the wit of man could +devise. And, moreover, they did not want their children made strange to +them. There was all the machinery and all the men needed to teach the +old subjects, and none to teach whatever new the critic might propose. +Such science instruction as my father gave seemed indeed the uninviting +alternative to the classical grind. It was certainly an altogether +inferior instrument at that time. + +So it was I occupied my mind with the exact study of dead languages +for seven long years. It was the strangest of detachments. We would sit +under the desk of such a master as Topham like creatures who had fallen +into an enchanted pit, and he would do his considerable best to work us +up to enthusiasm for, let us say, a Greek play. If we flagged he would +lash himself to revive us. He would walk about the class-room mouthing +great lines in a rich roar, and asking us with a flushed face and +shining eyes if it was not “GLORIOUS.” The very sight of Greek letters +brings back to me the dingy, faded, ink-splashed quality of our +class-room, the banging of books, Topham's disordered hair, the sheen of +his alpaca gown, his deep unmusical intonations and the wide striding +of his creaking boots. Glorious! And being plastic human beings we would +consent that it was glorious, and some of us even achieved an answering +reverberation and a sympathetic flush. I at times responded freely. We +all accepted from him unquestioningly that these melodies, these strange +sounds, exceeded any possibility of beauty that lay in the Gothic +intricacy, the splash and glitter, the jar and recovery, the stabbing +lights, the heights and broad distances of our English tongue. That +indeed was the chief sin of him. It was not that he was for Greek and +Latin, but that he was fiercely against every beauty that was neither +classic nor deferred to classical canons. + +And what exactly did we make of it, we seniors who understood it best? +We visualised dimly through that dust and the grammatical difficulties, +the spectacle of the chorus chanting grotesquely, helping out +protagonist and antagonist, masked and buskined, with the telling of +incomprehensible parricides, of inexplicable incest, of gods faded +beyond symbolism, of that Relentless Law we did not believe in for a +moment, that no modern western European can believe in. We thought +of the characters in the unconvincing wigs and costumes of our school +performance. No Gilbert Murray had come as yet to touch these things +to life again. It was like the ghost of an antiquarian's toy theatre, +a ghost that crumbled and condensed into a gritty dust of construing as +one looked at it. + +Marks, shindies, prayers and punishments, all flavoured with the +leathery stuffiness of time-worn Big Hall.... + +And then out one would come through our grey old gate into the evening +light and the spectacle of London hurrying like a cataract, London in +black and brown and blue and gleaming silver, roaring like the very loom +of Time. We came out into the new world no teacher has yet had the power +and courage to grasp and expound. Life and death sang all about one, +joys and fears on such a scale, in such an intricacy as never Greek +nor Roman knew. The interminable procession of horse omnibuses went +lumbering past, bearing countless people we knew not whence, we knew +not whither. Hansoms clattered, foot passengers jostled one, a thousand +appeals of shop and boarding caught the eye. The multi-coloured lights +of window and street mingled with the warm glow of the declining day +under the softly flushing London skies; the ever-changing placards, +the shouting news-vendors, told of a kaleidoscopic drama all about the +globe. One did not realise what had happened to us, but the voice +of Topham was suddenly drowned and lost, he and his minute, remote +gesticulations.... + +That submerged and isolated curriculum did not even join on to living +interests where it might have done so. We were left absolutely to the +hints of the newspapers, to casual political speeches, to the cartoons +of the comic papers or a chance reading of some Socialist pamphlet for +any general ideas whatever about the huge swirling world process +in which we found ourselves. I always look back with particular +exasperation to the cessation of our modern history at the year 1815. +There it pulled up abruptly, as though it had come upon something +indelicate.... + +But, after all, what would Topham or Flack have made of the huge +adjustments of the nineteenth century? Flack was the chief cricketer on +the staff; he belonged to that great cult which pretends that the place +of this or that county in the struggle for the championship is a matter +of supreme importance to boys. He obliged us to affect a passionate +interest in the progress of county matches, to work up unnatural +enthusiasms. What a fuss there would be when some well-trained boy, +panting as if from Marathon, appeared with an evening paper! “I say, you +chaps, Middlesex all out for a hundred and five!” + +Under Flack's pressure I became, I confess, a cricket humbug of the +first class. I applied myself industriously year by year to mastering +scores and averages; I pretended that Lords or the Oval were the places +nearest Paradise for me. (I never went to either.) Through a slight +mistake about the county boundary I adopted Surrey for my loyalty, +though as a matter of fact we were by some five hundred yards or so in +Kent. It did quite as well for my purposes. I bowled rather straight and +fast, and spent endless hours acquiring the skill to bowl Flack out. He +was a bat in the Corinthian style, rich and voluminous, and succumbed +very easily to a low shooter or an unexpected Yorker, but usually he was +caught early by long leg. The difficulty was to bowl him before he got +caught. He loved to lift a ball to leg. After one had clean bowled him +at the practice nets one deliberately gave him a ball to leg just to +make him feel nice again. + +Flack went about a world of marvels dreaming of leg hits. He has been +observed, going across the Park on his way to his highly respectable +club in Piccadilly, to break from profound musings into a strange brief +dance that ended with an imaginary swipe with his umbrella, a roofer, +over the trees towards Buckingham Palace. The hit accomplished, Flack +resumed his way. + +Inadequately instructed foreigners would pass him in terror, needlessly +alert. + + +6 + +These schoolmasters move through my memory as always a little distant +and more than a little incomprehensible. Except when they wore flannels, +I saw them almost always in old college caps and gowns, a uniform which +greatly increased their detachment from the world of actual men. Gates, +the head, was a lean loose-limbed man, rather stupid I discovered when I +reached the Sixth and came into contact with him, but honest, simple +and very eager to be liberal-minded. He was bald, with an almost conical +baldness, with a grizzled pointed beard, small featured and, under the +stresses of a Zeitgeist that demanded liberality, with an expression of +puzzled but resolute resistance to his own unalterable opinions. He made +a tall dignified figure in his gown. In my junior days he spoke to me +only three or four times, and then he annoyed me by giving me a wrong +surname; it was a sore point because I was an outsider and not one of +the old school families, the Shoesmiths, the Naylors, the Marklows, the +Tophams, the Pevises and suchlike, who came generation after generation. +I recall him most vividly against the background of faded brown +book-backs in the old library in which we less destructive seniors were +trusted to work, with the light from the stained-glass window falling +in coloured patches on his face. It gave him the appearance of having no +colour of his own. He had a habit of scratching the beard on his cheek +as he talked, and he used to come and consult us about things and +invariably do as we said. That, in his phraseology, was “maintaining the +traditions of the school.” + +He had indeed an effect not of a man directing a school, but of a +man captured and directed by a school. Dead and gone Elizabethans had +begotten a monster that could carry him about in its mouth. + +Yet being a man, as I say, with his hair a little stirred by a Zeitgeist +that made for change, Gates did at times display a disposition towards +developments. City Merchants had no modern side, and utilitarian spirits +were carping in the PALL MALL GAZETTE and elsewhere at the omissions +from our curriculum, and particularly at our want of German. Moreover, +four classes still worked together with much clashing and uproar in the +old Big Hall that had once held in a common tumult the entire school. +Gates used to come and talk to us older fellows about these things. + +“I don't wish to innovate unduly,” he used to say. “But we ought to get +in some German, you know,--for those who like it. The army men will be +wanting it some of these days.” + +He referred to the organisation of regular evening preparation for the +lower boys in Big Hall as a “revolutionary change,” but he achieved it, +and he declared he began the replacement of the hacked wooden tables, at +which the boys had worked since Tudor days, by sloping desks with safety +inkpots and scientifically adjustable seats, “with grave misgivings.” + And though he never birched a boy in his life, and was, I am convinced, +morally incapable of such a scuffle, he retained the block and birch in +the school through all his term of office, and spoke at the Headmasters' +Conference in temperate approval of corporal chastisement, comparing it, +dear soul! to the power of the sword.... + +I wish I could, in some measure and without tediousness, convey the +effect of his discourses to General Assembly in Big Hall. But that +is like trying to draw the obverse and reverse of a sixpence worn to +complete illegibility. His tall fine figure stood high on the days, his +thoughtful tenor filled the air as he steered his hazardous way +through sentences that dragged inconclusive tails and dropped redundant +prepositions. And he pleaded ever so urgently, ever so finely, that +what we all knew for Sin was sinful, and on the whole best avoided +altogether, and so went on with deepening notes and even with short +arresting gestures of the right arm and hand, to stir and exhort us +towards goodness, towards that modern, unsectarian goodness, goodness +in general and nothing in particular, which the Zeitgeist seemed to +indicate in those transitional years. + + +7 + +The school never quite got hold of me. Partly I think that was because +I was a day-boy and so freer than most of the boys, partly because of +a temperamental disposition to see things in my own way and have my +private dreams, partly because I was a little antagonised by the family +traditions that ran through the school. I was made to feel at first +that I was a rank outsider, and I never quite forgot it. I suffered very +little bullying, and I never had a fight--in all my time there were only +three fights--but I followed my own curiosities. I was already a +very keen theologian and politician before I was fifteen. I was also +intensely interested in modern warfare. I read the morning papers in +the Reading Room during the midday recess, never missed the illustrated +weeklies, and often when I could afford it I bought a PALL MALL GAZETTE +on my way home. + +I do not think that I was very exceptional in that; most intelligent +boys, I believe, want naturally to be men, and are keenly interested +in men's affairs. There is not the universal passion for a magnified +puerility among them it is customary to assume. I was indeed a voracious +reader of everything but boys' books--which I detested--and fiction. I +read histories, travel, popular science and controversy with particular +zest, and I loved maps. School work and school games were quite +subordinate affairs for me. I worked well and made a passable figure +at games, and I do not think I was abnormally insensitive to the fine +quality of our school, to the charm of its mediaeval nucleus, its +Gothic cloisters, its scraps of Palladian and its dignified Georgian +extensions; the contrast of the old quiet, that in spite of our presence +pervaded it everywhere, with the rushing and impending London all +about it, was indeed a continual pleasure to me. But these things were +certainly not the living and central interests of my life. + +I had to conceal my wider outlook to a certain extent--from the masters +even more than from the boys. Indeed I only let myself go freely with +one boy, Britten, my especial chum, the son of the Agent-General for +East Australia. We two discovered in a chance conversation A PROPOS of a +map in the library that we were both of us curious why there were Malays +in Madagascar, and how the Mecca pilgrims came from the East Indies +before steamships were available. Neither of us had suspected that +there was any one at all in the school who knew or cared a rap about the +Indian Ocean, except as water on the way to India. But Britten had come +up through the Suez Canal, and his ship had spoken a pilgrim ship on +the way. It gave him a startling quality of living knowledge. From these +pilgrims we got to a comparative treatment of religions, and from that, +by a sudden plunge, to entirely sceptical and disrespectful confessions +concerning Gates' last outbreak of simple piety in School Assembly. We +became congenial intimates from that hour. + +The discovery of Britten happened to me when we were both in the Lower +Fifth. Previously there had been a watertight compartment between the +books I read and the thoughts they begot on the one hand and human +intercourse on the other. Now I really began my higher education, and +aired and examined and developed in conversation the doubts, the ideas, +the interpretations that had been forming in my mind. As we were both +day-boys with a good deal of control over our time we organised walks +and expeditions together, and my habit of solitary and rather vague +prowling gave way to much more definite joint enterprises. I went +several times to his house, he was the youngest of several brothers, one +of whom was a medical student and let us assist at the dissection of a +cat, and once or twice in vacation time he came to Penge, and we went +with parcels of provisions to do a thorough day in the grounds and +galleries of the Crystal Palace, ending with the fireworks at close +quarters. We went in a river steamboat down to Greenwich, and fired by +that made an excursion to Margate and back; we explored London docks +and Bethnal Green Museum, Petticoat Lane and all sorts of out-of-the-way +places together. + +We confessed shyly to one another a common secret vice, “Phantom +warfare.” When we walked alone, especially in the country, we had both +developed the same practice of fighting an imaginary battle about us +as we walked. As we went along we were generals, and our attacks pushed +along on either side, crouching and gathering behind hedges, cresting +ridges, occupying copses, rushing open spaces, fighting from house to +house. The hillsides about Penge were honeycombed in my imagination with +the pits and trenches I had created to check a victorious invader coming +out of Surrey. For him West Kensington was chiefly important as the +scene of a desperate and successful last stand of insurrectionary troops +(who had seized the Navy, the Bank and other advantages) against a +royalist army--reinforced by Germans--advancing for reasons best known +to themselves by way of Harrow and Ealing. It is a secret and solitary +game, as we found when we tried to play it together. We made a success +of that only once. All the way down to Margate we schemed defences and +assailed and fought them as we came back against the sunset. Afterwards +we recapitulated all that conflict by means of a large scale map of the +Thames and little paper ironclads in plan cut out of paper. + +A subsequent revival of these imaginings was brought about by Britten's +luck in getting, through a friend of his father's, admission for us both +to the spectacle of volunteer officers fighting the war game in Caxton +Hall. We developed a war game of our own at Britten's home with nearly a +couple of hundred lead soldiers, some excellent spring cannons that shot +hard and true at six yards, hills of books and a constantly elaborated +set of rules. For some months that occupied an immense proportion of +our leisure. Some of our battles lasted several days. We kept the game a +profound secret from the other fellows. They would not have understood. + +And we also began, it was certainly before we were sixteen, to write, +for the sake of writing. We liked writing. We had discovered Lamb +and the best of the middle articles in such weeklies as the SATURDAY +GAZETTE, and we imitated them. Our minds were full of dim uncertain +things we wanted to drag out into the light of expression. Britten had +got hold of IN MEMORIAM, and I had disinterred Pope's ESSAY ON MAN and +RABBI BEN EZRA, and these things had set our theological and cosmic +solicitudes talking. I was somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, +I know, when he and I walked along the Thames Embankment confessing +shamefully to one another that we had never read Lucretius. We thought +every one who mattered had read Lucretius. + +When I was nearly sixteen my mother was taken ill very suddenly, +and died of some perplexing complaint that involved a post-mortem +examination; it was, I think, the trouble that has since those days +been recognised as appendicitis. This led to a considerable change in +my circumstances; the house at Penge was given up, and my Staffordshire +uncle arranged for me to lodge during school terms with a needy +solicitor and his wife in Vicars Street, S. W., about a mile and a half +from the school. So it was I came right into London; I had almost two +years of London before I went to Cambridge. + +Those were our great days together. Afterwards we were torn apart; +Britten went to Oxford, and our circumstances never afterwards threw us +continuously together until the days of the BLUE WEEKLY. + +As boys, we walked together, read and discussed the same books, pursued +the same enquiries. We got a reputation as inseparables and the nickname +of the Rose and the Lily, for Britten was short and thick-set with +dark close curling hair and a ruddy Irish type of face; I was lean and +fair-haired and some inches taller than he. Our talk ranged widely and +yet had certain very definite limitations. We were amazingly free with +politics and religion, we went to that little meeting-house of William +Morris's at Hammersmith and worked out the principles of Socialism +pretty thoroughly, and we got up the Darwinian theory with the help +of Britten's medical-student brother and the galleries of the Natural +History Museum in Cromwell Road. Those wonderful cases on the ground +floor illustrating mimicry, dimorphism and so forth, were new in our +times, and we went through them with earnest industry and tried over our +Darwinism in the light of that. Such topics we did exhaustively. But on +the other hand I do not remember any discussion whatever of human sex or +sexual relationships. There, in spite of intense secret curiosities, our +lips were sealed by a peculiar shyness. And I do not believe we ever had +occasion either of us to use the word “love.” It was not only that we +were instinctively shy of the subject, but that we were mightily ashamed +of the extent of our ignorance and uncertainty in these matters. We +evaded them elaborately with an assumption of exhaustive knowledge. + +We certainly had no shyness about theology. We marked the emancipation +of our spirits from the frightful teachings that had oppressed our +boyhood, by much indulgence in blasphemous wit. We had a secret +literature of irreverent rhymes, and a secret art of theological +caricature. Britten's father had delighted his family by reading aloud +from Dr. Richard Garnett's TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, and Britten conveyed +the precious volume to me. That and the BAB BALLADS were the inspiration +of some of our earliest lucubrations. + +For an imaginative boy the first experience of writing is like a tiger's +first taste of blood, and our literary flowerings led very directly to +the revival of the school magazine, which had been comatose for some +years. But there we came upon a disappointment. + + +8 + +In that revival we associated certain other of the Sixth Form boys, +and notably one for whom our enterprise was to lay the foundations of a +career that has ended in the House of Lords, Arthur Cossington, now +Lord Paddockhurst. Cossington was at that time a rather heavy, rather +good-looking boy who was chiefly eminent in cricket, an outsider even as +we were and preoccupied no doubt, had we been sufficiently detached to +observe him, with private imaginings very much of the same quality +and spirit as our own. He was, we were inclined to think, rather a +sentimentalist, rather a poseur, he affected a concise emphatic style, +played chess very well, betrayed a belief in will-power, and earned +Britten's secret hostility, Britten being a sloven, by the invariable +neatness of his collars and ties. He came into our magazine with a +vigour that we found extremely surprising and unwelcome. + +Britten and I had wanted to write. We had indeed figured our project +modestly as a manuscript magazine of satirical, liberal and brilliant +literature by which in some rather inexplicable way the vague tumult of +ideas that teemed within us was to find form and expression; Cossington, +it was manifest from the outset, wanted neither to write nor writing, +but a magazine. I remember the inaugural meeting in Shoesmith major's +study--we had had great trouble in getting it together--and how +effectually Cossington bolted with the proposal. + +“I think we fellows ought to run a magazine,” said Cossington. “The +school used to have one. A school like this ought to have a magazine.” + +“The last one died in '84,” said Shoesmith from the hearthrug. “Called +the OBSERVER. Rot rather.” + +“Bad title,” said Cossington. + +“There was a TATLER before that,” said Britten, sitting on the writing +table at the window that was closed to deaden the cries of the Lower +School at play, and clashing his boots together. + +“We want something suggestive of City Merchants.” + +“CITY MERCHANDIZE,” said Britten. + +“Too fanciful. What of ARVONIAN? Richard Arvon was our founder, and it +seems almost a duty--” + +“They call them all -usians or -onians,” said Britten. + +“I like CITY MERCHANDIZE,” I said. “We could probably find a quotation +to suggest--oh! mixed good things.” + +Cossington regarded me abstractedly. + +“Don't want to put the accent on the City, do we?” said Shoesmith, who +had a feeling for county families, and Naylor supported him by a murmur +of approval. + +“We ought to call it the ARVONIAN,” decided Cossington, “and we might +very well have underneath, 'With which is incorporated the OBSERVER.' +That picks up the old traditions, makes an appeal to old boys and all +that, and it gives us something to print under the title.” + +I still held out for CITY MERCHANDIZE, which had taken my fancy. “Some +of the chaps' people won't like it,” said Naylor, “certain not to. And +it sounds Rum.” + +“Sounds Weird,” said a boy who had not hitherto spoken. + +“We aren't going to do anything Queer,” said Shoesmith, pointedly not +looking at Britten. + +The question of the title had manifestly gone against us. “Oh! HAVE it +ARVONIAN,” I said. + +“And next, what size shall we have?” said Cossington. + +“Something like MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE--or LONGMANS'; LONGMANS' is better +because it has a whole page, not columns. It makes no end of difference +to one's effects.” + +“What effects?” asked Shoesmith abruptly. + +“Oh! a pause or a white line or anything. You've got to write closer for +a double column. It's nuggetty. You can't get a swing on your prose.” I +had discussed this thoroughly with Britten. + +“If the fellows are going to write--” began Britten. + +“We ought to keep off fine writing,” said Shoesmith. “It's cheek. I vote +we don't have any.” + +“We sha'n't get any,” said Cossington, and then as an olive branch to +me, “unless Remington does a bit. Or Britten. But it's no good making +too much space for it.” + +“We ought to be very careful about the writing,” said Shoesmith. “We +don't want to give ourselves away.” + +“I vote we ask old Topham to see us through,” said Naylor. + +Britten groaned aloud and every one regarded him. “Greek epigrams on the +fellows' names,” he said. “Small beer in ancient bottles. Let's get a +stuffed broody hen to SIT on the magazine.” + +“We might do worse than a Greek epigram,” said Cossington. “One in each +number. It--it impresses parents and keeps up our classical tradition. +And the masters CAN help. We don't want to antagonise them. Of +course--we've got to departmentalise. Writing is only one section of the +thing. The ARVONIAN has to stand for the school. There's questions +of space and questions of expense. We can't turn out a great chunk of +printed prose like--like wet cold toast and call it a magazine.” + +Britten writhed, appreciating the image. + +“There's to be a section of sports. YOU must do that.” + +“I'm not going to do any fine writing,” said Shoesmith. + +“What you've got to do is just to list all the chaps and put a note to +their play:--'Naylor minor must pass more. Football isn't the place for +extreme individualism.' 'Ammersham shapes well as half-back.' Things +like that.” + +“I could do that all right,” said Shoesmith, brightening and manifestly +becoming pregnant with judgments. + +“One great thing about a magazine of this sort,” said Cossington, “is +to mention just as many names as you can in each number. It keeps the +interest alive. Chaps will turn it over looking for their own little +bit. Then it all lights up for them.” + +“Do you want any reports of matches?” Shoesmith broke from his +meditation. + +“Rather. With comments.” + +“Naylor surpassed himself and negotiated the lemon safely home,” said +Shoesmith. + +“Shut it,” said Naylor modestly. + +“Exactly,” said Cossington. “That gives us three features,” touching +them off on his fingers, “Epigram, Literary Section, Sports. Then we +want a section to shove anything into, a joke, a notice of anything +that's going on. So on. Our Note Book.” + +“Oh, Hell!” said Britten, and clashed his boots, to the silent +disapproval of every one. + +“Then we want an editorial.” + +“A WHAT?” cried Britten, with a note of real terror in his voice. + +“Well, don't we? Unless we have our Note Book to begin on the front +page. It gives a scrappy effect to do that. We want something manly and +straightforward and a bit thoughtful, about Patriotism, say, or ESPRIT +DE CORPS, or After-Life.” + +I looked at Britten. Hitherto we had not considered Cossington mattered +very much in the world. + +He went over us as a motor-car goes over a dog. There was a sort of +energy about him, a new sort of energy to us; we had never realised +that anything of the sort existed in the world. We were hopelessly at +a disadvantage. Almost instantly we had developed a clear and detailed +vision of a magazine made up of everything that was most acceptable +in the magazines that flourished in the adult world about us, and had +determined to make it a success. He had by a kind of instinct, as it +were, synthetically plagiarised every successful magazine and breathed +into this dusty mixture the breath of life. He was elected at his own +suggestion managing director, with the earnest support of Shoesmith and +Naylor, and conducted the magazine so successfully and brilliantly that +he even got a whole back page of advertisements from the big sports shop +in Holborn, and made the printers pay at the same rate for a notice +of certain books of their own which they said they had inserted by +inadvertency to fill up space. The only literary contribution in the +first number was a column by Topham in faultless stereotyped English in +depreciation of some fancied evil called Utilitarian Studies and ending +with that noble old quotation:-- + + +“To the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.” + + +And Flack crowded us out of number two with a bright little paper on the +“Humours of Cricket,” and the Head himself was profusely thoughtful all +over the editorial under the heading of “The School Chapel; and How it +Seems to an Old Boy.” + +Britten and I found it difficult to express to each other with any grace +or precision what we felt about that magazine. + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH ~~ ADOLESCENCE + + +1 + +I find it very difficult to trace how form was added to form +and interpretation followed interpretation in my ever-spreading, +ever-deepening, ever-multiplying and enriching vision of this world into +which I had been born. Every day added its impressions, its hints, its +subtle explications to the growing understanding. Day after day the +living interlacing threads of a mind weave together. Every morning now +for three weeks and more (for to-day is Thursday and I started on a +Tuesday) I have been trying to convey some idea of the factors and +early influences by which my particular scrap of subjective tapestry +was shaped, to show the child playing on the nursery floor, the son +perplexed by his mother, gazing aghast at his dead father, exploring +interminable suburbs, touched by first intimations of the sexual +mystery, coming in with a sort of confused avidity towards the centres +of the life of London. It is only by such an effort to write it down +that one realises how marvellously crowded, how marvellously analytical +and synthetic those ears must be. One begins with the little child +to whom the sky is a roof of blue, the world a screen of opaque and +disconnected facts, the home a thing eternal, and “being good” just +simple obedience to unquestioned authority; and one comes at last to +the vast world of one's adult perception, pierced deep by flaring +searchlights of partial understanding, here masked by mists, here +refracted and distorted through half translucent veils, here showing +broad prospects and limitless vistas and here impenetrably dark. + +I recall phases of deep speculation, doubts and even prayers by night, +and strange occasions when by a sort of hypnotic contemplation of +nothingness I sought to pierce the web of appearances about me. It is +hard to measure these things in receding perspective, and now I cannot +trace, so closely has mood succeeded and overlaid and obliterated mood, +the phases by which an utter horror of death was replaced by the growing +realisation of its necessity and dignity. Difficulty of the imagination +with infinite space, infinite time, entangled my mind; and moral +distress for the pain and suffering of bygone ages that made all thought +of reformation in the future seem but the grimmest irony upon now +irreparable wrongs. Many an intricate perplexity of these broadening +years did not so much get settled as cease to matter. Life crowded me +away from it. + +I have confessed myself a temerarious theologian, and in that +passage from boyhood to manhood I ranged widely in my search for some +permanently satisfying Truth. That, too, ceased after a time to be +urgently interesting. I came at last into a phase that endures to this +day, of absolute tranquillity, of absolute confidence in whatever that +Incomprehensible Comprehensive which must needs be the substratum of all +things, may be. Feeling OF IT, feeling BY IT, I cannot feel afraid of +it. I think I had got quite clearly and finally to that adjustment long +before my Cambridge days were done. I am sure that the evil in life is +transitory and finite like an accident or distress in the nursery; that +God is my Father and that I may trust Him, even though life hurts so +that one must needs cry out at it, even though it shows no consequence +but failure, no promise but pain.... + +But while I was fearless of theology I must confess it was comparatively +late before I faced and dared to probe the secrecies of sex. I was +afraid of sex. I had an instinctive perception that it would be a large +and difficult thing in my life, but my early training was all in +the direction of regarding it as an irrelevant thing, as something +disconnected from all the broad significances of life, as hostile +and disgraceful in its quality. The world was never so emasculated in +thought, I suppose, as it was in the Victorian time.... + +I was afraid to think either of sex or (what I have always found +inseparable from a kind of sexual emotion) beauty. Even as a boy I knew +the thing as a haunting and alluring mystery that I tried to keep away +from. Its dim presence obsessed me none the less for all the extravagant +decency, the stimulating silences of my upbringing.... + +The plaster Venuses and Apollos that used to adorn the vast aisle and +huge grey terraces of the Crystal Palace were the first intimations of +the beauty of the body that ever came into my life. As I write of it I +feel again the shameful attraction of those gracious forms. I used to +look at them not simply, but curiously and askance. Once at least in +my later days at Penge, I spent a shilling in admission chiefly for the +sake of them.... + +The strangest thing of all my odd and solitary upbringing seems to me +now that swathing up of all the splendours of the flesh, that strange +combination of fanatical terrorism and shyness that fenced me about with +prohibitions. It caused me to grow up, I will not say blankly ignorant, +but with an ignorance blurred and dishonoured by shame, by enigmatical +warnings, by cultivated aversions, an ignorance in which a fascinated +curiosity and desire struggled like a thing in a net. I knew so little +and I felt so much. There was indeed no Aphrodite at all in my youthful +Pantheon, but instead there was a mysterious and minatory gap. I have +told how at last a new Venus was born in my imagination out of gas lamps +and the twilight, a Venus with a cockney accent and dark eyes shining +out of the dusk, a Venus who was a warm, passion-stirring atmosphere +rather than incarnate in a body. And I have told, too, how I bought a +picture. + +All this was a thing apart from the rest of my life, a locked avoided +chamber.... + +It was not until my last year at Trinity that I really broke down the +barriers of this unwholesome silence and brought my secret broodings to +the light of day. Then a little set of us plunged suddenly into what +we called at first sociological discussion. I can still recall even the +physical feeling of those first tentative talks. I remember them mostly +as occurring in the rooms of Ted Hatherleigh, who kept at the corner by +the Trinity great gate, but we also used to talk a good deal at a man's +in King's, a man named, if I remember rightly, Redmayne. The atmosphere +of Hatherleigh's rooms was a haze of tobacco smoke against a background +brown and deep. He professed himself a socialist with anarchistic +leanings--he had suffered the martyrdom of ducking for it--and a huge +French May-day poster displaying a splendid proletarian in red and black +on a barricade against a flaring orange sky, dominated his decorations. +Hatherleigh affected a fine untidiness, and all the place, even +the floor, was littered with books, for the most part open and face +downward; deeper darknesses were supplied by a discarded gown and +our caps, all conscientiously battered, Hatherleigh's flopped like an +elephant's ear and inserted quill pens supported the corners of mine; +the highlights of the picture came chiefly as reflections from his +chequered blue mugs full of audit ale. We sat on oak chairs, except the +four or five who crowded on a capacious settle, we drank a lot of beer +and were often fuddled, and occasionally quite drunk, and we all smoked +reckless-looking pipes,--there was a transient fashion among us for corn +cobs for which Mark Twain, I think, was responsible. Our little excesses +with liquor were due far more to conscience than appetite, indicated +chiefly a resolve to break away from restraints that we suspected were +keeping us off the instructive knife-edges of life. Hatherleigh was a +good Englishman of the premature type with a red face, a lot of hair, a +deep voice and an explosive plunging manner, and it was he who said one +evening--Heaven knows how we got to it--“Look here, you know, it's all +Rot, this Shutting Up about Women. We OUGHT to talk about them. What are +we going to do about them? It's got to come. We're all festering inside +about it. Let's out with it. There's too much Decency altogether about +this Infernal University!” + +We rose to his challenge a little awkwardly and our first talk +was clumsy, there were flushed faces and red ears, and I remember +Hatherleigh broke out into a monologue on decency. “Modesty and +Decency,” said Hatherleigh, “are Oriental vices. The Jews brought them +to Europe. They're Semitic, just like our monasticism here and the +seclusion of women and mutilating the dead on a battlefield. And all +that sort of thing.” + +Hatherleigh's mind progressed by huge leaps, leaps that were usually +wildly inaccurate, and for a time we engaged hotly upon the topic of +those alleged mutilations and the Semitic responsibility for decency. +Hatherleigh tried hard to saddle the Semitic race with the less elegant +war customs of the Soudan and the northwest frontier of India, and +quoted Doughty, at that time a little-known author, and Cunninghame +Graham to show that the Arab was worse than a county-town spinster in +his regard for respectability. But his case was too preposterous, and +Esmeer, with his shrill penetrating voice and his way of pointing with +all four long fingers flat together, carried the point against him. He +quoted Cato and Roman law and the monasteries of Thibet. + +“Well, anyway,” said Hatherleigh, escaping from our hands like an +intellectual frog, “Semitic or not, I've got no use for decency.” + +We argued points and Hatherleigh professed an unusually balanced and +tolerating attitude. “I don't mind a certain refinement and dignity,” he +admitted generously. “What I object to is this spreading out of decency +until it darkens the whole sky, until it makes a man's father afraid to +speak of the most important things, until it makes a man afraid to look +a frank book in the face or think--even think! until it leads to our +coming to--to the business at last with nothing but a few prohibitions, +a few hints, a lot of dirty jokes and, and “--he waved a hand and seemed +to seek and catch his image in the air--“oh, a confounded buttered slide +of sentiment, to guide us. I tell you I'm going to think about it and +talk about it until I see a little more daylight than I do at present. +I'm twenty-two. Things might happen to me anywhen. You men can go out +into the world if you like, to sin like fools and marry like fools, +not knowing what you are doing and ashamed to ask. You'll take +the consequences, too, I expect, pretty meekly, sniggering a bit, +sentimentalising a bit, like--like Cambridge humorists.... I mean to +know what I'm doing.” + +He paused to drink, and I think I cut in with ideas of my own. But one +is apt to forget one's own share in a talk, I find, more than one does +the clear-cut objectivity of other people's, and I do not know how far +I contributed to this discussion that followed. I am, however, pretty +certain that it was then that ideal that we were pleased to call +aristocracy and which soon became the common property of our set was +developed. It was Esmeer, I know, who laid down and maintained the +proposition that so far as minds went there were really only two sorts +of man in the world, the aristocrat and the man who subdues his mind to +other people's. + +“'I couldn't THINK of it, Sir,'” said Esmeer in his elucidatory tones; +“that's what a servant says. His mind even is broken in to run between +fences, and he admits it. WE'VE got to be able to think of anything. +And 'such things aren't for the Likes of Us!' That's another servant's +saying. Well, everything IS for the Likes of Us. If we see fit, that +is.” + +A small fresh-coloured man in grey objected. + +“Well,” exploded Hatherleigh, “if that isn't so what the deuce are we +up here for? Instead of working in mines? If some things aren't to be +thought about ever! We've got the privilege of all these extra years for +getting things straight in our heads, and then we won't use 'em. Good +God! what do you think a university's for?”... + +Esmeer's idea came with an effect of real emancipation to several of +us. We were not going to be afraid of ideas any longer, we were going +to throw down every barrier of prohibition and take them in and see what +came of it. We became for a time even intemperately experimental, and +one of us, at the bare suggestion of an eminent psychic investigator, +took hashish and very nearly died of it within a fortnight of our great +elucidation. + +The chief matter of our interchanges was of course the discussion +of sex. Once the theme had been opened it became a sore place in +our intercourse; none of us seemed able to keep away from it. Our +imaginations got astir with it. We made up for lost time and went +round it and through it and over it exhaustively. I recall prolonged +discussion of polygamy on the way to Royston, muddy November tramps to +Madingley, when amidst much profanity from Hatherleigh at the serious +treatment of so obsolete a matter, we weighed the reasons, if any, for +the institution of marriage. The fine dim night-time spaces of the Great +Court are bound up with the inconclusive finales of mighty hot-eared +wrangles; the narrows of Trinity Street and Petty Cury and Market Hill +have their particular associations for me with that spate of confession +and free speech, that almost painful goal delivery of long pent and +crappled and sometimes crippled ideas. + +And we went on a reading party that Easter to a place called Pulborough +in Sussex, where there is a fishing inn and a river that goes under a +bridge. It was a late Easter and a blazing one, and we boated and bathed +and talked of being Hellenic and the beauty of the body until at moments +it seemed to us that we were destined to restore the Golden Age, by the +simple abolition of tailors and outfitters. + +Those undergraduate talks! how rich and glorious they seemed, how +splendidly new the ideas that grew and multiplied in our seething minds! +We made long afternoon and evening raids over the Downs towards Arundel, +and would come tramping back through the still keen moonlight singing +and shouting. We formed romantic friendships with one another, and +grieved more or less convincingly that there were no splendid women fit +to be our companions in the world. But Hatherleigh, it seemed, had once +known a girl whose hair was gloriously red. “My God!” said Hatherleigh +to convey the quality of her; just simply and with projectile violence: +“My God!” + +Benton had heard of a woman who lived with a man refusing to be married +to him--we thought that splendid beyond measure,--I cannot now imagine +why. She was “like a tender goddess,” Benton said. A sort of shame +came upon us in the dark in spite of our liberal intentions when Benton +committed himself to that. And after such talk we would fall upon great +pauses of emotional dreaming, and if by chance we passed a girl in a +governess cart, or some farmer's daughter walking to the station, we +became alertly silent or obstreperously indifferent to her. For might +she not be just that one exception to the banal decency, the sickly +pointless conventionality, the sham modesty of the times in which we +lived? + +We felt we stood for a new movement, not realising how perennially this +same emancipation returns to those ancient courts beside the Cam. +We were the anti-decency party, we discovered a catch phrase that we +flourished about in the Union and made our watchword, namely, “stark +fact.” We hung nude pictures in our rooms much as if they had been +flags, to the earnest concern of our bedders, and I disinterred my +long-kept engraving and had it framed in fumed oak, and found for it a +completer and less restrained companion, a companion I never cared for +in the slightest degree.... + +This efflorescence did not prevent, I think indeed it rather helped, our +more formal university work, for most of us took firsts, and three of +us got Fellowships in one year or another. There was Benton who had a +Research Fellowship and went to Tubingen, there was Esmeer and myself +who both became Residential Fellows. I had taken the Mental and +Moral Science Tripos (as it was then), and three years later I got a +lectureship in political science. In those days it was disguised in the +cloak of Political Economy. + + + +2 + + +It was our affectation to be a little detached from the main stream of +undergraduate life. We worked pretty hard, but by virtue of our +beer, our socialism and suchlike heterodoxy, held ourselves to be +differentiated from the swatting reading man. None of us, except Baxter, +who was a rowing blue, a rather abnormal blue with an appetite for +ideas, took games seriously enough to train, and on the other hand +we intimated contempt for the rather mediocre, deliberately humorous, +consciously gentlemanly and consciously wild undergraduate men who +made up the mass of Cambridge life. After the manner of youth we were +altogether too hard on our contemporaries. We battered our caps and +tore our gowns lest they should seem new, and we despised these others +extremely for doing exactly the same things; we had an idea of ourselves +and resented beyond measure a similar weakness in these our brothers. + +There was a type, or at least there seemed to us to be a type--I'm a +little doubtful at times now whether after all we didn't create it--for +which Hatherleigh invented the nickname the “Pinky Dinkys,” intending +thereby both contempt and abhorrence in almost equal measure. The Pinky +Dinky summarised all that we particularly did not want to be, and also, +I now perceive, much of what we were and all that we secretly dreaded +becoming. + +But it is hard to convey the Pinky Dinky idea, for all that it meant so +much to us. We spent one evening at least during that reading party upon +the Pinky Dinky; we sat about our one fire after a walk in the +rain--it was our only wet day--smoked our excessively virile pipes, and +elaborated the natural history of the Pinky Dinky. We improvised a +sort of Pinky Dinky litany, and Hatherleigh supplied deep notes for the +responses. + +“The Pinky Dinky extracts a good deal of amusement from life,” said some +one. + +“Damned prig!” said Hatherleigh. + +“The Pinky Dinky arises in the Union and treats the question with a +light gay touch. He makes the weird ones mad. But sometimes he cannot go +on because of the amusement he extracts.” + +“I want to shy books at the giggling swine,” said Hatherleigh. + +“The Pinky Dinky says suddenly while he is making the tea, 'We're all +being frightfully funny. It's time for you to say something now.'” + +“The Pinky Dinky shakes his head and says: 'I'm afraid I shall never be +a responsible being.' And he really IS frivolous.” + +“Frivolous but not vulgar,” said Esmeer. + +“Pinky Dinkys are chaps who've had their buds nipped,” said Hatherleigh. +“They're Plebs and they know it. They haven't the Guts to get hold of +things. And so they worry up all those silly little jokes of theirs to +carry it off.”... + +We tried bad ones for a time, viciously flavoured. + +Pinky Dinkys are due to over-production of the type that ought to keep +outfitters' shops. Pinky Dinkys would like to keep outfitters' shops +with whimsy 'scriptions on the boxes and make your bill out funny, and +not be snobs to customers, no!--not even if they had titles.” + +“Every Pinky Dinky's people are rather good people, and better than most +Pinky Dinky's people. But he does not put on side.” + +“Pinky Dinkys become playful at the sight of women.” + +“'Croquet's my game,' said the Pinky Dinky, and felt a man +condescended.” + +“But what the devil do they think they're up to, anyhow?” roared old +Hatherleigh suddenly, dropping plump into bottomless despair. + +We felt we had still failed to get at the core of the mystery of the +Pinky Dinky. + +We tried over things about his religion. “The Pinky Dinky goes to King's +Chapel, and sits and feels in the dusk. Solemn things! Oh HUSH! He +wouldn't tell you--” + +“He COULDN'T tell you.” + +“Religion is so sacred to him he never talks about it, never reads about +it, never thinks about it. Just feels!” + +“But in his heart of hearts, oh! ever so deep, the Pinky Dinky has a +doubt--” + +Some one protested. + +“Not a vulgar doubt,” Esmeer went on, “but a kind of hesitation whether +the Ancient of Days is really exactly what one would call good form.... +There's a lot of horrid coarseness got into the world somehow. SOMEBODY +put it there.... And anyhow there's no particular reason why a man +should be seen about with Him. He's jolly Awful of course and all +that--” + +“The Pinky Dinky for all his fun and levity has a clean mind.” + +“A thoroughly clean mind. Not like Esmeer's--the Pig!” + +“If once he began to think about sex, how could he be comfortable at +croquet?” + +“It's their Damned Modesty,” said Hatherleigh suddenly, “that's what's +the matter with the Pinky Dinky. It's Mental Cowardice dressed up as a +virtue and taking the poor dears in. Cambridge is soaked with it; it's +some confounded local bacillus. Like the thing that gives a flavour to +Havana cigars. He comes up here to be made into a man and a ruler of +the people, and he thinks it shows a nice disposition not to take on the +job! How the Devil is a great Empire to be run with men like him?” + +“All his little jokes and things,” said Esmeer regarding his feet on +the fender, “it's just a nervous sniggering--because he's afraid.... +Oxford's no better.” + +“What's he afraid of?” said I. + +“God knows!” exploded Hatherleigh and stared at the fire. + +“LIFE!” said Esmeer. “And so in a way are we,” he added, and made a +thoughtful silence for a time. + +“I say,” began Carter, who was doing the Natural Science Tripos, “what +is the adult form of the Pinky Dinky?” + +But there we were checked by our ignorance of the world. + +“What is the adult form of any of us?” asked Benton, voicing the thought +that had arrested our flow. + + + +3 + + +I do not remember that we ever lifted our criticism to the dons and the +organisation of the University. I think we took them for granted. When I +look back at my youth I am always astonished by the multitude of things +that we took for granted. It seemed to us that Cambridge was in the +order of things, for all the world like having eyebrows or a vermiform +appendix. Now with the larger scepticism of middle age I can entertain +very fundamental doubts about these old universities. Indeed I had a +scheme-- + +I do not see what harm I can do now by laying bare the purpose of the +political combinations I was trying to effect. + +My educational scheme was indeed the starting-point of all the big +project of conscious public reconstruction at which I aimed. I wanted +to build up a new educational machine altogether for the governing class +out of a consolidated system of special public service schools. I +meant to get to work upon this whatever office I was given in the new +government. I could have begun my plan from the Admiralty or the +War Office quite as easily as from the Education Office. I am firmly +convinced it is hopeless to think of reforming the old public schools +and universities to meet the needs of a modern state, they send their +roots too deep and far, the cost would exceed any good that could +possibly be effected, and so I have sought a way round this invincible +obstacle. I do think it would be quite practicable to side-track, as the +Americans say, the whole system by creating hardworking, hard-living, +modern and scientific boys' schools, first for the Royal Navy and then +for the public service generally, and as they grew, opening them to +the public without any absolute obligation to subsequent service. +Simultaneously with this it would not be impossible to develop a new +college system with strong faculties in modern philosophy, modern +history, European literature and criticism, physical and biological +science, education and sociology. + +We could in fact create a new liberal education in this way, and cut the +umbilicus of the classical languages for good and all. I should have set +this going, and trusted it to correct or kill the old public schools and +the Oxford and Cambridge tradition altogether. I had men in my mind to +begin the work, and I should have found others. I should have aimed at +making a hard-trained, capable, intellectually active, proud type of +man. Everything else would have been made subservient to that. I should +have kept my grip on the men through their vacation, and somehow or +other I would have contrived a young woman to match them. I think I +could have seen to it effectually enough that they didn't get at croquet +and tennis with the vicarage daughters and discover sex in the Peeping +Tom fashion I did, and that they realised quite early in life that +it isn't really virile to reek of tobacco. I should have had military +manoeuvres, training ships, aeroplane work, mountaineering and so forth, +in the place of the solemn trivialities of games, and I should have fed +and housed my men clean and very hard--where there wasn't any audit ale, +no credit tradesmen, and plenty of high pressure douches.... + +I have revisited Cambridge and Oxford time after time since I came +down, and so far as the Empire goes, I want to get clear of those two +places.... + +Always I renew my old feelings, a physical oppression, a sense of +lowness and dampness almost exactly like the feeling of an underground +room where paper moulders and leaves the wall, a feeling of ineradicable +contagion in the Gothic buildings, in the narrow ditch-like rivers, in +those roads and roads of stuffy little villas. Those little villas +have destroyed all the good of the old monastic system and none of its +evil.... + +Some of the most charming people in the world live in them, but their +collective effect is below the quality of any individual among them. +Cambridge is a world of subdued tones, of excessively subtle humours, of +prim conduct and free thinking; it fears the Parent, but it has no fear +of God; it offers amidst surroundings that vary between disguises and +antiquarian charm the inflammation of literature's purple draught; +one hears there a peculiar thin scandal like no other scandal in the +world--a covetous scandal--so that I am always reminded of Ibsen in +Cambridge. In Cambridge and the plays of Ibsen alone does it seem +appropriate for the heroine before the great crisis of life to “enter, +take off her overshoes, and put her wet umbrella upon the writing +desk.”... + +We have to make a new Academic mind for modern needs, and the last thing +to make it out of, I am convinced, is the old Academic mind. One +might as soon try to fake the old VICTORY at Portsmouth into a line of +battleship again. Besides which the old Academic mind, like those old +bathless, damp Gothic colleges, is much too delightful in its peculiar +and distinctive way to damage by futile patching. + +My heart warms to a sense of affectionate absurdity as I recall dear old +Codger, surely the most “unleaderly” of men. No more than from the old +Schoolmen, his kindred, could one get from him a School for Princes. +Yet apart from his teaching he was as curious and adorable as a good +Netsuke. Until quite recently he was a power in Cambridge, he could +make and bar and destroy, and in a way he has become the quintessence of +Cambridge in my thoughts. + +I see him on his way to the morning's lecture, with his plump childish +face, his round innocent eyes, his absurdly non-prehensile fat hand +carrying his cap, his grey trousers braced up much too high, his feet a +trifle inturned, and going across the great court with a queer tripping +pace that seemed cultivated even to my naive undergraduate eye. Or I +see him lecturing. He lectured walking up and down between the desks, +talking in a fluting rapid voice, and with the utmost lucidity. If he +could not walk up and down he could not lecture. His mind and voice had +precisely the fluid quality of some clear subtle liquid; one felt it +could flow round anything and overcome nothing. And its nimble eddies +were wonderful! Or again I recall him drinking port with little muscular +movements in his neck and cheek and chin and his brows knit--very +judicial, very concentrated, preparing to say the apt just thing; it was +the last thing he would have told a lie about. + +When I think of Codger I am reminded of an inscription I saw on some +occasion in Regent's Park above two eyes scarcely more limpidly innocent +than his--“Born in the Menagerie.” Never once since Codger began to +display the early promise of scholarship at the age of eight or more, +had he been outside the bars. His utmost travel had been to lecture here +and lecture there. His student phase had culminated in papers of quite +exceptional brilliance, and he had gone on to lecture with a cheerful +combination of wit and mannerism that had made him a success from the +beginning. He has lectured ever since. He lectures still. Year by year +he has become plumper, more rubicund and more and more of an item for +the intelligent visitor to see. Even in my time he was pointed out to +people as part of our innumerable enrichments, and obviously he knew it. +He has become now almost the leading Character in a little donnish world +of much too intensely appreciated Characters. + +He boasted he took no exercise, and also of his knowledge of port wine. +Of other wines he confessed quite frankly he had no “special knowledge.” + Beyond these things he had little pride except that he claimed to have +read every novel by a woman writer that had ever entered the Union +Library. This, however, he held to be remarkable rather than ennobling, +and such boasts as he made of it were tinged with playfulness. Certainly +he had a scholar's knowledge of the works of Miss Marie Corelli, Miss +Braddon, Miss Elizabeth Glyn and Madame Sarah Grand that would have +astonished and flattered those ladies enormously, and he loved nothing +so much in his hours of relaxation as to propound and answer difficult +questions upon their books. Tusher of King's was his ineffectual rival +in this field, their bouts were memorable and rarely other than glorious +for Codger; but then Tusher spread himself too much, he also undertook +to rehearse whole pages out of Bradshaw, and tell you with all the +changes how to get from any station to any station in Great Britain by +the nearest and cheapest routes.... + +Codger lodged with a little deaf innocent old lady, Mrs. Araminta +Mergle, who was understood to be herself a very redoubtable Character in +the Gyp-Bedder class; about her he related quietly absurd anecdotes. +He displayed a marvellous invention in ascribing to her plausible +expressions of opinion entirely identical in import with those of the +Oxford and Harvard Pragmatists, against whom he waged a fierce obscure +war.... + +It was Codger's function to teach me philosophy, philosophy! the +intimate wisdom of things. He dealt in a variety of Hegelian stuff like +nothing else in the world, but marvellously consistent with itself. It +was a wonderful web he spun out of that queer big active childish brain +that had never lusted nor hated nor grieved nor feared nor passionately +loved,--a web of iridescent threads. He had luminous final theories +about Love and Death and Immortality, odd matters they seemed for him to +think about! and all his woven thoughts lay across my perception of the +realities of things, as flimsy and irrelevant and clever and beautiful, +oh!--as a dew-wet spider's web slung in the morning sunshine across the +black mouth of a gun.... + + + +4 + + +All through those years of development I perceive now there must have +been growing in me, slowly, irregularly, assimilating to itself all +the phrases and forms of patriotism, diverting my religious impulses, +utilising my esthetic tendencies, my dominating idea, the statesman's +idea, that idea of social service which is the protagonist of my story, +that real though complex passion for Making, making widely and greatly, +cities, national order, civilisation, whose interplay with all those +other factors in life I have set out to present. It was growing in +me--as one's bones grow, no man intending it. + +I have tried to show how, quite early in my life, the fact of +disorderliness, the conception of social life as being a multitudinous +confusion out of hand, came to me. One always of course simplifies these +things in the telling, but I do not think I ever saw the world at large +in any other terms. I never at any stage entertained the idea +which sustained my mother, and which sustains so many people in the +world,--the idea that the universe, whatever superficial discords it +may present, is as a matter of fact “all right,” is being steered to +definite ends by a serene and unquestionable God. My mother thought that +Order prevailed, and that disorder was just incidental and foredoomed +rebellion; I feel and have always felt that order rebels against and +struggles against disorder, that order has an up-hill job, in gardens, +experiments, suburbs, everything alike; from the very beginnings of my +experience I discovered hostility to order, a constant escaping from +control. + +The current of living and contemporary ideas in which my mind was +presently swimming made all in the same direction; in place of my +mother's attentive, meticulous but occasionally extremely irascible +Providence, the talk was all of the Struggle for Existence and the +survival not of the Best--that was nonsense, but of the fittest to +survive. + +The attempts to rehabilitate Faith in the form of the Individualist's +LAISSEZ FAIRE never won upon me. I disliked Herbert Spencer all my life +until I read his autobiography, and then I laughed a little and loved +him. I remember as early as the City Merchants' days how Britten and I +scoffed at that pompous question-begging word “Evolution,” having, so to +speak, found it out. Evolution, some illuminating talker had remarked at +the Britten lunch table, had led not only to man, but to the liver-fluke +and skunk, obviously it might lead anywhere; order came into things only +through the struggling mind of man. That lit things wonderfully for +us. When I went up to Cambridge I was perfectly clear that life was +a various and splendid disorder of forces that the spirit of man sets +itself to tame. I have never since fallen away from that persuasion. + +I do not think I was exceptionally precocious in reaching these +conclusions and a sort of religious finality for myself by eighteen or +nineteen. I know men and women vary very much in these matters, just as +children do in learning to talk. Some will chatter at eighteen months +and some will hardly speak until three, and the thing has very little +to do with their subsequent mental quality. So it is with young people; +some will begin their religious, their social, their sexual interests at +fourteen, some not until far on in the twenties. Britten and I belonged +to one of the precocious types, and Cossington very probably to another. +It wasn't that there was anything priggish about any of us; we should +have been prigs to have concealed our spontaneous interests and ape the +theoretical boy. + +The world of man centred for my imagination in London, it still centres +there; the real and present world, that is to say, as distinguished from +the wonder-lands of atomic and microscopic science and the stars and +future time. I had travelled scarcely at all, I had never crossed the +Channel, but I had read copiously and I had formed a very good working +idea of this round globe with its mountains and wildernesses and forests +and all the sorts and conditions of human life that were scattered over +its surface. It was all alive, I felt, and changing every day; how it +was changing, and the changes men might bring about, fascinated my mind +beyond measure. + +I used to find a charm in old maps that showed The World as Known to the +Ancients, and I wish I could now without any suspicion of self-deception +write down compactly the world as it was known to me at nineteen. So +far as extension went it was, I fancy, very like the world I know now at +forty-two; I had practically all the mountains and seas, boundaries and +races, products and possibilities that I have now. But its intension was +very different. All the interval has been increasing and deepening my +social knowledge, replacing crude and second-hand impressions by felt +and realised distinctions. + +In 1895--that was my last year with Britten, for I went up to Cambridge +in September--my vision of the world had much the same relation to the +vision I have to-day that an ill-drawn daub of a mask has to the direct +vision of a human face. Britten and I looked at our world and saw--what +did we see? Forms and colours side by side that we had no suspicion were +interdependent. We had no conception of the roots of things nor of the +reaction of things. It did not seem to us, for example, that business +had anything to do with government, or that money and means affected the +heroic issues of war. There were no wagons in our war game, and where +there were guns, there it was assumed the ammunition was gathered +together. Finance again was a sealed book to us; we did not so much +connect it with the broad aspects of human affairs as regard it as a +sort of intrusive nuisance to be earnestly ignored by all right-minded +men. We had no conception of the quality of politics, nor how +“interests” came into such affairs; we believed men were swayed by +purely intellectual convictions and were either right or wrong, honest +or dishonest (in which case they deserved to be shot), good or bad. We +knew nothing of mental inertia, and could imagine the opinion of a whole +nation changed by one lucid and convincing exposition. We were capable +of the most incongruous transfers from the scroll of history to our own +times, we could suppose Brixton ravaged and Hampstead burnt in civil +wars for the succession to the throne, or Cheapside a lane of death and +the front of the Mansion House set about with guillotines in the course +of an accurately transposed French Revolution. We rebuilt London by Act +of Parliament, and once in a mood of hygienic enterprise we transferred +its population EN MASSE to the North Downs by an order of the Local +Government Board. We thought nothing of throwing religious organisations +out of employment or superseding all the newspapers by freely +distributed bulletins. We could contemplate the possibility of laws +abolishing whole classes; we were equal to such a dream as the peaceful +and orderly proclamation of Communism from the steps of St. Paul's +Cathedral, after the passing of a simply worded bill,--a close and not +unnaturally an exciting division carrying the third reading. I remember +quite distinctly evolving that vision. We were then fully fifteen and we +were perfectly serious about it. We were not fools; it was simply that +as yet we had gathered no experience at all of the limits and powers of +legislation and conscious collective intention.... + +I think this statement does my boyhood justice, and yet I have my +doubts. It is so hard now to say what one understood and what one did +not understand. It isn't only that every day changed one's general +outlook, but also that a boy fluctuates between phases of quite adult +understanding and phases of tawdrily magnificent puerility. Sometimes +I myself was in those tumbrils that went along Cheapside to the Mansion +House, a Sydney Cartonesque figure, a white defeated Mirabean; sometimes +it was I who sat judging and condemning and ruling (sleeping in +my clothes and feeding very simply) the soul and autocrat of the +Provisional Government, which occupied, of all inconvenient places! the +General Post Office at St. Martin's-le-Grand!... + +I cannot trace the development of my ideas at Cambridge, but I believe +the mere physical fact of going two hours' journey away from London gave +that place for the first time an effect of unity in my imagination. I +got outside London. It became tangible instead of being a frame almost +as universal as sea and sky. + +At Cambridge my ideas ceased to live in a duologue; in exchange for +Britten, with whom, however, I corresponded lengthily, stylishly and +self-consciously for some years, I had now a set of congenial friends. I +got talk with some of the younger dons, I learnt to speak in the Union, +and in my little set we were all pretty busily sharpening each other's +wits and correcting each other's interpretations. Cambridge made +politics personal and actual. At City Merchants' we had had no sense +of effective contact; we boasted, it is true, an under secretary and a +colonial governor among our old boys, but they were never real to +us; such distinguished sons as returned to visit the old school were +allusive and pleasant in the best Pinky Dinky style, and pretended to +be in earnest about nothing but our football and cricket, to mourn the +abolition of “water,” and find a shuddering personal interest in the +ancient swishing block. At Cambridge I felt for the first time that I +touched the thing that was going on. Real living statesmen came down to +debate in the Union, the older dons had been their college intimates, +their sons and nephews expounded them to us and made them real to us. +They invited us to entertain ideas; I found myself for the first time +in my life expected to read and think and discuss, my secret vice had +become a virtue. + +That combination-room world is at last larger and more populous and +various than the world of schoolmasters. The Shoesmiths and Naylors who +had been the aristocracy of City Merchants' fell into their place in my +mind; they became an undistinguished mass on the more athletic side of +Pinky Dinkyism, and their hostility to ideas and to the expression +of ideas ceased to limit and trouble me. The brighter men of each +generation stay up; these others go down to propagate their tradition, +as the fathers of families, as mediocre professional men, as assistant +masters in schools. Cambridge which perfects them is by the nature +of things least oppressed by them,--except when it comes to a vote in +Convocation. + +We were still in those days under the shadow of the great Victorians. I +never saw Gladstone (as I never set eyes on the old Queen), but he +had resigned office only a year before I went up to Trinity, and the +Combination Rooms were full of personal gossip about him and Disraeli +and the other big figures of the gladiatorial stage of Parlimentary +history, talk that leaked copiously into such sets as mine. The ceiling +of our guest chamber at Trinity was glorious with the arms of Sir +William Harcourt, whose Death Duties had seemed at first like a +socialist dawn. Mr. Evesham we asked to come to the Union every year, +Masters, Chamberlain and the old Duke of Devonshire; they did not come +indeed, but their polite refusals brought us all, as it were, within +personal touch of them. One heard of cabinet councils and meetings at +country houses. Some of us, pursuing such interests, went so far as to +read political memoirs and the novels of Disraeli and Mrs. Humphry Ward. +From gossip, example and the illustrated newspapers one learnt something +of the way in which parties were split, coalitions formed, how permanent +officials worked and controlled their ministers, how measures were +brought forward and projects modified. + +And while I was getting the great leading figures on the political +stage, who had been presented to me in my schooldays not so much as men +as the pantomimic monsters of political caricature, while I was getting +them reduced in my imagination to the stature of humanity, and their +motives to the quality of impulses like my own, I was also acquiring in +my Tripos work a constantly developing and enriching conception of +the world of men as a complex of economic, intellectual and moral +processes.... + + + +5 + + +Socialism is an intellectual Proteus, but to the men of my generation it +came as the revolt of the workers. Rodbertus we never heard of and +the Fabian Society we did not understand; Marx and Morris, the Chicago +Anarchists, JUSTICE and Social Democratic Federation (as it was then) +presented socialism to our minds. Hatherleigh was the leading exponent +of the new doctrines in Trinity, and the figure upon his wall of a +huge-muscled, black-haired toiler swaggering sledgehammer in hand across +a revolutionary barricade, seemed the quintessence of what he had to +expound. Landlord and capitalist had robbed and enslaved the workers, +and were driving them quite automatically to inevitable insurrection. +They would arise and the capitalist system would flee and vanish like +the mists before the morning, like the dews before the sunrise, giving +place in the most simple and obvious manner to an era of Right and +Justice and Virtue and Well Being, and in short a Perfectly Splendid +Time. + +I had already discussed this sort of socialism under the guidance of +Britten, before I went up to Cambridge. It was all mixed up with ideas +about freedom and natural virtue and a great scorn for kings, titles, +wealth and officials, and it was symbolised by the red ties we wore. Our +simple verdict on existing arrangements was that they were “all wrong.” + The rich were robbers and knew it, kings and princes were usurpers and +knew it, religious teachers were impostors in league with power, +the economic system was an elaborate plot on the part of the few to +expropriate the many. We went about feeling scornful of all the current +forms of life, forms that esteemed themselves solid, that were, we knew, +no more than shapes painted on a curtain that was presently to be torn +aside.... + +It was Hatherleigh's poster and his capacity for overstating things, I +think, that first qualified my simple revolutionary enthusiasm. Perhaps +also I had met with Fabian publications, but if I did I forget the +circumstances. And no doubt my innate constructiveness with its +practical corollary of an analytical treatment of the material supplied, +was bound to push me on beyond this melodramatic interpretation of human +affairs. + +I compared that Working Man of the poster with any sort of working man +I knew. I perceived that the latter was not going to change, and indeed +could not under any stimulus whatever be expected to change, into the +former. It crept into my mind as slowly and surely as the dawn creeps +into a room that the former was not, as I had at first rather glibly +assumed, an “ideal,” but a complete misrepresentation of the quality and +possibilities of things. + +I do not know now whether it was during my school-days or at Cambridge +that I first began not merely to see the world as a great contrast of +rich and poor, but to feel the massive effect of that multitudinous +majority of people who toil continually, who are for ever anxious about +ways and means, who are restricted, ill clothed, ill fed and ill +housed, who have limited outlooks and continually suffer misadventures, +hardships and distresses through the want of money. My lot had fallen +upon the fringe of the possessing minority; if I did not know the want +of necessities I knew shabbiness, and the world that let me go on to a +university education intimated very plainly that there was not a thing +beyond the primary needs that my stimulated imagination might demand +that it would not be an effort for me to secure. A certain aggressive +radicalism against the ruling and propertied classes followed almost +naturally from my circumstances. It did not at first connect itself at +all with the perception of a planless disorder in human affairs that had +been forced upon me by the atmosphere of my upbringing, nor did it link +me in sympathy with any of the profounder realities of poverty. It was +a personal independent thing. The dingier people one saw in the back +streets and lower quarters of Bromstead and Penge, the drift of dirty +children, ragged old women, street loafers, grimy workers that made +the social background of London, the stories one heard of privation and +sweating, only joined up very slowly with the general propositions I was +making about life. We could become splendidly eloquent about the social +revolution and the triumph of the Proletariat after the Class war, and +it was only by a sort of inspiration that it came to me that my bedder, +a garrulous old thing with a dusty black bonnet over one eye and an +ostentatiously clean apron outside the dark mysteries that clothed her, +or the cheeky little ruffians who yelled papers about the streets, were +really material to such questions. + +Directly any of us young socialists of Trinity found ourselves in +immediate contact with servants or cadgers or gyps or bedders or +plumbers or navvies or cabmen or railway porters we became unconsciously +and unthinkingly aristocrats. Our voices altered, our gestures altered. +We behaved just as all the other men, rich or poor, swatters or +sportsmen or Pinky Dinkys, behaved, and exactly as we were expected +to behave. On the whole it is a population of poor quality round about +Cambridge, rather stunted and spiritless and very difficult to idealise. +That theoretical Working Man of ours!--if we felt the clash at all we +explained it, I suppose, by assuming that he came from another part of +the country; Esmeer, I remember, who lived somewhere in the Fens, was +very eloquent about the Cornish fishermen, and Hatherleigh, who was +a Hampshire man, assured us we ought to know the Scottish miner. +My private fancy was for the Lancashire operative because of his +co-operative societies, and because what Lancashire thinks to-day +England thinks to-morrow.... And also I had never been in Lancashire. + +By little increments of realisation it was that the profounder verities +of the problem of socialism came to me. It helped me very much that I +had to go down to the Potteries several times to discuss my future with +my uncle and guardian; I walked about and saw Bursley Wakes and much of +the human aspects of organised industrialism at close quarters for the +first time. The picture of a splendid Working Man cheated out of his +innate glorious possibilities, and presently to arise and dash this +scoundrelly and scandalous system of private ownership to fragments, +began to give place to a limitless spectacle of inefficiency, to a +conception of millions of people not organised as they should be, not +educated as they should be, not simply prevented from but incapable +of nearly every sort of beauty, mostly kindly and well meaning, mostly +incompetent, mostly obstinate, and easily humbugged and easily diverted. +Even the tragic and inspiring idea of Marx, that the poor were nearing +a limit of painful experience, and awakening to a sense of intolerable +wrongs, began to develop into the more appalling conception that the +poor were simply in a witless uncomfortable inconclusive way--“muddling +along”; that they wanted nothing very definitely nor very urgently, that +mean fears enslaved them and mean satisfactions decoyed them, that they +took the very gift of life itself with a spiritless lassitude, hoarding +it, being rather anxious not to lose it than to use it in any way +whatever. + +The complete development of that realisation was the work of many +years. I had only the first intimations at Cambridge. But I did have +intimations. Most acutely do I remember the doubts that followed the +visit of Chris Robinson. Chris Robinson was heralded by such heroic +anticipations, and he was so entirely what we had not anticipated. + +Hatherleigh got him to come, arranged a sort of meeting for him at +Redmayne's rooms in King's, and was very proud and proprietorial. It +failed to stir Cambridge at all profoundly. Beyond a futile attempt +to screw up Hatherleigh made by some inexpert duffers who used nails +instead of screws and gimlets, there was no attempt to rag. Next day +Chris Robinson went and spoke at Bennett Hall in Newnham College, and +left Cambridge in the evening amidst the cheers of twenty men or so. +Socialism was at such a low ebb politically in those days that it didn't +even rouse men to opposition. + +And there sat Chris under that flamboyant and heroic Worker of the +poster, a little wrinkled grey-bearded apologetic man in ready-made +clothes, with watchful innocent brown eyes and a persistent and +invincible air of being out of his element. He sat with his stout boots +tucked up under his chair, and clung to a teacup and saucer and +looked away from us into the fire, and we all sat about on tables and +chair-arms and windowsills and boxes and anywhere except upon chairs +after the manner of young men. The only other chair whose seat was +occupied was the one containing his knitted woollen comforter and his +picturesque old beach-photographer's hat. We were all shy and didn't +know how to take hold of him now we had got him, and, which was +disconcertingly unanticipated, he was manifestly having the same +difficulty with us. We had expected to be gripped. + +“I'll not be knowing what to say to these Chaps,” he repeated with a +north-country quality in his speech. + +We made reassuring noises. + +The Ambassador of the Workers stirred his tea earnestly through an +uncomfortable pause. + +“I'd best tell 'em something of how things are in Lancashire, what +with the new machines and all that,” he speculated at last with red +reflections in his thoughtful eyes. + +We had an inexcusable dread that perhaps he would make a mess of the +meeting. + +But when he was no longer in the unaccustomed meshes of refined +conversation, but speaking with an audience before him, he became a +different man. He declared he would explain to us just exactly what +socialism was, and went on at once to an impassioned contrast of social +conditions. “You young men,” he said “come from homes of luxury; every +need you feel is supplied--” + +We sat and stood and sprawled about him, occupying every inch of +Redmayne's floor space except the hearthrug-platform, and we listened +to him and thought him over. He was the voice of wrongs that made us +indignant and eager. We forgot for a time that he had been shy and +seemed not a little incompetent, his provincial accent became a beauty +of his earnest speech, we were carried away by his indignations. We +looked with shining eyes at one another and at the various dons who had +dropped in and were striving to maintain a front of judicious severity. +We felt more and more that social injustice must cease, and cease +forthwith. We felt we could not sleep upon it. At the end we clapped and +murmured our applause and wanted badly to cheer. + +Then like a lancet stuck into a bladder came the heckling. Denson, that +indolent, liberal-minded sceptic, did most of the questioning. He lay +contorted in a chair, with his ugly head very low, his legs crossed and +his left boot very high, and he pointed his remarks with a long thin +hand and occasionally adjusted the unstable glasses that hid his watery +eyes. “I don't want to carp,” he began. “The present system, I admit, +stands condemned. Every present system always HAS stood condemned in the +minds of intelligent men. But where it seems to me you get thin, is just +where everybody has been thin, and that's when you come to the remedy.” + +“Socialism,” said Chris Robinson, as if it answered everything, and +Hatherleigh said “Hear! Hear!” very resolutely. + +“I suppose I OUGHT to take that as an answer,” said Denson, getting +his shoulder-blades well down to the seat of his chair; “but I don't. +I don't, you know. It's rather a shame to cross-examine you after this +fine address of yours”--Chris Robinson on the hearthrug made acquiescent +and inviting noises--“but the real question remains how exactly are you +going to end all these wrongs? There are the administrative questions. +If you abolish the private owner, I admit you abolish a very complex +and clumsy way of getting businesses run, land controlled and things +in general administered, but you don't get rid of the need of +administration, you know.” + +“Democracy,” said Chris Robinson. + +“Organised somehow,” said Denson. “And it's just the How perplexes me. +I can quite easily imagine a socialist state administered in a sort of +scrambling tumult that would be worse than anything we have got now. + +“Nothing could be worse than things are now,” said Chris Robinson. “I +have seen little children--” + +“I submit life on an ill-provisioned raft, for example, could easily be +worse--or life in a beleagured town.” + +Murmurs. + +They wrangled for some time, and it had the effect upon me of coming out +from the glow of a good matinee performance into the cold daylight of +late afternoon. Chris Robinson did not shine in conflict with Denson; he +was an orator and not a dialectician, and he missed Denson's points and +displayed a disposition to plunge into untimely pathos and indignation. +And Denson hit me curiously hard with one of his shafts. “Suppose,” he +said, “you found yourself prime minister--” + +I looked at Chris Robinson, bright-eyed and his hair a little ruffled +and his whole being rhetorical, and measured him against the huge +machine of government muddled and mysterious. Oh! but I was perplexed! + +And then we took him back to Hatherleigh's rooms and drank beer and +smoked about him while he nursed his knee with hairy wristed hands that +protruded from his flannel shirt, and drank lemonade under the cartoon +of that emancipated Worker, and we had a great discursive talk with him. + +“Eh! you should see our big meetings up north?” he said. + +Denson had ruffled him and worried him a good deal, and ever and again +he came back to that discussion. “It's all very easy for your learned +men to sit and pick holes,” he said, “while the children suffer and die. +They don't pick holes up north. They mean business.” + +He talked, and that was the most interesting part of it all, of his +going to work in a factory when he was twelve--“when you Chaps were all +with your mammies “--and how he had educated himself of nights until he +would fall asleep at his reading. + +“It's made many of us keen for all our lives,” he remarked, “all that +clemming for education. Why! I longed all through one winter to read a +bit of Darwin. I must know about this Darwin if I die for it, I said. +And I could no' get the book.” + +Hatherleigh made an enthusiastic noise and drank beer at him with round +eyes over the mug. + +“Well, anyhow I wasted no time on Greek and Latin,” said Chris Robinson. +“And one learns to go straight at a thing without splitting straws. One +gets hold of the Elementals.” + +(Well, did they? That was the gist of my perplexity.) + +“One doesn't quibble,” he said, returning to his rankling memory of +Denson, “while men decay and starve.” + +“But suppose,” I said, suddenly dropping into opposition, “the +alternative is to risk a worse disaster--or do something patently +futile.” + +“I don't follow that,” said Chris Robinson. “We don't propose anything +futile, so far as I can see.” + + +6 + + +The prevailing force in my undergraduate days was not Socialism +but Kiplingism. Our set was quite exceptional in its socialistic +professions. And we were all, you must understand, very distinctly +Imperialists also, and professed a vivid sense of the “White Man's +Burden.” + +It is a little difficult now to get back to the feelings of that +period; Kipling has since been so mercilessly and exhaustively mocked, +criticised and torn to shreds;--never was a man so violently exalted and +then, himself assisting, so relentlessly called down. But in the middle +nineties this spectacled and moustached little figure with its heavy +chin and its general effect of vehement gesticulation, its wild shouts +of boyish enthusiasm for effective force, its lyric delight in the +sounds and colours, in the very odours of empire, its wonderful +discovery of machinery and cotton waste and the under officer and the +engineer, and “shop” as a poetic dialect, became almost a national +symbol. He got hold of us wonderfully, he filled us with tinkling and +haunting quotations, he stirred Britten and myself to futile imitations, +he coloured the very idiom of our conversation. He rose to his climax +with his “Recessional,” while I was still an undergraduate. + +What did he give me exactly? + +He helped to broaden my geographical sense immensely, and he provided +phrases for just that desire for discipline and devotion and organised +effort the Socialism of our time failed to express, that the current +socialist movement still fails, I think, to express. The sort of thing +that follows, for example, tore something out of my inmost nature and +gave it a shape, and I took it back from him shaped and let much of +the rest of him, the tumult and the bullying, the hysteria and the +impatience, the incoherence and inconsistency, go uncriticised for the +sake of it:-- + + +“Keep ye the Law--be swift in all obedience--Clear the land of evil, +drive the road and bridge the ford, Make ye sure to each his own That he +reap where he hath sown; By the peace among Our peoples let men know we +serve the Lord!” + + +And then again, and for all our later criticism, this sticks in my mind, +sticks there now as quintessential wisdom: + + + “The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone; + 'E don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own; + 'E keeps 'is side-arms awful: 'e leaves 'em all about + An' then comes up the regiment an' pokes the 'eathen out. + All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, + All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less, + All along of abby-nay, kul, an' hazar-ho, + Mind you keep your rifle an' yourself jus' so!” + + +It is after all a secondary matter that Kipling, not having been born +and brought up in Bromstead and Penge, and the war in South Africa +being yet in the womb of time, could quite honestly entertain the now +remarkable delusion that England had her side-arms at that time kept +anything but “awful.” He learnt better, and we all learnt with him in +the dark years of exasperating and humiliating struggle that followed, +and I do not see that we fellow learners are justified in turning +resentfully upon him for a common ignorance and assumption.... + +South Africa seems always painted on the back cloth of my Cambridge +memories. How immense those disasters seemed at the time, disasters +our facile English world has long since contrived in any edifying or +profitable sense to forget! How we thrilled to the shouting newspaper +sellers as the first false flush of victory gave place to the +realisation of defeat. Far away there our army showed itself human, +mortal and human in the sight of all the world, the pleasant officers we +had imagined would change to wonderful heroes at the first crackling of +rifles, remained the pleasant, rather incompetent men they had always +been, failing to imagine, failing to plan and co-operate, failing to +grip. And the common soldiers, too, they were just what our streets and +country-side had made them, no sudden magic came out of the war bugles +for them. Neither splendid nor disgraceful were they,--just ill-trained +and fairly plucky and wonderfully good-tempered men--paying for it. And +how it lowered our vitality all that first winter to hear of Nicholson's +Nek, and then presently close upon one another, to realise the +bloody waste of Magersfontein, the shattering retreat from Stormberg, +Colenso--Colenso, that blundering battle, with White, as it seemed, in +Ladysmith near the point of surrender! and so through the long unfolding +catalogue of bleak disillusionments, of aching, unconcealed anxiety lest +worse should follow. To advance upon your enemy singing about his lack +of cleanliness and method went out of fashion altogether! The dirty +retrogressive Boer vanished from our scheme of illusion. + +All through my middle Cambridge period, the guns boomed and the rifles +crackled away there on the veldt, and the horsemen rode and the tale of +accidents and blundering went on. Men, mules, horses, stores and money +poured into South Africa, and the convalescent wounded streamed home. I +see it in my memory as if I had looked at it through a window instead of +through the pages of the illustrated papers; I recall as if I had been +there the wide open spaces, the ragged hillsides, the open order attacks +of helmeted men in khaki, the scarce visible smoke of the guns, the +wrecked trains in great lonely places, the burnt isolated farms, and +at last the blockhouses and the fences of barbed wire uncoiling and +spreading for endless miles across the desert, netting the elusive enemy +until at last, though he broke the meshes again and again, we had him in +the toils. If one's attention strayed in the lecture-room it wandered to +those battle-fields. + +And that imagined panorama of war unfolds to an accompaniment of yelling +newsboys in the narrow old Cambridge streets, of the flicker of papers +hastily bought and torn open in the twilight, of the doubtful reception +of doubtful victories, and the insensate rejoicings at last that seemed +to some of us more shameful than defeats.... + + + +7 + + +A book that stands out among these memories, that stimulated me +immensely so that I forced it upon my companions, half in the spirit of +propaganda and half to test it by their comments, was Meredith's ONE OF +OUR CONQUERORS. It is one of the books that have made me. In that I got +a supplement and corrective of Kipling. It was the first detached and +adverse criticism of the Englishman I had ever encountered. It must have +been published already nine or ten years when I read it. The country +had paid no heed to it, had gone on to the expensive lessons of the War +because of the dull aversion our people feel for all such intimations, +and so I could read it as a book justified. The war endorsed its every +word for me, underlined each warning indication of the gigantic dangers +that gathered against our system across the narrow seas. It discovered +Europe to me, as watching and critical. + +But while I could respond to all its criticisms of my country's +intellectual indolence, of my country's want of training and discipline +and moral courage, I remember that the idea that on the continent there +were other peoples going ahead of us, mentally alert while we fumbled, +disciplined while we slouched, aggressive and preparing to bring our +Imperial pride to a reckoning, was extremely novel and distasteful to +me. It set me worrying of nights. It put all my projects for social and +political reconstruction upon a new uncomfortable footing. It made them +no longer merely desirable but urgent. Instead of pride and the love +of making one might own to a baser motive. Under Kipling's sway I had a +little forgotten the continent of Europe, treated it as a mere envious +echo to our own world-wide display. I began now to have a disturbing +sense as it were of busy searchlights over the horizon.... + +One consequence of the patriotic chagrin Meredith produced in me was an +attempt to belittle his merit. “It isn't a good novel, anyhow,” I said. + +The charge I brought against it was, I remember, a lack of unity. It +professed to be a study of the English situation in the early nineties, +but it was all deflected, I said, and all the interest was confused by +the story of Victor Radnor's fight with society to vindicate the woman +he had loved and never married. Now in the retrospect and with a mind +full of bitter enlightenment, I can do Meredith justice, and admit the +conflict was not only essential but cardinal in his picture, that the +terrible inflexibility of the rich aunts and the still more terrible +claim of Mrs. Burman Radnor, the “infernal punctilio,” and Dudley +Sowerby's limitations, were the central substance of that inalertness +the book set itself to assail. So many things have been brought together +in my mind that were once remotely separated. A people that will not +valiantly face and understand and admit love and passion can understand +nothing whatever. But in those days what is now just obvious truth to me +was altogether outside my range of comprehension.... + + + +8 + + +As I seek to recapitulate the interlacing growth of my apprehension of +the world, as I flounder among the half-remembered developments that +found me a crude schoolboy and left me a man, there comes out, as if +it stood for all the rest, my first holiday abroad. That did not happen +until I was twenty-two. I was a fellow of Trinity, and the Peace of +Vereeniging had just been signed. + +I went with a man named Willersley, a man some years senior to myself, +who had just missed a fellowship and the higher division of the Civil +Service, and who had become an enthusiastic member of the London School +Board, upon which the cumulative vote and the support of the “advanced” + people had placed him. He had, like myself, a small independent income +that relieved him of any necessity to earn a living, and he had a +kindred craving for social theorising and some form of social service. +He had sought my acquaintance after reading a paper of mine (begotten +by the visit of Chris Robinson) on the limits of pure democracy. It had +marched with some thoughts of his own. + +We went by train to Spiez on the Lake of Thun, then up the Gemmi, +and thence with one or two halts and digressions and a little modest +climbing we crossed over by the Antrona pass (on which we were +benighted) into Italy, and by way of Domo D'ossola and the Santa Maria +Maggiore valley to Cannobio, and thence up the lake to Locarno (where, +as I shall tell, we stayed some eventful days) and so up the Val Maggia +and over to Airolo and home. + +As I write of that long tramp of ours, something of its freshness and +enlargement returns to me. I feel again the faint pleasant excitement of +the boat train, the trampling procession of people with hand baggage and +laden porters along the platform of the Folkestone pier, the scarcely +perceptible swaying of the moored boat beneath our feet. Then, very +obvious and simple, the little emotion of standing out from the homeland +and seeing the long white Kentish cliffs recede. One walked about the +boat doing one's best not to feel absurdly adventurous, and presently a +movement of people directed one's attention to a white lighthouse on a +cliff to the east of us, coming up suddenly; and then one turned to scan +the little different French coast villages, and then, sliding by in a +pale sunshine came a long wooden pier with oddly dressed children upon +it, and the clustering town of Boulogne. + +One took it all with the outward calm that became a young man of nearly +three and twenty, but one was alive to one's finger-tips with pleasing +little stimulations. The custom house examination excited one, the +strangeness of a babble in a foreign tongue; one found the French of +City Merchants' and Cambridge a shy and viscous flow, and then one was +standing in the train as it went slowly through the rail-laid street to +Boulogne Ville, and one looked out at the world in French, porters in +blouses, workmen in enormous purple trousers, police officers in peaked +caps instead of helmets and romantically cloaked, big carts, all on +two wheels instead of four, green shuttered casements instead of +sash windows, and great numbers of neatly dressed women in economical +mourning. + +“Oh! there's a priest!” one said, and was betrayed into suchlike artless +cries. + +It was a real other world, with different government and different +methods, and in the night one was roused from uneasy slumbers and +sat blinking and surly, wrapped up in one's couverture and with one's +oreiller all awry, to encounter a new social phenomenon, the German +official, so different in manner from the British; and when one woke +again after that one had come to Bale, and out one tumbled to get coffee +in Switzerland.... + +I have been over that route dozens of times since, but it still revives +a certain lingering youthfulness, a certain sense of cheerful release in +me. + +I remember that I and Willersley became very sociological as we ran on +to Spiez, and made all sorts of generalisations from the steeply sloping +fields on the hillsides, and from the people we saw on platforms and +from little differences in the way things were done. + +The clean prosperity of Bale and Switzerland, the big clean stations, +filled me with patriotic misgivings, as I thought of the vast dirtiness +of London, the mean dirtiness of Cambridgeshire. It came to me that +perhaps my scheme of international values was all wrong, that quite +stupendous possibilities and challenges for us and our empire might be +developing here--and I recalled Meredith's Skepsey in France with a new +understanding. + +Willersley had dressed himself in a world-worn Norfolk suit of greenish +grey tweeds that ended unfamiliarly at his rather impending, spectacled, +intellectual visage. I didn't, I remember, like the contrast of him with +the drilled Swiss and Germans about us. Convict coloured stockings +and vast hobnail boots finished him below, and all his luggage was a +borrowed rucksac that he had tied askew. He did not want to shave in +the train, but I made him at one of the Swiss stations--I dislike +these Oxford slovenlinesses--and then confound him! he cut himself and +bled.... + +Next morning we were breathing a thin exhilarating air that seemed to +have washed our very veins to an incredible cleanliness, and +eating hard-boiled eggs in a vast clear space of rime-edged rocks, +snow-mottled, above a blue-gashed glacier. All about us the monstrous +rock surfaces rose towards the shining peaks above, and there were +winding moraines from which the ice had receded, and then dark +clustering fir trees far below. + +I had an extraordinary feeling of having come out of things, of being +outside. + +“But this is the round world!” I said, with a sense of never having +perceived it before; “this is the round world!” + + + +9 + + +That holiday was full of big comprehensive effects; the first view of +the Rhone valley and the distant Valaisian Alps, for example, which we +saw from the shoulder of the mountain above the Gemmi, and the early +summer dawn breaking over Italy as we moved from our night's crouching +and munched bread and chocolate and stretched our stiff limbs among the +tumbled and precipitous rocks that hung over Lake Cingolo, and surveyed +the winding tiring rocky track going down and down to Antronapiano. + +And our thoughts were as comprehensive as our impressions. Willersley's +mind abounded in historical matter; he had an inaccurate abundant habit +of topographical reference; he made me see and trace and see again the +Roman Empire sweep up these winding valleys, and the coming of the first +great Peace among the warring tribes of men.... + +In the retrospect each of us seems to have been talking about our +outlook almost continually. Each of us, you see, was full of the same +question, very near and altogether predominant to us, the question: +“What am I going to do with my life?” He saw it almost as importantly as +I, but from a different angle, because his choice was largely made and +mine still hung in the balance. + +“I feel we might do so many things,” I said, “and everything that calls +one, calls one away from something else.” + +Willersley agreed without any modest disavowals. + +“We have got to think out,” he said, “just what we are and what we are +up to. We've got to do that now. And then--it's one of those questions +it is inadvisable to reopen subsequently.” + +He beamed at me through his glasses. The sententious use of long words +was a playful habit with him, that and a slight deliberate humour, +habits occasional Extension Lecturing was doing very much to intensify. + +“You've made your decision?” + +He nodded with a peculiar forward movement of his head. + +“How would you put it?” + +“Social Service--education. Whatever else matters or doesn't matter, it +seems to me there is one thing we MUST have and increase, and that +is the number of people who can think a little--and have”--he beamed +again--“an adequate sense of causation.” + +“You're sure it's worth while.” + +“For me--certainly. I don't discuss that any more.” + +“I don't limit myself too narrowly,” he added. “After all, the work is +all one. We who know, we who feel, are building the great modern state, +joining wall to wall and way to way, the new great England rising out +of the decaying old... we are the real statesmen--I like that use of +'statesmen.'...” + +“Yes,” I said with many doubts. “Yes, of course....” + +Willersley is middle-aged now, with silver in his hair and a deepening +benevolence in his always amiable face, and he has very fairly kept his +word. He has lived for social service and to do vast masses of +useful, undistinguished, fertilising work. Think of the days of +arid administrative plodding and of contention still more arid and +unrewarded, that he must have spent! His little affectations of gesture +and manner, imitative affectations for the most part, have increased, +and the humorous beam and the humorous intonations have become a thing +he puts on every morning like an old coat. His devotion is mingled with +a considerable whimsicality, and they say he is easily flattered by +subordinates and easily offended into opposition by colleagues; he has +made mistakes at times and followed wrong courses, still there he is, +a flat contradiction to all the ordinary doctrine of motives, a man who +has foregone any chances of wealth and profit, foregone any easier paths +to distinction, foregone marriage and parentage, in order to serve the +community. He does it without any fee or reward except his personal +self-satisfaction in doing this work, and he does it without any hope +of future joys and punishments, for he is an implacable Rationalist. No +doubt he idealises himself a little, and dreams of recognition. No +doubt he gets his pleasure from a sense of power, from the spending +and husbanding of large sums of public money, and from the inevitable +proprietorship he must feel in the fair, fine, well-ordered schools he +has done so much to develop. “But for me,” he can say, “there would have +been a Job about those diagrams, and that subject or this would have +been less ably taught.”... + +The fact remains that for him the rewards have been adequate, if not to +content at any rate to keep him working. Of course he covets the +notice of the world he has served, as a lover covets the notice of his +mistress. Of course he thinks somewhere, somewhen, he will get credit. +Only last year I heard some men talking of him, and they were noting, +with little mean smiles, how he had shown himself self-conscious while +there was talk of some honorary degree-giving or other; it would, I have +no doubt, please him greatly if his work were to flower into a crimson +gown in some Academic parterre. Why shouldn't it? But that is incidental +vanity at the worst; he goes on anyhow. Most men don't. + +But we had our walk twenty years and more ago now. He was oldish even +then as a young man, just as he is oldish still in middle age. Long +may his industrious elderliness flourish for the good of the world! He +lectured a little in conversation then; he lectures more now and listens +less, toilsomely disentangling what you already understand, giving you +in detail the data you know; these are things like callosities that come +from a man's work. + +Our long three weeks' talk comes back to me as a memory of ideas and +determinations slowly growing, all mixed up with a smell of wood smoke +and pine woods and huge precipices and remote gleams of snow-fields and +the sound of cascading torrents rushing through deep gorges far below. +It is mixed, too, with gossips with waitresses and fellow travellers, +with my first essays in colloquial German and Italian, with disputes +about the way to take, and other things that I will tell of in another +section. But the white passion of human service was our dominant theme. +Not simply perhaps nor altogether unselfishly, but quite honestly, and +with at least a frequent self-forgetfulness, did we want to do fine and +noble things, to help in their developing, to lessen misery, to broaden +and exalt life. It is very hard--perhaps it is impossible--to present +in a page or two the substance and quality of nearly a month's +conversation, conversation that is casual and discursive in form, that +ranges carelessly from triviality to immensity, and yet is constantly +resuming a constructive process, as workmen on a wall loiter and jest +and go and come back, and all the while build. + +We got it more and more definite that the core of our purpose beneath +all its varied aspects must needs be order and discipline. “Muddle,” + said I, “is the enemy.” That remains my belief to this day. Clearness +and order, light and foresight, these things I know for Good. It was +muddle had just given us all the still freshly painful disasters and +humiliations of the war, muddle that gives us the visibly sprawling +disorder of our cities and industrial country-side, muddle that gives us +the waste of life, the limitations, wretchedness and unemployment of the +poor. Muddle! I remember myself quoting Kipling-- + + + “All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, + All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less.” + + +“We build the state,” we said over and over again. “That is what we are +for--servants of the new reorganisation!” + +We planned half in earnest and half Utopianising, a League of Social +Service. + +We talked of the splendid world of men that might grow out of such +unpaid and ill-paid work as we were setting our faces to do. We spoke +of the intricate difficulties, the monstrous passive resistances, the +hostilities to such a development as we conceived our work subserved, +and we spoke with that underlying confidence in the invincibility of the +causes we adopted that is natural to young and scarcely tried men. + +We talked much of the detailed life of politics so far as it was known +to us, and there Willersley was more experienced and far better informed +than I; we discussed possible combinations and possible developments, +and the chances of some great constructive movement coming from +the heart-searchings the Boer war had occasioned. We would sink to +gossip--even at the Suetonius level. Willersley would decline towards +illuminating anecdotes that I capped more or less loosely from my +private reading. We were particularly wise, I remember, upon the +management of newspapers, because about that we knew nothing whatever. +We perceived that great things were to be done through newspapers. We +talked of swaying opinion and moving great classes to massive action. + +Men are egotistical even in devotion. All our splendid projects were +thickset with the first personal pronoun. We both could write, and all +that we said in general terms was reflected in the particular in our +minds; it was ourselves we saw, and no others, writing and speaking +that moving word. We had already produced manuscript and passed the +initiations of proof reading; I had been a frequent speaker in the +Union, and Willersley was an active man on the School Board. Our feet +were already on the lower rungs that led up and up. He was six and +twenty, and I twenty-two. We intimated our individual careers in terms +of bold expectation. I had prophetic glimpses of walls and hoardings +clamorous with “Vote for Remington,” and Willersley no doubt saw himself +chairman of this committee and that, saying a few slightly ironical +words after the declaration of the poll, and then sitting friendly +beside me on the government benches. There was nothing impossible in +such dreams. Why not the Board of Education for him? My preference at +that time wavered between the Local Government Board--I had great ideas +about town-planning, about revisions of municipal areas and re-organised +internal transit--and the War Office. I swayed strongly towards the +latter as the journey progressed. My educational bias came later. + +The swelling ambitions that have tramped over Alpine passes! How many +of them, like mine, have come almost within sight of realisation before +they failed? + +There were times when we posed like young gods (of unassuming exterior), +and times when we were full of the absurdest little solicitudes about +our prospects. There were times when one surveyed the whole world of +men as if it was a little thing at one's feet, and by way of contrast +I remember once lying in bed--it must have been during this holiday, +though I cannot for the life of me fix where--and speculating whether +perhaps some day I might not be a K. C. B., Sir Richard Remington, K. C. +B., M. P. + +But the big style prevailed.... + +We could not tell from minute to minute whether we were planning for +a world of solid reality, or telling ourselves fairy tales about this +prospect of life. So much seemed possible, and everything we could think +of so improbable. There were lapses when it seemed to me I could never +be anything but just the entirely unimportant and undistinguished young +man I was for ever and ever. I couldn't even think of myself as five and +thirty. + +Once I remember Willersley going over a list of failures, and why +they had failed--but young men in the twenties do not know much about +failures. + + + +10 + + +Willersley and I professed ourselves Socialists, but by this time I knew +my Rodbertus as well as my Marx, and there was much in our socialism +that would have shocked Chris Robinson as much as anything in life could +have shocked him. Socialism as a simple democratic cry we had done with +for ever. We were socialists because Individualism for us meant muddle, +meant a crowd of separated, undisciplined little people all obstinately +and ignorantly doing things jarringly, each one in his own way. +“Each,” I said quoting words of my father's that rose apt in my memory, +“snarling from his own little bit of property, like a dog tied to a +cart's tail.” + +“Essentially,” said Willersley, “essentially we're for conscription, in +peace and war alike. The man who owns property is a public official and +has to behave as such. That's the gist of socialism as I understand it.” + +“Or be dismissed from his post,” I said, “and replaced by some better +sort of official. A man's none the less an official because he's +irresponsible. What he does with his property affects people just the +same. Private! No one is really private but an outlaw....” + +Order and devotion were the very essence of our socialism, and a +splendid collective vigour and happiness its end. We projected an ideal +state, an organised state as confident and powerful as modern science, +as balanced and beautiful as a body, as beneficent as sunshine, the +organised state that should end muddle for ever; it ruled all our ideals +and gave form to all our ambitions. + +Every man was to be definitely related to that, to have his predominant +duty to that. Such was the England renewed we had in mind, and how to +serve that end, to subdue undisciplined worker and undisciplined wealth +to it, and make the Scientific Commonweal, King, was the continuing +substance of our intercourse. + + + +11 + + +Every day the wine of the mountains was stronger in our blood, and the +flush of our youth deeper. We would go in the morning sunlight along +some narrow Alpine mule-path shouting large suggestions for national +reorganisation, and weighing considerations as lightly as though the +world was wax in our hands. “Great England,” we said in effect, over +and over again, “and we will be among the makers! England renewed! The +country has been warned; it has learnt its lesson. The disasters and +anxieties of the war have sunk in. England has become serious.... Oh! +there are big things before us to do; big enduring things!” + +One evening we walked up to the loggia of a little pilgrimage church, +I forget its name, that stands out on a conical hill at the head of a +winding stair above the town of Locarno. Down below the houses clustered +amidst a confusion of heat-bitten greenery. I had been sitting silently +on the parapet, looking across to the purple mountain masses where +Switzerland passes into Italy, and the drift of our talk seemed suddenly +to gather to a head. + +I broke into speech, giving form to the thoughts that had been +accumulating. My words have long since passed out of my memory, the +phrases of familiar expression have altered for me, but the substance +remains as clear as ever. I said how we were in our measure emperors +and kings, men undriven, free to do as we pleased with life; we classed +among the happy ones, our bread and common necessities were given us for +nothing, we had abilities,--it wasn't modesty but cowardice to behave +as if we hadn't--and Fortune watched us to see what we might do with +opportunity and the world. + +“There are so many things to do, you see,” began Willersley, in his +judicial lecturer's voice. + +“So many things we may do,” I interrupted, “with all these years before +us.... We're exceptional men. It's our place, our duty, to do things.” + +“Here anyhow,” I said, answering the faint amusement of his face; “I've +got no modesty. Everything conspires to set me up. Why should I run +about like all those grubby little beasts down there, seeking nothing +but mean little vanities and indulgencies--and then take credit for +modesty? I KNOW I am capable. I KNOW I have imagination. Modesty! I know +if I don't attempt the very biggest things in life I am a damned shirk. +The very biggest! Somebody has to attempt them. I feel like a loaded gun +that is only a little perplexed because it has to find out just where to +aim itself....” + +The lake and the frontier villages, a white puff of steam on the distant +railway to Luino, the busy boats and steamers trailing triangular wakes +of foam, the long vista eastward towards battlemented Bellinzona, the +vast mountain distances, now tinged with sunset light, behind this +nearer landscape, and the southward waters with remote coast towns +shining dimly, waters that merged at last in a luminous golden haze, +made a broad panoramic spectacle. It was as if one surveyed the +world,--and it was like the games I used to set out upon my nursery +floor. I was exalted by it; I felt larger than men. So kings should +feel. + +That sense of largeness came to me then, and it has come to me since, +again and again, a splendid intimation or a splendid vanity. Once, I +remember, when I looked at Genoa from the mountain crest behind the +town and saw that multitudinous place in all its beauty of width and +abundance and clustering human effort, and once as I was steaming past +the brown low hills of Staten Island towards the towering vigour and +clamorous vitality of New York City, that mood rose to its quintessence. +And once it came to me, as I shall tell, on Dover cliffs. And a hundred +times when I have thought of England as our country might be, with no +wretched poor, no wretched rich, a nation armed and ordered, trained and +purposeful amidst its vales and rivers, that emotion of collective ends +and collective purposes has returned to me. I felt as great as humanity. +For a brief moment I was humanity, looking at the world I had made and +had still to make.... + + + +12 + + +And mingled with these dreams of power and patriotic service there was +another series of a different quality and a different colour, like the +antagonistic colour of a shot silk. The white life and the red life, +contrasted and interchanged, passing swiftly at a turn from one to +another, and refusing ever to mingle peacefully one with the other. I +was asking myself openly and distinctly: what are you going to do +for the world? What are you going to do with yourself? and with an +increasing strength and persistence Nature in spite of my averted +attention was asking me in penetrating undertones: what are you going +to do about this other fundamental matter, the beauty of girls and women +and your desire for them? + +I have told of my sisterless youth and the narrow circumstances of my +upbringing. It made all women-kind mysterious to me. If it had not been +for my Staffordshire cousins I do not think I should have known any +girls at all until I was twenty. Of Staffordshire I will tell a little +later. But I can remember still how through all those ripening years, +the thought of women's beauty, their magic presence in the world beside +me and the unknown, untried reactions of their intercourse, grew upon me +and grew, as a strange presence grows in a room when one is occupied by +other things. I busied myself and pretended to be wholly occupied, and +there the woman stood, full half of life neglected, and it seemed to my +averted mind sometimes that she was there clad and dignified and divine, +and sometimes Aphrodite shining and commanding, and sometimes that Venus +who stoops and allures. + +This travel abroad seemed to have released a multitude of things in my +mind; the clear air, the beauty of the sunshine, the very blue of +the glaciers made me feel my body and quickened all those disregarded +dreams. I saw the sheathed beauty of women's forms all about me, in the +cheerful waitresses at the inns, in the pedestrians one encountered +in the tracks, in the chance fellow travellers at the hotel tables. +“Confound it!” said I, and talked all the more zealously of that greater +England that was calling us. + +I remember that we passed two Germans, an old man and a tall fair girl, +father and daughter, who were walking down from Saas. She came swinging +and shining towards us, easy and strong. I worshipped her as she +approached. + +“Gut Tag!” said Willersley, removing his hat. + +“Morgen!” said the old man, saluting. + +I stared stockishly at the girl, who passed with an indifferent face. + +That sticks in my mind as a picture remains in a room, it has kept there +bright and fresh as a thing seen yesterday, for twenty years.... + +I flirted hesitatingly once or twice with comely serving girls, and was +a little ashamed lest Willersley should detect the keen interest I took +in them, and then as we came over the pass from Santa Maria Maggiore to +Cannobio, my secret preoccupation took me by surprise and flooded me and +broke down my pretences. + +The women in that valley are very beautiful--women vary from valley +to valley in the Alps and are plain and squat here and divinities five +miles away--and as we came down we passed a group of five or six of them +resting by the wayside. Their burthens were beside them, and one like +Ceres held a reaping hook in her brown hand. She watched us approaching +and smiled faintly, her eyes at mine. + +There was some greeting, and two of them laughed together. + +We passed. + +“Glorious girls they were,” said Willersley, and suddenly an immense +sense of boredom enveloped me. I saw myself striding on down that +winding road, talking of politics and parties and bills of parliament +and all sorts of dessicated things. That road seemed to me to wind on +for ever down to dust and infinite dreariness. I knew it for a way of +death. Reality was behind us. + +Willersley set himself to draw a sociological moral. “I'm not so +sure,” he said in a voice of intense discriminations, “after all, that +agricultural work isn't good for women.” + +“Damn agricultural work!” I said, and broke out into a vigorous cursing +of all I held dear. “Fettered things we are!” I cried. “I wonder why I +stand it!” + +“Stand what?” + +“Why don't I go back and make love to those girls and let the world and +you and everything go hang? Deep breasts and rounded limbs--and we poor +emasculated devils go tramping by with the blood of youth in us!...” + +“I'm not quite sure, Remington,” said Willersley, looking at me with +a deliberately quaint expression over his glasses, “that picturesque +scenery is altogether good for your morals.” + +That fever was still in my blood when we came to Locarno. + + + +13 + + +Along the hot and dusty lower road between the Orrido of Traffiume and +Cannobio Willersley had developed his first blister. And partly because +of that and partly because there was a bag at the station that gave us +the refreshment of clean linen and partly because of the lazy lower air +into which we had come, we decided upon three or four days' sojourn in +the Empress Hotel. + +We dined that night at a table-d'hote, and I found myself next to an +Englishwoman who began a conversation that was resumed presently in the +hotel lounge. She was a woman of perhaps thirty-three or thirty-four, +slenderly built, with a warm reddish skin and very abundant fair +golden hair, the wife of a petulant-looking heavy-faced man of perhaps +fifty-three, who smoked a cigar and dozed over his coffee and +presently went to bed. “He always goes to bed like that,” she confided +startlingly. “He sleeps after all his meals. I never knew such a man to +sleep.” + +Then she returned to our talk, whatever it was. + +We had begun at the dinner table with itineraries and the usual +topographical talk, and she had envied our pedestrian travel. “My +husband doesn't walk,” she said. “His heart is weak and he cannot manage +the hills.” + +There was something friendly and adventurous in her manner; she conveyed +she liked me, and when presently Willersley drifted off to write +letters our talk sank at once to easy confidential undertones. I felt +enterprising, and indeed it is easy to be daring with people one has +never seen before and may never see again. I said I loved beautiful +scenery and all beautiful things, and the pointing note in my voice made +her laugh. She told me I had bold eyes, and so far as I can remember I +said she made them bold. “Blue they are,” she remarked, smiling archly. +“I like blue eyes.” Then I think we compared ages, and she said she was +the Woman of Thirty, “George Moore's Woman of Thirty.” + +I had not read George Moore at the time, but I pretended to understand. + +That, I think, was our limit that evening. She went to bed, smiling +good-night quite prettily down the big staircase, and I and Willersley +went out to smoke in the garden. My head was full of her, and I found it +necessary to talk about her. So I made her a problem in sociology. “Who +the deuce are these people?” I said, “and how do they get a living? They +seem to have plenty of money. He strikes me as being--Willersley, what +is a drysalter? I think he's a retired drysalter.” + +Willersley theorised while I thought of the woman and that provocative +quality of dash she had displayed. The next day at lunch she and I met +like old friends. A huge mass of private thinking during the interval +had been added to our effect upon one another. We talked for a time of +insignificant things. + +“What do you do,” she asked rather quickly, “after lunch? Take a +siesta?” + +“Sometimes,” I said, and hung for a moment eye to eye. + +We hadn't a doubt of each other, but my heart was beating like a steamer +propeller when it lifts out of the water. + +“Do you get a view from your room?” she asked after a pause. + +“It's on the third floor, Number seventeen, near the staircase. My +friend's next door.” + +She began to talk of books. She was interested in Christian Science, +she said, and spoke of a book. I forget altogether what that book was +called, though I remember to this day with the utmost exactness the +purplish magenta of its cover. She said she would lend it to me and +hesitated. + +Willersley wanted to go for an expedition across the lake that +afternoon, but I refused. He made some other proposals that I rejected +abruptly. “I shall write in my room,” I said. + +“Why not write down here?” + +“I shall write in my room,” I snarled like a thwarted animal, and he +looked at me curiously. “Very well,” he said; “then I'll make some notes +and think about that order of ours out under the magnolias.” + +I hovered about the lounge for a time buying postcards and feverishly +restless, watching the movements of the other people. Finally I went up +to my room and sat down by the windows, staring out. There came a +little tap at the unlocked door and in an instant, like the go of a taut +bowstring, I was up and had it open. + +“Here is that book,” she said, and we hesitated. + +“COME IN!” I whispered, trembling from head to foot. + +“You're just a boy,” she said in a low tone. + +I did not feel a bit like a lover, I felt like a burglar with the +safe-door nearly opened. “Come in,” I said almost impatiently, for +anyone might be in the passage, and I gripped her wrist and drew her +towards me. + +“What do you mean?” she answered with a faint smile on her lips, and +awkward and yielding. + +I shut the door behind her, still holding her with one hand, then turned +upon her--she was laughing nervously--and without a word drew her to me +and kissed her. And I remember that as I kissed her she made a little +noise almost like the purring miaow with which a cat will greet one and +her face, close to mine, became solemn and tender. + +She was suddenly a different being from the discontented wife who had +tapped a moment since on my door, a woman transfigured.... + +That evening I came down to dinner a monster of pride, for behold! I +was a man. I felt myself the most wonderful and unprecedented of +adventurers. It was hard to believe that any one in the world before +had done as much. My mistress and I met smiling, we carried things off +admirably, and it seemed to me that Willersley was the dullest old dog +in the world. I wanted to give him advice. I wanted to give him derisive +pokes. After dinner and coffee in the lounge I was too excited and +hilarious to go to bed, I made him come with me down to the cafe under +the arches by the pier, and there drank beer and talked extravagant +nonsense about everything under the sun, in order not to talk about the +happenings of the afternoon. All the time something shouted within me: +“I am a man! I am a man!”... + +“What shall we do to-morrow?” said he. + +“I'm for loafing,” I said. “Let's row in the morning and spend to-morrow +afternoon just as we did to-day.” + +“They say the church behind the town is worth seeing.” + +“We'll go up about sunset; that's the best time for it. We can start +about five.” + +We heard music, and went further along the arcade to discover a place +where girls in operatic Swiss peasant costume were singing and dancing +on a creaking, protesting little stage. I eyed their generous display +of pink neck and arm with the seasoned eye of a man who has lived in the +world. Life was perfectly simple and easy, I felt, if one took it the +right way. + +Next day Willersley wanted to go on, but I delayed. Altogether I kept +him back four days. Then abruptly my mood changed, and we decided +to start early the following morning. I remember, though a little +indistinctly, the feeling of my last talk with that woman whose surname, +odd as it may seem, either I never learnt or I have forgotten. (Her +christian name was Milly.) She was tired and rather low-spirited, and +disposed to be sentimental, and for the first time in our intercourse I +found myself liking her for the sake of her own personality. There was +something kindly and generous appearing behind the veil of naive and +uncontrolled sensuality she had worn. There was a curious quality of +motherliness in her attitude to me that something in my nature answered +and approved. She didn't pretend to keep it up that she had yielded to +my initiative. “I've done you no harm,” she said a little doubtfully, an +odd note for a man's victim! And, “we've had a good time. You have liked +me, haven't you?” + +She interested me in her lonely dissatisfied life; she was childless and +had no hope of children, and her husband was the only son of a rich +meat salesman, very mean, a mighty smoker--“he reeks of it,” she said, +“always”--and interested in nothing but golf, billiards (which he played +very badly), pigeon shooting, convivial Free Masonry and Stock Exchange +punting. Mostly they drifted about the Riviera. Her mother had contrived +her marriage when she was eighteen. They were the first samples I ever +encountered of the great multitude of functionless property owners which +encumbers modern civilisation--but at the time I didn't think much of +that aspect of them.... + +I tell all this business as it happened without comment, because I +have no comment to make. It was all strange to me, strange rather than +wonderful, and, it may be, some dream of beauty died for ever in those +furtive meetings; it happened to me, and I could scarcely have been +more irresponsible in the matter or controlled events less if I had +been suddenly pushed over a cliff into water. I swam, of course--finding +myself in it. Things tested me, and I reacted, as I have told. The bloom +of my innocence, if ever there had been such a thing, was gone. And here +is the remarkable thing about it; at the time and for some days I was +over-weeningly proud; I have never been so proud before or since; I felt +I had been promoted to virility; I was unable to conceal my exultation +from Willersley. It was a mood of shining shameless ungracious +self-approval. As he and I went along in the cool morning sunshine by +the rice fields in the throat of the Val Maggia a silence fell between +us. + +“You know?” I said abruptly,--“about that woman?” + +Willersley did not answer for a moment. He looked at me over the corner +of his spectacles. + +“Things went pretty far?” he asked. + +“Oh! all the way!” and I had a twinge of fatuous pride in my +unpremeditated achievement. + +“She came to your room?” + +I nodded. + +“I heard her. I heard her whispering.... The whispering and rustling and +so on. I was in my room yesterday.... Any one might have heard you.” + +I went on with my head in the air. + +“You might have been caught, and that would have meant endless trouble. +You might have incurred all sorts of consequences. What did you know +about her?... We have wasted four days in that hot close place. When we +found that League of Social Service we were talking about,” he said +with a determined eye upon me, “chastity will be first among the virtues +prescribed.” + +“I shall form a rival league,” I said a little damped. “I'm hanged if I +give up a single desire in me until I know why.” + +He lifted his chin and stared before him through his glasses at nothing. +“There are some things,” he said, “that a man who means to work--to do +great public services--MUST turn his back upon. I'm not discussing the +rights or wrongs of this sort of thing. It happens to be the conditions +we work under. It will probably always be so. If you want to experiment +in that way, if you want even to discuss it,--out you go from political +life. You must know that's so.... You're a strange man, Remington, with +a kind of kink in you. You've a sort of force. You might happen to do +immense things.... Only--” + +He stopped. He had said all that he had forced himself to say. + +“I mean to take myself as I am,” I said. “I'm going to get experience +for humanity out of all my talents--and bury nothing.” + +Willersley twisted his face to its humorous expression. “I doubt if +sexual proclivities,” he said drily, “come within the scope of the +parable.” + +I let that go for a little while. Then I broke out. “Sex!” said I, “is +a fundamental thing in life. We went through all this at Trinity. I'm +going to look at it, experience it, think about it--and get it square +with the rest of life. Career and Politics must take their chances of +that. It's part of the general English slackness that they won't look +this in the face. Gods! what a muffled time we're coming out of! Sex +means breeding, and breeding is a necessary function in a nation. +The Romans broke up upon that. The Americans fade out amidst their +successes. Eugenics--” + +“THAT wasn't Eugenics,” said Willersley. + +“It was a woman,” I said after a little interval, feeling oddly that +I had failed altogether to answer him, and yet had a strong dumb case +against him. + + + + +BOOK THE SECOND: MARGARET + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ MARGARET IN STAFFORDSHIRE + + +1 + +I must go back a little way with my story. In the previous book I +have described the kind of education that happens to a man of my class +nowadays, and it has been convenient to leap a phase in my experience +that I must now set out at length. I want to tell in this second +hook how I came to marry, and to do that I must give something of the +atmosphere in which I first met my wife and some intimations of the +forces that went to her making. I met her in Staffordshire while I was +staying with that uncle of whom I have already spoken, the uncle who +sold my father's houses and settled my mother in Penge. Margaret was +twenty then and I was twenty-two. + +It was just before the walking tour in Switzerland that opened up +so much of the world to me. I saw her once, for an afternoon, and +circumstances so threw her up in relief that I formed a very vivid +memory of her. She was in the sharpest contrast with the industrial +world about her; she impressed me as a dainty blue flower might do, +come upon suddenly on a clinker heap. She remained in my mind at once a +perplexing interrogation and a symbol.... + +But first I must tell of my Staffordshire cousins and the world that +served as a foil for her. + + + +2 + + +I first went to stay with my cousins when I was an awkward youth of +sixteen, wearing deep mourning for my mother. My uncle wanted to talk +things over with me, he said, and if he could, to persuade me to go into +business instead of going up to Cambridge. + +I remember that visit on account of all sorts of novel things, but +chiefly, I think, because it was the first time I encountered anything +that deserves to be spoken of as wealth. For the first time in my life +I had to do with people who seemed to have endless supplies of money, +unlimited good clothes, numerous servants; whose daily life was made +up of things that I had hitherto considered to be treats or exceptional +extravagances. My cousins of eighteen and nineteen took cabs, for +instance, with the utmost freedom, and travelled first-class in the +local trains that run up and down the district of the Five Towns with an +entire unconsciousness of the magnificence, as it seemed to me, of such +a proceeding. + +The family occupied a large villa in Newcastle, with big lawns before +it and behind, a shrubbery with quite a lot of shrubs, a coach house +and stable, and subordinate dwelling-places for the gardener and the +coachman. Every bedroom contained a gas heater and a canopied brass +bedstead, and had a little bathroom attached equipped with the porcelain +baths and fittings my uncle manufactured, bright and sanitary and +stamped with his name, and the house was furnished throughout with +chairs and tables in bright shining wood, soft and prevalently +red Turkish carpets, cosy corners, curtained archways, gold-framed +landscapes, overmantels, a dining-room sideboard like a palace with +a large Tantalus, and electric light fittings of a gay and expensive +quality. There was a fine billiard-room on the ground floor with three +comfortable sofas and a rotating bookcase containing an excellent +collection of the English and American humorists from THREE MEN IN +A BOAT to the penultimate Mark Twain. There was also a conservatory +opening out of the dining-room, to which the gardener brought potted +flowers in their season.... + +My aunt was a little woman with a scared look and a cap that would +get over one eye, not very like my mother, and nearly eight years her +junior; she was very much concerned with keeping everything nice, and +unmercifully bullied by my two cousins, who took after their father and +followed the imaginations of their own hearts. They were tall, dark, +warmly flushed girls handsome rather than pretty. Gertrude, the eldest +and tallest, had eyes that were almost black; Sibyl was of a stouter +build, and her eyes, of which she was shamelessly proud, were dark blue. +Sibyl's hair waved, and Gertrude's was severely straight. They treated +me on my first visit with all the contempt of the adolescent girl for a +boy a little younger and infinitely less expert in the business of life +than herself. They were very busy with the writings of notes and certain +mysterious goings and comings of their own, and left me very much to +my own devices. Their speech in my presence was full of unfathomable +allusions. They were the sort of girls who will talk over and through an +uninitiated stranger with the pleasantest sense of superiority. + +I met them at breakfast and at lunch and at the half-past six o'clock +high tea that formed the third chief meal of the day. I heard them +rattling off the compositions of Chaminade and Moskowski, with great +decision and effect, and hovered on the edge of tennis foursomes +where it was manifest to the dullest intelligence that my presence was +unnecessary. Then I went off to find some readable book in the place, +but apart from miscellaneous popular novels, some veterinary works, a +number of comic books, old bound volumes of THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS +and a large, popular illustrated History of England, there was very +little to be found. My aunt talked to me in a casual feeble way, chiefly +about my mother's last illness. The two had seen very little of each +other for many years; she made no secret of it that the ineligible +qualities of my father were the cause of the estrangement. The only +other society in the house during the day was an old and rather decayed +Skye terrier in constant conflict with what were no doubt imaginary +fleas. I took myself off for a series of walks, and acquired a +considerable knowledge of the scenery and topography of the Potteries. + +It puzzled my aunt that I did not go westward, where it was country-side +and often quite pretty, with hedgerows and fields and copses +and flowers. But always I went eastward, where in a long valley +industrialism smokes and sprawls. That was the stuff to which I turned +by nature, to the human effort, and the accumulation and jar of men's +activities. And in such a country as that valley social and economic +relations were simple and manifest. Instead of the limitless confusion +of London's population, in which no man can trace any but the most +slender correlation between rich and poor, in which everyone seems +disconnected and adrift from everyone, you can see here the works, +the potbank or the ironworks or what not, and here close at hand the +congested, meanly-housed workers, and at a little distance a small +middle-class quarter, and again remoter, the big house of the employer. +It was like a very simplified diagram--after the untraceable confusion +of London. + +I prowled alone, curious and interested, through shabby back streets of +mean little homes; I followed canals, sometimes canals of mysteriously +heated waters with ghostly wisps of steam rising against blackened walls +or a distant prospect of dustbin-fed vegetable gardens, I saw the women +pouring out from the potbanks, heard the hooters summoning the toilers +to work, lost my way upon slag heaps as big as the hills of the south +country, dodged trains at manifestly dangerous level crossings, and +surveyed across dark intervening spaces, the flaming uproar, the +gnome-like activities of iron foundries. I heard talk of strikes and +rumours of strikes, and learnt from the columns of some obscure labour +paper I bought one day, of the horrors of the lead poisoning that was in +those days one of the normal risks of certain sorts of pottery workers. +Then back I came, by the ugly groaning and clanging steam train of that +period, to my uncle's house and lavish abundance of money and more or +less furtive flirtations and the tinkle of Moskowski and Chaminade. +It was, I say, diagrammatic. One saw the expropriator and the +expropriated--as if Marx had arranged the picture. It was as jumbled and +far more dingy and disastrous than any of the confusions of building and +development that had surrounded my youth at Bromstead and Penge, but +it had a novel quality of being explicable. I found great virtue in the +word “exploitation.” + +There stuck in my mind as if it was symbolical of the whole thing the +twisted figure of a man, whose face had been horribly scalded--I can't +describe how, except that one eye was just expressionless white--and +he ground at an organ bearing a card which told in weak and bitterly +satirical phrasing that he had been scalded by the hot water from +the tuyeres of the blast furnace of Lord Pandram's works. He had been +scalded and quite inadequately compensated and dismissed. And Lord +Pandram was worth half a million. + +That upturned sightless white eye of his took possession of my +imagination. I don't think that even then I was swayed by any crude +melodramatic conception of injustice. I was quite prepared to believe +the card wasn't a punctiliously accurate statement of fact, and that +a case could be made out for Lord Pandram. Still there in the muddy +gutter, painfully and dreadfully, was the man, and he was smashed and +scalded and wretched, and he ground his dismal hurdygurdy with a weary +arm, calling upon Heaven and the passer-by for help, for help and some +sort of righting--one could not imagine quite what. There he was as a +fact, as a by-product of the system that heaped my cousins with trinkets +and provided the comic novels and the abundant cigars and spacious +billiard-room of my uncle's house. I couldn't disconnect him and them. + +My uncle on his part did nothing to conceal the state of war that +existed between himself and his workers, and the mingled contempt and +animosity he felt from them. + + + +3 + + +Prosperity had overtaken my uncle. So quite naturally he believed that +every man who was not as prosperous as he was had only himself to blame. +He was rich and he had left school and gone into his father's business +at fifteen, and that seemed to him the proper age at which everyone's +education should terminate. He was very anxious to dissuade me from +going up to Cambridge, and we argued intermittently through all my +visit. + +I had remembered him as a big and buoyant man, striding destructively +about the nursery floor of my childhood, and saluting my existence by +slaps, loud laughter, and questions about half herrings and half eggs +subtly framed to puzzle and confuse my mind. I didn't see him for some +years until my father's death, and then he seemed rather smaller, +though still a fair size, yellow instead of red and much less radiantly +aggressive. This altered effect was due not so much to my own changed +perspectives, I fancy, as to the facts that he was suffering for +continuous cigar smoking, and being taken in hand by his adolescent +daughters who had just returned from school. + +During my first visit there was a perpetual series of--the only word is +rows, between them and him. Up to the age of fifteen or thereabouts, he +had maintained his ascendancy over them by simple old-fashioned physical +chastisement. Then after an interlude of a year it had dawned upon them +that power had mysteriously departed from him. He had tried stopping +their pocket money, but they found their mother financially amenable; +besides which it was fundamental to my uncle's attitude that he should +give them money freely. Not to do so would seem like admitting a +difficulty in making it. So that after he had stopped their allowances +for the fourth time Sybil and Gertrude were prepared to face beggary +without a qualm. It had been his pride to give them the largest +allowance of any girls at the school, not even excepting the +granddaughter of Fladden the Borax King, and his soul recoiled from this +discipline as it had never recoiled from the ruder method of the +earlier phase. Both girls had developed to a high pitch in their mutual +recriminations a gift for damaging retort, and he found it an altogether +deadlier thing than the power of the raised voice that had always +cowed my aunt. Whenever he became heated with them, they frowned as if +involuntarily, drew in their breath sharply, said: “Daddy, you really +must not say--” and corrected his pronunciation. Then, at a great +advantage, they resumed the discussion.... + +My uncle's views about Cambridge, however, were perfectly clear and +definite. It was waste of time and money. It was all damned foolery. +Did they make a man a better business man? Not a bit of it. He gave +instances. It spoilt a man for business by giving him “false ideas.” + Some men said that at college a man formed useful friendships. What use +were friendships to a business man? He might get to know lords, but, as +my uncle pointed out, a lord's requirements in his line of faience were +little greater than a common man's. If college introduced him to hotel +proprietors there might be something in it. Perhaps it helped a man into +Parliament, Parliament still being a confused retrogressive corner +in the world where lawyers and suchlike sheltered themselves from the +onslaughts of common-sense behind a fog of Latin and Greek and twaddle +and tosh; but I wasn't the sort to go into Parliament, unless I meant to +be a lawyer. Did I mean to be a lawyer? It cost no end of money, and +was full of uncertainties, and there were no judges nor great solicitors +among my relations. “Young chaps think they get on by themselves,” said +my uncle. “It isn't so. Not unless they take their coats off. I took +mine off before I was your age by nigh a year.” + +We were at cross purposes from the outset, because I did not think men +lived to make money; and I was obtuse to the hints he was throwing out +at the possibilities of his own potbank, not willfully obtuse, but just +failing to penetrate his meaning. Whatever City Merchants had or had +not done for me, Flack, Topham and old Gates had certainly barred my +mistaking the profitable production and sale of lavatory basins and +bathroom fittings for the highest good. It was only upon reflection that +it dawned upon me that the splendid chance for a young fellow with my +uncle, “me, having no son of my own,” was anything but an illustration +for comparison with my own chosen career. + +I still remember very distinctly my uncle's talk,--he loved to speak +“reet Staffordshire”--his rather flabby face with the mottled complexion +that told of crude ill-regulated appetites, his clumsy gestures--he kept +emphasising his points by prodding at me with his finger--the ill-worn, +costly, grey tweed clothes, the watch chain of plain solid gold, and +soft felt hat thrust back from his head. He tackled me first in the +garden after lunch, and then tried to raise me to enthusiasm by taking +me to his potbank and showing me its organisation, from the dusty +grinding mills in which whitened men worked and coughed, through the +highly ventilated glazing room in which strangely masked girls looked +ashamed of themselves,--“They'll risk death, the fools, to show their +faces to a man,” said my uncle, quite audibly--to the firing kilns and +the glazing kilns, and so round the whole place to the railway siding +and the gratifying spectacle of three trucks laden with executed orders. + +Then we went up a creaking outside staircase to his little office, and +he showed off before me for a while, with one or two subordinates and +the telephone. + +“None of your Gas,” he said, “all this. It's Real every bit of it. Hard +cash and hard glaze.” + +“Yes,” I said, with memories of a carelessly read pamphlet in my mind, +and without any satirical intention, “I suppose you MUST use lead in +your glazes?” + +Whereupon I found I had tapped the ruling grievance of my uncle's +life. He hated leadless glazes more than he hated anything, except +the benevolent people who had organised the agitation for their use. +“Leadless glazes ain't only fit for buns,” he said. “Let me tell you, my +boy--” + +He began in a voice of bland persuasiveness that presently warmed to +anger, to explain the whole matter. I hadn't the rights of the matter +at all. Firstly, there was practically no such thing as lead poisoning. +Secondly, not everyone was liable to lead poisoning, and it would +be quite easy to pick out the susceptible types--as soon as they had +it--and put them to other work. Thirdly, the evil effects of +lead poisoning were much exaggerated. Fourthly, and this was in a +particularly confidential undertone, many of the people liked to get +lead poisoning, especially the women, because it caused abortion. +I might not believe it, but he knew it for a fact. Fifthly, the +work-people simply would not learn the gravity of the danger, and would +eat with unwashed hands, and incur all sorts of risks, so that as my +uncle put it: “the fools deserve what they get.” Sixthly, he and several +associated firms had organised a simple and generous insurance scheme +against lead-poisoning risks. Seventhly, he never wearied in rational +(as distinguished from excessive, futile and expensive) precautions +against the disease. Eighthly, in the ill-equipped shops of his minor +competitors lead poisoning was a frequent and virulent evil, and people +had generalised from these exceptional cases. The small shops, he +hazarded, looking out of the cracked and dirty window at distant +chimneys, might be advantageously closed.... + +“But what's the good of talking?” said my uncle, getting off the table +on which he had been sitting. “Seems to me there'll come a time when a +master will get fined if he don't run round the works blowing his girls +noses for them. That's about what it'll come to.” + +He walked to the black mantelpiece and stood on the threadbare rug, and +urged me not to be misled by the stories of prejudiced and interested +enemies of our national industries. + +“They'll get a strike one of these days, of employers, and then we'll +see a bit,” he said. “They'll drive Capital abroad and then they'll +whistle to get it back again.”... + +He led the way down the shaky wooden steps and cheered up to tell me +of his way of checking his coal consumption. He exchanged a ferocious +greeting with one or two workpeople, and so we came out of the factory +gates into the ugly narrow streets, paved with a peculiarly hard +diapered brick of an unpleasing inky-blue colour, and bordered with the +mean and squalid homes of his workers. Doors stood open and showed grimy +interiors, and dirty ill-clad children played in the kennel. + +We passed a sickly-looking girl with a sallow face, who dragged her +limbs and peered at us dimly with painful eyes. She stood back, as +partly blinded people will do, to allow us to pass, although there was +plenty of room for us. + +I glanced back at her. + +“THAT'S ploombism,” said my uncle casually. + +“What?” said I. + +“Ploombism. And the other day I saw a fool of a girl, and what d'you +think? She'd got a basin that hadn't been fired, a cracked piece of +biscuit it was, up on the shelf over her head, just all over glaze, +killing glaze, man, and she was putting up her hand if you please, and +eating her dinner out of it. Got her dinner in it! + +“Eating her dinner out of it,” he repeated in loud and bitter tones, and +punched me hard in the ribs. + +“And then they comes to THAT--and grumbles. And the fools up in +Westminster want you to put in fans here and fans there--the Longton +fools have.... And then eating their dinners out of it all the time!”... + +At high tea that night--my uncle was still holding out against evening +dinner--Sibyl and Gertrude made what was evidently a concerted demand +for a motor-car. + +“You've got your mother's brougham,” he said, “that's good enough for +you.” But he seemed shaken by the fact that some Burslem rival was +launching out with the new invention. “He spoils his girls,” he +remarked. “He's a fool,” and became thoughtful. + +Afterwards he asked me to come to him into his study; it was a room with +a writing-desk and full of pieces of earthenware and suchlike litter, +and we had our great row about Cambridge. + +“Have you thought things over, Dick?” he said. + +“I think I'll go to Trinity, Uncle,” I said firmly. “I want to go to +Trinity. It is a great college.” + +He was manifestly chagrined. “You're a fool,” he said. + +I made no answer. + +“You're a damned fool,” he said. “But I suppose you've got to do it. You +could have come here--That don't matter, though, now... You'll have your +time and spend your money, and be a poor half-starved clergyman, mucking +about with the women all the day and afraid to have one of your own +ever, or you'll be a schoolmaster or some such fool for the rest of your +life. Or some newspaper chap. That's what you'll get from Cambridge. I'm +half a mind not to let you. Eh? More than half a mind....” + +“You've got to do the thing you can,” he said, after a pause, “and +likely it's what you're fitted for.” + + + +4 + + +I paid several short visits to Staffordshire during my Cambridge days, +and always these relations of mine produced the same effect of hardness. +My uncle's thoughts had neither atmosphere nor mystery. He lived in +a different universe from the dreams of scientific construction that +filled my mind. He could as easily have understood Chinese poetry. His +motives were made up of intense rivalries with other men of his class +and kind, a few vindictive hates springing from real and fancied +slights, a habit of acquisition that had become a second nature, a keen +love both of efficiency and display in his own affairs. He seemed to +me to have no sense of the state, no sense and much less any love of +beauty, no charity and no sort of religious feeling whatever. He had +strong bodily appetites, he ate and drank freely, smoked a great deal, +and occasionally was carried off by his passions for a “bit of a spree” + to Birmingham or Liverpool or Manchester. The indulgences of these +occasions were usually followed by a period of reaction, when he was +urgent for the suppression of nudity in the local Art Gallery and a +harsh and forcible elevation of the superficial morals of the valley. +And he spoke of the ladies who ministered to the delights of his +jolly-dog period, when he spoke of them at all, by the unprintable +feminine equivalent. My aunt he treated with a kindly contempt and +considerable financial generosity, but his daughters tore his heart; he +was so proud of them, so glad to find them money to spend, so resolved +to own them, so instinctively jealous of every man who came near them. + +My uncle has been the clue to a great number of men for me. He was an +illuminating extreme. I have learnt what not to expect from them through +him, and to comprehend resentments and dangerous sudden antagonisms I +should have found incomprehensible in their more complex forms, if I had +not first seen them in him in their feral state. + +With his soft felt hat at the back of his head, his rather heavy, rather +mottled face, his rationally thick boots and slouching tweed-clad form, +a little round-shouldered and very obstinate looking, he strolls through +all my speculations sucking his teeth audibly, and occasionally throwing +out a shrewd aphorism, the intractable unavoidable ore of the new +civilisation. + +Essentially he was simple. Generally speaking, he hated and despised in +equal measure whatever seemed to suggest that he personally was not +the most perfect human being conceivable. He hated all education after +fifteen because he had had no education after fifteen, he hated all +people who did not have high tea until he himself under duress gave up +high tea, he hated every game except football, which he had played and +could judge, he hated all people who spoke foreign languages because he +knew no language but Staffordshire, he hated all foreigners because he +was English, and all foreign ways because they were not his ways. Also +he hated particularly, and in this order, Londoner's, Yorkshiremen, +Scotch, Welch and Irish, because they were not “reet Staffordshire,” and +he hated all other Staffordshire men as insufficiently “reet.” He wanted +to have all his own women inviolate, and to fancy he had a call upon +every other woman in the world. He wanted to have the best cigars and +the best brandy in the world to consume or give away magnificently, and +every one else to have inferior ones. (His billiard table was an extra +large size, specially made and very inconvenient.) And he hated Trade +Unions because they interfered with his autocratic direction of his +works, and his workpeople because they were not obedient and untiring +mechanisms to do his bidding. He was, in fact, a very naive, vigorous +human being. He was about as much civilised, about as much tamed to the +ideas of collective action and mutual consideration as a Central African +negro. + +There are hordes of such men as he throughout all the modern industrial +world. You will find the same type with the slightest modifications in +the Pas de Calais or Rhenish Prussia or New Jersey or North Italy. No +doubt you would find it in New Japan. These men have raised themselves +up from the general mass of untrained, uncultured, poorish people in a +hard industrious selfish struggle. To drive others they have had first +to drive themselves. They have never yet had occasion nor leisure to +think of the state or social life as a whole, and as for dreams or +beauty, it was a condition of survival that they should ignore such +cravings. All the distinctive qualities of my uncle can be thought of as +dictated by his conditions; his success and harshness, the extravagances +that expressed his pride in making money, the uncongenial luxury that +sprang from rivalry, and his self-reliance, his contempt for broad +views, his contempt for everything that he could not understand. + +His daughters were the inevitable children of his life. Queer girls they +were! Curiously “spirited” as people phrase it, and curiously limited. +During my Cambridge days I went down to Staffordshire several times. My +uncle, though he still resented my refusal to go into his business, was +also in his odd way proud of me. I was his nephew and poor relation, and +yet there I was, a young gentleman learning all sorts of unremunerative +things in the grandest manner, “Latin and mook,” while the sons of his +neighhours, not nephews merely, but sons, stayed unpolished in their +native town. Every time I went down I found extensive changes and +altered relations, and before I had settled down to them off I went +again. I don't think I was one person to them; I was a series of +visitors. There is a gulf of ages between a gaunt schoolboy of sixteen +in unbecoming mourning and two vividly self-conscious girls of eighteen +and nineteen, but a Cambridge “man” of two and twenty with a first and +good tennis and a growing social experience, is a fair contemporary for +two girls of twenty-three and twenty-four. + +A motor-car appeared, I think in my second visit, a bottle-green +affair that opened behind, had dark purple cushions, and was controlled +mysteriously by a man in shiny black costume and a flat cap. The high +tea had been shifted to seven and rechristened dinner, but my uncle +would not dress nor consent to have wine; and after one painful +experiment, I gathered, and a scene, he put his foot down and prohibited +any but high-necked dresses. + +“Daddy's perfectly impossible,” Sybil told me. + +The foot had descended vehemently! “My own daughters!” he had said, +“dressed up like--“--and had arrested himself and fumbled and decided to +say--“actresses, and showin' their fat arms for every fool to stare +at!” Nor would he have any people invited to dinner. He didn't, he had +explained, want strangers poking about in his house when he came home +tired. So such calling as occurred went on during his absence in the +afternoon. + +One of the peculiarities of the life of these ascendant families of +the industrial class to which wealth has come, is its tremendous +insulations. There were no customs of intercourse in the Five Towns. All +the isolated prosperities of the district sprang from economising, hard +driven homes, in which there was neither time nor means for hospitality. +Social intercourse centred very largely upon the church or chapel, +and the chapels were better at bringing people together than the +Establishment to which my cousins belonged. Their chief outlet to the +wider world lay therefore through the acquaintances they had formed at +school, and through two much less prosperous families of relations who +lived at Longton and Hanley. A number of gossiping friendships with old +school mates were “kept up,” and my cousins would “spend the afternoon” + or even spend the day with these; such occasions led to other encounters +and interlaced with the furtive correspondences and snatched meetings +that formed the emotional thread of their lives. When the billiard table +had been new, my uncle had taken to asking in a few approved friends for +an occasional game, but mostly the billiard-room was for glory and the +girls. Both of them played very well. They never, so far as I know, +dined out, and when at last after bitter domestic conflicts they began +to go to dances, they went with the quavering connivance of my aunt, +and changed into ball frocks at friends' houses on the way. There was a +tennis club that formed a convenient afternoon rendezvous, and I recall +that in the period of my earlier visits the young bloods of the district +found much satisfaction in taking girls for drives in dog-carts and +suchlike high-wheeled vehicles, a disposition that died in tangled +tandems at the apparition of motor-car's. + +My aunt and uncle had conceived no plans in life for their daughters at +all. In the undifferentiated industrial community from which they had +sprung, girls got married somehow, and it did not occur to them that +the concentration of property that had made them wealthy, had cut their +children off from the general social sea in which their own awkward +meeting had occurred, without necessarily opening any other world in +exchange. My uncle was too much occupied with the works and his business +affairs and his private vices to philosophise about his girls; he wanted +them just to keep girls, preferably about sixteen, and to be a sort +of animated flowers and make home bright and be given things. He was +irritated that they would not remain at this, and still more irritated +that they failed to suppress altogether their natural interest in young +men. The tandems would be steered by weird and devious routes to evade +the bare chance of his bloodshot eye. My aunt seemed to have no ideas +whatever about what was likely to happen to her children. She had indeed +no ideas about anything; she took her husband and the days as they came. + +I can see now the pathetic difficulty of my cousins' position in life; +the absence of any guidance or instruction or provision for their +development. They supplemented the silences of home by the conversation +of schoolfellows and the suggestions of popular fiction. They had to +make what they could out of life with such hints as these. The church +was far too modest to offer them any advice. It was obtruded upon my +mind upon my first visit that they were both carrying on correspondences +and having little furtive passings and seeings and meetings with the +mysterious owners of certain initials, S. and L. K., and, if I remember +rightly, “the R. N.” brothers and cousins, I suppose, of their friends. +The same thing was going on, with a certain intensification, at my next +visit, excepting only that the initials were different. But when I +came again their methods were maturer or I was no longer a negligible +quantity, and the notes and the initials were no longer flaunted quite +so openly in my face. + +My cousins had worked it out from the indications of their universe that +the end of life is to have a “good time.” They used the phrase. That +and the drives in dog-carts were only the first of endless points of +resemblance between them and the commoner sort of American girl. When +some years ago I paid my first and only visit to America I seemed to +recover my cousins' atmosphere as soon as I entered the train at Euston. +There were three girls in my compartment supplied with huge decorated +cases of sweets, and being seen off by a company of friends, noisily +arch and eager about the “steamer letters” they would get at Liverpool; +they were the very soul-sisters of my cousins. The chief elements of a +good time, as my cousins judged it, as these countless thousands of rich +young women judge it, are a petty eventfulness, laughter, and to feel +that you are looking well and attracting attention. Shopping is one of +its leading joys. You buy things, clothes and trinkets for yourself and +presents for your friends. Presents always seemed to be flying about +in that circle; flowers and boxes of sweets were common currency. My +cousins were always getting and giving, my uncle caressed them with +parcels and cheques. They kissed him and he exuded sovereigns as a +stroked APHIS exudes honey. It was like the new language of the Academy +of Lagado to me, and I never learnt how to express myself in it, for +nature and training make me feel encumbered to receive presents and +embarrassed in giving them. But then, like my father, I hate and +distrust possessions. + +Of the quality of their private imagination I never learnt anything; I +suppose it followed the lines of the fiction they read and was romantic +and sentimental. So far as marriage went, the married state seemed at +once very attractive and dreadfully serious to them, composed in equal +measure of becoming important and becoming old. I don't know what they +thought about children. I doubt if they thought about them at all. It +was very secret if they did. + +As for the poor and dingy people all about them, my cousins were always +ready to take part in a Charitable Bazaar. They were unaware of any +economic correlation of their own prosperity and that circumambient +poverty, and they knew of Trade Unions simply as disagreeable external +things that upset my uncle's temper. They knew of nothing wrong in +social life at all except that there were “Agitators.” It surprised them +a little, I think, that Agitators were not more drastically put down. +But they had a sort of instinctive dread of social discussion as of +something that might breach the happiness of their ignorance.... + + + +5 + + +My cousins did more than illustrate Marx for me; they also undertook a +stage of my emotional education. Their method in that as in everything +else was extremely simple, but it took my inexperience by surprise. + +It must have been on my third visit that Sybil took me in hand. Hitherto +I seemed to have seen her only in profile, but now she became almost +completely full face, manifestly regarded me with those violet eyes +of hers. She passed me things I needed at breakfast--it was the first +morning of my visit--before I asked for them. + +When young men are looked at by pretty cousins, they become intensely +aware of those cousins. It seemed to me that I had always admired +Sybil's eyes very greatly, and that there was something in her +temperament congenial to mine. It was odd I had not noted it on my +previous visits. + +We walked round the garden somewhen that morning, and talked about +Cambridge. She asked quite a lot of questions about my work and my +ambitions. She said she had always felt sure I was clever. + +The conversation languished a little, and we picked some flowers for the +house. Then she asked if I could run. I conceded her various starts and +we raced up and down the middle garden path. Then, a little breathless, +we went into the new twenty-five guinea summer-house at the end of the +herbaceous border. + +We sat side by side, pleasantly hidden from the house, and she became +anxious about her hair, which was slightly and prettily disarranged, and +asked me to help her with the adjustment of a hairpin. I had never in my +life been so near the soft curly hair and the dainty eyebrow and eyelid +and warm soft cheek of a girl, and I was stirred-- + +It stirs me now to recall it. + +I became a battleground of impulses and inhibitions. + +“Thank you,” said my cousin, and moved a little away from me. + +She began to talk about friendship, and lost her thread and forgot the +little electric stress between us in a rather meandering analysis of her +principal girl friends. + +But afterwards she resumed her purpose. + +I went to bed that night with one proposition overshadowing everything +else in my mind, namely, that kissing my cousin Sybil was a difficult, +but not impossible, achievement. I do not recall any shadow of a doubt +whether on the whole it was worth doing. The thing had come into my +existence, disturbing and interrupting its flow exactly as a fever does. +Sybil had infected me with herself. + +The next day matters came to a crisis in the little upstairs +sitting-room which had been assigned me as a study during my visit. +I was working up there, or rather trying to work in spite of the +outrageous capering of some very primitive elements in my brain, when +she came up to me, under a transparent pretext of looking for a book. + +I turned round and then got up at the sight of her. I quite forget what +our conversation was about, but I know she led me to believe I might +kiss her. Then when I attempted to do so she averted her face. + +“How COULD you?” she said; “I didn't mean that!” + +That remained the state of our relations for two days. I developed a +growing irritation with and resentment against cousin Sybil, combined +with an intense desire to get that kiss for which I hungered and +thirsted. Cousin Sybil went about in the happy persuasion that I was +madly in love with her, and her game, so far as she was concerned, +was played and won. It wasn't until I had fretted for two days that +I realised that I was being used for the commonest form of excitement +possible to a commonplace girl; that dozens perhaps of young men had +played the part of Tantalus at cousin Sybil's lips. I walked about my +room at nights, damning her and calling her by terms which on the whole +she rather deserved, while Sybil went to sleep pitying “poor old Dick!” + +“Damn it!” I said, “I WILL be equal with you.” + +But I never did equalise the disadvantage, and perhaps it's as well, for +I fancy that sort of revenge cuts both people too much for a rational +man to seek it.... + +“Why are men so silly?” said cousin Sybil next morning, wriggling back +with down-bent head to release herself from what should have been a +compelling embrace. + +“Confound it!” I said with a flash of clear vision. “You STARTED this +game.” + +“Oh!” + +She stood back against a hedge of roses, a little flushed and excited +and interested, and ready for the delightful defensive if I should renew +my attack. + +“Beastly hot for scuffling,” I said, white with anger. “I don't know +whether I'm so keen on kissing you, Sybil, after all. I just thought you +wanted me to.” + +I could have whipped her, and my voice stung more than my words. + +Our eyes met; a real hatred in hers leaping up to meet mine. + +“Let's play tennis,” I said, after a moment's pause. + +“No,” she answered shortly, “I'm going indoors.” + +“Very well.” + +And that ended the affair with Sybil. + +I was still in the full glare of this disillusionment when Gertrude +awoke from some preoccupation to an interest in my existence. She +developed a disposition to touch my hand by accident, and let her +fingers rest in contact with it for a moment,--she had pleasant soft +hands;--she began to drift into summer houses with me, to let her arm +rest trustfully against mine, to ask questions about Cambridge. They +were much the same questions that Sybil had asked. But I controlled +myself and maintained a profile of intelligent and entirely civil +indifference to her blandishments. + +What Gertrude made of it came out one evening in some talk--I forget +about what--with Sybil. + +“Oh, Dick!” said Gertrude a little impatiently, “Dick's Pi.” + +And I never disillusioned her by any subsequent levity from this theory +of my innate and virginal piety. + + + +6 + + +It was against this harsh and crude Staffordshire background that +I think I must have seen Margaret for the first time. I say I think +because it is quite possible that we had passed each other in the +streets of Cambridge, no doubt with that affectation of mutual disregard +which was once customary between undergraduates and Newnham girls. But +if that was so I had noted nothing of the slender graciousness that +shone out so pleasingly against the bleaker midland surroundings. + +She was a younger schoolfellow of my cousins', and the step-daughter +of Seddon, a prominent solicitor of Burslem. She was not only not in +my cousins' generation but not in their set, she was one of a small +hardworking group who kept immaculate note-books, and did as much as is +humanly possible of that insensate pile of written work that the Girls' +Public School movement has inflicted upon school-girls. She really +learnt French and German admirably and thoroughly, she got as far in +mathematics as an unflinching industry can carry any one with no great +natural aptitude, and she went up to Bennett Hall, Newnham, after the +usual conflict with her family, to work for the History Tripos. + +There in her third year she made herself thoroughly ill through +overwork, so ill that she had to give up Newnham altogether and go +abroad with her stepmother. She made herself ill, as so many girls do +in those university colleges, through the badness of her home and school +training. She thought study must needs be a hard straining of the mind. +She worried her work, she gave herself no leisure to see it as a whole, +she felt herself not making headway and she cut her games and exercise +in order to increase her hours of toil, and worked into the night. She +carried a knack of laborious thoroughness into the blind alleys and +inessentials of her subject. It didn't need the badness of the food for +which Bennett Hall is celebrated and the remarkable dietary of nocturnal +cocoa, cakes and soft biscuits with which the girls have supplemented +it, to ensure her collapse. Her mother brought her home, fretting and +distressed, and then finding her hopelessly unhappy at home, took her +and her half-brother, a rather ailing youngster of ten who died three +years later, for a journey to Italy. + +Italy did much to assuage Margaret's chagrin. I think all three of them +had a very good time there. At home Mr. Seddon, her step-father, played +the part of a well-meaning blight by reason of the moods that arose +from nervous dyspepsia. They went to Florence, equipped with various +introductions and much sound advice from sympathetic Cambridge friends, +and having acquired an ease in Italy there, went on to Siena, Orvieto, +and at last Rome. They returned, if I remember rightly, by Pisa, +Genoa, Milan and Paris. Six months or more they had had abroad, and now +Margaret was back in Burslem, in health again and consciously a very +civilised person. + +New ideas were abroad, it was Maytime and a spring of abundant +flowers--daffodils were particularly good that year--and Mrs. Seddon +celebrated her return by giving an afternoon reception at short notice, +with the clear intention of letting every one out into the garden if the +weather held. + +The Seddons had a big old farmhouse modified to modern ideas of comfort +on the road out towards Misterton, with an orchard that had been rather +pleasantly subdued from use to ornament. It had rich blossoming cherry +and apple trees. Large patches of grass full of nodding yellow trumpets +had been left amidst the not too precisely mown grass, which was as +it were grass path with an occasional lapse into lawn or glade. And +Margaret, hatless, with the fair hair above her thin, delicately pink +face very simply done, came to meet our rather too consciously dressed +party,--we had come in the motor four strong, with my aunt in grey silk. +Margaret wore a soft flowing flowered blue dress of diaphanous material, +all unconnected with the fashion and tied with pretty ribbons, like a +slenderer, unbountiful Primavera. + +It was one of those May days that ape the light and heat of summer, and +I remember disconnectedly quite a number of brightly lit figures and +groups walking about, and a white gate between orchard and garden and a +large lawn with an oak tree and a red Georgian house with a verandah and +open French windows, through which the tea drinking had come out upon +the moss-edged flagstones even as Mrs. Seddon had planned. + +The party was almost entirely feminine except for a little curate with +a large head, a good voice and a radiant manner, who was obviously +attracted by Margaret, and two or three young husbands still +sufficiently addicted to their wives to accompany them. One of them +I recall as a quite romantic figure with abundant blond curly hair on +which was poised a grey felt hat encircled by a refined black band. He +wore, moreover, a loose rich shot silk tie of red and purple, a long +frock coat, grey trousers and brown shoes, and presently he removed his +hat and carried it in one hand. There were two tennis-playing youths +besides myself. There was also one father with three daughters in +anxious control, a father of the old school scarcely half broken +in, reluctant, rebellious and consciously and conscientiously “reet +Staffordshire.” The daughters were all alert to suppress the possible +plungings, the undesirable humorous impulses of this almost feral guest. +They nipped his very gestures in the bud. The rest of the people were +mainly mothers with daughters--daughters of all ages, and a scattering +of aunts, and there was a tendency to clotting, parties kept together +and regarded parties suspiciously. Mr. Seddon was in hiding, I think, +all the time, though not formally absent. + +Matters centred upon the tea in the long room of the French windows, +where four trim maids went to and fro busily between the house and the +clumps of people seated or standing before it; and tennis and croquet +were intermittently visible and audible beyond a bank of rockwork rich +with the spikes and cups and bells of high spring. + +Mrs. Seddon presided at the tea urn, and Margaret partly assisted and +partly talked to me and my cousin Sibyl--Gertrude had found a disused +and faded initial and was partnering him at tennis in a state of gentle +revival--while their mother exercised a divided chaperonage from a seat +near Mrs. Seddon. The little curate, stirring a partially empty cup of +tea, mingled with our party, and preluded, I remember, every observation +he made by a vigorous resumption of stirring. + +We talked of Cambridge, and Margaret kept us to it. The curate was a +Selwyn man and had taken a pass degree in theology, but Margaret had +come to Gaylord's lecturers in Trinity for a term before her breakdown, +and understood these differences. She had the eagerness of an exile +to hear the old familiar names of places and personalities. We capped +familiar anecdotes and were enthusiastic about Kings' Chapel and the +Backs, and the curate, addressing himself more particularly to Sibyl, +told a long confused story illustrative of his disposition to reckless +devilry (of a pure-minded kindly sort) about upsetting two canoes quite +needlessly on the way to Grantchester. + +I can still see Margaret as I saw her that afternoon, see her fresh fair +face, with the little obliquity of the upper lip, and her brow always +slightly knitted, and her manner as of one breathlessly shy but +determined. She had rather open blue eyes, and she spoke in an even +musical voice with the gentlest of stresses and the ghost of a lisp. +And it was true, she gathered, that Cambridge still existed. “I went +to Grantchester,” she said, “last year, and had tea under the +apple-blossom. I didn't think then I should have to come down.” (It was +that started the curate upon his anecdote.) + +“I've seen a lot of pictures, and learnt a lot about them--at the Pitti +and the Brera,--the Brera is wonderful--wonderful places,--but it isn't +like real study,” she was saying presently.... “We bought bales of +photographs,” she said. + +I thought the bales a little out of keeping. + +But fair-haired and quite simply and yet graciously and fancifully +dressed, talking of art and beautiful things and a beautiful land, and +with so much manifest regret for learning denied, she seemed a +different kind of being altogether from my smart, hard, high-coloured, +black-haired and resolutely hatted cousin; she seemed translucent beside +Gertrude. Even the little twist and droop of her slender body was a +grace to me. + +I liked her from the moment I saw her, and set myself to interest and +please her as well as I knew how. + +We recalled a case of ragging that had rustled the shrubs of Newnham, +and then Chris Robinson's visit--he had given a talk to Bennett Hall +also--and our impression of him. + +“He disappointed me, too,” said Margaret. + +I was moved to tell Margaret something of my own views in the matter of +social progress, and she listened--oh! with a kind of urged attention, +and her brow a little more knitted, very earnestly. The little curate +desisted from the appendices and refuse heaps and general debris of his +story, and made himself look very alert and intelligent. + +“We did a lot of that when I was up in the eighties,” he said. “I'm glad +Imperialism hasn't swamped you fellows altogether.” + +Gertrude, looking bright and confident, came to join our talk from the +shrubbery; the initial, a little flushed and evidently in a state of +refreshed relationship, came with her, and a cheerful lady in pink +and more particularly distinguished by a pink bonnet joined our little +group. Gertrude had been sipping admiration and was not disposed to play +a passive part in the talk. + +“Socialism!” she cried, catching the word. “It's well Pa isn't here. He +has Fits when people talk of socialism. Fits!” + +The initial laughed in a general kind of way. + +The curate said there was socialism AND socialism, and looked at +Margaret to gauge whether he had been too bold in this utterance. But +she was all, he perceived, for broad-mindness, and he stirred himself +(and incidentally his tea) to still more liberality of expression. He +said the state of the poor was appalling, simply appalling; that there +were times when he wanted to shatter the whole system, “only,” he said, +turning to me appealingly, “What have we got to put in its place?” + +“The thing that exists is always the more evident alternative,” I said. + +The little curate looked at it for a moment. “Precisely,” he said +explosively, and turned stirring and with his head a little on one side, +to hear what Margaret was saying. + +Margaret was saying, with a swift blush and an effect of daring, that +she had no doubt she was a socialist. + +“And wearing a gold chain!” said Gertrude, “And drinking out of +eggshell! I like that!” + +I came to Margaret's rescue. “It doesn't follow that because one's a +socialist one ought to dress in sackcloth and ashes.” + +The initial coloured deeply, and having secured my attention by prodding +me slightly with the wrist of the hand that held his teacup, cleared his +throat and suggested that “one ought to be consistent.” + +I perceived we were embarked upon a discussion of the elements. We began +an interesting little wrangle one of those crude discussions of general +ideas that are dear to the heart of youth. I and Margaret supported one +another as socialists, Gertrude and Sybil and the initial maintained +an anti-socialist position, the curate attempted a cross-bench position +with an air of intending to come down upon us presently with a casting +vote. He reminded us of a number of useful principles too often +overlooked in argument, that in a big question like this there was much +to be said on both sides, that if every one did his or her duty to every +one about them there would be no difficulty with social problems at all, +that over and above all enactments we needed moral changes in people +themselves. My cousin Gertrude was a difficult controversialist to +manage, being unconscious of inconsistency in statement and absolutely +impervious to reply. Her standpoint was essentially materialistic; +she didn't see why she shouldn't have a good time because other people +didn't; they would have a good time, she was sure, if she didn't. She +said that if we did give up everything we had to other people, they +wouldn't very likely know what to do with it. She asked if we were so +fond of work-people, why we didn't go and live among them, and expressed +the inflexible persuasion that if we HAD socialism, everything would +be just the same again in ten years' time. She also threw upon us the +imputation of ingratitude for a beautiful world by saying that so far as +she was concerned she didn't want to upset everything. She was contented +with things as they were, thank you. + +The discussion led in some way that I don't in the least recall now, and +possibly by abrupt transitions, to a croquet foursome in which Margaret +involved the curate without involving herself, and then stood beside me +on the edge of the lawn while the others played. We watched silently for +a moment. + +“I HATE that sort of view,” she said suddenly in a confidential +undertone, with her delicate pink flush returning. + +“It's want of imagination,” I said. + +“To think we are just to enjoy ourselves,” she went on; “just to go on +dressing and playing and having meals and spending money!” She seemed +to be referring not simply to my cousins, but to the whole world of +industry and property about us. “But what is one to do?” she asked. “I +do wish I had not had to come down. It's all so pointless here. There +seems to be nothing going forward, no ideas, no dreams. No one here +seems to feel quite what I feel, the sort of need there is for MEANING +in things. I hate things without meaning.” + +“Don't you do--local work?” + +“I suppose I shall. I suppose I must find something. Do you think--if +one were to attempt some sort of propaganda?” + +“Could you--?” I began a little doubtfully. + +“I suppose I couldn't,” she answered, after a thoughtful moment. “I +suppose it would come to nothing. And yet I feel there is so much to +be done for the world, so much one ought to be doing.... I want to do +something for the world.” + +I can see her now as she stood there with her brows nearly frowning, her +blue eyes looking before her, her mouth almost petulant. “One feels that +there are so many things going on--out of one's reach,” she said. + +I went back in the motor-car with my mind full of her, the quality of +delicate discontent, the suggestion of exile. Even a kind of weakness in +her was sympathetic. She told tremendously against her background. She +was, I say, like a protesting blue flower upon a cinder heap. It is +curious, too, how she connects and mingles with the furious quarrel +I had with my uncle that very evening. That came absurdly. Indirectly +Margaret was responsible. My mind was running on ideas she had revived +and questions she had set clamouring, and quite inadvertently in my +attempt to find solutions I talked so as to outrage his profoundest +feelings.... + + + +7 + + +What a preposterous shindy that was! + +I sat with him in the smoking-room, propounding what I considered to +be the most indisputable and non-contentious propositions +conceivable--until, to my infinite amazement, he exploded and called me +a “damned young puppy.” + +It was seismic. + +“Tremendously interesting time,” I said, “just in the beginning of +making a civilisation.” + +“Ah!” he said, with an averted face, and nodded, leaning forward over +his cigar. + +I had not the remotest thought of annoying him. + +“Monstrous muddle of things we have got,” I said, “jumbled streets, ugly +population, ugly factories--” + +“You'd do a sight better if you had to do with it,” said my uncle, +regarding me askance. + +“Not me. But a world that had a collective plan and knew where it meant +to be going would do a sight better, anyhow. We're all swimming in a +flood of ill-calculated chances--” + +“You'll be making out I organised that business down there--by +chance--next,” said my uncle, his voice thick with challenge. + +I went on as though I was back in Trinity. + +“There's a lot of chance in the making of all great businesses,” I said. + +My uncle remarked that that showed how much I knew about businesses. +If chance made businesses, why was it that he always succeeded and grew +while those fools Ackroyd and Sons always took second place? He showed +a disposition to tell the glorious history of how once Ackroyd's +overshadowed him, and how now he could buy up Ackroyd's three times +over. But I wanted to get out what was in my mind. + +“Oh!” I said, “as between man and man and business and business, some +of course get the pull by this quality or that--but it's forces quite +outside the individual case that make the big part of any success +under modern conditions. YOU never invented pottery, nor any process in +pottery that matters a rap in your works; it wasn't YOUR foresight that +joined all England up with railways and made it possible to organise +production on an altogether different scale. You really at the utmost +can't take credit for much more than being the sort of man who happened +to fit what happened to be the requirements of the time, and who +happened to be in a position to take advantage of them--” + +It was then my uncle cried out and called me a damned young puppy, and +became involved in some unexpected trouble of his own. + +I woke up as it were from my analysis of the situation to discover him +bent over a splendid spittoon, cursing incoherently, retching a little, +and spitting out the end of his cigar which he had bitten off in his +last attempt at self-control, and withal fully prepared as soon as he +had cleared for action to give me just all that he considered to be the +contents of his mind upon the condition of mine. + +Well, why shouldn't I talk my mind to him? He'd never had an outside +view of himself for years, and I resolved to stand up to him. We went +at it hammer and tongs! It became clear that he supposed me to be a +Socialist, a zealous, embittered hater of all ownership--and also an +educated man of the vilest, most pretentiously superior description. +His principal grievance was that I thought I knew everything; to that he +recurred again and again.... + +We had been maintaining an armed truce with each other since my resolve +to go up to Cambridge, and now we had out all that had accumulated +between us. There had been stupendous accumulations.... + +The particular things we said and did in that bawling encounter matter +nothing at all in this story. I can't now estimate how near we came +to fisticuffs. It ended with my saying, after a pungent reminder of +benefits conferred and remembered, that I didn't want to stay another +hour in his house. I went upstairs, in a state of puerile fury, to +pack and go off to the Railway Hotel, while he, with ironical civility, +telephoned for a cab. + +“Good riddance!” shouted my uncle, seeing me off into the night. + +On the face of it our row was preposterous, but the underlying reality +of our quarrel was the essential antagonism, it seemed to me, in all +human affairs, the antagonism between ideas and the established method, +that is to say, between ideas and the rule of thumb. The world I hate +is the rule-of-thumb world, the thing I and my kind of people exist +for primarily is to battle with that, to annoy it, disarrange it, +reconstruct it. We question everything, disturb anything that cannot +give a clear justification to our questioning, because we believe +inherently that our sense of disorder implies the possibility of a +better order. Of course we are detestable. My uncle was of that other +vaster mass who accept everything for the thing it seems to be, hate +enquiry and analysis as a tramp hates washing, dread and resist change, +oppose experiment, despise science. The world is our battleground; and +all history, all literature that matters, all science, deals with this +conflict of the thing that is and the speculative “if” that will destroy +it. + +But that is why I did not see Margaret Seddon again for five years. + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ MARGARET IN LONDON + + + +1 + + +I was twenty-seven when I met Margaret again, and the intervening +five years had been years of vigorous activity for me, if not of very +remarkable growth. When I saw her again, I could count myself a grown +man. I think, indeed, I counted myself more completely grown than I was. +At any rate, by all ordinary standards, I had “got on” very well, and +my ideas, if they had not changed very greatly, had become much more +definite and my ambitions clearer and bolder. + +I had long since abandoned my fellowship and come to London. I had +published two books that had been talked about, written several +articles, and established a regular relationship with the WEEKLY REVIEW +and the EVENING GAZETTE. I was a member of the Eighty Club and learning +to adapt the style of the Cambridge Union to larger uses. The London +world had opened out to me very readily. I had developed a pleasant +variety of social connections. I had made the acquaintance of Mr. +Evesham, who had been attracted by my NEW RULER, and who talked about +it and me, and so did a very great deal to make a way for me into the +company of prominent and amusing people. I dined out quite frequently. +The glitter and interest of good London dinner parties became a common +experience. I liked the sort of conversation one got at them extremely, +the little glow of duologues burning up into more general discussions, +the closing-in of the men after the going of the women, the sage, +substantial masculine gossiping, the later resumption of effective talk +with some pleasant woman, graciously at her best. I had a wide range +of houses; Cambridge had linked me to one or two correlated sets of +artistic and literary people, and my books and Mr. Evesham and opened +to me the big vague world of “society.” I wasn't aggressive nor +particularly snobbish nor troublesome, sometimes I talked well, and if I +had nothing interesting to say I said as little as possible, and I had +a youthful gravity of manner that was liked by hostesses. And the other +side of my nature that first flared through the cover of restraints at +Locarno, that too had had opportunity to develop along the line London +renders practicable. I had had my experiences and secrets and adventures +among that fringe of ill-mated or erratic or discredited women the +London world possesses. The thing had long ago ceased to be a matter of +magic or mystery, and had become a question of appetites and excitement, +and among other things the excitement of not being found out. + +I write rather doubtfully of my growing during this period. Indeed I +find it hard to judge whether I can say that I grew at all in any real +sense of the word, between three and twenty and twenty-seven. It seems +to me now to have been rather a phase of realisation and clarification. +All the broad lines of my thought were laid down, I am sure, by the date +of my Locarno adventure, but in those five years I discussed things over +and over again with myself and others, filled out with concrete fact +forms I had at first apprehended sketchily and conversationally, +measured my powers against my ideals and the forces in the world about +me. It was evident that many men no better than myself and with no +greater advantages than mine had raised themselves to influential and +even decisive positions in the worlds of politics and thought. I was +gathering the confidence and knowledge necessary to attack the world in +the large manner; I found I could write, and that people would let +me write if I chose, as one having authority and not as the scribes. +Socially and politically and intellectually I knew myself for an honest +man, and that quite without any deliberation on my part this showed +and made things easy for me. People trusted my good faith from the +beginning--for all that I came from nowhere and had no better position +than any adventurer. + +But the growth process was arrested, I was nothing bigger at +twenty-seven than at twenty-two, however much saner and stronger, and +any one looking closely into my mind during that period might well have +imagined growth finished altogether. It is particularly evident to me +now that I came no nearer to any understanding of women during that +time. That Locarno affair was infinitely more to me than I had supposed. +It ended something--nipped something in the bud perhaps--took me at a +stride from a vague, fine, ignorant, closed world of emotion to intrigue +and a perfectly definite and limited sensuality. It ended my youth, and +for a time it prevented my manhood. I had never yet even peeped at the +sweetest, profoundest thing in the world, the heart and meaning of a +girl, or dreamt with any quality of reality of a wife or any such thing +as a friend among womanhood. My vague anticipation of such things in +life had vanished altogether. I turned away from their possibility. It +seemed to me I knew what had to be known about womankind. I wanted to +work hard, to get on to a position in which I could develop and forward +my constructive projects. Women, I thought, had nothing to do with that. +It seemed clear I could not marry for some years; I was attractive to +certain types of women, I had vanity enough to give me an agreeable +confidence in love-making, and I went about seeking a convenient +mistress quite deliberately, some one who should serve my purpose and +say in the end, like that kindly first mistress of mine, “I've done you +no harm,” and so release me. It seemed the only wise way of disposing +of urgencies that might otherwise entangle and wreck the career I was +intent upon. + +I don't apologise for, or defend my mental and moral phases. So it was +I appraised life and prepared to take it, and so it is a thousand +ambitious men see it to-day.... + +For the rest these five years were a period of definition. My political +conceptions were perfectly plain and honest. I had one constant desire +ruling my thoughts. I meant to leave England and the empire better +ordered than I found it, to organise and discipline, to build up a +constructive and controlling State out of my world's confusions. We +had, I saw, to suffuse education with public intention, to develop a new +better-living generation with a collectivist habit of thought, to link +now chaotic activities in every human affair, and particularly to catch +that escaped, world-making, world-ruining, dangerous thing, industrial +and financial enterprise, and bring it back to the service of the +general good. I had then the precise image that still serves me as a +symbol for all I wish to bring about, the image of an engineer building +a lock in a swelling torrent--with water pressure as his only source of +power. My thoughts and acts were habitually turned to that enterprise; +it gave shape and direction to all my life. The problem that most +engaged my mind during those years was the practical and personal +problem of just where to apply myself to serve this almost innate +purpose. How was I, a child of this confusion, struggling upward through +the confusion, to take hold of things? Somewhere between politics and +literature my grip must needs be found, but where? Always I seem to +have been looking for that in those opening years, and disregarding +everything else to discover it. + + + +2 + + +The Baileys, under whose auspices I met Margaret again, were in the +sharpest contrast with the narrow industrialism of the Staffordshire +world. They were indeed at the other extreme of the scale, two active +self-centred people, excessively devoted to the public service. It was +natural I should gravitate to them, for they seemed to stand for the +maturer, more disciplined, better informed expression of all I was then +urgent to attempt to do. The bulk of their friends were politicians or +public officials, they described themselves as publicists--a vague yet +sufficiently significant term. They lived and worked in a hard little +house in Chambers Street, Westminster, and made a centre for quite an +astonishing amount of political and social activity. + +Willersley took me there one evening. The place was almost pretentiously +matter-of-fact and unassuming. The narrow passage-hall, papered with +some ancient yellowish paper, grained to imitate wood, was choked with +hats and cloaks and an occasional feminine wrap. Motioned rather than +announced by a tall Scotch servant woman, the only domestic I ever +remember seeing there, we made our way up a narrow staircase past the +open door of a small study packed with blue-books, to discover Altiora +Bailey receiving before the fireplace in her drawing-room. She was a +tall commanding figure, splendid but a little untidy in black silk and +red beads, with dark eyes that had no depths, with a clear hard voice +that had an almost visible prominence, aquiline features and straight +black hair that was apt to get astray, that was now astray like the +head feathers of an eagle in a gale. She stood with her hands behind her +back, and talked in a high tenor of a projected Town Planning Bill with +Blupp, who was practically in those days the secretary of the local +Government Board. A very short broad man with thick ears and fat white +hands writhing intertwined behind him, stood with his back to us, eager +to bark interruptions into Altiora's discourse. A slender girl in pale +blue, manifestly a young political wife, stood with one foot on the +fender listening with an expression of entirely puzzled propitiation. +A tall sandy-bearded bishop with the expression of a man in a trance +completed this central group. + +The room was one of those long apartments once divided by folding doors, +and reaching from back to front, that are common upon the first floors +of London houses. Its walls were hung with two or three indifferent +water colours, there was scarcely any furniture but a sofa or so and a +chair, and the floor, severely carpeted with matting, was crowded with +a curious medley of people, men predominating. Several were in evening +dress, but most had the morning garb of the politician; the women were +either severely rational or radiantly magnificent. Willersley pointed +out to me the wife of the Secretary of State for War, and I recognised +the Duchess of Clynes, who at that time cultivated intellectuality. I +looked round, identifying a face here or there, and stepping back trod +on some one's toe, and turned to find it belonged to the Right Hon. G. +B. Mottisham, dear to the PUNCH caricaturists. He received my apology +with that intentional charm that is one of his most delightful traits, +and resumed his discussion. Beside him was Esmeer of Trinity, whom I had +not seen since my Cambridge days.... + +Willersley found an ex-member of the School Board for whom he had +affinities, and left me to exchange experiences and comments upon the +company with Esmeer. Esmeer was still a don; but he was nibbling, he +said, at certain negotiations with the TIMES that might bring him +down to London. He wanted to come to London. “We peep at things from +Cambridge,” he said. + +“This sort of thing,” I said, “makes London necessary. It's the oddest +gathering.” + +“Every one comes here,” said Esmeer. “Mostly we hate them like +poison--jealousy--and little irritations--Altiora can be a horror at +times--but we HAVE to come.” + +“Things are being done?” + +“Oh!--no doubt of it. It's one of the parts of the British +machinery--that doesn't show.... But nobody else could do it. + +“Two people,” said Esmeer, “who've planned to be a power--in an original +way. And by Jove! they've done it!” + +I did not for some time pick out Oscar Bailey, and then Esmeer +showed him to me in elaborately confidential talk in a corner with a +distinguished-looking stranger wearing a ribbon. Oscar had none of the +fine appearance of his wife; he was a short sturdy figure with a rounded +protruding abdomen and a curious broad, flattened, clean-shaven face +that seemed nearly all forehead. He was of Anglo-Hungarian extraction, +and I have always fancied something Mongolian in his type. He peered +up with reddish swollen-looking eyes over gilt-edged glasses that were +divided horizontally into portions of different refractive power, and he +talking in an ingratiating undertone, with busy thin lips, an eager lisp +and nervous movements of the hand. + +People say that thirty years before at Oxford he was almost exactly the +same eager, clever little man he was when I first met him. He had come +up to Balliol bristling with extraordinary degrees and prizes captured +in provincial and Irish and Scotch universities--and had made a name for +himself as the most formidable dealer in exact fact the rhetoricians +of the Union had ever had to encounter. From Oxford he had gone on to a +position in the Higher Division of the Civil Service, I think in the +War Office, and had speedily made a place for himself as a political +journalist. He was a particularly neat controversialist, and very full +of political and sociological ideas. He had a quite astounding memory +for facts and a mastery of detailed analysis, and the time afforded +scope for these gifts. The later eighties were full of politico-social +discussion, and he became a prominent name upon the contents list of the +NINETEENTH CENTURY, the FORTNIGHTLY and CONTEMPORARY chiefly as a half +sympathetic but frequently very damaging critic of the socialism of that +period. He won the immense respect of every one specially interested in +social and political questions, he soon achieved the limited distinction +that is awarded such capacity, and at that I think he would have +remained for the rest of his life if he had not encountered Altiora. + +But Altiora Macvitie was an altogether exceptional woman, an +extraordinary mixture of qualities, the one woman in the world who could +make something more out of Bailey than that. She had much of the +vigour and handsomeness of a slender impudent young man, and an +unscrupulousness altogether feminine. She was one of those women who +are waiting in--what is the word?--muliebrity. She had courage and +initiative and a philosophical way of handling questions, and she could +be bored by regular work like a man. She was entirely unfitted for her +sex's sphere. She was neither uncertain, coy nor hard to please, and +altogether too stimulating and aggressive for any gentleman's hours of +ease. Her cookery would have been about as sketchy as her handwriting, +which was generally quite illegible, and she would have made, I feel +sure, a shocking bad nurse. Yet you mustn't imagine she was an inelegant +or unbeautiful woman, and she is inconceivable to me in high collars or +any sort of masculine garment. But her soul was bony, and at the base +of her was a vanity gaunt and greedy! When she wasn't in a state of +personal untidiness that was partly a protest against the waste of hours +exacted by the toilet and partly a natural disinclination, she had a +gypsy splendour of black and red and silver all her own. And somewhen in +the early nineties she met and married Bailey. + +I know very little about her early years. She was the only daughter of +Sir Deighton Macvitie, who applied the iodoform process to cotton, +and only his subsequent unfortunate attempts to become a Cotton King +prevented her being a very rich woman. As it was she had a tolerable +independence. She came into prominence as one of the more able of the +little shoal of young women who were led into politico-philanthropic +activities by the influence of the earlier novels of Mrs. Humphry +Ward--the Marcella crop. She went “slumming” with distinguished vigour, +which was quite usual in those days--and returned from her experiences +as an amateur flower girl with clear and original views about the +problem--which is and always had been unusual. She had not married, I +suppose because her standards were high, and men are cowards and with an +instinctive appetite for muliebrity. She had kept house for her father +by speaking occasionally to the housekeeper, butler and cook her mother +had left her, and gathering the most interesting dinner parties she +could, and had married off four orphan nieces in a harsh and successful +manner. After her father's smash and death she came out as a writer +upon social questions and a scathing critic of the Charity Organisation +Society, and she was three and thirty and a little at loose ends when +she met Oscar Bailey, so to speak, in the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. The +lurking woman in her nature was fascinated by the ease and precision +with which the little man rolled over all sorts of important and +authoritative people, she was the first to discover a sort of +imaginative bigness in his still growing mind, the forehead perhaps +carried him off physically, and she took occasion to meet and subjugate +him, and, so soon as he had sufficiently recovered from his abject +humility and a certain panic at her attentions, marry him. + +This had opened a new phase in the lives of Bailey and herself. The two +supplemented each other to an extraordinary extent. Their subsequent +career was, I think, almost entirely her invention. She was aggressive, +imaginative, and had a great capacity for ideas, while he was almost +destitute of initiative, and could do nothing with ideas except remember +and discuss them. She was, if not exact, at least indolent, with a +strong disposition to save energy by sketching--even her handwriting +showed that--while he was inexhaustibly industrious with a relentless +invariable calligraphy that grew larger and clearer as the years passed +by. She had a considerable power of charming; she could be just as nice +to people--and incidentally just as nasty--as she wanted to be. He was +always just the same, a little confidential and SOTTO VOCE, artlessly +rude and egoistic in an undignified way. She had considerable social +experience, good social connections, and considerable social ambition, +while he had none of these things. She saw in a flash her opportunity +to redeem his defects, use his powers, and do large, novel, rather +startling things. She ran him. Her marriage, which shocked her friends +and relations beyond measure--for a time they would only speak of Bailey +as “that gnome”--was a stroke of genius, and forthwith they proceeded +to make themselves the most formidable and distinguished couple +conceivable. P. B. P., she boasted, was engraved inside their wedding +rings, Pro Bono Publico, and she meant it to be no idle threat. She had +discovered very early that the last thing influential people will do is +to work. Everything in their lives tends to make them dependent upon a +supply of confidently administered detail. Their business is with the +window and not the stock behind, and in the end they are dependent upon +the stock behind for what goes into the window. She linked with that the +fact that Bailey had a mind as orderly as a museum, and an invincible +power over detail. She saw that if two people took the necessary pains +to know the facts of government and administration with precision, to +gather together knowledge that was dispersed and confused, to be able to +say precisely what had to be done and what avoided in this eventuality +or that, they would necessarily become a centre of reference for all +sorts of legislative proposals and political expedients, and she went +unhesitatingly upon that. + +Bailey, under her vigorous direction, threw up his post in the +Civil Service and abandoned sporadic controversies, and they devoted +themselves to the elaboration and realisation of this centre of public +information she had conceived as their role. They set out to study +the methods and organisation and realities of government in the most +elaborate manner. They did the work as no one had ever hitherto dreamt +of doing it. They planned the research on a thoroughly satisfying scale, +and arranged their lives almost entirely for it. They took that house +in Chambers Street and furnished it with severe economy, they discovered +that Scotch domestic who is destined to be the guardian and tyrant of +their declining years, and they set to work. Their first book, “The +Permanent Official,” fills three plump volumes, and took them and their +two secretaries upwards of four years to do. It is an amazingly good +book, an enduring achievement. In a hundred directions the history and +the administrative treatment of the public service was clarified for all +time.... + +They worked regularly every morning from nine to twelve, they lunched +lightly but severely, in the afternoon they “took exercise” or Bailey +attended meetings of the London School Board, on which he served, he +said, for the purposes of study--he also became a railway director +for the same end. In the late afternoon Altiora was at home to various +callers, and in the evening came dinner or a reception or both. + +Her dinners and gatherings were a very important feature in their +scheme. She got together all sorts of interesting people in or about +the public service, she mixed the obscurely efficient with the +ill-instructed famous and the rudderless rich, got together in one room +more of the factors in our strange jumble of a public life than had ever +met easily before. She fed them with a shameless austerity that kept the +conversation brilliant, on a soup, a plain fish, and mutton or boiled +fowl and milk pudding, with nothing to drink but whisky and soda, and +hot and cold water, and milk and lemonade. Everybody was soon very glad +indeed to come to that. She boasted how little her housekeeping cost +her, and sought constantly for fresh economies that would enable her, +she said, to sustain an additional private secretary. Secretaries were +the Baileys' one extravagance, they loved to think of searches going +on in the British Museum, and letters being cleared up and precis made +overhead, while they sat in the little study and worked together, Bailey +with a clockwork industry, and Altiora in splendid flashes between +intervals of cigarettes and meditation. “All efficient public careers,” + said Altiora, “consist in the proper direction of secretaries.” + +“If everything goes well I shall have another secretary next year,” + Altiora told me. “I wish I could refuse people dinner napkins. Imagine +what it means in washing! I dare most things.... But as it is, they +stand a lot of hardship here.” + +“There's something of the miser in both these people,” said Esmeer, and +the thing was perfectly true. For, after all, the miser is nothing more +than a man who either through want of imagination or want of suggestion +misapplies to a base use a natural power of concentration upon one end. +The concentration itself is neither good nor evil, but a power that +can be used in either way. And the Baileys gathered and reinvested +usuriously not money, but knowledge of the utmost value in human +affairs. They produced an effect of having found themselves--completely. +One envied them at times extraordinarily. I was attracted, I was +dazzled--and at the same time there was something about Bailey's big +wrinkled forehead, his lisping broad mouth, the gestures of his hands +and an uncivil preoccupation I could not endure.... + + + +3 + + +Their effect upon me was from the outset very considerable. + +Both of them found occasion on that first visit of mine to talk to +me about my published writings and particularly about my then just +published book THE NEW RULER, which had interested them very much. It +fell in indeed so closely with their own way of thinking that I doubt if +they ever understood how independently I had arrived at my conclusions. +It was their weakness to claim excessively. That irritation, however, +came later. We discovered each other immensely; for a time it produced a +tremendous sense of kindred and co-operation. + +Altiora, I remember, maintained that there existed a great army of such +constructive-minded people as ourselves--as yet undiscovered by one +another. + +“It's like boring a tunnel through a mountain,” said Oscar, “and +presently hearing the tapping of the workers from the other end.” + +“If you didn't know of them beforehand,” I said, “it might be a rather +badly joined tunnel.” + +“Exactly,” said Altiora with a high note, “and that's why we all want to +find out each other....” + +They didn't talk like that on our first encounter, but they urged me to +lunch with them next day, and then it was we went into things. A woman +Factory Inspector and the Educational Minister for New Banksland and his +wife were also there, but I don't remember they made any contribution +to the conversation. The Baileys saw to that. They kept on at me in an +urgent litigious way. + +“We have read your book,” each began--as though it had been a joint +function. “And we consider--” + +“Yes,” I protested, “I think--” + + That was a secondary matter. + +“They did not consider,” said Altiora, raising her voice and going right +over me, “that I had allowed sufficiently for the inevitable development +of an official administrative class in the modern state.” + +“Nor of its importance,” echoed Oscar. + +That, they explained in a sort of chorus, was the cardinal idea of their +lives, what they were up to, what they stood for. “We want to suggest to +you,” they said--and I found this was a stock opening of theirs--“that +from the mere necessities of convenience elected bodies MUST avail +themselves more and more of the services of expert officials. We have +that very much in mind. The more complicated and technical affairs +become, the less confidence will the elected official have in himself. +We want to suggest that these expert officials must necessarily develop +into a new class and a very powerful class in the community. We want to +organise that. It may be THE power of the future. They will necessarily +have to have very much of a common training. We consider ourselves as +amateur unpaid precursors of such a class.”... + +The vision they displayed for my consideration as the aim of +public-spirited endeavour, seemed like a harder, narrower, more +specialised version of the idea of a trained and disciplined state that +Willersley and I had worked out in the Alps. They wanted things more +organised, more correlated with government and a collective purpose, +just as we did, but they saw it not in terms of a growing collective +understanding, but in terms of functionaries, legislative change, and +methods of administration.... + +It wasn't clear at first how we differed. The Baileys were very anxious +to win me to co-operation, and I was quite prepared at first to identify +their distinctive expressions with phrases of my own, and so we came +very readily into an alliance that was to last some years, and break at +last very painfully. Altiora manifestly liked me, I was soon discussing +with her the perplexity I found in placing myself efficiently in the +world, the problem of how to take hold of things that occupied my +thoughts, and she was sketching out careers for my consideration, very +much as an architect on his first visit sketches houses, considers +requirements, and puts before you this example and that of the more or +less similar thing already done.... + + + +4 + + +It is easy to see how much in common there was between the Baileys and +me, and how natural it was that I should become a constant visitor at +their house and an ally of theirs in many enterprises. It is not nearly +so easy to define the profound antagonism of spirit that also held +between us. There was a difference in texture, a difference in quality. +How can I express it? The shapes of our thoughts were the same, but the +substance quite different. It was as if they had made in china or cast +iron what I had made in transparent living matter. (The comparison is +manifestly from my point of view.) Certain things never seemed to show +through their ideas that were visible, refracted perhaps and distorted, +but visible always through mine. + +I thought for a time the essential difference lay in our relation to +beauty. With me beauty is quite primary in life; I like truth, order +and goodness, wholly because they are beautiful or lead straight to +beautiful consequences. The Baileys either hadn't got that or they +didn't see it. They seemed at times to prefer things harsh and ugly. +That puzzled me extremely. The esthetic quality of many of their +proposals, the “manners” of their work, so to speak, were at times as +dreadful as--well, War Office barrack architecture. A caricature by +its exaggerated statements will sometimes serve to point a truth by +antagonising falsity and falsity. I remember talking to a prominent +museum official in need of more public funds for the work he had in +hand. I mentioned the possibility of enlisting Bailey's influence. + +“Oh, we don't want Philistines like that infernal Bottle-Imp running +us,” he said hastily, and would hear of no concerted action for the end +he had in view. “I'd rather not have the extension. + +“You see,” he went on to explain, “Bailey's wanting in the essentials.” + +“What essentials?” said I. + +“Oh! he'd be like a nasty oily efficient little machine for some merely +subordinate necessity among all my delicate stuff. He'd do all we wanted +no doubt in the way of money and powers--and he'd do it wrong and mess +the place for ever. Hands all black, you know. He's just a means. Just a +very aggressive and unmanageable means. This isn't a plumber's job....” + +I stuck to my argument. + +“I don't LIKE him,” said the official conclusively, and it seemed to me +at the time he was just blind prejudice speaking.... + +I came nearer the truth of the matter as I came to realise that +our philosophies differed profoundly. That isn't a very curable +difference,--once people have grown up. Theirs was a philosophy devoid +of FINESSE. Temperamentally the Baileys were specialised, concentrated, +accurate, while I am urged either by some Inner force or some entirely +assimilated influence in my training, always to round off and shadow +my outlines. I hate them hard. I would sacrifice detail to modelling +always, and the Baileys, it seemed to me, loved a world as flat and +metallic as Sidney Cooper's cows. If they had the universe in hand I +know they would take down all the trees and put up stamped tin green +shades and sunlight accumulators. Altiora thought trees hopelessly +irregular and sea cliffs a great mistake.... I got things clearer as +time went on. Though it was an Hegelian mess of which I had partaken at +Codger's table by way of a philosophical training, my sympathies have +always been Pragmatist. I belong almost by nature to that school of +Pragmatism that, following the medieval Nominalists, bases itself upon +a denial of the reality of classes, and of the validity of general +laws. The Baileys classified everything. They were, in the scholastic +sense--which so oddly contradicts the modern use of the word “Realists.” + They believed classes were REAL and independent of their individuals. +This is the common habit of all so-called educated people who have no +metaphysical aptitude and no metaphysical training. It leads them to a +progressive misunderstanding of the world. It was a favourite trick +of Altiora's to speak of everybody as a “type”; she saw men as samples +moving; her dining-room became a chamber of representatives. It gave +a tremendously scientific air to many of their generalisations, using +“scientific” in its nineteenth-century uncritical Herbert Spencer sense, +an air that only began to disappear when you thought them over again in +terms of actuality and the people one knew.... + +At the Baileys' one always seemed to be getting one's hands on the very +strings that guided the world. You heard legislation projected to affect +this “type” and that; statistics marched by you with sin and shame and +injustice and misery reduced to quite manageable percentages, you found +men who were to frame or amend bills in grave and intimate exchange +with Bailey's omniscience, you heard Altiora canvassing approaching +resignations and possible appointments that might make or mar a +revolution in administrative methods, and doing it with a vigorous +directness that manifestly swayed the decision; and you felt you were +in a sort of signal box with levers all about you, and the world outside +there, albeit a little dark and mysterious beyond the window, running +on its lines in ready obedience to these unhesitating lights, true and +steady to trim termini. + +And then with all this administrative fizzle, this pseudo-scientific +administrative chatter, dying away in your head, out you went into the +limitless grimy chaos of London streets and squares, roads and avenues +lined with teeming houses, each larger than the Chambers Street house +and at least equally alive, you saw the chaotic clamour of hoardings, +the jumble of traffic, the coming and going of mysterious myriads, +you heard the rumble of traffic like the noise of a torrent; a vague +incessant murmur of cries and voices, wanton crimes and accidents bawled +at you from the placards; imperative unaccountable fashions swaggered +triumphant in dazzling windows of the shops; and you found yourself +swaying back to the opposite conviction that the huge formless spirit +of the world it was that held the strings and danced the puppets on the +Bailey stage.... + +Under the lamps you were jostled by people like my Staffordshire uncle +out for a spree, you saw shy youths conversing with prostitutes, you +passed young lovers pairing with an entire disregard of the social +suitability of the “types” they might blend or create, you saw men +leaning drunken against lamp-posts whom you knew for the “type” that +will charge with fixed bayonets into the face of death, and you found +yourself unable to imagine little Bailey achieving either drunkenness or +the careless defiance of annihilation. You realised that quite a lot of +types were underrepresented in Chambers Street, that feral and obscure +and altogether monstrous forces must be at work, as yet altogether +unassimilated by those neat administrative reorganisations. + + + +5 + + +Altiora, I remember, preluded Margaret's reappearance by announcing her +as a “new type.” + +I was accustomed to go early to the Baileys' dinners in those days, for +a preliminary gossip with Altiora in front of her drawing-room fire. One +got her alone, and that early arrival was a little sign of appreciation +she valued. She had every woman's need of followers and servants. + +“I'm going to send you down to-night,” she said, “with a very +interesting type indeed--one of the new generation of serious gals. +Middle-class origin--and quite well off. Rich in fact. Her step-father +was a solicitor and something of an ENTREPRENEUR towards the end, I +fancy--in the Black Country. There was a little brother died, and she's +lost her mother quite recently. Quite on her own, so to speak. She's +never been out into society very much, and doesn't seem really very +anxious to go.... Not exactly an intellectual person, you know, but +quiet, and great force of character. Came up to London on her own and +came to us--someone had told her we were the sort of people to advise +her--to ask what to do. I'm sure she'll interest you.” + +“What CAN people of that sort do?” I asked. “Is she capable of +investigation?” + +Altiora compressed her lips and shook her head. She always did shake her +head when you asked that of anyone. + +“Of course what she ought to do,” said Altiora, with her silk dress +pulled back from her knee before the fire, and with a lift of her voice +towards a chuckle at her daring way of putting things, “is to marry a +member of Parliament and see he does his work.... Perhaps she will. +It's a very exceptional gal who can do anything by herself--quite +exceptional. The more serious they are--without being exceptional--the +more we want them to marry.” + +Her exposition was truncated by the entry of the type in question. + +“Well!” cried Altiora turning, and with a high note of welcome, “HERE +you are!” + +Margaret had gained in dignity and prettiness by the lapse of five +years, and she was now very beautifully and richly and simply dressed. +Her fair hair had been done in some way that made it seem softer and +more abundant than it was in my memory, and a gleam of purple velvet-set +diamonds showed amidst its mist of little golden and brown lines. +Her dress was of white and violet, the last trace of mourning for her +mother, and confessed the gracious droop of her tall and slender body. +She did not suggest Staffordshire at all, and I was puzzled for a moment +to think where I had met her. Her sweetly shaped mouth with the +slight obliquity of the lip and the little kink in her brow were +extraordinarily familiar to me. But she had either been prepared +by Altiora or she remembered my name. “We met,” she said, “while my +step-father was alive--at Misterton. You came to see us”; and instantly +I recalled the sunshine between the apple blossom and a slender pale +blue girlish shape among the daffodils, like something that had sprung +from a bulb itself. I recalled at once that I had found her very +interesting, though I did not clearly remember how it was she had +interested me. + +Other guests arrived--it was one of Altiora's boldly blended mixtures of +people with ideas and people with influence or money who might perhaps +be expected to resonate to them. Bailey came down late with an air of +hurry, and was introduced to Margaret and said absolutely nothing to +her--there being no information either to receive or impart and nothing +to do--but stood snatching his left cheek until I rescued him and her, +and left him free to congratulate the new Lady Snape on her husband's K. +C. B. + +I took Margaret down. We achieved no feats of mutual expression, except +that it was abundantly clear we were both very pleased and interested +to meet again, and that we had both kept memories of each other. We made +that Misterton tea-party and the subsequent marriages of my cousins +and the world of Burslem generally, matter for quite an agreeable +conversation until at last Altiora, following her invariable custom, +called me by name imperatively out of our duologue. “Mr. Remington,” she +said, “we want your opinion--” in her entirely characteristic effort to +get all the threads of conversation into her own hands for the climax +that always wound up her dinners. How the other women used to hate those +concluding raids of hers! I forget most of the other people at that +dinner, nor can I recall what the crowning rally was about. It didn't in +any way join on to my impression of Margaret. + +In the drawing-room of the matting floor I rejoined her, with Altiora's +manifest connivance, and in the interval I had been thinking of our +former meeting. + +“Do you find London,” I asked, “give you more opportunity for doing +things and learning things than Burslem?” + +She showed at once she appreciated my allusion to her former +confidences. “I was very discontented then,” she said and paused. “I've +really only been in London for a few months. It's so different. In +Burslem, life seems all business and getting--without any reason. One +went on and it didn't seem to mean anything. At least anything that +mattered.... London seems to be so full of meanings--all mixed up +together.” + +She knitted her brows over her words and smiled appealingly at the end +as if for consideration for her inadequate expression, appealingly and +almost humorously. + +I looked understandingly at her. “We have all,” I agreed, “to come to +London.” + +“One sees so much distress,” she added, as if she felt she had +completely omitted something, and needed a codicil. + +“What are you doing in London?” + +“I'm thinking of studying. Some social question. I thought perhaps I +might go and study social conditions as Mrs. Bailey did, go perhaps as +a work-girl or see the reality of living in, but Mrs. Bailey thought +perhaps it wasn't quite my work.” + +“Are you studying?” + +“I'm going to a good many lectures, and perhaps I shall take up a +regular course at the Westminster School of Politics and Sociology. But +Mrs. Bailey doesn't seem to believe very much in that either.” + +Her faintly whimsical smile returned. “I seem rather indefinite,” she +apologised, “but one does not want to get entangled in things one can't +do. One--one has so many advantages, one's life seems to be such a trust +and such a responsibility--” + +She stopped. + +“A man gets driven into work,” I said. + +“It must be splendid to be Mrs. Bailey,” she replied with a glance of +envious admiration across the room. + +“SHE has no doubts, anyhow,” I remarked. + +“She HAD,” said Margaret with the pride of one who has received great +confidences. + + + +6 + + +“You've met before?” said Altiora, a day or so later. + +I explained when. + +“You find her interesting?” + +I saw in a flash that Altiora meant to marry me to Margaret. + +Her intention became much clearer as the year developed. Altiora was +systematic even in matters that evade system. I was to marry Margaret, +and freed from the need of making an income I was to come into +politics--as an exponent of Baileyism. She put it down with the other +excellent and advantageous things that should occupy her summer holiday. +It was her pride and glory to put things down and plan them out in +detail beforehand, and I'm not quite sure that she did not even mark +off the day upon which the engagement was to be declared. If she did, +I disappointed her. We didn't come to an engagement, in spite of the +broadest hints and the glaring obviousness of everything, that summer. + +Every summer the Baileys went out of London to some house they hired +or borrowed, leaving their secretaries toiling behind, and they went +on working hard in the mornings and evenings and taking exercise in the +open air in the afternoon. They cycled assiduously and went for long +walks at a trot, and raided and studied (and incidentally explained +themselves to) any social “types” that lived in the neighbourhood. One +invaded type, resentful under research, described them with a dreadful +aptness as Donna Quixote and Sancho Panza--and himself as a harmless +windmill, hurting no one and signifying nothing. She did rather tilt +at things. This particular summer they were at a pleasant farmhouse in +level country near Pangbourne, belonging to the Hon. Wilfrid Winchester, +and they asked me to come down to rooms in the neighbourhood--Altiora +took them for a month for me in August--and board with them upon +extremely reasonable terms; and when I got there I found Margaret +sitting in a hammock at Altiora's feet. Lots of people, I gathered, were +coming and going in the neighbourhood, the Ponts were in a villa on the +river, and the Rickhams' houseboat was to moor for some days; but these +irruptions did not impede a great deal of duologue between Margaret and +myself. + +Altiora was efficient rather than artistic in her match-making. She sent +us off for long walks together--Margaret was a fairly good walker--she +exhumed some defective croquet things and incited us to croquet, not +understanding that detestable game is the worst stimulant for lovers +in the world. And Margaret and I were always getting left about, and +finding ourselves for odd half-hours in the kitchen-garden with nothing +to do except talk, or we were told with a wave of the hand to run away +and amuse each other. + +Altiora even tried a picnic in canoes, knowing from fiction rather than +imagination or experience the conclusive nature of such excursions. But +there she fumbled at the last moment, and elected at the river's brink +to share a canoe with me. Bailey showed so much zeal and so little +skill--his hat fell off and he became miraculously nothing but +paddle-clutching hands and a vast wrinkled brow--that at last he had to +be paddled ignominiously by Margaret, while Altiora, after a phase of +rigid discretion, as nearly as possible drowned herself--and me no doubt +into the bargain--with a sudden lateral gesture of the arm to emphasise +the high note with which she dismissed the efficiency of the Charity +Organisation Society. We shipped about an inch of water and sat in it +for the rest of the time, an inconvenience she disregarded heroically. +We had difficulties in landing Oscar from his frail craft upon the ait +of our feasting,--he didn't balance sideways and was much alarmed, and +afterwards, as Margaret had a pain in her back, I took him in my canoe, +let him hide his shame with an ineffectual but not positively harmful +paddle, and towed the other by means of the joined painters. Still it +was the fault of the inadequate information supplied in the books and +not of Altiora that that was not the date of my betrothal. + +I find it not a little difficult to state what kept me back from +proposing marriage to Margaret that summer, and what urged me forward +at last to marry her. It is so much easier to remember one's resolutions +than to remember the moods and suggestions that produced them. + +Marrying and getting married was, I think, a pretty simple affair to +Altiora; it was something that happened to the adolescent and unmarried +when you threw them together under the circumstances of health, warmth +and leisure. It happened with the kindly and approving smiles of the +more experienced elders who had organised these proximities. The young +people married, settled down, children ensued, and father and mother +turned their minds, now decently and properly disillusioned, to other +things. That to Altiora was the normal sexual life, and she believed it +to be the quality of the great bulk of the life about her. + +One of the great barriers to human understanding is the wide +temperamental difference one finds in the values of things relating to +sex. It is the issue upon which people most need training in charity and +imaginative sympathy. Here are no universal standards at all, and indeed +for no single man nor woman does there seem to be any fixed standard, so +much do the accidents of circumstances and one's physical phases affect +one's interpretations. There is nothing in the whole range of sexual +fact that may not seem supremely beautiful or humanly jolly or +magnificently wicked or disgusting or trivial or utterly insignificant, +according to the eye that sees or the mood that colours. Here is +something that may fill the skies and every waking hour or be almost +completely banished from a life. It may be everything on Monday and less +than nothing on Saturday. And we make our laws and rules as though in +these matters all men and women were commensurable one with another, +with an equal steadfast passion and an equal constant duty.... + +I don't know what dreams Altiora may have had in her schoolroom days, I +always suspected her of suppressed and forgotten phases, but certainly +her general effect now was of an entirely passionless worldliness in +these matters. Indeed so far as I could get at her, she regarded sexual +passion as being hardly more legitimate in a civilised person than--let +us say--homicidal mania. She must have forgotten--and Bailey too. I +suspect she forgot before she married him. I don't suppose either of +them had the slightest intimation of the dimensions sexual love can take +in the thoughts of the great majority of people with whom they come in +contact. They loved in their way--an intellectual way it was and a fond +way--but it had no relation to beauty and physical sensation--except +that there seemed a decree of exile against these things. They got their +glow in high moments of altruistic ambition--and in moments of vivid +worldly success. They sat at opposite ends of their dinner table with so +and so “captured,” and so and so, flushed with a mutual approval. They +saw people in love forgetful and distraught about them, and just put it +down to forgetfulness and distraction. At any rate Altiora manifestly +viewed my situation and Margaret's with an abnormal and entirely +misleading simplicity. There was the girl, rich, with an acceptable +claim to be beautiful, shiningly virtuous, quite capable of political +interests, and there was I, talented, ambitious and full of +political and social passion, in need of just the money, devotion and +regularisation Margaret could provide. We were both unmarried--white +sheets of uninscribed paper. Was there ever a simpler situation? What +more could we possibly want? + +She was even a little offended at the inconclusiveness that did not +settle things at Pangbourne. I seemed to her, I suspect, to reflect upon +her judgment and good intentions. + + + +7 + + +I didn't see things with Altiora's simplicity. + +I admired Margaret very much, I was fully aware of all that she and I +might give each other; indeed so far as Altiora went we were quite in +agreement. But what seemed solid ground to Altiora and the ultimate +footing of her emasculated world, was to me just the superficial +covering of a gulf--oh! abysses of vague and dim, and yet stupendously +significant things. + +I couldn't dismiss the interests and the passion of sex as Altiora did. +Work, I agreed, was important; career and success; but deep unanalysable +instincts told me this preoccupation was a thing quite as important; +dangerous, interfering, destructive indeed, but none the less a +dominating interest in life. I have told how flittingly and uninvited it +came like a moth from the outer twilight into my life, how it grew in me +with my manhood, how it found its way to speech and grew daring, and led +me at last to experience. After that adventure at Locarno sex and the +interests and desires of sex never left me for long at peace. I went on +with my work and my career, and all the time it was like--like someone +talking ever and again in a room while one tries to write. + +There were times when I could have wished the world a world all of men, +so greatly did this unassimilated series of motives and curiosities +hamper me; and times when I could have wished the world all of women. +I seemed always to be seeking something in women, in girls, and I +was never clear what it was I was seeking. But never--even at my +coarsest--was I moved by physical desire alone. Was I seeking help and +fellowship? Was I seeking some intimacy with beauty? It was a thing too +formless to state, that I seemed always desiring to attain and never +attaining. Waves of gross sensuousness arose out of this preoccupation, +carried me to a crisis of gratification or disappointment that was +clearly not the needed thing; they passed and left my mind free again +for a time to get on with the permanent pursuits of my life. And then +presently this solicitude would have me again, an irrelevance as it +seemed, and yet a constantly recurring demand. + +I don't want particularly to dwell upon things that are disagreeable +for others to read, but I cannot leave them out of my story and get the +right proportions of the forces I am balancing. I was no abnormal man, +and that world of order we desire to make must be built of such stuff as +I was and am and can beget. You cannot have a world of Baileys; it would +end in one orderly generation. Humanity is begotten in Desire, lives by +Desire. + + + “Love which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb; + Love which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom.” + + +I echo Henley. + +I suppose the life of celibacy which the active, well-fed, +well-exercised and imaginatively stirred young man of the educated +classes is supposed to lead from the age of nineteen or twenty, +when Nature certainly meant him to marry, to thirty or more, when +civilisation permits him to do so, is the most impossible thing in the +world. We deal here with facts that are kept secret and obscure, but +I doubt for my own part if more than one man out of five in our class +satisfies that ideal demand. The rest are even as I was, and Hatherleigh +and Esmeer and all the men I knew. I draw no lessons and offer no +panacea; I have to tell the quality of life, and this is how it is. This +is how it will remain until men and women have the courage to face the +facts of life. + +I was no systematic libertine, you must understand; things happened to +me and desire drove me. Any young man would have served for that Locarno +adventure, and after that what had been a mystic and wonderful thing +passed rapidly into a gross, manifestly misdirected and complicating +one. I can count a meagre tale of five illicit loves in the days of my +youth, to include that first experience, and of them all only two were +sustained relationships. Besides these five “affairs,” on one or two +occasions I dipped so low as the inky dismal sensuality of the streets, +and made one of those pairs of correlated figures, the woman in her +squalid finery sailing homeward, the man modestly aloof and behind, that +every night in the London year flit by the score of thousands across the +sight of the observant.... + +How ugly it is to recall; ugly and shameful now without qualification! +Yet at the time there was surely something not altogether ugly in +it--something that has vanished, some fine thing mortally ailing. + +One such occasion I recall as if it were a vision deep down in a pit, +as if it had happened in another state of existence to someone else. And +yet it is the sort of thing that has happened, once or twice at least, +to half the men in London who have been in a position to make it +possible. Let me try and give you its peculiar effect. Man or woman, you +ought to know of it. + +Figure to yourself a dingy room, somewhere in that network of streets +that lies about Tottenham Court Road, a dingy bedroom lit by a solitary +candle and carpeted with scraps and patches, with curtains of cretonne +closing the window, and a tawdry ornament of paper in the grate. I sit +on a bed beside a weary-eyed, fair-haired, sturdy young woman, half +undressed, who is telling me in broken German something that my +knowledge of German is at first inadequate to understand.... + +I thought she was boasting about her family, and then slowly the meaning +came to me. She was a Lett from near Libau in Courland, and she was +telling me--just as one tells something too strange for comment or +emotion--how her father had been shot and her sister outraged and +murdered before her eyes. + +It was as if one had dipped into something primordial and stupendous +beneath the smooth and trivial surfaces of life. There was I, you know, +the promising young don from Cambridge, who wrote quite brilliantly +about politics and might presently get into Parliament, with my collar +and tie in my hand, and a certain sense of shameful adventure fading out +of my mind. + +“Ach Gott!” she sighed by way of comment, and mused deeply for a +moment before she turned her face to me, as to something forgotten and +remembered, and assumed the half-hearted meretricious smile. + +“Bin ich eine hubsche?” she asked like one who repeats a lesson. + +I was moved to crave her pardon and come away. + +“Bin ich eine hubsche?” she asked a little anxiously, laying a detaining +hand upon me, and evidently not understanding a word of what I was +striving to say. + + + +8 + + +I find it extraordinarily difficult to recall the phases by which +I passed from my first admiration of Margaret's earnestness and +unconscious daintiness to an intimate acquaintance. The earlier +encounters stand out clear and hard, but then the impressions become +crowded and mingle not only with each other but with all the subsequent +developments of relationship, the enormous evolutions of interpretation +and comprehension between husband and wife. Dipping into my memories is +like dipping into a ragbag, one brings out this memory or that, with no +intimation of how they came in time or what led to them and joined them +together. And they are all mixed up with subsequent associations, +with sympathies and discords, habits of intercourse, surprises and +disappointments and discovered misunderstandings. I know only that +always my feelings for Margaret were complicated feelings, woven of many +and various strands. + +It is one of the curious neglected aspects of life how at the same time +and in relation to the same reality we can have in our minds streams of +thought at quite different levels. We can be at the same time idealising +a person and seeing and criticising that person quite coldly and +clearly, and we slip unconsciously from level to level and produce +all sorts of inconsistent acts. In a sense I had no illusions about +Margaret; in a sense my conception of Margaret was entirely poetic +illusion. I don't think I was ever blind to certain defects of hers, and +quite as certainly they didn't seem to matter in the slightest degree. +Her mind had a curious want of vigour, “flatness” is the only word; she +never seemed to escape from her phrase; her way of thinking, her way of +doing was indecisive; she remained in her attitude, it did not flow out +to easy, confirmatory action. + +I saw this quite clearly, and when we walked and talked together I +seemed always trying for animation in her and never finding it. I would +state my ideas. “I know,” she would say, “I know.” + +I talked about myself and she listened wonderfully, but she made no +answering revelations. I talked politics, and she remarked with her blue +eyes wide and earnest: “Every WORD you say seems so just.” + +I admired her appearance tremendously but--I can only express it by +saying I didn't want to touch her. Her fair hair was always delectably +done. It flowed beautifully over her pretty small ears, and she would +tie its fair coilings with fillets of black or blue velvet that carried +pretty buckles of silver and paste. The light, the faint down on her +brow and cheek was delightful. And it was clear to me that I made her +happy. + +My sense of her deficiencies didn't stand in the way of my falling at +last very deeply in love with her. Her very shortcomings seemed to offer +me something.... + +She stood in my mind for goodness--and for things from which it seemed +to me my hold was slipping. + +She seemed to promise a way of escape from the deepening opposition in +me between physical passions and the constructive career, the career +of wide aims and human service, upon which I had embarked. All the time +that I was seeing her as a beautiful, fragile, rather ineffective girl, +I was also seeing her just as consciously as a shining slender figure, +a radiant reconciliation, coming into my darkling disorders of lust and +impulse. I could understand clearly that she was incapable of the most +necessary subtleties of political thought, and yet I could contemplate +praying to her and putting all the intricate troubles of my life at her +feet. + +Before the reappearance of Margaret in my world at all an unwonted +disgust with the consequences and quality of my passions had arisen in +my mind. Among other things that moment with the Lettish girl haunted +me persistently. I would see myself again and again sitting amidst those +sluttish surroundings, collar and tie in hand, while her heavy German +words grouped themselves to a slowly apprehended meaning. I would +feel again with a fresh stab of remorse, that this was not a flash of +adventure, this was not seeing life in any permissible sense, but a dip +into tragedy, dishonour, hideous degradation, and the pitiless cruelty +of a world as yet uncontrolled by any ordered will. + +“Good God!” I put it to myself, “that I should finish the work those +Cossacks had begun! I who want order and justice before everything! +There's no way out of it, no decent excuse! If I didn't think, I ought +to have thought!”... + +“How did I get to it?”... I would ransack the phases of my development +from the first shy unveiling of a hidden wonder to the last extremity as +a man will go through muddled account books to find some disorganising +error.... + +I was also involved at that time--I find it hard to place these things +in the exact order of their dates because they were so disconnected +with the regular progress of my work and life--in an intrigue, a clumsy, +sensuous, pretentious, artificially stimulated intrigue, with a Mrs. +Larrimer, a woman living separated from her husband. I will not go +into particulars of that episode, nor how we quarrelled and chafed one +another. She was at once unfaithful and jealous and full of whims +about our meetings; she was careless of our secret, and vulgarised our +relationship by intolerable interpretations; except for some glowing +moments of gratification, except for the recurrent and essentially +vicious desire that drew us back to each other again, we both fretted at +a vexatious and unexpectedly binding intimacy. The interim was full +of the quality of work delayed, of time and energy wasted, of insecure +precautions against scandal and exposure. Disappointment is almost +inherent in illicit love. I had, and perhaps it was part of her +recurrent irritation also, a feeling as though one had followed +something fine and beautiful into a net--into bird lime! These furtive +scuffles, this sneaking into shabby houses of assignation, was what we +had made out of the suggestion of pagan beauty; this was the reality +of our vision of nymphs and satyrs dancing for the joy of life amidst +incessant sunshine. We had laid hands upon the wonder and glory of +bodily love and wasted them.... + +It was the sense of waste, of finely beautiful possibilities getting +entangled and marred for ever that oppressed me. I had missed, I had +lost. I did not turn from these things after the fashion of the Baileys, +as one turns from something low and embarrassing. I felt that these +great organic forces were still to be wrought into a harmony with my +constructive passion. I felt too that I was not doing it. I had not +understood the forces in this struggle nor its nature, and as I learnt +I failed. I had been started wrong, I had gone on wrong, in a world that +was muddled and confused, full of false counsel and erratic shames and +twisted temptations. I learnt to see it so by failures that were perhaps +destroying any chance of profit in my lessons. Moods of clear keen +industry alternated with moods of relapse and indulgence and moods of +dubiety and remorse. I was not going on as the Baileys thought I was +going on. There were times when the blindness of the Baileys irritated +me intensely. Beneath the ostensible success of those years, between +twenty-three and twenty-eight, this rottenness, known to scarcely +any one but myself, grew and spread. My sense of the probability of +a collapse intensified. I knew indeed now, even as Willersley had +prophesied five years before, that I was entangling myself in something +that might smother all my uses in the world. Down there among those +incommunicable difficulties, I was puzzled and blundering. I was losing +my hold upon things; the chaotic and adventurous element in life was +spreading upward and getting the better of me, over-mastering me and all +my will to rule and make.... And the strength, the drugging urgency of +the passion! + +Margaret shone at times in my imagination like a radiant angel in a +world of mire and disorder, in a world of cravings, hot and dull red +like scars inflamed.... + +I suppose it was because I had so great a need of such help as her +whiteness proffered, that I could ascribe impossible perfections to +her, a power of intellect, a moral power and patience to which she, poor +fellow mortal, had indeed no claim. If only a few of us WERE angels and +freed from the tangle of effort, how easy life might be! I wanted her so +badly, so very badly, to be what I needed. I wanted a woman to save me. +I forced myself to see her as I wished to see her. Her tepidities became +infinite delicacies, her mental vagueness an atmospheric realism. The +harsh precisions of the Baileys and Altiora's blunt directness threw up +her fineness into relief and made a grace of every weakness. + +Mixed up with the memory of times when I talked with Margaret as one +talks politely to those who are hopelessly inferior in mental quality, +explaining with a false lucidity, welcoming and encouraging the feeblest +response, when possible moulding and directing, are times when I did +indeed, as the old phrase goes, worship the ground she trod on. I was +equally honest and unconscious of inconsistency at each extreme. But in +neither phase could I find it easy to make love to Margaret. For in the +first I did not want to, though I talked abundantly to her of marriage +and so forth, and was a little puzzled at myself for not going on to +some personal application, and in the second she seemed inaccessible, I +felt I must make confessions and put things before her that would be the +grossest outrage upon the noble purity I attributed to her. + + + +9 + + +I went to Margaret at last to ask her to marry me, wrought up to the +mood of one who stakes his life on a cast. Separated from her, and with +the resonance of an evening of angry recriminations with Mrs. Larrimer +echoing in my mind, I discovered myself to be quite passionately in +love with Margaret. Last shreds of doubt vanished. It has always been a +feature of our relationship that Margaret absent means more to me than +Margaret present; her memory distils from its dross and purifies in +me. All my criticisms and qualifications of her vanished into some dark +corner of my mind. She was the lady of my salvation; I must win my way +to her or perish. + +I went to her at last, for all that I knew she loved me, in passionate +self-abasement, white and a-tremble. She was staying with the Rockleys +at Woking, for Shena Rockley had been at Bennett Hall with her and they +had resumed a close intimacy; and I went down to her on an impulse, +unheralded. I was kept waiting for some minutes, I remember, in a little +room upon which a conservatory opened, a conservatory full of pots +of large mauve-edged, white cyclamens in flower. And there was a big +lacquer cabinet, a Chinese thing, I suppose, of black and gold against +the red-toned wall. To this day the thought of Margaret is inseparably +bound up with the sight of a cyclamen's back-turned petals. + +She came in, looking pale and drooping rather more than usual. I +suddenly realised that Altiora's hint of a disappointment leading to +positive illness was something more than a vindictive comment. She +closed the door and came across to me and took and dropped my hand and +stood still. “What is it you want with me?” she asked. + +The speech I had been turning over and over in my mind on the way +vanished at the sight of her. + +“I want to talk to you,” I answered lamely. + +For some seconds neither of us said a word. + +“I want to tell you things about my life,” I began. + +She answered with a scarcely audible “yes.” + +“I almost asked you to marry me at Pangbourne,” I plunged. “I didn't. I +didn't because--because you had too much to give me.” + +“Too much!” she echoed, “to give you!” She had lifted her eyes to my +face and the colour was coming into her cheeks. + +“Don't misunderstand me,” I said hastily. “I want to tell you things, +things you don't know. Don't answer me. I want to tell you.” + +She stood before the fireplace with her ultimate answer shining through +the quiet of her face. “Go on,” she said, very softly. It was so +pitilessly manifest she was resolved to idealise the situation whatever +I might say. I began walking up and down the room between those +cyclamens and the cabinet. There were little gold fishermen on the +cabinet fishing from little islands that each had a pagoda and a tree, +and there were also men in boats or something, I couldn't determine +what, and some obscure sub-office in my mind concerned itself with that +quite intently. Yet I seem to have been striving with all my being +to get words for the truth of things. “You see,” I emerged, “you make +everything possible to me. You can give me help and sympathy, support, +understanding. You know my political ambitions. You know all that I +might do in the world. I do so intensely want to do constructive things, +big things perhaps, in this wild jumble.... Only you don't know a bit +what I am. I want to tell you what I am. I'm complex.... I'm streaked.” + +I glanced at her, and she was regarding me with an expression of +blissful disregard for any meaning I was seeking to convey. + +“You see,” I said, “I'm a bad man.” + +She sounded a note of valiant incredulity. + +Everything seemed to be slipping away from me. I pushed on to the ugly +facts that remained over from the wreck of my interpretation. “What +has held me back,” I said, “is the thought that you could not possibly +understand certain things in my life. Men are not pure as women are. I +have had love affairs. I mean I have had affairs. Passion--desire. You +see, I have had a mistress, I have been entangled--” + +She seemed about to speak, but I interrupted. “I'm not telling you,” I +said, “what I meant to tell you. I want you to know clearly that there +is another side to my life, a dirty side. Deliberately I say, dirty. It +didn't seem so at first--” + +I stopped blankly. “Dirty,” I thought, was the most idiotic choice of +words to have made. + +I had never in any tolerable sense of the word been dirty. + +“I drifted into this--as men do,” I said after a little pause and +stopped again. + +She was looking at me with her wide blue eyes. + +“Did you imagine,” she began, “that I thought you--that I expected--” + +“But how can you know?” + +“I know. I do know.” + +“But--” I began. + +“I know,” she persisted, dropping her eyelids. “Of course I know,” and +nothing could have convinced me more completely that she did not know. + +“All men--” she generalised. “A woman does not understand these +temptations.” + +I was astonished beyond measure at her way of taking my confession. ... + +“Of course,” she said, hesitating a little over a transparent +difficulty, “it is all over and past.” + +“It's all over and past,” I answered. + +There was a little pause. + +“I don't want to know,” she said. “None of that seems to matter now in +the slightest degree.” + +She looked up and smiled as though we had exchanged some acceptable +commonplaces. “Poor dear!” she said, dismissing everything, and put out +her arms, and it seemed to me that I could hear the Lettish girl in +the background--doomed safety valve of purity in this intolerable +world--telling something in indistinguishable German--I know not what +nor why.... + +I took Margaret in my arms and kissed her. Her eyes were wet with tears. +She clung to me and was near, I felt, to sobbing. + +“I have loved you,” she whispered presently, “Oh! ever since we met in +Misterton--six years and more ago.” + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ MARGARET IN VENICE + + + +1 + + +There comes into my mind a confused memory of conversations with +Margaret; we must have had dozens altogether, and they mix in now for +the most part inextricably not only with one another, but with later +talks and with things we discussed at Pangbourne. We had the immensest +anticipations of the years and opportunities that lay before us. I was +now very deeply in love with her indeed. I felt not that I had cleaned +up my life but that she had. We called each other “confederate” I +remember, and made during our brief engagement a series of visits to the +various legislative bodies in London, the County Council, the House of +Commons, where we dined with Villiers, and the St. Pancras Vestry, where +we heard Shaw speaking. I was full of plans and so was she of the way +in which we were to live and work. We were to pay back in public service +whatever excess of wealth beyond his merits old Seddon's economic +advantage had won for him from the toiling people in the potteries. The +end of the Boer War was so recent that that blessed word “efficiency” + echoed still in people's minds and thoughts. Lord Roseberry in a +memorable oration had put it into the heads of the big outer public, but +the Baileys with a certain show of justice claimed to have set it going +in the channels that took it to him--if as a matter of fact it was taken +to him. But then it was their habit to make claims of that sort. They +certainly did their share to keep “efficient” going. Altiora's +highest praise was “thoroughly efficient.” We were to be a “thoroughly +efficient” political couple of the “new type.” She explained us to +herself and Oscar, she explained us to ourselves, she explained us to +the people who came to her dinners and afternoons until the world was +highly charged with explanation and expectation, and the proposal that I +should be the Liberal candidate for the Kinghamstead Division seemed the +most natural development in the world. + +I was full of the ideal of hard restrained living and relentless +activity, and throughout a beautiful November at Venice, where chiefly +we spent our honeymoon, we turned over and over again and discussed in +every aspect our conception of a life tremendously focussed upon the +ideal of social service. + +Most clearly there stands out a picture of ourselves talking in a +gondola on our way to Torcella. Far away behind us the smoke of Murano +forms a black stain upon an immense shining prospect of smooth water, +water as unruffled and luminous as the sky above, a mirror on which rows +of posts and distant black high-stemmed, swan-necked boats with their +minutely clear swinging gondoliers, float aerially. Remote and low +before us rises the little tower of our destination. Our men swing +together and their oars swirl leisurely through the water, hump back in +the rowlocks, splash sharply and go swishing back again. Margaret lies +back on cushions, with her face shaded by a holland parasol, and I sit +up beside her. + +“You see,” I say, and in spite of Margaret's note of perfect +acquiescence I feel myself reasoning against an indefinable antagonism, +“it is so easy to fall into a slack way with life. There may seem to be +something priggish in a meticulous discipline, but otherwise it is +so easy to slip into indolent habits--and to be distracted from one's +purpose. The country, the world, wants men to serve its constructive +needs, to work out and carry out plans. For a man who has to make a +living the enemy is immediate necessity; for people like ourselves +it's--it's the constant small opportunity of agreeable things.” + +“Frittering away,” she says, “time and strength.” + +“That is what I feel. It's so pleasant to pretend one is simply modest, +it looks so foolish at times to take one's self too seriously. We've GOT +to take ourselves seriously.” + +She endorses my words with her eyes. + +“I feel I can do great things with life.” + +“I KNOW you can.” + +“But that's only to be done by concentrating one's life upon one main +end. We have to plan our days, to make everything subserve our scheme.” + +“I feel,” she answers softly, “we ought to give--every hour.” + +Her face becomes dreamy. “I WANT to give every hour,” she adds. + + + +2 + + +That holiday in Venice is set in my memory like a little artificial lake +in uneven confused country, as something very bright and skylike, and +discontinuous with all about it. The faded quality of the very sunshine +of that season, the mellow discoloured palaces and places, the huge, +time-ripened paintings of departed splendours, the whispering, nearly +noiseless passage of hearse-black gondolas, for the horrible steam +launch had not yet ruined Venice, the stilled magnificences of the +depopulated lagoons, the universal autumn, made me feel altogether in +recess from the teeming uproars of reality. There was not a dozen people +all told, no Americans and scarcely any English, to dine in the big +cavern of a dining-room, with its vistas of separate tables, its +distempered walls and its swathed chandeliers. We went about seeing +beautiful things, accepting beauty on every hand, and taking it for +granted that all was well with ourselves and the world. It was ten days +or a fortnight before I became fretful and anxious for action; a long +tranquillity for such a temperament as mine. + +Our pleasures were curiously impersonal, a succession of shared +aesthetic appreciation threads all that time. Our honeymoon was no +exultant coming together, no mutual shout of “YOU!” We were almost shy +with one another, and felt the relief of even a picture to help us +out. It was entirely in my conception of things that I should be very +watchful not to shock or distress Margaret or press the sensuous note. +Our love-making had much of the tepid smoothness of the lagoons. +We talked in delicate innuendo of what should be glorious freedoms. +Margaret had missed Verona and Venice in her previous Italian +journey--fear of the mosquito had driven her mother across Italy to the +westward route--and now she could fill up her gaps and see the Titians +and Paul Veroneses she already knew in colourless photographs, the +Carpaccios, (the St. George series delighted her beyond measure,) +the Basaitis and that great statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni that Ruskin +praised. + +But since I am not a man to look at pictures and architectural effects +day after day, I did watch Margaret very closely and store a thousand +memories of her. I can see her now, her long body drooping a little +forward, her sweet face upraised to some discovered familiar masterpiece +and shining with a delicate enthusiasm. I can hear again the soft +cadences of her voice murmuring commonplace comments, for she had no +gift of expressing the shapeless satisfaction these things gave her. + +Margaret, I perceived, was a cultivated person, the first cultivated +person with whom I had ever come into close contact. She was cultivated +and moral, and I, I now realise, was never either of these things. She +was passive, and I am active. She did not simply and naturally look +for beauty but she had been incited to look for it at school, and took +perhaps a keener interest in books and lectures and all the organisation +of beautiful things than she did in beauty itself; she found much of her +delight in being guided to it. Now a thing ceases to be beautiful to me +when some finger points me out its merits. Beauty is the salt of life, +but I take my beauty as a wild beast gets its salt, as a constituent of +the meal.... + +And besides, there was that between us that should have seemed more +beautiful than any picture.... + +So we went about Venice tracking down pictures and spiral staircases and +such-like things, and my brains were busy all the time with such things +as a comparison of Venice and its nearest modern equivalent, New York, +with the elaboration of schemes of action when we returned to London, +with the development of a theory of Margaret. + +Our marriage had done this much at least, that it had fused and +destroyed those two independent ways of thinking about her that had gone +on in my mind hitherto. Suddenly she had become very near to me, and a +very big thing, a sort of comprehensive generalisation behind a thousand +questions, like the sky or England. The judgments and understandings +that had worked when she was, so to speak, miles away from my life, +had now to be altogether revised. Trifling things began to matter +enormously, that she had a weak and easily fatigued back, for example, +or that when she knitted her brows and stammered a little in talking, +it didn't really mean that an exquisite significance struggled for +utterance. + +We visited pictures in the mornings chiefly. In the afternoon, unless we +were making a day-long excursion in a gondola, Margaret would rest for +an hour while I prowled about in search of English newspapers, and then +we would go to tea in the Piazza San Marco and watch the drift of people +feeding the pigeons and going into the little doors beneath the sunlit +arches and domes of Saint Mark's. Then perhaps we would stroll on the +Piazzetta, or go out into the sunset in a gondola. Margaret became very +interested in the shops that abound under the colonnades and decided at +last to make an extensive purchase of table glass. “These things,” she +said, “are quite beautiful, and far cheaper than anything but the most +ordinary looking English ware.” I was interested in her idea, and a good +deal charmed by the delightful qualities of tinted shape, slender handle +and twisted stem. I suggested we should get not simply tumblers +and wineglasses but bedroom waterbottles, fruit- and sweet-dishes, +water-jugs, and in the end we made quite a business-like afternoon of +it. + +I was beginning now to long quite definitely for events. Energy was +accumulating in me, and worrying me for an outlet. I found the TIMES and +the DAILY TELEGRAPH and the other papers I managed to get hold of, more +and more stimulating. I nearly wrote to the former paper one day in +answer to a letter by Lord Grimthorpe--I forget now upon what point. +I chafed secretly against this life of tranquil appreciations more and +more. I found my attitudes of restrained and delicate affection for +Margaret increasingly difficult to sustain. I surprised myself and her +by little gusts of irritability, gusts like the catspaws before a gale. +I was alarmed at these symptoms. + +One night when Margaret had gone up to her room, I put on a light +overcoat, went out into the night and prowled for a long time through +the narrow streets, smoking and thinking. I returned and went and sat on +the edge of her bed to talk to her. + +“Look here, Margaret,” I said; “this is all very well, but I'm +restless.” + +“Restless!” she said with a faint surprise in her voice. + +“Yes. I think I want exercise. I've got a sort of feeling--I've never +had it before--as though I was getting fat.” + +“My dear!” she cried. + +“I want to do things;--ride horses, climb mountains, take the devil out +of myself.” + +She watched me thoughtfully. + +“Couldn't we DO something?” she said. + +Do what? + +“I don't know. Couldn't we perhaps go away from here soon--and walk in +the mountains--on our way home.” + +I thought. “There seems to be no exercise at all in this place.” + +“Isn't there some walk?” + +“I wonder,” I answered. “We might walk to Chioggia perhaps, along +the Lido.” And we tried that, but the long stretch of beach fatigued +Margaret's back, and gave her blisters, and we never got beyond +Malamocco.... + +A day or so after we went out to those pleasant black-robed, bearded +Armenians in their monastery at Saint Lazzaro, and returned towards +sundown. We fell into silence. “PIU LENTO,” said Margaret to the +gondolier, and released my accumulated resolution. + +“Let us go back to London,” I said abruptly. + +Margaret looked at me with surprised blue eyes. + +“This is beautiful beyond measure, you know,” I said, sticking to my +point, “but I have work to do.” + +She was silent for some seconds. “I had forgotten,” she said. + +“So had I,” I sympathised, and took her hand. “Suddenly I have +remembered.” + +She remained quite still. “There is so much to be done,” I said, almost +apologetically. + +She looked long away from me across the lagoon and at last sighed, like +one who has drunk deeply, and turned to me. + +“I suppose one ought not to be so happy,” she said. “Everything has been +so beautiful and so simple and splendid. And clean. It has been just +With You--the time of my life. It's a pity such things must end. But +the world is calling you, dear.... I ought not to have forgotten it. I +thought you were resting--and thinking. But if you are rested.--Would +you like us to start to-morrow?” + +She looked at once so fragile and so devoted that on the spur of the +moment I relented, and we stayed in Venice four more days. + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH ~~ THE HOUSE IN WESTMINSTER + + + +1 + + +Margaret had already taken a little house in Radnor Square, Westminster, +before our marriage, a house that seemed particularly adaptable to our +needs as public-spirited efficients; it had been very pleasantly painted +and papered under Margaret's instructions, white paint and clean open +purples and green predominating, and now we set to work at once upon +the interesting business of arranging and--with our Venetian glass as a +beginning--furnishing it. We had been fairly fortunate with our wedding +presents, and for the most part it was open to us to choose just exactly +what we would have and just precisely where we would put it. + +Margaret had a sense of form and colour altogether superior to mine, and +so quite apart from the fact that it was her money equipped us, I stood +aside from all these matters and obeyed her summons to a consultation +only to endorse her judgment very readily. Until everything was settled +I went every day to my old rooms in Vincent Square and worked at a +series of papers that were originally intended for the FORTNIGHTLY +REVIEW, the papers that afterwards became my fourth book, “New Aspects +of Liberalism.” + +I still remember as delightful most of the circumstances of getting +into 79, Radnor Square. The thin flavour of indecision about Margaret +disappeared altogether in a shop; she had the precisest ideas of what +she wanted, and the devices of the salesman did not sway her. It was +very pleasant to find her taking things out of my hands with a certain +masterfulness, and showing the distinctest determination to make a +house in which I should be able to work in that great project of “doing +something for the world.” + +“And I do want to make things pretty about us,” she said. “You don't +think it wrong to have things pretty?” + +“I want them so.” + +“Altiora has things hard.” + +“Altiora,” I answered, “takes a pride in standing ugly and uncomfortable +things. But I don't see that they help her. Anyhow they won't help me.” + +So Margaret went to the best shops and got everything very simple and +very good. She bought some pictures very well indeed; there was a little +Sussex landscape, full of wind and sunshine, by Nicholson, for my study, +that hit my taste far better than if I had gone out to get some such +expression for myself. + +“We will buy a picture just now and then,” she said, “sometimes--when we +see one.” + +I would come back through the January mire or fog from Vincent Square to +the door of 79, and reach it at last with a quite childish appreciation +of the fact that its solid Georgian proportions and its fine brass +furnishings belonged to MY home; I would use my latchkey and discover +Margaret in the warm-lit, spacious hall with a partially opened +packing-case, fatigued but happy, or go up to have tea with her out +of the right tea things, “come at last,” or be told to notice what was +fresh there. It wasn't simply that I had never had a house before, but +I had really never been, except in the most transitory way, in any house +that was nearly so delightful as mine promised to be. Everything was +fresh and bright, and softly and harmoniously toned. Downstairs we had +a green dining-room with gleaming silver, dark oak, and English +colour-prints; above was a large drawing-room that could be made still +larger by throwing open folding doors, and it was all carefully done in +greys and blues, for the most part with real Sheraton supplemented by +Sheraton so skilfully imitated by an expert Margaret had discovered as +to be indistinguishable except to a minute scrutiny. And for me, above +this and next to my bedroom, there was a roomy study, with specially +thick stair-carpet outside and thick carpets in the bedroom overhead and +a big old desk for me to sit at and work between fire and window, and +another desk specially made for me by that expert if I chose to +stand and write, and open bookshelves and bookcases and every sort of +convenient fitting. There were electric heaters beside the open fire, +and everything was put for me to make tea at any time--electric kettle, +infuser, biscuits and fresh butter, so that I could get up and work at +any hour of the day or night. I could do no work in this apartment for +a long time, I was so interested in the perfection of its arrangements. +And when I brought in my books and papers from Vincent Square, Margaret +seized upon all the really shabby volumes and had them re-bound in a +fine official-looking leather. + +I can remember sitting down at that desk and looking round me and +feeling with a queer effect of surprise that after all even a place +in the Cabinet, though infinitely remote, was nevertheless in the same +large world with these fine and quietly expensive things. + +On the same floor Margaret had a “den,” a very neat and pretty den with +good colour-prints of Botticellis and Carpaccios, and there was a third +apartment for sectarial purposes should the necessity for them arise, +with a severe-looking desk equipped with patent files. And Margaret +would come flitting into the room to me, or appear noiselessly +standing, a tall gracefully drooping form, in the wide open doorway. “Is +everything right, dear?” she would ask. + +“Come in,” I would say, “I'm sorting out papers.” + +She would come to the hearthrug. + +“I mustn't disturb you,” she would remark. + +“I'm not busy yet.” + +“Things are getting into order. Then we must make out a time-table as +the Baileys do, and BEGIN!” + +Altiora came in to see us once or twice, and a number of serious +young wives known to Altiora called and were shown over the house, and +discussed its arrangements with Margaret. They were all tremendously +keen on efficient arrangements. + +“A little pretty,” said Altiora, with the faintest disapproval, +“still--” + +It was clear she thought we should grow out of that. From the day of our +return we found other people's houses open to us and eager for us. We +went out of London for week-ends and dined out, and began discussing +our projects for reciprocating these hospitalities. As a single man +unattached, I had had a wide and miscellaneous social range, but now +I found myself falling into place in a set. For a time I acquiesced +in this. I went very little to my clubs, the Climax and the National +Liberal, and participated in no bachelor dinners at all. For a time, +too, I dropped out of the garrulous literary and journalistic circles I +had frequented. I put up for the Reform, not so much for the use of the +club as a sign of serious and substantial political standing. I didn't +go up to Cambridge, I remember, for nearly a year, so occupied was I +with my new adjustments. + +The people we found ourselves among at this time were people, to put +it roughly, of the Parliamentary candidate class, or people already +actually placed in the political world. They ranged between very +considerable wealth and such a hard, bare independence as old Willersley +and the sister who kept house for him possessed. There were quite +a number of young couples like ourselves, a little younger and more +artless, or a little older and more established. Among the younger men +I had a sort of distinction because of my Cambridge reputation and my +writing, and because, unlike them, I was an adventurer and had won and +married my way into their circles instead of being naturally there. They +couldn't quite reckon upon what I should do; they felt I had reserves of +experience and incalculable traditions. Close to us were the Cramptons, +Willie Crampton, who has since been Postmaster-General, rich and +very important in Rockshire, and his younger brother Edward, who has +specialised in history and become one of those unimaginative men of +letters who are the glory of latter-day England. Then there was Lewis, +further towards Kensington, where his cousins the Solomons and the +Hartsteins lived, a brilliant representative of his race, able, +industrious and invariably uninspired, with a wife a little in revolt +against the racial tradition of feminine servitude and inclined to the +suffragette point of view, and Bunting Harblow, an old blue, and with an +erratic disposition well under the control of the able little cousin he +had married. I had known all these men, but now (with Altiora floating +angelically in benediction) they opened their hearts to me and took +me into their order. They were all like myself, prospective Liberal +candidates, with a feeling that the period of wandering in the +wilderness of opposition was drawing near its close. They were all +tremendously keen upon social and political service, and all greatly +under the sway of the ideal of a simple, strenuous life, a life finding +its satisfactions in political achievements and distinctions. The young +wives were as keen about it as the young husbands, Margaret most of +all, and I--whatever elements in me didn't march with the attitudes and +habits of this set were very much in the background during that time. + +We would give little dinners and have evening gatherings at which +everything was very simple and very good, with a slight but perceptible +austerity, and there was more good fruit and flowers and less perhaps in +the way of savouries, patties and entrees than was customary. Sherry we +banished, and Marsala and liqueurs, and there was always good home-made +lemonade available. No men waited, but very expert parlourmaids. Our +meat was usually Welsh mutton--I don't know why, unless that mountains +have ever been the last refuge of the severer virtues. And we talked +politics and books and ideas and Bernard Shaw (who was a department by +himself and supposed in those days to be ethically sound at bottom), +and mingled with the intellectuals--I myself was, as it were, a promoted +intellectual. + +The Cramptons had a tendency to read good things aloud on their less +frequented receptions, but I have never been able to participate +submissively in this hyper-digestion of written matter, and generally +managed to provoke a disruptive debate. We were all very earnest to make +the most of ourselves and to be and do, and I wonder still at times, +with an unassuaged perplexity, how it is that in that phase of utmost +earnestness I have always seemed to myself to be most remote from +reality. + + + +2 + + +I look back now across the detaching intervention of sixteen crowded +years, critically and I fancy almost impartially, to those beginnings +of my married life. I try to recall something near to their proper order +the developing phases of relationship. I am struck most of all by the +immense unpremeditated, generous-spirited insincerities upon which +Margaret and I were building. + +It seems to me that here I have to tell perhaps the commonest experience +of all among married educated people, the deliberate, shy, complex +effort to fill the yawning gaps in temperament as they appear, the +sustained, failing attempt to bridge abysses, level barriers, evade +violent pressures. I have come these latter years of my life to believe +that it is possible for a man and woman to be absolutely real with one +another, to stand naked souled to each other, unashamed and unafraid, +because of the natural all-glorifying love between them. It is possible +to love and be loved untroubling, as a bird flies through the air. But +it is a rare and intricate chance that brings two people within sight of +that essential union, and for the majority marriage must adjust itself +on other terms. Most coupled people never really look at one another. +They look a little away to preconceived ideas. And each from the first +days of love-making HIDES from the other, is afraid of disappointing, +afraid of offending, afraid of discoveries in either sense. They build +not solidly upon the rock of truth, but upon arches and pillars and +queer provisional supports that are needed to make a common foundation, +and below in the imprisoned darknesses, below the fine fabric they +sustain together begins for each of them a cavernous hidden life. Down +there things may be prowling that scarce ever peep out to consciousness +except in the grey half-light of sleepless nights, passions that flash +out for an instant in an angry glance and are seen no more, starved +victims and beautiful dreams bricked up to die. For the most of us there +is no jail delivery of those inner depths, and the life above goes on to +its honourable end. + +I have told how I loved Margaret and how I came to marry her. Perhaps +already unintentionally I have indicated the quality of the injustice +our marriage did us both. There was no kindred between us and no +understanding. We were drawn to one another by the unlikeness of our +quality, by the things we misunderstood in each other. I know a score of +couples who have married in that fashion. + +Modern conditions and modern ideas, and in particular the intenser and +subtler perceptions of modern life, press more and more heavily upon a +marriage tie whose fashion comes from an earlier and less discriminating +time. When the wife was her husband's subordinate, meeting him simply +and uncritically for simple ends, when marriage was a purely domestic +relationship, leaving thought and the vivid things of life +almost entirely to the unencumbered man, mental and temperamental +incompatibilities mattered comparatively little. But now the wife, +and particularly the loving childless wife, unpremeditatedly makes a +relentless demand for a complete association, and the husband exacts +unthought of delicacies of understanding and co-operation. These are +stupendous demands. People not only think more fully and elaborately +about life than they ever did before, but marriage obliges us to make +that ever more accidented progress a three-legged race of carelessly +assorted couples.... + +Our very mental texture was different. I was rough-minded, to use the +phrase of William James, primary and intuitive and illogical; she was +tender-minded, logical, refined and secondary. She was loyal to +pledge and persons, sentimental and faithful; I am loyal to ideas +and instincts, emotional and scheming. My imagination moves in broad +gestures; her's was delicate with a real dread of extravagance. My +quality is sensuous and ruled by warm impulses; hers was discriminating +and essentially inhibitory. I like the facts of the case and to mention +everything; I like naked bodies and the jolly smells of things. She +abounded in reservations, in circumlocutions and evasions, in keenly +appreciated secondary points. Perhaps the reader knows that Tintoretto +in the National Gallery, the Origin of the Milky Way. It is an admirable +test of temperamental quality. In spite of my early training I have +come to regard that picture as altogether delightful; to Margaret it +has always been “needlessly offensive.” In that you have our fundamental +breach. She had a habit, by no means rare, of damning what she did not +like or find sympathetic in me on the score that it was not my “true +self,” and she did not so much accept the universe as select from it and +do her best to ignore the rest. And also I had far more initiative than +had she. This is no catalogue of rights and wrongs, or superiorities +and inferiorities; it is a catalogue of differences between two people +linked in a relationship that constantly becomes more intolerant of +differences. + +This is how we stood to each other, and none of it was clear to either +of us at the outset. To begin with, I found myself reserving myself +from her, then slowly apprehending a jarring between our minds and +what seemed to me at first a queer little habit of misunderstanding in +her.... + +It did not hinder my being very fond of her.... + +Where our system of reservation became at once most usual and most +astounding was in our personal relations. It is not too much to say that +in that regard we never for a moment achieved sincerity with one another +during the first six years of our life together. It goes even deeper +than that, for in my effort to realise the ideal of my marriage I ceased +even to attempt to be sincere with myself. I would not admit my own +perceptions and interpretations. I tried to fit myself to her thinner +and finer determinations. There are people who will say with a note +of approval that I was learning to conquer myself. I record that much +without any note of approval.... + +For some years I never deceived Margaret about any concrete fact nor, +except for the silence about my earlier life that she had almost forced +upon me, did I hide any concrete fact that seemed to affect her, but +from the outset I was guilty of immense spiritual concealments, my very +marriage was based, I see now, on a spiritual subterfuge; I hid moods +from her, pretended feelings.... + + + +3 + + +The interest and excitement of setting-up a house, of walking about +it from room to room and from floor to floor, or sitting at one's own +dinner table and watching one's wife control conversation with a pretty, +timid resolution, of taking a place among the secure and free people of +our world, passed almost insensibly into the interest and excitement +of my Parliamentary candidature for the Kinghamstead Division, that +shapeless chunk of agricultural midland between the Great Western and +the North Western railways. I was going to “take hold” at last, the +Kinghamstead Division was my appointed handle. I was to find my place in +the rather indistinctly sketched constructions that were implicit in the +minds of all our circle. The precise place I had to fill and the precise +functions I had to discharge were not as yet very clear, but all that, +we felt sure, would become plain as things developed. + +A few brief months of vague activities of “nursing” gave place to +the excitements of the contest that followed the return of Mr. +Camphell-Bannerman to power in 1905. So far as the Kinghamstead Division +was concerned it was a depressed and tepid battle. I went about the +constituency making three speeches that were soon threadbare, and an +odd little collection of people worked for me; two solicitors, a cheap +photographer, a democratic parson, a number of dissenting ministers, the +Mayor of Kinghamstead, a Mrs. Bulger, the widow of an old Chartist who +had grown rich through electric traction patents, Sir Roderick Newton, +a Jew who had bought Calersham Castle, and old Sir Graham Rivers, that +sturdy old soldier, were among my chief supporters. We had headquarters +in each town and village, mostly there were empty shops we leased +temporarily, and there at least a sort of fuss and a coming and going +were maintained. The rest of the population stared in a state of +suspended judgment as we went about the business. The country was +supposed to be in a state of intellectual conflict and deliberate +decision, in history it will no doubt figure as a momentous conflict. +Yet except for an occasional flare of bill-sticking or a bill in a +window or a placard-plastered motor-car or an argumentative group +of people outside a public-house or a sluggish movement towards the +schoolroom or village hall, there was scarcely a sign that a great +empire was revising its destinies. Now and then one saw a canvasser on +a doorstep. For the most part people went about their business with an +entirely irresponsible confidence in the stability of the universe. At +times one felt a little absurd with one's flutter of colours and one's +air of saving the country. + +My opponent was a quite undistinguished Major-General who relied upon +his advocacy of Protection, and was particularly anxious we should avoid +“personalities” and fight the constituency in a gentlemanly spirit. He +was always writing me notes, apologising for excesses on the part of his +supporters, or pointing out the undesirability of some course taken by +mine. + +My speeches had been planned upon broad lines, but they lost touch with +these as the polling approached. To begin with I made a real attempt +to put what was in my mind before the people I was to supply with +a political voice. I spoke of the greatness of our empire and its +destinies, of the splendid projects and possibilities of life and order +that lay before the world, of all that a resolute and constructive +effort might do at the present time. “We are building a state,” I said, +“secure and splendid, we are in the dawn of the great age of mankind.” + Sometimes that would get a solitary “'Ear! 'ear!” Then having created, +as I imagined, a fine atmosphere, I turned upon the history of the last +Conservative administration and brought it into contrast with the wide +occasions of the age; discussed its failure to control the grasping +financiers in South Africa, its failure to release public education from +sectarian squabbles, its misconduct of the Boer War, its waste of the +world's resources.... + +It soon became manifest that my opening and my general spaciousness of +method bored my audiences a good deal. The richer and wider my phrases +the thinner sounded my voice in these non-resonating gatherings. Even +the platform supporters grew restive unconsciously, and stirred and +coughed. They did not recognise themselves as mankind. Building an +empire, preparing a fresh stage in the history of humanity, had no +appeal for them. They were mostly everyday, toiling people, full of +small personal solicitudes, and they came to my meetings, I think, very +largely as a relaxation. This stuff was not relaxing. They did not think +politics was a great constructive process, they thought it was a kind +of dog-fight. They wanted fun, they wanted spice, they wanted hits, +they wanted also a chance to say “'Ear', 'ear!” in an intelligent and +honourable manner and clap their hands and drum with their feet. The +great constructive process in history gives so little scope for clapping +and drumming and saying “'Ear, 'ear!” One might as well think of +hounding on the solar system. + +So after one or two attempts to lift my audiences to the level of the +issues involved, I began to adapt myself to them. I cut down my review +of our imperial outlook and destinies more and more, and +developed a series of hits and anecdotes and--what shall I call +them?--“crudifications” of the issue. My helper's congratulated me on +the rapid improvement of my platform style. I ceased to speak of the +late Prime Minister with the respect I bore him, and began to fall in +with the popular caricature of him as an artful rabbit-witted person +intent only on keeping his leadership, in spite of the vigorous attempts +of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain to oust him therefrom. I ceased to qualify my +statement that Protection would make food dearer for the agricultural +labourer. I began to speak of Mr. Alfred Lyttelton as an influence at +once insane and diabolical, as a man inspired by a passionate desire +to substitute manacled but still criminal Chinese for honest British +labourers throughout the world. And when it came to the mention of our +own kindly leader, of Mr. John Burns or any one else of any prominence +at all on our side I fell more and more into the intonation of one who +mentions the high gods. And I had my reward in brighter meetings and +readier and readier applause. + +One goes on from phase to phase in these things. + +“After all,” I told myself, “if one wants to get to Westminster one must +follow the road that leads there,” but I found the road nevertheless +rather unexpectedly distasteful. “When one gets there,” I said, “then it +is one begins.” + +But I would lie awake at nights with that sore throat and headache and +fatigue which come from speaking in ill-ventilated rooms, and wondering +how far it was possible to educate a whole people to great political +ideals. Why should political work always rot down to personalities and +personal appeals in this way? Life is, I suppose, to begin with and +end with a matter of personalities, from personalities all our broader +interests arise and to personalities they return. All our social and +political effort, all of it, is like trying to make a crowd of people +fall into formation. The broader lines appear, but then come a rush +and excitement and irrelevancy, and forthwith the incipient order has +vanished and the marshals must begin the work over again! + +My memory of all that time is essentially confusion. There was a +frightful lot of tiresome locomotion in it; for the Kinghamstead +Division is extensive, abounding in ill-graded and badly metalled +cross-roads and vicious little hills, and singularly unpleasing to +the eye in a muddy winter. It is sufficiently near to London to +have undergone the same process of ill-regulated expansion that made +Bromstead the place it is. Several of its overgrown villages have +developed strings of factories and sidings along the railway lines, and +there is an abundance of petty villas. There seemed to be no place +at which one could take hold of more than this or that element of the +population. Now we met in a meeting-house, now in a Masonic Hall or +Drill Hall; I also did a certain amount of open-air speaking in the +dinner hour outside gas-works and groups of factories. Some special sort +of people was, as it were, secreted in response to each special appeal. +One said things carefully adjusted to the distinctive limitations of +each gathering. Jokes of an incredible silliness and shallowness drifted +about us. Our advisers made us declare that if we were elected we would +live in the district, and one hasty agent had bills printed, “If Mr. +Remington is elected he will live here.” The enemy obtained a number +of these bills and stuck them on outhouses, pigstyes, dog-kennels; you +cannot imagine how irksome the repetition of that jest became. The vast +drifting indifference in between my meetings impressed me more and more. +I realised the vagueness of my own plans as I had never done before +I brought them to the test of this experience. I was perplexed by the +riddle of just how far I was, in any sense of the word, taking hold at +all, how far I wasn't myself flowing into an accepted groove. + +Margaret was troubled by no such doubts. She was clear I had to go into +Parliament on the side of Liberalism and the light, as against the late +Government and darkness. Essential to the memory of my first contest, is +the memory of her clear bright face, very resolute and grave, helping me +consciously, steadfastly, with all her strength. Her quiet confidence, +while I was so dissatisfied, worked curiously towards the alienation +of my sympathies. I felt she had no business to be so sure of me. I had +moments of vivid resentment at being thus marched towards Parliament. + +I seemed now always to be discovering alien forces of character in +her. Her way of taking life diverged from me more and more. She sounded +amazing, independent notes. She bought some particularly costly furs for +the campaign that roused enthusiasm whenever she appeared. She also made +me a birthday present in November of a heavily fur-trimmed coat and this +she would make me remove as I went on to the platform, and hold over her +arm until I was ready to resume it. It was fearfully heavy for her and +she liked it to be heavy for her. That act of servitude was in essence +a towering self-assertion. I would glance sideways while some chairman +floundered through his introduction and see the clear blue eye with +which she regarded the audience, which existed so far as she was +concerned merely to return me to Parliament. It was a friendly eye, +provided they were not silly or troublesome. But it kindled a little at +the hint of a hostile question. After we had come so far and taken so +much trouble! + +She constituted herself the dragoman of our political travels. In hotels +she was serenely resolute for the quietest and the best, she rejected +all their proposals for meals and substituted a severely nourishing +dietary of her own, and even in private houses she astonished me by her +tranquil insistence upon special comforts and sustenance. I can see her +face now as it would confront a hostess, a little intent, but sweetly +resolute and assured. + +Since our marriage she had read a number of political memoirs, and she +had been particularly impressed by the career of Mrs. Gladstone. I don't +think it occurred to her to compare and contrast my quality with that +of Mrs. Gladstone's husband. I suspect her of a deliberate intention +of achieving parallel results by parallel methods. I was to be +Gladstonised. Gladstone it appeared used to lubricate his speeches with +a mixture--if my memory serves me right--of egg beaten up in sherry, +and Margaret was very anxious I should take a leaf from that celebrated +book. She wanted, I know, to hold the glass in her hand while I was +speaking. + +But here I was firm. “No,” I said, very decisively, “simply I won't +stand that. It's a matter of conscience. I shouldn't feel--democratic. +I'll take my chance of the common water in the carafe on the chairman's +table.” + +“I DO wish you wouldn't,” she said, distressed. + +It was absurd to feel irritated; it was so admirable of her, a little +childish, infinitely womanly and devoted and fine--and I see now how +pathetic. But I could not afford to succumb to her. I wanted to follow +my own leading, to see things clearly, and this reassuring pose of a +high destiny, of an almost terribly efficient pursuit of a fixed end +when as a matter of fact I had a very doubtful end and an aim as yet by +no means fixed, was all too seductive for dalliance.... + + + +4 + + +And into all these things with the manner of a trifling and casual +incident comes the figure of Isabel Rivers. My first impressions of +her were of a rather ugly and ungainly, extraordinarily interesting +schoolgirl with a beautiful quick flush under her warm brown skin, who +said and did amusing and surprising things. When first I saw her she +was riding a very old bicycle downhill with her feet on the fork of the +frame--it seemed to me to the public danger, but afterwards I came to +understand the quality of her nerve better--and on the third occasion +she was for her own private satisfaction climbing a tree. On the +intervening occasion we had what seems now to have been a long sustained +conversation about the political situation and the books and papers I +had written. + +I wonder if it was. + +What a delightful mixture of child and grave woman she was at that time, +and how little I reckoned on the part she would play in my life! And +since she has played that part, how impossible it is to tell now of +those early days! Since I wrote that opening paragraph to this section +my idle pen has been, as it were, playing by itself and sketching faces +on the blotting pad--one impish wizened visage is oddly like little +Bailey--and I have been thinking cheek on fist amidst a limitless wealth +of memories. She sits below me on the low wall under the olive trees +with our little child in her arms. She is now the central fact in my +life. It still seems a little incredible that that should be so. She has +destroyed me as a politician, brought me to this belated rebeginning of +life. When I sit down and try to make her a girl again, I feel like the +Arabian fisherman who tried to put the genius back into the pot from +which it had spread gigantic across the skies.... + +I have a very clear vision of her rush downhill past our +labouring ascendant car--my colours fluttered from handle-bar and +shoulder-knot--and her waving hand and the sharp note of her voice. She +cried out something, I don't know what, some greeting. + +“What a pretty girl!” said Margaret. + +Parvill, the cheap photographer, that industrious organiser for whom +by way of repayment I got those magic letters, that knighthood of the +underlings, “J. P.” was in the car with us and explained her to us. “One +of the best workers you have,” he said.... + +And then after a toilsome troubled morning we came, rather cross from +the strain of sustained amiability, to Sir Graham Rivers' house. It +seemed all softness and quiet--I recall dead white panelling and +oval mirrors horizontally set and a marble fireplace between white +marble-blind Homer and marble-blind Virgil, very grave and fine--and how +Isabel came in to lunch in a shapeless thing like a blue smock that +made her bright quick-changing face seem yellow under her cloud of black +hair. Her step-sister was there, Miss Gamer, to whom the house was +to descend, a well-dressed lady of thirty, amiably disavowing +responsibility for Isabel in every phrase and gesture. And there was a +very pleasant doctor, an Oxford man, who seemed on excellent terms with +every one. It was manifest that he was in the habit of sparring with the +girl, but on this occasion she wasn't sparring and refused to be teased +into a display in spite of the taunts of either him or her father. She +was, they discovered with rising eyebrows, shy. It seemed an opportunity +too rare for them to miss. They proclaimed her enthusiasm for me in a +way that brought a flush to her cheek and a look into her eye between +appeal and defiance. They declared she had read my books, which I +thought at the time was exaggeration, their dry political quality was so +distinctly not what one was accustomed to regard as schoolgirl reading. +Miss Gamer protested to protect her, “When once in a blue moon Isabel is +well-behaved....!” + +Except for these attacks I do not remember much of the conversation +at table; it was, I know, discursive and concerned with the sort of +topographical and social and electioneering fact natural to such a +visit. Old Rivers struck me as a delightful person, modestly unconscious +of his doubly-earned V. C. and the plucky defence of Kardin-Bergat that +won his baronetcy. He was that excellent type, the soldier radical, and +we began that day a friendship that was only ended by his death in the +hunting-field three years later. He interested Margaret into a disregard +of my plate and the fact that I had secured the illegal indulgence of +Moselle. After lunch we went for coffee into another low room, this +time brown panelled and looking through French windows on a red-walled +garden, graceful even in its winter desolation. And there the +conversation suddenly picked up and became good. It had fallen to a +pause, and the doctor, with an air of definitely throwing off a mask +and wrecking an established tranquillity, remarked: “Very probably you +Liberals will come in, though I'm not sure you'll come in so mightily as +you think, but what you do when you do come in passes my comprehension.” + +“There's good work sometimes,” said Sir Graham, “in undoing.” + +“You can't govern a great empire by amending and repealing the Acts of +your predecessors,” said the doctor. + +There came that kind of pause that happens when a subject is broached +too big and difficult for the gathering. Margaret's blue eyes regarded +the speaker with quiet disapproval for a moment, and then came to me in +the not too confident hope that I would snub him out of existence with +some prompt rhetorical stroke. A voice spoke out of the big armchair. + +“We'll do things,” said Isabel. + +The doctor's eye lit with the joy of the fisherman who strikes his fish +at last. “What will you do?” he asked her. + +“Every one knows we're a mixed lot,” said Isabel. + +“Poor old chaps like me!” interjected the general. + +“But that's not a programme,” said the doctor. + +“But Mr. Remington has published a programme,” said Isabel. + +The doctor cocked half an eye at me. + +“In some review,” the girl went on. “After all, we're not going to +elect the whole Liberal party in the Kinghamstead Division. I'm a +Remington-ite!” + +“But the programme,” said the doctor, “the programme--” + +“In front of Mr. Remington!” + +“Scandal always comes home at last,” said the doctor. “Let him hear the +worst.” + +“I'd like to hear,” I said. “Electioneering shatters convictions and +enfeebles the mind.” + +“Not mine,” said Isabel stoutly. “I mean--Well, anyhow I take it Mr. +Remington stands for constructing a civilised state out of this muddle.” + +“THIS muddle,” protested the doctor with an appeal of the eye to the +beautiful long room and the ordered garden outside the bright clean +windows. + +“Well, THAT muddle, if you like! There's a slum within a mile of us +already. The dust and blacks get worse and worse, Sissie?” + +“They do,” agreed Miss Gamer. + +“Mr. Remington stands for construction, order, education, discipline.” + +“And you?” said the doctor. + +“I'm a good Remington-ite.” + +“Discipline!” said the doctor. + +“Oh!” said Isabel. “At times one has to be--Napoleonic. They want to +libel me, Mr. Remington. A political worker can't always be in time for +meals, can she? At times one has to make--splendid cuts.” + +Miss Gamer said something indistinctly. + +“Order, education, discipline,” said Sir Graham. “Excellent things! +But I've a sort of memory--in my young days--we talked about something +called liberty.” + +“Liberty under the law,” I said, with an unexpected approving murmur +from Margaret, and took up the defence. “The old Liberal definition of +liberty was a trifle uncritical. Privilege and legal restrictions are +not the only enemies of liberty. An uneducated, underbred, and underfed +propertyless man is a man who has lost the possibility of liberty. +There's no liberty worth a rap for him. A man who is swimming hopelessly +for life wants nothing but the liberty to get out of the water; he'll +give every other liberty for it--until he gets out.” + +Sir Graham took me up and we fell into a discussion of the +changing qualities of Liberalism. It was a good give-and-take talk, +extraordinarily refreshing after the nonsense and crowding secondary +issues of the electioneering outside. We all contributed more or less +except Miss Gamer; Margaret followed with knitted brows and occasional +interjections. “People won't SEE that,” for example, and “It all seems +so plain to me.” The doctor showed himself clever but unsubstantial and +inconsistent. Isabel sat back with her black mop of hair buried deep in +the chair looking quickly from face to face. Her colour came and went +with her vivid intellectual excitement; occasionally she would dart +a word, usually a very apt word, like a lizard's tongue into the +discussion. I remember chiefly that a chance illustration betrayed that +she had read Bishop Burnet.... + +After that it was not surprising that Isabel should ask for a lift in +our car as far as the Lurky Committee Room, and that she should offer +me quite sound advice EN ROUTE upon the intellectual temperament of the +Lurky gasworkers. + +On the third occasion that I saw Isabel she was, as I have said, +climbing a tree--and a very creditable tree--for her own private +satisfaction. It was a lapse from the high seriousness of politics, and +I perceived she felt that I might regard it as such and attach too much +importance to it. I had some difficulty in reassuring her. And it's odd +to note now--it has never occurred to me before--that from that day to +this I do not think I have ever reminded Isabel of that encounter. + +And after that memory she seems to be flickering about always in the +election, an inextinguishable flame; now she flew by on her bicycle, +now she dashed into committee rooms, now she appeared on doorsteps in +animated conversation with dubious voters; I took every chance I could +to talk to her--I had never met anything like her before in the world, +and she interested me immensely--and before the polling day she and I +had become, in the frankest simplicity, fast friends.... + +That, I think, sets out very fairly the facts of our early relationship. +But it is hard to get it true, either in form or texture, because of +the bright, translucent, coloured, and refracting memories that come +between. One forgets not only the tint and quality of thoughts and +impressions through that intervening haze, one forgets them altogether. +I don't remember now that I ever thought in those days of passionate +love or the possibility of such love between us. I may have done so +again and again. But I doubt it very strongly. I don't think I ever +thought of such aspects. I had no more sense of any danger between us, +seeing the years and things that separated us, than I could have had if +she had been an intelligent bright-eyed bird. Isabel came into my +life as a new sort of thing; she didn't join on at all to my previous +experiences of womanhood. They were not, as I have laboured to explain, +either very wide or very penetrating experiences, on the whole, +“strangled dinginess” expresses them, but I do not believe they were +narrower or shallower than those of many other men of my class. I +thought of women as pretty things and beautiful things, pretty rather +than beautiful, attractive and at times disconcertingly attractive, +often bright and witty, but, because of the vast reservations that hid +them from me, wanting, subtly and inevitably wanting, in understanding. +My idealisation of Margaret had evaporated insensibly after our +marriage. The shrine I had made for her in my private thoughts stood +at last undisguisedly empty. But Isabel did not for a moment admit of +either idealisation or interested contempt. She opened a new sphere +of womanhood to me. With her steady amber-brown eyes, her unaffected +interest in impersonal things, her upstanding waistless blue body, her +energy, decision and courage, she seemed rather some new and infinitely +finer form of boyhood than a feminine creature, as I had come to measure +femininity. She was my perfect friend. Could I have foreseen, had my +world been more wisely planned, to this day we might have been such +friends. + +She seemed at that time unconscious of sex, though she has told me since +how full she was of protesting curiosities and restrained emotions. She +spoke, as indeed she has always spoken, simply, clearly, and vividly; +schoolgirl slang mingled with words that marked ample voracious reading, +and she moved quickly with the free directness of some graceful young +animal. She took many of the easy freedoms a man or a sister might have +done with me. She would touch my arm, lay a hand on my shoulder as I +sat, adjust the lapel of a breast-pocket as she talked to me. She says +now she loved me always from the beginning. I doubt if there was a +suspicion of that in her mind those days. I used to find her regarding +me with the clearest, steadiest gaze in the world, exactly like the gaze +of some nice healthy innocent animal in a forest, interested, inquiring, +speculative, but singularly untroubled.... + + + +5 + + +Polling day came after a last hoarse and dingy crescendo. The excitement +was not of the sort that makes one forget one is tired out. The waiting +for the end of the count has left a long blank mark on my memory, and +then everyone was shaking my hand and repeating: “Nine hundred and +seventy-six.” + +My success had been a foregone conclusion since the afternoon, but +we all behaved as though we had not been anticipating this result for +hours, as though any other figures but nine hundred and seventy-six +would have meant something entirely different. “Nine hundred and +seventy-six!” said Margaret. “They didn't expect three hundred.” + +“Nine hundred and seventy-six,” said a little short man with a paper. +“It means a big turnover. Two dozen short of a thousand, you know.” + +A tremendous hullaboo began outside, and a lot of fresh people came into +the room. + +Isabel, flushed but not out of breath, Heaven knows where she had sprung +from at that time of night! was running her hand down my sleeve almost +caressingly, with the innocent bold affection of a girl. “Got you in!” + she said. “It's been no end of a lark.” + +“And now,” said I, “I must go and be constructive.” + +“Now you must go and be constructive,” she said. + +“You've got to live here,” she added. + +“By Jove! yes,” I said. “We'll have to house hunt.” + +“I shall read all your speeches.” + +She hesitated. + +“I wish I was you,” she said, and said it as though it was not exactly +the thing she was meaning to say. + +“They want you to speak,” said Margaret, with something unsaid in her +face. + +“You must come out with me,” I answered, putting my arm through hers, +and felt someone urging me to the French windows that gave on the +balcony. + +“If you think--” she said, yielding gladly + +“Oh, RATHER!” said I. + +The Mayor of Kinghamstead, a managing little man with no great belief in +my oratorical powers, was sticking his face up to mine. + +“It's all over,” he said, “and you've won. Say all the nice things you +can and say them plainly.” + +I turned and handed Margaret out through the window and stood looking +over the Market-place, which was more than half filled with swaying +people. The crowd set up a roar of approval at the sight of us, tempered +by a little booing. Down in one corner of the square a fight was going +on for a flag, a fight that even the prospect of a speech could not +instantly check. “Speech!” cried voices, “Speech!” and then a brief +“boo-oo-oo” that was drowned in a cascade of shouts and cheers. The +conflict round the flag culminated in the smashing of a pane of glass in +the chemist's window and instantly sank to peace. + +“Gentlemen voters of the Kinghamstead Division,” I began. + +“Votes for Women!” yelled a voice, amidst laughter--the first time I +remember hearing that memorable war-cry. + +“Three cheers for Mrs. Remington!” + +“Mrs. Remington asks me to thank you,” I said, amidst further uproar and +reiterated cries of “Speech!” + +Then silence came with a startling swiftness. + +Isabel was still in my mind, I suppose. “I shall go to Westminster,” I +began. I sought for some compelling phrase and could not find one. +“To do my share,” I went on, “in building up a great and splendid +civilisation.” + +I paused, and there was a weak gust of cheering, and then a renewal of +booing. + +“This election,” I said, “has been the end and the beginning of much. +New ideas are abroad--” + +“Chinese labour,” yelled a voice, and across the square swept a wildfire +of booting and bawling. + +It is one of the few occasions when I quite lost my hold on a speech. I +glanced sideways and saw the Mayor of Kinghamstead speaking behind his +hand to Parvill. By a happy chance Parvill caught my eye. + +“What do they want?” I asked. + +“Eh?” + +“What do they want?” + +“Say something about general fairness--the other side,” prompted +Parvill, flattered but a little surprised by my appeal. I pulled myself +hastily into a more popular strain with a gross eulogy of my opponent's +good taste. + +“Chinese labour!” cried the voice again. + +“You've given that notice to quit,” I answered. + +The Market-place roared delight, but whether that delight expressed +hostility to Chinamen or hostility to their practical enslavement no +student of the General Election of 1906 has ever been able to determine. +Certainly one of the most effective posters on our side displayed a +hideous yellow face, just that and nothing more. There was not even a +legend to it. How it impressed the electorate we did not know, but that +it impressed the electorate profoundly there can be no disputing. + + + +6 + + +Kinghamstead was one of the earliest constituencies fought, and we came +back--it must have been Saturday--triumphant but very tired, to our +house in Radnor Square. In the train we read the first intimations that +the victory of our party was likely to be a sweeping one. + +Then came a period when one was going about receiving and giving +congratulations and watching the other men arrive, very like a boy who +has returned to school with the first batch after the holidays. The +London world reeked with the General Election; it had invaded the +nurseries. All the children of one's friends had got big maps of England +cut up into squares to represent constituencies and were busy sticking +gummed blue labels over the conquered red of Unionism that had hitherto +submerged the country. And there were also orange labels, if I remember +rightly, to represent the new Labour party, and green for the Irish. I +engaged myself to speak at one or two London meetings, and lunched +at the Reform, which was fairly tepid, and dined and spent one or two +tumultuous evenings at the National Liberal Club, which was in active +eruption. The National Liberal became feverishly congested towards +midnight as the results of the counting came dropping in. A big +green-baize screen had been fixed up at one end of the large +smoking-room with the names of the constituencies that were voting that +day, and directly the figures came to hand, up they went, amidst cheers +that at last lost their energy through sheer repetition, whenever there +was record of a Liberal gain. I don't remember what happened when there +was a Liberal loss; I don't think that any were announced while I was +there. + +How packed and noisy the place was, and what a reek of tobacco and +whisky fumes we made! Everybody was excited and talking, making waves of +harsh confused sound that beat upon one's ears, and every now and then +hoarse voices would shout for someone to speak. Our little set was much +in evidence. Both the Cramptons were in, Lewis, Bunting Harblow. We gave +brief addresses attuned to this excitement and the late hour, amidst +much enthusiasm. + +“Now we can DO things!” I said amidst a rapture of applause. Men I did +not know from Adam held up glasses and nodded to me in solemn fuddled +approval as I came down past them into the crowd again. + +Men were betting whether the Unionists would lose more or less than two +hundred seats. + +“I wonder just what we shall do with it all,” I heard one sceptic +speculating.... + +After these orgies I would get home very tired and excited, and find it +difficult to get to sleep. I would lie and speculate about what it was +we WERE going to do. One hadn't anticipated quite such a tremendous +accession to power for one's party. Liberalism was swirling in like a +flood.... + +I found the next few weeks very unsatisfactory and distressing. I don't +clearly remember what it was I had expected; I suppose the fuss and +strain of the General Election had built up a feeling that my return +would in some way put power into my hands, and instead I found myself +a mere undistinguished unit in a vast but rather vague majority. There +were moments when I felt very distinctly that a majority could be +too big a crowd altogether. I had all my work still before me, I had +achieved nothing as yet but opportunity, and a very crowded opportunity +it was at that. Everyone about me was chatting Parliament and +appointments; one breathed distracting and irritating speculations as +to what would be done and who would be asked to do it. I was chiefly +impressed by what was unlikely to be done and by the absence of any +general plan of legislation to hold us all together. I found the talk +about Parliamentary procedure and etiquette particularly trying. We +dined with the elder Cramptons one evening, and old Sir Edward was +lengthily sage about what the House liked, what it didn't like, what +made a good impression and what a bad one. “A man shouldn't speak more +than twice in his first session, and not at first on too contentious a +topic,” said Sir Edward. “No.” + +“Very much depends on manner. The House hates a lecturer. There's a sort +of airy earnestness--” + +He waved his cigar to eke out his words. + +“Little peculiarities of costume count for a great deal. I could name +one man who spent three years living down a pair of spatterdashers. On +the other hand--a thing like that--if it catches the eye of the PUNCH +man, for example, may be your making.” + +He went off into a lengthy speculation of why the House had come to like +an originally unpopular Irishman named Biggar.... + +The opening of Parliament gave me some peculiar moods. I began to feel +more and more like a branded sheep. We were sworn in in batches, +dozens and scores of fresh men, trying not to look too fresh under the +inspection of policemen and messengers, all of us carrying new silk hats +and wearing magisterial coats. It is one of my vivid memories from this +period, the sudden outbreak of silk hats in the smoking-room of the +National Liberal Club. At first I thought there must have been a +funeral. Familiar faces that one had grown to know under soft felt hats, +under bowlers, under liberal-minded wide brims, and above artistic ties +and tweed jackets, suddenly met one, staring with the stern gaze of +self-consciousness, from under silk hats of incredible glossiness. There +was a disposition to wear the hat much too forward, I thought, for a +good Parliamentary style. + +There was much play with the hats all through; a tremendous competition +to get in first and put hats on coveted seats. A memory hangs about me +of the House in the early afternoon, an inhumane desolation inhabited +almost entirely by silk hats. The current use of cards to secure seats +came later. There were yards and yards of empty green benches with hats +and hats and hats distributed along them, resolute-looking top hats, lax +top hats with a kind of shadowy grin under them, sensible top bats brim +upward, and one scandalous incontinent that had rolled from the front +Opposition bench right to the middle of the floor. A headless hat is +surely the most soulless thing in the world, far worse even than a +skull.... + +At last, in a leisurely muddled manner we got to the Address; and +I found myself packed in a dense elbowing crowd to the right of the +Speaker's chair; while the attenuated Opposition, nearly leaderless +after the massacre, tilted its brim to its nose and sprawled at its ease +amidst its empty benches. + +There was a tremendous hullaboo about something, and I craned to see +over the shoulder of the man in front. “Order, order, order!” + +“What's it about?” I asked. + +The man in front of me was clearly no better informed, and then I +gathered from a slightly contemptuous Scotchman beside me that it was +Chris Robinson had walked between the honourable member in possession +of the house and the Speaker. I caught a glimpse of him blushingly +whispering about his misadventure to a colleague. He was just that +same little figure I had once assisted to entertain at Cambridge, but +grey-haired now, and still it seemed with the same knitted muffler +he had discarded for a reckless half-hour while he talked to us in +Hatherleigh's rooms. + +It dawned upon me that I wasn't particularly wanted in the House, and +that I should get all I needed of the opening speeches next day from the +TIMES. + +I made my way out and was presently walking rather aimlessly through the +outer lobby. + +I caught myself regarding the shadow that spread itself out before me, +multiplied itself in blue tints of various intensity, shuffled itself +like a pack of cards under the many lights, the square shoulders, the +silk hat, already worn with a parliamentary tilt backward; I found I was +surveying this statesmanlike outline with a weak approval. “A MEMBER!” + I felt the little cluster of people that were scattered about the lobby +must be saying. + +“Good God!” I said in hot reaction, “what am I doing here?” + +It was one of those moments infinitely trivial in themselves, that yet +are cardinal in a man's life. It came to me with extreme vividness that +it wasn't so much that I had got hold of something as that something +had got hold of me. I distinctly recall the rebound of my mind. Whatever +happened in this Parliament, I at least would attempt something. “By +God!” I said, “I won't be overwhelmed. I am here to do something, and do +something I will!” + +But I felt that for the moment I could not remain in the House. + +I went out by myself with my thoughts into the night. It was a chilling +night, and rare spots of rain were falling. I glanced over my shoulder +at the lit windows of the Lords. I walked, I remember, westward, and +presently came to the Grosvenar Embankment and followed it, watching the +glittering black rush of the river and the dark, dimly lit barges round +which the water swirled. Across the river was the hunched sky-line of +Doulton's potteries, and a kiln flared redly. Dimly luminous trams were +gliding amidst a dotted line of lamps, and two little trains crawled +into Waterloo station. Mysterious black figures came by me and were +suddenly changed to the commonplace at the touch of the nearer lamps. It +was a big confused world, I felt, for a man to lay his hands upon. + +I remember I crossed Vauxhall Bridge and stood for a time watching the +huge black shapes in the darkness under the gas-works. A shoal of coal +barges lay indistinctly on the darkly shining mud and water below, and +a colossal crane was perpetually hauling up coal into mysterious +blacknesses above, and dropping the empty clutch back to the barges. +Just one or two minute black featureless figures of men toiled amidst +these monster shapes. They did not seem to be controlling them but only +moving about among them. These gas-works have a big chimney that belches +a lurid flame into the night, a livid shivering bluish flame, shot with +strange crimson streaks.... + +On the other side of Lambeth Bridge broad stairs go down to the lapping +water of the river; the lower steps are luminous under the lamps and +one treads unwarned into thick soft Thames mud. They seem to be purely +architectural steps, they lead nowhere, they have an air of absolute +indifference to mortal ends. + +Those shapes and large inhuman places--for all of mankind that one +sees at night about Lambeth is minute and pitiful beside the industrial +monsters that snort and toil there--mix up inextricably with my memories +of my first days as a legislator. Black figures drift by me, heavy vans +clatter, a newspaper rough tears by on a motor bicycle, and presently, +on the Albert Embankment, every seat has its one or two outcasts huddled +together and slumbering. + +“These things come, these things go,” a whispering voice urged upon me, +“as once those vast unmeaning Saurians whose bones encumber museums came +and went rejoicing noisily in fruitless lives.”... + +Fruitless lives!--was that the truth of it all?... + +Later I stood within sight of the Houses of Parliament in front of the +colonnades of St Thomas's Hospital. I leant on the parapet close by a +lamp-stand of twisted dolphins--and I prayed! + +I remember the swirl of the tide upon the water, and how a string of +barges presently came swinging and bumping round as high-water turned +to ebb. That sudden change of position and my brief perplexity at it, +sticks like a paper pin through the substance of my thoughts. It was +then I was moved to prayer. I prayed that night that life might not +be in vain, that in particular I might not live in vain. I prayed for +strength and faith, that the monstrous blundering forces in life might +not overwhelm me, might not beat me back to futility and a meaningless +acquiescence in existent things. I knew myself for the weakling I was, +I knew that nevertheless it was set for me to make such order as I could +out of these disorders, and my task cowed me, gave me at the thought of +it a sense of yielding feebleness. + +“Break me, O God,” I prayed at last, “disgrace me, torment me, destroy +me as you will, but save me from self-complacency and little interests +and little successes and the life that passes like the shadow of a +dream.” + + + + +BOOK THE THIRD: THE HEART OF POLITICS + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ THE RIDDLE FOR THE STATESMAN + + + +1 + + +I have been planning and replanning, writing and rewriting, this next +portion of my book for many days. I perceive I must leave it raw edged +and ill joined. I have learnt something of the impossibility of History. +For all I have had to tell is the story of one man's convictions and +aims and how they reacted upon his life; and I find it too subtle and +involved and intricate for the doing. I find it taxes all my powers to +convey even the main forms and forces in that development. It is like +looking through moving media of changing hue and variable refraction +at something vitally unstable. Broad theories and generalisations are +mingled with personal influences, with prevalent prejudices; and +not only coloured but altered by phases of hopefulness and moods of +depression. The web is made up of the most diverse elements, beyond +treatment multitudinous.... For a week or so I desisted altogether, +and walked over the mountains and returned to sit through the warm soft +mornings among the shaded rocks above this little perched-up house of +ours, discussing my difficulties with Isabel and I think on the whole +complicating them further in the effort to simplify them to manageable +and stateable elements. + +Let me, nevertheless, attempt a rough preliminary analysis of this +confused process. A main strand is quite easily traceable. This main +strand is the story of my obvious life, my life as it must have looked +to most of my acquaintances. It presents you with a young couple, +bright, hopeful, and energetic, starting out under Altiora's auspices to +make a career. You figure us well dressed and active, running about in +motor-cars, visiting in great people's houses, dining amidst brilliant +companies, going to the theatre, meeting in the lobby. Margaret wore +hundreds of beautiful dresses. We must have had an air of succeeding +meritoriously during that time. + +We did very continually and faithfully serve our joint career. I thought +about it a great deal, and did and refrained from doing ten thousand +things for the sake of it. I kept up a solicitude for it, as it were by +inertia, long after things had happened and changes occurred in me +that rendered its completion impossible. Under certain very artless +pretences, we wanted steadfastly to make a handsome position in the +world, achieve respect, SUCCEED. Enormous unseen changes had been in +progress for years in my mind and the realities of my life, before +our general circle could have had any inkling of their existence, or +suspected the appearances of our life. Then suddenly our proceedings +began to be deflected, our outward unanimity visibly strained and marred +by the insurgence of these so long-hidden developments. + +That career had its own hidden side, of course; but when I write +of these unseen factors I do not mean that but something altogether +broader. I do not mean the everyday pettinesses which gave the cynical +observer scope and told of a narrower, baser aspect of the fair but +limited ambitions of my ostensible self. This “sub-careerist” element +noted little things that affected the career, made me suspicious of the +rivalry of so-and-so, propitiatory to so-and-so, whom, as a matter of +fact, I didn't respect or feel in the least sympathetic towards; guarded +with that man, who for all his charm and interest wasn't helpful, and +a little touchy at the appearance of neglect from that. No, I mean +something greater and not something smaller when I write of a hidden +life. + +In the ostensible self who glowed under the approbation of Altiora +Bailey, and was envied and discussed, praised and depreciated, in the +House and in smoking-room gossip, you really have as much of a man as +usually figures in a novel or an obituary notice. But I am tremendously +impressed now in the retrospect by the realisation of how little that +frontage represented me, and just how little such frontages do represent +the complexities of the intelligent contemporary. Behind it, yet +struggling to disorganise and alter it, altogether, was a far more +essential reality, a self less personal, less individualised, and +broader in its references. Its aims were never simply to get on; it +had an altogether different system of demands and satisfactions. It +was critical, curious, more than a little unfeeling--and relentlessly +illuminating. + +It is just the existence and development of this more generalised +self-behind-the-frontage that is making modern life so much more subtle +and intricate to render, and so much more hopeful in its relations +to the perplexities of the universe. I see this mental and spiritual +hinterland vary enormously in the people about me, from a type which +seems to keep, as people say, all its goods in the window, to others +who, like myself, come to regard the ostensible existence more and more +as a mere experimental feeder and agent for that greater personality +behind. And this back-self has its history of phases, its crises and +happy accidents and irrevocable conclusions, more or less distinct from +the adventures and achievements of the ostensible self. It meets persons +and phrases, it assimilates the spirit of a book, it is startled into +new realisations by some accident that seems altogether irrelevant to +the general tenor of one's life. Its increasing independence of the +ostensible career makes it the organ of corrective criticism; it +accumulates disturbing energy. Then it breaks our overt promises and +repudiates our pledges, coming down at last like an overbearing mentor +upon the small engagements of the pupil. + +In the life of the individual it takes the role that the growth of +philosophy, science, and creative literature may play in the development +of mankind. + + + +2 + + +It is curious to recall how Britten helped shatter that obvious, +lucidly explicable presentation of myself upon which I had embarked +with Margaret. He returned to revive a memory of adolescent dreams and a +habit of adolescent frankness; he reached through my shallow frontage +as no one else seemed capable of doing, and dragged that back-self into +relation with it. + +I remember very distinctly a dinner and a subsequent walk with him +which presents itself now as altogether typical of the quality of his +influence. + +I had come upon him one day while lunching with Somers and Sutton at +the Playwrights' Club, and had asked him to dinner on the spur of the +moment. He was oddly the same curly-headed, red-faced ventriloquist, and +oddly different, rather seedy as well as untidy, and at first a little +inclined to make comparisons with my sleek successfulness. But that +disposition presently evaporated, and his talk was good and fresh and +provocative. And something that had long been straining at its checks in +my mind flapped over, and he and I found ourselves of one accord. + +Altiora wasn't at this dinner. When she came matters were apt to become +confusedly strenuous. There was always a slight and ineffectual struggle +at the end on the part of Margaret to anticipate Altiora's overpowering +tendency to a rally and the establishment of some entirely unjustifiable +conclusion by a COUP-DE-MAIN. When, however, Altiora was absent, the +quieter influence of the Cramptons prevailed; temperance and information +for its own sake prevailed excessively over dinner and the play of +thought.... Good Lord! what bores the Cramptons were! I wonder I +endured them as I did. They had all of them the trick of lying in wait +conversationally; they had no sense of the self-exposures, the gallant +experiments in statement that are necessary for good conversation. They +would watch one talking with an expression exactly like peeping through +bushes. Then they would, as it were, dash out, dissent succinctly, +contradict some secondary fact, and back to cover. They gave one +twilight nerves. Their wives were easier but still difficult at a +stretch; they talked a good deal about children and servants, but with +an air caught from Altiora of making observations upon sociological +types. Lewis gossiped about the House in an entirely finite manner. He +never raised a discussion; nobody ever raised a discussion. He would ask +what we thought of Evesham's question that afternoon, and Edward would +say it was good, and Mrs. Willie, who had been behind the grille, would +think it was very good, and then Willie, parting the branches, would say +rather conclusively that he didn't think it was very much good, and I +would deny hearing the question in order to evade a profitless statement +of views in that vacuum, and then we would cast about in our minds for +some other topic of equal interest.... + +On this occasion Altiora was absent, and to qualify our Young Liberal +bleakness we had Mrs. Millingham, with her white hair and her fresh mind +and complexion, and Esmeer. Willie Crampton was with us, but not his +wife, who was having her third baby on principle; his brother Edward was +present, and the Lewises, and of course the Bunting Harblows. There was +also some other lady. I remember her as pale blue, but for the life of +me I cannot remember her name. + +Quite early there was a little breeze between Edward Crampton and +Esmeer, who had ventured an opinion about the partition of Poland. +Edward was at work then upon the seventh volume of his monumental Life +of Kosciusko, and a little impatient with views perhaps not altogether +false but betraying a lamentable ignorance of accessible literature. At +any rate, his correction of Esmeer was magisterial. After that there was +a distinct and not altogether delightful pause, and then some one, it +may have been the pale-blue lady, asked Mrs. Lewis whether her aunt Lady +Carmixter had returned from her rest-and-sun-cure in Italy. That led to +a rather anxiously sustained talk about regimen, and Willie told us how +he had profited by the no-breakfast system. It had increased his power +of work enormously. He could get through ten hours a day now without +inconvenience. + +“What do you do?” said Esmeer abruptly. + +“Oh! no end of work. There's all the estate and looking after things.” + +“But publicly?” + +“I asked three questions yesterday. And for one of them I had to consult +nine books!” + +We were drifting, I could see, towards Doctor Haig's system of dietary, +and whether the exclusion or inclusion of fish and chicken were most +conducive to high efficiency, when Britten, who had refused lemonade +and claret and demanded Burgundy, broke out, and was discovered to be +demanding in his throat just what we Young Liberals thought we were up +to? + +“I want,” said Britten, repeating his challenge a little louder, “to +hear just exactly what you think you are doing in Parliament?” + +Lewis laughed nervously, and thought we were “Seeking the Good of the +Community.” + +“HOW?” + +“Beneficient Legislation,” said Lewis. + +“Beneficient in what direction?” insisted Britten. “I want to know where +you think you are going.” + +“Amelioration of Social Conditions,” said Lewis. + +“That's only a phrase!” + +“You wouldn't have me sketch bills at dinner?” + +“I'd like you to indicate directions,” said Britten, and waited. + +“Upward and On,” said Lewis with conscious neatness, and turned to ask +Mrs. Bunting Harblow about her little boy's French. + +For a time talk frothed over Britten's head, but the natural mischief +in Mrs. Millingham had been stirred, and she was presently echoing his +demand in lisping, quasi-confidential undertones. “What ARE we Liberals +doing?” Then Esmeer fell in with the revolutionaries. + +To begin with, I was a little shocked by this clamour for +fundamentals--and a little disconcerted. I had the experience that I +suppose comes to every one at times of discovering oneself together with +two different sets of people with whom one has maintained two different +sets of attitudes. It had always been, I perceived, an instinctive +suppression in our circle that we shouldn't be more than vague about our +political ideals. It had almost become part of my morality to respect +this convention. It was understood we were all working hard, and keeping +ourselves fit, tremendously fit, under Altiora's inspiration, Pro Bono +Publico. Bunting Harblow had his under-secretaryship, and Lewis was on +the verge of the Cabinet, and these things we considered to be in the +nature of confirmations.... It added to the discomfort of the situation +that these plunging enquiries were being made in the presence of our +wives. + +The rebel section of our party forced the talk. + +Edward Crampton was presently declaring--I forget in what relation: “The +country is with us.” + +My long-controlled hatred of the Cramptons' stereotyped phrases about +the Country and the House got the better of me. I showed my cloven hoof +to my friends for the first time. + +“We don't respect the Country as we used to do,” I said. “We haven't +the same belief we used to have in the will of the people. It's no +good, Crampton, trying to keep that up. We Liberals know as a matter of +fact--nowadays every one knows--that the monster that brought us into +power has, among other deficiencies, no head. We've got to give it +one--if possible with brains and a will. That lies in the future. For +the present if the country is with us, it means merely that we happen to +have hold of its tether.” + +Lewis was shocked. A “mandate” from the Country was sacred to his system +of pretences. + +Britten wasn't subdued by his first rebuff; presently he was at +us again. There were several attempts to check his outbreak of +interrogation; I remember the Cramptons asked questions about the +welfare of various cousins of Lewis who were unknown to the rest of us, +and Margaret tried to engage Britten in a sympathetic discussion of the +Arts and Crafts exhibition. But Britten and Esmeer were persistent, Mrs. +Millingham was mischievous, and in the end our rising hopes of Young +Liberalism took to their thickets for good, while we talked all over +them of the prevalent vacuity of political intentions. Margaret was +perplexed by me. It is only now I perceive just how perplexing I must +have been. “Of course, she said with that faint stress of apprehension +in her eyes, one must have aims.” And, “it isn't always easy to put +everything into phrases.” “Don't be long,” said Mrs. Edward Crampton +to her husband as the wives trooped out. And afterwards when we went +upstairs I had an indefinable persuasion that the ladies had been +criticising Britten's share in our talk in an altogether unfavourable +spirit. Mrs. Edward evidently thought him aggressive and impertinent, +and Margaret with a quiet firmness that brooked no resistance, took him +at once into a corner and showed him Italian photographs by Coburn. We +dispersed early. + +I walked with Britten along the Chelsea back streets towards Battersea +Bridge--he lodged on the south side. + +“Mrs. Millingham's a dear,” he began. + +“She's a dear.” + +“I liked her demand for a hansom because a four-wheeler was too safe.” + +“She was worked up,” I said. “She's a woman of faultless character, but +her instincts, as Altiora would say, are anarchistic--when she gives +them a chance.” + +“So she takes it out in hansom cabs.” + +“Hansom cabs.” + +“She's wise,” said Britten.... + +“I hope, Remington,” he went on after a pause, “I didn't rag your other +guests too much. I've a sort of feeling at moments--Remington, those +chaps are so infernally not--not bloody. It's part of a man's duty +sometimes at least to eat red beef and get drunk. How is he to +understand government if he doesn't? It scares me to think of your +lot--by a sort of misapprehension--being in power. A kind of neuralgia +in the head, by way of government. I don't understand where YOU come in. +Those others--they've no lusts. Their ideal is anaemia. You and I, +we had at least a lust to take hold of life and make something of it. +They--they want to take hold of life and make nothing of it. They want +to cut out all the stimulants. Just as though life was anything else but +a reaction to stimulation!”... + +He began to talk of his own life. He had had ill-fortune through most +of it. He was poor and unsuccessful, and a girl he had been very fond +of had been attacked and killed by a horse in a field in a very horrible +manner. These things had wounded and tortured him, but they hadn't +broken him. They had, it seemed to me, made a kind of crippled and ugly +demigod of him. He was, I began to perceive, so much better than I had +any right to expect. At first I had been rather struck by his unkempt +look, and it made my reaction all the stronger. There was about him +something, a kind of raw and bleeding faith in the deep things of +life, that stirred me profoundly as he showed it. My set of people had +irritated him and disappointed him. I discovered at his touch how they +irritated him. He reproached me boldly. He made me feel ashamed of my +easy acquiescences as I walked in my sleek tall neatness beside his +rather old coat, his rather battered hat, his sturdier shorter shape, +and listened to his denunciations of our self-satisfied New Liberalism +and Progressivism. + +“It has the same relation to progress--the reality of progress--that the +things they paint on door panels in the suburbs have to art and beauty. +There's a sort of filiation.... Your Altiora's just the political +equivalent of the ladies who sell traced cloth for embroidery; she's +a dealer in Refined Social Reform for the Parlour. The real progress, +Remington, is a graver thing and a painfuller thing and a slower thing +altogether. Look! THAT”--and he pointed to where under a boarding in the +light of a gas lamp a dingy prostitute stood lurking--“was in Babylon +and Nineveh. Your little lot make believe there won't be anything of the +sort after this Parliament! They're going to vanish at a few top notes +from Altiora Bailey! Remington!--it's foolery. It's prigs at play. +It's make-believe, make-believe! Your people there haven't got hold of +things, aren't beginning to get hold of things, don't know anything of +life at all, shirk life, avoid life, get in little bright clean rooms +and talk big over your bumpers of lemonade while the Night goes by +outside--untouched. Those Crampton fools slink by all this,”--he +waved at the woman again--“pretend it doesn't exist, or is going to be +banished root and branch by an Act to keep children in the wet outside +public-houses. Do you think they really care, Remington? I don't. It's +make-believe. What they want to do, what Lewis wants to do, what Mrs. +Bunting Harblow wants her husband to do, is to sit and feel very grave +and necessary and respected on the Government benches. They think of +putting their feet out like statesmen, and tilting shiny hats with +becoming brims down over their successful noses. Presentation portrait +to a club at fifty. That's their Reality. That's their scope. They +don't, it's manifest, WANT to think beyond that. The things there ARE, +Remington, they'll never face! the wonder and the depth of life,--lust, +and the night-sky,--pain.” + +“But the good intention,” I pleaded, “the Good Will!” + +“Sentimentality,” said Britten. “No Good Will is anything but dishonesty +unless it frets and burns and hurts and destroys a man. That lot of +yours have nothing but a good will to think they have good will. Do you +think they lie awake of nights searching their hearts as we do? Lewis? +Crampton? Or those neat, admiring, satisfied little wives? See how they +shrank from the probe!” + +“We all,” I said, “shrink from the probe.” + +“God help us!” said Britten.... + +“We are but vermin at the best, Remington,” he broke out, “and the +greatest saint only a worm that has lifted its head for a moment from +the dust. We are damned, we are meant to be damned, coral animalculae +building upward, upward in a sea of damnation. But of all the damned +things that ever were damned, your damned shirking, temperate, +sham-efficient, self-satisfied, respectable, make-believe, +Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is the utterly damnedest.” He paused for +a moment, and resumed in an entirely different note: “Which is why I was +so surprised, Remington, to find YOU in this set!” + +“You're just the old plunger you used to be, Britten,” I said. “You're +going too far with all your might for the sake of the damns. Like a +donkey that drags its cart up a bank to get thistles. There's depths in +Liberalism--” + +“We were talking about Liberals.” + +“Liberty!” + +“Liberty! What do YOOR little lot know of liberty?” + +“What does any little lot know of liberty?” + +“It waits outside, too big for our understanding. Like the night and the +stars. And lust, Remington! lust and bitterness! Don't I know them? with +all the sweetness and hope of life bitten and trampled, the dear eyes +and the brain that loved and understood--and my poor mumble of a life +going on! I'm within sight of being a drunkard, Remington! I'm a failure +by most standards! Life has cut me to the bone. But I'm not afraid of it +any more. I've paid something of the price, I've seen something of the +meaning.” + +He flew off at a tangent. “I'd rather die in Delirium Tremens,” he +cried, “than be a Crampton or a Lewis....” + +“Make-believe. Make-believe.” The phrase and Britten's squat gestures +haunted me as I walked homeward alone. I went to my room and stood +before my desk and surveyed papers and files and Margaret's admirable +equipment of me. + +I perceived in the lurid light of Britten's suggestions that so it was +Mr. George Alexander would have mounted a statesman's private room.... + + + +3 + + +I was never at any stage a loyal party man. I doubt if party will +ever again be the force it was during the eighteenth and nineteenth +centuries. Men are becoming increasingly constructive and selective, +less patient under tradition and the bondage of initial circumstances. +As education becomes more universal and liberating, men will sort +themselves more and more by their intellectual temperaments and less and +less by their accidental associations. The past will rule them less; the +future more. It is not simply party but school and college and county +and country that lose their glamour. One does not hear nearly as much +as our forefathers did of the “old Harrovian,” “old Arvonian,” “old +Etonian” claim to this or that unfair advantage or unearnt sympathy. +Even the Scotch and the Devonians weaken a little in their clannishness. +A widening sense of fair play destroys such things. They follow +freemasonry down--freemasonry of which one is chiefly reminded nowadays +in England by propitiatory symbols outside shady public-houses.... + +There is, of course, a type of man which clings very obstinately to +party ties. These are the men with strong reproductive imaginations +and no imaginative initiative, such men as Cladingbowl, for example, or +Dayton. They are the scholars-at-large in life. For them the fact that +the party system has been essential in the history of England for two +hundred years gives it an overwhelming glamour. They have read histories +and memoirs, they see the great grey pile of Westminster not so much +for what it is as for what it was, rich with dramatic memories, populous +with glorious ghosts, phrasing itself inevitably in anecdotes and +quotations. It seems almost scandalous that new things should continue +to happen, swamping with strange qualities the savour of these old +associations. + +That Mr. Ramsay Macdonald should walk through Westminster Hall, thrust +himself, it may be, through the very piece of space that once held +Charles the Martyr pleading for his life, seems horrible profanation to +Dayton, a last posthumous outrage; and he would, I think, like to have +the front benches left empty now for ever, or at most adorned with +laureated ivory tablets: “Here Dizzy sat,” and “On this Spot William +Ewart Gladstone made his First Budget Speech.” Failing this, he demands, +if only as signs of modesty and respect on the part of the survivors, +meticulous imitation. “Mr. G.,” he murmurs, “would not have done that,” + and laments a vanished subtlety even while Mr. Evesham is speaking. He +is always gloomily disposed to lapse into wonderings about what +things are coming to, wonderings that have no grain of curiosity. His +conception of perfect conduct is industrious persistence along the +worn-down, well-marked grooves of the great recorded days. So infinitely +more important to him is the documented, respected thing than the +elusive present. + +Cladingbowl and Dayton do not shine in the House, though Cladingbowl is +a sound man on a committee, and Dayton keeps the OLD COUNTRY GAZETTE, +the most gentlemanly paper in London. They prevail, however, in their +clubs at lunch time. There, with the pleasant consciousness of a +morning's work free from either zeal or shirking, they mingle with +permanent officials, prominent lawyers, even a few of the soberer type +of business men, and relax their minds in the discussion of the morning +paper, of the architecture of the West End, and of the latest public +appointments, of golf, of holiday resorts, of the last judicial +witticisms and forensic “crushers.” The New Year and Birthday honours +lists are always very sagely and exhaustively considered, and anecdotes +are popular and keenly judged. They do not talk of the things that are +really active in their minds, but in the formal and habitual manner they +suppose to be proper to intelligent but still honourable men. Socialism, +individual money matters, and religion are forbidden topics, and sex and +women only in so far as they appear in the law courts. It is to me +the strangest of conventions, this assumption of unreal loyalties and +traditional respects, this repudiation and concealment of passionate +interests. It is like wearing gloves in summer fields, or bathing in a +gown, or falling in love with the heroine of a novel, or writing under a +pseudonym, or becoming a masked Tuareg.... + +It is not, I think, that men of my species are insensitive to the great +past that is embodied in Westminster and its traditions; we are not so +much wanting in the historical sense as alive to the greatness of our +present opportunities and the still vaster future that is possible to +us. London is the most interesting, beautiful, and wonderful city in the +world to me, delicate in her incidental and multitudinous littleness, +and stupendous in her pregnant totality; I cannot bring myself to use +her as a museum or an old bookshop. When I think of Whitehall that +little affair on the scaffold outside the Banqueting Hall seems trivial +and remote in comparison with the possibilities that offer themselves to +my imagination within the great grey Government buildings close at hand. + +It gives me a qualm of nostalgia even to name those places now. I think +of St. Stephen's tower streaming upwards into the misty London night and +the great wet quadrangle of New Palace Yard, from which the hansom cabs +of my first experiences were ousted more and more by taxicabs as the +second Parliament of King Edward the Seventh aged; I think of the +Admiralty and War office with their tall Marconi masts sending out +invisible threads of direction to the armies in the camps, to great +fleets about the world. The crowded, darkly shining river goes flooding +through my memory once again, on to those narrow seas that part us +from our rival nations; I see quadrangles and corridors of spacious +grey-toned offices in which undistinguished little men and little files +of papers link us to islands in the tropics, to frozen wildernesses +gashed for gold, to vast temple-studded plains, to forest worlds +and mountain worlds, to ports and fortresses and lighthouses and +watch-towers and grazing lands and corn lands all about the globe. Once +more I traverse Victoria Street, grimy and dark, where the Agents of the +Empire jostle one another, pass the big embassies in the West End +with their flags and scutcheons, follow the broad avenue that leads to +Buckingham Palace, witness the coming and going of troops and officials +and guests along it from every land on earth.... Interwoven in the +texture of it all, mocking, perplexing, stimulating beyond measure, is +the gleaming consciousness, the challenging knowledge: “You and your +kind might still, if you could but grasp it here, mould all the destiny +of Man!” + + + +4 + + +My first three years in Parliament were years of active discontent. The +little group of younger Liberals to which I belonged was very ignorant +of the traditions and qualities of our older leaders, and quite out of +touch with the mass of the party. For a time Parliament was enormously +taken up with moribund issues and old quarrels. The early Educational +legislation was sectarian and unenterprising, and the Licensing Bill +went little further than the attempted rectification of a Conservative +mistake. I was altogether for the nationalisation of the public-houses, +and of this end the Bill gave no intimations. It was just beer-baiting. +I was recalcitrant almost from the beginning, and spoke against the +Government so early as the second reading of the first Education Bill, +the one the Lords rejected in 1906. I went a little beyond my intention +in the heat of speaking,--it is a way with inexperienced man. I called +the Bill timid, narrow, a mere sop to the jealousies of sects and +little-minded people. I contrasted its aim and methods with the manifest +needs of the time. + +I am not a particularly good speaker; after the manner of a writer I +worry to find my meaning too much; but this was one of my successes. I +spoke after dinner and to a fairly full House, for people were already +a little curious about me because of my writings. Several of the +Conservative leaders were present and stayed, and Mr. Evesham, +I remember, came ostentatiously to hear me, with that engaging +friendliness of his, and gave me at the first chance an approving “Hear, +Hear!” I can still recall quite distinctly my two futile attempts to +catch the Speaker's eye before I was able to begin, the nervous quiver +of my rather too prepared opening, the effect of hearing my own voice +and my subconscious wonder as to what I could possibly be talking +about, the realisation that I was getting on fairly well, the immense +satisfaction afterwards of having on the whole brought it off, and the +absurd gratitude I felt for that encouraging cheer. + +Addressing the House of Commons is like no other public speaking in the +world. Its semi-colloquial methods give it an air of being easy, but +its shifting audience, the comings and goings and hesitations of members +behind the chair--not mere audience units, but men who matter--the +desolating emptiness that spreads itself round the man who fails to +interest, the little compact, disciplined crowd in the strangers' +gallery, the light, elusive, flickering movements high up behind the +grill, the wigged, attentive, weary Speaker, the table and the mace +and the chapel-like Gothic background with its sombre shadows, conspire +together, produce a confused, uncertain feeling in me, as though I was +walking upon a pavement full of trap-doors and patches of uncovered +morass. A misplaced, well-meant “Hear, Hear!” is apt to be +extraordinarily disconcerting, and under no other circumstances have I +had to speak with quite the same sideways twist that the arrangement of +the House imposes. One does not recognise one's own voice threading out +into the stirring brown. Unless I was excited or speaking to the mind of +some particular person in the house, I was apt to lose my feeling of an +auditor. I had no sense of whither my sentences were going, such as one +has with a public meeting well under one's eye. And to lose one's sense +of an auditor is for a man of my temperament to lose one's sense of the +immediate, and to become prolix and vague with qualifications. + + + +5 + + +My discontents with the Liberal party and my mental exploration of +the quality of party generally is curiously mixed up with certain +impressions of things and people in the National Liberal Club. The +National Liberal Club is Liberalism made visible in the flesh--and +Doultonware. It is an extraordinary big club done in a bold, wholesale, +shiny, marbled style, richly furnished with numerous paintings, steel +engravings, busts, and full-length statues of the late Mr. Gladstone; +and its spacious dining-rooms, its long, hazy, crowded smoking-room with +innumerable little tables and groups of men in armchairs, its +magazine room and library upstairs, have just that undistinguished and +unconcentrated diversity which is for me the Liberal note. The pensive +member sits and hears perplexing dialects and even fragments of foreign +speech, and among the clustering masses of less insistent whites his +roving eye catches profiles and complexions that send his mind afield to +Calcutta or Rangoon or the West Indies or Sierra Leone or the Cape.... + +I was not infrequently that pensive member. I used to go to the Club to +doubt about Liberalism. + +About two o'clock in the day the great smoking-room is crowded with +countless little groups. They sit about small round tables, or in +circles of chairs, and the haze of tobacco seems to prolong the great +narrow place, with its pillars and bays, to infinity. Some of the groups +are big, as many as a dozen men talk in loud tones; some are duologues, +and there is always a sprinkling of lonely, dissociated men. At first +one gets an impression of men going from group to group and as it were +linking them, but as one watches closely one finds that these men just +visit three or four groups at the outside, and know nothing of the +others. One begins to perceive more and more distinctly that one is +dealing with a sort of human mosaic; that each patch in that great place +is of a different quality and colour from the next and never to be mixed +with it. Most clubs have a common link, a lowest common denominator in +the Club Bore, who spares no one, but even the National Liberal bores +are specialised and sectional. As one looks round one sees here a clump +of men from the North Country or the Potteries, here an island of +South London politicians, here a couple of young Jews ascendant from +Whitechapel, here a circle of journalists and writers, here a group of +Irish politicians, here two East Indians, here a priest or so, here +a clump of old-fashioned Protestants, here a little knot of eminent +Rationalists indulging in a blasphemous story SOTTO VOCE. Next them are +a group of anglicised Germans and highly specialised chess-players, +and then two of the oddest-looking persons--bulging with documents and +intent upon extraordinary business transactions over long cigars.... + +I would listen to a stormy sea of babblement, and try to extract some +constructive intimations. Every now and then I got a whiff of politics. +It was clear they were against the Lords--against plutocrats--against +Cossington's newspapers--against the brewers.... It was tremendously +clear what they were against. The trouble was to find out what on earth +they were for!... + +As I sat and thought, the streaked and mottled pillars and wall, the +various views, aspects, and portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, the +partitions of polished mahogany, the yellow-vested waiters, would +dissolve and vanish, and I would have a vision of this sample of +miscellaneous men of limited, diverse interests and a universal +littleness of imagination enlarged, unlimited, no longer a sample but a +community, spreading, stretching out to infinity--all in little groups +and duologues and circles, all with their special and narrow concerns, +all with their backs to most of the others. + +What but a common antagonism would ever keep these multitudes together? +I understood why modern electioneering is more than half of it +denunciation. Let us condemn, if possible, let us obstruct and deprive, +but not let us do. There is no real appeal to the commonplace mind in +“Let us do.” That calls for the creative imagination, and few have been +accustomed to respond to that call. The other merely needs jealousy and +bate, of which there are great and easily accessible reservoirs in every +human heart.... + +I remember that vision of endless, narrow, jealous individuality very +vividly. A seething limitlessness it became at last, like a waste place +covered by crawling locusts that men sweep up by the sackload and drown +by the million in ditches.... + +Grotesquely against it came the lean features, the sidelong shy +movements of Edward Crampton, seated in a circle of talkers close at +hand. I had a whiff of his strained, unmusical voice, and behold! he was +saying something about the “Will of the People....” + +The immense and wonderful disconnectednesses of human life! I forgot the +smoke and jabber of the club altogether; I became a lonely spirit flung +aloft by some queer accident, a stone upon a ledge in some high and +rocky wilderness, and below as far as the eye could reach stretched the +swarming infinitesimals of humanity, like grass upon the field, like +pebbles upon unbounded beaches. Was there ever to be in human life +more than that endless struggling individualism? Was there indeed some +giantry, some immense valiant synthesis, still to come--or present it +might be and still unseen by me, or was this the beginning and withal +the last phase of mankind?... + +I glimpsed for a while the stupendous impudence of our ambitions, +the tremendous enterprise to which the modern statesman is implicitly +addressed. I was as it were one of a little swarm of would-be reef +builders looking back at the teeming slime upon the ocean floor. All the +history of mankind, all the history of life, has been and will be +the story of something struggling out of the indiscriminated abyss, +struggling to exist and prevail over and comprehend individual lives--an +effort of insidious attraction, an idea of invincible appeal. That +something greater than ourselves, which does not so much exist as seek +existence, palpitating between being and not-being, how marvellous it +is! It has worn the form and visage of ten thousand different gods, +sought a shape for itself in stone and ivory and music and wonderful +words, spoken more and more clearly of a mystery of love, a mystery +of unity, dabbling meanwhile in blood and cruelty beyond the common +impulses of men. It is something that comes and goes, like a light that +shines and is withdrawn, withdrawn so completely that one doubts if it +has ever been.... + + + +6 + + +I would mark with a curious interest the stray country member of +the club up in town for a night or so. My mind would be busy with +speculations about him, about his home, his family, his reading, his +horizons, his innumerable fellows who didn't belong and never came up. +I would fill in the outline of him with memories of my uncle and his +Staffordshire neighbours. He was perhaps Alderman This or Councillor +That down there, a great man in his ward, J. P. within seven miles of +the boundary of the borough, and a God in his home. Here he was nobody, +and very shy, and either a little too arrogant or a little too meek +towards our very democratic mannered but still livened waiters. Was +he perhaps the backbone of England? He over-ate himself lest he should +appear mean, went through our Special Dinner conscientiously, drank, +unless he was teetotal, of unfamiliar wines, and did his best, in spite +of the rules, to tip. Afterwards, in a state of flushed repletion, he +would have old brandy, black coffee, and a banded cigar, or in the +name of temperance omit the brandy and have rather more coffee, in +the smoking-room. I would sit and watch that stiff dignity of +self-indulgence, and wonder, wonder.... + +An infernal clairvoyance would come to me. I would have visions of him +in relation to his wife, checking always, sometimes bullying, sometimes +being ostentatiously “kind”; I would see him glance furtively at his +domestic servants upon his staircase, or stiffen his upper lip against +the reluctant, protesting business employee. We imaginative people +are base enough, heaven knows, but it is only in rare moods of bitter +penetration that we pierce down to the baser lusts, the viler shames, +the everlasting lying and muddle-headed self-justification of the dull. + +I would turn my eyes down the crowded room and see others of him and +others. What did he think he was up to? Did he for a moment realise that +his presence under that ceramic glory of a ceiling with me meant, if it +had any rational meaning at all, that we were jointly doing something +with the nation and the empire and mankind?... How on earth could any +one get hold of him, make any noble use of him? He didn't read beyond +his newspaper. He never thought, but only followed imaginings in his +heart. He never discussed. At the first hint of discussion his temper +gave way. He was, I knew, a deep, thinly-covered tank of resentments +and quite irrational moral rages. Yet withal I would have to resist an +impulse to go over to him and nudge him and say to him, “Look here! +What indeed do you think we are doing with the nation and the empire and +mankind? You know--MANKIND!” + +I wonder what reply I should have got. + +So far as any average could be struck and so far as any backbone could +be located, it seemed to me that this silent, shy, replete, sub-angry, +middle-class sentimentalist was in his endless species and varieties and +dialects the backbone of our party. So far as I could be considered as +representing anything in the House, I pretended to sit for the elements +of HIM.... + + + +7 + + +For a time I turned towards the Socialists. They at least had an air of +coherent intentions. At that time Socialism had come into politics again +after a period of depression and obscurity, with a tremendous ECLAT. +There was visibly a following of Socialist members to Chris Robinson; +mysteriously uncommunicative gentlemen in soft felt hats and short +coats and square-toed boots who replied to casual advances a little +surprisingly in rich North Country dialects. Members became aware of a +“seagreen incorruptible,” as Colonel Marlow put it to me, speaking on +the Address, a slender twisted figure supporting itself on a stick and +speaking with a fire that was altogether revolutionary. This was Philip +Snowden, the member for Blackburn. They had come in nearly forty +strong altogether, and with an air of presently meaning to come in much +stronger. They were only one aspect of what seemed at that time a big +national movement. Socialist societies, we gathered, were springing up +all over the country, and every one was inquiring about Socialism and +discussing Socialism. It had taken the Universities with particular +force, and any youngster with the slightest intellectual pretension was +either actively for or brilliantly against. For a time our Young Liberal +group was ostentatiously sympathetic.... + +When I think of the Socialists there comes a vivid memory of certain +evening gatherings at our house.... + +These gatherings had been organised by Margaret as the outcome of +a discussion at the Baileys'. Altiora had been very emphatic and +uncharitable upon the futility of the Socialist movement. It seemed that +even the leaders fought shy of dinner-parties. + +“They never meet each other,” said Altiora, “much less people on the +other side. How can they begin to understand politics until they do +that?” + +“Most of them have totally unpresentable wives,” said Altiora, +“totally!” and quoted instances, “and they WILL bring them. Or they +won't come! Some of the poor creatures have scarcely learnt their table +manners. They just make holes in the talk....” + +I thought there was a great deal of truth beneath Altiora's outburst. +The presentation of the Socialist case seemed very greatly crippled +by the want of a common intimacy in its leaders; the want of intimacy +didn't at first appear to be more than an accident, and our talk led to +Margaret's attempt to get acquaintance and easy intercourse afoot among +them and between them and the Young Liberals of our group. She gave a +series of weekly dinners, planned, I think, a little too accurately upon +Altiora's model, and after each we had as catholic a reception as we +could contrive. + +Our receptions were indeed, I should think, about as catholic as +receptions could be. Margaret found herself with a weekly houseful of +insoluble problems in intercourse. One did one's best, but one got a +nightmare feeling as the evening wore on. + +It was one of the few unanimities of these parties that every one should +be a little odd in appearance, funny about the hair or the tie or the +shoes or more generally, and that bursts of violent aggression should +alternate with an attitude entirely defensive. A number of our guests +had an air of waiting for a clue that never came, and stood and sat +about silently, mildly amused but not a bit surprised that we did not +discover their distinctive Open-Sesames. There was a sprinkling of +manifest seers and prophetesses in shapeless garments, far too many, I +thought, for really easy social intercourse, and any conversation at any +moment was liable to become oracular. One was in a state of tension +from first to last; the most innocent remark seemed capable of exploding +resentment, and replies came out at the most unexpected angles. We Young +Liberals went about puzzled but polite to the gathering we had evoked. +The Young Liberals' tradition is on the whole wonderfully discreet, +superfluous steam is let out far away from home in the Balkans or +Africa, and the neat, stiff figures of the Cramptons, Bunting Harblow, +and Lewis, either in extremely well-cut morning coats indicative of the +House, or in what is sometimes written of as “faultless evening dress,” + stood about on those evenings, they and their very quietly and simply +and expensively dressed little wives, like a datum line amidst lakes and +mountains. + +I didn't at first see the connection between systematic social +reorganisation and arbitrary novelties in dietary and costume, just as +I didn't realise why the most comprehensive constructive projects should +appear to be supported solely by odd and exceptional personalities. +On one of these evenings a little group of rather jolly-looking pretty +young people seated themselves for no particular reason in a large +circle on the floor of my study, and engaged, so far as I could judge, +in the game of Hunt the Meaning, the intellectual equivalent of Hunt the +Slipper. It must have been that same evening I came upon an unbleached +young gentleman before the oval mirror on the landing engaged in +removing the remains of an anchovy sandwich from his protruded +tongue--visible ends of cress having misled him into the belief that he +was dealing with doctrinally permissible food. It was not unusual to be +given hand-bills and printed matter by our guests, but there I had +the advantage over Lewis, who was too tactful to refuse the stuff, too +neatly dressed to pocket it, and had no writing-desk available upon +which he could relieve himself in a manner flattering to the giver. So +that his hands got fuller and fuller. A relentless, compact little woman +in what Margaret declared to be an extremely expensive black dress +has also printed herself on my memory; she had set her heart upon my +contributing to a weekly periodical in the lentil interest with which +she was associated, and I spent much time and care in evading her. + +Mingling with the more hygienic types were a number of Anti-Puritan +Socialists, bulging with bias against temperance, and breaking out +against austere methods of living all over their faces. Their manner +was packed with heartiness. They were apt to choke the approaches to +the little buffet Margaret had set up downstairs, and there engage in +discussions of Determinism--it always seemed to be Determinism--which +became heartier and noisier, but never acrimonious even in the small +hours. It seemed impossible to settle about this Determinism of +theirs--ever. And there were worldly Socialists also. I particularly +recall a large, active, buoyant, lady-killing individual with an +eyeglass borne upon a broad black ribbon, who swam about us one evening. +He might have been a slightly frayed actor, in his large frock-coat, +his white waistcoat, and the sort of black and white check trousers that +twinkle. He had a high-pitched voice with aristocratic intonations, and +he seemed to be in a perpetual state of interrogation. “What are we +all he-a for?” he would ask only too audibly. “What are we doing he-a? +What's the connection?” + +What WAS the connection? + +We made a special effort with our last assembly in June, 1907. We tried +to get something like a representative collection of the parliamentary +leaders of Socialism, the various exponents of Socialist thought and a +number of Young Liberal thinkers into one room. Dorvil came, and Horatio +Bulch; Featherstonehaugh appeared for ten minutes and talked charmingly +to Margaret and then vanished again; there was Wilkins the novelist and +Toomer and Dr. Tumpany. Chris Robinson stood about for a time in a new +comforter, and Magdeberg and Will Pipes and five or six Labour members. +And on our side we had our particular little group, Bunting Harblow, +Crampton, Lewis, all looking as broad-minded and open to conviction as +they possibly could, and even occasionally talking out from their bushes +almost boldly. But the gathering as a whole refused either to mingle or +dispute, and as an experiment in intercourse the evening was a failure. +Unexpected dissociations appeared between Socialists one had supposed +friendly. I could not have imagined it was possible for half so many +people to turn their backs on everybody else in such small rooms as +ours. But the unsaid things those backs expressed broke out, I remarked, +with refreshed virulence in the various organs of the various sections +of the party next week. + +I talked, I remember, with Dr. Tumpany, a large young man in a still +larger professional frock-coat, and with a great shock of very fair +hair, who was candidate for some North Country constituency. We +discussed the political outlook, and, like so many Socialists at that +time, he was full of vague threatenings against the Liberal party. I +was struck by a thing in him that I had already observed less vividly in +many others of these Socialist leaders, and which gave me at last a clue +to the whole business. He behaved exactly like a man in possession of +valuable patent rights, who wants to be dealt with. He had an air of +having a corner in ideas. Then it flashed into my head that the whole +Socialist movement was an attempted corner in ideas.... + + + +8 + + +Late that night I found myself alone with Margaret amid the debris of +the gathering. + +I sat before the fire, hands in pockets, and Margaret, looking white and +weary, came and leant upon the mantel. + +“Oh, Lord!” said Margaret. + +I agreed. Then I resumed my meditation. + +“Ideas,” I said, “count for more than I thought in the world.” + +Margaret regarded me with that neutral expression behind which she was +accustomed to wait for clues. + +“When you think of the height and depth and importance and wisdom of the +Socialist ideas, and see the men who are running them,” I explained.... +“A big system of ideas like Socialism grows up out of the obvious common +sense of our present conditions. It's as impersonal as science. All +these men--They've given nothing to it. They're just people who have +pegged out claims upon a big intellectual No-Man's-Land--and don't feel +quite sure of the law. There's a sort of quarrelsome uneasiness.... +If we professed Socialism do you think they'd welcome us? Not a man of +them! They'd feel it was burglary....” + +“Yes,” said Margaret, looking into the fire. “That is just what I felt +about them all the evening.... Particularly Dr. Tumpany.” + +“We mustn't confuse Socialism with the Socialists,” I said; “that's +the moral of it. I suppose if God were to find He had made a mistake in +dates or something, and went back and annihilated everybody from Owen +onwards who was in any way known as a Socialist leader or teacher, +Socialism would be exactly where it is and what it is to-day--a growing +realisation of constructive needs in every man's mind, and a little +corner in party politics. So, I suppose, it will always be.... But they +WERE a damned lot, Margaret!” + +I looked up at the little noise she made. “TWICE!” she said, smiling +indulgently, “to-day!” (Even the smile was Altiora's.) + +I returned to my thoughts. They WERE a damned human lot. It was an +excellent word in that connection.... + +But the ideas marched on, the ideas marched on, just as though men's +brains were no more than stepping-stones, just as though some great +brain in which we are all little cells and corpuscles was thinking +them!... + +“I don't think there is a man among them who makes me feel he is +trustworthy,” said Margaret; “unless it is Featherstonehaugh.” + +I sat taking in this proposition. + +“They'll never help us, I feel,” said Margaret. + +“Us?” + +“The Liberals.” + +“Oh, damn the Liberals!” I said. “They'll never even help themselves.” + +“I don't think I could possibly get on with any of those people,” said +Margaret, after a pause. + +She remained for a time looking down at me and, I could feel, perplexed +by me, but I wanted to go on with my thinking, and so I did not look up, +and presently she stooped to my forehead and kissed me and went rustling +softly to her room. + +I remained in my study for a long time with my thoughts crystallising +out.... + +It was then, I think, that I first apprehended clearly how that +opposition to which I have already alluded of the immediate life and the +mental hinterland of a man, can be applied to public and social affairs. +The ideas go on--and no person or party succeeds in embodying them. The +reality of human progress never comes to the surface, it is a power +in the deeps, an undertow. It goes on in silence while men think, in +studies where they write self-forgetfully, in laboratories under the +urgency of an impersonal curiosity, in the rare illumination of honest +talk, in moments of emotional insight, in thoughtful reading, but not +in everyday affairs. Everyday affairs and whatever is made an everyday +affair, are transactions of the ostensible self, the being of habits, +interests, usage. Temper, vanity, hasty reaction to imitation, personal +feeling, are their substance. No man can abolish his immediate self and +specialise in the depths; if he attempt that, he simply turns himself +into something a little less than the common man. He may have an immense +hinterland, but that does not absolve him from a frontage. That is the +essential error of the specialist philosopher, the specialist teacher, +the specialist publicist. They repudiate frontage; claim to be pure +hinterland. That is what bothered me about Codger, about those various +schoolmasters who had prepared me for life, about the Baileys and their +dream of an official ruling class. A human being who is a philosopher +in the first place, a teacher in the first place, or a statesman in the +first place, is thereby and inevitably, though he bring God-like gifts +to the pretence--a quack. These are attempts to live deep-side +shallow, inside out. They produce merely a new pettiness. To understand +Socialism, again, is to gain a new breadth of outlook; to join a +Socialist organisation is to join a narrow cult which is not even +tolerably serviceable in presenting or spreading the ideas for which it +stands.... + +I perceived I had got something quite fundamental here. It had taken me +some years to realise the true relation of the great constructive ideas +that swayed me not only to political parties, but to myself. I had +been disposed to identify the formulae of some one party with social +construction, and to regard the other as necessarily anti-constructive, +just as I had been inclined to follow the Baileys in the +self-righteousness of supposing myself to be wholly constructive. But I +saw now that every man of intellectual freedom and vigour is necessarily +constructive-minded nowadays, and that no man is disinterestedly so. +Each one of us repeats in himself the conflict of the race between the +splendour of its possibilities and its immediate associations. We may be +shaping immortal things, but we must sleep and answer the dinner gong, +and have our salt of flattery and self-approval. In politics a man +counts not for what he is in moments of imaginative expansion, but +for his common workaday, selfish self; and political parties are held +together not by a community of ultimate aims, but by the stabler bond +of an accustomed life. Everybody almost is for progress in general, and +nearly everybody is opposed to any change, except in so far as gross +increments are change, in his particular method of living and behaviour. +Every party stands essentially for the interests and mental usages of +some definite class or group of classes in the exciting community, and +every party has its scientific-minded and constructive leading section, +with well-defined hinterlands formulating its social functions in a +public-spirited form, and its superficial-minded following confessing +its meannesses and vanities and prejudices. No class will abolish +itself, materially alter its way of life, or drastically reconstruct +itself, albeit no class is indisposed to co-operate in the unlimited +socialisation of any other class. In that capacity for aggression upon +other classes lies the essential driving force of modern affairs. The +instincts, the persons, the parties, and vanities sway and struggle. +The ideas and understandings march on and achieve themselves for all--in +spite of every one.... + +The methods and traditions of British politics maintain the form of two +great parties, with rider groups seeking to gain specific ends in the +event of a small Government majority. These two main parties are more or +less heterogeneous in composition. Each, however, has certain necessary +characteristics. The Conservative Party has always stood quite +definitely for the established propertied interests. The land-owner, +the big lawyer, the Established Church, and latterly the huge private +monopoly of the liquor trade which has been created by temperance +legislation, are the essential Conservatives. Interwoven now with the +native wealthy are the families of the great international usurers, and +a vast miscellaneous mass of financial enterprise. Outside the range of +resistance implied by these interests, the Conservative Party has always +shown itself just as constructive and collectivist as any other party. +The great landowners have been as well-disposed towards the endowment +of higher education, and as willing to co-operate with the Church in +protective and mildly educational legislation for children and the +working class, as any political section. The financiers, too, are +adventurous-spirited and eager for mechanical progress and technical +efficiency. They are prepared to spend public money upon research, +upon ports and harbours and public communications, upon sanitation and +hygienic organisation. A certain rude benevolence of public intention is +equally characteristic of the liquor trade. Provided his comfort leads +to no excesses of temperance, the liquor trade is quite eager to see +the common man prosperous, happy, and with money to spend in a bar. All +sections of the party are aggressively patriotic and favourably inclined +to the idea of an upstanding, well-fed, and well-exercised population +in uniform. Of course there are reactionary landowners and old-fashioned +country clergy, full of localised self-importance, jealous even of the +cottager who can read, but they have neither the power nor the ability +to retard the constructive forces in the party as a whole. On the other +hand, when matters point to any definitely confiscatory proposal, to the +public ownership and collective control of land, for example, or +state mining and manufactures, or the nationalisation of the so-called +public-house or extended municipal enterprise, or even to an increase of +the taxation of property, then the Conservative Party presents a nearly +adamantine bar. It does not stand for, it IS, the existing arrangement +in these affairs. + +Even more definitely a class party is the Labour Party, whose immediate +interest is to raise wages, shorten hours of labor, increase employment, +and make better terms for the working-man tenant and working-man +purchaser. Its leaders are no doubt constructive minded, but the mass +of the following is naturally suspicious of education and discipline, +hostile to the higher education, and--except for an obvious antagonism +to employers and property owners--almost destitute of ideas. What +else can it be? It stands for the expropriated multitude, whose whole +situation and difficulty arise from its individual lack of initiative +and organising power. It favours the nationalisation of land and capital +with no sense of the difficulties involved in the process; but, on the +other hand, the equally reasonable socialisation of individuals which +is implied by military service is steadily and quite naturally and quite +illogically opposed by it. It is only in recent years that Labour has +emerged as a separate party from the huge hospitable caravanserai of +Liberalism, and there is still a very marked tendency to step back again +into that multitudinous assemblage. + +For multitudinousness has always been the Liberal characteristic. +Liberalism never has been nor ever can be anything but a diversified +crowd. Liberalism has to voice everything that is left out by these +other parties. It is the party against the predominating interests. It +is at once the party of the failing and of the untried; it is the party +of decadence and hope. From its nature it must be a vague and planless +association in comparison with its antagonist, neither so constructive +on the one hand, nor on the other so competent to hinder the inevitable +constructions of the civilised state. Essentially it is the party +of criticism, the “Anti” party. It is a system of hostilities and +objections that somehow achieves at times an elusive common soul. It is +a gathering together of all the smaller interests which find themselves +at a disadvantage against the big established classes, the leasehold +tenant as against the landowner, the retail tradesman as against +the merchant and the moneylender, the Nonconformist as against the +Churchman, the small employer as against the demoralising hospitable +publican, the man without introductions and broad connections against +the man who has these things. It is the party of the many small men +against the fewer prevailing men. It has no more essential reason for +loving the Collectivist state than the Conservatives; the small dealer +is doomed to absorption in that just as much as the large owner; but +it resorts to the state against its antagonists as in the middle ages +common men pitted themselves against the barons by siding with the king. +The Liberal Party is the party against “class privilege” because it +represents no class advantages, but it is also the party that is on +the whole most set against Collective control because it represents +no established responsibility. It is constructive only so far as its +antagonism to the great owner is more powerful than its jealousy of the +state. It organises only because organisation is forced upon it by the +organisation of its adversaries. It lapses in and out of alliance with +Labour as it sways between hostility to wealth and hostility to public +expenditure.... + +Every modern European state will have in some form or other these three +parties: the resistent, militant, authoritative, dull, and unsympathetic +party of establishment and success, the rich party; the confused, +sentimental, spasmodic, numerous party of the small, struggling, +various, undisciplined men, the poor man's party; and a third party +sometimes detaching itself from the second and sometimes reuniting with +it, the party of the altogether expropriated masses, the proletarians, +Labour. Change Conservative and Liberal to Republican and Democrat, for +example, and you have the conditions in the United States. The Crown or +a dethroned dynasty, the Established Church or a dispossessed church, +nationalist secessions, the personalities of party leaders, may break +up, complicate, and confuse the self-expression of these three necessary +divisions in the modern social drama, the analyst will make them out +none the less for that.... + +And then I came back as if I came back to a refrain;--the ideas go +on--as though we are all no more than little cells and corpuscles in +some great brain beyond our understanding.... + +So it was I sat and thought my problem out.... I still remember my +satisfaction at seeing things plainly at last. It was like clouds +dispersing to show the sky. Constructive ideas, of course, couldn't hold +a party together alone, “interests and habits, not ideas,” I had that +now, and so the great constructive scheme of Socialism, invading and +inspiring all parties, was necessarily claimed only by this collection +of odds and ends, this residuum of disconnected and exceptional people. +This was true not only of the Socialist idea, but of the scientific +idea, the idea of veracity--of human confidence in humanity--of all that +mattered in human life outside the life of individuals.... The only real +party that would ever profess Socialism was the Labour Party, and that +in the entirely one-sided form of an irresponsible and non-constructive +attack on property. Socialism in that mutilated form, the teeth and +claws without the eyes and brain, I wanted as little as I wanted +anything in the world. + +Perfectly clear it was, perfectly clear, and why hadn't I seen it +before?... I looked at my watch, and it was half-past two. + +I yawned, stretched, got up and went to bed. + + + +9 + + +My ideas about statecraft have passed through three main phases to the +final convictions that remain. There was the first immediacy of my dream +of ports and harbours and cities, railways, roads, and administered +territories--the vision I had seen in the haze from that little church +above Locarno. Slowly that had passed into a more elaborate legislative +constructiveness, which had led to my uneasy association with the +Baileys and the professedly constructive Young Liberals. To get that +ordered life I had realised the need of organisation, knowledge, +expertness, a wide movement of co-ordinated methods. On the individual +side I thought that a life of urgent industry, temperance, and close +attention was indicated by my perception of these ends. I married +Margaret and set to work. But something in my mind refused from the +outset to accept these determinations as final. There was always a doubt +lurking below, always a faint resentment, a protesting criticism, a +feeling of vitally important omissions. + +I arrived at last at the clear realisation that my political associates, +and I in my association with them, were oddly narrow, priggish, and +unreal, that the Socialists with whom we were attempting co-operation +were preposterously irrelevant to their own theories, that my political +life didn't in some way comprehend more than itself, that rather +perplexingly I was missing the thing I was seeking. Britten's footnotes +to Altiora's self-assertions, her fits of energetic planning, her +quarrels and rallies and vanities, his illuminating attacks on +Cramptonism and the heavy-spirited triviality of such Liberalism as the +Children's Charter, served to point my way to my present conclusions. +I had been trying to deal all along with human progress as something +immediate in life, something to be immediately attacked by political +parties and groups pointing primarily to that end. I now began to +see that just as in my own being there was the rather shallow, rather +vulgar, self-seeking careerist, who wore an admirable silk hat and +bustled self-consciously through the lobby, and a much greater and +indefinitely growing unpublished personality behind him--my hinterland, +I have called it--so in human affairs generally the permanent reality +is also a hinterland, which is never really immediate, which draws +continually upon human experience and influences human action more and +more, but which is itself never the actual player upon the stage. It is +the unseen dramatist who never takes a call. Now it was just through the +fact that our group about the Baileys didn't understand this, that with +a sort of frantic energy they were trying to develop that sham expert +officialdom of theirs to plan, regulate, and direct the affairs of +humanity, that the perplexing note of silliness and shallowness that I +had always felt and felt now most acutely under Britten's gibes, came +in. They were neglecting human life altogether in social organisation. + +In the development of intellectual modesty lies the growth of +statesmanship. It has been the chronic mistake of statecraft and all +organising spirits to attempt immediately to scheme and arrange and +achieve. Priests, schools of thought, political schemers, leaders of +men, have always slipped into the error of assuming that they can think +out the whole--or at any rate completely think out definite parts--of +the purpose and future of man, clearly and finally; they have set +themselves to legislate and construct on that assumption, and, +experiencing the perplexing obduracy and evasions of reality, they have +taken to dogma, persecution, training, pruning, secretive education; and +all the stupidities of self-sufficient energy. In the passion of their +good intentions they have not hesitated to conceal fact, suppress +thought, crush disturbing initiatives and apparently detrimental +desires. And so it is blunderingly and wastefully, destroying with +the making, that any extension of social organisation is at present +achieved. + +Directly, however, this idea of an emancipation from immediacy is +grasped, directly the dominating importance of this critical, less +personal, mental hinterland in the individual and of the collective mind +in the race is understood, the whole problem of the statesman and +his attitude towards politics gain a new significance, and becomes +accessible to a new series of solutions. He wants no longer to “fix +up,” as people say, human affairs, but to devote his forces to the +development of that needed intellectual life without which all his +shallow attempts at fixing up are futile. He ceases to build on the +sands, and sets himself to gather foundations. + +You see, I began in my teens by wanting to plan and build cities and +harbours for mankind; I ended in the middle thirties by desiring only +to serve and increase a general process of thought, a process fearless, +critical, real-spirited, that would in its own time give cities, +harbours, air, happiness, everything at a scale and quality and in +a light altogether beyond the match-striking imaginations of a +contemporary mind. I wanted freedom of speech and suggestion, vigour of +thought, and the cultivation of that impulse of veracity that lurks +more or less discouraged in every man. With that I felt there must go an +emotion. I hit upon a phrase that became at last something of a refrain +in my speech and writings, to convey the spirit that I felt was at the +very heart of real human progress--love and fine thinking. + +(I suppose that nowadays no newspaper in England gets through a week +without the repetition of that phrase.) + +My convictions crystallised more and more definitely upon this. The +more of love and fine thinking the better for men, I said; the less, +the worse. And upon this fresh basis I set myself to examine what I as +a politician might do. I perceived I was at last finding an adequate +expression for all that was in me, for those forces that had rebelled at +the crude presentations of Bromstead, at the secrecies and suppressions +of my youth, at the dull unrealities of City Merchants, at the +conventions and timidities of the Pinky Dinkys, at the philosophical +recluse of Trinity and the phrases and tradition-worship of my political +associates. None of these things were half alive, and I wanted life to +be intensely alive and awake. I wanted thought like an edge of steel and +desire like a flame. The real work before mankind now, I realised once +and for all, is the enlargement of human expression, the release and +intensification of human thought, the vivider utilisation of experience +and the invigoration of research--and whatever one does in human affairs +has or lacks value as it helps or hinders that. + +With that I had got my problem clear, and the solution, so far as I +was concerned, lay in finding out the point in the ostensible life of +politics at which I could most subserve these ends. I was still against +the muddles of Bromstead, but I had hunted them down now to their +essential form. The jerry-built slums, the roads that went nowhere, +the tarred fences, litigious notice-boards and barbed wire fencing, the +litter and the heaps of dump, were only the outward appearances whose +ultimate realities were jerry-built conclusions, hasty purposes, aimless +habits of thought, and imbecile bars and prohibitions in the thoughts +and souls of men. How are we through politics to get at that confusion? + +We want to invigorate and reinvigorate education. We want to create a +sustained counter effort to the perpetual tendency of all educational +organisations towards classicalism, secondary issues, and the evasion of +life. + +We want to stimulate the expression of life through art and literature, +and its exploration through research. + +We want to make the best and finest thought accessible to every one, +and more particularly to create and sustain an enormous free criticism, +without which art, literature, and research alike degenerate into +tradition or imposture. + +Then all the other problems which are now so insoluble, destitution, +disease, the difficulty of maintaining international peace, the scarcely +faced possibility of making life generally and continually beautiful, +become--EASY.... + +It was clear to me that the most vital activities in which I could +engage would be those which most directly affected the Church, public +habits of thought, education, organised research, literature, and the +channels of general discussion. I had to ask myself how my position +as Liberal member for Kinghamstead squared with and conduced to this +essential work. + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ SEEKING ASSOCIATES + + + +1 + + +I have told of my gradual abandonment of the pretensions and habits of +party Liberalism. In a sense I was moving towards aristocracy. Regarding +the development of the social and individual mental hinterland as the +essential thing in human progress, I passed on very naturally to the +practical assumption that we wanted what I may call “hinterlanders.” Of +course I do not mean by aristocracy the changing unorganised medley of +rich people and privileged people who dominate the civilised world of +to-day, but as opposed to this, a possibility of co-ordinating the will +of the finer individuals, by habit and literature, into a broad common +aim. We must have an aristocracy--not of privilege, but of understanding +and purpose--or mankind will fail. I find this dawning more and more +clearly when I look through my various writings of the years between +1903 and 1910. I was already emerging to plain statements in 1908. + +I reasoned after this fashion. The line of human improvement and the +expansion of human life lies in the direction of education and finer +initiatives. If humanity cannot develop an education far beyond anything +that is now provided, if it cannot collectively invent devices and solve +problems on a much richer, broader scale than it does at the present +time, it cannot hope to achieve any very much finer order or any more +general happiness than it now enjoys. We must believe, therefore, that +it CAN develop such a training and education, or we must abandon secular +constructive hope. And here my peculiar difficulty as against crude +democracy comes in. If humanity at large is capable of that high +education and those creative freedoms our hope demands, much more must +its better and more vigorous types be so capable. And if those who have +power and leisure now, and freedom to respond to imaginative appeals, +cannot be won to the idea of collective self-development, then the whole +of humanity cannot be won to that. From that one passes to what +has become my general conception in politics, the conception of the +constructive imagination working upon the vast complex of powerful +people, clever people, enterprising people, influential people, amidst +whom power is diffused to-day, to produce that self-conscious, highly +selective, open-minded, devoted aristocratic culture, which seems to me +to be the necessary next phase in the development of human affairs. +I see human progress, not as the spontaneous product of crowds of raw +minds swayed by elementary needs, but as a natural but elaborate result +of intricate human interdependencies, of human energy and curiosity +liberated and acting at leisure, of human passions and motives, modified +and redirected by literature and art.... + +But now the reader will understand how it came about that, disappointed +by the essential littleness of Liberalism, and disillusioned about the +representative quality of the professed Socialists, I turned my +mind more and more to a scrutiny of the big people, the wealthy and +influential people, against whom Liberalism pits its forces. I was +asking myself definitely whether, after all, it was not my particular +job to work through them and not against them. Was I not altogether out +of my element as an Anti-? Weren't there big bold qualities about these +people that common men lack, and the possibility of far more splendid +dreams? Were they really the obstacles, might they not be rather the +vehicles of the possible new braveries of life? + + + +2 + + +The faults of the Imperialist movement were obvious enough. The +conception of the Boer War had been clumsy and puerile, the costly +errors of that struggle appalling, and the subsequent campaign of Mr. +Chamberlain for Tariff Reform seemed calculated to combine the financial +adventurers of the Empire in one vast conspiracy against the consumer. +The cant of Imperialism was easy to learn and use; it was speedily +adopted by all sorts of base enterprises and turned to all sorts of base +ends. But a big child is permitted big mischief, and my mind was +now continually returning to the persuasion that after all in some +development of the idea of Imperial patriotism might be found that wide, +rough, politically acceptable expression of a constructive dream capable +of sustaining a great educational and philosophical movement such as +no formula of Liberalism supplied. The fact that it readily took vulgar +forms only witnessed to its strong popular appeal. Mixed in with the +noisiness and humbug of the movement there appeared a real regard for +social efficiency, a real spirit of animation and enterprise. There +suddenly appeared in my world--I saw them first, I think, in 1908--a +new sort of little boy, a most agreeable development of the slouching, +cunning, cigarette-smoking, town-bred youngster, a small boy in a khaki +hat, and with bare knees and athletic bearing, earnestly engaged in +wholesome and invigorating games up to and occasionally a little beyond +his strength--the Boy Scout. I liked the Boy Scout, and I find it +difficult to express how much it mattered to me, with my growing bias in +favour of deliberate national training, that Liberalism hadn't been able +to produce, and had indeed never attempted to produce, anything of this +kind. + + + +3 + + +In those days there existed a dining club called--there was some lost +allusion to the exorcism of party feeling in its title--the Pentagram +Circle. It included Bailey and Dayton and myself, Sir Herbert Thorns, +Lord Charles Kindling, Minns the poet, Gerbault the big railway man, +Lord Gane, fresh from the settlement of Framboya, and Rumbold, who later +became Home Secretary and left us. We were men of all parties and very +various experiences, and our object was to discuss the welfare of the +Empire in a disinterested spirit. We dined monthly at the Mermaid in +Westminster, and for a couple of years we kept up an average attendance +of ten out of fourteen. The dinner-time was given up to desultory +conversation, and it is odd how warm and good the social atmosphere of +that little gathering became as time went on; then over the dessert, so +soon as the waiters had swept away the crumbs and ceased to fret us, one +of us would open with perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes' exposition +of some specially prepared question, and after him we would deliver +ourselves in turn, each for three or four minutes. When every one +present had spoken once talk became general again, and it was rare we +emerged upon Hendon Street before midnight. Sometimes, as my house +was conveniently near, a knot of men would come home with me and go on +talking and smoking in my dining-room until two or three. We had Fred +Neal, that wild Irish journalist, among us towards the end, and his +stupendous flow of words materially prolonged our closing discussions +and made our continuance impossible. + +I learned very much and very many things at those dinners, but more +particularly did I become familiarised with the habits of mind of such +men as Neal, Crupp, Gane, and the one or two other New Imperialists +who belonged to us. They were nearly all like Bailey Oxford men, though +mostly of a younger generation, and they were all mysteriously and +inexplicably advocates of Tariff Reform, as if it were the principal +instead of at best a secondary aspect of constructive policy. They +seemed obsessed by the idea that streams of trade could be diverted +violently so as to link the parts of the Empire by common interests, and +they were persuaded, I still think mistakenly, that Tariff Reform would +have an immense popular appeal. They were also very keen on military +organisation, and with a curious little martinet twist in their minds +that boded ill for that side of public liberty. So much against them. +But they were disposed to spend money much more generously on education +and research of all sorts than our formless host of Liberals seemed +likely to do; and they were altogether more accessible than the Young +Liberals to bold, constructive ideas affecting the universities and +upper classes. The Liberals are abjectly afraid of the universities. +I found myself constantly falling into line with these men in our +discussions, and more and more hostile to Dayton's sentimentalising +evasions of definite schemes and Minns' trust in such things as the +“Spirit of our People” and the “General Trend of Progress.” It wasn't +that I thought them very much righter than their opponents; I believe +all definite party “sides” at any time are bound to be about equally +right and equally lop-sided; but that I thought I could get more out +of them and what was more important to me, more out of myself if I +co-operated with them. By 1908 I had already arrived at a point where I +could be definitely considering a transfer of my political allegiance. + +These abstract questions are inseparably interwoven with my memory of a +shining long white table, and our hock bottles and burgundy bottles, and +bottles of Perrier and St. Galmier and the disturbed central trophy of +dessert, and scattered glasses and nut-shells and cigarette-ends and +menu-cards used for memoranda. I see old Dayton sitting back and cocking +his eye to the ceiling in a way he had while he threw warmth into the +ancient platitudes of Liberalism, and Minns leaning forward, and a +little like a cockatoo with a taste for confidences, telling us in a +hushed voice of his faith in the Destiny of Mankind. Thorns lounges, +rolling his round face and round eyes from speaker to speaker and +sounding the visible depths of misery whenever Neal begins. Gerbault +and Gane were given to conversation in undertones, and Bailey pursued +mysterious purposes in lisping whispers. It was Crupp attracted me most. +He had, as people say, his eye on me from the beginning. He used to +speak at me, and drifted into a custom of coming home with me very +regularly for an after-talk. + +He opened his heart to me. + +“Neither of us,” he said, “are dukes, and neither of us are horny-handed +sons of toil. We want to get hold of the handles, and to do that, one +must go where the power is, and give it just as constructive a twist as +we can. That's MY Toryism.” + +“Is it Kindling's--or Gerbault's?” + +“No. But theirs is soft, and mine's hard. Mine will wear theirs out. You +and I and Bailey are all after the same thing, and why aren't we working +together?” + +“Are you a Confederate?” I asked suddenly. + +“That's a secret nobody tells,” he said. + +“What are the Confederates after?” + +“Making aristocracy work, I suppose. Just as, I gather, you want to +do.”... + +The Confederates were being heard of at that time. They were at once +attractive and repellent to me, an odd secret society whose membership +nobody knew, pledged, it was said, to impose Tariff Reform and an ample +constructive policy upon the Conservatives. In the press, at any rate, +they had an air of deliberately organised power. I have no doubt the +rumour of them greatly influenced my ideas.... + +In the end I made some very rapid decisions, but for nearly two years I +was hesitating. Hesitations were inevitable in such a matter. I was +not dealing with any simple question of principle, but with elusive and +fluctuating estimates of the trend of diverse forces and of the nature +of my own powers. All through that period I was asking over and over +again: how far are these Confederates mere dreamers? How far--and this +was more vital--are they rendering lip-service to social organisations? +Is it true they desire war because it confirms the ascendency of their +class? How far can Conservatism be induced to plan and construct before +it resists the thrust towards change. Is it really in bulk anything more +than a mass of prejudice and conceit, cynical indulgence, and a hard +suspicion of and hostility to the expropriated classes in the community? + +That is a research which yields no statistics, an enquiry like asking +what is the ruling colour of a chameleon. The shadowy answer varied +with my health, varied with my mood and the conduct of the people I was +watching. How fine can people be? How generous?--not incidentally, but +all round? How far can you educate sons beyond the outlook of their +fathers, and how far lift a rich, proud, self-indulgent class above the +protests of its business agents and solicitors and its own habits and +vanity? Is chivalry in a class possible?--was it ever, indeed, or will +it ever indeed be possible? Is the progress that seems attainable in +certain directions worth the retrogression that may be its price? + + + +4 + + +It was to the Pentagram Circle that I first broached the new conceptions +that were developing in my mind. I count the evening of my paper the +beginning of the movement that created the BLUE WEEKLY and our wing of +the present New Tory party. I do that without any excessive egotism, +because my essay was no solitary man's production; it was my reaction +to forces that had come to me very large through my fellow-members; its +quick reception by them showed that I was, so to speak, merely the first +of the chestnuts to pop. The atmospheric quality of the evening stands +out very vividly in my memory. The night, I remember, was warmly foggy +when after midnight we went to finish our talk at my house. + +We had recently changed the rules of the club to admit visitors, and +so it happened that I had brought Britten, and Crupp introduced Arnold +Shoesmith, my former schoolfellow at City Merchants, and now the +wealthy successor of his father and elder brother. I remember his heavy, +inexpressively handsome face lighting to his rare smile at the sight of +me, and how little I dreamt of the tragic entanglement that was destined +to involve us both. Gane was present, and Esmeer, a newly-added +member, but I think Bailey was absent. Either he was absent, or he said +something so entirely characteristic and undistinguished that it has +left no impression on my mind. + +I had broken a little from the traditions of the club even in my title, +which was deliberately a challenge to the liberal idea: it was, “The +World Exists for Exceptional People.” It is not the title I should +choose now--for since that time I have got my phrase of “mental +hinterlander” into journalistic use. I should say now, “The World Exists +for Mental Hinterland.” + +The notes I made of that opening have long since vanished with a +thousand other papers, but some odd chance has preserved and brought +with me to Italy the menu for the evening; its back black with the +scrawled notes I made of the discussion for my reply. I found it the +other day among some letters from Margaret and a copy of the 1909 Report +of the Poor Law Commission, also rich with pencilled marginalia. + +My opening was a criticism of the democratic idea and method, upon lines +such as I have already sufficiently indicated in the preceding sections. +I remember how old Dayton fretted in his chair, and tushed and pished +at that, even as I gave it, and afterwards we were treated to one of his +platitudinous harangues, he sitting back in his chair with that small +obstinate eye of his fixed on the ceiling, and a sort of cadaverous glow +upon his face, repeating--quite regardless of all my reasoning and all +that had been said by others in the debate--the sacred empty phrases +that were his soul's refuge from reality. “You may think it very +clever,” he said with a nod of his head to mark his sense of his point, +“not to Trust in the People. I do.” And so on. Nothing in his life or +work had ever shown that he did trust in the people, but that was +beside the mark. He was the party Liberal, and these were the party +incantations. + +After my preliminary attack on vague democracy I went on to show that +all human life was virtually aristocratic; people must either recognise +aristocracy in general or else follow leaders, which is aristocracy in +particular, and so I came to my point that the reality of human progress +lay necessarily through the establishment of freedoms for the human best +and a collective receptivity and understanding. There was a disgusted +grunt from Dayton, “Superman rubbish--Nietzsche. Shaw! Ugh!” I sailed on +over him to my next propositions. The prime essential in a progressive +civilisation was the establishment of a more effective selective process +for the privilege of higher education, and the very highest educational +opportunity for the educable. We were too apt to patronise scholarship +winners, as though a scholarship was toffee given as a reward for +virtue. It wasn't any reward at all; it was an invitation to capacity. +We had no more right to drag in virtue, or any merit but quality, than +we had to involve it in a search for the tallest man. We didn't want a +mere process for the selection of good as distinguished from gifted and +able boys--“No, you DON'T,” from Dayton--we wanted all the brilliant +stuff in the world concentrated upon the development of the world. +Just to exasperate Dayton further I put in a plea for gifts as against +character in educational, artistic, and legislative work. “Good +teaching,” I said, “is better than good conduct. We are becoming idiotic +about character.” + +Dayton was too moved to speak. He slewed round upon me an eye of +agonised aversion. + +I expatiated on the small proportion of the available ability that is +really serving humanity to-day. “I suppose to-day all the thought, all +the art, all the increments of knowledge that matter, are supplied so +far as the English-speaking community is concerned by--how many?--by +three or four thousand individuals. ['Less,' said Thorns.) To be +more precise, by the mental hinterlands of three or four thousand +individuals. We who know some of the band entertain no illusions as to +their innate rarity. We know that they are just the few out of many, the +few who got in our world of chance and confusion, the timely stimulus, +the apt suggestion at the fortunate moment, the needed training, the +leisure. The rest are lost in the crowd, fail through the defects of +their qualities, become commonplace workmen and second-rate professional +men, marry commonplace wives, are as much waste as the driftage of +superfluous pollen in a pine forest is waste.” + +“Decent honest lives!” said Dayton to his bread-crumbs, with his chin in +his necktie. “WASTE!” + +“And the people who do get what we call opportunity get it usually +in extremely limited and cramping forms. No man lives a life of +intellectual productivity alone; he needs not only material and +opportunity, but helpers, resonators. Round and about what I might +call the REAL men, you want the sympathetic cooperators, who help by +understanding. It isn't that our--SALT of three or four thousand is +needlessly rare; it is sustained by far too small and undifferentiated a +public. Most of the good men we know are not really doing the very +best work of their gifts; nearly all are a little adapted, most are +shockingly adapted to some second-best use. Now, I take it, this is the +very centre and origin of the muddle, futility, and unhappiness that +distresses us; it's the cardinal problem of the state--to discover, +develop, and use the exceptional gifts of men. And I see that best +done--I drift more and more away from the common stuff of legislative +and administrative activity--by a quite revolutionary development of the +educational machinery, but by a still more unprecedented attempt to +keep science going, to keep literature going, and to keep what is +the necessary spur of all science and literature, an intelligent and +appreciative criticism going. You know none of these things have ever +been kept going hitherto; they've come unexpectedly and inexplicably.” + +“Hear, hear!” from Dayton, cough, nodding of the head, and an expression +of mystical profundity. + +“They've lit up a civilisation and vanished, to give place to darkness +again. Now the modern state doesn't mean to go back to darkness +again--and so it's got to keep its light burning.” I went on to attack +the present organisation of our schools and universities, which +seemed elaborately designed to turn the well-behaved, uncritical, and +uncreative men of each generation into the authoritative leaders of the +next, and I suggested remedies upon lines that I have already indicated +in the earlier chapters of this story.... + +So far I had the substance of the club with me, but I opened new +ground and set Crupp agog by confessing my doubt from which party or +combination of groups these developments of science and literature and +educational organisation could most reasonably be expected. I looked up +to find Crupp's dark little eye intent upon me. + +There I left it to them. + +We had an astonishingly good discussion; Neal burst once, but we emerged +from his flood after a time, and Dayton had his interlude. The rest was +all close, keen examination of my problem. + +I see Crupp now with his arm bent before him on the table in a way we +had, as though it was jointed throughout its length like a lobster's +antenna, his plump, short-fingered hand crushing up a walnut shell into +smaller and smaller fragments. “Remington,” he said, “has given us the +data for a movement, a really possible movement. It's not only possible, +but necessary--urgently necessary, I think, if the Empire is to go on.” + +“We're working altogether too much at the social basement in education +and training,” said Gane. “Remington is right about our neglect of the +higher levels.” + +Britten made a good contribution with an analysis of what he called the +spirit of a country and what made it. “The modern community needs its +serious men to be artistic and its artists to be taken seriously,” I +remember his saying. “The day has gone by for either dull responsibility +or merely witty art.” + +I remember very vividly how Shoesmith harped on an idea I had thrown out +of using some sort of review or weekly to express and elaborate these +conceptions of a new, severer, aristocratic culture. + +“It would have to be done amazingly well,” said Britten, and my mind +went back to my school days and that ancient enterprise of ours, and how +Cossington had rushed it. Well, Cossington had too many papers nowadays +to interfere with us, and we perhaps had learnt some defensive devices. + +“But this thing has to be linked to some political party,” said Crupp, +with his eye on me. “You can't get away from that. The Liberals,” he +added, “have never done anything for research or literature.” + +“They had a Royal Commission on the Dramatic Censorship,” said Thorns, +with a note of minute fairness. “It shows what they were made of,” he +added. + +“It's what I've told Remington again and again,” said Crupp, “we've +got to pick up the tradition of aristocracy, reorganise it, and make it +work. But he's certainly suggested a method.” + +“There won't be much aristocracy to pick up,” said Dayton, darkly to the +ceiling, “if the House of Lords throws out the Budget.” + +“All the more reason for picking it up,” said Neal. “For we can't do +without it.” + +“Will they go to the bad, or will they rise from the ashes, aristocrats +indeed--if the Liberals come in overwhelmingly?” said Britten. + +“It's we who might decide that,” said Crupp, insidiously. + +“I agree,” said Gane. + +“No one can tell,” said Thorns. “I doubt if they will get beaten.” + +It was an odd, fragmentary discussion that night. We were all with ideas +in our minds at once fine and imperfect. We threw out suggestions that +showed themselves at once far inadequate, and we tried to qualify them +by minor self-contradictions. Britten, I think, got more said than any +one. “You all seem to think you want to organise people, particular +groups and classes of individuals,” he insisted. “It isn't that. That's +the standing error of politicians. You want to organise a culture. +Civilisation isn't a matter of concrete groupings; it's a matter of +prevailing ideas. The problem is how to make bold, clear ideas prevail. +The question for Remington and us is just what groups of people will +most help this culture forward.” + +“Yes, but how are the Lords going to behave?” said Crupp. “You yourself +were asking that a little while ago.” + +“If they win or if they lose,” Gane maintained, “there will be a +movement to reorganise aristocracy--Reform of the House of Lords, +they'll call the political form of it.” + +“Bailey thinks that,” said some one. + +“The labour people want abolition,” said some one. “Let 'em,” said +Thorns. + +He became audible, sketching a possibility of action. + +“Suppose all of us were able to work together. It's just one of those +indeterminate, confused, eventful times ahead when a steady jet of ideas +might produce enormous results.” + +“Leave me out of it,” said Dayton, “IF you please.” + +“We should,” said Thorns under his breath. + +I took up Crupp's initiative, I remember, and expanded it. + +“I believe we could do--extensive things,” I insisted. + +“Revivals and revisions of Toryism have been tried so often,” said +Thorns, “from the Young England movement onward.” + +“Not one but has produced its enduring effects,” I said. “It's the +peculiarity of English conservatism that it's persistently progressive +and rejuvenescent.” + +I think it must have been about that point that Dayton fled our +presence, after some clumsy sentence that I decided upon reflection was +intended to remind me of my duty to my party. + +Then I remember Thorns firing doubts at me obliquely across the table. +“You can't run a country through its spoilt children,” he said. “What +you call aristocrats are really spoilt children. They've had too much of +everything, except bracing experience.” + +“Children can always be educated,” said Crupp. + +“I said SPOILT children,” said Thorns. + +“Look here, Thorns!” said I. “If this Budget row leads to a storm, and +these big people get their power clipped, what's going to happen? Have +you thought of that? When they go out lock, stock, and barrel, who comes +in?” + +“Nature abhors a Vacuum,” said Crupp, supporting me. + +“Bailey's trained officials,” suggested Gane. + +“Quacks with a certificate of approval from Altiora,” said Thorns. “I +admit the horrors of the alternative. There'd be a massacre in three +years.” + +“One may go on trying possibilities for ever,” I said. “One thing +emerges. Whatever accidents happen, our civilisation needs, and almost +consciously needs, a culture of fine creative minds, and all the +necessary tolerances, opennesses, considerations, that march with that. +For my own part, I think that is the Most Vital Thing. Build your ship +of state as you will; get your men as you will; I concentrate on what is +clearly the affair of my sort of man,--I want to ensure the quality of +the quarter deck.” + +“Hear, hear!” said Shoesmith, suddenly--his first remark for a long +time. “A first-rate figure,” said Shoesmith, gripping it. + +“Our danger is in missing that,” I went on. “Muddle isn't ended by +transferring power from the muddle-headed few to the muddle-headed +many, and then cheating the many out of it again in the interests of +a bureaucracy of sham experts. But that seems the limit of the liberal +imagination. There is no real progress in a country, except a rise +in the level of its free intellectual activity. All other progress is +secondary and dependant. If you take on Bailey's dreams of efficient +machinery and a sort of fanatical discipline with no free-moving brains +behind it, confused ugliness becomes rigid ugliness,--that's all. +No doubt things are moving from looseness to discipline, and from +irresponsible controls to organised controls--and also and rather +contrariwise everything is becoming as people say, democratised; but +all the more need in that, for an ark in which the living element may be +saved.” + +“Hear, hear!” said Shoesmith, faint but pursuing. + +It must have been in my house afterwards that Shoesmith became +noticeable. He seemed trying to say something vague and difficult that +he didn't get said at all on that occasion. “We could do immense things +with a weekly,” he repeated, echoing Neal, I think. And there he left +off and became a mute expressiveness, and it was only afterwards, when I +was in bed, that I saw we had our capitalist in our hands.... + +We parted that night on my doorstep in a tremendous glow--but in that +sort of glow one doesn't act upon without much reconsideration, and it +was some months before I made my decision to follow up the indications +of that opening talk. + + + +5 + + +I find my thoughts lingering about the Pentagram Circle. In my +developments it played a large part, not so much by starting new trains +of thought as by confirming the practicability of things I had already +hesitatingly entertained. Discussion with these other men so prominently +involved in current affairs endorsed views that otherwise would have +seemed only a little less remote from actuality than the guardians of +Plato or the labour laws of More. Among other questions that were never +very distant from our discussions, that came apt to every topic, was +the true significance of democracy, Tariff Reform as a method of +international hostility, and the imminence of war. On the first issue +I can still recall little Bailey, glib and winking, explaining that +democracy was really just a dodge for getting assent to the ordinances +of the expert official by means of the polling booth. “If they don't +like things,” said he, “they can vote for the opposition candidate +and see what happens then--and that, you see, is why we don't want +proportional representation to let in the wild men.” I opened my +eyes--the lids had dropped for a moment under the caress of those smooth +sounds--to see if Bailey's artful forefinger wasn't at the side of his +predominant nose. + +The international situation exercised us greatly. Our meetings were +pervaded by the feeling that all things moved towards a day of +reckoning with Germany, and I was largely instrumental in keeping up +the suggestion that India was in a state of unstable equilibrium, that +sooner or later something must happen there--something very serious to +our Empire. Dayton frankly detested these topics. He was full of +that old Middle Victorian persuasion that whatever is inconvenient or +disagreeable to the English mind could be annihilated by not thinking +about it. He used to sit low in his chair and look mulish. “Militarism,” + he would declare in a tone of the utmost moral fervour, “is a curse. +It's an unmitigated curse.” Then he would cough shortly and twitch his +head back and frown, and seem astonished beyond measure that after this +conclusive statement we could still go on talking of war. + +All our Imperialists were obsessed by the thought of international +conflict, and their influence revived for a time those uneasinesses that +had been aroused in me for the first time by my continental journey +with Willersley and by Meredith's “One of Our Conquerors.” That +quite justifiable dread of a punishment for all the slackness, mental +dishonesty, presumption, mercenary respectability and sentimentalised +commercialism of the Victorian period, at the hands of the better +organised, more vigorous, and now far more highly civilised peoples +of Central Europe, seemed to me to have both a good and bad series of +consequences. It seemed the only thing capable of bracing English minds +to education, sustained constructive effort and research; but on the +other hand it produced the quality of a panic, hasty preparation, +impatience of thought, a wasteful and sometimes quite futile immediacy. +In 1909, for example, there was a vast clamour for eight additional +Dreadnoughts-- + + “We want eight + And we won't wait,” + +but no clamour at all about our national waste of inventive talent, our +mean standard of intellectual attainment, our disingenuous criticism, +and the consequent failure to distinguish men of the quality needed to +carry on the modern type of war. Almost universally we have the wrong +men in our places of responsibility and the right men in no place +at all, almost universally we have poorly qualified, hesitating, and +resentful subordinates, because our criticism is worthless and, so +habitually as to be now almost unconsciously, dishonest. Germany is +beating England in every matter upon which competition is possible, +because she attended sedulously to her collective mind for sixty +pregnant years, because in spite of tremendous defects she is still far +more anxious for quality in achievement than we are. I remember saying +that in my paper. From that, I remember, I went on to an image that had +flashed into my mind. “The British Empire,” I said, “is like some of +those early vertebrated monsters, the Brontosaurus and the Atlantosaurus +and such-like; it sacrifices intellect to character; its backbone, +that is to say,--especially in the visceral region--is bigger than its +cranium. It's no accident that things are so. We've worked for backbone. +We brag about backbone, and if the joints are anchylosed so much the +better. We're still but only half awake to our error. You can't change +that suddenly.” + +“Turn it round and make it go backwards,” interjected Thorns. + +“It's trying to do that,” I said, “in places.” + +And afterwards Crupp declared I had begotten a nightmare which haunted +him of nights; he was trying desperately and belatedly to blow a brain +as one blows soap-bubbles on such a mezoroic saurian as I had conjured +up, while the clumsy monster's fate, all teeth and brains, crept nearer +and nearer.... + +I've grown, I think, since those days out of the urgency of that +apprehension. I still think a European war, and conceivably a very +humiliating war for England, may occur at no very distant date, but I +do not think there is any such heroic quality in our governing class +as will make that war catastrophic. The prevailing spirit in English +life--it is one of the essential secrets of our imperial endurance--is +one of underbred aggression in prosperity and diplomatic compromise in +moments of danger; we bully haughtily where we can and assimilate where +we must. It is not for nothing that our upper and middle-class youth is +educated by teachers of the highest character, scholars and gentlemen, +men who can pretend quite honestly that Darwinism hasn't upset the +historical fall of man, that cricket is moral training, and that +Socialism is an outrage upon the teachings of Christ. A sort of +dignified dexterity of evasion is the national reward. Germany, with a +larger population, a vigorous and irreconcilable proletariat, a bolder +intellectual training, a harsher spirit, can scarcely fail to drive us +at last to a realisation of intolerable strain. So we may never fight at +all. The war of preparations that has been going on for thirty years may +end like a sham-fight at last in an umpire's decision. We shall proudly +but very firmly take the second place. For my own part, since I love +England as much as I detest her present lethargy of soul, I pray for a +chastening war--I wouldn't mind her flag in the dirt if only her spirit +would come out of it. So I was able to shake off that earlier fear of +some final and irrevocable destruction truncating all my schemes. At the +most, a European war would be a dramatic episode in the reconstruction I +had in view. + +In India, too, I no longer foresee, as once I was inclined to +see, disaster. The English rule in India is surely one of the most +extraordinary accidents that has ever happened in history. We are there +like a man who has fallen off a ladder on to the neck of an elephant, +and doesn't know what to do or how to get down. Until something happens +he remains. Our functions in India are absurd. We English do not own +that country, do not even rule it. We make nothing happen; at the most +we prevent things happening. We suppress our own literature there. Most +English people cannot even go to this land they possess; the authorities +would prevent it. If Messrs. Perowne or Cook organised a cheap tour +of Manchester operatives, it would be stopped. No one dare bring the +average English voter face to face with the reality of India, or let +the Indian native have a glimpse of the English voter. In my time I +have talked to English statesmen, Indian officials and ex-officials, +viceroys, soldiers, every one who might be supposed to know what India +signifies, and I have prayed them to tell me what they thought we were +up to there. I am not writing without my book in these matters. And +beyond a phrase or so about “even-handed justice”--and look at our +sedition trials!--they told me nothing. Time after time I have heard +of that apocryphal native ruler in the north-west, who, when asked what +would happen if we left India, replied that in a week his men would be +in the saddle, and in six months not a rupee nor a virgin would be left +in Lower Bengal. That is always given as our conclusive justification. +But is it our business to preserve the rupees and virgins of Lower +Bengal in a sort of magic inconclusiveness? Better plunder than +paralysis, better fire and sword than futility. Our flag is spread over +the peninsula, without plans, without intentions--a vast preventive. +The sum total of our policy is to arrest any discussion, any conferences +that would enable the Indians to work out a tolerable scheme of the +future for themselves. But that does not arrest the resentment of men +held back from life. Consider what it must be for the educated Indian +sitting at the feast of contemporary possibilities with his mouth gagged +and his hands bound behind him! The spirit of insurrection breaks out +in spite of espionage and seizures. Our conflict for inaction develops +stupendous absurdities. The other day the British Empire was taking off +and examining printed cotton stomach wraps for seditious emblems and +inscriptions.... + +In some manner we shall have to come out of India. We have had our +chance, and we have demonstrated nothing but the appalling dulness of +our national imagination. We are not good enough to do anything with +India. Codger and Flack, and Gates and Dayton, Cladingbowl in the club, +and the HOME CHURCHMAN in the home, cant about “character,” worship +of strenuous force and contempt of truth; for the sake of such men and +things as these, we must abandon in fact, if not in appearance, that +empty domination. Had we great schools and a powerful teaching, could we +boast great men, had we the spirit of truth and creation in our lives, +then indeed it might be different. But a race that bears a sceptre must +carry gifts to justify it. + +It does not follow that we shall be driven catastrophically from India. +That was my earlier mistake. We are not proud enough in our bones to be +ruined by India as Spain was by her empire. We may be able to abandon +India with an air of still remaining there. It is our new method. We +train our future rulers in the public schools to have a very wholesome +respect for strength, and as soon as a power arises in India in spite of +us, be it a man or a culture, or a native state, we shall be willing to +deal with it. We may or may not have a war, but our governing class will +be quick to learn when we are beaten. Then they will repeat our South +African diplomacy, and arrange for some settlement that will abandon +the reality, such as it is, and preserve the semblance of power. The +conqueror DE FACTO will become the new “loyal Briton,” and the democracy +at home will be invited to celebrate our recession--triumphantly. I am +no believer in the imminent dissolution of our Empire; I am less and +less inclined to see in either India or Germany the probability of an +abrupt truncation of those slow intellectual and moral constructions +which are the essentials of statecraft. + + + +6 + + +I sit writing in this little loggia to the sound of dripping water--this +morning we had rain, and the roof of our little casa is still not dry, +there are pools in the rocks under the sweet chestnuts, and the torrent +that crosses the salita is full and boastful,--and I try to recall the +order of my impressions during that watching, dubious time, before I +went over to the Conservative Party. I was trying--chaotic task--to +gauge the possibilities inherent in the quality of the British +aristocracy. There comes a broad spectacular effect of wide parks, +diversified by woods and bracken valleys, and dappled with deer; of +great smooth lawns shaded by ancient trees; of big facades of sunlit +buildings dominating the country side; of large fine rooms full of +handsome, easy-mannered people. As a sort of representative picture to +set off against those other pictures of Liberals and of Socialists I +have given, I recall one of those huge assemblies the Duchess of Clynes +inaugurated at Stamford House. The place itself is one of the vastest +private houses in London, a huge clustering mass of white and gold +saloons with polished floors and wonderful pictures, and staircases and +galleries on a Gargantuan scale. And there she sought to gather all +that was most representative of English activities, and did, in fact, in +those brilliant nocturnal crowds, get samples of nearly every section +of our social and intellectual life, with a marked predominance upon the +political and social side. + +I remember sitting in one of the recesses at the end of the big saloon +with Mrs. Redmondson, one of those sharp-minded, beautiful rich women +one meets so often in London, who seem to have done nothing and to be +capable of everything, and we watched the crowd--uniforms and splendours +were streaming in from a State ball--and exchanged information. I told +her about the politicians and intellectuals, and she told me about the +aristocrats, and we sharpened our wit on them and counted the percentage +of beautiful people among the latter, and wondered if the general effect +of tallness was or was not an illusion. + +They were, we agreed, for the most part bigger than the average of +people in London, and a handsome lot, even when they were not subtly +individualised. “They look so well nurtured,” I said, “well cared for. +I like their quiet, well-trained movements, their pleasant consideration +for each other.” + +“Kindly, good tempered, and at bottom utterly selfish,” she said, “like +big, rather carefully trained, rather pampered children. What else can +you expect from them?” + +“They are good tempered, anyhow,” I witnessed, “and that's an +achievement. I don't think I could ever be content under a bad-tempered, +sentimentalism, strenuous Government. That's why I couldn't stand the +Roosevelt REGIME in America. One's chief surprise when one comes across +these big people for the first time is their admirable easiness and +a real personal modesty. I confess I admire them. Oh! I like them. +I wouldn't at all mind, I believe, giving over the country to this +aristocracy--given SOMETHING--” + +“Which they haven't got.” + +“Which they haven't got--or they'd be the finest sort of people in the +world.” + +“That something?” she inquired. + +“I don't know. I've been puzzling my wits to know. They've done all +sorts of things--” + +“That's Lord Wrassleton,” she interrupted, “whose leg was broken--you +remember?--at Spion Kop.” + +“It's healed very well. I like the gold lace and the white glove +resting, with quite a nice awkwardness, on the sword. When I was a +little boy I wanted to wear clothes like that. And the stars! He's got +the V. C. Most of these people here have at any rate shown pluck, you +know--brought something off.” + +“Not quite enough,” she suggested. + +“I think that's it,” I said. “Not quite enough--not quite hard enough,” + I added. + +She laughed and looked at me. “You'd like to make us,” she said. + +“What?” + +“Hard.” + +“I don't think you'll go on if you don't get hard.” + +“We shan't be so pleasant if we do.” + +“Well, there my puzzled wits come in again. I don't see why an +aristocracy shouldn't be rather hard trained, and yet kindly. I'm not +convinced that the resources of education are exhausted. I want to +better this, because it already looks so good.” + +“How are we to do it?” asked Mrs. Redmondson. + +“Oh, there you have me! I've been spending my time lately in trying to +answer that! It makes me quarrel with”--I held up my fingers and ticked +the items off--“the public schools, the private tutors, the army exams, +the Universities, the Church, the general attitude of the country +towards science and literature--” + +“We all do,” said Mrs. Redmondson. “We can't begin again at the +beginning,” she added. + +“Couldn't one,” I nodded at the assembly in general, start a movement? + +“There's the Confederates,” she said, with a faint smile that masked a +gleam of curiosity.... “You want,” she said, “to say to the aristocracy, +'Be aristocrats. NOBLESSE OBLIGE.' Do you remember what happened to the +monarch who was told to 'Be a King'?” + +“Well,” I said, “I want an aristocracy.” + +“This,” she said, smiling, “is the pick of them. The backwoodsmen are +off the stage. These are the brilliant ones--the smart and the blues.... +They cost a lot of money, you know.” + +So far Mrs. Redmondson, but the picture remained full of things not +stated in our speech. They were on the whole handsome people, charitable +minded, happy, and easy. They led spacious lives, and there was +something free and fearless about their bearing that I liked extremely. +The women particularly were wide-reading, fine-thinking. Mrs. Redmondson +talked as fully and widely and boldly as a man, and with those flashes +of intuition, those startling, sudden delicacies of perception few men +display. I liked, too, the relations that held between women and men, +their general tolerance, their antagonism to the harsh jealousies that +are the essence of the middle-class order.... + +After all, if one's aim resolved itself into the development of a type +and culture of men, why shouldn't one begin at this end? + +It is very easy indeed to generalise about a class of human beings, but +much harder to produce a sample. Was old Lady Forthundred, for instance, +fairly a sample? I remember her as a smiling, magnificent presence, a +towering accumulation of figure and wonderful shimmering blue silk and +black lace and black hair, and small fine features and chins and chins +and chins, disposed in a big cane chair with wraps and cushions upon the +great terrace of Champneys. Her eye was blue and hard, and her accent +and intonation were exactly what you would expect from a rather +commonplace dressmaker pretending to be aristocratic. I was, I am +afraid, posing a little as the intelligent but respectful inquirer from +below investigating the great world, and she was certainly posing as my +informant. She affected a cynical coarseness. She developed a theory on +the governance of England, beautifully frank and simple. “Give 'um all +a peerage when they get twenty thousand a year,” she maintained. “That's +my remedy.” + +In my new role of theoretical aristocrat I felt a little abashed. + +“Twenty thousand,” she repeated with conviction. + +It occurred to me that I was in the presence of the aristocratic +theory currently working as distinguished from my as yet unformulated +intentions. + +“You'll get a lot of loafers and scamps among 'um,” said Lady +Forthundred. “You get loafers and scamps everywhere, but you'll get a +lot of men who'll work hard to keep things together, and that's what +we're all after, isn't ut? + +“It's not an ideal arrangement.” + +“Tell me anything better,” said Lady Forthundred. + +On the whole, and because she refused emphatically to believe in +education, Lady Forthundred scored. + +We had been discussing Cossington's recent peerage, for Cossington, my +old schoolfellow at City Merchants', and my victor in the affair of +the magazine, had clambered to an amazing wealth up a piled heap of +energetically pushed penny and halfpenny magazines, and a group of +daily newspapers. I had expected to find the great lady hostile to the +new-comer, but she accepted him, she gloried in him. + +“We're a peerage,” she said, “but none of us have ever had any nonsense +about nobility.” + +She turned and smiled down on me. “We English,” she said, “are a +practical people. We assimilate 'um.” + +“Then, I suppose, they don't give trouble?” + +“Then they don't give trouble.” + +“They learn to shoot?” + +“And all that,” said Lady Forthundred. “Yes. And things go on. Sometimes +better than others, but they go on--somehow. It depends very much on the +sort of butler who pokes 'um about.” + +I suggested that it might be possible to get a secure twenty thousand a +year by at least detrimental methods--socially speaking. + +“We must take the bad and the good of 'um,” said Lady Forthundred, +courageously.... + +Now, was she a sample? It happened she talked. What was there in the +brains of the multitude of her first, second, third, fourth, and fifth +cousins, who didn't talk, who shone tall, and bearing themselves finely, +against a background of deft, attentive maids and valets, on every +spacious social scene? How did things look to them? + + + +7 + + +Side by side with Lady Forthundred, it is curious to put Evesham with +his tall, bent body, his little-featured almost elvish face, his unequal +mild brown eyes, his gentle manner, his sweet, amazing oratory. He led +all these people wonderfully. He was always curious and interested about +life, wary beneath a pleasing frankness--and I tormented my brain to get +to the bottom of him. For a long time he was the most powerful man in +England under the throne; he had the Lords in his hand, and a great +majority in the Commons, and the discontents and intrigues that are the +concomitants of an overwhelming party advantage broke against him as +waves break against a cliff. He foresaw so far in these matters that it +seemed he scarcely troubled to foresee. He brought political art to +the last triumph of naturalness. Always for me he has been the typical +aristocrat, so typical and above the mere forms of aristocracy, that he +remained a commoner to the end of his days. + +I had met him at the beginning of my career; he read some early papers +of mine, and asked to see me, and I conceived a flattered liking for him +that strengthened to a very strong feeling indeed. He seemed to me to +stand alone without an equal, the greatest man in British political +life. Some men one sees through and understands, some one cannot see +into or round because they are of opaque clay, but about Evesham I had a +sense of things hidden as it were by depth and mists, because he was so +big and atmospheric a personality. No other contemporary has had that +effect upon me. I've sat beside him at dinners, stayed in houses with +him--he was in the big house party at Champneys--talked to him, +sounded him, watching him as I sat beside him. I could talk to him with +extraordinary freedom and a rare sense of being understood. Other men +have to be treated in a special manner; approached through their own +mental dialect, flattered by a minute regard for what they have said and +done. Evesham was as widely and charitably receptive as any man I have +ever met. The common politicians beside him seemed like rows of stuffy +little rooms looking out upon the sea. + +And what was he up to? What did HE think we were doing with Mankind? +That I thought worth knowing. + +I remember his talking on one occasion at the Hartsteins', at a dinner +so tremendously floriferous and equipped that we were almost forced into +duologues, about the possible common constructive purpose in politics. + +“I feel so much,” he said, “that the best people in every party +converge. We don't differ at Westminster as they do in the country +towns. There's a sort of extending common policy that goes on under +every government, because on the whole it's the right thing to do, and +people know it. Things that used to be matters of opinion become matters +of science--and cease to be party questions.” + +He instanced education. + +“Apart,” said I, “from the religious question.” + +“Apart from the religious question.” + +He dropped that aspect with an easy grace, and went on with his general +theme that political conflict was the outcome of uncertainty. “Directly +you get a thing established, so that people can say, 'Now this is +Right,' with the same conviction that people can say water is a +combination of oxygen and hydrogen, there's no more to be said. The +thing has to be done....” + +And to put against this effect of Evesham, broad and humanely tolerant, +posing as the minister of a steadily developing constructive conviction, +there are other memories. + +Have I not seen him in the House, persistent, persuasive, indefatigable, +and by all my standards wickedly perverse, leaning over the table with +those insistent movements of his hand upon it, or swaying forward with +a grip upon his coat lapel, fighting with a diabolical skill to preserve +what are in effect religious tests, tests he must have known would +outrage and humiliate and injure the consciences of a quarter--and that +perhaps the best quarter--of the youngsters who come to the work of +elementary education? + +In playing for points in the game of party advantage Evesham displayed +at times a quite wicked unscrupulousness in the use of his subtle mind. +I would sit on the Liberal benches and watch him, and listen to his +urbane voice, fascinated by him. Did he really care? Did anything matter +to him? And if it really mattered nothing, why did he trouble to serve +the narrowness and passion of his side? Or did he see far beyond my +scope, so that this petty iniquity was justified by greater, remoter +ends of which I had no intimation? + +They accused him of nepotism. His friends and family were certainly well +cared for. In private life he was full of an affectionate intimacy; he +pleased by being charmed and pleased. One might think at times there was +no more of him than a clever man happily circumstanced, and finding an +interest and occupation in politics. And then came a glimpse of thought, +of imagination, like the sight of a soaring eagle through a staircase +skylight. Oh, beyond question he was great! No other contemporary +politician had his quality. In no man have I perceived so +sympathetically the great contrast between warm, personal things and the +white dream of statecraft. Except that he had it seemed no hot passions, +but only interests and fine affections and indolences, he paralleled the +conflict of my life. He saw and thought widely and deeply; but at times +it seemed to me his greatness stood over and behind the reality of his +life, like some splendid servant, thinking his own thoughts, who waits +behind a lesser master's chair.... + + + +8 + + +Of course, when Evesham talked of this ideal of the organised state +becoming so finely true to practicability and so clearly stated as to +have the compelling conviction of physical science, he spoke quite after +my heart. Had he really embodied the attempt to realise that, I could +have done no more than follow him blindly. But neither he nor I embodied +that, and there lies the gist of my story. And when it came to a study +of others among the leading Tories and Imperialists the doubt increased, +until with some at last it was possible to question whether they had any +imaginative conception of constructive statecraft at all; whether they +didn't opaquely accept the world for what it was, and set themselves +single-mindedly to make a place for themselves and cut a figure in it. + +There were some very fine personalities among them: there were the great +peers who had administered Egypt, India, South Africa, Framboya--Cromer, +Kitchener, Curzon, Milner, Gane, for example. So far as that easier +task of holding sword and scales had gone, they had shown the finest +qualities, but they had returned to the perplexing and exacting problem +of the home country, a little glorious, a little too simply bold. They +wanted to arm and they wanted to educate, but the habit of immediate +necessity made them far more eager to arm than to educate, and their +experience of heterogeneous controls made them overrate the need for +obedience in a homogeneous country. They didn't understand raw men, +ill-trained men, uncertain minds, and intelligent women; and these are +the things that matter in England.... There were also the great business +adventurers, from Cranber to Cossington (who was now Lord Paddockhurst). +My mind remained unsettled, and went up and down the scale between +a belief in their far-sighted purpose and the perception of crude +vanities, coarse ambitions, vulgar competitiveness, and a mere habitual +persistence in the pursuit of gain. For a time I saw a good deal of +Cossington--I wish I had kept a diary of his talk and gestures, to mark +how he could vary from day to day between a POSEUR, a smart tradesman, +and a very bold and wide-thinking political schemer. He had a vanity +of sweeping actions, motor car pounces, Napoleonic rushes, that led to +violent ineffectual changes in the policy of his papers, and a haunting +pursuit by parallel columns in the liberal press that never abashed him +in the slightest degree. By an accident I plumbed the folly in him--but +I feel I never plumbed his wisdom. I remember him one day after a lunch +at the Barhams' saying suddenly, out of profound meditation over the end +of a cigar, one of those sentences that seem to light the whole interior +being of a man. “Some day,” he said softly, rather to himself than to +me, and A PROPOS of nothing--“some day I will raise the country.” + +“Why not?” I said, after a pause, and leant across him for the little +silver spirit-lamp, to light my cigarette.... + +Then the Tories had for another section the ancient creations, and again +there were the financial peers, men accustomed to reserve, and their big +lawyers, accustomed to--well, qualified statement. And below the giant +personalities of the party were the young bloods, young, adventurous men +of the type of Lord Tarvrille, who had seen service in South Africa, +who had travelled and hunted; explorers, keen motorists, interested +in aviation, active in army organisation. Good, brown-faced stuff they +were, but impervious to ideas outside the range of their activities, +more ignorant of science than their chauffeurs, and of the quality +of English people than welt-politicians; contemptuous of school and +university by reason of the Gateses and Flacks and Codgers who had come +their way, witty, light-hearted, patriotic at the Kipling level, with +a certain aptitude for bullying. They varied in insensible gradations +between the noble sportsmen on the one hand, and men like Gane and the +Tories of our Pentagram club on the other. You perceive how a man +might exercise his mind in the attempt to strike an average of public +serviceability in this miscellany! And mixed up with these, mixed up +sometimes in the same man, was the pure reactionary, whose predominant +idea was that the village schools should confine themselves to teaching +the catechism, hat-touching and courtesying, and be given a holiday +whenever beaters were in request.... + +I find now in my mind as a sort of counterpoise to Evesham the figure +of old Lord Wardingham, asleep in the largest armchair in the library +of Stamford Court after lunch. One foot rested on one of those things--I +think they are called gout stools. He had been playing golf all the +morning and wearied a weak instep; at lunch he had sat at my table and +talked in the overbearing manner permitted to irascible important men +whose insteps are painful. Among other things he had flouted the idea +that women would ever understand statecraft or be more than a nuisance +in politics, denied flatly that Hindoos were capable of anything +whatever except excesses in population, regretted he could not +censor picture galleries and circulating libraries, and declared that +dissenters were people who pretended to take theology seriously with the +express purpose of upsetting the entirely satisfactory compromise of the +Established Church. “No sensible people, with anything to gain or lose, +argue about religion,” he said. “They mean mischief.” Having delivered +his soul upon these points, and silenced the little conversation to the +left of him from which they had arisen, he became, after an appreciative +encounter with a sanguinary woodcock, more amiable, responded to some +respectful initiatives of Crupp's, and related a number of classical +anecdotes of those blighting snubs, vindictive retorts and scandalous +miscarriages of justice that are so dear to the forensic mind. Now he +reposed. He was breathing heavily with his mouth a little open and his +head on one side. One whisker was turned back against the comfortable +padding. His plump strong hands gripped the arms of his chair, and his +frown was a little assuaged. How tremendously fed up he looked! Honours, +wealth, influence, respect, he had them all. How scornful and hard it +had made his unguarded expression! + +I note without comment that it didn't even occur to me then to wake him +up and ask him what HE was up to with mankind. + + + +9 + + +One countervailing influence to my drift to Toryism in those days was +Margaret's quite religious faith in the Liberals. I realised that slowly +and with a mild astonishment. It set me, indeed, even then questioning +my own change of opinion. We came at last incidentally, as our way was, +to an exchange of views. It was as nearly a quarrel as we had before +I came over to the Conservative side. It was at Champneys, and I think +during the same visit that witnessed my exploration of Lady Forthundred. +It arose indirectly, I think, out of some comments of mine upon our +fellow-guests, but it is one of those memories of which the scene and +quality remain more vivid than the things said, a memory without any +very definite beginning or end. It was afternoon, in the pause between +tea and the dressing bell, and we were in Margaret's big silver-adorned, +chintz-bright room, looking out on the trim Italian garden.... Yes, the +beginning of it has escaped me altogether, but I remember it as an odd +exceptional little wrangle. + +At first we seem to have split upon the moral quality of the +aristocracy, and I had an odd sense that in some way too feminine for +me to understand our hostess had aggrieved her. She said, I know, that +Champneys distressed her; made her “eager for work and reality again.” + +“But aren't these people real?” + +“They're so superficial, so extravagant!” + +I said I was not shocked by their unreality. They seemed the least +affected people I had ever met. “And are they really so extravagant?” + I asked, and put it to her that her dresses cost quite as much as any +other woman's in the house. + +“It's not only their dresses,” Margaret parried. “It's the scale and +spirit of things.” + +I questioned that. “They're cynical,” said Margaret, staring before her +out of the window. + +I challenged her, and she quoted the Brabants, about whom there had +been an ancient scandal. She'd heard of it from Altiora, and it was also +Altiora who'd given her a horror of Lord Carnaby, who was also with us. +“You know his reputation,” said Margaret. “That Normandy girl. Every +one knows about it. I shiver when I look at him. He seems--oh! like +something not of OUR civilisation. He WILL come and say little things to +me.” + +“Offensive things?” + +“No, politenesses and things. Of course his manners are--quite right. +That only makes it worse, I think. It shows he might have helped--all +that happened. I do all I can to make him see I don't like him. But none +of the others make the slightest objection to him.” + +“Perhaps these people imagine something might be said for him.” + +“That's just it,” said Margaret. + +“Charity,” I suggested. + +“I don't like that sort of toleration.” + +I was oddly annoyed. “Like eating with publicans and sinners,” I said. +“No!...” + +But scandals, and the contempt for rigid standards their condonation +displayed, weren't more than the sharp edge of the trouble. “It's their +whole position, their selfish predominance, their class conspiracy +against the mass of people,” said Margaret. “When I sit at dinner +in that splendid room, with its glitter and white reflections and +candlelight, and its flowers and its wonderful service and its +candelabra of solid gold, I seem to feel the slums and the mines and the +over-crowded cottages stuffed away under the table.” + +I reminded Margaret that she was not altogether innocent of unearned +increment. + +“But aren't we doing our best to give it back?” she said. + +I was moved to question her. “Do you really think,” I asked, “that the +Tories and peers and rich people are to blame for social injustice as we +have it to-day? Do you really see politics as a struggle of light on the +Liberal side against darkness on the Tory?” + +“They MUST know,” said Margaret. + +I found myself questioning that. I see now that to Margaret it must have +seemed the perversest carping against manifest things, but at the time +I was concentrated simply upon the elucidation of her view and my own; I +wanted to get at her conception in the sharpest, hardest lines that were +possible. It was perfectly clear that she saw Toryism as the diabolical +element in affairs. The thing showed in its hopeless untruth all the +clearer for the fine, clean emotion with which she gave it out to me. +My sleeping peer in the library at Stamford Court and Evesham talking +luminously behind the Hartstein flowers embodied the devil, and my +replete citizen sucking at his cigar in the National Liberal Club, +Willie Crampton discussing the care and management of the stomach over +a specially hygienic lemonade, and Dr. Tumpany in his aggressive +frock-coat pegging out a sort of copyright in Socialism, were the centre +and wings of the angelic side. It was nonsense. But how was I to put the +truth to her? + +“I don't see things at all as you do,” I said. “I don't see things in +the same way.” + +“Think of the poor,” said Margaret, going off at a tangent. + +“Think of every one,” I said. “We Liberals have done more mischief +through well-intentioned benevolence than all the selfishness in the +world could have done. We built up the liquor interest.” + +“WE!” cried Margaret. “How can you say that? It's against us.” + +“Naturally. But we made it a monopoly in our clumsy efforts to prevent +people drinking what they liked, because it interfered with industrial +regularity--” + +“Oh!” cried Margaret, stung; and I could see she thought I was talking +mere wickedness. + +“That's it,” I said. + +“But would you have people drink whatever they pleased?” + +“Certainly. What right have I to dictate to other men and women?” + +“But think of the children!” + +“Ah! there you have the folly of modern Liberalism, its half-cunning, +half-silly way of getting at everything in a roundabout fashion. If +neglecting children is an offence, and it IS an offence, then deal +with it as such, but don't go badgering and restricting people who sell +something that may possibly in some cases lead to a neglect of children. +If drunkenness is an offence, punish it, but don't punish a man for +selling honest drink that perhaps after all won't make any one drunk at +all. Don't intensify the viciousness of the public-house by assuming the +place isn't fit for women and children. That's either spite or folly. +Make the public-house FIT for women and children. Make it a real +public-house. If we Liberals go on as we are going, we shall presently +want to stop the sale of ink and paper because those things tempt men +to forgery. We do already threaten the privacy of the post because of +betting tout's letters. The drift of all that kind of thing is narrow, +unimaginative, mischievous, stupid....” + +I stopped short and walked to the window and surveyed a pretty fountain, +facsimile of one in Verona, amidst trim-cut borderings of yew. Beyond, +and seen between the stems of ilex trees, was a great blaze of yellow +flowers.... + +“But prevention,” I heard Margaret behind me, “is the essence of our +work.” + +I turned. “There's no prevention but education. There's no antiseptics +in life but love and fine thinking. Make people fine, make fine people. +Don't be afraid. These Tory leaders are better people individually +than the average; why cast them for the villains of the piece? The +real villain in the piece--in the whole human drama--is the +muddle-headedness, and it matters very little if it's virtuous-minded or +wicked. I want to get at muddle-headedness. If I could do that I could +let all that you call wickedness in the world run about and do what +it jolly well pleased. It would matter about as much as a slightly +neglected dog--in an otherwise well-managed home.” + +My thoughts had run away with me. + +“I can't understand you,” said Margaret, in the profoundest distress. “I +can't understand how it is you are coming to see things like this.” + + + +10 + + +The moods of a thinking man in politics are curiously evasive and +difficult to describe. Neither the public nor the historian will permit +the statesman moods. He has from the first to assume he has an Aim, a +definite Aim, and to pretend to an absolute consistency with that. Those +subtle questionings about the very fundamentals of life which plague us +all so relentlessly nowadays are supposed to be silenced. He lifts his +chin and pursues his Aim explicitly in the sight of all men. Those +who have no real political experience can scarcely imagine the immense +mental and moral strain there is between one's everyday acts and +utterances on the one hand and the “thinking-out” process on the other. +It is perplexingly difficult to keep in your mind, fixed and firm, a +scheme essentially complex, to keep balancing a swaying possibility +while at the same time under jealous, hostile, and stupid observation +you tread your part in the platitudinous, quarrelsome, ill-presented +march of affairs.... + +The most impossible of all autobiographies is an intellectual +autobiography. I have thrown together in the crudest way the elements +of the problem I struggled with, but I can give no record of the subtle +details; I can tell nothing of the long vacillations between Protean +values, the talks and re-talks, the meditations, the bleak lucidities of +sleepless nights.... + +And yet these things I have struggled with must be thought out, and, to +begin with, they must be thought out in this muddled, experimenting way. +To go into a study to think about statecraft is to turn your back on the +realities you are constantly needing to feel and test and sound if your +thinking is to remain vital; to choose an aim and pursue it in despite +of all subsequent questionings is to bury the talent of your mind. It +is no use dealing with the intricate as though it were simple, to leap +haphazard at the first course of action that presents itself; the whole +world of politicians is far too like a man who snatches a poker to a +failing watch. It is easy to say he wants to “get something done,” but +the only sane thing to do for the moment is to put aside that poker and +take thought and get a better implement.... + +One of the results of these fundamental preoccupations of mine was a +curious irritability towards Margaret that I found difficult to conceal. +It was one of the incidental cruelties of our position that this should +happen. I was in such doubt myself, that I had no power to phrase +things for her in a form she could use. Hitherto I had stage-managed our +“serious” conversations. Now I was too much in earnest and too uncertain +to go on doing this. I avoided talk with her. Her serene, sustained +confidence in vague formulae and sentimental aspirations exasperated me; +her want of sympathetic apprehension made my few efforts to indicate my +changing attitudes distressing and futile. It wasn't that I was always +thinking right, and that she was always saying wrong. It was that I was +struggling to get hold of a difficult thing that was, at any rate, half +true, I could not gauge how true, and that Margaret's habitual phrasing +ignored these elusive elements of truth, and without premeditation +fitted into the weaknesses of my new intimations, as though they had +nothing but weaknesses. It was, for example, obvious that these big +people, who were the backbone of Imperialism and Conservatism, were +temperamentally lax, much more indolent, much more sensuous, than our +deliberately virtuous Young Liberals. I didn't want to be reminded of +that, just when I was in full effort to realise the finer elements in +their composition. Margaret classed them and disposed of them. It was +our incurable differences in habits and gestures of thought coming +between us again. + +The desert of misunderstanding widened. I was forced back upon myself +and my own secret councils. For a time I went my way alone; an unmixed +evil for both of us. Except for that Pentagram evening, a series of +talks with Isabel Rivers, who was now becoming more and more important +in my intellectual life, and the arguments I maintained with Crupp, I +never really opened my mind at all during that period of indecisions, +slow abandonments, and slow acquisitions. + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ SECESSION + + + +1 + + +At last, out of a vast accumulation of impressions, decision distilled +quite suddenly. I succumbed to Evesham and that dream of the right +thing triumphant through expression. I determined I would go over to +the Conservatives, and use my every gift and power on the side of such +forces on that side as made for educational reorganisation, scientific +research, literature, criticism, and intellectual development. That was +in 1909. I judged the Tories were driving straight at a conflict with +the country, and I thought them bound to incur an electoral defeat. I +under-estimated their strength in the counties. There would follow, I +calculated, a period of profound reconstruction in method and policy +alike. I was entirely at one with Crupp in perceiving in this an immense +opportunity for the things we desired. An aristocracy quickened by +conflict and on the defensive, and full of the idea of justification +by reconstruction, might prove altogether more apt for thought and +high professions than Mrs. Redmondson's spoilt children. Behind the now +inevitable struggle for a reform of the House of Lords, there would +be great heart searchings and educational endeavour. On that we +reckoned.... + +At last we talked it out to the practical pitch, and Crupp and +Shoesmith, and I and Gane, made our definite agreement together.... + +I emerged from enormous silences upon Margaret one evening. + +She was just back from the display of some new musicians at the +Hartsteins. I remember she wore a dress of golden satin, very +rich-looking and splendid. About her slender neck there was a rope of +gold-set amber beads. Her hair caught up and echoed and returned these +golden notes. I, too, was in evening dress, but where I had been escapes +me,--some forgotten dinner, I suppose. I went into her room. I remember +I didn't speak for some moments. I went across to the window and pulled +the blind aside, and looked out upon the railed garden of the square, +with its shrubs and shadowed turf gleaming pallidly and irregularly in +the light of the big electric standard in the corner. + +“Margaret,” I said, “I think I shall break with the party.” + +She made no answer. I turned presently, a movement of enquiry. + +“I was afraid you meant to do that,” she said. + +“I'm out of touch,” I explained. “Altogether.” + +“Oh! I know.” + +“It places me in a difficult position,” I said. + +Margaret stood at her dressing-table, looking steadfastly at herself +in the glass, and with her fingers playing with a litter of stoppered +bottles of tinted glass. “I was afraid it was coming to this,” she said. + +“In a way,” I said, “we've been allies. I owe my seat to you. I couldn't +have gone into Parliament....” + +“I don't want considerations like that to affect us,” she interrupted. + +There was a pause. She sat down in a chair by her dressing-table, lifted +an ivory hand-glass, and put it down again. + +“I wish,” she said, with something like a sob in her voice, “it were +possible that you shouldn't do this.” She stopped abruptly, and I did +not look at her, because I could feel the effort she was making to +control herself. + +“I thought,” she began again, “when you came into Parliament--” + +There came another silence. “It's all gone so differently,” she said. +“Everything has gone so differently.” + +I had a sudden memory of her, shining triumphant after the Kinghampstead +election, and for the first time I realised just how perplexing and +disappointing my subsequent career must have been to her. + +“I'm not doing this without consideration,” I said. + +“I know,” she said, in a voice of despair, “I've seen it coming. But--I +still don't understand it. I don't understand how you can go over.” + +“My ideas have changed and developed,” I said. + +I walked across to her bearskin hearthrug, and stood by the mantel. + +“To think that you,” she said; “you who might have been leader--” She +could not finish it. “All the forces of reaction,” she threw out. + +“I don't think they are the forces of reaction,” I said. “I think I can +find work to do--better work on that side.” + +“Against us!” she said. “As if progress wasn't hard enough! As if it +didn't call upon every able man!” + +“I don't think Liberalism has a monopoly of progress.” + +She did not answer that. She sat quite still looking in front of her. +“WHY have you gone over?” she asked abruptly as though I had said +nothing. + +There came a silence that I was impelled to end. I began a stiff +dissertation from the hearthrug. “I am going over, because I think I +may join in an intellectual renascence on the Conservative side. I +think that in the coming struggle there will be a partial and altogether +confused and demoralising victory for democracy, that will stir the +classes which now dominate the Conservative party into an energetic +revival. They will set out to win back, and win back. Even if my +estimate of contemporary forces is wrong and they win, they will still +be forced to reconstruct their outlook. A war abroad will supply the +chastening if home politics fail. The effort at renascence is bound to +come by either alternative. I believe I can do more in relation to +that effort than in any other connexion in the world of politics at the +present time. That's my case, Margaret.” + +She certainly did not grasp what I said. “And so you will throw aside +all the beginnings, all the beliefs and pledges--” Again her sentence +remained incomplete. “I doubt if even, once you have gone over, they +will welcome you.” + +“That hardly matters.” + +I made an effort to resume my speech. + +“I came into Parliament, Margaret,” I said, “a little prematurely. +Still--I suppose it was only by coming into Parliament that I could see +things as I do now in terms of personality and imaginative range....” + I stopped. Her stiff, unhappy, unlistening silence broke up my +disquisition. + +“After all,” I remarked, “most of this has been implicit in my +writings.” + +She made no sign of admission. + +“What are you going to do?” she asked. + +“Keep my seat for a time and make the reasons of my breach clear. Then +either I must resign or--probably this new Budget will lead to a +General Election. It's evidently meant to strain the Lords and provoke a +quarrel.” + +“You might, I think, have stayed to fight for the Budget.” + +“I'm not,” I said, “so keen against the Lords.” + +On that we halted. + +“But what are you going to do?” she asked. + +“I shall make my quarrel over some points in the Budget. I can't quite +tell you yet where my chance will come. Then I shall either resign my +seat--or if things drift to dissolution I shall stand again.” + +“It's political suicide.” + +“Not altogether.” + +“I can't imagine you out of Parliament again. It's just like--like +undoing all we have done. What will you do?” + +“Write. Make a new, more definite place for myself. You know, of course, +there's already a sort of group about Crupp and Gane.” + +Margaret seemed lost for a time in painful thought. + +“For me,” she said at last, “our political work has been a religion--it +has been more than a religion.” + +I heard in silence. I had no form of protest available against the +implications of that. + +“And then I find you turning against all we aimed to do--talking of +going over, almost lightly--to those others.”... + +She was white-lipped as she spoke. In the most curious way she had +captured the moral values of the situation. I found myself protesting +ineffectually against her fixed conviction. “It's because I think my +duty lies in this change that I make it,” I said. + +“I don't see how you can say that,” she replied quietly. + +There was another pause between us. + +“Oh!” she said and clenched her hand upon the table. “That it should +have come to this!” + +She was extraordinarily dignified and extraordinarily absurd. She was +hurt and thwarted beyond measure. She had no place in her ideas, I +thought, for me. I could see how it appeared to her, but I could not +make her see anything of the intricate process that had brought me to +this divergence. The opposition of our intellectual temperaments +was like a gag in my mouth. What was there for me to say? A flash +of intuition told me that behind her white dignity was a passionate +disappointment, a shattering of dreams that needed before everything +else the relief of weeping. + +“I've told you,” I said awkwardly, “as soon as I could.” + +There was another long silence. “So that is how we stand,” I said with +an air of having things defined. I walked slowly to the door. + +She had risen and stood now staring in front of her. + +“Good-night,” I said, making no movement towards our habitual kiss. + +“Good-night,” she answered in a tragic note.... + +I closed the door softly. I remained for a moment or so on the big +landing, hesitating between my bedroom and my study. As I did so I heard +the soft rustle of her movement and the click of the key in her bedroom +door. Then everything was still.... + +She hid her tears from me. Something gripped my heart at the thought. + +“Damnation!” I said wincing. “Why the devil can't people at least THINK +in the same manner?” + + + +2 + + +And that insufficient colloquy was the beginning of a prolonged +estrangement between us. It was characteristic of our relations that we +never reopened the discussion. The thing had been in the air for some +time; we had recognised it now; the widening breach between us was +confessed. My own feelings were curiously divided. It is remarkable that +my very real affection for Margaret only became evident to me with this +quarrel. The changes of the heart are very subtle changes. I am quite +unaware how or when my early romantic love for her purity and beauty +and high-principled devotion evaporated from my life; but I do know that +quite early in my parliamentary days there had come a vague, unconfessed +resentment at the tie that seemed to hold me in servitude to her +standards of private living and public act. I felt I was caught, and +none the less so because it had been my own act to rivet on my shackles. +So long as I still held myself bound to her that resentment grew. Now, +since I had broken my bonds and taken my line it withered again, and I +could think of Margaret with a returning kindliness. + +But I still felt embarrassment with her. I felt myself dependent upon +her for house room and food and social support, as it were under false +pretences. I would have liked to have separated our financial affairs +altogether. But I knew that to raise the issue would have seemed a +last brutal indelicacy. So I tried almost furtively to keep my personal +expenditure within the scope of the private income I made by writing, +and we went out together in her motor brougham, dined and made +appearances, met politely at breakfast--parted at night with a kiss upon +her cheek. The locking of her door upon me, which at that time I quite +understood, which I understand now, became for a time in my mind, +through some obscure process of the soul, an offence. I never crossed +the landing to her room again. + +In all this matter, and, indeed, in all my relations with Margaret, I +perceive now I behaved badly and foolishly. My manifest blunder is that +I, who was several years older than she, much subtler and in many ways +wiser, never in any measure sought to guide and control her. After our +marriage I treated her always as an equal, and let her go her way; held +her responsible for all the weak and ineffective and unfortunate things +she said and did to me. She wasn't clever enough to justify that. It +wasn't fair to expect her to sympathise, anticipate, and understand. +I ought to have taken care of her, roped her to me when it came to +crossing the difficult places. If I had loved her more, and wiselier and +more tenderly, if there had not been the consciousness of my financial +dependence on her always stiffening my pride, I think she would have +moved with me from the outset, and left the Liberals with me. But she +did not get any inkling of the ends I sought in my change of sides. It +must have seemed to her inexplicable perversity. She had, I knew--for +surely I knew it then--an immense capacity for loyalty and devotion. +There she was with these treasures untouched, neglected and perplexed. +A woman who loves wants to give. It is the duty and business of the man +she has married for love to help her to help and give. But I was stupid. +My eyes had never been opened. I was stiff with her and difficult to +her, because even on my wedding morning there had been, deep down in +my soul, voiceless though present, something weakly protesting, a faint +perception of wrong-doing, the infinitesimally small, slow-multiplying +germs of shame. + + + +3 + + +I made my breach with the party on the Budget. + +In many ways I was disposed to regard the 1909 Budget as a fine piece +of statecraft. Its production was certainly a very unexpected display +of vigour on the Liberal side. But, on the whole, this movement +towards collectivist organisation on the part of the Liberals rather +strengthened than weakened my resolve to cross the floor of the house. +It made it more necessary, I thought, to leaven the purely obstructive +and reactionary elements that were at once manifest in the opposition. I +assailed the land taxation proposals in one main speech, and a series +of minor speeches in committee. The line of attack I chose was that the +land was a great public service that needed to be controlled on broad +and far-sighted lines. I had no objection to its nationalisation, but I +did object most strenuously to the idea of leaving it in private hands, +and attempting to produce beneficial social results through the pressure +of taxation upon the land-owning class. That might break it up in an +utterly disastrous way. The drift of the government proposals was all in +the direction of sweating the landowner to get immediate values from his +property, and such a course of action was bound to give us an irritated +and vindictive land-owning class, the class upon which we had hitherto +relied--not unjustifiably--for certain broad, patriotic services and +an influence upon our collective judgments that no other class seemed +prepared to exercise. Abolish landlordism if you will, I said, buy +it out, but do not drive it to a defensive fight, and leave it still +sufficiently strong and wealthy to become a malcontent element in your +state. You have taxed and controlled the brewer and the publican until +the outraged Liquor Interest has become a national danger. You now +propose to do the same thing on a larger scale. You turn a class which +has many fine and truly aristocratic traditions towards revolt, and +there is nothing in these or any other of your proposals that shows any +sense of the need for leadership to replace these traditional leaders +you are ousting. This was the substance of my case, and I hammered at it +not only in the House, but in the press.... + +The Kinghampstead division remained for some time insensitive to my +defection. + +Then it woke up suddenly, and began, in the columns of the +KINGSHAMPSTEAD GUARDIAN, an indignant, confused outcry. I was treated to +an open letter, signed “Junius Secundus,” and I replied in provocative +terms. There were two thinly attended public meetings at different ends +of the constituency, and then I had a correspondence with my old friend +Parvill, the photographer, which ended in my seeing a deputation. + +My impression is that it consisted of about eighteen or twenty people. +They had had to come upstairs to me and they were manifestly full of +indignation and a little short of breath. There was Parvill himself, +J.P., dressed wholly in black--I think to mark his sense of the +occasion--and curiously suggestive in his respect for my character and +his concern for the honourableness of the KINGHAMPSTEAD GUARDIAN editor, +of Mark Antony at the funeral of Cesar. There was Mrs. Bulger, also in +mourning; she had never abandoned the widow's streamers since the death +of her husband ten years ago, and her loyalty to Liberalism of the +severest type was part as it were of her weeds. There was a nephew of +Sir Roderick Newton, a bright young Hebrew of the graver type, and a +couple of dissenting ministers in high collars and hats that stopped +halfway between the bowler of this world and the shovel-hat of heaven. +There was also a young solicitor from Lurky done in the horsey style, +and there was a very little nervous man with a high brow and a face +contracting below as though the jawbones and teeth had been taken out +and the features compressed. The rest of the deputation, which included +two other public-spirited ladies and several ministers of religion, +might have been raked out of any omnibus going Strandward during the +May meetings. They thrust Parvill forward as spokesman, and manifested +a strong disposition to say “Hear, hear!” to his more strenuous protests +provided my eye wasn't upon them at the time. + +I regarded this appalling deputation as Parvill's apologetic but quite +definite utterances drew to an end. I had a moment of vision. Behind +them I saw the wonderful array of skeleton forces that stand for public +opinion, that are as much public opinion as exists indeed at the present +time. The whole process of politics which bulks so solidly in history +seemed for that clairvoyant instant but a froth of petty motives above +abysms of indifference.... + +Some one had finished. I perceived I had to speak. + +“Very well,” I said, “I won't keep you long in replying. I'll resign if +there isn't a dissolution before next February, and if there is I shan't +stand again. You don't want the bother and expense of a bye-election +(approving murmurs) if it can be avoided. But I may tell you plainly now +that I don't think it will be necessary for me to resign, and the sooner +you find my successor the better for the party. The Lords are in a +corner; they've got to fight now or never, and I think they will throw +out the Budget. Then they will go on fighting. It is a fight that will +last for years. They have a sort of social discipline, and you haven't. +You Liberals will find yourselves with a country behind you, vaguely +indignant perhaps, but totally unprepared with any ideas whatever in +the matter, face to face with the problem of bringing the British +constitution up-to-date. Anything may happen, provided only that it is +sufficiently absurd. If the King backs the Lords--and I don't see why he +shouldn't--you have no Republican movement whatever to fall back +upon. You lost it during the Era of Good Taste. The country, I say, is +destitute of ideas, and you have no ideas to give it. I don't see what +you will do.... For my own part, I mean to spend a year or so between a +window and my writing-desk.” + +I paused. “I think, gentlemen,” began Parvill, “that we hear all this +with very great regret....” + + + +4 + + +My estrangement from Margaret stands in my memory now as something that +played itself out within the four walls of our house in Radnor Square, +which was, indeed, confined to those limits. I went to and fro between +my house and the House of Commons, and the dining-rooms and clubs and +offices in which we were preparing our new developments, in a state +of aggressive and energetic dissociation, in the nascent state, as a +chemist would say. I was free now, and greedy for fresh combination. I +had a tremendous sense of released energies. I had got back to the sort +of thing I could do, and to the work that had been shaping itself for +so long in my imagination. Our purpose now was plain, bold, and +extraordinarily congenial. We meant no less than to organise a new +movement in English thought and life, to resuscitate a Public Opinion +and prepare the ground for a revised and renovated ruling culture. + +For a time I seemed quite wonderfully able to do whatever I wanted to +do. Shoesmith responded to my first advances. We decided to create a +weekly paper as our nucleus, and Crupp and I set to work forthwith to +collect a group of writers and speakers, including Esmeer, Britten, Lord +Gane, Neal, and one or two younger men, which should constitute a more +or less definite editorial council about me, and meet at a weekly lunch +on Tuesday to sustain our general co-operations. We marked our claim +upon Toryism even in the colour of our wrapper, and spoke of ourselves +collectively as the Blue Weeklies. But our lunches were open to all +sorts of guests, and our deliberations were never of a character to +control me effectively in my editorial decisions. My only influential +councillor at first was old Britten, who became my sub-editor. It was +curious how we two had picked up our ancient intimacy again and resumed +the easy give and take of our speculative dreaming schoolboy days. + +For a time my life centred altogether upon this journalistic work. +Britten was an experienced journalist, and I had most of the necessary +instincts for the business. We meant to make the paper right and +good down to the smallest detail, and we set ourselves at this with +extraordinary zeal. It wasn't our intention to show our political +motives too markedly at first, and through all the dust storm and +tumult and stress of the political struggle of 1910, we made a little +intellectual oasis of good art criticism and good writing. It was the +firm belief of nearly all of us that the Lords were destined to be +beaten badly in 1910, and our game was the longer game of reconstruction +that would begin when the shouting and tumult of that immediate conflict +were over. Meanwhile we had to get into touch with just as many good +minds as possible. + +As we felt our feet, I developed slowly and carefully a broadly +conceived and consistent political attitude. As I will explain later, +we were feminist from the outset, though that caused Shoesmith and Gane +great searching of heart; we developed Esmeer's House of Lords reform +scheme into a general cult of the aristocratic virtues, and we did much +to humanise and liberalise the narrow excellencies of that Break-up of +the Poor Law agitation, which had been organised originally by Beatrice +and Sidney Webb. In addition, without any very definite explanation to +any one but Esmeer and Isabel Rivers, and as if it was quite a small +matter, I set myself to secure a uniform philosophical quality in our +columns. + +That, indeed, was the peculiar virtue and characteristic of the BLUE +WEEKLY. I was now very definitely convinced that much of the confusion +and futility of contemporary thought was due to the general need of +metaphysical training.... The great mass of people--and not simply +common people, but people active and influential in intellectual +things--are still quite untrained in the methods of thought and +absolutely innocent of any criticism of method; it is scarcely a +caricature to call their thinking a crazy patchwork, discontinuous and +chaotic. They arrive at conclusions by a kind of accident, and do not +suspect any other way may be found to their attainment. A stage above +this general condition stands that minority of people who have at +some time or other discovered general terms and a certain use +for generalisations. They are--to fall back on the ancient +technicality--Realists of a crude sort. When I say Realist of course +I mean Realist as opposed to Nominalist, and not Realist in the almost +diametrically different sense of opposition to Idealist. Such are the +Baileys; such, to take their great prototype, was Herbert Spencer (who +couldn't read Kant); such are whole regiments of prominent and entirely +self-satisfied contemporaries. They go through queer little processes of +definition and generalisation and deduction with the completest belief +in the validity of the intellectual instrument they are using. They are +Realists--Cocksurists--in matter of fact; sentimentalists in behaviour. +The Baileys having got to this glorious stage in mental development--it +is glorious because it has no doubts--were always talking about training +“Experts” to apply the same simple process to all the affairs +of mankind. Well, Realism isn't the last word of human wisdom. +Modest-minded people, doubtful people, subtle people, and the like--the +kind of people William James writes of as “tough-minded,” go on beyond +this methodical happiness, and are forever after critical of premises +and terms. They are truer--and less confident. They have reached +scepticism and the artistic method. They have emerged into the new +Nominalism. + +Both Isabel and I believe firmly that these differences of intellectual +method matter profoundly in the affairs of mankind, that the collective +mind of this intricate complex modern state can only function properly +upon neo-Nominalist lines. This has always been her side of our mental +co-operation rather than mine. Her mind has the light movement that +goes so often with natural mental power; she has a wonderful art in +illustration, and, as the reader probably knows already, she writes of +metaphysical matters with a rare charm and vividness. So far there has +been no collection of her papers published, but they are to be found not +only in the BLUE WEEKLY columns but scattered about the monthlies; many +people must be familiar with her style. It was an intention we did +much to realise before our private downfall, that we would use the BLUE +WEEKLY to maintain a stream of suggestion against crude thinking, and +at last scarcely a week passed but some popular distinction, some +large imposing generalisation, was touched to flaccidity by her pen or +mine.... + +I was at great pains to give my philosophical, political, and social +matter the best literary and critical backing we could get in London. I +hunted sedulously for good descriptive writing and good criticism; I +was indefatigable in my readiness to hear and consider, if not to accept +advice; I watched every corner of the paper, and had a dozen men alert +to get me special matter of the sort that draws in the unattached +reader. The chief danger on the literary side of a weekly is that it +should fall into the hands of some particular school, and this I watched +for closely. It seems impossible to get vividness of apprehension and +breadth of view together in the same critic. So it falls to the wise +editor to secure the first and impose the second. Directly I detected +the shrill partisan note in our criticism, the attempt to puff a poor +thing because it was “in the right direction,” or damn a vigorous piece +of work because it wasn't, I tackled the man and had it out with him. +Our pay was good enough for that to matter a good deal.... + +Our distinctive little blue and white poster kept up its neat persistent +appeal to the public eye, and before 1911 was out, the BLUE WEEKLY was +printing twenty pages of publishers' advertisements, and went into +all the clubs in London and three-quarters of the country houses where +week-end parties gather together. Its sale by newsagents and bookstalls +grew steadily. One got more and more the reassuring sense of being +discussed, and influencing discussion. + + + +5 + + +Our office was at the very top of a big building near the end of Adelphi +Terrace; the main window beside my desk, a big undivided window of +plate glass, looked out upon Cleopatra's Needle, the corner of the Hotel +Cecil, the fine arches of Waterloo Bridge, and the long sweep of south +bank with its shot towers and chimneys, past Bankside to the dimly seen +piers of the great bridge below the Tower. The dome of St. Paul's just +floated into view on the left against the hotel facade. By night and +day, in every light and atmosphere, it was a beautiful and various view, +alive as a throbbing heart; a perpetual flow of traffic ploughed and +splashed the streaming silver of the river, and by night the shapes of +things became velvet black and grey, and the water a shining mirror +of steel, wearing coruscating gems of light. In the foreground the +Embankment trams sailed glowing by, across the water advertisements +flashed and flickered, trains went and came and a rolling drift of smoke +reflected unseen fires. By day that spectacle was sometimes a marvel of +shining wet and wind-cleared atmosphere, sometimes a mystery of drifting +fog, sometimes a miracle of crowded details, minutely fine. + +As I think of that view, so variously spacious in effect, I am back +there, and this sunlit paper might be lamp-lit and lying on my old desk. +I see it all again, feel it all again. In the foreground is a green +shaded lamp and crumpled galley slips and paged proofs and letters, two +or three papers in manuscript, and so forth. In the shadows are chairs +and another table bearing papers and books, a rotating bookcase dimly +seen, a long window seat black in the darkness, and then the cool +unbroken spectacle of the window. How often I would watch some tram-car, +some string of barges go from me slowly out of sight. The people were +black animalculae by day, clustering, collecting, dispersing, by night, +they were phantom face-specks coming, vanishing, stirring obscurely +between light and shade. + +I recall many hours at my desk in that room before the crisis came, +hours full of the peculiar happiness of effective strenuous work. Once +some piece of writing went on, holding me intent and forgetful of time +until I looked up from the warm circle of my electric lamp to see the +eastward sky above the pale silhouette of the Tower Bridge, flushed and +banded brightly with the dawn. + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH ~~ THE BESETTING OF SEX + + + +1 + + +Art is selection and so is most autobiography. But I am concerned with a +more tangled business than selection, I want to show a contemporary man +in relation to the state and social usage, and the social organism in +relation to that man. To tell my story at all I have to simplify. I have +given now the broad lines of my political development, and how I passed +from my initial liberal-socialism to the conception of a constructive +aristocracy. I have tried to set that out in the form of a man +discovering himself. Incidentally that self-development led to a +profound breach with my wife. One has read stories before of husband +and wife speaking severally two different languages and coming to an +understanding. But Margaret and I began in her dialect, and, as I came +more and more to use my own, diverged. + +I had thought when I married that the matter of womankind had ended for +me. I have tried to tell all that sex and women had been to me up to my +married life with Margaret and our fatal entanglement, tried to show the +queer, crippled, embarrassed and limited way in which these interests +break upon the life of a young man under contemporary conditions. I +do not think my lot was a very exceptional one. I missed the chance of +sisters and girl playmates, but that is not an uncommon misadventure +in an age of small families; I never came to know any woman at all +intimately until I was married to Margaret. My earlier love affairs were +encounters of sex, under conditions of furtiveness and adventure that +made them things in themselves, restricted and unilluminating. From a +boyish disposition to be mystical and worshipping towards women I +had passed into a disregardful attitude, as though women were things +inferior or irrelevant, disturbers in great affairs. For a time Margaret +had blotted out all other women; she was so different and so near; +she was like a person who stands suddenly in front of a little window +through which one has been surveying a crowd. She didn't become +womankind for me so much as eliminate womankind from my world.... And +then came this secret separation.... + +Until this estrangement and the rapid and uncontrollable development of +my relations with Isabel which chanced to follow it, I seemed to have +solved the problem of women by marriage and disregard. I thought these +things were over. I went about my career with Margaret beside me, her +brow slightly knit, her manner faintly strenuous, helping, helping; and +if we had not altogether abolished sex we had at least so circumscribed +and isolated it that it would not have affected the general tenor of our +lives in the slightest degree if we had. + +And then, clothing itself more and more in the form of Isabel and her +problems, this old, this fundamental obsession of my life returned. The +thing stole upon my mind so that I was unaware of its invasion and how +it was changing our long intimacy. I have already compared the lot of +the modern publicist to Machiavelli writing in his study; in his day +women and sex were as disregarded in these high affairs as, let us say, +the chemistry of air or the will of the beasts in the fields; in ours +the case has altogether changed, and woman has come now to stand beside +the tall candles, half in the light, half in the mystery of the +shadows, besetting, interrupting, demanding unrelentingly an altogether +unprecedented attention. I feel that in these matters my life has been +almost typical of my time. Woman insists upon her presence. She is +no longer a mere physical need, an aesthetic bye-play, a sentimental +background; she is a moral and intellectual necessity in a man's life. +She comes to the politician and demands, Is she a child or a citizen? Is +she a thing or a soul? She comes to the individual man, as she came +to me and asks, Is she a cherished weakling or an equal mate, an +unavoidable helper? Is she to be tried and trusted or guarded and +controlled, bond or free? For if she is a mate, one must at once trust +more and exact more, exacting toil, courage, and the hardest, most +necessary thing of all, the clearest, most shameless, explicitness of +understanding.... + + + +2 + + +In all my earlier imaginings of statecraft I had tacitly assumed either +that the relations of the sexes were all right or that anyhow they +didn't concern the state. It was a matter they, whoever “they” were, had +to settle among themselves. That sort of disregard was possible then. +But even before 1906 there were endless intimations that the dams +holding back great reservoirs of discussion were crumbling. We political +schemers were ploughing wider than any one had ploughed before in the +field of social reconstruction. We had also, we realised, to plough +deeper. We had to plough down at last to the passionate elements of +sexual relationship and examine and decide upon them. + +The signs multiplied. In a year or so half the police of the metropolis +were scarce sufficient to protect the House from one clamorous aspect +of the new problem. The members went about Westminster with an odd, new +sense of being beset. A good proportion of us kept up the pretence that +the Vote for Women was an isolated fad, and the agitation an epidemic +madness that would presently pass. But it was manifest to any one who +sought more than comfort in the matter that the streams of women and +sympathisers and money forthcoming marked far deeper and wider things +than an idle fancy for the franchise. The existing laws and conventions +of relationship between Man and Woman were just as unsatisfactory a +disorder as anything else in our tumbled confusion of a world, and that +also was coming to bear upon statecraft. + +My first parliament was the parliament of the Suffragettes. I don't +propose to tell here of that amazing campaign, with its absurdities +and follies, its courage and devotion. There were aspects of that +unquenchable agitation that were absolutely heroic and aspects that were +absolutely pitiful. It was unreasonable, unwise, and, except for its +one central insistence, astonishingly incoherent. It was amazingly +effective. The very incoherence of the demand witnessed, I think, to the +forces that lay behind it. It wasn't a simple argument based on a +simple assumption; it was the first crude expression of a great mass and +mingling of convergent feelings, of a widespread, confused persuasion +among modern educated women that the conditions of their relations with +men were oppressive, ugly, dishonouring, and had to be altered. They +had not merely adopted the Vote as a symbol of equality; it was fairly +manifest to me that, given it, they meant to use it, and to use it +perhaps even vindictively and blindly, as a weapon against many things +they had every reason to hate.... + +I remember, with exceptional vividness, that great night early in the +session of 1909, when--I think it was--fifty or sixty women went to +prison. I had been dining at the Barham's, and Lord Barham and I came +down from the direction of St. James's Park into a crowd and a confusion +outside the Caxton Hall. We found ourselves drifting with an immense +multitude towards Parliament Square and parallel with a silent, +close-packed column of girls and women, for the most part white-faced +and intent. I still remember the effect of their faces upon me. It was +quite different from the general effect of staring about and divided +attention one gets in a political procession of men. There was an +expression of heroic tension. + +There had been a pretty deliberate appeal on the part of the women's +organisers to the Unemployed, who had been demonstrating throughout that +winter, to join forces with the movement, and the result was shown +in the quality of the crowd upon the pavement. It was an ugly, +dangerous-looking crowd, but as yet good-tempered and sympathetic. When +at last we got within sight of the House the square was a seething seat +of excited people, and the array of police on horse and on foot might +have been assembled for a revolutionary outbreak. There were dense +masses of people up Whitehall, and right on to Westminster Bridge. The +scuffle that ended in the arrests was the poorest explosion to follow +such stupendous preparations.... + + + +3 + + +Later on in that year the women began a new attack. Day and night, and +all through the long nights of the Budget sittings, at all the piers +of the gates of New Palace Yard and at St. Stephen's Porch, stood women +pickets, and watched us silently and reproachfully as we went to and +fro. They were women of all sorts, though, of course, the independent +worker-class predominated. There were grey-headed old ladies standing +there, sturdily charming in the rain; battered-looking, ambiguous women, +with something of the desperate bitterness of battered women showing in +their eyes; north-country factory girls; cheaply-dressed suburban women; +trim, comfortable mothers of families; valiant-eyed girl graduates +and undergraduates; lank, hungry-looking creatures, who stirred one's +imagination; one very dainty little woman in deep mourning, I recall, +grave and steadfast, with eyes fixed on distant things. Some of those +women looked defiant, some timidly aggressive, some full of the stir of +adventure, some drooping with cold and fatigue. The supply never ceased. +I had a mortal fear that somehow the supply might halt or cease. I +found that continual siege of the legislature extraordinarily +impressive--infinitely more impressive than the feeble-forcible +“ragging” of the more militant section. I thought of the appeal that +must be going through the country, summoning the women from countless +scattered homes, rooms, colleges, to Westminster. + +I remember too the petty little difficulty I felt whether I should +ignore these pickets altogether, or lift a hat as I hurried past with +averted eyes, or look them in the face as I did so. Towards the end the +House evoked an etiquette of salutation. + + + +4 + + +There was a tendency, even on the part of its sympathisers, to treat the +whole suffrage agitation as if it were a disconnected issue, irrelevant +to all other broad developments of social and political life. We +struggled, all of us, to ignore the indicating finger it thrust out +before us. “Your schemes, for all their bigness,” it insisted to +our reluctant, averted minds, “still don't go down to the essential +things....” + +We have to go deeper, or our inadequate children's insufficient children +will starve amidst harvests of earless futility. That conservatism which +works in every class to preserve in its essentials the habitual daily +life is all against a profounder treatment of political issues. The +politician, almost as absurdly as the philosopher, tends constantly, in +spite of magnificent preludes, vast intimations, to specialise himself +out of the reality he has so stupendously summoned--he bolts back to +littleness. The world has to be moulded anew, he continues to admit, but +without, he adds, any risk of upsetting his week-end visits, his morning +cup of tea.... + +The discussion of the relations of men and women disturbs every one. It +reacts upon the private life of every one who attempts it. And at +any particular time only a small minority have a personal interest in +changing the established state of affairs. Habit and interest are in a +constantly recruited majority against conscious change and adjustment +in these matters. Drift rules us. The great mass of people, and an +overwhelming proportion of influential people, are people who have +banished their dreams and made their compromise. Wonderful and beautiful +possibilities are no longer to be thought about. They have given up +any aspirations for intense love, their splendid offspring, for keen +delights, have accepted a cultivated kindliness and an uncritical sense +of righteousness as their compensation. It's a settled affair with +them, a settled, dangerous affair. Most of them fear, and many hate, the +slightest reminder of those abandoned dreams. As Dayton once said to +the Pentagram Circle, when we were discussing the problem of a universal +marriage and divorce law throughout the Empire, “I am for leaving all +these things alone.” And then, with a groan in his voice, “Leave them +alone! Leave them all alone!” + +That was his whole speech for the evening, in a note of suppressed +passion, and presently, against all our etiquette, he got up and went +out. + +For some years after my marriage, I too was for leaving them alone. I +developed a dread and dislike for romance, for emotional music, for the +human figure in art--turning my heart to landscape. I wanted to sneer +at lovers and their ecstasies, and was uncomfortable until I found +the effective sneer. In matters of private morals these were my most +uncharitable years. I didn't want to think of these things any more for +ever. I hated the people whose talk or practice showed they were not +of my opinion. I wanted to believe that their views were immoral and +objectionable and contemptible, because I had decided to treat them as +at that level. I was, in fact, falling into the attitude of the normal +decent man. + +And yet one cannot help thinking! The sensible moralised man finds it +hard to escape the stream of suggestion that there are still dreams +beyond these commonplace acquiescences,--the appeal of beauty suddenly +shining upon one, the mothlike stirrings of serene summer nights, the +sweetness of distant music.... + +It is one of the paradoxical factors in our public life at the present +time, which penalises abandonment to love so abundantly and so heavily, +that power, influence and control fall largely to unencumbered people +and sterile people and people who have married for passionless purposes, +people whose very deficiency in feeling has left them free to follow +ambition, people beautyblind, who don't understand what it is to fall in +love, what it is to desire children or have them, what it is to feel in +their blood and bodies the supreme claim of good births and selective +births above all other affairs in life, people almost of necessity +averse from this most fundamental aspect of existence.... + + + +5 + + +It wasn't, however, my deepening sympathy with and understanding of the +position of women in general, or the change in my ideas about all these +intimate things my fast friendship with Isabel was bringing about, that +led me to the heretical views I have in the last five years dragged from +the region of academic and timid discussion into the field of practical +politics. Those influences, no doubt, have converged to the same end, +and given me a powerful emotional push upon my road, but it was a +broader and colder view of things that first determined me in my attempt +to graft the Endowment of Motherhood in some form or other upon British +Imperialism. Now that I am exiled from the political world, it is +possible to estimate just how effectually that grafting has been done. + +I have explained how the ideas of a trained aristocracy and a universal +education grew to paramount importance in my political scheme. It is but +a short step from this to the question of the quantity and quality of +births in the community, and from that again to these forbidden and +fear-beset topics of marriage, divorce, and the family organisation. +A sporadic discussion of these aspects had been going on for years, a +Eugenic society existed, and articles on the Falling Birth Rate, and the +Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit were staples of the monthly magazines. +But beyond an intermittent scolding of prosperous childless people +in general--one never addressed them in particular--nothing was done +towards arresting those adverse processes. Almost against my natural +inclination, I found myself forced to go into these things. I came to +the conclusion that under modern conditions the isolated private family, +based on the existing marriage contract, was failing in its work. It +wasn't producing enough children, and children good enough and well +trained enough for the demands of the developing civilised state. +Our civilisation was growing outwardly, and decaying in its intimate +substance, and unless it was presently to collapse, some very extensive +and courageous reorganisation was needed. The old haphazard system +of pairing, qualified more and more by worldly discretions, no longer +secures a young population numerous enough or good enough for the +growing needs and possibilities of our Empire. Statecraft sits weaving +splendid garments, no doubt, but with a puny, ugly, insufficient baby in +the cradle. + +No one so far has dared to take up this problem as a present question +for statecraft, but it comes unheralded, unadvocated, and sits at +every legislative board. Every improvement is provisional except the +improvement of the race, and it became more and more doubtful to me if +we were improving the race at all! Splendid and beautiful and courageous +people must come together and have children, women with their fine +senses and glorious devotion must be freed from the net that compels +them to be celibate, compels them to be childless and useless, or to +bear children ignobly to men whom need and ignorance and the treacherous +pressure of circumstances have forced upon them. We all know that, +and so few dare even to whisper it for fear that they should seem, in +seeking to save the family, to threaten its existence. It is as if +a party of pigmies in a not too capacious room had been joined by a +carnivorous giant--and decided to go on living happily by cutting him +dead.... + +The problem the developing civilised state has to solve is how it can +get the best possible increase under the best possible conditions. +I became more and more convinced that the independent family unit +of to-day, in which the man is master of the wife and owner of the +children, in which all are dependent upon him, subordinated to his +enterprises and liable to follow his fortunes up or down, does not +supply anything like the best conceivable conditions. We want to +modernise the family footing altogether. An enormous premium both in +pleasure and competitive efficiency is put upon voluntary childlessness, +and enormous inducements are held out to women to subordinate +instinctive and selective preferences to social and material +considerations. + +The practical reaction of modern conditions upon the old tradition of +the family is this: that beneath the pretence that nothing is changing, +secretly and with all the unwholesomeness of secrecy everything is +changed. Offspring fall away, the birth rate falls and falls most among +just the most efficient and active and best adapted classes in the +community. The species is recruited from among its failures and from +among less civilised aliens. Contemporary civilisations are in effect +burning the best of their possible babies in the furnaces that run the +machinery. In the United States the native Anglo-American strain has +scarcely increased at all since 1830, and in most Western European +countries the same is probably true of the ablest and most energetic +elements in the community. The women of these classes still remain +legally and practically dependent and protected, with the only natural +excuse for their dependence gone.... + +The modern world becomes an immense spectacle of unsatisfactory +groupings; here childless couples bored to death in the hopeless effort +to sustain an incessant honeymoon, here homes in which a solitary child +grows unsocially, here small two or three-child homes that do no more +than continue the culture of the parents at a great social cost, here +numbers of unhappy educated but childless married women, here careless, +decivilised fecund homes, here orphanages and asylums for the heedlessly +begotten. It is just the disorderly proliferation of Bromstead over +again, in lives instead of in houses. + +What is the good, what is the common sense, of rectifying boundaries, +pushing research and discovery, building cities, improving all the +facilities of life, making great fleets, waging wars, while this aimless +decadence remains the quality of the biological outlook?... + +It is difficult now to trace how I changed from my early aversion until +I faced this mass of problems. But so far back as 1910 I had it clear +in my mind that I would rather fail utterly than participate in all the +surrenders of mind and body that are implied in Dayton's snarl of “Leave +it alone; leave it all alone!” Marriage and the begetting and care of +children, is the very ground substance in the life of the community. +In a world in which everything changes, in which fresh methods, fresh +adjustments and fresh ideas perpetually renew the circumstances of life, +it is preposterous that we should not even examine into these matters, +should rest content to be ruled by the uncriticised traditions of a +barbaric age. + +Now, it seems to me that the solution of this problem is also the +solution of the woman's individual problem. The two go together, are +right and left of one question. The only conceivable way out from our +IMPASSE lies in the recognition of parentage, that is to say of adequate +mothering, as no longer a chance product of individual passions but +a service rendered to the State. Women must become less and less +subordinated to individual men, since this works out in a more or less +complete limitation, waste, and sterilisation of their essentially +social function; they must become more and more subordinated as +individually independent citizens to the collective purpose. Or, to +express the thing by a familiar phrase, the highly organised, scientific +state we desire must, if it is to exist at all, base itself not upon +the irresponsible man-ruled family, but upon the matriarchal family, +the citizen-ship and freedom of women and the public endowment of +motherhood. + +After two generations of confused and experimental revolt it grows clear +to modern women that a conscious, deliberate motherhood and mothering is +their special function in the State, and that a personal subordination +to an individual man with an unlimited power of control over this +intimate and supreme duty is a degradation. No contemporary woman of +education put to the test is willing to recognise any claim a man can +make upon her but the claim of her freely-given devotion to him. She +wants the reality of her choice and she means “family” while a man +too often means only possession. This alters the spirit of the family +relationships fundamentally. Their form remains just what it was +when woman was esteemed a pretty, desirable, and incidentally a +child-producing, chattel. Against these time-honoured ideas the new +spirit of womanhood struggles in shame, astonishment, bitterness, and +tears.... + +I confess myself altogether feminist. I have no doubts in the matter. +I want this coddling and browbeating of women to cease. I want to +see women come in, free and fearless, to a full participation in the +collective purpose of mankind. Women, I am convinced, are as fine +as men; they can be as wise as men; they are capable of far greater +devotion than men. I want to see them citizens, with a marriage law +framed primarily for them and for their protection and the good of the +race, and not for men's satisfactions. I want to see them bearing and +rearing good children in the State as a generously rewarded public duty +and service, choosing their husbands freely and discerningly, and in no +way enslaved by or subordinated to the men they have chosen. The social +consciousness of women seems to me an unworked, an almost untouched mine +of wealth for the constructive purpose of the world. I want to change +the respective values of the family group altogether, and make the home +indeed the women's kingdom and the mother the owner and responsible +guardian of her children. + +It is no use pretending that this is not novel and revolutionary; it is. +The Endowment of Motherhood implies a new method of social organization, +a rearrangement of the social unit, untried in human experience--as +untried as electric traction was or flying in 1800. Of course, it may +work out to modify men's ideas of marriage profoundly. To me that is +a secondary consideration. I do not believe that particular assertion +myself, because I am convinced that a practical monogamy is a +psychological necessity to the mass of civilised people. But even if I +did believe it I should still keep to my present line, because it is the +only line that will prevent a highly organised civilisation from ending +in biological decay. The public Endowment of Motherhood is the only +possible way which will ensure the permanently developing civilised +state at which all constructive minds are aiming. A point is reached in +the life-history of a civilisation when either this reconstruction +must be effected or the quality and MORALE of the population prove +insufficient for the needs of the developing organisation. It is not so +much moral decadence that will destroy us as moral inadaptability. +The old code fails under the new needs. The only alternative to this +profound reconstruction is a decay in human quality and social collapse. +Either this unprecedented rearrangement must be achieved by our +civilisation, or it must presently come upon a phase of disorder and +crumble and perish, as Rome perished, as France declines, as the strain +of the Pilgrim Fathers dwindles out of America. Whatever hope there may +be in the attempt therefore, there is no alternative to the attempt. + + + +6 + + +I wanted political success now dearly enough, but not at the price +of constructive realities. These questions were no doubt monstrously +dangerous in the political world; there wasn't a politician alive who +didn't look scared at the mention of “The Family,” but if raising these +issues were essential to the social reconstructions on which my life +was set, that did not matter. It only implied that I should take them +up with deliberate caution. There was no release because of risk or +difficulty. + +The question of whether I should commit myself to some open project in +this direction was going on in my mind concurrently with my speculations +about a change of party, like bass and treble in a complex piece of +music. The two drew to a conclusion together. I would not only go over +to Imperialism, but I would attempt to biologise Imperialism. + +I thought at first that I was undertaking a monstrous uphill task. +But as I came to look into the possibilities of the matter, a strong +persuasion grew up in my mind that this panic fear of legislative +proposals affecting the family basis was excessive, that things were +much riper for development in this direction than old-experienced people +out of touch with the younger generation imagined, that to phrase +the thing in a parliamentary fashion, “something might be done in the +constituencies” with the Endowment of Motherhood forthwith, provided +only that it was made perfectly clear that anything a sane person could +possibly intend by “morality” was left untouched by these proposals. + +I went to work very carefully. I got Roper of the DAILY TELEPHONE and +Burkett of the DIAL to try over a silly-season discussion of State Help +for Mothers, and I put a series of articles on eugenics, upon the fall +in the birth-rate, and similar topics in the BLUE WEEKLY, leading up +to a tentative and generalised advocacy of the public endowment of the +nation's children. I was more and more struck by the acceptance won by a +sober and restrained presentation of this suggestion. + +And then, in the fourth year of the BLUE WEEKLY'S career, came the +Handitch election, and I was forced by the clamour of my antagonist, +and very willingly forced, to put my convictions to the test. I returned +triumphantly to Westminster with the Public Endowment of Motherhood +as part of my open profession and with the full approval of the party +press. Applauding benches of Imperialists cheered me on my way to the +table between the whips. + +That second time I took the oath I was not one of a crowd of new +members, but salient, an event, a symbol of profound changes and new +purposes in the national life. + +Here it is my political book comes to an end, and in a sense my book +ends altogether. For the rest is but to tell how I was swept out of this +great world of political possibilities. I close this Third Book as I +opened it, with an admission of difficulties and complexities, but now +with a pile of manuscript before me I have to confess them unsurmounted +and still entangled. + +Yet my aim was a final simplicity. I have sought to show my growing +realisation that the essential quality of all political and social +effort is the development of a great race mind behind the interplay of +individual lives. That is the collective human reality, the basis of +morality, the purpose of devotion. To that our lives must be given, from +that will come the perpetual fresh release and further ennoblement of +individual lives.... + +I have wanted to make that idea of a collective mind play in this book +the part United Italy plays in Machiavelli's PRINCE. I have called it +the hinterland of reality, shown it accumulating a dominating truth and +rightness which must force men's now sporadic motives more and more into +a disciplined and understanding relation to a plan. And I have tried +to indicate how I sought to serve this great clarification of our +confusions.... + +Now I come back to personality and the story of my self-betrayal, and +how it is I have had to leave all that far-reaching scheme of mine, a +mere project and beginning for other men to take or leave as it pleases +them. + + + + +BOOK THE FOURTH: ISABEL + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ LOVE AND SUCCESS + + + +1 + + +I come to the most evasive and difficult part of my story, which is to +tell how Isabel and I have made a common wreck of our joint lives. + +It is not the telling of one simple disastrous accident. There was a +vein in our natures that led to this collapse, gradually and at +this point and that it crept to the surface. One may indeed see our +destruction--for indeed politically we could not be more extinct if we +had been shot dead--in the form of a catastrophe as disconnected and +conclusive as a meteoric stone falling out of heaven upon two friends +and crushing them both. But I do not think that is true to our situation +or ourselves. We were not taken by surprise. The thing was in us and +not from without, it was akin to our way of thinking and our habitual +attitudes; it had, for all its impulsive effect, a certain necessity. We +might have escaped no doubt, as two men at a hundred yards may shoot at +each other with pistols for a considerable time and escape. But it isn't +particularly reasonable to talk of the contrariety of fate if they both +get hit. + +Isabel and I were dangerous to each other for several years of +friendship, and not quite unwittingly so. + +In writing this, moreover, there is a very great difficulty in steering +my way between two equally undesirable tones in the telling. In the +first place I do not want to seem to confess my sins with a penitence I +am very doubtful if I feel. Now that I have got Isabel we can no doubt +count the cost of it and feel unquenchable regrets, but I am not sure +whether, if we could be put back now into such circumstances as we +were in a year ago, or two years ago, whether with my eyes fully open I +should not do over again very much as I did. And on the other hand I do +not want to justify the things we have done. We are two bad people--if +there is to be any classification of good and bad at all, we have acted +badly, and quite apart from any other considerations we've largely +wasted our own very great possibilities. But it is part of a queer +humour that underlies all this, that I find myself slipping again and +again into a sentimental treatment of our case that is as unpremeditated +as it is insincere. When I am a little tired after a morning's writing +I find the faint suggestion getting into every other sentence that our +blunders and misdeeds embodied, after the fashion of the prophet Hosea, +profound moral truths. Indeed, I feel so little confidence in my ability +to keep this altogether out of my book that I warn the reader here that +in spite of anything he may read elsewhere in the story, intimating +however shyly an esoteric and exalted virtue in our proceedings, the +plain truth of this business is that Isabel and I wanted each other with +a want entirely formless, inconsiderate, and overwhelming. And though I +could tell you countless delightful and beautiful things about Isabel, +were this a book in her praise, I cannot either analyse that want or +account for its extreme intensity. + +I will confess that deep in my mind there is a belief in a sort of wild +rightness about any love that is fraught with beauty, but that eludes +me and vanishes again, and is not, I feel, to be put with the real +veracities and righteousnesses and virtues in the paddocks and +menageries of human reason.... + +We have already a child, and Margaret was childless, and I find myself +prone to insist upon that, as if it was a justification. But, indeed, +when we became lovers there was small thought of Eugenics between us. +Ours was a mutual and not a philoprogenitive passion. Old Nature behind +us may have had such purposes with us, but it is not for us to annex +her intentions by a moralising afterthought. There isn't, in fact, any +decent justification for us whatever--at that the story must stand. + +But if there is no justification there is at least a very effective +excuse in the mental confusedness of our time. The evasion of that +passionately thorough exposition of belief and of the grounds of +morality, which is the outcome of the mercenary religious compromises of +the late Vatican period, the stupid suppression of anything but the most +timid discussion of sexual morality in our literature and drama, the +pervading cultivated and protected muddle-headedness, leaves mentally +vigorous people with relatively enormous possibilities of destruction +and little effective help. They find themselves confronted by the +habits and prejudices of manifestly commonplace people, and by that +extraordinary patched-up Christianity, the cult of a “Bromsteadised” + deity, diffused, scattered, and aimless, which hides from examination +and any possibility of faith behind the plea of good taste. A god about +whom there is delicacy is far worse than no god at all. We are FORCED to +be laws unto ourselves and to live experimentally. It is inevitable that +a considerable fraction of just that bolder, more initiatory section of +the intellectual community, the section that can least be spared from +the collective life in a period of trial and change, will drift into +such emotional crises and such disaster as overtook us. Most perhaps +will escape, but many will go down, many more than the world can spare. +It is the unwritten law of all our public life, and the same holds true +of America, that an honest open scandal ends a career. England in the +last quarter of a century has wasted half a dozen statesmen on this +score; she would, I believe, reject Nelson now if he sought to serve +her. Is it wonderful that to us fretting here in exile this should seem +the cruellest as well as the most foolish elimination of a necessary +social element? It destroys no vice; for vice hides by nature. It +not only rewards dullness as if it were positive virtue, but sets an +enormous premium upon hypocrisy. That is my case, and that is why I am +telling this side of my story with so much explicitness. + + + +2 + + +Ever since the Kinghamstead election I had maintained what seemed a +desultory friendship with Isabel. At first it was rather Isabel kept +it up than I. Whenever Margaret and I went down to that villa, with its +three or four acres of garden and shrubbery about it, which fulfilled +our election promise to live at Kinghamstead, Isabel would turn up in +a state of frank cheerfulness, rejoicing at us, and talk all she was +reading and thinking to me, and stay for all the rest of the day. In +her shameless liking for me she was as natural as a savage. She would +exercise me vigorously at tennis, while Margaret lay and rested her +back in the afternoon, or guide me for some long ramble that dodged the +suburban and congested patches of the constituency with amazing skill. +She took possession of me in that unabashed, straight-minded way a girl +will sometimes adopt with a man, chose my path or criticised my +game with a motherly solicitude for my welfare that was absurd and +delightful. And we talked. We discussed and criticised the stories of +novels, scraps of history, pictures, social questions, socialism, the +policy of the Government. She was young and most unevenly informed, but +she was amazingly sharp and quick and good. Never before in my life had +I known a girl of her age, or a woman of her quality. I had never dreamt +there was such talk in the world. Kinghamstead became a lightless +place when she went to Oxford. Heaven knows how much that may not have +precipitated my abandonment of the seat! + +She went to Ridout College, Oxford, and that certainly weighed with +me when presently after my breach with the Liberals various little +undergraduate societies began to ask for lectures and discussions. I +favoured Oxford. I declared openly I did so because of her. At that time +I think we neither of us suspected the possibility of passion that lay +like a coiled snake in the path before us. It seemed to us that we +had the quaintest, most delightful friendship in the world; she was +my pupil, and I was her guide, philosopher, and friend. People smiled +indulgently--even Margaret smiled indulgently--at our attraction for one +another. + +Such friendships are not uncommon nowadays--among easy-going, +liberal-minded people. For the most part, there's no sort of harm, as +people say, in them. The two persons concerned are never supposed to +think of the passionate love that hovers so close to the friendship, or +if they do, then they banish the thought. I think we kept the thought as +permanently in exile as any one could do. If it did in odd moments come +into our heads we pretended elaborately it wasn't there. + +Only we were both very easily jealous of each other's attention, and +tremendously insistent upon each other's preference. + +I remember once during the Oxford days an intimation that should have +set me thinking, and I suppose discreetly disentangling myself. It was +one Sunday afternoon, and it must have been about May, for the trees and +shrubs of Ridout College were gay with blossom, and fresh with the new +sharp greens of spring. I had walked talking with Isabel and a couple of +other girls through the wide gardens of the place, seen and criticised +the new brick pond, nodded to the daughter of this friend and that +in the hammocks under the trees, and picked a way among the scattered +tea-parties on the lawn to our own circle on the grass under a Siberian +crab near the great bay window. There I sat and ate great quantities +of cake, and discussed the tactics of the Suffragettes. I had made some +comments upon the spirit of the movement in an address to the men in +Pembroke, and it had got abroad, and a group of girls and women dons +were now having it out with me. + +I forget the drift of the conversation, or what it was made Isabel +interrupt me. She did interrupt me. She had been lying prone on the +ground at my right hand, chin on fists, listening thoughtfully, and +I was sitting beside old Lady Evershead on a garden seat. I turned to +Isabel's voice, and saw her face uplifted, and her dear cheeks and nose +and forehead all splashed and barred with sunlight and the shadows of +the twigs of the trees behind me. And something--an infinite tenderness, +stabbed me. It was a keen physical feeling, like nothing I had ever felt +before. It had a quality of tears in it. For the first time in my narrow +and concentrated life another human being had really thrust into my +being and gripped my very heart. + +Our eyes met perplexed for an extraordinary moment. Then I turned +back and addressed myself a little stiffly to the substance of her +intervention. For some time I couldn't look at her again. + +From that time forth I knew I loved Isabel beyond measure. + +Yet it is curious that it never occurred to me for a year or so that +this was likely to be a matter of passion between us. I have told how +definitely I put my imagination into harness in those matters at my +marriage, and I was living now in a world of big interests, where there +is neither much time nor inclination for deliberate love-making. I +suppose there is a large class of men who never meet a girl or a woman +without thinking of sex, who meet a friend's daughter and decide: +“Mustn't get friendly with her--wouldn't DO,” and set invisible bars +between themselves and all the wives in the world. Perhaps that is +the way to live. Perhaps there is no other method than this effectual +annihilation of half--and the most sympathetic and attractive half--of +the human beings in the world, so far as any frank intercourse is +concerned. I am quite convinced anyhow that such a qualified intimacy +as ours, such a drifting into the sense of possession, such untrammeled +conversation with an invisible, implacable limit set just where the +intimacy glows, it is no kind of tolerable compromise. If men and women +are to go so far together, they must be free to go as far as they may +want to go, without the vindictive destruction that has come upon us. +On the basis of the accepted codes the jealous people are right, and the +liberal-minded ones are playing with fire. If people are not to love, +then they must be kept apart. If they are not to be kept apart, then we +must prepare for an unprecedented toleration of lovers. + +Isabel was as unforeseeing as I to begin with, but sex marches into the +life of an intelligent girl with demands and challenges far more urgent +than the mere call of curiosity and satiable desire that comes to a +young man. No woman yet has dared to tell the story of that unfolding. +She attracted men, and she encouraged them, and watched them, and tested +them, and dismissed them, and concealed the substance of her thoughts +about them in the way that seems instinctive in a natural-minded girl. +There was even an engagement--amidst the protests and disapproval of +the college authorities. I never saw the man, though she gave me a long +history of the affair, to which I listened with a forced and insincere +sympathy. She struck me oddly as taking the relationship for a thing +in itself, and regardless of its consequences. After a time she became +silent about him, and then threw him over; and by that time, I think, +for all that she was so much my junior, she knew more about herself and +me than I was to know for several years to come. + +We didn't see each other for some months after my resignation, but we +kept up a frequent correspondence. She said twice over that she wanted +to talk to me, that letters didn't convey what one wanted to say, and +I went up to Oxford pretty definitely to see her--though I combined it +with one or two other engagements--somewhere in February. Insensibly she +had become important enough for me to make journeys for her. + +But we didn't see very much of one another on that occasion. There was +something in the air between us that made a faint embarrassment; the +mere fact, perhaps, that she had asked me to come up. + +A year before she would have dashed off with me quite unscrupulously +to talk alone, carried me off to her room for an hour with a minute of +chaperonage to satisfy the rules. Now there was always some one or other +near us that it seemed impossible to exorcise. + +We went for a walk on the Sunday afternoon with old Fortescue, K. C., +who'd come up to see his two daughters, both great friends of Isabel's, +and some mute inglorious don whose name I forget, but who was in a +state of marked admiration for her. The six of us played a game of +conversational entanglements throughout, and mostly I was impressing +the Fortescue girls with the want of mental concentration possible in a +rising politician. We went down Carfex, I remember, to Folly Bridge, +and inspected the Barges, and then back by way of Merton to the Botanic +Gardens and Magdalen Bridge. And in the Botanic Gardens she got almost +her only chance with me. + +“Last months at Oxford,” she said. + +“And then?” I asked. + +“I'm coming to London,” she said. + +“To write?” + +She was silent for a moment. Then she said abruptly, with that quick +flush of hers and a sudden boldness in her eyes: “I'm going to work with +you. Why shouldn't I?” + + + +3 + + +Here, again, I suppose I had a fair warning of the drift of things. +I seem to remember myself in the train to Paddington, sitting with a +handful of papers--galley proofs for the BLUE WEEKLY, I suppose--on my +lap, and thinking about her and that last sentence of hers, and all that +it might mean to me. + +It is very hard to recall even the main outline of anything so elusive +as a meditation. I know that the idea of working with her gripped me, +fascinated me. That my value in her life seemed growing filled me with +pride and a kind of gratitude. I was already in no doubt that her value +in my life was tremendous. It made it none the less, that in those days +I was obsessed by the idea that she was transitory, and bound to go out +of my life again. It is no good trying to set too fine a face upon this +complex business, there is gold and clay and sunlight and savagery in +every love story, and a multitude of elvish elements peeped out beneath +the fine rich curtain of affection that masked our future. I've never +properly weighed how immensely my vanity was gratified by her clear +preference for me. Nor can I for a moment determine how much deliberate +intention I hide from myself in this affair. + +Certainly I think some part of me must have been saying in the train: +“Leave go of her. Get away from her. End this now.” I can't have been so +stupid as not to have had that in my mind.... + +If she had been only a beautiful girl in love with me, I think I could +have managed the situation. Once or twice since my marriage and before +Isabel became of any significance in my life, there had been incidents +with other people, flashes of temptation--no telling is possible of +the thing resisted. I think that mere beauty and passion would not +have taken me. But between myself and Isabel things were incurably +complicated by the intellectual sympathy we had, the jolly march of +our minds together. That has always mattered enormously. I should have +wanted her company nearly as badly if she had been some crippled old +lady; we would have hunted shoulder to shoulder, as two men. Only two +men would never have had the patience and readiness for one another +we two had. I had never for years met any one with whom I could be so +carelessly sure of understanding or to whom I could listen so easily +and fully. She gave me, with an extraordinary completeness, that rare, +precious effect of always saying something fresh, and yet saying it so +that it filled into and folded about all the little recesses and corners +of my mind with an infinite, soft familiarity. It is impossible to +explain that. It is like trying to explain why her voice, her voice +heard speaking to any one--heard speaking in another room--pleased my +ears. + +She was the only Oxford woman who took a first that year. She spent the +summer in Scotland and Yorkshire, writing to me continually of all she +now meant to do, and stirring my imagination. She came to London for +the autumn session. For a time she stayed with old Lady Colbeck, but she +fell out with her hostess when it became clear she wanted to write, not +novels, but journalism, and then she set every one talking by taking +a flat near Victoria and installing as her sole protector an elderly +German governess she had engaged through a scholastic agency. She began +writing, not in that copious flood the undisciplined young woman of +gifts is apt to produce, but in exactly the manner of an able young man, +experimenting with forms, developing the phrasing of opinions, taking +a definite line. She was, of course, tremendously discussed. She was +disapproved of, but she was invited out to dinner. She got rather a +reputation for the management of elderly distinguished men. It was an +odd experience to follow Margaret's soft rustle of silk into some +big drawing-room and discover my snub-nosed girl in the blue sack +transformed into a shining creature in the soft splendour of pearls and +ivory-white and lace, and with a silver band about her dusky hair. + +For a time we did not meet very frequently, though always she professed +an unblushing preference for my company, and talked my views and sought +me out. Then her usefulness upon the BLUE WEEKLY began to link us +closelier. She would come up to the office, and sit by the window, +and talk over the proofs of the next week's articles, going through my +intentions with a keen investigatory scalpel. Her talk always puts me in +mind of a steel blade. Her writing became rapidly very good; she had +a wit and a turn of the phrase that was all her own. We seemed to have +forgotten the little shadow of embarrassment that had fallen over our +last meeting at Oxford. Everything seemed natural and easy between us in +those days; a little unconventional, but that made it all the brighter. + +We developed something like a custom of walks, about once a week or so, +and letters and notes became frequent. I won't pretend things were not +keenly personal between us, but they had an air of being innocently +mental. She used to call me “Master” in our talks, a monstrous and +engaging flattery, and I was inordinately proud to have her as my pupil. +Who wouldn't have been? And we went on at that distance for a long +time--until within a year of the Handitch election. + +After Lady Colbeck threw her up as altogether too “intellectual” for +comfortable control, Isabel was taken up by the Balfes in a less formal +and compromising manner, and week-ended with them and their cousin +Leonora Sparling, and spent large portions of her summer with them in +Herefordshire. There was a lover or so in that time, men who came a +little timidly at this brilliant young person with the frank manner and +the Amazonian mind, and, she declared, received her kindly refusals with +manifest relief. And Arnold Shoesmith struck up a sort of friendship +that oddly imitated mine. She took a liking to him because he was clumsy +and shy and inexpressive; she embarked upon the dangerous interest of +helping him to find his soul. I had some twinges of jealousy about that. +I didn't see the necessity of him. He invaded her time, and I thought +that might interfere with her work. If their friendship stole some hours +from Isabel's writing, it did not for a long while interfere with our +walks or our talks, or the close intimacy we had together. + + + +4 + + +Then suddenly Isabel and I found ourselves passionately in love. + +The change came so entirely without warning or intention that I find it +impossible now to tell the order of its phases. What disturbed pebble +started the avalanche I cannot trace. Perhaps it was simply that the +barriers between us and this masked aspect of life had been wearing down +unperceived. + +And there came a change in Isabel. It was like some change in the cycle +of nature, like the onset of spring--a sharp brightness, an uneasiness. +She became restless with her work; little encounters with men began to +happen, encounters not quite in the quality of the earlier proposals; +and then came an odd incident of which she told me, but somehow, I felt, +didn't tell me completely. She told me all she was able to tell me. +She had been at a dance at the Ropers', and a man, rather well known in +London, had kissed her. The thing amazed her beyond measure. It was the +sort of thing immediately possible between any man and any woman, that +one never expects to happen until it happens. It had the surprising +effect of a judge generally known to be bald suddenly whipping off his +wig in court. No absolutely unexpected revelation could have quite the +same quality of shock. She went through the whole thing to me with a +remarkable detachment, told me how she had felt--and the odd things it +seemed to open to her. + +“I WANT to be kissed, and all that sort of thing,” she avowed. “I +suppose every woman does.” + +She added after a pause: “And I don't want any one to do it.” + +This struck me as queerly expressive of the woman's attitude to these +things. “Some one presently will--solve that,” I said. + +“Some one will perhaps.” + +I was silent. + +“Some one will,” she said, almost viciously. “And then we'll have to +stop these walks and talks of ours, dear Master.... I'll be sorry to +give them up.” + +“It's part of the requirements of the situation,” I said, “that he +should be--oh, very interesting! He'll start, no doubt, all sorts of new +topics, and open no end of attractive vistas.... You can't, you know, +always go about in a state of pupillage.” + +“I don't think I can,” said Isabel. “But it's only just recently I've +begun to doubt about it.” + +I remember these things being said, but just how much we saw and +understood, and just how far we were really keeping opaque to each other +then, I cannot remember. But it must have been quite soon after this +that we spent nearly a whole day together at Kew Gardens, with the +curtains up and the barriers down, and the thing that had happened plain +before our eyes. I don't remember we ever made any declaration. We just +assumed the new footing.... + +It was a day early in that year--I think in January, because there was +thin, crisp snow on the grass, and we noted that only two other people +had been to the Pagoda that day. I've a curious impression of greenish +colour, hot, moist air and huge palm fronds about very much of our talk, +as though we were nearly all the time in the Tropical House. But I +also remember very vividly looking at certain orange and red spray-like +flowers from Patagonia, which could not have been there. It is a curious +thing that I do not remember we made any profession of passionate love +for one another; we talked as though the fact of our intense love for +each other had always been patent between us. There was so long and +frank an intimacy between us that we talked far more like brother and +sister or husband and wife than two people engaged in the war of the +sexes. We wanted to know what we were going to do, and whatever we +did we meant to do in the most perfect concert. We both felt an +extraordinary accession of friendship and tenderness then, and, what +again is curious, very little passion. But there was also, in spite of +the perplexities we faced, an immense satisfaction about that day. It +was as if we had taken off something that had hindered our view of each +other, like people who unvizored to talk more easily at a masked ball. + +I've had since to view our relations from the standpoint of the ordinary +observer. I find that vision in the most preposterous contrast with all +that really went on between us. I suppose there I should figure as a +wicked seducer, while an unprotected girl succumbed to my fascinations. +As a matter of fact, it didn't occur to us that there was any personal +inequality between us. I knew her for my equal mentally; in so many +things she was beyond comparison cleverer than I; her courage outwent +mine. The quick leap of her mind evoked a flash of joy in mine like the +response of an induction wire; her way of thinking was like watching +sunlight reflected from little waves upon the side of a boat, it was so +bright, so mobile, so variously and easily true to its law. In the back +of our minds we both had a very definite belief that making love is full +of joyous, splendid, tender, and exciting possibilities, and we had to +discuss why we shouldn't be to the last degree lovers. + +Now, what I should like to print here, if it were possible, in all the +screaming emphasis of red ink, is this: that the circumstances of my +upbringing and the circumstances of Isabel's upbringing had left not a +shadow of belief or feeling that the utmost passionate love between +us was in itself intrinsically WRONG. I've told with the fullest +particularity just all that I was taught or found out for myself +in these matters, and Isabel's reading and thinking, and the fierce +silences of her governesses and the breathless warnings of teachers, and +all the social and religious influences that had been brought to bear +upon her, had worked out to the same void of conviction. The code had +failed with us altogether. We didn't for a moment consider anything but +the expediency of what we both, for all our quiet faces and steady eyes, +wanted most passionately to do. + +Well, here you have the state of mind of whole brigades of people, and +particularly of young people, nowadays. The current morality hasn't +gripped them; they don't really believe in it at all. They may render +it lip-service, but that is quite another thing. There are scarcely any +tolerable novels to justify its prohibitions; its prohibitions do, in +fact, remain unjustified amongst these ugly suppressions. You may, if +you choose, silence the admission of this in literature and current +discussion; you will not prevent it working out in lives. People come up +to the great moments of passion crudely unaware, astoundingly unprepared +as no really civilised and intelligently planned community would let any +one be unprepared. They find themselves hedged about with customs +that have no organic hold upon them, and mere discretions all generous +spirits are disposed to despise. + +Consider the infinite absurdities of it! Multitudes of us are trying +to run this complex modern community on a basis of “Hush” without +explaining to our children or discussing with them anything about +love and marriage at all. Doubt and knowledge creep about in enforced +darknesses and silences. We are living upon an ancient tradition which +everybody doubts and nobody has ever analysed. We affect a tremendous +and cultivated shyness and delicacy about imperatives of the most +arbitrary appearance. What ensues? What did ensue with us, for example? +On the one hand was a great desire, robbed of any appearance of shame +and grossness by the power of love, and on the other hand, the possible +jealousy of so and so, the disapproval of so and so, material risks and +dangers. It is only in the retrospect that we have been able to grasp +something of the effectual case against us. The social prohibition lit +by the intense glow of our passion, presented itself as preposterous, +irrational, arbitrary, and ugly, a monster fit only for mockery. We +might be ruined! Well, there is a phase in every love affair, a sort +of heroic hysteria, when death and ruin are agreeable additions to the +prospect. It gives the business a gravity, a solemnity. Timid people may +hesitate and draw back with a vague instinctive terror of the immensity +of the oppositions they challenge, but neither Isabel nor I are timid +people. + +We weighed what was against us. We decided just exactly as scores of +thousands of people have decided in this very matter, that if it were +possible to keep this thing to ourselves, there was nothing against it. +And so we took our first step. With the hunger of love in us, it was +easy to conclude we might be lovers, and still keep everything to +ourselves. That cleared our minds of the one persistent obstacle that +mattered to us--the haunting presence of Margaret. + +And then we found, as all those scores of thousands of people scattered +about us have found, that we could not keep it to ourselves. Love will +out. All the rest of this story is the chronicle of that. Love with +sustained secrecy cannot be love. It is just exactly the point people do +not understand. + + + +5 + + +But before things came to that pass, some months and many phases and a +sudden journey to America intervened. + +“This thing spells disaster,” I said. “You are too big and I am too big +to attempt this secrecy. Think of the intolerable possibility of being +found out! At any cost we have to stop--even at the cost of parting.” + +“Just because we may be found out!” + +“Just because we may be found out.” + +“Master, I shouldn't in the least mind being found out with you. I'm +afraid--I'd be proud.” + +“Wait till it happens.” + +There followed a struggle of immense insincerity between us. It is hard +to tell who urged and who resisted. + +She came to me one night to the editorial room of the BLUE WEEKLY, and +argued and kissed me with wet salt lips, and wept in my arms; she told +me that now passionate longing for me and my intimate life possessed +her, so that she could not work, could not think, could not endure other +people for the love of me.... + +I fled absurdly. That is the secret of the futile journey to America +that puzzled all my friends. + +I ran away from Isabel. I took hold of the situation with all my +strength, put in Britten with sketchy, hasty instructions to edit the +paper, and started headlong and with luggage, from which, among other +things, my shaving things were omitted, upon a tour round the world. + +Preposterous flight that was! I remember as a thing almost farcical my +explanations to Margaret, and how frantically anxious I was to prevent +the remote possibility of her coming with me, and how I crossed in the +TUSCAN, a bad, wet boat, and mixed seasickness with ungovernable sorrow. +I wept--tears. It was inexpressibly queer and ridiculous--and, good God! +how I hated my fellow-passengers! + +New York inflamed and excited me for a time, and when things slackened, +I whirled westward to Chicago--eating and drinking, I remember, in the +train from shoals of little dishes, with a sort of desperate voracity. +I did the queerest things to distract myself--no novelist would dare to +invent my mental and emotional muddle. Chicago also held me at first, +amazing lapse from civilisation that the place is! and then abruptly, +with hosts expecting me, and everything settled for some days in Denver, +I found myself at the end of my renunciations, and turned and came back +headlong to London. + +Let me confess it wasn't any sense of perfect and incurable trust and +confidence that brought me back, or any idea that now I had strength to +refrain. It was a sudden realisation that after all the separation might +succeed; some careless phrasing in one of her jealously read letters set +that idea going in my mind--the haunting perception that I might return +to London and find it empty of the Isabel who had pervaded it. Honour, +discretion, the careers of both of us, became nothing at the thought. I +couldn't conceive my life resuming there without Isabel. I couldn't, in +short, stand it. + +I don't even excuse my return. It is inexcusable. I ought to have kept +upon my way westward--and held out. I couldn't. I wanted Isabel, and +I wanted her so badly now that everything else in the world was +phantom-like until that want was satisfied. Perhaps you have never +wanted anything like that. I went straight to her. + +But here I come to untellable things. There is no describing the reality +of love. The shapes of things are nothing, the actual happenings are +nothing, except that somehow there falls a light upon them and a wonder. +Of how we met, and the thrill of the adventure, the curious bright sense +of defiance, the joy of having dared, I can't tell--I can but hint of +just one aspect, of what an amazing LARK--it's the only word--it seemed +to us. The beauty which was the essence of it, which justifies it so far +as it will bear justification, eludes statement. + +What can a record of contrived meetings, of sundering difficulties +evaded and overcome, signify here? Or what can it convey to say that +one looked deep into two dear, steadfast eyes, or felt a heart throb +and beat, or gripped soft hair softly in a trembling hand? Robbed of +encompassing love, these things are of no more value than the taste of +good wine or the sight of good pictures, or the hearing of music,--just +sensuality and no more. No one can tell love--we can only tell the gross +facts of love and its consequences. Given love--given mutuality, and one +has effected a supreme synthesis and come to a new level of life--but +only those who know can know. This business has brought me more +bitterness and sorrow than I had ever expected to bear, but even now +I will not say that I regret that wilful home-coming altogether. We +loved--to the uttermost. Neither of us could have loved any one else +as we did and do love one another. It was ours, that beauty; it existed +only between us when we were close together, for no one in the world +ever to know save ourselves. + +My return to the office sticks out in my memory with an extreme +vividness, because of the wild eagle of pride that screamed within me. +It was Tuesday morning, and though not a soul in London knew of it yet +except Isabel, I had been back in England a week. I came in upon Britten +and stood in the doorway. + +“GOD!” he said at the sight of me. + +“I'm back,” I said. + +He looked at my excited face with those red-brown eyes of his. Silently +I defied him to speak his mind. + +“Where did you turn back?” he said at last. + + + +6 + + +I had to tell what were, so far as I can remember my first positive lies +to Margaret in explaining that return. I had written to her from Chicago +and again from New York, saying that I felt I ought to be on the spot +in England for the new session, and that I was coming back--presently. +I concealed the name of my boat from her, and made a calculated +prevarication when I announced my presence in London. I telephoned +before I went back for my rooms to be prepared. She was, I knew, with +the Bunting Harblows in Durham, and when she came back to Radnor Square +I had been at home a day. + +I remember her return so well. + +My going away and the vivid secret of the present had wiped out from my +mind much of our long estrangement. Something, too, had changed in her. +I had had some hint of it in her letters, but now I saw it plainly. I +came out of my study upon the landing when I heard the turmoil of her +arrival below, and she came upstairs with a quickened gladness. It was a +cold March, and she was dressed in unfamiliar dark furs that suited her +extremely and reinforced the delicate flush of her sweet face. She held +out both her hands to me, and drew me to her unhesitatingly and kissed +me. + +“So glad you are back, dear,” she said. “Oh! so very glad you are back.” + +I returned her kiss with a queer feeling at my heart, too +undifferentiated to be even a definite sense of guilt or meanness. I +think it was chiefly amazement--at the universe--at myself. + +“I never knew what it was to be away from you,” she said. + +I perceived suddenly that she had resolved to end our estrangement. She +put herself so that my arm came caressingly about her. + +“These are jolly furs,” I said. + +“I got them for you.” + +The parlourmaid appeared below dealing with the maid and the luggage +cab. + +“Tell me all about America,” said Margaret. “I feel as though you'd been +away six year's.” + +We went arm in arm into our little sitting-room, and I took off the +fur's for her and sat down upon the chintz-covered sofa by the fire. +She had ordered tea, and came and sat by me. I don't know what I had +expected, but of all things I had certainly not expected this sudden +abolition of our distances. + +“I want to know all about America,” she repeated, with her eyes +scrutinising me. “Why did you come back?” + +I repeated the substance of my letters rather lamely, and she sat +listening. + +“But why did you turn back--without going to Denver?” + +“I wanted to come back. I was restless.” + +“Restlessness,” she said, and thought. “You were restless in Venice. You +said it was restlessness took you to America.” + +Again she studied me. She turned a little awkwardly to her tea things, +and poured needless water from the silver kettle into the teapot. +Then she sat still for some moments looking at the equipage with +expressionless eyes. I saw her hand upon the edge of the table tremble +slightly. I watched her closely. A vague uneasiness possessed me. What +might she not know or guess? + +She spoke at last with an effort. “I wish you were in Parliament again,” + she said. “Life doesn't give you events enough.” + +“If I was in Parliament again, I should be on the Conservative side.” + +“I know,” she said, and was still more thoughtful. + +“Lately,” she began, and paused. “Lately I've been reading--you.” + +I didn't help her out with what she had to say. I waited. + +“I didn't understand what you were after. I had misjudged. I didn't +know. I think perhaps I was rather stupid.” Her eyes were suddenly +shining with tears. “You didn't give me much chance to understand.” + +She turned upon me suddenly with a voice full of tears. + +“Husband,” she said abruptly, holding her two hands out to me, “I want +to begin over again!” + +I took her hands, perplexed beyond measure. “My dear!” I said. + +“I want to begin over again.” + +I bowed my head to hide my face, and found her hand in mine and kissed +it. + +“Ah!” she said, and slowly withdrew her hand. She leant forward with her +arm on the sofa-back, and looked very intently into my face. I felt the +most damnable scoundrel in the world as I returned her gaze. The thought +of Isabel's darkly shining eyes seemed like a physical presence between +us.... + +“Tell me,” I said presently, to break the intolerable tension, “tell me +plainly what you mean by this.” + +I sat a little away from her, and then took my teacup in hand, with an +odd effect of defending myself. “Have you been reading that old book of +mine?” I asked. + +“That and the paper. I took a complete set from the beginning down +to Durham with me. I have read it over, thought it over. I didn't +understand--what you were teaching.” + +There was a little pause. + +“It all seems so plain to me now,” she said, “and so true.” + +I was profoundly disconcerted. I put down my teacup, stood up in the +middle of the hearthrug, and began talking. “I'm tremendously glad, +Margaret, that you've come to see I'm not altogether perverse,” I began. +I launched out into a rather trite and windy exposition of my views, and +she sat close to me on the sofa, looking up into my face, hanging on my +words, a deliberate and invincible convert. + +“Yes,” she said, “yes.”... + +I had never doubted my new conceptions before; now I doubted them +profoundly. But I went on talking. It's the grim irony in the lives of +all politicians, writers, public teachers, that once the audience is at +their feet, a new loyalty has gripped them. It isn't their business to +admit doubt and imperfections. They have to go on talking. And I was +now so accustomed to Isabel's vivid interruptions, qualifications, +restatements, and confirmations.... + +Margaret and I dined together at home. She made me open out my political +projects to her. “I have been foolish,” she said. “I want to help.” + +And by some excuse I have forgotten she made me come to her room. I +think it was some book I had to take her, some American book I had +brought back with me, and mentioned in our talk. I walked in with it, +and put it down on the table and turned to go. + +“Husband!” she cried, and held out her slender arms to me. I was +compelled to go to her and kiss her, and she twined them softly about my +neck and drew me to her and kissed me. I disentangled them very gently, +and took each wrist and kissed it, and the backs of her hands. + +“Good-night,” I said. There came a little pause. “Good-night, Margaret,” + I repeated, and walked very deliberately and with a kind of sham +preoccupation to the door. + +I did not look at her, but I could feel her standing, watching me. If I +had looked up, she would, I knew, have held out her arms to me.... + +At the very outset that secret, which was to touch no one but Isabel and +myself, had reached out to stab another human being. + + + +7 + + +The whole world had changed for Isabel and me; and we tried to pretend +that nothing had changed except a small matter between us. We believed +quite honestly at that time that it was possible to keep this thing +that had happened from any reaction at all, save perhaps through some +magically enhanced vigour in our work, upon the world about us! Seen in +retrospect, one can realise the absurdity of this belief; within a week +I realised it; but that does not alter the fact that we did believe as +much, and that people who are deeply in love and unable to marry will +continue to believe so to the very end of time. They will continue to +believe out of existence every consideration that separates them until +they have come together. Then they will count the cost, as we two had to +do. + +I am telling a story, and not propounding theories in this book; and +chiefly I am telling of the ideas and influences and emotions that +have happened to me--me as a sort of sounding board for my world. The +moralist is at liberty to go over my conduct with his measure and +say, “At this point or at that you went wrong, and you ought to have +done”--so-and-so. The point of interest to the statesman is that it +didn't for a moment occur to us to do so-and-so when the time for doing +it came. It amazes me now to think how little either of us troubled +about the established rights or wrongs of the situation. We hadn't an +atom of respect for them, innate or acquired. The guardians of public +morals will say we were very bad people; I submit in defence that they +are very bad guardians--provocative guardians.... And when at last there +came a claim against us that had an effective validity for us, we were +in the full tide of passionate intimacy. + +I had a night of nearly sleepless perplexity after Margaret's return. +She had suddenly presented herself to me like something dramatically +recalled, fine, generous, infinitely capable of feeling. I was amazed +how much I had forgotten her. In my contempt for vulgarised and +conventionalised honour I had forgotten that for me there was such +a reality as honour. And here it was, warm and near to me, living, +breathing, unsuspecting. Margaret's pride was my honour, that I had had +no right even to imperil. + +I do not now remember if I thought at that time of going to Isabel and +putting this new aspect of the case before her. Perhaps I did. Perhaps +I may have considered even then the possibility of ending what had so +freshly and passionately begun. If I did, it vanished next day at +the sight of her. Whatever regrets came in the darkness, the daylight +brought an obstinate confidence in our resolution again. We would, we +declared, “pull the thing off.” Margaret must not know. Margaret should +not know. If Margaret did not know, then no harm whatever would be done. +We tried to sustain that.... + +For a brief time we had been like two people in a magic cell, magically +cut off from the world and full of a light of its own, and then we began +to realise that we were not in the least cut off, that the world was all +about us and pressing in upon us, limiting us, threatening us, resuming +possession of us. I tried to ignore the injury to Margaret of her +unreciprocated advances. I tried to maintain to myself that this hidden +love made no difference to the now irreparable breach between husband +and wife. But I never spoke of it to Isabel or let her see that aspect +of our case. How could I? The time for that had gone.... + +Then in new shapes and relations came trouble. Distressful elements +crept in by reason of our unavoidable furtiveness; we ignored them, +hid them from each other, and attempted to hide them from ourselves. +Successful love is a thing of abounding pride, and we had to be secret. +It was delightful at first to be secret, a whispering, warm conspiracy; +then presently it became irksome and a little shameful. Her essential +frankness of soul was all against the masks and falsehoods that many +women would have enjoyed. Together in our secrecy we relaxed, then in +the presence of other people again it was tiresome to have to watch +for the careless, too easy phrase, to snatch back one's hand from the +limitless betrayal of a light, familiar touch. + +Love becomes a poor thing, at best a poor beautiful thing, if it +develops no continuing and habitual intimacy. We were always meeting, +and most gloriously loving and beginning--and then we had to snatch at +remorseless ticking watches, hurry to catch trains, and go back to this +or that. That is all very well for the intrigues of idle people perhaps, +but not for an intense personal relationship. It is like lighting a +candle for the sake of lighting it, over and over again, and each time +blowing it out. That, no doubt, must be very amusing to children playing +with the matches, but not to people who love warm light, and want it in +order to do fine and honourable things together. We had achieved--I +give the ugly phrase that expresses the increasing discolouration in my +mind--“illicit intercourse.” To end at that, we now perceived, wasn't in +our style. But where were we to end?... + +Perhaps we might at this stage have given it up. I think if we could +have seen ahead and around us we might have done so. But the glow of our +cell blinded us.... I wonder what might have happened if at that time we +had given it up.... We propounded it, we met again in secret to discuss +it, and our overpowering passion for one another reduced that meeting to +absurdity.... + +Presently the idea of children crept between us. It came in from all our +conceptions of life and public service; it was, we found, in the quality +of our minds that physical love without children is a little weak, +timorous, more than a little shameful. With imaginative people there +very speedily comes a time when that realisation is inevitable. We +hadn't thought of that before--it isn't natural to think of that before. +We hadn't known. There is no literature in English dealing with such +things. + +There is a necessary sequence of phases in love. These came in their +order, and with them, unanticipated tarnishings on the first bright +perfection of our relations. For a time these developing phases were +no more than a secret and private trouble between us, little shadows +spreading by imperceptible degrees across that vivid and luminous cell. + + + +8 + + +The Handitch election flung me suddenly into prominence. + +It is still only two years since that struggle, and I will not trouble +the reader with a detailed history of events that must be quite +sufficiently present in his mind for my purpose already. Huge stacks of +journalism have dealt with Handitch and its significance. For the reader +very probably, as for most people outside a comparatively small circle, +it meant my emergence from obscurity. We obtruded no editor's name in +the BLUE WEEKLY; I had never as yet been on the London hoardings. Before +Handitch I was a journalist and writer of no great public standing; +after Handitch, I was definitely a person, in the little group of +persons who stood for the Young Imperialist movement. Handitch was, to a +very large extent, my affair. I realised then, as a man comes to do, how +much one can still grow after seven and twenty. In the second election +I was a man taking hold of things; at Kinghamstead I had been simply a +young candidate, a party unit, led about the constituency, told to +do this and that, and finally washed in by the great Anti-Imperialist +flood, like a starfish rolling up a beach. + +My feminist views had earnt the mistrust of the party, and I do not +think I should have got the chance of Handitch or indeed any chance at +all of Parliament for a long time, if it had not been that the seat with +its long record of Liberal victories and its Liberal majority of 3642 at +the last election, offered a hopeless contest. The Liberal dissensions +and the belated but by no means contemptible Socialist candidate were +providential interpositions. I think, however, the conduct of Gane, +Crupp, and Tarvrille in coming down to fight for me, did count +tremendously in my favour. “We aren't going to win, perhaps,” said +Crupp, “but we are going to talk.” And until the very eve of victory, we +treated Handitch not so much as a battlefield as a hoarding. And so it +was the Endowment of Motherhood as a practical form of Eugenics got into +English politics. + +Plutus, our agent, was scared out of his wits when the thing began. + +“They're ascribing all sorts of queer ideas to you about the Family,” he +said. + +“I think the Family exists for the good of the children,” I said; “is +that queer?” + +“Not when you explain it--but they won't let you explain it. And about +marriage--?” + +“I'm all right about marriage--trust me.” + +“Of course, if YOU had children,” said Plutus, rather +inconsiderately.... + +They opened fire upon me in a little electioneering rag call +the HANDITCH SENTINEL, with a string of garbled quotations and +misrepresentations that gave me an admirable text for a speech. I spoke +for an hour and ten minutes with a more and more crumpled copy of the +SENTINEL in my hand, and I made the fullest and completest exposition +of the idea of endowing motherhood that I think had ever been made up +to that time in England. Its effect on the press was extraordinary. The +Liberal papers gave me quite unprecedented space under the impression +that I had only to be given rope to hang myself; the Conservatives cut +me down or tried to justify me; the whole country was talking. I had had +a pamphlet in type upon the subject, and I revised this carefully and +put it on the book-stalls within three days. It sold enormously and +brought me bushels of letters. We issued over three thousand in Handitch +alone. At meeting after meeting I was heckled upon nothing else. Long +before polling day Plutus was converted. + +“It's catching on like old age pensions,” he said. “We've dished the +Liberals! To think that such a project should come from our side!” + +But it was only with the declaration of the poll that my battle was won. +No one expected more than a snatch victory, and I was in by over fifteen +hundred. At one bound Cossington's papers passed from apologetics varied +by repudiation to triumphant praise. “A renascent England, breeding +men,” said the leader in his chief daily on the morning after the +polling, and claimed that the Conservatives had been ever the pioneers +in sanely bold constructive projects. + +I came up to London with a weary but rejoicing Margaret by the night +train. + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ THE IMPOSSIBLE POSITION + + + +1 + + +To any one who did not know of that glowing secret between Isabel and +myself, I might well have appeared at that time the most successful and +enviable of men. I had recovered rapidly from an uncongenial start +in political life; I had become a considerable force through the BLUE +WEEKLY, and was shaping an increasingly influential body of opinion; I +had re-entered Parliament with quite dramatic distinction, and in spite +of a certain faltering on the part of the orthodox Conservatives +towards the bolder elements in our propaganda, I had loyal and unenvious +associates who were making me a power in the party. People were coming +to our group, understandings were developing. It was clear we should +play a prominent part in the next general election, and that, given a +Conservative victory, I should be assured of office. The world opened +out to me brightly and invitingly. Great schemes took shape in my mind, +always more concrete, always more practicable; the years ahead seemed +falling into order, shining with the credible promise of immense +achievement. + +And at the heart of it all, unseen and unsuspected, was the secret of my +relations with Isabel--like a seed that germinates and thrusts, thrusts +relentlessly. + +From the onset of the Handitch contest onward, my meetings with her had +been more and more pervaded by the discussion of our situation. It had +innumerable aspects. It was very present to us that we wanted to be +together as much as possible--we were beginning to long very much for +actual living together in the same house, so that one could come as +it were carelessly--unawares--upon the other, busy perhaps about some +trivial thing. We wanted to feel each other in the daily atmosphere. +Preceding our imperatively sterile passion, you must remember, outside +it, altogether greater than it so far as our individual lives were +concerned, there had grown and still grew an enormous affection and +intellectual sympathy between us. We brought all our impressions and all +our ideas to each other, to see them in each other's light. It is hard +to convey that quality of intellectual unison to any one who has not +experienced it. I thought more and more in terms of conversation with +Isabel; her possible comments upon things would flash into my mind, +oh!--with the very sound of her voice. + +I remember, too, the odd effect of seeing her in the distance going +about Handitch, like any stranger canvasser; the queer emotion of her +approach along the street, the greeting as she passed. The morning of +the polling she vanished from the constituency. I saw her for an instant +in the passage behind our Committee rooms. + +“Going?” said I. + +She nodded. + +“Stay it out. I want you to see the fun. I remember--the other time.” + +She didn't answer for a moment or so, and stood with face averted. + +“It's Margaret's show,” she said abruptly. “If I see her smiling there +like a queen by your side--! She did--last time. I remember.” She caught +at a sob and dashed her hand across her face impatiently. “Jealous fool, +mean and petty, jealous fool!... Good luck, old man, to you! You're +going to win. But I don't want to see the end of it all the same....” + +“Good-bye!” said I, clasping her hand as some supporter appeared in the +passage.... + +I came back to London victorious, and a little flushed and coarse with +victory; and so soon as I could break away I went to Isabel's flat and +found her white and worn, with the stain of secret weeping about her +eyes. I came into the room to her and shut the door. + +“You said I'd win,” I said, and held out my arms. + +She hugged me closely for a moment. + +“My dear,” I whispered, “it's nothing--without you--nothing!” + +We didn't speak for some seconds. Then she slipped from my hold. “Look!” + she said, smiling like winter sunshine. “I've had in all the morning +papers--the pile of them, and you--resounding.” + +“It's more than I dared hope.” + +“Or I.” + +She stood for a moment still smiling bravely, and then she was sobbing +in my arms. “The bigger you are--the more you show,” she said--“the more +we are parted. I know, I know--” + +I held her close to me, making no answer. + +Presently she became still. “Oh, well,” she said, and wiped her eyes and +sat down on the little sofa by the fire; and I sat down beside her. + +“I didn't know all there was in love,” she said, staring at the coals, +“when we went love-making.” + +I put my arm behind her and took a handful of her dear soft hair in my +hand and kissed it. + +“You've done a great thing this time,” she said. “Handitch will make +you.” + +“It opens big chances,” I said. “But why are you weeping, dear one?” + +“Envy,” she said, “and love.” + +“You're not lonely?” + +“I've plenty to do--and lots of people.” + +“Well?” + +“I want you.” + +“You've got me.” + +She put her arm about me and kissed me. “I want you,” she said, “just as +if I had nothing of you. You don't understand--how a woman wants a man. +I thought once if I just gave myself to you it would be enough. It was +nothing--it was just a step across the threshold. My dear, every moment +you are away I ache for you--ache! I want to be about when it isn't +love-making or talk. I want to be doing things for you, and watching +you when you're not thinking of me. All those safe, careless, intimate +things. And something else--” She stopped. “Dear, I don't want to bother +you. I just want you to know I love you....” + +She caught my head in her hands and kissed it, then stood up abruptly. + +I looked up at her, a little perplexed. + +“Dear heart,” said I, “isn't this enough? You're my councillor, my +colleague, my right hand, the secret soul of my life--” + +“And I want to darn your socks,” she said, smiling back at me. + +“You're insatiable.” + +She smiled “No,” she said. “I'm not insatiable, Master. But I'm a woman +in love. And I'm finding out what I want, and what is necessary to +me--and what I can't have. That's all.” + +“We get a lot.” + +“We want a lot. You and I are greedy people for the things we like, +Master. It's very evident we've got nearly all we can ever have of one +another--and I'm not satisfied.” + +“What more is there? + +“For you--very little. I wonder. For me--every thing. Yes--everything. +You didn't mean it, Master; you didn't know any more than I did when I +began, but love between a man and a woman is sometimes very one-sided. +Fearfully one-sided! That's all....” + +“Don't YOU ever want children?” she said abruptly. + +“I suppose I do.” + +“You don't!” + +“I haven't thought of them.” + +“A man doesn't, perhaps. But I have.... I want them--like hunger. +YOUR children, and home with you. Really, continually you! That's the +trouble.... I can't have 'em, Master, and I can't have you.” + +She was crying, and through her tears she laughed. + +“I'm going to make a scene,” she said, “and get this over. I'm so +discontented and miserable; I've got to tell you. It would come between +us if I didn't. I'm in love with you, with everything--with all my +brains. I'll pull through all right. I'll be good, Master, never you +fear. But to-day I'm crying out with all my being. This election--You're +going up; you're going on. In these papers--you're a great big fact. +It's suddenly come home to me. At the back of my mind I've always had +the idea I was going to have you somehow presently for myself--I mean to +have you to go long tramps with, to keep house for, to get meals for, +to watch for of an evening. It's a sort of habitual background to my +thought of you. And it's nonsense--utter nonsense!” She stopped. She was +crying and choking. “And the child, you know--the child!” + +I was troubled beyond measure, but Handitch and its intimations were +clear and strong. + +“We can't have that,” I said. + +“No,” she said, “we can't have that.” + +“We've got our own things to do.” + +“YOUR things,” she said. + +“Aren't they yours too?” + +“Because of you,” she said. + +“Aren't they your very own things?” + +“Women don't have that sort of very own thing. Indeed, it's true! +And think! You've been down there preaching the goodness of children, +telling them the only good thing in a state is happy, hopeful children, +working to free mothers and children--” + +“And we give our own children to do it?” I said. + +“Yes,” she said. “And sometimes I think it's too much to give--too much +altogether.... Children get into a woman's brain--when she mustn't have +them, especially when she must never hope for them. Think of the child +we might have now!--the little creature with soft, tender skin, and +little hands and little feet! At times it haunts me. It comes and says, +Why wasn't I given life? I can hear it in the night.... The world is +full of such little ghosts, dear lover--little things that asked for +life and were refused. They clamour to me. It's like a little fist +beating at my heart. Love children, beautiful children. Little cold +hands that tear at my heart! Oh, my heart and my lord!” She was holding +my arm with both her hands and weeping against it, and now she drew +herself to my shoulder and wept and sobbed in my embrace. “I shall never +sit with your child on my knee and you beside me-never, and I am a woman +and your lover!...” + + + +2 + + +But the profound impossibility of our relation was now becoming more and +more apparent to us. We found ourselves seeking justification, clinging +passionately to a situation that was coldly, pitilessly, impossible and +fated. We wanted quite intensely to live together and have a child, but +also we wanted very many other things that were incompatible with these +desires. It was extraordinarily difficult to weigh our political and +intellectual ambitions against those intimate wishes. The weights kept +altering according as one found oneself grasping this valued thing or +that. It wasn't as if we could throw everything aside for our love, +and have that as we wanted it. Love such as we bore one another isn't +altogether, or even chiefly, a thing in itself--it is for the most part +a value set upon things. Our love was interwoven with all our other +interests; to go out of the world and live in isolation seemed to us +like killing the best parts of each other; we loved the sight of each +other engaged finely and characteristically, we knew each other best +as activities. We had no delusions about material facts; we didn't want +each other alive or dead, we wanted each other fully alive. We wanted +to do big things together, and for us to take each other openly and +desperately would leave us nothing in the world to do. We wanted +children indeed passionately, but children with every helpful chance in +the world, and children born in scandal would be handicapped at every +turn. We wanted to share a home, and not a solitude. + +And when we were at this stage of realisation, began the intimations +that we were found out, and that scandal was afoot against us.... + +I heard of it first from Esmeer, who deliberately mentioned it, +with that steady grey eye of his watching me, as an instance of the +preposterous falsehoods people will circulate. It came to Isabel +almost simultaneously through a married college friend, who made it her +business to demand either confirmation or denial. It filled us both with +consternation. In the surprise of the moment Isabel admitted her secret, +and her friend went off “reserving her freedom of action.” + +Discovery broke out in every direction. Friends with grave faces and +an atmosphere of infinite tact invaded us both. Other friends ceased to +invade either of us. It was manifest we had become--we knew not how--a +private scandal, a subject for duologues, an amazement, a perplexity, +a vivid interest. In a few brief weeks it seemed London passed from +absolute unsuspiciousness to a chattering exaggeration of its knowledge +of our relations. + +It was just the most inappropriate time for that disclosure. The long +smouldering antagonism to my endowment of motherhood ideas had flared +up into an active campaign in the EXPURGATOR, and it would be altogether +disastrous to us if I should be convicted of any personal irregularity. +It was just because of the manifest and challenging respectability of my +position that I had been able to carry the thing as far as I had done. +Now suddenly my fortunes had sprung a leak, and scandal was pouring +in.... It chanced, too, that a wave of moral intolerance was sweeping +through London, one of those waves in which the bitterness of the +consciously just finds an ally in the panic of the undiscovered. A +certain Father Blodgett had been preaching against social corruption +with extraordinary force, and had roused the Church of England people +to a kind of competition in denunciation. The old methods of the +Anti-Socialist campaign had been renewed, and had offered far too wide +a scope and too tempting an opportunity for private animosity, to be +restricted to the private affairs of the Socialists. I had intimations +of an extensive circulation of “private and confidential” letters.... + +I think there can be nothing else in life quite like the unnerving +realisation that rumour and scandal are afoot about one. Abruptly +one's confidence in the solidity of the universe disappears. One +walks silenced through a world that one feels to be full of inaudible +accusations. One cannot challenge the assault, get it out into the open, +separate truth and falsehood. It slinks from you, turns aside its face. +Old acquaintances suddenly evaded me, made extraordinary excuses; +men who had presumed on the verge of my world and pestered me with an +intrusive enterprise, now took the bold step of flat repudiation. I +became doubtful about the return of a nod, retracted all those tentacles +of easy civility that I had hitherto spread to the world. I still grow +warm with amazed indignation when I recall that Edward Crampton, meeting +me full on the steps of the Climax Club, cut me dead. “By God!” I cried, +and came near catching him by the throat and wringing out of him what +of all good deeds and bad, could hearten him, a younger man than I and +empty beyond comparison, to dare to play the judge to me. And then I had +an open slight from Mrs. Millingham, whom I had counted on as one counts +upon the sunrise. I had not expected things of that sort; they were +disconcerting beyond measure; it was as if the world were giving way +beneath my feet, as though something failed in the essential confidence +of life, as though a hand of wet ice had touched my heart. Similar +things were happening to Isabel. Yet we went on working, visiting, +meeting, trying to ignore this gathering of implacable forces against +us. + +For a time I was perplexed beyond measure to account for this campaign. +Then I got a clue. The centre of diffusion was the Bailey household. The +Baileys had never forgiven me my abandonment of the young Liberal group +they had done so much to inspire and organise; their dinner-table had +long been a scene of hostile depreciation of the BLUE WEEKLY and all its +allies; week after week Altiora proclaimed that I was “doing nothing,” + and found other causes for our bye-election triumphs; I counted Chambers +Street a dangerous place for me. Yet, nevertheless, I was astonished to +find them using a private scandal against me. They did. I think Handitch +had filled up the measure of their bitterness, for I had not only +abandoned them, but I was succeeding beyond even their power of +misrepresentation. Always I had been a wasp in their spider's web, +difficult to claim as a tool, uncritical, antagonistic. I admired their +work and devotion enormously, but I had never concealed my contempt for +a certain childish vanity they displayed, and for the frequent puerility +of their political intrigues. I suppose contempt galls more than +injuries, and anyhow they had me now. They had me. Bailey, I found, +was warning fathers of girls against me as a “reckless libertine,” and +Altiora, flushed, roguish, and dishevelled, was sitting on her fender +curb after dinner, and pledging little parties of five or six women at a +time with infinite gusto not to let the matter go further. Our cell was +open to the world, and a bleak, distressful daylight streaming in. + +I had a gleam of a more intimate motive in Altiora from the reports that +came to me. Isabel had been doing a series of five or six articles in +the POLITICAL REVIEW in support of our campaign, the POLITICAL REVIEW +which had hitherto been loyally Baileyite. Quite her best writing up to +the present, at any rate, is in those papers, and no doubt Altiora had +had not only to read her in those invaded columns, but listen to her +praises in the mouths of the tactless influential. Altiora, like so many +people who rely on gesture and vocal insistence in conversation, writes +a poor and slovenly prose and handles an argument badly; Isabel has her +University training behind her and wrote from the first with the stark +power of a clear-headed man. “Now we know,” said Altiora, with just a +gleam of malice showing through her brightness, “now we know who helps +with the writing!” + +She revealed astonishing knowledge. + +For a time I couldn't for the life of me discover her sources. I had, +indeed, a desperate intention of challenging her, and then I bethought +me of a youngster named Curmain, who had been my supplemental typist and +secretary for a time, and whom I had sent on to her before the days of +our breach. “Of course!” said I, “Curmain!” He was a tall, drooping, +sidelong youth with sandy hair, a little forward head, and a long +thin neck. He stole stamps, and, I suspected, rifled my private letter +drawer, and I found him one day on a turn of the stairs looking guilty +and ruffled with a pretty Irish housemaid of Margaret's manifestly in +a state of hot indignation. I saw nothing, but I felt everything in the +air between them. I hate this pestering of servants, but at the same +time I didn't want Curmain wiped out of existence, so I had packed him +off without unnecessary discussion to Altiora. He was quick and cheap +anyhow, and I thought her general austerity ought to redeem him if +anything could; the Chambers Street housemaid wasn't for any man's +kissing and showed it, and the stamps and private letters were looked +after with an efficiency altogether surpassing mine. And Altiora, I've +no doubt left now whatever, pumped this young undesirable about me, +and scenting a story, had him to dinner alone one evening to get to the +bottom of the matter. She got quite to the bottom of it,--it must have +been a queer duologue. She read Isabel's careless, intimate letters +to me, so to speak, by this proxy, and she wasn't ashamed to use this +information in the service of the bitterness that had sprung up in her +since our political breach. It was essentially a personal bitterness; it +helped no public purpose of theirs to get rid of me. My downfall in +any public sense was sheer waste,--the loss of a man. She knew she was +behaving badly, and so, when it came to remonstrance, she behaved worse. +She'd got names and dates and places; the efficiency of her information +was irresistible. And she set to work at it marvellously. Never before, +in all her pursuit of efficient ideals, had Altiora achieved such levels +of efficiency. I wrote a protest that was perhaps ill-advised and angry, +I went to her and tried to stop her. She wouldn't listen, she wouldn't +think, she denied and lied, she behaved like a naughty child of six +years old which has made up its mind to be hurtful. It wasn't only, I +think, that she couldn't bear our political and social influence; she +also--I realised at that interview couldn't bear our loving. It seemed +to her the sickliest thing,--a thing quite unendurable. While such +things were, the virtue had gone out of her world. + +I've the vividest memory of that call of mine. She'd just come in and +taken off her hat, and she was grey and dishevelled and tired, and in +a business-like dress of black and crimson that didn't suit her and +was muddy about the skirts; she'd a cold in her head and sniffed +penetratingly, she avoided my eye as she talked and interrupted +everything I had to say; she kept stabbing fiercely at the cushions of +her sofa with a long hat-pin and pretending she was overwhelmed with +grief at the DEBACLE she was deliberately organising. + +“Then part,” she cried, “part. If you don't want a smashing up,--part! +You two have got to be parted. You've got never to see each other ever, +never to speak.” There was a zest in her voice. “We're not circulating +stories,” she denied. “No! And Curmain never told us anything--Curmain +is an EXCELLENT young man; oh! a quite excellent young man. You +misjudged him altogether.”... + +I was equally unsuccessful with Bailey. I caught the little wretch in +the League Club, and he wriggled and lied. He wouldn't say where he had +got his facts, he wouldn't admit he had told any one. When I gave him +the names of two men who had come to me astonished and incredulous, +he attempted absurdly to make me think they had told HIM. He did his +horrible little best to suggest that honest old Quackett, who had just +left England for the Cape, was the real scandalmonger. That struck me +as mean, even for Bailey. I've still the odd vivid impression of his +fluting voice, excusing the inexcusable, his big, shifty face evading +me, his perspiration-beaded forehead, the shrugging shoulders, and the +would-be exculpatory gestures--Houndsditch gestures--of his enormous +ugly hands. + +“I can assure you, my dear fellow,” he said; “I can assure you we've +done everything to shield you--everything.”... + + + +3 + + +Isabel came after dinner one evening and talked in the office. She made +a white-robed, dusky figure against the deep blues of my big window. I +sat at my desk and tore a quill pen to pieces as I talked. + +“The Baileys don't intend to let this drop,” I said. “They mean that +every one in London is to know about it.” + +“I know.” + +“Well!” I said. + +“Dear heart,” said Isabel, facing it, “it's no good waiting for things +to overtake us; we're at the parting of the ways.” + +“What are we to do?” + +“They won't let us go on.” + +“Damn them!” + +“They are ORGANISING scandal.” + +“It's no good waiting for things to overtake us,” I echoed; “they have +overtaken us.” I turned on her. “What do you want to do?” + +“Everything,” she said. “Keep you and have our work. Aren't we Mates?” + +“We can't.” + +“And we can't!” + +“I've got to tell Margaret,” I said. + +“Margaret!” + +“I can't bear the idea of any one else getting in front with it. I've +been wincing about Margaret secretly--” + +“I know. You'll have to tell her--and make your peace with her.” + +She leant back against the bookcases under the window. + +“We've had some good times, Master;” she said, with a sigh in her voice. + +And then for a long time we stared at one another in silence. + +“We haven't much time left,” she said. + +“Shall we bolt?” I said. + +“And leave all this?” she asked, with her eyes going round the room. +“And that?” And her head indicated Westminster. “No!” + +I said no more of bolting. + +“We've got to screw ourselves up to surrender,” she said. + +“Something.” + +“A lot.” + +“Master,” she said, “it isn't all sex and stuff between us?” + +“No!” + +“I can't give up the work. Our work's my life.” + +We came upon another long pause. + +“No one will believe we've ceased to be lovers--if we simply do,” she +said. + +“We shouldn't.” + +“We've got to do something more parting than that.” + +I nodded, and again we paused. She was coming to something. + +“I could marry Shoesmith,” she said abruptly. + +“But--” I objected. + +“He knows. It wasn't fair. I told him.” + +“Oh, that explains,” I said. “There's been a kind of sulkiness--But--you +told him?” + +She nodded. “He's rather badly hurt,” she said. “He's been a good +friend to me. He's curiously loyal. But something, something he said one +day--forced me to let him know.... That's been the beastliness of all +this secrecy. That's the beastliness of all secrecy. You have to spring +surprises on people. But he keeps on. He's steadfast. He'd already +suspected. He wants me very badly to marry him....” + +“But you don't want to marry him?” + +“I'm forced to think of it.” + +“But does he want to marry you at that? Take you as a present from the +world at large?--against your will and desire?... I don't understand +him.” + +“He cares for me.” + +“How?” + +“He thinks this is a fearful mess for me. He wants to pull it straight.” + +We sat for a time in silence, with imaginations that obstinately refused +to take up the realities of this proposition. + +“I don't want you to marry Shoesmith,” I said at last. + +“Don't you like him?” + +“Not as your husband.” + +“He's a very clever and sturdy person--and very generous and devoted to +me.” + +“And me?” + +“You can't expect that. He thinks you are wonderful--and, naturally, +that you ought not to have started this.” + +“I've a curious dislike to any one thinking that but myself. I'm quite +ready to think it myself.” + +“He'd let us be friends--and meet.” + +“Let us be friends!” I cried, after a long pause. “You and me!” + +“He wants me to be engaged soon. Then, he says, he can go round fighting +these rumours, defending us both--and force a quarrel on the Baileys.” + +“I don't understand him,” I said, and added, “I don't understand you.” + +I was staring at her face. It seemed white and set in the dimness. + +“Do you really mean this, Isabel?” I asked. + +“What else is there to do, my dear?--what else is there to do at all? +I've been thinking day and night. You can't go away with me. You can't +smash yourself suddenly in the sight of all men. I'd rather die than +that should happen. Look what you are becoming in the country! Look at +all you've built up!--me helping. I wouldn't let you do it if you could. +I wouldn't let you--if it were only for Margaret's sake. THIS... closes +the scandal, closes everything.” + +“It closes all our life together,” I cried. + +She was silent. + +“It never ought to have begun,” I said. + +She winced. Then abruptly she was on her knees before me, with her hands +upon my shoulder and her eyes meeting mine. + +“My dear,” she said very earnestly, “don't misunderstand me! Don't think +I'm retreating from the things we've done! Our love is the best thing I +could ever have had from life. Nothing can ever equal it; nothing could +ever equal the beauty and delight you and I have had together. Never! +You have loved me; you do love me....” + +No one could ever know how to love you as I have loved you; no one could +ever love me as you have loved me, my king. And it's just because it's +been so splendid, dear; it's just because I'd die rather than have a +tithe of all this wiped out of my life again--for it's made me, it's all +I am--dear, it's years since I began loving you--it's just because of +its goodness that I want not to end in wreckage now, not to end in +the smashing up of all the big things I understand in you and love in +you.... + +“What is there for us if we keep on and go away?” she went on. “All +the big interests in our lives will vanish--everything. We shall become +specialised people--people overshadowed by a situation. We shall be +an elopement, a romance--all our breadth and meaning gone! People will +always think of it first when they think of us; all our work and aims +will be warped by it and subordinated to it. Is it good enough, dear? +Just to specialise.... I think of you. We've got a case, a passionate +case, the best of cases, but do we want to spend all our lives defending +it and justifying it? And there's that other life. I know now you care +for Margaret--you care more than you think you do. You have said fine +things of her. I've watched you about her. Little things have dropped +from you. She's given her life for you; she's nothing without you. +You feel that to your marrow all the time you are thinking about these +things. Oh, I'm not jealous, dear. I love you for loving her. I love you +in relation to her. But there it is, an added weight against us, another +thing worth saving.” + +Presently, I remember, she sat back on her heels and looked up into +my face. “We've done wrong--and parting's paying. It's time to pay. +We needn't have paid, if we'd kept to the track.... You and I, Master, +we've got to be men.” + +“Yes,” I said; “we've got to be men.” + + + +4 + + +I was driven to tell Margaret about our situation by my intolerable +dread that otherwise the thing might come to her through some stupid and +clumsy informant. She might even meet Altiora, and have it from her. + +I can still recall the feeling of sitting at my desk that night in that +large study of mine in Radnor Square, waiting for Margaret to come home. +It was oddly like the feeling of a dentist's reception-room; only it was +for me to do the dentistry with clumsy, cruel hands. I had left the door +open so that she would come in to me. + +I heard her silken rustle on the stairs at last, and then she was in the +doorway. “May I come in?” she said. + +“Do,” I said, and turned round to her. + +“Working?” she said. + +“Hard,” I answered. “Where have YOU been?” + +“At the Vallerys'. Mr. Evesham was talking about you. They were all +talking. I don't think everybody knew who I was. Just Mrs. Mumble I'd +been to them. Lord Wardenham doesn't like you.” + +“He doesn't.” + +“But they all feel you're rather big, anyhow. Then I went on to Park +Lane to hear a new pianist and some other music at Eva's.” + +“Yes.” + +“Then I looked in at the Brabants' for some midnight tea before I came +on here. They'd got some writers--and Grant was there.” + +“You HAVE been flying round....” + +There was a little pause between us. + +I looked at her pretty, unsuspecting face, and at the slender grace of +her golden-robed body. What gulfs there were between us! “You've been +amused,” I said. + +“It's been amusing. You've been at the House?” + +“The Medical Education Bill kept me.”... + +After all, why should I tell her? She'd got to a way of living that +fulfilled her requirements. Perhaps she'd never hear. But all that day +and the day before I'd been making up my mind to do the thing. + +“I want to tell you something,” I said. “I wish you'd sit down for a +moment or so.”... + +Once I had begun, it seemed to me I had to go through with it. + +Something in the quality of my voice gave her an intimation of unusual +gravity. She looked at me steadily for a moment and sat down slowly in +my armchair. + +“What is it?” she said. + +I went on awkwardly. “I've got to tell you--something extraordinarily +distressing,” I said. + +She was manifestly altogether unaware. + +“There seems to be a good deal of scandal abroad--I've only recently +heard of it--about myself--and Isabel.” + +“Isabel!” + +I nodded. + +“What do they say?” she asked. + +It was difficult, I found, to speak. + +“They say she's my mistress.” + +“Oh! How abominable!” + +She spoke with the most natural indignation. Our eyes met. + +“We've been great friends,” I said. + +“Yes. And to make THAT of it. My poor dear! But how can they?” She +paused and looked at me. “It's so incredible. How can any one believe +it? I couldn't.” + +She stopped, with her distressed eyes regarding me. Her expression +changed to dread. There was a tense stillness for a second, perhaps. + +I turned my face towards the desk, and took up and dropped a handful of +paper fasteners. + +“Margaret,” I said, “I'm afraid you'll have to believe it.” + + + +5 + + +Margaret sat very still. When I looked at her again, her face was very +white, and her distressed eyes scrutinised me. Her lips quivered as she +spoke. “You really mean--THAT?” she said. + +I nodded. + +“I never dreamt.” + +“I never meant you to dream.” + +“And that is why--we've been apart?” + +I thought. “I suppose it is.” + +“Why have you told me now?” + +“Those rumours. I didn't want any one else to tell you.” + +“Or else it wouldn't have mattered?” + +“No.” + +She turned her eyes from me to the fire. Then for a moment she looked +about the room she had made for me, and then quite silently, with a +childish quivering of her lips, with a sort of dismayed distress upon +her face, she was weeping. She sat weeping in her dress of cloth of +gold, with her bare slender arms dropped limp over the arms of her +chair, and her eyes averted from me, making no effort to stay or staunch +her tears. “I am sorry, Margaret,” I said. “I was in love.... I did not +understand....” + +Presently she asked: “What are you going to do?” + +“You see, Margaret, now it's come to be your affair--I want to know what +you--what you want.” + +“You want to leave me?” + +“If you want me to, I must.” + +“Leave Parliament--leave all the things you are doing,--all this fine +movement of yours?” + +“No.” I spoke sullenly. “I don't want to leave anything. I want to stay +on. I've told you, because I think we--Isabel and I, I mean--have got to +drive through a storm of scandal anyhow. I don't know how far things may +go, how much people may feel, and I can't, I can't have you unconscious, +unarmed, open to any revelation--” + +She made no answer. + +“When the thing began--I knew it was stupid but I thought it was a +thing that wouldn't change, wouldn't be anything but itself, wouldn't +unfold--consequences.... People have got hold of these vague rumours.... +Directly it reached any one else but--but us two--I saw it had to come +to you.” + +I stopped. I had that distressful feeling I have always had with +Margaret, of not being altogether sure she heard, of being doubtful +if she understood. I perceived that once again I had struck at her and +shattered a thousand unsubstantial pinnacles. And I couldn't get at +her, to help her, or touch her mind! I stood up, and at my movement she +moved. She produced a dainty little handkerchief, and made an effort to +wipe her face with it, and held it to her eyes. “Oh, my Husband!” she +sobbed. + +“What do you mean to do?” she said, with her voice muffled by her +handkerchief. + +“We're going to end it,” I said. + +Something gripped me tormentingly as I said that. I drew a chair beside +her and sat down. “You and I, Margaret, have been partners,” I began. +“We've built up this life of ours together; I couldn't have done it +without you. We've made a position, created a work--” + +She shook her head. “You,” she said. + +“You helping. I don't want to shatter it--if you don't want it +shattered. I can't leave my work. I can't leave you. I want you to +have--all that you have ever had. I've never meant to rob you. I've made +an immense and tragic blunder. You don't know how things took us, how +different they seemed! My character and accident have conspired--We'll +pay--in ourselves, not in our public service.” + +I halted again. Margaret remained very still. + +“I want you to understand that the thing is at an end. It is definitely +at an end. We--we talked--yesterday. We mean to end it altogether.” I +clenched my hands. “She's--she's going to marry Arnold Shoesmith.” + +I wasn't looking now at Margaret any more, but I heard the rustle of her +movement as she turned on me. + +“It's all right,” I said, clinging to my explanation. “We're doing +nothing shabby. He knows. He will. It's all as right--as things can +be now. We're not cheating any one, Margaret. We're doing things +straight--now. Of course, you know.... We shall--we shall have to make +sacrifices. Give things up pretty completely. Very completely.... We +shall have not to see each other for a time, you know. Perhaps not a +long time. Two or three years. Or write--or just any of that sort of +thing ever--” + +Some subconscious barrier gave way in me. I found myself crying +uncontrollably--as I have never cried since I was a little child. I was +amazed and horrified at myself. And wonderfully, Margaret was on her +knees beside me, with her arms about me, mingling her weeping with mine. +“Oh, my Husband!” she cried, “my poor Husband! Does it hurt you so? I +would do anything! Oh, the fool I am! Dear, I love you. I love you over +and away and above all these jealous little things!” + +She drew down my head to her as a mother might draw down the head of +a son. She caressed me, weeping bitterly with me. “Oh! my dear,” she +sobbed, “my dear! I've never seen you cry! I've never seen you cry. +Ever! I didn't know you could. Oh! my dear! Can't you have her, my dear, +if you want her? I can't bear it! Let me help you, dear. Oh! my Husband! +My Man! I can't bear to have you cry!” For a time she held me in +silence. + +“I've thought this might happen, I dreamt it might happen. You two, I +mean. It was dreaming put it into my head. When I've seen you together, +so glad with each other.... Oh! Husband mine, believe me! believe me! +I'm stupid, I'm cold, I'm only beginning to realise how stupid and cold, +but all I want in all the world is to give my life to you.”... + + + +6 + + +“We can't part in a room,” said Isabel. + +“We'll have one last talk together,” I said, and planned that we should +meet for a half a day between Dover and Walmer and talk ourselves out. +I still recall that day very well, recall even the curious exaltation of +grief that made our mental atmosphere distinctive and memorable. We had +seen so much of one another, had become so intimate, that we talked of +parting even as we parted with a sense of incredible remoteness. We went +together up over the cliffs, and to a place where they fall towards the +sea, past the white, quaint-lanterned lighthouses of the South Foreland. +There, in a kind of niche below the crest, we sat talking. It was a +spacious day, serenely blue and warm, and on the wrinkled water remotely +below a black tender and six hooded submarines came presently, and +engaged in mysterious manoeuvers. Shrieking gulls and chattering +jackdaws circled over us and below us, and dived and swooped; and a +skerry of weedy, fallen chalk appeared, and gradually disappeared again, +as the tide fell and rose. + +We talked and thought that afternoon on every aspect of our relations. +It seems to me now we talked so wide and far that scarcely an issue in +the life between man and woman can arise that we did not at least touch +upon. Lying there at Isabel's feet, I have become for myself a symbol of +all this world-wide problem between duty and conscious, passionate love +the world has still to solve. Because it isn't solved; there's a wrong +in it either way.. .. The sky, the wide horizon, seemed to lift us out +of ourselves until we were something representative and general. She was +womanhood become articulate, talking to her lover. + +“I ought,” I said, “never to have loved you.” + +“It wasn't a thing planned,” she said. + +“I ought never to have let our talk slip to that, never to have turned +back from America.” + +“I'm glad we did it,” she said. “Don't think I repent.” + +I looked at her. + +“I will never repent,” she said. “Never!” as though she clung to her +life in saying it. + +I remember we talked for a long time of divorce. It seemed to us then, +and it seems to us still, that it ought to have been possible for +Margaret to divorce me, and for me to marry without the scandalous and +ugly publicity, the taint and ostracism that follow such a readjustment. +We went on to the whole perplexing riddle of marriage. We criticised +the current code, how muddled and conventionalised it had become, how +modified by subterfuges and concealments and new necessities, and the +increasing freedom of women. “It's all like Bromstead when the building +came,” I said; for I had often talked to her of that early impression of +purpose dissolving again into chaotic forces. “There is no clear right +in the world any more. The world is Byzantine. The justest man to-day +must practise a tainted goodness.” + +These questions need discussion--a magnificent frankness of +discussion--if any standards are again to establish an effective hold +upon educated people. Discretions, as I have said already, will never +hold any one worth holding--longer than they held us. Against every +“shalt not” there must be a “why not” plainly put,--the “why not” + largest and plainest, the law deduced from its purpose. “You and I, +Isabel,” I said, “have always been a little disregardful of duty, partly +at least because the idea of duty comes to us so ill-clad. Oh! I know +there's an extravagant insubordinate strain in us, but that wasn't all. +I wish humbugs would leave duty alone. I wish all duty wasn't covered +with slime. That's where the real mischief comes in. Passion can always +contrive to clothe itself in beauty, strips itself splendid. That +carried us. But for all its mean associations there is this duty.... + +“Don't we come rather late to it?” + +“Not so late that it won't be atrociously hard to do.” + +“It's queer to think of now,” said Isabel. “Who could believe we did all +we have done honestly? Well, in a manner honestly. Who could believe we +thought this might be hidden? Who could trace it all step by step from +the time when we found that a certain boldness in our talk was pleasing? +We talked of love.... Master, there's not much for us to do in the way +of Apologia that any one will credit. And yet if it were possible to +tell the very heart of our story.... + +“Does Margaret really want to go on with you?” she asked--“shield +you--knowing of... THIS?” + +“I'm certain. I don't understand--just as I don't understand Shoesmith, +but she does. These people walk on solid ground which is just thin air +to us. They've got something we haven't got. Assurances? I wonder.”... + +Then it was, or later, we talked of Shoesmith, and what her life might +be with him. + +“He's good,” she said; “he's kindly. He's everything but magic. He's the +very image of the decent, sober, honourable life. You can't say a thing +against him or I--except that something--something in his imagination, +something in the tone of his voice--fails for me. Why don't I love +him?--he's a better man than you! Why don't you? IS he a better man than +you? He's usage, he's honour, he's the right thing, he's the breed and +the tradition,--a gentleman. You're your erring, incalculable self. I +suppose we women will trust this sort and love your sort to the very end +of time....” + +We lay side by side and nibbled at grass stalks as we talked. It seemed +enormously unreasonable to us that two people who had come to the pitch +of easy and confident affection and happiness that held between us +should be obliged to part and shun one another, or murder half the +substance of their lives. We felt ourselves crushed and beaten by an +indiscriminating machine which destroys happiness in the service of +jealousy. “The mass of people don't feel these things in quite the same +manner as we feel them,” she said. “Is it because they're different in +grain, or educated out of some primitive instinct?” + +“It's because we've explored love a little, and they know no more +than the gateway,” I said. “Lust and then jealousy; their simple +conception--and we have gone past all that and wandered hand in +hand....” + +I remember that for a time we watched two of that larger sort of gull, +whose wings are brownish-white, circle and hover against the blue. And +then we lay and looked at a band of water mirror clear far out to sea, +and wondered why the breeze that rippled all the rest should leave it so +serene. + +“And in this State of ours,” I resumed. + +“Eh!” said Isabel, rolling over into a sitting posture and looking out +at the horizon. “Let's talk no more of things we can never see. Talk to +me of the work you are doing and all we shall do--after we have parted. +We've said too little of that. We've had our red life, and it's over. +Thank Heaven!--though we stole it! Talk about your work, dear, and the +things we'll go on doing--just as though we were still together. We'll +still be together in a sense--through all these things we have in +common.” + +And so we talked of politics and our outlook. We were interested to the +pitch of self-forgetfulness. We weighed persons and forces, discussed +the probabilities of the next general election, the steady drift of +public opinion in the north and west away from Liberalism towards us. +It was very manifest that in spite of Wardenham and the EXPURGATOR, we +should come into the new Government strongly. The party had no one else, +all the young men were formally or informally with us; Esmeer would have +office, Lord Tarvrille, I... and very probably there would be something +for Shoesmith. “And for my own part,” I said, “I count on backing on the +Liberal side. For the last two years we've been forcing competition in +constructive legislation between the parties. The Liberals have not been +long in following up our Endowment of Motherhood lead. They'll have to +give votes and lip service anyhow. Half the readers of the BLUE WEEKLY, +they say, are Liberals.... + +“I remember talking about things of this sort with old Willersley,” I +said, “ever so many years ago. It was some place near Locarno, and we +looked down the lake that shone weltering--just as now we look over the +sea. And then we dreamt in an indistinct featureless way of all that you +and I are doing now.” + +“I!” said Isabel, and laughed. + +“Well, of some such thing,” I said, and remained for awhile silent, +thinking of Locarno. + +I recalled once more the largeness, the release from small personal +things that I had felt in my youth; statecraft became real and wonderful +again with the memory, the gigantic handling of gigantic problems. I +began to talk out my thoughts, sitting up beside her, as I could never +talk of them to any one but Isabel; began to recover again the +purpose that lay under all my political ambitions and adjustments and +anticipations. I saw the State, splendid and wide as I had seen it in +that first travel of mine, but now it was no mere distant prospect of +spires and pinnacles, but populous with fine-trained, bold-thinking, +bold-doing people. It was as if I had forgotten for a long time and now +remembered with amazement. + +At first, I told her, I had been altogether at a loss how I could do +anything to battle against the aimless muddle of our world; I had +wanted a clue--until she had come into my life questioning, suggesting, +unconsciously illuminating. “But I have done nothing,” she protested. I +declared she had done everything in growing to education under my eyes, +in reflecting again upon all the processes that had made myself, so +that instead of abstractions and blue-books and bills and devices, I had +realised the world of mankind as a crowd needing before all things fine +women and men. We'd spoilt ourselves in learning that, but anyhow we had +our lesson. Before her I was in a nineteenth-century darkness, dealing +with the nation as if it were a crowd of selfish men, forgetful of women +and children and that shy wild thing in the hearts of men, love, which +must be drawn upon as it has never been drawn upon before, if the State +is to live. I saw now how it is possible to bring the loose factors of a +great realm together, to create a mind of literature and thought in it, +and the expression of a purpose to make it self-conscious and fine. +I had it all clear before me, so that at a score of points I could +presently begin. The BLUE WEEKLY was a centre of force. Already we had +given Imperialism a criticism, and leavened half the press from our +columns. Our movement consolidated and spread. We should presently come +into power. Everything moved towards our hands. We should be able to get +at the schools, the services, the universities, the church; enormously +increase the endowment of research, and organise what was sorely wanted, +a criticism of research; contrive a closer contact between the press and +creative intellectual life; foster literature, clarify, strengthen the +public consciousness, develop social organisation and a sense of the +State. Men were coming to us every day, brilliant young peers like Lord +Dentonhill, writers like Carnot and Cresswell. It filled me with pride +to win such men. “We stand for so much more than we seem to stand for,” + I said. I opened my heart to her, so freely that I hesitate to open my +heart even to the reader, telling of projects and ambitions I cherished, +of my consciousness of great powers and widening opportunities.... + +Isabel watched me as I talked. + +She too, I think, had forgotten these things for a while. For it is +curious and I think a very significant thing that since we had become +lovers, we had talked very little of the broader things that had once so +strongly gripped our imaginations. + +“It's good,” I said, “to talk like this to you, to get back to youth and +great ambitions with you. There have been times lately when politics has +seemed the pettiest game played with mean tools for mean ends--and none +the less so that the happiness of three hundred million people might be +touched by our follies. I talk to no one else like this.... And now I +think of parting, I think but of how much more I might have talked to +you.”... + +Things drew to an end at last, but after we had spoken of a thousand +things. + +“We've talked away our last half day,” I said, staring over my shoulder +at the blazing sunset sky behind us. “Dear, it's been the last day of +our lives for us.... It doesn't seem like the last day of our lives. Or +any day.” + +“I wonder how it will feel?” said Isabel. + +“It will be very strange at first--not to be able to tell you things.” + +“I've a superstition that after--after we've parted--if ever I go into +my room and talk, you'll hear. You'll be--somewhere.” + +“I shall be in the world--yes.” + +“I don't feel as though these days ahead were real. Here we are, here we +remain.” + +“Yes, I feel that. As though you and I were two immortals, who didn't +live in time and space at all, who never met, who couldn't part, and +here we lie on Olympus. And those two poor creatures who did meet, poor +little Richard Remington and Isabel Rivers, who met and loved too much +and had to part, they part and go their ways, and we lie here and watch +them, you and I. She'll cry, poor dear.” + +“She'll cry. She's crying now!” + +“Poor little beasts! I think he'll cry too. He winces. He could--for +tuppence. I didn't know he had lachrymal glands at all until a little +while ago. I suppose all love is hysterical--and a little foolish. Poor +mites! Silly little pitiful creatures! How we have blundered! Think how +we must look to God! Well, we'll pity them, and then we'll inspire him +to stiffen up again--and do as we've determined he shall do. We'll see +it through,--we who lie here on the cliff. They'll be mean at times, and +horrid at times; we know them! Do you see her, a poor little fine lady +in a great house,--she sometimes goes to her room and writes.” + +“She writes for his BLUE WEEKLY still.” + +“Yes. Sometimes--I hope. And he's there in the office with a bit of her +copy in his hand.” + +“Is it as good as if she still talked it over with him before she wrote +it? Is it?” + +“Better, I think. Let's play it's better--anyhow. It may be that talking +over was rather mixed with love-making. After all, love-making is joy +rather than magic. Don't let's pretend about that even.... Let's go on +watching him. (I don't see why her writing shouldn't be better. Indeed I +don't.) See! There he goes down along the Embankment to Westminster just +like a real man, for all that he's smaller than a grain of dust. What is +running round inside that speck of a head of his? Look at him going past +the Policemen, specks too--selected large ones from the country. I think +he's going to dinner with the Speaker--some old thing like that. Is his +face harder or commoner or stronger?--I can't quite see.... And now he's +up and speaking in the House. Hope he'll hold on to the thread. He'll +have to plan his speeches to the very end of his days--and learn the +headings.” + +“Isn't she up in the women's gallery to hear him?” + +“No. Unless it's by accident.” + +“She's there,” she said. + +“Well, by accident it happens. Not too many accidents, Isabel. Never any +more adventures for us, dear, now. No!... They play the game, you know. +They've begun late, but now they've got to. You see it's not so +very hard for them since you and I, my dear, are here always, always +faithfully here on this warm cliff of love accomplished, watching and +helping them under high heaven. It isn't so VERY hard. Rather good in +some ways. Some people HAVE to be broken a little. Can you see Altiora +down there, by any chance?” + +“She's too little to be seen,” she said. + +“Can you see the sins they once committed?” + +“I can only see you here beside me, dear--for ever. For all my life, +dear, till I die. Was that--the sin?”... + +I took her to the station, and after she had gone I was to drive to +Dover, and cross to Calais by the night boat. I couldn't, I felt, return +to London. We walked over the crest and down to the little station of +Martin Mill side by side, talking at first in broken fragments, for the +most part of unimportant things. + +“None of this,” she said abruptly, “seems in the slightest degree real +to me. I've got no sense of things ending.” + +“We're parting,” I said. + +“We're parting--as people part in a play. It's distressing. But I don't +feel as though you and I were really never to see each other again for +years. Do you?” + +I thought. “No,” I said. + +“After we've parted I shall look to talk it over with you.” + +“So shall I.” + +“That's absurd.” + +“Absurd.” + +“I feel as if you'd always be there, just about where you are now. +Invisible perhaps, but there. We've spent so much of our lives joggling +elbows.”... + +“Yes. Yes. I don't in the least realise it. I suppose I shall begin to +when the train goes out of the station. Are we wanting in imagination, +Isabel?” + +“I don't know. We've always assumed it was the other way about.” + +“Even when the train goes out of the station--! I've seen you into so +many trains.” + +“I shall go on thinking of things to say to you--things to put in your +letters. For years to come. How can I ever stop thinking in that way +now? We've got into each other's brains.” + +“It isn't real,” I said; “nothing is real. The world's no more than a +fantastic dream. Why are we parting, Isabel?” + +“I don't know. It seems now supremely silly. I suppose we have to. Can't +we meet?--don't you think we shall meet even in dreams?” + +“We'll meet a thousand times in dreams,” I said. + +“I wish we could dream at the same time,” said Isabel.... “Dream walks. +I can't believe, dear, I shall never have a walk with you again.” + +“If I'd stayed six months in America,” I said, “we might have walked +long walks and talked long talks for all our lives.” + +“Not in a world of Baileys,” said Isabel. “And anyhow--” + +She stopped short. I looked interrogation. + +“We've loved,” she said. + +I took her ticket, saw to her luggage, and stood by the door of the +compartment. “Good-bye,” I said a little stiffly, conscious of the +people upon the platform. She bent above me, white and dusky, looking at +me very steadfastly. + +“Come here,” she whispered. “Never mind the porters. What can they know? +Just one time more--I must.” + +She rested her hand against the door of the carriage and bent down upon +me, and put her cold, moist lips to mine. + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ THE BREAKING POINT + + + +1 + + +And then we broke down. We broke our faith with both Margaret and +Shoesmith, flung career and duty out of our lives, and went away +together. + +It is only now, almost a year after these events, that I can begin to +see what happened to me. At the time it seemed to me I was a rational, +responsible creature, but indeed I had not parted from her two days +before I became a monomaniac to whom nothing could matter but Isabel. +Every truth had to be squared to that obsession, every duty. It astounds +me to think how I forgot Margaret, forgot my work, forgot everything +but that we two were parted. I still believe that with better chances +we might have escaped the consequences of the emotional storm that +presently seized us both. But we had no foresight of that, and no +preparation for it, and our circumstances betrayed us. It was partly +Shoesmith's unwisdom in delaying his marriage until after the end of the +session--partly my own amazing folly in returning within four days to +Westminster. But we were all of us intent upon the defeat of scandal +and the complete restoration of appearances. It seemed necessary that +Shoesmith's marriage should not seem to be hurried, still more necessary +that I should not vanish inexplicably. I had to be visible with Margaret +in London just as much as possible; we went to restaurants, we visited +the theatre; we could even contemplate the possibility of my presence at +the wedding. For that, however, we had schemed a weekend visit to Wales, +and a fictitious sprained ankle at the last moment which would justify +my absence.... + +I cannot convey to you the intolerable wretchedness and rebellion of +my separation from Isabel. It seemed that in the past two years all +my thoughts had spun commisures to Isabel's brain and I could think of +nothing that did not lead me surely to the need of the one intimate I +had found in the world. I came back to the House and the office and my +home, I filled all my days with appointments and duty, and it did not +save me in the least from a lonely emptiness such as I had never felt +before in all my life. I had little sleep. In the daytime I did a +hundred things, I even spoke in the House on two occasions, and by my +own low standards spoke well, and it seemed to me that I was going about +in my own brain like a hushed survivor in a house whose owner lies dead +upstairs. + +I came to a crisis after that wild dinner of Tarvrille's. Something in +that stripped my soul bare. + +It was an occasion made absurd and strange by the odd accident that the +house caught fire upstairs while we were dining below. It was a men's +dinner--“A dinner of all sorts,” said Tarvrille, when he invited me; +“everything from Evesham and Gane to Wilkins the author, and Heaven +knows what will happen!” I remember that afterwards Tarvrille was +accused of having planned the fire to make his dinner a marvel and a +memory. It was indeed a wonderful occasion, and I suppose if I had not +been altogether drenched in misery, I should have found the same wild +amusement in it that glowed in all the others. There were one or two +university dons, Lord George Fester, the racing man, Panmure, the +artist, two or three big City men, Weston Massinghay and another +prominent Liberal whose name I can't remember, the three men Tarvrille +had promised and Esmeer, Lord Wrassleton, Waulsort, the member for +Monckton, Neal and several others. We began a little coldly, with +duologues, but the conversation was already becoming general--so far as +such a long table permitted--when the fire asserted itself. + +It asserted itself first as a penetrating and emphatic smell of burning +rubber,--it was caused by the fusing of an electric wire. The reek +forced its way into the discussion of the Pekin massacres that had +sprung up between Evesham, Waulsort, and the others at the end of the +table. “Something burning,” said the man next to me. + +“Something must be burning,” said Panmure. + +Tarvrille hated undignified interruptions. He had a particularly +imperturbable butler with a cadaverous sad face and an eye of rigid +disapproval. He spoke to this individual over his shoulder. “Just see, +will you,” he said, and caught up the pause in the talk to his left. + +Wilkins was asking questions, and I, too, was curious. The story of the +siege of the Legations in China in the year 1900 and all that followed +upon that, is just one of those disturbing interludes in history that +refuse to join on to that general scheme of protestation by which +civilisation is maintained. It is a break in the general flow of +experience as disconcerting to statecraft as the robbery of my knife and +the scuffle that followed it had been to me when I was a boy at Penge. +It is like a tear in a curtain revealing quite unexpected backgrounds. I +had never given the business a thought for years; now this talk brought +back a string of pictures to my mind; how the reliefs arrived and the +plundering began, how section after section of the International Army +was drawn into murder and pillage, how the infection spread upward +until the wives of Ministers were busy looting, and the very sentinels +stripped and crawled like snakes into the Palace they were set to guard. +It did not stop at robbery, men were murdered, women, being plundered, +were outraged, children were butchered, strong men had found themselves +with arms in a lawless, defenceless city, and this had followed. Now it +was all recalled. + +“Respectable ladies addicted to district visiting at home were as bad as +any one,” said Panmure. “Glazebrook told me of one--flushed like a woman +at a bargain sale, he said--and when he pointed out to her that the silk +she'd got was bloodstained, she just said, 'Oh, bother!' and threw it +aside and went back....” + +We became aware that Tarvrille's butler had returned. We tried not to +seem to listen. + +“Beg pardon, m'lord,” he said. “The house IS on fire, m'lord.” + +“Upstairs, m'lord.” + +“Just overhead, m'lord.” + +“The maids are throwing water, m'lord, and I've telephoned FIRE.” + +“No, m'lord, no immediate danger.” + +“It's all right,” said Tarvrille to the table generally. “Go on! It's +not a general conflagration, and the fire brigade won't be five minutes. +Don't see that it's our affair. The stuff's insured. They say old Lady +Paskershortly was dreadful. Like a harpy. The Dowager Empress had shown +her some little things of hers. Pet things--hidden away. Susan went +straight for them--used to take an umbrella for the silks. Born +shoplifter.” + +It was evident he didn't want his dinner spoilt, and we played up +loyally. + +“This is recorded history,” said Wilkins,--“practically. It makes one +wonder about unrecorded history. In India, for example.” + +But nobody touched that. + +“Thompson,” said Tarvrille to the imperturbable butler, and indicating +the table generally, “champagne. Champagne. Keep it going.” + +“M'lord,” and Thompson marshalled his assistants. + +Some man I didn't know began to remember things about Mandalay. “It's +queer,” he said, “how people break out at times;” and told his story +of an army doctor, brave, public-spirited, and, as it happened, +deeply religious, who was caught one evening by the excitement of +plundering--and stole and hid, twisted the wrist of a boy until it +broke, and was afterwards overcome by wild remorse. + +I watched Evesham listening intently. “Strange,” he said, “very strange. +We are such stuff as thieves are made of. And in China, too, they +murdered people--for the sake of murdering. Apart, so to speak, from +mercenary considerations. I'm afraid there's no doubt of it in certain +cases. No doubt at all. Young soldiers fresh from German high schools +and English homes!” + +“Did OUR people?” asked some patriot. + +“Not so much. But I'm afraid there were cases.... Some of the Indian +troops were pretty bad.” + +Gane picked up the tale with confirmations. + +It is all printed in the vividest way as a picture upon my memory, so +that were I a painter I think I could give the deep rich browns and warm +greys beyond the brightly lit table, the various distinguished faces, +strongly illuminated, interested and keen, above the black and white of +evening dress, the alert menservants with their heavier, clean-shaved +faces indistinctly seen in the dimness behind. Then this was coloured +emotionally for me by my aching sense of loss and sacrifice, and by +the chance trend of our talk to the breaches and unrealities of the +civilised scheme. We seemed a little transitory circle of light in a +universe of darkness and violence; an effect to which the diminishing +smell of burning rubber, the trampling of feet overhead, the swish +of water, added enormously. Everybody--unless, perhaps, it was +Evesham--drank rather carelessly because of the suppressed excitement of +our situation, and talked the louder and more freely. + +“But what a flimsy thing our civilisation is!” said Evesham; “a mere +thin net of habits and associations!” + +“I suppose those men came back,” said Wilkins. + +“Lady Paskershortly did!” chuckled Evesham. + +“How do they fit it in with the rest of their lives?” Wilkins +speculated. “I suppose there's Pekin-stained police officers, +Pekin-stained J. P.'s--trying petty pilferers in the severest +manner.”... + +Then for a time things became preposterous. There was a sudden cascade +of water by the fireplace, and then absurdly the ceiling began to rain +upon us, first at this point and then that. “My new suit!” cried some +one. “Perrrrrr-up pe-rr”--a new vertical line of blackened water would +establish itself and form a spreading pool upon the gleaming cloth. The +men nearest would arrange catchment areas of plates and flower bowls. +“Draw up!” said Tarvrille, “draw up. That's the bad end of the table!” + He turned to the imperturbable butler. “Take round bath towels,” he +said; and presently the men behind us were offering--with inflexible +dignity--“Port wine, Sir. Bath towel, Sir!” Waulsort, with streaks of +blackened water on his forehead, was suddenly reminded of a wet year +when he had followed the French army manoeuvres. An animated dispute +sprang up between him and Neal about the relative efficiency of the new +French and German field guns. Wrassleton joined in and a little drunken +shrivelled Oxford don of some sort with a black-splashed shirt front who +presently silenced them all by the immensity and particularity of his +knowledge of field artillery. Then the talk drifted to Sedan and the +effect of dead horses upon drinking-water, which brought Wrassleton +and Weston Massinghay into a dispute of great vigour and emphasis. “The +trouble in South Africa,” said Weston Massinghay, “wasn't that we didn't +boil our water. It was that we didn't boil our men. The Boers drank the +same stuff we did. THEY didn't get dysentery.” + +That argument went on for some time. I was attacked across the table by +a man named Burshort about my Endowment of Motherhood schemes, but +in the gaps of that debate I could still hear Weston Massinghay +at intervals repeat in a rather thickened voice: “THEY didn't get +dysentery.” + +I think Evesham went early. The rest of us clustered more and more +closely towards the drier end of the room, the table was pushed along, +and the area beneath the extinguished conflagration abandoned to a +tinkling, splashing company of pots and pans and bowls and baths. +Everybody was now disposed to be hilarious and noisy, to say startling +and aggressive things; we must have sounded a queer clamour to a +listener in the next room. The devil inspired them to begin baiting me. +“Ours isn't the Tory party any more,” said Burshort. “Remington has made +it the Obstetric Party.” + +“That's good!” said Weston Massinghay, with all his teeth gleaming; “I +shall use that against you in the House!” + +“I shall denounce you for abusing private confidences if you do,” said +Tarvrille. + +“Remington wants us to give up launching Dreadnoughts and launch babies +instead,” Burshort urged. “For the price of one Dreadnought--” + +The little shrivelled don who had been omniscient about guns joined in +the baiting, and displayed himself a venomous creature. Something in +his eyes told me he knew Isabel and hated me for it. “Love and fine +thinking,” he began, a little thickly, and knocking over a wine-glass +with a too easy gesture. “Love and fine thinking. Two things don't go +together. No philosophy worth a damn ever came out of excesses of love. +Salt Lake City--Piggott--Ag--Agapemone again--no works to matter.” + +Everybody laughed. + +“Got to rec'nise these facts,” said my assailant. “Love and fine think'n +pretty phrase--attractive. Suitable for p'litical dec'rations. Postcard, +Christmas, gilt lets, in a wreath of white flow's. Not oth'wise +valu'ble.” + +I made some remark, I forget what, but he overbore me. + +Real things we want are Hate--Hate and COARSE think'n. I b'long to the +school of Mrs. F's Aunt--” + +“What?” said some one, intent. + +“In 'Little Dorrit,'” explained Tarvrille; “go on!” + +“Hate a fool,” said my assailant. + +Tarvrille glanced at me. I smiled to conceal the loss of my temper. + +“Hate,” said the little man, emphasising his point with a clumsy fist. +“Hate's the driving force. What's m'rality?--hate of rotten goings +on. What's patriotism?--hate of int'loping foreigners. What's +Radicalism?--hate of lords. What's Toryism?--hate of disturbance. It's +all hate--hate from top to bottom. Hate of a mess. Remington owned it +the other day, said he hated a mu'll. There you are! If you couldn't +get hate into an election, damn it (hic) people wou'n't poll. Poll for +love!--no' me!” + +He paused, but before any one could speak he had resumed. + +“Then this about fine thinking. Like going into a bear pit armed with a +tagle--talgent--talgent galv'nometer. Like going to fight a mad dog with +Shasepear and the Bible. Fine thinking--what we want is the thickes' +thinking we can get. Thinking that stands up alone. Taf Reform means +work for all, thassort of thing.” + +The gentleman from Cambridge paused. “YOU a flag!” he said. “I'd as soon +go to ba'ell und' wet tissue paper!” + +My best answer on the spur of the moment was: + +“The Japanese did.” Which was absurd. + +I went on to some other reply, I forget exactly what, and the talk of +the whole table drew round me. It was an extraordinary revelation to me. +Every one was unusually careless and outspoken, and it was amazing how +manifestly they echoed the feeling of this old Tory spokesman. They were +quite friendly to me, they regarded me and the BLUE WEEKLY as valuable +party assets for Toryism, but it was clear they attached no more +importance to what were my realities than they did to the remarkable +therapeutic claims of Mrs. Eddy. They were flushed and amused, perhaps +they went a little too far in their resolves to draw me, but they left +the impression on my mind of men irrevocably set upon narrow and cynical +views of political life. For them the political struggle was a game, +whose counters were human hate and human credulity; their real aim was +just every one's aim, the preservation of the class and way of living to +which their lives were attuned. They did not know how tired I was, how +exhausted mentally and morally, nor how cruel their convergent attack +on me chanced to be. But my temper gave way, I became tart and fierce, +perhaps my replies were a trifle absurd, and Tarvrille, with that quick +eye and sympathy of his, came to the rescue. Then for a time I sat +silent and drank port wine while the others talked. The disorder of +the room, the still dripping ceiling, the noise, the displaced ties and +crumpled shirts of my companions, jarred on my tormented nerves.... + +It was long past midnight when we dispersed. I remember Tarvrille coming +with me into the hall, and then suggesting we should go upstairs to see +the damage. A manservant carried up two flickering candles for us. +One end of the room was gutted, curtains, hangings, several chairs and +tables were completely burnt, the panelling was scorched and warped, +three smashed windows made the candles flare and gutter, and some scraps +of broken china still lay on the puddled floor. + +As we surveyed this, Lady Tarvrille appeared, back from some party, +a slender, white-cloaked, satin-footed figure with amazed blue eyes +beneath her golden hair. I remember how stupidly we laughed at her +surprise. + + + +2 + + +I parted from Panmure at the corner of Aldington Street, and went my way +alone. But I did not go home, I turned westward and walked for a long +way, and then struck northward aimlessly. I was too miserable to go to +my house. + +I wandered about that night like a man who has discovered his Gods +are dead. I can look back now detached yet sympathetic upon that wild +confusion of moods and impulses, and by it I think I can understand, oh! +half the wrongdoing and blundering in the world. + +I do not feel now the logical force of the process that must have +convinced me then that I had made my sacrifice and spent my strength in +vain. At no time had I been under any illusion that the Tory party had +higher ideals than any other party, yet it came to me like a thing newly +discovered that the men I had to work with had for the most part no such +dreams, no sense of any collective purpose, no atom of the faith I held. +They were just as immediately intent upon personal ends, just as limited +by habits of thought, as the men in any other group or party. Perhaps I +had slipped unawares for a time into the delusions of a party man--but I +do not think so. + +No, it was the mood of profound despondency that had followed upon the +abrupt cessation of my familiar intercourse with Isabel, that gave this +fact that had always been present in my mind its quality of devastating +revelation. It seemed as though I had never seen before nor suspected +the stupendous gap between the chaotic aims, the routine, the +conventional acquiescences, the vulgarisations of the personal life, and +that clearly conscious development and service of a collective thought +and purpose at which my efforts aimed. I had thought them but a little +way apart, and now I saw they were separated by all the distance +between earth and heaven. I saw now in myself and every one around me, +a concentration upon interests close at hand, an inability to detach +oneself from the provocations, tendernesses, instinctive hates, dumb +lusts and shy timidities that touched one at every point; and, save +for rare exalted moments, a regardlessness of broader aims and remoter +possibilities that made the white passion of statecraft seem as +unearthly and irrelevant to human life as the story an astronomer will +tell, half proven but altogether incredible, of habitable planets and +answering intelligences, suns' distances uncounted across the deep. It +seemed to me I had aspired too high and thought too far, had mocked my +own littleness by presumption, had given the uttermost dear reality of +life for a theoriser's dream. + +All through that wandering agony of mine that night a dozen threads of +thought interwove; now I was a soul speaking in protest to God against +a task too cold and high for it, and now I was an angry man, scorned and +pointed upon, who had let life cheat him of the ultimate pride of his +soul. Now I was the fool of ambition, who opened his box of gold to find +blank emptiness, and now I was a spinner of flimsy thoughts, whose web +tore to rags at a touch. I realised for the first time how much I had +come to depend upon the mind and faith of Isabel, how she had confirmed +me and sustained me, how little strength I had to go on with our +purposes now that she had vanished from my life. She had been the +incarnation of those great abstractions, the saving reality, the voice +that answered back. There was no support that night in the things that +had been. We were alone together on the cliff for ever more!--that was +very pretty in its way, but it had no truth whatever that could help +me now, no ounce of sustaining value. I wanted Isabel that night, no +sentiment or memory of her, but Isabel alive,--to talk to me, to touch +me, to hold me together. I wanted unendurably the dusky gentleness of +her presence, the consolation of her voice. + +We were alone together on the cliff! I startled a passing cabman into +interest by laughing aloud at that magnificent and characteristic +sentimentality. What a lie it was, and how satisfying it had been! That +was just where we shouldn't remain. We of all people had no distinction +from that humanity whose lot is to forget. We should go out to other +interests, new experiences, new demands. That tall and intricate fabric +of ambitious understandings we had built up together in our intimacy +would be the first to go; and last perhaps to endure with us would be +a few gross memories of sights and sounds, and trivial incidental +excitements.... + +I had a curious feeling that night that I had lost touch with life for +a long time, and had now been reminded of its quality. That infernal +little don's parody of my ruling phrase, “Hate and coarse thinking,” + stuck in my thoughts like a poisoned dart, a centre of inflammation. +Just as a man who is debilitated has no longer the vitality to resist +an infection, so my mind, slackened by the crisis of my separation from +Isabel, could find no resistance to his emphatic suggestion. It seemed +to me that what he had said was overpoweringly true, not only of +contemporary life, but of all possible human life. Love is the rare +thing, the treasured thing; you lock it away jealously and watch, and +well you may; hate and aggression and force keep the streets and rule +the world. And fine thinking is, in the rough issues of life, weak +thinking, is a balancing indecisive process, discovers with disloyal +impartiality a justice and a defect on each disputing side. “Good honest +men,” as Dayton calls them, rule the world, with a way of thinking +out decisions like shooting cartloads of bricks, and with a steadfast +pleasure in hostility. Dayton liked to call his antagonists “blaggards +and scoundrels”--it justified his opposition--the Lords were +“scoundrels,” all people richer than he were “scoundrels,” all +Socialists, all troublesome poor people; he liked to think of jails and +justice being done. His public spirit was saturated with the sombre +joys of conflict and the pleasant thought of condign punishment for +all recalcitrant souls. That was the way of it, I perceived. That had +survival value, as the biologists say. He was fool enough in politics to +be a consistent and happy politician.... + +Hate and coarse thinking; how the infernal truth of the phrase beat me +down that night! I couldn't remember that I had known this all along, +and that it did not really matter in the slightest degree. I had worked +it all out long ago in other terms, when I had seen how all parties +stood for interests inevitably, and how the purpose in life achieves +itself, if it achieves itself at all, as a bye product of the war +of individuals and classes. Hadn't I always known that science and +philosophy elaborate themselves in spite of all the passion and +narrowness of men, in spite of the vanities and weakness of their +servants, in spite of all the heated disorder of contemporary things? +Wasn't it my own phrase to speak of “that greater mind in men, in which +we are but moments and transitorily lit cells?” Hadn't I known that the +spirit of man still speaks like a thing that struggles out of mud and +slime, and that the mere effort to speak means choking and disaster? +Hadn't I known that we who think without fear and speak without +discretion will not come to our own for the next two thousand years? + +It was the last was most forgotten of all that faith mislaid. Before +mankind, in my vision that night, stretched new centuries of confusion, +vast stupid wars, hastily conceived laws, foolish temporary triumphs +of order, lapses, set-backs, despairs, catastrophes, new beginnings, a +multitudinous wilderness of time, a nigh plotless drama of wrong-headed +energies. In order to assuage my parting from Isabel we had set +ourselves to imagine great rewards for our separation, great personal +rewards; we had promised ourselves success visible and shining in our +lives. To console ourselves in our separation we had made out of +the BLUE WEEKLY and our young Tory movement preposterously enormous +things-as though those poor fertilising touches at the soil were indeed +the germinating seeds of the millennium, as though a million lives such +as ours had not to contribute before the beginning of the beginning. +That poor pretence had failed. That magnificent proposition shrivelled +to nothing in the black loneliness of that night. + +I saw that there were to be no such compensations. So far as my real +services to mankind were concerned I had to live an unrecognised +and unrewarded life. If I made successes it would be by the way. Our +separation would alter nothing of that. My scandal would cling to me +now for all my life, a thing affecting relationships, embarrassing and +hampering my spirit. I should follow the common lot of those who live by +the imagination, and follow it now in infinite loneliness of soul; the +one good comforter, the one effectual familiar, was lost to me for +ever; I should do good and evil together, no one caring to understand; +I should produce much weary work, much bad-spirited work, much absolute +evil; the good in me would be too often ill-expressed and missed or +misinterpreted. In the end I might leave one gleaming flake or so amidst +the slag heaps for a moment of postmortem sympathy. I was afraid beyond +measure of my derelict self. Because I believed with all my soul in love +and fine thinking that did not mean that I should necessarily either +love steadfastly or think finely. I remember how I fell talking to +God--I think I talked out loud. “Why do I care for these things?” + I cried, “when I can do so little! Why am I apart from the jolly +thoughtless fighting life of men? These dreams fade to nothingness, and +leave me bare!” + +I scolded. “Why don't you speak to a man, show yourself? I thought I +had a gleam of you in Isabel,--and then you take her away. Do you really +think I can carry on this game alone, doing your work in darkness and +silence, living in muddled conflict, half living, half dying?” + +Grotesque analogies arose in my mind. I discovered a strange parallelism +between my now tattered phrase of “Love and fine thinking” and the +“Love and the Word” of Christian thought. Was it possible the Christian +propaganda had at the outset meant just that system of attitudes I had +been feeling my way towards from the very beginning of my life? Had +I spent a lifetime making my way back to Christ? It mocks humanity +to think how Christ has been overlaid. I went along now, recalling +long-neglected phrases and sentences; I had a new vision of that great +central figure preaching love with hate and coarse thinking even in the +disciples about Him, rising to a tidal wave at last in that clamour for +Barabbas, and the public satisfaction in His fate.... + +It's curious to think that hopeless love and a noisy disordered dinner +should lead a man to these speculations, but they did. “He DID mean +that!” I said, and suddenly thought of what a bludgeon they'd made +of His Christianity. Athwart that perplexing, patient enigma sitting +inaudibly among publicans and sinners, danced and gibbered a long +procession of the champions of orthodoxy. “He wasn't human,” I said, +and remembered that last despairing cry, “My God! My God! why hast Thou +forsaken Me?” + +“Oh, HE forsakes every one,” I said, flying out as a tired mind will, +with an obvious repartee.... + +I passed at a bound from such monstrous theology to a towering rage +against the Baileys. In an instant and with no sense of absurdity I +wanted--in the intervals of love and fine thinking--to fling about that +strenuously virtuous couple; I wanted to kick Keyhole of the PEEPSHOW +into the gutter and make a common massacre of all the prosperous +rascaldom that makes a trade and rule of virtue. I can still feel that +transition. In a moment I had reached that phase of weakly decisive +anger which is for people of my temperament the concomitant of +exhaustion. + +“I will have her,” I cried. “By Heaven! I WILL have her! Life mocks me +and cheats me. Nothing can be made good to me again.... Why shouldn't I +save what I can? I can't save myself without her....” + +I remember myself--as a sort of anti-climax to that--rather tediously +asking my way home. I was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Holland +Park.... + +It was then between one and two. I felt that I could go home now without +any risk of meeting Margaret. It had been the thought of returning to +Margaret that had sent me wandering that night. It is one of the ugliest +facts I recall about that time of crisis, the intense aversion I felt +for Margaret. No sense of her goodness, her injury and nobility, and +the enormous generosity of her forgiveness, sufficed to mitigate that. +I hope now that in this book I am able to give something of her silvery +splendour, but all through this crisis I felt nothing of that. There was +a triumphant kindliness about her that I found intolerable. She meant to +be so kind to me, to offer unstinted consolation, to meet my needs, to +supply just all she imagined Isabel had given me. + +When I left Tarvrille's, I felt I could anticipate exactly how she would +meet my homecoming. She would be perplexed by my crumpled shirt front, +on which I had spilt some drops of wine; she would overlook that by an +effort, explain it sentimentally, resolve it should make no difference +to her. She would want to know who had been present, what we had talked +about, show the alertest interest in whatever it was--it didn't matter +what.... No, I couldn't face her. + +So I did not reach my study until two o'clock. + +There, I remember, stood the new and very beautiful old silver +candlesticks that she had set there two days since to please me--the +foolish kindliness of it! But in her search for expression, Margaret +heaped presents upon me. She had fitted these candlesticks with electric +lights, and I must, I suppose, have lit them to write my note to Isabel. +“Give me a word--the world aches without you,” was all I scrawled, +though I fully meant that she should come to me. I knew, though I ought +not to have known, that now she had left her flat, she was with the +Balfes--she was to have been married from the Balfes--and I sent my +letter there. And I went out into the silent square and posted the note +forthwith, because I knew quite clearly that if I left it until morning +I should never post it at all. + + + +3 + + +I had a curious revulsion of feeling that morning of our meeting. (Of +all places for such a clandestine encounter she had chosen the bridge +opposite Buckingham Palace.) Overnight I had been full of self pity, and +eager for the comfort of Isabel's presence. But the ill-written scrawl +in which she had replied had been full of the suggestion of her own +weakness and misery. And when I saw her, my own selfish sorrows were +altogether swept away by a wave of pitiful tenderness. Something had +happened to her that I did not understand. She was manifestly ill. She +came towards me wearily, she who had always borne herself so bravely; +her shoulders seemed bent, and her eyes were tired, and her face white +and drawn. All my life has been a narrow self-centred life; no brothers, +no sisters or children or weak things had ever yet made any intimate +appeal to me, and suddenly--I verily believe for the first time in my +life!--I felt a great passion of protective ownership; I felt that here +was something that I could die to shelter, something that meant more +than joy or pride or splendid ambitions or splendid creation to me, a +new kind of hold upon me, a new power in the world. Some sealed fountain +was opened in my breast. I knew that I could love Isabel broken, Isabel +beaten, Isabel ugly and in pain, more than I could love any sweet +or delightful or glorious thing in life. I didn't care any more for +anything in the world but Isabel, and that I should protect her. I +trembled as I came near her, and could scarcely speak to her for the +emotion that filled me.... + +“I had your letter,” I said. + +“I had yours.” + +“Where can we talk?” + +I remember my lame sentences. “We'll have a boat. That's best here.” + +I took her to the little boat-house, and there we hired a boat, and +I rowed in silence under the bridge and into the shade of a tree. The +square grey stone masses of the Foreign Office loomed through the twigs, +I remember, and a little space of grass separated us from the pathway +and the scrutiny of passers-by. And there we talked. + +“I had to write to you,” I said. + +“I had to come.” + +“When are you to be married?” + +“Thursday week.” + +“Well?” I said. “But--can we?” + +She leant forward and scrutinised my face with eyes wide open. “What do +you mean?” she said at last in a whisper. + +“Can we stand it? After all?” + +I looked at her white face. “Can you?” I said. + +She whispered. “Your career?” + +Then suddenly her face was contorted,--she wept silently, exactly as a +child tormented beyond endurance might suddenly weep.... + +“Oh! I don't care,” I cried, “now. I don't care. Damn the whole system +of things! Damn all this patching of the irrevocable! I want to take +care of you, Isabel! and have you with me.” + +“I can't stand it,” she blubbered. + +“You needn't stand it. I thought it was best for you.... I thought +indeed it was best for you. I thought even you wanted it like that.” + +“Couldn't I live alone--as I meant to do?” + +“No,” I said, “you couldn't. You're not strong enough. I've thought of +that; I've got to shelter you.” + +“And I want you,” I went on. “I'm not strong enough--I can't stand life +without you.” + +She stopped weeping, she made a great effort to control herself, and +looked at me steadfastly for a moment. “I was going to kill myself,” she +whispered. “I was going to kill myself quietly--somehow. I meant to wait +a bit and have an accident. I thought--you didn't understand. You were a +man, and couldn't understand....” + +“People can't do as we thought we could do,” I said. “We've gone too far +together.” + +“Yes,” she said, and I stared into her eyes. + +“The horror of it,” she whispered. “The horror of being handed over. +It's just only begun to dawn upon me, seeing him now as I do. He tries +to be kind to me.... I didn't know. I felt adventurous before.... It +makes me feel like all the women in the world who have ever been owned +and subdued.... It's not that he isn't the best of men, it's because I'm +a part of you.... I can't go through with it. If I go through with it, I +shall be left--robbed of pride--outraged--a woman beaten....” + +“I know,” I said, “I know.” + +“I want to live alone.... I don't care for anything now but just escape. +If you can help me....” + +“I must take you away. There's nothing for us but to go away together.” + +“But your work,” she said; “your career! Margaret! Our promises!” + +“We've made a mess of things, Isabel--or things have made a mess of us. +I don't know which. Our flags are in the mud, anyhow. It's too late +to save those other things! They have to go. You can't make terms with +defeat. I thought it was Margaret needed me most. But it's you. And I +need you. I didn't think of that either. I haven't a doubt left in the +world now. We've got to leave everything rather than leave each other. +I'm sure of it. Now we have gone so far. We've got to go right down to +earth and begin again.... Dear, I WANT disgrace with you....” + +So I whispered to her as she sat crumpled together on the faded cushions +of the boat, this white and weary young woman who had been so valiant +and careless a girl. “I don't care,” I said. “I don't care for anything, +if I can save you out of the wreckage we have made together.” + + + +4 + + +The next day I went to the office of the BLUE WEEKLY in order to get as +much as possible of its affairs in working order before I left London +with Isabel. I just missed Shoesmith in the lower office. Upstairs I +found Britten amidst a pile of outside articles, methodically reading +the title of each and sometimes the first half-dozen lines, and either +dropping them in a growing heap on the floor for a clerk to return, or +putting them aside for consideration. I interrupted him, squatted on +the window-sill of the open window, and sketched out my ideas for the +session. + +“You're far-sighted,” he remarked at something of mine which reached out +ahead. + +“I like to see things prepared,” I answered. + +“Yes,” he said, and ripped open the envelope of a fresh aspirant. + +I was silent while he read. + +“You're going away with Isabel Rivers,” he said abruptly. + +“Well!” I said, amazed. + +“I know,” he said, and lost his breath. “Not my business. Only--” + +It was queer to find Britten afraid to say a thing. + +“It's not playing the game,” he said. + +“What do you know?” + +“Everything that matters.” + +“Some games,” I said, “are too hard to play.” + +There came a pause between us. + +“I didn't know you were watching all this,” I said. + +“Yes,” he answered, after a pause, “I've watched.” + +“Sorry--sorry you don't approve.” + +“It means smashing such an infernal lot of things, Remington.” + +I did not answer. + +“You're going away then?” + +“Yes.” + +“Soon?” + +“Right away.” + +“There's your wife.” + +“I know.” + +“Shoesmith--whom you're pledged to in a manner. You've just picked him +out and made him conspicuous. Every one will know. Oh! of course--it's +nothing to you. Honour--” + +“I know.” + +“Common decency.” + +I nodded. + +“All this movement of ours. That's what I care for most.... It's come to +be a big thing, Remington.” + +“That will go on.” + +“We have a use for you--no one else quite fills it. No one.... I'm not +sure it will go on.” + +“Do you think I haven't thought of all these things?” + +He shrugged his shoulders, and rejected two papers unread. + +“I knew,” he remarked, “when you came back from America. You were alight +with it.” Then he let his bitterness gleam for a moment. “But I thought +you would stick to your bargain.” + +“It's not so much choice as you think,” I said. + +“There's always a choice.” + +“No,” I said. + +He scrutinised my face. + +“I can't live without her--I can't work. She's all mixed up with +this--and everything. And besides, there's things you can't understand. +There's feelings you've never felt.... You don't understand how much +we've been to one another.” + +Britten frowned and thought. + +“Some things one's GOT to do,” he threw out. + +“Some things one can't do.” + +“These infernal institutions--” + +“Some one must begin,” I said. + +He shook his head. “Not YOU,” he said. “No!” + +He stretched out his hands on the desk before him, and spoke again. + +“Remington,” he said, “I've thought of this business day and night too. +It matters to me. It matters immensely to me. In a way--it's a thing +one doesn't often say to a man--I've loved you. I'm the sort of man who +leads a narrow life.... But you've been something fine and good for me, +since that time, do you remember? when we talked about Mecca together.” + +I nodded. + +“Yes. And you'll always be something fine and good for me anyhow. I know +things about you,--qualities--no mere act can destroy them.. .. Well, I +can tell you, you're doing wrong. You're going on now like a man who is +hypnotised and can't turn round. You're piling wrong on wrong. It was +wrong for you two people ever to be lovers.” + +He paused. + +“It gripped us hard,” I said. + +“Yes!--but in your position! And hers! It was vile!” + +“You've not been tempted.” + +“How do you know? Anyhow--having done that, you ought to have stood the +consequences and thought of other people. You could have ended it at the +first pause for reflection. You didn't. You blundered again. You kept +on. You owed a certain secrecy to all of us! You didn't keep it. +You were careless. You made things worse. This engagement and this +publicity!--Damn it, Remington!” + +“I know,” I said, with smarting eyes. “Damn it! with all my heart! It +came of trying to patch.... You CAN'T patch.” + +“And now, as I care for anything under heaven, Remington, you two ought +to stand these last consequences--and part. You ought to part. Other +people have to stand things! Other people have to part. You ought to. +You say--what do you say? It's loss of so much life to lose each other. +So is losing a hand or a leg. But it's what you've incurred. Amputate. +Take your punishment--After all, you chose it.” + +“Oh, damn!” I said, standing up and going to the window. + +“Damn by all means. I never knew a topic so full of justifiable damns. +But you two did choose it. You ought to stick to your undertaking.” + +I turned upon him with a snarl in my voice. “My dear Britten!” I cried. +“Don't I KNOW I'm doing wrong? Aren't I in a net? Suppose I don't go! +Is there any right in that? Do you think we're going to be much to +ourselves or any one after this parting? I've been thinking all +last night of this business, trying it over and over again from the +beginning. How was it we went wrong? Since I came back from America--I +grant you THAT--but SINCE, there's never been a step that wasn't forced, +that hadn't as much right in it or more, as wrong. You talk as though I +was a thing of steel that could bend this way or that and never change. +You talk as though Isabel was a cat one could give to any kind of +owner.... We two are things that change and grow and alter all the time. +We're--so interwoven that being parted now will leave us just misshapen +cripples.... You don't know the motives, you don't know the rush and +feel of things, you don't know how it was with us, and how it is with +us. You don't know the hunger for the mere sight of one another; you +don't know anything.” + +Britten looked at his finger-nails closely. His red face puckered to +a wry frown. “Haven't we all at times wanted the world put back?” he +grunted, and looked hard and close at one particular nail. + +There was a long pause. + +“I want her,” I said, “and I'm going to have her. I'm too tired for +balancing the right or wrong of it any more. You can't separate them. +I saw her yesterday.... She's--ill.... I'd take her now, if death were +just outside the door waiting for us.” + +“Torture?” + +I thought. “Yes.” + +“For her?” + +“There isn't,” I said. + +“If there was?” + +I made no answer. + +“It's blind Want. And there's nothing ever been put into you to stand +against it. What are you going to do with the rest of your lives?” + +“No end of things.” + +“Nothing.” + +“I don't believe you are right,” I said. “I believe we can save +something--” + +Britten shook his head. “Some scraps of salvage won't excuse you,” he +said. + +His indignation rose. “In the middle of life!” he said. “No man has a +right to take his hand from the plough!” + +He leant forward on his desk and opened an argumentative palm. “You +know, Remington,” he said, “and I know, that if this could be fended off +for six months--if you could be clapped in prison, or got out of the way +somehow,--until this marriage was all over and settled down for a year, +say--you know then you two could meet, curious, happy, as friends. +Saved! You KNOW it.” + +I turned and stared at him. “You're wrong, Britten,” I said. “And does +it matter if we could?” + +I found that in talking to him I could frame the apologetics I had not +been able to find for myself alone. + +“I am certain of one thing, Britten. It is our duty not to hush up this +scandal.” + +He raised his eyebrows. I perceived now the element of absurdity in me, +but at the time I was as serious as a man who is burning. + +“It's our duty,” I went on, “to smash now openly in the sight of every +one. Yes! I've got that as clean and plain--as prison whitewash. I am +convinced that we have got to be public to the uttermost now--I mean +it--until every corner of our world knows this story, knows it fully, +adds it to the Parnell story and the Ashton Dean story and the Carmel +story and the Witterslea story, and all the other stories that have +picked man after man out of English public life, the men with active +imaginations, the men of strong initiative. To think this tottering +old-woman ridden Empire should dare to waste a man on such a score! You +say I ought to be penitent--” + +Britten shook his head and smiled very faintly. + +“I'm boiling with indignation,” I said. “I lay in bed last night and +went through it all. What in God's name was to be expected of us but +what has happened? I went through my life bit by bit last night, I +recalled all I've had to do with virtue and women, and all I was told +and how I was prepared. I was born into cowardice and debasement. We all +are. Our generation's grimy with hypocrisy. I came to the most beautiful +things in life--like peeping Tom of Coventry. I was never given a light, +never given a touch of natural manhood by all this dingy, furtive, +canting, humbugging English world. Thank God! I'll soon be out of it! +The shame of it! The very savages in Australia initiate their children +better than the English do to-day. Neither of us was ever given a +view of what they call morality that didn't make it show as shabby +subservience, as the meanest discretion, an abject submission to +unreasonable prohibitions! meek surrender of mind and body to the +dictation of pedants and old women and fools. We weren't taught--we +were mumbled at! And when we found that the thing they called unclean, +unclean, was Pagan beauty--God! it was a glory to sin, Britten, it was a +pride and splendour like bathing in the sunlight after dust and grime!” + +“Yes,” said Britten. “That's all very well--” + +I interrupted him. “I know there's a case--I'm beginning to think it a +valid case against us; but we never met it! There's a steely pride in +self restraint, a nobility of chastity, but only for those who see and +think and act--untrammeled and unafraid. The other thing, the current +thing, why! it's worth as much as the chastity of a monkey kept in a +cage by itself!” I put my foot in a chair, and urged my case upon him. +“This is a dirty world, Britten, simply because it is a muddled world, +and the thing you call morality is dirtier now than the thing you call +immorality. Why don't the moralists pick their stuff out of the slime +if they care for it, and wipe it?--damn them! I am burning now to say: +'Yes, we did this and this,' to all the world. All the world!... I +will!” + +Britten rubbed the palm of his hand on the corner of his desk. “That's +all very well, Remington,” he said. “You mean to go.” + +He stopped and began again. “If you didn't know you were in the wrong +you wouldn't be so damned rhetorical. You're in the wrong. It's as plain +to you as it is to me. You're leaving a big work, you're leaving a wife +who trusted you, to go and live with your jolly mistress.... You won't +see you're a statesman that matters, that no single man, maybe, might +come to such influence as you in the next ten years. You're throwing +yourself away and accusing your country of rejecting you.” + +He swung round upon his swivel at me. “Remington,” he said, “have you +forgotten the immense things our movement means?” + +I thought. “Perhaps I am rhetorical,” I said. + +“But the things we might achieve! If you'd only stay now--even now! Oh! +you'd suffer a little socially, but what of that? You'd be able to go +on--perhaps all the better for hostility of the kind you'd get. You +know, Remington--you KNOW.” + +I thought and went back to his earlier point. “If I am rhetorical, +at any rate it's a living feeling behind it. Yes, I remember all the +implications of our aims--very splendid, very remote. But just now it's +rather like offering to give a freezing man the sunlit Himalayas from +end to end in return for his camp-fire. When you talk of me and my jolly +mistress, it isn't fair. That misrepresents everything. I'm not going +out of this--for delights. That's the sort of thing men like Snuffles +and Keyhole imagine--that excites them! When I think of the things +these creatures think! Ugh! But YOU know better? You know that physical +passion that burns like a fire--ends clean. I'm going for love, +Britten--if I sinned for passion. I'm going, Britten, because when I saw +her the other day she HURT me. She hurt me damnably, Britten.... I've +been a cold man--I've led a rhetorical life--you hit me with that +word!--I put things in a windy way, I know, but what has got hold of +me at last is her pain. She's ill. Don't you understand? She's a sick +thing--a weak thing. She's no more a goddess than I'm a god.... I'm +not in love with her now; I'm RAW with love for her. I feel like a man +that's been flayed. I have been flayed.... You don't begin to imagine +the sort of helpless solicitude.... She's not going to do things easily; +she's ill. Her courage fails.... It's hard to put things when one isn't +rhetorical, but it's this, Britten--there are distresses that matter +more than all the delights or achievements in the world.... I made +her what she is--as I never made Margaret. I've made her--I've broken +her.... I'm going with my own woman. The rest of my life and England, +and so forth, must square itself to that....” + +For a long time, as it seemed, we remained silent and motionless. We'd +said all we had to say. My eyes caught a printed slip upon the desk +before him, and I came back abruptly to the paper. + +I picked up this galley proof. It was one of Winter's essays. “This +man goes on doing first-rate stuff,” I said. “I hope you will keep him +going.” + +He did not answer for a moment or so. “I'll keep him going,” he said at +last with a sigh. + + + +5 + + +I have a letter Margaret wrote me within a week of our flight. I cannot +resist transcribing some of it here, because it lights things as no word +of mine can do. It is a string of nearly inconsecutive thoughts written +in pencil in a fine, tall, sprawling hand. Its very inconsecutiveness is +essential. Many words are underlined. It was in answer to one from me; +but what I wrote has passed utterly from my mind.... + +“Certainly,” she says, “I want to hear from you, but I do not want +to see you. There's a sort of abstract YOU that I want to go on with. +Something I've made out of you.... I want to know things about you--but +I don't want to see or feel or imagine. When some day I have got rid +of my intolerable sense of proprietorship, it may be different. Then +perhaps we may meet again. I think it is even more the loss of our +political work and dreams that I am feeling than the loss of your +presence. Aching loss. I thought so much of the things we were DOING for +the world--had given myself so unreservedly. You've left me with nothing +to DO. I am suddenly at loose ends.... + +“We women are trained to be so dependent on a man. I've got no life of +my own at all. It seems now to me that I wore my clothes even for you +and your schemes.... + +“After I have told myself a hundred times why this has happened, I ask +again, 'Why did he give things up? Why did he give things up?'... + +“It is just as though you were wilfully dead.... + +“Then I ask again and again whether this thing need have happened at +all, whether if I had had a warning, if I had understood better, I might +not have adapted myself to your restless mind and made this catastrophe +impossible.... + +“Oh, my dear! why hadn't you the pluck to hurt me at the beginning, and +tell me what you thought of me and life? You didn't give me a chance; +not a chance. I suppose you couldn't. All these things you and I stood +away from. You let my first repugnances repel you.... + +“It is strange to think after all these years that I should be asking +myself, do I love you? have I loved you? In a sense I think I HATE +you. I feel you have taken my life, dragged it in your wake for a time, +thrown it aside. I am resentful. Unfairly resentful, for why should I +exact that you should watch and understand my life, when clearly I have +understood so little of yours. But I am savage--savage at the wrecking +of all you were to do. + +“Oh, why--why did you give things up? + +“No human being is his own to do what he likes with. You were not +only pledged to my tiresome, ineffectual companionship, but to great +purposes. They ARE great purposes.... + +“If only I could take up your work as you leave it, with the strength +you had--then indeed I feel I could let you go--you and your young +mistress.... All that matters so little to me.... + +“Yet I think I must indeed love you yourself in my slower way. At times +I am mad with jealousy at the thought of all I hadn't the wit to give +you.... I've always hidden my tears from you--and what was in my heart. +It's my nature to hide--and you, you want things brought to you to see. +You are so curious as to be almost cruel. You don't understand reserves. +You have no mercy with restraints and reservations. You are not really +a CIVILISED man at all. You hate pretences--and not only pretences but +decent coverings.... + +“It's only after one has lost love and the chance of loving that slow +people like myself find what they might have done. Why wasn't I bold and +reckless and abandoned? It's as reasonable to ask that, I suppose, as to +ask why my hair is fair.... + +“I go on with these perhapses over and over again here when I find +myself alone.... + +“My dear, my dear, you can't think of the desolation of things--I shall +never go back to that house we furnished together, that was to have been +the laboratory (do you remember calling it a laboratory?) in which you +were to forge so much of the new order.... + +“But, dear, if I can help you--even now--in any way--help both of you, I +mean.... It tears me when I think of you poor and discredited. You will +let me help you if I can--it will be the last wrong not to let me do +that.... + +“You had better not get ill. If you do, and I hear of it--I shall come +after you with a troupe of doctor's and nurses. If I am a failure as a +wife, no one has ever said I was anything but a success as a district +visitor....” + +There are other sheets, but I cannot tell whether they were written +before or after the ones from which I have quoted. And most of them +have little things too intimate to set down. But this oddly penetrating +analysis of our differences must, I think, be given. + +“There are all sorts of things I can't express about this and want to. +There's this difference that has always been between us, that you like +nakedness and wildness, and I, clothing and restraint. It goes through +everything. You are always TALKING of order and system, and the splendid +dream of the order that might replace the muddled system you hate, but +by a sort of instinct you seem to want to break the law. I've watched +you so closely. Now I want to obey laws, to make sacrifices, to follow +rules. I don't want to make, but I do want to keep. You are at once +makers and rebels, you and Isabel too. You're bad people--criminal +people, I feel, and yet full of something the world must have. You're +so much better than me, and so much viler. It may be there is no making +without destruction, but it seems to me sometimes that it is nothing +but an instinct for lawlessness that drives you. You remind me--do you +remember?--of that time we went from Naples to Vesuvius, and walked +over the hot new lava there. Do you remember how tired I was? I know it +disappointed you that I was tired. One walked there in spite of the heat +because there was a crust; like custom, like law. But directly a crust +forms on things, you are restless to break down to the fire again. +You talk of beauty, both of you, as something terrible, mysterious, +imperative. YOUR beauty is something altogether different from anything +I know or feel. It has pain in it. Yet you always speak as though it was +something I ought to feel and am dishonest not to feel. MY beauty is +a quiet thing. You have always laughed at my feeling for old-fashioned +chintz and blue china and Sheraton. But I like all these familiar USED +things. My beauty is STILL beauty, and yours, is excitement. I +know nothing of the fascination of the fire, or why one should go +deliberately out of all the decent fine things of life to run dangers +and be singed and tormented and destroyed. I don't understand....” + + + +6 + + +I remember very freshly the mood of our departure from London, the +platform of Charing Cross with the big illuminated clock overhead, the +bustle of porters and passengers with luggage, the shouting of newsboys +and boys with flowers and sweets, and the groups of friends seeing +travellers off by the boat train. Isabel sat very quiet and still in the +compartment, and I stood upon the platform with the door open, with +a curious reluctance to take the last step that should sever me from +London's ground. I showed our tickets, and bought a handful of red roses +for her. At last came the guards crying: “Take your seats,” and I got +in and closed the door on me. We had, thank Heaven! a compartment to +ourselves. I let down the window and stared out. + +There was a bustle of final adieux on the platform, a cry of “Stand +away, please, stand away!” and the train was gliding slowly and smoothly +out of the station. + +I looked out upon the river as the train rumbled with slowly gathering +pace across the bridge, and the bobbing black heads of the pedestrians +in the footway, and the curve of the river and the glowing great hotels, +and the lights and reflections and blacknesses of that old, familiar +spectacle. Then with a common thought, we turned our eyes westward to +where the pinnacles of Westminster and the shining clock tower rose hard +and clear against the still, luminous sky. + +“They'll be in Committee on the Reformatory Bill to-night,” I said, a +little stupidly. + +“And so,” I added, “good-bye to London!” + +We said no more, but watched the south-side streets below--bright gleams +of lights and movement, and the dark, dim, monstrous shapes of houses +and factories. We ran through Waterloo Station, London Bridge, New +Cross, St. John's. We said never a word. It seemed to me that for a time +we had exhausted our emotions. We had escaped, we had cut our knot, +we had accepted the last penalty of that headlong return of mine from +Chicago a year and a half ago. That was all settled. That harvest of +feelings we had reaped. I thought now only of London, of London as the +symbol of all we were leaving and all we had lost in the world. I felt +nothing now but an enormous and overwhelming regret.... + +The train swayed and rattled on its way. We ran through old Bromstead, +where once I had played with cities and armies on the nursery floor. The +sprawling suburbs with their scattered lights gave way to dim tree-set +country under a cloud-veiled, intermittently shining moon. We passed +Cardcaster Place. Perhaps old Wardingham, that pillar of the old +Conservatives, was there, fretting over his unsuccessful struggle with +our young Toryism. Little he recked of this new turn of the wheel and +how it would confirm his contempt of all our novelties. Perhaps some +faint intimation drew him to the window to see behind the stems of the +young fir trees that bordered his domain, the little string of lighted +carriage windows gliding southward.... + +Suddenly I began to realise just what it was we were doing. + +And now, indeed, I knew what London had been to me, London where I +had been born and educated, the slovenly mother of my mind and all my +ambitions, London and the empire! It seemed to me we must be going +out to a world that was utterly empty. All our significance fell from +us--and before us was no meaning any more. We were leaving London; my +hand, which had gripped so hungrily upon its complex life, had been +forced from it, my fingers left their hold. That was over. I should +never have a voice in public affairs again. The inexorable unwritten +law which forbids overt scandal sentenced me. We were going out to a +new life, a life that appeared in that moment to be a mere shrivelled +remnant of me, a mere residuum of sheltering and feeding and seeing +amidst alien scenery and the sound of unfamiliar tongues. We were going +to live cheaply in a foreign place, so cut off that I meet now the +merest stray tourist, the commonest tweed-clad stranger with a mixture +of shyness and hunger.... And suddenly all the schemes I was leaving +appeared fine and adventurous and hopeful as they had never done before. +How great was this purpose I had relinquished, this bold and subtle +remaking of the English will! I had doubted so many things, and now +suddenly I doubted my unimportance, doubted my right to this suicidal +abandonment. Was I not a trusted messenger, greatly trusted and +favoured, who had turned aside by the way? Had I not, after all, stood +for far more than I had thought; was I not filching from that dear great +city of my birth and life, some vitally necessary thing, a key, a link, +a reconciling clue in her political development, that now she might seek +vaguely for in vain? What is one life against the State? Ought I not +to have sacrificed Isabel and all my passion and sorrow for Isabel, and +held to my thing--stuck to my thing? + +I heard as though he had spoken it in the carriage Britten's “It WAS +a good game.” No end of a game. And for the first time I imagined the +faces and voices of Crupp and Esmeer and Gane when they learnt of +this secret flight, this flight of which they were quite unwarned. And +Shoesmith might be there in the house,--Shoesmith who was to have been +married in four days--the thing might hit him full in front of any kind +of people. Cruel eyes might watch him. Why the devil hadn't I written +letters to warn them all? I could have posted them five minutes before +the train started. I had never thought to that moment of the immense +mess they would be in; how the whole edifice would clatter about their +ears. I had a sudden desire to stop the train and go back for a day, +for two days, to set that negligence right. My brain for a moment +brightened, became animated and prolific of ideas. I thought of a +brilliant line we might have taken on that confounded Reformatory +Bill.... + +That sort of thing was over.... + +What indeed wasn't over? I passed to a vaguer, more multitudinous +perception of disaster, the friends I had lost already since Altiora +began her campaign, the ampler remnant whom now I must lose. I thought +of people I had been merry with, people I had worked with and played +with, the companions of talkative walks, the hostesses of houses that +had once glowed with welcome for us both. I perceived we must lose them +all. I saw life like a tree in late autumn that had once been rich and +splendid with friends--and now the last brave dears would be hanging on +doubtfully against the frosty chill of facts, twisting and tortured in +the universal gale of indignation, trying to evade the cold blast of the +truth. I had betrayed my party, my intimate friend, my wife, the +wife whose devotion had made me what I was. For awhile the figure of +Margaret, remote, wounded, shamed, dominated my mind, and the thought of +my immense ingratitude. Damn them! they'd take it out of her too. I had +a feeling that I wanted to go straight back and grip some one by the +throat, some one talking ill of Margaret. They'd blame her for not +keeping me, for letting things go so far.... I wanted the whole world +to know how fine she was. I saw in imagination the busy, excited +dinner tables at work upon us all, rather pleasantly excited, brightly +indignant, merciless. + +Well, it's the stuff we are!... + +Then suddenly, stabbing me to the heart, came a vision of Margaret's +tears and the sound of her voice saying, “Husband mine! Oh! husband +mine! To see you cry!”... + +I came out of a cloud of thoughts to discover the narrow compartment, +with its feeble lamp overhead, and our rugs and hand-baggage swaying on +the rack, and Isabel, very still in front of me, gripping my wilting red +roses tightly in her bare and ringless hand. + +For a moment I could not understand her attitude, and then I perceived +she was sitting bent together with her head averted from the light to +hide the tears that were streaming down her face. She had not got her +handkerchief out for fear that I should see this, but I saw her tears, +dark drops of tears, upon her sleeve.... + +I suppose she had been watching my expression, divining my thoughts. + +For a time I stared at her and was motionless, in a sort of still and +weary amazement. Why had we done this injury to one another? WHY? Then +something stirred within me. + +“ISABEL!” I whispered. + +She made no sign. + +“Isabel!” I repeated, and then crossed over to her and crept closely to +her, put my arm about her, and drew her wet cheek to mine. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The New Machiavelli, by Herbert George Wells + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1047 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1048-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1048-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..da3b257f --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1048-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5694 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1048 *** + +THE RULING PASSION + +by Henry van Dyke + + + + +A WRITER'S REQUEST OF HIS MASTER + + +Let me never tag a moral to a story, nor tell a story without a meaning. +Make me respect my material so much that I dare not slight my work. Help +me to deal very honestly with words and with people because they are +both alive. Show me that as in a river, so in a writing, clearness is +the best quality, and a little that is pure is worth more than much that +is mixed. Teach me to see the local colour without being blind to the +inner light. Give me an ideal that will stand the strain of weaving into +human stuff on the loom of the real. Keep me from caring more for books +than for folks, for art than for life. Steady me to do my full stint of +work as well as I can: and when that is done, stop me, pay what wages +Thou wilt, and help me to say, from a quiet heart, a grateful AMEN. + + + + +PREFACE + + +In every life worth writing about there is a ruling passion,--“the very +pulse of the machine.” Unless you touch that, you are groping around +outside of reality. + +Sometimes it is romantic love: Natures masterpiece of interested +benevolence. In almost all lives this passion has its season of empire. +Therefore, and rightly, it is the favourite theme of the storyteller. +Romantic love interests almost everybody, because almost everybody knows +something about it, or would like to know. + +But there are other passions, no less real, which also have their place +and power in human life. Some of them come earlier, and sometimes they +last longer, than romantic love. They play alongside of it and are mixed +up with it, now checking it, now advancing its flow and tingeing it with +their own colour. + +Just because love is so universal, it is often to one of the other +passions that we must look for the distinctive hue, the individual +quality of a life-story. Granted, if you will, that everybody must fall +in love, or ought to fall in love, How will he do it? And what will +he do afterwards? These are questions not without interest to one who +watches the human drama as a friend. The answers depend upon those +hidden and durable desires, affections, and impulses to which men and +women give themselves up for rule and guidance. + +Music, nature, children, honour, strife, revenge, money, pride, +friendship, loyalty, duty,--to these objects and others like them the +secret power of personal passion often turns, and the life unconsciously +follows it, as the tides in the sea follow the moon in the sky. + +When circumstances cross the ruling passion, when rocks lie in the way +and winds are contrary, then things happen, characters emerge, slight +events are significant, mere adventures are transformed into a real +plot. What care I how many “hair-breadth 'scapes” and “moving accidents” + your hero may pass through, unless I know him for a man? He is but +a puppet strung on wires. His kisses are wooden and his wounds bleed +sawdust. There is nothing about him to remember except his name, and +perhaps a bit of dialect. Kill him or crown him,--what difference does +it make? + +But go the other way about your work: + + “Take the least man of all mankind, as I; + Look at his head and heart, find how and why + He differs from his fellows utterly,”-- + +and now there is something to tell, with a meaning. + +If you tell it at length, it is a novel,--a painting. If you tell it in +brief, it is a short story,--an etching. But the subject is always the +same: the unseen, mysterious, ruling passion weaving the stuff of human +nature into patterns wherein the soul is imaged and revealed. + +To tell about some of these ruling passions, simply, clearly, and +concretely, is what I want to do in this book. The characters are +chosen, for the most part, among plain people, because their feelings +are expressed with fewer words and greater truth, not being costumed for +social effect. The scene is laid on Nature's stage because I like to be +out-of-doors, even when I am trying to think and learning to write. + +“Avalon,” Princeton, July 22, 1901. + + + +CONTENTS + + I. A Lover of Music + + II. The Reward of Virtue + + III. A Brave Heart + + IV. The Gentle Life + + V. A Friend of Justice + + VI. The White Blot + + VII. A Year of Nobility + + VIII. The Keeper of the Light + + + + + +I. A LOVER OF MUSIC + + + + +I + +He entered the backwoods village of Bytown literally on the wings of the +wind. It whirled him along like a big snowflake, and dropped him at the +door of Moody's “Sportsmen's Retreat,” as if he were a New Year's gift +from the North Pole. His coming seemed a mere chance; but perhaps there +was something more in it, after all. At all events, you shall hear, if +you will, the time and the manner of his arrival. + +It was the last night of December, some thirty-five years ago. All the +city sportsmen who had hunted the deer under Bill Moody's direction had +long since retreated to their homes, leaving the little settlement +on the border of the Adirondack wilderness wholly under the social +direction of the natives. + +The annual ball was in full swing in the dining-room of the hotel. At +one side of the room the tables and chairs were piled up, with their +legs projecting in the air like a thicket of very dead trees. + +The huge stove in the southeast corner was blushing a rosy red through +its thin coat of whitewash, and exhaling a furious dry heat flavoured +with the smell of baked iron. At the north end, however, winter reigned; +and there were tiny ridges of fine snow on the floor, sifted in by the +wind through the cracks in the window-frames. + +But the bouncing girls and the heavy-footed guides and lumbermen who +filled the ball-room did not appear to mind the heat or the cold. They +balanced and “sashayed” from the tropics to the arctic circle. They +swung at corners and made “ladies' change” all through the temperate +zone. They stamped their feet and did double-shuffles until the floor +trembled beneath them. The tin lamp-reflectors on the walls rattled like +castanets. + +There was only one drawback to the hilarity of the occasion. The +band, which was usually imported from Sandy River Forks for such +festivities,--a fiddle, a cornet, a flute, and an accordion,--had not +arrived. There was a general idea that the mail-sleigh, in which the +musicians were to travel, had been delayed by the storm, and might +break its way through the snow-drifts and arrive at any moment. But Bill +Moody, who was naturally of a pessimistic temperament, had offered a +different explanation. + +“I tell ye, old Baker's got that blame' band down to his hotel at +the Falls now, makin' 'em play fer his party. Them music fellers is +onsartin; can't trust 'em to keep anythin' 'cept the toon, and they +don't alluz keep that. Guess we might uz well shet up this ball, or go +to work playin' games.” + +At this proposal a thick gloom had fallen over the assembly; but it +had been dispersed by Serena Moody's cheerful offer to have the small +melodion brought out of the parlour, and to play for dancing as well as +she could. The company agreed that she was a smart girl, and prepared to +accept her performance with enthusiasm. As the dance went on, there were +frequent comments of approval to encourage her in the labour of love. + +“Sereny's doin' splendid, ain't she?” said the other girls. + +To which the men replied, “You bet! The playin' 's reel nice, and good +'nough fer anybody--outside o' city folks.” + +But Serena's repertory was weak, though her spirit was willing. There +was an unspoken sentiment among the men that “The Sweet By and By” was +not quite the best tune in the world for a quadrille. A Sunday-school +hymn, no matter how rapidly it was rendered, seemed to fall short of +the necessary vivacity for a polka. Besides, the wheezy little organ +positively refused to go faster than a certain gait. Hose Ransom +expressed the popular opinion of the instrument, after a figure in which +he and his partner had been half a bar ahead of the music from start to +finish, when he said: + +“By Jolly! that old maloney may be chock full o' relijun and po'try; but +it ain't got no DANCE into it, no more 'n a saw-mill.” + + +This was the situation of affairs inside of Moody's tavern on New Year's +Eve. But outside of the house the snow lay two feet deep on the level, +and shoulder-high in the drifts. The sky was at last swept clean of +clouds. The shivering stars and the shrunken moon looked infinitely +remote in the black vault of heaven. The frozen lake, on which the ice +was three feet thick and solid as rock, was like a vast, smooth bed, +covered with a white counterpane. The cruel wind still poured out of the +northwest, driving the dry snow along with it like a mist of powdered +diamonds. + +Enveloped in this dazzling, pungent atmosphere, half blinded and +bewildered by it, buffeted and yet supported by the onrushing torrent +of air, a man on snow-shoes, with a light pack on his shoulders, emerged +from the shelter of the Three Sisters' Islands, and staggered straight +on, down the lake. He passed the headland of the bay where Moody's +tavern is ensconced, and probably would have drifted on beyond it, to +the marsh at the lower end of the lake, but for the yellow glare of the +ball-room windows and the sound of music and dancing which came out to +him suddenly through a lull in the wind. + +He turned to the right, climbed over the low wall of broken ice-blocks +that bordered the lake, and pushed up the gentle slope to the open +passageway by which the two parts of the rambling house were joined +together. Crossing the porch with the last remnant of his strength, he +lifted his hand to knock, and fell heavily against the side door. + +The noise, heard through the confusion within, awakened curiosity and +conjecture. + +Just as when a letter comes to a forest cabin, it is turned over and +over, and many guesses are made as to the handwriting and the authorship +before it occurs to any one to open it and see who sent it, so was this +rude knocking at the gate the occasion of argument among the rustic +revellers as to what it might portend. Some thought it was the arrival +of the belated band. Others supposed the sound betokened a descent of +the Corey clan from the Upper Lake, or a change of heart on the part of +old Dan Dunning, who had refused to attend the ball because they would +not allow him to call out the figures. The guesses were various; but +no one thought of the possible arrival of a stranger at such an hour +on such a night, until Serena suggested that it would be a good plan +to open the door. Then the unbidden guest was discovered lying benumbed +along the threshold. + +There was no want of knowledge as to what should be done with a +half-frozen man, and no lack of ready hands to do it. They carried him +not to the warm stove, but into the semi-arctic region of the parlour. +They rubbed his face and his hands vigorously with snow. They gave him +a drink of hot tea flavoured with whiskey--or perhaps it was a drink of +whiskey with a little hot tea in it--and then, as his senses began to +return to him, they rolled him in a blanket and left him on a sofa to +thaw out gradually, while they went on with the dance. + +Naturally, he was the favourite subject of conversation for the next +hour. + +“Who is he, anyhow? I never seen 'im before. Where'd he come from?” + asked the girls. + +“I dunno,” said Bill Moody; “he didn't say much. Talk seemed all froze +up. Frenchy, 'cordin' to what he did say. Guess he must a come from +Canady, workin' on a lumber job up Raquette River way. Got bounced out +o' the camp, p'raps. All them Frenchies is queer.” + +This summary of national character appeared to command general assent. + +“Yaas,” said Hose Ransom, “did ye take note how he hung on to that pack +o' his'n all the time? Wouldn't let go on it. Wonder what 't wuz? Seemed +kinder holler 'n light, fer all 'twuz so big an' wropped up in lots o' +coverin's.” + +“What's the use of wonderin'?” said one of the younger boys; “find out +later on. Now's the time fer dancin'. Whoop 'er up!” + +So the sound of revelry swept on again in full flood. The men and maids +went careering up and down the room. Serena's willing fingers laboured +patiently over the yellow keys of the reluctant melodion. But the +ancient instrument was weakening under the strain; the bellows creaked; +the notes grew more and more asthmatic. + +“Hold the Fort” was the tune, “Money Musk” was the dance; and it was a +preposterously bad fit. The figure was tangled up like a fishing-line +after trolling all day without a swivel. The dancers were doing their +best, determined to be happy, as cheerful as possible, but all out of +time. The organ was whirring and gasping and groaning for breath. + +Suddenly a new music filled the room. + +The right tune--the real old joyful “Money Musk,” played jubilantly, +triumphantly, irresistibly--on a fiddle! + +The melodion gave one final gasp of surprise and was dumb. + +Every one looked up. There, in the parlour door, stood the stranger, +with his coat off, his violin hugged close under his chin, his right arm +making the bow fly over the strings, his black eyes sparkling, and his +stockinged feet marking time to the tune. + +“DANSEZ! DANSEZ,” he cried, “EN AVANT! Don' spik'. Don' res'! Ah'll +goin' play de feedle fo' yo' jess moch yo' lak', eef yo' h'only DANSE!” + +The music gushed from the bow like water from the rock when Moses +touched it. Tune followed tune with endless fluency and variety--polkas, +galops, reels, jigs, quadrilles; fragments of airs from many lands--“The +Fisher's Hornpipe,” “Charlie is my Darling,” “Marianne s'en va-t-au +Moulin,” “Petit Jean,” “Jordan is a Hard Road to Trabbel,” woven +together after the strangest fashion and set to the liveliest cadence. + +It was a magical performance. No one could withstand it. They all danced +together, like the leaves on the shivering poplars when the wind blows +through them. The gentle Serena was swept away from her stool at the +organ as if she were a little canoe drawn into the rapids, and Bill +Moody stepped high and cut pigeon-wings that had been forgotten for +a generation. It was long after midnight when the dancers paused, +breathless and exhausted. + +“Waal,” said Hose Ransom, “that's jess the hightonedest music we ever +had to Bytown. You 're a reel player, Frenchy, that's what you are. +What's your name? Where'd you come from? Where you goin' to? What +brought you here, anyhow?” + +“MOI?” said the fiddler, dropping his bow and taking a long breath. +“Mah nem Jacques Tremblay. Ah'll ben come fraum Kebeck. W'ere goin'? Ah +donno. Prob'ly Ah'll stop dis place, eef yo' lak' dat feedle so moch, +hein?” + +His hand passed caressingly over the smooth brown wood of the violin. He +drew it up close to his face again, as if he would have kissed it, while +his eyes wandered timidly around the circle of listeners, and rested at +last, with a question in them, on the face of the hotel-keeper. Moody +was fairly warmed, for once, out of his customary temper of mistrust and +indecision. He spoke up promptly. + +“You kin stop here jess long's you like. We don' care where you come +from, an' you need n't to go no fu'ther, less you wanter. But we ain't +got no use for French names round here. Guess we 'll call him Fiddlin' +Jack, hey, Sereny? He kin do the chores in the day-time, an' play the +fiddle at night.” + +This was the way in which Bytown came to have a lover of music among its +permanent inhabitants. + + + + +II + + +Jacques dropped into his place and filled it as if it had been made for +him. There was something in his disposition that seemed to fit him for +just the role that was vacant in the social drama of the settlement. It +was not a serious, important, responsible part, like that of a farmer, +or a store-keeper, or a professional hunter. It was rather an addition +to the regular programme of existence, something unannounced and +voluntary, and therefore not weighted with too heavy responsibilities. +There was a touch of the transient and uncertain about it. He seemed +like a perpetual visitor; and yet he stayed on as steadily as a native, +never showing, from the first, the slightest wish or intention to leave +the woodland village. + +I do not mean that he was an idler. Bytown had not yet arrived at that +stage of civilization in which an ornamental element is supported at the +public expense. + +He worked for his living, and earned it. He was full of a quick, +cheerful industry; and there was nothing that needed to be done about +Moody's establishment, from the wood-pile to the ice-house, at which he +did not bear a hand willingly and well. + +“He kin work like a beaver,” said Bill Moody, talking the stranger over +down at the post-office one day; “but I don't b'lieve he's got much +ambition. Jess does his work and takes his wages, and then gits his +fiddle out and plays.” + +“Tell ye what,” said Hose Ransom, who set up for the village +philosopher, “he ain't got no 'magination. That's what makes men +slack. He don't know what it means to rise in the world; don't care fer +anythin' ez much ez he does fer his music. He's jess like a bird; let +him have 'nough to eat and a chance to sing, and he's all right. What's +he 'magine about a house of his own, and a barn, and sich things?” + +Hosea's illustration was suggested by his own experience. He had just +put the profits of his last summer's guiding into a new barn, and his +imagination was already at work planning an addition to his house in the +shape of a kitchen L. + +But in spite of his tone of contempt, he had a kindly feeling for the +unambitious fiddler. Indeed, this was the attitude of pretty much every +one in the community. A few men of the rougher sort had made fun of him +at first, and there had been one or two attempts at rude handling. But +Jacques was determined to take no offence; and he was so good-humoured, +so obliging, so pleasant in his way of whistling and singing about his +work, that all unfriendliness soon died out. + +He had literally played his way into the affections of the village. The +winter seemed to pass more swiftly and merrily than it had done before +the violin was there. He was always ready to bring it out, and draw all +kinds of music from its strings, as long as any one wanted to listen or +to dance. + +It made no difference whether there was a roomful of listeners, or only +a couple, Fiddlin' Jack was just as glad to play. With a little, quiet +audience, he loved to try the quaint, plaintive airs of the old French +songs--“A la Claire Fontaine,” “Un Canadien Errant,” and “Isabeau +s'y Promene”--and bits of simple melody from the great composers, and +familiar Scotch and English ballads--things that he had picked up heaven +knows where, and into which he put a world of meaning, sad and sweet. + +He was at his best in this vein when he was alone with Serena in the +kitchen--she with a piece of sewing in her lap, sitting beside the lamp; +he in the corner by the stove, with the brown violin tucked under his +chin, wandering on from one air to another, and perfectly content if +she looked up now and then from her work and told him that she liked the +tune. + +Serena was a pretty girl, with smooth, silky hair, end eyes of the +colour of the nodding harebells that blossom on the edge of the woods. +She was slight and delicate. The neighbours called her sickly; and a +great doctor from Philadelphia who had spent a summer at Bytown had +put his ear to her chest, and looked grave, and said that she ought +to winter in a mild climate. That was before people had discovered the +Adirondacks as a sanitarium for consumptives. + +But the inhabitants of Bytown were not in the way of paying much +attention to the theories of physicians in regard to climate. They held +that if you were rugged, it was a great advantage, almost a virtue; but +if you were sickly, you just had to make the best of it, and get along +with the weather as well as you could. + +So Serena stayed at home and adapted herself very cheerfully to the +situation. She kept indoors in winter more than the other girls, and had +a quieter way about her; but you would never have called her an invalid. +There was only a clearer blue in her eyes, and a smoother lustre on +her brown hair, and a brighter spot of red on her cheek. She was +particularly fond of reading and of music. It was this that made her +so glad of the arrival of the violin. The violin's master knew it, and +turned to her as a sympathetic soul. I think he liked her eyes too, +and the soft tones of her voice. He was a sentimentalist, this little +Canadian, for all he was so merry; and love--but that comes later. + +“Where'd you get your fiddle, Jack? said Serena, one night as they sat +together in the kitchen. + +“Ah'll get heem in Kebeck,” answered Jacques, passing his hand lightly +over the instrument, as he always did when any one spoke of it. “Vair' +nice VIOLON, hein? W'at you t'ink? Ma h'ole teacher, to de College, he +was gif' me dat VIOLON, w'en Ah was gone away to de woods.” + +“I want to know! Were you in the College? What'd you go off to the woods +for?” + +“Ah'll get tire' fraum dat teachin'--read, read, read, h'all taim'. +Ah'll not lak' dat so moch. Rader be out-door--run aroun'--paddle de +CANOE--go wid de boys in de woods--mek' dem dance at ma MUSIQUE. A-a-ah! +Dat was fon! P'raps you t'ink dat not good, hem? You t'ink Jacques one +beeg fool, Ah suppose?” + +“I dunno,” said Serena, declining to commit herself, but pressing on +gently, as women do, to the point she had in view when she began the +talk. “Dunno's you're any more foolish than a man that keeps on doin' +what he don't like. But what made you come away from the boys in the +woods and travel down this way?” + +A shade passed over the face of Jacques. He turned away from the lamp +and bent over the violin on his knees, fingering the strings nervously. +Then he spoke, in a changed, shaken voice. + +“Ah'l tole you somet'ing, Ma'amselle Serene. You ma frien'. Don' you +h'ask me dat reason of it no more. Dat's somet'ing vair' bad, bad, bad. +Ah can't nevair tole dat--nevair.” + +There was something in the way he said it that gave a check to her +gentle curiosity and turned it into pity. A man with a secret in his +life? It was a new element in her experience; like a chapter in a book. +She was lady enough at heart to respect his silence. She kept away from +the forbidden ground. But the knowledge that it was there gave a new +interest to Jacques and his music. She embroidered some strange romances +around that secret while she sat in the kitchen sewing. + +Other people at Bytown were less forbearing. They tried their best +to find out something about Fiddlin' Jack's past, but he was not +communicative. He talked about Canada. All Canadians do. But about +himself? No. + +If the questions became too pressing, he would try to play himself away +from his inquisitors with new tunes. If that did not succeed, he would +take the violin under his arm and slip quickly out of the room. And if +you had followed him at such a time, you would have heard him drawing +strange, melancholy music from the instrument, sitting alone in the +barn, or in the darkness of his own room in the garret. + +Once, and only once, he seemed to come near betraying himself. This was +how it happened. + +There was a party at Moody's one night, and Bull Corey had come down +from the Upper Lake and filled himself up with whiskey. + +Bull was an ugly-tempered fellow. The more he drank, up to a certain +point, the steadier he got on his legs, and the more necessary it seemed +for him to fight somebody. The tide of his pugnacity that night took a +straight set toward Fiddlin' Jack. + +Bull began with musical criticisms. The fiddling did not suit him at +all. It was too quick, or else it was too slow. He failed to perceive +how any one could tolerate such music even in the infernal regions, and +he expressed himself in plain words to that effect. In fact, he damned +the performance without even the faintest praise. + +But the majority of the audience gave him no support. On the contrary, +they told him to shut up. And Jack fiddled along cheerfully. + +Then Bull returned to the attack, after having fortified himself in +the bar-room. And now he took national grounds. The French were, in +his opinion, a most despicable race. They were not a patch on the noble +American race. They talked too much, and their language was ridiculous. +They had a condemned, fool habit of taking off their hats when they +spoke to a lady. They ate frogs. + +Having delivered himself of these sentiments in a loud voice, much to +the interruption of the music, he marched over to the table on which +Fiddlin' Jack was sitting, and grabbed the violin from his hands. + +“Gimme that dam' fiddle,” he cried, “till I see if there's a frog in +it.” + +Jacques leaped from the table, transported with rage. His face was +convulsed. His eyes blazed. He snatched a carving-knife from the dresser +behind him, and sprang at Corey. + +“TORT DIEU!” he shrieked, “MON VIOLON! Ah'll keel you, beast!” + +But he could not reach the enemy. Bill Moody's long arms were flung +around the struggling fiddler, and a pair of brawny guides had Corey +pinned by the elbows, hustling him backward. Half a dozen men thrust +themselves between the would-be combatants. There was a dead silence, +a scuffling of feet on the bare floor; then the danger was past, and a +tumult of talk burst forth. + +But a strange alteration had passed over Jacques. He trembled. He turned +white. Tears poured down his cheeks. As Moody let him go, he dropped on +his knees, hid his face in his hands, and prayed in his own tongue. + +“My God, it is here again! Was it not enough that I must be tempted once +before? Must I have the madness yet another time? My God, show the mercy +toward me, for the Blessed Virgin's sake. I am a sinner, but not the +second time; for the love of Jesus, not the second time! Ave Maria, +gratia plena, ora pro me!” + +The others did not understand what he was saying. Indeed, they paid +little attention to him. They saw he was frightened, and thought it was +with fear. They were already discussing what ought to be done about the +fracas. + +It was plain that Bull Corey, whose liquor had now taken effect +suddenly, and made him as limp as a strip of cedar bark, must be thrown +out of the door, and left to cool off on the beach. But what to do with +Fiddlin' Jack for his attempt at knifing--a detested crime? He might +have gone at Bull with a gun, or with a club, or with a chair, or with +any recognized weapon. But with a carving-knife! That was a serious +offence. Arrest him, and send him to jail at the Forks? Take him out, +and duck him in the lake? Lick him, and drive him out of the town? + +There was a multitude of counsellors, but it was Hose Ransom who settled +the case. He was a well-known fighting-man, and a respected philosopher. +He swung his broad frame in front of the fiddler. + +“Tell ye what we'll do. Jess nothin'! Ain't Bull Corey the blowin'est +and the mos' trouble-us cuss 'round these hull woods? And would n't it +be a fust-rate thing ef some o' the wind was let out 'n him?” + +General assent greeted this pointed inquiry. + +“And wa'n't Fiddlin' Jack peacerble 'nough 's long 's he was let alone? +What's the matter with lettin' him alone now?” + +The argument seemed to carry weight. Hose saw his advantage, and +clinched it. + +“Ain't he given us a lot o' fun here this winter in a innercent kind o' +way, with his old fiddle? I guess there ain't nothin' on airth he loves +better 'n that holler piece o' wood, and the toons that's inside o' it. +It's jess like a wife or a child to him. Where's that fiddle, anyhow?” + +Some one had picked it deftly out of Corey's hand during the scuffle, +and now passed it up to Hose. + +“Here, Frenchy, take yer long-necked, pot-bellied music-gourd. And I +want you boys to understand, ef any one teches that fiddle ag'in, I'll +knock hell out 'n him.” + +So the recording angel dropped another tear upon the record of Hosea +Ransom, and the books were closed for the night. + + + + +III + + +For some weeks after the incident of the violin and the carving-knife, +it looked as if a permanent cloud had settled upon the spirits of +Fiddlin' Jack. He was sad and nervous; if any one touched him, or +even spoke to him suddenly, he would jump like a deer. He kept out of +everybody's way as much as possible, sat out in the wood-shed when he +was not at work, and could not be persuaded to bring down his fiddle. He +seemed in a fair way to be transformed into “the melancholy Jaques.” + +It was Serena who broke the spell; and she did it in a woman's way, the +simplest way in the world--by taking no notice of it. + +“Ain't you goin' to play for me to-night?” she asked one evening, +as Jacques passed through the kitchen. Whereupon the evil spirit was +exorcised, and the violin came back again to its place in the life of +the house. + +But there was less time for music now than there had been in the winter. +As the snow vanished from the woods, and the frost leaked out of the +ground, and the ice on the lake was honeycombed, breaking away from the +shore, and finally going to pieces altogether in a warm southeast storm, +the Sportsmen's Retreat began to prepare for business. There was a +garden to be planted, and there were boats to be painted. The rotten old +wharf in front of the house stood badly in need of repairs. The fiddler +proved himself a Jack-of-all-trades and master of more than one. + +In the middle of May the anglers began to arrive at the Retreat--a +quiet, sociable, friendly set of men, most of whom were old-time +acquaintances, and familiar lovers of the woods. They belonged to the +“early Adirondack period,” these disciples of Walton. They were not very +rich, and they did not put on much style, but they understood how to +have a good time; and what they did not know about fishing was not worth +knowing. + +Jacques fitted into their scheme of life as a well-made reel fits the +butt of a good rod. He was a steady oarsman, a lucky fisherman, with a +real genius for the use of the landing-net, and a cheerful companion, +who did not insist upon giving his views about artificial flies and +advice about casting, on every occasion. By the end of June he found +himself in steady employment as a guide. + +He liked best to go with the anglers who were not too energetic, but +were satisfied to fish for a few hours in the morning and again at +sunset, after a long rest in the middle of the afternoon. This was just +the time for the violin; and if Jacques had his way, he would take it +with him, carefully tucked away in its case in the bow of the boat; and +when the pipes were lit after lunch, on the shore of Round Island or +at the mouth of Cold Brook, he would discourse sweet music until the +declining sun drew near the tree-tops and the veery rang his silver +bell for vespers. Then it was time to fish again, and the flies danced +merrily over the water, and the great speckled trout leaped eagerly to +catch them. For trolling all day long for lake-trout Jacques had little +liking. + +“Dat is not de sport,” he would say, “to hol' one r-r-ope in de 'and, +an' den pool heem in wid one feesh on t'ree hook, h'all tangle h'up +in hees mout'--dat is not de sport. Bisside, dat leef not taim' for la +musique.” + +Midsummer brought a new set of guests to the Retreat, and filled the +ramshackle old house to overflowing. The fishing fell off, but there +were picnics and camping-parties in abundance, and Jacques was in +demand. The ladies liked him; his manners were so pleasant, and they +took a great interest in his music. Moody bought a piano for the parlour +that summer; and there were two or three good players in the house, +to whom Jacques would listen with delight, sitting on a pile of logs +outside the parlour windows in the warm August evenings. + +Some one asked him whether he did not prefer the piano to the violin. + +“NON,” he answered, very decidedly; “dat piano, he vairee smart; he +got plentee word, lak' de leetle yellow bird in de cage--'ow you call +heem--de cannarie. He spik' moch. Bot dat violon, he spik' more deep, to +de heart, lak' de Rossignol. He mak' me feel more glad, more sorree--dat +fo' w'at Ah lak' heem de bes'!” + +Through all the occupations and pleasures of the summer Jacques kept as +near as he could to Serena. If he learned a new tune, by listening to +the piano--some simple, artful air of Mozart, some melancholy echo of +a nocturne of Chopin, some tender, passionate love-song of Schubert--it +was to her that he would play it first. If he could persuade her to a +boat-ride with him on the lake, Sunday evening, the week was complete. +He even learned to know the more shy and delicate forest-blossoms that +she preferred, and would come in from a day's guiding with a tiny bunch +of belated twin-flowers, or a few purple-fringed orchids, or a handful +of nodding stalks of the fragrant pyrola, for her. + +So the summer passed, and the autumn, with its longer hunting +expeditions into the depth of the wilderness; and by the time winter +came around again, Fiddlin' Jack was well settled at Moody's as +a regular Adirondack guide of the old-fashioned type, but with a +difference. He improved in his English. Something of that missing +quality which Moody called ambition, and to which Hose Ransom gave the +name of imagination, seemed to awaken within him. He saved his wages. He +went into business for himself in a modest way, and made a good turn in +the manufacture of deerskin mittens and snow-shoes. By the spring he had +nearly three hundred dollars laid by, and bought a piece of land from +Ransom on the bank of the river just above the village. + +The second summer of guiding brought him in enough to commence building +a little house. It was of logs, neatly squared at the corners; and there +was a door exactly in the middle of the facade, with a square window +at either side, and another at each end of the house, according to the +common style of architecture at Bytown. + +But it was in the roof that the touch of distinction appeared. For this, +Jacques had modelled after his memory of an old Canadian roof. There was +a delicate concave sweep in it, as it sloped downward from the peak, and +the eaves projected pleasantly over the front door, making a strip of +shade wherein it would be good to rest when the afternoon sun shone hot. + +He took great pride in this effort of the builder's art. One day at the +beginning of May, when the house was nearly finished, he asked old Moody +and Serena to stop on their way home from the village and see what he +had done. He showed them the kitchen, and the living-room, with the +bed-room partitioned off from it, and sharing half of its side window. +Here was a place where a door could be cut at the back, and a shed built +for a summer kitchen--for the coolness, you understand. And here were +two stoves--one for the cooking, and the other in the living-room for +the warming, both of the newest. + +“An' look dat roof. Dat's lak' we make dem in Canada. De rain ron off +easy, and de sun not shine too strong at de door. Ain't dat nice? You +lak' dat roof, Ma'amselle Serene, hein?” + +Thus the imagination of Jacques unfolded itself, and his ambition +appeared to be making plans for its accomplishment. I do not want any +one to suppose that there was a crisis in his affair of the heart. There +was none. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether anybody in the village, +even Serena herself, ever dreamed that there was such an affair. Up +to the point when the house was finished and furnished, it was to be a +secret between Jacques and his violin; and they found no difficulty in +keeping it. + +Bytown was a Yankee village. Jacques was, after all, nothing but a +Frenchman. The native tone of religion, what there was of it, was +strongly Methodist. Jacques never went to church, and if he was +anything, was probably a Roman Catholic. Serena was something of a +sentimentalist, and a great reader of novels; but the international +love-story had not yet been invented, and the idea of getting married +to a foreigner never entered her head. I do not say that she suspected +nothing in the wild flowers, and the Sunday evening boat-rides, and the +music. She was a woman. I have said already that she liked Jacques very +much, and his violin pleased her to the heart. But the new building by +the river? I am sure she never even thought of it once, in the way that +he did. + +Well, in the end of June, just after the furniture had come for the +house with the curved roof, Serena was married to Hose Ransom. He was a +young widower without children, and altogether the best fellow, as well +as the most prosperous, in the settlement. His house stood up on the +hill, across the road from the lot which Jacques had bought. It was +painted white, and it had a narrow front porch, with a scroll-saw fringe +around the edge of it; and there was a little garden fenced in with +white palings, in which Sweet Williams and pansies and blue lupines and +pink bleeding-hearts were planted. + +The wedding was at the Sportsmen's Retreat, and Jacques was there, of +course. There was nothing of the disconsolate lover about him. The noun +he might have confessed to, in a confidential moment of intercourse with +his violin; but the adjective was not in his line. + +The strongest impulse in his nature was to be a giver of entertaininent, +a source of joy in others, a recognized element of delight in the +little world where he moved. He had the artistic temperament in its +most primitive and naive form. Nothing pleased him so much as the act of +pleasing. Music was the means which Nature had given him to fulfil +this desire. He played, as you might say, out of a certain kind of +selfishness, because he enjoyed making other people happy. He was +selfish enough, in his way, to want the pleasure of making everybody +feel the same delight that he felt in the clear tones, the merry +cadences, the tender and caressing flow of his violin. That was +consolation. That was power. That was success. + +And especially was he selfish enough to want to feel his ability to give +Serena a pleasure at her wedding--a pleasure that nobody else could give +her. When she asked him to play, he consented gladly. Never had he drawn +the bow across the strings with a more magical touch. The wedding guests +danced as if they were enchanted. The big bridegroom came up and clapped +him on the back, with the nearest approach to a gesture of affection +that backwoods etiquette allows between men. + +“Jack, you're the boss fiddler o' this hull county. Have a drink now? I +guess you 're mighty dry.” + +“MERCI, NON,” said Jacques. “I drink only de museek dis night. Eef I +drink two t'ings, I get dronk.” + +In between the dances, and while the supper was going on, he played +quieter tunes--ballads and songs that he knew Serena liked. After supper +came the final reel; and when that was wound up, with immense hilarity, +the company ran out to the side door of the tavern to shout a noisy +farewell to the bridal buggy, as it drove down the road toward the house +with the white palings. When they came back, the fiddler was gone. He +had slipped away to the little cabin with the curved roof. + +All night long he sat there playing in the dark. Every tune that he had +ever known came back to him--grave and merry, light and sad. He played +them over and over again, passing round and round among them as a leaf +on a stream follows the eddies, now backward, now forward, and returning +most frequently to an echo of a certain theme from Chopin--you remember +the NOCTURNE IN G MINOR, the second one? He did not know who Chopin +was. Perhaps he did not even know the name of the music. But the air had +fallen upon his ear somewhere, and had stayed in his memory; and now it +seemed to say something to him that had an especial meaning. + +At last he let the bow fall. He patted the brown wood of the violin +after his old fashion, loosened the strings a little, wrapped it in its +green baize cover, and hung it on the wall. + +“Hang thou there, thou little violin,” he murmured. “It is now that I +shall take the good care of thee, as never before; for thou art the wife +of Jacques Tremblay. And the wife of 'Osee Ransom, she is a friend to +us, both of us; and we will make the music for her many years, I +tell thee, many years--for her, and for her good man, and for the +children--yes?” + +But Serena did not have many years to listen to the playing of +Jacques Tremblay: on the white porch, in the summer evenings, with +bleeding-hearts abloom in the garden; or by the winter fire, while the +pale blue moonlight lay on the snow without, and the yellow lamplight +filled the room with homely radiance. In the fourth year after her +marriage she died, and Jacques stood beside Hose at the funeral. + +There was a child--a little boy--delicate and blue-eyed, the living +image of his mother. Jacques appointed himself general attendant, nurse +in extraordinary, and court musician to this child. He gave up his work +as a guide. It took him too much away from home. He was tired of it. +Besides, what did he want of so much money? He had his house. He could +gain enough for all his needs by making snow-shoes and the deerskin +mittens at home. Then he could be near little Billy. It was pleasanter +so. + +When Hose was away on a long trip in the woods, Jacques would move up +to the white house and stay on guard. His fiddle learned how to sing the +prettiest slumber songs. Moreover, it could crow in the morning, just +like the cock; and it could make a noise like a mouse, and like the cat, +too; and there were more tunes inside of it than in any music-box in the +world. + +As the boy grew older, the little cabin with the curved roof became +his favourite playground. It was near the river, and Fiddlin' Jack was +always ready to make a boat for him, or help him catch minnows in the +mill-dam. The child had a taste for music, too, and learned some of the +old Canadian songs, which he sang in a curious broken patois, while his +delighted teacher accompanied him on the violin. But it was a great day +when he was eight years old, and Jacques brought out a small fiddle, for +which he had secretly sent to Albany, and presented it to the boy. + +“You see dat feedle, Billee? Dat's for you! You mek' your lesson on +dat. When you kin mek' de museek, den you play on de violon--lak' dis +one--listen!” + +Then he drew the bow across the strings and dashed into a medley of the +jolliest airs imaginable. + +The boy took to his instruction as kindly as could have been expected. +School interrupted it a good deal; and play with the other boys carried +him away often; but, after all, there was nothing that he liked much +better than to sit in the little cabin on a winter evening and pick out +a simple tune after his teacher. He must have had some talent for it, +too; for Jacques was very proud of his pupil, and prophesied great +things of him. + +“You know dat little Billee of 'Ose Ransom,” the fiddler would say to a +circle of people at the hotel, where he still went to play for parties; +“you know dat small Ransom boy? Well, I 'm tichin' heem play de feedle; +an' I tell you, one day he play better dan hees ticher. Ah, dat 's +gr-r-reat t'ing, de museek, ain't it? Mek' you laugh, mek' you cry, mek' +you dance! Now, you dance. Tek' your pardnerre. EN AVANT! Kip' step to +de museek!” + + + + +IV + + +Thirty years brought many changes to Bytown. The wild woodland +flavour evaporated out of the place almost entirely; and instead of an +independent centre of rustic life, it became an annex to great cities. +It was exploited as a summer resort, and discovered as a winter resort. +Three or four big hotels were planted there, and in their shadow a score +of boarding-houses alternately languished and flourished. The summer +cottage also appeared and multiplied; and with it came many of the +peculiar features which man elaborates in his struggle toward the finest +civilization--afternoon teas, and amateur theatricals, and claw-hammer +coats, and a casino, and even a few servants in livery. + +The very name of Bytown was discarded as being too American and +commonplace. An Indian name was discovered, and considered much more +romantic and appropriate. You will look in vain for Bytown on the map +now. Nor will you find the old saw-mill there any longer, wasting a vast +water-power to turn its dripping wheel and cut up a few pine-logs into +fragrant boards. There is a big steam-mill a little farther up the +river, which rips out thousands of feet of lumber in a day; but there +are no more pine-logs, only sticks of spruce which the old lumbermen +would have thought hardly worth cutting. And down below the dam there is +a pulp-mill, to chew up the little trees and turn them into paper, and a +chair factory, and two or three industrial establishments, with quite a +little colony of French-Canadians employed in them as workmen. + +Hose Ransom sold his place on the hill to one of the hotel companies, +and a huge caravansary occupied the site of the house with the white +palings. There were no more bleeding-hearts in the garden. There were +beds of flaring red geraniums, which looked as if they were painted; and +across the circle of smooth lawn in front of the piazza the name of the +hotel was printed in alleged ornamental plants letters two feet long, +immensely ugly. Hose had been elevated to the office of postmaster, and +lived in a Queen Antic cottage on the main street. Little Billy Ransom +had grown up into a very interesting young man, with a decided musical +genius, and a tenor voice, which being discovered by an enterprising +patron of genius, from Boston, Billy was sent away to Paris to learn to +sing. Some day you will hear of his debut in grand opera, as Monsieur +Guillaume Rancon. + +But Fiddlin' Jack lived on in the little house with the curved roof, +beside the river, refusing all the good offers which were made to him +for his piece of land. + +“NON,” he said; “what for shall I sell dis house? I lak' her, she +lak' me. All dese walls got full from museek, jus' lak' de wood of dis +violon. He play bettair dan de new feedle, becos' I play heem so long. +I lak' to lissen to dat rivaire in de night. She sing from long taim' +ago--jus' de same song w'en I firs come here. W'at for I go away? W'at I +get? W'at you can gif' me lak' dat?” + +He was still the favourite musician of the county-side, in great request +at parties and weddings; but he had extended the sphere of his influence +a little. He was not willing to go to church, though there were now +several to choose from; but a young minister of liberal views who had +come to take charge of the new Episcopal chapel had persuaded Jacques +into the Sunday-school, to lead the children's singing with his violin. +He did it so well that the school became the most popular in the +village. It was much pleasanter to sing than to listen to long +addresses. + +Jacques grew old gracefully, but he certainly grew old rapidly. His +beard was white; his shoulders were stooping; he suffered a good deal +in damp days from rheumatism--fortunately not in his hands, but in his +legs. One spring there was a long spell of abominable weather, just +between freezing and thawing. He caught a heavy cold and took to his +bed. Hose came over to look after him. + +For a few days the old fiddler kept up his courage, and would sit up in +the bed trying to play; then his strength and his spirit seemed to fail +together. He grew silent and indifferent. When Hose came in he would +find Jacques with his face turned to the wall, where there was a tiny +brass crucifix hanging below the violin, and his lips moving quietly. + +“Don't ye want the fiddle, Jack? I 'd like ter hear some o' them +old-time tunes ag'in.” + +But the artifice failed. Jacques shook his head. His mind seemed to turn +back to the time of his first arrival in the village, and beyond it. +When he spoke at all, it was of something connected with this early +time. + +“Dat was bad taim' when I near keel Bull Corey, hein?” + +Hose nodded gravely. + +“Dat was beeg storm, dat night when I come to Bytown. You remember dat?” + +Yes, Hose remembered it very well. It was a real old-fashioned storm. + +“Ah, but befo dose taim', dere was wuss taim' dan dat--in Canada. Nobody +don' know 'bout dat. I lak to tell you, 'Ose, but I can't. No, it is not +possible to tell dat, nevair!” + +It came into Hose's mind that the case was serious. Jack was going to +die. He never went to church, but perhaps the Sunday-school might count +for something. He was only a Frenchman, after all, and Frenchmen had +their own ways of doing things. He certainly ought to see some kind of +a preacher before he went out of the wilderness. There was a Canadian +priest in town that week, who had come down to see about getting up a +church for the French people who worked in the mills. Perhaps Jack would +like to talk with him. + +His face lighted up at the proposal. He asked to have the room tidied +up, and a clean shirt put on him, and the violin laid open in its case +on a table beside the bed, and a few other preparations made for the +visit. Then the visitor came, a tall, friendly, quiet-looking man about +Jacques's age, with a smooth face and a long black cassock. The door was +shut, and they were left alone together. + +“I am comforted that you are come, mon pere,” said the sick man, “for I +have the heavy heart. There is a secret that I have kept for many years. +Sometimes I had almost forgotten that it must be told at the last; but +now it is the time to speak. I have a sin to confess--a sin of the most +grievous, of the most unpardonable.” + +The listener soothed him with gracious words; spoke of the mercy that +waits for all the penitent; urged him to open his heart without delay. + +“Well, then, mon pere, it is this that makes me fear to die. Long since, +in Canada, before I came to this place, I have killed a man. It was--” + +The voice stopped. The little round clock on the window-sill ticked very +distinctly and rapidly, as if it were in a hurry. + +“I will speak as short as I can. It was in the camp of 'Poleon Gautier, +on the river St. Maurice. The big Baptiste Lacombe, that crazy boy who +wants always to fight, he mocks me when I play, he snatches my violin, +he goes to break him on the stove. There is a knife in my belt. I +spring to Baptiste. I see no more what it is that I do. I cut him in +the neck--once, twice. The blood flies out. He falls down. He cries, 'I +die.' I grab my violin from the floor, quick; then I run to the woods. +No one can catch me. A blanket, the axe, some food, I get from a +hiding-place down the river. Then I travel, travel, travel through the +woods, how many days I know not, till I come here. No one knows me. I +give myself the name Tremblay. I make the music for them. With my violin +I live. I am happy. I forget. But it all returns to me--now--at the +last. I have murdered. Is there a forgiveness for me, mon pere?” + +The priest's face had changed very swiftly at the mention of the camp +on the St. Maurice. As the story went on, he grew strangely excited. +His lips twitched. His hands trembled. At the end he sank on his knees, +close by the bed, and looked into the countenance of the sick man, +searching it as a forester searches in the undergrowth for a lost trail. +Then his eyes lighted up as he found it. + +“My son,” said he, clasping the old fiddler's hand in his own, “you are +Jacques Dellaire. And I--do you know me now?--I am Baptiste Lacombe. +See those two scars upon my neck. But it was not death. You have not +murdered. You have given the stroke that changed my heart. Your sin is +forgiven--AND MINE ALSO--by the mercy of God!” + +The round clock ticked louder and louder. A level ray from the setting +sun--red gold--came in through the dusty window, and lay across the +clasped hands on the bed. A white-throated sparrow, the first of the +season, on his way to the woods beyond the St. Lawrence, whistled so +clearly and tenderly that it seemed as if he were repeating to these two +gray-haired exiles the name of their homeland. “Sweet--sweet--Canada, +Canada, Canada!” But there was a sweeter sound than that in the quiet +room. + +It was the sound of the prayer which begins, in every language spoken by +men, with the name of that Unseen One who rules over life's chances, +and pities its discords, and tunes it back again into harmony. Yes, +this prayer of the little children who are only learning how to play +the first notes of life's music, turns to the great Master musician who +knows it all and who loves to bring a melody out of every instrument +that He has made; and it seems to lay the soul in His hands to play upon +as He will, while it calls Him, OUR FATHER! + + +Some day, perhaps, you will go to the busy place where Bytown used to +be; and if you do, you must take the street by the river to the white +wooden church of St. Jacques. It stands on the very spot where there was +once a cabin with a curved roof. There is a gilt cross on the top of +the church. The door is usually open, and the interior is quite gay with +vases of china and brass, and paper flowers of many colours; but if +you go through to the sacristy at the rear, you will see a brown violin +hanging on the wall. + +Pere Baptiste, if he is there, will take it down and show it to you. He +calls it a remarkable instrument--one of the best, of the most sweet. + +But he will not let any one play upon it. He says it is a relic. + + + + +II. THE REWARD OF VIRTUE + + + + +I + +When the good priest of St. Gerome christened Patrick Mullarkey, he lent +himself unconsciously to an innocent deception. To look at the name, you +would think, of course, it belonged to an Irishman; the very appearance +of it was equal to a certificate of membership in a Fenian society. + +But in effect, from the turned-up toes of his bottes sauvages to +the ends of his black mustache, the proprietor of this name was a +Frenchman--Canadian French, you understand, and therefore even more +proud and tenacious of his race than if he had been born in Normandy. +Somewhere in his family tree there must have been a graft from the +Green Isle. A wandering lumberman from County Kerry had drifted up the +Saguenay into the Lake St. John region, and married the daughter of a +habitant, and settled down to forget his own country and his father's +house. But every visible trace of this infusion of new blood had +vanished long ago, except the name; and the name itself was transformed +on the lips of the St. Geromians. If you had heard them speak it in +their pleasant droning accent,--“Patrique Moullarque,”--you would have +supposed that it was made in France. To have a guide with such a name as +that was as good as being abroad. + +Even when they cut it short and called him “Patte,” as they usually did, +it had a very foreign sound. Everything about him was in harmony with +it; he spoke and laughed and sang and thought and felt in French--the +French of two hundred years ago, the language of Samuel de Champlain and +the Sieur de Monts, touched with a strong woodland flavour. In short, +my guide, philosopher, and friend, Pat, did not have a drop of Irish +in him, unless, perhaps, it was a certain--well, you shall judge for +yourself, when you have heard this story of his virtue, and the way it +was rewarded. + +It was on the shore of the Lac a la Belle Riviere, fifteen miles back +from St. Gerome, that I came into the story, and found myself, as +commonly happens in the real stories which life is always bringing out +in periodical form, somewhere about the middle of the plot. But Patrick +readily made me acquainted with what had gone before. Indeed, it is +one of life's greatest charms as a story-teller that there is never +any trouble about getting a brief resume of the argument, and even a +listener who arrives late is soon put into touch with the course of the +narrative. + +We had hauled our canoes and camp-stuff over the terrible road that +leads to the lake, with much creaking and groaning of wagons, and +complaining of men, who declared that the mud grew deeper and the hills +steeper every year, and vowed their customary vow never to come that way +again. At last our tents were pitched in a green copse of balsam trees, +close beside the water. The delightful sense of peace and freedom +descended upon our souls. Prosper and Ovide were cutting wood for the +camp-fire; Francois was getting ready a brace of partridges for supper; +Patrick and I were unpacking the provisions, arranging them conveniently +for present use and future transportation. + +“Here, Pat,” said I, as my hand fell on a large square parcel--“here is +some superfine tobacco that I got in Quebec for you and the other men on +this trip. Not like the damp stuff you had last year--a little bad +smoke and too many bad words. This is tobacco to burn--something quite +particular, you understand. How does that please you?” + +He had been rolling up a piece of salt pork in a cloth as I spoke, and +courteously wiped his fingers on the outside of the bundle before he +stretched out his hand to take the package of tobacco. Then he answered, +with his unfailing politeness, but more solemnly than usual: + +“A thousand thanks to m'sieu'. But this year I shall not have need of +the good tobacco. It shall be for the others.” + +The reply was so unexpected that it almost took my breath away. For Pat, +the steady smoker, whose pipes were as invariable as the precession of +the equinoxes, to refuse his regular rations of the soothing weed was a +thing unheard of. Could he be growing proud in his old age? Had he some +secret supply of cigars concealed in his kit, which made him scorn the +golden Virginia leaf? I demanded an explanation. + +“But no, m'sieu',” he replied; “it is not that, most assuredly. It +is something entirely different--something very serious. It is a +reformation that I commence. Does m'sieu' permit that I should inform +him of it?” + +Of course I permitted, or rather, warmly encouraged, the fullest +possible unfolding of the tale; and while we sat among the bags and +boxes, and the sun settled gently down behind the sharp-pointed firs +across the lake, and the evening sky and the waveless lake glowed with a +thousand tints of deepening rose and amber, Patrick put me in possession +of the facts which had led to a moral revolution in his life. + +“It was the Ma'm'selle Meelair, that young lady,--not very young, but +active like the youngest,--the one that I conducted down the Grande +Decharge to Chicoutimi last year, after you had gone away. She said that +she knew m'sieu' intimately. No doubt you have a good remembrance of +her?” + +I admitted an acquaintance with the lady. She was the president of +several societies for ethical agitation--a long woman, with short hair +and eyeglasses and a great thirst for tea; not very good in a canoe, but +always wanting to run the rapids and go into the dangerous places, and +talking all the time. Yes; that must have been the one. She was not a +bosom friend of mine, to speak accurately, but I remembered her well. + +“Well, then, m'sieu',” continued Patrick, “it was this demoiselle who +changed my mind about the smoking. But not in a moment, you understand; +it was a work of four days, and she spoke much. + +“The first day it was at the Island House; we were trolling for +ouananiche, and she was not pleased, for she lost many of the fish. I +was smoking at the stern of the canoe, and she said that the tobacco was +a filthy weed, that it grew in the devil's garden, and that it smelled +bad, terribly bad, and that it made the air sick, and that even the pig +would not eat it.” + +I could imagine Patrick's dismay as he listened to this dissertation; +for in his way he was as sensitive as a woman, and he would rather have +been upset in his canoe than have exposed himself to the reproach of +offending any one of his patrons by unpleasant or unseemly conduct. + +“What did you do then, Pat?” I asked. + +“Certainly I put out the pipe--what could I do otherwise? But I thought +that what the demoiselle Meelair has said was very strange, and not +true--exactly; for I have often seen the tobacco grow, and it springs +up out of the ground like the wheat or the beans, and it has beautiful +leaves, broad and green, with sometimes a red flower at the top. Does +the good God cause the filthy weeds to grow like that? Are they not all +clean that He has made? The potato--it is not filthy. And the onion? +It has a strong smell; but the demoiselle Meelair she ate much of the +onion--when we were not at the Island House, but in the camp. + +“And the smell of the tobacco--this is an affair of the taste. For me, +I love it much; it is like a spice. When I come home at night to the +camp-fire, where the boys are smoking, the smell of the pipes runs far +out into the woods to salute me. It says, 'Here we are, Patrique; come +in near to the fire.' The smell of the tobacco is more sweet than the +smell of the fish. The pig loves it not, assuredly; but what then? I am +not a pig. To me it is good, good, good. Don't you find it like that, +m'sieu'?” + +I had to confess that in the affair of taste I sided with Patrick rather +than with the pig. “Continue,” I said--“continue, my boy. Miss Miller +must have said more than that to reform you.” + +“Truly,” replied Pat. “On the second day we were making the lunch at +midday on the island below the first rapids. I smoked the pipe on a +rock apart, after the collation. Mees Meelair comes to me, and says: +'Patrique, my man, do you comprehend that the tobacco is a poison? +You are committing the murder of yourself.' Then she tells me many +things--about the nicoline, I think she calls him; how he goes into the +blood and into the bones and into the hair, and how quickly he will kill +the cat. And she says, very strong, 'The men who smoke the tobacco shall +die!'” + +“That must have frightened you well, Pat. I suppose you threw away your +pipe at once.” + +“But no, m'sieu'; this time I continue to smoke, for now it is Mees +Meelair who comes near the pipe voluntarily, and it is not my offence. +And I remember, while she is talking, the old bonhomme Michaud St. +Gerome. He is a capable man; when he was young he could carry a barrel +of flour a mile without rest, and now that he has seventy-three years he +yet keeps his force. And he smokes--it is astonishing how that old man +smokes! All the day, except when he sleeps. If the tobacco is a poison, +it is a poison of the slowest--like the tea or the coffee. For the cat +it is quick--yes; but for the man it is long; and I am still young--only +thirty-one. + +“But the third day, m'sieu'--the third day was the worst. It was a day +of sadness, a day of the bad chance. The demoiselle Meelair was not +content but that we should leap the Rapide des Cedres in canoe. It was +rough, rough--all feather-white, and the big rock at the corner boiling +like a kettle. But it is the ignorant who have the most of boldness. The +demoiselle Meelair she was not solid in the canoe. She made a jump and a +loud scream. I did my possible, but the sea was too high. We took in of +the water about five buckets. We were very wet. After that we make the +camp; and while I sit by the fire to dry my clothes I smoke for comfort. + +“Mees Meelair she comes to me once more. 'Patrique,' she says with a sad +voice, 'I am sorry that a nice man, so good, so brave, is married to a +thing so bad, so sinful!' At first I am mad when I hear this, because +I think she means Angelique, my wife; but immediately she goes on: +'You are married to the smoking. That is sinful; it is a wicked thing. +Christians do not smoke. There is none of the tobacco in heaven. The men +who use it cannot go there. Ah, Patrique, do you wish to go to the hell +with your pipe?'” + +“That was a close question,” I commented; “your Miss Miller is a plain +speaker. But what did you say when she asked you that?” + +“I said, m'sieu',” replied Patrick, lifting his hand to his forehead, +“that I must go where the good God pleased to send me, and that I would +have much joy to go to the same place with our cure, the Pere Morel, who +is a great smoker. I am sure that the pipe of comfort is no sin to that +holy man when he returns, some cold night, from the visiting of the +sick--it is not sin, not more than the soft chair and the warm fire. It +harms no one, and it makes quietness of mind. For me, when I see m'sieu' +the cure sitting at the door of the presbytere, in the evening coolness, +smoking the tobacco, very peaceful, and when he says to me, 'Good day, +Patrique; will you have a pipeful?' I cannot think that is wicked--no!” + +There was a warmth of sincerity in the honest fellow's utterance that +spoke well for the character of the cure of St. Gerome. The good word +of a plain fisherman or hunter is worth more than a degree of doctor of +divinity from a learned university. + +I too had grateful memories of good men, faithful, charitable, wise, +devout,--men before whose virtues my heart stood uncovered and reverent, +men whose lives were sweet with self-sacrifice, and whose words were +like stars of guidance to many souls,--and I had often seen these men +solacing their toils and inviting pleasant, kindly thoughts with the +pipe of peace. I wondered whether Miss Miller ever had the good fortune +to meet any of these men. They were not members of the societies for +ethical agitation, but they were profitable men to know. Their very +presence was medicinal. It breathed patience and fidelity to duty, and a +large, quiet friendliness. + +“Well, then,” I asked, “what did she say finally to turn you? What was +her last argument? Come, Pat, you must make it a little shorter than she +did.” + +“In five words, m'sieu', it was this: 'The tobacco causes the poverty.' +The fourth day--you remind yourself of the long dead-water below the +Rapide Gervais? It was there. All the day she spoke to me of the money +that goes to the smoke. Two piastres the month. Twenty-four the year. +Three hundred--yes, with the interest, more than three hundred in ten +years! Two thousand piastres in the life of the man! But she comprehends +well the arithmetic, that demoiselle Meelair; it was enormous! The big +farmer Tremblay has not more money at the bank than that. Then she asks +me if I have been at Quebec? No. If I would love to go? Of course, +yes. For two years of the smoking we could go, the goodwife and me, to +Quebec, and see the grand city, and the shops, and the many people, and +the cathedral, and perhaps the theatre. And at the asylum of the orphans +we could seek one of the little found children to bring home with us, to +be our own; for m'sieu knows it is the sadness of our house that we have +no child. But it was not Mees Meelair who said that--no, she would not +understand that thought.” + +Patrick paused for a moment, and rubbed his chin reflectively. Then he +continued: + +“And perhaps it seems strange to you also, m'sieu', that a poor man +should be so hungry for children. It is not so everywhere: not in +America, I hear. But it is so with us in Canada. I know not a man so +poor that he would not feel richer for a child. I know not a man so +happy that he would not feel happier with a child in the house. It is +the best thing that the good God gives to us; something to work for; +something to play with. It makes a man more gentle and more strong. And +a woman,--her heart is like an empty nest, if she has not a child. It +was the darkest day that ever came to Angelique and me when our little +baby flew away, four years ago. But perhaps if we have not one of our +own, there is another somewhere, a little child of nobody, that belongs +to us, for the sake of the love of children. Jean Boucher, my wife's +cousin, at St. Joseph d'Alma, has taken two from the asylum. Two, +m'sieu', I assure you for as soon as one was twelve years old, he said +he wanted a baby, and so he went back again and got another. That is +what I should like to do.” + +“But, Pat,” said I, “it is an expensive business, this raising of +children. You should think twice about it.” + +“Pardon, m'sieu',” answered Patrick; “I think a hundred times and always +the same way. It costs little more for three, or four, or five, in the +house than for two. The only thing is the money for the journey to the +city, the choice, the arrangement with the nuns. For that one must save. +And so I have thrown away the pipe. I smoke no more. The money of the +tobacco is for Quebec and for the little found child. I have already +eighteen piastres and twenty sous in the old box of cigars on the +chimney-piece at the house. This year will bring more. The winter after +the next, if we have the good chance, we go to the city, the goodwife +and me, and we come home with the little boy--or maybe the little girl. +Does m'sieu' approve?” + +“You are a man of virtue, Pat,” said I; “and since you will not take +your share of the tobacco on this trip, it shall go to the other men; +but you shall have the money instead, to put into your box on the +mantel-piece.” + +After supper that evening I watched him with some curiosity to see what +he would do without his pipe. He seemed restless and uneasy. The other +men sat around the fire, smoking; but Patrick was down at the landing, +fussing over one of the canoes, which had been somewhat roughly handled +on the road coming in. Then he began to tighten the tent-ropes, and +hauled at them so vigorously that he loosened two of the stakes. Then +he whittled the blade of his paddle for a while, and cut it an inch too +short. Then he went into the men's tent, and in a few minutes the sound +of snoring told that he had sought refuge in sleep at eight o'clock, +without telling a single caribou story, or making any plans for the next +day's sport. + + + + +II + +For several days we lingered on the Lake of the Beautiful River, trying +the fishing. We explored all the favourite meeting-places of the trout, +at the mouths of the streams and in the cool spring-holes, but we did +not have remarkable success. I am bound to say that Patrick was not +at his best that year as a fisherman. He was as ready to work, as +interested, as eager, as ever; but he lacked steadiness, persistence, +patience. Some tranquillizing influence seemed to have departed from +him. That placid confidence in the ultimate certainty of catching fish, +which is one of the chief elements of good luck, was wanting. He did not +appear to be able to sit still in the canoe. The mosquitoes troubled +him terribly. He was just as anxious as a man could be to have me take +plenty of the largest trout, but he was too much in a hurry. He even +went so far as to say that he did not think I cast the fly as well as I +did formerly, and that I was too slow in striking when the fish rose. He +was distinctly a weaker man without his pipe, but his virtuous resolve +held firm. + +There was one place in particular that required very cautious angling. +It was a spring-hole at the mouth of the Riviere du Milieu--an open +space, about a hundred feet long and fifteen feet wide, in the midst +of the lily-pads, and surrounded on every side by clear, shallow water. +Here the great trout assembled at certain hours of the day; but it was +not easy to get them. You must come up delicately in the canoe, and make +fast to a stake at the side of the pool, and wait a long time for the +place to get quiet and the fish to recover from their fright and come +out from under the lily-pads. It had been our custom to calm and soothe +this expectant interval with incense of the Indian weed, friendly to +meditation and a foe of “Raw haste, half-sister to delay.” But this year +Patrick could not endure the waiting. After five minutes he would say: + +“BUT the fishing is bad this season! There are none of the big ones here +at all. Let us try another place. It will go better at the Riviere du +Cheval, perhaps.” + +There was only one thing that would really keep him quiet, and that +was a conversation about Quebec. The glories of that wonderful city +entranced his thoughts. He was already floating, in imagination, with +the vast throngs of people that filled its splendid streets, looking up +at the stately houses and churches with their glittering roofs of tin, +and staring his fill at the magnificent shop-windows, where all the +luxuries of the world were displayed. He had heard that there were more +than a hundred shops--separate shops for all kinds of separate things: +some for groceries, and some for shoes, and some for clothes, and some +for knives and axes, and some for guns, and many shops where they sold +only jewels--gold rings, and diamonds, and forks of pure silver. Was it +not so? + +He pictured himself, side by side with his goodwife, in the salle a +manger of the Hotel Richelieu, ordering their dinner from a printed +bill of fare. Side by side they were walking on the Dufferin Terrace, +listening to the music of the military band. Side by side they were +watching the wonders of the play at the Theatre de l'Etoile du Nord. +Side by side they were kneeling before the gorgeous altar in the +cathedral. And then they were standing silent, side by side, in the +asylum of the orphans, looking at brown eyes and blue, at black hair and +yellow curls, at fat legs and rosy cheeks and laughing mouths, while the +Mother Superior showed off the little boys and girls for them to choose. +This affair of the choice was always a delightful difficulty, and here +his fancy loved to hang in suspense, vibrating between rival joys. + +Once, at the Riviere du Milieu, after considerable discourse upon +Quebec, there was an interval of silence, during which I succeeded in +hooking and playing a larger trout than usual. As the fish came up to +the side of the canoe, Patrick netted him deftly, exclaiming with an +abstracted air, “It is a boy, after all. I like that best.” + +Our camp was shifted, the second week, to the Grand Lac des Cedres; and +there we had extraordinary fortune with the trout: partly, I conjecture, +because there was only one place to fish, and so Patrick's uneasy zeal +could find no excuse for keeping me in constant motion all around the +lake. But in the matter of weather we were not so happy. There is always +a conflict in the angler's mind about the weather--a struggle between +his desires as a man and his desires as a fisherman. This time our +prayers for a good fishing season were granted at the expense of our +suffering human nature. There was a conjunction in the zodiac of the +signs of Aquarius and Pisces. It rained as easily, as suddenly, as +penetratingly, as Miss Miller talked; but in between the showers the +trout were very hungry. + +One day, when we were paddling home to our tents among the birch trees, +one of these unexpected storms came up; and Patrick, thoughtful of +my comfort as ever, insisted on giving me his coat to put around my +dripping shoulders. The paddling would serve instead of a coat for him, +he said; it would keep him warm to his bones. As I slipped the garment +over my back, something hard fell from one of the pockets into the +bottom of the canoe. It was a brier-wood pipe. + +“Aha! Pat,” I cried; “what is this? You said you had thrown all your +pipes away. How does this come in your pocket?” + +“But, m'sieu',” he answered, “this is different. This is not the pipe +pure and simple. It is a souvenir. It is the one you gave me two years +ago on the Metabetchouan, when we got the big caribou. I could not +reject this. I keep it always for the remembrance.” + +At this moment my hand fell upon a small, square object in the other +pocket of the coat. I pulled it out. It was a cake of Virginia leaf. +Without a word, I held it up, and looked at Patrick. He began to explain +eagerly: + +“Yes, certainly, it is the tobacco, m'sieu'; but it is not for the +smoke, as you suppose. It is for the virtue, for the self-victory. I +call this my little piece of temptation. See; the edges are not cut. I +smell it only; and when I think how it is good, then I speak to myself, +'But the little found child will be better!' It will last a long time, +this little piece of temptation; perhaps until we have the boy at our +house--or maybe the girl.” + +The conflict between the cake of Virginia leaf and Patrick's virtue must +have been severe during the last ten days of our expedition; for we +went down the Riviere des Ecorces, and that is a tough trip, and full +of occasions when consolation is needed. After a long, hard day's work +cutting out an abandoned portage through the woods, or tramping miles +over the incredibly shaggy hills to some outlying pond for a caribou, +and lugging the saddle and hind quarters back to the camp, the evening +pipe, after supper, seemed to comfort the men unspeakably. If their +tempers had grown a little short under stress of fatigue and hunger, now +they became cheerful and good-natured again. They sat on logs before +the camp-fire, their stockinged feet stretched out to the blaze, and the +puffs of smoke rose from their lips like tiny salutes to the comfortable +flame, or like incense burned upon the altar of gratitude and +contentment. + +Patrick, I noticed about this time, liked to get on the leeward side of +as many pipes as possible, and as near as he could to the smokers. He +said that this kept away the mosquitoes. There he would sit, with the +smoke drifting full in his face, both hands in his pockets, talking +about Quebec, and debating the comparative merits of a boy or a girl as +an addition to his household. + +But the great trial of his virtue was yet to come. The main object +of our trip down the River of Barks--the terminus ad quem of the +expedition, so to speak--was a bear. Now the bear as an object of the +chase, at least in Canada, is one of the most illusory of phantoms. The +manner of hunting is simple. It consists in walking about through the +woods, or paddling along a stream, until you meet a bear; then you try +to shoot him. This would seem to be, as the Rev. Mr. Leslie called his +book against the deists of the eighteenth century, “A Short and Easie +Method.” But in point of fact there are two principal difficulties. The +first is that you never find the bear when and where you are looking for +him. The second is that the bear sometimes finds you when--but you shall +see how it happened to us. + +We had hunted the whole length of the River of Barks with the utmost +pains and caution, never going out, even to pick blueberries, without +having the rifle at hand, loaded for the expected encounter. Not one +bear had we met. It seemed as if the whole ursine tribe must have +emigrated to Labrador. + +At last we came to the mouth of the river, where it empties into Lake +Kenogami, in a comparatively civilized country, with several farm-houses +in full view on the opposite bank. It was not a promising place for the +chase; but the river ran down with a little fall and a lively, cheerful +rapid into the lake, and it was a capital spot for fishing. So we left +the rifle in the case, and took a canoe and a rod, and went down, on the +last afternoon, to stand on the point of rocks at the foot of the rapid, +and cast the fly. + +We caught half a dozen good trout; but the sun was still hot, and we +concluded to wait awhile for the evening fishing. So we turned the canoe +bottom up among the bushes on the shore, stored the trout away in the +shade beneath it, and sat down in a convenient place among the stones +to have another chat about Quebec. We had just passed the jewelry shops, +and were preparing to go to the asylum of the orphans, when Patrick +put his hand on my shoulder with a convulsive grip, and pointed up the +stream. + +There was a huge bear, like a very big, wicked, black sheep with a +pointed nose, making his way down the shore. He shambled along lazily +and unconcernedly, as if his bones were loosely tied together in a bag +of fur. It was the most indifferent and disconnected gait that I ever +saw. Nearer and nearer he sauntered, while we sat as still as if we had +been paralyzed. And the gun was in its case at the tent! + +How the bear knew this I cannot tell; but know it he certainly did, +for he kept on until he reached the canoe, sniffed at it suspiciously, +thrust his sharp nose under it, and turned it over with a crash that +knocked two holes in the bottom, ate the fish, licked his chops, stared +at us for a few moments without the slightest appearance of gratitude, +made up his mind that he did not like our personal appearance, and then +loped leisurely up the mountain-side. We could hear him cracking the +underbrush long after he was lost to sight. + +Patrick looked at me and sighed. I said nothing. The French language, as +far as I knew it, seemed trifling and inadequate. It was a moment when +nothing could do any good except the consolations of philosophy, or a +pipe. Patrick pulled the brier-wood from his pocket; then he took out +the cake of Virginia leaf, looked at it, smelled it, shook his head, and +put it back again. His face was as long as his arm. He stuck the cold +pipe into his mouth, and pulled away at it for a while in silence. +Then his countenance began to clear, his mouth relaxed, he broke into a +laugh. + +“Sacred bear!” he cried, slapping his knee; “sacred beast of the world! +What a day of the good chance for her, HE! But she was glad, I suppose. +Perhaps she has some cubs, HE? BAJETTE!” + + + + +III + +This was the end of our hunting and fishing for that year. We spent the +next two days in voyaging through a half-dozen small lakes and streams, +in a farming country, on our way home. I observed that Patrick kept his +souvenir pipe between his lips a good deal of the time, and puffed at +vacancy. It seemed to soothe him. In his conversation he dwelt with +peculiar satisfaction on the thought of the money in the cigar-box +on the mantel-piece at St. Gerome. Eighteen piastres and twenty sous +already! And with the addition to be made from the tobacco not smoked +during the past month, it would amount to more than twenty-three +piastres; and all as safe in the cigar-box as if it were in the bank +at Chicoutimi! That reflection seemed to fill the empty pipe with +fragrance. It was a Barmecide smoke; but the fumes of it were potent, +and their invisible wreaths framed the most enchanting visions of tall +towers, gray walls, glittering windows, crowds of people, regiments +of soldiers, and the laughing eyes of a little boy--or was it a little +girl? + +When we came out of the mouth of La Belle Riviere, the broad blue +expanse of Lake St. John spread before us, calm and bright in the +radiance of the sinking sun. In a curve on the left, eight miles away, +sparkled the slender steeple of the church of St. Gerome. A thick column +of smoke rose from somewhere in its neighbourhood. “It is on the beach,” + said the men; “the boys of the village accustom themselves to burn the +rubbish there for a bonfire.” But as our canoes danced lightly forward +over the waves and came nearer to the place, it was evident that the +smoke came from the village itself. It was a conflagration, but not a +general one; the houses were too scattered and the day too still for a +fire to spread. What could it be? Perhaps the blacksmith shop, perhaps +the bakery, perhaps the old tumble-down barn of the little Tremblay? It +was not a large fire, that was certain. But where was it precisely? + +The question, becoming more and more anxious, was answered when we +arrived at the beach. A handful of boys, eager to be the bearers of +news, had spied us far off, and ran down to the shore to meet us. + +“Patrique! Patrique!” they shouted in English, to make their importance +as great as possible in my eyes. “Come 'ome kveek; yo' 'ouse ees hall +burn'!” + +“W'at!” cried Patrick. “MONJEE!” And he drove the canoe ashore, leaped +out, and ran up the bank toward the village as if he were mad. The other +men followed him, leaving me with the boys to unload the canoes and pull +them up on the sand, where the waves would not chafe them. + +This took some time, and the boys helped me willingly. “Eet ees not need +to 'urry, m'sieu',” they assured me; “dat 'ouse to Patrique Moullarque +ees hall burn' seence t'ree hour. Not'ing lef' bot de hash.” + +As soon as possible, however, I piled up the stuff, covered it with one +of the tents, and leaving it in charge of the steadiest of the boys, +took the road to the village and the site of the Maison Mullarkey. + +It had vanished completely: the walls of squared logs were gone; the +low, curved roof had fallen; the door-step with the morning-glory vines +climbing up beside it had sunken out of sight; nothing remained but +the dome of the clay oven at the back of the house, and a heap of +smouldering embers. + +Patrick sat beside his wife on a flat stone that had formerly supported +the corner of the porch. His shoulder was close to Angelique's--so close +that it looked almost as if he must have had his arm around her a moment +before I came up. His passion and grief had calmed themselves down now, +and he was quite tranquil. In his left hand he held the cake of Virginia +leaf, in his right a knife. He was cutting off delicate slivers of the +tobacco, which he rolled together with a circular motion between his +palms. Then he pulled his pipe from his pocket and filled the bowl with +great deliberation. + +“What a misfortune!” I cried. “The pretty house is gone. I am so sorry, +Patrick. And the box of money on the mantel-piece, that is gone, too, I +fear--all your savings. What a terrible misfortune! How did it happen?” + +“I cannot tell,” he answered rather slowly. “It is the good God. And he +has left me my Angelique. Also, m'sieu', you see”--here he went over to +the pile of ashes, and pulled out a fragment of charred wood with a +live coal at the end--“you see”--puff, puff--“he has given me”--puff, +puff--“a light for my pipe again”--puff, puff, puff! + +The fragrant, friendly smoke was pouring out now in full volume. It +enwreathed his head like drifts of cloud around the rugged top of a +mountain at sunrise. I could see that his face was spreading into a +smile of ineffable contentment. + +“My faith!” said I, “how can you be so cheerful? Your house is in ashes; +your money is burned up; the voyage to Quebec, the visit to the asylum, +the little orphan--how can you give it all up so easily?” + +“Well,” he replied, taking the pipe from his mouth, with fingers +curling around the bowl, as if they loved to feel that it was warm once +more--“well, then, it would be more hard, I suppose, to give it up not +easily. And then, for the house, we shall build a new one this fall; the +neighbours will help. And for the voyage to Quebec--without that we +may be happy. And as regards the little orphan, I will tell you +frankly”--here he went back to his seat upon the flat stone, and settled +himself with an air of great comfort beside his partner--“I tell you, in +confidence, Angelique demands that I prepare a particular furniture at +the new house. Yes, it is a cradle; but it is not for an orphan.” + + + + +IV + +It was late in the following summer when I came back again to St. +Gerome. The golden-rods and the asters were all in bloom along the +village street; and as I walked down it the broad golden sunlight of +the short afternoon seemed to glorify the open road and the plain square +houses with a careless, homely rapture of peace. The air was softly +fragrant with the odour of balm of Gilead. A yellow warbler sang from +a little clump of elder-bushes, tinkling out his contented song like a +chime of tiny bells, “Sweet--sweet--sweet--sweeter--sweeter--sweetest!” + +There was the new house, a little farther back from the road than the +old one; and in the place where the heap of ashes had lain, a primitive +garden, with marigolds and lupines and zinnias all abloom. And there was +Patrick, sitting on the door-step, smoking his pipe in the cool of the +day. Yes; and there, on a many-coloured counterpane spread beside him, +an infant joy of the house of Mullarkey was sucking her thumb, while her +father was humming the words of an old slumber-song: + + + Sainte Marguerite, + Veillez ma petite! + Endormez ma p'tite enfant + Jusqu'a l'age de quinze ans! + Quand elle aura quinze ans passe + Il faudra la marier + Avec un p'tit bonhomme + Que viendra de Rome. + + +“Hola! Patrick,” I cried; “good luck to you! Is it a girl or a boy?” + +“SALUT! m'sieu',” he answered, jumping up and waving his pipe. “It is a +girl AND a boy!” + +Sure enough, as I entered the door, I beheld Angelique rocking the other +half of the reward of virtue in the new cradle. + + + + +III. A BRAVE HEART + +“That was truly his name, m'sieu'--Raoul Vaillantcoeur--a name of the +fine sound, is it not? You like that word,--a valiant heart,--it pleases +you, eh! The man who calls himself by such a name as that ought to be a +brave fellow, a veritable hero? Well, perhaps. But I know an Indian +who is called Le Blanc; that means white. And a white man who is called +Lenoir; that means black. It is very droll, this affair of the names. It +is like the lottery.” + +Silence for a few moments, broken only by the ripple of water under the +bow of the canoe, the persistent patter of the rain all around us, +and the SLISH, SLISH of the paddle with which Ferdinand, my Canadian +voyageur, was pushing the birch-bark down the lonely length of Lac +Moise. I knew that there was one of his stories on the way. But I must +keep still to get it. A single ill-advised comment, a word that would +raise a question of morals or social philosophy, might switch the +narrative off the track into a swamp of abstract discourse in which +Ferdinand would lose himself. Presently the voice behind me began again. + +“But that word VAILLANT, m'sieu'; with us in Canada it does not mean +always the same as with you. Sometimes we use it for something that +sounds big, but does little; a gun that goes off with a terrible crack, +but shoots not straight nor far. When a man is like that he is FANFARON, +he shows off well, but--well, you shall judge for yourself, when you +hear what happened between this man Vaillantcoeur and his friend Prosper +Leclere at the building of the stone tower of the church at Abbeville. +You remind yourself of that grand church with the tall tower--yes? With +permission I am going to tell you what passed when that was made. And +you shall decide whether there was truly a brave heart in the story, or +not; and if it went with the name.” + +Thus the tale began, in the vast solitude of the northern forest, among +the granite peaks of the ancient Laurentian Mountains, on a lake that +knew no human habitation save the Indian's wigwam or the fisherman's +tent. + +How it rained that day! The dark clouds had collapsed upon the hills in +shapeless folds. The waves of the lake were beaten flat by the lashing +strokes of the storm. Quivering sheets of watery gray were driven before +the wind; and broad curves of silver bullets danced before them as they +swept over the surface. All around the homeless shores the evergreen +trees seemed to hunch their backs and crowd closer together in +patient misery. Not a bird had the heart to sing; only the +loon--storm-lover--laughed his crazy challenge to the elements, and +mocked us with his long-drawn maniac scream. + +It seemed as if we were a thousand miles from everywhere and everybody. +Cities, factories, libraries, colleges, law-courts, theatres, +palaces,--what had we dreamed of these things? They were far off, in +another world. We had slipped back into a primitive life. Ferdinand was +telling me the naked story of human love and human hate, even as it has +been told from the beginning. + +I cannot tell it just as he did. There was a charm in his speech too +quick for the pen: a woodland savour not to be found in any ink for sale +in the shops. I must tell it in my way, as he told it in his. + +But at all events, nothing that makes any difference shall go into the +translation unless it was in the original. This is Ferdinand's story. If +you care for the real thing, here it is. + + + + +I + +There were two young men in Abbeville who were easily the cocks of the +woodland walk. Their standing rested on the fact that they were the +strongest men in the parish. Strength is the thing that counts, when +people live on the edge of the wilderness. These two were well known all +through the country between Lake St. John and Chicoutimi as men of great +capacity. Either of them could shoulder a barrel of flour and walk off +with it as lightly as a common man would carry a side of bacon. There +was not a half-pound of difference between them in ability. But there +was a great difference in their looks and in their way of doing things. + +Raoul Vaillantcoeur was the biggest and the handsomest man in the +village; nearly six feet tall, straight as a fir tree, and black as +a bull-moose in December. He had natural force enough and to spare. +Whatever he did was done by sheer power of back and arm. He could send +a canoe up against the heaviest water, provided he did not get mad and +break his paddle--which he often did. He had more muscle than he knew +how to use. + +Prosper Leclere did not have so much, but he knew better how to handle +it. He never broke his paddle--unless it happened to be a bad one, and +then he generally had another all ready in the canoe. He was at least +four inches shorter than Vaillantcoeur; broad shoulders, long arms, +light hair, gray eyes; not a handsome fellow, but pleasant-looking and +very quiet. What he did was done more than half with his head. + +He was the kind of a man that never needs more than one match to light a +fire. + +But Vaillantcoeur--well, if the wood was wet he might use a dozen, and +when the blaze was kindled, as like as not he would throw in the rest of +the box. + +Now, these two men had been friends and were changed into rivals. At +least that was the way that one of them looked at it. And most of the +people in the parish seemed to think that was the right view. It was a +strange thing, and not altogether satisfactory to the public mind, +to have two strongest men in the village. The question of comparative +standing in the community ought to be raised and settled in the usual +way. Raoul was perfectly willing, and at times (commonly on Saturday +nights) very eager. But Prosper was not. + +“No,” he said, one March night, when he was boiling maple-sap in the +sugar-bush with little Ovide Rossignol (who had a lyric passion for +holding the coat while another man was fighting)--“no, for what shall I +fight with Raoul? As boys we have played together. Once, in the rapids +of the Belle Riviere, when I have fallen in the water, I think he has +saved my life. He was stronger, then, than me. I am always a friend to +him. If I beat him now, am I stronger? No, but weaker. And if he beats +me, what is the sense of that? Certainly I shall not like it. What is to +gain?” + +Down in the store of old Girard, that night, Vaillantcoeur was holding +forth after a different fashion. He stood among the cracker-boxes and +flour-barrels, with a background of shelves laden with bright-coloured +calicoes, and a line of tin pails hanging overhead, and stated his view +of the case with vigour. He even pulled off his coat and rolled up his +shirt-sleeve to show the knotty arguments with which he proposed to +clinch his opinion. + +“That Leclere,” said he, “that little Prosper Leclere! He thinks himself +one of the strongest--a fine fellow! But I tell you he is a coward. +If he is clever? Yes. But he is a poltroon. He knows well that I can +flatten him out like a crepe in the frying-pan. But he is afraid. He has +not as much courage as the musk-rat. You stamp on the bank. He dives. He +swims away. Bah!” + +“How about that time he cut loose the jam of logs in the Rapide des +Cedres?” said old Girard from his corner. + +Vaillantcoeur's black eyes sparkled and he twirled his mustache +fiercely. “SAPRIE!” he cried, “that was nothing! Any man with an axe can +cut a log. But to fight--that is another affair. That demands the brave +heart. The strong man who will not fight is a coward. Some day I will +put him through the mill--you shall see what that small Leclere is made +of. SACREDAM!” + +Of course, affairs had not come to this pass all at once. It was a long +history, beginning with the time when the two boys had played together, +and Raoul was twice as strong as the other, and was very proud of it. +Prosper did not care; it was all right so long as they had a good time. +But then Prosper began to do things better and better. Raoul did not +understand it; he was jealous. Why should he not always be the leader? +He had more force. Why should Prosper get ahead? Why should he have +better luck at the fishing and the hunting and the farming? It was by +some trick. There was no justice in it. + +Raoul was not afraid of anything but death; and whatever he wanted, he +thought he had a right to have. But he did not know very well how to get +it. He would start to chop a log just at the spot where there was a big +knot. + +He was the kind of a man that sets hare-snares on a caribou-trail, and +then curses his luck because he catches nothing. + +Besides, whatever he did, he was always thinking most about beating +somebody else. But Prosper eared most for doing the thing as well as +he could. If any one else could beat him--well, what difference did it +make? He would do better the next time. + +If he had a log to chop, he looked it all over for a clear place before +he began. What he wanted was, not to make the chips fly, but to get the +wood split. + +You are not to suppose that the one man was a saint and a hero, and +the other a fool and a ruffian. No; that sort of thing happens only in +books. People in Abbeville were not made on that plan. They were both +plain men. But there was a difference in their hearts; and out of that +difference grew all the trouble. + +It was hard on Vaillantcoeur, of course, to see Leclere going ahead, +getting rich, clearing off the mortgage on his farm, laying up money +with the notary Bergeron, who acted as banker for the parish--it was +hard to look on at this, while he himself stood still, or even slipped +back a little, got into debt, had to sell a bit of the land that his +father left him. There must be some cheating about it. + +But this was not the hardest morsel to swallow. The great thing that +stuck in his crop was the idea that the little Prosper, whom he could +have whipped so easily, and whom he had protected so loftily, when they +were boys, now stood just as high as he did as a capable man--perhaps +even higher. Why was it that when the Price Brothers, down at +Chicoutimi, had a good lumber-job up in the woods on the Belle Riviere, +they made Leclere the boss, instead of Vaillantcoeur? Why did the cure +Villeneuve choose Prosper, and not Raoul, to steady the strain of the +biggest pole when they were setting up the derrick for the building of +the new church? + +It was rough, rough! The more Raoul thought of it, the rougher it +seemed. The fact that it was a man who had once been his protege, and +still insisted on being his best friend, did not make it any smoother. +Would you have liked it any better on that account? I am not telling +you how it ought to have been, I am telling you how it was. This isn't +Vaillantcoeur's account-book; it's his story. You must strike your +balances as you go along. + +And all the time, you see, he felt sure that he was a stronger man and a +braver man than Prosper. He was hungry to prove it in the only way that +he could understand. The sense of rivalry grew into a passion of hatred, +and the hatred shaped itself into a blind, headstrong desire to fight. +Everything that Prosper did well, seemed like a challenge; every success +that he had was as hard to bear as an insult. All the more, because +Prosper seemed unconscious of it. He refused to take offence, went about +his work quietly and cheerfully, turned off hard words with a joke, went +out of his way to show himself friendly and good-natured. In reality, of +course, he knew well enough how matters stood. But he was resolved not +to show that he knew, if he could help it; and in any event, not to be +one of the two that are needed to make a quarrel. + +He felt very strangely about it. There was a presentiment in his heart +that he did not dare to shake off. It seemed as if this conflict were +one that would threaten the happiness of his whole life. He still kept +his old feeling of attraction to Raoul, the memory of the many happy +days they had spent together; and though the friendship, of course, +could never again be what it had been, there was something of it left, +at least on Prosper's side. To struggle with this man, strike at his +face, try to maim and disfigure him, roll over and over on the ground +with him, like two dogs tearing each other,--the thought was hateful. +His gorge rose at it. He would never do it, unless to save his life. +Then? Well, then, God must be his judge. + +So it was that these two men stood against each other in Abbeville. Just +as strongly as Raoul was set to get into a fight, just so strongly was +Prosper set to keep out of one. It was a trial of strength between two +passions,--the passion of friendship and the passion of fighting. + +Two or three things happened to put an edge on Raoul's hunger for an +out-and-out fight. + +The first was the affair at the shanty on Lac des Caps. The +wood-choppers, like sailors, have a way of putting a new man through a +few tricks to initiate him into the camp. Leclere was bossing the job, +with a gang of ten men from St. Raymond under him. Vaillantcoeur had +just driven a team in over the snow with a load of provisions, and +was lounging around the camp as if it belonged to him. It was Sunday +afternoon, the regular time for fun, but no one dared to take hold of +him. He looked too big. He expressed his opinion of the camp. + +“No fun in this shanty, HE? I suppose that little Leclere he makes +you others work, and say your prayers, and then, for the rest, you can +sleep. HE! Well, I am going to make a little fun for you, my boys. Come, +Prosper, get your hat, if you are able to climb a tree.” + +He snatched the hat from the table by the stove and ran out into the +snow. In front of the shanty a good-sized birch, tall, smooth, very +straight, was still standing. He went up the trunk like a bear. + +But there was a dead balsam that had fallen against the birch and lodged +on the lower branches. It was barely strong enough to bear the weight +of a light man. Up this slanting ladder Prosper ran quickly in his +moccasined feet, snatched the hat from Raoul's teeth as he swarmed up +the trunk, and ran down again. As he neared the ground, the balsam, +shaken from its lodgement, cracked and fell. Raoul was left up the tree, +perched among the branches, out of breath. Luck had set the scene for +the lumberman's favourite trick. + +“Chop him down! chop him down” was the cry; and a trio of axes were +twanging against the birch tree, while the other men shouted and laughed +and pelted the tree with ice to keep the prisoner from climbing down. + +Prosper neither shouted nor chopped, but he grinned a little as he +watched the tree quiver and shake, and heard the rain of “SACRES!” and +“MAUDITS!” that came out of the swaying top. He grinned--until he saw +that a half-dozen more blows would fell the birch right on the roof of +the shanty. + +“Are you crazy?” he cried, as he picked up an axe; “you know nothing how +to chop. You kill a man. You smash the cabane. Let go!” He shoved one of +the boys away and sent a few mighty cuts into the side of the birch that +was farthest from the cabin; then two short cuts on the other side; the +tree shivered, staggered, cracked, and swept in a great arc toward the +deep snow-drift by the brook. As the top swung earthward, Raoul jumped +clear of the crashing branches and landed safely in the feather-bed of +snow, buried up to his neck. Nothing was to be seen of him but his head, +like some new kind of fire-work--sputtering bad words. + +Well, this was the first thing that put an edge on Vaillantcoeur's +hunger to fight. No man likes to be chopped down by his friend, even +if the friend does it for the sake of saving him from being killed by a +fall on the shanty-roof. It is easy to forget that part of it. What you +remember is the grin. + +The second thing that made it worse was the bad chance that both of +these men had to fall in love with the same girl. Of course there were +other girls in the village beside Marie Antoinette Girard--plenty of +them, and good girls, too. But somehow or other, when they were beside +her, neither Raoul nor Prosper cared to look at any of them, but only +at 'Toinette. Her eyes were so much darker and her cheeks so much more +red--bright as the berries of the mountain-ash in September. Her hair +hung down to her waist on Sunday in two long braids, brown and shiny +like a ripe hazelnut; and her voice when she laughed made the sound of +water tumbling over little stones. + +No one knew which of the two lovers she liked best. At school it was +certainly Raoul, because he was bigger and bolder. When she came back +from her year in the convent at Roberval it was certainly Prosper, +because he could talk better and had read more books. He had a volume of +songs full of love and romance, and knew most of them by heart. But +this did not last forever. 'Toinette's manners had been polished at the +convent, but her ideas were still those of her own people. She never +thought that knowledge of books could take the place of strength, in +the real battle of life. She was a brave girl, and she felt sure in her +heart that the man of the most courage must be the best man after all. + +For a while she appeared to persuade herself that it was Prosper, beyond +a doubt, and always took his part when the other girls laughed at him. +But this was not altogether a good sign. When a girl really loves, +she does not talk, she acts. The current of opinion and gossip in +the village was too strong for her. By the time of the affair of the +“chopping-down” at Lac des Caps, her heart was swinging to and fro like +a pendulum. One week she would walk home from mass with Raoul. The next +week she would loiter in the front yard on a Saturday evening and talk +over the gate with Prosper, until her father called her into the shop to +wait on customers. + +It was in one of these talks that the pendulum seemed to make its last +swing and settle down to its resting-place. Prosper was telling her of +the good crops of sugar that he had made from his maple grove. + +“The profit will be large--more than sixty piastres--and with that I +shall buy at Chicoutimi a new four-wheeler, of the finest, a veritable +wedding carriage--if you--if I--'Toinette? Shall we ride together?” + +His left hand clasped hers as it lay on the gate. His right arm stole +over the low picket fence and went around the shoulder that leaned +against the gate-post. The road was quite empty, the night already dark. +He could feel her warm breath on his neck as she laughed. + +“If you! If I! If what? Why so many ifs in this fine speech? Of whom +is the wedding for which this new carriage is to be bought? Do you know +what Raoul Vaillantcoeur has said? 'No more wedding in this parish till +I have thrown the little Prosper over my shoulder!'” + +As she said this, laughing, she turned closer to the fence and looked +up, so that a curl on her forehead brushed against his cheek. + +“BATECHE! Who told you he said that?” + +“I heard him, myself.” + +“Where?” + +“In the store, two nights ago. But it was not for the first time. He +said it when we came from the church together, it will be four weeks +to-morrow.” + +“What did you say to him?” + +“I told him perhaps he was mistaken. The next wedding might be after the +little Prosper had measured the road with the back of the longest man in +Abbeville.” + +The laugh had gone out of her voice now. She was speaking eagerly, and +her bosom rose and fell with quick breaths. But Prosper's right arm +had dropped from her shoulder, and his hand gripped the fence as he +straightened up. + +“'Toinette!” he cried, “that was bravely said. And I could do it. Yes, I +know I could do it. But, MON DIEU, what shall I say? Three years now, he +has pushed me, every one has pushed me, to fight. And you--but I cannot. +I am not capable of it.” + +The girl's hand lay in his as cold and still as a stone. She was silent +for a moment, and then asked, coldly, “Why not?” + +“Why not? Because of the old friendship. Because he pulled me out of the +river long ago. Because I am still his friend. Because now he hates +me too much. Because it would be a black fight. Because shame and evil +would come of it, whoever won. That is what I fear, 'Toinette!” + +Her hand slipped suddenly away from his. She stepped back from the gate. + +“TIENS! You have fear, Monsieur Leclere! Truly I had not thought of +that. It is strange. For so strong a man it is a little stupid to be +afraid. Good-night. I hear my father calling me. Perhaps some one in the +store who wants to be served. You must tell me again what you are going +to do with the new carriage. Good-night!” + +She was laughing again. But it was a different laughter. Prosper, at +the gate, did not think it sounded like the running of a brook over +the stones. No, it was more the noise of the dry branches that knock +together in the wind. He did not hear the sigh that came as she shut +the door of the house, nor see how slowly she walked through the passage +into the store. + + + + +II + +There seemed to be a great many rainy Saturdays that spring; and in the +early summer the trade in Girard's store was so brisk that it appeared +to need all the force of the establishment to attend to it. The gate of +the front yard had no more strain put upon its hinges. It fell into +a stiff propriety of opening and shutting, at the touch of people who +understood that a gate was made merely to pass through, not to lean +upon. + +That summer Vaillantcoeur had a new hat--a black and shiny beaver--and a +new red-silk cravat. They looked fine on Corpus Christi day, when he and +'Toinette walked together as fiancee's. + +You would have thought he would have been content with that. Proud, +he certainly was. He stepped like the cure's big rooster with the +topknot--almost as far up in the air as he did along the ground; and he +held his chin high, as if he liked to look at things over his nose. + +But he was not satisfied all the way through. He thought more of beating +Prosper than of getting 'Toinette. And he was not quite sure that he had +beaten him yet. + +Perhaps the girl still liked Prosper a little. Perhaps she still thought +of his romances, and his chansons, and his fine, smooth words, and +missed them. Perhaps she was too silent and dull sometimes, when she +walked with Raoul; and sometimes she laughed too loud when he talked, +more at him than with him. Perhaps those St. Raymond fellows still +remembered the way his head stuck out of that cursed snow-drift, and +joked about it, and said how clever and quick the little Prosper was. +Perhaps--ah, MAUDIT! a thousand times perhaps! And only one way to +settle them, the old way, the sure way, and all the better now because +'Toinette must be on his side. She must understand for sure that the +bravest man in the parish had chosen her. + +That was the summer of the building of the grand stone tower of the +church. The men of Abbeville did it themselves, with their own hands, +for the glory of God. They were keen about that, and the cure was the +keenest of them all. No sharing of that glory with workmen from Quebec, +if you please! Abbeville was only forty years old, but they already +understood the glory of God quite as well there as at Quebec, without +doubt. They could build their own tower, perfectly, and they would. +Besides, it would cost less. + +Vaillantcoeur was the chief carpenter. He attended to the affair of +beams and timbers. Leclere was the chief mason. He directed the affair +of dressing the stones and laying them. That required a very careful +head, you understand, for the tower must be straight. In the floor +a little crookedness did not matter; but in the wall--that might be +serious. People have been killed by a falling tower. Of course, if +they were going into church, they would be sure of heaven. But then +think--what a disgrace for Abbeville! + +Every one was glad that Leclere bossed the raising of the tower. They +admitted that he might not be brave, but he was assuredly careful. +Vaillantcoeur alone grumbled, and said the work went too slowly, and +even swore that the sockets for the beams were too shallow, or else too +deep, it made no difference which. That BETE Prosper made trouble always +by his poor work. But the friction never came to a blaze; for the cure +was pottering about the tower every day and all day long, and a few +words from him would make a quarrel go off in smoke. + +“Softly, my boys!” he would say; “work smooth and you work fast. The +logs in the river run well when they run all the same way. But when two +logs cross each other, on the same rock--psst! a jam! The whole drive is +hung up! Do not run crossways, my children.” + +The walls rose steadily, straight as a steamboat pipe--ten, twenty, +thirty, forty feet; it was time to put in the two cross-girders, lay +the floor of the belfry, finish off the stonework, and begin the pointed +wooden spire. The cure had gone to Quebec that very day to buy the +shining plates of tin for the roof, and a beautiful cross of gilt for +the pinnacle. + +Leclere was in front of the tower putting on his overalls. Vaillantcoeur +came up, swearing mad. Three or four other workmen were standing about. + +“Look here, you Leclere,” said he, “I tried one of the cross-girders +yesterday afternoon and it wouldn't go. The templet on the north is +crooked--crooked as your teeth. We had to let the girder down again. I +suppose we must trim it off some way, to get a level bearing, and make +the tower weak, just to match your sacre bad work, eh?” + +“Well,” said Prosper, pleasant and quiet enough, “I'm sorry for that, +Raoul. Perhaps I could put that templet straight, or perhaps the girder +might be a little warped and twisted, eh? What? Suppose we measure it.” + +Sure enough, they found the long timber was not half seasoned and had +corkscrewed itself out of shape at least three inches. Vaillantcoeur sat +on the sill of the doorway and did not even look at them while they were +measuring. When they called out to him what they had found, he strode +over to them. + +“It's a dam' lie,” he said, sullenly. “Prosper Leclere, you slipped the +string. None of your sacre cheating! I have enough of it already. Will +you fight, you cursed sneak?” + +Prosper's face went gray, like the mortar in the trough. His fists +clenched and the cords on his neck stood out as if they were ropes. He +breathed hard. But he only said three words: + +“No! Not here.” + +“Not here? Why not? There is room. The cure is away. Why not here?” + +“It is the house of LE BON DIEU. Can we build it in hate?” + +“POLISSON! You make an excuse. Then come to Girard's, and fight there.” + +Again Prosper held in for a moment, and spoke three words: + +“No! Not now.” + +“Not now? But when, you heart of a hare? Will you sneak out of it until +you turn gray and die? When will you fight, little musk-rat?” + +“When I have forgotten. When I am no more your friend.” + +Prosper picked up his trowel and went into the tower. Raoul bad-worded +him and every stone of his building from foundation to cornice, and then +went down the road to get a bottle of cognac. + +An hour later he came back breathing out threatenings and slaughter, +strongly flavoured with raw spirits. Prosper was working quietly on the +top of the tower, at the side away from the road. He saw nothing until +Raoul, climbing up by the ladders on the inside, leaped on the platform +and rushed at him like a crazy lynx. + +“Now!” he cried, “no hole to hide in here, rat! I'll squeeze the lies +out of you.” + +He gripped Prosper by the head, thrusting one thumb into his eye, and +pushing him backward on the scaffolding. + +Blinded, half maddened by the pain, Prosper thought of nothing but +to get free. He swung his long arm upward and landed a heavy blow on +Raoul's face that dislocated the jaw; then twisting himself downward and +sideways, he fell in toward the wall. Raoul plunged forward, stumbled, +let go his hold, and pitched out from the tower, arms spread, clutching +the air. + +Forty feet straight down! A moment--or was it an eternity?--of horrible +silence. Then the body struck the rough stones at the foot of the tower +with a thick, soft dunt, and lay crumpled up among them, without a +groan, without a movement. + +When the other men, who had hurried up the ladders in terror, found +Leclere, he was peering over the edge of the scaffold, wiping the blood +from his eyes, trying to see down. + +“I have killed him,” he muttered, “my friend! He is smashed to death. I +am a murderer. Let me go. I must throw myself down!” + +They had hard work to hold him back. As they forced him down the ladders +he trembled like a poplar. + +But Vaillantcoeur was not dead. No; it was incredible--to fall forty +feet and not be killed--they talk of it yet all through the valley of +the Lake St. John--it was a miracle! But Vaillantcoeur had broken only +a nose, a collar-bone, and two ribs--for one like him that was but a +bagatelle. A good doctor from Chicoutimi, a few months of nursing, and +he would be on his feet again, almost as good a man as he had ever been. + +It was Leclere who put himself in charge of this. + +“It is my affair,” he said--“my fault! It was not a fair place to fight. +Why did I strike? I must attend to this bad work.” + +“MAIS, SACRE BLEU!” they answered, “how could you help it? He forced +you. You did not want to be killed. That would be a little too much.” + +“No,” he persisted, “this is my affair. Girard, you know my money is +with the notary. There is plenty. Raoul has not enough, perhaps not any. +But he shall want nothing--you understand--nothing! It is my affair, all +that he needs--but you shall not tell him--no! That is all.” + +Prosper had his way. But he did not see Vaillantcoeur after he was +carried home and put to bed in his cabin. Even if he had tried to do so, +it would have been impossible. He could not see anybody. One of his eyes +was entirely destroyed. The inflammation spread to the other, and all +through the autumn he lay in his house, drifting along the edge of +blindness, while Raoul lay in his house slowly getting well. + +The cure went from one house to the other, but he did not carry any +messages between them. If any were sent one way they were not received. +And the other way, none were sent. Raoul did not speak of Prosper; and +if one mentioned his name, Raoul shut his mouth and made no answer. + +To the cure, of course, it was a distress and a misery. To have a hatred +like this unhealed, was a blot on the parish; it was a shame, as well +as a sin. At last--it was already winter, the day before Christmas--the +cure made up his mind that he would put forth one more great effort. + +“Look you, my son,” he said to Prosper, “I am going this afternoon to +Raoul Vaillantcoeur to make the reconciliation. You shall give me a word +to carry to him. He shall hear it this time, I promise you. Shall I tell +him what you have done for him, how you have cared for him?” + +“No, never,” said Prosper; “you shall not take that word from me. It is +nothing. It will make worse trouble. I will never send it.” + +“What then?” said the priest. “Shall I tell him that you forgive him?” + +“No, not that,” answered Prosper, “that would be a foolish word. What +would that mean? It is not I who can forgive. I was the one who struck +hardest. It was he that fell from the tower.” + +“Well, then, choose the word for yourself. What shall it be? Come, I +promise you that he shall hear it. I will take with me the notary, and +the good man Girard, and the little Marie Antoinette. You shall hear an +answer. What message?” + +“Mon pere,” said Prosper, slowly, “you shall tell him just this. I, +Prosper Leclere, ask Raoul Vaillantcoeur that he will forgive me for not +fighting with him on the ground when he demanded it.” + +Yes, the message was given in precisely those words. Marie Antoinette +stood within the door, Bergeron and Girard at the foot of the bed, and +the cure spoke very clearly and firmly. Vaillantcoeur rolled on his +pillow and turned his face away. Then he sat up in bed, grunting a +little with the pain in his shoulder, which was badly set. His black +eyes snapped like the eyes of a wolverine in a corner. + +“Forgive?” he said, “no, never. He is a coward. I will never forgive!” + + +A little later in the afternoon, when the rose of sunset lay on the +snowy hills, some one knocked at the door of Leclere's house. + +“ENTREZ!” he cried. “Who is there? I see not very well by this light. +Who is it?” + +“It is me,” said 'Toinette, her cheeks rosier than the snow outside, +“nobody but me. I have come to ask you to tell me the rest about that +new carriage--do you remember?” + + + + +III + +The voice in the canoe behind me ceased. The rain let up. The SLISH, +SLISH of the paddle stopped. The canoe swung sideways to the breeze. I +heard the RAP, RAP, RAP of a pipe on the gunwale, and the quick scratch +of a match on the under side of the thwart. + +“What are you doing, Ferdinand?” + +“I go to light the pipe, m'sieu'.” + +“Is the story finished?” + +“But yes--but no--I know not, m'sieu'. As you will.” + +“But what did old Girard say when his daughter broke her engagement and +married a man whose eyes were spoiled?” + +“He said that Leclere could see well enough to work with him in the +store.” + +“And what did Vaillantcoeur say when he lost his girl?” + +“He said it was a cursed shame that one could not fight a blind man.” + +“And what did 'Toinette say?” + +“She said she had chosen the bravest heart in Abbeville.” + +“And Prosper--what did he say?” + +“M'sieu', I know not. He said it only to 'Toinette.” + + + + +IV. THE GENTLE LIFE + +Do you remember that fair little wood of silver birches on the West +Branch of the Neversink, somewhat below the place where the Biscuit +Brook runs in? There is a mossy terrace raised a couple of feet +above the water of a long, still pool; and a very pleasant spot for a +friendship-fire on the shingly beach below you; and a plenty of painted +trilliums and yellow violets and white foam-flowers to adorn your +woodland banquet, if it be spread in the month of May, when Mistress +Nature is given over to embroidery. + +It was there, at Contentment Corner, that Ned Mason had promised to +meet me on a certain day for the noontide lunch and smoke and talk, he +fishing down Biscuit Brook, and I down the West Branch, until we came +together at the rendezvous. But he was late that day--good old Ned! He +was occasionally behind time on a trout stream. For he went about his +fishing very seriously; and if it was fine, the sport was a natural +occasion of delay. But if it was poor, he made it an occasion to sit +down to meditate upon the cause of his failure, and tried to overcome it +with many subtly reasoned changes of the fly--which is a vain thing to +do, but well adapted to make one forgetful of the flight of time. + +So I waited for him near an hour, and then ate my half of the sandwiches +and boiled eggs, smoked a solitary pipe, and fell into a light sleep at +the foot of the biggest birch tree, an old and trusty friend of mine. +It seemed like a very slight sound that roused me: the snapping of a dry +twig in the thicket, or a gentle splash in the water, differing in some +indefinable way from the steady murmur of the stream; something it was, +I knew not what, that made me aware of some one coming down the brook. +I raised myself quietly on one elbow and looked up through the trees to +the head of the pool. “Ned will think that I have gone down long ago,” + I said to myself; “I will just lie here and watch him fish through this +pool, and see how he manages to spend so much time about it.” + +But it was not Ned's rod that I saw poking out through the bushes at the +bend in the brook. It was such an affair as I had never seen before upon +a trout stream: a majestic weapon at least sixteen feet long, made in +two pieces, neatly spliced together in the middle, and all painted a +smooth, glistening, hopeful green. The line that hung from the tip of it +was also green, but of a paler, more transparent colour, quite thick and +stiff where it left the rod, but tapering down towards the end, as if it +were twisted of strands of horse-hair, reduced in number, until, at +the hook, there were but two hairs. And the hook--there was no disguise +about that--it was an unabashed bait-hook, and well baited, too. Gently +the line swayed to and fro above the foaming water at the head of the +pool; quietly the bait settled down in the foam and ran with the current +around the edge of the deep eddy under the opposite bank; suddenly the +line straightened and tautened; sharply the tip of the long green rod +sprang upward, and the fisherman stepped out from the bushes to play his +fish. + +Where had I seen such a figure before? The dress was strange and +quaint--broad, low shoes, gray woollen stockings, short brown breeches +tied at the knee with ribbons, a loose brown coat belted at the waist +like a Norfolk jacket; a wide, rolling collar with a bit of lace at the +edge, and a soft felt hat with a shady brim. It was a costume that, +with all its oddity, seemed wonderfully fit and familiar. And the +face? Certainly it was the face of an old friend. Never had I seen a +countenance of more quietness and kindliness and twinkling good humour. + +“Well met, sir, and a pleasant day to you,” cried the angler, as his +eyes lighted on me. “Look you, I have hold of a good fish; I pray you +put that net under him, and touch not my line, for if you do, then we +break all. Well done, sir; I thank you. Now we have him safely landed. +Truly this is a lovely one; the best that I have taken in these waters. +See how the belly shines, here as yellow as a marsh-marigold, and there +as white as a foam-flower. Is not the hand of Divine Wisdom as skilful +in the colouring of a fish as in the painting of the manifold blossoms +that sweeten these wild forests?” + +“Indeed it is,” said I, “and this is the biggest trout that I have seen +caught in the upper waters of the Neversink. It is certainly eighteen +inches long, and should weigh close upon two pounds and a half.” + +“More than that,” he answered, “if I mistake not. But I observe that you +call it a trout. To my mind, it seems more like a char, as do all the +fish that I have caught in your stream. Look here upon these curious +water-markings that run through the dark green of the back, and these +enamellings of blue and gold upon the side. Note, moreover, how bright +and how many are the red spots, and how each one of them is encircled +with a ring of purple. Truly it is a fish of rare beauty, and of high +esteem with persons of note. I would gladly know if it he as good to the +taste as I have heard it reputed.” + +“It is even better,” I replied; “as you shall find, if you will but try +it.” + +Then a curious impulse came to me, to which I yielded with as little +hesitation or misgiving, at the time, as if it were the most natural +thing in the world. + +“You seem a stranger in this part of the country, sir,” said I; “but +unless I am mistaken you are no stranger to me. Did you not use to go +a-fishing in the New River, with honest Nat. and R. Roe, many years ago? +And did they not call you Izaak Walton?” + +His eyes smiled pleasantly at me and a little curve of merriment played +around his lips. “It is a secret which I thought not to have been +discovered here,” he said; “but since you have lit upon it, I will not +deny it.” + +Now how it came to pass that I was not astonished nor dismayed at this, +I cannot explain. But so it was; and the only feeling of which I +was conscious was a strong desire to detain this visitor as long +as possible, and have some talk with him. So I grasped at the only +expedient that flashed into my mind. + +“Well, then, sir,” I said, “you are most heartily welcome, and I trust +you will not despise the only hospitality I have to offer. If you will +sit down here among these birch trees in Contentment Corner, I will give +you half of a fisherman's luncheon, and will cook your char for you on +a board before an open wood-fire, if you are not in a hurry. Though I +belong to a nation which is reported to be curious, I will promise to +trouble you with no inquisitive questions; and if you will but talk to +me at your will, you shall find me a ready listener.” + +So we made ourselves comfortable on the shady bank, and while I busied +myself in splitting the fish and pinning it open on a bit of board that +I had found in a pile of driftwood, and setting it up before the fire to +broil, my new companion entertained me with the sweetest and friendliest +talk that I had ever heard. + +“To speak without offence, sir,” he began, “there was a word in your +discourse a moment ago that seemed strange to me. You spoke of being 'in +a hurry'; and that is an expression which is unfamiliar to my ears; but +if it mean the same as being in haste, then I must tell you that this +is a thing which, in my judgment, honest anglers should learn to forget, +and have no dealings with it. To be in haste is to be in anxiety and +distress of mind; it is to mistrust Providence, and to doubt that the +issue of all events is in wiser hands than ours; it is to disturb the +course of nature, and put overmuch confidence in the importance of our +own endeavours. + +“For how much of the evil that is in the world cometh from this plaguy +habit of being in haste! The haste to get riches, the haste to +climb upon some pinnacle of worldly renown, the haste to resolve +mysteries--from these various kinds of haste are begotten no small +part of the miseries and afflictions whereby the children of men are +tormented: such as quarrels and strifes among those who would over-reach +one another in business; envyings and jealousies among those who +would outshine one another in rich apparel and costly equipage; bloody +rebellions and cruel wars among those who would obtain power over their +fellow-men; cloudy disputations and bitter controversies among those who +would fain leave no room for modest ignorance and lowly faith among the +secrets of religion; and by all these miseries of haste the heart grows +weary, and is made weak and dull, or else hard and angry, while it +dwelleth in the midst of them. + +“But let me tell you that an angler's occupation is a good cure for +these evils, if for no other reason, because it gently dissuadeth us +from haste and leadeth us away from feverish anxieties into those ways +which are pleasantness and those paths which are peace. For an angler +cannot force his fortune by eagerness, nor better it by discontent. He +must wait upon the weather, and the height of the water, and the hunger +of the fish, and many other accidents of which he has no control. If +he would angle well, he must not be in haste. And if he be in haste, +he will do well to unlearn it by angling, for I think there is no surer +method. + +“This fair tree that shadows us from the sun hath grown many years +in its place without more unhappiness than the loss of its leaves in +winter, which the succeeding season doth generously repair; and shall we +be less contented in the place where God hath planted us? or shall there +go less time to the making of a man than to the growth of a tree? This +stream floweth wimpling and laughing down to the great sea which it +knoweth not; yet it doth not fret because the future is hidden; +and doubtless it were wise in us to accept the mysteries of life as +cheerfully and go forward with a merry heart, considering that we know +enough to make us happy and keep us honest for to-day. A man should be +well content if he can see so far ahead of him as the next bend in the +stream. What lies beyond, let him trust in the hand of God. + +“But as concerning riches, wherein should you and I be happier, this +pleasant afternoon of May, had we all the gold in Croesus his coffers? +Would the sun shine for us more bravely, or the flowers give forth a +sweeter breath, or yonder warbling vireo, hidden in her leafy choir, +send down more pure and musical descants, sweetly attuned by natural +magic to woo and win our thoughts from vanity and hot desires into a +harmony with the tranquil thoughts of God? And as for fame and power, +trust me, sir, I have seen too many men in my time that lived very +unhappily though their names were upon all lips, and died very sadly +though their power was felt in many lands; too many of these great +ones have I seen that spent their days in disquietude and ended them in +sorrow, to make me envy their conditions or hasten to rival them. Nor do +I think that, by all their perturbations and fightings and runnings to +and fro, the world hath been much bettered, or even greatly changed. The +colour and complexion of mortal life, in all things that are essential, +remain the same under Cromwell or under Charles. The goodness and mercy +of God are still over all His works, whether Presbytery or Episcopacy +be set up as His interpreter. Very quietly and peacefully have I lived +under several polities, civil and ecclesiastical, and under all there +was room enough to do my duty and love my friends and go a-fishing. +And let me tell you, sir, that in the state wherein I now find myself, +though there are many things of which I may not speak to you, yet one +thing is clear: if I had made haste in my mortal concerns, I should not +have saved time, but lost it; for all our affairs are under one sure +dominion which moveth them forward to their concordant end: wherefore +'HE THAT BELIEVETH SHALL NOT MAKE HASTE,' and, above all, not when he +goeth a-angling. + +“But tell me, I pray you, is not this char cooked yet? Methinks the time +is somewhat overlong for the roasting. The fragrant smell of the cookery +gives me an eagerness to taste this new dish. Not that I am in haste, +but-- + +“Well, it is done; and well done, too! Marry, the flesh of this fish is +as red as rose-leaves, and as sweet as if he had fed on nothing else. +The flavour of smoke from the fire is but slight, and it takes nothing +from the perfection of the dish, but rather adds to it, being clean and +delicate. I like not these French cooks who make all dishes in disguise, +and set them forth with strange foreign savours, like a masquerade. Give +me my food in its native dress, even though it be a little dry. If we +had but a cup of sack, now, or a glass of good ale, and a pipeful of +tobacco? + +“What! you have an abundance of the fragrant weed in your pouch? Sir, I +thank you very heartily! You entertain me like a prince. Not like King +James, be it understood, who despised tobacco and called it a 'lively +image and pattern of hell'; nor like the Czar of Russia who commanded +that all who used it should have their noses cut off; but like good +Queen Bess of glorious memory, who disdained not the incense of the +pipe, and some say she used one herself; though for my part I think the +custom of smoking one that is more fitting for men, whose frailty and +need of comfort are well known, than for that fairer sex whose innocent +and virgin spirits stand less in want of creature consolations. + +“But come, let us not trouble our enjoyment with careful discrimination +of others' scruples. Your tobacco is rarely good; I'll warrant it comes +from that province of Virginia which was named for the Virgin Queen; and +while we smoke together, let me call you, for this hour, my Scholar; +and so I will give you four choice rules for the attainment of that +unhastened quietude of mind whereof we did lately discourse. + +“First: you shall learn to desire nothing in the world so much but that +you can be happy without it. + +“Second: you shall seek that which you desire only by such means as are +fair and lawful, and this will leave you without bitterness towards men +or shame before God. + +“Third: you shall take pleasure in the time while you are seeking, even +though you obtain not immediately that which you seek; for the purpose +of a journey is not only to arrive at the goal, but also to find +enjoyment by the way. + +“Fourth: when you attain that which you have desired, you shall think +more of the kindness of your fortune than of the greatness of your +skill. This will make you grateful, and ready to share with others +that which Providence hath bestowed upon you; and truly this is both +reasonable and profitable, for it is but little that any of us would +catch in this world were not our luck better than our deserts. + +“And to these Four Rules I will add yet another--Fifth: when you smoke +your pipe with a good conscience, trouble not yourself because there are +men in the world who will find fault with you for so doing. If you wait +for a pleasure at which no sour-complexioned soul hath ever girded, you +will wait long, and go through life with a sad and anxious mind. But +I think that God is best pleased with us when we give little heed to +scoffers, and enjoy His gifts with thankfulness and an easy heart. + +“Well, Scholar, I have almost tired myself, and, I fear, more than +almost tired you. But this pipe is nearly burned out, and the few short +whiffs that are left in it shall put a period to my too long discourse. +Let me tell you, then, that there be some men in the world who hold not +with these my opinions. They profess that a life of contention and +noise and public turmoil, is far higher than a life of quiet work and +meditation. And so far as they follow their own choice honestly and with +a pure mind, I doubt not that it is as good for them as mine is for me, +and I am well pleased that every man do enjoy his own opinion. But so +far as they have spoken ill of me and my opinions, I do hold it a thing +of little consequence, except that I am sorry that they have thereby +embittered their own hearts. + +“For this is the punishment of men who malign and revile those that +differ from them in religion, or prefer another way of living; their +revilings, by so much as they spend their wit and labour to make them +shrewd and bitter, do draw all the sweet and wholesome sap out of their +lives and turn it into poison; and so they become vessels of mockery and +wrath, remembered chiefly for the evil things that they have said with +cleverness. + +“For be sure of this, Scholar, the more a man giveth himself to hatred +in this world, the more will he find to hate. But let us rather give +ourselves to charity, and if we have enemies (and what honest man hath +them not?) let them be ours, since they must, but let us not be theirs, +since we know better. + +“There was one Franck, a trooper of Cromwell's, who wrote ill of me, +saying that I neither understood the subjects whereof I discoursed nor +believed the things that I said, being both silly and pretentious. It +would have been a pity if it had been true. There was also one Leigh +Hunt, a maker of many books, who used one day a bottle of ink whereof +the gall was transfused into his blood, so that he wrote many hard words +of me, setting forth selfishness and cruelty and hypocrisy as if they +were qualities of my disposition. God knew, even then, whether these +things were true of me; and if they were not true, it would have been a +pity to have answered them; but it would have been still more a pity to +be angered by them. But since that time Master Hunt and I have met each +other; yes, and Master Franck, too; and we have come very happily to a +better understanding. + +“Trust me, Scholar, it is the part of wisdom to spend little of your +time upon the things that vex and anger you, and much of your time upon +the things that bring you quietness and confidence and good cheer. A +friend made is better than an enemy punished. There is more of God in +the peaceable beauty of this little wood-violet than in all the angry +disputations of the sects. We are nearer heaven when we listen to the +birds than when we quarrel with our fellow-men. I am sure that none can +enter into the spirit of Christ, his evangel, save those who willingly +follow his invitation when he says, 'COME YE YOURSELVES APART INTO A +LONELY PLACE, AND REST A WHILE.' For since his blessed kingdom was first +established in the green fields, by the lakeside, with humble fishermen +for its subjects, the easiest way into it hath ever been through the +wicket-gate of a lowly and grateful fellowship with nature. He that +feels not the beauty and blessedness and peace of the woods and meadows +that God hath bedecked with flowers for him even while he is yet a +sinner, how shall he learn to enjoy the unfading bloom of the celestial +country if he ever become a saint? + +“No, no, sir, he that departeth out of this world without perceiving +that it is fair and full of innocent sweetness hath done little honour +to the every-day miracles of divine beneficence; and though by mercy he +may obtain an entrance to heaven, it will be a strange place to him; and +though he have studied all that is written in men's books of divinity, +yet because he hath left the book of Nature unturned, he will have +much to learn and much to forget. Do you think that to be blind to the +beauties of earth prepareth the heart to behold the glories of heaven? +Nay, Scholar, I know that you are not of that opinion. But I can tell +you another thing which perhaps you knew not. The heart that is blest +with the glories of heaven ceaseth not to remember and to love the +beauties of this world. And of this love I am certain, because I feel +it, and glad because it is a great blessing. + +“There are two sorts of seeds sown in our remembrance by what we call +the hand of fortune, the fruits of which do not wither, but grow sweeter +forever and ever. The first is the seed of innocent pleasures, received +in gratitude and enjoyed with good companions, of which pleasures we +never grow weary of thinking, because they have enriched our hearts. The +second is the seed of pure and gentle sorrows, borne in submission +and with faithful love, and these also we never forget, but we come to +cherish them with gladness instead of grief, because we see them changed +into everlasting joys. And how this may be I cannot tell you now, for +you would not understand me. But that it is so, believe me: for if you +believe, you shall one day see it yourself. + +“But come, now, our friendly pipes are long since burned out. Hark, how +sweetly the tawny thrush in yonder thicket touches her silver harp for +the evening hymn! I will follow the stream downward, but do you tarry +here until the friend comes for whom you were waiting. I think we shall +all three meet one another, somewhere, after sunset.” + +I watched the gray hat and the old brown coat and long green rod +disappear among the trees around the curve of the stream. Then Ned's +voice sounded in my ears, and I saw him standing above me laughing. + +“Hallo, old man,” he said, “you're a sound sleeper! I hope you've had +good luck, and pleasant dreams.” + + + + +V. A FRIEND OF JUSTICE + + + + +I + +It was the black patch over his left eye that made all the trouble. In +reality he was of a disposition most peaceful and propitiating, a friend +of justice and fair dealing, strongly inclined to a domestic life, and +capable of extreme devotion. He had a vivid sense of righteousness, it +is true, and any violation of it was apt to heat his indignation to the +boiling-point. When this occurred he was strong in the back, stiff +in the neck, and fearless of consequences. But he was always open to +friendly overtures and ready to make peace with honour. + +Singularly responsive to every touch of kindness, desirous of affection, +secretly hungry for caresses, he had a heart framed for love and +tranquillity. But nature saw fit to put a black patch over his left eye; +wherefore his days were passed in the midst of conflict and he lived the +strenuous life. + +How this sinister mark came to him, he never knew. Indeed it is not +likely that he had any idea of the part that it played in his career. +The attitude that the world took toward him from the beginning, an +attitude of aggressive mistrust,--the role that he was expected and +practically forced to assume in the drama of existence, the role of +a hero of interminable strife,--must have seemed to him altogether +mysterious and somewhat absurd. But his part was fixed by the black +patch. It gave him an aspect so truculent and forbidding that all +the elements of warfare gathered around him as hornets around a sugar +barrel, and his appearance in public was like the raising of a flag for +battle. + +“You see that Pichou,” said MacIntosh, the Hudson's Bay agent at Mingan, +“you see yon big black-eye deevil? The savages call him Pichou because +he's ugly as a lynx--'LAID COMME UN PICHOU.' Best sledge-dog and the +gurliest tyke on the North Shore. Only two years old and he can lead +a team already. But, man, he's just daft for the fighting. Fought his +mother when he was a pup and lamed her for life. Fought two of his +brothers and nigh killed 'em both. Every dog in the place has a grudge +at him, and hell's loose as oft as he takes a walk. I'm loath to part +with him, but I'll be selling him gladly for fifty dollars to any man +that wants a good sledge-dog, eh?--and a bit collie-shangie every week.” + +Pichou had heard his name, and came trotting up to the corner of the +store where MacIntosh was talking with old Grant the chief factor, who +was on a tour of inspection along the North Shore, and Dan Scott, +the agent from Seven Islands, who had brought the chief down in his +chaloupe. Pichou did not understand what his master had been saying +about him: but he thought he was called, and he had a sense of duty; +and besides, he was wishful to show proper courtesy to well-dressed and +respectable strangers. He was a great dog, thirty inches high at the +shoulder; broad-chested, with straight, sinewy legs; and covered with +thick, wavy, cream-coloured hair from the tips of his short ears to the +end of his bushy tail--all except the left side of his face. That +was black from ear to nose--coal-black; and in the centre of this +storm-cloud his eye gleamed like fire. + +What did Pichou know about that ominous sign? No one had ever told +him. He had no looking-glass. He ran up to the porch where the men +were sitting, as innocent as a Sunday-school scholar coming to the +superintendent's desk to receive a prize. But when old Grant, who had +grown pursy and nervous from long living on the fat of the land at +Ottawa, saw the black patch and the gleaming eye, he anticipated evil; +so he hitched one foot up on the porch, crying “Get out!” and with the +other foot he planted a kick on the side of the dog's head. + +Pichou's nerve-centres had not been shaken by high living. They acted +with absolute precision and without a tremor. His sense of justice +was automatic, and his teeth were fixed through the leg of the chief +factor's boot, just below the calf. + +For two minutes there was a small chaos in the post of the Honourable +Hudson's Bay Company at Mingan. Grant howled bloody murder; MacIntosh +swore in three languages and yelled for his dog-whip; three Indians and +two French-Canadians wielded sticks and fence-pickets. But order did not +arrive until Dan Scott knocked the burning embers from his big pipe on +the end of the dog's nose. Pichou gasped, let go his grip, shook +his head, and loped back to his quarters behind the barn, bruised, +blistered, and intolerably perplexed by the mystery of life. + +As he lay on the sand, licking his wounds, he remembered many strange +things. First of all, there was the trouble with his mother. + +She was a Labrador Husky, dirty yellowish gray, with bristling neck, +sharp fangs, and green eyes, like a wolf. Her name was Babette. She had +a fiendish temper, but no courage. His father was supposed to be a huge +black and white Newfoundland that came over in a schooner from Miquelon. +Perhaps it was from him that the black patch was inherited. And perhaps +there were other things in the inheritance, too, which came from this +nobler strain of blood Pichon's unwillingness to howl with the other +dogs when they made night hideous; his silent, dignified ways; his sense +of fair play; his love of the water; his longing for human society and +friendship. + +But all this was beyond Pichou's horizon, though it was within his +nature. He remembered only that Babette had taken a hate for him, almost +from the first, and had always treated him worse than his all-yellow +brothers. She would have starved him if she could. Once when he was half +grown, she fell upon him for some small offence and tried to throttle +him. The rest of the pack looked on snarling and slavering. He caught +Babette by the fore-leg and broke the bone. She hobbled away, shrieking. +What else could he do? Must a dog let himself be killed by his mother? + +As for his brothers--was it fair that two of them should fall foul of +him about the rabbit which he had tracked and caught and killed? He +would have shared it with them, if they had asked him, for they ran +behind him on the trail. But when they both set their teeth in his +neck, there was nothing to do but to lay them both out: which he did. +Afterward he was willing enough to make friends, but they bristled and +cursed whenever he came near them. + +It was the same with everybody. If he went out for a walk on the beach, +Vigneau's dogs or Simard's dogs regarded it as an insult, and there +was a fight. Men picked up sticks, or showed him the butt-end of their +dog-whips, when he made friendly approaches. With the children it was +different; they seemed to like him a little; but never did he follow one +of them that a mother did not call from the house-door: “Pierre! Marie! +come away quick! That bad dog will bite you!” Once when he ran down to +the shore to watch the boat coming in from the mail-steamer, the +purser had refused to let the boat go to land, and called out, “M'sieu' +MacIntosh, you git no malle dis trip, eef you not call avay dat dam' +dog.” + +True, the Minganites seemed to take a certain kind of pride in his +reputation. They had brought Chouart's big brown dog, Gripette, down +from the Sheldrake to meet him; and after the meeting was over and +Gripette had been revived with a bucket of water, everybody, except +Chouart, appeared to be in good humour. The purser of the steamer had +gone to the trouble of introducing a famous BOULE-DOGGE from Quebec, +on the trip after that on which he had given such a hostile opinion of +Pichon. The bulldog's intentions were unmistakable; he expressed them +the moment he touched the beach; and when they carried him back to the +boat on a fish-barrow many flattering words were spoken about Pichou. He +was not insensible to them. But these tributes to his prowess were not +what he really wanted. His secret desire was for tokens of affection. +His position was honourable, but it was intolerably lonely and full of +trouble. He sought peace and he found fights. + +While he meditated dimly on these things, patiently trying to get the +ashes of Dan Scott's pipe out of his nose, his heart was cast down +and his spirit was disquieted within him. Was ever a decent dog so +mishandled before? Kicked for nothing by a fat stranger, and then beaten +by his own master! + +In the dining-room of the Post, Grant was slowly and reluctantly +allowing himself to be convinced that his injuries were not fatal. +During this process considerable Scotch whiskey was consumed and there +was much conversation about the viciousness of dogs. Grant insisted that +Pichou was mad and had a devil. MacIntosh admitted the devil, but firmly +denied the madness. The question was, whether the dog should be killed +or not; and over this point there was like to be more bloodshed, until +Dan Scott made his contribution to the argument: “If you shoot him, how +can you tell whether he is mad or not? I'll give thirty dollars for him +and take him home.” + +“If you do,” said Grant, “you'll sail alone, and I'll wait for the +steamer. Never a step will I go in the boat with the crazy brute that +bit me.” + +“Suit yourself,” said Dan Scott. “You kicked before he bit.” + +At daybreak he whistled the dog down to the chaloupe, hoisted sail, and +bore away for Seven Islands. There was a secret bond of sympathy between +the two companions on that hundred-mile voyage in an open boat. Neither +of them realized what it was, but still it was there. + +Dan Scott knew what it meant to stand alone, to face a small hostile +world, to have a surfeit of fighting. The station of Seven Islands +was the hardest in all the district of the ancient POSTES DU ROI. +The Indians were surly and crafty. They knew all the tricks of the +fur-trade. They killed out of season, and understood how to make a +rusty pelt look black. The former agent had accommodated himself to his +customers. He had no objection to shutting one of his eyes, so long as +the other could see a chance of doing a stroke of business for himself. +He also had a convenient weakness in the sense of smell, when there was +an old stock of pork to work off on the savages. But all of Dan Scott's +senses were strong, especially his sense of justice, and he came into +the Post resolved to play a straight game with both hands, toward the +Indians and toward the Honourable H. B. Company. The immediate results +were reproofs from Ottawa and revilings from Seven Islands. Furthermore +the free traders were against him because he objected to their selling +rum to the savages. + +It must be confessed that Dan Scott had a way with him that looked +pugnacious. He was quick in his motions and carried his shoulders well +thrown back. His voice was heavy. He used short words and few of them. +His eyebrow's were thick and they met over his nose. Then there was +a broad white scar at one corner of his mouth. His appearance was +not prepossessing, but at heart he was a philanthropist and a +sentimentalist. He thirsted for gratitude and affection on a just basis. +He had studied for eighteen months in the medical school at Montreal, +and his chief delight was to practise gratuitously among the sick and +wounded of the neighbourhood. His ambition for Seven Islands was to +make it a northern suburb of Paradise, and for himself to become a +full-fledged physician. Up to this time it seemed as if he would have to +break more bones than he could set; and the closest connection of Seven +Islands appeared to be with Purgatory. + +First, there had been a question of suzerainty between Dan Scott and the +local representative of the Astor family, a big half-breed descendant +of a fur-trader, who was the virtual chief of the Indians hunting on +the Ste. Marguerite: settled by knock-down arguments. Then there was a +controversy with Napoleon Bouchard about the right to put a fish-house +on a certain part of the beach: settled with a stick, after Napoleon had +drawn a knife. Then there was a running warfare with Virgile and Ovide +Boulianne, the free traders, who were his rivals in dealing with the +Indians for their peltry: still unsettled. After this fashion the record +of his relations with his fellow-citizens at Seven Islands was made +up. He had their respect, but not their affection. He was the only +Protestant, the only English-speaker, the most intelligent man, as well +as the hardest hitter in the place, and he was very lonely. Perhaps it +was this that made him take a fancy to Pichou. Their positions in the +world were not unlike. He was not the first man who has wanted sympathy +and found it in a dog. + +Alone together, in the same boat, they made friends with each other +easily. At first the remembrance of the hot pipe left a little suspicion +in Pichou's mind; but this was removed by a handsome apology in the +shape of a chunk of bread and a slice of meat from Dan Scott's lunch. +After this they got on together finely. It was the first time in his +life that Pichou had ever spent twenty-four hours away from other dogs; +it was also the first time he had ever been treated like a gentleman. +All that was best in him responded to the treatment. He could not have +been more quiet and steady in the boat if he had been brought up to a +seafaring life. When Dan Scott called him and patted him on the head, +the dog looked up in the man's face as if he had found his God. And +the man, looking down into the eye that was not disfigured by the black +patch, saw something that he had been seeking for a long time. + +All day the wind was fair and strong from the southeast. The chaloupe +ran swiftly along the coast past the broad mouth of the River +Saint-Jean, with its cluster of white cottages past the hill-encircled +bay of the River Magpie, with its big fish-houses past the fire-swept +cliffs of Riviere-au-Tonnerre, and the turbulent, rocky shores of the +Sheldrake: past the silver cascade of the Riviere-aux-Graines, and the +mist of the hidden fall of the Riviere Manitou: past the long, desolate +ridges of Cap Cormorant, where, at sunset, the wind began to droop away, +and the tide was contrary So the chaloupe felt its way cautiously toward +the corner of the coast where the little Riviere-a-la-Truite comes +tumbling in among the brown rocks, and found a haven for the night in +the mouth of the river. + +There was only one human dwelling-place in sight As far as the eye +could sweep, range after range of uninhabitable hills covered with the +skeletons of dead forests; ledge after ledge of ice-worn granite thrust +out like fangs into the foaming waves of the gulf. Nature, with her +teeth bare and her lips scarred: this was the landscape. And in the +midst of it, on a low hill above the murmuring river, surrounded by the +blanched trunks of fallen trees, and the blackened debris of wood and +moss, a small, square, weather-beaten palisade of rough-hewn spruce, and +a patch of the bright green leaves and white flowers of the dwarf cornel +lavishing their beauty on a lonely grave. This was the only habitation +in sight--the last home of the Englishman, Jack Chisholm, whose story +has yet to be told. + +In the shelter of this hill Dan Scott cooked his supper and shared it +with Pichou. When night was dark he rolled himself in his blanket, +and slept in the stern of the boat, with the dog at his side. Their +friendship was sealed. + +The next morning the weather was squally and full of sudden anger. They +crept out with difficulty through the long rollers that barred the tiny +harbour, and beat their way along the coast. At Moisie they must run far +out into the gulf to avoid the treacherous shoals, and to pass beyond +the furious race of white-capped billows that poured from the great +river for miles into the sea. Then they turned and made for the group of +half-submerged mountains and scattered rocks that Nature, in some freak +of fury, had thrown into the throat of Seven Islands Bay. That was a +difficult passage. The black shores were swept by headlong tides. Tusks +of granite tore the waves. Baffled and perplexed, the wind flapped and +whirled among the cliffs. Through all this the little boat buffeted +bravely on till she reached the point of the Gran Boule. Then a strange +thing happened. + +The water was lumpy; the evening was growing thick; a swirl of the +tide and a shift of the wind caught the chaloupe and swung her suddenly +around. The mainsail jibed, and before he knew how it happened Dan Scott +was overboard. He could swim but clumsily. The water blinded him, choked +him, dragged him down. Then he felt Pichou gripping him by the shoulder, +buoying him up, swimming mightily toward the chaloupe which hung +trembling in the wind a few yards away. At last they reached it and the +man climbed over the stern and pulled the dog after him. Dan Scott lay +in the bottom of the boat, shivering, dazed, until he felt the dog's +cold nose and warm breath against his cheek. He flung his arm around +Pichon's neck. + +“They said you were mad! God, if more men were mad like you!” + + + + +II + + +Pichou's work at Seven Islands was cut out for him on a generous scale. +It is true that at first he had no regular canine labour to perform, +for it was summer. Seven months of the year, on the North Shore, a +sledge-dog's occupation is gone. He is the idlest creature in the +universe. + +But Pichou, being a new-comer, had to win his footing in the community; +and that was no light task. With the humans it was comparatively easy. +At the outset they mistrusted him on account of his looks. Virgile +Boulianne asked: “Why did you buy such an ugly dog?” Ovide, who was +the wit of the family, said: “I suppose M'sieu' Scott got a present for +taking him.” + +“It's a good dog,” said Dan Scott. “Treat him well and he'll treat you +well. Kick him and I kick you.” + +Then he told what had happened off the point of Gran' Boule. The +village decided to accept Pichou at his master's valuation. Moderate +friendliness, with precautions, was shown toward him by everybody, +except Napoleon Bouchard, whose distrust was permanent and took the +form of a stick. He was a fat, fussy man; fat people seemed to have no +affinity for Pichou. + +But while the relations with the humans of Seven Islands were soon +established on a fair footing, with the canines Pichou had a very +different affair. They were not willing to accept any recommendations +as to character. They judged for themselves; and they judged by +appearances; and their judgment was utterly hostile to Pichou. + +They decided that he was a proud dog, a fierce dog, a bad dog, a +fighter. He must do one of two things: stay at home in the yard of the +Honourable H. B. Company, which is a thing that no self-respecting dog +would do in the summer-time, when cod-fish heads are strewn along the +beach; or fight his way from one end of the village to the other, which +Pichou promptly did, leaving enemies behind every fence. Huskies never +forget a grudge. They are malignant to the core. Hatred is the wine of +cowardly hearts. This is as true of dogs as it is of men. + +Then Pichou, having settled his foreign relations, turned his attention +to matters at home. There were four other dogs in Dan Scott's team. They +did not want Pichou for a leader, and he knew it. They were bitter +with jealousy. The black patch was loathsome to them. They treated +him disrespectfully, insultingly, grossly. Affairs came to a head +when Pecan, a rusty gray dog who had great ambitions and little sense, +disputed Pichou's tenure of a certain ham-bone. Dan Scott looked on +placidly while the dispute was terminated. Then he washed the blood and +sand from the gashes on Pecan's shoulder, and patted Pichou on the head. + +“Good dog,” he said. “You're the boss.” + +There was no further question about Pichou's leadership of the team. But +the obedience of his followers was unwilling and sullen. There was no +love in it. Imagine an English captain, with a Boer company, campaigning +in the Ashantee country, and you will have a fair idea of Pichou's +position at Seven Islands. + +He did not shrink from its responsibilities. There were certain reforms +in the community which seemed to him of vital importance, and he put +them through. + +First of all, he made up his mind that there ought to be peace and order +on the village street. In the yards of the houses that were strung along +it there should be home rule, and every dog should deal with trespassers +as he saw fit. Also on the beach, and around the fish-shanties, and +under the racks where the cod were drying, the right of the strong jaw +should prevail, and differences of opinion should be adjusted in +the old-fashioned way. But on the sandy road, bordered with a broken +board-walk, which ran between the houses and the beach, courtesy and +propriety must be observed. Visitors walked there. Children played +there. It was the general promenade. It must be kept peaceful and +decent. This was the First Law of the Dogs of Seven Islands. If two dogs +quarrel on the street they must go elsewhere to settle it. It was highly +unpopular, but Pichou enforced it with his teeth. + +The Second Law was equally unpopular: No stealing from the Honourable H. +B. Company. If a man bought bacon or corned-beef or any other delicacy, +and stored it an insecure place, or if he left fish on the beach over +night, his dogs might act according to their inclination. Though Pichou +did not understand how honest dogs could steal from their own master, +he was willing to admit that this was their affair. His affair was +that nobody should steal anything from the Post. It cost him many night +watches, and some large battles to carry it out, but he did it. In the +course of time it came to pass that the other dogs kept away from the +Post altogether, to avoid temptations; and his own team spent most of +their free time wandering about to escape discipline. + +The Third Law was this. Strange dogs must be decently treated as long +as they behave decently. This was contrary to all tradition, but +Pichou insisted upon it. If a strange dog wanted to fight he should be +accommodated with an antagonist of his own size. If he did not want to +fight he should be politely smelled and allowed to pass through. + +This Law originated on a day when a miserable, long-legged, black cur, +a cross between a greyhound and a water-spaniel, strayed into Seven +Islands from heaven knows where--weary, desolate, and bedraggled. All +the dogs in the place attacked the homeless beggar. There was a howling +fracas on the beach; and when Pichou arrived, the trembling cur was +standing up to the neck in the water, facing a semicircle of snarling, +snapping bullies who dared not venture out any farther. Pichou had no +fear of the water. He swam out to the stranger, paid the smelling +salute as well as possible under the circumstances, encouraged the poor +creature to come ashore, warned off the other dogs, and trotted by the +wanderer's side for miles down the beach until they disappeared around +the point. What reward Pichou got for this polite escort, I do not know. +But I saw him do the gallant deed; and I suppose this was the origin +of the well-known and much-resisted Law of Strangers' Rights in Seven +Islands. + +The most recalcitrant subjects with whom Pichou had to deal in all these +matters were the team of Ovide Boulianne. There were five of them, and +up to this time they had been the best team in the village. They had one +virtue: under the whip they could whirl a sledge over the snow farther +and faster than a horse could trot in a day. But they had innumerable +vices. Their leader, Carcajou, had a fleece like a merino ram. But under +this coat of innocence he carried a heart so black that he would bite +while he was wagging his tail. This smooth devil, and his four followers +like unto himself, had sworn relentless hatred to Pichou, and they made +his life difficult. + +But his great and sufficient consolation for all toils and troubles was +the friendship with his master. In the long summer evenings, when Dan +Scott was making up his accounts in the store, or studying his pocket +cyclopaedia of medicine in the living-room of the Post, with its +low beams and mysterious green-painted cupboards, Pichou would lie +contentedly at his feet. In the frosty autumnal mornings, when the brant +were flocking in the marshes at the head of the bay, they would go out +hunting together in a skiff. And who could lie so still as Pichou when +the game was approaching? Or who could spring so quickly and joyously to +retrieve a wounded bird? But best of all were the long walks on Sunday +afternoons, on the yellow beach that stretched away toward the Moisie, +or through the fir-forest behind the Pointe des Chasseurs. Then master +and dog had fellowship together in silence. To the dumb companion it was +like walking with his God in the garden in the cool of the day. + +When winter came, and snow fell, and waters froze, Pichou's serious +duties began. The long, slim COMETIQUE, with its curving prow, and its +runners of whalebone, was put in order. The harness of caribou-hide +was repaired and strengthened. The dogs, even the most vicious of them, +rejoiced at the prospect of doing the one thing that they could do best. +Each one strained at his trace as if he would drag the sledge alone. +Then the long tandem was straightened out, Dan Scott took his place +on the low seat, cracked his whip, shouted “POUITTE! POUITTE!” and the +equipage darted along the snowy track like a fifty-foot arrow. + +Pichou was in the lead, and he showed his metal from the start. No need +of the terrible FOUET to lash him forward or to guide his course. A +word was enough. “Hoc! Hoc! Hoc!” and he swung to the right, avoiding an +air-hole. “Re-re! Re-re!” and he veered to the left, dodging a heap of +broken ice. Past the mouth of the Ste. Marguerite, twelve miles; +past Les Jambons, twelve miles more; past the River of Rocks and La +Pentecote, fifteen miles more; into the little hamlet of Dead Men's +Point, behind the Isle of the Wise Virgin, whither the amateur doctor +had been summoned by telegraph to attend a patient with a broken +arm--forty-three miles for the first day's run! Not bad. Then the dogs +got their food for the day, one dried fish apiece; and at noon the next +day, reckless of bleeding feet, they flew back over the same track, and +broke their fast at Seven Islands before eight o'clock. The ration was +the same, a single fish; always the same, except when it was varied by +a cube of ancient, evil-smelling, potent whale's flesh, which a dog can +swallow at a single gulp. Yet the dogs of the North Shore are never +so full of vigour, courage, and joy of life as when the sledges are +running. It is in summer, when food is plenty and work slack, that they +sicken and die. + +Pichou's leadership of his team became famous. Under his discipline +the other dogs developed speed and steadiness. One day they made the +distance to the Godbout in a single journey, a wonderful run of over +eighty miles. But they loved their leader no better, though they +followed him faster. And as for the other teams, especially Carcajou's, +they were still firm in their deadly hatred for the dog with the black +patch. + + + + +III + +It was in the second winter after Pichou's coming to Seven Islands +that the great trial of his courage arrived. Late in February an Indian +runner on snowshoes staggered into the village. He brought news from the +hunting-parties that were wintering far up on the Ste. Marguerite--good +news and bad. First, they had already made a good hunting: for the +pelletrie, that is to say. They had killed many otter, some fisher and +beaver, and four silver foxes--a marvel of fortune. But then, for the +food, the chase was bad, very bad--no caribou, no hare, no ptarmigan, +nothing for many days. Provisions were very low. There were six families +together. Then la grippe had taken hold of them. They were sick, +starving. They would probably die, at least most of the women and +children. It was a bad job. + +Dan Scott had peculiar ideas of his duty toward the savages. He was +not romantic, but he liked to do the square thing. Besides, he had been +reading up on la grippe, and he had some new medicine for it, capsules +from Montreal, very powerful--quinine, phenacetine, and morphine. He was +as eager to try this new medicine as a boy is to fire off a new gun. +He loaded the Cometique with provisions and the medicine-chest with +capsules, harnessed his team, and started up the river. Thermometer +thirty degrees below zero; air like crystal; snow six feet deep on the +level. + +The first day's journey was slow, for the going was soft, and the track, +at places, had to be broken out with snow-shoes. Camp was made at the +foot of the big fall--a hole in snow, a bed of boughs, a hot fire and a +blanket stretched on a couple of sticks to reflect the heat, the dogs on +the other side of the fire, and Pichou close to his master. + +In the morning there was the steep hill beside the fall to climb, +alternately soft and slippery, now a slope of glass and now a +treacherous drift of yielding feathers; it was a road set on end. But +Pichou flattened his back and strained his loins and dug his toes into +the snow and would not give back an inch. When the rest of the team +balked the long whip slashed across their backs and recalled them +to their duty. At last their leader topped the ridge, and the others +struggled after him. Before them stretched the great dead-water of the +river, a straight white path to No-man's-land. The snow was smooth and +level, and the crust was hard enough to bear. Pichou settled down to his +work at a glorious pace. He seemed to know that he must do his best, +and that something important depended on the quickness of his legs. On +through the glittering solitude, on through the death-like silence, sped +the COMETIQUE, between the interminable walls of the forest, past the +mouths of nameless rivers, under the shadow of grim mountains. At noon +Dan Scott boiled the kettle, and ate his bread and bacon. But there was +nothing for the dogs, not even for Pichou; for discipline is discipline, +and the best of sledge-dogs will not run well after he has been fed. + +Then forward again, along the lifeless road, slowly over rapids, where +the ice was rough and broken, swiftly over still waters, where the way +was level, until they came to the foot of the last lake, and camped for +the night. The Indians were but a few miles away, at the head of the +lake, and it would be easy to reach them in the morning. + +But there was another camp on the Ste. Marguerite that night, and it was +nearer to Dan Scott than the Indians were. Ovide Boulianne had followed +him up the river, close on his track, which made the going easier. + +“Does that sacre bourgeois suppose that I allow him all that pelletrie +to himself and the Compagnie? Four silver fox, besides otter and beaver? +NON, MERCI! I take some provision, and some whiskey. I go to make trade +also.” Thus spoke the shrewd Ovide, proving that commerce is no less +daring, no less resolute, than philanthropy. The only difference is +in the motive, and that is not always visible. Ovide camped the second +night at a bend of the river, a mile below the foot of the lake. Between +him and Dan Scott there was a hill covered with a dense thicket of +spruce. + +By what magic did Carcajou know that Pichou, his old enemy, was so near +him in that vast wilderness of white death? By what mysterious language +did he communicate his knowledge to his companions and stir the sleeping +hatred in their hearts and mature the conspiracy of revenge? + +Pichou, sleeping by the fire, was awakened by the fall of a lump of snow +from the branch of a shaken evergreen. That was nothing. But there were +other sounds in the forest, faint, stealthy, inaudible to an ear less +keen than his. He crept out of the shelter and looked into the wood. +He could see shadowy forms, stealing among the trees, gliding down the +hill. Five of them. Wolves, doubtless! He must guard the provisions. By +this time the rest of his team were awake. Their eyes glittered. They +stirred uneasily. But they did not move from the dying fire. It was no +concern of theirs what their leader chose to do out of hours. In the +traces they would follow him, but there was no loyalty in their hearts. +Pichou stood alone by the sledge, waiting for the wolves. + +But these were no wolves. They were assassins. Like a company of +soldiers, they lined up together and rushed silently down the slope. +Like lightning they leaped upon the solitary dog and struck him down. In +an instant, before Dan Scott could throw off his blanket and seize the +loaded butt of his whip, Pichou's throat and breast were torn to rags, +his life-blood poured upon the snow, and his murderers were slinking +away, slavering and muttering through the forest. + +Dan Scott knelt beside his best friend. At a glance he saw that the +injury was fatal. “Well done, Pichou!” he murmured, “you fought a good +fight.” + +And the dog, by a brave effort, lifted the head with the black patch on +it, for the last time, licked his master', hand, and then dropped back +upon the snow--contented, happy, dead. + +There is but one drawback to a dog's friendship. It does not last long +enough. + + +End of the story? Well, if you care for the other people in it, you +shall hear what became of them. Dan Scott went on to the head of the +lake and found the Indians, and fed them and gave them his medicine, and +all of them got well except two, and they continued to hunt along +the Ste. Marguerite every winter and trade with the Honourable H. B. +Company. Not with Dan Scott, however, for before that year was ended +he resigned his post, and went to Montreal to finish his course in +medicine; and now he is a respected physician in Ontario. Married; three +children; useful; prosperous. But before he left Seven Islands he went +up the Ste. Marguerite in the summer, by canoe, and made a grave for +Pichou's bones, under a blossoming ash tree, among the ferns and wild +flowers. He put a cross over it. + +“Being French,” said he, “I suppose he was a Catholic. But I'll swear he +was a Christian.” + + + + +VI. THE WHITE BLOT + + + + +I + +The real location of a city house depends upon the pictures which hang +upon its walls. They are its neighbourhood and its outlook. They confer +upon it that touch of life and character, that power to beget love and +bind friendship, which a country house receives from its surrounding +landscape, the garden that embraces it, the stream that runs near it, +and the shaded paths that lead to and from its door. + +By this magic of pictures my narrow, upright slice of living-space in +one of the brown-stone strata on the eastward slope of Manhattan Island +is transferred to an open and agreeable site. It has windows that look +toward the woods and the sunset, watergates by which a little boat is +always waiting, and secret passageways leading into fair places that +are frequented by persons of distinction and charm. No darkness of night +obscures these outlets; no neighbour's house shuts off the view; no +drifted snow of winter makes them impassable. They are always free, and +through them I go out and in upon my adventures. + +One of these picture-wanderings has always appeared to me so singular +that I would like, if it were possible, to put it into words. + +It was Pierrepont who first introduced me to the picture--Pierrepont the +good-natured: of whom one of his friends said that he was like Mahomet's +Bridge of Paradise, because he was so hard to cross: to which another +added that there was also a resemblance in the fact that he led to a +region of beautiful illusions which he never entered. He is one of +those enthusiastic souls who are always discovering a new writer, a new +painter, a new view from some old wharf by the river, a new place to +obtain picturesque dinners at a grotesque price. He swung out of his +office, with his long-legged, easy stride, and nearly ran me down, as I +was plodding up-town through the languor of a late spring afternoon, +on one of those duty-walks which conscience offers as a sacrifice to +digestion. + +“Why, what is the matter with you?” he cried as he linked his arm +through mine, “you look outdone, tired all the way through to your +backbone. Have you been reading the 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' or +something by one of the new British female novelists? You will have la +grippe in your mind if you don't look out. But I know what you need. +Come with me, and I will do you good.” + +So saying, he drew me out of clanging Broadway into one of the side +streets that run toward the placid region of Washington Square. “No, +no,” I answered, feeling, even in the act of resistance, the pleasure of +his cheerful guidance, “you are altogether wrong. I don't need a dinner +at your new-found Bulgarian table-d'hote--seven courses for seventy-five +cents, and the wine thrown out; nor some of those wonderful Mexican +cheroots warranted to eradicate the tobacco-habit; nor a draught of your +South American melon sherbet that cures all pains, except these which it +causes. None of these things will help me. The doctor suggests that +they do not suit my temperament. Let us go home together and have a +shower-bath and a dinner of herbs, with just a reminiscence of the +stalled ox--and a bout at backgammon to wind up the evening. That will +be the most comfortable prescription.” + +“But you mistake me,” said he; “I am not thinking of any creature +comforts for you. I am prescribing for your mind. There is a picture +that I want you to see; not a coloured photograph, nor an exercise in +anatomical drawing; but a real picture that will rest the eyes of your +heart. Come away with me to Morgenstern's gallery, and be healed.” + +As we turned into the lower end of Fifth Avenue, it seemed as if I +were being gently floated along between the modest apartment-houses and +old-fashioned dwellings, and prim, respectable churches, on the smooth +current of Pierrepont's talk about his new-found picture. How often a +man has cause to return thanks for the enthusiasms of his friends! They +are the little fountains that run down from the hills to refresh the +mental desert of the despondent. + +“You remember Falconer,” continued Pierrepont, “Temple Falconer, that +modest, quiet, proud fellow who came out of the South a couple of years +ago and carried off the landscape prize at the Academy last year, and +then disappeared? He had no intimate friends here, and no one knew what +had become of him. But now this picture appears, to show what he has +been doing. It is an evening scene, a revelation of the beauty of +sadness, an idea expressed in colours--or rather, a real impression of +Nature that awakens an ideal feeling in the heart. It does not define +everything and say nothing, like so many paintings. It tells no story, +but I know it fits into one. There is not a figure in it, and yet it +is alive with sentiment; it suggests thoughts which cannot be put +into words. Don't you love the pictures that have that power of +suggestion--quiet and strong, like Homer Martin's 'Light-house' up at +the Century, with its sheltered bay heaving softly under the pallid +greenish sky of evening, and the calm, steadfast glow of the lantern +brightening into readiness for all the perils of night and coming storm? +How much more powerful that is than all the conventional pictures of +light-houses on inaccessible cliffs, with white foam streaming from them +like the ends of a schoolboy's comforter in a gale of wind! I tell you +the real painters are the fellows who love pure nature because it is +so human. They don't need to exaggerate, and they don't dare to be +affected. They are not afraid of the reality, and they are not ashamed +of the sentiment. They don't paint everything that they see, but they +see everything that they paint. And this picture makes me sure that +Falconer is one of them.” + +By this time we had arrived at the door of the house where Morgenstern +lives and moves and makes his profits, and were admitted to the shrine +of the Commercial Apollo and the Muses in Trade. + +It has often seemed to me as if that little house were a silent epitome +of modern art criticism, an automatic indicator, or perhaps regulator, +of the aesthetic taste of New York. On the first floor, surrounded by +all the newest fashions in antiquities and BRIC-A-BRAC, you will see the +art of to-day--the works of painters who are precisely in the focus of +advertisement, and whose names call out an instant round of applause in +the auction-room. On the floors above, in degrees of obscurity deepening +toward the attic, you will find the art of yesterday--the pictures which +have passed out of the glare of popularity without yet arriving at +the mellow radiance of old masters. In the basement, concealed in huge +packing-cases, and marked “PARIS--FRAGILE,”--you will find the art of +to-morrow; the paintings of the men in regard to whose names, styles, +and personal traits, the foreign correspondents and prophetic critics +in the newspapers, are now diffusing in the public mind that twilight of +familiarity and ignorance which precedes the sunrise of marketable fame. + +The affable and sagacious Morgenstern was already well acquainted with +the waywardness of Pierrepont's admiration, and with my own persistent +disregard of current quotations in the valuation of works of art. He +regarded us, I suppose, very much as Robin Hood would have looked upon +a pair of plain yeomen who had strayed into his lair. The knights of +capital, and coal barons, and rich merchants were his natural prey, but +toward this poor but honest couple it would be worthy only of a Gentile +robber to show anything but courteous and fair dealing. + +He expressed no surprise when he heard what we wanted to see, but smiled +tolerantly and led the way, not into the well-defined realm of the past, +the present, or the future, but into a region of uncertain fortunes, a +limbo of acknowledged but unrewarded merits, a large back room devoted +to the works of American painters. Here we found Falconer's picture; +and the dealer, with that instinctive tact which is the best part of his +business capital, left us alone to look at it. + +It showed the mouth of a little river: a secluded lagoon, where the +shallow tides rose and fell with vague lassitude, following the impulse +of prevailing winds more than the strong attraction of the moon. But now +the unsailed harbour was quite still, in the pause of the evening; +and the smooth undulations were caressed by a hundred opalescent hues, +growing deeper toward the west, where the river came in. Converging +lines of trees stood dark against the sky; a cleft in the woods marked +the course of the stream, above which the reluctant splendours of an +autumnal day were dying in ashes of roses, while three tiny clouds, +poised high in air, burned red with the last glimpse of the departed +sun. + +On the right was a reedy point running out into the bay, and behind it, +on a slight rise of ground, an antique house with tall white pillars. It +was but dimly outlined in the gathering shadows; yet one could +imagine its stately, formal aspect, its precise garden with beds of +old-fashioned flowers and straight paths bordered with box, and a +little arbour overgrown with honeysuckle. I know not by what subtlety of +delicate and indescribable touches--a slight inclination in one of the +pillars, a broken line which might indicate an unhinged gate, a drooping +resignation in the foliage of the yellowing trees, a tone of sadness +in the blending of subdued colours--the painter had suggested that the +place was deserted. But the truth was unmistakable. An air of loneliness +and pensive sorrow breathed from the picture; a sigh of longing and +regret. It was haunted by sad, sweet memories of some untold story of +human life. + +In the corner Falconer had put his signature, T. F., “LARMONE,” 189-, +and on the border of the picture he had faintly traced some words, which +we made out at last-- + + “A spirit haunts the year's last hours.” + +Pierrepont took up the quotation and completed it-- + + “A spirit haunts the year's last hours, + Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers: + To himself he talks; + For at eventide, listening earnestly, + At his work you may hear him sob and sigh, + In the walks; + Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks + Of the mouldering flowers: + Heavily hangs the broad sunflower + Over its grave i' the earth so chilly; + Heavily hangs the hollyhock, + Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.” + +“That is very pretty poetry, gentlemen,” said Morgenstern, who had come +in behind us, “but is it not a little vague? You like it, but you cannot +tell exactly what it means. I find the same fault in the picture from +my point of view. There is nothing in it to make a paragraph about, no +anecdote, no experiment in technique. It is impossible to persuade the +public to admire a picture unless you can tell them precisely the points +on which they must fix their admiration. And that is why, although the +painting is a good one, I should be willing to sell it at a low price.” + +He named a sum of money in three figures, so small that Pierrepont, who +often buys pictures by proxy, could not conceal his surprise. + +“Certainly I should consider that a good bargain, simply for +investment,” said he. “Falconer's name alone ought to be worth more than +that, ten years from now. He is a rising man.” + +“No, Mr. Pierrepont,” replied the dealer, “the picture is worth what +I ask for it, for I would not commit the impertinence of offering a +present to you or your friend; but it is worth no more. Falconer's name +will not increase in value. The catalogue of his works is too short for +fame to take much notice of it; and this is the last. Did you not hear +of his death last fall? I do not wonder, for it happened at some place +down on Long Island--a name that I never saw before, and have forgotten +now. There was not even an obituary in the newspapers.” + +“And besides,” he continued, after a pause, “I must not conceal from +you that the painting has a blemish. It is not always visible, since you +have failed to detect it; but it is more noticeable in some lights than +in others; and, do what I will, I cannot remove it. This alone would +prevent the painting from being a good investment. Its market value will +never rise.” + +He turned the canvas sideways to the light, and the defect became +apparent. + +It was a dim, oblong, white blot in the middle distance; a nebulous +blur in the painting, as if there had been some chemical impurity in the +pigment causing it to fade, or rather as if a long drop of some acid, or +perhaps a splash of salt water, had fallen upon the canvas while it was +wet, and bleached it. I knew little of the possible causes of such a +blot, but enough to see that it could not be erased without painting +over it, perhaps not even then. And yet it seemed rather to enhance than +to weaken the attraction which the picture had for me. + +“Your candour does you credit, Mr. Morgenstern,” said I, “but you know +me well enough to be sure that what you have said will hardly discourage +me. For I have never been an admirer of 'cabinet finish' in works of +art. Nor have I been in the habit of buying them, as a Circassian father +trains his daughters, with an eye to the market. They come into my house +for my own pleasure, and when the time arrives that I can see them +no longer, it will not matter much to me what price they bring in the +auction-room. This landscape pleases me so thoroughly that, if you will +let us take it with us this evening, I will send you a check for the +amount in the morning.” + +So we carried off the painting in a cab; and all the way home I was in +the pleasant excitement of a man who is about to make an addition to his +house; while Pierrepont was conscious of the glow of virtue which comes +of having done a favour to a friend and justified your own critical +judgment at one stroke. + +After dinner we hung the painting over the chimney-piece in the room +called the study (because it was consecrated to idleness), and sat there +far into the night, talking of the few times we had met Falconer at the +club, and of his reticent manner, which was broken by curious flashes of +impersonal confidence when he spoke not of himself but of his art. From +this we drifted into memories of good comrades who had walked beside us +but a few days in the path of life, and then disappeared, yet left us +feeling as if we cared more for them than for the men whom we see every +day; and of young geniuses who had never reached the goal; and of many +other glimpses of “the light that failed,” until the lamp was low and it +was time to say good-night. + + + + +II + +For several months I continued to advance in intimacy with my picture. +It grew more familiar, more suggestive; the truth and beauty of it +came home to me constantly. Yet there was something in it not quite +apprehended; a sense of strangeness; a reserve which I had not yet +penetrated. + +One night in August I found myself practically alone, so far as human +intercourse was concerned, in the populous, weary city. A couple of +hours of writing had produced nothing that would bear the test of +sunlight, so I anticipated judgment by tearing up the spoiled sheets of +paper, and threw myself upon the couch before the empty fireplace. It +was a dense, sultry night, with electricity thickening the air, and a +trouble of distant thunder rolling far away on the rim of the cloudy +sky--one of those nights of restless dulness, when you wait and long for +something to happen, and yet feel despondently that nothing ever will +happen again. I passed through a region of aimless thoughts into one +of migratory and unfinished dreams, and dropped from that into an empty +gulf of sleep. + +How late it was when I drifted back toward the shore of consciousness, +I cannot tell. But the student-lamp on the table had burned out, and +the light of the gibbous moon was creeping in through the open windows. +Slowly the pale illumination crept up the eastern wall, like a tide +rising as the moon declined. Now it reached the mantel-shelf and +overflowed the bronze heads of Homer and the Indian Bacchus and the +Egyptian image of Isis with the infant Horus. Now it touched the frame +of the picture and lapped over the edge. Now it rose to the shadowy +house and the dim garden, in the midst of which I saw the white blot +more distinctly than ever before. + +It seemed now to have taken a new shape, like the slender form of a +woman, robed in flowing white. And as I watched it through half-closed +eyes, the figure appeared to move and tremble and wave to and fro, as if +it were a ghost. + +A haunted picture! Why should it not be so? A haunted ruin, a haunted +forest, a haunted ship,--all these have been seen, or imagined, and +reported, and there are learned societies for investigating such things. +Why should not a picture have a ghost in it? + +My mind, in that curiously vivid state which lies between waking and +sleeping, went through the form of careful reasoning over the question. +If there may be some subtle connection between a house and the spirits +of the people who have once lived in it,--and wise men have believed +this,--why should there be any impassable gulf between a picture and +the vanished lives out of which it has grown? All the human thought +and feeling which have passed into it through the patient toil of art, +remain forever embodied there. A picture is the most living and personal +thing that a man can leave behind him. When we look at it we see what he +saw, hour after hour, day after day, and we see it through his mood +and impression, coloured by his emotion, tinged with his personality. +Surely, if the spirits of the dead are not extinguished, but only veiled +and hidden, and if it were possible by any means that their presence +could flash for a moment through the veil, it would be most natural that +they should come back again to hover around the work into which their +experience and passion had been woven. Here, if anywhere, they would +“Revisit the pale glimpses of the moon.” Here, if anywhere, we might +catch fleeting sight, as in a glass darkly, of the visions that passed +before them while they worked. + +This much of my train of reasoning along the edge of the dark, I +remember sharply. But after this, all was confused and misty. The shore +of consciousness receded. I floated out again on the ocean of forgotten +dreams. When I woke, it was with a quick start, as if my ship had been +made fast, silently and suddenly, at the wharf of reality, and the bell +rang for me to step ashore. + +But the vision of the white blot remained clear and distinct. And the +question that it had brought to me, the chain of thoughts that had +linked themselves to it, lingered through the morning, and made me feel +sure that there was an untold secret in Falconer's life and that the +clew to it must be sought in the history of his last picture. + +But how to trace the connection? Every one who had known Falconer, +however slightly, was out of town. There was no clew to follow. Even the +name “Larmone” gave me no help; for I could not find it on any map +of Long Island. It was probably the fanciful title of some old +country-place, familiar only to the people who had lived there. + +But the very remoteness of the problem, its lack of contact with the +practical world, fascinated me. It was like something that had drifted +away in the fog, on a sea of unknown and fluctuating currents. The only +possible way to find it was to commit yourself to the same wandering +tides and drift after it, trusting to a propitious fortune that you +might be carried in the same direction; and after a long, blind, +unhurrying chase, one day you might feel a faint touch, a jar, a thrill +along the side of your boat, and, peering through the fog, lay your hand +at last, without surprise, upon the very object of your quest. + + + + +III + +As it happened, the means for such a quest were at my disposal. I +was part owner of a boat which had been built for hunting and fishing +cruises on the shallow waters of the Great South Bay. It was a +deliberate, but not inconvenient, craft, well named the Patience; and my +turn for using it had come. Black Zekiel, the captain, crew, and cook, +was the very man that I would have chosen for such an expedition. He +combined the indolent good-humour of the negro with the taciturnity of +the Indian, and knew every shoal and channel of the tortuous waters. He +asked nothing better than to set out on a voyage without a port; sailing +aimlessly eastward day after day, through the long chain of landlocked +bays, with the sea plunging behind the sand-dunes on our right, and the +shores of Long Island sleeping on our left; anchoring every evening in +some little cove or estuary, where Zekiel could sit on the cabin roof, +smoking his corn-cob pipe, and meditating on the vanity and comfort of +life, while I pushed off through the mellow dusk to explore every creek +and bend of the shore, in my light canoe. + +There was nothing to hasten our voyage. The three weeks' vacation was +all but gone, when the Patience groped her way through a narrow, crooked +channel in a wide salt-meadow, and entered the last of the series +of bays. A few houses straggled down a point of land; the village of +Quantock lay a little farther back. Beyond that was a belt of woods +reaching to the water; and from these the south-country road emerged to +cross the upper end of the bay on a low causeway with a narrow bridge +of planks at the central point. Here was our Ultima Thule. Not even +the Patience could thread the eye of this needle, or float through the +shallow marsh-canal farther to the east. + +We anchored just in front of the bridge, and as I pushed the canoe +beneath it, after supper, I felt the indefinable sensation of having +passed that way before. I knew beforehand what the little boat would +drift into. The broad saffron light of evening fading over a still +lagoon; two converging lines of pine trees running back into the sunset; +a grassy point upon the right; and behind that a neglected garden, a +tangled bower of honeysuckle, a straight path bordered with box, leading +to a deserted house with a high, white-pillared porch--yes, it was +Larmone. + +In the morning I went up to the village to see if I could find trace of +my artist's visit to the place. There was no difficulty in the search, +for he had been there often. The people had plenty of recollections of +him, but no real memory, for it seemed as if none of them had really +known him. + +“Queer kinder fellow,” said a wrinkled old bayman with whom I walked +up the sandy road, “I seen him a good deal round here, but 'twan't like +havin' any 'quaintance with him. He allus kep' himself to himself, +pooty much. Used ter stay round 'Squire Ladoo's place most o' the +time--keepin' comp'ny with the gal I guess. Larmone? Yaas, that's what +THEY called it, but we don't go much on fancy names down here. No, the +painter didn' 'zactly live there, but it 'mounted to the same thing. +Las' summer they was all away, house shet up, painter hangin' round all +the time, 's if he looked fur 'em to come back any minnit. Purfessed to +be paintin', but I don' see's he did much. Lived up to Mort Halsey's; +died there too; year ago this fall. Guess Mis' Halsey can tell ye most +of any one 'bout him.” + +At the boarding-house (with wide, low verandas, now forsaken by the +summer boarders), which did duty for a village inn, I found Mrs. +Halsey; a notable housewife, with a strong taste for ancestry, and an +uncultivated world of romance still brightening her soft brown eyes. She +knew all the threads in the story that I was following; and the interest +with which she spoke made it evident that she had often woven them +together in the winter evenings on patterns of her own. + +Judge Ledoux had come to Quantock from the South during the war, and +built a house there like the one he used to live in. There were three +things he hated: slavery and war and society. But he always loved the +South more than the North, and lived like a foreigner, polite enough, +but very retired. His wife died after a few years, and left him alone +with a little girl. Claire grew up as pretty as a picture, but very shy +and delicate. About two years ago Mr. Falconer had come down from +the city; he stayed at Larmone first, and then he came to the +boarding-house, but he was over at the Ledoux' house almost all the +time. He was a Southerner too, and a relative of the family; a real +gentleman, and very proud though he was poor. It seemed strange that +he should not live with them, but perhaps he felt more free over here. +Every one thought he must be engaged to Claire, but he was not the kind +of a man that you could ask questions about himself. A year ago last +winter he had gone up to the city and taken all his things with him. He +had never stayed away so long before. In the spring the Ledoux had gone +to Europe; Claire seemed to be falling into a decline; her sight seemed +to be failing, and her father said she must see a famous doctor and have +a change of air. + +“Mr. Falconer came back in May,” continued the good lady, “as if he +expected to find them. But the house was shut up and nobody knew just +where they were. He seemed to be all taken aback; it was queer if +he didn't know about it, intimate as he had been; but he never said +anything, and made no inquiries; just seemed to be waiting, as if there +was nothing else for him to do. We would have told him in a minute, if +we had anything to tell. But all we could do was to guess there must +have been some kind of a quarrel between him and the Judge, and if there +was, he must know best about it himself. + +“All summer long he kept going over to the house and wandering around +in the garden. In the fall he began to paint a picture, but it was very +slow painting; he would go over in the afternoon and come back long +after dark, damp with the dew and fog. He kept growing paler and weaker +and more silent. Some days he did not speak more than a dozen words, +but always kind and pleasant. He was just dwindling away; and when the +picture was almost done a fever took hold of him. The doctor said it was +malaria, but it seemed to me more like a trouble in the throat, a kind +of dumb misery. And one night, in the third quarter of the moon, just +after the tide turned to run out, he raised up in the bed and tried to +speak, but he was gone. + +“We tried to find out his relations, but there didn't seem to be any, +except the Ledoux, and they were out of reach. So we sent the picture +up to our cousin in Brooklyn, and it sold for about enough to pay Mr. +Falconer's summer's board and the cost of his funeral. There was nothing +else that he left of any value, except a few books; perhaps you would +like to look at them, if you were his friend? + +“I never saw any one that I seemed to know so little and like so well. +It was a disappointment in love, of course, and they all said that he +died of a broken heart; but I think it was because his heart was too +full, and wouldn't break. + +“And oh!--I forgot to tell you; a week after he was gone there was a +notice in the paper that Claire Ledoux had died suddenly, on the last +of August, at some place in Switzerland. Her father is still away +travelling. And so the whole story is broken off and will never be +finished. Will you look at the books?” + +Nothing is more pathetic, to my mind, than to take up the books of one +who is dead. Here is his name, with perhaps a note of the place where +the volume was bought or read, and the marks on the pages that he liked +best. Here are the passages that gave him pleasure, and the thoughts +that entered into his life and formed it; they became part of him, but +where has he carried them now? + +Falconer's little library was an unstudied choice, and gave a hint +of his character. There was a New Testament in French, with his name +written in a slender, woman's hand; three or four volumes of stories, +Cable's “Old Creole Days,” Allen's “Kentucky Cardinal,” Page's “In +Old Virginia,” and the like; “Henry Esmond” and Amiel's “Journal” and +Lamartine's “Raphael”; and a few volumes of poetry, among them one of +Sidney Lanier's, and one of Tennyson's earlier poems. + +There was also a little morocco-bound book of manuscript notes. This I +begged permission to carry away with me, hoping to find in it something +which would throw light upon my picture, perhaps even some message to +be carried, some hint or suggestion of something which the writer would +fain have had done for him, and which I promised myself faithfully +to perform, as a test of an imagined friendship--imagined not in the +future, but in the impossible past. + +I read the book in this spirit, searching its pages carefully, through +the long afternoon, in the solitary cabin of my boat. There was nothing +at first but an ordinary diary; a record of the work and self-denials of +a poor student of art. Then came the date of his first visit to Larmone, +and an expression of the pleasure of being with his own people again +after a lonely life, and some chronicle of his occupations there, +studies for pictures, and idle days that were summed up in a phrase: “On +the bay,” or “In the woods.” + +After this the regular succession of dates was broken, and there +followed a few scraps of verse, irregular and unfinished, bound together +by the thread of a name--“Claire among her Roses,” “A Ride through +the Pines with Claire,” “An Old Song of Claire's” “The Blue Flower in +Claire's Eyes.” It was not poetry, but such an unconscious tribute to +the power and beauty of poetry as unfolds itself almost inevitably from +youthful love, as naturally as the blossoms unfold from the apple trees +in May. If you pick them they are worthless. They charm only in their +own time and place. + +A date told of his change from Larmone to the village, and this was +written below it: “Too heavy a sense of obligation destroys freedom, and +only a free man can dare to love.” + +Then came a number of fragments indicating trouble of mind +and hesitation; the sensitiveness of the artist, the delicate, +self-tormenting scruples of the lonely idealist, the morbid pride of the +young poor man, contending with an impetuous passion and forcing it to +surrender, or at least to compromise. + +“What right has a man to demand everything and offer nothing in return +except an ambition and a hope? Love must come as a giver, not as a +beggar.” + +“A knight should not ask to wear his lady's colours until he has won his +spurs.” + +“King Cophetua and the beggar-maid--very fine! but the other +way--humiliating!” + +“A woman may take everything from a man, wealth and fame and +position. But there is only one thing that a man may accept from a +woman--something that she alone can give--happiness.” + +“Self-respect is less than love, but it is the trellis that holds love +up from the ground; break it down, and all the flowers are in the dust, +the fruit is spoiled.” + +“And yet”--so the man's thought shone through everywhere--“I think she +must know that I love her, and why I cannot speak.” + +One entry was written in a clearer, stronger hand: “An end of +hesitation. The longest way is the shortest. I am going to the city to +work for the Academy prize, to think of nothing else until I win it, and +then come back with it to Claire, to tell her that I have a future, +and that it is hers. If I spoke of it now it would be like claiming the +reward before I had done the work. I have told her only that I am +going to prove myself an artist, AND TO LIVE FOR WHAT I LOVE BEST. She +understood, I am sure, for she would not lift her eyes to me, but her +hand trembled as she gave me the blue flower from her belt.” + +The date of his return to Larmone was marked, but the page was blank, as +the day had been. + +Some pages of dull self-reproach and questioning and bewildered regret +followed. + +“Is it possible that she has gone away, without a word, without a sign, +after what has passed between us? It is not fair. Surely I had some +claim.” + +“But what claim, after all? I asked for nothing. And was it not pride +that kept me silent, taking it for granted that if I asked, she would +give?” + +“It was a mistake; she did not understand, nor care.” + +“It was my fault; I might at least have told her that I loved her, +though she could not have answered me.” + +“It is too late now. To-night, while I was finishing the picture, I saw +her in the garden. Her spirit, all in white, with a blue flower in her +belt. I knew she was dead across the sea. I tried to call to her, but my +voice made no sound. She seemed not to see me. She moved like one in a +dream, straight on, and vanished. Is there no one who can tell her? Must +she never know that I loved her?” + +The last thing in the book was a printed scrap of paper that lay between +the leaves: + + + IRREVOCABLE + + “Would the gods might give + Another field for human strife; + Man must live one life + Ere he learns to live. + Ah, friend, in thy deep grave, + What now can change; what now can save?” + + +So there was a message after all, but it could never be carried; a task +for a friend, but it was impossible. What better thing could I do +with the poor little book than bury it in the garden in the shadow of +Larmone? The story of a silent fault, hidden in silence. How many of +life's deepest tragedies are only that: no great transgression, no shock +of conflict, no sudden catastrophe with its answering thrill of courage +and resistance: only a mistake made in the darkness, and under the +guidance of what seemed a true and noble motive; a failure to see the +right path at the right moment, and a long wandering beyond it; a word +left unspoken until the ears that should have heard it are sealed, and +the tongue that should have spoken it is dumb. + +The soft sea-fog clothed the night with clinging darkness; the faded +leaves hung slack and motionless from the trees, waiting for their fall; +the tense notes of the surf beyond the sand-dunes vibrated through the +damp air like chords from some mighty VIOLONO; large, warm drops wept +from the arbour while I sat in the garden, holding the poor little book, +and thinking of the white blot in the record of a life that was too +proud to bend to the happiness that was meant for it. + +There are men like that: not many perhaps, but a few; and they are the +ones who suffer most keenly in this world of half-understanding and +clouded knowledge. There is a pride, honourable and sensitive, that +imperils the realization of love, puts it under a spell of silence and +reserve, makes it sterile of blossoms and impotent of fruits. For what +is it, after all, but a subtle, spiritual worship of self? And what was +Falconer's resolve not to tell this girl that he loved her until he +had won fame and position, but a secret, unconscious setting of himself +above her? For surely, if love is supreme, it does not need to wait for +anything else to lend it worth and dignity. The very sweetness and power +of it lie in the confession of one life as dependent upon another for +its fulfilment. It is made strong in its very weakness. It is the only +thing, after all, that can break the prison bars and set the heart free +from itself. The pride that hinders it, enslaves it. Love's first duty +is to be true to itself, in word and deed. Then, having spoken truth and +acted verity, it may call on honour to keep it pure and steadfast. + +If Falconer had trusted Claire, and showed her his heart without +reserve, would she not have understood him and helped him? It was the +pride of independence, the passion of self-reliance that drew him +away from her and divided his heart from hers in a dumb isolation. But +Claire,--was not she also in fault? Might she not have known, should not +she have taken for granted, the truth which must have been so easy to +read in Falconer's face, though he never put it into words? And yet +with her there was something very different from the pride that kept him +silent. The virgin reserve of a young girl's heart is more sacred than +any pride of self. It is the maiden instinct which makes the woman +always the shrine, and never the pilgrim. She is not the seeker, but the +one sought. She dares not take anything for granted. She has the right +to wait for the voice, the word, the avowal. Then, and not till then, if +the pilgrim be the chosen one, the shrine may open to receive him. + +Not all women believe this; but those who do are the ones best worth +seeking and winning. And Claire was one of them. It seemed to me, as I +mused, half dreaming, on the unfinished story of these two lives that +had missed each other in the darkness, that I could see her figure +moving through the garden, beyond where the pallid bloom of the tall +cosmos-flower bent to the fitful breeze. Her robe was like the waving of +the mist. Her face was fair, and very fair, for all its sadness: a blue +flower, faint as a shadow on the snow, trembled at her waist, as she +paced to and fro along the path. + +I murmured to myself, “Yet he loved her: and she loved him. Can pride be +stronger than love?” + +Perhaps, after all, the lingering and belated confession which Falconer +had written in his diary might in some way come to her. Perhaps if it +were left here in the bower of honeysuckles where they had so often sat +together, it might be a sign and omen of the meeting of these two souls +that had lost each other in the dark of the world. Perhaps,--ah, who +can tell that it is not so?--for those who truly love, with all their +errors, with all their faults, there is no “irrevocable”--there is +“another field.” + +As I turned from the garden, the tense note of the surf vibrated through +the night. The pattering drops of dew rustled as they fell from the +leaves of the honeysuckle. But underneath these sounds it seemed as if +I heard a deep voice saying “Claire!” and a woman's lips whispering +“Temple!” + + + + +VII. A YEAR OF NOBILITY + + + + +I + +ENTER THE MARQUIS + +The Marquis sat by the camp-fire peeling potatoes. + +To look at him, you never would have taken him for a marquis. His +costume was a pair of corduroy trousers; a blue flannel shirt, patched +at elbows with gray; lumberman's boots, flat-footed, shapeless, with +loose leather legs strapped just below the knee, and wrinkled like the +hide of an ancient rhinoceros; and a soft brown hat with several holes +in the crown, as if it had done duty, at some time in its history, as an +impromptu target in a shooting-match. A red woollen scarf twisted about +his loins gave a touch of colour and picturesqueness. + +It was not exactly a court dress, but it sat well on the powerful sinewy +figure of the man. He never gave a thought to his looks, but peeled his +potatoes with a dexterity which betrayed a past-master of the humble +art, and threw the skins into the fire. + +“Look you, m'sieu',” he said to young Winthrop Alden, who sat on a +fallen tree near him, mending the fly-rod which he had broken in the +morning's fishing, “look you, it is an affair of the most strange, yet +of the most certain. We have known always that ours was a good family. +The name tells it. The Lamottes are of la haute classe in France. But +here, in Canada, we are poor. Yet the good blood dies not with the +poverty. It is buried, hidden, but it remains the same. It is like these +pataques. You plant good ones for seed: you get a good crop. You plant +bad ones: you get a bad crop. But we did not know about the title in our +family. No. We thought ours was a side-branch, an off-shoot. It was a +great surprise to us. But it is certain,--beyond a doubt.” + +Jean Lamotte's deep voice was quiet and steady. It had the tone of +assured conviction. His bright blue eyes above his ruddy mustache and +bronzed cheeks, were clear and tranquil as those of a child. + +Alden was immensely interested and amused. He was a member of the Boston +branch of the Society for Ancestral Culture, and he recognized the +favourite tenet of his sect,--the doctrine that “blood will tell.” He +was also a Harvard man, knowing almost everything and believing hardly +anything. Heredity was one of the few unquestioned articles of his +creed. But the form in which this familiar confession of faith came to +him, on the banks of the Grande Decharge, from the lips of a somewhat +ragged and distinctly illiterate Canadian guide, was grotesque enough +to satisfy the most modern taste for new sensations. He listened with an +air of gravity, and a delighted sense of the humour of the situation. + +“How did you find it out?” he asked. + +“Well, then,” continued Jean, “I will tell you how the news came to me. +It was at St. Gedeon, one Sunday last March. The snow was good and hard, +and I drove in, ten miles on the lake, from our house opposite Grosse +Ile. After mass, a man, evidently of the city, comes to me in the stable +while I feed the horse, and salutes me. + +“'Is this Jean Lamotte?' + +“'At your service, m'sieu'.' + +“'Son of Francois Louis Lamotte?' + +“'Of no other. But he is dead, God give him repose.' + +“'I been looking for you all through Charlevoix and Chicoutimi.' + +“'Here you find me then, and good-day to you,' says I, a little short, +for I was beginning to be shy of him. + +“'Chut, chut,' says he, very friendly. 'I suppose you have time to talk +a bit. How would you like to be a marquis and have a castle in France +with a hundred thousand dollars?' + +“For a moment I think I will lick him; then I laugh. 'Very well indeed,' +says I, 'and also a handful of stars for buckshot, and the new moon for +a canoe.' + +“'But no,' answers the man. 'I am earnest, Monsieur Lamotte. I want to +talk a long talk with you. Do you permit that I accompany you to your +residence?' + +“Residence! You know that little farm-house of logs where my mother +lives,--you saw it last summer. But of course it is a pretty good house. +It is clean. It is warm. So I bring the man home in the sleigh. All that +evening he tells the story. How our name Lamotte is really De la Motte +de la Luciere. How there belongs to that name an estate and a title +in France, now thirty years with no one to claim it. How he, being an +AVOCAT, has remarked the likeness of the names. How he has tracked the +family through Montmorency and Quebec, in all the parish books. How he +finds my great-grandfather's great-grandfather, Etienne de La Motte who +came to Canada two hundred years ago, a younger son of the Marquis de la +Luciere. How he has the papers, many of them, with red seals on them. I +saw them. 'Of course,' says he, 'there are others of the family +here to share the property. It must be divided. But it is +large--enormous--millions of francs. And the largest share is yours, +and the title, and a castle--a castle larger than Price's saw-mill at +Chicoutimi; with carpets, and electric lights, and coloured pictures on +the wall, like the hotel at Roberval.' + +“When my mother heard about that she was pleased. But me--when I heard +that I was a marquis, I knew it was true.” + +Jean's blue eyes were wide open now, and sparkling brightly. He had +put down the pan of potatoes. He was holding his head up and talking +eagerly. + +Alden turned away his face to light his pipe, and hide a smile. “Did he +get--any money--out of you?”--came slowly between the puffs of smoke. + +“Money!” answered Jean, “of course there must be money to carry on an +affair of this kind. There was seventy dollars that I had cleaned up on +the lumber-job last winter, and the mother had forty dollars from the +cow she sold in the fall. A hundred and ten dollars,--we gave him that. +He has gone to France to make the claim for us. Next spring he comes +back, and I give him a hundred dollars more; when I get my property five +thousand dollars more. It is little enough. A marquis must not be mean.” + +Alden swore softly in English, under his breath. A rustic comedy, a joke +on human nature, always pleased him; but beneath his cynical varnish +he had a very honest heart, and he hated cruelty and injustice. He knew +what a little money meant in the backwoods; what hard and bitter toil it +cost to rake it together; what sacrifices and privations must follow +its loss. If the smooth prospector of unclaimed estates in France had +arrived at the camp on the Grande Decharge at that moment, Alden would +have introduced him to the most unhappy hour of his life. + +But with Jean Lamotte it was by no means so easy to deal. Alden +perceived at once that ridicule would be worse than useless. The man was +far too much in earnest. A jest about a marquis with holes in his hat! +Yes, Jean would laugh at that very merrily; for he was a true VOYAGEUR. +But a jest about the reality of the marquis! That struck him as almost +profane. It was a fixed idea with him. Argument could not shake it. +He had seen the papers. He knew it was true. All the strength of his +vigorous and healthy manhood seemed to have gone into it suddenly, as if +this was the news for which he had been waiting, unconsciously, since he +was born. + +It was not in the least morbid, visionary, abstract. It was concrete, +actual, and so far as Alden could see, wholesome. It did not make Jean +despise his present life. On the contrary, it appeared to lend a zest +to it, as an interesting episode in the career of a nobleman. He was not +restless; he was not discontented. His whole nature was at once elated +and calmed. He was not at all feverish to get away from his familiar +existence, from the woods and the waters he knew so well, from the large +liberty of the unpeopled forest, the joyous rush of the great river, the +splendid breadth of the open sky. Unconsciously these things had gone +into his blood. Dimly he felt the premonitions of homesickness for them +all. But he was lifted up to remember that the blood into which these +things had entered was blue blood, and that though he lived in the +wilderness he really belonged to la haute classe. A breath of romance, +a spirit of chivalry from the days when the high-spirited courtiers of +Louis XIV sought their fortune in the New World, seemed to pass into +him. He spoke of it all with a kind of proud simplicity. + +“It appears curious to m'sieu', no doubt, but it has been so in Canada +from the beginning. There were many nobles here in the old time. +Frontenac,--he was a duke or a prince. Denonville,--he was a grand +seigneur. La Salle, Vaudreuil,--these are all noble, counts or barons. I +know not the difference, but the cure has told me the names. And the old +Jacques Cartier, the father of all, when he went home to France, I have +heard that the King made him a lord and gave him a castle. Why not? He +was a capable man, a brave man; he could sail a big ship, he could run +the rapids of the great river in his canoe. He could hunt the bear, the +lynx, the carcajou. I suppose all these men,--marquises and counts and +barons,--I suppose they all lived hard, and slept on the ground, and +used the axe and the paddle when they came to the woods. It is not the +fine coat that makes the noble. It is the good blood, the adventure, the +brave heart.” + +“Magnificent!” thought Alden. “It is the real thing, a bit of the +seventeenth century lost in the forest for two hundred years. It is like +finding an old rapier beside an Indian trail. I suppose the fellow +may be the descendant of some gay young lieutenant of the regiment +Carignan-Salieres, who came out with De Tracy, or Courcelles. An amour +with the daughter of a habitant,--a name taken at random,--who can +unravel the skein? But here's the old thread of chivalry running through +all the tangles, tarnished but unbroken.” + +This was what he said to himself. What he said to Jean was, “Well, +Jean, you and I have been together in the woods for two summers now, and +marquis or no marquis, I hope this is not going to make any difference +between us.” + +“But certainly NOT!” answered Jean. “I am well content with m'sieu', as +I hope m'sieu' is content with me. While I am AU BOIS, I ask no better +than to be your guide. Besides, I must earn those other hundred dollars, +for the payment in the spring.” + +Alden tried to make him promise to give nothing more to the lawyer +until he had something sure to show for his money. But Jean was +politely non-committal on that point. It was evident that he felt the +impossibility of meanness in a marquis. Why should he be sparing or +cautious? That was for the merchant, not for the noble. A hundred, two +hundred, three hundred dollars: What was that to an estate and a title? +Nothing risk, nothing gain! He must live up to his role. Meantime he was +ready to prove that he was the best guide on the Grande Decharge. + +And so he was. There was not a man in all the Lake St. John country who +knew the woods and waters as well as he did. Far up the great rivers +Peribonca and Misstassini he had pushed his birch canoe, exploring the +network of lakes and streams along the desolate Height of Land. He knew +the Grand Brule, where the bears roam in September on the fire-scarred +hills among the wide, unharvested fields of blueberries. He knew the +hidden ponds and slow-creeping little rivers where the beavers build +their dams, and raise their silent water-cities, like Venice lost in the +woods. He knew the vast barrens, covered with stiff silvery moss, where +the caribou fed in the winter. On the Decharge itself,--that tumultuous +flood, never failing, never freezing, by which the great lake pours all +its gathered waters in foam and fury down to the deep, still gorge of +the Saguenay,--there Jean was at home. There was not a curl or eddy +in the wild course of the river that he did not understand. The quiet +little channels by which one could drop down behind the islands while +the main stream made an impassable fall; the precise height of the water +at which it was safe to run the Rapide Gervais; the point of rock on the +brink of the Grande Chute where the canoe must whirl swiftly in to the +shore if you did not wish to go over the cataract; the exact force of +the tourniquet that sucked downward at one edge of the rapid, and of the +bouillon that boiled upward at the other edge, as if the bottom of the +river were heaving, and the narrow line of the FILET D'EAU along which +the birch-bark might shoot in safety; the treachery of the smooth, oily +curves where the brown water swept past the edge of the cliff, silent, +gloomy, menacing; the hidden pathway through the foam where the canoe +could run out securely and reach a favourite haunt of the ouananiche, +the fish that loves the wildest water,--all these secrets were known to +Jean. He read the river like a book. He loved it. He also respected it. +He knew it too well to take liberties with it. + +The camp, that June, was beside the Rapide des Cedres. A great ledge +stretched across the river; the water came down in three leaps, brown +above, golden at the edge, white where it fell. Below, on the left bank, +there was a little cove behind a high point of rocks, a curving beach +of white sand, a gentle slope of ground, a tent half hidden among the +birches and balsams. Down the river, the main channel narrowed and +deepened. High banks hemmed it in on the left, iron-coasted islands on +the right. It was a sullen, powerful, dangerous stream. Beyond that, in +mid-river, the Ile Maligne reared its wicked head, scarred, bristling +with skeletons of dead trees. On either side of it, the river broke away +into a long fury of rapids and falls in which no boat could live. + +It was there, on the point of the island, that the most famous fishing +in the river was found; and there Alden was determined to cast his fly +before he went home. Ten days they had waited at the Cedars for the +water to fall enough to make the passage to the island safe. At last +Alden grew impatient. It was a superb morning,--sky like an immense blue +gentian, air full of fragrance from a million bells of pink Linnaea, +sunshine flattering the great river,--a morning when danger and death +seemed incredible. + +“To-day we are going to the island, Jean; the water must be low enough +now.” + +“Not yet, m'sieu', I am sorry, but it is not yet.” + +Alden laughed rather unpleasantly. “I believe you are afraid. I thought +you were a good canoeman--” + +“I am that,” said Jean, quietly, “and therefore,--well, it is the bad +canoeman who is never afraid.” + +“But last September you took your monsieur to the island and gave him +fine fishing. Why won't you do it for me? I believe you want to keep me +away from this place and save it for him.” + +Jean's face flushed. “M'sieu' has no reason to say that of me. I beg +that he will not repeat it.” + +Alden laughed again. He was somewhat irritated at Jean for taking the +thing so seriously, for being so obstinate. On such a morning it was +absurd. At least it would do no harm to make an effort to reach the +island. If it proved impossible they could give it up. “All right, +Jean,” he said, “I'll take it back. You are only timid, that's all. +Francois here will go down with me. We can manage the canoe together. +Jean can stay at home and keep the camp. Eh, Francois?” + +Francois, the second guide, was a mush of vanity and good nature, with +just sense enough to obey Jean's orders, and just jealousy enough to +make him jump at a chance to show his independence. He would like very +well to be first man for a day,--perhaps for the next trip, if he had +good luck. He grinned and nodded his head--“All ready, m'sieu'; I guess +we can do it.” + +But while he was holding the canoe steady for Alden to step out to his +place in the bow, Jean came down and pushed him aside. “Go to bed, dam' +fool,” he muttered, shoved the canoe out into the river, and jumped +lightly to his own place in the stern. + +Alden smiled to himself and said nothing for a while. When they were a +mile or two down the river he remarked, “So I see you changed your mind, +Jean. Do you think better of the river now?” + +“No, m'sieu', I think the same.” + +“Well then?” + +“Because I must share the luck with you whether it is good or bad. It is +no shame to have fear. The shame is not to face it. But one thing I ask +of you--” + +“And that is?” + +“Kneel as low in the canoe as you can, paddle steady, and do not dodge +when a wave comes.” + +Alden was half inclined to turn back, and give it up. But pride made it +difficult to say the word. Besides the fishing was sure to be superb; +not a line had been wet there since last year. It was worth a little +risk. The danger could not be so very great after all. How fair the +river ran,--a current of living topaz between banks of emerald! What but +good luck could come on such a day? + +The canoe was gliding down the last smooth stretch. Alden lifted his +head, as they turned the corner, and for the first time saw the passage +close before him. His face went white, and he set his teeth. + +The left-hand branch of the river, cleft by the rocky point of the +island, dropped at once into a tumult of yellow foam and raved downward +along the northern shore. The right-hand branch swerved away to the +east, running with swift, silent fury. On the lower edge of this +desperate race of brown billows, a huge whirlpool formed and dissolved +every two or three minutes, now eddying round in a wide backwater into a +rocky bay on the end of the island, now swept away by the rush of waves +into the white rage of the rapids below. + +There was the secret pathway. The trick was, to dart across the +right-hand current at the proper moment, catch the rim of the whirlpool +as it swung backward, and let it sweep you around to the end of the +island. It was easy enough at low water. But now? + +The smooth waves went crowding and shouldering down the slope as if they +were running to a fight. The river rose and swelled with quick, uneven +passion. The whirlpool was in its place one minute; the next, it was +blotted out; everything rushed madly downward--and below was hell. + +Jean checked the boat for a moment, quivering in the strong +current, waiting for the TOURNIQUET to form again. Five seconds--ten +seconds--“Now!” he cried. + +The canoe shot obliquely into the stream, driven by strong, quick +strokes of the paddles. It seemed almost to leap from wave to wave. All +was going well. The edge of the whirlpool was near. Then came the crest +of a larger wave,--slap--into the boat. Alden shrank involuntarily from +the cold water, and missed his stroke. An eddy caught the bow and shoved +it out. The whirlpool receded, dissolved. The whole river rushed down +upon the canoe and carried it away like a leaf. + +Who says that thought is swift and clear in a moment like that? Who +talks about the whole of a man's life passing before him in a flash of +light? A flash of darkness! Thought is paralyzed, dumb. “What a fool!” + “Good-bye!” “If--” That is about all it can say. And if the moment +is prolonged, it says the same thing over again, stunned, bewildered, +impotent. Then?--The rocking waves; the sinking boat; the roar of the +fall; the swift overturn; the icy, blinding, strangling water--God! + +Jean was flung shoreward. Instinctively he struck out, with the current +and half across it, toward a point of rock. His foot touched bottom. +He drew himself up and looked back. The canoe was sweeping past, bottom +upward, Alden underneath it. + +Jean thrust himself out into the stream again, still going with the +current, but now away from shore. He gripped the canoe, flinging his +arm over the stern. Then he got hold of the thwart and tried to turn it +over. Too heavy! Groping underneath he caught Alden by the shoulder and +pulled him out. They would have gone down together but for the boat. + +“Hold on tight,” gasped Jean, “put your arm over the canoe--the other +side!” + +Alden, half dazed, obeyed him. The torrent carried the dancing, slippery +bark past another point. Just below it, there was a little eddy. + +“Now,” cried Jean; “the back-water--strike for the land!” + +They touched the black, gliddery rocks. They staggered out of the +water; waist-deep, knee-deep, ankle-deep; falling and rising again. They +crawled up on the warm moss.... + +The first thing that Alden noticed was the line of bright red spots on +the wing of a cedar-bird fluttering silently through the branches of the +tree above him. He lay still and watched it, wondering that he had never +before observed those brilliant sparks of colour on the little brown +bird. Then he wondered what made his legs ache so. Then he saw Jean, +dripping wet, sitting on a stone and looking down the river. + +He got up painfully and went over to him. He put his hand on the man's +shoulder. + +“Jean, you saved my life--I thank you, Marquis!” + +“M'sieu',” said Jean, springing up, “I beg you not to mention it. It was +nothing. A narrow shave,--but LA BONNE CHANCE! And after all, you were +right,--we got to the island! But now how to get off?” + + + + +II + +AN ALLIANCE OF RIVALS + +Yes, of course they got off--the next day. At the foot of the island, +two miles below, there is a place where the water runs quieter, and a +BATEAU can cross from the main shore. Francois was frightened when the +others did not come back in the evening. He made his way around to St. +Joseph d'Alma, and got a boat to come up and look for their bodies. He +found them on the shore, alive and very hungry. But all that has nothing +to do with the story. + +Nor does it make any difference how Alden spent the rest of his summer +in the woods, what kind of fishing he had, or what moved him to leave +five hundred dollars with Jean when he went away. That is all padding: +leave it out. The first point of interest is what Jean did with the +money. A suit of clothes, a new stove, and a set of kitchen utensils for +the log house opposite Grosse Ile, a trip to Quebec, a little game of +“Blof Americain” in the back room of the Hotel du Nord,--that was the +end of the money. + +This is not a Sunday-school story. Jean was no saint. Even as a hero he +had his weak points. But after his own fashion he was a pretty good +kind of a marquis. He took his headache the next morning as a matter of +course, and his empty pocket as a trick of fortune. With the nobility, +he knew very well, such things often happen; but the nobility do not +complain about it. They go ahead, as if it was a bagatelle. + +Before the week was out Jean was on his way to a lumber-shanty on the +St. Maurice River, to cook for a crew of thirty men all winter. + +The cook's position in camp is curious,--half menial, half superior. It +is no place for a feeble man. But a cook who is strong in the back and +quick with his fists can make his office much respected. Wages, forty +dollars a month; duties, to keep the pea-soup kettle always hot and the +bread-pan always full, to stand the jokes of the camp up to a +certain point, and after that to whip two or three of the most active +humourists. + +Jean performed all his duties to perfect satisfaction. Naturally most of +the jokes turned upon his great expectations. With two of the +principal jokers he had exchanged the usual and conclusive form of +repartee,--flattened them out literally. The ordinary BADINAGE he did +not mind in the least; it rather pleased him. + +But about the first of January a new hand came into the camp,--a big, +black-haired fellow from Three Rivers, Pierre Lamotte DIT Theophile. +With him it was different. There seemed to be something serious in his +jests about “the marquis.” It was not fun; it was mockery; always on the +edge of anger. He acted as if he would be glad to make Jean ridiculous +in any way. + +Finally the matter came to a head. Something happened to the soup one +Sunday morning--tobacco probably. Certainly it was very bad, only fit +to throw away; and the whole camp was mad. It was not really Pierre +who played the trick; but it was he who sneered that the camp would be +better off if the cook knew less about castles and more about cooking. +Jean answered that what the camp needed was to get rid of a badreux who +thought it was a joke to poison the soup. Pierre took this as a personal +allusion and requested him to discuss the question outside. But before +the discussion began he made some general remarks about the character +and pretensions of Jean. + +“A marquis!” said he. “This bagoulard gives himself out for a marquis! +He is nothing of the kind,--a rank humbug. There is a title in the +family, an estate in France, it is true. But it is mine. I have seen +the papers. I have paid money to the lawyer. I am waiting now for him +to arrange the matter. This man knows nothing about it. He is a fraud. I +will fight him now and settle the matter.” + +If a bucket of ice-water had been thrown over Jean he could not have +cooled off more suddenly. He was dazed. Another marquis? This was +a complication he had never dreamed of. It overwhelmed him like an +avalanche. He must have time to dig himself out of this difficulty. + +“But stop,” he cried; “you go too fast. This is more serious than a +pot of soup. I must hear about this. Let us talk first, Pierre, and +afterwards--” + +The camp was delighted. It was a fine comedy,--two fools instead of one. +The men pricked up their ears and clamoured for a full explanation, a +debate in open court. + +But that was not Jean's way. He had made no secret of his expectations, +but he did not care to confide all the details of his family history to +a crowd of fellows who would probably not understand and would certainly +laugh. Pierre was wrong of course, but at least he was in earnest. That +was something. + +“This affair is between Pierre and me,” said Jean. “We shall speak of it +by ourselves.” + +In the snow-muffled forest, that afternoon, where the great tree-trunks +rose like pillars of black granite from a marble floor, and the branches +of spruce and fir wove a dark green roof above their heads, these two +stray shoots of a noble stock tried to untangle their family history. +It was little that they knew about it. They could get back to their +grandfathers, but beyond that the trail was rather blind. Where they +crossed neither Jean nor Pierre could tell. In fact, both of their minds +had been empty vessels for the plausible lawyer to fill, and he had +filled them with various and windy stuff. There were discrepancies and +contradictions, denials and disputes, flashes of anger and clouds of +suspicion. + +But through all the voluble talk, somehow or other, the two men were +drawing closer together. Pierre felt Jean's force of character, his air +of natural leadership, his bonhommie. He thought, “It was a shame for +that lawyer to trick such a fine fellow with the story that he was +the heir of the family.” Jean, for his part, was impressed by Pierre's +simplicity and firmness of conviction. He thought, “What a mean thing +for that lawyer to fool such an innocent as this into supposing himself +the inheritor of the title.” What never occurred to either of them was +the idea that the lawyer had deceived them both. That was not to be +dreamed of. To admit such a thought would have seemed to them like +throwing away something of great value which they had just found. The +family name, the papers, the links of the genealogy which had been +so convincingly set forth,--all this had made an impression on their +imagination, stronger than any logical argument. But which was the +marquis? That was the question. + +“Look here,” said Jean at last, “of what value is it that we fight? We +are cousins. You think I am wrong. I think you are wrong. But one of us +must be right. Who can tell? There will certainly be something for both +of us. Blood is stronger than currant juice. Let us work together and +help each other. You come home with me when this job is done. The +lawyer returns to St. Gedeon in the spring. He will know. We can see +him together. If he has fooled you, you can do what you like to him. +When--PARDON, I mean if--I get the title, I will do the fair thing by +you. You shall do the same by me. Is it a bargain?” + +On this basis the compact was made. The camp was much amazed, not to say +disgusted, because there was no fight. Well-meaning efforts were made at +intervals through the winter to bring on a crisis. But nothing came of +it. The rival claimants had pooled their stock. They acknowledged the +tie of blood, and ignored the clash of interests. Together they +faced the fire of jokes and stood off the crowd; Pierre frowning and +belligerent, Jean smiling and scornful. Practically, they bossed the +camp. They were the only men who always shaved on Sunday morning. This +was regarded as foppish. + +The popular disappointment deepened into a general sense of injury. In +March, when the cut of timber was finished and the logs were all hauled +to the edge of the river, to lie there until the ice should break and +the “drive” begin, the time arrived for the camp to close. The last +night, under the inspiration drawn from sundry bottles which had been +smuggled in to celebrate the occasion, a plan was concocted in the +stables to humble “the nobility” with a grand display of humour. Jean +was to be crowned as marquis with a bridle and blinders: + +Pierre was to be anointed as count, with a dipperful of harness-oil; +after that the fun would be impromptu. + +The impromptu part of the programme began earlier than it was +advertised. Some whisper of the plan had leaked through the chinks +of the wall between the shanty and the stable. When the crowd came +shambling into the cabin, snickering and nudging one another, Jean and +Pierre were standing by the stove at the upper end of the long table. + +“Down with the canaille!” shouted Jean. + +“Clean out the gang!” responded Pierre. + +Brandishing long-handled frying-pans, they charged down the sides of the +table. The mob wavered, turned, and were lost! Helter-skelter they +fled, tumbling over one another in their haste to escape. The lamp +was smashed. The benches were upset. In the smoky hall a furious din +arose,--as if Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale were once more hewing their +way through the castle of Carteloise. Fear fell upon the multitude, and +they cried aloud grievously in their dismay. The blows of the weapons +echoed mightily in the darkness, and the two knights laid about them +grimly and with great joy. The door was too narrow for the flight. Some +of the men crept under the lowest berths; others hid beneath the table. +Two, endeavouring to escape by the windows, stuck fast, exposing a +broad and undefended mark to the pursuers. Here the last strokes of the +conflict were delivered. + +“One for the marquis!” cried Jean, bringing down his weapon with a +sounding whack. + +“Two for the count!” cried Pierre, making his pan crack like the blow of +a beaver's tail when he dives. + +Then they went out into the snowy night, and sat down together on the +sill of the stable-door, and laughed until the tears ran down their +cheeks. + +“My faith!” said Jean. “That was like the ancient time. It is from the +good wood that strong paddles are made,--eh, cousin?” And after that +there was a friendship between the two men that could not have been cut +with the sharpest axe in Quebec. + + + + +III + +A HAPPY ENDING WHICH IS ALSO A BEGINNING + +The plan of going back to St. Gedeon, to wait for the return of the +lawyer, was not carried out. Several of the little gods that use their +own indiscretion in arranging the pieces on the puzzle-map of life, +interfered with it. + +The first to meddle was that highly irresponsible deity with the bow +and arrows, who has no respect for rank or age, but reserves all his +attention for sex. + +When the camp on the St. Maurice dissolved, Jean went down with Pierre +to Three Rivers for a short visit. There was a snug house on a high bank +above the river, a couple of miles from the town. A wife and an armful +of children gave assurance that the race of La Motte de la Luciere +should not die out on this side of the ocean. + +There was also a little sister-in-law, Alma Grenou. If you had seen her +you would not have wondered at what happened. Eyes like a deer, face +like a mayflower, voice like the “D” string in a 'cello,--she was the +picture of Drummond's girl in “The Habitant”: + + + “She's nicer girl on whole Comte, an' jus' got eighteen year-- + Black eye, black hair, and cheek rosee dat's lak wan Fameuse + on de fall; + But don't spik much,--not of dat kin',--I can't say she love + me at all.” + + +With her Jean plunged into love. It was not a gradual approach, like +gliding down a smooth stream. It was not a swift descent, like running a +lively rapid. It was a veritable plunge, like going over a chute. He did +not know precisely what had happened to him at first; but he knew very +soon what to do about it. + +The return to Lake St. John was postponed till a more convenient season: +after the snow had melted and the ice had broken up--probably the lawyer +would not make his visit before that. If he arrived sooner, he would +come back again; he wanted his money, that was certain. Besides, what +was more likely than that he should come also to see Pierre? He had +promised to do so. At all events, they would wait at Three Rivers for a +while. + +The first week Jean told Alma that she was the prettiest girl he had +ever seen. She tossed her head and expressed a conviction that he was +joking. She suggested that he was in the habit of saying the same thing +to every girl. + +The second week he made a long stride in his wooing. He took her out +sleighing on the last remnant of the snow,--very thin and bumpy,--and +utilized the occasion to put his arm around her waist. She cried +“Laisse-moi tranquille, Jean!” boxed his ears, and said she thought he +must be out of his mind. + +The following Saturday afternoon he craftily came behind her in the +stable as she was milking the cow, and bent her head back and kissed +her on the face. She began to cry, and said he had taken an unfair +advantage, while her hands were busy. She hated him. + +“Well, then,” said he, still holding her warm shoulders, “if you hate +me, I am going home tomorrow.” + +The sobs calmed down quickly. She bent herself forward so that he could +see the rosy nape of her neck with the curling tendrils of brown hair +around it. + +“But,” she said, “but, Jean,--do you love me for sure?” + +After that the path was level, easy, and very quickly travelled. On +Sunday afternoon the priest was notified that his services would be +needed for a wedding, the first week in May. Pierre's consent was +genial and hilarious. The marriage suited him exactly. It was a family +alliance. It made everything move smooth and certain. The property would +be kept together. + +But the other little interfering gods had not yet been heard from. One +of them, who had special charge of what remained of the soul of the +dealer in unclaimed estates, put it into his head to go to Three Rivers +first, instead of to St. Gedeon. + +He had a good many clients in different parts of the country,--temporary +clients, of course,--and it occurred to him that he might as well +extract another fifty dollars from Pierre Lamotte DIT Theophile, before +going on a longer journey. On his way down from Montreal he stopped in +several small towns and slept in beds of various quality. + +Another of the little deities (the one that presides over unclean +villages; decidedly a false god, but sufficiently powerful) arranged a +surprise for the travelling lawyer. It came out at Three Rivers. + +He arrived about nightfall, and slept at the hotel, feeling curiously +depressed. The next morning he was worse; but he was a resolute and +industrious dog, after his own fashion. So he hired a buggy and drove +out through the mud to Pierre's place. They heard the wagon stop at the +gate, and went out to see who it was. + +The man was hardly recognizable: face pale, lips blue, eyes dull, teeth +chattering. + +“Get me out of this,” he muttered. “I am dying. God's sake, be quick!” + +They helped him to the house, and he immediately went into a convulsion. +From this he passed into a raging fever. Pierre took the buggy and drove +posthaste to town for a doctor. + +The doctor's opinion was evidently serious, but his remarks were +non-committal. + +“Keep him in this room. Give him ten drops of this in water every hour. +One of these powders if he becomes violent. One of you must stay with +him all the time. Only one, you understand. The rest keep away. I will +come back in the morning.” + +In the morning the doctor's face was yet more grave. He examined the +patient carefully. Then he turned to Jean, who had acted as nurse. + +“I thought so,” said he; “you must all be vaccinated immediately. There +is still time, I hope. But what to do with this gentleman, God knows. We +can't send him back to the town. He has the small-pox.” + +That was a pretty prelude to a wedding festival. They were all at their +wit's end. While the doctor scratched their arms, they discussed the +situation, excitedly and with desperation. Jean was the first to stop +chattering and begin to think. + +“There is that old cabane of Poulin's up the road. It is empty these +three years. But there is a good spring of water. One could patch the +roof at one end and put up a stove.” + +“Good!” said the doctor. “But some one to take care of him? It will be a +long job, and a bad one.” + +“I am going to do that,” said Jean; “it is my place. This gentleman +cannot be left to die in the road. Le bon Dieu did not send him here for +that. The head of the family”--here he stopped a moment and looked at +Pierre, who was silent--“must take the heavy end of the job, and I am +ready for it.” + +“Good!” said the doctor again. But Alma was crying in the corner of the +room. + +Four weeks, five weeks, six weeks the vigil in the cabane lasted. The +last patches of snow disappeared from the fields one night, as if winter +had picked up its rags and vanished. The willows along the brook turned +yellow; the grass greened around the spring. Scarlet buds flamed on the +swamp maples. A tender mist of foliage spread over the woodlands. The +chokecherries burst into a glory of white blossoms. The bluebirds came +back, fluting love-songs; and the robins, carolling ballads of joy; and +the blackbirds, creaking merrily. + +The priest came once and saw the sick man, but everything was going +well. It was not necessary to run any extra risks. Every week after that +he came and leaned on the fence, talking with Jean in the doorway. When +he went away he always lifted three fingers--so--you know the sign? It +is a very pleasant one, and it did Jean's heart good. + +Pierre kept the cabane well supplied with provisions, leaving them just +inside of the gate. But with the milk it was necessary to be a little +careful; so the can was kept in a place by itself, under the out-of-door +oven, in the shade. And beside this can Jean would find, every day, +something particular,--a blossom of the red geranium that bloomed in the +farmhouse window, a piece of cake with plums in it, a bunch of trailing +arbutus,--once it was a little bit of blue ribbon, tied in a certain +square knot--so--perhaps you know that sign too? That did Jean's heart +good also. + +But what kind of conversation was there in the cabane when the sick +man's delirium had passed and he knew what had happened to him? Not much +at first, for the man was too weak. After he began to get stronger, he +was thinking a great deal, fighting with himself. In the end he came out +pretty well--for a lawyer of his kind. Perhaps he was desirous to leave +the man whom he had deceived, and who had nursed him back from death, +some fragment, as much as possible, of the dream that brightened his +life. Perhaps he was only anxious to save as much as he could of his own +reputation. At all events, this is what he did. + +He told Jean a long story, part truth, part lie, about his +investigations. The estate and the title were in the family; that was +certain. Jean was the probable heir, if there was any heir; that was +almost sure. The part about Pierre had been a--well, a mistake. But +the trouble with the whole affair was this. A law made in the days of +Napoleon limited the time for which an estate could remain unclaimed. A +certain number of years, and then the government took everything. That +number of years had just passed. By the old law Jean was probably a +marquis with a castle. By the new law?--Frankly, he could not advise +a client to incur any more expense. In fact, he intended to return the +amount already paid. A hundred and ten dollars, was it not? Yes, and +fifty dollars for the six weeks of nursing. VOILA, a draft on Montreal, +a hundred and sixty dollars,--as good as gold! And beside that, there +was the incalculable debt for this great kindness to a sick man, for +which he would always be M. de la Motte's grateful debtor! + +The lawyer's pock-marked face--the scars still red and angry--lit +up with a curious mixed light of shrewdness and gratitude. Jean was +somewhat moved. His castle was in ruins. But he remained noble--by the +old law; that was something! + +A few days later the doctor pronounced it safe to move the patient. He +came with a carriage to fetch him. Jean, well fumigated and dressed in a +new suit of clothes, walked down the road beside them to the farm-house +gate. There Alma met him with both hands. His eyes embraced her. The +air of June was radiant about them. The fragrance of the woods breathed +itself over the broad valley. A song sparrow poured his heart out from +a blossoming lilac. The world was large, and free, and very good. And +between the lovers there was nothing but a little gate. + +“I understand,” said the doctor, smiling, as he tightened up the reins, +“I understand that there is a title in your family, M. de la Motte, in +effect that you are a marquis?” + +“It is true,” said Jean, turning his head, “at least so I think.” + +“So do I,” said the doctor “But you had better go in, MONSIEUR LE +MARQUIS--you keep MADAME LA MARQUISE waiting.” + + + + +VIII. THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT + +At long distance, looking over the blue waters of the Gulf of St. +Lawrence in clear weather, you might think that you saw a lonely +sea-gull, snow-white, perching motionless on a cobble of gray rock. +Then, as your boat drifted in, following the languid tide and the soft +southern breeze, you would perceive that the cobble of rock was a rugged +hill with a few bushes and stunted trees growing in the crevices, +and that the gleaming speck near the summit must be some kind of a +building--if you were on the coast of Italy or Spain you would say a +villa or a farm-house. Then, as you floated still farther north and +drew nearer to the coast, the desolate hill would detach itself from +the mainland and become a little mountain-isle, with a flock of smaller +islets clustering around it as a brood of wild ducks keep close to their +mother, and with deep water, nearly two miles wide, flowing between it +and the shore; while the shining speck on the seaward side stood out +clearly as a low, whitewashed dwelling with a sturdy round tower at one +end, crowned with a big eight-sided lantern--a solitary lighthouse. + +That is the Isle of the Wise Virgin. Behind it the long blue Laurentian +Mountains, clothed with unbroken forest, rise in sombre ranges toward +the Height of Land. In front of it the waters of the gulf heave and +sparkle far away to where the dim peaks of St. Anne des Monts are traced +along the southern horizon. Sheltered a little, but not completely, by +the island breakwater of granite, lies the rocky beach of Dead Men's +Point, where an English navy was wrecked in a night of storm a hundred +years ago. + +There are a score of wooden houses, a tiny, weather-beaten chapel, a +Hudson Bay Company's store, a row of platforms for drying fish, and a +varied assortment of boats and nets, strung along the beach now. Dead +Men's Point has developed into a centre of industry, with a life, a +tradition, a social character of its own. And in one of those houses, as +you sit at the door in the lingering June twilight, looking out across +the deep channel to where the lantern of the tower is just beginning +to glow with orange radiance above the shadow of the island--in that +far-away place, in that mystical hour, you should hear the story of the +light and its keeper. + + + + +I + +When the lighthouse was built, many years ago, the island had another +name. It was called the Isle of Birds. Thousands of sea-fowl nested +there. The handful of people who lived on the shore robbed the nests +and slaughtered the birds, with considerable profit. It was perceived in +advance that the building of the lighthouse would interfere with +this, and with other things. Hence it was not altogether a popular +improvement. Marcel Thibault, the oldest inhabitant, was the leader of +the opposition. + +“That lighthouse!” said he, “what good will it be for us? We know the +way in and out when it makes clear weather, by day or by night. But when +the sky gets swampy, when it makes fog, then we stay with ourselves at +home, or we run into La Trinite, or Pentecote. We know the way. What? +The stranger boats? B'EN! the stranger boats need not to come here, +if they know not the way. The more fish, the more seals, the more +everything will there be left for us. Just because of the stranger +boats, to build something that makes all the birds wild and spoils the +hunting--that is a fool's work. The good God made no stupid light on the +Isle of Birds. He saw no necessity of it.” + +“Besides,” continued Thibault, puffing slowly at his pipe, +“besides--those stranger boats, sometimes they are lost, they come +ashore. It is sad! But who gets the things that are saved, all sorts +of things, good to put into our houses, good to eat, good to sell, +sometimes a boat that can be patched up almost like new--who gets these +things, eh? Doubtless those for whom the good God intended them. But who +shall get them when this sacre lighthouse is built, eh? Tell me that, +you Baptiste Fortin.” + +Fortin represented the party of progress in the little parliament of the +beach. He had come down from Quebec some years ago bringing with him a +wife and two little daughters, and a good many new notions about life. +He had good luck at the cod-fishing, and built a house with windows at +the side as well as in front. When his third girl, Nataline, was born, +he went so far as to paint the house red, and put on a kitchen, and +enclose a bit of ground for a yard. This marked him as a radical, an +innovator. It was expected that he would defend the building of the +lighthouse. And he did. + +“Monsieur Thibault,” he said, “you talk well, but you talk too late. It +is of a past age, your talk. A new time comes to the Cote Nord. We +begin to civilize ourselves. To hold back against the light would be +our shame. Tell me this, Marcel Thibault, what men are they that love +darkness?” + +“TORRIEUX!” growled Thibault, “that is a little strong. You say my deeds +are evil?” + +“No, no,” answered Fortin; “I say not that, my friend, but I say this +lighthouse means good: good for us, and good for all who come to this +coast. It will bring more trade to us. It will bring a boat with the +mail, with newspapers, perhaps once, perhaps twice a month, all through +the summer. It will bring us into the great world. To lose that for the +sake of a few birds--CA SERA B'EN DE VALEUR! Besides, it is impossible. +The lighthouse is coming, certain.” + +Fortin was right, of course. But Thibault's position was not altogether +unnatural, nor unfamiliar. All over the world, for the past hundred +years, people have been kicking against the sharpness of the pricks that +drove them forward out of the old life, the wild life, the free life, +grown dear to them because it was so easy. There has been a terrible +interference with bird-nesting and other things. All over the world the +great Something that bridges rivers, and tunnels mountains, and fells +forests, and populates deserts, and opens up the hidden corners of the +earth, has been pushing steadily on; and the people who like things +to remain as they are have had to give up a great deal. There was no +exception made in favour of Dead Men's Point. The Isle of Birds lay in +the line of progress. The lighthouse arrived. + +It was a very good house for that day. The keeper's dwelling had three +rooms and was solidly built. The tower was thirty feet high. The lantern +held a revolving light, with a four-wick Fresnel lamp, burning sperm +oil. There was one of Stevenson's new cages of dioptric prisms around +the flame, and once every minute it was turned by clockwork, flashing a +broad belt of radiance fifteen miles across the sea. All night long that +big bright eye was opening and shutting. “BAGUETTE!” said Thibault, “it +winks like a one-eyed Windigo.” + +The Department of Marine and Fisheries sent down an expert from Quebec +to keep the light in order and run it for the first summer. He +took Fortin as his assistant. By the end of August he reported to +headquarters that the light was all right, and that Fortin was qualified +to be appointed keeper. Before October was out the certificate of +appointment came back, and the expert packed his bag to go up the river. + +“Now look here, Fortin,” said he, “this is no fishing trip. Do you think +you are up to this job?” + +“I suppose,” said Fortin. + +“Well now, do you remember all this business about the machinery that +turns the lenses? That 's the main thing. The bearings must be kept well +oiled, and the weight must never get out of order. The clock-face will +tell you when it is running right. If anything gets hitched up here's +the crank to keep it going until you can straighten the machine again. +It's easy enough to turn it. But you must never let it stop between dark +and daylight. The regular turn once a minute--that's the mark of this +light. If it shines steady it might as well be out. Yes, better! Any +vessel coming along here in a dirty night and seeing a fixed light would +take it for the Cap Loup-Marin and run ashore. This particular light has +got to revolve once a minute every night from April first to December +tenth, certain. Can you do it?” + +“Certain,” said Fortin. + +“That's the way I like to hear a man talk! Now, you've got oil enough to +last you through till the tenth of December, when you close the light, +and to run on for a month in the spring after you open again. The ice +may be late in going out and perhaps the supply-boat can't get down +before the middle of April, or thereabouts. But she'll bring plenty of +oil when she comes, so you'll be all right.” + +“All right,” said Fortin. + +“Well, I've said it all, I guess. You understand what you've got to do? +Good-by and good luck. You're the keeper of the light now.” + +“Good luck,” said Fortin, “I am going to keep it.” The same day he shut +up the red house on the beach and moved to the white house on the island +with Marie-Anne, his wife, and the three girls, Alma, aged seventeen, +Azilda, aged fifteen, and Nataline, aged thirteen. He was the captain, +and Marie-Anne was the mate, and the three girls were the crew. They +were all as full of happy pride as if they had come into possession of a +great fortune. + +It was the thirty-first day of October. A snow-shower had silvered the +island. The afternoon was clear and beautiful. As the sun sloped toward +the rose-coloured hills of the mainland the whole family stood out in +front of the lighthouse looking up at the tower. + +“Regard him well, my children,” said Baptiste; “God has given him to us +to keep, and to keep us. Thibault says he is a Windigo. B'EN! We shall +see that he is a friendly Windigo. Every minute all the night he +shall wink, just for kindness and good luck to all the world, till the +daylight.” + + + + +II + +On the ninth of November, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Baptiste +went into the tower to see that the clockwork was in order for the +night. He set the dial on the machine, put a few drops of oil on the +bearings of the cylinder, and started to wind up the weight. + +It rose a few inches, gave a dull click, and then stopped dead. He +tugged a little harder, but it would not move. Then he tried to let it +down. He pushed at the lever that set the clockwork in motion. + +He might as well have tried to make the island turn around by pushing at +one of the little spruce trees that clung to the rock. + +Then it dawned fearfully upon him that something must be wrong. +Trembling with anxiety, he climbed up and peered in among the wheels. + +The escapement wheel was cracked clean through, as if some one had +struck it with the head of an axe, and one of the pallets of the spindle +was stuck fast in the crack. He could knock it out easily enough, but +when the crack came around again, the pallet would catch and the clock +would stop once more. It was a fatal injury. + +Baptiste turned white, then red, gripped his head in his hands, and ran +down the steps, out of the door, straight toward his canoe, which was +pulled up on the western side of the island. + +“DAME!” he cried, “who has done this? Let me catch him! If that old +Thibault--” + +As he leaped down the rocky slope the setting sun gleamed straight in +his eyes. It was poised like a ball of fire on the very edge of the +mountains. Five minutes more and it would be gone. Fifteen minutes more +and darkness would close in. Then the giant's eye must begin to glow, +and to wink precisely once a minute all night long. If not, what became +of the keeper's word, his faith, his honour? + +No matter how the injury to the clockwork was done. No matter who was +to be blamed or punished for it. That could wait. The question now was +whether the light would fail or not. And it must be answered within a +quarter of an hour. + +That red ray of the vanishing sun was like a blow in the face to +Baptiste. It stopped him short, dazed and bewildered. Then he came to +himself, wheeled, and ran up the rocks faster than he had come down. + +“Marie-Anne! Alma!” he shouted, as he dashed past the door of the house, +“all of you! To me, in the tower!” + +He was up in the lantern when they came running in, full of curiosity, +excited, asking twenty questions at once. Nataline climbed up the ladder +and put her head through the trap-door. + +“What is it?” she panted. “What has hap--” + +“Go down,” answered her father, “go down all at once. Wait for me. I am +coming. I will explain.” + +The explanation was not altogether lucid and scientific. There were some +bad words mixed up with it. + +Baptiste was still hot with anger and the unsatisfied desire to whip +somebody, he did not know whom, for something, he did not know what. +But angry as he was, he was still sane enough to hold his mind hard and +close to the main point. The crank must be adjusted; the machine must be +ready to turn before dark. While he worked he hastily made the situation +clear to his listeners. + +That crank must be turned by hand, round and round all night, not too +slow, not too fast. The dial on the machine must mark time with +the clock on the wall. The light must flash once every minute until +daybreak. He would do as much of the labour as he could, but the wife +and the two older girls must help him. Nataline could go to bed. + +At this Nataline's short upper lip trembled. She rubbed her eyes with +the sleeve of her dress, and began to weep silently. + +“What is the matter with you?” said her mother, “bad child, have you +fear to sleep alone? A big girl like you!” + +“No,” she sobbed, “I have no fear, but I want some of the fun.” + +“Fun!” growled her father. “What fun? NOM D'UN CHIEN! She calls this +fun!” He looked at her for a moment, as she stood there, half defiant, +half despondent, with her red mouth quivering and her big brown eyes +sparkling fire; then he burst into a hearty laugh. + +“Come here, my little wild-cat,” he said, drawing her to him and kissing +her; “you are a good girl after all. I suppose you think this light is +part yours, eh?” + +The girl nodded. + +“B'EN! You shall have your share, fun and all. You shall make the tea +for us and bring us something to eat. Perhaps when Alma and 'Zilda +fatigue themselves they will permit a few turns of the crank to you. Are +you content? Run now and boil the kettle.” + +It was a very long night. No matter how easily a handle turns, after +a certain number of revolutions there is a stiffness about it. The +stiffness is not in the handle, but in the hand that pushes it. + +Round and round, evenly, steadily, minute after minute, hour after hour, +shoving out, drawing in, circle after circle, no swerving, no stopping, +no varying the motion, turn after turn--fifty-five, fifty-six, +fifty-seven--what's the use of counting? Watch the dial; go to +sleep--no! for God's sake, no sleep! But how hard it is to keep awake! +How heavy the arm grows, how stiffly the muscles move, how the will +creaks and groans. BATISCAN! It is not easy for a human being to become +part of a machine. + +Fortin himself took the longest spell at the crank, of course. He went +at his work with a rigid courage. His red-hot anger had cooled down into +a shape that was like a bar of forged steel. He meant to make that light +revolve if it killed him to do it. He was the captain of a company that +had run into an ambuscade. He was going to fight his way through if he +had to fight alone. + +The wife and the two older girls followed him blindly and bravely, in +the habit of sheer obedience. They did not quite understand the meaning +of the task, the honour of victory, the shame of defeat. But Fortin said +it must be done, and he knew best. So they took their places in turn, as +he grew weary, and kept the light flashing. + +And Nataline--well, there is no way of describing what Nataline did, +except to say that she played the fife. + +She felt the contest just as her father did, not as deeply, perhaps, but +in the same spirit. She went into the fight with darkness like a little +soldier. And she played the fife. + +When she came up from the kitchen with the smoking pail of tea, she +rapped on the door and called out to know whether the Windigo was at +home to-night. + +She ran in and out of the place like a squirrel. She looked up at the +light and laughed. Then she ran in and reported. “He winks,” she said, +“old one-eye winks beautifully. Keep him going. My turn now!” + +She refused to be put off with a shorter spell than the other girls. +“No,” she cried, “I can do it as well as you. You think you are so much +older. Well, what of that? The light is part mine; father said so. Let +me turn, va-t-en.” + +When the first glimmer of the little day came shivering along the +eastern horizon, Nataline was at the crank. The mother and the two older +girls were half asleep. Baptiste stepped out to look at the sky. “Come,” + he cried, returning. “We can stop now, it is growing gray in the east, +almost morning.” + +“But not yet,” said Nataline; “we must wait for the first red. A few +more turns. Let's finish it up with a song.” + +She shook her head and piped up the refrain of the old Canadian chanson: + + + “En roulant ma boule-le roulant + En roulant ma bou-le.” + + +And to that cheerful music the first night's battle was carried through +to victory. + +The next day Fortin spent two hours in trying to repair the clockwork. +It was of no use. The broken part was indispensable and could not be +replaced. + +At noon he went over to the mainland to tell of the disaster, and +perhaps to find out if any hostile hand was responsible for it. He found +out nothing. Every one denied all knowledge of the accident. Perhaps +there was a flaw in the wheel; perhaps it had broken itself. That was +possible. Fortin could not deny it; but the thing that hurt him most was +that he got so little sympathy. Nobody seemed to care whether the light +was kept burning or not. When he told them how the machine had been +turned all night by hand, they were astonished. “CRE-IE!” they cried, +“you must have had a great misery to do that.” But that he proposed to +go on doing it for a month longer, until December tenth, and to begin +again on April first, and go on turning the light by hand for three +or four weeks more until the supply-boat came down and brought the +necessary tools to repair the machine--such an idea as this went beyond +their horizon. + +“But you are crazy, Baptiste,” they said, “you can never do it; you are +not capable.” + +“I would be crazy,” he answered, “if I did not see what I must do. That +light is my charge. In all the world there is nothing else so great as +that for me and for my family--you understand? For us it is the chief +thing. It is my Ten Commandments. I shall keep it or be damned.” + +There was a silence after this remark. They were not very particular +about the use of language at Dead Men's Point, but this shocked them +a little. They thought that Fortin was swearing a shade too hard. In +reality he was never more reverent, never more soberly in earnest. + +After a while he continued, “I want some one to help me with the work +on the island. We must be up all the nights now. By day we must get some +sleep. I want another man or a strong boy. Is there any who will come? +The Government will pay. Or if not, I will pay, moi-meme.” + +There was no response. All the men hung back. The lighthouse was still +unpopular, or at least it was on trial. Fortin's pluck and resolution +had undoubtedly impressed them a little. But they still hesitated to +commit themselves to his side. + +“B'en,” he said, “there is no one. Then we shall manage the affair en +famille. Bon soir, messieurs!” + +He walked down to the beach with his head in the air, without looking +back. But before he had his canoe in the water he heard some one running +down behind him. It was Thibault's youngest son, Marcel, a well-grown +boy of sixteen, very much out of breath with running and shyness. + +“Monsieur Fortin,” he stammered, “will you--do you think--am I big +enough?” + +Baptiste looked him in the face for a moment. Then his eyes twinkled. + +“Certain,” he answered, “you are bigger than your father. But what will +he say to this?” + +“He says,” blurted out Marcel--“well, he says that he will say nothing +if I do not ask him.” + +So the little Marcel was enlisted in the crew on the island. For thirty +nights those six people--a man, and a boy, and four women (Nataline was +not going to submit to any distinctions on the score of age, you may be +sure)--for a full month they turned their flashing lantern by hand from +dusk to day-break. + +The fog, the frost, the hail, the snow beleaguered their tower. Hunger +and cold, sleeplessness and weariness, pain and discouragement, held +rendezvous in that dismal, cramped little room. Many a night Nataline's +fife of fun played a feeble, wheezy note. But it played. And the crank +went round. And every bit of glass in the lantern was as clear as +polished crystal. And the big lamp was full of oil. And the great eye +of the friendly giant winked without ceasing, through fierce storm and +placid moonlight. + +When the tenth of December came, the light went to sleep for the winter, +and the keepers took their way across the ice to the mainland. They had +won the battle, not only on the island, fighting against the elements, +but also at Dead Men's Point, against public opinion. The inhabitants +began to understand that the lighthouse meant something--a law, an +order, a principle. + +Men cannot help feeling respect for a thing when they see others willing +to fight or to suffer for it. + +When the time arrived to kindle the light again in the spring, Fortin +could have had any one that he wanted to help him. But no; he chose the +little Marcel again; the boy wanted to go, and he had earned the right. +Besides, he and Nataline had struck up a close friendship on the island, +cemented during the winter by various hunting excursions after hares and +ptarmigan. Marcel was a skilful setter of snares. But Nataline was not +content until she had won consent to borrow her father's CARABINE. They +hunted in partnership. One day they had shot a fox. That is, Nataline +had shot it, though Marcel had seen it first and tracked it. Now they +wanted to try for a seal on the point of the island when the ice went +out. It was quite essential that Marcel should go. + +“Besides,” said Baptiste to his wife, confidentially, “a boy costs less +than a man. Why should we waste money? Marcel is best.” + +A peasant-hero is seldom averse to economy in small things, like money. + +But there was not much play in the spring session with the light on the +island. It was a bitter job. December had been lamb-like compared with +April. First, the southeast wind kept the ice driving in along the +shore. Then the northwest wind came hurtling down from the Arctic +wilderness like a pack of wolves. There was a snow-storm of four days +and nights that made the whole world--earth and sky and sea--look like a +crazy white chaos. And through it all, that weary, dogged crank must be +kept turning--turning from dark to daylight. + +It seemed as if the supply-boat would never come. At last they saw it, +one fair afternoon, April the twenty-ninth, creeping slowly down the +coast. They were just getting ready for another night's work. + +Fortin ran out of the tower, took off his hat, and began to say his +prayers. The wife and the two elder girls stood in the kitchen door, +crossing themselves, with tears in their eyes. Marcel and Nataline were +coming up from the point of the island, where they had been watching for +their seal. She was singing + + + “Mon pere n'avait fille que moi, + Encore sur la mer il m'envoi-e-eh!” + + +When she saw the boat she stopped short for a minute. + +“Well,” she said, “they find us awake, n'est-c'pas? And if they don't +come faster than that we'll have another chance to show them how we make +the light wink, eh?” + +Then she went on with her song-- + + “Sautez, mignonne, Cecilia. + Ah, ah, ah, ah, Cecilia!” + + + + +III + +You did not suppose that was the end of the story, did you? + +No, an out-of-doors story does not end like that, broken off in the +middle, with a bit of a song. It goes on to something definite, like a +wedding or a funeral. + +You have not heard, yet, how near the light came to failing, and how the +keeper saved it and something else too. Nataline's story is not told; it +is only begun. This first part is only the introduction, just to let you +see what kind of a girl she was, and how her life was made. If you want +to hear the conclusion, we must hurry along a little faster or we shall +never get to it. + +Nataline grew up like a young birch tree--stately and strong, good to +look at. She was beautiful in her place; she fitted it exactly. Her +bronzed face with an under-tinge of red; her low, black eyebrows; her +clear eyes like the brown waters of a woodland stream; her dark, curly +hair with little tendrils always blowing loose around the pillar of her +neck; her broad breast and sloping shoulders; her firm, fearless step; +her voice, rich and vibrant; her straight, steady looks--but there, +who can describe a thing like that? I tell you she was a girl to love +out-of-doors. + +There was nothing that she could not do. She could cook; she could swing +an axe; she could paddle a canoe; she could fish; she could shoot; and, +best of all, she could run the lighthouse. Her father's devotion to it +had gone into her blood. It was the centre of her life, her law of God. +There was nothing about it that she did not understand and love. From +the first of April to the tenth of December the flashing of that light +was like the beating of her heart--steady, even, unfaltering. She kept +time to it as unconsciously as the tides follow the moon. She lived by +it and for it. + +There were no more accidents to the clockwork after the first one was +repaired. It ran on regularly, year after year. + +Alma and Azilda were married and went away to live, one on the South +Shore, the other at Quebec. Nataline was her father's right-hand man. As +the rheumatism took hold of him and lamed his shoulders and wrists, more +and more of the work fell upon her. She was proud of it. + +At last it came to pass, one day in January, that Baptiste died. He was +not gathered to his fathers, for they were buried far away beside the +Montmorenci, and on the rocky coast of Brittany. But the men dug through +the snow behind the tiny chapel at Dead Men's Point, and made a grave +for Baptiste Fortin, and the young priest of the mission read the +funeral service over it. + +It went without saying that Nataline was to be the keeper of the light, +at least until the supply-boat came down again in the spring and orders +arrived from the Government in Quebec. Why not? She was a woman, it is +true. But if a woman can do a thing as well as a man, why should she not +do it? Besides, Nataline could do this particular thing much better +than any man on the Point. Everybody approved of her as the heir of her +father, especially young Marcel Thibault. + +What? + +Yes, of course. You could not help guessing it. He was Nataline's lover. +They were to be married the next summer. They sat together in the best +room, while the old mother was rocking to and fro and knitting beside +the kitchen stove, and talked of what they were going to do. Once in a +while, when Nataline grieved for her father, she would let Marcel put +his arm around her and comfort her in the way that lovers know. But +their talk was mainly of the future, because they were young, and of the +light, because Nataline's life belonged to it. + +Perhaps the Government would remember that year when it was kept going +by hand for two months, and give it to her to keep as long as she lived. +That would be only fair. Certainly, it was hers for the present. No one +had as good a right to it. She took possession without a doubt. At all +events, while she was the keeper the light should not fail. + +But that winter was a bad one on the North Shore, and particularly at +Dead Men's Point. It was terribly bad. The summer before, the fishing +had been almost a dead failure. In June a wild storm had smashed all +the salmon nets and swept most of them away. In July they could find no +caplin for bait for the cod-fishing, and in August and September +they could find no cod. The few bushels of potatoes that some of the +inhabitants had planted, rotted in the ground. The people at the Point +went into the winter short of money and very short of food. + +There were some supplies at the store, pork and flour and molasses, +and they could run through the year on credit and pay their debts the +following summer if the fish came back. But this resource also failed +them. In the last week of January the store caught fire and burned up. +Nothing was saved. The only hope now was the seal-hunting in February +and March and April. That at least would bring them meat and oil enough +to keep them from starvation. + +But this hope failed, too. The winds blew strong from the north and +west, driving the ice far out into the gulf. The chase was long and +perilous. The seals were few and wild. Less than a dozen were killed in +all. By the last week in March Dead Men's Point stood face to face with +famine. + +Then it was that old Thibault had an idea. + +“There is sperm oil on the Island of Birds,” said he, “in the +lighthouse, plenty of it, gallons of it. It is not very good to taste, +perhaps, but what of that? It will keep life in the body. The Esquimaux +drink it in the north, often. We must take the oil of the lighthouse to +keep us from starving until the supply-boat comes down.” + +“But how shall we get it?” asked the others. “It is locked up. Nataline +Fortin has the key. Will she give it?” + +“Give it?” growled Thibault. “Name of a name! of course she will give +it. She must. Is not a life, the life of all of us, more than a light?” + +A self-appointed committee of three, with Thibault at the head, waited +upon Nataline without delay, told her their plan, and asked for the +key. She thought it over silently for a few minutes, and then refused +point-blank. + +“No,” she said, “I will not give the key. That oil is for the lamp. If +you take it, the lamp will not be lighted on the first of April; it will +not be burning when the supply-boat comes. For me, that would be shame, +disgrace, worse than death. I am the keeper of the light. You shall not +have the oil.” + +They argued with her, pleaded with her, tried to browbeat her. She was +a rock. Her round under-jaw was set like a steel trap. Her lips +straightened into a white line. Her eyebrows drew together, and her eyes +grew black. + +“No,” she cried, “I tell you no, no, a thousand times no. All in this +house I will share with you. But not one drop of what belongs to the +light! Never.” + +Later in the afternoon the priest came to see her; a thin, pale young +man, bent with the hardships of his life, and with sad dreams in his +sunken eyes. He talked with her very gently and kindly. + +“Think well, my daughter; think seriously what you do. Is it not our +first duty to save human life? Surely that must be according to the will +of God. Will you refuse to obey it?” + +Nataline was trembling a little now. Her brows were unlocked. The tears +stood in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She was twisting her hands +together. + +“My father,” she answered, “I desire to do the will of God. But how +shall I know it? Is it not His first command that we should love and +serve Him faithfully in the duty which He has given us? He gave me this +light to keep. My father kept it. He is dead. If I am unfaithful what +will he say to me? Besides, the supply-boat is coming soon--I have +thought of this--when it comes it will bring food. But if the light is +out, the boat may be lost. That would be the punishment for my sin. No, +MON PERE, we must trust God. He will keep the people. I will keep the +light.”' + +The priest looked at her long and steadily. A glow came into his face. +He put his hand on her shoulder. “You shall follow your conscience,” he +said quietly. “Peace be with you, Nataline.” + +That evening just at dark Marcel came. She let him take her in his arms +and kiss her. She felt like a little child, tired and weak. + +“Well,” he whispered, “you have done bravely, sweetheart. You were right +not to give the key. That would have been a shame to you. But it is all +settled now. They will have the oil without your fault. To-night they +are going out to the lighthouse to break in and take what they want. You +need not know. There will be no blame--” + +She straightened in his arms as if an electric shock had passed through +her. She sprang back, blazing with anger. + +“What?” she cried, “me a thief by round-about,--with my hand behind my +back and my eyes shut? Never. Do you think I care only for the blame? I +tell you that is nothing. My light shall not be robbed, never, never!” + +She came close to him and took him by the shoulders. Their eyes were on +a level. He was a strong man, but she was the stronger then. + +“Marcel Thibault,” she said, “do you love me?” + +“My faith,” he gasped, “I do. You know I do.” + +“Then listen,” she continued; “this is what you are going to do. You are +going down to the shore at once to make ready the big canoe. I am going +to get food enough to last us for the month. It will be a hard pinch, +but it will do. Then we are going out to the island to-night, in less +than an hour. Day after to-morrow is the first of April. Then we shall +light the lantern, and it shall burn every night until the boat comes +down. You hear? Now go: and be quick and bring your gun.” + + + + +IV + +They pushed off in the black darkness, among the fragments of ice that +lay along the shore. They crossed the strait in silence, and hid their +canoe among the rocks on the island. They carried their stuff up to the +house and locked it in the kitchen. Then they unlocked the tower, and +went in, Marcel with his shot-gun, and Nataline with her father's old +carabine. They fastened the door again, and bolted it, and sat down in +the dark to wait. + +Presently they heard the grating of the prow of the barge on the stones +below, the steps of men stumbling up the steep path, and voices mingled +in confused talk. The glimmer of a couple of lanterns went bobbing in +and out among the rocks and bushes. There was a little crowd of eight or +ten men, and they came on carelessly, chattering and laughing. Three of +them carried axes, and three others a heavy log of wood which they had +picked up on their way. + +“The log is better than the axes,” said one; “take it in your hands this +way, two of you on one side, another on the opposite side in the middle. +Then swing it back and forwards and let it go. The door will come down, +I tell you, like a sheet of paper. But wait till I give the word, then +swing hard. One--two--” + +“Stop!” cried Nataline, throwing open the little window. “If you dare to +touch that door, I shoot.” + +She thrust out the barrel of the rifle, and Marcel's shot-gun appeared +beside it. The old rifle was not loaded, but who knew that? Besides, +both barrels of the shot-gun were full. + +There was amazement in the crowd outside the tower, and consternation, +and then anger. + +“Marcel,” they shouted, “you there? MAUDIT POLISSON! Come out of that. +Let us in. You told us--” + +“I know,” answered Marcel, “but I was mistaken, that is all. I stand by +Mademoiselle Fortin. What she says is right. If any man tries to break +in here, we kill him. No more talk!” + +The gang muttered; cursed; threatened; looked at the guns; and went off +to their boat. + +“It is murder that you will do,” one of them called out, “you are a +murderess, you Mademoiselle Fortin! you cause the people to die of +hunger!” + +“Not I,” she answered; “that is as the good God pleases. No matter. The +light shall burn.” + +They heard the babble of the men as they stumbled down the hill; the +grinding of the boat on the rocks as they shoved off; the rattle of the +oars in the rowlocks. After that the island was as still as a graveyard. + +Then Nataline sat down on the floor in the dark, and put her face in +her hands, and cried. Marcel tried to comfort her. She took his hand and +pushed it gently away from her waist. + +“No, Marcel,” she said, “not now! Not that, please, Marcel! Come into +the house. I want to talk with you.” + +They went into the cold, dark kitchen, lit a candle and kindled a fire +in the stove. Nataline busied herself with a score of things. She put +away the poor little store of provisions, sent Marcel for a pail of +water, made some tea, spread the table, and sat down opposite to him. +For a time she kept her eyes turned away from him, while she talked +about all sorts of things. Then she fell silent for a little, still not +looking at him. She got up and moved about the room, arranged two or +three packages on the shelves, shut the damper of the stove, glancing at +Marcel's back out of the corners of her eyes. Then she came back to her +chair, pushed her cup aside, rested both elbows on the table and her +chin in her hands, and looked Marcel square in the face with her clear +brown eyes. + +“My friend,” she said, “are you an honest man, un brave garcon?” + +For an instant he could say nothing. He was so puzzled. “Why yes, +Nataline,” he answered, “yes, surely--I hope.” + +“Then let me speak to you without fear,” she continued. “You do not +suppose that I am ignorant of what I have done this night. I am not a +baby. You are a man. I am a girl. We are shut up alone in this house for +two weeks, a month, God knows how long. You know what that means, what +people will say. I have risked all that a girl has most precious. I have +put my good name in your hands.” + +Marcel tried to speak, but she stopped him. + +“Let me finish. It is not easy to say. I know you are honourable. +I trust you waking and sleeping. But I am a woman. There must be no +love-making. We have other work to do. The light must not fail. You will +not touch me, you will not embrace me--not once--till after the boat has +come. Then”--she smiled at him like a sunburned angel--“well, is it a +bargain?” + +She put out one hand across the table. Marcel took it in both of his +own. He did not kiss it. He lifted it up in front of his face. + +“I swear to you, Nataline, you shall be to me as the Blessed Virgin +herself.” + +The next day they put the light in order, and the following night they +kindled it. They still feared another attack from the mainland, and +thought it needful that one of them should be on guard all the time, +though the machine itself was working beautifully and needed little +watching. Nataline took the night duty; it was her own choice; she loved +the charge of the lamp. Marcel was on duty through the day. They were +together for three or four hours in the morning and in the evening. + +It was not a desperate vigil like that affair with the broken clockwork +eight years before. There was no weary turning of the crank. There was +just enough work to do about the house and the tower to keep them busy. +The weather was fair. The worst thing was the short supply of food. +But though they were hungry, they were not starving. And Nataline still +played the fife. She jested, she sang, she told long fairy stories while +they sat in the kitchen. Marcel admitted that it was not at all a bad +arrangement. + +But his thoughts turned very often to the arrival of the supply-boat. +He hoped it would not be late. The ice was well broken up already and +driven far out into the gulf. The boat ought to be able to run down the +shore in good time. + +One evening as Nataline came down from her sleep she saw Marcel coming +up the rocks dragging a young seal behind him. + +“Hurra!” he shouted, “here is plenty of meat. I shot it out at the end +of the island, about an hour ago.” + +But Nataline said that they did not need the seal. There was still food +enough in the larder. On shore there must be greater need. Marcel must +take the seal over to the mainland that night and leave it on the beach +near the priest's house. He grumbled a little, but he did it. + +That was on the twenty-third of April. The clear sky held for three +days longer, calm, bright, halcyon weather. On the afternoon of the +twenty-seventh the clouds came down from the north, not a long furious +tempest, but a brief, sharp storm, with considerable wind and a +whirling, blinding fall of April snow. It was a bad night for boats at +sea, confusing, bewildering, a night when the lighthouse had to do its +best. Nataline was in the tower all night, tending the lamp, watching +the clockwork. Once it seemed to her that the lantern was so covered +with snow that light could not shine through. She got her long brush +and scraped the snow away. It was cold work, but she gloried in it. The +bright eye of the tower, winking, winking steadily through the storm +seemed to be the sign of her power in the world. It was hers. She kept +it shining. + +When morning came the wind was still blowing fitfully off shore, but +the snow had almost ceased. Nataline stopped the clockwork, and was just +climbing up into the lantern to put out the lamp, when Marcel's voice +hailed her. + +“Come down, Nataline, come down quick. Make haste!” + +She turned and hurried out, not knowing what was to come; perhaps a +message of trouble from the mainland, perhaps a new assault on the +lighthouse. + +As she came out of the tower, her brown eyes heavy from the night-watch, +her dark face pale from the cold, she saw Marcel standing on the rocky +knoll beside the house and pointing shoreward. + +She ran up beside him and looked. There, in the deep water between the +island and the point, lay the supply-boat, rocking quietly on the waves. + +It flashed upon her in a moment what it meant--the end of her fight, +relief for the village, victory! And the light that had guided the +little ship safe through the stormy night into the harbour was hers. + +She turned and looked up at the lamp, still burning. + +“I kept you!” she cried. + +Then she turned to Marcel; the colour rose quickly in her cheeks, the +light sparkled in her eyes; she smiled, and held out both her hands, +whispering, “Now you shall keep me!” + +There was a fine wedding on the last day of April, and from that time +the island took its new name,--the Isle of the Wise Virgin. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ruling Passion, by Henry van Dyke + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1048 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1049-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1049-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d3b05b6d --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1049-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7687 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1049 *** + +VANISHED ARIZONA + +Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman + + +by Martha Summerhayes + + + + +TO MY SON HARRY SUMMERHAYES WHO SHARED THE VICISSITUDES OF MY LIFE IN +ARIZONA, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED + + + + + +Preface + +I have written this story of my army life at the urgent and ceaseless +request of my children. + +For whenever I allude to those early days, and tell to them the tales +they have so often heard, they always say: "Now, mother, will you write +these stories for us? Please, mother, do; we must never forget them." + +Then, after an interval, "Mother, have you written those stories of +Arizona yet?" until finally, with the aid of some old letters written +from those very places (the letters having been preserved, with other +papers of mine, by an uncle in New England long since dead), I have been +able to give a fairly connected story. + +I have not attempted to commemorate my husband's brave career in the +Civil War, as I was not married until some years after the close of that +war, nor to describe the many Indian campaigns in which he took part, +nor to write about the achievements of the old Eighth Infantry. I leave +all that to the historian. I have given simply the impressions made upon +the mind of a young New England woman who left her comfortable home +in the early seventies, to follow a second lieutenant into the wildest +encampments of the American army. + +Hoping the story may possess some interest for the younger women of the +army, and possibly for some of our old friends, both in the army and in +civil life, I venture to send it forth. + +POSTCRIPT (second edition). + +The appendix to this, the second edition of my book, will tell something +of the kind manner in which the first edition was received by my friends +and the public at large. + +But as several people had expressed a wish that I should tell more of my +army experiences I have gone carefully over the entire book, adding some +detail and a few incidents which had come to my mind later. + +I have also been able, with some difficulty and much patient effort, +to secure several photographs of exceptional interest, which have been +added to the illustrations. + +January, 1911. + + + +CONTENTS + + PREFACE + + CHAPTER + I. GERMANY AND THE ARMY + II. I JOINED THE ARMY + III. ARMY HOUSE-KEEPING + IV. DOWN THE PACIFIC COAST + V. THE SLUE + VI. UP THE RIO COLORADO + VII. THE MOJAVE DESERT + VIII. LEARNING HOW TO SOLDIER + IX. ACROSS THE MOGOLLONS + X. A PERILOUS ADVENTURE + XI. CAMP APACHE + XII. LIFE AMONGST THE APACHES + XIII. A NEW RECRUIT + XIV. A MEMORABLE JOURNEY + XV. FORDING THE LITTLE COLORADO + XVI. STONEMAN'S LAKE + XVII. THE COLORADO DESERT + XVIII. EHRENBERG ON THE COLORADO + XIX. SUMMER AT EHRENBERG + XX. MY DELIVERER + XXI. WINTER IN EHRENBERG + XXII. RETURN TO THE STATES + XXIII. BACK TO ARIZONA + XXIV. UP THE VALLEY OF THE GILA + XXV. OLD CAMP MACDOWELL + XXVI. A SUDDEN ORDER + XXVII. THE EIGHTH FOOT LEAVES ARIZONA + XXVIII. CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA + XXIX. CHANGING STATION + XXX. FORT NIOBRARA + XXXI. SANTA FE + XXXII. TEXAS + XXXIII. DAVID'S ISLAND + + APPENDIX + + + + +VANISHED ARIZONA + + + + +CHAPTER I. GERMANY AND THE ARMY + +The stalwart men of the Prussian army, the Lancers, the Dragoons, the +Hussars, the clank of their sabres on the pavements, their brilliant +uniforms, all made an impression upon my romantic mind, and I listened +eagerly, in the quiet evenings, to tales of Hanover under King George, +to stories of battles lost, and the entry of the Prussians into the old +Residenz-stadt; the flight of the King, and the sorrow and chagrin which +prevailed. + +For I was living in the family of General Weste, the former +stadt-commandant of Hanover, who had served fifty years in the army and +had accompanied King George on his exit from the city. He was a gallant +veteran, with the rank of General-Lieutenant, ausser Dienst. A charming +and dignified man, accepting philosophically the fact that Hanover had +become Prussian, but loyal in his heart to his King and to old Hanover; +pretending great wrath when, on the King's birthday, he found yellow +and white sand strewn before his door, but unable to conceal the joyful +gleam in his eye when he spoke of it. + +The General's wife was the daughter of a burgomaster and had been +brought up in a neighboring town. She was a dear, kind soul. + +The house-keeping was simple, but stately and precise, as befitted +the rank of this officer. The General was addressed by the servants as +Excellenz and his wife as Frau Excellenz. A charming unmarried daughter +lived at home, making, with myself, a family of four. + +Life was spent quietly, and every evening, after our coffee (served in +the living-room in winter, and in the garden in summer), Frau Generalin +would amuse me with descriptions of life in her old home, and of how +girls were brought up in her day; how industry was esteemed by her +mother the greatest virtue, and idleness was punished as the most +beguiling sin. She was never allowed, she said, to read, even on Sunday, +without her knitting-work in her hands; and she would often sigh, and +say to me, in German (for dear Frau Generalin spoke no other tongue), +"Ach, Martha, you American girls are so differently brought up"; and I +would say, "But, Frau Generalin, which way do you think is the better?" +She would then look puzzled, shrug her shoulders, and often say, "Ach! +times are different I suppose, but my ideas can never change." + +Now the dear Frau Generalin did not speak a word of English, and as I +had had only a few lessons in German before I left America, I had the +utmost difficulty at first in comprehending what she said. She spoke +rapidly and I would listen with the closest attention, only to give up +in despair, and to say, "Gute Nacht," evening after evening, with my +head buzzing and my mind a blank. + +After a few weeks, however, I began to understand everything she said, +altho' I could not yet write or read the language, and I listened with +the greatest interest to the story of her marriage with young Lieutenant +Weste, of the bringing up of her four children, and of the old days in +Hanover, before the Prussians took possession. + +She described to me the brilliant Hanoverian Court, the endless +festivities and balls, the stately elegance of the old city, and the +cruel misfortunes of the King. And how, a few days after the King's +flight, the end of all things came to her; for she was politely +informed one evening, by a big Prussian major, that she must seek other +lodgings--he needed her quarters. At this point she always wept, and I +sympathized. + +Thus I came to know military life in Germany, and I fell in love with +the army, with its brilliancy and its glitter, with its struggles +and its romance, with its sharp contrasts, its deprivations, and its +chivalry. + +I came to know, as their guest, the best of old military society. They +were very old-fashioned and precise, and Frau Generalin often told me +that American girls were too ausgelassen in their manners. She often +reproved me for seating myself upon the sofa (which was only for old +people) and also for looking about too much when walking on the streets. +Young girls must keep their eyes more cast down, looking up only +occasionally. (I thought this dreadfully prim, as I was eager to see +everything). I was expected to stop and drop a little courtesy on +meeting an older woman, and then to inquire after the health of each +member of the family. It seemed to take a lot of time, but all the other +girls did it, and there seemed to be no hurry about anything, ever, +in that elegant old Residenz-stadt. Surely a contrast to our bustling +American towns. + +A sentiment seemed to underlie everything they did. The Emperor meant +so much to them, and they adored the Empress. A personal feeling, an +affection, such as I had never heard of in a republic, caused me to stop +and wonder if an empire were not the best, after all. And one day, +when the Emperor, passing through Hanover en route, drove down the +Georgen-strasse in an open barouche and raised his hat as he glanced at +the sidewalk where I happened to be standing, my heart seemed to stop +beating, and I was overcome by a most wonderful feeling--a feeling that +in a man would have meant chivalry and loyalty unto death. + +In this beautiful old city, life could not be taken any other than +leisurely. Theatres with early hours, the maid coming for me with a +lantern at nine o'clock, the frequent Kaffee-klatsch, the delightful +afternoon coffee at the Georgen-garten, the visits to the Zoological +gardens, where we always took our fresh rolls along with our +knitting-work in a basket, and then sat at a little table in the open, +and were served with coffee, sweet cream, and butter, by a strapping +Hessian peasant woman--all so simple, yet so elegant, so peaceful. + +We heard the best music at the theatre, which was managed with the same +precision, and maintained by the Government with the same generosity, +as in the days of King George. No one was allowed to enter after the +overture had begun, and an absolute hush prevailed. + +The orchestra consisted of sixty or more pieces, and the audience was +critical. The parquet was filled with officers in the gayest uniforms; +there were few ladies amongst them; the latter sat mostly in the boxes, +of which there were several tiers, and as soon as the curtain fell, +between the acts, the officers would rise, turn around, and level their +glasses at the boxes. Sometimes they came and visited in the boxes. + +As I had been brought up in a town half Quaker, half Puritan, the custom +of going to the theatre Sunday evenings was rather a questionable one +in my mind. But I soon fell in with their ways, and found that on Sunday +evenings there was always the most brilliant audience and the best plays +were selected. With this break-down of the wall of narrow prejudice, I +gave up others equally as narrow, and adopted the German customs with my +whole heart. + +I studied the language with unflinching perseverance, for this was the +opportunity I had dreamed about and longed for in the barren winter +evenings at Nantucket when I sat poring over Coleridge's translations of +Schiller's plays and Bayard Taylor's version of Goethe's Faust. + +Should I ever read these intelligently in the original? + +And when my father consented for me to go over and spend a year and live +in General Weste's family, there never was a happier or more grateful +young woman. Appreciative and eager, I did not waste a moment, and my +keen enjoyment of the German classics repaid me a hundred fold for all +my industry. + +Neither time nor misfortune, nor illness can take from me the memory of +that year of privileges such as is given few American girls to enjoy, +when they are at an age to fully appreciate them. + +And so completely separated was I from the American and English colony +that I rarely heard my own language spoken, and thus I lived, ate, +listened, talked, and even dreamed in German. + +There seemed to be time enough to do everything we wished; and, as the +Franco-Prussian war was just over (it was the year of 1871), and many +troops were in garrison at Hanover, the officers could always join us at +the various gardens for after-dinner coffee, which, by the way, was not +taken in the demi-tasse, but in good generous coffee-cups, with plenty +of rich cream. Every one drank at least two cups, the officers smoked, +the women knitted or embroidered, and those were among the pleasantest +hours I spent in Germany. + +The intrusion of unwelcome visitors was never to be feared, as, by +common consent, the various classes in Hanover kept by themselves, thus +enjoying life much better than in a country where everybody is striving +after the pleasures and luxuries enjoyed by those whom circumstances +have placed above them. + +The gay uniforms lent a brilliancy to every affair, however simple. +Officers were not allowed to appear en civile, unless on leave of +absence. + +I used to say, "Oh, Frau General, how fascinating it all is!" "Hush, +Martha," she would say; "life in the army is not always so brilliant as +it looks; in fact, we often call it, over here, 'glaenzendes Elend.'" + +These bitter words made a great impression upon my mind, and in after +years, on the American frontier, I seemed to hear them over and over +again. + +When I bade good-bye to the General and his family, I felt a tightening +about my throat and my heart, and I could not speak. Life in Germany had +become dear to me, and I had not known how dear until I was leaving it +forever. + + + + +CHAPTER II. I JOINED THE ARMY + +I was put in charge of the captain of the North German Lloyd S. S. +"Donau," and after a most terrific cyclone in mid-ocean, in which we +nearly foundered, I landed in Hoboken, sixteen days from Bremen. + +My brother, Harry Dunham, met me on the pier, saying, as he took me in +his arms, "You do not need to tell me what sort of a trip you have had; +it is enough to look at the ship--that tells the story." + +As the vessel had been about given up for lost, her arrival was somewhat +of an agreeable surprise to all our friends, and to none more so than +my old friend Jack, a second lieutenant of the United States army, who +seemed so glad to have me back in America, that I concluded the only +thing to do was to join the army myself. + +A quiet wedding in the country soon followed my decision, and we set +out early in April of the year 1874 to join his regiment, which was +stationed at Fort Russell, Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. + +I had never been west of New York, and Cheyenne seemed to me, in +contrast with the finished civilization of Europe, which I had so +recently left, the wildest sort of a place. + +Arriving in the morning, and alighting from the train, two gallant +officers, in the uniform of the United States infantry, approached +and gave us welcome; and to me, the bride, a special "welcome to the +regiment" was given by each of them with outstretched hands. + +Major Wilhelm said, "The ambulance is right here; you must come to our +house and stay until you get your quarters." + +Such was my introduction to the army--and to the army ambulance, in +which I was destined to travel so many miles. + +Four lively mules and a soldier driver brought us soon to the post, +and Mrs. Wilhelm welcomed us to her pleasant and comfortable-looking +quarters. + +I had never seen an army post in America. I had always lived in places +which needed no garrison, and the army, except in Germany, was an +unknown quantity to me. + +Fort Russell was a large post, and the garrison consisted of many +companies of cavalry and infantry. It was all new and strange to me. + +Soon after luncheon, Jack said to Major Wilhelm, "Well, now, I must go +and look for quarters: what's the prospect?" + +"You will have to turn some one out," said the Major, as they left the +house together. + +About an hour afterwards they returned, and Jack said, "Well, I have +turned out Lynch; but," he added, "as his wife and child are away, I do +not believe he'll care very much." + +"Oh," said I, "I'm so sorry to have to turn anybody out!" + +The Major and his wife smiled, and the former remarked, "You must not +have too much sympathy: it's the custom of the service--it's always +done--by virtue of rank. They'll hate you for doing it, but if you +don't do it they'll not respect you. After you've been turned out once +yourself, you will not mind turning others out." + +The following morning I drove over to Cheyenne with Mrs. Wilhelm, and +as I passed Lieutenant Lynch's quarters and saw soldiers removing +Mrs. Lynch's lares and penates, in the shape of a sewing machine, +lamp-shades, and other home-like things, I turned away in pity that such +customs could exist in our service. + +To me, who had lived my life in the house in which I was born, moving +was a thing to be dreaded. + +But Mrs. Wilhelm comforted me, and assured me it was not such a serious +matter after all. Army women were accustomed to it, she said. + + + + +CHAPTER III. ARMY HOUSE-KEEPING + +Not knowing before I left home just what was needed for house-keeping in +the army, and being able to gather only vague ideas on the subject from +Jack, who declared that his quarters were furnished admirably, I +had taken out with me but few articles in addition to the silver and +linen-chests. + +I began to have serious doubts on the subject of my menage, after +inspecting the bachelor furnishings which had seemed so ample to my +husband. But there was so much to be seen in the way of guard mount, +cavalry drill, and various military functions, besides the drives to +town and the concerts of the string orchestra, that I had little time to +think of the practical side of life. + +Added to this, we were enjoying the delightful hospitality of the +Wilhelms, and the Major insisted upon making me acquainted with the +"real old-fashioned army toddy" several times a day,--a new beverage +to me, brought up in a blue-ribbon community, where wine-bibbing and +whiskey drinking were rated as belonging to only the lowest classes. +To be sure, my father always drank two fingers of fine cognac before +dinner, but I had always considered that a sort of medicine for a man +advanced in years. + +Taken all in all, it is not to be wondered at if I saw not much in those +few days besides bright buttons, blue uniforms, and shining swords. + +Everything was military and gay and brilliant, and I forgot the very +existence of practical things, in listening to the dreamy strains of +Italian and German music, rendered by our excellent and painstaking +orchestra. For the Eighth Infantry loved good music, and had imported +its musicians direct from Italy. + +This came to an end, however, after a few days, and I was obliged to +descend from those heights to the dead level of domestic economy. + +My husband informed me that the quarters were ready for our occupancy +and that we could begin house-keeping at once. He had engaged a soldier +named Adams for a striker; he did not know whether Adams was much of +a cook, he said, but he was the only available man just then, as the +companies were up north at the Agency. + +Our quarters consisted of three rooms and a kitchen, which formed +one-half of a double house. + +I asked Jack why we could not have a whole house. I did not think I +could possibly live in three rooms and a kitchen. + +"Why, Martha," said he, "did you not know that women are not reckoned +in at all at the War Department? A lieutenant's allowance of quarters, +according to the Army Regulations, is one room and a kitchen, a +captain's allowance is two rooms and a kitchen, and so on up, until a +colonel has a fairly good house." I told him I thought it an outrage; +that lieutenants' wives needed quite as much as colonels' wives. + +He laughed and said, "You see we have already two rooms over our proper +allowance; there are so many married officers, that the Government has +had to stretch a point." + +After indulging in some rather harsh comments upon a government which +could treat lieutenants' wives so shabbily, I began to investigate my +surroundings. + +Jack had placed his furnishings (some lace curtains, camp chairs, and a +carpet) in the living-room, and there was a forlorn-looking bedstead in +the bedroom. A pine table in the dining-room and a range in the kitchen +completed the outfit. A soldier had scrubbed the rough floors with a +straw broom: it was absolutely forlorn, and my heart sank within me. + +But then I thought of Mrs. Wilhelm's quarters, and resolved to try my +best to make ours look as cheerful and pretty as hers. A chaplain was +about leaving the post and wished to dispose of his things, so we +bought a carpet of him, a few more camp chairs of various designs, and a +cheerful-looking table-cover. We were obliged to be very economical, as +Jack was a second lieutenant, the pay was small and a little in arrears, +after the wedding trip and long journey out. We bought white Holland +shades for the windows, and made the three rooms fairly comfortable and +then I turned my attention to the kitchen. + +Jack said I should not have to buy anything at all; the Quartermaster +Department furnished everything in the line of kitchen utensils; and, as +his word was law, I went over to the quartermaster store-house to select +the needed articles. + +After what I had been told, I was surprised to find nothing smaller than +two-gallon tea-kettles, meat-forks a yard long, and mess-kettles deep +enough to cook rations for fifty men! I rebelled, and said I would not +use such gigantic things. + +My husband said: "Now, Mattie, be reasonable; all the army women keep +house with these utensils; the regiment will move soon, and then what +should we do with a lot of tin pans and such stuff? You know a second +lieutenant is allowed only a thousand pounds of baggage when he changes +station." This was a hard lesson, which I learned later. + +Having been brought up in an old-time community, where women deferred to +their husbands in everything, I yielded, and the huge things were sent +over. I had told Mrs. Wilhelm that we were to have luncheon in our own +quarters. + +So Adams made a fire large enough to roast beef for a company of +soldiers, and he and I attempted to boil a few eggs in the deep +mess-kettle and to make the water boil in the huge tea-kettle. + +But Adams, as it turned out, was not a cook, and I must confess that my +own attention had been more engrossed by the study of German auxiliary +verbs, during the few previous years, than with the art of cooking. + +Of course, like all New England girls of that period, I knew how to make +quince jelly and floating islands, but of the actual, practical side of +cooking, and the management of a range, I knew nothing. + +Here was a dilemma, indeed! + +The eggs appeared to boil, but they did not seem to be done when we took +them off, by the minute-hand of the clock. + +I declared the kettle was too large; Adams said he did not understand it +at all. + +I could have wept with chagrin! Our first meal a deux! + +I appealed to Jack. He said, "Why, of course, Martha, you ought to know +that things do not cook as quickly at this altitude as they do down at +the sea level. We are thousands of feet above the sea here in Wyoming." +(I am not sure it was thousands, but it was hundreds at least.) + +So that was the trouble, and I had not thought of it! + +My head was giddy with the glamour, the uniform, the guard-mount, the +military music, the rarefied air, the new conditions, the new interests +of my life. Heine's songs, Goethe's plays, history and romance were +floating through my mind. Is it to be wondered at that I and Adams +together prepared the most atrocious meals that ever a new husband had +to eat? I related my difficulties to Jack, and told him I thought +we should never be able to manage with such kitchen utensils as were +furnished by the Q. M. D. + +"Oh, pshaw! You are pampered and spoiled with your New England +kitchens," said he; "you will have to learn to do as other army women +do--cook in cans and such things, be inventive, and learn to do with +nothing." This was my first lesson in army house-keeping. + +After my unpractical teacher had gone out on some official business, I +ran over to Mrs. Wilhelm's quarters and said, "Will you let me see your +kitchen closet?" + +She assented, and I saw the most beautiful array of tin-ware, shining +and neat, placed in rows upon the shelves and hanging from hooks on the +wall. + +"So!" I said; "my military husband does not know anything about these +things;" and I availed myself of the first trip of the ambulance over +to Cheyenne, bought a stock of tin-ware and had it charged, and made +no mention of it--because I feared that tin-ware was to be our bone of +contention, and I put off the evil day. + +The cooking went on better after that, but I did not have much +assistance from Adams. + +I had great trouble at first with the titles and the rank: but I soon +learned that many of the officers were addressed by the brevet title +bestowed upon them for gallant service in the Civil War, and I began +to understand about the ways and customs of the army of Uncle Sam. In +contrast to the Germans, the American lieutenants were not addressed by +their title (except officially); I learned to "Mr." all the lieutenants +who had no brevet. + +One morning I suggested to Adams that he should wash the front windows; +after being gone a half hour, to borrow a step-ladder, he entered the +room, mounted the ladder and began. I sat writing. Suddenly, he +faced around, and addressing me, said, "Madam, do you believe in +spiritualism?" + +"Good gracious! Adams, no; why do you ask me such a question?" + +This was enough; he proceeded to give a lecture on the subject worthy of +a man higher up on the ladder of this life. I bade him come to an end +as soon as I dared (for I was not accustomed to soldiers), and suggested +that he was forgetting his work. + +It was early in April, and the snow drifted through the crevices of the +old dried-out house, in banks upon our bed; but that was soon mended, +and things began to go smoothly enough, when Jack was ordered to join +his company, which was up at the Spotted Tail Agency. It was expected +that the Sioux under this chief would break out at any minute. They had +become disaffected about some treaty. I did not like to be left alone +with the Spiritualist, so Jack asked one of the laundresses, whose +husband was out with the company, to come and stay and take care of +me. Mrs. Patten was an old campaigner; she understood everything about +officers and their ways, and she made me absolutely comfortable for +those two lonely months. I always felt grateful to her; she was a dear +old Irish woman. + +All the families and a few officers were left at the post, and, with the +daily drive to Cheyenne, some small dances and theatricals, my time was +pleasantly occupied. + +Cheyenne in those early days was an amusing but unattractive frontier +town; it presented a great contrast to the old civilization I had +so recently left. We often saw women in cotton wrappers, high-heeled +slippers, and sun-bonnets, walking in the main streets. Cows, pigs, and +saloons seemed to be a feature of the place. + +In about six weeks, the affairs of the Sioux were settled, and the +troops returned to the post. The weather began to be uncomfortably hot +in those low wooden houses. I missed the comforts of home and the fresh +sea air of the coast, but I tried to make the best of it. + +Our sleeping-room was very small, and its one window looked out over the +boundless prairie at the back of the post. On account of the great heat, +we were obliged to have this window wide open at night. I heard the +cries and wails of various animals, but Jack said that was nothing--they +always heard them. + +Once, at midnight, the wails seemed to be nearer, and I was terrified; +but he told me 'twas only the half-wild cats and coyotes which prowled +around the post. I asked him if they ever came in. "Gracious, no!" he +said; "they are too wild." + +I calmed myself for sleep--when like lightning, one of the huge +creatures gave a flying leap in at our window, across the bed, and +through into the living-room. + +"Jerusalem!" cried the lieutenant, and flew after her, snatching his +sword, which stood in the corner, and poking vigorously under the divan. + +I rolled myself under the bed-covers, in the most abject terror lest +she might come back the same way; and, true enough, she did, with a most +piercing cry. I never had much rest after that occurrence, as we had no +protection against these wild-cats. + +The regiment, however, in June was ordered to Arizona, that dreaded and +then unknown land, and the uncertain future was before me. I saw the +other women packing china and their various belongings. I seemed to be +helpless. Jack was busy with things outside. He had three large army +chests, which were brought in and placed before me. "Now," he said, "all +our things must go into those chests"--and I supposed they must. + +I was pitifully ignorant of the details of moving, and I stood +despairingly gazing into the depths of those boxes, when the jolly +and stout wife of Major von Hermann passed my window. She glanced in, +comprehended the situation, and entered, saying, "You do not understand +how to pack? Let me help you: give me a cushion to kneel upon--now bring +everything that is to be packed, and I can soon show you how to do it." +With her kind assistance the chests were packed, and I found that we had +a great deal of surplus stuff which had to be put into rough cases, or +rolled into packages and covered with burlap. Jack fumed when he saw it, +and declared we could not take it all, as it exceeded our allowance of +weight. I declared we must take it, or we could not exist. + +With some concessions on both sides we were finally packed up, and +left Fort Russell about the middle of June, with the first detachment, +consisting of head-quarters and band, for San Francisco, over the Union +Pacific Railroad. + +For it must be remembered, that in 1874 there were no railroads in +Arizona, and all troops which were sent to that distant territory either +marched over-land through New Mexico, or were transported by steamer +from San Francisco down the coast, and up the Gulf of California to Fort +Yuma, from which point they marched up the valley of the Gila to the +southern posts, or continued up the Colorado River by steamer, to +other points of disembarkation, whence they marched to the posts in the +interior, or the northern part of the territory. + +Much to my delight, we were allowed to remain over in San Francisco, and +go down with the second detachment. We made the most of the time, which +was about a fortnight, and on the sixth of August we embarked with six +companies of soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel Wilkins in command, on the old +steamship "Newbern," Captain Metzger, for Arizona. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. DOWN THE PACIFIC COAST + +Now the "Newbern" was famous for being a good roller, and she lived +up to her reputation. For seven days I saw only the inside of our +stateroom. At the end of that time we arrived off Cape St. Lucas (the +extreme southern point of Lower California), and I went on deck. + +We anchored and took cattle aboard. I watched the natives tow them off, +the cattle swimming behind their small boats, and then saw the poor +beasts hoisted up by their horns to the deck of our ship. + +I thought it most dreadfully cruel, but was informed that it had been +done from time immemorial, so I ceased to talk about it, knowing that +I could not reform those aged countries, and realizing, faintly perhaps +(for I had never seen much of the rough side of life), that just as +cruel things were done to the cattle we consume in the North. + +Now that Mr. Sinclair, in his great book "The Jungle," has brought the +multiplied horrors of the great packing-houses before our very eyes, we +might witness the hoisting of the cattle over the ship's side without +feeling such intense pity, admitting that everything is relative, even +cruelty. + +It was now the middle of August, and the weather had become insufferably +hot, but we were out of the long swell of the Pacific Ocean; we had +rounded Cape St. Lucas, and were steaming up the Gulf of California, +towards the mouth of the Great Colorado, whose red and turbulent waters +empty themselves into this gulf, at its head. + +I now had time to become acquainted with the officers of the regiment, +whom I had not before met; they had come in from other posts and joined +the command at San Francisco. + +The daughter of the lieutenant-colonel was on board, the beautiful and +graceful Caroline Wilkins, the belle of the regiment; and Major Worth, +to whose company my husband belonged. I took a special interest in the +latter, as I knew we must face life together in the wilds of Arizona. I +had time to learn something about the regiment and its history; and that +Major Worth's father, whose monument I had so often seen in New York, +was the first colonel of the Eighth Infantry, when it was organized in +the State of New York in 1838. + +The party on board was merry enough, and even gay. There was Captain +Ogilby, a great, genial Scotchman, and Captain Porter, a graduate of +Dublin, and so charmingly witty. He seemed very devoted to Miss Wilkins, +but Miss Wilkins was accustomed to the devotion of all the officers of +the Eighth Infantry. In fact, it was said that every young lieutenant +who joined the regiment had proposed to her. She was most attractive, +and as she had too kind a heart to be a coquette, she was a universal +favorite with the women as well as with the men. + +There was Ella Bailey, too, Miss Wilkins' sister, with her young and +handsome husband and their young baby. + +Then, dear Mrs. Wilkins, who had been so many years in the army that she +remembered crossing the plains in a real ox-team. She represented the +best type of the older army woman--and it was so lovely to see her +with her two daughters, all in the same regiment. A mother of grown-up +daughters was not often met with in the army. + +And Lieutenant-Colonel Wilkins, a gentleman in the truest sense of +the word--a man of rather quiet tastes, never happier than when he +had leisure for indulging his musical taste in strumming all sorts of +Spanish fandangos on the guitar, or his somewhat marked talent with the +pencil and brush. + +The heat of the staterooms compelled us all to sleep on deck, so our +mattresses were brought up by the soldiers at night, and spread about. +The situation, however, was so novel and altogether ludicrous, and our +fear of rats which ran about on deck so great, that sleep was well-nigh +out of the question. + +Before dawn, we fled to our staterooms, but by sunrise we were glad to +dress and escape from their suffocating heat and go on deck again. +Black coffee and hard-tack were sent up, and this sustained us until the +nine-o'clock breakfast, which was elaborate, but not good. There was no +milk, of course, except the heavily sweetened sort, which I could not +use: it was the old-time condensed and canned milk; the meats were +beyond everything, except the poor, tough, fresh beef we had seen +hoisted over the side, at Cape St. Lucas. The butter, poor at the +best, began to pour like oil. Black coffee and bread, and a baked sweet +potato, seemed the only things that I could swallow. + +The heat in the Gulf of California was intense. Our trunks were brought +up from the vessel's hold, and we took out summer clothing. But how +inadequate and inappropriate it was for that climate! Our faces burned +and blistered; even the parting on the head burned, under the awnings +which were kept spread. The ice-supply decreased alarmingly, the meats +turned green, and when the steward went down into the refrigerator, +which was somewhere below the quarter-deck, to get provisions for the +day, every woman held a bottle of salts to her nose, and the officers +fled to the forward part of the ship. The odor which ascended from +that refrigerator was indescribable: it lingered and would not go. It +followed us to the table, and when we tasted the food we tasted the +odor. We bribed the steward for ice. Finally, I could not go below at +all, but had a baked sweet potato brought on deck, and lived several +days upon that diet. + +On the 14th of August we anchored off Mazatlan, a picturesque and +ancient adobe town in old Mexico. The approach to this port was +strikingly beautiful. Great rocks, cut by the surf into arches and +caverns, guarded the entrance to the harbor. We anchored two miles out. +A customs and a Wells-Fargo boat boarded us, and many natives came along +side, bringing fresh cocoanuts, bananas, and limes. Some Mexicans bound +for Guaymas came on board, and a troupe of Japanese jugglers. + +While we were unloading cargo, some officers and their wives went on +shore in one of the ship's boats, and found it a most interesting place. +It was garrisoned by Mexican troops, uniformed in white cotton shirts +and trousers. They visited the old hotel, the amphitheatre where the +bull-fights were held, and the old fort. They told also about the +cock-pits--and about the refreshing drinks they had. + +My thirst began to be abnormal. We bought a dozen cocoanuts, and I drank +the milk from them, and made up my mind to go ashore at the next port; +for after nine days with only thick black coffee and bad warm water to +drink, I was longing for a cup of good tea or a glass of fresh, sweet +milk. + +A day or so more brought us to Guaymas, another Mexican port. Mrs. +Wilkins said she had heard something about an old Spaniard there, +who used to cook meals for stray travellers. This was enough. I was +desperately hungry and thirsty, and we decided to try and find him. Mrs. +Wilkins spoke a little Spanish, and by dint of inquiries we found the +man's house, a little old, forlorn, deserted-looking adobe casa. + +We rapped vigorously upon the old door, and after some minutes a small, +withered old man appeared. + +Mrs. Wilkins told him what we wanted, but this ancient Delmonico +declined to serve us, and said, in Spanish, the country was "a desert"; +he had "nothing in the house"; he had "not cooked a meal in years"; he +could not; and, finally, he would not; and he gently pushed the door to +in our faces. But we did not give it up, and Mrs. Wilkins continued to +persuade. I mustered what Spanish I knew, and told him I would pay him +any price for a cup of coffee with fresh milk. He finally yielded, and +told us to return in one hour. + +So we walked around the little deserted town. I could think only of the +breakfast we were to have in the old man's casa. And it met and exceeded +our wildest anticipations, for, just fancy! We were served with a +delicious boullion, then chicken, perfectly cooked, accompanied by some +dish flavored with chile verde, creamy biscuit, fresh butter, and golden +coffee with milk. There were three or four women and several officers in +the party, and we had a merry breakfast. We paid the old man generously, +thanked him warmly, and returned to the ship, fortified to endure the +sight of all the green ducks that came out of the lower hold. + +You must remember that the "Newbern" was a small and old propeller, +not fitted up for passengers, and in those days the great refrigerating +plants were unheard of. The women who go to the Philippines on our great +transports of to-day cannot realize and will scarcely believe what we +endured for lack of ice and of good food on that never-to-be-forgotten +voyage down the Pacific coast and up the Gulf of California in the +summer of 1874. + + + + +CHAPTER V. THE SLUE + +At last, after a voyage of thirteen days, we came to anchor a mile or so +off Port Isabel, at the mouth of the Colorado River. A narrow but deep +slue runs up into the desert land, on the east side of the river's +mouth, and provides a harbor of refuge for the flat-bottomed +stern-wheelers which meet the ocean steamers at this point. Hurricanes +are prevalent at this season in the Gulf of California, but we had been +fortunate in not meeting with any on the voyage. The wind now freshened, +however, and beat the waves into angry foam, and there we lay for three +days on the "Newbern," off Port Isabel, before the sea was calm enough +for the transfer of troops and baggage to the lighters. + +This was excessively disagreeable. The wind was like a breath from a +furnace; it seemed as though the days would never end, and the wind +never stop blowing. Jack's official diary says: "One soldier died +to-day." + +Finally, on the fourth day, the wind abated, and the transfer was begun. +We boarded the river steamboat "Cocopah," towing a barge loaded with +soldiers, and steamed away for the slue. I must say that we welcomed the +change with delight. Towards the end of the afternoon the "Cocopah" put +her nose to the shore and tied up. It seemed strange not to see pier +sand docks, nor even piles to tie to. Anchors were taken ashore and the +boat secured in that manner: there being no trees of sufficient size to +make fast to. + +The soldiers went into camp on shore. The heat down in that low, flat +place was intense. Another man died that night. + +What was our chagrin, the next morning, to learn that we must go back to +the "Newbern," to carry some freight from up-river. There was nothing +to do but stay on board and tow that dreary barge, filled with hot, red, +baked-looking ore, out to the ship, unload, and go back up the slue. +Jack's diary records: "Aug. 23rd. Heat awful. Pringle died to-day." He +was the third soldier to succumb. It seemed to me their fate was a hard +one. To die, down in that wretched place, to be rolled in a blanket and +buried on those desert shores, with nothing but a heap of stones to mark +their graves. + +The adjutant of the battalion read the burial service, and the +trumpeters stepped to the edge of the graves and sounded "Taps," which +echoed sad and melancholy far over those parched and arid lands. My eyes +filled with tears, for one of the soldiers was from our own company, and +had been kind to me. + +Jack said: "You mustn't cry, Mattie; it's a soldier's life, and when a +man enlists he must take his chances." + +"Yes, but," I said, "somewhere there must be a mother or sister, or some +one who cares for these poor men, and it's all so sad to think of." + +"Well, I know it is sad," he replied, soothingly, "but listen! It is all +over, and the burial party is returning." + +I listened and heard the gay strains of "The girl I left behind me," +which the trumpeters were playing with all their might. "You see," said +Jack, "it would not do for the soldiers to be sad when one of them +dies. Why, it would demoralize the whole command. So they play these gay +things to cheer them up." + +And I began to feel that tears must be out of place at a soldier's +funeral. I attended many a one after that, but I had too much +imagination, and in spite of all my brave efforts, visions of the poor +boy's mother on some little farm in Missouri or Kansas perhaps, or in +some New England town, or possibly in the old country, would come before +me, and my heart was filled with sadness. + +The Post Hospital seemed to me a lonesome place to die in, although the +surgeon and soldier attendants were kind to the sick men. There were no +women nurses in the army in those days. + +The next day, the "Cocopah" started again and towed a barge out to the +ship. But the hot wind sprang up and blew fiercely, and we lay off and +on all day, until it was calm enough to tow her back to the slue. By +that time I had about given up all hope of getting any farther, and if +the weather had only been cooler I could have endured with equanimity +the idle life and knocking about from the ship to the slue, and from +the slue to the ship. But the heat was unbearable. We had to unpack our +trunks again and get out heavy-soled shoes, for the zinc which covered +the decks of these river-steamers burned through the thin slippers we +had worn on the ship. + +That day we had a little diversion, for we saw the "Gila" come down the +river and up the slue, and tie up directly alongside of us. She had on +board and in barges four companies of the Twenty-third Infantry, who +were going into the States. We exchanged greetings and visits, and from +the great joy manifested by them all, I drew my conclusions as to what +lay before us, in the dry and desolate country we were about to enter. + +The women's clothes looked ridiculously old-fashioned, and I wondered if +I should look that way when my time came to leave Arizona. + +Little cared they, those women of the Twenty-third, for, joy upon joys! +They saw the "Newbern" out there in the offing, waiting to take them +back to green hills, and to cool days and nights, and to those they had +left behind, three years before. + +On account of the wind, which blew again with great violence, the +"Cocopah" could not leave the slue that day. The officers and soldiers +were desperate for something to do. So they tried fishing, and caught +some "croakers," which tasted very fresh and good, after all the curried +and doctored-up messes we had been obliged to eat on board ship. + +We spent seven days in and out of that slue. Finally, on August the +26th, the wind subsided and we started up river. Towards sunset we +arrived at a place called "Old Soldier's Camp." There the "Gila" joined +us, and the command was divided between the two river-boats. We were +assigned to the "Gila," and I settled myself down with my belongings, +for the remainder of the journey up river. + +We resigned ourselves to the dreadful heat, and at the end of two more +days the river had begun to narrow, and we arrived at Fort Yuma, which +was at that time the post best known to, and most talked about by army +officers of any in Arizona. No one except old campaigners knew much +about any other post in the Territory. + +It was said to be the very hottest place that ever existed, and from the +time we left San Francisco we had heard the story, oft repeated, of the +poor soldier who died at Fort Yuma, and after awhile returned to beg for +his blankets, having found the regions of Pluto so much cooler than the +place he had left. But the fort looked pleasant to us, as we approached. +It lay on a high mesa to the left of us and there was a little green +grass where the post was built. + +None of the officers knew as yet their destination, and I found myself +wishing it might be our good fortune to stay at Fort Yuma. It seemed +such a friendly place. + +Lieutenant Haskell, Twelfth Infantry, who was stationed there, came down +to the boat to greet us, and brought us our letters from home. He then +extended his gracious hospitality to us all, arranging for us to come to +his quarters the next day for a meal, and dividing the party as best he +could accommodate us. It fell to our lot to go to breakfast with Major +and Mrs. Wells and Miss Wilkins. + +An ambulance was sent the next morning, at nine o'clock, to bring us up +the steep and winding road, white with heat, which led to the fort. + +I can never forget the taste of the oatmeal with fresh milk, the eggs +and butter, and delicious tomatoes, which were served to us in his +latticed dining-room. + +After twenty-three days of heat and glare, and scorching winds, +and stale food, Fort Yuma and Mr. Haskell's dining-room seemed like +Paradise. + +Of course it was hot; it was August, and we expected it. But the heat +of those places can be much alleviated by the surroundings. There were +shower baths, and latticed piazzas, and large ollas hanging in the +shade of them, containing cool water. Yuma was only twenty days from San +Francisco, and they were able to get many things direct by steamer. Of +course there was no ice, and butter was kept only by ingenious devices +of the Chinese servants; there were but few vegetables, but what was to +be had at all in that country, was to be had at Fort Yuma. + +We staid one more day, and left two companies of the regiment there. +When we departed, I felt, somehow, as though we were saying good-bye to +the world and civilization, and as our boat clattered and tugged away +up river with its great wheel astern, I could not help looking back +longingly to old Fort Yuma. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. UP THE RIO COLORADO + +And now began our real journey up the Colorado River, that river unknown +to me except in my early geography lessons--that mighty and untamed +river, which is to-day unknown except to the explorer, or the few people +who have navigated its turbulent waters. Back in memory was the picture +of it on the map; here was the reality, then, and here we were, on the +steamer "Gila," Captain Mellon, with the barge full of soldiers towing +on after us, starting for Fort Mojave, some two hundred miles above. + +The vague and shadowy foreboding that had fluttered through my mind +before I left Fort Russell had now also become a reality and crowded out +every other thought. The river, the scenery, seemed, after all, but an +illusion, and interested me but in a dreamy sort of way. + +We had staterooms, but could not remain in them long at a time, on +account of the intense heat. I had never felt such heat, and no one else +ever had or has since. The days were interminable. We wandered around +the boat, first forward, then aft, to find a cool spot. We hung up our +canteens (covered with flannel and dipped in water), where they would +swing in the shade, thereby obtaining water which was a trifle cooler +than the air. There was no ice, and consequently no fresh provisions. A +Chinaman served as steward and cook, and at the ringing of a bell we all +went into a small saloon back of the pilothouse, where the meals were +served. Our party at table on the "Gila" consisted of several unmarried +officers, and several officers with their wives, about eight or nine in +all, and we could have had a merry time enough but for the awful heat, +which destroyed both our good looks and our tempers. The fare was +meagre, of course; fresh biscuit without butter, very salt boiled beef, +and some canned vegetables, which were poor enough in those days. Pies +made from preserved peaches or plums generally followed this delectable +course. Chinamen, as we all know, can make pies under conditions that +would stagger most chefs. They may have no marble pastry-slab, and the +lard may run like oil, still they can make pies that taste good to the +hungry traveller. + +But that dining-room was hot! The metal handles of the knives were +uncomfortably warm to the touch; and even the wooden arms of the chairs +felt as if they were slowly igniting. After a hasty meal, and a few +remarks upon the salt beef, and the general misery of our lot, we would +seek some spot which might be a trifle cooler. A siesta was out of the +question, as the staterooms were insufferable; and so we dragged out the +weary days. + +At sundown the boat put her nose up to the bank and tied up for the +night. The soldiers left the barges and went into camp on shore, to +cook their suppers and to sleep. The banks of the river offered no very +attractive spot upon which to make a camp; they were low, flat, and +covered with underbrush and arrow-weed, which grew thick to the water's +edge. I always found it interesting to watch the barge unload the men at +sundown. + +At twilight some of the soldiers came on board and laid our mattresses +side by side on the after deck. Pajamas and loose gowns were soon en +evidence, but nothing mattered, as they were no electric lights to +disturb us with their glare. Rank also mattered not; Lieutenant-Colonel +Wilkins and his wife lay down to rest, with the captains and lieutenants +and their wives, wherever their respective strikers had placed their +mattresses (for this was the good old time when the soldiers were +allowed to wait upon officers 'families). + +Under these circumstances, much sleep was not to be thought of; the +sultry heat by the river bank, and the pungent smell of the arrow-weed +which lined the shores thickly, contributed more to stimulate than to +soothe the weary nerves. But the glare of the sun was gone, and after +awhile a stillness settled down upon this company of Uncle Sam's +servants and their followers. (In the Army Regulations, wives are not +rated except as "camp followers.") + +But even this short respite from the glare of the sun was soon to end; +for before the crack of dawn, or, as it seemed to us, shortly after +midnight, came such a clatter with the fires and the high-pressure +engine and the sparks, and what all they did in that wild and reckless +land, that further rest was impossible, and we betook ourselves with +our mattresses to the staterooms, for another attempt at sleep, which, +however, meant only failure, as the sun rose incredibly early on that +river, and we were glad to take a hasty sponge from a basin of rather +thick looking river-water, and go again out on deck, where we could +always get a cup of black coffee from the Chinaman. + +And thus began another day of intolerable glare and heat. Conversation +lagged; no topic seemed to have any interest except the thermometer, +which hung in the coolest place on the boat; and one day when Major +Worth looked at it and pronounced it one hundred and twenty-two in the +shade, a grim despair seized upon me, and I wondered how much more heat +human beings could endure. There was nothing to relieve the monotony of +the scenery. On each side of us, low river banks, and nothing between +those and the horizon line. On our left was Lower [*] California, and on +our right, Arizona. Both appeared to be deserts. + + * This term is here used (as we used it at Ehrenberg) to + designate the low, flat lands west of the river, without any + reference to Lower California proper,--the long peninsula + belonging to Mexico. + +As the river narrowed, however, the trip began to be enlivened by the +constant danger of getting aground on the shifting sand-bars which are +so numerous in this mighty river. Jack Mellon was then the most famous +pilot on the Colorado, and he was very skilful in steering clear of the +sand-bars, skimming over them, or working his boat off, when once fast +upon them. The deck-hands, men of a mixed Indian and Mexican race, stood +ready with long poles, in the bow, to jump overboard, when we struck +a bar, and by dint of pushing, and reversing the engine, the boat would +swing off. + +On approaching a shallow place, they would sound with their poles, and +in a sing-song high-pitched tone drawl out the number of feet. Sometimes +their sleepy drawling tones would suddenly cease, and crying loudly, "No +alli agua!" they would swing themselves over the side of the boat into +the river, and begin their strange and intricate manipulations with the +poles. Then, again, they would carry the anchor away off and by means of +great spars, and some method too complicated for me to describe, Captain +Mellon would fairly lift the boat over the bar. + +But our progress was naturally much retarded, and sometimes we were +aground an hour, sometimes a half day or more. Captain Mellon was +always cheerful. River steamboating was his life, and sand-bars were his +excitement. On one occasion, I said, "Oh! Captain, do you think we +shall get off this bar to-day?" "Well, you can't tell," he said, with a +twinkle in his eye; "one trip, I lay fifty-two days on a bar," and then, +after a short pause, "but that don't happen very often; we sometimes lay +a week, though; there is no telling; the bars change all the time." + +Sometimes the low trees and brushwood on the banks parted, and a young +squaw would peer out at us. This was a little diversion, and picturesque +besides. They wore very short skirts made of stripped bark, and as +they held back the branches of the low willows, and looked at us with +curiosity, they made pictures so pretty that I have never forgotten +them. We had no kodaks then, but even if we had had them, they could not +have reproduced the fine copper color of those bare shoulders and arms, +the soft wood colors of the short bark skirts, the gleam of the sun upon +their blue-black hair, and the turquoise color of the wide bead-bands +which encircled their arms. + +One morning, as I was trying to finish out a nap in my stateroom, +Jack came excitedly in and said: "Get up, Martha, we are coming to +Ehrenberg!" Visions of castles on the Rhine, and stories of the +middle ages floated through my mind, as I sprang up, in pleasurable +anticipation of seeing an interesting and beautiful place. Alas! for my +ignorance. I saw but a row of low thatched hovels, perched on the edge +of the ragged looking river-bank; a road ran lengthwise along, and +opposite the hovels I saw a store and some more mean-looking huts of +adobe. + +"Oh! Jack!" I cried, "and is that Ehrenberg? Who on earth gave such a +name to the wretched place?" + +"Oh, some old German prospector, I suppose; but never mind, the place +is all right enough. Come! Hurry up! We are going to stop here and land +freight. There is an officer stationed here. See those low white walls? +That is where he lives. Captain Bernard of the Fifth Cavalry. It's quite +a place; come out and see it." + +But I did not go ashore. Of all dreary, miserable-looking settlements +that one could possibly imagine, that was the worst. An unfriendly, +dirty, and Heaven-forsaken place, inhabited by a poor class of Mexicans +and half-breeds. It was, however, an important shipping station for +freight which was to be sent overland to the interior, and there was +always one army officer stationed there. + +Captain Bernard came on board to see us. I did not ask him how he liked +his station; it seemed to me too satirical; like asking the Prisoner of +Chillon, for instance, how he liked his dungeon. + +I looked over towards those low white walls, which enclosed the +Government corral and the habitation of this officer, and thanked my +stars that no such dreadful detail had come to my husband. I did not +dream that in less than a year this exceptionally hard fate was to be my +own. + +We left Ehrenberg with no regrets, and pushed on up river. + +On the third of September the boilers "foamed" so that we had to tie up +for nearly a day. This was caused by the water being so very muddy. The +Rio Colorado deserves its name, for its swift-flowing current sweeps by +like a mass of seething red liquid, turbulent and thick and treacherous. +It was said on the river, that those who sank beneath its surface were +never seen again, and in looking over into those whirlpools and swirling +eddies, one might well believe this to be true. + +From there on, up the river, we passed through great canons and the +scenery was grand enough; but one cannot enjoy scenery with the mercury +ranging from 107 to 122 in the shade. The grandeur was quite lost upon +us all, and we were suffocated by the scorching heat radiating from +those massive walls of rocks between which we puffed and clattered +along. + +I must confess that the history of this great river was quite unknown to +me then. I had never read of the early attempts made to explore it, both +from above and from its mouth, and the wonders of the "Grand Canon" were +as yet unknown to the world. I did not realize that, as we steamed along +between those high perpendicular walls of rock, we were really seeing +the lower end of that great chasm which now, thirty years later, has +become one of the most famous resorts of this country and, in fact, of +the world. + +There was some mention made of Major Powell, that daring adventurer, +who, a few years previously, had accomplished the marvellous feat of +going down the Colorado and through the Grand Canon, in a small boat, he +being the first man who had at that time ever accomplished it, many men +having lost their lives in the attempt. + +At last, on the 8th of September, we arrived at Camp Mojave, on the +right bank of the river; a low, square enclosure, on the low level of +the flat land near the river. It seemed an age since we had left Yuma +and twice an age since we had left the mouth of the river. But it was +only eighteen days in all, and Captain Mellon remarked: "A quick trip!" +and congratulated us on the good luck we had had in not being detained +on the sandbars. "Great Heavens," I thought, "if that is what they call +a quick trip!" But I do not know just what I thought, for those eighteen +days on the Great Colorado in midsummer, had burned themselves into my +memory, and I made an inward vow that nothing would ever force me into +such a situation again. I did not stop to really think; I only felt, and +my only feeling was a desire to get cool and to get out of the Territory +in some other way and at some cooler season. How futile a wish, and how +futile a vow! + + Dellenbaugh, who was with Powell in 1869 in his second + expedition down the river in small boats, has given to the + world a most interesting account of this wonderful river and + the canons through which it cuts its tempestuous way to the + Gulf of California, in two volumes entitled "The Romance of + the Great Colorado" and "A Canon Voyage". + +We bade good-bye to our gallant river captain and watched the great +stern-wheeler as she swung out into the stream, and, heading up river, +disappeared around a bend; for even at that time this venturesome pilot +had pushed his boat farther up than any other steam-craft had ever +gone, and we heard that there were terrific rapids and falls and unknown +mysteries above. The superstition of centuries hovered over the "great +cut," and but few civilized beings had looked down into its awful +depths. Brave, dashing, handsome Jack Mellon! What would I give and +what would we all give, to see thee once more, thou Wizard of the Great +Colorado! + +We turned our faces towards the Mojave desert, and I wondered, what +next? + +The Post Surgeon kindly took care of us for two days and nights, and we +slept upon the broad piazzas of his quarters. + +We heard no more the crackling and fizzing of the stern-wheeler's +high-pressure engines at daylight, and our eyes, tired with gazing at +the red whirlpools of the river, found relief in looking out upon the +grey-white flat expanse which surrounded Fort Mojave, and merged itself +into the desert beyond. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. THE MOJAVE DESERT + +Thou white and dried-up sea! so old! So strewn with wealth, so sown +with gold! Yes, thou art old and hoary white With time and ruin of +all things, And on thy lonesome borders Night Sits brooding o'er with +drooping wings.--JOAQUIN MILLER. + + +The country had grown steadily more unfriendly ever since leaving Fort +Yuma, and the surroundings of Camp Mojave were dreary enough. + +But we took time to sort out our belongings, and the officers arranged +for transportation across the Territory. Some had bought, in San +Francisco, comfortable travelling-carriages for their families. They +were old campaigners; they knew a thing or two about Arizona; we +lieutenants did not know, we had never heard much about this part of our +country. But a comfortable large carriage, known as a Dougherty wagon, +or, in common army parlance, an ambulance, was secured for me to travel +in. This vehicle had a large body, with two seats facing each other, and +a seat outside for the driver. The inside of the wagon could be closed +if desired by canvas sides and back which rolled up and down, and by a +curtain which dropped behind the driver's seat. So I was enabled to have +some degree of privacy, if I wished. + +We repacked our mess-chest, and bought from the Commissary at Mojave the +provisions necessary for the long journey to Fort Whipple, which was the +destination of one of the companies and the headquarters officers. + +On the morning of September 10th everything in the post was astir with +preparations for the first march. It was now thirty-five days since we +left San Francisco, but the change from boat to land travelling offered +an agreeable diversion after the monotony of the river. I watched with +interest the loading of the great prairie-schooners, into which went the +soldiers' boxes and the camp equipage. Outside was lashed a good deal of +the lighter stuff; I noticed a barrel of china, which looked much like +our own, lashed directly over one wheel. Then there were the massive +blue army wagons, which were also heavily loaded; the laundresses with +their children and belongings were placed in these. + +At last the command moved out. It was to me a novel sight. The wagons +and schooners were each drawn by teams of six heavy mules, while a team +of six lighter mules was put to each ambulance and carriage. These +were quite different from the draught animals I had always seen in the +Eastern States; these Government mules being sleek, well-fed and trained +to trot as fast as the average carriage-horse. The harnesses were quite +smart, being trimmed off with white ivory rings. Each mule was "Lize" +or "Fanny" or "Kate", and the soldiers who handled the lines were +accustomed to the work; for work, and arduous work, it proved to be, as +we advanced into the then unknown Territory of Arizona. + +The main body of the troops marched in advance; then came the ambulances +and carriages, followed by the baggage-wagons and a small rear-guard. +When the troops were halted once an hour for rest, the officers, who +marched with the soldiers, would come to the ambulances and chat awhile, +until the bugle call for "Assembly" sounded, when they would join their +commands again, the men would fall in, the call "Forward" was sounded, +and the small-sized army train moved on. + +The first day's march was over a dreary country; a hot wind blew, and +everything was filled with dust. I had long ago discarded my hat, as an +unnecessary and troublesome article; consequently my head wa snow a mass +of fine white dust, which stuck fast, of course. I was covered from head +to foot with it, and it would not shake off, so, although our steamboat +troubles were over, our land troubles had begun. + +We reached, after a few hours' travel, the desolate place where we were +to camp. + +In the mean time, it had been arranged for Major Worth, who had no +family, to share our mess, and we had secured the services of a soldier +belonging to his company whose ability as a camp cook was known to both +officers. + +I cannot say that life in the army, as far as I had gone, presented any +very great attractions. This, our first camp, was on the river, a little +above Hardyville. Good water was there, and that was all; I had not yet +learned to appreciate that. There was not a tree nor a shrub to give +shade. The only thing I could see, except sky and sand, was a ruined +adobe enclosure, with no roof. I sat in the ambulance until our tent was +pitched, and then Jack came to me, followed by a six-foot soldier, and +said: "Mattie, this is Bowen, our striker; now I want you to tell him +what he shall cook for our supper; and--don't you think it would be +nice if you could show him how to make some of those good New England +doughnuts? I think Major Worth might like them; and after all the +awful stuff we have had, you know," et caetera, et caetera. I met the +situation, after an inward struggle, and said, weakly, "Where are the +eggs?" "Oh," said he, "you don't need eggs; you're on the frontier now; +you must learn to do without eggs." + +Everything in me rebelled, but still I yielded. You see I had been +married only six months; the women at home, and in Germany also, had +always shown great deference to their husbands' wishes. But at that +moment I almost wished Major Worth and Jack and Bowen and the mess-chest +at the bottom of the Rio Colorado. However, I nerved myself for the +effort, and when Bowen had his camp-fire made, he came and called me. + +At the best, I never had much confidence in my ability as a cook, but +as a camp cook! Ah, me! Everything seemed to swim before my eyes, and I +fancied that the other women were looking at me from their tents. Bowen +was very civil, turned back the cover of the mess-chest and propped it +up. That was the table. Then he brought me a tin basin, and some flour, +some condensed milk, some sugar, and a rolling-pin, and then he hung a +camp-kettle with lard in it over the fire. I stirred up a mixture in +the basin, but the humiliation of failure was spared me, for just then, +without warning, came one of those terrific sandstorms which prevail +on the deserts of Arizona, blowing us all before it in its fury, and +filling everything with sand. + +We all scurried to the tents; some of them had blown down. There was not +much shelter, but the storm was soon over, and we stood collecting +our scattered senses. I saw Mrs. Wilkins at the door of her tent. She +beckoned to me; I went over there, and she said: "Now, my dear, I am +going to give you some advice. You must not take it unkindly. I am an +old army woman and I have made many campaigns with the Colonel; you have +but just joined the army. You must never try to do any cooking at the +camp-fire. The soldiers are there for that work, and they know lots more +about it than any of us do." + +"But, Jack," I began-- + +"Never mind Jack," said she; "he does not know as much as I do about it; +and when you reach your post," she added, "you can show him what you can +do in that line." + +Bowen cleared away the sandy remains of the doubtful dough, and prepared +for us a very fair supper. Soldiers' bacon, and coffee, and biscuits +baked in a Dutch oven. + +While waiting for the sun to set, we took a short stroll over to the +adobe ruins. Inside the enclosure lay an enormous rattlesnake, coiled. +It was the first one I had ever seen except in a cage, and I was +fascinated by the horror of the round, grayish-looking heap, so near the +color of the sand on which it lay. Some soldiers came and killed it. +But I noticed that Bowen took extra pains that night, to spread buffalo +robes under our mattresses, and to place around them a hair lariat. +"Snakes won't cross over that," he said, with a grin. + +Bowen was a character. Originally from some farm in Vermont, he had +served some years with the Eighth Infantry, and for a long time in the +same company under Major Worth, and had cooked for the bachelors' mess. +He was very tall, and had a good-natured face, but he did not have much +opinion of what is known as etiquette, either military or civil; he +seemed to consider himself a sort of protector to the officers of +Company K, and now, as well, to the woman who had joined the company. +He took us all under his wing, as it were, and although he had to be +sharply reprimanded sometimes, in a kind of language which he seemed to +expect, he was allowed more latitude than most soldiers. + +This was my first night under canvas in the army. I did not like those +desert places, and they grew to have a horror for me. + +At four o'clock in the morning the cook's call sounded, the mules were +fed, and the crunching and the braying were something to awaken the +heaviest sleepers. Bowen called us. I was much upset by the dreadful +dust, which was thick upon everything I touched. We had to hasten our +toilet, as they were striking tents and breaking camp early, in order +to reach before noon the next place where there was water. Sitting on +camp-stools, around the mess-tables, in the open, before the break of +day, we swallowed some black coffee and ate some rather thick slices +of bacon and dry bread. The Wilkins' tent was near ours, and I said to +them, rather peevishly: "Isn't this dust something awful?" + +Miss Wilkins looked up with her sweet smile and gentle manner and +replied: "Why, yes, Mrs. Summerhayes, it is pretty bad, but you must not +worry about such a little thing as dust." + +"How can I help it?" I said; "my hair, my clothes, everything full of +it, and no chance for a bath or a change: a miserable little basin of +water and--" + +I suppose I was running on with all my grievances, but she stopped me +and said again: "Soon, now, you will not mind it at all. Ella and I are +army girls, you know, and we do not mind anything. There's no use in +fretting about little things." + +Miss Wilkins' remarks made a tremendous impression upon my mind and I +began to study her philosophy. + +At break of day the command marched out, their rifles on their +shoulders, swaying along ahead of us, in the sunlight and the heat, +which continued still to be almost unendurable. The dry white dust of +this desert country boiled and surged up and around us in suffocating +clouds. + +I had my own canteen hung up in the ambulance, but the water in it got +very warm and I learned to take but a swallow at a time, as it could not +be refilled until we reached the next spring--and there is always some +uncertainty in Arizona as to whether the spring or basin has gone dry. +So water was precious, and we could not afford to waste a drop. + +At about noon we reached a forlorn mud hut, known as Packwood's ranch. +But the place had a bar, which was cheerful for some of the poor men, +as the two days' marches had been rather hard upon them, being so "soft" +from the long voyage. I could never begrudge a soldier a bit of cheer +after the hard marches in Arizona, through miles of dust and burning +heat, their canteens long emptied and their lips parched and dry. I +watched them often as they marched along with their blanket-rolls, their +haversacks, and their rifles, and I used to wonder that they did not +complain. + +About that time the greatest luxury in the entire world seemed to me +to be a glass of fresh sweet milk, and I shall always remember Mr. +Packwood's ranch, because we had milk to drink with our supper, and some +delicious quail to eat. + +Ranches in that part of Arizona meant only low adobe dwellings occupied +by prospectors or men who kept the relays of animals for stage routes. +Wretched, forbidding-looking places they were! Never a tree or a bush to +give shade, never a sign of comfort or home. + +Our tents were pitched near Packwood's, out in the broiling sun. They +were like ovens; there was no shade, no coolness anywhere; we would have +gladly slept, after the day's march, but instead we sat broiling in the +ambulances, and waited for the long afternoon to wear away. + +The next day dragged along in the same manner; the command marching +bravely along through dust and heat and thirst, as Kipling's soldier +sings: + + +"With its best foot first And the road a-sliding past, An' every +bloomin' campin'-ground Exactly like the last". + + +Beal's Springs did not differ from the other ranch, except that possibly +it was even more desolate. But a German lived there, who must have had +some knowledge of cooking, for I remember that we bought a peach pie +from him and ate it with a relish. I remember, too, that we gave him a +good silver dollar for it. + +The only other incident of that day's march was the suicide of Major +Worth's pet dog "Pete." Having exhausted his ability to endure, this +beautiful red setter fixed his eye upon a distant range of mountains, +and ran without turning, or heeding any call, straight as the crow +flies, towards them and death. We never saw him again; a ranchman told +us he had known of several other instances where a well-bred dog had +given up in this manner, and attempted to run for the hills. We had a +large greyhound with us, but he did not desert. + +Major Worth was much affected by the loss of his dog, and did not join +us at supper that night. We kept a nice fat quail for him, however, and +at about nine o'clock, when all was still and dark, Jack entered the +Major's tent and said: "Come now, Major, my wife has sent you this nice +quail; don't give up so about Pete, you know." + +The Major lay upon his camp-bed, with his face turned to the wall of his +tent; he gave a deep sigh, rolled himself over and said: "Well, put it +on the table, and light the candle; I'll try to eat it. Thank your wife +for me." + +So the Lieutenant made a light, and lo! and behold, the plate was there, +but the quail was gone! In the darkness, our great kangaroo hound had +stolen noiselessly upon his master's heels, and quietly removed the +bird. The two officers were dumbfounded. Major Worth said: "D--n my +luck;" and turned his face again to the wall of his tent. + +Now Major Worth was just the dearest and gentlest sort of a man, but he +had been born and brought up in the old army, and everyone knows that +times and customs were different then. + +Men drank more and swore a good deal, and while I do not wish my story +to seem profane, yet I would not describe army life or the officers as +I knew them, if I did not allow the latter to use an occasional strong +expression. + +The incident, however, served to cheer up the Major, though he continued +to deplore the loss of his beautiful dog. + +For the next two days our route lay over the dreariest and most desolate +country. It was not only dreary, it was positively hostile in its +attitude towards every living thing except snakes, centipedes and +spiders. They seemed to flourish in those surroundings. + +Sometimes either Major Worth or Jack would come and drive along a few +miles in the ambulance with me to cheer me up, and they allowed me to +abuse the country to my heart's content. It seemed to do me much good. +The desert was new to me then. I had not read Pierre Loti's wonderful +book, "Le Desert," and I did not see much to admire in the desolate +waste lands through which we were travelling. I did not dream of the +power of the desert, nor that I should ever long to see it again. But +as I write, the longing possesses me, and the pictures then indelibly +printed upon my mind, long forgotten amidst the scenes and events of +half a lifetime, unfold themselves like a panorama before my vision and +call me to come back, to look upon them once more. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. LEARNING HOW TO SOLDIER + +"The grasses failed, and then a mass Of dry red cactus ruled the land: +The sun rose right above and fell, As falling molten from the skies, And +no winged thing was seen to pass." Joaquin Miller. + + +We made fourteen miles the next day, and went into camp at a place +called Freeze-wash, near some old silver mines. A bare and lonesome +spot, where there was only sand to be seen, and some black, +burnt-looking rocks. From under these rocks, crept great tarantulas, not +forgetting lizards, snakes, and not forgetting the scorpion, which ran +along with its tail turned up ready to sting anything that came in its +way. The place furnished good water, however, and that was now the most +important thing. + +The next day's march was a long one. The guides said: "Twenty-eight +miles to Willow Grove Springs." + +The command halted ten minutes every hour for rest, but the sun poured +down upon us, and I was glad to stay in the ambulance. It was at these +times that my thoughts turned back to the East and to the blue sea and +the green fields of God's country. I looked out at the men, who were +getting pretty well fagged, and at the young officers whose uniforms +were white with dust, and Frau Weste's words about glaenzendes Elend +came to my mind. I fell to thinking: was the army life, then, only +"glittering misery," and had I come to participate in it? + +Some of the old soldiers had given out, and had to be put on the army +wagons. I was getting to look rather fagged and seedy, and was much +annoyed at my appearance. Not being acquainted with the vicissitudes of +the desert, I had not brought in my travelling-case a sufficient number +of thin washbodices. The few I had soon became black beyond recognition, +as the dust boiled (literally) up and into the ambulance and covered +me from head to foot. But there was no help for it, and no one was much +better off. + +It was about that time that we began to see the outlines of a great +mountain away to the left and north of us. It seemed to grow nearer and +nearer, and fascinated our gaze. + +Willow Grove Springs was reached at four o'clock and the small cluster +of willow trees was most refreshing to our tired eyes. The next day's +march was over a rolling country. We began to see grass, and to feel +that, at last, we were out of the desert. The wonderful mountain still +loomed up large and clear on our left. I thought of the old Spanish +explorers and wondered if they came so far as this, when they journeyed +through that part of our country three hundred years before. I wondered +what beautiful and high-sounding name they might have given it. I +wondered a good deal about that bare and isolated mountain, rising out +of what seemed an endless waste of sand. I asked the driver if he knew +the name of it: "That is Bill Williams' mountain, ma'am," he replied, +and relapsed into his customary silence, which was unbroken except by an +occasional remark to the wheelers or the leaders. + +I thought of the Harz Mountains, which I had so recently tramped over, +and the romantic names and legends connected with them, and I sighed to +think such an imposing landmark as this should have such a prosaic name. +I realized that Arizona was not a land of romance; and when Jack came +to the ambulance, I said, "Don't you think it a pity that such monstrous +things are allowed in America, as to call that great fine mountain 'Bill +Williams' mountain'?" + +"Why no," he said; "I suppose he discovered it, and I dare say he had a +hard enough time before he got to it." + +We camped at Fort Rock, and Lieutenant Bailey shot an antelope. It was +the first game we had seen; our spirits revived a bit; the sight of +green grass and trees brought new life to us. + +Anvil Rock and old Camp Hualapais were our next two stopping places. +We drove through groves of oaks, cedars and pines, and the days began +hopefully and ended pleasantly. To be sure, the roads were very rough +and our bones ached after a long day's travelling. But our tents were +now pitched under tall pine trees and looked inviting. Soldiers have a +knack of making a tent attractive. + +"Madame, the Lieutenant's compliments, and your tent is ready." + +I then alighted and found my little home awaiting me. The tent-flaps +tied open, the mattresses laid, the blankets turned back, the camp-table +with candle-stick upon it, and a couple of camp-chairs at the door of +the tent. Surely it is good to be in the army I then thought; and after +a supper consisting of soldiers' hot biscuit, antelope steak broiled +over the coals, and a large cup of black coffee, I went to rest, +listening to the soughing of the pines. + +My mattress was spread always upon the ground, with a buffalo robe under +it and a hair lariat around it, to keep off the snakes; as it is said +they do not like to cross them. I found the ground more comfortable than +the camp cots which were used by some of the officers, and most of the +women. + +The only Indians we had seen up to that time were the peaceful tribes +of the Yumas, Cocopahs and Mojaves, who lived along the Colorado. We had +not yet entered the land of the dread Apache. + +The nights were now cool enough, and I never knew sweeter rest than came +to me in the midst of those pine groves. + +Our road was gradually turning southward, but for some days Bill +Williams was the predominating feature of the landscape; turn whichever +way we might, still this purple mountain was before us. It seemed to +pervade the entire country, and took on such wonderful pink colors at +sunset. Bill Williams held me in thrall, until the hills and valleys in +the vicinity of Fort Whipple shut him out from my sight. But he seemed +to have come into my life somehow, and in spite of his name, I loved him +for the companionship he had given me during those long, hot, weary and +interminable days. + +About the middle of September, we arrived at American ranch, some ten +miles from Fort Whipple, which was the headquarters station. Colonel +Wilkins and his family left us, and drove on to their destination. Some +officers of the Fifth Cavalry rode out to greet us, and Lieutenant Earl +Thomas asked me to come into the post and rest a day or two at their +house, as we then had learned that K Company was to march on to Camp +Apache, in the far eastern part of the Territory. + +We were now enabled to get some fresh clothing from our trunks, which +were in the depths of the prairie-schooners, and all the officers' wives +were glad to go into the post, where we were most kindly entertained. +Fort Whipple was a very gay and hospitable post, near the town of +Prescott, which was the capital city of Arizona. The country being +mountainous and fertile, the place was very attractive, and I felt sorry +that we were not to remain there. But I soon learned that in the army, +regrets were vain. I soon ceased to ask myself whether I was sorry or +glad at any change in our stations. + +On the next day the troops marched in, and camped outside the post. The +married officers were able to join their wives, and the three days we +spent there were delightful. There was a dance given, several informal +dinners, drives into the town of Prescott, and festivities of various +kinds. General Crook commanded the Department of Arizona then; he was +out on some expedition, but Mrs. Crook gave a pleasant dinner for us. +After dinner, Mrs. Crook came and sat beside me, asked kindly about our +long journey, and added: "I am truly sorry the General is away; I should +like for him to meet you; you are just the sort of woman he likes." A +few years afterwards I met the General, and remembering this remark, +I was conscious of making a special effort to please. The indifferent +courtesy with which he treated me, however, led me to think that women +are often mistaken judges of their husband's tastes. + +The officers' quarters at Fort Whipple were quite commodious, and after +seven weeks' continuous travelling, the comforts which surrounded me at +Mrs. Thomas' home seemed like the veriest luxuries. I was much affected +by the kindness shown me by people I had never met before, and I +kept wondering if I should ever have an opportunity to return their +courtesies. "Don't worry about that, Martha," said Jack, "your turn will +come." + +He proved a true prophet, for sooner or later, I saw them all again, +and was able to extend to them the hospitality of an army home. +Nevertheless, my heart grows warm whenever I think of the people who +first welcomed me to Arizona, me a stranger in the army, and in the +great southwest as well. + +At Fort Whipple we met also some people we had known at Fort Russell, +who had gone down with the first detachment, among them Major and Mrs. +Wilhelm, who were to remain at headquarters. We bade good-bye to the +Colonel and his family, to the officers of F, who were to stay behind, +and to our kind friends of the Fifth Cavalry. + +We now made a fresh start, with Captain Ogilby in command. Two days took +us into Camp Verde, which lies on a mesa above the river from which it +takes its name. + +Captain Brayton, of the Eight Infantry, and his wife, who were already +settled at Camp Verde, received us and took the best care of us. Mrs. +Brayton gave me a few more lessons in army house-keeping, and I could +not have had a better teacher. I told her about Jack and the tinware; +her bright eyes snapped, and she said: "Men think they know everything, +but the truth is, they don't know anything; you go right ahead and have +all the tinware and other things; all you can get, in fact; and when the +time comes to move, send Jack out of the house, get a soldier to come in +and pack you up, and say nothing about it." + +"But the weight--" + +"Fiddlesticks! They all say that; now you just not mind their talk, but +take all you need, and it will get carried along, somehow." + +Still another company left our ranks, and remained at Camp Verde. The +command was now getting deplorably small, I thought, to enter an Indian +country, for we were now to start for Camp Apache. Several routes were +discussed, but, it being quite early in the autumn, and the Apache +Indians being just then comparatively quiet, they decided to march the +troops over Crook's Trail, which crossed the Mogollon range and was +considered to be shorter than any other. It was all the same to me. I +had never seen a map of Arizona, and never heard of Crook's Trail. +Maps never interested me, and I had not read much about life in the +Territories. At that time, the history of our savage races was a blank +page to me. I had been listening to the stories of an old civilization, +and my mind did not adjust itself readily to the new surroundings. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. ACROSS THE MOGOLLONS + +It was a fine afternoon in the latter part of September, when our small +detachment, with Captain Ogilby in command, marched out of Camp Verde. +There were two companies of soldiers, numbering about a hundred men +in all, five or six officers, Mrs. Bailey and myself, and a couple +of laundresses. I cannot say that we were gay. Mrs. Bailey had said +good-bye to her father and mother and sister at Fort Whipple, and +although she was an army girl, she did not seem to bear the parting very +philosophically. Her young child, nine months old, was with her, and +her husband, as stalwart and handsome an officer as ever wore +shoulder-straps. But we were facing unknown dangers, in a far country, +away from mother, father, sister and brother--a country infested with +roving bands of the most cruel tribe ever known, who tortured before +they killed. We could not even pretend to be gay. + +The travelling was very difficult and rough, and both men and animals +were worn out by night. But we were now in the mountains, the air was +cool and pleasant, and the nights so cold that we were glad to have a +small stove in our tents to dress by in the mornings. The scenery was +wild and grand; in fact, beyond all that I had ever dreamed of; more +than that, it seemed so untrod, so fresh, somehow, and I do not suppose +that even now, in the day of railroads and tourists, many people have +had the view of the Tonto Basin which we had one day from the top of the +Mogollon range. + +I remember thinking, as we alighted from our ambulances and stood +looking over into the Basin, "Surely I have never seen anything to +compare with this--but oh! would any sane human being voluntarily go +through with what I have endured on this journey, in order to look upon +this wonderful scene?" + +The roads had now become so difficult that our wagon-train could not +move as fast as the lighter vehicles or the troops. Sometimes at a +critical place in the road, where the ascent was not only dangerous, but +doubtful, or there was, perhaps, a sharp turn, the ambulances waited to +see the wagons safely over the pass. Each wagon had its six mules; each +ambulance had also its quota of six. + +At the foot of one of these steep places, the wagons would halt, the +teamsters would inspect the road, and calculate the possibilities of +reaching the top; then, furiously cracking their whips, and pouring +forth volley upon volley of oaths, they would start the team. Each mule +got its share of dreadful curses. I had never heard or conceived of +any oaths like those. They made my blood fairly curdle, and I am not +speaking figuratively. The shivers ran up and down my back, and I half +expected to see those teamsters struck down by the hand of the Almighty. + +For although the anathemas hurled at my innocent head, during +the impressionable years of girlhood, by the pale and determined +Congregational ministers with gold-bowed spectacles, who held forth +in the meeting-house of my maternal ancestry (all honor to their +sincerity), had taken little hold upon my mind, still, the vital drop +of the Puritan was in my blood, and the fear of a personal God and His +wrath still existed, away back in the hidden recesses of my heart. + +This swearing and lashing went on until the heavily-loaded +prairie-schooner, swaying, swinging, and swerving to the edge of the +cut, and back again to the perpendicular wall of the mountain, would +finally reach the top, and pass on around the bend; then another would +do the same. Each teamster had his own particular variety of oaths, each +mule had a feminine name, and this brought the swearing down to a sort +of personal basis. I remonstrated with Jack, but he said: teamsters +always swore; "the mules wouldn't even stir to go up a hill, if they +weren't sworn at like that." + +By the time we had crossed the great Mogollon mesa, I had become +accustomed to those dreadful oaths, and learned to admire the skill, +persistency and endurance shown by those rough teamsters. I actually +got so far as to believe what Jack had told me about the swearing being +necessary, for I saw impossible feats performed by the combination. + +When near camp, and over the difficult places, we drove on ahead and +waited for the wagons to come in. It was sometimes late evening before +tents could be pitched and supper cooked. And oh! to see the poor jaded +animals when the wagons reached camp! I could forget my own discomfort +and even hunger, when I looked at their sad faces. + +One night the teamsters reported that a six-mule team had rolled down +the steep side of a mountain. I did not ask what became of the poor +faithful mules; I do not know, to this day. In my pity and real distress +over the fate of these patient brutes, I forgot to inquire what boxes +were on the unfortunate wagon. + +We began to have some shooting. Lieutenant Bailey shot a young deer, +and some wild turkeys, and we could not complain any more of the lack of +fresh food. + +It did not surprise us to learn that ours was the first wagon-train +to pass over Crook's Trail. For miles and miles the so-called road was +nothing but a clearing, and we were pitched and jerked from side to side +of the ambulance, as we struck large rocks or tree-stumps; in some steep +places, logs were chained to the rear of the ambulance, to keep it from +pitching forward onto the backs of the mules. At such places I got out +and picked my way down the rocky declivity. + +We now began to hear of the Apache Indians, who were always out, in +either large or small bands, doing their murderous work. + +One day a party of horseman tore past us at a gallop. Some of them +raised their hats to us as they rushed past, and our officers recognized +General Crook, but we could not, in the cloud of dust, distinguish +officers from scouts. All wore the flannel shirt, handkerchief tied +about the neck, and broad campaign hat. + +After supper that evening, the conversation turned upon Indians in +general, and Apaches in particular. We camped always at a basin, or a +tank, or a hole, or a spring, or in some canon, by a creek. Always from +water to water we marched. Our camp that night was in the midst of a +primeval grove of tall pine trees; verily, an untrodden land. We had a +big camp-fire, and sat around it until very late. There were only five +or six officers, and Mrs. Bailey and myself. + +The darkness and blackness of the place were uncanny. We all sat looking +into the fire. Somebody said, "Injuns would not have such a big fire as +that." + +"No; you bet they wouldn't," was the quick reply of one of the officers. + +Then followed a long pause; we all sat thinking, and gazing into the +fire, which crackled and leaped into fitful blazes. + +"Our figures must make a mighty good outline against that fire," +remarked one of officers, nonchalantly; "I dare say those stealthy sons +of Satan know exactly where we are at this minute," he added. + +"Yes, you bet your life they do!" answered one of the younger men, +lapsing into the frontiersman's language, from the force of his +convictions. + +"Look behind you at those trees, Jack," said Major Worth. "Can you see +anything? No! And if there were an Apache behind each one of them, we +should never know it." + +We all turned and peered into the black darkness which surrounded us. + +Another pause followed; the silence was weird--only the cracking of the +fire was heard, and the mournful soughing of the wind in the pines. + +Suddenly, a crash! We started to our feet and faced around. + +"A dead branch," said some one. + +Major Worth shrugged his shoulders, and turning to Jack, said, in a low +tone, "D---- d if I don't believe I'm getting nervous," and saying "good +night," he walked towards his tent. + +No element of doubt pervaded my mind as to my own state. The weird +feeling of being up in those remote mountain passes, with but a handful +of soldiers against the wary Apaches, the mysterious look of those black +tree-trunks, upon which flickered the uncertain light of the camp-fire +now dying, and from behind each one of which I imagined a red devil +might be at that moment taking aim with his deadly arrow, all inspired +me with fear such as I had never before known. + +In the cyclone which had overtaken our good ship in mid-Atlantic, where +we lay tossing about at the mercy of the waves for thirty-six long +hours, I had expected to yield my body to the dark and grewsome depths +of the ocean. I had almost felt the cold arms of Death about me; but +compared to the sickening dread of the cruel Apache, my fears then had +been as naught. Facing the inevitable at sea, I had closed my eyes and +said good-bye to Life. But in this mysterious darkness, every nerve, +every sense, was keenly alive with terror. + +Several of that small party around the camp-fire have gone from amongst +us, but I venture to say that, of the few who are left, not one will deny +that he shared in the vague apprehension which seized upon us. + +Midnight found us still lingering around the dead ashes of the fire. +After going to our tent, Jack saw that I was frightened. He said: "Don't +worry, Martha, an Apache never was known to attack in the night," and +after hearing many repetitions of this assertion, upon which I made him +take his oath, I threw myself upon the bed. After our candle was out, I +said: "When do they attack?" Jack who, with the soldiers' indifference +to danger, was already half asleep, replied: "Just before daylight, +usually, but do not worry, I say; there aren't any Injuns in this +neighborhood. Why! Didn't you meet General Crook to-day? You ought to +have some sense. If there'd been an Injun around here he would have +cleaned him out. Now go to sleep and don't be foolish." But I was taking +my first lessons in campaigning, and sleep was not so easy. + +Just before dawn, as I had fallen into a light slumber, the flaps of the +tent burst open, and began shaking violently to and fro. I sprang to my +feet, prepared for the worst. Jack started up: "What is it?" he cried. + +"It must have been the wind, I think, but it frightened me," I murmured. +The Lieutenant fastened the tent-flaps together, and lay down to sleep +again; but my heart beat fast, and I listened for every sound. + +The day gradually dawned, and with it my fears of the night were +allayed. But ever after that, Jack's fatal answer, "Just before +daylight," kept my eyes wide open for hours before the dawn. + + + + + +CHAPTER X. A PERILOUS ADVENTURE + +One fine afternoon, after a march of twenty-two miles over a rocky road, +and finding our provisions low, Mr. Bailey and Jack went out to shoot +wild turkeys. As they shouldered their guns and walked away. Captain +Ogilby called out to them, "Do not go too far from camp." + +Jack returned at sundown with a pair of fine turkeys! but Bailey failed +to come in. However, as they all knew him to be an experienced woodsman, +no one showed much anxiety until darkness had settled over the camp. +Then they began to signal, by discharging their rifles; the officers +went out in various directions, giving "halloos," and firing at +intervals, but there came no sound of the missing man. + +The camp was now thoroughly alarmed. This was too dangerous a place +for a man to be wandering around in all night, and search-parties +of soldiers were formed. Trees were burned, and the din of rifles, +constantly discharged, added to the excitement. One party after another +came in. They had scoured the country--and not a trace of Bailey. + +The young wife sat in her tent, soothing her little child; everybody +except her, gave up hope; the time dragged on; our hearts grew heavy; +the sky was alight with blazing trees. + +I went into Mrs. Bailey's tent. She was calm and altogether lovely, and +said: "Charley can't get lost, and unless something has happened to him, +he will come in." + +Ella Bailey was a brave young army woman; she was an inspiration to the +entire camp. + +Finally, after hours of the keenest anxiety, a noise of gladsome shouts +rang through the trees, and in came a party of men with the young +officer on their shoulders. His friend Craig had been untiring in the +search, and at last had heard a faint "halloo" in the distance, and one +shot (the only cartridge poor Bailey had left). + +After going over almost impassable places, they finally found him, lying +at the bottom of a ravine. In the black darkness of the evening, he had +walked directly over the edge of the chasm and fallen to the bottom, +dislocating his ankle. + +He was some miles from camp, and had used up all his ammunition except +the one cartridge. He had tried in vain to walk or even crawl out of +the ravine, but had finally been overcome by exhaustion and lay there +helpless, in the wild vastnesses of the mountains. + +A desperate situation, indeed! Some time afterwards, he told me how he +felt, when he realized how poor his chances were, when he saw he had +only one cartridge left and found that he had scarce strength to answer +a "halloo," should he hear one. But soldiers never like to talk much +about such things. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. CAMP APACHE + +By the fourth of October we had crossed the range, and began to see +something which looked like roads. Our animals were fagged to a state +of exhaustion, but the travelling was now much easier and there was good +grazing, and after three more long day's marches, we arrived at Camp +Apache. We were now at our journey's end, after two months' continuous +travelling, and I felt reasonably sure of shelter and a fireside for the +winter at least. I knew that my husband's promotion was expected, but +the immediate present was filled with an interest so absorbing, that a +consideration of the future was out of the question. + +At that time (it was the year of 1874) the officers' quarters at Camp +Apache were log cabins, built near the edge of the deep canon through +which the White Mountain River flows, before its junction with Black +River. + +We were welcomed by the officers of the Fifth Cavalry, who were +stationed there. It was altogether picturesque and attractive. In +addition to the row of log cabins, there were enormous stables and +Government buildings, and a cutler's store. We were entertained for +a day or two, and then quarters were assigned to us. The second +lieutenants had rather a poor choice, as the quarters were scarce. We +were assigned a half of a log cabin, which gave us one room, a small +square hall, and a bare shed, the latter detached from the house, to be +used for a kitchen. The room on the other side of the hall was occupied +by the Post Surgeon, who was temporarily absent. + +Our things were unloaded and brought to this cabin. I missed the barrel +of china, and learned that it had been on the unfortunate wagon which +rolled down the mountain-side. I had not attained that state of mind +which came to me later in my army life. I cared then a good deal about +my belongings, and the annoyance caused by the loss of our china was +quite considerable. I knew there was none to be obtained at Camp Apache, +as most of the merchandise came in by pack-train to that isolated place. + +Mrs. Dodge, of the Twenty-third Infantry, who was about to leave the +post, heard of my predicament, and offered me some china plates and +cups, which she thought not worth the trouble of packing (so she said), +and I was glad to accept them, and thanked her, almost with tears in my +eyes. + +Bowen nailed down our one carpet over the poor board floor (after having +first sprinkled down a thick layer of clean straw, which he brought from +the quartermaster stables). Two iron cots from the hospital were brought +over, and two bed-sacks filled with fresh, sweet straw, were laid upon +them; over these were laid our mattresses. Woven-wire springs were then +unheard of in that country. + +We untied our folding chairs, built a fire on the hearth, captured an +old broken-legged wash-stand and a round table from somewhere, and that +was our living-room. A pine table was found for the small hall, which +was to be our dinning-room, and some chairs with raw-hide seats were +brought from the barracks, some shelves knocked up against one wall, to +serve as sideboard. Now for the kitchen! + +A cooking-stove and various things were sent over from the Q. M. +store-house, and Bowen (the wonder of it!) drove in nails, and hung up +my Fort Russell tin-ware, and put up shelves and stood my pans in rows, +and polished the stove, and went out and stole a table somewhere (Bowen +was invaluable in that way), polished the zinc under the stove, and lo! +and behold, my army kitchen! Bowen was indeed a treasure; he said he +would like to cook for us, for ten dollars a month. We readily accepted +this offer. There were no persons to be obtained, in these distant +places, who could do the cooking in the families of officers, so it +was customary to employ a soldier; and the soldier often displayed +remarkable ability in the way of cooking, in some cases, in fact, more +than in the way of soldiering. They liked the little addition to their +pay, if they were of frugal mind; they had also their own quiet room +to sleep in, and I often thought the family life, offering as it did a +contrast to the bareness and desolation of the noisy barracks, appealed +to the domestic instinct, so strong in some men's natures. At all +events, it was always easy in those days to get a man from the company, +and they sometimes remained for years with an officer's family; in some +cases attending drills and roll-calls besides. + +Now came the unpacking of the chests and trunks. In our one diminutive +room, and small hall, was no closet, there were no hooks on the bare +walls, no place to hang things or lay things, and what to do I did not +know. I was in despair; Jack came in, to find me sitting on the edge of +a chest, which was half unpacked, the contents on the floor. I was very +mournful, and he did not see why. + +"Oh! Jack! I've nowhere to put things!" + +"What things?" said this impossible man. + +"Why, all our things," said I, losing my temper; "can't you see them?'' + +"Put them back in the chests,--and get them out as you need them," +said this son of Mars, and buckled on his sword. "Do the best you can, +Martha, I have to go to the barracks; be back again soon." I looked +around me, and tried to solve the problem. There was no bureau, nothing; +not a nook or corner where a thing might be stowed. I gazed at the +motley collection of bed-linen, dust-pans, silver bottles, boot +jacks, saddles, old uniforms, full dress military hats, sword-belts, +riding-boots, cut glass, window-shades, lamps, work-baskets, and books, +and I gave it up in despair. You see, I was not an army girl, and I did +not know how to manage. + +There was nothing to be done, however, but to follow Jack's advice, so +I threw the boots, saddles and equipments under the bed, and laid the +other things back in the chests, closed the lids and went out to take a +look at the post. Towards evening, a soldier came for orders for beef, +and I learned how to manage that. I was told that we bought our meats +direct from the contractor; I had to state how much and what cuts I +wished. Another soldier came to bring us milk, and I asked Jack who was +the milkman, and he said, blessed if he knew; I learned, afterwards, +that the soldiers roped some of the wild Texas cows that were kept in +one of the Government corrals, and tied them securely to keep them +from kicking; then milked them, and the milk was divided up among the +officers' families, according to rank. We received about a pint every +night. I declared it was not enough; but I soon discovered that however +much education, position and money might count in civil life, rank +seemed to be the one and only thing in the army, and Jack had not much +of that just then. + +The question of getting settled comfortably still worried me, and +after a day of two, I went over to see what Mrs. Bailey had done. To my +surprise, I found her out playing tennis, her little boy asleep in the +baby-carriage, which they had brought all the way from San Francisco, +near the court. I joined the group, and afterwards asked her advice +about the matter. She laughed kindly, and said: "Oh! you'll get used to +it, and things will settle themselves. Of course it is troublesome, +but you can have shelves and such things--you'll soon learn," and still +smiling, she gave her ball a neat left-hander. + +I concluded that my New England bringing up had been too serious, and +wondered if I had made a dreadful mistake in marrying into the army, or +at least in following my husband to Arizona. I debated the question with +myself from all sides, and decided then and there that young army wives +should stay at home with their mothers and fathers, and not go into such +wild and uncouth places. I thought my decision irrevocable. + +Before the two small deep windows in our room we hung some Turkey red +cotton, Jack built in his spare moments a couch for me, and gradually +our small quarters assumed an appearance of comfort. I turned my +attention a little to social matters. We dined at Captain Montgomery's +(the commanding officer's) house; his wife was a famous Washington +beauty. He had more rank, consequently more rooms, than we had, and +their quarters were very comfortable and attractive. + +There was much that was new and interesting at the post. The Indians who +lived on this reservation were the White Mountain Apaches, a fierce and +cruel tribe, whose depredations and atrocities had been carried on for +years, in and around, and, indeed, far away from their mountain homes. +But this tribe was now under surveillance of the Government, and guarded +by a strong garrison of cavalry and infantry at Camp Apache. They were +divided into bands, under Chiefs Pedro, Diablo, Patone and Cibiano; +they came into the post twice a week to be counted, and to receive their +rations of beef, sugar, beans, and other staples, which Uncle Sam's +commissary officer issued to them. + +In the absence of other amusement, the officers' wives walked over to +witness this rather solemn ceremony. At least, the serious expression on +the faces of the Indians, as they received their rations, gave an air of +solemnity to the proceeding. + +Large stakes were driven into the ground; at each stake, sat or stood +the leader of a band; a sort of father to his people; then the rest +of them stretched out in several long lines, young bucks and old ones, +squaws and pappooses, the families together, about seventeen hundred +souls in all. I used to walk up and down between the lines, with the +other women, and the squaws looked at our clothes and chuckled, and +made some of their inarticulate remarks to each other. The bucks looked +admiringly at the white women, especially at the cavalry beauty, Mrs. +Montgomery, although I thought that Chief Diablo cast a special eye at +our young Mrs. Bailey, of the infantry. + +Diablo was a handsome fellow. I was especially impressed by his +extraordinary good looks. + +This tribe was quiet at that time, only a few renegades escaping into +the hills on their wild adventures: but I never felt any confidence in +them and was, on the whole, rather afraid of them. The squaws were shy, +and seldom came near the officers' quarters. Some of the younger girls +were extremely pretty; they had delicate hands, and small feet encased +in well-shaped moccasins. They wore short skirts made of stripped bark, +which hung gracefully about their bare knees and supple limbs, and +usually a sort of low-necked camisa, made neatly of coarse, unbleached +muslin, with a band around the neck and arms, and, in cold weather a +pretty blanket was wrapped around their shoulders and fastened at the +breast in front. In summer the blanket was replaced by a square of +bright calico. Their coarse, black hair hung in long braids in front +over each shoulder, and nearly all of them wore an even bang or fringe +over the forehead. Of course hats were unheard of. The Apaches, both men +and women, had not then departed from the customs of their ancestors, +and still retained the extraordinary beauty and picturesqueness of their +aboriginal dress. They wore sometimes a fine buckskin upper garment, and +if of high standing in the tribe, necklaces of elks teeth. + +The young lieutenants sometimes tried to make up to the prettiest +ones, and offered them trinkets, pretty boxes of soap, beads, and small +mirrors (so dear to the heart of the Indian girl), but the young maids +were coy enough; it seemed to me they cared more for men of their own +race. + +Once or twice, I saw older squaws with horribly disfigured faces. I +supposed it was the result of some ravaging disease, but I learned that +it was the custom of this tribe, to cut off the noses of those women who +were unfaithful to their lords. Poor creatures, they had my pity, for +they were only children of Nature, after all, living close to the earth, +close to the pulse of their mother. But this sort of punishment seemed +to be the expression of the cruel and revengeful nature of the Apache. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. LIFE AMONGST THE APACHES + +Bowen proved to be a fairly good cook, and I ventured to ask people to +dinner in our little hall dining-room, a veritable box of a place. One +day, feeling particularly ambitious to have my dinner a success, I +made a bold attempt at oyster patties. With the confidence of youth and +inexperience, I made the pastry, and it was a success; I took a can of +Baltimore oysters, and did them up in a fashion that astonished myself, +and when, after the soup, each guest was served with a hot oyster patty, +one of the cavalry officers fairly gasped. "Oyster patty, if I'm alive! +Where on earth--Bless my stars! And this at Camp Apache!" + +"And by Holy Jerusalem! they are good, too," claimed Captain Reilly, and +turning to Bowen, he said: "Bowen, did you make these?" + +Bowen straightened himself up to his six foot two, clapped his heels +together, and came to "attention," looked straight to the front, and +replied: "Yes, sir." + +I thought I heard Captain Reilly say in an undertone to his neighbor, +"The hell he did," but I was not sure. + +At that season, we got excellent wild turkeys there, and good Southdown +mutton, and one could not complain of such living. + +But I could never get accustomed to the wretched small space of one room +and a hall; for the kitchen, being detached, could scarcely be counted +in. I had been born and brought up in a spacious house, with plenty +of bedrooms, closets, and an immense old-time garret. The forlorn +makeshifts for closets, and the absence of all conveniences, annoyed +me and added much to the difficulties of my situation. Added to this, I +soon discovered that my husband had a penchant for buying and collecting +things which seemed utterly worthless to me, and only added to the +number of articles to be handled and packed away. I begged him to +refrain, and to remember that he was married, and that we had not the +money to spend in such ways. He really did try to improve, and denied +himself the taking of many an alluring share in raffles for old saddles, +pistols, guns, and cow-boy's stuff, which were always being held at the +sutler's store. + +But an auction of condemned hospital stores was too much for him, and +he came in triumphantly one day, bringing a box of antiquated dentist's +instruments in his hand. + +"Good gracious!" I cried, "what can you ever do with those forceps?" + +"Oh! they are splendid," he said, "and they will come in mighty handy +some time." + +I saw that he loved tools and instruments, and I reflected, why not? +There are lots of things I have a passion for, and love, just as he +loves those things and I shall never say any more about it. "Only," I +added, aloud, "do not expect me to pack up such trash when we come to +move; you will have to look out for it yourself." + +So with that spiteful remark from me, the episode of the forceps was +ended, for the time at least. + +As the winter came on, the isolation of the place had a rather +depressing effect upon us all. The officers were engaged in their +various duties: drill, courts-martial, instruction, and other military +occupations. They found some diversion at "the store," where the +ranchmen assembled and told frontier stories and played exciting games +of poker. Jack's duties as commissary officer kept him much away from +me, and I was very lonely. + +The mail was brought in twice a week by a soldier on horseback. When he +failed to come in at the usual time, much anxiety was manifested, and I +learned that only a short time before, one of the mail-carriers had +been killed by Indians and the mail destroyed. I did not wonder that on +mail-day everybody came out in front of the quarters and asked: "Is the +mail-carrier in?" And nothing much was done or thought of on that day, +until we saw him come jogging in, the mail-bag tied behind his saddle. +Our letters were from two to three weeks old. The eastern mail came +via Santa Fe to the terminus of the railroad, and then by stage; for +in 1874, the railroads did not extend very far into the Southwest. At +a certain point on the old New Mexico road, our man met the San Carlos +carrier, and received the mail for Apache. + +"I do not understand," I said, "how any soldier can be found to take +such a dangerous detail." + +"Why so?" said Jack. "They like it." + +"I should think that when they got into those canons and narrow defiles, +they would think of the horrible fate of their predecessor," said I. + +"Perhaps they do," he answered; "but a soldier is always glad to get a +detail that gives him a change from the routine of post life." + +I was getting to learn about the indomitable pluck of our soldiers. They +did not seem to be afraid of anything. At Camp Apache my opinion of the +American soldier was formed, and it has never changed. In the long +march across the Territory, they had cared for my wants and performed +uncomplainingly for me services usually rendered by women. Those were +before the days of lineal promotion. Officers remained with their +regiments for many years. A feeling of regimental prestige held officers +and men together. I began to share that feeling. I knew the names of the +men in the company, and not one but was ready to do a service for the +"Lieutenant's wife." "K" had long been a bachelor company; and now a +young woman had joined it. I was a person to be pampered and cared for, +and they knew besides that I was not long in the army. + +During that winter I received many a wild turkey and other nice things +for the table, from the men of the company. I learned to know and to +thoroughly respect the enlisted man of the American army. + +And now into the varied kaleidoscope of my army life stepped the Indian +Agent. And of all unkempt, unshorn, disagreeable-looking personages who +had ever stepped foot into our quarters, this was the worst. + +"Heaven save us from a Government which appoints such men as that to +watch over and deal with Indians," cried I, as he left the house. "Is it +possible that his position here demands social recognition?" I added. + +"Hush!" said the second lieutenant of K company. "It's the Interior +Department that appoints the Indian Agents, and besides," he added, +"it's not good taste on your part, Martha, to abuse the Government which +gives us our bread and butter." + +"Well, you can say what you like, and preach policy all you wish, no +Government on earth can compel me to associate with such men as those!" +With that assertion, I left the room, to prevent farther argument. + +And I will here add that in my experience on the frontier, which +extended over a long period, it was never my good fortune to meet with +an Indian Agent who impressed me as being the right sort of a man to +deal with those children of nature, for Indians are like children, and +their intuitions are keen. They know and appreciate honesty and fair +dealing, and they know a gentleman when they meet one. + +The winter came on apace, but the weather was mild and pleasant. One +day some officers came in and said we must go over to the "Ravine" that +evening, where the Indians were going to have a rare sort of a dance. + +There was no one to say to me: "Do not go," and, as we welcomed any +little excitement which would relieve the monotony of our lives, we cast +aside all doubts of the advisability of my going. So, after dinner, we +joined the others, and sallied forth into the darkness of an Arizona +night. We crossed the large parade-ground, and picked our way over a +rough and pathless country, lighted only by the stars above. + +Arriving at the edge of the ravine, what a scene was before us! We +looked down into a natural amphitheatre, in which blazed great fires; +hordes of wild Apaches darted about, while others sat on logs beating +their tomtoms. + +I was afraid, and held back, but the rest of the party descended into +the ravine, and, leaning on a good strong arm, I followed. We all sat +down on the great trunk of a fallen tree, and soon the dancers came into +the arena. + +They were entirely naked, except for the loin-cloth; their bodies were +painted, and from their elbows and knees stood out bunches of feathers, +giving them the appearance of huge flying creatures; jingling things +were attached to their necks and arms. Upon their heads were large +frames, made to resemble the branching horns of an elk, and as they +danced, and bowed their heads, the horns lent them the appearance of +some unknown animal, and added greatly to their height. Their feathers +waved, their jingles shook, and their painted bodies twisted and turned +in the light of the great fire, which roared and leaped on high. At +one moment they were birds, at another animals, at the next they were +demons. + +The noise of the tomtoms and the harsh shouts of the Indians grew wilder +and wilder. It was weird and terrifying. Then came a pause; the arena +was cleared, and with much solemnity two wicked-looking creatures came +out and performed a sort of shadow dance, brandishing knives as they +glided through the intricate figures. + +It was a fascinating but unearthly scene, and the setting completed the +illusion. Fright deprived me of the power of thought, but in a sort of +subconscious way I felt that Orpheus must have witnessed just such +mad revels when he went down into Pluto's regions. Suddenly the shouts +became war whoops, the demons brandished their knives madly, and nodded +their branching horns; the tomtoms were beaten with a dreadful din, and +terror seized my heart. What if they be treacherous, and had lured our +small party down into this ravine for an ambush! The thing could well +be, I thought. I saw uneasiness in the faces of the other women, and +by mutual consent we got up and slowly took our departure. I barely had +strength to climb up the steep side of the hollow. I was thankful to +escape from its horrors. + +Scarce three months after that some of the same band of Indians fired +into the garrison and fled to the mountains. I remarked to Jack, that I +thought we were very imprudent to go to see that dance, and he said he +supposed we were. But I had never regarded life in such a light way as +he seemed to. + +Women usually like to talk over their trials and their wonderful +adventures, and that is why I am writing this, I suppose. Men simply +will not talk about such things. + +The cavalry beauty seemed to look at this frontier life +philosophically--what she really thought about it, I never knew. Mrs. +Bailey was so much occupied by the care of her young child and various +out-door amusements, that she did not, apparently, think much about +things that happened around us. At all events, she never seemed inclined +to talk about them. There was no one else to talk to; the soil was +strange, and the atmosphere a foreign one to me; life did not seem to +be taken seriously out there, as it was back in New England, where they +always loved to sit down and talk things over. I was downright lonesome +for my mother and sisters. + +I could not go out very much at that time, so I occupied myself a good +deal with needle-work. + +One evening we heard firing across the canon. Jack caught up his sword, +buckling on his belt as he went out. "Injuns fighting on the other side +of the river," some soldier reported. Finding that it did not concern +us, Jack said, "Come out into the back yard, Martha, and look over the +stockade, and I think you can see across the river." So I hurried out to +the stockade, but Jack, seeing that I was not tall enough, picked up +an empty box that stood under the window of the room belonging to the +Doctor, when, thud! fell something out onto the ground, and rolled away. +I started involuntarily. It was dark in the yard. I stood stock still. +"What was that?" I whispered. + +"Nothing but an old Edam cheese," said this true-hearted soldier of +mine. I knew it was not a cheese, but said no more. I stood up on the +box, watched the firing like a man, and went quietly back into the +quarters. After retiring, I said, "You might just a swell tell me now, +you will have to sooner or later, what was in the box--it had a dreadful +sound, as it rolled away on the ground." + +"Well," said he, "if you must know, it was an Injun's head that the +Doctor had saved, to take to Washington with him. It had a sort of a +malformed skull or jaw-bone or something. But he left it behind--I guess +it got a leetle to old for him to carry," he laughed. "Somebody told me +there was a head in the yard, but I forgot all about it. Lucky thing you +didn't see it, wasn't it? I suppose you'd been scared--well, I must tell +the fatigue party to-morrow to take it away. Now don't let me forget +it," and this soldier of many battles fell into the peaceful slumber +which comes to those who know not fear. + +The next day I overheard him telling Major Worth what had happened, +and adding that he would roast that Doctor if he ever came back. I +was seeing the rugged side of life, indeed, and getting accustomed to +shocks. + +Now the cavalry beauty gave a dinner. It was lovely; but in the midst of +it, we perceived a sort of confusion of moccasined footsteps outside +the dining-room. My nerves were, by this time, always on the alert. +I glanced through the large door opening out into the hall, and saw +a group of Indian scouts; they laid a coffee-sack down by the corner +fire-place, near the front door. The commanding officer left the table +hastily; the portiere was drawn. + +I had heard tales of atrocious cruelties committed by a band of Indians +who had escaped from the reservation and were ravaging the country +around. I had heard how they maimed poor sheep and cut off the legs of +cattle at the first joint, leaving them to die; how they tortured women, +and burned their husbands and children before their eyes; I had heard +also that the Indian scouts were out after them, with orders to bring +them in, dead or alive. + +The next day I learned that the ringleader's head was in the bag that I +had seen, and that the others had surrendered and returned. The scouts +were Apaches in the pay of the Government, and I always heard that, as +long as they were serving as scouts, they showed themselves loyal and +would hunt down their nearest relative. + +Major Worth got tired of the monotony of a bachelor's life at Camp +Apache and decided to give a dance in his quarters, and invite the +chiefs. I think the other officers did not wholly approve of it, +although they felt friendly enough towards them, as long as they were +not causing disturbances. But to meet the savage Apache on a basis of +social equality, in an officer's quarters, and to dance in a quadrille +with him! Well, the limit of all things had been reached! + +However, Major Worth, who was actually suffering from the ennui of +frontier life in winter, and in time of peace, determined to carry out +his project, so he had his quarters, which were quite spacious, cleared +and decorated with evergreen boughs. From his company, he secured some +men who could play the banjo and guitar, and all the officers and their +wives, and the chiefs with their harems, came to this novel fete. A +quadrille was formed, in which the chiefs danced opposite the officers. +The squaws sat around, as they were too shy to dance. These chiefs were +painted, and wore only their necklaces and the customary loin-cloth, +throwing their blankets about their shoulders when they had finished +dancing. I noticed again Chief Diablo's great good looks. + +Conversation was carried on principally by signs and nods, and through +the interpreter (a white man named Cooley). Besides, the officers had +picked up many short phrases of the harsh and gutteral Apache tongue. + +Diablo was charmed with the young, handsome wife of one of the officers, +and asked her husband how many ponies he would take for her, and Pedro +asked Major Worth, if all those white squaws belonged to him. + +The party passed off pleasantly enough, and was not especially +subversive to discipline, although I believe it was not repeated. + +Afterwards, long afterwards, when we were stationed at David's Island, +New York Harbor, and Major Worth was no longer a bachelor, but a +dignified married man and had gained his star in the Spanish War, +we used to meet occasionally down by the barge office or taking a +Fenster-promenade on Broadway, and we would always stand awhile and chat +over the old days at Camp Apache in '74. Never mind how pressing our +mutual engagements were, we could never forego the pleasure of talking +over those wild days and contrasting them with our then present +surroundings. "Shall you ever forget my party?" he said, the last time +we met. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. A NEW RECRUIT + +In January our little boy arrived, to share our fate and to gladden our +hearts. As he was the first child born to an officer's family in Camp +Apache, there was the greatest excitement. All the sheep-ranchers and +cattlemen for miles around came into the post. The beneficent canteen, +with its soldiers' and officers' clubrooms did not exist then. So they +all gathered at the sutler's store, to celebrate events with a round of +drinks. They wanted to shake hands with and congratulate the new father, +after their fashion, upon the advent of the blond-haired baby. Their +great hearts went out to him, and they vied with each other in doing the +handsome thing by him, in a manner according to their lights, and their +ideas of wishing well to a man; a manner, sometimes, alas! disastrous in +its results to the man! However, by this time, I was getting used to all +sides of frontier life. + +I had no time to be lonely now, for I had no nurse, and the only person +who was able to render me service was a laundress of the Fifth Cavalry, +who came for about two hours each day, to give the baby his bath and +to arrange things about the bed. I begged her to stay with me, but, of +course, I knew it was impossible. + +So here I was, inexperienced and helpless, alone in bed, with an infant +a few days old. Dr. Loring, our excellent Post Surgeon, was both kind +and skillful, but he was in poor health and expecting each day to +be ordered to another station. My husband was obliged to be at the +Commissary Office all day, issuing rations to troops and scouts, and +attending to the duties of his position. + +But, realizing in a measure the utter helplessness of my situation, he +sent a soldier up to lead a wire cord through the thick wall at the head +of my bed and out through the small yard into the kitchen. To this they +attached a big cow-bell, so, by making some considerable effort to reach +up and pull this wire, I could summon Bowen, that is, if Bowen happened +to be there. But Bowen seemed always to be out at drill or over at the +company quarters, and frequently my bell brought no response. When he +did come, however, he was just as kind and just as awkward as it was +possible for a great big six-foot farmer-soldier to be. + +But I grew weaker and weaker with trying to be strong, and one day +when Jack came in and found both the baby and myself crying, he said, +man-like, "What's the matter?" I said, "I must have some one to take +care of me, or we shall both die." + +He seemed to realize that the situation was desperate, and mounted men +were sent out immediately in all directions to find a woman. + +At last, a Mexican girl was found in a wood-chopper's camp, and was +brought to me. She was quite young and very ignorant and stupid, and +spoke nothing but a sort of Mexican "lingo," and did not understand a +word of English. But I felt that my life was saved; and Bowen fixed up +a place on the couch for her to sleep, and Jack went over to the +unoccupied room on the other side of the cabin and took possession of +the absent doctor's bed. + +I begged Jack to hunt up a Spanish dictionary, and fortunately one +was found at the sutler's store, which, doubtless the sutler or his +predecessor had brought into the country years before. + +The girl did not know anything. I do not think she had ever been inside +a casa before. She had washed herself in mountain streams, and did not +know what basins and sponges were for. So it was of no use to point to +the objects I wanted. + +I propped myself up in bed and studied the dictionary, and, having some +idea of the pronunciation of Latin languages, I essayed to call for warm +water and various other necessary articles needed around a sick bed. +Sometimes I succeeded in getting an idea through her impervious brain, +but more often she would stand dazed and immovable and I would let the +dictionary drop from my tired hands and fall back upon the pillow in a +sweat of exhaustion. Then Bowen would be called in, and with the help of +some perfunctory language and gestures on his part, this silent creature +of the mountains would seem to wake up and try to understand. + +And so I worried through those dreadful days--and the nights! Ah! we had +better not describe them. The poor wild thing slept the sleep of death +and could not hear my loudest calls nor desperate shouts. + +So Jack attached a cord to her pillow, and I would tug and tug at that +and pull the pillow from under her head. It was of no avail. She slept +peacefully on, and it seemed to me, as I lay there staring at her, that +not even Gabriel's trump would ever arouse her. + +In desperation I would creep out of bed and wait upon myself and then +confess to Jack and the Doctor next day. + +Well, we had to let the creature go, for she was of no use, and the +Spanish dictionary was laid aside. + +I struggled along, fighting against odds; how I ever got well at all is +a wonder, when I think of all the sanitary precautions taken now-a-days +with young mothers and babies. The Doctor was ordered away and another +one came. I had no advice or help from any one. Calomel or quinine are +the only medicines I remember taking myself or giving to my child. + +But to go back a little. The seventh day after the birth of the baby, a +delegation of several squaws, wives of chiefs, came to pay me a formal +visit. They brought me some finely woven baskets, and a beautiful +pappoose-basket or cradle, such as they carry their own babies in. This +was made of the lightest wood, and covered with the finest skin of +fawn, tanned with birch bark by their own hands, and embroidered in blue +beads; it was their best work. I admired it, and tried to express to +them my thanks. These squaws took my baby (he was lying beside me on the +bed), then, cooing and chuckling, they looked about the room, until they +found a small pillow, which they laid into the basket-cradle, then put +my baby in, drew the flaps together, and laced him into it; then stood +it up, and laid it down, and laughed again in their gentle manner, and +finally soothed him to sleep. I was quite touched by the friendliness of +it all. They laid the cradle on the table and departed. Jack went out +to bring Major Worth in, to see the pretty sight, and as the two entered +the room, Jack pointed to the pappoose-basket. + +Major Worth tip-toed forward, and gazed into the cradle; he did not +speak for some time; then, in his inimitable way, and half under his +breath, he said, slowly, "Well, I'll be d--d!" This was all, but when he +turned towards the bedside, and came and shook my hand, his eyes shone +with a gentle and tender look. + +And so was the new recruit introduced to the Captain of Company K. + +And now there must be a bath-tub for the baby. The sutler rummaged his +entire place, to find something that might do. At last, he sent me a +freshly scoured tub, that looked as if it might, at no very remote date, +have contained salt mackerel marked "A One." So then, every morning at +nine o'clock, our little half-window was black with the heads of the +curious squaws and bucks, trying to get a glimpse of the fair baby's +bath. A wonderful performance, it appeared to them. + +Once a week this room, which was now a nursery combined with bedroom and +living-room, was overhauled by the stalwart Bowen. The baby was put to +sleep and laced securely into the pappoose-basket. He was then carried +into the kitchen, laid on the dresser, and I sat by with a book or +needle-work watching him, until Bowen had finished the room. On one of +these occasions, I noticed a ledger lying upon one of the shelves. I +looked into it, and imagine my astonishment, when I read: "Aunt Hepsey's +Muffins," "Sarah's Indian Pudding," and on another page, "Hasty's Lemon +Tarts," "Aunt Susan's Method of Cooking a Leg of Mutton," and "Josie +Well's Pressed Calf Liver." Here were my own, my very own family +recipes, copied into Bowen's ledger, in large illiterate characters; +and on the fly-leaf, "Charles Bowen's Receipt Book." I burst into a good +hearty laugh, almost the first one I had enjoyed since I arrived at Camp +Apache. + +The long-expected promotion to a first lieutenancy came at about +this time. Jack was assigned to a company which was stationed at Camp +MacDowell, but his departure for the new post was delayed until the +spring should be more advanced and I should be able to undertake the +long, rough trip with our young child. + +The second week in April, my baby just nine weeks old, we began to pack +up. I had gained a little in experience, to be sure, but I had lost my +health and strength. I knew nothing of the care of a young infant, and +depended entirely upon the advice of the Post Surgeon, who happened at +that time to be a young man, much better versed in the sawing off of +soldiers' legs than in the treatment of young mothers and babies. + +The packing up was done under difficulties, and with much help from our +faithful Bowen. It was arranged for Mrs. Bailey, who was to spend the +summer with her parents at Fort Whipple, to make the trip at the same +time, as our road to Camp MacDowell took us through Fort Whipple. There +were provided two ambulances with six mules each, two baggage-wagons, an +escort of six calvarymen fully armed, and a guide. Lieutenant Bailey was +to accompany his wife on the trip. + +I was genuinely sorry to part with Major Worth, but in the excitement +and fatigue of breaking up our home, I had little time to think of my +feelings. My young child absorbed all my time. Alas! for the ignorance +of young women, thrust by circumstances into such a situation! I had +miscalculated my strength, for I had never known illness in my life, +and there was no one to tell me any better. I reckoned upon my superbly +healthy nature to bring me through. In fact, I did not think much about +it; I simply got ready and went, as soldiers do. + +I heard them say that we were not to cross the Mogollon range, but were +to go to the north of it, ford the Colorado Chiquito at Sunset Crossing, +and so on to Camp Verde and Whipple Barracks by the Stoneman's Lake +road. It sounded poetic and pretty. Colorado Chiquito, Sunset Crossing, +and Stoneman's Lake road! I thought to myself, they were prettier than +any of the names I had heard in Arizona. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. A MEMORABLE JOURNEY + +How broken plunged the steep descent! How barren! Desolate and rent By +earthquake shock, the land lay dead, Like some proud king in old-time +slain. An ugly skeleton, it gleamed In burning sands. The fiery rain +Of fierce volcanoes here had sown Its ashes. Burnt and black and seamed +With thunder-strokes and strewn With cinders. Yea, so overthrown, That +wilder men than we had said, On seeing this, with gathered breath, "We +come on the confines of death!"--JOAQUIN MILLER. + + +Six good cavalrymen galloped along by our side, on the morning of April +24th, 1875, as with two ambulances, two army wagons, and a Mexican +guide, we drove out of Camp Apache at a brisk trot. + +The drivers were all armed, and spare rifles hung inside the ambulances. +I wore a small derringer, with a narrow belt filled with cartridges. An +incongruous sight, methinks now, it must have been. A young mother, pale +and thin, a child of scarce three months in her arms, and a pistol belt +around her waist! + +I scarcely looked back at Camp Apache. We had a long day's march before +us, and we looked ahead. Towards night we made camp at Cooley's ranch, +and slept inside, on the floor. Cooley was interpreter and scout, and +although he was a white man, he had married a young Indian girl, the +daughter of one of the chiefs and was known as a squaw man. There +seemed to be two Indian girls at his ranch; they were both tidy and +good-looking, and they prepared us a most appetizing supper. + +The ranch had spaces for windows, covered with thin unbleached muslin +(or manta, as it is always called out there), glass windows being then +too great a luxury in that remote place. There were some partitions +inside the ranch, but no doors; and, of course, no floors except adobe. +Several half-breed children, nearly naked, stood and gazed at us as +we prepared for rest. This was interesting and picturesque from many +standpoints perhaps, but it did not tend to make me sleepy. I lay gazing +into the fire which was smouldering in the corner, and finally I said, +in a whisper, "Jack, which girl do you think is Cooley's wife?" + +"I don't know," answered this cross and tired man; and then added, "both +of 'em, I guess." + +Now this was too awful, but I knew he did not intend for me to ask any +more questions. I had a difficult time, in those days, reconciling what +I saw with what I had been taught was right, and I had to sort over my +ideas and deep-rooted prejudices a good many times. + +The two pretty squaws prepared a nice breakfast for us, and we set out, +quite refreshed, to travel over the malapais (as the great lava-beds in +that part of the country are called). There was no trace of a road. A +few hours of this grinding and crunching over crushed lava wearied us +all, and the animals found it hard pulling, although the country was +level. + +We crossed Silver Creek without difficulty, and arrived at Stinson's +ranch, after traveling twenty-five miles, mostly malapais. Do not for a +moment think of these ranches as farms. Some of them were deserted sheep +ranches, and had only adobe walls standing in ruins. But the camp must +have a name, and on the old maps of Arizona these names are still to be +found. Of course, on the new railroad maps, they are absent. They were +generally near a spring or a creek, consequently were chosen as camps. + +Mrs. Bailey had her year-old boy, Howard, with her. We began to +experience the utmost inconvenience from the lack of warm water and +other things so necessary to the health and comfort of children. But we +tried to make light of it all, and the two Lieutenants tried, in a man's +way, to help us out. We declared we must have some clean towels for the +next day, so we tried to rinse out, in the cold, hard water of the well, +those which we had with us, and, as it was now nightfall and there was +no fire inside this apparently deserted ranch, the two Lieutenants stood +and held the wet towels before the camp-fire until they were dry. + +Mrs. Bailey and I, too tired to move, sat and watched them and had each +our own thoughts. She was an army girl and perhaps had seen such things +before, but it was a situation that did not seem quite in keeping with +my ideas of the fitness of things in general, and with the uniform in +particular. The uniform, associated in my mind with brilliant functions, +guard-mount, parades and full-dress weddings--the uniform, in fact, +that I adored. As I sat, gazing at them, they both turned around, +and, realizing how almost ludicrous they looked, they began to laugh. +Whereupon we all four laughed and Jack said: "Nice work for United +States officers! hey, Bailey?" + +"It might be worse," sighed the handsome, blond-haired Bailey. + +Thirty miles the next day, over a good road, brought us to Walker's +ranch, on the site of old Camp Supply. This ranch was habitable in a +way, and the owner said we might use the bedrooms; but the wild-cats +about the place were so numerous and so troublesome in the night, that +we could not sleep. I have mentioned the absence of windows in these +ranches; we were now to experience the great inconvenience resulting +therefrom, for the low open spaces furnished great opportunity for the +cats. In at one opening, and out at another they flew, first across the +Bailey's bed, then over ours. The dogs caught the spirit of the chase, +and added their noise to that of the cats. Both babies began to cry, and +then up got Bailey and threw his heavy campaign boots at the cats, with +some fitting remarks. A momentary silence reigned, and we tried again +to sleep. Back came the cats, and then came Jack's turn with boots and +travelling satchels. It was all of no avail, and we resigned ourselves. +Cruelly tired, here we were, we two women, compelled to sit on hard +boxes or the edge of a bed, to quiet our poor babies, all through that +night, at that old sheep-ranch. Like the wretched emigrant, differing +only from her inasmuch as she, never having known comfort perhaps, +cannot realize her misery. + +The two Lieutenants slipped on their blouses, and sat looking helplessly +at us, waging war on the cats at intervals. And so the dawn found us, +our nerves at a tension, and our strength gone--a poor preparation for +the trying day which was to follow. + +We were able to buy a couple of sheep there, to take with us for +supplies, and some antelope meat. We could not indulge, in foolish +scruples, but I tried not to look when they tied the live sheep and +threw them into one of the wagons. + +Quite early in the day, we met a man who said he had been fired upon by +some Indians at Sanford's Pass. We thought perhaps he had been scared by +some stray shot, and we did not pay much attention to his story. + +Soon after, however, we passed a sort of old adobe ruin, out of which +crept two bare-headed Mexicans, so badly frightened that their dark +faces were pallid; their hair seemed standing on end, and they looked +stark mad with fear. They talked wildly to the guide, and gesticulated, +pointing in the direction of the Pass. They had been fired at, and their +ponies taken by some roving Apaches. They had been in hiding for over +a day, and were hungry and miserable. We gave them food and drink. They +implored us, by the Holy Virgin, not to go through the Pass. + +What was to be done? The officers took counsel; the men looked to their +arms. It was decided to go through. Jack examined his revolver, and saw +that my pistol was loaded. I was instructed minutely what to do, in case +we were attacked. + +For miles we strained our eyes, looking in the direction whence these +men had come. + +At last, in mid-afternoon, we approached the Pass, a narrow defile +winding down between high hills from this table-land to the plain below. +To say that we feared an ambush, would not perhaps convey a very clear +idea of how I felt on entering the Pass. + +There was not a word spoken. I obeyed orders, and lay down in the bottom +of the ambulance; I took my derringer out of the holster and cocked it. +I looked at my little boy lying helpless there beside me, and at his +delicate temples, lined with thin blue veins, and wondered if I could +follow out the instructions I had received: for Jack had said, after the +decision was made, to go through the Pass, "Now, Mattie, I don't think +for a minute that there are any Injuns in that Pass, and you must not be +afraid. We have got to go through it any way; but"--he hesitated,--"we +may be mistaken; there may be a few of them in there, and they'll have a +mighty good chance to get in a shot or two. And now listen: if I'm hit, +you'll know what to do. You have your derringer; and when you see that +there is no help for it, if they get away with the whole outfit, why, +there's only one thing to be done. Don't let them get the baby, for they +will carry you both off and--well, you know the squaws are much more +cruel than the bucks. Don't let them get either of you alive. Now"--to +the driver--"go on." + +Jack was a man of few words, and seldom spoke much in times like that. + +So I lay very quiet in the bottom of the ambulance. I realized that we +were in great danger. My thoughts flew back to the East, and I saw, as +in a flash, my father and mother, sisters and brother; I think I tried +to say a short prayer for them, and that they might never know the +worst. I fixed my eyes upon my husband's face. There he sat, rifle in +hand, his features motionless, his eyes keenly watching out from one +side of the ambulance, while a stalwart cavalry-man, carbine in hand, +watched the other side of the narrow defile. The minutes seemed like +hours. + +The driver kept his animals steady, and we rattled along. + +At last, as I perceived the steep slope of the road, I looked out, and +saw that the Pass was widening out, and we must be nearing the end of +it. "Keep still," said Jack, without moving a feature. My heart seemed +then to stop beating, and I dared not move again, until I heard him say, +"Thank God, we're out of it! Get up, Mattie! See the river yonder? We'll +cross that to-night, and then we'll be out of their God d----d country!" + +This was Jack's way of working off his excitement, and I did not mind +it. I knew he was not afraid of Apaches for himself, but for his wife +and child. And if I had been a man, I should have said just as much and +perhaps more. + +We were now down in a flat country, and low alkali plains lay between us +and the river. My nerves gradually recovered from the tension in which +they had been held; the driver stopped his team for a moment, the other +ambulance drove up alongside of us, and Ella Bailey and I looked at each +other; we did not talk any, but I believe we cried just a little. Then +Mr. Bailey and Jack (thinking we were giving way, I suppose) pulled out +their big flasks, and we had to take a cup of good whiskey, weakened up +with a little water from our canteens, which had been filled at Walker's +ranch in the morning. Great Heavens! I thought, was it this morning +that we left Walker's ranch, or was it a year ago? So much had I lived +through in a few hours. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. FORDING THE LITTLE COLORADO + +At a bend in the road the Mexican guide galloped up near the ambulance, +and pointing off to the westward with a graceful gesture, said: +"Colorado Chiquito! Colorado Chiquito!" And, sure enough, there in the +afternoon sun lay the narrow winding river, its surface as smooth as +glass, and its banks as if covered with snow. + +We drove straight for the ford, known as Sunset Crossing. The guide was +sure he knew the place. But the river was high, and I could not see how +anybody could cross it without a boat. The Mexican rode his pony in +once or twice; shook his head, and said in Spanish, "there was much +quicksand. The old ford had changed much since he saw it." He galloped +excitedly to and fro, along the bank of the river, always returning to +the same place, and declaring "it was the ford; there was no other; he +knew it well." + +But the wagons not having yet arrived, it was decided not to attempt +crossing until morning, when we could get a fresh start. + +The sun was gradually sinking in the west, but the heat down in that +alkali river-bottom even at that early season of the year was most +uncomfortable. I was worn out with fright and fatigue; my poor child +cried piteously and incessantly. Nothing was of any avail to soothe him. +After the tents were pitched and the camp-fires made, some warm water +was brought, and I tried to wash away some of the dust from him, but the +alkali water only irritated his delicate skin, and his head, where it +had lain on my arm, was inflamed by the constant rubbing. It began +to break out in ugly blisters; I was in despair. We were about as +wretchedly off as two human beings could be, and live, it seemed to me. +The disappointment at not getting across the river, combined with +the fear that the Indians were still in the neighborhood, added to my +nervousness and produced an exhaustion which, under other circumstances, +would have meant collapse. + +The mournful and demoniacal cries of the coyotes filled the night; they +seemed to come close to the tent, and their number seemed to be legion. +I lay with eyes wide open, watching for the day to come, and resolving +each minute that if I ever escaped alive from that lonely river-bottom +with its burning alkali, and its millions of howling coyotes, I would +never, never risk being placed in such a situation again. + +At dawn everybody got up and dressed. I looked in my small hand-mirror, +and it seemed to me my hair had turned a greyish color, and while it +was not exactly white, the warm chestnut tinge never came back into it, +after that day and night of terror. My eyes looked back at me large and +hollow from the small glass, and I was in that state when it is easy to +imagine the look of Death in one's own face. I think sometimes it comes, +after we have thought ourselves near the borders. And I surely had been +close to them the day before. + + +***** + + +If perchance any of my readers have followed this narrative so far, and +there be among them possibly any men, young or old, I would say to such +ones: "Desist!" For what I am going to tell about in this chapter, and +possibly another, concerns nobody but women, and my story will now, for +awhile, not concern itself with the Eighth Foot, nor the army, nor the +War Department, nor the Interior Department, nor the strategic value of +Sunset Crossing, which may now be a railroad station, for all I know. It +is simply a story of my journey from the far bank of the Little Colorado +to Fort Whipple, and then on, by a change of orders, over mountains +and valleys, cactus plains and desert lands, to the banks of the Great +Colorado. + +My attitude towards the places I travelled through was naturally +influenced by the fact that I had a young baby in my arms the entire +way, and that I was not able to endure hardship at that time. For +usually, be it remembered, at that period of a child's life, both mother +and infant are not out of the hands of the doctor and trained nurse, to +say nothing of the assistance so gladly rendered by those near and dear. + +The morning of the 28th of April dawned shortly after midnight, as +mornings in Arizona generally do at that season, and after a hasty +camp breakfast, and a good deal of reconnoitering on the part of the +officers, who did not seem to be exactly satisfied about the Mexican's +knowledge of the ford, they told him to push his pony in, and cross if +he could. + +He managed to pick his way across and back, after a good deal of +floundering, and we decided to try the ford. First they hitched up ten +mules to one of the heavily loaded baggage-wagons, the teamster cracked +his whip, and in they went. But the quicksand frightened the leaders, +and they lost their courage. Now when a mule loses courage, in the +water, he puts his head down and is done for. The leaders disappeared +entirely, then the next two and finally the whole ten of them were gone, +irrevocably, as I thought. But like a flash, the officers shouted: "Cut +away those mules! Jump in there!" and amid other expletives the men +plunged in, and feeling around under the water cut the poor animals +loose and they began to crawl out on the other bank. I drew a long +breath, for I thought the ten mules were drowned. + +The guide picked his way over again to the other side and caught them +up, and then I began to wonder how on earth we should ever get across. + +There lay the heavy army wagon, deep mired in the middle of the stream, +and what did I see? Our army chests, floating away down the river. I +cried out: "Oh! do save our chests!" "They're all right, we'll get them +presently," said Jack. It seemed a long time to me, before the soldiers +could get them to the bank, which they did, with the aid of stout ropes. +All our worldly goods were in those chests, and I knew they were soaked +wet and probably ruined; but, after all, what did it matter, in the face +of the serious problem which confronted us? + +In the meantime, some of the men had floated the other boxes and trunks +out of the wagon back to the shore, and were busy taking the huge +vehicle apart. Any one who knows the size of an army wagon will realize +that this was hard work, especially as the wagon was mired, and nearly +submerged. But the men worked desperately, and at last succeeded in +getting every part of it back onto the dry land. + +Somebody stirred up the camp-fire and put the kettle on, and Mrs. Bailey +and I mixed up a smoking strong hot toddy for those brave fellows, who +were by this time well exhausted. Then they set to work to make a boat, +by drawing a large canvas under the body of the wagon, and fastening +it securely. For this Lieutenant of mine had been a sailor-man and knew +well how to meet emergencies. + +One or two of the soldiers had now forded the stream on horseback, and +taken over a heavy rope, which was made fast to our improvised boat. +I was acquainted with all kinds of boats, from a catamaran to a +full-rigged ship, but never a craft like this had I seen. Over the +sides we clambered, however, and were ferried across the treacherous +and glassy waters of the Little Colorado. All the baggage and the two +ambulances were ferried over, and the other wagon was unloaded and drawn +over by means of ropes. + +This proceeding took all day, and of course we could get no farther, and +were again obliged to camp in that most uncomfortable river-bottom. But +we felt safer on that side. I looked at the smooth surface of the river, +and its alkali shores, and the picture became indelibly impressed upon +my memory. The unpleasant reality destroyed any poetic associations +which might otherwise have clung to the name of Sunset Crossing in my +ever vivid imagination. + +After the tents were pitched, and the camp snugged up, Mr. Bailey +produced some champagne and we wished each other joy, that we had made +the dangerous crossing and escaped the perils of Sanford's Pass. I am +afraid the champagne was not as cold as might have been desired, but the +bottle had been wrapped in a wet blanket, and cooled a little in that +way, and we drank it with zest, from a mess-cup. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. STONEMAN'S LAKE + +The road began now to ascend, and after twenty miles' travelling we +reached a place called Updyke's Tanks. It was a nice place, with plenty +of wood and grass. The next day we camped at Jay Coxe's Tanks. It was +a hard day's march, and I was tired out when we arrived there. The +ambulance was simply jerked over those miles of fearful rocks; one could +not say driven or dragged over, for we were pitched from rock to rock +the entire distance. + +Stoneman's Lake Road was famous, as I afterwards heard. Perhaps it was +just as well for me that I did not know about it in advance. + +The sure-footed mules picked their way over these sharp-edged rocks. +There was not a moment's respite. We asked a soldier to help with +holding the baby, for my arms gave out entirely, and were as if +paralyzed. The jolting threw us all by turns against the sides of +the ambulance (which was not padded), and we all got some rather bad +bruises. We finally bethought ourselves of the pappoose basket, which we +had brought along in the ambulance, having at the last moment no other +place to put it. So a halt was called, we placed the tired baby in this +semi-cradle, laced the sides snugly over him, and were thus enabled to +carry him over those dreadful roads without danger. + +He did not cry much, but the dust made him thirsty. I could not give him +nourishment without stopping the entire train of wagons, on account +of the constant pitching of the ambulance; delay was not advisable or +expedient, so my poor little son had to endure with the rest of us. The +big Alsatian cavalryman held the cradle easily in his strong arms, and +so the long miles were travelled, one by one. + +At noon of this day we made a refreshing halt, built a fire and took +some luncheon. We found a shady, grassy spot, upon which the blankets +were spread, and we stretched ourselves out upon them and rested. But +we were still some miles from water, so after a short respite we were +compelled to push on. We had been getting steadily higher since leaving +Sunset Crossing, and now it began to be cold and looked like snow. Mrs. +Bailey and I found it very trying to meet these changes of temperature. +A good place for the camp was found at Coxe's Tanks, trenches were dug +around the tents, and the earth banked up to keep us warm. The cool air, +our great fatigue, and the comparative absence of danger combined to +give us a heavenly night's rest. + +Towards sunset of the next day, which was May Day, our cavalcade reached +Stoneman's Lake. We had had another rough march, and had reached the +limit of endurance, or thought we had, when we emerged from a mountain +pass and drew rein upon the high green mesa overlooking Stoneman's Lake, +a beautiful blue sheet of water lying there away below us. It was good +to our tired eyes, which had gazed upon nothing but burnt rocks +and alkali plains for so many days. Our camp was beautiful beyond +description, and lay near the edge of the mesa, whence we could look +down upon the lovely lake. It was a complete surprise to us, as points +of scenery were not much known or talked about then in Arizona. Ponds +and lakes were unheard of. They did not seem to exist in that drear land +of arid wastes. We never heard of water except that of the Colorado +or the Gila or the tanks and basins, and irrigation ditches of the +settlers. But here was a real Italian lake, a lake as blue as the skies +above us. We feasted our eyes and our very souls upon it. + +Bailey and the guide shot some wild turkeys, and as we had already +eaten all the mutton we had along, the ragout of turkey made by the +soldier-cook for our supper tasted better to us tired and hungry +travellers, perhaps, than a canvasback at Delmonico's tastes to the +weary lounger or the over-worked financier. + +In the course of the day, we had passed a sort of sign-board, with the +rudely written inscription, "Camp Starvation," and we had heard from +Mr. Bailey the story of the tragic misfortunes at this very place of +the well-known Hitchcock family of Arizona. The road was lined with dry +bones, and skulls of oxen, white and bleached in the sun, lying on the +bare rocks. Indeed, at every stage of the road we had seen evidences +of hard travel, exhausted cattle, anxious teamsters, hunger and thirst, +despair, starvation, and death. + +However, Stoneman's Lake remains a joy in the memory, and far and away +the most beautiful spot I ever saw in Arizona. But unless the approaches +to it are made easier, tourists will never gaze upon it. + +In the distance we saw the "divide," over which we must pass in order +to reach Camp Verde, which was to be our first stopping place, and we +looked joyfully towards the next day's march, which we expected would +bring us there. + +We thought the worst was over and, before retiring to our tents for the +night, we walked over to the edge of the high mesa and, in the gathering +shadows of twilight, looked down into the depths of that beautiful lake, +knowing that probably we should never see it again. + +And indeed, in all the years I spent in Arizona afterward, I never even +heard of the lake again. + +I wonder now, did it really exist or was it an illusion, a dream, or the +mirage which appears to the desert traveller, to satisfy him and lure +him on, to quiet his imagination, and to save his senses from utter +extinction? + +In the morning the camp was all astir for an early move. We had no +time to look back: we were starting for a long day's march, across the +"divide," and into Camp Verde. + +But we soon found that the road (if road it could be called) was worse +than any we had encountered. The ambulance was pitched and jerked from +rock to rock and we were thumped against the iron framework in a most +dangerous manner. So we got out and picked our way over the great sharp +boulders. + +The Alsatian soldier carried the baby, who lay securely in the pappoose +cradle. + +One of the cavalry escort suggested my taking his horse, but I did +not feel strong enough to think of mounting a horse, so great was my +discouragement and so exhausted was my vitality. Oh! if girls only knew +about these things I thought! For just a little knowledge of the care +of an infant and its needs, its nourishment and its habits, might have +saved both mother and child from such utter collapse. + +Little by little we gave up hope of reaching Verde that day. At four +o'clock we crossed the "divide," and clattered down a road so near the +edge of a precipice that I was frightened beyond everything: my senses +nearly left me. Down and around, this way and that, near the edge, then +back again, swaying, swerving, pitching, the gravel clattering over the +precipice, the six mules trotting their fastest, we reached the +bottom and the driver pulled up his team. "Beaver Springs!" said he, +impressively, loosening up the brakes. + +As Jack lifted me out of the ambulance, I said: "Why didn't you tell +me?" pointing back to the steep road. "Oh," said he, "I thought it was +better for you not to know; people get scared about such things, when +they know about them before hand." + +"But," I remarked, "such a break-neck pace!" Then, to the driver, +"Smith, how could you drive down that place at such a rate and frighten +me so?" + +"Had to, ma'am, or we'd a'gone over the edge." + +I had been brought up in a flat country down near the sea, and I did not +know the dangers of mountain travelling, nor the difficulties attending +the piloting of a six-mule team down a road like that. From this time +on, however, Smith rose in my estimation. I seemed also to be realizing +that the Southwest was a great country and that there was much to learn +about. Life out there was beginning to interest me. + +Camp Verde lay sixteen miles farther on; no one knew if the road were +good or bad. I declared I could not travel another mile, even if +they all went on and left me to the wolves and the darkness of Beaver +Springs. + +We looked to our provisions and took account of stock. There was not +enough for the two families. We had no flour and no bread; there was +only a small piece of bacon, six potatoes, some condensed milk, and some +chocolate. The Baileys decided to go on; for Mrs. Bailey was to meet her +sister at Verde and her parents at Whipple. We said good-bye, and their +ambulance rolled away. Our tent was pitched and the baby was laid on the +bed, asleep from pure exhaustion. + +The dread darkness of night descended upon us, and the strange odors of +the bottom-lands arose, mingling with the delicious smoky smell of the +camp-fire. + +By the light of the blazing mesquite wood, we now divided what +provisions we had, into two portions: one for supper, and one for +breakfast. A very light meal we had that evening, and I arose from the +mess-table unsatisfied and hungry. + +Jack and I sat down by the camp-fire, musing over the hard times we were +having, when suddenly I heard a terrified cry from my little son. We +rushed to the tent, lighted a candle, and oh! horror upon horrors! +his head and face were covered with large black ants; he was wailing +helplessly, and beating the air with his tiny arms. + +"My God!" cried Jack, "we're camped over an ant-hill!" + +I seized the child, and brushing off the ants as I fled, brought him out +to the fire, where by its light I succeeded in getting rid of them all. +But the horror of it! Can any mother brought up in God's country with +kind nurses and loved ones to minister to her child, for a moment +imagine how I felt when I saw those hideous, three-bodied, long-legged +black ants crawling over my baby's face? After a lapse of years, I +cannot recall that moment without a shudder. + +The soldiers at last found a place which seemed to be free from +ant-hills, and our tent was again pitched, but only to find that the +venomous things swarmed over us as soon as we lay down to rest. + +And so, after the fashion of the Missouri emigrant, we climbed into the +ambulance and lay down upon our blankets in the bottom of it, and tried +to believe we were comfortable. + +My long, hard journey of the preceding autumn, covering a period of +two months; my trying experiences during the winter at Camp Apache; the +sudden break-up and the packing; the lack of assistance from a nurse; +the terrors of the journey; the sympathy for my child, who suffered from +many ailments and principally from lack of nourishment, added to the +profound fatigue I felt, had reduced my strength to a minimum. I wonder +that I lived, but something sustained me, and when we reached Camp Verde +the next day, and drew up before Lieutenant O'Connell's quarters, and +saw Mrs. O'Connell's kind face beaming to welcome us, I felt that here +was relief at last. + +The tall Alsatian handed the pappoose cradle to Mrs. O'Connell. + +"Gracious goodness! what is this?" cried the bewildered woman; "surely +it cannot be your baby! You haven't turned entirely Indian, have you, +amongst those wild Apaches?" + +I felt sorry I had not taken him out of the basket before we arrived. I +did not realize the impression it would make at Camp Verde. After +all, they did not know anything about our life at Apache, or our rough +travels to get back from there. Here were lace-curtained windows, +well-dressed women, smart uniforms, and, in fact, civilization, compared +with what we had left. + +The women of the post gathered around the broad piazza, to see the +wonder. But when they saw the poor little wan face, the blue eyes which +looked sadly out at them from this rude cradle, the linen bandages +covering the back of the head, they did not laugh any more, but took him +and ministered to him, as only kind women can minister to a sick baby. + +There was not much rest, however, for we had to sort and rearrange our +things, and dress ourselves properly. (Oh! the luxury of a room and a +tub, after that journey!) Jack put on his best uniform, and there was +no end of visiting, in spite of the heat, which was considerable even +at that early date in May. The day there would have been pleasant enough +but for my wretched condition. + +The next morning we set out for Fort Whipple, making a long day's march, +and arriving late in the evening. The wife of the Quartermaster, a total +stranger to me, received us, and before we had time to exchange the +usual social platitudes, she gave one look at the baby, and put an end +to any such attempts. "You have a sick child; give him to me;" then I +told her some things, and she said: "I wonder he is alive." Then she +took him under her charge and declared we should not leave her house +until he was well again. She understood all about nursing, and day +by day, under her good care, and Doctor Henry Lippincott's skilful +treatment, I saw my baby brought back to life again. Can I ever forget +Mrs. Aldrich's blessed kindness? + +Up to then, I had taken no interest in Camp MacDowell, where was +stationed the company into which my husband was promoted. I knew it +was somewhere in the southern part of the Territory, and isolated. The +present was enough. I was meeting my old Fort Russell friends, and under +Doctor Lippincott's good care I was getting back a measure of strength. +Camp MacDowell was not yet a reality to me. + +We met again Colonel Wilkins and Mrs. Wilkins and Carrie, and Mrs. +Wilkins thanked me for bringing her daughter alive out of those wilds. +Poor girl; 'twas but a few months when we heard of her death, at the +birth of her second child. I have always thought her death was caused by +the long hard journey from Apache to Whipple, for Nature never intended +women to go through what we went through, on that memorable journey by +Stoneman's Lake. + +There I met again Captain Porter, and I asked him if he had progressed +any in his courtship, and he, being very much embarrassed, said he did +not know, but if patient waiting was of any avail, he believed he might +win his bride. + +After we had been at Whipple a few days, Jack came in and remarked +casually to Lieutenant Aldrich, "Well, I heard Bernard has asked to be +relieved from Ehrenberg. + +"What!" I said, "the lonely man down there on the river--the prisoner +of Chillon--the silent one? Well, they are going to relieve him, of +course?" + +"Why, yes," said Jack, falteringly, "if they can get anyone to take his +place." + +"Can't they order some one?" I inquired. + +"Of course they can," he replied, and then, turning towards the window, +he ventured: "The fact is Martha, I've been offered it, and am thinking +it over." (The real truth was, that he had applied for it, thinking it +possessed great advantages over Camp MacDowell. ) + +"What! do I hear aright? Have your senses left you? Are you crazy? +Are you going to take me to that awful place? Why, Jack, I should die +there!" + +"Now, Martha, be reasonable; listen to me, and if you really decide +against it, I'll throw up the detail. But don't you see, we shall be +right on the river, the boat comes up every fortnight or so, you can +jump aboard and go up to San Francisco." (Oh, how alluring that sounded +to my ears!) "Why, it's no trouble to get out of Arizona from Ehrenberg. +Then, too, I shall be independent, and can do just as I like, and when +I like," et caetera, et caetera. "Oh, you'll be making the greatest +mistake, if you decide against it. As for MacDowell, it's a hell of a +place, down there in the South; and you never will be able to go back +East with the baby, if we once get settled down there. Why, it's a good +fifteen days from the river." + +And so he piled up the arguments in favor of Ehrenberg, saying finally, +"You need not stop a day there. If the boat happens to be up, you can +jump right aboard and start at once down river." + +All the discomforts of the voyage on the "Newbern," and the memory of +those long days spent on the river steamer in August had paled before my +recent experiences. I flew, in imagination, to the deck of the "Gila," +and to good Captain Mellon, who would take me and my child out of that +wretched Territory. + +"Yes, yes, let us go then," I cried; for here came in my inexperience. I +thought I was choosing the lesser evil, and I knew that Jack believed it +to be so, and also that he had set his heart upon Ehrenberg, for reasons +known only to the understanding of a military man. + +So it was decided to take the Ehrenberg detail. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. THE COLORADO DESERT + +Some serpents slid from out the grass That grew in tufts by shattered +stone, Then hid below some broken mass Of ruins older than the East, +That Time had eaten, as a bone Is eaten by some savage beast. + +Great dull-eyed rattlesnakes--they lay All loathsome, yellow-skinned, +and slept Coiled tight as pine knots in the sun, With flat heads through +the centre run; Then struck out sharp, then rattling crept Flat-bellied +down the dusty way. + +--JOAQUIN MILLER. + + +At the end of a week, we started forth for Ehrenberg. Our escort was now +sent back to Camp Apache, and the Baileys remained at Fort Whipple, so +our outfit consisted of one ambulance and one army wagon. One or two +soldiers went along, to help with the teams and the camp. + +We travelled two days over a semi-civilized country, and found quite +comfortable ranches where we spent the nights. The greatest luxury was +fresh milk, and we enjoyed that at these ranches in Skull Valley. They +kept American cows, and supplied Whipple Barracks with milk and butter. +We drank, and drank, and drank again, and carried a jugful to our +bedside. The third day brought us to Cullen's ranch, at the edge of +the desert. Mrs. Cullen was a Mexican woman and had a little boy named +Daniel; she cooked us a delicious supper of stewed chicken, and fried +eggs, and good bread, and then she put our boy to bed in Daniel's crib. +I felt so grateful to her; and with a return of physical comfort, I +began to think that life, after all, might be worth the living. + +Hopefully and cheerfully the next morning we entered the vast Colorado +desert. This was verily the desert, more like the desert which our +imagination pictures, than the one we had crossed in September +from Mojave. It seemed so white, so bare, so endless, and so still; +irreclaimable, eternal, like Death itself. The stillness was appalling. +We saw great numbers of lizards darting about like lightning; they were +nearly as white as the sand itself, and sat up on their hind legs and +looked at us with their pretty, beady black eyes. It seemed very far off +from everywhere and everybody, this desert--but I knew there was a camp +somewhere awaiting us, and our mules trotted patiently on. Towards noon +they began to raise their heads and sniff the air; they knew that water +was near. They quickened their pace, and we soon drew up before a large +wooden structure. There were no trees nor grass around it. A Mexican +worked the machinery with the aid of a mule, and water was bought for +our twelve animals, at so much per head. The place was called Mesquite +Wells; the man dwelt alone in his desolation, with no living being +except his mule for company. How could he endure it! I was not able, +even faintly, to comprehend it; I had not lived long enough. He occupied +a small hut, and there he staid, year in and year out, selling water to +the passing traveller; and I fancy that travellers were not so frequent +at Mesquite Wells a quarter of a century ago. + +The thought of that hermit and his dreary surroundings filled my mind +for a long time after we drove away, and it was only when we halted and +a soldier got down to kill a great rattlesnake near the ambulance, that +my thoughts were diverted. The man brought the rattles to us and the new +toy served to amuse my little son. + +At night we arrived at Desert Station. There was a good ranch there, +kept by Hunt and Dudley, Englishmen, I believe. I did not see them, but +I wondered who they were and why they staid in such a place. They were +absent at the time; perhaps they had mines or something of the sort to +look after. One is always imagining things about people who live in such +extraordinary places. At all events, whatever Messrs. Hunt and Dudley +were doing down there, their ranch was clean and attractive, which was +more than could be said of the place where we stopped the next night, a +place called Tyson's Wells. We slept in our tent that night, for of +all places on the earth a poorly kept ranch in Arizona is the most +melancholy and uninviting. It reeks of everything unclean, morally and +physically. Owen Wister has described such a place in his delightful +story, where the young tenderfoot dances for the amusement of the old +habitues. + +One more day's travel across the desert brought us to our El Dorado. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. EHRENBERG ON THE COLORADO + +Under the burning mid-day sun of Arizona, on May 16th, our six good +mules, with the long whip cracking about their ears, and the ambulance +rattling merrily along, brought us into the village of Ehrenberg. There +was one street, so called, which ran along on the river bank, and then a +few cross streets straggling back into the desert, with here and there +a low adobe casa. The Government house stood not far from the river, and +as we drove up to the entrance the same blank white walls stared at me. +It did not look so much like a prison, after all, I thought. Captain +Bernard, the man whom I had pitied, stood at the doorway, to greet +us, and after we were inside the house he had some biscuits and wine +brought; and then the change of stations was talked of, and he said to +me, "Now, please make yourself at home. The house is yours; my things +are virtually packed up, and I leave in a day or two. There is a soldier +here who can stay with you; he has been able to attend to my simple +wants. I eat only twice a day; and here is Charley, my Indian, who +fetches the water from the river and does the chores. I dine generally +at sundown." + +A shadow fell across the sunlight in the doorway; I looked around and +there stood "Charley," who had come in with the noiseless step of the +moccasined foot. I saw before me a handsome naked Cocopah Indian, who +wore a belt and a gee-string. He seemed to feel at home and began to +help with the bags and various paraphernalia of ambulance travellers. +He looked to be about twenty-four years old. His face was smiling and +friendly and I knew I should like him. + +The house was a one-story adobe. It formed two sides of a hollow square; +the other two sides were a high wall, and the Government freight-house +respectively. The courtyard was partly shaded by a ramada and partly +open to the hot sun. There was a chicken-yard in one corner of the +inclosed square, and in the centre stood a rickety old pump, which +indicated some sort of a well. Not a green leaf or tree or blade of +grass in sight. Nothing but white sand, as far as one could see, in all +directions. + +Inside the house there were bare white walls, ceilings covered with +manta, and sagging, as they always do; small windows set in deep +embrasures, and adobe floors. Small and inconvenient rooms, opening +one into another around two sides of the square. A sort of low veranda +protected by lattice screens, made from a species of slim cactus, called +ocotilla, woven together, and bound with raw-hide, ran around a part of +the house. + +Our dinner was enlivened by some good Cocomonga wine. I tried to +ascertain something about the source of provisions, but evidently the +soldier had done the foraging, and Captain Bernard admitted that it was +difficult, adding always that he did not require much, "it was so warm," +et caetera, et caetera. The next morning I took the reins, nominally, +but told the soldier to go ahead and do just as he had always done. I +selected a small room for the baby's bath, the all important function of +the day. The Indian brought me a large tub (the same sort of a half of a +vinegar barrel we had used at Apache for ourselves), set it down in the +middle of the floor, and brought water from a barrel which stood in +the corral. A low box was placed for me to sit on. This was a bachelor +establishment, and there was no place but the floor to lay things on; +but what with the splashing and the leaking and the dripping, the floor +turned to mud and the white clothes and towels were covered with it, and +I myself was a sight to behold. The Indian stood smiling at my plight. +He spoke only a pigeon English, but said, "too much-ee wet." + +I was in despair; things began to look hopeless again to me. I thought +"surely these Mexicans must know how to manage with these floors." +Fisher, the steamboat agent, came in, and I asked him if he could not +find me a nurse. He said he would try, and went out to see what could be +done. + +He finally brought in a rather forlorn looking Mexican woman leading a +little child (whose father was not known), and she said she would come +to us for quinze pesos a month. I consulted with Fisher, and he said +she was a pretty good sort, and that we could not afford to be too +particular down in that country. And so she came; and although she was +indolent, and forever smoking cigarettes, she did care for the baby, and +fanned him when he slept, and proved a blessing to me. + +And now came the unpacking of our boxes, which had floated down the +Colorado Chiquito. The fine damask, brought from Germany for my linen +chest, was a mass of mildew; and when the books came to light, I could +have wept to see the pretty editions of Schiller, Goethe, and Lessing, +which I had bought in Hanover, fall out of their bindings; the latter, +warped out of all shape, and some of them unrecognizable. I did the best +I could, however, not to show too much concern, and gathered the pages +carefully together, to dry them in the sun. + +They were my pride, my best beloved possessions, the links that bound me +to the happy days in old Hanover. + +I went to Fisher for everything--a large, well-built American, and a +kind good man. Mrs. Fisher could not endure the life at Ehrenberg, so +she lived in San Francisco, he told me. There were several other white +men in the place, and two large stores where everything was kept that +people in such countries buy. These merchants made enormous profits, and +their families lived in luxury in San Francisco. + +The rest of the population consisted of a very poor class of Mexicans, +Cocopah, Yuma and Mojave Indians, and half-breeds. + +The duties of the army officer stationed here consisted principally in +receiving and shipping the enormous quantity of Government freight which +was landed by the river steamers. It was shipped by wagon trains across +the Territory, and at all times the work carried large responsibilities +with it. + +I soon realized that however much the present incumbent might like the +situation, it was no fit place for a woman. + +The station at Ehrenberg was what we call, in the army, "detached +service." I realized that we had left the army for the time being; that +we had cut loose from a garrison; that we were in a place where good +food could not be procured, and where there were practically no servants +to be had. That there was not a woman to speak to, or to go to for +advice or help, and, worst of all, that there was no doctor in the +place. Besides all this, my clothes were all ruined by lying wet for a +fortnight in the boxes, and I had practically nothing to wear. I did not +then know what useless things clothes were in Ehrenberg. + +The situation appeared rather serious; the weather had grown intensely +hot, and it was decided that the only thing for me to do was to go to +San Francisco for the summer. + +So one day we heard the whistle of the "Gila" going up; and when she +came down river, I was all ready to go on board, with Patrocina and +Jesusita, [*] and my own child, who was yet but five months old. I bade +farewell to the man on detached service, and we headed down river. We +seemed to go down very rapidly, although the trip lasted several days. +Patrocina took to her bed with neuralgia (or nostalgia); her little +devil of a child screamed the entire days and nights through, to the +utter discomfiture of the few other passengers. A young lieutenant and +his wife and an army surgeon, who had come from one of the posts in the +interior, were among the number, and they seemed to think that I could +help it (though they did not say so). + + * Diminutive of Jesus, a very common name amongst the + Mexicans. Pronounced Hay-soo-se-ta. + +Finally the doctor said that if I did not throw Jesusita overboard, +he would; why didn't I "wring the neck of its worthless Mexican of +a mother?" and so on, until I really grew very nervous and unhappy, +thinking what I should do after we got on board the ocean steamer. I, +a victim of seasickness, with this unlucky woman and her child on +my hands, in addition to my own! No; I made up my mind to go back to +Ehrenberg, but I said nothing. + +I did not dare to let Doctor Clark know of my decision, for I knew he +would try to dissuade me; but when we reached the mouth of the river, +and they began to transfer the passengers to the ocean steamer which +lay in the offing, I quietly sat down upon my trunk and told them I +was going back to Ehrenberg. Captain Mellon grinned; the others were +speechless; they tried persuasion, but saw it was useless; and then they +said good-bye to me, and our stern-wheeler headed about and started for +up river. + +Ehrenberg had become truly my old man of the sea; I could not get rid of +it. There I must go, and there I must stay, until circumstances and the +Fates were more propitious for my departure. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. SUMMER AT EHRENBERG + +The week we spent going up the Colorado in June was not as uncomfortable +as the time spent on the river in August of the previous year. +Everything is relative, I discovered, and I was happy in going back +to stay with the First Lieutenant of C Company, and share his fortunes +awhile longer. + +Patrocina recovered, as soon as she found we were to return to +Ehrenberg. I wondered how anybody could be so homesick for such a +God-forsaken place. I asked her if she had ever seen a tree, or green +grass (for I could talk with her quite easily now). She shook her +mournful head. "But don't you want to see trees and grass and flowers?" + +Another sad shake of the head was the only reply. + +Such people, such natures, and such lives, were incomprehensible to me +then. I could not look at things except from my own standpoint. + +She took her child upon her knee, and lighted a cigarette; I took mine +upon my knee, and gazed at the river banks: they were now old friends: I +had gazed at them many times before; how much I had experienced, and how +much had happened since I first saw them! Could it be that I should ever +come to love them, and the pungent smell of the arrow-weed which covered +them to the water's edge? + +The huge mosquitoes swarmed over us in the nights from those thick +clumps of arrow-weed and willow, and the nets with which Captain Mellon +provided us did not afford much protection. + +The June heat was bad enough, though not quite so stifling as the August +heat. I was becoming accustomed to climates, and had learned to endure +discomfort. The salt beef and the Chinaman's peach pies were no longer +offensive to me. Indeed, I had a good appetite for them, though they +were not exactly the sort of food prescribed by the modern doctor, for +a young mother. Of course, milk, eggs, and all fresh food were not to be +had on the river boats. Ice was still a thing unknown on the Colorado. + +When, after a week, the "Gila" pushed her nose up to the bank at +Ehrenberg, there stood the Quartermaster. He jumped aboard, and did not +seem in the least surprised to see me. "I knew you'd come back," said +he. I laughed, of course, and we both laughed. + +"I hadn't the courage to go on," I replied + +"Oh, well, we can make things comfortable here and get through the +summer some way," he said. "I'll build some rooms on, and a kitchen, +and we can surely get along. It's the healthiest place in the world for +children, they tell me." + +So after a hearty handshake with Captain Mellon, who had taken such +good care of me on my week's voyage up river, I being almost the only +passenger, I put my foot once more on the shores of old Ehrenberg, and +we wended our way towards the blank white walls of the Government house. +I was glad to be back, and content to wait. + +So work was begun immediately on the kitchen. My first stipulation was, +that the new rooms were to have wooden floors; for, although the Cocopah +Charley kept the adobe floors in perfect condition, by sprinkling them +down and sweeping them out every morning, they were quite impossible, +especially where it concerned white dresses and children, and the little +sharp rocks in them seemed to be so tiring to the feet. + +Life as we Americans live it was difficult in Ehrenberg. I often said: +"Oh! if we could only live as the Mexicans live, how easy it would be!" +For they had their fire built between some stones piled up in +their yard, a piece of sheet iron laid over the top: this was the +cooking-stove. A pot of coffee was made in the morning early, and the +family sat on the low porch and drank it, and ate a biscuit. Then a +kettle of frijoles [*] was put over to boil. These were boiled slowly +for some hours, then lard and salt were added, and they simmered down +until they were deliciously fit to eat, and had a thick red gravy. + + *Mexican brown bean. + +Then the young matron, or daughter of the house, would mix the +peculiar paste of flour and salt and water, for tortillas, a species +of unleavened bread. These tortillas were patted out until they were +as large as a dinner plate, and very thin; then thrown onto the +hot sheet-iron, where they baked. Each one of the family then got a +tortilla, the spoonful of beans was laid upon it, and so they managed +without the paraphernalia of silver and china and napery. + +How I envied them the simplicity of their lives! Besides, the tortillas +were delicious to eat, and as for the frijoles, they were beyond +anything I had ever eaten in the shape of beans. I took lessons in the +making of tortillas. A woman was paid to come and teach me; but I never +mastered the art. It is in the blood of the Mexican, and a girl begins +at a very early age to make the tortilla. It is the most graceful thing +to see a pretty Mexican toss the wafer-like disc over her bare arm, and +pat it out until transparent. + +This was their supper; for, like nearly all people in the tropics, they +ate only twice a day. Their fare was varied sometimes by a little carni +seca, pounded up and stewed with chile verde or chile colorado. + +Now if you could hear the soft, exquisite, affectionate drawl with which +the Mexican woman says chile verde you could perhaps come to realize +what an important part the delicious green pepper plays in the cookery +of these countries. They do not use it in its raw state, but generally +roast it whole, stripping off the thin skin and throwing away the seeds, +leaving only the pulp, which acquires a fine flavor by having been +roasted or toasted over the hot coals. + +The women were scrupulously clean and modest, and always wore, when in +their casa, a low-necked and short-sleeved white linen camisa, fitting +neatly, with bands around neck and arms. Over this they wore a calico +skirt; always white stockings and black slippers. When they ventured +out, the younger women put on muslin gowns, and carried parasols. The +older women wore a linen towel thrown over their heads, or, in cool +weather, the black riboso. I often cried: "Oh! if I could only dress as +the Mexicans do! Their necks and arms do look so cool and clean." + +I have always been sorry I did not adopt their fashion of house apparel. +Instead of that, I yielded to the prejudices of my conservative partner, +and sweltered during the day in high-necked and long-sleeved white +dresses, kept up the table in American fashion, ate American food in +so far as we could get it, and all at the expense of strength; for our +soldier cooks, who were loaned us by Captain Ernest from his company at +Fort Yuma, were constantly being changed, and I was often left with the +Indian and the indolent Patrocina. At those times, how I wished I had +no silver, no table linen, no china, and could revert to the primitive +customs of my neighbors! + +There was no market, but occasionally a Mexican killed a steer, and we +bought enough for one meal; but having no ice, and no place away from +the terrific heat, the meat was hung out under the ramada with a piece +of netting over it, until the first heat had passed out of it, and then +it was cooked. + +The Mexican, after selling what meat he could, cut the rest into thin +strips and hung it up on ropes to dry in the sun. It dried hard and +brittle, in its natural state, so pure is the air on that wonderful +river bank. They called this carni seca, and the Americans called it +"jerked beef." + +Patrocina often prepared me a dish of this, when I was unable to taste +the fresh meat. She would pound it fine with a heavy pestle, and then +put it to simmer, seasoning it with the green or red pepper. It was most +savory. There was no butter at all during the hot months, but our hens +laid a few eggs, and the Quartermaster was allowed to keep a small lot +of commissary stores, from which we drew our supplies of flour, ham, and +canned things. We were often without milk for weeks at a time, for the +cows crossed the river to graze, and sometimes could not get back until +the river fell again, and they could pick their way back across the +shifting sand bars. + +The Indian brought the water every morning in buckets from the river. +It looked like melted chocolate. He filled the barrels, and when it had +settled clear, the ollas were filled, and thus the drinking water was a +trifle cooler than the air. One day it seemed unusually cool, so I said: +"Let us see by the thermometer how cool the water really is." We found +the temperature of the water to be 86 degrees; but that, with the air at +122 in the shade, seemed quite refreshing to drink. + +I did not see any white people at all except Fisher, Abe Frank (the +mail contractor), and one or two of the younger merchants. If I wanted +anything, I went to Fisher. He always could solve the difficulty. He +procured for me an excellent middle-aged laundress, who came and brought +the linen herself, and, bowing to the floor, said always, "Buenos dias, +Senorita!" dwelling on the latter word, as a gentle compliment to a +younger woman, and then, "Mucho calor este dia," in her low, drawling +voice. + +Like the others, she was spotlessly clean, modest and gentle. I asked +her what on earth they did about bathing, for I had found the tub baths +with the muddy water so disagreeable. She told me the women bathed in +the river at daybreak, and asked me if I would like to go with them. + +I was only too glad to avail myself of her invitation, and so, like +Pharoah's daughter of old, I went with my gentle handmaiden every +morning to the river bank, and, wading in about knee-deep in the thick +red waters, we sat down and let the swift current flow by us. We dared +not go deeper; we could feel the round stones grinding against each +other as they were carried down, and we were all afraid. It was +difficult to keep one's foothold, and Capt. Mellon's words were ever +ringing in my ears, "He who disappears below the surface of the Colorado +is never seen again." But we joined hands and ventured like children +and played like children in these red waters and after all, it was much +nicer than a tub of muddy water indoors. + +A clump of low mesquite trees at the top of the bank afforded sufficient +protection at that hour; we rubbed dry, slipped on a loose gown, and +wended our way home. What a contrast to the limpid, bracing salt waters +of my own beloved shores! + +When I thought of them, I was seized with a longing which consumed me +and made my heart sick; and I thought of these poor people, who had +never known anything in their lives but those desert places, and that +muddy red water, and wondered what they would do, how they would act, +if transported into some beautiful forest, or to the cool bright shores +where clear blue waters invite to a plunge. + +Whenever the river-boat came up, we were sure to have guests, for +many officers went into the Territory via Ehrenberg. Sometimes the +"transportation" was awaiting them; at other times, they were obliged to +wait at Ehrenberg until it arrived. They usually lived on the boat, as +we had no extra rooms, but I generally asked them to luncheon or supper +(for anything that could be called a dinner was out of the question). + +This caused me some anxiety, as there was nothing to be had; but I +remembered the hospitality I had received, and thought of what they had +been obliged to eat on the voyage, and I always asked them to share what +we could provide, however simple it might be. + +At such times we heard all the news from Washington and the States, and +all about the fashions, and they, in their turn, asked me all sorts of +questions about Ehrenberg and how I managed to endure the life. They +were always astonished when the Cocopah Indian waited on them at table, +for he wore nothing but his gee-string, and although it was an every-day +matter to us, it rather took their breath away. + +But "Charley" appealed to my aesthetic sense in every way. Tall, and +well-made, with clean-cut limbs and features, fine smooth copper-colored +skin, handsome face, heavy black hair done up in pompadour fashion and +plastered with Colorado mud, which was baked white by the sun, a small +feather at the crown of his head, wide turquoise bead bracelets upon his +upper arm, and a knife at his waist--this was my Charley, my half-tame +Cocopah, my man about the place, my butler in fact, for Charley +understood how to open a bottle of Cocomonga gracefully, and to keep the +glasses filled. + +Charley also wheeled the baby out along the river banks, for we had +had a fine "perambulator" sent down from San Francisco. It was an +incongruous sight, to be sure, and one must laugh to think of it. The +Ehrenberg babies did not have carriages, and the village flocked to see +it. There sat the fair-haired, six-months-old boy, with but one linen +garment on, no cap, no stockings--and this wild man of the desert, his +knife gleaming at his waist, and his gee-string floating out behind, +wheeling and pushing the carriage along the sandy roads. + +But this came to an end; for one day Fisher rushed in, breathless, and +said: "Well! here is your baby! I was just in time, for that Injun of +yours left the carriage in the middle of the street, to look in at the +store window, and a herd of wild cattle came tearing down! I grabbed the +carriage to the sidewalk, cussed the Injun out, and here's the child! +It's no use," he added, "you can't trust those Injuns out of sight." + +The heat was terrific. Our cots were placed in the open part of the +corral (as our courtyard was always called). It was a desolate-looking +place; on one side, the high adobe wall; on another, the freight-house; +and on the other two, our apartments. Our kitchen and the two other +rooms were now completed. The kitchen had no windows, only open spaces +to admit the air and light, and we were often startled in the night by +the noise of thieves in the house, rummaging for food. + +At such times, our soldier-cook would rush into the corral with his +rifle, the Lieutenant would jump up and seize his shotgun, which always +stood near by, and together they would roam through the house. But the +thieving Indians could jump out of the windows as easily as they jumped +in, and the excitement would soon be over. The violent sand-storms +which prevail in those deserts, sometimes came up in the night, without +warning; then we rushed half suffocated and blinded into the house, and +as soon as we had closed the windows it had passed on, leaving a deep +layer of sand on everything in the room, and on our perspiring bodies. + +Then came the work, next day, for the Indian had to carry everything out +of doors; and one storm was so bad that he had to use a shovel to remove +the sand from the floors. The desert literally blew into the house. + +And now we saw a singular phenomenon. In the late afternoon of each day, +a hot steam would collect over the face of the river, then slowly rise, +and floating over the length and breadth of this wretched hamlet of +Ehrenberg, descend upon and envelop us. Thus we wilted and perspired, +and had one part of the vapor bath without its bracing concomitant +of the cool shower. In a half hour it was gone, but always left me +prostrate; then Jack gave me milk punch, if milk was at hand, or sherry +and egg, or something to bring me up to normal again. We got to dread +the steam so; it was the climax of the long hot day and was peculiar +to that part of the river. The paraphernalia by the side of our cots +at night consisted of a pitcher of cold tea, a lantern, matches, a +revolver, and a shotgun. Enormous yellow cats, which lived in and around +the freight-house, darted to and fro inside and outside the house, along +the ceiling-beams, emitting loud cries, and that alone was enough to +prevent sleep. In the old part of the house, some of the partitions did +not run up to the roof, but were left open (for ventilation, I suppose), +thus making a fine play-ground for cats and rats, which darted along, +squeaking, meowing and clattering all the night through. An uncanny +feeling of insecurity was ever with me. What with the accumulated effect +of the day's heat, what with the thieving Indians, the sand-storms and +the cats, our nights by no means gave us the refreshment needed by our +worn-out systems. By the latter part of the summer, I was so exhausted +by the heat and the various difficulties of living, that I had become a +mere shadow of my former self. + +Men and children seem to thrive in those climates, but it is death to +women, as I had often heard. + +It was in the late summer that the boat arrived one day bringing a large +number of staff officers and their wives, head clerks, and "general +service" men for Fort Whipple. They had all been stationed in Washington +for a number of years, having had what is known in the army as +"gilt-edged" details. I threw a linen towel over my head, and went to +the boat to call on them, and, remembering my voyage from San Francisco +the year before, prepared to sympathize with them. But they had met +their fate with resignation; knowing they should find a good climate and +a pleasant post up in the mountains, and as they had no young children +with them, they were disposed to make merry over their discomforts. + +We asked them to come to our quarters for supper, and to come early, as +any place was cooler than the boat, lying down there in the melting sun, +and nothing to look upon but those hot zinc-covered decks or the ragged +river banks, with their uninviting huts scattered along the edge. + +The surroundings somehow did not fit these people. Now Mrs. Montgomery +at Camp Apache seemed to have adapted herself to the rude setting of +a log cabin in the mountains, but these were Staff people and they +had enjoyed for years the civilized side of army life; now they were +determined to rough it, but they did not know how to begin. + +The beautiful wife of the Adjutant-General was mourning over some +freckles which had come to adorn her dazzling complexion, and she had +put on a large hat with a veil. Was there ever anything so incongruous +as a hat and veil in Ehrenberg! For a long time I had not seen a woman +in a hat; the Mexicans all wore a linen towel over their heads. + +But her beauty was startling, and, after all, I thought, a woman so +handsome must try to live up to her reputation. Now for some weeks Jack +had been investigating the sulphur well, which was beneath the old pump +in our corral. He had had a long wooden bath-tub built, and I watched it +with a lazy interest, and observed his glee as he found a longshoreman +or roustabout who could caulk it. The shape was exactly like a coffin +(but men have no imaginations), and when I told him how it made me feel +to look at it, he said: "Oh! you are always thinking of gloomy things. +It's a fine tub, and we are mighty lucky to find that man to caulk it. +I'm going to set it up in the little square room, and lead the sulphur +water into it, and it will be splendid, and just think," he added, "what +it will do for rheumatism!" + +Now Jack had served in the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers during the +Civil War, and the swamps of the Chickahominy had brought him into close +acquaintance with that dread disease. + +As for myself, rheumatism was about the only ailment I did not have at +that time, and I suppose I did not really sympathize with him. But this +energetic and indomitable man mended the pump, with Fisher's help, and +led the water into the house, laid a floor, set up the tub in the little +square room, and behold, our sulphur bath! + +After much persuasion, I tried the bath. The water flowed thick and inky +black into the tub; of course the odor was beyond description, and the +effect upon me was not such that I was ever willing to try it again. +Jack beamed. "How do you like it, Martha?" said he. "Isn't it fine? Why +people travel hundreds of miles to get a bath like that!" + +I had my own opinion, but I did not wish to dampen his enthusiasm. +Still, in order to protect myself in the future, I had to tell him I +thought I should ordinarily prefer the river. + +"Well," he said, "there are those who will be thankful to have a bath in +that water; I am going to use it every day." + +I remonstrated: "How do you know what is in that inky water--and how do +you dare to use it?" + +"Oh, Fisher says it's all right; people here used to drink it years ago, +but they have not done so lately, because the pump was broken down." + +The Washington people seemed glad to pay us the visit. Jack's eyes +danced with true generosity and glee. He marked his victim; and, +selecting the Staff beauty and the Paymaster's wife, he expatiated on +the wonderful properties of his sulphur bath. + +"Why, yes, the sooner the better," said Mrs. Martin. "I'd give +everything I have in this world, and all my chances for the next, to get +a tub bath!" + +"It will be so refreshing just before supper," said Mrs. Maynadier, who +was more conservative. + +So the Indian, who had put on his dark blue waist-band (or sash), made +from flannel, revelled out and twisted into strands of yarn, and which +showed the supple muscles of his clean-cut thighs, and who had done up +an extra high pompadour in white clay, and burnished his knife, which +gleamed at his waist, ushered these Washington women into a small +apartment adjoining the bath-room, and turned on the inky stream into +the sarcophagus. + +The Staff beauty looked at the black pool, and shuddered. "Do you use +it?" said she. + +"Occasionally," I equivocated. + +"Does it hurt the complexion?" she ventured. + +"Jack thinks it excellent for that," I replied. + +And then I left them, directing Charley to wait, and prepare the bath +for the second victim. + +By and by the beauty came out. "Where is your mirror?" cried she (for +our appointments were primitive, and mirrors did not grow on bushes at +Ehrenberg); "I fancy I look queer," she added, and, in truth, she did; +for our water of the Styx did not seem to affiliate with the chemical +properties of the numerous cosmetics used by her, more or less, all her +life, but especially on the voyage, and her face had taken on a queer +color, with peculiar spots here and there. + +Fortunately my mirrors were neither large nor true, and she never really +saw how she looked, but when she came back into the living-room, she +laughed and said to Jack: "What kind of water did you say that was? I +never saw any just like it." + +"Oh! you have probably never been much to the sulphur springs," said he, +with his most superior and crushing manner. + +"Perhaps not," she replied, "but I thought I knew something about it; +why, my entire body turned such a queer color." + +"Oh! it always does that," said this optimistic soldier man, "and that +shows it is doing good." + +The Paymaster's wife joined us later. I think she had profited by the +beauty's experience, for she said but little. + +The Quartermaster was happy; and what if his wife did not believe +in that uncanny stream which flowed somewhere from out the infernal +regions, underlying that wretched hamlet, he had succeeded in being a +benefactor to two travellers at least! + +We had a merry supper: cold ham, chicken, and fresh biscuit, a plenty of +good Cocomonga wine, sweet milk, which to be sure turned to curds as it +stood on the table, some sort of preserves from a tin, and good coffee. +I gave them the best to be had in the desert--and at all events it was a +change from the Chinaman's salt beef and peach pies, and they saw fresh +table linen and shining silver, and accepted our simple hospitality in +the spirit in which we gave it. + +Alice Martin was much amused over Charley; and Charley could do nothing +but gaze on her lovely features. "Why on earth don't you put some +clothes on him?" laughed she, in her delightful way. + +I explained to her that the Indian's fashion of wearing white men's +clothes was not pleasing to the eye, and told her that she must +cultivate her aesthetic sense, and in a short time she would be able to +admire these copper-colored creatures of Nature as much as I did. + +But I fear that a life spent mostly in a large city had cast fetters +around her imagination, and that the life at Fort Whipple afterwards +savored too much of civilization to loosen the bonds of her soul. I +saw her many times again, but she never recovered from her amazement at +Charley's lack of apparel, and she never forgot the sulphur bath. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. MY DELIVERER + +One day, in the early autumn, as the "Gila" touched at Ehrenberg, on her +way down river, Captain Mellon called Jack on to the boat, and, pointing +to a young woman, who was about to go ashore, said: "Now, there's a girl +I think will do for your wife. She imagines she has bronchial troubles, +and some doctor has ordered her to Tucson. She comes from up North +somewhere. Her money has given out, and she thinks I am going to leave +her here. Of course, you know I would not do that; I can take her on +down to Yuma, but I thought your wife might like to have her, so I've +told her she could not travel on this boat any farther without she could +pay her fare. Speak to her: she looks to me like a nice sort of a girl." + +In the meantime, the young woman had gone ashore and was sitting upon +her trunk, gazing hopelessly about. Jack approached, offered her a home +and good wages, and brought her to me. + +I could have hugged her for very joy, but I restrained myself and +advised her to stay with us for awhile, saying the Ehrenberg climate was +quite as good as that of Tucson. + +She remarked quietly: "You do not look as if it agreed with you very +well, ma'am." + +Then I told her of my young child, and my hard journeys, and she decided +to stay until she could earn enough to reach Tucson. + +And so Ellen became a member of our Ehrenberg family. She was a fine, +strong girl, and a very good cook, and seemed to be in perfect health. +She said, however, that she had had an obstinate cough which nothing +would reach, and that was why she came to Arizona. From that time, +things went more smoothly. Some yeast was procured from the Mexican +bakeshop, and Ellen baked bread and other things, which seemed like the +greatest luxuries to us. We sent the soldier back to his company at Fort +Yuma, and began to live with a degree of comfort. + +I looked at Ellen as my deliverer, and regarded her coming as a special +providence, the kind I had heard about all my life in New England, but +had never much believed in. + +After a few weeks, Ellen was one evening seized with a dreadful +toothache, which grew so severe that she declared she could not endure +it another hour: she must have the tooth out. "Was there a dentist in +the place?" + +I looked at Jack: he looked at me: Ellen groaned with pain. + +"Why, yes! of course there is," said this man for emergencies; "Fisher +takes out teeth, he told me so the other day." + +Now I did not believe that Fisher knew any more about extracting teeth +than I did myself, but I breathed a prayer to the Recording Angel, and +said naught. + +"I'll go get Fisher," said Jack. + +Now Fisher was the steamboat agent. He stood six feet in his stockings, +had a powerful physique and a determined eye. Men in those countries had +to be determined; for if they once lost their nerve, Heaven save them. +Fisher had handsome black eyes. + +When they came in, I said: "Can you attend to this business, Mr. +Fisher?" + +"I think so," he replied, quietly. "The Quartermaster says he has some +forceps." + +I gasped. Jack, who had left the room, now appeared, a box of +instruments in his hand, his eyes shining with joy and triumph. + +Fisher took the box, and scanned it. "I guess they'll do," said he. + +So we placed Ellen in a chair, a stiff barrack chair, with a raw-hide +seat, and no arms. + +It was evening. + +"Mattie, you must hold the candle," said Jack. "I'll hold Ellen, and, +Fisher, you pull the tooth." + +So I lighted the candle, and held it, while Ellen tried, by its +flickering light, to show Fisher the tooth that ached. + +Fisher looked again at the box of instruments. "Why," said he, "these +are lower jaw rollers, the kind used a hundred years ago; and her tooth +is an upper jaw." + +"Never mind," answered the Lieutenant, "the instruments are all right. +Fisher, you can get the tooth out, that's all you want, isn't it?" + +The Lieutenant was impatient; and besides he did not wish any slur cast +upon his precious instruments. + +So Fisher took up the forceps, and clattered around amongst Ellen's +sound white teeth. His hand shook, great beads of perspiration gathered +on his face, and I perceived a very strong odor of Cocomonga wine. He +had evidently braced for the occasion. + +It was, however, too late to protest. He fastened onto a molar, and with +the lion's strength which lay in his gigantic frame, he wrenched it out. + +Ellen put up her hand and felt the place. "My God! you've pulled the +wrong tooth!" cried she, and so he had. + +I seized a jug of red wine which stood near by, and poured out a +gobletful, which she drank. The blood came freely from her mouth, and I +feared something dreadful had happened. + +Fisher declared she had shown him the wrong tooth, and was perfectly +willing to try again. I could not witness the second attempt, so I put +the candle down and fled. + +The stout-hearted and confiding girl allowed the second trial, and +between the steamboat agent, the Lieutenant, and the red wine, the +aching molar was finally extracted. + +This was a serious and painful occurrence. It did not cause any of us +to laugh, at the time. I am sure that Ellen, at least, never saw the +comical side of it. + +When it was all over, I thanked Fisher, and Jack beamed upon me with: +"You see, Mattie, my case of instruments did come in handy, after all." + +Encouraged by success, he applied for a pannier of medicines, and the +Ehrenberg citizens soon regarded him as a healer. At a certain hour in +the morning, the sick ones came to his office, and he dispensed simple +drugs to them and was enabled to do much good. He seemed to have a sort +of intuitive knowledge about medicines and performed some miraculous +cures, but acquired little or no facility in the use of the language. + +I was often called in as interpreter, and with the help of the sign +language, and the little I knew of Spanish, we managed to get an idea of +the ailments of these poor people. + +And so our life flowed on in that desolate spot, by the banks of the +Great Colorado. + +I rarely went outside the enclosure, except for my bath in the river at +daylight, or for some urgent matter. The one street along the river was +hot and sandy and neglected. One had not only to wade through the sand, +but to step over the dried heads or horns or bones of animals left there +to whiten where they died, or thrown out, possibly, when some one killed +a sheep or beef. Nothing decayed there, but dried and baked hard in that +wonderful air and sun. + +Then, the groups of Indians, squaws and halfbreeds loafing around the +village and the store! One never felt sure what one was to meet, and +although by this time I tolerated about everything that I had been +taught to think wicked or immoral, still, in Ehrenberg, the limit was +reached, in the sights I saw on the village streets, too bold and too +rude to be described in these pages. + +The few white men there led respectable lives enough for that country. +The standard was not high, and when I thought of the dreary years they +had already spent there without their families, and the years they must +look forward to remaining there, I was willing to reserve my judgement. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. WINTER IN EHRENBERG + +We asked my sister, Mrs. Penniman, to come out and spend the winter with +us, and to bring her son, who was in most delicate health. It was said +that the climate of Ehrenberg would have a magical effect upon all +diseases of the lungs or throat. So, to save her boy, my sister made +the long and arduous trip out from New England, arriving in Ehrenberg in +October. + +What a joy to see her, and to initiate her into the ways of our life in +Arizona! Everything was new, everything was a wonder to her and to my +nephew. At first, he seemed to gain perceptibly, and we had great hopes +of his recovery. + +It was now cool enough to sleep indoors, and we began to know what it +was to have a good night's rest. + +But no sooner had we gotten one part of our life comfortably arranged, +before another part seemed to fall out of adjustment. Accidents and +climatic conditions kept my mind in a perpetual state of unrest. + +Our dining-room door opened through two small rooms into the kitchen, +and one day, as I sat at the table, waiting for Jack to come in to +supper, I heard a strange sort of crashing noise. Looking towards the +kitchen, through the vista of open doorways, I saw Ellen rush to the +door which led to the courtyard. She turned a livid white, threw up +her hands, and cried, "Great God! the Captain!" She was transfixed with +horror. + +I flew to the door, and saw that the pump had collapsed and gone down +into the deep sulphur well. In a second, Jack's head and hands appeared +at the edge; he seemed to be caught in the debris of rotten timber. +Before I could get to him, he had scrambled half way out. "Don't come +near this place," he cried, "it's all caving in!" + +And so it seemed; for, as he worked himself up and out, the entire +structure feel in, and half the corral with it, as it looked to me. + +Jack escaped what might have been an unlucky bath in his sulphur well, +and we all recovered our composure as best we could. + +Surely, if life was dull at Ehrenberg, it could not be called exactly +monotonous. We were not obliged to seek our excitement outside; we had +plenty of it, such as it was, within our walls. + +My confidence in Ehrenberg, however, as a salubrious dwelling-place, was +being gradually and literally undermined. I began to be distrustful of +the very ground beneath my feet. Ellen felt the same way, evidently, +although we did not talk much about it. She probably longed also +for some of her own kind; and when, one morning, we went into the +dining-room for breakfast, Ellen stood, hat on, bag in hand, at the +door. Dreading to meet my chagrin, she said: "Good-bye, Captain; +good-bye, missis, you've been very kind to me. I'm leaving on the stage +for Tucson--where I first started for, you know." + +And she tripped out and climbed up into the dusty, rickety vehicle +called "the stage." I had felt so safe about Ellen, as I did not know +that any stage line ran through the place. + +And now I was in a fine plight! I took a sunshade, and ran over to +Fisher's house. "Mr. Fisher, what shall I do? Ellen has gone to Tucson!" + +Fisher bethought himself, and we went out together in the village. Not +a woman to be found who would come to cook for us! There was only one +thing to do. The Quartermaster was allowed a soldier, to assist in the +Government work. I asked him if he understood cooking; he said he had +never done any, but he would try, if I would show him how. + +This proved a hopeless task, and I finally gave it up. Jack dispatched +an Indian runner to Fort Yuma, ninety miles or more down river, begging +Captain Ernest to send us a soldier-cook on the next boat. + +This was a long time to wait; the inconveniences were intolerable: there +were our four selves, Patrocina and Jesusita, the soldier-clerk and the +Indian, to be provided for: Patrocina prepared carni seca with peppers, +a little boy came around with cuajada, a delicious sweet curd cheese, +and I tried my hand at bread, following out Ellen's instructions. + +How often I said to my husband. "If we must live in this wretched place, +let's give up civilization and live as the Mexicans do! They are the +only happy beings around here. + +"Look at them, as you pass along the street! At nearly any hour in the +day you can see them, sitting under their ramada, their backs propped +against the wall of their casa, calmly smoking cigarettes and gazing at +nothing, with a look of ineffable contentment upon their features! They +surely have solved the problem of life!" + +But we seemed never to be able to free ourselves from the fetters of +civilization, and so I struggled on. + +One evening after dusk, I went into the kitchen, opened the kitchen +closet door to take out some dish, when clatter! bang! down fell the +bread-pan, and a shower of other tin ware, and before I could fairly get +my breath, out jumped two young squaws and without deigning to glance +at me they darted across the kitchen and leaped out the window like two +frightened fawn. + +They had on nothing but their birthday clothes and as I was somewhat +startled at the sight of them, I stood transfixed, my eyes gazing at the +open space through which they had flown. + +Charley, the Indian, was in the corral, filling the ollas, and, hearing +the commotion, came in and saw just the disappearing heels of the two +squaws. + +I said, very sternly: "Charley, how came those squaws in my closet?" He +looked very much ashamed and said: "Oh, me tell you: bad man go to kill +'em; I hide 'em." + +"Well," said I, "do not hide any more girls in this casa! You savez +that?" + +He bowed his head in acquiescence. + +I afterwards learned that one of the girls was his sister. + +The weather was now fairly comfortable, and in the evenings we sat under +the ramada, in front of the house, and watched the beautiful pink +glow which spread over the entire heavens and illuminated the distant +mountains of Lower California. I have never seen anything like that +wonderful color, which spread itself over sky, river and desert. For an +hour, one could have believed oneself in a magician's realm. + +At about this time, the sad-eyed Patrocina found it expedient to +withdraw into the green valleys of Lower California, to recuperate for a +few months. With the impish Jesusita in her arms, she bade me a mournful +good-bye. Worthless as she was from the standpoint of civilized morals, +I was attached to her and felt sorry to part with her. + +Then I took a Mexican woman from Chihuahua. Now the Chihuahuans hold +their heads high, and it was rather with awe that I greeted the tall +middle-aged Chihuahuan lady who came to be our little son's nurse. Her +name was Angela. "Angel of light," I thought, how fortunate I am to get +her! + +After a few weeks, Fisher observed that the whole village was eating +Ferris ham, an unusual delicacy in Ehrenberg, and that the Goldwaters' +had sold none. So he suggested that our commissary storehouse be looked +to; and it was found that a dozen hams or so had been withdrawn from +their canvas covers, the covers stuffed with straw, and hung back in +place. Verily the Chihuahuan was adding to her pin-money in a most +unworthy fashion, and she had to go. After that, I was left without a +nurse. My little son was now about nine months old. + +Milk began to be more plentiful at this season, and, with my sister's +advice and help, I decided to make the one great change in a baby's life +i.e., to take him from his mother. Modern methods were unknown then, and +we had neither of us any experience in these matters and there was no +doctor in the place. + +The result was, that both the baby and myself were painfully and +desperately ill and not knowing which way to turn for aid, when, by a +lucky turn of Fortune's wheel, our good, dear Doctor Henry Lippincott +came through Ehrenberg on his way out to the States. Once more he took +care of us, and it is to him that I believe I owe my life. + +Captain Ernest sent us a cook from Yuma, and soon some officers came +for the duck-shooting. There were thousands of ducks around the various +lagoons in the neighborhood, and the sport was rare. We had all the +ducks we could eat. + +Then came an earthquake, which tore and rent the baked earth apart. The +ground shivered, the windows rattled, the birds fell close to the ground +and could not fly, the stove-pipes fell to the floor, the thick walls +cracked and finally, the earth rocked to and fro like some huge thing +trying to get its balance. + +It was in the afternoon. My sister and I were sitting with our +needle-work in the living-room. Little Harry was on the floor, occupied +with some toys. I was paralyzed with fear; my sister did not move. We +sat gazing at each other, scarce daring to breathe, expecting every +instant the heavy walls to crumble about our heads. The earth rocked and +rocked, and rocked again, then swayed and swayed and finally was still. +My sister caught Harry in her arms, and then Jack and Willie came +breathlessly in. "Did you feel it?" said Jack. + +"Did we feel it!" said I, scornfully. + +Sarah was silent, and I looked so reproachfully at Jack, that he +dropped his light tone, and said: "It was pretty awful. We were in the +Goldwaters' store, when suddenly it grew dark and the lamps above our +heads began to rattle and swing, and we all rushed out into the middle +of the street and stood, rather dazed, for we scarcely knew what had +happened; then we hurried home. But it's all over now." + +"I do not believe it," said I; "we shall have more"; and, in fact, we +did have two light shocks in the night, but no more followed, and the +next morning, we recovered, in a measure, from our fright and went out +to see the great fissures in that treacherous crust of earth upon which +Ehrenberg was built. + +I grew afraid, after that, and the idea that the earth would eventually +open and engulf us all took possession of my mind. + +My health, already weakened by shocks and severe strains, gave way +entirely. I, who had gloried in the most perfect health, and had a +constitution of iron, became an emaciated invalid. + +From my window, one evening at sundown, I saw a weird procession moving +slowly along towards the outskirts of the village. It must be a funeral, +thought I, and it flashed across my mind that I had never seen the +burying-ground. + +A man with a rude cross led the procession. Then came some Mexicans with +violins and guitars. After the musicians, came the body of the deceased, +wrapped in a white cloth, borne on a bier by friends, and followed by +the little band of weeping women, with black ribosos folded about their +heads. They did not use coffins at Ehrenberg, because they had none, I +suppose. + +The next day I asked Jack to walk to the grave-yard with me. He +postponed it from day to day, but I insisted upon going. At last, he +took me to see it. + +There was no enclosure, but the bare, sloping, sandy place was sprinkled +with graves, marked by heaps of stones, and in some instances by rude +crosses of wood, some of which had been wrenched from their upright +position by the fierce sand-storms. There was not a blade of grass, a +tree, or a flower. I walked about among these graves, and close beside +some of them I saw deep holes and whitnened bones. I was quite ignorant +or unthinking, and asked what the holes were. + +"It is where the coyotes and wolves come in the nights," said Jack. + +My heart sickened as I thought of these horrors, and I wondered if +Ehrenberg held anything in store for me worse than what I had already +seen. We turned away from this unhallowed grave-yard and walked to our +quarters. I had never known much about "nerves," but I began to see +spectres in the night, and those ghastly graves with their coyote-holes +were ever before me. The place was but a stone's throw from us, and the +uneasy spirits from these desecrated graves began to haunt me. I +could not sit alone on the porch at night, for they peered through the +lattice, and mocked at me, and beckoned. Some had no heads, some no +arms, but they pointed or nodded towards the grewsome burying-ground: +"You'll be with us soon, you'll be with us soon." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. RETURN TO THE STATES + +I dream of the east wind's tonic, Of the breakers' stormy roar, And the +peace of the inner harbor With the long low Shimmo shore. + +* * * * + +I long for the buoy-bell's tolling When the north wind brings from afar +The smooth, green, shining billows, To be churned into foam on the bar. + +Oh! for the sea-gulls' screaming As they swoop so bold and free! Oh! for +the fragrant commons, And the glorious open sea!-- + +For the restful great contentment, For the joy that is never known Till +past the jetty and Brant Point Light The Islander comes to his own! + +--MARY E. STARBUCK. + + +"I must send you out. I see that you cannot stand it here another +month," said Jack one day; and so he bundled us onto the boat in the +early spring, and took us down the river to meet the ocean steamer. + +There was no question about it this time, and I well knew it. + +I left my sister and her son in Ehrenberg, and I never saw my nephew +again. A month later, his state of health became so alarming that my +sister took him to San Francisco. He survived the long voyage, but died +there a few weeks later at the home of my cousin. + +At Fort Yuma we telegraphed all over the country for a nurse, but no +money would tempt those Mexican women to face an ocean voyage. Jack put +me on board the old "Newbern" in charge of the Captain, waited to see +our vessel under way, then waved good-bye from the deck of the "Gila," +and turned his face towards his post and duty. I met the situation +as best I could, and as I have already described a voyage on this old +craft, I shall not again enter into details. There was no stewardess +on board, and all arrangements were of the crudest description. Both +my child and I were seasick all the way, and the voyage lasted sixteen +days. Our misery was very great. + +The passengers were few in number, only a couple of Mexican miners +who had been prospecting, an irritable old Mexican woman, and a German +doctor, who was agreeable but elusive. + +The old Mexican woman sat on the deck all day, with her back against the +stateroom door; she was a picturesque and indolent figure. + +There was no diversion, no variety; my little boy required constant care +and watching. The days seemed endless. Everbody bought great bunches of +green bananas at the ports in Mexico, where we stopped for passengers. + +The old woman was irritable, and one day when she saw the agreeable +German doctor pulling bananas from the bunch which she had hung in the +sun to ripen, she got up muttering "Carramba," and shaking her fist +in his face. He appeased her wrath by offering her, in the most fluent +Spanish, some from his own bunch when they should be ripe. + +Such were my surroundings on the old "Newbern." The German doctor +was interesting, and I loved to talk with him, on days when I was not +seasick, and to read the letters which he had received from his family, +who were living on their Rittergut (or landed estates) in Prussia. + +He amused me by tales of his life at a wretched little mining village +somewhere about fifty miles from Ehrenberg, and I was always wondering +how he came to have lived there. + +He had the keenest sense of humor, and as I listened to the tales of +his adventures and miraculous escapes from death at the hands of these +desperate folk, I looked in his large laughing blue eyes and tried to +solve the mystery. + +For that he was of noble birth and of ancient family there was no doubt. +There were the letters, there was the crest, and here was the offshoot +of the family. I made up my mind that he was a ne'er-do-weel and a +rolling stone. He was elusive, and, beyond his adventures, told me +nothing of himself. It was some time after my arrival in San Francisco +that I learned more about him. + +Now, after we rounded Cape St. Lucas, we were caught in the long heavy +swell of the Pacific Ocean, and it was only at intervals that my little +boy and I could leave our stateroom. The doctor often held him while I +ran below to get something to eat, and I can never forget his kindness; +and if, as I afterward heard in San Francisco, he really had entered +the "Gate of a hundred sorrows," it would perhaps best explain his +elusiveness, his general condition, and his sometimes dazed expression. + +A gentle and kindly spirit, met by chance, known through the propinquity +of a sixteen days' voyage, and never forgotten. + +Everything comes to an end, however interminable it may seem, and at +last the sharp and jagged outlines of the coast began to grow softer and +we approached the Golden Gate. + +The old "Newbern," with nothing in her but ballast, rolled and lurched +along, through the bright green waters of the outer bar. I stood leaning +against the great mast, steadying myself as best I could, and the tears +rolled down my face; for I saw the friendly green hills, and before me +lay the glorious bay of San Francisco. I had left behind me the deserts, +the black rocks, the burning sun, the snakes, the scorpions, the +centipedes, the Indians and the Ehrenberg graveyard; and so the tears +flowed, and I did not try to stop them; they were tears of joy. + +The custom officers wanted to confiscate the great bundles of Mexican +cigarettes they found in my trunk, but "No," I told them, "they were for +my own use." They raised their eyebrows, gave me one look, and put them +back into the trunk. + +My beloved California relatives met us, and took care of us for a +fortnight, and when I entered a Pullman car for a nine days' journey to +my old home, it seemed like the most luxurious comfort, although I had +a fourteen-months-old child in my arms, and no nurse. So does everything +in this life go by comparison. + +Arriving in Boston, my sister Harriet met me at the train, and as +she took little Harry from my arms she cried: "Where did you get that +sunbonnet? Now the baby can't wear that in Boston!" + +Of course we were both thinking hard of all that had happened to me +since we parted, on the morning after my wedding, two years before, and +we were so overcome with the joy of meeting, that if it had not been for +the baby's white sunbonnet, I do not know what kind of a scene we might +have made. That saved the situation, and after a few days of rest and +necessary shopping, we started for our old home in Nantucket. Such a +welcome as the baby and I had from my mother and father and all old +friends! + +But I saw sadness in their faces, and I heard it in their voices, for no +one thought I could possibly live. I felt, however, sure it was not too +late. I knew the East wind's tonic would not fail me, its own child. + +Stories of our experiences and misfortunes were eagerly listened to, by +the family, and betwixt sighs and laughter they declared they were going +to fill some boxes which should contain everything necessary for comfort +in those distant places. So one room in our old house was set apart for +this; great boxes were brought, and day by day various articles, useful, +ornamental, and comfortable, and precious heirlooms of silver and glass, +were packed away in them. It was the year of 1876, the year of the great +Centennial, at Philadelphia. Everybody went, but it had no attractions +for me. I was happy enough, enjoying the health-giving air and the +comforts of an Eastern home. I wondered that I had ever complained about +anything there, or wished to leave that blissful spot. + +The poorest person in that place by the sea had more to be thankful for, +in my opinion, than the richest people in Arizona. I felt as if I must +cry it out from the house-tops. My heart was thankful every minute of +the day and night, for every breath of soft air that I breathed, for +every bit of fresh fish that I ate, for fresh vegetables, and for +butter--for gardens, for trees, for flowers, for the good firm earth +beneath my feet. I wrote the man on detached service that I should never +return to Ehrenberg. + +After eight months, in which my health was wholly restored, I heard the +good news that Captain Corliss had applied for his first lieutenant, and +I decided to join him at once at Camp MacDowell. + +Although I had not wholly forgotten that Camp MacDowell had been called +by very bad names during our stay at Fort Whipple, at the time that Jack +decided on the Ehrenberg detail, I determined to brave it, in all its +unattractiveness, isolation and heat, for I knew there was a garrison +and a Doctor there, and a few officers' families, I knew supplies were +to be obtained and the ordinary comforts of a far-off post. Then too, +in my summer in the East I had discovered that I was really a soldier's +wife and I must go back to it all. To the army with its glitter and +its misery, to the post with its discomforts, to the soldiers, to the +drills, to the bugle-calls, to the monotony, to the heat of Southern +Arizona, to the uniform and the stalwart Captains and gay Lieutenants +who wore it, I felt the call and I must go. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. BACK TO ARIZONA + +The last nails were driven in the precious boxes, and I started overland +in November with my little son, now nearly two years old. + +"Overland" in those days meant nine days from New York to San Francisco. +Arriving in Chicago, I found it impossible to secure a section on the +Pullman car so was obliged to content myself with a lower berth. I did +not allow myself to be disappointed. + +On entering the section, I saw an enormous pair of queer cow hide shoes, +the very queerest shoes I had ever seen, lying on the floor, with a much +used travelling bag. I speculated a good deal on the shoes, but did not +see the owner of them until several hours later, when a short thick-set +German with sandy close-cut beard entered and saluted me politely. "You +are noticing my shoes perhaps Madame?" + +"Yes" I said, involuntarily answering him in German. + +His face shone with pleasure and he explained to me that they were made +in Russia and he always wore them when travelling. "What have we," I +thought, "an anarchist?" + +But with the inexperience and fearlessness of youth, I entered into a +most delightful conversation in German with him. I found him rather an +extraordinarily well educated gentleman and he said he lived in Nevada, +but had been over to Vienna to place his little boy at a military +school, "as," he said, "there is nothing like a uniform to give a +boy self-respect." He said his wife had died several months before. I +congratulated myself that the occupant of the upper berth was at least a +gentleman. + +The next day, as we sat opposite each other chatting, always in German, +he paused, and fixing his eyes rather steadily upon me he remarked: "Do +you think I put on mourning when my wife died? no indeed, I put on white +kid gloves and had a fiddler and danced at the grave. All this mourning +that people have is utter nonsense." + +I was amazed at the turn his conversation had taken and sat quite still, +not knowing just what to say or to do. + +After awhile, he looked at me steadily, and said, very deferentially, +"Madame, the spirit of my dead wife is looking at me from out your +eyes." + +By this time I realized that the man was a maniac, and I had always +heard that one must agree with crazy people, so I nodded, and that +seemed to satisfy him, and bye and bye after some minutes which seemed +like hours to me, he went off to the smoking room. + +The tension was broken and I appealed to a very nice looking woman who +happened to be going to some place in Nevada near which this Doctor +lived, and she said, when I told her his name, "Why, yes, I heard of +him before I left home, he lives in Silver City, and at the death of +his wife, he went hopelessly insane, but," she added, "he is harmless, I +believe." + +This was a nice fix, to be sure, and I staid over in her section all +day, and late that night the Doctor arrived at the junction where he +was to take another train. So I slept in peace, after a considerable +agitation. + +There is nothing like experience to teach a young woman how to travel +alone. + +In San Francisco I learned that I could now go as far as Los Angeles by +rail, thence by steamer to San Diego, and so on by stage to Fort Yuma, +where my husband was to meet me with an ambulance and a wagon. + +I was enchanted with the idea of avoiding the long sea-trip down the +Pacific coast, but sent my boxes down by the Steamer "Montana," sister +ship of the old "Newbern," and after a few days' rest in San Francisco, +set forth by rail for Los Angeles. At San Pedro, the port of Los +Angeles, we embarked for San Diego. It was a heavenly night. I sat +on deck enjoying the calm sea, and listening to the romantic story of +Lieutenant Philip Reade, then stationed at San Diego. He was telling the +story himself, and I had never read or heard of anything so mysterious +or so tragic. + +Then, too, aside from the story, Mr. Reade was a very good-looking and +chivalrous young army officer. He was returning to his station in San +Diego, and we had this pleasant opportunity to renew what had been a +very slight acquaintance. + +The calm waters of the Pacific, with their long and gentle swell, the +pale light of the full moon, our steamer gliding so quietly along, the +soft air of the California coast, the absence of noisy travellers, these +made a fit setting for the story of his early love and marriage, and the +tragic mystery which surrounded the death of his young bride. + +All the romance which lived and will ever live in me was awake to the +story, and the hours passed all too quickly. + +But a cry from my little boy in the near-by deck stateroom recalled me +to the realities of life and I said good-night, having spent one of the +most delightful evenings I ever remember. + +Mr. Reade wears now a star on his shoulder, and well earned it is, too. +I wonder if he has forgotten how he helped to bind up my little boy's +finger which had been broken in an accident on the train from San +Francisco to Los Angeles? or how he procured a surgeon for me on our +arrival there, and got a comfortable room for us at the hotel? or how he +took us to drive (with an older lady for a chaperon), or how he kindly +cared for us until we were safely on the boat that evening? If I had +ever thought chivalry dead, I learned then that I had been mistaken. + +San Diego charmed me, as we steamed, the next morning, into its shining +bay. But as our boat was two hours late and the stage-coach was waiting, +I had to decline Mr. Reade's enchanting offers to drive us around the +beautiful place, to show me the fine beaches, and his quarters, and all +other points of interest in this old town of Southern California. + +Arizona, not San Diego, was my destination, so we took a hasty breakfast +at the hotel and boarded the stage, which, filled with passengers, was +waiting before the door. + +The driver waited for no ceremonies, muttered something about being +late, cracked his whip, and away we went. I tried to stow myself and my +little boy and my belongings away comfortably, but the road was rough +and the coach swayed, and I gave it up. There were passengers on top of +the coach, and passengers inside the coach. One woman who was totally +deaf, and some miners and blacksmiths, and a few other men, the flotsam +and jetsam of the Western countries, who come from no one knoweth +whence, and who go, no one knoweth whither, who have no trade or +profession and are sometimes even without a name. + +They seemed to want to be kind to me. Harry got very stage-sick and gave +us much trouble, and they all helped me to hold him. Night came. I do +not remember that we made any stops at all; if we did, I have forgotten +them. The night on that stage-coach can be better imagined than +described. I do not know of any adjectives that I could apply to it. +Just before dawn, we stopped to change horses and driver, and as the +day began to break, we felt ourselves going down somewhere at a terrific +speed. + +The great Concord coach slipped and slid and swayed on its huge springs +as we rounded the curves. + +The road was narrow and appeared to be cut out of solid rock, which +seemed to be as smooth as soapstone; the four horses were put to their +speed, and down and around and away we went. I drew in my breath as I +looked out and over into the abyss on my left. Death and destruction +seemed to be the end awaiting us all. Everybody was limp, when we +reached the bottom--that is, I was limp, and I suppose the others were. +The stage-driver knew I was frightened, because I sat still and looked +white and he came and lifted me out. He lived in a small cabin at the +bottom of the mountain; I talked with him some. "The fact is," he said, +"we are an hour late this morning; we always make it a point to 'do it' +before dawn, so the passengers can't see anything; they are almost sure +to get stampeded if we come down by daylight." + +I mentioned this road afterwards in San Francisco, and learned that it +was a famous road, cut out of the side of a solid mountain of rock; long +talked of, long desired, and finally built, at great expense, by the +state and the county together; that they always had the same man to +drive over it, and that they never did it by daylight. I did not inquire +if there had ever been any accidents. I seemed to have learned all I +wanted to know about it. + +After a little rest and a breakfast at a sort of roadhouse, a relay of +horses was taken, and we travelled one more day over a flat country, to +the end of the stage-route. Jack was to meet me. Already from the stage +I had espied the post ambulance and two blue uniforms. Out jumped Major +Ernest and Jack. I remember thinking how straight and how well they +looked. I had forgotten really how army men did look, I had been so long +away. + +And now we were to go to Fort Yuma and stay with the Wells' until my +boxes, which had been sent around by water on the steamer "Montana," +should arrive. I had only the usual thirty pounds allowance of luggage +with me on the stage, and it was made up entirely of my boy's clothing, +and an evening dress I had worn on the last night of my stay in San +Francisco. + +Fort Yuma was delightful at this season (December), and after four or +five days spent most enjoyably, we crossed over one morning on the old +rope ferryboat to Yuma City, to inquire at the big country store there +of news from the Gulf. There was no bridge then over the Colorado. + +The merchant called Jack to one side and said something to him in a low +tone. I was sure it concerned the steamer, and I said: "what it is?" + +Then they told me that news had just been received from below, that the +"Montana" had been burned to the water's edge in Guaymas harbor, and +everything on board destroyed; the passengers had been saved with much +difficulty, as the disaster occurred in the night. + +I had lost all the clothes I had in the world--and my precious boxes +were gone. I scarcely knew how to meet the calamity. + +Jack said: "Don't mind, Mattie; I'm so thankful you and the boy were not +on board the ship; the things are nothing, no account at all." + +"But," said I, "you do not understand. I have no clothes except what I +have on, and a party dress. Oh! what shall I do?" I cried. + +The merchant was very sympathetic and kind, and Major Wells said, "Let's +go home and tell Fanny; maybe she can suggest something." + +I turned toward the counter, and bought some sewing materials, realizing +that outside of my toilet articles and my party dress all my personal +belongings were swept away. I was in a country where there were no +dressmakers, and no shops; I was, for the time being, a pauper, as far +as clothing was concerned. + +When I got back to Mrs. Wells I broke down entirely; she put her arms +around me and said: "I've heard all about it; I know just how you must +feel; now come in my room, and we'll see what can be done." + +She laid out enough clothing to last me until I could get some things +from the East, and gave me a grey and white percale dress with a basque, +and a border, and although it was all very much too large for me, it +sufficed to relieve my immediate distress. + +Letters were dispatched to the East, in various directions, for every +sort and description of clothing, but it was at least two months before +any of it appeared, and I felt like an object of charity for a long +time. Then, too, I had anticipated the fitting up of our quarters with +all the pretty cretonnes and other things I had brought from home. And +now the contents of those boxes were no more! The memory of the visit +was all that was left to me. It was very hard to bear. + +Preparations for our journey to Camp MacDowell were at last completed. +The route to our new post lay along the valley of the Gila River, +following it up from its mouth, where it empties into the Colorado, +eastwards towards the southern middle portion of Arizona. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. UP THE VALLEY OF THE GILA + +The December sun was shining brightly down, as only the Arizona sun +can shine at high noon in winter, when we crossed the Colorado on +the primitive ferryboat drawn by ropes, clambered up into the great +thorough-brace wagon (or ambulance) with its dusty white canvas covers +all rolled up at the sides, said good-bye to our kind hosts of Fort +Yuma, and started, rattling along the sandy main street of Yuma City, +for old Camp MacDowell. + +Our big blue army wagon, which had been provided for my boxes and +trunks, rumbling along behind us, empty except for the camp equipage. + +But it all seemed so good to me: I was happy to see the soldiers again, +the drivers and teamsters, and even the sleek Government mules. The old +blue uniforms made my heart glad. Every sound was familiar, even the +rattling of the harness with its ivory rings and the harsh sound of the +heavy brakes reinforced with old leather soles. + +Even the country looked attractive, smiling under the December sun. I +wondered if I had really grown to love the desert. I had read somewhere +that people did. But I was not paying much attention in those days +to the analysis of my feelings. I did not stop to question the subtle +fascination which I felt steal over me as we rolled along the smooth +hard roads that followed the windings of the Gila River. I was back +again in the army; I had cast my lot with a soldier, and where he was, +was home to me. + +In Nantucket, no one thought much about the army. The uniform of the +regulars was never seen there. The profession of arms was scarcely known +or heard of. Few people manifested any interest in the life of the Far +West. I had, while there, felt out of touch with my oldest friends. Only +my darling old uncle, a brave old whaling captain, had said: "Mattie, I +am much interested in all you have written us about Arizona; come right +down below and show me on the dining-room map just where you went." + +Gladly I followed him down the stairs, and he took his pencil out and +began to trace. After he had crossed the Mississippi, there did not seem +to be anything but blank country, and I could not find Arizona, and it +was written in large letters across the entire half of this antique map, +"Unexplored." + +"True enough," he laughed. "I must buy me a new map." + +But he drew his pencil around Cape Horn and up the Pacific coast, and +I described to him the voyages I had made on the old "Newbern," and his +face was aglow with memories. + +"Yes," he said, "in 1826, we put into San Francisco harbor and sent +our boats up to San Jose for water and we took goats from some of those +islands, too. Oh! I know the coast well enough. We were on our way to the +Ar'tic Ocean then, after right whales." + +But, as a rule, people there seemed to have little interest in the army +and it had made me feel as one apart. + +Gila City was our first camp; not exactly a city, to be sure, at that +time, whatever it may be now. We were greeted by the sight of a few old +adobe houses, and the usual saloon. I had ceased, however, to dwell upon +such trifles as names. Even "Filibuster," the name of our next camp, +elicited no remark from me. + +The weather was fine beyond description. Each day, at noon, we got out +of the ambulance, and sat down on the warm white sand, by a little clump +of mesquite, and ate our luncheon. Coveys of quail flew up and we shot +them, thereby insuring a good supper. + +The mules trotted along contentedly on the smooth white road, which +followed the south bank of the Gila River. Myriads of lizards ran out +and looked at us. "Hello, here you are again," they seemed to say. + +The Gila Valley in December was quite a different thing from the Mojave +desert in September; and although there was not much to see, in that +low, flat country, yet we three were joyous and happy. + +Good health again was mine, the travelling was ideal, there were no +discomforts, and I experienced no terrors in this part of Arizona. + +Each morning, when the tent was struck, and I sat on the camp-stool by +the little heap of ashes, which was all that remained of what had been +so pleasant a home for an afternoon and a night, a little lonesome +feeling crept over me, at the thought of leaving the place. So strong is +the instinct and love of home in some people, that the little tendrils +shoot out in a day and weave themselves around a spot which has given +them shelter. Such as those are not born to be nomads. + +Camps were made at Stanwix, Oatman's Flat, and Gila Bend. There we left +the river, which makes a mighty loop at this point, and struck across +the plains to Maricopa Wells. The last day's march took us across the +Gila River, over the Maricopa desert, and brought us to the Salt River. +We forded it at sundown, rested our animals a half hour or so, and drove +through the MacDowell canon in the dark of the evening, nine miles more +to the post. A day's march of forty-five miles. (A relay of mules had +been sent to meet us at the Salt River, but by some oversight, we had +missed it.) + +Jack had told me of the curious cholla cactus, which is said to nod at +the approach of human beings, and to deposit its barbed needles at their +feet. Also I had heard stories of this deep, dark canon and things that +had happened there. + +Fort MacDowell was in Maricopa County, Arizona, on the Verde River, +seventy miles or so south of Camp Verde; the roving bands of Indians, +escaping from Camp Apache and the San Carlos reservation, which lay +far to the east and southeast, often found secure hiding places in the +fastnesses of the Superstition Mountains and other ranges, which lay +between old Camp MacDowell and these reservations. + +Hence, a company of cavalry and one of infantry were stationed at Camp +MacDowell, and the officers and men of this small command were kept +busy, scouting, and driving the renegades from out of this part of the +country back to their reservations. It was by no means an idle post, as +I found after I got there; the life at Camp MacDowell meant hard work, +exposure and fatigue for this small body of men. + +As we wound our way through this deep, dark canon, after crossing the +Salt River, I remembered the things I had heard, of ambush and murder. +Our animals were too tired to go out of a walk, the night fell in black +shadows down between those high mountain walls, the chollas, which are a +pale sage-green color in the day-time, took on a ghastly hue. They were +dotted here and there along the road, and on the steep mountainsides. +They grew nearly as tall as a man, and on each branch were great +excrescences which looked like people's heads, in the vague light which +fell upon them. + +They nodded to us, and it made me shudder; they seemed to be something +human. + +The soldiers were not partial to MacDowell canon; they knew too much +about the place; and we all breathed a sigh of relief when we emerged +from this dark uncanny road and saw the lights of the post, lying low, +long, flat, around a square. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. OLD CAMP MACDOWELL + +We were expected, evidently, for as we drove along the road in front of +the officers' quarters they all came out to meet us, and we received a +great welcome. + +Captain Corliss of C company welcomed us to the post and to his company, +and said he hoped I should like MacDowell better than I did Ehrenberg. +Now Ehrenberg seemed years agone, and I could laugh at the mention of +it. + +Supper was awaiting us at Captain Corliss's, and Mrs. Kendall, wife +of Lieutenant Kendall, Sixth Cavalry, had, in Jack's absence, put the +finishing touches to our quarters. So I went at once to a comfortable +home, and life in the army began again for me. + +How good everything seemed! There was Doctor Clark, whom I had met first +at Ehrenberg, and who wanted to throw Patrocina and Jesusita into the +Colorado. I was so glad to find him there; he was such a good doctor, +and we never had a moment's anxiety, as long as he staid at Camp +MacDowell. Our confidence in him was unbounded. + +It was easy enough to obtain a man from the company. There were then +no hateful laws forbidding soldiers to work in officers' families; no +dreaded inspectors, who put the flat question, "Do you employ a soldier +for menial labor?" + +Captain Corliss gave me an old man by the name of Smith, and he was glad +to come and stay with us and do what simple cooking we required. One of +the laundresses let me have her daughter for nurserymaid, and our small +establishment at Camp MacDowell moved on smoothly, if not with elegance. + +The officers' quarters were a long, low line of adobe buildings with no +space between them; the houses were separated only by thick walls. In +front, the windows looked out over the parade ground. In the rear, they +opened out on a road which ran along the whole length, and on the other +side of which lay another row of long, low buildings which were the +kitchens, each set of quarters having its own. + +We occupied the quarters at the end of the row, and a large bay window +looked out over a rather desolate plain, and across to the large and +well-kept hospital. As all my draperies and pretty cretonnes had been +burnt up on the ill-fated ship, I had nothing but bare white shades at +the windows, and the rooms looked desolate enough. But a long divan was +soon built, and some coarse yellow cotton bought at John Smith's (the +sutler's) store, to cover it. My pretty rugs and mats were also gone, +and there was only the old ingrain carpet from Fort Russell. The floors +were adobe, and some men from the company came and laid down old canvas, +then the carpet, and drove in great spikes around the edge to hold it +down. The floors of the bedroom and dining-room were covered with canvas +in the same manner. Our furnishings were very scanty and I felt very +mournful about the loss of the boxes. We could not claim restitution as +the steamship company had been courteous enough to take the boxes down +free of charge. + +John Smith, the post trader (the name "sutler" fell into disuse about +now) kept a large store but, nothing that I could use to beautify my +quarters with--and our losses had been so heavy that we really could not +afford to send back East for more things. My new white dresses came and +were suitable enough for the winter climate of MacDowell. But I missed +the thousand and one accessories of a woman's wardrobe, the accumulation +of years, the comfortable things which money could not buy especially at +that distance. + +I had never learned how to make dresses or to fit garments and although +I knew how to sew, my accomplishments ran more in the line of outdoor +sports. + +But Mrs. Kendall whose experience in frontier life had made her +self-reliant, lent me some patterns, and I bought some of John Smith's +calico and went to work to make gowns suited to the hot weather. This +was in 1877, and every one will remember that the ready-made house-gowns +were not to be had in those days in the excellence and profusion in +which they can to-day be found, in all parts of the country. + +Now Mrs. Kendall was a tall, fine woman, much larger than I, but I used +her patterns without alterations, and the result was something like a +bag. They were freshly laundried and cool, however, and I did not place +so much importance on the lines of them, as the young women of the +present time do. To-day, the poorest farmer's wife in the wilds of +Arkansas or Alaska can wear better fitting gowns than I wore then. But +my riding habits, of which I had several kinds, to suit warm and cold +countries, had been left in Jack's care at Ehrenberg, and as long as +these fitted well, it did not so much matter about the gowns. + +Captain Chaffee, who commanded the company of the Sixth Cavalry +stationed there, was away on leave, but Mr. Kendall, his first +lieutenant, consented for me to exercise "Cochise," Captain Chaffee's +Indian pony, and I had a royal time. + +Cavalry officers usually hate riding: that is, riding for pleasure; +for they are in the saddle so much, for dead earnest work; but a young +officer, a second lieutenant, not long out from the Academy, liked to +ride, and we had many pleasant riding parties. Mr. Dravo and I rode one +day to the Mormon settlement, seventeen miles away, on some business +with the bishop, and a Mormon woman gave us a lunch of fried salt pork, +potatoes, bread, and milk. How good it tasted, after our long ride! and +how we laughed about it all, and jollied, after the fashion of young +people, all the way back to the post! Mr Dravo had also lost all his +things on the "Montana," and we sympathized greatly with each other. +He, however, had sent an order home to Pennsylvania, duplicating all the +contents of his boxes. I told him I could not duplicate mine, if I sent +a thousand orders East. + +When, after some months, his boxes came, he brought me in a package, +done up in tissue paper and tied with ribbon: "Mother sends you these; +she wrote that I was not to open them; I think she felt sorry for you, +when I wrote her you had lost all your clothing. I suppose," he added, +mustering his West Point French to the front, and handing me the +package, "it is what you ladies call 'lingerie.'" + +I hope I blushed, and I think I did, for I was not so very old, and +I was touched by this sweet remembrance from the dear mother back in +Pittsburgh. And so many lovely things happened all the time; everybody +was so kind to me. Mrs. Kendall and her young sister, Kate Taylor, Mrs. +John Smith and I, were the only women that winter at Camp MacDowell. +Afterwards, Captain Corliss brought a bride to the post, and a new +doctor took Doctor Clark's place. + +There were interminable scouts, which took both cavalry and infantry +out of the post. We heard a great deal about "chasing Injuns" in the +Superstition Mountains, and once a lieutenant of infantry went out to +chase an escaping Indian Agent. + +Old Smith, my cook, was not very satisfactory; he drank a good deal, and +I got very tired of the trouble he caused me. It was before the days of +the canteen, and soldiers could get all the whiskey they wanted at the +trader's store; and, it being generally the brand that was known in the +army as "Forty rod," they got very drunk on it sometimes. I never had +it in my heart to blame them much, poor fellows, for every human beings +wants and needs some sort of recreation and jovial excitement. + +Captain Corliss said to Jack one day, in my presence, "I had a fine +batch of recruits come in this morning." + +"That's lovely," said I; "what kind of men are they? Any good cooks +amongst them?" (for I was getting very tired of Smith). + +Captain Corliss smiled a grim smile. "What do you think the United +States Government enlists men for?" said he; "do you think I want my +company to be made up of dish-washers?" + +He was really quite angry with me, and I concluded that I had been +too abrupt, in my eagerness for another man, and that my ideas on the +subject were becoming warped. I decided that I must be more diplomatic +in the future, in my dealings with the Captain of C company. + +The next day, when we went to breakfast, whom did we find in the +dining-room but Bowen! Our old Bowen of the long march across the +Territory! Of Camp Apache and K company! He had his white apron on, his +hair rolled back in his most fetching style, and was putting the coffee +on the table. + +"But, Bowen," said I, "where--how on earth--did you--how did you know +we--what does it mean?" + +Bowen saluted the First Lieutenant of C company, and said: "Well, sir, +the fact is, my time was out, and I thought I would quit. I went to San +Francisco and worked in a miners' restaurant" (here he hesitated), "but +I didn't like it, and I tried something else, and lost all my money, and +I got tired of the town, so I thought I'd take on again, and as I knowed +ye's were in C company now, I thought I'd come to MacDowell, and I came +over here this morning and told old Smith he'd better quit; this was my +job, and here I am, and I hope ye're all well--and the little boy?" + +Here was loyalty indeed, and here was Bowen the Immortal, back again! + +And now things ran smoothly once more. Roasts of beef and haunches of +venison, ducks and other good things we had through the winter. + +It was cool enough to wear white cotton dresses, but nothing heavier. It +never rained, and the climate was superb, although it was always hot in +the sun. We had heard that it was very hot here; in fact, people called +MacDowell by very bad names. As the spring came on, we began to realize +that the epithets applied to it might be quite appropriate. + +In front of our quarters was a ramada, [*] supported by rude poles of +the cottonwood tree. Then came the sidewalk, and the acequia (ditch), +then a row of young cottonwood trees, then the parade ground. Through +the acequia ran the clear water that supplied the post, and under the +shade of the ramadas, hung the large ollas from which we dipped the +drinking water, for as yet, of course, ice was not even dreamed of in +the far plains of MacDowell. The heat became intense, as the summer +approached. To sleep inside the house was impossible, and we soon +followed the example of the cavalry, who had their beds out on the +parade ground. + + *A sort of rude awning made of brush and supported by + cottonwood poles. + +Two iron cots, therefore, were brought from the hospital, and placed +side by side in front of our quarters, beyond the acequia and the +cottonwood trees, in fact, out in the open space of the parade ground. +Upon these were laid some mattresses and sheets, and after "taps" had +sounded, and lights were out, we retired to rest. Near the cots stood +Harry's crib. We had not thought about the ants, however, and they +swarmed over our beds, driving us into the house. The next morning Bowen +placed a tin can of water under each point of contact; and as each cot +had eight legs, and the crib had four, twenty cans were necessary. He +had not taken the trouble to remove the labels, and the pictures of red +tomatoes glared at us in the hot sun through the day; they did not look +poetic, but our old enemies, the ants, were outwitted. + +There was another species of tiny insect, however, which seemed to drop +from the little cotton-wood trees which grew at the edge of the acequia, +and myriads of them descended and crawled all over us, so we had to +have our beds moved still farther out on to the open space of the parade +ground. + +And now we were fortified against all the venomous creeping things and +we looked forward to blissful nights of rest. + +We did not look along the line, when we retired to our cots, but if we +had, we should have seen shadowy figures, laden with pillows, flying +from the houses to the cots or vice versa. It was certainly a novel +experience. + +With but a sheet for a covering, there we lay, looking up at the starry +heavens. I watched the Great Bear go around, and other constellations +and seemed to come into close touch with Nature and the mysterious +night. But the melancholy solemnity of my communings was much affected +by the howling of the coyotes, which seemed sometimes to be so near +that I jumped to the side of the crib, to see if my little boy was being +carried off. The good sweet slumber which I craved never came to me in +those weird Arizona nights under the stars. + +At about midnight, a sort of dewy coolness would come down from the sky, +and we could then sleep a little; but the sun rose incredibly early in +that southern country, and by the crack of dawn sheeted figures were to +be seen darting back into the quarters, to try for another nap. The nap +rarely came to any of us, for the heat of the houses never passed off, +day or night, at that season. After an early breakfast, the long day +began again. + +The question of what to eat came to be a serious one. We experimented +with all sorts of tinned foods, and tried to produce some variety from +them, but it was all rather tiresome. We almost dreaded the visits of +the Paymaster and the Inspector at that season, as we never had anything +in the house to give them. + +One hot night, at about ten o'clock, we heard the rattle of wheels, and +an ambulance drew up at our door. Out jumped Colonel Biddle, Inspector +General, from Fort Whipple. "What shall I give him to eat, poor hungry +man?" I thought. I looked in the wire-covered safe, which hung outside +the kitchen, and discovered half a beefsteak-pie. The gallant Colonel +declared that if there was one thing above all others that he liked, it +was cold beefsteak-pie. Lieutenant Thomas of the Fifth Cavalry echoed +his sentiments, and with a bottle of Cocomonga, which was always kept +cooling somewhere, they had a merry supper. + +These visits broke the monotony of our life at Camp MacDowell. We heard +of the gay doings up at Fort Whipple, and of the lovely climate there. + +Mr. Thomas said he could not understand why we wore such bags of +dresses. I told him spitefully that if the women of Fort Whipple would +come down to MacDowell to spend the summer, they would soon be able +to explain it to him. I began to feel embarrassed at the fit of my +house-gowns. After a few days spent with us, however, the mercury +ranging from l04 to l20 degrees in the shade, he ceased to comment upon +our dresses or our customs. + +I had a glass jar of butter sent over from the Commissary, and asked +Colonel Biddle if he thought it right that such butter as that should +be bought by the purchasing officer in San Francisco. It had melted, +and separated into layers of dead white, deep orange and pinkish-purple +colors. Thus I, too, as well as General Miles, had my turn at trying to +reform the Commissary Department of Uncle Sam's army. + +Hammocks were swung under the ramadas, and after luncheon everybody +tried a siesta. Then, near sundown, an ambulance came and took us over +to the Verde River, about a mile away, where we bathed in water almost +as thick as that of the Great Colorado. We taught Mrs. Kendall to swim, +but Mr. Kendall, being an inland man, did not take to the water. Now the +Verde River was not a very good substitute for the sea, and the thick +water filled our ears and mouths, but it gave us a little half hour in +the day when we could experience a feeling of being cool, and we found +it worth while to take the trouble. Thick clumps of mesquite trees +furnished us with dressing-rooms. We were all young, and youth requires +so little with which to make merry. + +After the meagre evening dinner, the Kendalls and ourselves sat together +under the ramada until taps, listening generally to the droll anecdotes +told by Mr. Kendall, who had an inexhaustible fund. Then another night +under the stars, and so passed the time away. + +We lived, ate, slept by the bugle calls. Reveille means sunrise, when a +Lieutenant must hasten to put himself into uniform, sword and belt, and +go out to receive the report of the company or companies of soldiers, +who stand drawn up in line on the parade ground. + +At about nine o'clock in the morning comes the guard-mount, a function +always which everybody goes out to see. Then the various drill calls, +and recalls, and sick-call and the beautiful stable-call for the +cavalry, when the horses are groomed and watered, the thrilling +fire-call and the startling assembly, or call-to-arms, when every +soldier jumps for his rifle and every officer buckles on his sword, and +a woman's heart stands still. + +Then at night, "tattoo," when the company officers go out to receive the +report of "all present and accounted for"--and shortly after that, the +mournful "taps," a signal for the barrack lights to be put out. + +The bugle call of "taps" is mournful also through association, as it is +always blown over the grave of a soldier or an officer, after the coffin +has been lowered into the earth. The soldier-musicians who blow the +calls, seem to love the call of "taps," (strangely enough) and I +remember well that there at Camp MacDowell, we all used to go out and +listen when "taps went," as the soldier who blew it, seemed to put a +whole world of sorrow into it, turning to the four points of the compass +and letting its clear tones tremble through the air, away off across the +Maricopa desert and then toward the East, our home so faraway. We never +spoke, we just listened, and who can tell the thoughts that each one +had in his mind? Church nor ministers nor priests had we there in +those distant lands, but can we say that our lives were wholly without +religion? + +The Sunday inspection of men and barracks, which was performed with +much precision and formality, and often in full dress uniform, gave us +something by which we could mark the weeks, as they slipped along. There +was no religious service of any kind, as Uncle Sam did not seem to think +that the souls of us people in the outposts needed looking after. It +would have afforded much comfort to the Roman Catholics had there been a +priest stationed there. + +The only sermon I ever heard in old Camp MacDowell was delivered by +a Mormon Bishop and was of a rather preposterous nature, neither +instructive nor edifying. But the good Catholics read their prayer-books +at home, and the rest of us almost forgot that such organizations as +churches existed. + +Another bright winter found us still gazing at the Four Peaks of the +MacDowell Mountains, the only landmark on the horizon. I was glad, in +those days, that I had not staid back East, for the life of an officer +without his family, in those drear places, is indeed a blank and empty +one. + +"Four years I have sat here and looked at the Four Peaks," said Captain +Corliss, one day, "and I'm getting almighty tired of it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. A SUDDEN ORDER + +In June, 1878, Jack was ordered to report to the commanding officer at +Fort Lowell (near the ancient city of Tucson), to act as Quartermaster +and Commissary at that post. This was a sudden and totally unexpected +order. It was indeed hard, and it seemed to me cruel. For our regiment +had been four years in the Territory, and we were reasonably sure of +being ordered out before long. Tucson lay far to the south of us, and +was even hotter than this place. But there was nothing to be done; we +packed up, I with a heavy heart, Jack with his customary stoicism. + +With the grief which comes only at that time in one's life, and which +sees no end and no limit, I parted from my friends at Camp MacDowell. +Two years together, in the most intimate companionship, cut off from +the outside world, and away from all early ties, had united us with +indissoluble bonds,--and now we were to part,--forever as I thought. + +We all wept; I embraced them all, and Jack lifted me into the +ambulance; Mrs. Kendall gave a last kiss to our little boy; Donahue, our +soldier-driver, loosened up his brakes, cracked his long whip, and away +we went, down over the flat, through the dark MacDowell canon, with the +chollas nodding to us as we passed, across the Salt River, and on across +an open desert to Florence, forty miles or so to the southeast of us. + +At Florence we sent our military transportation back and staid over a +day at a tavern to rest. We met there a very agreeable and cultivated +gentleman, Mr. Charles Poston, who was en route to his home, somewhere +in the mountains nearby. We took the Tucson stage at sundown, and +travelled all night. I heard afterwards more about Mr. Poston: he had +attained some reputation in the literary world by writing about the +Sun-worshippers of Asia. He had been a great traveller in his early +life, but now had built himself some sort of a house in one of the +desolate mountains which rose out of these vast plains of Arizona, +hoisted his sun-flag on the top, there to pass the rest of his days. +People out there said he was a sun-worshipper. I do not know. "But when +I am tired of life and people," I thought, "this will not be the place I +shall choose." + +Arriving at Tucson, after a hot and tiresome night in the stage, we went +to an old hostelry. Tucson looked attractive. Ancient civilization is +always interesting to me. + +Leaving me at the tavern, my husband drove out to Fort Lowell, to see +about quarters and things in general. In a few hours he returned with +the overwhelming news that he found a dispatch awaiting him at that +post, ordering him to return immediately to his company at Camp +MacDowell, as the Eighth Infantry was ordered to the Department of +California. + +Ordered "out" at last! I felt like jumping up onto the table, climbing +onto the roof, dancing and singing and shouting for joy! Tired as we +were (and I thought I had reached the limit), we were not too tired to +take the first stage back for Florence, which left that evening. Those +two nights on the Tucson stage are a blank in my memory. I got through +them somehow. + +In the morning, as we approached the town of Florence, the great blue +army wagon containing our household goods, hove in sight--its white +canvas cover stretched over hoops, its six sturdy mules coming along +at a good trot, and Sergeant Stone cracking his long whip, to keep up a +proper pace in the eyes of the Tucson stage-driver. + +Jack called him to halt, and down went the Sergeant's big brakes. +Both teams came to a stand-still, and we told the Sergeant the news. +Bewilderment, surprise, joy, followed each other on the old Sergeant's +countenance. He turned his heavy team about, and promised to reach Camp +MacDowell as soon as the animals could make it. At Florence, we left the +stage, and went to the little tavern once more; the stage route did not +lie in our direction, so we must hire a private conveyance to bring us +to Camp MacDowell. Jack found a man who had a good pair of ponies and an +open buckboard. Towards night we set forth to cross the plain which lies +between Florence and the Salt River, due northwest by the map. + +When I saw the driver I did not care much for his appearance. He did +not inspire me with confidence, but the ponies looked strong, and we had +forty or fifty miles before us. + +After we got fairly into the desert, which was a trackless waste, I +became possessed by a feeling that the man did not know the way. He +talked a good deal about the North Star, and the fork in the road, and +that we must be sure not to miss it. + +It was a still, hot, starlit night. Jack and the driver sat on the front +seat. They had taken the back seat out, and my little boy and I sat in +the bottom of the wagon, with the hard cushions to lean against through +the night. I suppose we were drowsy with sleep; at all events, the talk +about the fork of the road and the North Star faded away into dreams. + +I awoke with a chilly feeling, and a sudden jolt over a rock. "I do +not recollect any rocks on this road, Jack, when we came over it in the +ambulance," said I. + +"Neither do I," he replied. + +I looked for the North Star: I had looked for it often when in open +boats. It was away off on our left, the road seemed to be ascending and +rocky: I had never seen this piece of road before, that I was sure of. + +"We are going to the eastward," said I, "and we should be going +northwest." + +"My dear, lie down and go to sleep; the man knows the road; he is taking +a short cut, I suppose," said the Lieutenant. There was something not at +all reassuring in his tones, however. + +The driver did not turn his head nor speak. I looked at the North Star, +which was getting farther and farther on our left, and I felt the gloomy +conviction that we were lost on the desert. + +Finally, at daylight, after going higher and higher, we drew up in an +old deserted mining-camp. + +The driver jerked his ponies up, and, with a sullen gesture, said, "We +must have missed the fork of the road; this is Picket Post." + +"Great Heavens!" I cried; "how far out of the way are we?" + +"About fifteen miles," he drawled, "you see we shall have to go back to +the place where the road forks, and make a new start." + +I nearly collapsed with discouragement. I looked around at the ruined +walls and crumbling pillars of stone, so weird and so grey in the +dawning light: it might have been a worshipping place of the Druids. +My little son shivered with the light chill which comes at daybreak in +those tropical countries: we were hungry and tired and miserable: my +bones ached, and I felt like crying. + +We gave the poor ponies time to breathe, and took a bite of cold food +ourselves. + +Ah! that blighted and desolate place called Picket Post! Forsaken by God +and man, it might have been the entrance to Hades. + +Would the ponies hold out? They looked jaded to be sure, but we had +stopped long enough to breathe them, and away they trotted again, down +the mountain this time, instead of up. + +It was broad day when we reached the fork of the road, which we had not +been able to see in the night: there was no mistaking it now. + +We had travelled already about forty miles, thirty more lay before us; +but there were no hills, it was all flat country, and the owner of these +brave little ponies said we could make it. + +As we neared the MacDowell canon, we met Captain Corliss marching +out with his company (truly they had lost no time in starting for +California), and he told his First Lieutenant he would make slow +marches, that we might overtake him before he reached Yuma. + +We were obliged to wait at Camp MacDowell for Sergeant Stone to arrive +with our wagonful of household goods, and then, after a mighty weeding +out and repacking, we set forth once more, with a good team of mules +and a good driver, to join the command. We bade the Sixth Cavalry people +once more good-bye, but I was so nearly dead by this time, with the +heat, and the fatigue of all this hard travelling and packing up, that +the keener edge of my emotions was dulled. Eight days and nights spent +in travelling hither and thither over those hot plains in Southern +Arizona, and all for what? + +Because somebody in ordering somebody to change his station, had +forgotten that somebody's regiment was about to be ordered out of the +country it had been in for four years. Also because my husband was a +soldier who obeyed orders without questioning them. If he had been a +political wire-puller, many of our misfortunes might have been averted. +But then, while I half envied the wives of the wire-pullers, I took a +sort of pride in the blind obedience shown by my own particular soldier +to the orders he received. + +After that week's experience, I held another colloquy with myself, and +decided that wives should not follow their husbands in the army, and +that if I ever got back East again, I would stay: I simply could not go +on enduring these unmitigated and unreasonable hardships. + +The Florence man staid over at the post a day or so to rest his ponies. +I bade him good-bye and told him to take care of those brave little +beasts, which had travelled seventy miles without rest, to bring us +to our destination. He nodded pleasantly and drove away. "A queer +customer," I observed to Jack. + +"Yes," answered he, "they told me in Florence that he was a 'road agent' +and desperado, but there did not seem to be anyone else, and my orders +were peremptory, so I took him. I knew the ponies could pull us through, +by the looks of them; and road agents are all right with army officers, +they know they wouldn't get anything if they held 'em up." + +"How much did he charge you for the trip?" I asked. + +"Sixteen dollars," was the reply. And so ended the episode. Except that +I looked back to Picket Post with a sort of horror, I thought no more +about it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. THE EIGHTH FOOT LEAVES ARIZONA + +And now after the eight days of most distressing heat, and the fatigue +of all sorts and varieties of travelling, the nights spent in a +stage-coach or at a desert inn, or in the road agent's buckboard, +holding always my little son close to my side, came six days more of +journeying down the valley of the Gila. + +We took supper in Phoenix, at a place known as "Devine's." I was hearing +a good deal about Phoenix; for even then, its gardens, its orchards +and its climate were becoming famous, but the season of the year was +unpropitious to form a favorable opinion of that thriving place, even if +my opinions of Arizona, with its parched-up soil and insufferable heat, +had not been formed already. + +We crossed the Gila somewhere below there, and stopped at our old +camping places, but the entire valley was seething hot, and the +remembrance of the December journey seemed but an aggravating dream. + +We joined Captain Corliss and the company at Antelope Station, and in +two more days were at Yuma City. By this time, the Southern Pacific +Railroad had been built as far as Yuma, and a bridge thrown across the +Colorado at this point. It seemed an incongruity. And how burning hot +the cars looked, standing there in the Arizona sun! + +After four years in that Territory, and remembering the days, weeks, and +even months spent in travelling on the river, or marching through the +deserts, I could not make the Pullman cars seem a reality. + +We brushed the dust of the Gila Valley from our clothes, I unearthed +a hat from somewhere, and some wraps which had not seen the light for +nearly two years, and prepared to board the train. + +I cried out in my mind, the prayer of the woman in one of Fisher's +Ehrenberg stories, to which I used to listen with unmitigated delight, +when I lived there. The story was this: "Mrs. Blank used to live here +in Ehrenberg; she hated the place just as you do, but she was obliged to +stay. Finally, after a period of two years, she and her sister, who had +lived with her, were able to get away. I crossed over the river with +them to Lower California, on the old rope ferry-boat which they used +to have near Ehrenberg, and as soon as the boat touched the bank, they +jumped ashore, and down they both went upon their knees, clasped their +hands, raised their eyes to Heaven, and Mrs. Blank said: 'I thank Thee, +oh Lord! Thou hast at last delivered us from the wilderness, and brought +us back to God's country. Receive my thanks, oh Lord!'" + +And then Fisher used to add: "And the tears rolled down their faces, and +I knew they felt every word they spoke; and I guess you'll feel about +the same way when you get out of Arizona, even if you don't quite drop +on your knees," he said. + +The soldiers did not look half so picturesque, climbing into the cars, +as they did when loading onto a barge; and when the train went across +the bridge, and we looked down upon the swirling red waters of the Great +Colorado from the windows of a luxurious Pullman, I sighed; and, with +the strange contradictoriness of the human mind, I felt sorry that +the old days had come to an end. For, somehow, the hardships and +deprivations which we have endured, lose their bitterness when they have +become only a memory. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA + +A portion of our regiment was ordered to Oregon, to join General Howard, +who was conducting the Bannock Campaign, so I remained that summer in +San Francisco, to await my husband's return. + +I could not break away from my Arizona habits. I wore only white +dresses, partly because I had no others which were in fashion, partly +because I had become imbued with a profound indifference to dress. + +"They'll think you're a Mexican," said my New England aunt (who regarded +all foreigners with contempt). "Let them think," said I; "I almost wish +I were; for, after all, they are the only people who understand the +philosophy of living. Look at the tired faces of the women in your +streets," I added, "one never sees that sort of expression down below, +and I have made up my mind not to be caught by the whirlpool of advanced +civilization again." + +Added to the white dresses, I smoked cigarettes, and slept all the +afternoons. I was in the bondage of tropical customs, and I had lapsed +back into a state of what my aunt called semi-barbarism. + +"Let me enjoy this heavenly cool climate, and do not worry me," I +begged. I shuddered when I heard people complain of the cold winds of +the San Francisco summer. How do they dare tempt Fate, thought I, and I +wished them all in Ehrenberg or MacDowell for one summer. "I think they +might then know something about climate, and would have something to +complain about!" + +How I revelled in the flowers, and all the luxuries of that delightful +city! + +The headquarters of the Eighth was located at Benicia, and General +Kautz, our Colonel, invited me to pay a visit to his wife. A pleasant +boat-trip up the Sacramento River brought us to Benicia. Mrs. Kautz, a +handsome and accomplished Austrian, presided over her lovely army home +in a manner to captivate my fancy, and the luxury of their surroundings +almost made me speechless. + +"The other side of army life," thought I. + +A visit to Angel Island, one of the harbor defences, strengthened this +impression. Four years of life in the southern posts of Arizona had +almost made me believe that army life was indeed but "glittering +misery," as the Germans had called it. + +In the autumn, the troops returned from Oregon, and C company was +ordered to Camp MacDermit, a lonely spot up in the northern part of +Nevada (Nevada being included in the Department of California). I was +sure by that time that bad luck was pursuing us. I did not know so much +about the "ins and outs" of the army then as I do now. + +At my aunt's suggestion, I secured a Chinaman of good caste for a +servant, and by deceiving him (also my aunt's advice) with the idea that +we were going only as far as Sacramento, succeeded in making him willing +to accompany us. + +We started east, and left the railroad at a station called "Winnemucca." +MacDermit lay ninety miles to the north. But at Winnemucca the Chinaman +balked. "You say: 'All'e same Saclamento': lis place heap too far: me +no likee!" I talked to him, and, being a good sort, he saw that I meant +well, and the soldiers bundled him on top of the army wagon, gave him a +lot of good-natured guying, and a revolver to keep off Indians, and so +we secured Hoo Chack. + +Captain Corliss had been obliged to go on ahead with his wife, who was +in the most delicate health. The post ambulance had met them at this +place. + +Jack was to march over the ninety miles, with the company. I watched +them starting out, the men, glad of the release from the railroad train, +their guns on their shoulders, stepping off in military style and in +good form. + +The wagons followed--the big blue army wagons, and Hoo Chack, looking +rather glum, sitting on top of a pile of baggage. + +I took the Silver City stage, and except for my little boy I was the +only passenger for the most of the way. We did the ninety miles without +resting over, except for relays of horses. + +I climbed up on the box and talked with the driver. I liked these +stage-drivers. They were "nervy," fearless men, and kind, too, and had a +great dash and go about them. They often had a quiet and gentle bearing, +but by that time I knew pretty well what sort of stuff they were made +of, and I liked to have them talk to me, and I liked to look out upon +the world through their eyes, and judge of things from their standpoint. + +It was an easy journey, and we passed a comfortable night in the stage. + +Camp MacDermit was a colorless, forbidding sort of a place. Only one +company was stationed there, and my husband was nearly always scouting +in the mountains north of us. The weather was severe, and the winter +there was joyless and lonesome. The extreme cold and the loneliness +affected my spirits, and I suffered from depression. + +I had no woman to talk to, for Mrs. Corliss, who was the only other +officer's wife at the post, was confined to the house by the most +delicate health, and her mind was wholly absorbed by the care of her +young infant. There were no nurses to be had in that desolate corner of +the earth. + +One day, a dreadful looking man appeared at the door, a person such as +one never sees except on the outskirts of civilization, and I wondered +what business brought him. He wore a long, black, greasy frock coat, +a tall hat, and had the face of a sneak. He wanted the Chinaman's +poll-tax, he said. + +"But," I suggested, "I never heard of collecting taxes in a Government +post; soldiers and officers do not pay taxes." + +"That may be," he replied, "but your Chinaman is not a soldier, and I am +going to have his tax before I leave this house." + +"So, ho," I thought; "a threat!" and the soldier's blood rose in me. + +I was alone; Jack was miles away up North. Hoo Chack appeared in the +hall; he had evidently heard the man's last remark. "Now," I said, "this +Chinaman is in my employ, and he shall not pay any tax, until I find out +if he be exempt or not." + +The evil-looking man approached the Chinaman. Hoo Chack grew a shade +paler. I fancied he had a knife under his white shirt; in fact, he felt +around for it. I said, "Hoo Chack, go away, I will talk to this man." + +I opened the front door. "Come with me" (to the tax-collector); "we will +ask the commanding officer about this matter." My heart was really in my +mouth, but I returned the man's steady and dogged gaze, and he followed +me to Captain Corliss' quarters. I explained the matter to the Captain, +and left the man to his mercy. "Why didn't you call the Sergeant of the +Guard, and have the man slapped into the guard-house?" said Jack, when +I told him about it afterwards. "The man had no business around here; he +was trying to browbeat you into giving him a dollar, I suppose." + +The country above us was full of desperadoes from Boise and Silver City, +and I was afraid to be left alone so much at night; so I begged Captain +Corliss to let me have a soldier to sleep in my quarters. He sent me old +Needham. So I installed old Needham in my guest chamber with his loaded +rifle. Now old Needham was but a wisp of a man; long years of service +had broken down his health; he was all wizened up and feeble; but he +was a soldier; I felt safe, and could sleep once more. Just the sight +of Needham and his old blue uniform coming at night, after taps, was a +comfort to me. + +Anxiety filled my soul, for Jack was scouting in the Stein Mountains +all winter in the snow, after Indians who were avowedly hostile, and had +threatened to kill on sight. He often went out with a small pack-train, +and some Indian scouts, five or six soldiers, and I thought it quite +wrong for him to be sent into the mountains with so small a number. + +Camp MacDermit was, as I have already mentioned, a "one-company post." +We all know what that may mean, on the frontier. Our Second Lieutenant +was absent, and all the hard work of winter scouting fell upon Jack, +keeping him away for weeks at a time. + +The Piute Indians were supposed to be peaceful, and their old chief, +Winnemucca, once the warlike and dreaded foe of the white man, was now +quiet enough, and too old to fight. He lived, with his family, at an +Indian village near the post. + +He came to see me occasionally. His dress was a curious mixture of +civilization and savagery. He wore the chapeau and dress-coat of a +General of the American Army, with a large epaulette on one shoulder. He +was very proud of the coat, because General Crook had given it to him. +His shirt, leggings and moccasins were of buckskin, and the long braids +of his coal-black hair, tied with strips of red flannel, gave the last +touch to this incongruous costume. + +But I must say that his demeanor was gentle and dignified, and, after +recovering from the superficial impressions which his startling costume +had at first made upon my mind, I could well believe that he had +once been the war-leader, as he was now the political head of his +once-powerful tribe. + +Winnemucca did not disdain to accept some little sugar-cakes from me, +and would sit down on our veranda and munch them. + +He always showed me the pasteboard medal which hung around his neck, +and which bore General Howard's signature; and he always said: "General +Howard tell me, me good Injun, me go up--up--up"--pointing dramatically +towards Heaven. On one occasion, feeling desperate for amusement, I said +to him: "General Howard very good man, but he make a mistake; where you +go, is not up--up--up, but," pointing solemnly to the earth below us, +"down--down--down." He looked incredulous, but I assured him it was a +nice place down there. + +Some of the scattered bands of the tribe, however, were restless +and unsubdued, and gave us much trouble, and it was these bands that +necessitated the scouts. + +My little son, Harry, four years old, was my constant and only +companion, during that long, cold, and anxious winter. + +My mother sent me an appealing invitation to come home for a year. I +accepted gladly, and one afternoon in May, Jack put us aboard the Silver +City stage, which passed daily through the post. + +Our excellent Chinese servant promised to stay with the "Captain" and +take care of him, and as I said "Good-bye, Hoo Chack," I noticed an +expression of real regret on his usually stolid features. + +Occupied with my thoughts, on entering the stage, I did not notice the +passengers or the man sitting next me on the back seat. Darkness soon +closed around us, and I suppose we fell asleep. Between naps, I heard a +queer clanking sound, but supposed it was the chains of the harness or +the stage-coach gear. The next morning, as we got out at a relay station +for breakfast, I saw the handcuffs on the man next to whom I had sat all +the night long. The sheriff was on the box outside. He very obligingly +changed seats with me for the rest of the way, and evening found us on +the overland train speeding on our journey East. Camp MacDermit with its +dreary associations and surroundings faded gradually from my mind, like +a dream. + + +***** + + +The year of 1879 brought us several changes. My little daughter was +born in mid-summer at our old home in Nantucket. As I lay watching the +curtains move gently to and fro in the soft sea-breezes, and saw my +mother and sister moving about the room, and a good old nurse rocking my +baby in her arms, I could but think of those other days at Camp Apache, +when I lay through the long hours, with my new-born baby by my side, +watching, listening for some one to come in. There was no one, no woman +to come, except the poor hard-working laundress of the cavalry, who did +come once a day to care for the baby. + +Ah! what a contrast! and I had to shut my eyes for fear I should cry, at +the mere thought of those other days. + + +***** + + +Jack took a year's leave of absence and joined me in the autumn at +Nantucket, and the winter was spent in New York, enjoying the theatres +and various amusements we had so long been deprived of. Here we met +again Captain Porter and Carrie Wilkins, who was now Mrs. Porter. They +were stationed at David's Island, one of the harbor posts, and we went +over to see them. "Yes," he said, "as Jacob waited seven years for +Rachel, so I waited for Carrie." + +The following summer brought us the good news that Captain Corliss' +company was ordered to Angel Island, in the bay of San Francisco. "Thank +goodness," said Jack, "C company has got some good luck, at last!" + +Joyfully we started back on the overland trip to California, which took +about nine days at that time. Now, travelling with a year-old baby and a +five-year-old boy was quite troublesome, and we were very glad when +the train had crossed the bleak Sierras and swept down into the lovely +valley of the Sacramento. + +Arriving in San Francisco, we went to the old Occidental Hotel, and as +we were going in to dinner, a card was handed to us. "Hoo Chack" was the +name on the card. "That Chinaman!" I cried to Jack. "How do you suppose +he knew we were here?" + +We soon made arrangements for him to accompany us to Angel Island, and +in a few days this "heathen Chinee" had unpacked all our boxes and made +our quarters very comfortable. He was rather a high-caste man, and as +true and loyal as a Christian. He never broke his word, and he staid +with us as long as we remained in California. + +And now we began to live, to truly live; for we felt that the years +spent at those desert posts under the scorching suns of Arizona had +cheated us out of all but a bare existence upon earth. + +The flowers ran riot in our garden, fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh +fish, and all the luxuries of that marvellous climate, were brought to +our door. + +A comfortable Government steamboat plied between San Francisco and its +harbor posts, and the distance was not great--only three quarters of an +hour. So we had a taste of the social life of that fascinating city, and +could enjoy the theatres also. + +On the Island, we had music and dancing, as it was the headquarters +of the regiment. Mrs. Kautz, so brilliant and gay, held grand court +here--receptions, military functions, lawn tennis, bright uniforms, were +the order of the day. And that incomparable climate! How I revelled in +it! When the fog rolled in from the Golden Gate, and enveloped the great +city of Saint Francis in its cold vapors, the Island of the Angels lay +warm and bright in the sunshine. + +The old Spaniards named it well, and the old Nantucket whalers who +sailed around Cape Horn on their way to the Ar'tic, away back in the +eighteen twenties, used to put in near there for water, and were +well familiar with its bright shores, before it was touched by man's +handiwork. + +Was there ever such an emerald green as adorned those hills which sloped +down to the bay? Could anything equal the fields of golden escholzchia +which lay there in the sunshine? Or the blue masses of "baby-eye," which +opened in the mornings and held up their pretty cups to catch the dew? + +Was this a real Paradise? + +It surely seemed so to us; and, as if Nature had not done enough, +the Fates stepped in and sent all the agreeable young officers of the +regiment there, to help us enjoy the heavenly spot. + +There was Terrett, the handsome and aristocratic young Baltimorean, one +of the finest men I ever saw in uniform; and Richardson, the stalwart +Texan, and many others, with whom we danced and played tennis, and +altogether there was so much to do and to enjoy that Time rushed by and +we knew only that we were happy, and enchanted with Life. + +Did any uniform ever equal that of the infantry in those days? The +dark blue, heavily braided "blouse," the white stripe on the light blue +trousers, the jaunty cap? And then, the straight backs and the slim +lines of those youthful figures! It seems to me any woman who was not an +Egyptian mummy would feel her heart thrill and her blood tingle at the +sight of them. + +Indians and deserts and Ehrenberg did not exist for me any more. My +girlhood seemed to have returned, and I enjoyed everything with the +keenest zest. + +My old friend Charley Bailey, who had married for his second wife a most +accomplished young San Francisco girl, lived next door to us. + +General and Mrs. Kautz entertained so hospitably, and were so beloved by +all. Together Mrs. Kautz and I read the German classics, and went to the +German theatre; and by and by a very celebrated player, Friedrich Haase, +from the Royal Theatre of Berlin, came to San Francisco. We never missed +a performance, and when his tour was over, Mrs. Kautz gave a lawn party +at Angel Island for him and a few of the members of his company. It +was charming. I well remember how the sun shone that day, and, as we +strolled up from the boat with them, Frau Haase stopped, looked at the +blue sky, the lovely clouds, the green slopes of the Island and said: +"Mein Gott! Frau Summerhayes, was ist das fur ein Paradies! Warum haben +Sie uns nicht gesagt, Sie wohnten im Paradies!" + +So, with music and German speech, and strolls to the North and to the +South Batteries, that wonderful and never to-be-forgotten day with the +great Friedrich Haase came to an end. + +The months flew by, and the second winter found us still there; we heard +rumors of Indian troubles in Arizona, and at last the orders came. The +officers packed away their evening clothes in camphor and had their +campaign clothes put out to air, and got their mess-chests in order, +and the post was alive with preparations for the field. All the families +were to stay behind. The most famous Indian renegade was to be hunted +down, and serious fighting was looked for. + +At last all was ready, and the day was fixed for the departure of the +troops. + +The winter rains had set in, and the skies were grey, as the command +marched down to the boat. + +The officers and soldiers were in their campaign clothes; the latter had +their blanket-rolls and haversacks slung over their shoulders, and their +tin cups, which hung from the haversacks, rattled and jingled as they +marched down in even columns of four, over the wet and grassy slopes of +the parade ground, where so short a time before all had been glitter and +sunshine. + +I realized then perhaps for the first time what the uniform really stood +for; that every man who wore it, was going out to fight--that they +held their lives as nothing. The glitter was all gone; nothing but sad +reality remained. + +The officers' wives and the soldiers' wives followed the troops to the +dock. The soldiers marched single file over the gang-plank of the +boat, the officers said good-bye, the shrill whistle of the "General +McPherson" sounded--and they were off. We leaned back against the +coal-sheds, and soldiers' and officers' wives alike all wept together. + +And now a season of gloom came upon us. The skies were dull and murky +and the rain poured down. + +Our old friend Bailey, who was left behind on account of illness, grew +worse and finally his case was pronounced hopeless. His death added to +the deep gloom and sadness which enveloped us all. + +A few of the soldiers who had staid on the Island to take care of the +post, carried poor Bailey to the boat, his casket wrapped in the flag +and followed by a little procession of women. I thought I had never seen +anything so sad. + +The campaign lengthened out into months, but the California winters are +never very long, and before the troops came back the hills looked their +brightest green again. The campaign had ended with no very serious +losses to our troops and all was joyous again, until another order took +us from the sea-coast to the interior once more. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. CHANGING STATION + +It was the custom to change the stations of the different companies of a +regiment about every two years. So the autumn of '82 found us on the +way to Fort Halleck, a post in Nevada, but differing vastly from the +desolate MacDermit station. Fort Halleck was only thirteen miles south +of the Overland Railroad, and lay near a spur of the Humboldt range. +There were miles of sage-brush between the railroad and the post, but +the mountains which rose abruptly five thousand feet on the far side, +made a magnificent background for the officers' quarters, which lay +nestled at the bottom of the foot-hills. + +"Oh! what a lovely post!" I cried, as we drove in. + +Major Sanford of the First Cavalry, with Captain Carr and Lieutenant +Oscar Brown, received us. "Dear me," I thought, "if the First Cavalry is +made up of such gallant men as these, the old Eighth Infantry will have +to look out for its laurels." + +Mrs. Sanford and Mrs. Carr gave us a great welcome and vied with each +other in providing for our comfort, and we were soon established. + +It was so good to see the gay yellow of the cavalry again! Now I rode, +to my heart's content, and it was good to be alive; to see the cavalry +drill, and to ride through the canons, gorgeous in their flaming autumn +tints; then again to gallop through the sage-brush, jumping where we +could not turn, starting up rabbits by the score. + +That little old post, now long since abandoned, marked a pleasant epoch +in our life. From the ranches scattered around we could procure butter +and squabs and young vegetables, and the soldiers cultivated great +garden patches, and our small dinners and breakfasts live in delightful +memory. + +At the end of two years spent so pleasantly with the people of the First +Cavalry, our company was again ordered to Angel Island. But a second +very active campaign in Arizona and Mexico, against Geronimo, took our +soldiers away from us, and we passed through a period of considerable +anxiety. June of '86 saw the entire regiment ordered to take station in +Arizona once more. + +We travelled to Tucson in a Pullman car. It was hot and uninteresting. +I had been at Tucson nine years before, for a few hours, but the place +seemed unfamiliar. I looked for the old tavern; I saw only the railroad +restaurant. We went in to take breakfast, before driving out to the +post of Fort Lowell, seven miles away. Everything seemed changed. Iced +cantaloupe was served by a spick-span alert waiter; then, quail on +toast. "Ice in Arizona?" It was like a dream, and I remarked to Jack, +"This isn't the same Arizona we knew in '74," and then, "I don't believe +I like it as well, either; all this luxury doesn't seem to belong to the +place." + +After a drive behind some smart mules, over a flat stretch of seven +miles, we arrived at Fort Lowell, a rather attractive post, with a long +line of officers' quarters, before which ran a level road shaded by +beautiful great trees. We were assigned a half of one of these sets of +quarters, and as our half had no conveniences for house-keeping, it +was arranged that we should join a mess with General and Mrs. Kautz and +their family. We soon got settled down to our life there, and we had +various recreations; among them, driving over to Tucson and riding on +horseback are those which I remember best. We made a few acquaintances +in Tucson, and they sometimes drove out in the evenings, or more +frequently rode out on horseback. Then we would gather together on the +Kautz piazza and everybody sang to the accompaniment of Mrs. Kautz's +guitar. It was very hot, of course; we had all expected that, but the +luxuries obtainable through the coming of the railroad, such as ice, and +various summer drinks, and lemons, and butter, helped out to make the +summer there more comfortable. + +We slept on the piazzas, which ran around the houses on a level with the +ground. At that time the fad for sleeping out of doors, at least amongst +civilized people, did not exist, and our arrangements were entirely +primitive. + +Our quarters were surrounded by a small yard and a fence; the latter was +dilapidated, and the gate swung on one hinge. We were seven miles from +anywhere, and surrounded by a desolate country. I did not experience the +feeling of terror that I had had at Camp Apache, for instance, nor the +grewsome fear of the Ehrenberg grave-yard, nor the appalling fright I +had known in crossing the Mogollon range or in driving through Sanford's +Pass. But still there was a haunting feeling of insecurity which hung +around me especially at night. I was awfully afraid of snakes, and no +sooner had we lain ourselves down on our cots to sleep, than I would +hear a rustling among the dry leaves that had blown in under our beds. +Then all would be still again; then a crackling and a rustling--in a +flash I would be sitting up in bed. "Jack, do you hear that?" Of course +I did not dare to move or jump out of bed, so I would sit, rigid, +scared. "Jack! what is it?" "Nonsense, Mattie, go to sleep; it's +the toads jumping about in the leaves." But my sleep was fitful and +disturbed, and I never knew what a good night's rest was. + +One night I was awakened by a tremendous snort right over my face. I +opened my eyes and looked into the wild eyes of a big black bull. I +think I must have screamed, for the bull ran clattering off the piazza +and out through the gate. By this time Jack was up, and Harry and +Katherine, who slept on the front piazza, came running out, and I said: +"Well, this is the limit of all things, and if that gate isn't mended +to-morrow, I will know the reason why." + +Now I heard a vague rumor that there was a creature of this sort in or +near the post, and that he had a habit of wandering around at night, +but as I had never seen him, it had made no great impression on my mind. +Jack had a great laugh at me, but I did not think then, nor do I now, +that it was anything to be laughed at. + +We had heard much of the old Mission of San Xavier del Bac, away the +other side of Tucson. Mrs. Kautz decided to go over there and go into +camp and paint a picture of San Xavier. It was about sixteen miles from +Fort Lowell. + +So all the camp paraphernalia was gotten ready and several of the +officers joined the party, and we all went over to San Xavier and camped +for a few days under the shadow of those beautiful old walls. This +Mission is almost unknown to the American traveler. + +Exquisite in color, form and architecture, it stands there a silent +reminder of the Past. + +The curious carvings and paintings inside the church, and the precious +old vestments which were shown us by an ancient custodian, filled +my mind with wonder. The building is partly in ruins, and the little +squirrels were running about the galleries, but the great dome is +intact, and many of the wonderful figures which ornament it. Of course +we know the Spanish built it about the middle or last of the sixteenth +century, and that they tried to christianize the tribes of Indians +who lived around in the vicinity. But there is no sign of priest or +communicant now, nothing but a desolate plain around it for miles. No +one can possibly understand how the building of this large and beautiful +mission was accomplished, and I believe history furnishes very little +information. In its archives was found quite recently the charter given +by Ferdinand and Isabella, to establish the "pueblo" of Tucson about the +beginning of the 16th century. + +After a few delightful days, we broke camp and returned to Fort Lowell. + +And now the summer was drawing to a close, and we were anticipating +the delights of the winter climate at Tucson, when, without a note of +warning, came the orders for Fort Niobrara. We looked, appalled, in each +other's faces, the evening the telegram came, for we did not even know +where Fort Niobrara was. + +We all rushed into Major Wilhelm's quarters, for he always knew +everything. We (Mrs. Kautz and several of the other ladies of the post, +and myself) were in a state of tremendous excitement. We pounded on +Major Wilhelm's door and we heard a faint voice from his bedroom (for it +was after ten o'clock); then we waited a few moments and he said, "Come +in." + +We opened the door, but there being no light in his quarters we could +not see him. A voice said: "What in the name of--" but we did not +wait for him to finish; we all shouted: "Where is Fort Niobrara?" "The +Devil!" he said. "Are we ordered there?" "Yes, yes," we cried; "where is +it?" "Why, girls," he said, relapsing into his customary moderate tones, +"It's a hell of a freezing cold place, away up north in Nebraska." + +We turned our backs and went over to our quarters to have a +consultation, and we all retired with sad hearts. + +Now, just think of it! To come to Fort Lowell in July, only to move in +November! What could it mean? It was hard to leave the sunny South, to +spend the winter in those congealed regions in the North. We were but +just settled, and now came another break-up! + +Our establishment now, with two children, several servants, two saddle +horses, and additional household furnishings, was not so simple as +in the beginning of our army life, when three chests and a box or two +contained our worldly goods. Each move we made was more difficult than +the last; our allowance of baggage did not begin to cover what we had to +take along, and this added greatly to the expense of moving. + +The enormous waste attending a move, and the heavy outlay incurred +in travelling and getting settled anew, kept us always poor; these +considerations increased our chagrin over this unexpected change of +station. There was nothing to be done, however. Orders are relentless, +even if they seem senseless, which this one did, to the women, at least, +of the Eighth Infantry. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. FORT NIOBRARA + +The journey itself, however, was not to be dreaded, although it was so +undesired. It was entirely by rail across New Mexico and Kansas, to +St. Joseph, then up the Missouri River and then across the state to +the westward. Finally, after four or five days, we reached the small +frontier town of Valentine, in the very northwest corner of the bleak +and desolate state of Nebraska. The post of Niobrara was four miles +away, on the Niobrara (swift water) River. + +Some officers of the Ninth Cavalry met us at the station with the post +ambulances. There were six companies of our regiment, with headquarters +and band. + +It was November, and the drive across the rolling prairie-land gave us +a fair glimpse of the country around. We crossed the old bridge over the +Niobrara River, and entered the post. The snow lay already on the brown +and barren hills, and the place struck a chill to my heart. + +The Ninth Cavalry took care of all the officers' families until we +could get established. Lieutenant Bingham, a handsome and +distinguished-looking young bachelor, took us with our two children +to his quarters, and made us delightfully at home. His quarters were +luxuriously furnished, and he was altogether adorable. This, to be sure, +helped to soften my first harsh impressions of the place. + +Quarters were not very plentiful, and we were compelled to take a house +occupied by a young officer of the Ninth. What base ingratitude it +seemed, after the kindness we had accepted from his regiment! But +there was no help for it. We secured a colored cook, who proved a very +treasure, and on inquiring how she came to be in those wilds, I learned +that she had accompanied a young heiress who eloped with a cavalry +lieutenant, from her home in New York some years before. + +What a contrast was here, and what a cruel contrast! With blood thinned +down by the enervating summer at Tucson, here we were, thrust into the +polar regions! Ice and snow and blizzards, blizzards and snow and ice! +The mercury disappeared at the bottom of the thermometer, and we had +nothing to mark any degrees lower than 40 below zero. Human calculations +had evidently stopped there. Enormous box stoves were in every room and +in the halls; the old-fashioned sort that we used to see in school-rooms +and meeting-houses in New England. Into these, the soldiers stuffed +great logs of mountain mahogany, and the fires were kept roaring day and +night. + +A board walk ran in front of the officers' quarters, and, desperate for +fresh air and exercise, some of the ladies would bundle up and go to +walk. But frozen chins, ears and elbows soon made this undesirable, and +we gave up trying the fresh air, unless the mercury rose to 18 below, +when a few of us would take our daily promenade. + +We could not complain of our fare, however, for our larder hung full of +all sorts of delicate and delicious things, brought in by the grangers, +and which we were glad to buy. Prairie-chickens, young pigs, venison, +and ducks, all hanging, to be used when desired. + +To frappe a bottle of wine, we stood it on the porch; in a few minutes +it would pour crystals. House-keeping was easy, but keeping warm was +difficult. + +It was about this time that the law was passed abolishing the +post-trader's store, and forbidding the selling of whiskey to soldiers +on a Government reservation. The pleasant canteen, or Post Exchange, the +soldiers' club-room, was established, where the men could go to relieve +the monotony of their lives. + +With the abolition of whiskey, the tone of the post improved greatly; +the men were contented with a glass of beer or light wine, the canteen +was well managed, so the profits went back into the company messes in +the shape of luxuries heretofore unknown; billiards and reading-rooms +were established; and from that time on, the canteen came to be +regarded in the army as a most excellent institution. The men gained in +self-respect; the canteen provided them with a place where they could +go and take a bite of lunch, read, chat, smoke, or play games with their +own chosen friends, and escape the lonesomeness of the barracks. + +But, alas! this condition of things was not destined to endure, for the +women of the various Temperance societies, in their mistaken zeal +and woeful ignorance of the soldiers' life, succeeded in influencing +legislation to such an extent that the canteen, in its turn, was +abolished; with what dire results, we of the army all know. + +Those estimable women of the W. C. T. U. thought to do good to the army, +no doubt, but through their pitiful ignorance of the soldiers' needs +they have done him an incalculable harm. + +Let them stay by their lectures and their clubs, I say, and their other +amusements; let them exercise their good influences nearer home, with a +class of people whose conditions are understood by them, where they can, +no doubt, do worlds of good. + +They cannot know the drear monotony of the barracks life on the frontier +in times of peace. I have lived close by it, and I know it well. A +ceaseless round of drill and work and lessons, and work and lessons and +drill--no recreation, no excitement, no change. + +Far away from family and all home companionship, a man longs for some +pleasant place to go, after the day's work is done. Perhaps these women +think (if, in their blind enthusiasm, they think at all) that a young +soldier or an old soldier needs no recreation. At all events, they have +taken from him the only one he had, the good old canteen, and given him +nothing in return. + +Now Fort Niobrara was a large post. There were ten companies, cavalry +and infantry, General August V. Kautz, the Colonel of the Eighth +Infantry, in command. + +And here, amidst the sand-hills of Nebraska, we first began to really +know our Colonel. A man of strong convictions and abiding honesty, a +soldier who knew his profession thoroughly, having not only achieved +distinction in the Civil War, but having served when little more than a +boy, in the Mexican War of 1846. Genial in his manners, brave and kind, +he was beloved by all. + +The three Kautz children, Frankie, Austin, and Navarra, were the +inseparable companions of our own children. There was a small school +for the children of the post, and a soldier by the name of Delany was +schoolmaster. He tried hard to make our children learn, but they did not +wish to study, and spent all their spare time in planning tricks to be +played upon poor Delany. It was a difficult situation for the +soldier. Finally, the two oldest Kautz children were sent East to +boarding-school, and we also began to realize that something must be +done. + +Our surroundings during the early winter, it is true, had been dreary +enough, but as the weather softened a bit and the spring approached, the +post began to wake up. + +In the meantime, Cupid had not been idle. It was observed that Mr. +Bingham, our gracious host of the Ninth Cavalry, had fallen in love with +Antoinette, the pretty and attractive daughter of Captain Lynch of our +own regiment, and the post began to be on the qui vive to see how the +affair would end, for nobody expects to see the course of true love run +smooth. In their case, however, the Fates were kind and in due time the +happy engagement was announced. + +We had an excellent amusement hall, with a fine floor for dancing. The +chapel was at one end, and a fairly good stage was at the other. + +Being nearer civilization now, in the state of Nebraska, Uncle Sam +provided us with a chaplain, and a weekly service was held by the +Anglican clergyman--a tall, well-formed man, a scholar and, as we say, a +gentleman. He wore the uniform of the army chaplain, and as far as looks +went could hold his own with any of the younger officers. And it was a +great comfort to the church people to have this weekly service. + +During the rest of the time, the chapel was concealed by heavy curtains, +and the seats turned around facing the stage. + +We had a good string orchestra of twenty or more pieces, and as there +were a number of active young bachelors at the post, a series of weekly +dances was inaugurated. Never did I enjoy dancing more than at this +time. + +Then Mrs. Kautz, who was a thorough music lover and had a cultivated +taste as well as a trained and exquisite voice, gave several musicales, +for which much preparation was made, and which were most delightful. +These were given at the quarters of General Kautz, a long, low, rambling +one-story house, arranged with that artistic taste for which Mrs. Kautz +was distinguished. + +Then came theatricals, all managed by Mrs. Kautz, whose talents were +versatile. + +We charged admission, for we needed some more scenery, and the +neighboring frontier town of Valentine came riding and driving over +the prairie and across the old bridge of the Niobrara River, to see our +plays. We had a well-lighted stage. Our methods were primitive, as there +was no gas or electricity there in those days, but the results were +good, and the histrionic ability shown by some of our young men and +women seemed marvellous to us. + +I remember especially Bob Emmet's acting, which moved me to tears, in a +most pathetic love scene. I thought, "What has the stage lost, in this +gifted man!" + +But he is of a family whose talents are well known, and his personality, +no doubt, added much to his natural ability as an actor. + +Neither the army nor the stage can now claim this brilliant cavalry +officer, as he was induced, by urgent family reasons, shortly after the +period of which I am writing, to resign his commission and retire to +private life, at the very height of his ambitious career. + +And now the summer came on apace. A tennis-court was made, and added +greatly to our amusement. We were in the saddle every day, and the +country around proved very attractive at this season, both for riding +and driving. + +But all this gayety did not content me, for the serious question of +education for our children now presented itself; the question which, +sooner or later, presents itself to the minds of all the parents of army +children. It is settled differently by different people. It had taken a +year for us to decide. + +I made up my mind that the first thing to be done was to take the +children East and then decide on schools afterwards. So our plans were +completed and the day of departure fixed upon. Jack was to remain at the +Post. + +About an hour before I was to leave I saw the members of the string +orchestra filing across the parade ground, coming directly towards our +quarters. My heart began to beat faster, as I realized that Mrs. Kautz +had planned a serenade for me. I felt it was a great break in my army +life, but I did not know I was leaving the old regiment forever, the +regiment with which I had been associated for so many years. And as I +listened to the beautiful strains of the music I loved so well, my +eyes were wet with tears, and after all the goodbye's were said, to the +officers and their wives, my friends who had shared all our joys and our +sorrows in so many places and under so many conditions, I ran out to +the stable and pressed my cheek against the soft warm noses of our two +saddle horses. I felt that life was over for me, and nothing but work +and care remained. I say I felt all this. It must have been premonition, +for I had no idea that I was leaving the line of the army forever. + +The ambulance was at the door, to take us to Valentine, where I bade +Jack good bye, and took the train for the East. His last promise was to +visit us once a year, or whenever he could get a leave of absence. + +My husband had now worn the single bar on his shoulder-strap for eleven +years or more; before that, the straps of the second lieutenant had +adorned his broad shoulders for a period quite as long. Twenty-two +years a lieutenant in the regular army, after fighting, in a volunteer +regiment of his own state, through the four years of the Civil War! The +"gallant and meritorious service" for which he had received brevets, +seemed, indeed, to have been forgotten. He had grown grey in Indian +campaigns, and it looked as if the frontier might always be the home of +the senior lieutenant of the old Eighth. Promotion in that regiment had +been at a standstill for years. + +Being in Washington for a short time towards mid-winter enjoying the +social side of military life at the Capital, an opportunity came to me +to meet President Cleveland, and although his administration was nearing +its close, and the stress of official cares was very great, he seemed to +have leisure and interest to ask me about my life on the frontier; and +as the conversation became quite personal, the impulse seized me, to +tell him just how I felt about the education of our children, and then +to tell him what I thought and what others thought about the unjust +way in which the promotions and retirements in our regiment had been +managed. + +He listened with the greatest interest and seemed pleased with my +frankness. He asked me what the soldiers and officers out there thought +of "So and So." "They hate him," I said. + +Whereupon he laughed outright and I knew I had committed an +indiscretion, but life on the frontier does not teach one diplomacy +of speech, and by that time I was nerved up to say just what I felt, +regardless of results. + +"Well," he said, smiling, "I am afraid I cannot interfere much with +those military matters;" then, pointing with his left hand and thumb +towards the War Department, "they fix them all up over there in the +Adjutant General's office," he added. + +Then he asked me many more questions; if I had always stayed out there +with my husband, and why I did not live in the East, as so many +army women did; and all the time I could hear the dull thud of the +carpenters' hammers, for they were building even then the board seats +for the public who would witness the inaugural ceremonies of his +successor, and with each stroke of the hammer, his face seemed to grow +more sad. + +I felt the greatness of the man; his desire to be just and good: his +marvellous personal power, his ability to understand and to sympathize, +and when I parted from him he said again laughingly, "Well, I shall not +forget your husband's regiment, and if anything turns up for those fine +men you have told me about, they will hear from me." And I knew they +were the words of a man, who meant what he said. + +In the course of our conversation he had asked, "Who are these men? Do +they ever come to Washington? I rarely have these things explained to me +and I have little time to interfere with the decisions of the Adjutant +General's office." + +I replied: "No, Mr. President, they are not the men you see around +Washington. Our regiment stays on the frontier, and these men are the +ones who do the fighting, and you people here in Washington are apt to +forget all about them." + +"What have they ever done? Were they in the Civil War?" he asked. + +"Their records stand in black and white in the War Department," I +replied, "if you have the interest to learn more about them." + +"Women's opinions are influenced by their feelings," he said. + +"Mine are based upon what I know, and I am prepared to stand by my +convictions," I replied. + +Soon after this interview, I returned to New York and I did not give the +matter very much further thought, but my impression of the greatness of +Mr. Cleveland and of his powerful personality has remained with me to +this day. + +A vacancy occurred about this time in the Quartermaster's Department, +and the appointment was eagerly sought for by many Lieutenants of the +army. President Cleveland saw fit to give the appointment to Lieutenant +Summerhayes, making him a Captain and Quartermaster, and then, another +vacancy occurring shortly after, he appointed Lieutenant John McEwen +Hyde to be also a Captain and Quartermaster. + +Lieutenant Hyde stood next in rank to my husband and had grown grey in +the old Eighth Infantry. So the regiment came in for its honor at last, +and General Kautz, when the news of the second appointment reached him, +exclaimed, "Well! well! does the President think my regiment a nursery +for the Staff?" + +The Eighth Foot and the Ninth Horse at Niobrara gave the new Captain and +Quartermaster a rousing farewell, for now my husband was leaving his old +regiment forever; and, while he appreciated fully the honor of his new +staff position, he felt a sadness at breaking off the associations of +so many years--a sadness which can scarcely be understood by the young +officers of the present day, who are promoted from one regiment to +another, and rarely remain long enough with one organization to know +even the men of their own Company. + +There were many champagne suppers, dinners and card-parties given for +him, to make the good-bye something to be remembered, and at the end of +a week's festivities, he departed by a night train from Valentine, thus +eluding the hospitality of those generous but wild frontiersmen, who +were waiting to give him what they call out there a "send-off." + +For Valentine was like all frontier towns; a row of stores and saloons. +The men who kept them were generous, if somewhat rough. One of the +officers of the post, having occasion to go to the railroad station one +day at Valentine, saw the body of a man hanging to a telegraph pole a +short distance up the track. He said to the station man: "What does that +mean?" (nodding his head in the direction of the telegraph pole). + +"Why, it means just this," said the station man, "the people who hung +that man last night had the nerve to put him right in front of this +place, by G--. What would the passengers think of this town, sir, as +they went by? Why, the reputation of Valentine would be ruined! Yes, +sir, we cut him down and moved him up a pole or two. He was a hard case, +though," he added. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. SANTA FE + +I made haste to present Captain Summerhayes with the shoulder-straps of +his new rank, when he joined me in New York. + + +***** + + +The orders for Santa Fe reached us in mid-summer at Nantucket. I knew +about as much of Santa Fe as the average American knows, and that was +nothing; but I did know that the Staff appointment solved the problem of +education for us (for Staff officers are usually stationed in cities), +and I knew that our frontier life was over. I welcomed the change, for +our children were getting older, and we were ourselves approaching the +age when comfort means more to one than it heretofore has. + +Jack obeyed his sudden orders, and I followed him as soon as possible. + +Arriving at Santa Fe in the mellow sunlight of an October day, we were +met by my husband and an officer of the Tenth Infantry, and as we drove +into the town, its appearance of placid content, its ancient buildings, +its great trees, its clear air, its friendly, indolent-looking +inhabitants, gave me a delightful feeling of home. A mysterious charm +seemed to possess me. It was the spell which that old town loves to +throw over the strangers who venture off the beaten track to come within +her walls. + +Lying only eighteen miles away, over a small branch road from Llamy +(a station on the Atchison and Topeka Railroad), few people take the +trouble to stop over to visit it. "Dead old town," says the commercial +traveller, "nothing doing there." + +And it is true. + +But no spot that I have visited in this country has thrown around me +the spell of enchantment which held me fast in that sleepy and historic +town. + +The Governor's Palace, the old plaza, the ancient churches, the +antiquated customs, the Sisters' Hospital, the old Convent of Our Lady +of Loretto, the soft music of the Spanish tongue, I loved them all. + +There were no factories; no noise was ever heard; the sun shone +peacefully on, through winter and summer alike. There was no cold, +no heat, but a delightful year-around climate. Why the place was not +crowded with health seekers, was a puzzle to me. I had thought that the +bay of San Francisco offered the most agreeable climate in America, +but, in the Territory of New Mexico, Santa Fe was the perfection of all +climates combined. + +The old city lies in the broad valley of the Santa Fe Creek, but the +valley of the Santa Fe Creek lies seven thousand feet above the +sea level. I should never have known that we were living at a great +altitude, if I had not been told, for the equable climate made us forget +to inquire about height or depth or distance. + +I listened to old Father de Fourri preach his short sermons in English +to the few Americans who sat on one side of the aisle, in the church of +Our Lady of Guadaloupe; then, turning with an easy gesture towards his +Mexican congregation, who sat or knelt near the sanctuary, and saying, +"Hermanos mios," he gave the same discourse in good Spanish. I felt +comfortable in the thought that I was improving my Spanish as well as +profiting by Father de Fourri's sound logic. This good priest had grown +old at Santa Fe in the service of his church. + +The Mexican women, with their black ribosos wound around their heads and +concealing their faces, knelt during the entire mass, and made many long +responses in Latin. + +After years spent in a heathenish manner, as regards all church +observations, this devout and unique service, following the customs of +ancient Spain, was interesting to me in the extreme. + +Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon I attended Vespers in the chapel of +the Sisters' Hospital (as it was called). A fine Sanitarium, managed +entirely by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity. + +Sister Victoria, who was at the head of the management, was not only a +very beautiful woman, but she had an agreeable voice and always led in +the singing. + +It seemed like Heaven. + +I wrote to my friends in the East to come to the Sisters' Hospital if +they wanted health, peace and happiness, for it was surely to be found +there. I visited the convent of Our Lady of Loretto: I stood before a +high wall in an embrasure of which there was a low wooden gate; I pulled +on a small knotted string which hung out of a little hole, and a +queer old bell rang. Then one of the nuns came and let me in, across a +beautiful garden to the convent school. I placed my little daughter as +a day pupil there, as she was now eleven years old. The nuns spoke very +little English and the children none at all. + +The entire city was ancient, Spanish, Catholic, steeped in a religious +atmosphere and in what the average American Protestant would call +the superstitions of the dark ages. There were endless fiestas, and +processions and religious services, I saw them all and became much +interested in reading the history of the Catholic missions, established +so early out through what was then a wild and unexplored country. After +that, I listened with renewed interest to old Father de Fouri, who had +tended and led his flock of simple people so long and so lovingly. + +There was a large painting of Our Lady of Guadaloupe over the +altar--these people firmly believed that she had appeared to them, on +the earth, and so strong was the influence around me that I began almost +to believe it too. I never missed the Sunday morning mass, and I fell in +easily with the religious observances. + +I read and studied about the old explorers, and I seemed to live in +the time of Cortez and his brave band. I became acquainted with Adolf +Bandelier, who had lived for years in that country, engaged in research +for the American Archaeological Society. I visited the Indian pueblos, +those marvellous structures of adobe, where live entire tribes, and saw +natives who have not changed their manner of speech or dress since the +days when the Spaniards first penetrated to their curious dwellings, +three hundred or more years ago. I climbed the rickety ladders, by which +one enters these strange dwellings, and bought the great bowls which +these Indians shape in some manner without the assistance of a potter's +wheel, and then bake in their mud ovens. + +The pueblo of Tesuque is only nine miles from Santa Fe, and a pleasant +drive, at that; it seemed strange to me that the road was not lined +with tourists. But no, they pass all these wonders by, in their +disinclination to go off the beaten track. + +Visiting the pueblos gets to be a craze. Governor and Mrs. Prince knew +them all--the pueblo of Taos, of Santa Clara, San Juan, and others; and +the Governor's collection of great stone idols was a marvel indeed. +He kept them laid out on shelves, which resembled the bunks on a +great vessel, and in an apartment especially reserved for them, in his +residence at Santa Fe, and it was always with considerable awe that +I entered that apartment. The Governor occupied at that time a low, +rambling adobe house, on Palace Avenue, and this, with its thick walls +and low window-seats, made a fit setting for the treasures they had +gathered. + +Later on, the Governor's family occupied the palace (as it is always +called) of the old Spanish Viceroy, a most ancient, picturesque, yet +dignified building, facing the plaza. + +The various apartments in this old palace were used for Government +offices when we were stationed there in 1889, and in one of these rooms, +General Lew Wallace, a few years before, had written his famous book, +"Ben Hur." + +On the walls were hanging old portraits painted by the Spaniards in +the sixteenth century. They were done on rawhide, and whether these +interesting and historic pictures have been preserved by our Government +I do not know. + +The distinguished Anglican clergyman living there taught a small class +of boys, and the "Academy," an excellent school established by the +Presbyterian Board of Missions, afforded good advantages for the young +girls of the garrison. And as we had found that the Convent of Loretto +was not just adapted to the education of an American child, we withdrew +Katharine from that school and placed her at the Presbyterian Academy. + +To be sure, the young woman teacher gave a rousing lecture on total +abstinence once a week; going even so far as to say, that to partake of +apple sauce which had begun to ferment was yielding to the temptations +of Satan. The young woman's arguments made a disastrous impression +upon our children's minds; so much so, that the rich German Jews whose +daughters attended the school complained greatly; for, as they told us, +these girls would hasten to snatch the decanters from the sideboard, +at the approach of visitors, and hide them, and they began to sit +in judgment upon their elders. Now these men were among the leading +citizens of the town; they were self-respecting and wealthy. They could +not stand these extreme doctrines, so opposed to their life and their +traditions. We informed Miss X. one day that she could excuse our +children from the total abstinence lecture, or we should be compelled +to withdraw them from the school. She said she could not compel them to +listen, but preach she must. She remained obedient to her orders from +the Board, and we could but respect her for that. Our young daughters +were, however, excused from the lecture. + +But our time was not entirely given up to the study of ancient pottery, +for the social life there was delightful. The garrison was in the centre +of the town, the houses were comfortable, and the streets shaded by old +trees. The Tenth Infantry had its headquarters and two companies there. +Every afternoon, the military band played in the Plaza, where everybody +went and sat on benches in the shade of the old trees, or, if cool, in +the delightful sunshine. The pretty and well-dressed senoritas cast shy +glances at the young officers of the Tenth; but, alas! the handsome +and attractive Lieutenants Van Vliet and Seyburn, and the more sedate +Lieutenant Plummer, could not return these bewitching glances, as they +were all settled in life. + +The two former officers had married in Detroit, and both Mrs. Van Vliet +and Mrs. Seyburn did honor to the beautiful city of Michigan, for they +were most agreeable and clever women, and presided over their army homes +with distinguished grace and hospitality. + +The Americans who lived there were all professional people; mostly +lawyers, and a few bankers. I could not understand why so many Eastern +lawyers lived there. I afterwards learned that the old Spanish land +grants had given rise to illimitable and never-ending litigation. + +Every morning we rode across country. There were no fences, but the wide +irrigation ditches gave us a plenty of excitement, and the riding was +glorious. I had no occasion yet to realize that we had left the line of +the army. + +A camping trip to the head-waters of the Pecos, where we caught speckled +trout in great abundance in the foaming riffles and shallow pools +of this rushing mountain stream, remaining in camp a week under the +spreading boughs of the mighty pines, added to the variety and delights +of our life there. + +With such an existence as this, good health and diversion, the time +passed rapidly by. + +It was against the law now for soldiers to marry; the old days of +"laundresses" had passed away. But the trombone player of the Tenth +Infantry band (a young Boston boy) had married a wife, and now a baby +had come to them. They could get no quarters, so we took the family in, +and, as the wife was an excellent cook, we were able to give many small +dinners. The walls of the house being three feet thick, we were never +troubled by the trombone practice or the infant's cries. And many a +delightful evening we had around the board, with Father de Fourri, +Rev. Mr. Meany (the Anglican clergyman), the officers and ladies of the +Tenth, Governor and Mrs. Prince, and the brilliant lawyer folk of Santa +Fe. + +Such an ideal life cannot last long; this existence of ours does not +seem to be contrived on those lines. At the end of a year, orders came +for Texas, and perhaps it was well that orders came, or we might be in +Santa Fe to-day, wrapt in a dream of past ages; for the city of the Holy +Faith had bound us with invisible chains. + +With our departure from Santa Fe, all picturesqueness came to an end in +our army life. Ever after that, we had really good houses to live in, +which had all modern arrangements; we had beautiful, well-kept lawns +and gardens, the same sort of domestic service that civilians have, and +lived almost the same life. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. TEXAS + +Whenever I think of San Antonio and Fort Sam Houston, the perfume of the +wood violet which blossomed in mid-winter along the borders of our lawn, +and the delicate odor of the Cape jessamine, seem to be wafted about me. + +Fort Sam Houston is the Headquarters of the Department of Texas, and all +the Staff officers live there, in comfortable stone houses, with broad +lawns shaded by chinaberry trees. Then at the top of the hill is a great +quadrangle, with a clock tower and all the department offices. On the +other side of this quadrangle is the post, where the line officers live. + +General Stanley commanded the Department. A fine, dignified and able +man, with a great record as an Indian fighter. Jack knew him well, as +he had been with him in the first preliminary survey for the northern +Pacific Railroad, when he drove old Sitting Bull back to the Powder +River. + +He was now about to reach the age of retirement; and as the day +approached, that day when a man has reached the limit of his usefulness +(in the opinion of an ever-wise Government), that day which sounds the +knell of active service, that day so dreaded and yet so longed for, that +day when an army officer is sixty-four years old and Uncle Sam lays him +upon the shelf, as that day approached, the city of San Antonio, in fact +the entire State of Texas poured forth to bid him Godspeed; for if ever +an army man was beloved, it was General Stanley by the State of Texas. + +Now on the other side of the great quadrangle lay the post, where were +the soldiers' barracks and quarters of the line officers. This was +commanded by Colonel Coppinger, a gallant officer, who had fought in +many wars in many countries. + +He had his famous regiment, the Twenty-third Infantry, and many were +the pleasant dances and theatricals we had, with the music furnished +by their band; for, as it was a time of peace, the troops were all in +garrison. + +Major Burbank was there also, with his well-drilled Light Battery of the +3rd Artillery. + +My husband, being a Captain and Quartermaster, served directly under +General George H. Weeks, who was Chief Quartermaster of the Department, +and I can never forget his kindness to us both. He was one of the best +men I ever knew, in the army or out of it, and came to be one of my +dearest friends. He possessed the sturdy qualities of his Puritan +ancestry, united with the charming manners of an aristocrat. + +We belonged, of course, now, with the Staff, and something, an +intangible something, seemed to have gone out of the life. The officers +were all older, and the Staff uniforms were more sombre. I missed +the white stripe of the infantry, and the yellow of the cavalry. The +shoulder-straps all had gold eagles or leaves on them, instead of +the Captains' or Lieutenants' bars. Many of the Staff officers wore +civilians' clothes, which distressed me much, and I used to tell them +that if I were Secretary of War they would not be permitted to go about +in black alpaca coats and cinnamon-brown trousers. + +"What would you have us do?" said General Weeks. + +"Wear white duck and brass buttons," I replied. + +"Fol-de-rol!" said the fine-looking and erect Chief Quartermaster; "you +would have us be as vain as we were when we were Lieutenants?" + +"You can afford to be," I answered; for, even with his threescore years, +he had retained the lines of youth, and was, in my opinion, the finest +looking man in the Staff of the Army. + +But all my reproaches and all my diplomacy were of no avail in reforming +the Staff. Evidently comfort and not looks was their motto. + +One day, I accidentally caught a side view of myself in a long mirror +(long mirrors had not been very plentiful on the frontier), and was +appalled by the fact that my own lines corresponded but too well, alas! +with those of the Staff. Ah, me! were the days, then, of Lieutenants +forever past and gone? The days of suppleness and youth, the careless +gay days, when there was no thought for the future, no anxiety about +education, when the day began with a wild dash across country and ended +with a dinner and dance---were they over, then, for us all? + +Major Burbank's battery of light artillery came over and enlivened the +quiet of our post occasionally with their brilliant red color. At those +times, we all went out and stood in the music pavilion to watch the +drill; and when his horses and guns and caissons thundered down the hill +and swept by us at a terrific gallop, our hearts stood still. Even the +dignified Staff permitted themselves a thrill, and as for us women, our +excitement knew no bounds. + +The brilliant red of the artillery brought color to the rather grey +aspect of the quiet Headquarters post, and the magnificent drill +supplied the martial element so dear to a woman's heart. + +In San Antonio, the New has almost obliterated the Old, and little +remains except its pretty green river, its picturesque bridges, and the +historic Alamo, to mark it from other cities in the Southwest. + +In the late afternoon, everybody drove to the Plaza, where all the +country people were selling their garden-stuff and poultry in the open +square. This was charming, and we all bought live fowl and drove +home again. One heard cackling and gobbling from the smart traps and +victorias, and it seemed to be a survival of an old custom. The whole +town took a drive after that, and supped at eight o'clock. + +The San Antonio people believe there is no climate to equal theirs, and +talk much about the cool breezes from the Gulf of Mexico, which is some +miles away. But I found seven months of the twelve too hot for comfort, +and I could never detect much coolness in the summer breezes. + +After I settled down to the sedateness which is supposed to belong to +the Staff, I began to enjoy life very much. There is compensation for +every loss, and I found, with the new friends, many of whom had lived +their lives, and had known sorrow and joy, a true companionship which +enriched my life, and filled the days with gladness. + +My son had completed the High School course in San Antonio, under an +able German master, and had been sent East to prepare for the Stevens +Institute of Technology, and in the following spring I took my daughter +Katharine and fled from the dreaded heat of a Texas summer. Never can I +forget the child's grief on parting from her Texas pony. She extorted a +solemn promise from her father, who was obliged to stay in Texas, that +he would never part with him. + +My brother, then unmarried, and my sister Harriet were living together +in New Rochelle and to them we went. Harry's vacation enabled him to be +with us, and we had a delightful summer. It was good to be on the shores +of Long Island Sound. + +In the autumn, not knowing what next was in store for us, I placed my +dear little Katharine at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Kenwood +on the Hudson, that she might be able to complete her education in one +place, and in the care of those lovely, gentle and refined ladies of +that order. + +Shortly after that, Captain Jack was ordered to David's Island, New +York Harbor (now called Fort Slocum), where we spent four happy and +uninterrupted years, in the most constant intercourse with my dear +brother and sister. + +Old friends were coming and going all the time, and it seemed so good to +us to be living in a place where this was possible. + +Captain Summerhayes was constructing officer and had a busy life, with +all the various sorts of building to be done there. + +David's Island was then an Artillery Post, and there were several +batteries stationed there. (Afterwards it became a recruiting station.) +The garrison was often entirely changed. At one time, General Henry C. +Cook was in command. He and his charming Southern wife added so much to +the enjoyment of the post. Then came our old friends the Van Vliets of +Santa Fe days; and Dr. and Mrs. Valery Havard, who are so well known in +the army, and then Colonel Carl Woodruff and Mrs. Woodruff, whom we all +liked so much, and dear Doctor Julian Cabell, and others, who completed +a delightful garrison. + +And we had a series of informal dances and invited the distinguished +members of the artist colony from New Rochelle, and it was at one of +these dances that I first met Frederic Remington. I had long admired his +work and had been most anxious to meet him. As a rule, Frederic did +not attend any social functions, but he loved the army, and as Mrs. +Remington was fond of social life, they were both present at our first +little invitation dance. + +About the middle of the evening I noticed Mr. Remington sitting alone +and I crossed the hall and sat down beside him. I then told him how much +I had loved his work and how it appealed to all army folks, and how +glad I was to know him, and I suppose I said many other things such +as literary men and painters and players often have to hear from +enthusiastic women like myself. However, Frederic seemed pleased, and +made some modest little speech and then fell into an abstracted silence, +gazing on the great flag which was stretched across the hall at one +end, and from behind which some few soldiers who were going to assist +in serving the supper were passing in and out. I fell in with his mood +immediately, as he was a person with whom formality was impossible, and +said: "What are you looking at, Mr. Remington?" He replied, turning +upon me his round boyish face and his blue eyes gladdening, "I was +just thinking I wished I was behind in there where those blue jackets +are--you know--behind that flag with the soldiers--those are the men +I like to study, you know, I don't like all this fuss and feathers of +society"--then, blushing at his lack of gallantry, he added: "It's all +right, of course, pretty women and all that, and I suppose you think I'm +dreadful and--do you want me to dance with you--that's the proper thing +here isn't it?" Whereupon, he seized me in his great arms and whirled me +around at a pace I never dreamed of, and, once around, he said, "that's +enough of this thing, isn't it, let's sit down, I believe I'm going to +like you, though I'm not much for women." I said "You must come over +here often;" and he replied, "You've got a lot of jolly good fellows +over here and I will do it." + +Afterwards, the Remingtons and ourselves became the closest friends. +Mrs. Remington's maiden name was Eva Caton, and after the first few +meetings, she became "little Eva" to me--and if ever there was an +embodiment of that gentle lovely name and what it implies, it is this +woman, the wife of the great artist, who has stood by him through all +the reverses of his early life and been, in every sense, his guiding +star. + +And now began visits to the studio, a great room he had built on to his +house at New Rochelle. It had an enormous fire place where great logs +were burned, and the walls were hung with the most rare and wonderful +Indian curios. There he did all the painting which has made him famous +in the last twenty years, and all the modelling which has already become +so well known and would have eventually made him a name as a great +sculptor. He always worked steadily until three o'clock and then +there was a walk or game of tennis or a ride. After dinner, delightful +evenings in the studio. + +Frederic was a student and a deep thinker. He liked to solve all +questions for himself and did not accept readily other men's theories. +He thought much on religious subjects and the future life, and liked to +compare the Christian religion with the religions of Eastern countries, +weighing them one against the other with fairness and clear logic. + +And so we sat, many evenings into the night, Frederic and Jack stretched +in their big leather chairs puffing away at their pipes, Eva with her +needlework, and myself a rapt listener: wondering at this man of genius, +who could work with his creative brush all day long and talk with the +eloquence of a learned Doctor of Divinity half the night. + +During the time we were stationed at Davids Island, Mr. Remington and +Jack made a trip to the Southwest, where they shot the peccary (wild +hog) in Texas and afterwards blue quail and other game in Mexico. +Artist and soldier, they got on famously together notwithstanding the +difference in their ages. + +And now he was going to try his hand at a novel, a real romance. We +talked a good deal about the little Indian boy, and I got to love White +Weasel long before he appeared in print as John Ermine. The book came +out after we had left New Rochelle--but I received a copy from him, and +wrote him my opinion of it, which was one of unstinted praise. But it +did not surprise me to learn that he did not consider it a success from +a financial point of view. + +"You see," he said a year afterwards, "that sort of thing does not +interest the public. What they want,"--here he began to mimic some funny +old East Side person, and both hands gesticulating--"is a back yard and +a cabbage patch and a cook stove and babies' clothes drying beside it, +you see, Mattie," he said. "They don't want to know anything about the +Indian or the half-breed, or what he thinks or believes." And then he +went off into one of his irresistible tirades combining ridicule and +abuse of the reading public, in language such as only Frederic Remington +could use before women and still retain his dignity. "Well, Frederic," I +said, "I will try to recollect that, when I write my experiences of Army +Life." + +In writing him my opinion of his book the year before, I had said, "In +fact, I am in love with John Ermine." The following Christmas he sent me +the accompanying card. + +Now the book was dramatized and produced, with Hackett as John Ermine, +at the Globe Theatre in September of 1902--the hottest weather ever on +record in Boston at that season. Of course seats were reserved for us; +we were living at Nantucket that year, and we set sail at noon to see +the great production. We snatched a bite of supper at a near-by hotel in +Boston and hurried to the theatre, but being late, had some difficulty +in getting our seats. + +The curtain was up and there sat Hackett, not with long yellow hair +(which was the salient point in the half-breed scout) but rather +well-groomed, looking more like a parlor Indian than a real live +half-breed, such as all we army people knew. I thought "this will never +do." + +The house was full, Hackett did the part well, and the audience murmured +on going out: "a very artistic success." But the play was too mystical, +too sad. It would have suited the "New Theatre" patrons better. I wrote +him from Nantucket and criticized one or two minor points, such as the +1850 riding habits of the women, which were slouchy and unbecoming and +made the army people look like poor emigrants and I received this letter +in reply: + +WEBSTER AVENUE, NEW ROCHELLE, N. Y. + +My dear Mrs. S., + +Much obliged for your talk--it is just what we want--proper impressions. + +I fought for that long hair but the management said the audience has got +to, have some Hackett--why I could not see--but he is a matinee idol and +that long with the box office. + +We'll dress Katherine up better. + +The long rehearsals at night nearly killed me--I was completely done up +and came home on train Monday in that terrific heat and now I am in the +hands of a doctor. Imagine me a week without sleep. + +Hope that fight took Jack back to his youth. For the stage I don't think +it was bad. We'll get grey shirts on their men later. + +The old lady arrives to-day--she has been in Gloversville. + +I think the play will go--but, we may have to save Ermine. The public is +a funny old cat and won't stand for the mustard. + +Well, glad you had a good time and of course you can't charge me up with +the heat. + +Yours, FREDERICK R. + + +Remington made a trip to the Yellowstone Park and this is what he wrote +to Jack. His letters were never dated. + +My dear Summerhayes: + +Say if you could get a few puffs of this cold air out here you would +think you were full of champagne water. I feel like a d--- kid-- + +I thought I should never be young again--but here I am only 14 years +old--my whiskers are falling out. + +Capt. Brown of the 1st cav. wishes to be remembered to you both. He is +Park Superintendent. Says if you will come out here he will take care of +you and he would. + +Am painting and doing some good work. Made a "govt. six" yesterday. + +In the course of time, he bought an Island in the St. Lawrence and they +spent several summers there. + +On the occasion of my husband accepting a detail in active service in +Washington at the Soldiers' Home, after his retirement, he received the +following letter. + + +INGLENEUK, CHIPPEWA BAY, N. Y. + +My dear Jack-- + +So there you are--and I'm d--- glad you are so nicely fixed. It's the +least they could do for you and you ought to be able to enjoy it for ten +years before they find any spavins on you if you will behave yourself, +but I guess you will drift into that Army and Navy Club and round up +with a lot of those old alkalied prairie-dogs whom neither Indians +nor whiskey could kill and Mr. Gout will take you over his route to +Arlington. + +I'm on the water wagon and I feel like a young mule. I am never going to +get down again to try the walking. If I lose my whip I am going to drive +right on and leave it. + +We are having a fine summer and I may run over to Washington this winter +and throw my eye over you to see how you go. We made a trip down to New +Foundland but saw nothing worth while. I guess I am getting to be an old +swat--I can't see anything that didn't happen twenty years ago, + +Y-- FREDERICK R. + + +At the close of the year just gone, this great soul passed from the +earth leaving a blank in our lives that nothing can ever fill. Passed +into the great Beyond whose mysteries were always troubling his mind. +Suddenly and swiftly the call came--the hand was stilled and the +restless spirit took its flight. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. DAVID'S ISLAND + +At Davids' Island the four happiest years of my army life glided swiftly +away. + +There was a small steam tug which made regular and frequent trips over +to New Rochelle and we enjoyed our intercourse with the artists and +players who lived there. + +Zogbaum, whose well known pictures of sailors and warships and soldiers +had reached us even in the far West, and whose charming family added so +much to our pleasure. + +Julian Hawthorne with his daughter Hildegarde, now so well known as a +literary critic; Henry Loomis Nelson, whose fair daughter Margaret +came to our little dances and promptly fell in love with a young, slim, +straight Artillery officer. A case of love at first sight, followed by a +short courtship and a beautiful little country wedding at Miss Nelson's +home on the old Pelham Road, where Hildegarde Hawthorne was bridesmaid +in a white dress and scarlet flowers (the artillery colors) and many +famous literary people from everywhere were present. + +Augustus Thomas, the brilliant playwright, whose home was near the +Remingtons on Lathers' Hill, and whose wife, so young, so beautiful and +so accomplished, made that home attractive and charming. + +Francis Wilson, known to the world at large, first as a singer in comic +opera, and now as an actor and author, also lived in New Rochelle, +and we came to have the honor of being numbered amongst his friends. A +devoted husband and kind father, a man of letters and a book lover, such +is the man as we knew him in his home and with his family. + +And now came the delicious warm summer days. We persuaded the +Quartermaster to prop up the little row of old bathing houses which had +toppled over with the heavy winter gales. There were several bathing +enthusiasts amongst us; we had a pretty fair little stretch of beach +which was set apart for the officers' families, and now what bathing +parties we had! Kemble, the illustrator, joined our ranks--and on a warm +summer morning the little old Tug Hamilton was gay with the artists and +their families, the players and writers of plays, and soon you could see +the little garrison hastening to the beach and the swimmers running down +the long pier, down the run-way and off head first into the clear waters +of the Sound. What a company was that! The younger and the older ones +all together, children and their fathers and mothers, all happy, all +well, all so gay, and we of the frontier so enamored of civilization +and what it brought us! There were no intruders and ah! those were happy +days. Uncle Sam seemed to be making up to us for what we had lost during +all those long years in the wild places. + +Then Augustus Thomas wrote the play of "Arizona" and we went to New York +to see it put on, and we sat in Mr. Thomas' box and saw our frontier +life brought before us with startling reality. + +And so one season followed another. Each bringing its pleasures, and +then came another lovely wedding, for my brother Harry gave up his +bachelor estate and married one of the nicest and handsomest girls in +Westchester County, and their home in New Rochelle was most attractive. +My son was at the Stevens Institute and both he and Katharine were able +to spend their vacations at David's Island, and altogether, our life +there was near to perfection. + +We were doomed to have one more tour in the West, however, and this time +it was the Middle West. + +For in the autumn of '96, Jack was ordered to Jefferson Barracks, +Missouri, on construction work. + +Jefferson Barracks is an old and historic post on the Mississippi River, +some ten miles south of St. Louis. I could not seem to take any interest +in the post or in the life there. I could not form new ties so quickly, +after our life on the coast, and I did not like the Mississippi Valley, +and St. Louis was too far from the post, and the trolley ride over there +too disagreeable for words. After seven months of just existing (on my +part) at Jefferson Barracks, Jack received an order for Fort Myer, the +end, the aim, the dream of all army people. Fort Myer is about three +miles from Washington, D. C. + +We lost no time in getting there and were soon settled in our pleasant +quarters. There was some building to be done, but the duty was +comparatively light, and we entered with considerable zest into the +social life of the Capital. We expected to remain there for two years, +at the end of which time Captain Summerhayes would be retired and +Washington would be our permanent home. + +But alas! our anticipation was never to be realized, for, as we all +know, in May of 1898, the Spanish War broke out, and my husband was +ordered to New York City to take charge of the Army Transport Service, +under Colonel Kimball. + +No delay was permitted to him, so I was left behind, to pack up the +household goods and to dispose of our horses and carriages as best I +could. + +The battle of Manila Bay had changed the current of our lives, and we +were once more adrift. + +The young Cavalry officers came in to say good-bye to Captain Jack: +every one was busy packing up his belongings for an indefinite period +and preparing for the field. We all felt the undercurrent of sadness +and uncertainty, but "a good health" and "happy return" was drunk +all around, and Jack departed at midnight for his new station and new +duties. + +The next morning at daybreak we were awakened by the tramp, tramp of the +Cavalry, marching out of the post, en route for Cuba. + +We peered out of the windows and watched the troops we loved so well, +until every man and horse had vanished from our sight. + +Fort Myer was deserted and our hearts were sad. + + +***** + +My sister Harriet, who was visiting us at that time, returned from her +morning walk, and as she stepped upon the porch, she said: "Well! of all +lonesome places I ever saw, this is the worst yet. I am going to pack +my trunk and leave. I came to visit an army post, but not an old women's +home or an orphan asylum: that is about all this place is now. I simply +cannot stay!" + +Whereupon, she proceeded immediately to carry out her resolution, and I +was left behind with my young daughter, to finish and close up our life +at Fort Myer. + +To describe the year which followed, that strenuous year in New York, is +beyond my power. + +That summer gave Jack his promotion to a Major, but the anxiety and the +terrible strain of official work broke down his health entirely, and in +the following winter the doctors sent him to Florida, to recuperate. + +After six weeks in St. Augustine, we returned to New York. The stress +of the war was over; the Major was ordered to Governor's Island as Chief +Quartermaster, Department of the East, and in the following year he was +retired, by operation of the law, at the age limit. + +I was glad to rest from the incessant changing of stations; the life +had become irksome to me, in its perpetual unrest. I was glad to find a +place to lay my head, and to feel that we were not under orders; to find +and to keep a roof-tree, under which we could abide forever. + +In 1903, by an act of Congress, the veterans of the Civil War, who had +served continuously for thirty years or more were given an extra +grade, so now my hero wears with complacency the silver leaf of the +Lieutenant-Colonel, and is enjoying the quiet life of a civilian. + +But that fatal spirit of unrest from which I thought to escape, and +which ruled my life for so many years, sometimes asserts its power, +and at those times my thoughts turn back to the days when we were all +Lieutenants together, marching across the deserts and mountains of +Arizona; back to my friends of the Eighth Infantry, that historic +regiment, whose officers and men fought before the walls of Chapultepec +and Mexico, back to my friends of the Sixth Cavalry, to the days at Camp +MacDowell, where we slept under the stars, and watched the sun rise from +behind the Four Peaks of the MacDowell Mountains: where we rode the +big cavalry horses over the sands of the Maricopa desert, swung in our +hammocks under the ramadas; swam in the red waters of the Verde River, +ate canned peaches, pink butter and commissary hams, listened for the +scratching of the centipedes as they scampered around the edges of our +canvas-covered floors, found scorpions in our slippers, and rattlesnakes +under our beds. + +The old post is long since abandoned, but the Four Peaks still stand, +wrapped in their black shadows by night, and their purple colors by day, +waiting for the passing of the Apache and the coming of the white man, +who shall dig his canals in those arid plains, and build his cities upon +the ruins of the ancient Aztec dwellings. + +The Sixth Cavalry, as well as the Eighth Infantry, has seen many +vicissitudes since those days. Some of our gallant Captains and +Lieutenants have won their stars, others have been slain in battle. + +Dear, gentle Major Worth received wounds in the Cuban campaign, which +caused his death, but he wore his stars before he obeyed the "last +call." + +The gay young officers of Angel Island days hold dignified commands in +the Philippines, Cuba, and Alaska. + + +***** + + +My early experiences were unusually rough. None of us seek such +experiences, but possibly they bring with them a sort of recompense, in +that simple comforts afterwards seem, by contrast, to be the greatest +luxuries. + +I am glad to have known the army: the soldiers, the line, and the Staff; +it is good to think of honor and chivalry, obedience to duty and the +pride of arms; to have lived amongst men whose motives were unselfish +and whose aims were high; amongst men who served an ideal; who +stood ready, at the call of their country, to give their lives for a +Government which is, to them, the best in the world. + +Sometimes I hear the still voices of the Desert: they seem to be calling +me through the echoes of the Past. I hear, in fancy, the wheels of the +ambulance crunching the small broken stones of the malapais, or grating +swiftly over the gravel of the smooth white roads of the river-bottoms. +I hear the rattle of the ivory rings on the harness of the six-mule +team; I see the soldiers marching on ahead; I see my white tent, so +inviting after a long day's journey. + +But how vain these fancies! Railroad and automobile have annihilated +distance, the army life of those years is past and gone, and Arizona, as +we knew it, has vanished from the face of the earth. + +THE END. + +APPENDIX. + +NANTUCKET ISLAND, June 1910. + +When, a few years ago, I determined to write my recollections of life +in the army, I was wholly unfamiliar with the methods of publishers, and +the firm to whom I applied to bring out my book, did not urge upon me +the advisability of having it electrotyped, firstly, because, as they +said afterwards, I myself had such a very modest opinion of my book, +and, secondly because they thought a book of so decidedly personal a +character would not reach a sale of more than a few hundred copies at +the farthest. The matter of electrotyping was not even discussed between +us. The entire edition of one thousand copies was exhausted in about +a year, without having been carried on the lists of any bookseller or +advertised in any way except through some circulars sent by myself to +personal friends, and through several excellent reviews in prominent +newspapers. + +As the demand for the book continued, I have thought it advisable to +re-issue it, adding a good deal that has come into my mind since its +publication. + + +***** + + +It was after the Colonel's retirement that we came to spend the summers +at Nantucket, and I began to enjoy the leisure that never comes into the +life of an army woman during the active service of her husband. We were +no longer expecting sudden orders, and I was able to think quietly over +the events of the past. + +My old letters which had been returned to me really gave me the +inspiration to write the book and as I read them over, the people and +the events therein described were recalled vividly to my mind--events +which I had forgotten, people whom I had forgotten--events and people +all crowded out of my memory for many years by the pressure of family +cares, and the succession of changes in our stations, by anxiety during +Indian campaigns, and the constant readjustment of my mind to new scenes +and new friends. + +And so, in the delicious quiet of the Autumn days at Nantucket, when the +summer winds had ceased to blow and the frogs had ceased their pipings +in the salt meadows, and the sea was wondering whether it should keep +its summer blue or change into its winter grey, I sat down at my desk +and began to write my story. + +Looking out over the quiet ocean in those wonderful November days, when +a peaceful calm brooded over all things, I gathered up all the threads +of my various experiences and wove them together. + +But the people and the lands I wrote about did not really exist for +me; they were dream people and dream lands. I wrote of them as they had +appeared to me in those early years, and, strange as it may seem, I did +not once stop to think if the people and the lands still existed. + +For a quarter of a century I had lived in the day that began with +reveille and ended with "Taps." + +Now on this enchanted island, there was no reveille to awaken us in the +morning, and in the evening the only sound we could hear was the "ruck" +of the waves on the far outer shores and the sad tolling of the bell +buoy when the heaving swell of the ocean came rolling over the bar. + +And so I wrote, and the story grew into a book which was published and +sent out to friends and family. + +As time passed on, I began to receive orders for the book from army +officers, and then one day I received orders from people in Arizona and +I awoke to the fact that Arizona was no longer the land of my memories. +I began to receive booklets telling me of projected railroads, also +pictures of wonderful buildings, all showing progress and prosperity. + +And then came letters from some Presidents of railroads whose lines ran +through Arizona, and from bankers and politicians and business men +of Tucson, Phoenix and Yuma City. Photographs showing shady roads and +streets, where once all was a glare and a sandy waste. Letters from +mining men who knew every foot of the roads we had marched over; +pictures of the great Laguna dam on the Colorado, and of the quarters of +the Government Reclamation Service Corps at Yuma. + +These letters and pictures told me of the wonderful contrast presented +by my story to the Arizona of today; and although I had not spared that +country, in my desire to place before my children and friends a vivid +picture of my life out there, all these men seemed willing to forgive +me and even declared that my story might do as much to advance their +interests and the prosperity of Arizona as anything which had been +written with only that object in view. + +My soul was calmed by these assurances, and I ceased to be distressed by +thinking over the descriptions I had given of the unpleasant conditions +existing in that country in the seventies. + +In the meantime, the San Francisco Chronicle had published a good review +of my book, and reproduced the photograph of Captain Jack Mellon, the +noted pilot of the Colorado river, adding that he was undoubtedly one of +the most picturesque characters who had ever lived on the Pacific Coast +and that he had died some years ago. + +And so he was really dead! And perhaps the others too, were all gone +from the earth, I thought when one day I received a communication from +an entire stranger, who informed me that the writer of the review in +the San Francisco newspaper had been mistaken in the matter of Captain +Mellon's death, that he had seen him recently and that he lived at San +Diego. So I wrote to him and made haste to forward him a copy of my +book, which reached him at Yuma, on the Colorado, and this is what he +wrote: + +YUMA, Dec. 15th, 1908. + +My dear Mrs. Summerhayes: + +Your good book and letter came yesterday p. m., for which accept my +thanks. My home is not in San Diego, but in Coronado, across the bay +from San Diego. That is the reason I did not get your letter sooner. + +In one hour after I received your book, I had orders for nine of them. +All these books go to the official force of the Reclamation Service here +who are Damming the Colorado for the Government Irrigation Project. They +are not Damming it as we formerly did, but with good solid masonry. The +Dam is 4800 feet long and 300 feet wide and 10 feet above high water. +In high water it will flow over the top of the Dam, but in low water +the ditches or canals will take all the water out of the River, the +approximate cost is three million. There will be a tunnel under the +River at Yuma just below the Bridge, to bring the water into Arizona +which is thickly settled to the Mexican Line. + +I have done nothing on the River since the 23rd of last August, at which +date they closed the River to Navigation, and the only reason I am now +in Yumais trying to get something from Government for my boats made +useless by the Dam. I expect to get a little, but not a tenth of what +they cost me. + +Your book could not have a better title: it is "Vanished Arizona" sure +enough, vanished the good and warm Hearts that were here when you were. +The People here now are cold blooded as a snake and are all trying to +get the best of the other fellow. + +There are but two alive that were on the River when you were on it. +Polhemus and myself are all that are left, but I have many friends on +this coast. + +***** + +The nurse Patrocina died in Los Angeles last summer and the crying kid +Jesusita she had on the boat when you went from Ehrenberg to the mouth +of the River grew up to be the finest looking Girl in these Parts; She +was the Star witness in a murder trial in Los Angeles last winter, and +her picture was in all of the Papers. + +I am sending you a picture of the Steamer "Mojave" which was not on +the river when you were here. I made 20 trips with her up to the Virgin +River, which is 145 miles above Fort Mojave, or 75 miles higher than any +other man has gone with a boat: she was 10 feet longer than the "Gila" +or any other boat ever on the River. (Excuse this blowing but it's the +truth). + +In 1864 I was on a trip down the Gulf of California, in a small sail +boat and one of my companions was John Stanton. In Angel's Bay a man +whom we were giving a passage to, murdered my partner and ran off with +the boat and left Charley Ticen, John Stanton and myself on the beach. +We were seventeen days tramping to a village with nothing to eat but +cactus but I think I have told you the story before and what I want to +know, is this Stanton alive. He belonged to New Bedford--his father had +been master of a whale-ship. + +When we reached Guaymas, Stanton found a friend, the mate of a steamer, +the mate also belonged to New Bedford. When we parted, Stanton told me +he was going home and was going to stay there, and as he was two years +younger than me, he may still be in New Bedford, and as you are on the +ground, maybe you can help me to find out. + +All the people that I know praise your descriptive power and now my dear +Mrs. Summerhayes I suppose you will have a hard time wading through my +scrawl but I know you will be generous and remember that I went to sea +when a little over nine years of age and had my pen been half as often +in my hand as a marlin spike, I would now be able to write a much +clearer hand. + +I have a little bungalow on Coronado Beach, across the bay from San +Diego, and if you ever come there, you or your husband, you are welcome; +while I have a bean you can have half. I would like to see you and talk +over old times. Yuma is quite a place now; no more adobes built; it is +brick and concrete, cement sidewalks and flower gardens with electric +light and a good water system. + +My home is within five minutes walk of the Pacific Ocean. I was born at +Digby, Nova Scotia, and the first music I ever heard was the surf of the +Bay of Fundy, and when I close my eyes forever I hope the surf of the +Pacific will be the last sound that will greet my ears. + +I read Vanished Arizona last night until after midnight, and thought +what we both had gone through since you first came up the Colorado with +me. My acquaintance with the army was always pleasant, and like Tom +Moore I often say: + +Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy Bright dreams of the past +which she cannot destroy! Which come in the night-time of sorrow and +care And bring back the features that joy used to wear. Long, long be my +heart with such memories filled! + +I suppose the Colonel goes down to the Ship Chandler's and gams with the +old whaling captains. When I was a boy, there was a wealthy family of +ship-owners in New Bedford by the name of Robinson. I saw one of +their ships in Bombay, India, that was in 1854, her name was the Mary +Robinson, and altho' there were over a hundred ships on the bay, she was +the handsomest there. + +Well, good friend, I am afraid I will tire you out, so I will belay +this, and with best wishes for you and yours, + +I am, yours truly, + +J. A. MELLON. + +P. S.--Fisher is long since called to his Long Home. + + +***** + + +I had fancied, when Vanished Arizona was published, that it might +possibly appeal to the sympathies of women, and that men would lay it +aside as a sort-of a "woman's book"--but I have received more really +sympathetic letters from men than I have from women, all telling me, in +different words, that the human side of the story had appealed to them, +and I suppose this comes from the fact that originally I wrote it for my +children, and felt perfect freedom to put my whole self into it. And now +that the book is entirely out of my hands, I am glad that I wrote it as +I did, for if I had stopped to think that my dream people might be real +people, and that the real people would read it, I might never have had +the courage to write it at all. + +The many letters I have received of which there have been several +hundred I am sure, have been so interesting that I reproduce a few more +of them here: + +FORT BENJAMIN HARRISON, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA. January 10, 1909. + +My dear Mrs. Summerhayes: + +I have just read the book. It is a good book, a true book, one of the +best kind of books. After taking it up I did not lay it down till it was +finished--till with you I had again gone over the malapais deserts of +Arizona, and recalled my own meetings with you at Niobrara and at old +Fort Marcy or Santa Fe. You were my cicerone in the old town and I +couldn't have had a better one--or more charming one. + +The book has recalled many memories to me. Scarcely a name you mention +but is or was a friend. Major Van Vliet loaned me his copy, but I shall +get one of my own and shall tell my friends in the East that, if they +desire a true picture of army life as it appears to the army woman, they +must read your book. + +For my part I feel that I must congratulate you on your successful work +and thank you for the pleasure you have given me in its perusal. + +With cordial regard to you and yours, and with best wishes for many +happy years. + +Very sincerely yours, + +L. W. V. KENNON, Maj. 10th Inf. + +HEADQUARTERS THIRD BRIGADE, NATIONAL GUARD OF PENNSYLVANIA, +WILKES-BARRE, PENNSYLVANIA. JANUARY 19, 1908. + +Dear Madam: + +I am sending you herewith my check for two copies of "Vanished Arizona." +This summer our mutual friend, Colonel Beaumont (late 4th U. S. Cav.) +ordered two copies for me and I have given them both away to friends +whom I wanted to have read your delightful and charming book. I am now +ordering one of these for another friend and wish to keep one in my +record library as a memorable story of the bravery and courage of the +noble band of army men and women who helped to blaze the pathway of the +nation's progress in its course of Empire Westward. + +No personal record written, which I have read, tells so splendidly of +what the good women of our army endured in the trials that beset the +army in the life on the plains in the days succeeding the Civil War. And +all this at a time when the nation and its people were caring but little +for you all and the struggles you were making. + +I will be pleased indeed if you will kindly inscribe your name in one of +the books you will send me. + +Sincerely Yours, C. B. DOUGHERTY, Brig. Gen'l N. G. Pa. Jan. 19, 1908 + +SCHENECTADY, N. Y. June 8th, 1908. + +Mrs. John W. Summerhayes, North Shore Hill, Nantucket, Mass. + +My Dear Mrs. Summerhayes: + +Were I to say that I enjoyed "Vanished Arizona, "I should very +inadequately express my feelings about it, because there is so much +to arouse emotions deeper than what we call "enjoyment;" it stirs +the sympathies and excites our admiration for your courage and your +fortitude. In a word, the story, honest and unaffected, yet vivid, has +in it that touch of nature which makes kin of us all. + +How actual knowledge and experience broadens our minds! Your +appreciation of, and charity for, the weaknesses of those living a +lonely life of deprivation on the frontier, impressed me very much. +I wish too, that what you say about the canteen could be published in +every newspaper in America. + +Very sincerely yours, + +M. F. WESTOVER, Secretary Gen'l Electric Co. + +THE MILITARY SERVICE INSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. Governor's +Island, N. Y. June 25, 1908. + +Dear Mrs. Summerhayes: + +I offer my personal congratulations upon your success in producing +a work of such absorbing interest to all friends of the Army, and so +instructive to the public at large. + +I have just finished reading the book, from cover to cover, to my wife +and we have enjoyed it thoroughly. + +Will you please advise me where the book can be purchased in New York, +or otherwise mail two copies to me at 203 W. 54th Street, New York City, +with memo of price per copy, that I may remit the amount. + +Very truly yours, + +T. F. RODENBOUGH, Secretary and Editor (Brig. Gen'l. U. S. A.) + +YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN, CONN. + +May 15, 1910. + +Dear Mrs. Summerhayes: + +I have read every word of your book "Vanished Arizona" with intense +interest. You have given a vivid account of what you actually saw and +lived through, and nobody can resist the truthfulness and reality of +your narrative. The book is a real contribution to American history, and +to the chronicles of army life. + +Faithfully yours, WM. LYON PHELPS, + +[Professor of English literature at Yale University.] + +LONACONING, MD., Jan. 2, 1909. + +Col. J. W. Summerhays, New Rochelle, N. Y. + +Dear Sir: + +Captain William Baird, 6th Cavalry, retired, now at Annapolis, sent me +Mrs. Summerhay's book to read, and I have read it with delight, for +I was in "K" when Mrs. Summerhays "took on" in the 8th. Myself and my +brother, Michael, served in "K" Company from David's Island to Camp +Apache. Doubtless you have forgotten me, but I am sure that you remember +the tall fifer of "K", Michael Gurnett. He was killed at Camp Mohave in +Sept. 1885, while in Company "G" of the 1st Infantry. I was five years +in "K", but my brother re-enlisted in "K", and afterward joined the +First. He served in the 31st, 22nd, 8th and 1st. + +Oh, that little book! We're all in it, even poor Charley Bowen. Mrs. +Summerhays should have written a longer story. She soldiered long enough +with the 8th in the "bloody 70's" to be able to write a book five times +as big. For what she's done, God bless her! She is entitled to the +Irishman's benediction: "May every hair in her head be a candle to light +her soul to glory." We poor old Regulars have little said about us in +print, and wish to God that "Vanished Arizona" was in the hands of every +old veteran of the "Marching 8th." If I had the means I would send a +copy to our 1st Serg't Bernard Moran, and the other old comrades at the +Soldiers' Home. But, alas, evil times have fallen upon us, and--I'm not +writing a jeremiad--I took the book from the post office and when I saw +the crossed guns and the "8" there was a lump in my throat, and I went +into the barber shop and read it through before I left. A friend of mine +was in the shop and when I came to Pringle's death, he said, "Gurnett, +that must be a sad book you're reading, why man, you're crying." + +I believe I was, but they were tears of joy. And, Oh, Lord, to think of +Bowen having a full page in history; but, after all, maybe he deserved +it. And that picture of my company commander! [Worth]. Long, long, have +I gazed on it. I was only sixteen and a half years old when I joined his +company at David's Island, Dec. 6th, 1871. Folliot A. Whitney was 1st +lieutenant and Cyrus Earnest, 2nd. What a fine man Whitney was. A finer +man nor truer gentleman ever wore a shoulder strap. If he had been +company commander I'd have re-enlisted and stayed with him. I was always +afraid of Worth, though he was always good to my brother and myself. +I deeply regretted Lieut. Whitney's death in Cuba, and I watched Major +Worth's career in the last war. It nearly broke my heart that I could +not go. Oh, the rattle of the war drum and the bugle calls and the +marching troops, it set me crazy, and me not able to take a hand in the +scrap. + +Mrs. Summerhays calls him Wm. T. Worth, isn't it Wm. S. Worth? + +The copy I have read was loaned me by Captain Baird; he says it's a +Christmas gift from General Carter, and I must return it. My poor wife +has read it with keen interest and says she: "William, I am going to +have that book for my children," and she'll get it, yea, verily! she +will. + +Well, Colonel, I'm right glad to know that you are still on this side of +the great divide, and I know that you and Mrs. S. will be glad to hear +from an old "walk-a-heap" of the 8th. + +I am working for a Cumberland newspaper--Lonaconing reporter--and I will +send you a copy or two of the paper with this. And now, permit me to +subscribe myself your + +Comrade In Arms, + +WILLIAM A. GURNETT. + + + +Dear Mrs. Summerhayes: + +Read your book--in fact when I got started I forgot my bedtime (and you +know how rigid that is) and sat it through. + +It has a bully note of the old army--it was all worthwhile--they had +color, those days. + +I say--now suppose you had married a man who kept a drug store--see what +you would have had and see what you would have missed. + +Yours, FREDERIC REMINGTON. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vanished Arizona, by Martha Summerhayes + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1049 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1050-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1050-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..eaf1cd62 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1050-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1728 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1050 *** + +THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS + +By Bernard Shaw + + + + +CONTENTS + + Preface + How the Play came to be Written + Thomas Tyler + Frank Harris + Harris "durch Mitleid wissend" + "Sidney's Sister: Pembroke's Mother" + Shakespear's Social Standing + This Side Idolatry + Shakespear's Pessimism + Gaiety of Genius + Jupiter and Semele + The Idol of the Bardolaters + Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion + Shakespear and Democracy + Shakespear and the British Public + The Dark Lady of the Sonnets + + + + + +THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS + +1910 + + + + +PREFACE TO THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS + + + + +How the Play came to be Written + +I had better explain why, in this little _piece d'occasion_, written +for a performance in aid of the funds of the project for establishing +a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespear, I have identified the +Dark Lady with Mistress Mary Fitton. First, let me say that I do not +contend that the Dark Lady was Mary Fitton, because when the case in +Mary's favor (or against her, if you please to consider that the Dark +Lady was no better than she ought to have been) was complete, a +portrait of Mary came to light and turned out to be that of a fair +lady, not of a dark one. That settles the question, if the portrait +is authentic, which I see no reason to doubt, and the lady's hair +undyed, which is perhaps less certain. Shakespear rubbed in the +lady's complexion in his sonnets mercilessly; for in his day black +hair was as unpopular as red hair was in the early days of Queen +Victoria. Any tinge lighter than raven black must be held fatal to +the strongest claim to be the Dark Lady. And so, unless it can be +shewn that Shakespear's sonnets exasperated Mary Fitton into dyeing +her hair and getting painted in false colors, I must give up all +pretence that my play is historical. The later suggestion of Mr +Acheson that the Dark Lady, far from being a maid of honor, kept a +tavern in Oxford and was the mother of Davenant the poet, is the one I +should have adopted had I wished to be up to date. Why, then, did I +introduce the Dark Lady as Mistress Fitton? + +Well, I had two reasons. The play was not to have been written by me +at all, but by Mrs Alfred Lyttelton; and it was she who suggested a +scene of jealousy between Queen Elizabeth and the Dark Lady at the +expense of the unfortunate Bard. Now this, if the Dark Lady was a +maid of honor, was quite easy. If she were a tavern landlady, it +would have strained all probability. So I stuck to Mary Fitton. But +I had another and more personal reason. I was, in a manner, present +at the birth of the Fitton theory. Its parent and I had become +acquainted; and he used to consult me on obscure passages in the +sonnets, on which, as far as I can remember, I never succeeded in +throwing the faintest light, at a time when nobody else thought my +opinion, on that or any other subject, of the slightest importance. I +thought it would be friendly to immortalize him, as the silly literary +saying is, much as Shakespear immortalized Mr W. H., as he said he +would, simply by writing about him. + +Let me tell the story formally. + + + + +Thomas Tyler + +Throughout the eighties at least, and probably for some years before, +the British Museum reading room was used daily by a gentleman of such +astonishing and crushing ugliness that no one who had once seen him +could ever thereafter forget him. He was of fair complexion, rather +golden red than sandy; aged between forty-five and sixty; and dressed +in frock coat and tall hat of presentable but never new appearance. +His figure was rectangular, waistless, neckless, ankleless, of middle +height, looking shortish because, though he was not particularly +stout, there was nothing slender about him. His ugliness was not +unamiable; it was accidental, external, excrescential. Attached to +his face from the left ear to the point of his chin was a monstrous +goitre, which hung down to his collar bone, and was very inadequately +balanced by a smaller one on his right eyelid. Nature's malice was so +overdone in his case that it somehow failed to produce the effect of +repulsion it seemed to have aimed at. When you first met Thomas Tyler +you could think of nothing else but whether surgery could really do +nothing for him. But after a very brief acquaintance you never +thought of his disfigurements at all, and talked to him as you might +to Romeo or Lovelace; only, so many people, especially women, would +not risk the preliminary ordeal, that he remained a man apart and a +bachelor all his days. I am not to be frightened or prejudiced by a +tumor; and I struck up a cordial acquaintance with him, in the course +of which he kept me pretty closely on the track of his work at the +Museum, in which I was then, like himself, a daily reader. + +He was by profession a man of letters of an uncommercial kind. He was +a specialist in pessimism; had made a translation of Ecclesiastes of +which eight copies a year were sold; and followed up the pessimism of +Shakespear and Swift with keen interest. He delighted in a hideous +conception which he called the theory of the cycles, according to +which the history of mankind and the universe keeps eternally +repeating itself without the slightest variation throughout all +eternity; so that he had lived and died and had his goitre before and +would live and die and have it again and again and again. He liked to +believe that nothing that happened to him was completely novel: he +was persuaded that he often had some recollection of its previous +occurrence in the last cycle. He hunted out allusions to this +favorite theory in his three favorite pessimists. He tried his hand +occasionally at deciphering ancient inscriptions, reading them as +people seem to read the stars, by discovering bears and bulls and +swords and goats where, as it seems to me, no sane human being can see +anything but stars higgledy-piggledy. Next to the translation of +Ecclesiastes, his _magnum opus_ was his work on Shakespear's Sonnets, +in which he accepted a previous identification of Mr W. H., the "onlie +begetter" of the sonnets, with the Earl of Pembroke (William Herbert), +and promulgated his own identification of Mistress Mary Fitton with +the Dark Lady. Whether he was right or wrong about the Dark Lady did +not matter urgently to me: she might have been Maria Tompkins for all +I cared. But Tyler would have it that she was Mary Fitton; and he +tracked Mary down from the first of her marriages in her teens to her +tomb in Cheshire, whither he made a pilgrimage and whence returned in +triumph with a picture of her statue, and the news that he was +convinced she was a dark lady by traces of paint still discernible. + +In due course he published his edition of the Sonnets, with the +evidence he had collected. He lent me a copy of the book, which I +never returned. But I reviewed it in the Pall Mall Gazette on the 7th +of January 1886, and thereby let loose the Fitton theory in a wider +circle of readers than the book could reach. Then Tyler died, sinking +unnoted like a stone in the sea. I observed that Mr Acheson, Mrs +Davenant's champion, calls him Reverend. It may very well be that he +got his knowledge of Hebrew in reading for the Church; and there was +always something of the clergyman or the schoolmaster in his dress and +air. Possibly he may actually have been ordained. But he never told +me that or anything else about his affairs; and his black pessimism +would have shot him violently out of any church at present established +in the West. We never talked about affairs: we talked about +Shakespear, and the Dark Lady, and Swift, and Koheleth, and the +cycles, and the mysterious moments when a feeling came over us that +this had happened to us before, and about the forgeries of the +Pentateuch which were offered for sale to the British Museum, and +about literature and things of the spirit generally. He always came +to my desk at the Museum and spoke to me about something or other, no +doubt finding that people who were keen on this sort of conversation +were rather scarce. He remains a vivid spot of memory in the void of +my forgetfulness, a quite considerable and dignified soul in a +grotesquely disfigured body. + + + + +Frank Harris + +To the review in the Pall Mall Gazette I attribute, rightly or +wrongly, the introduction of Mary Fitton to Mr Frank Harris. My +reason for this is that Mr Harris wrote a play about Shakespear and +Mary Fitton; and when I, as a pious duty to Tyler's ghost, reminded +the world that it was to Tyler we owed the Fitton theory, Frank +Harris, who clearly had not a notion of what had first put Mary into +his head, believed, I think, that I had invented Tyler expressly for +his discomfiture; for the stress I laid on Tyler's claims must have +seemed unaccountable and perhaps malicious on the assumption that he +was to me a mere name among the thousands of names in the British +Museum catalogue. Therefore I make it clear that I had and have +personal reasons for remembering Tyler, and for regarding myself as in +some sort charged with the duty of reminding the world of his work. I +am sorry for his sake that Mary's portrait is fair, and that Mr W. H. +has veered round again from Pembroke to Southampton; but even so his +work was not wasted: it is by exhausting all the hypotheses that we +reach the verifiable one; and after all, the wrong road always leads +somewhere. + +Frank Harris's play was written long before mine. I read it in +manuscript before the Shakespear Memorial National Theatre was mooted; +and if there is anything except the Fitton theory (which is Tyler's +property) in my play which is also in Mr Harris's it was I who annexed +it from him and not he from me. It does not matter anyhow, because +this play of mine is a brief trifle, and full of manifest +impossibilities at that; whilst Mr Harris's play is serious both in +size, intention, and quality. But there could not in the nature of +things be much resemblance, because Frank conceives Shakespear to have +been a broken-hearted, melancholy, enormously sentimental person, +whereas I am convinced that he was very like myself: in fact, if I +had been born in 1556 instead of in 1856, I should have taken to blank +verse and given Shakespear a harder run for his money than all the +other Elizabethans put together. Yet the success of Frank Harris's +book on Shakespear gave me great delight. + +To those who know the literary world of London there was a sharp +stroke of ironic comedy in the irresistible verdict in its favor. In +critical literature there is one prize that is always open to +competition, one blue ribbon that always carries the highest critical +rank with it. To win, you must write the best book of your generation +on Shakespear. It is felt on all sides that to do this a certain +fastidious refinement, a delicacy of taste, a correctness of manner +and tone, and high academic distinction in addition to the +indispensable scholarship and literary reputation, are needed; and men +who pretend to these qualifications are constantly looked to with a +gentle expectation that presently they will achieve the great feat. +Now if there is a man on earth who is the utter contrary of everything +that this description implies; whose very existence is an insult to +the ideal it realizes; whose eye disparages, whose resonant voice +denounces, whose cold shoulder jostles every decency, every delicacy, +every amenity, every dignity, every sweet usage of that quiet life of +mutual admiration in which perfect Shakespearian appreciation is +expected to arise, that man is Frank Harris. Here is one who is +extraordinarily qualified, by a range of sympathy and understanding +that extends from the ribaldry of a buccaneer to the shyest +tendernesses of the most sensitive poetry, to be all things to all +men, yet whose proud humor it is to be to every man, provided the man +is eminent and pretentious, the champion of his enemies. To the +Archbishop he is an atheist, to the atheist a Catholic mystic, to the +Bismarckian Imperialist an Anacharsis Klootz, to Anacharsis Klootz a +Washington, to Mrs Proudie a Don Juan, to Aspasia a John Knox: in +short, to everyone his complement rather than his counterpart, his +antagonist rather than his fellow-creature. Always provided, however, +that the persons thus confronted are respectable persons. Sophie +Perovskaia, who perished on the scaffold for blowing Alexander II to +fragments, may perhaps have echoed Hamlet's + + Oh God, Horatio, what a wounded name-- + Things standing thus unknown--I leave behind! + +but Frank Harris, in his Sonia, has rescued her from that injustice, +and enshrined her among the saints. He has lifted the Chicago +anarchists out of their infamy, and shewn that, compared with the +Capitalism that killed them, they were heroes and martyrs. He has +done this with the most unusual power of conviction. The story, as he +tells it, inevitably and irresistibly displaces all the vulgar, mean, +purblind, spiteful versions. There is a precise realism and an +unsmiling, measured, determined sincerity which gives a strange +dignity to the work of one whose fixed practice and ungovernable +impulse it is to kick conventional dignity whenever he sees it. + + + + +Harris "durch Mitleid wissend" + +Frank Harris is everything except a humorist, not, apparently, from +stupidity, but because scorn overcomes humor in him. Nobody ever +dreamt of reproaching Milton's Lucifer for not seeing the comic side +of his fall; and nobody who has read Mr Harris's stories desires to +have them lightened by chapters from the hand of Artemus Ward. Yet he +knows the taste and the value of humor. He was one of the few men of +letters who really appreciated Oscar Wilde, though he did not rally +fiercely to Wilde's side until the world deserted Oscar in his ruin. +I myself was present at a curious meeting between the two, when +Harris, on the eve of the Queensberry trial, prophesied to Wilde with +miraculous precision exactly what immediately afterwards happened to +him, and warned him to leave the country. It was the first time +within my knowledge that such a forecast proved true. Wilde, though +under no illusion as to the folly of the quite unselfish suit-at-law +he had been persuaded to begin, nevertheless so miscalculated the +force of the social vengeance he was unloosing on himself that he +fancied it could be stayed by putting up the editor of The Saturday +Review (as Mr Harris then was) to declare that he considered Dorian +Grey a highly moral book, which it certainly is. When Harris foretold +him the truth, Wilde denounced him as a fainthearted friend who was +failing him in his hour of need, and left the room in anger. Harris's +idiosyncratic power of pity saved him from feeling or shewing the +smallest resentment; and events presently proved to Wilde how insanely +he had been advised in taking the action, and how accurately Harris +had gauged the situation. + +The same capacity for pity governs Harris's study of Shakespear, whom, +as I have said, he pities too much; but that he is not insensible to +humor is shewn not only by his appreciation of Wilde, but by the fact +that the group of contributors who made his editorship of The Saturday +Review so remarkable, and of whom I speak none the less highly because +I happened to be one of them myself, were all, in their various ways, +humorists. + + + + +"Sidney's Sister: Pembroke's Mother" + +And now to return to Shakespear. Though Mr Harris followed Tyler in +identifying Mary Fitton as the Dark Lady, and the Earl of Pembroke as +the addressee of the other sonnets and the man who made love +successfully to Shakespear's mistress, he very characteristically +refuses to follow Tyler on one point, though for the life of me I +cannot remember whether it was one of the surmises which Tyler +published, or only one which he submitted to me to see what I would +say about it, just as he used to submit difficult lines from the +sonnets. + +This surmise was that "Sidney's sister: Pembroke's mother" set +Shakespear on to persuade Pembroke to marry, and that this was the +explanation of those earlier sonnets which so persistently and +unnaturally urged matrimony on Mr W. H. I take this to be one of the +brightest of Tyler's ideas, because the persuasions in the sonnets are +unaccountable and out of character unless they were offered to please +somebody whom Shakespear desired to please, and who took a motherly +interest in Pembroke. There is a further temptation in the theory for +me. The most charming of all Shakespear's old women, indeed the most +charming of all his women, young or old, is the Countess of Rousillon +in All's Well That Ends Well. It has a certain individuality among +them which suggests a portrait. Mr Harris will have it that all +Shakespear's nice old women are drawn from his beloved mother; but I +see no evidence whatever that Shakespear's mother was a particularly +nice woman or that he was particularly fond of her. That she was a +simple incarnation of extravagant maternal pride like the mother of +Coriolanus in Plutarch, as Mr Harris asserts, I cannot believe: she +is quite as likely to have borne her son a grudge for becoming "one of +these harlotry players" and disgracing the Ardens. Anyhow, as a +conjectural model for the Countess of Rousillon, I prefer that one of +whom Jonson wrote + + Sidney's sister: Pembroke's mother: + Death: ere thou has slain another, + Learnd and fair and good as she, + Time shall throw a dart at thee. + +But Frank will not have her at any price, because his ideal Shakespear +is rather like a sailor in a melodrama; and a sailor in a melodrama +must adore his mother. I do not at all belittle such sailors. They +are the emblems of human generosity; but Shakespear was not an emblem: +he was a man and the author of Hamlet, who had no illusions about his +mother. In weak moments one almost wishes he had. + + + + +Shakespear's Social Standing + +On the vexed question of Shakespear's social standing Mr Harris says +that Shakespear "had not had the advantage of a middle-class +training." I suggest that Shakespear missed this questionable +advantage, not because he was socially too low to have attained to it, +but because he conceived himself as belonging to the upper class from +which our public school boys are now drawn. Let Mr Harris survey for +a moment the field of contemporary journalism. He will see there some +men who have the very characteristics from which he infers that +Shakespear was at a social disadvantage through his lack of +middle-class training. They are rowdy, ill-mannered, abusive, +mischievous, fond of quoting obscene schoolboy anecdotes, adepts in +that sort of blackmail which consists in mercilessly libelling and +insulting every writer whose opinions are sufficiently heterodox to +make it almost impossible for him to risk perhaps five years of a +slender income by an appeal to a prejudiced orthodox jury; and they +see nothing in all this cruel blackguardism but an uproariously jolly +rag, although they are by no means without genuine literary ability, a +love of letters, and even some artistic conscience. But he will find +not one of the models of his type (I say nothing of mere imitators of +it) below the rank that looks at the middle class, not humbly and +enviously from below, but insolently from above. Mr Harris himself +notes Shakespear's contempt for the tradesman and mechanic, and his +incorrigible addiction to smutty jokes. He does us the public service +of sweeping away the familiar plea of the Bardolatrous ignoramus, that +Shakespear's coarseness was part of the manners of his time, putting +his pen with precision on the one name, Spenser, that is necessary to +expose such a libel on Elizabethan decency. There was nothing +whatever to prevent Shakespear from being as decent as More was before +him, or Bunyan after him, and as self-respecting as Raleigh or Sidney, +except the tradition of his class, in which education or statesmanship +may no doubt be acquired by those who have a turn for them, but in +which insolence, derision, profligacy, obscene jesting, debt +contracting, and rowdy mischievousness, give continual scandal to the +pious, serious, industrious, solvent bourgeois. No other class is +infatuated enough to believe that gentlemen are born and not made by a +very elaborate process of culture. Even kings are taught and coached +and drilled from their earliest boyhood to play their part. But the +man of family (I am convinced that Shakespear took that view of +himself) will plunge into society without a lesson in table manners, +into politics without a lesson in history, into the city without a +lesson in business, and into the army without a lesson in honor. + +It has been said, with the object of proving Shakespear a laborer, +that he could hardly write his name. Why? Because he "had not the +advantage of a middle-class training." Shakespear himself tells us, +through Hamlet, that gentlemen purposely wrote badly lest they should +be mistaken for scriveners; but most of them, then as now, wrote badly +because they could not write any better. In short, the whole range of +Shakespear's foibles: the snobbishness, the naughtiness, the contempt +for tradesmen and mechanics, the assumption that witty conversation +can only mean smutty conversation, the flunkeyism towards social +superiors and insolence towards social inferiors, the easy ways with +servants which is seen not only between The Two Gentlemen of Verona +and their valets, but in the affection and respect inspired by a great +servant like Adam: all these are the characteristics of Eton and +Harrow, not of the public elementary or private adventure school. +They prove, as everything we know about Shakespear suggests, that he +thought of the Shakespears and Ardens as families of consequence, and +regarded himself as a gentleman under a cloud through his father's ill +luck in business, and never for a moment as a man of the people. This +is at once the explanation of and excuse for his snobbery. He was not +a parvenu trying to cover his humble origin with a purchased coat of +arms: he was a gentleman resuming what he conceived to be his natural +position as soon as he gained the means to keep it up. + + + + +This Side Idolatry + +There is another matter which I think Mr Harris should ponder. He +says that Shakespear was but "little esteemed by his own generation." +He even describes Jonson's description of his "little Latin and less +Greek" as a sneer, whereas it occurs in an unmistakably sincere eulogy +of Shakespear, written after his death, and is clearly meant to +heighten the impression of Shakespear's prodigious natural endowments +by pointing out that they were not due to scholastic acquirements. +Now there is a sense in which it is true enough that Shakespear was +too little esteemed by his own generation, or, for the matter of that, +by any subsequent generation. The bargees on the Regent's Canal do +not chant Shakespear's verses as the gondoliers in Venice are said to +chant the verses of Tasso (a practice which was suspended for some +reason during my stay in Venice: at least no gondolier ever did it in +my hearing). Shakespear is no more a popular author than Rodin is a +popular sculptor or Richard Strauss a popular composer. But +Shakespear was certainly not such a fool as to expect the Toms, Dicks, +and Harrys of his time to be any more interested in dramatic poetry +than Newton, later on, expected them to be interested in fluxions. +And when we come to the question whether Shakespear missed that +assurance which all great men have had from the more capable and +susceptible members of their generation that they were great men, Ben +Jonson's evidence disposes of so improbable a notion at once and for +ever. "I loved the man," says Ben, "this side idolatry, as well as +any." Now why in the name of common sense should he have made that +qualification unless there had been, not only idolatry, but idolatry +fulsome enough to irritate Jonson into an express disavowal of it? +Jonson, the bricklayer, must have felt sore sometimes when Shakespear +spoke and wrote of bricklayers as his inferiors. He must have felt it +a little hard that being a better scholar, and perhaps a braver and +tougher man physically than Shakespear, he was not so successful or so +well liked. But in spite of this he praised Shakespear to the utmost +stretch of his powers of eulogy: in fact, notwithstanding his +disclaimer, he did not stop "this side idolatry." If, therefore, even +Jonson felt himself forced to clear himself of extravagance and +absurdity in his appreciation of Shakespear, there must have been many +people about who idolized Shakespear as American ladies idolize +Paderewski, and who carried Bardolatry, even in the Bard's own time, +to an extent that threatened to make his reasonable admirers +ridiculous. + + + + +Shakespear's Pessimism + +I submit to Mr Harris that by ruling out this idolatry, and its +possible effect in making Shakespear think that his public would stand +anything from him, he has ruled out a far more plausible explanation +of the faults of such a play as Timon of Athens than his theory that +Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady "cankered and took on proud +flesh in him, and tortured him to nervous breakdown and madness." In +Timon the intellectual bankruptcy is obvious enough: Shakespear tried +once too often to make a play out of the cheap pessimism which is +thrown into despair by a comparison of actual human nature with +theoretical morality, actual law and administration with abstract +justice, and so forth. But Shakespear's perception of the fact that +all men, judged by the moral standard which they apply to others and +by which they justify their punishment of others, are fools and +scoundrels, does not date from the Dark Lady complication: he seems +to have been born with it. If in The Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer +Night's Dream the persons of the drama are not quite so ready for +treachery and murder as Laertes and even Hamlet himself (not to +mention the procession of ruffians who pass through the latest plays) +it is certainly not because they have any more regard for law or +religion. There is only one place in Shakespear's plays where the +sense of shame is used as a human attribute; and that is where Hamlet +is ashamed, not of anything he himself has done, but of his mother's +relations with his uncle. This scene is an unnatural one: the son's +reproaches to his mother, even the fact of his being able to discuss +the subject with her, is more repulsive than her relations with her +deceased husband's brother. + +Here, too, Shakespear betrays for once his religious sense by making +Hamlet, in his agony of shame, declare that his mother's conduct makes +"sweet religion a rhapsody of words." But for that passage we might +almost suppose that the feeling of Sunday morning in the country which +Orlando describes so perfectly in As You Like It was the beginning and +end of Shakespear's notion of religion. I say almost, because +Isabella in Measure for Measure has religious charm, in spite of the +conventional theatrical assumption that female religion means an +inhumanly ferocious chastity. But for the most part Shakespear +differentiates his heroes from his villains much more by what they do +than by what they are. Don John in Much Ado is a true villain: a man +with a malicious will; but he is too dull a duffer to be of any use in +a leading part; and when we come to the great villains like Macbeth, +we find, as Mr Harris points out, that they are precisely identical +with the heroes: Macbeth is only Hamlet incongruously committing +murders and engaging in hand-to-hand combats. And Hamlet, who does +not dream of apologizing for the three murders he commits, is always +apologizing because he has not yet committed a fourth, and finds, to +his great bewilderment, that he does not want to commit it. "It +cannot be," he says, "but I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall to make +oppression bitter; else, ere this, I should have fatted all the region +kites with this slave's offal." Really one is tempted to suspect that +when Shylock asks "Hates any man the thing he would not kill?" he is +expressing the natural and proper sentiments of the human race as +Shakespear understood them, and not the vindictiveness of a stage Jew. + + + + +Gaiety of Genius + +In view of these facts, it is dangerous to cite Shakespear's pessimism +as evidence of the despair of a heart broken by the Dark Lady. There +is an irrepressible gaiety of genius which enables it to bear the +whole weight of the world's misery without blenching. There is a +laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the +lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing +of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, +immediately after pitying himself because + + There is no creature loves me + And if I die no soul will pity me, + +adds, with a grin, + + Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself + Find in myself no pity for myself? + +Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read +De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the +wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were +throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde +was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none +the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter +between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no +genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity +for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more +unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes +almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man +announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken +heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's +gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment +that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which +horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, +can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that +to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an +inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady +having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun +from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the +suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put +himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so +successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and +thirtieth sonnet! + + My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; + Coral is far more red than her lips' red; + If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; + If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; + I have seen roses damasked, red and white, + But no such roses see I in her cheeks; + And in some perfumes is there more delight + Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. + I love to hear her speak; yet well I know + That music hath a far more pleasing sound. + I grant I never saw a goddess go: + My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. + And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare + As any she belied with false compare. + +Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was +never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was +not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as +ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her +complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy +being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; +that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding +shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the +realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got +sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether +any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" +compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, +that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the +burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his +poems by Cloten and Touchstone. + + + + +Jupiter and Semele + +This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; +but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it +was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a +mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, +was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had +been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet +doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt +and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man +who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at +the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal +imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with +Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral +humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark +Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the +Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an +intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say + + Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises + Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. + Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments + Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, + That, if I then had waked after long sleep + Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, + The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches + Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd + I cried to dream again. + +which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her +ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, +whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are +nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. + +And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest +not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? +Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid +cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. + + Not marble, nor the gilded monuments + Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme + +is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen +sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his +place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." +The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably +conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays +any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely +as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not +stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him +off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not +confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to +private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have +become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its +ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that +the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne +Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased +when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the +consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an +end to sonnets. + +That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it +she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died +from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says +Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own +impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims + + And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, + Be resident in men like one another + And not in me: I am myself alone. + +Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce +disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he +discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets +her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal +of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr +Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so +penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself +again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; +and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear +never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In +Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic +tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among +a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not +Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the +Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer +Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight +in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, +is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all +things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a +grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all +Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the +first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of +mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now +is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale +the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should +have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much +Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south +and the bank of violets. + +I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in +pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, +not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which +we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in +Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, +it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) +it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out +of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and +with an unconquerable style which is the man. + + + + +The Idol of the Bardolaters + +There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the +Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the +missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus +is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching +picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. +But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris +have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of +the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible +or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in +giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing +with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing +about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, +tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection +in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material +that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about +Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our +hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens +or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it +because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the +conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the +same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with +a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy +Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the +plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by +the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; +therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout +with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio +treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of +Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish +Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the +greatest of teetotallers. + +Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then +rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous +result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all +(with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving +Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though +it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or +not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he +made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an +unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of +the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has +had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr +Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in +convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution +sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of +all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim +of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the +condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, +though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to +sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern +fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against +eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of +beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was +accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is +retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as +proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and +both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement +is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. +All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, +prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, +does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the +deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper +contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on +Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect +ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making +protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions +which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy +people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who +had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever +put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these +passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or +whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern +ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. + + + + +Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion + +That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: +first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a +sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual +constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility +to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This +latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, +for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of +Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the +absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm +which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris +points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul +Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the +sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the +language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by +Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always +seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still +unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship +delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be +outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the +language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence +that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his +revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing +neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that +she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. + +In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, +and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to +do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I +think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social +position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual +social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre +for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of +good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was +undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. +even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not +sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and +Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his +patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own +actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his +patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly +what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his +patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of +sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a +very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please +people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their +feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were +not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the +fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a +vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, +making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of +Cassio that + + Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge + Had stomach for them all, + +we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the +earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. + + + + +Shakespear and Democracy + +Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of +democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed +by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the +passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small +master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose +breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved +Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good +words" from him + + He that will give good words to thee will flatter + Beneath abhorring. + +But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an +abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political +sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John +Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. +Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and +Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, +including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, +foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to +the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the +plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley +admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal +suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of +Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, +but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from +a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and +denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same +balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find +stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing +man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the +purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king +and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of +the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching +Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why +Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers +went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no +such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country +gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the +shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal +servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, +Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as +normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work +with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide +and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never +forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his +assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of +crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell +is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes +a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear +was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where +thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, +Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning +such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris +relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. + +If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of +the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays +and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of +adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that +scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. + +Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with +innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him +as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's +experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man +is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. +The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great +effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford +to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been +as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort +that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that +lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and +grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch +which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be +those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want +of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now +the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, +will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read +only by historical students of social pathology. + +Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even +John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more +mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The +very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that +hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently +killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of +divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's +Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in +general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could +even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his +lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course +no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the +commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. +Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public +business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of +appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention +quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about +drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial +system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from +idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not +merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament +was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see +the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which +the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to +the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a +general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day +what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, +and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig +principles of individual liberty. + + + + +Shakespear and the British Public + +I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted +of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for +believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity +which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr +Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a +very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and +been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public +was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by +no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was +excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. + +He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry +VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the +originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the +common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is +the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any +notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as +Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not +quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of +penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror +of its cruelty and uncleanliness. + +Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to +impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce +popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier +works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they +were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing +popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they +would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's +heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this +way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap +up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it +for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; +but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound +magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was +forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it +mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About +Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two +genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our +theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled +Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to +express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue +to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good +deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history +of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes +Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have +said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" +was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all +speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's +Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how +much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so +forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant +parts, such as Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, and +Measure for Measure, have dropped on our stage as dead as the second +part of Goethe's Faust or Ibsen's Emperor or Galilean. + +Here, then, Shakespear had a real grievance; and though it is a +sentimental exaggeration to describe him as a broken-hearted man in +the face of the passages of reckless jollity and serenely happy poetry +in his latest plays, yet the discovery that his most serious work +could reach success only when carried on the back of a very +fascinating actor who was enormously overcharging his part, and that +the serious plays which did not contain parts big enough to hold the +overcharge were left on the shelf, amply accounts for the evident fact +that Shakespear did not end his life in a glow of enthusiastic +satisfaction with mankind and with the theatre, which is all that Mr +Harris can allege in support of his broken-heart theory. But even if +Shakespear had had no failures, it was not possible for a man of his +powers to observe the political and moral conduct of his +contemporaries without perceiving that they were incapable of dealing +with the problems raised by their own civilization, and that their +attempts to carry out the codes of law and to practise the religions +offered to them by great prophets and law-givers were and still are so +foolish that we now call for The Superman, virtually a new species, to +rescue the world from mismanagement. This is the real sorrow of great +men; and in the face of it the notion that when a great man speaks +bitterly or looks melancholy he must be troubled by a disappointment +in love seems to me sentimental trifling. + +If I have carried the reader with me thus far, he will find that +trivial as this little play of mine is, its sketch of Shakespear is +more complete than its levity suggests. Alas! its appeal for a +National Theatre as a monument to Shakespear failed to touch the very +stupid people who cannot see that a National Theatre is worth having +for the sake of the National Soul. I had unfortunately represented +Shakespear as treasuring and using (as I do myself) the jewels of +unconsciously musical speech which common people utter and throw away +every day; and this was taken as a disparagement of Shakespear's +"originality." Why was I born with such contemporaries? Why is +Shakespear made ridiculous by such a posterity? + + + +_The Dark Lady of The Sonnets was first performed at the Haymarket +Theatre, on the afternoon of Thursday, the 24th November 1910, by Mona +Limerick as the Dark Lady, Suzanne Sheldon as Queen Elizabeth, +Granville Barker as Shakespear, and Hugh Tabberer as the Warder._ + + + + +THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS + +_Fin de siecle 15-1600. Midsummer night on the terrace of the Palace +at Whitehall, overlooking the Thames. The Palace clock chimes four +quarters and strikes eleven._ + +_A Beefeater on guard. A Cloaked Man approaches._ + +THE BEEFEATER. Stand. Who goes there? Give the word. + +THE MAN. Marry! I cannot. I have clean forgotten it. + +THE BEEFEATER. Then cannot you pass here. What is your business? +Who are you? Are you a true man? + +THE MAN. Far from it, Master Warder. I am not the same man two days +together: sometimes Adam, sometimes Benvolio, and anon the Ghost. + +THE BEEFEATER. _[recoiling]_ A ghost! Angels and ministers of grace +defend us! + +THE MAN. Well said, Master Warder. With your leave I will set that +down in writing; for I have a very poor and unhappy brain for +remembrance. _[He takes out his tablets and writes]._ Methinks this +is a good scene, with you on your lonely watch, and I approaching like +a ghost in the moonlight. Stare not so amazedly at me; but mark what +I say. I keep tryst here to-night with a dark lady. She promised to +bribe the warder. I gave her the wherewithal: four tickets for the +Globe Theatre. + +THE BEEFEATER. Plague on her! She gave me two only. + +THE MAN. _[detaching a tablet]_ My friend: present this tablet, and +you will be welcomed at any time when the plays of Will Shakespear are +in hand. Bring your wife. Bring your friends. Bring the whole +garrison. There is ever plenty of room. + +THE BEEFEATER. I care not for these new-fangled plays. No man can +understand a word of them. They are all talk. Will you not give me a +pass for The Spanish Tragedy? + +THE MAN. To see The Spanish Tragedy one pays, my friend. Here are +the means. _[He gives him a piece of gold]._ + +THE BEEFEATER. _[overwhelmed]_ Gold! Oh, sir, you are a better +paymaster than your dark lady. + +THE MAN. Women are thrifty, my friend. + +THE BEEFEATER. Tis so, sir. And you have to consider that the most +open handed of us must een cheapen that which we buy every day. This +lady has to make a present to a warder nigh every night of her life. + +THE MAN. _[turning pale]_ I'll not believe it. + +THE BEEFEATER. Now you, sir, I dare be sworn, do not have an +adventure like this twice in the year. + +THE MAN. Villain: wouldst tell me that my dark lady hath ever done +thus before? that she maketh occasions to meet other men? + +THE BEEFEATER. Now the Lord bless your innocence, sir, do you think +you are the only pretty man in the world? A merry lady, sir: a warm +bit of stuff. Go to: I'll not see her pass a deceit on a gentleman +that hath given me the first piece of gold I ever handled. + +THE MAN. Master Warder: is it not a strange thing that we, knowing +that all women are false, should be amazed to find our own particular +drab no better than the rest? + +THE BEEFEATER. Not all, sir. Decent bodies, many of them. + +THE MAN. _[intolerantly]_ No. All false. All. If thou deny it, +thou liest. + +THE BEEFEATER. You judge too much by the Court, sir. There, indeed, +you may say of frailty that its name is woman. + +THE MAN. _[pulling out his tablets again]_ Prithee say that again: +that about frailty: the strain of music. + +THE BEEFEATER. What strain of music, sir? I'm no musician, God +knows. + +THE MAN. There is music in your soul: many of your degree have it +very notably. _[Writing]_ "Frailty: thy name is woman!" +_[Repeating it affectionately]_ "Thy name is woman." + +THE BEEFEATER. Well, sir, it is but four words. Are you a snapper-up +of such unconsidered trifles? + +THE MAN. _[eagerly]_ Snapper-up of--_[he gasps]_ Oh! Immortal +phrase! _[He writes it down]._ This man is a greater than I. + +THE BEEFEATER. You have my lord Pembroke's trick, sir. + +THE MAN. Like enough: he is my near friend. But what call you his +trick? + +THE BEEFEATER. Making sonnets by moonlight. And to the same lady +too. + +THE MAN. No! + +THE BEEFEATER. Last night he stood here on your errand, and in your +shoes. + +THE MAN. Thou, too, Brutus! And I called him friend! + +THE BEEFEATER. Tis ever so, sir. + +THE MAN. Tis ever so. Twas ever so. _[He turns away, overcome]._ +Two Gentlemen of Verona! Judas! Judas!! + +THE BEEFEATER. Is he so bad as that, sir? + +THE MAN. _[recovering his charity and self-possession]_ Bad? Oh no. +Human, Master Warder, human. We call one another names when we are +offended, as children do. That is all. + +THE BEEFEATER. Ay, sir: words, words, words. Mere wind, sir. We +fill our bellies with the east wind, sir, as the Scripture hath it. +You cannot feed capons so. + +THE MAN. A good cadence. By your leave _[He makes a note of it]._ + +THE BEEFEATER. What manner of thing is a cadence, sir? I have not +heard of it. + +THE MAN. A thing to rule the world with, friend. + +THE BEEFEATER. You speak strangely, sir: no offence. But, an't like +you, you are a very civil gentleman; and a poor man feels drawn to +you, you being, as twere, willing to share your thought with him. + +THE MAN. Tis my trade. But alas! the world for the most part will +none of my thoughts. + +_Lamplight streams from the palace door as it opens from within._ + +THE BEEFEATER. Here comes your lady, sir. I'll to t'other end of my +ward. You may een take your time about your business: I shall not +return too suddenly unless my sergeant comes prowling round. Tis a +fell sergeant, sir: strict in his arrest. Go'd'en, sir; and good +luck! _[He goes]._ + +THE MAN. "Strict in his arrest"! "Fell sergeant"! _[As if tasting a +ripe plum]_ O-o-o-h! _[He makes a note of them]._ + +_A Cloaked Lady gropes her way from the palace and wanders along the +terrace, walking in her sleep._ + +THE LADY. _[rubbing her hands as if washing them]_ Out, damned spot. +You will mar all with these cosmetics. God made you one face; and you +make yourself another. Think of your grave, woman, not ever of being +beautified. All the perfumes of Arabia will not whiten this Tudor +hand. + +THE MAN. "All the perfumes of Arabia"! "Beautified"! "Beautified"! +a poem in a single word. Can this be my Mary? _[To the Lady]_ Why +do you speak in a strange voice, and utter poetry for the first time? +Are you ailing? You walk like the dead. Mary! Mary! + +THE LADY. _[echoing him]_ Mary! Mary! Who would have thought that +woman to have had so much blood in her! Is it my fault that my +counsellors put deeds of blood on me? Fie! If you were women you +would have more wit than to stain the floor so foully. Hold not up +her head so: the hair is false. I tell you yet again, Mary's buried: +she cannot come out of her grave. I fear her not: these cats that +dare jump into thrones though they be fit only for men's laps must be +put away. Whats done cannot be undone. Out, I say. Fie! a queen, +and freckled! + +THE MAN. _[shaking her arm]_ Mary, I say: art asleep? + +_The Lady wakes; starts; and nearly faints. He catches her on his +arm._ + +THE LADY. Where am I? What art thou? + +THE MAN. I cry your mercy. I have mistook your person all this +while. Methought you were my Mary: my mistress. + +THE LADY. _[outraged]_ Profane fellow: how do you dare? + +THE MAN. Be not wroth with me, lady. My mistress is a marvellous +proper woman. But she does not speak so well as you. "All the +perfumes of Arabia"! That was well said: spoken with good accent and +excellent discretion. + +THE LADY. Have I been in speech with you here? + +THE MAN. Why, yes, fair lady. Have you forgot it? + +THE LADY. I have walked in my sleep. + +THE MAN. Walk ever in your sleep, fair one; for then your words drop +like honey. + +THE LADY. _[with cold majesty]_ Know you to whom you speak, sir, +that you dare express yourself so saucily? + +THE MAN. _[unabashed]_ Not I, not care neither. You are some lady +of the Court, belike. To me there are but two sorts of women: those +with excellent voices, sweet and low, and cackling hens that cannot +make me dream. Your voice has all manner of loveliness in it. Grudge +me not a short hour of its music. + +THE LADY. Sir: you are overbold. Season your admiration for a while +with-- + +THE MAN. _[holding up his hand to stop her]_ "Season your admiration +for a while--" + +THE LADY. Fellow: do you dare mimic me to my face? + +THE MAN. Tis music. Can you not hear? When a good musician sings a +song, do you not sing it and sing it again till you have caught and +fixed its perfect melody? "Season your admiration for a while": God! +the history of man's heart is in that one word admiration. +Admiration! _[Taking up his tablets]_ What was it? "Suspend your +admiration for a space--" + +THE LADY. A very vile jingle of esses. I said "Season your--" + +THE MAN. _[hastily]_ Season: ay, season, season, season. Plague on +my memory, my wretched memory! I must een write it down. _[He begins +to write, but stops, his memory failing him]._ Yet tell me which was +the vile jingle? You said very justly: mine own ear caught it even +as my false tongue said it. + +THE LADY. You said "for a space." I said "for a while." + +THE MAN. "For a while" _[he corrects it]._ Good! _[Ardently]_ And +now be mine neither for a space nor a while, but for ever. + +THE LADY. Odds my life! Are you by chance making love to me, knave? + +THE MAN. Nay: tis you who have made the love: I but pour it out at +your feet. I cannot but love a lass that sets such store by an apt +word. Therefore vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman--no: I have +said that before somewhere; and the wordy garment of my love for you +must be fire-new-- + +THE LADY. You talk too much, sir. Let me warn you: I am more +accustomed to be listened to than preached at. + +THE MAN. The most are like that that do talk well. But though you +spake with the tongues of angels, as indeed you do, yet know that I am +the king of words-- + +THE LADY. A king, ha! + +THE MAN. No less. We are poor things, we men and women-- + +THE LADY. Dare you call me woman? + +THE MAN. What nobler name can I tender you? How else can I love you? +Yet you may well shrink from the name: have I not said we are but +poor things? Yet there is a power that can redeem us. + +THE LADY. Gramercy for your sermon, sir. I hope I know my duty. + +THE MAN. This is no sermon, but the living truth. The power I speak +of is the power of immortal poesy. For know that vile as this world +is, and worms as we are, you have but to invest all this vileness with +a magical garment of words to transfigure us and uplift our souls til +earth flowers into a million heavens. + +THE LADY. You spoil your heaven with your million. You are +extravagant. Observe some measure in your speech. + +THE MAN. You speak now as Ben does. + +THE LADY. And who, pray, is Ben? + +THE MAN. A learned bricklayer who thinks that the sky is at the top +of his ladder, and so takes it on him to rebuke me for flying. I tell +you there is no word yet coined and no melody yet sung that is +extravagant and majestical enough for the glory that lovely words can +reveal. It is heresy to deny it: have you not been taught that in +the beginning was the Word? that the Word was with God? nay, that the +Word was God? + +THE LADY. Beware, fellow, how you presume to speak of holy things. +The Queen is the head of the Church. + +THE MAN. You are the head of my Church when you speak as you did at +first. "All the perfumes of Arabia"! Can the Queen speak thus? They +say she playeth well upon the virginals. Let her play so to me; and +I'll kiss her hands. But until then, you are my Queen; and I'll kiss +those lips that have dropt music on my heart. _[He puts his arms +about her]._ + +THE LADY. Unmeasured impudence! On your life, take your hands from +me. + +_The Dark Lady comes stooping along the terrace behind them like a +running thrush. When she sees how they are employed, she rises +angrily to her full height, and listens jealously._ + +THE MAN. _[unaware of the Dark Lady]_ Then cease to make my hands +tremble with the streams of life you pour through them. You hold me +as the lodestar holds the iron: I cannot but cling to you. We are +lost, you and I: nothing can separate us now. + +THE DARK LADY. We shall see that, false lying hound, you and your +filthy trull. _[With two vigorous cuffs, she knocks the pair asunder, +sending the man, who is unlucky enough to receive a righthanded blow, +sprawling an the flags]._ Take that, both of you! + +THE CLOAKED LADY. _[in towering wrath, throwing off her cloak and +turning in outraged majesty on her assailant]_ High treason! + +THE DARK LADY. _[recognizing her and falling on her knees in abject +terror]_ Will: I am lost: I have struck the Queen. + +THE MAN. _[sitting up as majestically as his ignominious posture +allows]_ Woman: you have struck WILLIAM SHAKESPEAR. + +QUEEN ELIZABETH. _[stupent]_ Marry, come up!!! Struck William +Shakespear quotha! And who in the name of all the sluts and jades and +light-o'-loves and fly-by-nights that infest this palace of mine, may +William Shakespear be? + +THE DARK LADY. Madam: he is but a player. Oh, I could have my hand +cut off-- + +QUEEN ELIZABETH. Belike you will, mistress. Have you bethought you +that I am like to have your head cut off as well? + +THE DARK LADY. Will: save me. Oh, save me. + +ELIZABETH. Save you! A likely savior, on my royal word! I had +thought this fellow at least an esquire; for I had hoped that even the +vilest of my ladies would not have dishonored my Court by wantoning +with a baseborn servant. + +SHAKESPEAR. _[indignantly scrambling to his feet]_ Base-born! I, a +Shakespear of Stratford! I, whose mother was an Arden! baseborn! You +forget yourself, madam. + +ELIZABETH. _[furious]_ S'blood! do I so? I will teach you-- + +THE DARK LADY. _[rising from her knees and throwing herself between +them]_ Will: in God's name anger her no further. It is death. +Madam: do not listen to him. + +SHAKESPEAR. Not were it een to save your life, Mary, not to mention +mine own, will I flatter a monarch who forgets what is due to my +family. I deny not that my father was brought down to be a poor +bankrupt; but twas his gentle blood that was ever too generous for +trade. Never did he disown his debts. Tis true he paid them not; but +it is an attested truth that he gave bills for them; and twas those +bills, in the hands of base hucksters, that were his undoing. + +ELIZABETH. _[grimly]_ The son of your father shall learn his place +in the presence of the daughter of Harry the Eighth. + +SHAKESPEAR. _[swelling with intolerant importance]_ Name not that +inordinate man in the same breath with Stratford's worthiest alderman. +John Shakespear wedded but once: Harry Tudor was married six times. +You should blush to utter his name. + +THE DARK LADY. | Will: for pity's sake-- | _crying out_ + + | | _together_ + +ELIZABETH. | Insolent dog-- | + +SHAKESPEAR. _[cutting them short]_ How know you that King Harry was +indeed your father? + +ELIZABETH. | Zounds! Now by-- + + | _[she stops to grind her teeth with rage]._ + +THE DARK LADY. | She will have me whipped through + + | the streets. Oh God! Oh God! + +SHAKESPEAR. Learn to know yourself better, madam. I am an honest +gentleman of unquestioned parentage, and have already sent in my +demand for the coat-of-arms that is lawfully mine. Can you say as +much for yourself? + +ELIZABETH. _[almost beside herself]_ Another word; and I begin with +mine own hands the work the hangman shall finish. + +SHAKESPEAR. You are no true Tudor: this baggage here has as good a +right to your royal seat as you. What maintains you on the throne of +England? Is it your renowned wit? your wisdom that sets at naught the +craftiest statesmen of the Christian world? No. Tis the mere chance +that might have happened to any milkmaid, the caprice of Nature that +made you the most wondrous piece of beauty the age hath seen. +_[Elizabeth's raised fists, on the point of striking him, fall to her +side]._ That is what hath brought all men to your feet, and founded +your throne on the impregnable rock of your proud heart, a stony +island in a sea of desire. There, madam, is some wholesome blunt +honest speaking for you. Now do your worst. + +ELIZABETH. _[with dignity]_ Master Shakespear: it is well for you +that I am a merciful prince. I make allowance for your rustic +ignorance. But remember that there are things which be true, and are +yet not seemly to be said (I will not say to a queen; for you will +have it that I am none) but to a virgin. + +SHAKESPEAR. _[bluntly]_ It is no fault of mine that you are a +virgin, madam, albeit tis my misfortune. + +THE DARK LADY. _[terrified again]_ In mercy, madam, hold no further +discourse with him. He hath ever some lewd jest on his tongue. You +hear how he useth me! calling me baggage and the like to your +Majesty's face. + +ELIZABETH. As for you, mistress, I have yet to demand what your +business is at this hour in this place, and how you come to be so +concerned with a player that you strike blindly at your sovereign in +your jealousy of him. + +THE DARK LADY. Madam: as I live and hope for salvation-- + +SHAKESPEAR. _[sardonically]_ Ha! + +THE DARK LADY. _[angrily]_--ay, I'm as like to be saved as thou +that believest naught save some black magic of words and verses--I +say, madam, as I am a living woman I came here to break with him for +ever. Oh, madam, if you would know what misery is, listen to this man +that is more than man and less at the same time. He will tie you down +to anatomize your very soul: he will wring tears of blood from your +humiliation; and then he will heal the wound with flatteries that no +woman can resist. + +SHAKESPEAR. Flatteries! _[Kneeling]_ Oh, madam, I put my case at +your royal feet. I confess to much. I have a rude tongue: I am +unmannerly: I blaspheme against the holiness of anointed royalty; but +oh, my royal mistress, AM I a flatterer? + +ELIZABETH. I absolve you as to that. You are far too plain a dealer +to please me. _[He rises gratefully]._ + +THE DARK LADY. Madam: he is flattering you even as he speaks. + +ELIZABETH. _[a terrible flash in her eye]_ Ha! Is it so? + +SHAKESPEAR. Madam: she is jealous; and, heaven help me! not without +reason. Oh, you say you are a merciful prince; but that was cruel of +you, that hiding of your royal dignity when you found me here. For +how can I ever be content with this black-haired, black-eyed, +black-avised devil again now that I have looked upon real beauty and +real majesty? + +THE DARK LADY. _[wounded and desperate]_ He hath swore to me ten +times over that the day shall come in England when black women, for +all their foulness, shall be more thought on than fair ones. _[To +Shakespear, scolding at him]_ Deny it if thou canst. Oh, he is +compact of lies and scorns. I am tired of being tossed up to heaven +and dragged down to hell at every whim that takes him. I am ashamed +to my very soul that I have abased myself to love one that my father +would not have deemed fit to hold my stirrup--one that will talk to +all the world about me--that will put my love and my shame into his +plays and make me blush for myself there--that will write sonnets +about me that no man of gentle strain would put his hand to. I am all +disordered: I know not what I am saying to your Majesty: I am of all +ladies most deject and wretched-- + +SHAKESPEAR. Ha! At last sorrow hath struck a note of music out of +thee. "Of all ladies most deject and wretched." _[He makes a note of +it]._ + +THE DARK LADY. Madam: I implore you give me leave to go. I am +distracted with grief and shame. I-- + +ELIZABETH. Go _[The Dark Lady tries to kiss her hand]._ No more. +Go. _[The Dark Lady goes, convulsed]._ You have been cruel to that +poor fond wretch, Master Shakespear. + +SHAKESPEAR. I am not cruel, madam; but you know the fable of Jupiter +and Semele. I could not help my lightnings scorching her. + +ELIZABETH. You have an overweening conceit of yourself, sir, that +displeases your Queen. + +SHAKESPEAR. Oh, madam, can I go about with the modest cough of a +minor poet, belittling my inspiration and making the mightiest wonder +of your reign a thing of nought? I have said that "not marble nor the +gilded monuments of princes shall outlive" the words with which I make +the world glorious or foolish at my will. Besides, I would have you +think me great enough to grant me a boon. + +ELIZABETH. I hope it is a boon that may be asked of a virgin Queen +without offence, sir. I mistrust your forwardness; and I bid you +remember that I do not suffer persons of your degree (if I may say so +without offence to your father the alderman) to presume too far. + +SHAKESPEAR. Oh, madam, I shall not forget myself again; though by my +life, could I make you a serving wench, neither a queen nor a virgin +should you be for so much longer as a flash of lightning might take to +cross the river to the Bankside. But since you are a queen and will +none of me, nor of Philip of Spain, nor of any other mortal man, I +must een contain myself as best I may, and ask you only for a boon of +State. + +ELIZABETH. A boon of State already! You are becoming a courtier like +the rest of them. You lack advancement. + +SHAKESPEAR. "Lack advancement." By your Majesty's leave: a queenly +phrase. _[He is about to write it down]._ + +ELIZABETH. _[striking the tablets from his hand]_ Your tables begin +to anger me, sir. I am not here to write your plays for you. + +SHAKESPEAR. You are here to inspire them, madam. For this, among the +rest, were you ordained. But the boon I crave is that you do endow a +great playhouse, or, if I may make bold to coin a scholarly name for +it, a National Theatre, for the better instruction and gracing of your +Majesty's subjects. + +ELIZABETH. Why, sir, are there not theatres enow on the Bankside and +in Blackfriars? + +SHAKESPEAR. Madam: these are the adventures of needy and desperate +men that must, to save themselves from perishing of want, give the +sillier sort of people what they best like; and what they best like, +God knows, is not their own betterment and instruction, as we well see +by the example of the churches, which must needs compel men to +frequent them, though they be open to all without charge. Only when +there is a matter of a murder, or a plot, or a pretty youth in +petticoats, or some naughty tale of wantonness, will your subjects pay +the great cost of good players and their finery, with a little profit +to boot. To prove this I will tell you that I have written two noble +and excellent plays setting forth the advancement of women of high +nature and fruitful industry even as your Majesty is: the one a +skilful physician, the other a sister devoted to good works. I have +also stole from a book of idle wanton tales two of the most damnable +foolishnesses in the world, in the one of which a woman goeth in man's +attire and maketh impudent love to her swain, who pleaseth the +groundlings by overthrowing a wrestler; whilst, in the other, one of +the same kidney sheweth her wit by saying endless naughtinesses to a +gentleman as lewd as herself. I have writ these to save my friends +from penury, yet shewing my scorn for such follies and for them that +praise them by calling the one As You Like It, meaning that it is not +as _I_ like it, and the other Much Ado About Nothing, as it truly is. +And now these two filthy pieces drive their nobler fellows from the +stage, where indeed I cannot have my lady physician presented at all, +she being too honest a woman for the taste of the town. Wherefore I +humbly beg your Majesty to give order that a theatre be endowed out of +the public revenue for the playing of those pieces of mine which no +merchant will touch, seeing that his gain is so much greater with the +worse than with the better. Thereby you shall also encourage other +men to undertake the writing of plays who do now despise it and leave +it wholly to those whose counsels will work little good to your realm. +For this writing of plays is a great matter, forming as it does the +minds and affections of men in such sort that whatsoever they see done +in show on the stage, they will presently be doing in earnest in the +world, which is but a larger stage. Of late, as you know, the Church +taught the people by means of plays; but the people flocked only to +such as were full of superstitious miracles and bloody martyrdoms; and +so the Church, which also was just then brought into straits by the +policy of your royal father, did abandon and discountenance the art of +playing; and thus it fell into the hands of poor players and greedy +merchants that had their pockets to look to and not the greatness of +this your kingdom. Therefore now must your Majesty take up that good +work that your Church hath abandoned, and restore the art of playing +to its former use and dignity. + +ELIZABETH. Master Shakespear: I will speak of this matter to the +Lord Treasurer. + +SHAKESPEAR. Then am I undone, madam; for there was never yet a Lord +Treasurer that could find a penny for anything over and above the +necessary expenses of your government, save for a war or a salary for +his own nephew. + +ELIZABETH. Master Shakespear: you speak sooth; yet cannot I in any +wise mend it. I dare not offend my unruly Puritans by making so lewd +a place as the playhouse a public charge; and there be a thousand +things to be done in this London of mine before your poetry can have +its penny from the general purse. I tell thee, Master Will, it will +be three hundred years and more before my subjects learn that man +cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh from the +mouth of those whom God inspires. By that time you and I will be dust +beneath the feet of the horses, if indeed there be any horses then, +and men be still riding instead of flying. Now it may be that by then +your works will be dust also. + +SHAKESPEAR. They will stand, madam: fear nor for that. + +ELIZABETH. It may prove so. But of this I am certain (for I know my +countrymen) that until every other country in the Christian world, +even to barbarian Muscovy and the hamlets of the boorish Germans, have +its playhouse at the public charge, England will never adventure. And +she will adventure then only because it is her desire to be ever in +the fashion, and to do humbly and dutifully whatso she seeth everybody +else doing. In the meantime you must content yourself as best you can +by the playing of those two pieces which you give out as the most +damnable ever writ, but which your countrymen, I warn you, will swear +are the best you have ever done. But this I will say, that if I could +speak across the ages to our descendants, I should heartily recommend +them to fulfil your wish; for the Scottish minstrel hath well said +that he that maketh the songs of a nation is mightier than he that +maketh its laws; and the same may well be true of plays and +interludes. _[The clock chimes the first quarter. The warder returns +on his round]._ And now, sir, we are upon the hour when it better +beseems a virgin queen to be abed than to converse alone with the +naughtiest of her subjects. Ho there! Who keeps ward on the queen's +lodgings tonight? + +THE WARDER. I do, an't please your majesty. + +ELIZABETH. See that you keep it better in future. You have let pass +a most dangerous gallant even to the very door of our royal chamber. +Lead him forth; and bring me word when he is safely locked out; for I +shall scarce dare disrobe until the palace gates are between us. + +SHAKESPEAR. _[kissing her hand]_ My body goes through the gate into +the darkness, madam; but my thoughts follow you. + +ELIZABETH. How! to my bed! + +SHAKESPEAR. No, madam, to your prayers, in which I beg you to +remember my theatre. + +ELIZABETH. That is my prayer to posterity. Forget not your own to +God; and so goodnight, Master Will. + +SHAKESPEAR. Goodnight, great Elizabeth. God save the Queen! + +ELIZABETH. Amen. + +_Exeunt severally: she to her chamber: he, in custody of the warder, +to the gate nearest Blackfriars._ + + +AYOT, ST. LAWRENCE, _20th June_ 1910. + + +Notes on the editing: Italicized text is delimited with underlines. +Punctuation and spelling retained as in the printed text. +Shaw intentionally spelled many words according to a non-standard +system. For example, "don't" is given as "dont" (without apostrophe), +"Dr." is given as "Dr" (without a period at the end), and +"Shakespeare" is given as "Shakespear" (no "e" at the end). Where +several characters in the play are speaking at once, I have indicated +it with vertical bars ("|"). The pound (currency) symbol has been +replaced by the word "pounds". + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Dark Lady of the Sonnets, by George Bernard Shaw + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1050 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1051-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1051-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..13fbf943 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1051-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7921 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1051 *** + +SARTOR RESARTUS: + +The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh + +By Thomas Carlyle. + +1831 + + + + +BOOK I. + + + +CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY. + +Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch +of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or +less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times +especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely +than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled +thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest +cranny or dog-hole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,--it might +strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or +nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or +History, has been written on the subject of Clothes. + +Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well +known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will endure +forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not +have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical +Logbooks can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds has grown +more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the +labors of our Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent genius of their +disciples, it has come about that now, to many a Royal Society, the +Creation of a World is little more mysterious than the cooking of a +dumpling; concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom +the question, _How the apples were got in_, presented difficulties. Why +mention our disquisitions on the Social Contract, on the Standard of +Taste, on the Migrations of the Herring? Then, have we not a Doctrine +of Rent, a Theory of Value; Philosophies of Language, of History, of +Pottery, of Apparitions, of Intoxicating Liquors? Man's whole life and +environment have been laid open and elucidated; scarcely a fragment +or fibre of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but has been probed, +dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decomposed: our +spiritual Faculties, of which it appears there are not a few, have their +Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards: every cellular, vascular, muscular +Tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies, Bichats. + +How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand +Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have been quite +overlooked by Science,--the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or +other cloth; which Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; +wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened, his whole +Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being? For if, +now and then, some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's +glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether +heedless; regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite +natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of +birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man as _a Clothed +Animal_; whereas he is by nature a _Naked Animal_; and only in certain +circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes. +Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after: the more +surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing +under our very eyes. + +But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, indefatigable, +deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing +that, in these revolutionary times, there should be one country where +abstract Thought can still take shelter; that while the din and frenzy +of Catholic Emancipations, and Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, +deafen every French and every English ear, the German can stand peaceful +on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling multitude +here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast +of cow-horn, emit his _Horet ihr Herren und lasset's Euch sagen_; in +other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, what +o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans have been blamed for +an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into devious courses, where +nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, forsaking +the gold-mines of finance and that political slaughter of fat oxen +whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into +regions of bilberries and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last +in remote peat-bogs. Of that unwise science, which, as our Humorist +expresses it, + + "By geometric scale + Doth take the size of pots of ale;" + +still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen +vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said. +In so far as the Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the +consequence. Nevertheless be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe +has tumult and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and +rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, +into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only +finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, +for the mind of man? It is written, "Many shall run to and fro, and +knowledge shall be increased." Surely the plain rule is, Let each +considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not +this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united +tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen some such adventurous, +and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on some out-lying, neglected, +yet vitally momentous province; the hidden treasures of which he first +discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were +directed thither, and the conquest was completed;--thereby, in these +his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting new standards, founding +new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm of +Nothingness and Night! Wise man was he who counselled that Speculation +should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two +points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed. + + +Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure Science, +especially pure moral Science, languishes among us English; and how +our mercantile greatness, and invaluable Constitution, impressing a +political or other immediately practical tendency on all English +culture and endeavor, cramps the free flight of Thought,--that this, +not Philosophy of Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such +Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language. +What English intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance +stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and even sequestered +condition of the German Learned, which permits and induces them to fish +in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems probable +enough, this abtruse Inquiry might, in spite of the results it leads +to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. The Editor of these +sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of confirmed speculative +habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess, that never, +till these last months, did the above very plain considerations, on our +total want of a Philosophy of Clothes, occur to him; and then, by quite +foreign suggestion. By the arrival, namely, of a new Book from Professor +Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo; treating expressly of this subject, +and in a style which, whether understood or not, could not even by the +blindest be overlooked. In the present Editor's way of thought, this +remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines, whether as judicially acceded +to, or judicially denied, has not remained without effect. + +"_Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken_ (Clothes, their Origin and +Influence): _von Diog. Teufelsdrockh, J. U. D. etc. Stillschweigen und +Cognie. Weissnichtwo_, 1831. + +"Here," says the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, "comes a Volume of that +extensive, close-printed, close-meditated sort, which, be it spoken with +pride, is seen only in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing +from the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen and Company, +with every external furtherance, it is of such internal quality as +to set Neglect at defiance.... A work," concludes the well-nigh +enthusiastic Reviewer, "interesting alike to the antiquary, the +historian, and the philosophic thinker; a masterpiece of boldness, +lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged independent Germanism and Philanthropy +(_derber Kerndeutschheit und Menschenliebe_); which will not, assuredly, +pass current without opposition in high places; but must and will exalt +the almost new name of Teufelsdrockh to the first ranks of Philosophy, +in our German Temple of Honor." + +Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in this the +first blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle him, sends hither +a Presentation-copy of his Book; with compliments and encomiums which +modesty forbids the present Editor to rehearse; yet without indicated +wish or hope of any kind, except what may be implied in the concluding +phrase: _Mochte es_ (this remarkable Treatise) _auch im Brittischen +Boden gedeihen_! + + + +CHAPTER II. EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. + +If for a speculative man, "whose seedfield," in the sublime words of the +Poet, "is Time," no conquest is important but that of new ideas, then +might the arrival of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Book be marked with +chalk in the Editor's calendar. It is indeed an "extensive Volume," of +boundless, almost formless contents, a very Sea of Thought; neither calm +nor clear, if you will; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive +to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true +orients. + +Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first deliberate +inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new Branch of +Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, was +disclosed; farther, what seemed scarcely less interesting, a quite new +human Individuality, an almost unexampled personal character, that, +namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh the Discloser. Of both which +novelties, as far as might be possible, we resolved to master the +significance. But as man is emphatically a proselytizing creature, no +sooner was such mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question +arose: How might this acquired good be imparted to others, perhaps in +equal need thereof; how could the Philosophy of Clothes, and the Author +of such Philosophy, be brought home, in any measure, to the business and +bosoms of our own English Nation? For if new-got gold is said to burn +the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much more may new +truth. + +Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought naturally was to +publish Article after Article on this remarkable Volume, in such widely +circulating Critical Journals as the Editor might stand connected with, +or by money or love procure access to. But, on the other hand, was it +not clear that such matter as must here be revealed, and treated of, +might endanger the circulation of any Journal extant? If, indeed, all +party-divisions in the State could have been abolished, Whig, Tory, +and Radical, embracing in discrepant union; and all the Journals of the +Nation could have been jumbled into one Journal, and the Philosophy of +Clothes poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt had +seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, except +_Fraser's Magazine_? A vehicle all strewed (figuratively speaking) +with the maddest Waterloo-Crackers, exploding distractively and +destructively, wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or sits; +nay, in any case, understood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to +overflowing, and inexorably shut! Besides, to state the Philosophy of +Clothes without the Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdrockh without +something of his personality, was it not to insure both of entire +misapprehension? Now for Biography, had it been otherwise admissible, +there were no adequate documents, no hope of obtaining such, but rather, +owing to circumstances, a special despair. Thus did the Editor see +himself, for the while, shut out from all public utterance of these +extraordinary Doctrines, and constrained to revolve them, not without +disquietude, in the dark depths of his own mind. + +So had it lasted for some months; and now the Volume on Clothes, read +and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the +personality of its Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all +that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic; whereby +the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent,--when +altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke, +our Professor's chief friend and associate in Weissnichtwo, with whom +we had not previously corresponded. The Hofrath, after much quite +extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the "agitation and +attention" which the Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its own +German Republic of Letters; on the deep significance and tendency of his +Friend's Volume; and then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted +at the practicability of conveying "some knowledge of it, and of him, to +England, and through England to the distant West:" a work on Professor +Teufelsdrockh "were undoubtedly welcome to the _Family_, the _National_, +or any other of those patriotic _Libraries_, at present the glory +of British Literature;" might work revolutions in Thought; and so +forth;--in conclusion, intimating not obscurely, that should the present +Editor feel disposed to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, +Hofrath Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite +Documents. + +As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but would +not crystallize, instantly when the wire or other fixed substance is +introduced, crystallization commences, and rapidly proceeds till the +whole is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind and this offer of +Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution and discontinuity; like +united itself with like in definite arrangement: and soon either in +actual vision and possession, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of +the whole Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid mass. +Cautiously yet courageously, through the twopenny post, application +to the famed redoubtable OLIVER YORKE was now made: an interview, +interviews with that singular man have taken place; with more of +assurance on our side, with less of satire (at least of open satire) +on his, than we anticipated; for the rest, with such issue as is now +visible. As to those same "patriotic _Libraries_," the Hofrath's counsel +could only be viewed with silent amazement; but with his offer of +Documents we joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. Thus, too, in +the sure expectation of these, we already see our task begun; and this +our _Sartor Resartus_, which is properly a "Life and Opinions of Herr +Teufelsdrockh," hourly advancing. + + +Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such title and +vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British +reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented +him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he +is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared +from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and +directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. +Who or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even +insignificant: [*] it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of +Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso hath ears, let +him hear. + + * With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, + or muffler; and, we have reason to think, under a feigned + name!--O. Y. + +On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give warning: namely, +that he is animated with a true though perhaps a feeble attachment to +the Institutions of our Ancestors; and minded to defend these, according +to ability, at all hazards; nay, it was partly with a view to such +defence that he engaged in this undertaking. To stem, or if that be +impossible, profitably to divert the current of Innovation, such a +Volume as Teufelsdrockh's, if cunningly planted down, were no despicable +pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear. + +For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal connection of +ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heuschrecke or this Philosophy of Clothes, can +pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, +we venture to promise, are those private Compliments themselves. +Grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of friendship; as fair +mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the gods, +when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of Philosophic Eloquence, +though with baser accompaniments, the present Editor revelled in that +feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in so full measure! But what +then? _Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas_; Teufelsdrockh is our friend, +Truth is our divinity. In our historical and critical capacity, we hope +we are strangers to all the world; have feud or favor with no one,--save +indeed the Devil, with whom, as with the Prince of Lies and Darkness, we +do at all times wage internecine war. This assurance, at an epoch when +puffery and quackery have reached a height unexampled in the annals of +mankind, and even English Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must +write on their door-lintels _No cheating here_,--we thought it good to +premise. + + + +CHAPTER III. REMINISCENCES. + +To the Author's private circle the appearance of this singular Work on +Clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the +rest of the world. For ourselves, at least, few things have been more +unexpected. Professor Teufelsdrockh, at the period of our acquaintance +with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life: a man +devoted to the higher Philosophies, indeed; yet more likely, if he +published at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both of +whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban; than to descend, +as he has here done, into the angry noisy Forum, with an Argument that +cannot but exasperate and divide. Not, that we can remember, was the +Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between us. If through the +high, silent, meditative Transcendentalism of our Friend we detected +any practical tendency whatever, it was at most Political, and towards a +certain prospective, and for the present quite speculative, Radicalism; +as indeed some correspondence, on his part, with Herr Oken of Jena was +now and then suspected; though his special contributions to the _Isis_ +could never be more than surmised at. But, at all events, nothing Moral, +still less anything Didactico-Religious, was looked for from him. + +Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hearing; which +indeed, with the Night they were uttered in, are to be forever +remembered. Lifting his huge tumbler of _Gukguk_, [*] and for a moment +lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full Coffee-house (it was _Zur +Grunen Gans_, the largest in Weissnichtwo, where all the Virtuosity, +and nearly all the Intellect of the place assembled of an evening); and +there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and the look truly of an angel, +though whether of a white or of a black one might be dubious, proposed +this toast: _Die Sache der Armen in Gottes und Teufels Namen_ (The Cause +of the Poor, in Heaven's name and--'s)! One full shout, breaking the +leaden silence; then a gurgle of innumerable emptying bumpers, again +followed by universal cheering, returned him loud acclaim. It was the +finale of the night: resuming their pipes; in the highest enthusiasm, +amid volumes of tobacco-smoke; triumphant, cloud-capt without and +within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. _Bleibt +doch ein echter Spass_- _und Galgen-vogel_, said several; meaning +thereby that, one day, he would probably be hanged for his democratic +sentiments. _Wo steckt doch der Schalk_? added they, looking round: but +Teufelsdrockh had retired by private alleys, and the Compiler of these +pages beheld him no more. + + * Gukguk is unhappily only an academical-beer. + +In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this Philosopher, +such estimate to form of his purposes and powers. And yet, thou brave +Teufelsdrockh, who could tell what lurked in thee? Under those thick +locks of thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise the gravest face +we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. In thy eyes +too, deep under their shaggy brows, and looking out so still and dreamy, +have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire, and +half fancied that their stillness was but the rest of infinite motion, +the _sleep_ of a spinning-top? Thy little figure, there as, in loose +ill-brushed threadbare habiliments, thou sattest, amid litter and +lumber, whole days, to "think and smoke tobacco," held in it a mighty +heart. The secrets of man's Life were laid open to thee; thou sawest +into the mystery of the Universe, farther than another; thou hadst _in +petto_ thy remarkable Volume on Clothes. Nay, was there not in that +clear logically founded Transcendentalism of thine; still more, in thy +meek, silent, deep-seated Sansculottism, combined with a true princely +Courtesy of inward nature, the visible rudiments of such speculation? +But great men are too often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. +Already, when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable Volume +lay on the loom; and silently, mysterious shuttles were putting in the +woof. + + +How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish biographical data, in this +case, may be a curious question; the answer of which, however, is +happily not our concern, but his. To us it appeared, after repeated +trial, that in Weissnichtwo, from the archives or memories of the +best-informed classes, no Biography of Teufelsdrockh was to be gathered; +not so much as a false one. He was a stranger there, wafted thither by +what is called the course of circumstances; concerning whose parentage, +birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had indeed made inquiries, +but satisfied herself with the most indistinct replies. For himself, he +was a man so still and altogether unparticipating, that to question +him even afar off on such particulars was a thing of more than usual +delicacy: besides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not +without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert such intrusions, and +deter you from the like. Wits spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind +of Melchizedek, without father or mother of any kind; sometimes, with +reference to his great historic and statistic knowledge, and the +vivid way he had of expressing himself like an eye-witness of distant +transactions and scenes, they called him the _Ewige Jude_, Everlasting, +or as we say, Wandering Jew. + +To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a Man as a Thing; which +Thing doubtless they were accustomed to see, and with satisfaction; +but no more thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of their +daily _Allgemeine Zeitung_, or the domestic habits of the Sun. Both were +there and welcome; the world enjoyed what good was in them, and thought +no more of the matter. The man Teufelsdrockh passed and repassed, in his +little circle, as one of those originals and nondescripts, more frequent +in German Universities than elsewhere; of whom, though you see them +alive, and feel certain enough that they must have a History, no History +seems to be discoverable; or only such as men give of mountain rocks and +antediluvian ruins: That they have been created by unknown agencies, +are in a state of gradual decay, and for the present reflect light +and resist pressure; that is, are visible and tangible objects in this +phantasm world, where so much other mystery is. + +It was to be remarked that though, by title and diploma, _Professor der +Allerley-Wissenschaft_, or as we should say in English, "Professor of +Things in General," he had never delivered any Course; perhaps never +been incited thereto by any public furtherance or requisition. To all +appearance, the enlightened Government of Weissnichtwo, in founding +their New University, imagined they had done enough, if "in times like +ours," as the half-official Program expressed it, "when all things are, +rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into Chaos, a Professorship of +this kind had been established; whereby, as occasion called, the task +of bodying somewhat forth again from such Chaos might be, even slightly, +facilitated." That actual Lectures should be held, and Public Classes +for the "Science of Things in General," they doubtless considered +premature; on which ground too they had only established the +Professorship, nowise endowed it; so that Teufelsdrockh, "recommended by +the highest Names," had been promoted thereby to a Name merely. + +Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admiration of this +new Professorship: how an enlightened Government had seen into the Want +of the Age (_Zeitbedurfniss_); how at length, instead of Denial +and Destruction, we were to have a science of Affirmation and +Reconstruction; and Germany and Weissnichtwo were where they should be, +in the vanguard of the world. Considerable also was the wonder at the +new Professor, dropt opportunely enough into the nascent University; so +able to lecture, should occasion call; so ready to hold his peace for +indefinite periods, should an enlightened Government consider that +occasion did not call. But such admiration and such wonder, being +followed by no act to keep them living, could last only nine days; +and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died away. The more +cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at popularity, on +the part of a Minister, whom domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, +old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove from the helm. + +As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appearances at the _Grune +Gans_, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. Here, +over his tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading Journals; sometimes +contemplatively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without +other visible employment: always, from his mild ways, an agreeable +phenomenon there; more especially when he opened his lips for speech; on +which occasions the whole Coffee-house would hush itself into silence, +as if sure to hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear a whole +series and river of the most memorable utterances; such as, when once +thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit audience: and the more +memorable, as issuing from a head apparently not more interested in +them, not more conscious of them, than is the sculptured stone head of +some public fountain, which through its brass mouth-tube emits water to +the worthy and the unworthy; careless whether it be for cooking +victuals or quenching conflagrations; indeed, maintains the same earnest +assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not. + +To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic Englishman, +however unworthy, Teufelsdrockh opened himself perhaps more than to the +most. Pity only that we could not then half guess his importance, and +scrutinize him with due power of vision! We enjoyed, what not three +men Weissnichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to the +Professor's private domicile. It was the attic floor of the highest +house in the Wahngasse; and might truly be called the pinnacle +of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs, +themselves rising from elevated ground. Moreover, with its windows it +looked towards all the four _Orte_ or as the Scotch say, and we ought to +say, _Airts_: the sitting room itself commanded three; another came to +view in the _Schlafgemach_ (bedroom) at the opposite end; to say nothing +of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, _duplicates_, showing +nothing new. So that it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of +Teufelsdrockh; wherefrom, sitting at ease he might see the whole +life-circulation of that considerable City; the streets and lanes of +which, with all their doing and driving (_Thun und Treiben_), were for +the most part visible there. + +"I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," we have heard him +say, "and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, +and choking by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade, where music plays +while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the +low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin +livelihood sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except +Schlosskirche weather-cock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive +bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged up in pouches +of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls in the +country Baron and his household; here, on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier +hops painfully along, begging alms: a thousand carriages, and wains, +cars, come tumbling in with Food, with young Rusticity, and other Raw +Produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with produce +manufactured. That living flood, pouring through these streets, of all +qualities and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is +going? _Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin_: From Eternity, onwards +to Eternity! These are Apparitions: what else? Are they not Souls +rendered visible: in Bodies, that took shape and will lose it, melting +into air? Their solid Pavement is a Picture of the Sense; they walk +on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind them and before them. Or +fanciest thou, the red and yellow Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs +on its heels and feather in its crown, is but of To-day, without a +Yesterday or a To-morrow; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when +Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a living +link in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being: watch well, or +it will be past thee, and seen no more." + +"_Ach, mein Lieber_!" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned +from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to +dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and +thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, +what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith +in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when +Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still +rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to +Halls roofed in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice +and Misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are abroad: that hum, +I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in +Heaven! Oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapors, and putrefactions, +and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! +The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are +being born; men are praying,--on the other side of a brick partition, +men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void Night. The proud +Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within +damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into buckle-beds, or shivers +hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure cellars, +_Rouge-et-Noir_ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry +Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing their +high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his +mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides +down, to fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more silently, +sets to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen +first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and +dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; +but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and +faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around +and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be +hanged on the morrow: comes no hammering from the _Rabenstein_?--their +gallows must even now be o' building. Upwards of five hundred thousand +two-legged animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal +position; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest +dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of +shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying +infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten.--All these heaped +and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry +between them;--crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel;--or +weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each +struggling to get its _head above_ the others: _such_ work goes on under +that smoke-counterpane!--But I, _mein Werther_, sit above it all; I am +alone with the stars." + +We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such +extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but with +the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light, and far +enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness was +visible. + +These were the Professor's talking seasons: most commonly he spoke +in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent and smoked; while the +visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer +an occasional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take himself +away. It was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and +miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, "united in a common +element of dust." Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered +a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily +thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, +tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Blucher Boots. Old Lieschen +(Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer +and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the +rest a very orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last +citadel of Teufelsdrockh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly +made her way thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdrockh hastily +saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery +of such lumber as was not Literary. These were her _Erdbeben_ +(earthquakes), which Teufelsdrockh dreaded worse than the pestilence; +nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would +he have been to sit here philosophizing forever, or till the litter, by +accumulation, drove him out of doors: but Lieschen was his right-arm, +and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed. We +can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought her +dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for Teufelsdrockh, +and Teufelsdrockh only, would she serve or give heed to; and with him +she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by +some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied +them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in her +kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight +and right there: hot and black came the coffee ever at the due moment; +and the speechless Lieschen herself looked out on you, from under her +clean white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and +wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence. + +Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we +ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke, already +known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. To us, +at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, +crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently +distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, +"they never appear without their umbrella." Had we not known with what +"little wisdom" the world is governed; and how, in Germany as +elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most part be but mute +train-bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing +or unwilling dupes,--it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke +should be named a _Rath_, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in +Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this +particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose +thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant +fluctuation,--you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, +Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he was "the +very Spirit of Love embodied:" blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and +kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we shall +now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless. Nevertheless +friend Teufelsdrockh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few +in these cases, was probably the best: _Er hat Gemuth und Geist, +hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals-Gunst; ist +gegenwartig aber halb-zerruttet, halb-erstarrt_, "He has heart and +talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or +favor of Fortune; and so is now half-cracked, half-congealed."--What +the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder; we, +safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, are careless. + +The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdrockh, +which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke +himself. We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the +fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return; +for Teufelsdrockh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, +as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved +him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to +observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, +our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far +more practically influential of the two, looked and tended on his +little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let but +Teufelsdrockh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into +a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing +might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out +his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took +some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his +twanging nasal, _Bravo! Das glaub' ich_; in either case, by way of +heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, +except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and godlike indifference, there +was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to +whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish was other than medicinal +and sacred. + +In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufelsdrockh, at +the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and +meditate. Here, perched up in his high Wahngasse watch-tower, and often, +in solitude, outwatching the Bear, it was that the indomitable +Inquirer fought all his battles with Dulness and Darkness; here, in +all probability, that he wrote this surprising Volume on _Clothes_. +Additional particulars: of his age, which was of that standing middle +sort you could only guess at; of his wide surtout; the color of his +trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we +might report, but do not. The Wisest truly is, in these times, the +Greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity leaving Kings and such +like to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the +Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects that, with all our +writing and reporting, Teufelsdrockh could be brought home to him, till +once the Documents arrive? His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily Presence, are +as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. But, on the +other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in this remarkable Volume, +much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the buried Bag of Doubloons? +To the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, namely, on the +"Origin and Influence of Clothes," we for the present gladly return. + + + +CHAPTER IV. CHARACTERISTICS. + +It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes +entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like +the very Sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of +genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid +its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness, +double-vision, and even utter blindness. + +Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and +prophesyings of the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, we admitted that the +Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the +best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way +of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a +new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of Speculation might henceforth +dig to unknown depths. More specially may it now be declared that +Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience of research, +philosophic and even poetic vigor, are here made indisputably manifest; +and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold +ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is +not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise +specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England +we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of such a topic as Clothes, +too often the manner of treating it betokens in the Author a rusticity +and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in a German, but +fatal to his success with our public. + +Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, or has mostly +forgotten what he saw. He speaks out with a strange plainness; calls +many things by their mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no +Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt +and overhung: "a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, +and ormolu," as he himself expresses it, "cannot hide from me that +such Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, where so many +God-created Souls do for the time meet together." To Teufelsdrockh the +highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable; but nowise for her pearl +bracelets and Malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little +less and little more than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a +Clown's smock; "each is an implement," he says, "in its kind; a tag +for _hooking-together_; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and +hammered on a stithy before smith's fingers." Thus does the Professor +look in men's faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific +freedom; like a man unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped +thither from the Moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, +running through his whole system of thought, that all these +shortcomings, over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise: +if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his +Transcendental Philosophies, and humor of looking at all Matter and +Material things as Spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more +hopeless, the more lamentable. + +To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly +believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the +Work: nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, +as Teufelsdrockh maintains, that "within the most starched cravat there +passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered +waistcoat beats a heart,"--the force of that rapt earnestness may be +felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through? In our +wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild +honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, +strength, which, except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. +Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast +into mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man. +Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder +the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs deep; into the true centre +of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with +crushing force smites it home, and buries it.--On the other hand, let us +be free to admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. Often after +some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and +dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he +were asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. + +Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and literature in most +known tongues, from _Sanchoniathon_ to _Dr. Lingard_, from your Oriental +_Shasters_, and _Talmuds_, and _Korans_, with Cassini's _Siamese +fables_, and Laplace's _Mecanique Celeste_, down to _Robinson Crusoe_ +and the _Belfast Town and Country Almanack_, are familiar to him,--we +shall say nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans such +universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, +indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that +devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned? + +In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability, +marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of +intercourse with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, we +find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step +forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing +amid flame and splendor from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, +picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; +all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest +Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer +sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches +even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene! On the whole, Professor +Teufelsdrockh, is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not +more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are +in quite angular attitudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and +dashes), and ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a +few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and +dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in +him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of +the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as +into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now +sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes +abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a +monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult +to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether +it is a tone and hum of real Humor, which we reckon among the very +highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere Insanity and Inanity, +which doubtless ranks below the very lowest. + +Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do +we still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of an +ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; +he could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it +seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then +again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such +indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and +ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humor, if +indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost +with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great +terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish +Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and +street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could +take interest. His look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever +seen: yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among +our own Chancery suitors; but rather the gravity as of some silent, +high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct volcano; +into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those eyes, those lights that +sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly Stars, but perhaps +also glances from the region of Nether Fire. + +Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature, +this of Teufelsdrockh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that once +we saw him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in +his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the +Seven Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single billow in that +vast World-Mahlstrom of Humor, with its heaven-kissing coruscations, +which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death! The +large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking +miscellaneously together, the present Editor being privileged to listen; +and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable +"Extra-Harangues;" and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for a _Cast-metal +King_: gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a +beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky features, a +radiant ever-young Apollo looked; and he burst forth like the neighing +of all Tattersall's,--tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, +foot clutched into the air,--loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a +laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head +to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, began +to fear all was not right: however, Teufelsdrockh, composed himself, and +sank into his old stillness; on his inscrutable countenance there was, +if anything, a slight look of shame; and Richter himself could not rouse +him again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know how much +is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and +wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in +Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men +wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold +glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called +laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat +outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if +they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who +cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but +his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem. + +Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdrockh has one scarcely pardonable +fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. In this +remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time +produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain show of outward +method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. +Apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the Work +naturally falls into two Parts; a Historical-Descriptive, and a +Philosophical-Speculative: but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of +demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and +indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many sections are of +a debatable rubric, or even quite nondescript and unnamable; whereby the +Book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like +some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and +flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French +mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry +Public invited to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this +Chaos shall be part of our endeavor. + + + +CHAPTER V. THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. + +"As Montesquieu wrote a _Spirit of Laws_," observes our Professor, "so +could I write a _Spirit of Clothes_; thus, with an _Esprit des +Lois_, properly an _Esprit de Coutumes_, we should have an _Esprit de +Costumes_. For neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man +proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious +operations of the mind. In all his Modes, and habilatory endeavors, an +Architectural Idea will be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are +the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of +a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded +mantles, based on light sandals; tower up in high headgear, from amid +peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell out in starched ruffs, buckram +stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate +sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,--will +depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, +Gothic, Later Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or +Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Color! From the soberest +drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold +themselves in choice of Color: if the Cut betoken Intellect and Talent, +so does the Color betoken Temper and Heart. In all which, among nations +as among individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable, though +infinitely complex working of Cause and Effect: every snip of the +Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by ever-active Influences, +which doubtless to Intelligences of a superior order are neither +invisible nor illegible. + +"For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philosophy of +Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable winter-evening +entertainment: nevertheless, for inferior Intelligences, like men, such +Philosophies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, what +is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling Letters from a +hieroglyphical prophetic Book, the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, +in Heaven?--Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not why I wear +such and such a Garment, obey such and such a Law; but even why I am +_here_, to wear and obey anything!--Much, therefore, if not the whole, +of that same _Spirit of Clothes_ I shall suppress, as hypothetical, +ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and Deductions drawn +therefrom in quite another than that omniscient style, are my humbler +and proper province." + +Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdrockh, has nevertheless +contrived to take in a well-nigh boundless extent of field; at least, +the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being +indispensable, we shall here glance over his First Part only in the +most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by +omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the same time, +in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the +Compilers of some _Library_ of General, Entertaining, Useful, or even +Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it +this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended +us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, "at present the glory of +British Literature"? If so, the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it +for their own behoof. + +To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and leads +us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological, metaphorical, +cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content +ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have we to do +with "Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to the Talmudists, he +had before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of +aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,"--very needlessly, we think. +On this portion of the Work, with its profound glances into the +_Adam-Kadmon_, or Primeval Element, here strangely brought into relation +with the _Nifl_ and _Muspel_ (Darkness and Light) of the antique North, +it may be enough to say, that its correctness of deduction, and depth of +Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist +in Britain with something like astonishment. + +But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdrockh hastens from the Tower +of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the whole habitable +and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, +Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern researches of +every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as +the Nurnbergers give an _Orbis Pictus_) an _Orbis Vestitus_; or view of +the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. It is here +that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we can triumphantly say: +Fall to! Here is learning: an irregular Treasury, if you will; but +inexhaustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons in +twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry +off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; +chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather +breeches, Celtic hilibegs (though breeches, as the name _Gallia +Braccata_ indicates, are the more ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke +tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us,--even the +Kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. For most part, too, we must +admit that the Learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled down quite +pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts +smelted out and thrown aside. + +Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures +of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised us. The first +purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or +decency, but ornament. "Miserable indeed," says he, "was the condition +of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of +hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round him +like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick +natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living +on wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in +morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements, +without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole +possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord +of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with deadly +unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge once +satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (_Putz_). Warmth +he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow +tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for Decoration he must +have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find tattooing and painting +even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man +is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in +civilized countries. + +"Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene Highness; +nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rosebloom Maiden, worthy to glide +sylph-like almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a divine +Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,--has descended, +like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal +Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong +cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by Time, yet in +Time! For not Mankind only, but all that Mankind does or beholds, is in +continual growth, re-genesis and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth +thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, ever-working Universe: it is +a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day (says one), it will +be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a +Hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years. + +"He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by device of _Movable +Types_ was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and +Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented +the Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and +Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will +the last do? Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under +Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was +in the old-world Grazier,--sick of lugging his slow Ox about the country +till he got it bartered for corn or oil,--to take a piece of Leather, +and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or _Pecus_); put +it in his pocket, and call it _Pecunia_, Money. Yet hereby did Barter +grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and all miracles +have been out-miracled: for there are Rothschilds and English National +Debts; and whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) +over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, +kings to mount guard over him,--to the length of sixpence.--Clothes too, +which began in foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not become! +Increased Security and pleasurable Heat soon followed: but what of +these? Shame, divine Shame (_Schaam_, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the +Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a +mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us +individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have made Men of us; +they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us. + +"But, on the whole," continues our eloquent Professor, "Man is a +Tool-using Animal (_Handthierendes Thier_). Weak in himself, and of +small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of +some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, +lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are +a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like +a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools; can devise Tools: with these +the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing +iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds +and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools; +without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all." + +Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a +remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal appears to us, of +all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is called +a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; +and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh +himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that +other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which, indeed, for +rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a Tartar be +said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on it? +Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing up his +whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? Or how would +Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinoco Indians who, according to +Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half +the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under +water? But, on the other hand, show us the human being, of any period or +climate, without his Tools: those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their +Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or can have. + +"Man is a Tool-using Animal," concludes Teufelsdrockh, in his abrupt +way; "of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we +consider the interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by man, +and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons, +we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain black stones +from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _Transport me and this +luggage at the rate of file-and-thirty miles an hour_; and they do +it: he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight +miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _Make this nation toil for +us, bleed for us, hunger and, sorrow and sin for us_; and they do it." + + + +CHAPTER VI. APRONS. + +One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that +on _Aprons_. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, "whose +Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which +proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country;" what +though John Knox's Daughter, "who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she +would catch her husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should lie +and be a bishop;" what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other +Apron worthies,--figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes +even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too +clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such sentences +as the following? + +"Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to +modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as +it were, the emblem and beatified ghost of an Apron), which some +highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nurnberg Work-boxes and Toy-boxes, +has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him +with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his +trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise +half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,--is there +not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much +has been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons! Nay, rightly +considered, what is your whole Military and Police Establishment, +charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-colored, +iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily enough); guarding +itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy +(_Teufels-schmiede_) of a world? But of all Aprons the most puzzling +to me hitherto has been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the +usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer (_Episcopus_) of Souls, I notice, +has tucked in the corner of it, as if his day's work were done: what +does he shadow forth thereby?" &c. &c. + +Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff as +we shall now quote? + +"I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the Parisian Cooks, as +a new vent, though a slight one, for Typography; therefore as an +encouragement to modern Literature, and deserving of approval: nor is it +without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm having +in view to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in +England."--We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed +have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for +our Literature, exuberant as it is.--Teufelsdrockh continues: "If such +supply of printed Paper should rise so far as to choke up the highways +and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse +to. In a world existing by Industry, we grudge to employ fire as a +destroying element, and not as a creating one. However, Heaven is +omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the mean while, is it not +beautiful to see five million quintals of Rags picked annually from the +Laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, printed on, +and sold,--returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths by the way? +Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags or Clothes-rubbish, the +grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion, from which and to +which the Social Activities (like vitreous and resinous Electricities) +circulate, in larger or smaller circles, through the mighty, billowy, +storm-tost chaos of Life, which they keep alive!"--Such passages fill +us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed feeling. + +Farther down we meet with this: "The Journalists are now the true Kings +and Clergy: henceforth Historians, unless they are fools, must write +not of Bourbon Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of Stamped +Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, according as +this or the other Able Editor, or Combination of Able Editors, gains the +world's ear. Of the British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most important +of all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and procedure, a +valuable descriptive History already exists, in that language, under the +title of _Satan's Invisible World Displayed_; which, however, by search +in all the Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet succeeded in procuring +(_vermochte night aufzutreiben_)." + +Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does +Teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where he had little business, +confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, +spurious, imaginary Historian of the _Brittische Journalistik_; and so +stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Literature! + + + +CHAPTER VII. MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. + +Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and historic, +when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the +Seventeenth Century; the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is here +that the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest harvest. +Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeed +each other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole too +in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of +genius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, precise, +graphical, and every way interesting have we found these Chapters, that +it may be thrown out as a pertinent question for parties concerned, +Whether or not a good English Translation thereof might henceforth be +profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work _On Ancient +Armor_? Take, by way of example, the following sketch; as authority +for which Paulinus's _Zeitkurzende Lust_ (ii. 678) is, with seeming +confidence, referred to: + +"Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fifteenth Century, we +might smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, were they to rise again, +and see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin. +But happily no bygone German, or man, rises again; thus the Present is +not needlessly trammelled with the Past; and only grows out of it, like +a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but lie +peaceably underground. Nay it is very mournful, yet not useless, to see +and know, how the Greatest and Dearest, in a short while, would find his +place quite filled up here, and no room for him; the very Napoleon, the +very Byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, and were now a +foreigner to his Europe. Thus is the Law of Progress secured; and in +Clothes, as in all other external things whatsoever, no fashion will +continue. + +"Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts, +complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and other riding and +fighting gear have been bepainted in modern Romance, till the whole has +acquired somewhat of a sign-post character,--I shall here say nothing: +the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are wonderful enough +for us. + +"Rich men, I find, have _Teusinke_ [a perhaps untranslatable article]; +also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that when a man +walks, it is with continual jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have a +whole chime of bells (_Glockenspiel_) fastened there; which, especially +in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a grateful +effect. Observe too how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch +intersections. The male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hang +bobbing over the side (_schief_): their shoes are peaked in front, +also to the length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags; even +the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses: some also clap bells on the +peak. Further, according to my authority, the men have breeches without +seat (_ohne Gesass_): these they fasten peakwise to their shirts; and +the long round doublet must overlap them. + +"Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind and +before, so that back and breast are almost bare. Wives of quality, on +the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; which +trains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their +silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman! Consider their welts, a +handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long +flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, +wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The maidens have bound +silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames +(_Flammen_), that is, sparkling hair-drops: but of their mother's +head-gear who shall speak? Neither in love of grace is comfort +forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that +can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem, +not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a +thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their +Ruff-mantles (_Kragenmantel_). + +"As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have +doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted +together with batter (_mit Teig zusammengekleistert_), which create +protuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the +art of Decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it." + +Our Professor, whether he have humor himself or not, manifests a certain +feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it which, could emotion +of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call +a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, counted shoes, +or other the like phenomena, of which the History of Dress offers +so many, escape him: more especially the mischances, or striking +adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with due +fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the mud +under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm +in him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen "was +red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her +tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in +any glass, were wont to serve her"? We can answer that Sir Walter knew +well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment +dyed in verdigris, would have done the same. + +Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only +slashed and gallooned, but artificially swollen out on the broader +parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,--our Professor fails not to +comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a +chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his +_devoir_ on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted several +pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, his +galloons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. Whereupon +the Professor publishes this reflection:-- + +"By what strange chances do we live in History? Erostratus by a torch; +Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by +his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a +bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a +turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,--for +no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of +Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheerfully to +Destiny, and read since it is written."--Has Teufelsdrockh, to be put in +mind that, nearly related to the impossible talent of Forgetting, stands +that talent of Silence, which even travelling Englishmen manifest? + +"The simplest costume," observes our Professor, "which I anywhere find +alluded to in History, is that used as regimental, by Bolivar's Cavalry, +in the late Colombian wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, +is provided (some were wont to cut off the corners, and make it +circular): in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long; +through this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck; and +so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes (for +he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed, but harnessed and +draperied." + +With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity, +and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of +our subject. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. + +If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume, Teufelsdrockh, +discussing merely the _Werden_ (Origin and successive Improvement) +of Clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will he in the +Speculative-Philosophical portion, which treats of their _Wirken_, or +Influences. It is here that the present Editor first feels the pressure +of his task; for here properly the higher and new Philosophy of Clothes +commences: all untried, almost inconceivable region, or chaos; in +venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how unspeakably important is it +to know what course, of survey and conquest, is the true one; where the +footing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, or +mere cloud, and may engulf us! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no less than to +expound the moral, political, even religious Influences of Clothes; he +undertakes to make manifest, in its thousand-fold bearings, this grand +Proposition, that Man's earthly interests "are all hooked and buttoned +together, and held up, by Clothes." He says in so many words, "Society +is founded upon Cloth;" and again, "Society sails through the Infinitude +on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and +unclean beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle, +would sink to endless depths, or mount to inane limbos, and in either +case be no more." + +By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of Meditation +this grand Theorem is here unfolded, and innumerable practical +Corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to +attempt exhibiting. Our Professor's method is not, in any case, that of +common school Logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each holding +by the skirts of the other; but at best that of practical Reason' +proceeding by large Intuition over whole systematic groups and kingdoms; +whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that of Nature, +reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Nature: a mighty maze, +yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. Nay we complained above, +that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call mere confusion, was +also discernible. Often, also, we have to exclaim: Would to Heaven +those same Biographical Documents were come! For it seems as if the +demonstration lay much in the Author's individuality; as if it were not +Argument that had taught him, but Experience. At present it is only +in local glimpses, and by significant fragments, picked often at +wide-enough intervals from the original Volume, and carefully collated, +that we can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow of this Doctrine. +Readers of any intelligence are once more invited to favor us with their +most concentrated attention: let these, after intense consideration, +and not till then, pronounce, Whether on the utmost verge of our actual +horizon there is not a looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate +Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to +sail thither?--As exordium to the whole, stand here the following long +citation:-- + +"With men of a speculative turn," writes Teufelsdrockh, "there come +seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you +ask yourself that unanswerable question: Who am I; the thing that can +say 'I' (_das Wesen das sich ICH nennt_)? The world, with its loud +trafficking, retires into the distance; and, through the paper-hangings, +and stonewalls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce and Polity, and all +the living and lifeless integuments (of Society and a Body), wherewith +your Existence sits surrounded,--the sight reaches forth into the void +Deep, and you are alone with the Universe, and silently commune with it, +as one mysterious Presence with another. + +"Who am I; what is this ME? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance;--some +embodied, visualized Idea in the Eternal Mind? _Cogito, ergo sum_. Alas, +poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I am; +and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies around, +written in all colors and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and +wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature: but where +is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written Apocalypse will +yield articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and +Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest century, +lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and many-colored visions +flit round our sense; but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream +and Dreamer are, we see not; except in rare half-waking moments, suspect +not. Creation, says one, lies before us, like a glorious Rainbow; but +the Sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in that +strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they were substances; +and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves most awake! Which of your +Philosophical Systems is other than a dream-theorem; a net quotient, +confidently given out, where divisor and dividend are both unknown? What +are all your national Wars, with their Moscow Retreats, and sanguinary +hate-filled Revolutions, but the Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This +Dreaming, this Somnambulism is what we on Earth call Life; wherein the +most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right hand from left; +yet they only are wise who know that they know nothing. + +"Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly +unproductive! The secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's +secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he +suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and +Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles +are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good +Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. _The +whole is greater than the part_: how exceedingly true! _Nature abhors a +vacuum_: how exceedingly false and calumnious! Again, _Nothing can act +but where it is_: with all my heart; only, WHERE is it? Be not the slave +of Words: is not the Distant, the Dead, while I love it, and long for +it, and mourn for it, Here, in the genuine sense, as truly as the floor +I stand on? But that same WHERE, with its brother WHEN, are from the +first the master-colors of our Dream-grotto; say rather, the Canvas +(the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our Dreams and Life-visions are +painted. Nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation taught certain +of every climate and age, that the WHERE and WHEN, so mysteriously +inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial terrestrial +adhesions to thought; that the Seer may discern them where they mount +up out of the celestial EVERYWHERE and FOREVER: have not all nations +conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eternal; as existing in a +universal HERE, an everlasting Now? Think well, thou too wilt find that +Space is but a mode of our human Sense, so likewise Time; there _is_ no +Space and no Time: WE are--we know not what;--light-sparkles floating in +the ether of Deity! + +"So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were but an air-image, +our ME the only reality: and Nature, with its thousand-fold production +and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward Force, the 'phantasy +of our Dream;' or what the Earth-Spirit in _Faust_ names it, _the living +visible Garment of God_:-- + + "'In Being's floods, in Action's storm, + I walk and work, above, beneath, + Work and weave in endless motion! + Birth and Death, + An infinite ocean; + A seizing and giving + The fire of Living: + 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, + And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by.' + +Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this thunder-speech of +the _Erdgeist_, are there yet twenty units of us that have learned the +meaning thereof? + +"It was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with these high +speculations, that I first came upon the question of Clothes. Strange +enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there being Tailors and +Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell: strip him of the +girths and flaps and extraneous tags I have fastened round him, and the +noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his +own boot-maker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the +valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein +warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces also +have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of color, +featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. While +I--good Heaven!--have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of +sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of +oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and walk abroad a moving +Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the +Charnel-house of Nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me more +slowly! Day after day, I must thatch myself anew; day after day, this +despicable thatch must lose some film of its thickness; some film of it, +frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed off into the Ashpit, into +the Laystall; till by degrees the whole has been brushed thither, and I, +the dust-making, patent Rag-grinder, get new material to grind down. +O subter-brutish! vile! most vile! For have not I too a compact +all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier? Am I a botched mass of tailors' +and cobblers' shreds, then; or a tightly articulated, homogeneous little +Figure, automatic, nay alive? + +"Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to +plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live +at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was +always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than +to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his +absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; +thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World +happen _twice_, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, +or noticeable. Perhaps not once in a lifetime does it occur to your +ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he gold-mantled Prince +or russet-jerkined Peasant, that his Vestments and his Self are not one +and indivisible; that _he_ is naked, without vestments, till he buy or +steal such, and by forethought sew and button them. + +"For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes-thatch, and +how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, it tailorizes and +demoralizes us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind; +almost as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet season, +you see grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped +sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great +in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; +and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift has it, 'a forked +straddling animal with bandy legs;' yet also a Spirit, and unutterable +Mystery of Mysteries." + + + +CHAPTER IX. ADAMITISM. + +Let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached in the +conclusion of the last Chapter. The Editor himself, on first glancing +over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: What, have we got +not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract? A +new Adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is the +Nineteenth, and destructive both to Superstition and Enthusiasm? + +Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdrockh, what benefits unspeakable all ages +and sexes derive from Clothes. For example, when thou thyself, a watery, +pulpy, slobbery freshman and new-comer in this Planet, sattest muling +and puking in thy nurse's arms; sucking thy coral, and looking forth +into the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been without thy +blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls? A terror to thyself and +mankind! Or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first receivedst +breeches, and thy long clothes became short? The village where thou +livedst was all apprised of the fact; and neighbor after neighbor kissed +thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper coins, on +that the first gala-day of thy existence. Again, wert not thou, at one +period of life, a Buck, or Blood, or Macaroni, or Incroyable, or Dandy, +or by whatever name, according to year and place, such phenomenon is +distinguished? In that one word lie included mysterious volumes. Nay, +now when the reign of folly is over, or altered, and thy clothes are not +for triumph but for defence, hast thou always worn them perforce, and as +a consequence of Man's Fall; never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable +House, a Body round thy Body, wherein that strange THEE of thine sat +snug, defying all variations of Climate? Girt with thick double-milled +kerseys; half buried under shawls and broadbrims, and overalls and +mudboots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hast +bestrode that "Horse I ride;" and, though it were in wild winter, dashed +through the world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain did +the sleet beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, +felted or woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds howl,--forests +sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep,--and the storms heap +themselves together into one huge Arctic whirlpool: thou flewest through +the middle thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild music hummed +in thy ears, thou too wert as a "sailor of the air;" the wreck of matter +and the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide. +Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what had +thy fleet quadruped been?--Nature is good, but she is not the best: here +truly was the victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed might +have pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy. + +Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdrockh forgotten what he +said lately about "Aboriginal Savages," and their "condition miserable +indeed"? Would he have all this unsaid; and us betake ourselves again to +the "matted cloak," and go sheeted in a "thick natural fell"? + +Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows full well what he is +saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes, +in these times, "so tailorize and demoralize us," have they no redeeming +value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of +necessity be thrown to the dogs? The truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though a +Sansculottist, is no Adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go +forth before this degenerate age "as a Sign," would nowise wish to do +it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility of +Clothes is altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insight +into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we +might call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before +vouchsafed to any man. For example:-- + +"You see two individuals," he writes, "one dressed in fine Red, the +other in coarse threadbare Blue: Red says to Blue, 'Be hanged and +anatomized;' Blue hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders!) +marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed up, vibrates his +hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton +for medical purposes. How is this; or what make ye of your _Nothing can +act but where it is_? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no _clutch_ +of him, is nowise in _contact_ with him: neither are those ministering +Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and Tipstaves so related to +commanding Red, that he can tug them hither and thither; but each stands +distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so is +it done: the articulated Word sets all hands in Action; and Rope and +Improved-drop perform their work. + +"Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: First, that _Man is a +Spirit_, and bound by invisible bonds to _All Men_; secondly, that _he +wears Clothes_, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has not +your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a +plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?--Society, which +the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth. + +"Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous ceremonials, +Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and how +the ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how Duke +this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and +innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are +advancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence; and I strive, in my remote +privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity,--on a sudden, as by +some enchanter's wand, the--shall I speak it?--the Clothes fly off the +whole dramatic corps; and Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed +Presence itself, every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, not +a shirt on them; and I know not whether to laugh or weep. This physical +or psychical infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, I have, +after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace of those +afflicted with the like." + +Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret! +Who is there now that can read the five columns of Presentations in his +Morning Newspaper without a shudder? Hypochondriac men, and all men are +to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently treated. With +what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, follows +out the consequences which Teufelsdrockh, with a devilish coolness, goes +on to draw:-- + +"What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality; should +the buttons all simultaneously start, and the solid wool evaporate, +in very Deed, as here in Dream? _Ach Gott_! How each skulks into +the nearest hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (_Haupt- und +Staats-Action_) becomes a Pickleherring-Farce to weep at, which is the +worst kind of Farce; _the tables_ (according to Horace), and with them, +the whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police, and +Civilized Society, _are dissolved_, in wails and howls." + +Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a +naked House of Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils +on itself, and will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the +Ministerial, the Opposition Benches--_infandum! infandum_! And yet why +is the thing impossible? Was not every soul, or rather every body, of +these Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; "a +forked Radish with a head fantastically carved"? And why might he not, +did our stern fate so order it, walk out to St. Stephen's, as well as +into bed, in that no-fashion; and there, with other similar Radishes, +hold a Bed of Justice? "Solace of those afflicted with the like!" +Unhappy Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a "physical or psychical +infirmity" before? And now how many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled +confession (which we, even to the sounder British world, and goaded on +by Critical and Biographical duty, grudge to reimpart) incurably +infect therewith! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists, or only the +maddest? + +"It will remain to be examined," adds the inexorable Teufelsdrockh, +"in how far the SCARECROW, as a Clothed Person, is not also entitled to +benefit of clergy, and English trial by jury: nay perhaps, considering +his high function (for is not he too a Defender of Property, and +Sovereign armed with the _terrors_ of the Law?), to a certain royal +Immunity and Inviolability; which, however, misers and the meaner class +of persons are not always voluntarily disposed to grant him." + +"O my Friends, we are [in Yorick Sterne's words] but as 'turkeys driven, +with a stick and red clout, to the market:' or if some drivers, as +they do in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle +thereof terrifies the boldest!" + + + +CHAPTER X. PURE REASON. + +It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as above hinted, is +a speculative Radical, and of the very darkest tinge; acknowledging, for +most part, in the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilized Life, which +we make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and +"bladders with dried peas." To linger among such speculations, longer +than mere Science requires, a discerning public can have no wish. For +our purposes the simple fact that such a _Naked World_ is possible, +nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), will be sufficient. Much, +therefore, we omit about "Kings wrestling naked on the green with +Carmen," and the Kings being thrown: "dissect them with scalpels," says +Teufelsdrockh; "the same viscera, tissues, livers, lights, and other +life-tackle, are there: examine their spiritual mechanism; the same +great Need, great Greed, and little Faculty; nay ten to one but the +Carman, who understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, something +of the laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, with other branches +of wagon-science, and has actually put forth his hand and operated on +Nature, is the more cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, their +so unspeakable difference? From Clothes." Much also we shall omit about +confusion of Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and how it would be everywhere +"Hail fellow well met," and Chaos were come again: all which to any one +that has once fairly pictured out the grand mother-idea, _Society in +a state of Nakedness_, will spontaneously suggest itself. Should some +sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world without +Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could exist, +let him turn to the original Volume, and view there the boundless +Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: over +which we have lightly flown; where not only whole armies but whole +nations might sink! If indeed the following argument, in its brief +riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final:-- + +"Are we Opossums; have we natural Pouches, like the Kangaroo? Or how, +without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, and +true pineal gland of the Body Social: I mean, a PURSE?" + +Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teufelsdrockh; at worst, +one knows not whether to hate or to love him. For though, in looking at +the fair tapestry of human Life, with its royal and even sacred figures, +he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse; and +indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that +unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indifference, +which must have sunk him in the estimation of most readers,--there is +that within which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past +and present Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity of +Teufelsdrockh is, that with all this Descendentalism, he combines a +Transcendentalism, no less superlative; whereby if on the one hand he +degrade man below most animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on +the other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an equality +with the Gods. + +"To the eye of vulgar Logic," says he, "what is man? An omnivorous Biped +that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a +Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, there +lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), +contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, +and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for +himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of +Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds +and Colors and Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably +over-shrouded: yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not +thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He +feels; power has been given him to know, to believe; nay does not the +spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here, +though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom, +with his lips of gold, 'the true SHEKINAH is Man:' where else is the +GOD'S-PRESENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in +our fellow-man?" + +In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Platonic Mysticism of our +Author, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature, bursts +forth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapor and tarnish +of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment, +we seem to look into a whole inward Sea of Light and Love;--though, +alas, the grim coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it from +view. + +Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable in this man; and +indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. Nothing +that he sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings: +thus, if in the highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne-Mantle, as +well as in the poorest Ox-goad and Gypsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay, +Contemptibility; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a reverend +Worth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the +manifestation of Spirit: were it never so honorable, can it be more? The +thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as +Visible, what is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial +Invisible, "unimaginable formless, dark with excess of bright"? Under +which point of view the following passage, so strange in purport, so +strange in phrase, seems characteristic enough:-- + +"The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on Clothes, or even with +armed eyesight, till they become _transparent_. 'The Philosopher,' says +the wisest of this age, 'must station himself in the middle:' how true! +The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest has descended, and the Lowest +has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. + +"Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether woven in +Arkwright looms, or by the silent Arachnes that weave unrestingly in our +Imagination? Or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot love; +since all was created by God? + +"Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the woollen, and +fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper Clothes) into the Man +himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, +a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet also an inscrutable +venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees with eyes!" + +For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals much in the +feeling of Wonder; insists on the necessity and high worth of universal +Wonder; which he holds to be the only reasonable temper for the denizen +of so singular a Planet as ours. "Wonder," says he, "is the basis of +Worship: the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in Man; only +at certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, a +reign _in partibus infidelium_." That progress of Science, which is to +destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration, +finds small favor with Teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise venerates +these two latter processes. + +"Shall your Science," exclaims he, "proceed in the small chink-lighted, +or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic alone; and man's +mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere +Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and Treatises of what you +call Political Economy, are the Meal? And what is that Science, which +the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's +in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecute +without shadow of a heart,--but one other of the mechanical and menial +handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too +noble an organ? I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps +poisonous; at best, dies like cookery with the day that called it forth; +does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spreading +harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to all Time." + +In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or softer, according +to ability; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, with +charitable intent. Above all, that class of "Logic-choppers, and +treble-pipe Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these +days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics' +Institute of Science, and cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and goslings +round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as +illuminated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full +daylight, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and +guarding you therewith, though the Sun is shining, and the street +populous with mere justice-loving men:" that whole class is +inexpressibly wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon animation he +perorates:-- + +"The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and +worship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried +the whole _Mecanique Celeste_ and _Hegel's Philosophy_, and the epitome +of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single +head,--is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let +those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful. + +"Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through thy world +by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand-lamp +of what I call Attorney-Logic; and 'explain' all, 'account' for all, or +believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognizes +the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere +under our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is an Oracle +and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall,--he shall be a +delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively +proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his +foot through it?--_Armer Teufel_! Doth not thy cow calve, doth not +thy bull gender? Thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt thou not die? +'Explain' me all this, or do one of two things: Retire into private +places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, +and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world all +disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and +sand-blind Pedant." + + + +CHAPTER XI. PROSPECTIVE. + +The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted +it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a +cloud-capt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in +the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly +questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more +important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries +many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a +truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning +marl of a Hell-on-Earth? + +Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives +an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads +us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views +and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a +Whole:-- + +"Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: 'If I take the wings of the morning +and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Universe, God is there.' Thou +thyself, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a +Prosaist, knowing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the +world where at least FORCE is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy +wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept +away; already on the wings of the North-wind, it is nearing the Tropic +of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? Thinkest +thou there is aught motionless; without Force, and utterly dead? + +"As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire +which glows star-like across the dark-growing (_nachtende_) moor, where +the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy +lost horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the +whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that +smithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that +circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dog-star; therein, +with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force of Man, are +cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force brought about; it +is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of +Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the +bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence +reach quite through the All; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by +brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay preaches forth +(exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, the +Gospel of Man's Force, commanding, and one day to be all-commanding. + +"Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing +hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered +leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, +shoreless flood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. +The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and +around it, though working in inverse order; else how could it rot? +Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from which +the earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; +all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into +Infinitude itself." + +Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy-Altar, what vacant, +high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us? + +"All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its +own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only +spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and _body_ it forth. Hence +Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant. +Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are emblematic, not of want +only, but of a manifold cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, +all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven: +must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the +else invisible creations and inspirations of our Reason are, like +Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful; the rather if, as +we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) +reveal such even to the outward eye? + +"Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed with +Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider it, what is Man +himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing +or visible Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like a +light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is he said also to be clothed +with a Body. + +"Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather +be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said that +Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are her +stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements +(of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as such, +or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and +colorless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in +the Flesh-Garment, Language,--then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues +and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek +for: is not your very _Attention_ a _Stretching-to_? The difference +lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems +osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; +while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, +sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. +Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same +Thought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering +it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks +(_Putz-Mantel_), and tawdry woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads +may gather whole hampers,--and burn them." + +Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see +a more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief +grievance; the Professor continues:-- + +"Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall +fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of +the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to +Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, +and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, +rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, +done, and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is but +Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF +CLOTHES." + +Towards these dim infinitely expanded regions, close-bordering on +the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual +difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling. +Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected +Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into +the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain +whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, these +so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand. By the kindness of +a Scottish Hamburg Merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile +world, he must not mention; but whose honorable courtesy, now and often +before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, +he cannot soon forget,--the bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its +Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of +Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader +shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what +breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet +disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and again +taken up. + +Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments, +Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral +trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we knew well already: +that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science +originating in the Head (_Verstand_) alone, no Life-Philosophy +(_Lebensphilosophie_), such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which +originates equally in the Character (_Gemuth_), and equally speaks +thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is known +and seen; "till the Author's View of the World (_Weltansicht_), and how +he actively and passively came by such view, are clear: in short till +a Biography of him has been philosophico-poetically written, and +philosophico-poetically read.... Nay," adds he, "were the speculative +scientific Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring age, ask +yourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How?--and rest not, till, if +no better may be, Fancy have shaped out an answer; and either in the +authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of Fiction, a complete +picture and Genetical History of the Man and his spiritual Endeavor lies +before you. But why," says the Hofrath, and indeed say we, "do I dilate +on the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The great Herr Minister +von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that Man is properly the _only_ +object that interests man:' thus I too have noted, that in Weissnichtwo +our whole conversation is little or nothing else but Biography or +Autobiography; ever humano-anecdotical (_menschlich-anekdotisch_). +Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally +pleasant of all things: especially Biography of distinguished +individuals. + +"By this time, _mein Verehrtester_ (my Most Esteemed)," continues +he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from +Teufelsdrockh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh +unaccountable, "by this time you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in that +mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all readers +do, with astonishment enough. Such portions and passages as you have +already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange +curiosity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps unparalleled +psychical mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and emitted it to +the light of day. Had Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother; did he, +at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? Did he ever, +in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his; looks he also +wistfully into the long burial-aisle of the Past, where only winds, +and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate answer? Has he fought +duels;--good Heaven! how did he comport himself when in Love? By what +singular stair-steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and sloughs +of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderful +prophetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now dwells? + +"To all these natural questions the voice of public History is as yet +silent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a Pilgrim, and Traveller +from a far Country; more or less footsore and travel-soiled; has +parted with road-companions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned by bad +cookery, blistered with bug-bites; nevertheless, at every stage (for +they have let him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole +particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, the picturesque +Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in indelible +sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these nowhere +forthcoming? Perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that mighty Volume +(of human Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unbound +up, as waste paper; and to rot, the sport of rainy winds? + +"No, _verehrtester Herr Herausgeber_, in no wise! I here, by the +unexampled favor you stand in with our Sage, send not a Biography only, +but an Autobiography: at least the materials for such; wherefrom, if I +misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight: and so the +whole Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes will stand clear to +the wondering eyes of England, nay thence, through America, through +Hindostan, and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (_einnehmen_) +great part of this terrestrial Planet!" + +And now let the sympathizing reader judge of our feeling when, in +place of this same Autobiography with "fullest insight," we find--Six +considerable PAPER-BAGS, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in +gilt China-ink, with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs, +beginning at Libra; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous +masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written in Professor +Teufelsdrockh's scarce legible _cursiv-schrift_; and treating of all +imaginable things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own personal +history only at rare intervals, and then in the most enigmatic manner. + +Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he here, +speaking in the third person, calls himself, "the Wanderer," is not once +named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological +Disquisition, "Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine," or, "The +continued Possibility of Prophecy," we shall meet with some quite +private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand +Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are +omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly loosely +on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also are long +purely Autobiographical delineations; yet without connection, without +recognizable coherence; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, they +almost remind us of "P.P. Clerk of this Parish." Thus does famine of +intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, order, appears to be +unknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same imbroglio; only perhaps +in the Bag _Capricorn_, and those near it, the confusion a little +worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration, "On receiving the +Doctor's-Hat," lie wash-bills, marked _bezahlt_ (settled). His Travels +are indicated by the Street-Advertisements of the various cities he has +visited; of which Street-Advertisements, in most living tongues, here is +perhaps the completest collection extant. + +So that if the Clothes-Volume itself was too like a Chaos, we have now +instead of the solar Luminary that should still it, the airy Limbo which +by intermixture will farther volatilize and discompose it! As we shall +perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper-Bags in +the British Museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them, +may be spared. Biography or Autobiography of Teufelsdrockh there is, +clearly enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, +shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly of +intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader, +rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that +aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six Bags hover round us, +and portions thereof be incorporated with our delineation of it. + +Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles) +deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed +_cursiv-schrift_; collating them with the almost equally unimaginable +Volume, which stands in legible print. Over such a universal medley of +high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (by +union of like with like, which is Method) to build a firm Bridge for +British travellers. Never perhaps since our first Bridge-builders, Sin +and Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did +any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present Editor. +For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwards +than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished up from the +weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass, there +another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil beneath: nor is +there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply the Diligence +and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor, endeavoring to evolve +printed Creation out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein, as +he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why to +the far-distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to be +swallowed up. + +Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the Editor, +dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some +fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little +but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the use of +health, or of life, if not to do some work therewith? And what work +nobler than transplanting foreign Thought into the barren domestic +soil; except indeed planting Thought of your own, which the fewest are +privileged to do? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of Clothes, can we +ever reach its real meaning, promises to reveal new-coming Eras, the +first dim rudiments and already-budding germs of a nobler Era, in +Universal History. Is not such a prize worth some striving? Forward with +us, courageous reader; be it towards failure, or towards success! The +latter thou sharest with us; the former also is not all our own. + + + + +BOOK II. + + + +CHAPTER I. GENESIS. + +In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether +from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinized soever, much insight +is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning +remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great +man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole +circumstances of his first appearance in this Planet, and what manner of +Public Entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. +To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this First Chapter +consecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure +extraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any: so that this +Genesis of his can properly be nothing but an Exodus (or transit out +of Invisibility into Visibility); whereof the preliminary portion is +nowhere forthcoming. + +"In the village of Entepfuhl," thus writes he, in the Bag _Libra_, +on various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, "dwelt Andreas +Futteral and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful +though now verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant, +and even regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but +now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, +cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he, +Cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the +apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which +Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as +beseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbors that would +listen about the Victory of Rossbach; and how Fritz the Only (_der +Einzige_) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had been +pleased to say, when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass-word, +'_Schweig Hund_ (Peace, hound)!' before any of his staff-adjutants could +answer. '_Das nenn' ich mir einen Konig_, There is what I call a King,' +would Andreas exclaim: 'but the smoke of Kunersdorf was still smarting +his eyes.' + +"Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather than +the looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether military +subordination; for, as Andreas said, 'the womankind will not drill (_wer +kann die Weiberchen dressiren_):' nevertheless she at heart loved him +both for valor and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and +Regiment's Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid: what you +see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was not Andreas +in very deed a man of order, courage, downrightness (_Geradheit_); that +understood Busching's _Geography_, had been in the victory of Rossbach, +and left for dead in the camisade of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, for +all her fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true +house-mother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; +so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the +whole habitation and environment, where on pegs of honor they hung, +looked ever trim and gay: a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in +fruit-trees and forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising +many-colored from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling in +through the very windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing but +garden-tools in methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats +where, especially on summer nights, a King might have wished to sit and +smoke, and call it his. Such a Bauergut (Copyhold) had Gretchen given +her veteran; whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had +made it what you saw. + +"Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk, when +the Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial Entepfuhl, did nevertheless +journey visible and radiant along the celestial Balance (_Libra_), +it was that a Stranger of reverend aspect entered; and, with grave +salutation, stood before the two rather astonished housemates. He was +close-muffled in a wide mantle; which without farther parley unfolding, +he deposited therefrom what seemed some Basket, overhung with +green Persian silk; saying only: _Ihr lieben Leute, hier bringe ein +unschatzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in aller Acht, sorgfaltigst benutzt +es: mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl mit schweren Zinsen, wird's einst +zuruckgefordert_. 'Good Christian people, here lies for you an +invaluable Loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it: +with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be +required back.' Uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell-like, +forever memorable tone, the Stranger gracefully withdrew; and before +Andreas or his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to fashion +either question or answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors could +aught of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in the +dusk; the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the Stranger was gone once +and always. So sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumn +stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could +have fancied it all a trick of Imagination, or some visit from an +authentic Spirit. Only that the green-silk Basket, such as neither +Imagination nor authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible +and tangible on their little parlor-table. Towards this the astonished +couple, now with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting +the green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid +down and rich white wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, +in the softest sleep, a little red-colored Infant! Beside it, lay a roll +of gold Friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known; +also a _Taufschein_ (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately +nothing but the Name was decipherable, other document or indication none +whatever. + +"To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth. +Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire +of any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had +passed through the neighboring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with +this Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for +Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: What to do +with this little sleeping red-colored Infant? Amid amazements and +curiosities, which had to die away without external satisfying, they +resolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, +on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possible +into manhood. The Heavens smiled on their endeavor: thus has that +same mysterious Individual ever since had a status for himself in this +visible Universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground; +and now expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge of good and evil, he, as +HERR DIOGENES TEUFELSDROCKH, professes or is ready to profess, perhaps +not altogether without effect, in the new University of Weissnichtwo, +the new Science of Things in General." + +Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might, +that these facts, first communicated, by the good Gretchen Futteral, +In his twelfth year, "produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite +indelible impression. Who this reverend Personage," he says, "that +glided into the Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and then, as +on spirit's wings, glided out again, might be? An inexpressible desire, +full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled within me to +shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and my loneliness, has Fantasy +turned, full of longing (_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to that unknown Father, +who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, might have +taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe. +Thou beloved Father, dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin +penetrable curtains of earthly Space, wend to and fro among the crowd +of the living? Or art thou hidden by those far thicker curtains of the +Everlasting Night, or rather of the Everlasting Day, through which my +mortal eye and outstretched arms need not strive to reach? Alas, I know +not, and in vain vex myself to know. More than once, heart-deluded, +have I taken for thee this and the other noble-looking Stranger; and +approached him wistfully, with infinite regard; but he too had to repel +me, he too was not thou. + +"And yet, O Man born of Woman," cries the Autobiographer, with one of +his sudden whirls, "wherein is my case peculiar? Hadst thou, any more +than I, a Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the +Adam and Eve, who led thee into Life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed +thee there, whom thou namest Father and Mother; these were, like mine, +but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true Beginning and Father +is in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only +with the spiritual.... + +"The little green veil," adds he, among much similar moralizing, and +embroiled discoursing, "I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name, +Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece +of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name I +have many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay +there any clew. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate to +believe. To no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's +Books, in and without the German Empire, and through all manner +of Subscriber-Lists (_Pranumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and other +Name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the name +Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. +Again, what may the unchristian rather than Christian 'Diogenes' mean? +Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such designation, to shadow +forth my future destiny, or his own present malign humor? Perhaps the +latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an Ostrich hadst +to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into self-support by +the mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth +one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed by the +worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have I fancied how, +in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung at, wounded, +hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by the Time-Spirit +(_Zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good soul first given thee +was seered into grim rage, and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave +in me an indignant appeal to the Future, and living speaking Protest +against the Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time +itself, is well named! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now modestly add, +was not perhaps quite lost in air. + +"For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, nay almost +all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap round the +earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously +(for there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the +very skin. And now from without, what mystic influences does it not send +inwards, even to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, +when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain +will grow to be an all overshadowing tree! Names? Could I unfold the +influence of Names, which are the most important of all Clothings, I +were a second greater Trismegistus. Not only all common Speech, but +Science, Poetry itself is no other, if thou consider it, than a right +_Naming_. Adam's first task was giving names to natural Appearances: +what is ours still but a continuation of the same; be the Appearances +exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry movements (as +in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, +God-attributes, Gods?--In a very plain sense the Proverb says, _Call +one a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost similar sense may we not +perhaps say, _Call one Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, and he will open the +Philosophy of Clothes_?" + + +"Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his Why, +his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind Light; sprawling +out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, +by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a +whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavoring +daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe +where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. Infinite was +his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle +of--Speech! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a fresh +(celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet by +degrees organic elements and fibres shoot through the watery albumen; +and out of vague Sensation grows Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, and +we have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions! + +"Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such diminutive +had they in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those high +consummations, by quick yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain +talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave out that +he was a grandnephew; the orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly +deceased, in Andreas's distant Prussian birthland; of whom, as of +her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at Entepfuhl. +Heedless of all which, the Nursling took to his spoon-meat, and throve. +I have heard him noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to +himself; above all, that seldom or never cried. He already felt +that time was precious; that he had other work cut out for him than +whimpering." + + +Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these +miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of Herr +Teufelsdrockh's genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem +to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and more +discern a certain satirical turn, and deep under-currents of roguish +whim, for the present stands pledged in honor, so we will not doubt him: +but seems it not conceivable that, by the "good Gretchen Futteral," +or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? +Should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl +Circulating Library, some cultivated native of that district might feel +called to afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, +permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo itself is not safe +from British Literature, may not some Copy find out even the mysterious +basket-bearing Stranger, who in a state of extreme senility perhaps +still exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to claim +openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride? + + + +CHAPTER II. IDYLLIC. + +"HAPPY season of Childhood!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh: "Kind Nature, that +art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with +auroral radiance; and for thy Nursling hast provided a soft swathing +of Love and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced round +(_umgaukelt_) by sweetest Dreams! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us +in, its roof still screens us; with a Father we have as yet a prophet, +priest and king, and an Obedience that makes us free. The young spirit +has awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what we mean by Time; as yet +Time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean; years to +the child are as ages: ah! the secret of Vicissitude, of that slower or +quicker decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the universal World-fabric, +from the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in +a motionless Universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling +Universe is forever denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair +Child, for thy long rough journey is at hand! A little while, and thou +too shalt sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; +thou too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: 'Rest? +Rest? Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in?' Celestial Nepenthe! +though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he +finds thee not; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on +the eyelids, on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep +and waking are one: the fair Life-garden rustles infinite around, and +everywhere is dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope; which budding, if +in youth, too frost-nipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no +fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can +find the kernel." + +In such rose-colored light does our Professor, as Poets are wont, look +back on his childhood; the historical details of which (to say nothing +of much other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on with an +almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl standing "in trustful +derangement" among the woody slopes; the paternal Orchard flanking it as +extreme outpost from below; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, among +beech-rows, through river after river, into the Donau, into the Black +Sea, into the Atmosphere and Universe; and how "the brave old Linden," +stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all +other rows and clumps, towered up from the central _Agora_ and _Campus +Martius_ of the Village, like its Sacred Tree; and how the old men sat +talking under its shadow (Gneschen often greedily listening), and the +wearied laborers reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the +young men and maidens often danced to flute-music. "Glorious summer +twilights," cries Teufelsdrockh, "when the Sun, like a proud Conqueror +and Imperial Taskmaster, turned his back, with his gold-purple +emblazonry, and all his fireclad bodyguard (of Prismatic Colors); and +the tired brickmakers of this clay Earth might steal a little frolic, +and those few meek Stars would not tell of them!" + +Then we have long details of the _Weinlesen_ (Vintage), the +Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so forth; with a whole cycle of the +Entepfuhl Children's-games, differing apparently by mere superficial +shades from those of other countries. Concerning all which, we shall +here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. What cares the world for our as +yet miniature Philosopher's achievements under that "brave old Linden "? +Or even where is the use of such practical reflections as the following? +"In all the sports of Children, were it only in their wanton breakages +and defacements, you shall discern a creative instinct (_schaffenden +Trieb_): the Mankin feels that he is a born Man, that his vocation is +to work. The choicest present you can make him is a Tool; be it knife or +pen-gun, for construction or for destruction; either way it is for Work, +for Change. In gregarious sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains +himself to Co-operation, for war or peace, as governor or governed: +the little Maid again, provident of her domestic destiny, takes with +preference to Dolls." + +Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering who it is that +relates it: "My first short-clothes were of yellow serge; or rather, +I should say, my first short-cloth, for the vesture was one and +indivisible, reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four limbs: +of which fashion how little could I then divine the architectural, how +much less the moral significance!" + +More graceful is the following little picture: "On fine evenings I was +wont to carry forth my supper (bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it +out-of-doors. On the coping of the Orchard-wall, which I could reach +by climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would set up the +pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed: there, many a sunset, have I, +looking at the distant western Mountains, consumed, not without relish, +my evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of World's +expectation as Day died, were still a Hebrew Speech for me; nevertheless +I was looking at the fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for their +gilding." + +With "the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry" we shall not +much intermeddle. It may be that hereby he acquired a "certain deeper +sympathy with animated Nature:" but when, we would ask, saw any man, +in a collection of Biographical Documents, such a piece as this: +"Impressive enough (_bedeutungsvoll_) was it to hear, in early morning, +the Swineherd's horn; and know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds +were, on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for breakfast on +the Heath. Or to see them at eventide, all marching in again, with short +squeak, almost in military order; and each, topographically correct, +trotting off in succession to the right or left, through its own lane, +to its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the Village-head, now left alone, +blew his last blast, and retired for the night. We are wont to love the +Hog chiefly in the form of Ham; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned +beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps humor of character; at any +rate, a touching, trustful submissiveness to Man,--who, were he but a +Swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling +slate or discolored-tin breeches, is still the Hierarch of this lower +world?" + +It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius +is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly +favorable influences accompany him through life, especially through +childhood, and expand him, while others lie close-folded and continue +dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole difference between an +inspired Prophet and a double-barrelled Game-preserver: the inner man of +the one has been fostered into generous development; that of the other, +crushed down perhaps by vigor of animal digestion, and the like, has +exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at +the bottom of his stomach. "With which opinion," cries Teufelsdrockh, +"I should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn might, by +favorable or unfavorable influences of soil and climate, be nursed into +a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into an oak. + +"Nevertheless," continues he, "I too acknowledge the all-but omnipotence +of early culture and nurture: hereby we have either a doddered dwarf +bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree; either a sick yellow +cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of +all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the +characteristic circumstances of their Education, what furthered, what +hindered, what in any way modified it: to which duty, nowadays so +pressing for many a German Autobiographer, I also zealously address +myself."--Thou rogue! Is it by short clothes of yellow serge, and +swineherd horns, that an infant of genius is educated? And yet, as +usual, it ever remains doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve at +these Autobiographical times of ours, or writing from the abundance of +his own fond ineptitude. For he continues: "If among the ever-streaming +currents of Sights, Hearings, Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as +in a Magic Hall, young Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to +select and specify, perhaps these following were also of the number: + +"Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, so the +young creature's Imagination was stirred up, and a Historical tendency +given him by the narrative habits of Father Andreas; who, with his +battle-reminiscences, and gray austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect, +could not but appear another Ulysses and 'much-enduring Man.' Eagerly I +hung upon his tales, when listening neighbors enlivened the hearth; from +these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades itself, a +dim world of Adventure expanded itself within me. Incalculable also +was the knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old Men under the +Linden-tree: the whole of Immensity was yet new to me; and had not these +reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys +thereof for nigh fourscore years? With amazement I began to discover +that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, of a World; that there +was such a thing as History, as Biography to which I also, one day, by +hand and tongue, might contribute. + +"In a like sense worked the _Postwagen_ (Stage-coach), which, +slow-rolling under its mountains of men and luggage, wended through our +Village: northwards, truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards visibly +at eventide. Not till my eighth year did I reflect that this Postwagen +could be other than some terrestrial Moon, rising and setting by mere +Law of Nature, like the heavenly one; that it came on made highways, +from far cities towards far cities; weaving them like a monstrous +shuttle into closer and closer union. It was then that, independently +of Schiller's _Wilhelm Tell_, I made this not quite insignificant +reflection (so true also in spiritual things): _Any road, this simple +Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the World_! + +"Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa, as I learned, +threading their way over seas and mountains, corporate cities and +belligerent nations, yearly found themselves with the month of +May, snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby? The hospitable Father (for +cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest: +there they built, and caught flies, and twittered, and bred; and all, I +chiefly, from the heart loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who +taught you the mason-craft; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic +incorporation, almost social police? For if, by ill chance, and when +time pressed, your House fell, have I not seen five neighborly +Helpers appear next day; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, +long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, complete it +again before nightfall? + +"But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl child's culture, +where as in a funnel its manifold influences were concentrated and +simultaneously poured down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. Here, +assembling from all the four winds, came the elements of an unspeakable +hurry-burly. Nut-brown maids and nut-brown men, all clear-washed, +loud-laughing, bedizened and beribanded; who came for dancing, for +treating, and if possible, for happiness. Topbooted Graziers from the +North; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also topbooted, from the South; +these with their subalterns in leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and +long ox-goads; shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate +barking and bellowing. Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their +crockery in fair rows; Nurnberg Pedlers, in booths that to me seemed +richer than Ormuz bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore; detachments +of the _Wiener Schub_ (Offscourings of Vienna) vociferously +superintending games of chance. Ballad-singers brayed, Auctioneers +grew hoarse; cheap New Wine (_heuriger_) flowed like water, still +worse confounding the confusion; and high over all, vaulted, in +ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particolored Merry-Andrew, like the genius +of the place and of Life itself. + +"Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence; under the deep heavenly +Firmament; waited on by the four golden Seasons, with their vicissitudes +of contribution, for even grim Winter brought its skating-matches and +shooting-matches, its snow-storms and Christmas-carols,--did the Child +sit and learn. These things were the Alphabet, whereby in aftertime +he was to syllable and partly read the grand Volume of the World: what +matters it whether such Alphabet be in large gilt letters or in small +ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read it? For Gneschen, eager to +learn, the very act of looking thereon was a blessedness that gilded +all: his existence was a bright, soft element of Joy; out of which, as +in Prospero's Island, wonder after wonder bodied itself forth, to teach +by charming. + +"Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even then my +felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down from Heaven into +the Earth. Among the rainbow colors that glowed on my horizon, lay even +in childhood a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and +often quite overshone; yet always it reappeared, nay ever waxing broader +and broader; till in after-years it almost overshadowed my whole canopy, +and threatened to engulf me in final night. It was the ring of Necessity +whereby we are all begirt; happy he for whom a kind heavenly Sun +brightens it into a ring of Duty, and plays round it with beautiful +prismatic diffractions; yet ever, as basis and as bourn for our whole +being, it is there. + +"For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprenticeship, we have not +much work to do; but, boarded and lodged gratis, are set down mostly +to look about us over the workshop, and see others work, till we have +understood the tools a little, and can handle this and that. If good +Passivity alone, and not good Passivity and good Activity together, were +the thing wanted, then was my early position favorable beyond the most. +In all that respects openness of Sense, affectionate Temper, ingenuous +Curiosity, and the fostering of these, what more could I have wished? +On the other side, however, things went not so well. My Active Power +(_Thatkraft_) was unfavorably hemmed in; of which misfortune how many +traces yet abide with me! In an orderly house, where the litter of +children's sports is hateful enough, your training is too stoical; +rather to bear and forbear than to make and do. I was forbid much: +wishes in any measure bold I had to renounce; everywhere a strait bond +of Obedience inflexibly held me down. Thus already Freewill often came +in painful collision with Necessity; so that my tears flowed, and at +seasons the Child itself might taste that root of bitterness, wherewith +the whole fruitage of our life is mingled and tempered. + +"In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was beyond measure safer +to err by excess than by defect. Obedience is our universal duty and +destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break: too early and too +thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, in this world of +ours, is as mere zero to Should, and for most part as the smallest of +fractions even to Shall. Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly +Discretion, nay of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my +upbringing. It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively secluded, every +way unscientific: yet in that very strictness and domestic solitude +might there not lie the root of deeper earnestness, of the stem from +which all noble fruit must grow? Above all, how unskilful soever, it was +loving, it was well-meant, honest; whereby every deficiency was helped. +My kind Mother, for as such I must ever love the good Gretchen, did me +one altogether invaluable service: she taught me, less indeed by word +than by act and daily reverent look and habitude, her own simple version +of the Christian Faith. Andreas too attended Church; yet more like +a parade-duty, for which he in the other world expected pay with +arrears,--as, I trust, he has received; but my Mother, with a true +woman's heart, and fine though uncultivated sense, was in the strictest +acceptation Religious. How indestructibly the Good grows, and propagates +itself, even among the weedy entanglements of Evil! The highest whom +I knew on Earth I here saw bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a +Higher in Heaven: such things, especially in infancy, reach inwards to +the very core of your being; mysteriously does a Holy of Holies build +itself into visibility in the mysterious deeps; and Reverence, the +divinest in man, springs forth undying from its mean envelopment of +Fear. Wouldst thou rather be a peasant's son that knew, were it never so +rudely, there was a God in Heaven and in Man; or a duke's son that only +knew there were two-and-thirty quarters on the family-coach?" + +To which last question we must answer: Beware, O Teufelsdrockh, of +spiritual pride! + + + +CHAPTER III. PEDAGOGY. + +Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible case of yellow serge, +borne forward mostly on the arms of kind Nature alone; seated, indeed, +and much to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop, but (except his +soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still +intelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there. Hitherto, +accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an incipient +Philosopher and Poet in the abstract; perhaps it would puzzle Herr +Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special Doctrine of Clothes is +as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gneschen, as with others, the +Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least all the pigments are +there); yet only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or young Boy, +namely, his Passive endowment, not his Active. The more impatient are we +to discover what figure he cuts in this latter capacity; how, when, to +use his own words, "he understands the tools a little, and can handle +this or that," he will proceed to handle it. + +Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our +Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost Hindoo character: +nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and every way excellent "Passivity" +of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist Activity, +distinguished his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that, +in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes the world. +For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man without +Activity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a man +with Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, +enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or even when +it has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. A dangerous, +difficult temper for the modern European; above all, disadvantageous in +the hero of a Biography! Now as heretofore it will behoove the Editor of +these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do his endeavor. + +Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a man +of letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. On this portion of his +History, Teufelsdrockh looks down professedly as indifferent. Reading he +"cannot remember ever to have learned;" so perhaps had it by nature. +He says generally: "Of the insignificant portion of my Education, which +depended on Schools, there need almost no notice be taken. I learned +what others learn; and kept it stored by in a corner of my head, +seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a down-bent, +broken-hearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, did +little for me, except discover that he could do little: he, good soul, +pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions; and that I must +be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the University. Meanwhile, +what printed thing soever I could meet with I read. My very copper +pocket-money I laid out on stall-literature; which, as it accumulated, +I with my own hands sewed into volumes. By this means was the young +head furnished with a considerable miscellany of things and shadows +of things: History in authentic fragments lay mingled with Fabulous +chimeras, wherein also was reality; and the whole not as dead stuff, but +as living pabulum, tolerably nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic." + +That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well, we now know. Indeed, +already in the youthful Gneschen, with all his outward stillness, there +may have been manifest an inward vivacity that promised much; symptoms +of a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical. Thus, to say +nothing of his Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and other phenomena of that +earlier period, have many readers of these pages stumbled, in their +twelfth year, on such reflections as the following? "It struck me much, +as I sat by the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched it flowing, +gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed and gurgled, +through all changes of weather and of fortune, from beyond the earliest +date of History. Yes, probably on the morning when Joshua forded Jordan; +even as at the mid-day when Caesar, doubtless with difficulty, swam the +Nile, yet kept his _Commentaries_ dry,--this little Kuhbach, assiduous +as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wilderness, as +yet unnamed, unseen: here, too, as in the Euphrates and the Ganges, is +a vein or veinlet of the grand World-circulation of Waters, which, with +its atmospheric arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with the World. +Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that +idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age." In which little +thought, as in a little fountain, may there not lie the beginning of +those well-nigh unutterable meditations on the grandeur and mystery +of TIME, and its relation to ETERNITY, which play such a part in this +Philosophy of Clothes? + +Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by no means lingers +so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. Green sunny tracts there +are still; but intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there +stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. "With my first view of the +Hinterschlag Gymnasium," writes he, "my evil days began. Well do I still +remember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full of hope +by the side of Father Andreas, I entered the main street of the place, +and saw its steeple-clock (then striking Eight) and _Schuldthurm_ +(Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving in to breakfast: +a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some human imps +had tied a tin kettle to its tail; thus did the agonized creature, +loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the Borough, and +become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering Hero, to +whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere does) has +malignantly appended a tin kettle of Ambition, to chase him on; which +the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and more +foolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that +mischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and epitome! + +"Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: I +was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards +me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone." +His school-fellows, as is usual, persecuted him: "They were Boys," he +says, "mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, which +bids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to +death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strong +tyrannize over the weak." He admits that though "perhaps in an unusual +degree morally courageous," he succeeded ill in battle, and would fain +have avoided it; a result, as would appear, owing less to his small +personal stature (for in passionate seasons he was "incredibly nimble"), +than to his "virtuous principles:" "if it was disgraceful to be beaten," +says he, "it was only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as +fought; thus was I drawn two ways at once, and in this important element +of school-history, the war-element, had little but sorrow." On the +whole, that same excellent "Passivity," so notable in Teufelsdrockh's +childhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. "He wept +often; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed _Der Weinende_ (the +Tearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed +not quite unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst +forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_Ungestum_) under +which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or at +least of Mankin." In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree +and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and +ignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only, +and not outwards; into a _height_ quite sickly, and disproportioned to +its _breadth_? + +We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were "mechanically" taught; +Hebrew scarce even mechanically; much else which they called History, +Cosmography, Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at all. So +that, except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and he himself "went +about, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen's workshops, there +learning many things;" and farther lighted on some small store +of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper's house, where he +lodged,--his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. Which facts the +Professor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment. Indeed, +throughout the whole of this Bag _Scorpio_, where we now are, and often +in the following Bag, he shows himself unusually animated on the matter +of Education, and not without some touch of what we might presume to be +anger. + +"My Teachers," says he, "were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of +man's nature, or of boy's; or of aught save their lexicons and quarterly +account-books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they +themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called it +fostering the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical +Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be +manufactured at Nurnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth +of anything; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by +having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a spirit, +by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at the fire of +living Thought? How shall _he_ give kindling, in whose own inward +man there is no live coal, but all is burnt out to a dead grammatical +cinder? The Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax enough; and of the human +soul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be acted +on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch-rods. + +"Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be; till the Hod-man is +discharged, or reduced to hod-bearing; and an Architect is hired, and on +all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals discover, +not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by +Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by +Gunpowder; that with Generals and Field-marshals for killing, there +should be world-honored Dignitaries, and were it possible, true +God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though the Soldier wears +openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have +travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool: nay, +were he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom +expected honor, would there not, among the idler class, perhaps a +certain levity be excited?" + +In the third year of this Gymnasic period, Father Andreas seems to have +died: the young Scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for the +first time clad outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible +melancholy. "The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had +yawned open; the pale kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable +silent nations and generations, stood before him; the inexorable word, +NEVER! now first showed its meaning. My Mother wept, and her sorrow got +vent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of tears, pent up in +silent desolation. Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is strong; Life is +so healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death: these stern +experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination, rose there to a +whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with not unmelodious +sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long years +of youth:--as in manhood also it does, and will do; for I have now +pitched my tent under a Cypress-tree; the Tomb is now my inexpugnable +Fortress, ever close by the gate of which I look upon the hostile +armaments, and pains and penalties of tyrannous Life placidly enough, +and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still smile. O ye loved +ones, that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I +could only weep for and never help; and ye, who wide-scattered still +toil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing the flinty ground with +your blood,--yet a little while, and we shall all meet THERE, and +our Mother's bosom will screen us all; and Oppression's harness, and +Sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit +ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more!" + +Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a labored Character of +the deceased Andreas Futteral; of his natural ability, his deserts in +life (as Prussian Sergeant); with long historical inquiries into the +genealogy of the Futteral Family, here traced back as far as Henry the +Fowler: the whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment. It +only concerns us to add, that now was the time when Mother Gretchen +revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred; or +indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the way +already known to us. "Thus was I doubly orphaned," says he; "bereft not +only of Possession, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Wonder, +here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit. Such a +disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through my whole +nature: ever till the years of mature manhood, it mingled with my whole +thoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreams +grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a corresponding civic +depression, it naturally imparted: _I was like no other_; in which +fixed idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener to frightfullest +results, may there not lie the first spring of tendencies, which in +my Life have become remarkable enough? As in birth, so in action, +speculation, and social position, my fellows are perhaps not numerous." + + +In the Bag _Sagittarius_, as we at length discover, Teufelsdrockh has +become a University man; though how, when, or of what quality, will +nowhere disclose itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in the +way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now surprise our +readers; not even the total want of dates, almost without parallel in +a Biographical work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, +and must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In _Sagittarius_, +however, Teufelsdrockh begins to show himself even more than +usually Sibylline: fragments of all sorts: scraps of regular Memoir, +College-Exercises, Programs, Professional Testimoniums, Milkscores, torn +Billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast; all blown together +as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the sane Historian. To +combine any picture of these University, and the subsequent, years; much +more, to decipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of the +Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may imagine. + +So much we can see; darkly, as through the foliage of some wavering +thicket: a youth of no common endowment, who has passed happily through +Childhood, less happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood, now at +length perfect in "dead vocables," and set down, as he hopes, by the +living Fountain, there to superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From such +Fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom with his +whole heart, for the water nowise suits his palate; discouragements, +entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. Nor perhaps +are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for "the good Gretchen, who in +spite of advices from not disinterested relatives has sent him +hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand." +Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold Chagrin, the Humor +of that young Soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals +itself; and, like strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of +colors, some of which are prismatic. Thus, with the aid of Time and of +what Time brings, has the stripling Diogenes Teufelsdrockh waxed into +manly stature; and into so questionable an aspect, that we ask with new +eagerness, How he specially came by it, and regret anew that there is +no more explicit answer. Certain of the intelligible and partially +significant fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted from +that Limbo of a Paper-bag, and presented with the usual preparation. + +As if, in the Bag _Scorpio_, Teufelsdrockh had not already expectorated +his antipedagogic spleen; as if, from the name _Sagittarius_, he had +thought himself called upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall in with +such matter as this: "The University where I was educated still stands +vivid enough in my remembrance, and I know its name well; which name, +however, I, from tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall in +nowise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, out of England and +Spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto discovered Universities. +This is indeed a time when right Education is, as nearly as may be, +impossible: however, in degrees of wrongness there is no limit: nay, +I can conceive a worse system than that of the Nameless itself; as +poisoned victual may be worse than absolute hunger. + +"It is written, When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the +ditch: wherefore, in such circumstances, may it not sometimes be safer, +if both leader and led simply--sit still? Had you, anywhere in Crim +Tartary, walled in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small, +ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into it eleven hundred +Christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to +seven years: certain persons, under the title of Professors, being +stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, and +exact considerable admission-fees,--you had, not indeed in mechanical +structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our +High Seminary. I say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was +quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily, +we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of +smoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without far +costlier apparatus than that of the Square Enclosure, and Declaration +aloud, you could not be sure of gulling. + +"Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; and gulled, +with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like a _Statistics +of Imposture_, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange +indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for +minor Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grand +all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our whole arts of Puffery, of +Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and +mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at all! +Can any one, for example, so much as say, What moneys, in Literature and +Shoeblacking, are realized by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish; +what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying, +in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements, +incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? But +to ask, How far, in all the several infinitely complected departments +of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial, +intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is supplied by true +Ware; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware:--in other words, To +what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and +countries, Deception takes the place of wages of Performance: here +truly is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which +hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, in +our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so high +even as at One to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope, +Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far from +the mark),--what almost prodigious saving may there not be anticipated, +as the _Statistics of Imposture_ advances, and so the manufacturing of +Shams (that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction +therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but wholly +unnecessary! + +"This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, for the present +brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in Education, Polity, +Religion, where so much is wanted and indispensable, and so little can +as yet be furnished, probably Imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature, +and man's Gullibility not his worst blessing. Suppose your sinews of +war quite broken; I mean your military chest insolvent, forage all but +exhausted; and that the whole army is about to mutiny, disband, and cut +your and each other's throat,--then were it not well could you, as if +by miracle, pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on coagulated +water, or mere imagination of meat; whereby, till the real supply came +up, they might be kept together and quiet? Such perhaps was the aim of +Nature, who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her favorite, +Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather omnipatient Talent of being +Gulled. + +"How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism; nay, almost makes +mechanism for itself! These Professors in the Nameless lived with ease, +with safety, by a mere Reputation, constructed in past times, and then +too with no great effort, by quite another class of persons. Which +Reputation, like a strong brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into the +general current, bade fair, with only a little annual re-painting on +their part, to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously +grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the Millers! They themselves +needed not to work; their attempts at working, at what they called +Educating, now when I look back on it, fill me with a certain mute +admiration. + +"Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational University; in the +highest degree hostile to Mysticism; thus was the young vacant mind +furnished with much talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages, +Prejudice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough blown out into +a state of windy argumentativeness; whereby the better sort had soon to +end in sick, impotent Scepticism; the worser sort explode (_crepiren_) +in finished Self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents become dead.--But +this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our era is the Era of Unbelief, +why murmur under it; is there not a better coming, nay come? As in +long-drawn systole and long-drawn diastole, must the period of Faith +alternate with the period of Denial; must the vernal growth, the summer +luxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual Representations and Creations, +be followed by, and again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter +dissolution. For man lives in Time, has his whole earthly being, +endeavor and destiny shaped for him by Time: only in the transitory +Time-Symbol is the ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made manifest. +And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it is for the nobler-minded +perhaps a comparative misery to have been born, and to be awake and +work; and for the duller a felicity, if, like hibernating animals, +safe-lodged in some Salamanca University or Sybaris City, or other +superstitious or voluptuous Castle of Indolence, they can slumber +through, in stupid dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaring +hailstorms have all alone their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms +the new Spring has been vouchsafed." + +That in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed forth, +Teufelsdrockh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubtful. "The +hungry young," he says, "looked up to their spiritual Nurses; and, for +food, were bidden eat the east-wind. What vain jargon of controversial +Metaphysic, Etymology, and mechanical Manipulation falsely named +Science, was current there, I indeed learned, better perhaps than the +most. Among eleven hundred Christian youths, there will not be wanting +some eleven eager to learn. By collision with such, a certain warmth, a +certain polish was communicated; by instinct and happy accident, I took +less to rioting (_renommiren_), than to thinking and reading, which +latter also I was free to do. Nay from the chaos of that Library, I +succeeded in fishing up more books perhaps than had been known to the +very keepers thereof. The foundation of a Literary Life was hereby laid: +I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in almost all cultivated +languages, on almost all subjects and sciences; farther, as man is ever +the prime object to man, already it was my favorite employment to read +character in speculation, and from the Writing to construe the Writer. +A certain groundplan of Human Nature and Life began to fashion itself in +me; wondrous enough, now when I look back on it; for my whole Universe, +physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine! However, such a conscious, +recognized groundplan, the truest I had, _was_ beginning to be there, +and by additional experiments might be corrected and indefinitely +extended." + +Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the +destitution of the wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire for +himself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help. Nevertheless +a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. +Teufelsdrockh gives us long details of his "fever-paroxysms of Doubt;" +his Inquiries concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of religious Faith; +and how "in the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than +over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the All-seeing, and with +audible prayers cried vehemently for Light, for deliverance from Death +and the Grave. Not till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did +the believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the +nightmare, Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair +living world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But +through such Purgatory pain," continues he, "it is appointed us to +pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and drop +piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed from this +its charnel-house, is to arise on us, new-born of Heaven, and with new +healing under its wings." + +To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we add a liberal +measure of Earthly distresses, want of practical guidance, want of +sympathy, want of money, want of hope; and all this in the fervid season +of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, yet here +so poor in means,--do we not see a strong incipient spirit oppressed and +overloaded from without and from within; the fire of genius struggling +up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with more of bitter vapor +than of clear flame? + +From various fragments of Letters and other documentary scraps, it is to +be inferred that Teufelsdrockh, isolated, shy, retiring as he was, had +not altogether escaped notice: certain established men are aware of his +existence; and, if stretching out no helpful hand, have at least their +eyes on him. He appears, though in dreary enough humor, to be addressing +himself to the Profession of Law;--whereof, indeed, the world has since +seen him a public graduate. But omitting these broken, unsatisfactory +thrums of Economical relation, let us present rather the following small +thread of Moral relation; and therewith, the reader for himself weaving +it in at the right place, conclude our dim arras-picture of these +University years. + +"Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr Towgood, or, as +it is perhaps better written, Herr Toughgut; a young person of quality +(_von Adel_), from the interior parts of England. He stood connected, by +blood and hospitality, with the Counts von Zahdarm, in this quarter of +Germany; to which noble Family I likewise was, by his means, with all +friendliness, brought near. Towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably +ill-cultivated; with considerable humor of character: and, bating his +total ignorance, for he knew nothing except Boxing and a little Grammar, +showed less of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for +most part belongs to Travellers of his nation. To him I owe my first +practical knowledge of the English and their ways; perhaps also +something of the partiality with which I have ever since regarded that +singular people. Towgood was not without an eye, could he have come at +any light. Invited doubtless by the presence of the Zahdarm Family, +he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting his +studies; he, whose studies had as yet been those of infancy, hither to +a University where so much as the notion of perfection, not to say the +effort after it, no longer existed! Often we would condole over the hard +destiny of the Young in this era: how, after all our toil, we were to be +turned out into the world, with beards on our chins indeed, but with few +other attributes of manhood; no existing thing that we were trained to +Act on, nothing that we could so much as Believe. 'How has our head on +the outside a polished Hat,' would Towgood exclaim, 'and in the inside +Vacancy, or a froth of Vocables and Attorney-Logic! At a small cost men +are educated to make leather into shoes; but at a great cost, what am +I educated to make? By Heaven, Brother! what I have already eaten +and worn, as I came thus far, would endow a considerable Hospital of +Incurables.'--'Man, indeed,' I would answer, 'has a Digestive Faculty, +which must be kept working, were it even partly by stealth. But as for +our Miseducation, make not bad worse; waste not the time yet ours, in +trampling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. _Frisch +zu, Bruder_! Here are Books, and we have brains to read them; here is +a whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on them: +_Frisch zu_!' + +"Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire. +We looked out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at +once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not +unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. For +myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. Towards this young +warm-hearted, strong-headed and wrong-headed Herr Towgood I was even +near experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish +Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could have +loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and +always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and its wants. +If man's _Soul_ is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, and Utilitarian +Philosophy, a kind of _Stomach_, what else is the true meaning of +Spiritual Union but an Eating together? Thus we, instead of Friends, are +Dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast away chimeras." + +So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little incipient +romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut? +He has dived under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we see not +where. Does any reader "in the interior parts of England" know of such a +man? + + + +CHAPTER IV. GETTING UNDER WAY. + +"Thus nevertheless," writes our Autobiographer, apparently as +quitting College, "was there realized Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes +Teufelsdrockh: a visible Temporary Figure (_Zeitbild_), occupying some +cubic feet of Space, and containing within it Forces both physical and +spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, in +more or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities +there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the +great Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and Delver, with +his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a +little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay your very Day-moth has +capabilities in this kind; and ever organizes something (into its own +Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and of mute dead air +makes living music, though only of the faintest, by humming. + +"How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned, +or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic +I name it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, and +henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days, +witness some. Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it +makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but cannot +the dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around him? Has he not seen the +Scottish Brass-smith's IDEA (and this but a mechanical one) travelling +on fire-wings round the Cape, and across two Oceans; and stronger than +any other Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetching +and carrying: at home, not only weaving Cloth; but rapidly enough +overturning the whole old system of Society; and, for Feudalism and +Preservation of the Game, preparing us, by indirect but sure methods, +Industrialism and the Government of the Wisest? Truly a Thinking Man is +the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every time such a one +announces himself, I doubt not, there runs a shudder through the +Nether Empire; and new Emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, if +possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him. + +"With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the Universe, +been called. Unhappy it is, however, that though born to the amplest +Sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sovereign right of Peace +and War against the Time-Prince (_Zeitfurst_), or Devil, and all his +Dominions, your coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre is +so difficult to get at, or even to get eye on!" + +By which last wire-drawn similitude does Teufelsdrockh mean no more than +that young men find obstacles in what we call "getting under way"? "Not +what I Have," continues he, "but what I Do is my Kingdom. To each is +given a certain inward Talent, a certain outward Environment of Fortune; +to each, by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum of +Capability. But the hardest problem were ever this first: To find by +study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on, what your combined +inward and outward Capability specially is. For, alas, our young soul is +all budding with Capabilities, and we see not yet which is the main and +true one. Always too the new man is in a new time, under new conditions; +his course can be the _fac-simile_ of no prior one, but is by its +nature original. And then how seldom will the outward Capability fit +the inward: though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended, +dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than all, we are foolish. Thus, +in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to +grope which is ours, and often clutch the wrong one: in this mad work +must several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, +by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, +many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new +disappointment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from side to +side: till at length, as exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, +they shift into their last enterprise, that of getting buried. + +"Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the general +fate; were it not that one thing saves us: our Hunger. For on this +ground, as the prompt nature of Hunger is well known, must a prompt +choice be made: hence have we, with wise foresight, Indentures and +Apprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, the +vague universality of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded into a +specific Craftsman; and so thenceforth work, with much or with little +waste of Capability as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, that of +time. Nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too is +born blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, receive sight +in nine days, but far later, sometimes never,--is it not well that there +should be what we call Professions, or Bread-studies (_Brodzwecke_), +preappointed us? Here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom partial +or total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly +round and round, still fancying that it is forward and forward; and +realize much: for himself victual; for the world an additional horse's +power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Economic Society. For +me too had such a leading-string been provided; only that it proved a +neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I broke it off. Then, in +the words of Ancient Pistol, did the world generally become mine oyster, +which I, by strength or cunning, was to open, as I would and could. +Almost had I deceased (_fast war ich umgekommen_), so obstinately did it +continue shut." + +We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was +to befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as +it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous +details, through this Bag _Pisces_, and those that follow. A young man +of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettled +colt, "breaks off his neck-halter," and bounds forth, from his peculiar +manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced +in. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbidden +pasture: either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or, +in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer +stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame +him; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by +miracle, clears his way; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, +yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence is still possible, +and Freedom, though waited on by Scarcity, is not without sweetness. +In a word, Teufelsdrockh having thrown up his legal Profession, finds +himself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous +want of decided Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. +Necessity urges him on; Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son +of Time; wild passions without solacement, wild faculties without +employment, ever vex and agitate him. He too must enact that stern +Monodrama, _No Object and no Rest_; must front its successive destinies, +work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can. + +Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his "neck-halter" sat +nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off. +If we look at the young man's civic position, in this Nameless capital, +as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern well that +it was far from enviable. His first Law-Examination he has come through +triumphantly; and can even boast that the _Examen Rigorosum_ need +not have frightened him: but though he is hereby "an _Auscultator_ of +respectability," what avails it? There is next to no employment to +be had. Neither, for a youth without connections, is the process of +Expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition +much cheered from without. "My fellow Auscultators," he says, "were +Auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words; +other vitality showed they almost none. Small speculation in those eyes, +that they did glare withal! Sense neither for the high nor for the +deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of +coming Preferment." In which words, indicating a total estrangement on +the part of Teufelsdrockh may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness +as from wounded vanity? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have +sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was +much more impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, in any case, +there could not be: already has the young Teufelsdrockh left the other +young geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself +is cygnet or gosling. + +Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was performed ill, at best +unpleasantly. "Great practical method and expertness" he may brag of; +but is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only +the deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been popular. We figure +to ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with +his independence, and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much? +"Like a very young person, I imagined it was with Work alone, and not +also with Folly and Sin, in myself and others, that I had been +appointed to struggle." Be this as it may, his progress from the passive +Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evidently of the +slowest. By degrees, those same established men, once partially inclined +to patronize him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and give him up +as "a man of genius" against which procedure he, in these Papers, loudly +protests. "As if," says he, "the higher did not presuppose the lower; as +if he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk post if he resolved +on it! But the world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing +for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust +nothing but the common copper." + +How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner, +contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from flying skyward +without return, is not too clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchen +seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the Earth; other +Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, nowhere flows for him; so that +"the prompt nature of Hunger being well known," we are not without our +anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many languages and sciences, +the aid derivable is small; neither, to use his own words, "does the +young Adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any literary gift; but at +best earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide faculty of Translation. +Nevertheless," continues he, "that I subsisted is clear, for you find me +even now alive." Which fact, however, except upon the principle of our +true-hearted, kind old Proverb, that "there is always life for a living +one," we must profess ourselves unable to explain. + +Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, bearing the +mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like an +independent Hearth-holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here also +occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which perhaps +throw light on his condition. The first has now no date, or writer's +name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: "The (_Inkblot_), tied +down by previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the +Herr Teufelsdrockh's views on the Assessorship in question; and sees +himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, what +were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a +man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting." The other +is on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now +dead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in +the original: "_Herr Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau Grafinn, auf +Donnerstag, zum AESTHETISCHEN THEE schonstens eingeladen_." + +Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most +urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash of +quite fluid _AEsthetic Tea_! How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual hand-grips +with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these Musical and +Literary dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast +of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence, +and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all, +it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. For the rest, +as this Frau Grafinn dates from the _Zahdarm House_, she can be no +other than the Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual +tendencies, and good-will to Teufelsdrockh, whether on the footing of +Herr Towgood, or on his own footing, are hereby manifest. That some +sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our +Autobiographer, though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, we +have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it +was in vain; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses +of the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to have been +always excluded. "The Zahdarms," says he, "lived in the soft, sumptuous +garniture of Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art, attracted and +attached from without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was +to the _Gnadigen Frau_ (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement was +due: assiduously she gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringing +was to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." Was Teufelsdrockh +also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? "With his +_Excellenz_ (the Count)," continues he, "I have more than once had the +honor to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the +world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavorable +light; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journalism (_die +auszurottende Journalistik_), little to desiderate therein. On some +points, as his _Excellenz_ was not uncholeric, I found it more pleasant +to keep silence. Besides, his occupation being that of Owning Land, +there might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use, +were little developed in him." + +That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless, +and many things besides "the Outrooting of Journalism" might have seemed +improvements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a barren +Auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes +from within, his position was no easy one. "The Universe," he says, "was +as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede, +or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in +the blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished Thought, +unfolding itself. A strange contradiction lay in me; and I as yet knew +not the solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring only +from discords set in harmony; that but for Evil there were no Good, as +victory is only possible by battle." + +"I have heard affirmed (surely in jest)," observes he elsewhere, "by +not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human +happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under +barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their +lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the +age of twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as considered in the +light of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coincide. +Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (_Madchen_) +are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young +gentlemen (_Bubchen_) do then attain their maximum of detestability. +Such gawks (_Gecken_) are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with such +a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous, +vain-glorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's +endeavor or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet +unendeavoring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it all +infinitely better, were it worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most +manageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three: multiply +your second and third term together, divide the product by the first, +and your quotient will be the answer,--which you are but an ass if you +cannot come at. The booby has not yet found out, by any trial, that, +do what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal +repeater, and no net integer quotient so much as to be thought of." + +In which passage does not there lie an implied confession that +Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward, +still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, +yet still afflictive derangement of head? Alas, on the former side +alone, his case was hard enough. "It continues ever true," says +he, "that Saturn, or Chronos, or what we call TIME, devours all his +Children: only by incessant Running, by incessant Working, may you (for +some threescore-and-ten years) escape him; and you too he devours at +last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time +stand still; even in thought, shake themselves free of Time? Our whole +terrestrial being is based on Time, and built of Time; it is wholly a +Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, the material of +it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to work,--in the right +direction. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in continual movement, +whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring a continual +Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward Wants were +but satisfaction for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have done, +is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. O +Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so +deep in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that only in lucid moments +can so much as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us! +Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Time +threatening to eat quite prematurely; for, strive as I might, there was +no good Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet." +That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, +that Teufelsdrockh's whole duty and necessity was, like other men's, "to +work,--in the right direction," and that no work was to be had; whereby +he became wretched enough. As was natural: with haggard Scarcity +threatening him in the distance; and so vehement a soul languishing +in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword by +rust, + + "To eat into itself, for lack + Of something else to hew and hack;" + +But on the whole, that same "excellent Passivity," as it has all along +done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance may +we not trace the beginnings of much that now characterizes our Professor +and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophy +itself? Already the attitude he has assumed towards the World is too +defensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. +"So far hitherto," he says, "as I had mingled with mankind, I was +notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of manner, which, as +my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardor +of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love +and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that +has a sense for the Godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, +and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (_Harte_), my +Indifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, +as my favorite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was +but as a buckram case, wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so +my own poor Person might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being +no longer exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, +the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good +as renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in those days, provoke +into some degree of hostility thereby! An ironic man, with his sly +stillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man, +from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. Have +we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest +indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and +worm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhock_), and thence fall shattered and +supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he +proved electric and a torpedo!" + +Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for +himself in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdrockh too +admits, is "to unite yourself with some one, and with somewhat (_sich +anzuschliessen_)"? Division, not union, is written on most part of his +procedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only +important connection he had ever succeeded in forming, his connection +with the Zahdarm Family, seems to have been paralyzed, for all practical +uses, by the death of the "not uncholeric" old Count. This fact stands +recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain _Discourse on Epitaphs_, +huddled into the present Bag, among so much else; of which Essay the +learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of than the +spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort +soever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. "By request of that +worthy Nobleman's survivors," says he, "I undertook to compose his +Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following; +which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet +fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven;"--wherein, we may +predict, there is more than the Latinity that will surprise an English +reader: + + HIC JACET + PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, + ZAEHDARMI COMES, + EX IMPERII CONCILIO, + VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI + EQUES. + QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, + QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES + PLUMBO CONFECIT: + VARII CIBI + CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA, + PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE, + HAUD SINE TUMULT DEVOLVENS, + IN STERCUS + PALAM CONVERTIT. + NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM + OPERA SEQUUNTUR. + SI MONUMENTUM QUAERIS, + FIMETUM ADSPICE. + PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [_sub dato_]; POSTREMUM [_sub dato_]. + + + +CHAPTER V. ROMANCE. + +"For long years," writes Teufelsdrockh, "had the poor Hebrew, in this +Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without +stubble, before ever the question once struck him with entire force: +For what?--_Beym Himmel_! For Food and Warmth! And are Food and Warmth +nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable?--Come of it what +might, I resolved to try." + +Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though +perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdrockh is now a man without +Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, +where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he +desperately steers off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass +of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdrockh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, +nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not _a Fleet_, sailing in +prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, in combination, wherein, +by mutual guidance, by all manner of loans and borrowings, each could +manifoldly aid the other? How wilt thou sail in unknown seas; and for +thyself find that shorter Northwest Passage to thy fair Spice-country +of a Nowhere?--A solitary rover, on such a voyage, with such nautical +tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay, as we forthwith discover, a +certain Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset; and as it were +falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. + +"If in youth," writes he once, "the Universe is majestically unveiling, +and everywhere Heaven revealing itself on Earth, nowhere to the Young +Man does this Heaven on Earth so immediately reveal itself as in the +Young Maiden. Strangely enough, in this strange life of ours, it +has been so appointed. On the whole, as I have often said, a +Person (_Personlichkeit_) is ever holy to us; a certain orthodox +Anthropomorphism connects my _Me_ with all _Thees_ in bonds of Love: but +it is in this approximation of the Like and Unlike, that such heavenly +attraction, as between Negative and Positive, first burns out into a +flame. Is the pitifullest mortal Person, think you, indifferent to us? +Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with him; to unite +him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or failing all +these, unite ourselves to him? But how much more, in this case of the +Like-Unlike! Here is conceded us the higher mystic possibility of such +a union, the highest in our Earth; thus, in the conducting medium of +Fantasy, flames forth that fire-development of the universal Spiritual +Electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, we first +emphatically denominate LOVE. + +"In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there already +blooms a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by some fairest Eve; nor, +in the stately vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that Garden, is a +Tree of Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof, wanting. +Perhaps too the whole is but the lovelier, if Cherubim and a Flaming +Sword divide it from all footsteps of men; and grant him, the +imaginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. Happy season of +virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial barrier; and +the sacred air-cities of Hope have not shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets +of Reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free! + +"As for our young Forlorn," continues Teufelsdrockh evidently meaning +himself, "in his secluded way of life, and with his glowing Fantasy, the +more fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his +feeling towards the Queens of this Earth was, and indeed is, altogether +unspeakable. A visible Divinity dwelt in them; to our young Friend all +women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them flitting past, in +their many-colored angel-plumage; or hovering mute and inaccessible on +the outskirts of _AEsthetic Tea_: all of air they were, all Soul and +Form; so lovely, like mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the +invisible Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very Heaven. That +he, our poor Friend, should ever win for himself one of these Gracefuls +(_Holden_)--_Ach Gott_! how could he hope it; should he not have died +under it? There was a certain delirious vertigo in the thought. + +"Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and Angels such as +the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of +true Sky-born, who visibly and audibly hovered round him wheresoever he +went; and they had that religious worship in his thought, though as yet +it was by their mere earthly and trivial name that he named them. But +now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual Air-maiden, incorporated +into tangibility and reality, should cast any electric glance of kind +eyes, saying thereby, 'Thou too mayest love and be loved;' and so kindle +him,--good Heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming +fire were probably kindled!" + +Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst forth, with +explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; as +indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, +we might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; +with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the +whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace +of Fantasy:" have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready, +on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze up? Neither, in this our +Life-element, are sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, +whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving "the outskirts +of _AEsthetic Tea_," flit higher; and, by electric Promethean glance, +kindle no despicable firework. Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, +and flamed off rocket-wise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendor, +each growing naturally from the other, through the several stages of a +happy Youthful Love; till the whole were safely burnt out; and the young +soul relieved with little damage! Happy, if it did not rather prove a +Conflagration and mad Explosion; painfully lacerating the heart itself; +nay perhaps bursting the heart in pieces (which were Death); or at best, +bursting the thin walls of your "reverberating furnace," so that it rage +thenceforth all unchecked among the contiguous combustibles (which +were Madness): till of the so fair and manifold internal world of our +Diogenes, there remained Nothing, or only the "crater of an extinct +volcano"! + +From multifarious Documents in this Bag _Capricornus_, and in the +adjacent ones on both sides thereof, it becomes manifest that our +philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he now looks, was heartily and +even frantically in Love: here therefore may our old doubts whether his +heart were of stone or of flesh give way. He loved once; not wisely +but too well. And once only: for as your Congreve needs a new case or +wrappage for every new rocket, so each human heart can properly exhibit +but one Love, if even one; the "First Love which is infinite" can be +followed by no second like unto it. In more recent years, accordingly, +the Editor of these Sheets was led to regard Teufelsdrockh as a man +not only who would never wed, but who would never even flirt; whom the +grand-climacteric itself, and _St. Martin's Summer_ of incipient Dotage, +would crown with no new myrtle-garland. To the Professor, women are +henceforth Pieces of Art; of Celestial Art, indeed, which celestial +pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has lost thought of +purchasing. + +Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how Teufelsdrockh +in this for him unexampled predicament, demeans himself; with what +specialties of successive configuration, splendor and color, his +Firework blazes off. Small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such can +meet with here. From amid these confused masses of Eulogy and Elegy, +with their mad Petrarchan and Werterean ware lying madly scattered among +all sorts of quite extraneous matter, not so much as the fair one's name +can be deciphered. For, without doubt, the title _Blumine_, whereby she +is here designated, and which means simply Goddess of Flowers, must be +fictitious. Was her real name Flora, then? But what was her surname, +or had she none? Of what station in Life was she; of what parentage, +fortune, aspect? Specially, by what Pre-established Harmony of +occurrences did the Lover and the Loved meet one another in so wide a +world; how did they behave in such meeting? To all which questions, not +unessential in a Biographic work, mere Conjecture must for most part +return answer. "It was appointed," says our Philosopher, "that the high +celestial orbit of Blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of our +Forlorn; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should fancy the upper +Sphere of Light was come down into this nether sphere of Shadows; and +finding himself mistaken, make noise enough." + +We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, and some +one's Cousin; high-born, and of high spirit; but unhappily dependent and +insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of moneyed +relatives. But how came "the Wanderer" into her circle? Was it by the +humid vehicle of _AEsthetic Tea_, or by the arid one of mere Business? +Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood; or of the Gnadige Frau, who, as +an ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to promote flirtation, +especially for young cynical Nondescripts? To all appearance, it was +chiefly by Accident, and the grace of Nature. + +"Thou fair Waldschloss," writes our Autobiographer, "what stranger ever +saw thee, were it even an absolved Auscultator, officially bearing in +his pocket the last _Relatio ex Actis_ he would ever write, but must +have paused to wonder! Noble Mansion! There stoodest thou, in deep +Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; +stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, +like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal. Beautiful rose +up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills; of the greenest +was their sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted +by some spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. To the unconscious +Wayfarer thou wert also as an Ammon's Temple, in the Libyan Waste; +where, for joy and woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay written. Well +might he pause and gaze; in that glance of his were prophecy and +nameless forebodings." + +But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscultator has handed +in his _Relatio ex Actis_; been invited to a glass of Rhine-wine; and +so, instead of returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty Town-home, +is ushered into the Garden-house, where sit the choicest party of dames +and cavaliers: if not engaged in AEsthetic Tea, yet in trustful evening +conversation, and perhaps Musical Coffee, for we hear of "harps and +pure voices making the stillness live." Scarcely, it would seem, is the +Garden-house inferior in respectability to the noble Mansion itself. +"Embowered amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odors +of thousand flowers, here sat that brave company; in front, from the +wide-opened doors, fair outlook over blossom and bush, over grove and +velvet green, stretching, undulating onwards to the remote Mountain +peaks: so bright, so mild, and everywhere the melody of birds and happy +creatures: it was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the SUIT +in the bosom-vesture of Summer herself. How came it that the Wanderer +advanced thither with such forecasting heart (_ahndungsvoll_), by the +side of his gay host? Did he feel that to these soft influences his hard +bosom ought to be shut; that here, once more, Fate had it in view to try +him; to mock him, and see whether there were Humor in him? + +"Next moment he finds himself presented to the party; and especially by +name to--Blumine! Peculiar among all dames and damosels glanced Blumine, +there in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights. Noblest maiden! +whom he bent to, in body and in soul; yet scarcely dared look at, for +the presence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrassment. + +"Blumine's was a name well known to him; far and wide was the fair one +heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices: from all which vague +colorings of Rumor, from the censures no less than from the praises, had +our friend painted for himself a certain imperious Queen of Hearts, and +blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting than your mere white +Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too little +naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public places; that light yet +so stately form; those dark tresses, shading a face where smiles and +sunlight played over earnest deeps: but all this he had seen only as a +magic vision, for him inaccessible, almost without reality. Her sphere +was too far from his; how should she ever think of him; O Heaven! how +should they so much as once meet together? And now that Rose-goddess +sits in the same circle with him; the light of _her_ eyes has smiled on +him; if he speak, she will hear it! Nay, who knows, since the heavenly +Sun looks into lowest valleys, but Blumine herself might have aforetime +noted the so unnotable; perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as he had +from hers, gathered wonder, gathered favor for him? Was the attraction, +the agitation mutual, then; pole and pole trembling towards contact, +when once brought into neighborhood? Say rather, heart swelling in +presence of the Queen of Hearts; like the Sea swelling when once +near its Moon! With the Wanderer it was even so: as in heavenward +gravitation, suddenly as at the touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul +is roused from its deepest recesses; and all that was painful and that +was blissful there, dim images, vague feelings of a whole Past and a +whole Future, are heaving in unquiet eddies within him. + +"Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend shrunk +forcibly together; and shrouded up his tremors and flutterings, of +what sort soever, in a safe cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming +Stolidity. How was it, then, that here, when trembling to the core of +his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but rose into strength, into +fearlessness and clearness? It was his guiding Genius (_Damon_) that +inspired him; he must go forth and meet his Destiny. Show thyself now, +whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even when your +anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first feels herself able +to transcend it; that she rises above it, in fiery victory; and borne on +new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even because so rapidly, +so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer remember, with a certain +satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat not silent but struck +adroitly into the stream of conversation; which thenceforth, to speak +with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say that he continued to +lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain inspiration was imparted him, +such inspiration as is still possible in our late era. The self-secluded +unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in free, glowing words; his soul is +as one sea of light, the peculiar home of Truth and Intellect; wherein +also Fantasy bodies forth form after form, radiant with all prismatic +hues." + +It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked one +"Philisitine;" who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly +pouring forth Philistinism (_Philistriositaten_.); little witting what +hero was here entering to demolish him! We omit the series of Socratic, +or rather Diogenic utterances, not unhappy in their way, whereby the +monster, "persuaded into silence," seems soon after to have withdrawn +for the night. "Of which dialectic marauder," writes our hero, "the +discomfiture was visibly felt as a benefit by most: but what were all +applauses to the glad smile, threatening every moment to become a laugh, +wherewith Blumine herself repaid the victor? He ventured to address her +she answered with attention: nay what if there were a slight tremor +in that silver voice; what if the red glow of evening were hiding a +transient blush! + +"The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought called forth +another: it was one of those rare seasons, when the soul expands with +full freedom, and man feels himself brought near to man. Gayly in light, +graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that circle; for +the burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers of Ceremony, which +are indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapor; and the +poor claims of _Me_ and _Thee_, no longer parted by rigid fences, +now flowed softly into one another; and Life lay all harmonious, +many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, the sovereign and owner +of which were Love only. Such music springs from kind hearts, in a kind +environment of place and time. And yet as the light grew more aerial +on the mountaintops, and the shadows fell longer over the valley, some +faint tone of sadness may have breathed through the heart; and, in +whispers more or less audible, reminded every one that as this bright +day was drawing towards its close, so likewise must the Day of Man's +Existence decline into dust and darkness; and with all its sick +toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink in the still Eternity. + +"To our Friend the hours seemed moments; holy was he and happy: the +words from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty grass; +all better feelings in his soul seemed to whisper, It is good for us +to be here. At parting, the Blumine's hand was in his: in the balmy +twilight, with the kind stars above them, he spoke something of meeting +again, which was not contradicted; he pressed gently those small +soft fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily +withdrawn." + +Poor Teufelsdrockh! it is clear to demonstration thou art smit: the +Queen of Hearts would see a "man of genius" also sigh for her; and +there, by art-magic, in that preternatural hour, has she bound +and spell-bound thee. "Love is not altogether a Delirium," says he +elsewhere; "yet has it many points in common therewith. I call it rather +a discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; +which discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or +demoniac, Inspiration or Insanity. But in the former case too, as in +common Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds itself to sight; on the so +petty domain of the Actual plants its Archimedes-lever, whereby to +move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy I might call the true +Heaven-gate and Hell-gate of man: his sensuous life is but the small +temporary stage (_Zeitbuhne_), whereon thick-streaming influences +from both these far yet near regions meet visibly, and act tragedy and +melodrama. Sense can support herself handsomely, in most countries, for +some eighteenpence a day; but for Fantasy planets and solar-systems will +not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the world, yet drinking no +better red wine than he had before." Alas! witness also your Diogenes, +flame-clad, scaling the upper Heaven, and verging towards Insanity, for +prize of a "high-souled Brunette," as if the Earth held but one and not +several of these! + +He says that, in Town, they met again: "day after day, like his heart's +sun, the blooming Blumine shone on him. Ah! a little while ago, and he +was yet in all darkness: him what Graceful (_Holde_) would ever love? +Disbelieving all things, the poor youth had never learned to believe +in himself. Withdrawn, in proud timidity, within his own fastnesses; +solitary from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he saw himself, +with a sad indignation, constrained to renounce the fairest hopes of +existence. And now, O now! 'She looks on thee,' cried he: 'she the +fairest, noblest; do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou art not despised? +The Heaven's-Messenger! All Heaven's blessings be hers!' Thus did +soft melodies flow through his heart; tones of an infinite gratitude; +sweetest intimations that he also was a man, that for him also +unutterable joys had been provided. + +"In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, laughter, tears, +and often with the inarticulate mystic speech of Music: such was the +element they now lived in; in such a many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by +this fairest of Orient Light-bringers must our Friend be blandished, and +the new Apocalypse of Nature enrolled to him. Fairest Blumine! And, even +as a Star, all Fire and humid Softness, a very Light-ray incarnate! Was +there so much as a fault, a 'caprice,' he could have dispensed with? Was +she not to him in very deed a Morning-star; did not her presence bring +with it airs from Heaven? As from AEolian Harps in the breath of +dawn, as from the Memnon's Statue struck by the rosy finger of Aurora, +unearthly music was around him, and lapped him into untried balmy Rest. +Pale Doubt fled away to the distance; Life bloomed up with happiness and +hope. The past, then, was all a haggard dream; he had been in the Garden +of Eden, then, and could not discern it! But lo now! the black walls +of his prison melt away; the captive is alive, is free. If he loved his +Disenchantress? _Ach Gott_! His whole heart and soul and life were hers, +but never had he named it Love: existence was all a Feeling, not yet +shaped into a Thought." + +Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it must be shaped; for +neither Disenchanter nor Disenchantress, mere "Children of Time," can +abide by Feeling alone. The Professor knows not, to this day, "how in +her soft, fervid bosom the Lovely found determination, even on hest +of Necessity, to cut asunder these so blissful bonds." He even appears +surprised at the "Duenna Cousin," whoever she may have been, "in whose +meagre hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from +the first, faintly approved of." We, even at such distance, can explain +it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one question: +What figure, at that period, was a Mrs. Teufelsdrockh likely to make in +polished society? Could she have driven so much as a brass-bound Gig, +or even a simple iron-spring one? Thou foolish "absolved Auscultator," +before whom lies no prospect of capital, will any yet known "religion +of young hearts" keep the human kitchen warm? Pshaw! thy divine Blumine, +when she "resigned herself to wed some richer," shows more philosophy, +though but "a woman of genius," than thou, a pretended man. + +Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love-mania, and with what +royal splendor it waxes, and rises. Let no one ask us to unfold the +glories of its dominant state; much less the horrors of its almost +instantaneous dissolution. How from such inorganic masses, henceforth +madder than ever, as lie in these Bags, can even fragments of a living +delineation be organized? Besides, of what profit were it? We view, with +a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier start from the ground, and +shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous +star: but what is there to look longer on, when once, by natural +elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded? A hapless +air-navigator, plunging, amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused +wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know +that Teufelsdrockh rose into the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a +natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular +one. For the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough +to do the like, paint it out for himself: considering only that if he, +for his perhaps comparatively insignificant mistress, underwent such +agonies and frenzies, what must Teufelsdrockh's have been, with a +fire-heart, and for a nonpareil Blumine! We glance merely at the final +scene:-- + +"One morning, he found his Morning-star all dimmed and dusky-red; the +fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed to have been weeping. Alas, +no longer a Morning-star, but a troublous skyey Portent, announcing that +the Doomsday had dawned! She said, in a tremulous voice, They were to +meet no more." The thunder-struck Air-sailor is not wanting to +himself in this dread hour: but what avails it? We omit the passionate +expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since all was vain, and not +even an explanation was conceded him; and hasten to the catastrophe. +"'Farewell, then, Madam!' said he, not without sternness, for his stung +pride helped him. She put her hand in his, she looked in his face, tears +started to her eyes; in wild audacity he clasped her to his bosom; +their lips were joined, their two souls, like two dew-drops, rushed into +one,--for the first time and for the last!" Thus was Teufelsdrockh made +immortal by a kiss. And then? Why, then--"thick curtains of Night rushed +over his soul, as rose the immeasurable Crash of Doom; and through the +ruins as of a shivered Universe was he falling, falling, towards the +Abyss." + + +CHAPTER VI. SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. + +We have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, matters must +often be expected to take a course of their own; that in so multiplex, +intricate a nature, there might be channels, both for admitting and +emitting, such as the Psychologist had seldom noted; in short, that on +no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the joy-storm nor in the +woe-storm could you predict his demeanor. + +To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that the +so passionate Teufelsdrockh precipitated through "a shivered Universe" +in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things which he can +next do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing Satanic Poetry; or +blow out his brains. In the progress towards any of which consummations, +do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, +brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, +stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson itself? + +Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. He quietly lifts his +_Pilgerstab_ (Pilgrim-staff), "old business being soon wound up;" and +begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the terraqueous Globe! +Curious it is, indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such +intensity of feeling, above all, with these unconscionable habits of +Exaggeration in speech, he combines that wonderful stillness of his, +that stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his sudden bereavement, in +this matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real Doomsday and +Dissolution of Nature, in which light doubtless it partly appeared +to himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby; but rather +is compressed closer. For once, as we might say, a Blumine by magic +appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things +rush out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from their +glass vial: but no sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, than the +strange casket of a heart springs to again; and perhaps there is now no +key extant that will open it; for a Teufelsdrockh as we remarked, +will not love a second time. Singular Diogenes! No sooner has that +heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard +it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. "One +highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel, had recalled +him as out of Death-shadows into celestial Life: but a gleam of Tophet +passed over the face of his Angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and +heard the laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture," adds he, "whereby +the Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean-waters: a lying +vision, yet not wholly a lie, for _he_ saw it." But what things soever +passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despairings +soever Teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he has the goodness to +conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence. We know it well; the +first mad paroxysm past, our brave Gneschen collected his dismembered +philosophies, and buttoned himself together; he was meek, silent, or +spoke of the weather and the Journals: only by a transient knitting of +those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of those eyes, glancing one knew +not whether with tear-dew or with fierce fire,--might you have guessed +what a Gehenna was within: that a whole Satanic School were spouting, +though inaudibly, there. To consume your own choler, as some chimneys +consume their own smoke; to keep a whole Satanic School spouting, if it +must spout, inaudibly, is a negative yet no slight virtue, nor one of +the commonest in these times. + +Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the strange +measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent Insanity; whereof +indeed the actual condition of these Documents in _Capricornus_ and +_Aquarius is_ no bad emblem. His so unlimited Wanderings, toilsome +enough, are without assigned or perhaps assignable aim; internal Unrest +seems his sole guidance; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of +the Prophet had fallen on him, and he were "made like unto a wheel." +Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these Paper-bags aggravates our +obscurity. Quite without note of preparation, for example, we come upon +the following slip: "A peculiar feeling it is that will rise in the +Traveller, when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he descries +lying far below, embosomed among its groves and green natural bulwarks, +and all diminished to a toy-box, the fair Town, where so many souls, as +it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic. Its +white steeple is then truly a starward-pointing finger; the canopy +of blue smoke seems like a sort of Lifebreath: for always, of its own +unity, the soul gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love; thus +does the little Dwelling-place of men, in itself a congeries of houses +and huts, become for us an individual, almost a person. But what +thousand other thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves +been the arena of joyous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle +we were rocked in still stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell +there, if our Buried ones there slumber!" Does Teufelsdrockh as the +wounded eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military +deserters, and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in +the direction of their birthland,--fly first, in this extremity, towards +his native Entepfuhl; but reflecting that there no help awaits him, take +only one wistful look from the distance, and then wend elsewhither? + +Little happier seems to be his next flight: into the wilds of Nature; as +if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. So at least we incline +to interpret the following Notice, separated from the former by some +considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing noteworthy:-- + +"Mountains were not new to him; but rarely are Mountains seen in such +combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks are of that sort called +Primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in +masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, +is here tempered by a singular airiness of form, and softness of +environment: in a climate favorable to vegetation, the gray cliff, +itself covered with lichens, shoots up through a garment of foliage +or verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round +the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates with +Grandeur: you ride through stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed +by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding amid broken +shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly emerging into some +emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a Lake, and +man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if Peace had +established herself in the bosom of Strength. + +"To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the Son of Time +not pretend: still less if some Spectre haunt him from the Past; and the +Future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, spectre-bearing. Reasonably might +the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of this world's +happiness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that is not +mad? Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original +Greek if that suit thee better: 'Whoso can look on Death will start at +no shadows.' + +"From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention called outwards; for +now the Valley closes in abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain +mass, the stony water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished on +horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the evening +sunset light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some moments +there. An upland irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in complex +branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent towards every +quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are beneath your feet, and +folded together: only the loftier summits look down here and there as on +a second plain; lakes also lie clear and earnest in their solitude. No +trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who fashioned +that little visible link of Highway, here, as would seem, scaling the +inaccessible, to unite Province with Province. But sunwards, lo you! how +it towers sheer up, a world of Mountains, the diadem and centre of the +mountain region! A hundred and a hundred savage peaks, in the last light +of Day; all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the +wilderness; there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the +night when Noah's Deluge first dried! Beautiful, nay solemn, was the +sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He gazed over those stupendous masses +with wonder, almost with longing desire; never till this hour had he +known Nature, that she was One, that she was his Mother and divine. And +as the ruddy glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had +now departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death and of Life, +stole through his soul; and he felt as if Death and Life were one, as if +the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in +that splendor, and his own spirit were therewith holding communion. + +"The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. Emerging from the +hidden Northward, to sink soon into the hidden Southward, came a gay +Barouche-and-four: it was open; servants and postilions wore wedding +favors: that happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their +marriage evening! Few moments brought them near: _Du Himmel_! It was +Herr Towgood and--Blumine! With slight unrecognizing salutation they +passed me; plunged down amid the neighboring thickets, onwards, to +Heaven, and to England; and I, in my friend Richter's words, _I remained +alone, behind them, with the Night_." + +Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be the place to +insert an observation, gleaned long ago from the great _Clothes-Volume_, +where it stands with quite other intent: "Some time before Small-pox +was extirpated," says the Professor, "there came a new malady of +the spiritual sort on Europe: I mean the epidemic, now endemical, of +View-hunting. Poets of old date, being privileged with Senses, had also +enjoyed external Nature; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup which +holds good or bad liquor for us; that is to say, in silence, or with +slight incidental commentary: never, as I compute, till after the +_Sorrows of Werter_, was there man found who would say: Come let us make +a Description! Having drunk the liquor, come let us eat the glass! Of +which endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to seek." Too true! + +We reckon it more important to remark that the Professor's Wanderings, +so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear +insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not. That +Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have withered up +what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him: Life has +become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long years, our Friend, +flying from spectres, has to stumble about at random, and naturally with +more haste than progress. + +Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from afar, in this +extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his; the simplest record of which, +were clear record possible, would fill volumes. Hopeless is the +obscurity, unspeakable the confusion. He glides from country to country, +from condition to condition; vanishing and reappearing, no man can +calculate how or where. Through all quarters of the world he wanders, +and apparently through all circles of society. If in any scene, perhaps +difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a time, and forms +connections, be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. Let him sink +out of sight as Private Scholar (_Privatsirender_), living by the grace +of God in some European capital, you may next find him as Hadjee in the +neighborhood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable Phantasmagoria, capricious, +quick-changing; as if our Traveller, instead of limbs and highways, +had transported himself by some wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The +whole, too, imparted emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that +collection of Street-Advertisements); with only some touch of direct +historical notice sparingly interspersed: little light-islets in the +world of haze! So that, from this point, the Professor is more of an +enigma than ever. In figurative language, we might say he becomes, not +indeed a spirit, yet spiritualized, vaporized. Fact unparalleled in +Biography: The river of his History, which we have traced from its +tiniest fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing +current, into the ocean, here dashes itself over that terrific Lover's +Leap; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous +clouds of spray! Low down it indeed collects again into pools and +plashes; yet only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, +into a general stream. To cast a glance into certain of those pools and +plashes, and trace whither they run, must, for a chapter or two, form +the limit of our endeavor. + +For which end doubtless those direct historical Notices, where they can +be met with, are the best. Nevertheless, of this sort too there occurs +much, which, with our present light, it were questionable to emit. +Teufelsdrockh vibrating everywhere between the highest and the lowest +levels, comes into contact with public History itself. For example, +those conversations and relations with illustrious Persons, as Sultan +Mahmoud, the Emperor Napoleon, and others, are they not as yet rather +of a diplomatic character than of a biographic? The Editor, appreciating +the sacredness of crowned heads, nay perhaps suspecting the possible +trickeries of a Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew this province for the +present; a new time may bring new insight and a different duty. + +If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Purpose, for there was +none, yet with what immediate outlooks; at all events, in what mood of +mind, the Professor undertook and prosecuted this world-pilgrimage,--the +answer is more distinct than favorable. "A nameless Unrest," says he, +"urged me forward; to which the outward motion was some momentary lying +solace. Whither should I go? My Loadstars were blotted out; in that +canopy of grim fire shone no star. Yet forward must I; the ground burnt +under me; there was no rest for the sole of my foot. I was alone, alone! +Ever too the strong inward longing shaped Phantasms for itself: towards +these, one after the other, must I fruitlessly wander. A feeling I +had, that for my fever-thirst there was and must be somewhere a healing +Fountain. To many fondly imagined Fountains, the Saints' Wells of these +days, did I pilgrim; to great Men, to great Cities, to great Events: but +found there no healing. In strange countries, as in the well-known; in +savage deserts, as in the press of corrupt civilization, it was ever +the same: how could your Wanderer escape from--_his own Shadow_? +Nevertheless still Forward! I felt as if in great haste; to do I saw not +what. From the depths of my own heart, it called to me, Forwards! The +winds and the streams, and all Nature sounded to me, Forwards! _Ach +Gott_, I was even, once for all, a Son of Time." + +From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic School was still +active enough? He says elsewhere: "The _Enchiridion of Epictetus_ I had +ever with me, often as my sole rational companion; and regret to +mention that the nourishment it yielded was trifling." Thou foolish +Teufelsdrockh How could it else? Hadst thou not Greek enough to +understand thus much: _The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought_, +though it were the noblest? + +"How I lived?" writes he once: "Friend, hast thou considered the 'rugged +all-nourishing Earth,' as Sophocles well names her; how she feeds +the sparrow on the house-top, much more her darling, man? While thou +stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of victual. My breakfast of +tea has been cooked by a Tartar woman, with water of the Amur, who wiped +her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I have roasted wild eggs in +the sand of Sahara; I have awakened in Paris _Estrapades_ and Vienna +_Malzleins_, with no prospect of breakfast beyond elemental liquid. That +I had my Living to seek saved me from Dying,--by suicide. In our +busy Europe, is there not an everlasting demand for Intellect, in the +chemical, mechanical, political, religious, educational, commercial +departments? In Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes? Living! +Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive Soul; how, as with +its little finger, it can create provision enough for the body (of a +Philosopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite other than +provision; namely, spectres to torment itself withal." + +Poor Teufelsdrockh! Flying with Hunger always parallel to him; and a +whole Infernal Chase in his rear; so that the countenance of Hunger is +comparatively a friend's! Thus must he, in the temper of ancient Cain, +or of the modern Wandering Jew,--save only that he feels himself not +guilty and but suffering the pains of guilt,--wend to and fro with +aimless speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface of the Earth (by +footprints), write his _Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh_; even as the great +Goethe, in passionate words, had to write his _Sorrows of Werter_, +before the spirit freed herself, and he could become a Man. Vain truly +is the hope of your swiftest Runner to escape "from his own Shadow"! +Nevertheless, in these sick days, when the Born of Heaven first descries +himself (about the age of twenty) in a world such as ours, richer +than usual in two things, in Truths grown obsolete, and Trades grown +obsolete,--what can the fool think but that it is all a Den of Lies, +wherein whoso will not speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle and +despair? Whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the publishing +of some such Work of Art, in one or the other dialect, becomes almost +a necessity. For what is it properly but an Altercation with the +Devil, before you begin honestly Fighting him? Your Byron publishes +his _Sorrows of Lord George_, in verse and in prose, and copiously +otherwise: your Bonaparte represents his _Sorrows of Napoleon_ Opera, +in an all-too stupendous style; with music of cannon-volleys, +and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires of +Conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of embattled +Hosts and the sound of falling Cities.--Happier is he who, like our +Clothes-Philosopher, can write such matter, since it must be written, +on the insensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also survive the +writing thereof! + + + +CHAPTER VII. THE EVERLASTING NO. + +Under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our Professor has now +shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual nature is nevertheless +progressive, and growing: for how can the "Son of Time," in any case, +stand still? We behold him, through those dim years, in a state of +crisis, of transition: his mad Pilgrimings, and general solution +into aimless Discontinuity, what is all this but a mad Fermentation; +wherefrom the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve +itself? + +Such transitions are ever full of pain: thus the Eagle when he moults is +sickly; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly dash off the old one +upon rocks. What Stoicism soever our Wanderer, in his individual acts +and motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of +anarchy and misery raging within; coruscations of which flash out: as, +indeed, how could there be other? Have we not seen him disappointed, +bemocked of Destiny, through long years? All that the young heart might +desire and pray for has been denied; nay, as in the last worst instance, +offered and then snatched away. Ever an "excellent Passivity;" but of +useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the former as Food to Hunger, +nothing granted: till at length, in this wild Pilgrimage, he must +forcibly seize for himself an Activity, though useless, unreasonable. +Alas, his cup of bitterness, which had been filling drop by drop, ever +since that first "ruddy morning" in the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was at +the very lip; and then with that poison-drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine +business, it runs over, and even hisses over in a deluge of foam. + +He himself says once, with more justness than originality: "Men is, +properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other possession but Hope; +this world of his is emphatically the Place of Hope." What, then, was +our Professor's possession? We see him, for the present, quite shut out +from Hope; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round +into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. + +Alas, shut out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we yet dream of! +For, as he wanders wearisomely through this world, he has now lost +all tidings of another and higher. Full of religion, or at least of +religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not +that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: "Doubt had darkened into +Unbelief," says he; "shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till +you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." To such readers as have +reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily +discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, +speculative and practical, that Soul is not synonymous with Stomach; +who understand, therefore, in our Friend's words, "that, for man's +well-being, Faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, +Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; +and without it, Worldlings puke up their sick existence, by suicide, in +the midst of luxury:" to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral +nature, the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of everything. +Unhappy young man! All wounds, the crush of long-continued Destitution, +the stab of false Friendship and of false Love, all wounds in thy so +genial heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth been +withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in his wild way: "Is there no God, +then; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first +Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and _see_ing it go? Has the +word Duty no meaning; is what we call Duty no divine Messenger and +Guide, but a false earthly Phantasm, made up of Desire and Fear, of +emanations from the Gallows and from Doctor Graham's Celestial-Bed? +Happiness of an approving Conscience! Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom +admiring men have since named Saint, feel that _he_ was 'the chief of +sinners;' and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit (_wohlgemuth_), spend much +of his time in fiddling? Foolish Wordmonger and Motive-grinder, who in +thy Logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and +wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure,--I tell +thee, Nay! To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever +the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of +Virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of suffering only, but of +injustice. What then? Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some +Passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others +_profit_ by? I know not: only this I know, If what thou namest Happiness +be our true aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity and sound +Digestion man may front much. But what, in these dull unimaginative +days, are the terrors of Conscience to the diseases of the Liver! Not on +Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing +our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and +live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his Elect!" + +Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, +shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and +receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once-fair +world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild beasts, or the +shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no Pillar of Cloud by day, +and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such +length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him. "But what boots it (_was +thut's_)?" cries he: "it is but the common lot in this era. Not having +come to spiritual majority prior to the _Siecle de Louis Quinze_, and +not being born purely a Loghead (_Dummkopf_ ), thou hadst no other +outlook. The whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their old +Temples of the Godhead, which for long have not been rain-proof, crumble +down; and men ask now: Where is the Godhead; our eyes never saw him?" + +Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call our +Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no era +of his life was he more decisively the Servant of Goodness, the Servant +of God, than even now when doubting God's existence. "One circumstance I +note," says he: "after all the nameless woe that Inquiry, which for +me, what it is not always, was genuine Love of Truth, had wrought me! I +nevertheless still loved Truth, and would bate no jot of my allegiance +to her. 'Truth!' I cried, 'though the Heavens crush me for following +her: no Falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of +Apostasy.' In conduct it was the same. Had a divine Messenger from the +clouds, or miraculous Handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed +to me _This thou shalt do_, with what passionate readiness, as I often +thought, would I have done it, had it been leaping into the +infernal Fire. Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, and Mechanical +Profit-and-Loss Philosophies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallucination +they had brought on, was the Infinite nature of Duty still dimly present +to me: living without God in the world, of God's light I was not utterly +bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, +could nowhere see Him, nevertheless in my heart He was present, and His +heaven-written Law still stood legible and sacred there." + +Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and spiritual +destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in his silent soul, have endured! +"The painfullest feeling," writes he, "is that of your own Feebleness +(_Unkraft_); ever, as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true +misery. And yet of your Strength there is and can be no clear feeling, +save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between +vague wavering Capability and fixed indubitable Performance, what a +difference! A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly +in us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively +discernible. Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its +natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept, +_Know thyself_; till it be translated into this partially possible one, +_Know what thou canst work at_. + +"But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net-result of my +Workings amounted as yet simply to--Nothing. How then could I believe in +my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? Ever did this +agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous question, remain to +me insoluble: Hast thou a certain Faculty, a certain Worth, such even +as the most have not; or art thou the completest Dullard of these modern +times? Alas, the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could +I believe? Had not my first, last Faith in myself, when even to me the +Heavens seemed laid open, and I dared to love, been all too cruelly +belied? The speculative Mystery of Life grew ever more mysterious to me: +neither in the practical Mystery had I made the slightest progress, but +been everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast out. A feeble +unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude, I seemed to have nothing +given me but eyes, whereby to discern my own wretchedness. Invisible yet +impenetrable walls, as of Enchantment, divided me from all living: was +there, in the wide world, any true bosom I could press trustfully to +mine? O Heaven, No, there was none! I kept a lock upon my lips: why +should I speak much with that shifting variety of so-called Friends, +in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls Friendship was but an +incredible tradition? In such cases, your resource is to talk little, +and that little mostly from the Newspapers. Now when I look back, it was +a strange isolation I then lived in. The men and women around me, even +speaking with me, were but Figures; I had, practically, forgotten that +they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In the midst of +their crowded streets and assemblages, I walked solitary; and (except as +it was my own heart, not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, +as the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have been, could I, +like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; +for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were +more frightful: but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, the very +Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To +me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of +Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling +on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh, the +vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living +banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; +nay, unless the Devil is your God?" + +A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, moreover, as the +worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution even of a Teufelsdrockh +threaten to fail? We conjecture that he has known sickness; and, in +spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the chronic sort. +Hear this, for example: "How beautiful to die of broken-heart, on Paper! +Quite another thing in practice; every window of your Feeling, even of +your Intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that no +pure ray can enter; a whole Drug-shop in your inwards; the fordone soul +drowning slowly in quagmires of Disgust!" + +Putting all which external and internal miseries together, may we not +find in the following sentences, quite in our Professor's still vein, +significance enough? "From Suicide a certain after-shine (_Nachschein_) +of Christianity withheld me: perhaps also a certain indolence of +character; for, was not that a remedy I had at any time within reach? +Often, however, was there a question present to me: Should some one now, +at the turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of Space, into the +other World, or other No-world, by pistol-shot,--how were it? On which +ground, too, I have often, in sea-storms and sieged cities and other +death-scenes, exhibited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely +enough, for courage." + +"So had it lasted," concludes the Wanderer, "so had it lasted, as in +bitter protracted Death-agony, through long years. The heart within +me, unvisited by any heavenly dew-drop, was smouldering in sulphurous, +slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear; +or once only when I, murmuring half-audibly, recited Faust's Death-song, +that wild _Selig der den er im Siegesglanze findet_ (Happy whom _he_ +finds in Battle's splendor), and thought that of this last Friend even +I was not forsaken, that Destiny itself could not doom me not to die. +Having no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it of Man or +of Devil: nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing, could the +Arch-Devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I +might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely enough, I lived +in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, +apprehensive of I knew not what: it seemed as if all things in the +Heavens above and the Earth beneath would hurt me; as if the Heavens +and the Earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I, +palpitating, waited to be devoured. + +"Full of such humor, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole French +Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dog-day, after much perambulation, +toiling along the dirty little _Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer_, among +civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot +as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace; whereby doubtless my spirits were little +cheered; when, all at once, there rose a Thought in me, and I asked +myself: 'What _art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost +thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable +biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? +Well, Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and +Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart; canst thou +not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, +trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it +come, then; I will meet it and defy it!' And as I so thought, there +rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear +away from me forever. I was strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, +almost a god. Ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed: +not Fear or whining Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed +Defiance. + +"Thus had the EVERLASTING NO (_das ewige Nein_) pealed authoritatively +through all the recesses of my Being, of my ME; and then was it that +my whole ME stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with emphasis +recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most important transaction in +Life, may that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point +of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said: 'Behold, thou art +fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's);' to which +my whole Me now made answer: '_I_ am not thine, but Free, and forever +hate thee!' + +"It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual New-birth, +or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a +Man." + + + +CHAPTER VIII. CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. + +Though, after this "Baphometic Fire-baptism" of his, our Wanderer +signifies that his Unrest was but increased; as, indeed, "Indignation +and Defiance," especially against things in general, are not the most +peaceable inmates; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was no +longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that henceforth it had at least a fixed +centre to revolve round. For the fire-baptized soul, long so scathed +and thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is its +Baphometic Baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus +gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the +remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will doubtless +by degrees be conquered and pacificated. Under another figure, we might +say, if in that great moment, in the _Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer_, the +old inward Satanic School was not yet thrown out of doors, it received +peremptory judicial notice to quit;--whereby, for the rest, its +howl-chantings, Ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, +might, in the mean while, become only the more tumultuous, and difficult +to keep secret. + +Accordingly, if we scrutinize these Pilgrimings well, there is perhaps +discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in their madness. Not +wholly as a Spectre does Teufelsdrockh now storm through the world; +at worst as a spectra-fighting Man, nay who will one day be a +Spectre-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many "Saints' Wells," +and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little +secular wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is ministered. +In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to "eat his own +heart;" and clutches round him outwardly on the NOT-ME for wholesomer +food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a much more natural +state? + +"Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I failed not to look +upon with interest. How beautiful to see thereby, as through a long +vista, into the remote Time; to have, as it were, an actual section of +almost the earliest Past brought safe into the Present, and set before +your eyes! There, in that old City, was a live ember of Culinary Fire +put down, say only two thousand years ago; and there, burning more or +less triumphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it has burnt, +and still burns, and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. Ah! and +the far more mysterious live ember of Vital Fire was then also put down +there; and still miraculously burns and spreads; and the smoke and +ashes thereof (in these Judgment-Halls and Churchyards), and its +bellows-engines (in these Churches), thou still seest; and its flame, +looking out from every kind countenance, and every hateful one, still +warms thee or scorches thee. + +"Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results are aeriform, +mystic, and preserved in Tradition only: such are his Forms of +Government, with the Authority they rest on; his Customs, or Fashions +both of Cloth-habits and of Soul-habits; much more his collective +stock of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has acquired of manipulating +Nature: all these things, as indispensable and priceless as they +are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, +spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son; if you demand +sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. Visible Ploughmen and +Hammermen there have been, ever from Cain and Tubal-cain downwards: +but where does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic, and +other Manufacturing SKILL lie warehoused? It transmits itself on the +atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision); it is a +thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like manner, ask +me not, Where are the LAWS; where is the GOVERNMENT? In vain wilt thou +go to Schonbrunn, to Downing Street, to the Palais Bourbon; thou findest +nothing there but brick or stone houses, and some bundles of Papers +tied with tape. Where, then, is that same cunningly devised almighty +GOVERNMENT of theirs to be laid hands on? Everywhere, yet nowhere: seen +only in its works, this too is a thing aeriform, invisible; or if you +will, mystic and miraculous. So spiritual (_geistig_) is our whole daily +Life: all that we do springs out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force; +only like a little Cloud-image, or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the +Actual body itself forth from the great mystic Deep. + +"Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I reckon up to the +extent of three: Cities, with their Cabinets and Arsenals; then tilled +Fields, to either or to both of which divisions Roads with their Bridges +may belong; and thirdly--Books. In which third truly, the last invented, +lies a worth far surpassing that of the two others. Wondrous indeed +is the virtue of a true Book. Not like a dead city of stones, yearly +crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled field, but then +a spiritual field: like a spiritual tree, let me rather say, it stands +from year to year, and from age to age (we have Books that already +number some hundred and fifty human ages); and yearly comes its new +produce of leaves (Commentaries, Deductions, Philosophical, Political +Systems; or were it only Sermons, Pamphlets, Journalistic Essays), every +one of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men. +O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries +or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name +City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or +City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, +namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble +and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and +Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will +pilgrim.--Fool! why journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian +fervor, to gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of +Sacchara? These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking +over the Desert, foolishly enough, for the last three thousand years: +but canst thou not open thy Hebrew BIBLE, then, or even Luther's Version +thereof?" + +No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in Battle, yet on some +Battle-field; which, we soon gather, must be that of Wagram; so that +here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of date. +Omitting much, let us impart what follows:-- + +"Horrible enough! A whole Marchfeld strewed with shell-splinters, +cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men and horses; stragglers still +remaining not so much as buried. And those red mould heaps; ay, there +lie the Shells of Men, out of which all the Life and Virtue has been +blown; and now are they swept together, and crammed down out of sight, +like blown Egg-shells!--Did Nature, when she bade the Donau bring down +his mould-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian Heights, and +spread them out here into the softest, richest level,--intend thee, O +Marchfeld, for a corn-bearing Nursery, whereon her children might be +nursed; or for a Cockpit, wherein they might the more commodiously be +throttled and tattered? Were thy three broad Highways, meeting here from +the ends of Europe, made for Ammunition-wagons, then? Were thy Wagrams +and Stillfrieds but so many ready-built Casemates, wherein the house of +Hapsburg might batter with artillery, and with artillery be battered? +Konig Ottokar, amid yonder hillocks, dies under Rodolf's truncheon; +here Kaiser Franz falls a-swoon under Napoleon's: within which five +centuries, to omit the others, how has thy breast, fair Plain, been +defaced and defiled! The greensward is torn up and trampled down; man's +fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedge-rows, and pleasant dwellings, +blown away with gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, +hideous Place of Skulls.--Nevertheless, Nature is at work; neither shall +these Powder-Devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her: but all +that gore and carnage will be shrouded in, absorbed into manure; and +next year the Marchfeld will be green, nay greener. Thrifty unwearied +Nature, ever out of our great waste educing some little profit of thy +own,--how dost thou, from the very carcass of the Killer, bring Life for +the Living! + +"What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and +upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, +in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. +From these, by certain 'Natural Enemies' of the French, there are +successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied +men; Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she +has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even +trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another +hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. +Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all +dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two +thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till +wanted. And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty +similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner +wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come +into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with +a gun in his hand. Straightaway the word 'Fire!' is given; and they +blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful +craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and +anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil +is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest +strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, unconsciously, +by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! +their Governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, +had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.--Alas, so is it +in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands; still as of old, +'what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must pay the piper!'--In that +fiction of the English Smollett, it is true, the final Cessation of War +is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth; where the two Natural Enemies, +in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe, filled with Brimstone; light the +same, and smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in: +but from such predicted Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and +contentious centuries, may still divide us!" + +Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away from his +own sorrows, over the many-colored world, and pertinently enough note +what is passing there. We may remark, indeed, that for the matter of +spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few periods of his +life were richer than this. Internally, there is the most momentous +instructive Course of Practical Philosophy, with Experiments, going +on; towards the right comprehension of which his Peripatetic habits, +favorable to Meditation, might help him rather than hinder. Externally, +again, as he wanders to and fro, there are, if for the longing heart +little substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough in these so +boundless Travels of his, granting that the Satanic School was even +partially kept down, what an incredible knowledge of our Planet, and +its Inhabitants and their Works, that is to say, of all knowable things, +might not Teufelsdrockh acquire! + +"I have read in most Public Libraries," says he, "including those of +Constantinople and Samarcand: in most Colleges, except the Chinese +Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen that there was no studying. +Unknown Languages have I oftenest gathered from their natural repertory, +the Air, by my organ of Hearing; Statistics, Geographics, Topographics +came, through the Eye, almost of their own accord. The ways of Man, how +he seeks food, and warmth, and protection for himself, in most regions, +are ocularly known to me. Like the great Hadrian, I meted out much of +the terraqueous Globe with a pair of Compasses that belonged to myself +only. + +"Of great Scenes why speak? Three summer days, I lingered reflecting, +and even composing (_dichtete_), by the Pine-chasms of Vaucluse; and in +that clear Lakelet moistened my bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees +of Tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great Wall of +China I have seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and +covered with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry.--Great Events, +also, have not I witnessed? Kings sweated down (_ausgemergelt_) into +Berlin-and-Milan Customhouse-Officers; the World well won, and the World +well lost; oftener than once a hundred thousand individuals shot (by +each other) in one day. All kindreds and peoples and nations dashed +together, and shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might ferment +there, and in time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith +convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven, could not +escape me. + +"For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection; and can perhaps +boast that few such in this era have wholly escaped me. Great Men +are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine BOOK OF +REVELATIONS, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by +some named HISTORY; to which inspired Texts your numerous talented men, +and your innumerable untalented men, are the better or worse exegetic +Commentaries, and wagon-load of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, +weekly Sermons. For my study, the inspired Texts themselves! Thus did +not I, in very early days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand +behind the field-chairs, under that shady Tree at Treisnitz by the Jena +Highway; waiting upon the great Schiller and greater Goethe; and hearing +what I have not forgotten. For--" + +--But at this point the Editor recalls his principle of caution, some +time ago laid down, and must suppress much. Let not the sacredness of +Laurelled, still more, of Crowned Heads, be tampered with. Should we, +at a future day, find circumstances altered, and the time come for +Publication, then may these glimpses into the privacy of the Illustrious +be conceded; which for the present were little better than treacherous, +perhaps traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron, therefore, of Pope +Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and the "White Water-roses" (Chinese Carbonari) +with their mysteries, no notice here! Of Napoleon himself we shall only, +glancing from afar, remark that Teufelsdrockh's relation to him seems to +have been of very varied character. At first we find our poor +Professor on the point of being shot as a spy; then taken into private +conversation, even pinched on the ear, yet presented with no money; +at last indignantly dismissed, almost thrown out of doors, as an +"Ideologist." "He himself," says the Professor, "was among the +completest Ideologists, at least Ideopraxists: in the Idea (_in der +Idee_) he lived, moved and fought. The man was a Divine Missionary, +though unconscious of it; and preached, through the cannon's throat, +that great doctrine, _La carriere ouverte aux talens_ (The Tools to him +that can handle them), which is our ultimate Political Evangel, +wherein alone can liberty lie. Madly enough he preached, it is true, as +Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, +amid much frothy rant; yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. +Or call him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell +unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did +not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, +notwithstanding, the peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the +boundless harvest, bless." + +More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdrockh's appearance +and emergence (we know not well whence) in the solitude of the North +Cape, on that June Midnight. He has a "light-blue Spanish cloak" +hanging round him, as his "most commodious, principal, indeed sole +upper-garment;" and stands there, on the World-promontory, looking +over the infinite Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now +motionless indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. + +"Silence as of death," writes he; "for Midnight, even in the +Arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs +ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, +over which in the utmost North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if +he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and +cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, +like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide +itself under my feet. In such moments, Solitude also is invaluable; for +who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies all Europe and +Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before him the silent +Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a +porch-lamp? + +"Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or monster, scrambling +from among the rock-hollows; and, shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean +Bear, hails me in Russian speech: most probably, therefore, a Russian +Smuggler. With courteous brevity, I signify my indifference to +contraband trade, my humane intentions, yet strong wish to be private. +In vain: the monster, counting doubtless on his superior stature, +and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were it with +murder, continues to advance; ever assailing me with his importunate +train-oil breath; and now has advanced, till we stand both on the verge +of the rock, the deep Sea rippling greedily down below. What argument +will avail? On the thick Hyperborean, cherubic reasoning, seraphic +eloquence were lost. Prepared for such extremity, I, deftly enough, +whisk aside one step; draw out, from my interior reservoirs, a +sufficient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say, 'Be so obliging as retire, +Friend (_Er ziehe sich zuruck, Freund_), and with promptitude!' This +logic even the Hyperborean understands: fast enough, with apologetic, +petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well as +homicidal purposes, need not return. + +"Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men +alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more +_Mind_, though all but no _Body_ whatever, then canst thou kill me +first, and art the taller. Hereby, at last, is the Goliath powerless, +and the David resistless; savage Animalism is nothing, inventive +Spiritualism is all. + +"With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things, in this +so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. Two little visual +Spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of +the UNFATHOMABLE, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon,--make +pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, +simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into +Dissolution; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant! Deuce on it +(_verdammt_), the little spitfires!--Nay, I think with old Hugo von +Trimberg: 'God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see +his wondrous Manikins here below.'" + +But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great generality, +which is our chief quest here: How prospered the inner man of +Teufelsdrockh, under so much outward shifting! Does Legion still lurk +in him, though repressed; or has he exorcised that Devil's Brood? We +can answer that the symptoms continue promising. Experience is the +grand spiritual Doctor; and with him Teufelsdrockh has now been long a +patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend belong +to the numerous class of Incurables, which seems not likely, some cure +will doubtless be effected. We should rather say that Legion, or the +Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, but next +to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the +while, in a quiet but no comfortable state. + +"At length, after so much roasting," thus writes our Autobiographer, "I +was what you might name calcined. Pray only that it be not rather, as is +the more frequent issue, reduced to a _caput-mortuum_! But in any +case, by mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many things. +Wretchedness was still wretched; but I could now partly see through it, +and despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had I not +found a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and, when I looked through his +brave garnitures, miserable enough? Thy wishes have all been sniffed +aside, thought I: but what, had they even been all granted! Did not the +Boy Alexander weep because he had not two Planets to conquer; or a whole +Solar System; or after that, a whole Universe? _Ach Gott_, when I gazed +into these Stars, have they not looked down on me as if with pity, from +their serene spaces; like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the +little lot of man! Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our +own, have been swallowed up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them +any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still +shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first +noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little +Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art +still Nothing, Nobody: true; but who, then, is Something, Somebody? For +thee the Family of Man has no use; it rejects thee; thou art wholly as a +dissevered limb: so be it; perhaps it is better so!" + +Too-heavy-laden Teufelsdrockh! Yet surely his bands are loosening; one +day he will hurl the burden far from him, and bound forth free and with +a second youth. + +"This," says our Professor, "was the CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE I had now +reached; through which whoso travels from the Negative Pole to the +Positive must necessarily pass." + + + +CHAPTER IX. THE EVERLASTING YEA. + +"Temptations in the Wilderness!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh, "Have we not +all to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us +by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; +yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary +Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, +a hard-fought battle. For the God-given mandate, _Work thou in +Well-doing_, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic +Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it +be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, +acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, _Eat thou and +be filled_, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every +nerve,--must not there be a confusion, a contest, before the better +Influence can become the upper? + +"To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, when such +God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay +must now be vanquished or vanquish,--should be carried of the spirit +into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle +with him; defiantly setting him at naught till he yield and fly. Name +it as we choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the +natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of +selfishness and baseness,--to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy +if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine +handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendor; +but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in +darkness, under earthly vapors!--Our Wilderness is the wide World in +an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and +fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also was +given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the +resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. To me also, +entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and +of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way +into the higher sunlit slopes--of that Mountain which has no summit, or +whose summit is in Heaven only!" + +He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure; as figures are, once +for all, natural to him: "Has not thy Life been that of most sufficient +men (_tuchtigen Manner_) thou hast known in this generation? An outflush +of foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as +many weeds as valuable herbs: this all parched away, under the Droughts +of practical and spiritual Unbelief, as Disappointment, in thought and +act, often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt gradually settled +into Denial! If I have had a second-crop, and now see the perennial +greensward, and sit under umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought (and +Doubt); herein too, be the Heavens praised, I am not without examples, +and even exemplars." + +So that, for Teufelsdrockh, also, there has been a "glorious +revolution:" these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of +his were but some purifying "Temptation in the Wilderness," before his +apostolic work (such as it was) could begin; which Temptation is now +happily over, and the Devil once more worsted! Was "that high moment in +the _Rue de l'Enfer_," then, properly the turning-point of the battle; +when the Fiend said, _Worship me, or be torn in shreds_; and was +answered valiantly with an _Apage Satana_?--Singular Teufelsdrockh, +would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain words! But it is +fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for such. Nothing but +innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow, fitfully wavering, +prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. "How paint to the sensual +eye," asks he once, "what passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man's Soul; +in what words, known to these profane times, speak even afar-off of the +unspeakable?" We ask in turn: Why perplex these times, profane as +they are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by commission? Not +mystical only is our Professor, but whimsical; and involves himself, now +more than ever, in eye-bewildering _chiaroscuro_. Successive glimpses, +here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must endeavor to +combine for their own behoof. + +He says: "The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out; its howl went +silent within me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I paused in +my wild wanderings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it was +as if the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to renounce +utterly, and say: Fly, then, false shadows of Hope; I will chase you no +more, I will believe you no more. And ye too, haggard spectres of Fear, +I care not for you; ye too are all shadows and a lie. Let me rest here: +for I am way-weary and life-weary; I will rest here, were it but to +die: to die or to live is alike to me; alike insignificant."--And again: +"Here, then, as I lay in that CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE; cast, doubtless by +benignant upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled +gradually away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The first +preliminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self (_Selbst-todtung_), had +been happily accomplished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its +hands ungyved." + +Might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to his +Locality, during this same "healing sleep;" that his Pilgrim-staff lies +cast aside here, on "the high table-land;" and indeed that the repose is +already taking wholesome effect on him? If it were not that the tone, +in some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we could have +expected! However, in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest +Dualism: light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the +fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe +and wail. We transcribe the piece entire. + +"Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and +meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the Mountains; over me, +as roof, the azure Dome, and around me, for walls, four azure-flowing +curtains,--namely, of the Four azure Winds, on whose bottom-fringes +also I have seen gilding. And then to fancy the fair Castles that stood +sheltered in these Mountain hollows; with their green flower-lawns, +and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the +straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother baking bread, with +her children round her:--all hidden and protectingly folded up in the +valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or to +see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my +mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were wont to speak to me (by +their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; and, in almost all weather, +proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a +culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For it was the +smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at morning, midday, eventide, were +boiling their husbands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the +air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as +plainly as smoke could say: Such and such a meal is getting ready +here. Not uninteresting! For you have the whole Borough, with all its +love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as +in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.--If, in my wide +Way-farings, I had learned to look into the business of the World in +its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general +propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom. + +"Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through the +Distance: round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying +vapor gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad +witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear +sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapor +had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great +fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O +Nature!--Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee GOD? Art not thou +the 'Living Garment of God'? O Heavens, is it, in very deed, HE, then, +that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives +and loves in me? + +"Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendors, of that Truth, and +Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than +Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice +to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; +like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated +heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a +charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's! + +"With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellowman: with an +infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou +not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou +bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, +so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my +Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears +from thy eyes!--Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which, in this +solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening +discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a +dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, +with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, +with his so mad Wants and so mean Endeavors, had become the dearer to +me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I now first named him +Brother. Thus was I standing in the porch of that '_Sanctuary of +Sorrow_;' by strange, steep ways had I too been guided thither; and ere +long its sacred gates would open, and the '_Divine Depth of Sorrow_' lie +disclosed to me." + +The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been +strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. "A +vain interminable controversy," writes he, "touching what is at present +called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since +the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from +idle Suffering into actual Endeavoring, must first be put an end to. The +most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough +Suppression of this controversy; to a few some Solution of it is +indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes out in +different terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has become +obsolete, and is found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to change +his Dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would. +The authentic _Church-Catechism_ of our present century has not yet +fallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own private behoof I attempt to +elucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his +Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his +cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance +Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, +in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot +accomplish it, above an hour or two: for the Shoeblack also has a Soul +quite other than his Stomach; and would require, if you consider it, +for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, +no more, and no less: _God's infinite Universe altogether to himself_, +therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. +Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus: speak not of +them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is +your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better +vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to +quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself +the most maltreated of men.--Always there is a black spot in our +sunshine: it is even, as I said, the _Shadow of Ourselves_. + +"But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain +valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of +average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of +indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; +requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such _overplus_ as there may +be do we account Happiness; any _deficit_ again is Misery. Now consider +that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund +of Self-conceit there is in each of us,--do you wonder that the balance +should so often dip the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry: See +there, what a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used!--I tell thee, +Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity; of what thou _fanciest_ those +same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as +is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that +thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die +in hemp. + +"So true is it, what I then said, that _the Fraction of Life can be +increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by +lessening your Denominator_. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, _Unity_ +itself divided by _Zero_ will give _Infinity_. Make thy claim of wages +a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest +of our time write: 'It is only with Renunciation (_Entsagen_) that Life, +properly speaking, can be said to begin.' + +"I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast +been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account +of? Say it in a word: is it not because thou art not HAPPY? Because +the THOU (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honored, nourished, +soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for? Foolish soul! What Act of +Legislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while +ago thou hadst no right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born and +predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other +than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after +somewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not +given thee? Close thy _Byron_; open thy _Goethe_." + +"_Es leuchtet mir ein_, I see a glimpse of it!" cries he elsewhere: +"there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do without +Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach +forth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, +in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life +and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike +only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspiredd Doctrine art thou +also honored to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful +Afflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it! Oh, thank thy +Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need +of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant +fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, +and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not +engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; +love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is +solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him." + +And again: "Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its +injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee: thou canst love +the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for +this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou +that '_Worship of Sorrow_'? The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen +centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation +of doleful creatures: nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, +arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, and +its sacred Lamp perennially burning." + +Without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the Editor +will only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still more +questionable character; unsuited to the general apprehension; nay +wherein he himself does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions +on Religion, yet not without bursts of splendor; on the "perennial +continuance of Inspiration;" on Prophecy; that there are "true Priests, +as well as Baal-Priests, in our own day:" with more of the like sort. We +select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago. + +"Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire," thus apostrophizes the +Professor: "shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems +finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, +considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion +looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas, +were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other +quartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since +on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But what +next? Wilt thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of that Religion in +a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise +too like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty in that kind? +Only a torch for burning, no hammer for building? Take our thanks, then, +and--thyself away. + +"Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or is the God present, +felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out +of me; or dispute into me? To the '_Worship of Sorrow_' ascribe what +origin and genesis thou pleasest, _has_ not that Worship originated, +and been generated; is it not _here_? Feel it in thy heart, and then say +whether it is of God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion,--for which +latter whoso will, let him worry and be worried." + +"Neither," observes he elsewhere, "shall ye tear out one another's eyes, +struggling over 'Plenary Inspiration,' and such like: try rather to get +a little even Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself. One BIBLE I +know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; +nay with my own eyes I saw the God's-Hand writing it: thereof all other +Bibles are but Leaves,--say, in Picture-Writing to assist the weaker +faculty." + +Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let him +take the following perhaps more intelligible passage:-- + +"To me, in this our life," says the Professor, "which is an internecine +warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hast +thou in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think +well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it +is simply this: 'Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of +Happiness in the world, something from my share: which, by the Heavens, +thou shalt not; nay I will fight thee rather.'--Alas, and the whole lot +to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a 'feast of shells,' for +the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one Appetite; +and the collective human species clutching at them!--Can we not, in all +such cases, rather say: 'Take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take +that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but +which thou so wantest; take it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had +enough for thee!'--If Fichte's _Wissenschaftslehre_ be, 'to a certain +extent, Applied Christianity,' surely to a still greater extent, so is +this. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely the +Passive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it! + +"But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till +it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not possible +till then; inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, a +vortex amid vortices, only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience +does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a +system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 'Doubt of any +sort cannot be removed except by Action.' On which ground, too, let +him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays +vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well +to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: '_Do the Duty which +lies nearest thee_,' which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty +will already have become clearer. + +"May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement is +even this: When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been dimly +struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and +thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario +in _Wilhelm Meister_, that your 'America is here or nowhere'? The +Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by +man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, +wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it +out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is +in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the +stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether +such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, +be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and +criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, +know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here +or nowhere,' couldst thou only see! + +"But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of +Creation is--Light. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in +bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over +the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever to +the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and +God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest +and least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely jumbled +conflicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep +silent rock-foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with its +everlasting Luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we have +a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World. + +"I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, +or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest +infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the +utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy +hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called +To-day; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work." + + + +CHAPTER X. PAUSE. + +Thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, in such +circumstances, might be, followed Teufelsdrockh, through the various +successive states and stages of Growth, Entanglement, Unbelief, and +almost Reprobation, into a certain clearer state of what he himself +seems to consider as Conversion. "Blame not the word," says he; "rejoice +rather that such a word, signifying such a thing, has come to light in +our modern Era, though hidden from the wisest Ancients. The Old World +knew nothing of Conversion; instead of an _Ecce Homo_, they had only +some _Choice of Hercules_. It was a new-attained progress in the Moral +Development of man: hereby has the Highest come home to the bosoms of +the most Limited; what to Plato was but a hallucination, and to Socrates +a chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, +and the poorest of their Pietists and Methodists." + +It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufelsdrockh +commences: we are henceforth to see him "work in well-doing," with +the spirit and clear aims of a Man. He has discovered that the Ideal +Workshop he so panted for is even this same Actual ill-furnished +Workshop he has so long been stumbling in. He can say to himself: +"Tools? Thou hast no Tools? Why, there is not a Man, or a Thing, now +alive but has tools. The basest of created animalcules, the Spider +itself, has a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and power-loom within +its head: the stupidest of Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, with +stone-and-lime house to hold it in: every being that can live can do +something: this let him _do_.--Tools? Hast thou not a Brain, furnished, +furnishable with some glimmerings of Light; and three fingers to hold a +Pen withal? Never since Aaron's Rod went out of practice, or even before +it, was there such a wonder-working Tool: greater than all recorded +miracles have been performed by Pens. For strangely in this so +solid-seeming World, which nevertheless is in continual restless flux, +it is appointed that _Sound_, to appearance the most fleeting, should +be the most continuing of all things. The WORD is well said to be +omnipotent in this world; man, thereby divine, can create as by a +_Fiat_. Awake, arise! Speak forth what is in thee; what God has given +thee, what the Devil shall not take away. Higher task than that of +Priesthood was allotted to no man: wert thou but the meanest in that +sacred Hierarchy, is it not honor enough therein to spend and be spent? + +"By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade into a +handicraft," adds Teufelsdrockh, "have I thenceforth abidden. Writings +of mine, not indeed known as mine (for what am I?), have fallen, perhaps +not altogether void, into the mighty seedfield of Opinion; fruits of my +unseen sowing gratifyingly meet me here and there. I thank the Heavens +that I have now found my Calling; wherein, with or without perceptible +result, I am minded diligently to persevere. + +"Nay how knowest thou," cries he, "but this and the other pregnant +Device, now grown to be a world-renowned far-working Institution; like +a grain of right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and now +stretching out strong boughs to the four winds, for the birds of the +air to lodge in,--may have been properly my doing? Some one's doing, it +without doubt was; from some Idea, in some single Head, it did first of +all take beginning: why not from some Idea in mine?" Does Teufelsdrockh, +here glance at that "SOCIETY FOR THE CONSERVATION OF PROPERTY +(_Eigenthums-conservirende Gesellschaft_)," of which so many ambiguous +notices glide spectra-like through these inexpressible Paper-bags? "An +Institution," hints he, "not unsuitable to the wants of the time; as +indeed such sudden extension proves: for already can the Society number, +among its office-bearers or corresponding members, the highest Names, if +not the highest Persons, in Germany, England, France; and contributions, +both of money and of meditation pour in from all quarters; to, if +possible, enlist the remaining Integrity of the world, and, defensively +and with forethought, marshal it round this Palladium." Does +Teufelsdrockh mean, then, to give himself out as the originator of +that so notable _Eigenthums-conservirende_ ("Owndom-conserving") +_Gesellschaft_; and if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it? He again +hints: "At a time when the divine Commandment, _Thou shalt not steal_, +wherein truly, if well understood, is comprised the whole Hebrew +Decalogue, with Solon's and Lycurgrus's Constitutions, Justinian's +Pandects, the Code Napoleon, and all Codes, Catechisms, Divinities, +Moralities whatsoever, that man has hitherto devised (and enforced with +Altar-fire and Gallows-ropes) for his social guidance: at a time, I say, +when this divine Commandment has all but faded away from the general +remembrance; and, with little disguise, a new opposite Commandment, +_Thou shalt steal_, is everywhere promulgated,--it perhaps behooved, in +this universal dotage and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to +bestir themselves and rally. When the widest and wildest violations +of that divine right of Property, the only divine right now extant or +conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and the +world has lived to hear it asserted that _we have no Property in our +very Bodies, but only an accidental Possession and Life-rent_, what +is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their +noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep down the smaller sort of vermin; +but what, except perhaps some such Universal Association, can protect +us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring hosts of +Boa-constrictors. If, therefore, the more sequestered Thinker have +wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written +_Program_ in the Public Journals, with its high _Prize-Questions_ and so +liberal _Prizes_, could have proceeded,--let him now cease such +wonder; and, with undivided faculty, betake himself to the _Concurrenz_ +(Competition)." + +We ask: Has this same "perhaps not ill-written _Program_," or any other +authentic Transaction of that Property-conserving Society, fallen under +the eye of the British Reader, in any Journal foreign or domestic? If +so, what are those _Prize-Questions_; what are the terms of Competition, +and when and where? No printed Newspaper-leaf, no farther light of any +sort, to be met with in these Paper-bags! Or is the whole business one +other of those whimsicalities and perverse inexplicabilities, whereby +Herr Teufelsdrockh, meaning much or nothing, is pleased so often to play +fast-and-loose with us? + + +Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utterance to a painful +suspicion, which, through late Chapters, has begun to haunt him; +paralyzing any little enthusiasm that might still have rendered his +thorny Biographical task a labor of love. It is a suspicion grounded +perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into certainty by the more and +more discernible humoristico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdrockh, in +whom underground humors and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel +within wheel, defy all reckoning: a suspicion, in one word, that these +Autobiographical Documents are partly a mystification! What if many +a so-called Fact were little better than a Fiction; if here we had no +direct Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's History; but only some +more or less fantastic Adumbration, symbolically, perhaps significantly +enough, shadowing forth the same! Our theory begins to be that, in +receiving as literally authentic what was but hieroglyphically so, +Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in that case we scruple not to name Hofrath +Nose-of-Wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools of others. +Could it be expected, indeed, that a man so known for impenetrable +reticence as Teufelsdrockh would all at once frankly unlock his private +citadel to an English Editor and a German Hofrath; and not rather +deceptively _in_lock both Editor and Hofrath in the labyrinthic +tortuosities and covered-ways of said citadel (having enticed them +thither), to see, in his half-devilish way, how the fools would look? + +Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will perhaps find himself +short. On a small slip, formerly thrown aside as blank, the ink being +all but invisible, we lately noticed, and with effort decipher, +the following: "What are your historical Facts; still more your +biographical? Wilt thou know a Man, above all a Mankind, by stringing +together bead-rolls of what thou namest Facts? The Man is the spirit +he worked in; not what he did, but what he became. Facts are engraved +Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. And then how your +Blockhead (_Dummkopf_) studies not their Meaning; but simply whether +they are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse +is it with your Bungler (_Pfuscher_): such I have seen reading some +Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the ill-cut +Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile." Was the Professor +apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself, +might mistake the Teufelsdrockh Serpent-of-Eternity in like manner? For +which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand satire, into +a plainer Symbol? Or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, +half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a Figure, he cares +not whither it gallop? We say not with certainty; and indeed, so strange +is the Professor, can never say. If our suspicion be wholly unfounded, +let his own questionable ways, not our necessary circumspectness bear +the blame. + +But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed exhausted +Editor determines here to shut these Paper-bags for the present. Let it +suffice that we know of Teufelsdrockh, so far, if "not what he did, yet +what he became:" the rather, as his character has now taken its ultimate +bent, and no new revolution, of importance, is to be looked for. The +imprisoned Chrysalis is now a winged Psyche: and such, wheresoever +be its flight, it will continue. To trace by what complex gyrations +(flights or involuntary waftings) through the mere external +Life-element, Teufelsdrockh, reaches his University Professorship, and +the Psyche clothes herself in civic Titles, without altering her now +fixed nature,--would be comparatively an unproductive task, were we even +unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a false and impossible one. +His outward Biography, therefore, which, at the Blumine Lover's-Leap, we +saw churned utterly into spray-vapor, may hover in that condition, for +aught that concerns us here. Enough that by survey of certain "pools and +plashes," we have ascertained its general direction; do we not already +know that, by one way and other, it _has_ long since rained down again +into a stream; and even now, at Weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, +fraught with the _Philosophy of Clothes_, and visible to whoso will +cast eye thereon? Over much invaluable matter, that lies scattered, +like jewels among quarry-rubbish, in those Paper-catacombs, we may have +occasion to glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right +place: meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended. + +If now, before reopening the great _Clothes-Volume_, we ask what our +degree of progress, during these Ten Chapters, has been, towards right +understanding of the _Clothes-Philosophy_, let not our discouragement +become total. To speak in that old figure of the Hell-gate Bridge over +Chaos, a few flying pontoons have perhaps been added, though as yet they +drift straggling on the Flood; how far they will reach, when once the +chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, only be matter of +conjecture. + +So much we already calculate: Through many a little loophole, we have +had glimpses into the internal world of Teufelsdrockh; his strange +mystic, almost magic Diagram of the Universe, and how it was gradually +drawn, is not henceforth altogether dark to us. Those mysterious ideas +on TIME, which merit consideration, and are not wholly unintelligible +with such, may by and by prove significant. Still more may his somewhat +peculiar view of Nature, the decisive Oneness he ascribes to Nature. How +all Nature and Life are but one _Garment_, a "Living Garment," woven and +ever a-weaving in the "Loom of Time;" is not here, indeed, the outline +of a whole _Clothes-Philosophy_; at least the arena it is to work in? +Remark, too, that the Character of the Man, nowise without meaning +in such a matter, becomes less enigmatic: amid so much tumultuous +obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do not a certain indomitable +Defiance and yet a boundless Reverence seem to loom forth, as the two +mountain-summits, on whose rock-strata all the rest were based and +built? + +Nay further, may we not say that Teufelsdrockh's Biography, allowing it +even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical truth, exhibits a man, as it +were preappointed for Clothes-Philosophy? To look through the Shows of +things into Things themselves he is led and compelled. The "Passivity" +given him by birth is fostered by all turns of his fortune. Everywhere +cast out, like oil out of water, from mingling in any Employment, in +any public Communion, he has no portion but Solitude, and a life of +Meditation. The whole energy of his existence is directed, through long +years, on one task: that of enduring pain, if he cannot cure it. Thus +everywhere do the Shows of things oppress him, withstand him, threaten +him with fearfullest destruction: only by victoriously penetrating into +Things themselves can he find peace and a stronghold. But is not this +same looking through the Shows, or Vestures, into the Things, even the +first preliminary to a _Philosophy of Clothes_? Do we not, in all +this, discern some beckonings towards the true higher purport of such +a Philosophy; and what shape it must assume with such a man, in such an +era? + +Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous Reader is not utterly +without guess whither he is bound: nor, let us hope, for all the +fantastic Dream-Grottos through which, as is our lot with Teufelsdrockh, +he must wander, will there be wanting between whiles some twinkling of a +steady Polar Star. + + + + +BOOK III. + + +CHAPTER I. INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. + +As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufelsdrockh, from an +early part of this Clothes-Volume, has more and more exhibited himself. +Striking it was, amid all his perverse cloudiness, with what force +of vision and of heart he pierced into the mystery of the World; +recognizing in the highest sensible phenomena, so far as Sense went, +only fresh or faded Raiment; yet ever, under this, a celestial Essence +thereby rendered visible: and while, on the one hand, he trod the old +rags of Matter, with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other +everywhere exalted Spirit above all earthly principalities and powers, +and worshipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a true +Platonic mysticism. What the man ultimately purposed by thus casting his +Greek-fire into the general Wardrobe of the Universe; what such, more +or less complete, rending and burning of Garments throughout the whole +compass of Civilized Life and Speculation, should lead to; the rather as +he was no Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like Rousseau, recommend +either bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a return to the savage +state: all this our readers are now bent to discover; this is, in fact, +properly the gist and purport of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Philosophy of +Clothes. + +Be it remembered, however, that such purport is here not so much +evolved, as detected to lie ready for evolving. We are to guide our +British Friends into the new Gold-country, and show them the mines; +nowise to dig out and exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains for all +time inexhaustible. Once there, let each dig for his own behoof, and +enrich himself. + +Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this of the +Professor's, can our course now more than formerly be straightforward, +step by step, but at best leap by leap. Significant Indications stand +out here and there; which for the critical eye, that looks both widely +and narrowly, shape themselves into some ground-scheme of a Whole: to +select these with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be +possible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, a passable +Bridge be effected: this, as heretofore, continues our only method. +Among such light-spots, the following, floating in much wild matter +about _Perfectibility_, has seemed worth clutching at:-- + +"Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History," says +Teufelsdrockh, "is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of +Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident +passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree +of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit of +Leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, +was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of +the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls +of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable +Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightly +accounted Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as in some periods +it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid +pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of +rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a Living Spirit belonging to him; +also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, it +could look upwards, and discern its celestial Home. The task of a daily +pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and +an honorable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post of +Thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing,--was +nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind: but ever amid the boring and +hammering came tones from that far country, came Splendors and Terrors; +for this poor Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man; and the Temple of +Immensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy +mystery to him. + +"The Clergy of the neighborhood, the ordained Watchers and Interpreters +of that same holy mystery, listened with un-affected tedium to his +consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to +'drink beer, and dance with the girls.' Blind leaders of the blind! +For what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their +shovel-hats scooped out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt +on; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and other +racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth,--if Man were but a Patent +Digester, and the Belly with its adjuncts the grand Reality? Fox turned +from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather-parings +and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher than AEtna, had been +heaped over that Spirit: but it was a Spirit, and would not lie buried +there. Through long days and nights of silent agony, it struggled and +wrestled, with a man's force, to be free: how its prison-mountains +heaved and swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to this +hand and that, and emerged into the light of Heaven! That Leicester +shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican or +Loretto-shrine.--'So bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed in,' groaned he, +'with thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags, +I can neither see nor move: not my own am I, but the World's; and Time +flies fast, and Heaven is high, and Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee, +if thou hast power of Thought! Why not; what binds me here? Want, +want!--Ha, of what? Will all the shoe-wages under the Moon ferry me +across into that far Land of Light? Only Meditation can, and devout +Prayer to God. I will to the woods: the hollow of a tree will lodge +me, wild berries feed me; and for Clothes, cannot I stitch myself one +perennial suit of Leather!' + +"Historical Oil-painting," continues Teufelsdrockh, "is one of the Arts +I never practiced; therefore shall I not decide whether this subject +were easy of execution on the canvas. Yet often has it seemed to me as +if such first outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten, more and +more into Day, the Chaotic Night that threatened to engulf him in its +hindrances and its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there is +in History. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and +understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, when he spreads +out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted +patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous all-including +Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox: +every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of +Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as +in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the +Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into +lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in broad Europe one +Free Man, and thou art he! + +"Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height; and +for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. Surely if, as D'Alembert +asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man of +Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by stronger reason is +George Fox the greatest of the Moderns, and greater than Diogenes +himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, +casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in half-savage Pride, +undervaluing the Earth; valuing it rather, as a place to yield him +warmth and food, he looks Heavenward from his Earth, and dwells in an +element of Mercy and Worship, with a still Strength, such as the Cynic's +Tub did nowise witness. Great, truly, was that Tub; a temple from which +man's dignity and divinity was scornfully preached abroad: but greater +is the Leather Hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and not in +Scorn but in Love." + + +George Fox's "perennial suit," with all that it held, has been worn +quite into ashes for nigh two centuries: why, in a discussion on +the _Perfectibility of Society_, reproduce it now? Not out of blind +sectarian partisanship: Teufelsdrockh, himself is no Quaker; with all +his pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene at the North +Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms? + +For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more meant in this +passage than meets the ear. At the same time, who can avoid smiling +at the earnestness and Boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an +underhand satire in it), with which that "Incident" is here brought +forward; and, in the Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as +he durst in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! Does Teufelsdrockh +anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable class +of the community, by way of testifying against the "Mammon-god," and +escaping from what he calls "Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair," +where doubtless some of them are toiled and whipped and hoodwinked +sufficiently,--will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of +Leather? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty lay aside +its robes of state, and Beauty its frills and train-gowns, for a second +skin of tanned hide? By which change Huddersfield and Manchester, and +Coventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, were reduced to hungry +solitudes; and only Day and Martin could profit. For neither would +Teufelsdrockh's mad daydream, here as we presume covertly intended, of +levelling Society (_levelling_ it indeed with a vengeance, into one +huge drowned marsh!), and so attaining the political effects of Nudity +without its frigorific or other consequences,--be thereby realized. +Would not the rich man purchase a waterproof suit of Russia Leather; +and the high-born Belle step forth in red or azure morocco, lined with +shamoy: the black cowhide being left to the Drudges and Gibeonites of +the world; and so all the old Distinctions be re-established? + +Or has the Professor his own deeper intention; and laughs in his sleeve +at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are but a part thereof? + + + +CHAPTER II. CHURCH-CLOTHES. + +Not less questionable is his Chapter on _Church-Clothes_, which has +the farther distinction of being the shortest in the Volume. We here +translate it entire:-- + +"By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised that I mean infinitely more +than Cassocks and Surplices; and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher +Sunday Clothes that men go to Church in. Far from it! Church-Clothes +are, in our vocabulary, the Forms, the _Vestures_, under which men have +at various periods embodied and represented for themselves the Religious +Principle; that is to say, invested the Divine Idea of the World with a +sensible and practically active Body, so that it might dwell among them +as a living and life-giving WORD. + +"These are unspeakably the most important of all the vestures and +garnitures of Human Existence. They are first spun and woven, I may say, +by that wonder of wonders, SOCIETY; for it is still only when 'two or +three are gathered together,' that Religion, spiritually existent, +and indeed indestructible, however latent, in each, first outwardly +manifests itself (as with 'cloven tongues of fire'), and seeks to be +embodied in a visible Communion and Church Militant. Mystical, more than +magical, is that Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward: +here properly Soul first speaks with Soul; for only in looking +heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, +does what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible. +How true is that of Novalis: 'It is certain, my Belief gains quite +_infinitely_ the moment I can convince another mind thereof'! Gaze thou +in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes where plays the lambent fire +of Kindness, or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of Anger; +feel how thy own so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with +the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all +one limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of deadly-grappling +Hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. But +if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our Earthly Life; how much +more when it is of the Divine Life we speak, and inmost ME is, as it +were, brought into contact with inmost ME! + +"Thus was it that I said, the Church Clothes are first spun and woven +by Society; outward Religion originates by Society, Society becomes +possible by Religion. Nay, perhaps, every conceivable Society, past and +present, may well be figured as properly and wholly a Church, in one or +other of these three predicaments: an audibly preaching and prophesying +Church, which is the best; second, a Church that struggles to preach +and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come; and third and +worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium +prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant +Chapter-houses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere +speech and chanting, let him," says the oracular Professor, "read on, +light of heart (_getrosten Muthes_). + +"But with regard to your Church proper, and the Church-Clothes specially +recognized as Church-Clothes, I remark, fearlessly enough, that without +such Vestures and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will not +exist. For if Government is, so to speak, the outward SKIN of the Body +Politic, holding the whole together and protecting it; and all your +Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the +Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues (lying _under_ such +SKIN), whereby Society stands and works;--then is Religion the +inmost Pericardial and Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm +Circulation to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue the Bones +and Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or animated only by a Galvanic +vitality; the SKIN would become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting +rawhide; and Society itself a dead carcass,--deserving to be buried. Men +were no longer Social, but Gregarious; which latter state also could not +continue, but must gradually issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, +savage isolation, and dispersion;--whereby, as we might continue to say, +the very dust and dead body of Society would have evaporated and +become abolished. Such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are the +Church-Clothes to civilized or even to rational men. + +"Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church-Clothes have gone +sorrowfully out-at-elbows; nay, far worse, many of them have become +mere hollow Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or Spirit +any longer dwells; but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid +accumulation, drive their trade; and the mask still glares on you +with its glass eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life,--some +generation-and-half after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and +in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith +to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. As a Priest, or +Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest of all men, so is +a Sham-priest (_Schein-priester_) the falsest and basest; neither is it +doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras, will one day be +torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of mankind; or even to +burn into tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes. + +"All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my Second +Volume, _On the Palingenesia, or Newbirth of Society_; which volume, +as treating practically of the Wear, Destruction, and Retexture +of Spiritual Tissues, or Garments, forms, properly speaking, the +Transcendental or ultimate Portion of this my work on _Clothes_, and is +already in a state of forwardness." + +And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary being added, +does Teufelsdrockh, and must his Editor now, terminate the singular +chapter on Church-Clothes! + + + +CHAPTER III. SYMBOLS. + +Probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing obscure +utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our Professor's speculations +on _Symbols_. To state his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our +compass: nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of +"Fantasy being the organ of the Godlike;" and how "Man thereby, though +based, to all seeming, on the small Visible, does nevertheless extend +down into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible, +indeed, his Life is properly the bodying forth." Let us, omitting these +high transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether from +the Paper-bags or the Printed Volume) what little seems logical and +practical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as +it will assume. By way of proem, take the following not injudicious +remarks:-- + +"The benignant efficacies of Concealment," cries our Professor, "who +shall speak or sing? SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars might still be raised +to them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship. +Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves +together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into +the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William +the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most +undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they +were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do +thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on the morrow, how much +clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those +mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut +out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of +concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, +so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the +greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: _Sprechen ist silbern, +Schweigen ist golden_ (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I +might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity. + +"Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in +Silence: neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. Let not thy left +hand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even to +thy own heart of 'those secrets known to all.' Is not Shame (_Schaam_) +the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals? Like other +plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the +eye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay do but look at it privily +thyself, the root withers, and no flower will glad thee. O my Friends, +when we view the fair clustering flowers that overwreathe, for example, +the Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and hues +of Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs them +up by the roots, and, with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us +the dung they flourish in! Men speak much of the Printing Press with +its Newspapers: _du Himmel_! what are these to Clothes and the Tailor's +Goose? + +"Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, and connected +with still greater things, is the wondrous agency of _Symbols_. In +a Symbol there is concealment and yet revelation; here therefore, by +Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance. And +if both the Speech be itself high, and the Silence fit and noble, how +expressive will their union be! Thus in many a painted Device, or simple +Seal-emblem, the commonest Truth stands out to us proclaimed with quite +new emphasis. + +"For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays into the +small prose domain of Sense, and becomes incorporated therewith. In the +Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less +distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; +the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, +and as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided +and commanded, made happy, made wretched: He everywhere finds himself +encompassed with Symbols, recognized as such or not recognized: the +Universe is but one vast Symbol of God; nay if thou wilt have it, what +is man himself but a Symbol of God; is not all that he does symbolical; +a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given force that is in him; a +'Gospel of Freedom,' which he, the 'Messias of Nature,' preaches, as he +can, by act and word? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible embodiment +of a Thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is, in +the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real." + +"Man," says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast with +these high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on the +verge of the inane, "Man is by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too, +of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we +consider it, is that of your actually existing Motive-Millwrights. +Fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himself +to be most things, down even to an animated heap of Glass: but to fancy +himself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains and Pleasures on, was +reserved for this his latter era. There stands he, his Universe one huge +Manger, filled with hay and thistles to be weighed against each other; +and looks long-eared enough. Alas, poor devil! spectres are appointed to +haunt him: one age he is hag-ridden, bewitched; the next, priest-ridden, +befooled; in all ages, bedevilled. And now the Genius of Mechanism +smothers him worse than any Nightmare did; till the Soul is nigh choked +out of him, and only a kind of Digestive, Mechanic life remains. In +Earth and in Heaven he can see nothing but Mechanism; has fear for +nothing else, hope in nothing else: the world would indeed grind him +to pieces; but cannot he fathom the Doctrine of Motives, and cunningly +compute these, and mechanize them to grind the other way? + +"Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by enchantment, you had but +to bid him open his eyes and look. In which country, in which time, was +it hitherto that man's history, or the history of any man, went on by +calculated or calculable 'Motives'? What make ye of your Christianities, +and Chivalries, and Reformations, and Marseillaise Hymns, and Reigns of +Terror? Nay, has not perhaps the Motive-grinder himself been in _Love_? +Did he never stand so much as a contested Election? Leave him to Time, +and the medicating virtue of Nature." + +"Yes, Friends," elsewhere observes the Professor, "not our Logical, +Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I might +say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; or Magician and Wizard to +lead us hellward. Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sense +but the implement of Fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever in the +dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness +(thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams in +from the circumambient Eternity, and colors with its own hues our little +islet of Time. The Understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou +canst not make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its color-giving +retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known five hundred living +soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which +they called their Flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross, +would not have brought above three groschen? Did not the whole Hungarian +Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser +Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown; an implement, as was sagaciously +observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a +horse-shoe? It is in and through _Symbols_ that man, consciously or +unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover, +are accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbolical worth, +and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes +for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike? + +"Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they have both an extrinsic +and intrinsic value; oftenest the former only. What, for instance, was +in that clouted Shoe, which the Peasants bore aloft with them as ensign +in their _Bauernkrieg_ (Peasants' War)? Or in the Wallet-and-staff round +which the Netherland _Gueux_, glorying in that nickname of Beggars, +heroically rallied and prevailed, though against King Philip himself? +Intrinsic significance these had none: only extrinsic; as the accidental +Standards of multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together; in +which union itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical and +borrowing of the Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or stood, +the stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms; military Banners everywhere; and +generally all national or other sectarian Costumes and Customs: they +have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even worth; but have +acquired an extrinsic one. Nevertheless through all these there glimmers +something of a Divine Idea; as through military Banners themselves, the +Divine Idea of Duty, of heroic Daring; in some instances of Freedom, of +Right. Nay the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the +Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one. + +"Another matter it is, however, when your Symbol has intrinsic meaning, +and is of itself _fit_ that men should unite round it. Let but the +Godlike manifest itself to Sense, let but Eternity look, more or less +visibly, through the Time-Figure (_Zeitbild_)! Then is it fit that men +unite there; and worship together before such Symbol; and so from day to +day, and from age to age, superadd to it new divineness. + +"Of this latter sort are all true Works of Art: in them (if thou know a +Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice) wilt thou discern Eternity looking +through Time; the Godlike rendered visible. Here too may an extrinsic +value gradually superadd itself: thus certain _Iliads_, and the like, +have, in three thousand years, attained quite new significance. But +nobler than all in this kind are the Lives of heroic god-inspired Men; +for what other Work of Art is so divine? In Death too, in the Death of +the Just, as the last perfection of a Work of Art, may we not discern +symbolic meaning? In that divinely transfigured Sleep, as of Victory, +resting over the beloved face which now knows thee no more, read (if +thou canst for tears) the confluence of Time with Eternity, and some +gleam of the latter peering through. + +"Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist or Poet has risen +into Prophet, and all men can recognize a present God, and worship the +Same: I mean religious Symbols. Various enough have been such religious +Symbols, what we call _Religions_; as men stood in this stage of culture +or the other, and could worse or better body forth the Godlike: some +Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth; many with only an extrinsic. +If thou ask to what height man has carried it in this manner, look +on our divinest Symbol: on Jesus of Nazareth, and his Life, and his +Biography, and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human Thought +not yet reached: this is Christianity and Christendom; a Symbol of quite +perennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be +anew inquired into, and anew made manifest. + +"But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacredness of Symbols, so +likewise in his progress he at length defaces, or even desecrates them; +and Symbols, like all terrestrial Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos has +not ceased to be true; yet it is no longer our Epos, but shines in the +distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like +a receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be +reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as +know that it _was_ a Sun. So likewise a day comes when the Runic +Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an African +Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things, even +Celestial Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, +their culmination, their decline. + +"Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal Sceptre is but +a piece of gilt wood; that the Pyx has become a most foolish box, and +truly, as Ancient Pistol thought, 'of little price.' A right Conjurer +might I name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden tools the +divine virtue they once held. + +"Of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst thou plant for Eternity, +then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his Fantasy and +Heart; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, then plant into his shallow +superficial faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical Understanding, +what will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World +will we call him, the Poet and inspired Maker; who, Prometheus-like, can +shape new Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it there. Such +too will not always be wanting; neither perhaps now are. Meanwhile, as +the average of matters goes, we account him Legislator and wise who can +so much as tell when a Symbol has grown old, and gently remove it. + +"When, as the last English Coronation [*] I was preparing," concludes this +wonderful Professor, "I read in their Newspapers that the 'Champion of +England,' he who has to offer battle to the Universe for his new King, +had brought it so far that he could now 'mount his horse with little +assistance,' I said to myself: Here also we have a Symbol well-nigh +superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters +and rags of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in this Ragfair of a World) +dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, if +you shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce +suffocation?" + + * That of George IV.--ED. + + + +CHAPTER IV. HELOTAGE. + +At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting, +to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled _Institute for the +Repression of Population_; which lies, dishonorably enough (with torn +leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag +_Pisces_. Not indeed for the sake of the tract itself, which we admire +little; but of the marginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand, +which rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their right +place here. + +Into the Hofrath's _Institute_, with its extraordinary schemes, and +machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall not so much as +glance. Enough for us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of +Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally +eats him up. A deadly fear of Population possesses the Hofrath; +something like a fixed idea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms +of Madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there +light; nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger; open mouths opening wider +and wider; a world to terminate by the frightfullest consummation: by +its too dense inhabitants, famished into delirium, universally eating +one another. To make air for himself in which strangulation, choking +enough to a benevolent heart, the Hofrath founds, or proposes to found, +this _Institute_ of his, as the best he can do. It is only with our +Professor's comments thereon that we concern ourselves. + +First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a speculative Radical, +has his own notions about human dignity; that the Zahdarm palaces and +courtesies have not made him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the +blank cover of Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following indistinctly +engrossed:-- + +"Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman that +with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes +her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein +notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of +the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all +weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face +of a Man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, +and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated +Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and +fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and +fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created +Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the +thick adhesions and defacements of Labor: and thy body, like thy soul, +was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: _thou_ art in thy duty, +be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for +daily bread. + +"A second man I honor, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling +for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of +Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavoring towards inward Harmony; +revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavors, +be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward +endeavor are one: when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman +only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers +Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not +the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have +Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?--These two, in all their degrees, I +honor: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it +listeth. + +"Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; +and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also +toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing +than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one +will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor of +Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light +shining in great darkness." + +And again: "It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: +we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is +worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry +and athirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden +and weary; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest; +in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest envelops him; and fitful +glitterings of cloud-skirted Dreams. But what I do mourn over is, that +the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of +earthly knowledge, should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, +like two spectres, Fear and Indignation bear him company. Alas, while +the Body stands so broad and brawny, must the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, +stupefied, almost annihilated! Alas, was this too a Breath of God; +bestowed in Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!--That there +should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call +a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by +some computations it does. The miserable fraction of Science which our +united Mankind, in a wide Universe of Nescience, has acquired, why is +not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?" + +Quite in an opposite strain is the following: "The old Spartans had a +wiser method; and went out and hunted down their Helots, and speared and +spitted them, when they grew too numerous. With our improved fashions +of hunting, Herr Hofrath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and +standing armies, how much easier were such a hunt! Perhaps in the most +thickly peopled country, some three days annually might suffice to shoot +all the able-bodied Paupers that had accumulated within the year. Let +Governments think of this. The expense were trifling: nay the very +carcasses would pay it. Have them salted and barrelled; could not you +victual therewith, if not Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm Paupers, +in workhouses and elsewhere, as enlightened Charity, dreading no evil of +them, might see good to keep alive?" + +"And yet," writes he farther on, "there must be something wrong. A +full-formed Horse will, in any market, bring from twenty to as high +as two hundred Friedrichs d'or: such is his worth to the world. A +full-formed Man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world +could afford him a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang +himself. Nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly devised +article, even as an Engine? Good Heavens! A white European Man, standing +on his two Legs, with his two five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, +and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty +to a hundred Horses!" + +"True, thou Gold-Hofrath," cries the Professor elsewhere: "too crowded +indeed! Meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous Globe +have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no more? How thick +stands your Population in the Pampas and Savannas of America; round +ancient Carthage, and in the interior of Africa; on both slopes of the +Altaic chain, in the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, +Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man, in one year, as I have +understood it, if you lend him Earth, will feed himself and nine others. +Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics of our still-glowing, +still-expanding Europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will +enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses +of indomitable living Valor; equipped, not now with the battle-axe +and war-chariot, but with the steam engine and ploughshare? Where are +they?--Preserving their Game!" + + + +CHAPTER V. THE PHOENIX. + +Putting which four singular Chapters together, and alongside of them +numerous hints, and even direct utterances, scattered over these +Writings of his, we come upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for +conclusion, that Teufelsdrockh is one of those who consider Society, +properly so called, to be as good as extinct; and that only the +gregarious feelings, and old inherited habitudes, at this juncture, hold +us from Dispersion, and universal national, civil, domestic and personal +war! He says expressly: "For the last three centuries, above all for the +last three quarters of a century, that same Pericardial Nervous Tissue +(as we named it) of Religion, where lies the Life-essence of Society, +has been smote at and perforated, needfully and needlessly; till now +it is quite rent into shreds; and Society, long pining, diabetic, +consumptive, can be regarded as defunct; for those spasmodic, galvanic +sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will they endure, galvanize as +you may, beyond two days." + +"Call ye that a Society," cries he again, "where there is no longer any +Social Idea extant; not so much as the Idea of a common Home, but only +of a common over-crowded Lodging-house? Where each, isolated, regardless +of his neighbor, turned against his neighbor, clutches what he can get, +and cries 'Mine!' and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse and +cut-throat Scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort, +can be employed? Where Friendship, Communion, has become an incredible +tradition; and your holiest Sacramental Supper is a smoking Tavern +Dinner, with Cook for Evangelist? Where your Priest has no tongue but +for plate-licking: and your high Guides and Governors cannot guide; but +on all hands hear it passionately proclaimed: _Laissez faire_; Leave us +alone of _your_ guidance, such light is darker than darkness; eat you +your wages, and sleep! + +"Thus, too," continues he, "does an observant eye discern everywhere +that saddest spectacle: The Poor perishing, like neglected, foundered +Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Overwork; the Rich, still more wretchedly, +of Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest in rank, at length, +without honor from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor, +as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred +Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the +expense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word, the STATE fallen +speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken into a +Police-Office, straitened to get its pay!" + +We might ask, are there many "observant eyes," belonging to practical +men in England or elsewhere, which have descried these phenomena; or +is it only from the mystic elevation of a German _Wahngasse_ that +such wonders are visible? Teufelsdrockh contends that the aspect of a +"deceased or expiring Society" fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs +may read. "What, for example," says he, "is the universally arrogated +Virtue, almost the sole remaining Catholic Virtue, of these days? +For some half-century, it has been the thing you name 'Independence.' +Suspicion of 'Servility,' of reverence for Superiors, the very dog-leech +is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your Superiors worthy to govern, +and you worthy to obey, reverence for them were even your only possible +freedom. Independence, in all kinds, is rebellion; if unjust rebellion, +why parade it, and everywhere prescribe it?" + +But what then? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to the state of +Nature? "The Soul Politic having departed," says Teufelsdrockh, "what +can follow but that the Body Politic be decently interred, to avoid +putrescence? Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough I see marching +with its bier, and chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral pile, +where, amid wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, +the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that these men, +Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ultimately +carry their point, and dissever and destroy most existing Institutions +of Society, seems a thing which has some time ago ceased to be doubtful. + +"Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armament +come to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that will +attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious +phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear +of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanizers are a +sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has +not Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Thought, here among +ourselves, and in every European country, at some time or other, within +the last fifty years? If now in all countries, except perhaps England, +it has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among Thinkers, and sunk +to Journalists and the popular mass,--who sees not that, as hereby it no +longer preaches, so the reason is, it now needs no Preaching, but is +in full universal Action, the doctrine everywhere known, and +enthusiastically laid to heart? The fit pabulum, in these times, for +a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise without their +corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it requires but to be +stated in such scenes to make proselytes enough.--Admirably calculated +for destroying, only not for rebuilding! It spreads like a sort of +Dog-madness; till the whole World-kennel will be rabid: then woe to +the Huntsmen, with or without their whips! They should have given the +quadrupeds water," adds he; "the water, namely, of Knowledge and of +Life, while it was yet time." + +Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we are at this hour +in a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless "Armament of +Mechanizers" and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! "The World," +says he, "as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and +waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker +combustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the +past Forms of Society; replace them with what it may. For the present, +it is contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual Interests are once +_divested_, these innumerable stript-off Garments shall mostly be burnt; +but the sounder Rags among them be quilted together into one huge Irish +watch-coat for the defence of the Body only!"--This, we think, is but +Job's-news to the humane reader. + +"Nevertheless," cries Teufelsdrockh, "who can hinder it; who is there +that can clutch into the wheelspokes of Destiny, and say to the Spirit +of the Time: Turn back, I command thee?--Wiser were it that we yielded +to the Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even this the best." + +Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own inferences from what +stands written, conjecture that Teufelsdrockh, individually had yielded +to this same "Inevitable and Inexorable" heartily enough; and now sat +waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical Indifference, +if not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World was +a "huge Ragfair," and the "rags and tatters of old Symbols" were raining +down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What with +those "unhunted Helots" of his; and the uneven _sic vos non vobis_ +pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in +existing things; what with the so hateful "empty Masks," full of beetles +and spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their glass eyes, "with a +ghastly affectation of life,"--we feel entitled to conclude him even +willing that much should be thrown to the Devil, so it were but done +gently! Safe himself in that "Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo," he would +consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITARIA, held +back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot-shackles, +and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do her +work;--to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples with her broad +hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better might be +built! Remarkable in this point of view are the following sentences. + +"Society," says he, "is not dead: that Carcass, which you call dead +Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to assume +a nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer +and fairer development, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity. +Wheresoever two or three Living Men are gathered together, there is +Society; or there it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous +structures, overspreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards to +Heaven and downwards to Gehenna: for always, under one or the other +figure, it has two authentic Revelations, of a God and of a Devil; the +Pulpit, namely, and the Gallows." + +Indeed, we already heard him speak of "Religion, in unnoticed nooks, +weaving for herself new Vestures;"--Teufelsdrockh himself being one +of the loom-treadles? Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange +aphorism of Saint Simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to be +said: "_L'age d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a place jusqu'ici dans le +passe, est devant nous_; The golden age, which a blind tradition has +hitherto placed in the Past, is Before us."--But listen again:-- + +"When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks +flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a Napoleon, +have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths +consumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious beards will +get singed. + +"For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-cremation will be +completed, you need not ask. The law of Perseverance is among the +deepest in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his +old house till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I seen +Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle Pageants, to +the extent of three hundred years and more after all life and sacredness +had evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time the +Phoenix Death-Birth itself will require, depends on unseen +contingencies.--Meanwhile, would Destiny offer Mankind, that after, say +two centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid, the +fire-creation should be accomplished, and we to find ourselves again +in a Living Society, and no longer fighting but working,--were it not +perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?" + +Thus is Teufelsdrockh, content that old sick Society should be +deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel than spice-wood); in the +faith that she is a Phoenix; and that a new heaven-born young one +will rise out of her ashes! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of +Indicator, shall forbear commentary. Meanwhile, will not the judicious +reader shake his head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in +anger, say or think: From a _Doctor utriusque Juris_, titular Professor +in a University, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, Society, +bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of a kind), +but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to his +benefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future which resembles +that rather of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than of a solid +householder paying scot-and-lot in a Christian country. + + + +CHAPTER VI. OLD CLOTHES. + +As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is in +practice probably the politest man extant: his whole heart and life are +penetrated and informed with the spirit of politeness; a noble natural +Courtesy shines through him, beautifying his vagaries; like sunlight, +making a rosyfingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds; +nay brightening London-smoke itself into gold vapor, as from the +crucible of an alchemist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he +expresses himself on this head:-- + +"Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the rich? In +Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from High-breeding, only as +it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully +insists on its own rights, I discern no special connection with wealth +or birth: but rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is due +from all men towards all men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster at his +post, and worth anything when there, this, with so much else, would be +reformed. Nay, each man were then also his neighbor's schoolmaster; till +at length a rude-visaged, unmannered Peasant could no more be met with, +than a Peasant unacquainted with botanical Physiology, or who felt not +that the clod he broke was created in Heaven. + +"For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, art not thou ALIVE; +is not this thy brother ALIVE? 'There is but one temple in the world,' +says Novalis, 'and that temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier +than this high Form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this +Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a +human Body.' + +"On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than most do; and +whereas the English Johnson only bowed to every Clergyman, or man with +a shovel-hat, I would bow to every Man with any sort of hat, or with no +hat whatever. Is not he a Temple, then; the visible Manifestation and +Impersonation of the Divinity? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowing +serves not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a Divinity; +and too often the bow is but pocketed by the _former_. It would go to +the pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the Devil, in +these times); therefore must we withhold it. + +"The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to those Shells +and outer Husks of the Body, wherein no devilish passion any longer +lodges, but only the pure emblem and effigies of Man: I mean, to Empty, +or even to Cast Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that most men do +reverence: to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the 'straddling +animal with bandy legs' which it holds, and makes a Dignitary of? Who +ever saw any Lord my-lorded in tattered blanket fastened with wooden +skewer? Nevertheless, I say, there is in such worship a shade +of hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how often does the Body +appropriate what was meant for the Cloth only! Whoso would avoid +falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps see good +to take a different course. That reverence which cannot act without +obstruction and perversion when the Clothes are full, may have free +course when they are empty. Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagoda +is not less sacred than the God; so do I too worship the hollow cloth +Garment with equal fervor, as when it contained the Man: nay, with more, +for I now fear no deception, of myself or of others. + +"Did not King _Toomtabard_, or, in other words, John Baliol, reign long +over Scotland; the man John Baliol being quite gone, and only the 'Toom +Tabard' (Empty Gown) remaining? What still dignity dwells in a suit +of Cast Clothes! How meekly it bears its honors! No haughty looks, +no scornful gesture: silent and serene, it fronts the world; neither +demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat still carries +the physiognomy of its Head: but the vanity and the stupidity, and +goose-speech which was the sign of these two, are gone. The Coat-arm is +stretched out, but not to strike; the Breeches, in modest simplicity, +depend at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow; the Waistcoat +hides no evil passion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now dwells +not in it. Thus all is purged from the grossness of sense, from the +carking cares and foul vices of the World; and rides there, on its +Clothes-horse; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purified +Apparition, visiting our low Earth. + +"Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of Civilized +Life, the Capital of England; and meditated, and questioned Destiny, +under that ink-sea of vapor, black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan +broth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding millions;--often have I +turned into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart +I walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through a +Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expressive in their +silence: the past witnesses and instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions, +Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in 'the +Prison men call Life.' Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom +Old Clothes are not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, that bearded +Jewish High-priest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom, +summons them from the four winds! On his head, like the Pope, he has +three Hats,--a real triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude of +wings, whereon the summoned Garments come to alight; and ever, as +he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as +if through a trumpet he were proclaiming: 'Ghosts of Life, come to +Judgment!' Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts: he will purify you in his +Purgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shall +reappear. Oh, let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready to go +out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace and +repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth Street, and say +whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, with +its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear, +where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty +and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there cast +out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness and the Devil,--then is +Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole +Pageant of Existence passes awfully before us; with its wail and +jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, +farce-tragedy, beast-godhood,--the Bedlam of Creation!" + + +To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem overcharged. +We too have walked through Monmouth Street; but with little feeling of +"Devotion:" probably in part because the contemplative process is so +fatally broken in upon by the brood of money-changers who nestle in +that Church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. +Whereas Teufelsdrockh, might be in that happy middle state, which leaves +to the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and so be +allowed to linger there without molestation.--Something we would have +given to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple-hat and +loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, "pacing and repacing in +austerest thought" that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphic +avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the "Ghosts of Life" +rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh, +that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum +hearest the grass grow! + +At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag Documents +destined for an English work, there exists nothing like an authentic +diary of this his sojourn in London; and of his Meditations among +the Clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, in +conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with his +Travels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject. + +For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find how +early the significance of Clothes had dawned on the now so distinguished +Clothes-Professor. Might we but fancy it to have been even in Monmouth +Street, at the bottom of our own English "ink-sea," that this remarkable +Volume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in his +soul,--as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into a +Universe! + + + +CHAPTER VII. ORGANIC FILAMENTS. + +For us, who happen to live while the World-Phoenix is burning herself, +and burning so slowly that, as Teufelsdrockh calculates, it were a +handsome bargain would she engage to have done "within two centuries," +there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, however, +does the Professor figure it. "In the living subject," says he, "change +is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the +new is already formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning of a +World-Phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn out, and lie as a +dead cinereous heap; and therefrom the young one start up by miracle, +and fly heavenward. Far otherwise! In that Fire-whirlwind, Creation and +Destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the Old are blown +about, do organic filaments of the New mysteriously spin themselves: and +amid the rushing and the waving of the Whirlwind element come tones of +a melodious Death-song, which end not but in tones of a more melodious +Birth-song. Nay, look into the Fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and +thou wilt see." Let us actually look, then: to poor individuals, who +cannot expect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, +mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the +spectacle. First, therefore, this of Mankind in general:-- + +"In vain thou deniest it," says the Professor; "thou art my Brother. Thy +very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish Lies thou tellest of me in +thy splenetic humor: what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I +a Steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not +thou! I should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well. + +"Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all; whether by the +soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of Necessity, as we like +to choose it. More than once have I said to myself, of some perhaps +whimsically strutting Figure, such as provokes whimsical thoughts: +'Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly covered up within the largest +imaginable Glass bell,--what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but +for the world! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds, +impinge against thy Glass walls, but have to drop unread: neither from +within comes there question or response into any Post-bag; thy Thoughts +fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing +hand: thou art no longer a circulating venous-arterial Heart, that, +taking and giving, circulatest through all Space and all Time: there +has a Hole fallen out in the immeasurable, universal World-tissue, which +must be darned up again!' + +"Such venous-arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal Messages, +paper and other Packages, going out from him and coming in, are +a blood-circulation, visible to the eye: but the finer nervous +circulation, by which all things, the minutest that he does, minutely +influence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses +whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing or new cursing: +all this you cannot see, but only imagine. I say, there is not a red +Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the +whole world must smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is +a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters +the centre of gravity of the Universe. + +"If now an existing generation of men stand so woven together, not less +indissolubly does generation with generation. Hast thou ever meditated +on that word, Tradition: how we inherit not Life only, but all the +garniture and form of Life; and work, and speak, and even think and +feel, as our Fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, +have given it us?--Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending +Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes? Not the Herren Stillschweigen and +Company; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others +whom thou knowest not. Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there +had been no English Shakspeare, or a different one. Simpleton! It was +Tubal-cain that made thy very Tailor's needle, and sewed that court-suit +of thine. + +"Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, much more +is Mankind, the Image that reflects and creates Nature, without which +Nature were not. As palpable lifestreams in that wondrous Individual +Mankind, among so many life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those +main currents of what we call Opinion; as preserved in Institutions, +Polities, Churches, above all in Books. Beautiful it is to understand +and know that a Thought did never yet die; that as thou, the originator +thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole Past, so thou +wilt transmit it to the whole Future. It is thus that the heroic heart, +the seeing eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the +latest; that the Wise Man stands ever encompassed, and spiritually +embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers; and there is a living, +literal _Communion of Saints_, wide as the World itself, and as the +History of the World. + +"Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this same +Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into Generations. Generations +are as the Days of toilsome Mankind: Death and Birth are the vesper and +the matin bells, that summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for +new advancement. What the Father has made, the Son can make and enjoy; +but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax, and +roll onwards; Arts, Establishments, Opinions, nothing is completed, but +ever completing. Newton has learned to see what Kepler saw; but there +is also a fresh heaven-derived force in Newton; he must mount to still +higher points of vision. So too the Hebrew Lawgiver is, in due time, +followed by an Apostle of the Gentiles. In the business of Destruction, +as this also is from time to time a necessary work, thou findest a like +sequence and perseverance: for Luther it was as yet hot enough to stand +by that burning of the Pope's Bull; Voltaire could not warm himself at +the glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel. Thus likewise, I +note, the English Whig has, in the second generation, become an English +Radical; who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, will become an +English Rebuilder. Find Mankind where thou wilt, thou findest it in +living movement, in progress faster or slower: the Phoenix soars aloft, +hovers with outstretched wings, filling Earth with her music; or, as +now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, +that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer." + +Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, lay this +to heart, and derive from it any little comfort they can. We subjoin +another passage, concerning Titles:-- + +"Remark, not without surprise," says Teufelsdrockh, "how all high Titles +of Honor come hitherto from Fighting. Your _Herzog_ (Duke, _Dux_) is +Leader of Armies; your Earl (_Jarl_) is Strong Man; your Marshal cavalry +Horse-shoer. A Millennium, or reign of Peace and Wisdom, having from of +old been prophesied, and becoming now daily more and more indubitable, +may it not be apprehended that such Fighting titles will cease to be +palatable, and new and higher need to be devised? + +"The only Title wherein I, with confidence, trace eternity is that of +King. _Konig_ (King), anciently _Konning_, means Ken-ning (Cunning), or +which is the same thing, Can-ning. Ever must the Sovereign of Mankind be +fitly entitled King." + +"Well, also," says he elsewhere, "was it written by Theologians: a King +rules by divine right. He carries in him an authority from God, or man +will never give it him. Can I choose my own King? I can choose my own +King Popinjay, and play what farce or tragedy I may with him: but he who +is to be my Ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen +for me in Heaven. Neither except in such Obedience to the Heaven-chosen +is Freedom so much as conceivable." + + +The Editor will here admit that, among all the wondrous provinces of +Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, there is none he walks in with such +astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, as in the Political. How, with +our English love of Ministry and Opposition, and that generous conflict +of Parties, mind warming itself against mind in their mutual wrestle +for the Public Good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable +Constitution kept warm and alive; how shall we domesticate ourselves +in this spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of the Dead and of the +Unborn, where the Present seems little other than an inconsiderable Film +dividing the Past and the Future? In those dim long-drawn expanses, all +is so immeasurable; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very radiances and +straggling light-beams have a supernatural character. And then with +such an indifference, such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the +inevitably coming as already here, to him all one whether it be distant +by centuries or only by days), does he sit;--and live, you would say, +rather in any other age than in his own! It is our painful duty to +announce, or repeat, that, looking into this man, we discern a deep, +silent, slow-burning, inextinguishable Radicalism, such as fills us with +shuddering admiration. + +Thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the Elective +Franchise; at least so we interpret the following: "Satisfy yourselves," +he says, "by universal, indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing +or will do, whether FREEDOM, heaven-born and leading heavenward, and +so vitally essential for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically +hatched and brought to light in that same Ballot-Box of yours; or +at worst, in some other discoverable or devisable Box, Edifice, or +Steam-mechanism. It were a mighty convenience; and beyond all feats of +manufacture witnessed hitherto." Is Teufelsdrockh acquainted with the +British constitution, even slightly?--He says, under another figure: +"But after all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere is, To +rebuild your old House from the top downwards (since you must live in +it the while), what better, what other, than the Representative Machine +will serve your turn? Meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name +of Free, 'when you have but knit up my chains into ornamental +festoons.'"--Or what will any member of the Peace Society make of such +an assertion as this: "The lower people everywhere desire War. Not so +unwisely; there is then a demand for lower people--to be shot!" + +Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul-confusing labyrinths +of speculative Radicalism, into somewhat clearer regions. Here, looking +round, as was our hest, for "organic filaments," we ask, may not this, +touching "Hero-worship," be of the number? It seems of a cheerful +character; yet so quaint, so mystical, one knows not what, or how +little, may lie under it. Our readers shall look with their own eyes:-- + +"True is it that, in these days, man can do almost all things, only not +obey. True likewise that whoso cannot obey cannot be free, still less +bear rule; he that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of +nothing, the equal of nothing. Nevertheless, believe not that man has +lost his faculty of Reverence; that if it slumber in him, it has gone +dead. Painful for man is that same rebellious Independence, when it has +become inevitable; only in loving companionship with his fellows does he +feel safe; only in reverently bowing down before the Higher does he feel +himself exalted. + +"Or what if the character of our so troublous Era lay even in this: that +man had forever cast away Fear, which is the lower; but not yet risen +into perennial Reverence, which is the higher and highest? + +"Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has Nature ordered it, that +whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. Before no faintest +revelation of the Godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of all, +when the Godlike showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. Thus is there +a true religious Loyalty forever rooted in his heart; nay in all +ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox +_Hero-worship_. In which fact, that Hero-worship exists, has existed, +and will forever exist, universally among Mankind, mayest thou discern +the corner-stone of living rock, whereon all Polities for the remotest +time may stand secure." + +Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so much as what +Teufelsdrockh, is looking at? He exclaims, "Or hast thou forgotten Paris +and Voltaire? How the aged, withered man, though but a Sceptic, Mocker, +and millinery Court-poet, yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, +could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a +smile from him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair +beneath his feet! All Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship; though +their Divinity, moreover, was of feature too apish. + +"But if such things," continues he, "were done in the dry tree, what +will be done in the green? If, in the most parched season of Man's +History, in the most parched spot of Europe, when Parisian life was +at best but a scientific _Hortus Siccus_, bedizened with some Italian +Gumflowers, such virtue could come out of it; what is to be looked for +when Life again waves leafy and bloomy, and your Hero-Divinity shall +have nothing apelike, but be wholly human? Know that there is in man a +quite indestructible Reverence for whatsoever holds of Heaven, or even +plausibly counterfeits such holding. Show the dullest clodpoll, show +the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually +here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and worship." + +Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously spinning +themselves, some will perhaps discover in the following passage:-- + +"There is no Church, sayest thou? The voice of Prophecy has gone dumb? +This is even what I dispute: but in any case, hast thou not still +Preaching enough? A Preaching Friar settles himself in every village; +and builds a pulpit, which he calls Newspaper. Therefrom he preaches +what most momentous doctrine is in him, for man's salvation; and dost +not thou listen, and believe? Look well, thou seest everywhere a +new Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some barefooted, some almost +bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously +enough, for copper alms and the love of God. These break in pieces +the ancient idols; and, though themselves too often reprobate, as +idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new Churches, +where the true God-ordained, that are to follow, may find audience, and +minister. Said I not, Before the old skin was shed, the new had formed +itself beneath it?" + +Perhaps also in the following; wherewith we now hasten to knit up this +ravelled sleeve:-- + +"But there is no Religion?" reiterates the Professor. "Fool! I tell +thee, there is. Hast thou well considered all that lies in this +immeasurable froth-ocean we name LITERATURE? Fragments of a genuine +Church-_Homiletic_ lie scattered there, which Time will assort: nay +fractions even of a _Liturgy_ could I point out. And knowest thou no +Prophet, even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age? None +to whom the Godlike had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest +forms of the Common; and by him been again prophetically revealed: in +whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days, +Man's Life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? Knowest +thou none such? I know him, and name him--Goethe. + +"But thou as yet standest in no Temple; joinest in no Psalm-worship; +feelest well that, where there is no ministering Priest, the people +perish? Be of comfort! Thou art not alone, if thou have Faith. Spake we +not of a Communion of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying and +brother-like embracing thee, so thou be worthy? Their heroic Sufferings +rise up melodiously together to Heaven, out of all lands, and out of all +times, as a sacred _Miserere_; their heroic Actions also, as a boundless +everlasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither say that thou hast now no Symbol +of the Godlike. Is not God's Universe a Symbol of the Godlike; is not +Immensity a Temple; is not Man's History, and Men's History, a perpetual +Evangel? Listen, and for organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the +Morning Stars sing together." + + + +CHAPTER VIII. NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. + +It is in his stupendous Section, headed _Natural Supernaturalism_, that +the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as +we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory +Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms +enough he has had to struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," of +Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did he +courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, +world-embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round +him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely +grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has +looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly +hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision, +the interior celestial Holy-of-Holies lies disclosed. + +Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attains +to Transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us +safe into the promised land, where _Palingenesia_, in all senses, may be +considered as beginning. "Courage, then!" may our Diogenes exclaim, with +better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Section +we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible; +but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. +Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect +is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, +shall study to do ours:-- + +"Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," thus quietly +begins the Professor; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile, +the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that +Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried +with him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a +miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, +do not I work a miracle, and magical '_Open sesame_!_'_ every time I +please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable _Schlagbaum_, or +shut Turnpike? + +"'But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?' +ask several. Whom I answer by this new question: What are the Laws of +Nature? To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation +of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now first +penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been, +brought to bear on us with its Material Force. + +"Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what ground +shall one, that can make Iron swim, come and declare that therefore +he can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such +declaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the +First Century, was full of meaning. + +"'But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?' cries +an illuminated class: 'Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move +by unalterable rules?' Probable enough, good friends: nay I, too, must +believe that the God, whom ancient inspired men assert to be 'without +variableness or shadow of turning,' does indeed never change; that +Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be +prevented from calling a Machine, does move by the most unalterable +rules. And now of you, too, I make the old inquiry: What those same +unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may +possibly be? + +"They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the accumulated +records of Man's Experience?--Was Man with his Experience present at the +Creation, then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific +individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and +gauged everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that +they read His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, +This stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas, not in anywise! +These scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are; +have seen some hand breadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is +infinite, without bottom as without shore. + +"Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that certain Planets, +with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a rate and in +a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have +succeeded in detecting,--is to me as precious as to another. But is this +what thou namest 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' and 'System of the World;' +this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen +thousand Suns per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of Moons, +and inert Balls, had been--looked at, nick-named, and marked in the +Zodiacal Way-bill; so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; their +How, their Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless Inane? + +"System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature +remains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion; and +all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and +measured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little +fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what +deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) +our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, +and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become +familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic +Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all +which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time +to time (unmiraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a +minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable +All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of +Providence through AEons of AEons. + +"We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a Volume it is,--whose +Author and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as +well know the Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand +descriptive Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar +Systems, and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume +written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing; of which +even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. +As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they strive bravely; +and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic +writing, pick out, by dexterous combination, some Letters in the vulgar +Character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic +Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than some +boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible +Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in this manner one +day evolve itself, the fewest dream. + +"Custom," continues the Professor, "doth make dotards of us all. +Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of Weavers; +and weaves air-raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe; whereby +indeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in our +houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, +forever hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from +the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that +our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest +simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what +is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an +ever-renewed effort to _transcend_ the sphere of blind Custom, and so +become Transcendental? + +"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of +all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the +Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is +by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein +is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she +is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when, +in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am I +to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen +it twice, or two hundred, or two million times? There is no reason in +Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine, +for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial +gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine; a power whereby cotton might be +spun, and money and money's worth realized. + +"Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of +Names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding +Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, +we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting +that still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are +Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, +altogether _infernal_ boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through +this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name +the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it +were formed within the bodily eye, or without it? In every the wisest +Soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire; +out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively built +together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a +habitable flowery Earth rind. + +"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many +other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, +SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth +itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind +it,--lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, +whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint +themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip +them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look +through. + +"Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himself +Anywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed +over Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but +all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of +Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world +we should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side +of the street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as his +fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating! +Of both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of +this latter. To clap on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were +Anywhere, straightway to be _There_! Next to clap on your other felt, +and, simply by wishing that you were _Anywhen_, straightway to be +_Then_! This were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the +Fire-Creation of the World to its Fire-Consummation; here historically +present in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and +Seneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to +face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth +of that late Time! + +"Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past +annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non-extant, or only +future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already +answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded +summonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet +darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down, +the curtains of To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both +_are_. Pierce through the Time-element, glance into the Eternal. Believe +what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all +Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there: that Time and Space +are not God, but creations of God; that with God as it is a universal +HERE, so is it an everlasting Now. + +"And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY?--O Heaven! Is the +white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left +behind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully +receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have +journeyed on alone,--but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend +still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with +God!--know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are +perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and +whatever will be, is even now and forever. This, should it unhappily +seem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, +or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou +canst not. + +"That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once for all, we are +sent into this Earth to live, should condition and determine our whole +Practical reasonings, conceptions, and imagings or imaginings, +seems altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they should, +furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind +us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit +Space and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay even, if thou +wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities: and consider, then, +with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest +God-effulgences! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my +hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand +and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. +Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of +distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the +true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch +forth my hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught therewith? +Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding +stupefactions, which Space practices on us. + +"Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti-magician, +and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. Had we but the +Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves +in a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and +feats of Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we have not such a Hat; and +man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without +one. + +"Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the +walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built +these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to +dance along from the _Steinbruch_ (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with +frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and +Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? Was it not +the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the +divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing Man? Our highest Orpheus +walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing +in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, +being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now +with thousand-fold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all our +hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, which +happens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happening in +two million? Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but +without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no +work that man glories in ever done. + +"Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from +the near moving-cause to its far distant Mover: The stroke that came +transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a +stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh, +could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from +the Beginnings, to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy +heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou +that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in +very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through +every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a +present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, +and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish. + +"Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic +Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could +not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and +tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye +as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human +Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The +good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; +well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his +side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the +threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? +Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and +that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it +is a simple scientific _fact_: we start out of Nothingness, take +figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is +Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not +tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song +of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our +discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide +bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (_poltern_), and revel in +our mad Dance of the Dead,--till the scent of the morning air summons us +to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now +is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce +battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all +vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, and +his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the +veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made +Night hideous, flitted away?--Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million +walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished +from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. + +"O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only +carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! +These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with +its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered +round our ME: wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence +is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse, +fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but +warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more. +Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the +Earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink +beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow +them. A little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are +not, their very ashes are not. + +"So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Generation +after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth issuing +from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and +Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one +hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly +dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:--and +then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, +and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some +wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this +mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding +grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, +fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully +across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's +mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the +Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality +and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped +in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But +whence?--O Heaven whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that +it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God. + + 'We _are such stuff_ + As Dreams are made of, and our little Life + Is rounded with a sleep!'" + + + +CHAPTER IX. CIRCUMSPECTIVE. + +Here, then, arises the so momentous question: Have many British Readers +actually arrived with us at the new promised country; is the Philosophy +of Clothes now at last opening around them? Long and adventurous has the +journey been: from those outmost vulgar, palpable Woollen Hulls of Man; +through his wondrous Flesh-Garments, and his wondrous Social Garnitures; +inwards to the Garments of his very Soul's Soul, to Time and Space +themselves! And now does the spiritual, eternal Essence of Man, and of +Mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin in any measure to reveal itself? +Can many readers discern, as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering +outlines, some primeval rudiments of Man's Being, what is changeable +divided from what is unchangeable? Does that Earth-Spirit's speech in +_Faust_,-- + + "'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, + And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by; " + +or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the Magician, +Shakespeare,-- + + "And like the baseless fabric of this vision, + The cloud-capt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, + The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, + And all which it inherit, shall dissolve; + And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, + Leave not a wrack behind;" + +begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do we at length stand +safe in the far region of Poetic Creation and Palingenesia, where that +Phoenix Death-Birth of Human Society, and of all Human Things, appears +possible, is seen to be inevitable? + +Along this most insufficient, unheard-of Bridge, which the Editor, +by Heaven's blessing, has now seen himself enabled to conclude if not +complete, it cannot be his sober calculation, but only his fond hope, +that many have travelled without accident. No firm arch, overspanning +the Impassable with paved highway, could the Editor construct; only, +as was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. +Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck +character; the darkness, the nature of the element, all was against us! + +Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thousand, provided with a +discursiveness of intellect rare in our day, have cleared the passage, +in spite of all? Happy few! little band of Friends! be welcome, be of +courage. By degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its new Whereabout; +the hand can stretch itself forth to work there: it is in this grand and +indeed highest work of Palingenesia that ye shall labor, each according +to ability. New laborers will arrive; new Bridges will be built; +nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft Bridge, in your passings and +repassings, be mended in many a point, till it grow quite firm, passable +even for the halt? + +Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started with us, joyous +and full of hope, where now is the innumerable remainder, whom we see no +longer by our side? The most have recoiled, and stand gazing afar +off, in unsympathetic astonishment, at our career: not a few, pressing +forward with more courage, have missed footing, or leaped short; and now +swim weltering in the Chaos-flood, some towards this shore, some towards +that. To these also a helping hand should be held out; at least some +word of encouragement be said. + +Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of utterance +Teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat infected us,--can it be hidden from +the Editor that many a British Reader sits reading quite bewildered in +head, and afflicted rather than instructed by the present Work? +Yes, long ago has many a British Reader been, as now, demanding with +something like a snarl: Whereto does all this lead; or what use is in +it? + +In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding thy digestive +faculty, O British Reader, it leads to nothing, and there is no use in +it; but rather the reverse, for it costs thee somewhat. Nevertheless, +if through this unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, and we by means +of him, have led thee into the true Land of Dreams; and through the +Clothes-Screen, as through a magical _Pierre-Pertuis_, thou lookest, +even for moments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest and +feelest that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based on Wonder, +and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles,--then art thou profited +beyond money's worth; and hast a thankfulness towards our Professor; +nay, perhaps in many a literary Tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, and +audibly express that same. + +Nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this time made aware that all +Symbols are properly Clothes; that all Forms whereby Spirit manifests +itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination, are Clothes; +and thus not only the parchment Magna Charta, which a Tailor was nigh +cutting into measures, but the Pomp and Authority of Law, the sacredness +of Majesty, and all inferior Worships (Worth-ships) are properly +a Vesture and Raiment; and the Thirty-nine Articles themselves are +articles of wearing-apparel (for the Religious Idea)? In which case, +must it not also be admitted that this Science of Clothes is a high one, +and may with infinitely deeper study on thy part yield richer fruit: +that it takes scientific rank beside Codification, and Political +Economy, and the Theory of the British Constitution; nay rather, +from its prophetic height looks down on all these, as on so many +weaving-shops and spinning-mills, where the Vestures which _it_ has +to fashion, and consecrate, and distribute, are, too often by haggard +hungry operatives who see no farther than their nose, mechanically woven +and spun? + +But omitting all this, much more all that concerns Natural +Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has reference to the Ulterior or +Transcendental portion of the Science, or bears never so remotely on +that promised Volume of the _Palingenesie der menschlichen Gesellschaft_ +(Newbirth of Society),--we humbly suggest that no province of +Clothes-Philosophy, even the lowest, is without its direct value, +but that innumerable inferences of a practical nature may be drawn +therefrom. To say nothing of those pregnant considerations, ethical, +political, symbolical, which crowd on the Clothes-Philosopher from the +very threshold of his Science; nothing even of those "architectural +ideas," which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of all Modes, +and will one day, better unfolding themselves, lead to important +revolutions,--let us glance for a moment, and with the faintest light +of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called the Habilatory Class of our +fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so much were to be looked on, +the million spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, +that puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, and +die that we may live,--let us but turn the reader's attention upon +two small divisions of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as +Cloth-animals, creatures that live, move and have their being in Cloth: +we mean, Dandies and Tailors. + +In regard to both which small divisions it may be asserted without +scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by Philosophy, is at +fault; and even that the dictates of humanity are violated. As will +perhaps abundantly appear to readers of the two following Chapters. + + + +CHAPTER X. THE DANDIACAL BODY. + +First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scientific +strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is a Clothes-wearing +Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing +of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is +heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes +wisely and well: so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress. +The all-importance of Clothes, which a German Professor, of unequalled +learning and acumen, writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has +sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy without effort, like an +instinct of genius; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What +Teufelsdrockh would call a "Divine Idea of Cloth" is born with him; and +this, like other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring his +heart asunder with unutterable throes. + +But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his Idea +an Action; shows himself in peculiar guise to mankind; walks forth, a +witness and living Martyr to the eternal worth of Clothes. We called him +a Poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes, +with cunning Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow? Say, +rather, an Epos, and _Clotha Virumque cano_, to the whole world, in +Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. Nay, if you grant, what +seems to be admissible, that the Dandy has a Thinking-principle in +him, and some notions of Time and Space, is there not in this +life-devotedness to Cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal +to the Perishable, something (though in reverse order) of that blending +and identification of Eternity with Time, which, as we have seen, +constitutes the Prophetic character? + +And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, +what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you +would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or +even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays +of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has +already secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of your eyes. +Understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret +it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame +on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will +waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and +over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with +hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him no Zoologist +classes among the Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care: when did we +see any injected Preparation of the Dandy in our Museums; any specimen +of him preserved in spirits! Lord Herringbone may dress himself in a +snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt and shoes: it skills not; the +undiscerning public, occupied with grosser wants, passes by regardless +on the other side. + +The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, properly +speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep: for here arises the +Clothes-Philosophy to resuscitate, strangely enough, both the one and +the other! Should sound views of this Science come to prevail, the +essential nature of the British Dandy, and the mystic significance that +lies in him, cannot always remain hidden under laughable and lamentable +hallucination. The following long Extract from Professor Teufelsdrockh +may set the matter, if not in its true light, yet in the way towards +such. It is to be regretted, however, that here, as so often elsewhere, +the Professor's keen philosophic perspicacity is somewhat marred by a +certain mixture of almost owlish purblindness, or else of some perverse, +ineffectual, ironic tendency; our readers shall judge which:-- + + +"In these distracted times," writes he, "when the Religious Principle, +driven out of most Churches, either lies unseen in the hearts of good +men, looking and longing and silently working there towards some new +Revelation; or else wanders homeless over the world, like a disembodied +soul seeking its terrestrial organization,--into how many strange +shapes, of Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not tentatively and +errantly cast itself! The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is for the +while without Exponent; yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly +active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep: thus Sect after +Sect, and Church after Church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into +new metamorphosis. + +"Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the wealthiest and +worst-instructed of European nations, offers precisely the elements +(of Heat, namely, and of Darkness), in which such moon-calves and +monstrosities are best generated. Among the newer Sects of that country, +one of the most notable, and closely connected with our present subject, +is that of the _Dandies_; concerning which, what little information I +have been able to procure may fitly stand here. + +"It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men generally without +sense for the Religious Principle, or judgment for its manifestations, +speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps +rather a Secular Sect, and not a Religious one; nevertheless, to the +psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial character +plainly enough reveals itself. Whether it belongs to the class of +Fetish-worships, or of Hero-worships or Polytheisms, or to what other +class, may in the present state of our intelligence remain undecided +(_schweben_). A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic +shape, is discernible enough; also (for human Error walks in a cycle, +and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to that +Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting from all nourishment, +and looking intensely for a length of time into their own navels, came +to discern therein the true Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. +To my own surmise, it appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new +modification, adapted to the new time, of that primeval Superstition, +_Self-worship_; which Zerdusht, Quangfoutchee, Mahomet, and others, +strove rather to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate; and which +only in the purer forms of Religion has been altogether rejected. +Wherefore, if any one chooses to name it revived Ahrimanism, or a new +figure of Demon-Worship, I have, so far as is yet visible, no objection. + +"For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of a new Sect, +display courage and perseverance, and what force there is in man's +nature, though never so enslaved. They affect great purity and +separatism; distinguish themselves by a particular costume (whereof some +notices were given in the earlier part of this Volume); likewise, so +far as possible, by a particular speech (apparently some broken +_Lingua-franca_, or English-French); and, on the whole, strive to +maintain a true Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from +the world. + +"They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish Temple did, +stands in their metropolis; and is named _Almack's_, a word of +uncertain etymology. They worship principally by night; and have their +High-priests and High-priestesses, who, however, do not continue for +life. The rites, by some supposed to be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps +with an Eleusinian or Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. +Nor are Sacred Books wanting to the Sect; these they call _Fashionable +Novels_: however, the Canon is not completed, and some are canonical and +others not. + +"Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, procured myself some +samples; and in hope of true insight, and with the zeal which beseems an +Inquirer into Clothes, set to interpret and study them. But wholly to +no purpose: that tough faculty of reading, for which the world will not +refuse me credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at naught. +In vain that I summoned my whole energies (_mich weidlich anstrengte_), +and did my very utmost; at the end of some short space, I was uniformly +seized with not so much what I can call a drumming in my ears, as a kind +of infinite, unsufferable, Jew's-harping and scrannel-piping there; to +which the frightfullest species of Magnetic Sleep soon supervened. And +if I strove to shake this away, and absolutely would not yield, there +came a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of _Delirium Tremens_, and a +melting into total deliquium: till at last, by order of the Doctor, +dreading ruin to my whole intellectual and bodily faculties, and a +general breaking up of the constitution, I reluctantly but determinedly +forbore. Was there some miracle at work here; like those Fire-balls, +and supernal and infernal prodigies, which, in the case of the Jewish +Mysteries, have also more than once scared back the Alien? Be this as +it may, such failure on my part, after best efforts, must excuse the +imperfection of this sketch; altogether incomplete, yet the completest I +could give of a Sect too singular to be omitted. + +"Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power shall induce me, as a +private individual, to open another _Fashionable Novel_. But luckily, +in this dilemma, comes a hand from the clouds; whereby if not victory, +deliverance is held out to me. Round one of those Book-packages, which +the _Stillschweigen'sche Buchhandlung_ is in the habit of importing +from England, come, as is usual, various waste printed-sheets +(_Maculatur-blatter_), by way of interior wrappage: into these the +Clothes-Philosopher, with a certain Mahometan reverence even for +waste-paper, where curious knowledge will sometimes hover, disdains not +to cast his eye. Readers may judge of his astonishment when on such +a defaced stray-sheet, probably the outcast fraction of some English +Periodical, such as they name _Magazine_, appears something like a +Dissertation on this very subject of _Fashionable Novels_! It sets out, +indeed, chiefly from a Secular point of view; directing itself, not +without asperity, against some to me unknown individual named _Pelham_, +who seems to be a Mystagogue, and leading Teacher and Preacher of the +Sect; so that, what indeed otherwise was not to be expected in such a +fugitive fragmentary sheet, the true secret, the Religious physiognomy +and physiology of the Dandiacal Body, is nowise laid fully open there. +Nevertheless, scattered lights do from time to time sparkle out, whereby +I have endeavored to profit. Nay, in one passage selected from the +Prophecies, or Mythic Theogonies, or whatever they are (for the style +seems very mixed) of this Mystagogue, I find what appears to be a +Confession of Faith, or Whole Duty of Man, according to the tenets of +that Sect. Which Confession or Whole Duty, therefore, as proceeding +from a source so authentic, I shall here arrange under Seven distinct +Articles, and in very abridged shape lay before the German world; +therewith taking leave of this matter. Observe also, that to avoid +possibility of error, I, as far as may be, quote literally from the +Original:-- + +ARTICLES OF FAITH. + +'1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about them; at the same +time, wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided. + +'2. The collar is a very important point: it should be low behind, and +slightly rolled. + +'3. No license of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt the +posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot. + +'4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. + +'5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely developed than +in his rings. + +'6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, to wear +white waistcoats. + +'7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips.' + +"All which Propositions I, for the present, content myself with modestly +but peremptorily and irrevocably denying. + +"In strange contrast with this Dandiacal Body stands another British +Sect, originally, as I understand, of Ireland, where its chief seat +still is; but known also in the main Island, and indeed everywhere +rapidly spreading. As this Sect has hitherto emitted no Canonical Books, +it remains to me in the same state of obscurity as the Dandiacal, which +has published Books that the unassisted human faculties are inadequate +to read. The members appear to be designated by a considerable diversity +of names, according to their various places of establishment: in England +they are generally called the _Drudge_ Sect; also, unphilosophically +enough, the _White Negroes_; and, chiefly in scorn by those of other +communions, the _Ragged-Beggar_ Sect. In Scotland, again, I find them +entitled _Hallanshakers_, or the _Stook of Duds_ Sect; any individual +communicant is named _Stook of Duds_ (that is, Shock of Rags), in +allusion, doubtless, to their professional Costume. While in Ireland, +which, as mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a perplexing +multiplicity of designations, such as _Bogtrotters, Redshanks, +Ribbonmen, Cottiers, Peep-of-Day Boys, Babes of the Wood, Rockites, +Poor-Slaves_: which last, however, seems to be the primary and generic +name; whereto, probably enough, the others are only subsidiary species, +or slight varieties; or, at most, propagated offsets from the parent +stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades of difference, it were +here loss of time to dwell on. Enough for us to understand, what seems +indubitable, that the original Sect is that of the _Poor-Slaves_; +whose doctrines, practices, and fundamental characteristics pervade and +animate the whole Body, howsoever denominated or outwardly diversified. + +"The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood: how the Universe, +and Man, and Man's Life, picture themselves to the mind of an Irish +Poor-Slave; with what feelings and opinions he looks forward on the +Future, round on the Present, back on the Past, it were extremely +difficult to specify. Something Monastic there appears to be in their +Constitution: we find them bound by the two Monastic Vows, of Poverty +and Obedience; which vows, especially the former, it is said, they +observe with great strictness; nay, as I have understood it, they are +pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably +consecrated thereto, even _before_ birth. That the third Monastic +Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find no ground to +conjecture. + +"Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal Sect in their grand +principle of wearing a peculiar Costume. Of which Irish Poor-Slave +Costume no description will indeed be found in the present Volume; for +this reason, that by the imperfect organ of Language it did not seem +describable. Their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets +and irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colors; through the +labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some +unknown process. It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of +buttons, thrums and skewers; to which frequently is added a girdle of +leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw +rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. +In head-dress they affect a certain freedom: hats with partial brim, +without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown; in the +former case, they sometimes invert the hat, and wear it brim uppermost, +like a university-cap, with what view is unknown. + +"The name Poor-Slaves seems to indicate a Slavonic, Polish, or Russian +origin: not so, however, the interior essence and spirit of their +Superstition, which rather displays a Teutonic or Druidical character. +One might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the Earth: for they dig +and affectionately work continually in her bosom; or else, shut up in +private Oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances derived from +her; seldom looking up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and then with +comparative indifference. Like the Druids, on the other hand, they live +in dark dwellings; often even breaking their glass windows, where they +find such, and stuffing them up with pieces of raiment, or other +opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. Again, like all +followers of Nature-Worship, they are liable to out-breakings of an +enthusiasm rising to ferocity; and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet +in sod cottages. + +"In respect of diet, they have also their observances. All Poor-Slaves +are Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters); a few are Ichthyophagous, and use +Salted Herrings: other animal food they abstain from; except indeed, +with perhaps some strange inverted fragment of a Brahminical feeling, +such animals as die a natural death. Their universal sustenance is the +root named Potato, cooked by fire alone; and generally without condiment +or relish of any kind, save an unknown condiment named _Point_, into +the meaning of which I have vainly inquired; the victual +_Potatoes-and-Point_ not appearing, at least not with specific accuracy +of description, in any European Cookery-Book whatever. For drink, they +use, with an almost epigrammatic counterpoise of taste, Milk, which +is the mildest of liquors, and _Potheen_, which is the fiercest. This +latter I have tasted, as well as the English _Blue-Ruin_, and the Scotch +_Whiskey_, analogous fluids used by the Sect in those countries: +it evidently contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state of +concentration, though disguised with acrid oils; and is, on the whole, +the most pungent substance known to me,--indeed, a perfect liquid +fire. In all their Religious Solemnities, Potheen is said to be an +indispensable requisite, and largely consumed. + +"An Irish Traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who presents himself +under the to me unmeaning title of _The late John Bernard_, offers +the following sketch of a domestic establishment, the inmates whereof, +though such is not stated expressly, appear to have been of that Faith. +Thereby shall my German readers now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as it +were with their own eyes; and even see him at meat. Moreover, in the +so precious waste-paper sheet above mentioned, I have found some +corresponding picture of a Dandiacal Household, painted by that same +Dandiacal Mystagogue, or Theogonist: this also, by way of counterpart +and contrast, the world shall look into. + +"First, therefore, of the Poor-Slave, who appears likewise to have been +a species of Innkeeper. I quote from the original: + + +POOR-SLAVE HOUSEHOLD. + +"'The furniture of this Caravansera consisted of a large iron Pot, two +oaken Tables, two Benches, two Chairs, and a Potheen Noggin. There was +a Loft above (attainable by a ladder), upon which the inmates slept; and +the space below was divided by a hurdle into two Apartments; the one for +their cow and pig, the other for themselves and guests. On entering the +house we discovered the family, eleven in number, at dinner: the father +sitting at the top, the mother at the bottom, the children on each side, +of a large oaken Board, which was scooped out in the middle, like a +trough, to receive the contents of their Pot of Potatoes. Little holes +were cut at equal distances to contain Salt; and a bowl of Milk stood on +the table: all the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives and dishes +were dispensed with.' The Poor-Slave himself our Traveller found, as he +says, broad-backed, black-browed, of great personal strength, and mouth +from ear to ear. His Wife was a sun-browned but well-featured woman; and +his young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. Of their +Philosophical or Religious tenets or observances, no notice or hint. + +"But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household; in which, truly, that +often-mentioned Mystagogue and inspired Penman himself has his abode:-- + + +DANDIACAL HOUSEHOLD. + +"'A Dressing-room splendidly furnished; violet-colored curtains, chairs +and ottomans of the same hue. Two full-length Mirrors are placed, one on +each side of a table, which supports the luxuries of the Toilet. Several +Bottles of Perfumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a +smaller table of mother-of-pearl: opposite to these are placed the +appurtenances of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. A Wardrobe +of Buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being partly open, discover +a profusion of Clothes; Shoes of a singularly small size monopolize +the lower shelves. Fronting the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight +glimpse of a Bath-room. Folding-doors in the background.--Enter the +Author,' our Theogonist in person, 'obsequiously preceded by a French +Valet, in white silk Jacket and cambric Apron.' + +"Such are the two Sects which, at this moment, divide the more unsettled +portion of the British People; and agitate that ever-vexed country. To +the eye of the political Seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with +the elements of discord and hostility, is far from consoling. These two +principles of Dandiacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish +or Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that same Drudgism may be, do +as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant and nowise considerable +shapes: nevertheless, in their roots and subterranean ramifications, +they extend through the entire structure of Society, and work +unweariedly in the secret depths of English national Existence; striving +to separate and isolate it into two contradictory, uncommunicating +masses. + +"In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor-Slaves or Drudges, +it would seem, are hourly increasing. The Dandiacal, again, is by nature +no proselytizing Sect; but it boasts of great hereditary resources, and +is strong by union; whereas the Drudges, split into parties, have as yet +no rallying-point; or at best only co-operate by means of partial secret +affiliations. If, indeed, there were to arise a _Communion of Drudges_, +as there is already a Communion of Saints, what strangest effects would +follow therefrom! Dandyism as yet affects to look down on Drudgism: but +perhaps the hour of trial, when it will be practically seen which ought +to look down, and which up, is not so distant. + +"To me it seems probable that the two Sects will one day part England +between them; each recruiting itself from the intermediate ranks, till +there be none left to enlist on either side. Those Dandiacal Manicheans, +with the host of Dandyizing Christians, will form one body: the Drudges, +gathering round them whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel +Pagan; sweeping up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radicals, +refractory Pot-wallopers, and so forth, into their general mass, will +form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudgism to two bottomless +boiling Whirlpools that had broken out on opposite quarters of the firm +land: as yet they appear only disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, +which man's art might cover in; yet mark them, their diameter is daily +widening: they are hollow Cones that boil up from the infinite Deep, +over which your firm land is but a thin crust or rind! Thus daily is +the intermediate land crumbling in, daily the empire of the two +Buchan-Bullers extending; till now there is but a foot-plank, a mere +film of Land between them; this too is washed away: and then--we have +the true Hell of Waters, and Noah's Deluge is out-deluged! + +"Or better, I might call them two boundless, and indeed unexampled +Electric Machines (turned by the 'Machinery of Society'), with batteries +of opposite quality; Drudgism the Negative, Dandyism the Positive; one +attracts hourly towards it and appropriates all the Positive Electricity +of the nation (namely, the Money thereof); the other is equally busy +with the Negative (that is to say the Hunger), which is equally potent. +Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters: but wait +a little, till the entire nation is in an electric state: till your +whole vital Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into two +isolated portions of Positive and Negative (of Money and of Hunger); +and stands there bottled up in two World-Batteries! The stirring of a +child's finger brings the two together; and then--What then? The Earth +is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom's thunder-peal; the +Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and thenceforth there are no +eclipses of the Moon.--Or better still, I might liken"-- + +Oh, enough, enough of likenings and similitudes; in excess of which, +truly, it is hard to say whether Teufelsdrockh or ourselves sin the +more. + +We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing and over-refining; +from of old we have been familiar with his tendency to Mysticism and +Religiosity, whereby in everything he was still scenting out Religion: +but never perhaps did these amaurosis-suffusions so cloud and distort +his otherwise most piercing vision, as in this of the _Dandiacal Body_! +Or was there something of intended satire; is the Professor and Seer +not quite the blinkard he affects to be? Of an ordinary mortal we should +have decisively answered in the affirmative; but with a Teufelsdrockh +there ever hovers some shade of doubt. In the mean while, if satire were +actually intended, the case is little better. There are not wanting men +who will answer: Does your Professor take us for simpletons? His irony +has overshot itself; we see through it, and perhaps through him. + + + +CHAPTER XI. TAILORS. + +Thus, however, has our first Practical Inference from the +Clothes-Philosophy, that which respects Dandies, been sufficiently +drawn; and we come now to the second, concerning Tailors. On this latter +our opinion happily quite coincides with that of Teufelsdrockh himself, +as expressed in the concluding page of his Volume, to whom, therefore, +we willingly give place. Let him speak his own last words, in his own +way:-- + + +"Upwards of a century," says he, "must elapse, and still the bleeding +fight of Freedom be fought, whoso is noblest perishing in the van, +and thrones be hurled on altars like Pelion on Ossa, and the Moloch +of Iniquity have his victims, and the Michael of Justice his martyrs, +before Tailors can be admitted to their true prerogatives of manhood, +and this last wound of suffering Humanity be closed. + +"If aught in the history of the world's blindness could surprise us, +here might we indeed pause and wonder. An idea has gone abroad, and +fixed itself down into a wide-spreading rooted error, that Tailors are a +distinct species in Physiology, not Men, but fractional Parts of a +Man. Call any one a _Schneider_ (Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our +dislocated, hoodwinked, and indeed delirious condition of Society, +equivalent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity? The epithet +_schneidermassig_ (tailor-like) betokens an otherwise unapproachable +degree of pusillanimity; we introduce a _Tailor's-Melancholy_, more +opprobrious than any Leprosy, into our Books of Medicine; and fable I +know not what of his generating it by living on Cabbage. Why should I +speak of Hans Sachs (himself a Shoemaker, or kind of Leather-Tailor), +with his _Schneider mit dem Panier_? Why of Shakspeare, in his _Taming +of the Shrew_, and elsewhere? Does it not stand on record that the +English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors, +addressed them with a 'Good morning, gentlemen both!' Did not the same +virago boast that she had a Cavalry Regiment, whereof neither horse nor +man could be injured; her Regiment, namely, of Tailors on Mares? Thus +everywhere is the falsehood taken for granted, and acted on as an +indisputable fact. + +"Nevertheless, need I put the question to any Physiologist, whether it +is disputable or not? Seems it not at least presumable, that, under his +Clothes, the Tailor has bones and viscera, and other muscles than the +sartorius? Which function of manhood is the Tailor not conjectured +to perform? Can he not arrest for debt? Is he not in most countries a +taxpaying animal? + +"To no reader of this Volume can it be doubtful which conviction is +mine. Nay if the fruit of these long vigils, and almost preternatural +Inquiries, is not to perish utterly, the world will have approximated +towards a higher Truth; and the doctrine, which Swift, with the keen +forecast of genius, dimly anticipated, will stand revealed in clear +light: that the Tailor is not only a Man, but something of a Creator or +Divinity. Of Franklin it was said, that 'he snatched the Thunder from +Heaven and the Sceptre from Kings:' but which is greater, I would ask, +he that lends, or he that snatches? For, looking away from individual +cases, and how a Man is by the Tailor new-created into a Nobleman, and +clothed not only with Wool but with Dignity and a Mystic Dominion,--is +not the fair fabric of Society itself, with all its royal mantles and +pontifical stoles, whereby, from nakedness and dismemberment, we are +organized into Polities, into nations, and a whole co-operating Mankind, +the creation, as has here been often irrefragably evinced, of the Tailor +alone?--What too are all Poets and moral Teachers, but a species of +Metaphorical Tailors? Touching which high Guild the greatest living +Guild-brother has triumphantly asked us: 'Nay if thou wilt have it, +who but the Poet first made Gods for men; brought them down to us; and +raised us up to them?' + +"And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis of his +Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the ninth part of a man! +Look up, thou much-injured one, look up with the kindling eye of hope, +and prophetic bodings of a noble better time. Too long hast thou sat +there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like some +sacred Anchorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing down +Heaven's richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. Be of +hope! Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the thick gloom +of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be Day. Mankind will +repay with interest their long-accumulated debt: the Anchorite that was +scoffed at will be worshipped; the Fraction will become not an Integer +only, but a Square and Cube. With astonishment the world will recognize +that the Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or even its God. + +"As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked upon these +Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroidering that rich Cloth, which +the Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within myself: +How many other Unholies has your covering Art made holy, besides this +Arabian Whinstone! + +"Still more touching was it when, turning the corner of a lane, in +the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came upon a Signpost, whereon stood +written that such and such a one was 'Breeches-Maker to his Majesty;' +and stood painted the Effigies of a Pair of Leather Breeches, and +between the knees these memorable words, SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. Was not +this the martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet +sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing to a better +day? A day of justice, when the worth of Breeches would be revealed to +man, and the Scissors become forever venerable. + +"Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal been altogether in +vain. It was in this high moment, when the soul, rent, as it were, and +shed asunder, is open to inspiring influence, that I first conceived +this Work on Clothes: the greatest I can ever hope to do; which has +already, after long retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so +large a section of my Life; and of which the Primary and simpler Portion +may here find its conclusion." + + + +CHAPTER XII. FAREWELL. + +So have we endeavored, from the enormous, amorphous Plum-pudding, more +like a Scottish Haggis, which Herr Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for +his fellow-mortals, to pick out the choicest Plums, and present them +separately on a cover of our own. A laborious, perhaps a thankless +enterprise; in which, however, something of hope has occasionally +cheered us, and of which we can now wash our hands not altogether +without satisfaction. If hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel +of spiritual nourishment have been added to the scanty ration of our +beloved British world, what nobler recompense could the Editor desire? +If it prove otherwise, why should he murmur? Was not this a Task which +Destiny, in any case, had appointed him; which having now done with, he +sees his general Day's-work so much the lighter, so much the shorter? + + +Of Professor Teufelsdrockh, it seems impossible to take leave without +a mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude, and disapproval. Who will +not regret that talents, which might have profited in the higher +walks of Philosophy, or in Art itself, have been so much devoted to a +rummaging among lumber-rooms; nay too often to a scraping in kennels, +where lost rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests? +Regret is unavoidable; yet censure were loss of time. To cure him of his +mad humors British Criticism would essay in vain: enough for her if she +can, by vigilance, prevent the spreading of such among ourselves. What +a result, should this piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of +writing, not to say of thinking, become general among our Literary men! +As it might so easily do. Thus has not the Editor himself, working over +Teufelsdrockh's German, lost much of his own English purity? Even as +the smaller whirlpool is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along +with it, so has the lesser mind, in this instance, been forced to become +portion of the greater, and, like it, see all things figuratively: which +habit time and assiduous effort will be needed to eradicate. + +Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows himself, is there any +reader that can part with him in declared enmity? Let us confess, there +is that in the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost +attaches us. His attitude, we will hope and believe, is that of a man +who had said to Cant, Begone; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not +be; and to Truth, Be thou in place of all to me: a man who had +manfully defied the "Time-Prince," or Devil, to his face; nay perhaps, +Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare, +and now stood minded to wage the same, by all weapons, in all places, +at all times. In such a cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack +Scythe-man, shall be welcome. + +Still the question returns on us: How could a man occasionally of keen +insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real Thoughts to +communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the +absurd? Which question he were wiser than the present Editor who should +satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, that +perhaps Necessity as well as Choice was concerned in it. Seems it +not conceivable that, in a Life like our Professor's, where so much +bountifully given by Nature had in Practice failed and misgone, +Literature also would never rightly prosper: that striving with his +characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other Picture, and ever +without success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all +colors, against the canvas, to try whether it will paint Foam? With all +his stillness, there were perhaps in Teufelsdrockh desperation enough +for this. + +A second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. It is, that +Teufelsdrockh, is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a +wish to proselytize. How often already have we paused, uncertain whether +the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really Stoicism and Despair, +or Love and Hope only seared into the figure of these! Remarkable, +moreover, is this saying of his: "How were Friendship possible? In +mutual devotedness to the Good and True: otherwise impossible; except +as Armed Neutrality, or hollow Commercial League. A man, be the Heavens +ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in +Love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail +in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man." And now in conjunction +therewith consider this other: "It is the Night of the World, and still +long till it be Day: we wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and +the Sun and the Stars of Heaven are as if blotted out for a season; +and two immeasurable Phantoms, HYPOCRISY and ATHEISM, with the Ghoul, +SENSUALITY, stalk abroad over the Earth, and call it theirs: well at +ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow Dream." + +But what of the awe-struck Wakeful who find it a Reality? Should not +these unite; since even an authentic Spectre is not visible to Two?--In +which case were this Enormous Clothes-Volume properly an enormous +Pitch-pan, which our Teufelsdrockh in his lone watch-tower had +kindled, that it might flame far and wide through the Night, and many +a disconsolately wandering spirit be guided thither to a Brother's +bosom!--We say as before, with all his malign Indifference, who knows +what mad Hopes this man may harbor? + +Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which harmonizes ill with +such conjecture; and, indeed, were Teufelsdrockh made like other +men, might as good as altogether subvert it. Namely, that while the +Beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the Watchman had quitted it; that +no pilgrim could now ask him: Watchman, what of the Night? Professor +Teufelsdrockh, be it known, is no longer visibly present at +Weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in space! Some time ago, +the Hofrath Heuschrecke was pleased to favor us with another copious +Epistle; wherein much is said about the "Population-Institute;" much +repeated in praise of the Paper-bag Documents, the hieroglyphic nature +of which our Hofrath still seems not to have surmised; and, lastly, +the strangest occurrence communicated, to us for the first time, in the +following paragraph:-- + +"_Ew. Wohlgeboren_ will have seen from the Public Prints, with what +affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the +disappearance of her Sage. Might but the united voice of Germany prevail +on him to return; nay could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves +by what mystery he went away! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences or +affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the +Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the Privy Council itself +can hitherto elicit no answer. + +"It had been remarked that while the agitating news of those +Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to month, and dinned every ear +in Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufelsdrockh was not known, at the _Gans_ or +elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once +these three: _Es geht an_ (It is beginning). Shortly after, as _Ew. +Wohlgeboren_ knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in +Berlin, threatened by a Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want +Evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that the +closing Chapter of the Clothes-Volume was to blame. In this appalling +crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was indescribable: nay, perhaps +through one humble individual, something thereof might pass into the +_Rath_ (Council) itself, and so contribute to the country's deliverance. +The Tailors are now entirely pacificated.-- + +"To neither of these two incidents can I attribute our loss: yet still +comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its Politics. For +example, when the _Saint-Simonian Society_ transmitted its Propositions +hither, and the whole _Gans_ was one vast cackle of laughter, +lamentation and astonishment, our Sage sat mute; and at the end of the +third evening said merely: 'Here also are men who have discovered, not +without amazement, that Man is still Man; of which high, long-forgotten +Truth you already see them make a false application.' Since then, as has +been ascertained by examination of the Post-Director, there passed at +least one Letter with its Answer between the Messieurs Bazard-Enfantin +and our Professor himself; of what tenor can now only be conjectured. On +the fifth night following, he was seen for the last time! + +"Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile Sects that +convulse our Era, been spirited away by certain of their emissaries; or +did he go forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them, +and confront them? Reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to +believe the Lost still living; our widowed heart also whispers that ere +long he will himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, his archives must, +one day, be opened by Authority; where much, perhaps the _Palingenesie_ +itself, is thought to be reposited." + + +Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like an Ignis +Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. + +So that Teufelsdrockh's public History were not done, then, or reduced +to an even, unromantic tenor; nay, perhaps the better part thereof were +only beginning? We stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has +melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. May +Time, which solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this +also! Our own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is +that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie always still, +Teufelsdrockh, is actually in London! + +Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial joy as of +over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. Well does he know, +if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers +likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable British +readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy +interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so +much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For +which, as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the Upper Powers? To +one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and +open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, +who namest thyself YORKE and OLIVER, and with thy vivacities and +genialities, with thy all too Irish mirth and madness, and odor of +palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, +_fare-well_! Have we not, in the course of Eternity, travelled some +months of our Life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not +existed together, though in a state of quarrel? + + + + +APPENDIX. + +This questionable little Book was undoubtedly written among the mountain +solitudes, in 1831; but, owing to impediments natural and accidental, +could not, for seven years more, appear as a Volume in England;--and had +at last to clip itself in pieces, and be content to struggle out, bit by +bit, in some courageous _Magazine_ that offered. Whereby now, to +certain idly curious readers, and even to myself till I make study, the +insignificant but at last irritating question, What its real history and +chronology are, is, if not insoluble, considerably involved in haze. + +To the first English Edition, 1838, which an American, or two American +had now opened the way for, there was slightingly prefixed, under the +title, "_Testimonies of Authors_," some straggle of real documents, +which, now that I find it again, sets the matter into clear light and +sequence:--and shall here, for removal of idle stumbling-blocks and +nugatory guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it +stood. (_Author's Note, of_ 1868.) + + +TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS. + +I. HIGHEST CLASS, BOOKSELLER'S TASTER. + +_Taster to Bookseller_.--"The Author of _Teufelsdrockh_ is a person of +talent; his work displays here and there some felicity of thought and +expression, considerable fancy and knowledge: but whether or not it +would take with the public seems doubtful. For a _jeu d'esprit_ of that +kind it is too long; it would have suited better as an essay or article +than as a volume. The Author has no great tact; his wit is frequently +heavy; and reminds one of the German Baron who took to leaping on +tables and answered that he was learning to be lively. _Is_ the work a +translation?" + +_Bookseller to Editor_.--"Allow me to say that such a writer requires +only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an able work. +Directly on receiving your permission, I sent your MS. to a gentleman in +the highest class of men of letters, and an accomplished German scholar: +I now enclose you his opinion, which, you may rely upon it, is a just +one; and I have too high an opinion of your good sense to" &c. &c.--_Ms. +(penes nos), London, 17th September_, 1831. + + +II. CRITIC OF THE SUN. + +"_Fraser's Magazine_ exhibits the usual brilliancy, and also the" &c. + +"_Sartor Resartus_ is what old Dennis used to call 'a heap of clotted +nonsense,' mixed however, here and there, with passages marked by +thought and striking poetic vigor. But what does the writer mean by +'Baphometic fire-baptism'? Why cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and +write so as to make himself generally intelligible? We quote by way +of curiosity a sentence from the _Sartor Resartus_; which may be read +either backwards or forwards, for it is equally intelligible either +way: indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head, +we think the reader will stand the fairest chance of getting at its +meaning: 'The fire-baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, +here feels its own freedom; which feeling is its Baphometic baptism: +the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and +will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not +indeed without hard battering, will doubtless by degrees be conquered +and pacificated.' Here is a"...--_Sun Newspaper, 1st April_, 1834. + + +III. NORTH--AMERICAN REVIEWER. + +... "After a careful survey of the whole ground, our belief is that no +such persons as Professors Teufelsdrockh or Counsellor Heuschrecke ever +existed; that the six Paper-bags, with their China-ink inscriptions +and multifarious contents, are a mere figment of the brain; that the +'present Editor' is the only person who has ever written upon the +Philosophy of Clothes; and that the _Sartor Resartus_ is the only +treatise that has yet appeared upon that subject;--in short, that the +whole account of the origin of the work before us, which the supposed +Editor relates with so much gravity, and of which we have given a brief +abstract, is, in plain English, a _hum_. + +"Without troubling our readers at any great length with our reasons for +entertaining these suspicions, we may remark, that the absence of all +other information on the subject, except what is contained in the work, +is itself a fact of a most significant character. The whole German +press, as well as the particular one where the work purports to have +been printed, seems to be under the control of _Stillschweigen and Co. +_--Silence and Company. If the Clothes-Philosophy and its author are +making so great a sensation throughout Germany as is pretended, how +happens it that the only notice we have of the fact is contained in a +few numbers of a monthly Magazine published at London! How happens it +that no intelligence about the matter has come out directly to this +country? We pique ourselves here in New England upon knowing at least +as much of what is going on in the literary way in the old Dutch +Mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored Isle; but thus far +we have no tidings whatever of the 'extensive close-printed, +close-meditated volume,' which forms the subject of this pretended +commentary. Again, we would respectfully inquire of the 'present Editor' +upon what part of the map of Germany we are to look for the city of +_Weissnichtwo_--'Know-not-where'--at which place the work is supposed +to have been printed, and the Author to have resided. It has been +our fortune to visit several portions of the German territory, and to +examine pretty carefully, at different times and for various purposes, +maps of the whole; but we have no recollection of any such place. We +suspect that the city of _Know-not-where_ might be called, with at +least as much propriety, _Nobody-knows-where_, and is to be +found in the kingdom of _Nowhere_. Again, the village of +_Entepfuhl_--'Duck-pond'--where the supposed Author of the work is said +to have passed his youth, and that of _Hinterschlag_, where he had his +education, are equally foreign to our geography. Duck-ponds enough there +undoubtedly are in almost every village in Germany, as the traveller +in that country knows too well to his cost, but any particular village +denominated Duck-pond is to us altogether _terra incognita_. The names +of the personages are not less singular than those of the places. +Who can refrain from a smile at the yoking together of such a pair of +appellatives as Diogenes Teufelsdrockh? The supposed bearer of +this strange title is represented as admitting, in his pretended +autobiography, that 'he had searched to no purpose through all the +Heralds' books in and without the German empire, and through all manner +of Subscribers'-lists, Militia-rolls, and other Name-catalogues,' +but had nowhere been able to find 'the name Teufelsdrockh, except as +appended to his own person.' We can readily believe this, and we doubt +very much whether any Christian parent would think of condemning a +son to carry through life the burden of so unpleasant a title. That of +Counsellor Heuschrecke--'Grasshopper'--though not offensive, looks much +more like a piece of fancy-work than a 'fair business transaction.' +The same may be said of _Blumine_--'Flower-Goddess'--the heroine of the +fable; and so of the rest. + +"In short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, that the +whole story of a correspondence with Germany, a university of +Nobody-knows-where, a Professor of Things in General, a Counsellor +Grasshopper, a Flower-Goddess Blumine, and so forth, has about as +much foundation in truth as the late entertaining account of Sir John +Herschel's discoveries in the moon. Fictions of this kind are, however, +not uncommon, and ought not, perhaps, to be condemned with too much +severity; but we are not sure that we can exercise the same indulgence +in regard to the attempt, which seems to be made to mislead the public +as to the substance of the work before us, and its pretended German +original. Both purport, as we have seen, to be upon the subject of +Clothes, or dress. _Clothes, their Origin and Influence_, is the title +of the supposed German treatise of Professor Teufelsdrockh and the +rather odd name of _Sartor Resartus_--the Tailor Patched--which the +present Editor has affixed to his pretended commentary, seems to look +the same way. But though there is a good deal of remark throughout the +work in a half-serious, half-comic style upon dress, it seems to be in +reality a treatise upon the great science of Things in General, which +Teufelsdrockh, is supposed to have professed at the university of +Nobody-knows-where. Now, without intending to adopt a too rigid standard +of morals, we own that we doubt a little the propriety of offering to +the public a treatise on Things in General, under the name and in the +form of an Essay on Dress. For ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately +are in the journey of life, far beyond the period when dress is +practically a matter of interest, we have no hesitation in saying, +that the real subject of the work is to us more attractive than the +ostensible one. But this is probably not the case with the mass of +readers. To the younger portion of the community, which constitutes +everywhere the very great majority, the subject of dress is one of +intense and paramount importance. An author who treats it appeals, like +the poet, to the young men end maddens--_virginibus puerisque_--and +calls upon them, by all the motives which habitually operate most +strongly upon their feelings, to buy his book. When, after opening their +purses for this purpose, they have carried home the work in triumph, +expecting to find in it some particular instruction in regard to the +tying of their neckcloths, or the cut of their corsets, and meet with +nothing better than a dissertation on Things in General, they +will--to use the mildest term--not be in very good humor. If the last +improvements in legislation, which we have made in this country, should +have found their way to England, the author, we think, would stand +some chance of being _Lynched_. Whether his object in this piece +of _supercherie_ be merely pecuniary profit, or whether he takes a +malicious pleasure in quizzing the Dandies, we shall not undertake to +say. In the latter part of the work, he devotes a separate chapter to +this class of persons, from the tenor of which we should be disposed +to conclude, that he would consider any mode of divesting them of their +property very much in the nature of a spoiling of the Egyptians. + +"The only thing about the work, tending to prove that it is what it +purports to be, a commentary on a real German treatise, is the style, +which is a sort of Babylonish dialect, not destitute, it is true, of +richness, vigor, and at times a sort of singular felicity of expression, +but very strongly tinged throughout with the peculiar idiom of the +German language. This quality in the style, however, may be a mere +result of a great familiarity with German literature; and we cannot, +therefore, look upon it as in itself decisive, still less as outweighing +so much evidence of an opposite character."--_North-American Review, No. +89, October_, 1835. + + +IV. NEW ENGLAND EDITORS. + +"The Editors have been induced, by the expressed desire of many persons, +to collect the following sheets out of the ephemeral pamphlets [*] in +which they first appeared, under the conviction that they contain in +themselves the assurance of a longer date. + + * _Fraser's_ (London) _Magazine_, 1833-34. + +"The Editors have no expectation that this little Work will have a +sudden and general popularity. They will not undertake, as there is no +need, to justify the gay costume in which the Author delights to +dress his thoughts, or the German idioms with which he has sportively +sprinkled his pages. It is his humor to advance the gravest speculations +upon the gravest topics in a quaint and burlesque style. If his +masquerade offend any of his audience, to that degree that they will not +hear what he has to say, it may chance to draw others to listen to his +wisdom; and what work of imagination can hope to please all! But we will +venture to remark that the distaste excited by these peculiarities in +some readers is greatest at first, and is soon forgotten; and that the +foreign dress and aspect of the Work are quite superficial, and cover +a genuine Saxon heart. We believe, no book has been published for many +years, written in a more sincere style of idiomatic English, or which +discovers an equal mastery over all the riches of the language. The +Author makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of his genius, +not only by frequent bursts of pure splendor, but by the wit and sense +which never fail him. + +"But what will chiefly commend the Book to the discerning reader is the +manifest design of the work, which is, a Criticism upon the Spirit of +the Age--we had almost said, of the hour--in which we live; exhibiting +in the most just and novel light the present aspects of Religion, +Politics, Literature, Arts, and Social Life. Under all his gayety +the Writer has an earnest meaning, and discovers an insight into the +manifold wants and tendencies of human nature, which is very rare among +our popular authors. The philanthropy and the purity of moral sentiment, +which inspire the work, will find their way to the heart of every lover +of virtue."--_Preface to Sartor Resartus: Boston_, 1835, 1837. + + +SUNT, FUERUNT VEL FUERE. + +LONDON, 30th June, 1838. + + + + + +Transcriber's Note: All spelling and punctuation was kept as in the +printed text. Italicized phrases are delimited by _underscores_. +Footnotes (there are only four) have been placed at the ends of the +paragraphs referencing them. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sartor Resartus, by Thomas Carlyle + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1051 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1052-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1052-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2b3da987 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1052-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2971 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1052 *** + +STEP BY STEP + +OR + +TIDY'S WAY TO FREEDOM. + + + "Woe to all who grind + Their brethren of a common Father down! + To all who plunder from the immortal mind + Its bright and glorious crown!" + --WHITTIER. + +[colophon omitted] + +Published By The + +American Tract Society, + +28 Cornhill, Boston. + + +Transcriber's Note: I have removed page numbers; all italics +are emphasis only. I have omitted running heads and have closed +contractions, e.g. "she 's" becoming "she's"; in addition, on page +180, stanza 3, line 1, I have changed the single quotation mark at the +beginning of the line to a double quotation mark. + + +Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by THE AMERICAN +TRACT SOCIETY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the +District of Massachusetts. + +Riverside, Cambridge: + +Stereotyped And Printed By H. O. Houghton. + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAP. PAGE + + + I. INTRODUCTION. . . . . . 5 + II. THE BABY. . . . . 13 + III. SUNSHINE. . . . . 24 + IV. SEVERAL EVENTS. . . . 36 + V. A NEW HOME. . . . . 43 + VI. BEGINNINGS OF KNOWLEDGE. 50 + VII. FRANCES. . . . . 62 + VIII. PRAYER. . . . . 75 + IX. THE FIRST LESSON. . . . 87 + X. LONY'S PETITION. . . . . 95 + XI. ROUGH PLACES. . . . . 105 + XII. A GREAT UNDERTAKING. . 112 + XIII. A LONG JOURNEY. . . . 127 + XIV. CRUELTY. . . . . 137 + XV. COTTON. . . . . 147 + XVI. RESCUE. . . . . 154 + XVII. TRUE LIBERTY. . . . 165 + XVIII. CROWNING MERCIES. . . 174 + + +OLD DINAH JOHNSON. . . . . + + + + +STEP BY STEP. + + + +CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. + +MY DEAR CHILDREN,--All of you who read this little book have doubtless +heard more or less of slavery. You know it is the system by which a +portion of our people hold their fellow-creatures as property, and doom +them to perpetual servitude. It is a hateful and accursed institution, +which God can not look upon but with abhorrence, and which no one of +his children should for a moment tolerate. It is opposed to every thing +Christian and humane, and full of all meanness and cruelty. It treats a +fellow-being, only because his skin is not so fair as our own, as +though he were a dumb animal or a piece of furniture. It allows him +no expression of choice about any thing, and no liberty of action. It +recognizes and employs all the instincts of the lower, but ignores and +tramples down all the faculties of his higher, nature. Can there be a +greater wrong? + +It is said by some, in extenuation of this wrong, that the slaves are +well fed and clothed, and are kindly, even affectionately, looked +after. This is true, in some cases,--with the house-servants, +particularly,--but, as a general thing, their food and clothing are +coarse and insufficient. But supposing it was otherwise; supposing they +were provided for with as much liberality as are the working classes at +the North, what is that when put into the balance with all the ills they +suffer? What comfort is it, when a wife is torn from her husband, or a +mother from her children, to know that each is to have enough to eat? +None at all. The most generous provision for the body can not satisfy +the longings of the heart, or compensate for its bereavements. + +They suffer, also, a constant dread and fear of change, which is not +the least of their torturing troubles. A kind owner may be taken away by +death, and the new one be harsh and cruel; or necessity may compel +him to sell his slaves, and thus they may be thrown into most unhappy +situations. So they live with a heavy cloud of sorrow always before +them, which their eyes can not look through or beyond. There is no +hope--no EARTHLY hope--for this poor, oppressed race. + +Their minds, too, are starved. No education, not even the least, is +allowed. It is a criminal offense in some of the States to teach a slave +to read. Now, if they could be made to exist without any consciousness +of intellectual capacity, it would not be so bad. But this is +impossible. They think and reason and wonder about things which they +see and hear; and, in many cases, feel an eager desire to be instructed. +This desire can not be gratified, because it would unfit them for their +servile condition; therefore all teaching is rigidly denied them. The +treasures of knowledge are bolted and barred to their approach, and +they are kept in the utmost darkness and ignorance. Oh, to starve the +mind!--Is it not far worse than to starve the body? + +There is yet another process of famishing to which the slaves are +subjected. They are not, as a general thing, taught by their masters +about God, the salvation of Jesus Christ or the way to heaven. The SOUL +is starved. To be sure, they pick up, here and there, a few crumbs of +religious truth, and make the most of their scanty supply. Many of them +truly love the Lord; and his unseen presence and joyful anticipations +of heaven make them submissive to their hardships, and cheerful and +faithful in their duties. But they can not thank their masters for what +religious light and knowledge they get. + +And who are these that hold their fellow-creatures in such cruel +bondage, starving body, mind, and soul with such indifference and +inhumanity? We blush to tell you. Many of them are of the number of +those who profess to love the Lord their God with all the heart, and +their neighbor as themselves. Can it be possible that God's own children +can participate in such a wickedness; can buy and sell, beat and kill, +their fellow-creatures? Can those who have humbly repented of sin, and +by faith accepted of the salvation of Jesus Christ, turn from his holy +cross to abuse others who are redeemed by the same precious blood, and +are heirs to the same glorious immortality? CAN such be Christians? + +And, children, you probably all understand that slavery is the sole +cause of the sad war which is now ravaging our beloved country; and +Christian people are praying, not only that the war may cease, but +that the sin which has caused it may cease also. We believe that God is +overruling all things to bring about this happy result, and before this +little story shall meet your eyes, there may be no more slaves within +our borders. Still we shall not have written it in vain, if it help +you to realize, more clearly than you have done, the sufferings and +degradation to which this unfortunate class have been subjected, and to +labor with zeal in the work which will then devolve upon us of educating +and elevating them. + +My story is not one of UNUSUAL interest. Thousands and ten of thousands +equally affecting might be told, and many far more romantic and +thrilling. What a day will that be, when the recorded history of every +slave-life shall be read before an assembled universe! What a long +catalogue of martyrs and heroes will then be revealed! What complicated +tales of wrongs and woes! What crowns and palms of victory will then be +awarded! What treasures of wrath heaped up against the day of wrath will +then be poured in fiery indignation upon deserving heads! Truly, then, +will come to pass the saying of the Lord Jesus, "The first shall be last +and the last first." + +Then, too, will appear most gloriously the loving kindness and tender +mercy of God, who loves to stoop to the poor and humble, and to care for +those who are friendless and alone. It seems as if our Heavenly Father +took special delight in revealing the truths of salvation to this +untutored people, in a mysterious way leading them into gospel light +and liberty; so that though men take pains to keep them in ignorance, +multitudes of them give evidence of piety, and find consolation for +their miseries in the sweet love of God. + +It is the dealings of God in guiding one of these to a knowledge of +himself, that I wish to relate to you in the following chapters. + + + +CHAPTER II. THE BABY. + +IN a snug corner of a meager slave-cabin, on a low cot, lies a little +babe asleep. A scarlet honeysuckle of wild and luxuriant growth shades +the uncurtained and unsashed window; and the humming-birds, flitting +among its brilliant blossoms, murmur a constant, gentle lullaby for the +infant sleeper. See, its skin is not so dark but that we may clearly +trace the blue veins underlying it; the lips, half parted, are lovely +as a rosebud; and the soft, silky curls are dewy as the flowers on this +June morning. A dimpled arm and one naked foot have escaped from the +gay patch-work quilt, which some fond hand has closely tucked about the +little form; and the breath comes and goes quickly, as if the folded +eyes were feasting on visions of beauty and delight. Dear little one! + + "We should see the spirits ringing + Round thee, were the clouds away; + 'Tis the child-heart draws them, singing + In the silent-seeming clay." + +Though that child-heart beats beneath a despised skin, though it has its +resting-place in a hovel, the angels may be there. Their loving, pitying +natures shrink not from poverty, but stoop with heavenly sympathy to the +mean abodes of suffering and misery. + +A soft step steals in through the half-opened door, across the room, and +a fervent kiss is laid on the little velvet cheek. + +Who is the intruder? Ah, who cares to watch and smile over a sleeping +infant, save its mother? Here, in this rude cabin, is a mother's +heart,--tender with its holy affections, and all aglow with delight, as +she gazes on the beautiful vision before her. + +We must call the mother Annie. She had but one name, for she was a +slave. Like the horse or the dog, she must have some appellation by +which, as an individual, she might be designated; a sort of appendage +on which to hang, as it were, the commands, threats, and severities that +from time to time might be administered; but farther than that, for her +own personal uses, why did she need a name? She was not a person, only a +thing,--a piece of property belonging to the Carroll estate. + +But for all that, she was a woman and a mother. God had sealed her such, +and who could obliterate his impress, or rob her of the crown he had +placed about her head,--a crown of thorns though it were? Her heart was +as full of all sweet motherly instincts as if she had been born in a +more favored condition; and the swarthy complexion of her child made +it no less dear or lovely in her sight; while a consciousness of its +degradation and sad future served only to deepen and intensify her love. +She knew what her child was born to suffer; but affection thrust far +away the evil day, that she might not lose the happiness of the present. +The babe was hers,--her own,--and for long years yet would be her joy +and comfort. + +Annie had other children, but they were wild, romping boys, grown out +of their babyhood, and so very naturally left to run and take care of +themselves. She had not ceased to love them, however, and would have +manifested it more, but for the idol, the little girl baby, which had +now for nearly a year nestled in her arms, and completely possessed +her heart. When they were hungry, they came like chickens about her +cabin-door, and being mistress of the kitchen, she always had plenty of +good, substantial crumbs for them; and when they were sick, she nursed +them with pitying care; but this was about all the attention they +received. + +The baby engrossed every leisure moment she could command. Many times a +day she would pause in her work to caress it. She would seat it upon the +floor, amid a perfect bed of honeysuckle blossoms, and bring the bright +orange gourds that grew around the door for its amusement. Sometimes a +broken toy or a shining trinket, which she had picked up in the house, +or a smooth pebble from the yard, would be added to the treasures of the +little one. Then she would come with food, the soft-boiled rice, or the +sweet corn gruel, she knew so well how to prepare; and often, often +she would steal in, as now, out of pure fondness, to watch its peaceful +slumbers. + +"Named the pickaninny yet?" asked the master one day, as he passed +the cabin, and carelessly looked in upon the mother and child amusing +themselves within. "'Tis time you did; 'most time to turn her off now, +you see." + +"Oh, Massa, don't say dat word," answered the woman, imploringly. +"'Pears I couldn't b'ar to turn her off yet,--couldn't live without her, +no ways. Reckon I'll call her Tidy; dat ar's my sister's name, and she's +got dat same sweet look 'bout de eyes,--don't you think so, Massa? Poor +Tidy! she's"--and Annie stopped, and a deep sigh, instead of words, +filled up the sentence, and tears dropped down upon the baby's forehead. +Memory traveled back to that dreadful night when this only sister had +been dragged from her bed, chained with a slave-gang, and driven off to +the dreaded South, never more to be heard from. + +WE talk of the "sunny South;"--to the slave, the South is cold, dark, +and cheerless; the land of untold horrors, the grave of hope and joy. + +"'Pears as if my poor old mudder," said Annie, brushing away the tears, +"never got up right smart after Tidy went away. She'd had six children +sold from her afore, and she set stores by her and me, 'cause we was +girls, and we was all she had left, too. Tidy was pooty as a flower; +and dat's just what your fadder, Massa Carroll, sold her for. My poor +mudder--how she cried and took on! but then she grew more settled like. +She said she'd gi'n her up for de good Lord to take care on. She said, +if he could take care of de posies in de woods, he certain sure would +look after her, and so she left off groaning like; but she's never got +over that sad look in her face. 'Oh,' says she to me, says she, 'Annie, +do call dat leetle cretur's name Tidy,--mebbe 'twill make my poor, sore +heart heal up;' and so I will." + +"So I would, Annie; yes, so I would," said the Master soothingly. "So I +would, if 'twill be any comfort to poor old Marcia,--clever old soul she +is. She was my mammy, and I was always fond of her. She has trotted me +on her knee, and toted me about on her back, many an hour. I must +go down to the quarters this very day, and see if she has things +comfortable. She's getting old, and we must do well by her in her old +age. And you, Annie, you mustn't mind those other things. We mustn't +borrow trouble. And we can't help it, you know; and we mustn't cry and +fret for what we can't help. What's the use? It don't do any good, you +see, and only makes a bad matter worse. Must take things as they come, +in this world of ours, Annie;" and the Master thought thus to assuage +the tide of bitter recollection in the breast of his down-trodden +bond-woman, and divert her mind from the painful future before her and +her darling child. In vain. The tears still fell over the brow of the +baby, flowing from the deep fountain of sorrow and tenderness that +springs forth only from a mother's heart. + +"Oh, Massa," she ventured timidly to say amid her sobs, "please don't +never part baby and me." + +"Be a good girl, Annie," said he, "and mind your work, and don't be +borrowing trouble. We'll take good care of you. You've got a nice baby, +that's a fact,--the smartest little thing on the whole plantation; see +how well you can raise her now." + +The fond heart of the trembling mother leaped back again to its +happiness at the praise bestowed upon her baby; and taking up the little +blossom, she laid it with pride upon her bosom, murmuring, "Years of +good times we'll have, sweety, afore sich dark days come,--mebbe they'll +never come to you and me." + +Alas, vain hope! Scarcely a single year had passed, when one day she +came to the cot to look at the little sleeper, and lo, her treasure was +gone! The master had found it convenient, in making a sale of some +field hands, to THROW IN this infant, by way of closing a satisfactory +bargain. + +None can tell, but those who have gone through the trying experience, +how hard it is for a mother to part with her child when God calls it +away by death. But oh, how much harder it must be to have a babe torn +away from the maternal arms by the stern hand of oppression, and flung +out on the cruel tide of selfishness and passion! Let us weep, dear +children, for the poor slave mothers who have to endure such wrongs. + +I will not undertake to describe the distress of this poor woman when +the knowledge of her loss burst upon her. It was as when the tall +tree is shivered by the lightning's blast. Her strong frame shook +and trembled beneath the shock; her eye rolled and burned in tearless +anguish, and her voice failed her in the intensity of her grief. For +hours she was unable to move. Alone, uncomforted, she lay upon the +earth, crushed beneath the weight of this unexpected calamity. + +"Leave her alone," said the master, "and let her grieve it out. The +cat will mew when her kittens are taken away. She'll get over it before +long, and come up again all right." + +"Ye mus' b'ar it, chile," said Annie's poor, old mother, drawing from +her own experience the only comfort which could be of any avail. "De +bressed Lord will help ye; nobody else can. I's so sorry for ye, honey; +but yer poor, old mudder can't do noffin. 'Tis de yoke de Heavenly +Massa puts on yer neck, and ye can't take it off nohow till he ondoes it +hissef wid his own hand. Ye mus' b'ar it, and say, De will ob de bressed +Lord be done." + +But, trying as this separation was, it proved to be the first link in +that chain of loving-kindnesses by which this little slave-child was to +be drawn towards God. Do you remember this verse in the Bible: "I have +loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness have +I drawn thee." + + + +CHAPTER III. SUNSHINE. + +IF ever there was a sunshiny corner of slavery, it was that into which +a kind Providence dropped this little, helpless babe, now but a little +more than two years old. + +It was a pleasant day in early spring when Colonel Lee alighted from +his gig before the family mansion at Rosevale, and laid the child, as a +present, at the feet of his daughter Matilda. + +Miss Matilda Lee was about thirty years of age,--as active and thrifty +a little woman as could be found any where within the domains of this +cruel system of oppression. Slavery is like a two-edged knife, cutting +both ways. It not only destroys the black, but demoralizes and ruins +the white race. Those who hold slaves are usually indolent, proud, and +inefficient. They think it a disgrace to work by the side of the negro, +and therefore will allow things to be left in a very careless, untidy +way, rather than put forth their energy to alter or improve them. And as +it is impossible for slaves, untaught and degraded as they are, to give +a neat and thrifty appearance to their homes, we, who have been brought +up at the North, accustomed to work ourselves, assisted by well-trained +domestics, can scarcely realize the many discomforts often to be +experienced in Southern houses. But Miss Lee was unusually energetic and +helpful, desirous of having every thing about her neat and tasteful, and +not afraid to do something towards it with her own hands. + +Being the eldest daughter, the entire charge of the family had devolved +upon her since the death of her mother, which had occurred about ten +years before. Within this time, her brothers and sisters had been +married, and now she and her father were all that were left at the old +homestead. + +Their servants, too, had dwindled away. Some had been given to the +sons and daughters when they left the parental roof; some had died, and +others had been sold to pay debts and furnish the means of living. Old +Rosa, the cook, Nancy, the waiting-maid, and Methuselah, the ancient +gardener, were all the house-servants that remained. So they lived in +a very quiet and frugal way; and Miss Matilda's activities, not being +entirely engrossed with family cares, found employment in the nurture of +flowers and pets. + +The grounds in front of the old-fashioned mansion had been laid out +originally in very elaborate style; and, though of late years they +had been greatly neglected, they still retained traces of their former +splendor. The rose-vines on the inside of the enclosure had grown +over the low, brick wall, to meet and mingle with the trees and bushes +outside, till together they formed a solid and luxuriant mass of +verdure. White and crimson roses shone amid the dark, glossy foliage +of the mountain-laurel, which held up with sturdy stem its own rich +clusters of fluted cups, that seemed to assert equality with the queen +of flowers, and would not be eclipsed by the fragrant loveliness of +their beautiful dependents. The borders of box, which had once been +trimmed and trained into fanciful points and tufts and convolutions of +verdure, had grown into misshapen clumps; and the white, pebbly walks no +longer sparkled in the sunlight. + +Still Miss Matilda, by the aid of Methuselah, in appearance almost +as ancient as we may suppose his namesake to have been, found great +pleasure in cultivating her flower-beds; and every year, her crocuses +and hyacinths, crown-imperials and tulips, pinks, lilies, and roses, +none the less beautiful because they are so commonly enjoyed, gave a +cheerful aspect to the place. + +Her numerous pets made the house equally bright and pleasant. There +was Sir Walter Raleigh, the dog, and Mrs. Felina, the great, splendid, +Maltese mother of three beautiful blue kittens; Jack and Gill, the +gentle, soft-toned Java sparrows; and Ruby, the unwearying canary +singer, always in loud and uninterpretable conversation with San Rosa, +the mocking-bird. The birds hung in the broad, deep window of the +sitting-room, in the shade of the jasmine and honeysuckle vines that +embowered it and filled the air with delicious perfume. The dog and +cat, when not inclined to active enjoyments, were accommodated with +comfortable beds in the adjoining apartment, which was the sleeping-room +of their mistress. + +The new household pet became an occupant of this same room. + +"Laws, now, Miss Tilda, ye a'n't gwine to put de chile in ther wid all +de dogs and cats, now. 'Pears ye might have company enough o' nights +widout takin' in a cryin' baby. She'll cry sure widout her mammy, and +what ye gwine to do thin?" and old Rosa stoutly protested against the +arrangement. + +"Never mind, Aunt Rosa, don't worry now; I'll manage to take good +care of the little creature. I know what you're after,--you want her +yourself." + +"Ho, ho ho! Laws, now, Miss Tilda, you dun know noffing 'bout babies; +takes an old mammy like me to fotch 'em up. Come here, child; what's yer +name?" + +The frightened little one, whose tongue had not yet learned to utter +many words, made no attempt to answer, but stood timidly looking from +one to another of the surrounding group. + +"She ha'n't got no name, 'ta'n't likely," suggested Nance. + +"We must christen her, then," said Miss Lee. + +"Carroll called her Tidy," remarked the old gentleman, entering the room +at that moment. + +"DAT'S a name of 'spectability," said Rosa, with a satisfied air. "'Tis +my 'pinion chillen should allus have 'spectable names, else they're +'posed on in dis yer world. Nudd's Tidy, now, dere's a spec'men for yer. +Never was no more 'complished 'fectioner dan she. She knowed how to cook +all de earth, she did. Hi! couldn't she barbecue a heifer, or brile +a cock's comb, jest as 'spertly as Miss Tilda here broiders a ruffle. +Right smart cretur she wor. And so YE'RE a gwine to be, honey,--your old +mammy sees it in de tips ob yer fingers;" and Rosa caught up the child, +and well-nigh smothered it with all sorts of maternal fondnesses. + +"Now Nance," continued the old negress, turning with an air of authority +to the tall, loose-jointed, reed-like maid, "Now Nance, ye mind yer +doin's in dese yer premises. Don't ye go for to kick de young un round +like as ef she cost noffin'. Ef ye do, look out;" and she shook her +turbaned head, and doubled her fist in very threatening manner before +the girl. "Now we've got a baby in dis yer house, we'll see how de tings +is gwine for to go." + +A baby in the Lee mansion did indeed inaugurate a new order of things +in the family. So young a servant they had not had for many a day on the +estate; and Rosa felt at once the responsibility of her position, and +played the mother to her heart's content. All the care of the child's +education seemed from that moment to devolve upon her, notwithstanding +Miss Lee's repeated assertions that SHE designed to bring up the little +one after her own heart, and that Tidy should never wait upon any one +but herself. + +Between them both, Tidy had things pretty much her own way. Such an +infant of course could not be expected to comprehend the fact that she +was a slave, and born to be ruled over, and trodden under foot. Like any +other little one, she enjoyed existence, and was as happy as could be +all the day long. Every thing around her,--the chickens and turkeys +in the yard, the flowers in the garden, the kittens and birds in the +sitting-room, and the goodies in the kitchen,--added to her pleasure. +She frisked and gamboled about the house and grounds as free and joyous +as the squirrels in the woods, and without a thought or suspicion that +any thing but happiness was in store for her. She not only slept at +night in the room of her mistress, but when the daily meals were served, +the child, seated on a low bench beside Miss Lee, was fed from her own +dish. So that, in respect to her animal nature, she fared as well as any +child need to; but this was all. Not a word of instruction of any kind +did she receive. + +As she grew older, and her active mind, observing and wondering at the +many objects of interest in nature, burst out into childish questions, +"What is this for?" and "Who made that?" her mistress would answer +carelessly, "I don't know," or "You'll find out by and by." Her thirst +for knowledge was never satisfied; for while Miss Lee was good-natured +and gentle in her ways toward the child, she took no pains to impart +information of any kind. Why should she? Tidy was only a slave. + +Here, my little readers, you may see the difference between her +condition and your own. You are carefully taught every thing that will +be of use to you. Even before you ask questions, they are answered; and +father and mother, older brothers and sisters, aunties, teachers, and +friends are ready and anxious to explain to you all the curious and +interesting things that come under your notice. Indeed, so desirous are +they to cultivate your intellectual nature, that they seek to stimulate +your appetite for knowledge, by drawing your attention to many things +which otherwise you would overlook. At the same time, they point you to +the great and all-wise Creator, that you may admire and love him who has +made every thing for our highest happiness and good. + +But slavery depends for its existence and growth upon the ignorance of +its miserable victims. If Tidy's questions had been answered, and her +curiosity satisfied, she would have gone on in her investigations; and +from studying objects in nature, she would have come to study books, and +perhaps would have read the Bible, and thus found out a great deal which +it is not considered proper for a slave to know. + +"We couldn't keep our servants, if we were to instruct them," says +the slaveholder; and therefore he makes the law which constitutes it a +criminal offense to teach a slave to read. + +But Tidy was taught to WORK. That is just what slaves are made for,--to +work, and so save their owners the trouble of working themselves. +Slaveholders do not recognize the fact that God designed us all to work, +and has so arranged matters, that true comfort and happiness can only be +reached through the gateway of labor. It is no blessing to be idle, and +let others wait upon us; and in this respect the slaves certainly have +the advantage of their masters. + +Tidy was an apt learner, and at eight years of age she could do up Miss +Matilda's ruffles, clean the great brass andirons and fender in the +sitting-room, and set a room to rights as neatly as any person in the +house. + + +CHAPTER IV. SEVERAL EVENTS. + +SHALL I pause here in my narrative to tell you what became of Annie +and some of the other persons who have been mentioned in the preceding +chapters? + +Tidy often saw her mother. Miss Lee used to visit Mr. Carroll's family, +and never went without taking Tidy, that the child and her mother might +have a good time together. And good times indeed they were. + +When Annie learned that her baby had been taken to Rosevale, that she +was so well cared for, and that they would be able sometimes to see one +another, her grief was very much abated, and she began to think in what +new ways she could show her love for her little one. She saved all the +money she could get; and, as she had opportunity, she would buy a bit +of gay calico, to make the child a frock or an apron. Mothers, you +perceive, are all alike, from the days of Hannah, who made a "little +coat" for her son Samuel, and "brought it to him from year to year, +when she came up with her husband to the yearly sacrifice," down to the +present time. Nothing pleases them more than to provide things useful +and pretty for their little ones. Even this slave-mother, with her +scanty means, felt this same longing. It did her heart good to be +doing something for her child; and so she was constantly planning and +preparing for these visits, that she might never be without something +new and gratifying to give her. In the warm days of summer, she would +take her down to Sweet-Brier Pond, a pretty pool of water right in the +heart of a sweet pine grove, a little way from the house, and Tidy +would have a good splashing frolic in the water, and come out looking +as bright and shining as a newly-polished piece of mahogany. Her mother +would press the water from her dripping locks, and turn the soft, glossy +hair in short, smooth curls over her fingers, put on the new frock, +and then set her out before her admiring eyes, and exclaim in her fond +motherly pride,-- + +"You's a purty cretur, honey. You dun know noffin how yer mudder lubs +ye." + +Tidy remembers to this day the delightful afternoon thus spent the +very last time she went to see her mother, though neither of them then +thought it was to be the last. Mr. Carroll, Annie's master, was very +close in all his business transactions, never allowing, as he remarked, +his left hand to know what his right hand did. He stole Tidy away, as we +have already told you, from her mother; and this was the way he usually +managed in parting his slaves, especially any that were much valued. He +said it was "a part of his religion to deal TENDERLY with his people!" + +"'Tis a great deal better," said he, "to avoid a row. They would +moan and wail and make such a fuss, if they knew they were to change +quarters." + +Humane man, wasn't he? + +Mr. Carroll got into debt, and an opportunity occurring, he sold Annie +and her four boys. The bargain was made without the knowledge of any +one on the estate; and in the night they were transferred to their new +master. Nobody ever knew to what part of the country they were carried. + +When the news reached the ear of Marcia, Annie's mother, it proved to be +more than she could bear. Her very last comfort was thus torn from her. +When she was told of it, the poor, decrepit old woman fell from her +chair upon the floor of her cabin insensible. The people lifted her up +and laid her upon the bed, but she never came to consciousness. She lay +without sense or motion until the next day, when she died. The slaves +said, "Old Marcia's heart broke." + +Thus little Tidy was left alone in the world, without a single relative +to love her. Didn't she care much about it? That happened thirty +years ago, and she can not speak of it even now without tears. But she +comforts herself by saying, "I shall meet them in heaven." Annie may not +yet have arrived at that blessed home; but Marcia has rejoiced all these +years in the presence of the Lord she loved, and has found, by a glad +experience, that the happiness of heaven can compensate for all the +trials of earth. + + "For God has marked each sorrowing day, + And numbered every secret tear; + And heaven's long age of bliss shall pay + For all his children suffer here." + +And now I must tell you of another death which occurred about this same +time. It was that of Colonel Lee. He had been a rich and a proud man, +and it would seem, that, like the rich man in the parable, he had had +all his good things in this life; and now that he had come to the +gates of death, he found himself in a sadly destitute and lamentable +condition. He was afraid to die; and when he came to the very last, his +shrieks of terror and distress were fearful. His mind was wandering, and +he fancied some strong being was binding him with chains and shackles. +He screamed for help, and even called for Rosa, his faithful old +servant, to come and help him. + +"Take off those hand-cuffs," he cried; "take them off. I can not bear +them. Don't let them put on those chains. Oh, I can't move! They'll drag +me away! Stop them; help me! save me!" + +But, alas! no one could save him. The man who had all his life been +loading his fellow-creatures with chains and fetters was now in the +grasp of One mightier than he, who was "delivering him over into chains +of darkness, to be reserved unto the judgment." + +How dreadful was such an end! + +"I would rather be a slave with all my sorrows," said Tidy, when she +related this sad story, "and wait for comfort until I get to heaven, +than to have all the riches of all the slaveholders in the world, gained +by injustice and oppression; for I could only carry them as far as the +grave, and there they would be an awful weight to drag me down into +torments for ever." + + + +CHAPTER V. A NEW HOME. + +AFTER Colonel Lee's death, which happened when Tidy was about ten years +old, the plantation and all the slaves were sold, and Miss Matilda, with +Tidy, who was her own personal property, found a home with her brother. +Mr. Richard Lee owned an estate about twenty miles from Rosevale. +His lands had once been well cultivated, but now received very little +attention, for medicinal springs had been discovered there a few years +before, and it was expected that these springs, by being made a resort +for invalids and fashionable people, would bring to the family all the +income they could desire. + +Mr. and Mrs. Lee were not very pleasant people. They were selfish and +penurious, and hard-hearted and severe towards their servants. They no +doubt were happy to have their sister take up her abode with them; but +there is reason to believe she was chiefly welcome on account of the +valuable little piece of property she brought with her. Tidy was just +exactly what Mrs. Lee wanted to fill a place in her family, which she +had never before been able to supply to her satisfaction. She needed +her as an under-nurse, and waiter-and-tender in general upon her four +children. Amelia, the eldest, was just Tidy's age, and Susan was two +years younger. Then came Lemuel, a boy of three, and George, the baby. + +Mammy Grace was the family nurse, but as she was growing old and +somewhat infirm, she required a pair of young, sprightly feet to +run after little Lemmy to keep him out of mischief, and to carry the +teething, worrying baby about. Tidy was just the child for her. + +The morning after her arrival, Mrs. Lee instructed her in her duties +thus:-- + +"You are to do what Mammy Grace and the children tell you to. See that +Lemmy doesn't stuff things into his ears and nose; mind you don't let +the baby fall, and behave yourself." + +She wasn't told what would be the consequence if she did not "behave +herself," but Tidy felt that she had something to fear from that +flashing eye and heavy brow. Miss Matilda had protected her, as far as +she was able, though without the child's knowledge, by saying to her +sister that she was willing her little servant should be employed in the +family, but that she was never to be whipped. + +"You're mighty saving of your little piece of flesh and blood," said her +sister-in-law. "I find it doesn't work well to be too tender; they need +a little cuffing now and then to keep them straight." + +"Tidy is a good child," replied Miss Matilda. "She always does as she is +told, and I have never had occasion to punish her in my life; and I can +not consent to her being treated severely." + +"We shall see," said Mrs. Lee; "but, I tell you, I take no impudence +from my hands." + +Miss Matilda's stipulation and her constant presence in the family no +doubt screened Tidy from much that was unpleasant from her new mistress; +for if children or servants are ever so well inclined, an ugly and +easily excited temper in a superior will provoke evil dispositions in +them, and MAKE occasions of punishment. But in this case the mistress +was evidently held in check. A knock on the head sometimes, a kick or a +cross word, was the greatest severity she ventured to inflict; so that, +upon the whole, the new home was a pleasant and happy one. + +The services Tidy was required to render were a perfect delight to her. +Like all children, she liked to be associated with those of her own age, +and, though called a slave, to all intents and purposes she was +received as the playmate and companion of Amelia and Susan. They were +good-natured, agreeable little girls, and it was a pleasure rather +than a task to walk to and from school, and carry their books and +dinner-basket for them. And to go into the play-house, and have the +handling of the dolls, the tea-sets, and toys, was employment as +charming as it was new. + +The nursery was in the cabin of Mammy Grace, which was situated a few +steps from the family mansion, and was distinguished from the log-huts +of the other slaves, by having brick walls and two rooms. The inner room +contained the baby's cradle, a crib for the little one who had not yet +outgrown his noon-day nap, her own bed, and now a cot for Tidy. In the +outer stood the spinning-wheel,--at which the old nurse wrought when not +occupied with the children,--a small table, an old chest of drawers, and +a few rude chairs. Some old carpets which had been discarded from the +house were laid over the floors, and gave an air of comfort to the +place. One shelf by the side of the fireplace held all the china and +plate they had to use; for, you must know, little readers, that slave +cabins contain very few of the conveniences which are so familiar to +you. To assert, as some people do, that the negroes do not need them, is +simply to say that they have never been used to the common comforts of +life, and so do not know their worth. + +Nevertheless, the place with all its scantiness of furniture was a happy +abode for Tidy, who found in Mammy Grace even a better mother than old +Rosa had been to her; for, besides being kind and cheerful, she was +pious, and from her lips it was that Tidy first heard the name of +God. Would you believe it? Tidy had lived to be ten years old in this +Christian land, and had never heard of the God who made her. Miss Lee, +with all her kindness, was not a Christian, and never read the Bible, +offered prayer, or went to church; so that the poor child had grown up +thus far as ignorant of religious truth as a heathen. + +We may well consider then the providence of God which brought her under +the care of Mammy Grace, the negro nurse, as another link in that golden +chain of love which was to draw her up out of the shame and misery +of her abject condition to the knowledge and service of her Heavenly +Father. + + + +CHAPTER VI. BEGINNINGS OF KNOWLEDGE. + +THE first day of the new service was over. The two babies had been +carried to the house and put to bed as usual at sunset, and Mammy Grace +had mixed the corn-pone for supper, and laid it to bake beneath the hot +ashes. + +Tidy stretched herself at full length near the open door of the cabin, +and resting her head upon her hand looked out. All was still save the +hum of voices from the house, and now and then the plaintive song of +the whippoorwill in the meadow. The new moon was just hiding its silvery +crescent behind Tulip Mountain, and the shadows were growing every +moment darker among the flower-laden trees that covered its sides. +It was just the hour for thinking; and as the weary child lay there, +watching the stars that, one by one, stepped with such strange, +noiseless grace out upon the clear, blue sky, soothed by the calm +influence that breathed through the beautiful twilight, she soon forgot +herself and her surroundings, and was lost in the mazes of speculation +and wonder. What were these bright spots that kept coming thicker +and faster over her head, winking and blinking at her, as if with a +conscious and friendly intelligence? Who made them? what were they +doing? where did they hide in the daytime? If she could climb up yonder +mountain, and then get to the top of those tall tulip-trees, she was +sure she could reach them, or, at least, see better what they were. Were +they candles, that some unseen hand had lighted and thrust out there, +that the night might not be wholly dark? That could not be, for then the +wind, which was fanning the trees, would blow them out. How the little +mind longed to fathom the mystery! Once she had ventured to ask Miss +Matilda what those bright specks up in the sky were, and she answered, +in an indifferent sort of way, "Stars, you little silly goose,--why, +don't you know? They are stars." And then she was just about as wise and +as satisfied as she had been before. + +She was so busy with her thoughts, that she did not perceive Mammy +Grace, as she drew the old, broken-backed rocking-chair up to the door, +and sitting down, with her elbows on her knees and her head upon her +hands, leaned forward, to discover, if possible, what the child was so +intently gazing at. She could discern no object in the deep twilight; +but, struck herself with the still beauty of the scene, she exclaimed,-- + +"Pooty night, a'n't it? How de stars of heaben do shine!" + +The voice disturbed Tidy in her reverie. Her first impulse was to get +up and walk away, that she might finish out her thinking in some other +place, where she could be alone. But the thought flashed through her +mind, that perhaps the kind-looking old nurse at her side might be able +to tell her some of the many things she was so perplexed about; and, +almost before she knew she was speaking, she blurted out,-- + +"What's them things up thar?" + +"Dem bright little shiny tings, honey, in de firm'ment? Laws, don' ye +know? Whar's ye lived all yer days, if ye don' know de stars when ye +sees 'em?" + +"Who owns 'em? and what they stuck up ther for?" asked the child, +somewhat encouraged. + +"Who owns 'em? Hi! dey's de property ob de Lord ob heaben, chile, I +reckons; and dey's put dar to gib us light o'nights. Jest see 'em shine! +and what a sight of 'em dar is, too; nobody can't count 'em noway. And +de Lord he hold 'em all in de holler ob his hand," said the old negress, +shaping her great black palm to suit the idea; "and he knows 'em all +by name, too. Specs 'tis wonderful; but ebery one ob dem leetle, teenty +tings has got a name, and de great Lord he 'members 'em ebery one." + +Tidy's wonder was not at all diminished by what she heard; and the +questions she wanted to ask came up so fast in her mind, she hardly +knew which to utter first. What they were made out of, how they came and +went, what they meant by twinkling so, were things she had long desired +to know; but for the moment these were forgotten in the burning, eager +curiosity she had, now that she had heard the name of their Maker, to +know more of him, and where he was to be found. Half rising from +her former position, and looking earnestly in the face of her humble +instructor, which was beaming with her own admiration of the glorious +works and power of the Lord, she exclaimed vehemently,-- + +"That Lord,--who's him? I's never heerd of him afore." + +"Laws, honey, don' ye know? He's de great Lord of heaben and earf, dat +made you and me and ebery body else. He made all de tings ye sees,--de +trees, de green grass, de birds, de pigs,--dere's noffin dat he didn't +make. Oh, he's de mighty Lord, I tells ye, chile! Didn't ye neber hear +'bout him afore?" + +Tidy shook her head; she could hardly speak. + +"Tell me some more," she said at last. + +"Well, chile, dis great Lord he lib up in de heaben of heabens, way up +ober dat blue sky, and he sits all de time on a great trone, and he sees +ebery ting dat goes on down har in dis yer world. Ef ye does any ting +bad, he puts it down in a great book he's got, and byme-by he'll punish +de wicked folks right orful." + +"Whip?" questioned Tidy. + +"Whip! no; burn in de hot fire and brimstone for eber and for eber. 'Tis +orful to be wicked, and hab de great Lord punish." + +"I ha'n't done noffin," cried out Tidy, fairly trembling with terror. + +"Laws, no,--course not, chile; ye's noffin but a chile, ye know; but +some folks does orful tings. But ye needn't be afeard, honey; he's +a good Lord, and lubs us all; and ef ye tries to be good, and 'beys +missus, and neber lies, nor steals, nor swars, he'll be a good friend to +ye. He'll make de sun to shine on yer, and de rain to fall; and when ye +dies, he'll take yer right up dar, to lib wid him allus. There now, jest +hark,--dat's old Si comin' up de lane. Don' ye h'ar him singin'? He lubs +de Lord, he does, and he's allus a-singin'. Hark, now! a'n't it pooty? +Guess de pone's done by dis time;" and she shuffled to the fireplace, to +look after her cake. + +Tidy, almost overwhelmed with the weight of knowledge that had been +poured in upon her inquiring spirit, and hardly knowing whether what +she had heard should make her glad or sorry, leaned back against the +door-post, and carelessly listened to the voice, as it came nearer and +nearer. In a minute the words fell with pleasing distinctness upon the +ear. + + "Dear sister, didn't you promise me + To help me shout and praise him? + Den come and jine your voice to mine, + And sing his lub amazin'. + I tink I hear de trumpet sound, + About de break of day; + Good Lord, we'll rise in de mornin', + And fly, and fly away, + On de mornin's wings, to Canaan's land, + To heaben, our happy home, + Bright angels shall convey our souls + To de new Jerusalem." + +"Hallelujah, amen, bress de Lord. How is ye dis night, Mammy Grace?" +said a cheerful voice at the cabin-door. + +"Ho! go 'long, Simon,--I knowed ye was comin'. Ye allus blows yer +trumpet 'fore yer gits here. Come in, help yerse'f to a cha'r. Here, +chile," addressing Tidy, "here's yer supper,--eat it now; and don' ye +neber let what I's telled ye slip out of yer 'membrance." + +Which Tidy was not at all likely to do. She picked up the bread which +was thrown to her, and, munching it as she went along, walked away to +the pump to get a drink of water. + +Children, when you rise in the morning and come down stairs to the +cheerful breakfast, or when you are called at noon and night, to join +the family circle again around a neatly-spread table, did you ever think +what a refining influence this single custom has upon your life? The +savage eats his meanly-prepared food from the vessel in which it is +cooked, each member of his household dipping with his fingers, or some +rude utensil, into the one dish. He is scarcely raised above the cattle +that eat their fodder at the crib, or the dog that gnaws the bone thrown +to him upon the ground. And are the slaves any better off? They are +neither allowed time, convenience, or inducements to enjoy a practice, +which is so common with us, that we fail to number it among our +privileges, or to recognize its elevating tendency; and yet they are +stigmatized as a debased and brutish class. Can we expect them to be +otherwise? Who is accountable for this degradation? By what system have +they become so reduced? and have any suitable efforts ever been made for +their elevation? + + +Since I wrote this chapter, I have learned some things with regard to +the freed men at Port Royal, where so many fugitive slaves have taken +refuge during the war, and are now employed by Government, and being +educated by Christian teachers, which will make what I have just said +more apparent. Dr. French, who has labored among this people, in a +public address, drew a pleasing picture of the improvements introduced +into the home-life of the negroes,--how, as they began to feel free, and +earn an independent subsistence, their cabins were whitewashed, swept +clean, kept in order, and pictures and maps, cut from illustrated +newspapers, were pasted up on the walls by the women as a decoration. +He spoke of the rivalry in neatness thus produced, and of the general +elevating and refining effect. On his representation, the commanding +officers and the society by whom he is employed permitted him to +introduce into some twenty-five of the cabins, on twenty-five different +plantations, what had never been known before,--a window with panes of +glass. To this luxury were added tables, good, strong, tin wash-basins, +and soap, stout bed-ticks, and a small looking-glass. The effect of the +father of the family, sitting at the head of his new table, while his +sable wife and children gathered around it, and asking a blessing on the +simple fare, was very touching. Hitherto they had boiled their hominy in +a common skillet, and eaten it out of oyster-shells, when and wherever +they could, some in-doors and some outside, in every variety of +attitude. He said, also, that the ludicrous pranks of both old and +young, on eying themselves for the first time in the mirror, were quite +amusing. + + + +CHAPTER VII. FRANCES. + +QUITE a number of children were gathered in the vicinity of the pump, +performing their usual antics, under the direction and leadership of +a girl larger and older than the rest,--a genuine, coal-black, +woolly-headed, thick-lipped young negro. This was the daughter of Venus, +the cook, and her appointment of service was the kitchen. Full of fun, +and nimble as an eel in every joint, her various pranks and feats of +skill were perfectly amazing, and were received with boisterous applause +by the rest of the group. + +As she saw Tidy advancing, however, she ceased her evolutions, and, +turning to the others with a comic grimace, she bade them hold off, +while she held discourse with the new-comer. + +"Her comes yer white nigger," she said, in a loud whisper, "and I's +boun' to gaffer de las' news;" and putting on a demure face, she +accosted the neatly-appareled child. + +"Specs ye're a stranger in dese yer parts. What's yer name?" + +"Tidy;--what's yourn?" was the ready response. + +"Dey calls me France. Dey don't stop to place fandangles on to names +here. Specs dey'll call YOU Ti." + +"I doesn't care; I's willin'," replied Tidy, good-naturedly. + +"What's de matter wid yer? Been sick?" proceeded France, with a roguish +twinkle of the eye. "Specs you's had measles or 'sumption,--yer's pale +as deaf; and yer hair,--laws, sakes, it'll a'most stan' alone! de kind's +all done gone out of it." + +"Never had much," said Tidy, laughing. "It's most straight, see;" and +she pulled one of the short ringlets out with her fingers. "And I isn't +sick, neither; 'tis my 'plexion." + +"'Plexion!" repeated Frances, with a tone of derision; "'tis white folks +has 'plexion; niggers don't hab none. Don't grow white skins in dese yer +parts." + +"White's as good as black, I s'pose, a'n't it?" answered Tidy, diverted +by the droll manners of her new acquaintance. "I don't see no odds +nohow." + +"'Ta'n't 'spectable, dat's all. Brack's de fashion here on dis yer +plantation. 'Tis tough, b'ars whippin's and hard knocks. Whew! Hi! Ke! +Missus'll cut ye all up to slivers fust time." + +"Does missus whip?" + +"Reckon she does jest dat ting. Reckons you'll feel it right smart 'fore +you're much older. Hi! she whips like a driver,--cuts de skin all off +de knuckles in little less dan no time at all. Yer'll see; make yer curl +all up." + +It was not a very pleasant prospect for Tidy, to be sure; but, more +amused than frightened, she went on with her inquiries. + +"What does she whip ye for?" + +"Laws, sake, for noffin at all; jest when she takes a notion; jest for +ex'cise, like. Owes me one, now," said the girl. "I breaked de pitcher +dis mornin', and, ho, ho, ho! how missus flied! I runned and 'scaped +her, though." + +"She'll catch ye some time." + +"No, she don't, not for dat score. Specs I'll dodge till she's got +suffin' else to tink about. Dat's de way dis chile fix it. Shouldn't hab +no skin leff, ef I didn't. Laws, now, ye ought to seen toder day, when +I's done stept on missus' toe. Didn't do it a purpose, sartain true, ef +ye do laugh," said she, shaking her head at the tittering tribe at her +heels. "Dat are leetle Luce pushed, and missus jest had her hand up to +gib Luce an old-fashioned crack on the head wid dat big brack key of +hern. Hi! didn't she fly roun', and forgot all 'bout Luce, a tryin' to +hit dis nig--and dis nig scooted and runned, and when missus' hand +come down wid de big key, thar warn't no nigger's head at all thar--and +missus was gwine to lay it on so drefful hard, dat she falled ober +hersef right down into de kitchen, and by de time she picked hersef up, +bof de nigs war done gone. Ho, ho, ho! I tells ye she was mad enough ter +eat 'em. 'Pears as ef sparks comed right out of dem brack eyes." + +The girl's loud voice, as she grew animated in telling her exploits, and +the boisterous glee of her hearers, might have drawn the mistress with +whip in hand from the house, to inflict with double severity the evaded +punishment of the morning, but for the timely interference of Venus, +who, with her clean white apron and turbaned head, majestically emerged +from the kitchen, warning the young rebel and her associates to clear +the premises. + +"Along wid yer, and keep yer tongue tween yer teeth, chile, or you'll +cotch it." + +So Frances, drawing Tidy along with her, and followed by the whole +troop, turned into the lane that led down to the negro quarters, and as +they saunter along, I will tell you about her. + +She was a fair specimen of slave children, full of the merry humor, the +love of fun and frolic peculiar to her race, with not a little admixture +of art and cunning. She was wild, rough, and boisterous, one of the sort +always getting into disgrace. She couldn't step without stumbling, nor +hold anything in her hand without spilling. She never had on a whole +frock, except when it was new, and her bare feet were seldom without +a bandage. She considered herself one of the most unfortunate of +creatures, because she met with so many accidents, and had, in +consequence, to suffer so much punishment; and it was of no use to try +to do differently, she declared, for she "couldn't help it, nohow." + +I have seen just such children who were not slaves, haven't you? And I +think I understand the cause of their misfortunes. Shall I give you an +inkling of it? It is because they are so heedless and headlong in their +ways, racing and romping about with perfect recklessness. Don't you +think now that I am right, little reader, you who cried this very day, +because you were always getting into trouble, and getting scolded and +punished for it? You who are always tearing your frock and soiling your +nice white apron, spilling ink on your copy-book, and misplacing your +geography, forgetting your pencil and losing your sponge, and so getting +reproof upon reproof until you are heart-sick and discouraged? I know +what Jessie Smith's father told HER the other day. "You wouldn't meet +with so many mishaps, Jessie, if you didn't RUSH so." Jessie tried, +after that, to move round more gently and carefully, and I think she got +on better. + +Frances was just one of these "rushing" children, but she was +good-natured, and Tidy was quite fascinated with her. It was so new to +have an associate of her own age too; and so it came to pass that almost +immediately they were fast friends. Now, as they strolled along in the +starlight, under the great spreading pines which stood as sentinels +here and there along their path, Tidy drank in eagerly all her companion +said, and in a little while had gathered all the interesting points of +information concerning the place and the people. Frances told her how +hard and mean the master and mistress were, and how poorly the slaves +fared down at the quarters. Up at the house they made out very well, she +said; but not half so well as she and her mother did when they lived out +east on Mr. Blackstone's plantation. Then she described the busy summer +season, when hundreds of people came there to board and drink the water +of the springs. Mr. Lee had built two long rows of little brick houses, +she said, down by the springs, where the people lived while they were +here, and there was a great dining cabin with long tables and seats, +and a barbecue hall, where they had barbecues, and then danced all night +long, and had gay times. And there was plenty of money going at such +times, for the people had quantities of money and gave it to the slaves. + +The negro quarters consisted of six log cabins, which had once been +whitewashed, but now were extremely wretched in appearance, both without +and within. It is customary on the plantations of the South to have the +houses of the negroes a little removed, perhaps a quarter of a mile, +from the family mansion. Thus, with the exception of the house servants, +who must be within call, the slave portion of the family live by +themselves, and generally in a most uncivilized and miserable way. In +some cases their houses are quite neatly built and kept; but it was not +so on Mr. Lee's estate. + +In front of these old huts was a spring, the water bubbling up and +running through a dilapidated, moss-covered spout, into a tub half sunk +in the earth, which in the daytime served as a drinking trough for the +animals, and a bathing-pool for the babies. Brushwood and logs were +lying around in all directions, and here and there a fire was burning, +at which the negroes were cooking their supper. Dogs and a few stray +babies were roaming about, seeming lonely for want of the pigs and +chickens which kept company with them all day, but had now gone to rest. +Boys and girls of larger growth were rollicking and careering over the +place, dancing and singing and entertaining themselves and the whole +settlement with their jollities and noise. + +Is it surprising, we must stop to ask, that the colored people are a +degraded class, when we consider the way in which the children live from +their very infancy. No work for them to do, nothing to learn, nobody to +care for them,--they are just left to grow and fatten like swine, till +they are in condition to be sold or to be broken in to their tasks in +the field. Utterly neglected, they contract, of necessity, lazy and +vicious habits, and it is no wonder they have to be whipped and broken +in to work as animals to the yoke or harness; and no wonder that under +such treatment for successive generations, the race should become so +reduced in mental and moral ability, as to be thought by many incapable +of ever reclaiming a position among the enlightened nations of the +earth. Oh, what a weight of guilt have the people of our country +incurred in allowing four millions of those poor people to be so trodden +down in the very midst of us! + +When the children reached home again they found Mammy Grace's cabin +quite full of men and women, shouting, singing, and talking in a way +quite unintelligible to our little stranger. After she had dropped upon +her cot for the night, she lifted her head and ventured to ask what +those people had been about. + +"Don' ye know, chile? We's had a praisin'-meetin'. We has 'em ebery +week, one week it's here, and one week it's ober to General Doolittle's, +ober de hill yonder. Ef ye's a good chile, honey, ye shall go wid yer +old mammy some time, ye shall." + +"What do you do?" asked Tidy. + +"We praises, chile,--praises de Lord, and den we prays too." + +"What's that?" + +"Laws, chile, ye don't know noffin. Whar's ye been fotched up all yer +days? Why, when we wants any ting we can't git oursef, nohow, we ask de +Lord to gib it to us--dat's what it is." + +That first day and evening in Tidy's new home was a memorable day in her +experience. It seemed as if she had been lifted up two or three degrees +in existence, so much had she heard and learned. She had enough to +think about as she lay down to rest, for the first time away from Miss +Matilda's sheltering presence. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. PRAYER. + +As Tidy grew in stature she grew in favor also with those around her. +Spry but gentle in her movements, obedient, obliging, and apt to learn, +she secured the good-will of her master and mistress, and the visitors +that thronged to the place. If any little service was to be performed +which required more than usual care or expedition, she was the one to be +called upon to do it. It was no easy task to please a person so fretful +and impatient in spirit as Mrs. Lee, yet Tidy, by her promptness and +docility, succeeded admirably. Still, with all her well-doing she was +not able entirely to avoid her harshness and cruelty. + +One day, when she had been several months in Mrs. Lee's family, she was +set to find a ball of yarn which had become detached from her mistress's +knitting-work. Diligently she hunted for it every-where,--in Mammy +Grace's cabin, on the veranda, in the drawing-room, dining-room, and +kitchen, up-stairs, down-stairs, and in the lady's chamber, but no ball +was to be found. The mistress grew impatient, and the child searched +again. The mistress became unreasonable and threatened, and the child +really began to tremble for fear of undeserved chastisement. What could +she do? + +What do you think she did? I will tell you? + +Ever since that first night with Mammy Grace, when Tidy had asked her +what it was to pray, and had been told, "When we wants any ting we can't +git oursefs, nohow, we asks de Lord to gib it to us," these words +had been treasured in her memory; but as yet she had never had an +opportunity to put them to a practical use; for up to this time she +had not really wanted any thing. Her necessities were all supplied even +better than she had reason to expect; for in addition to the plain but +sufficient fare that was allowed her in the cabin, she was never a day +without luxuries from the table of the family. Fruits, tarts, and many +a choice bit of cake, found their way through the children's hands to +their little favorite, so that she had nothing to wish for in the eating +line. Her services with the children were so much in accordance with her +taste as to be almost pastime, and the old nurse was as kind and good as +a mother could be. Never until this day had she been brought into a +real strait; and it was in this emergency that she thought to put Mammy +Grace's suggestion to the test. She had attended the weekly prayer or +"praisin'-meetin's" as they were called, and observed that when the +men and women prayed, they seemed to talk in a familiar way with this +invisible Lord; and she determined to do the same. As she went out for +the third time from the presence of her mistress, downcast and unhappy, +she thought that if she only had such eyes as the Lord had, which Mammy +Grace repeatedly told her were in every place, considering every little +thing in the earth, she would know just where to go to find the missing +ball. At that thought something seemed to whisper, "Pray." + +She darted out of the door, ran across the yard, making her way as +speedily as possible to the only retired spot she knew of. This was +a deep gully at the back of the house, through which a tiny stream of +water crept, just moistening the roots of the wild cherry and alder +bushes which grew there in great abundance, and keeping the grass fresh +and green all the summer long. No one ever came to this spot excepting +now and then the laundress with a piece of linen to bleach, or the +children to play hide-and-seek of a moonlight evening. Here she fell +upon her knees, and lifting up her hands as she had seen others do, she +said,-- + +"Blessed Lord, I want to find missus' ball of yarn, and I can't. You +know whar 'tis. Show me, so I sha'n't get cracks over my head with the +big key. Hallelujah, amen." + +She didn't know, innocent child, what this "Hallelujah, amen," meant; +but she remembered that Uncle Simon always ended in that way, and +she supposed it had something important to do with the prayer. So she +uttered it with a feeling of great satisfaction, as though that capped +the climax of her duty, and put the seal of acceptance on her petition; +and then she got up and walked away, as sure as could be that the ball +would be forthcoming. I dare say she expected to see it rolling out +before her from some unthought-of corner as she went along. + +Do not laugh at the poor little slave girl, children, or ridicule the +idea of her taking such a small thing to the Lord. If you, and older +people too, were in the habit of carrying all your little troubles to +the throne of grace, I am sure you would find help that you little dream +of. If the Lord in his greatness regards the little sparrows, so that +not one of them shall fall to the ground without his notice, and if he +numbers the hairs of our heads, surely there is nothing that can give +us uneasiness of mind or sorrow of heart too small to commend to his +notice. I wish we might all follow Tidy's example, and I have no doubt +that our heavenly Father, who is quite willing to have his words and his +love tested, would answer us as he did her. + +She went directly to the house, carefully looking this way and that, +as if expecting, as I said, that the ball would suddenly appear before +her,--of course it did not,--and passing across the veranda, entered the +hall. A great, old-fashioned, eight-day clock, like the pendulum that +hung in the farmer's kitchen so long, and got tired of ticking, I +imagine, stood in one corner. Just at the foot of this, Tidy saw a white +string protruding. She forgot for the moment what she was hunting after, +and stooped to pick up the string. She pulled at it, but it seemed to +catch in something and slipped through her fingers. She pulled again, +when lo and behold! out came the ball of yarn. Didn't her eyes sparkle? +Didn't her hands twitch with excitement, as she picked it up and carried +it to her mistress? So much for praying, said she to herself; I shall +know what to do the next time I get into trouble. + +The next time the affair proved a more serious one. It was no less than +a search for Frances, who had again been guilty of some misdemeanor, and +had hidden herself away to escape punishment. On the second day of her +absence, Mrs. Lee called Tidy, and instructed her to search for the +girl, with the assurance that if she didn't find her, she herself should +get the whipping. It was no very pleasant prospect for Tidy, but she +set to her task earnestly. A half-day she spent going over the +premises,--the house, the out-buildings, the quarters, and the +pine-woods opposite; but the girl was not to be found. + +Afraid to come and report her want of success, for a while she was quite +in despair; until again she bethought herself of prayer, and out she ran +to the gully. There she cried,-- + +"Lord, I's very anxious to find France. I'll thank you to show me whar +she is, and make missus merciful, so she sha'n't lash neither one of +us. Oh, if I could only find France. Blessed Lord, you can help me find +her"---- + +She was pleading very earnestly when a voice suddenly interrupted her, +and there, at her side, stood the girl. + +"Who's dat ar you's conbersin wid 'bout me, little goose?" asked +Frances. + +"Oh, France," cried Tidy in delight, "whar was you? Missus set me +lookin' for yer, and she said she'd whip all the skin off me, if I +didn't find yer. Whar's you been?" + +"Laws, you nummy, ye don't specs now I's gwine to let all dis yer +plantation know dat secret. Ho, ho, ho! If I telled, I couldn't go dar +'gin no way. I's comed here for my dinner, caus specs dis chile can't +starve nohow. See, my mudder knows whar to put de bones for dis yer +chile," and pushing aside the bushes, she displayed an ample supply of +eatables, which she fell to devouring greedily. Tidy had to reason long +and stoutly with the refractory girl before she could persuade her to +return to the house; and when she accomplished her purpose, she was +probably not aware of the real motive that wrought in that dark, stupid +negro mind. It was not the fear of an increased punishment, if she +remained longer absent,--it was not the faint hope that Tidy held +up, that if she humbly asked her mistress's pardon, she might be +forgiven,--but the thought that if she did not at once return, Tidy must +suffer in her stead, was too much for her. She was, notwithstanding her +black skin and rude nature, too generous to allow that. + +So the two wended their way to the kitchen in great trepidation, and +Tidy, stepping round to the sitting-room, timidly informed her mistress +of the arrival, adding in most beseeching manner, "Please, Missus, don't +whip her, 'caus she's so sorry." + +"You mind your own business, little sauce-box, or you'll catch it too. +When I want your advice, I'll come for it," and seizing her whip which +she kept on a shelf close by, she proceeded to the kitchen. Miss Matilda +followed, determined to see that justice was done to one at least. + +The poor frightened girl fell on her knees. + +"Oh, Missus," she cried, "dear Missus, do 'scuse me. I'll neber do dat +ting over 'gin! I'll neber run away 'gin! I'll neber do noffin! Oh, +Missus, please don't, oh, dear,"--as notwithstanding the appeal, the +angry blow fell. Before another could descend, Miss Matilda laid her +hand upon her sister's arm. + +"Excuse the girl, Susan," she said, gently, "excuse her just this once, +and give her a trial. See if she won't do better." + +It was very hard, for it was contrary to her nature, for Mrs. Lee to +show mercy. However, she did yield, and after a very severe reprimand to +the culprit, and a very unreasonable, angry speech to Tidy, who, to +to [sic] her thinking, had become implicated in Frances' guilt, she +dismissed them both from her presence,--the one chuckling over her +fortunate escape, and the other querying in her mind, whether or no +this unhoped-for mercy was another answer to prayer. Miss Matilda made +a remark as they retired, which Tidy heard, whether it was designed for +her ear or not. + +"I always have designed to give that child her liberty when she is old +enough; and if any thing prevents my doing so, I hope she will take it +herself." + +Take her liberty! What did that mean? Tidy laid up the saying, and +pondered it in her heart. + +Does any one of our little readers ask why Miss Matilda did not free +the child then? Tidy's services paid her owner's board at her brother's +house, and she couldn't afford to give away her very subsistence; COULD +SHE? + + + +CHAPTER IX. THE FIRST LESSON. + +THE walk to school was a very delightful one, and as the trio trudged +over the road from day to day, chattering like magpies, laughing, +singing, shouting, and dancing in the exuberance of childish glee, +all seemed equally light-hearted and joyous. Even the little slave who +carried the books which she was unable to read, and the basket of +dinner of which she could not by right partake, with a keen eye for +the beautiful, and a sensitive heart to appreciate nature, could not +apparently have been more happy, if her condition had been reversed, and +she had been made the served instead of the servant. + +The way for half a mile lay through a dense pine-wood,--the tall trees +rising like stately pillars in some vast temple filled with balsamic +incense, and floored with a clean, elastic fabric, smooth as polished +marble, over which the little feet lightly and gayly tripped. In the +central depths where the sun's rays never penetrated, and the fallen +leaves lay so thickly on the ground, no flowers could grow, but on the +outer edges spring lavished her treasures. The trailing arbutus added +new fragrance to the perfumed air, frail anemones trembled in the +wind, and violets flourished in the shade. The blood-root lifted its +lily-white blossoms to the light, and the cream-tinted, fragile bells of +the uvularia nestled by its side. Passing the wood and its embroidered +flowery border, a brook ran across the road. The rippling waters were +almost hidden by the bushes which grew upon its banks, where the wild +honeysuckle and touch-me-not, laurels and eglantine, mingled their +beautiful blossoms, and wooed the bee and humming-bird to their +gay bowers. Over this stream a narrow bridge led directly to the +school-house; but the homeward side was so attractive, that the children +always tarried there until they saw the teacher on the step, or heard +the little bell tinkling from the door. Tidy remained with them till +the last minute, and there her bright face might invariably be seen when +school was dismissed in the afternoon. A large flat rock between the +woods and the flowery edges of Pine Run was the place of rendezvous. + +One summer's morning they were earlier than usual, and emerging from the +woods, warm and weary with their long walk, they threw themselves down +upon the rock over which in the early day, the shadows of the trees +refreshingly fell. Amelia turned her face toward the Run, and lulled by +the gentle murmuring of the water, and the humming of the insects, +was soon quietly asleep; Susie, with an apron full of burs, was making +furniture for the play-house which they were arranging in a cleft of +the rock; and Tidy, who carried the books, was busily turning over the +leaves and amusing herself with the pictures. + +"My sakes!" she exclaimed presently, "what a funny cretur! See that +great lump on his back!" and she pointed with her finger to the picture +of a camel. "Miss Susie! what IS that? Is it a lame horse?" + +"Why no, Tidy, that's a camel; 'tisn't a horse at all. I was reading +that very place yesterday,--let me see," and taking the book she read +very intelligently a brief account of the wonderful animal. + +"How queer!" said Tidy, deeply interested. "And is there something in +this book about all the pictures?" + +"Yes," answered Susie, "if you could only read now, you would know about +every one. See here, on the next page is an elephant; see his great +tusks and his monstrous long trunk," and the child read to her attentive +listener of another of the wonders of creation. + +[illustration omitted] + +"How I wish I could read,--why can't I?" asked Tidy; and the little +colored face was turned up full of animation. "I don't b'lieve but I +could learn as well as you." + +"Why of course you could," answered Amelia, who had risen quite +refreshed by her short nap. "I don't see why not. You can't go to school +you know, because mother wants you to work; but I could teach you just +as well as not." + +"Oh, could you? will you?--do begin!" cried the eager child. "Oh, Miss +Mely, if you only would, I'd do any thing for you." + +"Look here," said Amelia, seizing the book from her sister's hands, and +by virtue of superior age, constituting herself the teacher; "do you +see those lines?" and she pointed to the columns of letters on the first +page. + +"Yes," said the ready pupil, all attention. + +"Well, those are letters,--the alphabet, they call it. Every one of them +has got a name, and when you have learned to know them all perfectly, so +that you can call them all right wherever you see 'em, why, then you can +read any thing." + +"Any thing?" asked Tidy in amazement. + +"Yes, any thing,--all kinds of books and papers and the Bible and every +thing." + +"I can learn THEM, I's sure I can," said Tidy. "Le's begin now." + +"Well, you see that first one,--that's A. You see how it's made,--two +lines go right up to a point, and then a straight one across. Now say, +what is it?" + +"A." + +"Yes; and now the next one,--that's B. There's a straight line down and +two curves on the front. What's that?" + +"B." + +"Now you must remember those two,--I sha'n't tell you any more this +morning, and I shall make you do just as Miss Agnes used to make me. +Miss Agnes was our governess at home before we came here to school. She +made me take a newspaper,--see, here's a piece,--and prick the letters +on it with a pin. Now you take this piece of paper, and prick every A +and every B that you can find on it, and to-morrow I'll show you some +more." + +Just then the bell sounded from the schoolhouse, and Amelia and Susan +went to their duties, but not with half so glad a heart as Tidy set +herself to hers. Down she squatted on the rock, and did not leave +the place till her first task was successfully accomplished, and the +precious piece of perforated paper safely stowed away for Amelia's +inspection. + +Day after day this process was repeated, until all the letters great and +small had been learned; and now for the more difficult work of putting +them together. There seemed to be but one step between Tidy and perfect +happiness. If she could only have a hymn-book and know how to read it, +she would ask nothing more. She didn't care so much about the Bible. If +she had known, as you do, children, that it is God's word, no doubt she +would have been anxious to learn what it contained. But this truth she +had never heard, and therefore all her desires were centered in the +hymn-book, in which were stored so many of those precious and beautiful +hymns which she loved so much to hear Uncle Simon repeat and sing. Would +she ever be so happy as to be able to sing them from her own book? + + + +CHAPTER X. LONY'S PETITION. + +BUT, ah! this is a world of disappointment, and it almost always happens +that if we attain any real good, we have to toil for it. Tidy's path was +not to continue as smooth and pleasant as it had been. + +Mr. and Mrs. Lee, by some untoward accident, found out what was going +on, and at once expounded the law and the necessities of the case to +their children, forbidding them in the most peremptory manner, and on +penalty of the severest chastisement, ever to attempt again to give Tidy +or any other slave a lesson. What the punishment was with which they +were threatened she never knew, for the little girls never dared even to +speak upon the subject; but she knew it must be something very dreadful, +and though this was a most cruel blow to her expectations, she loved +them too well to bring them into the slightest danger on her own +account. So she never afterwards alluded to the subject. + +Her first impulse was to give up all for lost, and to sit down and +weep despairingly over her disappointment; but she was of too hopeful a +disposition to do so. + +"I knows the letters," said she to herself, "and I specs I can learn +myself. I can SCRAMBLE ALONG, some way." + +Scrambling indeed! I wonder if any of you, little folks, would be +willing to undertake it. + +In her trouble she did not forget the strong hold to which she had +learned to resort in trouble. She PRAYED about it every day, morning, +noon, and night. Indeed the words "Lord, help me learn to read," were +seldom out of her heart. Even when she did not dare to utter them with +her lips, they were mentally ejaculated. Hers was indeed an unceasing +prayer. + +"Come chile," said Mammy Grace, one evening in the cool, frosty autumn, +as Tidy was hovering over the embers, eating her corn-bread, "put on de +ole shawl, and we'll tote ober de hills to Massa Bertram's. De meetin's +dare dis yer night, and Si's gwine to go. Come, honey, 'tis chill dis +ebening, and de walk'll put the warmf right smart inter ye;" and they +started off at a quick pace, over the hills, through the woods, down +the lanes, and across little brooks, the pale, cold moonlight streaming +across their path, and the warm sunlight of divine peace and favor +enlivening their hearts as they went on, making nothing at all of a walk +of three miles to sing and pray in company with Christian friends. Would +WE take as much pains to attend a prayer-meeting? + +It was not the customary place of meeting, and the people for the most +part were strangers. One party had come by special invitation, to see a +new PIECE OF PROPERTY which had just arrived upon the place,--a piece of +property that thought, and felt, and moved, and walked, like a thing +of life; that loved and feared the Lord, and sung and prayed like any +Christian. What wonderful qualities slaveholders' chattels possess! + +The woman, whose name was Apollonia, familiarly called Lony, was a tall, +gaunt, square-built negress, with a skin so black and shining, and her +limbs so rigid, that she might almost have been mistaken for one +of those massive statues we sometimes see carved out of the solid +anthracite. A bright yellow turban on her head rose in shape like an +Egyptian pyramid, adding to her extraordinary hight, and strangely +contrasting with her black, thick, African features. Altogether her +appearance would have been formidable and repelling, but for a look +in her eye like the clear shining after rain, and a tranquil, peaceful +expression which had over-spread her hard visage. Tidy was overawed +and fascinated by the gigantic figure, and when, after a few minutes +of sacred silence, the new comer, who seemed accepted as the presiding +spirit of the occasion, commenced singing, she was more than usually +interested and attentive. The words were not familiar to the company, so +that none could join, and the deep monotone of the woman, at first +low, and by degrees becoming louder and more animated, made every word +distinct and impressive. + + "I was but a youth when first I was called on, + To think of my soul and the state I was in; + I saw myself standing from God a great distance, + And betwixt me and him was a mountain of Sin. + + "Old Satan declared that I had been converted, + Old Satan persuaded me I was too young; + And before my days ended that I would grow tired, + And I'd wish that I'd never so early begun." + +"But, praise de Lord," exclaimed the woman, stopping short in her hymn, +and rising suddenly to her feet, "I habn't growed tired yet, and I's +been walkin in de ways of goodness forty years and more. De Lord, he is +good,--I knows he is, for I's tried him and found him out, and I's neber +tired o' praisin him. Bress de Lord! He's new to me ebery mornin, and +fresh as de coolin waters ebery ebening. Praise de Lord! Hallelujah! +When I was a chile, I use to make massa's boys mad so's to hear 'em +swar. It pleased dis wicked cretur to hear de fierce swarrin'. One day I +went to de garden behind de house to git de water-melons for dinner, and +I heerd a voice. 'Pears 'twas like a leetle, soft voice, but I couldn't +see nobody nowhar dat spoke, and it said, 'Lony, Lony, don't yer make +dem boys swar no more, ef ye do, ye'll lose yer soul.' I looked all roun +and roun, for I was skeered a'most to deff, but I couldn't see nobody, +and den I know'd 'twas a voice from heaben, for I'd heerd o' sich, and +I says, 'No, Lord, no, I won't.' I didn't know den what de SOUL was, +or what a drefful ting 'twas to lose it; but I knowd it mus mean suffin +orful. So I began to consider all de time 'bout de soul. Byme-by a +Baptis' min'ster comed to de place, and massa and missus was converted. +Den dey let us hab meetin's and de clersh'-man he comed and talked to +us. I didn't comperhend much he said, 'caus I was young and foolish; but +he telled a good many times 'bout dat ef we want to save our souls we +mus be babtize and git under de Lord's table. Says I to my own sef, +'Specs now ef poor Lony could only find de table of de bressed Lord, +'twould all be well, and she'd be pertected foreber.' So I prayed and +prayed, and one night de good Lord comed hissef, and bringd his great, +splendid table, and all de fair angels dressed in white and gold and +settin roun it, and I got under, and I ate de crumbs dat fell down, and +den 'pears I begun to live. Oh, 'twas sich a peace dat came all ober +me, and I wanted to sing and shout all of de time. And dat's jess whar I +been eber sence, my friends, and I neber wants to come away till I dies; +and den de good Lord'll take me up to de great heabenly mansion, and +gib me de gold robes, and den I shall set up wid de rest and be like 'em +all. And I's willin to wait, 'caus I lubs de Lord and praises him ebery +day. He is de good Lord, and he lubs me and hearkens ebery time I speaks +to him; and I ha'n't 'bleeged to holler loud, nuther, for he's neber far +away, but he keeps close by dis poor soul so he can hear ebery word and +cry. And he'll hear all yer cries, my friends, when ye prays for yersef +or for yer chillen, or yer bredren and sisters. Le's pray, now." + +Then kneeling down, this representative of a despised and untutored +race, with a faith that triumphed gloriously over her abject +surroundings, poured forth her supplications, talking with the Lord as a +man talks with his friend, as it were face to face. + +"O bressed Lord, dat's in de heaben and de earf and ebery whar; you's +heerd all de tings dat we's asked for. And you knows all dat dese yer +poor chillen wants dat dey hasn't axed for; and if dere's any ob 'em +here, dat doesn't dare to speak out loud, and tell what dey does want, +you can hear it jess as well, ef it is way down deep buried up in de +heart; and oh, bressed Lord, do gib 'em de desires of de heart, 'less +it's suffin dat'll hurt 'em, and den Lord don't gib it to 'em at all." + +This was enough for our little Tidy. Her heart swelled, and the great +tears ran down her cheeks, as she thought instantly of the one dear, +cherished petition that she dared not utter, but which was uppermost in +her heart continually; and as the woman pleaded with the Lord to hear +and answer the desires of every soul present, she held that want of hers +up before Him as a cup to be filled, and the Lord verily did fill it +up to the brim. A quiet, restful feeling took the place of the burning, +eager anxiety she had hitherto felt, and from that moment she was sure, +yes, SURE that she would have her wish, and some day be able to read. +Nothing had ever encouraged and strengthened her so much as the earnest +words and prayers of this Christian woman. How thankful she always felt +that she had been brought to the prayer-meeting at Massa Bertram's that +night. + + + +CHAPTER XI. ROUGH PLACES. + +To obtain possession of the hymn-book she desired, was not so very +difficult in Tidy's estimation. The numerous visitors at the house, +pleased with her bright face, her gentle manners, and ready attentions, +often dropped a coin into her hand, and these little moneys were +carefully treasured for the accomplishment of her purpose. She +calculated that by Christmas-time she should have enough money to buy +it, and Uncle Simon she knew would procure it for her. Her greatest +anxiety now was to be ready to use it. + +But how could she make herself ready? How was she to learn without a +teacher or a book? + +There had been an old primer for some time tossing about the +play-room--its scarlet cover looking more gorgeous and tempting in +Tidy's eyes, as they fell upon it day after day, than any trinket or +gewgaw she could have seen; yet she dared not touch it. She was too +honest to appropriate it to herself without leave, and she was afraid +to allude to the forbidden lessons by asking Amelia or Susan for it. +Several times she tried to draw their attention to the neglected book, +and to give them some hint of her own longing for it,--but all to no +avail. One day, however, she had orders from the children to clear up +the room thoroughly. + +"Make every thing neat as a pin," said Amelia, "while we go down to +dinner, for we are going to have company this afternoon; and if it looks +right nice, I'll give you an orange." + +"What shall I do with dis yer book, then, Miss Mely?" hastily asked +Tidy, as she stooped to pick up the book, and felt herself trembling all +over that she had dared to put her fingers upon it. + +"That? Oh, that's no good; throw it away,--we never use it now,--or keep +it yourself, if you want to," said she, after a second thought. + +It was done. The book was quickly deposited in a safe place, and the +clearing up proceeded rapidly. The orange was a small consideration; for +had she not got a book, her heart's desire, and now she could learn to +read. + +She could learn all alone; she would be her own teacher. If she got into +a very narrow place she would get Uncle Simon to help her out. No one +else on the estate knew how to read, and he didn't know much, but no +doubt he could be of some assistance. Such was Tidy's inward plan. + +After this, the little girl might have been seen every evening stretched +at full length on the cabin floor, her head towards the fireplace, where +the choicest pine knots were kindled into a cheerful blaze, with her +spelling-book open before her. She was "clambering" up the rough way of +knowledge. + +Did she accomplish her purpose? To be sure she did. Little reader, did +you ever make up your mind to do any thing and fail? There's an old +proverb that says, "Where there's a will there's a way;" and this is +true. Resolution and energy, patience and perseverance, will achieve +nearly every thing you set about. Try it. Try it when you have hard +lessons to do, puzzling examples in arithmetic to solve, that long stint +in sewing to do, that distasteful music to practice, those bad habits to +conquer. Try it faithfully, and when you grow up, you'll be able to say, +from your own experience, "Where there's a will there's a way." + +You must not expect, however, that Tidy learned very rapidly or very +perfectly under such discouragements. Think how it would be with +yourself, if you only knew your letters. You might read quite easily +m-a-n, but how do you think you could find out that those letters +spelled man? + +Tidy advanced much more expeditiously after she had obtained possession +of her hymn-book. Some of the hymns were quite familiar to her from her +having heard them sung so often at the meetings, and she determined to +study these first; and you may well imagine how proud she felt,--not +sinfully, but innocently proud,--when she seated herself one afternoon +by Mammy Grace's side, and pulling her hymn-book out of her bosom, asked +if she might read a hymn. + +"Yes, chile, 'deed ye may, ef ye can. Specs 'twill do yer ole mammy's +heart good to hear ye read de books like de white folks." + +And the child opened the book, and in a clear, pleasant, happy voice she +read slowly, but correctly,-- + + "My God, the spring of all my joys, + The life of my delights, + The glory of my brightest days, + And comfort of my nights. + + "In darkest shades if he appear, + My dawning is begun; + He is my soul's sweet morning star, + And he my rising sun." + +"Look dar, chile," cried the old nurse, springing to her feet, "Massa +George's jess a'most out ob de door. Ef he SHOULD fall and break his +neck, what WOULD 'come of us. Dis yer chile 'd neber hab no more peace +all de days of her life. Yer reads raal pooty, honey; but ye mus'n't +neglect duty for de books, 'caus ef ye do, ye isn't worthy of de +prevelege." + +So Tidy had to forego her hymns till the children were put to bed. + +After this, in the long winter evenings, in Mammy Grace's snug cabin, +what harvests of enjoyment were gathered from that precious book. Uncle +Simon was the favored guest on such occasions, and always "bringed his +welcome wid hissef," he said, in the shape of pitch-pine fagots, the +richest to be found, by the light of which they read and sung the songs +of Zion, which they dearly loved; the pious old slave in the mean +time commending, congratulating, and encouraging Tidy in her wonderful +intellectual achievements. + + + +CHAPTER XII. A GREAT UNDERTAKING. + +PERSONS of will and energy generally have some distinct object before +them which they are striving to reach,--something of importance to +be gained or done. As fast as one thing is attained, another plan +is projected; and so they go on, mounting up from one achievement to +another all through life. And this enterprising spirit begins to be +developed at a very early age in children. + +Tidy was one of these active little beings, full of business, never +unhappy for want of something to do; and besides the ordinary and more +trivial occupations of the outer life, her spirit or inner life had ever +a dear, cherished object before it, which engrossed her thoughts, +taxed her capabilities, and raised her above the degraded level of her +companions in servitude. + +Now that she had attained one grand point in learning to read, she +ventured on another and far more difficult enterprise. What do you think +it was? Why, nothing more or less than to GET HER LIBERTY. + +She had heard Miss Matilda say in the kitchen, "If I don't give the +child her liberty, I hope she will take it." This was her warrant. She +perceived, by Miss Matilda's words and manner, in the first place, that +liberty was desirable, and, in the second, that she COULD take it. But, +ignorant child as she was, she little knew the difficulties that stood +in the way. + +She had now lived several years in Mr. Lee's family, and had grown wiser +in many respects. She began to realize more fully what it was to be a +slave, and what her probable prospects were, if she did not escape. She +learned that there was a place, not a great way from her Virginian home, +where people did not hold her race in bondage; where she could go and +come as she pleased, choose her own employers and occupation, be paid +for her labor, provide for herself, and perhaps some day have a home of +her own, with husband and children whom she could hold and enjoy. Do you +think it strange that such a condition seemed attractive, and that she +was willing to make great efforts and run fearful risks to reach it? + +She kept her intentions profoundly secret. Even Mammy Grace and Uncle +Simon, her best friends, were not in her confidence. But she prayed +about it constantly, and sought information from every possible source +with regard to this free land,--where it was, and how it could be +reached,--and at last formed her plan, which she determined to carry out +during the coming summer. + +She knew she must have money, if she was going to travel, and for a +long time she had been carefully saving up all she could command. She +constantly endeavored to make herself useful in various ways in order to +get it. The summer-time was her money harvest; and this season she was +delighted to find visitors thronging to the Springs in greater numbers +than she had ever seen before. She knew if there was plenty of company, +there would be plenty of business, and consequently a plenty of money; +for the class of people who came there were for the most part wealthy, +and were quite willing to pay for the attentions they received. The +little brick houses in which they lodged were under the care of the +slave girls. Each one had two of these cabins, as they were called, in +charge, and were required to keep them in order, to wait upon the ladies +and children, and serve them at the table. Tidy was unwearied in her +efforts to please. She answered promptly to every call, and kept her +rooms in the neatest manner; and for her pains she received many a +bright coin, which was providently stored away in a little bag, and +concealed beneath her mattress. Perhaps these conscientious people would +not have bestowed money so freely on their favorite young maid, if they +had known the purpose to which it was to be applied. For they say that +slavery is a Christian institution, a sort of missionary enterprise, +which has been divinely appointed for the good of the colored race; and +of course to get away from it is to run away from God and the privileges +and blessings he is so kind as to give. + +Tidy, however, thought differently, as the slaves generally do; and as +she had made up her mind that she should gain greater advantages in +a state of freedom, she determined to persevere in her attempt. Her +accumulations finally became so large, that she thought she might +venture to start on her journey. + +She knew, too, that she must have clothes quite different from those she +usually wore. And how was she to get these? Ah, she had had an eye for a +long while to this. She and Amelia were not only of the same age, but +of the same size. Tidy had grown in the last two years very rapidly, and +had now reached a womanly hight and figure. She had watched the growth +of Amelia with the keenest interest. So far, it had corresponded with +her own so exactly that she could easily wear the clothes made for +her young mistress. In fact, Amelia often dressed Tidy up in her own +garments that she might get a better idea of how they looked upon +herself. This season, Amelia, for the first time, had a traveling suit +complete, for she was going a journey with her father; and when it +was finished, she was so pleased that she sent for Tidy at once to +participate in her joy, and insisted that she should immediately put it +on, that she might see how it fitted, and if every thing about it was as +it should be. The dress was a dark green merino, made with a very long +pelerine cape, which was the very pink of the fashion, and was the +especial admiration of all the children. Tidy arrayed herself in these, +and, putting the little jaunty cap of the same color on her head, stood +before the glass and surveyed herself with as perfect satisfaction as +the owner of the becoming costume herself experienced. Indeed she +could hardly keep her eye from telling tales of the joy within, as she +inwardly said, "There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip, and may +be, Miss Amelia, I shall go traveling in this before you do." She felt +that nothing could have been provided more suitable or timely than this +charming suit. + +Are you shocked, little reader, that Tidy, the good, exemplary, +conscientious Tidy, should have thought of appropriating Amelia's +wardrobe to herself? I must stop a moment here to explain to you the +slaves' code of morals. They are so ignorant that we must not expect +them to have so high or correct a standard of conduct as we have, or to +be able to make such nice distinctions in questions of right and wrong. + +Ever since Mammy Grace had made to her young pupil the first imperfect +revelation of God's character and government, declaring that he would +punish with eternal fire those who should lie, swear, or steal, +the child had held these sins in the greatest abhorrence, and was +scrupulously careful to avoid them. She would not have taken from the +baby-house a trinket, or an article of food from the kitchen, without +leave, on any account. At the same time, she had learned the slave +theory that as they are never paid for their labor, they have a right +to any thing which their labor has purchased, OF WHICH THEY HAVE NEED. +Consequently if a slave is not provided with food sufficient for his +wants, he supplies himself. The pigs and chickens, vegetables and +fruits, or any thing else which he can handily obtain, he helps himself +to, as though they were his own, and never burdens his conscience +with the sin of stealing. A slave, who had obtained his freedom, once +remarked in a public meeting, that when he was a boy, he was OBLIGED +to steal, or TAKE food, as he called it, in order to live, because so +little was provided for him. "But now," said he, while his face shone +with a consciousness of honesty and honor, "I wouldn't take a cent's +worth from any man; no, not for my right hand." + +So, you see, that this principle of appropriating what the labor of her +own hands had earned, when necessity demanded it, was that upon which +Tidy was to act. She never needed to steal food, nor even luxuries, for +she always had enough; nor money, because, for her limited wants, she +always had enough of that. But now, when she was going a journey, and +wanted to look especially nice, she felt very glad to have the dress +prepared so fitting for the occasion; and she did not feel a single +misgiving of conscience about taking it when she got ready to use it. +Whether this was just right or not, I shall leave an open question for +you to decide in your own minds. It will bear thought and discussion, +and will be quite a profitable subject for you to consider. + +When the preparations were all made, Mammy Grace and old Simon were let +into the secret. Whether they said any thing by way of discussion I do +not know--at any rate, it did not alter Tidy's determination. I think, +however, that she found her two aged friends very useful in aiding her +last movements; and when the eventful moment arrived, and Tidy, attired +in Miss Amelia's garments, with a traveling-bag in her hand, containing +her hymn-book, her money, and a few needed articles, stood at the foot +of the walk that led into the public road, Mammy Grace stood with her in +the starlight of the early summer's morning, and bade her God-speed. + +"Ye looks like a lady for all de world, honey; I 'clare dese yer old +eyes neber would a thought 'twas you, in dis yer fine dress--hi, hi, hi! +Specs nobody'll tink ye's run away. De old nuss hates to part wid her +chile; but ef ye must go, ye must, and de bressed Lord go wid ye, and +keep ye safe." + +Then giving her a most affectionate hug, she put a paper of eatables in +her hand, and helped her to mount the horse before Uncle Simon, who was +already in the saddle. Where or how the old man procured the horse and +equipments, HE knew--but nobody else did. + +The animal was a fast trotter, and brought them speedily five miles to +the village, where Tidy was to take the stage-coach to Baltimore. It +was before railroads and steam-engines were much talked of in Virginia. +Alighting in the outskirts of the town, Simon lifted the young girl to +the ground, and hastily commending her to "de bressed Lord of heaben and +earf," he bade her good-by, and went back to his bondage and toil. They +never saw each other again. + +The day was fine, and riding a novel occupation for Tidy, but so full +was her trembling heart of anxiety and fear that she could not enjoy it. +She was afraid to look out of the window lest she might be recognized by +some one; and she dared not look at the two pleasant-faced gentlemen who +were in the coach with her, lest they might question her, and find out +her true condition. So she cuddled back as closely as possible in the +corner, and when they kindly offered her cakes and fruit, she just +ventured to say, "No, thank you." Her own food, which the dear old nurse +had taken so much pains to put up for her, lay untouched in her lap, for +her heart was so absorbed she could not eat. + +Night brought her to the hotel in Baltimore. The great city, the large +building, and busy servants running hither and thither quite bewildered +her, and she had to watch herself very closely lest she should betray +herself. The waiters looked at her rather suspiciously; but she behaved +with all propriety, called for her room and supper, paid for what she +had, and in the morning was ready to take her seat in the northern +stage, and no one ventured to molest or question her. How her heart +leaped when she found herself safely on her way to Philadelphia. One +day more, and she would be in a free city. What she should do when she +arrived there, how she was to support herself in future, did not trouble +her. That she might stand on free soil, and lift up her eyes to the +stars that shone on her liberated body was all she thought of; and +to-night this was to be. With every step of the plodding horses, she +grew bolder and more assured, and her faith and hope and joyousness +rose. But, alas! there was a lion in the way of which she had not +dreamed. + +"Your pass!" shouted a grim-looking man, as she stepped, bag in hand, +with gentle dignity on the boat that was to take her across the stream +which divided slave territory from our free States. "Where's your pass? +Don't stand there staring at me," said the official, as the frightened +girl looked up as if for an explanation. + +A pass! She had never once thought of that! No one had mentioned her +need of it. What was she to do? She looked confounded and terrified. + +"No pass?" inquired the man, sternly. "'Tis easy enough to see what +YOU are, then. A runaway!" said he, turning to a man at his right hand, +"make her fast." + +Frightened and trembling, Tidy tried to run, but it was of no use; a +strong hand seized her slender arm, and held her securely. Then her +sight seemed to fail her, she grew dizzy, and fell fainting on the deck. +A crowd gathered about her. They remarked her light skin and delicate +features, her ladylike form and neat dress. Could she be a slave? they +asked. Would such a child as she appeared to be attempt to gain her +liberty? They dashed water on her head, and, as her consciousness +returned, she saw the faces of those two pleasant Scotch gentlemen, +who had rode with her the day before all the way from Virginia, looking +kindly and pitifully upon her. + +"If you had only told us," they said, "we could have helped you." + +But there was no friend or helper in that terrible hour, and poor Tidy, +weeping and almost heart-broken, was carried back to Baltimore, and +thrown into the SLAVE-JAIL. + + + +CHAPTER XIII. A LONG JOURNEY. + +IF I pronounce this disastrous event in Tidy's life another link in +the chain of loving-kindness by which God was leading her to himself, +perhaps you will wonder. But, my dear children, adversities are designed +for this very purpose, and are all directed in infinite love and wisdom +for our good. Tidy had prayed that she might be free, and the Lord +heard, and meant to answer her prayer. He meant not only to give her the +liberty she sought, but, more than that, to make her soul free in Christ +Jesus; but there were some things she needed to learn first. She was +not prepared yet to use her personal liberty rightly, nor did she at all +appreciate or desire that other and better freedom. Therefore the Lord +disappointed her at this time, and turned the course of her life, as it +were, upside down, that by painful experiences and narrow straits she +might learn what an all-sufficient Friend he could be to her; that she +might learn too the sinfulness of her own heart, and his free grace and +mercy for her pardon and salvation. + +God "leads the blind in the way they know not." Tidy knew nothing of +the method by which he was guiding her, and when she found her hopes +crushed, and herself crouching, forlorn and friendless, weary and +half-famished, in a prison, she gave up all for lost. She felt indeed +cast off and forsaken. For hours she sat and cried despairingly, the +pretty dress crumpled and stained with tears, and the hat which had been +so much admired trampled under foot. Shame, grief, and fear of what was +to come drove her almost to distraction. + +At the end of three days, Mr. Lee, acting as her master, who had been +apprised of her arrest, arrived at the prison. But what a wretched +object had he come to see! He could scarcely believe that the miserable, +dejected being before him was the once bright, beautiful Tidy,--such a +change had her disappointment and sorrow wrought. He really pitied +her, if a slaveholder ever can pity a slave, and yet he reproached her +severely. He told her she was a fool to run away; that niggers never +knew when they were well off; that if she had had a thimble-full of +sense she might have known she couldn't make her escape. He said they +had just been offered a thousand dollars for her,--which was then +considered an enormous price,--by a gentleman in Virginia, and they had +been on the point of selling her. + +"I's Miss Matilda's," fiercely cried the poor girl at this, "and SHE +wouldn't a sold me; she said she never would." + +"Yes, she would, Miss," replied Mr. Lee; "we don't let her throw +away such a valuable piece of property for nothing, I can tell you. A +thousand dollars in the bank isn't a small thing. It wouldn't find feet +to walk off with very soon, that we know." + +"Miss Matilda TOLD me to take my liberty," said Tidy, disconsolately. + +"Miss Matilda is a fool, like you. But we shall look out she don't cheat +herself in such a fashion. Now you can have your choice, little one; +you can go home with me, and take a good flogging for an example to the +rest, and stay with us till another buyer comes up,--for Mr. Nicholson +won't take such an uncertain piece of goods as you have showed yourself +to be,--or you can go South. There's a trader here ready to take you +right off. I'll give you till tomorrow morning to make up your mind." + +"I'll go South," said the poor girl, the next morning. "I can't bear +ever to see Miss Tilda again." And she settled herself down to her fate. +She knew her life of bondage would be hard there, and she would not +have much chance of getting her freedom. But it was better than the +mortification of going back. + +So she was sold to Mr. Pervis, the slave-trader. Mr. Pervis made about +fifty purchases in Baltimore and the vicinity, and then organizing his +gang he started for the South. Oh, what a different journey from that +which Tidy had intended when she left home. A thousand miles South, into +the very heart of slavery's dominions, with a company of coarse, stupid, +filthy, wretched creatures, such as she never would have willingly +associated with at home, so much more delicately had she been +reared. Many of these were field-hands sold to go to the cotton +plantations,--sold for "rascality." + +Do you know what that means? You think it is ugliness. But no; it is +a DISEASE. It is a droll sort of malady, to which a learned Louisiana +doctor has given a singular name, which I can't spell, and which you +wouldn't know how to pronounce; but the symptoms I can describe. Where +a slave is attacked with this disease, he acts in a very stupid and +careless manner, and does a great deal of mischief, breaking, abusing, +and wasting every thing he can lay his hands on. He tears his clothes, +throws away food, cuts up plants in the field, breaks his tools, hurts +the horses and cattle, and does a vast amount of injury, and in such +a way that it seems as if it was all done on purpose. He will neither +work, nor eat the food offered him; quarrels with the other slaves and +fights with the drivers, and altogether acts in such an ugly way that +the overseer says he is "rascally." If it was really ugliness, he would +be whipped; but, of course, whipping won't cure disease; so the masters +consider it incurable, and sell the slave to go South to work in the +rice-swamps and cotton-fields. They, perhaps, think a change of +climate will do more for the patient than any other means. The Southern +physicians don't have much success, to tell the truth, in curing this +difficulty, for they don't seem to understand it. If they would only +consult with some of their profession at the North, I have no doubt they +would get some valuable suggestions on the subject. I really believe +that the liberty-cure, practised by some judicious money-pathic +physician, would effectually cure this "rascality." I wish I could see +it tried. + +Tidy found herself, therefore, in very undesirable company on this +expedition to Georgia, and made up her mind very shortly that there +would not be much enjoyment in it. She did not have to drag wearily +along on foot all the way; for Mr. Lee was considerate enough to suggest +to Mr. Pervis, that, as she had been brought up as a house-servant, and +not accustomed to very hard work, she would not be able to walk much, +and if she was not allowed to ride, there would be no Tidy left by the +time they got to their journey's end, and the thousand dollars which had +just been paid for her would have been thrown away. So Mr. Pervis gave +her a permanent place in one of the wagons, and the other women were +taken up by turns, whenever the poor creatures could step no longer. +The men dragged along, handcuffed in pairs, and their low, brutal, and +profane conversation was dreadful to Tidy. Oh, how often she wished she +had staid contentedly with Mammy Grace, and not tried to run away. And +yet her hope was not utterly gone, for she often caught herself saying, +with closed teeth, "Give me a chance, and I'll try it again." Freedom +looked too attractive to be entirely relinquished. + +The gang halted at night, put up their tents, lighted fires and cooked +their mean repast. Then they stretched themselves on the bare ground to +sleep. In the morning, after the wretched breakfast was eaten, the tents +were struck, the wagons loaded again, and they started for another day's +travel,--and so on till the long, wearisome march was over. It took them +many weeks before they arrived at their destination. + +There Tidy was soon resold, the trader making two hundred dollars by +the bargain, and she became the property of Mr. Turner, who took her to +Natchez, on the Mississippi River, where she became waiting-maid to Mrs. +Turner, his wife. + +The poor girl was never the same in appearance after she left her +Virginia home. A deep pall seemed to have been thrown over her spirit, +and her hopes and happiness lay buried beneath it. Her disposition had +lost its buoyancy, and her face wore a sad, pensive look. She tried +to do her duty here as before, and her skill and neatness made her a +favorite. But there was no one here to care for her and love her as +Mammy Grace had done; and she missed the children sadly. Her hymn-book +was neglected; for when she opened it such a flood of recollections came +over her that the tears blinded her eyes and she could not see a word, +and she never now heard a prayer. She was again in an irreligious +family, and among an ungodly set of servants, and her faith, hope, and +love began to grow dim. A dull, heavy manner, and a careless, reckless +state of mind was growing upon her. + +It required deeper sorrow than she had yet experienced to wake her up +from this sluggish, unhappy condition. + + + +CHAPTER XIV. CRUELTY. + +SHE was standing one beautiful evening at the front gate of the house, +leaning on the rail, and gazing listlessly up the street. She was +thinking, perhaps, of that starry night when first she had heard of the +name of God, or that other, when her faith had been so wonderfully built +up in listening to the striking experiences and prayer of the memorable +Lony. Perhaps she had wandered farther back to the time, when, under old +Rosa's protection, she had fed the chickens and watered the flowers at +Rosevale with childish content. Whatever it was, the tears would come, +and several times she raised her hand and dashed them away. Then she +turned her head and gazed the other way. + +A large hotel stood nearly opposite the house, and across the narrow +street she watched the mingling, busy crowd of black and white, young +and old, coming and going, each intent on his own interests, each +holding in his heart the secret of his own history. Who are they all? +thought Tidy, what business are they all about? I wonder if they are all +happy? not one of them knows or cares for poor, unhappy me,--when lo! +there suddenly loomed up before her a familiar face. She watched it +eagerly as it moved up and down in the throng, for she felt that she had +seen it before. But it was some minutes before she could tell exactly +where. At last it all came to her. It was Arthur Carroll, the son of the +man who had owned her when a baby. She had often seen and played with +him in her visits to her mother. Many years had passed since she last +beheld him, and he had grown to be a young gentleman; but she was sure +it was he. He stepped out of the hotel and came towards the house. +She uttered a little, quick cry, "Why, Mass Arthur!" He turned and +recognized her, and at once stopped to inquire into her condition and +circumstances. + +It was almost like a visit to old Virginia to see young Carroll; and as +cold water to a thirsty soul was the news he brought her from that far +country. Tidy drank in eagerly every word he could tell her of the +Lees, and others whom she knew, and they were enjoying an animated +conversation when Tidy's master passed that way. He saw his slave +engaged in familiar talk with a stranger, and remembering the remark +of the trader of whom he had bought her, that she had tried "the +running-away game" once, and must be watched lest she should repeat the +attempt, without waiting to inquire into the circumstances of the case, +he resolved to administer a proper chastisement. Coming up behind, he +struck her a violent blow on the side of the head that sent the frail +girl reeling to the ground. + +For a few minutes Tidy lay stunned upon the earth. When she came to +herself, her head was smarting with pain and her heart burned like fire +with indignation, and in a perfect frenzy of distress and mortification +she rushed out of the gate and flew down the street. Up and down, +through the streets and lanes of the city, she ran for hours, not +knowing or caring whither she went, until finally, exhausted and +bewildered, she dropped down upon the ground. Some one raised the +panting girl and took her to the guard-house. There she lay until +morning before she could give any distinct thought to what she had done, +and what course she was now to pursue. + +When she began to think clearly, she felt that she had acted very +unwisely. For a slave to resist punishment, if it is ever so undeserved, +or to attempt to escape it by running away, is only to provoke severer +chastisement. That she well knew, and that there was nothing to be done +now, but to walk back to her master's house and meet a fate she could +not avoid. She only hoped that, when she acknowledged her fault, and +frankly told her master that she did it under a wild and bewildering +excitement, he would pardon her and let it pass. + +She dragged her weary steps back to her master's house, fainting with +fatigue and hunger, and presented herself before her mistress. + +"I's right sorry I runned so," she said, "but I was kind o' scared like, +and didn't know jest what I did. I knows I's no business to run away +when massa cuffed me." + +Her mistress made no reply but an angry look; but nothing was said by +any one about what had happened, and Tidy felt that trouble was brewing. +What it would be she could not tell, but her heart was heavy within her. +Nothing occurred that day, but the next morning she was told to tie up +her clothes and be ready to go up the river at ten o'clock. She +knew what going up the river meant. Mr. Turner owned a large cotton +plantation about twenty miles from Natchez, and the severest punishment +dreaded by his servants in the city was to be sent there. + +Tom, the coachman, accompanied Tidy, bearing in his pocket a note to the +overseer of the plantation. Would you take a peep into it before she, +whom it most concerned, learned its contents? It ran thus,-- + +"NATCHEZ, Wednesday, A. M. + +"DIOSSY,-- + +"Give this wench a hundred lashes with the long whip this afternoon. +Wash her down well, and when she is fit to work, put her into the cotton +field. + +"ABRAM TURNER." + +Oh, let us weep, dear children, for the poor girl, who, for no crime +at all, not even a misdeed, was made to bare her tender skin to such +shameless cruelty. No friend was there to help her, to plead for her, to +deliver her from the relentless, violent hand of the wicked oppressor. +She was left all alone to her terrible suffering. Can we wonder that she +felt that even the Lord had forgotten her? + +That night there was scarcely an inch of flesh from her neck to her feet +that was not torn, raw, and bleeding. The salt brine, which is used to +heal the wounds, although when first applied it seems to aggravate +the torture, was poured pitilessly over her, and writhing with agony, +fainting, and almost dead, she was borne to a wretched hut, and laid +on a hard pallet. Three weeks she lay there, sick and helpless; but she +cried unto the Lord in her distress, and he heard her, and prepared to +deliver her, though the time of her deliverance was not yet fully come. +She had been brought low, but her eyes were not yet opened to her true +needs, and she had not yet learned the prayer God would have her offer, +"Be merciful to me, a SINNER." + +Children, when you pray, do not be discouraged, if God does not answer +you INSTANTLY. His way is not as our way; and though he hears us, and +means to answer us, he may see that we are not yet ready to receive and +appreciate the blessing we seek. Besides, there is no TIME with God as +we count time. WE reckon by days and weeks, by months and years, but +with him all is "one, eternal NOW;" and he goes steadily on, executing +his purposes of love and mercy, without regard to those points and +measures of time which seem so important to us. We must remember, too, +that it takes longer to do some things than others. A praying woman +whose faith was greatly tried, once asked her minister what this verse +meant,--Luke xviii. 8: "I tell you that he will avenge them SPEEDILY." +He replied, "If you make a loaf of bread in ten minutes, you think you +have done your work speedily. Supposing a steam-engine is to be built. +The pattern must be drafted, the iron brought, the parts cast, fitted, +polished, tried,--it will take months to complete it, and then you may +consider it SPEEDILY executed. So, when we ask God to do something for +us, he may see a good deal of preparation to be necessary,--obstacles +are to be removed, stepping-stones to be laid,--in the words of the +Bible, the rough places are to be made plain, and the crooked ways +straight, before the way of the Lord is prepared, and he can come +directly with the thing we have asked." + +It was thus with Tidy. She kept praying all the time to be free, but the +Lord, who meant to give her a larger and better freedom than she +asked, led her through such rough and crooked paths that she was quite +discouraged, and nearly gave up all for lost. + +This was her painful condition when she was driven, for the first time +in her life, with a gang of men and women to work in the cotton-field. + + + +CHAPTER XV. COTTON. + +LET us look into a cotton-field; we will take this one of a hundred +acres. The cotton is planted in rows, and requires incessant tillage to +secure a good crop. The weeds and long grass grow so rankly in this warm +climate that great watchfulness and care are required to keep them down. +If there should be much rain during the season, they will spread so +rapidly as perhaps quite to outgrow and ruin the crop. + +Two gangs of laborers work in the field. The plough-gang go first +through the rows, turning up the soil, and are followed by the hoe-gang, +who break out the weeds, and lay the soil carefully around the roots of +the young plants. This operation has to be repeated again and again; and +so important is it to have it done seasonably that the workers are urged +on, early and late, until the field is in a flourishing condition. Hot +or cold, wet or dry, day and night, sometimes, the poor creatures have +to toil through this busy season. Then there is a little intermission of +the severe labor until the picking time, when again they are obliged to +work incessantly. + +Most of the hoers are women and boys, some of whom do the whole allotted +task; others only a quarter, half, or three quarters, according to their +ability. When the children are first put into the field, they are only +put to quarter tasks, and some of the women are unable to do more. The +bell is rung for them at early dawn, when they rise, prepare and eat +their breakfast, and move down to the field. Clad in coarse, filthy, and +scanty clothing, they drag sullenly along, and use their implements of +labor with a slow, reluctant motion, that says very plainly, "This +work is not for ME. My toil will do ME no good." Oh, how would freedom, +kindness, and good wages spur up those unwilling toilers! How would +the bright faces, the cheerful words and songs of independent, +self-interested, intelligent laborers, make those fields to rejoice, +almost imparting vigor and growth to the cotton itself! But, alas! it is +a sad place, a valley of sighs and groans and tears and blood, a realm +of hate and malice, of imprecation and wrath, and every fierce and +wicked passion. + +A "water-toter" follows each gang with a pail and calabash; and the +negro-driver stands among them with a long whip in his hand, which he +snaps over their heads continually, and lets the lash fall, with more or +less severity, on one and another, shouting and yelling meanwhile in +a furious and brutal manner, as a boisterous teamster would do to his +unruly oxen. + +If the season is wet, the danger to the crop being greater, there is +more necessity for constant toil, and the poor slaves are whipped, +pushed, and driven to the very utmost, and allowed no time to rest. +It is no matter if the old are over-worked, or the young too hardly +pressed, or the feeble women faint under their burdens. So that a good +crop is produced, and the planter can enjoy his luxuries, it is no +consideration that tools are worn out, mules are destroyed, or the +slaves die; more can be bought for next year, and the slaveholder says +it pays to force a crop, though it be at the expense of life among the +hands. + +At noon, the dinner is brought to each gang in a cart. The hoers stop +work only long enough to eat their poor fare standing,--and poor fare +indeed it is. The corn that is made into bread is so filled with husks +and ground so poorly that it is scarcely better than the fodder given to +the cattle; and the bacon, if they have any, is badly cured and cooked. +But they must eat that or starve; there is no chance of getting any +thing better. The ploughmen take their dinners in the sheds where the +mules are allowed to rest; and since two hours is usually given these +animals, for rest and foddering, they, of course, must take the same. + +At sunset they leave off work, and, tired and hungry, they have to +prepare their own supper; and after hastily eating it, at nine o'clock +the bell is rung for them to go to bed. Sundays they are not usually +required to work, and some planters give their slaves a portion of +Saturday, in the more leisure season; and this intermission of field +labor is all the opportunity they have to wash and mend their clothes, +or for any enjoyment. What a sorry life! sixteen hours out of the +twenty-four, with a hoe in the hand, or a heavy cotton sack or basket +tied about the neck, toiling on under the curses and lash of the driver +and the overseer. + +Tidy dreaded it. Brought up as she had been, accustomed to comparatively +neat clothing, good food, cheerful associates, and light work, how could +she live here? She felt that she could not long endure it. Her strength +would fail, her task be unfinished, then she must be punished, and +before long, through hard fare, unwearied toil, and ill usage, she felt +that she should die. But there was no help. Once she had ventured to +send an entreaty to her master to take her back to house service. But he +was hardhearted and unrelenting, and declared with an oath that made her +ears tingle that she should never leave the cotton-field till she died, +and there was no power in heaven or earth that could make him change +his determination. So she hopelessly plodded on, day after day, scorched +beneath the hot sun, and drenched with the pouring rain, weak, faint, +and thirsty, trembling before the coarse shouts, and shrinking from the +tormenting lash of the pitiless driver, sure that her fate was sealed. + +[illustration omitted] + +Was there no eye to pity, and no arm to rescue? Yes, the unseen God, +whose name is love, was leading her still. Through all the dark, rough +places of her life, his kind, invisible hand was laying link to link in +that wondrous chain which was finally to bring her safe and happy into +his own bosom. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. RESCUE. + +THE slaves on Mr. Turner's plantation had no SABBATH. To be sure, they +were not driven to the field on Sunday, because it was considered an +economic provision to let man and beast rest one day out of the seven. +But they had no church to attend, and never had any meetings among +themselves. Indeed there were no pious ones among them. The men took the +day for sport; the women washed and ironed, sewed and cooked, and did +various necessary chores for themselves and children, for which they +were allowed no other opportunity; and spent the rest of the day in rude +singing, dancing, and boisterous merriment. + +Tidy could not live as the rest did. She could not forget the +instructions and habits of the past. She preferred to sit up later on +Saturday evening to do the work which others did on Sunday, and when +that day came, she never entered into their coarse gayety and mirth. She +had no heart for it, and did not care though she was reviled and scoffed +at for her particular, pious ways. + +One Sunday afternoon, weary with the noise and rioting at the quarters, +homesick and sad, she wandered away from her hovel, and strolling down +the path which led to the cotton-field, she kept on through bush and +brake and wood until she reached the bank of the river. Here, where the +great Mississippi, the Father of Waters, seemed to have broken his way +through tangled and interminable forests, she stood and looked out upon +the broad stream. It lay like a vast mirror reflecting the sunlight, +its surface only now and then disturbed by a passing boat or prowling +king-fisher. Up and down the bank, with folded arms and pensive +countenance, the toil-worn, weary girl walked, her soul in unison with +the solitude and silence of the place. Recollections of the past, which +continually haunted her, but which she had of late striven with all her +might to banish from her mind, now rushed like a mighty tide over +her. She could not help thinking of the pleasant Sabbath days in old +Virginia, when she and Mammy Grace were always permitted to go to +church; and of those sunset hours, when, seated in the door of the neat +cabin, she had joined with the old nurse and Uncle Simon in singing +those beautiful hymns they loved so well. How long it was since she +had tried to sing one! Before she was aware, she was humming, in a low +voice, the once familiar words:-- + + "Oh, when shall I see Jesus, + And reign with him above? + And from that flowing fountain + Drink everlasting love?" + +Then, suddenly jumping over all the intervening verses, as if she, a +poor shipwrecked soul, were springing to the cable suddenly thrown out +before her, she burst out in a loud strain,-- + + "Whene'er you meet with trouble + And trials on your way, + Oh, cast your care on Jesus, + And don't forget to pray." + +With what unction Uncle Simon used to pour forth that verse. It was to +him the grand cure-all, the panacea for every heart-trouble; and over +and over again he would sing it, always winding up in his own peculiar +fashion with a quick, jerked-out "Hallelujah! Amen." + +His image rose vividly before Tidy at that moment, and, as the tears +began to roll down her cheeks, she clasped her hands over her face, and +cried, "Oh, I has forgot that. I has forgot to pray." Then, falling on +her knees, she poured forth such an earnest prayer as had never before, +perhaps, been heard in that vast solitude. Her heart was relieved by +this outpouring of her griefs to God, and she wondered that she had +allowed herself, notwithstanding her sufferings and discouragements, to +neglect such a privilege. It is so sometimes; grief is so overwhelming +that it seems to shut us away from God; but we can never find comfort +or relief until we have pierced through the clouds, and got near to his +loving ear and heart again. Tidy found this true. "And now," she said +to herself, "I WILL keep on praying until he hears me, and comes to help +me,--I am determined I will." + +But perhaps, thought she, I haven't prayed the right prayer; perhaps +there's something about me that's wrong; and she cried with a loud +voice, that was echoed back again from those forest depths, "O Lord, +tell me just how to pray, that I mayn't make no mistake." + +No sooner had she uttered this petition than she thought she heard a +voice, and these were its words: "Say, 'O Lord, pluck me out of the +fiery brands, and take my feet out of the miry pit, and make me stand +on the everlasting rock; and, O Lord, save my soul.'" Tidy had heard a +great many of her people tell about dreams and visions and voices, but +she had never before had any such experiences. But this came to her with +a reality she could not doubt or resist. It seemed like a voice from +heaven, and she remarked that great stress was laid upon the last +words, "O Lord, SAVE MY SOUL." Hitherto she had only sought temporal +deliverance. She had never been fully awakened to her condition as a +sinner, and had, therefore, never asked for the salvation of her soul. +Now it was strongly impressed upon her mind that there was something +more to be delivered from than the horrors of the cotton-field. She +was a sinner, was not in favor with God, and if she should die in her +present condition, she would go down to those everlasting burnings which +she had always feared. All this was conveyed to her mind by a sudden +impression, in much shorter time than I can relate it; and at once she +accepted it, and earnestly resolved that she would offer that twofold +prayer every day and hour, till the Lord should be pleased to come for +her help. + +Perhaps some of my readers would like to ask if I believe she really +heard a voice. No, I do not. I think it was the Holy Spirit of God that +brought to her mind some of the Scripture expressions she had formerly +heard, and applied them to her heart with power. This is the peculiar +work of the Holy Spirit. When Christ was bidding farewell to his +disciples, he told them he should send the Comforter, which is the Holy +Ghost, who should teach them all things, and BRING ALL THINGS TO THEIR +REMEMBRANCE. I think that God, in his tender love and pity for Tidy, +sent the Holy Ghost to bring to her remembrance those things which had +long been buried in her heart; and at that tranquil hour, in that still, +lonely spot, when her spirit was tender with sorrow, she was just in the +condition to receive his influences, and give attention to the thoughts +he had stirred up within her. And coming to her perception quickly, +like a flash of light, as truth often does, it seemed to her excited +imagination like an audible voice, and the words had all the effect upon +her of a direct revelation from heaven. + +This striking experience refreshed the poor girl, and nerved her anew +for her toils and trials. She felt hope again dawning within her; and +though she could see no way, she had faith to believe that the Lord +would appear for her rescue. She prayed the new prayer constantly. It +was her first thought in the morning, and her last at night, and during +every moment of the livelong day was in her heart or on her lips. + +One forenoon, as she was drawing her weary length along with the +accustomed gang, picking the ripe, bursting cotton-bolls, a messenger +arrived to say that she was wanted by the master. She almost fainted at +the summons. What could he want her for? Surely it was not for good. Was +he going to inflict cruelty again as unmerited as it had before been? +She threw off her cotton-sack from her neck, to obey the summons; +but she trembled so that she could scarcely walk. Her knees smote one +against another, her heart throbbed, and her tongue cleaved to the +roof of her mouth in her excitement and fright. As she drew near to the +house, she perceived her master with haughty strides walking up and down +the veranda, his hands behind him and his head thrown back, his whole +appearance bearing witness to the proud, imperious spirit within. A +gentleman of milder aspect was seated on a chair, intently eying Tidy as +she approached, and she heard him say,-- + +"Can you recommend her, Turner? Do you really think she is capable of +filling the place?" + +"Capable!" said the master. "Take off that bag, and dress her, and +you'll see. TOO smart, that's her fault. YOU'LL see." + +"I like her looks; I'll try her," was the reply; and this was all the +intimation Tidy had that she had been transferred to another master. Her +heart leaped within her at what she heard; but when peremptorily told to +get ready to follow Mr. Meesham, she hesitated. What for, do you think? +Her first impulse was to throw herself at her master's feet, and ask +what had induced him to sell her. But she dared not. He cast upon her +a glance of such spurning contempt that she cringed before him. But she +made up her mind that God only could have moved that stern, proud man to +change a purpose which he had declared to be inflexible. She was right. +God, who controls all hearts, and can turn them withersoever he pleases, +in answer to prayer, had moved that stubborn heart. + +Thus the first part of Tidy's new prayer was answered. + + + +CHAPTER XVII. TRUE LIBERTY. + +THE new home of Mr. Meesham was in Mobile. The master was an unmarried +man, who wanted a capable superintendent for his domestic concerns, a +neat, lady-like servant to wait upon his table, a trustworthy keeper +of his keys, a leader and director of his household slaves. All this +he found in Tidy, and when she was promoted to the head of the +establishment, dressed in becoming apparel, with plenty of food at her +command, pleasant, easy work to do, and leisure enough for rest and +enjoyment, perhaps you think she was happy. + +Ah, she was still a slave, and every day she was painfully reminded of +it. She could not exercise her own judgment, nor act according to her +own sense of right. She must walk in the way her master pointed out, and +do his bidding. Whatever comforts she could pick up as she went along, +she was welcome to; but she must have no choice or will of her own. + +Perhaps you think her gratitude to God for his great deliverance would +make her happy. So it did for a time, and then she forgot her deliverer, +and the still greater blessing she needed to ask of him. How many there +are just like her, who cry to God for help in adversity, and forget him +when the help comes. How many who promise God, when they are in trouble +and danger, that if they are spared they will serve him, and, when the +danger is past, entirely forget their vows. + +Thus it was with Tidy. She had been brought out of the cotton-field, and +the misery that curtained it all round, into circumstances of plenty and +comparative ease; and, rejoicing that the first part of her prayer was +answered, she forgot all about the second and most important petition, +"O Lord, save my soul." + +But God was too faithful to forget it. He allowed her to go on in her +own course a few years longer, and then he laid his hand upon her again. +He prostrated her upon a bed of sickness, and brought her to look death +in the face. Then the Holy Spirit began to deal powerfully with her. She +realized that she was a great sinner. It seemed that she was standing on +the brink of a horrible precipice, and her sins, like so many tormenting +spirits, were ready to cast her headlong into the abyss of destruction. +Whither could she flee for safety? + +She found a Bible and tried to read; but it had been so long since she +had looked into a book that she had almost forgotten what she once knew. +It was impossible for her to read right on as we do; she could only pick +out here and there a word and a sentence. One day she opened the book +and her eye fell on the word "Come." She knew that word very well. +It made her think right away of the hymn, "Come, ye sinners, poor and +needy." She thought she would read on just there, and see what it said; +and imperfectly, and after long endeavors, she made out this verse, +"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins +be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like +crimson, they shall be as wool." Then she glanced at a verse above, +"Wash ye, make you clean: put away the evil of your doings from before +mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well." + +These verses conveyed to her dark, unin-structed mind two very clear +ideas. One was that she was to forsake every thing that appeared to +her like sin, and to do right in future; and the other, that she was +permitted to reason with the Lord about the sins she had committed; both +which she at once resolved to do. + +Her prayer now was changed. Before she had begged, entreated the Lord +to forgive her sins; now she brought arguments. "Am I not a poor slave, +Lord," she cried, "that never has known nothing at all. I never heard no +preaching, I never had nobody to tell me how to be saved. I have done a +good many wicked things, but I didn't know they were wicked then; and +I have left undone many things, but I didn't know I ought to be so +particular to do them. And, Lord, out of your own goodness and kindness +won't you forgive this poor child. You are so full of love, pity me, +pity me, O Lord, and save my poor soul. I will try to be good. I will +try to do right. I'll never, never dance no more. I'll try to bear all +the hard knocks I get, and I won't be hard on them that's beneath me, +and I will pray, and try to read the Bible, and I'll talk to the rest of +the people; only, Lord, forgive my sins, and take this load off that's +breaking my heart, and make me feel safe and happy, so I won't be afraid +when I die." + +Thus the sick girl prayed with clasped hands upon her bed of pain; but +still her mind was dark. There was no one to tell her of the way of +salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. Had she never heard of Jesus? +She had heard his name, had sung it in her hymns; but she imagined it +to be another name for the Lord, and had never heard of the glorious +salvation that blessed Name imparts. + +One night, while in this state of distress and perplexity, Tidy dreamed +a dream. She thought she saw the Lord, seated on a majestic throne, with +thousands and ten thousands of shining angels about him, and she was +brought a guilty criminal before him. Convicted of sin, and not knowing +what else to do, she again commenced pleading in her own behalf, using +every argument she could think of to move the Lord to mercy. There was +no answer, but the great Judge to whom she appealed seemed turned aside +in earnest conversation with one who stood at his right hand, wearing +the human form, but more fair and beautiful than any person she had ever +seen. Then the Lord turned again and looked upon her,--and such a look, +of pity, of love, of forgiveness and reconciliation! A sweet peace +distilled upon her soul, and joy, such as she had never felt, sprang up +in her bosom. "I am forgiven, I am accepted!" she cried, "but not for +any thing I have said. This stranger has undertaken my case. He has +interceded for me. I know not what plea he has used, but it has been +successful, and my soul is saved." In this exultation of joy she awoke. + +Yes, her soul WAS free. The plan of salvation had been dimly revealed +to the weeping sinner in the visions of the night. What strange ways the +Lord sometimes takes to reveal his love to his creatures! But his way +is not as our way, and he has ALL means at his control. Every soul will +have an individual history to tell of the revelation of God's mercy to +it. + +Thus the second part of Tidy's long-offered prayer was answered. From +this time she rejoiced in the Lord, and gloried in her unknown Saviour. +Her prayers were changed to praises, and she forgot that she was a slave +in the happiness of her new-found soul-liberty. + + +She kept her Bible at hand, and every now and then picked out some +precious verse; but the long, sweet story of Calvary, hidden between its +covers, she had not yet read. And her voice found delightful employment +in singing the hymns of the olden time, which came to her now with a +meaning they had never had before. The Lord sent her health of body, and +as she returned to her duties, she tried in all things to be faithful +and worthy. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. CROWNING MERCIES. + +THE Lord had not yet exhausted his love towards Tidy, but was designing +still greater mercies for her. He was going to deliver her from the +thralldom of oppression, and to send her to be further instructed in his +truth, and to bear testimony to his loving-kindness in another home. + +The master's heart was moved to set her free; and, embarked in a small +vessel, with a New England captain, Tidy found herself at twenty years +of age sailing away from the land of cruel bondage, to a home where she +should know the blessings of freedom. Her emancipation papers were put +into the hands of the captain, and money to provide for her comfort, +with the assurance that while her master lived she should never want. + +At first she was sick and almost broken-hearted at the change in her +condition. Much as she longed for freedom, she had formed new ties in +her Mobile home, which it was hard for her affectionate nature to break. +She was old enough now to look forward to some of the difficulties to be +encountered in a land of strangers, seeking employment in unaccustomed +ways. But she went to her Bible as usual in her trouble, and the words +which the Angel of the Covenant addressed to Jacob, when, exiled from +his father's house, he made the stones of Bethel his pillow, came right +home refreshingly to her,--"I am with thee, and will keep thee in +all places whither thou goest." The soreness at her heart was at once +healed, and she cried out, in deep emotion, "Enough, Lord! Now I have +got something to hold on by, and I will never let it go. When I get into +trouble, I shall come and say, Lord, you remember what you said to me on +board ship, and I know you will keep your promise." + +Thus fortified for her new life, Tidy arrived at New York. The sun was +just setting as she planted her foot on the soil of freedom; and as +his slanting rays fell upon her, she thought of her toiling, suffering +sisters, driven at this hour from labor to misery, and her heart +sickened at the thought. "O God," she cried, "hasten the day when ALL +shall be free." + +Tidy's first experience in this wilderness of delights, where was so +much to be seen, learned, and enjoyed, was a striking one, and proved +how the goodness of God followed her all the days of her life. It was +Saturday evening when she landed. The family with whom the captain +placed her were pious people, and were glad enough of the opportunity on +the morrow of taking an emancipated slave, who had never been inside +a church, to the house of God. It was a humble, un-pretending edifice +where the colored people worshiped, but to her it was spacious and +splendid. How neat and orderly every thing appeared. Men, women, and +children, in their Sunday attire, walked quietly through the streets, +and reverently seated themselves in the place of worship. The minister +ascended the pulpit, and the singers took their places in the choir. It +was communion Sunday, and the table within the altar was spread for the +holy feast. All these strange and incomprehensible proceedings filled +the mind of Tidy with solemnity and awe. + +The services began. The prayer and reading of the Scripture seemed to +feed her hungry soul as with the bread of life. Then the congregation +arose and sang,-- + + "Alas, and did my Saviour bleed? + And did my Sovereign die? + Would he devote his sacred head + For such a worm as I? + Oh, the Lamb, the loving Lamb, + The Lamb on Calvary; + + The Lamb that was slain, + That liveth again, + To intercede for me." + +All through the hymn she was actually trembling with excitement. Her +whole being was thrilled, her eyes overflowed with tears, and she +could scarcely hold herself up, as verse after verse, with the swelling +chorus, convinced her that they sang the praises of Him whom she had +seen in her dream, who stood between her and an offended God, and whom, +though she knew him not, she loved and cherished in her inmost soul. Oh, +if she could know more about him! + +Her wish was to be gratified. As Paul said to the people of Athens, +"Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you," so might +the preacher of righteousness have said to this eager listener. He took +for his text these words: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was +bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; +and with his stripes we are healed." Then followed the whole story of +the cross,--the reasons why it was necessary for Jesus to give his life +a ransom for many; the divine love that prompted the sacrifice; the +all-sufficiency of the atonement; and the completeness of Christ's +salvation. He spoke of Jesus as the one accepted Intercessor, Advocate, +and Surety above, and urged his hearers to yield themselves with faith +and love to this faithful and merciful Saviour. + +Tidy sat with her eyes fixed on the speaker, her mouth open with +amazement, and her hands clasped tightly over her heart, as if to quiet +its feverish throbs; and when he had finished, and one and another in +the congregation added an earnest "Amen," "Hallelujah," and "Praise the +Lord," she could keep still no longer. "'TIS HE," she cried, raising her +hands, "'TIS HE; But I never heard his name before." + +The closing hymn fell with sweet acceptance upon her ear, and calmed, in +some measure, the tumultuous rapture of her spirit:-- + + "Earth has engrossed my love too long! + 'Tis time I lift mine eyes + Upward, dear Father, to thy throne, + And to my native skies. + + "There the blest Man, my Saviour sits; + The God! how bright he shines! + And scatters infinite delights + On all the happy minds. + + *'Seraphs, with elevated strains, + Circle the throne around; + And move and charm the starry plains, + With an immortal sound. + + "Jesus, the Lord, their harps employs; + Jesus, my love, they sing! + Jesus, the life of all our joys, + Sounds sweet from every string. + + "Now let me mount and join their song, + And be an angel too; + My heart, my hand, my ear, my tongue, + Here's joyful work for you. + + "There ye that love my Saviour sit, + There I would fain have place, + Among your thrones, or at your feet, + So I might see his face." + +Is there any thing, dear children, that can penetrate the whole being +with such rapturous joy as the love of Christ? If you have never felt +it, learn to know him that you may experience those "infinite delights" +which he only can pour in upon the soul. + +And now we must take leave of Tidy. She lives still, a hearty, humble, +trusting Christian. She has been led to her true rest in God, and in +him she is secure and happy; "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; having +nothing, and yet possessing all things." + +"I have every thing I want," she says, as she sits beside me, "for God +is my Father, and his children, you know, Missus, inherits the earth." + +"How happens it, then, that you are so poor?" I ask. + +"My Father gives me every thing he sees best for me," is her beautiful +reply. "It wouldn't be good for me to have a great many things. When I +need any thing, I ask him, and he always gives it to me. I AM PERFECTLY +SATISFIED." + + +Dear children, upon this little story-tree two golden apples of +instruction hang, which I want you to pluck and enjoy. One is, that if +God so loved a humble slave-child, and took such pains to bring her to +himself, it is our privilege to feel the same sympathy and love for this +poor despised race. And this love will draw us two ways: first, towards +God, admiring and praising his infinite goodness and compassion; and, +secondly, towards these prostrate, down-trodden people, to do all we +can, in God's name, and for his dear sake, for their elevation and +instruction. Remember, "Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these +little ones, a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple,"--that +is, through this feeling of love, of Christian kindness, "he shall in no +wise lose his reward." + +The other,--if God so loved this humble slave-child, he has the same +love towards every one of you. Will you not yield yourselves to his +control, and let his various loving-kindnesses draw you too to himself? + + + +OLD DINAH JOHNSON. + +ONE day little Henry Wallace came to his mother's side, as she was +sitting at her work, and, after standing thoughtfully a few moments, he +looked up in her face and said: + +"Ma, how many heavens are there?" + +"Only one, my child," replied his mother, looking up from her work with +surprise at such a question. "What made you ask me that?" + +"Isn't there but one?" inquired Henry, with a little sort of trouble in +his voice. "Then, will Dinah Johnson go to the same heaven we do?" + +"Certainly, my dear; for heaven is one glorious temple, and God is the +light of it; and into it will be gathered all those who love the Lord +Jesus Christ, to dwell in his presence, in fullness of joy, for ever. +But Henry, my darling, why did you ask such a question? Don't you want +poor old Dinah to go to the same heaven that we do?" + +"Oh, yes, mamma, I love Dinah, and I want her to go to our heaven; +but last Sunday papa told me that the angels were every one fair and +beautiful, and Jacob Sanders says Dinah is a homely old darkey. Now, how +can she change, mamma?" + +Henry's mother saw at once where the difficulty lay in her little boy's +mind; so, putting aside her work, she took the child up on her knee, and +explained the matter to him. + +"Henry," said she, "I am sorry to hear that Jacob Sanders calls Dinah a +darkey; for those who are so unfortunate as to have a black skin don't +like to be called that or any other bad name. They have trouble enough +without that, and I hope you will never, never do it. They like best to +be called colored persons, and we should always try to please them. We +should pity them, and try to relieve their sorrows, and not increase +them. Don't you think so?" + +"Yes, ma, and I do love Dinah, and I don't care if she isn't white, like +you." + +"Neither does God, our heavenly Father, care, Henry, about the color of +the skin. The Bible says, 'God is no respecter of persons; but in every +nation, he that feareth him and worketh righteousness, is accepted with +him.' God looks at the soul more than at the body. Nothing colors THE +SOUL but sin. That stains and blackens it all over, and only the blood +of Jesus Christ can wash it pure and white again. But every soul that +has been washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb will be welcomed +into heaven, with songs of great rejoicing; and all will dwell together +in peace and purity, and love and great happiness for ever. + +"Poor old Dinah is one of God's dear children. She loves the dear +Saviour very much, and tries in every way to please and honor him; and +she is looking forward with great pleasure to the time when she shall +drop that infirm, old, black body, and be clothed with light as an +angel. I shall be glad for her,--sha'n't you, darling?" + +"Yes, indeed, mamma,--so glad;" and the little boy's mind was henceforth +at rest on that point. + +But I must tell my readers who old Dinah Johnson was. Once she was a +slave; but when she had become so old that her busy head and hands and +feet could do no more service for her master, he had set her free. Of +course, she was glad to be free,--to feel that she could go where she +liked, and do as she pleased, and keep all the money she could earn for +herself. Precious little it was, though, for her sight was growing dim, +and her hands and feet were all distorted with rheumatism; and what with +pains and poverty and old age, her strength was fast wasting. But she +was happy, really happy. + +If you could have looked upon her, though, you wouldn't have supposed +she had any thing to be happy about. With a skin black as night, hair +gray and scanty, her face was as homely as homely could be, and her +limbs were weak and tottering. The old, unpainted house she lived in +shook and creaked with every blast of the wintry wind, and the snow +drifted in at every crack and crevice. Her furniture was very poor, +and her food mean. But it is not what we see outside that makes people +happy. Oh, no; happiness springs from the inside. The fountain is in the +heart, from which the streams of joy and gladness flow. + +With all her homeliness and poverty, old Dinah was a jewel in the sight +of the Lord. He had graven her upon the palm of his hand, and written +her name in the book of life; and she was treasured as a precious child +in his loving heart. The name of the Lord was precious to her, also; +they were bound together in a covenant of love. Of course, she was +happy. + +Her heavenly Friend never forgot her. He sent many a one to bring her +work and money and fuel and clothes. She was never without her bread and +water,--you know the Lord has told his children that their "BREAD and +WATER shall be SURE,"--and almost always she had a little tea and sugar +in the cupboard. At Thanksgiving time, many a good basket-full of +pies and chickens found their way to her humble door; and when she had +received them, she would raise her hands and eyes to heaven, and thank +the Lord for his goodness, and ask for a blessing upon the kind hearts +that sent the gifts. She did not always know who they were, but she was +sure she should see them and love them in heaven. + +The only thing that seemed to trouble old Dinah was that she couldn't +help others; that she couldn't do any thing for her Lord and Saviour. +"I am so black and ugly," she would say, "and so old and lame and poor, +that I a'n't fit to speak to any body; but I'll pray, I'll pray." +She managed to hobble to church; and there, from her high seat in the +gallery,--poor colored people must always have the highest seats in +the house of God,--she could look all around the congregation. She took +especial notice of the young men and women that came into church; and +what do you think she did? Why, she would select this one and that one +to pray for, that they might be converted. She would find out their +names, and something about them; and then she would ask God, a great +many times every day, that he would send his Holy Spirit to them, and +give them new hearts. They didn't know any thing about her, of course, +nor what she was doing. By and by, she would hear the glad news that +they had come to Christ. Then she would choose others. These were +converted, too; and by and by there was a great revival in the church, +and many sinners were saved. After a time, there came a large crowd to +join the church, and number themselves among the Lord's people; and poor +old Dinah saw twelve young men, and several young women stand up in the +aisle that day, and give themselves publicly to God, whom she had picked +out and prayed for in this way. Oh, she was so happy, then! Her old +eyes overflowed with tears of joy, and she couldn't stop thanking and +praising God. + +Now this was the good old creature that Henry Wallace thought might have +to go to another heaven, because her skin was black. Do YOU think God +would need to make another heaven for her? No, indeed. But I'll tell +you, dear children, what I think. If there is a place in heaven higher +and nearer God than another, that's the place where poor old Dinah will +be found at last. I think that those who love God most, whether they are +black or white, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, refined or rude, will +stand the nearest to him in heaven. I am sure there was such warm love +between her and the Saviour, that he will not want her to be far away +from him in that bright world. He will call her up close to his side, +and look upon her with sweet, affectionate smiles all the time. And +many a one will wonder, perhaps, who that can be, so favored, so +distinguished. They will never imagine it to be the glorified body of a +poor, old, black slave, from such a wretched home,--will they? + +If there are TWO heavens, I would like to be admitted to hers,--wouldn't +you? + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Step by Step, by The American Tract Society + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1052 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1053-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1053-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b8c9a575 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1053-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6810 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Within the Tides, by Joseph Conrad + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Within the Tides + Tales + + +Author: Joseph Conrad + + + +Release Date: January 5, 2011 [eBook #1053] +[This file was first posted on August 29, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITHIN THE TIDES*** + + +Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + WITHIN THE + TIDES + + + TALES + + . . . Go, make you ready. + + HAMLET _to the_ PLAYERS. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + * * * * * + + LONDON & TORONTO + J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. + PARIS: J. M. DENT ET. FILS + + * * * * * + +FIRST EDITION _February_ 1915 +REPRINTED _April_ 1915; _August_ 1919 + + * * * * * + + To + MR. AND MRS. RALPH WEDGWOOD + + THIS SHEAF OF CARE-FREE ANTE-BELLUM PAGES + IN GRATITUDE FOR THEIR CHARMING HOSPITALITY + IN THE LAST MONTH OF PEACE + + + + +Contents + + PAGE +THE PLANTER OF MALATA 3 +THE PARTNER 119 +THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 175 +BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 223 + +THE PLANTER OF MALATA + + +CHAPTER I + + +In the private editorial office of the principal newspaper in a great +colonial city two men were talking. They were both young. The stouter +of the two, fair, and with more of an urban look about him, was the +editor and part-owner of the important newspaper. + +The other’s name was Renouard. That he was exercised in his mind about +something was evident on his fine bronzed face. He was a lean, lounging, +active man. The journalist continued the conversation. + +“And so you were dining yesterday at old Dunster’s.” + +He used the word old not in the endearing sense in which it is sometimes +applied to intimates, but as a matter of sober fact. The Dunster in +question was old. He had been an eminent colonial statesman, but had now +retired from active politics after a tour in Europe and a lengthy stay in +England, during which he had had a very good press indeed. The colony +was proud of him. + +“Yes. I dined there,” said Renouard. “Young Dunster asked me just as I +was going out of his office. It seemed to be like a sudden thought. And +yet I can’t help suspecting some purpose behind it. He was very +pressing. He swore that his uncle would be very pleased to see me. Said +his uncle had mentioned lately that the granting to me of the Malata +concession was the last act of his official life.” + +“Very touching. The old boy sentimentalises over the past now and then.” + +“I really don’t know why I accepted,” continued the other. “Sentiment +does not move me very easily. Old Dunster was civil to me of course, but +he did not even inquire how I was getting on with my silk plants. Forgot +there was such a thing probably. I must say there were more people there +than I expected to meet. Quite a big party.” + +“I was asked,” remarked the newspaper man. “Only I couldn’t go. But +when did you arrive from Malata?” + +“I arrived yesterday at daylight. I am anchored out there in the bay—off +Garden Point. I was in Dunster’s office before he had finished reading +his letters. Have you ever seen young Dunster reading his letters? I +had a glimpse of him through the open door. He holds the paper in both +hands, hunches his shoulders up to his ugly ears, and brings his long +nose and his thick lips on to it like a sucking apparatus. A commercial +monster.” + +“Here we don’t consider him a monster,” said the newspaper man looking at +his visitor thoughtfully. + +“Probably not. You are used to see his face and to see other faces. I +don’t know how it is that, when I come to town, the appearance of the +people in the street strike me with such force. They seem so awfully +expressive.” + +“And not charming.” + +“Well—no. Not as a rule. The effect is forcible without being clear. . . . +I know that you think it’s because of my solitary manner of life away +there.” + +“Yes. I do think so. It is demoralising. You don’t see any one for +months at a stretch. You’re leading an unhealthy life.” + +The other hardly smiled and murmured the admission that true enough it +was a good eleven months since he had been in town last. + +“You see,” insisted the other. “Solitude works like a sort of poison. +And then you perceive suggestions in faces—mysterious and forcible, that +no sound man would be bothered with. Of course you do.” + +Geoffrey Renouard did not tell his journalist friend that the suggestions +of his own face, the face of a friend, bothered him as much as the +others. He detected a degrading quality in the touches of age which +every day adds to a human countenance. They moved and disturbed him, +like the signs of a horrible inward travail which was frightfully +apparent to the fresh eye he had brought from his isolation in Malata, +where he had settled after five strenuous years of adventure and +exploration. + +“It’s a fact,” he said, “that when I am at home in Malata I see no one +consciously. I take the plantation boys for granted.” + +“Well, and we here take the people in the streets for granted. And +that’s sanity.” + +The visitor said nothing to this for fear of engaging a discussion. What +he had come to seek in the editorial office was not controversy, but +information. Yet somehow he hesitated to approach the subject. Solitary +life makes a man reticent in respect of anything in the nature of gossip, +which those to whom chatting about their kind is an everyday exercise +regard as the commonest use of speech. + +“You very busy?” he asked. + +The Editor making red marks on a long slip of printed paper threw the +pencil down. + +“No. I am done. Social paragraphs. This office is the place where +everything is known about everybody—including even a great deal of +nobodies. Queer fellows drift in and out of this room. Waifs and strays +from home, from up-country, from the Pacific. And, by the way, last time +you were here you picked up one of that sort for your assistant—didn’t +you?” + +“I engaged an assistant only to stop your preaching about the evils of +solitude,” said Renouard hastily; and the pressman laughed at the +half-resentful tone. His laugh was not very loud, but his plump person +shook all over. He was aware that his younger friend’s deference to his +advice was based only on an imperfect belief in his wisdom—or his +sagacity. But it was he who had first helped Renouard in his plans of +exploration: the five-years’ programme of scientific adventure, of work, +of danger and endurance, carried out with such distinction and rewarded +modestly with the lease of Malata island by the frugal colonial +government. And this reward, too, had been due to the journalist’s +advocacy with word and pen—for he was an influential man in the +community. Doubting very much if Renouard really liked him, he was +himself without great sympathy for a certain side of that man which he +could not quite make out. He only felt it obscurely to be his real +personality—the true—and, perhaps, the absurd. As, for instance, in that +case of the assistant. Renouard had given way to the arguments of his +friend and backer—the argument against the unwholesome effect of +solitude, the argument for the safety of companionship even if +quarrelsome. Very well. In this docility he was sensible and even +likeable. But what did he do next? Instead of taking counsel as to the +choice with his old backer and friend, and a man, besides, knowing +everybody employed and unemployed on the pavements of the town, this +extraordinary Renouard suddenly and almost surreptitiously picked up a +fellow—God knows who—and sailed away with him back to Malata in a hurry; +a proceeding obviously rash and at the same time not quite straight. +That was the sort of thing. The secretly unforgiving journalist laughed +a little longer and then ceased to shake all over. + +“Oh, yes. About that assistant of yours. . . .” + +“What about him,” said Renouard, after waiting a while, with a shadow of +uneasiness on his face. + +“Have you nothing to tell me of him?” + +“Nothing except. . . .” Incipient grimness vanished out of Renouard’s +aspect and his voice, while he hesitated as if reflecting seriously +before he changed his mind. “No. Nothing whatever.” + +“You haven’t brought him along with you by chance—for a change.” + +The Planter of Malata stared, then shook his head, and finally murmured +carelessly: “I think he’s very well where he is. But I wish you could +tell me why young Dunster insisted so much on my dining with his uncle +last night. Everybody knows I am not a society man.” + +The Editor exclaimed at so much modesty. Didn’t his friend know that he +was their one and only explorer—that he was the man experimenting with +the silk plant. . . . + +“Still, that doesn’t tell me why I was invited yesterday. For young +Dunster never thought of this civility before. . . .” + +“Our Willie,” said the popular journalist, “never does anything without a +purpose, that’s a fact.” + +“And to his uncle’s house too!” + +“He lives there.” + +“Yes. But he might have given me a feed somewhere else. The +extraordinary part is that the old man did not seem to have anything +special to say. He smiled kindly on me once or twice, and that was all. +It was quite a party, sixteen people.” + +The Editor then, after expressing his regret that he had not been able to +come, wanted to know if the party had been entertaining. + +Renouard regretted that his friend had not been there. Being a man whose +business or at least whose profession was to know everything that went on +in this part of the globe, he could probably have told him something of +some people lately arrived from home, who were amongst the guests. Young +Dunster (Willie), with his large shirt-front and streaks of white skin +shining unpleasantly through the thin black hair plastered over the top +of his head, bore down on him and introduced him to that party, as if he +had been a trained dog or a child phenomenon. Decidedly, he said, he +disliked Willie—one of these large oppressive men. . . . + +A silence fell, and it was as if Renouard were not going to say anything +more when, suddenly, he came out with the real object of his visit to the +editorial room. + +“They looked to me like people under a spell.” + +The Editor gazed at him appreciatively, thinking that, whether the effect +of solitude or not, this was a proof of a sensitive perception of the +expression of faces. + +“You omitted to tell me their name, but I can make a guess. You mean +Professor Moorsom, his daughter and sister—don’t you?” + +Renouard assented. Yes, a white-haired lady. But from his silence, with +his eyes fixed, yet avoiding his friend, it was easy to guess that it was +not in the white-haired lady that he was interested. + +“Upon my word,” he said, recovering his usual bearing. “It looks to me +as if I had been asked there only for the daughter to talk to me.” + +He did not conceal that he had been greatly struck by her appearance. +Nobody could have helped being impressed. She was different from +everybody else in that house, and it was not only the effect of her +London clothes. He did not take her down to dinner. Willie did that. +It was afterwards, on the terrace. . . . + +The evening was delightfully calm. He was sitting apart and alone, and +wishing himself somewhere else—on board the schooner for choice, with the +dinner-harness off. He hadn’t exchanged forty words altogether during +the evening with the other guests. He saw her suddenly all by herself +coming towards him along the dimly lighted terrace, quite from a +distance. + +She was tall and supple, carrying nobly on her straight body a head of a +character which to him appeared peculiar, something—well—pagan, crowned +with a great wealth of hair. He had been about to rise, but her decided +approach caused him to remain on the seat. He had not looked much at her +that evening. He had not that freedom of gaze acquired by the habit of +society and the frequent meetings with strangers. It was not shyness, +but the reserve of a man not used to the world and to the practice of +covert staring, with careless curiosity. All he had captured by his +first, keen, instantly lowered, glance was the impression that her hair +was magnificently red and her eyes very black. It was a troubling +effect, but it had been evanescent; he had forgotten it almost till very +unexpectedly he saw her coming down the terrace slow and eager, as if she +were restraining herself, and with a rhythmic upward undulation of her +whole figure. The light from an open window fell across her path, and +suddenly all that mass of arranged hair appeared incandescent, chiselled +and fluid, with the daring suggestion of a helmet of burnished copper and +the flowing lines of molten metal. It kindled in him an astonished +admiration. But he said nothing of it to his friend the Editor. Neither +did he tell him that her approach woke up in his brain the image of +love’s infinite grace and the sense of the inexhaustible joy that lives +in beauty. No! What he imparted to the Editor were no emotions, but +mere facts conveyed in a deliberate voice and in uninspired words. + +“That young lady came and sat down by me. She said: ‘Are you French, Mr. +Renouard?’” + +He had breathed a whiff of perfume of which he said nothing either—of +some perfume he did not know. Her voice was low and distinct. Her +shoulders and her bare arms gleamed with an extraordinary splendour, and +when she advanced her head into the light he saw the admirable contour of +the face, the straight fine nose with delicate nostrils, the exquisite +crimson brushstroke of the lips on this oval without colour. The +expression of the eyes was lost in a shadowy mysterious play of jet and +silver, stirring under the red coppery gold of the hair as though she had +been a being made of ivory and precious metals changed into living +tissue. + +“. . . I told her my people were living in Canada, but that I was brought +up in England before coming out here. I can’t imagine what interest she +could have in my history.” + +“And you complain of her interest?” + +The accent of the all-knowing journalist seemed to jar on the Planter of +Malata. + +“No!” he said, in a deadened voice that was almost sullen. But after a +short silence he went on. “Very extraordinary. I told her I came out to +wander at large in the world when I was nineteen, almost directly after I +left school. It seems that her late brother was in the same school a +couple of years before me. She wanted me to tell her what I did at first +when I came out here; what other men found to do when they came out—where +they went, what was likely to happen to them—as if I could guess and +foretell from my experience the fates of men who come out here with a +hundred different projects, for hundreds of different reasons—for no +reason but restlessness—who come, and go, and disappear! Preposterous. +She seemed to want to hear their histories. I told her that most of them +were not worth telling.” + +The distinguished journalist leaning on his elbow, his head resting +against the knuckles of his left hand, listened with great attention, but +gave no sign of that surprise which Renouard, pausing, seemed to expect. + +“You know something,” the latter said brusquely. The all-knowing man +moved his head slightly and said, “Yes. But go on.” + +“It’s just this. There is no more to it. I found myself talking to her +of my adventures, of my early days. It couldn’t possibly have interested +her. Really,” he cried, “this is most extraordinary. Those people have +something on their minds. We sat in the light of the window, and her +father prowled about the terrace, with his hands behind his back and his +head drooping. The white-haired lady came to the dining-room window +twice—to look at us I am certain. The other guests began to go away—and +still we sat there. Apparently these people are staying with the +Dunsters. It was old Mrs. Dunster who put an end to the thing. The +father and the aunt circled about as if they were afraid of interfering +with the girl. Then she got up all at once, gave me her hand, and said +she hoped she would see me again.” + +While he was speaking Renouard saw again the sway of her figure in a +movement of grace and strength—felt the pressure of her hand—heard the +last accents of the deep murmur that came from her throat so white in the +light of the window, and remembered the black rays of her steady eyes +passing off his face when she turned away. He remembered all this +visually, and it was not exactly pleasurable. It was rather startling +like the discovery of a new faculty in himself. There are faculties one +would rather do without—such, for instance, as seeing through a stone +wall or remembering a person with this uncanny vividness. And what about +those two people belonging to her with their air of expectant solicitude! +Really, those figures from home got in front of one. In fact, their +persistence in getting between him and the solid forms of the everyday +material world had driven Renouard to call on his friend at the office. +He hoped that a little common, gossipy information would lay the ghost of +that unexpected dinner-party. Of course the proper person to go to would +have been young Dunster, but, he couldn’t stand Willie Dunster—not at any +price. + +In the pause the Editor had changed his attitude, faced his desk, and +smiled a faint knowing smile. + +“Striking girl—eh?” he said. + +The incongruity of the word was enough to make one jump out of the chair. +Striking! That girl striking! Stri . . .! But Renouard restrained his +feelings. His friend was not a person to give oneself away to. And, +after all, this sort of speech was what he had come there to hear. As, +however, he had made a movement he re-settled himself comfortably and +said, with very creditable indifference, that yes—she was, rather. +Especially amongst a lot of over-dressed frumps. There wasn’t one woman +under forty there. + +“Is that the way to speak of the cream of our society; the ‘top of the +basket,’ as the French say,” the Editor remonstrated with mock +indignation. “You aren’t moderate in your expressions—you know.” + +“I express myself very little,” interjected Renouard seriously. + +“I will tell you what you are. You are a fellow that doesn’t count the +cost. Of course you are safe with me, but will you never learn. . . .” + +“What struck me most,” interrupted the other, “is that she should pick me +out for such a long conversation.” + +“That’s perhaps because you were the most remarkable of the men there.” + +Renouard shook his head. + +“This shot doesn’t seem to me to hit the mark,” he said calmly. “Try +again.” + +“Don’t you believe me? Oh, you modest creature. Well, let me assure you +that under ordinary circumstances it would have been a good shot. You +are sufficiently remarkable. But you seem a pretty acute customer too. +The circumstances are extraordinary. By Jove they are!” + +He mused. After a time the Planter of Malata dropped a negligent— + +“And you know them.” + +“And I know them,” assented the all-knowing Editor, soberly, as though +the occasion were too special for a display of professional vanity; a +vanity so well known to Renouard that its absence augmented his wonder +and almost made him uneasy as if portending bad news of some sort. + +“You have met those people?” he asked. + +“No. I was to have met them last night, but I had to send an apology to +Willie in the morning. It was then that he had the bright idea to invite +you to fill the place, from a muddled notion that you could be of use. +Willie is stupid sometimes. For it is clear that you are the last man +able to help.” + +“How on earth do I come to be mixed up in this—whatever it is?” +Renouard’s voice was slightly altered by nervous irritation. “I only +arrived here yesterday morning.” + + + +CHAPTER II + + +His friend the Editor turned to him squarely. “Willie took me into +consultation, and since he seems to have let you in I may just as well +tell you what is up. I shall try to be as short as I can. But in +confidence—mind!” + +He waited. Renouard, his uneasiness growing on him unreasonably, +assented by a nod, and the other lost no time in beginning. Professor +Moorsom—physicist and philosopher—fine head of white hair, to judge from +the photographs—plenty of brains in the head too—all these famous +books—surely even Renouard would know. . . . + +Renouard muttered moodily that it wasn’t his sort of reading, and his +friend hastened to assure him earnestly that neither was it his +sort—except as a matter of business and duty, for the literary page of +that newspaper which was his property (and the pride of his life). The +only literary newspaper in the Antipodes could not ignore the fashionable +philosopher of the age. Not that anybody read Moorsom at the Antipodes, +but everybody had heard of him—women, children, dock labourers, cabmen. +The only person (besides himself) who had read Moorsom, as far as he +knew, was old Dunster, who used to call himself a Moorsomian (or was it +Moorsomite) years and years ago, long before Moorsom had worked himself +up into the great swell he was now, in every way. . . Socially too. +Quite the fashion in the highest world. + +Renouard listened with profoundly concealed attention. “A charlatan,” he +muttered languidly. + +“Well—no. I should say not. I shouldn’t wonder though if most of his +writing had been done with his tongue in his cheek. Of course. That’s +to be expected. I tell you what: the only really honest writing is to be +found in newspapers and nowhere else—and don’t you forget it.” + +The Editor paused with a basilisk stare till Renouard had conceded a +casual: “I dare say,” and only then went on to explain that old Dunster, +during his European tour, had been made rather a lion of in London, where +he stayed with the Moorsoms—he meant the father and the girl. The +professor had been a widower for a long time. + +“She doesn’t look just a girl,” muttered Renouard. The other agreed. +Very likely not. Had been playing the London hostess to tip-top people +ever since she put her hair up, probably. + +“I don’t expect to see any girlish bloom on her when I do have the +privilege,” he continued. “Those people are staying with the Dunster’s +_incog._, in a manner, you understand—something like royalties. They +don’t deceive anybody, but they want to be left to themselves. We have +even kept them out of the paper—to oblige old Dunster. But we shall put +your arrival in—our local celebrity.” + +“Heavens!” + +“Yes. Mr. G. Renouard, the explorer, whose indomitable energy, etc., and +who is now working for the prosperity of our country in another way on +his Malata plantation . . . And, by the by, how’s the silk +plant—flourishing?” + +“Yes.” + +“Did you bring any fibre?” + +“Schooner-full.” + +“I see. To be transhipped to Liverpool for experimental manufacture, eh? +Eminent capitalists at home very much interested, aren’t they?” + +“They are.” + +A silence fell. Then the Editor uttered slowly—“You will be a rich man +some day.” + +Renouard’s face did not betray his opinion of that confident prophecy. +He didn’t say anything till his friend suggested in the same meditative +voice— + +“You ought to interest Moorsom in the affair too—since Willie has let you +in.” + +“A philosopher!” + +“I suppose he isn’t above making a bit of money. And he may be clever at +it for all you know. I have a notion that he’s a fairly practical old +cove. . . . Anyhow,” and here the tone of the speaker took on a tinge of +respect, “he has made philosophy pay.” + +Renouard raised his eyes, repressed an impulse to jump up, and got out of +the arm-chair slowly. “It isn’t perhaps a bad idea,” he said. “I’ll +have to call there in any case.” + +He wondered whether he had managed to keep his voice steady, its tone +unconcerned enough; for his emotion was strong though it had nothing to +do with the business aspect of this suggestion. He moved in the room in +vague preparation for departure, when he heard a soft laugh. He spun +about quickly with a frown, but the Editor was not laughing at him. He +was chuckling across the big desk at the wall: a preliminary of some +speech for which Renouard, recalled to himself, waited silent and +mistrustful. + +“No! You would never guess! No one would ever guess what these people +are after. Willie’s eyes bulged out when he came to me with the tale.” + +“They always do,” remarked Renouard with disgust. “He’s stupid.” + +“He was startled. And so was I after he told me. It’s a search party. +They are out looking for a man. Willie’s soft heart’s enlisted in the +cause.” + +Renouard repeated: “Looking for a man.” + +He sat down suddenly as if on purpose to stare. “Did Willie come to you +to borrow the lantern,” he asked sarcastically, and got up again for no +apparent reason. + +“What lantern?” snapped the puzzled Editor, and his face darkened with +suspicion. “You, Renouard, are always alluding to things that aren’t +clear to me. If you were in politics, I, as a party journalist, wouldn’t +trust you further than I could see you. Not an inch further. You are +such a sophisticated beggar. Listen: the man is the man Miss Moorsom was +engaged to for a year. He couldn’t have been a nobody, anyhow. But he +doesn’t seem to have been very wise. Hard luck for the young lady.” + +He spoke with feeling. It was clear that what he had to tell appealed to +his sentiment. Yet, as an experienced man of the world, he marked his +amused wonder. Young man of good family and connections, going +everywhere, yet not merely a man about town, but with a foot in the two +big F’s. + +Renouard lounging aimlessly in the room turned round: “And what the +devil’s that?” he asked faintly. + +“Why Fashion and Finance,” explained the Editor. “That’s how I call it. +There are the three R’s at the bottom of the social edifice and the two +F’s on the top. See?” + +“Ha! Ha! Excellent! Ha! Ha!” Renouard laughed with stony eyes. + +“And you proceed from one set to the other in this democratic age,” the +Editor went on with unperturbed complacency. “That is if you are clever +enough. The only danger is in being too clever. And I think something +of the sort happened here. That swell I am speaking of got himself into +a mess. Apparently a very ugly mess of a financial character. You will +understand that Willie did not go into details with me. They were not +imparted to him with very great abundance either. But a bad +mess—something of the criminal order. Of course he was innocent. But he +had to quit all the same.” + +“Ha! Ha!” Renouard laughed again abruptly, staring as before. “So +there’s one more big F in the tale.” + +“What do you mean?” inquired the Editor quickly, with an air as if his +patent were being infringed. + +“I mean—Fool.” + +“No. I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say that.” + +“Well—let him be a scoundrel then. What the devil do I care.” + +“But hold on! You haven’t heard the end of the story.” + +Renouard, his hat on his head already, sat down with the disdainful smile +of a man who had discounted the moral of the story. Still he sat down +and the Editor swung his revolving chair right round. He was full of +unction. + +“Imprudent, I should say. In many ways money is as dangerous to handle +as gunpowder. You can’t be too careful either as to who you are working +with. Anyhow there was a mighty flashy burst up, a sensation, and—his +familiar haunts knew him no more. But before he vanished he went to see +Miss Moorsom. That very fact argues for his innocence—don’t it? What +was said between them no man knows—unless the professor had the +confidence from his daughter. There couldn’t have been much to say. +There was nothing for it but to let him go—was there?—for the affair had +got into the papers. And perhaps the kindest thing would have been to +forget him. Anyway the easiest. Forgiveness would have been more +difficult, I fancy, for a young lady of spirit and position drawn into an +ugly affair like that. Any ordinary young lady, I mean. Well, the +fellow asked nothing better than to be forgotten, only he didn’t find it +easy to do so himself, because he would write home now and then. Not to +any of his friends though. He had no near relations. The professor had +been his guardian. No, the poor devil wrote now and then to an old +retired butler of his late father, somewhere in the country, forbidding +him at the same time to let any one know of his whereabouts. So that +worthy old ass would go up and dodge about the Moorsom’s town house, +perhaps waylay Miss Moorsom’s maid, and then would write to ‘Master +Arthur’ that the young lady looked well and happy, or some such cheerful +intelligence. I dare say he wanted to be forgotten, but I shouldn’t +think he was much cheered by the news. What would you say?” + +Renouard, his legs stretched out and his chin on his breast, said +nothing. A sensation which was not curiosity, but rather a vague nervous +anxiety, distinctly unpleasant, like a mysterious symptom of some malady, +prevented him from getting up and going away. + +“Mixed feelings,” the Editor opined. “Many fellows out here receive news +from home with mixed feelings. But what will his feelings be when he +hears what I am going to tell you now? For we know he has not heard yet. +Six months ago a city clerk, just a common drudge of finance, gets +himself convicted of a common embezzlement or something of that kind. +Then seeing he’s in for a long sentence he thinks of making his +conscience comfortable, and makes a clean breast of an old story of +tampered with, or else suppressed, documents, a story which clears +altogether the honesty of our ruined gentleman. That embezzling fellow +was in a position to know, having been employed by the firm before the +smash. There was no doubt about the character being cleared—but where +the cleared man was nobody could tell. Another sensation in society. +And then Miss Moorsom says: ‘He will come back to claim me, and I’ll +marry him.’ But he didn’t come back. Between you and me I don’t think +he was much wanted—except by Miss Moorsom. I imagine she’s used to have +her own way. She grew impatient, and declared that if she knew where the +man was she would go to him. But all that could be got out of the old +butler was that the last envelope bore the postmark of our beautiful +city; and that this was the only address of ‘Master Arthur’ that he ever +had. That and no more. In fact the fellow was at his last gasp—with a +bad heart. Miss Moorsom wasn’t allowed to see him. She had gone herself +into the country to learn what she could, but she had to stay downstairs +while the old chap’s wife went up to the invalid. She brought down the +scrap of intelligence I’ve told you of. He was already too far gone to +be cross-examined on it, and that very night he died. He didn’t leave +behind him much to go by, did he? Our Willie hinted to me that there had +been pretty stormy days in the professor’s house, but—here they are. I +have a notion she isn’t the kind of everyday young lady who may be +permitted to gallop about the world all by herself—eh? Well, I think it +rather fine of her, but I quite understand that the professor needed all +his philosophy under the circumstances. She is his only child now—and +brilliant—what? Willie positively spluttered trying to describe her to +me; and I could see directly you came in that you had an uncommon +experience.” + +Renouard, with an irritated gesture, tilted his hat more forward on his +eyes, as though he were bored. The Editor went on with the remark that +to be sure neither he (Renouard) nor yet Willie were much used to meet +girls of that remarkable superiority. Willie when learning business with +a firm in London, years before, had seen none but boarding-house society, +he guessed. As to himself in the good old days, when he trod the +glorious flags of Fleet Street, he neither had access to, nor yet would +have cared for the swells. Nothing interested him then but parliamentary +politics and the oratory of the House of Commons. + +He paid to this not very distant past the tribute of a tender, +reminiscent smile, and returned to his first idea that for a society girl +her action was rather fine. All the same the professor could not be very +pleased. The fellow if he was as pure as a lily now was just about as +devoid of the goods of the earth. And there were misfortunes, however +undeserved, which damaged a man’s standing permanently. On the other +hand, it was difficult to oppose cynically a noble impulse—not to speak +of the great love at the root of it. Ah! Love! And then the lady was +quite capable of going off by herself. She was of age, she had money of +her own, plenty of pluck too. Moorsom must have concluded that it was +more truly paternal, more prudent too, and generally safer all round to +let himself be dragged into this chase. The aunt came along for the same +reasons. It was given out at home as a trip round the world of the usual +kind. + +Renouard had risen and remained standing with his heart beating, and +strangely affected by this tale, robbed as it was of all glamour by the +prosaic personality of the narrator. The Editor added: “I’ve been asked +to help in the search—you know.” + +Renouard muttered something about an appointment and went out into the +street. His inborn sanity could not defend him from a misty creeping +jealousy. He thought that obviously no man of that sort could be worthy +of such a woman’s devoted fidelity. Renouard, however, had lived long +enough to reflect that a man’s activities, his views, and even his ideas +may be very inferior to his character; and moved by a delicate +consideration for that splendid girl he tried to think out for the man a +character of inward excellence and outward gifts—some extraordinary +seduction. But in vain. Fresh from months of solitude and from days at +sea, her splendour presented itself to him absolutely unconquerable in +its perfection, unless by her own folly. It was easier to suspect her of +this than to imagine in the man qualities which would be worthy of her. +Easier and less degrading. Because folly may be generous—could be +nothing else but generosity in her; whereas to imagine her subjugated by +something common was intolerable. + +Because of the force of the physical impression he had received from her +personality (and such impressions are the real origins of the deepest +movements of our soul) this conception of her was even inconceivable. +But no Prince Charming has ever lived out of a fairy tale. He doesn’t +walk the worlds of Fashion and Finance—and with a stumbling gait at that. +Generosity. Yes. It was her generosity. But this generosity was +altogether regal in its splendour, almost absurd in its lavishness—or, +perhaps, divine. + +In the evening, on board his schooner, sitting on the rail, his arms +folded on his breast and his eyes fixed on the deck, he let the darkness +catch him unawares in the midst of a meditation on the mechanism of +sentiment and the springs of passion. And all the time he had an abiding +consciousness of her bodily presence. The effect on his senses had been +so penetrating that in the middle of the night, rousing up suddenly, +wide-eyed in the darkness of his cabin, he did not create a faint mental +vision of her person for himself, but, more intimately affected, he +scented distinctly the faint perfume she used, and could almost have +sworn that he had been awakened by the soft rustle of her dress. He even +sat up listening in the dark for a time, then sighed and lay down again, +not agitated but, on the contrary, oppressed by the sensation of +something that had happened to him and could not be undone. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +In the afternoon he lounged into the editorial office, carrying with +affected nonchalance that weight of the irremediable he had felt laid on +him suddenly in the small hours of the night—that consciousness of +something that could no longer be helped. His patronising friend +informed him at once that he had made the acquaintance of the Moorsom +party last night. At the Dunsters, of course. Dinner. + +“Very quiet. Nobody there. It was much better for the business. I say +. . .” + +Renouard, his hand grasping the back of a chair, stared down at him +dumbly. + +“Phew! That’s a stunning girl. . . Why do you want to sit on that chair? +It’s uncomfortable!” + +“I wasn’t going to sit on it.” Renouard walked slowly to the window, +glad to find in himself enough self-control to let go the chair instead +of raising it on high and bringing it down on the Editor’s head. + +“Willie kept on gazing at her with tears in his boiled eyes. You should +have seen him bending sentimentally over her at dinner.” + +“Don’t,” said Renouard in such an anguished tone that the Editor turned +right round to look at his back. + +“You push your dislike of young Dunster too far. It’s positively +morbid,” he disapproved mildly. “We can’t be all beautiful after thirty. +. . . I talked a little, about you mostly, to the professor. He appeared +to be interested in the silk plant—if only as a change from the great +subject. Miss Moorsom didn’t seem to mind when I confessed to her that I +had taken you into the confidence of the thing. Our Willie approved too. +Old Dunster with his white beard seemed to give me his blessing. All +those people have a great opinion of you, simply because I told them that +you’ve led every sort of life one can think of before you got struck on +exploration. They want you to make suggestions. What do you think +‘Master Arthur’ is likely to have taken to?” + +“Something easy,” muttered Renouard without unclenching his teeth. + +“Hunting man. Athlete. Don’t be hard on the chap. He may be riding +boundaries, or droving cattle, or humping his swag about the back-blocks +away to the devil—somewhere. He may be even prospecting at the back of +beyond—this very moment.” + +“Or lying dead drunk in a roadside pub. It’s late enough in the day for +that.” + +The Editor looked up instinctively. The clock was pointing at a quarter +to five. “Yes, it is,” he admitted. “But it needn’t be. And he may +have lit out into the Western Pacific all of a sudden—say in a trading +schooner. Though I really don’t see in what capacity. Still . . . ” + +“Or he may be passing at this very moment under this very window.” + +“Not he . . . and I wish you would get away from it to where one can see +your face. I hate talking to a man’s back. You stand there like a +hermit on a sea-shore growling to yourself. I tell you what it is, +Geoffrey, you don’t like mankind.” + +“I don’t make my living by talking about mankind’s affairs,” Renouard +defended himself. But he came away obediently and sat down in the +arm-chair. “How can you be so certain that your man isn’t down there in +the street?” he asked. “It’s neither more nor less probable than every +single one of your other suppositions.” + +Placated by Renouard’s docility the Editor gazed at him for a while. +“Aha! I’ll tell you how. Learn then that we have begun the campaign. +We have telegraphed his description to the police of every township up +and down the land. And what’s more we’ve ascertained definitely that he +hasn’t been in this town for the last three months at least. How much +longer he’s been away we can’t tell.” + +“That’s very curious.” + +“It’s very simple. Miss Moorsom wrote to him, to the post office here +directly she returned to London after her excursion into the country to +see the old butler. Well—her letter is still lying there. It has not +been called for. Ergo, this town is not his usual abode. Personally, I +never thought it was. But he cannot fail to turn up some time or other. +Our main hope lies just in the certitude that he must come to town sooner +or later. Remember he doesn’t know that the butler is dead, and he will +want to inquire for a letter. Well, he’ll find a note from Miss +Moorsom.” + +Renouard, silent, thought that it was likely enough. His profound +distaste for this conversation was betrayed by an air of weariness +darkening his energetic sun-tanned features, and by the augmented +dreaminess of his eyes. The Editor noted it as a further proof of that +immoral detachment from mankind, of that callousness of sentiment +fostered by the unhealthy conditions of solitude—according to his own +favourite theory. Aloud he observed that as long as a man had not given +up correspondence he could not be looked upon as lost. Fugitive +criminals had been tracked in that way by justice, he reminded his +friend; then suddenly changed the bearing of the subject somewhat by +asking if Renouard had heard from his people lately, and if every member +of his large tribe was well and happy. + +“Yes, thanks.” + +The tone was curt, as if repelling a liberty. Renouard did not like +being asked about his people, for whom he had a profound and remorseful +affection. He had not seen a single human being to whom he was related, +for many years, and he was extremely different from them all. + +On the very morning of his arrival from his island he had gone to a set +of pigeon-holes in Willie Dunster’s outer office and had taken out from a +compartment labelled “Malata” a very small accumulation of envelopes, a +few addressed to himself, and one addressed to his assistant, all to the +care of the firm, W. Dunster and Co. As opportunity offered, the firm +used to send them on to Malata either by a man-of-war schooner going on a +cruise, or by some trading craft proceeding that way. But for the last +four months there had been no opportunity. + +“You going to stay here some time?” asked the Editor, after a longish +silence. + +Renouard, perfunctorily, did see no reason why he should make a long +stay. + +“For health, for your mental health, my boy,” rejoined the newspaper man. +“To get used to human faces so that they don’t hit you in the eye so hard +when you walk about the streets. To get friendly with your kind. I +suppose that assistant of yours can be trusted to look after things?” + +“There’s the half-caste too. The Portuguese. He knows what’s to be +done.” + +“Aha!” The Editor looked sharply at his friend. “What’s his name?” + +“Who’s name?” + +“The assistant’s you picked up on the sly behind my back.” + +Renouard made a slight movement of impatience. + +“I met him unexpectedly one evening. I thought he would do as well as +another. He had come from up country and didn’t seem happy in a town. +He told me his name was Walter. I did not ask him for proofs, you know.” + +“I don’t think you get on very well with him.” + +“Why? What makes you think so.” + +“I don’t know. Something reluctant in your manner when he’s in +question.” + +“Really. My manner! I don’t think he’s a great subject for +conversation, perhaps. Why not drop him?” + +“Of course! You wouldn’t confess to a mistake. Not you. Nevertheless I +have my suspicions about it.” + +Renouard got up to go, but hesitated, looking down at the seated Editor. + +“How funny,” he said at last with the utmost seriousness, and was making +for the door, when the voice of his friend stopped him. + +“You know what has been said of you? That you couldn’t get on with +anybody you couldn’t kick. Now, confess—is there any truth in the soft +impeachment?” + +“No,” said Renouard. “Did you print that in your paper.” + +“No. I didn’t quite believe it. But I will tell you what I believe. I +believe that when your heart is set on some object you are a man that +doesn’t count the cost to yourself or others. And this shall get printed +some day.” + +“Obituary notice?” Renouard dropped negligently. + +“Certain—some day.” + +“Do you then regard yourself as immortal?” + +“No, my boy. I am not immortal. But the voice of the press goes on for +ever. . . . And it will say that this was the secret of your great +success in a task where better men than you—meaning no offence—did fail +repeatedly.” + +“Success,” muttered Renouard, pulling-to the office door after him with +considerable energy. And the letters of the word PRIVATE like a row of +white eyes seemed to stare after his back sinking down the staircase of +that temple of publicity. + +Renouard had no doubt that all the means of publicity would be put at the +service of love and used for the discovery of the loved man. He did not +wish him dead. He did not wish him any harm. We are all equipped with a +fund of humanity which is not exhausted without many and repeated +provocations—and this man had done him no evil. But before Renouard had +left old Dunster’s house, at the conclusion of the call he made there +that very afternoon, he had discovered in himself the desire that the +search might last long. He never really flattered himself that it might +fail. It seemed to him that there was no other course in this world for +himself, for all mankind, but resignation. And he could not help +thinking that Professor Moorsom had arrived at the same conclusion too. + +Professor Moorsom, slight frame of middle height, a thoughtful keen head +under the thick wavy hair, veiled dark eyes under straight eyebrows, and +with an inward gaze which when disengaged and arriving at one seemed to +issue from an obscure dream of books, from the limbo of meditation, +showed himself extremely gracious to him. Renouard guessed in him a man +whom an incurable habit of investigation and analysis had made gentle and +indulgent; inapt for action, and more sensitive to the thoughts than to +the events of existence. Withal not crushed, sub-ironic without a trace +of acidity, and with a simple manner which put people at ease quickly. +They had a long conversation on the terrace commanding an extended view +of the town and the harbour. + +The splendid immobility of the bay resting under his gaze, with its grey +spurs and shining indentations, helped Renouard to regain his +self-possession, which he had felt shaken, in coming out on the terrace, +into the setting of the most powerful emotion of his life, when he had +sat within a foot of Miss Moorsom with fire in his breast, a humming in +his ears, and in a complete disorder of his mind. There was the very +garden seat on which he had been enveloped in the radiant spell. And +presently he was sitting on it again with the professor talking of her. +Near by the patriarchal Dunster leaned forward in a wicker arm-chair, +benign and a little deaf, his big hand to his ear with the innocent +eagerness of his advanced age remembering the fires of life. + +It was with a sort of apprehension that Renouard looked forward to seeing +Miss Moorsom. And strangely enough it resembled the state of mind of a +man who fears disenchantment more than sortilege. But he need not have +been afraid. Directly he saw her in a distance at the other end of the +terrace he shuddered to the roots of his hair. With her approach the +power of speech left him for a time. Mrs. Dunster and her aunt were +accompanying her. All these people sat down; it was an intimate circle +into which Renouard felt himself cordially admitted; and the talk was of +the great search which occupied all their minds. Discretion was expected +by these people, but of reticence as to the object of the journey there +could be no question. Nothing but ways and means and arrangements could +be talked about. + +By fixing his eyes obstinately on the ground, which gave him an air of +reflective sadness, Renouard managed to recover his self-possession. He +used it to keep his voice in a low key and to measure his words on the +great subject. And he took care with a great inward effort to make them +reasonable without giving them a discouraging complexion. For he did not +want the quest to be given up, since it would mean her going away with +her two attendant grey-heads to the other side of the world. + +He was asked to come again, to come often and take part in the counsels +of all these people captivated by the sentimental enterprise of a +declared love. On taking Miss Moorsom’s hand he looked up, would have +liked to say something, but found himself voiceless, with his lips +suddenly sealed. She returned the pressure of his fingers, and he left +her with her eyes vaguely staring beyond him, an air of listening for an +expected sound, and the faintest possible smile on her lips. A smile not +for him, evidently, but the reflection of some deep and inscrutable +thought. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +He went on board his schooner. She lay white, and as if suspended, in +the crepuscular atmosphere of sunset mingling with the ashy gleam of the +vast anchorage. He tried to keep his thoughts as sober, as reasonable, +as measured as his words had been, lest they should get away from him and +cause some sort of moral disaster. What he was afraid of in the coming +night was sleeplessness and the endless strain of that wearisome task. +It had to be faced however. He lay on his back, sighing profoundly in +the dark, and suddenly beheld his very own self, carrying a small bizarre +lamp, reflected in a long mirror inside a room in an empty and +unfurnished palace. In this startling image of himself he recognised +somebody he had to follow—the frightened guide of his dream. He +traversed endless galleries, no end of lofty halls, innumerable doors. +He lost himself utterly—he found his way again. Room succeeded room. At +last the lamp went out, and he stumbled against some object which, when +he stooped for it, he found to be very cold and heavy to lift. The +sickly white light of dawn showed him the head of a statue. Its marble +hair was done in the bold lines of a helmet, on its lips the chisel had +left a faint smile, and it resembled Miss Moorsom. While he was staring +at it fixedly, the head began to grow light in his fingers, to diminish +and crumble to pieces, and at last turned into a handful of dust, which +was blown away by a puff of wind so chilly that he woke up with a +desperate shiver and leaped headlong out of his bed-place. The day had +really come. He sat down by the cabin table, and taking his head between +his hands, did not stir for a very long time. + +Very quiet, he set himself to review this dream. The lamp, of course, he +connected with the search for a man. But on closer examination he +perceived that the reflection of himself in the mirror was not really the +true Renouard, but somebody else whose face he could not remember. In +the deserted palace he recognised a sinister adaptation by his brain of +the long corridors with many doors, in the great building in which his +friend’s newspaper was lodged on the first floor. The marble head with +Miss Moorsom’s face! Well! What other face could he have dreamed of? +And her complexion was fairer than Parian marble, than the heads of +angels. The wind at the end was the morning breeze entering through the +open porthole and touching his face before the schooner could swing to +the chilly gust. + +Yes! And all this rational explanation of the fantastic made it only +more mysterious and weird. There was something daemonic in that dream. +It was one of those experiences which throw a man out of conformity with +the established order of his kind and make him a creature of obscure +suggestions. + +Henceforth, without ever trying to resist, he went every afternoon to the +house where she lived. He went there as passively as if in a dream. He +could never make out how he had attained the footing of intimacy in the +Dunster mansion above the bay—whether on the ground of personal merit or +as the pioneer of the vegetable silk industry. It must have been the +last, because he remembered distinctly, as distinctly as in a dream, +hearing old Dunster once telling him that his next public task would be a +careful survey of the Northern Districts to discover tracts suitable for +the cultivation of the silk plant. The old man wagged his beard at him +sagely. It was indeed as absurd as a dream. + +Willie of course would be there in the evening. But he was more of a +figure out of a nightmare, hovering about the circle of chairs in his +dress-clothes like a gigantic, repulsive, and sentimental bat. “Do away +with the beastly cocoons all over the world,” he buzzed in his blurred, +water-logged voice. He affected a great horror of insects of all kinds. +One evening he appeared with a red flower in his button-hole. Nothing +could have been more disgustingly fantastic. And he would also say to +Renouard: “You may yet change the history of our country. For economic +conditions do shape the history of nations. Eh? What?” And he would +turn to Miss Moorsom for approval, lowering protectingly his spatulous +nose and looking up with feeling from under his absurd eyebrows, which +grew thin, in the manner of canebrakes, out of his spongy skin. For this +large, bilious creature was an economist and a sentimentalist, facile to +tears, and a member of the Cobden Club. + +In order to see as little of him as possible Renouard began coming +earlier so as to get away before his arrival, without curtailing too much +the hours of secret contemplation for which he lived. He had given up +trying to deceive himself. His resignation was without bounds. He +accepted the immense misfortune of being in love with a woman who was in +search of another man only to throw herself into his arms. With such +desperate precision he defined in his thoughts the situation, the +consciousness of which traversed like a sharp arrow the sudden silences +of general conversation. The only thought before which he quailed was +the thought that this could not last; that it must come to an end. He +feared it instinctively as a sick man may fear death. For it seemed to +him that it must be the death of him followed by a lightless, bottomless +pit. But his resignation was not spared the torments of jealousy: the +cruel, insensate, poignant, and imbecile jealousy, when it seems that a +woman betrays us simply by this that she exists, that she breathes—and +when the deep movements of her nerves or her soul become a matter of +distracting suspicion, of killing doubt, of mortal anxiety. + +In the peculiar condition of their sojourn Miss Moorsom went out very +little. She accepted this seclusion at the Dunsters’ mansion as in a +hermitage, and lived there, watched over by a group of old people, with +the lofty endurance of a condescending and strong-headed goddess. It was +impossible to say if she suffered from anything in the world, and whether +this was the insensibility of a great passion concentrated on itself, or +a perfect restraint of manner, or the indifference of superiority so +complete as to be sufficient to itself. But it was visible to Renouard +that she took some pleasure in talking to him at times. Was it because +he was the only person near her age? Was this, then, the secret of his +admission to the circle? + +He admired her voice as well poised as her movements, as her attitudes. +He himself had always been a man of tranquil tones. But the power of +fascination had torn him out of his very nature so completely that to +preserve his habitual calmness from going to pieces had become a terrible +effort. + +He used to go from her on board the schooner exhausted, broken, shaken +up, as though he had been put to the most exquisite torture. When he saw +her approaching he always had a moment of hallucination. She was a misty +and fair creature, fitted for invisible music, for the shadows of love, +for the murmurs of waters. After a time (he could not be always staring +at the ground) he would summon up all his resolution and look at her. +There was a sparkle in the clear obscurity of her eyes; and when she +turned them on him they seemed to give a new meaning to life. He would +say to himself that another man would have found long before the happy +release of madness, his wits burnt to cinders in that radiance. But no +such luck for him. His wits had come unscathed through the furnaces of +hot suns, of blazing deserts, of flaming angers against the weaknesses of +men and the obstinate cruelties of hostile nature. + +Being sane he had to be constantly on his guard against falling into +adoring silences or breaking out into wild speeches. He had to keep +watch on his eyes, his limbs, on the muscles of his face. Their +conversations were such as they could be between these two people: she a +young lady fresh from the thick twilight of four million people and the +artificiality of several London seasons; he the man of definite +conquering tasks, the familiar of wide horizons, and in his very repose +holding aloof from these agglomerations of units in which one loses one’s +importance even to oneself. They had no common conversational small +change. They had to use the great pieces of general ideas, but they +exchanged them trivially. It was no serious commerce. Perhaps she had +not much of that coin. Nothing significant came from her. It could not +be said that she had received from the contacts of the external world +impressions of a personal kind, different from other women. What was +ravishing in her was her quietness and, in her grave attitudes, the +unfailing brilliance of her femininity. He did not know what there was +under that ivory forehead so splendidly shaped, so gloriously crowned. +He could not tell what were her thoughts, her feelings. Her replies were +reflective, always preceded by a short silence, while he hung on her lips +anxiously. He felt himself in the presence of a mysterious being in whom +spoke an unknown voice, like the voice of oracles, bringing everlasting +unrest to the heart. + +He was thankful enough to sit in silence with secretly clenched teeth, +devoured by jealousy—and nobody could have guessed that his quiet +deferential bearing to all these grey-heads was the supreme effort of +stoicism, that the man was engaged in keeping a sinister watch on his +tortures lest his strength should fail him. As before, when grappling +with other forces of nature, he could find in himself all sorts of +courage except the courage to run away. + +It was perhaps from the lack of subjects they could have in common that +Miss Moorsom made him so often speak of his own life. He did not shrink +from talking about himself, for he was free from that exacerbated, timid +vanity which seals so many vain-glorious lips. He talked to her in his +restrained voice, gazing at the tip of her shoe, and thinking that the +time was bound to come soon when her very inattention would get weary of +him. And indeed on stealing a glance he would see her dazzling and +perfect, her eyes vague, staring in mournful immobility, with a drooping +head that made him think of a tragic Venus arising before him, not from +the foam of the sea, but from a distant, still more formless, mysterious, +and potent immensity of mankind. + + + +CHAPTER V + + +One afternoon Renouard stepping out on the terrace found nobody there. +It was for him, at the same time, a melancholy disappointment and a +poignant relief. + +The heat was great, the air was still, all the long windows of the house +stood wide open. At the further end, grouped round a lady’s work-table, +several chairs disposed sociably suggested invisible occupants, a company +of conversing shades. Renouard looked towards them with a sort of dread. +A most elusive, faint sound of ghostly talk issuing from one of the rooms +added to the illusion and stopped his already hesitating footsteps. He +leaned over the balustrade of stone near a squat vase holding a tropical +plant of a bizarre shape. Professor Moorsom coming up from the garden +with a book under his arm and a white parasol held over his bare head, +found him there and, closing the parasol, leaned over by his side with a +remark on the increasing heat of the season. Renouard assented and +changed his position a little; the other, after a short silence, +administered unexpectedly a question which, like the blow of a club on +the head, deprived Renouard of the power of speech and even thought, but, +more cruel, left him quivering with apprehension, not of death but of +everlasting torment. Yet the words were extremely simple. + +“Something will have to be done soon. We can’t remain in a state of +suspended expectation for ever. Tell me what do you think of our +chances?” + +Renouard, speechless, produced a faint smile. The professor confessed in +a jocular tone his impatience to complete the circuit of the globe and be +done with it. It was impossible to remain quartered on the dear +excellent Dunsters for an indefinite time. And then there were the +lectures he had arranged to deliver in Paris. A serious matter. + +That lectures by Professor Moorsom were a European event and that +brilliant audiences would gather to hear them Renouard did not know. All +he was aware of was the shock of this hint of departure. The menace of +separation fell on his head like a thunderbolt. And he saw the absurdity +of his emotion, for hadn’t he lived all these days under the very cloud? +The professor, his elbows spread out, looked down into the garden and +went on unburdening his mind. Yes. The department of sentiment was +directed by his daughter, and she had plenty of volunteered moral +support; but he had to look after the practical side of life without +assistance. + +“I have the less hesitation in speaking to you about my anxiety, because +I feel you are friendly to us and at the same time you are detached from +all these sublimities—confound them.” + +“What do you mean?” murmured Renouard. + +“I mean that you are capable of calm judgment. Here the atmosphere is +simply detestable. Everybody has knuckled under to sentiment. Perhaps +your deliberate opinion could influence . . .” + +“You want Miss Moorsom to give it up?” The professor turned to the young +man dismally. + +“Heaven only knows what I want.” + +Renouard leaning his back against the balustrade folded his arms on his +breast, appeared to meditate profoundly. His face, shaded softly by the +broad brim of a planter’s Panama hat, with the straight line of the nose +level with the forehead, the eyes lost in the depth of the setting, and +the chin well forward, had such a profile as may be seen amongst the +bronzes of classical museums, pure under a crested helmet—recalled +vaguely a Minerva’s head. + +“This is the most troublesome time I ever had in my life,” exclaimed the +professor testily. + +“Surely the man must be worth it,” muttered Renouard with a pang of +jealousy traversing his breast like a self-inflicted stab. + +Whether enervated by the heat or giving way to pent up irritation the +professor surrendered himself to the mood of sincerity. + +“He began by being a pleasantly dull boy. He developed into a +pointlessly clever young man, without, I suspect, ever trying to +understand anything. My daughter knew him from childhood. I am a busy +man, and I confess that their engagement was a complete surprise to me. +I wish their reasons for that step had been more naïve. But simplicity +was out of fashion in their set. From a worldly point of view he seems +to have been a mere baby. Of course, now, I am assured that he is the +victim of his noble confidence in the rectitude of his kind. But that’s +mere idealising of a sad reality. For my part I will tell you that from +the very beginning I had the gravest doubts of his dishonesty. +Unfortunately my clever daughter hadn’t. And now we behold the reaction. +No. To be earnestly dishonest one must be really poor. This was only a +manifestation of his extremely refined cleverness. The complicated +simpleton. He had an awful awakening though.” + +In such words did Professor Moorsom give his “young friend” to understand +the state of his feelings toward the lost man. It was evident that the +father of Miss Moorsom wished him to remain lost. Perhaps the +unprecedented heat of the season made him long for the cool spaces of the +Pacific, the sweep of the ocean’s free wind along the promenade decks, +cumbered with long chairs, of a ship steaming towards the Californian +coast. To Renouard the philosopher appeared simply the most treacherous +of fathers. He was amazed. But he was not at the end of his +discoveries. + +“He may be dead,” the professor murmured. + +“Why? People don’t die here sooner than in Europe. If he had gone to +hide in Italy, for instance, you wouldn’t think of saying that.” + +“Well! And suppose he has become morally disintegrated. You know he was +not a strong personality,” the professor suggested moodily. “My +daughter’s future is in question here.” + +Renouard thought that the love of such a woman was enough to pull any +broken man together—to drag a man out of his grave. And he thought this +with inward despair, which kept him silent as much almost as his +astonishment. At last he managed to stammer out a generous— + +“Oh! Don’t let us even suppose. . .” + +The professor struck in with a sadder accent than before— + +“It’s good to be young. And then you have been a man of action, and +necessarily a believer in success. But I have been looking too long at +life not to distrust its surprises. Age! Age! Here I stand before you +a man full of doubts and hesitation—_spe lentus_, _timidus futuri_.” + +He made a sign to Renouard not to interrupt, and in a lowered voice, as +if afraid of being overheard, even there, in the solitude of the terrace— + +“And the worst is that I am not even sure how far this sentimental +pilgrimage is genuine. Yes. I doubt my own child. It’s true that she’s +a woman. . . . ” + +Renouard detected with horror a tone of resentment, as if the professor +had never forgiven his daughter for not dying instead of his son. The +latter noticed the young man’s stony stare. + +“Ah! you don’t understand. Yes, she’s clever, open-minded, popular, +and—well, charming. But you don’t know what it is to have moved, +breathed, existed, and even triumphed in the mere smother and froth of +life—the brilliant froth. There thoughts, sentiments, opinions, +feelings, actions too, are nothing but agitation in empty space—to amuse +life—a sort of superior debauchery, exciting and fatiguing, meaning +nothing, leading nowhere. She is the creature of that circle. And I ask +myself if she is obeying the uneasiness of an instinct seeking its +satisfaction, or is it a revulsion of feeling, or is she merely deceiving +her own heart by this dangerous trifling with romantic images. And +everything is possible—except sincerity, such as only stark, struggling +humanity can know. No woman can stand that mode of life in which women +rule, and remain a perfectly genuine, simple human being. Ah! There’s +some people coming out.” + +He moved off a pace, then turning his head: “Upon my word! I would be +infinitely obliged to you if you could throw a little cold water. . . ” +and at a vaguely dismayed gesture of Renouard, he added: “Don’t be +afraid. You wouldn’t be putting out a sacred fire.” + +Renouard could hardly find words for a protest: “I assure you that I +never talk with Miss Moorsom—on—on—that. And if you, her father . . . ” + +“I envy you your innocence,” sighed the professor. “A father is only an +everyday person. Flat. Stale. Moreover, my child would naturally +mistrust me. We belong to the same set. Whereas you carry with you the +prestige of the unknown. You have proved yourself to be a force.” + +Thereupon the professor followed by Renouard joined the circle of all the +inmates of the house assembled at the other end of the terrace about a +tea-table; three white heads and that resplendent vision of woman’s +glory, the sight of which had the power to flutter his heart like a +reminder of the mortality of his frame. + +He avoided the seat by the side of Miss Moorsom. The others were talking +together languidly. Unnoticed he looked at that woman so marvellous that +centuries seemed to lie between them. He was oppressed and overcome at +the thought of what she could give to some man who really would be a +force! What a glorious struggle with this amazon. What noble burden for +the victorious strength. + +Dear old Mrs. Dunster was dispensing tea, looking from time to time with +interest towards Miss Moorsom. The aged statesman having eaten a raw +tomato and drunk a glass of milk (a habit of his early farming days, long +before politics, when, pioneer of wheat-growing, he demonstrated the +possibility of raising crops on ground looking barren enough to +discourage a magician), smoothed his white beard, and struck lightly +Renouard’s knee with his big wrinkled hand. + +“You had better come back to-night and dine with us quietly.” + +He liked this young man, a pioneer, too, in more than one direction. +Mrs. Dunster added: “Do. It will be very quiet. I don’t even know if +Willie will be home for dinner.” Renouard murmured his thanks, and left +the terrace to go on board the schooner. While lingering in the +drawing-room doorway he heard the resonant voice of old Dunster uttering +oracularly— + +“. . . the leading man here some day. . . . Like me.” + +Renouard let the thin summer portière of the doorway fall behind him. +The voice of Professor Moorsom said— + +“I am told that he has made an enemy of almost every man who had to work +with him.” + +“That’s nothing. He did his work. . . . Like me.” + +“He never counted the cost they say. Not even of lives.” + +Renouard understood that they were talking of him. Before he could move +away, Mrs. Dunster struck in placidly— + +“Don’t let yourself be shocked by the tales you may hear of him, my dear. +Most of it is envy.” + +Then he heard Miss Moorsom’s voice replying to the old lady— + +“Oh! I am not easily deceived. I think I may say I have an instinct for +truth.” + +He hastened away from that house with his heart full of dread. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +On board the schooner, lying on the settee on his back with the knuckles +of his hands pressed over his eyes, he made up his mind that he would not +return to that house for dinner—that he would never go back there any +more. He made up his mind some twenty times. The knowledge that he had +only to go up on the quarter deck, utter quietly the words: “Man the +windlass,” and that the schooner springing into life would run a hundred +miles out to sea before sunrise, deceived his struggling will. Nothing +easier! Yet, in the end, this young man, almost ill-famed for his +ruthless daring, the inflexible leader of two tragically successful +expeditions, shrank from that act of savage energy, and began, instead, +to hunt for excuses. + +No! It was not for him to run away like an incurable who cuts his +throat. He finished dressing and looked at his own impassive face in the +saloon mirror scornfully. While being pulled on shore in the gig, he +remembered suddenly the wild beauty of a waterfall seen when hardly more +than a boy, years ago, in Menado. There was a legend of a +governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, on official tour, committing +suicide on that spot by leaping into the chasm. It was supposed that a +painful disease had made him weary of life. But was there ever a +visitation like his own, at the same time binding one to life and so +cruelly mortal! + +The dinner was indeed quiet. Willie, given half an hour’s grace, failed +to turn up, and his chair remained vacant by the side of Miss Moorsom. +Renouard had the professor’s sister on his left, dressed in an expensive +gown becoming her age. That maiden lady in her wonderful preservation +reminded Renouard somehow of a wax flower under glass. There were no +traces of the dust of life’s battles on her anywhere. She did not like +him very much in the afternoons, in his white drill suit and planter’s +hat, which seemed to her an unduly Bohemian costume for calling in a +house where there were ladies. But in the evening, lithe and elegant in +his dress clothes and with his pleasant, slightly veiled voice, he always +made her conquest afresh. He might have been anybody distinguished—the +son of a duke. Falling under that charm probably (and also because her +brother had given her a hint), she attempted to open her heart to +Renouard, who was watching with all the power of his soul her niece +across the table. She spoke to him as frankly as though that miserable +mortal envelope, emptied of everything but hopeless passion, were indeed +the son of a duke. + +Inattentive, he heard her only in snatches, till the final confidential +burst: “. . . glad if you would express an opinion. Look at her, so +charming, such a great favourite, so generally admired! It would be too +sad. We all hoped she would make a brilliant marriage with somebody very +rich and of high position, have a house in London and in the country, and +entertain us all splendidly. She’s so eminently fitted for it. She has +such hosts of distinguished friends! And then—this instead! . . . My +heart really aches.” + +Her well-bred if anxious whisper was covered by the voice of professor +Moorsom discoursing subtly down the short length of the dinner table on +the Impermanency of the Measurable to his venerable disciple. It might +have been a chapter in a new and popular book of Moorsomian philosophy. +Patriarchal and delighted, old Dunster leaned forward a little, his eyes +shining youthfully, two spots of colour at the roots of his white beard; +and Renouard, glancing at the senile excitement, recalled the words heard +on those subtle lips, adopted their scorn for his own, saw their truth +before this man ready to be amused by the side of the grave. Yes! +Intellectual debauchery in the froth of existence! Froth and fraud! + +On the same side of the table Miss Moorsom never once looked towards her +father, all her grace as if frozen, her red lips compressed, the faintest +rosiness under her dazzling complexion, her black eyes burning +motionless, and the very coppery gleams of light lying still on the waves +and undulation of her hair. Renouard fancied himself overturning the +table, smashing crystal and china, treading fruit and flowers under foot, +seizing her in his arms, carrying her off in a tumult of shrieks from all +these people, a silent frightened mortal, into some profound retreat as +in the age of Cavern men. Suddenly everybody got up, and he hastened to +rise too, finding himself out of breath and quite unsteady on his feet. + +On the terrace the philosopher, after lighting a cigar, slipped his hand +condescendingly under his “dear young friend’s” arm. Renouard regarded +him now with the profoundest mistrust. But the great man seemed really +to have a liking for his young friend—one of those mysterious sympathies, +disregarding the differences of age and position, which in this case +might have been explained by the failure of philosophy to meet a very +real worry of a practical kind. + +After a turn or two and some casual talk the professor said suddenly: “My +late son was in your school—do you know? I can imagine that had he lived +and you had ever met you would have understood each other. He too was +inclined to action.” + +He sighed, then, shaking off the mournful thought and with a nod at the +dusky part of the terrace where the dress of his daughter made a luminous +stain: “I really wish you would drop in that quarter a few sensible, +discouraging words.” + +Renouard disengaged himself from that most perfidious of men under the +pretence of astonishment, and stepping back a pace— + +“Surely you are making fun of me, Professor Moorsom,” he said with a low +laugh, which was really a sound of rage. + +“My dear young friend! It’s no subject for jokes, to me. . . You don’t +seem to have any notion of your prestige,” he added, walking away towards +the chairs. + +“Humbug!” thought Renouard, standing still and looking after him. “And +yet! And yet! What if it were true?” + +He advanced then towards Miss Moorsom. Posed on the seat on which they +had first spoken to each other, it was her turn to watch him coming on. +But many of the windows were not lighted that evening. It was dark over +there. She appeared to him luminous in her clear dress, a figure without +shape, a face without features, awaiting his approach, till he got quite +near to her, sat down, and they had exchanged a few insignificant words. +Gradually she came out like a magic painting of charm, fascination, and +desire, glowing mysteriously on the dark background. Something +imperceptible in the lines of her attitude, in the modulations of her +voice, seemed to soften that suggestion of calm unconscious pride which +enveloped her always like a mantle. He, sensitive like a bond slave to +the moods of the master, was moved by the subtle relenting of her grace +to an infinite tenderness. He fought down the impulse to seize her by +the hand, lead her down into the garden away under the big trees, and +throw himself at her feet uttering words of love. His emotion was so +strong that he had to cough slightly, and not knowing what to talk to her +about he began to tell her of his mother and sisters. All the family +were coming to London to live there, for some little time at least. + +“I hope you will go and tell them something of me. Something seen,” he +said pressingly. + +By this miserable subterfuge, like a man about to part with his life, he +hoped to make her remember him a little longer. + +“Certainly,” she said. “I’ll be glad to call when I get back. But that +‘when’ may be a long time.” + +He heard a light sigh. A cruel jealous curiosity made him ask— + +“Are you growing weary, Miss Moorsom?” + +A silence fell on his low spoken question. + +“Do you mean heart-weary?” sounded Miss Moorsom’s voice. “You don’t know +me, I see.” + +“Ah! Never despair,” he muttered. + +“This, Mr. Renouard, is a work of reparation. I stand for truth here. I +can’t think of myself.” + +He could have taken her by the throat for every word seemed an insult to +his passion; but he only said— + +“I never doubted the—the—nobility of your purpose.” + +“And to hear the word weariness pronounced in this connection surprises +me. And from a man too who, I understand, has never counted the cost.” + +“You are pleased to tease me,” he said, directly he had recovered his +voice and had mastered his anger. It was as if Professor Moorsom had +dropped poison in his ear which was spreading now and tainting his +passion, his very jealousy. He mistrusted every word that came from +those lips on which his life hung. “How can you know anything of men who +do not count the cost?” he asked in his gentlest tones. + +“From hearsay—a little.” + +“Well, I assure you they are like the others, subject to suffering, +victims of spells. . . .” + +“One of them, at least, speaks very strangely.” + +She dismissed the subject after a short silence. “Mr. Renouard, I had a +disappointment this morning. This mail brought me a letter from the +widow of the old butler—you know. I expected to learn that she had heard +from—from here. But no. No letter arrived home since we left.” + +Her voice was calm. His jealousy couldn’t stand much more of this sort +of talk; but he was glad that nothing had turned up to help the search; +glad blindly, unreasonably—only because it would keep her longer in his +sight—since she wouldn’t give up. + +“I am too near her,” he thought, moving a little further on the seat. He +was afraid in the revulsion of feeling of flinging himself on her hands, +which were lying on her lap, and covering them with kisses. He was +afraid. Nothing, nothing could shake that spell—not if she were ever so +false, stupid, or degraded. She was fate itself. The extent of his +misfortune plunged him in such a stupor that he failed at first to hear +the sound of voices and footsteps inside the drawing-room. Willie had +come home—and the Editor was with him. + +They burst out on the terrace babbling noisily, and then pulling +themselves together stood still, surprising—and as if themselves +surprised. + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +They had been feasting a poet from the bush, the latest discovery of the +Editor. Such discoveries were the business, the vocation, the pride and +delight of the only apostle of letters in the hemisphere, the solitary +patron of culture, the Slave of the Lamp—as he subscribed himself at the +bottom of the weekly literary page of his paper. He had had no +difficulty in persuading the virtuous Willie (who had festive instincts) +to help in the good work, and now they had left the poet lying asleep on +the hearthrug of the editorial room and had rushed to the Dunster mansion +wildly. The Editor had another discovery to announce. Swaying a little +where he stood he opened his mouth very wide to shout the one word +“Found!” Behind him Willie flung both his hands above his head and let +them fall dramatically. Renouard saw the four white-headed people at the +end of the terrace rise all together from their chairs with an effect of +sudden panic. + +“I tell you—he—is—found,” the patron of letters shouted emphatically. + +“What is this!” exclaimed Renouard in a choked voice. Miss Moorsom +seized his wrist suddenly, and at that contact fire ran through all his +veins, a hot stillness descended upon him in which he heard the blood—or +the fire—beating in his ears. He made a movement as if to rise, but was +restrained by the convulsive pressure on his wrist. + +“No, no.” Miss Moorsom’s eyes stared black as night, searching the space +before her. Far away the Editor strutted forward, Willie following with +his ostentatious manner of carrying his bulky and oppressive carcass +which, however, did not remain exactly perpendicular for two seconds +together. + +“The innocent Arthur . . . Yes. We’ve got him,” the Editor became very +business-like. “Yes, this letter has done it.” + +He plunged into an inside pocket for it, slapped the scrap of paper with +his open palm. “From that old woman. William had it in his pocket since +this morning when Miss Moorsom gave it to him to show me. Forgot all +about it till an hour ago. Thought it was of no importance. Well, no! +Not till it was properly read.” + +Renouard and Miss Moorsom emerged from the shadows side by side, a +well-matched couple, animated yet statuesque in their calmness and in +their pallor. She had let go his wrist. On catching sight of Renouard +the Editor exclaimed: + +“What—you here!” in a quite shrill voice. + +There came a dead pause. All the faces had in them something dismayed +and cruel. + +“He’s the very man we want,” continued the Editor. “Excuse my +excitement. You are the very man, Renouard. Didn’t you tell me that +your assistant called himself Walter? Yes? Thought so. But here’s that +old woman—the butler’s wife—listen to this. She writes: All I can tell +you, Miss, is that my poor husband directed his letters to the name of H. +Walter.” + +Renouard’s violent but repressed exclamation was lost in a general murmur +and shuffle of feet. The Editor made a step forward, bowed with +creditable steadiness. + +“Miss Moorsom, allow me to congratulate you from the bottom of my heart +on the happy—er—issue. . . ” + +“Wait,” muttered Renouard irresolutely. + +The Editor jumped on him in the manner of their old friendship. “Ah, +you! You are a fine fellow too. With your solitary ways of life you +will end by having no more discrimination than a savage. Fancy living +with a gentleman for months and never guessing. A man, I am certain, +accomplished, remarkable, out of the common, since he had been +distinguished” (he bowed again) “by Miss Moorsom, whom we all admire.” + +She turned her back on him. + +“I hope to goodness you haven’t been leading him a dog’s life, Geoffrey,” +the Editor addressed his friend in a whispered aside. + +Renouard seized a chair violently, sat down, and propping his elbow on +his knee leaned his head on his hand. Behind him the sister of the +professor looked up to heaven and wrung her hands stealthily. Mrs. +Dunster’s hands were clasped forcibly under her chin, but she, dear soul, +was looking sorrowfully at Willie. The model nephew! In this strange +state! So very much flushed! The careful disposition of the thin hairs +across Willie’s bald spot was deplorably disarranged, and the spot itself +was red and, as it were, steaming. + +“What’s the matter, Geoffrey?” The Editor seemed disconcerted by the +silent attitudes round him, as though he had expected all these people to +shout and dance. “You have him on the island—haven’t you?” + +“Oh, yes: I have him there,” said Renouard, without looking up. + +“Well, then!” The Editor looked helplessly around as if begging for +response of some sort. But the only response that came was very +unexpected. Annoyed at being left in the background, and also because +very little drink made him nasty, the emotional Willie turned malignant +all at once, and in a bibulous tone surprising in a man able to keep his +balance so well— + +“Aha! But you haven’t got him here—not yet!” he sneered. “No! You +haven’t got him yet.” + +This outrageous exhibition was to the Editor like the lash to a jaded +horse. He positively jumped. + +“What of that? What do you mean? We—haven’t—got—him—here. Of course he +isn’t here! But Geoffrey’s schooner is here. She can be sent at once to +fetch him here. No! Stay! There’s a better plan. Why shouldn’t you +all sail over to Malata, professor? Save time! I am sure Miss Moorsom +would prefer. . .” + +With a gallant flourish of his arm he looked for Miss Moorsom. She had +disappeared. He was taken aback somewhat. + +“Ah! H’m. Yes. . . . Why not. A pleasure cruise, delightful ship, +delightful season, delightful errand, del . . . No! There are no +objections. Geoffrey, I understand, has indulged in a bungalow three +sizes too large for him. He can put you all up. It will be a pleasure +for him. It will be the greatest privilege. Any man would be proud of +being an agent of this happy reunion. I am proud of the little part I’ve +played. He will consider it the greatest honour. Geoff, my boy, you had +better be stirring to-morrow bright and early about the preparations for +the trip. It would be criminal to lose a single day.” + +He was as flushed as Willie, the excitement keeping up the effect of the +festive dinner. For a time Renouard, silent, as if he had not heard a +word of all that babble, did not stir. But when he got up it was to +advance towards the Editor and give him such a hearty slap on the back +that the plump little man reeled in his tracks and looked quite +frightened for a moment. + +“You are a heaven-born discoverer and a first-rate manager. . . He’s +right. It’s the only way. You can’t resist the claim of sentiment, and +you must even risk the voyage to Malata. . . ” Renouard’s voice sank. “A +lonely spot,” he added, and fell into thought under all these eyes +converging on him in the sudden silence. His slow glance passed over all +the faces in succession, remaining arrested on Professor Moorsom, stony +eyed, a smouldering cigar in his fingers, and with his sister standing by +his side. + +“I shall be infinitely gratified if you consent to come. But, of course, +you will. We shall sail to-morrow evening then. And now let me leave +you to your happiness.” + +He bowed, very grave, pointed suddenly his finger at Willie who was +swaying about with a sleepy frown. . . . “Look at him. He’s overcome +with happiness. You had better put him to bed . . . ” and disappeared +while every head on the terrace was turned to Willie with varied +expressions. + +Renouard ran through the house. Avoiding the carriage road he fled down +the steep short cut to the shore, where his gig was waiting. At his loud +shout the sleeping Kanakas jumped up. He leaped in. “Shove off. Give +way!” and the gig darted through the water. “Give way! Give way!” She +flew past the wool-clippers sleeping at their anchors each with the open +unwinking eye of the lamp in the rigging; she flew past the flagship of +the Pacific squadron, a great mass all dark and silent, heavy with the +slumbers of five hundred men, and where the invisible sentries heard his +urgent “Give way! Give way!” in the night. The Kanakas, panting, rose +off the thwarts at every stroke. Nothing could be fast enough for him! +And he ran up the side of his schooner shaking the ladder noisily with +his rush. + +On deck he stumbled and stood still. + +Wherefore this haste? To what end, since he knew well before he started +that he had a pursuer from whom there was no escape. + +As his foot touched the deck his will, his purpose he had been hurrying +to save, died out within. It had been nothing less than getting the +schooner under-way, letting her vanish silently in the night from amongst +these sleeping ships. And now he was certain he could not do it. It was +impossible! And he reflected that whether he lived or died such an act +would lay him under a dark suspicion from which he shrank. No, there was +nothing to be done. + +He went down into the cabin and, before even unbuttoning his overcoat, +took out of the drawer the letter addressed to his assistant; that letter +which he had found in the pigeon-hole labelled “Malata” in young +Dunster’s outer office, where it had been waiting for three months some +occasion for being forwarded. From the moment of dropping it in the +drawer he had utterly forgotten its existence—till now, when the man’s +name had come out so clamorously. He glanced at the common envelope, +noted the shaky and laborious handwriting: H. Walter, Esqre. Undoubtedly +the very last letter the old butler had posted before his illness, and in +answer clearly to one from “Master Arthur” instructing him to address in +the future: “Care of Messrs. W. Dunster and Co.” Renouard made as if to +open the envelope, but paused, and, instead, tore the letter deliberately +in two, in four, in eight. With his hand full of pieces of paper he +returned on deck and scattered them overboard on the dark water, in which +they vanished instantly. + +He did it slowly, without hesitation or remorse. H. Walter, Esqre, in +Malata. The innocent Arthur—What was his name? The man sought for by +that woman who as she went by seemed to draw all the passion of the earth +to her, without effort, not deigning to notice, naturally, as other women +breathed the air. But Renouard was no longer jealous of her very +existence. Whatever its meaning it was not for that man he had picked up +casually on obscure impulse, to get rid of the tiresome expostulations of +a so-called friend; a man of whom he really knew nothing—and now a dead +man. In Malata. Oh, yes! He was there secure enough, untroubled in his +grave. In Malata. To bury him was the last service Renouard had +rendered to his assistant before leaving the island on this trip to town. + +Like many men ready enough for arduous enterprises Renouard was inclined +to evade the small complications of existence. This trait of his +character was composed of a little indolence, some disdain, and a +shrinking from contests with certain forms of vulgarity—like a man who +would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid a toad. His intercourse +with the meddlesome journalist was that merely outward intimacy without +sympathy some young men get drawn into easily. It had amused him rather +to keep that “friend” in the dark about the fate of his assistant. +Renouard had never needed other company than his own, for there was in +him something of the sensitiveness of a dreamer who is easily jarred. He +had said to himself that the all-knowing one would only preach again +about the evils of solitude and worry his head off in favour of some +forlornly useless protégé of his. Also the inquisitiveness of the Editor +had irritated him and had closed his lips in sheer disgust. + +And now he contemplated the noose of consequences drawing tight around +him. + +It was the memory of that diplomatic reticence which on the terrace had +stiffled his first cry which would have told them all that the man sought +for was not to be met on earth any more. He shrank from the absurdity of +hearing the all-knowing one, and not very sober at that, turning on him +with righteous reproaches— + +“You never told me. You gave me to understand that your assistant was +alive, and now you say he’s dead. Which is it? Were you lying then or +are you lying now?” No! the thought of such a scene was not to be borne. +He had sat down appalled, thinking: “What shall I do now?” + +His courage had oozed out of him. Speaking the truth meant the Moorsoms +going away at once—while it seemed to him that he would give the last +shred of his rectitude to secure a day more of her company. He sat +on—silent. Slowly, from confused sensations, from his talk with the +professor, the manner of the girl herself, the intoxicating familiarity +of her sudden hand-clasp, there had come to him a half glimmer of hope. +The other man was dead. Then! . . . Madness, of course—but he could not +give it up. He had listened to that confounded busybody arranging +everything—while all these people stood around assenting, under the spell +of that dead romance. He had listened scornful and silent. The glimmers +of hope, of opportunity, passed before his eyes. He had only to sit +still and say nothing. That and no more. And what was truth to him in +the face of that great passion which had flung him prostrate in spirit at +her adored feet! + +And now it was done! Fatality had willed it! With the eyes of a mortal +struck by the maddening thunderbolt of the gods, Renouard looked up to +the sky, an immense black pall dusted over with gold, on which great +shudders seemed to pass from the breath of life affirming its sway. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +At last, one morning, in a clear spot of a glassy horizon charged with +heraldic masses of black vapours, the island grew out from the sea, +showing here and there its naked members of basaltic rock through the +rents of heavy foliage. Later, in the great spilling of all the riches +of sunset, Malata stood out green and rosy before turning into a violet +shadow in the autumnal light of the expiring day. Then came the night. +In the faint airs the schooner crept on past a sturdy squat headland, and +it was pitch dark when her headsails ran down, she turned short on her +heel, and her anchor bit into the sandy bottom on the edge of the outer +reef; for it was too dangerous then to attempt entering the little bay +full of shoals. After the last solemn flutter of the mainsail the +murmuring voices of the Moorsom party lingered, very frail, in the black +stillness. + +They were sitting aft, on chairs, and nobody made a move. Early in the +day, when it had become evident that the wind was failing, Renouard, +basing his advice on the shortcomings of his bachelor establishment, had +urged on the ladies the advisability of not going ashore in the middle of +the night. Now he approached them in a constrained manner (it was +astonishing the constraint that had reigned between him and his guests +all through the passage) and renewed his arguments. No one ashore would +dream of his bringing any visitors with him. Nobody would even think of +coming off. There was only one old canoe on the plantation. And landing +in the schooner’s boats would be awkward in the dark. There was the risk +of getting aground on some shallow patches. It would be best to spend +the rest of the night on board. + +There was really no opposition. The professor smoking a pipe, and very +comfortable in an ulster buttoned over his tropical clothes, was the +first to speak from his long chair. + +“Most excellent advice.” + +Next to him Miss Moorsom assented by a long silence. Then in a voice as +of one coming out of a dream— + +“And so this is Malata,” she said. “I have often wondered . . .” + +A shiver passed through Renouard. She had wondered! What about? Malata +was himself. He and Malata were one. And she had wondered! She had . . . + +The professor’s sister leaned over towards Renouard. Through all these +days at sea the man’s—the found man’s—existence had not been alluded to +on board the schooner. That reticence was part of the general constraint +lying upon them all. She, herself, certainly had not been exactly elated +by this finding—poor Arthur, without money, without prospects. But she +felt moved by the sentiment and romance of the situation. + +“Isn’t it wonderful,” she whispered out of her white wrap, “to think of +poor Arthur sleeping there, so near to our dear lovely Felicia, and not +knowing the immense joy in store for him to-morrow.” + +There was such artificiality in the wax-flower lady that nothing in this +speech touched Renouard. It was but the simple anxiety of his heart that +he was voicing when he muttered gloomily— + +“No one in the world knows what to-morrow may hold in store.” + +The mature lady had a recoil as though he had said something impolite. +What a harsh thing to say—instead of finding something nice and +appropriate. On board, where she never saw him in evening clothes, +Renouard’s resemblance to a duke’s son was not so apparent to her. +Nothing but his—ah—bohemianism remained. She rose with a sort of +ostentation. + +“It’s late—and since we are going to sleep on board to-night . . .” she +said. “But it does seem so cruel.” + +The professor started up eagerly, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. +“Infinitely more sensible, my dear Emma.” + +Renouard waited behind Miss Moorsom’s chair. + +She got up slowly, moved one step forward, and paused looking at the +shore. The blackness of the island blotted out the stars with its vague +mass like a low thundercloud brooding over the waters and ready to burst +into flame and crashes. + +“And so—this is Malata,” she repeated dreamily, moving towards the cabin +door. The clear cloak hanging from her shoulders, the ivory face—for the +night had put out nothing of her but the gleams of her hair—made her +resemble a shining dream-woman uttering words of wistful inquiry. She +disappeared without a sign, leaving Renouard penetrated to the very +marrow by the sounds that came from her body like a mysterious resonance +of an exquisite instrument. + +He stood stock still. What was this accidental touch which had evoked +the strange accent of her voice? He dared not answer that question. But +he had to answer the question of what was to be done now. Had the moment +of confession come? The thought was enough to make one’s blood run cold. + +It was as if those people had a premonition of something. In the +taciturn days of the passage he had noticed their reserve even amongst +themselves. The professor smoked his pipe moodily in retired spots. +Renouard had caught Miss Moorsom’s eyes resting on himself more than +once, with a peculiar and grave expression. He fancied that she avoided +all opportunities of conversation. The maiden lady seemed to nurse a +grievance. And now what had he to do? + +The lights on the deck had gone out one after the other. The schooner +slept. + +About an hour after Miss Moorsom had gone below without a sign or a word +for him, Renouard got out of his hammock slung in the waist under the +midship awning—for he had given up all the accommodation below to his +guests. He got out with a sudden swift movement, flung off his sleeping +jacket, rolled his pyjamas up his thighs, and stole forward, unseen by +the one Kanaka of the anchor-watch. His white torso, naked like a +stripped athlete’s, glimmered, ghostly, in the deep shadows of the deck. +Unnoticed he got out of the ship over the knight-heads, ran along the +back rope, and seizing the dolphin-striker firmly with both hands, +lowered himself into the sea without a splash. + +He swam away, noiseless like a fish, and then struck boldly for the land, +sustained, embraced, by the tepid water. The gentle, voluptuous heave of +its breast swung him up and down slightly; sometimes a wavelet murmured +in his ears; from time to time, lowering his feet, he felt for the bottom +on a shallow patch to rest and correct his direction. He landed at the +lower end of the bungalow garden, into the dead stillness of the island. +There were no lights. The plantation seemed to sleep, as profoundly as +the schooner. On the path a small shell cracked under his naked heel. + +The faithful half-caste foreman going his rounds cocked his ears at the +sharp sound. He gave one enormous start of fear at the sight of the +swift white figure flying at him out of the night. He crouched in +terror, and then sprang up and clicked his tongue in amazed recognition. + +“Tse! Tse! The master!” + +“Be quiet, Luiz, and listen to what I say.” + +Yes, it was the master, the strong master who was never known to raise +his voice, the man blindly obeyed and never questioned. He talked low +and rapidly in the quiet night, as if every minute were precious. On +learning that three guests were coming to stay Luiz clicked his tongue +rapidly. These clicks were the uniform, stenographic symbols of his +emotions, and he could give them an infinite variety of meaning. He +listened to the rest in a deep silence hardly affected by the low, “Yes, +master,” whenever Renouard paused. + +“You understand?” the latter insisted. “No preparations are to be made +till we land in the morning. And you are to say that Mr. Walter has gone +off in a trading schooner on a round of the islands.” + +“Yes, master.” + +“No mistakes—mind!” + +“No, master.” + +Renouard walked back towards the sea. Luiz, following him, proposed to +call out half a dozen boys and man the canoe. + +“Imbecile!” + +“Tse! Tse! Tse!” + +“Don’t you understand that you haven’t seen me?” + +“Yes, master. But what a long swim. Suppose you drown.” + +“Then you can say of me and of Mr. Walter what you like. The dead don’t +mind.” + +Renouard entered the sea and heard a faint “Tse! Tse! Tse!” of concern +from the half-caste, who had already lost sight of the master’s dark head +on the overshadowed water. + +Renouard set his direction by a big star that, dipping on the horizon, +seemed to look curiously into his face. On this swim back he felt the +mournful fatigue of all that length of the traversed road, which brought +him no nearer to his desire. It was as if his love had sapped the +invisible supports of his strength. There came a moment when it seemed +to him that he must have swum beyond the confines of life. He had a +sensation of eternity close at hand, demanding no effort—offering its +peace. It was easy to swim like this beyond the confines of life looking +at a star. But the thought: “They will think I dared not face them and +committed suicide,” caused a revolt of his mind which carried him on. He +returned on board, as he had left, unheard and unseen. He lay in his +hammock utterly exhausted and with a confused feeling that he had been +beyond the confines of life, somewhere near a star, and that it was very +quiet there. + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Sheltered by the squat headland from the first morning sparkle of the sea +the little bay breathed a delicious freshness. The party from the +schooner landed at the bottom of the garden. They exchanged +insignificant words in studiously casual tones. The professor’s sister +put up a long-handled eye-glass as if to scan the novel surroundings, but +in reality searching for poor Arthur anxiously. Having never seen him +otherwise than in his town clothes she had no idea what he would look +like. It had been left to the professor to help his ladies out of the +boat because Renouard, as if intent on giving directions, had stepped +forward at once to meet the half-caste Luiz hurrying down the path. In +the distance, in front of the dazzlingly sunlit bungalow, a row of +dark-faced house-boys unequal in stature and varied in complexion +preserved the immobility of a guard of honour. + +Luiz had taken off his soft felt hat before coming within earshot. +Renouard bent his head to his rapid talk of domestic arrangements he +meant to make for the visitors; another bed in the master’s room for the +ladies and a cot for the gentleman to be hung in the room opposite +where—where Mr. Walter—here he gave a scared look all round—Mr. +Walter—had died. + +“Very good,” assented Renouard in an even undertone. “And remember what +you have to say of him.” + +“Yes, master. Only”—he wriggled slightly and put one bare foot on the +other for a moment in apologetic embarrassment—“only I—I—don’t like to +say it.” + +Renouard looked at him without anger, without any sort of expression. +“Frightened of the dead? Eh? Well—all right. I will say it myself—I +suppose once for all. . . .” Immediately he raised his voice very much. + +“Send the boys down to bring up the luggage.” + +“Yes, master.” + +Renouard turned to his distinguished guests who, like a personally +conducted party of tourists, had stopped and were looking about them. + +“I am sorry,” he began with an impassive face. “My man has just told me +that Mr. Walter . . .” he managed to smile, but didn’t correct himself . +. . “has gone in a trading schooner on a short tour of the islands, to +the westward.” + +This communication was received in profound silence. + +Renouard forgot himself in the thought: “It’s done!” But the sight of +the string of boys marching up to the house with suit-cases and +dressing-bags rescued him from that appalling abstraction. + +“All I can do is to beg you to make yourselves at home . . . with what +patience you may.” + +This was so obviously the only thing to do that everybody moved on at +once. The professor walked alongside Renouard, behind the two ladies. + +“Rather unexpected—this absence.” + +“Not exactly,” muttered Renouard. “A trip has to be made every year to +engage labour.” + +“I see . . . And he . . . How vexingly elusive the poor fellow has +become! I’ll begin to think that some wicked fairy is favouring this +love tale with unpleasant attentions.” + +Renouard noticed that the party did not seem weighed down by this new +disappointment. On the contrary they moved with a freer step. The +professor’s sister dropped her eye-glass to the end of its chain. Miss +Moorsom took the lead. The professor, his lips unsealed, lingered in the +open: but Renouard did not listen to that man’s talk. He looked after +that man’s daughter—if indeed that creature of irresistible seductions +were a daughter of mortals. The very intensity of his desire, as if his +soul were streaming after her through his eyes, defeated his object of +keeping hold of her as long as possible with, at least, one of his +senses. Her moving outlines dissolved into a misty coloured shimmer of a +woman made of flame and shadows, crossing the threshold of his house. + +The days which followed were not exactly such as Renouard had feared—yet +they were not better than his fears. They were accursed in all the moods +they brought him. But the general aspect of things was quiet. The +professor smoked innumerable pipes with the air of a worker on his +holiday, always in movement and looking at things with that mysteriously +sagacious aspect of men who are admittedly wiser than the rest of the +world. His white head of hair—whiter than anything within the horizon +except the broken water on the reefs—was glimpsed in every part of the +plantation always on the move under the white parasol. And once he +climbed the headland and appeared suddenly to those below, a white speck +elevated in the blue, with a diminutive but statuesque effect. + +Felicia Moorsom remained near the house. Sometimes she could be seen +with a despairing expression scribbling rapidly in her lock-up dairy. +But only for a moment. At the sound of Renouard’s footsteps she would +turn towards him her beautiful face, adorable in that calm which was like +a wilful, like a cruel ignoring of her tremendous power. Whenever she +sat on the verandah, on a chair more specially reserved for her use, +Renouard would stroll up and sit on the steps near her, mostly silent, +and often not trusting himself to turn his glance on her. She, very +still with her eyes half-closed, looked down on his head—so that to a +beholder (such as Professor Moorsom, for instance) she would appear to be +turning over in her mind profound thoughts about that man sitting at her +feet, his shoulders bowed a little, his hands listless—as if vanquished. +And, indeed, the moral poison of falsehood has such a decomposing power +that Renouard felt his old personality turn to dead dust. Often, in the +evening, when they sat outside conversing languidly in the dark, he felt +that he must rest his forehead on her feet and burst into tears. + +The professor’s sister suffered from some little strain caused by the +unstability of her own feelings toward Renouard. She could not tell +whether she really did dislike him or not. At times he appeared to her +most fascinating; and, though he generally ended by saying something +shockingly crude, she could not resist her inclination to talk with +him—at least not always. One day when her niece had left them alone on +the verandah she leaned forward in her chair—speckless, resplendent, and, +in her way, almost as striking a personality as her niece, who did not +resemble her in the least. “Dear Felicia has inherited her hair and the +greatest part of her appearance from her mother,” the maiden lady used to +tell people. + +She leaned forward then, confidentially. + +“Oh! Mr. Renouard! Haven’t you something comforting to say?” + +He looked up, as surprised as if a voice from heaven had spoken with this +perfect society intonation, and by the puzzled profundity of his blue +eyes fluttered the wax-flower of refined womanhood. She continued. +“For—I can speak to you openly on this tiresome subject—only think what a +terrible strain this hope deferred must be for Felicia’s heart—for her +nerves.” + +“Why speak to me about it,” he muttered feeling half choked suddenly. + +“Why! As a friend—a well-wisher—the kindest of hosts. I am afraid we +are really eating you out of house and home.” She laughed a little. +“Ah! When, when will this suspense be relieved! That poor lost Arthur! +I confess that I am almost afraid of the great moment. It will be like +seeing a ghost.” + +“Have you ever seen a ghost?” asked Renouard, in a dull voice. + +She shifted her hands a little. Her pose was perfect in its ease and +middle-aged grace. + +“Not actually. Only in a photograph. But we have many friends who had +the experience of apparitions.” + +“Ah! They see ghosts in London,” mumbled Renouard, not looking at her. + +“Frequently—in a certain very interesting set. But all sorts of people +do. We have a friend, a very famous author—his ghost is a girl. One of +my brother’s intimates is a very great man of science. He is friendly +with a ghost . . . Of a girl too,” she added in a voice as if struck for +the first time by the coincidence. “It is the photograph of that +apparition which I have seen. Very sweet. Most interesting. A little +cloudy naturally. . . . Mr. Renouard! I hope you are not a sceptic. +It’s so consoling to think. . .” + +“Those plantation boys of mine see ghosts too,” said Renouard grimly. + +The sister of the philosopher sat up stiffly. What crudeness! It was +always so with this strange young man. + +“Mr. Renouard! How can you compare the superstitious fancies of your +horrible savages with the manifestations . . . ” + +Words failed her. She broke off with a very faint primly angry smile. +She was perhaps the more offended with him because of that flutter at the +beginning of the conversation. And in a moment with perfect tact and +dignity she got up from her chair and left him alone. + +Renouard didn’t even look up. It was not the displeasure of the lady +which deprived him of his sleep that night. He was beginning to forget +what simple, honest sleep was like. His hammock from the ship had been +hung for him on a side verandah, and he spent his nights in it on his +back, his hands folded on his chest, in a sort of half conscious, +oppressed stupor. In the morning he watched with unseeing eyes the +headland come out a shapeless inkblot against the thin light of the false +dawn, pass through all the stages of daybreak to the deep purple of its +outlined mass nimbed gloriously with the gold of the rising sun. He +listened to the vague sounds of waking within the house: and suddenly he +became aware of Luiz standing by the hammock—obviously troubled. + +“What’s the matter?” + +“Tse! Tse! Tse!” + +“Well, what now? Trouble with the boys?” + +“No, master. The gentleman when I take him his bath water he speak to +me. He ask me—he ask—when, when, I think Mr. Walter, he come back.” + +The half-caste’s teeth chattered slightly. Renouard got out of the +hammock. + +“And he is here all the time—eh?” + +Luiz nodded a scared affirmative, but at once protested, “I no see him. +I never. Not I! The ignorant wild boys say they see . . . Something! +Ough!” + +He clapped his teeth on another short rattle, and stood there, shrunk, +blighted, like a man in a freezing blast. + +“And what did you say to the gentleman?” + +“I say I don’t know—and I clear out. I—I don’t like to speak of him.” + +“All right. We shall try to lay that poor ghost,” said Renouard +gloomily, going off to a small hut near by to dress. He was saying to +himself: “This fellow will end by giving me away. The last thing that I +. . . No! That mustn’t be.” And feeling his hand being forced he +discovered the whole extent of his cowardice. + + + +CHAPTER X + + +That morning wandering about his plantation, more like a frightened soul +than its creator and master, he dodged the white parasol bobbing up here +and there like a buoy adrift on a sea of dark-green plants. The crop +promised to be magnificent, and the fashionable philosopher of the age +took other than a merely scientific interest in the experiment. His +investments were judicious, but he had always some little money lying by, +for experiments. + +After lunch, being left alone with Renouard, he talked a little of +cultivation and such matters. Then suddenly: + +“By the way, is it true what my sister tells me, that your plantation +boys have been disturbed by a ghost?” + +Renouard, who since the ladies had left the table was not keeping such a +strict watch on himself, came out of his abstraction with a start and a +stiff smile. + +“My foreman had some trouble with them during my absence. They funk +working in a certain field on the slope of the hill.” + +“A ghost here!” exclaimed the amused professor. “Then our whole +conception of the psychology of ghosts must be revised. This island has +been uninhabited probably since the dawn of ages. How did a ghost come +here. By air or water? And why did it leave its native haunts. Was it +from misanthropy? Was he expelled from some community of spirits?” + +Renouard essayed to respond in the same tone. The words died on his +lips. Was it a man or a woman ghost, the professor inquired. + +“I don’t know.” Renouard made an effort to appear at ease. He had, he +said, a couple of Tahitian amongst his boys—a ghost-ridden race. They +had started the scare. They had probably brought their ghost with them. + +“Let us investigate the matter, Renouard,” proposed the professor half in +earnest. “We may make some interesting discoveries as to the state of +primitive minds, at any rate.” + +This was too much. Renouard jumped up and leaving the room went out and +walked about in front of the house. He would allow no one to force his +hand. Presently the professor joined him outside. He carried his +parasol, but had neither his book nor his pipe with him. Amiably serious +he laid his hand on his “dear young friend’s” arm. + +“We are all of us a little strung up,” he said. “For my part I have been +like sister Anne in the story. But I cannot see anything coming. +Anything that would be the least good for anybody—I mean.” + +Renouard had recovered sufficiently to murmur coldly his regret of this +waste of time. For that was what, he supposed, the professor had in his +mind. + +“Time,” mused Professor Moorsom. “I don’t know that time can be wasted. +But I will tell you, my dear friend, what this is: it is an awful waste +of life. I mean for all of us. Even for my sister, who has got a +headache and is gone to lie down.” + +He shook gently Renouard’s arm. “Yes, for all of us! One may meditate +on life endlessly, one may even have a poor opinion of it—but the fact +remains that we have only one life to live. And it is short. Think of +that, my young friend.” + +He released Renouard’s arm and stepped out of the shade opening his +parasol. It was clear that there was something more in his mind than +mere anxiety about the date of his lectures for fashionable audiences. +What did the man mean by his confounded platitudes? To Renouard, scared +by Luiz in the morning (for he felt that nothing could be more fatal than +to have his deception unveiled otherwise than by personal confession), +this talk sounded like encouragement or a warning from that man who +seemed to him to be very brazen and very subtle. It was like being +bullied by the dead and cajoled by the living into a throw of dice for a +supreme stake. + +Renouard went away to some distance from the house and threw himself down +in the shade of a tree. He lay there perfectly still with his forehead +resting on his folded arms, light-headed and thinking. It seemed to him +that he must be on fire, then that he had fallen into a cool whirlpool, a +smooth funnel of water swirling about with nauseating rapidity. And then +(it must have been a reminiscence of his boyhood) he was walking on the +dangerous thin ice of a river, unable to turn back. . . . Suddenly it +parted from shore to shore with a loud crack like the report of a gun. + +With one leap he found himself on his feet. All was peace, stillness, +sunshine. He walked away from there slowly. Had he been a gambler he +would have perhaps been supported in a measure by the mere excitement. +But he was not a gambler. He had always disdained that artificial manner +of challenging the fates. The bungalow came into view, bright and +pretty, and all about everything was peace, stillness, sunshine. . . . + +While he was plodding towards it he had a disagreeable sense of the dead +man’s company at his elbow. The ghost! He seemed to be everywhere but +in his grave. Could one ever shake him off? he wondered. At that moment +Miss Moorsom came out on the verandah; and at once, as if by a mystery of +radiating waves, she roused a great tumult in his heart, shook earth and +sky together—but he plodded on. Then like a grave song-note in the storm +her voice came to him ominously. + +“Ah! Mr. Renouard. . . ” He came up and smiled, but she was very +serious. “I can’t keep still any longer. Is there time to walk up this +headland and back before dark?” + +The shadows were lying lengthened on the ground; all was stillness and +peace. “No,” said Renouard, feeling suddenly as steady as a rock. “But +I can show you a view from the central hill which your father has not +seen. A view of reefs and of broken water without end, and of great +wheeling clouds of sea-birds.” + +She came down the verandah steps at once and they moved off. “You go +first,” he proposed, “and I’ll direct you. To the left.” + +She was wearing a short nankin skirt, a muslin blouse; he could see +through the thin stuff the skin of her shoulders, of her arms. The noble +delicacy of her neck caused him a sort of transport. “The path begins +where these three palms are. The only palms on the island.” + +“I see.” + +She never turned her head. After a while she observed: “This path looks +as if it had been made recently.” + +“Quite recently,” he assented very low. + +They went on climbing steadily without exchanging another word; and when +they stood on the top she gazed a long time before her. The low evening +mist veiled the further limit of the reefs. Above the enormous and +melancholy confusion, as of a fleet of wrecked islands, the restless +myriads of sea-birds rolled and unrolled dark ribbons on the sky, +gathered in clouds, soared and stooped like a play of shadows, for they +were too far for them to hear their cries. + +Renouard broke the silence in low tones. + +“They’ll be settling for the night presently.” She made no sound. Round +them all was peace and declining sunshine. Near by, the topmost pinnacle +of Malata, resembling the top of a buried tower, rose a rock, +weather-worn, grey, weary of watching the monotonous centuries of the +Pacific. Renouard leaned his shoulders against it. Felicia Moorsom +faced him suddenly, her splendid black eyes full on his face as though +she had made up her mind at last to destroy his wits once and for all. +Dazzled, he lowered his eyelids slowly. + +“Mr. Renouard! There is something strange in all this. Tell me where he +is?” + +He answered deliberately. + +“On the other side of this rock. I buried him there myself.” + +She pressed her hands to her breast, struggled for her breath for a +moment, then: “Ohhh! . . . You buried him! . . . What sort of man are +you? . . . You dared not tell! . . . He is another of your victims? . . . +You dared not confess that evening. . . . You must have killed him. What +could he have done to you? . . . You fastened on him some atrocious +quarrel and . . .” + +Her vengeful aspect, her poignant cries left him as unmoved as the weary +rock against which he leaned. He only raised his eyelids to look at her +and lowered them slowly. Nothing more. It silenced her. And as if +ashamed she made a gesture with her hand, putting away from her that +thought. He spoke, quietly ironic at first. + +“Ha! the legendary Renouard of sensitive idiots—the ruthless +adventurer—the ogre with a future. That was a parrot cry, Miss Moorsom. +I don’t think that the greatest fool of them all ever dared hint such a +stupid thing of me that I killed men for nothing. No, I had noticed this +man in a hotel. He had come from up country I was told, and was doing +nothing. I saw him sitting there lonely in a corner like a sick crow, +and I went over one evening to talk to him. Just on impulse. He wasn’t +impressive. He was pitiful. My worst enemy could have told you he +wasn’t good enough to be one of Renouard’s victims. It didn’t take me +long to judge that he was drugging himself. Not drinking. Drugs.” + +“Ah! It’s now that you are trying to murder him,” she cried. + +“Really. Always the Renouard of shopkeepers’ legend. Listen! I would +never have been jealous of him. And yet I am jealous of the air you +breathe, of the soil you tread on, of the world that sees you—moving +free—not mine. But never mind. I rather liked him. For a certain +reason I proposed he should come to be my assistant here. He said he +believed this would save him. It did not save him from death. It came +to him as it were from nothing—just a fall. A mere slip and tumble of +ten feet into a ravine. But it seems he had been hurt before +up-country—by a horse. He ailed and ailed. No, he was not a +steel-tipped man. And his poor soul seemed to have been damaged too. It +gave way very soon.” + +“This is tragic!” Felicia Moorsom whispered with feeling. Renouard’s +lips twitched, but his level voice continued mercilessly. + +“That’s the story. He rallied a little one night and said he wanted to +tell me something. I, being a gentleman, he said, he could confide in +me. I told him that he was mistaken. That there was a good deal of a +plebeian in me, that he couldn’t know. He seemed disappointed. He +muttered something about his innocence and something that sounded like a +curse on some woman, then turned to the wall and—just grew cold.” + +“On a woman,” cried Miss Moorsom indignantly. “What woman?” + +“I wonder!” said Renouard, raising his eyes and noting the crimson of her +ear-lobes against the live whiteness of her complexion, the sombre, as if +secret, night-splendour of her eyes under the writhing flames of her +hair. “Some woman who wouldn’t believe in that poor innocence of his. . +. Yes. You probably. And now you will not believe in me—not even in me +who must in truth be what I am—even to death. No! You won’t. And yet, +Felicia, a woman like you and a man like me do not often come together on +this earth.” + +The flame of her glorious head scorched his face. He flung his hat far +away, and his suddenly lowered eyelids brought out startlingly his +resemblance to antique bronze, the profile of Pallas, still, austere, +bowed a little in the shadow of the rock. “Oh! If you could only +understand the truth that is in me!” he added. + +She waited, as if too astounded to speak, till he looked up again, and +then with unnatural force as if defending herself from some unspoken +aspersion, “It’s I who stand for truth here! Believe in you! In you, +who by a heartless falsehood—and nothing else, nothing else, do you +hear?—have brought me here, deceived, cheated, as in some abominable +farce!” She sat down on a boulder, rested her chin in her hands, in the +pose of simple grief—mourning for herself. + +“It only wanted this. Why! Oh! Why is it that ugliness, ridicule, and +baseness must fall across my path.” + +On that height, alone with the sky, they spoke to each other as if the +earth had fallen away from under their feet. + +“Are you grieving for your dignity? He was a mediocre soul and could +have given you but an unworthy existence.” + +She did not even smile at those words, but, superb, as if lifting a +corner of the veil, she turned on him slowly. + +“And do you imagine I would have devoted myself to him for such a +purpose! Don’t you know that reparation was due to him from me? A +sacred debt—a fine duty. To redeem him would not have been in my power—I +know it. But he was blameless, and it was for me to come forward. Don’t +you see that in the eyes of the world nothing could have rehabilitated +him so completely as his marriage with me? No word of evil could be +whispered of him after I had given him my hand. As to giving myself up +to anything less than the shaping of a man’s destiny—if I thought I could +do it I would abhor myself. . . .” She spoke with authority in her deep +fascinating, unemotional voice. Renouard meditated, gloomy, as if over +some sinister riddle of a beautiful sphinx met on the wild road of his +life. + +“Yes. Your father was right. You are one of these aristocrats . . .” + +She drew herself up haughtily. + +“What do you say? My father! . . . I an aristocrat.” + +“Oh! I don’t mean that you are like the men and women of the time of +armours, castles, and great deeds. Oh, no! They stood on the naked +soil, had traditions to be faithful to, had their feet on this earth of +passions and death which is not a hothouse. They would have been too +plebeian for you since they had to lead, to suffer with, to understand +the commonest humanity. No, you are merely of the topmost layer, +disdainful and superior, the mere pure froth and bubble on the +inscrutable depths which some day will toss you out of existence. But +you are you! You are you! You are the eternal love itself—only, O +Divinity, it isn’t your body, it is your soul that is made of foam.” + +She listened as if in a dream. He had succeeded so well in his effort to +drive back the flood of his passion that his life itself seemed to run +with it out of his body. At that moment he felt as one dead speaking. +But the headlong wave returning with tenfold force flung him on her +suddenly, with open arms and blazing eyes. She found herself like a +feather in his grasp, helpless, unable to struggle, with her feet off the +ground. But this contact with her, maddening like too much felicity, +destroyed its own end. Fire ran through his veins, turned his passion to +ashes, burnt him out and left him empty, without force—almost without +desire. He let her go before she could cry out. And she was so used to +the forms of repression enveloping, softening the crude impulses of old +humanity that she no longer believed in their existence as if it were an +exploded legend. She did not recognise what had happened to her. She +came safe out of his arms, without a struggle, not even having felt +afraid. + +“What’s the meaning of this?” she said, outraged but calm in a scornful +way. + +He got down on his knees in silence, bent low to her very feet, while she +looked down at him, a little surprised, without animosity, as if merely +curious to see what he would do. Then, while he remained bowed to the +ground pressing the hem of her skirt to his lips, she made a slight +movement. He got up. + +“No,” he said. “Were you ever so much mine what could I do with you +without your consent? No. You don’t conquer a wraith, cold mist, stuff +of dreams, illusion. It must come to you and cling to your breast. And +then! Oh! And then!” + +All ecstasy, all expression went out of his face. + +“Mr. Renouard,” she said, “though you can have no claim on my +consideration after having decoyed me here for the vile purpose, +apparently, of gloating over me as your possible prey, I will tell you +that I am not perhaps the extraordinary being you think I am. You may +believe me. Here I stand for truth itself.” + +“What’s that to me what you are?” he answered. “At a sign from you I +would climb up to the seventh heaven to bring you down to earth for my +own—and if I saw you steeped to the lips in vice, in crime, in mud, I +would go after you, take you to my arms—wear you for an incomparable +jewel on my breast. And that’s love—true love—the gift and the curse of +the gods. There is no other.” + +The truth vibrating in his voice made her recoil slightly, for she was +not fit to hear it—not even a little—not even one single time in her +life. It was revolting to her; and in her trouble, perhaps prompted by +the suggestion of his name or to soften the harshness of expression, for +she was obscurely moved, she spoke to him in French. + +“_Assez_! _J’ai horreur de tout cela_,” she said. + +He was white to his very lips, but he was trembling no more. The dice +had been cast, and not even violence could alter the throw. She passed +by him unbendingly, and he followed her down the path. After a time she +heard him saying: + +“And your dream is to influence a human destiny?” + +“Yes!” she answered curtly, unabashed, with a woman’s complete assurance. + +“Then you may rest content. You have done it.” + +She shrugged her shoulders slightly. But just before reaching the end of +the path she relented, stopped, and went back to him. + +“I don’t suppose you are very anxious for people to know how near you +came to absolute turpitude. You may rest easy on that point. I shall +speak to my father, of course, and we will agree to say that he has +died—nothing more.” + +“Yes,” said Renouard in a lifeless voice. “He is dead. His very ghost +shall be done with presently.” + +She went on, but he remained standing stock still in the dusk. She had +already reached the three palms when she heard behind her a loud peal of +laughter, cynical and joyless, such as is heard in smoking-rooms at the +end of a scandalous story. It made her feel positively faint for a +moment. + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Slowly a complete darkness enveloped Geoffrey Renouard. His resolution +had failed him. Instead of following Felicia into the house, he had +stopped under the three palms, and leaning against a smooth trunk had +abandoned himself to a sense of an immense deception and the feeling of +extreme fatigue. This walk up the hill and down again was like the +supreme effort of an explorer trying to penetrate the interior of an +unknown country, the secret of which is too well defended by its cruel +and barren nature. Decoyed by a mirage, he had gone too far—so far that +there was no going back. His strength was at an end. For the first time +in his life he had to give up, and with a sort of despairing +self-possession he tried to understand the cause of the defeat. He did +not ascribe it to that absurd dead man. + +The hesitating shadow of Luiz approached him unnoticed till it spoke +timidly. Renouard started. + +“Eh? What? Dinner waiting? You must say I beg to be excused. I can’t +come. But I shall see them to-morrow morning, at the landing place. +Take your orders from the professor as to the sailing of the schooner. +Go now.” + +Luiz, dumbfounded, retreated into the darkness. Renouard did not move, +but hours afterwards, like the bitter fruit of his immobility, the words: +“I had nothing to offer to her vanity,” came from his lips in the silence +of the island. And it was then only that he stirred, only to wear the +night out in restless tramping up and down the various paths of the +plantation. Luiz, whose sleep was made light by the consciousness of +some impending change, heard footsteps passing by his hut, the firm tread +of the master; and turning on his mats emitted a faint Tse! Tse! Tse! of +deep concern. + +Lights had been burning in the bungalow almost all through the night; and +with the first sign of day began the bustle of departure. House boys +walked processionally carrying suit-cases and dressing-bags down to the +schooner’s boat, which came to the landing place at the bottom of the +garden. Just as the rising sun threw its golden nimbus around the purple +shape of the headland, the Planter of Malata was perceived pacing +bare-headed the curve of the little bay. He exchanged a few words with +the sailing-master of the schooner, then remained by the boat, standing +very upright, his eyes on the ground, waiting. + +He had not long to wait. Into the cool, overshadowed garden the +professor descended first, and came jauntily down the path in a lively +cracking of small shells. With his closed parasol hooked on his forearm, +and a book in his hand, he resembled a banal tourist more than was +permissible to a man of his unique distinction. He waved the disengaged +arm from a distance, but at close quarters, arrested before Renouard’s +immobility, he made no offer to shake hands. He seemed to appraise the +aspect of the man with a sharp glance, and made up his mind. + +“We are going back by Suez,” he began almost boisterously. “I have been +looking up the sailing lists. If the zephirs of your Pacific are only +moderately propitious I think we are sure to catch the mail boat due in +Marseilles on the 18th of March. This will suit me excellently. . . .” +He lowered his tone. “My dear young friend, I’m deeply grateful to you.” + +Renouard’s set lips moved. + +“Why are you grateful to me?” + +“Ah! Why? In the first place you might have made us miss the next boat, +mightn’t you? . . . I don’t thank you for your hospitality. You can’t be +angry with me for saying that I am truly thankful to escape from it. But +I am grateful to you for what you have done, and—for being what you are.” + +It was difficult to define the flavour of that speech, but Renouard +received it with an austerely equivocal smile. The professor stepping +into the boat opened his parasol and sat down in the stern-sheets waiting +for the ladies. No sound of human voice broke the fresh silence of the +morning while they walked the broad path, Miss Moorsom a little in +advance of her aunt. + +When she came abreast of him Renouard raised his head. + +“Good-bye, Mr. Renouard,” she said in a low voice, meaning to pass on; +but there was such a look of entreaty in the blue gleam of his sunken +eyes that after an imperceptible hesitation she laid her hand, which was +ungloved, in his extended palm. + +“Will you condescend to remember me?” he asked, while an emotion with +which she was angry made her pale cheeks flush and her black eyes +sparkle. + +“This is a strange request for you to make,” she said, exaggerating the +coldness of her tone. + +“Is it? Impudent perhaps. Yet I am not so guilty as you think; and bear +in mind that to me you can never make reparation.” + +“Reparation? To you! It is you who can offer me no reparation for the +offence against my feelings—and my person; for what reparation can be +adequate for your odious and ridiculous plot so scornful in its +implication, so humiliating to my pride. No! I don’t want to remember +you.” + +Unexpectedly, with a tightening grip, he pulled her nearer to him, and +looking into her eyes with fearless despair— + +“You’ll have to. I shall haunt you,” he said firmly. + +Her hand was wrenched out of his grasp before he had time to release it. +Felicia Moorsom stepped into the boat, sat down by the side of her +father, and breathed tenderly on her crushed fingers. + +The professor gave her a sidelong look—nothing more. But the professor’s +sister, yet on shore, had put up her long-handle double eye-glass to look +at the scene. She dropped it with a faint rattle. + +“I’ve never in my life heard anything so crude said to a lady,” she +murmured, passing before Renouard with a perfectly erect head. When, a +moment afterwards, softening suddenly, she turned to throw a good-bye to +that young man, she saw only his back in the distance moving towards the +bungalow. She watched him go in—amazed—before she too left the soil of +Malata. + +Nobody disturbed Renouard in that room where he had shut himself in to +breathe the evanescent perfume of her who for him was no more, till late +in the afternoon when the half-caste was heard on the other side of the +door. + +He wanted the master to know that the trader _Janet_ was just entering +the cove. + +Renouard’s strong voice on his side of the door gave him most unexpected +instructions. He was to pay off the boys with the cash in the office and +arrange with the captain of the _Janet_ to take every worker away from +Malata, returning them to their respective homes. An order on the +Dunster firm would be given to him in payment. + +And again the silence of the bungalow remained unbroken till, next +morning, the half-caste came to report that everything was done. The +plantation boys were embarking now. + +Through a crack in the door a hand thrust at him a piece of paper, and +the door slammed to so sharply that Luiz stepped back. Then approaching +cringingly the keyhole, in a propitiatory tone he asked: + +“Do I go too, master?” + +“Yes. You too. Everybody.” + +“Master stop here alone?” + +Silence. And the half-caste’s eyes grew wide with wonder. But he also, +like those “ignorant savages,” the plantation boys, was only too glad to +leave an island haunted by the ghost of a white man. He backed away +noiselessly from the mysterious silence in the closed room, and only in +the very doorway of the bungalow allowed himself to give vent to his +feelings by a deprecatory and pained— + +“Tse! Tse! Tse!” + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +The Moorsoms did manage to catch the homeward mail boat all right, but +had only twenty-four hours in town. Thus the sentimental Willie could +not see very much of them. This did not prevent him afterwards from +relating at great length, with manly tears in his eyes, how poor Miss +Moorsom—the fashionable and clever beauty—found her betrothed in Malata +only to see him die in her arms. Most people were deeply touched by the +sad story. It was the talk of a good many days. + +But the all-knowing Editor, Renouard’s only friend and crony, wanted to +know more than the rest of the world. From professional incontinence, +perhaps, he thirsted for a full cup of harrowing detail. And when he +noticed Renouard’s schooner lying in port day after day he sought the +sailing master to learn the reason. The man told him that such were his +instructions. He had been ordered to lie there a month before returning +to Malata. And the month was nearly up. “I will ask you to give me a +passage,” said the Editor. + +He landed in the morning at the bottom of the garden and found peace, +stillness, sunshine reigning everywhere, the doors and windows of the +bungalow standing wide open, no sight of a human being anywhere, the +plants growing rank and tall on the deserted fields. For hours the +Editor and the schooner’s crew, excited by the mystery, roamed over the +island shouting Renouard’s name; and at last set themselves in grim +silence to explore systematically the uncleared bush and the deeper +ravines in search of his corpse. What had happened? Had he been +murdered by the boys? Or had he simply, capricious and secretive, +abandoned his plantation taking the people with him. It was impossible +to tell what had happened. At last, towards the decline of the day, the +Editor and the sailing master discovered a track of sandals crossing a +strip of sandy beach on the north shore of the bay. Following this track +fearfully, they passed round the spur of the headland, and there on a +large stone found the sandals, Renouard’s white jacket, and the Malay +sarong of chequered pattern which the planter of Malata was well known to +wear when going to bathe. These things made a little heap, and the +sailor remarked, after gazing at it in silence— + +“Birds have been hovering over this for many a day.” + +“He’s gone bathing and got drowned,” cried the Editor in dismay. + +“I doubt it, sir. If he had been drowned anywhere within a mile from the +shore the body would have been washed out on the reefs. And our boats +have found nothing so far.” + +Nothing was ever found—and Renouard’s disappearance remained in the main +inexplicable. For to whom could it have occurred that a man would set +out calmly to swim beyond the confines of life—with a steady stroke—his +eyes fixed on a star! + +Next evening, from the receding schooner, the Editor looked back for the +last time at the deserted island. A black cloud hung listlessly over the +high rock on the middle hill; and under the mysterious silence of that +shadow Malata lay mournful, with an air of anguish in the wild sunset, as +if remembering the heart that was broken there. + + * * * * * + +_Dec._ 1913. + + + + +THE PARTNER + + +“And that be hanged for a silly yarn. The boatmen here in Westport have +been telling this lie to the summer visitors for years. The sort that +gets taken out for a row at a shilling a head—and asks foolish +questions—must be told something to pass the time away. D’ye know +anything more silly than being pulled in a boat along a beach? . . . It’s +like drinking weak lemonade when you aren’t thirsty. I don’t know why +they do it! They don’t even get sick.” + +A forgotten glass of beer stood at his elbow; the locality was a small +respectable smoking-room of a small respectable hotel, and a taste for +forming chance acquaintances accounts for my sitting up late with him. +His great, flat, furrowed cheeks were shaven; a thick, square wisp of +white hairs hung from his chin; its waggling gave additional point to his +deep utterance; and his general contempt for mankind with its activities +and moralities was expressed in the rakish set of his big soft hat of +black felt with a large rim, which he kept always on his head. + +His appearance was that of an old adventurer, retired after many unholy +experiences in the darkest parts of the earth; but I had every reason to +believe that he had never been outside England. From a casual remark +somebody dropped I gathered that in his early days he must have been +somehow connected with shipping—with ships in docks. Of individuality he +had plenty. And it was this which attracted my attention at first. But +he was not easy to classify, and before the end of the week I gave him up +with the vague definition, “an imposing old ruffian.” + +One rainy afternoon, oppressed by infinite boredom, I went into the +smoking-room. He was sitting there in absolute immobility, which was +really fakir-like and impressive. I began to wonder what could be the +associations of that sort of man, his “milieu,” his private connections, +his views, his morality, his friends, and even his wife—when to my +surprise he opened a conversation in a deep, muttering voice. + +I must say that since he had learned from somebody that I was a writer of +stories he had been acknowledging my existence by means of some vague +growls in the morning. + +He was essentially a taciturn man. There was an effect of rudeness in +his fragmentary sentences. It was some time before I discovered that +what he would be at was the process by which stories—stories for +periodicals—were produced. + +What could one say to a fellow like that? But I was bored to death; the +weather continued impossible; and I resolved to be amiable. + +“And so you make these tales up on your own. How do they ever come into +your head?” he rumbled. + +I explained that one generally got a hint for a tale. + +“What sort of hint?” + +“Well, for instance,” I said, “I got myself rowed out to the rocks the +other day. My boatman told me of the wreck on these rocks nearly twenty +years ago. That could be used as a hint for a mainly descriptive bit of +story with some such title as ‘In the Channel,’ for instance.” + +It was then that he flew out at the boatmen and the summer visitors who +listen to their tales. Without moving a muscle of his face he emitted a +powerful “Rot,” from somewhere out of the depths of his chest, and went +on in his hoarse, fragmentary mumble. “Stare at the silly rocks—nod +their silly heads [the visitors, I presume]. What do they think a man +is—blown-out paper bag or what?—go off pop like that when he’s hit—Damn +silly yarn—Hint indeed! . . . A lie?” + +You must imagine this statuesque ruffian enhaloed in the black rim of his +hat, letting all this out as an old dog growls sometimes, with his head +up and staring-away eyes. + +“Indeed!” I exclaimed. “Well, but even if untrue it _is_ a hint, +enabling me to see these rocks, this gale they speak of, the heavy seas, +etc., etc., in relation to mankind. The struggle against natural forces +and the effect of the issue on at least one, say, exalted—” + +He interrupted me by an aggressive— + +“Would truth be any good to you?” + +“I shouldn’t like to say,” I answered, cautiously. “It’s said that truth +is stranger than fiction.” + +“Who says that?” he mouthed. + +“Oh! Nobody in particular.” + +I turned to the window; for the contemptuous beggar was oppressive to +look at, with his immovable arm on the table. I suppose my unceremonious +manner provoked him to a comparatively long speech. + +“Did you ever see such a silly lot of rocks? Like plums in a slice of +cold pudding.” + +I was looking at them—an acre or more of black dots scattered on the +steel-grey shades of the level sea, under the uniform gossamer grey mist +with a formless brighter patch in one place—the veiled whiteness of the +cliff coming through, like a diffused, mysterious radiance. It was a +delicate and wonderful picture, something expressive, suggestive, and +desolate, a symphony in grey and black—a Whistler. But the next thing +said by the voice behind me made me turn round. It growled out contempt +for all associated notions of roaring seas with concise energy, then went +on— + +“I—no such foolishness—looking at the rocks out there—more likely call to +mind an office—I used to look in sometimes at one time—office in +London—one of them small streets behind Cannon Street Station. . . ” + +He was very deliberate; not jerky, only fragmentary; at times profane. + +“That’s a rather remote connection,” I observed, approaching him. + +“Connection? To Hades with your connections. It was an accident.” + +“Still,” I said, “an accident has its backward and forward connections, +which, if they could be set forth—” + +Without moving he seemed to lend an attentive ear. + +“Aye! Set forth. That’s perhaps what you could do. Couldn’t you now? +There’s no sea life in this connection. But you can put it in out of +your head—if you like.” + +“Yes. I could, if necessary,” I said. “Sometimes it pays to put in a +lot out of one’s head, and sometimes it doesn’t. I mean that the story +isn’t worth it. Everything’s in that.” + +It amused me to talk to him like this. He reflected audibly that he +guessed story-writers were out after money like the rest of the world +which had to live by its wits: and that it was extraordinary how far +people who were out after money would go. . . Some of them. + +Then he made a sally against sea life. Silly sort of life, he called it. +No opportunities, no experience, no variety, nothing. Some fine men came +out of it—he admitted—but no more chance in the world if put to it than +fly. Kids. So Captain Harry Dunbar. Good sailor. Great name as a +skipper. Big man; short side-whiskers going grey, fine face, loud voice. +A good fellow, but no more up to people’s tricks than a baby. + +“That’s the captain of the _Sagamore_ you’re talking about,” I said, +confidently. + +After a low, scornful “Of course” he seemed now to hold on the wall with +his fixed stare the vision of that city office, “at the back of Cannon +Street Station,” while he growled and mouthed a fragmentary description, +jerking his chin up now and then, as if angry. + +It was, according to his account, a modest place of business, not shady +in any sense, but out of the way, in a small street now rebuilt from end +to end. “Seven doors from the Cheshire Cat public house under the +railway bridge. I used to take my lunch there when my business called me +to the city. Cloete would come in to have his chop and make the girl +laugh. No need to talk much, either, for that. Nothing but the way he +would twinkle his spectacles on you and give a twitch of his thick mouth +was enough to start you off before he began one of his little tales. +Funny fellow, Cloete. C-l-o-e-t-e—Cloete.” + +“What was he—a Dutchman?” I asked, not seeing in the least what all this +had to do with the Westport boatmen and the Westport summer visitors and +this extraordinary old fellow’s irritable view of them as liars and +fools. “Devil knows,” he grunted, his eyes on the wall as if not to miss +a single movement of a cinematograph picture. “Spoke nothing but +English, anyway. First I saw him—comes off a ship in dock from the +States—passenger. Asks me for a small hotel near by. Wanted to be quiet +and have a look round for a few days. I took him to a place—friend of +mine. . . Next time—in the City—Hallo! You’re very obliging—have a +drink. Talks plenty about himself. Been years in the States. All sorts +of business all over the place. With some patent medicine people, too. +Travels. Writes advertisements and all that. Tells me funny stories. +Tall, loose-limbed fellow. Black hair up on end, like a brush; long +face, long legs, long arms, twinkle in his specs, jocular way of +speaking—in a low voice. . . See that?” + +I nodded, but he was not looking at me. + +“Never laughed so much in my life. The beggar—would make you laugh +telling you how he skinned his own father. He was up to that, too. A +man who’s been in the patent-medicine trade will be up to anything from +pitch-and-toss to wilful murder. And that’s a bit of hard truth for you. +Don’t mind what they do—think they can carry off anything and talk +themselves out of anything—all the world’s a fool to them. Business man, +too, Cloete. Came over with a few hundred pounds. Looking for something +to do—in a quiet way. Nothing like the old country, after all, says he. . . +And so we part—I with more drinks in me than I was used to. After a +time, perhaps six months or so, I run up against him again in Mr. George +Dunbar’s office. Yes, _that_ office. It wasn’t often that I . . . +However, there was a bit of his cargo in a ship in dock that I wanted to +ask Mr. George about. In comes Cloete out of the room at the back with +some papers in his hand. Partner. You understand?” + +“Aha!” I said. “The few hundred pounds.” + +“And that tongue of his,” he growled. “Don’t forget that tongue. Some +of his tales must have opened George Dunbar’s eyes a bit as to what +business means.” + +“A plausible fellow,” I suggested. + +“H’m! You must have it in your own way—of course. Well. Partner. +George Dunbar puts his top-hat on and tells me to wait a moment. . . +George always looked as though he were making a few thousands a year—a +city swell. . . Come along, old man! And he and Captain Harry go out +together—some business with a solicitor round the corner. Captain Harry, +when he was in England, used to turn up in his brother’s office regularly +about twelve. Sat in a corner like a good boy, reading the paper and +smoking his pipe. So they go out. . . Model brothers, says Cloete—two +love-birds—I am looking after the tinned-fruit side of this cozy little +show. . . Gives me that sort of talk. Then by-and-by: What sort of old +thing is that _Sagamore_? Finest ship out—eh? I dare say all ships are +fine to you. You live by them. I tell you what; I would just as soon +put my money into an old stocking. Sooner!” + + * * * * * + +He drew a breath, and I noticed his hand, lying loosely on the table, +close slowly into a fist. In that immovable man it was startling, +ominous, like the famed nod of the Commander. + +“So, already at that time—note—already,” he growled. + +“But hold on,” I interrupted. “The _Sagamore_ belonged to Mundy and +Rogers, I’ve been told.” + +He snorted contemptuously. “Damn boatmen—know no better. Flew the +firm’s _house-flag_. That’s another thing. Favour. It was like this: +When old man Dunbar died, Captain Harry was already in command with the +firm. George chucked the bank he was clerking in—to go on his own with +what there was to share after the old chap. George was a smart man. +Started warehousing; then two or three things at a time: wood-pulp, +preserved-fruit trade, and so on. And Captain Harry let him have his +share to work with. . . I am provided for in my ship, he says. . . But +by-and-by Mundy and Rogers begin to sell out to foreigners all their +ships—go into steam right away. Captain Harry gets very upset—lose +command, part with the ship he was fond of—very wretched. Just then, so +it happened, the brothers came in for some money—an old woman died or +something. Quite a tidy bit. Then young George says: There’s enough +between us two to buy the _Sagamore_ with. . . But you’ll need more money +for your business, cries Captain Harry—and the other laughs at him: My +business is going on all right. Why, I can go out and make a handful of +sovereigns while you are trying to get your pipe to draw, old man. . . +Mundy and Rogers very friendly about it: Certainly, Captain. And we will +manage her for you, if you like, as if she were still our own. . . Why, +with a connection like that it was good investment to buy that ship. +Good! Aye, at the time.” + +The turning of his head slightly toward me at this point was like a sign +of strong feeling in any other man. + +“You’ll mind that this was long before Cloete came into it at all,” he +muttered, warningly. + +“Yes. I will mind,” I said. “We generally say: some years passed. +That’s soon done.” + +He eyed me for a while silently in an unseeing way, as if engrossed in +the thought of the years so easily dealt with; his own years, too, they +were, the years before and the years (not so many) after Cloete came upon +the scene. When he began to speak again, I discerned his intention to +point out to me, in his obscure and graphic manner, the influence on +George Dunbar of long association with Cloete’s easy moral standards, +unscrupulously persuasive gift of humour (funny fellow), and +adventurously reckless disposition. He desired me anxiously to elaborate +this view, and I assured him it was quite within my powers. He wished me +also to understand that George’s business had its ups and downs (the +other brother was meantime sailing to and fro serenely); that he got into +low water at times, which worried him rather, because he had married a +young wife with expensive tastes. He was having a pretty anxious time of +it generally; and just then Cloete ran up in the city somewhere against a +man working a patent medicine (the fellow’s old trade) with some success, +but which, with capital, capital to the tune of thousands to be spent +with both hands on advertising, could be turned into a great +thing—infinitely better-paying than a gold-mine. Cloete became excited +at the possibilities of that sort of business, in which he was an expert. +I understood that George’s partner was all on fire from the contact with +this unique opportunity. + +“So he goes in every day into George’s room about eleven, and sings that +tune till George gnashes his teeth with rage. Do shut up. What’s the +good? No money. Hardly any to go on with, let alone pouring thousands +into advertising. Never dare propose to his brother Harry to sell the +ship. Couldn’t think of it. Worry him to death. It would be like the +end of the world coming. And certainly not for a business of that kind! +. . . Do you think it would be a swindle? asks Cloete, twitching his +mouth. . . George owns up: No—would be no better than a squeamish ass if +he thought that, after all these years in business. + +“Cloete looks at him hard—Never thought of _selling_ the ship. Expected +the blamed old thing wouldn’t fetch half her insured value by this time. +Then George flies out at him. What’s the meaning, then, of these silly +jeers at ship-owning for the last three weeks? Had enough of them, +anyhow. + +“Angry at having his mouth made to water, see. Cloete don’t get excited. . . +I am no squeamish ass, either, says he, very slowly. ’Tisn’t selling +your old _Sagamore_ wants. The blamed thing wants tomahawking (seems the +name _Sagamore_ means an Indian chief or something. The figure-head was +a half-naked savage with a feather over one ear and a hatchet in his +belt). Tomahawking, says he. + +“What do you mean? asks George. . . Wrecking—it could be managed with +perfect safety, goes on Cloete—your brother would then put in his share +of insurance money. Needn’t tell him exactly what for. He thinks you’re +the smartest business man that ever lived. Make his fortune, too. . . +George grips the desk with both hands in his rage. . . You think my +brother’s a man to cast away his ship on purpose. I wouldn’t even dare +think of such a thing in the same room with him—the finest fellow that +ever lived. . . Don’t make such noise; they’ll hear you outside, says +Cloete; and he tells him that his brother is the salted pattern of all +virtues, but all that’s necessary is to induce him to stay ashore for a +voyage—for a holiday—take a rest—why not? . . . In fact, I have in view +somebody up to that sort of game—Cloete whispers. + +“George nearly chokes. . . So you think I am of that sort—you think _me_ +capable—What do you take me for? . . . He almost loses his head, while +Cloete keeps cool, only gets white about the gills. . . I take you for a +man who will be most cursedly hard up before long. . . He goes to the +door and sends away the clerks—there were only two—to take their lunch +hour. Comes back . . . What are you indignant about? Do I want you to +rob the widow and orphan? Why, man! Lloyd’s a corporation, it hasn’t +got a body to starve. There’s forty or more of them perhaps who +underwrote the lines on that silly ship of yours. Not one human being +would go hungry or cold for it. They take every risk into consideration. +Everything I tell you. . . That sort of talk. H’m! George too upset to +speak—only gurgles and waves his arms; so sudden, you see. The other, +warming his back at the fire, goes on. Wood-pulp business next door to a +failure. Tinned-fruit trade nearly played out. . . You’re frightened, he +says; but the law is only meant to frighten fools away. . . And he shows +how safe casting away that ship would be. Premiums paid for so many, +many years. No shadow of suspicion could arise. And, dash it all! a +ship must meet her end some day. . . + +“I am not frightened. I am indignant,” says George Dunbar. + +“Cloete boiling with rage inside. Chance of a lifetime—his chance! And +he says kindly: Your wife’ll be much more indignant when you ask her to +get out of that pretty house of yours and pile in into a two-pair +back—with kids perhaps, too. . . + +“George had no children. Married a couple of years; looked forward to a +kid or two very much. Feels more upset than ever. Talks about an honest +man for father, and so on. Cloete grins: You be quick before they come, +and they’ll have a rich man for father, and no one the worse for it. +That’s the beauty of the thing. + +“George nearly cries. I believe he did cry at odd times. This went on +for weeks. He couldn’t quarrel with Cloete. Couldn’t pay off his few +hundreds; and besides, he was used to have him about. Weak fellow, +George. Cloete generous, too. . . Don’t think of my little pile, says +he. Of course it’s gone when we have to shut up. But I don’t care, he +says. . . And then there was George’s new wife. When Cloete dines there, +the beggar puts on a dress suit; little woman liked it; . . . Mr. Cloete, +my husband’s partner; such a clever man, man of the world, so amusing! . . . +When he dines there and they are alone: Oh, Mr. Cloete, I wish George +would do something to improve our prospects. Our position is really so +mediocre. . . And Cloete smiles, but isn’t surprised, because he had put +all these notions himself into her empty head. . . What your husband +wants is enterprise, a little audacity. You can encourage him best, Mrs. +Dunbar. . . She was a silly, extravagant little fool. Had made George +take a house in Norwood. Live up to a lot of people better off than +themselves. I saw her once; silk dress, pretty boots, all feathers and +scent, pink face. More like the Promenade at the Alhambra than a decent +home, it looked to me. But some women do get a devil of a hold on a +man.” + +“Yes, some do,” I assented. “Even when the man is the husband.” + +“My missis,” he addressed me unexpectedly, in a solemn, surprisingly +hollow tone, “could wind me round her little finger. I didn’t find it +out till she was gone. Aye. But she was a woman of sense, while that +piece of goods ought to have been walking the streets, and that’s all I +can say. . . You must make her up out of your head. You will know the +sort.” + +“Leave all that to me,” I said. + +“H’m!” he grunted, doubtfully, then going back to his scornful tone: “A +month or so afterwards the _Sagamore_ arrives home. All very jolly at +first. . . Hallo, George boy! Hallo, Harry, old man! . . . But by and by +Captain Harry thinks his clever brother is not looking very well. And +George begins to look worse. He can’t get rid of Cloete’s notion. It +has stuck in his head. . . There’s nothing wrong—quite well. . . Captain +Harry still anxious. Business going all right, eh? Quite right. Lots +of business. Good business. . . Of course Captain Harry believes that +easily. Starts chaffing his brother in his jolly way about rolling in +money. George’s shirt sticks to his back with perspiration, and he feels +quite angry with the captain. . . The fool, he says to himself. Rolling +in money, indeed! And then he thinks suddenly: Why not? . . . Because +Cloete’s notion has got hold of his mind. + +“But next day he weakens and says to Cloete . . . Perhaps it would be +best to sell. Couldn’t you talk to my brother? and Cloete explains to +him over again for the twentieth time why selling wouldn’t do, anyhow. +No! The _Sagamore_ must be tomahawked—as he would call it; to spare +George’s feelings, maybe. But every time he says the word, George +shudders. . . I’ve got a man at hand competent for the job who will do +the trick for five hundred, and only too pleased at the chance, says +Cloete. . . George shuts his eyes tight at that sort of talk—but at the +same time he thinks: Humbug! There can be no such man. And yet if there +was such a man it would be safe enough—perhaps. + +“And Cloete always funny about it. He couldn’t talk about anything +without it seeming there was a great joke in it somewhere. . . Now, says +he, I know you are a moral citizen, George. Morality is mostly funk, and +I think you’re the funkiest man I ever came across in my travels. Why, +you are afraid to speak to your brother. Afraid to open your mouth to +him with a fortune for us all in sight. . . George flares up at this: no, +he ain’t afraid; he will speak; bangs fist on the desk. And Cloete pats +him on the back. . . We’ll be made men presently, he says. + +“But the first time George attempts to speak to Captain Harry his heart +slides down into his boots. Captain Harry only laughs at the notion of +staying ashore. He wants no holiday, not he. But Jane thinks of +remaining in England this trip. Go about a bit and see some of her +people. Jane was the Captain’s wife; round-faced, pleasant lady. George +gives up that time; but Cloete won’t let him rest. So he tries again; +and the Captain frowns. He frowns because he’s puzzled. He can’t make +it out. He has no notion of living away from his _Sagamore_. . . + +“Ah!” I cried. “Now I understand.” + +“No, you don’t,” he growled, his black, contemptuous stare turning on me +crushingly. + +“I beg your pardon,” I murmured. + +“H’m! Very well, then. Captain Harry looks very stern, and George +crumples all up inside. . . He sees through me, he thinks. . . Of course +it could not be; but George, by that time, was scared at his own shadow. +He is shirking it with Cloete, too. Gives his partner to understand that +his brother has half a mind to try a spell on shore, and so on. Cloete +waits, gnawing his fingers; so anxious. Cloete really had found a man +for the job. Believe it or not, he had found him inside the very +boarding-house he lodged in—somewhere about Tottenham Court Road. He had +noticed down-stairs a fellow—a boarder and not a boarder—hanging about +the dark—part of the passage mostly; sort of ‘man of the house,’ a +slinking chap. Black eyes. White face. The woman of the house—a widow +lady, she called herself—very full of Mr. Stafford; Mr. Stafford this and +Mr. Stafford that. . . Anyhow, Cloete one evening takes him out to have a +drink. Cloete mostly passed away his evenings in saloon bars. No +drunkard, though, Cloete; for company; liked to talk to all sorts there; +just habit; American fashion. + +“So Cloete takes that chap out more than once. Not very good company, +though. Little to say for himself. Sits quiet and drinks what’s given +to him, eyes always half closed, speaks sort of demure. . . I’ve had +misfortunes, he says. The truth was they had kicked him out of a big +steam-ship company for disgraceful conduct; nothing to affect his +certificate, you understand; and he had gone down quite easily. Liked +it, I expect. Anything’s better than work. Lived on the widow lady who +kept that boarding-house.” + +“That’s almost incredible,” I ventured to interrupt. “A man with a +master’s certificate, do you mean?” + +“I do; I’ve known them ’bus cads,” he growled, contemptuously. “Yes. +Swing on the tail-board by the strap and yell, ‘tuppence all the way.’ +Through drink. But this Stafford was of another kind. Hell’s full of +such Staffords; Cloete would make fun of him, and then there would be a +nasty gleam in the fellow’s half-shut eye. But Cloete was generally kind +to him. Cloete was a fellow that would be kind to a mangy dog. Anyhow, +he used to stand drinks to that object, and now and then gave him half a +crown—because the widow lady kept Mr. Stafford short of pocket-money. +They had rows almost every day down in the basement. . . + +“It was the fellow being a sailor that put into Cloete’s mind the first +notion of doing away with the _Sagamore_. He studies him a bit, thinks +there’s enough devil in him yet to be tempted, and one evening he says to +him . . . I suppose you wouldn’t mind going to sea again, for a spell? . . . +The other never raises his eyes; says it’s scarcely worth one’s while +for the miserable salary one gets. . . Well, but what do you say to +captain’s wages for a time, and a couple of hundred extra if you are +compelled to come home without the ship. Accidents will happen, says +Cloete. . . Oh! sure to, says that Stafford; and goes on taking sips of +his drink as if he had no interest in the matter. + +“Cloete presses him a bit; but the other observes, impudent and languid +like: You see, there’s no future in a thing like that—is there? . . Oh! +no, says Cloete. Certainly not. I don’t mean this to have any future—as +far as you are concerned. It’s a ‘once for all’ transaction. Well, what +do you estimate your future at? he asks. . . The fellow more listless +than ever—nearly asleep.—I believe the skunk was really too lazy to care. +Small cheating at cards, wheedling or bullying his living out of some +woman or other, was more his style. Cloete swears at him in whispers +something awful. All this in the saloon bar of the Horse Shoe, Tottenham +Court Road. Finally they agree, over the second sixpennyworth of Scotch +hot, on five hundred pounds as the price of tomahawking the _Sagamore_. +And Cloete waits to see what George can do. + +“A week or two goes by. The other fellow loafs about the house as if +there had been nothing, and Cloete begins to doubt whether he really +means ever to tackle that job. But one day he stops Cloete at the door, +with his downcast eyes: What about that employment you wished to give me? +he asks. . . You see, he had played some more than usual dirty trick on +the woman and expected awful ructions presently; and to be fired out for +sure. Cloete very pleased. George had been prevaricating to him such a +lot that he really thought the thing was as well as settled. And he +says: Yes. It’s time I introduced you to my friend. Just get your hat +and we will go now. . . + +“The two come into the office, and George at his desk sits up in a sudden +panic—staring. Sees a tallish fellow, sort of nasty-handsome face, heavy +eyes, half shut; short drab overcoat, shabby bowler hat, very +careful—like in his movements. And he thinks to himself, Is that how +such a man looks! No, the thing’s impossible. . . Cloete does the +introduction, and the fellow turns round to look behind him at the chair +before he sits down. . . A thoroughly competent man, Cloete goes on . . . +The man says nothing, sits perfectly quiet. And George can’t speak, +throat too dry. Then he makes an effort: H’m! H’m! Oh +yes—unfortunately—sorry to disappoint—my brother—made other +arrangements—going himself. + +“The fellow gets up, never raising his eyes off the ground, like a modest +girl, and goes out softly, right out of the office without a sound. +Cloete sticks his chin in his hand and bites all his fingers at once. +George’s heart slows down and he speaks to Cloete. . . This can’t be +done. How can it be? Directly the ship is lost Harry would see through +it. You know he is a man to go to the underwriters himself with his +suspicions. And he would break his heart over me. How can I play that +on him? There’s only two of us in the world belonging to each other. . . + +“Cloete lets out a horrid cuss-word, jumps up, bolts away into his room, +and George hears him there banging things around. After a while he goes +to the door and says in a trembling voice: You ask me for an +impossibility. . . Cloete inside ready to fly out like a tiger and rend +him; but he opens the door a little way and says softly: Talking of +hearts, yours is no bigger than a mouse’s, let me tell you. . . But +George doesn’t care—load off the heart, anyhow. And just then Captain +Harry comes in. . . Hallo, George boy. I am little late. What about a +chop at the Cheshire, now? . . . Right you are, old man. . . And off they +go to lunch together. Cloete has nothing to eat that day. + +“George feels a new man for a time; but all of a sudden that fellow +Stafford begins to hang about the street, in sight of the house door. +The first time George sees him he thinks he made a mistake. But no; next +time he has to go out, there is the very fellow skulking on the other +side of the road. It makes George nervous; but he must go out on +business, and when the fellow cuts across the road-way he dodges him. He +dodges him once, twice, three times; but at last he gets nabbed in his +very doorway. . . What do you want? he says, trying to look fierce. + +“It seems that ructions had come in the basement of that boarding-house, +and the widow lady had turned on him (being jealous mad), to the extent +of talking of the police. _That_ Mr. Stafford couldn’t stand; so he +cleared out like a scared stag, and there he was, chucked into the +streets, so to speak. Cloete looked so savage as he went to and fro that +he hadn’t the spunk to tackle him; but George seemed a softer kind to his +eye. He would have been glad of half a quid, anything. . . I’ve had +misfortunes, he says softly, in his demure way, which frightens George +more than a row would have done. . . Consider the severity of my +disappointment, he says. . . + +“George, instead of telling him to go to the devil, loses his head. . . I +don’t know you. What do you want? he cries, and bolts up-stairs to +Cloete. . . . Look what’s come of it, he gasps; now we are at the mercy +of that horrid fellow. . . Cloete tries to show him that the fellow can +do nothing; but George thinks that some sort of scandal may be forced on, +anyhow. Says that he can’t live with that horror haunting him. Cloete +would laugh if he weren’t too weary of it all. Then a thought strikes +him and he changes his tune. . . Well, perhaps! I will go down-stairs +and send him away to begin with. . . He comes back. . . He’s gone. But +perhaps you are right. The fellow’s hard up, and that’s what makes +people desperate. The best thing would be to get him out of the country +for a time. Look here, the poor devil is really in want of employment. +I won’t ask you much this time: only to hold your tongue; and I shall try +to get your brother to take him as chief officer. At this George lays +his arms and his head on his desk, so that Cloete feels sorry for him. +But altogether Cloete feels more cheerful because he has shaken the ghost +a bit into that Stafford. That very afternoon he buys him a suit of blue +clothes, and tells him that he will have to turn to and work for his +living now. Go to sea as mate of the _Sagamore_. The skunk wasn’t very +willing, but what with having nothing to eat and no place to sleep in, +and the woman having frightened him with the talk of some prosecution or +other, he had no choice, properly speaking. Cloete takes care of him for +a couple of days. . . Our arrangement still stands, says he. Here’s the +ship bound for Port Elizabeth; not a safe anchorage at all. Should she +by chance part from her anchors in a north-east gale and get lost on the +beach, as many of them do, why, it’s five hundred in your pocket—and a +quick return home. You are up to the job, ain’t you? + +“Our Mr. Stafford takes it all in with downcast eyes. . . I am a +competent seaman, he says, with his sly, modest air. A ship’s chief mate +has no doubt many opportunities to manipulate the chains and anchors to +some purpose. . . At this Cloete thumps him on the back: You’ll do, my +noble sailor. Go in and win. . . + +“Next thing George knows, his brother tells him that he had occasion to +oblige his partner. And glad of it, too. Likes the partner no end. +Took a friend of his as mate. Man had his troubles, been ashore a year +nursing a dying wife, it seems. Down on his luck. . . George protests +earnestly that he knows nothing of the person. Saw him once. Not very +attractive to look at. . . And Captain Harry says in his hearty way, +That’s so, but must give the poor devil a chance. . . + +“So Mr. Stafford joins in dock. And it seems that he did manage to +monkey with one of the cables—keeping his mind on Port Elizabeth. The +riggers had all the cable ranged on deck to clean lockers. The new mate +watches them go ashore—dinner hour—and sends the ship-keeper out of the +ship to fetch him a bottle of beer. Then he goes to work whittling away +the forelock of the forty-five-fathom shackle-pin, gives it a tap or two +with a hammer just to make it loose, and of course that cable wasn’t safe +any more. Riggers come back—you know what riggers are: come day, go day, +and God send Sunday. Down goes the chain into the locker without their +foreman looking at the shackles at all. What does he care? He ain’t +going in the ship. And two days later the ship goes to sea. . . ” + + * * * * * + +At this point I was incautious enough to breathe out another “I see,” +which gave offence again, and brought on me a rude “No, you don’t”—as +before. But in the pause he remembered the glass of beer at his elbow. +He drank half of it, wiped his mustaches, and remarked grimly— + +“Don’t you think that there will be any sea life in this, because there +ain’t. If you’re going to put in any out of your own head, now’s your +chance. I suppose you know what ten days of bad weather in the Channel +are like? I don’t. Anyway, ten whole days go by. One Monday Cloete +comes to the office a little late—hears a woman’s voice in George’s room +and looks in. Newspapers on the desk, on the floor; Captain Harry’s wife +sitting with red eyes and a bag on the chair near her. . . Look at this, +says George, in great excitement, showing him a paper. Cloete’s heart +gives a jump. Ha! Wreck in Westport Bay. The _Sagamore_ gone ashore +early hours of Sunday, and so the newspaper men had time to put in some +of their work. Columns of it. Lifeboat out twice. Captain and crew +remain by the ship. Tugs summoned to assist. If the weather improves, +this well-known fine ship may yet be saved. . . You know the way these +chaps put it. . . Mrs. Harry there on her way to catch a train from +Cannon Street. Got an hour to wait. + +“Cloete takes George aside and whispers: Ship saved yet! Oh, damn! That +must never be; you hear? But George looks at him dazed, and Mrs. Harry +keeps on sobbing quietly: . . . I ought to have been with him. But I am +going to him. . . We are all going together, cries Cloete, all of a +sudden. He rushes out, sends the woman a cup of hot bovril from the shop +across the road, buys a rug for her, thinks of everything; and in the +train tucks her in and keeps on talking, thirteen to the dozen, all the +way, to keep her spirits up, as it were; but really because he can’t hold +his peace for very joy. Here’s the thing done all at once, and nothing +to pay. Done. Actually done. His head swims now and again when he +thinks of it. What enormous luck! It almost frightens him. He would +like to yell and sing. Meantime George Dunbar sits in his corner, +looking so deadly miserable that at last poor Mrs. Harry tries to comfort +him, and so cheers herself up at the same time by talking about how her +Harry is a prudent man; not likely to risk his crew’s life or his own +unnecessarily—and so on. + +“First thing they hear at Westport station is that the life-boat has been +out to the ship again, and has brought off the second officer, who had +hurt himself, and a few sailors. Captain and the rest of the crew, about +fifteen in all, are still on board. Tugs expected to arrive every +moment. + +“They take Mrs. Harry to the inn, nearly opposite the rocks; she bolts +straight up-stairs to look out of the window, and she lets out a great +cry when she sees the wreck. She won’t rest till she gets on board to +her Harry. Cloete soothes her all he can. . . All right; you try to eat +a mouthful, and we will go to make inquiries. + +“He draws George out of the room: Look here, she can’t go on board, but I +shall. I’ll see to it that he doesn’t stop in the ship too long. Let’s +go and find the coxswain of the life-boat. . . George follows him, +shivering from time to time. The waves are washing over the old pier; +not much wind, a wild, gloomy sky over the bay. In the whole world only +one tug away off, heading to the seas, tossed in and out of sight every +minute as regular as clockwork. + +“They meet the coxswain and he tells them: Yes! He’s going out again. +No, they ain’t in danger on board—not yet. But the ship’s chance is very +poor. Still, if the wind doesn’t pipe up again and the sea goes down +something might be tried. After some talk he agrees to take Cloete on +board; supposed to be with an urgent message from the owners to the +captain. + +“Whenever Cloete looks at the sky he feels comforted; it looks so +threatening. George Dunbar follows him about with a white face and +saying nothing. Cloete takes him to have a drink or two, and by and by +he begins to pick up. . . That’s better, says Cloete; dash me if it +wasn’t like walking about with a dead man before. You ought to be +throwing up your cap, man. I feel as if I wanted to stand in the street +and cheer. Your brother is safe, the ship is lost, and we are made men. + +“Are you certain she’s lost? asks George. It would be an awful blow +after all the agonies I have gone through in my mind, since you first +spoke to me, if she were to be got off—and—and—all this temptation to +begin over again. . . For we had nothing to do with this; had we? + +“Of course not, says Cloete. Wasn’t your brother himself in charge? +It’s providential. . . Oh! cries George, shocked. . . Well, say it’s the +devil, says Cloete, cheerfully. I don’t mind! You had nothing to do +with it any more than a baby unborn, you great softy, you. . . Cloete has +got so that he almost loved George Dunbar. Well. Yes. That was so. I +don’t mean he respected him. He was just fond of his partner. + +“They go back, you may say fairly skipping, to the hotel, and find the +wife of the captain at the open window, with her eyes on the ship as if +she wanted to fly across the bay over there. . . Now then, Mrs. Dunbar, +cries Cloete, you can’t go, but I am going. Any messages? Don’t be shy. +I’ll deliver every word faithfully. And if you would like to give me a +kiss for him, I’ll deliver that too, dash me if I don’t. + +“He makes Mrs. Harry laugh with his patter. . . Oh, dear Mr. Cloete, you +are a calm, reasonable man. Make him behave sensibly. He’s a bit +obstinate, you know, and he’s so fond of the ship, too. Tell him I am +here—looking on. . . Trust me, Mrs. Dunbar. Only shut that window, +that’s a good girl. You will be sure to catch cold if you don’t, and the +Captain won’t be pleased coming off the wreck to find you coughing and +sneezing so that you can’t tell him how happy you are. And now if you +can get me a bit of tape to fasten my glasses on good to my ears, I will +be going. . . + +“How he gets on board I don’t know. All wet and shaken and excited and +out of breath, he does get on board. Ship lying over, smothered in +sprays, but not moving very much; just enough to jag one’s nerve a bit. +He finds them all crowded on the deck-house forward, in their shiny +oilskins, with faces like sick men. Captain Harry can’t believe his +eyes. What! Mr. Cloete! What are you doing here, in God’s name? . . . +Your wife’s ashore there, looking on, gasps out Cloete; and after they +had talked a bit, Captain Harry thinks it’s uncommonly plucky and kind of +his brother’s partner to come off to him like this. Man glad to have +somebody to talk to. . . It’s a bad business, Mr. Cloete, he says. And +Cloete rejoices to hear that. Captain Harry thinks he had done his best, +but the cable had parted when he tried to anchor her. It was a great +trial to lose the ship. Well, he would have to face it. He fetches a +deep sigh now and then. Cloete almost sorry he had come on board, +because to be on that wreck keeps his chest in a tight band all the time. +They crouch out of the wind under the port boat, a little apart from the +men. The life-boat had gone away after putting Cloete on board, but was +coming back next high water to take off the crew if no attempt at getting +the ship afloat could be made. Dusk was falling; winter’s day; black +sky; wind rising. Captain Harry felt melancholy. God’s will be done. +If she must be left on the rocks—why, she must. A man should take what +God sends him standing up. . . Suddenly his voice breaks, and he squeezes +Cloete’s arm: It seems as if I couldn’t leave her, he whispers. Cloete +looks round at the men like a lot of huddled sheep and thinks to himself: +They won’t stay. . . Suddenly the ship lifts a little and sets down with +a thump. Tide rising. Everybody beginning to look out for the +life-boat. Some of the men made her out far away and also two more tugs. +But the gale has come on again, and everybody knows that no tug will ever +dare come near the ship. + +“That’s the end, Captain Harry says, very low. . . . Cloete thinks he +never felt so cold in all his life. . . And I feel as if I didn’t care to +live on just now, mutters Captain Harry . . . Your wife’s ashore, looking +on, says Cloete . . . Yes. Yes. It must be awful for her to look at the +poor old ship lying here done for. Why, that’s our home. + +“Cloete thinks that as long as the _Sagamore’s_ done for he doesn’t care, +and only wishes himself somewhere else. The slightest movement of the +ship cuts his breath like a blow. And he feels excited by the danger, +too. The captain takes him aside. . . The life-boat can’t come near us +for more than an hour. Look here, Cloete, since you are here, and such a +plucky one—do something for me. . . He tells him then that down in his +cabin aft in a certain drawer there is a bundle of important papers and +some sixty sovereigns in a small canvas bag. Asks Cloete to go and get +these things out. He hasn’t been below since the ship struck, and it +seems to him that if he were to take his eyes off her she would fall to +pieces. And then the men—a scared lot by this time—if he were to leave +them by themselves they would attempt to launch one of the ship’s boats +in a panic at some heavier thump—and then some of them bound to get +drowned. . . There are two or three boxes of matches about my shelves in +my cabin if you want a light, says Captain Harry. Only wipe your wet +hands before you begin to feel for them. . . + +“Cloete doesn’t like the job, but doesn’t like to show funk, either—and +he goes. Lots of water on the main-deck, and he splashes along; it was +getting dark, too. All at once, by the mainmast, somebody catches him by +the arm. Stafford. He wasn’t thinking of Stafford at all. Captain +Harry had said something as to the mate not being quite satisfactory, but +it wasn’t much. Cloete doesn’t recognise him in his oilskins at first. +He sees a white face with big eyes peering at him. . . Are you pleased, +Mr. Cloete . . . ? + +“Cloete is moved to laugh at the whine, and shakes him off. But the +fellow scrambles on after him on the poop and follows him down into the +cabin of that wrecked ship. And there they are, the two of them; can +hardly see each other. . . You don’t mean to make me believe you have had +anything to do with this, says Cloete. . . + +“They both shiver, nearly out of their wits with the excitement of being +on board that ship. She thumps and lurches, and they stagger together, +feeling sick. Cloete again bursts out laughing at that wretched creature +Stafford pretending to have been up to something so desperate. . . Is +that how you think you can treat me now? yells the other man all of a +sudden. . . + +“A sea strikes the stern, the ship trembles and groans all round them, +there’s the noise of the seas about and overhead, confusing Cloete, and +he hears the other screaming as if crazy. . . Ah, you don’t believe me! +Go and look at the port chain. Parted? Eh? Go and see if it’s parted. +Go and find the broken link. You can’t. There’s no broken link. That +means a thousand pounds for me. No less. A thousand the day after we +get ashore—prompt. I won’t wait till she breaks up, Mr. Cloete. To the +underwriters I go if I’ve to walk to London on my bare feet. Port cable! +Look at her port cable, I will say to them. I doctored it—for the +owners—tempted by a low rascal called Cloete. + +“Cloete does not understand what it means exactly. All he sees is that +the fellow means to make mischief. He sees trouble ahead. . . Do you +think you can scare me? he asks,—you poor miserable skunk. . . And +Stafford faces him out—both holding on to the cabin table: No, damn you, +you are only a dirty vagabond; but I can scare the other, the chap in the +black coat. . . + +“Meaning George Dunbar. Cloete’s brain reels at the thought. He doesn’t +imagine the fellow can do any real harm, but he knows what George is; +give the show away; upset the whole business he had set his heart on. He +says nothing; he hears the other, what with the funk and strain and +excitement, panting like a dog—and then a snarl. . . A thousand down, +twenty-four hours after we get ashore; day after to-morrow. That’s my +last word, Mr. Cloete. . . A thousand pounds, day after to-morrow, says +Cloete. Oh yes. And to-day take this, you dirty cur. . . He hits +straight from the shoulder in sheer rage, nothing else. Stafford goes +away spinning along the bulk-head. Seeing this, Cloete steps out and +lands him another one somewhere about the jaw. The fellow staggers +backward right into the captain’s cabin through the open door. Cloete, +following him up, hears him fall down heavily and roll to leeward, then +slams the door to and turns the key. . . There! says he to himself, that +will stop you from making trouble.” + +“By Jove!” I murmured. + +The old fellow departed from his impressive immobility to turn his +rakishly hatted head and look at me with his old, black, lack-lustre +eyes. + +“He did leave him there,” he uttered, weightily, returning to the +contemplation of the wall. “Cloete didn’t mean to allow anybody, let +alone a thing like Stafford, to stand in the way of his great notion of +making George and himself, and Captain Harry, too, for that matter, rich +men. And he didn’t think much of consequences. These patent-medicine +chaps don’t care what they say or what they do. They think the world’s +bound to swallow any story they like to tell. . . He stands listening for +a bit. And it gives him quite a turn to hear a thump at the door and a +sort of muffled raving screech inside the captain’s room. He thinks he +hears his own name, too, through the awful crash as the old _Sagamore_ +rises and falls to a sea. That noise and that awful shock make him clear +out of the cabin. He collects his senses on the poop. But his heart +sinks a little at the black wildness of the night. Chances that he will +get drowned himself before long. Puts his head down the companion. +Through the wind and breaking seas he can hear the noise of Stafford’s +beating against the door and cursing. He listens and says to himself: +No. Can’t trust him now. . . + +“When he gets back to the top of the deck-house he says to Captain Harry, +who asks him if he got the things, that he is very sorry. There was +something wrong with the door. Couldn’t open it. And to tell you the +truth, says he, I didn’t like to stop any longer in that cabin. There +are noises there as if the ship were going to pieces. . . Captain Harry +thinks: Nervous; can’t be anything wrong with the door. But he says: +Thanks—never mind, never mind. . . All hands looking out now for the +life-boat. Everybody thinking of himself rather. Cloete asks himself, +will they miss him? But the fact is that Mr. Stafford had made such poor +show at sea that after the ship struck nobody ever paid any attention to +him. Nobody cared what he did or where he was. Pitch dark, too—no +counting of heads. The light of the tug with the lifeboat in tow is seen +making for the ship, and Captain Harry asks: Are we all there? . . . +Somebody answers: All here, sir. . . Stand by to leave the ship, then, +says Captain Harry; and two of you help the gentleman over first. . . +Aye, aye, sir. . . Cloete was moved to ask Captain Harry to let him stay +till last, but the life-boat drops on a grapnel abreast the fore-rigging, +two chaps lay hold of him, watch their chance, and drop him into her, all +safe. + +“He’s nearly exhausted; not used to that sort of thing, you see. He sits +in the stern-sheets with his eyes shut. Don’t want to look at the white +water boiling all around. The men drop into the boat one after another. +Then he hears Captain Harry’s voice shouting in the wind to the coxswain, +to hold on a moment, and some other words he can’t catch, and the +coxswain yelling back: Don’t be long, sir. . . What is it? Cloete asks +feeling faint. . . Something about the ship’s papers, says the coxswain, +very anxious. It’s no time to be fooling about alongside, you +understand. They haul the boat off a little and wait. The water flies +over her in sheets. Cloete’s senses almost leave him. He thinks of +nothing. He’s numb all over, till there’s a shout: Here he is! . . . +They see a figure in the fore-rigging waiting—they slack away on the +grapnel-line and get him in the boat quite easy. There is a little +shouting—it’s all mixed up with the noise of the sea. Cloete fancies +that Stafford’s voice is talking away quite close to his ear. There’s a +lull in the wind, and Stafford’s voice seems to be speaking very fast to +the coxswain; he tells him that of course he was near his skipper, was +all the time near him, till the old man said at the last moment that he +must go and get the ship’s papers from aft; would insist on going +himself; told him, Stafford, to get into the life-boat. . . He had meant +to wait for his skipper, only there came this smooth of the seas, and he +thought he would take his chance at once. + +“Cloete opens his eyes. Yes. There’s Stafford sitting close by him in +that crowded life-boat. The coxswain stoops over Cloete and cries: Did +you hear what the mate said, sir? . . . Cloete’s face feels as if it were +set in plaster, lips and all. Yes, I did, he forces himself to answer. +The coxswain waits a moment, then says: I don’t like it. . . And he turns +to the mate, telling him it was a pity he did not try to run along the +deck and hurry up the captain when the lull came. Stafford answers at +once that he did think of it, only he was afraid of missing him on the +deck in the dark. For, says he, the captain might have got over at once, +thinking I was already in the life-boat, and you would have hauled off +perhaps, leaving me behind. . . True enough, says the coxswain. A minute +or so passes. This won’t do, mutters the coxswain. Suddenly Stafford +speaks up in a sort of hollow voice: I was by when he told Mr. Cloete +here that he didn’t know how he would ever have the courage to leave the +old ship; didn’t he, now? . . . And Cloete feels his arm being gripped +quietly in the dark. . . Didn’t he now? We were standing together just +before you went over, Mr. Cloete? . . . + +“Just then the coxswain cries out: I’m going on board to see. . . Cloete +tears his arm away: I am going with you. . . + +“When they get aboard, the coxswain tells Cloete to go aft along one side +of the ship and he would go along the other so as not to miss the +captain. . . And feel about with your hands, too, says he; he might have +fallen and be lying insensible somewhere on the deck. . . When Cloete +gets at last to the cabin companion on the poop the coxswain is already +there, peering down and sniffing. I detect a smell of smoke down there, +says he. And he yells: Are you there, sir? . . . This is not a case for +shouting, says Cloete, feeling his heart go stony, as it were. . . Down +they go. Pitch dark; the inclination so sharp that the coxswain, groping +his way into the captain’s room, slips and goes tumbling down. Cloete +hears him cry out as though he had hurt himself, and asks what’s the +matter. And the coxswain answers quietly that he had fallen on the +captain, lying there insensible. Cloete without a word begins to grope +all over the shelves for a box of matches, finds one, and strikes a +light. He sees the coxswain in his cork jacket kneeling over Captain +Harry. . . Blood, says the coxswain, looking up, and the match goes out. +. . + +“Wait a bit, says Cloete; I’ll make paper spills. . . He had felt the +back of books on the shelves. And so he stands lighting one spill from +another while the coxswain turns poor Captain Harry over. Dead, he says. +Shot through the heart. Here’s the revolver. . . He hands it up to +Cloete, who looks at it before putting it in his pocket, and sees a plate +on the butt with _H. Dunbar_ on it. . . His own, he mutters. . . Whose +else revolver did you expect to find? snaps the coxswain. And look, he +took off his long oilskin in the cabin before he went in. But what’s +this lot of burnt paper? What could he want to burn the ship’s papers +for? . . . + +Cloete sees all, the little drawers drawn out, and asks the coxswain to +look well into them. . . There’s nothing, says the man. Cleaned out. +Seems to have pulled out all he could lay his hands on and set fire to +the lot. Mad—that’s what it is—went mad. And now he’s dead. You’ll +have to break it to his wife. . . + +“I feel as if I were going mad myself, says Cloete, suddenly, and the +coxswain begs him for God’s sake to pull himself together, and drags him +away from the cabin. They had to leave the body, and as it was they were +just in time before a furious squall came on. Cloete is dragged into the +life-boat and the coxswain tumbles in. Haul away on the grapnel, he +shouts; the captain has shot himself. . . + +“Cloete was like a dead man—didn’t care for anything. He let that +Stafford pinch his arm twice without making a sign. Most of Westport was +on the old pier to see the men out of the life-boat, and at first there +was a sort of confused cheery uproar when she came alongside; but after +the coxswain has shouted something the voices die out, and everybody is +very quiet. As soon as Cloete has set foot on something firm he becomes +himself again. The coxswain shakes hands with him: Poor woman, poor +woman, I’d rather you had the job than I. . . + +“Where’s the mate?” asks Cloete. He’s the last man who spoke to the +master. . . Somebody ran along—the crew were being taken to the Mission +Hall, where there was a fire and shake-downs ready for them—somebody ran +along the pier and caught up with Stafford. . . Here! The owner’s agent +wants you. . . Cloete tucks the fellow’s arm under his own and walks away +with him to the left, where the fishing-harbour is. . . I suppose I +haven’t misunderstood you. You wish me to look after you a bit, says he. +The other hangs on him rather limp, but gives a nasty little laugh: You +had better, he mumbles; but mind, no tricks; no tricks, Mr. Cloete; we +are on land now. + +“There’s a police office within fifty yards from here, says Cloete. He +turns into a little public house, pushes Stafford along the passage. The +landlord runs out of the bar. . . This is the mate of the ship on the +rocks, Cloete explains; I wish you would take care of him a bit to-night. . . +What’s the matter with him? asks the man. Stafford leans against the +wall in the passage, looking ghastly. And Cloete says it’s nothing—done +up, of course. . . I will be responsible for the expense; I am the +owner’s agent. I’ll be round in an hour or two to see him. + +And Cloete gets back to the hotel. The news had travelled there already, +and the first thing he sees is George outside the door as white as a +sheet waiting for him. Cloete just gives him a nod and they go in. Mrs. +Harry stands at the head of the stairs, and, when she sees only these two +coming up, flings her arms above her head and runs into her room. Nobody +had dared tell her, but not seeing her husband was enough. Cloete hears +an awful shriek. . . Go to her, he says to George. + +“While he’s alone in the private parlour Cloete drinks a glass of brandy +and thinks it all out. Then George comes in. . . The landlady’s with +her, he says. And he begins to walk up and down the room, flinging his +arms about and talking, disconnected like, his face set hard as Cloete +has never seen it before. . . What must be, must be. Dead—only brother. +Well, dead—his troubles over. But we are living, he says to Cloete; and +I suppose, says he, glaring at him with hot, dry eyes, that you won’t +forget to wire in the morning to your friend that we are coming in for +certain. . . + +“Meaning the patent-medicine fellow. . . Death is death and business is +business, George goes on; and look—my hands are clean, he says, showing +them to Cloete. Cloete thinks: He’s going crazy. He catches hold of him +by the shoulders and begins to shake him: Damn you—if you had had the +sense to know what to say to your brother, if you had had the spunk to +speak to him at all, you moral creature you, he would be alive now, he +shouts. + +“At this George stares, then bursts out weeping with a great bellow. He +throws himself on the couch, buries his face in a cushion, and howls like +a kid. . . That’s better, thinks Cloete, and he leaves him, telling the +landlord that he must go out, as he has some little business to attend to +that night. The landlord’s wife, weeping herself, catches him on the +stairs: Oh, sir, that poor lady will go out of her mind. . . + +“Cloete shakes her off, thinking to himself: Oh no! She won’t. She will +get over it. Nobody will go mad about this affair unless I do. It isn’t +sorrow that makes people go mad, but worry. + +“There Cloete was wrong. What affected Mrs. Harry was that her husband +should take his own life, with her, as it were, looking on. She brooded +over it so that in less than a year they had to put her into a Home. She +was very, very quiet; just gentle melancholy. She lived for quite a long +time. + +“Well, Cloete splashes along in the wind and rain. Nobody in the +streets—all the excitement over. The publican runs out to meet him in +the passage and says to him: Not this way. He isn’t in his room. We +couldn’t get him to go to bed nohow. He’s in the little parlour there. +We’ve lighted him a fire. . . You have been giving him drinks too, says +Cloete; I never said I would be responsible for drinks. How many? . . . +Two, says the other. It’s all right. I don’t mind doing that much for a +shipwrecked sailor. . . Cloete smiles his funny smile: Eh? Come. He +paid for them. . . The publican just blinks. . . Gave you gold, didn’t +he? Speak up! . . . What of that! cries the man. What are you after, +anyway? He had the right change for his sovereign. + +“Just so, says Cloete. He walks into the parlour, and there he sees our +Stafford; hair all up on end, landlord’s shirt and pants on, bare feet in +slippers, sitting by the fire. When he sees Cloete he casts his eyes +down. + +“You didn’t mean us ever to meet again, Mr. Cloete, Stafford says, +demurely. . . That fellow, when he had the drink he wanted—he wasn’t a +drunkard—would put on this sort of sly, modest air. . . But since the +captain committed suicide, he says, I have been sitting here thinking it +out. All sorts of things happen. Conspiracy to lose the ship—attempted +murder—and this suicide. For if it was not suicide, Mr. Cloete, then I +know of a victim of the most cruel, cold-blooded attempt at murder; +somebody who has suffered a thousand deaths. And that makes the thousand +pounds of which we spoke once a quite insignificant sum. Look how very +convenient this suicide is. . . + +“He looks up at Cloete then, who smiles at him and comes quite close to +the table. + +“You killed Harry Dunbar, he whispers. . . The fellow glares at him and +shows his teeth: Of course I did! I had been in that cabin for an hour +and a half like a rat in a trap. . . Shut up and left to drown in that +wreck. Let flesh and blood judge. Of course I shot him! I thought it +was you, you murdering scoundrel, come back to settle me. He opens the +door flying and tumbles right down upon me; I had a revolver in my hand, +and I shot him. I was crazy. Men have gone crazy for less. + +“Cloete looks at him without flinching. Aha! That’s your story, is it? +. . . And he shakes the table a little in his passion as he speaks. . . +Now listen to mine. What’s this conspiracy? Who’s going to prove it? +You were there to rob. You were rifling his cabin; he came upon you +unawares with your hands in the drawer; and you shot him with his own +revolver. You killed to steal—to steal! His brother and the clerks in +the office know that he took sixty pounds with him to sea. Sixty pounds +in gold in a canvas bag. He told me where they were. The coxswain of +the life-boat can swear to it that the drawers were all empty. And you +are such a fool that before you’re half an hour ashore you change a +sovereign to pay for a drink. Listen to me. If you don’t turn up day +after to-morrow at George Dunbar’s solicitors, to make the proper +deposition as to the loss of the ship, I shall set the police on your +track. Day after to-morrow. . . + +“And then what do you think? That Stafford begins to tear his hair. +Just so. Tugs at it with both hands without saying anything. Cloete +gives a push to the table which nearly sends the fellow off his chair, +tumbling inside the fender; so that he has got to catch hold of it to +save himself. . . + +“You know the sort of man I am, Cloete says, fiercely. I’ve got to a +point that I don’t care what happens to me. I would shoot you now for +tuppence. + +“At this the cur dodges under the table. Then Cloete goes out, and as he +turns in the street—you know, little fishermen’s cottages, all dark; +raining in torrents, too—the other opens the window of the parlour and +speaks in a sort of crying voice— + +“You low Yankee fiend—I’ll pay you off some day. + +“Cloete passes by with a damn bitter laugh, because he thinks that the +fellow in a way has paid him off already, if he only knew it.” + + * * * * * + +My impressive ruffian drank what remained of his beer, while his black, +sunken eyes looked at me over the rim. + +“I don’t quite understand this,” I said. “In what way?” + +He unbent a little and explained without too much scorn that Captain +Harry being dead, his half of the insurance money went to his wife, and +her trustees of course bought consols with it. Enough to keep her +comfortable. George Dunbar’s half, as Cloete feared from the first, did +not prove sufficient to launch the medicine well; other moneyed men +stepped in, and these two had to go out of that business, pretty nearly +shorn of everything. + +“I am curious,” I said, “to learn what the motive force of this tragic +affair was—I mean the patent medicine. Do you know?” + +He named it, and I whistled respectfully. Nothing less than Parker’s +Lively Lumbago Pills. Enormous property! You know it; all the world +knows it. Every second man, at least, on this globe of ours has tried +it. + +“Why!” I cried, “they missed an immense fortune.” + +“Yes,” he mumbled, “by the price of a revolver-shot.” + +He told me also that eventually Cloete returned to the States, passenger +in a cargo-boat from Albert Dock. The night before he sailed he met him +wandering about the quays, and took him home for a drink. “Funny chap, +Cloete. We sat all night drinking grogs, till it was time for him to go +on board.” + +It was then that Cloete, unembittered but weary, told him this story, +with that utterly unconscious frankness of a patent-medicine man stranger +to all moral standards. Cloete concluded by remarking that he, had “had +enough of the old country.” George Dunbar had turned on him, too, in the +end. Cloete was clearly somewhat disillusioned. + +As to Stafford, he died, professed loafer, in some East End hospital or +other, and on his last day clamoured “for a parson,” because his +conscience worried him for killing an innocent man. “Wanted somebody to +tell him it was all right,” growled my old ruffian, contemptuously. “He +told the parson that I knew this Cloete who had tried to murder him, and +so the parson (he worked among the dock labourers) once spoke to me about +it. That skunk of a fellow finding himself trapped yelled for mercy. . . +Promised to be good and so on. . . Then he went crazy . . . screamed and +threw himself about, beat his head against the bulkheads . . . you can +guess all that—eh? . . . till he was exhausted. Gave up. Threw himself +down, shut his eyes, and wanted to pray. So he says. Tried to think of +some prayer for a quick death—he was that terrified. Thought that if he +had a knife or something he would cut his throat, and be done with it. +Then he thinks: No! Would try to cut away the wood about the lock. . . +He had no knife in his pocket. . . he was weeping and calling on God to +send him a tool of some kind when suddenly he thinks: Axe! In most ships +there is a spare emergency axe kept in the master’s room in some locker +or other. . . Up he jumps. . . Pitch dark. Pulls at the drawers to find +matches and, groping for them, the first thing he comes upon—Captain +Harry’s revolver. Loaded too. He goes perfectly quiet all over. Can +shoot the lock to pieces. See? Saved! God’s providence! There are +boxes of matches too. Thinks he: I may just as well see what I am about. + +“Strikes a light and sees the little canvas bag tucked away at the back +of the drawer. Knew at once what that was. Rams it into his pocket +quick. Aha! says he to himself: this requires more light. So he pitches +a lot of paper on the floor, set fire to it, and starts in a hurry +rummaging for more valuables. Did you ever? He told that East-End +parson that the devil tempted him. First God’s mercy—then devil’s work. +Turn and turn about. . . + +“Any squirming skunk can talk like that. He was so busy with the drawers +that the first thing he heard was a shout, Great Heavens. He looks up +and there was the door open (Cloete had left the key in the lock) and +Captain Harry holding on, well above him, very fierce in the light of the +burning papers. His eyes were starting out of his head. Thieving, he +thunders at him. A sailor! An officer! No! A wretch like you deserves +no better than to be left here to drown. + +“This Stafford—on his death-bed—told the parson that when he heard these +words he went crazy again. He snatched his hand with the revolver in it +out of the drawer, and fired without aiming. Captain Harry fell right in +with a crash like a stone on top of the burning papers, putting the blaze +out. All dark. Not a sound. He listened for a bit then dropped the +revolver and scrambled out on deck like mad.” + +The old fellow struck the table with his ponderous fist. + +“What makes me sick is to hear these silly boat-men telling people the +captain committed suicide. Pah! Captain Harry was a man that could face +his Maker any time up there, and here below, too. He wasn’t the sort to +slink out of life. Not he! He was a good man down to the ground. He +gave me my first job as stevedore only three days after I got married.” + +As the vindication of Captain Harry from the charge of suicide seemed to +be his only object, I did not thank him very effusively for his material. +And then it was not worth many thanks in any case. + +For it is too startling even to think of such things happening in our +respectable Channel in full view, so to speak, of the luxurious +continental traffic to Switzerland and Monte Carlo. This story to be +acceptable should have been transposed to somewhere in the South Seas. +But it would have been too much trouble to cook it for the consumption of +magazine readers. So here it is raw, so to speak—just as it was told to +me—but unfortunately robbed of the striking effect of the narrator; the +most imposing old ruffian that ever followed the unromantic trade of +master stevedore in the port of London. + + * * * * * + +_Oct._ 1910. + + + + +THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES +A FIND + + +This tale, episode, experience—call it how you will—was related in the +fifties of the last century by a man who, by his own confession, was +sixty years old at the time. Sixty is not a bad age—unless in +perspective, when no doubt it is contemplated by the majority of us with +mixed feelings. It is a calm age; the game is practically over by then; +and standing aside one begins to remember with a certain vividness what a +fine fellow one used to be. I have observed that, by an amiable +attention of Providence, most people at sixty begin to take a romantic +view of themselves. Their very failures exhale a charm of peculiar +potency. And indeed the hopes of the future are a fine company to live +with, exquisite forms, fascinating if you like, but—so to speak—naked, +stripped for a run. The robes of glamour are luckily the property of the +immovable past which, without them, would sit, a shivery sort of thing, +under the gathering shadows. + +I suppose it was the romanticism of growing age which set our man to +relate his experience for his own satisfaction or for the wonder of his +posterity. It could not have been for his glory, because the experience +was simply that of an abominable fright—terror he calls it. You would +have guessed that the relation alluded to in the very first lines was in +writing. + +This writing constitutes the Find declared in the sub-title. The title +itself is my own contrivance, (can’t call it invention), and has the +merit of veracity. We will be concerned with an inn here. As to the +witches that’s merely a conventional expression, and we must take our +man’s word for it that it fits the case. + +The Find was made in a box of books bought in London, in a street which +no longer exists, from a second-hand bookseller in the last stage of +decay. As to the books themselves they were at least twentieth-hand, and +on inspection turned out not worth the very small sum of money I +disbursed. It might have been some premonition of that fact which made +me say: “But I must have the box too.” The decayed bookseller assented +by the careless, tragic gesture of a man already doomed to extinction. + +A litter of loose pages at the bottom of the box excited my curiosity but +faintly. The close, neat, regular handwriting was not attractive at +first sight. But in one place the statement that in A.D. 1813 the writer +was twenty-two years old caught my eye. Two and twenty is an interesting +age in which one is easily reckless and easily frightened; the faculty of +reflection being weak and the power of imagination strong. + +In another place the phrase: “At night we stood in again,” arrested my +languid attention, because it was a sea phrase. “Let’s see what it is +all about,” I thought, without excitement. + +Oh! but it was a dull-faced MS., each line resembling every other line in +their close-set and regular order. It was like the drone of a monotonous +voice. A treatise on sugar-refining (the dreariest subject I can think +of) could have been given a more lively appearance. “In A.D. 1813, I was +twenty-two years old,” he begins earnestly and goes on with every +appearance of calm, horrible industry. Don’t imagine, however, that +there is anything archaic in my find. Diabolic ingenuity in invention +though as old as the world is by no means a lost art. Look at the +telephones for shattering the little peace of mind given to us in this +world, or at the machine guns for letting with dispatch life out of our +bodies. Now-a-days any blear-eyed old witch if only strong enough to +turn an insignificant little handle could lay low a hundred young men of +twenty in the twinkling of an eye. + +If this isn’t progress! . . . Why immense! We have moved on, and so you +must expect to meet here a certain naiveness of contrivance and +simplicity of aim appertaining to the remote epoch. And of course no +motoring tourist can hope to find such an inn anywhere, now. This one, +the one of the title, was situated in Spain. That much I discovered only +from internal evidence, because a good many pages of that relation were +missing—perhaps not a great misfortune after all. The writer seemed to +have entered into a most elaborate detail of the why and wherefore of his +presence on that coast—presumably the north coast of Spain. His +experience has nothing to do with the sea, though. As far as I can make +it out, he was an officer on board a sloop-of-war. There’s nothing +strange in that. At all stages of the long Peninsular campaign many of +our men-of-war of the smaller kind were cruising off the north coast of +Spain—as risky and disagreeable a station as can be well imagined. + +It looks as though that ship of his had had some special service to +perform. A careful explanation of all the circumstances was to be +expected from our man, only, as I’ve said, some of his pages (good tough +paper too) were missing: gone in covers for jampots or in wadding for the +fowling-pieces of his irreverent posterity. But it is to be seen clearly +that communication with the shore and even the sending of messengers +inland was part of her service, either to obtain intelligence from or to +transmit orders or advice to patriotic Spaniards, guerilleros or secret +juntas of the province. Something of the sort. All this can be only +inferred from the preserved scraps of his conscientious writing. + +Next we come upon the panegyric of a very fine sailor, a member of the +ship’s company, having the rating of the captain’s coxswain. He was +known on board as Cuba Tom; not because he was Cuban however; he was +indeed the best type of a genuine British tar of that time, and a +man-of-war’s man for years. He came by the name on account of some +wonderful adventures he had in that island in his young days, adventures +which were the favourite subject of the yarns he was in the habit of +spinning to his shipmates of an evening on the forecastle head. He was +intelligent, very strong, and of proved courage. Incidentally we are +told, so exact is our narrator, that Tom had the finest pigtail for +thickness and length of any man in the Navy. This appendage, much cared +for and sheathed tightly in a porpoise skin, hung half way down his broad +back to the great admiration of all beholders and to the great envy of +some. + +Our young officer dwells on the manly qualities of Cuba Tom with +something like affection. This sort of relation between officer and man +was not then very rare. A youngster on joining the service was put under +the charge of a trustworthy seaman, who slung his first hammock for him +and often later on became a sort of humble friend to the junior officer. +The narrator on joining the sloop had found this man on board after some +years of separation. There is something touching in the warm pleasure he +remembers and records at this meeting with the professional mentor of his +boyhood. + +We discover then that, no Spaniard being forthcoming for the service, +this worthy seaman with the unique pigtail and a very high character for +courage and steadiness had been selected as messenger for one of these +missions inland which have been mentioned. His preparations were not +elaborate. One gloomy autumn morning the sloop ran close to a shallow +cove where a landing could be made on that iron-bound shore. A boat was +lowered, and pulled in with Tom Corbin (Cuba Tom) perched in the bow, and +our young man (Mr. Edgar Byrne was his name on this earth which knows him +no more) sitting in the stern sheets. + +A few inhabitants of a hamlet, whose grey stone houses could be seen a +hundred yards or so up a deep ravine, had come down to the shore and +watched the approach of the boat. The two Englishmen leaped ashore. +Either from dullness or astonishment the peasants gave no greeting, and +only fell back in silence. + +Mr. Byrne had made up his mind to see Tom Corbin started fairly on his +way. He looked round at the heavy surprised faces. + +“There isn’t much to get out of them,” he said. “Let us walk up to the +village. There will be a wine shop for sure where we may find somebody +more promising to talk to and get some information from.” + +“Aye, aye, sir,” said Tom falling into step behind his officer. “A bit +of palaver as to courses and distances can do no harm; I crossed the +broadest part of Cuba by the help of my tongue tho’ knowing far less +Spanish than I do now. As they say themselves it was ‘four words and no +more’ with me, that time when I got left behind on shore by the +_Blanche_, frigate.” + +He made light of what was before him, which was but a day’s journey into +the mountains. It is true that there was a full day’s journey before +striking the mountain path, but that was nothing for a man who had +crossed the island of Cuba on his two legs, and with no more than four +words of the language to begin with. + +The officer and the man were walking now on a thick sodden bed of dead +leaves, which the peasants thereabouts accumulate in the streets of their +villages to rot during the winter for field manure. Turning his head Mr. +Byrne perceived that the whole male population of the hamlet was +following them on the noiseless springy carpet. Women stared from the +doors of the houses and the children had apparently gone into hiding. +The village knew the ship by sight, afar off, but no stranger had landed +on that spot perhaps for a hundred years or more. The cocked hat of Mr. +Byrne, the bushy whiskers and the enormous pigtail of the sailor, filled +them with mute wonder. They pressed behind the two Englishmen staring +like those islanders discovered by Captain Cook in the South Seas. + +It was then that Byrne had his first glimpse of the little cloaked man in +a yellow hat. Faded and dingy as it was, this covering for his head made +him noticeable. + +The entrance to the wine shop was like a rough hole in a wall of flints. +The owner was the only person who was not in the street, for he came out +from the darkness at the back where the inflated forms of wine skins hung +on nails could be vaguely distinguished. He was a tall, one-eyed +Asturian with scrubby, hollow cheeks; a grave expression of countenance +contrasted enigmatically with the roaming restlessness of his solitary +eye. On learning that the matter in hand was the sending on his way of +that English mariner toward a certain Gonzales in the mountains, he +closed his good eye for a moment as if in meditation. Then opened it, +very lively again. + +“Possibly, possibly. It could be done.” + +A friendly murmur arose in the group in the doorway at the name of +Gonzales, the local leader against the French. Inquiring as to the +safety of the road Byrne was glad to learn that no troops of that nation +had been seen in the neighbourhood for months. Not the smallest little +detachment of these impious _polizones_. While giving these answers the +owner of the wine-shop busied himself in drawing into an earthenware jug +some wine which he set before the heretic English, pocketing with grave +abstraction the small piece of money the officer threw upon the table in +recognition of the unwritten law that none may enter a wine-shop without +buying drink. His eye was in constant motion as if it were trying to do +the work of the two; but when Byrne made inquiries as to the possibility +of hiring a mule, it became immovably fixed in the direction of the door +which was closely besieged by the curious. In front of them, just within +the threshold, the little man in the large cloak and yellow hat had taken +his stand. He was a diminutive person, a mere homunculus, Byrne +describes him, in a ridiculously mysterious, yet assertive attitude, a +corner of his cloak thrown cavalierly over his left shoulder, muffling +his chin and mouth; while the broad-brimmed yellow hat hung on a corner +of his square little head. He stood there taking snuff, repeatedly. + +“A mule,” repeated the wine-seller, his eyes fixed on that quaint and +snuffy figure. . . “No, señor officer! Decidedly no mule is to be got in +this poor place.” + +The coxswain, who stood by with the true sailor’s air of unconcern in +strange surroundings, struck in quietly— + +“If your honour will believe me Shank’s pony’s the best for this job. I +would have to leave the beast somewhere, anyhow, since the captain has +told me that half my way will be along paths fit only for goats.” + +The diminutive man made a step forward, and speaking through the folds of +the cloak which seemed to muffle a sarcastic intention— + +“Si, señor. They are too honest in this village to have a single mule +amongst them for your worship’s service. To that I can bear testimony. +In these times it’s only rogues or very clever men who can manage to have +mules or any other four-footed beasts and the wherewithal to keep them. +But what this valiant mariner wants is a guide; and here, señor, behold +my brother-in-law, Bernardino, wine-seller, and alcade of this most +Christian and hospitable village, who will find you one.” + +This, Mr. Byrne says in his relation, was the only thing to do. A youth +in a ragged coat and goat-skin breeches was produced after some more +talk. The English officer stood treat to the whole village, and while +the peasants drank he and Cuba Tom took their departure accompanied by +the guide. The diminutive man in the cloak had disappeared. + +Byrne went along with the coxswain out of the village. He wanted to see +him fairly on his way; and he would have gone a greater distance, if the +seaman had not suggested respectfully the advisability of return so as +not to keep the ship a moment longer than necessary so close in with the +shore on such an unpromising looking morning. A wild gloomy sky hung +over their heads when they took leave of each other, and their +surroundings of rank bushes and stony fields were dreary. + +“In four days’ time,” were Byrne’s last words, “the ship will stand in +and send a boat on shore if the weather permits. If not you’ll have to +make it out on shore the best you can till we come along to take you +off.” + +“Right you are, sir,” answered Tom, and strode on. Byrne watched him +step out on a narrow path. In a thick pea-jacket with a pair of pistols +in his belt, a cutlass by his side, and a stout cudgel in his hand, he +looked a sturdy figure and well able to take care of himself. He turned +round for a moment to wave his hand, giving to Byrne one more view of his +honest bronzed face with bushy whiskers. The lad in goatskin breeches +looking, Byrne says, like a faun or a young satyr leaping ahead, stopped +to wait for him, and then went off at a bound. Both disappeared. + +Byrne turned back. The hamlet was hidden in a fold of the ground, and +the spot seemed the most lonely corner of the earth and as if accursed in +its uninhabited desolate barrenness. Before he had walked many yards, +there appeared very suddenly from behind a bush the muffled up diminutive +Spaniard. Naturally Byrne stopped short. + +The other made a mysterious gesture with a tiny hand peeping from under +his cloak. His hat hung very much at the side of his head. “Señor,” he +said without any preliminaries. “Caution! It is a positive fact that +one-eyed Bernardino, my brother-in-law, has at this moment a mule in his +stable. And why he who is not clever has a mule there? Because he is a +rogue; a man without conscience. Because I had to give up the _macho_ to +him to secure for myself a roof to sleep under and a mouthful of _olla_ +to keep my soul in this insignificant body of mine. Yet, señor, it +contains a heart many times bigger than the mean thing which beats in the +breast of that brute connection of mine of which I am ashamed, though I +opposed that marriage with all my power. Well, the misguided woman +suffered enough. She had her purgatory on this earth—God rest her soul.” + +Byrne says he was so astonished by the sudden appearance of that +sprite-like being, and by the sardonic bitterness of the speech, that he +was unable to disentangle the significant fact from what seemed but a +piece of family history fired out at him without rhyme or reason. Not at +first. He was confounded and at the same time he was impressed by the +rapid forcible delivery, quite different from the frothy excited +loquacity of an Italian. So he stared while the homunculus letting his +cloak fall about him, aspired an immense quantity of snuff out of the +hollow of his palm. + +“A mule,” exclaimed Byrne seizing at last the real aspect of the +discourse. “You say he has got a mule? That’s queer! Why did he refuse +to let me have it?” + +The diminutive Spaniard muffled himself up again with great dignity. + +“_Quien sabe_,” he said coldly, with a shrug of his draped shoulders. +“He is a great _politico_ in everything he does. But one thing your +worship may be certain of—that his intentions are always rascally. This +husband of my _defunta_ sister ought to have been married a long time ago +to the widow with the wooden legs.” {188} + +“I see. But remember that, whatever your motives, your worship +countenanced him in this lie.” + +The bright unhappy eyes on each side of a predatory nose confronted Byrne +without wincing, while with that testiness which lurks so often at the +bottom of Spanish dignity— + +“No doubt the señor officer would not lose an ounce of blood if I were +stuck under the fifth rib,” he retorted. “But what of this poor sinner +here?” Then changing his tone. “Señor, by the necessities of the times +I live here in exile, a Castilian and an old Christian, existing +miserably in the midst of these brute Asturians, and dependent on the +worst of them all, who has less conscience and scruples than a wolf. And +being a man of intelligence I govern myself accordingly. Yet I can +hardly contain my scorn. You have heard the way I spoke. A caballero of +parts like your worship might have guessed that there was a cat in +there.” + +“What cat?” said Byrne uneasily. “Oh, I see. Something suspicious. No, +señor. I guessed nothing. My nation are not good guessers at that sort +of thing; and, therefore, I ask you plainly whether that wine-seller has +spoken the truth in other particulars?” + +“There are certainly no Frenchmen anywhere about,” said the little man +with a return to his indifferent manner. + +“Or robbers—_ladrones_?” + +“_Ladrones en grande_—no! Assuredly not,” was the answer in a cold +philosophical tone. “What is there left for them to do after the French? +And nobody travels in these times. But who can say! Opportunity makes +the robber. Still that mariner of yours has a fierce aspect, and with +the son of a cat rats will have no play. But there is a saying, too, +that where honey is there will soon be flies.” + +This oracular discourse exasperated Byrne. “In the name of God,” he +cried, “tell me plainly if you think my man is reasonably safe on his +journey.” + +The homunculus, undergoing one of his rapid changes, seized the officer’s +arm. The grip of his little hand was astonishing. + +“Señor! Bernardino had taken notice of him. What more do you want? And +listen—men have disappeared on this road—on a certain portion of this +road, when Bernardino kept a _meson_, an inn, and I, his brother-in-law, +had coaches and mules for hire. Now there are no travellers, no coaches. +The French have ruined me. Bernardino has retired here for reasons of +his own after my sister died. They were three to torment the life out of +her, he and Erminia and Lucilla, two aunts of his—all affiliated to the +devil. And now he has robbed me of my last mule. You are an armed man. +Demand the _macho_ from him, with a pistol to his head, señor—it is not +his, I tell you—and ride after your man who is so precious to you. And +then you shall both be safe, for no two travellers have been ever known +to disappear together in these days. As to the beast, I, its owner, I +confide it to your honour.” + +They were staring hard at each other, and Byrne nearly burst into a laugh +at the ingenuity and transparency of the little man’s plot to regain +possession of his mule. But he had no difficulty to keep a straight face +because he felt deep within himself a strange inclination to do that very +extraordinary thing. He did not laugh, but his lip quivered; at which +the diminutive Spaniard, detaching his black glittering eyes from Byrne’s +face, turned his back on him brusquely with a gesture and a fling of the +cloak which somehow expressed contempt, bitterness, and discouragement +all at once. He turned away and stood still, his hat aslant, muffled up +to the ears. But he was not offended to the point of refusing the silver +_duro_ which Byrne offered him with a non-committal speech as if nothing +extraordinary had passed between them. + +“I must make haste on board now,” said Byrne, then. + +“_Vaya usted con Dios_,” muttered the gnome. And this interview ended +with a sarcastic low sweep of the hat which was replaced at the same +perilous angle as before. + +Directly the boat had been hoisted the ship’s sails were filled on the +off-shore tack, and Byrne imparted the whole story to his captain, who +was but a very few years older than himself. There was some amused +indignation at it—but while they laughed they looked gravely at each +other. A Spanish dwarf trying to beguile an officer of his majesty’s +navy into stealing a mule for him—that was too funny, too ridiculous, too +incredible. Those were the exclamations of the captain. He couldn’t get +over the grotesqueness of it. + +“Incredible. That’s just it,” murmured Byrne at last in a significant +tone. + +They exchanged a long stare. “It’s as clear as daylight,” affirmed the +captain impatiently, because in his heart he was not certain. And Tom +the best seaman in the ship for one, the good-humouredly deferential +friend of his boyhood for the other, was becoming endowed with a +compelling fascination, like a symbolic figure of loyalty appealing to +their feelings and their conscience, so that they could not detach their +thoughts from his safety. Several times they went up on deck, only to +look at the coast, as if it could tell them something of his fate. It +stretched away, lengthening in the distance, mute, naked, and savage, +veiled now and then by the slanting cold shafts of rain. The westerly +swell rolled its interminable angry lines of foam and big dark clouds +flew over the ship in a sinister procession. + +“I wish to goodness you had done what your little friend in the yellow +hat wanted you to do,” said the commander of the sloop late in the +afternoon with visible exasperation. + +“Do you, sir?” answered Byrne, bitter with positive anguish. “I wonder +what you would have said afterwards? Why! I might have been kicked out +of the service for looting a mule from a nation in alliance with His +Majesty. Or I might have been battered to a pulp with flails and +pitch-forks—a pretty tale to get abroad about one of your officers—while +trying to steal a mule. Or chased ignominiously to the boat—for you +would not have expected me to shoot down unoffending people for the sake +of a mangy mule. . . And yet,” he added in a low voice, “I almost wish +myself I had done it.” + +Before dark those two young men had worked themselves up into a highly +complex psychological state of scornful scepticism and alarmed credulity. +It tormented them exceedingly; and the thought that it would have to last +for six days at least, and possibly be prolonged further for an +indefinite time, was not to be borne. The ship was therefore put on the +inshore tack at dark. All through the gusty dark night she went towards +the land to look for her man, at times lying over in the heavy puffs, at +others rolling idle in the swell, nearly stationary, as if she too had a +mind of her own to swing perplexed between cool reason and warm impulse. + +Then just at daybreak a boat put off from her and went on tossed by the +seas towards the shallow cove where, with considerable difficulty, an +officer in a thick coat and a round hat managed to land on a strip of +shingle. + +“It was my wish,” writes Mr. Byrne, “a wish of which my captain approved, +to land secretly if possible. I did not want to be seen either by my +aggrieved friend in the yellow hat, whose motives were not clear, or by +the one-eyed wine-seller, who may or may not have been affiliated to the +devil, or indeed by any other dweller in that primitive village. But +unfortunately the cove was the only possible landing place for miles; and +from the steepness of the ravine I couldn’t make a circuit to avoid the +houses.” + +“Fortunately,” he goes on, “all the people were yet in their beds. It +was barely daylight when I found myself walking on the thick layer of +sodden leaves filling the only street. No soul was stirring abroad, no +dog barked. The silence was profound, and I had concluded with some +wonder that apparently no dogs were kept in the hamlet, when I heard a +low snarl, and from a noisome alley between two hovels emerged a vile cur +with its tail between its legs. He slunk off silently showing me his +teeth as he ran before me, and he disappeared so suddenly that he might +have been the unclean incarnation of the Evil One. There was, too, +something so weird in the manner of its coming and vanishing, that my +spirits, already by no means very high, became further depressed by the +revolting sight of this creature as if by an unlucky presage.” + +He got away from the coast unobserved, as far as he knew, then struggled +manfully to the west against wind and rain, on a barren dark upland, +under a sky of ashes. Far away the harsh and desolate mountains raising +their scarped and denuded ridges seemed to wait for him menacingly. The +evening found him fairly near to them, but, in sailor language, uncertain +of his position, hungry, wet, and tired out by a day of steady tramping +over broken ground during which he had seen very few people, and had been +unable to obtain the slightest intelligence of Tom Corbin’s passage. +“On! on! I must push on,” he had been saying to himself through the hours +of solitary effort, spurred more by incertitude than by any definite fear +or definite hope. + +The lowering daylight died out quickly, leaving him faced by a broken +bridge. He descended into the ravine, forded a narrow stream by the last +gleam of rapid water, and clambering out on the other side was met by the +night which fell like a bandage over his eyes. The wind sweeping in the +darkness the broadside of the sierra worried his ears by a continuous +roaring noise as of a maddened sea. He suspected that he had lost the +road. Even in daylight, with its ruts and mud-holes and ledges of +outcropping stone, it was difficult to distinguish from the dreary waste +of the moor interspersed with boulders and clumps of naked bushes. But, +as he says, “he steered his course by the feel of the wind,” his hat +rammed low on his brow, his head down, stopping now and again from mere +weariness of mind rather than of body—as if not his strength but his +resolution were being overtaxed by the strain of endeavour half suspected +to be vain, and by the unrest of his feelings. + +In one of these pauses borne in the wind faintly as if from very far away +he heard a sound of knocking, just knocking on wood. He noticed that the +wind had lulled suddenly. + +His heart started beating tumultuously because in himself he carried the +impression of the desert solitudes he had been traversing for the last +six hours—the oppressive sense of an uninhabited world. When he raised +his head a gleam of light, illusory as it often happens in dense +darkness, swam before his eyes. While he peered, the sound of feeble +knocking was repeated—and suddenly he felt rather than saw the existence +of a massive obstacle in his path. What was it? The spur of a hill? Or +was it a house! Yes. It was a house right close, as though it had risen +from the ground or had come gliding to meet him, dumb and pallid; from +some dark recess of the night. It towered loftily. He had come up under +its lee; another three steps and he could have touched the wall with his +hand. It was no doubt a _posada_ and some other traveller was trying for +admittance. He heard again the sound of cautious knocking. + +Next moment a broad band of light fell into the night through the opened +door. Byrne stepped eagerly into it, whereupon the person outside leaped +with a stifled cry away into the night. An exclamation of surprise was +heard too, from within. Byrne, flinging himself against the half closed +door, forced his way in against some considerable resistance. + +A miserable candle, a mere rushlight, burned at the end of a long deal +table. And in its light Byrne saw, staggering yet, the girl he had +driven from the door. She had a short black skirt, an orange shawl, a +dark complexion—and the escaped single hairs from the mass, sombre and +thick like a forest and held up by a comb, made a black mist about her +low forehead. A shrill lamentable howl of: “Misericordia!” came in two +voices from the further end of the long room, where the fire-light of an +open hearth played between heavy shadows. The girl recovering herself +drew a hissing breath through her set teeth. + +It is unnecessary to report the long process of questions and answers by +which he soothed the fears of two old women who sat on each side of the +fire, on which stood a large earthenware pot. Byrne thought at once of +two witches watching the brewing of some deadly potion. But all the +same, when one of them raising forward painfully her broken form lifted +the cover of the pot, the escaping steam had an appetising smell. The +other did not budge, but sat hunched up, her head trembling all the time. + +They were horrible. There was something grotesque in their decrepitude. +Their toothless mouths, their hooked noses, the meagreness of the active +one, and the hanging yellow cheeks of the other (the still one, whose +head trembled) would have been laughable if the sight of their dreadful +physical degradation had not been appalling to one’s eyes, had not +gripped one’s heart with poignant amazement at the unspeakable misery of +age, at the awful persistency of life becoming at last an object of +disgust and dread. + +To get over it Byrne began to talk, saying that he was an Englishman, and +that he was in search of a countryman who ought to have passed this way. +Directly he had spoken the recollection of his parting with Tom came up +in his mind with amazing vividness: the silent villagers, the angry +gnome, the one-eyed wine-seller, Bernardino. Why! These two unspeakable +frights must be that man’s aunts—affiliated to the devil. + +Whatever they had been once it was impossible to imagine what use such +feeble creatures could be to the devil, now, in the world of the living. +Which was Lucilla and which was Erminia? They were now things without a +name. A moment of suspended animation followed Byrne’s words. The +sorceress with the spoon ceased stirring the mess in the iron pot, the +very trembling of the other’s head stopped for the space of breath. In +this infinitesimal fraction of a second Byrne had the sense of being +really on his quest, of having reached the turn of the path, almost +within hail of Tom. + +“They have seen him,” he thought with conviction. Here was at last +somebody who had seen him. He made sure they would deny all knowledge of +the Ingles; but on the contrary they were eager to tell him that he had +eaten and slept the night in the house. They both started talking +together, describing his appearance and behaviour. An excitement quite +fierce in its feebleness possessed them. The doubled-up sorceress +flourished aloft her wooden spoon, the puffy monster got off her stool +and screeched, stepping from one foot to the other, while the trembling +of her head was accelerated to positive vibration. Byrne was quite +disconcerted by their excited behaviour. . . Yes! The big, fierce Ingles +went away in the morning, after eating a piece of bread and drinking some +wine. And if the caballero wished to follow the same path nothing could +be easier—in the morning. + +“You will give me somebody to show me the way?” said Byrne. + +“Si, señor. A proper youth. The man the caballero saw going out.” + +“But he was knocking at the door,” protested Byrne. “He only bolted when +he saw me. He was coming in.” + +“No! No!” the two horrid witches screamed out together. “Going out. +Going out!” + +After all it may have been true. The sound of knocking had been faint, +elusive, reflected Byrne. Perhaps only the effect of his fancy. He +asked— + +“Who is that man?” + +“Her _novio_.” They screamed pointing to the girl. “He is gone home to +a village far away from here. But he will return in the morning. Her +_novio_! And she is an orphan—the child of poor Christian people. She +lives with us for the love of God, for the love of God.” + +The orphan crouching on the corner of the hearth had been looking at +Byrne. He thought that she was more like a child of Satan kept there by +these two weird harridans for the love of the Devil. Her eyes were a +little oblique, her mouth rather thick, but admirably formed; her dark +face had a wild beauty, voluptuous and untamed. As to the character of +her steadfast gaze attached upon him with a sensuously savage attention, +“to know what it was like,” says Mr. Byrne, “you have only to observe a +hungry cat watching a bird in a cage or a mouse inside a trap.” + +It was she who served him the food, of which he was glad; though with +those big slanting black eyes examining him at close range, as if he had +something curious written on his face, she gave him an uncomfortable +sensation. But anything was better than being approached by these +blear-eyed nightmarish witches. His apprehensions somehow had been +soothed; perhaps by the sensation of warmth after severe exposure and the +ease of resting after the exertion of fighting the gale inch by inch all +the way. He had no doubt of Tom’s safety. He was now sleeping in the +mountain camp having been met by Gonzales’ men. + +Byrne rose, filled a tin goblet with wine out of a skin hanging on the +wall, and sat down again. The witch with the mummy face began to talk to +him, ramblingly of old times; she boasted of the inn’s fame in those +better days. Great people in their own coaches stopped there. An +archbishop slept once in the _casa_, a long, long time ago. + +The witch with the puffy face seemed to be listening from her stool, +motionless, except for the trembling of her head. The girl (Byrne was +certain she was a casual gipsy admitted there for some reason or other) +sat on the hearth stone in the glow of the embers. She hummed a tune to +herself, rattling a pair of castanets slightly now and then. At the +mention of the archbishop she chuckled impiously and turned her head to +look at Byrne, so that the red glow of the fire flashed in her black eyes +and on her white teeth under the dark cowl of the enormous overmantel. +And he smiled at her. + +He rested now in the ease of security. His advent not having been +expected there could be no plot against him in existence. Drowsiness +stole upon his senses. He enjoyed it, but keeping a hold, so he thought +at least, on his wits; but he must have been gone further than he thought +because he was startled beyond measure by a fiendish uproar. He had +never heard anything so pitilessly strident in his life. The witches had +started a fierce quarrel about something or other. Whatever its origin +they were now only abusing each other violently, without arguments; their +senile screams expressed nothing but wicked anger and ferocious dismay. +The gipsy girl’s black eyes flew from one to the other. Never before had +Byrne felt himself so removed from fellowship with human beings. Before +he had really time to understand the subject of the quarrel, the girl +jumped up rattling her castanets loudly. A silence fell. She came up to +the table and bending over, her eyes in his— + +“Señor,” she said with decision, “You shall sleep in the archbishop’s +room.” + +Neither of the witches objected. The dried-up one bent double was +propped on a stick. The puffy faced one had now a crutch. + +Byrne got up, walked to the door, and turning the key in the enormous +lock put it coolly in his pocket. This was clearly the only entrance, +and he did not mean to be taken unawares by whatever danger there might +have been lurking outside. + +When he turned from the door he saw the two witches “affiliated to the +Devil” and the Satanic girl looking at him in silence. He wondered if +Tom Corbin took the same precaution last might. And thinking of him he +had again that queer impression of his nearness. The world was perfectly +dumb. And in this stillness he heard the blood beating in his ears with +a confused rushing noise, in which there seemed to be a voice uttering +the words: “Mr. Byrne, look out, sir.” Tom’s voice. He shuddered; for +the delusions of the senses of hearing are the most vivid of all, and +from their nature have a compelling character. + +It seemed impossible that Tom should not be there. Again a slight chill +as of stealthy draught penetrated through his very clothes and passed +over all his body. He shook off the impression with an effort. + +It was the girl who preceded him upstairs carrying an iron lamp from the +naked flame of which ascended a thin thread of smoke. Her soiled white +stockings were full of holes. + +With the same quiet resolution with which he had locked the door below, +Byrne threw open one after another the doors in the corridor. All the +rooms were empty except for some nondescript lumber in one or two. And +the girl seeing what he would be at stopped every time, raising the smoky +light in each doorway patiently. Meantime she observed him with +sustained attention. The last door of all she threw open herself. + +“You sleep here, señor,” she murmured in a voice light like a child’s +breath, offering him the lamp. + +“_Buenos noches_, _senorita_,” he said politely, taking it from her. + +She didn’t return the wish audibly, though her lips did move a little, +while her gaze black like a starless night never for a moment wavered +before him. He stepped in, and as he turned to close the door she was +still there motionless and disturbing, with her voluptuous mouth and +slanting eyes, with the expression of expectant sensual ferocity of a +baffled cat. He hesitated for a moment, and in the dumb house he heard +again the blood pulsating ponderously in his ears, while once more the +illusion of Tom’s voice speaking earnestly somewhere near by was +specially terrifying, because this time he could not make out the words. + +He slammed the door in the girl’s face at last, leaving her in the dark; +and he opened it again almost on the instant. Nobody. She had vanished +without the slightest sound. He closed the door quickly and bolted it +with two heavy bolts. + +A profound mistrust possessed him suddenly. Why did the witches quarrel +about letting him sleep here? And what meant that stare of the girl as +if she wanted to impress his features for ever in her mind? His own +nervousness alarmed him. He seemed to himself to be removed very far +from mankind. + +He examined his room. It was not very high, just high enough to take the +bed which stood under an enormous baldaquin-like canopy from which fell +heavy curtains at foot and head; a bed certainly worthy of an archbishop. +There was a heavy table carved all round the edges, some arm-chairs of +enormous weight like the spoils of a grandee’s palace; a tall shallow +wardrobe placed against the wall and with double doors. He tried them. +Locked. A suspicion came into his mind, and he snatched the lamp to make +a closer examination. No, it was not a disguised entrance. That heavy, +tall piece of furniture stood clear of the wall by quite an inch. He +glanced at the bolts of his room door. No! No one could get at him +treacherously while he slept. But would he be able to sleep? he asked +himself anxiously. If only he had Tom there—the trusty seaman who had +fought at his right hand in a cutting out affair or two, and had always +preached to him the necessity to take care of himself. “For it’s no +great trick,” he used to say, “to get yourself killed in a hot fight. +Any fool can do that. The proper pastime is to fight the Frenchies and +then live to fight another day.” + +Byrne found it a hard matter not to fall into listening to the silence. +Somehow he had the conviction that nothing would break it unless he heard +again the haunting sound of Tom’s voice. He had heard it twice before. +Odd! And yet no wonder, he argued with himself reasonably, since he had +been thinking of the man for over thirty hours continuously and, what’s +more, inconclusively. For his anxiety for Tom had never taken a definite +shape. “Disappear,” was the only word connected with the idea of Tom’s +danger. It was very vague and awful. “Disappear!” What did that mean? + +Byrne shuddered, and then said to himself that he must be a little +feverish. But Tom had not disappeared. Byrne had just heard of him. +And again the young man felt the blood beating in his ears. He sat still +expecting every moment to hear through the pulsating strokes the sound of +Tom’s voice. He waited straining his ears, but nothing came. Suddenly +the thought occurred to him: “He has not disappeared, but he cannot make +himself heard.” + +He jumped up from the arm-chair. How absurd! Laying his pistol and his +hanger on the table he took off his boots and, feeling suddenly too tired +to stand, flung himself on the bed which he found soft and comfortable +beyond his hopes. + +He had felt very wakeful, but he must have dozed off after all, because +the next thing he knew he was sitting up in bed and trying to recollect +what it was that Tom’s voice had said. Oh! He remembered it now. It +had said: “Mr. Byrne! Look out, sir!” A warning this. But against +what? + +He landed with one leap in the middle of the floor, gasped once, then +looked all round the room. The window was shuttered and barred with an +iron bar. Again he ran his eyes slowly all round the bare walls, and +even looked up at the ceiling, which was rather high. Afterwards he went +to the door to examine the fastenings. They consisted of two enormous +iron bolts sliding into holes made in the wall; and as the corridor +outside was too narrow to admit of any battering arrangement or even to +permit an axe to be swung, nothing could burst the door open—unless +gunpowder. But while he was still making sure that the lower bolt was +pushed well home, he received the impression of somebody’s presence in +the room. It was so strong that he spun round quicker than lightning. +There was no one. Who could there be? And yet . . . + +It was then that he lost the decorum and restraint a man keeps up for his +own sake. He got down on his hands and knees, with the lamp on the +floor, to look under the bed, like a silly girl. He saw a lot of dust +and nothing else. He got up, his cheeks burning, and walked about +discontented with his own behaviour and unreasonably angry with Tom for +not leaving him alone. The words: “Mr. Byrne! Look out, sir,” kept on +repeating themselves in his head in a tone of warning. + +“Hadn’t I better just throw myself on the bed and try to go to sleep,” he +asked himself. But his eyes fell on the tall wardrobe, and he went +towards it feeling irritated with himself and yet unable to desist. How +he could explain to-morrow the burglarious misdeed to the two odious +witches he had no idea. Nevertheless he inserted the point of his hanger +between the two halves of the door and tried to prize them open. They +resisted. He swore, sticking now hotly to his purpose. His mutter: “I +hope you will be satisfied, confound you,” was addressed to the absent +Tom. Just then the doors gave way and flew open. + +He was there. + +He—the trusty, sagacious, and courageous Tom was there, drawn up shadowy +and stiff, in a prudent silence, which his wide-open eyes by their fixed +gleam seemed to command Byrne to respect. But Byrne was too startled to +make a sound. Amazed, he stepped back a little—and on the instant the +seaman flung himself forward headlong as if to clasp his officer round +the neck. Instinctively Byrne put out his faltering arms; he felt the +horrible rigidity of the body and then the coldness of death as their +heads knocked together and their faces came into contact. They reeled, +Byrne hugging Tom close to his breast in order not to let him fall with a +crash. He had just strength enough to lower the awful burden gently to +the floor—then his head swam, his legs gave way, and he sank on his +knees, leaning over the body with his hands resting on the breast of that +man once full of generous life, and now as insensible as a stone. + +“Dead! my poor Tom, dead,” he repeated mentally. The light of the lamp +standing near the edge of the table fell from above straight on the stony +empty stare of these eyes which naturally had a mobile and merry +expression. + +Byrne turned his own away from them. Tom’s black silk neckerchief was +not knotted on his breast. It was gone. The murderers had also taken +off his shoes and stockings. And noticing this spoliation, the exposed +throat, the bare up-turned feet, Byrne felt his eyes run full of tears. +In other respects the seaman was fully dressed; neither was his clothing +disarranged as it must have been in a violent struggle. Only his checked +shirt had been pulled a little out the waistband in one place, just +enough to ascertain whether he had a money belt fastened round his body. +Byrne began to sob into his handkerchief. + +It was a nervous outburst which passed off quickly. Remaining on his +knees he contemplated sadly the athletic body of as fine a seaman as ever +had drawn a cutlass, laid a gun, or passed the weather earring in a gale, +lying stiff and cold, his cheery, fearless spirit departed—perhaps +turning to him, his boy chum, to his ship out there rolling on the grey +seas off an iron-bound coast, at the very moment of its flight. + +He perceived that the six brass buttons of Tom’s jacket had been cut off. +He shuddered at the notion of the two miserable and repulsive witches +busying themselves ghoulishly about the defenceless body of his friend. +Cut off. Perhaps with the same knife which . . . The head of one +trembled; the other was bent double, and their eyes were red and bleared, +their infamous claws unsteady. . . It must have been in this very room +too, for Tom could not have been killed in the open and brought in here +afterwards. Of that Byrne was certain. Yet those devilish crones could +not have killed him themselves even by taking him unawares—and Tom would +be always on his guard of course. Tom was a very wide awake wary man +when engaged on any service. . . And in fact how did they murder him? +Who did? In what way? + +Byrne jumped up, snatched the lamp off the table, and stooped swiftly +over the body. The light revealed on the clothing no stain, no trace, no +spot of blood anywhere. Byrne’s hands began to shake so that he had to +set the lamp on the floor and turn away his head in order to recover from +this agitation. + +Then he began to explore that cold, still, and rigid body for a stab, a +gunshot wound, for the trace of some killing blow. He felt all over the +skull anxiously. It was whole. He slipped his hand under the neck. It +was unbroken. With terrified eyes he peered close under the chin and saw +no marks of strangulation on the throat. + +There were no signs anywhere. He was just dead. + +Impulsively Byrne got away from the body as if the mystery of an +incomprehensible death had changed his pity into suspicion and dread. +The lamp on the floor near the set, still face of the seaman showed it +staring at the ceiling as if despairingly. In the circle of light Byrne +saw by the undisturbed patches of thick dust on the floor that there had +been no struggle in that room. “He has died outside,” he thought. Yes, +outside in that narrow corridor, where there was hardly room to turn, the +mysterious death had come to his poor dear Tom. The impulse of snatching +up his pistols and rushing out of the room abandoned Byrne suddenly. For +Tom, too, had been armed—with just such powerless weapons as he himself +possessed—pistols, a cutlass! And Tom had died a nameless death, by +incomprehensible means. + +A new thought came to Byrne. That stranger knocking at the door and +fleeing so swiftly at his appearance had come there to remove the body. +Aha! That was the guide the withered witch had promised would show the +English officer the shortest way of rejoining his man. A promise, he saw +it now, of dreadful import. He who had knocked would have two bodies to +deal with. Man and officer would go forth from the house together. For +Byrne was certain now that he would have to die before the morning—and in +the same mysterious manner, leaving behind him an unmarked body. + +The sight of a smashed head, of a throat cut, of a gaping gunshot wound, +would have been an inexpressible relief. It would have soothed all his +fears. His soul cried within him to that dead man whom he had never +found wanting in danger. “Why don’t you tell me what I am to look for, +Tom? Why don’t you?” But in rigid immobility, extended on his back, he +seemed to preserve an austere silence, as if disdaining in the finality +of his awful knowledge to hold converse with the living. + +Suddenly Byrne flung himself on his knees by the side of the body, and +dry-eyed, fierce, opened the shirt wide on the breast, as if to tear the +secret forcibly from that cold heart which had been so loyal to him in +life! Nothing! Nothing! He raised the lamp, and all the sign +vouchsafed to him by that face which used to be so kindly in expression +was a small bruise on the forehead—the least thing, a mere mark. The +skin even was not broken. He stared at it a long time as if lost in a +dreadful dream. Then he observed that Tom’s hands were clenched as +though he had fallen facing somebody in a fight with fists. His +knuckles, on closer view, appeared somewhat abraded. Both hands. + +The discovery of these slight signs was more appalling to Byrne than the +absolute absence of every mark would have been. So Tom had died striking +against something which could be hit, and yet could kill one without +leaving a wound—by a breath. + +Terror, hot terror, began to play about Byrne’s heart like a tongue of +flame that touches and withdraws before it turns a thing to ashes. He +backed away from the body as far as he could, then came forward +stealthily casting fearful glances to steal another look at the bruised +forehead. There would perhaps be such a faint bruise on his own +forehead—before the morning. + +“I can’t bear it,” he whispered to himself. Tom was for him now an +object of horror, a sight at once tempting and revolting to his fear. He +couldn’t bear to look at him. + +At last, desperation getting the better of his increasing horror, he +stepped forward from the wall against which he had been leaning, seized +the corpse under the armpits, and began to lug it over to the bed. The +bare heels of the seaman trailed on the floor noiselessly. He was heavy +with the dead weight of inanimate objects. With a last effort Byrne +landed him face downwards on the edge of the bed, rolled him over, +snatched from under this stiff passive thing a sheet with which he +covered it over. Then he spread the curtains at head and foot so that +joining together as he shook their folds they hid the bed altogether from +his sight. + +He stumbled towards a chair, and fell on it. The perspiration poured +from his face for a moment, and then his veins seemed to carry for a +while a thin stream of half, frozen blood. Complete terror had +possession of him now, a nameless terror which had turned his heart to +ashes. + +He sat upright in the straight-backed chair, the lamp burning at his +feet, his pistols and his hanger at his left elbow on the end of the +table, his eyes turning incessantly in their sockets round the walls, +over the ceiling, over the floor, in the expectation of a mysterious and +appalling vision. The thing which could deal death in a breath was +outside that bolted door. But Byrne believed neither in walls nor bolts +now. Unreasoning terror turning everything to account, his old time +boyish admiration of the athletic Tom, the undaunted Tom (he had seemed +to him invincible), helped to paralyse his faculties, added to his +despair. + +He was no longer Edgar Byrne. He was a tortured soul suffering more +anguish than any sinner’s body had ever suffered from rack or boot. The +depth of his torment may be measured when I say that this young man, as +brave at least as the average of his kind, contemplated seizing a pistol +and firing into his own head. But a deadly, chilly, langour was +spreading over his limbs. It was as if his flesh had been wet plaster +stiffening slowly about his ribs. Presently, he thought, the two witches +will be coming in, with crutch and stick—horrible, grotesque, +monstrous—affiliated to the devil—to put a mark on his forehead, the tiny +little bruise of death. And he wouldn’t be able to do anything. Tom had +struck out at something, but he was not like Tom. His limbs were dead +already. He sat still, dying the death over and over again; and the only +part of him which moved were his eyes, turning round and round in their +sockets, running over the walls, the floor, the ceiling, again and again +till suddenly they became motionless and stony—starting out of his head +fixed in the direction of the bed. + +He had seen the heavy curtains stir and shake as if the dead body they +concealed had turned over and sat up. Byrne, who thought the world could +hold no more terrors in store, felt his hair stir at the roots. He +gripped the arms of the chair, his jaw fell, and the sweat broke out on +his brow while his dry tongue clove suddenly to the roof of his mouth. +Again the curtains stirred, but did not open. “Don’t, Tom!” Byrne made +effort to shout, but all he heard was a slight moan such as an uneasy +sleeper may make. He felt that his brain was going, for, now, it seemed +to him that the ceiling over the bed had moved, had slanted, and came +level again—and once more the closed curtains swayed gently as if about +to part. + +Byrne closed his eyes not to see the awful apparition of the seaman’s +corpse coming out animated by an evil spirit. In the profound silence of +the room he endured a moment of frightful agony, then opened his eyes +again. And he saw at once that the curtains remained closed still, but +that the ceiling over the bed had risen quite a foot. With the last +gleam of reason left to him he understood that it was the enormous +baldaquin over the bed which was coming down, while the curtains attached +to it swayed softly, sinking gradually to the floor. His drooping jaw +snapped to—and half rising in his chair he watched mutely the noiseless +descent of the monstrous canopy. It came down in short smooth rushes +till lowered half way or more, when it took a run and settled swiftly its +turtle-back shape with the deep border piece fitting exactly the edge of +the bedstead. A slight crack or two of wood were heard, and the +overpowering stillness of the room resumed its sway. + +Byrne stood up, gasped for breath, and let out a cry of rage and dismay, +the first sound which he is perfectly certain did make its way past his +lips on this night of terrors. This then was the death he had escaped! +This was the devilish artifice of murder poor Tom’s soul had perhaps +tried from beyond the border to warn him of. For this was how he had +died. Byrne was certain he had heard the voice of the seaman, faintly +distinct in his familiar phrase, “Mr. Byrne! Look out, sir!” and again +uttering words he could not make out. But then the distance separating +the living from the dead is so great! Poor Tom had tried. Byrne ran to +the bed and attempted to lift up, to push off the horrible lid smothering +the body. It resisted his efforts, heavy as lead, immovable like a +tombstone. The rage of vengeance made him desist; his head buzzed with +chaotic thoughts of extermination, he turned round the room as if he +could find neither his weapons nor the way out; and all the time he +stammered awful menaces. . . + +A violent battering at the door of the inn recalled him to his soberer +senses. He flew to the window pulled the shutters open, and looked out. +In the faint dawn he saw below him a mob of men. Ha! He would go and +face at once this murderous lot collected no doubt for his undoing. +After his struggle with nameless terrors he yearned for an open fray with +armed enemies. But he must have remained yet bereft of his reason, +because forgetting his weapons he rushed downstairs with a wild cry, +unbarred the door while blows were raining on it outside, and flinging it +open flew with his bare hands at the throat of the first man he saw +before him. They rolled over together. Byrne’s hazy intention was to +break through, to fly up the mountain path, and come back presently with +Gonzales’ men to exact an exemplary vengeance. He fought furiously till +a tree, a house, a mountain, seemed to crash down upon his head—and he +knew no more. + + * * * * * + +Here Mr. Byrne describes in detail the skilful manner in which he found +his broken head bandaged, informs us that he had lost a great deal of +blood, and ascribes the preservation of his sanity to that circumstance. +He sets down Gonzales’ profuse apologies in full too. For it was +Gonzales who, tired of waiting for news from the English, had come down +to the inn with half his band, on his way to the sea. “His excellency,” +he explained, “rushed out with fierce impetuosity, and, moreover, was not +known to us for a friend, and so we . . . etc., etc. When asked what had +become of the witches, he only pointed his finger silently to the ground, +then voiced calmly a moral reflection: “The passion for gold is pitiless +in the very old, señor,” he said. “No doubt in former days they have put +many a solitary traveller to sleep in the archbishop’s bed.” + +“There was also a gipsy girl there,” said Byrne feebly from the +improvised litter on which he was being carried to the coast by a squad +of guerilleros. + +“It was she who winched up that infernal machine, and it was she too who +lowered it that night,” was the answer. + +“But why? Why?” exclaimed Byrne. “Why should she wish for my death?” + +“No doubt for the sake of your excellency’s coat buttons,” said politely +the saturnine Gonzales. “We found those of the dead mariner concealed on +her person. But your excellency may rest assured that everything that is +fitting has been done on this occasion.” + +Byrne asked no more questions. There was still another death which was +considered by Gonzales as “fitting to the occasion.” The one-eyed +Bernardino stuck against the wall of his wine-shop received the charge of +six escopettas into his breast. As the shots rang out the rough bier +with Tom’s body on it went past carried by a bandit-like gang of Spanish +patriots down the ravine to the shore, where two boats from the ship were +waiting for what was left on earth of her best seaman. + +Mr. Byrne, very pale and weak, stepped into the boat which carried the +body of his humble friend. For it was decided that Tom Corbin should +rest far out in the bay of Biscay. The officer took the tiller and, +turning his head for the last look at the shore, saw on the grey hillside +something moving, which he made out to be a little man in a yellow hat +mounted on a mule—that mule without which the fate of Tom Corbin would +have remained mysterious for ever. + + * * * * * + +_June_, 1913. + + + + +BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS + + +CHAPTER I + + +While we were hanging about near the water’s edge, as sailors idling +ashore will do (it was in the open space before the Harbour Office of a +great Eastern port), a man came towards us from the “front” of business +houses, aiming obliquely at the landing steps. He attracted my attention +because in the movement of figures in white drill suits on the pavement +from which he stepped, his costume, the usual tunic and trousers, being +made of light grey flannel, made him noticeable. + +I had time to observe him. He was stout, but he was not grotesque. His +face was round and smooth, his complexion very fair. On his nearer +approach I saw a little moustache made all the fairer by a good many +white hairs. And he had, for a stout man, quite a good chin. In passing +us he exchanged nods with the friend I was with and smiled. + +My friend was Hollis, the fellow who had so many adventures and had known +so many queer people in that part of the (more or less) gorgeous East in +the days of his youth. He said: “That’s a good man. I don’t mean good +in the sense of smart or skilful in his trade. I mean a really _good_ +man.” + +I turned round at once to look at the phenomenon. The “really _good_ +man” had a very broad back. I saw him signal a sampan to come alongside, +get into it, and go off in the direction of a cluster of local steamers +anchored close inshore. + +I said: “He’s a seaman, isn’t he?” + +“Yes. Commands that biggish dark-green steamer: ‘_Sissie_—Glasgow.’ He +has never commanded anything else but the ‘_Sissie_—Glasgow,’ only it +wasn’t always the same _Sissie_. The first he had was about half the +length of this one, and we used to tell poor Davidson that she was a size +too small for him. Even at that time Davidson had bulk. We warned him +he would get callosities on his shoulders and elbows because of the tight +fit of his command. And Davidson could well afford the smiles he gave us +for our chaff. He made lots of money in her. She belonged to a portly +Chinaman resembling a mandarin in a picture-book, with goggles and thin +drooping moustaches, and as dignified as only a Celestial knows how to +be. + +“The best of Chinamen as employers is that they have such gentlemanly +instincts. Once they become convinced that you are a straight man, they +give you their unbounded confidence. You simply can’t do wrong, then. +And they are pretty quick judges of character, too. Davidson’s Chinaman +was the first to find out his worth, on some theoretical principle. One +day in his counting-house, before several white men he was heard to +declare: ‘Captain Davidson is a good man.’ And that settled it. After +that you couldn’t tell if it was Davidson who belonged to the Chinaman or +the Chinaman who belonged to Davidson. It was he who, shortly before he +died, ordered in Glasgow the new _Sissie_ for Davidson to command.” + +We walked into the shade of the Harbour Office and leaned our elbows on +the parapet of the quay. + +“She was really meant to comfort poor Davidson,” continued Hollis. “Can +you fancy anything more naïvely touching than this old mandarin spending +several thousand pounds to console his white man? Well, there she is. +The old mandarin’s sons have inherited her, and Davidson with her; and he +commands her; and what with his salary and trading privileges he makes a +lot of money; and everything is as before; and Davidson even smiles—you +have seen it? Well, the smile’s the only thing which isn’t as before.” + +“Tell me, Hollis,” I asked, “what do you mean by good in this +connection?” + +“Well, there are men who are born good just as others are born witty. +What I mean is his nature. No simpler, more scrupulously delicate soul +had ever lived in such a—a—comfortable envelope. How we used to laugh at +Davidson’s fine scruples! In short, he’s thoroughly humane, and I don’t +imagine there can be much of any other sort of goodness that counts on +this earth. And as he’s that with a shade of particular refinement, I +may well call him a ‘_really_ good man.’” + +I knew from old that Hollis was a firm believer in the final value of +shades. And I said: “I see”—because I really did see Hollis’s Davidson +in the sympathetic stout man who had passed us a little while before. +But I remembered that at the very moment he smiled his placid face +appeared veiled in melancholy—a sort of spiritual shadow. I went on. + +“Who on earth has paid him off for being so fine by spoiling his smile?” + +“That’s quite a story, and I will tell it to you if you like. Confound +it! It’s quite a surprising one, too. Surprising in every way, but +mostly in the way it knocked over poor Davidson—and apparently only +because he is such a good sort. He was telling me all about it only a +few days ago. He said that when he saw these four fellows with their +heads in a bunch over the table, he at once didn’t like it. He didn’t +like it at all. You mustn’t suppose that Davidson is a soft fool. These +men— + +“But I had better begin at the beginning. We must go back to the first +time the old dollars had been called in by our Government in exchange for +a new issue. Just about the time when I left these parts to go home for +a long stay. Every trader in the islands was thinking of getting his old +dollars sent up here in time, and the demand for empty French wine +cases—you know the dozen of vermouth or claret size—was something +unprecedented. The custom was to pack the dollars in little bags of a +hundred each. I don’t know how many bags each case would hold. A good +lot. Pretty tidy sums must have been moving afloat just then. But let +us get away from here. Won’t do to stay in the sun. Where could we—? I +know! let us go to those tiffin-rooms over there.” + +We moved over accordingly. Our appearance in the long empty room at that +early hour caused visible consternation amongst the China boys. But +Hollis led the way to one of the tables between the windows screened by +rattan blinds. A brilliant half-light trembled on the ceiling, on the +whitewashed walls, bathed the multitude of vacant chairs and tables in a +peculiar, stealthy glow. + +“All right. We will get something to eat when it’s ready,” he said, +waving the anxious Chinaman waiter aside. He took his temples touched +with grey between his hands, leaning over the table to bring his face, +his dark, keen eyes, closer to mine. + +“Davidson then was commanding the steamer _Sissie_—the little one which +we used to chaff him about. He ran her alone, with only the Malay serang +for a deck officer. The nearest approach to another white man on board +of her was the engineer, a Portuguese half-caste, as thin as a lath and +quite a youngster at that. For all practical purposes Davidson was +managing that command of his single-handed; and of course this was known +in the port. I am telling you of it because the fact had its influence +on the developments you shall hear of presently. + +“His steamer, being so small, could go up tiny creeks and into shallow +bays and through reefs and over sand-banks, collecting produce, where no +other vessel but a native craft would think of venturing. It is a paying +game, often. Davidson was known to visit in her places that no one else +could find and that hardly anybody had ever heard of. + +“The old dollars being called in, Davidson’s Chinaman thought that the +_Sissie_ would be just the thing to collect them from small traders in +the less frequented parts of the Archipelago. It’s a good business. +Such cases of dollars are dumped aft in the ship’s lazarette, and you get +good freight for very little trouble and space. + +“Davidson, too, thought it was a good idea; and together they made up a +list of his calls on his next trip. Then Davidson (he had naturally the +chart of his voyages in his head) remarked that on his way back he might +look in at a certain settlement up a mere creek, where a poor sort of +white man lived in a native village. Davidson pointed out to his +Chinaman that the fellow was certain to have some rattans to ship. + +“‘Probably enough to fill her forward,’ said Davidson. ‘And that’ll be +better than bringing her back with empty holds. A day more or less +doesn’t matter.’ + +“This was sound talk, and the Chinaman owner could not but agree. But if +it hadn’t been sound it would have been just the same. Davidson did what +he liked. He was a man that could do no wrong. However, this suggestion +of his was not merely a business matter. There was in it a touch of +Davidsonian kindness. For you must know that the man could not have +continued to live quietly up that creek if it had not been for Davidson’s +willingness to call there from time to time. And Davidson’s Chinaman +knew this perfectly well, too. So he only smiled his dignified, bland +smile, and said: ‘All right, Captain. You do what you like.’ + +“I will explain presently how this connection between Davidson and that +fellow came about. Now I want to tell you about the part of this affair +which happened here—the preliminaries of it. + +“You know as well as I do that these tiffin-rooms where we are sitting +now have been in existence for many years. Well, next day about twelve +o’clock, Davidson dropped in here to get something to eat. + +“And here comes the only moment in this story where accident—mere +accident—plays a part. If Davidson had gone home that day for tiffin, +there would be now, after twelve years or more, nothing changed in his +kindly, placid smile. + +“But he came in here; and perhaps it was sitting at this very table that +he remarked to a friend of mine that his next trip was to be a +dollar-collecting trip. He added, laughing, that his wife was making +rather a fuss about it. She had begged him to stay ashore and get +somebody else to take his place for a voyage. She thought there was some +danger on account of the dollars. He told her, he said, that there were +no Java-sea pirates nowadays except in boys’ books. He had laughed at +her fears, but he was very sorry, too; for when she took any notion in +her head it was impossible to argue her out of it. She would be worrying +herself all the time he was away. Well, he couldn’t help it. There was +no one ashore fit to take his place for the trip. + +“This friend of mine and I went home together in the same mail-boat, and +he mentioned that conversation one evening in the Red Sea while we were +talking over the things and people we had just left, with more or less +regret. + +“I can’t say that Davidson occupied a very prominent place. Moral +excellence seldom does. He was quietly appreciated by those who knew him +well; but his more obvious distinction consisted in this, that he was +married. Ours, as you remember, was a bachelor crowd; in spirit anyhow, +if not absolutely in fact. There might have been a few wives in +existence, but if so they were invisible, distant, never alluded to. For +what would have been the good? Davidson alone was visibly married. + +“Being married suited him exactly. It fitted him so well that the +wildest of us did not resent the fact when it was disclosed. Directly he +had felt his feet out here, Davidson sent for his wife. She came out +(from West Australia) in the _Somerset_, under the care of Captain +Ritchie—you know, Monkey-face Ritchie—who couldn’t praise enough her +sweetness, her gentleness, and her charm. She seemed to be the +heaven-born mate for Davidson. She found on arrival a very pretty +bungalow on the hill, ready for her and the little girl they had. Very +soon he got for her a two-wheeled trap and a Burmah pony, and she used to +drive down of an evening to pick up Davidson, on the quay. When +Davidson, beaming, got into the trap, it would become very full all at +once. + +“We used to admire Mrs. Davidson from a distance. It was a girlish head +out of a keepsake. From a distance. We had not many opportunities for a +closer view, because she did not care to give them to us. We would have +been glad to drop in at the Davidson bungalow, but we were made to feel +somehow that we were not very welcome there. Not that she ever said +anything ungracious. She never had much to say for herself. I was +perhaps the one who saw most of the Davidsons at home. What I noticed +under the superficial aspect of vapid sweetness was her convex, obstinate +forehead, and her small, red, pretty, ungenerous mouth. But then I am an +observer with strong prejudices. Most of us were fetched by her white, +swan-like neck, by that drooping, innocent profile. There was a lot of +latent devotion to Davidson’s wife hereabouts, at that time, I can tell +you. But my idea was that she repaid it by a profound suspicion of the +sort of men we were; a mistrust which extended—I fancied—to her very +husband at times. And I thought then she was jealous of him in a way; +though there were no women that she could be jealous about. She had no +women’s society. It’s difficult for a shipmaster’s wife unless there are +other shipmasters’ wives about, and there were none here then. I know +that the dock manager’s wife called on her; but that was all. The +fellows here formed the opinion that Mrs. Davidson was a meek, shy little +thing. She looked it, I must say. And this opinion was so universal +that the friend I have been telling you of remembered his conversation +with Davidson simply because of the statement about Davidson’s wife. He +even wondered to me: ‘Fancy Mrs. Davidson making a fuss to that extent. +She didn’t seem to me the sort of woman that would know how to make a +fuss about anything.’ + +“I wondered, too—but not so much. That bumpy forehead—eh? I had always +suspected her of being silly. And I observed that Davidson must have +been vexed by this display of wifely anxiety. + +“My friend said: ‘No. He seemed rather touched and distressed. There +really was no one he could ask to relieve him; mainly because he intended +to make a call in some God-forsaken creek, to look up a fellow of the +name of Bamtz who apparently had settled there.’ + +“And again my friend wondered. ‘Tell me,’ he cried, ‘what connection can +there be between Davidson and such a creature as Bamtz?’ + +“I don’t remember now what answer I made. A sufficient one could have +been given in two words: ‘Davidson’s goodness.’ _That_ never boggled at +unworthiness if there was the slightest reason for compassion. I don’t +want you to think that Davidson had no discrimination at all. Bamtz +could not have imposed on him. Moreover, everybody knew what Bamtz was. +He was a loafer with a beard. When I think of Bamtz, the first thing I +see is that long black beard and a lot of propitiatory wrinkles at the +corners of two little eyes. There was no such beard from here to +Polynesia, where a beard is a valuable property in itself. Bamtz’s beard +was valuable to him in another way. You know how impressed Orientals are +by a fine beard. Years and years ago, I remember, the grave Abdullah, +the great trader of Sambir, unable to repress signs of astonishment and +admiration at the first sight of that imposing beard. And it’s very well +known that Bamtz lived on Abdullah off and on for several years. It was +a unique beard, and so was the bearer of the same. A unique loafer. He +made a fine art of it, or rather a sort of craft and mystery. One can +understand a fellow living by cadging and small swindles in towns, in +large communities of people; but Bamtz managed to do that trick in the +wilderness, to loaf on the outskirts of the virgin forest. + +“He understood how to ingratiate himself with the natives. He would +arrive in some settlement up a river, make a present of a cheap carbine +or a pair of shoddy binoculars, or something of that sort, to the Rajah, +or the head-man, or the principal trader; and on the strength of that +gift, ask for a house, posing mysteriously as a very special trader. He +would spin them no end of yarns, live on the fat of the land, for a +while, and then do some mean swindle or other—or else they would get +tired of him and ask him to quit. And he would go off meekly with an air +of injured innocence. Funny life. Yet, he never got hurt somehow. I’ve +heard of the Rajah of Dongala giving him fifty dollars’ worth of trade +goods and paying his passage in a prau only to get rid of him. Fact. +And observe that nothing prevented the old fellow having Bamtz’s throat +cut and the carcase thrown into deep water outside the reefs; for who on +earth would have inquired after Bamtz? + +“He had been known to loaf up and down the wilderness as far north as the +Gulf of Tonkin. Neither did he disdain a spell of civilisation from time +to time. And it was while loafing and cadging in Saigon, bearded and +dignified (he gave himself out there as a bookkeeper), that he came +across Laughing Anne. + +“The less said of her early history the better, but something must be +said. We may safely suppose there was very little heart left in her +famous laugh when Bamtz spoke first to her in some low café. She was +stranded in Saigon with precious little money and in great trouble about +a kid she had, a boy of five or six. + +“A fellow I just remember, whom they called Pearler Harry, brought her +out first into these parts—from Australia, I believe. He brought her out +and then dropped her, and she remained knocking about here and there, +known to most of us by sight, at any rate. Everybody in the Archipelago +had heard of Laughing Anne. She had really a pleasant silvery laugh +always at her disposal, so to speak, but it wasn’t enough apparently to +make her fortune. The poor creature was ready to stick to any +half-decent man if he would only let her, but she always got dropped, as +it might have been expected. + +“She had been left in Saigon by the skipper of a German ship with whom +she had been going up and down the China coast as far as Vladivostok for +near upon two years. The German said to her: ‘This is all over, _mein +Taubchen_. I am going home now to get married to the girl I got engaged +to before coming out here.’ And Anne said: ‘All right, I’m ready to go. +We part friends, don’t we?’ + +“She was always anxious to part friends. The German told her that of +course they were parting friends. He looked rather glum at the moment of +parting. She laughed and went ashore. + +“But it was no laughing matter for her. She had some notion that this +would be her last chance. What frightened her most was the future of her +child. She had left her boy in Saigon before going off with the German, +in the care of an elderly French couple. The husband was a doorkeeper in +some Government office, but his time was up, and they were returning to +France. She had to take the boy back from them; and after she had got +him back, she did not like to part with him any more. + +“That was the situation when she and Bamtz got acquainted casually. She +could not have had any illusions about that fellow. To pick up with +Bamtz was coming down pretty low in the world, even from a material point +of view. She had always been decent, in her way; whereas Bamtz was, not +to mince words, an abject sort of creature. On the other hand, that +bearded loafer, who looked much more like a pirate than a bookkeeper, was +not a brute. He was gentle—rather—even in his cups. And then, despair, +like misfortune, makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows. For she +may well have despaired. She was no longer young—you know. + +“On the man’s side this conjunction is more difficult to explain, +perhaps. One thing, however, must be said of Bamtz; he had always kept +clear of native women. As one can’t suspect him of moral delicacy, I +surmise that it must have been from prudence. And he, too, was no longer +young. There were many white hairs in his valuable black beard by then. +He may have simply longed for some kind of companionship in his queer, +degraded existence. Whatever their motives, they vanished from Saigon +together. And of course nobody cared what had become of them. + +“Six months later Davidson came into the Mirrah Settlement. It was the +very first time he had been up that creek, where no European vessel had +ever been seen before. A Javanese passenger he had on board offered him +fifty dollars to call in there—it must have been some very particular +business—and Davidson consented to try. Fifty dollars, he told me, were +neither here nor there; but he was curious to see the place, and the +little _Sissie_ could go anywhere where there was water enough to float a +soup-plate. + +“Davidson landed his Javanese plutocrat, and, as he had to wait a couple +of hours for the tide, he went ashore himself to stretch his legs. + +“It was a small settlement. Some sixty houses, most of them built on +piles over the river, the rest scattered in the long grass; the usual +pathway at the back; the forest hemming in the clearing and smothering +what there might have been of air into a dead, hot stagnation. + +“All the population was on the river-bank staring silently, as Malays +will do, at the _Sissie_ anchored in the stream. She was almost as +wonderful to them as an angel’s visit. Many of the old people had only +heard vaguely of fire-ships, and not many of the younger generation had +seen one. On the back path Davidson strolled in perfect solitude. But +he became aware of a bad smell and concluded he would go no farther. + +“While he stood wiping his forehead, he heard from somewhere the +exclamation: ‘My God! It’s Davy!’ + +“Davidson’s lower jaw, as he expressed it, came unhooked at the crying of +this excited voice. Davy was the name used by the associates of his +young days; he hadn’t heard it for many years. He stared about with his +mouth open and saw a white woman issue from the long grass in which a +small hut stood buried nearly up to the roof. + +“Try to imagine the shock: in that wild place that you couldn’t find on a +map, and more squalid than the most poverty-stricken Malay settlement had +a right to be, this European woman coming swishing out of the long grass +in a fanciful tea-gown thing, dingy pink satin, with a long train and +frayed lace trimmings; her eyes like black coals in a pasty-white face. +Davidson thought that he was asleep, that he was delirious. From the +offensive village mudhole (it was what Davidson had sniffed just before) +a couple of filthy buffaloes uprose with loud snorts and lumbered off +crashing through the bushes, panic-struck by this apparition. + +“The woman came forward, her arms extended, and laid her hands on +Davidson’s shoulders, exclaiming: ‘Why! You have hardly changed at all. +The same good Davy.’ And she laughed a little wildly. + +“This sound was to Davidson like a galvanic shock to a corpse. He +started in every muscle. ‘Laughing Anne,’ he said in an awe-struck +voice. + +“‘All that’s left of her, Davy. All that’s left of her.’ + +“Davidson looked up at the sky; but there was to be seen no balloon from +which she could have fallen on that spot. When he brought his distracted +gaze down, it rested on a child holding on with a brown little paw to the +pink satin gown. He had run out of the grass after her. Had Davidson +seen a real hobgoblin his eyes could not have bulged more than at this +small boy in a dirty white blouse and ragged knickers. He had a round +head of tight chestnut curls, very sunburnt legs, a freckled face, and +merry eyes. Admonished by his mother to greet the gentleman, he finished +off Davidson by addressing him in French. + +“‘_Bonjour_.’ + +“Davidson, overcome, looked up at the woman in silence. She sent the +child back to the hut, and when he had disappeared in the grass, she +turned to Davidson, tried to speak, but after getting out the words, +‘That’s my Tony,’ burst into a long fit of crying. She had to lean on +Davidson’s shoulder. He, distressed in the goodness of his heart, stood +rooted to the spot where she had come upon him. + +“What a meeting—eh? Bamtz had sent her out to see what white man it was +who had landed. And she had recognised him from that time when Davidson, +who had been pearling himself in his youth, had been associating with +Harry the Pearler and others, the quietest of a rather rowdy set. + +“Before Davidson retraced his steps to go on board the steamer, he had +heard much of Laughing Anne’s story, and had even had an interview, on +the path, with Bamtz himself. She ran back to the hut to fetch him, and +he came out lounging, with his hands in his pockets, with the detached, +casual manner under which he concealed his propensity to cringe. +Ya-a-as-as. He thought he would settle here permanently—with her. This +with a nod at Laughing Anne, who stood by, a haggard, tragically anxious +figure, her black hair hanging over her shoulders. + +“‘No more paint and dyes for me, Davy,’ she struck in, ‘if only you will +do what he wants you to do. You know that I was always ready to stand by +my men—if they had only let me.’ + +“Davidson had no doubt of her earnestness. It was of Bamtz’s good faith +that he was not at all sure. Bamtz wanted Davidson to promise to call at +Mirrah more or less regularly. He thought he saw an opening to do +business with rattans there, if only he could depend on some craft to +bring out trading goods and take away his produce. + +“‘I have a few dollars to make a start on. The people are all right.’ + +“He had come there, where he was not known, in a native prau, and had +managed, with his sedate manner and the exactly right kind of yarn he +knew how to tell to the natives, to ingratiate himself with the chief +man. + +“‘The Orang Kaya has given me that empty house there to live in as long +as I will stay,’ added Bamtz. + +“‘Do it, Davy,’ cried the woman suddenly. ‘Think of that poor kid.’ + +“‘Seen him? ’Cute little customer,’ said the reformed loafer in such a +tone of interest as to surprise Davidson into a kindly glance. + +“‘I certainly can do it,’ he declared. He thought of at first making +some stipulation as to Bamtz behaving decently to the woman, but his +exaggerated delicacy and also the conviction that such a fellow’s +promises were worth nothing restrained him. Anne went a little distance +down the path with him talking anxiously. + +“‘It’s for the kid. How could I have kept him with me if I had to knock +about in towns? Here he will never know that his mother was a painted +woman. And this Bamtz likes him. He’s real fond of him. I suppose I +ought to thank God for that.’ + +“Davidson shuddered at any human creature being brought so low as to have +to thank God for the favours or affection of a Bamtz. + +“‘And do you think that you can make out to live here?’ he asked gently. + +“‘Can’t I? You know I have always stuck to men through thick and thin +till they had enough of me. And now look at me! But inside I am as I +always was. I have acted on the square to them all one after another. +Only they do get tired somehow. Oh, Davy! Harry ought not to have cast +me off. It was he that led me astray.’ + +“Davidson mentioned to her that Harry the Pearler had been dead now for +some years. Perhaps she had heard? + +“She made a sign that she had heard; and walked by the side of Davidson +in silence nearly to the bank. Then she told him that her meeting with +him had brought back the old times to her mind. She had not cried for +years. She was not a crying woman either. It was hearing herself called +Laughing Anne that had started her sobbing like a fool. Harry was the +only man she had loved. The others— + +“She shrugged her shoulders. But she prided herself on her loyalty to +the successive partners of her dismal adventures. She had never played +any tricks in her life. She was a pal worth having. But men did get +tired. They did not understand women. She supposed it had to be. + +“Davidson was attempting a veiled warning as to Bamtz, but she +interrupted him. She knew what men were. She knew what this man was +like. But he had taken wonderfully to the kid. And Davidson desisted +willingly, saying to himself that surely poor Laughing Anne could have no +illusions by this time. She wrung his hand hard at parting. + +“‘It’s for the kid, Davy—it’s for the kid. Isn’t he a bright little +chap?’ + + + +CHAPTER II + + +“All this happened about two years before the day when Davidson, sitting +in this very room, talked to my friend. You will see presently how this +room can get full. Every seat’ll be occupied, and as you notice, the +tables are set close, so that the backs of the chairs are almost +touching. There is also a good deal of noisy talk here about one +o’clock. + +“I don’t suppose Davidson was talking very loudly; but very likely he had +to raise his voice across the table to my friend. And here accident, +mere accident, put in its work by providing a pair of fine ears close +behind Davidson’s chair. It was ten to one against, the owner of the +same having enough change in his pockets to get his tiffin here. But he +had. Most likely had rooked somebody of a few dollars at cards +overnight. He was a bright creature of the name of Fector, a spare, +short, jumpy fellow with a red face and muddy eyes. He described himself +as a journalist, as certain kind of women give themselves out as +actresses in the dock of a police-court. + +“He used to introduce himself to strangers as a man with a mission to +track out abuses and fight them whenever found. He would also hint that +he was a martyr. And it’s a fact that he had been kicked, horsewhipped, +imprisoned, and hounded with ignominy out of pretty well every place +between Ceylon and Shanghai, for a professional blackmailer. + +“I suppose, in that trade, you’ve got to have active wits and sharp ears. +It’s not likely that he overheard every word Davidson said about his +dollar collecting trip, but he heard enough to set his wits at work. + +“He let Davidson go out, and then hastened away down to the native slums +to a sort of lodging-house kept in partnership by the usual sort of +Portuguese and a very disreputable Chinaman. Macao Hotel, it was called, +but it was mostly a gambling den that one used to warn fellows against. +Perhaps you remember? + +“There, the evening before, Fector had met a precious couple, a +partnership even more queer than the Portuguese and the Chinaman. One of +the two was Niclaus—you know. Why! the fellow with a Tartar moustache +and a yellow complexion, like a Mongolian, only that his eyes were set +straight and his face was not so flat. One couldn’t tell what breed he +was. A nondescript beggar. From a certain angle you would think a very +bilious white man. And I daresay he was. He owned a Malay prau and +called himself The Nakhoda, as one would say: The Captain. Aha! Now you +remember. He couldn’t, apparently, speak any other European language +than English, but he flew the Dutch flag on his prau. + +“The other was the Frenchman without hands. Yes. The very same we used +to know in ’79 in Sydney, keeping a little tobacco shop at the lower end +of George Street. You remember the huge carcase hunched up behind the +counter, the big white face and the long black hair brushed back off a +high forehead like a bard’s. He was always trying to roll cigarettes on +his knee with his stumps, telling endless yarns of Polynesia and whining +and cursing in turn about ‘_mon malheur_.’ His hands had been blown away +by a dynamite cartridge while fishing in some lagoon. This accident, I +believe, had made him more wicked than before, which is saying a good +deal. + +“He was always talking about ‘resuming his activities’ some day, whatever +they were, if he could only get an intelligent companion. It was evident +that the little shop was no field for his activities, and the sickly +woman with her face tied up, who used to look in sometimes through the +back door, was no companion for him. + +“And, true enough, he vanished from Sydney before long, after some +trouble with the Excise fellows about his stock. Goods stolen out of a +warehouse or something similar. He left the woman behind, but he must +have secured some sort of companion—he could not have shifted for +himself; but whom he went away with, and where, and what other companions +he might have picked up afterwards, it is impossible to make the remotest +guess about. + +“Why exactly he came this way I can’t tell. Towards the end of my time +here we began to hear talk of a maimed Frenchman who had been seen here +and there. But no one knew then that he had foregathered with Niclaus +and lived in his prau. I daresay he put Niclaus up to a thing or two. +Anyhow, it was a partnership. Niclaus was somewhat afraid of the +Frenchman on account of his tempers, which were awful. He looked then +like a devil; but a man without hands, unable to load or handle a weapon, +can at best go for one only with his teeth. From that danger Niclaus +felt certain he could always defend himself. + +“The couple were alone together loafing in the common-room of that +infamous hotel when Fector turned up. After some beating about the bush, +for he was doubtful how far he could trust these two, he repeated what he +had overheard in the tiffin-rooms. + +“His tale did not have much success till he came to mention the creek and +Bamtz’s name. Niclaus, sailing about like a native in a prau, was, in +his own words, ‘familiar with the locality.’ The huge Frenchman, walking +up and down the room with his stumps in the pockets of his jacket, +stopped short in surprise. ‘_Comment_? _Bamtz_! _Bamtz_!’ + +“He had run across him several times in his life. He exclaimed: +‘_Bamtz_! _Mais je ne connais que ca_!’ And he applied such a +contemptuously indecent epithet to Bamtz that when, later, he alluded to +him as ‘_une chiffe_’ (a mere rag) it sounded quite complimentary. ‘We +can do with him what we like,’ he asserted confidently. ‘Oh, yes. +Certainly we must hasten to pay a visit to that—’ (another awful +descriptive epithet quite unfit for repetition). ‘Devil take me if we +don’t pull off a coup that will set us all up for a long time.’ + +“He saw all that lot of dollars melted into bars and disposed of +somewhere on the China coast. Of the escape after the _coup_ he never +doubted. There was Niclaus’s prau to manage that in. + +“In his enthusiasm he pulled his stumps out of his pockets and waved them +about. Then, catching sight of them, as it were, he held them in front +of his eyes, cursing and blaspheming and bewailing his misfortune and his +helplessness, till Niclaus quieted him down. + +“But it was his mind that planned out the affair and it was his spirit +which carried the other two on. Neither of them was of the bold +buccaneer type; and Fector, especially, had never in his adventurous life +used other weapons than slander and lies. + +“That very evening they departed on a visit to Bamtz in Niclaus’s prau, +which had been lying, emptied of her cargo of cocoanuts, for a day or two +under the canal bridge. They must have crossed the bows of the anchored +_Sissie_, and no doubt looked at her with interest as the scene of their +future exploit, the great haul, _le grand coup_! + +“Davidson’s wife, to his great surprise, sulked with him for several days +before he left. I don’t know whether it occurred to him that, for all +her angelic profile, she was a very stupidly obstinate girl. She didn’t +like the tropics. He had brought her out there, where she had no +friends, and now, she said, he was becoming inconsiderate. She had a +presentiment of some misfortune, and notwithstanding Davidson’s +painstaking explanations, she could not see why her presentiments were to +be disregarded. On the very last evening before Davidson went away she +asked him in a suspicious manner: + +“‘Why is it that you are so anxious to go this time?’ + +“‘I am not anxious,’ protested the good Davidson. ‘I simply can’t help +myself. There’s no one else to go in my place.’ + +“‘Oh! There’s no one,’ she said, turning away slowly. + +“She was so distant with him that evening that Davidson from a sense of +delicacy made up his mind to say good-bye to her at once and go and sleep +on board. He felt very miserable and, strangely enough, more on his own +account than on account of his wife. She seemed to him much more +offended than grieved. + +“Three weeks later, having collected a good many cases of old dollars +(they were stowed aft in the lazarette with an iron bar and a padlock +securing the hatch under his cabin-table), yes, with a bigger lot than he +had expected to collect, he found himself homeward bound and off the +entrance of the creek where Bamtz lived and even, in a sense, flourished. + +“It was so late in the day that Davidson actually hesitated whether he +should not pass by this time. He had no regard for Bamtz, who was a +degraded but not a really unhappy man. His pity for Laughing Anne was no +more than her case deserved. But his goodness was of a particularly +delicate sort. He realised how these people were dependent on him, and +how they would feel their dependence (if he failed to turn up) through a +long month of anxious waiting. Prompted by his sensitive humanity, +Davidson, in the gathering dusk, turned the _Sissie’s_ head towards the +hardly discernible coast, and navigated her safety through a maze of +shallow patches. But by the time he got to the mouth of the creek the +night had come. + +“The narrow waterway lay like a black cutting through the forest. And as +there were always grounded snaggs in the channel which it would be +impossible to make out, Davidson very prudently turned the _Sissie_ +round, and with only enough steam on the boilers to give her a touch +ahead if necessary, let her drift up stern first with the tide, silent +and invisible in the impenetrable darkness and in the dumb stillness. + +“It was a long job, and when at the end of two hours Davidson thought he +must be up to the clearing, the settlement slept already, the whole land +of forests and rivers was asleep. + +“Davidson, seeing a solitary light in the massed darkness of the shore, +knew that it was burning in Bamtz’s house. This was unexpected at this +time of the night, but convenient as a guide. By a turn of the screw and +a touch of the helm he sheered the _Sissie_ alongside Bamtz’s wharf—a +miserable structure of a dozen piles and a few planks, of which the +ex-vagabond was very proud. A couple of Kalashes jumped down on it, took +a turn with the ropes thrown to them round the posts, and the _Sissie_ +came to rest without a single loud word or the slightest noise. And just +in time too, for the tide turned even before she was properly moored. + +“Davidson had something to eat, and then, coming on deck for a last look +round, noticed that the light was still burning in the house. + +“This was very unusual, but since they were awake so late, Davidson +thought that he would go up to say that he was in a hurry to be off and +to ask that what rattans there were in store should be sent on board with +the first sign of dawn. + +“He stepped carefully over the shaky planks, not being anxious to get a +sprained ankle, and picked his way across the waste ground to the foot of +the house ladder. The house was but a glorified hut on piles, unfenced +and lonely. + +“Like many a stout man, Davidson is very lightfooted. He climbed the +seven steps or so, stepped across the bamboo platform quietly, but what +he saw through the doorway stopped him short. + +“Four men were sitting by the light of a solitary candle. There was a +bottle, a jug and glasses on the table, but they were not engaged in +drinking. Two packs of cards were lying there too, but they were not +preparing to play. They were talking together in whispers, and remained +quite unaware of him. He himself was too astonished to make a sound for +some time. The world was still, except for the sibilation of the +whispering heads bunched together over the table. + +“And Davidson, as I have quoted him to you before, didn’t like it. He +didn’t like it at all. + +“The situation ended with a scream proceeding from the dark, interior +part of the room. ‘O Davy! you’ve given me a turn.’ + +“Davidson made out beyond the table Anne’s very pale face. She laughed a +little hysterically, out of the deep shadows between the gloomy mat +walls. ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ + +“The four heads sprang apart at the first sound, and four pairs of eyes +became fixed stonily on Davidson. The woman came forward, having little +more on her than a loose chintz wrapper and straw slippers on her bare +feet. Her head was tied up Malay fashion in a red handkerchief, with a +mass of loose hair hanging under it behind. Her professional, gay, +European feathers had literally dropped off her in the course of these +two years, but a long necklace of amber beads hung round her uncovered +neck. It was the only ornament she had left; Bamtz had sold all her +poor-enough trinkets during the flight from Saigon—when their association +began. + +“She came forward, past the table, into the light, with her usual groping +gesture of extended arms, as though her soul, poor thing! had gone blind +long ago, her white cheeks hollow, her eyes darkly wild, distracted, as +Davidson thought. She came on swiftly, grabbed him by the arm, dragged +him in. ‘It’s heaven itself that sends you to-night. My Tony’s so +bad—come and see him. Come along—do!’ + +“Davidson submitted. The only one of the men to move was Bamtz, who made +as if to get up but dropped back in his chair again. Davidson in passing +heard him mutter confusedly something that sounded like ‘poor little +beggar.’ + +“The child, lying very flushed in a miserable cot knocked up out of +gin-cases, stared at Davidson with wide, drowsy eyes. It was a bad bout +of fever clearly. But while Davidson was promising to go on board and +fetch some medicines, and generally trying to say reassuring things, he +could not help being struck by the extraordinary manner of the woman +standing by his side. Gazing with despairing expression down at the cot, +she would suddenly throw a quick, startled glance at Davidson and then +towards the other room. + +“‘Yes, my poor girl,’ he whispered, interpreting her distraction in his +own way, though he had nothing precise in his mind. ‘I’m afraid this +bodes no good to you. How is it they are here?’ + +“She seized his forearm and breathed out forcibly: ‘No good to me! Oh, +no! But what about you! They are after the dollars you have on board.’ + +“Davidson let out an astonished ‘How do they know there are any dollars?’ + +“She clapped her hands lightly, in distress. ‘So it’s true! You have +them on board? Then look out for yourself.’ + +“They stood gazing down at the boy in the cot, aware that they might be +observed from the other room. + +“‘We must get him to perspire as soon as possible,’ said Davidson in his +ordinary voice. ‘You’ll have to give him hot drink of some kind. I will +go on board and bring you a spirit-kettle amongst other things.’ And he +added under his breath: ‘Do they actually mean murder?’ + +“She made no sign, she had returned to her desolate contemplation of the +boy. Davidson thought she had not heard him even, when with an unchanged +expression she spoke under her breath. + +“‘The Frenchman would, in a minute. The others shirk it—unless you +resist. He’s a devil. He keeps them going. Without him they would have +done nothing but talk. I’ve got chummy with him. What can you do when +you are with a man like the fellow I am with now. Bamtz is terrified of +them, and they know it. He’s in it from funk. Oh, Davy! take your ship +away—quick!’ + +“‘Too late,’ said Davidson. ‘She’s on the mud already.’ + +“If the kid hadn’t been in this state I would have run off with him—to +you—into the woods—anywhere. Oh, Davy! will he die?’ she cried aloud +suddenly. + +“Davidson met three men in the doorway. They made way for him without +actually daring to face his glance. But Bamtz was the only one who +looked down with an air of guilt. The big Frenchman had remained lolling +in his chair; he kept his stumps in his pockets and addressed Davidson. + +“‘Isn’t it unfortunate about that child! The distress of that woman +there upsets me, but I am of no use in the world. I couldn’t smooth the +sick pillow of my dearest friend. I have no hands. Would you mind +sticking one of those cigarettes there into the mouth of a poor, harmless +cripple? My nerves want soothing—upon my honour, they do.’ + +“Davidson complied with his naturally kind smile. As his outward +placidity becomes only more pronounced, if possible, the more reason +there is for excitement; and as Davidson’s eyes, when his wits are hard +at work, get very still and as if sleepy, the huge Frenchman might have +been justified in concluding that the man there was a mere sheep—a sheep +ready for slaughter. With a ‘_merci bien_’ he uplifted his huge carcase +to reach the light of the candle with his cigarette, and Davidson left +the house. + +“Going down to the ship and returning, he had time to consider his +position. At first he was inclined to believe that these men +(Niclaus—the white Nakhoda—was the only one he knew by sight before, +besides Bamtz) were not of the stamp to proceed to extremities. This was +partly the reason why he never attempted to take any measures on board. +His pacific Kalashes were not to be thought of as against white men. His +wretched engineer would have had a fit from fright at the mere idea of +any sort of combat. Davidson knew that he would have to depend on +himself in this affair if it ever came off. + +“Davidson underestimated naturally the driving power of the Frenchman’s +character and the force of the actuating motive. To that man so +hopelessly crippled these dollars were an enormous opportunity. With his +share of the robbery he would open another shop in Vladivostok, Haïphong, +Manila—somewhere far away. + +“Neither did it occur to Davidson, who is a man of courage, if ever there +was one, that his psychology was not known to the world at large, and +that to this particular lot of ruffians, who judged him by his +appearance, he appeared an unsuspicious, inoffensive, soft creature, as +he passed again through the room, his hands full of various objects and +parcels destined for the sick boy. + +“All the four were sitting again round the table. Bamtz not having the +pluck to open his mouth, it was Niclaus who, as a collective voice, +called out to him thickly to come out soon and join in a drink. + +“‘I think I’ll have to stay some little time in there, to help her look +after the boy,’ Davidson answered without stopping. + +“This was a good thing to say to allay a possible suspicion. And, as it +was, Davidson felt he must not stay very long. + +“He sat down on an old empty nail-keg near the improvised cot and looked +at the child; while Laughing Anne, moving to and fro, preparing the hot +drink, giving it to the boy in spoonfuls, or stopping to gaze motionless +at the flushed face, whispered disjointed bits of information. She had +succeeded in making friends with that French devil. Davy would +understand that she knew how to make herself pleasant to a man. + +“And Davidson nodded without looking at her. + +“The big beast had got to be quite confidential with her. She held his +cards for him when they were having a game. Bamtz! Oh! Bamtz in his +funk was only too glad to see the Frenchman humoured. And the Frenchman +had come to believe that she was a woman who didn’t care what she did. +That’s how it came about they got to talk before her openly. For a long +time she could not make out what game they were up to. The new arrivals, +not expecting to find a woman with Bamtz, had been very startled and +annoyed at first, she explained. + +“She busied herself in attending to the boy; and nobody looking into that +room would have seen anything suspicious in those two people exchanging +murmurs by the sick-bedside. + +“‘But now they think I am a better man than Bamtz ever was,’ she said +with a faint laugh. + +“The child moaned. She went down on her knees, and, bending low, +contemplated him mournfully. Then raising her head, she asked Davidson +whether he thought the child would get better. Davidson was sure of it. +She murmured sadly: ‘Poor kid. There’s nothing in life for such as he. +Not a dog’s chance. But I couldn’t let him go, Davy! I couldn’t.’ + +“Davidson felt a profound pity for the child. She laid her hand on his +knee and whispered an earnest warning against the Frenchman. Davy must +never let him come to close quarters. Naturally Davidson wanted to know +the reason, for a man without hands did not strike him as very formidable +under any circumstances. + +“‘Mind you don’t let him—that’s all,’ she insisted anxiously, hesitated, +and then confessed that the Frenchman had got her away from the others +that afternoon and had ordered her to tie a seven-pound iron weight (out +of the set of weights Bamtz used in business) to his right stump. She +had to do it for him. She had been afraid of his savage temper. Bamtz +was such a craven, and neither of the other men would have cared what +happened to her. The Frenchman, however, with many awful threats had +warned her not to let the others know what she had done for him. +Afterwards he had been trying to cajole her. He had promised her that if +she stood by him faithfully in this business he would take her with him +to Haïphong or some other place. A poor cripple needed somebody to take +care of him—always. + +“Davidson asked her again if they really meant mischief. It was, he told +me, the hardest thing to believe he had run up against, as yet, in his +life. Anne nodded. The Frenchman’s heart was set on this robbery. Davy +might expect them, about midnight, creeping on board his ship, to steal +anyhow—to murder, perhaps. Her voice sounded weary, and her eyes +remained fastened on her child. + +“And still Davidson could not accept it somehow; his contempt for these +men was too great. + +“‘Look here, Davy,’ she said. ‘I’ll go outside with them when they +start, and it will be hard luck if I don’t find something to laugh at. +They are used to that from me. Laugh or cry—what’s the odds. You will +be able to hear me on board on this quiet night. Dark it is too. Oh! +it’s dark, Davy!—it’s dark!’ + +“‘Don’t you run any risks,’ said Davidson. Presently he called her +attention to the boy, who, less flushed now, had dropped into a sound +sleep. ‘Look. He’ll be all right.’ + +“She made as if to snatch the child up to her breast, but restrained +herself. Davidson prepared to go. She whispered hurriedly: + +“‘Mind, Davy! I’ve told them that you generally sleep aft in the hammock +under the awning over the cabin. They have been asking me about your +ways and about your ship, too. I told them all I knew. I had to keep in +with them. And Bamtz would have told them if I hadn’t—you understand?’ + +“He made a friendly sign and went out. The men about the table (except +Bamtz) looked at him. This time it was Fector who spoke. ‘Won’t you +join us in a quiet game, Captain?’ + +“Davidson said that now the child was better he thought he would go on +board and turn in. Fector was the only one of the four whom he had, so +to speak, never seen, for he had had a good look at the Frenchman +already. He observed Fector’s muddy eyes, his mean, bitter mouth. +Davidson’s contempt for those men rose in his gorge, while his placid +smile, his gentle tones and general air of innocence put heart into them. +They exchanged meaning glances. + +“‘We shall be sitting late over the cards,’ Fector said in his harsh, low +voice. + +“‘Don’t make more noise than you can help.’ + +“‘Oh! we are a quiet lot. And if the invalid shouldn’t be so well, she +will be sure to send one of us down to call you, so that you may play the +doctor again. So don’t shoot at sight.’ + +“‘He isn’t a shooting man,’ struck in Niclaus. + +“‘I never shoot before making sure there’s a reason for it—at any rate,’ +said Davidson. + +“Bamtz let out a sickly snigger. The Frenchman alone got up to make a +bow to Davidson’s careless nod. His stumps were stuck immovably in his +pockets. Davidson understood now the reason. + +“He went down to the ship. His wits were working actively, and he was +thoroughly angry. He smiled, he says (it must have been the first grim +smile of his life), at the thought of the seven-pound weight lashed to +the end of the Frenchman’s stump. The ruffian had taken that precaution +in case of a quarrel that might arise over the division of the spoil. A +man with an unsuspected power to deal killing blows could take his own +part in a sudden scrimmage round a heap of money, even against +adversaries armed with revolvers, especially if he himself started the +row. + +“‘He’s ready to face any of his friends with that thing. But he will +have no use for it. There will be no occasion to quarrel about these +dollars here,’ thought Davidson, getting on board quietly. He never +paused to look if there was anybody about the decks. As a matter of +fact, most of his crew were on shore, and the rest slept, stowed away in +dark corners. + +“He had his plan, and he went to work methodically. + +“He fetched a lot of clothing from below and disposed it in his hammock +in such a way as to distend it to the shape of a human body; then he +threw over all the light cotton sheet he used to draw over himself when +sleeping on deck. Having done this, he loaded his two revolvers and +clambered into one of the boats the _Sissie_ carried right aft, swung out +on their davits. Then he waited. + +“And again the doubt of such a thing happening to him crept into his +mind. He was almost ashamed of this ridiculous vigil in a boat. He +became bored. And then he became drowsy. The stillness of the black +universe wearied him. There was not even the lapping of the water to +keep him company, for the tide was out and the _Sissie_ was lying on soft +mud. Suddenly in the breathless, soundless, hot night an argus pheasant +screamed in the woods across the stream. Davidson started violently, all +his senses on the alert at once. + +“The candle was still burning in the house. Everything was quiet again, +but Davidson felt drowsy no longer. An uneasy premonition of evil +oppressed him. + +“‘Surely I am not afraid,’ he argued with himself. + +“The silence was like a seal on his ears, and his nervous inward +impatience grew intolerable. He commanded himself to keep still. But +all the same he was just going to jump out of the boat when a faint +ripple on the immensity of silence, a mere tremor in the air, the ghost +of a silvery laugh, reached his ears. + +“Illusion! + +“He kept very still. He had no difficulty now in emulating the stillness +of the mouse—a grimly determined mouse. But he could not shake off that +premonition of evil unrelated to the mere danger of the situation. +Nothing happened. It had been an illusion! + +“A curiosity came to him to learn how they would go to work. He wondered +and wondered, till the whole thing seemed more absurd than ever. + +“He had left the hanging lamp in the cabin burning as usual. It was part +of his plan that everything should be as usual. Suddenly in the dim glow +of the skylight panes a bulky shadow came up the ladder without a sound, +made two steps towards the hammock (it hung right over the skylight), and +stood motionless. The Frenchman! + +“The minutes began to slip away. Davidson guessed that the Frenchman’s +part (the poor cripple) was to watch his (Davidson’s) slumbers while the +others were no doubt in the cabin busy forcing off the lazarette hatch. + +“What was the course they meant to pursue once they got hold of the +silver (there were ten cases, and each could be carried easily by two +men) nobody can tell now. But so far, Davidson was right. They were in +the cabin. He expected to hear the sounds of breaking-in every moment. +But the fact was that one of them (perhaps Fector, who had stolen papers +out of desks in his time) knew how to pick a lock, and apparently was +provided with the tools. Thus while Davidson expected every moment to +hear them begin down there, they had the bar off already and two cases +actually up in the cabin out of the lazarette. + +“In the diffused faint glow of the skylight the Frenchman moved no more +than a statue. Davidson could have shot him with the greatest ease—but +he was not homicidally inclined. Moreover, he wanted to make sure before +opening fire that the others had gone to work. Not hearing the sounds he +expected to hear, he felt uncertain whether they all were on board yet. + +“While he listened, the Frenchman, whose immobility might have but +cloaked an internal struggle; moved forward a pace, then another. +Davidson, entranced, watched him advance one leg, withdraw his right +stump, the armed one, out of his pocket, and swinging his body to put +greater force into the blow, bring the seven-pound weight down on the +hammock where the head of the sleeper ought to have been. + +“Davidson admitted to me that his hair stirred at the roots then. But +for Anne, his unsuspecting head would have been there. The Frenchman’s +surprise must have been simply overwhelming. He staggered away from the +lightly swinging hammock, and before Davidson could make a movement he +had vanished, bounding down the ladder to warn and alarm the other +fellows. + +“Davidson sprang instantly out of the boat, threw up the skylight flap, +and had a glimpse of the men down there crouching round the hatch. They +looked up scared, and at that moment the Frenchman outside the door +bellowed out ‘_Trahison_—_trahison_!’ They bolted out of the cabin, +falling over each other and swearing awfully. The shot Davidson let off +down the skylight had hit no one; but he ran to the edge of the cabin-top +and at once opened fire at the dark shapes rushing about the deck. These +shots were returned, and a rapid fusillade burst out, reports and +flashes, Davidson dodging behind a ventilator and pulling the trigger +till his revolver clicked, and then throwing it down to take the other in +his right hand. + +“He had been hearing in the din the Frenchman’s infuriated yells +‘_Tuez-le_! _tuez-le_!’ above the fierce cursing of the others. But +though they fired at him they were only thinking of clearing out. In the +flashes of the last shots Davidson saw them scrambling over the rail. +That he had hit more than one he was certain. Two different voices had +cried out in pain. But apparently none of them were disabled. + +“Davidson leaned against the bulwark reloading his revolver without +haste. He had not the slightest apprehension of their coming back. On +the other hand, he had no intention of pursuing them on shore in the +dark. What they were doing he had no idea. Looking to their hurts +probably. Not very far from the bank the invisible Frenchman was +blaspheming and cursing his associates, his luck, and all the world. He +ceased; then with a sudden, vengeful yell, ‘It’s that woman!—it’s that +woman that has sold us,’ was heard running off in the night. + +“Davidson caught his breath in a sudden pang of remorse. He perceived +with dismay that the stratagem of his defence had given Anne away. He +did not hesitate a moment. It was for him to save her now. He leaped +ashore. But even as he landed on the wharf he heard a shrill shriek +which pierced his very soul. + +“The light was still burning in the house. Davidson, revolver in hand, +was making for it when another shriek, away to his left, made him change +his direction. + +“He changed his direction—but very soon he stopped. It was then that he +hesitated in cruel perplexity. He guessed what had happened. The woman +had managed to escape from the house in some way, and now was being +chased in the open by the infuriated Frenchman. He trusted she would try +to run on board for protection. + +“All was still around Davidson. Whether she had run on board or not, +this silence meant that the Frenchman had lost her in the dark. + +“Davidson, relieved, but still very anxious, turned towards the +river-side. He had not made two steps in that direction when another +shriek burst out behind him, again close to the house. + +“He thinks that the Frenchman had lost sight of the poor woman right +enough. Then came that period of silence. But the horrible ruffian had +not given up his murderous purpose. He reasoned that she would try to +steal back to her child, and went to lie in wait for her near the house. + +“It must have been something like that. As she entered the light falling +about the house-ladder, he had rushed at her too soon, impatient for +vengeance. She had let out that second scream of mortal fear when she +caught sight of him, and turned to run for life again. + +“This time she was making for the river, but not in a straight line. Her +shrieks circled about Davidson. He turned on his heels, following the +horrible trail of sound in the darkness. He wanted to shout ‘This way, +Anne! I am here!’ but he couldn’t. At the horror of this chase, more +ghastly in his imagination than if he could have seen it, the +perspiration broke out on his forehead, while his throat was as dry as +tinder. A last supreme scream was cut short suddenly. + +“The silence which ensued was even more dreadful. Davidson felt sick. +He tore his feet from the spot and walked straight before him, gripping +the revolver and peering into the obscurity fearfully. Suddenly a bulky +shape sprang from the ground within a few yards of him and bounded away. +Instinctively he fired at it, started to run in pursuit, and stumbled +against something soft which threw him down headlong. + +“Even as he pitched forward on his head he knew it could be nothing else +but Laughing Anne’s body. He picked himself up and, remaining on his +knees, tried to lift her in his arms. He felt her so limp that he gave +it up. She was lying on her face, her long hair scattered on the ground. +Some of it was wet. Davidson, feeling about her head, came to a place +where the crushed bone gave way under his fingers. But even before that +discovery he knew that she was dead. The pursuing Frenchman had flung +her down with a kick from behind, and, squatting on her back, was +battering in her skull with the weight she herself had fastened to his +stump, when the totally unexpected Davidson loomed up in the night and +scared him away. + +“Davidson, kneeling by the side of that woman done so miserably to death, +was overcome by remorse. She had died for him. His manhood was as if +stunned. For the first time he felt afraid. He might have been pounced +upon in the dark at any moment by the murderer of Laughing Anne. He +confesses to the impulse of creeping away from that pitiful corpse on his +hands and knees to the refuge of the ship. He even says that he actually +began to do so. . . + +“One can hardly picture to oneself Davidson crawling away on all fours +from the murdered woman—Davidson unmanned and crushed by the idea that +she had died for him in a sense. But he could not have gone very far. +What stopped him was the thought of the boy, Laughing Anne’s child, that +(Davidson remembered her very words) would not have a dog’s chance. + +“This life the woman had left behind her appeared to Davidson’s +conscience in the light of a sacred trust. He assumed an erect attitude +and, quaking inwardly still, turned about and walked towards the house. + +“For all his tremors he was very determined; but that smashed skull had +affected his imagination, and he felt very defenceless in the darkness, +in which he seemed to hear faintly now here, now there, the prowling +footsteps of the murderer without hands. But he never faltered in his +purpose. He got away with the boy safely after all. The house he found +empty. A profound silence encompassed him all the time, except once, +just as he got down the ladder with Tony in his arms, when a faint groan +reached his ears. It seemed to come from the pitch-black space between +the posts on which the house was built, but he did not stop to +investigate. + +“It’s no use telling you in detail how Davidson got on board with the +burden Anne’s miserably cruel fate had thrust into his arms; how next +morning his scared crew, after observing from a distance the state of +affairs on board, rejoined with alacrity; how Davidson went ashore and, +aided by his engineer (still half dead with fright), rolled up Laughing +Anne’s body in a cotton sheet and brought it on board for burial at sea +later. While busy with this pious task, Davidson, glancing about, +perceived a huge heap of white clothes huddled up against the corner-post +of the house. That it was the Frenchman lying there he could not doubt. +Taking it in connection with the dismal groan he had heard in the night, +Davidson is pretty sure that his random shot gave a mortal hurt to the +murderer of poor Anne. + +“As to the others, Davidson never set eyes on a single one of them. +Whether they had concealed themselves in the scared settlement, or bolted +into the forest, or were hiding on board Niclaus’s prau, which could be +seen lying on the mud a hundred yards or so higher up the creek, the fact +is that they vanished; and Davidson did not trouble his head about them. +He lost no time in getting out of the creek directly the _Sissie_ +floated. After steaming some twenty miles clear of the coast, he (in his +own words) ‘committed the body to the deep.’ He did everything himself. +He weighted her down with a few fire-bars, he read the service, he lifted +the plank, he was the only mourner. And while he was rendering these +last services to the dead, the desolation of that life and the atrocious +wretchedness of its end cried aloud to his compassion, whispered to him +in tones of self-reproach. + +“He ought to have handled the warning she had given him in another way. +He was convinced now that a simple display of watchfulness would have +been enough to restrain that vile and cowardly crew. But the fact was +that he had not quite believed that anything would be attempted. + +“The body of Laughing Anne having been ‘committed to the deep’ some +twenty miles S.S.W. from Cape Selatan, the task before Davidson was to +commit Laughing Anne’s child to the care of his wife. And there poor, +good Davidson made a fatal move. He didn’t want to tell her the whole +awful story, since it involved the knowledge of the danger from which he, +Davidson, had escaped. And this, too, after he had been laughing at her +unreasonable fears only a short time before. + +“‘I thought that if I told her everything,’ Davidson explained to me, +‘she would never have a moment’s peace while I was away on my trips.’ + +“He simply stated that the boy was an orphan, the child of some people to +whom he, Davidson, was under the greatest obligation, and that he felt +morally bound to look after him. Some day he would tell her more, he +said, and meantime he trusted in the goodness and warmth of her heart, in +her woman’s natural compassion. + +“He did not know that her heart was about the size of a parched pea, and +had the proportional amount of warmth; and that her faculty of compassion +was mainly directed to herself. He was only startled and disappointed at +the air of cold surprise and the suspicious look with which she received +his imperfect tale. But she did not say much. She never had much to +say. She was a fool of the silent, hopeless kind. + +“What story Davidson’s crew thought fit to set afloat in Malay town is +neither here nor there. Davidson himself took some of his friends into +his confidence, besides giving the full story officially to the Harbour +Master. + +“The Harbour Master was considerably astonished. He didn’t think, +however, that a formal complaint should be made to the Dutch Government. +They would probably do nothing in the end, after a lot of trouble and +correspondence. The robbery had not come off, after all. Those +vagabonds could be trusted to go to the devil in their own way. No +amount of fuss would bring the poor woman to life again, and the actual +murderer had been done justice to by a chance shot from Davidson. Better +let the matter drop. + +“This was good common sense. But he was impressed. + +“‘Sounds a terrible affair, Captain Davidson.’ + +“‘Aye, terrible enough,’ agreed the remorseful Davidson. But the most +terrible thing for him, though he didn’t know it yet then, was that his +wife’s silly brain was slowly coming to the conclusion that Tony was +Davidson’s child, and that he had invented that lame story to introduce +him into her pure home in defiance of decency, of virtue—of her most +sacred feelings. + +“Davidson was aware of some constraint in his domestic relations. But at +the best of times she was not demonstrative; and perhaps that very +coldness was part of her charm in the placid Davidson’s eyes. Women are +loved for all sorts of reasons and even for characteristics which one +would think repellent. She was watching him and nursing her suspicions. + +“Then, one day, Monkey-faced Ritchie called on that sweet, shy Mrs. +Davidson. She had come out under his care, and he considered himself a +privileged person—her oldest friend in the tropics. He posed for a great +admirer of hers. He was always a great chatterer. He had got hold of +the story rather vaguely, and he started chattering on that subject, +thinking she knew all about it. And in due course he let out something +about Laughing Anne. + +“‘Laughing Anne,’ says Mrs. Davidson with a start. ‘What’s that?’ + +“Ritchie plunged into circumlocution at once, but she very soon stopped +him. ‘Is that creature dead?’ she asks. + +“‘I believe so,’ stammered Ritchie. ‘Your husband says so.’ + +“‘But you don’t know for certain?’ + +“‘No! How could I, Mrs. Davidson!’ + +“‘That’s all wanted to know,’ says she, and goes out of the room. + +“When Davidson came home she was ready to go for him, not with common +voluble indignation, but as if trickling a stream of cold clear water +down his back. She talked of his base intrigue with a vile woman, of +being made a fool of, of the insult to her dignity. + +“Davidson begged her to listen to him and told her all the story, +thinking that it would move a heart of stone. He tried to make her +understand his remorse. She heard him to the end, said ‘Indeed!’ and +turned her back on him. + +“‘Don’t you believe me?’ he asked, appalled. + +“She didn’t say yes or no. All she said was, ‘Send that brat away at +once.’ + +“‘I can’t throw him out into the street,’ cried Davidson. ‘You don’t +mean it.’ + +“‘I don’t care. There are charitable institutions for such children, I +suppose.’ + +“‘That I will never do,’ said Davidson. + +“‘Very well. That’s enough for me.’ + +“Davidson’s home after this was like a silent, frozen hell for him. A +stupid woman with a sense of grievance is worse than an unchained devil. +He sent the boy to the White Fathers in Malacca. This was not a very +expensive sort of education, but she could not forgive him for not +casting the offensive child away utterly. She worked up her sense of her +wifely wrongs and of her injured purity to such a pitch that one day, +when poor Davidson was pleading with her to be reasonable and not to make +an impossible existence for them both, she turned on him in a chill +passion and told him that his very sight was odious to her. + +“Davidson, with his scrupulous delicacy of feeling, was not the man to +assert his rights over a woman who could not bear the sight of him. He +bowed his head; and shortly afterwards arranged for her to go back to her +parents. That was exactly what she wanted in her outraged dignity. And +then she had always disliked the tropics and had detested secretly the +people she had to live amongst as Davidson’s wife. She took her pure, +sensitive, mean little soul away to Fremantle or somewhere in that +direction. And of course the little girl went away with her too. What +could poor Davidson have done with a little girl on his hands, even if +she had consented to leave her with him—which is unthinkable. + +“This is the story that has spoiled Davidson’s smile for him—which +perhaps it wouldn’t have done so thoroughly had he been less of a good +fellow.” + +Hollis ceased. But before we rose from the table I asked him if he knew +what had become of Laughing Anne’s boy. + +He counted carefully the change handed him by the Chinaman waiter, and +raised his head. + +“Oh! that’s the finishing touch. He was a bright, taking little chap, as +you know, and the Fathers took very special pains in his bringing up. +Davidson expected in his heart to have some comfort out of him. In his +placid way he’s a man who needs affection. Well, Tony has grown into a +fine youth—but there you are! He wants to be a priest; his one dream is +to be a missionary. The Fathers assure Davidson that it is a serious +vocation. They tell him he has a special disposition for mission work, +too. So Laughing Anne’s boy will lead a saintly life in China somewhere; +he may even become a martyr; but poor Davidson is left out in the cold. +He will have to go downhill without a single human affection near him +because of these old dollars.” + + * * * * * + +_Jan._ 1914 + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH, ENGLAND + + + + +Footnotes + + +{188} The gallows, supposed to be widowed of the last executed criminal +and waiting for another. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITHIN THE TIDES*** + + +******* This file should be named 1053-0.txt or 1053-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/5/1053 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1054-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1054-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..79a0ffce --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1054-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9422 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Collection of Ballads, by Andrew Lang + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: A Collection of Ballads + + +Author: Andrew Lang + + + +Release Date: February 6, 2015 [eBook #1054] +[This file was first posted on August 1, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COLLECTION OF BALLADS*** + + +Transcribed from the 1910 Chapman and Hall editionby David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + + + A COLLECTION OF + BALLADS + + + * * * * * + + EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION + AND NOTES + BY + ANDREW LANG + + * * * * * + + LONDON + CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED + + * * * * * + + _First Published in 1897_ + _Reprinted 1910_ + + * * * * * + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +INTRODUCTION ix +SIR PATRICK SPENS 1 +BATTLE OF OTTERBOURNE 5 +TAM LIN 10 +THOMAS THE RHYMER 16 +“SIR HUGH; OR THE JEW’S DAUGHTER” 19 +SON DAVIE! SON DAVIE! 22 +THE WIFE OF USHER’S WELL 24 +THE TWA CORBIES 26 +THE BONNIE EARL MORAY 27 +CLERK SAUNDERS 30 +WALY, WALY 35 +LOVE GREGOR; OR, THE LASS OF LOCHROYAN 37 +THE QUEEN’S MARIE 41 +KINMONT WILLIE 45 +JAMIE TELFER 52 +THE DOUGLAS TRAGEDY 59 +THE BONNY HIND 62 +YOUNG BICHAM 65 +THE LOVING BALLAD OF LORD BATEMAN 69 +THE BONNIE HOUSE O’ AIRLY 73 +ROB ROY 75 +THE BATTLE OF KILLIE-CRANKIE 77 +ANNAN WATER 79 +THE ELPHIN NOURRICE 81 +COSPATRICK 82 +JOHNNIE ARMSTRANG 87 +EDOM O’ GORDON 92 +LADY ANNE BOTHWELL’S LAMENT 98 +JOCK O THE SIDE 101 +LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET 107 +FAIR ANNIE 111 +THE DOWIE DENS OF YARROW 116 +SIR ROLAND 119 +ROSE THE RED AND WHITE LILY 123 +THE BATTLE OF HARLAW—EVERGREEN VERSION 131 +TRADITIONARY VERSION 138 +DICKIE MACPHALION 142 +A LYKE-WAKE DIRGE 143 +THE LAIRD OF WARISTOUN 145 +MAY COLVEN 147 +JOHNIE FAA 150 +HOBBIE NOBLE 152 +THE TWA SISTERS 157 +MARY AMBREE 160 +ALISON GROSS 165 +THE HEIR OF LYNNE 167 +GORDON OF BRACKLEY 172 +EDWARD, EDWARD 175 +YOUNG BENJIE 177 +AULD MAITLAND 180 +THE BROOMFIELD HILL 189 +WILLIE’S LADYE 193 +ROBIN HOOD AND THE MONK 196 +ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER 209 +ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER 221 +NOTES 227 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +WHEN the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads, from +the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under certain +disabilities. The Comparative Method was scarcely understood, and was +little practised. Editors were content to study the ballads of their own +countryside, or, at most, of Great Britain. Teutonic and Northern +parallels to our ballads were then adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson. It +was later that the ballads of Europe, from the Faroes to Modern Greece, +were compared with our own, with European _Märchen_, or children’s tales, +and with the popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and +savage peoples. The results of this more recent comparison may be +briefly stated. Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation. +Every man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses +himself in song. A typical example is the Song of Lamech in Genesis— + + “I have slain a man to my wounding, + And a young man to my hurt.” + +Instances perpetually occur in the Sagas: Grettir, Egil, Skarphedin, are +always singing. In _Kidnapped_, Mr. Stevenson introduces “The Song of +the Sword of Alan,” a fine example of Celtic practice: words and air are +beaten out together, in the heat of victory. In the same way, the women +sang improvised dirges, like Helen; lullabies, like the lullaby of Danæ +in Simonides, and flower songs, as in modern Italy. Every function of +life, war, agriculture, the chase, had its appropriate magical and +mimetic dance and song, as in Finland, among Red Indians, and among +Australian blacks. “The deeds of men” were chanted by heroes, as by +Achilles; stories were told in alternate verse and prose; girls, like +Homer’s Nausicaa, accompanied dance and ball play, priests and +medicine-men accompanied rites and magical ceremonies by songs. + +These practices are world-wide, and world-old. The thoroughly popular +songs, thus evolved, became the rude material of a professional class of +minstrels, when these arose, as in the heroic age of Greece. A minstrel +might be attached to a Court, or a noble; or he might go wandering with +song and harp among the people. In either case, this class of men +developed more regular and ample measures. They evolved the hexameter; +the _laisse_ of the _Chansons de Geste_; the strange technicalities of +Scandinavian poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of +Greece. The narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or +the mediæval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed into +the artistic lyric. These lyric forms were fixed, in many cases, by the +art of writing. But poetry did not remain solely in professional and +literary hands. The mediæval minstrels and _jongleurs_ (who may best be +studied in Léon Gautier’s Introduction to his _Epopées Françaises_) sang +in Court and Camp. The poorer, less regular brethren of the art, harped +and played conjuring tricks, in farm and grange, or at street corners. +The foreign newer metres took the place of the old alliterative English +verse. But unprofessional men and women did not cease to make and sing. + +Some writers have decided, among them Mr. Courthope, that our traditional +ballads are degraded popular survivals of literary poetry. The plots and +situations of some ballads are, indeed, the same as those of some +literary mediæval romances. But these plots and situations, in Epic and +Romance, are themselves the final literary form of _märchen_, myths and +inventions originally _popular_, and still, in certain cases, extant in +popular form among races which have not yet evolved, or borrowed, the +ampler and more polished and complex _genres_ of literature. Thus, when +a literary romance and a ballad have the same theme, the ballad may be a +popular degradation of the romance; or, it may be the original popular +shape of it, still surviving in tradition. A well-known case in prose, +is that of the French fairy tales. + +Perrault, in 1697, borrowed these from tradition and gave them literary +and courtly shape. But _Cendrillon_ or _Chaperon Rouge_ in the mouth of +a French peasant, is apt to be the old traditional version, +uncontaminated by the refinements of Perrault, despite Perrault’s immense +success and circulation. Thus tradition preserves pre-literary forms, +even though, on occasion, it may borrow from literature. Peasant poets +have been authors of ballads, without being, for all that, professional +minstrels. Many such poems survive in our ballad literature. + +The material of the ballad may be either romantic or historical. The +former class is based on one of the primeval invented situations, one of +the elements of the _Märchen_ in prose. Such tales or myths occur in the +stories of savages, in the legends of peasants, are interwoven later with +the plot in Epic or Romance, and may also inspire ballads. Popular +superstitions, the witch, metamorphosis, the returning ghost, the fairy, +all of them survivals of the earliest thought, naturally play a great +part. The Historical ballad, on the other hand, has a basis of +resounding fact, murder, battle, or fire-raising, but the facts, being +derived from popular rumour, are immediately corrupted and distorted, +sometimes out of all knowledge. Good examples are the ballads on +Darnley’s murder and the youth of James VI. + +In the romantic class, we may take _Tamlane_. Here the idea of fairies +stealing children is thoroughly popular; they also steal young men as +lovers, and again, men may win fairy brides, by clinging to them through +all transformations. A classical example is the seizure of Thetis by +Peleus, and Child quotes a modern Cretan example. The dipping in milk +and water, I may add, has precedent in ancient Egypt (in _The Two +Brothers_), and in modern Senegambia. The fairy tax, tithe, or teind, +paid to Hell, is illustrated by old trials for witchcraft, in Scotland. +{0a} Now, in literary forms and romance, as in _Ogier le Danois_, +persons are carried away by the Fairy King or Queen. But here the +literary romance borrows from popular superstition; the ballad has no +need to borrow a familiar fact from literary romance. On the whole +subject the curious may consult “The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, +and Fairies,” by the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle, himself, +according to tradition, a victim of the fairies. + +Thus, in _Tamlane_, the whole _donnée_ is popular. But the current +version, that of Scott, is contaminated, as Scott knew, by incongruous +modernisms. Burns’s version, from tradition, already localizes the +events at Carterhaugh, the junction of Ettrick and Yarrow. But Burns’s +version does not make the Earl of Murray father of the hero, nor the Earl +of March father of the heroine. Roxburgh is the hero’s father in Burns’s +variant, which is more plausible, and the modern verses do not occur. +This ballad apparently owes nothing to literary romance. + +In _Mary Hamilton_ we have a notable instance of the Historical Ballad. +No Marie of Mary Stuart’s suffered death for child murder. + +She had no Marie Hamilton, no Marie Carmichael among her four Maries, +though a lady of the latter name was at her court. But early in the +reign a Frenchwoman of the queen’s was hanged, with her paramour, an +apothecary, for slaying her infant. Knox mentions the fact, which is +also recorded in letters from the English ambassador, uncited by Mr. +Child. Knox adds that there were ballads against the Maries. Now, in +March 1719, a Mary Hamilton, of Scots descent, a maid of honour of +Catherine of Russia, was hanged for child murder (_Child_, vi. 383). It +has therefore been supposed, first by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe long +ago, later by Professor Child, and then by Mr. Courthope, that our ballad +is of 1719, or later, and deals with the Russian, not the Scotch, +tragedy. + +To this we may reply (1) that we have no example of such a throwing back +of a contemporary event, in ballads. (2) There is a version (_Child_, +viii. 507) in which Mary Hamilton’s paramour is a “pottinger,” or +apothecary, as in the real old Scotch affair. (3) The number of variants +of a ballad is likely to be proportionate to its antiquity and wide +distribution. Now only _Sir Patrick Spens_ has so many widely different +variants as _Mary Hamilton_. These could hardly have been evolved +between 1719 and 1790, when Burns quotes the poem as an old ballad. (4) +We have no example of a poem so much in the old ballad manner, for +perhaps a hundred and fifty years before 1719. The style first degraded +and then expired: compare _Rob Roy_ and _Killiecrankie_, in this +collection, also the ballads of _Loudoun Hill_, _The Battle of +Philiphaugh_, and others much earlier than 1719. New styles of popular +poetry on contemporary events as _Sherriffmuir_ and _Tranent Brae_ had +arisen. (5) The extreme historic inaccuracy of _Mary Hamilton_ is +paralleled by that of all the ballads on real events. The mention of the +Pottinger is a trace of real history which has no parallel in the Russian +affair, and there is no room, says Professor Child, for the supposition +that it was voluntarily inserted by reciter or copyist, to tally with the +narrative in Knox’s History. + +On the other side, we have the name of Mary Hamilton occurring in a +tragic event of 1719, but then the name does not uniformly appear in the +variants of the ballad. The lady is there spoken of generally as Mary +Hamilton, but also as Mary Myle, Lady Maisry, as daughter of the Duke of +York (Stuart), as Marie Mild, and so forth. Though she bids sailors +carry the tale of her doom, she is not abroad, but in Edinburgh town. +Nothing can be less probable than that a Scots popular ballad-maker in +1719, telling the tale of a yesterday’s tragedy in Russia, should throw +the time back by a hundred and fifty years, should change the scene to +Scotland (the heart of the sorrow would be Mary’s exile), and, above all, +should compose a ballad in a style long obsolete. This is not the method +of the popular poet, and such imitations of the old ballad as +_Hardyknute_ show that literary poets of 1719 had not knowledge or skill +enough to mimic the antique manner with any success. + +We may, therefore, even in face of Professor Child, regard _Mary +Hamilton_ as an old example of popular perversion of history in ballad, +not as “one of the very latest,” and also “one of the very best” of +Scottish popular ballads. + +_Rob Roy_ shows the same power of perversion. It was not Rob Roy but his +sons, Robin Oig (who shot Maclaren at the plough-tail), and James Mohr +(alternately the spy, the Jacobite, and the Hanoverian spy once more), +who carried off the heiress of Edenbelly. Indeed a kind of added +epilogue, in a different measure, proves that a poet was aware of the +facts, and wished to correct his predecessor. + +Such then are ballads, in relation to legend and history. They are, on +the whole, with exceptions, absolutely popular in origin, composed by men +of the people for the people, and then diffused among and altered by +popular reciters. In England they soon won their way into printed stall +copies, and were grievously handled and moralized by the hack editors. + +No ballad has a stranger history than _The Loving Ballad of Lord +Bateman_, illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray. Their +form is a ludicrous cockney perversion, but it retains the essence. +Bateman, a captive of “this Turk,” is beloved by the Turk’s daughter (a +staple incident of old French romance), and by her released. The lady +after seven years rejoins Lord Bateman: he has just married a local +bride, but “orders another marriage,” and sends home his bride “in a +coach and three.” This incident is stereotyped in the ballads and occurs +in an example in the Romaic. {0b} + +Now Lord Bateman is _Young Bekie_ in the Scotch ballads, who becomes +_Young Beichan_, _Young Bichem_, and so forth, and has adventures +identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in the +Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious. As Motherwell +saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket, Gilbert Becket, +father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has heard how _his_ Saracen +bride sought him in London. (Robert of Gloucester’s _Life and Martyrdom +of Thomas Becket_, Percy Society. See Child’s Introduction, IV., i. +1861, and _Motherwell’s Minstrelsy_, p. xv., 1827.) The legend of the +dissolved marriage is from the common stock of ballad lore, Motherwell +found an example in the state of _Cantefable_, alternate prose and verse, +like _Aucassin and Nicolette_. Thus the cockney rhyme descends from the +twelfth century. + +Such are a few of the curiosities of the ballad. The examples selected +are chiefly chosen for their romantic charm, and for the spirit of the +Border raids which they record. A few notes are added in an appendix. +The text is chosen from among the many variants in Child’s learned but +still unfinished collection, and an effort has been made to choose the +copies which contain most poetry with most signs of uncontaminated +originality. In a few cases Sir Walter Scott’s versions, though +confessedly “made up,” are preferred. Perhaps the editor may be allowed +to say that he does not merely plough with Professor Child’s heifer, but +has made a study of ballads from his boyhood. + +This fact may exempt him, even in the eyes of too patriotic American +critics, from “the common blame of a plagiary.” Indeed, as Professor +Child has not yet published his general theory of the Ballad, the editor +does not know whether he agrees with the ideas here set forth. + +So far the Editor had written, when news came of Professor Child’s +regretted death. He had lived to finish, it is said, the vast collection +of all known traditional Scottish and English Ballads, with all +accessible variants, a work of great labour and research, and a +distinguished honour to American scholarship. We are not told, however, +that he had written a general study of the topic, with his conclusions as +to the evolution and diffusion of the Ballads: as to the influences which +directed the selection of certain themes of _Märchen_ for poetic +treatment, and the processes by which identical ballads were distributed +throughout Europe. No one, it is to be feared, is left, in Europe at +least, whose knowledge of the subject is so wide and scientific as that +of Professor Child. It is to be hoped that some pupil of his may +complete the task in his sense, if, indeed, he has left it unfinished. + + + + +SIR PATRICK SPENS + + + (_Border Minstrelsy_.) + + THE king sits in Dunfermline town, + Drinking the blude-red wine o: + “O whare will I get a skeely skipper + To sail this new ship of mine o?” + + O up and spake an eldern-knight, + Sat at the king’s right knee: + “Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor + That ever saild the sea.” + + Our king has written a braid letter, + And seald it with his hand, + And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, + Was walking on the strand. + + “To Noroway, to Noroway, + To Noroway oer the faem; + The king’s daughter of Noroway, + ’Tis thou maun bring her hame.” + + The first word that Sir Patrick read, + Sae loud, loud laughed he; + The neist word that Sir Patrick read, + The tear blinded his ee. + + “O wha is this has done this deed, + And tauld the king o me, + To send us out, at this time of the year, + To sail upon the sea?” + + “Be it wind, be it weet, be it hall, be it sleet, + Our ship must sail the faem; + The king’s daughter of Noroway, + ’Tis we must fetch her hame.” + + They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn, + Wi’ a’ the speed they may; + They hae landed in Noroway, + Upon a Wodensday. + + They hadna been a week, a week + In Noroway but twae, + When that the lords o Noroway + Began aloud to say: + + “Ye Scottishmen spend a’ our king’s goud, + And a’ our queenis fee.” + “Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud! + Fu’ loud I hear ye lie! + + “For I brought as much white monie + As gane my men and me, + And I brought a half-fou’ o’ gude red goud, + Out o’er the sea wi’ me. + + “Make ready, make ready, my merry-men a’! + Our gude ship sails the morn.” + “Now ever alake, my master dear, + I fear a deadly storm! + + I saw the new moon, late yestreen, + Wi’ the auld moon in her arm; + And if we gang to sea, master, + I fear we’ll come to harm.” + + They hadna sail’d a league, a league, + A league but barely three, + When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, + And gurly grew the sea. + + The ankers brak, and the top-masts lap, + It was sic a deadly storm; + And the waves cam o’er the broken ship, + Till a’ her sides were torn. + + “O where will I get a gude sailor, + To take my helm in hand, + Till I get up to the tall top-mast; + To see if I can spy land?” + + “O here am I, a sailor gude, + To take the helm in hand, + Till you go up to the tall top-mast + But I fear you’ll ne’er spy land.” + + He hadna gane a step, a step, + A step but barely ane, + When a bout flew out of our goodly ship, + And the salt sea it came in. + + “Gae, fetch a web o’ the silken claith, + Another o’ the twine, + And wap them into our ship’s side, + And let na the sea come in.” + + They fetchd a web o the silken claith, + Another o the twine, + And they wapped them roun that gude ship’s side + But still the sea came in. + + O laith, laith, were our gude Scots lords + To weet their cork-heel’d shoon! + But lang or a the play was play’d + They wat their hats aboon, + + And mony was the feather-bed + That fluttered on the faem, + And mony was the gude lord’s son + That never mair cam hame. + + The ladyes wrang their fingers white, + The maidens tore their hair, + A’ for the sake of their true loves, + For them they’ll see na mair. + + O lang, lang may the ladyes sit, + Wi’ their fans into their hand, + Before they see Sir Patrick Spens + Come sailing to the strand! + + And lang, lang may the maidens sit, + Wi’ their goud kaims in their hair, + A’ waiting for their ain dear loves! + For them they’ll see na mair. + + O forty miles off Aberdeen, + ’Tis fifty fathoms deep, + And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens, + Wi’ the Scots lords at his feet. + + + + +BATTLE OF OTTERBOURNE + + + (_Child_, vol. vi.) + + IT fell about the Lammas tide, + When the muir-men win their hay, + The doughty Douglas bound him to ride + Into England, to drive a prey. + + He chose the Gordons and the Graemes, + With them the Lindesays, light and gay; + But the Jardines wald nor with him ride, + And they rue it to this day. + + And he has burn’d the dales of Tyne, + And part of Bambrough shire: + And three good towers on Reidswire fells, + He left them all on fire. + + And he march’d up to Newcastle, + And rode it round about: + “O wha’s the lord of this castle? + Or wha’s the lady o’t?” + + But up spake proud Lord Percy then, + And O but he spake hie! + “I am the lord of this castle, + My wife’s the lady gaye.” + + “If thou’rt the lord of this castle, + Sae weel it pleases me! + For, ere I cross the Border fells, + The tane of us sall die.” + + He took a lang spear in his hand, + Shod with the metal free, + And for to meet the Douglas there, + He rode right furiouslie. + + But O how pale his lady look’d, + Frae aff the castle wa’, + When down, before the Scottish spear, + She saw proud Percy fa’. + + “Had we twa been upon the green, + And never an eye to see, + I wad hae had you, flesh and fell; + But your sword sall gae wi’ mee.” + + “But gae ye up to Otterbourne, + And wait there dayis three; + And, if I come not ere three dayis end, + A fause knight ca’ ye me.” + + “The Otterbourne’s a bonnie burn; + ’Tis pleasant there to be; + But there is nought at Otterbourne, + To feed my men and me. + + “The deer rins wild on hill and dale, + The birds fly wild from tree to tree; + But there is neither bread nor kale, + To feed my men and me. + + “Yet I will stay it Otterbourne, + Where you shall welcome be; + And, if ye come not at three dayis end, + A fause lord I’ll ca’ thee.” + + “Thither will I come,” proud Percy said, + “By the might of Our Ladye!”— + “There will I bide thee,” said the Douglas, + “My troth I plight to thee.” + + They lighted high on Otterbourne, + Upon the bent sae brown; + They lighted high on Otterbourne, + And threw their pallions down. + + And he that had a bonnie boy, + Sent out his horse to grass, + And he that had not a bonnie boy, + His ain servant he was. + + But up then spake a little page, + Before the peep of dawn: + “O waken ye, waken ye, my good lord, + For Percy’s hard at hand.” + + “Ye lie, ye lie, ye liar loud! + Sae loud I hear ye lie; + For Percy had not men yestreen, + To dight my men and me. + + “But I have dream’d a dreary dream, + Beyond the Isle of Sky; + I saw a dead man win a fight, + And I think that man was I.” + + He belted on his guid braid sword, + And to the field he ran; + But he forgot the helmet good, + That should have kept his brain. + + When Percy wi the Douglas met, + I wat he was fu fain! + They swakked their swords, till sair they swat, + And the blood ran down like rain. + + But Percy with his good broad sword, + That could so sharply wound, + Has wounded Douglas on the brow, + Till he fell to the ground. + + Then he calld on his little foot-page, + And said—“Run speedilie, + And fetch my ain dear sister’s son, + Sir Hugh Montgomery. + + “My nephew good,” the Douglas said, + “What recks the death of ane! + Last night I dreamd a dreary dream, + And I ken the day’s thy ain. + + “My wound is deep; I fain would sleep; + Take thou the vanguard of the three, + And hide me by the braken bush, + That grows on yonder lilye lee. + + “O bury me by the braken-bush, + Beneath the blooming brier; + Let never living mortal ken + That ere a kindly Scot lies here.” + + He lifted up that noble lord, + Wi the saut tear in his e’e; + He hid him in the braken bush, + That his merrie men might not see. + + The moon was clear, the day drew near, + The spears in flinders flew, + But mony a gallant Englishman + Ere day the Scotsmen slew. + + The Gordons good, in English blood, + They steepd their hose and shoon; + The Lindesays flew like fire about, + Till all the fray was done. + + The Percy and Montgomery met, + That either of other were fain; + They swapped swords, and they twa swat, + And aye the blood ran down between. + + “Yield thee, now yield thee, Percy,” he said, + “Or else I vow I’ll lay thee low!” + “To whom must I yield,” quoth Earl Percy, + “Now that I see it must be so?” + + “Thou shalt not yield to lord nor loun, + Nor yet shalt thou yield to me; + But yield thee to the braken-bush, + That grows upon yon lilye lee!” + + “I will not yield to a braken-bush, + Nor yet will I yield to a brier; + But I would yield to Earl Douglas, + Or Sir Hugh the Montgomery, if he were here.” + + As soon as he knew it was Montgomery, + He stuck his sword’s point in the gronde; + The Montgomery was a courteous knight, + And quickly took him by the honde. + + This deed was done at Otterbourne, + About the breaking of the day; + Earl Douglas was buried at the braken bush, + And the Percy led captive away. + + + + +TAM LIN + + + (_Child_, Part II., p. 340, Burns’s Version.) + + O I FORBID you, maidens a’, + That wear gowd on your hair, + To come or gae by Carterhaugh, + For young Tam Lin is there. + + There’s nane that gaes by Carterhaugh + But they leave him a wad, + Either their rings, or green mantles, + Or else their maidenhead. + + Janet has kilted her green kirtle + A little aboon her knee, + And she has braided her yellow hair + A little aboon her bree, + And she’s awa’ to Carterhaugh, + As fast as she can hie. + + When she came to Carterhaugh + Tam Lin was at the well, + And there she fand his steed standing, + But away was himsel. + + She had na pu’d a double rose, + A rose but only twa, + Till up then started young Tam Lin, + Says, “Lady, thou’s pu nae mae. + + “Why pu’s thou the rose, Janet, + And why breaks thou the wand? + Or why comes thou to Carterhaugh + Withoutten my command?” + + “Carterhaugh, it is my ain, + My daddie gave it me; + I’ll come and gang by Carterhaugh, + And ask nae leave at thee.” + + * * * * * + + Janet has kilted her green kirtle + A little aboon her knee, + And she has snooded her yellow hair + A little aboon her bree, + And she is to her father’s ha, + As fast as she can hie. + + Four and twenty ladies fair + Were playing at the ba, + And out then cam the fair Janet, + Ance the flower amang them a’. + + Four and twenty ladies fair + Were playing at the chess, + And out then cam the fair Janet, + As green as onie grass. + + Out then spak an auld grey knight, + Lay oer the castle wa, + And says, “Alas, fair Janet, for thee + But we’ll be blamed a’.” + + “Haud your tongue, ye auld-fac’d knight, + Some ill death may ye die! + Father my bairn on whom I will, + I’ll father nane on thee.” + + Out then spak her father dear, + And he spak meek and mild; + “And ever alas, sweet Janet,” he says. + “I think thou gaes wi child.” + + “If that I gae wi’ child, father, + Mysel maun bear the blame; + There’s neer a laird about your ha + Shall get the bairn’s name. + + “If my love were an earthly knight, + As he’s an elfin grey, + I wad na gie my ain true-love + For nae lord that ye hae. + + “The steed that my true-love rides on + Is lighter than the wind; + Wi siller he is shod before + Wi burning gowd behind.” + + Janet has kilted her green kirtle + A little aboon her knee, + And she has snooded her yellow hair + A little aboon her bree, + And she’s awa’ to Carterhaugh, + As fast as she can hie. + + When she cam to Carterhaugh, + Tam Lin was at the well, + And there she fand his steed standing, + But away was himsel. + + She had na pu’d a double rose, + A rose but only twa, + Till up then started young Tam Lin, + Says, “Lady, thou pu’s nae mae. + + “Why pu’s thou the rose, Janet, + Amang the groves sae green, + And a’ to kill the bonie babe + That we gat us between?” + + “O tell me, tell me, Tam Lin,” she says, + “For’s sake that died on tree, + If eer ye was in holy chapel, + Or christendom did see?” + + “Roxbrugh he was my grandfather, + Took me with him to bide, + And ance it fell upon a day + That wae did me betide. + + “And ance it fell upon a day, + A cauld day and a snell, + When we were frae the hunting come, + That frae my horse I fell; + The Queen o Fairies she caught me, + In yon green hill to dwell. + + “And pleasant is the fairy land, + But, an eerie tale to tell, + Ay at the end of seven years + We pay a tiend to hell; + I am sae fair and fu’ o flesh + I’m feared it be mysel. + + “But the night is Halloween, lady, + The morn is Hallowday; + Then win me, win me, an ye will, + For weel I wat ye may. + + “Just at the mirk and midnight hour + The fairy folk will ride, + And they that wad their true love win, + At Miles Cross they maun bide.” + + “But how shall I thee ken, Tam Lin, + Or how my true-love know, + Amang sae mony unco knights + The like I never saw?” + + “O first let pass the black, lady, + And syne let pass the brown, + But quickly run to the milk-white steed, + Pu ye his rider down. + + “For I’ll ride on the milk-white steed, + And ay nearest the town; + Because I was an earthly knight + They gie me that renown. + + “My right hand will be gloyd, lady, + My left hand will be bare, + Cockt up shall my bonnet be, + And kaimd down shall my hair; + And thae’s the takens I gie thee, + Nae doubt I will be there. + + “They’ll turn me in your arms, lady, + Into an esk and adder; + But hold me fast, and fear me not, + I am your bairn’s father. + + “They’ll turn me to a bear sae grim, + And then a lion bold; + But hold me fast, and fear me not, + As ye shall love your child. + + “Again they’ll turn me in your arms + To a red het gaud of airn; + But hold me fast, and fear me not, + I’ll do to you nae harm. + + “And last they’ll turn me in your arms + Into the burning gleed; + Then throw me into well water, + O throw me in wi speed. + + “And then I’ll be your ain true-love, + I’ll turn a naked knight; + Then cover me wi your green mantle, + And cover me out o sight.” + + Gloomy, gloomy was the night, + And eerie was the way, + As fair Jenny in her green mantle + To Miles Cross she did gae. + + About the middle o’ the night + She heard the bridles ring; + This lady was as glad at that + As any earthly thing. + + First she let the black pass by, + And syne she let the brown; + But quickly she ran to the milk-white steed, + And pu’d the rider down, + + Sae weel she minded whae he did say, + And young Tam Lin did win; + Syne coverd him wi her green mantle, + As blythe’s a bird in spring. + + Out then spak the Queen o Fairies, + Out of a bush o broom: + “Them that has gotten young Tam Lin + Has gotten a stately groom.” + + Out then spak the Queen o Fairies, + And an angry woman was she; + “Shame betide her ill-far’d face, + And an ill death may she die, + For she’s taen awa the bonniest knight + In a’ my companie. + + “But had I kend, Tam Lin,” she says, + “What now this night I see, + I wad hae taen out thy twa grey e’en, + And put in twa een o tree.” + + + + +THOMAS THE RHYMER + + + (_Child_, Part II., p. 317.) + + TRUE Thomas lay on Huntlie bank; + A ferlie he spied wi’ his ee; + And there he saw a lady bright, + Come riding down by the Eildon Tree. + + Her skirt was o the grass-green silk, + Her mantle o the velvet fyne, + At ilka tett of her horse’s mane + Hang fifty siller bells and nine. + + True Thomas he pulld aff his cap, + And louted low down to his knee: + “All hail, thou mighty Queen of Heaven! + For thy peer on earth I never did see.” + + “O no, O no, Thomas,” she said, + “That name does not belang to me; + I am but the queen of fair Elfland, + That am hither come to visit thee. + + “Harp and carp, Thomas,” she said, + “Harp and carp, along wi’ me, + And if ye dare to kiss my lips, + Sure of your bodie I will be!” + + “Betide me weal, betide me woe, + That weird sall never daunton me; + Syne he has kissed her rosy lips, + All underneath the Eildon Tree. + + “Now, ye maun go wi me,” she said, + “True Thomas, ye maun go wi me, + And ye maun serve me seven years, + Thro weal or woe as may chance to be.” + + She mounted on her milk-white steed, + She’s taen True Thomas up behind, + And aye wheneer her bride rung, + The steed flew swifter than the wind. + + O they rade on, and farther on— + The steed gaed swifter than the wind— + Until they reached a desart wide, + And living land was left behind. + + “Light down, light down, now, True Thomas, + And lean your head upon my knee; + Abide and rest a little space, + And I will shew you ferlies three. + + “O see ye not yon narrow road, + So thick beset with thorns and briers? + That is the path of righteousness, + Tho after it but few enquires. + + “And see ye not that braid braid road, + That lies across that lily leven? + That is the path of wickedness, + Tho some call it the road to heaven. + + “And see not ye that bonny road, + That winds about the fernie brae? + That is the road to fair Elfland, + Where thou and I this night maun gae. + + “But, Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue, + Whatever ye may hear or see, + For, if you speak word in Elflyn land, + Ye’ll neer get back to your ain countrie.” + + O they rade on, and farther on, + And they waded thro rivers aboon the knee, + And they saw neither sun nor moon, + But they heard the roaring of the sea. + + It was mirk mirk night, and there was nae stern light, + And they waded thro red blude to the knee; + For a’ the blude that’s shed an earth + Rins thro the springs o that countrie. + + Syne they came on to a garden green, + And she pu’d an apple frae a tree: + “Take this for thy wages, True Thomas, + It will give the tongue that can never lie.” + + “My tongue is mine ain,” True Thomas said, + “A gudely gift ye wad gie me! + I neither dought to buy nor sell, + At fair or tryst where I may be. + + “I dought neither speak to prince or peer, + Nor ask of grace from fair ladye:” + “Now hold thy peace,” the lady said, + “For as I say, so must it be.” + + He has gotten a coat of the even cloth, + And a pair of shoes of velvet green, + And till seven years were gane and past + True Thomas on earth was never seen. + + + + +“SIR HUGH; OR THE JEW’S DAUGHTER” + + + (_Child_, vol. v.) + + FOUR-AND-TWENTY bonny boys + Were playing at the ba, + And by it came him sweet Sir Hugh, + And he playd o’er them a’. + + He kickd the ba with his right foot + And catchd it wi his knee, + And throuch-and-thro the Jew’s window + He gard the bonny ba flee. + + He’s doen him to the Jew’s castell + And walkd it round about; + And there he saw the Jew’s daughter, + At the window looking out. + + “Throw down the ba, ye Jew’s daughter, + Throw down the ba to me!” + “Never a bit,” says the Jew’s daughter, + “Till up to me come ye.” + + “How will I come up? How can I come up? + How can I come to thee? + For as ye did to my auld father, + The same ye’ll do to me.” + + She’s gane till her father’s garden, + And pu’d an apple red and green; + ’Twas a’ to wyle him sweet Sir Hugh, + And to entice him in. + + She’s led him in through ae dark door, + And sae has she thro nine; + She’s laid him on a dressing-table, + And stickit him like a swine. + + And first came out the thick, thick blood, + And syne came out the thin; + And syne came out the bonny heart’s blood; + There was nae mair within. + + She’s rowd him in a cake o lead, + Bade him lie still and sleep; + She’s thrown him in Our Lady’s draw-well, + Was fifty fathom deep. + + When bells were rung, and mass was sung, + And a’ the bairns came hame, + When every lady gat hame her son, + The Lady Maisry gat nane. + + She’s taen her mantle her about, + Her coffer by the hand, + And she’s gane out to seek her son, + And wandered o’er the land. + + She’s doen her to the Jew’s castell, + Where a’ were fast asleep: + “Gin ye be there, my sweet Sir Hugh, + I pray you to me speak.” + + “Gae hame, gae hame, my mither dear, + Prepare my winding-sheet, + And at the back o merry Lincoln + The morn I will you meet.” + + Now Lady Maisry is gane hame, + Make him a winding-sheet, + And at the back o merry Lincoln, + The dead corpse did her meet. + + And a the bells o merry Lincoln + Without men’s hands were rung, + And a’ the books o merry Lincoln + Were read without man’s tongue, + And neer was such a burial + Sin Adam’s days begun. + + + + +SON DAVIE! SON DAVIE! + + + (_Mackay_.) + + “WHAT bluid’s that on thy coat lap? + Son Davie! Son Davie! + What bluid’s that on thy coat lap? + And the truth come tell to me, O.” + + “It is the bluid of my great hawk, + Mother lady, Mother lady! + It is the bluid of my great hawk, + And the truth I hae tald to thee, O.” + + “Hawk’s bluid was ne’er sae red, + Son Davie! Son Davie! + Hawk’s bluid was ne’er sae red, + And the truth come tell to me, O.” + + “It is the bluid of my grey hound, + Mother lady! Mother lady! + It is the bluid of my grey hound, + And it wudna rin for me, O.” + + “Hound’s bluid was ne’er sae red, + Son Davie! Son Davie! + Hound’s bluid was ne’er sae red, + And the truth come tell to me, O.” + + “It is the bluid o’ my brother John, + Mother lady! Mother lady! + It is the bluid o’ my brother John, + And the truth I hae tald to thee, O.” + + “What about did the plea begin? + Son Davie! Son Davie!” + “It began about the cutting o’ a willow wand, + That would never hae been a tree, O.” + + “What death dost thou desire to die? + Son Davie! Son Davie! + What death dost thou desire to die? + And the truth come tell to me, O.” + + “I’ll set my foot in a bottomless ship, + Mother lady! mother lady! + I’ll set my foot in a bottomless ship, + And ye’ll never see mair o’ me, O.” + + “What wilt thou leave to thy poor wife? + Son Davie! Son Davie!” + “Grief and sorrow all her life, + And she’ll never get mair frae me, O.” + + “What wilt thou leave to thy young son? + Son Davie! son Davie!” + “The weary warld to wander up and down, + And he’ll never get mair o’ me, O.” + + “What wilt thou leave to thy mother dear? + Son Davie! Son Davie!” + “A fire o’ coals to burn her wi’ hearty cheer, + And she’ll never get mair o’ me, O.” + + + + +THE WIFE OF USHER’S WELL + + + (_Child_, vol. iii.) + + THERE lived a wife at Usher’s Well, + And a wealthy wife was she; + She had three stout and stalwart sons, + And sent them oer the sea, + + They hadna been a week from her, + A week but barely ane, + When word came to the carline wife + That her three sons were gane. + + They hadna been a week from her, + A week but barely three, + Whan word came to the carlin wife + That her sons she’d never see. + + “I wish the wind may never cease, + Nor fashes in the flood, + Till my three sons come hame to me, + In earthly flesh and blood!” + + It fell about the Martinmass, + Whan nights are lang and mirk, + The carline wife’s three sons came hame, + And their hats were o the birk. + + It neither grew in syke nor ditch, + Nor yet in ony sheugh; + But at the gates o Paradise + That birk grew fair eneugh. + + * * * * * + + “Blow up the fire, my maidens! + Bring water from the well; + For a’ my house shall feast this night, + Since my three sons are well.” + + And she has made to them a bed, + She’s made it large and wide; + And she’s taen her mantle her about, + Sat down at the bedside. + + * * * * * + + Up then crew the red, red cock, + And up and crew the gray; + The eldest to the youngest said, + “’Tis time we were away.” + + The cock he hadna crawd but once, + And clapp’d his wings at a’, + Whan the youngest to the eldest said, + “Brother, we must awa. + + “The cock doth craw, the day doth daw, + The channerin worm doth chide; + Gin we be mist out o our place, + A sair pain we maun bide. + + “Fare ye weel, my mother dear! + Fareweel to barn and byre! + And fare ye weel, the bonny lass + That kindles my mother’s fire!” + + + + +THE TWA CORBIES + + + (_Child_, vol. i.) + + AS I was walking all alane, + I heard twa corbies making a mane; + The tane unto the t’other say, + “Where sall we gang and dine the day?” + + “In behint yon auld fail dyke, + I wot there lies a new-slain knight; + And naebody kens that he lies there + But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair. + + “His hound is to the hunting gane, + His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame, + His lady’s ta’en another mate, + So we may make our dinner sweet. + + “Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane, + And I’ll pike out his bonny blue een; + Wi ae lock o his gowden hair + We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare. + + “Mony a one for him makes mane, + But nane sall ken whae he is gane, + Oer his white banes, when they are bare, + The wind sall blaw for evermair.” + + + + +THE BONNIE EARL MORAY + + + (_Child_, vol. vi.) + + A. + + YE Highlands, and ye Lawlands + Oh where have you been? + They have slain the Earl of Murray, + And they layd him on the green. + + “Now wae be to thee, Huntly! + And wherefore did you sae? + I bade you bring him wi you, + But forbade you him to slay.” + + He was a braw gallant, + And he rid at the ring; + And the bonny Earl of Murray, + Oh he might have been a King! + + He was a braw gallant, + And he playd at the ba; + And the bonny Earl of Murray, + Was the flower amang them a’. + + He was a braw gallant, + And he playd at the glove; + And the bonny Earl of Murray, + Oh he was the Queen’s love! + + Oh lang will his lady + Look oer the castle Down, + Eer she see the Earl of Murray + Come sounding thro the town! + Eer she, etc. + + B. + + “Open the gates + and let him come in; + He is my brother Huntly, + he’ll do him nae harm.” + + The gates they were opent, + they let him come in, + But fause traitor Huntly, + he did him great harm. + + He’s ben and ben, + and ben to his bed, + And with a sharp rapier + he stabbed him dead. + + The lady came down the stair, + wringing her hands: + “He has slain the Earl o Murray, + the flower o Scotland.” + + But Huntly lap on his horse, + rade to the King: + “Ye’re welcome hame, Huntly, + and whare hae ye been? + + “Where hae ye been? + and how hae ye sped?” + “I’ve killed the Earl o Murray + dead in his bed.” + + “Foul fa you, Huntly! + and why did ye so? + You might have taen the Earl o Murray, + and saved his life too.” + + “Her bread it’s to bake, + her yill is to brew; + My sister’s a widow, + and sair do I rue. + + “Her corn grows ripe, + her meadows grow green, + But in bonnie Dinnibristle + I darena be seen.” + + + + +CLERK SAUNDERS + + + (_Child_, vol. iii.) + + CLERK SAUNDERS and may Margaret + Walked ower yon garden green; + And sad and heavy was the love + That fell thir twa between. + + “A bed, a bed,” Clerk Saunders said, + “A bed for you and me!” + “Fye na, fye na,” said may Margaret, + “’Till anes we married be. + + “For in may come my seven bauld brothers, + Wi’ torches burning bright; + They’ll say,—‘We hae but ae sister, + And behold she’s wi a knight!’” + + “Then take the sword frae my scabbard, + And slowly lift the pin; + And you may swear, and save your aith. + Ye never let Clerk Saunders in. + + “And take a napkin in your hand, + And tie up baith your bonny e’en, + And you may swear, and save your aith, + Ye saw me na since late yestreen.” + + It was about the midnight hour, + When they asleep were laid, + When in and came her seven brothers, + Wi’ torches burning red. + + When in and came her seven brothers, + Wi’ torches burning bright: + They said, “We hae but ae sister, + And behold her lying with a knight!” + + Then out and spake the first o’ them, + “I bear the sword shall gar him die!” + And out and spake the second o’ them, + “His father has nae mair than he!” + + And out and spake the third o’ them, + “I wot that they are lovers dear!” + And out and spake the fourth o’ them, + “They hae been in love this mony a year!” + + Then out and spake the fifth o’ them, + “It were great sin true love to twain!” + And out and spake the sixth o’ them, + “It were shame to slay a sleeping man!” + + Then up and gat the seventh o’ them, + And never a word spake he; + But he has striped his bright brown brand + Out through Clerk Saunders’ fair bodye. + + Clerk Saunders he started, and Margaret she turned + Into his arms as asleep she lay; + And sad and silent was the night + That was atween thir twae. + + And they lay still and sleeped sound + Until the day began to daw; + And kindly to him she did say, + “It is time, true love, you were awa’.” + + But he lay still, and sleeped sound, + Albeit the sun began to sheen; + She looked atween her and the wa’, + And dull and drowsie were his e’en. + + Then in and came her father dear; + Said,—“Let a’ your mourning be: + I’ll carry the dead corpse to the clay, + And I’ll come back and comfort thee.” + + “Comfort weel your seven sons; + For comforted will I never be: + I ween ’twas neither knave nor loon + Was in the bower last night wi’ me.” + + The clinking bell gaed through the town, + To carry the dead corse to the clay; + And Clerk Saunders stood at may Margaret’s window, + I wot, an hour before the day. + + “Are ye sleeping, Margaret?” he says, + “Or are ye waking presentlie? + Give me my faith and troth again, + I wot, true love, I gied to thee.” + + “Your faith and troth ye sall never get, + Nor our true love sall never twin, + Until ye come within my bower, + And kiss me cheik and chin.” + + “My mouth it is full cold, Margaret, + It has the smell, now, of the ground; + And if I kiss thy comely mouth, + Thy days of life will not be lang. + + “O, cocks are crowing a merry midnight, + I wot the wild fowls are boding day; + Give me my faith and troth again, + And let me fare me on my way.” + + “Thy faith and troth thou sall na get, + And our true love sall never twin, + Until ye tell what comes of women, + I wot, who die in strong traivelling? + + “Their beds are made in the heavens high, + Down at the foot of our good lord’s knee, + Weel set about wi’ gillyflowers; + I wot, sweet company for to see. + + “O, cocks are crowing a merry midnight, + I wot the wild fowl are boding day; + The psalms of heaven will soon be sung, + And I, ere now, will be missed away.” + + Then she has ta’en a crystal wand, + And she has stroken her troth thereon; + She has given it him out at the shot-window, + Wi’ mony a sad sigh, and heavy groan. + + “I thank ye, Marg’ret, I thank ye, Marg’ret; + And aye I thank ye heartilie; + Gin ever the dead come for the quick, + Be sure, Mag’ret, I’ll come for thee.” + + It’s hosen and shoon, and gown alone, + She climb’d the wall, and followed him, + Until she came to the green forest, + And there she lost the sight o’ him. + + “Is there ony room at your head, Saunders? + Is there ony room at your feet? + Is there ony room at your side, Saunders, + Where fain, fain I wad sleep?” + + “There’s nae room at my head, Marg’ret, + There’s nae room at my feet; + My bed it is full lowly now, + Amang the hungry worms I sleep. + + “Cauld mould is my covering now, + But and my winding-sheet; + The dew it falls nae sooner down + Than my resting-place is weet. + + “But plait a wand o’ bonnie birk, + And lay it on my breast; + And shed a tear upon my grave, + And wish my saul gude rest. + + “And fair Marg’ret, and rare Marg’ret, + And Marg’ret, o’ veritie, + Gin ere ye love another man, + Ne’er love him as ye did me.” + + Then up and crew the milk-white cock, + And up and crew the gray; + Her lover vanish’d in the air, + And she gaed weeping away. + + + + +WALY, WALY + + + (_Mackay_.) + + O WALY, waly, up the bank, + O waly, waly, down the brae. + And waly, waly, yon burn side, + Where I and my love wont to gae. + I leaned my back unto an aik, + An’ thocht it was a trustie tree, + But first it bow’d and syne it brak, + Sae my true love did lichtly me. + + O waly, waly, but love is bonnie + A little time while it is new, + But when it’s auld it waxes cauld, + And fades away like morning dew. + O wherefore should I busk my head, + O wherefore should I kame my hair, + For my true love has me forsook, + And says he’ll never love me mair. + + Now Arthur’s Seat shall be my bed, + The sheets shall ne’er be pressed by me, + St. Anton’s well shall be my drink, + Since my true love has forsaken me. + Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw, + And shake the green leaves off the tree! + O gentle Death, when wilt thou come? + For of my life I am wearie! + + ’Tis not the frost that freezes fell, + Nor blawing snaw’s inclemencie, + ’Tis not sic cauld that makes me cry, + But my love’s heart’s grown cauld to me. + When we came in by Glasgow toun + We were a comely sicht to see; + My love was clad in the black velvet, + And I mysel in cramasie. + + But had I wist before I kist + That love had been sae ill to win, + I’d locked my heart in a case of gold, + And pinned it wi’ a siller pin. + Oh, oh! if my young babe were born, + And set upon the nurse’s knee; + And I myself were dead and gane, + And the green grass growing over me! + + + + +LOVE GREGOR; OR, THE LASS OF LOCHROYAN + + + (_Child_, Part III., p. 220.) + + “O WHA will shoe my fu’ fair foot? + And wha will glove my hand? + And wha will lace my middle jimp, + Wi’ the new-made London band? + + “And wha will kaim my yellow hair, + Wi’ the new made silver kaim? + And wha will father my young son, + Till Love Gregor come hame?” + + “Your father will shoe your fu’ fair foot, + Your mother will glove your hand; + Your sister will lace your middle jimp + Wi’ the new-made London band. + + “Your brother will kaim your yellow hair, + Wi’ the new made silver kaim; + And the king of heaven will father your bairn, + Till Love Gregor come haim.” + + “But I will get a bonny boat, + And I will sail the sea, + For I maun gang to Love Gregor, + Since he canno come hame to me.” + + O she has gotten a bonny boat, + And sailld the sa’t sea fame; + She langd to see her ain true-love, + Since he could no come hame. + + “O row your boat, my mariners, + And bring me to the land, + For yonder I see my love’s castle, + Close by the sa’t sea strand.” + + She has ta’en her young son in her arms, + And to the door she’s gone, + And lang she’s knocked and sair she ca’d, + But answer got she none. + + “O open the door, Love Gregor,” she says, + “O open, and let me in; + For the wind blaws thro’ my yellow hair, + And the rain draps o’er my chin.” + + “Awa, awa, ye ill woman, + You’r nae come here for good; + You’r but some witch, or wile warlock, + Or mer-maid of the flood.” + + “I am neither a witch nor a wile warlock, + Nor mer-maid of the sea, + I am Fair Annie of Rough Royal; + O open the door to me.” + + “Gin ye be Annie of Rough Royal— + And I trust ye are not she— + Now tell me some of the love-tokens + That past between you and me.” + + “O dinna you mind now, Love Gregor, + When we sat at the wine, + How we changed the rings frae our fingers? + And I can show thee thine. + + “O yours was good, and good enough, + But ay the best was mine; + For yours was o’ the good red goud, + But mine o’ the diamonds fine. + + “But open the door now, Love Gregor, + O open the door I pray, + For your young son that is in my arms + Will be dead ere it be day.” + + “Awa, awa, ye ill woman, + For here ye shanno win in; + Gae drown ye in the raging sea, + Or hang on the gallows-pin.” + + When the cock had crawn, and day did dawn, + And the sun began to peep, + Then up he rose him, Love Gregor, + And sair, sair did he weep. + + “O I dreamd a dream, my mother dear, + The thoughts o’ it gars me greet, + That Fair Annie of Rough Royal + Lay cauld dead at my feet.” + + “Gin it be for Annie of Rough Royal + That ye make a’ this din, + She stood a’ last night at this door, + But I trow she wan no in.” + + “O wae betide ye, ill woman, + An ill dead may ye die! + That ye woudno open the door to her, + Nor yet woud waken me.” + + O he has gone down to yon shore-side, + As fast as he could fare; + He saw Fair Annie in her boat, + But the wind it tossd her sair. + + And “Hey, Annie!” and “How, Annie! + O Annie, winna ye bide?” + But ay the mair that he cried “Annie,” + The braider grew the tide. + + And “Hey, Annie!” and “How, Annie! + Dear Annie, speak to me!” + But ay the louder he cried “Annie,” + The louder roard the sea. + + The wind blew loud, the sea grew rough, + And dashd the boat on shore; + Fair Annie floats on the raging sea, + But her young son rose no more. + + Love Gregor tare his yellow hair, + And made a heavy moan; + Fair Annie’s corpse lay at his feet, + But his bonny young son was gone. + + O cherry, cherry was her cheek, + And gowden was her hair, + But clay cold were her rosey lips, + Nae spark of life was there, + + And first he’s kissd her cherry cheek, + And neist he’s kissed her chin; + And saftly pressd her rosey lips, + But there was nae breath within. + + “O wae betide my cruel mother, + And an ill dead may she die! + For she turnd my true-love frae my door, + When she came sae far to me.” + + + + +THE QUEEN’S MARIE + + + (_Child_, vi., _Border Minstrelsy_.) + + MARIE HAMILTON’S to the kirk gane, + Wi ribbons in her hair; + The king thought mair o Marie Hamilton, + Than ony that were there. + + Marie Hamilton’s to the kirk gane, + Wi ribbons on her breast; + The king thought mair o Marie Hamilton, + Than he listend to the priest. + + Marie Hamilton’s to the kirk gane, + Wi gloves upon her hands; + The king thought mair o Marie Hamilton, + Than the queen and a’ her lands. + + She hadna been about the king’s court + A month, but barely one, + Till she was beloved by a’ the king’s court, + And the king the only man. + + She hadna been about the king’s court + A month, but barely three, + Till frae the king’s court Marie Hamilton, + Marie Hamilton durst na be. + + The king is to the Abbey gane, + To pu the Abbey tree, + To scale the babe frae Marie’s heart; + But the thing it wadna be. + + O she has rowd it in her apron, + And set it on the sea: + “Gae sink ye, or swim ye, bonny babe, + Ye’s get na mair o me.” + + Word is to the kitchen gane, + And word is to the ha, + And word is to the noble room, + Amang the ladyes a’, + That Marie Hamilton’s brought to bed, + And the bonny babe’s mist and awa. + + Scarcely had she lain down again, + And scarcely faen asleep, + When up then started our gude queen, + Just at her bed-feet, + Saying “Marie Hamilton, where’s your babe? + For I am sure I heard it greet.” + + “O no, O no, my noble queen! + Think no such thing to be! + ’Twas but a stitch into my side, + And sair it troubles me.” + + “Get up, get up, Marie Hamilton, + Get up, and follow me, + For I am going to Edinburgh town, + A rich wedding for to see.” + + O slowly, slowly raise she up, + And slowly put she on; + And slowly rode she out the way, + Wi mony a weary groan. + + The queen was clad in scarlet, + Her merry maids all in green; + And every town that they cam to, + They took Marie for the queen. + + “Ride hooly, hooly, gentlemen, + Ride hooly now wi’ me! + For never, I am sure, a wearier burd + Rade in your cumpanie.” + + But little wist Marie Hamilton, + When she rade on the brown, + That she was ga’en to Edinburgh town, + And a’ to be put down. + + “Why weep ye so, ye burgess-wives, + Why look ye so on me? + O, I am going to Edinburgh town, + A rich wedding for to see!” + + When she gaed up the Tolbooth stairs, + The corks frae her heels did flee; + And lang or eer she cam down again, + She was condemned to die. + + When she cam to the Netherbow Port, + She laughed loud laughters three; + But when she cam to the gallows-foot, + The tears blinded her ee. + + “Yestreen the queen had four Maries, + The night she’ll hae but three; + There was Marie Seaton, and Marie Beaten, + And Marie Carmichael, and me. + + “O, often have I dressd my queen, + And put gold upon her hair; + But now I’ve gotten for my reward + The gallows to be my share. + + “Often have I dressd my queen, + And often made her bed: + But now I’ve gotten for my reward + The gallows-tree to tread. + + “I charge ye all, ye mariners, + When ye sail ower the faem, + Let neither my father nor mother get wit, + But that I’m coming hame. + + “I charge ye all, ye mariners, + That sail upon the sea, + Let neither my father nor mother get wit, + This dog’s death I’m to die. + + “For if my father and mother got wit, + And my bold brethren three, + O mickle wad be the gude red blude, + This day wad be spilt for me! + + “O little did my mother ken, + The day she cradled me, + The lands I was to travel in, + Or the death I was to die!” + + + + +KINMONT WILLIE + + + (_Child_, vol. vi.) + + O HAVE ye na heard o the fause Sakelde? + O have ye na heard o the keen Lord Scroop? + How they hae taen bauld Kinmont Willie, + On Hairibee to hang him up? + + Had Willie had but twenty men, + But twenty men as stout as be, + Fause Sakelde had never the Kinmont taen + Wi eight score in his companie. + + They band his legs beneath the steed, + They tied his hands behind his back; + They guarded him, fivesome on each side, + And they brought him ower the Liddel-rack. + + They led him thro the Liddel-rack. + And also thro the Carlisle sands; + They brought him to Carlisle castell. + To be at my Lord Scroope’s commands. + + “My hands are tied; but my tongue is free, + And whae will dare this deed avow? + Or answer by the border law? + Or answer to the bauld Buccleuch?” + + “Now haud thy tongue, thou rank reiver! + There’s never a Scot shall set ye free: + Before ye cross my castle-yate, + I trow ye shall take farewell o me.” + + “Fear na ye that, my lord,” quo Willie: + “By the faith o my body, Lord Scroope,” he said, + “I never yet lodged in a hostelrie— + But I paid my lawing before I gaed.” + + Now word is gane to the bauld Keeper, + In Branksome Ha where that he lay, + That Lord Scroope has taen the Kinmont Willie, + Between the hours of night and day. + + He has taen the table wi his hand, + He garrd the red wine spring on hie; + “Now Christ’s curse on my head,” he said, + “But avenged of Lord Scroope I’ll be! + + “O is my basnet a widow’s curch? + Or my lance a wand of the willow-tree? + Or my arm a lady’s lilye hand, + That an English lord should lightly me? + + “And have they taen him, Kinmont Willie, + Against the truce of Border tide? + And forgotten that the bauld Bacleuch + Is keeper here on the Scottish side? + + “And have they een taen him, Kinmont Willie, + Withouten either dread or fear, + And forgotten that the bauld Bacleuch + Can back a steed, or shake a spear? + + “O were there war between the lands, + As well I wot that there is none, + I would slight Carlisle castell high, + Tho it were builded of marble stone. + + “I would set that castell in a low, + And sloken it with English blood; + There’s nevir a man in Cumberland + Should ken where Carlisle castell stood. + + “But since nae war’s between the lands, + And there is peace, and peace should be; + I’ll neither harm English lad or lass, + And yet the Kinmont freed shall be!” + + He has calld him forty marchmen bauld, + I trow they were of his ain name, + Except Sir Gilbert Elliot, calld + The Laird of Stobs, I mean the same. + + He has calld him forty marchmen bauld, + Were kinsmen to the bauld Buccleuch, + With spur on heel, and splent on spauld, + And gleuves of green, and feathers blue. + + There were five and five before them a’, + Wi hunting-horns and bugles bright; + And five and five came wi Buccleuch, + Like Warden’s men, arrayed for fight. + + And five and five, like a mason-gang, + That carried the ladders lang and hie; + And five and five, like broken men; + And so they reached the Woodhouselee. + + And as we crossd the Bateable Land, + When to the English side we held, + The first o men that we met wi, + Whae sould it be but fause Sakelde! + + “Where be ye gaun, ye hunters keen?” + Quo fause Sakelde; “come tell to me!” + “We go to hunt an English stag, + Has trespassed on the Scots countrie.” + + “Where be ye gaun, ye marshal-men?” + Quo fause Sakelde; “come tell me true!” + “We go to catch a rank reiver, + Has broken faith wi the bauld Buccleuch.” + + “Where are ye gaun, ye mason-lads, + Wi a’ your ladders lang and hie?” + “We gang to herry a corbie’s nest, + That wons not far frae Woodhouselee.” + + “Where be ye gaun, ye broken men?” + Quo fause Sakelde; “come tell to me?” + Now Dickie of Dryhope led that band, + And the nevir a word o lear had he. + + “Why trespass ye on the English side? + Row-footed outlaws, stand!” quo he; + The neer a word had Dickie to say, + Sae he thrust the lance thro his fause bodie. + + Then on we held for Carlisle toun, + And at Staneshaw-bank the Eden we crossd; + The water was great and meikle of spait, + But the nevir a horse nor man we lost. + + And when we reachd the Staneshaw-bank, + The wind was rising loud and hie; + And there the laird garrd leave our steeds, + For fear that they should stamp and nie. + + And when we left the Staneshaw-bank, + The wind began full loud to blaw; + But ’twas wind and weet, and fire and sleet, + When we came beneath the castell-wa. + + We crept on knees, and held our breath, + Till we placed the ladders against the wa; + And sae ready was Buccleuch himsell + To mount she first, before us a’. + + He has taen the watchman by the throat, + He flung him down upon the lead: + “Had there not been peace between our lands, + Upon the other side thou hadst gaed. + + “Now sound out, trumpets!” quo Buccleuch; + “Let’s waken Lord Scroope right merrilie!” + Then loud the warden’s trumpet blew + “O whae dare meddle wi me?” + + Then speedilie to wark we gaed, + And raised the slogan ane and a’, + And cut a hole through a sheet of lead, + And so we wan to the castel-ha. + + They thought King James and a’ his men + Had won the house wi bow and speir; + It was but twenty Scots and ten + That put a thousand in sic a stear! + + Wi coulters, and wi fore-hammers, + We garrd the bars bang merrilie, + Until we came to the inner prison, + Where Willie o Kinmont he did lie. + + And when we came to the lower prison, + Where Willie o Kinmont he did lie, + “O sleep ye, wake ye, Kinmont Willie, + Upon the morn that thou’s to die?” + + “O I sleep saft, and I wake aft, + It’s lang since sleeping was fley’d frae me; + Gie my service back to my wyfe and bairns + And a’ gude fellows that speer for me.” + + Then Red Rowan has hente him up, + The starkest man in Teviotdale: + “Abide, abide now, Red Rowan, + Till of my Lord Scroope I take farewell. + + “Farewell, farewell, my gude Lord Scroope! + My gude Lord Scroope, farewell!” he cried; + “I’ll pay you for my lodging-maill, + When first we meet on the border-side.” + + Then shoulder high, with shout and cry, + We bore him down the ladder lang; + At every stride Red Rowan made, + I wot the Kinmont’s airms playd clang! + + “O mony a time,” quo Kinmont Willie. + “I have ridden horse baith wild and wood; + But a rougher beast than Red Rowan, + I ween my legs have neer bestrode. + + “And mony a time,” quo Kinmont Willie, + “I’ve pricked a horse out oure the furs; + But since the day I backed a steed + I nevir wore sic cumbrous spurs!” + + We scarce had won the Staneshaw-bank, + When a’ the Carlisle bells were rung, + And a thousand men, in horse and foot, + Cam wi the keen Lord Scroope along. + + Buccleuch has turned to Eden Water, + Even where it flowd frae bank to brim, + And he has plunged in wi a’ his band, + And safely swam them thro the stream. + + He turned him on the other side, + And at Lord Scroope his glove flung he: + “If ye like na my visit in merry England, + In fair Scotland come visit me!” + + All sore astonished stood Lord Scroope, + He stood as still as rock of stane; + He scarcely dared to trew his eyes, + When thro the water they had gane. + + “He is either himsell a devil frae hell, + Or else his mother a witch maun be; + I wad na have ridden that wan water + For a’ the gowd in Christentie.” + + + + +JAMIE TELFER + + + (_Child_, vol. vi. Early Edition.) + + IT fell about the Martinmas tyde, + When our Border steeds get corn and hay + The captain of Bewcastle hath bound him to ryde, + And he’s ower to Tividale to drive a prey. + + The first ae guide that they met wi’, + It was high up Hardhaughswire; + The second guide that we met wi’, + It was laigh down in Borthwick water. + + “What tidings, what tidings, my trusty guide?” + “Nae tidings, nae tidings, I hae to thee; + But, gin ye’ll gae to the fair Dodhead, + Mony a cow’s cauf I’ll let thee see.” + + And whan they cam to the fair Dodhead, + Right hastily they clam the peel; + They loosed the kye out, ane and a’, + And ranshackled the house right weel. + + Now Jamie Telfer’s heart was sair, + The tear aye rowing in his e’e; + He pled wi’ the captain to hae his gear, + Or else revenged he wad be. + + The captain turned him round and leugh; + Said—“Man, there’s naething in thy house, + But ae auld sword without a sheath, + That hardly now wad fell a mouse!” + + The sun was na up, but the moon was down, + It was the gryming o’ a new fa’n snaw, + Jamie Telfer has run three myles a-foot, + Between the Dodhead and the Stobs’s Ha’ + + And whan he cam to the fair tower yate, + He shouted loud, and cried weel hie, + Till out bespak auld Gibby Elliot— + “Wha’s this that brings the fraye to me?” + + “It’s I, Jamie Telfer o’ the fair Dodhead, + And a harried man I think I be! + There’s naething left at the fair Dodhead, + But a waefu’ wife and bairnies three. + + “Gae seek your succour at Branksome Ha’. + For succour ye’se get nane frae me! + Gae seek your succour where ye paid black-mail, + For, man! ye ne’er paid money to me.” + + Jamie has turned him round about, + I wat the tear blinded his e’e— + “I’ll ne’er pay mail to Elliot again, + And the fair Dodhead I’ll never see! + + “My hounds may a’ rin masterless, + My hawks may fly frae tree to tree; + My lord may grip my vassal lands, + For there again maun I never be.” + + He has turned him to the Tiviot side, + E’en as fast as he could drie, + Till he came to the Coultart Cleugh + And there he shouted baith loud and hie. + + Then up bespak him auld Jock Grieve— + “Wha’s this that brings the fray to me?” + “It’s I, Jamie Telfer o’ the fair Dodhead, + A harried man I trow I be. + + “There’s naething left in the fair Dodhead, + But a greeting wife and bairnies three, + And sax poor câ’s stand in the sta’, + A’ routing loud for their minnie.” + + “Alack a wae!” quo’ auld Jock Grieve, + “Alack! my heart is sair for thee! + For I was married on the elder sister, + And you on the youngest of a’ the three.” + + Then he has ta’en out a bonny black, + Was right weel fed wi’ corn and hay, + And he’s set Jamie Telfer on his back, + To the Catslockhill to tak’ the fray. + + And whan he cam to the Catslockhill, + He shouted loud and weel cried he, + Till out and spak him William’s Wat— + “O wha’s this brings the fraye to me?” + + “It’s I, Jamie Telfer o’ the fair Dodhead, + A harried man I think I be! + The captain of Bewcastle has driven my gear; + For God’s sake rise, and succour me!” + + “Alas for wae!” quo’ William’s Wat, + “Alack, for thee my heart is sair! + I never cam by the fair Dodhead, + That ever I fand thy basket bare.” + + He’s set his twa sons on coal-black steeds, + Himsel’ upon a freckled gray, + And they are on wi, Jamie Telfer, + To Branksome Ha to tak the fray. + + And whan they cam to Branksome Ha’, + They shouted a’ baith loud and hie, + Till up and spak him auld Buccleuch, + Said—“Wha’s this brings the fray to me? + + “It’s I, Jamie Telfer o’ the fair Dodhead, + And a harried man I think I be! + There’s nought left in the fair Dodhead, + But a greeting wife and bairnies three.” + + “Alack for wae!” quoth the gude auld lord, + “And ever my heart is wae for thee! + But fye gar cry on Willie, my son, + And see that he come to me speedilie! + + “Gar warn the water, braid and wide, + Gar warn it soon and hastily! + They that winna ride for Telfer’s kye, + Let them never look in the face o’ me! + + “Warn Wat o’ Harden, and his sons, + Wi’ them will Borthwick water ride; + Warn Gaudilands, and Allanhaugh, + And Gilmanscleugh, and Commonside. + + “Ride by the gate at Priesthaughswire, + And warn the Currors o’ the Lee; + As ye come down the Hermitage Slack, + Warn doughty Willie o’ Gorrinbery.” + + The Scots they rade, the Scots they ran, + Sae starkly and sae steadilie! + And aye the ower-word o’ the thrang, + Was—“Rise for Branksome readilie!” + + The gear was driven the Frostylee up, + Frae the Frostylee unto the plain, + Whan Willie has looked his men before, + And saw the kye right fast driving. + + “Wha drives thir kye?” ’gan Willie say, + “To mak an outspeckle o’ me?” + “It’s I, the captain o’ Bewcastle, Willie; + I winna layne my name for thee.” + + “O will ye let Telfer’s kye gae back, + Or will ye do aught for regard o’ me? + Or, by the faith o’ my body,” quo’ Willie Scott, + “I se ware my dame’s cauf’s-skin on thee!” + + “I winna let the kye gae back, + Neither for thy love, nor yet thy fear, + But I will drive Jamie Telfer’s kye, + In spite of every Scot that’s here.” + + “Set on them, lads!” quo’ Willie than, + “Fye, lads, set on them cruellie! + For ere they win to the Ritterford, + Mony a toom saddle there sall be!” + + But Willie was stricken ower the head, + And through the knapscap the sword has gane; + And Harden grat for very rage, + Whan Willie on the ground lay slain. + + But he’s ta’en aff his gude steel-cap, + And thrice he’s waved it in the air— + The Dinlay snaw was ne’er mair white, + Nor the lyart locks of Harden’s hair. + + “Revenge! revenge!” auld Wat ’gan cry; + “Fye, lads, lay on them cruellie! + We’ll ne’er see Tiviotside again, + Or Willie’s death revenged shall be.” + + O mony a horse ran masterless, + The splintered lances flew on hie; + But or they wan to the Kershope ford, + The Scots had gotten the victory. + + John o’ Brigham there was slain, + And John o’ Barlow, as I hear say; + And thirty mae o’ the captain’s men, + Lay bleeding on the grund that day. + + The captain was run thro’ the thick of the thigh— + And broken was his right leg bane; + If he had lived this hundred year, + He had never been loved by woman again. + + “Hae back thy kye!” the captain said; + “Dear kye, I trow, to some they be! + For gin I suld live a hundred years, + There will ne’er fair lady smile on me.” + + Then word is gane to the captain’s bride, + Even in the bower where that she lay, + That her lord was prisoner in enemy’s land, + Since into Tividale he had led the way. + + “I wad lourd have had a winding-sheet, + And helped to put it ower his head, + Ere he had been disgraced by the Border Scot, + When he ower Liddel his men did lead!” + + There was a wild gallant amang us a’, + His name was Watty wi’ the Wudspurs, + Cried—“On for his house in Stanegirthside, + If ony man will ride with us!” + + When they cam to the Stanegirthside, + They dang wi’ trees, and burst the door; + They loosed out a’ the captain’s kye, + And set them forth our lads before. + + There was an auld wife ayont the fire, + A wee bit o’ the captain’s kin— + “Wha daur loose out the captain’s kye, + Or answer to him and his men?” + + “It’s I, Watty Wudspurs, loose the kye, + I winna layne my name frae thee! + And I will loose out the captain’s kye, + In scorn of a’ his men and he.” + + When they cam to the fair Dodhead, + They were a wellcum sight to see! + For instead of his ain ten milk-kye, + Jamie Telfer has gotten thirty and three. + + And he has paid the rescue shot, + Baith wi’ goud, and white monie; + And at the burial o’ Willie Scott, + I wot was mony a weeping e’e. + + + + +THE DOUGLAS TRAGEDY + + + (_Child_, vol. ii. Early Edition.) + + “RISE up, rise up now, Lord Douglas,” she says, + “And put on your armour so bright; + Let it never be said that a daughter of thine + Was married to a lord under night. + + “Rise up, rise up, my seven bold sons, + And put on your armour so bright, + And take better care of your youngest sister, + For your eldest’s awa the last night.”— + + He’s mounted her on a milk-white steed, + And himself on a dapple grey, + With a bugelet horn hung down by his side, + And lightly they rode away. + + Lord William lookit o’er his left shoulder, + To see what he could see, + And there be spy’d her seven brethren bold, + Come riding o’er the lee. + + “Light down, light down, Lady Marg’ret,” he said, + “And hold my steed in your hand, + Until that against your seven brothers bold, + And your father I make a stand.”— + + She held his steed in her milk white hand, + And never shed one tear, + Until that she saw her seven brethren fa’, + And her father hard fighting, who loved her so dear. + + “O hold your hand, Lord William!” she said, + “For your strokes they are wondrous sair; + True lovers I can get many a ane, + But a father I can never get mair.”— + + O she’s ta’en out her handkerchief, + It was o’ the holland sae fine, + And aye she dighted her father’s bloody wounds, + That were redder than the wine. + + “O chuse, O chuse, Lady Marg’ret,” he said, + “O whether will ye gang or bide?” + “I’ll gang, I’ll gang, Lord William,” she said, + “For ye have left me no other guide.”— + + He’s lifted her on a milk-white steed, + And himself on a dapple grey. + With a bugelet horn hung down by his side, + And slowly they baith rade away. + + O they rade on, and on they rade, + And a’ by the light of the moon, + Until they came to yon wan water, + And there they lighted down. + + They lighted down to tak a drink + Of the spring that ran sae clear: + And down the stream ran his gude heart’s blood, + And sair she ’gan to fear. + + “Hold up, hold up, Lord William,” she says, + “For I fear that you are slain!” + “’Tis naething but the shadow of my scarlet cloak + That shines in the water sae plain.” + + O they rade on, and on they rade, + And a’ by the light of the moon, + Until they cam to his mother’s ha’ door, + And there they lighted down. + + “Get up, get up, lady mother,” he says, + “Get up, and let me in!— + Get up, get up, lady mother,” he says, + “For this night my fair ladye I’ve win. + + “O mak my bed, lady mother,” he says, + “O mak it braid and deep! + And lay Lady Marg’ret close at my back, + And the sounder I will sleep.”— + + Lord William was dead lang ere midnight, + Lady Marg’ret lang ere day— + And all true lovers that go thegither, + May they have mair luck than they! + + Lord William was buried in St. Marie’s kirk, + Lady Margaret in Marie’s quire; + Out o’ the lady’s grave grew a bonny red rose, + And out o’ the knight’s a brier. + + And they twa met, and they twa plat, + And fain they wad be near; + And a’ the warld might ken right weel, + They were twa lovers dear. + + But by and rade the Black Douglas, + And wow but he was rough! + For he pull’d up the bonny brier, + An flang’t in St. Marie’s Loch. + + + + +THE BONNY HIND + + + (_Child_, vol. ii.) + + O MAY she comes, and may she goes, + Down by yon gardens green, + And there she spied a gallant squire + As squire had ever been. + + And may she comes, and may she goes, + Down by yon hollin tree, + And there she spied a brisk young squire, + And a brisk young squire was he. + + “Give me your green manteel, fair maid, + Give me your maidenhead; + Gif ye winna gie me your green manteel, + Gi me your maidenhead.” + + He has taen her by the milk-white hand, + And softly laid her down, + And when he’s lifted her up again + Given her a silver kaim. + + “Perhaps there may be bairns, kind sir, + Perhaps there may be nane; + But if you be a courtier, + You’ll tell to me your name.” + + “I am na courtier, fair maid, + But new come frae the sea; + I am nae courtier, fair maid, + But when I court’ith thee. + + “They call me Jack when I’m abroad, + Sometimes they call me John; + But when I’m in my father’s bower + Jock Randal is my name.” + + “Ye lee, ye lee, ye bonny lad, + Sae loud’s I hear ye lee! + For I’m Lord Randal’s yae daughter, + He has nae mair nor me.” + + “Ye lee, ye lee, ye bonny may, + Sae loud’s I hear ye lee! + For I’m Lord Randal’s yae yae son, + Just now come oer the sea.” + + She’s putten her hand down by her spare + And out she’s taen a knife, + And she has putn’t in her heart’s bluid, + And taen away her life. + + And he’s taen up his bonny sister, + With the big tear in his een, + And he has buried his bonny sister + Amang the hollins green. + + And syne he’s hyed him oer the dale, + His father dear to see: + “Sing O and O for my bonny hind, + Beneath yon hollin tree!” + + “What needs you care for your bonny hyn? + For it you needna care; + There’s aught score hyns in yonder park, + And five score hyns to spare. + + “Fourscore of them are siller-shod, + Of thae ye may get three;” + “But O and O for my bonny hyn, + Beneath yon hollin tree!” + + “What needs you care for your bonny hyn? + For it you needna care; + Take you the best, gi me the warst, + Since plenty is to spare.” + + “I care na for your hyns, my lord, + I care na for your fee; + But O and O for my bonny hyn, + Beneath the hollin tree!” + + “O were ye at your sister’s bower, + Your sister fair to see, + Ye’ll think na mair o your bonny hyn + Beneath the hollin tree.” + + + + +YOUNG BICHAM + + + (_Child_, vol. ii.) + + IN London city was Bicham born, + He longd strange countries for to see, + But he was taen by a savage Moor, + Who handld him right cruely. + + For thro his shoulder he put a bore, + An thro the bore has pitten a tree, + And he’s gard him draw the carts o wine, + Where horse and oxen had wont to be. + + He’s casten [him] in a dungeon deep, + Where he coud neither hear nor see; + He’s shut him up in a prison strong, + An he’s handld him right cruely. + + O this Moor he had but ae daughter, + I wot her name was Shusy Pye; + She’s doen her to the prison-house, + And she’s calld young Bicham one word by. + + “O hae ye ony lands or rents, + Or citys in your ain country, + Coud free you out of prison strong, + An coud maintain a lady free?” + + “O London city is my own, + An other citys twa or three, + Coud loose me out o prison strong, + An could maintain a lady free.” + + O she has bribed her father’s men + Wi meikle goud and white money, + She’s gotten the key o the prison doors, + And she has set Young Bicham free. + + She’s gi’n him a loaf o good white bread, + But an a flask o Spanish wine, + An she bad him mind on the ladie’s love + That sae kindly freed him out o pine. + + “Go set your foot on good ship-board, + An haste you back to your ain country, + An before that seven years has an end, + Come back again, love, and marry me.” + + It was long or seven years had an end + She longd fu sair her love to see; + She’s set her foot on good ship-board, + An turnd her back on her ain country. + + She’s saild up, so has she down, + Till she came to the other side; + She’s landed at Young Bicham’s gates, + An I hop this day she sal be his bride. + + “Is this Young Bicham’s gates?” says she. + “Or is that noble prince within?” + “He’s up the stair wi his bonny bride, + An monny a lord and lady wi him.” + + “O has he taen a bonny bride, + An has he clean forgotten me?” + An sighing said that gay lady, + “I wish I were in my ain country!” + + She’s pitten her ban in her pocket, + An gin the porter guineas three; + Says, “Take ye that, ye proud porter, + An bid the bridegroom speak to me.” + + O whan the porter came up the stair, + He’s fa’n low down upon his knee: + “Won up, won up, ye proud porter, + And what makes a’ this courtesy?” + + “O I’ve been porter at your gates + This mair nor seven years an three, + But there is a lady at them now + The like of whom I never did see. + + “For on every finger she has a ring, + An on the mid-finger she has three, + An there’s as meikle goud aboon her brow + As woud buy an earldom o lan to me.” + + Then up it started Young Bicham, + An sware so loud by Our Lady, + “It can be nane but Shusy Pye + That has come oor the sea to me.” + + O quickly ran he down the stair, + O fifteen steps he has made but three, + He’s tane his bonny love in his arms + An a wot he kissd her tenderly. + + “O hae you tane a bonny bride? + An hae you quite forsaken me? + An hae ye quite forgotten her + That gae you life an liberty?” + + She’s lookit oer her left shoulder + To hide the tears stood in her ee; + “Now fare thee well, Young Bicham,” she says, + “I’ll strive to think nae mair on thee.” + + “Take back your daughter, madam,” he says, + “An a double dowry I’ll gie her wi; + For I maun marry my first true love, + That’s done and suffered so much for me.” + + He’s tak his bonny love by the han, + And led her to yon fountain stane; + He’s changed her name frae Shusy Pye, + An he’s cald her his bonny love, Lady Jane. + + + + +THE LOVING BALLAD OF LORD BATEMAN + + + (_Child_, vol. ii. _Cockney copy_.) + + LORD BATEMAN was a noble lord, + A noble lord of high degree; + He shipped himself all aboard of a ship, + Some foreign country for to see. + + He sailed east, he sailed west, + Until he came to famed Turkey, + Where he was taken and put to prison, + Until his life was quite weary. + + All in this prison there grew a tree, + O there it grew so stout and strong! + Where he was chained all by the middle, + Until his life was almost gone. + + This Turk he had one only daughter, + The fairest my two eyes eer see; + She steal the keys of her father’s prison, + And swore Lord Bateman she would let go free. + + O she took him to her father’s cellar, + And gave to him the best of wine; + And every health she drank unto him + Was “I wish, Lord Bateman, as you was mine.” + + “O have you got houses, have you got land, + And does Northumberland belong to thee? + And what would you give to the fair young lady + As out of prison would let you go free?” + + “O I’ve got houses and I’ve got land, + And half Northumberland belongs to me; + And I will give it all to the fair young lady + As out of prison would let me go free.” + + “O in seven long years I’ll make a vow + For seven long years, and keep it strong, + That if you’ll wed no other woman, + O I will wed no other man.” + + O she took him to her father’s harbor, + And gave to him a ship of fame, + Saying, “Farewell, farewell to you, Lord Bateman, + I fear I shall never see you again.” + + Now seven long years is gone and past, + And fourteen days, well known to me; + She packed up all her gay clothing, + And swore Lord Bateman she would go see. + + O when she arrived at Lord Bateman’s castle, + How boldly then she rang the bell! + “Who’s there? who’s there?” cries the proud young porter, + “O come unto me pray quickly tell.” + + “O is this here Lord Bateman’s castle, + And is his lordship here within?” + “O yes, O yes,” cries the proud young porter, + “He’s just now taking his young bride in.” + + “O bid him to send me a slice of bread, + And a bottle of the very best wine, + And not forgetting the fair young lady + As did release him when close confine.” + + O away and away went this proud young porter, + O away and away and away went he, + Until he came to Lord Bateman’s chamber, + Where he went down on his bended knee. + + “What news, what news, my proud young porter? + What news, what news? come tell to me:” + “O there is the fairest young lady + As ever my two eyes did see. + + “She has got rings on every finger, + And on one finger she has got three; + With as much gay gold about her middle + As would buy half Northumberlee. + + “O she bids you to send her a slice of bread, + And a bottle of the very best wine, + And not forgetting the fair young lady + As did release you when close confine.” + + Lord Bateman then in passion flew, + And broke his sword in splinters three, + Saying, “I will give half of my father’s land, + If so be as Sophia has crossed the sea.” + + Then up and spoke this young bride’s mother, + Who never was heard to speak so free; + Saying, “You’ll not forget my only daughter, + If so be Sophia has crossed the sea.” + + “O it’s true I made a bride of your daughter, + But she’s neither the better nor the worse for me; + She came to me with a horse and saddle, + But she may go home in a coach and three.” + + Lord Bateman then prepared another marriage, + With both their hearts so full of glee, + Saying, “I will roam no more to foreign countries, + Now that Sophia has crossed the sea.” + + + + +THE BONNIE HOUSE O’ AIRLY + + + (_Child_, vol. vii. Early Edition.) + + IT fell on a day, and a bonnie summer day, + When the corn grew green and yellow, + That there fell out a great dispute + Between Argyle and Airly. + + The Duke o’ Montrose has written to Argyle + To come in the morning early, + An’ lead in his men, by the back O’ Dunkeld, + To plunder the bonnie house o’ Airly. + + The lady look’d o’er her window sae hie, + And O but she looked weary! + And there she espied the great Argyle + Come to plunder the bonnie house o’ Airly. + + “Come down, come down, Lady Margaret,” he says, + “Come down and kiss me fairly, + Or before the morning clear daylight, + I’ll no leave a standing stane in Airly.” + + “I wadna kiss thee, great Argyle, + I wadna kiss thee fairly, + I wadna kiss thee, great Argyle, + Gin you shouldna leave a standing stane Airly.” + + He has ta’en her by the middle sae sma’, + Says, “Lady, where is your drury?” + “It’s up and down by the bonnie burn side, + Amang the planting of Airly.” + + They sought it up, they sought it down, + They sought it late and early, + And found it in the bonnie balm-tree, + That shines on the bowling-green o’ Airly, + + He has ta’en her by the left shoulder, + And O but she grat sairly, + And led her down to yon green bank, + Till he plundered the bonnie house o’ Airly. + + “O it’s I hae seven braw sons,” she says, + “And the youngest ne’er saw his daddie, + And altho’ I had as mony mae, + I wad gie them a’ to Charlie. + + “But gin my good lord had been at hame, + As this night he is wi’ Charlie, + There durst na a Campbell in a’ the west + Hae plundered the bonnie house o’ Airly.” + + + + +ROB ROY + + + (_Child_, vol. vi. Early Edition.) + + ROB ROY from the Highlands cam, + Unto the Lawlan’ border, + To steal awa a gay ladie + To haud his house in order. + He cam oure the lock o’ Lynn, + Twenty men his arms did carry; + Himsel gaed in, an’ fand her out, + Protesting he would many. + + “O will ye gae wi’ me,” he says, + “Or will ye be my honey? + Or will ye be my wedded wife? + For I love you best of any.” + “I winna gae wi’ you,” she says, + “Nor will I be your honey, + Nor will I be your wedded wife; + You love me for my money.” + + * * * * * + + But he set her on a coal-black steed, + Himsel lap on behind her, + An’ he’s awa to the Highland hills, + Whare her frien’s they canna find her. + + * * * * * + + “Rob Roy was my father ca’d, + Macgregor was his name, ladie; + He led a band o’ heroes bauld, + An’ I am here the same, ladie. + Be content, be content, + Be content to stay, ladie, + For thou art my wedded wife + Until thy dying day, ladie. + + “He was a hedge unto his frien’s, + A heckle to his foes, ladie, + Every one that durst him wrang, + He took him by the nose, ladie. + I’m as bold, I’m as bold, + I’m as bold, an more, ladie; + He that daurs dispute my word, + Shall feel my guid claymore, ladie.” + + + + +THE BATTLE OF KILLIE-CRANKIE + + + (_Child_, vol. vii. Early Edition.) + + CLAVERS and his Highlandmen + Came down upo’ the raw, man, + Who being stout, gave mony a clout; + The lads began to claw then. + With sword and terge into their hand, + Wi which they were nae slaw, man, + Wi mony a fearful heavy sigh, + The lads began to claw then. + + O’er bush, o’er bank, o’er ditch, o’er stark, + She flang amang them a’, man; + The butter-box got many knocks, + Their riggings paid for a’ then. + They got their paiks, wi sudden straiks, + Which to their grief they saw, man: + Wi clinkum, clankum o’er their crowns, + The lads began to fa’ then. + + Hur skipt about, hur leapt about, + And flang amang them a’, man; + The English blades got broken beads, + Their crowns were cleav’d in twa then. + The durk and door made their last hour, + And prov’d their final fa’, man; + They thought the devil had been there, + That play’d them sic a paw then. + + The Solemn League and Covenant + Came whigging up the hills, man; + Thought Highland trews durst not refuse + For to subscribe their bills then. + In Willie’s name, they thought nag ane + Durst stop their course at a’, man, + But hur-nane-sell, wi mony a knock, + Cry’d, “Furich—Whigs awa’,” man. + + Sir Evan Du, and his men true, + Came linking up the brink, man; + The Hogan Dutch they feared such, + They bred a horrid stink then. + The true Maclean and his fierce men + Came in amang them a’, man; + Nane durst withstand his heavy hand. + All fled and ran awa’ then. + + _Oh’ on a ri_, _Oh’ on a ri_, + Why should she lose King Shames, man? + _Oh’ rig in di_, _Oh’ rig in di_, + She shall break a’ her banes then; + With _furichinish_, an’ stay a while, + And speak a word or twa, man, + She’s gi’ a straike, out o’er the neck, + Before ye win awa’ then. + + Oh fy for shame, ye’re three for ane, + Hur-nane-sell’s won the day, man; + King Shames’ red-coats should be hung up, + Because they ran awa’ then. + Had bent their brows, like Highland trows, + And made as lang a stay, man, + They’d sav’d their king, that sacred thing, + And Willie’d ran awa’ then. + + + + +ANNAN WATER + + + (_Child_, vol. ii. Early Edition.) + + “ANNAN water’s wading deep, + And my love Annie’s wondrous bonny; + And I am laith she suld weet her feet, + Because I love her best of ony. + + “Gar saddle me the bonny black,— + Gar saddle sune, and make him ready: + For I will down the Gatehope-Slack, + And all to see my bonny ladye.”— + + He has loupen on the bonny black, + He stirr’d him wi’ the spur right sairly; + But, or he wan the Gatehope-Slack, + I think the steed was wae and weary. + + He has loupen on the bonny gray, + He rade the right gate and the ready; + I trow he would neither stint nor stay, + For he was seeking his bonny ladye. + + O he has ridden o’er field and fell, + Through muir and moss, and mony a mire; + His spurs o’ steel were sair to bide, + And fra her fore-feet flew the fire. + + “Now, bonny grey, now play your part! + Gin ye be the steed that wins my deary, + Wi’ corn and hay ye’se be fed for aye, + And never spur sall make you wearie.” + + The gray was a mare, and a right good mare; + But when she wan the Annan water, + She couldna hae ridden a furlong mair, + Had a thousand merks been wadded at her. + + “O boatman, boatman, put off your boat! + Put off your boat for gowden monie! + I cross the drumly stream the night, + Or never mair I see my honey.”— + + “O I was sworn sae late yestreen, + And not by ae aith, but by many; + And for a’ the gowd in fair Scotland, + I dare na take ye through to Annie.” + + The side was stey, and the bottom deep, + Frae bank to brae the water pouring; + And the bonny grey mare did sweat for fear, + For she heard the water-kelpy roaring. + + O he has pou’d aff his dapperpy coat, + The silver buttons glancèd bonny; + The waistcoat bursted aff his breast, + He was sae full of melancholy. + + He has ta’en the ford at that stream tail; + I wot he swam both strong and steady; + But the stream was broad, and his strength did fail, + And he never saw his bonny ladye. + + “O wae betide the frush saugh wand! + And wae betide the bush of brier! + It brake into my true love’s hand, + When his strength did fail, and his limbs did tire. + + “And wae betide ye, Annan water, + This night that ye are a drumlie river! + For over thee I’ll build a bridge, + That ye never more true love may sever.”— + + + + +THE ELPHIN NOURRICE + + + (_C. K. Sharpe_.) + + I HEARD a cow low, a bonnie cow low, + An’ a cow low down in yon glen; + Lang, lang will my young son greet, + Or his mither bid him come ben. + + I heard a cow low, a bonnie cow low, + An’ a cow low down in yon fauld; + Lang, lang will my young son greet, + Or is mither take him frae cauld. + + Waken, Queen of Elfan, + An hear your Nourrice moan. + O moan ye for your meat, + Or moan ye for your fee, + Or moan ye for the ither bounties + That ladies are wont to gie? + + I moan na for my meat, + Nor yet for my fee, + But I mourn for Christened land— + It’s there I fain would be. + + O nurse my bairn, Nourice, she says, + Till he stan’ at your knee, + An’ ye’s win hame to Christen land, + Whar fain it’s ye wad be. + + O keep my bairn, Nourice, + Till he gang by the hauld, + An’ ye’s win hame to your young son, + Ye left in four nights auld. + + + + +COSPATRICK + + + (_Mackay_.) + + COSPATRICK has sent o’er the faem; + Cospatrick brought his ladye hame; + And fourscore ships have come her wi’, + The ladye by the green-wood tree. + + There were twal’ and twal’ wi’ baken bread, + And twal’ and twal’ wi’ gowd sae red, + And twal’ and twal’ wi’ bouted flour, + And twal’ and twal’ wi’ the paramour. + + Sweet Willy was a widow’s son, + And at her stirrup he did run; + And she was clad in the finest pall, + But aye she loot the tears down fall. + + “O is your saddle set awrye? + Or rides your steed for you owre high? + Or are you mourning, in your tide, + That you suld be Cospatrick’s bride?” + + “I am not mourning, at this tide, + That I suld he Cospatrick’s bride; + But I am sorrowing in my mood, + That I suld leave my mother good.” + + “But, gentle boy, come tell to me, + What is the custom of thy countrie?” + “The custom thereof, my dame,” he says, + “Will ill a gentle ladye please. + + “Seven king’s daughters has our lord wedded, + And seven king’s daughters has our lord bedded; + But he’s cutted their breasts frae their breast-bane, + And sent them mourning hame again. + + “Yet, gin you’re sure that you’re a maid, + Ye may gae safely to his bed; + But gif o’ that ye be na sure, + Then hire some damsel o’ your bour.” + + The ladye’s called her bour-maiden, + That waiting was unto her train. + “Five thousand marks I’ll gie to thee, + To sleep this night with my lord for me.” + + When bells were rung, and mass was sayne, + And a’ men unto bed were gane, + Cospatrick and the bonny maid, + Into ae chamber they were laid. + + “Now speak to me, blankets, and speak to me, bed, + And speak, thou sheet, enchanted web; + And speak, my sword, that winna lie, + Is this a true maiden that lies by me?” + + “It is not a maid that you hae wedded, + But it is a maid that you hae bedded; + It is a leal maiden that lies by thee, + But not the maiden that it should be.” + + O wrathfully he left the bed, + And wrathfully his claes on did; + And he has ta’en him through the ha’, + And on his mother he did ca’. + + “I am the most unhappy man, + That ever was in Christen land? + I courted a maiden, meik and mild, + And I hae gotten naething but a woman wi’ child.” + + “O stay, my son, into this ha’, + And sport ye wi’ your merry men a’; + And I will to the secret bour, + To see how it fares wi’ your paramour.” + + The carline she was stark and stare, + She aff the hinges dang the dure. + “O is your bairn to laird or loun, + Or is it to your father’s groom?” + + “O hear me, mother, on my knee, + Till my sad story I tell to thee: + O we were sisters, sisters seven, + We were the fairest under heaven. + + “It fell on a summer’s afternoon, + When a’ our toilsome work was done, + We coost the kevils us amang, + To see which suld to the green-wood gang. + + “Ohon! alas, for I was youngest, + And aye my weird it was the strongest! + The kevil it on me did fa’, + Whilk was the cause of a’ my woe. + + “For to the green-wood I maun gae, + To pu’ the red rose and the slae; + To pu’ the red rose and the thyme, + To deck my mother’s bour and mine. + + “I hadna pu’d a flower but ane, + When by there came a gallant hinde, + Wi’ high colled hose and laigh colled shoon, + And he seemed to be some king’s son. + + “And be I maid, or be I nae, + He kept me there till the close o’ day; + And be I maid, or be I nane, + He kept me there till the day was done. + + “He gae me a lock o’ his yellow hair, + And bade me keep it ever mair; + He gae me a carknet o’ bonny beads, + And bade me keep it against my needs. + + “He gae to me a gay gold ring, + And bade me keep it abune a’ thing.” + “What did ye wi’ the tokens rare, + That ye gat frae that gallant there?” + + “O bring that coffer unto me, + And a’ the tokens ye sall see.” + “Now stay, daughter, your bour within, + While I gae parley wi’ my son.” + + O she has ta’en her thro’ the ha’, + And on her son began to ca’: + “What did ye wi’ the bonny beads, + I bade ye keep against your needs? + + “What did you wi’ the gay gold ring, + I bade you keep abune a’ thing?” + “I gae them to a ladye gay, + I met in green-wood on a day. + + “But I wad gie a’ my halls and tours, + I had that ladye within my bours, + But I wad gie my very life, + I had that ladye to my wife.” + + “Now keep, my son, your ha’s and tours; + Ye have that bright burd in your bours; + And keep, my son, your very life; + Ye have that ladye to your wife.” + + Now, or a month was come and gane, + The ladye bore a bonny son; + And ’twas written on his breast-bane, + “Cospatrick is my father’s name.” + + + + +JOHNNIE ARMSTRANG + + + SOME speak of lords, some speak of lairds, + And sic like men of high degree; + Of a gentleman I sing a sang, + Some time call’d Laird of Gilnockie. + + The king he writes a loving letter, + With his ain hand sae tenderlie, + And he hath sent it to Johnnie Armstrang, + To come and speak with him speedilie. + + The Elliots and Armstrangs did convene, + They were a gallant companie: + “We’ll ride and meet our lawful king, + And bring him safe to Gilnockie. + + “Make kinnen {87} and capon ready, then, + And venison in great plentie; + We’ll welcome here our royal king; + I hope he’ll dine at Gilnockie!” + + They ran their horse on the Langholm howm, + And brake their spears with meikle main; + The ladies lookit frae their loft windows— + “God bring our men weel hame again!” + + When Johnnie came before the king, + With all his men sae brave to see, + The king he moved his bonnet to him; + He ween’d he was a king as well as he. + + “May I find grace, my sovereign liege, + Grace for my loyal men and me? + For my name it is Johnnie Armstrang, + And a subject of yours, my liege,” said he. + + “Away, away, thou traitor strang! + Out of my sight soon may’st thou be! + I granted never a traitor’s life, + And now I’ll not begin with thee.” + + “Grant me my life, my liege, my king! + And a bonnie gift I’ll gi’e to thee; + Full four-and-twenty milk-white steeds, + Were all foal’d in ae year to me. + + “I’ll gi’e thee all these milk-white steeds, + That prance and nicher {88a} at a spear; + And as meikle gude Inglish gilt, {88b} + As four of their braid backs dow {88c} bear.” + + “Away, away, thou traitor strang! + Out of my sight soon may’st thou be! + I granted never a traitor’s life, + And now I’ll not begin with thee.” + + “Grant me my life, my liege, my king! + And a bonnie gift I’ll gi’e to thee: + Gude four-and-twenty ganging {88d} mills, + That gang thro’ all the year to me. + + “These four-and-twenty mills complete, + Shall gang for thee thro’ all the year; + And as meikle of gude red wheat, + As all their happers dow to bear.” + + “Away, away, thou traitor strang! + Out of my sight soon may’st thou be! + I granted never a traitor’s life, + And now I’ll not begin with thee.” + + “Grant me my life, my liege, my king! + And a great gift I’ll gi’e to thee: + Bauld four-and-twenty sisters’ sons + Shall for thee fecht, tho’ all shou’d flee.” + + “Away, away, thou traitor strang! + Out of my sight soon may’st thou be! + I granted never a traitor’s life, + And now I’ll not begin with thee.” + + “Grant me my life, my liege, my king! + And a brave gift I’ll gi’e to thee: + All between here and Newcastle town + Shall pay their yearly rent to thee.” + + “Away, away, thou traitor strang! + Out of my sight soon may’st thou be! + I granted never a traitor’s life, + And now I’ll not begin with thee.” + + “Ye lied, ye lied, now, king,” he says, + “Altho’ a king and prince ye be! + For I’ve loved naething in my life, + I weel dare say it, but honestie. + + “Save a fat horse, and a fair woman, + Twa bonnie dogs to kill a deer; + But England shou’d have found me meal and mault, + Gif I had lived this hundred year. + + “She shou’d have found me meal and mault, + And beef and mutton in all plentie; + But never a Scots wife cou’d have said, + That e’er I skaith’d her a puir flee. + + “To seek het water beneath cauld ice, + Surely it is a great follie: + I have ask’d grace at a graceless face, + But there is nane for my men and me. + + “But had I kenn’d, ere I came frae hame, + How unkind thou wou’dst been to me, + I wou’d ha’e keepit the Border side, + In spite of all thy force and thee. + + “Wist England’s king that I was ta’en, + Oh, gin a blythe man he wou’d be! + For ance I slew his sister’s son, + And on his breast-bane brak a tree.” + + John wore a girdle about his middle, + Embroider’d o’er with burning gold, + Bespangled with the same metal, + Maist beautiful was to behold. + + There hang nine targats {90a} at Johnnie’s hat, + An ilk ane worth three hundred pound: + “What wants that knave that a king shou’d have, + But the sword of honour and the crown? + + “Oh, where got thee these targats, Johnnie. + That blink sae brawly {90b} aboon thy brie?” + “I gat them in the field fechting, {90c} + Where, cruel king, thou durst not be. + + “Had I my horse and harness gude, + And riding as I wont to be, + It shou’d have been tauld this hundred year, + The meeting of my king and me! + + “God be with thee, Kirsty, {91} my brother, + Lang live thou laird of Mangertoun! + Lang may’st thou live on the Border side, + Ere thou see thy brother ride up and down! + + “And God he with thee, Kirsty, my son, + Where thou sits on thy nurse’s knee! + But an thou live this hundred year, + Thy father’s better thou’lt never be. + + “Farewell, my bonnie Gilnock hall, + Where on Esk side thou standest stout! + Gif I had lived but seven years mair, + I wou’d ha’e gilt thee round about.” + + John murder’d was at Carlinrigg, + And all his gallant companie; + But Scotland’s heart was ne’er sae wae, + To see sae mony brave men die; + + Because they saved their country dear + Frae Englishmen! Nane were sae bauld + While Johnnie lived on the Border side, + Nane of them durst come near his hauld. + + + + +EDOM O’ GORDON + + + IT fell about the Martinmas, + When the wind blew shrill and cauld, + Said Edom o’ Gordon to his men,— + “We maun draw to a hald. {92} + + “And whatna hald shall we draw to, + My merry men and me? + We will gae straight to Towie house, + To see that fair ladye.” + + [The ladye stood on her castle wall, + Beheld baith dale and down; + There she was ’ware of a host of men + Came riding towards the town. + + “Oh, see ye not, my merry men all, + Oh, see ye not what I see? + Methinks I see a host of men; + I marvel who they be.” + + She thought it had been her own wed lord. + As he came riding hame; + It was the traitor, Edom o’ Gordon, + Wha reck’d nae sin nor shame.] + + She had nae sooner buskit hersel’, + And putten on her gown, + Till Edom o’ Gordon and his men + Were round about the town. + + They had nae sooner supper set, + Nae sooner said the grace, + Till Edom o’ Gordon and his men + Were round about the place. + + The ladye ran to her tower head, + As fast as she cou’d hie, + To see if, by her fair speeches, + She cou’d with him agree. + + As soon as he saw this ladye fair. + And her yetts all lockit fast, + He fell into a rage of wrath, + And his heart was all aghast. + + “Come down to me, ye ladye gay, + Come down, come down to me; + This night ye shall lye within my arms, + The morn my bride shall be.” + + “I winna come down, ye false Gordon, + I winna come down to thee; + I winna forsake my ain dear lord, + That is sae far frae me.” + + “Gi’e up your house, ye ladye fair, + Gi’e up your house to me; + Or I shall burn yoursel’ therein, + Bot and your babies three.” + + “I winna gi’e up, ye false Gordon, + To nae sic traitor as thee; + Tho’ you shou’d burn mysel’ therein, + Bot and my babies three. + + [“But fetch to me my pistolette, + And charge to me my gun; + For, but if I pierce that bluidy butcher, + My babes we will be undone.” + + She stiffly stood on her castle wall, + And let the bullets flee; + She miss’d that bluidy butcher’s heart, + Tho’ she slew other three.] + + “Set fire to the house!” quo’ the false Gordon, + “Since better may nae be; + And I will burn hersel’ therein, + Bot and her babies three.” + + “Wae worth, wae worth ye, Jock, my man, + I paid ye weel your fee; + Why pull ye out the grund-wa’-stance, + Lets in the reek {94} to me? + + “And e’en wae worth ye, Jock, my man, + I paid ye weel your hire; + Why pull ye out my grund-wa’-stane, + To me lets in the fire?” + + “Ye paid me weel my hire, ladye, + Ye paid me weel my fee; + But now I’m Edom o’ Gordon’s man, + Maun either do or dee.” + + Oh, then out spake her youngest son, + Sat on the nurse’s knee: + Says—“Mither dear, gi’e o’er this house, + For the reek it smothers me.” + + [“I wou’d gi’e all my gold, my bairn, + Sae wou’d I all my fee, + For ae blast of the westlin’ wind, + To blaw the reek frae thee.] + + “But I winna gi’e up my house, my dear, + To nae sic traitor as he; + Come weal, come woe, my jewels fair, + Ye maun take share with me.” + + Oh, then out spake her daughter dear, + She was baith jimp and small: + “Oh, row me in a pair of sheets, + And tow me o’er the wall.” + + They row’d her in a pair of sheets, + And tow’d her o’er the wall; + But on the point of Gordon’s spear + She got a deadly fall. + + Oh, bonnie, bonnie was her mouth, + And cherry were her cheeks; + And clear, clear was her yellow hair, + Whereon the red bluid dreeps. + + Then with his spear he turn’d her o’er, + Oh, gin her face was wan! + He said—“You are the first that e’er + I wish’d alive again.” + + He turn’d her o’er and o’er again, + Oh, gin her skin was white! + “I might ha’e spared that bonnie face + To ha’e been some man’s delight. + + “Busk and boun, my merry men all, + For ill dooms I do guess; + I canna look on that bonnie face, + As it lyes on the grass!” + + “Wha looks to freits, {95} my master dear, + Their freits will follow them; + Let it ne’er be said brave Edom o’ Gordon + Was daunted with a dame.” + + [But when the ladye saw the fire + Come flaming o’er her head, + She wept, and kissed her children twain; + Said—“Bairns, we been but dead.” + + The Gordon then his bugle blew, + And said—“Away, away! + The house of Towie is all in a flame, + I hald it time to gae.”] + + Oh, then he spied her ain dear lord, + As he came o’er the lea; + He saw his castle all in a flame, + As far as he could see. + + Then sair, oh sair his mind misgave, + And oh, his heart was wae! + “Put on, put on, my wighty {96a} men, + As fast as ye can gae. + + “Put on, put on, my wighty men, + As fast as ye can drie; + For he that is hindmost of the thrang + Shall ne’er get gude of me!” + + Then some they rade, and some they ran, + Full fast out o’er the bent; + But ere the foremost could win up, + Baith ladye and babes were brent. + + [He wrang his hands, he rent his hair, + And wept in tearful mood; + “Ah, traitors! for this cruel deed, + Ye shall weep tears of bluid.” + + And after the Gordon he has gane, + Sae fast as he might drie; + And soon in the Gordon’s foul heart’s bluid + He’s wroken {96b} his dear layde.] + + And mony were the mudie {97} men + Lay gasping on the green; + And mony were the fair ladyes + Lay lemanless at hame. + + And mony were the mudie men + Lay gasping on the green; + For of fifty men the Gordon brocht, + There were but five gaed hame. + + And round, and round the walls he went, + Their ashes for to view; + At last into the flames he flew, + And bade the world adieu. + + + + +LADY ANNE BOTHWELL’S LAMENT + + + (_Child_, vol. iv. Early Edition.) + + BALOW, my boy, ly still and sleep, + It grieves me sore to hear thee weep, + If thou’lt be silent, I’ll be glad, + Thy mourning makes my heart full sad. + Balow, my boy, thy mother’s joy, + Thy father bred one great annoy. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _ly still and sleep_, + _It grieves me sore to hear thee weep_. + + Balow, my darling, sleep a while, + And when thou wak’st then sweetly smile; + But smile not as thy father did, + To cozen maids, nay, God forbid; + For in thine eye his look I see, + The tempting look that ruin’d me. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + When he began to court my love, + And with his sugar’d words to move, + His tempting face, and flatt’ring chear, + In time to me did not appear; + But now I see that cruel he + Cares neither for his babe nor me. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + Fareweel, fareaeel, thou falsest youth + That ever kist a woman’s mouth. + Let never any after me + Submit unto thy courtesy! + For, if hey do, O! cruel thou + Wilt her abuse and care not how! + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + I was too cred’lous at the first, + To yield thee all a maiden durst. + Thou swore for ever true to prove, + Thy faith unchang’d, unchang’d thy love; + But quick as thought the change is wrought, + Thy love’s no mair, thy promise nought. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + I wish I were a maid again! + From young men’s flatt’ry I’d refrain; + For now unto my grief I find + They all are perjur’d and unkind; + Bewitching charms bred all my harms;— + Witness my babe lies in my arms. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + I take my fate from bad to worse, + That I must needs be now a nurse, + And lull my young son on my lap: + From me, sweet orphan, take the pap. + Balow, my child, thy mother mild + Shall wail as from all bliss exil’d. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + Balow, my boy, weep not for me, + Whose greatest grief’s for wronging thee. + Nor pity her deserved smart, + Who can blame none but her fond heart; + For, too soon tursting latest finds + With fairest tongues are falsest minds. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + Balow, my boy, thy father’s fled, + When he the thriftless son has played; + Of vows and oaths forgetful, he + Preferr’d the wars to thee and me. + But now, perhaps, thy curse and mine + Make him eat acorns with the swine. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + But curse not him; perhaps now he, + Stung with remorse, is blessing thee: + Perhaps at death; for who can tell + Whether the judge of heaven or hell, + By some proud foe has struck the blow, + And laid the dear deceiver low? + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + I wish I were into the bounds + Where he lies smother’d in his wounds, + Repeating, as he pants for air, + My name, whom once he call’d his fair; + No woman’s yet so fiercely set + But she’ll forgive, though not forget. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + If linen lacks, for my love’s sake + Then quickly to him would I make + My smock, once for his body meet, + And wrap him in that winding-sheet. + Ah me! how happy had I been, + If he had ne’er been wrapt therein. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _etc._ + + Balow, my boy, I’ll weep for thee; + Too soon, alake, thou’lt weep for me: + Thy griefs are growing to a sum, + God grant thee patience when they come; + Born to sustain thy mother’s shame, + A hapless fate, a bastard’s name. + _Balow_, _my boy_, _ly still and sleep_, + _It grieves me sore to hear thee weep_. + + + + +JOCK O THE SIDE + + + (_Child_, Part VI., p. 479.) + + NOW Liddisdale has ridden a raid, + But I wat they had better staid at hame; + For Mitchell o Winfield he is dead, + And my son Johnie is prisner tane? + With my fa ding diddle, la la dew diddle. + + For Mangerton house auld Downie is gane, + Her coats she has kilted up to her knee; + And down the water wi speed she rins, + While tears in spaits fa fast frae her eie. + + Then up and bespake the lord Mangerton: + “What news, what news, sister Downie, to me?” + “Bad news, bad news, my lord Mangerton; + Mitchel is killd, and tane they hae my son Johnie.” + + “Neer fear, sister Downie,” quo Mangerton; + “I hae yokes of oxen, four-and-twentie, + My barns, my byres, and my faulds, a’ weel filld, + And I’ll part wi them a’ ere Johnie shall die. + + “Three men I’ll take to set him free, + Weel harnessd a’ wi best of steel; + The English rogues may hear, and drie + The weight o their braid swords to feel + + “The Laird’s Jock ane, the Laird’s Wat twa, + O Hobie Noble, thou ane maun be! + Thy coat is blue, thou has been true, + Since England banishd thee, to me.” + + Now, Hobie was an English man, + In Bewcastle-dale was bred and born; + But his misdeeds they were sae great, + They banished him neer to return. + + Lord Mangerton then orders gave,— + “Your horses the wrang way maun a’ be shod; + Like gentlemen ye must not seem, + But look like corn-caugers gawn ae road. + + “Your armour gude ye maunna shaw, + Nor ance appear like men o weir; + As country lads be all arrayd, + Wi branks and brecham on ilk mare.” + + Sae now a’ their horses are shod the wrang way, + And Hobie has mounted his grey sae fine, + Jock his lively bay, Wat’s on his white horse behind, + And on they rode for the water o Tyne. + + At the Cholerford they a’ light down, + And there, wi the help o the light o the moon, + A tree they cut, wi fifteen naggs upon each side, + To climb up the wall of Newcastle toun. + + But when they came to Newcastle toun, + And were alighted at the wa, + They fand their tree three ells oer laigh, + They fand their stick baith short aid sma. + + Then up and spake the Laird’s ain Jock, + “There’s naething for’t; the gates we maun force.” + But when they cam the gate unto, + A proud porter withstood baith men and horse. + + His neck in twa I wat they hae wrung; + Wi foot or hand he neer play’d paw; + His life and his keys at anes they hae taen, + And cast his body ahind the wa. + + Now soon they reached Newcastle jail, + And to the prisner thus they call: + “Sleips thou, wakes thou, Jock o the Side, + Or is thou wearied o thy thrall?” + + Jock answers thus, wi dolefu tone: + “Aft, aft I wake, I seldom sleip; + But wha’s this kens my name sae weel, + And thus to hear my waes does seek?” + + Then up and spake the good Laird’s Jock: + “Neer fear ye now, my billie,” quo he; + “For here’s the Laird’s Jock, the Laird’s Wat, + And Hobie Noble, come to set thee free.” + + “Oh, had thy tongue, and speak nae mair, + And o thy talk now let me be! + For if a’ Liddesdale were here the night, + The morn’s the day that I maun die. + + “Full fifteen stane o Spanish iron, + They hae laid a’ right sair on me; + Wi locks and keys I am fast bound + Into this dungeon mirk and drearie.” + + “Fear ye no that,” quo the Laird’s Jock; + “A faint heart neer wan a fair ladie; + Work thou within, we’ll work without, + And I’ll be sworn we set thee free.” + + The first strong dore that they came at, + They loosed it without a key; + The next chaind dore that they cam at, + They gard it a’ in flinders flee. + + The prisner now, upo his back, + The Laird’s Jock’s gotten up fu hie; + And down the stair him, irons and a’, + Wi nae sma speed and joy brings he. + + “Now, Jock, I wat,” quo Hobie Noble, + “Part o the weight ye may lay on me,” + “I wat weel no,” quo the Laird’s Jock + “I count him lighter than a flee.” + + Sae out at the gates they a’ are gane, + The prisner’s set on horseback hie; + And now wi speed they’ve tane the gate; + While ilk ane jokes fu wantonlie. + + “O Jock, sae winsomely’s ye ride, + Wi baith your feet upo ae side! + Sae weel’s ye’re harnessd, and sae trig! + In troth ye sit like ony bride.” + + The night, tho wat, they didna mind, + But hied them on fu mirrilie, + Until they cam to Cholerford brae, + Where the water ran like mountains hie. + + But when they came to Cholerford, + There they met with an auld man; + Says, “Honest man, will the water ride? + Tell us in haste, if that ye can.” + + “I wat weel no,” quo the good auld man; + “Here I hae livd this threty yeirs and three, + And I neer yet saw the Tyne sae big, + Nor rinning ance sae like a sea.” + + Then up and spake the Laird’s saft Wat, + The greatest coward in the company; + “Now halt, now halt, we needna try’t; + The day is comd we a’ maun die!” + + “Poor faint-hearted thief!” quo the Laird’s Jock, + “There’ll nae man die but he that’s fie; + I’ll lead ye a’ right safely through; + Lift ye the prisner on ahint me.” + + Sae now the water they a’ hae tane, + By anes and ’twas they a’ swam through + “Here are we a’ safe,” says the Laird’s Jock, + “And, poor faint Wat, what think ye now?” + + They scarce the ither side had won, + When twenty men they saw pursue; + Frae Newcastle town they had been sent, + A’ English lads right good and true. + + But when the land-sergeant the water saw, + “It winna ride, my lads,” quo he; + Then out he cries, “Ye the prisner may take, + But leave the irons, I pray, to me.” + + “I wat weel no,” cryd the Laird’s Jock, + “I’ll keep them a’; shoon to my mare they’ll be; + My good grey mare; for I am sure, + She’s bought them a’ fu dear frae thee.” + + Sae now they’re away for Liddisdale, + Een as fast as they coud them hie; + The prisner’s brought to his ain fireside, + And there o’s airns they make him free. + + “Now, Jock, my billie,” quo a’ the three, + “The day was comd thou was to die; + But thou’s as weel at thy ain fireside, + Now sitting, I think, ’tween thee and me.” + + They hae gard fill up ae punch-bowl, + And after it they maun hae anither, + And thus the night they a’ hae spent, + Just as they had been brither and brither. + + + + +LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET + + + (_Child_, Part III., p. 182.) + + LORD THOMAS and Fair Annet + Sate a’ day on a hill; + Whan night was cum, and sun was sett, + They had not talkt their fill. + + Lord Thomas said a word in jest, + Fair Annet took it ill: + “A, I will nevir wed a wife + Against my ain friend’s will.” + + “Gif ye wull nevir wed a wife, + A wife wull neir wed yee;” + Sae he is hame to tell his mither, + And knelt upon his knee. + + “O rede, O rede, mither,” he says, + “A gude rede gie to mee; + O sall I tak the nut-browne bride, + And let Faire Annet bee?” + + “The nut-browne bride haes gowd and gear, + Fair Annet she has gat nane; + And the little beauty Fair Annet haes + O it wull soon be gane.” + + And he has till his brother gane: + “Now, brother, rede ye mee; + A, sall I marrie the nut-browne bride, + And let Fair Annet bee?” + + “The nut-browne bride has oxen, brother, + The nut-browne bride has kye; + I wad hae ye marrie the nut-browne bride, + And cast Fair Annet bye.” + + “Her oxen may dye i’ the house, billie, + And her kye into the byre; + And I sall hae nothing to mysell + Bot a fat fadge by the fyre.” + + And he has till his sister gane: + “Now, sister, rede ye mee; + O sall I marrie the nut-browne bride, + And set Fair Annet free?” + + “I’se rede ye tak Fair Annet, Thomas, + And let the browne bride alane; + Lest ye sould sigh, and say, Alace, + What is this we brought hame!” + + “No, I will tak my mither’s counsel, + And marrie me owt o hand; + And I will tak the nut-browne bride, + Fair Annet may leive the land.” + + Up then rose Fair Annet’s father, + Twa hours or it wer day, + And he is gane unto the bower + Wherein Fair Annet lay. + + “Rise up, rise up, Fair Annet,” he says + “Put on your silken sheene; + Let us gae to St. Marie’s Kirke, + And see that rich weddeen.” + + “My maides, gae to my dressing-roome, + And dress to me my hair; + Whaireir yee laid a plait before, + See yee lay ten times mair. + + “My maids, gae to my dressing-room, + And dress to me my smock; + The one half is o the holland fine, + The other o needle-work.” + + The horse Fair Annet rade upon, + He amblit like the wind; + Wi siller he was shod before, + Wi burning gowd behind. + + Four and twanty siller bells + Wer a’ tyed till his mane, + And yae tift o the norland wind, + They tinkled ane by ane. + + Four and twanty gay gude knichts + Rade by Fair Annet’s side, + And four and twanty fair ladies, + As gin she had bin a bride. + + And whan she cam to Marie’s Kirk, + She sat on Marie’s stean: + The cleading that Fair Annet had on + It skinkled in their een. + + And whan she cam into the kirk, + She shimmerd like the sun; + The belt that was about her waist + Was a’ wi pearles bedone. + + She sat her by the nut-browne bride, + And her een they wer sae clear, + Lord Thomas he clean forgat the bride, + When Fair Annet drew near. + + He had a rose into his hand, + He gae it kisses three, + And reaching by the nut-browne bride, + Laid it on Fair Annet’s knee. + + Up then spak the nut-browne bride, + She spak wi meikle spite: + “And whair gat ye that rose-water, + That does mak yee sae white?” + + “O I did get the rose-water + Whair ye wull neir get nane, + For I did get that very rose-water + Into my mither’s wame.” + + The bride she drew a long bodkin + Frae out her gay head-gear, + And strake Fair Annet unto the heart, + That word spak nevir mair. + + Lord Thomas he saw Fair Annet wex pale, + And marvelit what mote bee; + But when he saw her dear heart’s blude, + A’ wood-wroth wexed bee. + + He drew his dagger that was sae sharp, + That was sae sharp and meet, + And drave it into the nut-browne bride, + That fell deid at his feit. + + “Now stay for me, dear Annet,” he sed, + “Now stay, my dear,” he cry’d; + Then strake the dagger untill his heart, + And fell deid by her side. + + Lord Thomas was buried without kirk-wa, + Fair Annet within the quiere, + And o the ane thair grew a birk, + The other a bonny briere. + + And ay they grew, and ay they threw, + As they wad faine be neare; + And by this ye may ken right weil + They were twa luvers deare. + + + + +FAIR ANNIE + + + (_Child_, Part III., p. 69.) + + “IT’S narrow, narrow, make your bed, + And learn to lie your lane: + For I’m ga’n oer the sea, Fair Annie, + A braw bride to bring hame. + Wi her I will get gowd and gear; + Wi you I neer got nane. + + “But wha will bake my bridal bread, + Or brew my bridal ale? + And wha will welcome my brisk bride, + That I bring oer the dale?” + + “It’s I will bake your bridal bread, + And brew your bridal ale, + And I will welcome your brisk bride, + That you bring oer the dale.” + + “But she that welcomes my brisk bride + Maun gang like maiden fair; + She maun lace on her robe sae jimp, + And braid her yellow hair.” + + “But how can I gang maiden-like, + When maiden I am nane? + Have I not born seven sons to thee, + And am with child again?” + + She’s taen her young son in her arms, + Another in her hand, + And she’s up to the highest tower, + To see him come to land. + + “Come up, come up, my eldest son, + And look oer yon sea-strand, + And see your father’s new-come bride, + Before she come to land.” + + “Come down, come down, my mother dear, + Come frae the castle wa! + I fear, if langer ye stand there, + Ye’ll let yoursell down fa.” + + And she gaed down, and farther down, + Her love’s ship for to see, + And the topmast and the mainmast + Shone like the silver free. + + And she’s gane down, and farther down, + The bride’s ship to behold, + And the topmast and the mainmast + They shone just like the gold. + + She’s taen her seven sons in her hand, + I wot she didna fail; + She met Lord Thomas and his bride, + As they came oer the dale. + + “You’re welcome to your house, Lord Thomas, + You’re welcome to your land; + You’re welcome with your fair ladye, + That you lead by the hand. + + “You’re welcome to your ha’s, ladye, + You’re welcome to your bowers; + Your welcome to your hame, ladye, + For a’ that’s here is yours.” + + “I thank thee, Annie; I thank thee, Annie, + Sae dearly as I thank thee; + You’re the likest to my sister Annie, + That ever I did see. + + “There came a knight out oer the sea, + And steald my sister away; + The shame scoup in his company, + And land where’er he gae!” + + She hang ae napkin at the door, + Another in the ha, + And a’ to wipe the trickling tears, + Sae fast as they did fa. + + And aye she served the lang tables + With white bread and with wine, + And aye she drank the wan water, + To had her colour fine. + + And aye she served the lang tables, + With white bread and with brown; + And aye she turned her round about, + Sae fast the tears fell down. + + And he’s taen down the silk napkin, + Hung on a silver pin, + And aye he wipes the tear trickling + A’down her cheek and chin. + + And aye he turn’d him round about, + And smiled amang his men; + Says, “Like ye best the old ladye, + Or her that’s new come hame?” + + When bells were rung, and mass was sung, + And a’ men bound to bed, + Lord Thomas and his new-come bride + To their chamber they were gaed. + + Annie made her bed a little forbye, + To hear what they might say; + “And ever alas!” Fair Annie cried, + “That I should see this day! + + “Gin my seven sons were seven young rats, + Running on the castle wa, + And I were a grey cat mysell, + I soon would worry them a’. + + “Gin my young sons were seven young hares, + Running oer yon lilly lee, + And I were a grew hound mysell, + Soon worried they a’ should be.” + + And wae and sad Fair Annie sat, + And drearie was her sang, + And ever, as she sobbd and grat, + “Wae to the man that did the wrang!” + + “My gown is on,” said the new-come bride, + “My shoes are on my feet, + And I will to Fair Annie’s chamber, + And see what gars her greet. + + “What ails ye, what ails ye, Fair Annie, + That ye make sic a moan? + Has your wine-barrels cast the girds, + Or is your white bread gone? + + “O wha was’t was your father, Annie, + Or wha was’t was your mother? + And had ye ony sister, Annie, + Or had ye ony brother?” + + “The Earl of Wemyss was my father, + The Countess of Wemyss my mother; + And a’ the folk about the house + To me were sister and brother.” + + “If the Earl of Wemyss was your father, + I wot sae was he mine; + And it shall not be for lack o gowd + That ye your love sall fyne. + + “For I have seven ships o mine ain, + A’ loaded to the brim, + And I will gie them a’ to thee + Wi four to thine eldest son: + But thanks to a’ the powers in heaven + That I gae maiden hame!” + + + + +THE DOWIE DENS OF YARROW + + + (_Child_, Part III. Early Edition.) + + LATE at e’en, drinking the wine, + And ere they paid the lawing, + They set a combat them between, + To fight it in the dawing. + + “Oh, stay at hame, my noble lord, + Oh, stay at hame, my marrow! + My cruel brother will you betray + On the dowie houms of Yarrow.” + + “Oh, fare ye weel, my ladye gaye! + Oh, fare ye weel, my Sarah! + For I maun gae, though I ne’er return, + Frae the dowie banks of Yarrow.” + + She kiss’d his cheek, she kaim’d his hair, + As oft she had done before, O; + She belted him with his noble brand, + And he’s away to Yarrow. + + As he gaed up the Tennies bank, + I wot he gaed wi’ sorrow, + Till, down in a den, he spied nine arm’d men, + On the dowie houms of Yarrow. + + “Oh, come ye here to part your land, + The bonnie Forest thorough? + Or come ye here to wield your brand, + On the dowie houms of Yarrow?” + + “I come not here to part my land, + And neither to beg nor borrow; + I come to wield my noble brand, + On the bonnie banks of Yarrow. + + “If I see all, ye’re nine to ane; + An that’s an unequal marrow: + Yet will I fight, while lasts my brand, + On the bonnie banks of Yarrow.” + + Four has he hurt, and five has slain, + On the bloody braes of Yarrow; + Till that stubborn knight came him behind, + And ran his body thorough. + + “Gae hame, gae hame, good-brother John, + And tell your sister Sarah, + To come and lift her leafu’ lord; + He’s sleepin’ sound on Yarrow.” + + “Yestreen I dream’d a dolefu’ dream; + I fear there will be sorrow! + I dream’d I pu’d the heather green, + Wi’ my true love, on Yarrow. + + “O gentle wind, that bloweth south, + From where my love repaireth, + Convey a kiss from his dear mouth, + And tell me how he fareth! + + “But in the glen strive armed men; + They’ve wrought me dole and sorrow; + They’ve slain—the comeliest knight they’ve slain— + He bleeding lies on Yarrow.” + + As she sped down yon high, high hill, + She gaed wi’ dole and sorrow, + And in the den spied ten slain men, + On the dowie banks of Yarrow. + + She kiss’d his cheek, she kaim’d his hair, + She search’d his wounds all thorough, + She kiss’d them, till her lips grew red, + On the dowie houms of Yarrow. + + “Now, haud your tongue, my daughter dear! + For a’ this breeds but sorrow; + I’ll wed ye to a better lord + Than him ye lost on Yarrow.” + + “Oh, haud your tongue, my father dear! + Ye mind me but of sorrow: + A fairer rose did never bloom + Than now lies cropp’d on Yarrow.” + + + + +SIR ROLAND + + + (_Child_, vol. i. Early Edition.) + + WHAN he cam to his ain luve’s bouir + He tirled at the pin, + And sae ready was his fair fause luve + To rise and let him in. + + “O welcome, welcome, Sir Roland,” she says, + “Thrice welcome thou art to me; + For this night thou wilt feast in my secret bouir, + And to-morrow we’ll wedded be.” + + “This night is hallow-eve,” he said, + “And to-morrow is hallow-day; + And I dreamed a drearie dream yestreen, + That has made my heart fu’ wae. + + “I dreamed a drearie dream yestreen, + And I wish it may cum to gude: + I dreamed that ye slew my best grew hound, + And gied me his lappered blude.” + + * * * * * + + “Unbuckle your belt, Sir Roland,” she said, + And set you safely down.” + “O your chamber is very dark, fair maid, + And the night is wondrous lown.” + + “Yes, dark, dark is my secret bouir, + And lown the midnight may be; + For there is none waking in a’ this tower + But thou, my true love, and me.” + + * * * * * + + She has mounted on her true love’s steed, + By the ae light o’ the moon; + She has whipped him and spurred him, + And roundly she rade frae the toun. + + She hadna ridden a mile o’ gate, + Never a mile but ane, + When she was aware of a tall young man, + Slow riding o’er the plain, + + She turned her to the right about, + Then to the left turn’d she; + But aye, ’tween her and the wan moonlight, + That tall knight did she see. + + And he was riding burd alane, + On a horse as black as jet, + But tho’ she followed him fast and fell, + No nearer could she get. + + “O stop! O stop! young man,” she said; + “For I in dule am dight; + O stop, and win a fair lady’s luve, + If you be a leal true knight.” + + But nothing did the tall knight say, + And nothing did he blin; + Still slowly ride he on before + And fast she rade behind. + + She whipped her steed, she spurred her steed, + Till his breast was all a foam; + But nearer unto that tall young knight, + By Our Ladye she could not come. + + “O if you be a gay young knight, + As well I trow you be, + Pull tight your bridle reins, and stay + Till I come up to thee.” + + But nothing did that tall knight say, + And no whit did he blin, + Until he reached a broad river’s side + And there he drew his rein. + + “O is this water deep?” he said, + “As it is wondrous dun? + Or is it sic as a saikless maid, + And a leal true knight may swim?” + + “The water it is deep,” she said, + “As it is wondrous dun; + But it is sic as a saikless maid, + And a leal true knight may swim.” + + The knight spurred on his tall black steed; + The lady spurred on her brown; + And fast they rade unto the flood, + And fast they baith swam down. + + “The water weets my tae,” she said; + “The water weets my knee, + And hold up my bridle reins, sir knight, + For the sake of Our Ladye.” + + “If I would help thee now,” he said, + “It were a deadly sin, + For I’ve sworn neir to trust a fair may’s word, + Till the water weets her chin.” + + “Oh, the water weets my waist,” she said, + “Sae does it weet my skin, + And my aching heart rins round about, + The burn maks sic a din. + + “The water is waxing deeper still, + Sae does it wax mair wide; + And aye the farther that we ride on, + Farther off is the other side. + + “O help me now, thou false, false knight, + Have pity on my youth, + For now the water jawes owre my head, + And it gurgles in my mouth.” + + The knight turned right and round about, + All in the middle stream; + And he stretched out his head to that lady, + But loudly she did scream. + + “O this is hallow-morn,” he said, + “And it is your bridal-day, + But sad would be that gay wedding, + If bridegroom and bride were away. + + “And ride on, ride on, proud Margaret! + Till the water comes o’er your bree, + For the bride maun ride deep, and deeper yet, + Wha rides this ford wi’ me. + + “Turn round, turn round, proud Margaret! + Turn ye round, and look on me, + Thou hast killed a true knight under trust, + And his ghost now links on with thee.” + + + + +ROSE THE RED AND WHITE LILY + + + (_Child_, Part IV.) + + O ROSE the Red and White Lilly, + Their mother dear was dead, + And their father married an ill woman, + Wishd them twa little guede. + + Yet she had twa as fu fair sons + As eer brake manis bread, + And the tane of them loed her White Lilly, + And the tither lood Rose the Red. + + O, biggit ha they a bigly bowr, + And strawn it oer wi san, + And there was mair mirth i the ladies’ bowr + Than in a’ their father’s lan. + + But out it spake their step-mother, + Wha stood a little foreby: + “I hope to live and play the prank + Sal gar your loud sang ly.” + + She’s calld upon her eldest son: + “Come here, my son, to me; + It fears me sair, my eldest son, + That ye maun sail the sea.” + + “Gin it fear you sair, my mither dear, + Your bidding I maun dee; + But be never war to Rose the Red + Than ye ha been to me.” + + “O had your tongue, my eldest son, + For sma sal be her part; + You’ll nae get a kiss o her comely mouth + Gin your very fair heart should break.” + + She’s calld upon her youngest son: + “Come here, my son, to me; + It fears me sair, my youngest son, + That ye maun sail the sea.” + + “Gin it fear you sair, my mither dear, + Your bidding I maun dee; + But be never war to White Lilly + Than ye ha been to me.” + + “O haud your tongue, my youngest son, + For sma sall be her part; + You’ll neer get a kiss o her comely mouth + Tho your very fair heart should break.” + + When Rose the Red and White Lilly + Saw their twa loves were gane, + Then stopped ha they their loud, loud sang, + And tane up the still moarnin; + And their step-mother stood listnin by, + To hear the ladies’ mean. + + Then out it spake her, White Lily; + “My sister, we’ll be gane; + Why shou’d we stay in Barnsdale, + To waste our youth in pain?” + + Then cutted ha they their green cloathing, + A little below their knee; + And sae ha they their yallow hair, + A little aboon there bree; + And they’ve doen them to haely chapel + Was christened by Our Ladye. + + There ha they changed their ain twa names, + Sae far frae ony town; + And the tane o them hight Sweet Willy, + And the tither o them Roge the Roun. + + Between this twa a vow was made, + An they sware it to fulfil; + That at three blasts o a buglehorn, + She’d come her sister till. + + Now Sweet Willy’s gane to the kingis court, + Her true-love for to see, + And Roge the Roun to good green wood, + Brown Robin’s man to be. + + As it fell out upon a day, + They a did put the stane; + Full seven foot ayont them a + She gard the puttin-stane gang. + + She leand her back against an oak, + And gae a loud Ohone! + Then out it spake him Brown Robin, + “But that’s a woman’s moan!” + + “Oh, ken ye by my red rose lip? + Or by my yallow hair; + Or ken ye by my milk-white breast? + For ye never saw it bare?” + + “I ken no by your red rose lip, + Nor by your yallow hair; + Nor ken I by your milk-white breast, + For I never saw it bare; + But, come to your bowr whaever sae likes, + Will find a ladye there.” + + “Oh, gin ye come to my bowr within, + Thro fraud, deceit, or guile, + Wi this same bran that’s in my han + I swear I will thee kill.” + + “But I will come thy bowr within, + An spear nae leave,” quoth he; + “An this same bran that’s i my ban, + I sall ware back on the.” + + About the tenth hour of the night, + The ladie’s bowr door was broken, + An eer the first hour of the day + The bonny knave bairn was gotten. + + When days were gane and months were run, + The ladye took travailing, + And sair she cry’d for a bow’r-woman, + For to wait her upon. + + Then out it spake him, Brown Robin: + “Now what needs a’ this din? + For what coud any woman do + But I coud do the same?” + + “Twas never my mither’s fashion,” she says, + “Nor sall it ever be mine, + That belted knights shoud eer remain + Where ladies dreed their pine. + + “But ye take up that bugle-horn, + An blaw a blast for me; + I ha a brother i the kingis court + Will come me quickly ti.” + + “O gin ye ha a brither on earth + That ye love better nor me, + Ye blaw the horn yoursel,” he says, + “For ae blast I winna gie.” + + She’s set the horn till her mouth, + And she’s blawn three blasts sae shrill; + Sweet Willy heard i the kingis court, + And came her quickly till. + + Then up it started Brown Robin, + An an angry man was he: + “There comes nae man this bowr within + But first must fight wi me.” + + O they hae fought that bowr within + Till the sun was gaing down, + Till drops o blude frae Rose the Red + Cam trailing to the groun. + + She leand her back against the wa, + Says, “Robin, let a’ be; + For it is a lady born and bred + That’s foughten sae well wi thee.” + + O seven foot he lap a back; + Says, “Alas, and wae is me! + I never wisht in a’ my life, + A woman’s blude to see; + An ae for the sake of ae fair maid + Whose name was White Lilly.” + + Then out it spake her White Lilly, + An a hearty laugh laugh she: + “She’s lived wi you this year an mair, + Tho ye kenntna it was she.” + + Now word has gane thro a’ the lan, + Before a month was done, + That Brown Robin’s man, in good green wood, + Had born a bonny young son. + + The word has gane to the kingis court, + An to the king himsel; + “Now, by my fay,” the king could say, + “The like was never heard tell!” + + Then out it spake him Bold Arthur, + An a hearty laugh laugh he: + “I trow some may has playd the loun, + And fled her ain country.” + + “Bring me my steed,” then cry’d the king, + “My bow and arrows keen; + I’ll ride mysel to good green wood, + An see what’s to be seen.” + + “An’t please your grace,” said Bold Arthur, + “My liege, I’ll gang you wi, + An try to fin a little foot-page, + That’s strayd awa frae me.” + + O they’ve hunted i the good green wood + The buck but an the rae, + An they drew near Brown Robin’s bowr, + About the close of day. + + Then out it spake the king in hast, + Says, “Arthur look an see + Gin that be no your little foot-page + That leans against yon tree.” + + Then Arthur took his bugle-horn, + An blew a blast sae shrill; + Sweet Willy started at the sound, + An ran him quickly till. + + “O wanted ye your meat, Willy? + Or wanted ye your fee? + Or gat ye ever an angry word, + That ye ran awa frae me?” + + “I wanted nought, my master dear; + To me ye ay was good; + I came but to see my ae brother, + That wons in this green wood.” + + Then out it spake the king again, + Says, “Bonny boy, tell to me, + Wha lives into yon bigly bowr, + Stands by yon green oak tree?” + + “Oh, pardon me,” says Sweet Willie, + “My liege, I dare no tell; + An I pray you go no near that bowr, + For fear they do you fell.” + + “Oh, haud your tongue, my bonny boy, + For I winna be said nay; + But I will gang that bowr within, + Betide me weal or wae.” + + They’ve lighted off their milk-white steeds, + An saftly enterd in, + And there they saw her White Lilly, + Nursing her bonny young son. + + “Now, by the rood,” the king coud say, + “This is a comely sight; + I trow, instead of a forrester’s man, + This is a lady bright!” + + Then out it spake her, Rose the Red, + An fell low down on her knee: + “Oh, pardon us, my gracious liege, + An our story I’ll tell thee. + + “Our father was a wealthy lord, + That wond in Barnsdale; + But we had a wicked step-mother, + That wrought us meickle bale. + + “Yet she had twa as fu fair sons + As ever the sun did see, + An the tane of them lood my sister dear, + An the tother said he lood me.” + + Then out it spake him Bold Arthur, + As by the king he stood: + “Now, by the faith o my body, + This shoud be Rose the Red!” + + Then in it came him Brown Robin, + Frae hunting O the deer; + But whan he saw the king was there, + He started back for fear. + + The king has taen him by the hand, + An bide him naithing dread; + Says, “Ye maun leave the good greenwood, + Come to the court wi speed.” + + Then up he took White Lilly’s son, + An set him on his knee; + Says—“Gin ye live to wield a bran, + My bowman ye sall bee.” + + The king he sent for robes of green, + An girdles o shinning gold; + He gart the ladies be arrayd + Most comely to behold. + + They’ve done them unto Mary kirk, + An there gat fair wedding, + An fan the news spread oer the lan, + For joy the bells did ring. + + Then out it spake her Rose the Red, + An a hearty laugh laugh she: + “I wonder what would our step-dame say, + Gin she his sight did see!” + + + + +THE BATTLE OF HARLAW +EVERGREEN VERSION + + + (_Child_, vol. vii. Early Edition, Appendix.) + + FRAE Dunidier as I cam throuch, + Doun by the hill of Banochie, + Allangst the lands of Garioch. + Grit pitie was to heir and se + The noys and dulesum hermonie, + That evir that dreiry day did daw! + Cryand the corynoch on hie, + Alas! alas! for the Harlaw. + + I marvlit what the matter meant; + All folks were in a fiery fariy: + I wist nocht wha was fae or freind, + Yet quietly I did me carrie. + But sen the days of auld King Hairy, + Sic slauchter was not hard nor sene, + And thair I had nae tyme to tairy, + For bissiness in Aberdene. + + Thus as I walkit on the way, + To Inverury as I went, + I met a man, and bad him stay, + Requeisting him to mak me quaint + Of the beginning and the event + That happenit thair at the Harlaw; + Then he entreited me to tak tent, + And he the truth sould to me schaw. + + Grit Donald of the Ysles did claim + Unto the lands of Ross sum richt, + And to the governour he came, + Them for to haif, gif that he micht, + Wha saw his interest was but slicht, + And thairfore answerit with disdain. + He hastit hame baith day and nicht, + And sent nae bodward back again. + + But Donald richt impatient + Of that answer Duke Robert gaif, + He vow’d to God Omniyotent, + All the hale lands of Ross to half, + Or ells be graithed in his graif: + He wald not quat his richt for nocht, + Nor be abusit like a slaif; + That bargin sould be deirly bocht. + + Then haistylie he did command + That all his weir-men should convene; + Ilk an well harnisit frae hand, + To melt and heir what he did mein. + He waxit wrath and vowit tein; + Sweirand he wald surpryse the North, + Subdew the brugh of Aberdene, + Mearns, Angus, and all Fyfe to Forth. + + Thus with the weir-men of the yles, + Wha war ay at his bidding bown, + With money maid, with forss and wyls, + Richt far and neir, baith up and doun, + Throw mount and muir, frae town to town, + Allangst the lands of Ross he roars, + And all obey’d at his bandown, + Evin frae the North to Suthren shoars. + + Then all the countrie men did yield; + For nae resistans durst they mak, + Nor offer batill in the feild, + Be forss of arms to beir him bak. + Syne they resolvit all and spak, + That best it was for thair behoif, + They sould him for thair chiftain tak, + Believing weil he did them luve. + + Then he a proclamation maid, + All men to meet at Inverness, + Throw Murray land to mak a raid, + Frae Arthursyre unto Spey-ness. + And further mair, he sent express, + To schaw his collours and ensenzie, + To all and sindry, mair and less, + Throchout the bounds of Byne and Enzie. + + And then throw fair Strathbogie land + His purpose was for to pursew, + And whatsoevir durst gainstand, + That race they should full sairly rew. + Then he bad all his men be trew, + And him defend by forss and slicht, + And promist them rewardis anew, + And mak them men of mekle micht. + + Without resistans, as he said, + Throw all these parts he stoutly past, + Where sum war wae, and sum war glaid, + But Garioch was all agast. + Throw all these feilds be sped him fast, + For sic a sicht was never sene; + And then, forsuith, he langd at last + To se the bruch of Aberdene. + + To hinder this prowd enterprise, + The stout and michty Erl of Marr + With all his men in arms did ryse, + Even frae Curgarf to Craigyvar: + And down the syde of Don richt far, + Angus and Mearns did all convene + To fecht, or Donald came sae nar + The ryall bruch of Aberdene. + + And thus the martial Erle of Marr + Marcht with his men in richt array; + Befoir his enemis was aware, + His banner bauldly did display. + For weil enewch they kent the way, + And all their semblance well they saw: + Without all dangir or delay, + Come haistily to the Harlaw. + + With him the braif Lord Ogilvy, + Of Angus sheriff principall, + The constable of gude Dundè, + The vanguard led before them all. + Suppose in number they war small, + Thay first richt bauldlie did pursew, + And maid thair faes befor them fall, + Wha then that race did sairly rew. + + And then the worthy Lord Salton, + The strong undoubted Laird of Drum, + The stalwart Laird of Lawristone, + With ilk thair forces all and sum. + Panmuir with all his men, did cum, + The provost of braif Aberdene, + With trumpets and with tuick of drum, + Came schortly in thair armour schene. + + These with the Earle of Marr came on, + In the reir-ward richt orderlie, + Thair enemies to sett upon; + In awfull manner hardilie, + Togither vowit to live and die, + Since they had marchit mony mylis, + For to suppress the tyrannie + Of douted Donald of the Ysles. + + But he, in number ten to ane, + Right subtilè alang did ryde, + With Malcomtosch, and fell Maclean, + With all thair power at thair syde; + Presumeand on their strenth and pryde, + Without all feir or ony aw, + Richt bauldie battil did abyde, + Hard by the town of fair Harlaw. + + The armies met, the trumpet sounds, + The dandring drums alloud did touk, + Baith armies byding on the bounds, + Till ane of them the feild sould bruik. + Nae help was thairfor, nane wald jouk, + Ferss was the fecht on ilka syde, + And on the ground lay mony a bouk + Of them that thair did battil byd. + + With doutsum victorie they dealt, + The bludy battil lastit lang; + Each man fits nibours forss thair felt, + The weakest aft-tymes gat the wrang: + Thair was nae mowis thair them amang, + Naithing was hard but heavy knocks, + That eccho mad a dulefull sang, + Thairto resounding frae the rocks. + + But Donalds men at last gaif back, + For they war all out of array: + The Earl of Marris men throw them brak, + Pursewing shairply in thair way, + Thair enemys to tak or slay, + Be dynt of forss to gar them yield; + Wha war richt blyth to win away, + And sae for feirdness tint the feild. + + Then Donald fled, and that full fast, + To mountains hich for all his micht; + For he and his war all agast, + And ran till they war out of sicht; + And sae of Ross he lost his richt, + Thocht mony men with hem he brocht; + Towards the yles fled day and nicht, + And all he wan was deirlie bocht. + + This is (quod he) the richt report + Of all that I did heir and knaw; + Thocht my discourse be sumthing schort, + Tak this to be a richt suthe saw: + Contrairie God and the kings law, + Thair was spilt mekle Christian blude, + Into the battil of Harlaw: + This is the sum, sae I conclude. + + But yet a bonnie while abide, + And I sall mak thee cleirly ken + What slaughter was on ilkay syde, + Of Lowland and of Highland men, + Wha for thair awin haif evir bene; + These lazie lowns micht weil be spared, + Chased like deers into their dens, + And gat their wages for reward. + + Malcomtosh, of the clan heid-cheif, + Macklean with his grit hauchty heid, + With all thair succour and relief, + War dulefully dung to the deid; + And now we are freid of thair feid, + They will not lang to cum again; + Thousands with them, without remeid, + On Donald’s syd, that day war slain. + + And on the uther syde war lost, + Into the feild that dismal day, + Chief men of worth, of mekle cost, + To be lamentit sair for ay. + The Lord Saltoun of Rothemay, + A man of micht and mekle main; + Grit dolour was for his decay, + That sae unhappylie was slain. + + Of the best men amang them was + The gracious gude Lord Ogilvy, + The sheriff-principal of Angus, + Renownit for truth and equitie, + For faith and magnanimitie; + He had few fallows in the field, + Yet fell by fatall destinie, + For he naeways wad grant to yield. + + Sir James Scrimgeor of Duddap, knicht, + Grit constabill of fair Dundè, + Unto the dulefull deith was dicht; + The kingis cheif bannerman was he, + A valiant man of chevalrie, + Whose predecessors wan that place + At Spey, with gude King William frie + ’Gainst Murray, and Macduncan’s race. + + Gude Sir Allexander Irving, + The much renowit laird of Drum, + Nane in his days was bettir sene + When they war semblit all and sum. + To praise him we sould not be dumm, + For valour, witt, and worthyness; + To end his days he ther did cum + Whose ransom is remeidyless. + + And thair the knicht of Lawriston + Was slain into his armour schene, + And gude Sir Robert Davidson, + Wha provost was of Aberdene: + The knicht of Panmure, as was sene, + A mortall man in armour bricht, + Sir Thomas Murray, stout and kene, + Left to the warld thair last gude nicht. + + Thair was not sen King Keneths days + Sic strange intestine crewel stryf + In Scotland sene, as ilk man says, + Whare mony liklie lost thair lyfe; + Whilk maid divorce twene man and wyfe, + And mony childrene fatherless, + Whilk in this realme has bene full ryfe: + Lord help these lands, our wrangs redress. + + In July, on Saint James his even, + That four and twenty dismall day, + Twelve hundred, ten score and eleven + Of theirs sen Chryst, the suthe to say, + Men will remember, as they may, + When thus the ventie they knaw, + And mony a ane may murn for ay, + The brim battil of the Harlaw. + + + + +TRADITIONARY VERSION + + + (_Child_, Part VI.) + + AS I came in by Dunidier, + An doun by Netherha, + There was fifty thousand Hielanmen + A marching to Harlaw. + (Chorus) Wi a dree dree dradie drumtie dree. + + As I cam on, an farther on, + An doun an by Balquhain, + Oh there I met Sir James the Rose, + Wi him Sir John the Gryme. + + “O cam ye frae the Hielans, man? + And cam ye a’ the wey? + Saw ye Macdonell an his men, + As they cam frae the Skee?” + + “Yes, me cam frae ta Hielans, man, + An me cam a ta wey, + An she saw Macdonell an his men, + As they cam frae ta Skee.” + + “Oh, was ye near Macdonell’s men? + Did ye their numbers see? + Come, tell to me, John Hielanman, + What micht their numbers be?” + + “Yes, me was near, an near eneuch, + An me their numbers saw; + There was fifty thousand Hielanmen + A marching to Harlaw.” + + “Gin that be true,” says James the Rose, + “We’ll no come meikle speed; + We’ll cry upo our merry men, + And lichtly mount our steed.” + + “Oh no, oh no!” quo’ John the Gryme, + “That thing maun never be; + The gallant Grymes were never bate, + We’ll try what we can dee.” + + As I cam on, an farther on, + An doun an by Harlaw, + They fell fu close on ilka side; + Sic fun ye never saw. + + They fell fu close on ilka side, + Sic fun ye never saw; + For Hielan swords gied clash for clash, + At the battle o Harlaw. + + The Hielanmen, wi their lang swords, + They laid on us fu sair, + An they drave back our merry men + Three acres breadth an mair. + + Brave Forbës to his brither did say, + “Noo brither, dinna ye see? + They beat us back on ilka side, + An we’se be forced to flee.” + + “Oh no, oh no, my brither dear, + That thing maun never be; + Tak ye your good sword in your hand, + An come your wa’s wi me.” + + “Oh no, oh no, my brither dear, + The clans they are ower strang, + An they drive back our merry men, + Wi swords baith sharp an lang.” + + Brave Forbës drew his men aside, + Said, “Tak your rest a while, + Until I to Drumminnor send, + To fess my coat o mail.” + + The servan he did ride, + An his horse it did na fail, + For in twa hours an a quarter + He brocht the coat o mail. + + Then back to back the brithers twa + Gaed in amo the thrang, + An they hewed doun the Hielanmen, + Wi swords baith sharp an lang. + + Macdonell he was young an stout, + Had on his coat o mail, + And he has gane oot throw them a’ + To try his han himsell. + + The first ae straik that Forbës strack, + He garrt Macdonell reel; + An the neist ae straik that Forbës strack, + The great Macdonell fell. + + And siccan a lierachie, + I’m sure ye never sawe + As wis amo the Hielanmen, + When they saw Macdonell fa. + + An whan they saw that he was deid, + They turnd and ran awa, + An they buried him in Legget’s Den, + A large mile frae Harlaw. + + They rade, they ran, an some did gang, + They were o sma record; + But Forbës and his merry men, + They slew them a’ the road. + + On Monanday, at mornin, + The battle it began, + On Saturday at gloamin’, + Ye’d scarce kent wha had wan. + + An sic a weary buryin, + I’m sure ye never saw, + As wis the Sunday after that, + On the muirs aneath Harlaw. + + Gin anybody speer at ye + For them ye took awa, + Ye may tell their wives and bairnies, + They’re sleepin at Harlaw. + + + + +DICKIE MACPHALION + + + (_Sharpe’s Ballad Book_, No. XIV.) + + I WENT to the mill, but the miller was gone, + I sat me down, and cried ochone! + To think on the days that are past and gone, + Of Dickie Macphalion that’s slain. + Shoo, shoo, shoolaroo, + To think on the days that are past and gone, + Of Dickie Macphalion that’s slain. + + I sold my rock, I sold my reel, + And sae hae I my spinning wheel, + And a’ to buy a cap of steel + For Dickie Macphalion that’s slain! + Shoo, shoo, shoolaroo, + And a’ to buy a cap of steel + For Dickie Macphalion that’s slain. + + + + +A LYKE-WAKE DIRGE + + + (_Border Minstrelsy_, vol. ii., p. 357.) + + THIS ae nighte, this ae nighte, + _Every nighte and alle_, + Fire, and sleet, and candle-lighte, + _And Christe receive thye saule_. + + When thou from hence away art paste, + _Every nighte and alle_, + To Whinny-muir thou comest at laste; + _And Christe receive thye saule_. + + If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon, + _Every nighte and alle_, + Sit thee down and put them on; + _And Christe receive thye saule_. + + If hosen and shoon thou ne’er gavest nane, + _Every nighte and alle_, + The whinnes sall pricke thee to the bare bane; + _And Christe receive thye saule_. + + From Whinny-muir when thou mayst passe, + _Every nighte and alle_, + To Brigg o’ Dread thou comest at laste, + _And Christe receive thye saule_. + + From Brigg o’ Dread when thou mayst passe, + _Every nighte and alle_, + To Purgatory fire thou comest at last, + _And Christe receive thye saule_. + + If ever thou gavest meat or drink, + _Every nighte and alle_, + The fire sall never make thee shrinke; + _And Christe receive thye saule_. + + If meate or drinke thou never gavest nane, + _Every nighte and alle_, + The fire will burn thee to the bare bane; + _And Christe receive thye saule_. + + This ae nighte, this ae nighte, + _Every nighte and alle_, + Fire, and sleet, and candle-lighte, + _And Christe receive thye saule_. + + + + +THE LAIRD OF WARISTOUN + + + (_Child_, vol. iii. Early Edition.) + + DOWN by yon garden green, + Sae merrily as she gaes; + She has twa weel-made feet, + And she trips upon her taes. + + She has twa weel-made feet; + Far better is her hand; + She’s as jimp in the middle + As ony willow wand. + + “Gif ye will do my bidding, + At my bidding for to be, + It’s I will make you lady + Of a’ the lands you see.” + + * * * * * + + He spak a word in jest; + Her answer was na good; + He threw a plate at her face, + Made it a’ gush out o’ blood. + + She wasna frae her chamber + A step but barely three, + When up and at her richt hand + There stood Man’s Enemy. + + “Gif ye will do my bidding, + At my bidding for to be, + I’ll learn you a wile, + Avenged for to be.” + + The foul thief knotted the tether; + She lifted his head on hie; + The nourice drew the knot + That gar’d lord Waristoun die. + + Then word is gane to Leith, + Also to Edinburgh town + That the lady had kill’d the laird, + The laird o’ Waristoun. + + * * * * * + + Tak aff, tak aff my hood + But lat my petticoat be; + Pat my mantle o’er my head; + For the fire I downa see. + + Now, a’ ye gentle maids, + Tak warning now by me, + And never marry ane + But wha pleases your e’e. + + “For he married me for love, + But I married him for fee; + And sae brak out the feud + That gar’d my dearie die.” + + + + +MAY COLVEN + + + (_Child_, Part I., p. 56.) + + FALSE Sir John a wooing came + To a maid of beauty fair; + May Colven was this lady’s name, + Her father’s only heir. + + He wood her butt, he wood her ben, + He wood her in the ha, + Until he got this lady’s consent + To mount and ride awa. + + He went down to her father’s bower, + Where all the steeds did stand, + And he’s taken one of the best steeds + That was in her father’s land. + + He’s got on and she’s got on, + As fast as they could flee, + Until they came to a lonesome part, + A rock by the side of the sea. + + “Loup off the steed,” says false Sir John, + “Your bridal bed you see; + For I have drowned seven young ladies, + The eighth one you shall be. + + “Cast off, cast off, my May Colven, + All and your silken gown, + For it’s oer good and oer costly + To rot in the salt sea foam. + + “Cast off, cast off, my May Colven, + All and your embroiderd shoen, + For oer good and oer costly + To rot in the salt sea foam.” + + “O turn you about, O false Sir John, + And look to the leaf of the tree, + For it never became a gentleman + A naked woman to see.” + + He turned himself straight round about, + To look to the leaf of the tree, + So swift as May Colven was + To throw him in the sea. + + “O help, O help, my May Colven, + O help, or else I’ll drown; + I’ll take you home to your father’s bower, + And set you down safe and sound.” + + “No help, no help, O false Sir John, + No help, nor pity thee; + Tho’ seven kings’ daughters you have drownd, + But the eighth shall not be me.” + + So she went on her father’s steed, + As swift as she could flee, + And she came home to her father’s bower + Before it was break of day. + + Up then and spoke the pretty parrot: + “May Colven, where have you been? + What has become of false Sir John, + That woo’d you so late the streen? + + “He woo’d you butt, he woo’d you ben, + He woo’d you in the ha, + Until he got your own consent + For to mount and gang awa.” + + “O hold your tongue, my pretty parrot, + Lay not the blame upon me; + Your cup shall be of the flowered gold, + Your cage of the root of the tree.” + + Up then spake the king himself, + In the bed-chamber where he lay: + “What ails the pretty parrot, + That prattles so long or day?” + + “There came a cat to my cage door, + It almost a worried me, + And I was calling on May Colven + To take the cat from me.” + + + + +JOHNIE FAA + + + (_Child_, vol. iv. Early Edition.) + + THE gypsies came to our good lord’s gate + And wow but they sang sweetly! + They sang sae sweet and sae very complete + That down came the fair lady. + + And she came tripping doun the stair, + And a’ her maids before her; + As soon as they saw her weel-far’d face, + They coost the glamer o’er her. + + “O come with me,” says Johnie Faw, + “O come with me, my dearie; + For I vow and I swear by the hilt of my sword, + That your lord shall nae mair come near ye.” + + Then she gied them the beer and the wine, + And they gied her the ginger; + But she gied them a far better thing, + The goud ring aff her finger. + + “Gae take frae me this yay mantle, + And bring to me a plaidie; + For if kith and kin, and a’ had sworn, + I’ll follow the gypsy laddie. + + “Yestreen I lay in a weel-made bed, + Wi’ my good lord beside me; + But this night I’ll lye in a tenant’s barn, + Whatever shall betide me!” + + “Come to your bed,” says Johnie Faw, + “Oh, come to your bed, my dearie: + For I vow and swear by the hilt of my sword, + Your lord shall nae mair come near ye.” + + “I’ll go to bed to my Johnie Faw, + I’ll go to bed to my dearie; + For I vow and I swear by the fan in my hand, + My lord shall nae mair come near me. + + “I’ll mak a hap to my Johnie Faw, + I’ll mak a hap to my dearie; + And he’s get a’ the coat gaes round, + And my lord shall nae mair come near me.” + + And when our lord came hame at e’en, + And spier’d for his fair lady, + The tane she cry’d, and the other reply’d, + “She’s awa’ wi’ the gypsy laddie!” + + “Gae saddle to me the black black steed, + Gae saddle and make him ready; + Before that I either eat or sleep, + I’ll gae seek my fair lady.” + + And we were fifteen weel-made men, + Altho’ we were na bonny; + And we were a’ put down but ane, + For a fair young wanton lady. + + + + +HOBBIE NOBLE + + + (_Child_, vi. Early Edition.) + + FOUL fa’ the breast first treason bred in! + That Liddesdale may safely say: + For in it there was baith meat and drink, + And corn unto our geldings gay. + + We were stout-hearted men and true, + As England it did often say; + But now we may turn our backs and fly, + Since brave Noble is seld away. + + Now Hobie he was an English man, + And born into Bewcastle dale; + But his misdeeds they were sae great, + They banish’d him to Liddisdale. + + At Kershope foot the tryst was set, + Kershope of the lilye lee; + And there was traitour Sim o’ the Mains, + With him a private companie. + + Then Hobie has graith’d his body weel, + I wat it was wi’ baith good iron and steel; + And he has pull’d out his fringed grey, + And there, brave Noble, he rade him weel. + + Then Hobie is down the water gane, + E’en as fast as he may drie; + Tho’ they shoud a’ brusten and broken their hearts, + Frae that tryst Noble he would na be. + + “Weel may ye be, my feiries five! + And aye, what is your wills wi’ me?” + Then they cry’d a’ wi’ ae consent, + “Thou’rt welcome here, brave Noble, to me. + + “Wilt thou with us in England ride, + And thy safe warrand we will be? + If we get a horse worth a hundred punds, + Upon his back that thou shalt be.” + + “I dare not with you into England ride; + The Land-sergeant has me at feid: + I know not what evil may betide, + For Peter of Whitfield, his brother, is dead. + + “And Anton Shiel he loves not me, + For I gat twa drifts o his sheep; + The great Earl of Whitfield loves me not, + For nae gear frae me he e’er could keep. + + “But will ye stay till the day gae down, + Until the night come o’er the grund, + And I’ll be a guide worth ony twa, + That may in Liddesdale be fund? + + “Tho’ dark the night as pitch and tar, + I’ll guide ye o’er yon hills fu’ hie; + And bring ye a’ in safety back, + If ye’ll be true and follow me.” + + He’s guided them o’er moss and muir, + O’er hill and houp, and mony a down; + Til they came to the Foulbogshiel, + And there, brave Noble, he lighted down. + + But word is gane to the Land-sergeant, + In Askirton where that he lay— + “The deer that ye hae hunted lang, + Is seen into the Waste this day.” + + “Then Hobbie Noble is that deer! + I wat he carries the style fu’ hie; + Aft has he beat your slough-hounds back, + And set yourselves at little lee. + + “Gar warn the bows of Hartlie-burn; + See they shaft their arrows on the wa’! + Warn Willeva and Spear Edom, + And see the morn they meet me a’. + + “Gar meet me on the Rodric-haugh, + And see it be by break o’ day; + And we will on to Conscowthart-Green, + For there, I think, we’ll get our prey.” + + Then Hobbie Noble has dream’d a dream, + In the Foulbogshiel, where that he lay; + He thought his horse was neath him shot, + And he himself got hard away. + + The cocks could crow, the day could dawn, + And I wot so even down fell the rain; + If Hobbie had no waken’d at that time, + In the Foulbogshiel he had been tane or slain. + + “Get up, get up, my feiries five! + For I wot here makes a fu’ ill day; + Yet the warst cloak of this companie, + I hope, shall cross the Waste this day.” + + Now Hobie thought the gates were clear; + But, ever alas! it was not sae: + They were beset wi’ cruel men and keen, + That away brave Hobbie could not gae. + + “Yet follow me, my feiries five, + And see of me ye keep good ray; + And the worst cloak o’ this companie + I hope shall cross the Waste this day.” + + There was heaps of men now Hobbie before, + And other heaps was him behind, + That had he wight as Wallace was, + Away brave Noble he could not win. + + Then Hobie he had but a laddies sword; + But he did more than a laddies deed; + In the midst of Conscouthart-Green, + He brake it oer Jersawigham’s head. + + Now they have tane brave Hobie Noble, + Wi’ his ain bowstring they band him sae; + And I wat heart was ne’er sae sair, + As when his ain five band him on the brae. + + They have tane him on for West Carlisle; + They ask’d him if he knew the why? + Whate’er he thought, yet little he said; + He knew the way as well as they. + + They hae ta’en him up the Ricker gate; + The wives they cast their windows wide; + And every wife to anither can say, + “That’s the man loos’d Jock o’ the Side!” + + “Fye on ye, women! why ca’ ye me man? + For it’s nae man that I’m used like; + I am but like a forfoughen hound, + Has been fighting in a dirty syke.” + + Then they hae tane him up thro’ Carlisle town, + And set him by the chimney fire; + They gave brave Noble a wheat loaf to eat, + And that was little his desire. + + Then they gave him a wheat loaf to eat, + And after that a can o beer; + Then they cried a’ with ae consent, + “Eat, brave Noble, and make gude cheer! + + “Confess my lord’s horse, Hobie,” they said, + “And the morn in Carlisle thou’s no die;” + “How shall I confess them,” Hobie says, + “For I never saw them with mine eye?” + + Then Hobie has sworn a fu’ great aith, + By the day that he was gotten and born, + He never had ony thing o’ my lord’s, + That either eat him grass or corn. + + “Now fare thee weel, sweet Mangerton! + For I think again I’ll ne’er thee see: + I wad betray nae lad alive, + For a’ the goud in Christentie. + + “And fare thee weel, sweet Liddesdale! + Baith the hie land and the law; + Keep ye weel frae traitor Mains! + For goud and gear he’ll sell ye a’. + + “Yet wad I rather be ca’d Hobie Noble, + In Carlisle where he suffers for his faut, + Before I’d be ca’d traitor Mains, + That eats and drinks of the meal and maut.” + + + + +THE TWA SISTERS + + + (_Sharpe’s Ballad Book_, No. X., p. 30.) + + THERE liv’d twa sisters in a bower, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + There liv’d twa sisters in a bower, + Stirling for aye: + The youngest o’ them, O, she was a flower! + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay. + + There came a squire frae the west, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + There cam a squire frae the west, + Stirling for aye: + He lo’ed them baith, but the youngest best, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay. + + He gied the eldest a gay gold ring, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + He gied the eldest a gay gold ring, + Stirling for aye: + But he lo’ed the youngest aboon a’ thing, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay. + + “Oh sister, sister, will ye go to the sea? + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + Oh sister, sister, will ye go to the sea? + Stirling for aye: + Our father’s ships sail bonnilie, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay.” + + The youngest sat down upon a stane, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + The youngest sat down upon a stane, + Stirling for aye: + The eldest shot the youngest in, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay. + + “Oh sister, sister, lend me your hand, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + Oh, sister, sister, lend me your hand, + Stirling for aye: + And you shall hae my gouden fan, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay. + + “Oh, sister, sister, save my life, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + Oh sister, sister, save my life, + Stirling for aye: + And ye shall be the squire’s wife, + Bonny Sweet Johnstonne that stands upon Tay.” + + First she sank, and then she swam, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + First she sank, and then she swam, + Stirling for aye: + Until she cam to Tweed mill dam, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay. + + The millar’s daughter was baking bread, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + The millar’s daughter was baking bread, + Stirling for aye: + She went for water, as she had need, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay. + + “Oh father, father, in our mill dam, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch, + Oh father, father, in our mill dam, + Stirling for aye: + There’s either a lady, or a milk-white swan, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay.” + + They could nae see her fingers small, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + They could nae see her fingers small, + Stirling for aye: + Wi’ diamond rings they were cover’d all, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay. + + They could nae see her yellow hair, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + They could nae see her yellow hair, + Stirling for aye: + Sae mony knots and platts war there, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay. + + Bye there cam a fiddler fair, + Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch. + Bye there cam a fiddler fair, + Stirling for aye: + And he’s ta’en three tails o’ her yellow hair, + Bonny Sanct Johnstonne that stands upon Tay. + + + + +MARY AMBREE + + + (_Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, vol. ii. p. 230.) + + WHEN captaines couragious, whom death cold not daunte, + Did march to the siege of the citty of Gaunt, + They mustred their souldiers by two and by three, + And the formost in battle was Mary Ambree. + + When [the] brave sergeant-major was slaine in her sight, + Who was her true lover, her joy, and delight, + Because he was slaine most treacherouslie + Then vowd to revenge him Mary Ambree. + + She clothed herselfe from the top to the toe + In buffe of the bravest, most seemelye to showe; + A faire shirt of male then slipped on shee: + Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree? + + A helmett of proofe shee strait did provide, + A stronge arminge-sword shee girt by her side, + On her hand a goodly faire gauntlett put shee: + Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree? + + Then tooke shee her sworde and her targett in hand, + Bidding all such, as wold, [to] bee of her band; + To wayte on her person came thousand and three: + Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree? + + “My soldiers,” she saith, “soe valliant and bold, + Nowe followe your captaine, whom you doe beholde; + Still formost in battell myselfe will I bee:” + Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree? + + Then cryed out her souldiers, and loude they did say, + “Soe well thou becomest this gallant array, + Thy harte and thy weapons so well do agree, + No mayden was ever like Mary Ambree.” + + She cheared her souldiers, that foughten for life, + With ancyent and standard, with drum and with fife, + With brave clanging trumpetts, that sounded so free; + Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree? + + “Before I will see the worst of you all + To come into danger of death or of thrall, + This hand and this life I will venture so free:” + Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree? + + Shee ledd upp her souldiers in battaile array, + Gainst three times theyr number by breake of the daye; + Seven howers in skirmish continued shee: + Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree? + + She filled the skyes with the smoke of her shott, + And her enemyes bodyes with bulletts so hott; + For one of her own men a score killed shee: + Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree? + + And when her false gunner, to spoyle her intent, + Away all her pellets and powder had sent, + Straight with her keen weapon she slasht him in three: + Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree? + + Being falselye betrayed for lucre of hyre, + At length she was forced to make a retyre; + Then her souldiers into a strong castle drew shee: + Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree? + + Her foes they besett her on everye side, + As thinking close siege shee cold never abide; + To beate down the walles they all did decree: + But stoutlye deffyd them brave Mary Ambree. + + Then tooke shee her sword and her targett in hand, + And mounting the walls all undaunted did stand, + There daring their captaines to match any three: + O what a brave captaine was Mary Ambree! + + “Now saye, English captaine, what woldest thou give + To ransome thy selfe, which else must not live? + Come yield thy selfe quicklye, or slaine thou must bee:” + Then smiled sweetlye brave Mary Ambree. + + “Ye captaines couragious, of valour so bold, + Whom thinke you before you now you doe behold?” + “A knight, sir, of England, and captaine soe free, + Who shortlye with us a prisoner must bee.” + + “No captaine of England; behold in your sight + Two brests in my bosome, and therefore no knight: + Noe knight, sirs, of England, nor captaine you see, + But a poor simple mayden called Mary Ambree.” + + “But art thou a woman, as thou dost declare, + Whose valor hath proved so undaunted in warre? + If England doth yield such brave maydens as thee, + Full well mey they conquer, faire Mary Ambree.” + + The Prince of Great Parma heard of her renowne, + Who long had advanced for England’s fair crowne; + Hee wooed her and sued her his mistress to bee, + And offered rich presents to Mary Ambree. + + But this virtuous mayden despised them all: + “’Ile nere sell my honour for purple nor pall; + A maiden of England, sir, never will bee + The wench of a monarcke,” quoth Mary Ambree. + + Then to her owne country shee back did returne, + Still holding the foes of rare England in scorne! + Therfore English captaines of every degree + Sing forth the brave valours of Mary Ambree. + + + + +ALISON GROSS + + + O ALISON GROSS, that lives in yon tow’r, + The ugliest witch in the north countrie, + She trysted me ae day up till her bow’r, + And mony fair speeches she made to me. + + She straik’d my head, and she kaim’d my hair, + And she set me down saftly on her knee; + Says—“If ye will be my leman sae true, + Sae mony braw things as I will you gi’e.” + + She shaw’d me a mantle of red scarlet, + With gowden flowers and fringes fine; + Says—“If ye will be my leman sae true, + This goodly gift it shall be thine.” + + “Awa, awa, ye ugly witch, + Hand far awa, and let me be; + I never will be your leman sae true, + And I wish I were out of your company.” + + She neist brocht a sark of the saftest silk, + Weel wrought with pearls about the band; + Says—“If ye will be my ain true love, + This goodly gift ye shall command.” + + She show’d me a cup of the good red gowd, + Weel set with jewels sae fair to see; + Says—“If ye will be my leman sae true, + This goodly gift I will you gi’e.” + + “Awa, awa, ye ugly witch, + Haud far awa, and let me be; + For I wadna ance kiss your ugly mouth, + For all the gifts that ye cou’d gi’e.” + + She’s turn’d her richt and round about, + And thrice she blew on a grass-green horn; + And she sware by the moon and the stars aboon, + That she’d gar me rue the day I was born. + + Then out has she ta’en a silver wand, + And she turn’d her three times round and round; + She mutter’d sic words, that my strength it fail’d, + And I fell down senseless on the ground. + + She turn’d me into an ugly worm, + And gar’d me toddle about the tree; + And aye on ilka Saturday night, + Auld Alison Gross she came to me, + + With silver basin, and silver kame, + To kame my headie upon her knee; + But rather than kiss her ugly mouth, + I’d ha’e toddled for ever about the tree. + + But as it fell out on last Hallow-e’en, + When the seely court was ridin’ by, + The queen lighted down on a gowan bank, + Near by the tree where I wont to lye. + + She took me up in her milk-white hand, + And she straik’d me three times o’er her knee; + She chang’d me again to my ain proper shape, + And nae mair do I toddle about the tree. + + + + +THE HEIR OF LYNNE + + + OF all the lords in faire Scotland + A song I will begin: + Amongst them all dwelled a lord + Which was the unthrifty Lord of Lynne. + + His father and mother were dead him froe, + And so was the head of all his kinne; + He did neither cease nor blinne + To the cards and dice that he did run. + + To drinke the wine that was so cleere! + With every man he would make merry. + And then bespake him John of the Scales, + Unto the heire of Lynne say’d hee, + + Sayes “how dost thou, Lord of Lynne, + Doest either want gold or fee? + Wilt thou not sell thy land so brode + To such a good fellow as me? + + “For . . . I . . . ” he said, + “My land, take it unto thee; + I draw you to record, my lords all;” + With that he cast him a Gods pennie. + + He told him the gold upon the bord, + It wanted never a bare penny. + “That gold is thine, the land is mine, + The heire of Lynne I will bee.” + + “Heeres gold enough,” saithe the heire of Lynne, + “Both for me and my company.” + He drunke the wine that was so cleere, + And with every man he made merry. + + Within three quarters of a yeare + His gold and fee it waxed thinne, + His merry men were from him gone, + And left himselfe all alone. + + He had never a penny left in his purse, + Never a penny but three, + And one was brasse and another was lead + And another was white mony. + + “Now well-a-day!” said the heire of Lynne, + “Now well-a-day, and woe is mee! + For when I was the Lord of Lynne, + I neither wanted gold nor fee; + + “For I have sold my lands so broad, + And have not left me one penny! + I must go now and take some read + Unto Edenborrow and beg my bread.” + + He had not beene in Edenborrow + Nor three quarters of a yeare, + But some did give him and some said nay, + And some bid “to the deele gang yee! + + “For if we should hang some land selfeer, + The first we would begin with thee.” + “Now well-a-day!” said the heire of Lynne, + “Now well-a-day, and woe is mee! + + “For now I have sold my lands so broad + That merry man is irke with mee; + But when that I was the Lord of Lynne + Then on my land I lived merrily; + + “And now I have sold my land so broade + That I have not left me one pennye! + God be with my father!” he said, + “On his land he lived merrily.” + + Still in a study there as he stood, + He unbethought him of a bill, + He unbethought him of a bill + Which his father had left with him. + + Bade him he should never on it looke + Till he was in extreame neede, + “And by my faith,” said the heire of Lynne, + “Then now I had never more neede.” + + He tooke the bill and looked it on, + Good comfort that he found there; + It told him of a castle wall + Where there stood three chests in feare: + + Two were full of the beaten gold, + The third was full of white money. + He turned then downe his bags of bread + And filled them full of gold so red. + + Then he did never cease nor blinne + Till John of the Scales house he did winne. + When that he came John of the Scales, + Up at the speere he looked then; + + There sate three lords upon a rowe, + And John o’ the Scales sate at the bord’s head, + And John o’ the Scales sate at the bord’s head + Because he was the lord of Lynne. + + And then bespake the heire of Lynne + To John o’ the Scales wife thus sayd hee, + Sayd “Dame, wilt thou not trust me one shott + That I may sit downe in this company?” + + “Now Christ’s curse on my head,” she said, + “If I do trust thee one pennye,” + Then bespake a good fellowe, + Which sate by John o’ the Scales his knee, + + Said “have thou here, thou heire of Lynne, + Forty-pence I will lend thee,— + Some time a good fellow thou hast beene + And other forty if it need bee.” + + They drunken wine that was so cleere, + And every man they made merry, + And then bespake him John o’ the Scales + Unto the Lord of Lynne said hee; + + Said “how doest thou heire of Lynne, + Since I did buy thy lands of thee? + I will sell it to thee twenty better cheepe, + Nor ever did I buy it of thee.” + + “I draw you to recorde, lords all:” + With that he cast him god’s penny; + Then he tooke to his bags of bread, + And they were full of the gold so red. + + He told him the gold then over the borde + It wanted never a broad pennye; + “That gold is thine, the land is mine, + And the heire of Lynne againe I will bee.” + + “Now well-a-day!” said John o’ the Scales’ wife, + “Well-a-day, and woe is me! + Yesterday I was the lady of Lynne, + And now I am but John o’ the Scales wife!” + + Says “have thou here, thou good fellow, + Forty pence thou did lend me; + Forty pence thou did lend me, + And forty I will give thee, + I’ll make thee keeper of my forrest, + Both of the wild deere and the tame.” + + But then bespake the heire of Lynne, + These were the words and thus spake hee, + “Christ’s curse light upon my crowne + If ere my land stand in any jeopardye!” + + + + +GORDON OF BRACKLEY + + + DOWN Deeside cam Inveraye + Whistlin’ and playing, + An’ called loud at Brackley gate + Ere the day dawning— + “Come, Gordon of Brackley. + Proud Gordon, come down, + There’s a sword at your threshold + Mair sharp than your own.” + + “Arise now, gay Gordon,” + His lady ’gan cry, + “Look, here is bold Inveraye + Driving your kye.” + “How can I go, lady, + An’ win them again, + When I have but ae sword, + And Inveraye ten?” + + “Arise up, my maidens, + Wi’ roke and wi’ fan, + How blest had I been + Had I married a man! + Arise up, my maidens, + Tak’ spear and tak’ sword, + Go milk the ewes, Gordon, + An’ I will be lord.” + + The Gordon sprung up + Wi’ his helm on his head, + Laid his hand on his sword, + An’ his thigh on his steed, + An’ he stooped low, and said, + As he kissed his young dame, + “There’s a Gordon rides out + That will never ride hame.” + + There rode with fierce Inveraye + Thirty and three, + But wi’ Brackley were nane + But his brother and he; + Twa gallanter Gordons + Did never blade draw, + But against three-and-thirty + Wae’s me! what are twa? + + Wi’ sword and wi’ dagger + They rushed on him rude; + The twa gallant Gordons + Lie bathed in their blude. + Frae the springs o’ the Dee + To the mouth o’ the Tay, + The Gordons mourn for him, + And curse Inveraye. + + “O were ye at Brackley? + An’ what saw ye there? + Was his young widow weeping + An’ tearing her hair?” + “I looked in at Brackley, + I looked in, and oh! + There was mirth, there was feasting, + But naething o’ woe. + + “As a rose bloomed the lady, + An’ blithe as a bride, + As a bridegroom bold Inveraye + Smiled by her side. + Oh! she feasted him there + As she ne’er feasted lord, + While the blood of her husband + Was moist on his sword. + + “In her chamber she kept him + Till morning grew gray, + Thro’ the dark woods of Brackley + She shewed him the way. + ‘Yon wild hill,’ she said, + ‘Where the sun’s shining on, + Is the hill of Glentanner,— + One kiss, and begone!’” + + There’s grief in the cottage, + There’s grief in the ha’, + For the gude, gallant Gordon + That’s dead an’ awa’. + To the bush comes the bud, + An’ the flower to the plain, + But the gude and the brave + They come never again. + + + + +EDWARD, EDWARD + + + “WHY does your brand sae drop wi’ blude, + Edward, Edward? + Why does your brand sae drop wi’ blude + And why sae sad gang ye, O?” + “O I hae killed my hawk sae gude, + Mither, mither; + O I hae killed my hawk sae gude, + And I hae nae mair but he, O.” + + “Your hawk’s blude was never sae red, + Edward, Edward; + Your hawk’s blude was never sae red, + My dear son, I tell thee, O.” + “O I hae killed my red-roan steed, + Mither, mither; + O I hae killed my red-roan steed, + That was sae fair and free, O.” + + “Your steed was auld, and ye’ve plenty mair, + Edward, Edward; + Your steed was auld, and ye’ve plenty mair; + Some ither dule ye dree, O.” + “O I hae killed my father dear, + Mither, mither; + O I hae killed my father dear, + Alas, and wae is me, O!” + + “And whatten penance will ye dree for that, + Edward, Edward? + Whatten penance will ye dree for that? + My dear son, now tell me, O.” + “I’ll set my feet in yonder boat, + Mither, mither; + I’ll set my feet in yonder boat, + And I’ll fare over the sea, O.” + + “And what will ye do wi’ your tow’rs and your ha’, + Edward, Edward? + And what will ye do wi’ your tow’rs and your ha’, + That were sae fair to see, O?” + “I’ll let them stand till they doun fa’, + Mither, mither; + I’ll let them stand till they doun fa’, + For here never mair maun I be, O.” + + “And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife, + Edward, Edward? + And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife, + When ye gang ower the sea, O?” + “The warld’s room: let them beg through life, + Mither, mither; + The warld’s room: let them beg through life; + For them never mair will I see, O.” + + “And what will ye leave to your ain mither dear, + Edward, Edward? + And what will ye leave to your ain mither dear, + My dear son, now tell me, O?” + “The curse of hell frae me sall ye bear, + Mither, mither; + The curse of hell frae me sall ye bear: + Sic counsels ye gave to me, O!” + + + + +YOUNG BENJIE + + + OF all the maids of fair Scotland, + The fairest was Marjorie; + And young Benjie was her ae true love, + And a dear true love was he. + + And wow but they were lovers dear, + And lov’d full constantlie; + But aye the mair when they fell out, + The sairer was their plea. + + And they ha’e quarrell’d on a day, + Till Marjorie’s heart grew wae; + And she said she’d chuse another luve, + And let young Benjie gae. + + And he was stout and proud-hearted, + And thought o’t bitterlie; + And he’s gane by the wan moonlight, + To meet his Marjorie. + + “Oh, open, open, my true love, + Oh, open and let me in!” + “I darena open, young Benjie, + My three brothers are within.” + + “Ye lee, ye lee, ye bonnie burd, + Sae loud’s I hear ye lee; + As I came by the Louden banks, + They bade gude e’en to me. + + “But fare ye weel, my ae fause love, + That I have lov’d sae lang! + It sets ye chuse another love, + And let young Benjie gang.” + + Then Marjorie turn’d her round about, + The tear blinding her e’e; + “I darena, darena let thee in, + But I’ll come down to thee.” + + Then salt she smil’d, and said to him— + “Oh, what ill ha’e I done?” + He took her in his arms twa, + And threw her o’er the linn. + + The stream was strong, the maid was stout, + And laith, laith to be dang; + But ere she wan the Louden banks, + Her fair colour was wan. + + Then up bespake her eldest brother— + “Oh, see na ye what I see?” + And out then spake her second brother— + “It is our sister Marjorie!” + + Out then spake her eldest brother— + “Oh, how shall we her ken?” + And out then spake her youngest brother— + “There’s a honey mark on her chin.” + + Then they’ve ta’en the comely corpse, + And laid it on the ground; + Saying—“Wha has kill’d our ae sister? + And how can he be found? + + “The night it is her low lykewake, + The morn her burial day; + And we maun watch at mirk midnight, + And hear what she will say.” + + With doors ajar, and candles light, + And torches burning clear, + The streekit corpse, till still midnight, + They waked, but naething hear. + + About the middle of the night + The cocks began to craw; + And at the dead hour of the night, + The corpse began to thraw. + + “Oh, wha has done thee wrang, sister, + Or dared the deadly sin? + Wha was sae stout, and fear’d nae dout, + As throw ye o’er the linn?” + + “Young Benjie was the first ae man + I laid my love upon; + He was sae stout and proud-hearted, + He threw me o’er the linn.” + + “Shall we young Benjie head, sister? + Shall we young Benjie hang? + Or shall we pike out his twa gray een, + And punish him ere he gang?” + + “Ye maunna Benjie head, brothers, + Ye maunna Benjie hang; + But ye maun pike out his twa gray een. + And punish him ere he gang. + + “Tie a green gravat round his neck, + And lead him out and in, + And the best ae servant about your house + To wait young Benjie on. + + “And aye at every seven years’ end, + Ye’ll take him to the linn; + For that’s the penance he maun dree, + To scug his deadly sin.” + + + + +AULD MAITLAND + + + THERE lived a king in southern land, + King Edward hight his name; + Unwordily he wore the crown, + Till fifty years were gane. + + He had a sister’s son o’s ain, + Was large of blood and bane; + And afterward, when he came up, + Young Edward hight his name. + + One day he came before the king, + And kneel’d low on his knee: + “A boon, a boon, my good uncle, + I crave to ask of thee! + + “At our lang wars, in fair Scotland, + I fain ha’e wish’d to be, + If fifteen hundred waled wight men + You’ll grant to ride with me.” + + “Thou shall ha’e thae, thou shall ha’e mae; + I say it sickerlie; + And I myself, an auld gray man, + Array’d your host shall see.” + + King Edward rade, King Edward ran— + I wish him dool and pyne! + Till he had fifteen hundred men + Assembled on the Tyne. + + And thrice as many at Berwicke + Were all for battle bound, + [Who, marching forth with false Dunbar, + A ready welcome found.] + + They lighted on the banks of Tweed, + And blew their coals sae het, + And fired the Merse and Teviotdale, + All in an evening late. + + As they fared up o’er Lammermoor, + They burn’d baith up and down, + Until they came to a darksome house, + Some call it Leader-Town. + + “Wha hauds this house?” young Edward cried, + “Or wha gi’est o’er to me?” + A gray-hair’d knight set up his head, + And crackit right crousely: + + “Of Scotland’s king I haud my house; + He pays me meat and fee; + And I will keep my gude auld house, + While my house will keep me.” + + They laid their sowies to the wall, + With mony a heavy peal; + But he threw o’er to them agen + Baith pitch and tar barrel. + + With springalds, stanes, and gads of airn, + Amang them fast he threw; + Till mony of the Englishmen + About the wall he slew. + + Full fifteen days that braid host lay, + Sieging Auld Maitland keen; + Syne they ha’e left him, hail and feir, + Within his strength of stane. + + Then fifteen barks, all gaily good, + Met them upon a day, + Which they did lade with as much spoil + As they you’d bear away. + + “England’s our ain by heritage; + And what can us withstand, + Now we ha’e conquer’d fair Scotland, + With buckler, bow, and brand?” + + Then they are on to the land of France, + Where auld king Edward lay, + Burning baith castle, tower, and town, + That he met in his way. + + Until he came unto that town, + Which some call Billop-Grace: + There were Auld Maitland’s sons, all three, + Learning at school, alas! + + The eldest to the youngest said, + “Oh, see ye what I see? + If all be true yon standard says, + We’re fatherless all three. + + “For Scotland’s conquer’d up and down; + Landmen we’ll never be! + Now, will you go, my brethren two, + And try some jeopardy?” + + Then they ha’e saddled twa black horse, + Twa black horse and a gray; + And they are on to king Edward’s host, + Before the dawn of day. + + When they arrived before the host, + They hover’d on the lay: + “Wilt thou lend me our king’s standard, + To bear a little way?” + + “Where wast thou bred? where wast thou born? + Where, or in what countrie?” + “In north of England I was born;” + (It needed him to lee.) + + “A knight me gat, a ladye bore, + I am a squire of high renown; + I well may bear’t to any king + That ever yet wore crown.” + + “He ne’er came of an Englishman, + Had sic an e’e or bree; + But thou art the likest Auld Maitland, + That ever I did see. + + “But sic a gloom on ae browhead, + Grant I ne’er see again! + For mony of our men he slew, + And mony put to pain.” + + When Maitland heard his father’s name, + An angry man was he; + Then, lifting up a gilt dagger, + Hung low down by his knee, + + He stabb’d the knight the standard bore, + He stabb’d him cruellie; + Then caught the standard by the neuk, + And fast away rode he. + + “Now, is’t na time, brothers,” he cried, + “Now, is’t na time to flee?” + “Ay, by my sooth!” they baith replied, + “We’ll bear you companye.” + + The youngest turn’d him in a path, + And drew a burnish’d brand, + And fifteen of the foremost slew, + Till back the lave did stand. + + He spurr’d the gray into the path, + Till baith his sides they bled: + “Gray! thou maun carry me away, + Or my life lies in wad!” + + The captain lookit o’er the wall, + About the break of day; + There he beheld the three Scots lads + Pursued along the way. + + “Pull up portcullize! down draw-brig! + My nephews are at hand; + And they shall lodge with me to-night, + In spite of all England.” + + Whene’er they came within the yate, + They thrust their horse them frae, + And took three lang spears in their hands, + Saying—“Here shall come nae me!” + + And they shot out, and they shot in, + Till it was fairly day; + When mony of the Englishmen + About the draw-brig lay. + + Then they ha’e yoked the carts and wains, + To ca’ their dead away, + And shot auld dykes abune the lave, + In gutters where they lay. + + The king, at his pavilion door, + Was heard aloud to say: + “Last night, three of the lads of France + My standard stole away. + + “With a fause tale, disguised they came, + And with a fauser trayne; + And to regain my gaye standard, + These men where all down slayne.” + + “It ill befits,” the youngest said, + “A crownèd king to lee; + But, or that I taste meat and drink, + Reprovèd shall he be.” + + He went before king Edward straight, + And kneel’d low on his knee: + “I wou’d ha’e leave, my lord,” he said, + “To speak a word with thee.” + + The king he turn’d him round about, + And wistna what to say: + Quo’ he, “Man, thou’s ha’e leave to speak, + Though thou should speak all day.” + + “Ye said that three young lads of France + Your standard stole away, + With a fause tale and fauser trayne, + And mony men did slay; + + “But we are nane the lads of France, + Nor e’er pretend to be: + We are three lads of fair Scotland,— + Auld Maitland’s sons are we. + + “Nor is there men in all your host + Daur fight us three to three.” + “Now, by my sooth,” young Edward said, + “Weel fitted ye shall be! + + “Piercy shall with the eldest fight, + And Ethert Lunn with thee; + William of Lancaster the third, + And bring your fourth to me! + + “Remember, Piercy, aft the Scot + Has cower’d beneath thy hand; + For every drap of Maitland blood, + I’ll gi’e a rig of land.” + + He clanked Piercy o’er the head + A deep wound and a sair, + Till the best blood of his body + Came running down his hair. + + “Now, I’ve slayne ane; slay ye the twa; + And that’s gude companye; + And if the twa shou’d slay ye baith, + Ye’se get nae help frae me.” + + But Ethert Lunn, a baited bear, + Had many battles seen; + He set the youngest wonder sair, + Till the eldest he grew keen. + + “I am nae king, nor nae sic thing: + My word it shanna stand! + For Ethert shall a buffet bide, + Come he beneath my brand.” + + He clankit Ethert o’er the head + A deep wound and a sair, + Till the best blood in his body + Came running o’er his hair. + + “Now, I’ve slayne twa; slay ye the ane; + Isna that gude companye? + And though the ane shou’d slay ye baith. + Ye’se get nae help of me.” + + The twa-some they ha’e slayne the ane, + They maul’d him cruellie; + Then hung him over the draw-brig, + That all the host might see. + + They rade their horse, they ran their horse, + Then hover’d on the lee: + “We be three lads of fair Scotland, + That fain wou’d fighting see.” + + This boasting when young Edward heard, + An angry man was he: + “I’ll take yon lad, I’ll bind yon lad, + And bring him bound to thee! + + “Now, God forbid,” king Edward said, + “That ever thou shou’d try! + Three worthy leaders we ha’e lost, + And thou the forth wou’d lie. + + “If thou shou’dst hang on yon draw-brig, + Blythe wou’d I never be.” + But, with the poll-axe in his hand, + Upon the brig sprang be. + + The first stroke that young Edward ga’e, + He struck with might and main; + He clove the Maitland’s helmet stout, + And bit right nigh the brain. + + When Maitland saw his ain blood fall, + An angry man was he; + He let his weapon frae him fall, + And at his throat did flee. + + And thrice about he did him swing, + Till on the ground he light, + Where he has halden young Edward, + Tho’ he was great in might. + + “Now let him up,” king Edward cried, + “And let him come to me; + And for the deed that thou hast done, + Thou shalt ha’e earldomes three!” + + “It’s ne’er be said in France, nor e’er + In Scotland, when I’m hame, + That Edward once lay under me, + And e’er gat up again!” + + He pierced him through and through the heart, + He maul’d him cruellie; + Then hung him o’er the draw-brig, + Beside the other three. + + “Now take frae me that feather-bed, + Make me a bed of strae! + I wish I hadna lived this day, + To make my heart sae wae. + + “If I were ance at London Tow’r, + Where I was wont to be, + I never mair shou’d gang frae hame, + Till borne on a bier-tree.” + + + + +THE BROOMFIELD HILL + + + THERE was a knight and lady bright + Set trysts amo the broom, + The one to come at morning eav, + The other at afternoon. + + “I’ll wager a wager wi’ you,” he said, + “An hundred marks and ten, + That ye shall not go to Broomfield Hills, + Return a maiden again.” + + “I’ll wager a wager wi’ you,” she said, + “A hundred pounds and ten, + That I will gang to Broomfield Hills, + A maiden return again.” + + The lady stands in her bower door, + And thus she made her mane: + “Oh, shall I gang to Broomfield Hills, + Or shall I stay at hame? + + “If I do gang to Broomfield Hills + A maid I’ll not return; + But if I stay from Broomfield Hills, + I’ll be a maid mis-sworn.” + + Then out it speaks an auld witch wife, + Sat in the bower aboon: + “O ye shall gang to Broomfield Hills, + Ye shall not stay at hame. + + “But when ye gang to Broomfield Hills, + Walk nine times round and round; + Down below a bonny burn bank, + Ye’ll find your love sleeping sound. + + “Ye’ll pu the bloom frae off the broom, + Strew’t at his head and feet, + And aye the thicker that ye do strew, + The sounder he will sleep. + + “The broach that is on your napkin, + Put it on his breast bane, + To let him know, when he does wake, + That’s true love’s come and gane. + + “The rings that are on your fingers, + Lay them down on a stane, + To let him know, when he does wake, + That’s true love’s come and gane. + + “And when he hae your work all done, + Ye’ll gang to a bush o’ broom, + And then you’ll hear what he will say, + When he sees ye are gane.” + + When she came to Broomfield Hills, + She walked it nine times round, + And down below yon burn bank, + She found him sleeping sound. + + She pu’d the bloom frae off the broom, + Strew’d it at ’s head and feet, + And aye the thicker that she strewd, + The sounder he did sleep. + + The broach that was on her napkin, + She put it on his breast-bane, + To let him know, when he did wake, + His love was come and gane. + + The rings that were on her fingers, + She laid upon a stane, + To let him know, when he did wake, + His love was come and gane. + + Now when she had her work all dune, + She went to a bush o’ broom, + That she might hear what he did say, + When he saw that she was gane. + + “O where were ye my guid grey hound, + That I paid for sae dear, + Ye didna waken me frae my sleep + When my true love was sae near?” + + “I scraped wi’ my foot, master, + Till a’ my collars rang, + But still the mair that I did scrape, + Waken woud ye nane.” + + “Where were ye, my bony brown steed, + That I paid for sae dear, + That ye woudna waken me out o’ my sleep + When my love was sae near?” + + “I patted wi my foot, master, + Till a’ my bridles rang, + But the mair that I did patt, + Waken woud ye nane.” + + “O where were ye, my gay goss-hawk + That I paid for sae dear, + That ye woudna waken me out o’ my sleep + When ye saw my love near?” + + “I flapped wi my wings, master, + Till a’ my bells they rang, + But still, the mair that I did flap, + Waken woud ye nane.” + + “O where were ye, my merry young men + That I pay meat and fee, + That ye woudna waken me out o’ my sleep + When my love ye did see?” + + “Ye’ll sleep mair on the night, master, + And wake mair on the day; + Gae sooner down to Broomfield Hills + When ye’ve sic pranks to play. + + “If I had seen any armèd men + Come riding over the hill— + But I saw but a fair lady + Come quietly you until.” + + “O wae mat worth yow, my young men, + That I pay meat and fee, + That ye woudna waken me frae sleep + When ye my love did see? + + “O had I waked when she was nigh, + And o her got my will, + I shoudna cared upon the morn + The sma birds o her were fill.” + + When she went out, right bitter she wept, + But singing came she hame; + Says, “I hae been at Broomfield Hills, + And maid returned again.” + + + + +WILLIE’S LADYE + + + WILLIE has ta’en him o’er the faem, + He’s wooed a wife, and brought her hame; + He’s wooed her for her yellow hair, + But his mother wrought her meikle care; + + And meikle dolour gar’d her dree, + For lighter she can never be; + But in her bow’r she sits with pain, + And Willie mourns o’er her in vain. + + And to his mother he has gane, + That vile rank witch, of vilest kind! + He says—“My lady has a cup, + With gowd and silver set about; + This gudely gift shall be your ain, + And let her be lighter of her bairn.” + + “Of her bairn she’s never be lighter, + Nor in her bow’r to shine the brighter + But she shall die, and turn to clay, + And you shall wed another may.” + + “Another may I’ll never wed, + Another may I’ll never bring hame.” + But, sighing, said that weary wight— + “I wish my life were at an end.” + + “Yet gae ye to your mother again, + That vile rank witch, of vilest kind + And say, your ladye has a steed, + The like of him’s no in the land of Leed. + + “For he is silver shod before, + And he is gowden shod behind; + At every tuft of that horse mane + There’s a golden chess, and a bell to ring. + This gudely gift shall be her ain, + And let me be lighter of my bairn.” + + “Of her young bairn she’s ne’er be lighter, + Nor in her bow’r to shine the brighter; + But she shall die, and turn to clay, + And ye shall wed another may.” + + “Another may I’ll never wed, + Another may I’ll never bring hame.” + But, sighing, said that weary wight— + “I wish my life were at an end!” + + “Yet gae ye to your mother again, + That vile rank witch, of rankest kind! + And say, your ladye has a girdle, + It’s all red gowd to the middle; + + “And aye, at ilka siller hem, + Hang fifty siller bells and ten; + This gudely gift shall be her ain, + And let me be lighter of my bairn.” + + “Of her young bairn she’s ne’er be lighter, + Nor in your bow’r to shine the brighter; + For she shall die, and turn to clay, + And thou shall wed another may.” + + “Another may I’ll never wed, + Another may I’ll never bring hame.” + But, sighing, said that weary wight— + “I wish my days were at an end!” + + Then out and spak the Billy Blind, + He spak aye in good time [his mind]:— + “Yet gae ye to the market place, + And there do buy a loaf of wace; + Do shape it bairn and bairnly like, + And in it two glassen een you’ll put. + + “Oh, wha has loosed the nine witch-knots + That were amang that ladye’s locks? + And wha’s ta’en out the kames of care, + That were amang that ladye’s hair? + + “And wha has ta’en down that bush of woodbine + That hung between her bow’r and mine? + And wha has kill’d the master kid + That ran beneath that ladye’s bed? + And wha has loosed her left foot shee, + And let that ladye lighter be?” + + Syne, Willie’s loosed the nine witch-knots + That were amang that ladye’s locks; + And Willie’s ta’en out the kames of care + That were into that ladye’s hair; + And he’s ta’en down the bush of woodbine, + Hung atween her bow’r and the witch carline. + + And he has killed the master kid + That ran beneath that ladye’s bed; + And he has loosed her left foot shee, + And latten that ladye lighter be; + And now he has gotten a bonnie son, + And meikle grace be him upon. + + + + +ROBIN HOOD AND THE MONK + + + IN somer when the shawes be sheyne, + And leves be large and longe, + Hit is full mery in feyre foreste + To here the foulys song. + + To se the dere draw to the dale, + And leve the hilles hee, + And shadow hem in the leves grene, + Vndur the grene-wode tre. + + Hit befell on Whitsontide, + Erly in a may mornyng, + The son vp fayre can shyne, + And the briddis mery can syng. + + “This is a mery mornyng,” seid Litulle Johne, + “Be hym that dyed on tre; + A more mery man than I am one + Lyves not in Cristianté.” + + “Pluk vp thi hert, my dere mayster,” + Litulle Johne can sey, + “And thynk hit is a fulle fayre tyme + In a mornynge of may.” + + “Ze on thynge greves me,” seid Robyne, + “And does my hert mych woo, + That I may not so solem day + To mas nor matyns goo. + + “Hit is a fourtnet and more,” seyd hee, + “Syn I my Sauyour see; + To day will I to Notyngham,” seid Robyn, + “With the myght of mylde Mary.” + + Then spake Moche the mylner sune, + Euer more wel hym betyde, + “Take xii thi wyght zemen + Well weppynd be thei side. + Such on wolde thi selfe slon + That xii dar not abyde.” + + “Off alle my mery men,” seid Robyne, + “Be my feithe I wil non haue; + But Litulle Johne shall beyre my bow + Til that me list to drawe.” + + * * * * * + + “Thou shalle beyre thin own,” seid Litulle Jon, + “Maister, and I wil beyre myne, + And we wille shete a peny,” seid Litulle Jon, + “Vnder the grene wode lyne.” + + “I wil not shete a peny,” seyde Robyn Hode, + “In feith, Litulle Johne, with thee, + But euer for on as thou shetes,” seid Robyn, + “In feith I holde the thre.” + + Thus shet thei forthe, these zemen too, + Bothe at buske and brome, + Til Litulle Johne wan of his maister + V s. to hose and shone. + + A ferly strife fel them betwene, + As they went bi the way; + Litull Johne seid he had won v shyllyngs, + And Robyn Hode seid schortly nay. + + With that Robyn Hode lyed Litul Jone, + And smote him with his honde; + Litul John waxed wroth therwith, + And pulled out his bright bronde. + + “Were thou not my maister,” seid Litulle Johne, + “Thou shuldis by hit ful sore; + Get the a man where thou wilt, Robyn, + For thou getes me no more.” + + Then Robyn goes to Notyngham, + Hymselfe mornynge allone, + And Litulle Johne to mery Scherewode, + The pathes he knowe alkone. + + Whan Robyn came to Notyngham, + Sertenly withoutene layne, + He prayed to God and myld Mary + To brynge hym out saue agayne. + + He gos into seynt Mary chirche, + And knelyd downe before the rode; + Alle that euer were the churche within + Beheld wel Robyne Hode. + + Beside hym stode a gret-hedid munke, + I pray to God woo he be; + Full sone he knew gode Robyn + As sone as he hym se. + + Out at the durre he ran + Ful sone and anon; + Alle the zatis of Notyngham + He made to be sparred euerychone. + + “Rise vp,” he seid, “thou prowde schereff, + Buske the and make the bowne; + I haue spyed the kynges felone, + For sothe he is in this towne. + + “I haue spyed the false felone, + As he stondes at his masse; + Hit is longe of the,” seide the munke, + “And euer he fro vs passe. + + “This traytur[s] name is Robyn Hode; + Vnder the grene wode lynde, + He robbyt me onys of a C pound, + Hit shalle neuer out of my mynde.” + + Vp then rose this prowd schereff, + And zade towarde hym zare; + Many was the modur son + To the kyrk with him can fare. + + In at the durres thei throly thrast + With staves ful gode ilkone, + “Alas, alas,” seid Robin Hode, + “Now mysse I Litulle Johne.” + + But Robyne toke out a too-hond sworde + That hangit down be his kne; + Ther as the schereff and his men stode thyckust, + Thidurward wold he. + + Thryes thorow at them he ran, + Then for sothe as I yow say, + And woundyt many a modur sone, + And xii he slew that day. + + Hys sworde vpon the schireff hed + Sertanly he brake in too; + “The smyth that the made,” seid Robyn, + “I pray God wyrke him woo. + + “For now am I weppynlesse,” seid Robyne, + “Alasse, agayn my wylle; + But if I may fle these traytors fro, + I wot thei wil me kylle.” + + Robyns men to the churche ran + Throout hem euerilkon; + Sum fel in swonyng as thei were dede, + And lay still as any stone. + + * * * * * + + Non of theym were in her mynde + But only Litulle Jon. + + “Let be your dule,” seid Litulle Jon, + “For his luf that dyed on tre; + Ze that shulde be duzty men, + Hit is gret shame to se. + + “Oure maister has bene hard bystode, + And zet scapyd away; + Pluk up your hertes and leve this mone, + And herkyn what I shal say. + + “He has seruyd our lady many a day, + And zet wil securly; + Therefore I trust in her specialy + No wycked deth shal he dye. + + “Therfor be glad,” seid Litul Johne, + “And let this mournyng be, + And I shall be the munkes gyde, + With the myght of mylde Mary. + + “And I mete hym,” seid Litull Johne, + “We will go but we too + . . . . . . . + . . . . . . . + + “Loke that ze kepe wel our tristil tre + Vnder the levys smale, + And spare non of this venyson + That gose in thys vale.” + + Forthe thei went these zemen too, + Litul Johne and Moche onfere, + And lokid on Moche emys hows + The hyeway lay fulle nere. + + Litul John stode at a window in the mornynge, + And lokid forth at a stage; + He was war wher the munke came ridynge, + And with him a litul page. + + “Be my feith,” said Litul Johne to Moche, + “I can the tel tithyngus gode; + I se wher the munk comys rydyng, + I know hym be his wyde hode.” + + Thei went into the way these zemen bothe + As curtes men and hende, + Thei spyrred tithyngus at the munke, + As thei hade bene his frende. + + “Fro whens come ze,” seid Litul Johne, + “Tel vs tithyngus, I yow pray, + Off a false owtlay [called Robyn Hode], + Was takyn zisturday. + + “He robbyt me and my felowes bothe + Of xx marke in serten; + If that false owtlay be takyn, + For sothe we wolde be fayne.” + + “So did he me,” seid the munke, + “Of a C pound and more; + I layde furst hande hym apon, + Ze may thonke me therefore.” + + “I pray God thanke yow,” seid Litulle Johne, + “And we wil when we may; + We wil go with yow, with your leve, + And brynge yow on your way. + + “For Robyn Hode hase many a wilde felow, + I telle yow in certen; + If thei wist ze rode this way, + In feith ze shulde be slayn.” + + As thei went talkyng be the way, + The munke an Litulle Johne, + Johne toke the munkes horse be the hede + Ful sone and anone. + + Johne toke the munkes horse be the hed, + For sothe as I yow say, + So did Muche the litulle page, + For he shulde not stirre away. + + Be the golett of the hode + Johne pulled the munke downe; + Johne was nothynge of hym agast, + He lete hym falle on his crowne. + + Litulle Johne was sore agrevyd, + And drew out his swerde in hye; + The munke saw he shulde be ded, + Lowd mercy can he crye. + + “He was my maister,” said Litulle Johne, + “That thou hase browzt in bale; + Shalle thou neuer cum at our kynge + For to telle hym tale.” + + John smote of the munkes hed, + No longer wolde he dwelle; + So did Moche the litulle page, + For ferd lest he wold tell. + + Ther thei beryed hem both + In nouther mosse nor lynge, + And Litulle Johne and Muche infere + Bare the letturs to oure kyng. + + * * * * * + + He kneled down vpon—his kne, + “God zow sane, my lege lorde, + Jesus yow saue and se. + + “God yow saue, my lege kyng,” + To speke Johne was fulle bolde; + He gaf hym tbe letturs in his hond, + The kyng did hit unfold. + + The kyng red the letturs anon, + And seid, “so met I the, + Ther was neuer zoman in mery Inglond + I longut so sore to see. + + “Wher is the munke that these shuld haue browzt?” + Oure kynge gan say; + “Be my trouthe,” seid Litull Jone, + “He dyed aftur the way.” + + The kyng gaf Moche and Litul Jon + xx pound in sertan, + And made theim zemen of the crowne, + And bade theim go agayn. + + He gaf Johne the seel in hand, + The scheref for to bere, + To brynge Robyn hym to, + And no man do hym dere. + + Johne toke his leve at cure kyng, + The sothe as I yow say; + The next way to Notyngham + To take he zede the way. + + When Johne came to Notyngham + The zatis were sparred ychone; + Johne callid vp the porter, + He answerid sone anon. + + “What is the cause,” seid Litul John, + “Thou sparris the zates so fast?” + “Because of Robyn Hode,” seid [the] porter, + “In depe prison is cast. + + “Johne, and Moche, and Wylle Scathlok, + For sothe as I yow say, + Thir slew oure men vpon oure wallis, + And sawtene vs euery day.” + + Litulle Johne spyrred aftur the schereff, + And sone he hym fonde; + He oppyned the kyngus privè seelle, + And gaf hyn in his honde. + + When the schereft saw the kyngus seelle, + He did of his hode anon; + “Wher is the munke that bare the letturs?” + He said to Litulle Johne. + + “He is so fayn of hym,” seid Litulle Johne, + “For sothe as I yow sey, + He has made hym abot of Westmynster, + A lorde of that abbay.” + + The scheref made John gode chere, + And gaf hym wine of the best; + At nyzt thei went to her bedde, + And euery man to his rest. + + When the scheref was on-slepe + Dronken of wine and ale, + Litul Johne and Moche for sothe + Toke the way vnto the jale. + + Litul Johne callid vp the jayler, + And bade him ryse anon; + He seid Robyn Hode had brokyn preson, + And out of hit was gon. + + The portere rose anon sertan, + As sone as he herd John calle; + Litul Johne was redy with a swerd, + And bare hym to the walle. + + “Now will I be porter,” seid Litul Johne, + “And take the keyes in honde;” + He toke the way to Robyn Hode, + And sone he hym vnbonde. + + He gaf hym a gode swerd in his hond, + His hed with for to kepe, + And ther as the walle was lowyst + Anon down can thei lepe. + + Be that the cok began to crow, + The day began to sprynge, + The scheref fond the jaylier ded, + The comyn belle made he rynge. + + He made a crye thoroowt al the tow[n], + Whedur he be zoman or knave, + That cowthe brynge hyrn Robyn Hode, + His warisone he shuld haue. + + “For I dar neuer,” said the scheref, + “Cum before oure kynge, + For if I do, I wot serten, + For sothe he wil me henge.” + + The scheref made to seke Notyngham, + Bothe be strete and stye, + And Robyn was in mery Scherwode + As lizt as lef on lynde. + + Then bespake gode Litulle Johne, + To Robyn Hode can he say, + “I haue done the a gode turne for an euylle, + Quyte me whan thou may. + + “I haue done the a gode turne,” said Litulle Johne, + “For sothe as I you saie; + I haue brouzt the vnder grene wode lyne; + Fare wel, and haue gode day.” + + “Nay, be my trouthe,” seid Robyn Hode, + “So shalle hit neuer be; + I make the maister,” seid Robyn Hode, + “Off alle my men and me.” + + “Nay, be my trouthe,” seid Litulle Johne, + “So shall hit neuer be, + But lat me be a felow,” seid Litulle Johne, + “Non odur kepe I’ll be.” + + Thus Johne gate Robyn Hode out of prisone, + Sertan withoutyn layne; + When his men saw hym hol and sounde, + For sothe they were ful fayne. + + They filled in wyne, and made him glad, + Vnder the levys smale, + And zete pastes of venysone, + That gode was with ale. + + Than worde came to oure kynge, + How Robyn Hode was gone, + And how the scheref of Notyngham + Durst neuer loke hyme vpone. + + Then bespake oure cumly kynge, + In an angur hye, + “Litulle Johne hase begyled the schereff, + In faith so hase he me. + + “Litulle Johne has begyled vs bothe, + And that fulle wel I se, + Or ellis the schereff of Notyngham + Hye hongut shuld he be. + + “I made hem zemen of the crowne, + And gaf hem fee with my hond, + I gaf hem grithe,” seid oure kyng, + “Thorowout alle mery Inglond. + + “I gaf hem grithe,” then seide oure kyng, + “I say, so mot I the, + For sothe soche a zeman as he is on + In alle Ingland ar not thre. + + “He is trew to his maister,” seide oure kynge, + “I say, be swete seynt Johne; + He louys bettur Robyn Hode, + Then he dose vs ychone. + + “Robyne Hode is euer bond to him, + Bothe in strete and stalle; + Speke no more of this matter,” seid oure kynge, + “But John has begyled vs alle.” + + Thus endys the talkyng of the munke + And Robyne Hode i-wysse; + God, that is euer a crowned kyng, + Bryng vs alle to his blisse. + + + + +ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER + + + IN schomer, when the leves spryng, + The bloschems on every bowe, + So merey doyt the berdys syng + Yn wodys merey now. + + Herkens, god yemen, + Comley, corteysse, and god, + On of the best that yever bar bou, + Hes name was Roben Hode. + + Roben Hood was the yemans name, + That was boyt corteys and fre; + For the loffe of owr ladey, + All wemen werschep he. + + Bot as the god yemen stod on a day, + Among hes mery manèy, + He was war of a prowd potter, + Cam dryfyng owyr the ley. + + “Yonder comet a prod potter,” seyde Roben, + “That long hayt hantyd this wey; + He was never so corteys a man + On peney of pawage to pay.” + + “Y met hem bot at Wentbreg,” seyde Lytyll John, + “And therfor yeffell mot he the, + Seche thre strokes he me gafe, + Yet they cleffe by my seydys. + + “Y ley forty shillings,” seyde Lytyll John, + “To pay het thes same day, + Ther ys nat a man arnong hus all + A wed schall make hem ley.” + + “Her ys forty shillings,” seyde Roben, + “Mor, and thow dar say, + That y schall make that prowde potter, + A wed to me schall he ley.” + + Ther thes money they leyde, + They toke bot a yeman to kepe; + Roben befor the potter he breyde, + And bad hem stond stell. + + Handys apon hes horse he leyde, + And bad the potter stonde foll stell; + The potter schorteley to hem seyde, + “Felow, what ys they well?” + + “All thes thre yer, and mor, potter,” he seyde, + “Thow hast hantyd thes wey, + Yet wer tow never so cortys a man + One peney of pauage to pay.” + + “What ys they name,” seyde the potter, + “For pauage thow ask of me?” + “Roben Hod ys mey name, + A wed schall thow leffe me.” + + “Well well y non leffe,” seyde the potter, + “Nor pavag well y non pay; + Away they honde fro mey horse, + Y well the tene eyls, be me fay.” + + The potter to hes cart he went, + He was not to seke; + A god to-hande staffe therowt he hent, + Befor Roben he lepe. + + Roben howt with a swerd bent, + A bokeler en hes honde [therto]; + The potter to Roben he went, + And seyde, “Felow, let mey horse go.” + + Togeder then went thes two yemen, + Het was a god seyt to se; + Therof low Robyn hes men, + Ther they stod onder a tre. + + Leytell John to hes felowhes seyde, + “Yend potter welle steffeley stonde:” + The potter, with an acward stroke, + Smot the bokeler owt of hes honde; + + And ar Roben meyt get hem agen + Hes bokeler at hes fette, + The potter yn the neke hem toke, + To the gronde sone he yede. + + That saw Roben hes men, + As they stode ender a bow; + “Let us helpe owr master,” seyed Lytell John, + “Yonder potter els well hem sclo.” + + Thes yemen went with a breyde, + To ther master they cam. + Leytell John to hes master seyde, + “He haet the wager won? + + “Schall y haff yowr forty shillings,” seyde Lytel John, + “Or ye, master, schall haffe myne?” + “Yeff they wer a hundred,” seyde Roben, + “Y feythe, they ben all theyne.” + + “Het ys fol leytell cortesey,” seyde the potter, + “As y haffe harde weyse men saye, + Yeff a por yeman com drywyng ower the wey, + To let hem of hes gorney.” + + “Be mey trowet, thow seys soyt,” seyde Roben, + “Thow seys god yemenrey; + And thow dreyffe forthe yevery day, + Thow schalt never be let for me. + + “Y well prey the, god potter, + A felischepe well thow haffe? + Geffe me they clothyng, and thow schalt hafe myne; + Y well go to Notynggam.” + + “Y grant therto,” seyde the potter, + “Thow schalt feynde me a felow gode; + But thow can sell mey pottes well, + Come ayen as thow yode.” + + “Nay, be mey trowt,” seyde Roben, + “And then y bescro mey hede + Yeffe y bryng eney pottes ayen, + And eney weyffe well hem chepe.” + + Than spake Leytell John, + And all hes felowhes heynd, + “Master, be well war of the screffe of Notynggam, + For he ys leytell howr frende.” + + “Heyt war howte,” seyde Roben, + “Felowhes, let me alone; + Thorow the helpe of howr ladey, + To Notynggam well y gon.” + + Robyn went to Notynggam, + Thes pottes for to sell; + The potter abode with Robens men, + Ther he fered not eylle. + + Tho Roben droffe on hes wey, + So merey ower the londe: + Heres mor and affter ys to saye, + The best ys beheynde. + + [THE SECOND FIT.] + + WHEN Roben cam to Netynggam, + The soyt yef y scholde saye, + He set op hes horse anon, + And gaffe hem hotys and haye. + + Yn the medys of the towne, + Ther he schowed hes war; + “Pottys! pottys!” he gan crey foll sone, + “Haffe hansell for the mar.” + + Foll effen agenest the screffeys gate + Schowed he hes chaffar; + Weyffes and wedowes abowt hem drow, + And chepyd fast of hes war. + + Yet, “Pottys, gret chepe!” creyed Robyn, + “Y loffe yeffell thes to stonde;” + And all that saw hem sell, + Seyde he had be no potter long. + + The pottys that wer werthe pens feyffe, + He sold tham for pens thre; + Preveley seyde man and weyffe, + “Ywnder potter schall never the.” + + Thos Roben solde foll fast, + Tell he had pottys bot feyffe; + On he hem toke of his car, + And sende hem to the screffeys weyffe. + + Therof sche was foll fayne, + “Gramarsey, sir,” than seyde sche; + “When ye com to thes contre ayen, + Y schall bey of they pottys, so mot y the.” + + “Ye schall haffe of the best,” seyde Roben, + And swar be the treneytè; + Foll corteysley she gan hem call, + “Com deyne with the screfe and me.” + + “Godamarsey,” seyde Roben, + “Yowr bedyng schalle be doyn;” + A mayden yn the pottys gan ber, + Roben and the screffe weyffe folowed anon. + + Whan Roben ynto the hall cam, + The screffe sone he met; + The potter cowed of corteysey, + And sone the screffe he gret. + + “Loketh what thes potter hayt geffe yow and me; + Feyffe pottys smalle and grete!” + “He ys fol wellcom,” seyd the screffe, + “Let os was, and go to mete.” + + As they sat at her methe, + With a nobell cher, + Two of the screffes men gan speke + Off a gret wagèr, + + Was made the thother daye, + Off a schotyng was god and feyne, + Off forty shillings, the soyt to saye, + Who scholde thes wager wen. + + Styll than sat thes prowde po, + Thos than thowt he; + “As y am a trow Cerstyn man, + Thes schotyng well y se.” + + Whan they had fared of the best, + With bred and ale and weyne, + To the bottys they made them prest, + With bowes and boltys full feyne. + + The screffes men schot foll fast, + As archares that weren godde; + Ther cam non ner ney the marke + Bey halfe a god archares bowe. + + Stell then stod the prowde potter, + Thos than seyde he; + “And y had a bow, be the rode, + On schot scholde yow se.” + + “Thow schall haffe a bow,” seyde the screffe, + “The best that thow well cheys of thre; + Thou semyst a stalward and a stronge, + Asay schall thow be.” + + The screffe commandyd a yeman that stod hem bey + Affter bowhes to wende; + The best bow that the yeman browthe + Roben set on a stryng. + + “Now schall y wet and thow be god, + And polle het op to they ner;” + “So god me helpe,” seyde the prowde potter, + “Thys ys bot rygzt weke ger.” + + To a quequer Roben went, + A god bolt owthe he toke; + So ney on to the marke he went, + He fayled not a fothe. + + All they schot abowthe agen, + The screffes men and he; + Off the marke he welde not fayle, + He cleffed the preke on thre. + + The screffes men thowt gret schame, + The potter the mastry wan; + The screffe lowe and made god game, + And seyde, “Potter, thow art a man; + Thow art worthey to ber a bowe, + Yn what plas that thow gang.” + + “Yn mey cart y haffe a bowe, + Forsoyt,” he seyde, “and that a godde; + Yn mey cart ys the bow + That I had of Robyn Hode.” + + “Knowest thow Robyn Hode?” seyde the screffe, + “Potter, y prey the tell thou me;” + “A hundred torne y haffe schot with hem, + Under hes tortyll tree.” + + “Y had lever nar a hundred ponde,” seyde the screffe, + And swar be the trenitè, + [“Y had lever nar a hundred ponde,” he seyde,] + “That the fals owtelawe stod be me. + + “And ye well do afftyr mey red,” seyde the potter, + “And boldeley go with me, + And to morow, or we het bred, + Roben Hode wel we se.” + + “Y well queyt the,” kod the screffe, + And swer be god of meythe; + Schetyng thay left, and hom they went, + Her scoper was redey deythe. + + Upon the morow, when het was day, + He boskyd hem forthe to reyde; + The potter hes carte forthe gan ray, + And wolde not [be] leffe beheynde. + + He toke leffe of the screffys wyffe, + And thankyd her of all thyng: + “Dam, for mey loffe, and ye well thys wer, + Y geffe yow her a golde ryng.” + + “Gramarsey,” seyde the weyffe, + “Sir, god eylde het the;” + The screffes hart was never so leythe, + The feyr forest to se. + + And when he cam ynto the foreyst, + Yonder the leffes grene, + Berdys ther sange on bowhes prest, + Het was gret joy to sene. + + “Her het ys mercy to be,” seyde Roben, + “For a man that had hawt to spende; + Be mey horne we schall awet + Yeff Roben Hode be ner hande.” + + Roben set hes horne to hes mowthe, + And blow a blast that was full god, + That herde hes men that ther stode, + Fer downe yn the wodde; + “I her mey master,” seyde Leytell John; + They ran as thay wer wode. + + Whan thay to thar master cam, + Leytell John wold not spar; + “Master, how haffe yow far yn Notynggam? + How haffe yow solde yowr war?” + + “Ye, be mey trowthe, Leytyll John, + Loke thow take no car; + Y haffe browt the screffe of Notynggam, + For all howr chaffar.” + + “He ys foll wellcom,” seyde Lytyll John, + “Thes tydyng ys foll godde;” + The screffe had lever nar a hundred ponde + [He had never sene Roben Hode.] + + “Had I west that beforen, + At Notynggam when we wer, + Thow scholde not com yn feyr forest + Of all thes thowsande eyr.” + + “That wot y well,” seyde Roben, + “Y thanke god that ye be her; + Therfor schall ye leffe yowr horse with hos, + And all your hother ger.” + + “That fend I godys forbode,” kod the screffe, + “So to lese mey godde;” + “Hether ye cam on horse foll hey, + And hom schall ye go on fote; + And gret well they weyffe at home, + The woman ys foll godde. + + “Y schall her sende a wheyt palffrey, + Het hambellet as the weynde; + Ner for the loffe of yowr weyffe, + Off mor sorow scholde yow seyng.” + + Thes parted Robyn Hode and the screffe, + To Notynggam he toke the waye; + Hes weyffe feyr welcomed hem hom, + And to hem gan sche saye: + + “Seyr, how haffe yow fared yn grene foreyst? + Haffe ye browt Roben hom?” + “Dam, the deyell spede him, bothe bodey and bon, + Y haffe hade a foll grete skorne. + + “Of all the god that y haffe lade to grene wod, + He hayt take het fro me, + All bot this feyr palffrey, + That he hayt sende to the.” + + With that sche toke op a lowde lawhyng, + And swhar be hem that deyed on tre, + “Now haffe yow payed for all the pottys + That Roben gaffe to me. + + “Now ye be corn hom to Notynggam, + Ye schall haffe god ynowe;” + Now speke we of Roben Hode, + And of the pottyr onder the grene bowhe. + + “Potter, what was they pottys worthe + To Notynggam that y ledde with me?” + “They wer worth two nobellys,” seyd he, + “So mot y treyffe or the; + So cowde y had for tham, + And y had ther be.” + + “Thow schalt hafe ten ponde,” seyde Roben, + “Of money feyr and fre; + And yever whan thou comest to grene wod, + Wellcom, potter to me.” + + Thes partyd Robyn, the screffe, and the potter, + Ondernethe the grene-wod tre; + God haffe mersey on Robyn Hodys solle, + And saffe all god yemanrey! + + + + +ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER + + + COME, all you brave gallants, and listen awhile, + _With hey down_, _down_, _an a down_, + That are in the bowers within; + For of Robin Hood, that archer good, + A song I intend for to sing. + + Upon a time it chancèd so, + Bold Robin in forrest did ’spy + A jolly butcher, with a bonny fine mare, + With his flesh to the market did hye. + + “Good morrow, good fellow,” said jolly Robin, + “What food hast [thou]? tell unto me; + Thy trade to me tell, and where thou dost dwell, + For I like well thy company.” + + The butcher he answer’d jolly Robin, + “No matter where I dwell; + For a butcher I am, and to Nottingham + I am going, my flesh to sell.” + + “What’s [the] price of thy flesh?” said jolly Robin, + “Come, tell it soon unto me; + And the price of thy mare, be she never so dear, + For a butcher fain would I be.” + + “The price of my flesh,” the butcher repli’d, + “I soon will tell unto thee; + With my bonny mare, and they are not too dear, + Four mark thou must give unto me.” + + “Four mark I will give thee,” saith jolly Robin, + “Four mark it shall be thy fee; + The mony come count, and let me mount, + For a butcher I fain would be.” + + Now Robin he is to Nottingham gone, + His butchers trade to begin; + With good intent to the sheriff he went, + And there he took up his inn. + + When other butchers did open their meat, + Bold Robin he then begun; + But how for to sell he knew not well, + For a butcher he was but young. + + When other butchers no meat could sell, + Robin got both gold and fee; + For he sold more meat for one peny + Then others could do for three. + + But when he sold his meat so fast, + No butcher by him could thrive; + For he sold more meat for one peny + Than others could do for five. + + Which made the butchers of Nottingham + To study as they did stand, + Saying, “Surely he ‘is’ some prodigal, + That hath sold his fathers land.” + + The butchers stepped to jolly Robin, + Acquainted with him for to be; + “Come, brother,” one said, “we be all of one trade, + Come, will you go dine with me?” + + “Accurst of his heart,” said jolly Robin, + “That a butcher doth deny; + I will go with you, my brethren true, + As fast as I can hie.” + + But when to the sheriffs house they came, + To dinner they hied apace, + And Robin Hood he the man must be + Before them all to say grace. + + “Pray God bless us all,” said jolly Robin, + “And our meat within this place; + A cup of sack so good will nourish our blood, + And so do I end my grace.” + + “Come fill us more wine,” said jolly Robin, + “Let us be merry while we do stay; + For wine and good cheer, be it never so dear, + I vow I the reck’ning will pay. + + “Come, ‘brothers,’ be merry,” said jolly Robin, + “Let us drink, and never give ore; + For the shot I will pay, ere I go my way, + If it cost me five pounds and more.” + + “This is a mad blade,” the butchers then said; + Saies the sheriff, “He is some prodigàl, + That some land has sold for silver and gold, + And now he doth mean to spend all. + + “Hast thou any horn beasts,” the sheriff repli’d, + “Good fellow, to sell unto me?” + “Yes, that I have, good master sheriff, + I have hundreds two or three; + + “And a hundred aker of good free land, + If you please it to see: + And Ile make you as good assurance of it, + As ever my father made me.” + + The sheriff he saddled his good palfrèy, + And, with three hundred pound in gold, + Away he went with bold Robin Hood, + His horned beasts to behold. + + Away then the sheriff and Robin did ride, + To the forrest of merry Sherwood; + Then the sheriff did say, “God bless us this day + From a man they call Robin Hood!” + + But when a little farther they came, + Bold Robin he chancèd to spy + A hundred head of good red deer, + Come tripping the sheriff full nigh. + + “How like you my horn’d beasts, good master sheriff? + They be fat and fair for to see;” + “I tell thee, good fellow, I would I were gone, + For I like not thy company.” + + Then Robin set his horn to his mouth, + And blew but blasts three; + Then quickly anon there came Little John, + And all his company. + + “What is your will, master?” then said Little John, + “Good master come tell unto me;” + “I have brought hither the sheriff of Nottingham + This day to dine with thee.” + + “He is welcome to me,” then said Little John, + “I hope he will honestly pay; + I know he has gold, if it be but well told, + Will serve us to drink a whole day.” + + Then Robin took his mantle from his back, + And laid it upon the ground: + And out of the sheriffs portmantle + He told three hundred pound. + + Then Robin he brought him thorow the wood, + And set him on his dapple gray; + “O have me commanded to your wife at home;” + So Robin went laughing away. + + + + +NOTES + + +SIR PATRICK SPENS.—p. 1 + + +MR. CHILD finds the first published version of “the grand old ballad of +Sir Patrick Spens,” as Coleridge calls it, in Bishop Percy’s _Reliques_. +Here the name is “Spence,” and the middle rhyme— + + “Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour,” + +is not of early date. The “Cork-heeled Shoon,” too, cannot be early, but +ballads are subject, in oral tradition, to such modern interpolations. +The verse about the ladies waiting vainly is anticipated in a popular +song of the fourteenth century, on a defeat of the _noblesse_ in +Flanders— + + “Their ladies them may abide in bower and hall well long!” + +If there be historical foundation for the ballad, it is probably a +blending of the voyage of Margaret, daughter of Alexander III., to wed +Eric, King of Norway, in 1281 (some of her escort were drowned on their +way home), with the rather mysterious death, or disappearance, of +Margaret’s daughter, “The Maid of Norway,” on her voyage to marry the son +of Edward I., in 1290. A woman, who alleged that she was the Maid of +Norway, was later burned at the stake. The great number and variety of +versions sufficiently indicate the antiquity of this ballad, wherein +exact history is not to be expected. + + + +THE BATTLE OF OTTERBURN.—p. 5 + + +From _The Border Minstrelsy_, Sir Walter Scott’s latest edition of 1833: +the copy in the edition of 1802 is less complete. The gentle and joyous +passage of arms here recorded, took place in August 1388. We have an +admirable account of Otterburn fight from Froissart, who revels in a +gallant encounter, fairly fought out hand to hand, with no intervention +of archery or artillery, and for no wretched practical purpose. In such +a combat the Scots, never renowned for success at long bowls, and led by +a Douglas, were likely to prove victorious, even against long odds, and +when taken by surprise. + +Choosing an advantage in the discordant days of Richard II., the Scots +mustered a very large force near Jedburgh, merely to break lances on +English ground, and take loot. Learning that, as they advanced by the +Carlisle route, the English intended to invade Scotland by Berwick and +the east coast, the Scots sent three or four hundred men-at-arms, with a +few thousand mounted archers and pikemen, who should harry Northumberland +to the walls of Newcastle. These were led by James, Earl of Douglas, +March, and Murray. In a fight at Newcastle, Douglas took Harry Percy’s +pennon, which Hotspur vowed to recover. The retreat began, but the Scots +waited at Otterburn, partly to besiege the castle, partly to abide +Hotspur’s challenge. He made his attack at moonlight, with overwhelming +odds, but was hampered by a marsh, and incommoded by a flank attach of +the Scots. Then it came to who would pound longest, with axe and sword. +Douglas cut his way through the English, axe in hand, and was overthrown, +but his men protected his body. The Sinclairs and Lindsay raised his +banner, with his cry; March and Dunbar came up; Hotspur was taken by +Montgomery, and the English were routed with heavy loss. Douglas was +buried in Melrose Abbey; very many years later the English defiled his +grave, but were punished at Ancram Moor. There is an English poem on the +fight of “about 1550”; it has many analogies with our Scottish version, +and, doubtless, ours descends from a ballad almost contemporary. The +ballad was a great favourite of Scott’s. In a severe illness, thinking +of Lockhart, not yet his son-in-law, he quoted— + + “My wound is deep, I fain would sleep, + Take thou the vanguard of the three.” + +Mr. Child thinks the command to + + “yield to the bracken-bush” + +unmartial. This does not seem a strong objection, in Froissart’s time. +It is explained in an oral fragment— + + “For there lies aneth yon bracken-bush + Wha aft has conquered mair than thee.” + +Mr. Child also thinks that the “dreamy dream” may be copied from Hume of +Godscroft. It is at least as probable that Godscroft borrowed from the +ballad which he cites. The embroidered gauntlet of the Percy is in the +possession of Douglas of Cavers to this day. + + + +TAM LIN, OR TAMLANE.—p. 10 + + +Burns’s version, in Johnson’s _Museum_ (1792). Scott’s version is made +up of this copy, Riddell’s, Herd’s, and oral recitations, and contains +feeble literary interpolations, not, of course, by Sir Walter. _The +Complaint of Scotland_ (1549) mentions the “Tale of the Young Tamlene” as +then popular. It is needless here to enter into the subject of +Fairyland, and captures of mortals by Fairies: the Editor has said his +say in his edition of Kirk’s _Secret Commonwealth_. The Nereids, in +Modern Greece, practise fairy cantrips, and the same beliefs exist in +Samoa and New Caledonia. The metamorphoses are found in the _Odyssey_, +Book iv., in the winning of Thetis, the _Nereid_, _or Fairy Bride_, by +Peleus, in a modern Cretan fairy tale, and so on. There is a similar +incident in _Penda Baloa_, a Senegambian ballad (_Contes Populaires de la +Sénégambie_, Berenger Ferand, Paris, 1885). The dipping of Tamlane has +precedents in _Old Deccan Days_, in a Hottentot tale by Bleek, and in +_Les Deux Frères_, the Egyptian story, translated by Maspero (the Editor +has already given these parallels in a note to _Border Ballads_, by +Graham R. Thomson). Mr. Child also cites Mannhardt, “Wald und +Feldkulte,” ii. 64–70. Carterhaugh, the scene of the ballad, is at the +junction of Ettrick and Yarrow, between Bowhill and Philiphaugh. + + + +THOMAS RYMER.—p. 16 + + +From _The Border Minstrelsy_; the original was derived from a lady living +near Erceldoune (Earlston), and from Mrs. Brown’s MSS. That Thomas of +Erceldoune had some popular fame as a rhymer and soothsayer as early as +1320–1350, seems to be established. As late as the Forty Five, nay, even +as late as the expected Napoleonic invasion, sayings attributed to Thomas +were repeated with some measure of belief. A real Thomas Rymer of +Erceldoune witnessed an undated deed of Peter de Haga, early in the +thirteenth century. The de Hagas, or Haigs of Bemersyde, were the +subjects of the prophecy attributed to Thomas, + + “Betide, betide, whate’er betide, + There will aye be a Haig in Bemersyde,” + +and a Haig still owns that ancient _château_ on the Tweed, which has a +singular set of traditions. Learmont is usually given as the Erceldoune +family name; a branch of the family owned Dairsie in Fifeshire, and were +a kind of hereditary provosts of St. Andrews. If Thomas did predict the +death of Alexander III., or rather report it by dint of clairvoyance, he +must have lived till 1285. The date of the poem on the Fairy Queen, +attributed to Thomas, is uncertain, the story itself is a variant of +“Ogier the Dane.” The scene is Huntly Bank, under Eildon Hill, and was +part of the lands acquired, at fantastic prices, by Sir Walter Scott. +His passion for land was really part of his passion for collecting +antiquities. The theory of Fairyland here (as in many other Scottish +legends and witch trials) is borrowed from the Pre-Christian Hades, and +the Fairy Queen is a late refraction from Persephone. Not to eat, in the +realm of the dead, is a regular precept of savage belief, all the world +over. Mr. Robert Kirk’s _Secret Commonwealth of Elves_, _Fauns_, _and +Fairies_ may be consulted, or the Editor’s _Perrault_, p. xxxv. (Oxford, +1888). Of the later legends about Thomas, Scott gives plenty, in _The +Border Minstrelsy_. The long ancient romantic poem on the subject is +probably the source of the ballad, though a local ballad may have +preceded the long poem. Scott named the glen through which the Bogle +Burn flows to Chiefswood, “The Rhymer’s Glen.” + + + +SIR HUGH.—p. 19 + + +The date of the Martyrdom of Hugh is attributed by Matthew Paris to 1225. +Chaucer puts a version in the mouth of his Prioress. No doubt the story +must have been a mere excuse for Jew-baiting. In America the Jew becomes +“The Duke” in a version picked up by Mr. Newells, from the recitation of +a street boy in New York. The daughter of a Jew is not more likely than +the daughter of a duke to have been concerned in the cruel and +blasphemous imitation of the horrors attributed by Horace to the witch +Canidia. But some such survivals of pagan sorcery did exist in the +Middle Ages, under the influence of “Satanism.” + + + +SON DAVIE.—p. 22 + + +Motherwell’s version. One of many ballads on fratricide, instigated by +the mother: or inquired into by her, as the case may be. “Edward” is +another example of this gloomy situation. + + + +THE WIFE OF USHER’S WELL.—p. 24 + + +Here + + “The cock doth craw, the day doth daw,” + +having a middle rhyme, can scarcely be of extreme antiquity. Probably, +in the original poem, the dead return to rebuke the extreme grief of the +Mother, but the poem is perhaps really more affecting in the absence of a +didactic motive. Scott obtained it from an old woman in West Lothian. +Probably the reading “fashes,” (troubles), “in the flood” is correct, not +“fishes,” or “freshes.” The mother desires that the sea may never cease +to be troubled till her sons return (verse 4, line 2). The peculiar doom +of women dead in child-bearing occurs even in Aztec mythology. + + + +THE TWA CORBIES.—p. 26 + + +From the third volume of _Border Minstrelsy_, derived by Charles +Kirkpatrick Sharpe from a traditional version. The English version, +“Three Ravens,” was published in _Melismata_, by T. Ravensworth (1611). +In Scots, the lady “has ta’en another mate” his hawk and hound have +deserted the dead knight. In the English song, the hounds watch by him, +the hawks keep off carrion birds, as for the lady— + + “She buried him before the prime, + She was dead herselfe ere evensong time.” + +Probably the English is the earlier version. + + + +THE BONNIE EARL OF MURRAY.—p. 27 + + +Huntly had a commission to apprehend the Earl, who was in the disgrace of +James VI. Huntly, as an ally of Bothwell, asked him to surrender at +Donibristle, in Fife; he would not yield to his private enemy, the house +was burned, and Murray was slain, Huntly gashing his face. “You have +spoiled a better face than your own,” said the dying Earl (1592). James +Melville mentions contemporary ballads on the murder. Ramsay published +the ballad in his _Tea Table Miscellany_, and it is often sung to this +day. + + + +CLERK SAUNDERS.—p. 30 + + +First known as published in _Border Minstrelsy_ (1802). The apparition +of the lover is borrowed from “Sweet Willie’s Ghost.” The evasions +practised by the lady, and the austerities vowed by her have many Norse, +French, and Spanish parallels in folk-poetry. Scott’s version is “made +up” from several sources, but is, in any case, verse most satisfactory as +poetry. + + + +WALY, WALY.—p. 35 + + +From Ramsay’s _Tea Table Miscellany_, a curiously composite gathering of +verses. There is a verse, obviously a variant, in a sixteenth century +song, cited by Leyden. St. Anthon’s Well is on a hill slope of Arthur’s +Seat, near Holyrood. Here Jeanie Deans trysted with her sister’s +seducer, in _The Heart of Midlothian_. The Cairn of Nichol Mushat, the +wife-murderer, is not far off. The ruins of Anthony’s Chapel are still +extant. + + + +LOVE GREGOR.—p. 37 + + +There are French and Romaic variants of this ballad. “Lochroyal,” where +the ballad is localized, is in Wigtownshire, but the localization varies. +The “tokens” are as old as the Return of Odysseus, in the _Odyssey_: his +token is the singular construction of his bridal bed, attached by him to +a living tree-trunk. A similar legend occurs in Chinese. See Gerland’s +_Alt-Giechische Märchen_. + + + +THE QUEEN’S MARIE—MARY HAMILTON.—p. 41 + + +A made-up copy from Scott’s edition of 1833. This ballad has caused a +great deal of controversy. Queen Mary had no Mary Hamilton among her +Four Maries. No Marie was executed for child-murder. But we know, from +Knox, that ballads were recited against the Maries, and that one of the +Mary’s chamberwomen was hanged, with her lover, a pottinger, or +apothecary, for getting rid of her infant. These last facts were +certainly quite basis enough for a ballad, the ballad echoing, not +history, but rumour, and rumour adapted to the popular taste. Thus the +ballad might have passed unchallenged, as a survival, more or less +modified in time, of Queen Mary’s period. But in 1719 a Mary Hamilton, a +Maid of Honour, of Scottish descent, was executed in Russia, for +infanticide. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe conceived that this affair was +the origin of the ballad, and is followed by Mr. Child. + +We reply (1) The ballad has almost the largest number of variants on +record. This is a proof of antiquity. Variants so many, differing in +all sorts of points, could not have arisen between 1719, and the age of +Burns, who quotes the poem. + +(2) This is especially improbable, because, in 1719, the old vein of +ballad poetry had run dry, popular song had chosen other forms, and no +literary imitator could have written Mary Hamilton in 1719. + +(3) There is no example of a popular ballad in which a contemporary +event, interesting just because it is contemporary, is thrown back into a +remote age. + +(4) The name, Mary Hamilton, is often _not_ given to the heroine in +variants of the ballad. She is of several names and ranks in the +variants. + +(5) As Mr. Child himself remarked, the “pottinger” of the real story of +Queen Mary’s time occurs in one variant. There was no “pottinger” in the +Russian affair. + +All these arguments, to which others might be added, seem fatal to the +late date and modern origin of the ballad, and Mr. Child’s own faith in +the hypothesis was shaken, if not overthrown. + + + +KINMONT WILLIE.—p. 45 + + +From _The Border Minstrelsy_. The account in Satchells has either been +based on the ballad, or the ballad is based on Satchells. After a +meeting, on the Border of Salkeld of Corby, and Scott of Haining, Kinmont +Willie was seized by the English as he rode home from the tryst. Being +“wanted,” he was lodged in Carlisle Castle, and this was a breach of the +day’s truce. Buccleugh, as warder, tried to obtain Willie’s release by +peaceful means. These failing, Buccleugh did what the ballad reports, +April 13, 1596. Harden and Goudilands were with Buccleugh, being his +neighbours near Branxholme. Dicky of Dryhope, with others, Armstrongs, +was also true to the call of duty. A few verses in the ballad are +clearly by _aut Gualterus aut diabolus_, and none the worse for that. +Salkeld, of course, was not really slain; and, if the men were “left for +dead,” probably they were not long in that debatable condition. In the +rising of 1745 Prince Charlie’s men forded Eden as boldly as Buccleuch, +the Prince saving a drowning Highlander with his own hand. + + + +JAMIE TELFER.—p. 52 + + +Scott, for once, was wrong in his localities. The Dodhead of the poem is +_not_ that near Singlee, in Ettrick, but a place of the same name, near +Skelfhill, on the southern side of Teviot, within three miles of Stobs, +where Telfer vainly seeks help from Elliot. The other Dodhead is at a +great distance from Stobs, up Borthwick Water, over the tableland, past +Clearburn Loch and Buccleugh, and so down Ettrick, past Tushielaw. The +Catslockhill is not that on Yarrow, near Ladhope, but another near +Branxholme, whence it is no far cry to Branxholme Hall. Borthwick Water, +Goudilands (below Branxholme), Commonside (a little farther up Teviot), +Allanhaugh, and the other places of the Scotts, were all easily “warned.” +There are traces of a modern hand in this excellent ballad. The +topography is here corrected from MS. notes in a first edition of the +_Minstrelsy_, in the library of Mr. Charles Grieve at Branxholme’ Park, a +scion of “auld Jock Grieve” of the Coultart Cleugh. Names linger long in +pleasant Teviotdale. + + + +THE DOUGLAS TRAGEDY.—p. 59 + + +The ballad has Norse analogues, but is here localized on the Douglas +Burn, a tributary of Yarrow on the left bank. The St. Mary’s Kirk would +be that now ruinous, on St. Mary’s Loch, the chapel burned by the Lady of +Branxholme when she + + “gathered a band + Of the best that would ride at her command,” + +in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. The ancient keep of Blackhouse on +Douglas Burn may have been the home of the heroine, if we are to +localize. + + + +THE BONNY HIND.—p. 62 + + +Herd got this tragic ballad from a milkmaid, in 1771. Mr. Child quotes a +verse parallel, preserved in Faroe, and in the Icelandic. There is a +similar incident in the cycle of Kullervo, in the Finnish _Kalevala_. +Scott says that similar tragedies are common in Scotch popular poetry; +such cases are “Lizzie Wan,” and “The King’s Dochter, Lady Jean.” A +sorrow nearly as bitter occurs in the French “Milk White Dove”: a brother +kills his sister, metamorphosed into a white deer. “The Bridge of Death” +(French) seems to hint at something of the same kind; or rather the +Editor finds that he has arbitrarily read “The Bonny Hind” into “Le Pont +des Morts,” in Puymaigre’s _Chants Populaires du Pays Messin_, p. 60. +(_Ballads and Lyrics of Old France_, p. 63) + + + +YOUNG BEICHAN, OR YOUNG BICHAM.—p. 65 + + +This is the original of the Cockney _Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman_, +illustrated by Cruikshank, and by Thackeray. There is a vast number of +variants, evidence to the antiquity of the story. The earliest known +trace is in the familiar legend of the Saracen lady, who sought and found +her lover, Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas à Becket, in London (see +preface to _Life of Becket_, or Beket), Percy Society, 1845. The date +may be _circ._ 1300. The kind of story, the loving daughter of the cruel +captor, is as old as Medea and Jason, and her search for her lover comes +in such _Märchen_ as “The Black Bull o’ Norraway.” No story is more +widely diffused (see _A Far Travelled Tale_, in the Editor’s _Custom and +Myth_). The appearance of the “True Love,” just at her lover’s wedding, +is common in the _Märchen_ of the world, and occurs in a Romaic ballad, +as well as in many from Northern Europe. The “local colour”—the Moor or +Saracen—is derived from Crusading times, perhaps. Motherwell found the +ballad recited with intervals of prose narrative, as in _Aucassin and +Nicolette_. The notes to Cruikshank’s _Loving Ballad_ are, obviously, by +Thackeray. + + + +THE BONNY HOUSE O’ AIRLY.—p. 73 + + +Lord Airly’s houses were destroyed by Argyll, representing the +Covenanters, and also in pursuance of a private feud, in 1639, or 1640. +There are erroneous versions of this ballad, in which Lochiel appears, +and the date is, apparently, transferred to 1745. Montrose, in his early +Covenanting days, was not actually concerned in the burning of the Bonnie +House, which he, when a Royalist, revenged on the possessions of “gleyed +Argyll.” The reference to “Charlie” is out of keeping; no one, perhaps, +ever called Charles I. by that affectionate name. Lady Ogilvie had not +the large family attributed to her: her son, Lord Ogilvie, escaped from +prison in the Castle of St. Andrews, after Philiphaugh. A Lord Ogilvie +was out in 1745; and, later, had a regiment in the French Service. Few +families have a record so consistently loyal. + + + +ROB ROY.—p. 75 + + +The abductors of the widowed young heiress of Edenhelly were Rob’s sons, +Robin Oig, who went through a form of marriage with the girl, and James +Mohr, a good soldier, but a double-dyed spy and scoundrel. Robin Oig was +hanged in 1753. James Mohr, a detected traitor to Prince Charles, died +miserably in Paris, in 1754. Readers of Mr. Stevenson’s _Catriona_ know +James well; information as to his villanies is extant in Additional MSS. +(British Museum). This is probably the latest ballad in the collection. +It occurs in several variants, some of which, copied out by Burns, derive +thence a certain accidental interest. In Mr. Stevenson’s _Catriona_, the +heroine of that name takes a thoroughly Highland view of the abduction. +Robin Oig, in any case, was “nane the waur o’ a hanging,” for he shot a +Maclaren at the plough-tail, before the Forty-Five. The trial of these +sons of Alpen was published shortly after Scott’s _Rob Roy_. + + + +KILLIECRANKIE.—p. 77 + + +Fought on July 27, 1689. _Not_ on the haugh near the modern road by the +railway, but higher up the hill, in the grounds of Urrard House. Two +shelter trenches, whence Dundee’s men charged, are still visible, high on +the hillside above Urrand. There is said, by Mr. Child, to have been a +contemporary broadside of the ballad, which is an example of the +evolution of popular ballads from the old traditional model. There is +another song, by, or attributed to, Burns, and of remarkable spirit and +vigour. + + + +ANNAN WATER.—p. 79 + + +From _The Border Minstrelsy_ Scott says that these are the original words +of the tune of “Allan Water,” and that he has added two verses from a +variant with a fortunate conclusion. “Allan Water” is a common river +name; the stream so called joins Teviot above Branxholme. Annan is the +large stream that flows into the Solway Frith. The Gate-slack, in +Annandale, fixes the locality. + + + +THE ELPHIN NOURRICE.—p. 81 + + +This curious poem is taken from the reprint of Charles Kirkpatrick +Sharpe’s tiny _Ballad Book_, itself now almost _introuvable_. It does +not, to the Editor’s knowledge, occur elsewhere, but is probably +authentic. The view of the Faery Queen is more pleasing and sympathetic +than usual. Why mortal women were desired as nurses (except to attend on +stolen mortal children, kept to “pay the Kane to hell”) is not obvious. +Irish beliefs are precisely similar; in England they are of frequent +occurrence. + + + +JOHNNIE ARMSTRANG.—p. 87 + + +Armstrang of Gilnockie was a brother of the laird of Mangertoun. He had +a kind of Robin Hood reputation on the Scottish Border, as one who only +robbed the English. Pitscottie’s account of his slaying by James V. +(1529) reads as if the ballad were his authority, and an air for the +subject is mentioned in the _Complaint of Scotland_. In Sir Herbert +Maxwell’s _History of Dumfries and Galloway_ is an excellent account of +the historical facts of the case. + + + +EDOM O’ GORDON.—p. 92 + + +Founded on an event in the wars between Kingsmen and Queensmen, in the +minority of James VI., while Queen Mary was imprisoned in England. +“Edom” was Adam Gordon of Auchindown, brother of Huntley, and a Queen’s +man. He, by his retainer, Car, or Ker, burned Towie House, a seat of the +Forbes’s. Ker recurs in the long and more or less literary ballad of +_The Battle of Balrinnes_. In variants the localities are much altered, +and, in one version, the scene is transferred to Ayrshire, and Loudoun +Castle. All the ballads of fire-raising, a very usual practice, have +points in common, and transference was easy. + + + +LADY ANNE BOTHWELL’S LAMENT.—p. 98 + + +Tradition has confused the heroine of this piece with the wife of +Bothwelhaugh, who slew the Regent Murray. That his motive was not mere +political assassination, but to avenge the ill-treatment and death of his +wife, seems to be disproved by Maidment. The affair, however, is still +obscure. This deserted Lady Anne of the ballad was, in fact, not the +wife of Bothwelhaugh, but the daughter of the Bishop of Orkney; her lover +is said to have been her cousin, Alexander Erskine, son of the Earl of +Mar. Part of the poem (Mr. Child points out) occurs in Broome’s play, +_The Northern Lass_ (1632). Though a popular favourite, the piece is +clearly of literary origin, and has been severely “edited” by a literary +hand. This version is Allan Ramsay’s. + + + +JOCK O’ THE SIDE.—p. 101 + + +A Liddesdale chant. Jock flourished about 1550–1570, and is commemorated +as a receiver by Sir Richard Maitland in a poem often quoted. The +analogies of this ballad with that of “Kinmont Willie” are very close. +The reference to a punch-bowl sounds modern, and the tale is much less +plausible than that of “Kinmont Willie,” which, however, bears a few +obvious marks of Sir Walter’s own hand. A sceptical editor must choose +between two theories: either Scott of Satchells founded his account of +the affair of “Kinmont Willie” on a pre-existing ballad of that name, or +the ballad printed by Scott is based on the prose narrative of Scott of +Satchells. The former hypothesis, everything considered, is the more +probable. + + + +LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET.—p. 107 + + +Published in Percy’s _Reliques_, from a Scotch manuscript, “with some +corrections.” The situation, with various differences in detail and +conclusion, is popular in Norse and Romaic ballads, and also in many +_Märchen_ of the type of _The Black Bull of Norraway_. + + + +FAIR ANNIE.—p. 111 + + +From _The Border Minstrelsy_. There are Danish, Swedish, Dutch, and +German versions, and the theme enters artistic poetry as early as Marie +de France (_Le Lai del Freisne_). In Scotch the Earl of Wemyss is a +recent importation: the earldom dates from 1633. Of course this process +of attaching a legend or _Märchen_ to a well-known name, or place, is one +of the most common in mythological evolution, and by itself invalidates +the theory which would explain myths by a philological analysis of the +proper names in the tale. These may not be, and probably are not, the +original names. + + + +THE DOWNIE DENS OF YARROW.—p. 116 + + +From _The Border Minstrelsy_. Scott thought that the hero was Walter +Scott, third son of Thirlestane, slain by Scott of Tushielaw. The +“monument” (a standing stone near Yarrow) is really of a very early, +rather Post-Roman date, and refers to no feud of Thirlestane, Oakwood, +Kirkhope, or Tushielaw. The stone is not far from Yarrow Krik, near a +place called Warrior’s Rest. Hamilton of Bangour’s version is beautiful +and well known. Quite recently a very early interment of a corpse, in +the curved position, was discovered not far from the standing stone with +the inscription. Ballad, stone, and interment may all be distinct and +separate. + + + +SIR ROLAND.—p. 119 + + +From Motherwell’s _Minstrelsy_. The authenticity of the ballad is +dubious, but, if a forgery, it is a very skilled one for the early +nineteenth century. Poets like Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Rossetti, and Mrs. +Marriot Watson have imitated the genuine popular ballad, but never so +closely as the author of “Sir Roland.” + + + +ROSE THE RED AND WHITE LILY.—p. 123 + + +From the Jamieson-Brown MS., originally written out by Mrs. Brown in +1783: Sir Waiter made changes in _The Border Minstrelsy_. The ballad is +clearly a composite affair. Robert Chambers regarded Mrs. Brown as the +Mrs. Harris of ballad lore, but Mr. Norval Clyne’s reply was absolutely +crushing and satisfactory. + + + +THE BATTLE OF HARLAW.—p. 131 + + +Fought on July 24, 1411. This fight broke the Highland force in +Scotland. The first version is, of course, literary, perhaps a +composition of 1550, or even earlier. The second version is traditional, +and was procured by Aytoun from Lady John Scott, herself the author of +some beautiful songs. But the best ballad on the Red Harlaw is that +placed by Scott in the mouth of Elspeth, in _The Antiquary_. This, +indeed, is beyond all rivalry the most splendid modern imitation of the +ancient popular Muse. + + + +DICKIE MACPHALION.—p. 142 + + +A great favourite of Scott’s, who heard it sung at Miss Edgeworth’s, +during his tour in Ireland (1825). One verse recurs in a Jacobite chant, +probably of 1745–1760, but the bibliography of Jacobite songs is +especially obscure. + + + +A LYKE-WAKE DIRGE.—p. 143 + + +From the _Border Minstrelsy_. The ideas are mainly pre-Christian; the +Brig o’ Dread occurs in Islamite and Iroquois belief, and in almost all +mythologies the souls have to cross a River. Music for this dirge is +given in Mr. Harold Boulton’s and Miss Macleod’s _Songs of the North_. + + + +THE LAIRD OF WARISTOUN.—p. 145 + + +This version was taken down by Sir Walter Scott from his mother’s +recitation, for Jamieson’s book of ballads. Jamieson later quarrelled +bitterly with Sir Walter, as letters at Abbotsford prove. A variant is +given by Kinloch, and a longer, less poetical, but more historically +accurate version is given by Buchan. The House of Waristoun is, or +lately was, a melancholy place hanging above a narrow lake, in the +northern suburbs of Edinburgh, near the Water of Leith. Kincaid was the +name of the Laird; according to Chambers, the more famous lairds of +Covenanting times were Johnstons. Kincaid is said to have treated his +wife cruelly, wherefore she, or her nurse, engaged one Robert Weir, an +old servant of her father (Livingstone of Dunipace), to strangle the +unhappy man in his own bedroom (July 2, 1600). The lady was beheaded, +the nurse was burned, and, later, Weir was also executed. The line + + “I wish that ye may sink for sin” + +occurs in an earlier ballad on Edinburgh Castle— + + “And that all for the black dinner + Earl Douglas got therein.” + + + +MAY COLVEN.—p. 147 + + +From Herd’s MS. Versions occur in Polish, German, Magyar, Portuguese, +Scandinavian, and in French. The ballad is here localised on the Carrick +coast, near Girvan. The lady is called a Kennedy of Culzean. Prof. +Bugge regards this widely diffused ballad as based on the Apocryphal +legend of Judith and Holofernes. If so, the legend is _diablement changé +en route_. More probably the origin is a _Märchen_ of a kind of +_Rakshasa_ fatal to women. Mr. Child has collected a vast mass of +erudition on the subject, and by no means acquiesces in Prof. Bugge’s +ingenious hypothesis. + + + +JOHNIE FAA.—p. 150 + + +From Pinkerton’s Scottish Ballads. The event narrated is a legend of the +house of Cassilis (Kennedy), but is wholly unhistorical. “Sir John Faa,” +in the fable, is aided by Gypsies, but, apparently, is not one of the +Earls of Egypt, on whom Mr. Crockett’s novel, _The Raiders_, may be +consulted. The ballad was first printed, as far as is known, in Ramsay’s +_Tea Table Miscellany_. + + + +HOBBIE NOBLE.—p. 152 + + +The hero recurs in _Jock o’ the Side_, and Jock o’ the Mains is an +historical character, that is, finds mention in authentic records, as +Scott points out. The Armstrongs were deported in great numbers, as “an +ill colony,” to Ulster, by James I. Sir Herbert Maxwell’s _History of +Dumfries and Galloway_ may be consulted for these and similar reivers. + + + +THE TWA SISTERS.—p. 157 + + +A version of “Binnorie.” The ballad here ends abruptly; doubtless the +fiddler made fiddle-strings of the lady’s hair, and a fiddle of her +breast-bone, while the instrument probably revealed the cruelty of the +sister. Other extant versions are composite or interpolated, so this +fragment (Sharpe’s) has been preferred in this place. + + + +MARY AMBREE.—p. 160 + + +Taken by Percy from a piece in the Pepys Collection. The girl warrior is +a favourite figure in popular romance. Often she slays a treacherous +lover, as in _Billy Taylor_. Nothing is known of Mary Ambree as an +historical personage; she may be as legendary as fair maiden Lilias, of +Liliarid’s Edge, who “fought upon her stumps.” In that case the local +name is demonstrably earlier than the mythical Lilias, who fought with +such tenacity. + + + +ALISON GROSS.—p. 165 + + +Jamieson gave this ballad from a manuscript, altering the spelling in +conformity with Scots orthography. Mr. Child prints the manuscript; here +Jamieson’s more familiar spelling is retained. The idea of the romance +occurs in a Romaic _Märchen_, but, in place of the Queen of Faery, a more +beautiful girl than the sorceress (Nereid in Romaic), restores the youth +to his true shape. Mr. Child regarded the tale as “one of the numerous +wild growths” from _Beauty and the Beast_. It would be more correct to +say that _Beauty and the Beast_ is a late, courtly, French adaptation and +amplification of the original popular “wild growth” which first appears +(in literary form) as _Cupid and Psyche_, in Apuleius. Except for the +metamorphosis, however, there is little analogy in this case. The +friendly act of the Fairy Queen is without parallel in British Folklore, +but Mr. Child points out that the Nereid Queen, in Greece, is still as +kind as Thetis of old, not a sepulchral siren, the shadow of the pagan +“Fairy Queen Proserpina,” as Campion calls her. + + + +THE HEIR OF LYNNE.—p. 167 + + +From Percy’s Folio Manuscript. There is a cognate Greek epigram— + + Χρυσὸν ἀνὴρ εὗρων ἔλιπε βρόχον αὐτὰρ ὁ χρυσόν + Ὅν λίπεν, οὐχ εὑρών, ἥφεν τον εὗρε βρόχον. + + + +GORDON OF BRACKLEY.—p. 172 + + +This, though probably not the most authentic, is decidedly the most +pleasing version; it is from Mackay’s collection, perhaps from his pen. + + + +EDWARD.—p. 175 + + +Percy got this piece from Lord Hailes, with pseudo-antiquated spelling. +Mr. Swinburne has published a parallel ballad “From the Finnish.” There +are a number of parallel ballads on Cruel Brothers, and Cruel Sisters, +such as _Son Davie_, which may be compared. Fratricides and unconscious +incests were motives dear to popular poetry. + + + +YOUNG BENJIE.—p. 177 + + +From the _Border Minstrelsy_. That corpses _might_ begin to “thraw,” if +carelessly watched, was a prevalent superstition. Scott gives an +example: the following may be added, as less well known. The watchers +had left the corpse alone, and were dining in the adjoining room, when a +terrible noise was heard in the chamber of death. None dared enter; the +minister was sent for, and passed into the room. He emerged, asked for a +pair of tongs, and returned, bearing in the tongs _a bloody glove_, and +the noise ceased. He always declined to say what he had witnessed. +Ministers were exorcists in the last century, and the father of James +Thomson, the poet, died suddenly in an interview with a guest, in a +haunted house. The house was pulled down, as being uninhabitable. + + + +AULD MAITLAND.—p. 180 + + +From _The Border Minstrelsy_. This ballad is inserted, not for its +merit, still less for its authenticity, but for the problem of its +puzzling history. Scott certainly got it from the mother of the Ettrick +Shepherd, in 1801. The Shepherd’s father had been a grown-up man in +1745, and his mother was also of a great age, and unlikely to be able to +learn a new-forged ballad by heart. The Shepherd himself (then a most +unsophisticated person) said, in a letter of June 30, 1801, that he was +“surprized to hear this song is suspected by some to be a modern forgery; +the contrary will be best proved by most of the old people, here about, +having a great part of it by heart.” The two last lines of verse seven +were, confessedly, added by Hogg, to fill a _lacuna_. They are +especially modern in style. Now thus to fill up sham _lacunæ_ in sham +ballads of his own, with lines manifestly modern, was a favourite trick +of Surtees of Mainsforth. He used the device in “Barthram’s Dirge,” +which entirely took in Sir Walter, and was guilty of many other +_supercheries_, especially of the “Fray of Suport Mill.” Could the +unlettered Shepherd, fond of hoaxes as he was, have invented this +stratagem, sixteen years before he joined the _Blackwood_ set? And is it +conceivable that his old mother, entering into the joke, would commit her +son’s fraudulent verses to memory, and recite them to Sir Walter as +genuine tradition? She said to Scott, that the ballad “never was printed +i’ the world, for my brothers and me learned it and many mae frae auld +Andrew Moore, and he learned it frae auld Baby Mettlin” (Maitland?) “wha +was housekeeper to the first laird o’ Tushilaw.” (On Ettrick, near +Thirlestane. She doubtless meant the first of the Andersons of +Tushielaw, who succeeded the old lairds, the Scotts.) “She was said to +hae been another or a guid ane, and there are many queer stories about +hersel’, but O, she had been a grand singer o’ auld songs an’ ballads.” +(Hogg’s _Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott_, p. 61, 1834.) + +“Maitland upon auld beird gray” is mentioned by Gawain Douglas, in his +_Palice of Honour_, which the Shepherd can hardly have read, and Scott +identified this Maitland with the ancestor of Lethington; his date was +1250–1296. On the whole, even the astute Shepherd, in his early days of +authorship, could hardly have laid a plot so insidious, and the question +of the authenticity and origin of the ballad (obvious interpolations +apart) remains a mystery. Who could have forged it? It is, as an +exercise in imitation, far beyond _Hardyknute_, and at least on a level +with _Sir Roland_. The possibility of such forgeries is now very slight +indeed, but vitiates early collections. + +If we suspect Leyden, who alone had the necessary knowledge of +antiquities, we are still met by the improbability of old Mrs. Hogg being +engaged in the hoax. Moreover, Leyden was probably too keen an antiquary +to take part in one of the deceptions which Ritson wished to punish so +severely. Mr. Child expresses his strong and natural suspicions of the +authenticity of the ballad, and Hogg is, certainly, a dubious source. He +took in Jeffrey with the song of “Donald Macgillavray,” and instantly +boasted of his triumph. He could not have kept his secret, after the +death of Scott. These considerations must not be neglected, however +suspicious “Auld, Maitland” may appear. + + + +THE BROOMFIELD HILL.—p. 189 + + +From Buchan’s _Ballads of the North of Scotland_. There are Elizabethan +references to the poem, and a twelfth century romance turns on the main +idea of sleep magically induced. The lover therein is more fortunate +than the hero of the ballad, and, finally, overcomes the spell. The idea +recurs in the Norse poetry. + + + +WILLIE’S LADYE.—p. 193 + + +Scott took this ballad from Mrs. Brown’s celebrated Manuscript. The kind +of spell indicated was practised by Hera upon Alcmena, before the birth +of Heracles. Analogous is the spell by binding witch-knots, practised by +Simaetha on her lover, in the second Idyll of Theocritus. Montaigne has +some curious remarks on these enchantments, explaining their power by +what is now called “suggestion.” There is a Danish parallel to “Willie’s +Ladye,” translated by Jamieson. + + + +ROBIN HOOD BALLADS.—p. 196 + + +There is plentiful “learning” about Robin Hood, but no real knowledge. +He is first mentioned in literature, as the subject of “rhymes,” in +_Piers Plowman_ (_circ._ 1377). As a topic of ballads he must be much +older than that date. In 1439 his name was a synonym for a bandit. +Wyntoun, the Scots chronicler, dates the outlaw in the time of Edward I. +Major, the Scots philosopher and master of John Knox, makes a guess +(taken up by Scott in _Ivanhoe_) as the period of Richard I. Kuhn seeks +to show that Hood is a survival of Woden, or of his _Wooden_, “wooden +horse” or hobby horse. The Robin Hood play was parallel with the May +games, which, as Mr. Frazer shows in his _Golden Bough_, were really +survivals of a world-wide religious practice. But Robin Hood need not be +confused with the legendary May King. Mr. Child judiciously rejects +these mythological conjectures, based, as they are, on far-fetched +etymologies and analogies. Robin is an idealized bandit, reiver, or +Klepht, as in modern Romaic ballads, and his adventures are precisely +such as popular fancy everywhere attaches to such popular heroes. An +historical Robin there may have been, but _premit nox alta_. + + + +ROBIN HOOD AND THE MONK.—p. 196 + + +This copy follows in Mr. Child’s early edition, “from the second edition +of Ritson’s _Robin Hood_, as collated by Sir Frederic Madden.” It is +conjectured to be “possibly as old as the reign of Edward II.” That the +murder of a monk should be pardoned in the facile way described is +manifestly improbable. Even in the lawless Galloway of 1508, McGhie of +Phumpton was fined six merks for “throwing William Schankis, monk, from +his horse.” (History of Dumfries and Galloway, by Sir Herbert Maxwell, +p. 155.) + + + +ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER.—p. 209 + + +Published by Ritson, from a Cambridge MS., probably of the reign of Henry +VII. + + + +ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER.—p. 221 + + +Published by Ritson, from a Black Letter copy in the collection of +Anthony Wood, the Oxford antiquary. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{0a} See Pitcairn, Case of Alison Pearson, 1586. + +{0b} Translated in _Ballads and Lyrics of Old France_.—A. L. + +{87} “Kinnen,” rabbits. + +{88a} “Nicher,” neigh. + +{88b} “Gilt,” gold. + +{88c} “Dow,” are able to. + +{88d} “Ganging,” going. + +{90a} “Targats”, tassels. + +{90b} “Blink sae brawly,” glance so bravely. + +{90c} “Fechting,” fighting. + +{91} “Kirsty,” Christopher. + +{92} “Hald,” hold. + +{94} “Reek,” smoke. + +{95} “Freits,” omens. + +{96a} “Wighty,” valiant. + +{96b} “Wroken,” revenged. + +{97} “Mudie,” bold. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COLLECTION OF BALLADS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1054-0.txt or 1054-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/5/1054 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1055-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1055-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5f968d16 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1055-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7580 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1055 *** + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + + + ’TWIXT LAND & SEA + TALES + + + BY + JOSEPH CONRAD + + A SMILE OF FORTUNE + + THE SECRET SHARER + + FREYA OF THE SEVEN + ISLES + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + _Life is a tragic folly_ + _Let us laugh and be jolly_ + _Away with melancholy_ + _Bring me a branch of holly_ + _Life is a tragic folly_ + + A. SYMONS. + + * * * * * + + LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. + ALDINE HOUSE, COVENT GARDEN · 1920 + +FIRST EDITION _October_ 1912 +REPRINTED _November_ 1912; _January_ 1913; _November_ 1918; + _December_ 1920 + + * * * * * + + _All rights reserved_ + + * * * * * + + TO + CAPTAIN C. M. MARRIS + LATE MASTER AND OWNER + OF THE + ARABY MAID: ARCHIPELAGO TRADER + IN MEMORY OF THOSE + OLD DAYS OF ADVENTURE + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +A Smile of Fortune 1 +The Secret Sharer 99 +Freya of the Seven Isles 161 + + + + +A SMILE OF FORTUNE +HARBOUR STORY + + +EVER since the sun rose I had been looking ahead. The ship glided gently +in smooth water. After a sixty days’ passage I was anxious to make my +landfall, a fertile and beautiful island of the tropics. The more +enthusiastic of its inhabitants delight in describing it as the “Pearl of +the Ocean.” Well, let us call it the “Pearl.” It’s a good name. A +pearl distilling much sweetness upon the world. + +This is only a way of telling you that first-rate sugar-cane is grown +there. All the population of the Pearl lives for it and by it. Sugar is +their daily bread, as it were. And I was coming to them for a cargo of +sugar in the hope of the crop having been good and of the freights being +high. + +Mr. Burns, my chief mate, made out the land first; and very soon I became +entranced by this blue, pinnacled apparition, almost transparent against +the light of the sky, a mere emanation, the astral body of an island +risen to greet me from afar. It is a rare phenomenon, such a sight of +the Pearl at sixty miles off. And I wondered half seriously whether it +was a good omen, whether what would meet me in that island would be as +luckily exceptional as this beautiful, dreamlike vision so very few +seamen have been privileged to behold. + +But horrid thoughts of business interfered with my enjoyment of an +accomplished passage. I was anxious for success and I wished, too, to do +justice to the flattering latitude of my owners’ instructions contained +in one noble phrase: “We leave it to you to do the best you can with the +ship.” . . . All the world being thus given me for a stage, my abilities +appeared to me no bigger than a pinhead. + +Meantime the wind dropped, and Mr. Burns began to make disagreeable +remarks about my usual bad luck. I believe it was his devotion for me +which made him critically outspoken on every occasion. All the same, I +would not have put up with his humours if it had not been my lot at one +time to nurse him through a desperate illness at sea. After snatching +him out of the jaws of death, so to speak, it would have been absurd to +throw away such an efficient officer. But sometimes I wished he would +dismiss himself. + +We were late in closing in with the land, and had to anchor outside the +harbour till next day. An unpleasant and unrestful night followed. In +this roadstead, strange to us both, Burns and I remained on deck almost +all the time. Clouds swirled down the porphyry crags under which we lay. +The rising wind made a great bullying noise amongst the naked spars, with +interludes of sad moaning. I remarked that we had been in luck to fetch +the anchorage before dark. It would have been a nasty, anxious night to +hang off a harbour under canvas. But my chief mate was uncompromising in +his attitude. + +“Luck, you call it, sir! Ay—our usual luck. The sort of luck to thank +God it’s no worse!” + +And so he fretted through the dark hours, while I drew on my fund of +philosophy. Ah, but it was an exasperating, weary, endless night, to be +lying at anchor close under that black coast! The agitated water made +snarling sounds all round the ship. At times a wild gust of wind out of +a gully high up on the cliffs struck on our rigging a harsh and plaintive +note like the wail of a forsaken soul. + + + +CHAPTER I + + +By half-past seven in the morning, the ship being then inside the harbour +at last and moored within a long stone’s-throw from the quay, my stock of +philosophy was nearly exhausted. I was dressing hurriedly in my cabin +when the steward came tripping in with a morning suit over his arm. + +Hungry, tired, and depressed, with my head engaged inside a white shirt +irritatingly stuck together by too much starch, I desired him peevishly +to “heave round with that breakfast.” I wanted to get ashore as soon as +possible. + +“Yes, sir. Ready at eight, sir. There’s a gentleman from the shore +waiting to speak to you, sir.” + +This statement was curiously slurred over. I dragged the shirt violently +over my head and emerged staring. + +“So early!” I cried. “Who’s he? What does he want?” + +On coming in from sea one has to pick up the conditions of an utterly +unrelated existence. Every little event at first has the peculiar +emphasis of novelty. I was greatly surprised by that early caller; but +there was no reason for my steward to look so particularly foolish. + +“Didn’t you ask for the name?” I inquired in a stern tone. + +“His name’s Jacobus, I believe,” he mumbled shamefacedly. + +“Mr. Jacobus!” I exclaimed loudly, more surprised than ever, but with a +total change of feeling. “Why couldn’t you say so at once?” + +But the fellow had scuttled out of my room. Through the momentarily +opened door I had a glimpse of a tall, stout man standing in the cuddy by +the table on which the cloth was already laid; a “harbour” table-cloth, +stainless and dazzlingly white. So far good. + +I shouted courteously through the closed door, that I was dressing and +would be with him in a moment. In return the assurance that there was no +hurry reached me in the visitor’s deep, quiet undertone. His time was my +own. He dared say I would give him a cup of coffee presently. + +“I am afraid you will have a poor breakfast,” I cried apologetically. +“We have been sixty-one days at sea, you know.” + +A quiet little laugh, with a “That’ll be all right, Captain,” was his +answer. All this, words, intonation, the glimpsed attitude of the man in +the cuddy, had an unexpected character, a something friendly in +it—propitiatory. And my surprise was not diminished thereby. What did +this call mean? Was it the sign of some dark design against my +commercial innocence? + +Ah! These commercial interests—spoiling the finest life under the sun. +Why must the sea be used for trade—and for war as well? Why kill and +traffic on it, pursuing selfish aims of no great importance after all? +It would have been so much nicer just to sail about with here and there a +port and a bit of land to stretch one’s legs on, buy a few books and get +a change of cooking for a while. But, living in a world more or less +homicidal and desperately mercantile, it was plainly my duty to make the +best of its opportunities. + +My owners’ letter had left it to me, as I have said before, to do my best +for the ship, according to my own judgment. But it contained also a +postscript worded somewhat as follows: + +“Without meaning to interfere with your liberty of action we are writing +by the outgoing mail to some of our business friends there who may be of +assistance to you. We desire you particularly to call on Mr. Jacobus, a +prominent merchant and charterer. Should you hit it off with him he may +be able to put you in the way of profitable employment for the ship.” + +Hit it off! Here was the prominent creature absolutely on board asking +for the favour of a cup of coffee! And life not being a fairy-tale the +improbability of the event almost shocked me. Had I discovered an +enchanted nook of the earth where wealthy merchants rush fasting on board +ships before they are fairly moored? Was this white magic or merely some +black trick of trade? I came in the end (while making the bow of my tie) +to suspect that perhaps I did not get the name right. I had been +thinking of the prominent Mr. Jacobus pretty frequently during the +passage and my hearing might have been deceived by some remote similarity +of sound. . . The steward might have said Antrobus—or maybe Jackson. + +But coming out of my stateroom with an interrogative “Mr. Jacobus?” I was +met by a quiet “Yes,” uttered with a gentle smile. The “yes” was rather +perfunctory. He did not seem to make much of the fact that he was Mr. +Jacobus. I took stock of a big, pale face, hair thin on the top, +whiskers also thin, of a faded nondescript colour, heavy eyelids. The +thick, smooth lips in repose looked as if glued together. The smile was +faint. A heavy, tranquil man. I named my two officers, who just then +came down to breakfast; but why Mr. Burns’s silent demeanour should +suggest suppressed indignation I could not understand. + +While we were taking our seats round the table some disconnected words of +an altercation going on in the companionway reached my ear. A stranger +apparently wanted to come down to interview me, and the steward was +opposing him. + +“You can’t see him.” + +“Why can’t I?” + +“The Captain is at breakfast, I tell you. He’ll be going on shore +presently, and you can speak to him on deck.” + +“That’s not fair. You let—” + +“I’ve had nothing to do with that.” + +“Oh, yes, you have. Everybody ought to have the same chance. You let +that fellow—” + +The rest I lost. The person having been repulsed successfully, the +steward came down. I can’t say he looked flushed—he was a mulatto—but he +looked flustered. After putting the dishes on the table he remained by +the sideboard with that lackadaisical air of indifference he used to +assume when he had done something too clever by half and was afraid of +getting into a scrape over it. The contemptuous expression of Mr. +Burns’s face as he looked from him to me was really extraordinary. I +couldn’t imagine what new bee had stung the mate now. + +The Captain being silent, nobody else cared to speak, as is the way in +ships. And I was saying nothing simply because I had been made dumb by +the splendour of the entertainment. I had expected the usual +sea-breakfast, whereas I beheld spread before us a veritable feast of +shore provisions: eggs, sausages, butter which plainly did not come from +a Danish tin, cutlets, and even a dish of potatoes. It was three weeks +since I had seen a real, live potato. I contemplated them with interest, +and Mr. Jacobus disclosed himself as a man of human, homely sympathies, +and something of a thought-reader. + +“Try them, Captain,” he encouraged me in a friendly undertone. “They are +excellent.” + +“They look that,” I admitted. “Grown on the island, I suppose.” + +“Oh, no, imported. Those grown here would be more expensive.” + +I was grieved at the ineptitude of the conversation. Were these the +topics for a prominent and wealthy merchant to discuss? I thought the +simplicity with which he made himself at home rather attractive; but what +is one to talk about to a man who comes on one suddenly, after sixty-one +days at sea, out of a totally unknown little town in an island one has +never seen before? What were (besides sugar) the interests of that crumb +of the earth, its gossip, its topics of conversation? To draw him on +business at once would have been almost indecent—or even worse: +impolitic. All I could do at the moment was to keep on in the old +groove. + +“Are the provisions generally dear here?” I asked, fretting inwardly at +my inanity. + +“I wouldn’t say that,” he answered placidly, with that appearance of +saving his breath his restrained manner of speaking suggested. + +He would not be more explicit, yet he did not evade the subject. Eyeing +the table in a spirit of complete abstemiousness (he wouldn’t let me help +him to any eatables) he went into details of supply. The beef was for +the most part imported from Madagascar; mutton of course was rare and +somewhat expensive, but good goat’s flesh— + +“Are these goat’s cutlets?” I exclaimed hastily, pointing at one of the +dishes. + +Posed sentimentally by the sideboard, the steward gave a start. + +“Lor’, no, sir! It’s real mutton!” + +Mr. Burns got through his breakfast impatiently, as if exasperated by +being made a party to some monstrous foolishness, muttered a curt excuse, +and went on deck. Shortly afterwards the second mate took his smooth red +countenance out of the cabin. With the appetite of a schoolboy, and +after two months of sea-fare, he appreciated the generous spread. But I +did not. It smacked of extravagance. All the same, it was a remarkable +feat to have produced it so quickly, and I congratulated the steward on +his smartness in a somewhat ominous tone. He gave me a deprecatory smile +and, in a way I didn’t know what to make of, blinked his fine dark eyes +in the direction of the guest. + +The latter asked under his breath for another cup of coffee, and nibbled +ascetically at a piece of very hard ship’s biscuit. I don’t think he +consumed a square inch in the end; but meantime he gave me, casually as +it were, a complete account of the sugar crop, of the local business +houses, of the state of the freight market. All that talk was +interspersed with hints as to personalities, amounting to veiled +warnings, but his pale, fleshy face remained equable, without a gleam, as +if ignorant of his voice. As you may imagine I opened my ears very wide. +Every word was precious. My ideas as to the value of business friendship +were being favourably modified. He gave me the names of all the +disponible ships together with their tonnage and the names of their +commanders. From that, which was still commercial information, he +condescended to mere harbour gossip. The _Hilda_ had unaccountably lost +her figurehead in the Bay of Bengal, and her captain was greatly affected +by this. He and the ship had been getting on in years together and the +old gentleman imagined this strange event to be the forerunner of his own +early dissolution. The _Stella_ had experienced awful weather off the +Cape—had her decks swept, and the chief officer washed overboard. And +only a few hours before reaching port the baby died. + +Poor Captain H— and his wife were terribly cut up. If they had only been +able to bring it into port alive it could have been probably saved; but +the wind failed them for the last week or so, light breezes, and . . . +the baby was going to be buried this afternoon. He supposed I would +attend— + +“Do you think I ought to?” I asked, shrinkingly. + +He thought so, decidedly. It would be greatly appreciated. All the +captains in the harbour were going to attend. Poor Mrs. H— was quite +prostrated. Pretty hard on H— altogether. + +“And you, Captain—you are not married I suppose?” + +“No, I am not married,” I said. “Neither married nor even engaged.” + +Mentally I thanked my stars; and while he smiled in a musing, dreamy +fashion, I expressed my acknowledgments for his visit and for the +interesting business information he had been good enough to impart to me. +But I said nothing of my wonder thereat. + +“Of course, I would have made a point of calling on you in a day or two,” +I concluded. + +He raised his eyelids distinctly at me, and somehow managed to look +rather more sleepy than before. + +“In accordance with my owners’ instructions,” I explained. “You have had +their letter, of course?” + +By that time he had raised his eyebrows too but without any particular +emotion. On the contrary he struck me then as absolutely imperturbable. + +“Oh! You must be thinking of my brother.” + +It was for me, then, to say “Oh!” But I hope that no more than civil +surprise appeared in my voice when I asked him to what, then, I owed the +pleasure. . . . He was reaching for an inside pocket leisurely. + +“My brother’s a very different person. But I am well known in this part +of the world. You’ve probably heard—” + +I took a card he extended to me. A thick business card, as I lived! +Alfred Jacobus—the other was Ernest—dealer in every description of ship’s +stores! Provisions salt and fresh, oils, paints, rope, canvas, etc., +etc. Ships in harbour victualled by contract on moderate terms— + +“I’ve never heard of you,” I said brusquely. + +His low-pitched assurance did not abandon him. + +“You will be very well satisfied,” he breathed out quietly. + +I was not placated. I had the sense of having been circumvented somehow. +Yet I had deceived myself—if there was any deception. But the confounded +cheek of inviting himself to breakfast was enough to deceive any one. +And the thought struck me: Why! The fellow had provided all these +eatables himself in the way of business. I said: + +“You must have got up mighty early this morning.” + +He admitted with simplicity that he was on the quay before six o’clock +waiting for my ship to come in. He gave me the impression that it would +be impossible to get rid of him now. + +“If you think we are going to live on that scale,” I said, looking at the +table with an irritated eye, “you are jolly well mistaken.” + +“You’ll find it all right, Captain. I quite understand.” + +Nothing could disturb his equanimity. I felt dissatisfied, but I could +not very well fly out at him. He had told me many useful things—and +besides he was the brother of that wealthy merchant. That seemed queer +enough. + +I rose and told him curtly that I must now go ashore. At once he offered +the use of his boat for all the time of my stay in port. + +“I only make a nominal charge,” he continued equably. “My man remains +all day at the landing-steps. You have only to blow a whistle when you +want the boat.” + +And, standing aside at every doorway to let me go through first, he +carried me off in his custody after all. As we crossed the quarter-deck +two shabby individuals stepped forward and in mournful silence offered me +business cards which I took from them without a word under his heavy eye. +It was a useless and gloomy ceremony. They were the touts of the other +ship-chandlers, and he placid at my back, ignored their existence. + +We parted on the quay, after he had expressed quietly the hope of seeing +me often “at the store.” He had a smoking-room for captains there, with +newspapers and a box of “rather decent cigars.” I left him very +unceremoniously. + +My consignees received me with the usual business heartiness, but their +account of the state of the freight-market was by no means so favourable +as the talk of the wrong Jacobus had led me to expect. Naturally I +became inclined now to put my trust in his version, rather. As I closed +the door of the private office behind me I thought to myself: “H’m. A +lot of lies. Commercial diplomacy. That’s the sort of thing a man +coming from sea has got to expect. They would try to charter the ship +under the market rate.” + +In the big, outer room, full of desks, the chief clerk, a tall, lean, +shaved person in immaculate white clothes and with a shiny, +closely-cropped black head on which silvery gleams came and went, rose +from his place and detained me affably. Anything they could do for me, +they would be most happy. Was I likely to call again in the afternoon? +What? Going to a funeral? Oh, yes, poor Captain H—. + +He pulled a long, sympathetic face for a moment, then, dismissing from +this workaday world the baby, which had got ill in a tempest and had died +from too much calm at sea, he asked me with a dental, shark-like smile—if +sharks had false teeth—whether I had yet made my little arrangements for +the ship’s stay in port. + +“Yes, with Jacobus,” I answered carelessly. “I understand he’s the +brother of Mr. Ernest Jacobus to whom I have an introduction from my +owners.” + +I was not sorry to let him know I was not altogether helpless in the +hands of his firm. He screwed his thin lips dubiously. + +“Why,” I cried, “isn’t he the brother?” + +“Oh, yes. . . . They haven’t spoken to each other for eighteen years,” he +added impressively after a pause. + +“Indeed! What’s the quarrel about?” + +“Oh, nothing! Nothing that one would care to mention,” he protested +primly. “He’s got quite a large business. The best ship-chandler here, +without a doubt. Business is all very well, but there is such a thing as +personal character, too, isn’t there? Good-morning, Captain.” + +He went away mincingly to his desk. He amused me. He resembled an old +maid, a commercial old maid, shocked by some impropriety. Was it a +commercial impropriety? Commercial impropriety is a serious matter, for +it aims at one’s pocket. Or was he only a purist in conduct who +disapproved of Jacobus doing his own touting? It was certainly +undignified. I wondered how the merchant brother liked it. But then +different countries, different customs. In a community so isolated and +so exclusively “trading” social standards have their own scale. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +I WOULD have gladly dispensed with the mournful opportunity of becoming +acquainted by sight with all my fellow-captains at once. However I found +my way to the cemetery. We made a considerable group of bareheaded men +in sombre garments. I noticed that those of our company most approaching +to the now obsolete sea-dog type were the most moved—perhaps because they +had less “manner” than the new generation. The old sea-dog, away from +his natural element, was a simple and sentimental animal. I noticed +one—he was facing me across the grave—who was dropping tears. They +trickled down his weather-beaten face like drops of rain on an old rugged +wall. I learned afterwards that he was looked upon as the terror of +sailors, a hard man; that he had never had wife or chick of his own, and +that, engaged from his tenderest years in deep-sea voyages, he knew women +and children merely by sight. + +Perhaps he was dropping those tears over his lost opportunities, from +sheer envy of paternity and in strange jealousy of a sorrow which he +could never know. Man, and even the sea-man, is a capricious animal, the +creature and the victim of lost opportunities. But he made me feel +ashamed of my callousness. I had no tears. + +I listened with horribly critical detachment to that service I had had to +read myself, once or twice, over childlike men who had died at sea. The +words of hope and defiance, the winged words so inspiring in the free +immensity of water and sky, seemed to fall wearily into the little grave. +What was the use of asking Death where her sting was, before that small, +dark hole in the ground? And then my thoughts escaped me altogether—away +into matters of life—and no very high matters at that—ships, freights, +business. In the instability of his emotions man resembles deplorably a +monkey. I was disgusted with my thoughts—and I thought: Shall I be able +to get a charter soon? Time’s money. . . . Will that Jacobus really put +good business in my way? I must go and see him in a day or two. + +Don’t imagine that I pursued these thoughts with any precision. They +pursued me rather: vague, shadowy, restless, shamefaced. Theirs was a +callous, abominable, almost revolting, pertinacity. And it was the +presence of that pertinacious ship-chandler which had started them. He +stood mournfully amongst our little band of men from the sea, and I was +angry at his presence, which, suggesting his brother the merchant, had +caused me to become outrageous to myself. For indeed I had preserved +some decency of feeling. It was only the mind which— + +It was over at last. The poor father—a man of forty with black, bushy +side-whiskers and a pathetic gash on his freshly-shaved chin—thanked us +all, swallowing his tears. But for some reason, either because I +lingered at the gate of the cemetery being somewhat hazy as to my way +back, or because I was the youngest, or ascribing my moodiness caused by +remorse to some more worthy and appropriate sentiment, or simply because +I was even more of a stranger to him than the others—he singled me out. +Keeping at my side, he renewed his thanks, which I listened to in a +gloomy, conscience-stricken silence. Suddenly he slipped one hand under +my arm and waved the other after a tall, stout figure walking away by +itself down a street in a flutter of thin, grey garments: + +“That’s a good fellow—a real good fellow”—he swallowed down a belated +sob—“this Jacobus.” + +And he told me in a low voice that Jacobus was the first man to board his +ship on arrival, and, learning of their misfortune, had taken charge of +everything, volunteered to attend to all routine business, carried off +the ship’s papers on shore, arranged for the funeral— + +“A good fellow. I was knocked over. I had been looking at my wife for +ten days. And helpless. Just you think of that! The dear little chap +died the very day we made the land. How I managed to take the ship in +God alone knows! I couldn’t see anything; I couldn’t speak; I couldn’t. +. . . You’ve heard, perhaps, that we lost our mate overboard on the +passage? There was no one to do it for me. And the poor woman nearly +crazy down below there all alone with the . . . By the Lord! It isn’t +fair.” + +We walked in silence together. I did not know how to part from him. On +the quay he let go my arm and struck fiercely his fist into the palm of +his other hand. + +“By God, it isn’t fair!” he cried again. “Don’t you ever marry unless +you can chuck the sea first. . . . It isn’t fair.” + +I had no intention to “chuck the sea,” and when he left me to go aboard +his ship I felt convinced that I would never marry. While I was waiting +at the steps for Jacobus’s boatman, who had gone off somewhere, the +captain of the _Hilda_ joined me, a slender silk umbrella in his hand and +the sharp points of his archaic, Gladstonian shirt-collar framing a +small, clean-shaved, ruddy face. It was wonderfully fresh for his age, +beautifully modelled and lit up by remarkably clear blue eyes. A lot of +white hair, glossy like spun glass, curled upwards slightly under the +brim of his valuable, ancient, panama hat with a broad black ribbon. In +the aspect of that vivacious, neat, little old man there was something +quaintly angelic and also boyish. + +He accosted me, as though he had been in the habit of seeing me every day +of his life from my earliest childhood, with a whimsical remark on the +appearance of a stout negro woman who was sitting upon a stool near the +edge of the quay. Presently he observed amiably that I had a very pretty +little barque. + +I returned this civil speech by saying readily: + +“Not so pretty as the _Hilda_.” + +At once the corners of his clear-cut, sensitive mouth dropped dismally. + +“Oh, dear! I can hardly bear to look at her now.” + +Did I know, he asked anxiously, that he had lost the figurehead of his +ship; a woman in a blue tunic edged with gold, the face perhaps not so +very, very pretty, but her bare white arms beautifully shaped and +extended as if she were swimming? Did I? Who would have expected such a +things . . . After twenty years too! + +Nobody could have guessed from his tone that the woman was made of wood; +his trembling voice, his agitated manner gave to his lamentations a +ludicrously scandalous flavour. . . . Disappeared at night—a clear fine +night with just a slight swell—in the gulf of Bengal. Went off without a +splash; no one in the ship could tell why, how, at what hour—after twenty +years last October. . . . Did I ever hear! . . . + +I assured him sympathetically that I had never heard—and he became very +doleful. This meant no good he was sure. There was something in it +which looked like a warning. But when I remarked that surely another +figure of a woman could be procured I found myself being soundly rated +for my levity. The old boy flushed pink under his clear tan as if I had +proposed something improper. One could replace masts, I was told, or a +lost rudder—any working part of a ship; but where was the use of sticking +up a new figurehead? What satisfaction? How could one care for it? It +was easy to see that I had never been shipmates with a figurehead for +over twenty years. + +“A new figurehead!” he scolded in unquenchable indignation. “Why! I’ve +been a widower now for eight-and-twenty years come next May and I would +just as soon think of getting a new wife. You’re as bad as that fellow +Jacobus.” + +I was highly amused. + +“What has Jacobus done? Did he want you to marry again, Captain?” I +inquired in a deferential tone. But he was launched now and only grinned +fiercely. + +“Procure—indeed! He’s the sort of chap to procure you anything you like +for a price. I hadn’t been moored here for an hour when he got on board +and at once offered to sell me a figurehead he happens to have in his +yard somewhere. He got Smith, my mate, to talk to me about it. ‘Mr. +Smith,’ says I, ‘don’t you know me better than that? Am I the sort that +would pick up with another man’s cast-off figurehead?’ And after all +these years too! The way some of you young fellows talk—” + +I affected great compunction, and as I stepped into the boat I said +soberly: + +“Then I see nothing for it but to fit in a neat fiddlehead—perhaps. You +know, carved scrollwork, nicely gilt.” + +He became very dejected after his outburst. + +“Yes. Scrollwork. Maybe. Jacobus hinted at that too. He’s never at a +loss when there’s any money to be extracted from a sailorman. He would +make me pay through the nose for that carving. A gilt fiddlehead did you +say—eh? I dare say it would do for you. You young fellows don’t seem to +have any feeling for what’s proper.” + +He made a convulsive gesture with his right arm. + +“Never mind. Nothing can make much difference. I would just as soon let +the old thing go about the world with a bare cutwater,” he cried sadly. +Then as the boat got away from the steps he raised his voice on the edge +of the quay with comical animosity: + +“I would! If only to spite that figurehead-procuring bloodsucker. I am +an old bird here and don’t you forget it. Come and see me on board some +day!” + +I spent my first evening in port quietly in my ship’s cuddy; and glad +enough was I to think that the shore life which strikes one as so pettily +complex, discordant, and so full of new faces on first coming from sea, +could be kept off for a few hours longer. I was however fated to hear +the Jacobus note once more before I slept. + +Mr. Burns had gone ashore after the evening meal to have, as he said, “a +look round.” As it was quite dark when he announced his intention I +didn’t ask him what it was he expected to see. Some time about midnight, +while sitting with a book in the saloon, I heard cautious movements in +the lobby and hailed him by name. + +Burns came in, stick and hat in hand, incredibly vulgarised by his smart +shore togs, with a jaunty air and an odious twinkle in his eye. Being +asked to sit down he laid his hat and stick on the table and after we had +talked of ship affairs for a little while: + +“I’ve been hearing pretty tales on shore about that ship-chandler fellow +who snatched the job from you so neatly, sir.” + +I remonstrated with my late patient for his manner of expressing himself. +But he only tossed his head disdainfully. A pretty dodge indeed: +boarding a strange ship with breakfast in two baskets for all hands and +calmly inviting himself to the captain’s table! Never heard of anything +so crafty and so impudent in his life. + +I found myself defending Jacobus’s unusual methods. + +“He’s the brother of one of the wealthiest merchants in the port.” The +mate’s eyes fairly snapped green sparks. + +“His grand brother hasn’t spoken to him for eighteen or twenty years,” he +declared triumphantly. “So there!” + +“I know all about that,” I interrupted loftily. + +“Do you sir? H’m!” His mind was still running on the ethics of +commercial competition. “I don’t like to see your good nature taken +advantage of. He’s bribed that steward of ours with a five-rupee note to +let him come down—or ten for that matter. He don’t care. He will shove +that and more into the bill presently.” + +“Is that one of the tales you have heard ashore?” I asked. + +He assured me that his own sense could tell him that much. No; what he +had heard on shore was that no respectable person in the whole town would +come near Jacobus. He lived in a large old-fashioned house in one of the +quiet streets with a big garden. After telling me this Burns put on a +mysterious air. “He keeps a girl shut up there who, they say—” + +“I suppose you’ve heard all this gossip in some eminently respectable +place?” I snapped at him in a most sarcastic tone. + +The shaft told, because Mr. Burns, like many other disagreeable people, +was very sensitive himself. He remained as if thunderstruck, with his +mouth open for some further communication, but I did not give him the +chance. “And, anyhow, what the deuce do I care?” I added, retiring into +my room. + +And this was a natural thing to say. Yet somehow I was not indifferent. +I admit it is absurd to be concerned with the morals of one’s +ship-chandler, if ever so well connected; but his personality had stamped +itself upon my first day in harbour, in the way you know. + +After this initial exploit Jacobus showed himself anything but intrusive. +He was out in a boat early every morning going round the ships he served, +and occasionally remaining on board one of them for breakfast with the +captain. + +As I discovered that this practice was generally accepted, I just nodded +to him familiarly when one morning, on coming out of my room, I found him +in the cabin. Glancing over the table I saw that his place was already +laid. He stood awaiting my appearance, very bulky and placid, holding a +beautiful bunch of flowers in his thick hand. He offered them to my +notice with a faint, sleepy smile. From his own garden; had a very fine +old garden; picked them himself that morning before going out to +business; thought I would like. . . . He turned away. “Steward, can you +oblige me with some water in a large jar, please.” + +I assured him jocularly, as I took my place at the table, that he made me +feel as if I were a pretty girl, and that he mustn’t be surprised if I +blushed. But he was busy arranging his floral tribute at the sideboard. +“Stand it before the Captain’s plate, steward, please.” He made this +request in his usual undertone. + +The offering was so pointed that I could do no less than to raise it to +my nose, and as he sat down noiselessly he breathed out the opinion that +a few flowers improved notably the appearance of a ship’s saloon. He +wondered why I did not have a shelf fitted all round the skylight for +flowers in pots to take with me to sea. He had a skilled workman able to +fit up shelves in a day, and he could procure me two or three dozen good +plants— + +The tips of his thick, round fingers rested composedly on the edge of the +table on each side of his cup of coffee. His face remained immovable. +Mr. Burns was smiling maliciously to himself. I declared that I hadn’t +the slightest intention of turning my skylight into a conservatory only +to keep the cabin-table in a perpetual mess of mould and dead vegetable +matter. + +“Rear most beautiful flowers,” he insisted with an upward glance. “It’s +no trouble really.” + +“Oh, yes, it is. Lots of trouble,” I contradicted. “And in the end some +fool leaves the skylight open in a fresh breeze, a flick of salt water +gets at them and the whole lot is dead in a week.” + +Mr. Burns snorted a contemptuous approval. Jacobus gave up the subject +passively. After a time he unglued his thick lips to ask me if I had +seen his brother yet. I was very curt in my answer. + +“No, not yet.” + +“A very different person,” he remarked dreamily and got up. His +movements were particularly noiseless. “Well—thank you, Captain. If +anything is not to your liking please mention it to your steward. I +suppose you will be giving a dinner to the office-clerks presently.” + +“What for?” I cried with some warmth. “If I were a steady trader to the +port I could understand it. But a complete stranger! . . . I may not +turn up again here for years. I don’t see why! . . . Do you mean to say +it is customary?” + +“It will be expected from a man like you,” he breathed out placidly. +“Eight of the principal clerks, the manager, that’s nine, you three +gentlemen, that’s twelve. It needn’t be very expensive. If you tell +your steward to give me a day’s notice—” + +“It will be expected of me! Why should it be expected of me? Is it +because I look particularly soft—or what?” + +His immobility struck me as dignified suddenly, his imperturbable quality +as dangerous. “There’s plenty of time to think about that,” I concluded +weakly with a gesture that tried to wave him away. But before he +departed he took time to mention regretfully that he had not yet had the +pleasure of seeing me at his “store” to sample those cigars. He had a +parcel of six thousand to dispose of, very cheap. + +“I think it would be worth your while to secure some,” he added with a +fat, melancholy smile and left the cabin. + +Mr. Burns struck his fist on the table excitedly. + +“Did you ever see such impudence! He’s made up his mind to get something +out of you one way or another, sir.” + +At once feeling inclined to defend Jacobus, I observed philosophically +that all this was business, I supposed. But my absurd mate, muttering +broken disjointed sentences, such as: “I cannot bear! . . . Mark my +words! . . .” and so on, flung out of the cabin. If I hadn’t nursed him +through that deadly fever I wouldn’t have suffered such manners for a +single day. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +JACOBUS having put me in mind of his wealthy brother I concluded I would +pay that business call at once. I had by that time heard a little more +of him. He was a member of the Council, where he made himself +objectionable to the authorities. He exercised a considerable influence +on public opinion. Lots of people owed him money. He was an importer on +a great scale of all sorts of goods. For instance, the whole supply of +bags for sugar was practically in his hands. This last fact I did not +learn till afterwards. The general impression conveyed to me was that of +a local personage. He was a bachelor and gave weekly card-parties in his +house out of town, which were attended by the best people in the colony. + +The greater, then, was my surprise to discover his office in shabby +surroundings, quite away from the business quarter, amongst a lot of +hovels. Guided by a black board with white lettering, I climbed a narrow +wooden staircase and entered a room with a bare floor of planks littered +with bits of brown paper and wisps of packing straw. A great number of +what looked like wine-cases were piled up against one of the walls. A +lanky, inky, light-yellow, mulatto youth, miserably long-necked and +generally recalling a sick chicken, got off a three-legged stool behind a +cheap deal desk and faced me as if gone dumb with fright. I had some +difficulty in persuading him to take in my name, though I could not get +from him the nature of his objection. He did it at last with an almost +agonised reluctance which ceased to be mysterious to me when I heard him +being sworn at menacingly with savage, suppressed growls, then audibly +cuffed and finally kicked out without any concealment whatever; because +he came back flying head foremost through the door with a stifled shriek. + +To say I was startled would not express it. I remained still, like a man +lost in a dream. Clapping both his hands to that part of his frail +anatomy which had received the shock, the poor wretch said to me simply: + +“Will you go in, please.” His lamentable self-possession was wonderful; +but it did not do away with the incredibility of the experience. A +preposterous notion that I had seen this boy somewhere before, a thing +obviously impossible, was like a delicate finishing touch of weirdness +added to a scene fit to raise doubts as to one’s sanity. I stared +anxiously about me like an awakened somnambulist. + +“I say,” I cried loudly, “there isn’t a mistake, is there? This is Mr. +Jacobus’s office.” + +The boy gazed at me with a pained expression—and somehow so familiar! A +voice within growled offensively: + +“Come in, come in, since you are there. . . . I didn’t know.” + +I crossed the outer room as one approaches the den of some unknown wild +beast; with intrepidity but in some excitement. Only no wild beast that +ever lived would rouse one’s indignation; the power to do that belongs to +the odiousness of the human brute. And I was very indignant, which did +not prevent me from being at once struck by the extraordinary resemblance +of the two brothers. + +This one was dark instead of being fair like the other; but he was as +big. He was without his coat and waistcoat; he had been doubtless +snoozing in the rocking-chair which stood in a corner furthest from the +window. Above the great bulk of his crumpled white shirt, buttoned with +three diamond studs, his round face looked swarthy. It was moist; his +brown moustache hung limp and ragged. He pushed a common, cane-bottomed +chair towards me with his foot. + +“Sit down.” + +I glanced at it casually, then, turning my indignant eyes full upon him, +I declared in precise and incisive tones that I had called in obedience +to my owners’ instructions. + +“Oh! Yes. H’m! I didn’t understand what that fool was saying. . . . +But never mind! It will teach the scoundrel to disturb me at this time +of the day,” he added, grinning at me with savage cynicism. + +I looked at my watch. It was past three o’clock—quite the full swing of +afternoon office work in the port. He snarled imperiously: “Sit down, +Captain.” + +I acknowledged the gracious invitation by saying deliberately: + +“I can listen to all you may have to say without sitting down.” + +Emitting a loud and vehement “Pshaw!” he glared for a moment, very +round-eyed and fierce. It was like a gigantic tomcat spitting at one +suddenly. “Look at him! . . . What do you fancy yourself to be? What +did you come here for? If you won’t sit down and talk business you had +better go to the devil.” + +“I don’t know him personally,” I said. “But after this I wouldn’t mind +calling on him. It would be refreshing to meet a gentleman.” + +He followed me, growling behind my back: + +“The impudence! I’ve a good mind to write to your owners what I think of +you.” + +I turned on him for a moment: + +“As it happens I don’t care. For my part I assure you I won’t even take +the trouble to mention you to them.” + +He stopped at the door of his office while I traversed the littered +anteroom. I think he was somewhat taken aback. + +“I will break every bone in your body,” he roared suddenly at the +miserable mulatto lad, “if you ever dare to disturb me before half-past +three for anybody. D’ye hear? For anybody! . . . Let alone any damned +skipper,” he added, in a lower growl. + +The frail youngster, swaying like a reed, made a low moaning sound. I +stopped short and addressed this sufferer with advice. It was prompted +by the sight of a hammer (used for opening the wine-cases, I suppose) +which was lying on the floor. + +“If I were you, my boy, I would have that thing up my sleeve when I went +in next and at the first occasion I would—” + +What was there so familiar in that lad’s yellow face? Entrenched and +quaking behind the flimsy desk, he never looked up. His heavy, lowered +eyelids gave me suddenly the clue of the puzzle. He resembled—yes, those +thick glued lips—he resembled the brothers Jacobus. He resembled both, +the wealthy merchant and the pushing shopkeeper (who resembled each +other); he resembled them as much as a thin, light-yellow mulatto lad may +resemble a big, stout, middle-aged white man. It was the exotic +complexion and the slightness of his build which had put me off so +completely. Now I saw in him unmistakably the Jacobus strain, weakened, +attenuated, diluted as it were in a bucket of water—and I refrained from +finishing my speech. I had intended to say: “Crack this brute’s head for +him.” I still felt the conclusion to be sound. But it is no trifling +responsibility to counsel parricide to any one, however deeply injured. + +“Beggarly—cheeky—skippers.” + +I despised the emphatic growl at my back; only, being much vexed and +upset, I regret to say that I slammed the door behind me in a most +undignified manner. + +It may not appear altogether absurd if I say that I brought out from that +interview a kindlier view of the other Jacobus. It was with a feeling +resembling partisanship that, a few days later, I called at his “store.” +That long, cavern-like place of business, very dim at the back and +stuffed full of all sorts of goods, was entered from the street by a +lofty archway. At the far end I saw my Jacobus exerting himself in his +shirt-sleeves among his assistants. The captains’ room was a small, +vaulted apartment with a stone floor and heavy iron bars in its windows +like a dungeon converted to hospitable purposes. A couple of cheerful +bottles and several gleaming glasses made a brilliant cluster round a +tall, cool red earthenware pitcher on the centre table which was littered +with newspapers from all parts of the world. A well-groomed stranger in +a smart grey check suit, sitting with one leg flung over his knee, put +down one of these sheets briskly and nodded to me. + +I guessed him to be a steamer-captain. It was impossible to get to know +these men. They came and went too quickly and their ships lay moored far +out, at the very entrance of the harbour. Theirs was another life +altogether. He yawned slightly. + +“Dull hole, isn’t it?” + +I understood this to allude to the town. + +“Do you find it so?” I murmured. + +“Don’t you? But I’m off to-morrow, thank goodness.” + +He was a very gentlemanly person, good-natured and superior. I watched +him draw the open box of cigars to his side of the table, take a big +cigar-case out of his pocket and begin to fill it very methodically. +Presently, on our eyes meeting, he winked like a common mortal and +invited me to follow his example. “They are really decent smokes.” I +shook my head. + +“I am not off to-morrow.” + +“What of that? Think I am abusing old Jacobus’s hospitality? Heavens! +It goes into the bill, of course. He spreads such little matters all +over his account. He can take care of himself! Why, it’s business—” + +I noted a shadow fall over his well-satisfied expression, a momentary +hesitation in closing his cigar-case. But he ended by putting it in his +pocket jauntily. A placid voice uttered in the doorway: “That’s quite +correct, Captain.” + +The large noiseless Jacobus advanced into the room. His quietness, in +the circumstances, amounted to cordiality. He had put on his jacket +before joining us, and he sat down in the chair vacated by the +steamer-man, who nodded again to me and went out with a short, jarring +laugh. A profound silence reigned. With his drowsy stare Jacobus seemed +to be slumbering open-eyed. Yet, somehow, I was aware of being +profoundly scrutinised by those heavy eyes. In the enormous cavern of +the store somebody began to nail down a case, expertly: tap-tap . . . +tap-tap-tap. + +Two other experts, one slow and nasal, the other shrill and snappy, +started checking an invoice. + +“A half-coil of three-inch manilla rope.” + +“Right!” + +“Six assorted shackles.” + +“Right!” + +“Six tins assorted soups, three of paté, two asparagus, fourteen pounds +tobacco, cabin.” + +“Right!” + +“It’s for the captain who was here just now,” breathed out the immovable +Jacobus. “These steamer orders are very small. They pick up what they +want as they go along. That man will be in Samarang in less than a +fortnight. Very small orders indeed.” + +The calling over of the items went on in the shop; an extraordinary +jumble of varied articles, paint-brushes, Yorkshire Relish, etc., etc. . . . +“Three sacks of best potatoes,” read out the nasal voice. + +At this Jacobus blinked like a sleeping man roused by a shake, and +displayed some animation. At his order, shouted into the shop, a +smirking half-caste clerk with his ringlets much oiled and with a pen +stuck behind his ear, brought in a sample of six potatoes which he +paraded in a row on the table. + +Being urged to look at their beauty I gave them a cold and hostile +glance. Calmly, Jacobus proposed that I should order ten or fifteen +tons—tons! I couldn’t believe my ears. My crew could not have eaten +such a lot in a year; and potatoes (excuse these practical remarks) are a +highly perishable commodity. I thought he was joking—or else trying to +find out whether I was an unutterable idiot. But his purpose was not so +simple. I discovered that he meant me to buy them on my own account. + +“I am proposing you a bit of business, Captain. I wouldn’t charge you a +great price.” + +I told him that I did not go in for trade. I even added grimly that I +knew only too well how that sort of spec. generally ended. + +He sighed and clasped his hands on his stomach with exemplary +resignation. I admired the placidity of his impudence. Then waking up +somewhat: + +“Won’t you try a cigar, Captain?” + +“No, thanks. I don’t smoke cigars.” + +“For once!” he exclaimed, in a patient whisper. A melancholy silence +ensued. You know how sometimes a person discloses a certain unsuspected +depth and acuteness of thought; that is, in other words, utters something +unexpected. It was unexpected enough to hear Jacobus say: + +“The man who just went out was right enough. You might take one, +Captain. Here everything is bound to be in the way of business.” + +I felt a little ashamed of myself. The remembrance of his horrid brother +made him appear quite a decent sort of fellow. It was with some +compunction that I said a few words to the effect that I could have no +possible objection to his hospitality. + +Before I was a minute older I saw where this admission was leading me. +As if changing the subject, Jacobus mentioned that his private house was +about ten minutes’ walk away. It had a beautiful old walled garden. +Something really remarkable. I ought to come round some day and have a +look at it. + +He seemed to be a lover of gardens. I too take extreme delight in them; +but I did not mean my compunction to carry me as far as Jacobus’s +flower-beds, however beautiful and old. He added, with a certain +homeliness of tone: + +“There’s only my girl there.” + +It is difficult to set everything down in due order; so I must revert +here to what happened a week or two before. The medical officer of the +port had come on board my ship to have a look at one of my crew who was +ailing, and naturally enough he was asked to step into the cabin. A +fellow-shipmaster of mine was there too; and in the conversation, somehow +or other, the name of Jacobus came to be mentioned. It was pronounced +with no particular reverence by the other man, I believe. I don’t +remember now what I was going to say. The doctor—a pleasant, cultivated +fellow, with an assured manner—prevented me by striking in, in a sour +tone: + +“Ah! You’re talking about my respected papa-in-law.” + +Of course, that sally silenced us at the time. But I remembered the +episode, and at this juncture, pushed for something noncommittal to say, +I inquired with polite surprise: + +“You have your married daughter living with you, Mr. Jacobus?” + +He moved his big hand from right to left quietly. No! That was another +of his girls, he stated, ponderously and under his breath as usual. She +. . . He seemed in a pause to be ransacking his mind for some kind of +descriptive phrase. But my hopes were disappointed. He merely produced +his stereotyped definition. + +“She’s a very different sort of person.” + +“Indeed. . . . And by the by, Jacobus, I called on your brother the other +day. It’s no great compliment if I say that I found him a very different +sort of person from you.” + +He had an air of profound reflection, then remarked quaintly: + +“He’s a man of regular habits.” + +He might have been alluding to the habit of late siesta; but I mumbled +something about “beastly habits anyhow”—and left the store abruptly. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +MY little passage with Jacobus the merchant became known generally. One +or two of my acquaintances made distant allusions to it. Perhaps the +mulatto boy had talked. I must confess that people appeared rather +scandalised, but not with Jacobus’s brutality. A man I knew remonstrated +with me for my hastiness. + +I gave him the whole story of my visit, not forgetting the tell-tale +resemblance of the wretched mulatto boy to his tormentor. He was not +surprised. No doubt, no doubt. What of that? In a jovial tone he +assured me that there must be many of that sort. The elder Jacobus had +been a bachelor all his life. A highly respectable bachelor. But there +had never been open scandal in that connection. His life had been quite +regular. It could cause no offence to any one. + +I said that I had been offended considerably. My interlocutor opened +very wide eyes. Why? Because a mulatto lad got a few knocks? That was +not a great affair, surely. I had no idea how insolent and untruthful +these half-castes were. In fact he seemed to think Mr. Jacobus rather +kind than otherwise to employ that youth at all; a sort of amiable +weakness which could be forgiven. + +This acquaintance of mine belonged to one of the old French families, +descendants of the old colonists; all noble, all impoverished, and living +a narrow domestic life in dull, dignified decay. The men, as a rule, +occupy inferior posts in Government offices or in business houses. The +girls are almost always pretty, ignorant of the world, kind and agreeable +and generally bilingual; they prattle innocently both in French and +English. The emptiness of their existence passes belief. + +I obtained my entry into a couple of such households because some years +before, in Bombay, I had occasion to be of use to a pleasant, ineffectual +young man who was rather stranded there, not knowing what to do with +himself or even how to get home to his island again. It was a matter of +two hundred rupees or so, but, when I turned up, the family made a point +of showing their gratitude by admitting me to their intimacy. My +knowledge of the French language made me specially acceptable. They had +meantime managed to marry the fellow to a woman nearly twice his age, +comparatively well off: the only profession he was really fit for. But +it was not all cakes and ale. The first time I called on the couple she +spied a little spot of grease on the poor devil’s pantaloons and made him +a screaming scene of reproaches so full of sincere passion that I sat +terrified as at a tragedy of Racine. + +Of course there was never question of the money I had advanced him; but +his sisters, Miss Angele and Miss Mary, and the aunts of both families, +who spoke quaint archaic French of pre-Revolution period, and a host of +distant relations adopted me for a friend outright in a manner which was +almost embarrassing. + +It was with the eldest brother (he was employed at a desk in my +consignee’s office) that I was having this talk about the merchant +Jacobus. He regretted my attitude and nodded his head sagely. An +influential man. One never knew when one would need him. I expressed my +immense preference for the shopkeeper of the two. At that my friend +looked grave. + +“What on earth are you pulling that long face about?” I cried +impatiently. “He asked me to see his garden and I have a good mind to go +some day.” + +“Don’t do that,” he said, so earnestly that I burst into a fit of +laughter; but he looked at me without a smile. + +This was another matter altogether. At one time the public conscience of +the island had been mightily troubled by my Jacobus. The two brothers +had been partners for years in great harmony, when a wandering circus +came to the island and my Jacobus became suddenly infatuated with one of +the lady-riders. What made it worse was that he was married. He had not +even the grace to conceal his passion. It must have been strong indeed +to carry away such a large placid creature. His behaviour was perfectly +scandalous. He followed that woman to the Cape, and apparently travelled +at the tail of that beastly circus to other parts of the world, in a most +degrading position. The woman soon ceased to care for him, and treated +him worse than a dog. Most extraordinary stories of moral degradation +were reaching the island at that time. He had not the strength of mind +to shake himself free. . . . + +The grotesque image of a fat, pushing ship-chandler, enslaved by an +unholy love-spell, fascinated me; and I listened rather open-mouthed to +the tale as old as the world, a tale which had been the subject of +legend, of moral fables, of poems, but which so ludicrously failed to fit +the personality. What a strange victim for the gods! + +Meantime his deserted wife had died. His daughter was taken care of by +his brother, who married her as advantageously as was possible in the +circumstances. + +“Oh! The Mrs. Doctor!” I exclaimed. + +“You know that? Yes. A very able man. He wanted a lift in the world, +and there was a good bit of money from her mother, besides the +expectations. . . Of course, they don’t know him,” he added. “The doctor +nods in the street, I believe, but he avoids speaking to him when they +meet on board a ship, as must happen sometimes.” + +I remarked that this surely was an old story by now. + +My friend assented. But it was Jacobus’s own fault that it was neither +forgiven nor forgotten. He came back ultimately. But how? Not in a +spirit of contrition, in a way to propitiate his scandalised +fellow-citizens. He must needs drag along with him a child—a girl. . . . + +“He spoke to me of a daughter who lives with him,” I observed, very much +interested. + +“She’s certainly the daughter of the circus-woman,” said my friend. “She +may be his daughter too; I am willing to admit that she is. In fact I +have no doubt—” + +But he did not see why she should have been brought into a respectable +community to perpetuate the memory of the scandal. And that was not the +worst. Presently something much more distressing happened. That +abandoned woman turned up. Landed from a mail-boat. . . . + +“What! Here? To claim the child perhaps,” I suggested. + +“Not she!” My friendly informant was very scornful. “Imagine a painted, +haggard, agitated, desperate hag. Been cast off in Mozambique by +somebody who paid her passage here. She had been injured internally by a +kick from a horse; she hadn’t a cent on her when she got ashore; I don’t +think she even asked to see the child. At any rate, not till the last +day of her life. Jacobus hired for her a bungalow to die in. He got a +couple of Sisters from the hospital to nurse her through these few +months. If he didn’t marry her _in extremis_ as the good Sisters tried +to bring about, it’s because she wouldn’t even hear of it. As the nuns +said: ‘The woman died impenitent.’ It was reported that she ordered +Jacobus out of the room with her last breath. This may be the real +reason why he didn’t go into mourning himself; he only put the child into +black. While she was little she was to be seen sometimes about the +streets attended by a negro woman, but since she became of age to put her +hair up I don’t think she has set foot outside that garden once. She +must be over eighteen now.” + +Thus my friend, with some added details; such as, that he didn’t think +the girl had spoken to three people of any position in the island; that +an elderly female relative of the brothers Jacobus had been induced by +extreme poverty to accept the position of gouvernante to the girl. As to +Jacobus’s business (which certainly annoyed his brother) it was a wise +choice on his part. It brought him in contact only with strangers of +passage; whereas any other would have given rise to all sorts of +awkwardness with his social equals. The man was not wanting in a certain +tact—only he was naturally shameless. For why did he want to keep that +girl with him? It was most painful for everybody. + +I thought suddenly (and with profound disgust) of the other Jacobus, and +I could not refrain from saying slily: + +“I suppose if he employed her, say, as a scullion in his household and +occasionally pulled her hair or boxed her ears, the position would have +been more regular—less shocking to the respectable class to which he +belongs.” + +He was not so stupid as to miss my intention, and shrugged his shoulders +impatiently. + +“You don’t understand. To begin with, she’s not a mulatto. And a +scandal is a scandal. People should be given a chance to forget. I dare +say it would have been better for her if she had been turned into a +scullion or something of that kind. Of course he’s trying to make money +in every sort of petty way, but in such a business there’ll never be +enough for anybody to come forward.” + +When my friend left me I had a conception of Jacobus and his daughter +existing, a lonely pair of castaways, on a desert island; the girl +sheltering in the house as if it were a cavern in a cliff, and Jacobus +going out to pick up a living for both on the beach—exactly like two +shipwrecked people who always hope for some rescuer to bring them back at +last into touch with the rest of mankind. + +But Jacobus’s bodily reality did not fit in with this romantic view. +When he turned up on board in the usual course, he sipped the cup of +coffee placidly, asked me if I was satisfied—and I hardly listened to the +harbour gossip he dropped slowly in his low, voice-saving enunciation. I +had then troubles of my own. My ship chartered, my thoughts dwelling on +the success of a quick round voyage, I had been suddenly confronted by a +shortage of bags. A catastrophe! The stock of one especial kind, called +pockets, seemed to be totally exhausted. A consignment was shortly +expected—it was afloat, on its way, but, meantime, the loading of my ship +dead stopped, I had enough to worry about. My consignees, who had +received me with such heartiness on my arrival, now, in the character of +my charterers, listened to my complaints with polite helplessness. Their +manager, the old-maidish, thin man, who so prudishly didn’t even like to +speak about the impure Jacobus, gave me the correct commercial view of +the position. + +“My dear Captain”—he was retracting his leathery cheeks into a +condescending, shark-like smile—“we were not morally obliged to tell you +of a possible shortage before you signed the charter-party. It was for +you to guard against the contingency of a delay—strictly speaking. But +of course we shouldn’t have taken any advantage. This is no one’s fault +really. We ourselves have been taken unawares,” he concluded primly, +with an obvious lie. + +This lecture I confess had made me thirsty. Suppressed rage generally +produces that effect; and as I strolled on aimlessly I bethought myself +of the tall earthenware pitcher in the captains’ room of the Jacobus +“store.” + +With no more than a nod to the men I found assembled there, I poured down +a deep, cool draught on my indignation, then another, and then, becoming +dejected, I sat plunged in cheerless reflections. The others read, +talked, smoked, bandied over my head some unsubtle chaff. But my +abstraction was respected. And it was without a word to any one that I +rose and went out, only to be quite unexpectedly accosted in the bustle +of the store by Jacobus the outcast. + +“Glad to see you, Captain. What? Going away? You haven’t been looking +so well these last few days, I notice. Run down, eh?” + +He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his words were in the usual course of +business, but they had a human note. It was commercial amenity, but I +had been a stranger to amenity in that connection. I do verily believe +(from the direction of his heavy glance towards a certain shelf) that he +was going to suggest the purchase of Clarkson’s Nerve Tonic, which he +kept in stock, when I said impulsively: + +“I am rather in trouble with my loading.” + +Wide awake under his sleepy, broad mask with glued lips, he understood at +once, had a movement of the head so appreciative that I relieved my +exasperation by exclaiming: + +“Surely there must be eleven hundred quarter-bags to be found in the +colony. It’s only a matter of looking for them.” + +Again that slight movement of the big head, and in the noise and activity +of the store that tranquil murmur: + +“To be sure. But then people likely to have a reserve of quarter-bags +wouldn’t want to sell. They’d need that size themselves.” + +“That’s exactly what my consignees are telling me. Impossible to buy. +Bosh! They don’t want to. It suits them to have the ship hung up. But +if I were to discover the lot they would have to—Look here, Jacobus! You +are the man to have such a thing up your sleeve.” + +He protested with a ponderous swing of his big head. I stood before him +helplessly, being looked at by those heavy eyes with a veiled expression +as of a man after some soul-shaking crisis. Then, suddenly: + +“It’s impossible to talk quietly here,” he whispered. “I am very busy. +But if you could go and wait for me in my house. It’s less than ten +minutes’ walk. Oh, yes, you don’t know the way.” + +He called for his coat and offered to take me there himself. He would +have to return to the store at once for an hour or so to finish his +business, and then he would be at liberty to talk over with me that +matter of quarter-bags. This programme was breathed out at me through +slightly parted, still lips; his heavy, motionless glance rested upon me, +placid as ever, the glance of a tired man—but I felt that it was +searching, too. I could not imagine what he was looking for in me and +kept silent, wondering. + +“I am asking you to wait for me in my house till I am at liberty to talk +this matter over. You will?” + +“Why, of course!” I cried. + +“But I cannot promise—” + +“I dare say not,” I said. “I don’t expect a promise.” + +“I mean I can’t even promise to try the move I’ve in my mind. One must +see first . . . h’m!” + +“All right. I’ll take the chance. I’ll wait for you as long as you +like. What else have I to do in this infernal hole of a port!” + +Before I had uttered my last words we had set off at a swinging pace. We +turned a couple of corners and entered a street completely empty of +traffic, of semi-rural aspect, paved with cobblestones nestling in grass +tufts. The house came to the line of the roadway; a single story on an +elevated basement of rough-stones, so that our heads were below the level +of the windows as we went along. All the jalousies were tightly shut, +like eyes, and the house seemed fast asleep in the afternoon sunshine. +The entrance was at the side, in an alley even more grass-grown than the +street: a small door, simply on the latch. + +With a word of apology as to showing me the way, Jacobus preceded me up a +dark passage and led me across the naked parquet floor of what I supposed +to be the dining-room. It was lighted by three glass doors which stood +wide open on to a verandah or rather loggia running its brick arches +along the garden side of the house. It was really a magnificent garden: +smooth green lawns and a gorgeous maze of flower-beds in the foreground, +displayed around a basin of dark water framed in a marble rim, and in the +distance the massed foliage of varied trees concealing the roofs of other +houses. The town might have been miles away. It was a brilliantly +coloured solitude, drowsing in a warm, voluptuous silence. Where the +long, still shadows fell across the beds, and in shady nooks, the massed +colours of the flowers had an extraordinary magnificence of effect. I +stood entranced. Jacobus grasped me delicately above the elbow, +impelling me to a half-turn to the left. + +I had not noticed the girl before. She occupied a low, deep, wickerwork +arm-chair, and I saw her in exact profile like a figure in a tapestry, +and as motionless. Jacobus released my arm. + +“This is Alice,” he announced tranquilly; and his subdued manner of +speaking made it sound so much like a confidential communication that I +fancied myself nodding understandingly and whispering: “I see, I see.” . . . +Of course, I did nothing of the kind. Neither of us did anything; we +stood side by side looking down at the girl. For quite a time she did +not stir, staring straight before her as if watching the vision of some +pageant passing through the garden in the deep, rich glow of light and +the splendour of flowers. + +Then, coming to the end of her reverie, she looked round and up. If I +had not at first noticed her, I am certain that she too had been unaware +of my presence till she actually perceived me by her father’s side. The +quickened upward movement of the heavy eyelids, the widening of the +languid glance, passing into a fixed stare, put that beyond doubt. + +Under her amazement there was a hint of fear, and then came a flash as of +anger. Jacobus, after uttering my name fairly loud, said: “Make yourself +at home, Captain—I won’t be gone long,” and went away rapidly. Before I +had time to make a bow I was left alone with the girl—who, I remembered +suddenly, had not been seen by any man or woman of that town since she +had found it necessary to put up her hair. It looked as though it had +not been touched again since that distant time of first putting up; it +was a mass of black, lustrous locks, twisted anyhow high on her head, +with long, untidy wisps hanging down on each side of the clear sallow +face; a mass so thick and strong and abundant that, nothing but to look +at, it gave you a sensation of heavy pressure on the top of your head and +an impression of magnificently cynical untidiness. She leaned forward, +hugging herself with crossed legs; a dingy, amber-coloured, flounced +wrapper of some thin stuff revealed the young supple body drawn together +tensely in the deep low seat as if crouching for a spring. I detected a +slight, quivering start or two, which looked uncommonly like bounding +away. They were followed by the most absolute immobility. + +The absurd impulse to run out after Jacobus (for I had been startled, +too) once repressed, I took a chair, placed it not very far from her, sat +down deliberately, and began to talk about the garden, caring not what I +said, but using a gentle caressing intonation as one talks to soothe a +startled wild animal. I could not even be certain that she understood +me. She never raised her face nor attempted to look my way. I kept on +talking only to prevent her from taking flight. She had another of those +quivering, repressed starts which made me catch my breath with +apprehension. + +Ultimately I formed a notion that what prevented her perhaps from going +off in one great, nervous leap, was the scantiness of her attire. The +wicker armchair was the most substantial thing about her person. What +she had on under that dingy, loose, amber wrapper must have been of the +most flimsy and airy character. One could not help being aware of it. +It was obvious. I felt it actually embarrassing at first; but that sort +of embarrassment is got over easily by a mind not enslaved by narrow +prejudices. I did not avert my gaze from Alice. I went on talking with +ingratiating softness, the recollection that, most likely, she had never +before been spoken to by a strange man adding to my assurance. I don’t +know why an emotional tenseness should have crept into the situation. +But it did. And just as I was becoming aware of it a slight scream cut +short my flow of urbane speech. + +The scream did not proceed from the girl. It was emitted behind me, and +caused me to turn my head sharply. I understood at once that the +apparition in the doorway was the elderly relation of Jacobus, the +companion, the gouvernante. While she remained thunderstruck, I got up +and made her a low bow. + +The ladies of Jacobus’s household evidently spent their days in light +attire. This stumpy old woman with a face like a large wrinkled lemon, +beady eyes, and a shock of iron-grey hair, was dressed in a garment of +some ash-coloured, silky, light stuff. It fell from her thick neck down +to her toes with the simplicity of an unadorned nightgown. It made her +appear truly cylindrical. She exclaimed: “How did you get here?” + +Before I could say a word she vanished and presently I heard a confusion +of shrill protestations in a distant part of the house. Obviously no one +could tell her how I got there. In a moment, with great outcries from +two negro women following her, she waddled back to the doorway, +infuriated. + +“What do you want here?” + +I turned to the girl. She was sitting straight up now, her hands posed +on the arms of the chair. I appealed to her. + +“Surely, Miss Alice, you will not let them drive me out into the street?” + +Her magnificent black eyes, narrowed, long in shape, swept over me with +an indefinable expression, then in a harsh, contemptuous voice she let +fall in French a sort of explanation: + +“_C’est papa_.” + +I made another low bow to the old woman. + +She turned her back on me in order to drive away her black henchwomen, +then surveying my person in a peculiar manner with one small eye nearly +closed and her face all drawn up on that side as if with a twinge of +toothache, she stepped out on the verandah, sat down in a rocking-chair +some distance away, and took up her knitting from a little table. Before +she started at it she plunged one of the needles into the mop of her grey +hair and stirred it vigorously. + +Her elementary nightgown-sort of frock clung to her ancient, stumpy, and +floating form. She wore white cotton stockings and flat brown velvet +slippers. Her feet and ankles were obtrusively visible on the foot-rest. +She began to rock herself slightly, while she knitted. I had resumed my +seat and kept quiet, for I mistrusted that old woman. What if she +ordered me to depart? She seemed capable of any outrage. She had +snorted once or twice; she was knitting violently. Suddenly she piped at +the young girl in French a question which I translate colloquially: + +“What’s your father up to, now?” + +The young creature shrugged her shoulders so comprehensively that her +whole body swayed within the loose wrapper; and in that unexpectedly +harsh voice which yet had a seductive quality to the senses, like certain +kinds of natural rough wines one drinks with pleasure: + +“It’s some captain. Leave me alone—will you!” + +The chair rocked quicker, the old, thin voice was like a whistle. + +“You and your father make a pair. He would stick at nothing—that’s well +known. But I didn’t expect this.” + +I thought it high time to air some of my own French. I remarked +modestly, but firmly, that this was business. I had some matters to talk +over with Mr. Jacobus. + +At once she piped out a derisive “Poor innocent!” Then, with a change of +tone: “The shop’s for business. Why don’t you go to the shop to talk +with him?” + +The furious speed of her fingers and knitting-needles made one dizzy; and +with squeaky indignation: + +“Sitting here staring at that girl—is that what you call business?” + +“No,” I said suavely. “I call this pleasure—an unexpected pleasure. And +unless Miss Alice objects—” + +I half turned to her. She flung at me an angry and contemptuous “Don’t +care!” and leaning her elbow on her knees took her chin in her hand—a +Jacobus chin undoubtedly. And those heavy eyelids, this black irritated +stare reminded me of Jacobus, too—the wealthy merchant, the respected +one. The design of her eyebrows also was the same, rigid and ill-omened. +Yes! I traced in her a resemblance to both of them. It came to me as a +sort of surprising remote inference that both these Jacobuses were rather +handsome men after all. I said: + +“Oh! Then I shall stare at you till you smile.” + +She favoured me again with an even more viciously scornful “Don’t care!” + +The old woman broke in blunt and shrill: + +“Hear his impudence! And you too! Don’t care! Go at least and put some +more clothes on. Sitting there like this before this sailor riff-raff.” + +The sun was about to leave the Pearl of the Ocean for other seas, for +other lands. The walled garden full of shadows blazed with colour as if +the flowers were giving up the light absorbed during the day. The +amazing old woman became very explicit. She suggested to the girl a +corset and a petticoat with a cynical unreserve which humiliated me. Was +I of no more account than a wooden dummy? The girl snapped out: +“Shan’t!” + +It was not the naughty retort of a vulgar child; it had a note of +desperation. Clearly my intrusion had somehow upset the balance of their +established relations. The old woman knitted with furious accuracy, her +eyes fastened down on her work. + +“Oh, you are the true child of your father! And _that_ talks of entering +a convent! Letting herself be stared at by a fellow.” + +“Leave off.” + +“Shameless thing!” + +“Old sorceress,” the girl uttered distinctly, preserving her meditative +pose, chin in hand, and a far-away stare over the garden. + +It was like the quarrel of the kettle and the pot. The old woman flew +out of the chair, banged down her work, and with a great play of thick +limb perfectly visible in that weird, clinging garment of hers, strode at +the girl—who never stirred. I was experiencing a sort of trepidation +when, as if awed by that unconscious attitude, the aged relative of +Jacobus turned short upon me. + +She was, I perceived, armed with a knitting-needle; and as she raised her +hand her intention seemed to be to throw it at me like a dart. But she +only used it to scratch her head with, examining me the while at close +range, one eye nearly shut and her face distorted by a whimsical, +one-sided grimace. + +“My dear man,” she asked abruptly, “do you expect any good to come of +this?” + +“I do hope so indeed, Miss Jacobus.” I tried to speak in the easy tone +of an afternoon caller. “You see, I am here after some bags.” + +“Bags! Look at that now! Didn’t I hear you holding forth to that +graceless wretch?” + +“You would like to see me in my grave,” uttered the motionless girl +hoarsely. + +“Grave! What about me? Buried alive before I am dead for the sake of a +thing blessed with such a pretty father!” she cried; and turning to me: +“You’re one of these men he does business with. Well—why don’t you leave +us in peace, my good fellow?” + +It was said in a tone—this “leave us in peace!” There was a sort of +ruffianly familiarity, a superiority, a scorn in it. I was to hear it +more than once, for you would show an imperfect knowledge of human nature +if you thought that this was my last visit to that house—where no +respectable person had put foot for ever so many years. No, you would be +very much mistaken if you imagined that this reception had scared me +away. First of all I was not going to run before a grotesque and +ruffianly old woman. + +And then you mustn’t forget these necessary bags. That first evening +Jacobus made me stay to dinner; after, however, telling me loyally that +he didn’t know whether he could do anything at all for me. He had been +thinking it over. It was too difficult, he feared. . . . But he did not +give it up in so many words. + +We were only three at table; the girl by means of repeated “Won’t!” +“Shan’t!” and “Don’t care!” having conveyed and affirmed her intention +not to come to the table, not to have any dinner, not to move from the +verandah. The old relative hopped about in her flat slippers and piped +indignantly, Jacobus towered over her and murmured placidly in his +throat; I joined jocularly from a distance, throwing in a few words, for +which under the cover of the night I received secretly a most vicious +poke in the ribs from the old woman’s elbow or perhaps her fist. I +restrained a cry. And all the time the girl didn’t even condescend to +raise her head to look at any of us. All this may sound childish—and yet +that stony, petulant sullenness had an obscurely tragic flavour. + +And so we sat down to the food around the light of a good many candles +while she remained crouching out there, staring in the dark as if feeding +her bad temper on the heavily scented air of the admirable garden. + +Before leaving I said to Jacobus that I would come next day to hear if +the bag affair had made any progress. He shook his head slightly at +that. + +“I’ll haunt your house daily till you pull it off. You’ll be always +finding me here.” + +His faint, melancholy smile did not part his thick lips. + +“That will be all right, Captain.” + +Then seeing me to the door, very tranquil, he murmured earnestly the +recommendation: “Make yourself at home,” and also the hospitable hint +about there being always “a plate of soup.” It was only on my way to the +quay, down the ill-lighted streets, that I remembered I had been engaged +to dine that very evening with the S— family. Though vexed with my +forgetfulness (it would be rather awkward to explain) I couldn’t help +thinking that it had procured me a more amusing evening. And +besides—business. The sacred business—. + +In a barefooted negro who overtook me at a run and bolted down the +landing-steps I recognised Jacobus’s boatman, who must have been feeding +in the kitchen. His usual “Good-night, sah!” as I went up my ship’s +ladder had a more cordial sound than on previous occasions. + + + +CHAPTER V + + +I KEPT my word to Jacobus. I haunted his home. He was perpetually +finding me there of an afternoon when he popped in for a moment from the +“store.” The sound of my voice talking to his Alice greeted him on his +doorstep; and when he returned for good in the evening, ten to one he +would hear it still going on in the verandah. I just nodded to him; he +would sit down heavily and gently, and watch with a sort of approving +anxiety my efforts to make his daughter smile. + +I called her often “Alice,” right before him; sometimes I would address +her as Miss “Don’t Care,” and I exhausted myself in nonsensical chatter +without succeeding once in taking her out of her peevish and tragic self. +There were moments when I felt I must break out and start swearing at her +till all was blue. And I fancied that had I done so Jacobus would not +have moved a muscle. A sort of shady, intimate understanding seemed to +have been established between us. + +I must say the girl treated her father exactly in the same way she +treated me. + +And how could it have been otherwise? She treated me as she treated her +father. She had never seen a visitor. She did not know how men behaved. +I belonged to the low lot with whom her father did business at the port. +I was of no account. So was her father. The only decent people in the +world were the people of the island, who would have nothing to do with +him because of something wicked he had done. This was apparently the +explanation Miss Jacobus had given her of the household’s isolated +position. For she had to be told something! And I feel convinced that +this version had been assented to by Jacobus. I must say the old woman +was putting it forward with considerable gusto. It was on her lips the +universal explanation, the universal allusion, the universal taunt. + +One day Jacobus came in early and, beckoning me into the dining-room, +wiped his brow with a weary gesture and told me that he had managed to +unearth a supply of quarter-bags. + +“It’s fourteen hundred your ship wanted, did you say, Captain?” + +“Yes, yes!” I replied eagerly; but he remained calm. He looked more +tired than I had ever seen him before. + +“Well, Captain, you may go and tell your people that they can get that +lot from my brother.” + +As I remained open-mouthed at this, he added his usual placid formula of +assurance: + +“You’ll find it correct, Captain.” + +“You spoke to your brother about it?” I was distinctly awed. “And for +me? Because he must have known that my ship’s the only one hung up for +bags. How on earth—” + +He wiped his brow again. I noticed that he was dressed with unusual +care, in clothes in which I had never seen him before. He avoided my +eye. + +“You’ve heard people talk, of course. . . . That’s true enough. He . . . +I . . . We certainly. . . for several years . . .” His voice declined to +a mere sleepy murmur. “You see I had something to tell him of, something +which—” + +His murmur stopped. He was not going to tell me what this something was. +And I didn’t care. Anxious to carry the news to my charterers, I ran +back on the verandah to get my hat. + +At the bustle I made the girl turned her eyes slowly in my direction, and +even the old woman was checked in her knitting. I stopped a moment to +exclaim excitedly: + +“Your father’s a brick, Miss Don’t Care. That’s what he is.” + +She beheld my elation in scornful surprise. Jacobus with unwonted +familiarity seized my arm as I flew through the dining-room, and breathed +heavily at me a proposal about “A plate of soup” that evening. I +answered distractedly: “Eh? What? Oh, thanks! Certainly. With +pleasure,” and tore myself away. Dine with him? Of course. The merest +gratitude— + +But some three hours afterwards, in the dusky, silent street, paved with +cobble-stones, I became aware that it was not mere gratitude which was +guiding my steps towards the house with the old garden, where for years +no guest other than myself had ever dined. Mere gratitude does not gnaw +at one’s interior economy in that particular way. Hunger might; but I +was not feeling particularly hungry for Jacobus’s food. + +On that occasion, too, the girl refused to come to the table. + +My exasperation grew. The old woman cast malicious glances at me. I +said suddenly to Jacobus: “Here! Put some chicken and salad on that +plate.” He obeyed without raising his eyes. I carried it with a knife +and fork and a serviette out on the verandah. The garden was one mass of +gloom, like a cemetery of flowers buried in the darkness, and she, in the +chair, seemed to muse mournfully over the extinction of light and colour. +Only whiffs of heavy scent passed like wandering, fragrant souls of that +departed multitude of blossoms. I talked volubly, jocularly, +persuasively, tenderly; I talked in a subdued tone. To a listener it +would have sounded like the murmur of a pleading lover. Whenever I +paused expectantly there was only a deep silence. It was like offering +food to a seated statue. + +“I haven’t been able to swallow a single morsel thinking of you out here +starving yourself in the dark. It’s positively cruel to be so obstinate. +Think of my sufferings.” + +“Don’t care.” + +I felt as if I could have done her some violence—shaken her, beaten her +maybe. I said: + +“Your absurd behaviour will prevent me coming here any more.” + +“What’s that to me?” + +“You like it.” + +“It’s false,” she snarled. + +My hand fell on her shoulder; and if she had flinched I verily believe I +would have shaken her. But there was no movement and this immobility +disarmed my anger. + +“You do. Or you wouldn’t be found on the verandah every day. Why are +you here, then? There are plenty of rooms in the house. You have your +own room to stay in—if you did not want to see me. But you do. You know +you do.” + +I felt a slight shudder under my hand and released my grip as if +frightened by that sign of animation in her body. The scented air of the +garden came to us in a warm wave like a voluptuous and perfumed sigh. + +“Go back to them,” she whispered, almost pitifully. + +As I re-entered the dining-room I saw Jacobus cast down his eyes. I +banged the plate on the table. At this demonstration of ill-humour he +murmured something in an apologetic tone, and I turned on him viciously +as if he were accountable to me for these “abominable eccentricities,” I +believe I called them. + +“But I dare say Miss Jacobus here is responsible for most of this +offensive manner,” I added loftily. + +She piped out at once in her brazen, ruffianly manner: + +“Eh? Why don’t you leave us in peace, my good fellow?” + +I was astonished that she should dare before Jacobus. Yet what could he +have done to repress her? He needed her too much. He raised a heavy, +drowsy glance for an instant, then looked down again. She insisted with +shrill finality: + +“Haven’t you done your business, you two? Well, then—” + +She had the true Jacobus impudence, that old woman. Her mop of iron-grey +hair was parted, on the side like a man’s, raffishly, and she made as if +to plunge her fork into it, as she used to do with the knitting-needle, +but refrained. Her little black eyes sparkled venomously. I turned to +my host at the head of the table—menacingly as it were. + +“Well, and what do you say to that, Jacobus? Am I to take it that we +have done with each other?” + +I had to wait a little. The answer when it came was rather unexpected, +and in quite another spirit than the question. + +“I certainly think we might do some business yet with those potatoes of +mine, Captain. You will find that—” + +I cut him short. + +“I’ve told you before that I don’t trade.” + +His broad chest heaved without a sound in a noiseless sigh. + +“Think it over, Captain,” he murmured, tenacious and tranquil; and I +burst into a jarring laugh, remembering how he had stuck to the +circus-rider woman—the depth of passion under that placid surface, which +even cuts with a riding-whip (so the legend had it) could never raffle +into the semblance of a storm; something like the passion of a fish would +be if one could imagine such a thing as a passionate fish. + +That evening I experienced more distinctly than ever the sense of moral +discomfort which always attended me in that house lying under the ban of +all “decent” people. I refused to stay on and smoke after dinner; and +when I put my hand into the thickly-cushioned palm of Jacobus, I said to +myself that it would be for the last time under his roof. I pressed his +bulky paw heartily nevertheless. Hadn’t he got me out of a serious +difficulty? To the few words of acknowledgment I was bound, and indeed +quite willing, to utter, he answered by stretching his closed lips in his +melancholy, glued-together smile. + +“That will be all right, I hope, Captain,” he breathed out weightily. + +“What do you mean?” I asked, alarmed. “That your brother might yet—” + +“Oh, no,” he reassured me. “He . . . he’s a man of his word, Captain.” + +My self-communion as I walked away from his door, trying to believe that +this was for the last time, was not satisfactory. I was aware myself +that I was not sincere in my reflections as to Jacobus’s motives, and, of +course, the very next day I went back again. + +How weak, irrational, and absurd we are! How easily carried away +whenever our awakened imagination brings us the irritating hint of a +desire! I cared for the girl in a particular way, seduced by the moody +expression of her face, by her obstinate silences, her rare, scornful +words; by the perpetual pout of her closed lips, the black depths of her +fixed gaze turned slowly upon me as if in contemptuous provocation, only +to be averted next moment with an exasperating indifference. + +Of course the news of my assiduity had spread all over the little town. +I noticed a change in the manner of my acquaintances and even something +different in the nods of the other captains, when meeting them at the +landing-steps or in the offices where business called me. The +old-maidish head clerk treated me with distant punctiliousness and, as it +were, gathered his skirts round him for fear of contamination. It seemed +to me that the very niggers on the quays turned to look after me as I +passed; and as to Jacobus’s boatman his “Good-night, sah!” when he put me +on board was no longer merely cordial—it had a familiar, confidential +sound as though we had been partners in some villainy. + +My friend S— the elder passed me on the other side of the street with a +wave of the hand and an ironic smile. The younger brother, the one they +had married to an elderly shrew, he, on the strength of an older +friendship and as if paying a debt of gratitude, took the liberty to +utter a word of warning. + +“You’re doing yourself no good by your choice of friends, my dear chap,” +he said with infantile gravity. + +As I knew that the meeting of the brothers Jacobus was the subject of +excited comment in the whole of the sugary Pearl of the Ocean I wanted to +know why I was blamed. + +“I have been the occasion of a move which may end in a reconciliation +surely desirable from the point of view of the proprieties—don’t you +know?” + +“Of course, if that girl were disposed of it would certainly facilitate—” +he mused sagely, then, inconsequential creature, gave me a light tap on +the lower part of my waistcoat. “You old sinner,” he cried jovially, +“much you care for proprieties. But you had better look out for +yourself, you know, with a personage like Jacobus who has no sort of +reputation to lose.” + +He had recovered his gravity of a respectable citizen by that time and +added regretfully: + +“All the women of our family are perfectly scandalised.” + +But by that time I had given up visiting the S— family and the D— family. +The elder ladies pulled such faces when I showed myself, and the +multitude of related young ladies received me with such a variety of +looks: wondering, awed, mocking (except Miss Mary, who spoke to me and +looked at me with hushed, pained compassion as though I had been ill), +that I had no difficulty in giving them all up. I would have given up +the society of the whole town, for the sake of sitting near that girl, +snarling and superb and barely clad in that flimsy, dingy, amber wrapper, +open low at the throat. She looked, with the wild wisps of hair hanging +down her tense face, as though she had just jumped out of bed in the +panic of a fire. + +She sat leaning on her elbow, looking at nothing. Why did she stay +listening to my absurd chatter? And not only that; but why did she +powder her face in preparation for my arrival? It seemed to be her idea +of making a toilette, and in her untidy negligence a sign of great effort +towards personal adornment. + +But I might have been mistaken. The powdering might have been her daily +practice and her presence in the verandah a sign of an indifference so +complete as to take no account of my existence. Well, it was all one to +me. + +I loved to watch her slow changes of pose, to look at her long +immobilities composed in the graceful lines of her body, to observe the +mysterious narrow stare of her splendid black eyes, somewhat long in +shape, half closed, contemplating the void. She was like a spellbound +creature with the forehead of a goddess crowned by the dishevelled +magnificent hair of a gipsy tramp. Even her indifference was seductive. +I felt myself growing attached to her by the bond of an irrealisable +desire, for I kept my head—quite. And I put up with the moral discomfort +of Jacobus’s sleepy watchfulness, tranquil, and yet so expressive; as if +there had been a tacit pact between us two. I put up with the insolence +of the old woman’s: “Aren’t you ever going to leave us in peace, my good +fellow?” with her taunts; with her brazen and sinister scolding. She was +of the true Jacobus stock, and no mistake. + +Directly I got away from the girl I called myself many hard names. What +folly was this? I would ask myself. It was like being the slave of some +depraved habit. And I returned to her with my head clear, my heart +certainly free, not even moved by pity for that castaway (she was as much +of a castaway as any one ever wrecked on a desert island), but as if +beguiled by some extraordinary promise. Nothing more unworthy could be +imagined. The recollection of that tremulous whisper when I gripped her +shoulder with one hand and held a plate of chicken with the other was +enough to make me break all my good resolutions. + +Her insulting taciturnity was enough sometimes to make one gnash one’s +teeth with rage. When she opened her mouth it was only to be abominably +rude in harsh tones to the associate of her reprobate father; and the +full approval of her aged relative was conveyed to her by offensive +chuckles. If not that, then her remarks, always uttered in the tone of +scathing contempt, were of the most appalling inanity. + +How could it have been otherwise? That plump, ruffianly Jacobus old maid +in the tight grey frock had never taught her any manners. Manners I +suppose are not necessary for born castaways. No educational +establishment could ever be induced to accept her as a pupil—on account +of the proprieties, I imagine. And Jacobus had not been able to send her +away anywhere. How could he have done it? Who with? Where to? He +himself was not enough of an adventurer to think of settling down +anywhere else. His passion had tossed him at the tail of a circus up and +down strange coasts, but, the storm over, he had drifted back shamelessly +where, social outcast as he was, he remained still a Jacobus—one of the +oldest families on the island, older than the French even. There must +have been a Jacobus in at the death of the last Dodo. . . . The girl had +learned nothing, she had never listened to a general conversation, she +knew nothing, she had heard of nothing. She could read certainly; but +all the reading matter that ever came in her way were the newspapers +provided for the captains’ room of the “store.” Jacobus had the habit of +taking these sheets home now and then in a very stained and ragged +condition. + +As her mind could not grasp the meaning of any matters treated there +except police-court reports and accounts of crimes, she had formed for +herself a notion of the civilised world as a scene of murders, +abductions, burglaries, stabbing affrays, and every sort of desperate +violence. England and France, Paris and London (the only two towns of +which she seemed to have heard), appeared to her sinks of abomination, +reeking with blood, in contrast to her little island where petty larceny +was about the standard of current misdeeds, with, now and then, some more +pronounced crime—and that only amongst the imported coolie labourers on +sugar estates or the negroes of the town. But in Europe these things +were being done daily by a wicked population of white men amongst whom, +as that ruffianly, aristocratic old Miss Jacobus pointed out, the +wandering sailors, the associates of her precious papa, were the lowest +of the low. + +It was impossible to give her a sense of proportion. I suppose she +figured England to herself as about the size of the Pearl of the Ocean; +in which case it would certainly have been reeking with gore and a mere +wreck of burgled houses from end to end. One could not make her +understand that these horrors on which she fed her imagination were lost +in the mass of orderly life like a few drops of blood in the ocean. She +directed upon me for a moment the uncomprehending glance of her narrowed +eyes and then would turn her scornful powdered face away without a word. +She would not even take the trouble to shrug her shoulders. + +At that time the batches of papers brought by the last mail reported a +series of crimes in the East End of London, there was a sensational case +of abduction in France and a fine display of armed robbery in Australia. +One afternoon crossing the dining-room I heard Miss Jacobus piping in the +verandah with venomous animosity: “I don’t know what your precious papa +is plotting with that fellow. But he’s just the sort of man who’s +capable of carrying you off far away somewhere and then cutting your +throat some day for your money.” + +There was a good half of the length of the verandah between their chairs. +I came out and sat down fiercely midway between them. + +“Yes, that’s what we do with girls in Europe,” I began in a grimly +matter-of-fact tone. I think Miss Jacobus was disconcerted by my sudden +appearance. I turned upon her with cold ferocity: + +“As to objectionable old women, they are first strangled quietly, then +cut up into small pieces and thrown away, a bit here and a bit there. +They vanish—” + +I cannot go so far as to say I had terrified her. But she was troubled +by my truculence, the more so because I had been always addressing her +with a politeness she did not deserve. Her plump, knitting hands fell +slowly on her knees. She said not a word while I fixed her with severe +determination. Then as I turned away from her at last, she laid down her +work gently and, with noiseless movements, retreated from the verandah. +In fact, she vanished. + +But I was not thinking of her. I was looking at the girl. It was what I +was coming for daily; troubled, ashamed, eager; finding in my nearness to +her a unique sensation which I indulged with dread, self-contempt, and +deep pleasure, as if it were a secret vice bound to end in my undoing, +like the habit of some drug or other which ruins and degrades its slave. + +I looked her over, from the top of her dishevelled head, down the lovely +line of the shoulder, following the curve of the hip, the draped form of +the long limb, right down to her fine ankle below a torn, soiled flounce; +and as far as the point of the shabby, high-heeled, blue slipper, +dangling from her well-shaped foot, which she moved slightly, with quick, +nervous jerks, as if impatient of my presence. And in the scent of the +massed flowers I seemed to breathe her special and inexplicable charm, +the heady perfume of the everlastingly irritated captive of the garden. + +I looked at her rounded chin, the Jacobus chin; at the full, red lips +pouting in the powdered, sallow face; at the firm modelling of the cheek, +the grains of white in the hairs of the straight sombre eyebrows; at the +long eyes, a narrowed gleam of liquid white and intense motionless black, +with their gaze so empty of thought, and so absorbed in their fixity that +she seemed to be staring at her own lonely image, in some far-off mirror +hidden from my sight amongst the trees. + +And suddenly, without looking at me, with the appearance of a person +speaking to herself, she asked, in that voice slightly harsh yet mellow +and always irritated: + +“Why do you keep on coming here?” + +“Why do I keep on coming here?” I repeated, taken by surprise. I could +not have told her. I could not even tell myself with sincerity why I was +coming there. “What’s the good of you asking a question like that?” + +“Nothing is any good,” she observed scornfully to the empty air, her chin +propped on her hand, that hand never extended to any man, that no one had +ever grasped—for I had only grasped her shoulder once—that generous, +fine, somewhat masculine hand. I knew well the peculiarly efficient +shape—broad at the base, tapering at the fingers—of that hand, for which +there was nothing in the world to lay hold of. I pretended to be +playful. + +“No! But do you really care to know?” + +She shrugged indolently her magnificent shoulders, from which the dingy +thin wrapper was slipping a little. + +“Oh—never mind—never mind!” + +There was something smouldering under those airs of lassitude. She +exasperated me by the provocation of her nonchalance, by something +elusive and defiant in her very form which I wanted to seize. I said +roughly: + +“Why? Don’t you think I should tell you the truth?” + +Her eyes glided my way for a sidelong look, and she murmured, moving only +her full, pouting lips: + +“I think you would not dare.” + +“Do you imagine I am afraid of you? What on earth. . . . Well, it’s +possible, after all, that I don’t know exactly why I am coming here. Let +us say, with Miss Jacobus, that it is for no good. You seem to believe +the outrageous things she says, if you do have a row with her now and +then.” + +She snapped out viciously: + +“Who else am I to believe? + +“I don’t know,” I had to own, seeing her suddenly very helpless and +condemned to moral solitude by the verdict of a respectable community. +“You might believe me, if you chose.” + +She made a slight movement and asked me at once, with an effort as if +making an experiment: + +“What is the business between you and papa?” + +“Don’t you know the nature of your father’s business? Come! He sells +provisions to ships.” + +She became rigid again in her crouching pose. + +“Not that. What brings you here—to this house?” + +“And suppose it’s you? You would not call that business? Would you? +And now let us drop the subject. It’s no use. My ship will be ready for +sea the day after to-morrow.” + +She murmured a distinctly scared “So soon,” and getting up quickly, went +to the little table and poured herself a glass of water. She walked with +rapid steps and with an indolent swaying of her whole young figure above +the hips; when she passed near me I felt with tenfold force the charm of +the peculiar, promising sensation I had formed the habit to seek near +her. I thought with sudden dismay that this was the end of it; that +after one more day I would be no longer able to come into this verandah, +sit on this chair, and taste perversely the flavour of contempt in her +indolent poses, drink in the provocation of her scornful looks, and +listen to the curt, insolent remarks uttered in that harsh and seductive +voice. As if my innermost nature had been altered by the action of some +moral poison, I felt an abject dread of going to sea. + +I had to exercise a sudden self-control, as one puts on a brake, to +prevent myself jumping up to stride about, shout, gesticulate, make her a +scene. What for? What about? I had no idea. It was just the relief of +violence that I wanted; and I lolled back in my chair, trying to keep my +lips formed in a smile; that half-indulgent, half-mocking smile which was +my shield against the shafts of her contempt and the insulting sallies +flung at me by the old woman. + +She drank the water at a draught, with the avidity of raging thirst, and +let herself fall on the nearest chair, as if utterly overcome. Her +attitude, like certain tones of her voice, had in it something masculine: +the knees apart in the ample wrapper, the clasped hands hanging between +them, her body leaning forward, with drooping head. I stared at the +heavy black coil of twisted hair. It was enormous, crowning the bowed +head with a crushing and disdained glory. The escaped wisps hung +straight down. And suddenly I perceived that the girl was trembling from +head to foot, as though that glass of iced water had chilled her to the +bone. + +“What’s the matter now?” I said, startled, but in no very sympathetic +mood. + +She shook her bowed, overweighted head and cried in a stifled voice but +with a rising inflection: + +“Go away! Go away! Go away!” + +I got up then and approached her, with a strange sort of anxiety. I +looked down at her round, strong neck, then stooped low enough to peep at +her face. And I began to tremble a little myself. + +“What on earth are you gone wild about, Miss Don’t Care?” + +She flung herself backwards violently, her head going over the back of +the chair. And now it was her smooth, full, palpitating throat that lay +exposed to my bewildered stare. Her eyes were nearly closed, with only a +horrible white gleam under the lids as if she were dead. + +“What has come to you?” I asked in awe. “What are you terrifying +yourself with?” + +She pulled herself together, her eyes open frightfully wide now. The +tropical afternoon was lengthening the shadows on the hot, weary earth, +the abode of obscure desires, of extravagant hopes, of unimaginable +terrors. + +“Never mind! Don’t care!” Then, after a gasp, she spoke with such +frightful rapidity that I could hardly make out the amazing words: “For +if you were to shut me up in an empty place as smooth all round as the +palm of my hand, I could always strangle myself with my hair.” + +For a moment, doubting my ears, I let this inconceivable declaration sink +into me. It is ever impossible to guess at the wild thoughts that pass +through the heads of our fellow-creatures. What monstrous imaginings of +violence could have dwelt under the low forehead of that girl who had +been taught to regard her father as “capable of anything” more in the +light of a misfortune than that of a disgrace; as, evidently, something +to be resented and feared rather than to be ashamed of? She seemed, +indeed, as unaware of shame as of anything else in the world; but in her +ignorance, her resentment and fear took a childish and violent shape. + +Of course she spoke without knowing the value of words. What could she +know of death—she who knew nothing of life? It was merely as the proof +of her being beside herself with some odious apprehension, that this +extraordinary speech had moved me, not to pity, but to a fascinated, +horrified wonder. I had no idea what notion she had of her danger. Some +sort of abduction. It was quite possible with the talk of that atrocious +old woman. Perhaps she thought she could be carried off, bound hand and +foot and even gagged. At that surmise I felt as if the door of a furnace +had been opened in front of me. + +“Upon my honour!” I cried. “You shall end by going crazy if you listen +to that abominable old aunt of yours—” + +I studied her haggard expression, her trembling lips. Her cheeks even +seemed sunk a little. But how I, the associate of her disreputable +father, the “lowest of the low” from the criminal Europe, could manage to +reassure her I had no conception. She was exasperating. + +“Heavens and earth! What do you think I can do?” + +“I don’t know.” + +Her chin certainly trembled. And she was looking at me with extreme +attention. I made a step nearer to her chair. + +“I shall do nothing. I promise you that. Will that do? Do you +understand? I shall do nothing whatever, of any kind; and the day after +to-morrow I shall be gone.” + +What else could I have said? She seemed to drink in my words with the +thirsty avidity with which she had emptied the glass of water. She +whispered tremulously, in that touching tone I had heard once before on +her lips, and which thrilled me again with the same emotion: + +“I would believe you. But what about papa—” + +“He be hanged!” My emotion betrayed itself by the brutality of my tone. +“I’ve had enough of your papa. Are you so stupid as to imagine that I am +frightened of him? He can’t make me do anything.” + +All that sounded feeble to me in the face of her ignorance. But I must +conclude that the “accent of sincerity” has, as some people say, a really +irresistible power. The effect was far beyond my hopes,—and even beyond +my conception. To watch the change in the girl was like watching a +miracle—the gradual but swift relaxation of her tense glance, of her +stiffened muscles, of every fibre of her body. That black, fixed stare +into which I had read a tragic meaning more than once, in which I had +found a sombre seduction, was perfectly empty now, void of all +consciousness whatever, and not even aware any longer of my presence; it +had become a little sleepy, in the Jacobus fashion. + +But, man being a perverse animal, instead of rejoicing at my complete +success, I beheld it with astounded and indignant eyes. There was +something cynical in that unconcealed alteration, the true Jacobus +shamelessness. I felt as though I had been cheated in some rather +complicated deal into which I had entered against my better judgment. +Yes, cheated without any regard for, at least, the forms of decency. + +With an easy, indolent, and in its indolence supple, feline movement, she +rose from the chair, so provokingly ignoring me now, that for very rage I +held my ground within less than a foot of her. Leisurely and tranquil, +behaving right before me with the ease of a person alone in a room, she +extended her beautiful arms, with her hands clenched, her body swaying, +her head thrown back a little, revelling contemptuously in a sense of +relief, easing her limbs in freedom after all these days of crouching, +motionless poses when she had been so furious and so afraid. + +All this with supreme indifference, incredible, offensive, exasperating, +like ingratitude doubled with treachery. + +I ought to have been flattered, perhaps, but, on the contrary, my anger +grew; her movement to pass by me as if I were a wooden post or a piece of +furniture, that unconcerned movement brought it to a head. + +I won’t say I did not know what I was doing, but, certainly, cool +reflection had nothing to do with the circumstance that next moment both +my arms were round her waist. It was an impulsive action, as one +snatches at something falling or escaping; and it had no hypocritical +gentleness about it either. She had no time to make a sound, and the +first kiss I planted on her closed lips was vicious enough to have been a +bite. + +She did not resist, and of course I did not stop at one. She let me go +on, not as if she were inanimate—I felt her there, close against me, +young, full of vigour, of life, a strong desirable creature, but as if +she did not care in the least, in the absolute assurance of her safety, +what I did or left undone. Our faces brought close together in this +storm of haphazard caresses, her big, black, wide-open eyes looked into +mine without the girl appearing either angry or pleased or moved in any +way. In that steady gaze which seemed impersonally to watch my madness I +could detect a slight surprise, perhaps—nothing more. I showered kisses +upon her face and there did not seem to be any reason why this should not +go on for ever. + +That thought flashed through my head, and I was on the point of +desisting, when, all at once, she began to struggle with a sudden +violence which all but freed her instantly, which revived my exasperation +with her, indeed a fierce desire never to let her go any more. I +tightened my embrace in time, gasping out: “No—you don’t!” as if she were +my mortal enemy. On her part not a word was said. Putting her hands +against my chest, she pushed with all her might without succeeding to +break the circle of my arms. Except that she seemed thoroughly awake +now, her eyes gave me no clue whatever. To meet her black stare was like +looking into a deep well, and I was totally unprepared for her change of +tactics. Instead of trying to tear my hands apart, she flung herself +upon my breast and with a downward, undulating, serpentine motion, a +quick sliding dive, she got away from me smoothly. It was all very +swift; I saw her pick up the tail of her wrapper and run for the door at +the end of the verandah not very gracefully. She appeared to be limping +a little—and then she vanished; the door swung behind her so noiselessly +that I could not believe it was completely closed. I had a distinct +suspicion of her black eye being at the crack to watch what I would do. +I could not make up my mind whether to shake my fist in that direction or +blow a kiss. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +EITHER would have been perfectly consistent with my feelings. I gazed at +the door, hesitating, but in the end I did neither. The monition of some +sixth sense—the sense of guilt, maybe, that sense which always acts too +late, alas!—warned me to look round; and at once I became aware that the +conclusion of this tumultuous episode was likely to be a matter of lively +anxiety. Jacobus was standing in the doorway of the dining-room. How +long he had been there it was impossible to guess; and remembering my +struggle with the girl I thought he must have been its mute witness from +beginning to end. But this supposition seemed almost incredible. +Perhaps that impenetrable girl had heard him come in and had got away in +time. + +He stepped on to the verandah in his usual manner, heavy-eyed, with glued +lips. I marvelled at the girl’s resemblance to this man. Those long, +Egyptian eyes, that low forehead of a stupid goddess, she had found in +the sawdust of the circus; but all the rest of the face, the design and +the modelling, the rounded chin, the very lips—all that was Jacobus, +fined down, more finished, more expressive. + +His thick hand fell on and grasped with force the back of a light chair +(there were several standing about) and I perceived the chance of a +broken head at the end of all this—most likely. My mortification was +extreme. The scandal would be horrible; that was unavoidable. But how +to act so as to satisfy myself I did not know. I stood on my guard and +at any rate faced him. There was nothing else for it. Of one thing I +was certain, that, however brazen my attitude, it could never equal the +characteristic Jacobus impudence. + +He gave me his melancholy, glued smile and sat down. I own I was +relieved. The perspective of passing from kisses to blows had nothing +particularly attractive in it. Perhaps—perhaps he had seen nothing? He +behaved as usual, but he had never before found me alone on the verandah. +If he had alluded to it, if he had asked: “Where’s Alice?” or something +of the sort, I would have been able to judge from the tone. He would +give me no opportunity. The striking peculiarity was that he had never +looked up at me yet. “He knows,” I said to myself confidently. And my +contempt for him relieved my disgust with myself. + +“You are early home,” I remarked. + +“Things are very quiet; nothing doing at the store to-day,” he explained +with a cast-down air. + +“Oh, well, you know, I am off,” I said, feeling that this, perhaps, was +the best thing to do. + +“Yes,” he breathed out. “Day after to-morrow.” + +This was not what I had meant; but as he gazed persistently on the floor, +I followed the direction of his glance. In the absolute stillness of the +house we stared at the high-heeled slipper the girl had lost in her +flight. We stared. It lay overturned. + +After what seemed a very long time to me, Jacobus hitched his chair +forward, stooped with extended arm and picked it up. It looked a slender +thing in his big, thick hands. It was not really a slipper, but a low +shoe of blue, glazed kid, rubbed and shabby. It had straps to go over +the instep, but the girl only thrust her feet in, after her slovenly +manner. Jacobus raised his eyes from the shoe to look at me. + +“Sit down, Captain,” he said at last, in his subdued tone. + +As if the sight of that shoe had renewed the spell, I gave up suddenly +the idea of leaving the house there and then. It had become impossible. +I sat down, keeping my eyes on the fascinating object. Jacobus turned +his daughter’s shoe over and over in his cushioned paws as if studying +the way the thing was made. He contemplated the thin sole for a time; +then glancing inside with an absorbed air: + +“I am glad I found you here, Captain.” + +I answered this by some sort of grunt, watching him covertly. Then I +added: “You won’t have much more of me now.” + +He was still deep in the interior of that shoe on which my eyes too were +resting. + +“Have you thought any more of this deal in potatoes I spoke to you about +the other day?” + +“No, I haven’t,” I answered curtly. He checked my movement to rise by an +austere, commanding gesture of the hand holding that fatal shoe. I +remained seated and glared at him. “You know I don’t trade.” + +“You ought to, Captain. You ought to.” + +I reflected. If I left that house now I would never see the girl again. +And I felt I must see her once more, if only for an instant. It was a +need, not to be reasoned with, not to be disregarded. No, I did not want +to go away. I wanted to stay for one more experience of that strange +provoking sensation and of indefinite desire, the habit of which had made +me—me of all people!—dread the prospect of going to sea. + +“Mr. Jacobus,” I pronounced slowly. “Do you really think that upon the +whole and taking various’ matters into consideration—I mean everything, +do you understand?—it would be a good thing for me to trade, let us say, +with you?” + +I waited for a while. He went on looking at the shoe which he held now +crushed in the middle, the worn point of the toe and the high heel +protruding on each side of his heavy fist. + +“That will be all right,” he said, facing me squarely at last. + +“Are you sure?” + +“You’ll find it quite correct, Captain.” He had uttered his habitual +phrases in his usual placid, breath-saving voice and stood my hard, +inquisitive stare sleepily without as much as a wink. + +“Then let us trade,” I said, turning my shoulder to him. “I see you are +bent on it.” + +I did not want an open scandal, but I thought that outward decency may be +bought too dearly at times. I included Jacobus, myself, the whole +population of the island, in the same contemptuous disgust as though we +had been partners in an ignoble transaction. And the remembered vision +at sea, diaphanous and blue, of the Pearl of the Ocean at sixty miles +off; the unsubstantial, clear marvel of it as if evoked by the art of a +beautiful and pure magic, turned into a thing of horrors too. Was this +the fortune this vaporous and rare apparition had held for me in its hard +heart, hidden within the shape as of fair dreams and mist? Was this my +luck? + +“I think”—Jacobus became suddenly audible after what seemed the silence +of vile meditation—“that you might conveniently take some thirty tons. +That would be about the lot, Captain.” + +“Would it? The lot! I dare say it would be convenient, but I haven’t +got enough money for that.” + +I had never seen him so animated. + +“No!” he exclaimed with what I took for the accent of grim menace. +“That’s a pity.” He paused, then, unrelenting: “How much money have you +got, Captain?” he inquired with awful directness. + +It was my turn to face him squarely. I did so and mentioned the amount I +could dispose of. And I perceived that he was disappointed. He thought +it over, his calculating gaze lost in mine, for quite a long time before +he came out in a thoughtful tone with the rapacious suggestion: + +“You could draw some more from your charterers. That would be quite +easy, Captain.” + +“No, I couldn’t,” I retorted brusquely. “I’ve drawn my salary up to +date, and besides, the ship’s accounts are closed.” + +I was growing furious. I pursued: “And I’ll tell you what: if I could do +it I wouldn’t.” Then throwing off all restraint, I added: “You are a bit +too much of a Jacobus, Mr. Jacobus.” + +The tone alone was insulting enough, but he remained tranquil, only a +little puzzled, till something seemed to dawn upon him; but the unwonted +light in his eyes died out instantly. As a Jacobus on his native heath, +what a mere skipper chose to say could not touch him, outcast as he was. +As a ship-chandler he could stand anything. All I caught of his mumble +was a vague—“quite correct,” than which nothing could have been more +egregiously false at bottom—to my view, at least. But I remembered—I had +never forgotten—that I must see the girl. I did not mean to go. I meant +to stay in the house till I had seen her once more. + +“Look here!” I said finally. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take as +many of your confounded potatoes as my money will buy, on condition that +you go off at once down to the wharf to see them loaded in the lighter +and sent alongside the ship straight away. Take the invoice and a signed +receipt with you. Here’s the key of my desk. Give it to Burns. He will +pay you.” + +He got up from his chair before I had finished speaking, but he refused +to take the key. Burns would never do it. He wouldn’t like to ask him +even. + +“Well, then,” I said, eyeing him slightingly, “there’s nothing for it, +Mr. Jacobus, but you must wait on board till I come off to settle with +you.” + +“That will be all right, Captain. I will go at once.” + +He seemed at a loss what to do with the girl’s shoe he was still holding +in his fist. Finally, looking dully at me, he put it down on the chair +from which he had risen. + +“And you, Captain? Won’t you come along, too, just to see—” + +“Don’t bother about me. I’ll take care of myself.” + +He remained perplexed for a moment, as if trying to understand; and then +his weighty: “Certainly, certainly, Captain,” seemed to be the outcome of +some sudden thought. His big chest heaved. Was it a sigh? As he went +out to hurry off those potatoes he never looked back at me. + +I waited till the noise of his footsteps had died out of the dining-room, +and I waited a little longer. Then turning towards the distant door I +raised my voice along the verandah: + +“Alice!” + +Nothing answered me, not even a stir behind the door. Jacobus’s house +might have been made empty for me to make myself at home in. I did not +call again. I had become aware of a great discouragement. I was +mentally jaded, morally dejected. I turned to the garden again, sitting +down with my elbows spread on the low balustrade, and took my head in my +hands. + +The evening closed upon me. The shadows lengthened, deepened, mingled +together into a pool of twilight in which the flower-beds glowed like +coloured embers; whiffs of heavy scent came to me as if the dusk of this +hemisphere were but the dimness of a temple and the garden an enormous +censer swinging before the altar of the stars. The colours of the +blossoms deepened, losing their glow one by one. + +The girl, when I turned my head at a slight noise, appeared to me very +tall and slender, advancing with a swaying limp, a floating and uneven +motion which ended in the sinking of her shadowy form into the deep low +chair. And I don’t know why or whence I received the impression that she +had come too late. She ought to have appeared at my call. She ought to +have . . . It was as if a supreme opportunity had been missed. + +I rose and took a seat close to her, nearly opposite her arm-chair. Her +ever discontented voice addressed me at once, contemptuously: + +“You are still here.” + +I pitched mine low. + +“You have come out at last.” + +“I came to look for my shoe—before they bring in the lights.” + +It was her harsh, enticing whisper, subdued, not very steady, but its low +tremulousness gave me no thrill now. I could only make out the oval of +her face, her uncovered throat, the long, white gleam of her eyes. She +was mysterious enough. Her hands were resting on the arms of the chair. +But where was the mysterious and provoking sensation which was like the +perfume of her flower-like youth? I said quietly: + +“I have got your shoe here.” She made no sound and I continued: “You had +better give me your foot and I will put it on for you.” + +She made no movement. I bent low down and groped for her foot under the +flounces of the wrapper. She did not withdraw it and I put on the shoe, +buttoning the instep-strap. It was an inanimate foot. I lowered it +gently to the floor. + +“If you buttoned the strap you would not be losing your shoe, Miss Don’t +Care,” I said, trying to be playful without conviction. I felt more like +wailing over the lost illusion of vague desire, over the sudden +conviction that I would never find again near her the strange, half-evil, +half-tender sensation which had given its acrid flavour to so many days, +which had made her appear tragic and promising, pitiful and provoking. +That was all over. + +“Your father picked it up,” I said, thinking she may just as well be told +of the fact. + +“I am not afraid of papa—by himself,” she declared scornfully. + +“Oh! It’s only in conjunction with his disreputable associates, +strangers, the ‘riff-raff of Europe’ as your charming aunt or great-aunt +says—men like me, for instance—that you—” + +“I am not afraid of you,” she snapped out. + +“That’s because you don’t know that I am now doing business with your +father. Yes, I am in fact doing exactly what he wants me to do. I’ve +broken my promise to you. That’s the sort of man I am. And now—aren’t +you afraid? If you believe what that dear, kind, truthful old lady says +you ought to be.” + +It was with unexpected modulated softness that the affirmed: + +“No. I am not afraid.” She hesitated. . . . “Not now.” + +“Quite right. You needn’t be. I shall not see you again before I go to +sea.” I rose and stood near her chair. “But I shall often think of you +in this old garden, passing under the trees over there, walking between +these gorgeous flower-beds. You must love this garden—” + +“I love nothing.” + +I heard in her sullen tone the faint echo of that resentfully tragic note +which I had found once so provoking. But it left me unmoved except for a +sudden and weary conviction of the emptiness of all things under Heaven. + +“Good-bye, Alice,” I said. + +She did not answer, she did not move. To merely take her hand, shake it, +and go away seemed impossible, almost improper. I stooped without haste +and pressed my lips to her smooth forehead. This was the moment when I +realised clearly with a sort of terror my complete detachment from that +unfortunate creature. And as I lingered in that cruel self-knowledge I +felt the light touch of her arms falling languidly on my neck and +received a hasty, awkward, haphazard kiss which missed my lips. No! She +was not afraid; but I was no longer moved. Her arms slipped off my neck +slowly, she made no sound, the deep wicker arm-chair creaked slightly; +only a sense of my dignity prevented me fleeing headlong from that +catastrophic revelation. + +I traversed the dining-room slowly. I thought: She’s listening to my +footsteps; she can’t help it; she’ll hear me open and shut that door. +And I closed it as gently behind me as if I had been a thief retreating +with his ill-gotten booty. During that stealthy act I experienced the +last touch of emotion in that house, at the thought of the girl I had +left sitting there in the obscurity, with her heavy hair and empty eyes +as black as the night itself, staring into the walled garden, silent, +warm, odorous with the perfume of imprisoned flowers, which, like +herself, were lost to sight in a world buried in darkness. + +The narrow, ill-lighted, rustic streets I knew so well on my way to the +harbour were extremely quiet. I felt in my heart that the further one +ventures the better one understands how everything in our life is common, +short, and empty; that it is in seeking the unknown in our sensations +that we discover how mediocre are our attempts and how soon defeated! +Jacobus’s boatman was waiting at the steps with an unusual air of +readiness. He put me alongside the ship, but did not give me his +confidential “Good-evening, sah,” and, instead of shoving off at once, +remained holding by the ladder. + +I was a thousand miles from commercial affairs, when on the dark +quarter-deck Mr. Burns positively rushed at me, stammering with +excitement. He had been pacing the deck distractedly for hours awaiting +my arrival. Just before sunset a lighter loaded with potatoes had come +alongside with that fat ship-chandler himself sitting on the pile of +sacks. He was now stuck immovable in the cabin. What was the meaning of +it all? Surely I did not— + +“Yes, Mr. Burns, I did,” I cut him short. He was beginning to make +gestures of despair when I stopped that, too, by giving him the key of my +desk and desiring him, in a tone which admitted of no argument, to go +below at once, pay Mr. Jacobus’s bill, and send him out of the ship. + +“I don’t want to see him,” I confessed frankly, climbing the poop-ladder. +I felt extremely tired. Dropping on the seat of the skylight, I gave +myself up to idle gazing at the lights about the quay and at the black +mass of the mountain on the south side of the harbour. I never heard +Jacobus leave the ship with every single sovereign of my ready cash in +his pocket. I never heard anything till, a long time afterwards, Mr. +Burns, unable to contain himself any longer, intruded upon me with his +ridiculously angry lamentations at my weakness and good nature. + +“Of course, there’s plenty of room in the after-hatch. But they are sure +to go rotten down there. Well! I never heard . . . seventeen tons! I +suppose I must hoist in that lot first thing to-morrow morning.” + +“I suppose you must. Unless you drop them overboard. But I’m afraid you +can’t do that. I wouldn’t mind myself, but it’s forbidden to throw +rubbish into the harbour, you know.” + +“That is the truest word you have said for many a day, sir—rubbish. +That’s just what I expect they are. Nearly eighty good gold sovereigns +gone; a perfectly clean sweep of your drawer, sir. Bless me if I +understand!” + +As it was impossible to throw the right light on this commercial +transaction I left him to his lamentations and under the impression that +I was a hopeless fool. Next day I did not go ashore. For one thing, I +had no money to go ashore with—no, not enough to buy a cigarette. +Jacobus had made a clean sweep. But that was not the only reason. The +Pearl of the Ocean had in a few short hours grown odious to me. And I +did not want to meet any one. My reputation had suffered. I knew I was +the object of unkind and sarcastic comments. + +The following morning at sunrise, just as our stern-fasts had been let go +and the tug plucked us out from between the buoys, I saw Jacobus standing +up in his boat. The nigger was pulling hard; several baskets of +provisions for ships were stowed between the thwarts. The father of +Alice was going his morning round. His countenance was tranquil and +friendly. He raised his arm and shouted something with great heartiness. +But his voice was of the sort that doesn’t carry any distance; all I +could catch faintly, or rather guess at, were the words “next time” and +“quite correct.” And it was only of these last that I was certain. +Raising my arm perfunctorily for all response, I turned away. I rather +resented the familiarity of the thing. Hadn’t I settled accounts finally +with him by means of that potato bargain? + +This being a harbour story it is not my purpose to speak of our passage. +I was glad enough to be at sea, but not with the gladness of old days. +Formerly I had no memories to take away with me. I shared in the blessed +forgetfulness of sailors, that forgetfulness natural and invincible, +which resembles innocence in so far that it prevents self-examination. +Now however I remembered the girl. During the first few days I was for +ever questioning myself as to the nature of facts and sensations +connected with her person and with my conduct. + +And I must say also that Mr. Burns’ intolerable fussing with those +potatoes was not calculated to make me forget the part which I had +played. He looked upon it as a purely commercial transaction of a +particularly foolish kind, and his devotion—if it was devotion and not +mere cussedness as I came to regard it before long—inspired him with a +zeal to minimise my loss as much as possible. Oh, yes! He took care of +those infamous potatoes with a vengeance, as the saying goes. + +Everlastingly, there was a tackle over the after-hatch and everlastingly +the watch on deck were pulling up, spreading out, picking over, +rebagging, and lowering down again, some part of that lot of potatoes. +My bargain with all its remotest associations, mental and visual—the +garden of flowers and scents, the girl with her provoking contempt and +her tragic loneliness of a hopeless castaway—was everlastingly dangled +before my eyes, for thousands of miles along the open sea. And as if by +a satanic refinement of irony it was accompanied by a most awful smell. +Whiffs from decaying potatoes pursued me on the poop, they mingled with +my thoughts, with my food, poisoned my very dreams. They made an +atmosphere of corruption for the ship. + +I remonstrated with Mr. Burns about this excessive care. I would have +been well content to batten the hatch down and let them perish under the +deck. + +That perhaps would have been unsafe. The horrid emanations might have +flavoured the cargo of sugar. They seemed strong enough to taint the +very ironwork. In addition Mr. Burns made it a personal matter. He +assured me he knew how to treat a cargo of potatoes at sea—had been in +the trade as a boy, he said. He meant to make my loss as small as +possible. What between his devotion—it must have been devotion—and his +vanity, I positively dared not give him the order to throw my +commercial-venture overboard. I believe he would have refused point +blank to obey my lawful command. An unprecedented and comical situation +would have been created with which I did not feel equal to deal. + +I welcomed the coming of bad weather as no sailor had ever done. When at +last I hove the ship to, to pick up the pilot outside Port Philip Heads, +the after-hatch had not been opened for more than a week and I might have +believed that no such thing as a potato had ever been on board. + +It was an abominable day, raw, blustering, with great squalls of wind and +rain; the pilot, a cheery person, looked after the ship and chatted to +me, streaming from head to foot; and the heavier the lash of the downpour +the more pleased with himself and everything around him he seemed to be. +He rubbed his wet hands with a satisfaction, which to me, who had stood +that kind of thing for several days and nights, seemed inconceivable in +any non-aquatic creature. + +“You seem to enjoy getting wet, Pilot,” I remarked. + +He had a bit of land round his house in the suburbs and it was of his +garden he was thinking. At the sound of the word garden, unheard, +unspoken for so many days, I had a vision of gorgeous colour, of sweet +scents, of a girlish figure crouching in a chair. Yes. That was a +distinct emotion breaking into the peace I had found in the sleepless +anxieties of my responsibility during a week of dangerous bad weather. +The Colony, the pilot explained, had suffered from unparalleled drought. +This was the first decent drop of water they had had for seven months. +The root crops were lost. And, trying to be casual, but with visible +interest, he asked me if I had perchance any potatoes to spare. + +Potatoes! I had managed to forget them. In a moment I felt plunged into +corruption up to my neck. Mr. Burns was making eyes at me behind the +pilot’s back. + +Finally, he obtained a ton, and paid ten pounds for it. This was twice +the price of my bargain with Jacobus. The spirit of covetousness woke up +in me. That night, in harbour, before I slept, the Custom House galley +came alongside. While his underlings were putting seals on the +storerooms, the officer in charge took me aside confidentially. “I say, +Captain, you don’t happen to have any potatoes to sell.” + +Clearly there was a potato famine in the land. I let him have a ton for +twelve pounds and he went away joyfully. That night I dreamt of a pile +of gold in the form of a grave in which a girl was buried, and woke up +callous with greed. On calling at my ship-broker’s office, that man, +after the usual business had been transacted, pushed his spectacles up on +his forehead. + +“I was thinking, Captain, that coming from the Pearl of the Ocean you may +have some potatoes to sell.” + +I said negligently: “Oh, yes, I could spare you a ton. Fifteen pounds.” + +He exclaimed: “I say!” But after studying my face for a while accepted +my terms with a faint grimace. It seems that these people could not +exist without potatoes. I could. I didn’t want to see a potato as long +as I lived; but the demon of lucre had taken possession of me. How the +news got about I don’t know, but, returning on board rather late, I found +a small group of men of the coster type hanging about the waist, while +Mr. Burns walked to and fro the quarterdeck loftily, keeping a triumphant +eye on them. They had come to buy potatoes. + +“These chaps have been waiting here in the sun for hours,” Burns +whispered to me excitedly. “They have drank the water-cask dry. Don’t +you throw away your chances, sir. You are too good-natured.” + +I selected a man with thick legs and a man with a cast in his eye to +negotiate with; simply because they were easily distinguishable from the +rest. “You have the money on you?” I inquired, before taking them down +into the cabin. + +“Yes, sir,” they answered in one voice, slapping their pockets. I liked +their air of quiet determination. Long before the end of the day all the +potatoes were sold at about three times the price I had paid for them. +Mr. Burns, feverish and exulting, congratulated himself on his skilful +care of my commercial venture, but hinted plainly that I ought to have +made more of it. + +That night I did not sleep very well. I thought of Jacobus by fits and +starts, between snatches of dreams concerned with castaways starving on a +desert island covered with flowers. It was extremely unpleasant. In the +morning, tired and unrefreshed, I sat down and wrote a long letter to my +owners, giving them a carefully-thought-out scheme for the ship’s +employment in the East and about the China Seas for the next two years. +I spent the day at that task and felt somewhat more at peace when it was +done. + +Their reply came in due course. They were greatly struck with my +project; but considering that, notwithstanding the unfortunate difficulty +with the bags (which they trusted I would know how to guard against in +the future), the voyage showed a very fair profit, they thought it would +be better to keep the ship in the sugar trade—at least for the present. + +I turned over the page and read on: + +“We have had a letter from our good friend Mr. Jacobus. We are pleased +to see how well you have hit it off with him; for, not to speak of his +assistance in the unfortunate matter of the bags, he writes us that +should you, by using all possible dispatch, manage to bring the ship back +early in the season he would be able to give us a good rate of freight. +We have no doubt that your best endeavours . . . etc. . . etc.” + +I dropped the letter and sat motionless for a long time. Then I wrote my +answer (it was a short one) and went ashore myself to post it. But I +passed one letter-box, then another, and in the end found myself going up +Collins Street with the letter still in my pocket—against my heart. +Collins Street at four o’clock in the afternoon is not exactly a desert +solitude; but I had never felt more isolated from the rest of mankind as +when I walked that day its crowded pavement, battling desperately with my +thoughts and feeling already vanquished. + +There came a moment when the awful tenacity of Jacobus, the man of one +passion and of one idea, appeared to me almost heroic. He had not given +me up. He had gone again to his odious brother. And then he appeared to +me odious himself. Was it for his own sake or for the sake of the poor +girl? And on that last supposition the memory of the kiss which missed +my lips appalled me; for whatever he had seen, or guessed at, or risked, +he knew nothing of that. Unless the girl had told him. How could I go +back to fan that fatal spark with my cold breath? No, no, that +unexpected kiss had to be paid for at its full price. + +At the first letter-box I came to I stopped and reaching into my +breast-pocket I took out the letter—it was as if I were plucking out my +very heart—and dropped it through the slit. Then I went straight on +board. + +I wondered what dreams I would have that night; but as it turned out I +did not sleep at all. At breakfast I informed Mr. Burns that I had +resigned my command. + +He dropped his knife and fork and looked at me with indignation. + +“You have, sir! I thought you loved the ship.” + +“So I do, Burns,” I said. “But the fact is that the Indian Ocean and +everything that is in it has lost its charm for me. I am going home as +passenger by the Suez Canal.” + +“Everything that is in it,” he repeated angrily. “I’ve never heard +anybody talk like this. And to tell you the truth, sir, all the time we +have been together I’ve never quite made you out. What’s one ocean more +than another? Charm, indeed!” + +He was really devoted to me, I believe. But he cheered up when I told +him that I had recommended him for my successor. + +“Anyhow,” he remarked, “let people say what they like, this Jacobus has +served your turn. I must admit that this potato business has paid +extremely well. Of course, if only you had—” + +“Yes, Mr. Burns,” I interrupted. “Quite a smile of fortune.” + +But I could not tell him that it was driving me out of the ship I had +learned to love. And as I sat heavy-hearted at that parting, seeing all +my plans destroyed, my modest future endangered—for this command was like +a foot in the stirrup for a young man—he gave up completely for the first +time his critical attitude. + +“A wonderful piece of luck!” he said. + + + + +THE SECRET SHARER +AN EPISODE FROM THE COAST + + +CHAPTER I + + +ON my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a +mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in +its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if +abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other +end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the +eye could reach. To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting ruins +of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its foundations set in a +blue sea that itself looked solid, so still and stable did it lie below +my feet; even the track of light from the westering sun shone smoothly, +without that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible ripple. +And when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had +just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the +flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and +unmarked closeness, in one levelled floor half brown, half blue under the +enormous dome of the sky. Corresponding in their insignificance to the +islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one on each side of the +only fault in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the river Meinam +we had just left on the first preparatory stage of our homeward journey; +and, far back on the inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove +surrounding the great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye +could rest from the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the +horizon. Here and there gleams as of a few scattered pieces of silver +marked the windings of the great river; and on the nearest of them, just +within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land became lost to my +sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the impassive earth had +swallowed her up without an effort, without a tremor. My eye followed +the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there, above the plain, +according to the devious curves of the stream, but always fainter and +farther away, till I lost it at last behind the mitre-shaped hill of the +great pagoda. And then I was left alone with my ship, anchored at the +head of the Gulf of Siam. + +She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in an +immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by +the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not +a sound in her—and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on +the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky. In this +breathless pause at the threshold of a long passage we seemed to be +measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed +task of both our existences to be carried out, far from all human eyes, +with only sky and sea for spectators and for judges. + +There must have been some glare in the air to interfere with one’s sight, +because it was only just before the sun left us that my roaming eyes made +out beyond the highest ridge of the principal islet of the group +something which did away with the solemnity of perfect solitude. The +tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with tropical suddenness a swarm +of stars came out above the shadowy earth, while I lingered yet, my hand +resting lightly on my ship’s rail as if on the shoulder of a trusted +friend. But, with all that multitude of celestial bodies staring down at +one, the comfort of quiet communion with her was gone for good. And +there were also disturbing sounds by this time—voices, footsteps forward; +the steward flitted along the maindeck, a busily ministering spirit; a +hand-bell tinkled urgently under the poop-deck. . . . + +I found my two officers waiting for me near the supper table, in the +lighted cuddy. We sat down at once, and as I helped the chief mate, I +said: + +“Are you aware that there is a ship anchored inside the islands? I saw +her mastheads above the ridge as the sun went down.” + +He raised sharply his simple face, overcharged by a terrible growth of +whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations: “Bless my soul, sir! You +don’t say so!” + +My second mate was a round-cheeked, silent young man, grave beyond his +years, I thought; but as our eyes happened to meet I detected a slight +quiver on his lips. I looked down at once. It was not my part to +encourage sneering on board my ship. It must be said, too, that I knew +very little of my officers. In consequence of certain events of no +particular significance, except to myself, I had been appointed to the +command only a fortnight before. Neither did I know much of the hands +forward. All these people had been together for eighteen months or so, +and my position was that of the only stranger on board. I mention this +because it has some bearing on what is to follow. But what I felt most +was my being a stranger to the ship; and if all the truth must be told, I +was somewhat of a stranger to myself. The youngest man on board (barring +the second mate), and untried as yet by a position of the fullest +responsibility, I was willing to take the adequacy of the others for +granted. They had simply to be equal to their tasks; but I wondered how +far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one’s own +personality every man sets up for himself secretly. + + * * * * * + +Meantime the chief mate, with an almost visible effect of collaboration +on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers, was trying to +evolve a theory of the anchored ship. His dominant trait was to take all +things into earnest consideration. He was of a painstaking turn of mind. +As he used to say, he “liked to account to himself” for practically +everything that came in his way, down to a miserable scorpion he had +found in his cabin a week before. The why and the wherefore of that +scorpion—how it got on board and came to select his room rather than the +pantry (which was a dark place and more what a scorpion would be partial +to), and how on earth it managed to drown itself in the inkwell of his +writing-desk—had exercised him infinitely. The ship within the islands +was much more easily accounted for; and just as we were about to rise +from table he made his pronouncement. She was, he doubted not, a ship +from home lately arrived. Probably she drew too much water to cross the +bar except at the top of spring tides. Therefore she went into that +natural harbour to wait for a few days in preference to remaining in an +open roadstead. + +“That’s so,” confirmed the second mate, suddenly, in his slightly hoarse +voice. “She draws over twenty feet. She’s the Liverpool ship _Sephora_ +with a cargo of coal. Hundred and twenty-three days from Cardiff.” + +We looked at him in surprise. + +“The tugboat skipper told me when he came on board for your letters, +sir,” explained the young man. “He expects to take her up the river the +day after to-morrow.” + +After thus overwhelming us with the extent of his information he slipped +out of the cabin. The mate observed regretfully that he “could not +account for that young fellow’s whims.” What prevented him telling us +all about it at once, he wanted to know. + +I detained him as he was making a move. For the last two days the crew +had had plenty of hard work, and the night before they had very little +sleep. I felt painfully that I—a stranger—was doing something unusual +when I directed him to let all hands turn in without setting an +anchor-watch. I proposed to keep on deck myself till one o’clock or +thereabouts. I would get the second mate to relieve me at that hour. + +“He will turn out the cook and the steward at four,” I concluded, “and +then give you a call. Of course at the slightest sign of any sort of +wind we’ll have the hands up and make a start at once.” + +He concealed his astonishment. “Very well, sir.” Outside the cuddy he +put his head in the second mate’s door to inform him of my unheard-of +caprice to take a five hours’ anchor-watch on myself. I heard the other +raise his voice incredulously—“What? The captain himself?” Then a few +more murmurs, a door closed, then another. A few moments later I went on +deck. + +My strangeness, which had made me sleepless, had prompted that +unconventional arrangement, as if I had expected in those solitary hours +of the night to get on terms with the ship of which I knew nothing, +manned by men of whom I knew very little more. Fast alongside a wharf, +littered like any ship in port with a tangle of unrelated things, invaded +by unrelated shore people, I had hardly seen her yet properly. Now, as +she lay cleared for sea, the stretch of her maindeck seemed to me very +fine under the stars. Very fine, very roomy for her size, and very +inviting. I descended the poop and paced the waist, my mind picturing to +myself the coming passage through the Malay Archipelago, down the Indian +Ocean, and up the Atlantic. All its phases were familiar enough to me, +every characteristic, all the alternatives which were likely to face me +on the high seas—everything! . . . except the novel responsibility of +command. But I took heart from the reasonable thought that the ship was +like other ships, the men like other men, and that the sea was not likely +to keep any special surprises expressly for my discomfiture. + +Arrived at that comforting conclusion, I bethought myself of a cigar and +went below to get it. All was still down there. Everybody at the after +end of the ship was sleeping profoundly. I came out again on the +quarter-deck, agreeably at ease in my sleeping-suit on that warm +breathless night, barefooted, a glowing cigar in my teeth, and, going +forward, I was met by the profound silence of the fore end of the ship. +Only as I passed the door of the forecastle I heard a deep, quiet, +trustful sigh of some sleeper inside. And suddenly I rejoiced in the +great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my +choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, +invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute +straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose. + +The riding-light in the fore-rigging burned with a clear, untroubled, as +if symbolic, flame, confident and bright in the mysterious shades of the +night. Passing on my way aft along the other side of the ship, I +observed that the rope side-ladder, put over, no doubt, for the master of +the tug when he came to fetch away our letters, had not been hauled in as +it should have been. I became annoyed at this, for exactitude in small +matters is the very soul of discipline. Then I reflected that I had +myself peremptorily dismissed my officers from duty, and by my own act +had prevented the anchor-watch being formally set and things properly +attended to. I asked myself whether it was wise ever to interfere with +the established routine of duties even from the kindest of motives. My +action might have made me appear eccentric. Goodness only knew how that +absurdly whiskered mate would “account” for my conduct, and what the +whole ship thought of that informality of their new captain. I was vexed +with myself. + +Not from compunction certainly, but, as it were mechanically, I proceeded +to get the ladder in myself. Now a side-ladder of that sort is a light +affair and comes in easily, yet my vigorous tug, which should have +brought it flying on board, merely recoiled upon my body in a totally +unexpected jerk. What the devil! . . . I was so astounded by the +immovableness of that ladder that I remained stock-still, trying to +account for it to myself like that imbecile mate of mine. In the end, of +course, I put my head over the rail. + +The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy +shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale +floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a faint +flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the +naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the elusive, +silent play of summer lightning in a night sky. With a gasp I saw +revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back +immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One hand, +awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete but for +the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping mouth +with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute stillness +of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his face, a +dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship’s side. But even then I could +only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired head. +However, it was enough for the horrid, frost-bound sensation which had +gripped me about the chest to pass off. The moment of vain exclamations +was past, too. I only climbed on the spare spar and leaned over the rail +as far as I could, to bring my eyes nearer to that mystery floating +alongside. + +As he hung by the ladder, like a resting swimmer, the sea-lightning +played about his limbs at every stir; and he appeared in it ghastly, +silvery, fish-like. He remained as mute as a fish, too. He made no +motion to get out of the water, either. It was inconceivable that he +should not attempt to come on board, and strangely troubling to suspect +that perhaps he did not want to. And my first words were prompted by +just that troubled incertitude. + +“What’s the matter?” I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to the +face upturned exactly under mine. + +“Cramp,” it answered, no louder. Then slightly anxious, “I say, no need +to call any one.” + +“I was not going to,” I said. + +“Are you alone on deck?” + +“Yes.” + +I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go the +ladder to swim away beyond my ken—mysterious as he came. But, for the +moment, this being appearing as if he had risen from the bottom of the +sea (it was certainly the nearest land to the ship) wanted only to know +the time. I told him. And he, down there, tentatively: + +“I suppose your captain’s turned in?” + +“I am sure he isn’t,” I said. + +He seemed to struggle with himself, for I heard something like the low, +bitter murmur of doubt. “What’s the good?” His next words came out with +a hesitating effort. + +“Look here, my man. Could you call him out quietly?” + +I thought the time had come to declare myself. + +“_I_ am the captain.” + +I heard a “By Jove!” whispered at the level of the water. The +phosphorescence flashed in the swirl of the water all about his limbs, +his other hand seized the ladder. + +“My name’s Leggatt.” + +The voice was calm and resolute. A good voice. The self-possession of +that man had somehow induced a corresponding state in myself. It was +very quietly that I remarked: + +“You must be a good swimmer.” + +“Yes. I’ve been in the water practically since nine o’clock. The +question for me now is whether I am to let go this ladder and go on +swimming till I sink from exhaustion, or—to come on board here.” + +I felt this was no mere formula of desperate speech, but a real +alternative in the view of a strong soul. I should have gathered from +this that he was young; indeed, it is only the young who are ever +confronted by such clear issues. But at the time it was pure intuition +on my part. A mysterious communication was established already between +us two—in the face of that silent, darkened tropical sea. I was young, +too; young enough to make no comment. The man in the water began +suddenly to climb up the ladder, and I hastened away from the rail to +fetch some clothes. + +Before entering the cabin I stood still, listening in the lobby at the +foot of the stairs. A faint snore came through the closed door of the +chief mate’s room. The second mate’s door was on the hook, but the +darkness in there was absolutely soundless. He, too, was young and could +sleep like a stone. Remained the steward, but he was not likely to wake +up before he was called. I got a sleeping-suit out of my room and, +coming back on deck, saw the naked man from the sea sitting on the +main-hatch, glimmering white in the darkness, his elbows on his knees and +his head in his hands. In a moment he had concealed his damp body in a +sleeping-suit of the same grey-stripe pattern as the one I was wearing +and followed me like my double on the poop. Together we moved right aft, +barefooted, silent. + +“What is it?” I asked in a deadened voice, taking the lighted lamp out of +the binnacle, and raising it to his face. + +“An ugly business.” + +He had rather regular features; a good mouth; light eyes under somewhat +heavy, dark eyebrows; a smooth, square forehead; no growth on his cheeks; +a small, brown moustache, and a well-shaped, round chin. His expression +was concentrated, meditative, under the inspecting light of the lamp I +held up to his face; such as a man thinking hard in solitude might wear. +My sleeping-suit was just right for his size. A well-knit young fellow +of twenty-five at most. He caught his lower lip with the edge of white, +even teeth. + +“Yes,” I said, replacing the lamp in the binnacle. The warm, heavy +tropical night closed upon his head again. + +“There’s a ship over there,” he murmured. + +“Yes, I know. The _Sephora_. Did you know of us?” + +“Hadn’t the slightest idea. I am the mate of her—” He paused and +corrected himself. “I should say I _was_.” + +“Aha! Something wrong?” + +“Yes. Very wrong indeed. I’ve killed a man.” + +“What do you mean? Just now?” + +“No, on the passage. Weeks ago. Thirty-nine south. When I say a man—” + +“Fit of temper,” I suggested, confidently. + +The shadowy, dark head, like mine, seemed to nod imperceptibly above the +ghostly grey of my sleeping-suit. It was, in the night, as though I had +been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a sombre and immense +mirror. + +“A pretty thing to have to own up to for a Conway boy,” murmured my +double, distinctly. + +“You’re a Conway boy?” + +“I am,” he said, as if startled. Then, slowly . . . “Perhaps you too—” + +It was so; but being a couple of years older I had left before he joined. +After a quick interchange of dates a silence fell; and I thought suddenly +of my absurd mate with his terrific whiskers and the “Bless my soul—you +don’t say so” type of intellect. My double gave me an inkling of his +thoughts by saying: + +“My father’s a parson in Norfolk. Do you see me before a judge and jury +on that charge? For myself I can’t see the necessity. There are fellows +that an angel from heaven—And I am not that. He was one of those +creatures that are just simmering all the time with a silly sort of +wickedness. Miserable devils that have no business to live at all. He +wouldn’t do his duty and wouldn’t let anybody else do theirs. But what’s +the good of talking! You know well enough the sort of ill-conditioned +snarling cur—” + +He appealed to me as if our experiences had been as identical as our +clothes. And I knew well enough the pestiferous danger of such a +character where there are no means of legal repression. And I knew well +enough also that my double there was no homicidal ruffian. I did not +think of asking him for details, and he told me the story roughly in +brusque, disconnected sentences. I needed no more. I saw it all going +on as though I were myself inside that other sleeping-suit. + +“It happened while we were setting a reefed foresail, at dusk. Reefed +foresail! You understand the sort of weather. The only sail we had left +to keep the ship running; so you may guess what it had been like for +days. Anxious sort of job, that. He gave me some of his cursed +insolence at the sheet. I tell you I was overdone with this terrific +weather that seemed to have no end to it. Terrific, I tell you—and a +deep ship. I believe the fellow himself was half crazed with funk. It +was no time for gentlemanly reproof, so I turned round and felled him +like an ox. He up and at me. We closed just as an awful sea made for +the ship. All hands saw it coming and took to the rigging, but I had him +by the throat, and went on shaking him like a rat, the men above us +yelling, “Look out! look out!” Then a crash as if the sky had fallen on +my head. They say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be +seen of the ship—just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle head +and of the poop all awash driving along in a smother of foam. It was a +miracle that they found us, jammed together behind the forebits. It’s +clear that I meant business, because I was holding him by the throat +still when they picked us up. He was black in the face. It was too much +for them. It seems they rushed us aft together, gripped as we were, +screaming “Murder!” like a lot of lunatics, and broke into the cuddy. +And the ship running for her life, touch and go all the time, any minute +her last in a sea fit to turn your hair grey only a-looking at it. I +understand that the skipper, too, started raving like the rest of them. +The man had been deprived of sleep for more than a week, and to have this +sprung on him at the height of a furious gale nearly drove him out of his +mind. I wonder they didn’t fling me overboard after getting the carcass +of their precious ship-mate out of my fingers. They had rather a job to +separate us, I’ve been told. A sufficiently fierce story to make an old +judge and a respectable jury sit up a bit. The first thing I heard when +I came to myself was the maddening howling of that endless gale, and on +that the voice of the old man. He was hanging on to my bunk, staring +into my face out of his sou’wester. + +“‘Mr. Leggatt, you have killed a man. You can act no longer as chief +mate of this ship.’” + +His care to subdue his voice made it sound monotonous. He rested a hand +on the end of the skylight to steady himself with, and all that time did +not stir a limb, so far as I could see. “Nice little tale for a quiet +tea-party,” he concluded in the same tone. + +One of my hands, too, rested on the end of the skylight; neither did I +stir a limb, so far as I knew. We stood less than a foot from each +other. It occurred to me that if old “Bless my soul—you don’t say so” +were to put his head up the companion and catch sight of us, he would +think he was seeing double, or imagine himself come upon a scene of weird +witchcraft; the strange captain having a quiet confabulation by the wheel +with his own grey ghost. I became very much concerned to prevent +anything of the sort. I heard the other’s soothing undertone. + +“My father’s a parson in Norfolk,” it said. Evidently he had forgotten +he had told me this important fact before. Truly a nice little tale. + +“You had better slip down into my stateroom now,” I said, moving off +stealthily. My double followed my movements; our bare feet made no +sound; I let him in, closed the door with care, and, after giving a call +to the second mate, returned on deck for my relief. + +“Not much sign of any wind yet,” I remarked when he approached. + +“No, sir. Not much,” he assented, sleepily, in his hoarse voice, with +just enough deference, no more, and barely suppressing a yawn. + +“Well, that’s all you have to look out for. You have got your orders.” + +“Yes, sir.” + +I paced a turn or two on the poop and saw him take up his position face +forward with his elbow in the ratlines of the mizzen-rigging before I +went below. The mate’s faint snoring was still going on peacefully. The +cuddy lamp was burning over the table on which stood a vase with flowers, +a polite attention from the ship’s provision merchant—the last flowers we +should see for the next three months at the very least. Two bunches of +bananas hung from the beam symmetrically, one on each side of the +rudder-casing. Everything was as before in the ship—except that two of +her captain’s sleeping-suits were simultaneously in use, one motionless +in the cuddy, the other keeping very still in the captain’s stateroom. + +It must be explained here that my cabin had the form of the capital +letter L the door being within the angle and opening into the short part +of the letter. A couch was to the left, the bed-place to the right; my +writing-desk and the chronometers’ table faced the door. But any one +opening it, unless he stepped right inside, had no view of what I call +the long (or vertical) part of the letter. It contained some lockers +surmounted by a bookcase; and a few clothes, a thick jacket or two, caps, +oilskin coat, and such like, hung on hooks. There was at the bottom of +that part a door opening into my bath-room, which could be entered also +directly from the saloon. But that way was never used. + +The mysterious arrival had discovered the advantage of this particular +shape. Entering my room, lighted strongly by a big bulkhead lamp swung +on gimbals above my writing-desk, I did not see him anywhere till he +stepped out quietly from behind the coats hung in the recessed part. + +“I heard somebody moving about, and went in there at once,” he whispered. + +I, too, spoke under my breath. + +“Nobody is likely to come in here without knocking and getting +permission.” + +He nodded. His face was thin and the sunburn faded, as though he had +been ill. And no wonder. He had been, I heard presently, kept under +arrest in his cabin for nearly seven weeks. But there was nothing sickly +in his eyes or in his expression. He was not a bit like me, really; yet, +as we stood leaning over my bed-place, whispering side by side, with our +dark heads together and our backs to the door, anybody bold enough to +open it stealthily would have been treated to the uncanny sight of a +double captain busy talking in whispers with his other self. + +“But all this doesn’t tell me how you came to hang on to our +side-ladder,” I inquired, in the hardly audible murmurs we used, after he +had told me something more of the proceedings on board the _Sephora_ once +the bad weather was over. + +“When we sighted Java Head I had had time to think all those matters out +several times over. I had six weeks of doing nothing else, and with only +an hour or so every evening for a tramp on the quarter-deck.” + +He whispered, his arms folded on the side of my bed-place, staring +through the open port. And I could imagine perfectly the manner of this +thinking out—a stubborn if not a steadfast operation; something of which +I should have been perfectly incapable. + +“I reckoned it would be dark before we closed with the land,” he +continued, so low that I had to strain my hearing, near as we were to +each other, shoulder touching shoulder almost. “So I asked to speak to +the old man. He always seemed very sick when he came to see me—as if he +could not look me in the face. You know, that foresail saved the ship. +She was too deep to have run long under bare poles. And it was I that +managed to set it for him. Anyway, he came. When I had him in my +cabin—he stood by the door looking at me as if I had the halter round my +neck already—I asked him right away to leave my cabin door unlocked at +night while the ship was going through Sunda Straits. There would be the +Java coast within two or three miles, off Angier Point. I wanted nothing +more. I’ve had a prize for swimming my second year in the Conway.” + +“I can believe it,” I breathed out. + +“God only knows why they locked me in every night. To see some of their +faces you’d have thought they were afraid I’d go about at night +strangling people. Am I a murdering brute? Do I look it? By Jove! if I +had been he wouldn’t have trusted himself like that into my room. You’ll +say I might have chucked him aside and bolted out, there and then—it was +dark already. Well, no. And for the same reason I wouldn’t think of +trying to smash the door. There would have been a rush to stop me at the +noise, and I did not mean to get into a confounded scrimmage. Somebody +else might have got killed—for I would not have broken out only to get +chucked back, and I did not want any more of that work. He refused, +looking more sick than ever. He was afraid of the men, and also of that +old second mate of his who had been sailing with him for years—a +grey-headed old humbug; and his steward, too, had been with him devil +knows how long—seventeen years or more—a dogmatic sort of loafer who +hated me like poison, just because I was the chief mate. No chief mate +ever made more than one voyage in the _Sephora_, you know. Those two old +chaps ran the ship. Devil only knows what the skipper wasn’t afraid of +(all his nerve went to pieces altogether in that hellish spell of bad +weather we had)—of what the law would do to him—of his wife, perhaps. +Oh, yes! she’s on board. Though I don’t think she would have meddled. +She would have been only too glad to have me out of the ship in any way. +The ‘brand of Cain’ business, don’t you see. That’s all right. I was +ready enough to go off wandering on the face of the earth—and that was +price enough to pay for an Abel of that sort. Anyhow, he wouldn’t listen +to me. ‘This thing must take its course. I represent the law here.’ He +was shaking like a leaf. ‘So you won’t?’ ‘No!’ ‘Then I hope you will +be able to sleep on that,’ I said, and turned my back on him. ‘I wonder +that _you_ can,’ cries he, and locks the door. + +“Well, after that, I couldn’t. Not very well. That was three weeks ago. +We have had a slow passage through the Java Sea; drifted about Carimata +for ten days. When we anchored here they thought, I suppose, it was all +right. The nearest land (and that’s five miles) is the ship’s +destination; the consul would soon set about catching me; and there would +have been no object in bolting to these islets there. I don’t suppose +there’s a drop of water on them. I don’t know how it was, but to-night +that steward, after bringing me my supper, went out to let me eat it, and +left the door unlocked. And I ate it—all there was, too. After I had +finished I strolled out on the quarterdeck. I don’t know that I meant to +do anything. A breath of fresh air was all I wanted, I believe. Then a +sudden temptation came over me. I kicked off my slippers and was in the +water before I had made up my mind fairly. Somebody heard the splash and +they raised an awful hullabaloo. ‘He’s gone! Lower the boats! He’s +committed suicide! No, he’s swimming.’ Certainly I was swimming. It’s +not so easy for a swimmer like me to commit suicide by drowning. I +landed on the nearest islet before the boat left the ship’s side. I +heard them pulling about in the dark, hailing, and so on, but after a bit +they gave up. Everything quieted down and the anchorage became as still +as death. I sat down on a stone and began to think. I felt certain they +would start searching for me at daylight. There was no place to hide on +those stony things—and if there had been, what would have been the good? +But now I was clear of that ship, I was not going back. So after a while +I took off all my clothes, tied them up in a bundle with a stone inside, +and dropped them in the deep water on the outer side of that islet. That +was suicide enough for me. Let them think what they liked, but I didn’t +mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank—but that’s not the +same thing. I struck out for another of these little islands, and it was +from that one that I first saw your riding-light. Something to swim for. +I went on easily, and on the way I came upon a flat rock a foot or two +above water. In the daytime, I dare say, you might make it out with a +glass from your poop. I scrambled up on it and rested myself for a bit. +Then I made another start. That last spell must have been over a mile.” + +His whisper was getting fainter and fainter, and all the time he stared +straight out through the port-hole, in which there was not even a star to +be seen. I had not interrupted him. There was something that made +comment impossible in his narrative, or perhaps in himself; a sort of +feeling, a quality, which I can’t find a name for. And when he ceased, +all I found was a futile whisper: “So you swam for our light?” + +“Yes—straight for it. It was something to swim for. I couldn’t see any +stars low down because the coast was in the way, and I couldn’t see the +land, either. The water was like glass. One might have been swimming in +a confounded thousand-feet deep cistern with no place for scrambling out +anywhere; but what I didn’t like was the notion of swimming round and +round like a crazed bullock before I gave out; and as I didn’t mean to go +back . . . No. Do you see me being hauled back, stark naked, off one of +these little islands by the scruff of the neck and fighting like a wild +beast? Somebody would have got killed for certain, and I did not want +any of that. So I went on. Then your ladder—” + +“Why didn’t you hail the ship?” I asked, a little louder. + +He touched my shoulder lightly. Lazy footsteps came right over our heads +and stopped. The second mate had crossed from the other side of the poop +and might have been hanging over the rail, for all we knew. + +“He couldn’t hear us talking—could he?” My double breathed into my very +ear, anxiously. + +His anxiety was an answer, a sufficient answer, to the question I had put +to him. An answer containing all the difficulty of that situation. I +closed the port-hole quietly, to make sure. A louder word might have +been overheard. + +“Who’s that?” he whispered then. + +“My second mate. But I don’t know much more of the fellow than you do.” + +And I told him a little about myself. I had been appointed to take +charge while I least expected anything of the sort, not quite a fortnight +ago. I didn’t know either the ship or the people. Hadn’t had the time +in port to look about me or size anybody up. And as to the crew, all +they knew was that I was appointed to take the ship home. For the rest, +I was almost as much of a stranger on board as himself, I said. And at +the moment I felt it most acutely. I felt that it would take very little +to make me a suspect person in the eyes of the ship’s company. + +He had turned about meantime; and we, the two strangers in the ship, +faced each other in identical attitudes. + +“Your ladder—” he murmured, after a silence. “Who’d have thought of +finding a ladder hanging over at night in a ship anchored out here! I +felt just then a very unpleasant faintness. After the life I’ve been +leading for nine weeks, anybody would have got out of condition. I +wasn’t capable of swimming round as far as your rudder-chains. And, lo +and behold! there was a ladder to get hold of. After I gripped it I said +to myself, ‘What’s the good?’ When I saw a man’s head looking over I +thought I would swim away presently and leave him shouting—in whatever +language it was. I didn’t mind being looked at. I—I liked it. And then +you speaking to me so quietly—as if you had expected me—made me hold on a +little longer. It had been a confounded lonely time—I don’t mean while +swimming. I was glad to talk a little to somebody that didn’t belong to +the _Sephora_. As to asking for the captain, that was a mere impulse. +It could have been no use, with all the ship knowing about me and the +other people pretty certain to be round here in the morning. I don’t +know—I wanted to be seen, to talk with somebody, before I went on. I +don’t know what I would have said. . . . ‘Fine night, isn’t it?’ or +something of the sort.” + +“Do you think they will be round here presently?” I asked with some +incredulity. + +“Quite likely,” he said, faintly. + +He looked extremely haggard all of a sudden. His head rolled on his +shoulders. + +“H’m. We shall see then. Meantime get into that bed,” I whispered. +“Want help? There.” + +It was a rather high bed-place with a set of drawers underneath. This +amazing swimmer really needed the lift I gave him by seizing his leg. He +tumbled in, rolled over on his back, and flung one arm across his eyes. +And then, with his face nearly hidden, he must have looked exactly as I +used to look in that bed. I gazed upon my other self for a while before +drawing across carefully the two green serge curtains which ran on a +brass rod. I thought for a moment of pinning them together for greater +safety, but I sat down on the couch, and once there I felt unwilling to +rise and hunt for a pin. I would do it in a moment. I was extremely +tired, in a peculiarly intimate way, by the strain of stealthiness, by +the effort of whispering and the general secrecy of this excitement. It +was three o’clock by now and I had been on my feet since nine, but I was +not sleepy; I could not have gone to sleep. I sat there, fagged out, +looking at the curtains, trying to clear my mind of the confused +sensation of being in two places at once, and greatly bothered by an +exasperating knocking in my head. It was a relief to discover suddenly +that it was not in my head at all, but on the outside of the door. +Before I could collect myself the words “Come in” were out of my mouth, +and the steward entered with a tray, bringing in my morning coffee. I +had slept, after all, and I was so frightened that I shouted, “This way! +I am here, steward,” as though he had been miles away. He put down the +tray on the table next the couch and only then said, very quietly, “I can +see you are here, sir.” I felt him give me a keen look, but I dared not +meet his eyes just then. He must have wondered why I had drawn the +curtains of my bed before going to sleep on the couch. He went out, +hooking the door open as usual. + +I heard the crew washing decks above me. I knew I would have been told +at once if there had been any wind. Calm, I thought, and I was doubly +vexed. Indeed, I felt dual more than ever. The steward reappeared +suddenly in the doorway. I jumped up from the couch so quickly that he +gave a start. + +“What do you want here?” + +“Close your port, sir—they are washing decks.” + +“It is closed,” I said, reddening. + +“Very well, sir.” But he did not move from the doorway and returned my +stare in an extraordinary, equivocal manner for a time. Then his eyes +wavered, all his expression changed, and in a voice unusually gentle, +almost coaxingly: + +“May I come in to take the empty cup away, sir?” + +“Of course!” I turned my back on him while he popped in and out. Then I +unhooked and closed the door and even pushed the bolt. This sort of +thing could not go on very long. The cabin was as hot as an oven, too. +I took a peep at my double, and discovered that he had not moved, his arm +was still over his eyes; but his chest heaved; his hair was wet; his chin +glistened with perspiration. I reached over him and opened the port. + +“I must show myself on deck,” I reflected. + +Of course, theoretically, I could do what I liked, with no one to say nay +to me within the whole circle of the horizon; but to lock my cabin door +and take the key away I did not dare. Directly I put my head out of the +companion I saw the group of my two officers, the second mate barefooted, +the chief mate in long india-rubber boots, near the break of the poop, +and the steward half-way down the poop-ladder talking to them eagerly. +He happened to catch sight of me and dived, the second ran down on the +main-deck shouting some order or other, and the chief mate came to meet +me, touching his cap. + +There was a sort of curiosity in his eye that I did not like. I don’t +know whether the steward had told them that I was “queer” only, or +downright drunk, but I know the man meant to have a good look at me. I +watched him coming with a smile which, as he got into point-blank range, +took effect and froze his very whiskers. I did not give him time to open +his lips. + +“Square the yards by lifts and braces before the hands go to breakfast.” + +It was the first particular order I had given on board that ship; and I +stayed on deck to see it executed, too. I had felt the need of asserting +myself without loss of time. That sneering young cub got taken down a +peg or two on that occasion, and I also seized the opportunity of having +a good look at the face of every foremast man as they filed past me to go +to the after braces. At breakfast time, eating nothing myself, I +presided with such frigid dignity that the two mates were only too glad +to escape from the cabin as soon as decency permitted; and all the time +the dual working of my mind distracted me almost to the point of +insanity. I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent +on my actions as my own personality, sleeping in that bed, behind that +door which faced me as I sat at the head of the table. It was very much +like being mad, only it was worse because one was aware of it. + +I had to shake him for a solid minute, but when at last he opened his +eyes it was in the full possession of his senses, with an inquiring look. + +“All’s well so far,” I whispered. “Now you must vanish into the +bath-room.” + +He did so, as noiseless as a ghost, and I then rang for the steward, and +facing him boldly, directed him to tidy up my stateroom while I was +having my bath—“and be quick about it.” As my tone admitted of no +excuses, he said, “Yes, sir,” and ran off to fetch his dust-pan and +brushes. I took a bath and did most of my dressing, splashing, and +whistling softly for the steward’s edification, while the secret sharer +of my life stood drawn up bolt upright in that little space, his face +looking very sunken in daylight, his eyelids lowered under the stern, +dark line of his eyebrows drawn together by a slight frown. + +When I left him there to go back to my room the steward was finishing +dusting. I sent for the mate and engaged him in some insignificant +conversation. It was, as it were, trifling with the terrific character +of his whiskers; but my object was to give him an opportunity for a good +look at my cabin. And then I could at last shut, with a clear +conscience, the door of my stateroom and get my double back into the +recessed part. There was nothing else for it. He had to sit still on a +small folding stool, half smothered by the heavy coats hanging there. We +listened to the steward going into the bath-room out of the saloon, +filling the water-bottles there, scrubbing the bath, setting things to +rights, whisk, bang, clatter—out again into the saloon—turn the +key—click. Such was my scheme for keeping my second self invisible. +Nothing better could be contrived under the circumstances. And there we +sat; I at my writing-desk ready to appear busy with some papers, he +behind me, out of sight of the door. It would not have been prudent to +talk in daytime; and I could not have stood the excitement of that queer +sense of whispering to myself. Now and then glancing over my shoulder, I +saw him far back there, sitting rigidly on the low stool, his bare feet +close together, his arms folded, his head hanging on his breast—and +perfectly still. Anybody would have taken him for me. + +I was fascinated by it myself. Every moment I had to glance over my +shoulder. I was looking at him when a voice outside the door said: + +“Beg pardon, sir.” + +“Well!” . . . I kept my eyes on him, and so, when the voice outside the +door announced, “There’s a ship’s boat coming our way, sir,” I saw him +give a start—the first movement he had made for hours. But he did not +raise his bowed head. + +“All right. Get the ladder over.” + +I hesitated. Should I whisper something to him? But what? His +immobility seemed to have been never disturbed. What could I tell him he +did not know already? . . . Finally I went on deck. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +THE skipper of the _Sephora_ had a thin red whisker all round his face, +and the sort of complexion that goes with hair of that colour; also the +particular, rather smeary shade of blue in the eyes. He was not exactly +a showy figure; his shoulders were high, his stature but middling—one leg +slightly more bandy than the other. He shook hands, looking vaguely +around. A spiritless tenacity was his main characteristic, I judged. I +behaved with a politeness which seemed to disconcert him. Perhaps he was +shy. He mumbled to me as if he were ashamed of what he was saying; gave +his name (it was something like Archbold—but at this distance of years I +hardly am sure), his ship’s name, and a few other particulars of that +sort, in the manner of a criminal making a reluctant and doleful +confession. He had had terrible weather on the passage +out—terrible—terrible—wife aboard, too. + +By this time we were seated in the cabin and the steward brought in a +tray with a bottle and glasses. “Thanks! No.” Never took liquor. +Would have some water, though. He drank two tumblerfuls. Terrible +thirsty work. Ever since daylight had been exploring the islands round +his ship. + +“What was that for—fun?” I asked, with an appearance of polite interest. + +“No!” He sighed. “Painful duty.” + +As he persisted in his mumbling and I wanted my double to hear every +word, I hit upon the notion of informing him that I regretted to say I +was hard of hearing. + +“Such a young man, too!” he nodded, keeping his smeary blue, +unintelligent eyes fastened upon me. What was the cause of it—some +disease? he inquired, without the least sympathy and as if he thought +that, if so, I’d got no more than I deserved. + +“Yes; disease,” I admitted in a cheerful tone which seemed to shock him. +But my point was gained, because he had to raise his voice to give me his +tale. It is not worth while to record that version. It was just over +two months since all this had happened, and he had thought so much about +it that he seemed completely muddled as to its bearings, but still +immensely impressed. + +“What would you think of such a thing happening on board your own ship? +I’ve had the _Sephora_ for these fifteen years. I am a well-known +shipmaster.” + +He was densely distressed—and perhaps I should have sympathised with him +if I had been able to detach my mental vision from the unsuspected sharer +of my cabin as though he were my second self. There he was on the other +side of the bulkhead, four or five feet from us, no more, as we sat in +the saloon. I looked politely at Captain Archbold (if that was his +name), but it was the other I saw, in a grey sleeping-suit, seated on a +low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms folded, and every word +said between us falling into the ears of his dark head bowed on his +chest. + +“I have been at sea now, man and boy, for seven-and-thirty years, and +I’ve never heard of such a thing happening in an English ship. And that +it should be my ship. Wife on board, too.” + +I was hardly listening to him. + +“Don’t you think,” I said, “that the heavy sea which, you told me, came +aboard just then might have killed the man? I have seen the sheer weight +of a sea kill a man very neatly, by simply breaking his neck.” + +“Good God!” he uttered, impressively, fixing his smeary blue eyes on me. +“The sea! No man killed by the sea ever looked like that.” He seemed +positively scandalised at my suggestion. And as I gazed at him, +certainly not prepared for anything original on his part, he advanced his +head close to mine and thrust his tongue out at me so suddenly that I +couldn’t help starting back. + +After scoring over my calmness in this graphic way he nodded wisely. If +I had seen the sight, he assured me, I would never forget it as long as I +lived. The weather was too bad to give the corpse a proper sea burial. +So next day at dawn they took it up on the poop, covering its face with a +bit of bunting; he read a short prayer, and then, just as it was, in its +oilskins and long boots, they launched it amongst those mountainous seas +that seemed ready every moment to swallow up the ship herself and the +terrified lives on board of her. + +“That reefed foresail saved you,” I threw in. + +“Under God—it did,” he exclaimed fervently. “It was by a special mercy, +I firmly believe, that it stood some of those hurricane squalls.” + +“It was the setting of that sail which—” I began. + +“God’s own hand in it,” he interrupted me. “Nothing less could have done +it. I don’t mind telling you that I hardly dared give the order. It +seemed impossible that we could touch anything without losing it, and +then our last hope would have been gone.” + +The terror of that gale was on him yet. I let him go on for a bit, then +said, casually—as if returning to a minor subject: + +“You were very anxious to give up your mate to the shore people, I +believe?” + +He was. To the law. His obscure tenacity on that point had in it +something incomprehensible and a little awful; something, as it were, +mystical, quite apart from his anxiety that he should not be suspected of +“countenancing any doings of that sort.” Seven-and-thirty virtuous years +at sea, of which over twenty of immaculate command, and the last fifteen +in the _Sephora_, seemed to have laid him under some pitiless obligation. + +“And you know,” he went on, groping shamefacedly amongst his feelings, “I +did not engage that young fellow. His people had some interest with my +owners. I was in a way forced to take him on. He looked very smart, +very gentlemanly, and all that. But do you know—I never liked him, +somehow. I am a plain man. You see, he wasn’t exactly the sort for the +chief mate of a ship like the _Sephora_.” + +I had become so connected in thoughts and impressions with the secret +sharer of my cabin that I felt as if I, personally, were being given to +understand that I, too, was not the sort that would have done for the +chief mate of a ship like the _Sephora_. I had no doubt of it in my +mind. + +“Not at all the style of man. You understand,” he insisted, +superfluously, looking hard at me. + +I smiled urbanely. He seemed at a loss for a while. + +“I suppose I must report a suicide.” + +“Beg pardon?” + +“Suicide! That’s what I’ll have to write to my owners directly I get +in.” + +“Unless you manage to recover him before to-morrow,” I assented, +dispassionately. . . “I mean, alive.” + +He mumbled something which I really did not catch, and I turned my ear to +him in a puzzled manner. He fairly bawled: + +“The land—I say, the mainland is at least seven miles off my anchorage.” + +“About that.” + +My lack of excitement, of curiosity, of surprise, of any sort of +pronounced interest, began to arouse his distrust. But except for the +felicitous pretence of deafness I had not tried to pretend anything. I +had felt utterly incapable of playing the part of ignorance properly, and +therefore was afraid to try. It is also certain that he had brought some +ready-made suspicions with him, and that he viewed my politeness as a +strange and unnatural phenomenon. And yet how else could I have received +him? Not heartily! That was impossible for psychological reasons, which +I need not state here. My only object was to keep off his inquiries. +Surlily? Yes, but surliness might have provoked a point-blank question. +From its novelty to him and from its nature, punctilious courtesy was the +manner best calculated to restrain the man. But there was the danger of +his breaking through my defence bluntly. I could not, I think, have met +him by a direct lie, also for psychological (not moral) reasons. If he +had only known how afraid I was of his putting my feeling of identity +with the other to the test! But, strangely enough—(I thought of it only +afterward)—I believe that he was not a little disconcerted by the reverse +side of that weird situation, by something in me that reminded him of the +man he was seeking—suggested a mysterious similitude to the young fellow +he had distrusted and disliked from the first. + +However that might have been, the silence was not very prolonged. He +took another oblique step. + +“I reckon I had no more than a two-mile pull to your ship. Not a bit +more.” + +“And quite enough, too, in this awful heat,” I said. + +Another pause full of mistrust followed. Necessity, they say, is mother +of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions. And +I was afraid he would ask me point-blank for news of my other self. + +“Nice little saloon, isn’t it?” I remarked, as if noticing for the first +time the way his eyes roamed from one closed door to the other. “And +very well fitted out too. Here, for instance,” I continued, reaching +over the back of my seat negligently and flinging the door open, “is my +bath-room.” + +He made an eager movement, but hardly gave it a glance. I got up, shut +the door of the bath-room, and invited him to have a look round, as if I +were very proud of my accommodation. He had to rise and be shown round, +but he went through the business without any raptures whatever. + +“And now we’ll have a look at my stateroom,” I declared, in a voice as +loud as I dared to make it, crossing the cabin to the starboard side with +purposely heavy steps. + +He followed me in and gazed around. My intelligent double had vanished. +I played my part. + +“Very convenient—isn’t it?” + +“Very nice. Very comf. . . ” He didn’t finish, and went out brusquely +as if to escape from some unrighteous wiles of mine. But it was not to +be. I had been too frightened not to feel vengeful; I felt I had him on +the run, and I meant to keep him on the run. My polite insistence must +have had something menacing in it, because he gave in suddenly. And I +did not let him off a single item; mate’s room, pantry, storerooms, the +very sail-locker which was also under the poop—he had to look into them +all. When at last I showed him out on the quarter-deck he drew a long, +spiritless sigh, and mumbled dismally that he must really be going back +to his ship now. I desired my mate, who had joined us, to see to the +captain’s boat. + +The man of whiskers gave a blast on the whistle which he used to wear +hanging round his neck, and yelled, “_Sephoras_ away!” My double down +there in my cabin must have heard, and certainly could not feel more +relieved than I. Four fellows came running out from somewhere forward +and went over the side, while my own men, appearing on deck too, lined +the rail. I escorted my visitor to the gangway ceremoniously, and nearly +overdid it. He was a tenacious beast. On the very ladder he lingered, +and in that unique, guiltily conscientious manner of sticking to the +point: + +“I say . . . you . . . you don’t think that—” + +I covered his voice loudly: + +“Certainly not. . . . I am delighted. Good-bye.” + +I had an idea of what he meant to say, and just saved myself by the +privilege of defective hearing. He was too shaken generally to insist, +but my mate, close witness of that parting, looked mystified and his face +took on a thoughtful cast. As I did not want to appear as if I wished to +avoid all communication with my officers, he had the opportunity to +address me. + +“Seems a very nice man. His boat’s crew told our chaps a very +extraordinary story, if what I am told by the steward is true. I suppose +you had it from the captain, sir?” + +“Yes. I had a story from the captain.” + +“A very horrible affair—isn’t it, sir?” + +“It is.” + +“Beats all these tales we hear about murders in Yankee ships.” + +“I don’t think it beats them. I don’t think it resembles them in the +least.” + +“Bless my soul—you don’t say so! But of course I’ve no acquaintance +whatever with American ships, not I, so I couldn’t go against your +knowledge. It’s horrible enough for me. . . . But the queerest part is +that those fellows seemed to have some idea the man was hidden aboard +here. They had really. Did you ever hear of such a thing?” + +“Preposterous—isn’t it?” + +We were walking to and fro athwart the quarterdeck. No one of the crew +forward could be seen (the day was Sunday), and the mate pursued: + +“There was some little dispute about it. Our chaps took offence. ‘As if +we would harbour a thing like that,’ they said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to +look for him in our coal-hole?’ Quite a tiff. But they made it up in +the end. I suppose he did drown himself. Don’t you, sir?” + +“I don’t suppose anything.” + +“You have no doubt in the matter, sir?” + +“None whatever.” + +I left him suddenly. I felt I was producing a bad impression, but with +my double down there it was most trying to be on deck. And it was almost +as trying to be below. Altogether a nerve-trying situation. But on the +whole I felt less torn in two when I was with him. There was no one in +the whole ship whom I dared take into my confidence. Since the hands had +got to know his story, it would have been impossible to pass him off for +any one else, and an accidental discovery was to be dreaded now more than +ever. . . . + +The steward being engaged in laying the table for dinner, we could talk +only with our eyes when I first went down. Later in the afternoon we had +a cautious try at whispering. The Sunday quietness of the ship was +against us; the stillness of air and water around her was against us; the +elements, the men were against us—everything was against us in our secret +partnership; time itself—for this could not go on forever. The very +trust in Providence was, I suppose, denied to his guilt. Shall I confess +that this thought cast me down very much? And as to the chapter of +accidents which counts for so much in the book of success, I could only +hope that it was closed. For what favourable accident could be expected? + +“Did you hear everything?” were my first words as soon as we took up our +position side by side, leaning over my bed-place. + +He had. And the proof of it was his earnest whisper, “The man told you +he hardly dared to give the order.” + +I understood the reference to be to that saving foresail. + +“Yes. He was afraid of it being lost in the setting.” + +“I assure you he never gave the order. He may think he did, but he never +gave it. He stood there with me on the break of the poop after the +maintopsail blew away, and whimpered about our last hope—positively +whimpered about it and nothing else—and the night coming on! To hear +one’s skipper go on like that in such weather was enough to drive any +fellow out of his mind. It worked me up into a sort of desperation. I +just took it into my own hands and went away from him, boiling, and— But +what’s the use telling you? _You_ know! . . . Do you think that if I had +not been pretty fierce with them I should have got the men to do +anything? Not it! The bo’s’n perhaps? Perhaps! It wasn’t a heavy +sea—it was a sea gone mad! I suppose the end of the world will be +something like that; and a man may have the heart to see it coming once +and be done with it—but to have to face it day after day—I don’t blame +anybody. I was precious little better than the rest. Only—I was an +officer of that old coal-waggon, anyhow—” + +“I quite understand,” I conveyed that sincere assurance into his ear. He +was out of breath with whispering; I could hear him pant slightly. It +was all very simple. The same strung-up force which had given +twenty-four men a chance, at least, for their lives, had, in a sort of +recoil, crushed an unworthy mutinous existence. + +But I had no leisure to weigh the merits of the matter—footsteps in the +saloon, a heavy knock. “There’s enough wind to get under way with, sir.” +Here was the call of a new claim upon my thoughts and even upon my +feelings. + +“Turn the hands up,” I cried through the door. “I’ll be on deck +directly.” + +I was going out to make the acquaintance of my ship. Before I left the +cabin our eyes met—the eyes of the only two strangers on board. I +pointed to the recessed part where the little camp-stool awaited him and +laid my finger on my lips. He made a gesture—somewhat vague—a little +mysterious, accompanied by a faint smile, as if of regret. + +This is not the place to enlarge upon the sensations of a man who feels +for the first time a ship move under his feet to his own independent +word. In my case they were not unalloyed. I was not wholly alone with +my command; for there was that stranger in my cabin. Or rather, I was +not completely and wholly with her. Part of me was absent. That mental +feeling of being in two places at once affected me physically as if the +mood of secrecy had penetrated my very soul. Before an hour had elapsed +since the ship had begun to move, having occasion to ask the mate (he +stood by my side) to take a compass bearing of the Pagoda, I caught +myself reaching up to his ear in whispers. I say I caught myself, but +enough had escaped to startle the man. I can’t describe it otherwise +than by saying that he shied. A grave, preoccupied manner, as though he +were in possession of some perplexing intelligence, did not leave him +henceforth. A little later I moved away from the rail to look at the +compass with such a stealthy gait that the helmsman noticed it—and I +could not help noticing the unusual roundness of his eyes. These are +trifling instances, though it’s to no commander’s advantage to be +suspected of ludicrous eccentricities. But I was also more seriously +affected. There are to a seaman certain words, gestures, that should in +given conditions come as naturally, as instinctively as the winking of a +menaced eye. A certain order should spring on to his lips without +thinking; a certain sign should get itself made, so to speak, without +reflection. But all unconscious alertness had abandoned me. I had to +make an effort of will to recall myself back (from the cabin) to the +conditions of the moment. I felt that I was appearing an irresolute +commander to those people who were watching me more or less critically. + +And, besides, there were the scares. On the second day out, for +instance, coming off the deck in the afternoon (I had straw slippers on +my bare feet) I stopped at the open pantry door and spoke to the steward. +He was doing something there with his back to me. At the sound of my +voice he nearly jumped out of his skin, as the saying is, and +incidentally broke a cup. + +“What on earth’s the matter with you?” I asked, astonished. + +He was extremely confused. “Beg your pardon, sir. I made sure you were +in your cabin.” + +“You see I wasn’t.” + +“No, sir. I could have sworn I had heard you moving in there not a +moment ago. It’s most extraordinary . . . very sorry, sir.” + +I passed on with an inward shudder. I was so identified with my secret +double that I did not even mention the fact in those scanty, fearful +whispers we exchanged. I suppose he had made some slight noise of some +kind or other. It would have been miraculous if he hadn’t at one time or +another. And yet, haggard as he appeared, he looked always perfectly +self-controlled, more than calm—almost invulnerable. On my suggestion he +remained almost entirely in the bathroom, which, upon the whole, was the +safest place. There could be really no shadow of an excuse for any one +ever wanting to go in there, once the steward had done with it. It was a +very tiny place. Sometimes he reclined on the floor, his legs bent, his +head sustained on one elbow. At others I would find him on the +camp-stool, sitting in his grey sleeping-suit and with his cropped dark +hair like a patient, unmoved convict. At night I would smuggle him into +my bed-place, and we would whisper together, with the regular footfalls +of the officer of the watch passing and repassing over our heads. It was +an infinitely miserable time. It was lucky that some tins of fine +preserves were stowed in a locker in my stateroom; hard bread I could +always get hold of; and so he lived on stewed chicken, paté de foie gras, +asparagus, cooked oysters, sardines—on all sorts of abominable sham +delicacies out of tins. My early morning coffee he always drank; and it +was all I dared do for him in that respect. + +Every day there was the horrible manoeuvring to go through so that my +room and then the bath-room should be done in the usual way. I came to +hate the sight of the steward, to abhor the voice of that harmless man. +I felt that it was he who would bring on the disaster of discovery. It +hung like a sword over our heads. + +The fourth day out, I think (we were then working down the east side of +the Gulf of Siam, tack for tack, in light winds and smooth water)—the +fourth day, I say, of this miserable juggling with the unavoidable, as we +sat at our evening meal, that man, whose slightest movement I dreaded, +after putting down the dishes ran up on deck busily. This could not be +dangerous. Presently he came down again; and then it appeared that he +had remembered a coat of mine which I had thrown over a rail to dry after +having been wetted in a shower which had passed over the ship in the +afternoon. Sitting stolidly at the head of the table I became terrified +at the sight of the garment on his arm. Of course he made for my door. +There was no time to lose. + +“Steward,” I thundered. My nerves were so shaken that I could not govern +my voice and conceal my agitation. This was the sort of thing that made +my terrifically whiskered mate tap his forehead with his forefinger. I +had detected him using that gesture while talking on deck with a +confidential air to the carpenter. It was too far to hear a word, but I +had no doubt that this pantomime could only refer to the strange new +captain. + +“Yes, sir,” the pale-faced steward turned resignedly to me. It was this +maddening course of being shouted at, checked without rhyme or reason, +arbitrarily chased out of my cabin, suddenly called into it, sent flying +out of his pantry on incomprehensible errands, that accounted for the +growing wretchedness of his expression. + +“Where are you going with that coat?” + +“To your room, sir.” + +“Is there another shower coming?” + +“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. Shall I go up again and see, sir?” + +“No! never mind.” + +My object was attained, as of course my other self in there would have +heard everything that passed. During this interlude my two officers +never raised their eyes off their respective plates; but the lip of that +confounded cub, the second mate, quivered visibly. + +I expected the steward to hook my coat on and come out at once. He was +very slow about it; but I dominated my nervousness sufficiently not to +shout after him. Suddenly I became aware (it could be heard plainly +enough) that the fellow for some reason or other was opening the door of +the bath-room. It was the end. The place was literally not big enough +to swing a cat in. My voice died in my throat and I went stony all over. +I expected to hear a yell of surprise and terror, and made a movement, +but had not the strength to get on my legs. Everything remained still. +Had my second self taken the poor wretch by the throat? I don’t know +what I would have done next moment if I had not seen the steward come out +of my room, close the door, and then stand quietly by the sideboard. + +“Saved,” I thought. “But, no! Lost! Gone! He was gone!” + +I laid my knife and fork down and leaned back in my chair. My head swam. +After a while, when sufficiently recovered to speak in a steady voice, I +instructed my mate to put the ship round at eight o’clock himself. + +“I won’t come on deck,” I went on. “I think I’ll turn in, and unless the +wind shifts I don’t want to be disturbed before midnight. I feel a bit +seedy.” + +“You did look middling bad a little while ago,” the chief mate remarked +without showing any great concern. + +They both went out, and I stared at the steward clearing the table. +There was nothing to be read on that wretched man’s face. But why did he +avoid my eyes I asked myself. Then I thought I should like to hear the +sound of his voice. + +“Steward!” + +“Sir!” Startled as usual. + +“Where did you hang up that coat?” + +“In the bath-room, sir.” The usual anxious tone. “It’s not quite dry +yet, sir.” + +For some time longer I sat in the cuddy. Had my double vanished as he +had come? But of his coming there was an explanation, whereas his +disappearance would be inexplicable. . . . I went slowly into my dark +room, shut the door, lighted the lamp, and for a time dared not turn +round. When at last I did I saw him standing bolt-upright in the narrow +recessed part. It would not be true to say I had a shock, but an +irresistible doubt of his bodily existence flitted through my mind. Can +it be, I asked myself, that he is not visible to other eyes than mine? +It was like being haunted. Motionless, with a grave face, he raised his +hands slightly at me in a gesture which meant clearly, “Heavens! what a +narrow escape!” Narrow indeed. I think I had come creeping quietly as +near insanity as any man who has not actually gone over the border. That +gesture restrained me, so to speak. + +The mate with the terrific whiskers was now putting the ship on the other +tack. In the moment of profound silence which follows upon the hands +going to their stations I heard on the poop his raised voice: “Hard +alee!” and the distant shout of the order repeated on the maindeck. The +sails, in that light breeze, made but a faint fluttering noise. It +ceased. The ship was coming round slowly; I held my breath in the +renewed stillness of expectation; one wouldn’t have thought that there +was a single living soul on her decks. A sudden brisk shout, “Mainsail +haul!” broke the spell, and in the noisy cries and rush overhead of the +men running away with the main-brace we two, down in my cabin, came +together in our usual position by the bed-place. + +He did not wait for my question. “I heard him fumbling here and just +managed to squat myself down in the bath,” he whispered to me. “The +fellow only opened the door and put his arm in to hang the coat up. All +the same—” + +“I never thought of that,” I whispered back, even more appalled than +before at the closeness of the shave, and marvelling at that something +unyielding in his character which was carrying him through so finely. +There was no agitation in his whisper. Whoever was being driven +distracted, it was not he. He was sane. And the proof of his sanity was +continued when he took up the whispering again. + +“It would never do for me to come to life again.” + +It was something that a ghost might have said. But what he was alluding +to was his old captain’s reluctant admission of the theory of suicide. +It would obviously serve his turn—if I had understood at all the view +which seemed to govern the unalterable purpose of his action. + +“You must maroon me as soon as ever you can get amongst these islands off +the Cambodje shore,” he went on. + +“Maroon you! We are not living in a boy’s adventure tale,” I protested. +His scornful whispering took me up. + +“We aren’t indeed! There’s nothing of a boy’s tale in this. But there’s +nothing else for it. I want no more. You don’t suppose I am afraid of +what can be done to me? Prison or gallows or whatever they may please. +But you don’t see me coming back to explain such things to an old fellow +in a wig and twelve respectable tradesmen, do you? What can they know +whether I am guilty or not—or of _what_ I am guilty, either? That’s my +affair. What does the Bible say? ‘Driven off the face of the earth.’ +Very well. I am off the face of the earth now. As I came at night so I +shall go.” + +“Impossible!” I murmured. “You can’t.” + +“Can’t? . . . Not naked like a soul on the Day of Judgment. I shall +freeze on to this sleeping-suit. The Last Day is not yet—and you have +understood thoroughly. Didn’t you?” + +I felt suddenly ashamed of myself. I may say truly that I understood—and +my hesitation in letting that man swim away from my ship’s side had been +a mere sham sentiment, a sort of cowardice. + +“It can’t be done now till next night,” I breathed out. “The ship is on +the off-shore tack and the wind may fail us.” + +“As long as I know that you understand,” he whispered. “But of course +you do. It’s a great satisfaction to have got somebody to understand. +You seem to have been there on purpose.” And in the same whisper, as if +we two whenever we talked had to say things to each other which were not +fit for the world to hear, he added, “It’s very wonderful.” We remained +side by side talking in our secret way—but sometimes silent or just +exchanging a whispered word or two at long intervals. And as usual he +stared through the port. A breath of wind came now and again into our +faces. The ship might have been moored in dock, so gently and on an even +keel she slipped through the water, that did not murmur even at our +passage, shadowy and silent like a phantom sea. + +At midnight I went on deck, and to my mate’s great surprise put the ship +round on the other tack. His terrible whiskers flitted round me in +silent criticism. I certainly should not have done it if it had been +only a question of getting out of that sleepy gulf as quickly as +possible. I believe he told the second mate, who relieved him, that it +was a great want of judgment. The other only yawned. That intolerable +cub shuffled about so sleepily and lolled against the rails in such a +slack, improper fashion that I came down on him sharply. + +“Aren’t you properly awake yet?” + +“Yes, sir! I am awake.” + +“Well, then, be good enough to hold yourself as if you were. And keep a +look-out. If there’s any current we’ll be closing with some islands +before daylight.” + +The east side of the gulf is fringed with islands, some solitary, others +in groups. On the blue background of the high coast they seem to float +on silvery patches of calm water, arid and grey, or dark green and +rounded like clumps of evergreen bushes, with the larger ones, a mile or +two long, showing the outlines of ridges, ribs of grey rock under the +dank mantle of matted leafage. Unknown to trade, to travel, almost to +geography, the manner of life they harbour is an unsolved secret. There +must be villages—settlements of fishermen at least—on the largest of +them, and some communication with the world is probably kept up by native +craft. But all that forenoon, as we headed for them, fanned along by the +faintest of breezes, I saw no sign of man or canoe in the field of the +telescope I kept on pointing at the scattered group. + +At noon I gave no orders for a change of course, and the mate’s whiskers +became much concerned and seemed to be offering themselves unduly to my +notice. At last I said: + +“I am going to stand right in. Quite in—as far as I can take her.” + +The stare of extreme surprise imparted an air of ferocity also to his +eyes, and he looked truly terrific for a moment. + +“We’re not doing well in the middle of the gulf,” I continued, casually. +“I am going to look for the land breezes to-night.” + +“Bless my soul! Do you mean, sir, in the dark amongst the lot of all +them islands and reefs and shoals?” + +“Well—if there are any regular land breezes at all on this coast one must +get close inshore to find them, mustn’t one?” + +“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed again under his breath. All that afternoon +he wore a dreamy, contemplative appearance which in him was a mark of +perplexity. After dinner I went into my stateroom as if I meant to take +some rest. There we two bent our dark heads over a half-unrolled chart +lying on my bed. + +“There,” I said. “It’s got to be Koh-ring. I’ve been looking at it ever +since sunrise. It has got two hills and a low point. It must be +inhabited. And on the coast opposite there is what looks like the mouth +of a biggish river—with some town, no doubt, not far up. It’s the best +chance for you that I can see.” + +“Anything. Koh-ring let it be.” + +He looked thoughtfully at the chart as if surveying chances and distances +from a lofty height—and following with his eyes his own figure wandering +on the blank land of Cochin-China, and then passing off that piece of +paper clean out of sight into uncharted regions. And it was as if the +ship had two captains to plan her course for her. I had been so worried +and restless running up and down that I had not had the patience to dress +that day. I had remained in my sleeping-suit, with straw slippers and a +soft floppy hat. The closeness of the heat in the gulf had been most +oppressive, and the crew were used to see me wandering in that airy +attire. + +“She will clear the south point as she heads now,” I whispered into his +ear. “Goodness only knows when, though, but certainly after dark. I’ll +edge her in to half a mile, as far as I may be able to judge in the +dark—” + +“Be careful,” he murmured, warningly—and I realised suddenly that all my +future, the only future for which I was fit, would perhaps go +irretrievably to pieces in any mishap to my first command. + +I could not stop a moment longer in the room. I motioned him to get out +of sight and made my way on the poop. That unplayful cub had the watch. +I walked up and down for a while thinking things out, then beckoned him +over. + +“Send a couple of hands to open the two quarterdeck ports,” I said, +mildly. + +He actually had the impudence, or else so forgot himself in his wonder at +such an incomprehensible order, as to repeat: + +“Open the quarter-deck ports! What for, sir?” + +“The only reason you need concern yourself about is because I tell you to +do so. Have them open wide and fastened properly.” + +He reddened and went off, but I believe made some jeering remark to the +carpenter as to the sensible practice of ventilating a ship’s +quarter-deck. I know he popped into the mate’s cabin to impart the fact +to him because the whiskers came on deck, as it were by chance, and stole +glances at me from below—for signs of lunacy or drunkenness, I suppose. + +A little before supper, feeling more restless than ever, I rejoined, for +a moment, my second self. And to find him sitting so quietly was +surprising, like something against nature, inhuman. + +I developed my plan in a hurried whisper. + +“I shall stand in as close as I dare and then put her round. I shall +presently find means to smuggle you out of here into the sail-locker, +which communicates with the lobby. But there is an opening, a sort of +square for hauling the sails out, which gives straight on the +quarter-deck and which is never closed in fine weather, so as to give air +to the sails. When the ship’s way is deadened in stays and all the hands +are aft at the main-braces you shall have a clear road to slip out and +get overboard through the open quarter-deck port. I’ve had them both +fastened up. Use a rope’s end to lower yourself into the water so as to +avoid a splash—you know. It could be heard and cause some beastly +complication.” + +He kept silent for a while, then whispered, “I understand.” + +“I won’t be there to see you go,” I began with an effort. “The rest . . . +I only hope I have understood, too.” + +“You have. From first to last”—and for the first time there seemed to be +a faltering, something strained in his whisper. He caught hold of my +arm, but the ringing of the supper bell made me start. He didn’t, +though; he only released his grip. + +After supper I didn’t come below again till well past eight o’clock. The +faint, steady breeze was loaded with dew; and the wet, darkened sails +held all there was of propelling power in it. The night, clear and +starry, sparkled darkly, and the opaque, lightless patches shifting +slowly against the low stars were the drifting islets. On the port bow +there was a big one more distant and shadowily imposing by the great +space of sky it eclipsed. + +On opening the door I had a back view of my very own self looking at a +chart. He had come out of the recess and was standing near the table. + +“Quite dark enough,” I whispered. + +He stepped back and leaned against my bed with a level, quiet glance. I +sat on the couch. We had nothing to say to each other. Over our heads +the officer of the watch moved here and there. Then I heard him move +quickly. I knew what that meant. He was making for the companion; and +presently his voice was outside my door. + +“We are drawing in pretty fast, sir. Land looks rather close.” + +“Very well,” I answered. “I am coming on deck directly.” + +I waited till he was gone out of the cuddy, then rose. My double moved +too. The time had come to exchange our last whispers, for neither of us +was ever to hear each other’s natural voice. + +“Look here!” I opened a drawer and took out three sovereigns. “Take +this, anyhow. I’ve got six and I’d give you the lot, only I must keep a +little money to buy some fruit and vegetables for the crew from native +boats as we go through Sunda Straits.” + +He shook his head. + +“Take it,” I urged him, whispering desperately. “No one can tell what—” + +He smiled and slapped meaningly the only pocket of the sleeping-jacket. +It was not safe, certainly. But I produced a large old silk handkerchief +of mine, and tying the three pieces of gold in a corner, pressed it on +him. He was touched, I suppose, because he took it at last and tied it +quickly round his waist under the jacket, on his bare skin. + +Our eyes met; several seconds elapsed, till, our glances still mingled, I +extended my hand and turned the lamp out. Then I passed through the +cuddy, leaving the door of my room wide open. . . . . “Steward!” + +He was still lingering in the pantry in the greatness of his zeal, giving +a rub-up to a plated cruet stand the last thing before going to bed. +Being careful not to wake up the mate, whose room was opposite, I spoke +in an undertone. + +He looked round anxiously. “Sir!” + +“Can you get me a little hot water from the galley?” + +“I am afraid, sir, the galley fire’s been out for some time now.” + +“Go and see.” + +He fled up the stairs. + +“Now,” I whispered, loudly, into the saloon—too loudly, perhaps, but I +was afraid I couldn’t make a sound. He was by my side in an instant—the +double captain slipped past the stairs—through a tiny dark passage . . . +a sliding door. We were in the sail-locker, scrambling on our knees over +the sails. A sudden thought struck me. I saw myself wandering +barefooted, bareheaded, the sun beating on my dark poll. I snatched off +my floppy hat and tried hurriedly in the dark to ram it on my other self. +He dodged and fended off silently. I wonder what he thought had come to +me before he understood and suddenly desisted. Our hands met gropingly, +lingered united in a steady, motionless clasp for a second. . . . No word +was breathed by either of us when they separated. + +I was standing quietly by the pantry door when the steward returned. + +“Sorry, sir. Kettle barely warm. Shall I light the spirit-lamp?” + +“Never mind.” + +I came out on deck slowly. It was now a matter of conscience to shave +the land as close as possible—for now he must go overboard whenever the +ship was put in stays. Must! There could be no going back for him. +After a moment I walked over to leeward and my heart flew into my mouth +at the nearness of the land on the bow. Under any other circumstances I +would not have held on a minute longer. The second mate had followed me +anxiously. + +I looked on till I felt I could command my voice. “She will weather,” I +said then in a quiet tone. “Are you going to try that, sir?” he +stammered out incredulously. + +I took no notice of him and raised my tone just enough to be heard by the +helmsman. + +“Keep her good full.” + +“Good full, sir.” + +The wind fanned my cheek, the sails slept, the world was silent. The +strain of watching the dark loom of the land grow bigger and denser was +too much for me. I had shut my eyes—because the ship must go closer. +She must! The stillness was intolerable. Were we standing still? + +When I opened my eyes the second view started my heart with a thump. The +black southern hill of Koh-ring seemed to hang right over the ship like a +towering fragment of the everlasting night. On that enormous mass of +blackness there was not a gleam to be seen, not a sound to be heard. It +was gliding irresistibly toward us and yet seemed already within reach of +the hand. I saw the vague figures of the watch grouped in the waist, +gazing in awed silence. + +“Are you going on, sir,” inquired an unsteady voice at my elbow. + +I ignored it. I had to go on. + +“Keep her full. Don’t check her way. That won’t do now,” I said, +warningly. + +“I can’t see the sails very well,” the helmsman answered me, in strange, +quavering tones. + +Was she close enough? Already she was, I won’t say in the shadow of the +land, but in the very blackness of it, already swallowed up as it were, +gone too close to be recalled, gone from me altogether. + +“Give the mate a call,” I said to the young man who stood at my elbow as +still as death. “And turn all hands up.” + +My tone had a borrowed loudness reverberated from the height of the land. +Several voices cried out together: “We are all on deck, sir.” + +Then stillness again, with the great shadow gliding closer, towering +higher, without a light, without a sound. Such a hush had fallen on the +ship that she might have been a bark of the dead floating in slowly under +the very gate of Erebus. + +“My God! Where are we?” + +It was the mate moaning at my elbow. He was thunderstruck, and as it +were deprived of the moral support of his whiskers. He clapped his hands +and absolutely cried out, “Lost!” + +“Be quiet,” I said, sternly. + +He lowered his tone, but I saw the shadowy gesture of his despair. “What +are we doing here?” + +“Looking for the land wind.” + +He made as if to tear his hair, and addressed me recklessly. + +“She will never get out. You have done it, sir. I knew it’d end in +something like this. She will never weather, and you are too close now +to stay. She’ll drift ashore before she’s round. O my God!” + +I caught his arm as he was raising it to batter his poor devoted head, +and shook it violently. + +“She’s ashore already,” he wailed, trying to tear himself away. + +“Is she? . . . Keep good full there!” + +“Good full, sir,” cried the helmsman in a frightened, thin, child-like +voice. + +I hadn’t let go the mate’s arm and went on shaking it. “Ready about, do +you hear? You go forward”—shake—“and stop there”—shake—“and hold your +noise”—shake—“and see these head-sheets properly overhauled”—shake, +shake—shake. + +And all the time I dared not look toward the land lest my heart should +fail me. I released my grip at last and he ran forward as if fleeing for +dear life. + +I wondered what my double there in the sail-locker thought of this +commotion. He was able to hear everything—and perhaps he was able to +understand why, on my conscience, it had to be thus close—no less. My +first order “Hard alee!” re-echoed ominously under the towering shadow of +Koh-ring as if I had shouted in a mountain gorge. And then I watched the +land intently. In that smooth water and light wind it was impossible to +feel the ship coming-to. No! I could not feel her. And my second self +was making now ready to slip out and lower himself overboard. Perhaps he +was gone already . . .? + +The great black mass brooding over our very mastheads began to pivot away +from the ship’s side silently. And now I forgot the secret stranger +ready to depart, and remembered only that I was a total stranger to the +ship. I did not know her. Would she do it? How was she to be handled? + +I swung the mainyard and waited helplessly. She was perhaps stopped, and +her very fate hung in the balance, with the black mass of Koh-ring like +the gate of the everlasting night towering over her taffrail. What would +she do now? Had she way on her yet? I stepped to the side swiftly, and +on the shadowy water I could see nothing except a faint phosphorescent +flash revealing the glassy smoothness of the sleeping surface. It was +impossible to tell—and I had not learned yet the feel of my ship. Was +she moving? What I needed was something easily seen, a piece of paper, +which I could throw overboard and watch. I had nothing on me. To run +down for it I didn’t dare. There was no time. All at once my strained, +yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard of the +ship’s side. White on the black water. A phosphorescent flash passed +under it. What was that thing? . . . I recognised my own floppy hat. It +must have fallen off his head . . . and he didn’t bother. + +Now I had what I wanted—the saving mark for my eyes. But I hardly +thought of my other self, now gone from the ship, to be hidden forever +from all friendly faces, to be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, +with no brand of the curse on his sane forehead to stay a slaying hand +. . . too proud to explain. + +And I watched the hat—the expression of my sudden pity for his mere +flesh. It had been meant to save his homeless head from the dangers of +the sun. And now—behold—it was saving the ship, by serving me for a mark +to help out the ignorance of my strangeness. Ha! It was drifting +forward, warning me just in time that the ship had gathered sternway. + +“Shift the helm,” I said in a low voice to the seaman standing still like +a statue. + +The man’s eyes glistened wildly in the binnacle light as he jumped round +to the other side and spun round the wheel. + +I walked to the break of the poop. On the overshadowed deck all hands +stood by the forebraces waiting for my order. The stars ahead seemed to +be gliding from right to left. And all was so still in the world that I +heard the quiet remark “She’s round,” passed in a tone of intense relief +between two seamen. + +“Let go and haul.” + +The foreyards ran round with a great noise, amidst cheery cries. And now +the frightful whisker’s made themselves heard giving various orders. +Already the ship was drawing ahead. And I was alone with her. Nothing! +no one in the world should stand now between us, throwing a shadow on the +way of silent knowledge and mute affection, the perfect communion of a +seaman with his first command. + +Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very edge of a +darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the very gateway of +Erebus—yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat +left behind to mark the spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of +my thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered himself into +the water to take his punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer striking +out for a new destiny. + + + +FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES +A STORY OF SHALLOW WATERS +CHAPTER I + + +ONE day—and that day was many years ago now—I received a long, chatty +letter from one of my old chums and fellow-wanderers in Eastern waters. +He was still out there, but settled down, and middle-aged; I imagined +him—grown portly in figure and domestic in his habits; in short, +overtaken by the fate common to all except to those who, being specially +beloved by the gods, get knocked on the head early. The letter was of +the reminiscent “do you remember” kind—a wistful letter of backward +glances. And, amongst other things, “surely you remember old Nelson,” he +wrote. + +Remember old Nelson! Certainly. And to begin with, his name was not +Nelson. The Englishmen in the Archipelago called him Nelson because it +was more convenient, I suppose, and he never protested. It would have +been mere pedantry. The true form of his name was Nielsen. He had come +out East long before the advent of telegraph cables, had served English +firms, had married an English girl, had been one of us for years, trading +and sailing in all directions through the Eastern Archipelago, across and +around, transversely, diagonally, perpendicularly, in semi-circles, and +zigzags, and figures of eights, for years and years. + +There was no nook or cranny of these tropical waters that the enterprise +of old Nelson (or Nielsen) had not penetrated in an eminently pacific +way. His tracks, if plotted out, would have covered the map of the +Archipelago like a cobweb—all of it, with the sole exception of the +Philippines. He would never approach that part, from a strange dread of +Spaniards, or, to be exact, of the Spanish authorities. What he imagined +they could do to him it is impossible to say. Perhaps at some time in +his life he had read some stories of the Inquisition. + +But he was in general afraid of what he called “authorities”; not the +English authorities, which he trusted and respected, but the other two of +that part of the world. He was not so horrified at the Dutch as he was +at the Spaniards, but he was even more mistrustful of them. Very +mistrustful indeed. The Dutch, in his view, were capable of “playing any +ugly trick on a man” who had the misfortune to displease them. There +were their laws and regulations, but they had no notion of fair play in +applying them. It was really pitiable to see the anxious circumspection +of his dealings with some official or other, and remember that this man +had been known to stroll up to a village of cannibals in New Guinea in a +quiet, fearless manner (and note that he was always fleshy all his life, +and, if I may say so, an appetising morsel) on some matter of barter that +did not amount perhaps to fifty pounds in the end. + +Remember old Nelson! Rather! Truly, none of us in my generation had +known him in his active days. He was “retired” in our time. He had +bought, or else leased, part of a small island from the Sultan of a +little group called the Seven Isles, not far north from Banka. It was, I +suppose, a legitimate transaction, but I have no doubt that had he been +an Englishman the Dutch would have discovered a reason to fire him out +without ceremony. In this connection the real form of his name stood him +in good stead. In the character of an unassuming Dane whose conduct was +most correct, they let him be. With all his money engaged in cultivation +he was naturally careful not to give even the shadow of offence, and it +was mostly for prudential reasons of that sort that he did not look with +a favourable eye on Jasper Allen. But of that later. Yes! One +remembered well enough old Nelson’s big, hospitable bungalow erected on a +shelving point of land, his portly form, costumed generally in a white +shirt and trousers (he had a confirmed habit of taking off his alpaca +jacket on the slightest provocation), his round blue eyes, his straggly, +sandy-white moustache sticking out all ways like the quills of the +fretful porcupine, his propensity to sit down suddenly and fan himself +with his hat. But there’s no use concealing the fact that what one +remembered really was his daughter, who at that time came out to live +with him—and be a sort of Lady of the Isles. + +Freya Nelson (or Nielsen) was the kind of girl one remembers. The oval +of her face was perfect; and within that fascinating frame the most happy +disposition of line and feature, with an admirable complexion, gave an +impression of health, strength, and what I might call unconscious +self-confidence—a most pleasant and, as it were, whimsical determination. +I will not compare her eyes to violets, because the real shade of their +colour was peculiar, not so dark and more lustrous. They were of the +wide-open kind, and looked at one frankly in every mood. I never did see +the long, dark eyelashes lowered—I dare say Jasper Allen did, being a +privileged person—but I have no doubt that the expression must have been +charming in a complex way. She could—Jasper told me once with a +touchingly imbecile exultation—sit on her hair. I dare say, I dare say. +It was not for me to behold these wonders; I was content to admire the +neat and becoming way she used to do it up so as not to conceal the good +shape of her head. And this wealth of hair was so glossy that when the +screens of the west verandah were down, making a pleasant twilight there, +or in the shade of the grove of fruit-trees near the house, it seemed to +give out a golden light of its own. + +She dressed generally in a white frock, with a skirt of walking length, +showing her neat, laced, brown boots. If there was any colour about her +costume it was just a bit of blue perhaps. No exertion seemed to +distress her. I have seen her land from the dinghy after a long pull in +the sun (she rowed herself about a good deal) with no quickened breath +and not a single hair out of its place. In the morning when she came out +on the verandah for the first look westward, Sumatra way, over the sea, +she seemed as fresh and sparkling as a dewdrop. But a dewdrop is +evanescent, and there was nothing evanescent about Freya. I remember her +round, solid arms with the fine wrists, and her broad, capable hands with +tapering fingers. + +I don’t know whether she was actually born at sea, but I do know that up +to twelve years of age she sailed about with her parents in various +ships. After old Nelson lost his wife it became a matter of serious +concern for him what to do with the girl. A kind lady in Singapore, +touched by his dumb grief and deplorable perplexity, offered to take +charge of Freya. This arrangement lasted some six years, during which +old Nelson (or Nielsen) “retired” and established, himself on his island, +and then it was settled (the kind lady going away to Europe) that his +daughter should join him. + +As the first and most important preparation for that event the old fellow +ordered from his Singapore agent a Steyn and Ebhart’s “upright grand.” I +was then commanding a little steamer in the island trade, and it fell to +my lot to take it out to him, so I know something of Freya’s “upright +grand.” We landed the enormous packing-case with difficulty on a flat +piece of rock amongst some bushes, nearly knocking the bottom out of one +of my boats in the course of that nautical operation. Then, all my crew +assisting, engineers and firemen included, by the exercise of much +anxious ingenuity, and by means of rollers, levers, tackles, and inclined +planes of soaped planks, toiling in the sun like ancient Egyptians at the +building of a pyramid, we got it as far as the house and up on to the +edge of the west verandah—which was the actual drawing-room of the +bungalow. There, the case being ripped off cautiously, the beautiful +rosewood monster stood revealed at last. In reverent excitement we +coaxed it against the wall and drew the first free breath of the day. It +was certainly the heaviest movable object on that islet since the +creation of the world. The volume of sound it gave out in that bungalow +(which acted as a sounding-board) was really astonishing. It thundered +sweetly right over the sea. Jasper Allen told me that early of a morning +on the deck of the _Bonito_ (his wonderfully fast and pretty brig) he +could hear Freya playing her scales quite distinctly. But the fellow +always anchored foolishly close to the point, as I told him more than +once. Of course, these seas are almost uniformly serene, and the Seven +Isles is a particularly calm and cloudless spot as a rule. But still, +now and again, an afternoon thunderstorm over Banka, or even one of these +vicious thick squalls, from the distant Sumatra coast, would make a +sudden sally upon the group, enveloping it for a couple of hours in +whirlwinds and bluish-black murk of a particularly sinister aspect. +Then, with the lowered rattan-screens rattling desperately in the wind +and the bungalow shaking all over, Freya would sit down to the piano and +play fierce Wagner music in the flicker of blinding flashes, with +thunderbolts falling all round, enough to make your hair stand on end; +and Jasper would remain stock still on the verandah, adoring the back +view of her supple, swaying figure, the miraculous sheen of her fair +head, the rapid hands on the keys, the white nape of her neck—while the +brig, down at the point there, surged at her cables within a hundred +yards of nasty, shiny, black rock-heads. Ugh! + +And this, if you please, for no reason but that, when he went on board at +night and laid his head on the pillow, he should feel that he was as near +as he could conveniently get to his Freya slumbering in the bungalow. +Did you ever! And, mind, this brig was the home to be—their home—the +floating paradise which he was gradually fitting out like a yacht to sail +his life blissfully away in with Freya. Imbecile! But the fellow was +always taking chances. + +One day, I remember I watched with Freya on the verandah the brig +approaching the point from the northward. I suppose Jasper made the girl +out with his long glass. What does he do? Instead of standing on for +another mile and a half along the shoals and then tacking for the +anchorage in a proper and seamanlike manner, he spies a gap between two +disgusting old jagged reefs, puts the helm down suddenly, and shoots the +brig through, with all her sails shaking and rattling, so that we could +hear the racket on the verandah. I drew my breath through my teeth, I +can tell you, and Freya swore. Yes! She clenched her capable fists and +stamped with her pretty brown boot and said “Damn!” Then, looking at me +with a little heightened colour—not much—she remarked, “I forgot you were +there,” and laughed. To be sure, to be sure. When Jasper was in sight +she was not likely to remember that anybody else in the world was there. +In my concern at this mad trick I couldn’t help appealing to her +sympathetic common sense. + +“Isn’t he a fool?” I said with feeling. + +“Perfect idiot,” she agreed warmly, looking at me straight with her +wide-open, earnest eyes and the dimple of a smile on her cheek. + +“And that,” I pointed out to her, “just to save twenty minutes or so in +meeting you.” + +We heard the anchor go down, and then she became very resolute and +threatening. + +“Wait a bit. I’ll teach him.” + +She went into her own room and shut the door, leaving me alone on the +verandah with my instructions. Long before the brig’s sails were furled, +Jasper came up three steps at a time, forgetting to say how d’ye do, and +looking right and left eagerly. + +“Where’s Freya? Wasn’t she here just now?” + +When I explained to him that he was to be deprived of Miss Freya’s +presence for a whole hour, “just to teach him,” he said I had put her up +to it, no doubt, and that he feared he would have yet to shoot me some +day. She and I were getting too thick together. Then he flung himself +into a chair, and tried to talk to me about his trip. But the funny +thing was that the fellow actually suffered. I could see it. His voice +failed him, and he sat there dumb, looking at the door with the face of a +man in pain. Fact. . . . And the next still funnier thing was that the +girl calmly walked out of her room in less than ten minutes. And then I +left. I mean to say that I went away to seek old Nelson (or Nielsen) on +the back verandah, which was his own special nook in the distribution of +that house, with the kind purpose of engaging him in conversation lest he +should start roaming about and intrude unwittingly where he was not +wanted just then. + +He knew that the brig had arrived, though he did not know that Jasper was +already with his daughter. I suppose he didn’t think it was possible in +the time. A father naturally wouldn’t. He suspected that Allen was +sweet on his girl; the fowls of the air and the fishes of the sea, most +of the traders in the Archipelago, and all sorts and conditions of men in +the town of Singapore were aware of it. But he was not capable of +appreciating how far the girl was gone on the fellow. He had an idea +that Freya was too sensible to ever be gone on anybody—I mean to an +unmanageable extent. No; it was not that which made him sit on the back +verandah and worry himself in his unassuming manner during Jasper’s +visits. What he worried about were the Dutch “authorities.” For it is a +fact that the Dutch looked askance at the doings of Jasper Allen, owner +and master of the brig _Bonito_. They considered him much too +enterprising in his trading. I don’t know that he ever did anything +illegal; but it seems to me that his immense activity was repulsive to +their stolid character and slow-going methods. Anyway, in old Nelson’s +opinion, the captain of the _Bonito_ was a smart sailor, and a nice young +man, but not a desirable acquaintance upon the whole. Somewhat +compromising, you understand. On the other hand, he did not like to tell +Jasper in so many words to keep away. Poor old Nelson himself was a nice +fellow. I believe he would have shrunk from hurting the feelings even of +a mop-headed cannibal, unless, perhaps, under very strong provocation. I +mean the feelings, not the bodies. As against spears, knives, hatchets, +clubs, or arrows, old Nelson had proved himself capable of taking his own +part. In every other respect he had a timorous soul. So he sat on the +back verandah with a concerned expression, and whenever the voices of his +daughter and Jasper Allen reached him, he would blow out his cheeks and +let the air escape with a dismal sound, like a much tried man. + +Naturally I derided his fears which he, more or less, confided to me. He +had a certain regard for my judgment, and a certain respect, not for my +moral qualities, however, but for the good terms I was supposed to be on +with the Dutch “authorities.” I knew for a fact that his greatest +bugbear, the Governor of Banka—a charming, peppery, hearty, retired +rear-admiral—had a distinct liking for him. This consoling assurance +which I used always to put forward, made old Nelson (or Nielsen) brighten +up for a moment; but in the end he would shake his head doubtfully, as +much as to say that this was all very well, but that there were depths in +the Dutch official nature which no one but himself had ever fathomed. +Perfectly ridiculous. + +On this occasion I am speaking of, old Nelson was even fretty; for while +I was trying to entertain him with a very funny and somewhat scandalous +adventure which happened to a certain acquaintance of ours in Saigon, he +exclaimed suddenly: + +“What the devil he wants to turn up here for!” + +Clearly he had not heard a word of the anecdote. And this annoyed me, +because the anecdote was really good. I stared at him. + +“Come, come!” I cried. “Don’t you know what Jasper Allen is turning up +here for?” + +This was the first open allusion I had ever made to the true state of +affairs between Jasper and his daughter. He took it very calmly. + +“Oh, Freya is a sensible girl!” he murmured absently, his mind’s eye +obviously fixed on the “authorities.” No; Freya was no fool. He was not +concerned about that. He didn’t mind it in the least. The fellow was +just company for her; he amused the girl; nothing more. + +When the perspicacious old chap left off mumbling, all was still in the +house. The other two were amusing themselves very quietly, and no doubt +very heartily. What more absorbing and less noisy amusement could they +have found than to plan their future? Side by side on the verandah they +must have been looking at the brig, the third party in that fascinating +game. Without her there would have been no future. She was the fortune +and the home, and the great free world for them. Who was it that likened +a ship to a prison? May I be ignominiously hanged at a yardarm if that’s +true. The white sails of that craft were the white wings—pinions, I +believe, would be the more poetical style—well, the white pinions, of +their soaring love. Soaring as regards Jasper. Freya, being a woman, +kept a better hold of the mundane connections of this affair. + +But Jasper was elevated in the true sense of the word ever since the day +when, after they had been gazing at the brig in one of those decisive +silences that alone establish a perfect communion between creatures +gifted with speech, he proposed that she should share the ownership of +that treasure with him. Indeed, he presented the brig to her altogether. +But then his heart was in the brig since the day he bought her in Manilla +from a certain middle-aged Peruvian, in a sober suit of black broadcloth, +enigmatic and sententious, who, for all I know, might have stolen her on +the South American coast, whence he said he had come over to the +Philippines “for family reasons.” This “for family reasons” was +distinctly good. No true _caballero_ would care to push on inquiries +after such a statement. + +Indeed, Jasper was quite the _caballero_. The brig herself was then all +black and enigmatical, and very dirty; a tarnished gem of the sea, or, +rather, a neglected work of art. For he must have been an artist, the +obscure builder who had put her body together on lovely lines out of the +hardest tropical timber fastened with the purest copper. Goodness only +knows in what part of the world she was built. Jasper himself had not +been able to ascertain much of her history from his sententious, +saturnine Peruvian—if the fellow was a Peruvian, and not the devil +himself in disguise, as Jasper jocularly pretended to believe. My +opinion is that she was old enough to have been one of the last pirates, +a slaver perhaps, or else an opium clipper of the early days, if not an +opium smuggler. + +However that may be, she was as sound as on the day she first took the +water, sailed like a witch, steered like a little boat, and, like some +fair women of adventurous life famous in history, seemed to have the +secret of perpetual youth; so that there was nothing unnatural in Jasper +Allen treating her like a lover. And that treatment restored the lustre +of her beauty. He clothed her in many coats of the very best white paint +so skilfully, carefully, artistically put on and kept clean by his +badgered crew of picked Malays, that no costly enamel such as jewellers +use for their work could have looked better and felt smoother to the +touch. A narrow gilt moulding defined her elegant sheer as she sat on +the water, eclipsing easily the professional good looks of any pleasure +yacht that ever came to the East in those days. For myself, I must say I +prefer a moulding of deep crimson colour on a white hull. It gives a +stronger relief besides being less expensive; and I told Jasper so. But +no, nothing less than the best gold-leaf would do, because no decoration +could be gorgeous enough for the future abode of his Freya. + +His feelings for the brig and for the girl were as indissolubly united in +his heart as you may fuse two precious metals together in one crucible. +And the flame was pretty hot, I can assure you. It induced in him a +fierce inward restlessness both of activity and desire. Too fine in +face, with a lateral wave in his chestnut hair, spare, long-limbed, with +an eager glint in his steely eyes and quick, brusque movements, he made +me think sometimes of a flashing sword-blade perpetually leaping out of +the scabbard. It was only when he was near the girl, when he had her +there to look at, that this peculiarly tense attitude was replaced by a +grave devout watchfulness of her slightest movements and utterances. Her +cool, resolute, capable, good-humoured self-possession seemed to steady +his heart. Was it the magic of her face, of her voice, of her glances +which calmed him so? Yet these were the very things one must believe +which had set his imagination ablaze—if love begins in imagination. But +I am no man to discuss such mysteries, and it strikes me that we have +neglected poor old Nelson inflating his cheeks in a state of worry on the +back verandah. + +I pointed out to him that, after all, Jasper was not a very frequent +visitor. He and his brig worked hard all over the Archipelago. But all +old Nelson said, and he said it uneasily, was: + +“I hope Heemskirk won’t turn up here while the brig’s about.” + +Getting up a scare about Heemskirk now! Heemskirk! . . . Really, one +hadn’t the patience— + + + +CHAPTER II + + +FOR, pray, who was Heemskirk? You shall see at once how unreasonable +this dread of Heemskirk. . . . Certainly, his nature was malevolent +enough. That was obvious, directly you heard him laugh. Nothing gives +away more a man’s secret disposition than the unguarded ring of his +laugh. But, bless my soul! if we were to start at every evil guffaw like +a hare at every sound, we shouldn’t be fit for anything but the solitude +of a desert, or the seclusion of a hermitage. And even there we should +have to put up with the unavoidable company of the devil. + +However, the devil is a considerable personage, who has known better days +and has moved high up in the hierarchy of Celestial Host; but in the +hierarchy of mere earthly Dutchmen, Heemskirk, whose early days could not +have been very splendid, was merely a naval officer forty years of age, +of no particular connections or ability to boast of. He was commanding +the _Neptun_, a little gunboat employed on dreary patrol duty up and down +the Archipelago, to look after the traders. Not a very exalted position +truly. I tell you, just a common middle-aged lieutenant of some +twenty-five years’ service and sure to be retired before long—that’s all. + +He never bothered his head very much as to what was going on in the Seven +Isles group till he learned from some talk in Mintok or Palembang, I +suppose, that there was a pretty girl living there. Curiosity, I +presume, caused him to go poking around that way, and then, after he had +once seen Freya, he made a practice of calling at the group whenever he +found himself within half a day’s steaming from it. + +I don’t mean to say that Heemskirk was a typical Dutch naval officer. I +have seen enough of them not to fall into that absurd mistake. He had a +big, clean-shaven face; great flat, brown cheeks, with a thin, hooked +nose and a small, pursy mouth squeezed in between. There were a few +silver threads in his black hair, and his unpleasant eyes were nearly +black, too. He had a surly way of casting side glances without moving +his head, which was set low on a short, round neck. A thick, round trunk +in a dark undress jacket with gold shoulder-straps, was sustained by a +straddly pair of thick, round legs, in white drill trousers. His round +skull under a white cap looked as if it were immensely thick too, but +there were brains enough in it to discover and take advantage maliciously +of poor old Nelson’s nervousness before everything that was invested with +the merest shred of authority. + +Heemskirk would land on the point and perambulate silently every part of +the plantation as if the whole place belonged to him, before he went to +the house. On the verandah he would take the best chair, and would stay +for tiffin or dinner, just simply stay on, without taking the trouble to +invite himself by so much as a word. + +He ought to have been kicked, if only for his manner to Miss Freya. Had +he been a naked savage, armed with spears and poisoned arrows, old Nelson +(or Nielsen) would have gone for him with his bare fists. But these gold +shoulder-straps—Dutch shoulder-straps at that—were enough to terrify the +old fellow; so he let the beggar treat him with heavy contempt, devour +his daughter with his eyes, and drink the best part of his little stock +of wine. + +I saw something of this, and on one occasion I tried to pass a remark on +the subject. It was pitiable to see the trouble in old Nelson’s round +eyes. At first he cried out that the lieutenant was a good friend of +his; a very good fellow. I went on staring at him pretty hard, so that +at last he faltered, and had to own that, of course, Heemskirk was not a +very genial person outwardly, but all the same at bottom. . . . + +“I haven’t yet met a genial Dutchman out here,” I interrupted. +“Geniality, after all, is not of much consequence, but don’t you see—” + +Nelson looked suddenly so frightened at what I was going to say that I +hadn’t the heart to go on. Of course, I was going to tell him that the +fellow was after his girl. That just describes it exactly. What +Heemskirk might have expected or what he thought he could do, I don’t +know. For all I can tell, he might have imagined himself irresistible, +or have taken Freya for what she was not, on account of her lively, +assured, unconstrained manner. But there it is. He was after that girl. +Nelson could see it well enough. Only he preferred to ignore it. He did +not want to be told of it. + +“All I want is to live in peace and quietness with the Dutch +authorities,” he mumbled shamefacedly. + +He was incurable. I was sorry for him, and I really think Miss Freya was +sorry for her father, too. She restrained herself for his sake, and as +everything she did she did it simply, unaffectedly, and even good +humouredly. No small effort that, because in Heemskirk’s attentions +there was an insolent touch of scorn, hard to put up with. Dutchmen of +that sort are over-bearing to their inferiors, and that officer of the +king looked upon old Nelson and Freya as quite beneath him in every way. + +I can’t say I felt sorry for Freya. She was not the sort of girl to take +anything tragically. One could feel for her and sympathise with her +difficulty, but she seemed equal to any situation. It was rather +admiration she extorted by her competent serenity. It was only when +Jasper and Heemskirk were together at the bungalow, as it happened now +and then, that she felt the strain, and even then it was not for +everybody to see. My eyes alone could detect a faint shadow on the +radiance of her personality. Once I could not help saying to her +appreciatively: + +“Upon my word you are wonderful.” + +She let it pass with a faint smile. + +“The great thing is to prevent Jasper becoming unreasonable,” she said; +and I could see real concern lurking in the quiet depths of her frank +eyes gazing straight at me. “You will help to keep him quiet, won’t +you?” + +“Of course, we must keep him quiet,” I declared, understanding very well +the nature of her anxiety. “He’s such a lunatic, too, when he’s roused.” + +“He is!” she assented, in a soft tone; for it was our joke to speak of +Jasper abusively. “But I have tamed him a bit. He’s quite a good boy +now.” + +“He would squash Heemskirk like a blackbeetle all the same,” I remarked. + +“Rather!” she murmured. “And that wouldn’t do,” she added quickly. +“Imagine the state poor papa would get into. Besides, I mean to be +mistress of the dear brig and sail about these seas, not go off wandering +ten thousand miles away from here.” + +“The sooner you are on board to look after the man and the brig the +better,” I said seriously. “They need you to steady them both a bit. I +don’t think Jasper will ever get sobered down till he has carried you off +from this island. You don’t see him when he is away from you, as I do. +He’s in a state of perpetual elation which almost frightens me.” + +At this she smiled again, and then looked serious. For it could not be +unpleasant to her to be told of her power, and she had some sense of her +responsibility. She slipped away from me suddenly, because Heemskirk, +with old Nelson in attendance at his elbow, was coming up the steps of +the verandah. Directly his head came above the level of the floor his +ill-natured black eyes shot glances here and there. + +“Where’s your girl, Nelson?” he asked, in a tone as if every soul in the +world belonged to him. And then to me: “The goddess has flown, eh?” + +Nelson’s Cove—as we used to call it—was crowded with shipping that day. +There was first my steamer, then the _Neptun_ gunboat further out, and +the _Bonito_, brig, anchored as usual so close inshore that it looked as +if, with a little skill and judgment, one could shy a hat from the +verandah on to her scrupulously holystoned quarter-deck. Her brasses +flashed like gold, her white body-paint had a sheen like a satin robe. +The rake of her varnished spars and the big yards, squared to a hair, +gave her a sort of martial elegance. She was a beauty. No wonder that +in possession of a craft like that and the promise of a girl like Freya, +Jasper lived in a state of perpetual elation fit, perhaps, for the +seventh heaven, but not exactly safe in a world like ours. + +I remarked politely to Heemskirk that, with three guests in the house, +Miss Freya had no doubt domestic matters to attend to. I knew, of +course, that she had gone to meet Jasper at a certain cleared spot on the +banks of the only stream on Nelson’s little island. The commander of the +_Neptun_ gave me a dubious black look, and began to make himself at home, +flinging his thick, cylindrical carcass into a rocking-chair, and +unbuttoning his coat. Old Nelson sat down opposite him in a most +unassuming manner, staring anxiously with his round eyes and fanning +himself with his hat. I tried to make conversation to while the time +away; not an easy task with a morose, enamoured Dutchman constantly +looking from one door to another and answering one’s advances either with +a jeer or a grunt. + +However, the evening passed off all right. Luckily, there is a degree of +bliss too intense for elation. Jasper was quiet and concentrated +silently in watching Freya. As we went on board our respective ships I +offered to give his brig a tow out next morning. I did it on purpose to +get him away at the earliest possible moment. So in the first cold light +of the dawn we passed by the gunboat lying black and still without a +sound in her at the mouth of the glassy cove. But with tropical +swiftness the sun had climbed twice its diameter above the horizon before +we had rounded the reef and got abreast of the point. On the biggest +boulder there stood Freya, all in white and, in her helmet, like a +feminine and martial statue with a rosy face, as I could see very well +with my glasses. She fluttered an expressive handkerchief, and Jasper, +running up the main rigging of the white and warlike brig, waved his hat +in response. Shortly afterwards we parted, I to the northward and Jasper +heading east with a light wind on the quarter, for Banjermassin and two +other ports, I believe it was, that trip. + +This peaceful occasion was the last on which I saw all these people +assembled together; the charmingly fresh and resolute Freya, the +innocently round-eyed old Nelson, Jasper, keen, long limbed, lean faced, +admirably self-contained, in his manner, because inconceivably happy +under the eyes of his Freya; all three tall, fair, and blue-eyed in +varied shades, and amongst them the swarthy, arrogant, black-haired +Dutchman, shorter nearly by a head, and so much thicker than any of them +that he seemed to be a creature capable of inflating itself, a grotesque +specimen of mankind from some other planet. + +The contrast struck me all at once as we stood in the lighted verandah, +after rising from the dinner-table. I was fascinated by it for the rest +of the evening, and I remember the impression of something funny and +ill-omened at the same time in it to this day. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +A FEW weeks later, coming early one morning into Singapore, from a +journey to the southward, I saw the brig lying at anchor in all her usual +symmetry and splendour of aspect as though she had been taken out of a +glass case and put delicately into the water that very moment. + +She was well out in the roadstead, but I steamed in and took up my +habitual berth close in front of the town. Before we had finished +breakfast a quarter-master came to tell me that Captain Allen’s boat was +coming our way. + +His smart gig dashed alongside, and in two bounds he was up our +accommodation-ladder and shaking me by the hand with his nervous grip, +his eyes snapping inquisitively, for he supposed I had called at the +Seven Isles group on my way. I reached into my pocket for a nicely +folded little note, which he grabbed out of my hand without ceremony and +carried off on the bridge to read by himself. After a decent interval I +followed him up there, and found him pacing to and fro; for the nature of +his emotions made him restless even in his most thoughtful moments. + +He shook his head at me triumphantly. + +“Well, my dear boy,” he said, “I shall be counting the days now.” + +I understood what he meant. I knew that those young people had settled +already on a runaway match without official preliminaries. This was +really a logical decision. Old Nelson (or Nielsen) would never have +agreed to give up Freya peaceably to this compromising Jasper. Heavens! +What would the Dutch authorities say to such a match! It sounds too +ridiculous for words. But there’s nothing in the world more selfishly +hard than a timorous man in a fright about his “little estate,” as old +Nelson used to call it in apologetic accents. A heart permeated by a +particular sort of funk is proof against sense, feeling, and ridicule. +It’s a flint. + +Jasper would have made his request all the same and then taken his own +way; but it was Freya who decided that nothing should be said, on the +ground that, “Papa would only worry himself to distraction.” He was +capable of making himself ill, and then she wouldn’t have the heart to +leave him. Here you have the sanity of feminine outlook and the +frankness of feminine reasoning. And for the rest, Miss Freya could read +“poor dear papa” in the way a woman reads a man—like an open book. His +daughter once gone, old Nelson would not worry himself. He would raise a +great outcry, and make no end of lamentable fuss, but that’s not the same +thing. The real agonies of indecision, the anguish of conflicting +feelings would be spared to him. And as he was too unassuming to rage, +he would, after a period of lamentation, devote himself to his “little +estate,” and to keeping on good terms with the authorities. + +Time would do the rest. And Freya thought she could afford to wait, +while ruling over her own home in the beautiful brig and over the man who +loved her. This was the life for her who had learned to walk on a ship’s +deck. She was a ship-child, a sea-girl if ever there was one. And of +course she loved Jasper and trusted him; but there was a shade of anxiety +in her pride. It is very fine and romantic to possess for your very own +a finely tempered and trusty sword-blade, but whether it is the best +weapon to counter with the common cudgel-play of Fate—that’s another +question. + +She knew that she had the more substance of the two—you needn’t try any +cheap jokes, I am not talking of their weights. She was just a little +anxious while he was away, and she had me who, being a tried confidant, +took the liberty to whisper frequently “The sooner the better.” But +there was a peculiar vein of obstinacy in Miss Freya, and her reason for +delay was characteristic. “Not before my twenty-first birthday; so that +there shall be no mistake in people’s minds as to me being old enough to +know what I am doing.” + +Jasper’s feelings were in such subjection that he had never even +remonstrated against the decree. She was just splendid, whatever she did +or said, and there was an end of it for him. I believe that he was +subtle enough to be even flattered at bottom—at times. And then to +console him he had the brig which seemed pervaded by the spirit of Freya, +since whatever he did on board was always done under the supreme sanction +of his love. + +“Yes. I’ll soon begin to count the days,” he repeated. “Eleven months +more. I’ll have to crowd three trips into that.” + +“Mind you don’t come to grief trying to do too much,” I admonished him. +But he dismissed my caution with a laugh and an elated gesture. Pooh! +Nothing, nothing could happen to the brig, he cried, as if the flame of +his heart could light up the dark nights of uncharted seas, and the image +of Freya serve for an unerring beacon amongst hidden shoals; as if the +winds had to wait on his future, the stars fight for it in their courses; +as if the magic of his passion had the power to float a ship on a drop of +dew or sail her through the eye of a needle—simply because it was her +magnificent lot to be the servant of a love so full of grace as to make +all the ways of the earth safe, resplendent, and easy. + +“I suppose,” I said, after he had finished laughing at my innocent enough +remark, “I suppose you will be off to-day.” + +That was what he meant to do. He had not gone at daylight only because +he expected me to come in. + +“And only fancy what has happened yesterday,” he went on. “My mate left +me suddenly. Had to. And as there’s nobody to be found at a short +notice I am going to take Schultz with me. The notorious Schultz! Why +don’t you jump out of your skin? I tell you I went and unearthed Schultz +late last evening, after no end of trouble. ‘I am your man, captain,’ he +says, in that wonderful voice of his, ‘but I am sorry to confess I have +practically no clothes to my back. I have had to sell all my wardrobe to +get a little food from day to day.’ What a voice that man has got. Talk +about moving stones! But people seem to get used to it. I had never +seen him before, and, upon my word, I felt suddenly tears rising to my +eyes. Luckily it was dusk. He was sitting very quiet under a tree in a +native compound as thin as a lath, and when I peered down at him all he +had on was an old cotton singlet and a pair of ragged pyjamas. I bought +him six white suits and two pairs of canvas shoes. Can’t clear the ship +without a mate. Must have somebody. I am going on shore presently to +sign him on, and I shall take him with me as I go back on board to get +under way. Now, I am a lunatic—am I not? Mad, of course. Come on! Lay +it on thick. Let yourself go. I like to see you get excited.” + +He so evidently expected me to scold that I took especial pleasure in +exaggerating the calmness of my attitude. + +“The worst that can be brought up against Schultz,” I began, folding my +arms and speaking dispassionately, “is an awkward habit of stealing the +stores of every ship he has ever been in. He will do it. That’s really +all that’s wrong. I don’t credit absolutely that story Captain Robinson +tells of Schultz conspiring in Chantabun with some ruffians in a Chinese +junk to steal the anchor off the starboard bow of the _Bohemian Girl_ +schooner. Robinson’s story is too ingenious altogether. That other tale +of the engineers of the _Nan-Shan_ finding Schultz at midnight in the +engine-room busy hammering at the brass bearings to carry them off for +sale on shore seems to me more authentic. Apart from this little +weakness, let me tell you that Schultz is a smarter sailor than many who +never took a drop of drink in their lives, and perhaps no worse morally +than some men you and I know who have never stolen the value of a penny. +He may not be a desirable person to have on board one’s ship, but since +you have no choice he may be made to do, I believe. The important thing +is to understand his psychology. Don’t give him any money till you have +done with him. Not a cent, if he begs ever so. For as sure as Fate the +moment you give him any money he will begin to steal. Just remember +that.” + +I enjoyed Jasper’s incredulous surprise. + +“The devil he will!” he cried. “What on earth for? Aren’t you trying to +pull my leg, old boy?” + +“No. I’m not. You must understand Schultz’s psychology. He’s neither a +loafer nor a cadger. He’s not likely to wander about looking for +somebody to stand him drinks. But suppose he goes on shore with five +dollars, or fifty for that matter, in his pocket? After the third or +fourth glass he becomes fuddled and charitable. He either drops his +money all over the place, or else distributes the lot around; gives it to +any one who will take it. Then it occurs to him that the night is young +yet, and that he may require a good many more drinks for himself and his +friends before morning. So he starts off cheerfully for his ship. His +legs never get affected nor his head either in the usual way. He gets +aboard and simply grabs the first thing that seems to him suitable—the +cabin lamp, a coil of rope, a bag of biscuits, a drum of oil—and converts +it into money without thinking twice about it. This is the process and +no other. You have only to look out that he doesn’t get a start. That’s +all.” + +“Confound his psychology,” muttered Jasper. “But a man with a voice like +his is fit to talk to the angels. Is he incurable do you think?” + +I said that I thought so. Nobody had prosecuted him yet, but no one +would employ him any longer. His end would be, I feared, to starve in +some hole or other. + +“Ah, well,” reflected Jasper. “The _Bonito_ isn’t trading to any ports +of civilisation. That’ll make it easier for him to keep straight.” + +That was true. The brig’s business was on uncivilised coasts, with +obscure rajahs dwelling in nearly unknown bays; with native settlements +up mysterious rivers opening their sombre, forest-lined estuaries among a +welter of pale green reefs and dazzling sand-banks, in lonely straits of +calm blue water all aglitter with sunshine. Alone, far from the beaten +tracks, she glided, all white, round dark, frowning headlands, stole out, +silent like a ghost, from behind points of land stretching out all black +in the moonlight; or lay hove-to, like a sleeping sea-bird, under the +shadow of some nameless mountain waiting for a signal. She would be +glimpsed suddenly on misty, squally days dashing disdainfully aside the +short aggressive waves of the Java Sea; or be seen far, far away, a tiny +dazzling white speck flying across the brooding purple masses of +thunderclouds piled up on the horizon. Sometimes, on the rare mail +tracks, where civilisation brushes against wild mystery, when the naïve +passengers crowding along the rail exclaimed, pointing at her with +interest: “Oh, here’s a yacht!” the Dutch captain, with a hostile glance, +would grunt contemptuously: “Yacht! No! That’s only English Jasper. A +pedlar—” + +“A good seaman you say,” ejaculated Jasper, still in the matter of the +hopeless Schultz with the wonderfully touching voice. + +“First rate. Ask any one. Quite worth having—only impossible,” I +declared. + +“He shall have his chance to reform in the brig,” said Jasper, with a +laugh. “There will be no temptations either to drink or steal where I am +going to this time.” + +I didn’t press him for anything more definite on that point. In fact, +intimate as we were, I had a pretty clear notion of the general run of +his business. + +But as we are going ashore in his gig he asked suddenly: “By the way, do +you know where Heemskirk is?” + +I eyed him covertly, and was reassured. He had asked the question, not +as a lover, but as a trader. I told him that I had heard in Palembang +that the _Neptun_ was on duty down about Flores and Sumbawa. Quite out +of his way. He expressed his satisfaction. + +“You know,” he went on, “that fellow, when he gets on the Borneo coast, +amuses himself by knocking down my beacons. I have had to put up a few +to help me in and out of the rivers. Early this year a Celebes trader +becalmed in a prau was watching him at it. He steamed the gunboat full +tilt at two of them, one after another, smashing them to pieces, and then +lowered a boat on purpose to pull out a third, which I had a lot of +trouble six months ago to stick up in the middle of a mudflat for a tide +mark. Did you ever hear of anything more provoking—eh?” + +“I wouldn’t quarrel with the beggar,” I observed casually, yet disliking +that piece of news strongly. “It isn’t worth while.” + +“I quarrel?” cried Jasper. “I don’t want to quarrel. I don’t want to +hurt a single hair of his ugly head. My dear fellow, when I think of +Freya’s twenty-first birthday, all the world’s my friend, Heemskirk +included. It’s a nasty, spiteful amusement, all the same.” + +We parted rather hurriedly on the quay, each of us having his own +pressing business to attend to. I would have been very much cut up had I +known that this hurried grasp of the hand with “So long, old boy. Good +luck to you!” was the last of our partings. + +On his return to the Straits I was away, and he was gone again before I +got back. He was trying to achieve three trips before Freya’s +twenty-first birthday. At Nelson’s Cove I missed him again by only a +couple of days. Freya and I talked of “that lunatic” and “perfect idiot” +with great delight and infinite appreciation. She was very radiant, with +a more pronounced gaiety, notwithstanding that she had just parted from +Jasper. But this was to be their last separation. + +“Do get aboard as soon as you can, Miss Freya,” I entreated. + +She looked me straight in the face, her colour a little heightened and +with a sort of solemn ardour—if there was a little catch in her voice. + +“The very next day.” + +Ah, yes! The very next day after her twenty-first birthday. I was +pleased at this hint of deep feeling. It was as if she had grown +impatient at last of the self-imposed delay. I supposed that Jasper’s +recent visit had told heavily. + +“That’s right,” I said approvingly. “I shall be much easier in my mind +when I know you have taken charge of that lunatic. Don’t you lose a +minute. He, of course, will be on time—unless heavens fall.” + +“Yes. Unless—” she repeated in a thoughtful whisper, raising her eyes to +the evening sky without a speck of cloud anywhere. Silent for a time, we +let our eyes wander over the waters below, looking mysteriously still in +the twilight, as if trustfully composed for a long, long dream in the +warm, tropical night. And the peace all round us seemed without limits +and without end. + +And then we began again to talk Jasper over in our usual strain. We +agreed that he was too reckless in many ways. Luckily, the brig was +equal to the situation. Nothing apparently was too much for her. A +perfect darling of a ship, said Miss Freya. She and her father had spent +an afternoon on board. Jasper had given them some tea. Papa was grumpy. +. . . I had a vision of old Nelson under the brig’s snowy awnings, +nursing his unassuming vexation, and fanning himself with his hat. A +comedy father. . . . As a new instance of Jasper’s lunacy, I was told +that he was distressed at his inability to have solid silver handles +fitted to all the cabin doors. “As if I would have let him!” commented +Miss Freya, with amused indignation. Incidentally, I learned also that +Schultz, the nautical kleptomaniac with the pathetic voice, was still +hanging on to his job, with Miss Freya’s approval. Jasper had confided +to the lady of his heart his purpose of straightening out the fellow’s +psychology. Yes, indeed. All the world was his friend because it +breathed the same air with Freya. + +Somehow or other, I brought Heemskirk’s name into conversation, and, to +my great surprise, startled Miss Freya. Her eyes expressed something +like distress, while she bit her lip as if to contain an explosion of +laughter. Oh! Yes. Heemskirk was at the bungalow at the same time with +Jasper, but he arrived the day after. He left the same day as the brig, +but a few hours later. + +“What a nuisance he must have been to you two,” I said feelingly. + +Her eyes flashed at me a sort of frightened merriment, and suddenly she +exploded into a clear burst of laughter. “Ha, ha, ha!” + +I echoed it heartily, but not with the game charming tone: “Ha, ha, ha! +. . . Isn’t he grotesque? Ha, ha, ha!” And the ludicrousness of old +Nelson’s inanely fierce round eyes in association with his conciliatory +manner to the lieutenant presenting itself to my mind brought on another +fit. + +“He looks,” I spluttered, “he looks—Ha, ha, ha!—amongst you three . . . +like an unhappy black-beetle. Ha, ha, ha!” + +She gave out another ringing peal, ran off into her own room, and slammed +the door behind her, leaving me profoundly astounded. I stopped laughing +at once. + +“What’s the joke?” asked old Nelson’s voice, half way down the steps. + +He came up, sat down, and blew out his cheeks, looking inexpressibly +fatuous. But I didn’t want to laugh any more. And what on earth, I +asked myself, have we been laughing at in this uncontrollable fashion. I +felt suddenly depressed. + +Oh, yes. Freya had started it. The girl’s overwrought, I thought. And +really one couldn’t wonder at it. + +I had no answer to old Nelson’s question, but he was too aggrieved at +Jasper’s visit to think of anything else. He as good as asked me whether +I wouldn’t undertake to hint to Jasper that he was not wanted at the +Seven Isles group. I declared that it was not necessary. From certain +circumstances which had come to my knowledge lately, I had reason to +think that he would not be much troubled by Jasper Allen in the future. + +He emitted an earnest “Thank God!” which nearly set me laughing again, +but he did not brighten up proportionately. It seemed Heemskirk had +taken special pains to make himself disagreeable. The lieutenant had +frightened old Nelson very much by expressing a sinister wonder at the +Government permitting a white man to settle down in that part at all. +“It is against our declared policy,” he had remarked. He had also +charged him with being in reality no better than an Englishman. He had +even tried to pick a quarrel with him for not learning to speak Dutch. + +“I told him I was too old to learn now,” sighed out old Nelson (or +Nielsen) dismally. “He said I ought to have learned Dutch long before. +I had been making my living in Dutch dependencies. It was disgraceful of +me not to speak Dutch, he said. He was as savage with me as if I had +been a Chinaman.” + +It was plain he had been viciously badgered. He did not mention how many +bottles of his best claret he had offered up on the altar of +conciliation. It must have been a generous libation. But old Nelson (or +Nielsen) was really hospitable. He didn’t mind that; and I only +regretted that this virtue should be lavished on the lieutenant-commander +of the _Neptun_. I longed to tell him that in all probability he would +be relieved from Heemskirk’s visitations also. I did not do so only from +the fear (absurd, I admit) of arousing some sort of suspicion in his +mind. As if with this guileless comedy father such a thing were +possible! + +Strangely enough, the last words on the subject of Heemskirk were spoken +by Freya, and in that very sense. The lieutenant was turning up +persistently in old Nelson’s conversation at dinner. At last I muttered +a half audible “Damn the lieutenant.” I could see that the girl was +getting exasperated, too. + +“And he wasn’t well at all—was he, Freya?” old Nelson went on moaning. +“Perhaps it was that which made him so snappish, hey, Freya? He looked +very bad when he left us so suddenly. His liver must be in a bad state, +too.” + +“Oh, he will end by getting over it,” said Freya impatiently. “And do +leave off worrying about him, papa. Very likely you won’t see much of +him for a long time to come.” + +The look she gave me in exchange for my discreet smile had no hidden +mirth in it. Her eyes seemed hollowed, her face gone wan in a couple of +hours. We had been laughing too much. Overwrought! Overwrought by the +approach of the decisive moment. After all, sincere, courageous, and +self-reliant as she was, she must have felt both the passion and the +compunction of her resolve. The very strength of love which had carried +her up to that point must have put her under a great moral strain, in +which there might have been a little simple remorse, too. For she was +honest—and there, across the table, sat poor old Nelson (or Nielsen) +staring at her, round-eyed and so pathetically comic in his fierce aspect +as to touch the most lightsome heart. + +He retired early to his room to soothe himself for a night’s rest by +perusing his account-books. We two remained on the verandah for another +hour or so, but we exchanged only languid phrases on things without +importance, as though we had been emotionally jaded by our long day’s +talk on the only momentous subject. And yet there was something she +might have told a friend. But she didn’t. We parted silently. She +distrusted my masculine lack of common sense, perhaps. . . . O! Freya! + +Going down the precipitous path to the landing-stage, I was confronted in +the shadows of boulders and bushes by a draped feminine figure whose +appearance startled me at first. It glided into my way suddenly from +behind a piece of rock. But in a moment it occurred to me that it could +be no one else but Freya’s maid, a half-caste Malacca Portuguese. One +caught fleeting glimpses of her olive face and dazzling white teeth about +the house. I had observed her at times from a distance, as she sat +within call under the shade of some fruit trees, brushing and plaiting +her long raven locks. It seemed to be the principal occupation of her +leisure hours. We had often exchanged nods and smiles—and a few words, +too. She was a pretty creature. And once I had watched her approvingly +make funny and expressive grimaces behind Heemskirk’s back. I understood +(from Jasper) that she was in the secret, like a comedy camerista. She +was to accompany Freya on her irregular way to matrimony and “ever after” +happiness. Why should she be roaming by night near the cove—unless on +some love affair of her own—I asked myself. But there was nobody +suitable within the Seven Isles group, as far as I knew. It flashed upon +me that it was myself she had been lying in wait for. + +She hesitated, muffled from head to foot, shadowy and bashful. I +advanced another pace, and how I felt is nobody’s business. + +“What is it?” I asked, very low. + +“Nobody knows I am here,” she whispered. + +“And nobody can see us,” I whispered back. + +The murmur of words “I’ve been so frightened” reached me. Just then +forty feet above our head, from the yet lighted verandah, unexpected and +startling, Freya’s voice rang out in a clear, imperious call: + +“Antonia!” + +With a stifled exclamation, the hesitating girl vanished out of the path. +A bush near by rustled; then silence. I waited wondering. The lights on +the verandah went out. I waited a while longer then continued down the +path to my boat, wondering more than ever. + +I remember the occurrences of that visit especially, because this was the +last time I saw the Nelson bungalow. On arriving at the Straits I found +cable messages which made it necessary for me to throw up my employment +at a moment’s notice and go home at once. I had a desperate scramble to +catch the mailboat which was due to leave next day, but I found time to +write two short notes, one to Freya, the other to Jasper. Later on I +wrote at length, this time to Allen alone. I got no answer. I hunted up +then his brother, or, rather, half-brother, a solicitor in the city, a +sallow, calm, little man who looked at me over his spectacles +thoughtfully. + +Jasper was the only child of his father’s second marriage, a transaction +which had failed to commend itself to the first, grown-up family. + +“You haven’t heard for ages,” I repeated, with secret annoyance. “May I +ask what ‘for ages’ means in this connection?” + +“It means that I don’t care whether I ever hear from him or not,” +retorted the little man of law, turning nasty suddenly. + +I could not blame Jasper for not wasting his time in correspondence with +such an outrageous relative. But why didn’t he write to me—a decent sort +of friend, after all; enough of a friend to find for his silence the +excuse of forgetfulness natural to a state of transcendental bliss? I +waited indulgently, but nothing ever came. And the East seemed to drop +out of my life without an echo, like a stone falling into a well of +prodigious depth. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +I SUPPOSE praiseworthy motives are a sufficient justification almost for +anything. What could be more commendable in the abstract than a girl’s +determination that “poor papa” should not be worried, and her anxiety +that the man of her choice should be kept by any means from every +occasion of doing something rash, something which might endanger the +whole scheme of their happiness? + +Nothing could be more tender and more prudent. We must also remember the +girl’s self-reliant temperament, and the general unwillingness of women—I +mean women of sense—to make a fuss over matters of that sort. + +As has been said already, Heemskirk turned up some time after Jasper’s +arrival at Nelson’s Cove. The sight of the brig lying right under the +bungalow was very offensive to him. He did not fly ashore before his +anchor touched the ground as Jasper used to do. On the contrary, he hung +about his quarter-deck mumbling to himself; and when he ordered his boat +to be manned it was in an angry voice. Freya’s existence, which lifted +Jasper out of himself into a blissful elation, was for Heemskirk a cause +of secret torment, of hours of exasperated brooding. + +While passing the brig he hailed her harshly and asked if the master was +on board. Schultz, smart and neat in a spotless white suit, leaned over +the taffrail, finding the question somewhat amusing. He looked +humorously down into Heemskirk’s boat, and answered, in the most amiable +modulations of his beautiful voice: “Captain Allen is up at the house, +sir.” But his expression changed suddenly at the savage growl: “What the +devil are you grinning at?” which acknowledged that information. + +He watched Heemskirk land and, instead of going to the house, stride away +by another path into the grounds. + +The desire-tormented Dutchman found old Nelson (or Nielsen) at his +drying-sheds, very busy superintending the manipulation of his tobacco +crop, which, though small, was of excellent quality, and enjoying himself +thoroughly. But Heemskirk soon put a stop to this simple happiness. He +sat down by the old chap, and by the sort of talk which he knew was best +calculated for the purpose, reduced him before long to a state of +concealed and perspiring nervousness. It was a horrid talk of +“authorities,” and old Nelson tried to defend himself. If he dealt with +English traders it was because he had to dispose of his produce somehow. +He was as conciliatory as he knew how to be, and this very thing seemed +to excite Heemskirk, who had worked himself up into a heavily breathing +state of passion. + +“And the worst of them all is that Allen,” he growled. “Your particular +friend—eh? You have let in a lot of these Englishmen into this part. +You ought never to have been allowed to settle here. Never. What’s he +doing here now?” + +Old Nelson (or Nielsen), becoming very agitated, declared that Jasper +Allen was no particular friend of his. No friend at all—at all. He had +bought three tons of rice from him to feed his workpeople on. What sort +of evidence of friendship was that? Heemskirk burst out at last with the +thought that had been gnawing at his vitals: + +“Yes. Sell three tons of rice and flirt three days with that girl of +yours. I am speaking to you as a friend, Nielsen. This won’t do. You +are only on sufferance here.” + +Old Nelson was taken aback at first, but recovered pretty quickly. Won’t +do! Certainly! Of course, it wouldn’t do! The last man in the world. +But his girl didn’t care for the fellow, and was too sensible to fall in +love with any one. He was very earnest in impressing on Heemskirk his +own feeling of absolute security. And the lieutenant, casting doubting +glances sideways, was yet willing to believe him. + +“Much you know about it,” he grunted nevertheless. + +“But I do know,” insisted old Nelson, with the greater desperation +because he wanted to resist the doubts arising in his own mind. “My own +daughter! In my own house, and I not to know! Come! It would be a good +joke, lieutenant.” + +“They seem to be carrying on considerably,” remarked Heemskirk moodily. +“I suppose they are together now,” he added, feeling a pang which changed +what he meant for a mocking smile into a strange grimace. + +The harassed Nelson shook his hand at him. He was at bottom shocked at +this insistence, and was even beginning to feel annoyed at the absurdity +of it. + +“Pooh! Pooh! I’ll tell you what, lieutenant: you go to the house and +have a drop of gin-and-bitters before dinner. Ask for Freya. I must see +the last of this tobacco put away for the night, but I’ll be along +presently.” + +Heemskirk was not insensible to this suggestion. It answered to his +secret longing, which was not a longing for drink, however. Old Nelson +shouted solicitously after his broad back a recommendation to make +himself comfortable, and that there was a box of cheroots on the +verandah. + +It was the west verandah that old Nelson meant, the one which was the +living-room of the house, and had split-rattan screens of the very finest +quality. The east verandah, sacred to his own privacy, puffing out of +cheeks, and other signs of perplexed thinking, was fitted with stout +blinds of sailcloth. The north verandah was not a verandah at all, +really. It was more like a long balcony. It did not communicate with +the other two, and could only be approached by a passage inside the +house. Thus it had a privacy which made it a convenient place for a +maiden’s meditations without words, and also for the discourses, +apparently without sense, which, passing between a young man and a maid, +become pregnant with a diversity of transcendental meanings. + +This north verandah was embowered with climbing plants. Freya, whose +room opened out on it, had furnished it as a sort of boudoir for herself, +with a few cane chairs and a sofa of the same kind. On this sofa she and +Jasper sat as close together as is possible in this imperfect world where +neither can a body be in two places at once nor yet two bodies can be in +one place at the same time. They had been sitting together all the +afternoon, and I won’t say that their talk had been without sense. +Loving him with a little judicious anxiety lest in his elation he should +break his heart over some mishap, Freya naturally would talk to him +soberly. He, nervous and brusque when away from her, appeared always as +if overcome by her visibility, by the great wonder of being palpably +loved. An old man’s child, having lost his mother early, thrown out to +sea out of the way while very young, he had not much experience of +tenderness of any kind. + +In this private, foliage-embowered verandah, and at this late hour of the +afternoon, he bent down a little, and, possessing himself of Freya’s +hands, was kissing them one after another, while she smiled and looked +down at his head with the eyes of approving compassion. At that same +moment Heemskirk was approaching the house from the north. + +Antonia was on the watch on that side. But she did not keep a very good +watch. The sun was setting; she knew that her young mistress and the +captain of the _Bonito_ were about to separate. She was walking to and +fro in the dusky grove with a flower in her hair, and singing softly to +herself, when suddenly, within a foot of her, the lieutenant appeared +from behind a tree. She bounded aside like a startled fawn, but +Heemskirk, with a lucid comprehension of what she was there for, pounced +upon her, and, catching her arm, clapped his other thick hand over her +mouth. + +“If you try to make a noise I’ll twist your neck!” + +This ferocious figure of speech terrified the girl sufficiently. +Heemskirk had seen plainly enough on the verandah Freya’s golden head +with another head very close to it. He dragged the unresisting maid with +him by a circuitous way into the compound, where he dismissed her with a +vicious push in the direction of the cluster of bamboo huts for the +servants. + +She was very much like the faithful camerista of Italian comedy, but in +her terror she bolted away without a sound from that thick, short, +black-eyed man with a cruel grip of fingers like a vice. Quaking all +over at a distance, extremely scared and half inclined to laugh, she saw +him enter the house at the back. + +The interior of the bungalow was divided by two passages crossing each +other in the middle. At that point Heemskirk, by turning his head +slightly to the left as he passed, secured the evidence of “carrying on” +so irreconcilable with old Nelson’s assurances that it made him stagger, +with a rush of blood to his head. Two white figures, distinct against +the light, stood in an unmistakable attitude. Freya’s arms were round +Jasper’s neck. Their faces were characteristically superimposed on each +other, and Heemskirk went on, his throat choked with a sudden rising of +curses, till on the west verandah he stumbled blindly against a chair and +then dropped into another as though his legs had been swept from under +him. He had indulged too long in the habit of appropriating Freya to +himself in his thoughts. “Is that how you entertain your visitors—you . . . ” +he thought, so outraged that he could not find a sufficiently +degrading epithet. + +Freya struggled a little and threw her head back. + +“Somebody has come in,” she whispered. Jasper, holding her clasped +closely to his breast, and looking down into her face, suggested +casually: + +“Your father.” + +Freya tried to disengage herself, but she had not the heart absolutely to +push him away with her hands. + +“I believe it’s Heemskirk,” she breathed out at him. + +He, plunging into her eyes in a quiet rapture, was provoked to a vague +smile by the sound of the name. + +“The ass is always knocking down my beacons outside the river,” he +murmured. He attached no other meaning to Heemskirk’s existence; but +Freya was asking herself whether the lieutenant had seen them. + +“Let me go, kid,” she ordered in a peremptory whisper. Jasper obeyed, +and, stepping back at once, continued his contemplation of her face under +another angle. “I must go and see,” she said to herself anxiously. + +She instructed him hurriedly to wait a moment after she was gone and then +to slip on to the back verandah and get a quiet smoke before he showed +himself. + +“Don’t stay late this evening,” was her last recommendation before she +left him. + +Then Freya came out on the west verandah with her light, rapid step. +While going through the doorway she managed to shake down the folds of +the looped-up curtains at the end of the passage so as to cover Jasper’s +retreat from the bower. Directly she appeared Heemskirk jumped up as if +to fly at her. She paused and he made her an exaggerated low bow. + +It irritated Freya. + +“Oh! It’s you, Mr. Heemskirk. How do you do?” She spoke in her usual +tone. Her face was not plainly visible to him in the dusk of the deep +verandah. He dared not trust himself to speak, his rage at what he had +seen was so great. And when she added with serenity: “Papa will be +coming in before long,” he called her horrid names silently, to himself, +before he spoke with contorted lips. + +“I have seen your father already. We had a talk in the sheds. He told +me some very interesting things. Oh, very—” + +Freya sat down. She thought: “He has seen us, for certain.” She was not +ashamed. What she was afraid of was some foolish or awkward +complication. But she could not conceive how much her person had been +appropriated by Heemskirk (in his thoughts). She tried to be +conversational. + +“You are coming now from Palembang, I suppose?” + +“Eh? What? Oh, yes! I come from Palembang. Ha, ha, ha! You know what +your father said? He said he was afraid you were having a very dull time +of it here.” + +“And I suppose you are going to cruise in the Moluccas,” continued Freya, +who wanted to impart some useful information to Jasper if possible. At +the same time she was always glad to know that those two men were a few +hundred miles apart when not under her eye. + +Heemskirk growled angrily. + +“Yes. Moluccas,” glaring in the direction of her shadowy figure. “Your +father thinks it’s very quiet for you here. I tell you what, Miss Freya. +There isn’t such a quiet spot on earth that a woman can’t find an +opportunity of making a fool of somebody.” + +Freya thought: “I mustn’t let him provoke me.” Presently the Tamil boy, +who was Nelson’s head servant, came in with the lights. She addressed +him at once with voluble directions where to put the lamps, told him to +bring the tray with the gin and bitters, and to send Antonia into the +house. + +“I will have to leave you to yourself, Mr. Heemskirk, for a while,” she +said. + +And she went to her room to put on another frock. She made a quick +change of it because she wished to be on the verandah before her father +and the lieutenant met again. She relied on herself to regulate that +evening’s intercourse between these two. But Antonia, still scared and +hysterical, exhibited a bruise on her arm which roused Freya’s +indignation. + +“He jumped on me out of the bush like a tiger,” said the girl, laughing +nervously with frightened eyes. + +“The brute!” thought Freya. “He meant to spy on us, then.” She was +enraged, but the recollection of the thick Dutchman in white trousers +wide at the hips and narrow at the ankles, with his shoulder-straps and +black bullet head, glaring at her in the light of the lamps, was so +repulsively comical that she could not help a smiling grimace. Then she +became anxious. The absurdities of three men were forcing this anxiety +upon her: Jasper’s impetuosity, her father’s fears, Heemskirk’s +infatuation. She was very tender to the first two, and she made up her +mind to display all her feminine diplomacy. All this, she said to +herself, will be over and done with before very long now. + +Heemskirk on the verandah, lolling in a chair, his legs extended and his +white cap reposing on his stomach, was lashing himself into a fury of an +atrocious character altogether incomprehensible to a girl like Freya. +His chin was resting on his chest, his eyes gazed stonily at his shoes. +Freya examined him from behind the curtain. He didn’t stir. He was +ridiculous. But this absolute stillness was impressive. She stole back +along the passage to the east verandah, where Jasper was sitting quietly +in the dark, doing what he was told, like a good boy. + +“Psst,” she hissed. He was by her side in a moment. + +“Yes. What is it?” he murmured. + +“It’s that beetle,” she whispered uneasily. Under the impression of +Heemskirk’s sinister immobility she had half a mind to let Jasper know +that they had been seen. But she was by no means certain that Heemskirk +would tell her father—and at any rate not that evening. She concluded +rapidly that the safest thing would be to get Jasper out of the way as +soon as possible. + +“What has he been doing?” asked Jasper in a calm undertone. + +“Oh, nothing! Nothing. He sits there looking cross. But you know how +he’s always worrying papa.” + +“Your father’s quite unreasonable,” pronounced Jasper judicially. + +“I don’t know,” she said in a doubtful tone. Something of old Nelson’s +dread of the authorities had rubbed off on the girl since she had to live +with it day after day. “I don’t know. Papa’s afraid of being reduced to +beggary, as he says, in his old days. Look here, kid, you had better +clear out to-morrow, first thing.” + +Jasper had hoped for another afternoon with Freya, an afternoon of quiet +felicity with the girl by his side and his eyes on his brig, anticipating +a blissful future. His silence was eloquent with disappointment, and +Freya understood it very well. She, too, was disappointed. But it was +her business to be sensible. + +“We shan’t have a moment to ourselves with that beetle creeping round the +house,” she argued in a low, hurried voice. “So what’s the good of your +staying? And he won’t go while the brig’s here. You know he won’t.” + +“He ought to be reported for loitering,” murmured Jasper with a vexed +little laugh. + +“Mind you get under way at daylight,” recommended Freya under her breath. + +He detained her after the manner of lovers. She expostulated without +struggling because it was hard for her to repulse him. He whispered into +her ear while he put his arms round her. + +“Next time we two meet, next time I hold you like this, it shall be on +board. You and I, in the brig—all the world, all the life—” And then he +flashed out: “I wonder I can wait! I feel as if I must carry you off +now, at once. I could run with you in my hands—down the path—without +stumbling—without touching the earth—” + +She was still. She listened to the passion in his voice. She was saying +to herself that if she were to whisper the faintest yes, if she were but +to sigh lightly her consent, he would do it. He was capable of doing +it—without touching the earth. She closed her eyes and smiled in the +dark, abandoning herself in a delightful giddiness, for an instant, to +his encircling arm. But before he could be tempted to tighten his grasp +she was out of it, a foot away from him and in full possession of +herself. + +That was the steady Freya. She was touched by the deep sigh which +floated up to her from the white figure of Jasper, who did not stir. + +“You are a mad kid,” she said tremulously. Then with a change of tone: +“No one could carry me off. Not even you. I am not the sort of girl +that gets carried off.” His white form seemed to shrink a little before +the force of that assertion and she relented. “Isn’t it enough for you +to know that you have—that you have carried me away?” she added in a +tender tone. + +He murmured an endearing word, and she continued: + +“I’ve promised you—I’ve said I would come—and I shall come of my own free +will. You shall wait for me on board. I shall get up the side—by +myself, and walk up to you on the deck and say: ‘Here I am, kid.’ And +then—and then I shall be carried off. But it will be no man who will +carry me off—it will be the brig, your brig—our brig. . . . I love the +beauty!” + +She heard an inarticulate sound, something like a moan wrung out by pain +or delight, and glided away. There was that other man on the other +verandah, that dark, surly Dutchman who could make trouble between Jasper +and her father, bring about a quarrel, ugly words, and perhaps a physical +collision. What a horrible situation! But, even putting aside that +awful extremity, she shrank from having to live for some three months +with a wretched, tormented, angry, distracted, absurd man. And when the +day came, the day and the hour, what should she do if her father tried to +detain her by main force—as was, after all, possible? Could she actually +struggle with him hand to hand? But it was of lamentations and +entreaties that she was really afraid. Could she withstand them? What +an odious, cruel, ridiculous position would that be! + +“But it won’t be. He’ll say nothing,” she thought as she came out +quickly on the west verandah, and, seeing that Heemskirk did not move, +sat down on a chair near the doorway and kept her eyes on him. The +outraged lieutenant had not changed his attitude; only his cap had fallen +off his stomach and was lying on the floor. His thick black eyebrows +were knitted by a frown, while he looked at her out of the corners of his +eyes. And their sideways glance in conjunction with the hooked nose, the +whole bulky, ungainly, sprawling person, struck Freya as so comically +moody that, inwardly discomposed as she was, she could not help smiling. +She did her best to give that smile a conciliatory character. She did +not want to provoke Heemskirk needlessly. + +And the lieutenant, perceiving that smile, was mollified. It never +entered his head that his outward appearance, a naval officer, in +uniform, could appear ridiculous to that girl of no position—the daughter +of old Nielsen. The recollection of her arms round Jasper’s neck still +irritated and excited him. “The hussy!” he thought. “Smiling—eh? +That’s how you are amusing yourself. Fooling your father finely, aren’t +you? You have a taste for that sort of fun—have you? Well, we shall +see—” He did not alter his position, but on his pursed-up lips there +also appeared a smile of surly and ill-omened amusement, while his eyes +returned to the contemplation of his boots. + +Freya felt hot with indignation. She sat radiantly fair in the +lamplight, her strong, well-shaped hands lying one on top of the other in +her lap. . . “Odious creature,” she thought. Her face coloured with +sudden anger. “You have scared my maid out of her senses,” she said +aloud. “What possessed you?” + +He was thinking so deeply of her that the sound of her voice, pronouncing +these unexpected words, startled him extremely. He jerked up his head +and looked so bewildered that Freya insisted impatiently: + +“I mean Antonia. You have bruised her arm. What did you do it for?” + +“Do you want to quarrel with me?” he asked thickly, with a sort of +amazement. He blinked like an owl. He was funny. Freya, like all +women, had a keen sense of the ridiculous in outward appearance. + +“Well, no; I don’t think I do.” She could not help herself. She laughed +outright, a clear, nervous laugh in which Heemskirk joined suddenly with +a harsh “Ha, ha, ha!” + +Voices and footsteps were heard in the passage, and Jasper, with old +Nelson, came out. Old Nelson looked at his daughter approvingly, for he +liked the lieutenant to be kept in good humour. And he also joined +sympathetically in the laugh. “Now, lieutenant, we shall have some +dinner,” he said, rubbing his hands cheerily. Jasper had gone straight +to the balustrade. The sky was full of stars, and in the blue velvety +night the cove below had a denser blackness, in which the riding-lights +of the brig and of the gunboat glimmered redly, like suspended sparks. +“Next time this riding-light glimmers down there, I’ll be waiting for her +on the quarter-deck to come and say ‘Here I am,’” Jasper thought; and his +heart seemed to grow bigger in his chest, dilated by an oppressive +happiness that nearly wrung out a cry from him. There was no wind. Not +a leaf below him stirred, and even the sea was but a still uncomplaining +shadow. Far away on the unclouded sky the pale lightning, the +heat-lightning of the tropics, played tremulously amongst the low stars +in short, faint, mysteriously consecutive flashes, like incomprehensible +signals from some distant planet. + +The dinner passed off quietly. Freya sat facing her father, calm but +pale. Heemskirk affected to talk only to old Nelson. Jasper’s behaviour +was exemplary. He kept his eyes under control, basking in the sense of +Freya’s nearness, as people bask in the sun without looking up to heaven. +And very soon after dinner was over, mindful of his instructions, he +declared that it was time for him to go on board his ship. + +Heemskirk did not look up. Ensconced in the rocking-chair, and puffing +at a cheroot, he had the air of meditating surlily over some odious +outbreak. So at least it seemed to Freya. Old Nelson said at once: +“I’ll stroll down with you.” He had begun a professional conversation +about the dangers of the New Guinea coast, and wanted to relate to Jasper +some experience of his own “over there.” Jasper was such a good +listener! Freya made as if to accompany them, but her father frowned, +shook his head, and nodded significantly towards the immovable Heemskirk +blotting out smoke with half-closed eyes and protruded lips. The +lieutenant must not be left alone. Take offence, perhaps. + +Freya obeyed these signs. “Perhaps it is better for me to stay,” she +thought. Women are not generally prone to review their own conduct, +still less to condemn it. The embarrassing masculine absurdities are in +the main responsible for its ethics. But, looking at Heemskirk, Freya +felt regret and even remorse. His thick bulk in repose suggested the +idea of repletion, but as a matter of fact he had eaten very little. He +had drunk a great deal, however. The fleshy lobes of his unpleasant big +ears with deeply folded rims were crimson. They quite flamed in the +neighbourhood of the flat, sallow cheeks. For a considerable time he did +not raise his heavy brown eyelids. To be at the mercy of such a creature +was humiliating; and Freya, who always ended by being frank with herself, +thought regretfully: “If only I had been open with papa from the first! +But then what an impossible life he would have led me!” Yes. Men were +absurd in many ways; lovably like Jasper, impracticably like her father, +odiously like that grotesquely supine creature in the chair. Was it +possible to talk him over? Perhaps it was not necessary? “Oh! I can’t +talk to him,” she thought. And when Heemskirk, still without looking at +her, began resolutely to crush his half-smoked cheroot on the +coffee-tray, she took alarm, glided towards the piano, opened it in +tremendous haste, and struck the keys before she sat down. + +In an instant the verandah, the whole carpetless wooden bungalow raised +on piles, became filled with an uproarious, confused resonance. But +through it all she heard, she felt on the floor the heavy, prowling +footsteps of the lieutenant moving to and fro at her back. He was not +exactly drunk, but he was sufficiently primed to make the suggestions of +his excited imagination seem perfectly feasible and even clever; +beautifully, unscrupulously clever. Freya, aware that he had stopped +just behind her, went on playing without turning her head. She played +with spirit, brilliantly, a fierce piece of music, but when his voice +reached her she went cold all over. It was the voice, not the words. +The insolent familiarity of tone dismayed her to such an extent that she +could not understand at first what he was saying. His utterance was +thick, too. + +“I suspected. . . . Of course I suspected something of your little goings +on. I am not a child. But from suspecting to seeing—seeing, you +understand—there’s an enormous difference. That sort of thing. . . . +Come! One isn’t made of stone. And when a man has been worried by a +girl as I have been worried by you, Miss Freya—sleeping and waking, then, +of course. . . . But I am a man of the world. It must be dull for you +here . . . I say, won’t you leave off this confounded playing . . .?” + +This last was the only sentence really which she made out. She shook her +head negatively, and in desperation put on the loud pedal, but she could +not make the sound of the piano cover his raised voice. + +“Only, I am surprised that you should. . . . An English trading skipper, +a common fellow. Low, cheeky lot, infesting these islands. I would make +short work of such trash! While you have here a good friend, a gentleman +ready to worship at your feet—your pretty feet—an officer, a man of +family. Strange, isn’t it? But what of that! You are fit for a +prince.” + +Freya did not turn her head. Her face went stiff with horror and +indignation. This adventure was altogether beyond her conception of what +was possible. It was not in her character to jump up and run away. It +seemed to her, too, that if she did move there was no saying what might +happen. Presently her father would be back, and then the other would +have to leave off. It was best to ignore—to ignore. She went on playing +loudly and correctly, as though she were alone, as if Heemskirk did not +exist. That proceeding irritated him. + +“Come! You may deceive your father,” he bawled angrily, “but I am not to +be made a fool of! Stop this infernal noise . . . Freya . . . Hey! You +Scandinavian Goddess of Love! Stop! Do you hear? That’s what you +are—of love. But the heathen gods are only devils in disguise, and +that’s what you are, too—a deep little devil. Stop it, I say, or I will +lift you off that stool!” + +Standing behind her, he devoured her with his eyes, from the golden crown +of her rigidly motionless head to the heels of her shoes, the line of her +shapely shoulders, the curves of her fine figure swaying a little before +the keyboard. She had on a light dress; the sleeves stopped short at the +elbows in an edging of lace. A satin ribbon encircled her waist. In an +access of irresistible, reckless hopefulness he clapped both his hands on +that waist—and then the irritating music stopped at last. But, quick as +she was in springing away from the contact (the round music-stool going +over with a crash), Heemskirk’s lips, aiming at her neck, landed a +hungry, smacking kiss just under her ear. A deep silence reigned for a +time. And then he laughed rather feebly. + +He was disconcerted somewhat by her white, still face, the big light +violet eyes resting on him stonily. She had not uttered a sound. She +faced him, steadying herself on the corner of the piano with one extended +hand. The other went on rubbing with mechanical persistency the place +his lips had touched. + +“What’s the trouble?” he said, offended. “Startled you? Look here: +don’t let us have any of that nonsense. You don’t mean to say a kiss +frightens you so much as all that. . . . I know better. . . . I don’t +mean to be left out in the cold.” + +He had been gazing into her face with such strained intentness that he +could no longer see it distinctly. Everything round him was rather +misty. He forgot the overturned stool, caught his foot against it, and +lurched forward slightly, saying in an ingratiating tone: + +“I’m not bad fun, really. You try a few kisses to begin with—” + +He said no more, because his head received a terrific concussion, +accompanied by an explosive sound. Freya had swung her round, strong arm +with such force that the impact of her open palm on his flat cheek turned +him half round. Uttering a faint, hoarse yell, the lieutenant clapped +both his hands to the left side of his face, which had taken on suddenly +a dusky brick-red tinge. Freya, very erect, her violet eyes darkened, +her palm still tingling from the blow, a sort of restrained determined +smile showing a tiny gleam of her white teeth, heard her father’s rapid, +heavy tread on the path below the verandah. Her expression lost its +pugnacity and became sincerely concerned. She was sorry for her father. +She stooped quickly to pick up the music-stool, as if anxious to +obliterate the traces. . . . But that was no good. She had resumed her +attitude, one hand resting lightly on the piano, before old Nelson got up +to the top of the stairs. + +Poor father! How furious he will be—how upset! And afterwards, what +tremors, what unhappiness! Why had she not been open with him from the +first? His round, innocent stare of amazement cut her to the quick. But +he was not looking at her. His stare was directed to Heemskirk, who, +with his back to him and with his hands still up to his face, was hissing +curses through his teeth, and (she saw him in profile) glaring at her +balefully with one black, evil eye. + +“What’s the matter?” asked old Nelson, very much bewildered. + +She did not answer him. She thought of Jasper on the deck of the brig, +gazing up at the lighted bungalow, and she felt frightened. It was a +mercy that one of them at least was on board out of the way. She only +wished he were a hundred miles off. And yet she was not certain that she +did. Had Jasper been mysteriously moved that moment to reappear on the +verandah she would have thrown her consistency, her firmness, her +self-possession, to the winds, and flown into his arms. + +“What is it? What is it?” insisted the unsuspecting Nelson, getting +quite excited. “Only this minute you were playing a tune, and—” + +Freya, unable to speak in her apprehension of what was coming (she was +also fascinated by that black, evil, glaring eye), only nodded slightly +at the lieutenant, as much as to say: “Just look at him!” + +“Why, yes!” exclaimed old Nelson. “I see. What on earth—” + +Meantime he had cautiously approached Heemskirk, who, bursting into +incoherent imprecations, was stamping with both feet where he stood. The +indignity of the blow, the rage of baffled purpose, the ridicule of the +exposure, and the impossibility of revenge maddened him to a point when +he simply felt he must howl with fury. + +“Oh, oh, oh!” he howled, stamping across the verandah as though he meant +to drive his foot through the floor at every step. + +“Why, is his face hurt?” asked the astounded old Nelson. The truth +dawned suddenly upon his innocent mind. “Dear me!” he cried, +enlightened. “Get some brandy, quick, Freya. . . . You are subject to +it, lieutenant? Fiendish, eh? I know, I know! Used to go crazy all of +a sudden myself in the time. . . . And the little bottle of laudanum from +the medicine-chest, too, Freya. Look sharp. . . . Don’t you see he’s got +a toothache?” + +And, indeed, what other explanation could have presented itself to the +guileless old Nelson, beholding this cheek nursed with both hands, these +wild glances, these stampings, this distracted swaying of the body? It +would have demanded a preternatural acuteness to hit upon the true cause. +Freya had not moved. She watched Heemskirk’s savagely inquiring, black +stare directed stealthily upon herself. “Aha, you would like to be let +off!” she said to herself. She looked at him unflinchingly, thinking it +out. The temptation of making an end of it all without further trouble +was irresistible. She gave an almost imperceptible nod of assent, and +glided away. + +“Hurry up that brandy!” old Nelson shouted, as she disappeared in the +passage. + +Heemskirk relieved his deeper feelings by a sudden string of curses in +Dutch and English which he sent after her. He raved to his heart’s +content, flinging to and fro the verandah and kicking chairs out of his +way; while Nelson (or Nielsen), whose sympathy was profoundly stirred by +these evidences of agonising pain, hovered round his dear (and dreaded) +lieutenant, fussing like an old hen. + +“Dear me, dear me! Is it so bad? I know well what it is. I used to +frighten my poor wife sometimes. Do you get it often like this, +lieutenant?” + +Heemskirk shouldered him viciously out of his way, with a short, insane +laugh. But his staggering host took it in good part; a man beside +himself with excruciating toothache is not responsible. + +“Go into my room, lieutenant,” he suggested urgently. “Throw yourself on +my bed. We will get something to ease you in a minute.” + +He seized the poor sufferer by the arm and forced him gently onwards to +the very bed, on which Heemskirk, in a renewed access of rage, flung +himself down with such force that he rebounded from the mattress to the +height of quite a foot. + +“Dear me!” exclaimed the scared Nelson, and incontinently ran off to +hurry up the brandy and the laudanum, very angry that so little alacrity +was shown in relieving the tortures of his precious guest. In the end he +got these things himself. + +Half an hour later he stood in the inner passage of the house, surprised +by faint, spasmodic sounds of a mysterious nature, between laughter and +sobs. He frowned; then went straight towards his daughter’s room and +knocked at the door. + +Freya, her glorious fair hair framing her white face and rippling down a +dark-blue dressing-gown, opened it partly. + +The light in the room was dim. Antonia, crouching in a corner, rocked +herself backwards and forwards, uttering feeble moans. Old Nelson had +not much experience in various kinds of feminine laughter, but he was +certain there had been laughter there. + +“Very unfeeling, very unfeeling!” he said, with weighty displeasure. +“What is there so amusing in a man being in pain? I should have thought +a woman—a young girl—” + +“He was so funny,” murmured Freya, whose eyes glistened strangely in the +semi-obscurity of the passage. “And then, you know, I don’t like him,” +she added, in an unsteady voice. + +“Funny!” repeated old Nelson, amazed at this evidence of callousness in +one so young. “You don’t like him! Do you mean to say that, because you +don’t like him, you—Why, it’s simply cruel! Don’t you know it’s about +the worst sort of pain there is? Dogs have been known to go mad with +it.” + +“He certainly seemed to have gone mad,” Freya said with an effort, as if +she were struggling with some hidden feeling. + +But her father was launched. + +“And you know how he is. He notices everything. He is a fellow to take +offence for the least little thing—regular Dutchman—and I want to keep +friendly with him. It’s like this, my girl: if that rajah of ours were +to do something silly—and you know he is a sulky, rebellious beggar—and +the authorities took into their heads that my influence over him wasn’t +good, you would find yourself without a roof over your head—” + +She cried: “What nonsense, father!” in a not very assured tone, and +discovered that he was angry, angry enough to achieve irony; yes, old +Nelson (or Nielsen), irony! Just a gleam of it. + +“Oh, of course, if you have means of your own—a mansion, a plantation +that I know nothing of—” But he was not capable of sustained irony. “I +tell you they would bundle me out of here,” he whispered forcibly; +“without compensation, of course. I know these Dutch. And the +lieutenant’s just the fellow to start the trouble going. He has the ear +of influential officials. I wouldn’t offend him for anything—for +anything—on no consideration whatever. . . . What did you say?” + +It was only an inarticulate exclamation. If she ever had a half-formed +intention of telling him everything she had given it up now. It was +impossible, both out of regard for his dignity and for the peace of his +poor mind. + +“I don’t care for him myself very much,” old Nelson’s subdued undertone +confessed in a sigh. “He’s easier now,” he went on, after a silence. +“I’ve given him up my bed for the night. I shall sleep on my verandah, +in the hammock. No; I can’t say I like him either, but from that to +laugh at a man because he’s driven crazy with pain is a long way. You’ve +surprised me, Freya. That side of his face is quite flushed.” + +Her shoulders shook convulsively under his hands, which he laid on her +paternally. His straggly, wiry moustache brushed her forehead in a +good-night kiss. She closed the door, and went away from it to the +middle of the room before she allowed herself a tired-out sort of laugh, +without buoyancy. + +“Flushed! A little flushed!” she repeated to herself. “I hope so, +indeed! A little—” + +Her eyelashes were wet. Antonia, in her corner, moaned and giggled, and +it was impossible to tell where the moans ended and the giggles began. + +The mistress and the maid had been somewhat hysterical, for Freya, on +fleeing into her room, had found Antonia there, and had told her +everything. + +“I have avenged you, my girl,” she exclaimed. + +And then they had laughingly cried and cryingly laughed with +admonitions—“Ssh, not so loud! Be quiet!” on one part, and interludes of +“I am so frightened. . . . He’s an evil man,” on the other. + +Antonia was very much afraid of Heemskirk. She was afraid of him because +of his personal appearance: because of his eyes and his eyebrows, and his +mouth and his nose and his limbs. Nothing could be more rational. And +she thought him an evil man, because, to her eyes, he looked evil. No +ground for an opinion could be sounder. In the dimness of the room, with +only a nightlight burning at the head of Freya’s bed, the camerista crept +out of her corner to crouch at the feet of her mistress, supplicating in +whispers: + +“There’s the brig. Captain Allen. Let us run away at once—oh, let us +run away! I am so frightened. Let us! Let us!” + +“I! Run away!” thought Freya to herself, without looking down at the +scared girl. “Never.” + +Both the resolute mistress under the mosquito-net and the frightened maid +lying curled up on a mat at the foot of the bed did not sleep very well +that night. The person that did not sleep at all was Lieutenant +Heemskirk. He lay on his back staring vindictively in the darkness. +Inflaming images and humiliating reflections succeeded each other in his +mind, keeping up, augmenting his anger. A pretty tale this to get about! +But it must not be allowed to get about. The outrage had to be swallowed +in silence. A pretty affair! Fooled, led on, and struck by the girl—and +probably fooled by the father, too. But no. Nielsen was but another +victim of that shameless hussy, that brazen minx, that sly, laughing, +kissing, lying . . . + +“No; he did not deceive me on purpose,” thought the tormented lieutenant. +“But I should like to pay him off, all the same, for being such an +imbecile—” + +Well, some day, perhaps. One thing he was firmly resolved on: he had +made up his mind to steal early out of the house. He did not think he +could face the girl without going out of his mind with fury. + +“Fire and perdition! Ten thousand devils! I shall choke here before the +morning!” he muttered to himself, lying rigid on his back on old Nelson’s +bed, his breast heaving for air. + +He arose at daylight and started cautiously to open the door. Faint +sounds in the passage alarmed him, and remaining concealed he saw Freya +coming out. This unexpected sight deprived him of all power to move away +from the crack of the door. It was the narrowest crack possible, but +commanding the view of the end of the verandah. Freya made for that end +hastily to watch the brig passing the point. She wore her dark +dressing-gown; her feet were bare, because, having fallen asleep towards +the morning, she ran out headlong in her fear of being too late. +Heemskirk had never seen her looking like this, with her hair drawn back +smoothly to the shape of her head, and hanging in one heavy, fair tress +down her back, and with that air of extreme youth, intensity, and +eagerness. And at first he was amazed, and then he gnashed his teeth. +He could not face her at all. He muttered a curse, and kept still behind +the door. + +With a low, deep-breathed “Ah!” when she first saw the brig already under +way, she reached for Nelson’s long glass reposing on brackets high up the +wall. The wide sleeve of the dressing-gown slipped back, uncovering her +white arm as far as the shoulder. Heemskirk gripping the door-handle, as +if to crush it, felt like a man just risen to his feet from a drinking +bout. + +And Freya knew that he was watching her. She knew. She had seen the +door move as she came out of the passage. She was aware of his eyes +being on her, with scornful bitterness, with triumphant contempt. + +“You are there,” she thought, levelling the long glass. “Oh, well, look +on, then!” + +The green islets appeared like black shadows, the ashen sea was smooth as +glass, the clear robe of the colourless dawn, in which even the brig +appeared shadowy, had a hem of light in the east. Directly Freya had +made out Jasper on deck, with his own long glass directed to the +bungalow, she laid hers down and raised both her beautiful white arms +above her head. In that attitude of supreme cry she stood still, glowing +with the consciousness of Jasper’s adoration going out to her figure held +in the field of his glass away there, and warmed, too, by the feeling of +evil passion, the burning, covetous eyes of the other, fastened on her +back. In the fervour of her love, in the caprice of her mind, and with +that mysterious knowledge of masculine nature women seem to be born to, +she thought: + +“You are looking on—you will—you must! Then you shall see something.” + +She brought both her hands to her lips, then flung them out, sending a +kiss over the sea, as if she wanted to throw her heart along with it on +the deck of the brig. Her face was rosy, her eyes shone. Her repeated, +passionate gesture seemed to fling kisses by the hundred again and again +and again, while the slowly ascending sun brought the glory of colour to +the world, turning the islets green, the sea blue, the brig below her +white—dazzlingly white in the spread of her wings—with the red ensign +streaming like a tiny flame from the peak. + +And each time she murmured with a rising inflexion: + +“Take this—and this—and this—” till suddenly her arms fell. She had seen +the ensign dipped in response, and next moment the point below hid the +hull of the brig from her view. Then she turned away from the +balustrade, and, passing slowly before the door of her father’s room with +her eyelids lowered, and an enigmatic expression on her face, she +disappeared behind the curtain. + +But instead of going along the passage, she remained concealed and very +still on the other side to watch what would happen. For some time the +broad, furnished verandah remained empty. Then the door of old Nelson’s +room came open suddenly, and Heemskirk staggered out. His hair was +rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, his unshaven face looked very dark. He +gazed wildly about, saw his cap on a table, snatched it up, and made for +the stairs quietly, but with a strange, tottering gait, like the last +effort of waning strength. + +Shortly after his head had sunk below the level of the floor, Freya came +out from behind the curtain, with compressed, scheming lips, and no +softness at all in her luminous eyes. He could not be allowed to sneak +off scot free. Never—never! She was excited, she tingled all over, she +had tasted blood! He must be made to understand that she had been aware +of having been watched; he must know that he had been seen slinking off +shamefully. But to run to the front rail and shout after him would have +been childish, crude—undignified. And to shout—what? What word? What +phrase? No; it was impossible. Then how? . . . She frowned, discovered +it, dashed at the piano, which had stood open all night, and made the +rosewood monster growl savagery in an irritated bass. She struck chords +as if firing shots after that straddling, broad figure in ample white +trousers and a dark uniform jacket with gold shoulder-straps, and then +she pursued him with the same thing she had played the evening before—a +modern, fierce piece of love music which had been tried more than once +against the thunderstorms of the group. She accentuated its rhythm with +triumphant malice, so absorbed in her purpose that she did not notice the +presence of her father, who, wearing an old threadbare ulster of a check +pattern over his sleeping suit, had run out from the back verandah to +inquire the reason of this untimely performance. He stared at her. + +“What on earth? . . . Freya!” His voice was nearly drowned by the piano. +“What’s become of the lieutenant?” he shouted. + +She looked up at him as if her soul were lost in her music, with unseeing +eyes. + +“Gone.” + +“Wha-a-t? . . . Where?” + +She shook her head slightly, and went on playing louder than before. Old +Nelson’s innocently anxious gaze starting from the open door of his room, +explored the whole place high and low, as if the lieutenant were +something small which might have been crawling on the floor or clinging +to a wall. But a shrill whistle coming somewhere from below pierced the +ample volume of sound rolling out of the piano in great, vibrating waves. +The lieutenant was down at the cove, whistling for the boat to come and +take him off to his ship. And he seemed to be in a terrific hurry, too, +for he whistled again almost directly, waited for a moment, and then sent +out a long, interminable, shrill call as distressful to hear as though he +had shrieked without drawing breath. Freya ceased playing suddenly. + +“Going on board,” said old Nelson, perturbed by the event. “What could +have made him clear out so early? Queer chap. Devilishly touchy, too! +I shouldn’t wonder if it was your conduct last night that hurt his +feelings? I noticed you, Freya. You as well as laughed in his face, +while he was suffering agonies from neuralgia. It isn’t the way to get +yourself liked. He’s offended with you.” + +Freya’s hands now reposed passive on the keys; she bowed her fair head, +feeling a sudden discontent, a nervous lassitude, as though she had +passed through some exhausting crisis. Old Nelson (or Nielsen), looking +aggrieved, was revolving matters of policy in his bald head. + +“I think it would be right for me to go on board just to inquire, some +time this morning,” he declared fussily. “Why don’t they bring me my +morning tea? Do you hear, Freya? You have astonished me, I must say. I +didn’t think a young girl could be so unfeeling. And the lieutenant +thinks himself a friend of ours, too! What? No? Well, he calls himself +a friend, and that’s something to a person in my position. Certainly! +Oh, yes, I must go on board.” + +“Must you?” murmured Freya listlessly; then added, in her thought: “Poor +man!” + + + +CHAPTER V + + +IN respect of the next seven weeks, all that is necessary to say is, +first, that old Nelson (or Nielsen) failed in paying his politic call. +The _Neptun_ gunboat of H.M. the King of the Netherlands, commanded by an +outraged and infuriated lieutenant, left the cove at an unexpectedly +early hour. When Freya’s father came down to the shore, after seeing his +precious crop of tobacco spread out properly in the sun, she was already +steaming round the point. Old Nelson regretted the circumstance for many +days. + +“Now, I don’t know in what disposition the man went away,” he lamented to +his hard daughter. He was amazed at her hardness. He was almost +frightened by her indifference. + +Next, it must be recorded that the same day the gunboat _Neptun_, +steering east, passed the brig _Bonito_ becalmed in sight of Carimata, +with her head to the eastward, too. Her captain, Jasper Allen, giving +himself up consciously to a tender, possessive reverie of his Freya, did +not get out of his long chair on the poop to look at the _Neptun_ which +passed so close that the smoke belching out suddenly from her short black +funnel rolled between the masts of the Bonito, obscuring for a moment the +sunlit whiteness of her sails, consecrated to the service of love. +Jasper did not even turn his head for a glance. But Heemskirk, on the +bridge, had gazed long and earnestly at the brig from the distance, +gripping hard the brass rail in front of him, till, the two ships +closing, he lost all confidence in himself, and retreating to the +chartroom, pulled the door to with a crash. There, his brows knitted, +his mouth drawn on one side in sardonic meditation, he sat through many +still hours—a sort of Prometheus in the bonds of unholy desire, having +his very vitals torn by the beak and claws of humiliated passion. + +That species of fowl is not to be shooed off as easily as a chicken. +Fooled, cheated, deceived, led on, outraged, mocked at—beak and claws! A +sinister bird! The lieutenant had no mind to become the talk of the +Archipelago, as the naval officer who had had his face slapped by a girl. +Was it possible that she really loved that rascally trader? He tried not +to think, but, worse than thoughts, definite impressions beset him in his +retreat. He saw her—a vision plain, close to, detailed, plastic, +coloured, lighted up—he saw her hanging round the neck of that fellow. +And he shut his eyes, only to discover that this was no remedy. Then a +piano began to play near by, very plainly; and he put his fingers to his +ears with no better effect. It was not to be borne—not in solitude. He +bolted out of the chartroom, and talked of indifferent things somewhat +wildly with the officer of the watch on the bridge, to the mocking +accompaniment of a ghostly piano. + +The last thing to be recorded is that Lieutenant Heemskirk instead of +pursuing his course towards Ternate, where he was expected, went out of +his way to call at Makassar, where no one was looking for his arrival. +Once there, he gave certain explanations and laid a certain proposal +before the governor, or some other authority, and obtained permission to +do what he thought fit in these matters. Thereupon the _Neptun_, giving +up Ternate altogether, steamed north in view of the mountainous coast of +Celebes, and then crossing the broad straits took up her station on the +low coast of virgin forests, inviolate and mute, in waters phosphorescent +at night; deep blue in daytime with gleaming green patches over the +submerged reefs. For days the _Neptun_ could be seen moving smoothly up +and down the sombre face of the shore, or hanging about with a watchful +air near the silvery breaks of broad estuaries, under the great luminous +sky never softened, never veiled, and flooding the earth with the +everlasting sunshine of the tropics—that sunshine which, in its unbroken +splendour, oppresses the soul with an inexpressible melancholy more +intimate, more penetrating, more profound than the grey sadness of the +northern mists. + + . . . . . + +The trading brig _Bonito_ appeared gliding round a sombre forest-clad +point of land on the silvery estuary of a great river. The breath of air +that gave her motion would not have fluttered the flame of a torch. She +stole out into the open from behind a veil of unstirring leaves, +mysteriously silent, ghostly white, and solemnly stealthy in her +imperceptible progress; and Jasper, his elbow in the main rigging, and +his head leaning against his hand, thought of Freya. Everything in the +world reminded him of her. The beauty of the loved woman exists in the +beauties of Nature. The swelling outlines of the hills, the curves of a +coast, the free sinuosities of a river are less suave than the harmonious +lines of her body, and when she moves, gliding lightly, the grace of her +progress suggests the power of occult forces which rule the fascinating +aspects of the visible world. + +Dependent on things as all men are, Jasper loved his vessel—the house of +his dreams. He lent to her something of Freya’s soul. Her deck was the +foothold of their love. The possession of his brig appeased his passion +in a soothing certitude of happiness already conquered. + +The full moon was some way up, perfect and serene, floating in air as +calm and limpid as the glance of Freya’s eyes. There was not a sound in +the brig. + +“Here she shall stand, by my side, on evenings like this,” he thought, +with rapture. + +And it was at that moment, in this peace, in this serenity, under the +full, benign gaze of the moon propitious to lovers, on a sea without a +wrinkle, under a sky without a cloud, as if all Nature had assumed its +most clement mood in a spirit of mockery, that the gunboat _Neptun_, +detaching herself from the dark coast under which she had been lying +invisible, steamed out to intercept the trading brig _Bonito_ standing +out to sea. + +Directly the gunboat had been made out emerging from her ambush, Schultz, +of the fascinating voice, had given signs of strange agitation. All that +day, ever since leaving the Malay town up the river, he had shown a +haggard face, going about his duties like a man with something weighing +on his mind. Jasper had noticed it, but the mate, turning away, as +though he had not liked being looked at, had muttered shamefacedly of a +headache and a touch of fever. He must have had it very badly when, +dodging behind his captain he wondered aloud: “What can that fellow want +with us?” . . . A naked man standing in a freezing blast and trying not +to shiver could not have spoken with a more harshly uncertain intonation. +But it might have been fever—a cold fit. + +“He wants to make himself disagreeable, simply,” said Jasper, with +perfect good humour. “He has tried it on me before. However, we shall +soon see.” + +And, indeed, before long the two vessels lay abreast within easy hail. +The brig, with her fine lines and her white sails, looked vaporous and +sylph-like in the moonlight. The gunboat, short, squat, with her stumpy +dark spars naked like dead trees, raised against the luminous sky of that +resplendent night, threw a heavy shadow on the lane of water between the +two ships. + +Freya haunted them both like an ubiquitous spirit, and as if she were the +only woman in the world. Jasper remembered her earnest recommendation to +be guarded and cautious in all his acts and words while he was away from +her. In this quite unforeseen encounter he felt on his ear the very +breath of these hurried admonitions customary to the last moment of their +partings, heard the half-jesting final whisper of the “Mind, kid, I’d +never forgive you!” with a quick pressure on his arm, which he answered +by a quiet, confident smile. Heemskirk was haunted in another fashion. +There were no whispers in it; it was more like visions. He saw that girl +hanging round the neck of a low vagabond—that vagabond, the vagabond who +had just answered his hail. He saw her stealing bare-footed across a +verandah with great, clear, wide-open, eager eyes to look at a brig—that +brig. If she had shrieked, scolded, called names! . . . But she had +simply triumphed over him. That was all. Led on (he firmly believed +it), fooled, deceived, outraged, struck, mocked at. . . . Beak and claws! +The two men, so differently haunted by Freya of the Seven Isles, were not +equally matched. + +In the intense stillness, as of sleep, which had fallen upon the two +vessels, in a world that itself seemed but a delicate dream, a boat +pulled by Javanese sailors crossing the dark lane of water came alongside +the brig. The white warrant officer in her, perhaps the gunner, climbed +aboard. He was a short man, with a rotund stomach and a wheezy voice. +His immovable fat face looked lifeless in the moonlight, and he walked +with his thick arms hanging away from his body as though he had been +stuffed. His cunning little eyes glittered like bits of mica. He +conveyed to Jasper, in broken English, a request to come on board the +_Neptun_. + +Jasper had not expected anything so unusual. But after a short +reflection he decided to show neither annoyance, nor even surprise. The +river from which he had come had been politically disturbed for a couple +of years, and he was aware that his visits there were looked upon with +some suspicion. But he did not mind much the displeasure of the +authorities, so terrifying to old Nelson. He prepared to leave the brig, +and Schultz followed him to the rail as if to say something, but in the +end stood by in silence. Jasper getting over the side, noticed his +ghastly face. The eyes of the man who had found salvation in the brig +from the effects of his peculiar psychology looked at him with a dumb, +beseeching expression. + +“What’s the matter?” Jasper asked. + +“I wonder how this will end?” said he of the beautiful voice, which had +even fascinated the steady Freya herself. But where was its charming +timbre now? These words had sounded like a raven’s croak. + +“You are ill,” said Jasper positively. + +“I wish I were dead!” was the startling statement uttered by Schultz +talking to himself in the extremity of some mysterious trouble. Jasper +gave him a keen glance, but this was not the time to investigate the +morbid outbreak of a feverish man. He did not look as though he were +actually delirious, and that for the moment must suffice. Schultz made a +dart forward. + +“That fellow means harm!” he said desperately. “He means harm to you, +Captain Allen. I feel it, and I—” + +He choked with inexplicable emotion. + +“All right, Schultz. I won’t give him an opening.” Jasper cut him short +and swung himself into the boat. + +On board the _Neptun_ Heemskirk, standing straddle-legs in the flood of +moonlight, his inky shadow falling right across the quarter-deck, made no +sign at his approach, but secretly he felt something like the heave of +the sea in his chest at the sight of that man. Jasper waited before him +in silence. + +Brought face to face in direct personal contact, they fell at once into +the manner of their casual meetings in old Nelson’s bungalow. They +ignored each other’s existence—Heemskirk moodily; Jasper, with a +perfectly colourless quietness. + +“What’s going on in that river you’ve just come out of?” asked the +lieutenant straight away. + +“I know nothing of the troubles, if you mean that,” Jasper answered. +“I’ve landed there half a cargo of rice, for which I got nothing in +exchange, and went away. There’s no trade there now, but they would have +been starving in another week—if I hadn’t turned up.” + +“Meddling! English meddling! And suppose the rascals don’t deserve +anything better than to starve, eh?” + +“There are women and children there, you know,” observed Jasper, in his +even tone. + +“Oh, yes! When an Englishman talks of women and children, you may be +sure there’s something fishy about the business. Your doings will have +to be investigated.” + +They spoke in turn, as though they had been disembodied spirits—mere +voices in empty air; for they looked at each other as if there had been +nothing there, or, at most, with as much recognition as one gives to an +inanimate object, and no more. But now a silence fell. Heemskirk had +thought, all at once: “She will tell him all about it. She will tell him +while she hangs round his neck laughing.” And the sudden desire to +annihilate Jasper on the spot almost deprived him of his senses by its +vehemence. He lost the power of speech, of vision. For a moment he +absolutely couldn’t see Jasper. But he heard him inquiring, as of the +world at large: + +“Am I, then, to conclude that the brig is detained?” + +Heemskirk made a recovery in a flush of malignant satisfaction. + +“She is. I am going to take her to Makassar in tow.” + +“The courts will have to decide on the legality of this,” said Jasper, +aware that the matter was becoming serious, but with assumed +indifference. + +“Oh, yes, the courts! Certainly. And as to you, I shall keep you on +board here.” + +Jasper’s dismay at being parted from his ship was betrayed by a stony +immobility. It lasted but an instant. Then he turned away and hailed +the brig. Mr. Schultz answered: + +“Yes, sir.” + +“Get ready to receive a tow-rope from the gunboat! We are going to be +taken to Makassar.” + +“Good God! What’s that for, sir?” came an anxious cry faintly. + +“Kindness, I suppose,” Jasper, ironical, shouted with great deliberation. +“We might have been—becalmed in here—for days. And hospitality. I am +invited to stay—on board here.” + +The answer to this information was a loud ejaculation of distress. +Jasper thought anxiously: “Why, the fellow’s nerve’s gone to pieces;” and +with an awkward uneasiness of a new sort, looked intently at the brig. +The thought that he was parted from her—for the first time since they +came together—shook the apparently careless fortitude of his character to +its very foundations, which were deep. All that time neither Heemskirk +nor even his inky shadow had stirred in the least. + +“I am going to send a boat’s crew and an officer on board your vessel,” +he announced to no one in particular. Jasper, tearing himself away from +the absorbed contemplation of the brig, turned round, and, without +passion, almost without expression in his voice, entered his protest +against the whole of the proceedings. What he was thinking of was the +delay. He counted the days. Makassar was actually on his way; and to be +towed there really saved time. On the other hand, there would be some +vexing formalities to go through. But the thing was too absurd. “The +beetle’s gone mad,” he thought. “I’ll be released at once. And if not, +Mesman must enter into a bond for me.” Mesman was a Dutch merchant with +whom Jasper had had many dealings, a considerable person in Makassar. + +“You protest? H’m!” Heemskirk muttered, and for a little longer remained +motionless, his legs planted well apart, and his head lowered as though +he were studying his own comical, deeply-split shadow. Then he made a +sign to the rotund gunner, who had kept at hand, motionless, like a +vilely-stuffed specimen of a fat man, with a lifeless face and glittering +little eyes. The fellow approached, and stood at attention. + +“You will board the brig with a boat’s crew!” + +“Ya, mynherr!” + +“You will have one of your men to steer her all the time,” went on +Heemskirk, giving his orders in English, apparently for Jasper’s +edification. “You hear?” + +“Ya, mynherr.” + +“You will remain on deck and in charge all the time.” + +“Ya, mynherr.” + +Jasper felt as if, together with the command of the brig, his very heart +were being taken out of his breast. Heemskirk asked, with a change of +tone: + +“What weapons have you on board?” + +At one time all the ships trading in the China Seas had a licence to +carry a certain quantity of firearms for purposes of defence. Jasper +answered: + +“Eighteen rifles with their bayonets, which were on board when I bought +her, four years ago. They have been declared.” + +“Where are they kept?” + +“Fore-cabin. Mate has the key.” + +“You will take possession of them,” said Heemskirk to the gunner. + +“Ya, mynherr.” + +“What is this for? What do you mean to imply?” cried out Jasper; then +bit his lip. “It’s monstrous!” he muttered. + +Heemskirk raised for a moment a heavy, as if suffering, glance. + +“You may go,” he said to his gunner. The fat man saluted, and departed. + +During the next thirty hours the steady towing was interrupted once. At +a signal from the brig, made by waving a flag on the forecastle, the +gunboat was stopped. The badly-stuffed specimen of a warrant-officer, +getting into his boat, arrived on board the _Neptun_ and hurried straight +into his commander’s cabin, his excitement at something he had to +communicate being betrayed by the blinking of his small eyes. These two +were closeted together for some time, while Jasper at the taffrail tried +to make out if anything out of the common had occurred on board the brig. + +But nothing seemed to be amiss on board. However, he kept a look-out for +the gunner; and, though he had avoided speaking to anybody since he had +finished with Heemskirk, he stopped that man when he came out on deck +again to ask how his mate was. + +“He was feeling not very well when I left,” he explained. + +The fat warrant-officer, holding himself as though the effort of carrying +his big stomach in front of him demanded a rigid carriage, understood +with difficulty. Not a single one of his features showed the slightest +animation, but his little eyes blinked rapidly at last. + +“Oh, ya! The mate. Ya, ya! He is very well. But, mein Gott, he is one +very funny man!” + +Jasper could get no explanation of that remark, because the Dutchman got +into the boat hurriedly, and went back on board the brig. But he +consoled himself with the thought that very soon all this unpleasant and +rather absurd experience would be over. The roadstead of Makassar was in +sight already. Heemskirk passed by him going on the bridge. For the +first time the lieutenant looked at Jasper with marked intention; and the +strange roll of his eyes was so funny—it had been long agreed by Jasper +and Freya that the lieutenant was funny—so ecstatically gratified, as +though he were rolling a tasty morsel on his tongue, that Jasper could +not help a broad smile. And then he turned to his brig again. + +To see her, his cherished possession, animated by something of his +Freya’s soul, the only foothold of two lives on the wide earth, the +security of his passion, the companion of adventure, the power to snatch +the calm, adorable Freya to his breast, and carry her off to the end of +the world; to see this beautiful thing embodying worthily his pride and +his love, to see her captive at the end of a tow-rope was not indeed a +pleasant experience. It had something nightmarish in it, as, for +instance, the dream of a wild sea-bird loaded with chains. + +Yet what else could he want to look at? Her beauty would sometimes come +to his heart with the force of a spell, so that he would forget where he +was. And, besides, that sense of superiority which the certitude of +being loved gives to a young man, that illusion of being set above the +Fates by a tender look in a woman’s eyes, helped him, the first shock +over, to go through these experiences with an amused self-confidence. +For what evil could touch the elect of Freya? + +It was now afternoon, the sun being behind the two vessels as they headed +for the harbour. “The beetle’s little joke shall soon be over,” thought +Jasper, without any great animosity. As a seaman well acquainted with +that part of the world, a casual glance was enough to tell him what was +being done. “Hallo,” he thought, “he is going through Spermonde Passage. +We shall be rounding Tamissa reef presently.” And again he returned to +the contemplation of his brig, that main-stay of his material and +emotional existence which would be soon in his hands again. On a sea, +calm like a millpond, a heavy smooth ripple undulated and streamed away +from her bows, for the powerful _Neptun_ was towing at great speed, as if +for a wager. The Dutch gunner appeared on the forecastle of the +_Bonito_, and with him a couple of men. They stood looking at the coast, +and Jasper lost himself in a loverlike trance. + +The deep-toned blast of the gunboat’s steam-whistle made him shudder by +its unexpectedness. Slowly he looked about. Swift as lightning he +leaped from where he stood, bounding forward along the deck. + +“You will be on Tamissa reef!” he yelled. + +High up on the bridge Heemskirk looked back over his shoulder heavily; +two seamen were spinning the wheel round, and the _Neptun_ was already +swinging rapidly away from the edge of the pale water over the danger. +Ha! just in time. Jasper turned about instantly to watch his brig; and, +even before he realised that—in obedience, it appears, to Heemskirk’s +orders given beforehand to the gunner—the tow-rope had been let go at the +blast of the whistle, before he had time to cry out or to move a limb, he +saw her cast adrift and shooting across the gunboat’s stern with the +impetus of her speed. He followed her fine, gliding form with eyes +growing big with incredulity, wild with horror. The cries on board of +her came to him only as a dreadful and confused murmur through the loud +thumping of blood in his ears, while she held on. She ran upright in a +terrible display of her gift of speed, with an incomparable air of life +and grace. She ran on till the smooth level of water in front of her +bows seemed to sink down suddenly as if sucked away; and, with a strange, +violent tremor of her mast-heads she stopped, inclined her lofty spars a +little, and lay still. She lay still on the reef, while the _Neptun_, +fetching a wide circle, continued at full speed up Spermonde Passage, +heading for the town. She lay still, perfectly still, with something +ill-omened and unnatural in her attitude. In an instant the subtle +melancholy of things touched by decay had fallen on her in the sunshine; +she was but a speck in the brilliant emptiness of space, already lonely, +already desolate. + +“Hold him!” yelled a voice from the bridge. + +Jasper had started to run to his brig with a headlong impulse, as a man +dashes forward to pull away with his hands a living, breathing, loved +creature from the brink of destruction. “Hold him! Stick to him!” +vociferated the lieutenant at the top of the bridge-ladder, while Jasper +struggled madly without a word, only his head emerging from the heaving +crowd of the _Neptun’s_ seamen, who had flung themselves upon him +obediently. “Hold—I would not have that fellow drown himself for +anything now!” + +Jasper ceased struggling. + +One by one they let go of him; they fell back gradually farther and +farther, in attentive silence, leaving him standing unsupported in a +widened, clear space, as if to give him plenty of room to fall after the +struggle. He did not even sway perceptibly. Half an hour later, when +the _Neptun_ anchored in front of the town, he had not stirred yet, had +moved neither head nor limb as much as a hair’s breadth. Directly the +rumble of the gunboat’s cable had ceased, Heemskirk came down heavily +from the bridge. + +“Call a sampan” he said, in a gloomy tone, as he passed the sentry at the +gangway, and then moved on slowly towards the spot where Jasper, the +object of many awed glances, stood looking at the deck, as if lost in a +brown study. Heemskirk came up close, and stared at him thoughtfully, +with his fingers over his lips. Here he was, the favoured vagabond, the +only man to whom that infernal girl was likely to tell the story. But he +would not find it funny. The story how Lieutenant Heemskirk—No, he would +not laugh at it. He looked as though he would never laugh at anything in +his life. + +Suddenly Jasper looked up. His eyes, without any other expression but +bewilderment, met those of Heemskirk, observant and sombre. + +“Gone on the reef!” he said, in a low, astounded tone. “On-the-reef!” he +repeated still lower, and as if attending inwardly to the birth of some +awful and amazing sensation. + +“On the very top of high-water, spring tides,” Heemskirk struck in, with +a vindictive, exulting violence which flashed and expired. He paused, as +if weary, fixing upon Jasper his arrogant eyes, over which secret +disenchantment, the unavoidable shadow of all passion, seemed to pass +like a saddening cloud. “On the very top,” he repeated, rousing himself +in fierce reaction to snatch his laced cap off his head with a +horizontal, derisive flourish towards the gangway. “And now you may go +ashore to the courts, you damned Englishman!” he said. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +THE affair of the brig _Bonito_ was bound to cause a sensation in +Makassar, the prettiest, and perhaps the cleanest-looking of all the +towns in the Islands; which however knows few occasions for excitement. +The “front,” with its special population, was soon aware that something +had happened. A steamer towing a sailing vessel had been observed far +out to sea for some time, and when the steamer came in alone, leaving the +other outside, attention was aroused. Why was that? Her masts only +could be seen—with furled sails—remaining in the same place to the +southward. And soon the rumour ran all along the crowded seashore street +that there was a ship on Tamissa reef. That crowd interpreted the +appearance correctly. Its cause was beyond their penetration, for who +could associate a girl nine hundred miles away with the stranding of a +ship on Tamissa reef, or look for the remote filiation of that event in +the psychology of at least three people, even if one of them, Lieutenant +Heemskirk, was at that very moment passing amongst them on his way to +make his verbal report? + +No; the minds on the “front” were not competent for that sort of +investigation, but many hands there—brown hands, yellow hands, white +hands—were raised to shade the eyes gazing out to sea. The rumour spread +quickly. Chinese shopkeepers came to their doors, more than one white +merchant, even, rose from his desk to go to the window. After all, a +ship on Tamissa was not an everyday occurrence. And presently the rumour +took a more definite shape. An English trader—detained on suspicion at +sea by the _Neptun_—Heemskirk was towing him in to test a case, and by +some strange accident— + +Later on the name came out. “The _Bonito_—what! Impossible! Yes—yes, +the _Bonito_. Look! You can see from here; only two masts. It’s a +brig. Didn’t think that man would ever let himself be caught. +Heemskirk’s pretty smart, too. They say she’s fitted out in her cabin +like a gentleman’s yacht. That Allen is a sort of gentleman too. An +extravagant beggar.” + +A young man entered smartly Messrs. Mesman Brothers’ office on the +“front,” bubbling with some further information. + +“Oh, yes; that’s the _Bonito_ for certain! But you don’t know the story +I’ve heard just now. The fellow must have been feeding that river with +firearms for the last year or two. Well, it seems he has grown so +reckless from long impunity that he has actually dared to sell the very +ship’s rifles this time. It’s a fact. The rifles are not on board. +What impudence! Only, he didn’t know that there was one of our warships +on the coast. But those Englishmen are so impudent that perhaps he +thought that nothing would be done to him for it. Our courts do let off +these fellows too often, on some miserable excuse or other. But, at any +rate, there’s an end of the famous _Bonito_. I have just heard in the +harbour-office that she must have gone on at the very top of high-water; +and she is in ballast, too. No human power, they think, can move her +from where she is. I only hope it is so. It would be fine to have the +notorious _Bonito_ stuck up there as a warning to others.” + +Mr. J. Mesman, a colonial-born Dutchman, a kind, paternal old fellow, +with a clean-shaven, quiet, handsome face, and a head of fine iron-grey +hair curling a little on his collar, did not say a word in defence of +Jasper and the _Bonito_. He rose from his arm-chair suddenly. His face +was visibly troubled. It had so happened that once, from a business talk +of ways and means, island trade, money matters, and so on, Jasper had +been led to open himself to him on the subject of Freya; and the +excellent man, who had known old Nelson years before and even remembered +something of Freya, was much astonished and amused by the unfolding of +the tale. + +“Well, well, well! Nelson! Yes; of course. A very honest sort of man. +And a little child with very fair hair. Oh, yes! I have a distinct +recollection. And so she has grown into such a fine girl, so very +determined, so very—” And he laughed almost boisterously. “Mind, when +you have happily eloped with your future wife, Captain Allen, you must +come along this way, and we shall welcome her here. A little fair-headed +child! I remember. I remember.” + +It was that knowledge which had brought trouble to his face at the first +news of the wreck. He took up his hat. + +“Where are you going, Mr. Mesman?” + +“I am going to look for Allen. I think he must be ashore. Does anybody +know?” + +No one of those present knew. And Mr. Mesman went out on the “front” to +make inquiries. + +The other part of the town, the part near the church and the fort, got +its information in another way. The first thing disclosed to it was +Jasper himself, walking rapidly, as though he were pursued. And, as a +matter of fact, a Chinaman, obviously a sampan man, was following him at +the same headlong pace. Suddenly, while passing Orange House, Jasper +swerved and went in, or, rather, rushed in, startling Gomez, the hotel +clerk, very much. But a Chinaman beginning to make an unseemly noise at +the door claimed the immediate attention of Gomez. His grievance was +that the white man whom he had brought on shore from the gunboat had not +paid him his boat-fare. He had pursued him so far, asking for it all the +way. But the white man had taken no notice whatever of his just claim. +Gomez satisfied the coolie with a few coppers, and then went to look for +Jasper, whom he knew very well. He found him standing stiffly by a +little round table. At the other end of the verandah a few men sitting +there had stopped talking, and were looking at him in silence. Two +billiard-players, with cues in their hands, had come to the door of the +billiard-room and stared, too. + +On Gomez coming up to him, Jasper raised one hand to point at his own +throat. Gomez noted the somewhat soiled state of his white clothes, then +took one look at his face, and fled away to order the drink for which +Jasper seemed to be asking. + +Where he wanted to go—or what purpose—where he, perhaps, only imagined +himself to be going, when a sudden impulse or the sight of a familiar +place had made him turn into Orange House—it is impossible to say. He +was steadying himself lightly with the tips of his fingers on the little +table. There were on that verandah two men whom he knew well personally, +but his gaze roaming incessantly as though he were looking for a way of +escape, passed and repassed over them without a sign of recognition. +They, on their side, looking at him, doubted the evidence of their own +eyes. It was not that his face was distorted. On the contrary, it was +still, it was set. But its expression, somehow, was unrecognisable. Can +that be him? they wondered with awe. + +In his head there was a wild chaos of clear thoughts. Perfectly clear. +It was this clearness which was so terrible in conjunction with the utter +inability to lay hold of any single one of them all. He was saying to +himself, or to them: “Steady, steady.” A China boy appeared before him +with a glass on a tray. He poured the drink down his throat, and rushed +out. His disappearance removed the spell of wonder from the beholders. +One of the men jumped up and moved quickly to that side of the verandah +from which almost the whole of the roadstead could be seen. At the very +moment when Jasper, issuing from the door of the Orange House, was +passing under him in the street below, he cried to the others excitedly: + +“That was Allen right enough! But where is his brig?” + +Jasper heard these words with extraordinary loudness. The heavens rang +with them, as if calling him to account; for those were the very words +Freya would have to use. It was an annihilating question; it struck his +consciousness like a thunderbolt and brought a sudden night upon the +chaos of his thoughts even as he walked. He did not check his pace. He +went on in the darkness for another three strides, and then fell. + +The good Mesman had to push on as far as the hospital before he found +him. The doctor there talked of a slight heatstroke. Nothing very much. +Out in three days. . . . It must be admitted that the doctor was right. +In three days, Jasper Allen came out of the hospital and became visible +to the town—very visible indeed—and remained so for quite a long time; +long enough to become almost one of the sights of the place; long enough +to become disregarded at last; long enough for the tale of his haunting +visibility to be remembered in the islands to this day. + +The talk on the “front” and Jasper’s appearance in the Orange House stand +at the beginning of the famous _Bonito_ case, and give a view of its two +aspects—the practical and the psychological. The case for the courts and +the case for compassion; that last terribly evident and yet obscure. + +It has, you must understand, remained obscure even for that friend of +mine who wrote me the letter mentioned in the very first lines of this +narrative. He was one of those in Mr. Mesman’s office, and accompanied +that gentleman in his search for Jasper. His letter described to me the +two aspects and some of the episodes of the case. Heemskirk’s attitude +was that of deep thankfulness for not having lost his own ship, and that +was all. Haze over the land was his explanation of having got so close +to Tamissa reef. He saved his ship, and for the rest he did not care. +As to the fat gunner, he deposed simply that he thought at the time that +he was acting for the best by letting go the tow-rope, but admitted that +he was greatly confused by the suddenness of the emergency. + +As a matter of fact, he had acted on very precise instructions from +Heemskirk, to whom through several years’ service together in the East he +had become a sort of devoted henchman. What was most amazing in the +detention of the _Bonito_ was his story how, proceeding to take +possession of the firearms as ordered, he discovered that there were no +firearms on board. All he found in the fore-cabin was an empty rack for +the proper number of eighteen rifles, but of the rifles themselves never +a single one anywhere in the ship. The mate of the brig, who looked +rather ill and behaved excitedly, as though he were perhaps a lunatic, +wanted him to believe that Captain Allen knew nothing of this; that it +was he, the mate, who had recently sold these rifles in the dead of night +to a certain person up the river. In proof of this story he produced a +bag of silver dollars and pressed it on his, the gunner’s, acceptance. +Then, suddenly flinging it down on the deck, he beat his own head with +both his fists and started heaping shocking curses upon his own soul for +an ungrateful wretch not fit to live. + +All this the gunner reported at once to his commanding officer. + +What Heemskirk intended by taking upon himself to detain the _Bonito_ it +is difficult to say, except that he meant to bring some trouble into the +life of the man favoured by Freya. He had been looking at Jasper with a +desire to strike that man of kisses and embraces to the earth. The +question was: How could he do it without giving himself away? But the +report of the gunner created a serious case enough. Yet Allen had +friends—and who could tell whether he wouldn’t somehow succeed in +wriggling out of it? The idea of simply towing the brig so much +compromised on to the reef came to him while he was listening to the fat +gunner in his cabin. There was but little risk of being disapproved now. +And it should be made to appear an accident. + +Going out on deck he had gloated upon his unconscious victim with such a +sinister roll of his eyes, such a queerly pursed mouth, that Jasper could +not help smiling. And the lieutenant had gone on the bridge, saying to +himself: + +“You wait! I shall spoil the taste of those sweet kisses for you. When +you hear of Lieutenant Heemskirk in the future that name won’t bring a +smile on your lips, I swear. You are delivered into my hands.” + +And this possibility had come about without any planning, one could +almost say naturally, as if events had mysteriously shaped themselves to +fit the purposes of a dark passion. The most astute scheming could not +have served Heemskirk better. It was given to him to taste a +transcendental, an incredible perfection of vengeance; to strike a deadly +blow into that hated person’s heart, and to watch him afterwards walking +about with the dagger in his breast. + +For that is what the state of Jasper amounted to. He moved, acted, +weary-eyed, keen-faced, lank and restless, with brusque movements and +fierce gestures; he talked incessantly in a frenzied and fatigued voice, +but within himself he knew that nothing would ever give him back the +brig, just as nothing can heal a pierced heart. His soul, kept quiet in +the stress of love by the unflinching Freya’s influence, was like a still +but overwound string. The shock had started it vibrating, and the string +had snapped. He had waited for two years in a perfectly intoxicated +confidence for a day that now would never come to a man disarmed for life +by the loss of the brig, and, it seemed to him, made unfit for love to +which he had no foothold to offer. + +Day after day he would traverse the length of the town, follow the coast, +and, reaching the point of land opposite that part of the reef on which +his brig lay stranded, look steadily across the water at her beloved +form, once the home of an exulting hope, and now, in her inclined, +desolated immobility, towering above the lonely sea-horizon, a symbol of +despair. + +The crew had left her in due course in her own boats which directly they +reached the town were sequestrated by the harbour authorities. The +vessel, too, was sequestrated pending proceedings; but these same +authorities did not take the trouble to set a guard on board. For, +indeed, what could move her from there? Nothing, unless a miracle; +nothing, unless Jasper’s eyes, fastened on her tensely for hours +together, as though he hoped by the mere power of vision to draw her to +his breast. + +All this story, read in my friend’s very chatty letter, dismayed me not a +little. But it was really appalling to read his relation of how Schultz, +the mate, went about everywhere affirming with desperate pertinacity that +it was he alone who had sold the rifles. “I stole them,” he protested. +Of course, no one would believe him. My friend himself did not believe +him, though he, of course, admired this self-sacrifice. But a good many +people thought it was going too far to make oneself out a thief for the +sake of a friend. Only, it was such an obvious lie, too, that it did not +matter, perhaps. + +I, who, in view of Schultz’s psychology, knew how true that must be, +admit that I was appalled. So this was how a perfidious destiny took +advantage of a generous impulse! And I felt as though I were an +accomplice in this perfidy, since I did to a certain extent encourage +Jasper. Yet I had warned him as well. + +“The man seemed to have gone crazy on this point,” wrote my friend. “He +went to Mesman with his story. He says that some rascally white man +living amongst the natives up that river made him drunk with some gin one +evening, and then jeered at him for never having any money. Then he, +protesting to us that he was an honest man and must be believed, +described himself as being a thief whenever he took a drop too much, and +told us that he went on board and passed the rifles one by one without +the slightest compunction to a canoe which came alongside that night, +receiving ten dollars apiece for them. + +“Next day he was ill with shame and grief, but had not the courage to +confess his lapse to his benefactor. When the gunboat stopped the brig +he felt ready to die with the apprehension of the consequences, and would +have died happily, if he could have been able to bring the rifles back by +the sacrifice of his life. He said nothing to Jasper, hoping that the +brig would be released presently. When it turned out otherwise and his +captain was detained on board the gunboat, he was ready to commit suicide +from despair; only he thought it his duty to live in order to let the +truth be known. ‘I am an honest man! I am an honest man!’ he repeated, +in a voice that brought tears to our eyes. ‘You must believe me when I +tell you that I am a thief—a vile, low, cunning, sneaking thief as soon +as I’ve had a glass or two. Take me somewhere where I may tell the truth +on oath.’ + +“When we had at last convinced him that his story could be of no use to +Jasper—for what Dutch court, having once got hold of an English trader, +would accept such an explanation; and, indeed, how, when, where could one +hope to find proofs of such a tale?—he made as if to tear his hair in +handfuls, but, calming down, said: ‘Good-bye, then, gentlemen,’ and went +out of the room so crushed that he seemed hardly able to put one foot +before the other. That very night he committed suicide by cutting his +throat in the house of a half-caste with whom he had been lodging since +he came ashore from the wreck.” + +That throat, I thought with a shudder, which could produce the tender, +persuasive, manly, but fascinating voice which had aroused Jasper’s ready +compassion and had secured Freya’s sympathy! Who could ever have +supposed such an end in store for the impossible, gentle Schultz, with +his idiosyncrasy of naïve pilfering, so absurdly straightforward that, +even in the people who had suffered from it, it aroused nothing more than +a sort of amused exasperation? He was really impossible. His lot +evidently should have been a half-starved, mysterious, but by no means +tragic existence as a mild-eyed, inoffensive beachcomber on the fringe of +native life. There are occasions when the irony of fate, which some +people profess to discover in the working out of our lives, wears the +aspect of crude and savage jesting. + +I shook my head over the manes of Schultz, and went on with my friend’s +letter. It told me how the brig on the reef, looted by the natives from +the coast villages, acquired gradually the lamentable aspect, the grey +ghastliness of a wreck; while Jasper, fading daily into a mere shadow of +a man, strode brusquely all along the “front” with horribly lively eyes +and a faint, fixed smile on his lips, to spend the day on a lonely spit +of sand looking eagerly at her, as though he had expected some shape on +board to rise up and make some sort of sign to him over the decaying +bulwarks. The Mesmans were taking care of him as far as it was possible. +The _Bonito_ case had been referred to Batavia, where no doubt it would +fade away in a fog of official papers. . . . It was heartrending to read +all this. That active and zealous officer, Lieutenant Heemskirk, his air +of sullen, darkly-pained self-importance not lightened by the approval of +his action conveyed to him unofficially, had gone on to take up his +station in the Moluccas. . . . + +Then, at the end of the bulky, kindly-meant epistle, dealing with the +island news of half a year at least, my friend wrote: “A couple of months +ago old Nelson turned up here, arriving by the mail-boat from Java. Came +to see Mesman, it seems. A rather mysterious visit, and extraordinarily +short, after coming all that way. He stayed just four days at the Orange +House, with apparently nothing in particular to do, and then caught the +south-going steamer for the Straits. I remember people saying at one +time that Allen was rather sweet on old Nelson’s daughter, the girl that +was brought up by Mrs. Harley and then went to live with him at the Seven +Isles group. Surely you remember old Nelson—” + +Remember old Nelson! Rather! + +The letter went on to inform me further that old Nelson, at least, +remembered me, since some time after his flying visit to Makassar he had +written to the Mesmans asking for my address in London. + +That old Nelson (or Nielsen), the note of whose personality was a +profound, echoless irresponsiveness to everything around him, should wish +to write, or find anything to write about to anybody, was in itself a +cause for no small wonder. And to me, of all people! I waited with +uneasy impatience for whatever disclosure could come from that naturally +benighted intelligence, but my impatience had time to wear out before my +eyes beheld old Nelson’s trembling, painfully-formed handwriting, senile +and childish at the same time, on an envelope bearing a penny stamp and +the postal mark of the Notting Hill office. I delayed opening it in +order to pay the tribute of astonishment due to the event by flinging my +hands above my head. So he had come home to England, to be definitely +Nelson; or else was on his way home to Denmark, where he would revert for +ever to his original Nielsen! But old Nelson (or Nielsen) out of the +tropics seemed unthinkable. And yet he was there, asking me to call. + +His address was at a boarding-house in one of those Bayswater squares, +once of leisure, which nowadays are reduced to earning their living. +Somebody had recommended him there. I started to call on him on one of +those January days in London, one of those wintry days composed of the +four devilish elements, cold, wet, mud, and grime, combined with a +particular stickiness of atmosphere that clings like an unclean garment +to one’s very soul. Yet on approaching his abode I saw, like a flicker +far behind the soiled veil of the four elements, the wearisome and +splendid glitter of a blue sea with the Seven Islets like minute specks +swimming in my eye, the high red roof of the bungalow crowning the very +smallest of them all. This visual reminiscence was profoundly +disturbing. I knocked at the door with a faltering hand. + +Old Nelson (or Nielsen) got up from the table at which he was sitting +with a shabby pocket-book full of papers before him. He took off his +spectacles before shaking hands. For a moment neither of us said a word; +then, noticing me looking round somewhat expectantly, he murmured some +words, of which I caught only “daughter” and “Hong Kong,” cast his eyes +down, and sighed. + +His moustache, sticking all ways out, as of yore, was quite white now. +His old cheeks were softly rounded, with some colour in them; strangely +enough, that something childlike always noticeable in the general contour +of his physiognomy had become much more marked. Like his handwriting, he +looked childish and senile. He showed his age most in his +unintelligently furrowed, anxious forehead and in his round, innocent +eyes, which appeared to me weak and blinking and watery; or was it that +they were full of tears? . . . + +To discover old Nelson fully informed upon any matter whatever was a new +experience. And after the first awkwardness had worn off he talked +freely, with, now and then, a question to start him going whenever he +lapsed into silence, which he would do suddenly, clasping his hands on +his waistcoat in an attitude which would recall to me the east verandah, +where he used to sit talking quietly and puffing out his cheeks in what +seemed now old, very old days. He talked in a reasonable somewhat +anxious tone. + +“No, no. We did not know anything for weeks. Out of the way like that, +we couldn’t, of course. No mail service to the Seven Isles. But one day +I ran over to Banka in my big sailing-boat to see whether there were any +letters, and saw a Dutch paper. But it looked only like a bit of marine +news: English brig _Bonito_ gone ashore outside Makassar roads. That was +all. I took the paper home with me and showed it to her. ‘I will never +forgive him!’ she cries with her old spirit. ‘My dear,’ I said, ‘you are +a sensible girl. The best man may lose a ship. But what about your +health?’ I was beginning to be frightened at her looks. She would not +let me talk even of going to Singapore before. But, really, such a +sensible girl couldn’t keep on objecting for ever. ‘Do what you like, +papa,’ she says. Rather a job, that. Had to catch a steamer at sea, but +I got her over all right. There, doctors, of course. Fever. Anæmia. +Put her to bed. Two or three women very kind to her. Naturally in our +papers the whole story came out before long. She reads it to the end, +lying on the couch; then hands the newspaper back to me, whispers +‘Heemskirk,’ and goes off into a faint.” + +He blinked at me for quite a long time, his eyes running full of tears +again. + +“Next day,” he began, without any emotion in his voice, “she felt +stronger, and we had a long talk. She told me everything.” + +Here old Nelson, with his eyes cast down, gave me the whole story of the +Heemskirk episode in Freya’s words; then went on in his rather jerky +utterance, and looking up innocently: + +“‘My dear,’ I said, ‘you have behaved in the main like a sensible girl.’ +‘I have been horrid,’ she cries, ‘and he is breaking his heart over +there.’ Well, she was too sensible not to see she wasn’t in a state to +travel. But I went. She told me to go. She was being looked after very +well. Anæmia. Getting better, they said.” + +He paused. + +“You did see him?” I murmured. + +“Oh, yes; I did see him,” he started again, talking in that reasonable +voice as though he were arguing a point. “I did see him. I came upon +him. Eyes sunk an inch into his head; nothing but skin on the bones of +his face, a skeleton in dirty white clothes. That’s what he looked like. +How Freya . . . But she never did—not really. He was sitting there, the +only live thing for miles along that coast, on a drift-log washed up on +the shore. They had clipped his hair in the hospital, and it had not +grown again. He stared, holding his chin in his hand, and with nothing +on the sea between him and the sky but that wreck. When I came up to him +he just moved his head a bit. ‘Is that you, old man?’ says he—like that. + +“If you had seen him you would have understood at once how impossible it +was for Freya to have ever loved that man. Well, well. I don’t say. +She might have—something. She was lonely, you know. But really to go +away with him! Never! Madness. She was too sensible . . . I began to +reproach him gently. And by and by he turns on me. ‘Write to you! What +about? Come to her! What with? If I had been a man I would have +carried her off, but she made a child, a happy child, of me. Tell her +that the day the only thing I had belonging to me in the world perished +on this reef I discovered that I had no power over her. . . Has she come +here with you?’ he shouts, blazing at me suddenly with his hollow eyes. +I shook my head. Come with me, indeed! Anæmia! ‘Aha! You see? Go +away, then, old man, and leave me alone here with that ghost,’ he says, +jerking his head at the wreck of his brig. + +“Mad! It was getting dusk. I did not care to stop any longer all by +myself with that man in that lonely place. I was not going to tell him +of Freya’s illness. Anæmia! What was the good? Mad! And what sort of +husband would he have made, anyhow, for a sensible girl like Freya? Why, +even my little property I could not have left them. The Dutch +authorities would never have allowed an Englishman to settle there. It +was not sold then. My man Mahmat, you know, was looking after it for me. +Later on I let it go for a tenth of its value to a Dutch half-caste. But +never mind. It was nothing to me then. Yes; I went away from him. I +caught the return mail-boat. I told everything to Freya. ‘He’s mad,’ I +said; ‘and, my dear, the only thing he loved was his brig.’ + +“‘Perhaps,’ she says to herself, looking straight away—her eyes were +nearly as hollow as his—‘perhaps it is true. Yes! I would never allow +him any power over me.’” + +Old Nelson paused. I sat fascinated, and feeling a little cold in that +room with a blazing fire. + +“So you see,” he continued, “she never really cared for him. Much too +sensible. I took her away to Hong Kong. Change of climate, they said. +Oh, these doctors! My God! Winter time! There came ten days of cold +mists and wind and rain. Pneumonia. But look here! We talked a lot +together. Days and evenings. Who else had she? . . . She talked a lot +to me, my own girl. Sometimes she would laugh a little. Look at me and +laugh a little—” + +I shuddered. He looked up vaguely, with a childish, puzzled moodiness. + +“She would say: ‘I did not really mean to be a bad daughter to you, +papa.’ And I would say: ‘Of course, my dear. You could not have meant +it.’ She would lie quiet and then say: ‘I wonder?’ And sometimes, ‘I’ve +been really a coward,’ she would tell me. You know, sick people they say +things. And so she would say too: ‘I’ve been conceited, headstrong, +capricious. I sought my own gratification. I was selfish or afraid.’ +. . . But sick people, you know, they say anything. And once, after lying +silent almost all day, she said: ‘Yes; perhaps, when the day came I would +not have gone. Perhaps! I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘Draw the curtain, +papa. Shut the sea out. It reproaches me with my folly.’” He gasped +and paused. + +“So you see,” he went on in a murmur. “Very ill, very ill indeed. +Pneumonia. Very sudden.” He pointed his finger at the carpet, while the +thought of the poor girl, vanquished in her struggle with three men’s +absurdities, and coming at last to doubt her own self, held me in a very +anguish of pity. + +“You see yourself,” he began again in a downcast manner. “She could not +have really . . . She mentioned you several times. Good friend. +Sensible man. So I wanted to tell you myself—let you know the truth. A +fellow like that! How could it be? She was lonely. And perhaps for a +while . . . Mere nothing. There could never have been a question of love +for my Freya—such a sensible girl—” + +“Man!” I cried, rising upon him wrathfully, “don’t you see that she died +of it?” + +He got up too. “No! no!” he stammered, as if angry. “The doctors! +Pneumonia. Low state. The inflammation of the . . . They told me. +Pneu—” + +He did not finish the word. It ended in a sob. He flung his arms out in +a gesture of despair, giving up his ghastly pretence with a low, +heartrending cry: + +“And I thought that she was so sensible!” + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1055 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1056-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1056-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ef7f620d --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1056-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14686 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1056 *** + +[Illustration] + + + + +Martin Eden + +by Jack London + + +Contents + + CHAPTER I. + CHAPTER II. + CHAPTER III. + CHAPTER IV. + CHAPTER V. + CHAPTER VI. + CHAPTER VII. + CHAPTER VIII. + CHAPTER IX. + CHAPTER X. + CHAPTER XI. + CHAPTER XII. + CHAPTER XIII. + CHAPTER XIV. + CHAPTER XV. + CHAPTER XVI. + CHAPTER XVII. + CHAPTER XVIII. + CHAPTER XIX. + CHAPTER XX. + CHAPTER XXI. + CHAPTER XXII. + CHAPTER XXIII. + CHAPTER XXIV. + CHAPTER XXV. + CHAPTER XXVI. + CHAPTER XXVII. + CHAPTER XXVIII. + CHAPTER XXIX. + CHAPTER XXX. + CHAPTER XXXI. + CHAPTER XXXII. + CHAPTER XXXIII. + CHAPTER XXXIV. + CHAPTER XXXV. + CHAPTER XXXVI. + CHAPTER XXXVII. + CHAPTER XXXVIII. + CHAPTER XXXIX. + CHAPTER XL. + CHAPTER XLI. + CHAPTER XLII. + CHAPTER XLIII. + CHAPTER XLIV. + CHAPTER XLV. + CHAPTER XLVI. + + +“Let me live out my years in heat of blood! + Let me lie drunken with the dreamer’s wine! +Let me not see this soul-house built of mud + Go toppling to the dust a vacant shrine!” + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +The one opened the door with a latch-key and went in, followed by a +young fellow who awkwardly removed his cap. He wore rough clothes that +smacked of the sea, and he was manifestly out of place in the spacious +hall in which he found himself. He did not know what to do with his +cap, and was stuffing it into his coat pocket when the other took it +from him. The act was done quietly and naturally, and the awkward young +fellow appreciated it. “He understands,” was his thought. “He’ll see me +through all right.” + +He walked at the other’s heels with a swing to his shoulders, and his +legs spread unwittingly, as if the level floors were tilting up and +sinking down to the heave and lunge of the sea. The wide rooms seemed +too narrow for his rolling gait, and to himself he was in terror lest +his broad shoulders should collide with the doorways or sweep the +bric-a-brac from the low mantel. He recoiled from side to side between +the various objects and multiplied the hazards that in reality lodged +only in his mind. Between a grand piano and a centre-table piled high +with books was space for a half a dozen to walk abreast, yet he essayed +it with trepidation. His heavy arms hung loosely at his sides. He did +not know what to do with those arms and hands, and when, to his excited +vision, one arm seemed liable to brush against the books on the table, +he lurched away like a frightened horse, barely missing the piano +stool. He watched the easy walk of the other in front of him, and for +the first time realized that his walk was different from that of other +men. He experienced a momentary pang of shame that he should walk so +uncouthly. The sweat burst through the skin of his forehead in tiny +beads, and he paused and mopped his bronzed face with his handkerchief. + +“Hold on, Arthur, my boy,” he said, attempting to mask his anxiety with +facetious utterance. “This is too much all at once for yours truly. +Give me a chance to get my nerve. You know I didn’t want to come, an’ I +guess your fam’ly ain’t hankerin’ to see me neither.” + +“That’s all right,” was the reassuring answer. “You mustn’t be +frightened at us. We’re just homely people—Hello, there’s a letter for +me.” + +He stepped back to the table, tore open the envelope, and began to +read, giving the stranger an opportunity to recover himself. And the +stranger understood and appreciated. His was the gift of sympathy, +understanding; and beneath his alarmed exterior that sympathetic +process went on. He mopped his forehead dry and glanced about him with +a controlled face, though in the eyes there was an expression such as +wild animals betray when they fear the trap. He was surrounded by the +unknown, apprehensive of what might happen, ignorant of what he should +do, aware that he walked and bore himself awkwardly, fearful that every +attribute and power of him was similarly afflicted. He was keenly +sensitive, hopelessly self-conscious, and the amused glance that the +other stole privily at him over the top of the letter burned into him +like a dagger-thrust. He saw the glance, but he gave no sign, for among +the things he had learned was discipline. Also, that dagger-thrust went +to his pride. He cursed himself for having come, and at the same time +resolved that, happen what would, having come, he would carry it +through. The lines of his face hardened, and into his eyes came a +fighting light. He looked about more unconcernedly, sharply observant, +every detail of the pretty interior registering itself on his brain. +His eyes were wide apart; nothing in their field of vision escaped; and +as they drank in the beauty before them the fighting light died out and +a warm glow took its place. He was responsive to beauty, and here was +cause to respond. + +An oil painting caught and held him. A heavy surf thundered and burst +over an outjutting rock; lowering storm-clouds covered the sky; and, +outside the line of surf, a pilot-schooner, close-hauled, heeled over +till every detail of her deck was visible, was surging along against a +stormy sunset sky. There was beauty, and it drew him irresistibly. He +forgot his awkward walk and came closer to the painting, very close. +The beauty faded out of the canvas. His face expressed his +bepuzzlement. He stared at what seemed a careless daub of paint, then +stepped away. Immediately all the beauty flashed back into the canvas. +“A trick picture,” was his thought, as he dismissed it, though in the +midst of the multitudinous impressions he was receiving he found time +to feel a prod of indignation that so much beauty should be sacrificed +to make a trick. He did not know painting. He had been brought up on +chromos and lithographs that were always definite and sharp, near or +far. He had seen oil paintings, it was true, in the show windows of +shops, but the glass of the windows had prevented his eager eyes from +approaching too near. + +He glanced around at his friend reading the letter and saw the books on +the table. Into his eyes leaped a wistfulness and a yearning as +promptly as the yearning leaps into the eyes of a starving man at sight +of food. An impulsive stride, with one lurch to right and left of the +shoulders, brought him to the table, where he began affectionately +handling the books. He glanced at the titles and the authors’ names, +read fragments of text, caressing the volumes with his eyes and hands, +and, once, recognized a book he had read. For the rest, they were +strange books and strange authors. He chanced upon a volume of +Swinburne and began reading steadily, forgetful of where he was, his +face glowing. Twice he closed the book on his forefinger to look at the +name of the author. Swinburne! he would remember that name. That fellow +had eyes, and he had certainly seen color and flashing light. But who +was Swinburne? Was he dead a hundred years or so, like most of the +poets? Or was he alive still, and writing? He turned to the title-page +. . . yes, he had written other books; well, he would go to the free +library the first thing in the morning and try to get hold of some of +Swinburne’s stuff. He went back to the text and lost himself. He did +not notice that a young woman had entered the room. The first he knew +was when he heard Arthur’s voice saying:- + +“Ruth, this is Mr. Eden.” + +The book was closed on his forefinger, and before he turned he was +thrilling to the first new impression, which was not of the girl, but +of her brother’s words. Under that muscled body of his he was a mass of +quivering sensibilities. At the slightest impact of the outside world +upon his consciousness, his thoughts, sympathies, and emotions leapt +and played like lambent flame. He was extraordinarily receptive and +responsive, while his imagination, pitched high, was ever at work +establishing relations of likeness and difference. “Mr. Eden,” was what +he had thrilled to—he who had been called “Eden,” or “Martin Eden,” or +just “Martin,” all his life. And “_Mister_!” It was certainly going +some, was his internal comment. His mind seemed to turn, on the +instant, into a vast camera obscura, and he saw arrayed around his +consciousness endless pictures from his life, of stoke-holes and +forecastles, camps and beaches, jails and boozing-kens, fever-hospitals +and slum streets, wherein the thread of association was the fashion in +which he had been addressed in those various situations. + +And then he turned and saw the girl. The phantasmagoria of his brain +vanished at sight of her. She was a pale, ethereal creature, with wide, +spiritual blue eyes and a wealth of golden hair. He did not know how +she was dressed, except that the dress was as wonderful as she. He +likened her to a pale gold flower upon a slender stem. No, she was a +spirit, a divinity, a goddess; such sublimated beauty was not of the +earth. Or perhaps the books were right, and there were many such as she +in the upper walks of life. She might well be sung by that chap, +Swinburne. Perhaps he had had somebody like her in mind when he painted +that girl, Iseult, in the book there on the table. All this plethora of +sight, and feeling, and thought occurred on the instant. There was no +pause of the realities wherein he moved. He saw her hand coming out to +his, and she looked him straight in the eyes as she shook hands, +frankly, like a man. The women he had known did not shake hands that +way. For that matter, most of them did not shake hands at all. A flood +of associations, visions of various ways he had made the acquaintance +of women, rushed into his mind and threatened to swamp it. But he shook +them aside and looked at her. Never had he seen such a woman. The women +he had known! Immediately, beside her, on either hand, ranged the women +he had known. For an eternal second he stood in the midst of a portrait +gallery, wherein she occupied the central place, while about her were +limned many women, all to be weighed and measured by a fleeting glance, +herself the unit of weight and measure. He saw the weak and sickly +faces of the girls of the factories, and the simpering, boisterous +girls from the south of Market. There were women of the cattle camps, +and swarthy cigarette-smoking women of Old Mexico. These, in turn, were +crowded out by Japanese women, doll-like, stepping mincingly on wooden +clogs; by Eurasians, delicate featured, stamped with degeneracy; by +full-bodied South-Sea-Island women, flower-crowned and brown-skinned. +All these were blotted out by a grotesque and terrible nightmare +brood—frowsy, shuffling creatures from the pavements of Whitechapel, +gin-bloated hags of the stews, and all the vast hell’s following of +harpies, vile-mouthed and filthy, that under the guise of monstrous +female form prey upon sailors, the scrapings of the ports, the scum and +slime of the human pit. + +“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Eden?” the girl was saying. “I have been +looking forward to meeting you ever since Arthur told us. It was brave +of you—” + +He waved his hand deprecatingly and muttered that it was nothing at +all, what he had done, and that any fellow would have done it. She +noticed that the hand he waved was covered with fresh abrasions, in the +process of healing, and a glance at the other loose-hanging hand showed +it to be in the same condition. Also, with quick, critical eye, she +noted a scar on his cheek, another that peeped out from under the hair +of the forehead, and a third that ran down and disappeared under the +starched collar. She repressed a smile at sight of the red line that +marked the chafe of the collar against the bronzed neck. He was +evidently unused to stiff collars. Likewise her feminine eye took in +the clothes he wore, the cheap and unaesthetic cut, the wrinkling of +the coat across the shoulders, and the series of wrinkles in the +sleeves that advertised bulging biceps muscles. + +While he waved his hand and muttered that he had done nothing at all, +he was obeying her behest by trying to get into a chair. He found time +to admire the ease with which she sat down, then lurched toward a chair +facing her, overwhelmed with consciousness of the awkward figure he was +cutting. This was a new experience for him. All his life, up to then, +he had been unaware of being either graceful or awkward. Such thoughts +of self had never entered his mind. He sat down gingerly on the edge of +the chair, greatly worried by his hands. They were in the way wherever +he put them. Arthur was leaving the room, and Martin Eden followed his +exit with longing eyes. He felt lost, alone there in the room with that +pale spirit of a woman. There was no bar-keeper upon whom to call for +drinks, no small boy to send around the corner for a can of beer and by +means of that social fluid start the amenities of friendship flowing. + +“You have such a scar on your neck, Mr. Eden,” the girl was saying. +“How did it happen? I am sure it must have been some adventure.” + +“A Mexican with a knife, miss,” he answered, moistening his parched +lips and clearing his throat. “It was just a fight. After I got the +knife away, he tried to bite off my nose.” + +Baldly as he had stated it, in his eyes was a rich vision of that hot, +starry night at Salina Cruz, the white strip of beach, the lights of +the sugar steamers in the harbor, the voices of the drunken sailors in +the distance, the jostling stevedores, the flaming passion in the +Mexican’s face, the glint of the beast-eyes in the starlight, the sting +of the steel in his neck, and the rush of blood, the crowd and the +cries, the two bodies, his and the Mexican’s, locked together, rolling +over and over and tearing up the sand, and from away off somewhere the +mellow tinkling of a guitar. Such was the picture, and he thrilled to +the memory of it, wondering if the man could paint it who had painted +the pilot-schooner on the wall. The white beach, the stars, and the +lights of the sugar steamers would look great, he thought, and midway +on the sand the dark group of figures that surrounded the fighters. The +knife occupied a place in the picture, he decided, and would show well, +with a sort of gleam, in the light of the stars. But of all this no +hint had crept into his speech. “He tried to bite off my nose,” he +concluded. + +“Oh,” the girl said, in a faint, far voice, and he noticed the shock in +her sensitive face. + +He felt a shock himself, and a blush of embarrassment shone faintly on +his sunburned cheeks, though to him it burned as hotly as when his +cheeks had been exposed to the open furnace-door in the fire-room. Such +sordid things as stabbing affrays were evidently not fit subjects for +conversation with a lady. People in the books, in her walk of life, did +not talk about such things—perhaps they did not know about them, +either. + +There was a brief pause in the conversation they were trying to get +started. Then she asked tentatively about the scar on his cheek. Even +as she asked, he realized that she was making an effort to talk his +talk, and he resolved to get away from it and talk hers. + +“It was just an accident,” he said, putting his hand to his cheek. “One +night, in a calm, with a heavy sea running, the main-boom-lift carried +away, an’ next the tackle. The lift was wire, an’ it was threshin’ +around like a snake. The whole watch was tryin’ to grab it, an’ I +rushed in an’ got swatted.” + +“Oh,” she said, this time with an accent of comprehension, though +secretly his speech had been so much Greek to her and she was wondering +what a _lift_ was and what _swatted_ meant. + +“This man Swineburne,” he began, attempting to put his plan into +execution and pronouncing the _i_ long. + +“Who?” + +“Swineburne,” he repeated, with the same mispronunciation. “The poet.” + +“Swinburne,” she corrected. + +“Yes, that’s the chap,” he stammered, his cheeks hot again. “How long +since he died?” + +“Why, I haven’t heard that he was dead.” She looked at him curiously. +“Where did you make his acquaintance?” + +“I never clapped eyes on him,” was the reply. “But I read some of his +poetry out of that book there on the table just before you come in. How +do you like his poetry?” + +And thereat she began to talk quickly and easily upon the subject he +had suggested. He felt better, and settled back slightly from the edge +of the chair, holding tightly to its arms with his hands, as if it +might get away from him and buck him to the floor. He had succeeded in +making her talk her talk, and while she rattled on, he strove to follow +her, marvelling at all the knowledge that was stowed away in that +pretty head of hers, and drinking in the pale beauty of her face. +Follow her he did, though bothered by unfamiliar words that fell glibly +from her lips and by critical phrases and thought-processes that were +foreign to his mind, but that nevertheless stimulated his mind and set +it tingling. Here was intellectual life, he thought, and here was +beauty, warm and wonderful as he had never dreamed it could be. He +forgot himself and stared at her with hungry eyes. Here was something +to live for, to win to, to fight for—ay, and die for. The books were +true. There were such women in the world. She was one of them. She lent +wings to his imagination, and great, luminous canvases spread +themselves before him whereon loomed vague, gigantic figures of love +and romance, and of heroic deeds for woman’s sake—for a pale woman, a +flower of gold. And through the swaying, palpitant vision, as through a +fairy mirage, he stared at the real woman, sitting there and talking of +literature and art. He listened as well, but he stared, unconscious of +the fixity of his gaze or of the fact that all that was essentially +masculine in his nature was shining in his eyes. But she, who knew +little of the world of men, being a woman, was keenly aware of his +burning eyes. She had never had men look at her in such fashion, and it +embarrassed her. She stumbled and halted in her utterance. The thread +of argument slipped from her. He frightened her, and at the same time +it was strangely pleasant to be so looked upon. Her training warned her +of peril and of wrong, subtle, mysterious, luring; while her instincts +rang clarion-voiced through her being, impelling her to hurdle caste +and place and gain to this traveller from another world, to this +uncouth young fellow with lacerated hands and a line of raw red caused +by the unaccustomed linen at his throat, who, all too evidently, was +soiled and tainted by ungracious existence. She was clean, and her +cleanness revolted; but she was woman, and she was just beginning to +learn the paradox of woman. + +“As I was saying—what was I saying?” She broke off abruptly and laughed +merrily at her predicament. + +“You was saying that this man Swinburne failed bein’ a great poet +because—an’ that was as far as you got, miss,” he prompted, while to +himself he seemed suddenly hungry, and delicious little thrills crawled +up and down his spine at the sound of her laughter. Like silver, he +thought to himself, like tinkling silver bells; and on the instant, and +for an instant, he was transported to a far land, where under pink +cherry blossoms, he smoked a cigarette and listened to the bells of the +peaked pagoda calling straw-sandalled devotees to worship. + +“Yes, thank you,” she said. “Swinburne fails, when all is said, because +he is, well, indelicate. There are many of his poems that should never +be read. Every line of the really great poets is filled with beautiful +truth, and calls to all that is high and noble in the human. Not a line +of the great poets can be spared without impoverishing the world by +that much.” + +“I thought it was great,” he said hesitatingly, “the little I read. I +had no idea he was such a—a scoundrel. I guess that crops out in his +other books.” + +“There are many lines that could be spared from the book you were +reading,” she said, her voice primly firm and dogmatic. + +“I must ’a’ missed ’em,” he announced. “What I read was the real goods. +It was all lighted up an’ shining, an’ it shun right into me an’ +lighted me up inside, like the sun or a searchlight. That’s the way it +landed on me, but I guess I ain’t up much on poetry, miss.” + +He broke off lamely. He was confused, painfully conscious of his +inarticulateness. He had felt the bigness and glow of life in what he +had read, but his speech was inadequate. He could not express what he +felt, and to himself he likened himself to a sailor, in a strange ship, +on a dark night, groping about in the unfamiliar running rigging. Well, +he decided, it was up to him to get acquainted in this new world. He +had never seen anything that he couldn’t get the hang of when he wanted +to and it was about time for him to want to learn to talk the things +that were inside of him so that she could understand. _She_ was bulking +large on his horizon. + +“Now Longfellow—” she was saying. + +“Yes, I’ve read ’m,” he broke in impulsively, spurred on to exhibit and +make the most of his little store of book knowledge, desirous of +showing her that he was not wholly a stupid clod. “‘The Psalm of Life,’ +‘Excelsior,’ an’ . . . I guess that’s all.” + +She nodded her head and smiled, and he felt, somehow, that her smile +was tolerant, pitifully tolerant. He was a fool to attempt to make a +pretence that way. That Longfellow chap most likely had written +countless books of poetry. + +“Excuse me, miss, for buttin’ in that way. I guess the real facts is +that I don’t know nothin’ much about such things. It ain’t in my class. +But I’m goin’ to make it in my class.” + +It sounded like a threat. His voice was determined, his eyes were +flashing, the lines of his face had grown harsh. And to her it seemed +that the angle of his jaw had changed; its pitch had become +unpleasantly aggressive. At the same time a wave of intense virility +seemed to surge out from him and impinge upon her. + +“I think you could make it in—in your class,” she finished with a +laugh. “You are very strong.” + +Her gaze rested for a moment on the muscular neck, heavy corded, almost +bull-like, bronzed by the sun, spilling over with rugged health and +strength. And though he sat there, blushing and humble, again she felt +drawn to him. She was surprised by a wanton thought that rushed into +her mind. It seemed to her that if she could lay her two hands upon +that neck that all its strength and vigor would flow out to her. She +was shocked by this thought. It seemed to reveal to her an undreamed +depravity in her nature. Besides, strength to her was a gross and +brutish thing. Her ideal of masculine beauty had always been slender +gracefulness. Yet the thought still persisted. It bewildered her that +she should desire to place her hands on that sunburned neck. In truth, +she was far from robust, and the need of her body and mind was for +strength. But she did not know it. She knew only that no man had ever +affected her before as this one had, who shocked her from moment to +moment with his awful grammar. + +“Yes, I ain’t no invalid,” he said. “When it comes down to hard-pan, I +can digest scrap-iron. But just now I’ve got dyspepsia. Most of what +you was sayin’ I can’t digest. Never trained that way, you see. I like +books and poetry, and what time I’ve had I’ve read ’em, but I’ve never +thought about ’em the way you have. That’s why I can’t talk about ’em. +I’m like a navigator adrift on a strange sea without chart or compass. +Now I want to get my bearin’s. Mebbe you can put me right. How did you +learn all this you’ve ben talkin’?” + +“By going to school, I fancy, and by studying,” she answered. + +“I went to school when I was a kid,” he began to object. + +“Yes; but I mean high school, and lectures, and the university.” + +“You’ve gone to the university?” he demanded in frank amazement. He +felt that she had become remoter from him by at least a million miles. + +“I’m going there now. I’m taking special courses in English.” + +He did not know what “English” meant, but he made a mental note of that +item of ignorance and passed on. + +“How long would I have to study before I could go to the university?” +he asked. + +She beamed encouragement upon his desire for knowledge, and said: “That +depends upon how much studying you have already done. You have never +attended high school? Of course not. But did you finish grammar +school?” + +“I had two years to run, when I left,” he answered. “But I was always +honorably promoted at school.” + +The next moment, angry with himself for the boast, he had gripped the +arms of the chair so savagely that every finger-end was stinging. At +the same moment he became aware that a woman was entering the room. He +saw the girl leave her chair and trip swiftly across the floor to the +newcomer. They kissed each other, and, with arms around each other’s +waists, they advanced toward him. That must be her mother, he thought. +She was a tall, blond woman, slender, and stately, and beautiful. Her +gown was what he might expect in such a house. His eyes delighted in +the graceful lines of it. She and her dress together reminded him of +women on the stage. Then he remembered seeing similar grand ladies and +gowns entering the London theatres while he stood and watched and the +policemen shoved him back into the drizzle beyond the awning. Next his +mind leaped to the Grand Hotel at Yokohama, where, too, from the +sidewalk, he had seen grand ladies. Then the city and the harbor of +Yokohama, in a thousand pictures, began flashing before his eyes. But +he swiftly dismissed the kaleidoscope of memory, oppressed by the +urgent need of the present. He knew that he must stand up to be +introduced, and he struggled painfully to his feet, where he stood with +trousers bagging at the knees, his arms loose-hanging and ludicrous, +his face set hard for the impending ordeal. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +The process of getting into the dining room was a nightmare to him. +Between halts and stumbles, jerks and lurches, locomotion had at times +seemed impossible. But at last he had made it, and was seated alongside +of Her. The array of knives and forks frightened him. They bristled +with unknown perils, and he gazed at them, fascinated, till their +dazzle became a background across which moved a succession of +forecastle pictures, wherein he and his mates sat eating salt beef with +sheath-knives and fingers, or scooping thick pea-soup out of pannikins +by means of battered iron spoons. The stench of bad beef was in his +nostrils, while in his ears, to the accompaniment of creaking timbers +and groaning bulkheads, echoed the loud mouth-noises of the eaters. He +watched them eating, and decided that they ate like pigs. Well, he +would be careful here. He would make no noise. He would keep his mind +upon it all the time. + +He glanced around the table. Opposite him was Arthur, and Arthur’s +brother, Norman. They were her brothers, he reminded himself, and his +heart warmed toward them. How they loved each other, the members of +this family! There flashed into his mind the picture of her mother, of +the kiss of greeting, and of the pair of them walking toward him with +arms entwined. Not in his world were such displays of affection between +parents and children made. It was a revelation of the heights of +existence that were attained in the world above. It was the finest +thing yet that he had seen in this small glimpse of that world. He was +moved deeply by appreciation of it, and his heart was melting with +sympathetic tenderness. He had starved for love all his life. His +nature craved love. It was an organic demand of his being. Yet he had +gone without, and hardened himself in the process. He had not known +that he needed love. Nor did he know it now. He merely saw it in +operation, and thrilled to it, and thought it fine, and high, and +splendid. + +He was glad that Mr. Morse was not there. It was difficult enough +getting acquainted with her, and her mother, and her brother, Norman. +Arthur he already knew somewhat. The father would have been too much +for him, he felt sure. It seemed to him that he had never worked so +hard in his life. The severest toil was child’s play compared with +this. Tiny nodules of moisture stood out on his forehead, and his shirt +was wet with sweat from the exertion of doing so many unaccustomed +things at once. He had to eat as he had never eaten before, to handle +strange tools, to glance surreptitiously about and learn how to +accomplish each new thing, to receive the flood of impressions that was +pouring in upon him and being mentally annotated and classified; to be +conscious of a yearning for her that perturbed him in the form of a +dull, aching restlessness; to feel the prod of desire to win to the +walk in life whereon she trod, and to have his mind ever and again +straying off in speculation and vague plans of how to reach to her. +Also, when his secret glance went across to Norman opposite him, or to +any one else, to ascertain just what knife or fork was to be used in +any particular occasion, that person’s features were seized upon by his +mind, which automatically strove to appraise them and to divine what +they were—all in relation to her. Then he had to talk, to hear what was +said to him and what was said back and forth, and to answer, when it +was necessary, with a tongue prone to looseness of speech that required +a constant curb. And to add confusion to confusion, there was the +servant, an unceasing menace, that appeared noiselessly at his +shoulder, a dire Sphinx that propounded puzzles and conundrums +demanding instantaneous solution. He was oppressed throughout the meal +by the thought of finger-bowls. Irrelevantly, insistently, scores of +times, he wondered when they would come on and what they looked like. +He had heard of such things, and now, sooner or later, somewhere in the +next few minutes, he would see them, sit at table with exalted beings +who used them—ay, and he would use them himself. And most important of +all, far down and yet always at the surface of his thought, was the +problem of how he should comport himself toward these persons. What +should his attitude be? He wrestled continually and anxiously with the +problem. There were cowardly suggestions that he should make believe, +assume a part; and there were still more cowardly suggestions that +warned him he would fail in such course, that his nature was not fitted +to live up to it, and that he would make a fool of himself. + +It was during the first part of the dinner, struggling to decide upon +his attitude, that he was very quiet. He did not know that his +quietness was giving the lie to Arthur’s words of the day before, when +that brother of hers had announced that he was going to bring a wild +man home to dinner and for them not to be alarmed, because they would +find him an interesting wild man. Martin Eden could not have found it +in him, just then, to believe that her brother could be guilty of such +treachery—especially when he had been the means of getting this +particular brother out of an unpleasant row. So he sat at table, +perturbed by his own unfitness and at the same time charmed by all that +went on about him. For the first time he realized that eating was +something more than a utilitarian function. He was unaware of what he +ate. It was merely food. He was feasting his love of beauty at this +table where eating was an aesthetic function. It was an intellectual +function, too. His mind was stirred. He heard words spoken that were +meaningless to him, and other words that he had seen only in books and +that no man or woman he had known was of large enough mental caliber to +pronounce. When he heard such words dropping carelessly from the lips +of the members of this marvellous family, her family, he thrilled with +delight. The romance, and beauty, and high vigor of the books were +coming true. He was in that rare and blissful state wherein a man sees +his dreams stalk out from the crannies of fantasy and become fact. + +Never had he been at such an altitude of living, and he kept himself in +the background, listening, observing, and pleasuring, replying in +reticent monosyllables, saying, “Yes, miss,” and “No, miss,” to her, +and “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am,” to her mother. He curbed the +impulse, arising out of his sea-training, to say “Yes, sir,” and “No, +sir,” to her brothers. He felt that it would be inappropriate and a +confession of inferiority on his part—which would never do if he was to +win to her. Also, it was a dictate of his pride. “By God!” he cried to +himself, once; “I’m just as good as them, and if they do know lots that +I don’t, I could learn ’m a few myself, all the same!” And the next +moment, when she or her mother addressed him as “Mr. Eden,” his +aggressive pride was forgotten, and he was glowing and warm with +delight. He was a civilized man, that was what he was, shoulder to +shoulder, at dinner, with people he had read about in books. He was in +the books himself, adventuring through the printed pages of bound +volumes. + +But while he belied Arthur’s description, and appeared a gentle lamb +rather than a wild man, he was racking his brains for a course of +action. He was no gentle lamb, and the part of second fiddle would +never do for the high-pitched dominance of his nature. He talked only +when he had to, and then his speech was like his walk to the table, +filled with jerks and halts as he groped in his polyglot vocabulary for +words, debating over words he knew were fit but which he feared he +could not pronounce, rejecting other words he knew would not be +understood or would be raw and harsh. But all the time he was oppressed +by the consciousness that this carefulness of diction was making a +booby of him, preventing him from expressing what he had in him. Also, +his love of freedom chafed against the restriction in much the same way +his neck chafed against the starched fetter of a collar. Besides, he +was confident that he could not keep it up. He was by nature powerful +of thought and sensibility, and the creative spirit was restive and +urgent. He was swiftly mastered by the concept or sensation in him that +struggled in birth-throes to receive expression and form, and then he +forgot himself and where he was, and the old words—the tools of speech +he knew—slipped out. + +Once, he declined something from the servant who interrupted and +pestered at his shoulder, and he said, shortly and emphatically, “Pow!” + +On the instant those at the table were keyed up and expectant, the +servant was smugly pleased, and he was wallowing in mortification. But +he recovered himself quickly. + +“It’s the Kanaka for ‘finish,’” he explained, “and it just come out +naturally. It’s spelt p-a-u.” + +He caught her curious and speculative eyes fixed on his hands, and, +being in explanatory mood, he said:- + +“I just come down the Coast on one of the Pacific mail steamers. She +was behind time, an’ around the Puget Sound ports we worked like +niggers, storing cargo—mixed freight, if you know what that means. +That’s how the skin got knocked off.” + +“Oh, it wasn’t that,” she hastened to explain, in turn. “Your hands +seemed too small for your body.” + +His cheeks were hot. He took it as an exposure of another of his +deficiencies. + +“Yes,” he said depreciatingly. “They ain’t big enough to stand the +strain. I can hit like a mule with my arms and shoulders. They are too +strong, an’ when I smash a man on the jaw the hands get smashed, too.” + +He was not happy at what he had said. He was filled with disgust at +himself. He had loosed the guard upon his tongue and talked about +things that were not nice. + +“It was brave of you to help Arthur the way you did—and you a +stranger,” she said tactfully, aware of his discomfiture though not of +the reason for it. + +He, in turn, realized what she had done, and in the consequent warm +surge of gratefulness that overwhelmed him forgot his loose-worded +tongue. + +“It wasn’t nothin’ at all,” he said. “Any guy ’ud do it for another. +That bunch of hoodlums was lookin’ for trouble, an’ Arthur wasn’t +botherin’ ’em none. They butted in on ’m, an’ then I butted in on them +an’ poked a few. That’s where some of the skin off my hands went, along +with some of the teeth of the gang. I wouldn’t ’a’ missed it for +anything. When I seen—” + +He paused, open-mouthed, on the verge of the pit of his own depravity +and utter worthlessness to breathe the same air she did. And while +Arthur took up the tale, for the twentieth time, of his adventure with +the drunken hoodlums on the ferry-boat and of how Martin Eden had +rushed in and rescued him, that individual, with frowning brows, +meditated upon the fool he had made of himself, and wrestled more +determinedly with the problem of how he should conduct himself toward +these people. He certainly had not succeeded so far. He wasn’t of their +tribe, and he couldn’t talk their lingo, was the way he put it to +himself. He couldn’t fake being their kind. The masquerade would fail, +and besides, masquerade was foreign to his nature. There was no room in +him for sham or artifice. Whatever happened, he must be real. He +couldn’t talk their talk just yet, though in time he would. Upon that +he was resolved. But in the meantime, talk he must, and it must be his +own talk, toned down, of course, so as to be comprehensible to them and +so as not to shock them too much. And furthermore, he wouldn’t claim, +not even by tacit acceptance, to be familiar with anything that was +unfamiliar. In pursuance of this decision, when the two brothers, +talking university shop, had used “trig” several times, Martin Eden +demanded:- + +“What is _trig_?” + +“Trignometry,” Norman said; “a higher form of math.” + +“And what is math?” was the next question, which, somehow, brought the +laugh on Norman. + +“Mathematics, arithmetic,” was the answer. + +Martin Eden nodded. He had caught a glimpse of the apparently +illimitable vistas of knowledge. What he saw took on tangibility. His +abnormal power of vision made abstractions take on concrete form. In +the alchemy of his brain, trigonometry and mathematics and the whole +field of knowledge which they betokened were transmuted into so much +landscape. The vistas he saw were vistas of green foliage and forest +glades, all softly luminous or shot through with flashing lights. In +the distance, detail was veiled and blurred by a purple haze, but +behind this purple haze, he knew, was the glamour of the unknown, the +lure of romance. It was like wine to him. Here was adventure, something +to do with head and hand, a world to conquer—and straightway from the +back of his consciousness rushed the thought, _conquering, to win to +her, that lily-pale spirit sitting beside him_. + +The glimmering vision was rent asunder and dissipated by Arthur, who, +all evening, had been trying to draw his wild man out. Martin Eden +remembered his decision. For the first time he became himself, +consciously and deliberately at first, but soon lost in the joy of +creating in making life as he knew it appear before his listeners’ +eyes. He had been a member of the crew of the smuggling schooner +_Halcyon_ when she was captured by a revenue cutter. He saw with wide +eyes, and he could tell what he saw. He brought the pulsing sea before +them, and the men and the ships upon the sea. He communicated his power +of vision, till they saw with his eyes what he had seen. He selected +from the vast mass of detail with an artist’s touch, drawing pictures +of life that glowed and burned with light and color, injecting movement +so that his listeners surged along with him on the flood of rough +eloquence, enthusiasm, and power. At times he shocked them with the +vividness of the narrative and his terms of speech, but beauty always +followed fast upon the heels of violence, and tragedy was relieved by +humor, by interpretations of the strange twists and quirks of sailors’ +minds. + +And while he talked, the girl looked at him with startled eyes. His +fire warmed her. She wondered if she had been cold all her days. She +wanted to lean toward this burning, blazing man that was like a volcano +spouting forth strength, robustness, and health. She felt that she must +lean toward him, and resisted by an effort. Then, too, there was the +counter impulse to shrink away from him. She was repelled by those +lacerated hands, grimed by toil so that the very dirt of life was +ingrained in the flesh itself, by that red chafe of the collar and +those bulging muscles. His roughness frightened her; each roughness of +speech was an insult to her ear, each rough phase of his life an insult +to her soul. And ever and again would come the draw of him, till she +thought he must be evil to have such power over her. All that was most +firmly established in her mind was rocking. His romance and adventure +were battering at the conventions. Before his facile perils and ready +laugh, life was no longer an affair of serious effort and restraint, +but a toy, to be played with and turned topsy-turvy, carelessly to be +lived and pleasured in, and carelessly to be flung aside. “Therefore, +play!” was the cry that rang through her. “Lean toward him, if so you +will, and place your two hands upon his neck!” She wanted to cry out at +the recklessness of the thought, and in vain she appraised her own +cleanness and culture and balanced all that she was against what he was +not. She glanced about her and saw the others gazing at him with rapt +attention; and she would have despaired had not she seen horror in her +mother’s eyes—fascinated horror, it was true, but none the less horror. +This man from outer darkness was evil. Her mother saw it, and her +mother was right. She would trust her mother’s judgment in this as she +had always trusted it in all things. The fire of him was no longer +warm, and the fear of him was no longer poignant. + +Later, at the piano, she played for him, and at him, aggressively, with +the vague intent of emphasizing the impassableness of the gulf that +separated them. Her music was a club that she swung brutally upon his +head; and though it stunned him and crushed him down, it incited him. +He gazed upon her in awe. In his mind, as in her own, the gulf widened; +but faster than it widened, towered his ambition to win across it. But +he was too complicated a plexus of sensibilities to sit staring at a +gulf a whole evening, especially when there was music. He was +remarkably susceptible to music. It was like strong drink, firing him +to audacities of feeling,—a drug that laid hold of his imagination and +went cloud-soaring through the sky. It banished sordid fact, flooded +his mind with beauty, loosed romance and to its heels added wings. He +did not understand the music she played. It was different from the +dance-hall piano-banging and blatant brass bands he had heard. But he +had caught hints of such music from the books, and he accepted her +playing largely on faith, patiently waiting, at first, for the lilting +measures of pronounced and simple rhythm, puzzled because those +measures were not long continued. Just as he caught the swing of them +and started, his imagination attuned in flight, always they vanished +away in a chaotic scramble of sounds that was meaningless to him, and +that dropped his imagination, an inert weight, back to earth. + +Once, it entered his mind that there was a deliberate rebuff in all +this. He caught her spirit of antagonism and strove to divine the +message that her hands pronounced upon the keys. Then he dismissed the +thought as unworthy and impossible, and yielded himself more freely to +the music. The old delightful condition began to be induced. His feet +were no longer clay, and his flesh became spirit; before his eyes and +behind his eyes shone a great glory; and then the scene before him +vanished and he was away, rocking over the world that was to him a very +dear world. The known and the unknown were commingled in the +dream-pageant that thronged his vision. He entered strange ports of +sun-washed lands, and trod market-places among barbaric peoples that no +man had ever seen. The scent of the spice islands was in his nostrils +as he had known it on warm, breathless nights at sea, or he beat up +against the southeast trades through long tropic days, sinking +palm-tufted coral islets in the turquoise sea behind and lifting +palm-tufted coral islets in the turquoise sea ahead. Swift as thought +the pictures came and went. One instant he was astride a broncho and +flying through the fairy-colored Painted Desert country; the next +instant he was gazing down through shimmering heat into the whited +sepulchre of Death Valley, or pulling an oar on a freezing ocean where +great ice islands towered and glistened in the sun. He lay on a coral +beach where the cocoanuts grew down to the mellow-sounding surf. The +hulk of an ancient wreck burned with blue fires, in the light of which +danced the _hula_ dancers to the barbaric love-calls of the singers, +who chanted to tinkling _ukuleles_ and rumbling tom-toms. It was a +sensuous, tropic night. In the background a volcano crater was +silhouetted against the stars. Overhead drifted a pale crescent moon, +and the Southern Cross burned low in the sky. + +He was a harp; all life that he had known and that was his +consciousness was the strings; and the flood of music was a wind that +poured against those strings and set them vibrating with memories and +dreams. He did not merely feel. Sensation invested itself in form and +color and radiance, and what his imagination dared, it objectified in +some sublimated and magic way. Past, present, and future mingled; and +he went on oscillating across the broad, warm world, through high +adventure and noble deeds to Her—ay, and with her, winning her, his arm +about her, and carrying her on in flight through the empery of his +mind. + +And she, glancing at him across her shoulder, saw something of all this +in his face. It was a transfigured face, with great shining eyes that +gazed beyond the veil of sound and saw behind it the leap and pulse of +life and the gigantic phantoms of the spirit. She was startled. The +raw, stumbling lout was gone. The ill-fitting clothes, battered hands, +and sunburned face remained; but these seemed the prison-bars through +which she saw a great soul looking forth, inarticulate and dumb because +of those feeble lips that would not give it speech. Only for a flashing +moment did she see this, then she saw the lout returned, and she +laughed at the whim of her fancy. But the impression of that fleeting +glimpse lingered, and when the time came for him to beat a stumbling +retreat and go, she lent him the volume of Swinburne, and another of +Browning—she was studying Browning in one of her English courses. He +seemed such a boy, as he stood blushing and stammering his thanks, that +a wave of pity, maternal in its prompting, welled up in her. She did +not remember the lout, nor the imprisoned soul, nor the man who had +stared at her in all masculineness and delighted and frightened her. +She saw before her only a boy, who was shaking her hand with a hand so +calloused that it felt like a nutmeg-grater and rasped her skin, and +who was saying jerkily:- + +“The greatest time of my life. You see, I ain’t used to things. . . ” +He looked about him helplessly. “To people and houses like this. It’s +all new to me, and I like it.” + +“I hope you’ll call again,” she said, as he was saying good night to +her brothers. + +He pulled on his cap, lurched desperately through the doorway, and was +gone. + +“Well, what do you think of him?” Arthur demanded. + +“He is most interesting, a whiff of ozone,” she answered. “How old is +he?” + +“Twenty—almost twenty-one. I asked him this afternoon. I didn’t think +he was that young.” + +And I am three years older, was the thought in her mind as she kissed +her brothers goodnight. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +As Martin Eden went down the steps, his hand dropped into his coat +pocket. It came out with a brown rice paper and a pinch of Mexican +tobacco, which were deftly rolled together into a cigarette. He drew +the first whiff of smoke deep into his lungs and expelled it in a long +and lingering exhalation. “By God!” he said aloud, in a voice of awe +and wonder. “By God!” he repeated. And yet again he murmured, “By God!” +Then his hand went to his collar, which he ripped out of the shirt and +stuffed into his pocket. A cold drizzle was falling, but he bared his +head to it and unbuttoned his vest, swinging along in splendid +unconcern. He was only dimly aware that it was raining. He was in an +ecstasy, dreaming dreams and reconstructing the scenes just past. + +He had met the woman at last—the woman that he had thought little +about, not being given to thinking about women, but whom he had +expected, in a remote way, he would sometime meet. He had sat next to +her at table. He had felt her hand in his, he had looked into her eyes +and caught a vision of a beautiful spirit;—but no more beautiful than +the eyes through which it shone, nor than the flesh that gave it +expression and form. He did not think of her flesh as flesh,—which was +new to him; for of the women he had known that was the only way he +thought. Her flesh was somehow different. He did not conceive of her +body as a body, subject to the ills and frailties of bodies. Her body +was more than the garb of her spirit. It was an emanation of her +spirit, a pure and gracious crystallization of her divine essence. This +feeling of the divine startled him. It shocked him from his dreams to +sober thought. No word, no clew, no hint, of the divine had ever +reached him before. He had never believed in the divine. He had always +been irreligious, scoffing good-naturedly at the sky-pilots and their +immortality of the soul. There was no life beyond, he had contended; it +was here and now, then darkness everlasting. But what he had seen in +her eyes was soul—immortal soul that could never die. No man he had +known, nor any woman, had given him the message of immortality. But she +had. She had whispered it to him the first moment she looked at him. +Her face shimmered before his eyes as he walked along,—pale and +serious, sweet and sensitive, smiling with pity and tenderness as only +a spirit could smile, and pure as he had never dreamed purity could be. +Her purity smote him like a blow. It startled him. He had known good +and bad; but purity, as an attribute of existence, had never entered +his mind. And now, in her, he conceived purity to be the superlative of +goodness and of cleanness, the sum of which constituted eternal life. + +And promptly urged his ambition to grasp at eternal life. He was not +fit to carry water for her—he knew that; it was a miracle of luck and a +fantastic stroke that had enabled him to see her and be with her and +talk with her that night. It was accidental. There was no merit in it. +He did not deserve such fortune. His mood was essentially religious. He +was humble and meek, filled with self-disparagement and abasement. In +such frame of mind sinners come to the penitent form. He was convicted +of sin. But as the meek and lowly at the penitent form catch splendid +glimpses of their future lordly existence, so did he catch similar +glimpses of the state he would gain to by possessing her. But this +possession of her was dim and nebulous and totally different from +possession as he had known it. Ambition soared on mad wings, and he saw +himself climbing the heights with her, sharing thoughts with her, +pleasuring in beautiful and noble things with her. It was a +soul-possession he dreamed, refined beyond any grossness, a free +comradeship of spirit that he could not put into definite thought. He +did not think it. For that matter, he did not think at all. Sensation +usurped reason, and he was quivering and palpitant with emotions he had +never known, drifting deliciously on a sea of sensibility where feeling +itself was exalted and spiritualized and carried beyond the summits of +life. + +He staggered along like a drunken man, murmuring fervently aloud: “By +God! By God!” + +A policeman on a street corner eyed him suspiciously, then noted his +sailor roll. + +“Where did you get it?” the policeman demanded. + +Martin Eden came back to earth. His was a fluid organism, swiftly +adjustable, capable of flowing into and filling all sorts of nooks and +crannies. With the policeman’s hail he was immediately his ordinary +self, grasping the situation clearly. + +“It’s a beaut, ain’t it?” he laughed back. “I didn’t know I was talkin’ +out loud.” + +“You’ll be singing next,” was the policeman’s diagnosis. + +“No, I won’t. Gimme a match an’ I’ll catch the next car home.” + +He lighted his cigarette, said good night, and went on. “Now wouldn’t +that rattle you?” he ejaculated under his breath. “That copper thought +I was drunk.” He smiled to himself and meditated. “I guess I was,” he +added; “but I didn’t think a woman’s face’d do it.” + +He caught a Telegraph Avenue car that was going to Berkeley. It was +crowded with youths and young men who were singing songs and ever and +again barking out college yells. He studied them curiously. They were +university boys. They went to the same university that she did, were in +her class socially, could know her, could see her every day if they +wanted to. He wondered that they did not want to, that they had been +out having a good time instead of being with her that evening, talking +with her, sitting around her in a worshipful and adoring circle. His +thoughts wandered on. He noticed one with narrow-slitted eyes and a +loose-lipped mouth. That fellow was vicious, he decided. On shipboard +he would be a sneak, a whiner, a tattler. He, Martin Eden, was a better +man than that fellow. The thought cheered him. It seemed to draw him +nearer to Her. He began comparing himself with the students. He grew +conscious of the muscled mechanism of his body and felt confident that +he was physically their master. But their heads were filled with +knowledge that enabled them to talk her talk,—the thought depressed +him. But what was a brain for? he demanded passionately. What they had +done, he could do. They had been studying about life from the books +while he had been busy living life. His brain was just as full of +knowledge as theirs, though it was a different kind of knowledge. How +many of them could tie a lanyard knot, or take a wheel or a lookout? +His life spread out before him in a series of pictures of danger and +daring, hardship and toil. He remembered his failures and scrapes in +the process of learning. He was that much to the good, anyway. Later on +they would have to begin living life and going through the mill as he +had gone. Very well. While they were busy with that, he could be +learning the other side of life from the books. + +As the car crossed the zone of scattered dwellings that separated +Oakland from Berkeley, he kept a lookout for a familiar, two-story +building along the front of which ran the proud sign, HIGGINBOTHAM’S +CASH STORE. Martin Eden got off at this corner. He stared up for a +moment at the sign. It carried a message to him beyond its mere +wording. A personality of smallness and egotism and petty +underhandedness seemed to emanate from the letters themselves. Bernard +Higginbotham had married his sister, and he knew him well. He let +himself in with a latch-key and climbed the stairs to the second floor. +Here lived his brother-in-law. The grocery was below. There was a smell +of stale vegetables in the air. As he groped his way across the hall he +stumbled over a toy-cart, left there by one of his numerous nephews and +nieces, and brought up against a door with a resounding bang. “The +pincher,” was his thought; “too miserly to burn two cents’ worth of gas +and save his boarders’ necks.” + +He fumbled for the knob and entered a lighted room, where sat his +sister and Bernard Higginbotham. She was patching a pair of his +trousers, while his lean body was distributed over two chairs, his feet +dangling in dilapidated carpet-slippers over the edge of the second +chair. He glanced across the top of the paper he was reading, showing a +pair of dark, insincere, sharp-staring eyes. Martin Eden never looked +at him without experiencing a sense of repulsion. What his sister had +seen in the man was beyond him. The other affected him as so much +vermin, and always aroused in him an impulse to crush him under his +foot. “Some day I’ll beat the face off of him,” was the way he often +consoled himself for enduring the man’s existence. The eyes, +weasel-like and cruel, were looking at him complainingly. + +“Well,” Martin demanded. “Out with it.” + +“I had that door painted only last week,” Mr. Higginbotham half whined, +half bullied; “and you know what union wages are. You should be more +careful.” + +Martin had intended to reply, but he was struck by the hopelessness of +it. He gazed across the monstrous sordidness of soul to a chromo on the +wall. It surprised him. He had always liked it, but it seemed that now +he was seeing it for the first time. It was cheap, that was what it +was, like everything else in this house. His mind went back to the +house he had just left, and he saw, first, the paintings, and next, +Her, looking at him with melting sweetness as she shook his hand at +leaving. He forgot where he was and Bernard Higginbotham’s existence, +till that gentleman demanded:- + +“Seen a ghost?” + +Martin came back and looked at the beady eyes, sneering, truculent, +cowardly, and there leaped into his vision, as on a screen, the same +eyes when their owner was making a sale in the store below—subservient +eyes, smug, and oily, and flattering. + +“Yes,” Martin answered. “I seen a ghost. Good night. Good night, +Gertrude.” + +He started to leave the room, tripping over a loose seam in the +slatternly carpet. + +“Don’t bang the door,” Mr. Higginbotham cautioned him. + +He felt the blood crawl in his veins, but controlled himself and closed +the door softly behind him. + +Mr. Higginbotham looked at his wife exultantly. + +“He’s ben drinkin’,” he proclaimed in a hoarse whisper. “I told you he +would.” + +She nodded her head resignedly. + +“His eyes was pretty shiny,” she confessed; “and he didn’t have no +collar, though he went away with one. But mebbe he didn’t have more’n a +couple of glasses.” + +“He couldn’t stand up straight,” asserted her husband. “I watched him. +He couldn’t walk across the floor without stumblin’. You heard ’m +yourself almost fall down in the hall.” + +“I think it was over Alice’s cart,” she said. “He couldn’t see it in +the dark.” + +Mr. Higginbotham’s voice and wrath began to rise. All day he effaced +himself in the store, reserving for the evening, with his family, the +privilege of being himself. + +“I tell you that precious brother of yours was drunk.” + +His voice was cold, sharp, and final, his lips stamping the enunciation +of each word like the die of a machine. His wife sighed and remained +silent. She was a large, stout woman, always dressed slatternly and +always tired from the burdens of her flesh, her work, and her husband. + +“He’s got it in him, I tell you, from his father,” Mr. Higginbotham +went on accusingly. “An’ he’ll croak in the gutter the same way. You +know that.” + +She nodded, sighed, and went on stitching. They were agreed that Martin +had come home drunk. They did not have it in their souls to know +beauty, or they would have known that those shining eyes and that +glowing face betokened youth’s first vision of love. + +“Settin’ a fine example to the children,” Mr. Higginbotham snorted, +suddenly, in the silence for which his wife was responsible and which +he resented. Sometimes he almost wished she would oppose him more. “If +he does it again, he’s got to get out. Understand! I won’t put up with +his shinanigan—debotchin’ innocent children with his boozing.” Mr. +Higginbotham liked the word, which was a new one in his vocabulary, +recently gleaned from a newspaper column. “That’s what it is, +debotchin’—there ain’t no other name for it.” + +Still his wife sighed, shook her head sorrowfully, and stitched on. Mr. +Higginbotham resumed the newspaper. + +“Has he paid last week’s board?” he shot across the top of the +newspaper. + +She nodded, then added, “He still has some money.” + +“When is he goin’ to sea again?” + +“When his pay-day’s spent, I guess,” she answered. “He was over to San +Francisco yesterday looking for a ship. But he’s got money, yet, an’ +he’s particular about the kind of ship he signs for.” + +“It’s not for a deck-swab like him to put on airs,” Mr. Higginbotham +snorted. “Particular! Him!” + +“He said something about a schooner that’s gettin’ ready to go off to +some outlandish place to look for buried treasure, that he’d sail on +her if his money held out.” + +“If he only wanted to steady down, I’d give him a job drivin’ the +wagon,” her husband said, but with no trace of benevolence in his +voice. “Tom’s quit.” + +His wife looked alarm and interrogation. + +“Quit to-night. Is goin’ to work for Carruthers. They paid ’m more’n I +could afford.” + +“I told you you’d lose ’m,” she cried out. “He was worth more’n you was +giving him.” + +“Now look here, old woman,” Higginbotham bullied, “for the thousandth +time I’ve told you to keep your nose out of the business. I won’t tell +you again.” + +“I don’t care,” she sniffled. “Tom was a good boy.” Her husband glared +at her. This was unqualified defiance. + +“If that brother of yours was worth his salt, he could take the wagon,” +he snorted. + +“He pays his board, just the same,” was the retort. “An’ he’s my +brother, an’ so long as he don’t owe you money you’ve got no right to +be jumping on him all the time. I’ve got some feelings, if I have been +married to you for seven years.” + +“Did you tell ’m you’d charge him for gas if he goes on readin’ in +bed?” he demanded. + +Mrs. Higginbotham made no reply. Her revolt faded away, her spirit +wilting down into her tired flesh. Her husband was triumphant. He had +her. His eyes snapped vindictively, while his ears joyed in the +sniffles she emitted. He extracted great happiness from squelching her, +and she squelched easily these days, though it had been different in +the first years of their married life, before the brood of children and +his incessant nagging had sapped her energy. + +“Well, you tell ’m to-morrow, that’s all,” he said. “An’ I just want to +tell you, before I forget it, that you’d better send for Marian +to-morrow to take care of the children. With Tom quit, I’ll have to be +out on the wagon, an’ you can make up your mind to it to be down below +waitin’ on the counter.” + +“But to-morrow’s wash day,” she objected weakly. + +“Get up early, then, an’ do it first. I won’t start out till ten +o’clock.” + +He crinkled the paper viciously and resumed his reading. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +Martin Eden, with blood still crawling from contact with his +brother-in-law, felt his way along the unlighted back hall and entered +his room, a tiny cubbyhole with space for a bed, a wash-stand, and one +chair. Mr. Higginbotham was too thrifty to keep a servant when his wife +could do the work. Besides, the servant’s room enabled them to take in +two boarders instead of one. Martin placed the Swinburne and Browning +on the chair, took off his coat, and sat down on the bed. A screeching +of asthmatic springs greeted the weight of his body, but he did not +notice them. He started to take off his shoes, but fell to staring at +the white plaster wall opposite him, broken by long streaks of dirty +brown where rain had leaked through the roof. On this befouled +background visions began to flow and burn. He forgot his shoes and +stared long, till his lips began to move and he murmured, “Ruth.” + +“Ruth.” He had not thought a simple sound could be so beautiful. It +delighted his ear, and he grew intoxicated with the repetition of it. +“Ruth.” It was a talisman, a magic word to conjure with. Each time he +murmured it, her face shimmered before him, suffusing the foul wall +with a golden radiance. This radiance did not stop at the wall. It +extended on into infinity, and through its golden depths his soul went +questing after hers. The best that was in him was out in splendid +flood. The very thought of her ennobled and purified him, made him +better, and made him want to be better. This was new to him. He had +never known women who had made him better. They had always had the +counter effect of making him beastly. He did not know that many of them +had done their best, bad as it was. Never having been conscious of +himself, he did not know that he had that in his being that drew love +from women and which had been the cause of their reaching out for his +youth. Though they had often bothered him, he had never bothered about +them; and he would never have dreamed that there were women who had +been better because of him. Always in sublime carelessness had he +lived, till now, and now it seemed to him that they had always reached +out and dragged at him with vile hands. This was not just to them, nor +to himself. But he, who for the first time was becoming conscious of +himself, was in no condition to judge, and he burned with shame as he +stared at the vision of his infamy. + +He got up abruptly and tried to see himself in the dirty looking-glass +over the wash-stand. He passed a towel over it and looked again, long +and carefully. It was the first time he had ever really seen himself. +His eyes were made for seeing, but up to that moment they had been +filled with the ever changing panorama of the world, at which he had +been too busy gazing, ever to gaze at himself. He saw the head and face +of a young fellow of twenty, but, being unused to such appraisement, he +did not know how to value it. Above a square-domed forehead he saw a +mop of brown hair, nut-brown, with a wave to it and hints of curls that +were a delight to any woman, making hands tingle to stroke it and +fingers tingle to pass caresses through it. But he passed it by as +without merit, in Her eyes, and dwelt long and thoughtfully on the +high, square forehead,—striving to penetrate it and learn the quality +of its content. What kind of a brain lay behind there? was his +insistent interrogation. What was it capable of? How far would it take +him? Would it take him to her? + +He wondered if there was soul in those steel-gray eyes that were often +quite blue of color and that were strong with the briny airs of the +sun-washed deep. He wondered, also, how his eyes looked to her. He +tried to imagine himself she, gazing into those eyes of his, but failed +in the jugglery. He could successfully put himself inside other men’s +minds, but they had to be men whose ways of life he knew. He did not +know her way of life. She was wonder and mystery, and how could he +guess one thought of hers? Well, they were honest eyes, he concluded, +and in them was neither smallness nor meanness. The brown sunburn of +his face surprised him. He had not dreamed he was so black. He rolled +up his shirt-sleeve and compared the white underside of the arm with +his face. Yes, he was a white man, after all. But the arms were +sunburned, too. He twisted his arm, rolled the biceps over with his +other hand, and gazed underneath where he was least touched by the sun. +It was very white. He laughed at his bronzed face in the glass at the +thought that it was once as white as the underside of his arm; nor did +he dream that in the world there were few pale spirits of women who +could boast fairer or smoother skins than he—fairer than where he had +escaped the ravages of the sun. + +His might have been a cherub’s mouth, had not the full, sensuous lips a +trick, under stress, of drawing firmly across the teeth. At times, so +tightly did they draw, the mouth became stern and harsh, even ascetic. +They were the lips of a fighter and of a lover. They could taste the +sweetness of life with relish, and they could put the sweetness aside +and command life. The chin and jaw, strong and just hinting of square +aggressiveness, helped the lips to command life. Strength balanced +sensuousness and had upon it a tonic effect, compelling him to love +beauty that was healthy and making him vibrate to sensations that were +wholesome. And between the lips were teeth that had never known nor +needed the dentist’s care. They were white and strong and regular, he +decided, as he looked at them. But as he looked, he began to be +troubled. Somewhere, stored away in the recesses of his mind and +vaguely remembered, was the impression that there were people who +washed their teeth every day. They were the people from up above—people +in her class. She must wash her teeth every day, too. What would she +think if she learned that he had never washed his teeth in all the days +of his life? He resolved to get a tooth-brush and form the habit. He +would begin at once, to-morrow. It was not by mere achievement that he +could hope to win to her. He must make a personal reform in all things, +even to tooth-washing and neck-gear, though a starched collar affected +him as a renunciation of freedom. + +He held up his hand, rubbing the ball of the thumb over the calloused +palm and gazing at the dirt that was ingrained in the flesh itself and +which no brush could scrub away. How different was her palm! He +thrilled deliciously at the remembrance. Like a rose-petal, he thought; +cool and soft as a snowflake. He had never thought that a mere woman’s +hand could be so sweetly soft. He caught himself imagining the wonder +of a caress from such a hand, and flushed guiltily. It was too gross a +thought for her. In ways it seemed to impugn her high spirituality. She +was a pale, slender spirit, exalted far beyond the flesh; but +nevertheless the softness of her palm persisted in his thoughts. He was +used to the harsh callousness of factory girls and working women. Well +he knew why their hands were rough; but this hand of hers . . . It was +soft because she had never used it to work with. The gulf yawned +between her and him at the awesome thought of a person who did not have +to work for a living. He suddenly saw the aristocracy of the people who +did not labor. It towered before him on the wall, a figure in brass, +arrogant and powerful. He had worked himself; his first memories seemed +connected with work, and all his family had worked. There was Gertrude. +When her hands were not hard from the endless housework, they were +swollen and red like boiled beef, what of the washing. And there was +his sister Marian. She had worked in the cannery the preceding summer, +and her slim, pretty hands were all scarred with the tomato-knives. +Besides, the tips of two of her fingers had been left in the cutting +machine at the paper-box factory the preceding winter. He remembered +the hard palms of his mother as she lay in her coffin. And his father +had worked to the last fading gasp; the horned growth on his hands must +have been half an inch thick when he died. But Her hands were soft, and +her mother’s hands, and her brothers’. This last came to him as a +surprise; it was tremendously indicative of the highness of their +caste, of the enormous distance that stretched between her and him. + +He sat back on the bed with a bitter laugh, and finished taking off his +shoes. He was a fool; he had been made drunken by a woman’s face and by +a woman’s soft, white hands. And then, suddenly, before his eyes, on +the foul plaster-wall appeared a vision. He stood in front of a gloomy +tenement house. It was night-time, in the East End of London, and +before him stood Margey, a little factory girl of fifteen. He had seen +her home after the bean-feast. She lived in that gloomy tenement, a +place not fit for swine. His hand was going out to hers as he said good +night. She had put her lips up to be kissed, but he wasn’t going to +kiss her. Somehow he was afraid of her. And then her hand closed on his +and pressed feverishly. He felt her callouses grind and grate on his, +and a great wave of pity welled over him. He saw her yearning, hungry +eyes, and her ill-fed female form which had been rushed from childhood +into a frightened and ferocious maturity; then he put his arms about +her in large tolerance and stooped and kissed her on the lips. Her glad +little cry rang in his ears, and he felt her clinging to him like a +cat. Poor little starveling! He continued to stare at the vision of +what had happened in the long ago. His flesh was crawling as it had +crawled that night when she clung to him, and his heart was warm with +pity. It was a gray scene, greasy gray, and the rain drizzled greasily +on the pavement stones. And then a radiant glory shone on the wall, and +up through the other vision, displacing it, glimmered Her pale face +under its crown of golden hair, remote and inaccessible as a star. + +He took the Browning and the Swinburne from the chair and kissed them. +Just the same, she told me to call again, he thought. He took another +look at himself in the glass, and said aloud, with great solemnity:- + +“Martin Eden, the first thing to-morrow you go to the free library an’ +read up on etiquette. Understand!” + +He turned off the gas, and the springs shrieked under his body. + +“But you’ve got to quit cussin’, Martin, old boy; you’ve got to quit +cussin’,” he said aloud. + +Then he dozed off to sleep and to dream dreams that for madness and +audacity rivalled those of poppy-eaters. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +He awoke next morning from rosy scenes of dream to a steamy atmosphere +that smelled of soapsuds and dirty clothes, and that was vibrant with +the jar and jangle of tormented life. As he came out of his room he +heard the slosh of water, a sharp exclamation, and a resounding smack +as his sister visited her irritation upon one of her numerous progeny. +The squall of the child went through him like a knife. He was aware +that the whole thing, the very air he breathed, was repulsive and mean. +How different, he thought, from the atmosphere of beauty and repose of +the house wherein Ruth dwelt. There it was all spiritual. Here it was +all material, and meanly material. + +“Come here, Alfred,” he called to the crying child, at the same time +thrusting his hand into his trousers pocket, where he carried his money +loose in the same large way that he lived life in general. He put a +quarter in the youngster’s hand and held him in his arms a moment, +soothing his sobs. “Now run along and get some candy, and don’t forget +to give some to your brothers and sisters. Be sure and get the kind +that lasts longest.” + +His sister lifted a flushed face from the wash-tub and looked at him. + +“A nickel’d ha’ ben enough,” she said. “It’s just like you, no idea of +the value of money. The child’ll eat himself sick.” + +“That’s all right, sis,” he answered jovially. “My money’ll take care +of itself. If you weren’t so busy, I’d kiss you good morning.” + +He wanted to be affectionate to this sister, who was good, and who, in +her way, he knew, loved him. But, somehow, she grew less herself as the +years went by, and more and more baffling. It was the hard work, the +many children, and the nagging of her husband, he decided, that had +changed her. It came to him, in a flash of fancy, that her nature +seemed taking on the attributes of stale vegetables, smelly soapsuds, +and of the greasy dimes, nickels, and quarters she took in over the +counter of the store. + +“Go along an’ get your breakfast,” she said roughly, though secretly +pleased. Of all her wandering brood of brothers he had always been her +favorite. “I declare I _will_ kiss you,” she said, with a sudden stir +at her heart. + +With thumb and forefinger she swept the dripping suds first from one +arm and then from the other. He put his arms round her massive waist +and kissed her wet steamy lips. The tears welled into her eyes—not so +much from strength of feeling as from the weakness of chronic overwork. +She shoved him away from her, but not before he caught a glimpse of her +moist eyes. + +“You’ll find breakfast in the oven,” she said hurriedly. “Jim ought to +be up now. I had to get up early for the washing. Now get along with +you and get out of the house early. It won’t be nice to-day, what of +Tom quittin’ an’ nobody but Bernard to drive the wagon.” + +Martin went into the kitchen with a sinking heart, the image of her red +face and slatternly form eating its way like acid into his brain. She +might love him if she only had some time, he concluded. But she was +worked to death. Bernard Higginbotham was a brute to work her so hard. +But he could not help but feel, on the other hand, that there had not +been anything beautiful in that kiss. It was true, it was an unusual +kiss. For years she had kissed him only when he returned from voyages +or departed on voyages. But this kiss had tasted of soapsuds, and the +lips, he had noticed, were flabby. There had been no quick, vigorous +lip-pressure such as should accompany any kiss. Hers was the kiss of a +tired woman who had been tired so long that she had forgotten how to +kiss. He remembered her as a girl, before her marriage, when she would +dance with the best, all night, after a hard day’s work at the laundry, +and think nothing of leaving the dance to go to another day’s hard +work. And then he thought of Ruth and the cool sweetness that must +reside in her lips as it resided in all about her. Her kiss would be +like her hand-shake or the way she looked at one, firm and frank. In +imagination he dared to think of her lips on his, and so vividly did he +imagine that he went dizzy at the thought and seemed to rift through +clouds of rose-petals, filling his brain with their perfume. + +In the kitchen he found Jim, the other boarder, eating mush very +languidly, with a sick, far-away look in his eyes. Jim was a plumber’s +apprentice whose weak chin and hedonistic temperament, coupled with a +certain nervous stupidity, promised to take him nowhere in the race for +bread and butter. + +“Why don’t you eat?” he demanded, as Martin dipped dolefully into the +cold, half-cooked oatmeal mush. “Was you drunk again last night?” + +Martin shook his head. He was oppressed by the utter squalidness of it +all. Ruth Morse seemed farther removed than ever. + +“I was,” Jim went on with a boastful, nervous giggle. “I was loaded +right to the neck. Oh, she was a daisy. Billy brought me home.” + +Martin nodded that he heard,—it was a habit of nature with him to pay +heed to whoever talked to him,—and poured a cup of lukewarm coffee. + +“Goin’ to the Lotus Club dance to-night?” Jim demanded. “They’re goin’ +to have beer, an’ if that Temescal bunch comes, there’ll be a +rough-house. I don’t care, though. I’m takin’ my lady friend just the +same. Cripes, but I’ve got a taste in my mouth!” + +He made a wry face and attempted to wash the taste away with coffee. + +“D’ye know Julia?” + +Martin shook his head. + +“She’s my lady friend,” Jim explained, “and she’s a peach. I’d +introduce you to her, only you’d win her. I don’t see what the girls +see in you, honest I don’t; but the way you win them away from the +fellers is sickenin’.” + +“I never got any away from you,” Martin answered uninterestedly. The +breakfast had to be got through somehow. + +“Yes, you did, too,” the other asserted warmly. “There was Maggie.” + +“Never had anything to do with her. Never danced with her except that +one night.” + +“Yes, an’ that’s just what did it,” Jim cried out. “You just danced +with her an’ looked at her, an’ it was all off. Of course you didn’t +mean nothin’ by it, but it settled me for keeps. Wouldn’t look at me +again. Always askin’ about you. She’d have made fast dates enough with +you if you’d wanted to.” + +“But I didn’t want to.” + +“Wasn’t necessary. I was left at the pole.” Jim looked at him +admiringly. “How d’ye do it, anyway, Mart?” + +“By not carin’ about ’em,” was the answer. + +“You mean makin’ b’lieve you don’t care about them?” Jim queried +eagerly. + +Martin considered for a moment, then answered, “Perhaps that will do, +but with me I guess it’s different. I never have cared—much. If you can +put it on, it’s all right, most likely.” + +“You should ’a’ ben up at Riley’s barn last night,” Jim announced +inconsequently. “A lot of the fellers put on the gloves. There was a +peach from West Oakland. They called ’m ‘The Rat.’ Slick as silk. No +one could touch ’m. We was all wishin’ you was there. Where was you +anyway?” + +“Down in Oakland,” Martin replied. + +“To the show?” + +Martin shoved his plate away and got up. + +“Comin’ to the dance to-night?” the other called after him. + +“No, I think not,” he answered. + +He went downstairs and out into the street, breathing great breaths of +air. He had been suffocating in that atmosphere, while the apprentice’s +chatter had driven him frantic. There had been times when it was all he +could do to refrain from reaching over and mopping Jim’s face in the +mush-plate. The more he had chattered, the more remote had Ruth seemed +to him. How could he, herding with such cattle, ever become worthy of +her? He was appalled at the problem confronting him, weighted down by +the incubus of his working-class station. Everything reached out to +hold him down—his sister, his sister’s house and family, Jim the +apprentice, everybody he knew, every tie of life. Existence did not +taste good in his mouth. Up to then he had accepted existence, as he +had lived it with all about him, as a good thing. He had never +questioned it, except when he read books; but then, they were only +books, fairy stories of a fairer and impossible world. But now he had +seen that world, possible and real, with a flower of a woman called +Ruth in the midmost centre of it; and thenceforth he must know bitter +tastes, and longings sharp as pain, and hopelessness that tantalized +because it fed on hope. + +He had debated between the Berkeley Free Library and the Oakland Free +Library, and decided upon the latter because Ruth lived in Oakland. Who +could tell?—a library was a most likely place for her, and he might see +her there. He did not know the way of libraries, and he wandered +through endless rows of fiction, till the delicate-featured +French-looking girl who seemed in charge, told him that the reference +department was upstairs. He did not know enough to ask the man at the +desk, and began his adventures in the philosophy alcove. He had heard +of book philosophy, but had not imagined there had been so much written +about it. The high, bulging shelves of heavy tomes humbled him and at +the same time stimulated him. Here was work for the vigor of his brain. +He found books on trigonometry in the mathematics section, and ran the +pages, and stared at the meaningless formulas and figures. He could +read English, but he saw there an alien speech. Norman and Arthur knew +that speech. He had heard them talking it. And they were her brothers. +He left the alcove in despair. From every side the books seemed to +press upon him and crush him. + +He had never dreamed that the fund of human knowledge bulked so big. He +was frightened. How could his brain ever master it all? Later, he +remembered that there were other men, many men, who had mastered it; +and he breathed a great oath, passionately, under his breath, swearing +that his brain could do what theirs had done. + +And so he wandered on, alternating between depression and elation as he +stared at the shelves packed with wisdom. In one miscellaneous section +he came upon a “Norrie’s Epitome.” He turned the pages reverently. In a +way, it spoke a kindred speech. Both he and it were of the sea. Then he +found a “Bowditch” and books by Lecky and Marshall. There it was; he +would teach himself navigation. He would quit drinking, work up, and +become a captain. Ruth seemed very near to him in that moment. As a +captain, he could marry her (if she would have him). And if she +wouldn’t, well—he would live a good life among men, because of Her, and +he would quit drinking anyway. Then he remembered the underwriters and +the owners, the two masters a captain must serve, either of which could +and would break him and whose interests were diametrically opposed. He +cast his eyes about the room and closed the lids down on a vision of +ten thousand books. No; no more of the sea for him. There was power in +all that wealth of books, and if he would do great things, he must do +them on the land. Besides, captains were not allowed to take their +wives to sea with them. + +Noon came, and afternoon. He forgot to eat, and sought on for the books +on etiquette; for, in addition to career, his mind was vexed by a +simple and very concrete problem: _When you meet a young lady and she +asks you to call, how soon can you call_? was the way he worded it to +himself. But when he found the right shelf, he sought vainly for the +answer. He was appalled at the vast edifice of etiquette, and lost +himself in the mazes of visiting-card conduct between persons in polite +society. He abandoned his search. He had not found what he wanted, +though he had found that it would take all of a man’s time to be +polite, and that he would have to live a preliminary life in which to +learn how to be polite. + +“Did you find what you wanted?” the man at the desk asked him as he was +leaving. + +“Yes, sir,” he answered. “You have a fine library here.” + +The man nodded. “We should be glad to see you here often. Are you a +sailor?” + +“Yes, sir,” he answered. “And I’ll come again.” + +Now, how did he know that? he asked himself as he went down the stairs. + +And for the first block along the street he walked very stiff and +straight and awkwardly, until he forgot himself in his thoughts, +whereupon his rolling gait gracefully returned to him. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +A terrible restlessness that was akin to hunger afflicted Martin Eden. +He was famished for a sight of the girl whose slender hands had gripped +his life with a giant’s grasp. He could not steel himself to call upon +her. He was afraid that he might call too soon, and so be guilty of an +awful breach of that awful thing called etiquette. He spent long hours +in the Oakland and Berkeley libraries, and made out application blanks +for membership for himself, his sisters Gertrude and Marian, and Jim, +the latter’s consent being obtained at the expense of several glasses +of beer. With four cards permitting him to draw books, he burned the +gas late in the servant’s room, and was charged fifty cents a week for +it by Mr. Higginbotham. + +The many books he read but served to whet his unrest. Every page of +every book was a peep-hole into the realm of knowledge. His hunger fed +upon what he read, and increased. Also, he did not know where to begin, +and continually suffered from lack of preparation. The commonest +references, that he could see plainly every reader was expected to +know, he did not know. And the same was true of the poetry he read +which maddened him with delight. He read more of Swinburne than was +contained in the volume Ruth had lent him; and “Dolores” he understood +thoroughly. But surely Ruth did not understand it, he concluded. How +could she, living the refined life she did? Then he chanced upon +Kipling’s poems, and was swept away by the lilt and swing and glamour +with which familiar things had been invested. He was amazed at the +man’s sympathy with life and at his incisive psychology. _Psychology_ +was a new word in Martin’s vocabulary. He had bought a dictionary, +which deed had decreased his supply of money and brought nearer the day +on which he must sail in search of more. Also, it incensed Mr. +Higginbotham, who would have preferred the money taking the form of +board. + +He dared not go near Ruth’s neighborhood in the daytime, but night +found him lurking like a thief around the Morse home, stealing glimpses +at the windows and loving the very walls that sheltered her. Several +times he barely escaped being caught by her brothers, and once he +trailed Mr. Morse down town and studied his face in the lighted +streets, longing all the while for some quick danger of death to +threaten so that he might spring in and save her father. On another +night, his vigil was rewarded by a glimpse of Ruth through a +second-story window. He saw only her head and shoulders, and her arms +raised as she fixed her hair before a mirror. It was only for a moment, +but it was a long moment to him, during which his blood turned to wine +and sang through his veins. Then she pulled down the shade. But it was +her room—he had learned that; and thereafter he strayed there often, +hiding under a dark tree on the opposite side of the street and smoking +countless cigarettes. One afternoon he saw her mother coming out of a +bank, and received another proof of the enormous distance that +separated Ruth from him. She was of the class that dealt with banks. He +had never been inside a bank in his life, and he had an idea that such +institutions were frequented only by the very rich and the very +powerful. + +In one way, he had undergone a moral revolution. Her cleanness and +purity had reacted upon him, and he felt in his being a crying need to +be clean. He must be that if he were ever to be worthy of breathing the +same air with her. He washed his teeth, and scrubbed his hands with a +kitchen scrub-brush till he saw a nail-brush in a drug-store window and +divined its use. While purchasing it, the clerk glanced at his nails, +suggested a nail-file, and so he became possessed of an additional +toilet-tool. He ran across a book in the library on the care of the +body, and promptly developed a penchant for a cold-water bath every +morning, much to the amazement of Jim, and to the bewilderment of Mr. +Higginbotham, who was not in sympathy with such high-fangled notions +and who seriously debated whether or not he should charge Martin extra +for the water. Another stride was in the direction of creased trousers. +Now that Martin was aroused in such matters, he swiftly noted the +difference between the baggy knees of the trousers worn by the working +class and the straight line from knee to foot of those worn by the men +above the working class. Also, he learned the reason why, and invaded +his sister’s kitchen in search of irons and ironing-board. He had +misadventures at first, hopelessly burning one pair and buying another, +which expenditure again brought nearer the day on which he must put to +sea. + +But the reform went deeper than mere outward appearance. He still +smoked, but he drank no more. Up to that time, drinking had seemed to +him the proper thing for men to do, and he had prided himself on his +strong head which enabled him to drink most men under the table. +Whenever he encountered a chance shipmate, and there were many in San +Francisco, he treated them and was treated in turn, as of old, but he +ordered for himself root beer or ginger ale and good-naturedly endured +their chaffing. And as they waxed maudlin he studied them, watching the +beast rise and master them and thanking God that he was no longer as +they. They had their limitations to forget, and when they were drunk, +their dim, stupid spirits were even as gods, and each ruled in his +heaven of intoxicated desire. With Martin the need for strong drink had +vanished. He was drunken in new and more profound ways—with Ruth, who +had fired him with love and with a glimpse of higher and eternal life; +with books, that had set a myriad maggots of desire gnawing in his +brain; and with the sense of personal cleanliness he was achieving, +that gave him even more superb health than what he had enjoyed and that +made his whole body sing with physical well-being. + +One night he went to the theatre, on the blind chance that he might see +her there, and from the second balcony he did see her. He saw her come +down the aisle, with Arthur and a strange young man with a football mop +of hair and eyeglasses, the sight of whom spurred him to instant +apprehension and jealousy. He saw her take her seat in the orchestra +circle, and little else than her did he see that night—a pair of +slender white shoulders and a mass of pale gold hair, dim with +distance. But there were others who saw, and now and again, glancing at +those about him, he noted two young girls who looked back from the row +in front, a dozen seats along, and who smiled at him with bold eyes. He +had always been easy-going. It was not in his nature to give rebuff. In +the old days he would have smiled back, and gone further and encouraged +smiling. But now it was different. He did smile back, then looked away, +and looked no more deliberately. But several times, forgetting the +existence of the two girls, his eyes caught their smiles. He could not +re-thumb himself in a day, nor could he violate the intrinsic +kindliness of his nature; so, at such moments, he smiled at the girls +in warm human friendliness. It was nothing new to him. He knew they +were reaching out their woman’s hands to him. But it was different now. +Far down there in the orchestra circle was the one woman in all the +world, so different, so terrifically different, from these two girls of +his class, that he could feel for them only pity and sorrow. He had it +in his heart to wish that they could possess, in some small measure, +her goodness and glory. And not for the world could he hurt them +because of their outreaching. He was not flattered by it; he even felt +a slight shame at his lowliness that permitted it. He knew, did he +belong in Ruth’s class, that there would be no overtures from these +girls; and with each glance of theirs he felt the fingers of his own +class clutching at him to hold him down. + +He left his seat before the curtain went down on the last act, intent +on seeing Her as she passed out. There were always numbers of men who +stood on the sidewalk outside, and he could pull his cap down over his +eyes and screen himself behind some one’s shoulder so that she should +not see him. He emerged from the theatre with the first of the crowd; +but scarcely had he taken his position on the edge of the sidewalk when +the two girls appeared. They were looking for him, he knew; and for the +moment he could have cursed that in him which drew women. Their casual +edging across the sidewalk to the curb, as they drew near, apprised him +of discovery. They slowed down, and were in the thick of the crowd as +they came up with him. One of them brushed against him and apparently +for the first time noticed him. She was a slender, dark girl, with +black, defiant eyes. But they smiled at him, and he smiled back. + +“Hello,” he said. + +It was automatic; he had said it so often before under similar +circumstances of first meetings. Besides, he could do no less. There +was that large tolerance and sympathy in his nature that would permit +him to do no less. The black-eyed girl smiled gratification and +greeting, and showed signs of stopping, while her companion, arm linked +in arm, giggled and likewise showed signs of halting. He thought +quickly. It would never do for Her to come out and see him talking +there with them. Quite naturally, as a matter of course, he swung in +along-side the dark-eyed one and walked with her. There was no +awkwardness on his part, no numb tongue. He was at home here, and he +held his own royally in the badinage, bristling with slang and +sharpness, that was always the preliminary to getting acquainted in +these swift-moving affairs. At the corner where the main stream of +people flowed onward, he started to edge out into the cross street. But +the girl with the black eyes caught his arm, following him and dragging +her companion after her, as she cried: + +“Hold on, Bill! What’s yer rush? You’re not goin’ to shake us so sudden +as all that?” + +He halted with a laugh, and turned, facing them. Across their shoulders +he could see the moving throng passing under the street lamps. Where he +stood it was not so light, and, unseen, he would be able to see Her as +she passed by. She would certainly pass by, for that way led home. + +“What’s her name?” he asked of the giggling girl, nodding at the +dark-eyed one. + +“You ask her,” was the convulsed response. + +“Well, what is it?” he demanded, turning squarely on the girl in +question. + +“You ain’t told me yours, yet,” she retorted. + +“You never asked it,” he smiled. “Besides, you guessed the first +rattle. It’s Bill, all right, all right.” + +“Aw, go ’long with you.” She looked him in the eyes, her own sharply +passionate and inviting. “What is it, honest?” + +Again she looked. All the centuries of woman since sex began were +eloquent in her eyes. And he measured her in a careless way, and knew, +bold now, that she would begin to retreat, coyly and delicately, as he +pursued, ever ready to reverse the game should he turn fainthearted. +And, too, he was human, and could feel the draw of her, while his ego +could not but appreciate the flattery of her kindness. Oh, he knew it +all, and knew them well, from A to Z. Good, as goodness might be +measured in their particular class, hard-working for meagre wages and +scorning the sale of self for easier ways, nervously desirous for some +small pinch of happiness in the desert of existence, and facing a +future that was a gamble between the ugliness of unending toil and the +black pit of more terrible wretchedness, the way whereto being briefer +though better paid. + +“Bill,” he answered, nodding his head. “Sure, Pete, Bill an’ no other.” + +“No joshin’?” she queried. + +“It ain’t Bill at all,” the other broke in. + +“How do you know?” he demanded. “You never laid eyes on me before.” + +“No need to, to know you’re lyin’,” was the retort. + +“Straight, Bill, what is it?” the first girl asked. + +“Bill’ll do,” he confessed. + +She reached out to his arm and shook him playfully. “I knew you was +lyin’, but you look good to me just the same.” + +He captured the hand that invited, and felt on the palm familiar +markings and distortions. + +“When’d you chuck the cannery?” he asked. + +“How’d yeh know?” and, “My, ain’t cheh a mind-reader!” the girls +chorussed. + +And while he exchanged the stupidities of stupid minds with them, +before his inner sight towered the book-shelves of the library, filled +with the wisdom of the ages. He smiled bitterly at the incongruity of +it, and was assailed by doubts. But between inner vision and outward +pleasantry he found time to watch the theatre crowd streaming by. And +then he saw Her, under the lights, between her brother and the strange +young man with glasses, and his heart seemed to stand still. He had +waited long for this moment. He had time to note the light, fluffy +something that hid her queenly head, the tasteful lines of her wrapped +figure, the gracefulness of her carriage and of the hand that caught up +her skirts; and then she was gone and he was left staring at the two +girls of the cannery, at their tawdry attempts at prettiness of dress, +their tragic efforts to be clean and trim, the cheap cloth, the cheap +ribbons, and the cheap rings on the fingers. He felt a tug at his arm, +and heard a voice saying:- + +“Wake up, Bill! What’s the matter with you?” + +“What was you sayin’?” he asked. + +“Oh, nothin’,” the dark girl answered, with a toss of her head. “I was +only remarkin’—” + +“What?” + +“Well, I was whisperin’ it’d be a good idea if you could dig up a +gentleman friend—for her” (indicating her companion), “and then, we +could go off an’ have ice-cream soda somewhere, or coffee, or +anything.” + +He was afflicted by a sudden spiritual nausea. The transition from Ruth +to this had been too abrupt. Ranged side by side with the bold, defiant +eyes of the girl before him, he saw Ruth’s clear, luminous eyes, like a +saint’s, gazing at him out of unplumbed depths of purity. And, somehow, +he felt within him a stir of power. He was better than this. Life meant +more to him than it meant to these two girls whose thoughts did not go +beyond ice-cream and a gentleman friend. He remembered that he had led +always a secret life in his thoughts. These thoughts he had tried to +share, but never had he found a woman capable of understanding—nor a +man. He had tried, at times, but had only puzzled his listeners. And as +his thoughts had been beyond them, so, he argued now, he must be beyond +them. He felt power move in him, and clenched his fists. If life meant +more to him, then it was for him to demand more from life, but he could +not demand it from such companionship as this. Those bold black eyes +had nothing to offer. He knew the thoughts behind them—of ice-cream and +of something else. But those saint’s eyes alongside—they offered all he +knew and more than he could guess. They offered books and painting, +beauty and repose, and all the fine elegance of higher existence. +Behind those black eyes he knew every thought process. It was like +clockwork. He could watch every wheel go around. Their bid was low +pleasure, narrow as the grave, that palled, and the grave was at the +end of it. But the bid of the saint’s eyes was mystery, and wonder +unthinkable, and eternal life. He had caught glimpses of the soul in +them, and glimpses of his own soul, too. + +“There’s only one thing wrong with the programme,” he said aloud. “I’ve +got a date already.” + +The girl’s eyes blazed her disappointment. + +“To sit up with a sick friend, I suppose?” she sneered. + +“No, a real, honest date with—” he faltered, “with a girl.” + +“You’re not stringin’ me?” she asked earnestly. + +He looked her in the eyes and answered: “It’s straight, all right. But +why can’t we meet some other time? You ain’t told me your name yet. An’ +where d’ye live?” + +“Lizzie,” she replied, softening toward him, her hand pressing his arm, +while her body leaned against his. “Lizzie Connolly. And I live at +Fifth an’ Market.” + +He talked on a few minutes before saying good night. He did not go home +immediately; and under the tree where he kept his vigils he looked up +at a window and murmured: “That date was with you, Ruth. I kept it for +you.” + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +A week of heavy reading had passed since the evening he first met Ruth +Morse, and still he dared not call. Time and again he nerved himself up +to call, but under the doubts that assailed him his determination died +away. He did not know the proper time to call, nor was there any one to +tell him, and he was afraid of committing himself to an irretrievable +blunder. Having shaken himself free from his old companions and old +ways of life, and having no new companions, nothing remained for him +but to read, and the long hours he devoted to it would have ruined a +dozen pairs of ordinary eyes. But his eyes were strong, and they were +backed by a body superbly strong. Furthermore, his mind was fallow. It +had lain fallow all his life so far as the abstract thought of the +books was concerned, and it was ripe for the sowing. It had never been +jaded by study, and it bit hold of the knowledge in the books with +sharp teeth that would not let go. + +It seemed to him, by the end of the week, that he had lived centuries, +so far behind were the old life and outlook. But he was baffled by lack +of preparation. He attempted to read books that required years of +preliminary specialization. One day he would read a book of antiquated +philosophy, and the next day one that was ultra-modern, so that his +head would be whirling with the conflict and contradiction of ideas. It +was the same with the economists. On the one shelf at the library he +found Karl Marx, Ricardo, Adam Smith, and Mill, and the abstruse +formulas of the one gave no clew that the ideas of another were +obsolete. He was bewildered, and yet he wanted to know. He had become +interested, in a day, in economics, industry, and politics. Passing +through the City Hall Park, he had noticed a group of men, in the +centre of which were half a dozen, with flushed faces and raised +voices, earnestly carrying on a discussion. He joined the listeners, +and heard a new, alien tongue in the mouths of the philosophers of the +people. One was a tramp, another was a labor agitator, a third was a +law-school student, and the remainder was composed of wordy workingmen. +For the first time he heard of socialism, anarchism, and single tax, +and learned that there were warring social philosophies. He heard +hundreds of technical words that were new to him, belonging to fields +of thought that his meagre reading had never touched upon. Because of +this he could not follow the arguments closely, and he could only guess +at and surmise the ideas wrapped up in such strange expressions. Then +there was a black-eyed restaurant waiter who was a theosophist, a union +baker who was an agnostic, an old man who baffled all of them with the +strange philosophy that _what is is right_, and another old man who +discoursed interminably about the cosmos and the father-atom and the +mother-atom. + +Martin Eden’s head was in a state of addlement when he went away after +several hours, and he hurried to the library to look up the definitions +of a dozen unusual words. And when he left the library, he carried +under his arm four volumes: Madam Blavatsky’s “Secret Doctrine,” +“Progress and Poverty,” “The Quintessence of Socialism,” and “Warfare +of Religion and Science.” Unfortunately, he began on the “Secret +Doctrine.” Every line bristled with many-syllabled words he did not +understand. He sat up in bed, and the dictionary was in front of him +more often than the book. He looked up so many new words that when they +recurred, he had forgotten their meaning and had to look them up again. +He devised the plan of writing the definitions in a note-book, and +filled page after page with them. And still he could not understand. He +read until three in the morning, and his brain was in a turmoil, but +not one essential thought in the text had he grasped. He looked up, and +it seemed that the room was lifting, heeling, and plunging like a ship +upon the sea. Then he hurled the “Secret Doctrine” and many curses +across the room, turned off the gas, and composed himself to sleep. Nor +did he have much better luck with the other three books. It was not +that his brain was weak or incapable; it could think these thoughts +were it not for lack of training in thinking and lack of the +thought-tools with which to think. He guessed this, and for a while +entertained the idea of reading nothing but the dictionary until he had +mastered every word in it. + +Poetry, however, was his solace, and he read much of it, finding his +greatest joy in the simpler poets, who were more understandable. He +loved beauty, and there he found beauty. Poetry, like music, stirred +him profoundly, and, though he did not know it, he was preparing his +mind for the heavier work that was to come. The pages of his mind were +blank, and, without effort, much he read and liked, stanza by stanza, +was impressed upon those pages, so that he was soon able to extract +great joy from chanting aloud or under his breath the music and the +beauty of the printed words he had read. Then he stumbled upon Gayley’s +“Classic Myths” and Bulfinch’s “Age of Fable,” side by side on a +library shelf. It was illumination, a great light in the darkness of +his ignorance, and he read poetry more avidly than ever. + +The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that +he had become quite cordial, always greeting him with a smile and a nod +when he entered. It was because of this that Martin did a daring thing. +Drawing out some books at the desk, and while the man was stamping the +cards, Martin blurted out:- + +“Say, there’s something I’d like to ask you.” + +The man smiled and paid attention. + +“When you meet a young lady an’ she asks you to call, how soon can you +call?” + +Martin felt his shirt press and cling to his shoulders, what of the +sweat of the effort. + +“Why I’d say any time,” the man answered. + +“Yes, but this is different,” Martin objected. “She—I—well, you see, +it’s this way: maybe she won’t be there. She goes to the university.” + +“Then call again.” + +“What I said ain’t what I meant,” Martin confessed falteringly, while +he made up his mind to throw himself wholly upon the other’s mercy. +“I’m just a rough sort of a fellow, an’ I ain’t never seen anything of +society. This girl is all that I ain’t, an’ I ain’t anything that she +is. You don’t think I’m playin’ the fool, do you?” he demanded +abruptly. + +“No, no; not at all, I assure you,” the other protested. “Your request +is not exactly in the scope of the reference department, but I shall be +only too pleased to assist you.” + +Martin looked at him admiringly. + +“If I could tear it off that way, I’d be all right,” he said. + +“I beg pardon?” + +“I mean if I could talk easy that way, an’ polite, an’ all the rest.” + +“Oh,” said the other, with comprehension. + +“What is the best time to call? The afternoon?—not too close to +meal-time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?” + +“I’ll tell you,” the librarian said with a brightening face. “You call +her up on the telephone and find out.” + +“I’ll do it,” he said, picking up his books and starting away. + +He turned back and asked:- + +“When you’re speakin’ to a young lady—say, for instance, Miss Lizzie +Smith—do you say ‘Miss Lizzie’? or ‘Miss Smith’?” + +“Say ‘Miss Smith,’” the librarian stated authoritatively. “Say ‘Miss +Smith’ always—until you come to know her better.” + +So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem. + +“Come down any time; I’ll be at home all afternoon,” was Ruth’s reply +over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return +the borrowed books. + +She met him at the door herself, and her woman’s eyes took in +immediately the creased trousers and the certain slight but indefinable +change in him for the better. Also, she was struck by his face. It was +almost violent, this health of his, and it seemed to rush out of him +and at her in waves of force. She felt the urge again of the desire to +lean toward him for warmth, and marvelled again at the effect his +presence produced upon her. And he, in turn, knew again the swimming +sensation of bliss when he felt the contact of her hand in greeting. +The difference between them lay in that she was cool and self-possessed +while his face flushed to the roots of the hair. He stumbled with his +old awkwardness after her, and his shoulders swung and lurched +perilously. + +Once they were seated in the living-room, he began to get on +easily—more easily by far than he had expected. She made it easy for +him; and the gracious spirit with which she did it made him love her +more madly than ever. They talked first of the borrowed books, of the +Swinburne he was devoted to, and of the Browning he did not understand; +and she led the conversation on from subject to subject, while she +pondered the problem of how she could be of help to him. She had +thought of this often since their first meeting. She wanted to help +him. He made a call upon her pity and tenderness that no one had ever +made before, and the pity was not so much derogatory of him as maternal +in her. Her pity could not be of the common sort, when the man who drew +it was so much man as to shock her with maidenly fears and set her mind +and pulse thrilling with strange thoughts and feelings. The old +fascination of his neck was there, and there was sweetness in the +thought of laying her hands upon it. It seemed still a wanton impulse, +but she had grown more used to it. She did not dream that in such guise +new-born love would epitomize itself. Nor did she dream that the +feeling he excited in her was love. She thought she was merely +interested in him as an unusual type possessing various potential +excellencies, and she even felt philanthropic about it. + +She did not know she desired him; but with him it was different. He +knew that he loved her, and he desired her as he had never before +desired anything in his life. He had loved poetry for beauty’s sake; +but since he met her the gates to the vast field of love-poetry had +been opened wide. She had given him understanding even more than +Bulfinch and Gayley. There was a line that a week before he would not +have favored with a second thought—“God’s own mad lover dying on a +kiss”; but now it was ever insistent in his mind. He marvelled at the +wonder of it and the truth; and as he gazed upon her he knew that he +could die gladly upon a kiss. He felt himself God’s own mad lover, and +no accolade of knighthood could have given him greater pride. And at +last he knew the meaning of life and why he had been born. + +As he gazed at her and listened, his thoughts grew daring. He reviewed +all the wild delight of the pressure of her hand in his at the door, +and longed for it again. His gaze wandered often toward her lips, and +he yearned for them hungrily. But there was nothing gross or earthly +about this yearning. It gave him exquisite delight to watch every +movement and play of those lips as they enunciated the words she spoke; +yet they were not ordinary lips such as all men and women had. Their +substance was not mere human clay. They were lips of pure spirit, and +his desire for them seemed absolutely different from the desire that +had led him to other women’s lips. He could kiss her lips, rest his own +physical lips upon them, but it would be with the lofty and awful +fervor with which one would kiss the robe of God. He was not conscious +of this transvaluation of values that had taken place in him, and was +unaware that the light that shone in his eyes when he looked at her was +quite the same light that shines in all men’s eyes when the desire of +love is upon them. He did not dream how ardent and masculine his gaze +was, nor that the warm flame of it was affecting the alchemy of her +spirit. Her penetrative virginity exalted and disguised his own +emotions, elevating his thoughts to a star-cool chastity, and he would +have been startled to learn that there was that shining out of his +eyes, like warm waves, that flowed through her and kindled a kindred +warmth. She was subtly perturbed by it, and more than once, though she +knew not why, it disrupted her train of thought with its delicious +intrusion and compelled her to grope for the remainder of ideas partly +uttered. Speech was always easy with her, and these interruptions would +have puzzled her had she not decided that it was because he was a +remarkable type. She was very sensitive to impressions, and it was not +strange, after all, that this aura of a traveller from another world +should so affect her. + +The problem in the background of her consciousness was how to help him, +and she turned the conversation in that direction; but it was Martin +who came to the point first. + +“I wonder if I can get some advice from you,” he began, and received an +acquiescence of willingness that made his heart bound. “You remember +the other time I was here I said I couldn’t talk about books an’ things +because I didn’t know how? Well, I’ve ben doin’ a lot of thinkin’ ever +since. I’ve ben to the library a whole lot, but most of the books I’ve +tackled have ben over my head. Mebbe I’d better begin at the beginnin’. +I ain’t never had no advantages. I’ve worked pretty hard ever since I +was a kid, an’ since I’ve ben to the library, lookin’ with new eyes at +books—an’ lookin’ at new books, too—I’ve just about concluded that I +ain’t ben reading the right kind. You know the books you find in +cattle-camps an’ fo’c’s’ls ain’t the same you’ve got in this house, for +instance. Well, that’s the sort of readin’ matter I’ve ben accustomed +to. And yet—an’ I ain’t just makin’ a brag of it—I’ve ben different +from the people I’ve herded with. Not that I’m any better than the +sailors an’ cow-punchers I travelled with,—I was cow-punchin’ for a +short time, you know,—but I always liked books, read everything I could +lay hands on, an’—well, I guess I think differently from most of ’em. + +“Now, to come to what I’m drivin’ at. I was never inside a house like +this. When I come a week ago, an’ saw all this, an’ you, an’ your +mother, an’ brothers, an’ everything—well, I liked it. I’d heard about +such things an’ read about such things in some of the books, an’ when I +looked around at your house, why, the books come true. But the thing +I’m after is I liked it. I wanted it. I want it now. I want to breathe +air like you get in this house—air that is filled with books, and +pictures, and beautiful things, where people talk in low voices an’ are +clean, an’ their thoughts are clean. The air I always breathed was +mixed up with grub an’ house-rent an’ scrappin’ an booze an’ that’s all +they talked about, too. Why, when you was crossin’ the room to kiss +your mother, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever seen. +I’ve seen a whole lot of life, an’ somehow I’ve seen a whole lot more +of it than most of them that was with me. I like to see, an’ I want to +see more, an’ I want to see it different. + +“But I ain’t got to the point yet. Here it is. I want to make my way to +the kind of life you have in this house. There’s more in life than +booze, an’ hard work, an’ knockin’ about. Now, how am I goin’ to get +it? Where do I take hold an’ begin? I’m willin’ to work my passage, you +know, an’ I can make most men sick when it comes to hard work. Once I +get started, I’ll work night an’ day. Mebbe you think it’s funny, me +askin’ you about all this. I know you’re the last person in the world I +ought to ask, but I don’t know anybody else I could ask—unless it’s +Arthur. Mebbe I ought to ask him. If I was—” + +His voice died away. His firmly planned intention had come to a halt on +the verge of the horrible probability that he should have asked Arthur +and that he had made a fool of himself. Ruth did not speak immediately. +She was too absorbed in striving to reconcile the stumbling, uncouth +speech and its simplicity of thought with what she saw in his face. She +had never looked in eyes that expressed greater power. Here was a man +who could do anything, was the message she read there, and it accorded +ill with the weakness of his spoken thought. And for that matter so +complex and quick was her own mind that she did not have a just +appreciation of simplicity. And yet she had caught an impression of +power in the very groping of this mind. It had seemed to her like a +giant writhing and straining at the bonds that held him down. Her face +was all sympathy when she did speak. + +“What you need, you realize yourself, and it is education. You should +go back and finish grammar school, and then go through to high school +and university.” + +“But that takes money,” he interrupted. + +“Oh!” she cried. “I had not thought of that. But then you have +relatives, somebody who could assist you?” + +He shook his head. + +“My father and mother are dead. I’ve two sisters, one married, an’ the +other’ll get married soon, I suppose. Then I’ve a string of +brothers,—I’m the youngest,—but they never helped nobody. They’ve just +knocked around over the world, lookin’ out for number one. The oldest +died in India. Two are in South Africa now, an’ another’s on a whaling +voyage, an’ one’s travellin’ with a circus—he does trapeze work. An’ I +guess I’m just like them. I’ve taken care of myself since I was +eleven—that’s when my mother died. I’ve got to study by myself, I +guess, an’ what I want to know is where to begin.” + +“I should say the first thing of all would be to get a grammar. Your +grammar is—” She had intended saying “awful,” but she amended it to “is +not particularly good.” + +He flushed and sweated. + +“I know I must talk a lot of slang an’ words you don’t understand. But +then they’re the only words I know—how to speak. I’ve got other words +in my mind, picked ’em up from books, but I can’t pronounce ’em, so I +don’t use ’em.” + +“It isn’t what you say, so much as how you say it. You don’t mind my +being frank, do you? I don’t want to hurt you.” + +“No, no,” he cried, while he secretly blessed her for her kindness. +“Fire away. I’ve got to know, an’ I’d sooner know from you than anybody +else.” + +“Well, then, you say, ‘You was’; it should be, ‘You were.’ You say ‘I +seen’ for ‘I saw.’ You use the double negative—” + +“What’s the double negative?” he demanded; then added humbly, “You see, +I don’t even understand your explanations.” + +“I’m afraid I didn’t explain that,” she smiled. “A double negative +is—let me see—well, you say, ‘never helped nobody.’ ‘Never’ is a +negative. ‘Nobody’ is another negative. It is a rule that two negatives +make a positive. ‘Never helped nobody’ means that, not helping nobody, +they must have helped somebody.” + +“That’s pretty clear,” he said. “I never thought of it before. But it +don’t mean they _must_ have helped somebody, does it? Seems to me that +‘never helped nobody’ just naturally fails to say whether or not they +helped somebody. I never thought of it before, and I’ll never say it +again.” + +She was pleased and surprised with the quickness and surety of his +mind. As soon as he had got the clew he not only understood but +corrected her error. + +“You’ll find it all in the grammar,” she went on. “There’s something +else I noticed in your speech. You say ‘don’t’ when you shouldn’t. +‘Don’t’ is a contraction and stands for two words. Do you know them?” + +He thought a moment, then answered, “‘Do not.’” + +She nodded her head, and said, “And you use ‘don’t’ when you mean ‘does +not.’” + +He was puzzled over this, and did not get it so quickly. + +“Give me an illustration,” he asked. + +“Well—” She puckered her brows and pursed up her mouth as she thought, +while he looked on and decided that her expression was most adorable. +“‘It don’t do to be hasty.’ Change ‘don’t’ to ‘do not,’ and it reads, +‘It do not do to be hasty,’ which is perfectly absurd.” + +He turned it over in his mind and considered. + +“Doesn’t it jar on your ear?” she suggested. + +“Can’t say that it does,” he replied judicially. + +“Why didn’t you say, ‘Can’t say that it do’?” she queried. + +“That sounds wrong,” he said slowly. “As for the other I can’t make up +my mind. I guess my ear ain’t had the trainin’ yours has.” + +“There is no such word as ‘ain’t,’” she said, prettily emphatic. + +Martin flushed again. + +“And you say ‘ben’ for ‘been,’” she continued; “‘come’ for ‘came’; and +the way you chop your endings is something dreadful.” + +“How do you mean?” He leaned forward, feeling that he ought to get down +on his knees before so marvellous a mind. “How do I chop?” + +“You don’t complete the endings. ‘A-n-d’ spells ‘and.’ You pronounce it +‘an’.’ ‘I-n-g’ spells ‘ing.’ Sometimes you pronounce it ‘ing’ and +sometimes you leave off the ‘g.’ And then you slur by dropping initial +letters and diphthongs. ‘T-h-e-m’ spells ‘them.’ You pronounce it—oh, +well, it is not necessary to go over all of them. What you need is the +grammar. I’ll get one and show you how to begin.” + +As she arose, there shot through his mind something that he had read in +the etiquette books, and he stood up awkwardly, worrying as to whether +he was doing the right thing, and fearing that she might take it as a +sign that he was about to go. + +“By the way, Mr. Eden,” she called back, as she was leaving the room. +“What is _booze_? You used it several times, you know.” + +“Oh, booze,” he laughed. “It’s slang. It means whiskey an’ +beer—anything that will make you drunk.” + +“And another thing,” she laughed back. “Don’t use ‘you’ when you are +impersonal. ‘You’ is very personal, and your use of it just now was not +precisely what you meant.” + +“I don’t just see that.” + +“Why, you said just now, to me, ‘whiskey and beer—anything that will +make you drunk’—make me drunk, don’t you see?” + +“Well, it would, wouldn’t it?” + +“Yes, of course,” she smiled. “But it would be nicer not to bring me +into it. Substitute ‘one’ for ‘you’ and see how much better it sounds.” + +When she returned with the grammar, she drew a chair near his—he +wondered if he should have helped her with the chair—and sat down +beside him. She turned the pages of the grammar, and their heads were +inclined toward each other. He could hardly follow her outlining of the +work he must do, so amazed was he by her delightful propinquity. But +when she began to lay down the importance of conjugation, he forgot all +about her. He had never heard of conjugation, and was fascinated by the +glimpse he was catching into the tie-ribs of language. He leaned closer +to the page, and her hair touched his cheek. He had fainted but once in +his life, and he thought he was going to faint again. He could scarcely +breathe, and his heart was pounding the blood up into his throat and +suffocating him. Never had she seemed so accessible as now. For the +moment the great gulf that separated them was bridged. But there was no +diminution in the loftiness of his feeling for her. She had not +descended to him. It was he who had been caught up into the clouds and +carried to her. His reverence for her, in that moment, was of the same +order as religious awe and fervor. It seemed to him that he had +intruded upon the holy of holies, and slowly and carefully he moved his +head aside from the contact which thrilled him like an electric shock +and of which she had not been aware. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +Several weeks went by, during which Martin Eden studied his grammar, +reviewed the books on etiquette, and read voraciously the books that +caught his fancy. Of his own class he saw nothing. The girls of the +Lotus Club wondered what had become of him and worried Jim with +questions, and some of the fellows who put on the glove at Riley’s were +glad that Martin came no more. He made another discovery of +treasure-trove in the library. As the grammar had shown him the +tie-ribs of language, so that book showed him the tie-ribs of poetry, +and he began to learn metre and construction and form, beneath the +beauty he loved finding the why and wherefore of that beauty. Another +modern book he found treated poetry as a representative art, treated it +exhaustively, with copious illustrations from the best in literature. +Never had he read fiction with so keen zest as he studied these books. +And his fresh mind, untaxed for twenty years and impelled by maturity +of desire, gripped hold of what he read with a virility unusual to the +student mind. + +When he looked back now from his vantage-ground, the old world he had +known, the world of land and sea and ships, of sailor-men and +harpy-women, seemed a very small world; and yet it blended in with this +new world and expanded. His mind made for unity, and he was surprised +when at first he began to see points of contact between the two worlds. +And he was ennobled, as well, by the loftiness of thought and beauty he +found in the books. This led him to believe more firmly than ever that +up above him, in society like Ruth and her family, all men and women +thought these thoughts and lived them. Down below where he lived was +the ignoble, and he wanted to purge himself of the ignoble that had +soiled all his days, and to rise to that sublimated realm where dwelt +the upper classes. All his childhood and youth had been troubled by a +vague unrest; he had never known what he wanted, but he had wanted +something that he had hunted vainly for until he met Ruth. And now his +unrest had become sharp and painful, and he knew at last, clearly and +definitely, that it was beauty, and intellect, and love that he must +have. + +During those several weeks he saw Ruth half a dozen times, and each +time was an added inspiration. She helped him with his English, +corrected his pronunciation, and started him on arithmetic. But their +intercourse was not all devoted to elementary study. He had seen too +much of life, and his mind was too matured, to be wholly content with +fractions, cube root, parsing, and analysis; and there were times when +their conversation turned on other themes—the last poetry he had read, +the latest poet she had studied. And when she read aloud to him her +favorite passages, he ascended to the topmost heaven of delight. Never, +in all the women he had heard speak, had he heard a voice like hers. +The least sound of it was a stimulus to his love, and he thrilled and +throbbed with every word she uttered. It was the quality of it, the +repose, and the musical modulation—the soft, rich, indefinable product +of culture and a gentle soul. As he listened to her, there rang in the +ears of his memory the harsh cries of barbarian women and of hags, and, +in lesser degrees of harshness, the strident voices of working women +and of the girls of his own class. Then the chemistry of vision would +begin to work, and they would troop in review across his mind, each, by +contrast, multiplying Ruth’s glories. Then, too, his bliss was +heightened by the knowledge that her mind was comprehending what she +read and was quivering with appreciation of the beauty of the written +thought. She read to him much from “The Princess,” and often he saw her +eyes swimming with tears, so finely was her aesthetic nature strung. At +such moments her own emotions elevated him till he was as a god, and, +as he gazed at her and listened, he seemed gazing on the face of life +and reading its deepest secrets. And then, becoming aware of the +heights of exquisite sensibility he attained, he decided that this was +love and that love was the greatest thing in the world. And in review +would pass along the corridors of memory all previous thrills and +burnings he had known,—the drunkenness of wine, the caresses of women, +the rough play and give and take of physical contests,—and they seemed +trivial and mean compared with this sublime ardor he now enjoyed. + +The situation was obscured to Ruth. She had never had any experiences +of the heart. Her only experiences in such matters were of the books, +where the facts of ordinary day were translated by fancy into a fairy +realm of unreality; and she little knew that this rough sailor was +creeping into her heart and storing there pent forces that would some +day burst forth and surge through her in waves of fire. She did not +know the actual fire of love. Her knowledge of love was purely +theoretical, and she conceived of it as lambent flame, gentle as the +fall of dew or the ripple of quiet water, and cool as the velvet-dark +of summer nights. Her idea of love was more that of placid affection, +serving the loved one softly in an atmosphere, flower-scented and +dim-lighted, of ethereal calm. She did not dream of the volcanic +convulsions of love, its scorching heat and sterile wastes of parched +ashes. She knew neither her own potencies, nor the potencies of the +world; and the deeps of life were to her seas of illusion. The conjugal +affection of her father and mother constituted her ideal of +love-affinity, and she looked forward some day to emerging, without +shock or friction, into that same quiet sweetness of existence with a +loved one. + +So it was that she looked upon Martin Eden as a novelty, a strange +individual, and she identified with novelty and strangeness the effects +he produced upon her. It was only natural. In similar ways she had +experienced unusual feelings when she looked at wild animals in the +menagerie, or when she witnessed a storm of wind, or shuddered at the +bright-ribbed lightning. There was something cosmic in such things, and +there was something cosmic in him. He came to her breathing of large +airs and great spaces. The blaze of tropic suns was in his face, and in +his swelling, resilient muscles was the primordial vigor of life. He +was marred and scarred by that mysterious world of rough men and +rougher deeds, the outposts of which began beyond her horizon. He was +untamed, wild, and in secret ways her vanity was touched by the fact +that he came so mildly to her hand. Likewise she was stirred by the +common impulse to tame the wild thing. It was an unconscious impulse, +and farthest from her thoughts that her desire was to re-thumb the clay +of him into a likeness of her father’s image, which image she believed +to be the finest in the world. Nor was there any way, out of her +inexperience, for her to know that the cosmic feel she caught of him +was that most cosmic of things, love, which with equal power drew men +and women together across the world, compelled stags to kill each other +in the rutting season, and drove even the elements irresistibly to +unite. + +His swift development was a source of surprise and interest. She +detected unguessed finenesses in him that seemed to bud, day by day, +like flowers in congenial soil. She read Browning aloud to him, and was +often puzzled by the strange interpretations he gave to mooted +passages. It was beyond her to realize that, out of his experience of +men and women and life, his interpretations were far more frequently +correct than hers. His conceptions seemed naive to her, though she was +often fired by his daring flights of comprehension, whose orbit-path +was so wide among the stars that she could not follow and could only +sit and thrill to the impact of unguessed power. Then she played to +him—no longer at him—and probed him with music that sank to depths +beyond her plumb-line. His nature opened to music as a flower to the +sun, and the transition was quick from his working-class rag-time and +jingles to her classical display pieces that she knew nearly by heart. +Yet he betrayed a democratic fondness for Wagner, and the “Tannhäuser” +overture, when she had given him the clew to it, claimed him as nothing +else she played. In an immediate way it personified his life. All his +past was the _Venusburg_ motif, while her he identified somehow with +the _Pilgrim’s Chorus_ motif; and from the exalted state this elevated +him to, he swept onward and upward into that vast shadow-realm of +spirit-groping, where good and evil war eternally. + +Sometimes he questioned, and induced in her mind temporary doubts as to +the correctness of her own definitions and conceptions of music. But +her singing he did not question. It was too wholly her, and he sat +always amazed at the divine melody of her pure soprano voice. And he +could not help but contrast it with the weak pipings and shrill +quaverings of factory girls, ill-nourished and untrained, and with the +raucous shriekings from gin-cracked throats of the women of the seaport +towns. She enjoyed singing and playing to him. In truth, it was the +first time she had ever had a human soul to play with, and the plastic +clay of him was a delight to mould; for she thought she was moulding +it, and her intentions were good. Besides, it was pleasant to be with +him. He did not repel her. That first repulsion had been really a fear +of her undiscovered self, and the fear had gone to sleep. Though she +did not know it, she had a feeling in him of proprietary right. Also, +he had a tonic effect upon her. She was studying hard at the +university, and it seemed to strengthen her to emerge from the dusty +books and have the fresh sea-breeze of his personality blow upon her. +Strength! Strength was what she needed, and he gave it to her in +generous measure. To come into the same room with him, or to meet him +at the door, was to take heart of life. And when he had gone, she would +return to her books with a keener zest and fresh store of energy. + +She knew her Browning, but it had never sunk into her that it was an +awkward thing to play with souls. As her interest in Martin increased, +the remodelling of his life became a passion with her. + +“There is Mr. Butler,” she said one afternoon, when grammar and +arithmetic and poetry had been put aside. + +“He had comparatively no advantages at first. His father had been a +bank cashier, but he lingered for years, dying of consumption in +Arizona, so that when he was dead, Mr. Butler, Charles Butler he was +called, found himself alone in the world. His father had come from +Australia, you know, and so he had no relatives in California. He went +to work in a printing-office,—I have heard him tell of it many +times,—and he got three dollars a week, at first. His income to-day is +at least thirty thousand a year. How did he do it? He was honest, and +faithful, and industrious, and economical. He denied himself the +enjoyments that most boys indulge in. He made it a point to save so +much every week, no matter what he had to do without in order to save +it. Of course, he was soon earning more than three dollars a week, and +as his wages increased he saved more and more. + +“He worked in the daytime, and at night he went to night school. He had +his eyes fixed always on the future. Later on he went to night high +school. When he was only seventeen, he was earning excellent wages at +setting type, but he was ambitious. He wanted a career, not a +livelihood, and he was content to make immediate sacrifices for his +ultimate gain. He decided upon the law, and he entered father’s office +as an office boy—think of that!—and got only four dollars a week. But +he had learned how to be economical, and out of that four dollars he +went on saving money.” + +She paused for breath, and to note how Martin was receiving it. His +face was lighted up with interest in the youthful struggles of Mr. +Butler; but there was a frown upon his face as well. + +“I’d say they was pretty hard lines for a young fellow,” he remarked. +“Four dollars a week! How could he live on it? You can bet he didn’t +have any frills. Why, I pay five dollars a week for board now, an’ +there’s nothin’ excitin’ about it, you can lay to that. He must have +lived like a dog. The food he ate—” + +“He cooked for himself,” she interrupted, “on a little kerosene stove.” + +“The food he ate must have been worse than what a sailor gets on the +worst-feedin’ deep-water ships, than which there ain’t much that can be +possibly worse.” + +“But think of him now!” she cried enthusiastically. “Think of what his +income affords him. His early denials are paid for a thousand-fold.” + +Martin looked at her sharply. + +“There’s one thing I’ll bet you,” he said, “and it is that Mr. Butler +is nothin’ gay-hearted now in his fat days. He fed himself like that +for years an’ years, on a boy’s stomach, an’ I bet his stomach’s none +too good now for it.” + +Her eyes dropped before his searching gaze. + +“I’ll bet he’s got dyspepsia right now!” Martin challenged. + +“Yes, he has,” she confessed; “but—” + +“An’ I bet,” Martin dashed on, “that he’s solemn an’ serious as an old +owl, an’ doesn’t care a rap for a good time, for all his thirty +thousand a year. An’ I’ll bet he’s not particularly joyful at seein’ +others have a good time. Ain’t I right?” + +She nodded her head in agreement, and hastened to explain:- + +“But he is not that type of man. By nature he is sober and serious. He +always was that.” + +“You can bet he was,” Martin proclaimed. “Three dollars a week, an’ +four dollars a week, an’ a young boy cookin’ for himself on an +oil-burner an’ layin’ up money, workin’ all day an’ studyin’ all night, +just workin’ an’ never playin’, never havin’ a good time, an’ never +learnin’ how to have a good time—of course his thirty thousand came +along too late.” + +His sympathetic imagination was flashing upon his inner sight all the +thousands of details of the boy’s existence and of his narrow spiritual +development into a thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year man. With the +swiftness and wide-reaching of multitudinous thought Charles Butler’s +whole life was telescoped upon his vision. + +“Do you know,” he added, “I feel sorry for Mr. Butler. He was too young +to know better, but he robbed himself of life for the sake of thirty +thousand a year that’s clean wasted upon him. Why, thirty thousand, +lump sum, wouldn’t buy for him right now what ten cents he was layin’ +up would have bought him, when he was a kid, in the way of candy an’ +peanuts or a seat in nigger heaven.” + +It was just such uniqueness of points of view that startled Ruth. Not +only were they new to her, and contrary to her own beliefs, but she +always felt in them germs of truth that threatened to unseat or modify +her own convictions. Had she been fourteen instead of twenty-four, she +might have been changed by them; but she was twenty-four, conservative +by nature and upbringing, and already crystallized into the cranny of +life where she had been born and formed. It was true, his bizarre +judgments troubled her in the moments they were uttered, but she +ascribed them to his novelty of type and strangeness of living, and +they were soon forgotten. Nevertheless, while she disapproved of them, +the strength of their utterance, and the flashing of eyes and +earnestness of face that accompanied them, always thrilled her and drew +her toward him. She would never have guessed that this man who had come +from beyond her horizon, was, in such moments, flashing on beyond her +horizon with wider and deeper concepts. Her own limits were the limits +of her horizon; but limited minds can recognize limitations only in +others. And so she felt that her outlook was very wide indeed, and that +where his conflicted with hers marked his limitations; and she dreamed +of helping him to see as she saw, of widening his horizon until it was +identified with hers. + +“But I have not finished my story,” she said. “He worked, so father +says, as no other office boy he ever had. Mr. Butler was always eager +to work. He never was late, and he was usually at the office a few +minutes before his regular time. And yet he saved his time. Every spare +moment was devoted to study. He studied book-keeping and type-writing, +and he paid for lessons in shorthand by dictating at night to a court +reporter who needed practice. He quickly became a clerk, and he made +himself invaluable. Father appreciated him and saw that he was bound to +rise. It was on father’s suggestion that he went to law college. He +became a lawyer, and hardly was he back in the office when father took +him in as junior partner. He is a great man. He refused the United +States Senate several times, and father says he could become a justice +of the Supreme Court any time a vacancy occurs, if he wants to. Such a +life is an inspiration to all of us. It shows us that a man with will +may rise superior to his environment.” + +“He is a great man,” Martin said sincerely. + +But it seemed to him there was something in the recital that jarred +upon his sense of beauty and life. He could not find an adequate motive +in Mr. Butler’s life of pinching and privation. Had he done it for love +of a woman, or for attainment of beauty, Martin would have understood. +God’s own mad lover should do anything for the kiss, but not for thirty +thousand dollars a year. He was dissatisfied with Mr. Butler’s career. +There was something paltry about it, after all. Thirty thousand a year +was all right, but dyspepsia and inability to be humanly happy robbed +such princely income of all its value. + +Much of this he strove to express to Ruth, and shocked her and made it +clear that more remodelling was necessary. Hers was that common +insularity of mind that makes human creatures believe that their color, +creed, and politics are best and right and that other human creatures +scattered over the world are less fortunately placed than they. It was +the same insularity of mind that made the ancient Jew thank God he was +not born a woman, and sent the modern missionary god-substituting to +the ends of the earth; and it made Ruth desire to shape this man from +other crannies of life into the likeness of the men who lived in her +particular cranny of life. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +Back from sea Martin Eden came, homing for California with a lover’s +desire. His store of money exhausted, he had shipped before the mast on +the treasure-hunting schooner; and the Solomon Islands, after eight +months of failure to find treasure, had witnessed the breaking up of +the expedition. The men had been paid off in Australia, and Martin had +immediately shipped on a deep-water vessel for San Francisco. Not alone +had those eight months earned him enough money to stay on land for many +weeks, but they had enabled him to do a great deal of studying and +reading. + +His was the student’s mind, and behind his ability to learn was the +indomitability of his nature and his love for Ruth. The grammar he had +taken along he went through again and again until his unjaded brain had +mastered it. He noticed the bad grammar used by his shipmates, and made +a point of mentally correcting and reconstructing their crudities of +speech. To his great joy he discovered that his ear was becoming +sensitive and that he was developing grammatical nerves. A double +negative jarred him like a discord, and often, from lack of practice, +it was from his own lips that the jar came. His tongue refused to learn +new tricks in a day. + +After he had been through the grammar repeatedly, he took up the +dictionary and added twenty words a day to his vocabulary. He found +that this was no light task, and at wheel or lookout he steadily went +over and over his lengthening list of pronunciations and definitions, +while he invariably memorized himself to sleep. “Never did anything,” +“if I were,” and “those things,” were phrases, with many variations, +that he repeated under his breath in order to accustom his tongue to +the language spoken by Ruth. “And” and “ing,” with the “d” and “g” +pronounced emphatically, he went over thousands of times; and to his +surprise he noticed that he was beginning to speak cleaner and more +correct English than the officers themselves and the +gentleman-adventurers in the cabin who had financed the expedition. + +The captain was a fishy-eyed Norwegian who somehow had fallen into +possession of a complete Shakespeare, which he never read, and Martin +had washed his clothes for him and in return been permitted access to +the precious volumes. For a time, so steeped was he in the plays and in +the many favorite passages that impressed themselves almost without +effort on his brain, that all the world seemed to shape itself into +forms of Elizabethan tragedy or comedy and his very thoughts were in +blank verse. It trained his ear and gave him a fine appreciation for +noble English; withal it introduced into his mind much that was archaic +and obsolete. + +The eight months had been well spent, and, in addition to what he had +learned of right speaking and high thinking, he had learned much of +himself. Along with his humbleness because he knew so little, there +arose a conviction of power. He felt a sharp gradation between himself +and his shipmates, and was wise enough to realize that the difference +lay in potentiality rather than achievement. What he could do,—they +could do; but within him he felt a confused ferment working that told +him there was more in him than he had done. He was tortured by the +exquisite beauty of the world, and wished that Ruth were there to share +it with him. He decided that he would describe to her many of the bits +of South Sea beauty. The creative spirit in him flamed up at the +thought and urged that he recreate this beauty for a wider audience +than Ruth. And then, in splendor and glory, came the great idea. He +would write. He would be one of the eyes through which the world saw, +one of the ears through which it heard, one of the hearts through which +it felt. He would write—everything—poetry and prose, fiction and +description, and plays like Shakespeare. There was career and the way +to win to Ruth. The men of literature were the world’s giants, and he +conceived them to be far finer than the Mr. Butlers who earned thirty +thousand a year and could be Supreme Court justices if they wanted to. + +Once the idea had germinated, it mastered him, and the return voyage to +San Francisco was like a dream. He was drunken with unguessed power and +felt that he could do anything. In the midst of the great and lonely +sea he gained perspective. Clearly, and for the first time, he saw Ruth +and her world. It was all visualized in his mind as a concrete thing +which he could take up in his two hands and turn around and about and +examine. There was much that was dim and nebulous in that world, but he +saw it as a whole and not in detail, and he saw, also, the way to +master it. To write! The thought was fire in him. He would begin as +soon as he got back. The first thing he would do would be to describe +the voyage of the treasure-hunters. He would sell it to some San +Francisco newspaper. He would not tell Ruth anything about it, and she +would be surprised and pleased when she saw his name in print. While he +wrote, he could go on studying. There were twenty-four hours in each +day. He was invincible. He knew how to work, and the citadels would go +down before him. He would not have to go to sea again—as a sailor; and +for the instant he caught a vision of a steam yacht. There were other +writers who possessed steam yachts. Of course, he cautioned himself, it +would be slow succeeding at first, and for a time he would be content +to earn enough money by his writing to enable him to go on studying. +And then, after some time,—a very indeterminate time,—when he had +learned and prepared himself, he would write the great things and his +name would be on all men’s lips. But greater than that, infinitely +greater and greatest of all, he would have proved himself worthy of +Ruth. Fame was all very well, but it was for Ruth that his splendid +dream arose. He was not a fame-monger, but merely one of God’s mad +lovers. + +Arrived in Oakland, with his snug pay-day in his pocket, he took up his +old room at Bernard Higginbotham’s and set to work. He did not even let +Ruth know he was back. He would go and see her when he finished the +article on the treasure-hunters. It was not so difficult to abstain +from seeing her, because of the violent heat of creative fever that +burned in him. Besides, the very article he was writing would bring her +nearer to him. He did not know how long an article he should write, but +he counted the words in a double-page article in the Sunday supplement +of the _San Francisco Examiner_, and guided himself by that. Three +days, at white heat, completed his narrative; but when he had copied it +carefully, in a large scrawl that was easy to read, he learned from a +rhetoric he picked up in the library that there were such things as +paragraphs and quotation marks. He had never thought of such things +before; and he promptly set to work writing the article over, referring +continually to the pages of the rhetoric and learning more in a day +about composition than the average schoolboy in a year. When he had +copied the article a second time and rolled it up carefully, he read in +a newspaper an item on hints to beginners, and discovered the iron law +that manuscripts should never be rolled and that they should be written +on one side of the paper. He had violated the law on both counts. Also, +he learned from the item that first-class papers paid a minimum of ten +dollars a column. So, while he copied the manuscript a third time, he +consoled himself by multiplying ten columns by ten dollars. The product +was always the same, one hundred dollars, and he decided that that was +better than seafaring. If it hadn’t been for his blunders, he would +have finished the article in three days. One hundred dollars in three +days! It would have taken him three months and longer on the sea to +earn a similar amount. A man was a fool to go to sea when he could +write, he concluded, though the money in itself meant nothing to him. +Its value was in the liberty it would get him, the presentable garments +it would buy him, all of which would bring him nearer, swiftly nearer, +to the slender, pale girl who had turned his life back upon itself and +given him inspiration. + +He mailed the manuscript in a flat envelope, and addressed it to the +editor of the _San Francisco Examiner_. He had an idea that anything +accepted by a paper was published immediately, and as he had sent the +manuscript in on Friday he expected it to come out on the following +Sunday. He conceived that it would be fine to let that event apprise +Ruth of his return. Then, Sunday afternoon, he would call and see her. +In the meantime he was occupied by another idea, which he prided +himself upon as being a particularly sane, careful, and modest idea. He +would write an adventure story for boys and sell it to _The Youth’s +Companion_. He went to the free reading-room and looked through the +files of _The Youth’s Companion_. Serial stories, he found, were +usually published in that weekly in five instalments of about three +thousand words each. He discovered several serials that ran to seven +instalments, and decided to write one of that length. + +He had been on a whaling voyage in the Arctic, once—a voyage that was +to have been for three years and which had terminated in shipwreck at +the end of six months. While his imagination was fanciful, even +fantastic at times, he had a basic love of reality that compelled him +to write about the things he knew. He knew whaling, and out of the real +materials of his knowledge he proceeded to manufacture the fictitious +adventures of the two boys he intended to use as joint heroes. It was +easy work, he decided on Saturday evening. He had completed on that day +the first instalment of three thousand words—much to the amusement of +Jim, and to the open derision of Mr. Higginbotham, who sneered +throughout meal-time at the “litery” person they had discovered in the +family. + +Martin contented himself by picturing his brother-in-law’s surprise on +Sunday morning when he opened his _Examiner_ and saw the article on the +treasure-hunters. Early that morning he was out himself to the front +door, nervously racing through the many-sheeted newspaper. He went +through it a second time, very carefully, then folded it up and left it +where he had found it. He was glad he had not told any one about his +article. On second thought he concluded that he had been wrong about +the speed with which things found their way into newspaper columns. +Besides, there had not been any news value in his article, and most +likely the editor would write to him about it first. + +After breakfast he went on with his serial. The words flowed from his +pen, though he broke off from the writing frequently to look up +definitions in the dictionary or to refer to the rhetoric. He often +read or re-read a chapter at a time, during such pauses; and he +consoled himself that while he was not writing the great things he felt +to be in him, he was learning composition, at any rate, and training +himself to shape up and express his thoughts. He toiled on till dark, +when he went out to the reading-room and explored magazines and +weeklies until the place closed at ten o’clock. This was his programme +for a week. Each day he did three thousand words, and each evening he +puzzled his way through the magazines, taking note of the stories, +articles, and poems that editors saw fit to publish. One thing was +certain: What these multitudinous writers did he could do, and only +give him time and he would do what they could not do. He was cheered to +read in _Book News_, in a paragraph on the payment of magazine writers, +not that Rudyard Kipling received a dollar per word, but that the +minimum rate paid by first-class magazines was two cents a word. _The +Youth’s Companion_ was certainly first class, and at that rate the +three thousand words he had written that day would bring him sixty +dollars—two months’ wages on the sea! + +On Friday night he finished the serial, twenty-one thousand words long. +At two cents a word, he calculated, that would bring him four hundred +and twenty dollars. Not a bad week’s work. It was more money than he +had ever possessed at one time. He did not know how he could spend it +all. He had tapped a gold mine. Where this came from he could always +get more. He planned to buy some more clothes, to subscribe to many +magazines, and to buy dozens of reference books that at present he was +compelled to go to the library to consult. And still there was a large +portion of the four hundred and twenty dollars unspent. This worried +him until the thought came to him of hiring a servant for Gertrude and +of buying a bicycle for Marian. + +He mailed the bulky manuscript to _The Youth’s Companion_, and on +Saturday afternoon, after having planned an article on pearl-diving, he +went to see Ruth. He had telephoned, and she went herself to greet him +at the door. The old familiar blaze of health rushed out from him and +struck her like a blow. It seemed to enter into her body and course +through her veins in a liquid glow, and to set her quivering with its +imparted strength. He flushed warmly as he took her hand and looked +into her blue eyes, but the fresh bronze of eight months of sun hid the +flush, though it did not protect the neck from the gnawing chafe of the +stiff collar. She noted the red line of it with amusement which quickly +vanished as she glanced at his clothes. They really fitted him,—it was +his first made-to-order suit,—and he seemed slimmer and better +modelled. In addition, his cloth cap had been replaced by a soft hat, +which she commanded him to put on and then complimented him on his +appearance. She did not remember when she had felt so happy. This +change in him was her handiwork, and she was proud of it and fired with +ambition further to help him. + +But the most radical change of all, and the one that pleased her most, +was the change in his speech. Not only did he speak more correctly, but +he spoke more easily, and there were many new words in his vocabulary. +When he grew excited or enthusiastic, however, he dropped back into the +old slurring and the dropping of final consonants. Also, there was an +awkward hesitancy, at times, as he essayed the new words he had +learned. On the other hand, along with his ease of expression, he +displayed a lightness and facetiousness of thought that delighted her. +It was his old spirit of humor and badinage that had made him a +favorite in his own class, but which he had hitherto been unable to use +in her presence through lack of words and training. He was just +beginning to orientate himself and to feel that he was not wholly an +intruder. But he was very tentative, fastidiously so, letting Ruth set +the pace of sprightliness and fancy, keeping up with her but never +daring to go beyond her. + +He told her of what he had been doing, and of his plan to write for a +livelihood and of going on with his studies. But he was disappointed at +her lack of approval. She did not think much of his plan. + +“You see,” she said frankly, “writing must be a trade, like anything +else. Not that I know anything about it, of course. I only bring common +judgment to bear. You couldn’t hope to be a blacksmith without spending +three years at learning the trade—or is it five years! Now writers are +so much better paid than blacksmiths that there must be ever so many +more men who would like to write, who—try to write.” + +“But then, may not I be peculiarly constituted to write?” he queried, +secretly exulting at the language he had used, his swift imagination +throwing the whole scene and atmosphere upon a vast screen along with a +thousand other scenes from his life—scenes that were rough and raw, +gross and bestial. + +The whole composite vision was achieved with the speed of light, +producing no pause in the conversation, nor interrupting his calm train +of thought. On the screen of his imagination he saw himself and this +sweet and beautiful girl, facing each other and conversing in good +English, in a room of books and paintings and tone and culture, and all +illuminated by a bright light of steadfast brilliance; while ranged +about and fading away to the remote edges of the screen were +antithetical scenes, each scene a picture, and he the onlooker, free to +look at will upon what he wished. He saw these other scenes through +drifting vapors and swirls of sullen fog dissolving before shafts of +red and garish light. He saw cowboys at the bar, drinking fierce +whiskey, the air filled with obscenity and ribald language, and he saw +himself with them drinking and cursing with the wildest, or sitting at +table with them, under smoking kerosene lamps, while the chips clicked +and clattered and the cards were dealt around. He saw himself, stripped +to the waist, with naked fists, fighting his great fight with Liverpool +Red in the forecastle of the _Susquehanna_; and he saw the bloody deck +of the _John Rogers_, that gray morning of attempted mutiny, the mate +kicking in death-throes on the main-hatch, the revolver in the old +man’s hand spitting fire and smoke, the men with passion-wrenched +faces, of brutes screaming vile blasphemies and falling about him—and +then he returned to the central scene, calm and clean in the steadfast +light, where Ruth sat and talked with him amid books and paintings; and +he saw the grand piano upon which she would later play to him; and he +heard the echoes of his own selected and correct words, “But then, may +I not be peculiarly constituted to write?” + +“But no matter how peculiarly constituted a man may be for +blacksmithing,” she was laughing, “I never heard of one becoming a +blacksmith without first serving his apprenticeship.” + +“What would you advise?” he asked. “And don’t forget that I feel in me +this capacity to write—I can’t explain it; I just know that it is in +me.” + +“You must get a thorough education,” was the answer, “whether or not +you ultimately become a writer. This education is indispensable for +whatever career you select, and it must not be slipshod or sketchy. You +should go to high school.” + +“Yes—” he began; but she interrupted with an afterthought:- + +“Of course, you could go on with your writing, too.” + +“I would have to,” he said grimly. + +“Why?” She looked at him, prettily puzzled, for she did not quite like +the persistence with which he clung to his notion. + +“Because, without writing there wouldn’t be any high school. I must +live and buy books and clothes, you know.” + +“I’d forgotten that,” she laughed. “Why weren’t you born with an +income?” + +“I’d rather have good health and imagination,” he answered. “I can make +good on the income, but the other things have to be made good for—” He +almost said “you,” then amended his sentence to, “have to be made good +for one.” + +“Don’t say ‘make good,’” she cried, sweetly petulant. “It’s slang, and +it’s horrid.” + +He flushed, and stammered, “That’s right, and I only wish you’d correct +me every time.” + +“I—I’d like to,” she said haltingly. “You have so much in you that is +good that I want to see you perfect.” + +He was clay in her hands immediately, as passionately desirous of being +moulded by her as she was desirous of shaping him into the image of her +ideal of man. And when she pointed out the opportuneness of the time, +that the entrance examinations to high school began on the following +Monday, he promptly volunteered that he would take them. + +Then she played and sang to him, while he gazed with hungry yearning at +her, drinking in her loveliness and marvelling that there should not be +a hundred suitors listening there and longing for her as he listened +and longed. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +He stopped to dinner that evening, and, much to Ruth’s satisfaction, +made a favorable impression on her father. They talked about the sea as +a career, a subject which Martin had at his finger-ends, and Mr. Morse +remarked afterward that he seemed a very clear-headed young man. In his +avoidance of slang and his search after right words, Martin was +compelled to talk slowly, which enabled him to find the best thoughts +that were in him. He was more at ease than that first night at dinner, +nearly a year before, and his shyness and modesty even commended him to +Mrs. Morse, who was pleased at his manifest improvement. + +“He is the first man that ever drew passing notice from Ruth,” she told +her husband. “She has been so singularly backward where men are +concerned that I have been worried greatly.” + +Mr. Morse looked at his wife curiously. + +“You mean to use this young sailor to wake her up?” he questioned. + +“I mean that she is not to die an old maid if I can help it,” was the +answer. “If this young Eden can arouse her interest in mankind in +general, it will be a good thing.” + +“A very good thing,” he commented. “But suppose,—and we must suppose, +sometimes, my dear,—suppose he arouses her interest too particularly in +him?” + +“Impossible,” Mrs. Morse laughed. “She is three years older than he, +and, besides, it is impossible. Nothing will ever come of it. Trust +that to me.” + +And so Martin’s rôle was arranged for him, while he, led on by Arthur +and Norman, was meditating an extravagance. They were going out for a +ride into the hills Sunday morning on their wheels, which did not +interest Martin until he learned that Ruth, too, rode a wheel and was +going along. He did not ride, nor own a wheel, but if Ruth rode, it was +up to him to begin, was his decision; and when he said good night, he +stopped in at a cyclery on his way home and spent forty dollars for a +wheel. It was more than a month’s hard-earned wages, and it reduced his +stock of money amazingly; but when he added the hundred dollars he was +to receive from the _Examiner_ to the four hundred and twenty dollars +that was the least _The Youth’s Companion_ could pay him, he felt that +he had reduced the perplexity the unwonted amount of money had caused +him. Nor did he mind, in the course of learning to ride the wheel home, +the fact that he ruined his suit of clothes. He caught the tailor by +telephone that night from Mr. Higginbotham’s store and ordered another +suit. Then he carried the wheel up the narrow stairway that clung like +a fire-escape to the rear wall of the building, and when he had moved +his bed out from the wall, found there was just space enough in the +small room for himself and the wheel. + +Sunday he had intended to devote to studying for the high school +examination, but the pearl-diving article lured him away, and he spent +the day in the white-hot fever of re-creating the beauty and romance +that burned in him. The fact that the _Examiner_ of that morning had +failed to publish his treasure-hunting article did not dash his +spirits. He was at too great a height for that, and having been deaf to +a twice-repeated summons, he went without the heavy Sunday dinner with +which Mr. Higginbotham invariably graced his table. To Mr. Higginbotham +such a dinner was advertisement of his worldly achievement and +prosperity, and he honored it by delivering platitudinous sermonettes +upon American institutions and the opportunity said institutions gave +to any hard-working man to rise—the rise, in his case, which he pointed +out unfailingly, being from a grocer’s clerk to the ownership of +Higginbotham’s Cash Store. + +Martin Eden looked with a sigh at his unfinished “Pearl-diving” on +Monday morning, and took the car down to Oakland to the high school. +And when, days later, he applied for the results of his examinations, +he learned that he had failed in everything save grammar. + +“Your grammar is excellent,” Professor Hilton informed him, staring at +him through heavy spectacles; “but you know nothing, positively +nothing, in the other branches, and your United States history is +abominable—there is no other word for it, abominable. I should advise +you—” + +Professor Hilton paused and glared at him, unsympathetic and +unimaginative as one of his own test-tubes. He was professor of physics +in the high school, possessor of a large family, a meagre salary, and a +select fund of parrot-learned knowledge. + +“Yes, sir,” Martin said humbly, wishing somehow that the man at the +desk in the library was in Professor Hilton’s place just then. + +“And I should advise you to go back to the grammar school for at least +two years. Good day.” + +Martin was not deeply affected by his failure, though he was surprised +at Ruth’s shocked expression when he told her Professor Hilton’s +advice. Her disappointment was so evident that he was sorry he had +failed, but chiefly so for her sake. + +“You see I was right,” she said. “You know far more than any of the +students entering high school, and yet you can’t pass the examinations. +It is because what education you have is fragmentary, sketchy. You need +the discipline of study, such as only skilled teachers can give you. +You must be thoroughly grounded. Professor Hilton is right, and if I +were you, I’d go to night school. A year and a half of it might enable +you to catch up that additional six months. Besides, that would leave +you your days in which to write, or, if you could not make your living +by your pen, you would have your days in which to work in some +position.” + +But if my days are taken up with work and my nights with school, when +am I going to see you?—was Martin’s first thought, though he refrained +from uttering it. Instead, he said:- + +“It seems so babyish for me to be going to night school. But I wouldn’t +mind that if I thought it would pay. But I don’t think it will pay. I +can do the work quicker than they can teach me. It would be a loss of +time—” he thought of her and his desire to have her—“and I can’t afford +the time. I haven’t the time to spare, in fact.” + +“There is so much that is necessary.” She looked at him gently, and he +was a brute to oppose her. “Physics and chemistry—you can’t do them +without laboratory study; and you’ll find algebra and geometry almost +hopeless without instruction. You need the skilled teachers, the +specialists in the art of imparting knowledge.” + +He was silent for a minute, casting about for the least vainglorious +way in which to express himself. + +“Please don’t think I’m bragging,” he began. “I don’t intend it that +way at all. But I have a feeling that I am what I may call a natural +student. I can study by myself. I take to it kindly, like a duck to +water. You see yourself what I did with grammar. And I’ve learned much +of other things—you would never dream how much. And I’m only getting +started. Wait till I get—” He hesitated and assured himself of the +pronunciation before he said “momentum. I’m getting my first real feel +of things now. I’m beginning to size up the situation—” + +“Please don’t say ‘size up,’” she interrupted. + +“To get a line on things,” he hastily amended. + +“That doesn’t mean anything in correct English,” she objected. + +He floundered for a fresh start. + +“What I’m driving at is that I’m beginning to get the lay of the land.” + +Out of pity she forebore, and he went on. + +“Knowledge seems to me like a chart-room. Whenever I go into the +library, I am impressed that way. The part played by teachers is to +teach the student the contents of the chart-room in a systematic way. +The teachers are guides to the chart-room, that’s all. It’s not +something that they have in their own heads. They don’t make it up, +don’t create it. It’s all in the chart-room and they know their way +about in it, and it’s their business to show the place to strangers who +might else get lost. Now I don’t get lost easily. I have the bump of +location. I usually know where I’m at—What’s wrong now?” + +“Don’t say ‘where I’m at.’” + +“That’s right,” he said gratefully, “where I am. But where am I at—I +mean, where am I? Oh, yes, in the chart-room. Well, some people—” + +“Persons,” she corrected. + +“Some persons need guides, most persons do; but I think I can get along +without them. I’ve spent a lot of time in the chart-room now, and I’m +on the edge of knowing my way about, what charts I want to refer to, +what coasts I want to explore. And from the way I line it up, I’ll +explore a whole lot more quickly by myself. The speed of a fleet, you +know, is the speed of the slowest ship, and the speed of the teachers +is affected the same way. They can’t go any faster than the ruck of +their scholars, and I can set a faster pace for myself than they set +for a whole schoolroom.” + +“‘He travels the fastest who travels alone,’” she quoted at him. + +But I’d travel faster with you just the same, was what he wanted to +blurt out, as he caught a vision of a world without end of sunlit +spaces and starry voids through which he drifted with her, his arm +around her, her pale gold hair blowing about his face. In the same +instant he was aware of the pitiful inadequacy of speech. God! If he +could so frame words that she could see what he then saw! And he felt +the stir in him, like a throe of yearning pain, of the desire to paint +these visions that flashed unsummoned on the mirror of his mind. Ah, +that was it! He caught at the hem of the secret. It was the very thing +that the great writers and master-poets did. That was why they were +giants. They knew how to express what they thought, and felt, and saw. +Dogs asleep in the sun often whined and barked, but they were unable to +tell what they saw that made them whine and bark. He had often wondered +what it was. And that was all he was, a dog asleep in the sun. He saw +noble and beautiful visions, but he could only whine and bark at Ruth. +But he would cease sleeping in the sun. He would stand up, with open +eyes, and he would struggle and toil and learn until, with eyes +unblinded and tongue untied, he could share with her his visioned +wealth. Other men had discovered the trick of expression, of making +words obedient servitors, and of making combinations of words mean more +than the sum of their separate meanings. He was stirred profoundly by +the passing glimpse at the secret, and he was again caught up in the +vision of sunlit spaces and starry voids—until it came to him that it +was very quiet, and he saw Ruth regarding him with an amused expression +and a smile in her eyes. + +“I have had a great visioning,” he said, and at the sound of his words +in his own ears his heart gave a leap. Where had those words come from? +They had adequately expressed the pause his vision had put in the +conversation. It was a miracle. Never had he so loftily framed a lofty +thought. But never had he attempted to frame lofty thoughts in words. +That was it. That explained it. He had never tried. But Swinburne had, +and Tennyson, and Kipling, and all the other poets. His mind flashed on +to his “Pearl-diving.” He had never dared the big things, the spirit of +the beauty that was a fire in him. That article would be a different +thing when he was done with it. He was appalled by the vastness of the +beauty that rightfully belonged in it, and again his mind flashed and +dared, and he demanded of himself why he could not chant that beauty in +noble verse as the great poets did. And there was all the mysterious +delight and spiritual wonder of his love for Ruth. Why could he not +chant that, too, as the poets did? They had sung of love. So would he. +By God!— + +And in his frightened ears he heard his exclamation echoing. Carried +away, he had breathed it aloud. The blood surged into his face, wave +upon wave, mastering the bronze of it till the blush of shame flaunted +itself from collar-rim to the roots of his hair. + +“I—I—beg your pardon,” he stammered. “I was thinking.” + +“It sounded as if you were praying,” she said bravely, but she felt +herself inside to be withering and shrinking. It was the first time she +had heard an oath from the lips of a man she knew, and she was shocked, +not merely as a matter of principle and training, but shocked in spirit +by this rough blast of life in the garden of her sheltered maidenhood. + +But she forgave, and with surprise at the ease of her forgiveness. +Somehow it was not so difficult to forgive him anything. He had not had +a chance to be as other men, and he was trying so hard, and succeeding, +too. It never entered her head that there could be any other reason for +her being kindly disposed toward him. She was tenderly disposed toward +him, but she did not know it. She had no way of knowing it. The placid +poise of twenty-four years without a single love affair did not fit her +with a keen perception of her own feelings, and she who had never +warmed to actual love was unaware that she was warming now. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +Martin went back to his pearl-diving article, which would have been +finished sooner if it had not been broken in upon so frequently by his +attempts to write poetry. His poems were love poems, inspired by Ruth, +but they were never completed. Not in a day could he learn to chant in +noble verse. Rhyme and metre and structure were serious enough in +themselves, but there was, over and beyond them, an intangible and +evasive something that he caught in all great poetry, but which he +could not catch and imprison in his own. It was the elusive spirit of +poetry itself that he sensed and sought after but could not capture. It +seemed a glow to him, a warm and trailing vapor, ever beyond his +reaching, though sometimes he was rewarded by catching at shreds of it +and weaving them into phrases that echoed in his brain with haunting +notes or drifted across his vision in misty wafture of unseen beauty. +It was baffling. He ached with desire to express and could but gibber +prosaically as everybody gibbered. He read his fragments aloud. The +metre marched along on perfect feet, and the rhyme pounded a longer and +equally faultless rhythm, but the glow and high exaltation that he felt +within were lacking. He could not understand, and time and again, in +despair, defeated and depressed, he returned to his article. Prose was +certainly an easier medium. + +Following the “Pearl-diving,” he wrote an article on the sea as a +career, another on turtle-catching, and a third on the northeast +trades. Then he tried, as an experiment, a short story, and before he +broke his stride he had finished six short stories and despatched them +to various magazines. He wrote prolifically, intensely, from morning +till night, and late at night, except when he broke off to go to the +reading-room, draw books from the library, or to call on Ruth. He was +profoundly happy. Life was pitched high. He was in a fever that never +broke. The joy of creation that is supposed to belong to the gods was +his. All the life about him—the odors of stale vegetables and soapsuds, +the slatternly form of his sister, and the jeering face of Mr. +Higginbotham—was a dream. The real world was in his mind, and the +stories he wrote were so many pieces of reality out of his mind. + +The days were too short. There was so much he wanted to study. He cut +his sleep down to five hours and found that he could get along upon it. +He tried four hours and a half, and regretfully came back to five. He +could joyfully have spent all his waking hours upon any one of his +pursuits. It was with regret that he ceased from writing to study, that +he ceased from study to go to the library, that he tore himself away +from that chart-room of knowledge or from the magazines in the +reading-room that were filled with the secrets of writers who succeeded +in selling their wares. It was like severing heart strings, when he was +with Ruth, to stand up and go; and he scorched through the dark streets +so as to get home to his books at the least possible expense of time. +And hardest of all was it to shut up the algebra or physics, put +note-book and pencil aside, and close his tired eyes in sleep. He hated +the thought of ceasing to live, even for so short a time, and his sole +consolation was that the alarm clock was set five hours ahead. He would +lose only five hours anyway, and then the jangling bell would jerk him +out of unconsciousness and he would have before him another glorious +day of nineteen hours. + +In the meantime the weeks were passing, his money was ebbing low, and +there was no money coming in. A month after he had mailed it, the +adventure serial for boys was returned to him by _The Youth’s +Companion_. The rejection slip was so tactfully worded that he felt +kindly toward the editor. But he did not feel so kindly toward the +editor of the _San Francisco Examiner_. After waiting two whole weeks, +Martin had written to him. A week later he wrote again. At the end of +the month, he went over to San Francisco and personally called upon the +editor. But he did not meet that exalted personage, thanks to a +Cerberus of an office boy, of tender years and red hair, who guarded +the portals. At the end of the fifth week the manuscript came back to +him, by mail, without comment. There was no rejection slip, no +explanation, nothing. In the same way his other articles were tied up +with the other leading San Francisco papers. When he recovered them, he +sent them to the magazines in the East, from which they were returned +more promptly, accompanied always by the printed rejection slips. + +The short stories were returned in similar fashion. He read them over +and over, and liked them so much that he could not puzzle out the cause +of their rejection, until, one day, he read in a newspaper that +manuscripts should always be typewritten. That explained it. Of course +editors were so busy that they could not afford the time and strain of +reading handwriting. Martin rented a typewriter and spent a day +mastering the machine. Each day he typed what he composed, and he typed +his earlier manuscripts as fast as they were returned him. He was +surprised when the typed ones began to come back. His jaw seemed to +become squarer, his chin more aggressive, and he bundled the +manuscripts off to new editors. + +The thought came to him that he was not a good judge of his own work. +He tried it out on Gertrude. He read his stories aloud to her. Her eyes +glistened, and she looked at him proudly as she said:- + +“Ain’t it grand, you writin’ those sort of things.” + +“Yes, yes,” he demanded impatiently. “But the story—how did you like +it?” + +“Just grand,” was the reply. “Just grand, an’ thrilling, too. I was all +worked up.” + +He could see that her mind was not clear. The perplexity was strong in +her good-natured face. So he waited. + +“But, say, Mart,” after a long pause, “how did it end? Did that young +man who spoke so highfalutin’ get her?” + +And, after he had explained the end, which he thought he had made +artistically obvious, she would say:- + +“That’s what I wanted to know. Why didn’t you write that way in the +story?” + +One thing he learned, after he had read her a number of stories, +namely, that she liked happy endings. + +“That story was perfectly grand,” she announced, straightening up from +the wash-tub with a tired sigh and wiping the sweat from her forehead +with a red, steamy hand; “but it makes me sad. I want to cry. There is +too many sad things in the world anyway. It makes me happy to think +about happy things. Now if he’d married her, and—You don’t mind, Mart?” +she queried apprehensively. “I just happen to feel that way, because +I’m tired, I guess. But the story was grand just the same, perfectly +grand. Where are you goin’ to sell it?” + +“That’s a horse of another color,” he laughed. + +“But if you _did_ sell it, what do you think you’d get for it?” + +“Oh, a hundred dollars. That would be the least, the way prices go.” + +“My! I do hope you’ll sell it!” + +“Easy money, eh?” Then he added proudly: “I wrote it in two days. +That’s fifty dollars a day.” + +He longed to read his stories to Ruth, but did not dare. He would wait +till some were published, he decided, then she would understand what he +had been working for. In the meantime he toiled on. Never had the +spirit of adventure lured him more strongly than on this amazing +exploration of the realm of mind. He bought the text-books on physics +and chemistry, and, along with his algebra, worked out problems and +demonstrations. He took the laboratory proofs on faith, and his intense +power of vision enabled him to see the reactions of chemicals more +understandingly than the average student saw them in the laboratory. +Martin wandered on through the heavy pages, overwhelmed by the clews he +was getting to the nature of things. He had accepted the world as the +world, but now he was comprehending the organization of it, the play +and interplay of force and matter. Spontaneous explanations of old +matters were continually arising in his mind. Levers and purchases +fascinated him, and his mind roved backward to hand-spikes and blocks +and tackles at sea. The theory of navigation, which enabled the ships +to travel unerringly their courses over the pathless ocean, was made +clear to him. The mysteries of storm, and rain, and tide were revealed, +and the reason for the existence of trade-winds made him wonder whether +he had written his article on the northeast trade too soon. At any rate +he knew he could write it better now. One afternoon he went out with +Arthur to the University of California, and, with bated breath and a +feeling of religious awe, went through the laboratories, saw +demonstrations, and listened to a physics professor lecturing to his +classes. + +But he did not neglect his writing. A stream of short stories flowed +from his pen, and he branched out into the easier forms of verse—the +kind he saw printed in the magazines—though he lost his head and wasted +two weeks on a tragedy in blank verse, the swift rejection of which, by +half a dozen magazines, dumfounded him. Then he discovered Henley and +wrote a series of sea-poems on the model of “Hospital Sketches.” They +were simple poems, of light and color, and romance and adventure. “Sea +Lyrics,” he called them, and he judged them to be the best work he had +yet done. There were thirty, and he completed them in a month, doing +one a day after having done his regular day’s work on fiction, which +day’s work was the equivalent to a week’s work of the average +successful writer. The toil meant nothing to him. It was not toil. He +was finding speech, and all the beauty and wonder that had been pent +for years behind his inarticulate lips was now pouring forth in a wild +and virile flood. + +He showed the “Sea Lyrics” to no one, not even to the editors. He had +become distrustful of editors. But it was not distrust that prevented +him from submitting the “Lyrics.” They were so beautiful to him that he +was impelled to save them to share with Ruth in some glorious, far-off +time when he would dare to read to her what he had written. Against +that time he kept them with him, reading them aloud, going over them +until he knew them by heart. + +He lived every moment of his waking hours, and he lived in his sleep, +his subjective mind rioting through his five hours of surcease and +combining the thoughts and events of the day into grotesque and +impossible marvels. In reality, he never rested, and a weaker body or a +less firmly poised brain would have been prostrated in a general +break-down. His late afternoon calls on Ruth were rarer now, for June +was approaching, when she would take her degree and finish with the +university. Bachelor of Arts!—when he thought of her degree, it seemed +she fled beyond him faster than he could pursue. + +One afternoon a week she gave to him, and arriving late, he usually +stayed for dinner and for music afterward. Those were his red-letter +days. The atmosphere of the house, in such contrast with that in which +he lived, and the mere nearness to her, sent him forth each time with a +firmer grip on his resolve to climb the heights. In spite of the beauty +in him, and the aching desire to create, it was for her that he +struggled. He was a lover first and always. All other things he +subordinated to love. + +Greater than his adventure in the world of thought was his +love-adventure. The world itself was not so amazing because of the +atoms and molecules that composed it according to the propulsions of +irresistible force; what made it amazing was the fact that Ruth lived +in it. She was the most amazing thing he had ever known, or dreamed, or +guessed. + +But he was oppressed always by her remoteness. She was so far from him, +and he did not know how to approach her. He had been a success with +girls and women in his own class; but he had never loved any of them, +while he did love her, and besides, she was not merely of another +class. His very love elevated her above all classes. She was a being +apart, so far apart that he did not know how to draw near to her as a +lover should draw near. It was true, as he acquired knowledge and +language, that he was drawing nearer, talking her speech, discovering +ideas and delights in common; but this did not satisfy his lover’s +yearning. His lover’s imagination had made her holy, too holy, too +spiritualized, to have any kinship with him in the flesh. It was his +own love that thrust her from him and made her seem impossible for him. +Love itself denied him the one thing that it desired. + +And then, one day, without warning, the gulf between them was bridged +for a moment, and thereafter, though the gulf remained, it was ever +narrower. They had been eating cherries—great, luscious, black cherries +with a juice of the color of dark wine. And later, as she read aloud to +him from “The Princess,” he chanced to notice the stain of the cherries +on her lips. For the moment her divinity was shattered. She was clay, +after all, mere clay, subject to the common law of clay as his clay was +subject, or anybody’s clay. Her lips were flesh like his, and cherries +dyed them as cherries dyed his. And if so with her lips, then was it so +with all of her. She was woman, all woman, just like any woman. It came +upon him abruptly. It was a revelation that stunned him. It was as if +he had seen the sun fall out of the sky, or had seen worshipped purity +polluted. + +Then he realized the significance of it, and his heart began pounding +and challenging him to play the lover with this woman who was not a +spirit from other worlds but a mere woman with lips a cherry could +stain. He trembled at the audacity of his thought; but all his soul was +singing, and reason, in a triumphant paean, assured him he was right. +Something of this change in him must have reached her, for she paused +from her reading, looked up at him, and smiled. His eyes dropped from +her blue eyes to her lips, and the sight of the stain maddened him. His +arms all but flashed out to her and around her, in the way of his old +careless life. She seemed to lean toward him, to wait, and all his will +fought to hold him back. + +“You were not following a word,” she pouted. + +Then she laughed at him, delighting in his confusion, and as he looked +into her frank eyes and knew that she had divined nothing of what he +felt, he became abashed. He had indeed in thought dared too far. Of all +the women he had known there was no woman who would not have +guessed—save her. And she had not guessed. There was the difference. +She was different. He was appalled by his own grossness, awed by her +clear innocence, and he gazed again at her across the gulf. The bridge +had broken down. + +But still the incident had brought him nearer. The memory of it +persisted, and in the moments when he was most cast down, he dwelt upon +it eagerly. The gulf was never again so wide. He had accomplished a +distance vastly greater than a bachelorship of arts, or a dozen +bachelorships. She was pure, it was true, as he had never dreamed of +purity; but cherries stained her lips. She was subject to the laws of +the universe just as inexorably as he was. She had to eat to live, and +when she got her feet wet, she caught cold. But that was not the point. +If she could feel hunger and thirst, and heat and cold, then could she +feel love—and love for a man. Well, he was a man. And why could he not +be the man? “It’s up to me to make good,” he would murmur fervently. “I +will be _the_ man. I will make myself _the_ man. I will make good.” + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + +Early one evening, struggling with a sonnet that twisted all awry the +beauty and thought that trailed in glow and vapor through his brain, +Martin was called to the telephone. + +“It’s a lady’s voice, a fine lady’s,” Mr. Higginbotham, who had called +him, jeered. + +Martin went to the telephone in the corner of the room, and felt a wave +of warmth rush through him as he heard Ruth’s voice. In his battle with +the sonnet he had forgotten her existence, and at the sound of her +voice his love for her smote him like a sudden blow. And such a +voice!—delicate and sweet, like a strain of music heard far off and +faint, or, better, like a bell of silver, a perfect tone, crystal-pure. +No mere woman had a voice like that. There was something celestial +about it, and it came from other worlds. He could scarcely hear what it +said, so ravished was he, though he controlled his face, for he knew +that Mr. Higginbotham’s ferret eyes were fixed upon him. + +It was not much that Ruth wanted to say—merely that Norman had been +going to take her to a lecture that night, but that he had a headache, +and she was so disappointed, and she had the tickets, and that if he +had no other engagement, would he be good enough to take her? + +Would he! He fought to suppress the eagerness in his voice. It was +amazing. He had always seen her in her own house. And he had never +dared to ask her to go anywhere with him. Quite irrelevantly, still at +the telephone and talking with her, he felt an overpowering desire to +die for her, and visions of heroic sacrifice shaped and dissolved in +his whirling brain. He loved her so much, so terribly, so hopelessly. +In that moment of mad happiness that she should go out with him, go to +a lecture with him—with him, Martin Eden—she soared so far above him +that there seemed nothing else for him to do than die for her. It was +the only fit way in which he could express the tremendous and lofty +emotion he felt for her. It was the sublime abnegation of true love +that comes to all lovers, and it came to him there, at the telephone, +in a whirlwind of fire and glory; and to die for her, he felt, was to +have lived and loved well. And he was only twenty-one, and he had never +been in love before. + +His hand trembled as he hung up the receiver, and he was weak from the +organ which had stirred him. His eyes were shining like an angel’s, and +his face was transfigured, purged of all earthly dross, and pure and +holy. + +“Makin’ dates outside, eh?” his brother-in-law sneered. “You know what +that means. You’ll be in the police court yet.” + +But Martin could not come down from the height. Not even the bestiality +of the allusion could bring him back to earth. Anger and hurt were +beneath him. He had seen a great vision and was as a god, and he could +feel only profound and awful pity for this maggot of a man. He did not +look at him, and though his eyes passed over him, he did not see him; +and as in a dream he passed out of the room to dress. It was not until +he had reached his own room and was tying his necktie that he became +aware of a sound that lingered unpleasantly in his ears. On +investigating this sound he identified it as the final snort of Bernard +Higginbotham, which somehow had not penetrated to his brain before. + +As Ruth’s front door closed behind them and he came down the steps with +her, he found himself greatly perturbed. It was not unalloyed bliss, +taking her to the lecture. He did not know what he ought to do. He had +seen, on the streets, with persons of her class, that the women took +the men’s arms. But then, again, he had seen them when they didn’t; and +he wondered if it was only in the evening that arms were taken, or only +between husbands and wives and relatives. + +Just before he reached the sidewalk, he remembered Minnie. Minnie had +always been a stickler. She had called him down the second time she +walked out with him, because he had gone along on the inside, and she +had laid the law down to him that a gentleman always walked on the +outside—when he was with a lady. And Minnie had made a practice of +kicking his heels, whenever they crossed from one side of the street to +the other, to remind him to get over on the outside. He wondered where +she had got that item of etiquette, and whether it had filtered down +from above and was all right. + +It wouldn’t do any harm to try it, he decided, by the time they had +reached the sidewalk; and he swung behind Ruth and took up his station +on the outside. Then the other problem presented itself. Should he +offer her his arm? He had never offered anybody his arm in his life. +The girls he had known never took the fellows’ arms. For the first +several times they walked freely, side by side, and after that it was +arms around the waists, and heads against the fellows’ shoulders where +the streets were unlighted. But this was different. She wasn’t that +kind of a girl. He must do something. + +He crooked the arm next to her—crooked it very slightly and with secret +tentativeness, not invitingly, but just casually, as though he was +accustomed to walk that way. And then the wonderful thing happened. He +felt her hand upon his arm. Delicious thrills ran through him at the +contact, and for a few sweet moments it seemed that he had left the +solid earth and was flying with her through the air. But he was soon +back again, perturbed by a new complication. They were crossing the +street. This would put him on the inside. He should be on the outside. +Should he therefore drop her arm and change over? And if he did so, +would he have to repeat the manoeuvre the next time? And the next? +There was something wrong about it, and he resolved not to caper about +and play the fool. Yet he was not satisfied with his conclusion, and +when he found himself on the inside, he talked quickly and earnestly, +making a show of being carried away by what he was saying, so that, in +case he was wrong in not changing sides, his enthusiasm would seem the +cause for his carelessness. + +As they crossed Broadway, he came face to face with a new problem. In +the blaze of the electric lights, he saw Lizzie Connolly and her giggly +friend. Only for an instant he hesitated, then his hand went up and his +hat came off. He could not be disloyal to his kind, and it was to more +than Lizzie Connolly that his hat was lifted. She nodded and looked at +him boldly, not with soft and gentle eyes like Ruth’s, but with eyes +that were handsome and hard, and that swept on past him to Ruth and +itemized her face and dress and station. And he was aware that Ruth +looked, too, with quick eyes that were timid and mild as a dove’s, but +which saw, in a look that was a flutter on and past, the working-class +girl in her cheap finery and under the strange hat that all +working-class girls were wearing just then. + +“What a pretty girl!” Ruth said a moment later. + +Martin could have blessed her, though he said:- + +“I don’t know. I guess it’s all a matter of personal taste, but she +doesn’t strike me as being particularly pretty.” + +“Why, there isn’t one woman in ten thousand with features as regular as +hers. They are splendid. Her face is as clear-cut as a cameo. And her +eyes are beautiful.” + +“Do you think so?” Martin queried absently, for to him there was only +one beautiful woman in the world, and she was beside him, her hand upon +his arm. + +“Do I think so? If that girl had proper opportunity to dress, Mr. Eden, +and if she were taught how to carry herself, you would be fairly +dazzled by her, and so would all men.” + +“She would have to be taught how to speak,” he commented, “or else most +of the men wouldn’t understand her. I’m sure you couldn’t understand a +quarter of what she said if she just spoke naturally.” + +“Nonsense! You are as bad as Arthur when you try to make your point.” + +“You forget how I talked when you first met me. I have learned a new +language since then. Before that time I talked as that girl talks. Now +I can manage to make myself understood sufficiently in your language to +explain that you do not know that other girl’s language. And do you +know why she carries herself the way she does? I think about such +things now, though I never used to think about them, and I am beginning +to understand—much.” + +“But why does she?” + +“She has worked long hours for years at machines. When one’s body is +young, it is very pliable, and hard work will mould it like putty +according to the nature of the work. I can tell at a glance the trades +of many workingmen I meet on the street. Look at me. Why am I rolling +all about the shop? Because of the years I put in on the sea. If I’d +put in the same years cow-punching, with my body young and pliable, I +wouldn’t be rolling now, but I’d be bow-legged. And so with that girl. +You noticed that her eyes were what I might call hard. She has never +been sheltered. She has had to take care of herself, and a young girl +can’t take care of herself and keep her eyes soft and gentle like—like +yours, for example.” + +“I think you are right,” Ruth said in a low voice. “And it is too bad. +She is such a pretty girl.” + +He looked at her and saw her eyes luminous with pity. And then he +remembered that he loved her and was lost in amazement at his fortune +that permitted him to love her and to take her on his arm to a lecture. + +Who are you, Martin Eden? he demanded of himself in the looking-glass, +that night when he got back to his room. He gazed at himself long and +curiously. Who are you? What are you? Where do you belong? You belong +by rights to girls like Lizzie Connolly. You belong with the legions of +toil, with all that is low, and vulgar, and unbeautiful. You belong +with the oxen and the drudges, in dirty surroundings among smells and +stenches. There are the stale vegetables now. Those potatoes are +rotting. Smell them, damn you, smell them. And yet you dare to open the +books, to listen to beautiful music, to learn to love beautiful +paintings, to speak good English, to think thoughts that none of your +own kind thinks, to tear yourself away from the oxen and the Lizzie +Connollys and to love a pale spirit of a woman who is a million miles +beyond you and who lives in the stars! Who are you? and what are you? +damn you! And are you going to make good? + +He shook his fist at himself in the glass, and sat down on the edge of +the bed to dream for a space with wide eyes. Then he got out note-book +and algebra and lost himself in quadratic equations, while the hours +slipped by, and the stars dimmed, and the gray of dawn flooded against +his window. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + +It was the knot of wordy socialists and working-class philosophers that +held forth in the City Hall Park on warm afternoons that was +responsible for the great discovery. Once or twice in the month, while +riding through the park on his way to the library, Martin dismounted +from his wheel and listened to the arguments, and each time he tore +himself away reluctantly. The tone of discussion was much lower than at +Mr. Morse’s table. The men were not grave and dignified. They lost +their tempers easily and called one another names, while oaths and +obscene allusions were frequent on their lips. Once or twice he had +seen them come to blows. And yet, he knew not why, there seemed +something vital about the stuff of these men’s thoughts. Their +logomachy was far more stimulating to his intellect than the reserved +and quiet dogmatism of Mr. Morse. These men, who slaughtered English, +gesticulated like lunatics, and fought one another’s ideas with +primitive anger, seemed somehow to be more alive than Mr. Morse and his +crony, Mr. Butler. + +Martin had heard Herbert Spencer quoted several times in the park, but +one afternoon a disciple of Spencer’s appeared, a seedy tramp with a +dirty coat buttoned tightly at the throat to conceal the absence of a +shirt. Battle royal was waged, amid the smoking of many cigarettes and +the expectoration of much tobacco-juice, wherein the tramp successfully +held his own, even when a socialist workman sneered, “There is no god +but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is his prophet.” Martin was +puzzled as to what the discussion was about, but when he rode on to the +library he carried with him a new-born interest in Herbert Spencer, and +because of the frequency with which the tramp had mentioned “First +Principles,” Martin drew out that volume. + +So the great discovery began. Once before he had tried Spencer, and +choosing the “Principles of Psychology” to begin with, he had failed as +abjectly as he had failed with Madam Blavatsky. There had been no +understanding the book, and he had returned it unread. But this night, +after algebra and physics, and an attempt at a sonnet, he got into bed +and opened “First Principles.” Morning found him still reading. It was +impossible for him to sleep. Nor did he write that day. He lay on the +bed till his body grew tired, when he tried the hard floor, reading on +his back, the book held in the air above him, or changing from side to +side. He slept that night, and did his writing next morning, and then +the book tempted him and he fell, reading all afternoon, oblivious to +everything and oblivious to the fact that that was the afternoon Ruth +gave to him. His first consciousness of the immediate world about him +was when Bernard Higginbotham jerked open the door and demanded to know +if he thought they were running a restaurant. + +Martin Eden had been mastered by curiosity all his days. He wanted to +know, and it was this desire that had sent him adventuring over the +world. But he was now learning from Spencer that he never had known, +and that he never could have known had he continued his sailing and +wandering forever. He had merely skimmed over the surface of things, +observing detached phenomena, accumulating fragments of facts, making +superficial little generalizations—and all and everything quite +unrelated in a capricious and disorderly world of whim and chance. The +mechanism of the flight of birds he had watched and reasoned about with +understanding; but it had never entered his head to try to explain the +process whereby birds, as organic flying mechanisms, had been +developed. He had never dreamed there was such a process. That birds +should have come to be, was unguessed. They always had been. They just +happened. + +And as it was with birds, so had it been with everything. His ignorant +and unprepared attempts at philosophy had been fruitless. The medieval +metaphysics of Kant had given him the key to nothing, and had served +the sole purpose of making him doubt his own intellectual powers. In +similar manner his attempt to study evolution had been confined to a +hopelessly technical volume by Romanes. He had understood nothing, and +the only idea he had gathered was that evolution was a dry-as-dust +theory, of a lot of little men possessed of huge and unintelligible +vocabularies. And now he learned that evolution was no mere theory but +an accepted process of development; that scientists no longer disagreed +about it, their only differences being over the method of evolution. + +And here was the man Spencer, organizing all knowledge for him, +reducing everything to unity, elaborating ultimate realities, and +presenting to his startled gaze a universe so concrete of realization +that it was like the model of a ship such as sailors make and put into +glass bottles. There was no caprice, no chance. All was law. It was in +obedience to law that the bird flew, and it was in obedience to the +same law that fermenting slime had writhed and squirmed and put out +legs and wings and become a bird. + +Martin had ascended from pitch to pitch of intellectual living, and +here he was at a higher pitch than ever. All the hidden things were +laying their secrets bare. He was drunken with comprehension. At night, +asleep, he lived with the gods in colossal nightmare; and awake, in the +day, he went around like a somnambulist, with absent stare, gazing upon +the world he had just discovered. At table he failed to hear the +conversation about petty and ignoble things, his eager mind seeking out +and following cause and effect in everything before him. In the meat on +the platter he saw the shining sun and traced its energy back through +all its transformations to its source a hundred million miles away, or +traced its energy ahead to the moving muscles in his arms that enabled +him to cut the meat, and to the brain wherewith he willed the muscles +to move to cut the meat, until, with inward gaze, he saw the same sun +shining in his brain. He was entranced by illumination, and did not +hear the “Bughouse,” whispered by Jim, nor see the anxiety on his +sister’s face, nor notice the rotary motion of Bernard Higginbotham’s +finger, whereby he imparted the suggestion of wheels revolving in his +brother-in-law’s head. + +What, in a way, most profoundly impressed Martin, was the correlation +of knowledge—of all knowledge. He had been curious to know things, and +whatever he acquired he had filed away in separate memory compartments +in his brain. Thus, on the subject of sailing he had an immense store. +On the subject of woman he had a fairly large store. But these two +subjects had been unrelated. Between the two memory compartments there +had been no connection. That, in the fabric of knowledge, there should +be any connection whatever between a woman with hysterics and a +schooner carrying a weather-helm or heaving to in a gale, would have +struck him as ridiculous and impossible. But Herbert Spencer had shown +him not only that it was not ridiculous, but that it was impossible for +there to be no connection. All things were related to all other things +from the farthermost star in the wastes of space to the myriads of +atoms in the grain of sand under one’s foot. This new concept was a +perpetual amazement to Martin, and he found himself engaged continually +in tracing the relationship between all things under the sun and on the +other side of the sun. He drew up lists of the most incongruous things +and was unhappy until he succeeded in establishing kinship between them +all—kinship between love, poetry, earthquake, fire, rattlesnakes, +rainbows, precious gems, monstrosities, sunsets, the roaring of lions, +illuminating gas, cannibalism, beauty, murder, lovers, fulcrums, and +tobacco. Thus, he unified the universe and held it up and looked at it, +or wandered through its byways and alleys and jungles, not as a +terrified traveller in the thick of mysteries seeking an unknown goal, +but observing and charting and becoming familiar with all there was to +know. And the more he knew, the more passionately he admired the +universe, and life, and his own life in the midst of it all. + +“You fool!” he cried at his image in the looking-glass. “You wanted to +write, and you tried to write, and you had nothing in you to write +about. What did you have in you?—some childish notions, a few +half-baked sentiments, a lot of undigested beauty, a great black mass +of ignorance, a heart filled to bursting with love, and an ambition as +big as your love and as futile as your ignorance. And you wanted to +write! Why, you’re just on the edge of beginning to get something in +you to write about. You wanted to create beauty, but how could you when +you knew nothing about the nature of beauty? You wanted to write about +life when you knew nothing of the essential characteristics of life. +You wanted to write about the world and the scheme of existence when +the world was a Chinese puzzle to you and all that you could have +written would have been about what you did not know of the scheme of +existence. But cheer up, Martin, my boy. You’ll write yet. You know a +little, a very little, and you’re on the right road now to know more. +Some day, if you’re lucky, you may come pretty close to knowing all +that may be known. Then you will write.” + +He brought his great discovery to Ruth, sharing with her all his joy +and wonder in it. But she did not seem to be so enthusiastic over it. +She tacitly accepted it and, in a way, seemed aware of it from her own +studies. It did not stir her deeply, as it did him, and he would have +been surprised had he not reasoned it out that it was not new and fresh +to her as it was to him. Arthur and Norman, he found, believed in +evolution and had read Spencer, though it did not seem to have made any +vital impression upon them, while the young fellow with the glasses and +the mop of hair, Will Olney, sneered disagreeably at Spencer and +repeated the epigram, “There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert +Spencer is his prophet.” + +But Martin forgave him the sneer, for he had begun to discover that +Olney was not in love with Ruth. Later, he was dumfounded to learn from +various little happenings not only that Olney did not care for Ruth, +but that he had a positive dislike for her. Martin could not understand +this. It was a bit of phenomena that he could not correlate with all +the rest of the phenomena in the universe. But nevertheless he felt +sorry for the young fellow because of the great lack in his nature that +prevented him from a proper appreciation of Ruth’s fineness and beauty. +They rode out into the hills several Sundays on their wheels, and +Martin had ample opportunity to observe the armed truce that existed +between Ruth and Olney. The latter chummed with Norman, throwing Arthur +and Martin into company with Ruth, for which Martin was duly grateful. + +Those Sundays were great days for Martin, greatest because he was with +Ruth, and great, also, because they were putting him more on a par with +the young men of her class. In spite of their long years of disciplined +education, he was finding himself their intellectual equal, and the +hours spent with them in conversation was so much practice for him in +the use of the grammar he had studied so hard. He had abandoned the +etiquette books, falling back upon observation to show him the right +things to do. Except when carried away by his enthusiasm, he was always +on guard, keenly watchful of their actions and learning their little +courtesies and refinements of conduct. + +The fact that Spencer was very little read was for some time a source +of surprise to Martin. “Herbert Spencer,” said the man at the desk in +the library, “oh, yes, a great mind.” But the man did not seem to know +anything of the content of that great mind. One evening, at dinner, +when Mr. Butler was there, Martin turned the conversation upon Spencer. +Mr. Morse bitterly arraigned the English philosopher’s agnosticism, but +confessed that he had not read “First Principles”; while Mr. Butler +stated that he had no patience with Spencer, had never read a line of +him, and had managed to get along quite well without him. Doubts arose +in Martin’s mind, and had he been less strongly individual he would +have accepted the general opinion and given Herbert Spencer up. As it +was, he found Spencer’s explanation of things convincing; and, as he +phrased it to himself, to give up Spencer would be equivalent to a +navigator throwing the compass and chronometer overboard. So Martin +went on into a thorough study of evolution, mastering more and more the +subject himself, and being convinced by the corroborative testimony of +a thousand independent writers. The more he studied, the more vistas he +caught of fields of knowledge yet unexplored, and the regret that days +were only twenty-four hours long became a chronic complaint with him. + +One day, because the days were so short, he decided to give up algebra +and geometry. Trigonometry he had not even attempted. Then he cut +chemistry from his study-list, retaining only physics. + +“I am not a specialist,” he said, in defence, to Ruth. “Nor am I going +to try to be a specialist. There are too many special fields for any +one man, in a whole lifetime, to master a tithe of them. I must pursue +general knowledge. When I need the work of specialists, I shall refer +to their books.” + +“But that is not like having the knowledge yourself,” she protested. + +“But it is unnecessary to have it. We profit from the work of the +specialists. That’s what they are for. When I came in, I noticed the +chimney-sweeps at work. They’re specialists, and when they get done, +you will enjoy clean chimneys without knowing anything about the +construction of chimneys.” + +“That’s far-fetched, I am afraid.” + +She looked at him curiously, and he felt a reproach in her gaze and +manner. But he was convinced of the rightness of his position. + +“All thinkers on general subjects, the greatest minds in the world, in +fact, rely on the specialists. Herbert Spencer did that. He generalized +upon the findings of thousands of investigators. He would have had to +live a thousand lives in order to do it all himself. And so with +Darwin. He took advantage of all that had been learned by the florists +and cattle-breeders.” + +“You’re right, Martin,” Olney said. “You know what you’re after, and +Ruth doesn’t. She doesn’t know what she is after for herself even.” + +“—Oh, yes,” Olney rushed on, heading off her objection, “I know you +call it general culture. But it doesn’t matter what you study if you +want general culture. You can study French, or you can study German, or +cut them both out and study Esperanto, you’ll get the culture tone just +the same. You can study Greek or Latin, too, for the same purpose, +though it will never be any use to you. It will be culture, though. +Why, Ruth studied Saxon, became clever in it,—that was two years +ago,—and all that she remembers of it now is ‘Whan that sweet Aprile +with his schowers soote’—isn’t that the way it goes?” + +“But it’s given you the culture tone just the same,” he laughed, again +heading her off. “I know. We were in the same classes.” + +“But you speak of culture as if it should be a means to something,” +Ruth cried out. Her eyes were flashing, and in her cheeks were two +spots of color. “Culture is the end in itself.” + +“But that is not what Martin wants.” + +“How do you know?” + +“What do you want, Martin?” Olney demanded, turning squarely upon him. + +Martin felt very uncomfortable, and looked entreaty at Ruth. + +“Yes, what do you want?” Ruth asked. “That will settle it.” + +“Yes, of course, I want culture,” Martin faltered. “I love beauty, and +culture will give me a finer and keener appreciation of beauty.” + +She nodded her head and looked triumph. + +“Rot, and you know it,” was Olney’s comment. “Martin’s after career, +not culture. It just happens that culture, in his case, is incidental +to career. If he wanted to be a chemist, culture would be unnecessary. +Martin wants to write, but he’s afraid to say so because it will put +you in the wrong.” + +“And why does Martin want to write?” he went on. “Because he isn’t +rolling in wealth. Why do you fill your head with Saxon and general +culture? Because you don’t have to make your way in the world. Your +father sees to that. He buys your clothes for you, and all the rest. +What rotten good is our education, yours and mine and Arthur’s and +Norman’s? We’re soaked in general culture, and if our daddies went +broke to-day, we’d be falling down to-morrow on teachers’ examinations. +The best job you could get, Ruth, would be a country school or music +teacher in a girls’ boarding-school.” + +“And pray what would you do?” she asked. + +“Not a blessed thing. I could earn a dollar and a half a day, common +labor, and I might get in as instructor in Hanley’s cramming joint—I +say might, mind you, and I might be chucked out at the end of the week +for sheer inability.” + +Martin followed the discussion closely, and while he was convinced that +Olney was right, he resented the rather cavalier treatment he accorded +Ruth. A new conception of love formed in his mind as he listened. +Reason had nothing to do with love. It mattered not whether the woman +he loved reasoned correctly or incorrectly. Love was above reason. If +it just happened that she did not fully appreciate his necessity for a +career, that did not make her a bit less lovable. She was all lovable, +and what she thought had nothing to do with her lovableness. + +“What’s that?” he replied to a question from Olney that broke in upon +his train of thought. + +“I was saying that I hoped you wouldn’t be fool enough to tackle +Latin.” + +“But Latin is more than culture,” Ruth broke in. “It is equipment.” + +“Well, are you going to tackle it?” Olney persisted. + +Martin was sore beset. He could see that Ruth was hanging eagerly upon +his answer. + +“I am afraid I won’t have time,” he said finally. “I’d like to, but I +won’t have time.” + +“You see, Martin’s not seeking culture,” Olney exulted. “He’s trying to +get somewhere, to do something.” + +“Oh, but it’s mental training. It’s mind discipline. It’s what makes +disciplined minds.” Ruth looked expectantly at Martin, as if waiting +for him to change his judgment. “You know, the foot-ball players have +to train before the big game. And that is what Latin does for the +thinker. It trains.” + +“Rot and bosh! That’s what they told us when we were kids. But there is +one thing they didn’t tell us then. They let us find it out for +ourselves afterwards.” Olney paused for effect, then added, “And what +they didn’t tell us was that every gentleman should have studied Latin, +but that no gentleman should know Latin.” + +“Now that’s unfair,” Ruth cried. “I knew you were turning the +conversation just in order to get off something.” + +“It’s clever all right,” was the retort, “but it’s fair, too. The only +men who know their Latin are the apothecaries, the lawyers, and the +Latin professors. And if Martin wants to be one of them, I miss my +guess. But what’s all that got to do with Herbert Spencer anyway? +Martin’s just discovered Spencer, and he’s wild over him. Why? Because +Spencer is taking him somewhere. Spencer couldn’t take me anywhere, nor +you. We haven’t got anywhere to go. You’ll get married some day, and +I’ll have nothing to do but keep track of the lawyers and business +agents who will take care of the money my father’s going to leave me.” + +Onley got up to go, but turned at the door and delivered a parting +shot. + +“You leave Martin alone, Ruth. He knows what’s best for himself. Look +at what he’s done already. He makes me sick sometimes, sick and ashamed +of myself. He knows more now about the world, and life, and man’s +place, and all the rest, than Arthur, or Norman, or I, or you, too, for +that matter, and in spite of all our Latin, and French, and Saxon, and +culture.” + +“But Ruth is my teacher,” Martin answered chivalrously. “She is +responsible for what little I have learned.” + +“Rats!” Olney looked at Ruth, and his expression was malicious. “I +suppose you’ll be telling me next that you read Spencer on her +recommendation—only you didn’t. And she doesn’t know anything more +about Darwin and evolution than I do about King Solomon’s mines. What’s +that jawbreaker definition about something or other, of Spencer’s, that +you sprang on us the other day—that indefinite, incoherent homogeneity +thing? Spring it on her, and see if she understands a word of it. That +isn’t culture, you see. Well, tra la, and if you tackle Latin, Martin, +I won’t have any respect for you.” + +And all the while, interested in the discussion, Martin had been aware +of an irk in it as well. It was about studies and lessons, dealing with +the rudiments of knowledge, and the schoolboyish tone of it conflicted +with the big things that were stirring in him—with the grip upon life +that was even then crooking his fingers like eagle’s talons, with the +cosmic thrills that made him ache, and with the inchoate consciousness +of mastery of it all. He likened himself to a poet, wrecked on the +shores of a strange land, filled with power of beauty, stumbling and +stammering and vainly trying to sing in the rough, barbaric tongue of +his brethren in the new land. And so with him. He was alive, painfully +alive, to the great universal things, and yet he was compelled to +potter and grope among schoolboy topics and debate whether or not he +should study Latin. + +“What in hell has Latin to do with it?” he demanded before his mirror +that night. “I wish dead people would stay dead. Why should I and the +beauty in me be ruled by the dead? Beauty is alive and everlasting. +Languages come and go. They are the dust of the dead.” + +And his next thought was that he had been phrasing his ideas very well, +and he went to bed wondering why he could not talk in similar fashion +when he was with Ruth. He was only a schoolboy, with a schoolboy’s +tongue, when he was in her presence. + +“Give me time,” he said aloud. “Only give me time.” + +Time! Time! Time! was his unending plaint. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + +It was not because of Olney, but in spite of Ruth, and his love for +Ruth, that he finally decided not to take up Latin. His money meant +time. There was so much that was more important than Latin, so many +studies that clamored with imperious voices. And he must write. He must +earn money. He had had no acceptances. Twoscore of manuscripts were +travelling the endless round of the magazines. How did the others do +it? He spent long hours in the free reading-room, going over what +others had written, studying their work eagerly and critically, +comparing it with his own, and wondering, wondering, about the secret +trick they had discovered which enabled them to sell their work. + +He was amazed at the immense amount of printed stuff that was dead. No +light, no life, no color, was shot through it. There was no breath of +life in it, and yet it sold, at two cents a word, twenty dollars a +thousand—the newspaper clipping had said so. He was puzzled by +countless short stories, written lightly and cleverly he confessed, but +without vitality or reality. Life was so strange and wonderful, filled +with an immensity of problems, of dreams, and of heroic toils, and yet +these stories dealt only with the commonplaces of life. He felt the +stress and strain of life, its fevers and sweats and wild +insurgences—surely this was the stuff to write about! He wanted to +glorify the leaders of forlorn hopes, the mad lovers, the giants that +fought under stress and strain, amid terror and tragedy, making life +crackle with the strength of their endeavor. And yet the magazine short +stories seemed intent on glorifying the Mr. Butlers, the sordid +dollar-chasers, and the commonplace little love affairs of commonplace +little men and women. Was it because the editors of the magazines were +commonplace? he demanded. Or were they afraid of life, these writers +and editors and readers? + +But his chief trouble was that he did not know any editors or writers. +And not merely did he not know any writers, but he did not know anybody +who had ever attempted to write. There was nobody to tell him, to hint +to him, to give him the least word of advice. He began to doubt that +editors were real men. They seemed cogs in a machine. That was what it +was, a machine. He poured his soul into stories, articles, and poems, +and intrusted them to the machine. He folded them just so, put the +proper stamps inside the long envelope along with the manuscript, +sealed the envelope, put more stamps outside, and dropped it into the +mail-box. It travelled across the continent, and after a certain lapse +of time the postman returned him the manuscript in another long +envelope, on the outside of which were the stamps he had enclosed. +There was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning +arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope to +another and stuck on the stamps. It was like the slot machines wherein +one dropped pennies, and, with a metallic whirl of machinery had +delivered to him a stick of chewing-gum or a tablet of chocolate. It +depended upon which slot one dropped the penny in, whether he got +chocolate or gum. And so with the editorial machine. One slot brought +checks and the other brought rejection slips. So far he had found only +the latter slot. + +It was the rejection slips that completed the horrible machinelikeness +of the process. These slips were printed in stereotyped forms and he +had received hundreds of them—as many as a dozen or more on each of his +earlier manuscripts. If he had received one line, one personal line, +along with one rejection of all his rejections, he would have been +cheered. But not one editor had given that proof of existence. And he +could conclude only that there were no warm human men at the other end, +only mere cogs, well oiled and running beautifully in the machine. + +He was a good fighter, whole-souled and stubborn, and he would have +been content to continue feeding the machine for years; but he was +bleeding to death, and not years but weeks would determine the fight. +Each week his board bill brought him nearer destruction, while the +postage on forty manuscripts bled him almost as severely. He no longer +bought books, and he economized in petty ways and sought to delay the +inevitable end; though he did not know how to economize, and brought +the end nearer by a week when he gave his sister Marian five dollars +for a dress. + +He struggled in the dark, without advice, without encouragement, and in +the teeth of discouragement. Even Gertrude was beginning to look +askance. At first she had tolerated with sisterly fondness what she +conceived to be his foolishness; but now, out of sisterly solicitude, +she grew anxious. To her it seemed that his foolishness was becoming a +madness. Martin knew this and suffered more keenly from it than from +the open and nagging contempt of Bernard Higginbotham. Martin had faith +in himself, but he was alone in this faith. Not even Ruth had faith. +She had wanted him to devote himself to study, and, though she had not +openly disapproved of his writing, she had never approved. + +He had never offered to show her his work. A fastidious delicacy had +prevented him. Besides, she had been studying heavily at the +university, and he felt averse to robbing her of her time. But when she +had taken her degree, she asked him herself to let her see something of +what he had been doing. Martin was elated and diffident. Here was a +judge. She was a bachelor of arts. She had studied literature under +skilled instructors. Perhaps the editors were capable judges, too. But +she would be different from them. She would not hand him a stereotyped +rejection slip, nor would she inform him that lack of preference for +his work did not necessarily imply lack of merit in his work. She would +talk, a warm human being, in her quick, bright way, and, most important +of all, she would catch glimpses of the real Martin Eden. In his work +she would discern what his heart and soul were like, and she would come +to understand something, a little something, of the stuff of his dreams +and the strength of his power. + +Martin gathered together a number of carbon copies of his short +stories, hesitated a moment, then added his “Sea Lyrics.” They mounted +their wheels on a late June afternoon and rode for the hills. It was +the second time he had been out with her alone, and as they rode along +through the balmy warmth, just chilled by she sea-breeze to refreshing +coolness, he was profoundly impressed by the fact that it was a very +beautiful and well-ordered world and that it was good to be alive and +to love. They left their wheels by the roadside and climbed to the +brown top of an open knoll where the sunburnt grass breathed a harvest +breath of dry sweetness and content. + +“Its work is done,” Martin said, as they seated themselves, she upon +his coat, and he sprawling close to the warm earth. He sniffed the +sweetness of the tawny grass, which entered his brain and set his +thoughts whirling on from the particular to the universal. “It has +achieved its reason for existence,” he went on, patting the dry grass +affectionately. “It quickened with ambition under the dreary downpour +of last winter, fought the violent early spring, flowered, and lured +the insects and the bees, scattered its seeds, squared itself with its +duty and the world, and—” + +“Why do you always look at things with such dreadfully practical eyes?” +she interrupted. + +“Because I’ve been studying evolution, I guess. It’s only recently that +I got my eyesight, if the truth were told.” + +“But it seems to me you lose sight of beauty by being so practical, +that you destroy beauty like the boys who catch butterflies and rub the +down off their beautiful wings.” + +He shook his head. + +“Beauty has significance, but I never knew its significance before. I +just accepted beauty as something meaningless, as something that was +just beautiful without rhyme or reason. I did not know anything about +beauty. But now I know, or, rather, am just beginning to know. This +grass is more beautiful to me now that I know why it is grass, and all +the hidden chemistry of sun and rain and earth that makes it become +grass. Why, there is romance in the life-history of any grass, yes, and +adventure, too. The very thought of it stirs me. When I think of the +play of force and matter, and all the tremendous struggle of it, I feel +as if I could write an epic on the grass. + +“How well you talk,” she said absently, and he noted that she was +looking at him in a searching way. + +He was all confusion and embarrassment on the instant, the blood +flushing red on his neck and brow. + +“I hope I am learning to talk,” he stammered. “There seems to be so +much in me I want to say. But it is all so big. I can’t find ways to +say what is really in me. Sometimes it seems to me that all the world, +all life, everything, had taken up residence inside of me and was +clamoring for me to be the spokesman. I feel—oh, I can’t describe it—I +feel the bigness of it, but when I speak, I babble like a little child. +It is a great task to transmute feeling and sensation into speech, +written or spoken, that will, in turn, in him who reads or listens, +transmute itself back into the selfsame feeling and sensation. It is a +lordly task. See, I bury my face in the grass, and the breath I draw in +through my nostrils sets me quivering with a thousand thoughts and +fancies. It is a breath of the universe I have breathed. I know song +and laughter, and success and pain, and struggle and death; and I see +visions that arise in my brain somehow out of the scent of the grass, +and I would like to tell them to you, to the world. But how can I? My +tongue is tied. I have tried, by the spoken word, just now, to describe +to you the effect on me of the scent of the grass. But I have not +succeeded. I have no more than hinted in awkward speech. My words seem +gibberish to me. And yet I am stifled with desire to tell. Oh!—” he +threw up his hands with a despairing gesture—“it is impossible! It is +not understandable! It is incommunicable!” + +“But you do talk well,” she insisted. “Just think how you have improved +in the short time I have known you. Mr. Butler is a noted public +speaker. He is always asked by the State Committee to go out on stump +during campaign. Yet you talked just as well as he the other night at +dinner. Only he was more controlled. You get too excited; but you will +get over that with practice. Why, you would make a good public speaker. +You can go far—if you want to. You are masterly. You can lead men, I am +sure, and there is no reason why you should not succeed at anything you +set your hand to, just as you have succeeded with grammar. You would +make a good lawyer. You should shine in politics. There is nothing to +prevent you from making as great a success as Mr. Butler has made. And +minus the dyspepsia,” she added with a smile. + +They talked on; she, in her gently persistent way, returning always to +the need of thorough grounding in education and to the advantages of +Latin as part of the foundation for any career. She drew her ideal of +the successful man, and it was largely in her father’s image, with a +few unmistakable lines and touches of color from the image of Mr. +Butler. He listened eagerly, with receptive ears, lying on his back and +looking up and joying in each movement of her lips as she talked. But +his brain was not receptive. There was nothing alluring in the pictures +she drew, and he was aware of a dull pain of disappointment and of a +sharper ache of love for her. In all she said there was no mention of +his writing, and the manuscripts he had brought to read lay neglected +on the ground. + +At last, in a pause, he glanced at the sun, measured its height above +the horizon, and suggested his manuscripts by picking them up. + +“I had forgotten,” she said quickly. “And I am so anxious to hear.” + +He read to her a story, one that he flattered himself was among his +very best. He called it “The Wine of Life,” and the wine of it, that +had stolen into his brain when he wrote it, stole into his brain now as +he read it. There was a certain magic in the original conception, and +he had adorned it with more magic of phrase and touch. All the old fire +and passion with which he had written it were reborn in him, and he was +swayed and swept away so that he was blind and deaf to the faults of +it. But it was not so with Ruth. Her trained ear detected the +weaknesses and exaggerations, the overemphasis of the tyro, and she was +instantly aware each time the sentence-rhythm tripped and faltered. She +scarcely noted the rhythm otherwise, except when it became too pompous, +at which moments she was disagreeably impressed with its +amateurishness. That was her final judgment on the story as a +whole—amateurish, though she did not tell him so. Instead, when he had +done, she pointed out the minor flaws and said that she liked the +story. + +But he was disappointed. Her criticism was just. He acknowledged that, +but he had a feeling that he was not sharing his work with her for the +purpose of schoolroom correction. The details did not matter. They +could take care of themselves. He could mend them, he could learn to +mend them. Out of life he had captured something big and attempted to +imprison it in the story. It was the big thing out of life he had read +to her, not sentence-structure and semicolons. He wanted her to feel +with him this big thing that was his, that he had seen with his own +eyes, grappled with his own brain, and placed there on the page with +his own hands in printed words. Well, he had failed, was his secret +decision. Perhaps the editors were right. He had felt the big thing, +but he had failed to transmute it. He concealed his disappointment, and +joined so easily with her in her criticism that she did not realize +that deep down in him was running a strong undercurrent of +disagreement. + +“This next thing I’ve called ‘The Pot’,” he said, unfolding the +manuscript. “It has been refused by four or five magazines now, but +still I think it is good. In fact, I don’t know what to think of it, +except that I’ve caught something there. Maybe it won’t affect you as +it does me. It’s a short thing—only two thousand words.” + +“How dreadful!” she cried, when he had finished. “It is horrible, +unutterably horrible!” + +He noted her pale face, her eyes wide and tense, and her clenched +hands, with secret satisfaction. He had succeeded. He had communicated +the stuff of fancy and feeling from out of his brain. It had struck +home. No matter whether she liked it or not, it had gripped her and +mastered her, made her sit there and listen and forget details. + +“It is life,” he said, “and life is not always beautiful. And yet, +perhaps because I am strangely made, I find something beautiful there. +It seems to me that the beauty is tenfold enhanced because it is +there—” + +“But why couldn’t the poor woman—” she broke in disconnectedly. Then +she left the revolt of her thought unexpressed to cry out: “Oh! It is +degrading! It is not nice! It is nasty!” + +For the moment it seemed to him that his heart stood still. _Nasty_! He +had never dreamed it. He had not meant it. The whole sketch stood +before him in letters of fire, and in such blaze of illumination he +sought vainly for nastiness. Then his heart began to beat again. He was +not guilty. + +“Why didn’t you select a nice subject?” she was saying. “We know there +are nasty things in the world, but that is no reason—” + +She talked on in her indignant strain, but he was not following her. He +was smiling to himself as he looked up into her virginal face, so +innocent, so penetratingly innocent, that its purity seemed always to +enter into him, driving out of him all dross and bathing him in some +ethereal effulgence that was as cool and soft and velvety as starshine. +_We know there are nasty things in the world_! He cuddled to him the +notion of her knowing, and chuckled over it as a love joke. The next +moment, in a flashing vision of multitudinous detail, he sighted the +whole sea of life’s nastiness that he had known and voyaged over and +through, and he forgave her for not understanding the story. It was +through no fault of hers that she could not understand. He thanked God +that she had been born and sheltered to such innocence. But he knew +life, its foulness as well as its fairness, its greatness in spite of +the slime that infested it, and by God he was going to have his say on +it to the world. Saints in heaven—how could they be anything but fair +and pure? No praise to them. But saints in slime—ah, that was the +everlasting wonder! That was what made life worth while. To see moral +grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to rise himself and first +glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud-dripping eyes; to see out of +weakness, and frailty, and viciousness, and all abysmal brutishness, +arising strength, and truth, and high spiritual endowment— + +He caught a stray sequence of sentences she was uttering. + +“The tone of it all is low. And there is so much that is high. Take ‘In +Memoriam.’” + +He was impelled to suggest “Locksley Hall,” and would have done so, had +not his vision gripped him again and left him staring at her, the +female of his kind, who, out of the primordial ferment, creeping and +crawling up the vast ladder of life for a thousand thousand centuries, +had emerged on the topmost rung, having become one Ruth, pure, and +fair, and divine, and with power to make him know love, and to aspire +toward purity, and to desire to taste divinity—him, Martin Eden, who, +too, had come up in some amazing fashion from out of the ruck and the +mire and the countless mistakes and abortions of unending creation. +There was the romance, and the wonder, and the glory. There was the +stuff to write, if he could only find speech. Saints in heaven!—They +were only saints and could not help themselves. But he was a man. + +“You have strength,” he could hear her saying, “but it is untutored +strength.” + +“Like a bull in a china shop,” he suggested, and won a smile. + +“And you must develop discrimination. You must consult taste, and +fineness, and tone.” + +“I dare too much,” he muttered. + +She smiled approbation, and settled herself to listen to another story. + +“I don’t know what you’ll make of this,” he said apologetically. “It’s +a funny thing. I’m afraid I got beyond my depth in it, but my +intentions were good. Don’t bother about the little features of it. +Just see if you catch the feel of the big thing in it. It is big, and +it is true, though the chance is large that I have failed to make it +intelligible.” + +He read, and as he read he watched her. At last he had reached her, he +thought. She sat without movement, her eyes steadfast upon him, +scarcely breathing, caught up and out of herself, he thought, by the +witchery of the thing he had created. He had entitled the story +“Adventure,” and it was the apotheosis of adventure—not of the +adventure of the storybooks, but of real adventure, the savage +taskmaster, awful of punishment and awful of reward, faithless and +whimsical, demanding terrible patience and heartbreaking days and +nights of toil, offering the blazing sunlight glory or dark death at +the end of thirst and famine or of the long drag and monstrous delirium +of rotting fever, through blood and sweat and stinging insects leading +up by long chains of petty and ignoble contacts to royal culminations +and lordly achievements. + +It was this, all of it, and more, that he had put into his story, and +it was this, he believed, that warmed her as she sat and listened. Her +eyes were wide, color was in her pale cheeks, and before he finished it +seemed to him that she was almost panting. Truly, she was warmed; but +she was warmed, not by the story, but by him. She did not think much of +the story; it was Martin’s intensity of power, the old excess of +strength that seemed to pour from his body and on and over her. The +paradox of it was that it was the story itself that was freighted with +his power, that was the channel, for the time being, through which his +strength poured out to her. She was aware only of the strength, and not +of the medium, and when she seemed most carried away by what he had +written, in reality she had been carried away by something quite +foreign to it—by a thought, terrible and perilous, that had formed +itself unsummoned in her brain. She had caught herself wondering what +marriage was like, and the becoming conscious of the waywardness and +ardor of the thought had terrified her. It was unmaidenly. It was not +like her. She had never been tormented by womanhood, and she had lived +in a dreamland of Tennysonian poesy, dense even to the full +significance of that delicate master’s delicate allusions to the +grossnesses that intrude upon the relations of queens and knights. She +had been asleep, always, and now life was thundering imperatively at +all her doors. Mentally she was in a panic to shoot the bolts and drop +the bars into place, while wanton instincts urged her to throw wide her +portals and bid the deliciously strange visitor to enter in. + +Martin waited with satisfaction for her verdict. He had no doubt of +what it would be, and he was astounded when he heard her say: + +“It is beautiful.” + +“It is beautiful,” she repeated, with emphasis, after a pause. + +Of course it was beautiful; but there was something more than mere +beauty in it, something more stingingly splendid which had made beauty +its handmaiden. He sprawled silently on the ground, watching the grisly +form of a great doubt rising before him. He had failed. He was +inarticulate. He had seen one of the greatest things in the world, and +he had not expressed it. + +“What did you think of the—” He hesitated, abashed at his first attempt +to use a strange word. “Of the _motif_?” he asked. + +“It was confused,” she answered. “That is my only criticism in the +large way. I followed the story, but there seemed so much else. It is +too wordy. You clog the action by introducing so much extraneous +material.” + +“That was the major _motif_,” he hurriedly explained, “the big +underrunning _motif_, the cosmic and universal thing. I tried to make +it keep time with the story itself, which was only superficial after +all. I was on the right scent, but I guess I did it badly. I did not +succeed in suggesting what I was driving at. But I’ll learn in time.” + +She did not follow him. She was a bachelor of arts, but he had gone +beyond her limitations. This she did not comprehend, attributing her +incomprehension to his incoherence. + +“You were too voluble,” she said. “But it was beautiful, in places.” + +He heard her voice as from far off, for he was debating whether he +would read her the “Sea Lyrics.” He lay in dull despair, while she +watched him searchingly, pondering again upon unsummoned and wayward +thoughts of marriage. + +“You want to be famous?” she asked abruptly. + +“Yes, a little bit,” he confessed. “That is part of the adventure. It +is not the being famous, but the process of becoming so, that counts. +And after all, to be famous would be, for me, only a means to something +else. I want to be famous very much, for that matter, and for that +reason.” + +“For your sake,” he wanted to add, and might have added had she proved +enthusiastic over what he had read to her. + +But she was too busy in her mind, carving out a career for him that +would at least be possible, to ask what the ultimate something was +which he had hinted at. There was no career for him in literature. Of +that she was convinced. He had proved it to-day, with his amateurish +and sophomoric productions. He could talk well, but he was incapable of +expressing himself in a literary way. She compared Tennyson, and +Browning, and her favorite prose masters with him, and to his hopeless +discredit. Yet she did not tell him her whole mind. Her strange +interest in him led her to temporize. His desire to write was, after +all, a little weakness which he would grow out of in time. Then he +would devote himself to the more serious affairs of life. And he would +succeed, too. She knew that. He was so strong that he could not fail—if +only he would drop writing. + +“I wish you would show me all you write, Mr. Eden,” she said. + +He flushed with pleasure. She was interested, that much was sure. And +at least she had not given him a rejection slip. She had called certain +portions of his work beautiful, and that was the first encouragement he +had ever received from any one. + +“I will,” he said passionately. “And I promise you, Miss Morse, that I +will make good. I have come far, I know that; and I have far to go, and +I will cover it if I have to do it on my hands and knees.” He held up a +bunch of manuscript. “Here are the ‘Sea Lyrics.’ When you get home, +I’ll turn them over to you to read at your leisure. And you must be +sure to tell me just what you think of them. What I need, you know, +above all things, is criticism. And do, please, be frank with me.” + +“I will be perfectly frank,” she promised, with an uneasy conviction +that she had not been frank with him and with a doubt if she could be +quite frank with him the next time. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + + +“The first battle, fought and finished,” Martin said to the +looking-glass ten days later. “But there will be a second battle, and a +third battle, and battles to the end of time, unless—” + +He had not finished the sentence, but looked about the mean little room +and let his eyes dwell sadly upon a heap of returned manuscripts, still +in their long envelopes, which lay in a corner on the floor. He had no +stamps with which to continue them on their travels, and for a week +they had been piling up. More of them would come in on the morrow, and +on the next day, and the next, till they were all in. And he would be +unable to start them out again. He was a month’s rent behind on the +typewriter, which he could not pay, having barely enough for the week’s +board which was due and for the employment office fees. + +He sat down and regarded the table thoughtfully. There were ink stains +upon it, and he suddenly discovered that he was fond of it. + +“Dear old table,” he said, “I’ve spent some happy hours with you, and +you’ve been a pretty good friend when all is said and done. You never +turned me down, never passed me out a reward-of-unmerit rejection slip, +never complained about working overtime.” + +He dropped his arms upon the table and buried his face in them. His +throat was aching, and he wanted to cry. It reminded him of his first +fight, when he was six years old, when he punched away with the tears +running down his cheeks while the other boy, two years his elder, had +beaten and pounded him into exhaustion. He saw the ring of boys, +howling like barbarians as he went down at last, writhing in the throes +of nausea, the blood streaming from his nose and the tears from his +bruised eyes. + +“Poor little shaver,” he murmured. “And you’re just as badly licked +now. You’re beaten to a pulp. You’re down and out.” + +But the vision of that first fight still lingered under his eyelids, +and as he watched he saw it dissolve and reshape into the series of +fights which had followed. Six months later Cheese-Face (that was the +boy) had whipped him again. But he had blacked Cheese-Face’s eye that +time. That was going some. He saw them all, fight after fight, himself +always whipped and Cheese-Face exulting over him. But he had never run +away. He felt strengthened by the memory of that. He had always stayed +and taken his medicine. Cheese-Face had been a little fiend at +fighting, and had never once shown mercy to him. But he had stayed! He +had stayed with it! + +Next, he saw a narrow alley, between ramshackle frame buildings. The +end of the alley was blocked by a one-story brick building, out of +which issued the rhythmic thunder of the presses, running off the first +edition of the _Enquirer_. He was eleven, and Cheese-Face was thirteen, +and they both carried the _Enquirer_. That was why they were there, +waiting for their papers. And, of course, Cheese-Face had picked on him +again, and there was another fight that was indeterminate, because at +quarter to four the door of the press-room was thrown open and the gang +of boys crowded in to fold their papers. + +“I’ll lick you to-morrow,” he heard Cheese-Face promise; and he heard +his own voice, piping and trembling with unshed tears, agreeing to be +there on the morrow. + +And he had come there the next day, hurrying from school to be there +first, and beating Cheese-Face by two minutes. The other boys said he +was all right, and gave him advice, pointing out his faults as a +scrapper and promising him victory if he carried out their +instructions. The same boys gave Cheese-Face advice, too. How they had +enjoyed the fight! He paused in his recollections long enough to envy +them the spectacle he and Cheese-Face had put up. Then the fight was +on, and it went on, without rounds, for thirty minutes, until the +press-room door was opened. + +He watched the youthful apparition of himself, day after day, hurrying +from school to the _Enquirer_ alley. He could not walk very fast. He +was stiff and lame from the incessant fighting. His forearms were black +and blue from wrist to elbow, what of the countless blows he had warded +off, and here and there the tortured flesh was beginning to fester. His +head and arms and shoulders ached, the small of his back ached,—he +ached all over, and his brain was heavy and dazed. He did not play at +school. Nor did he study. Even to sit still all day at his desk, as he +did, was a torment. It seemed centuries since he had begun the round of +daily fights, and time stretched away into a nightmare and infinite +future of daily fights. Why couldn’t Cheese-Face be licked? he often +thought; that would put him, Martin, out of his misery. It never +entered his head to cease fighting, to allow Cheese-Face to whip him. + +And so he dragged himself to the _Enquirer_ alley, sick in body and +soul, but learning the long patience, to confront his eternal enemy, +Cheese-Face, who was just as sick as he, and just a bit willing to quit +if it were not for the gang of newsboys that looked on and made pride +painful and necessary. One afternoon, after twenty minutes of desperate +efforts to annihilate each other according to set rules that did not +permit kicking, striking below the belt, nor hitting when one was down, +Cheese-Face, panting for breath and reeling, offered to call it quits. +And Martin, head on arms, thrilled at the picture he caught of himself, +at that moment in the afternoon of long ago, when he reeled and panted +and choked with the blood that ran into his mouth and down his throat +from his cut lips; when he tottered toward Cheese-Face, spitting out a +mouthful of blood so that he could speak, crying out that he would +never quit, though Cheese-Face could give in if he wanted to. And +Cheese-Face did not give in, and the fight went on. + +The next day and the next, days without end, witnessed the afternoon +fight. When he put up his arms, each day, to begin, they pained +exquisitely, and the first few blows, struck and received, racked his +soul; after that things grew numb, and he fought on blindly, seeing as +in a dream, dancing and wavering, the large features and burning, +animal-like eyes of Cheese-Face. He concentrated upon that face; all +else about him was a whirling void. There was nothing else in the world +but that face, and he would never know rest, blessed rest, until he had +beaten that face into a pulp with his bleeding knuckles, or until the +bleeding knuckles that somehow belonged to that face had beaten him +into a pulp. And then, one way or the other, he would have rest. But to +quit,—for him, Martin, to quit,—that was impossible! + +Came the day when he dragged himself into the _Enquirer_ alley, and +there was no Cheese-Face. Nor did Cheese-Face come. The boys +congratulated him, and told him that he had licked Cheese-Face. But +Martin was not satisfied. He had not licked Cheese-Face, nor had +Cheese-Face licked him. The problem had not been solved. It was not +until afterward that they learned that Cheese-Face’s father had died +suddenly that very day. + +Martin skipped on through the years to the night in the nigger heaven +at the Auditorium. He was seventeen and just back from sea. A row +started. Somebody was bullying somebody, and Martin interfered, to be +confronted by Cheese-Face’s blazing eyes. + +“I’ll fix you after de show,” his ancient enemy hissed. + +Martin nodded. The nigger-heaven bouncer was making his way toward the +disturbance. + +“I’ll meet you outside, after the last act,” Martin whispered, the +while his face showed undivided interest in the buck-and-wing dancing +on the stage. + +The bouncer glared and went away. + +“Got a gang?” he asked Cheese-Face, at the end of the act. + +“Sure.” + +“Then I got to get one,” Martin announced. + +Between the acts he mustered his following—three fellows he knew from +the nail works, a railroad fireman, and half a dozen of the Boo Gang, +along with as many more from the dread Eighteen-and-Market Gang. + +When the theatre let out, the two gangs strung along inconspicuously on +opposite sides of the street. When they came to a quiet corner, they +united and held a council of war. + +“Eighth Street Bridge is the place,” said a red-headed fellow belonging +to Cheese-Face’s Gang. “You kin fight in the middle, under the electric +light, an’ whichever way the bulls come in we kin sneak the other way.” + +“That’s agreeable to me,” Martin said, after consulting with the +leaders of his own gang. + +The Eighth Street Bridge, crossing an arm of San Antonio Estuary, was +the length of three city blocks. In the middle of the bridge, and at +each end, were electric lights. No policeman could pass those +end-lights unseen. It was the safe place for the battle that revived +itself under Martin’s eyelids. He saw the two gangs, aggressive and +sullen, rigidly keeping apart from each other and backing their +respective champions; and he saw himself and Cheese-Face stripping. A +short distance away lookouts were set, their task being to watch the +lighted ends of the bridge. A member of the Boo Gang held Martin’s +coat, and shirt, and cap, ready to race with them into safety in case +the police interfered. Martin watched himself go into the centre, +facing Cheese-Face, and he heard himself say, as he held up his hand +warningly:- + +“They ain’t no hand-shakin’ in this. Understand? They ain’t nothin’ but +scrap. No throwin’ up the sponge. This is a grudge-fight an’ it’s to a +finish. Understand? Somebody’s goin’ to get licked.” + +Cheese-Face wanted to demur,—Martin could see that,—but Cheese-Face’s +old perilous pride was touched before the two gangs. + +“Aw, come on,” he replied. “Wot’s the good of chewin’ de rag about it? +I’m wit’ cheh to de finish.” + +Then they fell upon each other, like young bulls, in all the glory of +youth, with naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to maim, to +destroy. All the painful, thousand years’ gains of man in his upward +climb through creation were lost. Only the electric light remained, a +milestone on the path of the great human adventure. Martin and +Cheese-Face were two savages, of the stone age, of the squatting place +and the tree refuge. They sank lower and lower into the muddy abyss, +back into the dregs of the raw beginnings of life, striving blindly and +chemically, as atoms strive, as the star-dust of the heavens strives, +colliding, recoiling, and colliding again and eternally again. + +“God! We are animals! Brute-beasts!” Martin muttered aloud, as he +watched the progress of the fight. It was to him, with his splendid +power of vision, like gazing into a kinetoscope. He was both onlooker +and participant. His long months of culture and refinement shuddered at +the sight; then the present was blotted out of his consciousness and +the ghosts of the past possessed him, and he was Martin Eden, just +returned from sea and fighting Cheese-Face on the Eighth Street Bridge. +He suffered and toiled and sweated and bled, and exulted when his naked +knuckles smashed home. + +They were twin whirlwinds of hatred, revolving about each other +monstrously. The time passed, and the two hostile gangs became very +quiet. They had never witnessed such intensity of ferocity, and they +were awed by it. The two fighters were greater brutes than they. The +first splendid velvet edge of youth and condition wore off, and they +fought more cautiously and deliberately. There had been no advantage +gained either way. “It’s anybody’s fight,” Martin heard some one +saying. Then he followed up a feint, right and left, was fiercely +countered, and felt his cheek laid open to the bone. No bare knuckle +had done that. He heard mutters of amazement at the ghastly damage +wrought, and was drenched with his own blood. But he gave no sign. He +became immensely wary, for he was wise with knowledge of the low +cunning and foul vileness of his kind. He watched and waited, until he +feigned a wild rush, which he stopped midway, for he had seen the glint +of metal. + +“Hold up yer hand!” he screamed. “Them’s brass knuckles, an’ you hit me +with ’em!” + +Both gangs surged forward, growling and snarling. In a second there +would be a free-for-all fight, and he would be robbed of his vengeance. +He was beside himself. + +“You guys keep out!” he screamed hoarsely. “Understand? Say, d’ye +understand?” + +They shrank away from him. They were brutes, but he was the arch-brute, +a thing of terror that towered over them and dominated them. + +“This is my scrap, an’ they ain’t goin’ to be no buttin’ in. Gimme them +knuckles.” + +Cheese-Face, sobered and a bit frightened, surrendered the foul weapon. + +“You passed ’em to him, you red-head sneakin’ in behind the push +there,” Martin went on, as he tossed the knuckles into the water. “I +seen you, an’ I was wonderin’ what you was up to. If you try anything +like that again, I’ll beat cheh to death. Understand?” + +They fought on, through exhaustion and beyond, to exhaustion +immeasurable and inconceivable, until the crowd of brutes, its +blood-lust sated, terrified by what it saw, begged them impartially to +cease. And Cheese-Face, ready to drop and die, or to stay on his legs +and die, a grisly monster out of whose features all likeness to +Cheese-Face had been beaten, wavered and hesitated; but Martin sprang +in and smashed him again and again. + +Next, after a seeming century or so, with Cheese-Face weakening fast, +in a mix-up of blows there was a loud snap, and Martin’s right arm +dropped to his side. It was a broken bone. Everybody heard it and knew; +and Cheese-Face knew, rushing like a tiger in the other’s extremity and +raining blow on blow. Martin’s gang surged forward to interfere. Dazed +by the rapid succession of blows, Martin warned them back with vile and +earnest curses sobbed out and groaned in ultimate desolation and +despair. + +He punched on, with his left hand only, and as he punched, doggedly, +only half-conscious, as from a remote distance he heard murmurs of fear +in the gangs, and one who said with shaking voice: “This ain’t a scrap, +fellows. It’s murder, an’ we ought to stop it.” + +But no one stopped it, and he was glad, punching on wearily and +endlessly with his one arm, battering away at a bloody something before +him that was not a face but a horror, an oscillating, hideous, +gibbering, nameless thing that persisted before his wavering vision and +would not go away. And he punched on and on, slower and slower, as the +last shreds of vitality oozed from him, through centuries and aeons and +enormous lapses of time, until, in a dim way, he became aware that the +nameless thing was sinking, slowly sinking down to the rough +board-planking of the bridge. And the next moment he was standing over +it, staggering and swaying on shaky legs, clutching at the air for +support, and saying in a voice he did not recognize:- + +“D’ye want any more? Say, d’ye want any more?” + +He was still saying it, over and over,—demanding, entreating, +threatening, to know if it wanted any more,—when he felt the fellows of +his gang laying hands on him, patting him on the back and trying to put +his coat on him. And then came a sudden rush of blackness and oblivion. + +The tin alarm-clock on the table ticked on, but Martin Eden, his face +buried on his arms, did not hear it. He heard nothing. He did not +think. So absolutely had he relived life that he had fainted just as he +fainted years before on the Eighth Street Bridge. For a full minute the +blackness and the blankness endured. Then, like one from the dead, he +sprang upright, eyes flaming, sweat pouring down his face, shouting:- + +“I licked you, Cheese-Face! It took me eleven years, but I licked you!” + +His knees were trembling under him, he felt faint, and he staggered +back to the bed, sinking down and sitting on the edge of it. He was +still in the clutch of the past. He looked about the room, perplexed, +alarmed, wondering where he was, until he caught sight of the pile of +manuscripts in the corner. Then the wheels of memory slipped ahead +through four years of time, and he was aware of the present, of the +books he had opened and the universe he had won from their pages, of +his dreams and ambitions, and of his love for a pale wraith of a girl, +sensitive and sheltered and ethereal, who would die of horror did she +witness but one moment of what he had just lived through—one moment of +all the muck of life through which he had waded. + +He arose to his feet and confronted himself in the looking-glass. + +“And so you arise from the mud, Martin Eden,” he said solemnly. “And +you cleanse your eyes in a great brightness, and thrust your shoulders +among the stars, doing what all life has done, letting the ‘ape and +tiger die’ and wresting highest heritage from all powers that be.” + +He looked more closely at himself and laughed. + +“A bit of hysteria and melodrama, eh?” he queried. “Well, never mind. +You licked Cheese-Face, and you’ll lick the editors if it takes twice +eleven years to do it in. You can’t stop here. You’ve got to go on. +It’s to a finish, you know.” + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + +The alarm-clock went off, jerking Martin out of sleep with a suddenness +that would have given headache to one with less splendid constitution. +Though he slept soundly, he awoke instantly, like a cat, and he awoke +eagerly, glad that the five hours of unconsciousness were gone. He +hated the oblivion of sleep. There was too much to do, too much of life +to live. He grudged every moment of life sleep robbed him of, and +before the clock had ceased its clattering he was head and ears in the +washbasin and thrilling to the cold bite of the water. + +But he did not follow his regular programme. There was no unfinished +story waiting his hand, no new story demanding articulation. He had +studied late, and it was nearly time for breakfast. He tried to read a +chapter in Fiske, but his brain was restless and he closed the book. +To-day witnessed the beginning of the new battle, wherein for some time +there would be no writing. He was aware of a sadness akin to that with +which one leaves home and family. He looked at the manuscripts in the +corner. That was it. He was going away from them, his pitiful, +dishonored children that were welcome nowhere. He went over and began +to rummage among them, reading snatches here and there, his favorite +portions. “The Pot” he honored with reading aloud, as he did +“Adventure.” “Joy,” his latest-born, completed the day before and +tossed into the corner for lack of stamps, won his keenest approbation. + +“I can’t understand,” he murmured. “Or maybe it’s the editors who can’t +understand. There’s nothing wrong with that. They publish worse every +month. Everything they publish is worse—nearly everything, anyway.” + +After breakfast he put the type-writer in its case and carried it down +into Oakland. + +“I owe a month on it,” he told the clerk in the store. “But you tell +the manager I’m going to work and that I’ll be in in a month or so and +straighten up.” + +He crossed on the ferry to San Francisco and made his way to an +employment office. “Any kind of work, no trade,” he told the agent; and +was interrupted by a new-comer, dressed rather foppishly, as some +workingmen dress who have instincts for finer things. The agent shook +his head despondently. + +“Nothin’ doin’ eh?” said the other. “Well, I got to get somebody +to-day.” + +He turned and stared at Martin, and Martin, staring back, noted the +puffed and discolored face, handsome and weak, and knew that he had +been making a night of it. + +“Lookin’ for a job?” the other queried. “What can you do?” + +“Hard labor, sailorizing, run a type-writer, no shorthand, can sit on a +horse, willing to do anything and tackle anything,” was the answer. + +The other nodded. + +“Sounds good to me. My name’s Dawson, Joe Dawson, an’ I’m tryin’ to +scare up a laundryman.” + +“Too much for me.” Martin caught an amusing glimpse of himself ironing +fluffy white things that women wear. But he had taken a liking to the +other, and he added: “I might do the plain washing. I learned that much +at sea.” Joe Dawson thought visibly for a moment. + +“Look here, let’s get together an’ frame it up. Willin’ to listen?” + +Martin nodded. + +“This is a small laundry, up country, belongs to Shelly Hot +Springs,—hotel, you know. Two men do the work, boss and assistant. I’m +the boss. You don’t work for me, but you work under me. Think you’d be +willin’ to learn?” + +Martin paused to think. The prospect was alluring. A few months of it, +and he would have time to himself for study. He could work hard and +study hard. + +“Good grub an’ a room to yourself,” Joe said. + +That settled it. A room to himself where he could burn the midnight oil +unmolested. + +“But work like hell,” the other added. + +Martin caressed his swelling shoulder-muscles significantly. “That came +from hard work.” + +“Then let’s get to it.” Joe held his hand to his head for a moment. +“Gee, but it’s a stem-winder. Can hardly see. I went down the line last +night—everything—everything. Here’s the frame-up. The wages for two is +a hundred and board. I’ve ben drawin’ down sixty, the second man forty. +But he knew the biz. You’re green. If I break you in, I’ll be doing +plenty of your work at first. Suppose you begin at thirty, an’ work up +to the forty. I’ll play fair. Just as soon as you can do your share you +get the forty.” + +“I’ll go you,” Martin announced, stretching out his hand, which the +other shook. “Any advance?—for rail-road ticket and extras?” + +“I blew it in,” was Joe’s sad answer, with another reach at his aching +head. “All I got is a return ticket.” + +“And I’m broke—when I pay my board.” + +“Jump it,” Joe advised. + +“Can’t. Owe it to my sister.” + +Joe whistled a long, perplexed whistle, and racked his brains to little +purpose. + +“I’ve got the price of the drinks,” he said desperately. “Come on, an’ +mebbe we’ll cook up something.” + +Martin declined. + +“Water-wagon?” + +This time Martin nodded, and Joe lamented, “Wish I was.” + +“But I somehow just can’t,” he said in extenuation. “After I’ve ben +workin’ like hell all week I just got to booze up. If I didn’t, I’d cut +my throat or burn up the premises. But I’m glad you’re on the wagon. +Stay with it.” + +Martin knew of the enormous gulf between him and this man—the gulf the +books had made; but he found no difficulty in crossing back over that +gulf. He had lived all his life in the working-class world, and the +_camaraderie_ of labor was second nature with him. He solved the +difficulty of transportation that was too much for the other’s aching +head. He would send his trunk up to Shelly Hot Springs on Joe’s ticket. +As for himself, there was his wheel. It was seventy miles, and he could +ride it on Sunday and be ready for work Monday morning. In the meantime +he would go home and pack up. There was no one to say good-by to. Ruth +and her whole family were spending the long summer in the Sierras, at +Lake Tahoe. + +He arrived at Shelly Hot Springs, tired and dusty, on Sunday night. Joe +greeted him exuberantly. With a wet towel bound about his aching brow, +he had been at work all day. + +“Part of last week’s washin’ mounted up, me bein’ away to get you,” he +explained. “Your box arrived all right. It’s in your room. But it’s a +hell of a thing to call a trunk. An’ what’s in it? Gold bricks?” + +Joe sat on the bed while Martin unpacked. The box was a packing-case +for breakfast food, and Mr. Higginbotham had charged him half a dollar +for it. Two rope handles, nailed on by Martin, had technically +transformed it into a trunk eligible for the baggage-car. Joe watched, +with bulging eyes, a few shirts and several changes of underclothes +come out of the box, followed by books, and more books. + +“Books clean to the bottom?” he asked. + +Martin nodded, and went on arranging the books on a kitchen table which +served in the room in place of a wash-stand. + +“Gee!” Joe exploded, then waited in silence for the deduction to arise +in his brain. At last it came. + +“Say, you don’t care for the girls—much?” he queried. + +“No,” was the answer. “I used to chase a lot before I tackled the +books. But since then there’s no time.” + +“And there won’t be any time here. All you can do is work an’ sleep.” + +Martin thought of his five hours’ sleep a night, and smiled. The room +was situated over the laundry and was in the same building with the +engine that pumped water, made electricity, and ran the laundry +machinery. The engineer, who occupied the adjoining room, dropped in to +meet the new hand and helped Martin rig up an electric bulb, on an +extension wire, so that it travelled along a stretched cord from over +the table to the bed. + +The next morning, at quarter-past six, Martin was routed out for a +quarter-to-seven breakfast. There happened to be a bath-tub for the +servants in the laundry building, and he electrified Joe by taking a +cold bath. + +“Gee, but you’re a hummer!” Joe announced, as they sat down to +breakfast in a corner of the hotel kitchen. + +With them was the engineer, the gardener, and the assistant gardener, +and two or three men from the stable. They ate hurriedly and gloomily, +with but little conversation, and as Martin ate and listened he +realized how far he had travelled from their status. Their small mental +caliber was depressing to him, and he was anxious to get away from +them. So he bolted his breakfast, a sickly, sloppy affair, as rapidly +as they, and heaved a sigh of relief when he passed out through the +kitchen door. + +It was a perfectly appointed, small steam laundry, wherein the most +modern machinery did everything that was possible for machinery to do. +Martin, after a few instructions, sorted the great heaps of soiled +clothes, while Joe started the masher and made up fresh supplies of +soft-soap, compounded of biting chemicals that compelled him to swathe +his mouth and nostrils and eyes in bath-towels till he resembled a +mummy. Finished the sorting, Martin lent a hand in wringing the +clothes. This was done by dumping them into a spinning receptacle that +went at a rate of a few thousand revolutions a minute, tearing the +water from the clothes by centrifugal force. Then Martin began to +alternate between the dryer and the wringer, between times “shaking +out” socks and stockings. By the afternoon, one feeding and one +stacking up, they were running socks and stockings through the mangle +while the irons were heating. Then it was hot irons and underclothes +till six o’clock, at which time Joe shook his head dubiously. + +“Way behind,” he said. “Got to work after supper.” And after supper +they worked until ten o’clock, under the blazing electric lights, until +the last piece of under-clothing was ironed and folded away in the +distributing room. It was a hot California night, and though the +windows were thrown wide, the room, with its red-hot ironing-stove, was +a furnace. Martin and Joe, down to undershirts, bare armed, sweated and +panted for air. + +“Like trimming cargo in the tropics,” Martin said, when they went +upstairs. + +“You’ll do,” Joe answered. “You take hold like a good fellow. If you +keep up the pace, you’ll be on thirty dollars only one month. The +second month you’ll be gettin’ your forty. But don’t tell me you never +ironed before. I know better.” + +“Never ironed a rag in my life, honestly, until to-day,” Martin +protested. + +He was surprised at his weariness when he got into his room, forgetful +of the fact that he had been on his feet and working without let up for +fourteen hours. He set the alarm clock at six, and measured back five +hours to one o’clock. He could read until then. Slipping off his shoes, +to ease his swollen feet, he sat down at the table with his books. He +opened Fiske, where he had left off to read. But he found trouble and +began to read it through a second time. Then he awoke, in pain from his +stiffened muscles and chilled by the mountain wind that had begun to +blow in through the window. He looked at the clock. It marked two. He +had been asleep four hours. He pulled off his clothes and crawled into +bed, where he was asleep the moment after his head touched the pillow. + +Tuesday was a day of similar unremitting toil. The speed with which Joe +worked won Martin’s admiration. Joe was a dozen of demons for work. He +was keyed up to concert pitch, and there was never a moment in the long +day when he was not fighting for moments. He concentrated himself upon +his work and upon how to save time, pointing out to Martin where he did +in five motions what could be done in three, or in three motions what +could be done in two. “Elimination of waste motion,” Martin phrased it +as he watched and patterned after. He was a good workman himself, quick +and deft, and it had always been a point of pride with him that no man +should do any of his work for him or outwork him. As a result, he +concentrated with a similar singleness of purpose, greedily snapping up +the hints and suggestions thrown out by his working mate. He “rubbed +out” collars and cuffs, rubbing the starch out from between the double +thicknesses of linen so that there would be no blisters when it came to +the ironing, and doing it at a pace that elicited Joe’s praise. + +There was never an interval when something was not at hand to be done. +Joe waited for nothing, waited on nothing, and went on the jump from +task to task. They starched two hundred white shirts, with a single +gathering movement seizing a shirt so that the wristbands, neckband, +yoke, and bosom protruded beyond the circling right hand. At the same +moment the left hand held up the body of the shirt so that it would not +enter the starch, and at the same moment the right hand dipped into the +starch—starch so hot that, in order to wring it out, their hands had to +thrust, and thrust continually, into a bucket of cold water. And that +night they worked till half-past ten, dipping “fancy starch”—all the +frilled and airy, delicate wear of ladies. + +“Me for the tropics and no clothes,” Martin laughed. + +“And me out of a job,” Joe answered seriously. “I don’t know nothin’ +but laundrying.” + +“And you know it well.” + +“I ought to. Began in the Contra Costa in Oakland when I was eleven, +shakin’ out for the mangle. That was eighteen years ago, an’ I’ve never +done a tap of anything else. But this job is the fiercest I ever had. +Ought to be one more man on it at least. We work to-morrow night. +Always run the mangle Wednesday nights—collars an’ cuffs.” + +Martin set his alarm, drew up to the table, and opened Fiske. He did +not finish the first paragraph. The lines blurred and ran together and +his head nodded. He walked up and down, batting his head savagely with +his fists, but he could not conquer the numbness of sleep. He propped +the book before him, and propped his eyelids with his fingers, and fell +asleep with his eyes wide open. Then he surrendered, and, scarcely +conscious of what he did, got off his clothes and into bed. He slept +seven hours of heavy, animal-like sleep, and awoke by the alarm, +feeling that he had not had enough. + +“Doin’ much readin’?” Joe asked. + +Martin shook his head. + +“Never mind. We got to run the mangle to-night, but Thursday we’ll +knock off at six. That’ll give you a chance.” + +Martin washed woollens that day, by hand, in a large barrel, with +strong soft-soap, by means of a hub from a wagon wheel, mounted on a +plunger-pole that was attached to a spring-pole overhead. + +“My invention,” Joe said proudly. “Beats a washboard an’ your knuckles, +and, besides, it saves at least fifteen minutes in the week, an’ +fifteen minutes ain’t to be sneezed at in this shebang.” + +Running the collars and cuffs through the mangle was also Joe’s idea. +That night, while they toiled on under the electric lights, he +explained it. + +“Something no laundry ever does, except this one. An’ I got to do it if +I’m goin’ to get done Saturday afternoon at three o’clock. But I know +how, an’ that’s the difference. Got to have right heat, right pressure, +and run ’em through three times. Look at that!” He held a cuff aloft. +“Couldn’t do it better by hand or on a tiler.” + +Thursday, Joe was in a rage. A bundle of extra “fancy starch” had come +in. + +“I’m goin’ to quit,” he announced. “I won’t stand for it. I’m goin’ to +quit it cold. What’s the good of me workin’ like a slave all week, +a-savin’ minutes, an’ them a-comin’ an’ ringin’ in fancy-starch extras +on me? This is a free country, an’ I’m to tell that fat Dutchman what I +think of him. An’ I won’t tell ’m in French. Plain United States is +good enough for me. Him a-ringin’ in fancy starch extras!” + +“We got to work to-night,” he said the next moment, reversing his +judgment and surrendering to fate. + +And Martin did no reading that night. He had seen no daily paper all +week, and, strangely to him, felt no desire to see one. He was not +interested in the news. He was too tired and jaded to be interested in +anything, though he planned to leave Saturday afternoon, if they +finished at three, and ride on his wheel to Oakland. It was seventy +miles, and the same distance back on Sunday afternoon would leave him +anything but rested for the second week’s work. It would have been +easier to go on the train, but the round trip was two dollars and a +half, and he was intent on saving money. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + + +Martin learned to do many things. In the course of the first week, in +one afternoon, he and Joe accounted for the two hundred white shirts. +Joe ran the tiler, a machine wherein a hot iron was hooked on a steel +string which furnished the pressure. By this means he ironed the yoke, +wristbands, and neckband, setting the latter at right angles to the +shirt, and put the glossy finish on the bosom. As fast as he finished +them, he flung the shirts on a rack between him and Martin, who caught +them up and “backed” them. This task consisted of ironing all the +unstarched portions of the shirts. + +It was exhausting work, carried on, hour after hour, at top speed. Out +on the broad verandas of the hotel, men and women, in cool white, +sipped iced drinks and kept their circulation down. But in the laundry +the air was sizzling. The huge stove roared red hot and white hot, +while the irons, moving over the damp cloth, sent up clouds of steam. +The heat of these irons was different from that used by housewives. An +iron that stood the ordinary test of a wet finger was too cold for Joe +and Martin, and such test was useless. They went wholly by holding the +irons close to their cheeks, gauging the heat by some secret mental +process that Martin admired but could not understand. When the fresh +irons proved too hot, they hooked them on iron rods and dipped them +into cold water. This again required a precise and subtle judgment. A +fraction of a second too long in the water and the fine and silken edge +of the proper heat was lost, and Martin found time to marvel at the +accuracy he developed—an automatic accuracy, founded upon criteria that +were machine-like and unerring. + +But there was little time in which to marvel. All Martin’s +consciousness was concentrated in the work. Ceaselessly active, head +and hand, an intelligent machine, all that constituted him a man was +devoted to furnishing that intelligence. There was no room in his brain +for the universe and its mighty problems. All the broad and spacious +corridors of his mind were closed and hermetically sealed. The echoing +chamber of his soul was a narrow room, a conning tower, whence were +directed his arm and shoulder muscles, his ten nimble fingers, and the +swift-moving iron along its steaming path in broad, sweeping strokes, +just so many strokes and no more, just so far with each stroke and not +a fraction of an inch farther, rushing along interminable sleeves, +sides, backs, and tails, and tossing the finished shirts, without +rumpling, upon the receiving frame. And even as his hurrying soul +tossed, it was reaching for another shirt. This went on, hour after +hour, while outside all the world swooned under the overhead California +sun. But there was no swooning in that superheated room. The cool +guests on the verandas needed clean linen. + +The sweat poured from Martin. He drank enormous quantities of water, +but so great was the heat of the day and of his exertions, that the +water sluiced through the interstices of his flesh and out at all his +pores. Always, at sea, except at rare intervals, the work he performed +had given him ample opportunity to commune with himself. The master of +the ship had been lord of Martin’s time; but here the manager of the +hotel was lord of Martin’s thoughts as well. He had no thoughts save +for the nerve-racking, body-destroying toil. Outside of that it was +impossible to think. He did not know that he loved Ruth. She did not +even exist, for his driven soul had no time to remember her. It was +only when he crawled to bed at night, or to breakfast in the morning, +that she asserted herself to him in fleeting memories. + +“This is hell, ain’t it?” Joe remarked once. + +Martin nodded, but felt a rasp of irritation. The statement had been +obvious and unnecessary. They did not talk while they worked. +Conversation threw them out of their stride, as it did this time, +compelling Martin to miss a stroke of his iron and to make two extra +motions before he caught his stride again. + +On Friday morning the washer ran. Twice a week they had to put through +hotel linen,—the sheets, pillow-slips, spreads, table-cloths, and +napkins. This finished, they buckled down to “fancy starch.” It was +slow work, fastidious and delicate, and Martin did not learn it so +readily. Besides, he could not take chances. Mistakes were disastrous. + +“See that,” Joe said, holding up a filmy corset-cover that he could +have crumpled from view in one hand. “Scorch that an’ it’s twenty +dollars out of your wages.” + +So Martin did not scorch that, and eased down on his muscular tension, +though nervous tension rose higher than ever, and he listened +sympathetically to the other’s blasphemies as he toiled and suffered +over the beautiful things that women wear when they do not have to do +their own laundrying. “Fancy starch” was Martin’s nightmare, and it was +Joe’s, too. It was “fancy starch” that robbed them of their hard-won +minutes. They toiled at it all day. At seven in the evening they broke +off to run the hotel linen through the mangle. At ten o’clock, while +the hotel guests slept, the two laundrymen sweated on at “fancy starch” +till midnight, till one, till two. At half-past two they knocked off. + +Saturday morning it was “fancy starch,” and odds and ends, and at three +in the afternoon the week’s work was done. + +“You ain’t a-goin’ to ride them seventy miles into Oakland on top of +this?” Joe demanded, as they sat on the stairs and took a triumphant +smoke. + +“Got to,” was the answer. + +“What are you goin’ for?—a girl?” + +“No; to save two and a half on the railroad ticket. I want to renew +some books at the library.” + +“Why don’t you send ’em down an’ up by express? That’ll cost only a +quarter each way.” + +Martin considered it. + +“An’ take a rest to-morrow,” the other urged. “You need it. I know I +do. I’m plumb tuckered out.” + +He looked it. Indomitable, never resting, fighting for seconds and +minutes all week, circumventing delays and crushing down obstacles, a +fount of resistless energy, a high-driven human motor, a demon for +work, now that he had accomplished the week’s task he was in a state of +collapse. He was worn and haggard, and his handsome face drooped in +lean exhaustion. He pulled his cigarette spiritlessly, and his voice +was peculiarly dead and monotonous. All the snap and fire had gone out +of him. His triumph seemed a sorry one. + +“An’ next week we got to do it all over again,” he said sadly. “An’ +what’s the good of it all, hey? Sometimes I wish I was a hobo. They +don’t work, an’ they get their livin’. Gee! I wish I had a glass of +beer; but I can’t get up the gumption to go down to the village an’ get +it. You’ll stay over, an’ send your books down by express, or else +you’re a damn fool.” + +“But what can I do here all day Sunday?” Martin asked. + +“Rest. You don’t know how tired you are. Why, I’m that tired Sunday I +can’t even read the papers. I was sick once—typhoid. In the hospital +two months an’ a half. Didn’t do a tap of work all that time. It was +beautiful.” + +“It was beautiful,” he repeated dreamily, a minute later. + +Martin took a bath, after which he found that the head laundryman had +disappeared. Most likely he had gone for a glass of beer Martin +decided, but the half-mile walk down to the village to find out seemed +a long journey to him. He lay on his bed with his shoes off, trying to +make up his mind. He did not reach out for a book. He was too tired to +feel sleepy, and he lay, scarcely thinking, in a semi-stupor of +weariness, until it was time for supper. Joe did not appear for that +function, and when Martin heard the gardener remark that most likely he +was ripping the slats off the bar, Martin understood. He went to bed +immediately afterward, and in the morning decided that he was greatly +rested. Joe being still absent, Martin procured a Sunday paper and lay +down in a shady nook under the trees. The morning passed, he knew not +how. He did not sleep, nobody disturbed him, and he did not finish the +paper. He came back to it in the afternoon, after dinner, and fell +asleep over it. + +So passed Sunday, and Monday morning he was hard at work, sorting +clothes, while Joe, a towel bound tightly around his head, with groans +and blasphemies, was running the washer and mixing soft-soap. + +“I simply can’t help it,” he explained. “I got to drink when Saturday +night comes around.” + +Another week passed, a great battle that continued under the electric +lights each night and that culminated on Saturday afternoon at three +o’clock, when Joe tasted his moment of wilted triumph and then drifted +down to the village to forget. Martin’s Sunday was the same as before. +He slept in the shade of the trees, toiled aimlessly through the +newspaper, and spent long hours lying on his back, doing nothing, +thinking nothing. He was too dazed to think, though he was aware that +he did not like himself. He was self-repelled, as though he had +undergone some degradation or was intrinsically foul. All that was +god-like in him was blotted out. The spur of ambition was blunted; he +had no vitality with which to feel the prod of it. He was dead. His +soul seemed dead. He was a beast, a work-beast. He saw no beauty in the +sunshine sifting down through the green leaves, nor did the azure vault +of the sky whisper as of old and hint of cosmic vastness and secrets +trembling to disclosure. Life was intolerably dull and stupid, and its +taste was bad in his mouth. A black screen was drawn across his mirror +of inner vision, and fancy lay in a darkened sick-room where entered no +ray of light. He envied Joe, down in the village, rampant, tearing the +slats off the bar, his brain gnawing with maggots, exulting in maudlin +ways over maudlin things, fantastically and gloriously drunk and +forgetful of Monday morning and the week of deadening toil to come. + +A third week went by, and Martin loathed himself, and loathed life. He +was oppressed by a sense of failure. There was reason for the editors +refusing his stuff. He could see that clearly now, and laugh at himself +and the dreams he had dreamed. Ruth returned his “Sea Lyrics” by mail. +He read her letter apathetically. She did her best to say how much she +liked them and that they were beautiful. But she could not lie, and she +could not disguise the truth from herself. She knew they were failures, +and he read her disapproval in every perfunctory and unenthusiastic +line of her letter. And she was right. He was firmly convinced of it as +he read the poems over. Beauty and wonder had departed from him, and as +he read the poems he caught himself puzzling as to what he had had in +mind when he wrote them. His audacities of phrase struck him as +grotesque, his felicities of expression were monstrosities, and +everything was absurd, unreal, and impossible. He would have burned the +“Sea Lyrics” on the spot, had his will been strong enough to set them +aflame. There was the engine-room, but the exertion of carrying them to +the furnace was not worth while. All his exertion was used in washing +other persons’ clothes. He did not have any left for private affairs. + +He resolved that when Sunday came he would pull himself together and +answer Ruth’s letter. But Saturday afternoon, after work was finished +and he had taken a bath, the desire to forget overpowered him. “I guess +I’ll go down and see how Joe’s getting on,” was the way he put it to +himself; and in the same moment he knew that he lied. But he did not +have the energy to consider the lie. If he had had the energy, he would +have refused to consider the lie, because he wanted to forget. He +started for the village slowly and casually, increasing his pace in +spite of himself as he neared the saloon. + +“I thought you was on the water-wagon,” was Joe’s greeting. + +Martin did not deign to offer excuses, but called for whiskey, filling +his own glass brimming before he passed the bottle. + +“Don’t take all night about it,” he said roughly. + +The other was dawdling with the bottle, and Martin refused to wait for +him, tossing the glass off in a gulp and refilling it. + +“Now, I can wait for you,” he said grimly; “but hurry up.” + +Joe hurried, and they drank together. + +“The work did it, eh?” Joe queried. + +Martin refused to discuss the matter. + +“It’s fair hell, I know,” the other went on, “but I kind of hate to see +you come off the wagon, Mart. Well, here’s how!” + +Martin drank on silently, biting out his orders and invitations and +awing the barkeeper, an effeminate country youngster with watery blue +eyes and hair parted in the middle. + +“It’s something scandalous the way they work us poor devils,” Joe was +remarking. “If I didn’t bowl up, I’d break loose an’ burn down the +shebang. My bowlin’ up is all that saves ’em, I can tell you that.” + +But Martin made no answer. A few more drinks, and in his brain he felt +the maggots of intoxication beginning to crawl. Ah, it was living, the +first breath of life he had breathed in three weeks. His dreams came +back to him. Fancy came out of the darkened room and lured him on, a +thing of flaming brightness. His mirror of vision was silver-clear, a +flashing, dazzling palimpsest of imagery. Wonder and beauty walked with +him, hand in hand, and all power was his. He tried to tell it to Joe, +but Joe had visions of his own, infallible schemes whereby he would +escape the slavery of laundry-work and become himself the owner of a +great steam laundry. + +“I tell yeh, Mart, they won’t be no kids workin’ in my laundry—not on +yer life. An’ they won’t be no workin’ a livin’ soul after six P.M. You +hear me talk! They’ll be machinery enough an’ hands enough to do it all +in decent workin’ hours, an’ Mart, s’help me, I’ll make yeh +superintendent of the shebang—the whole of it, all of it. Now here’s +the scheme. I get on the water-wagon an’ save my money for two +years—save an’ then—” + +But Martin turned away, leaving him to tell it to the barkeeper, until +that worthy was called away to furnish drinks to two farmers who, +coming in, accepted Martin’s invitation. Martin dispensed royal +largess, inviting everybody up, farm-hands, a stableman, and the +gardener’s assistant from the hotel, the barkeeper, and the furtive +hobo who slid in like a shadow and like a shadow hovered at the end of +the bar. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + + +Monday morning, Joe groaned over the first truck load of clothes to the +washer. + +“I say,” he began. + +“Don’t talk to me,” Martin snarled. + +“I’m sorry, Joe,” he said at noon, when they knocked off for dinner. + +Tears came into the other’s eyes. + +“That’s all right, old man,” he said. “We’re in hell, an’ we can’t help +ourselves. An’, you know, I kind of like you a whole lot. That’s what +made it—hurt. I cottoned to you from the first.” + +Martin shook his hand. + +“Let’s quit,” Joe suggested. “Let’s chuck it, an’ go hoboin’. I ain’t +never tried it, but it must be dead easy. An’ nothin’ to do. Just think +of it, nothin’ to do. I was sick once, typhoid, in the hospital, an’ it +was beautiful. I wish I’d get sick again.” + +The week dragged on. The hotel was full, and extra “fancy starch” +poured in upon them. They performed prodigies of valor. They fought +late each night under the electric lights, bolted their meals, and even +got in a half hour’s work before breakfast. Martin no longer took his +cold baths. Every moment was drive, drive, drive, and Joe was the +masterful shepherd of moments, herding them carefully, never losing +one, counting them over like a miser counting gold, working on in a +frenzy, toil-mad, a feverish machine, aided ably by that other machine +that thought of itself as once having been one Martin Eden, a man. + +But it was only at rare moments that Martin was able to think. The +house of thought was closed, its windows boarded up, and he was its +shadowy caretaker. He was a shadow. Joe was right. They were both +shadows, and this was the unending limbo of toil. Or was it a dream? +Sometimes, in the steaming, sizzling heat, as he swung the heavy irons +back and forth over the white garments, it came to him that it was a +dream. In a short while, or maybe after a thousand years or so, he +would awake, in his little room with the ink-stained table, and take up +his writing where he had left off the day before. Or maybe that was a +dream, too, and the awakening would be the changing of the watches, +when he would drop down out of his bunk in the lurching forecastle and +go up on deck, under the tropic stars, and take the wheel and feel the +cool tradewind blowing through his flesh. + +Came Saturday and its hollow victory at three o’clock. + +“Guess I’ll go down an’ get a glass of beer,” Joe said, in the queer, +monotonous tones that marked his week-end collapse. + +Martin seemed suddenly to wake up. He opened the kit bag and oiled his +wheel, putting graphite on the chain and adjusting the bearings. Joe +was halfway down to the saloon when Martin passed by, bending low over +the handle-bars, his legs driving the ninety-six gear with rhythmic +strength, his face set for seventy miles of road and grade and dust. He +slept in Oakland that night, and on Sunday covered the seventy miles +back. And on Monday morning, weary, he began the new week’s work, but +he had kept sober. + +A fifth week passed, and a sixth, during which he lived and toiled as a +machine, with just a spark of something more in him, just a glimmering +bit of soul, that compelled him, at each week-end, to scorch off the +hundred and forty miles. But this was not rest. It was +super-machinelike, and it helped to crush out the glimmering bit of +soul that was all that was left him from former life. At the end of the +seventh week, without intending it, too weak to resist, he drifted down +to the village with Joe and drowned life and found life until Monday +morning. + +Again, at the week-ends, he ground out the one hundred and forty miles, +obliterating the numbness of too great exertion by the numbness of +still greater exertion. At the end of three months he went down a third +time to the village with Joe. He forgot, and lived again, and, living, +he saw, in clear illumination, the beast he was making of himself—not +by the drink, but by the work. The drink was an effect, not a cause. It +followed inevitably upon the work, as the night follows upon the day. +Not by becoming a toil-beast could he win to the heights, was the +message the whiskey whispered to him, and he nodded approbation. The +whiskey was wise. It told secrets on itself. + +He called for paper and pencil, and for drinks all around, and while +they drank his very good health, he clung to the bar and scribbled. + +“A telegram, Joe,” he said. “Read it.” + +Joe read it with a drunken, quizzical leer. But what he read seemed to +sober him. He looked at the other reproachfully, tears oozing into his +eyes and down his cheeks. + +“You ain’t goin’ back on me, Mart?” he queried hopelessly. + +Martin nodded, and called one of the loungers to him to take the +message to the telegraph office. + +“Hold on,” Joe muttered thickly. “Lemme think.” + +He held on to the bar, his legs wobbling under him, Martin’s arm around +him and supporting him, while he thought. + +“Make that two laundrymen,” he said abruptly. “Here, lemme fix it.” + +“What are you quitting for?” Martin demanded. + +“Same reason as you.” + +“But I’m going to sea. You can’t do that.” + +“Nope,” was the answer, “but I can hobo all right, all right.” + +Martin looked at him searchingly for a moment, then cried:- + +“By God, I think you’re right! Better a hobo than a beast of toil. Why, +man, you’ll live. And that’s more than you ever did before.” + +“I was in hospital, once,” Joe corrected. “It was beautiful. +Typhoid—did I tell you?” + +While Martin changed the telegram to “two laundrymen,” Joe went on:- + +“I never wanted to drink when I was in hospital. Funny, ain’t it? But +when I’ve ben workin’ like a slave all week, I just got to bowl up. +Ever noticed that cooks drink like hell?—an’ bakers, too? It’s the +work. They’ve sure got to. Here, lemme pay half of that telegram.” + +“I’ll shake you for it,” Martin offered. + +“Come on, everybody drink,” Joe called, as they rattled the dice and +rolled them out on the damp bar. + +Monday morning Joe was wild with anticipation. He did not mind his +aching head, nor did he take interest in his work. Whole herds of +moments stole away and were lost while their careless shepherd gazed +out of the window at the sunshine and the trees. + +“Just look at it!” he cried. “An’ it’s all mine! It’s free. I can lie +down under them trees an’ sleep for a thousan’ years if I want to. Aw, +come on, Mart, let’s chuck it. What’s the good of waitin’ another +moment. That’s the land of nothin’ to do out there, an’ I got a ticket +for it—an’ it ain’t no return ticket, b’gosh!” + +A few minutes later, filling the truck with soiled clothes for the +washer, Joe spied the hotel manager’s shirt. He knew its mark, and with +a sudden glorious consciousness of freedom he threw it on the floor and +stamped on it. + +“I wish you was in it, you pig-headed Dutchman!” he shouted. “In it, +an’ right there where I’ve got you! Take that! an’ that! an’ that! damn +you! Hold me back, somebody! Hold me back!” + +Martin laughed and held him to his work. On Tuesday night the new +laundrymen arrived, and the rest of the week was spent breaking them +into the routine. Joe sat around and explained his system, but he did +no more work. + +“Not a tap,” he announced. “Not a tap. They can fire me if they want +to, but if they do, I’ll quit. No more work in mine, thank you kindly. +Me for the freight cars an’ the shade under the trees. Go to it, you +slaves! That’s right. Slave an’ sweat! Slave an’ sweat! An’ when you’re +dead, you’ll rot the same as me, an’ what’s it matter how you live?—eh? +Tell me that—what’s it matter in the long run?” + +On Saturday they drew their pay and came to the parting of the ways. + +“They ain’t no use in me askin’ you to change your mind an’ hit the +road with me?” Joe asked hopelessly: + +Martin shook his head. He was standing by his wheel, ready to start. +They shook hands, and Joe held on to his for a moment, as he said:- + +“I’m goin’ to see you again, Mart, before you an’ me die. That’s +straight dope. I feel it in my bones. Good-by, Mart, an’ be good. I +like you like hell, you know.” + +He stood, a forlorn figure, in the middle of the road, watching until +Martin turned a bend and was gone from sight. + +“He’s a good Indian, that boy,” he muttered. “A good Indian.” + +Then he plodded down the road himself, to the water tank, where half a +dozen empties lay on a side-track waiting for the up freight. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + + +Ruth and her family were home again, and Martin, returned to Oakland, +saw much of her. Having gained her degree, she was doing no more +studying; and he, having worked all vitality out of his mind and body, +was doing no writing. This gave them time for each other that they had +never had before, and their intimacy ripened fast. + +At first, Martin had done nothing but rest. He had slept a great deal, +and spent long hours musing and thinking and doing nothing. He was like +one recovering from some terrible bout of hardship. The first signs of +reawakening came when he discovered more than languid interest in the +daily paper. Then he began to read again—light novels, and poetry; and +after several days more he was head over heels in his long-neglected +Fiske. His splendid body and health made new vitality, and he possessed +all the resiliency and rebound of youth. + +Ruth showed her disappointment plainly when he announced that he was +going to sea for another voyage as soon as he was well rested. + +“Why do you want to do that?” she asked. + +“Money,” was the answer. “I’ll have to lay in a supply for my next +attack on the editors. Money is the sinews of war, in my case—money and +patience.” + +“But if all you wanted was money, why didn’t you stay in the laundry?” + +“Because the laundry was making a beast of me. Too much work of that +sort drives to drink.” + +She stared at him with horror in her eyes. + +“Do you mean—?” she quavered. + +It would have been easy for him to get out of it; but his natural +impulse was for frankness, and he remembered his old resolve to be +frank, no matter what happened. + +“Yes,” he answered. “Just that. Several times.” + +She shivered and drew away from him. + +“No man that I have ever known did that—ever did that.” + +“Then they never worked in the laundry at Shelly Hot Springs,” he +laughed bitterly. “Toil is a good thing. It is necessary for human +health, so all the preachers say, and Heaven knows I’ve never been +afraid of it. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, +and the laundry up there is one of them. And that’s why I’m going to +sea one more voyage. It will be my last, I think, for when I come back, +I shall break into the magazines. I am certain of it.” + +She was silent, unsympathetic, and he watched her moodily, realizing +how impossible it was for her to understand what he had been through. + +“Some day I shall write it up—‘The Degradation of Toil’ or the +‘Psychology of Drink in the Working-class,’ or something like that for +a title.” + +Never, since the first meeting, had they seemed so far apart as that +day. His confession, told in frankness, with the spirit of revolt +behind, had repelled her. But she was more shocked by the repulsion +itself than by the cause of it. It pointed out to her how near she had +drawn to him, and once accepted, it paved the way for greater intimacy. +Pity, too, was aroused, and innocent, idealistic thoughts of reform. +She would save this raw young man who had come so far. She would save +him from the curse of his early environment, and she would save him +from himself in spite of himself. And all this affected her as a very +noble state of consciousness; nor did she dream that behind it and +underlying it were the jealousy and desire of love. + +They rode on their wheels much in the delightful fall weather, and out +in the hills they read poetry aloud, now one and now the other, noble, +uplifting poetry that turned one’s thoughts to higher things. +Renunciation, sacrifice, patience, industry, and high endeavor were the +principles she thus indirectly preached—such abstractions being +objectified in her mind by her father, and Mr. Butler, and by Andrew +Carnegie, who, from a poor immigrant boy had arisen to be the +book-giver of the world. All of which was appreciated and enjoyed by +Martin. He followed her mental processes more clearly now, and her soul +was no longer the sealed wonder it had been. He was on terms of +intellectual equality with her. But the points of disagreement did not +affect his love. His love was more ardent than ever, for he loved her +for what she was, and even her physical frailty was an added charm in +his eyes. He read of sickly Elizabeth Barrett, who for years had not +placed her feet upon the ground, until that day of flame when she +eloped with Browning and stood upright, upon the earth, under the open +sky; and what Browning had done for her, Martin decided he could do for +Ruth. But first, she must love him. The rest would be easy. He would +give her strength and health. And he caught glimpses of their life, in +the years to come, wherein, against a background of work and comfort +and general well-being, he saw himself and Ruth reading and discussing +poetry, she propped amid a multitude of cushions on the ground while +she read aloud to him. This was the key to the life they would live. +And always he saw that particular picture. Sometimes it was she who +leaned against him while he read, one arm about her, her head upon his +shoulder. Sometimes they pored together over the printed pages of +beauty. Then, too, she loved nature, and with generous imagination he +changed the scene of their reading—sometimes they read in closed-in +valleys with precipitous walls, or in high mountain meadows, and, +again, down by the gray sand-dunes with a wreath of billows at their +feet, or afar on some volcanic tropic isle where waterfalls descended +and became mist, reaching the sea in vapor veils that swayed and +shivered to every vagrant wisp of wind. But always, in the foreground, +lords of beauty and eternally reading and sharing, lay he and Ruth, and +always in the background that was beyond the background of nature, dim +and hazy, were work and success and money earned that made them free of +the world and all its treasures. + +“I should recommend my little girl to be careful,” her mother warned +her one day. + +“I know what you mean. But it is impossible. He is not—” + +Ruth was blushing, but it was the blush of maidenhood called upon for +the first time to discuss the sacred things of life with a mother held +equally sacred. + +“Your kind.” Her mother finished the sentence for her. + +Ruth nodded. + +“I did not want to say it, but he is not. He is rough, brutal, +strong—too strong. He has not—” + +She hesitated and could not go on. It was a new experience, talking +over such matters with her mother. And again her mother completed her +thought for her. + +“He has not lived a clean life, is what you wanted to say.” + +Again Ruth nodded, and again a blush mantled her face. + +“It is just that,” she said. “It has not been his fault, but he has +played much with—” + +“With pitch?” + +“Yes, with pitch. And he frightens me. Sometimes I am positively in +terror of him, when he talks in that free and easy way of the things he +has done—as if they did not matter. They do matter, don’t they?” + +They sat with their arms twined around each other, and in the pause her +mother patted her hand and waited for her to go on. + +“But I am interested in him dreadfully,” she continued. “In a way he is +my protégé. Then, too, he is my first boy friend—but not exactly +friend; rather protégé and friend combined. Sometimes, too, when he +frightens me, it seems that he is a bulldog I have taken for a +plaything, like some of the ‘frat’ girls, and he is tugging hard, and +showing his teeth, and threatening to break loose.” + +Again her mother waited. + +“He interests me, I suppose, like the bulldog. And there is much good +in him, too; but there is much in him that I would not like in—in the +other way. You see, I have been thinking. He swears, he smokes, he +drinks, he has fought with his fists (he has told me so, and he likes +it; he says so). He is all that a man should not be—a man I would want +for my—” her voice sank very low—“husband. Then he is too strong. My +prince must be tall, and slender, and dark—a graceful, bewitching +prince. No, there is no danger of my falling in love with Martin Eden. +It would be the worst fate that could befall me.” + +“But it is not that that I spoke about,” her mother equivocated. “Have +you thought about him? He is so ineligible in every way, you know, and +suppose he should come to love you?” + +“But he does—already,” she cried. + +“It was to be expected,” Mrs. Morse said gently. “How could it be +otherwise with any one who knew you?” + +“Olney hates me!” she exclaimed passionately. “And I hate Olney. I feel +always like a cat when he is around. I feel that I must be nasty to +him, and even when I don’t happen to feel that way, why, he’s nasty to +me, anyway. But I am happy with Martin Eden. No one ever loved me +before—no man, I mean, in that way. And it is sweet to be loved—that +way. You know what I mean, mother dear. It is sweet to feel that you +are really and truly a woman.” She buried her face in her mother’s lap, +sobbing. “You think I am dreadful, I know, but I am honest, and I tell +you just how I feel.” + +Mrs. Morse was strangely sad and happy. Her child-daughter, who was a +bachelor of arts, was gone; but in her place was a woman-daughter. The +experiment had succeeded. The strange void in Ruth’s nature had been +filled, and filled without danger or penalty. This rough sailor-fellow +had been the instrument, and, though Ruth did not love him, he had made +her conscious of her womanhood. + +“His hand trembles,” Ruth was confessing, her face, for shame’s sake, +still buried. “It is most amusing and ridiculous, but I feel sorry for +him, too. And when his hands are too trembly, and his eyes too shiny, +why, I lecture him about his life and the wrong way he is going about +it to mend it. But he worships me, I know. His eyes and his hands do +not lie. And it makes me feel grown-up, the thought of it, the very +thought of it; and I feel that I am possessed of something that is by +rights my own—that makes me like the other girls—and—and young women. +And, then, too, I knew that I was not like them before, and I knew that +it worried you. You thought you did not let me know that dear worry of +yours, but I did, and I wanted to—‘to make good,’ as Martin Eden says.” + +It was a holy hour for mother and daughter, and their eyes were wet as +they talked on in the twilight, Ruth all white innocence and frankness, +her mother sympathetic, receptive, yet calmly explaining and guiding. + +“He is four years younger than you,” she said. “He has no place in the +world. He has neither position nor salary. He is impractical. Loving +you, he should, in the name of common sense, be doing something that +would give him the right to marry, instead of paltering around with +those stories of his and with childish dreams. Martin Eden, I am +afraid, will never grow up. He does not take to responsibility and a +man’s work in the world like your father did, or like all our friends, +Mr. Butler for one. Martin Eden, I am afraid, will never be a +money-earner. And this world is so ordered that money is necessary to +happiness—oh, no, not these swollen fortunes, but enough of money to +permit of common comfort and decency. He—he has never spoken?” + +“He has not breathed a word. He has not attempted to; but if he did, I +would not let him, because, you see, I do not love him.” + +“I am glad of that. I should not care to see my daughter, my one +daughter, who is so clean and pure, love a man like him. There are +noble men in the world who are clean and true and manly. Wait for them. +You will find one some day, and you will love him and be loved by him, +and you will be happy with him as your father and I have been happy +with each other. And there is one thing you must always carry in mind—” + +“Yes, mother.” + +Mrs. Morse’s voice was low and sweet as she said, “And that is the +children.” + +“I—have thought about them,” Ruth confessed, remembering the wanton +thoughts that had vexed her in the past, her face again red with maiden +shame that she should be telling such things. + +“And it is that, the children, that makes Mr. Eden impossible,” Mrs. +Morse went on incisively. “Their heritage must be clean, and he is, I +am afraid, not clean. Your father has told me of sailors’ lives, +and—and you understand.” + +Ruth pressed her mother’s hand in assent, feeling that she really did +understand, though her conception was of something vague, remote, and +terrible that was beyond the scope of imagination. + +“You know I do nothing without telling you,” she began. “—Only, +sometimes you must ask me, like this time. I wanted to tell you, but I +did not know how. It is false modesty, I know it is that, but you can +make it easy for me. Sometimes, like this time, you must ask me, you +must give me a chance.” + +“Why, mother, you are a woman, too!” she cried exultantly, as they +stood up, catching her mother’s hands and standing erect, facing her in +the twilight, conscious of a strangely sweet equality between them. “I +should never have thought of you in that way if we had not had this +talk. I had to learn that I was a woman to know that you were one, +too.” + +“We are women together,” her mother said, drawing her to her and +kissing her. “We are women together,” she repeated, as they went out of +the room, their arms around each other’s waists, their hearts swelling +with a new sense of companionship. + +“Our little girl has become a woman,” Mrs. Morse said proudly to her +husband an hour later. + +“That means,” he said, after a long look at his wife, “that means she +is in love.” + +“No, but that she is loved,” was the smiling rejoinder. “The experiment +has succeeded. She is awakened at last.” + +“Then we’ll have to get rid of him.” Mr. Morse spoke briskly, in +matter-of-fact, businesslike tones. + +But his wife shook her head. “It will not be necessary. Ruth says he is +going to sea in a few days. When he comes back, she will not be here. +We will send her to Aunt Clara’s. And, besides, a year in the East, +with the change in climate, people, ideas, and everything, is just the +thing she needs.” + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + + +The desire to write was stirring in Martin once more. Stories and poems +were springing into spontaneous creation in his brain, and he made +notes of them against the future time when he would give them +expression. But he did not write. This was his little vacation; he had +resolved to devote it to rest and love, and in both matters he +prospered. He was soon spilling over with vitality, and each day he saw +Ruth, at the moment of meeting, she experienced the old shock of his +strength and health. + +“Be careful,” her mother warned her once again. “I am afraid you are +seeing too much of Martin Eden.” + +But Ruth laughed from security. She was sure of herself, and in a few +days he would be off to sea. Then, by the time he returned, she would +be away on her visit East. There was a magic, however, in the strength +and health of Martin. He, too, had been told of her contemplated +Eastern trip, and he felt the need for haste. Yet he did not know how +to make love to a girl like Ruth. Then, too, he was handicapped by the +possession of a great fund of experience with girls and women who had +been absolutely different from her. They had known about love and life +and flirtation, while she knew nothing about such things. Her +prodigious innocence appalled him, freezing on his lips all ardors of +speech, and convincing him, in spite of himself, of his own +unworthiness. Also he was handicapped in another way. He had himself +never been in love before. He had liked women in that turgid past of +his, and been fascinated by some of them, but he had not known what it +was to love them. He had whistled in a masterful, careless way, and +they had come to him. They had been diversions, incidents, part of the +game men play, but a small part at most. And now, and for the first +time, he was a suppliant, tender and timid and doubting. He did not +know the way of love, nor its speech, while he was frightened at his +loved one’s clear innocence. + +In the course of getting acquainted with a varied world, whirling on +through the ever changing phases of it, he had learned a rule of +conduct which was to the effect that when one played a strange game, he +should let the other fellow play first. This had stood him in good +stead a thousand times and trained him as an observer as well. He knew +how to watch the thing that was strange, and to wait for a weakness, +for a place of entrance, to divulge itself. It was like sparring for an +opening in fist-fighting. And when such an opening came, he knew by +long experience to play for it and to play hard. + +So he waited with Ruth and watched, desiring to speak his love but not +daring. He was afraid of shocking her, and he was not sure of himself. +Had he but known it, he was following the right course with her. Love +came into the world before articulate speech, and in its own early +youth it had learned ways and means that it had never forgotten. It was +in this old, primitive way that Martin wooed Ruth. He did not know he +was doing it at first, though later he divined it. The touch of his +hand on hers was vastly more potent than any word he could utter, the +impact of his strength on her imagination was more alluring than the +printed poems and spoken passions of a thousand generations of lovers. +Whatever his tongue could express would have appealed, in part, to her +judgment; but the touch of hand, the fleeting contact, made its way +directly to her instinct. Her judgment was as young as she, but her +instincts were as old as the race and older. They had been young when +love was young, and they were wiser than convention and opinion and all +the new-born things. So her judgment did not act. There was no call +upon it, and she did not realize the strength of the appeal Martin made +from moment to moment to her love-nature. That he loved her, on the +other hand, was as clear as day, and she consciously delighted in +beholding his love-manifestations—the glowing eyes with their tender +lights, the trembling hands, and the never failing swarthy flush that +flooded darkly under his sunburn. She even went farther, in a timid way +inciting him, but doing it so delicately that he never suspected, and +doing it half-consciously, so that she scarcely suspected herself. She +thrilled with these proofs of her power that proclaimed her a woman, +and she took an Eve-like delight in tormenting him and playing upon +him. + +Tongue-tied by inexperience and by excess of ardor, wooing unwittingly +and awkwardly, Martin continued his approach by contact. The touch of +his hand was pleasant to her, and something deliciously more than +pleasant. Martin did not know it, but he did know that it was not +distasteful to her. Not that they touched hands often, save at meeting +and parting; but that in handling the bicycles, in strapping on the +books of verse they carried into the hills, and in conning the pages of +books side by side, there were opportunities for hand to stray against +hand. And there were opportunities, too, for her hair to brush his +cheek, and for shoulder to touch shoulder, as they leaned together over +the beauty of the books. She smiled to herself at vagrant impulses +which arose from nowhere and suggested that she rumple his hair; while +he desired greatly, when they tired of reading, to rest his head in her +lap and dream with closed eyes about the future that was to be theirs. +On Sunday picnics at Shellmound Park and Schuetzen Park, in the past, +he had rested his head on many laps, and, usually, he had slept soundly +and selfishly while the girls shaded his face from the sun and looked +down and loved him and wondered at his lordly carelessness of their +love. To rest his head in a girl’s lap had been the easiest thing in +the world until now, and now he found Ruth’s lap inaccessible and +impossible. Yet it was right here, in his reticence, that the strength +of his wooing lay. It was because of this reticence that he never +alarmed her. Herself fastidious and timid, she never awakened to the +perilous trend of their intercourse. Subtly and unaware she grew toward +him and closer to him, while he, sensing the growing closeness, longed +to dare but was afraid. + +Once he dared, one afternoon, when he found her in the darkened living +room with a blinding headache. + +“Nothing can do it any good,” she had answered his inquiries. “And +besides, I don’t take headache powders. Doctor Hall won’t permit me.” + +“I can cure it, I think, and without drugs,” was Martin’s answer. “I am +not sure, of course, but I’d like to try. It’s simply massage. I +learned the trick first from the Japanese. They are a race of masseurs, +you know. Then I learned it all over again with variations from the +Hawaiians. They call it _lomi-lomi_. It can accomplish most of the +things drugs accomplish and a few things that drugs can’t.” + +Scarcely had his hands touched her head when she sighed deeply. + +“That is so good,” she said. + +She spoke once again, half an hour later, when she asked, “Aren’t you +tired?” + +The question was perfunctory, and she knew what the answer would be. +Then she lost herself in drowsy contemplation of the soothing balm of +his strength: Life poured from the ends of his fingers, driving the +pain before it, or so it seemed to her, until with the easement of +pain, she fell asleep and he stole away. + +She called him up by telephone that evening to thank him. + +“I slept until dinner,” she said. “You cured me completely, Mr. Eden, +and I don’t know how to thank you.” + +He was warm, and bungling of speech, and very happy, as he replied to +her, and there was dancing in his mind, throughout the telephone +conversation, the memory of Browning and of sickly Elizabeth Barrett. +What had been done could be done again, and he, Martin Eden, could do +it and would do it for Ruth Morse. He went back to his room and to the +volume of Spencer’s “Sociology” lying open on the bed. But he could not +read. Love tormented him and overrode his will, so that, despite all +determination, he found himself at the little ink-stained table. The +sonnet he composed that night was the first of a love-cycle of fifty +sonnets which was completed within two months. He had the “Love-sonnets +from the Portuguese” in mind as he wrote, and he wrote under the best +conditions for great work, at a climacteric of living, in the throes of +his own sweet love-madness. + +The many hours he was not with Ruth he devoted to the “Love-cycle,” to +reading at home, or to the public reading-rooms, where he got more +closely in touch with the magazines of the day and the nature of their +policy and content. The hours he spent with Ruth were maddening alike +in promise and in inconclusiveness. It was a week after he cured her +headache that a moonlight sail on Lake Merritt was proposed by Norman +and seconded by Arthur and Olney. Martin was the only one capable of +handling a boat, and he was pressed into service. Ruth sat near him in +the stern, while the three young fellows lounged amidships, deep in a +wordy wrangle over “frat” affairs. + +The moon had not yet risen, and Ruth, gazing into the starry vault of +the sky and exchanging no speech with Martin, experienced a sudden +feeling of loneliness. She glanced at him. A puff of wind was heeling +the boat over till the deck was awash, and he, one hand on tiller and +the other on main-sheet, was luffing slightly, at the same time peering +ahead to make out the near-lying north shore. He was unaware of her +gaze, and she watched him intently, speculating fancifully about the +strange warp of soul that led him, a young man with signal powers, to +fritter away his time on the writing of stories and poems foredoomed to +mediocrity and failure. + +Her eyes wandered along the strong throat, dimly seen in the starlight, +and over the firm-poised head, and the old desire to lay her hands upon +his neck came back to her. The strength she abhorred attracted her. Her +feeling of loneliness became more pronounced, and she felt tired. Her +position on the heeling boat irked her, and she remembered the headache +he had cured and the soothing rest that resided in him. He was sitting +beside her, quite beside her, and the boat seemed to tilt her toward +him. Then arose in her the impulse to lean against him, to rest herself +against his strength—a vague, half-formed impulse, which, even as she +considered it, mastered her and made her lean toward him. Or was it the +heeling of the boat? She did not know. She never knew. She knew only +that she was leaning against him and that the easement and soothing +rest were very good. Perhaps it had been the boat’s fault, but she made +no effort to retrieve it. She leaned lightly against his shoulder, but +she leaned, and she continued to lean when he shifted his position to +make it more comfortable for her. + +It was a madness, but she refused to consider the madness. She was no +longer herself but a woman, with a woman’s clinging need; and though +she leaned ever so lightly, the need seemed satisfied. She was no +longer tired. Martin did not speak. Had he, the spell would have been +broken. But his reticence of love prolonged it. He was dazed and dizzy. +He could not understand what was happening. It was too wonderful to be +anything but a delirium. He conquered a mad desire to let go sheet and +tiller and to clasp her in his arms. His intuition told him it was the +wrong thing to do, and he was glad that sheet and tiller kept his hands +occupied and fended off temptation. But he luffed the boat less +delicately, spilling the wind shamelessly from the sail so as to +prolong the tack to the north shore. The shore would compel him to go +about, and the contact would be broken. He sailed with skill, stopping +way on the boat without exciting the notice of the wranglers, and +mentally forgiving his hardest voyages in that they had made this +marvellous night possible, giving him mastery over sea and boat and +wind so that he could sail with her beside him, her dear weight against +him on his shoulder. + +When the first light of the rising moon touched the sail, illuminating +the boat with pearly radiance, Ruth moved away from him. And, even as +she moved, she felt him move away. The impulse to avoid detection was +mutual. The episode was tacitly and secretly intimate. She sat apart +from him with burning cheeks, while the full force of it came home to +her. She had been guilty of something she would not have her brothers +see, nor Olney see. Why had she done it? She had never done anything +like it in her life, and yet she had been moonlight-sailing with young +men before. She had never desired to do anything like it. She was +overcome with shame and with the mystery of her own burgeoning +womanhood. She stole a glance at Martin, who was busy putting the boat +about on the other tack, and she could have hated him for having made +her do an immodest and shameful thing. And he, of all men! Perhaps her +mother was right, and she was seeing too much of him. It would never +happen again, she resolved, and she would see less of him in the +future. She entertained a wild idea of explaining to him the first time +they were alone together, of lying to him, of mentioning casually the +attack of faintness that had overpowered her just before the moon came +up. Then she remembered how they had drawn mutually away before the +revealing moon, and she knew he would know it for a lie. + +In the days that swiftly followed she was no longer herself but a +strange, puzzling creature, wilful over judgment and scornful of +self-analysis, refusing to peer into the future or to think about +herself and whither she was drifting. She was in a fever of tingling +mystery, alternately frightened and charmed, and in constant +bewilderment. She had one idea firmly fixed, however, which insured her +security. She would not let Martin speak his love. As long as she did +this, all would be well. In a few days he would be off to sea. And even +if he did speak, all would be well. It could not be otherwise, for she +did not love him. Of course, it would be a painful half hour for him, +and an embarrassing half hour for her, because it would be her first +proposal. She thrilled deliciously at the thought. She was really a +woman, with a man ripe to ask for her in marriage. It was a lure to all +that was fundamental in her sex. The fabric of her life, of all that +constituted her, quivered and grew tremulous. The thought fluttered in +her mind like a flame-attracted moth. She went so far as to imagine +Martin proposing, herself putting the words into his mouth; and she +rehearsed her refusal, tempering it with kindness and exhorting him to +true and noble manhood. And especially he must stop smoking cigarettes. +She would make a point of that. But no, she must not let him speak at +all. She could stop him, and she had told her mother that she would. +All flushed and burning, she regretfully dismissed the conjured +situation. Her first proposal would have to be deferred to a more +propitious time and a more eligible suitor. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + + +Came a beautiful fall day, warm and languid, palpitant with the hush of +the changing season, a California Indian summer day, with hazy sun and +wandering wisps of breeze that did not stir the slumber of the air. +Filmy purple mists, that were not vapors but fabrics woven of color, +hid in the recesses of the hills. San Francisco lay like a blur of +smoke upon her heights. The intervening bay was a dull sheen of molten +metal, whereon sailing craft lay motionless or drifted with the lazy +tide. Far Tamalpais, barely seen in the silver haze, bulked hugely by +the Golden Gate, the latter a pale gold pathway under the westering +sun. Beyond, the Pacific, dim and vast, was raising on its sky-line +tumbled cloud-masses that swept landward, giving warning of the first +blustering breath of winter. + +The erasure of summer was at hand. Yet summer lingered, fading and +fainting among her hills, deepening the purple of her valleys, spinning +a shroud of haze from waning powers and sated raptures, dying with the +calm content of having lived and lived well. And among the hills, on +their favorite knoll, Martin and Ruth sat side by side, their heads +bent over the same pages, he reading aloud from the love-sonnets of the +woman who had loved Browning as it is given to few men to be loved. + +But the reading languished. The spell of passing beauty all about them +was too strong. The golden year was dying as it had lived, a beautiful +and unrepentant voluptuary, and reminiscent rapture and content +freighted heavily the air. It entered into them, dreamy and languorous, +weakening the fibres of resolution, suffusing the face of morality, or +of judgment, with haze and purple mist. Martin felt tender and melting, +and from time to time warm glows passed over him. His head was very +near to hers, and when wandering phantoms of breeze stirred her hair so +that it touched his face, the printed pages swam before his eyes. + +“I don’t believe you know a word of what you are reading,” she said +once when he had lost his place. + +He looked at her with burning eyes, and was on the verge of becoming +awkward, when a retort came to his lips. + +“I don’t believe you know either. What was the last sonnet about?” + +“I don’t know,” she laughed frankly. “I’ve already forgotten. Don’t let +us read any more. The day is too beautiful.” + +“It will be our last in the hills for some time,” he announced gravely. +“There’s a storm gathering out there on the sea-rim.” + +The book slipped from his hands to the ground, and they sat idly and +silently, gazing out over the dreamy bay with eyes that dreamed and did +not see. Ruth glanced sidewise at his neck. She did not lean toward +him. She was drawn by some force outside of herself and stronger than +gravitation, strong as destiny. It was only an inch to lean, and it was +accomplished without volition on her part. Her shoulder touched his as +lightly as a butterfly touches a flower, and just as lightly was the +counter-pressure. She felt his shoulder press hers, and a tremor run +through him. Then was the time for her to draw back. But she had become +an automaton. Her actions had passed beyond the control of her will—she +never thought of control or will in the delicious madness that was upon +her. His arm began to steal behind her and around her. She waited its +slow progress in a torment of delight. She waited, she knew not for +what, panting, with dry, burning lips, a leaping pulse, and a fever of +expectancy in all her blood. The girdling arm lifted higher and drew +her toward him, drew her slowly and caressingly. She could wait no +longer. With a tired sigh, and with an impulsive movement all her own, +unpremeditated, spasmodic, she rested her head upon his breast. His +head bent over swiftly, and, as his lips approached, hers flew to meet +them. + +This must be love, she thought, in the one rational moment that was +vouchsafed her. If it was not love, it was too shameful. It could be +nothing else than love. She loved the man whose arms were around her +and whose lips were pressed to hers. She pressed more tightly to him, +with a snuggling movement of her body. And a moment later, tearing +herself half out of his embrace, suddenly and exultantly she reached up +and placed both hands upon Martin Eden’s sunburnt neck. So exquisite +was the pang of love and desire fulfilled that she uttered a low moan, +relaxed her hands, and lay half-swooning in his arms. + +Not a word had been spoken, and not a word was spoken for a long time. +Twice he bent and kissed her, and each time her lips met his shyly and +her body made its happy, nestling movement. She clung to him, unable to +release herself, and he sat, half supporting her in his arms, as he +gazed with unseeing eyes at the blur of the great city across the bay. +For once there were no visions in his brain. Only colors and lights and +glows pulsed there, warm as the day and warm as his love. He bent over +her. She was speaking. + +“When did you love me?” she whispered. + +“From the first, the very first, the first moment I laid eye on you. I +was mad for love of you then, and in all the time that has passed since +then I have only grown the madder. I am maddest, now, dear. I am almost +a lunatic, my head is so turned with joy.” + +“I am glad I am a woman, Martin—dear,” she said, after a long sigh. + +He crushed her in his arms again and again, and then asked:- + +“And you? When did you first know?” + +“Oh, I knew it all the time, almost, from the first.” + +“And I have been as blind as a bat!” he cried, a ring of vexation in +his voice. “I never dreamed it until just how, when I—when I kissed +you.” + +“I didn’t mean that.” She drew herself partly away and looked at him. +“I meant I knew you loved almost from the first.” + +“And you?” he demanded. + +“It came to me suddenly.” She was speaking very slowly, her eyes warm +and fluttery and melting, a soft flush on her cheeks that did not go +away. “I never knew until just now when—you put your arms around me. +And I never expected to marry you, Martin, not until just now. How did +you make me love you?” + +“I don’t know,” he laughed, “unless just by loving you, for I loved you +hard enough to melt the heart of a stone, much less the heart of the +living, breathing woman you are.” + +“This is so different from what I thought love would be,” she announced +irrelevantly. + +“What did you think it would be like?” + +“I didn’t think it would be like this.” She was looking into his eyes +at the moment, but her own dropped as she continued, “You see, I didn’t +know what this was like.” + +He offered to draw her toward him again, but it was no more than a +tentative muscular movement of the girdling arm, for he feared that he +might be greedy. Then he felt her body yielding, and once again she was +close in his arms and lips were pressed on lips. + +“What will my people say?” she queried, with sudden apprehension, in +one of the pauses. + +“I don’t know. We can find out very easily any time we are so minded.” + +“But if mamma objects? I am sure I am afraid to tell her.” + +“Let me tell her,” he volunteered valiantly. “I think your mother does +not like me, but I can win her around. A fellow who can win you can win +anything. And if we don’t—” + +“Yes?” + +“Why, we’ll have each other. But there’s no danger not winning your +mother to our marriage. She loves you too well.” + +“I should not like to break her heart,” Ruth said pensively. + +He felt like assuring her that mothers’ hearts were not so easily +broken, but instead he said, “And love is the greatest thing in the +world.” + +“Do you know, Martin, you sometimes frighten me. I am frightened now, +when I think of you and of what you have been. You must be very, very +good to me. Remember, after all, that I am only a child. I never loved +before.” + +“Nor I. We are both children together. And we are fortunate above most, +for we have found our first love in each other.” + +“But that is impossible!” she cried, withdrawing herself from his arms +with a swift, passionate movement. “Impossible for you. You have been a +sailor, and sailors, I have heard, are—are—” + +Her voice faltered and died away. + +“Are addicted to having a wife in every port?” he suggested. “Is that +what you mean?” + +“Yes,” she answered in a low voice. + +“But that is not love.” He spoke authoritatively. “I have been in many +ports, but I never knew a passing touch of love until I saw you that +first night. Do you know, when I said good night and went away, I was +almost arrested.” + +“Arrested?” + +“Yes. The policeman thought I was drunk; and I was, too—with love for +you.” + +“But you said we were children, and I said it was impossible, for you, +and we have strayed away from the point.” + +“I said that I never loved anybody but you,” he replied. “You are my +first, my very first.” + +“And yet you have been a sailor,” she objected. + +“But that doesn’t prevent me from loving you the first.” + +“And there have been women—other women—oh!” + +And to Martin Eden’s supreme surprise, she burst into a storm of tears +that took more kisses than one and many caresses to drive away. And all +the while there was running through his head Kipling’s line: “_And the +Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady are sisters under their skins_.” It was +true, he decided; though the novels he had read had led him to believe +otherwise. His idea, for which the novels were responsible, had been +that only formal proposals obtained in the upper classes. It was all +right enough, down whence he had come, for youths and maidens to win +each other by contact; but for the exalted personages up above on the +heights to make love in similar fashion had seemed unthinkable. Yet the +novels were wrong. Here was a proof of it. The same pressures and +caresses, unaccompanied by speech, that were efficacious with the girls +of the working-class, were equally efficacious with the girls above the +working-class. They were all of the same flesh, after all, sisters +under their skins; and he might have known as much himself had he +remembered his Spencer. As he held Ruth in his arms and soothed her, he +took great consolation in the thought that the Colonel’s lady and Judy +O’Grady were pretty much alike under their skins. It brought Ruth +closer to him, made her possible. Her dear flesh was as anybody’s +flesh, as his flesh. There was no bar to their marriage. Class +difference was the only difference, and class was extrinsic. It could +be shaken off. A slave, he had read, had risen to the Roman purple. +That being so, then he could rise to Ruth. Under her purity, and +saintliness, and culture, and ethereal beauty of soul, she was, in +things fundamentally human, just like Lizzie Connolly and all Lizzie +Connollys. All that was possible of them was possible of her. She could +love, and hate, maybe have hysterics; and she could certainly be +jealous, as she was jealous now, uttering her last sobs in his arms. + +“Besides, I am older than you,” she remarked suddenly, opening her eyes +and looking up at him, “three years older.” + +“Hush, you are only a child, and I am forty years older than you, in +experience,” was his answer. + +In truth, they were children together, so far as love was concerned, +and they were as naive and immature in the expression of their love as +a pair of children, and this despite the fact that she was crammed with +a university education and that his head was full of scientific +philosophy and the hard facts of life. + +They sat on through the passing glory of the day, talking as lovers are +prone to talk, marvelling at the wonder of love and at destiny that had +flung them so strangely together, and dogmatically believing that they +loved to a degree never attained by lovers before. And they returned +insistently, again and again, to a rehearsal of their first impressions +of each other and to hopeless attempts to analyze just precisely what +they felt for each other and how much there was of it. + +The cloud-masses on the western horizon received the descending sun, +and the circle of the sky turned to rose, while the zenith glowed with +the same warm color. The rosy light was all about them, flooding over +them, as she sang, “Good-by, Sweet Day.” She sang softly, leaning in +the cradle of his arm, her hands in his, their hearts in each other’s +hands. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + + +Mrs. Morse did not require a mother’s intuition to read the +advertisement in Ruth’s face when she returned home. The flush that +would not leave the cheeks told the simple story, and more eloquently +did the eyes, large and bright, reflecting an unmistakable inward +glory. + +“What has happened?” Mrs. Morse asked, having bided her time till Ruth +had gone to bed. + +“You know?” Ruth queried, with trembling lips. + +For reply, her mother’s arm went around her, and a hand was softly +caressing her hair. + +“He did not speak,” she blurted out. “I did not intend that it should +happen, and I would never have let him speak—only he didn’t speak.” + +“But if he did not speak, then nothing could have happened, could it?” + +“But it did, just the same.” + +“In the name of goodness, child, what are you babbling about?” Mrs. +Morse was bewildered. “I don’t think I know what happened, after all. +What did happen?” + +Ruth looked at her mother in surprise. + +“I thought you knew. Why, we’re engaged, Martin and I.” + +Mrs. Morse laughed with incredulous vexation. + +“No, he didn’t speak,” Ruth explained. “He just loved me, that was all. +I was as surprised as you are. He didn’t say a word. He just put his +arm around me. And—and I was not myself. And he kissed me, and I kissed +him. I couldn’t help it. I just had to. And then I knew I loved him.” + +She paused, waiting with expectancy the benediction of her mother’s +kiss, but Mrs. Morse was coldly silent. + +“It is a dreadful accident, I know,” Ruth recommenced with a sinking +voice. “And I don’t know how you will ever forgive me. But I couldn’t +help it. I did not dream that I loved him until that moment. And you +must tell father for me.” + +“Would it not be better not to tell your father? Let me see Martin +Eden, and talk with him, and explain. He will understand and release +you.” + +“No! no!” Ruth cried, starting up. “I do not want to be released. I +love him, and love is very sweet. I am going to marry him—of course, if +you will let me.” + +“We have other plans for you, Ruth, dear, your father and I—oh, no, no; +no man picked out for you, or anything like that. Our plans go no +farther than your marrying some man in your own station in life, a good +and honorable gentleman, whom you will select yourself, when you love +him.” + +“But I love Martin already,” was the plaintive protest. + +“We would not influence your choice in any way; but you are our +daughter, and we could not bear to see you make a marriage such as +this. He has nothing but roughness and coarseness to offer you in +exchange for all that is refined and delicate in you. He is no match +for you in any way. He could not support you. We have no foolish ideas +about wealth, but comfort is another matter, and our daughter should at +least marry a man who can give her that—and not a penniless adventurer, +a sailor, a cowboy, a smuggler, and Heaven knows what else, who, in +addition to everything, is hare-brained and irresponsible.” + +Ruth was silent. Every word she recognized as true. + +“He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what +geniuses and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish. A +man thinking of marriage should be preparing for marriage. But not he. +As I have said, and I know you agree with me, he is irresponsible. And +why should he not be? It is the way of sailors. He has never learned to +be economical or temperate. The spendthrift years have marked him. It +is not his fault, of course, but that does not alter his nature. And +have you thought of the years of licentiousness he inevitably has +lived? Have you thought of that, daughter? You know what marriage +means.” + +Ruth shuddered and clung close to her mother. + +“I have thought.” Ruth waited a long time for the thought to frame +itself. “And it is terrible. It sickens me to think of it. I told you +it was a dreadful accident, my loving him; but I can’t help myself. +Could you help loving father? Then it is the same with me. There is +something in me, in him—I never knew it was there until to-day—but it +is there, and it makes me love him. I never thought to love him, but, +you see, I do,” she concluded, a certain faint triumph in her voice. + +They talked long, and to little purpose, in conclusion agreeing to wait +an indeterminate time without doing anything. + +The same conclusion was reached, a little later that night, between +Mrs. Morse and her husband, after she had made due confession of the +miscarriage of her plans. + +“It could hardly have come otherwise,” was Mr. Morse’s judgment. “This +sailor-fellow has been the only man she was in touch with. Sooner or +later she was going to awaken anyway; and she did awaken, and lo! here +was this sailor-fellow, the only accessible man at the moment, and of +course she promptly loved him, or thought she did, which amounts to the +same thing.” + +Mrs. Morse took it upon herself to work slowly and indirectly upon +Ruth, rather than to combat her. There would be plenty of time for +this, for Martin was not in position to marry. + +“Let her see all she wants of him,” was Mr. Morse’s advice. “The more +she knows him, the less she’ll love him, I wager. And give her plenty +of contrast. Make a point of having young people at the house. Young +women and young men, all sorts of young men, clever men, men who have +done something or who are doing things, men of her own class, +gentlemen. She can gauge him by them. They will show him up for what he +is. And after all, he is a mere boy of twenty-one. Ruth is no more than +a child. It is calf love with the pair of them, and they will grow out +of it.” + +So the matter rested. Within the family it was accepted that Ruth and +Martin were engaged, but no announcement was made. The family did not +think it would ever be necessary. Also, it was tacitly understood that +it was to be a long engagement. They did not ask Martin to go to work, +nor to cease writing. They did not intend to encourage him to mend +himself. And he aided and abetted them in their unfriendly designs, for +going to work was farthest from his thoughts. + +“I wonder if you’ll like what I have done!” he said to Ruth several +days later. “I’ve decided that boarding with my sister is too +expensive, and I am going to board myself. I’ve rented a little room +out in North Oakland, retired neighborhood and all the rest, you know, +and I’ve bought an oil-burner on which to cook.” + +Ruth was overjoyed. The oil-burner especially pleased her. + +“That was the way Mr. Butler began his start,” she said. + +Martin frowned inwardly at the citation of that worthy gentleman, and +went on: “I put stamps on all my manuscripts and started them off to +the editors again. Then to-day I moved in, and to-morrow I start to +work.” + +“A position!” she cried, betraying the gladness of her surprise in all +her body, nestling closer to him, pressing his hand, smiling. “And you +never told me! What is it?” + +He shook his head. + +“I meant that I was going to work at my writing.” Her face fell, and he +went on hastily. “Don’t misjudge me. I am not going in this time with +any iridescent ideas. It is to be a cold, prosaic, matter-of-fact +business proposition. It is better than going to sea again, and I shall +earn more money than any position in Oakland can bring an unskilled +man.” + +“You see, this vacation I have taken has given me perspective. I +haven’t been working the life out of my body, and I haven’t been +writing, at least not for publication. All I’ve done has been to love +you and to think. I’ve read some, too, but it has been part of my +thinking, and I have read principally magazines. I have generalized +about myself, and the world, my place in it, and my chance to win to a +place that will be fit for you. Also, I’ve been reading Spencer’s +‘Philosophy of Style,’ and found out a lot of what was the matter with +me—or my writing, rather; and for that matter with most of the writing +that is published every month in the magazines.” + +“But the upshot of it all—of my thinking and reading and loving—is that +I am going to move to Grub Street. I shall leave masterpieces alone and +do hack-work—jokes, paragraphs, feature articles, humorous verse, and +society verse—all the rot for which there seems so much demand. Then +there are the newspaper syndicates, and the newspaper short-story +syndicates, and the syndicates for the Sunday supplements. I can go +ahead and hammer out the stuff they want, and earn the equivalent of a +good salary by it. There are free-lances, you know, who earn as much as +four or five hundred a month. I don’t care to become as they; but I’ll +earn a good living, and have plenty of time to myself, which I wouldn’t +have in any position.” + +“Then, I’ll have my spare time for study and for real work. In between +the grind I’ll try my hand at masterpieces, and I’ll study and prepare +myself for the writing of masterpieces. Why, I am amazed at the +distance I have come already. When I first tried to write, I had +nothing to write about except a few paltry experiences which I neither +understood nor appreciated. But I had no thoughts. I really didn’t. I +didn’t even have the words with which to think. My experiences were so +many meaningless pictures. But as I began to add to my knowledge, and +to my vocabulary, I saw something more in my experiences than mere +pictures. I retained the pictures and I found their interpretation. +That was when I began to do good work, when I wrote ‘Adventure,’ ‘Joy,’ +‘The Pot,’ ‘The Wine of Life,’ ‘The Jostling Street,’ the ‘Love-cycle,’ +and the ‘Sea Lyrics.’ I shall write more like them, and better; but I +shall do it in my spare time. My feet are on the solid earth, now. +Hack-work and income first, masterpieces afterward. Just to show you, I +wrote half a dozen jokes last night for the comic weeklies; and just as +I was going to bed, the thought struck me to try my hand at a triolet—a +humorous one; and inside an hour I had written four. They ought to be +worth a dollar apiece. Four dollars right there for a few afterthoughts +on the way to bed.” + +“Of course it’s all valueless, just so much dull and sordid plodding; +but it is no more dull and sordid than keeping books at sixty dollars a +month, adding up endless columns of meaningless figures until one dies. +And furthermore, the hack-work keeps me in touch with things literary +and gives me time to try bigger things.” + +“But what good are these bigger things, these masterpieces?” Ruth +demanded. “You can’t sell them.” + +“Oh, yes, I can,” he began; but she interrupted. + +“All those you named, and which you say yourself are good—you have not +sold any of them. We can’t get married on masterpieces that won’t +sell.” + +“Then we’ll get married on triolets that will sell,” he asserted +stoutly, putting his arm around her and drawing a very unresponsive +sweetheart toward him. + +“Listen to this,” he went on in attempted gayety. “It’s not art, but +it’s a dollar. + +“He came in + When I was out, +To borrow some tin +Was why he came in, + And he went without; +So I was in + And he was out.” + + +The merry lilt with which he had invested the jingle was at variance +with the dejection that came into his face as he finished. He had drawn +no smile from Ruth. She was looking at him in an earnest and troubled +way. + +“It may be a dollar,” she said, “but it is a jester’s dollar, the fee +of a clown. Don’t you see, Martin, the whole thing is lowering. I want +the man I love and honor to be something finer and higher than a +perpetrator of jokes and doggerel.” + +“You want him to be like—say Mr. Butler?” he suggested. + +“I know you don’t like Mr. Butler,” she began. + +“Mr. Butler’s all right,” he interrupted. “It’s only his indigestion I +find fault with. But to save me I can’t see any difference between +writing jokes or comic verse and running a type-writer, taking +dictation, or keeping sets of books. It is all a means to an end. Your +theory is for me to begin with keeping books in order to become a +successful lawyer or man of business. Mine is to begin with hack-work +and develop into an able author.” + +“There is a difference,” she insisted. + +“What is it?” + +“Why, your good work, what you yourself call good, you can’t sell. You +have tried, you know that,—but the editors won’t buy it.” + +“Give me time, dear,” he pleaded. “The hack-work is only makeshift, and +I don’t take it seriously. Give me two years. I shall succeed in that +time, and the editors will be glad to buy my good work. I know what I +am saying; I have faith in myself. I know what I have in me; I know +what literature is, now; I know the average rot that is poured out by a +lot of little men; and I know that at the end of two years I shall be +on the highroad to success. As for business, I shall never succeed at +it. I am not in sympathy with it. It strikes me as dull, and stupid, +and mercenary, and tricky. Anyway I am not adapted for it. I’d never +get beyond a clerkship, and how could you and I be happy on the paltry +earnings of a clerk? I want the best of everything in the world for +you, and the only time when I won’t want it will be when there is +something better. And I’m going to get it, going to get all of it. The +income of a successful author makes Mr. Butler look cheap. A +‘best-seller’ will earn anywhere between fifty and a hundred thousand +dollars—sometimes more and sometimes less; but, as a rule, pretty close +to those figures.” + +She remained silent; her disappointment was apparent. + +“Well?” he asked. + +“I had hoped and planned otherwise. I had thought, and I still think, +that the best thing for you would be to study shorthand—you already +know type-writing—and go into father’s office. You have a good mind, +and I am confident you would succeed as a lawyer.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + + +That Ruth had little faith in his power as a writer, did not alter her +nor diminish her in Martin’s eyes. In the breathing spell of the +vacation he had taken, he had spent many hours in self-analysis, and +thereby learned much of himself. He had discovered that he loved beauty +more than fame, and that what desire he had for fame was largely for +Ruth’s sake. It was for this reason that his desire for fame was +strong. He wanted to be great in the world’s eyes; “to make good,” as +he expressed it, in order that the woman he loved should be proud of +him and deem him worthy. + +As for himself, he loved beauty passionately, and the joy of serving +her was to him sufficient wage. And more than beauty he loved Ruth. He +considered love the finest thing in the world. It was love that had +worked the revolution in him, changing him from an uncouth sailor to a +student and an artist; therefore, to him, the finest and greatest of +the three, greater than learning and artistry, was love. Already he had +discovered that his brain went beyond Ruth’s, just as it went beyond +the brains of her brothers, or the brain of her father. In spite of +every advantage of university training, and in the face of her +bachelorship of arts, his power of intellect overshadowed hers, and his +year or so of self-study and equipment gave him a mastery of the +affairs of the world and art and life that she could never hope to +possess. + +All this he realized, but it did not affect his love for her, nor her +love for him. Love was too fine and noble, and he was too loyal a lover +for him to besmirch love with criticism. What did love have to do with +Ruth’s divergent views on art, right conduct, the French Revolution, or +equal suffrage? They were mental processes, but love was beyond reason; +it was superrational. He could not belittle love. He worshipped it. +Love lay on the mountain-tops beyond the valley-land of reason. It was +a sublimated condition of existence, the topmost peak of living, and it +came rarely. Thanks to the school of scientific philosophers he +favored, he knew the biological significance of love; but by a refined +process of the same scientific reasoning he reached the conclusion that +the human organism achieved its highest purpose in love, that love must +not be questioned, but must be accepted as the highest guerdon of life. +Thus, he considered the lover blessed over all creatures, and it was a +delight to him to think of “God’s own mad lover,” rising above the +things of earth, above wealth and judgment, public opinion and +applause, rising above life itself and “dying on a kiss.” + +Much of this Martin had already reasoned out, and some of it he +reasoned out later. In the meantime he worked, taking no recreation +except when he went to see Ruth, and living like a Spartan. He paid two +dollars and a half a month rent for the small room he got from his +Portuguese landlady, Maria Silva, a virago and a widow, hard working +and harsher tempered, rearing her large brood of children somehow, and +drowning her sorrow and fatigue at irregular intervals in a gallon of +the thin, sour wine that she bought from the corner grocery and saloon +for fifteen cents. From detesting her and her foul tongue at first, +Martin grew to admire her as he observed the brave fight she made. +There were but four rooms in the little house—three, when Martin’s was +subtracted. One of these, the parlor, gay with an ingrain carpet and +dolorous with a funeral card and a death-picture of one of her numerous +departed babes, was kept strictly for company. The blinds were always +down, and her barefooted tribe was never permitted to enter the sacred +precinct save on state occasions. She cooked, and all ate, in the +kitchen, where she likewise washed, starched, and ironed clothes on all +days of the week except Sunday; for her income came largely from taking +in washing from her more prosperous neighbors. Remained the bedroom, +small as the one occupied by Martin, into which she and her seven +little ones crowded and slept. It was an everlasting miracle to Martin +how it was accomplished, and from her side of the thin partition he +heard nightly every detail of the going to bed, the squalls and +squabbles, the soft chattering, and the sleepy, twittering noises as of +birds. Another source of income to Maria were her cows, two of them, +which she milked night and morning and which gained a surreptitious +livelihood from vacant lots and the grass that grew on either side the +public side walks, attended always by one or more of her ragged boys, +whose watchful guardianship consisted chiefly in keeping their eyes out +for the poundmen. + +In his own small room Martin lived, slept, studied, wrote, and kept +house. Before the one window, looking out on the tiny front porch, was +the kitchen table that served as desk, library, and type-writing stand. +The bed, against the rear wall, occupied two-thirds of the total space +of the room. The table was flanked on one side by a gaudy bureau, +manufactured for profit and not for service, the thin veneer of which +was shed day by day. This bureau stood in the corner, and in the +opposite corner, on the table’s other flank, was the kitchen—the +oil-stove on a dry-goods box, inside of which were dishes and cooking +utensils, a shelf on the wall for provisions, and a bucket of water on +the floor. Martin had to carry his water from the kitchen sink, there +being no tap in his room. On days when there was much steam to his +cooking, the harvest of veneer from the bureau was unusually generous. +Over the bed, hoisted by a tackle to the ceiling, was his bicycle. At +first he had tried to keep it in the basement; but the tribe of Silva, +loosening the bearings and puncturing the tires, had driven him out. +Next he attempted the tiny front porch, until a howling southeaster +drenched the wheel a night-long. Then he had retreated with it to his +room and slung it aloft. + +A small closet contained his clothes and the books he had accumulated +and for which there was no room on the table or under the table. Hand +in hand with reading, he had developed the habit of making notes, and +so copiously did he make them that there would have been no existence +for him in the confined quarters had he not rigged several +clothes-lines across the room on which the notes were hung. Even so, he +was crowded until navigating the room was a difficult task. He could +not open the door without first closing the closet door, and _vice +versa_. It was impossible for him anywhere to traverse the room in a +straight line. To go from the door to the head of the bed was a zigzag +course that he was never quite able to accomplish in the dark without +collisions. Having settled the difficulty of the conflicting doors, he +had to steer sharply to the right to avoid the kitchen. Next, he +sheered to the left, to escape the foot of the bed; but this sheer, if +too generous, brought him against the corner of the table. With a +sudden twitch and lurch, he terminated the sheer and bore off to the +right along a sort of canal, one bank of which was the bed, the other +the table. When the one chair in the room was at its usual place before +the table, the canal was unnavigable. When the chair was not in use, it +reposed on top of the bed, though sometimes he sat on the chair when +cooking, reading a book while the water boiled, and even becoming +skilful enough to manage a paragraph or two while steak was frying. +Also, so small was the little corner that constituted the kitchen, he +was able, sitting down, to reach anything he needed. In fact, it was +expedient to cook sitting down; standing up, he was too often in his +own way. + +In conjunction with a perfect stomach that could digest anything, he +possessed knowledge of the various foods that were at the same time +nutritious and cheap. Pea-soup was a common article in his diet, as +well as potatoes and beans, the latter large and brown and cooked in +Mexican style. Rice, cooked as American housewives never cook it and +can never learn to cook it, appeared on Martin’s table at least once a +day. Dried fruits were less expensive than fresh, and he had usually a +pot of them, cooked and ready at hand, for they took the place of +butter on his bread. Occasionally he graced his table with a piece of +round-steak, or with a soup-bone. Coffee, without cream or milk, he had +twice a day, in the evening substituting tea; but both coffee and tea +were excellently cooked. + +There was need for him to be economical. His vacation had consumed +nearly all he had earned in the laundry, and he was so far from his +market that weeks must elapse before he could hope for the first +returns from his hack-work. Except at such times as he saw Ruth, or +dropped in to see his sister Gertude, he lived a recluse, in each day +accomplishing at least three days’ labor of ordinary men. He slept a +scant five hours, and only one with a constitution of iron could have +held himself down, as Martin did, day after day, to nineteen +consecutive hours of toil. He never lost a moment. On the looking-glass +were lists of definitions and pronunciations; when shaving, or +dressing, or combing his hair, he conned these lists over. Similar +lists were on the wall over the oil-stove, and they were similarly +conned while he was engaged in cooking or in washing the dishes. New +lists continually displaced the old ones. Every strange or partly +familiar word encountered in his reading was immediately jotted down, +and later, when a sufficient number had been accumulated, were typed +and pinned to the wall or looking-glass. He even carried them in his +pockets, and reviewed them at odd moments on the street, or while +waiting in butcher shop or grocery to be served. + +He went farther in the matter. Reading the works of men who had +arrived, he noted every result achieved by them, and worked out the +tricks by which they had been achieved—the tricks of narrative, of +exposition, of style, the points of view, the contrasts, the epigrams; +and of all these he made lists for study. He did not ape. He sought +principles. He drew up lists of effective and fetching mannerisms, till +out of many such, culled from many writers, he was able to induce the +general principle of mannerism, and, thus equipped, to cast about for +new and original ones of his own, and to weigh and measure and appraise +them properly. In similar manner he collected lists of strong phrases, +the phrases of living language, phrases that bit like acid and scorched +like flame, or that glowed and were mellow and luscious in the midst of +the arid desert of common speech. He sought always for the principle +that lay behind and beneath. He wanted to know how the thing was done; +after that he could do it for himself. He was not content with the fair +face of beauty. He dissected beauty in his crowded little bedroom +laboratory, where cooking smells alternated with the outer bedlam of +the Silva tribe; and, having dissected and learned the anatomy of +beauty, he was nearer being able to create beauty itself. + +He was so made that he could work only with understanding. He could not +work blindly, in the dark, ignorant of what he was producing and +trusting to chance and the star of his genius that the effect produced +should be right and fine. He had no patience with chance effects. He +wanted to know why and how. His was deliberate creative genius, and, +before he began a story or poem, the thing itself was already alive in +his brain, with the end in sight and the means of realizing that end in +his conscious possession. Otherwise the effort was doomed to failure. +On the other hand, he appreciated the chance effects in words and +phrases that came lightly and easily into his brain, and that later +stood all tests of beauty and power and developed tremendous and +incommunicable connotations. Before such he bowed down and marvelled, +knowing that they were beyond the deliberate creation of any man. And +no matter how much he dissected beauty in search of the principles that +underlie beauty and make beauty possible, he was aware, always, of the +innermost mystery of beauty to which he did not penetrate and to which +no man had ever penetrated. He knew full well, from his Spencer, that +man can never attain ultimate knowledge of anything, and that the +mystery of beauty was no less than that of life—nay, more—that the +fibres of beauty and life were intertwisted, and that he himself was +but a bit of the same nonunderstandable fabric, twisted of sunshine and +star-dust and wonder. + +In fact, it was when filled with these thoughts that he wrote his essay +entitled “Star-dust,” in which he had his fling, not at the principles +of criticism, but at the principal critics. It was brilliant, deep, +philosophical, and deliciously touched with laughter. Also it was +promptly rejected by the magazines as often as it was submitted. But +having cleared his mind of it, he went serenely on his way. It was a +habit he developed, of incubating and maturing his thought upon a +subject, and of then rushing into the type-writer with it. That it did +not see print was a matter of small moment with him. The writing of it +was the culminating act of a long mental process, the drawing together +of scattered threads of thought and the final generalizing upon all the +data with which his mind was burdened. To write such an article was the +conscious effort by which he freed his mind and made it ready for fresh +material and problems. It was in a way akin to that common habit of men +and women troubled by real or fancied grievances, who periodically and +volubly break their long-suffering silence and “have their say” till +the last word is said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + + +The weeks passed. Martin ran out of money, and publishers’ checks were +far away as ever. All his important manuscripts had come back and been +started out again, and his hack-work fared no better. His little +kitchen was no longer graced with a variety of foods. Caught in the +pinch with a part sack of rice and a few pounds of dried apricots, rice +and apricots was his menu three times a day for five days hand-running. +Then he startled to realize on his credit. The Portuguese grocer, to +whom he had hitherto paid cash, called a halt when Martin’s bill +reached the magnificent total of three dollars and eighty-five cents. + +“For you see,” said the grocer, “you no catcha da work, I losa da +mon’.” + +And Martin could reply nothing. There was no way of explaining. It was +not true business principle to allow credit to a strong-bodied young +fellow of the working-class who was too lazy to work. + +“You catcha da job, I let you have mora da grub,” the grocer assured +Martin. “No job, no grub. Thata da business.” And then, to show that it +was purely business foresight and not prejudice, “Hava da drink on da +house—good friends justa da same.” + +So Martin drank, in his easy way, to show that he was good friends with +the house, and then went supperless to bed. + +The fruit store, where Martin had bought his vegetables, was run by an +American whose business principles were so weak that he let Martin run +a bill of five dollars before stopping his credit. The baker stopped at +two dollars, and the butcher at four dollars. Martin added his debts +and found that he was possessed of a total credit in all the world of +fourteen dollars and eighty-five cents. He was up with his type-writer +rent, but he estimated that he could get two months’ credit on that, +which would be eight dollars. When that occurred, he would have +exhausted all possible credit. + +The last purchase from the fruit store had been a sack of potatoes, and +for a week he had potatoes, and nothing but potatoes, three times a +day. An occasional dinner at Ruth’s helped to keep strength in his +body, though he found it tantalizing enough to refuse further helping +when his appetite was raging at sight of so much food spread before it. +Now and again, though afflicted with secret shame, he dropped in at his +sister’s at meal-time and ate as much as he dared—more than he dared at +the Morse table. + +Day by day he worked on, and day by day the postman delivered to him +rejected manuscripts. He had no money for stamps, so the manuscripts +accumulated in a heap under the table. Came a day when for forty hours +he had not tasted food. He could not hope for a meal at Ruth’s, for she +was away to San Rafael on a two weeks’ visit; and for very shame’s sake +he could not go to his sister’s. To cap misfortune, the postman, in his +afternoon round, brought him five returned manuscripts. Then it was +that Martin wore his overcoat down into Oakland, and came back without +it, but with five dollars tinkling in his pocket. He paid a dollar each +on account to the four tradesmen, and in his kitchen fried steak and +onions, made coffee, and stewed a large pot of prunes. And having +dined, he sat down at his table-desk and completed before midnight an +essay which he entitled “The Dignity of Usury.” Having typed it out, he +flung it under the table, for there had been nothing left from the five +dollars with which to buy stamps. + +Later on he pawned his watch, and still later his wheel, reducing the +amount available for food by putting stamps on all his manuscripts and +sending them out. He was disappointed with his hack-work. Nobody cared +to buy. He compared it with what he found in the newspapers, weeklies, +and cheap magazines, and decided that his was better, far better, than +the average; yet it would not sell. Then he discovered that most of the +newspapers printed a great deal of what was called “plate” stuff, and +he got the address of the association that furnished it. His own work +that he sent in was returned, along with a stereotyped slip informing +him that the staff supplied all the copy that was needed. + +In one of the great juvenile periodicals he noted whole columns of +incident and anecdote. Here was a chance. His paragraphs were returned, +and though he tried repeatedly he never succeeded in placing one. Later +on, when it no longer mattered, he learned that the associate editors +and sub-editors augmented their salaries by supplying those paragraphs +themselves. The comic weeklies returned his jokes and humorous verse, +and the light society verse he wrote for the large magazines found no +abiding-place. Then there was the newspaper storiette. He knew that he +could write better ones than were published. Managing to obtain the +addresses of two newspaper syndicates, he deluged them with storiettes. +When he had written twenty and failed to place one of them, he ceased. +And yet, from day to day, he read storiettes in the dailies and +weeklies, scores and scores of storiettes, not one of which would +compare with his. In his despondency, he concluded that he had no +judgment whatever, that he was hypnotized by what he wrote, and that he +was a self-deluded pretender. + +The inhuman editorial machine ran smoothly as ever. He folded the +stamps in with his manuscript, dropped it into the letter-box, and from +three weeks to a month afterward the postman came up the steps and +handed him the manuscript. Surely there were no live, warm editors at +the other end. It was all wheels and cogs and oil-cups—a clever +mechanism operated by automatons. He reached stages of despair wherein +he doubted if editors existed at all. He had never received a sign of +the existence of one, and from absence of judgment in rejecting all he +wrote it seemed plausible that editors were myths, manufactured and +maintained by office boys, typesetters, and pressmen. + +The hours he spent with Ruth were the only happy ones he had, and they +were not all happy. He was afflicted always with a gnawing +restlessness, more tantalizing than in the old days before he possessed +her love; for now that he did possess her love, the possession of her +was far away as ever. He had asked for two years; time was flying, and +he was achieving nothing. Again, he was always conscious of the fact +that she did not approve what he was doing. She did not say so +directly. Yet indirectly she let him understand it as clearly and +definitely as she could have spoken it. It was not resentment with her, +but disapproval; though less sweet-natured women might have resented +where she was no more than disappointed. Her disappointment lay in that +this man she had taken to mould, refused to be moulded. To a certain +extent she had found his clay plastic, then it had developed +stubbornness, declining to be shaped in the image of her father or of +Mr. Butler. + +What was great and strong in him, she missed, or, worse yet, +misunderstood. This man, whose clay was so plastic that he could live +in any number of pigeonholes of human existence, she thought wilful and +most obstinate because she could not shape him to live in her +pigeonhole, which was the only one she knew. She could not follow the +flights of his mind, and when his brain got beyond her, she deemed him +erratic. Nobody else’s brain ever got beyond her. She could always +follow her father and mother, her brothers and Olney; wherefore, when +she could not follow Martin, she believed the fault lay with him. It +was the old tragedy of insularity trying to serve as mentor to the +universal. + +“You worship at the shrine of the established,” he told her once, in a +discussion they had over Praps and Vanderwater. “I grant that as +authorities to quote they are most excellent—the two foremost literary +critics in the United States. Every school teacher in the land looks up +to Vanderwater as the Dean of American criticism. Yet I read his stuff, +and it seems to me the perfection of the felicitous expression of the +inane. Why, he is no more than a ponderous bromide, thanks to Gelett +Burgess. And Praps is no better. His ‘Hemlock Mosses,’ for instance is +beautifully written. Not a comma is out of place; and the tone—ah!—is +lofty, so lofty. He is the best-paid critic in the United States. +Though, Heaven forbid! he’s not a critic at all. They do criticism +better in England. + +“But the point is, they sound the popular note, and they sound it so +beautifully and morally and contentedly. Their reviews remind me of a +British Sunday. They are the popular mouthpieces. They back up your +professors of English, and your professors of English back them up. And +there isn’t an original idea in any of their skulls. They know only the +established,—in fact, they are the established. They are weak minded, +and the established impresses itself upon them as easily as the name of +the brewery is impressed on a beer bottle. And their function is to +catch all the young fellows attending the university, to drive out of +their minds any glimmering originality that may chance to be there, and +to put upon them the stamp of the established.” + +“I think I am nearer the truth,” she replied, “when I stand by the +established, than you are, raging around like an iconoclastic South Sea +Islander.” + +“It was the missionary who did the image breaking,” he laughed. “And +unfortunately, all the missionaries are off among the heathen, so there +are none left at home to break those old images, Mr. Vanderwater and +Mr. Praps.” + +“And the college professors, as well,” she added. + +He shook his head emphatically. “No; the science professors should +live. They’re really great. But it would be a good deed to break the +heads of nine-tenths of the English professors—little, +microscopic-minded parrots!” + +Which was rather severe on the professors, but which to Ruth was +blasphemy. She could not help but measure the professors, neat, +scholarly, in fitting clothes, speaking in well-modulated voices, +breathing of culture and refinement, with this almost indescribable +young fellow whom somehow she loved, whose clothes never would fit him, +whose heavy muscles told of damning toil, who grew excited when he +talked, substituting abuse for calm statement and passionate utterance +for cool self-possession. They at least earned good salaries and +were—yes, she compelled herself to face it—were gentlemen; while he +could not earn a penny, and he was not as they. + +She did not weigh Martin’s words nor judge his argument by them. Her +conclusion that his argument was wrong was reached—unconsciously, it is +true—by a comparison of externals. They, the professors, were right in +their literary judgments because they were successes. Martin’s literary +judgments were wrong because he could not sell his wares. To use his +own phrase, they made good, and he did not make good. And besides, it +did not seem reasonable that he should be right—he who had stood, so +short a time before, in that same living room, blushing and awkward, +acknowledging his introduction, looking fearfully about him at the +bric-a-brac his swinging shoulders threatened to break, asking how long +since Swinburne died, and boastfully announcing that he had read +“Excelsior” and the “Psalm of Life.” + +Unwittingly, Ruth herself proved his point that she worshipped the +established. Martin followed the processes of her thoughts, but forbore +to go farther. He did not love her for what she thought of Praps and +Vanderwater and English professors, and he was coming to realize, with +increasing conviction, that he possessed brain-areas and stretches of +knowledge which she could never comprehend nor know existed. + +In music she thought him unreasonable, and in the matter of opera not +only unreasonable but wilfully perverse. + +“How did you like it?” she asked him one night, on the way home from +the opera. + +It was a night when he had taken her at the expense of a month’s rigid +economizing on food. After vainly waiting for him to speak about it, +herself still tremulous and stirred by what she had just seen and +heard, she had asked the question. + +“I liked the overture,” was his answer. “It was splendid.” + +“Yes, but the opera itself?” + +“That was splendid too; that is, the orchestra was, though I’d have +enjoyed it more if those jumping-jacks had kept quiet or gone off the +stage.” + +Ruth was aghast. + +“You don’t mean Tetralani or Barillo?” she queried. + +“All of them—the whole kit and crew.” + +“But they are great artists,” she protested. + +“They spoiled the music just the same, with their antics and +unrealities.” + +“But don’t you like Barillo’s voice?” Ruth asked. “He is next to +Caruso, they say.” + +“Of course I liked him, and I liked Tetralani even better. Her voice is +exquisite—or at least I think so.” + +“But, but—” Ruth stammered. “I don’t know what you mean, then. You +admire their voices, yet say they spoiled the music.” + +“Precisely that. I’d give anything to hear them in concert, and I’d +give even a bit more not to hear them when the orchestra is playing. +I’m afraid I am a hopeless realist. Great singers are not great actors. +To hear Barillo sing a love passage with the voice of an angel, and to +hear Tetralani reply like another angel, and to hear it all accompanied +by a perfect orgy of glowing and colorful music—is ravishing, most +ravishing. I do not admit it. I assert it. But the whole effect is +spoiled when I look at them—at Tetralani, five feet ten in her stocking +feet and weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, and at Barillo, a scant +five feet four, greasy-featured, with the chest of a squat, undersized +blacksmith, and at the pair of them, attitudinizing, clasping their +breasts, flinging their arms in the air like demented creatures in an +asylum; and when I am expected to accept all this as the faithful +illusion of a love-scene between a slender and beautiful princess and a +handsome, romantic, young prince—why, I can’t accept it, that’s all. +It’s rot; it’s absurd; it’s unreal. That’s what’s the matter with it. +It’s not real. Don’t tell me that anybody in this world ever made love +that way. Why, if I’d made love to you in such fashion, you’d have +boxed my ears.” + +“But you misunderstand,” Ruth protested. “Every form of art has its +limitations.” (She was busy recalling a lecture she had heard at the +university on the conventions of the arts.) “In painting there are only +two dimensions to the canvas, yet you accept the illusion of three +dimensions which the art of a painter enables him to throw into the +canvas. In writing, again, the author must be omnipotent. You accept as +perfectly legitimate the author’s account of the secret thoughts of the +heroine, and yet all the time you know that the heroine was alone when +thinking these thoughts, and that neither the author nor any one else +was capable of hearing them. And so with the stage, with sculpture, +with opera, with every art form. Certain irreconcilable things must be +accepted.” + +“Yes, I understood that,” Martin answered. “All the arts have their +conventions.” (Ruth was surprised at his use of the word. It was as if +he had studied at the university himself, instead of being ill-equipped +from browsing at haphazard through the books in the library.) “But even +the conventions must be real. Trees, painted on flat cardboard and +stuck up on each side of the stage, we accept as a forest. It is a real +enough convention. But, on the other hand, we would not accept a sea +scene as a forest. We can’t do it. It violates our senses. Nor would +you, or, rather, should you, accept the ravings and writhings and +agonized contortions of those two lunatics to-night as a convincing +portrayal of love.” + +“But you don’t hold yourself superior to all the judges of music?” she +protested. + +“No, no, not for a moment. I merely maintain my right as an individual. +I have just been telling you what I think, in order to explain why the +elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the orchestra for me. The +world’s judges of music may all be right. But I am I, and I won’t +subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind. If I don’t +like a thing, I don’t like it, that’s all; and there is no reason under +the sun why I should ape a liking for it just because the majority of +my fellow-creatures like it, or make believe they like it. I can’t +follow the fashions in the things I like or dislike.” + +“But music, you know, is a matter of training,” Ruth argued; “and opera +is even more a matter of training. May it not be—” + +“That I am not trained in opera?” he dashed in. + +She nodded. + +“The very thing,” he agreed. “And I consider I am fortunate in not +having been caught when I was young. If I had, I could have wept +sentimental tears to-night, and the clownish antics of that precious +pair would have but enhanced the beauty of their voices and the beauty +of the accompanying orchestra. You are right. It’s mostly a matter of +training. And I am too old, now. I must have the real or nothing. An +illusion that won’t convince is a palpable lie, and that’s what grand +opera is to me when little Barillo throws a fit, clutches mighty +Tetralani in his arms (also in a fit), and tells her how passionately +he adores her.” + +Again Ruth measured his thoughts by comparison of externals and in +accordance with her belief in the established. Who was he that he +should be right and all the cultured world wrong? His words and +thoughts made no impression upon her. She was too firmly intrenched in +the established to have any sympathy with revolutionary ideas. She had +always been used to music, and she had enjoyed opera ever since she was +a child, and all her world had enjoyed it, too. Then by what right did +Martin Eden emerge, as he had so recently emerged, from his rag-time +and working-class songs, and pass judgment on the world’s music? She +was vexed with him, and as she walked beside him she had a vague +feeling of outrage. At the best, in her most charitable frame of mind, +she considered the statement of his views to be a caprice, an erratic +and uncalled-for prank. But when he took her in his arms at the door +and kissed her good night in tender lover-fashion, she forgot +everything in the outrush of her own love to him. And later, on a +sleepless pillow, she puzzled, as she had often puzzled of late, as to +how it was that she loved so strange a man, and loved him despite the +disapproval of her people. + +And next day Martin Eden cast hack-work aside, and at white heat +hammered out an essay to which he gave the title, “The Philosophy of +Illusion.” A stamp started it on its travels, but it was destined to +receive many stamps and to be started on many travels in the months +that followed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + + +Maria Silva was poor, and all the ways of poverty were clear to her. +Poverty, to Ruth, was a word signifying a not-nice condition of +existence. That was her total knowledge on the subject. She knew Martin +was poor, and his condition she associated in her mind with the boyhood +of Abraham Lincoln, of Mr. Butler, and of other men who had become +successes. Also, while aware that poverty was anything but delectable, +she had a comfortable middle-class feeling that poverty was salutary, +that it was a sharp spur that urged on to success all men who were not +degraded and hopeless drudges. So that her knowledge that Martin was so +poor that he had pawned his watch and overcoat did not disturb her. She +even considered it the hopeful side of the situation, believing that +sooner or later it would arouse him and compel him to abandon his +writing. + +Ruth never read hunger in Martin’s face, which had grown lean and had +enlarged the slight hollows in the cheeks. In fact, she marked the +change in his face with satisfaction. It seemed to refine him, to +remove from him much of the dross of flesh and the too animal-like +vigor that lured her while she detested it. Sometimes, when with her, +she noted an unusual brightness in his eyes, and she admired it, for it +made him appear more the poet and the scholar—the things he would have +liked to be and which she would have liked him to be. But Maria Silva +read a different tale in the hollow cheeks and the burning eyes, and +she noted the changes in them from day to day, by them following the +ebb and flow of his fortunes. She saw him leave the house with his +overcoat and return without it, though the day was chill and raw, and +promptly she saw his cheeks fill out slightly and the fire of hunger +leave his eyes. In the same way she had seen his wheel and watch go, +and after each event she had seen his vigor bloom again. + +Likewise she watched his toils, and knew the measure of the midnight +oil he burned. Work! She knew that he outdid her, though his work was +of a different order. And she was surprised to behold that the less +food he had, the harder he worked. On occasion, in a casual sort of +way, when she thought hunger pinched hardest, she would send him in a +loaf of new baking, awkwardly covering the act with banter to the +effect that it was better than he could bake. And again, she would send +one of her toddlers in to him with a great pitcher of hot soup, +debating inwardly the while whether she was justified in taking it from +the mouths of her own flesh and blood. Nor was Martin ungrateful, +knowing as he did the lives of the poor, and that if ever in the world +there was charity, this was it. + +On a day when she had filled her brood with what was left in the house, +Maria invested her last fifteen cents in a gallon of cheap wine. +Martin, coming into her kitchen to fetch water, was invited to sit down +and drink. He drank her very-good health, and in return she drank his. +Then she drank to prosperity in his undertakings, and he drank to the +hope that James Grant would show up and pay her for his washing. James +Grant was a journeymen carpenter who did not always pay his bills and +who owed Maria three dollars. + +Both Maria and Martin drank the sour new wine on empty stomachs, and it +went swiftly to their heads. Utterly differentiated creatures that they +were, they were lonely in their misery, and though the misery was +tacitly ignored, it was the bond that drew them together. Maria was +amazed to learn that he had been in the Azores, where she had lived +until she was eleven. She was doubly amazed that he had been in the +Hawaiian Islands, whither she had migrated from the Azores with her +people. But her amazement passed all bounds when he told her he had +been on Maui, the particular island whereon she had attained womanhood +and married. Kahului, where she had first met her husband,—he, Martin, +had been there twice! Yes, she remembered the sugar steamers, and he +had been on them—well, well, it was a small world. And Wailuku! That +place, too! Did he know the head-luna of the plantation? Yes, and had +had a couple of drinks with him. + +And so they reminiscenced and drowned their hunger in the raw, sour +wine. To Martin the future did not seem so dim. Success trembled just +before him. He was on the verge of clasping it. Then he studied the +deep-lined face of the toil-worn woman before him, remembered her soups +and loaves of new baking, and felt spring up in him the warmest +gratitude and philanthropy. + +“Maria,” he exclaimed suddenly. “What would you like to have?” + +She looked at him, bepuzzled. + +“What would you like to have now, right now, if you could get it?” + +“Shoe alla da roun’ for da childs—seven pairs da shoe.” + +“You shall have them,” he announced, while she nodded her head gravely. +“But I mean a big wish, something big that you want.” + +Her eyes sparkled good-naturedly. He was choosing to make fun with her, +Maria, with whom few made fun these days. + +“Think hard,” he cautioned, just as she was opening her mouth to speak. + +“Alla right,” she answered. “I thinka da hard. I lika da house, dis +house—all mine, no paya da rent, seven dollar da month.” + +“You shall have it,” he granted, “and in a short time. Now wish the +great wish. Make believe I am God, and I say to you anything you want +you can have. Then you wish that thing, and I listen.” + +Maria considered solemnly for a space. + +“You no ’fraid?” she asked warningly. + +“No, no,” he laughed, “I’m not afraid. Go ahead.” + +“Most verra big,” she warned again. + +“All right. Fire away.” + +“Well, den—” She drew a big breath like a child, as she voiced to the +uttermost all she cared to demand of life. “I lika da have one milka +ranch—good milka ranch. Plenty cow, plenty land, plenty grass. I lika +da have near San Le-an; my sister liva dere. I sella da milk in +Oakland. I maka da plentee mon. Joe an’ Nick no runna da cow. Dey go-a +to school. Bimeby maka da good engineer, worka da railroad. Yes, I lika +da milka ranch.” + +She paused and regarded Martin with twinkling eyes. + +“You shall have it,” he answered promptly. + +She nodded her head and touched her lips courteously to the wine-glass +and to the giver of the gift she knew would never be given. His heart +was right, and in her own heart she appreciated his intention as much +as if the gift had gone with it. + +“No, Maria,” he went on; “Nick and Joe won’t have to peddle milk, and +all the kids can go to school and wear shoes the whole year round. It +will be a first-class milk ranch—everything complete. There will be a +house to live in and a stable for the horses, and cow-barns, of course. +There will be chickens, pigs, vegetables, fruit trees, and everything +like that; and there will be enough cows to pay for a hired man or two. +Then you won’t have anything to do but take care of the children. For +that matter, if you find a good man, you can marry and take it easy +while he runs the ranch.” + +And from such largess, dispensed from his future, Martin turned and +took his one good suit of clothes to the pawnshop. His plight was +desperate for him to do this, for it cut him off from Ruth. He had no +second-best suit that was presentable, and though he could go to the +butcher and the baker, and even on occasion to his sister’s, it was +beyond all daring to dream of entering the Morse home so disreputably +apparelled. + +He toiled on, miserable and well-nigh hopeless. It began to appear to +him that the second battle was lost and that he would have to go to +work. In doing this he would satisfy everybody—the grocer, his sister, +Ruth, and even Maria, to whom he owed a month’s room rent. He was two +months behind with his type-writer, and the agency was clamoring for +payment or for the return of the machine. In desperation, all but ready +to surrender, to make a truce with fate until he could get a fresh +start, he took the civil service examinations for the Railway Mail. To +his surprise, he passed first. The job was assured, though when the +call would come to enter upon his duties nobody knew. + +It was at this time, at the lowest ebb, that the smooth-running +editorial machine broke down. A cog must have slipped or an oil-cup run +dry, for the postman brought him one morning a short, thin envelope. +Martin glanced at the upper left-hand corner and read the name and +address of the _Transcontinental Monthly_. His heart gave a great leap, +and he suddenly felt faint, the sinking feeling accompanied by a +strange trembling of the knees. He staggered into his room and sat down +on the bed, the envelope still unopened, and in that moment came +understanding to him how people suddenly fall dead upon receipt of +extraordinarily good news. + +Of course this was good news. There was no manuscript in that thin +envelope, therefore it was an acceptance. He knew the story in the +hands of the _Transcontinental_. It was “The Ring of Bells,” one of his +horror stories, and it was an even five thousand words. And, since +first-class magazines always paid on acceptance, there was a check +inside. Two cents a word—twenty dollars a thousand; the check must be a +hundred dollars. One hundred dollars! As he tore the envelope open, +every item of all his debts surged in his brain—$3.85 to the grocer; +butcher $4.00 flat; baker, $2.00; fruit store, $5.00; total, $14.85. +Then there was room rent, $2.50; another month in advance, $2.50; two +months’ type-writer, $8.00; a month in advance, $4.00; total, $31.85. +And finally to be added, his pledges, plus interest, with the +pawnbroker—watch, $5.50; overcoat, $5.50; wheel, $7.75; suit of +clothes, $5.50 (60 % interest, but what did it matter?)—grand total, +$56.10. He saw, as if visible in the air before him, in illuminated +figures, the whole sum, and the subtraction that followed and that gave +a remainder of $43.90. When he had squared every debt, redeemed every +pledge, he would still have jingling in his pockets a princely $43.90. +And on top of that he would have a month’s rent paid in advance on the +type-writer and on the room. + +By this time he had drawn the single sheet of type-written letter out +and spread it open. There was no check. He peered into the envelope, +held it to the light, but could not trust his eyes, and in trembling +haste tore the envelope apart. There was no check. He read the letter, +skimming it line by line, dashing through the editor’s praise of his +story to the meat of the letter, the statement why the check had not +been sent. He found no such statement, but he did find that which made +him suddenly wilt. The letter slid from his hand. His eyes went +lack-lustre, and he lay back on the pillow, pulling the blanket about +him and up to his chin. + +Five dollars for “The Ring of Bells”—five dollars for five thousand +words! Instead of two cents a word, ten words for a cent! And the +editor had praised it, too. And he would receive the check when the +story was published. Then it was all poppycock, two cents a word for +minimum rate and payment upon acceptance. It was a lie, and it had led +him astray. He would never have attempted to write had he known that. +He would have gone to work—to work for Ruth. He went back to the day he +first attempted to write, and was appalled at the enormous waste of +time—and all for ten words for a cent. And the other high rewards of +writers, that he had read about, must be lies, too. His second-hand +ideas of authorship were wrong, for here was the proof of it. + +The _Transcontinental_ sold for twenty-five cents, and its dignified +and artistic cover proclaimed it as among the first-class magazines. It +was a staid, respectable magazine, and it had been published +continuously since long before he was born. Why, on the outside cover +were printed every month the words of one of the world’s great writers, +words proclaiming the inspired mission of the _Transcontinental_ by a +star of literature whose first coruscations had appeared inside those +self-same covers. And the high and lofty, heaven-inspired +_Transcontinental_ paid five dollars for five thousand words! The great +writer had recently died in a foreign land—in dire poverty, Martin +remembered, which was not to be wondered at, considering the +magnificent pay authors receive. + +Well, he had taken the bait, the newspaper lies about writers and their +pay, and he had wasted two years over it. But he would disgorge the +bait now. Not another line would he ever write. He would do what Ruth +wanted him to do, what everybody wanted him to do—get a job. The +thought of going to work reminded him of Joe—Joe, tramping through the +land of nothing-to-do. Martin heaved a great sigh of envy. The reaction +of nineteen hours a day for many days was strong upon him. But then, +Joe was not in love, had none of the responsibilities of love, and he +could afford to loaf through the land of nothing-to-do. He, Martin, had +something to work for, and go to work he would. He would start out +early next morning to hunt a job. And he would let Ruth know, too, that +he had mended his ways and was willing to go into her father’s office. + +Five dollars for five thousand words, ten words for a cent, the market +price for art. The disappointment of it, the lie of it, the infamy of +it, were uppermost in his thoughts; and under his closed eyelids, in +fiery figures, burned the “$3.85” he owed the grocer. He shivered, and +was aware of an aching in his bones. The small of his back ached +especially. His head ached, the top of it ached, the back of it ached, +the brains inside of it ached and seemed to be swelling, while the ache +over his brows was intolerable. And beneath the brows, planted under +his lids, was the merciless “$3.85.” He opened his eyes to escape it, +but the white light of the room seemed to sear the balls and forced him +to close his eyes, when the “$3.85” confronted him again. + +Five dollars for five thousand words, ten words for a cent—that +particular thought took up its residence in his brain, and he could no +more escape it than he could the “$3.85” under his eyelids. A change +seemed to come over the latter, and he watched curiously, till “$2.00” +burned in its stead. Ah, he thought, that was the baker. The next sum +that appeared was “$2.50.” It puzzled him, and he pondered it as if +life and death hung on the solution. He owed somebody two dollars and a +half, that was certain, but who was it? To find it was the task set him +by an imperious and malignant universe, and he wandered through the +endless corridors of his mind, opening all manner of lumber rooms and +chambers stored with odds and ends of memories and knowledge as he +vainly sought the answer. After several centuries it came to him, +easily, without effort, that it was Maria. With a great relief he +turned his soul to the screen of torment under his lids. He had solved +the problem; now he could rest. But no, the “$2.50” faded away, and in +its place burned “$8.00.” Who was that? He must go the dreary round of +his mind again and find out. + +How long he was gone on this quest he did not know, but after what +seemed an enormous lapse of time, he was called back to himself by a +knock at the door, and by Maria’s asking if he was sick. He replied in +a muffled voice he did not recognize, saying that he was merely taking +a nap. He was surprised when he noted the darkness of night in the +room. He had received the letter at two in the afternoon, and he +realized that he was sick. + +Then the “$8.00” began to smoulder under his lids again, and he +returned himself to servitude. But he grew cunning. There was no need +for him to wander through his mind. He had been a fool. He pulled a +lever and made his mind revolve about him, a monstrous wheel of +fortune, a merry-go-round of memory, a revolving sphere of wisdom. +Faster and faster it revolved, until its vortex sucked him in and he +was flung whirling through black chaos. + +Quite naturally he found himself at a mangle, feeding starched cuffs. +But as he fed he noticed figures printed in the cuffs. It was a new way +of marking linen, he thought, until, looking closer, he saw “$3.85” on +one of the cuffs. Then it came to him that it was the grocer’s bill, +and that these were his bills flying around on the drum of the mangle. +A crafty idea came to him. He would throw the bills on the floor and so +escape paying them. No sooner thought than done, and he crumpled the +cuffs spitefully as he flung them upon an unusually dirty floor. Ever +the heap grew, and though each bill was duplicated a thousand times, he +found only one for two dollars and a half, which was what he owed +Maria. That meant that Maria would not press for payment, and he +resolved generously that it would be the only one he would pay; so he +began searching through the cast-out heap for hers. He sought it +desperately, for ages, and was still searching when the manager of the +hotel entered, the fat Dutchman. His face blazed with wrath, and he +shouted in stentorian tones that echoed down the universe, “I shall +deduct the cost of those cuffs from your wages!” The pile of cuffs grew +into a mountain, and Martin knew that he was doomed to toil for a +thousand years to pay for them. Well, there was nothing left to do but +kill the manager and burn down the laundry. But the big Dutchman +frustrated him, seizing him by the nape of the neck and dancing him up +and down. He danced him over the ironing tables, the stove, and the +mangles, and out into the wash-room and over the wringer and washer. +Martin was danced until his teeth rattled and his head ached, and he +marvelled that the Dutchman was so strong. + +And then he found himself before the mangle, this time receiving the +cuffs an editor of a magazine was feeding from the other side. Each +cuff was a check, and Martin went over them anxiously, in a fever of +expectation, but they were all blanks. He stood there and received the +blanks for a million years or so, never letting one go by for fear it +might be filled out. At last he found it. With trembling fingers he +held it to the light. It was for five dollars. “Ha! Ha!” laughed the +editor across the mangle. “Well, then, I shall kill you,” Martin said. +He went out into the wash-room to get the axe, and found Joe starching +manuscripts. He tried to make him desist, then swung the axe for him. +But the weapon remained poised in mid-air, for Martin found himself +back in the ironing room in the midst of a snow-storm. No, it was not +snow that was falling, but checks of large denomination, the smallest +not less than a thousand dollars. He began to collect them and sort +them out, in packages of a hundred, tying each package securely with +twine. + +He looked up from his task and saw Joe standing before him juggling +flat-irons, starched shirts, and manuscripts. Now and again he reached +out and added a bundle of checks to the flying miscellany that soared +through the roof and out of sight in a tremendous circle. Martin struck +at him, but he seized the axe and added it to the flying circle. Then +he plucked Martin and added him. Martin went up through the roof, +clutching at manuscripts, so that by the time he came down he had a +large armful. But no sooner down than up again, and a second and a +third time and countless times he flew around the circle. From far off +he could hear a childish treble singing: “Waltz me around again, +Willie, around, around, around.” + +He recovered the axe in the midst of the Milky Way of checks, starched +shirts, and manuscripts, and prepared, when he came down, to kill Joe. +But he did not come down. Instead, at two in the morning, Maria, having +heard his groans through the thin partition, came into his room, to put +hot flat-irons against his body and damp cloths upon his aching eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + + +Martin Eden did not go out to hunt for a job in the morning. It was +late afternoon before he came out of his delirium and gazed with aching +eyes about the room. Mary, one of the tribe of Silva, eight years old, +keeping watch, raised a screech at sight of his returning +consciousness. Maria hurried into the room from the kitchen. She put +her work-calloused hand upon his hot forehead and felt his pulse. + +“You lika da eat?” she asked. + +He shook his head. Eating was farthest from his desire, and he wondered +that he should ever have been hungry in his life. + +“I’m sick, Maria,” he said weakly. “What is it? Do you know?” + +“Grip,” she answered. “Two or three days you alla da right. Better you +no eat now. Bimeby plenty can eat, to-morrow can eat maybe.” + +Martin was not used to sickness, and when Maria and her little girl +left him, he essayed to get up and dress. By a supreme exertion of +will, with rearing brain and eyes that ached so that he could not keep +them open, he managed to get out of bed, only to be left stranded by +his senses upon the table. Half an hour later he managed to regain the +bed, where he was content to lie with closed eyes and analyze his +various pains and weaknesses. Maria came in several times to change the +cold cloths on his forehead. Otherwise she left him in peace, too wise +to vex him with chatter. This moved him to gratitude, and he murmured +to himself, “Maria, you getta da milka ranch, all righta, all right.” + +Then he remembered his long-buried past of yesterday. + +It seemed a life-time since he had received that letter from the +_Transcontinental_, a life-time since it was all over and done with and +a new page turned. He had shot his bolt, and shot it hard, and now he +was down on his back. If he hadn’t starved himself, he wouldn’t have +been caught by La Grippe. He had been run down, and he had not had the +strength to throw off the germ of disease which had invaded his system. +This was what resulted. + +“What does it profit a man to write a whole library and lose his own +life?” he demanded aloud. “This is no place for me. No more literature +in mine. Me for the counting-house and ledger, the monthly salary, and +the little home with Ruth.” + +Two days later, having eaten an egg and two slices of toast and drunk a +cup of tea, he asked for his mail, but found his eyes still hurt too +much to permit him to read. + +“You read for me, Maria,” he said. “Never mind the big, long letters. +Throw them under the table. Read me the small letters.” + +“No can,” was the answer. “Teresa, she go to school, she can.” + +So Teresa Silva, aged nine, opened his letters and read them to him. He +listened absently to a long dun from the type-writer people, his mind +busy with ways and means of finding a job. Suddenly he was shocked back +to himself. + +“‘We offer you forty dollars for all serial rights in your story,’” +Teresa slowly spelled out, “‘provided you allow us to make the +alterations suggested.’” + +“What magazine is that?” Martin shouted. “Here, give it to me!” + +He could see to read, now, and he was unaware of the pain of the +action. It was the _White Mouse_ that was offering him forty dollars, +and the story was “The Whirlpool,” another of his early horror stories. +He read the letter through again and again. The editor told him plainly +that he had not handled the idea properly, but that it was the idea +they were buying because it was original. If they could cut the story +down one-third, they would take it and send him forty dollars on +receipt of his answer. + +He called for pen and ink, and told the editor he could cut the story +down three-thirds if he wanted to, and to send the forty dollars right +along. + +The letter despatched to the letter-box by Teresa, Martin lay back and +thought. It wasn’t a lie, after all. The _White Mouse_ paid on +acceptance. There were three thousand words in “The Whirlpool.” Cut +down a third, there would be two thousand. At forty dollars that would +be two cents a word. Pay on acceptance and two cents a word—the +newspapers had told the truth. And he had thought the _White Mouse_ a +third-rater! It was evident that he did not know the magazines. He had +deemed the _Transcontinental_ a first-rater, and it paid a cent for ten +words. He had classed the _White Mouse_ as of no account, and it paid +twenty times as much as the_ Transcontinental_ and also had paid on +acceptance. + +Well, there was one thing certain: when he got well, he would not go +out looking for a job. There were more stories in his head as good as +“The Whirlpool,” and at forty dollars apiece he could earn far more +than in any job or position. Just when he thought the battle lost, it +was won. He had proved for his career. The way was clear. Beginning +with the _White Mouse_ he would add magazine after magazine to his +growing list of patrons. Hack-work could be put aside. For that matter, +it had been wasted time, for it had not brought him a dollar. He would +devote himself to work, good work, and he would pour out the best that +was in him. He wished Ruth was there to share in his joy, and when he +went over the letters left lying on his bed, he found one from her. It +was sweetly reproachful, wondering what had kept him away for so +dreadful a length of time. He reread the letter adoringly, dwelling +over her handwriting, loving each stroke of her pen, and in the end +kissing her signature. + +And when he answered, he told her recklessly that he had not been to +see her because his best clothes were in pawn. He told her that he had +been sick, but was once more nearly well, and that inside ten days or +two weeks (as soon as a letter could travel to New York City and +return) he would redeem his clothes and be with her. + +But Ruth did not care to wait ten days or two weeks. Besides, her lover +was sick. The next afternoon, accompanied by Arthur, she arrived in the +Morse carriage, to the unqualified delight of the Silva tribe and of +all the urchins on the street, and to the consternation of Maria. She +boxed the ears of the Silvas who crowded about the visitors on the tiny +front porch, and in more than usual atrocious English tried to +apologize for her appearance. Sleeves rolled up from soap-flecked arms +and a wet gunny-sack around her waist told of the task at which she had +been caught. So flustered was she by two such grand young people asking +for her lodger, that she forgot to invite them to sit down in the +little parlor. To enter Martin’s room, they passed through the kitchen, +warm and moist and steamy from the big washing in progress. Maria, in +her excitement, jammed the bedroom and bedroom-closet doors together, +and for five minutes, through the partly open door, clouds of steam, +smelling of soap-suds and dirt, poured into the sick chamber. + +Ruth succeeded in veering right and left and right again, and in +running the narrow passage between table and bed to Martin’s side; but +Arthur veered too wide and fetched up with clatter and bang of pots and +pans in the corner where Martin did his cooking. Arthur did not linger +long. Ruth occupied the only chair, and having done his duty, he went +outside and stood by the gate, the centre of seven marvelling Silvas, +who watched him as they would have watched a curiosity in a side-show. +All about the carriage were gathered the children from a dozen blocks, +waiting and eager for some tragic and terrible dénouement. Carriages +were seen on their street only for weddings and funerals. Here was +neither marriage nor death: therefore, it was something transcending +experience and well worth waiting for. + +Martin had been wild to see Ruth. His was essentially a love-nature, +and he possessed more than the average man’s need for sympathy. He was +starving for sympathy, which, with him, meant intelligent +understanding; and he had yet to learn that Ruth’s sympathy was largely +sentimental and tactful, and that it proceeded from gentleness of +nature rather than from understanding of the objects of her sympathy. +So it was while Martin held her hand and gladly talked, that her love +for him prompted her to press his hand in return, and that her eyes +were moist and luminous at sight of his helplessness and of the marks +suffering had stamped upon his face. + +But while he told her of his two acceptances, of his despair when he +received the one from the _Transcontinental_, and of the corresponding +delight with which he received the one from the _White Mouse_, she did +not follow him. She heard the words he uttered and understood their +literal import, but she was not with him in his despair and his +delight. She could not get out of herself. She was not interested in +selling stories to magazines. What was important to her was matrimony. +She was not aware of it, however, any more than she was aware that her +desire that Martin take a position was the instinctive and preparative +impulse of motherhood. She would have blushed had she been told as much +in plain, set terms, and next, she might have grown indignant and +asserted that her sole interest lay in the man she loved and her desire +for him to make the best of himself. So, while Martin poured out his +heart to her, elated with the first success his chosen work in the +world had received, she paid heed to his bare words only, gazing now +and again about the room, shocked by what she saw. + +For the first time Ruth gazed upon the sordid face of poverty. Starving +lovers had always seemed romantic to her,—but she had had no idea how +starving lovers lived. She had never dreamed it could be like this. +Ever her gaze shifted from the room to him and back again. The steamy +smell of dirty clothes, which had entered with her from the kitchen, +was sickening. Martin must be soaked with it, Ruth concluded, if that +awful woman washed frequently. Such was the contagiousness of +degradation. When she looked at Martin, she seemed to see the smirch +left upon him by his surroundings. She had never seen him unshaven, and +the three days’ growth of beard on his face was repulsive to her. Not +alone did it give him the same dark and murky aspect of the Silva +house, inside and out, but it seemed to emphasize that animal-like +strength of his which she detested. And here he was, being confirmed in +his madness by the two acceptances he took such pride in telling her +about. A little longer and he would have surrendered and gone to work. +Now he would continue on in this horrible house, writing and starving +for a few more months. + +“What is that smell?” she asked suddenly. + +“Some of Maria’s washing smells, I imagine,” was the answer. “I am +growing quite accustomed to them.” + +“No, no; not that. It is something else. A stale, sickish smell.” + +Martin sampled the air before replying. + +“I can’t smell anything else, except stale tobacco smoke,” he +announced. + +“That’s it. It is terrible. Why do you smoke so much, Martin?” + +“I don’t know, except that I smoke more than usual when I am lonely. +And then, too, it’s such a long-standing habit. I learned when I was +only a youngster.” + +“It is not a nice habit, you know,” she reproved. “It smells to +heaven.” + +“That’s the fault of the tobacco. I can afford only the cheapest. But +wait until I get that forty-dollar check. I’ll use a brand that is not +offensive even to the angels. But that wasn’t so bad, was it, two +acceptances in three days? That forty-five dollars will pay about all +my debts.” + +“For two years’ work?” she queried. + +“No, for less than a week’s work. Please pass me that book over on the +far corner of the table, the account book with the gray cover.” He +opened it and began turning over the pages rapidly. “Yes, I was right. +Four days for ‘The Ring of Bells,’ two days for ‘The Whirlpool.’ That’s +forty-five dollars for a week’s work, one hundred and eighty dollars a +month. That beats any salary I can command. And, besides, I’m just +beginning. A thousand dollars a month is not too much to buy for you +all I want you to have. A salary of five hundred a month would be too +small. That forty-five dollars is just a starter. Wait till I get my +stride. Then watch my smoke.” + +Ruth misunderstood his slang, and reverted to cigarettes. + +“You smoke more than enough as it is, and the brand of tobacco will +make no difference. It is the smoking itself that is not nice, no +matter what the brand may be. You are a chimney, a living volcano, a +perambulating smoke-stack, and you are a perfect disgrace, Martin dear, +you know you are.” + +She leaned toward him, entreaty in her eyes, and as he looked at her +delicate face and into her pure, limpid eyes, as of old he was struck +with his own unworthiness. + +“I wish you wouldn’t smoke any more,” she whispered. “Please, for—my +sake.” + +“All right, I won’t,” he cried. “I’ll do anything you ask, dear love, +anything; you know that.” + +A great temptation assailed her. In an insistent way she had caught +glimpses of the large, easy-going side of his nature, and she felt +sure, if she asked him to cease attempting to write, that he would +grant her wish. In the swift instant that elapsed, the words trembled +on her lips. But she did not utter them. She was not quite brave +enough; she did not quite dare. Instead, she leaned toward him to meet +him, and in his arms murmured:- + +“You know, it is really not for my sake, Martin, but for your own. I am +sure smoking hurts you; and besides, it is not good to be a slave to +anything, to a drug least of all.” + +“I shall always be your slave,” he smiled. + +“In which case, I shall begin issuing my commands.” + +She looked at him mischievously, though deep down she was already +regretting that she had not preferred her largest request. + +“I live but to obey, your majesty.” + +“Well, then, my first commandment is, Thou shalt not omit to shave +every day. Look how you have scratched my cheek.” + +And so it ended in caresses and love-laughter. But she had made one +point, and she could not expect to make more than one at a time. She +felt a woman’s pride in that she had made him stop smoking. Another +time she would persuade him to take a position, for had he not said he +would do anything she asked? + +She left his side to explore the room, examining the clothes-lines of +notes overhead, learning the mystery of the tackle used for suspending +his wheel under the ceiling, and being saddened by the heap of +manuscripts under the table which represented to her just so much +wasted time. The oil-stove won her admiration, but on investigating the +food shelves she found them empty. + +“Why, you haven’t anything to eat, you poor dear,” she said with tender +compassion. “You must be starving.” + +“I store my food in Maria’s safe and in her pantry,” he lied. “It keeps +better there. No danger of my starving. Look at that.” + +She had come back to his side, and she saw him double his arm at the +elbow, the biceps crawling under his shirt-sleeve and swelling into a +knot of muscle, heavy and hard. The sight repelled her. Sentimentally, +she disliked it. But her pulse, her blood, every fibre of her, loved it +and yearned for it, and, in the old, inexplicable way, she leaned +toward him, not away from him. And in the moment that followed, when he +crushed her in his arms, the brain of her, concerned with the +superficial aspects of life, was in revolt; while the heart of her, the +woman of her, concerned with life itself, exulted triumphantly. It was +in moments like this that she felt to the uttermost the greatness of +her love for Martin, for it was almost a swoon of delight to her to +feel his strong arms about her, holding her tightly, hurting her with +the grip of their fervor. At such moments she found justification for +her treason to her standards, for her violation of her own high ideals, +and, most of all, for her tacit disobedience to her mother and father. +They did not want her to marry this man. It shocked them that she +should love him. It shocked her, too, sometimes, when she was apart +from him, a cool and reasoning creature. With him, she loved him—in +truth, at times a vexed and worried love; but love it was, a love that +was stronger than she. + +“This La Grippe is nothing,” he was saying. “It hurts a bit, and gives +one a nasty headache, but it doesn’t compare with break-bone fever.” + +“Have you had that, too?” she queried absently, intent on the +heaven-sent justification she was finding in his arms. + +And so, with absent queries, she led him on, till suddenly his words +startled her. + +He had had the fever in a secret colony of thirty lepers on one of the +Hawaiian Islands. + +“But why did you go there?” she demanded. + +Such royal carelessness of body seemed criminal. + +“Because I didn’t know,” he answered. “I never dreamed of lepers. When +I deserted the schooner and landed on the beach, I headed inland for +some place of hiding. For three days I lived off guavas, _ohia_-apples, +and bananas, all of which grew wild in the jungle. On the fourth day I +found the trail—a mere foot-trail. It led inland, and it led up. It was +the way I wanted to go, and it showed signs of recent travel. At one +place it ran along the crest of a ridge that was no more than a +knife-edge. The trail wasn’t three feet wide on the crest, and on +either side the ridge fell away in precipices hundreds of feet deep. +One man, with plenty of ammunition, could have held it against a +hundred thousand. + +“It was the only way in to the hiding-place. Three hours after I found +the trail I was there, in a little mountain valley, a pocket in the +midst of lava peaks. The whole place was terraced for taro-patches, +fruit trees grew there, and there were eight or ten grass huts. But as +soon as I saw the inhabitants I knew what I’d struck. One sight of them +was enough.” + +“What did you do?” Ruth demanded breathlessly, listening, like any +Desdemona, appalled and fascinated. + +“Nothing for me to do. Their leader was a kind old fellow, pretty far +gone, but he ruled like a king. He had discovered the little valley and +founded the settlement—all of which was against the law. But he had +guns, plenty of ammunition, and those Kanakas, trained to the shooting +of wild cattle and wild pig, were dead shots. No, there wasn’t any +running away for Martin Eden. He stayed—for three months.” + +“But how did you escape?” + +“I’d have been there yet, if it hadn’t been for a girl there, a +half-Chinese, quarter-white, and quarter-Hawaiian. She was a beauty, +poor thing, and well educated. Her mother, in Honolulu, was worth a +million or so. Well, this girl got me away at last. Her mother financed +the settlement, you see, so the girl wasn’t afraid of being punished +for letting me go. But she made me swear, first, never to reveal the +hiding-place; and I never have. This is the first time I have even +mentioned it. The girl had just the first signs of leprosy. The fingers +of her right hand were slightly twisted, and there was a small spot on +her arm. That was all. I guess she is dead, now.” + +“But weren’t you frightened? And weren’t you glad to get away without +catching that dreadful disease?” + +“Well,” he confessed, “I was a bit shivery at first; but I got used to +it. I used to feel sorry for that poor girl, though. That made me +forget to be afraid. She was such a beauty, in spirit as well as in +appearance, and she was only slightly touched; yet she was doomed to +lie there, living the life of a primitive savage and rotting slowly +away. Leprosy is far more terrible than you can imagine it.” + +“Poor thing,” Ruth murmured softly. “It’s a wonder she let you get +away.” + +“How do you mean?” Martin asked unwittingly. + +“Because she must have loved you,” Ruth said, still softly. “Candidly, +now, didn’t she?” + +Martin’s sunburn had been bleached by his work in the laundry and by +the indoor life he was living, while the hunger and the sickness had +made his face even pale; and across this pallor flowed the slow wave of +a blush. He was opening his mouth to speak, but Ruth shut him off. + +“Never mind, don’t answer; it’s not necessary,” she laughed. + +But it seemed to him there was something metallic in her laughter, and +that the light in her eyes was cold. On the spur of the moment it +reminded him of a gale he had once experienced in the North Pacific. +And for the moment the apparition of the gale rose before his eyes—a +gale at night, with a clear sky and under a full moon, the huge seas +glinting coldly in the moonlight. Next, he saw the girl in the leper +refuge and remembered it was for love of him that she had let him go. + +“She was noble,” he said simply. “She gave me life.” + +That was all of the incident, but he heard Ruth muffle a dry sob in her +throat, and noticed that she turned her face away to gaze out of the +window. When she turned it back to him, it was composed, and there was +no hint of the gale in her eyes. + +“I’m such a silly,” she said plaintively. “But I can’t help it. I do so +love you, Martin, I do, I do. I shall grow more catholic in time, but +at present I can’t help being jealous of those ghosts of the past, and +you know your past is full of ghosts.” + +“It must be,” she silenced his protest. “It could not be otherwise. And +there’s poor Arthur motioning me to come. He’s tired waiting. And now +good-by, dear.” + +“There’s some kind of a mixture, put up by the druggists, that helps +men to stop the use of tobacco,” she called back from the door, “and I +am going to send you some.” + +The door closed, but opened again. + +“I do, I do,” she whispered to him; and this time she was really gone. + +Maria, with worshipful eyes that none the less were keen to note the +texture of Ruth’s garments and the cut of them (a cut unknown that +produced an effect mysteriously beautiful), saw her to the carriage. +The crowd of disappointed urchins stared till the carriage disappeared +from view, then transferred their stare to Maria, who had abruptly +become the most important person on the street. But it was one of her +progeny who blasted Maria’s reputation by announcing that the grand +visitors had been for her lodger. After that Maria dropped back into +her old obscurity and Martin began to notice the respectful manner in +which he was regarded by the small fry of the neighborhood. As for +Maria, Martin rose in her estimation a full hundred per cent, and had +the Portuguese grocer witnessed that afternoon carriage-call he would +have allowed Martin an additional three-dollars-and-eighty-five-cents’ +worth of credit. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + + +The sun of Martin’s good fortune rose. The day after Ruth’s visit, he +received a check for three dollars from a New York scandal weekly in +payment for three of his triolets. Two days later a newspaper published +in Chicago accepted his “Treasure Hunters,” promising to pay ten +dollars for it on publication. The price was small, but it was the +first article he had written, his very first attempt to express his +thought on the printed page. To cap everything, the adventure serial +for boys, his second attempt, was accepted before the end of the week +by a juvenile monthly calling itself _Youth and Age_. It was true the +serial was twenty-one thousand words, and they offered to pay him +sixteen dollars on publication, which was something like seventy-five +cents a thousand words; but it was equally true that it was the second +thing he had attempted to write and that he was himself thoroughly +aware of its clumsy worthlessness. + +But even his earliest efforts were not marked with the clumsiness of +mediocrity. What characterized them was the clumsiness of too great +strength—the clumsiness which the tyro betrays when he crushes +butterflies with battering rams and hammers out vignettes with a +war-club. So it was that Martin was glad to sell his early efforts for +songs. He knew them for what they were, and it had not taken him long +to acquire this knowledge. What he pinned his faith to was his later +work. He had striven to be something more than a mere writer of +magazine fiction. He had sought to equip himself with the tools of +artistry. On the other hand, he had not sacrificed strength. His +conscious aim had been to increase his strength by avoiding excess of +strength. Nor had he departed from his love of reality. His work was +realism, though he had endeavored to fuse with it the fancies and +beauties of imagination. What he sought was an impassioned realism, +shot through with human aspiration and faith. What he wanted was life +as it was, with all its spirit-groping and soul-reaching left in. + +He had discovered, in the course of his reading, two schools of +fiction. One treated of man as a god, ignoring his earthly origin; the +other treated of man as a clod, ignoring his heaven-sent dreams and +divine possibilities. Both the god and the clod schools erred, in +Martin’s estimation, and erred through too great singleness of sight +and purpose. There was a compromise that approximated the truth, though +it flattered not the school of god, while it challenged the +brute-savageness of the school of clod. It was his story, “Adventure,” +which had dragged with Ruth, that Martin believed had achieved his +ideal of the true in fiction; and it was in an essay, “God and Clod,” +that he had expressed his views on the whole general subject. + +But “Adventure,” and all that he deemed his best work, still went +begging among the editors. His early work counted for nothing in his +eyes except for the money it brought, and his horror stories, two of +which he had sold, he did not consider high work nor his best work. To +him they were frankly imaginative and fantastic, though invested with +all the glamour of the real, wherein lay their power. This investiture +of the grotesque and impossible with reality, he looked upon as a +trick—a skilful trick at best. Great literature could not reside in +such a field. Their artistry was high, but he denied the worthwhileness +of artistry when divorced from humanness. The trick had been to fling +over the face of his artistry a mask of humanness, and this he had done +in the half-dozen or so stories of the horror brand he had written +before he emerged upon the high peaks of “Adventure,” “Joy,” “The Pot,” +and “The Wine of Life.” + +The three dollars he received for the triolets he used to eke out a +precarious existence against the arrival of the _White Mouse_ check. He +cashed the first check with the suspicious Portuguese grocer, paying a +dollar on account and dividing the remaining two dollars between the +baker and the fruit store. Martin was not yet rich enough to afford +meat, and he was on slim allowance when the _White Mouse_ check +arrived. He was divided on the cashing of it. He had never been in a +bank in his life, much less been in one on business, and he had a naive +and childlike desire to walk into one of the big banks down in Oakland +and fling down his indorsed check for forty dollars. On the other hand, +practical common sense ruled that he should cash it with his grocer and +thereby make an impression that would later result in an increase of +credit. Reluctantly Martin yielded to the claims of the grocer, paying +his bill with him in full, and receiving in change a pocketful of +jingling coin. Also, he paid the other tradesmen in full, redeemed his +suit and his bicycle, paid one month’s rent on the type-writer, and +paid Maria the overdue month for his room and a month in advance. This +left him in his pocket, for emergencies, a balance of nearly three +dollars. + +In itself, this small sum seemed a fortune. Immediately on recovering +his clothes he had gone to see Ruth, and on the way he could not +refrain from jingling the little handful of silver in his pocket. He +had been so long without money that, like a rescued starving man who +cannot let the unconsumed food out of his sight, Martin could not keep +his hand off the silver. He was not mean, nor avaricious, but the money +meant more than so many dollars and cents. It stood for success, and +the eagles stamped upon the coins were to him so many winged victories. + +It came to him insensibly that it was a very good world. It certainly +appeared more beautiful to him. For weeks it had been a very dull and +sombre world; but now, with nearly all debts paid, three dollars +jingling in his pocket, and in his mind the consciousness of success, +the sun shone bright and warm, and even a rain-squall that soaked +unprepared pedestrians seemed a merry happening to him. When he +starved, his thoughts had dwelt often upon the thousands he knew were +starving the world over; but now that he was feasted full, the fact of +the thousands starving was no longer pregnant in his brain. He forgot +about them, and, being in love, remembered the countless lovers in the +world. Without deliberately thinking about it, _motifs_ for love-lyrics +began to agitate his brain. Swept away by the creative impulse, he got +off the electric car, without vexation, two blocks beyond his crossing. + +He found a number of persons in the Morse home. Ruth’s two girl-cousins +were visiting her from San Rafael, and Mrs. Morse, under pretext of +entertaining them, was pursuing her plan of surrounding Ruth with young +people. The campaign had begun during Martin’s enforced absence, and +was already in full swing. She was making a point of having at the +house men who were doing things. Thus, in addition to the cousins +Dorothy and Florence, Martin encountered two university professors, one +of Latin, the other of English; a young army officer just back from the +Philippines, one-time school-mate of Ruth’s; a young fellow named +Melville, private secretary to Joseph Perkins, head of the San +Francisco Trust Company; and finally of the men, a live bank cashier, +Charles Hapgood, a youngish man of thirty-five, graduate of Stanford +University, member of the Nile Club and the Unity Club, and a +conservative speaker for the Republican Party during campaigns—in +short, a rising young man in every way. Among the women was one who +painted portraits, another who was a professional musician, and still +another who possessed the degree of Doctor of Sociology and who was +locally famous for her social settlement work in the slums of San +Francisco. But the women did not count for much in Mrs. Morse’s plan. +At the best, they were necessary accessories. The men who did things +must be drawn to the house somehow. + +“Don’t get excited when you talk,” Ruth admonished Martin, before the +ordeal of introduction began. + +He bore himself a bit stiffly at first, oppressed by a sense of his own +awkwardness, especially of his shoulders, which were up to their old +trick of threatening destruction to furniture and ornaments. Also, he +was rendered self-conscious by the company. He had never before been in +contact with such exalted beings nor with so many of them. Melville, +the bank cashier, fascinated him, and he resolved to investigate him at +the first opportunity. For underneath Martin’s awe lurked his assertive +ego, and he felt the urge to measure himself with these men and women +and to find out what they had learned from the books and life which he +had not learned. + +Ruth’s eyes roved to him frequently to see how he was getting on, and +she was surprised and gladdened by the ease with which he got +acquainted with her cousins. He certainly did not grow excited, while +being seated removed from him the worry of his shoulders. Ruth knew +them for clever girls, superficially brilliant, and she could scarcely +understand their praise of Martin later that night at going to bed. But +he, on the other hand, a wit in his own class, a gay quizzer and +laughter-maker at dances and Sunday picnics, had found the making of +fun and the breaking of good-natured lances simple enough in this +environment. And on this evening success stood at his back, patting him +on the shoulder and telling him that he was making good, so that he +could afford to laugh and make laughter and remain unabashed. + +Later, Ruth’s anxiety found justification. Martin and Professor +Caldwell had got together in a conspicuous corner, and though Martin no +longer wove the air with his hands, to Ruth’s critical eye he permitted +his own eyes to flash and glitter too frequently, talked too rapidly +and warmly, grew too intense, and allowed his aroused blood to redden +his cheeks too much. He lacked decorum and control, and was in decided +contrast to the young professor of English with whom he talked. + +But Martin was not concerned with appearances! He had been swift to +note the other’s trained mind and to appreciate his command of +knowledge. Furthermore, Professor Caldwell did not realize Martin’s +concept of the average English professor. Martin wanted him to talk +shop, and, though he seemed averse at first, succeeded in making him do +it. For Martin did not see why a man should not talk shop. + +“It’s absurd and unfair,” he had told Ruth weeks before, “this +objection to talking shop. For what reason under the sun do men and +women come together if not for the exchange of the best that is in +them? And the best that is in them is what they are interested in, the +thing by which they make their living, the thing they’ve specialized on +and sat up days and nights over, and even dreamed about. Imagine Mr. +Butler living up to social etiquette and enunciating his views on Paul +Verlaine or the German drama or the novels of D’Annunzio. We’d be bored +to death. I, for one, if I must listen to Mr. Butler, prefer to hear +him talk about his law. It’s the best that is in him, and life is so +short that I want the best of every man and woman I meet.” + +“But,” Ruth had objected, “there are the topics of general interest to +all.” + +“There, you mistake,” he had rushed on. “All persons in society, all +cliques in society—or, rather, nearly all persons and cliques—ape their +betters. Now, who are the best betters? The idlers, the wealthy idlers. +They do not know, as a rule, the things known by the persons who are +doing something in the world. To listen to conversation about such +things would mean to be bored, wherefore the idlers decree that such +things are shop and must not be talked about. Likewise they decree the +things that are not shop and which may be talked about, and those +things are the latest operas, latest novels, cards, billiards, +cocktails, automobiles, horse shows, trout fishing, tuna-fishing, +big-game shooting, yacht sailing, and so forth—and mark you, these are +the things the idlers know. In all truth, they constitute the shop-talk +of the idlers. And the funniest part of it is that many of the clever +people, and all the would-be clever people, allow the idlers so to +impose upon them. As for me, I want the best a man’s got in him, call +it shop vulgarity or anything you please.” + +And Ruth had not understood. This attack of his on the established had +seemed to her just so much wilfulness of opinion. + +So Martin contaminated Professor Caldwell with his own earnestness, +challenging him to speak his mind. As Ruth paused beside them she heard +Martin saying:- + +“You surely don’t pronounce such heresies in the University of +California?” + +Professor Caldwell shrugged his shoulders. “The honest taxpayer and the +politician, you know. Sacramento gives us our appropriations and +therefore we kowtow to Sacramento, and to the Board of Regents, and to +the party press, or to the press of both parties.” + +“Yes, that’s clear; but how about you?” Martin urged. “You must be a +fish out of the water.” + +“Few like me, I imagine, in the university pond. Sometimes I am fairly +sure I am out of water, and that I should belong in Paris, in Grub +Street, in a hermit’s cave, or in some sadly wild Bohemian crowd, +drinking claret,—dago-red they call it in San Francisco,—dining in +cheap restaurants in the Latin Quarter, and expressing vociferously +radical views upon all creation. Really, I am frequently almost sure +that I was cut out to be a radical. But then, there are so many +questions on which I am not sure. I grow timid when I am face to face +with my human frailty, which ever prevents me from grasping all the +factors in any problem—human, vital problems, you know.” + +And as he talked on, Martin became aware that to his own lips had come +the “Song of the Trade Wind”:- + +“I am strongest at noon, +But under the moon + I stiffen the bunt of the sail.” + + +He was almost humming the words, and it dawned upon him that the other +reminded him of the trade wind, of the Northeast Trade, steady, and +cool, and strong. He was equable, he was to be relied upon, and withal +there was a certain bafflement about him. Martin had the feeling that +he never spoke his full mind, just as he had often had the feeling that +the trades never blew their strongest but always held reserves of +strength that were never used. Martin’s trick of visioning was active +as ever. His brain was a most accessible storehouse of remembered fact +and fancy, and its contents seemed ever ordered and spread for his +inspection. Whatever occurred in the instant present, Martin’s mind +immediately presented associated antithesis or similitude which +ordinarily expressed themselves to him in vision. It was sheerly +automatic, and his visioning was an unfailing accompaniment to the +living present. Just as Ruth’s face, in a momentary jealousy had called +before his eyes a forgotten moonlight gale, and as Professor Caldwell +made him see again the Northeast Trade herding the white billows across +the purple sea, so, from moment to moment, not disconcerting but rather +identifying and classifying, new memory-visions rose before him, or +spread under his eyelids, or were thrown upon the screen of his +consciousness. These visions came out of the actions and sensations of +the past, out of things and events and books of yesterday and last +week—a countless host of apparitions that, waking or sleeping, forever +thronged his mind. + +So it was, as he listened to Professor Caldwell’s easy flow of +speech—the conversation of a clever, cultured man—that Martin kept +seeing himself down all his past. He saw himself when he had been quite +the hoodlum, wearing a “stiff-rim” Stetson hat and a square-cut, +double-breasted coat, with a certain swagger to the shoulders and +possessing the ideal of being as tough as the police permitted. He did +not disguise it to himself, nor attempt to palliate it. At one time in +his life he had been just a common hoodlum, the leader of a gang that +worried the police and terrorized honest, working-class householders. +But his ideals had changed. He glanced about him at the well-bred, +well-dressed men and women, and breathed into his lungs the atmosphere +of culture and refinement, and at the same moment the ghost of his +early youth, in stiff-rim and square-cut, with swagger and toughness, +stalked across the room. This figure, of the corner hoodlum, he saw +merge into himself, sitting and talking with an actual university +professor. + +For, after all, he had never found his permanent abiding place. He had +fitted in wherever he found himself, been a favorite always and +everywhere by virtue of holding his own at work and at play and by his +willingness and ability to fight for his rights and command respect. +But he had never taken root. He had fitted in sufficiently to satisfy +his fellows but not to satisfy himself. He had been perturbed always by +a feeling of unrest, had heard always the call of something from +beyond, and had wandered on through life seeking it until he found +books and art and love. And here he was, in the midst of all this, the +only one of all the comrades he had adventured with who could have made +themselves eligible for the inside of the Morse home. + +But such thoughts and visions did not prevent him from following +Professor Caldwell closely. And as he followed, comprehendingly and +critically, he noted the unbroken field of the other’s knowledge. As +for himself, from moment to moment the conversation showed him gaps and +open stretches, whole subjects with which he was unfamiliar. +Nevertheless, thanks to his Spencer, he saw that he possessed the +outlines of the field of knowledge. It was a matter only of time, when +he would fill in the outline. Then watch out, he thought—’ware shoal, +everybody! He felt like sitting at the feet of the professor, +worshipful and absorbent; but, as he listened, he began to discern a +weakness in the other’s judgments—a weakness so stray and elusive that +he might not have caught it had it not been ever present. And when he +did catch it, he leapt to equality at once. + +Ruth came up to them a second time, just as Martin began to speak. + +“I’ll tell you where you are wrong, or, rather, what weakens your +judgments,” he said. “You lack biology. It has no place in your scheme +of things.—Oh, I mean the real interpretative biology, from the ground +up, from the laboratory and the test-tube and the vitalized inorganic +right on up to the widest aesthetic and sociological generalizations.” + +Ruth was appalled. She had sat two lecture courses under Professor +Caldwell and looked up to him as the living repository of all +knowledge. + +“I scarcely follow you,” he said dubiously. + +Martin was not so sure but what he had followed him. + +“Then I’ll try to explain,” he said. “I remember reading in Egyptian +history something to the effect that understanding could not be had of +Egyptian art without first studying the land question.” + +“Quite right,” the professor nodded. + +“And it seems to me,” Martin continued, “that knowledge of the land +question, in turn, of all questions, for that matter, cannot be had +without previous knowledge of the stuff and the constitution of life. +How can we understand laws and institutions, religions and customs, +without understanding, not merely the nature of the creatures that made +them, but the nature of the stuff out of which the creatures are made? +Is literature less human than the architecture and sculpture of Egypt? +Is there one thing in the known universe that is not subject to the law +of evolution?—Oh, I know there is an elaborate evolution of the various +arts laid down, but it seems to me to be too mechanical. The human +himself is left out. The evolution of the tool, of the harp, of music +and song and dance, are all beautifully elaborated; but how about the +evolution of the human himself, the development of the basic and +intrinsic parts that were in him before he made his first tool or +gibbered his first chant? It is that which you do not consider, and +which I call biology. It is biology in its largest aspects. + +“I know I express myself incoherently, but I’ve tried to hammer out the +idea. It came to me as you were talking, so I was not primed and ready +to deliver it. You spoke yourself of the human frailty that prevented +one from taking all the factors into consideration. And you, in +turn,—or so it seems to me,—leave out the biological factor, the very +stuff out of which has been spun the fabric of all the arts, the warp +and the woof of all human actions and achievements.” + +To Ruth’s amazement, Martin was not immediately crushed, and that the +professor replied in the way he did struck her as forbearance for +Martin’s youth. Professor Caldwell sat for a full minute, silent and +fingering his watch chain. + +“Do you know,” he said at last, “I’ve had that same criticism passed on +me once before—by a very great man, a scientist and evolutionist, +Joseph Le Conte. But he is dead, and I thought to remain undetected; +and now you come along and expose me. Seriously, though—and this is +confession—I think there is something in your contention—a great deal, +in fact. I am too classical, not enough up-to-date in the +interpretative branches of science, and I can only plead the +disadvantages of my education and a temperamental slothfulness that +prevents me from doing the work. I wonder if you’ll believe that I’ve +never been inside a physics or chemistry laboratory? It is true, +nevertheless. Le Conte was right, and so are you, Mr. Eden, at least to +an extent—how much I do not know.” + +Ruth drew Martin away with her on a pretext; when she had got him +aside, whispering:- + +“You shouldn’t have monopolized Professor Caldwell that way. There may +be others who want to talk with him.” + +“My mistake,” Martin admitted contritely. “But I’d got him stirred up, +and he was so interesting that I did not think. Do you know, he is the +brightest, the most intellectual, man I have ever talked with. And I’ll +tell you something else. I once thought that everybody who went to +universities, or who sat in the high places in society, was just as +brilliant and intelligent as he.” + +“He’s an exception,” she answered. + +“I should say so. Whom do you want me to talk to now?—Oh, say, bring me +up against that cashier-fellow.” + +Martin talked for fifteen minutes with him, nor could Ruth have wished +better behavior on her lover’s part. Not once did his eyes flash nor +his cheeks flush, while the calmness and poise with which he talked +surprised her. But in Martin’s estimation the whole tribe of bank +cashiers fell a few hundred per cent, and for the rest of the evening +he labored under the impression that bank cashiers and talkers of +platitudes were synonymous phrases. The army officer he found +good-natured and simple, a healthy, wholesome young fellow, content to +occupy the place in life into which birth and luck had flung him. On +learning that he had completed two years in the university, Martin was +puzzled to know where he had stored it away. Nevertheless Martin liked +him better than the platitudinous bank cashier. + +“I really don’t object to platitudes,” he told Ruth later; “but what +worries me into nervousness is the pompous, smugly complacent, superior +certitude with which they are uttered and the time taken to do it. Why, +I could give that man the whole history of the Reformation in the time +he took to tell me that the Union-Labor Party had fused with the +Democrats. Do you know, he skins his words as a professional +poker-player skins the cards that are dealt out to him. Some day I’ll +show you what I mean.” + +“I’m sorry you don’t like him,” was her reply. “He’s a favorite of Mr. +Butler’s. Mr. Butler says he is safe and honest—calls him the Rock, +Peter, and says that upon him any banking institution can well be +built.” + +“I don’t doubt it—from the little I saw of him and the less I heard +from him; but I don’t think so much of banks as I did. You don’t mind +my speaking my mind this way, dear?” + +“No, no; it is most interesting.” + +“Yes,” Martin went on heartily, “I’m no more than a barbarian getting +my first impressions of civilization. Such impressions must be +entertainingly novel to the civilized person.” + +“What did you think of my cousins?” Ruth queried. + +“I liked them better than the other women. There’s plenty of fun in +them along with paucity of pretence.” + +“Then you did like the other women?” + +He shook his head. + +“That social-settlement woman is no more than a sociological +poll-parrot. I swear, if you winnowed her out between the stars, like +Tomlinson, there would be found in her not one original thought. As for +the portrait-painter, she was a positive bore. She’d make a good wife +for the cashier. And the musician woman! I don’t care how nimble her +fingers are, how perfect her technique, how wonderful her +expression—the fact is, she knows nothing about music.” + +“She plays beautifully,” Ruth protested. + +“Yes, she’s undoubtedly gymnastic in the externals of music, but the +intrinsic spirit of music is unguessed by her. I asked her what music +meant to her—you know I’m always curious to know that particular thing; +and she did not know what it meant to her, except that she adored it, +that it was the greatest of the arts, and that it meant more than life +to her.” + +“You were making them talk shop,” Ruth charged him. + +“I confess it. And if they were failures on shop, imagine my sufferings +if they had discoursed on other subjects. Why, I used to think that up +here, where all the advantages of culture were enjoyed—” He paused for +a moment, and watched the youthful shade of himself, in stiff-rim and +square-cut, enter the door and swagger across the room. “As I was +saying, up here I thought all men and women were brilliant and radiant. +But now, from what little I’ve seen of them, they strike me as a pack +of ninnies, most of them, and ninety percent of the remainder as bores. +Now there’s Professor Caldwell—he’s different. He’s a man, every inch +of him and every atom of his gray matter.” + +Ruth’s face brightened. + +“Tell me about him,” she urged. “Not what is large and brilliant—I know +those qualities; but whatever you feel is adverse. I am most curious to +know.” + +“Perhaps I’ll get myself in a pickle.” Martin debated humorously for a +moment. “Suppose you tell me first. Or maybe you find in him nothing +less than the best.” + +“I attended two lecture courses under him, and I have known him for two +years; that is why I am anxious for your first impression.” + +“Bad impression, you mean? Well, here goes. He is all the fine things +you think about him, I guess. At least, he is the finest specimen of +intellectual man I have met; but he is a man with a secret shame.” + +“Oh, no, no!” he hastened to cry. “Nothing paltry nor vulgar. What I +mean is that he strikes me as a man who has gone to the bottom of +things, and is so afraid of what he saw that he makes believe to +himself that he never saw it. Perhaps that’s not the clearest way to +express it. Here’s another way. A man who has found the path to the +hidden temple but has not followed it; who has, perhaps, caught +glimpses of the temple and striven afterward to convince himself that +it was only a mirage of foliage. Yet another way. A man who could have +done things but who placed no value on the doing, and who, all the +time, in his innermost heart, is regretting that he has not done them; +who has secretly laughed at the rewards for doing, and yet, still more +secretly, has yearned for the rewards and for the joy of doing.” + +“I don’t read him that way,” she said. “And for that matter, I don’t +see just what you mean.” + +“It is only a vague feeling on my part,” Martin temporized. “I have no +reason for it. It is only a feeling, and most likely it is wrong. You +certainly should know him better than I.” + +From the evening at Ruth’s Martin brought away with him strange +confusions and conflicting feelings. He was disappointed in his goal, +in the persons he had climbed to be with. On the other hand, he was +encouraged with his success. The climb had been easier than he +expected. He was superior to the climb, and (he did not, with false +modesty, hide it from himself) he was superior to the beings among whom +he had climbed—with the exception, of course, of Professor Caldwell. +About life and the books he knew more than they, and he wondered into +what nooks and crannies they had cast aside their educations. He did +not know that he was himself possessed of unusual brain vigor; nor did +he know that the persons who were given to probing the depths and to +thinking ultimate thoughts were not to be found in the drawing rooms of +the world’s Morses; nor did he dream that such persons were as lonely +eagles sailing solitary in the azure sky far above the earth and its +swarming freight of gregarious life. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + + +But success had lost Martin’s address, and her messengers no longer +came to his door. For twenty-five days, working Sundays and holidays, +he toiled on “The Shame of the Sun,” a long essay of some thirty +thousand words. It was a deliberate attack on the mysticism of the +Maeterlinck school—an attack from the citadel of positive science upon +the wonder-dreamers, but an attack nevertheless that retained much of +beauty and wonder of the sort compatible with ascertained fact. It was +a little later that he followed up the attack with two short essays, +“The Wonder-Dreamers” and “The Yardstick of the Ego.” And on essays, +long and short, he began to pay the travelling expenses from magazine +to magazine. + +During the twenty-five days spent on “The Shame of the Sun,” he sold +hack-work to the extent of six dollars and fifty cents. A joke had +brought in fifty cents, and a second one, sold to a high-grade comic +weekly, had fetched a dollar. Then two humorous poems had earned two +dollars and three dollars respectively. As a result, having exhausted +his credit with the tradesmen (though he had increased his credit with +the grocer to five dollars), his wheel and suit of clothes went back to +the pawnbroker. The type-writer people were again clamoring for money, +insistently pointing out that according to the agreement rent was to be +paid strictly in advance. + +Encouraged by his several small sales, Martin went back to hack-work. +Perhaps there was a living in it, after all. Stored away under his +table were the twenty storiettes which had been rejected by the +newspaper short-story syndicate. He read them over in order to find out +how not to write newspaper storiettes, and so doing, reasoned out the +perfect formula. He found that the newspaper storiette should never be +tragic, should never end unhappily, and should never contain beauty of +language, subtlety of thought, nor real delicacy of sentiment. +Sentiment it must contain, plenty of it, pure and noble, of the sort +that in his own early youth had brought his applause from “nigger +heaven”—the “For-God-my-country-and-the-Czar” and +“I-may-be-poor-but-I-am-honest” brand of sentiment. + +Having learned such precautions, Martin consulted “The Duchess” for +tone, and proceeded to mix according to formula. The formula consists +of three parts: (1) a pair of lovers are jarred apart; (2) by some deed +or event they are reunited; (3) marriage bells. The third part was an +unvarying quantity, but the first and second parts could be varied an +infinite number of times. Thus, the pair of lovers could be jarred +apart by misunderstood motives, by accident of fate, by jealous rivals, +by irate parents, by crafty guardians, by scheming relatives, and so +forth and so forth; they could be reunited by a brave deed of the man +lover, by a similar deed of the woman lover, by change of heart in one +lover or the other, by forced confession of crafty guardian, scheming +relative, or jealous rival, by voluntary confession of same, by +discovery of some unguessed secret, by lover storming girl’s heart, by +lover making long and noble self-sacrifice, and so on, endlessly. It +was very fetching to make the girl propose in the course of being +reunited, and Martin discovered, bit by bit, other decidedly piquant +and fetching ruses. But marriage bells at the end was the one thing he +could take no liberties with; though the heavens rolled up as a scroll +and the stars fell, the wedding bells must go on ringing just the same. +In quantity, the formula prescribed twelve hundred words minimum dose, +fifteen hundred words maximum dose. + +Before he got very far along in the art of the storiette, Martin worked +out half a dozen stock forms, which he always consulted when +constructing storiettes. These forms were like the cunning tables used +by mathematicians, which may be entered from top, bottom, right, and +left, which entrances consist of scores of lines and dozens of columns, +and from which may be drawn, without reasoning or thinking, thousands +of different conclusions, all unchallengably precise and true. Thus, in +the course of half an hour with his forms, Martin could frame up a +dozen or so storiettes, which he put aside and filled in at his +convenience. He found that he could fill one in, after a day of serious +work, in the hour before going to bed. As he later confessed to Ruth, +he could almost do it in his sleep. The real work was in constructing +the frames, and that was merely mechanical. + +He had no doubt whatever of the efficacy of his formula, and for once +he knew the editorial mind when he said positively to himself that the +first two he sent off would bring checks. And checks they brought, for +four dollars each, at the end of twelve days. + +In the meantime he was making fresh and alarming discoveries concerning +the magazines. Though the _Transcontinental_ had published “The Ring of +Bells,” no check was forthcoming. Martin needed it, and he wrote for +it. An evasive answer and a request for more of his work was all he +received. He had gone hungry two days waiting for the reply, and it was +then that he put his wheel back in pawn. He wrote regularly, twice a +week, to the _Transcontinental_ for his five dollars, though it was +only semi-occasionally that he elicited a reply. He did not know that +the _Transcontinental_ had been staggering along precariously for +years, that it was a fourth-rater, or tenth-rater, without standing, +with a crazy circulation that partly rested on petty bullying and +partly on patriotic appealing, and with advertisements that were +scarcely more than charitable donations. Nor did he know that the +_Transcontinental_ was the sole livelihood of the editor and the +business manager, and that they could wring their livelihood out of it +only by moving to escape paying rent and by never paying any bill they +could evade. Nor could he have guessed that the particular five dollars +that belonged to him had been appropriated by the business manager for +the painting of his house in Alameda, which painting he performed +himself, on week-day afternoons, because he could not afford to pay +union wages and because the first scab he had employed had had a ladder +jerked out from under him and been sent to the hospital with a broken +collar-bone. + +The ten dollars for which Martin had sold “Treasure Hunters” to the +Chicago newspaper did not come to hand. The article had been published, +as he had ascertained at the file in the Central Reading-room, but no +word could he get from the editor. His letters were ignored. To satisfy +himself that they had been received, he registered several of them. It +was nothing less than robbery, he concluded—a cold-blooded steal; while +he starved, he was pilfered of his merchandise, of his goods, the sale +of which was the sole way of getting bread to eat. + +_Youth and Age_ was a weekly, and it had published two-thirds of his +twenty-one-thousand-word serial when it went out of business. With it +went all hopes of getting his sixteen dollars. + +To cap the situation, “The Pot,” which he looked upon as one of the +best things he had written, was lost to him. In despair, casting about +frantically among the magazines, he had sent it to _The Billow_, a +society weekly in San Francisco. His chief reason for submitting it to +that publication was that, having only to travel across the bay from +Oakland, a quick decision could be reached. Two weeks later he was +overjoyed to see, in the latest number on the news-stand, his story +printed in full, illustrated, and in the place of honor. He went home +with leaping pulse, wondering how much they would pay him for one of +the best things he had done. Also, the celerity with which it had been +accepted and published was a pleasant thought to him. That the editor +had not informed him of the acceptance made the surprise more complete. +After waiting a week, two weeks, and half a week longer, desperation +conquered diffidence, and he wrote to the editor of _The Billow_, +suggesting that possibly through some negligence of the business +manager his little account had been overlooked. + +Even if it isn’t more than five dollars, Martin thought to himself, it +will buy enough beans and pea-soup to enable me to write half a dozen +like it, and possibly as good. + +Back came a cool letter from the editor that at least elicited Martin’s +admiration. + +“We thank you,” it ran, “for your excellent contribution. All of us in +the office enjoyed it immensely, and, as you see, it was given the +place of honor and immediate publication. We earnestly hope that you +liked the illustrations. + +“On rereading your letter it seems to us that you are laboring under +the misapprehension that we pay for unsolicited manuscripts. This is +not our custom, and of course yours was unsolicited. We assumed, +naturally, when we received your story, that you understood the +situation. We can only deeply regret this unfortunate misunderstanding, +and assure you of our unfailing regard. Again, thanking you for your +kind contribution, and hoping to receive more from you in the near +future, we remain, etc.” + +There was also a postscript to the effect that though _The Billow_ +carried no free-list, it took great pleasure in sending him a +complimentary subscription for the ensuing year. + +After that experience, Martin typed at the top of the first sheet of +all his manuscripts: “Submitted at your usual rate.” + +Some day, he consoled himself, they will be submitted at _my_ usual +rate. + +He discovered in himself, at this period, a passion for perfection, +under the sway of which he rewrote and polished “The Jostling Street,” +“The Wine of Life,” “Joy,” the “Sea Lyrics,” and others of his earlier +work. As of old, nineteen hours of labor a day was all too little to +suit him. He wrote prodigiously, and he read prodigiously, forgetting +in his toil the pangs caused by giving up his tobacco. Ruth’s promised +cure for the habit, flamboyantly labelled, he stowed away in the most +inaccessible corner of his bureau. Especially during his stretches of +famine he suffered from lack of the weed; but no matter how often he +mastered the craving, it remained with him as strong as ever. He +regarded it as the biggest thing he had ever achieved. Ruth’s point of +view was that he was doing no more than was right. She brought him the +anti-tobacco remedy, purchased out of her glove money, and in a few +days forgot all about it. + +His machine-made storiettes, though he hated them and derided them, +were successful. By means of them he redeemed all his pledges, paid +most of his bills, and bought a new set of tires for his wheel. The +storiettes at least kept the pot a-boiling and gave him time for +ambitious work; while the one thing that upheld him was the forty +dollars he had received from _The White Mouse_. He anchored his faith +to that, and was confident that the really first-class magazines would +pay an unknown writer at least an equal rate, if not a better one. But +the thing was, how to get into the first-class magazines. His best +stories, essays, and poems went begging among them, and yet, each +month, he read reams of dull, prosy, inartistic stuff between all their +various covers. If only one editor, he sometimes thought, would descend +from his high seat of pride to write me one cheering line! No matter if +my work is unusual, no matter if it is unfit, for prudential reasons, +for their pages, surely there must be some sparks in it, somewhere, a +few, to warm them to some sort of appreciation. And thereupon he would +get out one or another of his manuscripts, such as “Adventure,” and +read it over and over in a vain attempt to vindicate the editorial +silence. + +As the sweet California spring came on, his period of plenty came to an +end. For several weeks he had been worried by a strange silence on the +part of the newspaper storiette syndicate. Then, one day, came back to +him through the mail ten of his immaculate machine-made storiettes. +They were accompanied by a brief letter to the effect that the +syndicate was overstocked, and that some months would elapse before it +would be in the market again for manuscripts. Martin had even been +extravagant on the strength of those ten storiettes. Toward the last +the syndicate had been paying him five dollars each for them and +accepting every one he sent. So he had looked upon the ten as good as +sold, and he had lived accordingly, on a basis of fifty dollars in the +bank. So it was that he entered abruptly upon a lean period, wherein he +continued selling his earlier efforts to publications that would not +pay and submitting his later work to magazines that would not buy. +Also, he resumed his trips to the pawn-broker down in Oakland. A few +jokes and snatches of humorous verse, sold to the New York weeklies, +made existence barely possible for him. It was at this time that he +wrote letters of inquiry to the several great monthly and quarterly +reviews, and learned in reply that they rarely considered unsolicited +articles, and that most of their contents were written upon order by +well-known specialists who were authorities in their various fields. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + + +It was a hard summer for Martin. Manuscript readers and editors were +away on vacation, and publications that ordinarily returned a decision +in three weeks now retained his manuscript for three months or more. +The consolation he drew from it was that a saving in postage was +effected by the deadlock. Only the robber-publications seemed to remain +actively in business, and to them Martin disposed of all his early +efforts, such as “Pearl-diving,” “The Sea as a Career,” +“Turtle-catching,” and “The Northeast Trades.” For these manuscripts he +never received a penny. It is true, after six months’ correspondence, +he effected a compromise, whereby he received a safety razor for +“Turtle-catching,” and that _The Acropolis_, having agreed to give him +five dollars cash and five yearly subscriptions: for “The Northeast +Trades,” fulfilled the second part of the agreement. + +For a sonnet on Stevenson he managed to wring two dollars out of a +Boston editor who was running a magazine with a Matthew Arnold taste +and a penny-dreadful purse. “The Peri and the Pearl,” a clever skit of +a poem of two hundred lines, just finished, white hot from his brain, +won the heart of the editor of a San Francisco magazine published in +the interest of a great railroad. When the editor wrote, offering him +payment in transportation, Martin wrote back to inquire if the +transportation was transferable. It was not, and so, being prevented +from peddling it, he asked for the return of the poem. Back it came, +with the editor’s regrets, and Martin sent it to San Francisco again, +this time to _The Hornet_, a pretentious monthly that had been fanned +into a constellation of the first magnitude by the brilliant journalist +who founded it. But _The Hornet’s_ light had begun to dim long before +Martin was born. The editor promised Martin fifteen dollars for the +poem, but, when it was published, seemed to forget about it. Several of +his letters being ignored, Martin indicted an angry one which drew a +reply. It was written by a new editor, who coolly informed Martin that +he declined to be held responsible for the old editor’s mistakes, and +that he did not think much of “The Peri and the Pearl” anyway. + +But _The Globe_, a Chicago magazine, gave Martin the most cruel +treatment of all. He had refrained from offering his “Sea Lyrics” for +publication, until driven to it by starvation. After having been +rejected by a dozen magazines, they had come to rest in _The Globe_ +office. There were thirty poems in the collection, and he was to +receive a dollar apiece for them. The first month four were published, +and he promptly received a check for four dollars; but when he looked +over the magazine, he was appalled at the slaughter. In some cases the +titles had been altered: “Finis,” for instance, being changed to “The +Finish,” and “The Song of the Outer Reef” to “The Song of the Coral +Reef.” In one case, an absolutely different title, a misappropriate +title, was substituted. In place of his own, “Medusa Lights,” the +editor had printed, “The Backward Track.” But the slaughter in the body +of the poems was terrifying. Martin groaned and sweated and thrust his +hands through his hair. Phrases, lines, and stanzas were cut out, +interchanged, or juggled about in the most incomprehensible manner. +Sometimes lines and stanzas not his own were substituted for his. He +could not believe that a sane editor could be guilty of such +maltreatment, and his favorite hypothesis was that his poems must have +been doctored by the office boy or the stenographer. Martin wrote +immediately, begging the editor to cease publishing the lyrics and to +return them to him. + +He wrote again and again, begging, entreating, threatening, but his +letters were ignored. Month by month the slaughter went on till the +thirty poems were published, and month by month he received a check for +those which had appeared in the current number. + +Despite these various misadventures, the memory of the _White Mouse_ +forty-dollar check sustained him, though he was driven more and more to +hack-work. He discovered a bread-and-butter field in the agricultural +weeklies and trade journals, though among the religious weeklies he +found he could easily starve. At his lowest ebb, when his black suit +was in pawn, he made a ten-strike—or so it seemed to him—in a prize +contest arranged by the County Committee of the Republican Party. There +were three branches of the contest, and he entered them all, laughing +at himself bitterly the while in that he was driven to such straits to +live. His poem won the first prize of ten dollars, his campaign song +the second prize of five dollars, his essay on the principles of the +Republican Party the first prize of twenty-five dollars. Which was very +gratifying to him until he tried to collect. Something had gone wrong +in the County Committee, and, though a rich banker and a state senator +were members of it, the money was not forthcoming. While this affair +was hanging fire, he proved that he understood the principles of the +Democratic Party by winning the first prize for his essay in a similar +contest. And, moreover, he received the money, twenty-five dollars. But +the forty dollars won in the first contest he never received. + +Driven to shifts in order to see Ruth, and deciding that the long walk +from north Oakland to her house and back again consumed too much time, +he kept his black suit in pawn in place of his bicycle. The latter gave +him exercise, saved him hours of time for work, and enabled him to see +Ruth just the same. A pair of knee duck trousers and an old sweater +made him a presentable wheel costume, so that he could go with Ruth on +afternoon rides. Besides, he no longer had opportunity to see much of +her in her own home, where Mrs. Morse was thoroughly prosecuting her +campaign of entertainment. The exalted beings he met there, and to whom +he had looked up but a short time before, now bored him. They were no +longer exalted. He was nervous and irritable, what of his hard times, +disappointments, and close application to work, and the conversation of +such people was maddening. He was not unduly egotistic. He measured the +narrowness of their minds by the minds of the thinkers in the books he +read. At Ruth’s home he never met a large mind, with the exception of +Professor Caldwell, and Caldwell he had met there only once. As for the +rest, they were numskulls, ninnies, superficial, dogmatic, and +ignorant. It was their ignorance that astounded him. What was the +matter with them? What had they done with their educations? They had +had access to the same books he had. How did it happen that they had +drawn nothing from them? + +He knew that the great minds, the deep and rational thinkers, existed. +He had his proofs from the books, the books that had educated him +beyond the Morse standard. And he knew that higher intellects than +those of the Morse circle were to be found in the world. He read +English society novels, wherein he caught glimpses of men and women +talking politics and philosophy. And he read of salons in great cities, +even in the United States, where art and intellect congregated. +Foolishly, in the past, he had conceived that all well-groomed persons +above the working class were persons with power of intellect and vigor +of beauty. Culture and collars had gone together, to him, and he had +been deceived into believing that college educations and mastery were +the same things. + +Well, he would fight his way on and up higher. And he would take Ruth +with him. Her he dearly loved, and he was confident that she would +shine anywhere. As it was clear to him that he had been handicapped by +his early environment, so now he perceived that she was similarly +handicapped. She had not had a chance to expand. The books on her +father’s shelves, the paintings on the walls, the music on the +piano—all was just so much meretricious display. To real literature, +real painting, real music, the Morses and their kind, were dead. And +bigger than such things was life, of which they were densely, +hopelessly ignorant. In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their +masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind +interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while +their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe +struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the +youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—the same that moved +the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first +hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam’s rib; that moved +Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the +projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British +ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win +immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of +history. + +So Martin thought, and he thought further, till it dawned upon him that +the difference between these lawyers, officers, business men, and bank +cashiers he had met and the members of the working class he had known +was on a par with the difference in the food they ate, clothes they +wore, neighborhoods in which they lived. Certainly, in all of them was +lacking the something more which he found in himself and in the books. +The Morses had shown him the best their social position could produce, +and he was not impressed by it. A pauper himself, a slave to the +money-lender, he knew himself the superior of those he met at the +Morses’; and, when his one decent suit of clothes was out of pawn, he +moved among them a lord of life, quivering with a sense of outrage akin +to what a prince would suffer if condemned to live with goat-herds. + +“You hate and fear the socialists,” he remarked to Mr. Morse, one +evening at dinner; “but why? You know neither them nor their +doctrines.” + +The conversation had been swung in that direction by Mrs. Morse, who +had been invidiously singing the praises of Mr. Hapgood. The cashier +was Martin’s black beast, and his temper was a trifle short where the +talker of platitudes was concerned. + +“Yes,” he had said, “Charley Hapgood is what they call a rising young +man—somebody told me as much. And it is true. He’ll make the Governor’s +Chair before he dies, and, who knows? maybe the United States Senate.” + +“What makes you think so?” Mrs. Morse had inquired. + +“I’ve heard him make a campaign speech. It was so cleverly stupid and +unoriginal, and also so convincing, that the leaders cannot help but +regard him as safe and sure, while his platitudes are so much like the +platitudes of the average voter that—oh, well, you know you flatter any +man by dressing up his own thoughts for him and presenting them to +him.” + +“I actually think you are jealous of Mr. Hapgood,” Ruth had chimed in. + +“Heaven forbid!” + +The look of horror on Martin’s face stirred Mrs. Morse to belligerence. + +“You surely don’t mean to say that Mr. Hapgood is stupid?” she demanded +icily. + +“No more than the average Republican,” was the retort, “or average +Democrat, either. They are all stupid when they are not crafty, and +very few of them are crafty. The only wise Republicans are the +millionnaires and their conscious henchmen. They know which side their +bread is buttered on, and they know why.” + +“I am a Republican,” Mr. Morse put in lightly. “Pray, how do you +classify me?” + +“Oh, you are an unconscious henchman.” + +“Henchman?” + +“Why, yes. You do corporation work. You have no working-class nor +criminal practice. You don’t depend upon wife-beaters and pickpockets +for your income. You get your livelihood from the masters of society, +and whoever feeds a man is that man’s master. Yes, you are a henchman. +You are interested in advancing the interests of the aggregations of +capital you serve.” + +Mr. Morse’s face was a trifle red. + +“I confess, sir,” he said, “that you talk like a scoundrelly +socialist.” + +Then it was that Martin made his remark: + +“You hate and fear the socialists; but why? You know neither them nor +their doctrines.” + +“Your doctrine certainly sounds like socialism,” Mr. Morse replied, +while Ruth gazed anxiously from one to the other, and Mrs. Morse beamed +happily at the opportunity afforded of rousing her liege lord’s +antagonism. + +“Because I say Republicans are stupid, and hold that liberty, equality, +and fraternity are exploded bubbles, does not make me a socialist,” +Martin said with a smile. “Because I question Jefferson and the +unscientific Frenchmen who informed his mind, does not make me a +socialist. Believe me, Mr. Morse, you are far nearer socialism than I +who am its avowed enemy.” + +“Now you please to be facetious,” was all the other could say. + +“Not at all. I speak in all seriousness. You still believe in equality, +and yet you do the work of the corporations, and the corporations, from +day to day, are busily engaged in burying equality. And you call me a +socialist because I deny equality, because I affirm just what you live +up to. The Republicans are foes to equality, though most of them fight +the battle against equality with the very word itself the slogan on +their lips. In the name of equality they destroy equality. That was why +I called them stupid. As for myself, I am an individualist. I believe +the race is to the swift, the battle to the strong. Such is the lesson +I have learned from biology, or at least think I have learned. As I +said, I am an individualist, and individualism is the hereditary and +eternal foe of socialism.” + +“But you frequent socialist meetings,” Mr. Morse challenged. + +“Certainly, just as spies frequent hostile camps. How else are you to +learn about the enemy? Besides, I enjoy myself at their meetings. They +are good fighters, and, right or wrong, they have read the books. Any +one of them knows far more about sociology and all the other ologies +than the average captain of industry. Yes, I have been to half a dozen +of their meetings, but that doesn’t make me a socialist any more than +hearing Charley Hapgood orate made me a Republican.” + +“I can’t help it,” Mr. Morse said feebly, “but I still believe you +incline that way.” + +Bless me, Martin thought to himself, he doesn’t know what I was talking +about. He hasn’t understood a word of it. What did he do with his +education, anyway? + +Thus, in his development, Martin found himself face to face with +economic morality, or the morality of class; and soon it became to him +a grisly monster. Personally, he was an intellectual moralist, and more +offending to him than platitudinous pomposity was the morality of those +about him, which was a curious hotchpotch of the economic, the +metaphysical, the sentimental, and the imitative. + +A sample of this curious messy mixture he encountered nearer home. His +sister Marian had been keeping company with an industrious young +mechanic, of German extraction, who, after thoroughly learning the +trade, had set up for himself in a bicycle-repair shop. Also, having +got the agency for a low-grade make of wheel, he was prosperous. Marian +had called on Martin in his room a short time before to announce her +engagement, during which visit she had playfully inspected Martin’s +palm and told his fortune. On her next visit she brought Hermann von +Schmidt along with her. Martin did the honors and congratulated both of +them in language so easy and graceful as to affect disagreeably the +peasant-mind of his sister’s lover. This bad impression was further +heightened by Martin’s reading aloud the half-dozen stanzas of verse +with which he had commemorated Marian’s previous visit. It was a bit of +society verse, airy and delicate, which he had named “The Palmist.” He +was surprised, when he finished reading it, to note no enjoyment in his +sister’s face. Instead, her eyes were fixed anxiously upon her +betrothed, and Martin, following her gaze, saw spread on that worthy’s +asymmetrical features nothing but black and sullen disapproval. The +incident passed over, they made an early departure, and Martin forgot +all about it, though for the moment he had been puzzled that any woman, +even of the working class, should not have been flattered and delighted +by having poetry written about her. + +Several evenings later Marian again visited him, this time alone. Nor +did she waste time in coming to the point, upbraiding him sorrowfully +for what he had done. + +“Why, Marian,” he chided, “you talk as though you were ashamed of your +relatives, or of your brother at any rate.” + +“And I am, too,” she blurted out. + +Martin was bewildered by the tears of mortification he saw in her eyes. +The mood, whatever it was, was genuine. + +“But, Marian, why should your Hermann be jealous of my writing poetry +about my own sister?” + +“He ain’t jealous,” she sobbed. “He says it was indecent, ob—obscene.” + +Martin emitted a long, low whistle of incredulity, then proceeded to +resurrect and read a carbon copy of “The Palmist.” + +“I can’t see it,” he said finally, proffering the manuscript to her. +“Read it yourself and show me whatever strikes you as obscene—that was +the word, wasn’t it?” + +“He says so, and he ought to know,” was the answer, with a wave aside +of the manuscript, accompanied by a look of loathing. “And he says +you’ve got to tear it up. He says he won’t have no wife of his with +such things written about her which anybody can read. He says it’s a +disgrace, an’ he won’t stand for it.” + +“Now, look here, Marian, this is nothing but nonsense,” Martin began; +then abruptly changed his mind. + +He saw before him an unhappy girl, knew the futility of attempting to +convince her husband or her, and, though the whole situation was absurd +and preposterous, he resolved to surrender. + +“All right,” he announced, tearing the manuscript into half a dozen +pieces and throwing it into the waste-basket. + +He contented himself with the knowledge that even then the original +type-written manuscript was reposing in the office of a New York +magazine. Marian and her husband would never know, and neither himself +nor they nor the world would lose if the pretty, harmless poem ever +were published. + +Marian, starting to reach into the waste-basket, refrained. + +“Can I?” she pleaded. + +He nodded his head, regarding her thoughtfully as she gathered the torn +pieces of manuscript and tucked them into the pocket of her +jacket—ocular evidence of the success of her mission. She reminded him +of Lizzie Connolly, though there was less of fire and gorgeous +flaunting life in her than in that other girl of the working class whom +he had seen twice. But they were on a par, the pair of them, in dress +and carriage, and he smiled with inward amusement at the caprice of his +fancy which suggested the appearance of either of them in Mrs. Morse’s +drawing-room. The amusement faded, and he was aware of a great +loneliness. This sister of his and the Morse drawing-room were +milestones of the road he had travelled. And he had left them behind. +He glanced affectionately about him at his few books. They were all the +comrades left to him. + +“Hello, what’s that?” he demanded in startled surprise. + +Marian repeated her question. + +“Why don’t I go to work?” He broke into a laugh that was only +half-hearted. “That Hermann of yours has been talking to you.” + +She shook her head. + +“Don’t lie,” he commanded, and the nod of her head affirmed his charge. + +“Well, you tell that Hermann of yours to mind his own business; that +when I write poetry about the girl he’s keeping company with it’s his +business, but that outside of that he’s got no say so. Understand? + +“So you don’t think I’ll succeed as a writer, eh?” he went on. “You +think I’m no good?—that I’ve fallen down and am a disgrace to the +family?” + +“I think it would be much better if you got a job,” she said firmly, +and he saw she was sincere. “Hermann says—” + +“Damn Hermann!” he broke out good-naturedly. “What I want to know is +when you’re going to get married. Also, you find out from your Hermann +if he will deign to permit you to accept a wedding present from me.” + +He mused over the incident after she had gone, and once or twice broke +out into laughter that was bitter as he saw his sister and her +betrothed, all the members of his own class and the members of Ruth’s +class, directing their narrow little lives by narrow little +formulas—herd-creatures, flocking together and patterning their lives +by one another’s opinions, failing of being individuals and of really +living life because of the childlike formulas by which they were +enslaved. He summoned them before him in apparitional procession: +Bernard Higginbotham arm in arm with Mr. Butler, Hermann von Schmidt +cheek by jowl with Charley Hapgood, and one by one and in pairs he +judged them and dismissed them—judged them by the standards of +intellect and morality he had learned from the books. Vainly he asked: +Where are the great souls, the great men and women? He found them not +among the careless, gross, and stupid intelligences that answered the +call of vision to his narrow room. He felt a loathing for them such as +Circe must have felt for her swine. When he had dismissed the last one +and thought himself alone, a late-comer entered, unexpected and +unsummoned. Martin watched him and saw the stiff-rim, the square-cut, +double-breasted coat and the swaggering shoulders, of the youthful +hoodlum who had once been he. + +“You were like all the rest, young fellow,” Martin sneered. “Your +morality and your knowledge were just the same as theirs. You did not +think and act for yourself. Your opinions, like your clothes, were +ready made; your acts were shaped by popular approval. You were cock of +your gang because others acclaimed you the real thing. You fought and +ruled the gang, not because you liked to,—you know you really despised +it,—but because the other fellows patted you on the shoulder. You +licked Cheese-Face because you wouldn’t give in, and you wouldn’t give +in partly because you were an abysmal brute and for the rest because +you believed what every one about you believed, that the measure of +manhood was the carnivorous ferocity displayed in injuring and marring +fellow-creatures’ anatomies. Why, you whelp, you even won other +fellows’ girls away from them, not because you wanted the girls, but +because in the marrow of those about you, those who set your moral +pace, was the instinct of the wild stallion and the bull-seal. Well, +the years have passed, and what do you think about it now?” + +As if in reply, the vision underwent a swift metamorphosis. The +stiff-rim and the square-cut vanished, being replaced by milder +garments; the toughness went out of the face, the hardness out of the +eyes; and, the face, chastened and refined, was irradiated from an +inner life of communion with beauty and knowledge. The apparition was +very like his present self, and, as he regarded it, he noted the +student-lamp by which it was illuminated, and the book over which it +pored. He glanced at the title and read, “The Science of Æsthetics.” +Next, he entered into the apparition, trimmed the student-lamp, and +himself went on reading “The Science of Æsthetics.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + + +On a beautiful fall day, a day of similar Indian summer to that which +had seen their love declared the year before, Martin read his +“Love-cycle” to Ruth. It was in the afternoon, and, as before, they had +ridden out to their favorite knoll in the hills. Now and again she had +interrupted his reading with exclamations of pleasure, and now, as he +laid the last sheet of manuscript with its fellows, he waited her +judgment. + +She delayed to speak, and at last she spoke haltingly, hesitating to +frame in words the harshness of her thought. + +“I think they are beautiful, very beautiful,” she said; “but you can’t +sell them, can you? You see what I mean,” she said, almost pleaded. +“This writing of yours is not practical. Something is the matter—maybe +it is with the market—that prevents you from earning a living by it. +And please, dear, don’t misunderstand me. I am flattered, and made +proud, and all that—I could not be a true woman were it otherwise—that +you should write these poems to me. But they do not make our marriage +possible. Don’t you see, Martin? Don’t think me mercenary. It is love, +the thought of our future, with which I am burdened. A whole year has +gone by since we learned we loved each other, and our wedding day is no +nearer. Don’t think me immodest in thus talking about our wedding, for +really I have my heart, all that I am, at stake. Why don’t you try to +get work on a newspaper, if you are so bound up in your writing? Why +not become a reporter?—for a while, at least?” + +“It would spoil my style,” was his answer, in a low, monotonous voice. +“You have no idea how I’ve worked for style.” + +“But those storiettes,” she argued. “You called them hack-work. You +wrote many of them. Didn’t they spoil your style?” + +“No, the cases are different. The storiettes were ground out, jaded, at +the end of a long day of application to style. But a reporter’s work is +all hack from morning till night, is the one paramount thing of life. +And it is a whirlwind life, the life of the moment, with neither past +nor future, and certainly without thought of any style but reportorial +style, and that certainly is not literature. To become a reporter now, +just as my style is taking form, crystallizing, would be to commit +literary suicide. As it is, every storiette, every word of every +storiette, was a violation of myself, of my self-respect, of my respect +for beauty. I tell you it was sickening. I was guilty of sin. And I was +secretly glad when the markets failed, even if my clothes did go into +pawn. But the joy of writing the ‘Love-cycle’! The creative joy in its +noblest form! That was compensation for everything.” + +Martin did not know that Ruth was unsympathetic concerning the creative +joy. She used the phrase—it was on her lips he had first heard it. She +had read about it, studied about it, in the university in the course of +earning her Bachelorship of Arts; but she was not original, not +creative, and all manifestations of culture on her part were but +harpings of the harpings of others. + +“May not the editor have been right in his revision of your ‘Sea +Lyrics’?” she questioned. “Remember, an editor must have proved +qualifications or else he would not be an editor.” + +“That’s in line with the persistence of the established,” he rejoined, +his heat against the editor-folk getting the better of him. “What is, +is not only right, but is the best possible. The existence of anything +is sufficient vindication of its fitness to exist—to exist, mark you, +as the average person unconsciously believes, not merely in present +conditions, but in all conditions. It is their ignorance, of course, +that makes them believe such rot—their ignorance, which is nothing more +nor less than the henidical mental process described by Weininger. They +think they think, and such thinkless creatures are the arbiters of the +lives of the few who really think.” + +He paused, overcome by the consciousness that he had been talking over +Ruth’s head. + +“I’m sure I don’t know who this Weininger is,” she retorted. “And you +are so dreadfully general that I fail to follow you. What I was +speaking of was the qualification of editors—” + +“And I’ll tell you,” he interrupted. “The chief qualification of +ninety-nine per cent of all editors is failure. They have failed as +writers. Don’t think they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the +slavery to their circulation and to the business manager to the joy of +writing. They have tried to write, and they have failed. And right +there is the cursed paradox of it. Every portal to success in +literature is guarded by those watch-dogs, the failures in literature. +The editors, sub-editors, associate editors, most of them, and the +manuscript-readers for the magazines and book-publishers, most of them, +nearly all of them, are men who wanted to write and who have failed. +And yet they, of all creatures under the sun the most unfit, are the +very creatures who decide what shall and what shall not find its way +into print—they, who have proved themselves not original, who have +demonstrated that they lack the divine fire, sit in judgment upon +originality and genius. And after them come the reviewers, just so many +more failures. Don’t tell me that they have not dreamed the dream and +attempted to write poetry or fiction; for they have, and they have +failed. Why, the average review is more nauseating than cod-liver oil. +But you know my opinion on the reviewers and the alleged critics. There +are great critics, but they are as rare as comets. If I fail as a +writer, I shall have proved for the career of editorship. There’s bread +and butter and jam, at any rate.” + +Ruth’s mind was quick, and her disapproval of her lover’s views was +buttressed by the contradiction she found in his contention. + +“But, Martin, if that be so, if all the doors are closed as you have +shown so conclusively, how is it possible that any of the great writers +ever arrived?” + +“They arrived by achieving the impossible,” he answered. “They did such +blazing, glorious work as to burn to ashes those that opposed them. +They arrived by course of miracle, by winning a thousand-to-one wager +against them. They arrived because they were Carlyle’s battle-scarred +giants who will not be kept down. And that is what I must do; I must +achieve the impossible.” + +“But if you fail? You must consider me as well, Martin.” + +“If I fail?” He regarded her for a moment as though the thought she had +uttered was unthinkable. Then intelligence illumined his eyes. “If I +fail, I shall become an editor, and you will be an editor’s wife.” + +She frowned at his facetiousness—a pretty, adorable frown that made him +put his arm around her and kiss it away. + +“There, that’s enough,” she urged, by an effort of will withdrawing +herself from the fascination of his strength. “I have talked with +father and mother. I never before asserted myself so against them. I +demanded to be heard. I was very undutiful. They are against you, you +know; but I assured them over and over of my abiding love for you, and +at last father agreed that if you wanted to, you could begin right away +in his office. And then, of his own accord, he said he would pay you +enough at the start so that we could get married and have a little +cottage somewhere. Which I think was very fine of him—don’t you?” + +Martin, with the dull pain of despair at his heart, mechanically +reaching for the tobacco and paper (which he no longer carried) to roll +a cigarette, muttered something inarticulate, and Ruth went on. + +“Frankly, though, and don’t let it hurt you—I tell you, to show you +precisely how you stand with him—he doesn’t like your radical views, +and he thinks you are lazy. Of course I know you are not. I know you +work hard.” + +How hard, even she did not know, was the thought in Martin’s mind. + +“Well, then,” he said, “how about my views? Do you think they are so +radical?” + +He held her eyes and waited the answer. + +“I think them, well, very disconcerting,” she replied. + +The question was answered for him, and so oppressed was he by the +grayness of life that he forgot the tentative proposition she had made +for him to go to work. And she, having gone as far as she dared, was +willing to wait the answer till she should bring the question up again. + +She had not long to wait. Martin had a question of his own to propound +to her. He wanted to ascertain the measure of her faith in him, and +within the week each was answered. Martin precipitated it by reading to +her his “The Shame of the Sun.” + +“Why don’t you become a reporter?” she asked when he had finished. “You +love writing so, and I am sure you would succeed. You could rise in +journalism and make a name for yourself. There are a number of great +special correspondents. Their salaries are large, and their field is +the world. They are sent everywhere, to the heart of Africa, like +Stanley, or to interview the Pope, or to explore unknown Thibet.” + +“Then you don’t like my essay?” he rejoined. “You believe that I have +some show in journalism but none in literature?” + +“No, no; I do like it. It reads well. But I am afraid it’s over the +heads of your readers. At least it is over mine. It sounds beautiful, +but I don’t understand it. Your scientific slang is beyond me. You are +an extremist, you know, dear, and what may be intelligible to you may +not be intelligible to the rest of us.” + +“I imagine it’s the philosophic slang that bothers you,” was all he +could say. + +He was flaming from the fresh reading of the ripest thought he had +expressed, and her verdict stunned him. + +“No matter how poorly it is done,” he persisted, “don’t you see +anything in it?—in the thought of it, I mean?” + +She shook her head. + +“No, it is so different from anything I have read. I read Maeterlinck +and understand him—” + +“His mysticism, you understand that?” Martin flashed out. + +“Yes, but this of yours, which is supposed to be an attack upon him, I +don’t understand. Of course, if originality counts—” + +He stopped her with an impatient gesture that was not followed by +speech. He became suddenly aware that she was speaking and that she had +been speaking for some time. + +“After all, your writing has been a toy to you,” she was saying. +“Surely you have played with it long enough. It is time to take up life +seriously—_our_ life, Martin. Hitherto you have lived solely your own.” + +“You want me to go to work?” he asked. + +“Yes. Father has offered—” + +“I understand all that,” he broke in; “but what I want to know is +whether or not you have lost faith in me?” + +She pressed his hand mutely, her eyes dim. + +“In your writing, dear,” she admitted in a half-whisper. + +“You’ve read lots of my stuff,” he went on brutally. “What do you think +of it? Is it utterly hopeless? How does it compare with other men’s +work?” + +“But they sell theirs, and you—don’t.” + +“That doesn’t answer my question. Do you think that literature is not +at all my vocation?” + +“Then I will answer.” She steeled herself to do it. “I don’t think you +were made to write. Forgive me, dear. You compel me to say it; and you +know I know more about literature than you do.” + +“Yes, you are a Bachelor of Arts,” he said meditatively; “and you ought +to know.” + +“But there is more to be said,” he continued, after a pause painful to +both. “I know what I have in me. No one knows that so well as I. I know +I shall succeed. I will not be kept down. I am afire with what I have +to say in verse, and fiction, and essay. I do not ask you to have faith +in that, though. I do not ask you to have faith in me, nor in my +writing. What I do ask of you is to love me and have faith in love. + +“A year ago I begged for two years. One of those years is yet to run. +And I do believe, upon my honor and my soul, that before that year is +run I shall have succeeded. You remember what you told me long ago, +that I must serve my apprenticeship to writing. Well, I have served it. +I have crammed it and telescoped it. With you at the end awaiting me, I +have never shirked. Do you know, I have forgotten what it is to fall +peacefully asleep. A few million years ago I knew what it was to sleep +my fill and to awake naturally from very glut of sleep. I am awakened +always now by an alarm clock. If I fall asleep early or late, I set the +alarm accordingly; and this, and the putting out of the lamp, are my +last conscious actions. + +“When I begin to feel drowsy, I change the heavy book I am reading for +a lighter one. And when I doze over that, I beat my head with my +knuckles in order to drive sleep away. Somewhere I read of a man who +was afraid to sleep. Kipling wrote the story. This man arranged a spur +so that when unconsciousness came, his naked body pressed against the +iron teeth. Well, I’ve done the same. I look at the time, and I resolve +that not until midnight, or not until one o’clock, or two o’clock, or +three o’clock, shall the spur be removed. And so it rowels me awake +until the appointed time. That spur has been my bed-mate for months. I +have grown so desperate that five and a half hours of sleep is an +extravagance. I sleep four hours now. I am starved for sleep. There are +times when I am light-headed from want of sleep, times when death, with +its rest and sleep, is a positive lure to me, times when I am haunted +by Longfellow’s lines: + +“‘The sea is still and deep; +All things within its bosom sleep; +A single step and all is o’er, +A plunge, a bubble, and no more.’ + + +“Of course, this is sheer nonsense. It comes from nervousness, from an +overwrought mind. But the point is: Why have I done this? For you. To +shorten my apprenticeship. To compel Success to hasten. And my +apprenticeship is now served. I know my equipment. I swear that I learn +more each month than the average college man learns in a year. I know +it, I tell you. But were my need for you to understand not so desperate +I should not tell you. It is not boasting. I measure the results by the +books. Your brothers, to-day, are ignorant barbarians compared with me +and the knowledge I have wrung from the books in the hours they were +sleeping. Long ago I wanted to be famous. I care very little for fame +now. What I want is you; I am more hungry for you than for food, or +clothing, or recognition. I have a dream of laying my head on your +breast and sleeping an aeon or so, and the dream will come true ere +another year is gone.” + +His power beat against her, wave upon wave; and in the moment his will +opposed hers most she felt herself most strongly drawn toward him. The +strength that had always poured out from him to her was now flowering +in his impassioned voice, his flashing eyes, and the vigor of life and +intellect surging in him. And in that moment, and for the moment, she +was aware of a rift that showed in her certitude—a rift through which +she caught sight of the real Martin Eden, splendid and invincible; and +as animal-trainers have their moments of doubt, so she, for the +instant, seemed to doubt her power to tame this wild spirit of a man. + +“And another thing,” he swept on. “You love me. But why do you love me? +The thing in me that compels me to write is the very thing that draws +your love. You love me because I am somehow different from the men you +have known and might have loved. I was not made for the desk and +counting-house, for petty business squabbling, and legal jangling. Make +me do such things, make me like those other men, doing the work they +do, breathing the air they breathe, developing the point of view they +have developed, and you have destroyed the difference, destroyed me, +destroyed the thing you love. My desire to write is the most vital +thing in me. Had I been a mere clod, neither would I have desired to +write, nor would you have desired me for a husband.” + +“But you forget,” she interrupted, the quick surface of her mind +glimpsing a parallel. “There have been eccentric inventors, starving +their families while they sought such chimeras as perpetual motion. +Doubtless their wives loved them, and suffered with them and for them, +not because of but in spite of their infatuation for perpetual motion.” + +“True,” was the reply. “But there have been inventors who were not +eccentric and who starved while they sought to invent practical things; +and sometimes, it is recorded, they succeeded. Certainly I do not seek +any impossibilities—” + +“You have called it ‘achieving the impossible,’” she interpolated. + +“I spoke figuratively. I seek to do what men have done before me—to +write and to live by my writing.” + +Her silence spurred him on. + +“To you, then, my goal is as much a chimera as perpetual motion?” he +demanded. + +He read her answer in the pressure of her hand on his—the pitying +mother-hand for the hurt child. And to her, just then, he was the hurt +child, the infatuated man striving to achieve the impossible. + +Toward the close of their talk she warned him again of the antagonism +of her father and mother. + +“But you love me?” he asked. + +“I do! I do!” she cried. + +“And I love you, not them, and nothing they do can hurt me.” Triumph +sounded in his voice. “For I have faith in your love, not fear of their +enmity. All things may go astray in this world, but not love. Love +cannot go wrong unless it be a weakling that faints and stumbles by the +way.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + + +Martin had encountered his sister Gertrude by chance on Broadway—as it +proved, a most propitious yet disconcerting chance. Waiting on the +corner for a car, she had seen him first, and noted the eager, hungry +lines of his face and the desperate, worried look of his eyes. In +truth, he was desperate and worried. He had just come from a fruitless +interview with the pawnbroker, from whom he had tried to wring an +additional loan on his wheel. The muddy fall weather having come on, +Martin had pledged his wheel some time since and retained his black +suit. + +“There’s the black suit,” the pawnbroker, who knew his every asset, had +answered. “You needn’t tell me you’ve gone and pledged it with that +Jew, Lipka. Because if you have—” + +The man had looked the threat, and Martin hastened to cry:- + +“No, no; I’ve got it. But I want to wear it on a matter of business.” + +“All right,” the mollified usurer had replied. “And I want it on a +matter of business before I can let you have any more money. You don’t +think I’m in it for my health?” + +“But it’s a forty-dollar wheel, in good condition,” Martin had argued. +“And you’ve only let me have seven dollars on it. No, not even seven. +Six and a quarter; you took the interest in advance.” + +“If you want some more, bring the suit,” had been the reply that sent +Martin out of the stuffy little den, so desperate at heart as to +reflect it in his face and touch his sister to pity. + +Scarcely had they met when the Telegraph Avenue car came along and +stopped to take on a crowd of afternoon shoppers. Mrs. Higginbotham +divined from the grip on her arm as he helped her on, that he was not +going to follow her. She turned on the step and looked down upon him. +His haggard face smote her to the heart again. + +“Ain’t you comin’?” she asked + +The next moment she had descended to his side. + +“I’m walking—exercise, you know,” he explained. + +“Then I’ll go along for a few blocks,” she announced. “Mebbe it’ll do +me good. I ain’t ben feelin’ any too spry these last few days.” + +Martin glanced at her and verified her statement in her general +slovenly appearance, in the unhealthy fat, in the drooping shoulders, +the tired face with the sagging lines, and in the heavy fall of her +feet, without elasticity—a very caricature of the walk that belongs to +a free and happy body. + +“You’d better stop here,” he said, though she had already come to a +halt at the first corner, “and take the next car.” + +“My goodness!—if I ain’t all tired a’ready!” she panted. “But I’m just +as able to walk as you in them soles. They’re that thin they’ll bu’st +long before you git out to North Oakland.” + +“I’ve a better pair at home,” was the answer. + +“Come out to dinner to-morrow,” she invited irrelevantly. “Mr. +Higginbotham won’t be there. He’s goin’ to San Leandro on business.” + +Martin shook his head, but he had failed to keep back the wolfish, +hungry look that leapt into his eyes at the suggestion of dinner. + +“You haven’t a penny, Mart, and that’s why you’re walkin’. Exercise!” +She tried to sniff contemptuously, but succeeded in producing only a +sniffle. “Here, lemme see.” + +And, fumbling in her satchel, she pressed a five-dollar piece into his +hand. “I guess I forgot your last birthday, Mart,” she mumbled lamely. + +Martin’s hand instinctively closed on the piece of gold. In the same +instant he knew he ought not to accept, and found himself struggling in +the throes of indecision. That bit of gold meant food, life, and light +in his body and brain, power to go on writing, and—who was to +say?—maybe to write something that would bring in many pieces of gold. +Clear on his vision burned the manuscripts of two essays he had just +completed. He saw them under the table on top of the heap of returned +manuscripts for which he had no stamps, and he saw their titles, just +as he had typed them—“The High Priests of Mystery,” and “The Cradle of +Beauty.” He had never submitted them anywhere. They were as good as +anything he had done in that line. If only he had stamps for them! Then +the certitude of his ultimate success rose up in him, an able ally of +hunger, and with a quick movement he slipped the coin into his pocket. + +“I’ll pay you back, Gertrude, a hundred times over,” he gulped out, his +throat painfully contracted and in his eyes a swift hint of moisture. + +“Mark my words!” he cried with abrupt positiveness. “Before the year is +out I’ll put an even hundred of those little yellow-boys into your +hand. I don’t ask you to believe me. All you have to do is wait and +see.” + +Nor did she believe. Her incredulity made her uncomfortable, and +failing of other expedient, she said:- + +“I know you’re hungry, Mart. It’s sticking out all over you. Come in to +meals any time. I’ll send one of the children to tell you when Mr. +Higginbotham ain’t to be there. An’ Mart—” + +He waited, though he knew in his secret heart what she was about to +say, so visible was her thought process to him. + +“Don’t you think it’s about time you got a job?” + +“You don’t think I’ll win out?” he asked. + +She shook her head. + +“Nobody has faith in me, Gertrude, except myself.” His voice was +passionately rebellious. “I’ve done good work already, plenty of it, +and sooner or later it will sell.” + +“How do you know it is good?” + +“Because—” He faltered as the whole vast field of literature and the +history of literature stirred in his brain and pointed the futility of +his attempting to convey to her the reasons for his faith. “Well, +because it’s better than ninety-nine per cent of what is published in +the magazines.” + +“I wish’t you’d listen to reason,” she answered feebly, but with +unwavering belief in the correctness of her diagnosis of what was +ailing him. “I wish’t you’d listen to reason,” she repeated, “an’ come +to dinner to-morrow.” + +After Martin had helped her on the car, he hurried to the post-office +and invested three of the five dollars in stamps; and when, later in +the day, on the way to the Morse home, he stopped in at the post-office +to weigh a large number of long, bulky envelopes, he affixed to them +all the stamps save three of the two-cent denomination. + +It proved a momentous night for Martin, for after dinner he met Russ +Brissenden. How he chanced to come there, whose friend he was or what +acquaintance brought him, Martin did not know. Nor had he the curiosity +to inquire about him of Ruth. In short, Brissenden struck Martin as +anaemic and feather-brained, and was promptly dismissed from his mind. +An hour later he decided that Brissenden was a boor as well, what of +the way he prowled about from one room to another, staring at the +pictures or poking his nose into books and magazines he picked up from +the table or drew from the shelves. Though a stranger in the house he +finally isolated himself in the midst of the company, huddling into a +capacious Morris chair and reading steadily from a thin volume he had +drawn from his pocket. As he read, he abstractedly ran his fingers, +with a caressing movement, through his hair. Martin noticed him no more +that evening, except once when he observed him chaffing with great +apparent success with several of the young women. + +It chanced that when Martin was leaving, he overtook Brissenden already +half down the walk to the street. + +“Hello, is that you?” Martin said. + +The other replied with an ungracious grunt, but swung alongside. Martin +made no further attempt at conversation, and for several blocks +unbroken silence lay upon them. + +“Pompous old ass!” + +The suddenness and the virulence of the exclamation startled Martin. He +felt amused, and at the same time was aware of a growing dislike for +the other. + +“What do you go to such a place for?” was abruptly flung at him after +another block of silence. + +“Why do you?” Martin countered. + +“Bless me, I don’t know,” came back. “At least this is my first +indiscretion. There are twenty-four hours in each day, and I must spend +them somehow. Come and have a drink.” + +“All right,” Martin answered. + +The next moment he was nonplussed by the readiness of his acceptance. +At home was several hours’ hack-work waiting for him before he went to +bed, and after he went to bed there was a volume of Weismann waiting +for him, to say nothing of Herbert Spencer’s Autobiography, which was +as replete for him with romance as any thrilling novel. Why should he +waste any time with this man he did not like? was his thought. And yet, +it was not so much the man nor the drink as was it what was associated +with the drink—the bright lights, the mirrors and dazzling array of +glasses, the warm and glowing faces and the resonant hum of the voices +of men. That was it, it was the voices of men, optimistic men, men who +breathed success and spent their money for drinks like men. He was +lonely, that was what was the matter with him; that was why he had +snapped at the invitation as a bonita strikes at a white rag on a hook. +Not since with Joe, at Shelly Hot Springs, with the one exception of +the wine he took with the Portuguese grocer, had Martin had a drink at +a public bar. Mental exhaustion did not produce a craving for liquor +such as physical exhaustion did, and he had felt no need for it. But +just now he felt desire for the drink, or, rather, for the atmosphere +wherein drinks were dispensed and disposed of. Such a place was the +Grotto, where Brissenden and he lounged in capacious leather chairs and +drank Scotch and soda. + +They talked. They talked about many things, and now Brissenden and now +Martin took turn in ordering Scotch and soda. Martin, who was extremely +strong-headed, marvelled at the other’s capacity for liquor, and ever +and anon broke off to marvel at the other’s conversation. He was not +long in assuming that Brissenden knew everything, and in deciding that +here was the second intellectual man he had met. But he noted that +Brissenden had what Professor Caldwell lacked—namely, fire, the +flashing insight and perception, the flaming uncontrol of genius. +Living language flowed from him. His thin lips, like the dies of a +machine, stamped out phrases that cut and stung; or again, pursing +caressingly about the inchoate sound they articulated, the thin lips +shaped soft and velvety things, mellow phrases of glow and glory, of +haunting beauty, reverberant of the mystery and inscrutableness of +life; and yet again the thin lips were like a bugle, from which rang +the crash and tumult of cosmic strife, phrases that sounded clear as +silver, that were luminous as starry spaces, that epitomized the final +word of science and yet said something more—the poet’s word, the +transcendental truth, elusive and without words which could express, +and which none the less found expression in the subtle and all but +ungraspable connotations of common words. He, by some wonder of vision, +saw beyond the farthest outpost of empiricism, where was no language +for narration, and yet, by some golden miracle of speech, investing +known words with unknown significances, he conveyed to Martin’s +consciousness messages that were incommunicable to ordinary souls. + +Martin forgot his first impression of dislike. Here was the best the +books had to offer coming true. Here was an intelligence, a living man +for him to look up to. “I am down in the dirt at your feet,” Martin +repeated to himself again and again. + +“You’ve studied biology,” he said aloud, in significant allusion. + +To his surprise Brissenden shook his head. + +“But you are stating truths that are substantiated only by biology,” +Martin insisted, and was rewarded by a blank stare. “Your conclusions +are in line with the books which you must have read.” + +“I am glad to hear it,” was the answer. “That my smattering of +knowledge should enable me to short-cut my way to truth is most +reassuring. As for myself, I never bother to find out if I am right or +not. It is all valueless anyway. Man can never know the ultimate +verities.” + +“You are a disciple of Spencer!” Martin cried triumphantly. + +“I haven’t read him since adolescence, and all I read then was his +‘Education.’” + +“I wish I could gather knowledge as carelessly,” Martin broke out half +an hour later. He had been closely analyzing Brissenden’s mental +equipment. “You are a sheer dogmatist, and that’s what makes it so +marvellous. You state dogmatically the latest facts which science has +been able to establish only by _à posteriori_ reasoning. You jump at +correct conclusions. You certainly short-cut with a vengeance. You feel +your way with the speed of light, by some hyperrational process, to +truth.” + +“Yes, that was what used to bother Father Joseph, and Brother Dutton,” +Brissenden replied. “Oh, no,” he added; “I am not anything. It was a +lucky trick of fate that sent me to a Catholic college for my +education. Where did you pick up what you know?” + +And while Martin told him, he was busy studying Brissenden, ranging +from a long, lean, aristocratic face and drooping shoulders to the +overcoat on a neighboring chair, its pockets sagged and bulged by the +freightage of many books. Brissenden’s face and long, slender hands +were browned by the sun—excessively browned, Martin thought. This +sunburn bothered Martin. It was patent that Brissenden was no outdoor +man. Then how had he been ravaged by the sun? Something morbid and +significant attached to that sunburn, was Martin’s thought as he +returned to a study of the face, narrow, with high cheek-bones and +cavernous hollows, and graced with as delicate and fine an aquiline +nose as Martin had ever seen. There was nothing remarkable about the +size of the eyes. They were neither large nor small, while their color +was a nondescript brown; but in them smouldered a fire, or, rather, +lurked an expression dual and strangely contradictory. Defiant, +indomitable, even harsh to excess, they at the same time aroused pity. +Martin found himself pitying him he knew not why, though he was soon to +learn. + +“Oh, I’m a lunger,” Brissenden announced, offhand, a little later, +having already stated that he came from Arizona. “I’ve been down there +a couple of years living on the climate.” + +“Aren’t you afraid to venture it up in this climate?” + +“Afraid?” + +There was no special emphasis of his repetition of Martin’s word. But +Martin saw in that ascetic face the advertisement that there was +nothing of which it was afraid. The eyes had narrowed till they were +eagle-like, and Martin almost caught his breath as he noted the eagle +beak with its dilated nostrils, defiant, assertive, aggressive. +Magnificent, was what he commented to himself, his blood thrilling at +the sight. Aloud, he quoted:- + +“‘Under the bludgeoning of Chance + My head is bloody but unbowed.’” + + +“You like Henley,” Brissenden said, his expression changing swiftly to +large graciousness and tenderness. “Of course, I couldn’t have expected +anything else of you. Ah, Henley! A brave soul. He stands out among +contemporary rhymesters—magazine rhymesters—as a gladiator stands out +in the midst of a band of eunuchs.” + +“You don’t like the magazines,” Martin softly impeached. + +“Do you?” was snarled back at him so savagely as to startle him. + +“I—I write, or, rather, try to write, for the magazines,” Martin +faltered. + +“That’s better,” was the mollified rejoinder. “You try to write, but +you don’t succeed. I respect and admire your failure. I know what you +write. I can see it with half an eye, and there’s one ingredient in it +that shuts it out of the magazines. It’s guts, and magazines have no +use for that particular commodity. What they want is wish-wash and +slush, and God knows they get it, but not from you.” + +“I’m not above hack-work,” Martin contended. + +“On the contrary—” Brissenden paused and ran an insolent eye over +Martin’s objective poverty, passing from the well-worn tie and the +saw-edged collar to the shiny sleeves of the coat and on to the slight +fray of one cuff, winding up and dwelling upon Martin’s sunken cheeks. +“On the contrary, hack-work is above you, so far above you that you can +never hope to rise to it. Why, man, I could insult you by asking you to +have something to eat.” + +Martin felt the heat in his face of the involuntary blood, and +Brissenden laughed triumphantly. + +“A full man is not insulted by such an invitation,” he concluded. + +“You are a devil,” Martin cried irritably. + +“Anyway, I didn’t ask you.” + +“You didn’t dare.” + +“Oh, I don’t know about that. I invite you now.” + +Brissenden half rose from his chair as he spoke, as if with the +intention of departing to the restaurant forthwith. + +Martin’s fists were tight-clenched, and his blood was drumming in his +temples. + +“Bosco! He eats ’em alive! Eats ’em alive!” Brissenden exclaimed, +imitating the _spieler_ of a locally famous snake-eater. + +“I could certainly eat you alive,” Martin said, in turn running +insolent eyes over the other’s disease-ravaged frame. + +“Only I’m not worthy of it?” + +“On the contrary,” Martin considered, “because the incident is not +worthy.” He broke into a laugh, hearty and wholesome. “I confess you +made a fool of me, Brissenden. That I am hungry and you are aware of it +are only ordinary phenomena, and there’s no disgrace. You see, I laugh +at the conventional little moralities of the herd; then you drift by, +say a sharp, true word, and immediately I am the slave of the same +little moralities.” + +“You were insulted,” Brissenden affirmed. + +“I certainly was, a moment ago. The prejudice of early youth, you know. +I learned such things then, and they cheapen what I have since learned. +They are the skeletons in my particular closet.” + +“But you’ve got the door shut on them now?” + +“I certainly have.” + +“Sure?” + +“Sure.” + +“Then let’s go and get something to eat.” + +“I’ll go you,” Martin answered, attempting to pay for the current +Scotch and soda with the last change from his two dollars and seeing +the waiter bullied by Brissenden into putting that change back on the +table. + +Martin pocketed it with a grimace, and felt for a moment the kindly +weight of Brissenden’s hand upon his shoulder. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + + +Promptly, the next afternoon, Maria was excited by Martin’s second +visitor. But she did not lose her head this time, for she seated +Brissenden in her parlor’s grandeur of respectability. + +“Hope you don’t mind my coming?” Brissenden began. + +“No, no, not at all,” Martin answered, shaking hands and waving him to +the solitary chair, himself taking to the bed. “But how did you know +where I lived?” + +“Called up the Morses. Miss Morse answered the ’phone. And here I am.” +He tugged at his coat pocket and flung a thin volume on the table. +“There’s a book, by a poet. Read it and keep it.” And then, in reply to +Martin’s protest: “What have I to do with books? I had another +hemorrhage this morning. Got any whiskey? No, of course not. Wait a +minute.” + +He was off and away. Martin watched his long figure go down the outside +steps, and, on turning to close the gate, noted with a pang the +shoulders, which had once been broad, drawn in now over the collapsed +ruin of the chest. Martin got two tumblers, and fell to reading the +book of verse, Henry Vaughn Marlow’s latest collection. + +“No Scotch,” Brissenden announced on his return. “The beggar sells +nothing but American whiskey. But here’s a quart of it.” + +“I’ll send one of the youngsters for lemons, and we’ll make a toddy,” +Martin offered. + +“I wonder what a book like that will earn Marlow?” he went on, holding +up the volume in question. + +“Possibly fifty dollars,” came the answer. “Though he’s lucky if he +pulls even on it, or if he can inveigle a publisher to risk bringing it +out.” + +“Then one can’t make a living out of poetry?” + +Martin’s tone and face alike showed his dejection. + +“Certainly not. What fool expects to? Out of rhyming, yes. There’s +Bruce, and Virginia Spring, and Sedgwick. They do very nicely. But +poetry—do you know how Vaughn Marlow makes his living?—teaching in a +boys’ cramming-joint down in Pennsylvania, and of all private little +hells such a billet is the limit. I wouldn’t trade places with him if +he had fifty years of life before him. And yet his work stands out from +the ruck of the contemporary versifiers as a balas ruby among carrots. +And the reviews he gets! Damn them, all of them, the crass manikins!” + +“Too much is written by the men who can’t write about the men who do +write,” Martin concurred. “Why, I was appalled at the quantities of +rubbish written about Stevenson and his work.” + +“Ghouls and harpies!” Brissenden snapped out with clicking teeth. “Yes, +I know the spawn—complacently pecking at him for his Father Damien +letter, analyzing him, weighing him—” + +“Measuring him by the yardstick of their own miserable egos,” Martin +broke in. + +“Yes, that’s it, a good phrase,—mouthing and besliming the True, and +Beautiful, and Good, and finally patting him on the back and saying, +‘Good dog, Fido.’ Faugh! ‘The little chattering daws of men,’ Richard +Realf called them the night he died.” + +“Pecking at star-dust,” Martin took up the strain warmly; “at the +meteoric flight of the master-men. I once wrote a squib on them—the +critics, or the reviewers, rather.” + +“Let’s see it,” Brissenden begged eagerly. + +So Martin unearthed a carbon copy of “Star-dust,” and during the +reading of it Brissenden chuckled, rubbed his hands, and forgot to sip +his toddy. + +“Strikes me you’re a bit of star-dust yourself, flung into a world of +cowled gnomes who cannot see,” was his comment at the end of it. “Of +course it was snapped up by the first magazine?” + +Martin ran over the pages of his manuscript book. “It has been refused +by twenty-seven of them.” + +Brissenden essayed a long and hearty laugh, but broke down in a fit of +coughing. + +“Say, you needn’t tell me you haven’t tackled poetry,” he gasped. “Let +me see some of it.” + +“Don’t read it now,” Martin pleaded. “I want to talk with you. I’ll +make up a bundle and you can take it home.” + +Brissenden departed with the “Love-cycle,” and “The Peri and the +Pearl,” returning next day to greet Martin with:- + +“I want more.” + +Not only did he assure Martin that he was a poet, but Martin learned +that Brissenden also was one. He was swept off his feet by the other’s +work, and astounded that no attempt had been made to publish it. + +“A plague on all their houses!” was Brissenden’s answer to Martin’s +volunteering to market his work for him. “Love Beauty for its own +sake,” was his counsel, “and leave the magazines alone. Back to your +ships and your sea—that’s my advice to you, Martin Eden. What do you +want in these sick and rotten cities of men? You are cutting your +throat every day you waste in them trying to prostitute beauty to the +needs of magazinedom. What was it you quoted me the other day?—Oh, yes, +‘Man, the latest of the ephemera.’ Well, what do you, the latest of the +ephemera, want with fame? If you got it, it would be poison to you. You +are too simple, too elemental, and too rational, by my faith, to +prosper on such pap. I hope you never do sell a line to the magazines. +Beauty is the only master to serve. Serve her and damn the multitude! +Success! What in hell’s success if it isn’t right there in your +Stevenson sonnet, which outranks Henley’s ‘Apparition,’ in that +‘Love-cycle,’ in those sea-poems? + +“It is not in what you succeed in doing that you get your joy, but in +the doing of it. You can’t tell me. I know it. You know it. Beauty +hurts you. It is an everlasting pain in you, a wound that does not +heal, a knife of flame. Why should you palter with magazines? Let +beauty be your end. Why should you mint beauty into gold? Anyway, you +can’t; so there’s no use in my getting excited over it. You can read +the magazines for a thousand years and you won’t find the value of one +line of Keats. Leave fame and coin alone, sign away on a ship +to-morrow, and go back to your sea.” + +“Not for fame, but for love,” Martin laughed. “Love seems to have no +place in your Cosmos; in mine, Beauty is the handmaiden of Love.” + +Brissenden looked at him pityingly and admiringly. “You are so young, +Martin boy, so young. You will flutter high, but your wings are of the +finest gauze, dusted with the fairest pigments. Do not scorch them. But +of course you have scorched them already. It required some glorified +petticoat to account for that ‘Love-cycle,’ and that’s the shame of +it.” + +“It glorifies love as well as the petticoat,” Martin laughed. + +“The philosophy of madness,” was the retort. “So have I assured myself +when wandering in hasheesh dreams. But beware. These bourgeois cities +will kill you. Look at that den of traitors where I met you. Dry rot is +no name for it. One can’t keep his sanity in such an atmosphere. It’s +degrading. There’s not one of them who is not degrading, man and woman, +all of them animated stomachs guided by the high intellectual and +artistic impulses of clams—” + +He broke off suddenly and regarded Martin. Then, with a flash of +divination, he saw the situation. The expression on his face turned to +wondering horror. + +“And you wrote that tremendous ‘Love-cycle’ to her—that pale, +shrivelled, female thing!” + +The next instant Martin’s right hand had shot to a throttling clutch on +his throat, and he was being shaken till his teeth rattled. But Martin, +looking into his eyes, saw no fear there,—naught but a curious and +mocking devil. Martin remembered himself, and flung Brissenden, by the +neck, sidelong upon the bed, at the same moment releasing his hold. + +Brissenden panted and gasped painfully for a moment, then began to +chuckle. + +“You had made me eternally your debtor had you shaken out the flame,” +he said. + +“My nerves are on a hair-trigger these days,” Martin apologized. “Hope +I didn’t hurt you. Here, let me mix a fresh toddy.” + +“Ah, you young Greek!” Brissenden went on. “I wonder if you take just +pride in that body of yours. You are devilish strong. You are a young +panther, a lion cub. Well, well, it is you who must pay for that +strength.” + +“What do you mean?” Martin asked curiously, passing him a glass. “Here, +down this and be good.” + +“Because—” Brissenden sipped his toddy and smiled appreciation of it. +“Because of the women. They will worry you until you die, as they have +already worried you, or else I was born yesterday. Now there’s no use +in your choking me; I’m going to have my say. This is undoubtedly your +calf love; but for Beauty’s sake show better taste next time. What +under heaven do you want with a daughter of the bourgeoisie? Leave them +alone. Pick out some great, wanton flame of a woman, who laughs at life +and jeers at death and loves one while she may. There are such women, +and they will love you just as readily as any pusillanimous product of +bourgeois sheltered life.” + +“Pusillanimous?” Martin protested. + +“Just so, pusillanimous; prattling out little moralities that have been +prattled into them, and afraid to live life. They will love you, +Martin, but they will love their little moralities more. What you want +is the magnificent abandon of life, the great free souls, the blazing +butterflies and not the little gray moths. Oh, you will grow tired of +them, too, of all the female things, if you are unlucky enough to live. +But you won’t live. You won’t go back to your ships and sea; therefore, +you’ll hang around these pest-holes of cities until your bones are +rotten, and then you’ll die.” + +“You can lecture me, but you can’t make me talk back,” Martin said. +“After all, you have but the wisdom of your temperament, and the wisdom +of my temperament is just as unimpeachable as yours.” + +They disagreed about love, and the magazines, and many things, but they +liked each other, and on Martin’s part it was no less than a profound +liking. Day after day they were together, if for no more than the hour +Brissenden spent in Martin’s stuffy room. Brissenden never arrived +without his quart of whiskey, and when they dined together down-town, +he drank Scotch and soda throughout the meal. He invariably paid the +way for both, and it was through him that Martin learned the +refinements of food, drank his first champagne, and made acquaintance +with Rhenish wines. + +But Brissenden was always an enigma. With the face of an ascetic, he +was, in all the failing blood of him, a frank voluptuary. He was +unafraid to die, bitter and cynical of all the ways of living; and yet, +dying, he loved life, to the last atom of it. He was possessed by a +madness to live, to thrill, “to squirm my little space in the cosmic +dust whence I came,” as he phrased it once himself. He had tampered +with drugs and done many strange things in quest of new thrills, new +sensations. As he told Martin, he had once gone three days without +water, had done so voluntarily, in order to experience the exquisite +delight of such a thirst assuaged. Who or what he was, Martin never +learned. He was a man without a past, whose future was the imminent +grave and whose present was a bitter fever of living. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + + +Martin was steadily losing his battle. Economize as he would, the +earnings from hack-work did not balance expenses. Thanksgiving found +him with his black suit in pawn and unable to accept the Morses’ +invitation to dinner. Ruth was not made happy by his reason for not +coming, and the corresponding effect on him was one of desperation. He +told her that he would come, after all; that he would go over to San +Francisco, to the _Transcontinental_ office, collect the five dollars +due him, and with it redeem his suit of clothes. + +In the morning he borrowed ten cents from Maria. He would have borrowed +it, by preference, from Brissenden, but that erratic individual had +disappeared. Two weeks had passed since Martin had seen him, and he +vainly cudgelled his brains for some cause of offence. The ten cents +carried Martin across the ferry to San Francisco, and as he walked up +Market Street he speculated upon his predicament in case he failed to +collect the money. There would then be no way for him to return to +Oakland, and he knew no one in San Francisco from whom to borrow +another ten cents. + +The door to the _Transcontinental_ office was ajar, and Martin, in the +act of opening it, was brought to a sudden pause by a loud voice from +within, which exclaimed:- “But that is not the question, Mr. Ford.” +(Ford, Martin knew, from his correspondence, to be the editor’s name.) +“The question is, are you prepared to pay?—cash, and cash down, I mean? +I am not interested in the prospects of the _Transcontinental_ and what +you expect to make it next year. What I want is to be paid for what I +do. And I tell you, right now, the Christmas _Transcontinental_ don’t +go to press till I have the money in my hand. Good day. When you get +the money, come and see me.” + +The door jerked open, and the man flung past Martin, with an angry +countenance and went down the corridor, muttering curses and clenching +his fists. Martin decided not to enter immediately, and lingered in the +hallways for a quarter of an hour. Then he shoved the door open and +walked in. It was a new experience, the first time he had been inside +an editorial office. Cards evidently were not necessary in that office, +for the boy carried word to an inner room that there was a man who +wanted to see Mr. Ford. Returning, the boy beckoned him from halfway +across the room and led him to the private office, the editorial +sanctum. Martin’s first impression was of the disorder and cluttered +confusion of the room. Next he noticed a bewhiskered, youthful-looking +man, sitting at a roll-top desk, who regarded him curiously. Martin +marvelled at the calm repose of his face. It was evident that the +squabble with the printer had not affected his equanimity. + +“I—I am Martin Eden,” Martin began the conversation. (“And I want my +five dollars,” was what he would have liked to say.) + +But this was his first editor, and under the circumstances he did not +desire to scare him too abruptly. To his surprise, Mr. Ford leaped into +the air with a “You don’t say so!” and the next moment, with both +hands, was shaking Martin’s hand effusively. + +“Can’t say how glad I am to see you, Mr. Eden. Often wondered what you +were like.” + +Here he held Martin off at arm’s length and ran his beaming eyes over +Martin’s second-best suit, which was also his worst suit, and which was +ragged and past repair, though the trousers showed the careful crease +he had put in with Maria’s flat-irons. + +“I confess, though, I conceived you to be a much older man than you +are. Your story, you know, showed such breadth, and vigor, such +maturity and depth of thought. A masterpiece, that story—I knew it when +I had read the first half-dozen lines. Let me tell you how I first read +it. But no; first let me introduce you to the staff.” + +Still talking, Mr. Ford led him into the general office, where he +introduced him to the associate editor, Mr. White, a slender, frail +little man whose hand seemed strangely cold, as if he were suffering +from a chill, and whose whiskers were sparse and silky. + +“And Mr. Ends, Mr. Eden. Mr. Ends is our business manager, you know.” + +Martin found himself shaking hands with a cranky-eyed, bald-headed man, +whose face looked youthful enough from what little could be seen of it, +for most of it was covered by a snow-white beard, carefully trimmed—by +his wife, who did it on Sundays, at which times she also shaved the +back of his neck. + +The three men surrounded Martin, all talking admiringly and at once, +until it seemed to him that they were talking against time for a wager. + +“We often wondered why you didn’t call,” Mr. White was saying. + +“I didn’t have the carfare, and I live across the Bay,” Martin answered +bluntly, with the idea of showing them his imperative need for the +money. + +Surely, he thought to himself, my glad rags in themselves are eloquent +advertisement of my need. Time and again, whenever opportunity offered, +he hinted about the purpose of his business. But his admirers’ ears +were deaf. They sang his praises, told him what they had thought of his +story at first sight, what they subsequently thought, what their wives +and families thought; but not one hint did they breathe of intention to +pay him for it. + +“Did I tell you how I first read your story?” Mr. Ford said. “Of course +I didn’t. I was coming west from New York, and when the train stopped +at Ogden, the train-boy on the new run brought aboard the current +number of the _Transcontinental_.” + +My God! Martin thought; you can travel in a Pullman while I starve for +the paltry five dollars you owe me. A wave of anger rushed over him. +The wrong done him by the _Transcontinental_ loomed colossal, for +strong upon him were all the dreary months of vain yearning, of hunger +and privation, and his present hunger awoke and gnawed at him, +reminding him that he had eaten nothing since the day before, and +little enough then. For the moment he saw red. These creatures were not +even robbers. They were sneak-thieves. By lies and broken promises they +had tricked him out of his story. Well, he would show them. And a great +resolve surged into his will to the effect that he would not leave the +office until he got his money. He remembered, if he did not get it, +that there was no way for him to go back to Oakland. He controlled +himself with an effort, but not before the wolfish expression of his +face had awed and perturbed them. + +They became more voluble than ever. Mr. Ford started anew to tell how +he had first read “The Ring of Bells,” and Mr. Ends at the same time +was striving to repeat his niece’s appreciation of “The Ring of Bells,” +said niece being a school-teacher in Alameda. + +“I’ll tell you what I came for,” Martin said finally. “To be paid for +that story all of you like so well. Five dollars, I believe, is what +you promised me would be paid on publication.” + +Mr. Ford, with an expression on his mobile features of mediate and +happy acquiescence, started to reach for his pocket, then turned +suddenly to Mr. Ends, and said that he had left his money home. That +Mr. Ends resented this, was patent; and Martin saw the twitch of his +arm as if to protect his trousers pocket. Martin knew that the money +was there. + +“I am sorry,” said Mr. Ends, “but I paid the printer not an hour ago, +and he took my ready change. It was careless of me to be so short; but +the bill was not yet due, and the printer’s request, as a favor, to +make an immediate advance, was quite unexpected.” + +Both men looked expectantly at Mr. White, but that gentleman laughed +and shrugged his shoulders. His conscience was clean at any rate. He +had come into the _Transcontinental_ to learn magazine-literature, +instead of which he had principally learned finance. The +_Transcontinental_ owed him four months’ salary, and he knew that the +printer must be appeased before the associate editor. + +“It’s rather absurd, Mr. Eden, to have caught us in this shape,” Mr. +Ford preambled airily. “All carelessness, I assure you. But I’ll tell +you what we’ll do. We’ll mail you a check the first thing in the +morning. You have Mr. Eden’s address, haven’t you, Mr. Ends?” + +Yes, Mr. Ends had the address, and the check would be mailed the first +thing in the morning. Martin’s knowledge of banks and checks was hazy, +but he could see no reason why they should not give him the check on +this day just as well as on the next. + +“Then it is understood, Mr. Eden, that we’ll mail you the check +to-morrow?” Mr. Ford said. + +“I need the money to-day,” Martin answered stolidly. + +“The unfortunate circumstances—if you had chanced here any other day,” +Mr. Ford began suavely, only to be interrupted by Mr. Ends, whose +cranky eyes justified themselves in his shortness of temper. + +“Mr. Ford has already explained the situation,” he said with asperity. +“And so have I. The check will be mailed—” + +“I also have explained,” Martin broke in, “and I have explained that I +want the money to-day.” + +He had felt his pulse quicken a trifle at the business manager’s +brusqueness, and upon him he kept an alert eye, for it was in that +gentleman’s trousers pocket that he divined the _Transcontinental’s_ +ready cash was reposing. + +“It is too bad—” Mr. Ford began. + +But at that moment, with an impatient movement, Mr. Ends turned as if +about to leave the room. At the same instant Martin sprang for him, +clutching him by the throat with one hand in such fashion that Mr. +Ends’ snow-white beard, still maintaining its immaculate trimness, +pointed ceilingward at an angle of forty-five degrees. To the horror of +Mr. White and Mr. Ford, they saw their business manager shaken like an +Astrakhan rug. + +“Dig up, you venerable discourager of rising young talent!” Martin +exhorted. “Dig up, or I’ll shake it out of you, even if it’s all in +nickels.” Then, to the two affrighted onlookers: “Keep away! If you +interfere, somebody’s liable to get hurt.” + +Mr. Ends was choking, and it was not until the grip on his throat was +eased that he was able to signify his acquiescence in the digging-up +programme. All together, after repeated digs, its trousers pocket +yielded four dollars and fifteen cents. + +“Inside out with it,” Martin commanded. + +An additional ten cents fell out. Martin counted the result of his raid +a second time to make sure. + +“You next!” he shouted at Mr. Ford. “I want seventy-five cents more.” + +Mr. Ford did not wait, but ransacked his pockets, with the result of +sixty cents. + +“Sure that is all?” Martin demanded menacingly, possessing himself of +it. “What have you got in your vest pockets?” + +In token of his good faith, Mr. Ford turned two of his pockets inside +out. A strip of cardboard fell to the floor from one of them. He +recovered it and was in the act of returning it, when Martin cried:- + +“What’s that?—A ferry ticket? Here, give it to me. It’s worth ten +cents. I’ll credit you with it. I’ve now got four dollars and +ninety-five cents, including the ticket. Five cents is still due me.” + +He looked fiercely at Mr. White, and found that fragile creature in the +act of handing him a nickel. + +“Thank you,” Martin said, addressing them collectively. “I wish you a +good day.” + +“Robber!” Mr. Ends snarled after him. + +“Sneak-thief!” Martin retorted, slamming the door as he passed out. + +Martin was elated—so elated that when he recollected that _The Hornet_ +owed him fifteen dollars for “The Peri and the Pearl,” he decided +forthwith to go and collect it. But _The Hornet_ was run by a set of +clean-shaven, strapping young men, frank buccaneers who robbed +everything and everybody, not excepting one another. After some +breakage of the office furniture, the editor (an ex-college athlete), +ably assisted by the business manager, an advertising agent, and the +porter, succeeded in removing Martin from the office and in +accelerating, by initial impulse, his descent of the first flight of +stairs. + +“Come again, Mr. Eden; glad to see you any time,” they laughed down at +him from the landing above. + +Martin grinned as he picked himself up. + +“Phew!” he murmured back. “The _Transcontinental_ crowd were +nanny-goats, but you fellows are a lot of prize-fighters.” + +More laughter greeted this. + +“I must say, Mr. Eden,” the editor of _The Hornet_ called down, “that +for a poet you can go some yourself. Where did you learn that right +cross—if I may ask?” + +“Where you learned that half-Nelson,” Martin answered. “Anyway, you’re +going to have a black eye.” + +“I hope your neck doesn’t stiffen up,” the editor wished solicitously: +“What do you say we all go out and have a drink on it—not the neck, of +course, but the little rough-house?” + +“I’ll go you if I lose,” Martin accepted. + +And robbers and robbed drank together, amicably agreeing that the +battle was to the strong, and that the fifteen dollars for “The Peri +and the Pearl” belonged by right to _The Hornet’s_ editorial staff. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + + +Arthur remained at the gate while Ruth climbed Maria’s front steps. She +heard the rapid click of the type-writer, and when Martin let her in, +found him on the last page of a manuscript. She had come to make +certain whether or not he would be at their table for Thanksgiving +dinner; but before she could broach the subject Martin plunged into the +one with which he was full. + +“Here, let me read you this,” he cried, separating the carbon copies +and running the pages of manuscript into shape. “It’s my latest, and +different from anything I’ve done. It is so altogether different that I +am almost afraid of it, and yet I’ve a sneaking idea it is good. You be +judge. It’s an Hawaiian story. I’ve called it ‘Wiki-wiki.’” + +His face was bright with the creative glow, though she shivered in the +cold room and had been struck by the coldness of his hands at greeting. +She listened closely while he read, and though he from time to time had +seen only disapprobation in her face, at the close he asked:- + +“Frankly, what do you think of it?” + +“I—I don’t know,” she, answered. “Will it—do you think it will sell?” + +“I’m afraid not,” was the confession. “It’s too strong for the +magazines. But it’s true, on my word it’s true.” + +“But why do you persist in writing such things when you know they won’t +sell?” she went on inexorably. “The reason for your writing is to make +a living, isn’t it?” + +“Yes, that’s right; but the miserable story got away with me. I +couldn’t help writing it. It demanded to be written.” + +“But that character, that Wiki-Wiki, why do you make him talk so +roughly? Surely it will offend your readers, and surely that is why the +editors are justified in refusing your work.” + +“Because the real Wiki-Wiki would have talked that way.” + +“But it is not good taste.” + +“It is life,” he replied bluntly. “It is real. It is true. And I must +write life as I see it.” + +She made no answer, and for an awkward moment they sat silent. It was +because he loved her that he did not quite understand her, and she +could not understand him because he was so large that he bulked beyond +her horizon. + +“Well, I’ve collected from the _Transcontinental_,” he said in an +effort to shift the conversation to a more comfortable subject. The +picture of the bewhiskered trio, as he had last seen them, mulcted of +four dollars and ninety cents and a ferry ticket, made him chuckle. + +“Then you’ll come!” she cried joyously. “That was what I came to find +out.” + +“Come?” he muttered absently. “Where?” + +“Why, to dinner to-morrow. You know you said you’d recover your suit if +you got that money.” + +“I forgot all about it,” he said humbly. “You see, this morning the +poundman got Maria’s two cows and the baby calf, and—well, it happened +that Maria didn’t have any money, and so I had to recover her cows for +her. That’s where the _Transcontinental_ fiver went—‘The Ring of Bells’ +went into the poundman’s pocket.” + +“Then you won’t come?” + +He looked down at his clothing. + +“I can’t.” + +Tears of disappointment and reproach glistened in her blue eyes, but +she said nothing. + +“Next Thanksgiving you’ll have dinner with me in Delmonico’s,” he said +cheerily; “or in London, or Paris, or anywhere you wish. I know it.” + +“I saw in the paper a few days ago,” she announced abruptly, “that +there had been several local appointments to the Railway Mail. You +passed first, didn’t you?” + +He was compelled to admit that the call had come for him, but that he +had declined it. “I was so sure—I am so sure—of myself,” he concluded. +“A year from now I’ll be earning more than a dozen men in the Railway +Mail. You wait and see.” + +“Oh,” was all she said, when he finished. She stood up, pulling at her +gloves. “I must go, Martin. Arthur is waiting for me.” + +He took her in his arms and kissed her, but she proved a passive +sweetheart. There was no tenseness in her body, her arms did not go +around him, and her lips met his without their wonted pressure. + +She was angry with him, he concluded, as he returned from the gate. But +why? It was unfortunate that the poundman had gobbled Maria’s cows. But +it was only a stroke of fate. Nobody could be blamed for it. Nor did it +enter his head that he could have done aught otherwise than what he had +done. Well, yes, he was to blame a little, was his next thought, for +having refused the call to the Railway Mail. And she had not liked +“Wiki-Wiki.” + +He turned at the head of the steps to meet the letter-carrier on his +afternoon round. The ever recurrent fever of expectancy assailed Martin +as he took the bundle of long envelopes. One was not long. It was short +and thin, and outside was printed the address of _The New York +Outview_. He paused in the act of tearing the envelope open. It could +not be an acceptance. He had no manuscripts with that publication. +Perhaps—his heart almost stood still at the—wild thought—perhaps they +were ordering an article from him; but the next instant he dismissed +the surmise as hopelessly impossible. + +It was a short, formal letter, signed by the office editor, merely +informing him that an anonymous letter which they had received was +enclosed, and that he could rest assured the _Outview’s_ staff never +under any circumstances gave consideration to anonymous correspondence. + +The enclosed letter Martin found to be crudely printed by hand. It was +a hotchpotch of illiterate abuse of Martin, and of assertion that the +“so-called Martin Eden” who was selling stories to magazines was no +writer at all, and that in reality he was stealing stories from old +magazines, typing them, and sending them out as his own. The envelope +was postmarked “San Leandro.” Martin did not require a second thought +to discover the author. Higginbotham’s grammar, Higginbotham’s +colloquialisms, Higginbotham’s mental quirks and processes, were +apparent throughout. Martin saw in every line, not the fine Italian +hand, but the coarse grocer’s fist, of his brother-in-law. + +But why? he vainly questioned. What injury had he done Bernard +Higginbotham? The thing was so unreasonable, so wanton. There was no +explaining it. In the course of the week a dozen similar letters were +forwarded to Martin by the editors of various Eastern magazines. The +editors were behaving handsomely, Martin concluded. He was wholly +unknown to them, yet some of them had even been sympathetic. It was +evident that they detested anonymity. He saw that the malicious attempt +to hurt him had failed. In fact, if anything came of it, it was bound +to be good, for at least his name had been called to the attention of a +number of editors. Sometime, perhaps, reading a submitted manuscript of +his, they might remember him as the fellow about whom they had received +an anonymous letter. And who was to say that such a remembrance might +not sway the balance of their judgment just a trifle in his favor? + +It was about this time that Martin took a great slump in Maria’s +estimation. He found her in the kitchen one morning groaning with pain, +tears of weakness running down her cheeks, vainly endeavoring to put +through a large ironing. He promptly diagnosed her affliction as La +Grippe, dosed her with hot whiskey (the remnants in the bottles for +which Brissenden was responsible), and ordered her to bed. But Maria +was refractory. The ironing had to be done, she protested, and +delivered that night, or else there would be no food on the morrow for +the seven small and hungry Silvas. + +To her astonishment (and it was something that she never ceased from +relating to her dying day), she saw Martin Eden seize an iron from the +stove and throw a fancy shirt-waist on the ironing-board. It was Kate +Flanagan’s best Sunday waist, than whom there was no more exacting and +fastidiously dressed woman in Maria’s world. Also, Miss Flanagan had +sent special instruction that said waist must be delivered by that +night. As every one knew, she was keeping company with John Collins, +the blacksmith, and, as Maria knew privily, Miss Flanagan and Mr. +Collins were going next day to Golden Gate Park. Vain was Maria’s +attempt to rescue the garment. Martin guided her tottering footsteps to +a chair, from where she watched him with bulging eyes. In a quarter of +the time it would have taken her she saw the shirt-waist safely ironed, +and ironed as well as she could have done it, as Martin made her grant. + +“I could work faster,” he explained, “if your irons were only hotter.” + +To her, the irons he swung were much hotter than she ever dared to use. + +“Your sprinkling is all wrong,” he complained next. “Here, let me teach +you how to sprinkle. Pressure is what’s wanted. Sprinkle under pressure +if you want to iron fast.” + +He procured a packing-case from the woodpile in the cellar, fitted a +cover to it, and raided the scrap-iron the Silva tribe was collecting +for the junkman. With fresh-sprinkled garments in the box, covered with +the board and pressed by the iron, the device was complete and in +operation. + +“Now you watch me, Maria,” he said, stripping off to his undershirt and +gripping an iron that was what he called “really hot.” + +“An’ when he feenish da iron’ he washa da wools,” as she described it +afterward. “He say, ‘Maria, you are da greata fool. I showa you how to +washa da wools,’ an’ he shows me, too. Ten minutes he maka da +machine—one barrel, one wheel-hub, two poles, justa like dat.” + +Martin had learned the contrivance from Joe at the Shelly Hot Springs. +The old wheel-hub, fixed on the end of the upright pole, constituted +the plunger. Making this, in turn, fast to the spring-pole attached to +the kitchen rafters, so that the hub played upon the woollens in the +barrel, he was able, with one hand, thoroughly to pound them. + +“No more Maria washa da wools,” her story always ended. “I maka da kids +worka da pole an’ da hub an’ da barrel. Him da smarta man, Mister +Eden.” + +Nevertheless, by his masterly operation and improvement of her +kitchen-laundry he fell an immense distance in her regard. The glamour +of romance with which her imagination had invested him faded away in +the cold light of fact that he was an ex-laundryman. All his books, and +his grand friends who visited him in carriages or with countless +bottles of whiskey, went for naught. He was, after all, a mere +workingman, a member of her own class and caste. He was more human and +approachable, but, he was no longer mystery. + +Martin’s alienation from his family continued. Following upon Mr. +Higginbotham’s unprovoked attack, Mr. Hermann von Schmidt showed his +hand. The fortunate sale of several storiettes, some humorous verse, +and a few jokes gave Martin a temporary splurge of prosperity. Not only +did he partially pay up his bills, but he had sufficient balance left +to redeem his black suit and wheel. The latter, by virtue of a twisted +crank-hanger, required repairing, and, as a matter of friendliness with +his future brother-in-law, he sent it to Von Schmidt’s shop. + +The afternoon of the same day Martin was pleased by the wheel being +delivered by a small boy. Von Schmidt was also inclined to be friendly, +was Martin’s conclusion from this unusual favor. Repaired wheels +usually had to be called for. But when he examined the wheel, he +discovered no repairs had been made. A little later in the day he +telephoned his sister’s betrothed, and learned that that person didn’t +want anything to do with him in “any shape, manner, or form.” + +“Hermann von Schmidt,” Martin answered cheerfully, “I’ve a good mind to +come over and punch that Dutch nose of yours.” + +“You come to my shop,” came the reply, “an’ I’ll send for the police. +An’ I’ll put you through, too. Oh, I know you, but you can’t make no +rough-house with me. I don’t want nothin’ to do with the likes of you. +You’re a loafer, that’s what, an’ I ain’t asleep. You ain’t goin’ to do +no spongin’ off me just because I’m marryin’ your sister. Why don’t you +go to work an’ earn an honest livin’, eh? Answer me that.” + +Martin’s philosophy asserted itself, dissipating his anger, and he hung +up the receiver with a long whistle of incredulous amusement. But after +the amusement came the reaction, and he was oppressed by his +loneliness. Nobody understood him, nobody seemed to have any use for +him, except Brissenden, and Brissenden had disappeared, God alone knew +where. + +Twilight was falling as Martin left the fruit store and turned +homeward, his marketing on his arm. At the corner an electric car had +stopped, and at sight of a lean, familiar figure alighting, his heart +leapt with joy. It was Brissenden, and in the fleeting glimpse, ere the +car started up, Martin noted the overcoat pockets, one bulging with +books, the other bulging with a quart bottle of whiskey. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + + +Brissenden gave no explanation of his long absence, nor did Martin pry +into it. He was content to see his friend’s cadaverous face opposite +him through the steam rising from a tumbler of toddy. + +“I, too, have not been idle,” Brissenden proclaimed, after hearing +Martin’s account of the work he had accomplished. + +He pulled a manuscript from his inside coat pocket and passed it to +Martin, who looked at the title and glanced up curiously. + +“Yes, that’s it,” Brissenden laughed. “Pretty good title, eh? +‘Ephemera’—it is the one word. And you’re responsible for it, what of +your _man_, who is always the erected, the vitalized inorganic, the +latest of the ephemera, the creature of temperature strutting his +little space on the thermometer. It got into my head and I had to write +it to get rid of it. Tell me what you think of it.” + +Martin’s face, flushed at first, paled as he read on. It was perfect +art. Form triumphed over substance, if triumph it could be called where +the last conceivable atom of substance had found expression in so +perfect construction as to make Martin’s head swim with delight, to put +passionate tears into his eyes, and to send chills creeping up and down +his back. It was a long poem of six or seven hundred lines, and it was +a fantastic, amazing, unearthly thing. It was terrific, impossible; and +yet there it was, scrawled in black ink across the sheets of paper. It +dealt with man and his soul-gropings in their ultimate terms, plumbing +the abysses of space for the testimony of remotest suns and rainbow +spectrums. It was a mad orgy of imagination, wassailing in the skull of +a dying man who half sobbed under his breath and was quick with the +wild flutter of fading heart-beats. The poem swung in majestic rhythm +to the cool tumult of interstellar conflict, to the onset of starry +hosts, to the impact of cold suns and the flaming up of nebulae in the +darkened void; and through it all, unceasing and faint, like a silver +shuttle, ran the frail, piping voice of man, a querulous chirp amid the +screaming of planets and the crash of systems. + +“There is nothing like it in literature,” Martin said, when at last he +was able to speak. “It’s wonderful!—wonderful! It has gone to my head. +I am drunken with it. That great, infinitesimal question—I can’t shake +it out of my thoughts. That questing, eternal, ever recurring, thin +little wailing voice of man is still ringing in my ears. It is like the +dead-march of a gnat amid the trumpeting of elephants and the roaring +of lions. It is insatiable with microscopic desire. I now I’m making a +fool of myself, but the thing has obsessed me. You are—I don’t know +what you are—you are wonderful, that’s all. But how do you do it? How +do you do it?” + +Martin paused from his rhapsody, only to break out afresh. + +“I shall never write again. I am a dauber in clay. You have shown me +the work of the real artificer-artisan. Genius! This is something more +than genius. It transcends genius. It is truth gone mad. It is true, +man, every line of it. I wonder if you realize that, you dogmatist. +Science cannot give you the lie. It is the truth of the sneer, stamped +out from the black iron of the Cosmos and interwoven with mighty +rhythms of sound into a fabric of splendor and beauty. And now I won’t +say another word. I am overwhelmed, crushed. Yes, I will, too. Let me +market it for you.” + +Brissenden grinned. “There’s not a magazine in Christendom that would +dare to publish it—you know that.” + +“I know nothing of the sort. I know there’s not a magazine in +Christendom that wouldn’t jump at it. They don’t get things like that +every day. That’s no mere poem of the year. It’s the poem of the +century.” + +“I’d like to take you up on the proposition.” + +“Now don’t get cynical,” Martin exhorted. “The magazine editors are not +wholly fatuous. I know that. And I’ll close with you on the bet. I’ll +wager anything you want that ‘Ephemera’ is accepted either on the first +or second offering.” + +“There’s just one thing that prevents me from taking you.” Brissenden +waited a moment. “The thing is big—the biggest I’ve ever done. I know +that. It’s my swan song. I am almighty proud of it. I worship it. It’s +better than whiskey. It is what I dreamed of—the great and perfect +thing—when I was a simple young man, with sweet illusions and clean +ideals. And I’ve got it, now, in my last grasp, and I’ll not have it +pawed over and soiled by a lot of swine. No, I won’t take the bet. It’s +mine. I made it, and I’ve shared it with you.” + +“But think of the rest of the world,” Martin protested. “The function +of beauty is joy-making.” + +“It’s my beauty.” + +“Don’t be selfish.” + +“I’m not selfish.” Brissenden grinned soberly in the way he had when +pleased by the thing his thin lips were about to shape. “I’m as +unselfish as a famished hog.” + +In vain Martin strove to shake him from his decision. Martin told him +that his hatred of the magazines was rabid, fanatical, and that his +conduct was a thousand times more despicable than that of the youth who +burned the temple of Diana at Ephesus. Under the storm of denunciation +Brissenden complacently sipped his toddy and affirmed that everything +the other said was quite true, with the exception of the magazine +editors. His hatred of them knew no bounds, and he excelled Martin in +denunciation when he turned upon them. + +“I wish you’d type it for me,” he said. “You know how a thousand times +better than any stenographer. And now I want to give you some advice.” +He drew a bulky manuscript from his outside coat pocket. “Here’s your +‘Shame of the Sun.’ I’ve read it not once, but twice and three +times—the highest compliment I can pay you. After what you’ve said +about ‘Ephemera’ I must be silent. But this I will say: when ‘The Shame +of the Sun’ is published, it will make a hit. It will start a +controversy that will be worth thousands to you just in advertising.” + +Martin laughed. “I suppose your next advice will be to submit it to the +magazines.” + +“By all means no—that is, if you want to see it in print. Offer it to +the first-class houses. Some publisher’s reader may be mad enough or +drunk enough to report favorably on it. You’ve read the books. The meat +of them has been transmuted in the alembic of Martin Eden’s mind and +poured into ‘The Shame of the Sun,’ and one day Martin Eden will be +famous, and not the least of his fame will rest upon that work. So you +must get a publisher for it—the sooner the better.” + +Brissenden went home late that night; and just as he mounted the first +step of the car, he swung suddenly back on Martin and thrust into his +hand a small, tightly crumpled wad of paper. + +“Here, take this,” he said. “I was out to the races to-day, and I had +the right dope.” + +The bell clanged and the car pulled out, leaving Martin wondering as to +the nature of the crinkly, greasy wad he clutched in his hand. Back in +his room he unrolled it and found a hundred-dollar bill. + +He did not scruple to use it. He knew his friend had always plenty of +money, and he knew also, with profound certitude, that his success +would enable him to repay it. In the morning he paid every bill, gave +Maria three months’ advance on the room, and redeemed every pledge at +the pawnshop. Next he bought Marian’s wedding present, and simpler +presents, suitable to Christmas, for Ruth and Gertrude. And finally, on +the balance remaining to him, he herded the whole Silva tribe down into +Oakland. He was a winter late in redeeming his promise, but redeemed it +was, for the last, least Silva got a pair of shoes, as well as Maria +herself. Also, there were horns, and dolls, and toys of various sorts, +and parcels and bundles of candies and nuts that filled the arms of all +the Silvas to overflowing. + +It was with this extraordinary procession trooping at his and Maria’s +heels into a confectioner’s in quest of the biggest candy-cane ever +made, that he encountered Ruth and her mother. Mrs. Morse was shocked. +Even Ruth was hurt, for she had some regard for appearances, and her +lover, cheek by jowl with Maria, at the head of that army of Portuguese +ragamuffins, was not a pretty sight. But it was not that which hurt so +much as what she took to be his lack of pride and self-respect. +Further, and keenest of all, she read into the incident the +impossibility of his living down his working-class origin. There was +stigma enough in the fact of it, but shamelessly to flaunt it in the +face of the world—her world—was going too far. Though her engagement to +Martin had been kept secret, their long intimacy had not been +unproductive of gossip; and in the shop, glancing covertly at her lover +and his following, had been several of her acquaintances. She lacked +the easy largeness of Martin and could not rise superior to her +environment. She had been hurt to the quick, and her sensitive nature +was quivering with the shame of it. So it was, when Martin arrived +later in the day, that he kept her present in his breast-pocket, +deferring the giving of it to a more propitious occasion. Ruth in +tears—passionate, angry tears—was a revelation to him. The spectacle of +her suffering convinced him that he had been a brute, yet in the soul +of him he could not see how nor why. It never entered his head to be +ashamed of those he knew, and to take the Silvas out to a Christmas +treat could in no way, so it seemed to him, show lack of consideration +for Ruth. On the other hand, he did see Ruth’s point of view, after she +had explained it; and he looked upon it as a feminine weakness, such as +afflicted all women and the best of women. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + + +“Come on,—I’ll show you the real dirt,” Brissenden said to him, one +evening in January. + +They had dined together in San Francisco, and were at the Ferry +Building, returning to Oakland, when the whim came to him to show +Martin the “real dirt.” He turned and fled across the water-front, a +meagre shadow in a flapping overcoat, with Martin straining to keep up +with him. At a wholesale liquor store he bought two gallon-demijohns of +old port, and with one in each hand boarded a Mission Street car, +Martin at his heels burdened with several quart-bottles of whiskey. + +If Ruth could see me now, was his thought, while he wondered as to what +constituted the real dirt. + +“Maybe nobody will be there,” Brissenden said, when they dismounted and +plunged off to the right into the heart of the working-class ghetto, +south of Market Street. “In which case you’ll miss what you’ve been +looking for so long.” + +“And what the deuce is that?” Martin asked. + +“Men, intelligent men, and not the gibbering nonentities I found you +consorting with in that trader’s den. You read the books and you found +yourself all alone. Well, I’m going to show you to-night some other men +who’ve read the books, so that you won’t be lonely any more.” + +“Not that I bother my head about their everlasting discussions,” he +said at the end of a block. “I’m not interested in book philosophy. But +you’ll find these fellows intelligences and not bourgeois swine. But +watch out, they’ll talk an arm off of you on any subject under the +sun.” + +“Hope Norton’s there,” he panted a little later, resisting Martin’s +effort to relieve him of the two demijohns. “Norton’s an idealist—a +Harvard man. Prodigious memory. Idealism led him to philosophic +anarchy, and his family threw him off. Father’s a railroad president +and many times millionnaire, but the son’s starving in ’Frisco, editing +an anarchist sheet for twenty-five a month.” + +Martin was little acquainted in San Francisco, and not at all south of +Market; so he had no idea of where he was being led. + +“Go ahead,” he said; “tell me about them beforehand. What do they do +for a living? How do they happen to be here?” + +“Hope Hamilton’s there.” Brissenden paused and rested his hands. +“Strawn-Hamilton’s his name—hyphenated, you know—comes of old Southern +stock. He’s a tramp—laziest man I ever knew, though he’s clerking, or +trying to, in a socialist coöperative store for six dollars a week. But +he’s a confirmed hobo. Tramped into town. I’ve seen him sit all day on +a bench and never a bite pass his lips, and in the evening, when I +invited him to dinner—restaurant two blocks away—have him say, ‘Too +much trouble, old man. Buy me a package of cigarettes instead.’ He was +a Spencerian like you till Kreis turned him to materialistic monism. +I’ll start him on monism if I can. Norton’s another monist—only he +affirms naught but spirit. He can give Kreis and Hamilton all they +want, too.” + +“Who is Kreis?” Martin asked. + +“His rooms we’re going to. One time professor—fired from +university—usual story. A mind like a steel trap. Makes his living any +old way. I know he’s been a street fakir when he was down. +Unscrupulous. Rob a corpse of a shroud—anything. Difference between him +and the bourgeoisie is that he robs without illusion. He’ll talk +Nietzsche, or Schopenhauer, or Kant, or anything, but the only thing in +this world, not excepting Mary, that he really cares for, is his +monism. Haeckel is his little tin god. The only way to insult him is to +take a slap at Haeckel.” + +“Here’s the hang-out.” Brissenden rested his demijohn at the upstairs +entrance, preliminary to the climb. It was the usual two-story corner +building, with a saloon and grocery underneath. “The gang lives +here—got the whole upstairs to themselves. But Kreis is the only one +who has two rooms. Come on.” + +No lights burned in the upper hall, but Brissenden threaded the utter +blackness like a familiar ghost. He stopped to speak to Martin. + +“There’s one fellow—Stevens—a theosophist. Makes a pretty tangle when +he gets going. Just now he’s dish-washer in a restaurant. Likes a good +cigar. I’ve seen him eat in a ten-cent hash-house and pay fifty cents +for the cigar he smoked afterward. I’ve got a couple in my pocket for +him, if he shows up.” + +“And there’s another fellow—Parry—an Australian, a statistician and a +sporting encyclopaedia. Ask him the grain output of Paraguay for 1903, +or the English importation of sheetings into China for 1890, or at what +weight Jimmy Britt fought Battling Nelson, or who was welter-weight +champion of the United States in ’68, and you’ll get the correct answer +with the automatic celerity of a slot-machine. And there’s Andy, a +stone-mason, has ideas on everything, a good chess-player; and another +fellow, Harry, a baker, red hot socialist and strong union man. By the +way, you remember Cooks’ and Waiters’ strike—Hamilton was the chap who +organized that union and precipitated the strike—planned it all out in +advance, right here in Kreis’s rooms. Did it just for the fun of it, +but was too lazy to stay by the union. Yet he could have risen high if +he wanted to. There’s no end to the possibilities in that man—if he +weren’t so insuperably lazy.” + +Brissenden advanced through the darkness till a thread of light marked +the threshold of a door. A knock and an answer opened it, and Martin +found himself shaking hands with Kreis, a handsome brunette man, with +dazzling white teeth, a drooping black mustache, and large, flashing +black eyes. Mary, a matronly young blonde, was washing dishes in the +little back room that served for kitchen and dining room. The front +room served as bedchamber and living room. Overhead was the week’s +washing, hanging in festoons so low that Martin did not see at first +the two men talking in a corner. They hailed Brissenden and his +demijohns with acclamation, and, on being introduced, Martin learned +they were Andy and Parry. He joined them and listened attentively to +the description of a prize-fight Parry had seen the night before; while +Brissenden, in his glory, plunged into the manufacture of a toddy and +the serving of wine and whiskey-and-sodas. At his command, “Bring in +the clan,” Andy departed to go the round of the rooms for the lodgers. + +“We’re lucky that most of them are here,” Brissenden whispered to +Martin. “There’s Norton and Hamilton; come on and meet them. Stevens +isn’t around, I hear. I’m going to get them started on monism if I can. +Wait till they get a few jolts in them and they’ll warm up.” + +At first the conversation was desultory. Nevertheless Martin could not +fail to appreciate the keen play of their minds. They were men with +opinions, though the opinions often clashed, and, though they were +witty and clever, they were not superficial. He swiftly saw, no matter +upon what they talked, that each man applied the correlation of +knowledge and had also a deep-seated and unified conception of society +and the Cosmos. Nobody manufactured their opinions for them; they were +all rebels of one variety or another, and their lips were strangers to +platitudes. Never had Martin, at the Morses’, heard so amazing a range +of topics discussed. There seemed no limit save time to the things they +were alive to. The talk wandered from Mrs. Humphry Ward’s new book to +Shaw’s latest play, through the future of the drama to reminiscences of +Mansfield. They appreciated or sneered at the morning editorials, +jumped from labor conditions in New Zealand to Henry James and Brander +Matthews, passed on to the German designs in the Far East and the +economic aspect of the Yellow Peril, wrangled over the German elections +and Bebel’s last speech, and settled down to local politics, the latest +plans and scandals in the union labor party administration, and the +wires that were pulled to bring about the Coast Seamen’s strike. Martin +was struck by the inside knowledge they possessed. They knew what was +never printed in the newspapers—the wires and strings and the hidden +hands that made the puppets dance. To Martin’s surprise, the girl, +Mary, joined in the conversation, displaying an intelligence he had +never encountered in the few women he had met. They talked together on +Swinburne and Rossetti, after which she led him beyond his depth into +the by-paths of French literature. His revenge came when she defended +Maeterlinck and he brought into action the carefully-thought-out thesis +of “The Shame of the Sun.” + +Several other men had dropped in, and the air was thick with tobacco +smoke, when Brissenden waved the red flag. + +“Here’s fresh meat for your axe, Kreis,” he said; “a rose-white youth +with the ardor of a lover for Herbert Spencer. Make a Haeckelite of +him—if you can.” + +Kreis seemed to wake up and flash like some metallic, magnetic thing, +while Norton looked at Martin sympathetically, with a sweet, girlish +smile, as much as to say that he would be amply protected. + +Kreis began directly on Martin, but step by step Norton interfered, +until he and Kreis were off and away in a personal battle. Martin +listened and fain would have rubbed his eyes. It was impossible that +this should be, much less in the labor ghetto south of Market. The +books were alive in these men. They talked with fire and enthusiasm, +the intellectual stimulant stirring them as he had seen drink and anger +stir other men. What he heard was no longer the philosophy of the dry, +printed word, written by half-mythical demigods like Kant and Spencer. +It was living philosophy, with warm, red blood, incarnated in these two +men till its very features worked with excitement. Now and again other +men joined in, and all followed the discussion with cigarettes going +out in their hands and with alert, intent faces. + +Idealism had never attracted Martin, but the exposition it now received +at the hands of Norton was a revelation. The logical plausibility of +it, that made an appeal to his intellect, seemed missed by Kreis and +Hamilton, who sneered at Norton as a metaphysician, and who, in turn, +sneered back at them as metaphysicians. _Phenomenon_ and _noumenon_ +were bandied back and forth. They charged him with attempting to +explain consciousness by itself. He charged them with word-jugglery, +with reasoning from words to theory instead of from facts to theory. At +this they were aghast. It was the cardinal tenet of their mode of +reasoning to start with facts and to give names to the facts. + +When Norton wandered into the intricacies of Kant, Kreis reminded him +that all good little German philosophies when they died went to Oxford. +A little later Norton reminded them of Hamilton’s Law of Parsimony, the +application of which they immediately claimed for every reasoning +process of theirs. And Martin hugged his knees and exulted in it all. +But Norton was no Spencerian, and he, too, strove for Martin’s +philosophic soul, talking as much at him as to his two opponents. + +“You know Berkeley has never been answered,” he said, looking directly +at Martin. “Herbert Spencer came the nearest, which was not very near. +Even the stanchest of Spencer’s followers will not go farther. I was +reading an essay of Saleeby’s the other day, and the best Saleeby could +say was that Herbert Spencer _nearly_ succeeded in answering Berkeley.” + +“You know what Hume said?” Hamilton asked. Norton nodded, but Hamilton +gave it for the benefit of the rest. “He said that Berkeley’s arguments +admit of no answer and produce no conviction.” + +“In his, Hume’s, mind,” was the reply. “And Hume’s mind was the same as +yours, with this difference: he was wise enough to admit there was no +answering Berkeley.” + +Norton was sensitive and excitable, though he never lost his head, +while Kreis and Hamilton were like a pair of cold-blooded savages, +seeking out tender places to prod and poke. As the evening grew late, +Norton, smarting under the repeated charges of being a metaphysician, +clutching his chair to keep from jumping to his feet, his gray eyes +snapping and his girlish face grown harsh and sure, made a grand attack +upon their position. + +“All right, you Haeckelites, I may reason like a medicine man, but, +pray, how do you reason? You have nothing to stand on, you unscientific +dogmatists with your positive science which you are always lugging +about into places it has no right to be. Long before the school of +materialistic monism arose, the ground was removed so that there could +be no foundation. Locke was the man, John Locke. Two hundred years +ago—more than that, even in his ‘Essay concerning the Human +Understanding,’ he proved the non-existence of innate ideas. The best +of it is that that is precisely what you claim. To-night, again and +again, you have asserted the non-existence of innate ideas. + +“And what does that mean? It means that you can never know ultimate +reality. Your brains are empty when you are born. Appearances, or +phenomena, are all the content your minds can receive from your five +senses. Then noumena, which are not in your minds when you are born, +have no way of getting in—” + +“I deny—” Kreis started to interrupt. + +“You wait till I’m done,” Norton shouted. “You can know only that much +of the play and interplay of force and matter as impinges in one way or +another on our senses. You see, I am willing to admit, for the sake of +the argument, that matter exists; and what I am about to do is to +efface you by your own argument. I can’t do it any other way, for you +are both congenitally unable to understand a philosophic abstraction. + +“And now, what do you know of matter, according to your own positive +science? You know it only by its phenomena, its appearances. You are +aware only of its changes, or of such changes in it as cause changes in +your consciousness. Positive science deals only with phenomena, yet you +are foolish enough to strive to be ontologists and to deal with +noumena. Yet, by the very definition of positive science, science is +concerned only with appearances. As somebody has said, phenomenal +knowledge cannot transcend phenomena. + +“You cannot answer Berkeley, even if you have annihilated Kant, and +yet, perforce, you assume that Berkeley is wrong when you affirm that +science proves the non-existence of God, or, as much to the point, the +existence of matter.—You know I granted the reality of matter only in +order to make myself intelligible to your understanding. Be positive +scientists, if you please; but ontology has no place in positive +science, so leave it alone. Spencer is right in his agnosticism, but if +Spencer—” + +But it was time to catch the last ferry-boat for Oakland, and +Brissenden and Martin slipped out, leaving Norton still talking and +Kreis and Hamilton waiting to pounce on him like a pair of hounds as +soon as he finished. + +“You have given me a glimpse of fairyland,” Martin said on the +ferry-boat. “It makes life worth while to meet people like that. My +mind is all worked up. I never appreciated idealism before. Yet I can’t +accept it. I know that I shall always be a realist. I am so made, I +guess. But I’d like to have made a reply to Kreis and Hamilton, and I +think I’d have had a word or two for Norton. I didn’t see that Spencer +was damaged any. I’m as excited as a child on its first visit to the +circus. I see I must read up some more. I’m going to get hold of +Saleeby. I still think Spencer is unassailable, and next time I’m going +to take a hand myself.” + +But Brissenden, breathing painfully, had dropped off to sleep, his chin +buried in a scarf and resting on his sunken chest, his body wrapped in +the long overcoat and shaking to the vibration of the propellers. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + + +The first thing Martin did next morning was to go counter both to +Brissenden’s advice and command. “The Shame of the Sun” he wrapped and +mailed to _The Acropolis_. He believed he could find magazine +publication for it, and he felt that recognition by the magazines would +commend him to the book-publishing houses. “Ephemera” he likewise +wrapped and mailed to a magazine. Despite Brissenden’s prejudice +against the magazines, which was a pronounced mania with him, Martin +decided that the great poem should see print. He did not intend, +however, to publish it without the other’s permission. His plan was to +get it accepted by one of the high magazines, and, thus armed, again to +wrestle with Brissenden for consent. + +Martin began, that morning, a story which he had sketched out a number +of weeks before and which ever since had been worrying him with its +insistent clamor to be created. Apparently it was to be a rattling sea +story, a tale of twentieth-century adventure and romance, handling real +characters, in a real world, under real conditions. But beneath the +swing and go of the story was to be something else—something that the +superficial reader would never discern and which, on the other hand, +would not diminish in any way the interest and enjoyment for such a +reader. It was this, and not the mere story, that impelled Martin to +write it. For that matter, it was always the great, universal motif +that suggested plots to him. After having found such a motif, he cast +about for the particular persons and particular location in time and +space wherewith and wherein to utter the universal thing. “Overdue” was +the title he had decided for it, and its length he believed would not +be more than sixty thousand words—a bagatelle for him with his splendid +vigor of production. On this first day he took hold of it with +conscious delight in the mastery of his tools. He no longer worried for +fear that the sharp, cutting edges should slip and mar his work. The +long months of intense application and study had brought their reward. +He could now devote himself with sure hand to the larger phases of the +thing he shaped; and as he worked, hour after hour, he felt, as never +before, the sure and cosmic grasp with which he held life and the +affairs of life. “Overdue” would tell a story that would be true of its +particular characters and its particular events; but it would tell, +too, he was confident, great vital things that would be true of all +time, and all sea, and all life—thanks to Herbert Spencer, he thought, +leaning back for a moment from the table. Ay, thanks to Herbert Spencer +and to the master-key of life, evolution, which Spencer had placed in +his hands. + +He was conscious that it was great stuff he was writing. “It will go! +It will go!” was the refrain that kept sounding in his ears. Of course +it would go. At last he was turning out the thing at which the +magazines would jump. The whole story worked out before him in +lightning flashes. He broke off from it long enough to write a +paragraph in his note-book. This would be the last paragraph in +“Overdue”; but so thoroughly was the whole book already composed in his +brain that he could write, weeks before he had arrived at the end, the +end itself. He compared the tale, as yet unwritten, with the tales of +the sea-writers, and he felt it to be immeasurably superior. “There’s +only one man who could touch it,” he murmured aloud, “and that’s +Conrad. And it ought to make even him sit up and shake hands with me, +and say, ‘Well done, Martin, my boy.’” + +He toiled on all day, recollecting, at the last moment, that he was to +have dinner at the Morses’. Thanks to Brissenden, his black suit was +out of pawn and he was again eligible for dinner parties. Down town he +stopped off long enough to run into the library and search for +Saleeby’s books. He drew out “The Cycle of Life,” and on the car turned +to the essay Norton had mentioned on Spencer. As Martin read, he grew +angry. His face flushed, his jaw set, and unconsciously his hand +clenched, unclenched, and clenched again as if he were taking fresh +grips upon some hateful thing out of which he was squeezing the life. +When he left the car, he strode along the sidewalk as a wrathful man +will stride, and he rang the Morse bell with such viciousness that it +roused him to consciousness of his condition, so that he entered in +good nature, smiling with amusement at himself. No sooner, however, was +he inside than a great depression descended upon him. He fell from the +height where he had been up-borne all day on the wings of inspiration. +“Bourgeois,” “trader’s den”—Brissenden’s epithets repeated themselves +in his mind. But what of that? he demanded angrily. He was marrying +Ruth, not her family. + +It seemed to him that he had never seen Ruth more beautiful, more +spiritual and ethereal and at the same time more healthy. There was +color in her cheeks, and her eyes drew him again and again—the eyes in +which he had first read immortality. He had forgotten immortality of +late, and the trend of his scientific reading had been away from it; +but here, in Ruth’s eyes, he read an argument without words that +transcended all worded arguments. He saw that in her eyes before which +all discussion fled away, for he saw love there. And in his own eyes +was love; and love was unanswerable. Such was his passionate doctrine. + +The half hour he had with her, before they went in to dinner, left him +supremely happy and supremely satisfied with life. Nevertheless, at +table, the inevitable reaction and exhaustion consequent upon the hard +day seized hold of him. He was aware that his eyes were tired and that +he was irritable. He remembered it was at this table, at which he now +sneered and was so often bored, that he had first eaten with civilized +beings in what he had imagined was an atmosphere of high culture and +refinement. He caught a glimpse of that pathetic figure of him, so long +ago, a self-conscious savage, sprouting sweat at every pore in an agony +of apprehension, puzzled by the bewildering minutiae of +eating-implements, tortured by the ogre of a servant, striving at a +leap to live at such dizzy social altitude, and deciding in the end to +be frankly himself, pretending no knowledge and no polish he did not +possess. + +He glanced at Ruth for reassurance, much in the same manner that a +passenger, with sudden panic thought of possible shipwreck, will strive +to locate the life preservers. Well, that much had come out of it—love +and Ruth. All the rest had failed to stand the test of the books. But +Ruth and love had stood the test; for them he found a biological +sanction. Love was the most exalted expression of life. Nature had been +busy designing him, as she had been busy with all normal men, for the +purpose of loving. She had spent ten thousand centuries—ay, a hundred +thousand and a million centuries—upon the task, and he was the best she +could do. She had made love the strongest thing in him, increased its +power a myriad per cent with her gift of imagination, and sent him +forth into the ephemera to thrill and melt and mate. His hand sought +Ruth’s hand beside him hidden by the table, and a warm pressure was +given and received. She looked at him a swift instant, and her eyes +were radiant and melting. So were his in the thrill that pervaded him; +nor did he realize how much that was radiant and melting in her eyes +had been aroused by what she had seen in his. + +Across the table from him, cater-cornered, at Mr. Morse’s right, sat +Judge Blount, a local superior court judge. Martin had met him a number +of times and had failed to like him. He and Ruth’s father were +discussing labor union politics, the local situation, and socialism, +and Mr. Morse was endeavoring to twit Martin on the latter topic. At +last Judge Blount looked across the table with benignant and fatherly +pity. Martin smiled to himself. + +“You’ll grow out of it, young man,” he said soothingly. “Time is the +best cure for such youthful distempers.” He turned to Mr. Morse. “I do +not believe discussion is good in such cases. It makes the patient +obstinate.” + +“That is true,” the other assented gravely. “But it is well to warn the +patient occasionally of his condition.” + +Martin laughed merrily, but it was with an effort. The day had been too +long, the day’s effort too intense, and he was deep in the throes of +the reaction. + +“Undoubtedly you are both excellent doctors,” he said; “but if you care +a whit for the opinion of the patient, let him tell you that you are +poor diagnosticians. In fact, you are both suffering from the disease +you think you find in me. As for me, I am immune. The socialist +philosophy that riots half-baked in your veins has passed me by.” + +“Clever, clever,” murmured the judge. “An excellent ruse in +controversy, to reverse positions.” + +“Out of your mouth.” Martin’s eyes were sparkling, but he kept control +of himself. “You see, Judge, I’ve heard your campaign speeches. By some +henidical process—henidical, by the way is a favorite word of mine +which nobody understands—by some henidical process you persuade +yourself that you believe in the competitive system and the survival of +the strong, and at the same time you indorse with might and main all +sorts of measures to shear the strength from the strong.” + +“My young man—” + +“Remember, I’ve heard your campaign speeches,” Martin warned. “It’s on +record, your position on interstate commerce regulation, on regulation +of the railway trust and Standard Oil, on the conservation of the +forests, on a thousand and one restrictive measures that are nothing +else than socialistic.” + +“Do you mean to tell me that you do not believe in regulating these +various outrageous exercises of power?” + +“That’s not the point. I mean to tell you that you are a poor +diagnostician. I mean to tell you that I am not suffering from the +microbe of socialism. I mean to tell you that it is you who are +suffering from the emasculating ravages of that same microbe. As for +me, I am an inveterate opponent of socialism just as I am an inveterate +opponent of your own mongrel democracy that is nothing else than +pseudo-socialism masquerading under a garb of words that will not stand +the test of the dictionary.” + +“I am a reactionary—so complete a reactionary that my position is +incomprehensible to you who live in a veiled lie of social organization +and whose sight is not keen enough to pierce the veil. You make believe +that you believe in the survival of the strong and the rule of the +strong. I believe. That is the difference. When I was a trifle +younger,—a few months younger,—I believed the same thing. You see, the +ideas of you and yours had impressed me. But merchants and traders are +cowardly rulers at best; they grunt and grub all their days in the +trough of money-getting, and I have swung back to aristocracy, if you +please. I am the only individualist in this room. I look to the state +for nothing. I look only to the strong man, the man on horseback, to +save the state from its own rotten futility.” + +“Nietzsche was right. I won’t take the time to tell you who Nietzsche +was, but he was right. The world belongs to the strong—to the strong +who are noble as well and who do not wallow in the swine-trough of +trade and exchange. The world belongs to the true nobleman, to the +great blond beasts, to the noncompromisers, to the ‘yes-sayers.’ And +they will eat you up, you socialists—who are afraid of socialism and +who think yourselves individualists. Your slave-morality of the meek +and lowly will never save you.—Oh, it’s all Greek, I know, and I won’t +bother you any more with it. But remember one thing. There aren’t half +a dozen individualists in Oakland, but Martin Eden is one of them.” + +He signified that he was done with the discussion, and turned to Ruth. + +“I’m wrought up to-day,” he said in an undertone. “All I want to do is +to love, not talk.” + +He ignored Mr. Morse, who said:- + +“I am unconvinced. All socialists are Jesuits. That is the way to tell +them.” + +“We’ll make a good Republican out of you yet,” said Judge Blount. + +“The man on horseback will arrive before that time,” Martin retorted +with good humor, and returned to Ruth. + +But Mr. Morse was not content. He did not like the laziness and the +disinclination for sober, legitimate work of this prospective +son-in-law of his, for whose ideas he had no respect and of whose +nature he had no understanding. So he turned the conversation to +Herbert Spencer. Judge Blount ably seconded him, and Martin, whose ears +had pricked at the first mention of the philosopher’s name, listened to +the judge enunciate a grave and complacent diatribe against Spencer. +From time to time Mr. Morse glanced at Martin, as much as to say, +“There, my boy, you see.” + +“Chattering daws,” Martin muttered under his breath, and went on +talking with Ruth and Arthur. + +But the long day and the “real dirt” of the night before were telling +upon him; and, besides, still in his burnt mind was what had made him +angry when he read it on the car. + +“What is the matter?” Ruth asked suddenly alarmed by the effort he was +making to contain himself. + +“There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is its +prophet,” Judge Blount was saying at that moment. + +Martin turned upon him. + +“A cheap judgment,” he remarked quietly. “I heard it first in the City +Hall Park, on the lips of a workingman who ought to have known better. +I have heard it often since, and each time the clap-trap of it +nauseates me. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. To hear that great +and noble man’s name upon your lips is like finding a dew-drop in a +cesspool. You are disgusting.” + +It was like a thunderbolt. Judge Blount glared at him with apoplectic +countenance, and silence reigned. Mr. Morse was secretly pleased. He +could see that his daughter was shocked. It was what he wanted to do—to +bring out the innate ruffianism of this man he did not like. + +Ruth’s hand sought Martin’s beseechingly under the table, but his blood +was up. He was inflamed by the intellectual pretence and fraud of those +who sat in the high places. A Superior Court Judge! It was only several +years before that he had looked up from the mire at such glorious +entities and deemed them gods. + +Judge Blount recovered himself and attempted to go on, addressing +himself to Martin with an assumption of politeness that the latter +understood was for the benefit of the ladies. Even this added to his +anger. Was there no honesty in the world? + +“You can’t discuss Spencer with me,” he cried. “You do not know any +more about Spencer than do his own countrymen. But it is no fault of +yours, I grant. It is just a phase of the contemptible ignorance of the +times. I ran across a sample of it on my way here this evening. I was +reading an essay by Saleeby on Spencer. You should read it. It is +accessible to all men. You can buy it in any book-store or draw it from +the public library. You would feel ashamed of your paucity of abuse and +ignorance of that noble man compared with what Saleeby has collected on +the subject. It is a record of shame that would shame your shame. + +“‘The philosopher of the half-educated,’ he was called by an academic +Philosopher who was not worthy to pollute the atmosphere he breathed. I +don’t think you have read ten pages of Spencer, but there have been +critics, assumably more intelligent than you, who have read no more +than you of Spencer, who publicly challenged his followers to adduce +one single idea from all his writings—from Herbert Spencer’s writings, +the man who has impressed the stamp of his genius over the whole field +of scientific research and modern thought; the father of psychology; +the man who revolutionized pedagogy, so that to-day the child of the +French peasant is taught the three R’s according to principles laid +down by him. And the little gnats of men sting his memory when they get +their very bread and butter from the technical application of his +ideas. What little of worth resides in their brains is largely due to +him. It is certain that had he never lived, most of what is correct in +their parrot-learned knowledge would be absent. + +“And yet a man like Principal Fairbanks of Oxford—a man who sits in an +even higher place than you, Judge Blount—has said that Spencer will be +dismissed by posterity as a poet and dreamer rather than a thinker. +Yappers and blatherskites, the whole brood of them! ‘“First Principles” +is not wholly destitute of a certain literary power,’ said one of them. +And others of them have said that he was an industrious plodder rather +than an original thinker. Yappers and blatherskites! Yappers and +blatherskites!” + +Martin ceased abruptly, in a dead silence. Everybody in Ruth’s family +looked up to Judge Blount as a man of power and achievement, and they +were horrified at Martin’s outbreak. The remainder of the dinner passed +like a funeral, the judge and Mr. Morse confining their talk to each +other, and the rest of the conversation being extremely desultory. Then +afterward, when Ruth and Martin were alone, there was a scene. + +“You are unbearable,” she wept. + +But his anger still smouldered, and he kept muttering, “The beasts! The +beasts!” + +When she averred he had insulted the judge, he retorted:- + +“By telling the truth about him?” + +“I don’t care whether it was true or not,” she insisted. “There are +certain bounds of decency, and you had no license to insult anybody.” + +“Then where did Judge Blount get the license to assault truth?” Martin +demanded. “Surely to assault truth is a more serious misdemeanor than +to insult a pygmy personality such as the judge’s. He did worse than +that. He blackened the name of a great, noble man who is dead. Oh, the +beasts! The beasts!” + +His complex anger flamed afresh, and Ruth was in terror of him. Never +had she seen him so angry, and it was all mystified and unreasonable to +her comprehension. And yet, through her very terror ran the fibres of +fascination that had drawn and that still drew her to him—that had +compelled her to lean towards him, and, in that mad, culminating +moment, lay her hands upon his neck. She was hurt and outraged by what +had taken place, and yet she lay in his arms and quivered while he went +on muttering, “The beasts! The beasts!” And she still lay there when he +said: “I’ll not bother your table again, dear. They do not like me, and +it is wrong of me to thrust my objectionable presence upon them. +Besides, they are just as objectionable to me. Faugh! They are +sickening. And to think of it, I dreamed in my innocence that the +persons who sat in the high places, who lived in fine houses and had +educations and bank accounts, were worth while!” + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + + +“Come on, let’s go down to the local.” + +So spoke Brissenden, faint from a hemorrhage of half an hour before—the +second hemorrhage in three days. The perennial whiskey glass was in his +hands, and he drained it with shaking fingers. + +“What do I want with socialism?” Martin demanded. + +“Outsiders are allowed five-minute speeches,” the sick man urged. “Get +up and spout. Tell them why you don’t want socialism. Tell them what +you think about them and their ghetto ethics. Slam Nietzsche into them +and get walloped for your pains. Make a scrap of it. It will do them +good. Discussion is what they want, and what you want, too. You see, +I’d like to see you a socialist before I’m gone. It will give you a +sanction for your existence. It is the one thing that will save you in +the time of disappointment that is coming to you.” + +“I never can puzzle out why you, of all men, are a socialist,” Martin +pondered. “You detest the crowd so. Surely there is nothing in the +canaille to recommend it to your aesthetic soul.” He pointed an +accusing finger at the whiskey glass which the other was refilling. +“Socialism doesn’t seem to save you.” + +“I’m very sick,” was the answer. “With you it is different. You have +health and much to live for, and you must be handcuffed to life +somehow. As for me, you wonder why I am a socialist. I’ll tell you. It +is because Socialism is inevitable; because the present rotten and +irrational system cannot endure; because the day is past for your man +on horseback. The slaves won’t stand for it. They are too many, and +willy-nilly they’ll drag down the would-be equestrian before ever he +gets astride. You can’t get away from them, and you’ll have to swallow +the whole slave-morality. It’s not a nice mess, I’ll allow. But it’s +been a-brewing and swallow it you must. You are antediluvian anyway, +with your Nietzsche ideas. The past is past, and the man who says +history repeats itself is a liar. Of course I don’t like the crowd, but +what’s a poor chap to do? We can’t have the man on horseback, and +anything is preferable to the timid swine that now rule. But come on, +anyway. I’m loaded to the guards now, and if I sit here any longer, +I’ll get drunk. And you know the doctor says—damn the doctor! I’ll fool +him yet.” + +It was Sunday night, and they found the small hall packed by the +Oakland socialists, chiefly members of the working class. The speaker, +a clever Jew, won Martin’s admiration at the same time that he aroused +his antagonism. The man’s stooped and narrow shoulders and weazened +chest proclaimed him the true child of the crowded ghetto, and strong +on Martin was the age-long struggle of the feeble, wretched slaves +against the lordly handful of men who had ruled over them and would +rule over them to the end of time. To Martin this withered wisp of a +creature was a symbol. He was the figure that stood forth +representative of the whole miserable mass of weaklings and +inefficients who perished according to biological law on the ragged +confines of life. They were the unfit. In spite of their cunning +philosophy and of their antlike proclivities for coöperation, Nature +rejected them for the exceptional man. Out of the plentiful spawn of +life she flung from her prolific hand she selected only the best. It +was by the same method that men, aping her, bred race-horses and +cucumbers. Doubtless, a creator of a Cosmos could have devised a better +method; but creatures of this particular Cosmos must put up with this +particular method. Of course, they could squirm as they perished, as +the socialists squirmed, as the speaker on the platform and the +perspiring crowd were squirming even now as they counselled together +for some new device with which to minimize the penalties of living and +outwit the Cosmos. + +So Martin thought, and so he spoke when Brissenden urged him to give +them hell. He obeyed the mandate, walking up to the platform, as was +the custom, and addressing the chairman. He began in a low voice, +haltingly, forming into order the ideas which had surged in his brain +while the Jew was speaking. In such meetings five minutes was the time +allotted to each speaker; but when Martin’s five minutes were up, he +was in full stride, his attack upon their doctrines but half completed. +He had caught their interest, and the audience urged the chairman by +acclamation to extend Martin’s time. They appreciated him as a foeman +worthy of their intellect, and they listened intently, following every +word. He spoke with fire and conviction, mincing no words in his attack +upon the slaves and their morality and tactics and frankly alluding to +his hearers as the slaves in question. He quoted Spencer and Malthus, +and enunciated the biological law of development. + +“And so,” he concluded, in a swift résumé, “no state composed of the +slave-types can endure. The old law of development still holds. In the +struggle for existence, as I have shown, the strong and the progeny of +the strong tend to survive, while the weak and the progeny of the weak +are crushed and tend to perish. The result is that the strong and the +progeny of the strong survive, and, so long as the struggle obtains, +the strength of each generation increases. That is development. But you +slaves—it is too bad to be slaves, I grant—but you slaves dream of a +society where the law of development will be annulled, where no +weaklings and inefficients will perish, where every inefficient will +have as much as he wants to eat as many times a day as he desires, and +where all will marry and have progeny—the weak as well as the strong. +What will be the result? No longer will the strength and life-value of +each generation increase. On the contrary, it will diminish. There is +the Nemesis of your slave philosophy. Your society of slaves—of, by, +and for, slaves—must inevitably weaken and go to pieces as the life +which composes it weakens and goes to pieces. + +“Remember, I am enunciating biology and not sentimental ethics. No +state of slaves can stand—” + +“How about the United States?” a man yelled from the audience. + +“And how about it?” Martin retorted. “The thirteen colonies threw off +their rulers and formed the Republic so-called. The slaves were their +own masters. There were no more masters of the sword. But you couldn’t +get along without masters of some sort, and there arose a new set of +masters—not the great, virile, noble men, but the shrewd and spidery +traders and money-lenders. And they enslaved you over again—but not +frankly, as the true, noble men would do with weight of their own right +arms, but secretly, by spidery machinations and by wheedling and +cajolery and lies. They have purchased your slave judges, they have +debauched your slave legislatures, and they have forced to worse +horrors than chattel slavery your slave boys and girls. Two million of +your children are toiling to-day in this trader-oligarchy of the United +States. Ten millions of you slaves are not properly sheltered nor +properly fed. + +“But to return. I have shown that no society of slaves can endure, +because, in its very nature, such society must annul the law of +development. No sooner can a slave society be organized than +deterioration sets in. It is easy for you to talk of annulling the law +of development, but where is the new law of development that will +maintain your strength? Formulate it. Is it already formulated? Then +state it.” + +Martin took his seat amidst an uproar of voices. A score of men were on +their feet clamoring for recognition from the chair. And one by one, +encouraged by vociferous applause, speaking with fire and enthusiasm +and excited gestures, they replied to the attack. It was a wild +night—but it was wild intellectually, a battle of ideas. Some strayed +from the point, but most of the speakers replied directly to Martin. +They shook him with lines of thought that were new to him; and gave him +insights, not into new biological laws, but into new applications of +the old laws. They were too earnest to be always polite, and more than +once the chairman rapped and pounded for order. + +It chanced that a cub reporter sat in the audience, detailed there on a +day dull of news and impressed by the urgent need of journalism for +sensation. He was not a bright cub reporter. He was merely facile and +glib. He was too dense to follow the discussion. In fact, he had a +comfortable feeling that he was vastly superior to these wordy maniacs +of the working class. Also, he had a great respect for those who sat in +the high places and dictated the policies of nations and newspapers. +Further, he had an ideal, namely, of achieving that excellence of the +perfect reporter who is able to make something—even a great deal—out of +nothing. + +He did not know what all the talk was about. It was not necessary. +Words like _revolution_ gave him his cue. Like a paleontologist, able +to reconstruct an entire skeleton from one fossil bone, he was able to +reconstruct a whole speech from the one word _revolution_. He did it +that night, and he did it well; and since Martin had made the biggest +stir, he put it all into his mouth and made him the arch-anarch of the +show, transforming his reactionary individualism into the most lurid, +red-shirt socialist utterance. The cub reporter was an artist, and it +was a large brush with which he laid on the local color—wild-eyed +long-haired men, neurasthenic and degenerate types of men, voices +shaken with passion, clenched fists raised on high, and all projected +against a background of oaths, yells, and the throaty rumbling of angry +men. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + + +Over the coffee, in his little room, Martin read next morning’s paper. +It was a novel experience to find himself head-lined, on the first page +at that; and he was surprised to learn that he was the most notorious +leader of the Oakland socialists. He ran over the violent speech the +cub reporter had constructed for him, and, though at first he was +angered by the fabrication, in the end he tossed the paper aside with a +laugh. + +“Either the man was drunk or criminally malicious,” he said that +afternoon, from his perch on the bed, when Brissenden had arrived and +dropped limply into the one chair. + +“But what do you care?” Brissenden asked. “Surely you don’t desire the +approval of the bourgeois swine that read the newspapers?” + +Martin thought for a while, then said:- + +“No, I really don’t care for their approval, not a whit. On the other +hand, it’s very likely to make my relations with Ruth’s family a trifle +awkward. Her father always contended I was a socialist, and this +miserable stuff will clinch his belief. Not that I care for his +opinion—but what’s the odds? I want to read you what I’ve been doing +to-day. It’s ‘Overdue,’ of course, and I’m just about halfway through.” + +He was reading aloud when Maria thrust open the door and ushered in a +young man in a natty suit who glanced briskly about him, noting the +oil-burner and the kitchen in the corner before his gaze wandered on to +Martin. + +“Sit down,” Brissenden said. + +Martin made room for the young man on the bed and waited for him to +broach his business. + +“I heard you speak last night, Mr. Eden, and I’ve come to interview +you,” he began. + +Brissenden burst out in a hearty laugh. + +“A brother socialist?” the reporter asked, with a quick glance at +Brissenden that appraised the color-value of that cadaverous and dying +man. + +“And he wrote that report,” Martin said softly. “Why, he is only a +boy!” + +“Why don’t you poke him?” Brissenden asked. “I’d give a thousand +dollars to have my lungs back for five minutes.” + +The cub reporter was a trifle perplexed by this talking over him and +around him and at him. But he had been commended for his brilliant +description of the socialist meeting and had further been detailed to +get a personal interview with Martin Eden, the leader of the organized +menace to society. + +“You do not object to having your picture taken, Mr. Eden?” he said. +“I’ve a staff photographer outside, you see, and he says it will be +better to take you right away before the sun gets lower. Then we can +have the interview afterward.” + +“A photographer,” Brissenden said meditatively. “Poke him, Martin! Poke +him!” + +“I guess I’m getting old,” was the answer. “I know I ought, but I +really haven’t the heart. It doesn’t seem to matter.” + +“For his mother’s sake,” Brissenden urged. + +“It’s worth considering,” Martin replied; “but it doesn’t seem worth +while enough to rouse sufficient energy in me. You see, it does take +energy to give a fellow a poking. Besides, what does it matter?” + +“That’s right—that’s the way to take it,” the cub announced airily, +though he had already begun to glance anxiously at the door. + +“But it wasn’t true, not a word of what he wrote,” Martin went on, +confining his attention to Brissenden. + +“It was just in a general way a description, you understand,” the cub +ventured, “and besides, it’s good advertising. That’s what counts. It +was a favor to you.” + +“It’s good advertising, Martin, old boy,” Brissenden repeated solemnly. + +“And it was a favor to me—think of that!” was Martin’s contribution. + +“Let me see—where were you born, Mr. Eden?” the cub asked, assuming an +air of expectant attention. + +“He doesn’t take notes,” said Brissenden. “He remembers it all.” + +“That is sufficient for me.” The cub was trying not to look worried. +“No decent reporter needs to bother with notes.” + +“That was sufficient—for last night.” But Brissenden was not a disciple +of quietism, and he changed his attitude abruptly. “Martin, if you +don’t poke him, I’ll do it myself, if I fall dead on the floor the next +moment.” + +“How will a spanking do?” Martin asked. + +Brissenden considered judicially, and nodded his head. + +The next instant Martin was seated on the edge of the bed with the cub +face downward across his knees. + +“Now don’t bite,” Martin warned, “or else I’ll have to punch your face. +It would be a pity, for it is such a pretty face.” + +His uplifted hand descended, and thereafter rose and fell in a swift +and steady rhythm. The cub struggled and cursed and squirmed, but did +not offer to bite. Brissenden looked on gravely, though once he grew +excited and gripped the whiskey bottle, pleading, “Here, just let me +swat him once.” + +“Sorry my hand played out,” Martin said, when at last he desisted. “It +is quite numb.” + +He uprighted the cub and perched him on the bed. + +“I’ll have you arrested for this,” he snarled, tears of boyish +indignation running down his flushed cheeks. “I’ll make you sweat for +this. You’ll see.” + +“The pretty thing,” Martin remarked. “He doesn’t realize that he has +entered upon the downward path. It is not honest, it is not square, it +is not manly, to tell lies about one’s fellow-creatures the way he has +done, and he doesn’t know it.” + +“He has to come to us to be told,” Brissenden filled in a pause. + +“Yes, to me whom he has maligned and injured. My grocery will +undoubtedly refuse me credit now. The worst of it is that the poor boy +will keep on this way until he deteriorates into a first-class +newspaper man and also a first-class scoundrel.” + +“But there is yet time,” quoth Brissenden. “Who knows but what you may +prove the humble instrument to save him. Why didn’t you let me swat him +just once? I’d like to have had a hand in it.” + +“I’ll have you arrested, the pair of you, you b-b-big brutes,” sobbed +the erring soul. + +“No, his mouth is too pretty and too weak.” Martin shook his head +lugubriously. “I’m afraid I’ve numbed my hand in vain. The young man +cannot reform. He will become eventually a very great and successful +newspaper man. He has no conscience. That alone will make him great.” + +With that the cub passed out the door in trepidation to the last for +fear that Brissenden would hit him in the back with the bottle he still +clutched. + +In the next morning’s paper Martin learned a great deal more about +himself that was new to him. “We are the sworn enemies of society,” he +found himself quoted as saying in a column interview. “No, we are not +anarchists but socialists.” When the reporter pointed out to him that +there seemed little difference between the two schools, Martin had +shrugged his shoulders in silent affirmation. His face was described as +bilaterally asymmetrical, and various other signs of degeneration were +described. Especially notable were his thuglike hands and the fiery +gleams in his blood-shot eyes. + +He learned, also, that he spoke nightly to the workmen in the City Hall +Park, and that among the anarchists and agitators that there inflamed +the minds of the people he drew the largest audiences and made the most +revolutionary speeches. The cub painted a high-light picture of his +poor little room, its oil-stove and the one chair, and of the +death’s-head tramp who kept him company and who looked as if he had +just emerged from twenty years of solitary confinement in some fortress +dungeon. + +The cub had been industrious. He had scurried around and nosed out +Martin’s family history, and procured a photograph of Higginbotham’s +Cash Store with Bernard Higginbotham himself standing out in front. +That gentleman was depicted as an intelligent, dignified businessman +who had no patience with his brother-in-law’s socialistic views, and no +patience with the brother-in-law, either, whom he was quoted as +characterizing as a lazy good-for-nothing who wouldn’t take a job when +it was offered to him and who would go to jail yet. Hermann von +Schmidt, Marian’s husband, had likewise been interviewed. He had called +Martin the black sheep of the family and repudiated him. “He tried to +sponge off of me, but I put a stop to that good and quick,” Von Schmidt +had said to the reporter. “He knows better than to come bumming around +here. A man who won’t work is no good, take that from me.” + +This time Martin was genuinely angry. Brissenden looked upon the affair +as a good joke, but he could not console Martin, who knew that it would +be no easy task to explain to Ruth. As for her father, he knew that he +must be overjoyed with what had happened and that he would make the +most of it to break off the engagement. How much he would make of it he +was soon to realize. The afternoon mail brought a letter from Ruth. +Martin opened it with a premonition of disaster, and read it standing +at the open door when he had received it from the postman. As he read, +mechanically his hand sought his pocket for the tobacco and brown paper +of his old cigarette days. He was not aware that the pocket was empty +or that he had even reached for the materials with which to roll a +cigarette. + +It was not a passionate letter. There were no touches of anger in it. +But all the way through, from the first sentence to the last, was +sounded the note of hurt and disappointment. She had expected better of +him. She had thought he had got over his youthful wildness, that her +love for him had been sufficiently worth while to enable him to live +seriously and decently. And now her father and mother had taken a firm +stand and commanded that the engagement be broken. That they were +justified in this she could not but admit. Their relation could never +be a happy one. It had been unfortunate from the first. But one regret +she voiced in the whole letter, and it was a bitter one to Martin. “If +only you had settled down to some position and attempted to make +something of yourself,” she wrote. “But it was not to be. Your past +life had been too wild and irregular. I can understand that you are not +to be blamed. You could act only according to your nature and your +early training. So I do not blame you, Martin. Please remember that. It +was simply a mistake. As father and mother have contended, we were not +made for each other, and we should both be happy because it was +discovered not too late.” . . “There is no use trying to see me,” she +said toward the last. “It would be an unhappy meeting for both of us, +as well as for my mother. I feel, as it is, that I have caused her +great pain and worry. I shall have to do much living to atone for it.” + +He read it through to the end, carefully, a second time, then sat down +and replied. He outlined the remarks he had uttered at the socialist +meeting, pointing out that they were in all ways the converse of what +the newspaper had put in his mouth. Toward the end of the letter he was +God’s own lover pleading passionately for love. “Please answer,” he +said, “and in your answer you have to tell me but one thing. Do you +love me? That is all—the answer to that one question.” + +But no answer came the next day, nor the next. “Overdue” lay untouched +upon the table, and each day the heap of returned manuscripts under the +table grew larger. For the first time Martin’s glorious sleep was +interrupted by insomnia, and he tossed through long, restless nights. +Three times he called at the Morse home, but was turned away by the +servant who answered the bell. Brissenden lay sick in his hotel, too +feeble to stir out, and, though Martin was with him often, he did not +worry him with his troubles. + +For Martin’s troubles were many. The aftermath of the cub reporter’s +deed was even wider than Martin had anticipated. The Portuguese grocer +refused him further credit, while the greengrocer, who was an American +and proud of it, had called him a traitor to his country and refused +further dealings with him—carrying his patriotism to such a degree that +he cancelled Martin’s account and forbade him ever to attempt to pay +it. The talk in the neighborhood reflected the same feeling, and +indignation against Martin ran high. No one would have anything to do +with a socialist traitor. Poor Maria was dubious and frightened, but +she remained loyal. The children of the neighborhood recovered from the +awe of the grand carriage which once had visited Martin, and from safe +distances they called him “hobo” and “bum.” The Silva tribe, however, +stanchly defended him, fighting more than one pitched battle for his +honor, and black eyes and bloody noses became quite the order of the +day and added to Maria’s perplexities and troubles. + +Once, Martin met Gertrude on the street, down in Oakland, and learned +what he knew could not be otherwise—that Bernard Higginbotham was +furious with him for having dragged the family into public disgrace, +and that he had forbidden him the house. + +“Why don’t you go away, Martin?” Gertrude had begged. “Go away and get +a job somewhere and steady down. Afterwards, when this all blows over, +you can come back.” + +Martin shook his head, but gave no explanations. How could he explain? +He was appalled at the awful intellectual chasm that yawned between him +and his people. He could never cross it and explain to them his +position,—the Nietzschean position, in regard to socialism. There were +not words enough in the English language, nor in any language, to make +his attitude and conduct intelligible to them. Their highest concept of +right conduct, in his case, was to get a job. That was their first word +and their last. It constituted their whole lexicon of ideas. Get a job! +Go to work! Poor, stupid slaves, he thought, while his sister talked. +Small wonder the world belonged to the strong. The slaves were obsessed +by their own slavery. A job was to them a golden fetich before which +they fell down and worshipped. + +He shook his head again, when Gertrude offered him money, though he +knew that within the day he would have to make a trip to the +pawnbroker. + +“Don’t come near Bernard now,” she admonished him. “After a few months, +when he is cooled down, if you want to, you can get the job of drivin’ +delivery-wagon for him. Any time you want me, just send for me an’ I’ll +come. Don’t forget.” + +She went away weeping audibly, and he felt a pang of sorrow shoot +through him at sight of her heavy body and uncouth gait. As he watched +her go, the Nietzschean edifice seemed to shake and totter. The +slave-class in the abstract was all very well, but it was not wholly +satisfactory when it was brought home to his own family. And yet, if +there was ever a slave trampled by the strong, that slave was his +sister Gertrude. He grinned savagely at the paradox. A fine +Nietzsche-man he was, to allow his intellectual concepts to be shaken +by the first sentiment or emotion that strayed along—ay, to be shaken +by the slave-morality itself, for that was what his pity for his sister +really was. The true noble men were above pity and compassion. Pity and +compassion had been generated in the subterranean barracoons of the +slaves and were no more than the agony and sweat of the crowded +miserables and weaklings. + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + + +“Overdue” still continued to lie forgotten on the table. Every +manuscript that he had had out now lay under the table. Only one +manuscript he kept going, and that was Brissenden’s “Ephemera.” His +bicycle and black suit were again in pawn, and the type-writer people +were once more worrying about the rent. But such things no longer +bothered him. He was seeking a new orientation, and until that was +found his life must stand still. + +After several weeks, what he had been waiting for happened. He met Ruth +on the street. It was true, she was accompanied by her brother, Norman, +and it was true that they tried to ignore him and that Norman attempted +to wave him aside. + +“If you interfere with my sister, I’ll call an officer,” Norman +threatened. “She does not wish to speak with you, and your insistence +is insult.” + +“If you persist, you’ll have to call that officer, and then you’ll get +your name in the papers,” Martin answered grimly. “And now, get out of +my way and get the officer if you want to. I’m going to talk with +Ruth.” + +“I want to have it from your own lips,” he said to her. + +She was pale and trembling, but she held up and looked inquiringly. + +“The question I asked in my letter,” he prompted. + +Norman made an impatient movement, but Martin checked him with a swift +look. + +She shook her head. + +“Is all this of your own free will?” he demanded. + +“It is.” She spoke in a low, firm voice and with deliberation. “It is +of my own free will. You have disgraced me so that I am ashamed to meet +my friends. They are all talking about me, I know. That is all I can +tell you. You have made me very unhappy, and I never wish to see you +again.” + +“Friends! Gossip! Newspaper misreports! Surely such things are not +stronger than love! I can only believe that you never loved me.” + +A blush drove the pallor from her face. + +“After what has passed?” she said faintly. “Martin, you do not know +what you are saying. I am not common.” + +“You see, she doesn’t want to have anything to do with you,” Norman +blurted out, starting on with her. + +Martin stood aside and let them pass, fumbling unconsciously in his +coat pocket for the tobacco and brown papers that were not there. + +It was a long walk to North Oakland, but it was not until he went up +the steps and entered his room that he knew he had walked it. He found +himself sitting on the edge of the bed and staring about him like an +awakened somnambulist. He noticed “Overdue” lying on the table and drew +up his chair and reached for his pen. There was in his nature a logical +compulsion toward completeness. Here was something undone. It had been +deferred against the completion of something else. Now that something +else had been finished, and he would apply himself to this task until +it was finished. What he would do next he did not know. All that he did +know was that a climacteric in his life had been attained. A period had +been reached, and he was rounding it off in workman-like fashion. He +was not curious about the future. He would soon enough find out what it +held in store for him. Whatever it was, it did not matter. Nothing +seemed to matter. + +For five days he toiled on at “Overdue,” going nowhere, seeing nobody, +and eating meagrely. On the morning of the sixth day the postman +brought him a thin letter from the editor of _The Parthenon_. A glance +told him that “Ephemera” was accepted. “We have submitted the poem to +Mr. Cartwright Bruce,” the editor went on to say, “and he has reported +so favorably upon it that we cannot let it go. As an earnest of our +pleasure in publishing the poem, let me tell you that we have set it +for the August number, our July number being already made up. Kindly +extend our pleasure and our thanks to Mr. Brissenden. Please send by +return mail his photograph and biographical data. If our honorarium is +unsatisfactory, kindly telegraph us at once and state what you consider +a fair price.” + +Since the honorarium they had offered was three hundred and fifty +dollars, Martin thought it not worth while to telegraph. Then, too, +there was Brissenden’s consent to be gained. Well, he had been right, +after all. Here was one magazine editor who knew real poetry when he +saw it. And the price was splendid, even though it was for the poem of +a century. As for Cartwright Bruce, Martin knew that he was the one +critic for whose opinions Brissenden had any respect. + +Martin rode down town on an electric car, and as he watched the houses +and cross-streets slipping by he was aware of a regret that he was not +more elated over his friend’s success and over his own signal victory. +The one critic in the United States had pronounced favorably on the +poem, while his own contention that good stuff could find its way into +the magazines had proved correct. But enthusiasm had lost its spring in +him, and he found that he was more anxious to see Brissenden than he +was to carry the good news. The acceptance of _The Parthenon_ had +recalled to him that during his five days’ devotion to “Overdue” he had +not heard from Brissenden nor even thought about him. For the first +time Martin realized the daze he had been in, and he felt shame for +having forgotten his friend. But even the shame did not burn very +sharply. He was numb to emotions of any sort save the artistic ones +concerned in the writing of “Overdue.” So far as other affairs were +concerned, he had been in a trance. For that matter, he was still in a +trance. All this life through which the electric car whirred seemed +remote and unreal, and he would have experienced little interest and +less shock if the great stone steeple of the church he passed had +suddenly crumbled to mortar-dust upon his head. + +At the hotel he hurried up to Brissenden’s room, and hurried down +again. The room was empty. All luggage was gone. + +“Did Mr. Brissenden leave any address?” he asked the clerk, who looked +at him curiously for a moment. + +“Haven’t you heard?” he asked. + +Martin shook his head. + +“Why, the papers were full of it. He was found dead in bed. Suicide. +Shot himself through the head.” + +“Is he buried yet?” Martin seemed to hear his voice, like some one +else’s voice, from a long way off, asking the question. + +“No. The body was shipped East after the inquest. Lawyers engaged by +his people saw to the arrangements.” + +“They were quick about it, I must say,” Martin commented. + +“Oh, I don’t know. It happened five days ago.” + +“Five days ago?” + +“Yes, five days ago.” + +“Oh,” Martin said as he turned and went out. + +At the corner he stepped into the Western Union and sent a telegram to +_The Parthenon_, advising them to proceed with the publication of the +poem. He had in his pocket but five cents with which to pay his carfare +home, so he sent the message collect. + +Once in his room, he resumed his writing. The days and nights came and +went, and he sat at his table and wrote on. He went nowhere, save to +the pawnbroker, took no exercise, and ate methodically when he was +hungry and had something to cook, and just as methodically went without +when he had nothing to cook. Composed as the story was, in advance, +chapter by chapter, he nevertheless saw and developed an opening that +increased the power of it, though it necessitated twenty thousand +additional words. It was not that there was any vital need that the +thing should be well done, but that his artistic canons compelled him +to do it well. He worked on in the daze, strangely detached from the +world around him, feeling like a familiar ghost among these literary +trappings of his former life. He remembered that some one had said that +a ghost was the spirit of a man who was dead and who did not have sense +enough to know it; and he paused for the moment to wonder if he were +really dead and unaware of it. + +Came the day when “Overdue” was finished. The agent of the type-writer +firm had come for the machine, and he sat on the bed while Martin, on +the one chair, typed the last pages of the final chapter. “Finis,” he +wrote, in capitals, at the end, and to him it was indeed finis. He +watched the type-writer carried out the door with a feeling of relief, +then went over and lay down on the bed. He was faint from hunger. Food +had not passed his lips in thirty-six hours, but he did not think about +it. He lay on his back, with closed eyes, and did not think at all, +while the daze or stupor slowly welled up, saturating his +consciousness. Half in delirium, he began muttering aloud the lines of +an anonymous poem Brissenden had been fond of quoting to him. Maria, +listening anxiously outside his door, was perturbed by his monotonous +utterance. The words in themselves were not significant to her, but the +fact that he was saying them was. “I have done,” was the burden of the +poem. + +“‘I have done— +Put by the lute. +Song and singing soon are over +As the airy shades that hover +In among the purple clover. +I have done— +Put by the lute. +Once I sang as early thrushes +Sing among the dewy bushes; +Now I’m mute. +I am like a weary linnet, +For my throat has no song in it; +I have had my singing minute. +I have done. +Put by the lute.’” + + +Maria could stand it no longer, and hurried away to the stove, where +she filled a quart-bowl with soup, putting into it the lion’s share of +chopped meat and vegetables which her ladle scraped from the bottom of +the pot. Martin roused himself and sat up and began to eat, between +spoonfuls reassuring Maria that he had not been talking in his sleep +and that he did not have any fever. + +After she left him he sat drearily, with drooping shoulders, on the +edge of the bed, gazing about him with lack-lustre eyes that saw +nothing until the torn wrapper of a magazine, which had come in the +morning’s mail and which lay unopened, shot a gleam of light into his +darkened brain. It is _The Parthenon_, he thought, the August +_Parthenon_, and it must contain “Ephemera.” If only Brissenden were +here to see! + +He was turning the pages of the magazine, when suddenly he stopped. +“Ephemera” had been featured, with gorgeous head-piece and +Beardsley-like margin decorations. On one side of the head-piece was +Brissenden’s photograph, on the other side was the photograph of Sir +John Value, the British Ambassador. A preliminary editorial note quoted +Sir John Value as saying that there were no poets in America, and the +publication of “Ephemera” was _The Parthenon’s_. “There, take that, Sir +John Value!” Cartwright Bruce was described as the greatest critic in +America, and he was quoted as saying that “Ephemera” was the greatest +poem ever written in America. And finally, the editor’s foreword ended +with: “We have not yet made up our minds entirely as to the merits of +“Ephemera”; perhaps we shall never be able to do so. But we have read +it often, wondering at the words and their arrangement, wondering where +Mr. Brissenden got them, and how he could fasten them together.” Then +followed the poem. + +“Pretty good thing you died, Briss, old man,” Martin murmured, letting +the magazine slip between his knees to the floor. + +The cheapness and vulgarity of it was nauseating, and Martin noted +apathetically that he was not nauseated very much. He wished he could +get angry, but did not have energy enough to try. He was too numb. His +blood was too congealed to accelerate to the swift tidal flow of +indignation. After all, what did it matter? It was on a par with all +the rest that Brissenden had condemned in bourgeois society. + +“Poor Briss,” Martin communed; “he would never have forgiven me.” + +Rousing himself with an effort, he possessed himself of a box which had +once contained type-writer paper. Going through its contents, he drew +forth eleven poems which his friend had written. These he tore +lengthwise and crosswise and dropped into the waste basket. He did it +languidly, and, when he had finished, sat on the edge of the bed +staring blankly before him. + +How long he sat there he did not know, until, suddenly, across his +sightless vision he saw form a long horizontal line of white. It was +curious. But as he watched it grow in definiteness he saw that it was a +coral reef smoking in the white Pacific surges. Next, in the line of +breakers he made out a small canoe, an outrigger canoe. In the stern he +saw a young bronzed god in scarlet hip-cloth dipping a flashing paddle. +He recognized him. He was Moti, the youngest son of Tati, the chief, +and this was Tahiti, and beyond that smoking reef lay the sweet land of +Papara and the chief’s grass house by the river’s mouth. It was the end +of the day, and Moti was coming home from the fishing. He was waiting +for the rush of a big breaker whereon to jump the reef. Then he saw +himself, sitting forward in the canoe as he had often sat in the past, +dipping a paddle that waited Moti’s word to dig in like mad when the +turquoise wall of the great breaker rose behind them. Next, he was no +longer an onlooker but was himself in the canoe, Moti was crying out, +they were both thrusting hard with their paddles, racing on the steep +face of the flying turquoise. Under the bow the water was hissing as +from a steam jet, the air was filled with driven spray, there was a +rush and rumble and long-echoing roar, and the canoe floated on the +placid water of the lagoon. Moti laughed and shook the salt water from +his eyes, and together they paddled in to the pounded-coral beach where +Tati’s grass walls through the cocoanut-palms showed golden in the +setting sun. + +The picture faded, and before his eyes stretched the disorder of his +squalid room. He strove in vain to see Tahiti again. He knew there was +singing among the trees and that the maidens were dancing in the +moonlight, but he could not see them. He could see only the littered +writing-table, the empty space where the type-writer had stood, and the +unwashed window-pane. He closed his eyes with a groan, and slept. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + + +He slept heavily all night, and did not stir until aroused by the +postman on his morning round. Martin felt tired and passive, and went +through his letters aimlessly. One thin envelope, from a robber +magazine, contained a check for twenty-two dollars. He had been dunning +for it for a year and a half. He noted its amount apathetically. The +old-time thrill at receiving a publisher’s check was gone. Unlike his +earlier checks, this one was not pregnant with promise of great things +to come. To him it was a check for twenty-two dollars, that was all, +and it would buy him something to eat. + +Another check was in the same mail, sent from a New York weekly in +payment for some humorous verse which had been accepted months before. +It was for ten dollars. An idea came to him, which he calmly +considered. He did not know what he was going to do, and he felt in no +hurry to do anything. In the meantime he must live. Also he owed +numerous debts. Would it not be a paying investment to put stamps on +the huge pile of manuscripts under the table and start them on their +travels again? One or two of them might be accepted. That would help +him to live. He decided on the investment, and, after he had cashed the +checks at the bank down in Oakland, he bought ten dollars’ worth of +postage stamps. The thought of going home to cook breakfast in his +stuffy little room was repulsive to him. For the first time he refused +to consider his debts. He knew that in his room he could manufacture a +substantial breakfast at a cost of from fifteen to twenty cents. But, +instead, he went into the Forum Café and ordered a breakfast that cost +two dollars. He tipped the waiter a quarter, and spent fifty cents for +a package of Egyptian cigarettes. It was the first time he had smoked +since Ruth had asked him to stop. But he could see now no reason why he +should not, and besides, he wanted to smoke. And what did the money +matter? For five cents he could have bought a package of Durham and +brown papers and rolled forty cigarettes—but what of it? Money had no +meaning to him now except what it would immediately buy. He was +chartless and rudderless, and he had no port to make, while drifting +involved the least living, and it was living that hurt. + +The days slipped along, and he slept eight hours regularly every night. +Though now, while waiting for more checks, he ate in the Japanese +restaurants where meals were served for ten cents, his wasted body +filled out, as did the hollows in his cheeks. He no longer abused +himself with short sleep, overwork, and overstudy. He wrote nothing, +and the books were closed. He walked much, out in the hills, and loafed +long hours in the quiet parks. He had no friends nor acquaintances, nor +did he make any. He had no inclination. He was waiting for some +impulse, from he knew not where, to put his stopped life into motion +again. In the meantime his life remained run down, planless, and empty +and idle. + +Once he made a trip to San Francisco to look up the “real dirt.” But at +the last moment, as he stepped into the upstairs entrance, he recoiled +and turned and fled through the swarming ghetto. He was frightened at +the thought of hearing philosophy discussed, and he fled furtively, for +fear that some one of the “real dirt” might chance along and recognize +him. + +Sometimes he glanced over the magazines and newspapers to see how +“Ephemera” was being maltreated. It had made a hit. But what a hit! +Everybody had read it, and everybody was discussing whether or not it +was really poetry. The local papers had taken it up, and daily there +appeared columns of learned criticisms, facetious editorials, and +serious letters from subscribers. Helen Della Delmar (proclaimed with a +flourish of trumpets and rolling of tomtoms to be the greatest woman +poet in the United States) denied Brissenden a seat beside her on +Pegasus and wrote voluminous letters to the public, proving that he was +no poet. + +_The Parthenon_ came out in its next number patting itself on the back +for the stir it had made, sneering at Sir John Value, and exploiting +Brissenden’s death with ruthless commercialism. A newspaper with a +sworn circulation of half a million published an original and +spontaneous poem by Helen Della Delmar, in which she gibed and sneered +at Brissenden. Also, she was guilty of a second poem, in which she +parodied him. + +Martin had many times to be glad that Brissenden was dead. He had hated +the crowd so, and here all that was finest and most sacred of him had +been thrown to the crowd. Daily the vivisection of Beauty went on. +Every nincompoop in the land rushed into free print, floating their +wizened little egos into the public eye on the surge of Brissenden’s +greatness. Quoth one paper: “We have received a letter from a gentleman +who wrote a poem just like it, only better, some time ago.” Another +paper, in deadly seriousness, reproving Helen Della Delmar for her +parody, said: “But unquestionably Miss Delmar wrote it in a moment of +badinage and not quite with the respect that one great poet should show +to another and perhaps to the greatest. However, whether Miss Delmar be +jealous or not of the man who invented ‘Ephemera,’ it is certain that +she, like thousands of others, is fascinated by his work, and that the +day may come when she will try to write lines like his.” + +Ministers began to preach sermons against “Ephemera,” and one, who too +stoutly stood for much of its content, was expelled for heresy. The +great poem contributed to the gayety of the world. The comic +verse-writers and the cartoonists took hold of it with screaming +laughter, and in the personal columns of society weeklies jokes were +perpetrated on it to the effect that Charley Frensham told Archie +Jennings, in confidence, that five lines of “Ephemera” would drive a +man to beat a cripple, and that ten lines would send him to the bottom +of the river. + +Martin did not laugh; nor did he grit his teeth in anger. The effect +produced upon him was one of great sadness. In the crash of his whole +world, with love on the pinnacle, the crash of magazinedom and the dear +public was a small crash indeed. Brissenden had been wholly right in +his judgment of the magazines, and he, Martin, had spent arduous and +futile years in order to find it out for himself. The magazines were +all Brissenden had said they were and more. Well, he was done, he +solaced himself. He had hitched his wagon to a star and been landed in +a pestiferous marsh. The visions of Tahiti—clean, sweet Tahiti—were +coming to him more frequently. And there were the low Paumotus, and the +high Marquesas; he saw himself often, now, on board trading schooners +or frail little cutters, slipping out at dawn through the reef at +Papeete and beginning the long beat through the pearl-atolls to +Nukahiva and the Bay of Taiohae, where Tamari, he knew, would kill a +pig in honor of his coming, and where Tamari’s flower-garlanded +daughters would seize his hands and with song and laughter garland him +with flowers. The South Seas were calling, and he knew that sooner or +later he would answer the call. + +In the meantime he drifted, resting and recuperating after the long +traverse he had made through the realm of knowledge. When _The +Parthenon_ check of three hundred and fifty dollars was forwarded to +him, he turned it over to the local lawyer who had attended to +Brissenden’s affairs for his family. Martin took a receipt for the +check, and at the same time gave a note for the hundred dollars +Brissenden had let him have. + +The time was not long when Martin ceased patronizing the Japanese +restaurants. At the very moment when he had abandoned the fight, the +tide turned. But it had turned too late. Without a thrill he opened a +thick envelope from _The Millennium_, scanned the face of a check that +represented three hundred dollars, and noted that it was the payment on +acceptance for “Adventure.” Every debt he owed in the world, including +the pawnshop, with its usurious interest, amounted to less than a +hundred dollars. And when he had paid everything, and lifted the +hundred-dollar note with Brissenden’s lawyer, he still had over a +hundred dollars in pocket. He ordered a suit of clothes from the tailor +and ate his meals in the best cafés in town. He still slept in his +little room at Maria’s, but the sight of his new clothes caused the +neighborhood children to cease from calling him “hobo” and “tramp” from +the roofs of woodsheds and over back fences. + +“Wiki-Wiki,” his Hawaiian short story, was bought by _Warren’s Monthly_ +for two hundred and fifty dollars. _The Northern Review_ took his +essay, “The Cradle of Beauty,” and _Mackintosh’s Magazine_ took “The +Palmist”—the poem he had written to Marian. The editors and readers +were back from their summer vacations, and manuscripts were being +handled quickly. But Martin could not puzzle out what strange whim +animated them to this general acceptance of the things they had +persistently rejected for two years. Nothing of his had been published. +He was not known anywhere outside of Oakland, and in Oakland, with the +few who thought they knew him, he was notorious as a red-shirt and a +socialist. So there was no explaining this sudden acceptability of his +wares. It was sheer jugglery of fate. + +After it had been refused by a number of magazines, he had taken +Brissenden’s rejected advice and started “The Shame of the Sun” on the +round of publishers. After several refusals, Singletree, Darnley & Co. +accepted it, promising fall publication. When Martin asked for an +advance on royalties, they wrote that such was not their custom, that +books of that nature rarely paid for themselves, and that they doubted +if his book would sell a thousand copies. Martin figured what the book +would earn him on such a sale. Retailed at a dollar, on a royalty of +fifteen per cent, it would bring him one hundred and fifty dollars. He +decided that if he had it to do over again he would confine himself to +fiction. “Adventure,” one-fourth as long, had brought him twice as much +from _The Millennium_. That newspaper paragraph he had read so long ago +had been true, after all. The first-class magazines did not pay on +acceptance, and they paid well. Not two cents a word, but four cents a +word, had _The Millennium_ paid him. And, furthermore, they bought good +stuff, too, for were they not buying his? This last thought he +accompanied with a grin. + +He wrote to Singletree, Darnley & Co., offering to sell out his rights +in “The Shame of the Sun” for a hundred dollars, but they did not care +to take the risk. In the meantime he was not in need of money, for +several of his later stories had been accepted and paid for. He +actually opened a bank account, where, without a debt in the world, he +had several hundred dollars to his credit. “Overdue,” after having been +declined by a number of magazines, came to rest at the Meredith-Lowell +Company. Martin remembered the five dollars Gertrude had given him, and +his resolve to return it to her a hundred times over; so he wrote for +an advance on royalties of five hundred dollars. To his surprise a +check for that amount, accompanied by a contract, came by return mail. +He cashed the check into five-dollar gold pieces and telephoned +Gertrude that he wanted to see her. + +She arrived at the house panting and short of breath from the haste she +had made. Apprehensive of trouble, she had stuffed the few dollars she +possessed into her hand-satchel; and so sure was she that disaster had +overtaken her brother, that she stumbled forward, sobbing, into his +arms, at the same time thrusting the satchel mutely at him. + +“I’d have come myself,” he said. “But I didn’t want a row with Mr. +Higginbotham, and that is what would have surely happened.” + +“He’ll be all right after a time,” she assured him, while she wondered +what the trouble was that Martin was in. “But you’d best get a job +first an’ steady down. Bernard does like to see a man at honest work. +That stuff in the newspapers broke ’m all up. I never saw ’m so mad +before.” + +“I’m not going to get a job,” Martin said with a smile. “And you can +tell him so from me. I don’t need a job, and there’s the proof of it.” + +He emptied the hundred gold pieces into her lap in a glinting, tinkling +stream. + +“You remember that fiver you gave me the time I didn’t have carfare? +Well, there it is, with ninety-nine brothers of different ages but all +of the same size.” + +If Gertrude had been frightened when she arrived, she was now in a +panic of fear. Her fear was such that it was certitude. She was not +suspicious. She was convinced. She looked at Martin in horror, and her +heavy limbs shrank under the golden stream as though it were burning +her. + +“It’s yours,” he laughed. + +She burst into tears, and began to moan, “My poor boy, my poor boy!” + +He was puzzled for a moment. Then he divined the cause of her agitation +and handed her the Meredith-Lowell letter which had accompanied the +check. She stumbled through it, pausing now and again to wipe her eyes, +and when she had finished, said:- + +“An’ does it mean that you come by the money honestly?” + +“More honestly than if I’d won it in a lottery. I earned it.” + +Slowly faith came back to her, and she reread the letter carefully. It +took him long to explain to her the nature of the transaction which had +put the money into his possession, and longer still to get her to +understand that the money was really hers and that he did not need it. + +“I’ll put it in the bank for you,” she said finally. + +“You’ll do nothing of the sort. It’s yours, to do with as you please, +and if you won’t take it, I’ll give it to Maria. She’ll know what to do +with it. I’d suggest, though, that you hire a servant and take a good +long rest.” + +“I’m goin’ to tell Bernard all about it,” she announced, when she was +leaving. + +Martin winced, then grinned. + +“Yes, do,” he said. “And then, maybe, he’ll invite me to dinner again.” + +“Yes, he will—I’m sure he will!” she exclaimed fervently, as she drew +him to her and kissed and hugged him. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII. + + +One day Martin became aware that he was lonely. He was healthy and +strong, and had nothing to do. The cessation from writing and studying, +the death of Brissenden, and the estrangement from Ruth had made a big +hole in his life; and his life refused to be pinned down to good living +in cafés and the smoking of Egyptian cigarettes. It was true the South +Seas were calling to him, but he had a feeling that the game was not +yet played out in the United States. Two books were soon to be +published, and he had more books that might find publication. Money +could be made out of them, and he would wait and take a sackful of it +into the South Seas. He knew a valley and a bay in the Marquesas that +he could buy for a thousand Chili dollars. The valley ran from the +horseshoe, land-locked bay to the tops of the dizzy, cloud-capped peaks +and contained perhaps ten thousand acres. It was filled with tropical +fruits, wild chickens, and wild pigs, with an occasional herd of wild +cattle, while high up among the peaks were herds of wild goats harried +by packs of wild dogs. The whole place was wild. Not a human lived in +it. And he could buy it and the bay for a thousand Chili dollars. + +The bay, as he remembered it, was magnificent, with water deep enough +to accommodate the largest vessel afloat, and so safe that the South +Pacific Directory recommended it as the best careening place for ships +for hundreds of miles around. He would buy a schooner—one of those +yacht-like, coppered crafts that sailed like witches—and go trading +copra and pearling among the islands. He would make the valley and the +bay his headquarters. He would build a patriarchal grass house like +Tati’s, and have it and the valley and the schooner filled with +dark-skinned servitors. He would entertain there the factor of Taiohae, +captains of wandering traders, and all the best of the South Pacific +riffraff. He would keep open house and entertain like a prince. And he +would forget the books he had opened and the world that had proved an +illusion. + +To do all this he must wait in California to fill the sack with money. +Already it was beginning to flow in. If one of the books made a strike, +it might enable him to sell the whole heap of manuscripts. Also he +could collect the stories and the poems into books, and make sure of +the valley and the bay and the schooner. He would never write again. +Upon that he was resolved. But in the meantime, awaiting the +publication of the books, he must do something more than live dazed and +stupid in the sort of uncaring trance into which he had fallen. + +He noted, one Sunday morning, that the Bricklayers’ Picnic took place +that day at Shell Mound Park, and to Shell Mound Park he went. He had +been to the working-class picnics too often in his earlier life not to +know what they were like, and as he entered the park he experienced a +recrudescence of all the old sensations. After all, they were his kind, +these working people. He had been born among them, he had lived among +them, and though he had strayed for a time, it was well to come back +among them. + +“If it ain’t Mart!” he heard some one say, and the next moment a hearty +hand was on his shoulder. “Where you ben all the time? Off to sea? Come +on an’ have a drink.” + +It was the old crowd in which he found himself—the old crowd, with here +and there a gap, and here and there a new face. The fellows were not +bricklayers, but, as in the old days, they attended all Sunday picnics +for the dancing, and the fighting, and the fun. Martin drank with them, +and began to feel really human once more. He was a fool to have ever +left them, he thought; and he was very certain that his sum of +happiness would have been greater had he remained with them and let +alone the books and the people who sat in the high places. Yet the beer +seemed not so good as of yore. It didn’t taste as it used to taste. +Brissenden had spoiled him for steam beer, he concluded, and wondered +if, after all, the books had spoiled him for companionship with these +friends of his youth. He resolved that he would not be so spoiled, and +he went on to the dancing pavilion. Jimmy, the plumber, he met there, +in the company of a tall, blond girl who promptly forsook him for +Martin. + +“Gee, it’s like old times,” Jimmy explained to the gang that gave him +the laugh as Martin and the blonde whirled away in a waltz. “An’ I +don’t give a rap. I’m too damned glad to see ’m back. Watch ’m waltz, +eh? It’s like silk. Who’d blame any girl?” + +But Martin restored the blonde to Jimmy, and the three of them, with +half a dozen friends, watched the revolving couples and laughed and +joked with one another. Everybody was glad to see Martin back. No book +of his been published; he carried no fictitious value in their eyes. +They liked him for himself. He felt like a prince returned from excile, +and his lonely heart burgeoned in the geniality in which it bathed. He +made a mad day of it, and was at his best. Also, he had money in his +pockets, and, as in the old days when he returned from sea with a +pay-day, he made the money fly. + +Once, on the dancing-floor, he saw Lizzie Connolly go by in the arms of +a young workingman; and, later, when he made the round of the pavilion, +he came upon her sitting by a refreshment table. Surprise and greetings +over, he led her away into the grounds, where they could talk without +shouting down the music. From the instant he spoke to her, she was his. +He knew it. She showed it in the proud humility of her eyes, in every +caressing movement of her proudly carried body, and in the way she hung +upon his speech. She was not the young girl as he had known her. She +was a woman, now, and Martin noted that her wild, defiant beauty had +improved, losing none of its wildness, while the defiance and the fire +seemed more in control. “A beauty, a perfect beauty,” he murmured +admiringly under his breath. And he knew she was his, that all he had +to do was to say “Come,” and she would go with him over the world +wherever he led. + +Even as the thought flashed through his brain he received a heavy blow +on the side of his head that nearly knocked him down. It was a man’s +fist, directed by a man so angry and in such haste that the fist had +missed the jaw for which it was aimed. Martin turned as he staggered, +and saw the fist coming at him in a wild swing. Quite as a matter of +course he ducked, and the fist flew harmlessly past, pivoting the man +who had driven it. Martin hooked with his left, landing on the pivoting +man with the weight of his body behind the blow. The man went to the +ground sidewise, leaped to his feet, and made a mad rush. Martin saw +his passion-distorted face and wondered what could be the cause of the +fellow’s anger. But while he wondered, he shot in a straight left, the +weight of his body behind the blow. The man went over backward and fell +in a crumpled heap. Jimmy and others of the gang were running toward +them. + +Martin was thrilling all over. This was the old days with a vengeance, +with their dancing, and their fighting, and their fun. While he kept a +wary eye on his antagonist, he glanced at Lizzie. Usually the girls +screamed when the fellows got to scrapping, but she had not screamed. +She was looking on with bated breath, leaning slightly forward, so keen +was her interest, one hand pressed to her breast, her cheek flushed, +and in her eyes a great and amazed admiration. + +The man had gained his feet and was struggling to escape the +restraining arms that were laid on him. + +“She was waitin’ for me to come back!” he was proclaiming to all and +sundry. “She was waitin’ for me to come back, an’ then that fresh guy +comes buttin’ in. Let go o’ me, I tell yeh. I’m goin’ to fix ’m.” + +“What’s eatin’ yer?” Jimmy was demanding, as he helped hold the young +fellow back. “That guy’s Mart Eden. He’s nifty with his mits, lemme +tell you that, an’ he’ll eat you alive if you monkey with ’m.” + +“He can’t steal her on me that way,” the other interjected. + +“He licked the Flyin’ Dutchman, an’ you know _him_,” Jimmy went on +expostulating. “An’ he did it in five rounds. You couldn’t last a +minute against him. See?” + +This information seemed to have a mollifying effect, and the irate +young man favored Martin with a measuring stare. + +“He don’t look it,” he sneered; but the sneer was without passion. + +“That’s what the Flyin’ Dutchman thought,” Jimmy assured him. “Come on, +now, let’s get outa this. There’s lots of other girls. Come on.” + +The young fellow allowed himself to be led away toward the pavilion, +and the gang followed after him. + +“Who is he?” Martin asked Lizzie. “And what’s it all about, anyway?” + +Already the zest of combat, which of old had been so keen and lasting, +had died down, and he discovered that he was self-analytical, too much +so to live, single heart and single hand, so primitive an existence. + +Lizzie tossed her head. + +“Oh, he’s nobody,” she said. “He’s just ben keepin’ company with me.” + +“I had to, you see,” she explained after a pause. “I was gettin’ pretty +lonesome. But I never forgot.” Her voice sank lower, and she looked +straight before her. “I’d throw ’m down for you any time.” + +Martin looking at her averted face, knowing that all he had to do was +to reach out his hand and pluck her, fell to pondering whether, after +all, there was any real worth in refined, grammatical English, and, so, +forgot to reply to her. + +“You put it all over him,” she said tentatively, with a laugh. + +“He’s a husky young fellow, though,” he admitted generously. “If they +hadn’t taken him away, he might have given me my hands full.” + +“Who was that lady friend I seen you with that night?” she asked +abruptly. + +“Oh, just a lady friend,” was his answer. + +“It was a long time ago,” she murmured contemplatively. “It seems like +a thousand years.” + +But Martin went no further into the matter. He led the conversation off +into other channels. They had lunch in the restaurant, where he ordered +wine and expensive delicacies and afterward he danced with her and with +no one but her, till she was tired. He was a good dancer, and she +whirled around and around with him in a heaven of delight, her head +against his shoulder, wishing that it could last forever. Later in the +afternoon they strayed off among the trees, where, in the good old +fashion, she sat down while he sprawled on his back, his head in her +lap. He lay and dozed, while she fondled his hair, looked down on his +closed eyes, and loved him without reserve. Looking up suddenly, he +read the tender advertisement in her face. Her eyes fluttered down, +then they opened and looked into his with soft defiance. + +“I’ve kept straight all these years,” she said, her voice so low that +it was almost a whisper. + +In his heart Martin knew that it was the miraculous truth. And at his +heart pleaded a great temptation. It was in his power to make her +happy. Denied happiness himself, why should he deny happiness to her? +He could marry her and take her down with him to dwell in the +grass-walled castle in the Marquesas. The desire to do it was strong, +but stronger still was the imperative command of his nature not to do +it. In spite of himself he was still faithful to Love. The old days of +license and easy living were gone. He could not bring them back, nor +could he go back to them. He was changed—how changed he had not +realized until now. + +“I am not a marrying man, Lizzie,” he said lightly. + +The hand caressing his hair paused perceptibly, then went on with the +same gentle stroke. He noticed her face harden, but it was with the +hardness of resolution, for still the soft color was in her cheeks and +she was all glowing and melting. + +“I did not mean that—” she began, then faltered. “Or anyway I don’t +care.” + +“I don’t care,” she repeated. “I’m proud to be your friend. I’d do +anything for you. I’m made that way, I guess.” + +Martin sat up. He took her hand in his. He did it deliberately, with +warmth but without passion; and such warmth chilled her. + +“Don’t let’s talk about it,” she said. + +“You are a great and noble woman,” he said. “And it is I who should be +proud to know you. And I am, I am. You are a ray of light to me in a +very dark world, and I’ve got to be straight with you, just as straight +as you have been.” + +“I don’t care whether you’re straight with me or not. You could do +anything with me. You could throw me in the dirt an’ walk on me. An’ +you’re the only man in the world that can,” she added with a defiant +flash. “I ain’t taken care of myself ever since I was a kid for +nothin’.” + +“And it’s just because of that that I’m not going to,” he said gently. +“You are so big and generous that you challenge me to equal +generousness. I’m not marrying, and I’m not—well, loving without +marrying, though I’ve done my share of that in the past. I’m sorry I +came here to-day and met you. But it can’t be helped now, and I never +expected it would turn out this way. + +“But look here, Lizzie. I can’t begin to tell you how much I like you. +I do more than like you. I admire and respect you. You are magnificent, +and you are magnificently good. But what’s the use of words? Yet +there’s something I’d like to do. You’ve had a hard life; let me make +it easy for you.” (A joyous light welled into her eyes, then faded out +again.) “I’m pretty sure of getting hold of some money soon—lots of +it.” + +In that moment he abandoned the idea of the valley and the bay, the +grass-walled castle and the trim, white schooner. After all, what did +it matter? He could go away, as he had done so often, before the mast, +on any ship bound anywhere. + +“I’d like to turn it over to you. There must be something you want—to +go to school or business college. You might like to study and be a +stenographer. I could fix it for you. Or maybe your father and mother +are living—I could set them up in a grocery store or something. +Anything you want, just name it, and I can fix it for you.” + +She made no reply, but sat, gazing straight before her, dry-eyed and +motionless, but with an ache in the throat which Martin divined so +strongly that it made his own throat ache. He regretted that he had +spoken. It seemed so tawdry what he had offered her—mere money—compared +with what she offered him. He offered her an extraneous thing with +which he could part without a pang, while she offered him herself, +along with disgrace and shame, and sin, and all her hopes of heaven. + +“Don’t let’s talk about it,” she said with a catch in her voice that +she changed to a cough. She stood up. “Come on, let’s go home. I’m all +tired out.” + +The day was done, and the merrymakers had nearly all departed. But as +Martin and Lizzie emerged from the trees they found the gang waiting +for them. Martin knew immediately the meaning of it. Trouble was +brewing. The gang was his body-guard. They passed out through the gates +of the park with, straggling in the rear, a second gang, the friends +that Lizzie’s young man had collected to avenge the loss of his lady. +Several constables and special police officers, anticipating trouble, +trailed along to prevent it, and herded the two gangs separately aboard +the train for San Francisco. Martin told Jimmy that he would get off at +Sixteenth Street Station and catch the electric car into Oakland. +Lizzie was very quiet and without interest in what was impending. The +train pulled in to Sixteenth Street Station, and the waiting electric +car could be seen, the conductor of which was impatiently clanging the +gong. + +“There she is,” Jimmy counselled. “Make a run for it, an’ we’ll hold +’em back. Now you go! Hit her up!” + +The hostile gang was temporarily disconcerted by the manoeuvre, then it +dashed from the train in pursuit. The staid and sober Oakland folk who +sat upon the car scarcely noted the young fellow and the girl who ran +for it and found a seat in front on the outside. They did not connect +the couple with Jimmy, who sprang on the steps, crying to the +motorman:- + +“Slam on the juice, old man, and beat it outa here!” + +The next moment Jimmy whirled about, and the passengers saw him land +his fist on the face of a running man who was trying to board the car. +But fists were landing on faces the whole length of the car. Thus, +Jimmy and his gang, strung out on the long, lower steps, met the +attacking gang. The car started with a great clanging of its gong, and, +as Jimmy’s gang drove off the last assailants, they, too, jumped off to +finish the job. The car dashed on, leaving the flurry of combat far +behind, and its dumfounded passengers never dreamed that the quiet +young man and the pretty working-girl sitting in the corner on the +outside seat had been the cause of the row. + +Martin had enjoyed the fight, with a recrudescence of the old fighting +thrills. But they quickly died away, and he was oppressed by a great +sadness. He felt very old—centuries older than those careless, +care-free young companions of his others days. He had travelled far, +too far to go back. Their mode of life, which had once been his, was +now distasteful to him. He was disappointed in it all. He had developed +into an alien. As the steam beer had tasted raw, so their companionship +seemed raw to him. He was too far removed. Too many thousands of opened +books yawned between them and him. He had exiled himself. He had +travelled in the vast realm of intellect until he could no longer +return home. On the other hand, he was human, and his gregarious need +for companionship remained unsatisfied. He had found no new home. As +the gang could not understand him, as his own family could not +understand him, as the bourgeoisie could not understand him, so this +girl beside him, whom he honored high, could not understand him nor the +honor he paid her. His sadness was not untouched with bitterness as he +thought it over. + +“Make it up with him,” he advised Lizzie, at parting, as they stood in +front of the workingman’s shack in which she lived, near Sixth and +Market. He referred to the young fellow whose place he had usurped that +day. + +“I can’t—now,” she said. + +“Oh, go on,” he said jovially. “All you have to do is whistle and he’ll +come running.” + +“I didn’t mean that,” she said simply. + +And he knew what she had meant. + +She leaned toward him as he was about to say good night. But she leaned +not imperatively, not seductively, but wistfully and humbly. He was +touched to the heart. His large tolerance rose up in him. He put his +arms around her, and kissed her, and knew that upon his own lips rested +as true a kiss as man ever received. + +“My God!” she sobbed. “I could die for you. I could die for you.” + +She tore herself from him suddenly and ran up the steps. He felt a +quick moisture in his eyes. + +“Martin Eden,” he communed. “You’re not a brute, and you’re a damn poor +Nietzscheman. You’d marry her if you could and fill her quivering heart +full with happiness. But you can’t, you can’t. And it’s a damn shame.” + +“‘A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers,’” he muttered, +remembering his Henly. “‘Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame.’ It +is—a blunder and a shame.” + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII. + + +“The Shame of the Sun” was published in October. As Martin cut the +cords of the express package and the half-dozen complimentary copies +from the publishers spilled out on the table, a heavy sadness fell upon +him. He thought of the wild delight that would have been his had this +happened a few short months before, and he contrasted that delight that +should have been with his present uncaring coldness. His book, his +first book, and his pulse had not gone up a fraction of a beat, and he +was only sad. It meant little to him now. The most it meant was that it +might bring some money, and little enough did he care for money. + +He carried a copy out into the kitchen and presented it to Maria. + +“I did it,” he explained, in order to clear up her bewilderment. “I +wrote it in the room there, and I guess some few quarts of your +vegetable soup went into the making of it. Keep it. It’s yours. Just to +remember me by, you know.” + +He was not bragging, not showing off. His sole motive was to make her +happy, to make her proud of him, to justify her long faith in him. She +put the book in the front room on top of the family Bible. A sacred +thing was this book her lodger had made, a fetich of friendship. It +softened the blow of his having been a laundryman, and though she could +not understand a line of it, she knew that every line of it was great. +She was a simple, practical, hard-working woman, but she possessed +faith in large endowment. + +Just as emotionlessly as he had received “The Shame of the Sun” did he +read the reviews of it that came in weekly from the clipping bureau. +The book was making a hit, that was evident. It meant more gold in the +money sack. He could fix up Lizzie, redeem all his promises, and still +have enough left to build his grass-walled castle. + +Singletree, Darnley & Co. had cautiously brought out an edition of +fifteen hundred copies, but the first reviews had started a second +edition of twice the size through the presses; and ere this was +delivered a third edition of five thousand had been ordered. A London +firm made arrangements by cable for an English edition, and hot-footed +upon this came the news of French, German, and Scandinavian +translations in progress. The attack upon the Maeterlinck school could +not have been made at a more opportune moment. A fierce controversy was +precipitated. Saleeby and Haeckel indorsed and defended “The Shame of +the Sun,” for once finding themselves on the same side of a question. +Crookes and Wallace ranged up on the opposing side, while Sir Oliver +Lodge attempted to formulate a compromise that would jibe with his +particular cosmic theories. Maeterlinck’s followers rallied around the +standard of mysticism. Chesterton set the whole world laughing with a +series of alleged non-partisan essays on the subject, and the whole +affair, controversy and controversialists, was well-nigh swept into the +pit by a thundering broadside from George Bernard Shaw. Needless to say +the arena was crowded with hosts of lesser lights, and the dust and +sweat and din became terrific. + +“It is a most marvellous happening,” Singletree, Darnley & Co. wrote +Martin, “a critical philosophic essay selling like a novel. You could +not have chosen your subject better, and all contributory factors have +been unwarrantedly propitious. We need scarcely to assure you that we +are making hay while the sun shines. Over forty thousand copies have +already been sold in the United States and Canada, and a new edition of +twenty thousand is on the presses. We are overworked, trying to supply +the demand. Nevertheless we have helped to create that demand. We have +already spent five thousand dollars in advertising. The book is bound +to be a record-breaker.” + +“Please find herewith a contract in duplicate for your next book which +we have taken the liberty of forwarding to you. You will please note +that we have increased your royalties to twenty per cent, which is +about as high as a conservative publishing house dares go. If our offer +is agreeable to you, please fill in the proper blank space with the +title of your book. We make no stipulations concerning its nature. Any +book on any subject. If you have one already written, so much the +better. Now is the time to strike. The iron could not be hotter.” + +“On receipt of signed contract we shall be pleased to make you an +advance on royalties of five thousand dollars. You see, we have faith +in you, and we are going in on this thing big. We should like, also, to +discuss with you the drawing up of a contract for a term of years, say +ten, during which we shall have the exclusive right of publishing in +book-form all that you produce. But more of this anon.” + +Martin laid down the letter and worked a problem in mental arithmetic, +finding the product of fifteen cents times sixty thousand to be nine +thousand dollars. He signed the new contract, inserting “The Smoke of +Joy” in the blank space, and mailed it back to the publishers along +with the twenty storiettes he had written in the days before he +discovered the formula for the newspaper storiette. And promptly as the +United States mail could deliver and return, came Singletree, Darnley & +Co.’s check for five thousand dollars. + +“I want you to come down town with me, Maria, this afternoon about two +o’clock,” Martin said, the morning the check arrived. “Or, better, meet +me at Fourteenth and Broadway at two o’clock. I’ll be looking out for +you.” + +At the appointed time she was there; but _shoes_ was the only clew to +the mystery her mind had been capable of evolving, and she suffered a +distinct shock of disappointment when Martin walked her right by a +shoe-store and dived into a real estate office. What happened thereupon +resided forever after in her memory as a dream. Fine gentlemen smiled +at her benevolently as they talked with Martin and one another; a +type-writer clicked; signatures were affixed to an imposing document; +her own landlord was there, too, and affixed his signature; and when +all was over and she was outside on the sidewalk, her landlord spoke to +her, saying, “Well, Maria, you won’t have to pay me no seven dollars +and a half this month.” + +Maria was too stunned for speech. + +“Or next month, or the next, or the next,” her landlord said. + +She thanked him incoherently, as if for a favor. And it was not until +she had returned home to North Oakland and conferred with her own kind, +and had the Portuguese grocer investigate, that she really knew that +she was the owner of the little house in which she had lived and for +which she had paid rent so long. + +“Why don’t you trade with me no more?” the Portuguese grocer asked +Martin that evening, stepping out to hail him when he got off the car; +and Martin explained that he wasn’t doing his own cooking any more, and +then went in and had a drink of wine on the house. He noted it was the +best wine the grocer had in stock. + +“Maria,” Martin announced that night, “I’m going to leave you. And +you’re going to leave here yourself soon. Then you can rent the house +and be a landlord yourself. You’ve a brother in San Leandro or +Haywards, and he’s in the milk business. I want you to send all your +washing back unwashed—understand?—unwashed, and to go out to San +Leandro to-morrow, or Haywards, or wherever it is, and see that brother +of yours. Tell him to come to see me. I’ll be stopping at the Metropole +down in Oakland. He’ll know a good milk-ranch when he sees one.” + +And so it was that Maria became a landlord and the sole owner of a +dairy, with two hired men to do the work for her and a bank account +that steadily increased despite the fact that her whole brood wore +shoes and went to school. Few persons ever meet the fairy princes they +dream about; but Maria, who worked hard and whose head was hard, never +dreaming about fairy princes, entertained hers in the guise of an +ex-laundryman. + +In the meantime the world had begun to ask: “Who is this Martin Eden?” +He had declined to give any biographical data to his publishers, but +the newspapers were not to be denied. Oakland was his own town, and the +reporters nosed out scores of individuals who could supply information. +All that he was and was not, all that he had done and most of what he +had not done, was spread out for the delectation of the public, +accompanied by snapshots and photographs—the latter procured from the +local photographer who had once taken Martin’s picture and who promptly +copyrighted it and put it on the market. At first, so great was his +disgust with the magazines and all bourgeois society, Martin fought +against publicity; but in the end, because it was easier than not to, +he surrendered. He found that he could not refuse himself to the +special writers who travelled long distances to see him. Then again, +each day was so many hours long, and, since he no longer was occupied +with writing and studying, those hours had to be occupied somehow; so +he yielded to what was to him a whim, permitted interviews, gave his +opinions on literature and philosophy, and even accepted invitations of +the bourgeoisie. He had settled down into a strange and comfortable +state of mind. He no longer cared. He forgave everybody, even the cub +reporter who had painted him red and to whom he now granted a full page +with specially posed photographs. + +He saw Lizzie occasionally, and it was patent that she regretted the +greatness that had come to him. It widened the space between them. +Perhaps it was with the hope of narrowing it that she yielded to his +persuasions to go to night school and business college and to have +herself gowned by a wonderful dressmaker who charged outrageous prices. +She improved visibly from day to day, until Martin wondered if he was +doing right, for he knew that all her compliance and endeavor was for +his sake. She was trying to make herself of worth in his eyes—of the +sort of worth he seemed to value. Yet he gave her no hope, treating her +in brotherly fashion and rarely seeing her. + +“Overdue” was rushed upon the market by the Meredith-Lowell Company in +the height of his popularity, and being fiction, in point of sales it +made even a bigger strike than “The Shame of the Sun.” Week after week +his was the credit of the unprecedented performance of having two books +at the head of the list of best-sellers. Not only did the story take +with the fiction-readers, but those who read “The Shame of the Sun” +with avidity were likewise attracted to the sea-story by the cosmic +grasp of mastery with which he had handled it. First he had attacked +the literature of mysticism, and had done it exceeding well; and, next, +he had successfully supplied the very literature he had exposited, thus +proving himself to be that rare genius, a critic and a creator in one. + +Money poured in on him, fame poured in on him; he flashed, comet-like, +through the world of literature, and he was more amused than interested +by the stir he was making. One thing was puzzling him, a little thing +that would have puzzled the world had it known. But the world would +have puzzled over his bepuzzlement rather than over the little thing +that to him loomed gigantic. Judge Blount invited him to dinner. That +was the little thing, or the beginning of the little thing, that was +soon to become the big thing. He had insulted Judge Blount, treated him +abominably, and Judge Blount, meeting him on the street, invited him to +dinner. Martin bethought himself of the numerous occasions on which he +had met Judge Blount at the Morses’ and when Judge Blount had not +invited him to dinner. Why had he not invited him to dinner then? he +asked himself. He had not changed. He was the same Martin Eden. What +made the difference? The fact that the stuff he had written had +appeared inside the covers of books? But it was work performed. It was +not something he had done since. It was achievement accomplished at the +very time Judge Blount was sharing this general view and sneering at +his Spencer and his intellect. Therefore it was not for any real value, +but for a purely fictitious value that Judge Blount invited him to +dinner. + +Martin grinned and accepted the invitation, marvelling the while at his +complacence. And at the dinner, where, with their womankind, were half +a dozen of those that sat in high places, and where Martin found +himself quite the lion, Judge Blount, warmly seconded by Judge Hanwell, +urged privately that Martin should permit his name to be put up for the +Styx—the ultra-select club to which belonged, not the mere men of +wealth, but the men of attainment. And Martin declined, and was more +puzzled than ever. + +He was kept busy disposing of his heap of manuscripts. He was +overwhelmed by requests from editors. It had been discovered that he +was a stylist, with meat under his style. _The Northern Review_, after +publishing “The Cradle of Beauty,” had written him for half a dozen +similar essays, which would have been supplied out of the heap, had not +_Burton’s Magazine_, in a speculative mood, offered him five hundred +dollars each for five essays. He wrote back that he would supply the +demand, but at a thousand dollars an essay. He remembered that all +these manuscripts had been refused by the very magazines that were now +clamoring for them. And their refusals had been cold-blooded, +automatic, stereotyped. They had made him sweat, and now he intended to +make them sweat. _Burton’s Magazine_ paid his price for five essays, +and the remaining four, at the same rate, were snapped up by +_Mackintosh’s Monthly, The Northern Review_ being too poor to stand the +pace. Thus went out to the world “The High Priests of Mystery,” “The +Wonder-Dreamers,” “The Yardstick of the Ego,” “Philosophy of Illusion,” +“God and Clod,” “Art and Biology,” “Critics and Test-tubes,” +“Star-dust,” and “The Dignity of Usury,”—to raise storms and rumblings +and mutterings that were many a day in dying down. + +Editors wrote to him telling him to name his own terms, which he did, +but it was always for work performed. He refused resolutely to pledge +himself to any new thing. The thought of again setting pen to paper +maddened him. He had seen Brissenden torn to pieces by the crowd, and +despite the fact that him the crowd acclaimed, he could not get over +the shock nor gather any respect for the crowd. His very popularity +seemed a disgrace and a treason to Brissenden. It made him wince, but +he made up his mind to go on and fill the money-bag. + +He received letters from editors like the following: “About a year ago +we were unfortunate enough to refuse your collection of love-poems. We +were greatly impressed by them at the time, but certain arrangements +already entered into prevented our taking them. If you still have them, +and if you will be kind enough to forward them, we shall be glad to +publish the entire collection on your own terms. We are also prepared +to make a most advantageous offer for bringing them out in book-form.” + +Martin recollected his blank-verse tragedy, and sent it instead. He +read it over before mailing, and was particularly impressed by its +sophomoric amateurishness and general worthlessness. But he sent it; +and it was published, to the everlasting regret of the editor. The +public was indignant and incredulous. It was too far a cry from Martin +Eden’s high standard to that serious bosh. It was asserted that he had +never written it, that the magazine had faked it very clumsily, or that +Martin Eden was emulating the elder Dumas and at the height of success +was hiring his writing done for him. But when he explained that the +tragedy was an early effort of his literary childhood, and that the +magazine had refused to be happy unless it got it, a great laugh went +up at the magazine’s expense and a change in the editorship followed. +The tragedy was never brought out in book-form, though Martin pocketed +the advance royalties that had been paid. + +_Coleman’s Weekly_ sent Martin a lengthy telegram, costing nearly three +hundred dollars, offering him a thousand dollars an article for twenty +articles. He was to travel over the United States, with all expenses +paid, and select whatever topics interested him. The body of the +telegram was devoted to hypothetical topics in order to show him the +freedom of range that was to be his. The only restriction placed upon +him was that he must confine himself to the United States. Martin sent +his inability to accept and his regrets by wire “collect.” + +“Wiki-Wiki,” published in _Warren’s Monthly_, was an instantaneous +success. It was brought out forward in a wide-margined, beautifully +decorated volume that struck the holiday trade and sold like wildfire. +The critics were unanimous in the belief that it would take its place +with those two classics by two great writers, “The Bottle Imp” and “The +Magic Skin.” + +The public, however, received the “Smoke of Joy” collection rather +dubiously and coldly. The audacity and unconventionality of the +storiettes was a shock to bourgeois morality and prejudice; but when +Paris went mad over the immediate translation that was made, the +American and English reading public followed suit and bought so many +copies that Martin compelled the conservative house of Singletree, +Darnley & Co. to pay a flat royalty of twenty-five per cent for a third +book, and thirty per cent flat for a fourth. These two volumes +comprised all the short stories he had written and which had received, +or were receiving, serial publication. “The Ring of Bells” and his +horror stories constituted one collection; the other collection was +composed of “Adventure,” “The Pot,” “The Wine of Life,” “The +Whirlpool,” “The Jostling Street,” and four other stories. The +Lowell-Meredith Company captured the collection of all his essays, and +the Maxmillian Company got his “Sea Lyrics” and the “Love-cycle,” the +latter receiving serial publication in the _Ladies’ Home Companion_ +after the payment of an extortionate price. + +Martin heaved a sigh of relief when he had disposed of the last +manuscript. The grass-walled castle and the white, coppered schooner +were very near to him. Well, at any rate he had discovered Brissenden’s +contention that nothing of merit found its way into the magazines. His +own success demonstrated that Brissenden had been wrong. + +And yet, somehow, he had a feeling that Brissenden had been right, +after all. “The Shame of the Sun” had been the cause of his success +more than the stuff he had written. That stuff had been merely +incidental. It had been rejected right and left by the magazines. The +publication of “The Shame of the Sun” had started a controversy and +precipitated the landslide in his favor. Had there been no “Shame of +the Sun” there would have been no landslide, and had there been no +miracle in the go of “The Shame of the Sun” there would have been no +landslide. Singletree, Darnley & Co. attested that miracle. They had +brought out a first edition of fifteen hundred copies and been dubious +of selling it. They were experienced publishers and no one had been +more astounded than they at the success which had followed. To them it +had been in truth a miracle. They never got over it, and every letter +they wrote him reflected their reverent awe of that first mysterious +happening. They did not attempt to explain it. There was no explaining +it. It had happened. In the face of all experience to the contrary, it +had happened. + +So it was, reasoning thus, that Martin questioned the validity of his +popularity. It was the bourgeoisie that bought his books and poured its +gold into his money-sack, and from what little he knew of the +bourgeoisie it was not clear to him how it could possibly appreciate or +comprehend what he had written. His intrinsic beauty and power meant +nothing to the hundreds of thousands who were acclaiming him and buying +his books. He was the fad of the hour, the adventurer who had stormed +Parnassus while the gods nodded. The hundreds of thousands read him and +acclaimed him with the same brute non-understanding with which they had +flung themselves on Brissenden’s “Ephemera” and torn it to pieces—a +wolf-rabble that fawned on him instead of fanging him. Fawn or fang, it +was all a matter of chance. One thing he knew with absolute certitude: +“Ephemera” was infinitely greater than anything he had done. It was +infinitely greater than anything he had in him. It was a poem of +centuries. Then the tribute the mob paid him was a sorry tribute +indeed, for that same mob had wallowed “Ephemera” into the mire. He +sighed heavily and with satisfaction. He was glad the last manuscript +was sold and that he would soon be done with it all. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV. + + +Mr. Morse met Martin in the office of the Hotel Metropole. Whether he +had happened there just casually, intent on other affairs, or whether +he had come there for the direct purpose of inviting him to dinner, +Martin never could quite make up his mind, though he inclined toward +the second hypothesis. At any rate, invited to dinner he was by Mr. +Morse—Ruth’s father, who had forbidden him the house and broken off the +engagement. + +Martin was not angry. He was not even on his dignity. He tolerated Mr. +Morse, wondering the while how it felt to eat such humble pie. He did +not decline the invitation. Instead, he put it off with vagueness and +indefiniteness and inquired after the family, particularly after Mrs. +Morse and Ruth. He spoke her name without hesitancy, naturally, though +secretly surprised that he had had no inward quiver, no old, familiar +increase of pulse and warm surge of blood. + +He had many invitations to dinner, some of which he accepted. Persons +got themselves introduced to him in order to invite him to dinner. And +he went on puzzling over the little thing that was becoming a great +thing. Bernard Higginbotham invited him to dinner. He puzzled the +harder. He remembered the days of his desperate starvation when no one +invited him to dinner. That was the time he needed dinners, and went +weak and faint for lack of them and lost weight from sheer famine. That +was the paradox of it. When he wanted dinners, no one gave them to him, +and now that he could buy a hundred thousand dinners and was losing his +appetite, dinners were thrust upon him right and left. But why? There +was no justice in it, no merit on his part. He was no different. All +the work he had done was even at that time work performed. Mr. and Mrs. +Morse had condemned him for an idler and a shirk and through Ruth had +urged that he take a clerk’s position in an office. Furthermore, they +had been aware of his work performed. Manuscript after manuscript of +his had been turned over to them by Ruth. They had read them. It was +the very same work that had put his name in all the papers, and, it was +his name being in all the papers that led them to invite him. + +One thing was certain: the Morses had not cared to have him for himself +or for his work. Therefore they could not want him now for himself or +for his work, but for the fame that was his, because he was somebody +amongst men, and—why not?—because he had a hundred thousand dollars or +so. That was the way bourgeois society valued a man, and who was he to +expect it otherwise? But he was proud. He disdained such valuation. He +desired to be valued for himself, or for his work, which, after all, +was an expression of himself. That was the way Lizzie valued him. The +work, with her, did not even count. She valued him, himself. That was +the way Jimmy, the plumber, and all the old gang valued him. That had +been proved often enough in the days when he ran with them; it had been +proved that Sunday at Shell Mound Park. His work could go hang. What +they liked, and were willing to scrap for, was just Mart Eden, one of +the bunch and a pretty good guy. + +Then there was Ruth. She had liked him for himself, that was +indisputable. And yet, much as she had liked him she had liked the +bourgeois standard of valuation more. She had opposed his writing, and +principally, it seemed to him, because it did not earn money. That had +been her criticism of his “Love-cycle.” She, too, had urged him to get +a job. It was true, she refined it to “position,” but it meant the same +thing, and in his own mind the old nomenclature stuck. He had read her +all that he wrote—poems, stories, essays—“Wiki-Wiki,” “The Shame of the +Sun,” everything. And she had always and consistently urged him to get +a job, to go to work—good God!—as if he hadn’t been working, robbing +sleep, exhausting life, in order to be worthy of her. + +So the little thing grew bigger. He was healthy and normal, ate +regularly, slept long hours, and yet the growing little thing was +becoming an obsession. _Work performed_. The phrase haunted his brain. +He sat opposite Bernard Higginbotham at a heavy Sunday dinner over +Higginbotham’s Cash Store, and it was all he could do to restrain +himself from shouting out:- + +“It was work performed! And now you feed me, when then you let me +starve, forbade me your house, and damned me because I wouldn’t get a +job. And the work was already done, all done. And now, when I speak, +you check the thought unuttered on your lips and hang on my lips and +pay respectful attention to whatever I choose to say. I tell you your +party is rotten and filled with grafters, and instead of flying into a +rage you hum and haw and admit there is a great deal in what I say. And +why? Because I’m famous; because I’ve a lot of money. Not because I’m +Martin Eden, a pretty good fellow and not particularly a fool. I could +tell you the moon is made of green cheese and you would subscribe to +the notion, at least you would not repudiate it, because I’ve got +dollars, mountains of them. And it was all done long ago; it was work +performed, I tell you, when you spat upon me as the dirt under your +feet.” + +But Martin did not shout out. The thought gnawed in his brain, an +unceasing torment, while he smiled and succeeded in being tolerant. As +he grew silent, Bernard Higginbotham got the reins and did the talking. +He was a success himself, and proud of it. He was self-made. No one had +helped him. He owed no man. He was fulfilling his duty as a citizen and +bringing up a large family. And there was Higginbotham’s Cash Store, +that monument of his own industry and ability. He loved Higginbotham’s +Cash Store as some men loved their wives. He opened up his heart to +Martin, showed with what keenness and with what enormous planning he +had made the store. And he had plans for it, ambitious plans. The +neighborhood was growing up fast. The store was really too small. If he +had more room, he would be able to put in a score of labor-saving and +money-saving improvements. And he would do it yet. He was straining +every effort for the day when he could buy the adjoining lot and put up +another two-story frame building. The upstairs he could rent, and the +whole ground-floor of both buildings would be Higginbotham’s Cash +Store. His eyes glistened when he spoke of the new sign that would +stretch clear across both buildings. + +Martin forgot to listen. The refrain of “Work performed,” in his own +brain, was drowning the other’s clatter. The refrain maddened him, and +he tried to escape from it. + +“How much did you say it would cost?” he asked suddenly. + +His brother-in-law paused in the middle of an expatiation on the +business opportunities of the neighborhood. He hadn’t said how much it +would cost. But he knew. He had figured it out a score of times. + +“At the way lumber is now,” he said, “four thousand could do it.” + +“Including the sign?” + +“I didn’t count on that. It’d just have to come, onc’t the buildin’ was +there.” + +“And the ground?” + +“Three thousand more.” + +He leaned forward, licking his lips, nervously spreading and closing +his fingers, while he watched Martin write a check. When it was passed +over to him, he glanced at the amount-seven thousand dollars. + +“I—I can’t afford to pay more than six per cent,” he said huskily. + +Martin wanted to laugh, but, instead, demanded:- + +“How much would that be?” + +“Lemme see. Six per cent—six times seven—four hundred an’ twenty.” + +“That would be thirty-five dollars a month, wouldn’t it?” + +Higginbotham nodded. + +“Then, if you’ve no objection, we’ll arrange it this way.” Martin +glanced at Gertrude. “You can have the principal to keep for yourself, +if you’ll use the thirty-five dollars a month for cooking and washing +and scrubbing. The seven thousand is yours if you’ll guarantee that +Gertrude does no more drudgery. Is it a go?” + +Mr. Higginbotham swallowed hard. That his wife should do no more +housework was an affront to his thrifty soul. The magnificent present +was the coating of a pill, a bitter pill. That his wife should not +work! It gagged him. + +“All right, then,” Martin said. “I’ll pay the thirty-five a month, +and—” + +He reached across the table for the check. But Bernard Higginbotham got +his hand on it first, crying: + +“I accept! I accept!” + +When Martin got on the electric car, he was very sick and tired. He +looked up at the assertive sign. + +“The swine,” he groaned. “The swine, the swine.” + +When _Mackintosh’s Magazine_ published “The Palmist,” featuring it with +decorations by Berthier and with two pictures by Wenn, Hermann von +Schmidt forgot that he had called the verses obscene. He announced that +his wife had inspired the poem, saw to it that the news reached the +ears of a reporter, and submitted to an interview by a staff writer who +was accompanied by a staff photographer and a staff artist. The result +was a full page in a Sunday supplement, filled with photographs and +idealized drawings of Marian, with many intimate details of Martin Eden +and his family, and with the full text of “The Palmist” in large type, +and republished by special permission of _Mackintosh’s Magazine_. It +caused quite a stir in the neighborhood, and good housewives were proud +to have the acquaintances of the great writer’s sister, while those who +had not made haste to cultivate it. Hermann von Schmidt chuckled in his +little repair shop and decided to order a new lathe. “Better than +advertising,” he told Marian, “and it costs nothing.” + +“We’d better have him to dinner,” she suggested. + +And to dinner Martin came, making himself agreeable with the fat +wholesale butcher and his fatter wife—important folk, they, likely to +be of use to a rising young man like Hermann von Schmidt. No less a +bait, however, had been required to draw them to his house than his +great brother-in-law. Another man at table who had swallowed the same +bait was the superintendent of the Pacific Coast agencies for the Asa +Bicycle Company. Him Von Schmidt desired to please and propitiate +because from him could be obtained the Oakland agency for the bicycle. +So Hermann von Schmidt found it a goodly asset to have Martin for a +brother-in-law, but in his heart of hearts he couldn’t understand where +it all came in. In the silent watches of the night, while his wife +slept, he had floundered through Martin’s books and poems, and decided +that the world was a fool to buy them. + +And in his heart of hearts Martin understood the situation only too +well, as he leaned back and gloated at Von Schmidt’s head, in fancy +punching it well-nigh off of him, sending blow after blow home just +right—the chuckle-headed Dutchman! One thing he did like about him, +however. Poor as he was, and determined to rise as he was, he +nevertheless hired one servant to take the heavy work off of Marian’s +hands. Martin talked with the superintendent of the Asa agencies, and +after dinner he drew him aside with Hermann, whom he backed financially +for the best bicycle store with fittings in Oakland. He went further, +and in a private talk with Hermann told him to keep his eyes open for +an automobile agency and garage, for there was no reason that he should +not be able to run both establishments successfully. + +With tears in her eyes and her arms around his neck, Marian, at +parting, told Martin how much she loved him and always had loved him. +It was true, there was a perceptible halt midway in her assertion, +which she glossed over with more tears and kisses and incoherent +stammerings, and which Martin inferred to be her appeal for forgiveness +for the time she had lacked faith in him and insisted on his getting a +job. + +“He can’t never keep his money, that’s sure,” Hermann von Schmidt +confided to his wife. “He got mad when I spoke of interest, an’ he said +damn the principal and if I mentioned it again, he’d punch my Dutch +head off. That’s what he said—my Dutch head. But he’s all right, even +if he ain’t no business man. He’s given me my chance, an’ he’s all +right.” + +Invitations to dinner poured in on Martin; and the more they poured, +the more he puzzled. He sat, the guest of honor, at an Arden Club +banquet, with men of note whom he had heard about and read about all +his life; and they told him how, when they had read “The Ring of Bells” +in the _Transcontinental_, and “The Peri and the Pearl” in _The +Hornet_, they had immediately picked him for a winner. My God! and I +was hungry and in rags, he thought to himself. Why didn’t you give me a +dinner then? Then was the time. It was work performed. If you are +feeding me now for work performed, why did you not feed me then when I +needed it? Not one word in “The Ring of Bells,” nor in “The Peri and +the Pearl” has been changed. No; you’re not feeding me now for work +performed. You are feeding me because everybody else is feeding me and +because it is an honor to feed me. You are feeding me now because you +are herd animals; because you are part of the mob; because the one +blind, automatic thought in the mob-mind just now is to feed me. And +where does Martin Eden and the work Martin Eden performed come in in +all this? he asked himself plaintively, then arose to respond cleverly +and wittily to a clever and witty toast. + +So it went. Wherever he happened to be—at the Press Club, at the +Redwood Club, at pink teas and literary gatherings—always were +remembered “The Ring of Bells” and “The Peri and the Pearl” when they +were first published. And always was Martin’s maddening and unuttered +demand: Why didn’t you feed me then? It was work performed. “The Ring +of Bells” and “The Peri and the Pearl” are not changed one iota. They +were just as artistic, just as worth while, then as now. But you are +not feeding me for their sake, nor for the sake of anything else I have +written. You’re feeding me because it is the style of feeding just now, +because the whole mob is crazy with the idea of feeding Martin Eden. + +And often, at such times, he would abruptly see slouch in among the +company a young hoodlum in square-cut coat and under a stiff-rim +Stetson hat. It happened to him at the Gallina Society in Oakland one +afternoon. As he rose from his chair and stepped forward across the +platform, he saw stalk through the wide door at the rear of the great +room the young hoodlum with the square-cut coat and stiff-rim hat. Five +hundred fashionably gowned women turned their heads, so intent and +steadfast was Martin’s gaze, to see what he was seeing. But they saw +only the empty centre aisle. He saw the young tough lurching down that +aisle and wondered if he would remove the stiff-rim which never yet had +he seen him without. Straight down the aisle he came, and up the +platform. Martin could have wept over that youthful shade of himself, +when he thought of all that lay before him. Across the platform he +swaggered, right up to Martin, and into the foreground of Martin’s +consciousness disappeared. The five hundred women applauded softly with +gloved hands, seeking to encourage the bashful great man who was their +guest. And Martin shook the vision from his brain, smiled, and began to +speak. + +The Superintendent of Schools, good old man, stopped Martin on the +street and remembered him, recalling seances in his office when Martin +was expelled from school for fighting. + +“I read your ‘Ring of Bells’ in one of the magazines quite a time ago,” +he said. “It was as good as Poe. Splendid, I said at the time, +splendid!” + +Yes, and twice in the months that followed you passed me on the street +and did not know me, Martin almost said aloud. Each time I was hungry +and heading for the pawnbroker. Yet it was work performed. You did not +know me then. Why do you know me now? + +“I was remarking to my wife only the other day,” the other was saying, +“wouldn’t it be a good idea to have you out to dinner some time? And +she quite agreed with me. Yes, she quite agreed with me.” + +“Dinner?” Martin said so sharply that it was almost a snarl. + +“Why, yes, yes, dinner, you know—just pot luck with us, with your old +superintendent, you rascal,” he uttered nervously, poking Martin in an +attempt at jocular fellowship. + +Martin went down the street in a daze. He stopped at the corner and +looked about him vacantly. + +“Well, I’ll be damned!” he murmured at last. “The old fellow was afraid +of me.” + + + + +CHAPTER XLV. + + +Kreis came to Martin one day—Kreis, of the “real dirt”; and Martin +turned to him with relief, to receive the glowing details of a scheme +sufficiently wild-catty to interest him as a fictionist rather than an +investor. Kreis paused long enough in the midst of his exposition to +tell him that in most of his “Shame of the Sun” he had been a chump. + +“But I didn’t come here to spout philosophy,” Kreis went on. “What I +want to know is whether or not you will put a thousand dollars in on +this deal?” + +“No, I’m not chump enough for that, at any rate,” Martin answered. “But +I’ll tell you what I will do. You gave me the greatest night of my +life. You gave me what money cannot buy. Now I’ve got money, and it +means nothing to me. I’d like to turn over to you a thousand dollars of +what I don’t value for what you gave me that night and which was beyond +price. You need the money. I’ve got more than I need. You want it. You +came for it. There’s no use scheming it out of me. Take it.” + +Kreis betrayed no surprise. He folded the check away in his pocket. + +“At that rate I’d like the contract of providing you with many such +nights,” he said. + +“Too late.” Martin shook his head. “That night was the one night for +me. I was in paradise. It’s commonplace with you, I know. But it wasn’t +to me. I shall never live at such a pitch again. I’m done with +philosophy. I want never to hear another word of it.” + +“The first dollar I ever made in my life out of my philosophy,” Kreis +remarked, as he paused in the doorway. “And then the market broke.” + +Mrs. Morse drove by Martin on the street one day, and smiled and +nodded. He smiled back and lifted his hat. The episode did not affect +him. A month before it might have disgusted him, or made him curious +and set him to speculating about her state of consciousness at that +moment. But now it was not provocative of a second thought. He forgot +about it the next moment. He forgot about it as he would have forgotten +the Central Bank Building or the City Hall after having walked past +them. Yet his mind was preternaturally active. His thoughts went ever +around and around in a circle. The centre of that circle was “work +performed”; it ate at his brain like a deathless maggot. He awoke to it +in the morning. It tormented his dreams at night. Every affair of life +around him that penetrated through his senses immediately related +itself to “work performed.” He drove along the path of relentless logic +to the conclusion that he was nobody, nothing. Mart Eden, the hoodlum, +and Mart Eden, the sailor, had been real, had been he; but Martin Eden! +the famous writer, did not exist. Martin Eden, the famous writer, was a +vapor that had arisen in the mob-mind and by the mob-mind had been +thrust into the corporeal being of Mart Eden, the hoodlum and sailor. +But it couldn’t fool him. He was not that sun-myth that the mob was +worshipping and sacrificing dinners to. He knew better. + +He read the magazines about himself, and pored over portraits of +himself published therein until he was unable to associate his identity +with those portraits. He was the fellow who had lived and thrilled and +loved; who had been easy-going and tolerant of the frailties of life; +who had served in the forecastle, wandered in strange lands, and led +his gang in the old fighting days. He was the fellow who had been +stunned at first by the thousands of books in the free library, and who +had afterward learned his way among them and mastered them; he was the +fellow who had burned the midnight oil and bedded with a spur and +written books himself. But the one thing he was not was that colossal +appetite that all the mob was bent upon feeding. + +There were things, however, in the magazines that amused him. All the +magazines were claiming him. _Warren’s Monthly_ advertised to its +subscribers that it was always on the quest after new writers, and +that, among others, it had introduced Martin Eden to the reading +public. _The White Mouse_ claimed him; so did _The Northern Review_ and +_Mackintosh’s Magazine_, until silenced by _The Globe_, which pointed +triumphantly to its files where the mangled “Sea Lyrics” lay buried. +_Youth and Age_, which had come to life again after having escaped +paying its bills, put in a prior claim, which nobody but farmers’ +children ever read. The _Transcontinental_ made a dignified and +convincing statement of how it first discovered Martin Eden, which was +warmly disputed by _The Hornet_, with the exhibit of “The Peri and the +Pearl.” The modest claim of Singletree, Darnley & Co. was lost in the +din. Besides, that publishing firm did not own a magazine wherewith to +make its claim less modest. + +The newspapers calculated Martin’s royalties. In some way the +magnificent offers certain magazines had made him leaked out, and +Oakland ministers called upon him in a friendly way, while professional +begging letters began to clutter his mail. But worse than all this were +the women. His photographs were published broadcast, and special +writers exploited his strong, bronzed face, his scars, his heavy +shoulders, his clear, quiet eyes, and the slight hollows in his cheeks +like an ascetic’s. At this last he remembered his wild youth and +smiled. Often, among the women he met, he would see now one, now +another, looking at him, appraising him, selecting him. He laughed to +himself. He remembered Brissenden’s warning and laughed again. The +women would never destroy him, that much was certain. He had gone past +that stage. + +Once, walking with Lizzie toward night school, she caught a glance +directed toward him by a well-gowned, handsome woman of the +bourgeoisie. The glance was a trifle too long, a shade too +considerative. Lizzie knew it for what it was, and her body tensed +angrily. Martin noticed, noticed the cause of it, told her how used he +was becoming to it and that he did not care anyway. + +“You ought to care,” she answered with blazing eyes. “You’re sick. +That’s what’s the matter.” + +“Never healthier in my life. I weigh five pounds more than I ever did.” + +“It ain’t your body. It’s your head. Something’s wrong with your +think-machine. Even I can see that, an’ I ain’t nobody.” + +He walked on beside her, reflecting. + +“I’d give anything to see you get over it,” she broke out impulsively. +“You ought to care when women look at you that way, a man like you. +It’s not natural. It’s all right enough for sissy-boys. But you ain’t +made that way. So help me, I’d be willing an’ glad if the right woman +came along an’ made you care.” + +When he left Lizzie at night school, he returned to the Metropole. + +Once in his rooms, he dropped into a Morris chair and sat staring +straight before him. He did not doze. Nor did he think. His mind was a +blank, save for the intervals when unsummoned memory pictures took form +and color and radiance just under his eyelids. He saw these pictures, +but he was scarcely conscious of them—no more so than if they had been +dreams. Yet he was not asleep. Once, he roused himself and glanced at +his watch. It was just eight o’clock. He had nothing to do, and it was +too early for bed. Then his mind went blank again, and the pictures +began to form and vanish under his eyelids. There was nothing +distinctive about the pictures. They were always masses of leaves and +shrub-like branches shot through with hot sunshine. + +A knock at the door aroused him. He was not asleep, and his mind +immediately connected the knock with a telegram, or letter, or perhaps +one of the servants bringing back clean clothes from the laundry. He +was thinking about Joe and wondering where he was, as he said, “Come +in.” + +He was still thinking about Joe, and did not turn toward the door. He +heard it close softly. There was a long silence. He forgot that there +had been a knock at the door, and was still staring blankly before him +when he heard a woman’s sob. It was involuntary, spasmodic, checked, +and stifled—he noted that as he turned about. The next instant he was +on his feet. + +“Ruth!” he said, amazed and bewildered. + +Her face was white and strained. She stood just inside the door, one +hand against it for support, the other pressed to her side. She +extended both hands toward him piteously, and started forward to meet +him. As he caught her hands and led her to the Morris chair he noticed +how cold they were. He drew up another chair and sat down on the broad +arm of it. He was too confused to speak. In his own mind his affair +with Ruth was closed and sealed. He felt much in the same way that he +would have felt had the Shelly Hot Springs Laundry suddenly invaded the +Hotel Metropole with a whole week’s washing ready for him to pitch +into. Several times he was about to speak, and each time he hesitated. + +“No one knows I am here,” Ruth said in a faint voice, with an appealing +smile. + +“What did you say?” + +He was surprised at the sound of his own voice. + +She repeated her words. + +“Oh,” he said, then wondered what more he could possibly say. + +“I saw you come in, and I waited a few minutes.” + +“Oh,” he said again. + +He had never been so tongue-tied in his life. Positively he did not +have an idea in his head. He felt stupid and awkward, but for the life +of him he could think of nothing to say. It would have been easier had +the intrusion been the Shelly Hot Springs laundry. He could have rolled +up his sleeves and gone to work. + +“And then you came in,” he said finally. + +She nodded, with a slightly arch expression, and loosened the scarf at +her throat. + +“I saw you first from across the street when you were with that girl.” + +“Oh, yes,” he said simply. “I took her down to night school.” + +“Well, aren’t you glad to see me?” she said at the end of another +silence. + +“Yes, yes.” He spoke hastily. “But wasn’t it rash of you to come here?” + +“I slipped in. Nobody knows I am here. I wanted to see you. I came to +tell you I have been very foolish. I came because I could no longer +stay away, because my heart compelled me to come, because—because I +wanted to come.” + +She came forward, out of her chair and over to him. She rested her hand +on his shoulder a moment, breathing quickly, and then slipped into his +arms. And in his large, easy way, desirous of not inflicting hurt, +knowing that to repulse this proffer of herself was to inflict the most +grievous hurt a woman could receive, he folded his arms around her and +held her close. But there was no warmth in the embrace, no caress in +the contact. She had come into his arms, and he held her, that was all. +She nestled against him, and then, with a change of position, her hands +crept up and rested upon his neck. But his flesh was not fire beneath +those hands, and he felt awkward and uncomfortable. + +“What makes you tremble so?” he asked. “Is it a chill? Shall I light +the grate?” + +He made a movement to disengage himself, but she clung more closely to +him, shivering violently. + +“It is merely nervousness,” she said with chattering teeth. “I’ll +control myself in a minute. There, I am better already.” + +Slowly her shivering died away. He continued to hold her, but he was no +longer puzzled. He knew now for what she had come. + +“My mother wanted me to marry Charley Hapgood,” she announced. + +“Charley Hapgood, that fellow who speaks always in platitudes?” Martin +groaned. Then he added, “And now, I suppose, your mother wants you to +marry me.” + +He did not put it in the form of a question. He stated it as a +certitude, and before his eyes began to dance the rows of figures of +his royalties. + +“She will not object, I know that much,” Ruth said. + +“She considers me quite eligible?” + +Ruth nodded. + +“And yet I am not a bit more eligible now than I was when she broke our +engagement,” he meditated. “I haven’t changed any. I’m the same Martin +Eden, though for that matter I’m a bit worse—I smoke now. Don’t you +smell my breath?” + +In reply she pressed her open fingers against his lips, placed them +graciously and playfully, and in expectancy of the kiss that of old had +always been a consequence. But there was no caressing answer of +Martin’s lips. He waited until the fingers were removed and then went +on. + +“I am not changed. I haven’t got a job. I’m not looking for a job. +Furthermore, I am not going to look for a job. And I still believe that +Herbert Spencer is a great and noble man and that Judge Blount is an +unmitigated ass. I had dinner with him the other night, so I ought to +know.” + +“But you didn’t accept father’s invitation,” she chided. + +“So you know about that? Who sent him? Your mother?” + +She remained silent. + +“Then she did send him. I thought so. And now I suppose she has sent +you.” + +“No one knows that I am here,” she protested. “Do you think my mother +would permit this?” + +“She’d permit you to marry me, that’s certain.” + +She gave a sharp cry. “Oh, Martin, don’t be cruel. You have not kissed +me once. You are as unresponsive as a stone. And think what I have +dared to do.” She looked about her with a shiver, though half the look +was curiosity. “Just think of where I am.” + +“_I could die for you! I could die for you_!”—Lizzie’s words were +ringing in his ears. + +“Why didn’t you dare it before?” he asked harshly. “When I hadn’t a +job? When I was starving? When I was just as I am now, as a man, as an +artist, the same Martin Eden? That’s the question I’ve been propounding +to myself for many a day—not concerning you merely, but concerning +everybody. You see I have not changed, though my sudden apparent +appreciation in value compels me constantly to reassure myself on that +point. I’ve got the same flesh on my bones, the same ten fingers and +toes. I am the same. I have not developed any new strength nor virtue. +My brain is the same old brain. I haven’t made even one new +generalization on literature or philosophy. I am personally of the same +value that I was when nobody wanted me. And what is puzzling me is why +they want me now. Surely they don’t want me for myself, for myself is +the same old self they did not want. Then they must want me for +something else, for something that is outside of me, for something that +is not I! Shall I tell you what that something is? It is for the +recognition I have received. That recognition is not I. It resides in +the minds of others. Then again for the money I have earned and am +earning. But that money is not I. It resides in banks and in the +pockets of Tom, Dick, and Harry. And is it for that, for the +recognition and the money, that you now want me?” + +“You are breaking my heart,” she sobbed. “You know I love you, that I +am here because I love you.” + +“I am afraid you don’t see my point,” he said gently. “What I mean is: +if you love me, how does it happen that you love me now so much more +than you did when your love was weak enough to deny me?” + +“Forget and forgive,” she cried passionately. “I loved you all the +time, remember that, and I am here, now, in your arms.” + +“I’m afraid I am a shrewd merchant, peering into the scales, trying to +weigh your love and find out what manner of thing it is.” + +She withdrew herself from his arms, sat upright, and looked at him long +and searchingly. She was about to speak, then faltered and changed her +mind. + +“You see, it appears this way to me,” he went on. “When I was all that +I am now, nobody out of my own class seemed to care for me. When my +books were all written, no one who had read the manuscripts seemed to +care for them. In point of fact, because of the stuff I had written +they seemed to care even less for me. In writing the stuff it seemed +that I had committed acts that were, to say the least, derogatory. ‘Get +a job,’ everybody said.” + +She made a movement of dissent. + +“Yes, yes,” he said; “except in your case you told me to get a +position. The homely word _job_, like much that I have written, offends +you. It is brutal. But I assure you it was no less brutal to me when +everybody I knew recommended it to me as they would recommend right +conduct to an immoral creature. But to return. The publication of what +I had written, and the public notice I received, wrought a change in +the fibre of your love. Martin Eden, with his work all performed, you +would not marry. Your love for him was not strong enough to enable you +to marry him. But your love is now strong enough, and I cannot avoid +the conclusion that its strength arises from the publication and the +public notice. In your case I do not mention royalties, though I am +certain that they apply to the change wrought in your mother and +father. Of course, all this is not flattering to me. But worst of all, +it makes me question love, sacred love. Is love so gross a thing that +it must feed upon publication and public notice? It would seem so. I +have sat and thought upon it till my head went around.” + +“Poor, dear head.” She reached up a hand and passed the fingers +soothingly through his hair. “Let it go around no more. Let us begin +anew, now. I loved you all the time. I know that I was weak in yielding +to my mother’s will. I should not have done so. Yet I have heard you +speak so often with broad charity of the fallibility and frailty of +humankind. Extend that charity to me. I acted mistakenly. Forgive me.” + +“Oh, I do forgive,” he said impatiently. “It is easy to forgive where +there is really nothing to forgive. Nothing that you have done requires +forgiveness. One acts according to one’s lights, and more than that one +cannot do. As well might I ask you to forgive me for my not getting a +job.” + +“I meant well,” she protested. “You know that I could not have loved +you and not meant well.” + +“True; but you would have destroyed me out of your well-meaning.” + +“Yes, yes,” he shut off her attempted objection. “You would have +destroyed my writing and my career. Realism is imperative to my nature, +and the bourgeois spirit hates realism. The bourgeoisie is cowardly. It +is afraid of life. And all your effort was to make me afraid of life. +You would have formalized me. You would have compressed me into a +two-by-four pigeonhole of life, where all life’s values are unreal, and +false, and vulgar.” He felt her stir protestingly. “Vulgarity—a hearty +vulgarity, I’ll admit—is the basis of bourgeois refinement and culture. +As I say, you wanted to formalize me, to make me over into one of your +own class, with your class-ideals, class-values, and class-prejudices.” +He shook his head sadly. “And you do not understand, even now, what I +am saying. My words do not mean to you what I endeavor to make them +mean. What I say is so much fantasy to you. Yet to me it is vital +reality. At the best you are a trifle puzzled and amused that this raw +boy, crawling up out of the mire of the abyss, should pass judgment +upon your class and call it vulgar.” + +She leaned her head wearily against his shoulder, and her body shivered +with recurrent nervousness. He waited for a time for her to speak, and +then went on. + +“And now you want to renew our love. You want us to be married. You +want me. And yet, listen—if my books had not been noticed, I’d +nevertheless have been just what I am now. And you would have stayed +away. It is all those damned books—” + +“Don’t swear,” she interrupted. + +Her reproof startled him. He broke into a harsh laugh. + +“That’s it,” he said, “at a high moment, when what seems your life’s +happiness is at stake, you are afraid of life in the same old +way—afraid of life and a healthy oath.” + +She was stung by his words into realization of the puerility of her +act, and yet she felt that he had magnified it unduly and was +consequently resentful. They sat in silence for a long time, she +thinking desperately and he pondering upon his love which had departed. +He knew, now, that he had not really loved her. It was an idealized +Ruth he had loved, an ethereal creature of his own creating, the bright +and luminous spirit of his love-poems. The real bourgeois Ruth, with +all the bourgeois failings and with the hopeless cramp of the bourgeois +psychology in her mind, he had never loved. + +She suddenly began to speak. + +“I know that much you have said is so. I have been afraid of life. I +did not love you well enough. I have learned to love better. I love you +for what you are, for what you were, for the ways even by which you +have become. I love you for the ways wherein you differ from what you +call my class, for your beliefs which I do not understand but which I +know I can come to understand. I shall devote myself to understanding +them. And even your smoking and your swearing—they are part of you and +I will love you for them, too. I can still learn. In the last ten +minutes I have learned much. That I have dared to come here is a token +of what I have already learned. Oh, Martin!—” + +She was sobbing and nestling close against him. + +For the first time his arms folded her gently and with sympathy, and +she acknowledged it with a happy movement and a brightening face. + +“It is too late,” he said. He remembered Lizzie’s words. “I am a sick +man—oh, not my body. It is my soul, my brain. I seem to have lost all +values. I care for nothing. If you had been this way a few months ago, +it would have been different. It is too late, now.” + +“It is not too late,” she cried. “I will show you. I will prove to you +that my love has grown, that it is greater to me than my class and all +that is dearest to me. All that is dearest to the bourgeoisie I will +flout. I am no longer afraid of life. I will leave my father and +mother, and let my name become a by-word with my friends. I will come +to you here and now, in free love if you will, and I will be proud and +glad to be with you. If I have been a traitor to love, I will now, for +love’s sake, be a traitor to all that made that earlier treason.” + +She stood before him, with shining eyes. + +“I am waiting, Martin,” she whispered, “waiting for you to accept me. +Look at me.” + +It was splendid, he thought, looking at her. She had redeemed herself +for all that she had lacked, rising up at last, true woman, superior to +the iron rule of bourgeois convention. It was splendid, magnificent, +desperate. And yet, what was the matter with him? He was not thrilled +nor stirred by what she had done. It was splendid and magnificent only +intellectually. In what should have been a moment of fire, he coldly +appraised her. His heart was untouched. He was unaware of any desire +for her. Again he remembered Lizzie’s words. + +“I am sick, very sick,” he said with a despairing gesture. “How sick I +did not know till now. Something has gone out of me. I have always been +unafraid of life, but I never dreamed of being sated with life. Life +has so filled me that I am empty of any desire for anything. If there +were room, I should want you, now. You see how sick I am.” + +He leaned his head back and closed his eyes; and like a child, crying, +that forgets its grief in watching the sunlight percolate through the +tear-dimmed films over the pupils, so Martin forgot his sickness, the +presence of Ruth, everything, in watching the masses of vegetation, +shot through hotly with sunshine that took form and blazed against this +background of his eyelids. It was not restful, that green foliage. The +sunlight was too raw and glaring. It hurt him to look at it, and yet he +looked, he knew not why. + +He was brought back to himself by the rattle of the door-knob. Ruth was +at the door. + +“How shall I get out?” she questioned tearfully. “I am afraid.” + +“Oh, forgive me,” he cried, springing to his feet. “I’m not myself, you +know. I forgot you were here.” He put his hand to his head. “You see, +I’m not just right. I’ll take you home. We can go out by the servants’ +entrance. No one will see us. Pull down that veil and everything will +be all right.” + +She clung to his arm through the dim-lighted passages and down the +narrow stairs. + +“I am safe now,” she said, when they emerged on the sidewalk, at the +same time starting to take her hand from his arm. + +“No, no, I’ll see you home,” he answered. + +“No, please don’t,” she objected. “It is unnecessary.” + +Again she started to remove her hand. He felt a momentary curiosity. +Now that she was out of danger she was afraid. She was in almost a +panic to be quit of him. He could see no reason for it and attributed +it to her nervousness. So he restrained her withdrawing hand and +started to walk on with her. Halfway down the block, he saw a man in a +long overcoat shrink back into a doorway. He shot a glance in as he +passed by, and, despite the high turned-up collar, he was certain that +he recognized Ruth’s brother, Norman. + +During the walk Ruth and Martin held little conversation. She was +stunned. He was apathetic. Once, he mentioned that he was going away, +back to the South Seas, and, once, she asked him to forgive her having +come to him. And that was all. The parting at her door was +conventional. They shook hands, said good night, and he lifted his hat. +The door swung shut, and he lighted a cigarette and turned back for his +hotel. When he came to the doorway into which he had seen Norman +shrink, he stopped and looked in in a speculative humor. + +“She lied,” he said aloud. “She made believe to me that she had dared +greatly, and all the while she knew the brother that brought her was +waiting to take her back.” He burst into laughter. “Oh, these +bourgeois! When I was broke, I was not fit to be seen with his sister. +When I have a bank account, he brings her to me.” + +As he swung on his heel to go on, a tramp, going in the same direction, +begged him over his shoulder. + +“Say, mister, can you give me a quarter to get a bed?” were the words. + +But it was the voice that made Martin turn around. The next instant he +had Joe by the hand. + +“D’ye remember that time we parted at the Hot Springs?” the other was +saying. “I said then we’d meet again. I felt it in my bones. An’ here +we are.” + +“You’re looking good,” Martin said admiringly, “and you’ve put on +weight.” + +“I sure have.” Joe’s face was beaming. “I never knew what it was to +live till I hit hoboin’. I’m thirty pounds heavier an’ feel tiptop all +the time. Why, I was worked to skin an’ bone in them old days. Hoboin’ +sure agrees with me.” + +“But you’re looking for a bed just the same,” Martin chided, “and it’s +a cold night.” + +“Huh? Lookin’ for a bed?” Joe shot a hand into his hip pocket and +brought it out filled with small change. “That beats hard graft,” he +exulted. “You just looked good; that’s why I battered you.” + +Martin laughed and gave in. + +“You’ve several full-sized drunks right there,” he insinuated. + +Joe slid the money back into his pocket. + +“Not in mine,” he announced. “No gettin’ oryide for me, though there +ain’t nothin’ to stop me except I don’t want to. I’ve ben drunk once +since I seen you last, an’ then it was unexpected, bein’ on an empty +stomach. When I work like a beast, I drink like a beast. When I live +like a man, I drink like a man—a jolt now an’ again when I feel like +it, an’ that’s all.” + +Martin arranged to meet him next day, and went on to the hotel. He +paused in the office to look up steamer sailings. The _Mariposa_ sailed +for Tahiti in five days. + +“Telephone over to-morrow and reserve a stateroom for me,” he told the +clerk. “No deck-stateroom, but down below, on the weather-side,—the +port-side, remember that, the port-side. You’d better write it down.” + +Once in his room he got into bed and slipped off to sleep as gently as +a child. The occurrences of the evening had made no impression on him. +His mind was dead to impressions. The glow of warmth with which he met +Joe had been most fleeting. The succeeding minute he had been bothered +by the ex-laundryman’s presence and by the compulsion of conversation. +That in five more days he sailed for his loved South Seas meant nothing +to him. So he closed his eyes and slept normally and comfortably for +eight uninterrupted hours. He was not restless. He did not change his +position, nor did he dream. Sleep had become to him oblivion, and each +day that he awoke, he awoke with regret. Life worried and bored him, +and time was a vexation. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI. + + +“Say, Joe,” was his greeting to his old-time working-mate next morning, +“there’s a Frenchman out on Twenty-eighth Street. He’s made a pot of +money, and he’s going back to France. It’s a dandy, well-appointed, +small steam laundry. There’s a start for you if you want to settle +down. Here, take this; buy some clothes with it and be at this man’s +office by ten o’clock. He looked up the laundry for me, and he’ll take +you out and show you around. If you like it, and think it is worth the +price—twelve thousand—let me know and it is yours. Now run along. I’m +busy. I’ll see you later.” + +“Now look here, Mart,” the other said slowly, with kindling anger, “I +come here this mornin’ to see you. Savve? I didn’t come here to get no +laundry. I come here for a talk for old friends’ sake, and you shove a +laundry at me. I tell you what you can do. You can take that laundry +an’ go to hell.” + +He was out of the room when Martin caught him and whirled him around. + +“Now look here, Joe,” he said; “if you act that way, I’ll punch your +head. And for old friends’ sake I’ll punch it hard. Savve?—you will, +will you?” + +Joe had clinched and attempted to throw him, and he was twisting and +writhing out of the advantage of the other’s hold. They reeled about +the room, locked in each other’s arms, and came down with a crash +across the splintered wreckage of a wicker chair. Joe was underneath, +with arms spread out and held and with Martin’s knee on his chest. He +was panting and gasping for breath when Martin released him. + +“Now we’ll talk a moment,” Martin said. “You can’t get fresh with me. I +want that laundry business finished first of all. Then you can come +back and we’ll talk for old sake’s sake. I told you I was busy. Look at +that.” + +A servant had just come in with the morning mail, a great mass of +letters and magazines. + +“How can I wade through that and talk with you? You go and fix up that +laundry, and then we’ll get together.” + +“All right,” Joe admitted reluctantly. “I thought you was turnin’ me +down, but I guess I was mistaken. But you can’t lick me, Mart, in a +stand-up fight. I’ve got the reach on you.” + +“We’ll put on the gloves sometime and see,” Martin said with a smile. + +“Sure; as soon as I get that laundry going.” Joe extended his arm. “You +see that reach? It’ll make you go a few.” + +Martin heaved a sigh of relief when the door closed behind the +laundryman. He was becoming anti-social. Daily he found it a severer +strain to be decent with people. Their presence perturbed him, and the +effort of conversation irritated him. They made him restless, and no +sooner was he in contact with them than he was casting about for +excuses to get rid of them. + +He did not proceed to attack his mail, and for a half hour he lolled in +his chair, doing nothing, while no more than vague, half-formed +thoughts occasionally filtered through his intelligence, or rather, at +wide intervals, themselves constituted the flickering of his +intelligence. + +He roused himself and began glancing through his mail. There were a +dozen requests for autographs—he knew them at sight; there were +professional begging letters; and there were letters from cranks, +ranging from the man with a working model of perpetual motion, and the +man who demonstrated that the surface of the earth was the inside of a +hollow sphere, to the man seeking financial aid to purchase the +Peninsula of Lower California for the purpose of communist +colonization. There were letters from women seeking to know him, and +over one such he smiled, for enclosed was her receipt for pew-rent, +sent as evidence of her good faith and as proof of her respectability. + +Editors and publishers contributed to the daily heap of letters, the +former on their knees for his manuscripts, the latter on their knees +for his books—his poor disdained manuscripts that had kept all he +possessed in pawn for so many dreary months in order to fund them in +postage. There were unexpected checks for English serial rights and for +advance payments on foreign translations. His English agent announced +the sale of German translation rights in three of his books, and +informed him that Swedish editions, from which he could expect nothing +because Sweden was not a party to the Berne Convention, were already on +the market. Then there was a nominal request for his permission for a +Russian translation, that country being likewise outside the Berne +Convention. + +He turned to the huge bundle of clippings which had come in from his +press bureau, and read about himself and his vogue, which had become a +furore. All his creative output had been flung to the public in one +magnificent sweep. That seemed to account for it. He had taken the +public off its feet, the way Kipling had, that time when he lay near to +death and all the mob, animated by a mob-mind thought, began suddenly +to read him. Martin remembered how that same world-mob, having read him +and acclaimed him and not understood him in the least, had, abruptly, a +few months later, flung itself upon him and torn him to pieces. Martin +grinned at the thought. Who was he that he should not be similarly +treated in a few more months? Well, he would fool the mob. He would be +away, in the South Seas, building his grass house, trading for pearls +and copra, jumping reefs in frail outriggers, catching sharks and +bonitas, hunting wild goats among the cliffs of the valley that lay +next to the valley of Taiohae. + +In the moment of that thought the desperateness of his situation dawned +upon him. He saw, cleared eyed, that he was in the Valley of the +Shadow. All the life that was in him was fading, fainting, making +toward death. + +He realized how much he slept, and how much he desired to sleep. Of +old, he had hated sleep. It had robbed him of precious moments of +living. Four hours of sleep in the twenty-four had meant being robbed +of four hours of life. How he had grudged sleep! Now it was life he +grudged. Life was not good; its taste in his mouth was without tang, +and bitter. This was his peril. Life that did not yearn toward life was +in fair way toward ceasing. Some remote instinct for preservation +stirred in him, and he knew he must get away. He glanced about the +room, and the thought of packing was burdensome. Perhaps it would be +better to leave that to the last. In the meantime he might be getting +an outfit. + +He put on his hat and went out, stopping in at a gun-store, where he +spent the remainder of the morning buying automatic rifles, ammunition, +and fishing tackle. Fashions changed in trading, and he knew he would +have to wait till he reached Tahiti before ordering his trade-goods. +They could come up from Australia, anyway. This solution was a source +of pleasure. He had avoided doing something, and the doing of anything +just now was unpleasant. He went back to the hotel gladly, with a +feeling of satisfaction in that the comfortable Morris chair was +waiting for him; and he groaned inwardly, on entering his room, at +sight of Joe in the Morris chair. + +Joe was delighted with the laundry. Everything was settled, and he +would enter into possession next day. Martin lay on the bed, with +closed eyes, while the other talked on. Martin’s thoughts were far +away—so far away that he was rarely aware that he was thinking. It was +only by an effort that he occasionally responded. And yet this was Joe, +whom he had always liked. But Joe was too keen with life. The +boisterous impact of it on Martin’s jaded mind was a hurt. It was an +aching probe to his tired sensitiveness. When Joe reminded him that +sometime in the future they were going to put on the gloves together, +he could almost have screamed. + +“Remember, Joe, you’re to run the laundry according to those old rules +you used to lay down at Shelly Hot Springs,” he said. “No overworking. +No working at night. And no children at the mangles. No children +anywhere. And a fair wage.” + +Joe nodded and pulled out a note-book. + +“Look at here. I was workin’ out them rules before breakfast this A.M. +What d’ye think of them?” + +He read them aloud, and Martin approved, worrying at the same time as +to when Joe would take himself off. + +It was late afternoon when he awoke. Slowly the fact of life came back +to him. He glanced about the room. Joe had evidently stolen away after +he had dozed off. That was considerate of Joe, he thought. Then he +closed his eyes and slept again. + +In the days that followed Joe was too busy organizing and taking hold +of the laundry to bother him much; and it was not until the day before +sailing that the newspapers made the announcement that he had taken +passage on the _Mariposa_. Once, when the instinct of preservation +fluttered, he went to a doctor and underwent a searching physical +examination. Nothing could be found the matter with him. His heart and +lungs were pronounced magnificent. Every organ, so far as the doctor +could know, was normal and was working normally. + +“There is nothing the matter with you, Mr. Eden,” he said, “positively +nothing the matter with you. You are in the pink of condition. +Candidly, I envy you your health. It is superb. Look at that chest. +There, and in your stomach, lies the secret of your remarkable +constitution. Physically, you are a man in a thousand—in ten thousand. +Barring accidents, you should live to be a hundred.” + +And Martin knew that Lizzie’s diagnosis had been correct. Physically he +was all right. It was his “think-machine” that had gone wrong, and +there was no cure for that except to get away to the South Seas. The +trouble was that now, on the verge of departure, he had no desire to +go. The South Seas charmed him no more than did bourgeois civilization. +There was no zest in the thought of departure, while the act of +departure appalled him as a weariness of the flesh. He would have felt +better if he were already on board and gone. + +The last day was a sore trial. Having read of his sailing in the +morning papers, Bernard Higginbotham, Gertrude, and all the family came +to say good-by, as did Hermann von Schmidt and Marian. Then there was +business to be transacted, bills to be paid, and everlasting reporters +to be endured. He said good-by to Lizzie Connolly, abruptly, at the +entrance to night school, and hurried away. At the hotel he found Joe, +too busy all day with the laundry to have come to him earlier. It was +the last straw, but Martin gripped the arms of his chair and talked and +listened for half an hour. + +“You know, Joe,” he said, “that you are not tied down to that laundry. +There are no strings on it. You can sell it any time and blow the +money. Any time you get sick of it and want to hit the road, just pull +out. Do what will make you the happiest.” + +Joe shook his head. + +“No more road in mine, thank you kindly. Hoboin’s all right, exceptin’ +for one thing—the girls. I can’t help it, but I’m a ladies’ man. I +can’t get along without ’em, and you’ve got to get along without ’em +when you’re hoboin’. The times I’ve passed by houses where dances an’ +parties was goin’ on, an’ heard the women laugh, an’ saw their white +dresses and smiling faces through the windows—Gee! I tell you them +moments was plain hell. I like dancin’ an’ picnics, an’ walking in the +moonlight, an’ all the rest too well. Me for the laundry, and a good +front, with big iron dollars clinkin’ in my jeans. I seen a girl +already, just yesterday, and, d’ye know, I’m feelin’ already I’d just +as soon marry her as not. I’ve ben whistlin’ all day at the thought of +it. She’s a beaut, with the kindest eyes and softest voice you ever +heard. Me for her, you can stack on that. Say, why don’t you get +married with all this money to burn? You could get the finest girl in +the land.” + +Martin shook his head with a smile, but in his secret heart he was +wondering why any man wanted to marry. It seemed an amazing and +incomprehensible thing. + +From the deck of the _Mariposa_, at the sailing hour, he saw Lizzie +Connolly hiding in the skirts of the crowd on the wharf. Take her with +you, came the thought. It is easy to be kind. She will be supremely +happy. It was almost a temptation one moment, and the succeeding moment +it became a terror. He was in a panic at the thought of it. His tired +soul cried out in protest. He turned away from the rail with a groan, +muttering, “Man, you are too sick, you are too sick.” + +He fled to his stateroom, where he lurked until the steamer was clear +of the dock. In the dining saloon, at luncheon, he found himself in the +place of honor, at the captain’s right; and he was not long in +discovering that he was the great man on board. But no more +unsatisfactory great man ever sailed on a ship. He spent the afternoon +in a deck-chair, with closed eyes, dozing brokenly most of the time, +and in the evening went early to bed. + +After the second day, recovered from seasickness, the full passenger +list was in evidence, and the more he saw of the passengers the more he +disliked them. Yet he knew that he did them injustice. They were good +and kindly people, he forced himself to acknowledge, and in the moment +of acknowledgment he qualified—good and kindly like all the +bourgeoisie, with all the psychological cramp and intellectual futility +of their kind, they bored him when they talked with him, their little +superficial minds were so filled with emptiness; while the boisterous +high spirits and the excessive energy of the younger people shocked +him. They were never quiet, ceaselessly playing deck-quoits, tossing +rings, promenading, or rushing to the rail with loud cries to watch the +leaping porpoises and the first schools of flying fish. + +He slept much. After breakfast he sought his deck-chair with a magazine +he never finished. The printed pages tired him. He puzzled that men +found so much to write about, and, puzzling, dozed in his chair. When +the gong awoke him for luncheon, he was irritated that he must awaken. +There was no satisfaction in being awake. + +Once, he tried to arouse himself from his lethargy, and went forward +into the forecastle with the sailors. But the breed of sailors seemed +to have changed since the days he had lived in the forecastle. He could +find no kinship with these stolid-faced, ox-minded bestial creatures. +He was in despair. Up above nobody had wanted Martin Eden for his own +sake, and he could not go back to those of his own class who had wanted +him in the past. He did not want them. He could not stand them any more +than he could stand the stupid first-cabin passengers and the riotous +young people. + +Life was to him like strong, white light that hurts the tired eyes of a +sick person. During every conscious moment life blazed in a raw glare +around him and upon him. It hurt. It hurt intolerably. It was the first +time in his life that Martin had travelled first class. On ships at sea +he had always been in the forecastle, the steerage, or in the black +depths of the coal-hold, passing coal. In those days, climbing up the +iron ladders out the pit of stifling heat, he had often caught glimpses +of the passengers, in cool white, doing nothing but enjoy themselves, +under awnings spread to keep the sun and wind away from them, with +subservient stewards taking care of their every want and whim, and it +had seemed to him that the realm in which they moved and had their +being was nothing else than paradise. Well, here he was, the great man +on board, in the midmost centre of it, sitting at the captain’s right +hand, and yet vainly harking back to forecastle and stoke-hole in quest +of the Paradise he had lost. He had found no new one, and now he could +not find the old one. + +He strove to stir himself and find something to interest him. He +ventured the petty officers’ mess, and was glad to get away. He talked +with a quartermaster off duty, an intelligent man who promptly prodded +him with the socialist propaganda and forced into his hands a bunch of +leaflets and pamphlets. He listened to the man expounding the +slave-morality, and as he listened, he thought languidly of his own +Nietzsche philosophy. But what was it worth, after all? He remembered +one of Nietzsche’s mad utterances wherein that madman had doubted +truth. And who was to say? Perhaps Nietzsche had been right. Perhaps +there was no truth in anything, no truth in truth—no such thing as +truth. But his mind wearied quickly, and he was content to go back to +his chair and doze. + +Miserable as he was on the steamer, a new misery came upon him. What +when the steamer reached Tahiti? He would have to go ashore. He would +have to order his trade-goods, to find a passage on a schooner to the +Marquesas, to do a thousand and one things that were awful to +contemplate. Whenever he steeled himself deliberately to think, he +could see the desperate peril in which he stood. In all truth, he was +in the Valley of the Shadow, and his danger lay in that he was not +afraid. If he were only afraid, he would make toward life. Being +unafraid, he was drifting deeper into the shadow. He found no delight +in the old familiar things of life. The _Mariposa_ was now in the +northeast trades, and this wine of wind, surging against him, irritated +him. He had his chair moved to escape the embrace of this lusty comrade +of old days and nights. + +The day the _Mariposa_ entered the doldrums, Martin was more miserable +than ever. He could no longer sleep. He was soaked with sleep, and +perforce he must now stay awake and endure the white glare of life. He +moved about restlessly. The air was sticky and humid, and the +rain-squalls were unrefreshing. He ached with life. He walked around +the deck until that hurt too much, then sat in his chair until he was +compelled to walk again. He forced himself at last to finish the +magazine, and from the steamer library he culled several volumes of +poetry. But they could not hold him, and once more he took to walking. + +He stayed late on deck, after dinner, but that did not help him, for +when he went below, he could not sleep. This surcease from life had +failed him. It was too much. He turned on the electric light and tried +to read. One of the volumes was a Swinburne. He lay in bed, glancing +through its pages, until suddenly he became aware that he was reading +with interest. He finished the stanza, attempted to read on, then came +back to it. He rested the book face downward on his breast and fell to +thinking. That was it. The very thing. Strange that it had never come +to him before. That was the meaning of it all; he had been drifting +that way all the time, and now Swinburne showed him that it was the +happy way out. He wanted rest, and here was rest awaiting him. He +glanced at the open port-hole. Yes, it was large enough. For the first +time in weeks he felt happy. At last he had discovered the cure of his +ill. He picked up the book and read the stanza slowly aloud:- + +“‘From too much love of living, + From hope and fear set free, +We thank with brief thanksgiving + Whatever gods may be +That no life lives forever; +That dead men rise up never; + That even the weariest river + Winds somewhere safe to sea.’” + + +He looked again at the open port. Swinburne had furnished the key. Life +was ill, or, rather, it had become ill—an unbearable thing. “That dead +men rise up never!” That line stirred him with a profound feeling of +gratitude. It was the one beneficent thing in the universe. When life +became an aching weariness, death was ready to soothe away to +everlasting sleep. But what was he waiting for? It was time to go. + +He arose and thrust his head out the port-hole, looking down into the +milky wash. The _Mariposa_ was deeply loaded, and, hanging by his +hands, his feet would be in the water. He could slip in noiselessly. No +one would hear. A smother of spray dashed up, wetting his face. It +tasted salt on his lips, and the taste was good. He wondered if he +ought to write a swan-song, but laughed the thought away. There was no +time. He was too impatient to be gone. + +Turning off the light in his room so that it might not betray him, he +went out the port-hole feet first. His shoulders stuck, and he forced +himself back so as to try it with one arm down by his side. A roll of +the steamer aided him, and he was through, hanging by his hands. When +his feet touched the sea, he let go. He was in a milky froth of water. +The side of the _Mariposa_ rushed past him like a dark wall, broken +here and there by lighted ports. She was certainly making time. Almost +before he knew it, he was astern, swimming gently on the foam-crackling +surface. + +A bonita struck at his white body, and he laughed aloud. It had taken a +piece out, and the sting of it reminded him of why he was there. In the +work to do he had forgotten the purpose of it. The lights of the +_Mariposa_ were growing dim in the distance, and there he was, swimming +confidently, as though it were his intention to make for the nearest +land a thousand miles or so away. + +It was the automatic instinct to live. He ceased swimming, but the +moment he felt the water rising above his mouth the hands struck out +sharply with a lifting movement. The will to live, was his thought, and +the thought was accompanied by a sneer. Well, he had will,—ay, will +strong enough that with one last exertion it could destroy itself and +cease to be. + +He changed his position to a vertical one. He glanced up at the quiet +stars, at the same time emptying his lungs of air. With swift, vigorous +propulsion of hands and feet, he lifted his shoulders and half his +chest out of water. This was to gain impetus for the descent. Then he +let himself go and sank without movement, a white statue, into the sea. +He breathed in the water deeply, deliberately, after the manner of a +man taking an anaesthetic. When he strangled, quite involuntarily his +arms and legs clawed the water and drove him up to the surface and into +the clear sight of the stars. + +The will to live, he thought disdainfully, vainly endeavoring not to +breathe the air into his bursting lungs. Well, he would have to try a +new way. He filled his lungs with air, filled them full. This supply +would take him far down. He turned over and went down head first, +swimming with all his strength and all his will. Deeper and deeper he +went. His eyes were open, and he watched the ghostly, phosphorescent +trails of the darting bonita. As he swam, he hoped that they would not +strike at him, for it might snap the tension of his will. But they did +not strike, and he found time to be grateful for this last kindness of +life. + +Down, down, he swam till his arms and legs grew tired and hardly moved. +He knew that he was deep. The pressure on his ear-drums was a pain, and +there was a buzzing in his head. His endurance was faltering, but he +compelled his arms and legs to drive him deeper until his will snapped +and the air drove from his lungs in a great explosive rush. The bubbles +rubbed and bounded like tiny balloons against his cheeks and eyes as +they took their upward flight. Then came pain and strangulation. This +hurt was not death, was the thought that oscillated through his reeling +consciousness. Death did not hurt. It was life, the pangs of life, this +awful, suffocating feeling; it was the last blow life could deal him. + +His wilful hands and feet began to beat and churn about, spasmodically +and feebly. But he had fooled them and the will to live that made them +beat and churn. He was too deep down. They could never bring him to the +surface. He seemed floating languidly in a sea of dreamy vision. Colors +and radiances surrounded him and bathed him and pervaded him. What was +that? It seemed a lighthouse; but it was inside his brain—a flashing, +bright white light. It flashed swifter and swifter. There was a long +rumble of sound, and it seemed to him that he was falling down a vast +and interminable stairway. And somewhere at the bottom he fell into +darkness. That much he knew. He had fallen into darkness. And at the +instant he knew, he ceased to know. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1056 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1057-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1057-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..57e72dab --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1057-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6941 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Poems, by Oscar Wilde, Edited by Robert Ross + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Poems + with the Ballad of Reading Gaol + + +Author: Oscar Wilde + +Editor: Robert Ross + +Release Date: March 31, 2013 [eBook #1057] +[This file was first posted on September 24, 1997] +[Last updated: July 2, 2014] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS*** + + +Transcribed from the 1913 Methuen & Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + POEMS + BY + OSCAR WILDE + + + WITH THE BALLAD OF + READING GAOL + + * * * * * + + METHUEN & CO. LTD. + 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. + LONDON + + _Twelfth Edition_ + +_First Published_— + _Ravenna_ _1878_ + _Poems_ _1881_ + ,, _Fifth Edition_ _1882_ + _The Sphinx_ _1894_ + _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ _1898_ +_First Issued by Methuen and Co._ (_Limited _March 1908_ +Editions on Handmade Paper and Japanese Vellum_) +_Seventh Edition_ (_F’cap. 8vo_). _September 1909_ +_Eighth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _November 1909_ +_Ninth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _December 1909_ +_Tenth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _November 1910_ +_Eleventh Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _December 1911_ +_Twelfth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _April 1913_ + + + +NOTE + + +_This collection of Wilde’s Poems contains the volume of_ 1881 _in its +entirety_, ‘_The Sphinx_’, ‘_The Ballad of Reading Gaol_,’ _and_ +‘_Ravenna_.’ _Of the Uncollected Poems published in the Uniform Edition +of_ 1908, _a few_, _including the Translations from the Greek and the +Polish_, _are omitted_. _Two new poems_, ‘_Désespoir_’ _and_ ‘_Pan_,’_ +which I have recently discovered in manuscript_, _are now printed for the +first time_. _Particulars as to the original publication of each poem +will be found in_ ‘_A Bibliography of the Poems of Oscar Wilde_,’ _by +Stuart Mason_, _London_ 1907. + + _ROBERT ROSS_. + + + + +CONTENTS + +POEMS (1881): PAGE + Hélas! 3 + ELEUTHERIA: + Sonnet To Liberty 7 + Ave Imperatrix 8 + To Milton 14 + Louis Napoleon 15 + Sonnet on the Massacre of the Christians in 16 + Bulgaria + Quantum Mutata 17 + Libertatis Sacra Fames 18 + Theoretikos 19 + THE GARDEN OF EROS 21 + ROSA MYSTICA: + Requiescat 39 + Sonnet on approaching Italy 40 + San Miniato 41 + Ave Maria Gratia Plena 42 + Italia 43 + Sonnet written in Holy Week at Genoa 44 + Rome Unvisited 45 + Urbs Sacra Æterna 49 + Sonnet on hearing the Dies Iræ sung in the Sistine 50 + Chapel + Easter Day 51 + E Tenebris 52 + Vita Nuova 53 + Madonna Mia 54 + The New Helen 55 + THE BURDEN OF ITYS 61 + WIND FLOWERS: + Impression du Matin 83 + Magdalen Walks 84 + Athanasia 86 + Serenade 89 + Endymion 91 + La Bella Donna della mia Mente 93 + Chanson 95 + CHARMIDES 97 + FLOWERS OF GOLD: + Impressions: I. Les Silhouettes 135 + II. La Fuite de la Lune 136 + The Grave of Keats 137 + Theocritus: A Villanelle 138 + In the Gold Room: A Harmony 139 + Ballade de Marguerite 140 + The Dole of the King’s Daughter 143 + Amor Intellectualis 145 + Santa Decca 146 + A Vision 147 + Impression de Voyage 148 + The Grave of Shelley 149 + By the Arno 150 + IMPRESSIONS DE THÉÀTRE: + Fabien dei Franchi 155 + Phèdre 156 + Sonnets written at the Lyceum Theatre + I. Portia 157 + II. Queen Henrietta Maria 158 + III. Camma 159 + PANTHEA 161 + THE FOURTH MOVEMENT: + Impression: Le Réveillon 175 + At Verona 176 + Apologia 177 + Quia Multum Amavi 179 + Silentium Amoris 180 + Her Voice 181 + My Voice 183 + Tædium Vitæ 184 + HUMANITAD 185 + FLOWER OF LOVE: + ΓΛΥΚΥΠΙΚΡΟΣ ΕΡΩΣ 211 +UNCOLLECTED POEMS (1876–1893): + From Spring Days to Winter 217 + Tristitiæ 219 + The True Knowledge 220 + Impressions: I. Le Jardin 221 + II. La Mer 222 + Under the Balcony 223 + The Harlot’s House 225 + Le Jardin des Tuileries 227 + On the Sale by Auction of Keats’ Love Letters 228 + The New Remorse 229 + Fantasisies Décoratives: I. Le Panneau 230 + II. Les Ballons 232 + Canzonet 233 + Symphony in Yellow 235 + In the Forest 236 + To my Wife: With a Copy of my Poems 237 + With a Copy of ‘A House of Pomegranates’ 238 + Roses and Rue 239 + Désespoir 242 + Pan: Double Villanelle 243 +THE SPHINX (1894) 245 +THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL (1898) 269 +RAVENNA (1878) 305 + + + + +POEMS + + +HÉLAS! + + + TO _drift with every passion till my soul_ + _Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play_, + _Is it for this that I have given away_ + _Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control_? + _Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll_ + _Scrawled over on some boyish holiday_ + _With idle songs for pipe and virelay_, + _Which do but mar the secret of the whole_. + _Surely there was a time I might have trod_ + _The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance_ + _Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God_: + _Is that time dead_? _lo_! _with a little rod_ + _I did but touch the honey of romance_— + _And must I lose a soul’s inheritance_? + + + +ELEUTHERIA + + +SONNET TO LIBERTY + + + NOT that I love thy children, whose dull eyes + See nothing save their own unlovely woe, + Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,— + But that the roar of thy Democracies, + Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies, + Mirror my wildest passions like the sea + And give my rage a brother—! Liberty! + For this sake only do thy dissonant cries + Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings + By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades + Rob nations of their rights inviolate + And I remain unmoved—and yet, and yet, + These Christs that die upon the barricades, + God knows it I am with them, in some things. + + +AVE IMPERATRIX + + + SET in this stormy Northern sea, + Queen of these restless fields of tide, + England! what shall men say of thee, + Before whose feet the worlds divide? + + The earth, a brittle globe of glass, + Lies in the hollow of thy hand, + And through its heart of crystal pass, + Like shadows through a twilight land, + + The spears of crimson-suited war, + The long white-crested waves of fight, + And all the deadly fires which are + The torches of the lords of Night. + + The yellow leopards, strained and lean, + The treacherous Russian knows so well, + With gaping blackened jaws are seen + Leap through the hail of screaming shell. + + The strong sea-lion of England’s wars + Hath left his sapphire cave of sea, + To battle with the storm that mars + The stars of England’s chivalry. + + The brazen-throated clarion blows + Across the Pathan’s reedy fen, + And the high steeps of Indian snows + Shake to the tread of armèd men. + + And many an Afghan chief, who lies + Beneath his cool pomegranate-trees, + Clutches his sword in fierce surmise + When on the mountain-side he sees + + The fleet-foot Marri scout, who comes + To tell how he hath heard afar + The measured roll of English drums + Beat at the gates of Kandahar. + + For southern wind and east wind meet + Where, girt and crowned by sword and fire, + England with bare and bloody feet + Climbs the steep road of wide empire. + + O lonely Himalayan height, + Grey pillar of the Indian sky, + Where saw’st thou last in clanging flight + Our wingèd dogs of Victory? + + The almond-groves of Samarcand, + Bokhara, where red lilies blow, + And Oxus, by whose yellow sand + The grave white-turbaned merchants go: + + And on from thence to Ispahan, + The gilded garden of the sun, + Whence the long dusty caravan + Brings cedar wood and vermilion; + + And that dread city of Cabool + Set at the mountain’s scarpèd feet, + Whose marble tanks are ever full + With water for the noonday heat: + + Where through the narrow straight Bazaar + A little maid Circassian + Is led, a present from the Czar + Unto some old and bearded khan,— + + Here have our wild war-eagles flown, + And flapped wide wings in fiery fight; + But the sad dove, that sits alone + In England—she hath no delight. + + In vain the laughing girl will lean + To greet her love with love-lit eyes: + Down in some treacherous black ravine, + Clutching his flag, the dead boy lies. + + And many a moon and sun will see + The lingering wistful children wait + To climb upon their father’s knee; + And in each house made desolate + + Pale women who have lost their lord + Will kiss the relics of the slain— + Some tarnished epaulette—some sword— + Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain. + + For not in quiet English fields + Are these, our brothers, lain to rest, + Where we might deck their broken shields + With all the flowers the dead love best. + + For some are by the Delhi walls, + And many in the Afghan land, + And many where the Ganges falls + Through seven mouths of shifting sand. + + And some in Russian waters lie, + And others in the seas which are + The portals to the East, or by + The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar. + + O wandering graves! O restless sleep! + O silence of the sunless day! + O still ravine! O stormy deep! + Give up your prey! Give up your prey! + + And thou whose wounds are never healed, + Whose weary race is never won, + O Cromwell’s England! must thou yield + For every inch of ground a son? + + Go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head, + Change thy glad song to song of pain; + Wind and wild wave have got thy dead, + And will not yield them back again. + + Wave and wild wind and foreign shore + Possess the flower of English land— + Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more, + Hands that shall never clasp thy hand. + + What profit now that we have bound + The whole round world with nets of gold, + If hidden in our heart is found + The care that groweth never old? + + What profit that our galleys ride, + Pine-forest-like, on every main? + Ruin and wreck are at our side, + Grim warders of the House of Pain. + + Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet? + Where is our English chivalry? + Wild grasses are their burial-sheet, + And sobbing waves their threnody. + + O loved ones lying far away, + What word of love can dead lips send! + O wasted dust! O senseless clay! + Is this the end! is this the end! + + Peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead + To vex their solemn slumber so; + Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head, + Up the steep road must England go, + + Yet when this fiery web is spun, + Her watchmen shall descry from far + The young Republic like a sun + Rise from these crimson seas of war. + + +TO MILTON + + + MILTON! I think thy spirit hath passed away + From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers; + This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours + Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey, + And the age changed unto a mimic play + Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours: + For all our pomp and pageantry and powers + We are but fit to delve the common clay, + Seeing this little isle on which we stand, + This England, this sea-lion of the sea, + By ignorant demagogues is held in fee, + Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land + Which bare a triple empire in her hand + When Cromwell spake the word Democracy! + + +LOUIS NAPOLEON + + + EAGLE of Austerlitz! where were thy wings + When far away upon a barbarous strand, + In fight unequal, by an obscure hand, + Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings! + + Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red, + Or ride in state through Paris in the van + Of thy returning legions, but instead + Thy mother France, free and republican, + + Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place + The better laurels of a soldier’s crown, + That not dishonoured should thy soul go down + To tell the mighty Sire of thy race + + That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty, + And found it sweeter than his honied bees, + And that the giant wave Democracy + Breaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease. + + +SONNET + + + ON THE MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA + + CHRIST, dost Thou live indeed? or are Thy bones + Still straitened in their rock-hewn sepulchre? + And was Thy Rising only dreamed by her + Whose love of Thee for all her sin atones? + For here the air is horrid with men’s groans, + The priests who call upon Thy name are slain, + Dost Thou not hear the bitter wail of pain + From those whose children lie upon the stones? + Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom + Curtains the land, and through the starless night + Over Thy Cross a Crescent moon I see! + If Thou in very truth didst burst the tomb + Come down, O Son of Man! and show Thy might + Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee! + + +QUANTUM MUTATA + + + THERE was a time in Europe long ago + When no man died for freedom anywhere, + But England’s lion leaping from its lair + Laid hands on the oppressor! it was so + While England could a great Republic show. + Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care + Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair + The Pontiff in his painted portico + Trembled before our stern ambassadors. + How comes it then that from such high estate + We have thus fallen, save that Luxury + With barren merchandise piles up the gate + Where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by: + Else might we still be Milton’s heritors. + + +LIBERTATIS SACRA FAMES + + + ALBEIT nurtured in democracy, + And liking best that state republican + Where every man is Kinglike and no man + Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see, + Spite of this modern fret for Liberty, + Better the rule of One, whom all obey, + Than to let clamorous demagogues betray + Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy. + Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane + Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street + For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign + Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honour, all things fade, + Save Treason and the dagger of her trade, + Or Murder with his silent bloody feet. + + +THEORETIKOS + + + THIS mighty empire hath but feet of clay: + Of all its ancient chivalry and might + Our little island is forsaken quite: + Some enemy hath stolen its crown of bay, + And from its hills that voice hath passed away + Which spake of Freedom: O come out of it, + Come out of it, my Soul, thou art not fit + For this vile traffic-house, where day by day + Wisdom and reverence are sold at mart, + And the rude people rage with ignorant cries + Against an heritage of centuries. + It mars my calm: wherefore in dreams of Art + And loftiest culture I would stand apart, + Neither for God, nor for his enemies. + + + +THE GARDEN OF EROS + + + IT is full summer now, the heart of June; + Not yet the sunburnt reapers are astir + Upon the upland meadow where too soon + Rich autumn time, the season’s usurer, + Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees, + And see his treasure scattered by the wild and spendthrift breeze. + + Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil, + That love-child of the Spring, has lingered on + To vex the rose with jealousy, and still + The harebell spreads her azure pavilion, + And like a strayed and wandering reveller + Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June’s messenger + + The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade, + One pale narcissus loiters fearfully + Close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid + Of their own loveliness some violets lie + That will not look the gold sun in the face + For fear of too much splendour,—ah! methinks it is a place + + Which should be trodden by Persephone + When wearied of the flowerless fields of Dis! + Or danced on by the lads of Arcady! + The hidden secret of eternal bliss + Known to the Grecian here a man might find, + Ah! you and I may find it now if Love and Sleep be kind. + + There are the flowers which mourning Herakles + Strewed on the tomb of Hylas, columbine, + Its white doves all a-flutter where the breeze + Kissed them too harshly, the small celandine, + That yellow-kirtled chorister of eve, + And lilac lady’s-smock,—but let them bloom alone, and leave + + Yon spirèd hollyhock red-crocketed + To sway its silent chimes, else must the bee, + Its little bellringer, go seek instead + Some other pleasaunce; the anemone + That weeps at daybreak, like a silly girl + Before her love, and hardly lets the butterflies unfurl + + Their painted wings beside it,—bid it pine + In pale virginity; the winter snow + Will suit it better than those lips of thine + Whose fires would but scorch it, rather go + And pluck that amorous flower which blooms alone, + Fed by the pander wind with dust of kisses not its own. + + The trumpet-mouths of red convolvulus + So dear to maidens, creamy meadow-sweet + Whiter than Juno’s throat and odorous + As all Arabia, hyacinths the feet + Of Huntress Dian would be loth to mar + For any dappled fawn,—pluck these, and those fond flowers which are + + Fairer than what Queen Venus trod upon + Beneath the pines of Ida, eucharis, + That morning star which does not dread the sun, + And budding marjoram which but to kiss + Would sweeten Cytheræa’s lips and make + Adonis jealous,—these for thy head,—and for thy girdle take + + Yon curving spray of purple clematis + Whose gorgeous dye outflames the Tyrian King, + And foxgloves with their nodding chalices, + But that one narciss which the startled Spring + Let from her kirtle fall when first she heard + In her own woods the wild tempestuous song of summer’s bird, + + Ah! leave it for a subtle memory + Of those sweet tremulous days of rain and sun, + When April laughed between her tears to see + The early primrose with shy footsteps run + From the gnarled oak-tree roots till all the wold, + Spite of its brown and trampled leaves, grew bright with shimmering + gold. + + Nay, pluck it too, it is not half so sweet + As thou thyself, my soul’s idolatry! + And when thou art a-wearied at thy feet + Shall oxlips weave their brightest tapestry, + For thee the woodbine shall forget its pride + And veil its tangled whorls, and thou shalt walk on daisies pied. + + And I will cut a reed by yonder spring + And make the wood-gods jealous, and old Pan + Wonder what young intruder dares to sing + In these still haunts, where never foot of man + Should tread at evening, lest he chance to spy + The marble limbs of Artemis and all her company. + + And I will tell thee why the jacinth wears + Such dread embroidery of dolorous moan, + And why the hapless nightingale forbears + To sing her song at noon, but weeps alone + When the fleet swallow sleeps, and rich men feast, + And why the laurel trembles when she sees the lightening east. + + And I will sing how sad Proserpina + Unto a grave and gloomy Lord was wed, + And lure the silver-breasted Helena + Back from the lotus meadows of the dead, + So shalt thou see that awful loveliness + For which two mighty Hosts met fearfully in war’s abyss! + + And then I’ll pipe to thee that Grecian tale + How Cynthia loves the lad Endymion, + And hidden in a grey and misty veil + Hies to the cliffs of Latmos once the Sun + Leaps from his ocean bed in fruitless chase + Of those pale flying feet which fade away in his embrace. + + And if my flute can breathe sweet melody, + We may behold Her face who long ago + Dwelt among men by the Ægean sea, + And whose sad house with pillaged portico + And friezeless wall and columns toppled down + Looms o’er the ruins of that fair and violet cinctured town. + + Spirit of Beauty! tarry still awhile, + They are not dead, thine ancient votaries; + Some few there are to whom thy radiant smile + Is better than a thousand victories, + Though all the nobly slain of Waterloo + Rise up in wrath against them! tarry still, there are a few + + Who for thy sake would give their manlihood + And consecrate their being; I at least + Have done so, made thy lips my daily food, + And in thy temples found a goodlier feast + Than this starved age can give me, spite of all + Its new-found creeds so sceptical and so dogmatical. + + Here not Cephissos, not Ilissos flows, + The woods of white Colonos are not here, + On our bleak hills the olive never blows, + No simple priest conducts his lowing steer + Up the steep marble way, nor through the town + Do laughing maidens bear to thee the crocus-flowered gown. + + Yet tarry! for the boy who loved thee best, + Whose very name should be a memory + To make thee linger, sleeps in silent rest + Beneath the Roman walls, and melody + Still mourns her sweetest lyre; none can play + The lute of Adonais: with his lips Song passed away. + + Nay, when Keats died the Muses still had left + One silver voice to sing his threnody, + But ah! too soon of it we were bereft + When on that riven night and stormy sea + Panthea claimed her singer as her own, + And slew the mouth that praised her; since which time we walk alone, + + Save for that fiery heart, that morning star + Of re-arisen England, whose clear eye + Saw from our tottering throne and waste of war + The grand Greek limbs of young Democracy + Rise mightily like Hesperus and bring + The great Republic! him at least thy love hath taught to sing, + + And he hath been with thee at Thessaly, + And seen white Atalanta fleet of foot + In passionless and fierce virginity + Hunting the tuskèd boar, his honied lute + Hath pierced the cavern of the hollow hill, + And Venus laughs to know one knee will bow before her still. + + And he hath kissed the lips of Proserpine, + And sung the Galilæan’s requiem, + That wounded forehead dashed with blood and wine + He hath discrowned, the Ancient Gods in him + Have found their last, most ardent worshipper, + And the new Sign grows grey and dim before its conqueror. + + Spirit of Beauty! tarry with us still, + It is not quenched the torch of poesy, + The star that shook above the Eastern hill + Holds unassailed its argent armoury + From all the gathering gloom and fretful fight— + O tarry with us still! for through the long and common night, + + Morris, our sweet and simple Chaucer’s child, + Dear heritor of Spenser’s tuneful reed, + With soft and sylvan pipe has oft beguiled + The weary soul of man in troublous need, + And from the far and flowerless fields of ice + Has brought fair flowers to make an earthly paradise. + + We know them all, Gudrun the strong men’s bride, + Aslaug and Olafson we know them all, + How giant Grettir fought and Sigurd died, + And what enchantment held the king in thrall + When lonely Brynhild wrestled with the powers + That war against all passion, ah! how oft through summer hours, + + Long listless summer hours when the noon + Being enamoured of a damask rose + Forgets to journey westward, till the moon + The pale usurper of its tribute grows + From a thin sickle to a silver shield + And chides its loitering car—how oft, in some cool grassy field + + Far from the cricket-ground and noisy eight, + At Bagley, where the rustling bluebells come + Almost before the blackbird finds a mate + And overstay the swallow, and the hum + Of many murmuring bees flits through the leaves, + Have I lain poring on the dreamy tales his fancy weaves, + + And through their unreal woes and mimic pain + Wept for myself, and so was purified, + And in their simple mirth grew glad again; + For as I sailed upon that pictured tide + The strength and splendour of the storm was mine + Without the storm’s red ruin, for the singer is divine; + + The little laugh of water falling down + Is not so musical, the clammy gold + Close hoarded in the tiny waxen town + Has less of sweetness in it, and the old + Half-withered reeds that waved in Arcady + Touched by his lips break forth again to fresher harmony. + + Spirit of Beauty, tarry yet awhile! + Although the cheating merchants of the mart + With iron roads profane our lovely isle, + And break on whirling wheels the limbs of Art, + Ay! though the crowded factories beget + The blindworm Ignorance that slays the soul, O tarry yet! + + For One at least there is,—He bears his name + From Dante and the seraph Gabriel,— + Whose double laurels burn with deathless flame + To light thine altar; He too loves thee well, + Who saw old Merlin lured in Vivien’s snare, + And the white feet of angels coming down the golden stair, + + Loves thee so well, that all the World for him + A gorgeous-coloured vestiture must wear, + And Sorrow take a purple diadem, + Or else be no more Sorrow, and Despair + Gild its own thorns, and Pain, like Adon, be + Even in anguish beautiful;—such is the empery + + Which Painters hold, and such the heritage + This gentle solemn Spirit doth possess, + Being a better mirror of his age + In all his pity, love, and weariness, + Than those who can but copy common things, + And leave the Soul unpainted with its mighty questionings. + + But they are few, and all romance has flown, + And men can prophesy about the sun, + And lecture on his arrows—how, alone, + Through a waste void the soulless atoms run, + How from each tree its weeping nymph has fled, + And that no more ’mid English reeds a Naiad shows her head. + + Methinks these new Actæons boast too soon + That they have spied on beauty; what if we + Have analysed the rainbow, robbed the moon + Of her most ancient, chastest mystery, + Shall I, the last Endymion, lose all hope + Because rude eyes peer at my mistress through a telescope! + + What profit if this scientific age + Burst through our gates with all its retinue + Of modern miracles! Can it assuage + One lover’s breaking heart? what can it do + To make one life more beautiful, one day + More godlike in its period? but now the Age of Clay + + Returns in horrid cycle, and the earth + Hath borne again a noisy progeny + Of ignorant Titans, whose ungodly birth + Hurls them against the august hierarchy + Which sat upon Olympus; to the Dust + They have appealed, and to that barren arbiter they must + + Repair for judgment; let them, if they can, + From Natural Warfare and insensate Chance, + Create the new Ideal rule for man! + Methinks that was not my inheritance; + For I was nurtured otherwise, my soul + Passes from higher heights of life to a more supreme goal. + + Lo! while we spake the earth did turn away + Her visage from the God, and Hecate’s boat + Rose silver-laden, till the jealous day + Blew all its torches out: I did not note + The waning hours, to young Endymions + Time’s palsied fingers count in vain his rosary of suns! + + Mark how the yellow iris wearily + Leans back its throat, as though it would be kissed + By its false chamberer, the dragon-fly, + Who, like a blue vein on a girl’s white wrist, + Sleeps on that snowy primrose of the night, + Which ’gins to flush with crimson shame, and die beneath the light. + + Come let us go, against the pallid shield + Of the wan sky the almond blossoms gleam, + The corncrake nested in the unmown field + Answers its mate, across the misty stream + On fitful wing the startled curlews fly, + And in his sedgy bed the lark, for joy that Day is nigh, + + Scatters the pearlèd dew from off the grass, + In tremulous ecstasy to greet the sun, + Who soon in gilded panoply will pass + Forth from yon orange-curtained pavilion + Hung in the burning east: see, the red rim + O’ertops the expectant hills! it is the God! for love of him + + Already the shrill lark is out of sight, + Flooding with waves of song this silent dell,— + Ah! there is something more in that bird’s flight + Than could be tested in a crucible!— + But the air freshens, let us go, why soon + The woodmen will be here; how we have lived this night of June! + + + +ROSA MYSTICA + + +REQUIESCAT + + + TREAD lightly, she is near + Under the snow, + Speak gently, she can hear + The daisies grow. + + All her bright golden hair + Tarnished with rust, + She that was young and fair + Fallen to dust. + + Lily-like, white as snow, + She hardly knew + She was a woman, so + Sweetly she grew. + + Coffin-board, heavy stone, + Lie on her breast, + I vex my heart alone, + She is at rest. + + Peace, Peace, she cannot hear + Lyre or sonnet, + All my life’s buried here, + Heap earth upon it. + +AVIGNON. + + +SONNET ON APPROACHING ITALY + + + I REACHED the Alps: the soul within me burned, + Italia, my Italia, at thy name: + And when from out the mountain’s heart I came + And saw the land for which my life had yearned, + I laughed as one who some great prize had earned: + And musing on the marvel of thy fame + I watched the day, till marked with wounds of flame + The turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned. + The pine-trees waved as waves a woman’s hair, + And in the orchards every twining spray + Was breaking into flakes of blossoming foam: + But when I knew that far away at Rome + In evil bonds a second Peter lay, + I wept to see the land so very fair. + +TURIN. + + +SAN MINIATO + + + SEE, I have climbed the mountain side + Up to this holy house of God, + Where once that Angel-Painter trod + Who saw the heavens opened wide, + + And throned upon the crescent moon + The Virginal white Queen of Grace,— + Mary! could I but see thy face + Death could not come at all too soon. + + O crowned by God with thorns and pain! + Mother of Christ! O mystic wife! + My heart is weary of this life + And over-sad to sing again. + + O crowned by God with love and flame! + O crowned by Christ the Holy One! + O listen ere the searching sun + Show to the world my sin and shame. + + +AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA + + + WAS this His coming! I had hoped to see + A scene of wondrous glory, as was told + Of some great God who in a rain of gold + Broke open bars and fell on Danae: + Or a dread vision as when Semele + Sickening for love and unappeased desire + Prayed to see God’s clear body, and the fire + Caught her brown limbs and slew her utterly: + With such glad dreams I sought this holy place, + And now with wondering eyes and heart I stand + Before this supreme mystery of Love: + Some kneeling girl with passionless pale face, + An angel with a lily in his hand, + And over both the white wings of a Dove. + +FLORENCE. + + +ITALIA + + + ITALIA! thou art fallen, though with sheen + Of battle-spears thy clamorous armies stride + From the north Alps to the Sicilian tide! + Ay! fallen, though the nations hail thee Queen + Because rich gold in every town is seen, + And on thy sapphire-lake in tossing pride + Of wind-filled vans thy myriad galleys ride + Beneath one flag of red and white and green. + O Fair and Strong! O Strong and Fair in vain! + Look southward where Rome’s desecrated town + Lies mourning for her God-anointed King! + Look heaven-ward! shall God allow this thing? + Nay! but some flame-girt Raphael shall come down, + And smite the Spoiler with the sword of pain. + +VENICE. + + +SONNET + + + WRITTEN IN HOLY WEEK AT GENOA + + I WANDERED through Scoglietto’s far retreat, + The oranges on each o’erhanging spray + Burned as bright lamps of gold to shame the day; + Some startled bird with fluttering wings and fleet + Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet + Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay: + And the curved waves that streaked the great green bay + Laughed i’ the sun, and life seemed very sweet. + Outside the young boy-priest passed singing clear, + ‘Jesus the son of Mary has been slain, + O come and fill His sepulchre with flowers.’ + Ah, God! Ah, God! those dear Hellenic hours + Had drowned all memory of Thy bitter pain, + The Cross, the Crown, the Soldiers and the Spear. + + +ROME UNVISITED + + + I. + + THE corn has turned from grey to red, + Since first my spirit wandered forth + From the drear cities of the north, + And to Italia’s mountains fled. + + And here I set my face towards home, + For all my pilgrimage is done, + Although, methinks, yon blood-red sun + Marshals the way to Holy Rome. + + O Blessed Lady, who dost hold + Upon the seven hills thy reign! + O Mother without blot or stain, + Crowned with bright crowns of triple gold! + + O Roma, Roma, at thy feet + I lay this barren gift of song! + For, ah! the way is steep and long + That leads unto thy sacred street. + + II. + + AND yet what joy it were for me + To turn my feet unto the south, + And journeying towards the Tiber mouth + To kneel again at Fiesole! + + And wandering through the tangled pines + That break the gold of Arno’s stream, + To see the purple mist and gleam + Of morning on the Apennines + + By many a vineyard-hidden home, + Orchard and olive-garden grey, + Till from the drear Campagna’s way + The seven hills bear up the dome! + + III. + + A PILGRIM from the northern seas— + What joy for me to seek alone + The wondrous temple and the throne + Of him who holds the awful keys! + + When, bright with purple and with gold + Come priest and holy cardinal, + And borne above the heads of all + The gentle Shepherd of the Fold. + + O joy to see before I die + The only God-anointed king, + And hear the silver trumpets ring + A triumph as he passes by! + + Or at the brazen-pillared shrine + Holds high the mystic sacrifice, + And shows his God to human eyes + Beneath the veil of bread and wine. + + IV. + + FOR lo, what changes time can bring! + The cycles of revolving years + May free my heart from all its fears, + And teach my lips a song to sing. + + Before yon field of trembling gold + Is garnered into dusty sheaves, + Or ere the autumn’s scarlet leaves + Flutter as birds adown the wold, + + I may have run the glorious race, + And caught the torch while yet aflame, + And called upon the holy name + Of Him who now doth hide His face. + +ARONA. + + +URBS SACRA ÆTERNA + + + ROME! what a scroll of History thine has been; + In the first days thy sword republican + Ruled the whole world for many an age’s span: + Then of the peoples wert thou royal Queen, + Till in thy streets the bearded Goth was seen; + And now upon thy walls the breezes fan + (Ah, city crowned by God, discrowned by man!) + The hated flag of red and white and green. + When was thy glory! when in search for power + Thine eagles flew to greet the double sun, + And the wild nations shuddered at thy rod? + Nay, but thy glory tarried for this hour, + When pilgrims kneel before the Holy One, + The prisoned shepherd of the Church of God. + +MONTRE MARIO. + + +SONNET + + + ON HEARING THE DIES IRÆ SUNG IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL + + NAY, Lord, not thus! white lilies in the spring, + Sad olive-groves, or silver-breasted dove, + Teach me more clearly of Thy life and love + Than terrors of red flame and thundering. + The hillside vines dear memories of Thee bring: + A bird at evening flying to its nest + Tells me of One who had no place of rest: + I think it is of Thee the sparrows sing. + Come rather on some autumn afternoon, + When red and brown are burnished on the leaves, + And the fields echo to the gleaner’s song, + Come when the splendid fulness of the moon + Looks down upon the rows of golden sheaves, + And reap Thy harvest: we have waited long. + + +EASTER DAY + + + THE silver trumpets rang across the Dome: + The people knelt upon the ground with awe: + And borne upon the necks of men I saw, + Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome. + Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam, + And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red, + Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head: + In splendour and in light the Pope passed home. + My heart stole back across wide wastes of years + To One who wandered by a lonely sea, + And sought in vain for any place of rest: + ‘Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest. + I, only I, must wander wearily, + And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.’ + + +E TENEBRIS + + + COME down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand, + For I am drowning in a stormier sea + Than Simon on Thy lake of Galilee: + The wine of life is spilt upon the sand, + My heart is as some famine-murdered land + Whence all good things have perished utterly, + And well I know my soul in Hell must lie + If I this night before God’s throne should stand. + ‘He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase, + Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name + From morn to noon on Carmel’s smitten height.’ + Nay, peace, I shall behold, before the night, + The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame, + The wounded hands, the weary human face. + + +VITA NUOVA + + + I STOOD by the unvintageable sea + Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray; + The long red fires of the dying day + Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily; + And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee: + ‘Alas!’ I cried, ‘my life is full of pain, + And who can garner fruit or golden grain + From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!’ + My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw, + Nathless I threw them as my final cast + Into the sea, and waited for the end. + When lo! a sudden glory! and I saw + From the black waters of my tortured past + The argent splendour of white limbs ascend! + + +MADONNA MIA + + + A LILY-GIRL, not made for this world’s pain, + With brown, soft hair close braided by her ears, + And longing eyes half veiled by slumberous tears + Like bluest water seen through mists of rain: + Pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain, + Red underlip drawn in for fear of love, + And white throat, whiter than the silvered dove, + Through whose wan marble creeps one purple vein. + Yet, though my lips shall praise her without cease, + Even to kiss her feet I am not bold, + Being o’ershadowed by the wings of awe, + Like Dante, when he stood with Beatrice + Beneath the flaming Lion’s breast, and saw + The seventh Crystal, and the Stair of Gold. + + +THE NEW HELEN + + + WHERE hast thou been since round the walls of Troy + The sons of God fought in that great emprise? + Why dost thou walk our common earth again? + Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy, + His purple galley and his Tyrian men + And treacherous Aphrodite’s mocking eyes? + For surely it was thou, who, like a star + Hung in the silver silence of the night, + Didst lure the Old World’s chivalry and might + Into the clamorous crimson waves of war! + + Or didst thou rule the fire-laden moon? + In amorous Sidon was thy temple built + Over the light and laughter of the sea + Where, behind lattice scarlet-wrought and gilt, + Some brown-limbed girl did weave thee tapestry, + All through the waste and wearied hours of noon; + Till her wan cheek with flame of passion burned, + And she rose up the sea-washed lips to kiss + Of some glad Cyprian sailor, safe returned + From Calpé and the cliffs of Herakles! + + No! thou art Helen, and none other one! + It was for thee that young Sarpedôn died, + And Memnôn’s manhood was untimely spent; + It was for thee gold-crested Hector tried + With Thetis’ child that evil race to run, + In the last year of thy beleaguerment; + Ay! even now the glory of thy fame + Burns in those fields of trampled asphodel, + Where the high lords whom Ilion knew so well + Clash ghostly shields, and call upon thy name. + + Where hast thou been? in that enchanted land + Whose slumbering vales forlorn Calypso knew, + Where never mower rose at break of day + But all unswathed the trammelling grasses grew, + And the sad shepherd saw the tall corn stand + Till summer’s red had changed to withered grey? + Didst thou lie there by some Lethæan stream + Deep brooding on thine ancient memory, + The crash of broken spears, the fiery gleam + From shivered helm, the Grecian battle-cry? + + Nay, thou wert hidden in that hollow hill + With one who is forgotten utterly, + That discrowned Queen men call the Erycine; + Hidden away that never mightst thou see + The face of Her, before whose mouldering shrine + To-day at Rome the silent nations kneel; + Who gat from Love no joyous gladdening, + But only Love’s intolerable pain, + Only a sword to pierce her heart in twain, + Only the bitterness of child-bearing. + + The lotus-leaves which heal the wounds of Death + Lie in thy hand; O, be thou kind to me, + While yet I know the summer of my days; + For hardly can my tremulous lips draw breath + To fill the silver trumpet with thy praise, + So bowed am I before thy mystery; + So bowed and broken on Love’s terrible wheel, + That I have lost all hope and heart to sing, + Yet care I not what ruin time may bring + If in thy temple thou wilt let me kneel. + + Alas, alas, thou wilt not tarry here, + But, like that bird, the servant of the sun, + Who flies before the north wind and the night, + So wilt thou fly our evil land and drear, + Back to the tower of thine old delight, + And the red lips of young Euphorion; + Nor shall I ever see thy face again, + But in this poisonous garden-close must stay, + Crowning my brows with the thorn-crown of pain, + Till all my loveless life shall pass away. + + O Helen! Helen! Helen! yet a while, + Yet for a little while, O, tarry here, + Till the dawn cometh and the shadows flee! + For in the gladsome sunlight of thy smile + Of heaven or hell I have no thought or fear, + Seeing I know no other god but thee: + No other god save him, before whose feet + In nets of gold the tired planets move, + The incarnate spirit of spiritual love + Who in thy body holds his joyous seat. + + Thou wert not born as common women are! + But, girt with silver splendour of the foam, + Didst from the depths of sapphire seas arise! + And at thy coming some immortal star, + Bearded with flame, blazed in the Eastern skies, + And waked the shepherds on thine island-home. + Thou shalt not die: no asps of Egypt creep + Close at thy heels to taint the delicate air; + No sullen-blooming poppies stain thy hair, + Those scarlet heralds of eternal sleep. + + Lily of love, pure and inviolate! + Tower of ivory! red rose of fire! + Thou hast come down our darkness to illume: + For we, close-caught in the wide nets of Fate, + Wearied with waiting for the World’s Desire, + Aimlessly wandered in the House of gloom, + Aimlessly sought some slumberous anodyne + For wasted lives, for lingering wretchedness, + Till we beheld thy re-arisen shrine, + And the white glory of thy loveliness. + + + +THE BURDEN OF ITYS + + + THIS English Thames is holier far than Rome, + Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea + Breaking across the woodland, with the foam + Of meadow-sweet and white anemone + To fleck their blue waves,—God is likelier there + Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear! + + Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take + Yon creamy lily for their pavilion + Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake + A lazy pike lies basking in the sun, + His eyes half shut,—he is some mitred old + Bishop in _partibus_! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold. + + The wind the restless prisoner of the trees + Does well for Palæstrina, one would say + The mighty master’s hands were on the keys + Of the Maria organ, which they play + When early on some sapphire Easter morn + In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne + + From his dark House out to the Balcony + Above the bronze gates and the crowded square, + Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy + To toss their silver lances in the air, + And stretching out weak hands to East and West + In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest. + + Is not yon lingering orange after-glow + That stays to vex the moon more fair than all + Rome’s lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago + I knelt before some crimson Cardinal + Who bare the Host across the Esquiline, + And now—those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine. + + The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous + With the last shower, sweeter perfume bring + Through this cool evening than the odorous + Flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing, + When the grey priest unlocks the curtained shrine, + And makes God’s body from the common fruit of corn and vine. + + Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the mass + Were out of tune now, for a small brown bird + Sings overhead, and through the long cool grass + I see that throbbing throat which once I heard + On starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady, + Once where the white and crescent sand of Salamis meets sea. + + Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves + At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe, + And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves + Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe + To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait + Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate. + + And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas, + And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay, + And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees + That round and round the linden blossoms play; + And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall, + And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall, + + And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring + While the last violet loiters by the well, + And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing + The song of Linus through a sunny dell + Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold + And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold. + + And sweet with young Lycoris to recline + In some Illyrian valley far away, + Where canopied on herbs amaracine + We too might waste the summer-trancèd day + Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry, + While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea. + + But sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot + Of some long-hidden God should ever tread + The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute + Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head + By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed + To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed. + + Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister, + Though what thou sing’st be thine own requiem! + Tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler + Of thine own tragedies! do not contemn + These unfamiliar haunts, this English field, + For many a lovely coronal our northern isle can yield + + Which Grecian meadows know not, many a rose + Which all day long in vales Æolian + A lad might seek in vain for over-grows + Our hedges like a wanton courtesan + Unthrifty of its beauty; lilies too + Ilissos never mirrored star our streams, and cockles blue + + Dot the green wheat which, though they are the signs + For swallows going south, would never spread + Their azure tents between the Attic vines; + Even that little weed of ragged red, + Which bids the robin pipe, in Arcady + Would be a trespasser, and many an unsung elegy + + Sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding Thames + Which to awake were sweeter ravishment + Than ever Syrinx wept for; diadems + Of brown bee-studded orchids which were meant + For Cytheræa’s brows are hidden here + Unknown to Cytheræa, and by yonder pasturing steer + + There is a tiny yellow daffodil, + The butterfly can see it from afar, + Although one summer evening’s dew could fill + Its little cup twice over ere the star + Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold + And be no prodigal; each leaf is flecked with spotted gold + + As if Jove’s gorgeous leman Danae + Hot from his gilded arms had stooped to kiss + The trembling petals, or young Mercury + Low-flying to the dusky ford of Dis + Had with one feather of his pinions + Just brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its suns + + Is hardly thicker than the gossamer, + Or poor Arachne’s silver tapestry,— + Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre + Of One I sometime worshipped, but to me + It seems to bring diviner memories + Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas, + + Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where + On the clear river’s marge Narcissus lies, + The tangle of the forest in his hair, + The silence of the woodland in his eyes, + Wooing that drifting imagery which is + No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis + + Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both, + Fed by two fires and unsatisfied + Through their excess, each passion being loth + For love’s own sake to leave the other’s side + Yet killing love by staying; memories + Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees, + + Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf + At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew + Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf + And called false Theseus back again nor knew + That Dionysos on an amber pard + Was close behind her; memories of what Mæonia’s bard + + With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy, + Queen Helen lying in the ivory room, + And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy + Trimming with dainty hand his helmet’s plume, + And far away the moil, the shout, the groan, + As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax hurled the stone; + + Of wingèd Perseus with his flawless sword + Cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch, + And all those tales imperishably stored + In little Grecian urns, freightage more rich + Than any gaudy galleon of Spain + Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring back again, + + For well I know they are not dead at all, + The ancient Gods of Grecian poesy: + They are asleep, and when they hear thee call + Will wake and think ’t is very Thessaly, + This Thames the Daulian waters, this cool glade + The yellow-irised mead where once young Itys laughed and played. + + If it was thou dear jasmine-cradled bird + Who from the leafy stillness of thy throne + Sang to the wondrous boy, until he heard + The horn of Atalanta faintly blown + Across the Cumnor hills, and wandering + Through Bagley wood at evening found the Attic poets’ spring,— + + Ah! tiny sober-suited advocate + That pleadest for the moon against the day! + If thou didst make the shepherd seek his mate + On that sweet questing, when Proserpina + Forgot it was not Sicily and leant + Across the mossy Sandford stile in ravished wonderment,— + + Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood! + If ever thou didst soothe with melody + One of that little clan, that brotherhood + Which loved the morning-star of Tuscany + More than the perfect sun of Raphael + And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well. + + Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young, + Let elemental things take form again, + And the old shapes of Beauty walk among + The simple garths and open crofts, as when + The son of Leto bare the willow rod, + And the soft sheep and shaggy goats followed the boyish God. + + Sing on! sing on! and Bacchus will be here + Astride upon his gorgeous Indian throne, + And over whimpering tigers shake the spear + With yellow ivy crowned and gummy cone, + While at his side the wanton Bassarid + Will throw the lion by the mane and catch the mountain kid! + + Sing on! and I will wear the leopard skin, + And steal the moonèd wings of Ashtaroth, + Upon whose icy chariot we could win + Cithæron in an hour ere the froth + Has over-brimmed the wine-vat or the Faun + Ceased from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn + + Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest, + And warned the bat to close its filmy vans, + Some Mænad girl with vine-leaves on her breast + Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans + So softly that the little nested thrush + Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush + + Down the green valley where the fallen dew + Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store, + Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew + Trample the loosestrife down along the shore, + And where their hornèd master sits in state + Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate! + + Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face + Through the cool leaves Apollo’s lad will come, + The Tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase + Adown the chestnut-copses all a-bloom, + And ivory-limbed, grey-eyed, with look of pride, + After yon velvet-coated deer the virgin maid will ride. + + Sing on! and I the dying boy will see + Stain with his purple blood the waxen bell + That overweighs the jacinth, and to me + The wretched Cyprian her woe will tell, + And I will kiss her mouth and streaming eyes, + And lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where Adon lies! + + Cry out aloud on Itys! memory + That foster-brother of remorse and pain + Drops poison in mine ear,—O to be free, + To burn one’s old ships! and to launch again + Into the white-plumed battle of the waves + And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered caves! + + O for Medea with her poppied spell! + O for the secret of the Colchian shrine! + O for one leaf of that pale asphodel + Which binds the tired brows of Proserpine, + And sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she + Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea, + + Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased + From lily to lily on the level mead, + Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste + The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed, + Ere the black steeds had harried her away + Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day. + + O for one midnight and as paramour + The Venus of the little Melian farm! + O that some antique statue for one hour + Might wake to passion, and that I could charm + The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair, + Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair! + + Sing on! sing on! I would be drunk with life, + Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth, + I would forget the wearying wasted strife, + The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth, + The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer, + The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air! + + Sing on! sing on! O feathered Niobe, + Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal + From joy its sweetest music, not as we + Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal + Our too untented wounds, and do but keep + Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and murder pillowed sleep. + + Sing louder yet, why must I still behold + The wan white face of that deserted Christ, + Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold, + Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed, + And now in mute and marble misery + Sits in his lone dishonoured House and weeps, perchance for me? + + O Memory cast down thy wreathèd shell! + Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene! + O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell + Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly! + Cease, Philomel, thou dost the forest wrong + To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song! + + Cease, cease, or if ’t is anguish to be dumb + Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air, + Whose jocund carelessness doth more become + This English woodland than thy keen despair, + Ah! cease and let the north wind bear thy lay + Back to the rocky hills of Thrace, the stormy Daulian bay. + + A moment more, the startled leaves had stirred, + Endymion would have passed across the mead + Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard + Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed + To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid + Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid. + + A moment more, the waking dove had cooed, + The silver daughter of the silver sea + With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed + Her wanton from the chase, and Dryope + Had thrust aside the branches of her oak + To see the lusty gold-haired lad rein in his snorting yoke. + + A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss + Pale Daphne just awakening from the swoon + Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis + Had bared his barren beauty to the moon, + And through the vale with sad voluptuous smile + Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the Nile + + Down leaning from his black and clustering hair, + To shade those slumberous eyelids’ caverned bliss, + Or else on yonder grassy slope with bare + High-tuniced limbs unravished Artemis + Had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer + From his green ambuscade with shrill halloo and pricking spear. + + Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still! + O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing! + O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill + Come not with such despondent answering! + No more thou wingèd Marsyas complain, + Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain! + + It was a dream, the glade is tenantless, + No soft Ionian laughter moves the air, + The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness, + And from the copse left desolate and bare + Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry, + Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody + + So sad, that one might think a human heart + Brake in each separate note, a quality + Which music sometimes has, being the Art + Which is most nigh to tears and memory; + Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear? + Thy sister doth not haunt these fields, Pandion is not here, + + Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade, + No woven web of bloody heraldries, + But mossy dells for roving comrades made, + Warm valleys where the tired student lies + With half-shut book, and many a winding walk + Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk. + + The harmless rabbit gambols with its young + Across the trampled towing-path, where late + A troop of laughing boys in jostling throng + Cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight; + The gossamer, with ravelled silver threads, + Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-eaved sheds + + Of the lone Farm a flickering light shines out + Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock + Back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout + Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock, + And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill, + And the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill. + + The heron passes homeward to the mere, + The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees, + Gold world by world the silent stars appear, + And like a blossom blown before the breeze + A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky, + Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody. + + She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed, + She knows Endymion is not far away; + ’Tis I, ’tis I, whose soul is as the reed + Which has no message of its own to play, + So pipes another’s bidding, it is I, + Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery. + + Ah! the brown bird has ceased: one exquisite trill + About the sombre woodland seems to cling + Dying in music, else the air is still, + So still that one might hear the bat’s small wing + Wander and wheel above the pines, or tell + Each tiny dew-drop dripping from the bluebell’s brimming cell. + + And far away across the lengthening wold, + Across the willowy flats and thickets brown, + Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with tremulous gold + Marks the long High Street of the little town, + And warns me to return; I must not wait, + Hark! ’t is the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate. + + + +WIND FLOWERS + + +IMPRESSION DU MATIN + + + THE Thames nocturne of blue and gold + Changed to a Harmony in grey: + A barge with ochre-coloured hay + Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold + + The yellow fog came creeping down + The bridges, till the houses’ walls + Seemed changed to shadows and St. Paul’s + Loomed like a bubble o’er the town. + + Then suddenly arose the clang + Of waking life; the streets were stirred + With country waggons: and a bird + Flew to the glistening roofs and sang. + + But one pale woman all alone, + The daylight kissing her wan hair, + Loitered beneath the gas lamps’ flare, + With lips of flame and heart of stone. + + +MAGDALEN WALKS + + + THE little white clouds are racing over the sky, + And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March, + The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch + Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by. + + A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze, + The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth, + The birds are singing for joy of the Spring’s glad birth, + Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees. + + And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring, + And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar, + And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire + Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring. + + And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love + Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green, + And the gloom of the wych-elm’s hollow is lit with the iris sheen + Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove. + + See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there, + Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew, + And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue! + The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air. + + +ATHANASIA + + + TO that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught + Of all the great things men have saved from Time, + The withered body of a girl was brought + Dead ere the world’s glad youth had touched its prime, + And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid + In the dim womb of some black pyramid. + + But when they had unloosed the linen band + Which swathed the Egyptian’s body,—lo! was found + Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand + A little seed, which sown in English ground + Did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear + And spread rich odours through our spring-tide air. + + With such strange arts this flower did allure + That all forgotten was the asphodel, + And the brown bee, the lily’s paramour, + Forsook the cup where he was wont to dwell, + For not a thing of earth it seemed to be, + But stolen from some heavenly Arcady. + + In vain the sad narcissus, wan and white + At its own beauty, hung across the stream, + The purple dragon-fly had no delight + With its gold dust to make his wings a-gleam, + Ah! no delight the jasmine-bloom to kiss, + Or brush the rain-pearls from the eucharis. + + For love of it the passionate nightingale + Forgot the hills of Thrace, the cruel king, + And the pale dove no longer cared to sail + Through the wet woods at time of blossoming, + But round this flower of Egypt sought to float, + With silvered wing and amethystine throat. + + While the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue + A cooling wind crept from the land of snows, + And the warm south with tender tears of dew + Drenched its white leaves when Hesperos up-rose + Amid those sea-green meadows of the sky + On which the scarlet bars of sunset lie. + + But when o’er wastes of lily-haunted field + The tired birds had stayed their amorous tune, + And broad and glittering like an argent shield + High in the sapphire heavens hung the moon, + Did no strange dream or evil memory make + Each tremulous petal of its blossoms shake? + + Ah no! to this bright flower a thousand years + Seemed but the lingering of a summer’s day, + It never knew the tide of cankering fears + Which turn a boy’s gold hair to withered grey, + The dread desire of death it never knew, + Or how all folk that they were born must rue. + + For we to death with pipe and dancing go, + Nor would we pass the ivory gate again, + As some sad river wearied of its flow + Through the dull plains, the haunts of common men, + Leaps lover-like into the terrible sea! + And counts it gain to die so gloriously. + + We mar our lordly strength in barren strife + With the world’s legions led by clamorous care, + It never feels decay but gathers life + From the pure sunlight and the supreme air, + We live beneath Time’s wasting sovereignty, + It is the child of all eternity. + + +SERENADE + + + (FOR MUSIC) + + THE western wind is blowing fair + Across the dark Ægean sea, + And at the secret marble stair + My Tyrian galley waits for thee. + Come down! the purple sail is spread, + The watchman sleeps within the town, + O leave thy lily-flowered bed, + O Lady mine come down, come down! + + She will not come, I know her well, + Of lover’s vows she hath no care, + And little good a man can tell + Of one so cruel and so fair. + True love is but a woman’s toy, + They never know the lover’s pain, + And I who loved as loves a boy + Must love in vain, must love in vain. + + O noble pilot, tell me true, + Is that the sheen of golden hair? + Or is it but the tangled dew + That binds the passion-flowers there? + Good sailor come and tell me now + Is that my Lady’s lily hand? + Or is it but the gleaming prow, + Or is it but the silver sand? + + No! no! ’tis not the tangled dew, + ’Tis not the silver-fretted sand, + It is my own dear Lady true + With golden hair and lily hand! + O noble pilot, steer for Troy, + Good sailor, ply the labouring oar, + This is the Queen of life and joy + Whom we must bear from Grecian shore! + + The waning sky grows faint and blue, + It wants an hour still of day, + Aboard! aboard! my gallant crew, + O Lady mine, away! away! + O noble pilot, steer for Troy, + Good sailor, ply the labouring oar, + O loved as only loves a boy! + O loved for ever evermore! + + +ENDYMION + + + (FOR MUSIC) + + THE apple trees are hung with gold, + And birds are loud in Arcady, + The sheep lie bleating in the fold, + The wild goat runs across the wold, + But yesterday his love he told, + I know he will come back to me. + O rising moon! O Lady moon! + Be you my lover’s sentinel, + You cannot choose but know him well, + For he is shod with purple shoon, + You cannot choose but know my love, + For he a shepherd’s crook doth bear, + And he is soft as any dove, + And brown and curly is his hair. + + The turtle now has ceased to call + Upon her crimson-footed groom, + The grey wolf prowls about the stall, + The lily’s singing seneschal + Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all + The violet hills are lost in gloom. + O risen moon! O holy moon! + Stand on the top of Helice, + And if my own true love you see, + Ah! if you see the purple shoon, + The hazel crook, the lad’s brown hair, + The goat-skin wrapped about his arm, + Tell him that I am waiting where + The rushlight glimmers in the Farm. + + The falling dew is cold and chill, + And no bird sings in Arcady, + The little fauns have left the hill, + Even the tired daffodil + Has closed its gilded doors, and still + My lover comes not back to me. + False moon! False moon! O waning moon! + Where is my own true lover gone, + Where are the lips vermilion, + The shepherd’s crook, the purple shoon? + Why spread that silver pavilion, + Why wear that veil of drifting mist? + Ah! thou hast young Endymion, + Thou hast the lips that should be kissed! + + +LA BELLA DONNA DELLA MIA MENTE + + + MY limbs are wasted with a flame, + My feet are sore with travelling, + For, calling on my Lady’s name, + My lips have now forgot to sing. + + O Linnet in the wild-rose brake + Strain for my Love thy melody, + O Lark sing louder for love’s sake, + My gentle Lady passeth by. + + She is too fair for any man + To see or hold his heart’s delight, + Fairer than Queen or courtesan + Or moonlit water in the night. + + Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves, + (Green leaves upon her golden hair!) + Green grasses through the yellow sheaves + Of autumn corn are not more fair. + + Her little lips, more made to kiss + Than to cry bitterly for pain, + Are tremulous as brook-water is, + Or roses after evening rain. + + Her neck is like white melilote + Flushing for pleasure of the sun, + The throbbing of the linnet’s throat + Is not so sweet to look upon. + + As a pomegranate, cut in twain, + White-seeded, is her crimson mouth, + Her cheeks are as the fading stain + Where the peach reddens to the south. + + O twining hands! O delicate + White body made for love and pain! + O House of love! O desolate + Pale flower beaten by the rain! + + +CHANSON + + + A RING of gold and a milk-white dove + Are goodly gifts for thee, + And a hempen rope for your own love + To hang upon a tree. + + For you a House of Ivory, + (Roses are white in the rose-bower)! + A narrow bed for me to lie, + (White, O white, is the hemlock flower)! + + Myrtle and jessamine for you, + (O the red rose is fair to see)! + For me the cypress and the rue, + (Finest of all is rosemary)! + + For you three lovers of your hand, + (Green grass where a man lies dead)! + For me three paces on the sand, + (Plant lilies at my head)! + + + +CHARMIDES + + + I. + + HE was a Grecian lad, who coming home + With pulpy figs and wine from Sicily + Stood at his galley’s prow, and let the foam + Blow through his crisp brown curls unconsciously, + And holding wave and wind in boy’s despite + Peered from his dripping seat across the wet and stormy night. + + Till with the dawn he saw a burnished spear + Like a thin thread of gold against the sky, + And hoisted sail, and strained the creaking gear, + And bade the pilot head her lustily + Against the nor’west gale, and all day long + Held on his way, and marked the rowers’ time with measured song. + + And when the faint Corinthian hills were red + Dropped anchor in a little sandy bay, + And with fresh boughs of olive crowned his head, + And brushed from cheek and throat the hoary spray, + And washed his limbs with oil, and from the hold + Brought out his linen tunic and his sandals brazen-soled, + + And a rich robe stained with the fishers’ juice + Which of some swarthy trader he had bought + Upon the sunny quay at Syracuse, + And was with Tyrian broideries inwrought, + And by the questioning merchants made his way + Up through the soft and silver woods, and when the labouring day + + Had spun its tangled web of crimson cloud, + Clomb the high hill, and with swift silent feet + Crept to the fane unnoticed by the crowd + Of busy priests, and from some dark retreat + Watched the young swains his frolic playmates bring + The firstling of their little flock, and the shy shepherd fling + + The crackling salt upon the flame, or hang + His studded crook against the temple wall + To Her who keeps away the ravenous fang + Of the base wolf from homestead and from stall; + And then the clear-voiced maidens ’gan to sing, + And to the altar each man brought some goodly offering, + + A beechen cup brimming with milky foam, + A fair cloth wrought with cunning imagery + Of hounds in chase, a waxen honey-comb + Dripping with oozy gold which scarce the bee + Had ceased from building, a black skin of oil + Meet for the wrestlers, a great boar the fierce and white-tusked spoil + + Stolen from Artemis that jealous maid + To please Athena, and the dappled hide + Of a tall stag who in some mountain glade + Had met the shaft; and then the herald cried, + And from the pillared precinct one by one + Went the glad Greeks well pleased that they their simple vows had + done. + + And the old priest put out the waning fires + Save that one lamp whose restless ruby glowed + For ever in the cell, and the shrill lyres + Came fainter on the wind, as down the road + In joyous dance these country folk did pass, + And with stout hands the warder closed the gates of polished brass. + + Long time he lay and hardly dared to breathe, + And heard the cadenced drip of spilt-out wine, + And the rose-petals falling from the wreath + As the night breezes wandered through the shrine, + And seemed to be in some entrancèd swoon + Till through the open roof above the full and brimming moon + + Flooded with sheeny waves the marble floor, + When from his nook up leapt the venturous lad, + And flinging wide the cedar-carven door + Beheld an awful image saffron-clad + And armed for battle! the gaunt Griffin glared + From the huge helm, and the long lance of wreck and ruin flared + + Like a red rod of flame, stony and steeled + The Gorgon’s head its leaden eyeballs rolled, + And writhed its snaky horrors through the shield, + And gaped aghast with bloodless lips and cold + In passion impotent, while with blind gaze + The blinking owl between the feet hooted in shrill amaze. + + The lonely fisher as he trimmed his lamp + Far out at sea off Sunium, or cast + The net for tunnies, heard a brazen tramp + Of horses smite the waves, and a wild blast + Divide the folded curtains of the night, + And knelt upon the little poop, and prayed in holy fright. + + And guilty lovers in their venery + Forgat a little while their stolen sweets, + Deeming they heard dread Dian’s bitter cry; + And the grim watchmen on their lofty seats + Ran to their shields in haste precipitate, + Or strained black-bearded throats across the dusky parapet. + + For round the temple rolled the clang of arms, + And the twelve Gods leapt up in marble fear, + And the air quaked with dissonant alarums + Till huge Poseidon shook his mighty spear, + And on the frieze the prancing horses neighed, + And the low tread of hurrying feet rang from the cavalcade. + + Ready for death with parted lips he stood, + And well content at such a price to see + That calm wide brow, that terrible maidenhood, + The marvel of that pitiless chastity, + Ah! well content indeed, for never wight + Since Troy’s young shepherd prince had seen so wonderful a sight. + + Ready for death he stood, but lo! the air + Grew silent, and the horses ceased to neigh, + And off his brow he tossed the clustering hair, + And from his limbs he throw the cloak away; + For whom would not such love make desperate? + And nigher came, and touched her throat, and with hands violate + + Undid the cuirass, and the crocus gown, + And bared the breasts of polished ivory, + Till from the waist the peplos falling down + Left visible the secret mystery + Which to no lover will Athena show, + The grand cool flanks, the crescent thighs, the bossy hills of snow. + + Those who have never known a lover’s sin + Let them not read my ditty, it will be + To their dull ears so musicless and thin + That they will have no joy of it, but ye + To whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile, + Ye who have learned who Eros is,—O listen yet awhile. + + A little space he let his greedy eyes + Rest on the burnished image, till mere sight + Half swooned for surfeit of such luxuries, + And then his lips in hungering delight + Fed on her lips, and round the towered neck + He flung his arms, nor cared at all his passion’s will to check. + + Never I ween did lover hold such tryst, + For all night long he murmured honeyed word, + And saw her sweet unravished limbs, and kissed + Her pale and argent body undisturbed, + And paddled with the polished throat, and pressed + His hot and beating heart upon her chill and icy breast. + + It was as if Numidian javelins + Pierced through and through his wild and whirling brain, + And his nerves thrilled like throbbing violins + In exquisite pulsation, and the pain + Was such sweet anguish that he never drew + His lips from hers till overhead the lark of warning flew. + + They who have never seen the daylight peer + Into a darkened room, and drawn the curtain, + And with dull eyes and wearied from some dear + And worshipped body risen, they for certain + Will never know of what I try to sing, + How long the last kiss was, how fond and late his lingering. + + The moon was girdled with a crystal rim, + The sign which shipmen say is ominous + Of wrath in heaven, the wan stars were dim, + And the low lightening east was tremulous + With the faint fluttering wings of flying dawn, + Ere from the silent sombre shrine his lover had withdrawn. + + Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast + Clomb the brave lad, and reached the cave of Pan, + And heard the goat-foot snoring as he passed, + And leapt upon a grassy knoll and ran + Like a young fawn unto an olive wood + Which in a shady valley by the well-built city stood; + + And sought a little stream, which well he knew, + For oftentimes with boyish careless shout + The green and crested grebe he would pursue, + Or snare in woven net the silver trout, + And down amid the startled reeds he lay + Panting in breathless sweet affright, and waited for the day. + + On the green bank he lay, and let one hand + Dip in the cool dark eddies listlessly, + And soon the breath of morning came and fanned + His hot flushed cheeks, or lifted wantonly + The tangled curls from off his forehead, while + He on the running water gazed with strange and secret smile. + + And soon the shepherd in rough woollen cloak + With his long crook undid the wattled cotes, + And from the stack a thin blue wreath of smoke + Curled through the air across the ripening oats, + And on the hill the yellow house-dog bayed + As through the crisp and rustling fern the heavy cattle strayed. + + And when the light-foot mower went afield + Across the meadows laced with threaded dew, + And the sheep bleated on the misty weald, + And from its nest the waking corncrake flew, + Some woodmen saw him lying by the stream + And marvelled much that any lad so beautiful could seem, + + Nor deemed him born of mortals, and one said, + ‘It is young Hylas, that false runaway + Who with a Naiad now would make his bed + Forgetting Herakles,’ but others, ‘Nay, + It is Narcissus, his own paramour, + Those are the fond and crimson lips no woman can allure.’ + + And when they nearer came a third one cried, + ‘It is young Dionysos who has hid + His spear and fawnskin by the river side + Weary of hunting with the Bassarid, + And wise indeed were we away to fly: + They live not long who on the gods immortal come to spy.’ + + So turned they back, and feared to look behind, + And told the timid swain how they had seen + Amid the reeds some woodland god reclined, + And no man dared to cross the open green, + And on that day no olive-tree was slain, + Nor rushes cut, but all deserted was the fair domain, + + Save when the neat-herd’s lad, his empty pail + Well slung upon his back, with leap and bound + Raced on the other side, and stopped to hail, + Hoping that he some comrade new had found, + And gat no answer, and then half afraid + Passed on his simple way, or down the still and silent glade + + A little girl ran laughing from the farm, + Not thinking of love’s secret mysteries, + And when she saw the white and gleaming arm + And all his manlihood, with longing eyes + Whose passion mocked her sweet virginity + Watched him awhile, and then stole back sadly and wearily. + + Far off he heard the city’s hum and noise, + And now and then the shriller laughter where + The passionate purity of brown-limbed boys + Wrestled or raced in the clear healthful air, + And now and then a little tinkling bell + As the shorn wether led the sheep down to the mossy well. + + Through the grey willows danced the fretful gnat, + The grasshopper chirped idly from the tree, + In sleek and oily coat the water-rat + Breasting the little ripples manfully + Made for the wild-duck’s nest, from bough to bough + Hopped the shy finch, and the huge tortoise crept across the slough. + + On the faint wind floated the silky seeds + As the bright scythe swept through the waving grass, + The ouzel-cock splashed circles in the reeds + And flecked with silver whorls the forest’s glass, + Which scarce had caught again its imagery + Ere from its bed the dusky tench leapt at the dragon-fly. + + But little care had he for any thing + Though up and down the beech the squirrel played, + And from the copse the linnet ’gan to sing + To its brown mate its sweetest serenade; + Ah! little care indeed, for he had seen + The breasts of Pallas and the naked wonder of the Queen. + + But when the herdsman called his straggling goats + With whistling pipe across the rocky road, + And the shard-beetle with its trumpet-notes + Boomed through the darkening woods, and seemed to bode + Of coming storm, and the belated crane + Passed homeward like a shadow, and the dull big drops of rain + + Fell on the pattering fig-leaves, up he rose, + And from the gloomy forest went his way + Past sombre homestead and wet orchard-close, + And came at last unto a little quay, + And called his mates aboard, and took his seat + On the high poop, and pushed from land, and loosed the dripping sheet, + + And steered across the bay, and when nine suns + Passed down the long and laddered way of gold, + And nine pale moons had breathed their orisons + To the chaste stars their confessors, or told + Their dearest secret to the downy moth + That will not fly at noonday, through the foam and surging froth + + Came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes + And lit upon the ship, whose timbers creaked + As though the lading of three argosies + Were in the hold, and flapped its wings and shrieked, + And darkness straightway stole across the deep, + Sheathed was Orion’s sword, dread Mars himself fled down the steep, + + And the moon hid behind a tawny mask + Of drifting cloud, and from the ocean’s marge + Rose the red plume, the huge and hornèd casque, + The seven-cubit spear, the brazen targe! + And clad in bright and burnished panoply + Athena strode across the stretch of sick and shivering sea! + + To the dull sailors’ sight her loosened looks + Seemed like the jagged storm-rack, and her feet + Only the spume that floats on hidden rocks, + And, marking how the rising waters beat + Against the rolling ship, the pilot cried + To the young helmsman at the stern to luff to windward side + + But he, the overbold adulterer, + A dear profaner of great mysteries, + An ardent amorous idolater, + When he beheld those grand relentless eyes + Laughed loud for joy, and crying out ‘I come’ + Leapt from the lofty poop into the chill and churning foam. + + Then fell from the high heaven one bright star, + One dancer left the circling galaxy, + And back to Athens on her clattering car + In all the pride of venged divinity + Pale Pallas swept with shrill and steely clank, + And a few gurgling bubbles rose where her boy lover sank. + + And the mast shuddered as the gaunt owl flew + With mocking hoots after the wrathful Queen, + And the old pilot bade the trembling crew + Hoist the big sail, and told how he had seen + Close to the stern a dim and giant form, + And like a dipping swallow the stout ship dashed through the storm. + + And no man dared to speak of Charmides + Deeming that he some evil thing had wrought, + And when they reached the strait Symplegades + They beached their galley on the shore, and sought + The toll-gate of the city hastily, + And in the market showed their brown and pictured pottery. + + II. + + BUT some good Triton-god had ruth, and bare + The boy’s drowned body back to Grecian land, + And mermaids combed his dank and dripping hair + And smoothed his brow, and loosed his clenching hand; + Some brought sweet spices from far Araby, + And others bade the halcyon sing her softest lullaby. + + And when he neared his old Athenian home, + A mighty billow rose up suddenly + Upon whose oily back the clotted foam + Lay diapered in some strange fantasy, + And clasping him unto its glassy breast + Swept landward, like a white-maned steed upon a venturous quest! + + Now where Colonos leans unto the sea + There lies a long and level stretch of lawn; + The rabbit knows it, and the mountain bee + For it deserts Hymettus, and the Faun + Is not afraid, for never through the day + Comes a cry ruder than the shout of shepherd lads at play. + + But often from the thorny labyrinth + And tangled branches of the circling wood + The stealthy hunter sees young Hyacinth + Hurling the polished disk, and draws his hood + Over his guilty gaze, and creeps away, + Nor dares to wind his horn, or—else at the first break of day + + The Dryads come and throw the leathern ball + Along the reedy shore, and circumvent + Some goat-eared Pan to be their seneschal + For fear of bold Poseidon’s ravishment, + And loose their girdles, with shy timorous eyes, + Lest from the surf his azure arms and purple beard should rise. + + On this side and on that a rocky cave, + Hung with the yellow-belled laburnum, stands + Smooth is the beach, save where some ebbing wave + Leaves its faint outline etched upon the sands, + As though it feared to be too soon forgot + By the green rush, its playfellow,—and yet, it is a spot + + So small, that the inconstant butterfly + Could steal the hoarded money from each flower + Ere it was noon, and still not satisfy + Its over-greedy love,—within an hour + A sailor boy, were he but rude enow + To land and pluck a garland for his galley’s painted prow, + + Would almost leave the little meadow bare, + For it knows nothing of great pageantry, + Only a few narcissi here and there + Stand separate in sweet austerity, + Dotting the unmown grass with silver stars, + And here and there a daffodil waves tiny scimitars. + + Hither the billow brought him, and was glad + Of such dear servitude, and where the land + Was virgin of all waters laid the lad + Upon the golden margent of the strand, + And like a lingering lover oft returned + To kiss those pallid limbs which once with intense fire burned, + + Ere the wet seas had quenched that holocaust, + That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead, + Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost + Had withered up those lilies white and red + Which, while the boy would through the forest range, + Answered each other in a sweet antiphonal counter-change. + + And when at dawn the wood-nymphs, hand-in-hand, + Threaded the bosky dell, their satyr spied + The boy’s pale body stretched upon the sand, + And feared Poseidon’s treachery, and cried, + And like bright sunbeams flitting through a glade + Each startled Dryad sought some safe and leafy ambuscade. + + Save one white girl, who deemed it would not be + So dread a thing to feel a sea-god’s arms + Crushing her breasts in amorous tyranny, + And longed to listen to those subtle charms + Insidious lovers weave when they would win + Some fencèd fortress, and stole back again, nor thought it sin + + To yield her treasure unto one so fair, + And lay beside him, thirsty with love’s drouth, + Called him soft names, played with his tangled hair, + And with hot lips made havoc of his mouth + Afraid he might not wake, and then afraid + Lest he might wake too soon, fled back, and then, fond renegade, + + Returned to fresh assault, and all day long + Sat at his side, and laughed at her new toy, + And held his hand, and sang her sweetest song, + Then frowned to see how froward was the boy + Who would not with her maidenhood entwine, + Nor knew that three days since his eyes had looked on Proserpine; + + Nor knew what sacrilege his lips had done, + But said, ‘He will awake, I know him well, + He will awake at evening when the sun + Hangs his red shield on Corinth’s citadel; + This sleep is but a cruel treachery + To make me love him more, and in some cavern of the sea + + Deeper than ever falls the fisher’s line + Already a huge Triton blows his horn, + And weaves a garland from the crystalline + And drifting ocean-tendrils to adorn + The emerald pillars of our bridal bed, + For sphered in foaming silver, and with coral crownèd head, + + We two will sit upon a throne of pearl, + And a blue wave will be our canopy, + And at our feet the water-snakes will curl + In all their amethystine panoply + Of diamonded mail, and we will mark + The mullets swimming by the mast of some storm-foundered bark, + + Vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold + Like flakes of crimson light, and the great deep + His glassy-portaled chamber will unfold, + And we will see the painted dolphins sleep + Cradled by murmuring halcyons on the rocks + Where Proteus in quaint suit of green pastures his monstrous flocks. + + And tremulous opal-hued anemones + Will wave their purple fringes where we tread + Upon the mirrored floor, and argosies + Of fishes flecked with tawny scales will thread + The drifting cordage of the shattered wreck, + And honey-coloured amber beads our twining limbs will deck.’ + + But when that baffled Lord of War the Sun + With gaudy pennon flying passed away + Into his brazen House, and one by one + The little yellow stars began to stray + Across the field of heaven, ah! then indeed + She feared his lips upon her lips would never care to feed, + + And cried, ‘Awake, already the pale moon + Washes the trees with silver, and the wave + Creeps grey and chilly up this sandy dune, + The croaking frogs are out, and from the cave + The nightjar shrieks, the fluttering bats repass, + And the brown stoat with hollow flanks creeps through the dusky grass. + + Nay, though thou art a god, be not so coy, + For in yon stream there is a little reed + That often whispers how a lovely boy + Lay with her once upon a grassy mead, + Who when his cruel pleasure he had done + Spread wings of rustling gold and soared aloft into the sun. + + Be not so coy, the laurel trembles still + With great Apollo’s kisses, and the fir + Whose clustering sisters fringe the seaward hill + Hath many a tale of that bold ravisher + Whom men call Boreas, and I have seen + The mocking eyes of Hermes through the poplar’s silvery sheen. + + Even the jealous Naiads call me fair, + And every morn a young and ruddy swain + Woos me with apples and with locks of hair, + And seeks to soothe my virginal disdain + By all the gifts the gentle wood-nymphs love; + But yesterday he brought to me an iris-plumaged dove + + With little crimson feet, which with its store + Of seven spotted eggs the cruel lad + Had stolen from the lofty sycamore + At daybreak, when her amorous comrade had + Flown off in search of berried juniper + Which most they love; the fretful wasp, that earliest vintager + + Of the blue grapes, hath not persistency + So constant as this simple shepherd-boy + For my poor lips, his joyous purity + And laughing sunny eyes might well decoy + A Dryad from her oath to Artemis; + For very beautiful is he, his mouth was made to kiss; + + His argent forehead, like a rising moon + Over the dusky hills of meeting brows, + Is crescent shaped, the hot and Tyrian noon + Leads from the myrtle-grove no goodlier spouse + For Cytheræa, the first silky down + Fringes his blushing cheeks, and his young limbs are strong and brown; + + And he is rich, and fat and fleecy herds + Of bleating sheep upon his meadows lie, + And many an earthen bowl of yellow curds + Is in his homestead for the thievish fly + To swim and drown in, the pink clover mead + Keeps its sweet store for him, and he can pipe on oaten reed. + + And yet I love him not; it was for thee + I kept my love; I knew that thou would’st come + To rid me of this pallid chastity, + Thou fairest flower of the flowerless foam + Of all the wide Ægean, brightest star + Of ocean’s azure heavens where the mirrored planets are! + + I knew that thou would’st come, for when at first + The dry wood burgeoned, and the sap of spring + Swelled in my green and tender bark or burst + To myriad multitudinous blossoming + Which mocked the midnight with its mimic moons + That did not dread the dawn, and first the thrushes’ rapturous tunes + + Startled the squirrel from its granary, + And cuckoo flowers fringed the narrow lane, + Through my young leaves a sensuous ecstasy + Crept like new wine, and every mossy vein + Throbbed with the fitful pulse of amorous blood, + And the wild winds of passion shook my slim stem’s maidenhood. + + The trooping fawns at evening came and laid + Their cool black noses on my lowest boughs, + And on my topmost branch the blackbird made + A little nest of grasses for his spouse, + And now and then a twittering wren would light + On a thin twig which hardly bare the weight of such delight. + + I was the Attic shepherd’s trysting place, + Beneath my shadow Amaryllis lay, + And round my trunk would laughing Daphnis chase + The timorous girl, till tired out with play + She felt his hot breath stir her tangled hair, + And turned, and looked, and fled no more from such delightful snare. + + Then come away unto my ambuscade + Where clustering woodbine weaves a canopy + For amorous pleasaunce, and the rustling shade + Of Paphian myrtles seems to sanctify + The dearest rites of love; there in the cool + And green recesses of its farthest depth there is pool, + + The ouzel’s haunt, the wild bee’s pasturage, + For round its rim great creamy lilies float + Through their flat leaves in verdant anchorage, + Each cup a white-sailed golden-laden boat + Steered by a dragon-fly,—be not afraid + To leave this wan and wave-kissed shore, surely the place was made + + For lovers such as we; the Cyprian Queen, + One arm around her boyish paramour, + Strays often there at eve, and I have seen + The moon strip off her misty vestiture + For young Endymion’s eyes; be not afraid, + The panther feet of Dian never tread that secret glade. + + Nay if thou will’st, back to the beating brine, + Back to the boisterous billow let us go, + And walk all day beneath the hyaline + Huge vault of Neptune’s watery portico, + And watch the purple monsters of the deep + Sport in ungainly play, and from his lair keen Xiphias leap. + + For if my mistress find me lying here + She will not ruth or gentle pity show, + But lay her boar-spear down, and with austere + Relentless fingers string the cornel bow, + And draw the feathered notch against her breast, + And loose the archèd cord; aye, even now upon the quest + + I hear her hurrying feet,—awake, awake, + Thou laggard in love’s battle! once at least + Let me drink deep of passion’s wine, and slake + My parchèd being with the nectarous feast + Which even gods affect! O come, Love, come, + Still we have time to reach the cavern of thine azure home.’ + + Scarce had she spoken when the shuddering trees + Shook, and the leaves divided, and the air + Grew conscious of a god, and the grey seas + Crawled backward, and a long and dismal blare + Blew from some tasselled horn, a sleuth-hound bayed, + And like a flame a barbèd reed flew whizzing down the glade. + + And where the little flowers of her breast + Just brake into their milky blossoming, + This murderous paramour, this unbidden guest, + Pierced and struck deep in horrid chambering, + And ploughed a bloody furrow with its dart, + And dug a long red road, and cleft with wingèd death her heart. + + Sobbing her life out with a bitter cry + On the boy’s body fell the Dryad maid, + Sobbing for incomplete virginity, + And raptures unenjoyed, and pleasures dead, + And all the pain of things unsatisfied, + And the bright drops of crimson youth crept down her throbbing side. + + Ah! pitiful it was to hear her moan, + And very pitiful to see her die + Ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known + The joy of passion, that dread mystery + Which not to know is not to live at all, + And yet to know is to be held in death’s most deadly thrall. + + But as it hapt the Queen of Cythere, + Who with Adonis all night long had lain + Within some shepherd’s hut in Arcady, + On team of silver doves and gilded wain + Was journeying Paphos-ward, high up afar + From mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star, + + And when low down she spied the hapless pair, + And heard the Oread’s faint despairing cry, + Whose cadence seemed to play upon the air + As though it were a viol, hastily + She bade her pigeons fold each straining plume, + And dropt to earth, and reached the strand, and saw their dolorous + doom. + + For as a gardener turning back his head + To catch the last notes of the linnet, mows + With careless scythe too near some flower bed, + And cuts the thorny pillar of the rose, + And with the flower’s loosened loneliness + Strews the brown mould; or as some shepherd lad in wantonness + + Driving his little flock along the mead + Treads down two daffodils, which side by aide + Have lured the lady-bird with yellow brede + And made the gaudy moth forget its pride, + Treads down their brimming golden chalices + Under light feet which were not made for such rude ravages; + + Or as a schoolboy tired of his book + Flings himself down upon the reedy grass + And plucks two water-lilies from the brook, + And for a time forgets the hour glass, + Then wearies of their sweets, and goes his way, + And lets the hot sun kill them, even go these lovers lay. + + And Venus cried, ‘It is dread Artemis + Whose bitter hand hath wrought this cruelty, + Or else that mightier maid whose care it is + To guard her strong and stainless majesty + Upon the hill Athenian,—alas! + That they who loved so well unloved into Death’s house should pass.’ + + So with soft hands she laid the boy and girl + In the great golden waggon tenderly + (Her white throat whiter than a moony pearl + Just threaded with a blue vein’s tapestry + Had not yet ceased to throb, and still her breast + Swayed like a wind-stirred lily in ambiguous unrest) + + And then each pigeon spread its milky van, + The bright car soared into the dawning sky, + And like a cloud the aerial caravan + Passed over the Ægean silently, + Till the faint air was troubled with the song + From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long. + + But when the doves had reached their wonted goal + Where the wide stair of orbèd marble dips + Its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul + Just shook the trembling petals of her lips + And passed into the void, and Venus knew + That one fair maid the less would walk amid her retinue, + + And bade her servants carve a cedar chest + With all the wonder of this history, + Within whose scented womb their limbs should rest + Where olive-trees make tender the blue sky + On the low hills of Paphos, and the Faun + Pipes in the noonday, and the nightingale sings on till dawn. + + Nor failed they to obey her hest, and ere + The morning bee had stung the daffodil + With tiny fretful spear, or from its lair + The waking stag had leapt across the rill + And roused the ouzel, or the lizard crept + Athwart the sunny rock, beneath the grass their bodies slept. + + And when day brake, within that silver shrine + Fed by the flames of cressets tremulous, + Queen Venus knelt and prayed to Proserpine + That she whose beauty made Death amorous + Should beg a guerdon from her pallid Lord, + And let Desire pass across dread Charon’s icy ford. + + III + + IN melancholy moonless Acheron, + Farm for the goodly earth and joyous day + Where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun + Weighs down the apple trees, nor flowery May + Chequers with chestnut blooms the grassy floor, + Where thrushes never sing, and piping linnets mate no more, + + There by a dim and dark Lethæan well + Young Charmides was lying; wearily + He plucked the blossoms from the asphodel, + And with its little rifled treasury + Strewed the dull waters of the dusky stream, + And watched the white stars founder, and the land was like a dream, + + When as he gazed into the watery glass + And through his brown hair’s curly tangles scanned + His own wan face, a shadow seemed to pass + Across the mirror, and a little hand + Stole into his, and warm lips timidly + Brushed his pale cheeks, and breathed their secret forth into a sigh. + + Then turned he round his weary eyes and saw, + And ever nigher still their faces came, + And nigher ever did their young mouths draw + Until they seemed one perfect rose of flame, + And longing arms around her neck he cast, + And felt her throbbing bosom, and his breath came hot and fast, + + And all his hoarded sweets were hers to kiss, + And all her maidenhood was his to slay, + And limb to limb in long and rapturous bliss + Their passion waxed and waned,—O why essay + To pipe again of love, too venturous reed! + Enough, enough that Eros laughed upon that flowerless mead. + + Too venturous poesy, O why essay + To pipe again of passion! fold thy wings + O’er daring Icarus and bid thy lay + Sleep hidden in the lyre’s silent strings + Till thou hast found the old Castalian rill, + Or from the Lesbian waters plucked drowned Sappho’s golden quid! + + Enough, enough that he whose life had been + A fiery pulse of sin, a splendid shame, + Could in the loveless land of Hades glean + One scorching harvest from those fields of flame + Where passion walks with naked unshod feet + And is not wounded,—ah! enough that once their lips could meet + + In that wild throb when all existences + Seemed narrowed to one single ecstasy + Which dies through its own sweetness and the stress + Of too much pleasure, ere Persephone + Had bade them serve her by the ebon throne + Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna loosed her zone. + + + +FLOWERS OF GOLD + + +IMPRESSIONS + +I +LES SILHOUETTES + + + THE sea is flecked with bars of grey, + The dull dead wind is out of tune, + And like a withered leaf the moon + Is blown across the stormy bay. + + Etched clear upon the pallid sand + Lies the black boat: a sailor boy + Clambers aboard in careless joy + With laughing face and gleaming hand. + + And overhead the curlews cry, + Where through the dusky upland grass + The young brown-throated reapers pass, + Like silhouettes against the sky. + + +II +LA FUITE DE LA LUNE + + + TO outer senses there is peace, + A dreamy peace on either hand + Deep silence in the shadowy land, + Deep silence where the shadows cease. + + Save for a cry that echoes shrill + From some lone bird disconsolate; + A corncrake calling to its mate; + The answer from the misty hill. + + And suddenly the moon withdraws + Her sickle from the lightening skies, + And to her sombre cavern flies, + Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze. + + +THE GRAVE OF KEATS + + + RID of the world’s injustice, and his pain, + He rests at last beneath God’s veil of blue: + Taken from life when life and love were new + The youngest of the martyrs here is lain, + Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain. + No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew, + But gentle violets weeping with the dew + Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain. + O proudest heart that broke for misery! + O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene! + O poet-painter of our English Land! + Thy name was writ in water—it shall stand: + And tears like mine will keep thy memory green, + As Isabella did her Basil-tree. + +ROME. + + +THEOCRITUS + + + A VILLANELLE + + O SINGER of Persephone! + In the dim meadows desolate + Dost thou remember Sicily? + + Still through the ivy flits the bee + Where Amaryllis lies in state; + O Singer of Persephone! + + Simætha calls on Hecate + And hears the wild dogs at the gate; + Dost thou remember Sicily? + + Still by the light and laughing sea + Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate; + O Singer of Persephone! + + And still in boyish rivalry + Young Daphnis challenges his mate; + Dost thou remember Sicily? + + Slim Lacon keeps a goat for thee, + For thee the jocund shepherds wait; + O Singer of Persephone! + Dost thou remember Sicily? + + +IN THE GOLD ROOM + + + A HARMONY + + HER ivory hands on the ivory keys + Strayed in a fitful fantasy, + Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees + Rustle their pale-leaves listlessly, + Or the drifting foam of a restless sea + When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze. + + Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold + Like the delicate gossamer tangles spun + On the burnished disk of the marigold, + Or the sunflower turning to meet the sun + When the gloom of the dark blue night is done, + And the spear of the lily is aureoled. + + And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine + Burned like the ruby fire set + In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine, + Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate, + Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet + With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine. + + +BALLADE DE MARGUERITE + + + (NORMANDE) + + I AM weary of lying within the chase + When the knights are meeting in market-place. + + Nay, go not thou to the red-roofed town + Lest the hoofs of the war-horse tread thee down. + + But I would not go where the Squires ride, + I would only walk by my Lady’s side. + + Alack! and alack! thou art overbold, + A Forester’s son may not eat off gold. + + Will she love me the less that my Father is seen + Each Martinmas day in a doublet green? + + Perchance she is sewing at tapestrie, + Spindle and loom are not meet for thee. + + Ah, if she is working the arras bright + I might ravel the threads by the fire-light. + + Perchance she is hunting of the deer, + How could you follow o’er hill and mere? + + Ah, if she is riding with the court, + I might run beside her and wind the morte. + + Perchance she is kneeling in St. Denys, + (On her soul may our Lady have gramercy!) + + Ah, if she is praying in lone chapelle, + I might swing the censer and ring the bell. + + Come in, my son, for you look sae pale, + The father shall fill thee a stoup of ale. + + But who are these knights in bright array? + Is it a pageant the rich folks play? + + ’T is the King of England from over sea, + Who has come unto visit our fair countrie. + + But why does the curfew toll sae low? + And why do the mourners walk a-row? + + O ’t is Hugh of Amiens my sister’s son + Who is lying stark, for his day is done. + + Nay, nay, for I see white lilies clear, + It is no strong man who lies on the bier. + + O ’t is old Dame Jeannette that kept the hall, + I knew she would die at the autumn fall. + + Dame Jeannette had not that gold-brown hair, + Old Jeannette was not a maiden fair. + + O ’t is none of our kith and none of our kin, + (Her soul may our Lady assoil from sin!) + + But I hear the boy’s voice chaunting sweet, + ‘Elle est morte, la Marguerite.’ + + Come in, my son, and lie on the bed, + And let the dead folk bury their dead. + + O mother, you know I loved her true: + O mother, hath one grave room for two? + + +THE DOLE OF THE KING’S DAUGHTER + + + (BRETON) + + SEVEN stars in the still water, + And seven in the sky; + Seven sins on the King’s daughter, + Deep in her soul to lie. + + Red roses are at her feet, + (Roses are red in her red-gold hair) + And O where her bosom and girdle meet + Red roses are hidden there. + + Fair is the knight who lieth slain + Amid the rush and reed, + See the lean fishes that are fain + Upon dead men to feed. + + Sweet is the page that lieth there, + (Cloth of gold is goodly prey,) + See the black ravens in the air, + Black, O black as the night are they. + + What do they there so stark and dead? + (There is blood upon her hand) + Why are the lilies flecked with red? + (There is blood on the river sand.) + + There are two that ride from the south and east, + And two from the north and west, + For the black raven a goodly feast, + For the King’s daughter rest. + + There is one man who loves her true, + (Red, O red, is the stain of gore!) + He hath duggen a grave by the darksome yew, + (One grave will do for four.) + + No moon in the still heaven, + In the black water none, + The sins on her soul are seven, + The sin upon his is one. + + +AMOR INTELLECTUALIS + + + OFT have we trod the vales of Castaly + And heard sweet notes of sylvan music blown + From antique reeds to common folk unknown: + And often launched our bark upon that sea + Which the nine Muses hold in empery, + And ploughed free furrows through the wave and foam, + Nor spread reluctant sail for more safe home + Till we had freighted well our argosy. + Of which despoilèd treasures these remain, + Sordello’s passion, and the honeyed line + Of young Endymion, lordly Tamburlaine + Driving his pampered jades, and more than these, + The seven-fold vision of the Florentine, + And grave-browed Milton’s solemn harmonies. + + +SANTA DECCA + + + THE Gods are dead: no longer do we bring + To grey-eyed Pallas crowns of olive-leaves! + Demeter’s child no more hath tithe of sheaves, + And in the noon the careless shepherds sing, + For Pan is dead, and all the wantoning + By secret glade and devious haunt is o’er: + Young Hylas seeks the water-springs no more; + Great Pan is dead, and Mary’s son is King. + + And yet—perchance in this sea-trancèd isle, + Chewing the bitter fruit of memory, + Some God lies hidden in the asphodel. + Ah Love! if such there be, then it were well + For us to fly his anger: nay, but see, + The leaves are stirring: let us watch awhile. + +CORFU. + + +A VISION + + + TWO crownèd Kings, and One that stood alone + With no green weight of laurels round his head, + But with sad eyes as one uncomforted, + And wearied with man’s never-ceasing moan + For sins no bleating victim can atone, + And sweet long lips with tears and kisses fed. + Girt was he in a garment black and red, + And at his feet I marked a broken stone + Which sent up lilies, dove-like, to his knees. + Now at their sight, my heart being lit with flame, + I cried to Beatricé, ‘Who are these?’ + And she made answer, knowing well each name, + ‘Æschylos first, the second Sophokles, + And last (wide stream of tears!) Euripides.’ + + +IMPRESSION DE VOYAGE + + + THE sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky + Burned like a heated opal through the air; + We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair + For the blue lands that to the eastward lie. + From the steep prow I marked with quickening eye + Zakynthos, every olive grove and creek, + Ithaca’s cliff, Lycaon’s snowy peak, + And all the flower-strewn hills of Arcady. + The flapping of the sail against the mast, + The ripple of the water on the side, + The ripple of girls’ laughter at the stern, + The only sounds:—when ’gan the West to burn, + And a red sun upon the seas to ride, + I stood upon the soil of Greece at last! + +KATAKOLO. + + +THE GRAVE OF SHELLEY + + + LIKE burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed + Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone; + Here doth the little night-owl make her throne, + And the slight lizard show his jewelled head. + And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red, + In the still chamber of yon pyramid + Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid, + Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead. + + Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb + Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep, + But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb + In the blue cavern of an echoing deep, + Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom + Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep. + +ROME. + + +BY THE ARNO + + + THE oleander on the wall + Grows crimson in the dawning light, + Though the grey shadows of the night + Lie yet on Florence like a pall. + + The dew is bright upon the hill, + And bright the blossoms overhead, + But ah! the grasshoppers have fled, + The little Attic song is still. + + Only the leaves are gently stirred + By the soft breathing of the gale, + And in the almond-scented vale + The lonely nightingale is heard. + + The day will make thee silent soon, + O nightingale sing on for love! + While yet upon the shadowy grove + Splinter the arrows of the moon. + + Before across the silent lawn + In sea-green vest the morning steals, + And to love’s frightened eyes reveals + The long white fingers of the dawn + + Fast climbing up the eastern sky + To grasp and slay the shuddering night, + All careless of my heart’s delight, + Or if the nightingale should die. + + + +IMPRESSIONS DE THÉÂTRE + + +FABIEN DEI FRANCHI + + + TO MY FRIEND HENRY IRVING + + THE silent room, the heavy creeping shade, + The dead that travel fast, the opening door, + The murdered brother rising through the floor, + The ghost’s white fingers on thy shoulders laid, + And then the lonely duel in the glade, + The broken swords, the stifled scream, the gore, + Thy grand revengeful eyes when all is o’er,— + These things are well enough,—but thou wert made + For more august creation! frenzied Lear + Should at thy bidding wander on the heath + With the shrill fool to mock him, Romeo + For thee should lure his love, and desperate fear + Pluck Richard’s recreant dagger from its sheath— + Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare’s lips to blow! + + +PHÈDRE + + + TO SARAH BERNHARDT + + HOW vain and dull this common world must seem + To such a One as thou, who should’st have talked + At Florence with Mirandola, or walked + Through the cool olives of the Academe: + Thou should’st have gathered reeds from a green stream + For Goat-foot Pan’s shrill piping, and have played + With the white girls in that Phæacian glade + Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream. + + Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay + Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again + Back to this common world so dull and vain, + For thou wert weary of the sunless day, + The heavy fields of scentless asphodel, + The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell. + + +WRITTEN AT THE LYCEUM THEATRE + +I +PORTIA + + + TO ELLEN TERRY + + I MARVEL not Bassanio was so bold + To peril all he had upon the lead, + Or that proud Aragon bent low his head + Or that Morocco’s fiery heart grew cold: + For in that gorgeous dress of beaten gold + Which is more golden than the golden sun + No woman Veronesé looked upon + Was half so fair as thou whom I behold. + Yet fairer when with wisdom as your shield + The sober-suited lawyer’s gown you donned, + And would not let the laws of Venice yield + Antonio’s heart to that accursèd Jew— + O Portia! take my heart: it is thy due: + I think I will not quarrel with the Bond. + + +II +QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA + + + TO ELLEN TERRY + + IN the lone tent, waiting for victory, + She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, + Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain: + The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky, + War’s ruin, and the wreck of chivalry + To her proud soul no common fear can bring: + Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King, + Her soul a-flame with passionate ecstasy. + O Hair of Gold! O Crimson Lips! O Face + Made for the luring and the love of man! + With thee I do forget the toil and stress, + The loveless road that knows no resting place, + Time’s straitened pulse, the soul’s dread weariness, + My freedom, and my life republican! + + +III +CAMMA + + + TO ELLEN TERRY + + AS one who poring on a Grecian urn + Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made, + God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid, + And for their beauty’s sake is loth to turn + And face the obvious day, must I not yearn + For many a secret moon of indolent bliss, + When in midmost shrine of Artemis + I see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern? + + And yet—methinks I’d rather see thee play + That serpent of old Nile, whose witchery + Made Emperors drunken,—come, great Egypt, shake + Our stage with all thy mimic pageants! Nay, + I am grown sick of unreal passions, make + The world thine Actium, me thine Anthony! + + + +PANTHEA + + + NAY, let us walk from fire unto fire, + From passionate pain to deadlier delight,— + I am too young to live without desire, + Too young art thou to waste this summer night + Asking those idle questions which of old + Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told. + + For, sweet, to feel is better than to know, + And wisdom is a childless heritage, + One pulse of passion—youth’s first fiery glow,— + Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage: + Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy, + Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see! + + Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale, + Like water bubbling from a silver jar, + So soft she sings the envious moon is pale, + That high in heaven she is hung so far + She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,— + Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and labouring + moon. + + White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream, + The fallen snow of petals where the breeze + Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam + Of boyish limbs in water,—are not these + Enough for thee, dost thou desire more? + Alas! the Gods will give nought else from their eternal store. + + For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown + Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour + For wasted days of youth to make atone + By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never, + Hearken they now to either good or ill, + But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will. + + They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease, + Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine, + They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees + Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine, + Mourning the old glad days before they knew + What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do. + + And far beneath the brazen floor they see + Like swarming flies the crowd of little men, + The bustle of small lives, then wearily + Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again + Kissing each others’ mouths, and mix more deep + The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep. + + There all day long the golden-vestured sun, + Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch ablaze, + And, when the gaudy web of noon is spun + By its twelve maidens, through the crimson haze + Fresh from Endymion’s arms comes forth the moon, + And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon. + + There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead, + Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust + Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede + Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must, + His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare + The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air. + + There in the green heart of some garden close + Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side, + Her warm soft body like the briar rose + Which would be white yet blushes at its pride, + Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis + Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss. + + There never does that dreary north-wind blow + Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare, + Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow, + Nor ever doth the red-toothed lightning dare + To wake them in the silver-fretted night + When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight. + + Alas! they know the far Lethæan spring, + The violet-hidden waters well they know, + Where one whose feet with tired wandering + Are faint and broken may take heart and go, + And from those dark depths cool and crystalline + Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne. + + But we oppress our natures, God or Fate + Is our enemy, we starve and feed + On vain repentance—O we are born too late! + What balm for us in bruisèd poppy seed + Who crowd into one finite pulse of time + The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime. + + O we are wearied of this sense of guilt, + Wearied of pleasure’s paramour despair, + Wearied of every temple we have built, + Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer, + For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high: + One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo! we die. + + Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole + Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand, + No little coin of bronze can bring the soul + Over Death’s river to the sunless land, + Victim and wine and vow are all in vain, + The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again. + + We are resolved into the supreme air, + We are made one with what we touch and see, + With our heart’s blood each crimson sun is fair, + With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree + Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range + The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change. + + With beat of systole and of diastole + One grand great life throbs through earth’s giant heart, + And mighty waves of single Being roll + From nerveless germ to man, for we are part + Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, + One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. + + From lower cells of waking life we pass + To full perfection; thus the world grows old: + We who are godlike now were once a mass + Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold, + Unsentient or of joy or misery, + And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea. + + This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn + Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil, + Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn + To water-lilies; the brown fields men till + Will be more fruitful for our love to-night, + Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death’s despite. + + The boy’s first kiss, the hyacinth’s first bell, + The man’s last passion, and the last red spear + That from the lily leaps, the asphodel + Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear + Of too much beauty, and the timid shame + Of the young bridegroom at his lover’s eyes,—these with the same + + One sacrament are consecrate, the earth + Not we alone hath passions hymeneal, + The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth + At daybreak know a pleasure not less real + Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood, + We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. + + So when men bury us beneath the yew + Thy crimson-stainèd mouth a rose will be, + And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew, + And when the white narcissus wantonly + Kisses the wind its playmate some faint joy + Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy. + + And thus without life’s conscious torturing pain + In some sweet flower we will feel the sun, + And from the linnet’s throat will sing again, + And as two gorgeous-mailèd snakes will run + Over our graves, or as two tigers creep + Through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep + + And give them battle! How my heart leaps up + To think of that grand living after death + In beast and bird and flower, when this cup, + Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath, + And with the pale leaves of some autumn day + The soul earth’s earliest conqueror becomes earth’s last great prey. + + O think of it! We shall inform ourselves + Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun, + The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves + That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn + Upon the meadows, shall not be more near + Than you and I to nature’s mysteries, for we shall hear + + The thrush’s heart beat, and the daisies grow, + And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun + On sunless days in winter, we shall know + By whom the silver gossamer is spun, + Who paints the diapered fritillaries, + On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies. + + Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows + If yonder daffodil had lured the bee + Into its gilded womb, or any rose + Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree! + Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring, + But for the lovers’ lips that kiss, the poets’ lips that sing. + + Is the light vanished from our golden sun, + Or is this dædal-fashioned earth less fair, + That we are nature’s heritors, and one + With every pulse of life that beats the air? + Rather new suns across the sky shall pass, + New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass. + + And we two lovers shall not sit afar, + Critics of nature, but the joyous sea + Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star + Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be + Part of the mighty universal whole, + And through all æons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul! + + We shall be notes in that great Symphony + Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, + And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be + One with our heart; the stealthy creeping years + Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die, + The Universe itself shall be our Immortality. + + + +THE FOURTH MOVEMENT + + +IMPRESSION + + + LE RÉVEILLON + + THE sky is laced with fitful red, + The circling mists and shadows flee, + The dawn is rising from the sea, + Like a white lady from her bed. + + And jagged brazen arrows fall + Athwart the feathers of the night, + And a long wave of yellow light + Breaks silently on tower and hall, + + And spreading wide across the wold + Wakes into flight some fluttering bird, + And all the chestnut tops are stirred, + And all the branches streaked with gold. + + +AT VERONA + + + HOW steep the stairs within Kings’ houses are + For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread, + And O how salt and bitter is the bread + Which falls from this Hound’s table,—better far + That I had died in the red ways of war, + Or that the gate of Florence bare my head, + Than to live thus, by all things comraded + Which seek the essence of my soul to mar. + + ‘Curse God and die: what better hope than this? + He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss + Of his gold city, and eternal day’— + Nay peace: behind my prison’s blinded bars + I do possess what none can take away + My love, and all the glory of the stars. + + +APOLOGIA + + + IS it thy will that I should wax and wane, + Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey, + And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain + Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day? + + Is it thy will—Love that I love so well— + That my Soul’s House should be a tortured spot + Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell + The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not? + + Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure, + And sell ambition at the common mart, + And let dull failure be my vestiture, + And sorrow dig its grave within my heart. + + Perchance it may be better so—at least + I have not made my heart a heart of stone, + Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast, + Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown. + + Many a man hath done so; sought to fence + In straitened bonds the soul that should be free, + Trodden the dusty road of common sense, + While all the forest sang of liberty, + + Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight + Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air, + To where some steep untrodden mountain height + Caught the last tresses of the Sun God’s hair. + + Or how the little flower he trod upon, + The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold, + Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun + Content if once its leaves were aureoled. + + But surely it is something to have been + The best belovèd for a little while, + To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen + His purple wings flit once across thy smile. + + Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed + On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars, + Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed + The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars! + + +QUIA MULTUM AMAVI + + + DEAR Heart, I think the young impassioned priest + When first he takes from out the hidden shrine + His God imprisoned in the Eucharist, + And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine, + + Feels not such awful wonder as I felt + When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee, + And all night long before thy feet I knelt + Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry. + + Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more, + Through all those summer days of joy and rain, + I had not now been sorrow’s heritor, + Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain. + + Yet, though remorse, youth’s white-faced seneschal, + Tread on my heels with all his retinue, + I am most glad I loved thee—think of all + The suns that go to make one speedwell blue! + + +SILENTIUM AMORIS + + + AS often-times the too resplendent sun + Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon + Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won + A single ballad from the nightingale, + So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail, + And all my sweetest singing out of tune. + + And as at dawn across the level mead + On wings impetuous some wind will come, + And with its too harsh kisses break the reed + Which was its only instrument of song, + So my too stormy passions work me wrong, + And for excess of Love my Love is dumb. + + But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show + Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung; + Else it were better we should part, and go, + Thou to some lips of sweeter melody, + And I to nurse the barren memory + Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung. + + +HER VOICE + + + THE wild bee reels from bough to bough + With his furry coat and his gauzy wing, + Now in a lily-cup, and now + Setting a jacinth bell a-swing, + In his wandering; + Sit closer love: it was here I trow + I made that vow, + + Swore that two lives should be like one + As long as the sea-gull loved the sea, + As long as the sunflower sought the sun,— + It shall be, I said, for eternity + ’Twixt you and me! + Dear friend, those times are over and done; + Love’s web is spun. + + Look upward where the poplar trees + Sway and sway in the summer air, + Here in the valley never a breeze + Scatters the thistledown, but there + Great winds blow fair + From the mighty murmuring mystical seas, + And the wave-lashed leas. + + Look upward where the white gull screams, + What does it see that we do not see? + Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams + On some outward voyaging argosy,— + Ah! can it be + We have lived our lives in a land of dreams! + How sad it seems. + + Sweet, there is nothing left to say + But this, that love is never lost, + Keen winter stabs the breasts of May + Whose crimson roses burst his frost, + Ships tempest-tossed + Will find a harbour in some bay, + And so we may. + + And there is nothing left to do + But to kiss once again, and part, + Nay, there is nothing we should rue, + I have my beauty,—you your Art, + Nay, do not start, + One world was not enough for two + Like me and you. + + +MY VOICE + + + WITHIN this restless, hurried, modern world + We took our hearts’ full pleasure—You and I, + And now the white sails of our ship are furled, + And spent the lading of our argosy. + + Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan, + For very weeping is my gladness fled, + Sorrow has paled my young mouth’s vermilion, + And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed. + + But all this crowded life has been to thee + No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell + Of viols, or the music of the sea + That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell. + + +TÆDIUM VITÆ + + + TO stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear + This paltry age’s gaudy livery, + To let each base hand filch my treasury, + To mesh my soul within a woman’s hair, + And be mere Fortune’s lackeyed groom,—I swear + I love it not! these things are less to me + Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea, + Less than the thistledown of summer air + Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof + Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life + Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof + Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in, + Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife + Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin. + + + +HUMANITAD + + + IT is full winter now: the trees are bare, + Save where the cattle huddle from the cold + Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear + The autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold + Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true + To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew + + From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay + Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain + Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day + From the low meadows up the narrow lane; + Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep + Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep + + From the shut stable to the frozen stream + And back again disconsolate, and miss + The bawling shepherds and the noisy team; + And overhead in circling listlessness + The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack, + Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack + + Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds + And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck, + And hoots to see the moon; across the meads + Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck; + And a stray seamew with its fretful cry + Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky. + + Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings + His load of faggots from the chilly byre, + And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings + The sappy billets on the waning fire, + And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare + His children at their play, and yet,—the spring is in the air; + + Already the slim crocus stirs the snow, + And soon yon blanchèd fields will bloom again + With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow, + For with the first warm kisses of the rain + The winter’s icy sorrow breaks to tears, + And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers + + From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie, + And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs + Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly + Across our path at evening, and the suns + Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see + Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery + + Dance through the hedges till the early rose, + (That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!) + Burst from its sheathèd emerald and disclose + The little quivering disk of golden fire + Which the bees know so well, for with it come + Pale boy’s-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom. + + Then up and down the field the sower goes, + While close behind the laughing younker scares + With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows, + And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears, + And on the grass the creamy blossom falls + In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals + + Steal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons + Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine, + That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons + With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine + In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed + And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed + + Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply, + And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes, + Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy + Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise, + And violets getting overbold withdraw + From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw. + + O happy field! and O thrice happy tree! + Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock + And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea, + Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock + Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon + Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon. + + Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour, + The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns + Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture + Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations + With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind, + And straggling traveller’s-joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind. + + Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring, + That canst give increase to the sweet-breath’d kine, + And to the kid its little horns, and bring + The soft and silky blossoms to the vine, + Where is that old nepenthe which of yore + Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore! + + There was a time when any common bird + Could make me sing in unison, a time + When all the strings of boyish life were stirred + To quick response or more melodious rhyme + By every forest idyll;—do I change? + Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range? + + Nay, nay, thou art the same: ’tis I who seek + To vex with sighs thy simple solitude, + And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek + Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood; + Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare + To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair! + + Thou art the same: ’tis I whose wretched soul + Takes discontent to be its paramour, + And gives its kingdom to the rude control + Of what should be its servitor,—for sure + Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea + Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ‘’Tis not in me.’ + + To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect + In natural honour, not to bend the knee + In profitless prostrations whose effect + Is by itself condemned, what alchemy + Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed + Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued? + + The minor chord which ends the harmony, + And for its answering brother waits in vain + Sobbing for incompleted melody, + Dies a swan’s death; but I the heir of pain, + A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes, + Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise. + + The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom, + The little dust stored in the narrow urn, + The gentle ΧΑΙΡΕ of the Attic tomb,— + Were not these better far than to return + To my old fitful restless malady, + Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery? + + Nay! for perchance that poppy-crownèd god + Is like the watcher by a sick man’s bed + Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod + Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said, + Death is too rude, too obvious a key + To solve one single secret in a life’s philosophy. + + And Love! that noble madness, whose august + And inextinguishable might can slay + The soul with honeyed drugs,—alas! I must + From such sweet ruin play the runaway, + Although too constant memory never can + Forget the archèd splendour of those brows Olympian + + Which for a little season made my youth + So soft a swoon of exquisite indolence + That all the chiding of more prudent Truth + Seemed the thin voice of jealousy,—O hence + Thou huntress deadlier than Artemis! + Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss. + + My lips have drunk enough,—no more, no more,— + Though Love himself should turn his gilded prow + Back to the troubled waters of this shore + Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now + The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near, + Hence! Hence! I pass unto a life more barren, more austere. + + More barren—ay, those arms will never lean + Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul + In sweet reluctance through the tangled green; + Some other head must wear that aureole, + For I am hers who loves not any man + Whose white and stainless bosom bears the sign Gorgonian. + + Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page, + And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair, + With net and spear and hunting equipage + Let young Adonis to his tryst repair, + But me her fond and subtle-fashioned spell + Delights no more, though I could win her dearest citadel. + + Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy + Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloud + Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy + And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed + In wonder at her feet, not for the sake + Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take. + + Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed! + And, if my lips be musicless, inspire + At least my life: was not thy glory hymned + By One who gave to thee his sword and lyre + Like Æschylos at well-fought Marathon, + And died to show that Milton’s England still could bear a son! + + And yet I cannot tread the Portico + And live without desire, fear and pain, + Or nurture that wise calm which long ago + The grave Athenian master taught to men, + Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted, + To watch the world’s vain phantasies go by with unbowed head. + + Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips, + Those eyes that mirrored all eternity, + Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse + Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne + Is childless; in the night which she had made + For lofty secure flight Athena’s owl itself hath strayed. + + Nor much with Science do I care to climb, + Although by strange and subtle witchery + She drew the moon from heaven: the Muse Time + Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestry + To no less eager eyes; often indeed + In the great epic of Polymnia’s scroll I love to read + + How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war + Against a little town, and panoplied + In gilded mail with jewelled scimitar, + White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede + Between the waving poplars and the sea + Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylæ + + Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall, + And on the nearer side a little brood + Of careless lions holding festival! + And stood amazèd at such hardihood, + And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore, + And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o’er + + Some unfrequented height, and coming down + The autumn forests treacherously slew + What Sparta held most dear and was the crown + Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew + How God had staked an evil net for him + In the small bay at Salamis,—and yet, the page grows dim, + + Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel + With such a goodly time too out of tune + To love it much: for like the Dial’s wheel + That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon + Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes + Restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies. + + O for one grand unselfish simple life + To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills + Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife + Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills, + Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly + Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century! + + Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he + Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul + Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty + Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal + Where love and duty mingle! Him at least + The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom’s feast; + + But we are Learning’s changelings, know by rote + The clarion watchword of each Grecian school + And follow none, the flawless sword which smote + The pagan Hydra is an effete tool + Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now + Shall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow? + + One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod! + Gone is that last dear son of Italy, + Who being man died for the sake of God, + And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully, + O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower, + Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour + + Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or + The Arno with its tawny troubled gold + O’er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror + Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old + When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty + Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery + + Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell + With an old man who grabbled rusty keys, + Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell + With which oblivion buries dynasties + Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast, + As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed. + + He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome, + He drave the base wolf from the lion’s lair, + And now lies dead by that empyreal dome + Which overtops Valdarno hung in air + By Brunelleschi—O Melpomene + Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody! + + Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies + That Joy’s self may grow jealous, and the Nine + Forget awhile their discreet emperies, + Mourning for him who on Rome’s lordliest shrine + Lit for men’s lives the light of Marathon, + And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun! + + O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower! + Let some young Florentine each eventide + Bring coronals of that enchanted flower + Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide, + And deck the marble tomb wherein he lies + Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes; + + Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings, + Being tempest-driven to the farthest rim + Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings + Of the eternal chanting Cherubim + Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed away + Into a moonless void,—and yet, though he is dust and clay, + + He is not dead, the immemorial Fates + Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain. + Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates! + Ye argent clarions, sound a loftier strain + For the vile thing he hated lurks within + Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin. + + Still what avails it that she sought her cave + That murderous mother of red harlotries? + At Munich on the marble architrave + The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas + Which wash Ægina fret in loneliness + Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless + + For lack of our ideals, if one star + Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust + Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war + Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust + Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe + For all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy, + + What Easter Day shall make her children rise, + Who were not Gods yet suffered? what sure feet + Shall find their grave-clothes folded? what clear eyes + Shall see them bodily? O it were meet + To roll the stone from off the sepulchre + And kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of her, + + Our Italy! our mother visible! + Most blessed among nations and most sad, + For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell + That day at Aspromonte and was glad + That in an age when God was bought and sold + One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold, + + See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves + Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: Poverty + Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives + Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily, + And no word said:—O we are wretched men + Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen + + Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword + Which slew its master righteously? the years + Have lost their ancient leader, and no word + Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears: + While as a ruined mother in some spasm + Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm + + Genders unlawful children, Anarchy + Freedom’s own Judas, the vile prodigal + Licence who steals the gold of Liberty + And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real + One Fraticide since Cain, Envy the asp + That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp + + Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed + For whose dull appetite men waste away + Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed + Of things which slay their sower, these each day + Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet + Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street. + + What even Cromwell spared is desecrated + By weed and worm, left to the stormy play + Of wind and beating snow, or renovated + By more destructful hands: Time’s worst decay + Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness, + But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness. + + Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing + Through Lincoln’s lofty choir, till the air + Seems from such marble harmonies to ring + With sweeter song than common lips can dare + To draw from actual reed? ah! where is now + The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow + + For Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One + Who loved the lilies of the field with all + Our dearest English flowers? the same sun + Rises for us: the seasons natural + Weave the same tapestry of green and grey: + The unchanged hills are with us: but that Spirit hath passed away. + + And yet perchance it may be better so, + For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen, + Murder her brother is her bedfellow, + And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene + And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set; + Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate! + + For gentle brotherhood, the harmony + Of living in the healthful air, the swift + Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free + And women chaste, these are the things which lift + Our souls up more than even Agnolo’s + Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er the scroll of human woes, + + Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair + White as her own sweet lily and as tall, + Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,— + Ah! somehow life is bigger after all + Than any painted angel, could we see + The God that is within us! The old Greek serenity + + Which curbs the passion of that level line + Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes + And chastened limbs ride round Athena’s shrine + And mirror her divine economies, + And balanced symmetry of what in man + Would else wage ceaseless warfare,—this at least within the span + + Between our mother’s kisses and the grave + Might so inform our lives, that we could win + Such mighty empires that from her cave + Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin + Would walk ashamed of his adulteries, + And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes. + + To make the body and the spirit one + With all right things, till no thing live in vain + From morn to noon, but in sweet unison + With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain + The soul in flawless essence high enthroned, + Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned, + + Mark with serene impartiality + The strife of things, and yet be comforted, + Knowing that by the chain causality + All separate existences are wed + Into one supreme whole, whose utterance + Is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance + + Of Life in most august omnipresence, + Through which the rational intellect would find + In passion its expression, and mere sense, + Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind, + And being joined with it in harmony + More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary, + + Strike from their several tones one octave chord + Whose cadence being measureless would fly + Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord + Return refreshed with its new empery + And more exultant power,—this indeed + Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed. + + Ah! it was easy when the world was young + To keep one’s life free and inviolate, + From our sad lips another song is rung, + By our own hands our heads are desecrate, + Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessed + Of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest. + + Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown, + And of all men we are most wretched who + Must live each other’s lives and not our own + For very pity’s sake and then undo + All that we lived for—it was otherwise + When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies. + + But we have left those gentle haunts to pass + With weary feet to the new Calvary, + Where we behold, as one who in a glass + Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity, + And in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze + Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise. + + O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn! + O chalice of all common miseries! + Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne + An agony of endless centuries, + And we were vain and ignorant nor knew + That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew. + + Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds, + The night that covers and the lights that fade, + The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds, + The lips betraying and the life betrayed; + The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we + Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy. + + Is this the end of all that primal force + Which, in its changes being still the same, + From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course, + Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame, + Till the suns met in heaven and began + Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man! + + Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though + The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain + Loosen the nails—we shall come down I know, + Staunch the red wounds—we shall be whole again, + No need have we of hyssop-laden rod, + That which is purely human, that is godlike, that is God. + + + +FLOWER OF LOVE + + +ΓΛΥΚΥΠΙΚΡΟΣ ΕΡΩΣ + + + SWEET, I blame you not, for mine the fault + was, had I not been made of common clay + I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed + yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day. + + From the wildness of my wasted passion I had + struck a better, clearer song, + Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled + with some Hydra-headed wrong. + + Had my lips been smitten into music by the + kisses that but made them bleed, + You had walked with Bice and the angels on + that verdant and enamelled mead. + + I had trod the road which Dante treading saw + the suns of seven circles shine, + Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, + as they opened to the Florentine. + + And the mighty nations would have crowned + me, who am crownless now and without name, + And some orient dawn had found me kneeling + on the threshold of the House of Fame. + + I had sat within that marble circle where the + oldest bard is as the young, + And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the + lyre’s strings are ever strung. + + Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out + the poppy-seeded wine, + With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead, + clasped the hand of noble love in mine. + + And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush + the burnished bosom of the dove, + Two young lovers lying in an orchard would + have read the story of our love. + + Would have read the legend of my passion, + known the bitter secret of my heart, + Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as + we two are fated now to part. + + For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by + the cankerworm of truth, + And no hand can gather up the fallen withered + petals of the rose of youth. + + Yet I am not sorry that I loved you—ah! what + else had I a boy to do,— + For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the + silent-footed years pursue. + + Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and + when once the storm of youth is past, + Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death + the silent pilot comes at last. + + And within the grave there is no pleasure, for + the blindworm battens on the root, + And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of + Passion bears no fruit. + + Ah! what else had I to do but love you, God’s + own mother was less dear to me, + And less dear the Cytheræan rising like an + argent lily from the sea. + + I have made my choice, have lived my poems, + and, though youth is gone in wasted days, + I have found the lover’s crown of myrtle better + than the poet’s crown of bays. + + + + +UNCOLLECTED POEMS + + +FROM SPRING DAYS TO WINTER + + + (FOR MUSIC) + + IN the glad springtime when leaves were green, + O merrily the throstle sings! + I sought, amid the tangled sheen, + Love whom mine eyes had never seen, + O the glad dove has golden wings! + + Between the blossoms red and white, + O merrily the throstle sings! + My love first came into my sight, + O perfect vision of delight, + O the glad dove has golden wings! + + The yellow apples glowed like fire, + O merrily the throstle sings! + O Love too great for lip or lyre, + Blown rose of love and of desire, + O the glad dove has golden wings! + + But now with snow the tree is grey, + Ah, sadly now the throstle sings! + My love is dead: ah! well-a-day, + See at her silent feet I lay + A dove with broken wings! + Ah, Love! ah, Love! that thou wert slain— + Fond Dove, fond Dove return again! + + + +TRISTITÆ + + + _Αἴλινον_, _αἴλινον εἰπέ_, _τὸ δ’ εὖ νικάτω_ + + O WELL for him who lives at ease + With garnered gold in wide domain, + Nor heeds the splashing of the rain, + The crashing down of forest trees. + + O well for him who ne’er hath known + The travail of the hungry years, + A father grey with grief and tears, + A mother weeping all alone. + + But well for him whose foot hath trod + The weary road of toil and strife, + Yet from the sorrows of his life. + Builds ladders to be nearer God. + + + +THE TRUE KNOWLEDGE + + + . . . _ἀναyκαίως δ’ ἔχει_ + _Βίον θερίζειν ὥστε κάρπιμον στάχυν_, + _καὶ τὸν yὲν εἶναι τὸν δὲ yή_. + + THOU knowest all; I seek in vain + What lands to till or sow with seed— + The land is black with briar and weed, + Nor cares for falling tears or rain. + + Thou knowest all; I sit and wait + With blinded eyes and hands that fail, + Till the last lifting of the veil + And the first opening of the gate. + + Thou knowest all; I cannot see. + I trust I shall not live in vain, + I know that we shall meet again + In some divine eternity. + + + +IMPRESSIONS + + +I +LE JARDIN + + + THE lily’s withered chalice falls + Around its rod of dusty gold, + And from the beech-trees on the wold + The last wood-pigeon coos and calls. + + The gaudy leonine sunflower + Hangs black and barren on its stalk, + And down the windy garden walk + The dead leaves scatter,—hour by hour. + + Pale privet-petals white as milk + Are blown into a snowy mass: + The roses lie upon the grass + Like little shreds of crimson silk. + + +II +LA MER + + + A WHITE mist drifts across the shrouds, + A wild moon in this wintry sky + Gleams like an angry lion’s eye + Out of a mane of tawny clouds. + + The muffled steersman at the wheel + Is but a shadow in the gloom;— + And in the throbbing engine-room + Leap the long rods of polished steel. + + The shattered storm has left its trace + Upon this huge and heaving dome, + For the thin threads of yellow foam + Float on the waves like ravelled lace. + + + +UNDER THE BALCONY + + + O BEAUTIFUL star with the crimson mouth! + O moon with the brows of gold! + Rise up, rise up, from the odorous south! + And light for my love her way, + Lest her little feet should stray + On the windy hill and the wold! + O beautiful star with the crimson mouth! + O moon with the brows of gold! + + O ship that shakes on the desolate sea! + O ship with the wet, white sail! + Put in, put in, to the port to me! + For my love and I would go + To the land where the daffodils blow + In the heart of a violet dale! + O ship that shakes on the desolate sea! + O ship with the wet, white sail! + + O rapturous bird with the low, sweet note! + O bird that sits on the spray! + Sing on, sing on, from your soft brown throat! + And my love in her little bed + Will listen, and lift her head + From the pillow, and come my way! + O rapturous bird with the low, sweet note! + O bird that sits on the spray! + + O blossom that hangs in the tremulous air! + O blossom with lips of snow! + Come down, come down, for my love to wear! + You will die on her head in a crown, + You will die in a fold of her gown, + To her little light heart you will go! + O blossom that hangs in the tremulous air! + O blossom with lips of snow! + + + +THE HARLOT’S HOUSE + + + WE caught the tread of dancing feet, + We loitered down the moonlit street, + And stopped beneath the harlot’s house. + + Inside, above the din and fray, + We heard the loud musicians play + The ‘Treues Liebes Herz’ of Strauss. + + Like strange mechanical grotesques, + Making fantastic arabesques, + The shadows raced across the blind. + + We watched the ghostly dancers spin + To sound of horn and violin, + Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. + + Like wire-pulled automatons, + Slim silhouetted skeletons + Went sidling through the slow quadrille, + + Then took each other by the hand, + And danced a stately saraband; + Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. + + Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed + A phantom lover to her breast, + Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. + + Sometimes a horrible marionette + Came out, and smoked its cigarette + Upon the steps like a live thing. + + Then, turning to my love, I said, + ‘The dead are dancing with the dead, + The dust is whirling with the dust.’ + + But she—she heard the violin, + And left my side, and entered in: + Love passed into the house of lust. + + Then suddenly the tune went false, + The dancers wearied of the waltz, + The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl. + + And down the long and silent street, + The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, + Crept like a frightened girl. + + + +LE JARDIN DES TUILERIES + + + THIS winter air is keen and cold, + And keen and cold this winter sun, + But round my chair the children run + Like little things of dancing gold. + + Sometimes about the painted kiosk + The mimic soldiers strut and stride, + Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide + In the bleak tangles of the bosk. + + And sometimes, while the old nurse cons + Her book, they steal across the square, + And launch their paper navies where + Huge Triton writhes in greenish bronze. + + And now in mimic flight they flee, + And now they rush, a boisterous band— + And, tiny hand on tiny hand, + Climb up the black and leafless tree. + + Ah! cruel tree! if I were you, + And children climbed me, for their sake + Though it be winter I would break + Into spring blossoms white and blue! + + + +ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’ LOVE LETTERS + + + THESE are the letters which Endymion wrote + To one he loved in secret, and apart. + And now the brawlers of the auction mart + Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note, + Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote + The merchant’s price. I think they love not art + Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart + That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat. + + Is it not said that many years ago, + In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran + With torches through the midnight, and began + To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw + Dice for the garments of a wretched man, + Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe? + + + +THE NEW REMORSE + + + THE sin was mine; I did not understand. + So now is music prisoned in her cave, + Save where some ebbing desultory wave + Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand. + And in the withered hollow of this land + Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave, + That hardly can the leaden willow crave + One silver blossom from keen Winter’s hand. + + But who is this who cometh by the shore? + (Nay, love, look up and wonder!) Who is this + Who cometh in dyed garments from the South? + It is thy new-found Lord, and he shall kiss + The yet unravished roses of thy mouth, + And I shall weep and worship, as before. + + + +FANTAISIES DÉCORATIVES + + +I +LE PANNEAU + + + UNDER the rose-tree’s dancing shade + There stands a little ivory girl, + Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl + With pale green nails of polished jade. + + The red leaves fall upon the mould, + The white leaves flutter, one by one, + Down to a blue bowl where the sun, + Like a great dragon, writhes in gold. + + The white leaves float upon the air, + The red leaves flutter idly down, + Some fall upon her yellow gown, + And some upon her raven hair. + + She takes an amber lute and sings, + And as she sings a silver crane + Begins his scarlet neck to strain, + And flap his burnished metal wings. + + She takes a lute of amber bright, + And from the thicket where he lies + Her lover, with his almond eyes, + Watches her movements in delight. + + And now she gives a cry of fear, + And tiny tears begin to start: + A thorn has wounded with its dart + The pink-veined sea-shell of her ear. + + And now she laughs a merry note: + There has fallen a petal of the rose + Just where the yellow satin shows + The blue-veined flower of her throat. + + With pale green nails of polished jade, + Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl, + There stands a little ivory girl + Under the rose-tree’s dancing shade. + + +II +LES BALLONS + + + AGAINST these turbid turquoise skies + The light and luminous balloons + Dip and drift like satin moons, + Drift like silken butterflies; + + Reel with every windy gust, + Rise and reel like dancing girls, + Float like strange transparent pearls, + Fall and float like silver dust. + + Now to the low leaves they cling, + Each with coy fantastic pose, + Each a petal of a rose + Straining at a gossamer string. + + Then to the tall trees they climb, + Like thin globes of amethyst, + Wandering opals keeping tryst + With the rubies of the lime. + + + +CANZONET + + + I HAVE no store + Of gryphon-guarded gold; + Now, as before, + Bare is the shepherd’s fold. + Rubies nor pearls + Have I to gem thy throat; + Yet woodland girls + Have loved the shepherd’s note. + + Then pluck a reed + And bid me sing to thee, + For I would feed + Thine ears with melody, + Who art more fair + Than fairest fleur-de-lys, + More sweet and rare + Than sweetest ambergris. + + What dost thou fear? + Young Hyacinth is slain, + Pan is not here, + And will not come again. + No hornèd Faun + Treads down the yellow leas, + No God at dawn + Steals through the olive trees. + + Hylas is dead, + Nor will he e’er divine + Those little red + Rose-petalled lips of thine. + On the high hill + No ivory dryads play, + Silver and still + Sinks the sad autumn day. + + + +SYMPHONY IN YELLOW + + + AN omnibus across the bridge + Crawls like a yellow butterfly, + And, here and there, a passer-by + Shows like a little restless midge. + + Big barges full of yellow hay + Are moored against the shadowy wharf, + And, like a yellow silken scarf, + The thick fog hangs along the quay. + + The yellow leaves begin to fade + And flutter from the Temple elms, + And at my feet the pale green Thames + Lies like a rod of rippled jade. + + + +IN THE FOREST + + + OUT of the mid-wood’s twilight + Into the meadow’s dawn, + Ivory limbed and brown-eyed, + Flashes my Faun! + + He skips through the copses singing, + And his shadow dances along, + And I know not which I should follow, + Shadow or song! + + O Hunter, snare me his shadow! + O Nightingale, catch me his strain! + Else moonstruck with music and madness + I track him in vain! + + + +TO MY WIFE + + + WITH A COPY OF MY POEMS + + I CAN write no stately proem + As a prelude to my lay; + From a poet to a poem + I would dare to say. + + For if of these fallen petals + One to you seem fair, + Love will waft it till it settles + On your hair. + + And when wind and winter harden + All the loveless land, + It will whisper of the garden, + You will understand. + + + +WITH A COPY OF ‘A HOUSE OF POMEGRANATES’ + + + GO, little book, + To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl, + Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl: + And bid him look + Into thy pages: it may hap that he + May find that golden maidens dance through thee. + + + +ROSES AND RUE + + + (To L. L.) + + COULD we dig up this long-buried treasure, + Were it worth the pleasure, + We never could learn love’s song, + We are parted too long. + + Could the passionate past that is fled + Call back its dead, + Could we live it all over again, + Were it worth the pain! + + I remember we used to meet + By an ivied seat, + And you warbled each pretty word + With the air of a bird; + + And your voice had a quaver in it, + Just like a linnet, + And shook, as the blackbird’s throat + With its last big note; + + And your eyes, they were green and grey + Like an April day, + But lit into amethyst + When I stooped and kissed; + + And your mouth, it would never smile + For a long, long while, + Then it rippled all over with laughter + Five minutes after. + + You were always afraid of a shower, + Just like a flower: + I remember you started and ran + When the rain began. + + I remember I never could catch you, + For no one could match you, + You had wonderful, luminous, fleet, + Little wings to your feet. + + I remember your hair—did I tie it? + For it always ran riot— + Like a tangled sunbeam of gold: + These things are old. + + I remember so well the room, + And the lilac bloom + That beat at the dripping pane + In the warm June rain; + + And the colour of your gown, + It was amber-brown, + And two yellow satin bows + From your shoulders rose. + + And the handkerchief of French lace + Which you held to your face— + Had a small tear left a stain? + Or was it the rain? + + On your hand as it waved adieu + There were veins of blue; + In your voice as it said good-bye + Was a petulant cry, + + ‘You have only wasted your life.’ + (Ah, that was the knife!) + When I rushed through the garden gate + It was all too late. + + Could we live it over again, + Were it worth the pain, + Could the passionate past that is fled + Call back its dead! + + Well, if my heart must break, + Dear love, for your sake, + It will break in music, I know, + Poets’ hearts break so. + + But strange that I was not told + That the brain can hold + In a tiny ivory cell + God’s heaven and hell. + + + +DÉSESPOIR + + + THE seasons send their ruin as they go, + For in the spring the narciss shows its head + Nor withers till the rose has flamed to red, + And in the autumn purple violets blow, + And the slim crocus stirs the winter snow; + Wherefore yon leafless trees will bloom again + And this grey land grow green with summer rain + And send up cowslips for some boy to mow. + + But what of life whose bitter hungry sea + Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night + Covers the days which never more return? + Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn + We lose too soon, and only find delight + In withered husks of some dead memory. + + + +PAN + + + DOUBLE VILLANELLE + + I + + O goat-foot God of Arcady! + This modern world is grey and old, + And what remains to us of thee? + + No more the shepherd lads in glee + Throw apples at thy wattled fold, + O goat-foot God of Arcady! + + Nor through the laurels can one see + Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold, + And what remains to us of thee? + + And dull and dead our Thames would be, + For here the winds are chill and cold, + O goat-foot God of Arcady! + + Then keep the tomb of Helice, + Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold, + And what remains to us of thee? + + Though many an unsung elegy + Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold, + O goat-foot God of Arcady! + Ah, what remains to us of thee? + + II + + Ah, leave the hills of Arcady, + Thy satyrs and their wanton play, + This modern world hath need of thee. + + No nymph or Faun indeed have we, + For Faun and nymph are old and grey, + Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! + + This is the land where liberty + Lit grave-browed Milton on his way, + This modern world hath need of thee! + + A land of ancient chivalry + Where gentle Sidney saw the day, + Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! + + This fierce sea-lion of the sea, + This England lacks some stronger lay, + This modern world hath need of thee! + + Then blow some trumpet loud and free, + And give thine oaten pipe away, + Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! + This modern world hath need of thee! + + + + +THE SPHINX + + + TO + MARCEL SCHWOB + IN FRIENDSHIP + AND + IN ADMIRATION + + + +THE SPHINX + + + IN a dim corner of my room for longer than my fancy thinks + A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me through the shifting + gloom. + + Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she does not stir + For silver moons are naught to her and naught to her the suns that + reel. + + Red follows grey across the air, the waves of moonlight ebb and flow + But with the Dawn she does not go and in the night-time she is there. + + Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old and all the while this curious + cat + Lies couching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold. + + Upon the mat she lies and leers and on the tawny throat of her + Flutters the soft and silky fur or ripples to her pointed ears. + + Come forth, my lovely seneschal! so somnolent, so statuesque! + Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman and half animal! + + Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx! and put your head upon my + knee! + And let me stroke your throat and see your body spotted like the Lynx! + + And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory and grasp + The tail that like a monstrous Asp coils round your heavy velvet paws! + + * * * * * + + A THOUSAND weary centuries are thine while I have hardly seen + Some twenty summers cast their green for Autumn’s gaudy liveries. + + But you can read the Hieroglyphs on the great sandstone obelisks, + And you have talked with Basilisks, and you have looked on + Hippogriffs. + + O tell me, were you standing by when Isis to Osiris knelt? + And did you watch the Egyptian melt her union for Antony + + And drink the jewel-drunken wine and bend her head in mimic awe + To see the huge proconsul draw the salted tunny from the brine? + + And did you mark the Cyprian kiss white Adon on his catafalque? + And did you follow Amenalk, the God of Heliopolis? + + And did you talk with Thoth, and did you hear the moon-horned Io weep? + And know the painted kings who sleep beneath the wedge-shaped Pyramid? + + * * * * * + + LIFT up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one + sinks! + Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx! and sing me all your memories! + + Sing to me of the Jewish maid who wandered with the Holy Child, + And how you led them through the wild, and how they slept beneath your + shade. + + Sing to me of that odorous green eve when crouching by the marge + You heard from Adrian’s gilded barge the laughter of Antinous + + And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and watched with hot and + hungry stare + The ivory body of that rare young slave with his pomegranate mouth! + + Sing to me of the Labyrinth in which the twi-formed bull was stalled! + Sing to me of the night you crawled across the temple’s granite plinth + + When through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet Ibis flew + In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning Mandragores, + + And the great torpid crocodile within the tank shed slimy tears, + And tare the jewels from his ears and staggered back into the Nile, + + And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms as in your claws you + seized their snake + And crept away with it to slake your passion by the shuddering palms. + + * * * * * + + WHO were your lovers? who were they who wrestled for you in the dust? + Which was the vessel of your Lust? What Leman had you, every day? + + Did giant Lizards come and crouch before you on the reedy banks? + Did Gryphons with great metal flanks leap on you in your trampled + couch? + + Did monstrous hippopotami come sidling toward you in the mist? + Did gilt-scaled dragons writhe and twist with passion as you passed + them by? + + And from the brick-built Lycian tomb what horrible Chimera came + With fearful heads and fearful flame to breed new wonders from your + womb? + + * * * * * + + OR had you shameful secret quests and did you harry to your home + Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock crystal breasts? + + Or did you treading through the froth call to the brown Sidonian + For tidings of Leviathan, Leviathan or Behemoth? + + Or did you when the sun was set climb up the cactus-covered slope + To meet your swarthy Ethiop whose body was of polished jet? + + Or did you while the earthen skiffs dropped down the grey Nilotic + flats + At twilight and the flickering bats flew round the temple’s triple + glyphs + + Steal to the border of the bar and swim across the silent lake + And slink into the vault and make the Pyramid your lúpanar + + Till from each black sarcophagus rose up the painted swathèd dead? + Or did you lure unto your bed the ivory-horned Tragelaphos? + + Or did you love the god of flies who plagued the Hebrews and was + splashed + With wine unto the waist? or Pasht, who had green beryls for her eyes? + + Or that young god, the Tyrian, who was more amorous than the dove + Of Ashtaroth? or did you love the god of the Assyrian + + Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose high above his + hawk-faced head, + Painted with silver and with red and ribbed with rods of Oreichalch? + + Or did huge Apis from his car leap down and lay before your feet + Big blossoms of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured nenuphar? + + * * * * * + + HOW subtle-secret is your smile! Did you love none then? Nay, I know + Great Ammon was your bedfellow! He lay with you beside the Nile! + + The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when they saw him come + Odorous with Syrian galbanum and smeared with spikenard and with + thyme. + + He came along the river bank like some tall galley argent-sailed, + He strode across the waters, mailed in beauty, and the waters sank. + + He strode across the desert sand: he reached the valley where you lay: + He waited till the dawn of day: then touched your black breasts with + his hand. + + You kissed his mouth with mouths of flame: you made the hornèd god + your own: + You stood behind him on his throne: you called him by his secret name. + + You whispered monstrous oracles into the caverns of his ears: + With blood of goats and blood of steers you taught him monstrous + miracles. + + White Ammon was your bedfellow! Your chamber was the steaming Nile! + And with your curved archaic smile you watched his passion come and + go. + + * * * * * + + WITH Syrian oils his brows were bright: and wide-spread as a tent at + noon + His marble limbs made pale the moon and lent the day a larger light. + + His long hair was nine cubits’ span and coloured like that yellow gem + Which hidden in their garment’s hem the merchants bring from + Kurdistan. + + His face was as the must that lies upon a vat of new-made wine: + The seas could not insapphirine the perfect azure of his eyes. + + His thick soft throat was white as milk and threaded with thin veins + of blue: + And curious pearls like frozen dew were broidered on his flowing silk. + + * * * * * + + ON pearl and porphyry pedestalled he was too bright to look upon: + For on his ivory breast there shone the wondrous ocean-emerald, + + That mystic moonlit jewel which some diver of the Colchian caves + Had found beneath the blackening waves and carried to the Colchian + witch. + + Before his gilded galiot ran naked vine-wreathed corybants, + And lines of swaying elephants knelt down to draw his chariot, + + And lines of swarthy Nubians bare up his litter as he rode + Down the great granite-paven road between the nodding peacock-fans. + + The merchants brought him steatite from Sidon in their painted ships: + The meanest cup that touched his lips was fashioned from a chrysolite. + + The merchants brought him cedar chests of rich apparel bound with + cords: + His train was borne by Memphian lords: young kings were glad to be his + guests. + + Ten hundred shaven priests did bow to Ammon’s altar day and night, + Ten hundred lamps did wave their light through Ammon’s carven + house—and now + + Foul snake and speckled adder with their young ones crawl from stone + to stone + For ruined is the house and prone the great rose-marble monolith! + + Wild ass or trotting jackal comes and couches in the mouldering gates: + Wild satyrs call unto their mates across the fallen fluted drums. + + And on the summit of the pile the blue-faced ape of Horus sits + And gibbers while the fig-tree splits the pillars of the peristyle + + * * * * * + + THE god is scattered here and there: deep hidden in the windy sand + I saw his giant granite hand still clenched in impotent despair. + + And many a wandering caravan of stately negroes silken-shawled, + Crossing the desert, halts appalled before the neck that none can + span. + + And many a bearded Bedouin draws back his yellow-striped burnous + To gaze upon the Titan thews of him who was thy paladin. + + * * * * * + + GO, seek his fragments on the moor and wash them in the evening dew, + And from their pieces make anew thy mutilated paramour! + + Go, seek them where they lie alone and from their broken pieces make + Thy bruisèd bedfellow! And wake mad passions in the senseless stone! + + Charm his dull ear with Syrian hymns! he loved your body! oh, be kind, + Pour spikenard on his hair, and wind soft rolls of linen round his + limbs! + + Wind round his head the figured coins! stain with red fruits those + pallid lips! + Weave purple for his shrunken hips! and purple for his barren loins! + + * * * * * + + AWAY to Egypt! Have no fear. Only one God has ever died. + Only one God has let His side be wounded by a soldier’s spear. + + But these, thy lovers, are not dead. Still by the hundred-cubit gate + Dog-faced Anubis sits in state with lotus-lilies for thy head. + + Still from his chair of porphyry gaunt Memnon strains his lidless eyes + Across the empty land, and cries each yellow morning unto thee. + + And Nilus with his broken horn lies in his black and oozy bed + And till thy coming will not spread his waters on the withering corn. + + Your lovers are not dead, I know. They will rise up and hear your + voice + And clash their cymbals and rejoice and run to kiss your mouth! And + so, + + Set wings upon your argosies! Set horses to your ebon car! + Back to your Nile! Or if you are grown sick of dead divinities + + Follow some roving lion’s spoor across the copper-coloured plain, + Reach out and hale him by the mane and bid him be your paramour! + + Couch by his side upon the grass and set your white teeth in his + throat + And when you hear his dying note lash your long flanks of polished + brass + + And take a tiger for your mate, whose amber sides are flecked with + black, + And ride upon his gilded back in triumph through the Theban gate, + + And toy with him in amorous jests, and when he turns, and snarls, and + gnaws, + O smite him with your jasper claws! and bruise him with your agate + breasts! + + * * * * * + + WHY are you tarrying? Get hence! I weary of your sullen ways, + I weary of your steadfast gaze, your somnolent magnificence. + + Your horrible and heavy breath makes the light flicker in the lamp, + And on my brow I feel the damp and dreadful dews of night and death. + + Your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver in some stagnant lake, + Your tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances to fantastic tunes, + + Your pulse makes poisonous melodies, and your black throat is like the + hole + Left by some torch or burning coal on Saracenic tapestries. + + Away! The sulphur-coloured stars are hurrying through the Western + gate! + Away! Or it may be too late to climb their silent silver cars! + + See, the dawn shivers round the grey gilt-dialled towers, and the rain + Streams down each diamonded pane and blurs with tears the wannish day. + + What snake-tressed fury fresh from Hell, with uncouth gestures and + unclean, + Stole from the poppy-drowsy queen and led you to a student’s cell? + + * * * * * + + WHAT songless tongueless ghost of sin crept through the curtains of + the night, + And saw my taper burning bright, and knocked, and bade you enter in? + + Are there not others more accursed, whiter with leprosies than I? + Are Abana and Pharphar dry that you come here to slake your thirst? + + Get hence, you loathsome mystery! Hideous animal, get hence! + You wake in me each bestial sense, you make me what I would not be. + + You make my creed a barren sham, you wake foul dreams of sensual life, + And Atys with his blood-stained knife were better than the thing I am. + + False Sphinx! False Sphinx! By reedy Styx old Charon, leaning on his + oar, + Waits for my coin. Go thou before, and leave me to my crucifix, + + Whose pallid burden, sick with pain, watches the world with wearied + eyes, + And weeps for every soul that dies, and weeps for every soul in vain. + + + + +THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL + + + IN MEMORIAM + C. T. W. + SOMETIME TROOPER OF THE ROYAL HORSE GUARDS + OBIIT H.M. PRISON, READING, BERKSHIRE + JULY 7, 1896 + + + +THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL + + + I + + HE did not wear his scarlet coat, + For blood and wine are red, + And blood and wine were on his hands + When they found him with the dead, + The poor dead woman whom he loved, + And murdered in her bed. + + He walked amongst the Trial Men + In a suit of shabby grey; + A cricket cap was on his head, + And his step seemed light and gay; + But I never saw a man who looked + So wistfully at the day. + + I never saw a man who looked + With such a wistful eye + Upon that little tent of blue + Which prisoners call the sky, + And at every drifting cloud that went + With sails of silver by. + + I walked, with other souls in pain, + Within another ring, + And was wondering if the man had done + A great or little thing, + When a voice behind me whispered low, + ‘_That fellow’s got to swing_.’ + + Dear Christ! the very prison walls + Suddenly seemed to reel, + And the sky above my head became + Like a casque of scorching steel; + And, though I was a soul in pain, + My pain I could not feel. + + I only knew what hunted thought + Quickened his step, and why + He looked upon the garish day + With such a wistful eye; + The man had killed the thing he loved, + And so he had to die. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + Yet each man kills the thing he loves, + By each let this be heard, + Some do it with a bitter look, + Some with a flattering word, + The coward does it with a kiss, + The brave man with a sword! + + Some kill their love when they are young, + And some when they are old; + Some strangle with the hands of Lust, + Some with the hands of Gold: + The kindest use a knife, because + The dead so soon grow cold. + + Some love too little, some too long, + Some sell, and others buy; + Some do the deed with many tears, + And some without a sigh: + For each man kills the thing he loves, + Yet each man does not die. + + He does not die a death of shame + On a day of dark disgrace, + Nor have a noose about his neck, + Nor a cloth upon his face, + Nor drop feet foremost through the floor + Into an empty space. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + He does not sit with silent men + Who watch him night and day; + Who watch him when he tries to weep, + And when he tries to pray; + Who watch him lest himself should rob + The prison of its prey. + + He does not wake at dawn to see + Dread figures throng his room, + The shivering Chaplain robed in white, + The Sheriff stern with gloom, + And the Governor all in shiny black, + With the yellow face of Doom. + + He does not rise in piteous haste + To put on convict-clothes, + While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes + Each new and nerve-twitched pose, + Fingering a watch whose little ticks + Are like horrible hammer-blows. + + He does not know that sickening thirst + That sands one’s throat, before + The hangman with his gardener’s gloves + Slips through the padded door, + And binds one with three leathern thongs, + That the throat may thirst no more. + + He does not bend his head to hear + The Burial Office read, + Nor, while the terror of his soul + Tells him he is not dead, + Cross his own coffin, as he moves + Into the hideous shed. + + He does not stare upon the air + Through a little roof of glass: + He does not pray with lips of clay + For his agony to pass; + Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek + The kiss of Caiaphas. + + II + + SIX weeks our guardsman walked the yard, + In the suit of shabby grey: + His cricket cap was on his head, + And his step seemed light and gay, + But I never saw a man who looked + So wistfully at the day. + + I never saw a man who looked + With such a wistful eye + Upon that little tent of blue + Which prisoners call the sky, + And at every wandering cloud that trailed + Its ravelled fleeces by. + + He did not wring his hands, as do + Those witless men who dare + To try to rear the changeling Hope + In the cave of black Despair: + He only looked upon the sun, + And drank the morning air. + + He did not wring his hands nor weep, + Nor did he peek or pine, + But he drank the air as though it held + Some healthful anodyne; + With open mouth he drank the sun + As though it had been wine! + + And I and all the souls in pain, + Who tramped the other ring, + Forgot if we ourselves had done + A great or little thing, + And watched with gaze of dull amaze + The man who had to swing. + + And strange it was to see him pass + With a step so light and gay, + And strange it was to see him look + So wistfully at the day, + And strange it was to think that he + Had such a debt to pay. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + For oak and elm have pleasant leaves + That in the springtime shoot: + But grim to see is the gallows-tree, + With its adder-bitten root, + And, green or dry, a man must die + Before it bears its fruit! + + The loftiest place is that seat of grace + For which all worldlings try: + But who would stand in hempen band + Upon a scaffold high, + And through a murderer’s collar take + His last look at the sky? + + It is sweet to dance to violins + When Love and Life are fair: + To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes + Is delicate and rare: + But it is not sweet with nimble feet + To dance upon the air! + + So with curious eyes and sick surmise + We watched him day by day, + And wondered if each one of us + Would end the self-same way, + For none can tell to what red Hell + His sightless soul may stray. + + At last the dead man walked no more + Amongst the Trial Men, + And I knew that he was standing up + In the black dock’s dreadful pen, + And that never would I see his face + In God’s sweet world again. + + Like two doomed ships that pass in storm + We had crossed each other’s way: + But we made no sign, we said no word, + We had no word to say; + For we did not meet in the holy night, + But in the shameful day. + + A prison wall was round us both, + Two outcast men we were: + The world had thrust us from its heart, + And God from out His care: + And the iron gin that waits for Sin + Had caught us in its snare. + + III + + IN Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard, + And the dripping wall is high, + So it was there he took the air + Beneath the leaden sky, + And by each side a Warder walked, + For fear the man might die. + + Or else he sat with those who watched + His anguish night and day; + Who watched him when he rose to weep, + And when he crouched to pray; + Who watched him lest himself should rob + Their scaffold of its prey. + + The Governor was strong upon + The Regulations Act: + The Doctor said that Death was but + A scientific fact: + And twice a day the Chaplain called, + And left a little tract. + + And twice a day he smoked his pipe, + And drank his quart of beer: + His soul was resolute, and held + No hiding-place for fear; + He often said that he was glad + The hangman’s hands were near. + + But why he said so strange a thing + No Warder dared to ask: + For he to whom a watcher’s doom + Is given as his task, + Must set a lock upon his lips, + And make his face a mask. + + Or else he might be moved, and try + To comfort or console: + And what should Human Pity do + Pent up in Murderers’ Hole? + What word of grace in such a place + Could help a brother’s soul? + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + With slouch and swing around the ring + We trod the Fools’ Parade! + We did not care: we knew we were + The Devil’s Own Brigade: + And shaven head and feet of lead + Make a merry masquerade. + + We tore the tarry rope to shreds + With blunt and bleeding nails; + We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors, + And cleaned the shining rails: + And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank, + And clattered with the pails. + + We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, + We turned the dusty drill: + We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, + And sweated on the mill: + But in the heart of every man + Terror was lying still. + + So still it lay that every day + Crawled like a weed-clogged wave: + And we forgot the bitter lot + That waits for fool and knave, + Till once, as we tramped in from work, + We passed an open grave. + + With yawning mouth the yellow hole + Gaped for a living thing; + The very mud cried out for blood + To the thirsty asphalte ring: + And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair + Some prisoner had to swing. + + Right in we went, with soul intent + On Death and Dread and Doom: + The hangman, with his little bag, + Went shuffling through the gloom: + And each man trembled as he crept + Into his numbered tomb. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + That night the empty corridors + Were full of forms of Fear, + And up and down the iron town + Stole feet we could not hear, + And through the bars that hide the stars + White faces seemed to peer. + + He lay as one who lies and dreams + In a pleasant meadow-land, + The watchers watched him as he slept, + And could not understand + How one could sleep so sweet a sleep + With a hangman close at hand. + + But there is no sleep when men must weep + Who never yet have wept: + So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave— + That endless vigil kept, + And through each brain on hands of pain + Another’s terror crept. + + Alas! it is a fearful thing + To feel another’s guilt! + For, right within, the sword of Sin + Pierced to its poisoned hilt, + And as molten lead were the tears we shed + For the blood we had not spilt. + + The Warders with their shoes of felt + Crept by each padlocked door, + And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe, + Grey figures on the floor, + And wondered why men knelt to pray + Who never prayed before. + + All through the night we knelt and prayed, + Mad mourners of a corse! + The troubled plumes of midnight were + The plumes upon a hearse: + And bitter wine upon a sponge + Was the savour of Remorse. + + * * * * * + + The grey cock crew, the red cock crew, + But never came the day: + And crooked shapes of Terror crouched, + In the corners where we lay: + And each evil sprite that walks by night + Before us seemed to play. + + They glided past, they glided fast, + Like travellers through a mist: + They mocked the moon in a rigadoon + Of delicate turn and twist, + And with formal pace and loathsome grace + The phantoms kept their tryst. + + With mop and mow, we saw them go, + Slim shadows hand in hand: + About, about, in ghostly rout + They trod a saraband: + And the damned grotesques made arabesques, + Like the wind upon the sand! + + With the pirouettes of marionettes, + They tripped on pointed tread: + But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear, + As their grisly masque they led, + And loud they sang, and long they sang, + For they sang to wake the dead. + + ‘_Oho_!’ _they cried_, ‘_The world is wide_, + _But fettered limbs go lame_! + _And once_, _or twice_, _to throw the dice_ + _Is a gentlemanly game_, + _But he does not win who plays with Sin_ + _In the secret House of Shame_.’ + + No things of air these antics were, + That frolicked with such glee: + To men whose lives were held in gyves, + And whose feet might not go free, + Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things, + Most terrible to see. + + Around, around, they waltzed and wound; + Some wheeled in smirking pairs; + With the mincing step of a demirep + Some sidled up the stairs: + And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, + Each helped us at our prayers. + + The morning wind began to moan, + But still the night went on: + Through its giant loom the web of gloom + Crept till each thread was spun: + And, as we prayed, we grew afraid + Of the Justice of the Sun. + + The moaning wind went wandering round + The weeping prison-wall: + Till like a wheel of turning steel + We felt the minutes crawl: + O moaning wind! what had we done + To have such a seneschal? + + At last I saw the shadowed bars, + Like a lattice wrought in lead, + Move right across the whitewashed wall + That faced my three-plank bed, + And I knew that somewhere in the world + God’s dreadful dawn was red. + + At six o’clock we cleaned our cells, + At seven all was still, + But the sough and swing of a mighty wing + The prison seemed to fill, + For the Lord of Death with icy breath + Had entered in to kill. + + He did not pass in purple pomp, + Nor ride a moon-white steed. + Three yards of cord and a sliding board + Are all the gallows’ need: + So with rope of shame the Herald came + To do the secret deed. + + We were as men who through a fen + Of filthy darkness grope: + We did not dare to breathe a prayer, + Or to give our anguish scope: + Something was dead in each of us, + And what was dead was Hope. + + For Man’s grim Justice goes its way, + And will not swerve aside: + It slays the weak, it slays the strong, + It has a deadly stride: + With iron heel it slays the strong, + The monstrous parricide! + + We waited for the stroke of eight: + Each tongue was thick with thirst: + For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate + That makes a man accursed, + And Fate will use a running noose + For the best man and the worst. + + We had no other thing to do, + Save to wait for the sign to come: + So, like things of stone in a valley lone, + Quiet we sat and dumb: + But each man’s heart beat thick and quick, + Like a madman on a drum! + + With sudden shock the prison-clock + Smote on the shivering air, + And from all the gaol rose up a wail + Of impotent despair, + Like the sound that frightened marshes hear + From some leper in his lair. + + And as one sees most fearful things + In the crystal of a dream, + We saw the greasy hempen rope + Hooked to the blackened beam, + And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare + Strangled into a scream. + + And all the woe that moved him so + That he gave that bitter cry, + And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, + None knew so well as I: + For he who lives more lives than one + More deaths than one must die. + + IV + + THERE is no chapel on the day + On which they hang a man: + The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick, + Or his face is far too wan, + Or there is that written in his eyes + Which none should look upon. + + So they kept us close till nigh on noon, + And then they rang the bell, + And the Warders with their jingling keys + Opened each listening cell, + And down the iron stair we tramped, + Each from his separate Hell. + + Out into God’s sweet air we went, + But not in wonted way, + For this man’s face was white with fear, + And that man’s face was grey, + And I never saw sad men who looked + So wistfully at the day. + + I never saw sad men who looked + With such a wistful eye + Upon that little tent of blue + We prisoners called the sky, + And at every careless cloud that passed + In happy freedom by. + + But there were those amongst us all + Who walked with downcast head, + And knew that, had each got his due, + They should have died instead: + He had but killed a thing that lived, + Whilst they had killed the dead. + + For he who sins a second time + Wakes a dead soul to pain, + And draws it from its spotted shroud, + And makes it bleed again, + And makes it bleed great gouts of blood, + And makes it bleed in vain! + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb + With crooked arrows starred, + Silently we went round and round + The slippery asphalte yard; + Silently we went round and round, + And no man spoke a word. + + Silently we went round and round, + And through each hollow mind + The Memory of dreadful things + Rushed like a dreadful wind, + And Horror stalked before each man, + And Terror crept behind. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + The Warders strutted up and down, + And kept their herd of brutes, + Their uniforms were spick and span, + And they wore their Sunday suits, + But we knew the work they had been at, + By the quicklime on their boots. + + For where a grave had opened wide, + There was no grave at all: + Only a stretch of mud and sand + By the hideous prison-wall, + And a little heap of burning lime, + That the man should have his pall. + + For he has a pall, this wretched man, + Such as few men can claim: + Deep down below a prison-yard, + Naked for greater shame, + He lies, with fetters on each foot, + Wrapt in a sheet of flame! + + And all the while the burning lime + Eats flesh and bone away, + It eats the brittle bone by night, + And the soft flesh by day, + It eats the flesh and bone by turns, + But it eats the heart alway. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + For three long years they will not sow + Or root or seedling there: + For three long years the unblessed spot + Will sterile be and bare, + And look upon the wondering sky + With unreproachful stare. + + They think a murderer’s heart would taint + Each simple seed they sow. + It is not true! God’s kindly earth + Is kindlier than men know, + And the red rose would but blow more red, + The white rose whiter blow. + + Out of his mouth a red, red rose! + Out of his heart a white! + For who can say by what strange way, + Christ brings His will to light, + Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore + Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight? + + But neither milk-white rose nor red + May bloom in prison-air; + The shard, the pebble, and the flint, + Are what they give us there: + For flowers have been known to heal + A common man’s despair. + + So never will wine-red rose or white, + Petal by petal, fall + On that stretch of mud and sand that lies + By the hideous prison-wall, + To tell the men who tramp the yard + That God’s Son died for all. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + Yet though the hideous prison-wall + Still hems him round and round, + And a spirit may not walk by night + That is with fetters bound, + And a spirit may but weep that lies + In such unholy ground, + + He is at peace—this wretched man— + At peace, or will be soon: + There is no thing to make him mad, + Nor does Terror walk at noon, + For the lampless Earth in which he lies + Has neither Sun nor Moon. + + They hanged him as a beast is hanged: + They did not even toll + A requiem that might have brought + Rest to his startled soul, + But hurriedly they took him out, + And hid him in a hole. + + They stripped him of his canvas clothes, + And gave him to the flies: + They mocked the swollen purple throat, + And the stark and staring eyes: + And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud + In which their convict lies. + + The Chaplain would not kneel to pray + By his dishonoured grave: + Nor mark it with that blessed Cross + That Christ for sinners gave, + Because the man was one of those + Whom Christ came down to save. + + Yet all is well; he has but passed + To Life’s appointed bourne: + And alien tears will fill for him + Pity’s long-broken urn, + For his mourners will be outcast men, + And outcasts always mourn + + V + + I KNOW not whether Laws be right, + Or whether Laws be wrong; + All that we know who lie in gaol + Is that the wall is strong; + And that each day is like a year, + A year whose days are long. + + But this I know, that every Law + That men have made for Man, + Since first Man took his brother’s life, + And the sad world began, + But straws the wheat and saves the chaff + With a most evil fan. + + This too I know—and wise it were + If each could know the same— + That every prison that men build + Is built with bricks of shame, + And bound with bars lest Christ should see + How men their brothers maim. + + With bars they blur the gracious moon, + And blind the goodly sun: + And they do well to hide their Hell, + For in it things are done + That Son of God nor son of Man + Ever should look upon! + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + The vilest deeds like poison weeds, + Bloom well in prison-air; + It is only what is good in Man + That wastes and withers there: + Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, + And the Warder is Despair. + + For they starve the little frightened child + Till it weeps both night and day: + And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool, + And gibe the old and grey, + And some grow mad, and all grow bad, + And none a word may say. + + Each narrow cell in which we dwell + Is a foul and dark latrine, + And the fetid breath of living Death + Chokes up each grated screen, + And all, but Lust, is turned to dust + In Humanity’s machine. + + The brackish water that we drink + Creeps with a loathsome slime, + And the bitter bread they weigh in scales + Is full of chalk and lime, + And Sleep will not lie down, but walks + Wild-eyed, and cries to Time. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + But though lean Hunger and green Thirst + Like asp with adder fight, + We have little care of prison fare, + For what chills and kills outright + Is that every stone one lifts by day + Becomes one’s heart by night. + + With midnight always in one’s heart, + And twilight in one’s cell, + We turn the crank, or tear the rope, + Each in his separate Hell, + And the silence is more awful far + Than the sound of a brazen bell. + + And never a human voice comes near + To speak a gentle word: + And the eye that watches through the door + Is pitiless and hard: + And by all forgot, we rot and rot, + With soul and body marred. + + And thus we rust Life’s iron chain + Degraded and alone: + And some men curse, and some men weep, + And some men make no moan: + But God’s eternal Laws are kind + And break the heart of stone. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + And every human heart that breaks, + In prison-cell or yard, + Is as that broken box that gave + Its treasure to the Lord, + And filled the unclean leper’s house + With the scent of costliest nard. + + Ah! happy they whose hearts can break + And peace of pardon win! + How else may man make straight his plan + And cleanse his soul from Sin? + How else but through a broken heart + May Lord Christ enter in? + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + And he of the swollen purple throat, + And the stark and staring eyes, + Waits for the holy hands that took + The Thief to Paradise; + And a broken and a contrite heart + The Lord will not despise. + + The man in red who reads the Law + Gave him three weeks of life, + Three little weeks in which to heal + His soul of his soul’s strife, + And cleanse from every blot of blood + The hand that held the knife. + + And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, + The hand that held the steel: + For only blood can wipe out blood, + And only tears can heal: + And the crimson stain that was of Cain + Became Christ’s snow-white seal. + + VI + + IN Reading gaol by Reading town + There is a pit of shame, + And in it lies a wretched man + Eaten by teeth of flame, + In a burning winding-sheet he lies, + And his grave has got no name. + + And there, till Christ call forth the dead, + In silence let him lie: + No need to waste the foolish tear, + Or heave the windy sigh: + The man had killed the thing he loved, + And so he had to die. + + And all men kill the thing they love, + By all let this be heard, + Some do it with a bitter look, + Some with a flattering word, + The coward does it with a kiss, + The brave man with a sword! + + + + +RAVENNA + + + _Newdigate Prize Poem_ + Recited in the Sheldonian Theatre + Oxford + June 26th, 1878 + + * * * * * + + TO MY FRIEND + GEORGE FLEMING + AUTHOR OF + ‘THE NILE NOVEL’ AND ‘MIRAGE’ + + _Ravenna_, _March_ 1877 + _Oxford_, _March_ 1878 + + + +RAVENNA + + + I. + + A YEAR ago I breathed the Italian air,— + And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,— + These fields made golden with the flower of March, + The throstle singing on the feathered larch, + The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by, + The little clouds that race across the sky; + And fair the violet’s gentle drooping head, + The primrose, pale for love uncomforted, + The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar, + The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire + Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring); + And all the flowers of our English Spring, + Fond snowdrops, and the bright-starred daffodil. + Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill, + And breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew; + And down the river, like a flame of blue, + Keen as an arrow flies the water-king, + While the brown linnets in the greenwood sing. + A year ago!—it seems a little time + Since last I saw that lordly southern clime, + Where flower and fruit to purple radiance blow, + And like bright lamps the fabled apples glow. + Full Spring it was—and by rich flowering vines, + Dark olive-groves and noble forest-pines, + I rode at will; the moist glad air was sweet, + The white road rang beneath my horse’s feet, + And musing on Ravenna’s ancient name, + I watched the day till, marked with wounds of flame, + The turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned. + + O how my heart with boyish passion burned, + When far away across the sedge and mere + I saw that Holy City rising clear, + Crowned with her crown of towers!—On and on + I galloped, racing with the setting sun, + And ere the crimson after-glow was passed, + I stood within Ravenna’s walls at last! + + II. + + How strangely still! no sound of life or joy + Startles the air; no laughing shepherd-boy + Pipes on his reed, nor ever through the day + Comes the glad sound of children at their play: + O sad, and sweet, and silent! surely here + A man might dwell apart from troublous fear, + Watching the tide of seasons as they flow + From amorous Spring to Winter’s rain and snow, + And have no thought of sorrow;—here, indeed, + Are Lethe’s waters, and that fatal weed + Which makes a man forget his fatherland. + + Ay! amid lotus-meadows dost thou stand, + Like Proserpine, with poppy-laden head, + Guarding the holy ashes of the dead. + For though thy brood of warrior sons hath ceased, + Thy noble dead are with thee!—they at least + Are faithful to thine honour:—guard them well, + O childless city! for a mighty spell, + To wake men’s hearts to dreams of things sublime, + Are the lone tombs where rest the Great of Time. + + III. + + Yon lonely pillar, rising on the plain, + Marks where the bravest knight of France was slain,— + The Prince of chivalry, the Lord of war, + Gaston de Foix: for some untimely star + Led him against thy city, and he fell, + As falls some forest-lion fighting well. + Taken from life while life and love were new, + He lies beneath God’s seamless veil of blue; + Tall lance-like reeds wave sadly o’er his head, + And oleanders bloom to deeper red, + Where his bright youth flowed crimson on the ground. + + Look farther north unto that broken mound,— + There, prisoned now within a lordly tomb + Raised by a daughter’s hand, in lonely gloom, + Huge-limbed Theodoric, the Gothic king, + Sleeps after all his weary conquering. + Time hath not spared his ruin,—wind and rain + Have broken down his stronghold; and again + We see that Death is mighty lord of all, + And king and clown to ashen dust must fall + + Mighty indeed _their_ glory! yet to me + Barbaric king, or knight of chivalry, + Or the great queen herself, were poor and vain, + Beside the grave where Dante rests from pain. + His gilded shrine lies open to the air; + And cunning sculptor’s hands have carven there + The calm white brow, as calm as earliest morn, + The eyes that flashed with passionate love and scorn, + The lips that sang of Heaven and of Hell, + The almond-face which Giotto drew so well, + The weary face of Dante;—to this day, + Here in his place of resting, far away + From Arno’s yellow waters, rushing down + Through the wide bridges of that fairy town, + Where the tall tower of Giotto seems to rise + A marble lily under sapphire skies! + + Alas! my Dante! thou hast known the pain + Of meaner lives,—the exile’s galling chain, + How steep the stairs within kings’ houses are, + And all the petty miseries which mar + Man’s nobler nature with the sense of wrong. + Yet this dull world is grateful for thy song; + Our nations do thee homage,—even she, + That cruel queen of vine-clad Tuscany, + Who bound with crown of thorns thy living brow, + Hath decked thine empty tomb with laurels now, + And begs in vain the ashes of her son. + + O mightiest exile! all thy grief is done: + Thy soul walks now beside thy Beatrice; + Ravenna guards thine ashes: sleep in peace. + + IV. + + How lone this palace is; how grey the walls! + No minstrel now wakes echoes in these halls. + The broken chain lies rusting on the door, + And noisome weeds have split the marble floor: + Here lurks the snake, and here the lizards run + By the stone lions blinking in the sun. + Byron dwelt here in love and revelry + For two long years—a second Anthony, + Who of the world another Actium made! + Yet suffered not his royal soul to fade, + Or lyre to break, or lance to grow less keen, + ’Neath any wiles of an Egyptian queen. + For from the East there came a mighty cry, + And Greece stood up to fight for Liberty, + And called him from Ravenna: never knight + Rode forth more nobly to wild scenes of fight! + None fell more bravely on ensanguined field, + Borne like a Spartan back upon his shield! + O Hellas! Hellas! in thine hour of pride, + Thy day of might, remember him who died + To wrest from off thy limbs the trammelling chain: + O Salamis! O lone Platæan plain! + O tossing waves of wild Euboean sea! + O wind-swept heights of lone Thermopylæ! + He loved you well—ay, not alone in word, + Who freely gave to thee his lyre and sword, + Like Æschylos at well-fought Marathon: + + And England, too, shall glory in her son, + Her warrior-poet, first in song and fight. + No longer now shall Slander’s venomed spite + Crawl like a snake across his perfect name, + Or mar the lordly scutcheon of his fame. + + For as the olive-garland of the race, + Which lights with joy each eager runner’s face, + As the red cross which saveth men in war, + As a flame-bearded beacon seen from far + By mariners upon a storm-tossed sea,— + Such was his love for Greece and Liberty! + + Byron, thy crowns are ever fresh and green: + Red leaves of rose from Sapphic Mitylene + Shall bind thy brows; the myrtle blooms for thee, + In hidden glades by lonely Castaly; + The laurels wait thy coming: all are thine, + And round thy head one perfect wreath will twine. + + V. + + The pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze + With the hoarse murmur of the wintry seas, + And the tall stems were streaked with amber bright;— + I wandered through the wood in wild delight, + Some startled bird, with fluttering wings and fleet, + Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet, + Like silver crowns, the pale narcissi lay, + And small birds sang on every twining spray. + O waving trees, O forest liberty! + Within your haunts at least a man is free, + And half forgets the weary world of strife: + The blood flows hotter, and a sense of life + Wakes i’ the quickening veins, while once again + The woods are filled with gods we fancied slain. + Long time I watched, and surely hoped to see + Some goat-foot Pan make merry minstrelsy + Amid the reeds! some startled Dryad-maid + In girlish flight! or lurking in the glade, + The soft brown limbs, the wanton treacherous face + Of woodland god! Queen Dian in the chase, + White-limbed and terrible, with look of pride, + And leash of boar-hounds leaping at her side! + Or Hylas mirrored in the perfect stream. + + O idle heart! O fond Hellenic dream! + Ere long, with melancholy rise and swell, + The evening chimes, the convent’s vesper bell, + Struck on mine ears amid the amorous flowers. + Alas! alas! these sweet and honied hours + Had whelmed my heart like some encroaching sea, + And drowned all thoughts of black Gethsemane. + + VI. + + O lone Ravenna! many a tale is told + Of thy great glories in the days of old: + Two thousand years have passed since thou didst see + Cæsar ride forth to royal victory. + Mighty thy name when Rome’s lean eagles flew + From Britain’s isles to far Euphrates blue; + And of the peoples thou wast noble queen, + Till in thy streets the Goth and Hun were seen. + Discrowned by man, deserted by the sea, + Thou sleepest, rocked in lonely misery! + No longer now upon thy swelling tide, + Pine-forest-like, thy myriad galleys ride! + For where the brass-beaked ships were wont to float, + The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note; + And the white sheep are free to come and go + Where Adria’s purple waters used to flow. + + O fair! O sad! O Queen uncomforted! + In ruined loveliness thou liest dead, + Alone of all thy sisters; for at last + Italia’s royal warrior hath passed + Rome’s lordliest entrance, and hath worn his crown + In the high temples of the Eternal Town! + The Palatine hath welcomed back her king, + And with his name the seven mountains ring! + + And Naples hath outlived her dream of pain, + And mocks her tyrant! Venice lives again, + New risen from the waters! and the cry + Of Light and Truth, of Love and Liberty, + Is heard in lordly Genoa, and where + The marble spires of Milan wound the air, + Rings from the Alps to the Sicilian shore, + And Dante’s dream is now a dream no more. + + But thou, Ravenna, better loved than all, + Thy ruined palaces are but a pall + That hides thy fallen greatness! and thy name + Burns like a grey and flickering candle-flame + Beneath the noonday splendour of the sun + Of new Italia! for the night is done, + The night of dark oppression, and the day + Hath dawned in passionate splendour: far away + The Austrian hounds are hunted from the land, + Beyond those ice-crowned citadels which stand + Girdling the plain of royal Lombardy, + From the far West unto the Eastern sea. + + I know, indeed, that sons of thine have died + In Lissa’s waters, by the mountain-side + Of Aspromonte, on Novara’s plain,— + Nor have thy children died for thee in vain: + And yet, methinks, thou hast not drunk this wine + From grapes new-crushed of Liberty divine, + Thou hast not followed that immortal Star + Which leads the people forth to deeds of war. + Weary of life, thou liest in silent sleep, + As one who marks the lengthening shadows creep, + Careless of all the hurrying hours that run, + Mourning some day of glory, for the sun + Of Freedom hath not shewn to thee his face, + And thou hast caught no flambeau in the race. + + Yet wake not from thy slumbers,—rest thee well, + Amidst thy fields of amber asphodel, + Thy lily-sprinkled meadows,—rest thee there, + To mock all human greatness: who would dare + To vent the paltry sorrows of his life + Before thy ruins, or to praise the strife + Of kings’ ambition, and the barren pride + Of warring nations! wert not thou the Bride + Of the wild Lord of Adria’s stormy sea! + The Queen of double Empires! and to thee + Were not the nations given as thy prey! + And now—thy gates lie open night and day, + The grass grows green on every tower and hall, + The ghastly fig hath cleft thy bastioned wall; + And where thy mailèd warriors stood at rest + The midnight owl hath made her secret nest. + O fallen! fallen! from thy high estate, + O city trammelled in the toils of Fate, + Doth nought remain of all thy glorious days, + But a dull shield, a crown of withered bays! + + Yet who beneath this night of wars and fears, + From tranquil tower can watch the coming years; + Who can foretell what joys the day shall bring, + Or why before the dawn the linnets sing? + Thou, even thou, mayst wake, as wakes the rose + To crimson splendour from its grave of snows; + As the rich corn-fields rise to red and gold + From these brown lands, now stiff with Winter’s cold; + As from the storm-rack comes a perfect star! + + O much-loved city! I have wandered far + From the wave-circled islands of my home; + Have seen the gloomy mystery of the Dome + Rise slowly from the drear Campagna’s way, + Clothed in the royal purple of the day: + I from the city of the violet crown + Have watched the sun by Corinth’s hill go down, + And marked the ‘myriad laughter’ of the sea + From starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady; + Yet back to thee returns my perfect love, + As to its forest-nest the evening dove. + + O poet’s city! one who scarce has seen + Some twenty summers cast their doublets green + For Autumn’s livery, would seek in vain + To wake his lyre to sing a louder strain, + Or tell thy days of glory;—poor indeed + Is the low murmur of the shepherd’s reed, + Where the loud clarion’s blast should shake the sky, + And flame across the heavens! and to try + Such lofty themes were folly: yet I know + That never felt my heart a nobler glow + Than when I woke the silence of thy street + With clamorous trampling of my horse’s feet, + And saw the city which now I try to sing, + After long days of weary travelling. + + VII. + + Adieu, Ravenna! but a year ago, + I stood and watched the crimson sunset glow + From the lone chapel on thy marshy plain: + The sky was as a shield that caught the stain + Of blood and battle from the dying sun, + And in the west the circling clouds had spun + A royal robe, which some great God might wear, + While into ocean-seas of purple air + Sank the gold galley of the Lord of Light. + + Yet here the gentle stillness of the night + Brings back the swelling tide of memory, + And wakes again my passionate love for thee: + Now is the Spring of Love, yet soon will come + On meadow and tree the Summer’s lordly bloom; + And soon the grass with brighter flowers will blow, + And send up lilies for some boy to mow. + Then before long the Summer’s conqueror, + Rich Autumn-time, the season’s usurer, + Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees, + And see it scattered by the spendthrift breeze; + And after that the Winter cold and drear. + So runs the perfect cycle of the year. + And so from youth to manhood do we go, + And fall to weary days and locks of snow. + Love only knows no winter; never dies: + Nor cares for frowning storms or leaden skies + And mine for thee shall never pass away, + Though my weak lips may falter in my lay. + + Adieu! Adieu! yon silent evening star, + The night’s ambassador, doth gleam afar, + And bid the shepherd bring his flocks to fold. + Perchance before our inland seas of gold + Are garnered by the reapers into sheaves, + Perchance before I see the Autumn leaves, + I may behold thy city; and lay down + Low at thy feet the poet’s laurel crown. + + Adieu! Adieu! yon silver lamp, the moon, + Which turns our midnight into perfect noon, + Doth surely light thy towers, guarding well + Where Dante sleeps, where Byron loved to dwell. + + * * * * * + + Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty + at the Edinburgh University Press + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1057-0.txt or 1057-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/5/1057 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1058-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1058-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..aab27270 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1058-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6343 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mirror of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Mirror of the Sea + Memories and Impressions + + +Author: Joseph Conrad + + + +Release Date: April 7, 2013 [eBook #1058] +[This file was first posted on October 10, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIRROR OF THE SEA*** + + +Transcribed from the 1907 Methuen & Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + THE MIRROR OF THE SEA + MEMORIES AND IMPRESSIONS + + + BY + JOSEPH CONRAD + + * * * * * + + “ . . . for this miracle or this wonder + troubleth me right greatly.” + + BOETHIUS DE CON: PHIL: B. IV., PROSE VI. + + * * * * * + + THIRD EDITION + + * * * * * + + METHUEN & CO. + 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. + LONDON + + * * * * * + +_First published_ _October_ _1906_ +_Second Edition_ _December_ _1906_ +_Third Edition_ _January_ _1907_ + + * * * * * + + TO + KATHERINE SANDERSON + + WHOSE WARM WELCOME AND GRACIOUS HOSPITALITY + EXTENDED TO THE FRIEND OF HER SON + CHEERED THE FIRST DARK DAYS OF MY PARTING WITH THE SEA + THESE PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED + + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + +THE MIRROR OF THE SEA:— PAGE + LANDFALLS AND DEPARTURES I. 1 + EMBLEMS OF HOPE IV. 17 + THE FINE ART VII. 33 + COBWEBS AND GOSSAMER X. 52 + THE WEIGHT OF THE BURDEN XIII. 69 + OVERDUE AND MISSING XVI. 86 + THE GRIP OF THE LAND XX. 102 + THE CHARACTER OF THE FOE XXII. 109 + RULES OF EAST AND WEST XXV. 123 + THE FAITHFUL RIVER XXX. 157 + IN CAPTIVITY XXXIII. 180 + INITIATION XXXV. 201 + THE NURSERY OF THE CRAFT XXXVII. 233 + THE _TREMOLINO_ XL. 244 + THE HEROIC AGE XLVI. 289 + + + +I. + + + “And shippes by the brinke comen and gon, + And in swich forme endure a day or two.” + + _The Frankeleyn’s Tale_. + +LANDFALL and Departure mark the rhythmical swing of a seaman’s life and +of a ship’s career. From land to land is the most concise definition of +a ship’s earthly fate. + +A “Departure” is not what a vain people of landsmen may think. The term +“Landfall” is more easily understood; you fall in with the land, and it +is a matter of a quick eye and of a clear atmosphere. The Departure is +not the ship’s going away from her port any more than the Landfall can be +looked upon as the synonym of arrival. But there is this difference in +the Departure: that the term does not imply so much a sea event as a +definite act entailing a process—the precise observation of certain +landmarks by means of the compass card. + +Your Landfall, be it a peculiarly-shaped mountain, a rocky headland, or a +stretch of sand-dunes, you meet at first with a single glance. Further +recognition will follow in due course; but essentially a Landfall, good +or bad, is made and done with at the first cry of “Land ho!” The +Departure is distinctly a ceremony of navigation. A ship may have left +her port some time before; she may have been at sea, in the fullest sense +of the phrase, for days; but, for all that, as long as the coast she was +about to leave remained in sight, a southern-going ship of yesterday had +not in the sailor’s sense begun the enterprise of a passage. + +The taking of Departure, if not the last sight of the land, is, perhaps, +the last professional recognition of the land on the part of a sailor. +It is the technical, as distinguished from the sentimental, “good-bye.” +Henceforth he has done with the coast astern of his ship. It is a matter +personal to the man. It is not the ship that takes her departure; the +seaman takes his Departure by means of cross-bearings which fix the place +of the first tiny pencil-cross on the white expanse of the track-chart, +where the ship’s position at noon shall be marked by just such another +tiny pencil cross for every day of her passage. And there may be sixty, +eighty, any number of these crosses on the ship’s track from land to +land. The greatest number in my experience was a hundred and thirty of +such crosses from the pilot station at the Sand Heads in the Bay of +Bengal to the Scilly’s light. A bad passage. . . + +A Departure, the last professional sight of land, is always good, or at +least good enough. For, even if the weather be thick, it does not matter +much to a ship having all the open sea before her bows. A Landfall may +be good or bad. You encompass the earth with one particular spot of it +in your eye. In all the devious tracings the course of a sailing-ship +leaves upon the white paper of a chart she is always aiming for that one +little spot—maybe a small island in the ocean, a single headland upon the +long coast of a continent, a lighthouse on a bluff, or simply the peaked +form of a mountain like an ant-heap afloat upon the waters. But if you +have sighted it on the expected bearing, then that Landfall is good. +Fogs, snowstorms, gales thick with clouds and rain—those are the enemies +of good Landfalls. + + + + +II. + + +Some commanders of ships take their Departure from the home coast sadly, +in a spirit of grief and discontent. They have a wife, children perhaps, +some affection at any rate, or perhaps only some pet vice, that must be +left behind for a year or more. I remember only one man who walked his +deck with a springy step, and gave the first course of the passage in an +elated voice. But he, as I learned afterwards, was leaving nothing +behind him, except a welter of debts and threats of legal proceedings. + +On the other hand, I have known many captains who, directly their ship +had left the narrow waters of the Channel, would disappear from the sight +of their ship’s company altogether for some three days or more. They +would take a long dive, as it were, into their state-room, only to emerge +a few days afterwards with a more or less serene brow. Those were the +men easy to get on with. Besides, such a complete retirement seemed to +imply a satisfactory amount of trust in their officers, and to be trusted +displeases no seaman worthy of the name. + +On my first voyage as chief mate with good Captain MacW— I remember that +I felt quite flattered, and went blithely about my duties, myself a +commander for all practical purposes. Still, whatever the greatness of +my illusion, the fact remained that the real commander was there, backing +up my self-confidence, though invisible to my eyes behind a maple-wood +veneered cabin-door with a white china handle. + +That is the time, after your Departure is taken, when the spirit of your +commander communes with you in a muffled voice, as if from the sanctum +sanctorum of a temple; because, call her a temple or a “hell afloat”—as +some ships have been called—the captain’s state-room is surely the august +place in every vessel. + +The good MacW— would not even come out to his meals, and fed solitarily +in his holy of holies from a tray covered with a white napkin. Our +steward used to bend an ironic glance at the perfectly empty plates he +was bringing out from there. This grief for his home, which overcomes so +many married seamen, did not deprive Captain MacW— of his legitimate +appetite. In fact, the steward would almost invariably come up to me, +sitting in the captain’s chair at the head of the table, to say in a +grave murmur, “The captain asks for one more slice of meat and two +potatoes.” We, his officers, could hear him moving about in his berth, +or lightly snoring, or fetching deep sighs, or splashing and blowing in +his bath-room; and we made our reports to him through the keyhole, as it +were. It was the crowning achievement of his amiable character that the +answers we got were given in a quite mild and friendly tone. Some +commanders in their periods of seclusion are constantly grumpy, and seem +to resent the mere sound of your voice as an injury and an insult. + +But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates: whereas the man in +whom the sense of duty is strong (or, perhaps, only the sense of +self-importance), and who persists in airing on deck his moroseness all +day—and perhaps half the night—becomes a grievous infliction. He walks +the poop darting gloomy glances, as though he wished to poison the sea, +and snaps your head off savagely whenever you happen to blunder within +earshot. And these vagaries are the harder to bear patiently, as becomes +a man and an officer, because no sailor is really good-tempered during +the first few days of a voyage. There are regrets, memories, the +instinctive longing for the departed idleness, the instinctive hate of +all work. Besides, things have a knack of going wrong at the start, +especially in the matter of irritating trifles. And there is the abiding +thought of a whole year of more or less hard life before one, because +there was hardly a southern-going voyage in the yesterday of the sea +which meant anything less than a twelvemonth. Yes; it needed a few days +after the taking of your departure for a ship’s company to shake down +into their places, and for the soothing deep-water ship routine to +establish its beneficent sway. + +It is a great doctor for sore hearts and sore heads, too, your ship’s +routine, which I have seen soothe—at least for a time—the most turbulent +of spirits. There is health in it, and peace, and satisfaction of the +accomplished round; for each day of the ship’s life seems to close a +circle within the wide ring of the sea horizon. It borrows a certain +dignity of sameness from the majestic monotony of the sea. He who loves +the sea loves also the ship’s routine. + +Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks and months fall away +quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the +light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship’s wake, and vanish into a +great silence in which your ship moves on with a sort of magical effect. +They pass away, the days, the weeks, the months. Nothing but a gale can +disturb the orderly life of the ship; and the spell of unshaken monotony +that seems to have fallen upon the very voices of her men is broken only +by the near prospect of a Landfall. + +Then is the spirit of the ship’s commander stirred strongly again. But +it is not moved to seek seclusion, and to remain, hidden and inert, shut +up in a small cabin with the solace of a good bodily appetite. When +about to make the land, the spirit of the ship’s commander is tormented +by an unconquerable restlessness. It seems unable to abide for many +seconds together in the holy of holies of the captain’s state-room; it +will out on deck and gaze ahead, through straining eyes, as the appointed +moment comes nearer. It is kept vigorously upon the stretch of excessive +vigilance. Meantime the body of the ship’s commander is being enfeebled +by want of appetite; at least, such is my experience, though “enfeebled” +is perhaps not exactly the word. I might say, rather, that it is +spiritualized by a disregard for food, sleep, and all the ordinary +comforts, such as they are, of sea life. In one or two cases I have +known that detachment from the grosser needs of existence remain +regrettably incomplete in the matter of drink. + +But these two cases were, properly speaking, pathological cases, and the +only two in all my sea experience. In one of these two instances of a +craving for stimulants, developed from sheer anxiety, I cannot assert +that the man’s seamanlike qualities were impaired in the least. It was a +very anxious case, too, the land being made suddenly, close-to, on a +wrong bearing, in thick weather, and during a fresh onshore gale. Going +below to speak to him soon after, I was unlucky enough to catch my +captain in the very act of hasty cork-drawing. The sight, I may say, +gave me an awful scare. I was well aware of the morbidly sensitive +nature of the man. Fortunately, I managed to draw back unseen, and, +taking care to stamp heavily with my sea-boots at the foot of the cabin +stairs, I made my second entry. But for this unexpected glimpse, no act +of his during the next twenty-four hours could have given me the +slightest suspicion that all was not well with his nerve. + + + + +III. + + +Quite another case, and having nothing to do with drink, was that of poor +Captain B—. He used to suffer from sick headaches, in his young days, +every time he was approaching a coast. Well over fifty years of age when +I knew him, short, stout, dignified, perhaps a little pompous, he was a +man of a singularly well-informed mind, the least sailor-like in outward +aspect, but certainly one of the best seamen whom it has been my good +luck to serve under. He was a Plymouth man, I think, the son of a +country doctor, and both his elder boys were studying medicine. He +commanded a big London ship, fairly well known in her day. I thought no +end of him, and that is why I remember with a peculiar satisfaction the +last words he spoke to me on board his ship after an eighteen months’ +voyage. It was in the dock in Dundee, where we had brought a full cargo +of jute from Calcutta. We had been paid off that morning, and I had come +on board to take my sea-chest away and to say good-bye. In his slightly +lofty but courteous way he inquired what were my plans. I replied that I +intended leaving for London by the afternoon train, and thought of going +up for examination to get my master’s certificate. I had just enough +service for that. He commended me for not wasting my time, with such an +evident interest in my case that I was quite surprised; then, rising from +his chair, he said: + +“Have you a ship in view after you have passed?” + +I answered that I had nothing whatever in view. + +He shook hands with me, and pronounced the memorable words: + +“If you happen to be in want of employment, remember that as long as I +have a ship you have a ship, too.” + +In the way of compliment there is nothing to beat this from a ship’s +captain to his second mate at the end of a voyage, when the work is over +and the subordinate is done with. And there is a pathos in that memory, +for the poor fellow never went to sea again after all. He was already +ailing when we passed St. Helena; was laid up for a time when we were off +the Western Islands, but got out of bed to make his Landfall. He managed +to keep up on deck as far as the Downs, where, giving his orders in an +exhausted voice, he anchored for a few hours to send a wire to his wife +and take aboard a North Sea pilot to help him sail the ship up the east +coast. He had not felt equal to the task by himself, for it is the sort +of thing that keeps a deep-water man on his feet pretty well night and +day. + +When we arrived in Dundee, Mrs. B— was already there, waiting to take him +home. We travelled up to London by the same train; but by the time I had +managed to get through with my examination the ship had sailed on her +next voyage without him, and, instead of joining her again, I went by +request to see my old commander in his home. This is the only one of my +captains I have ever visited in that way. He was out of bed by then, +“quite convalescent,” as he declared, making a few tottering steps to +meet me at the sitting-room door. Evidently he was reluctant to take his +final cross-bearings of this earth for a Departure on the only voyage to +an unknown destination a sailor ever undertakes. And it was all very +nice—the large, sunny room; his deep, easy-chair in a bow window, with +pillows and a footstool; the quiet, watchful care of the elderly, gentle +woman who had borne him five children, and had not, perhaps, lived with +him more than five full years out of the thirty or so of their married +life. There was also another woman there in a plain black dress, quite +gray-haired, sitting very erect on her chair with some sewing, from which +she snatched side-glances in his direction, and uttering not a single +word during all the time of my call. Even when, in due course, I carried +over to her a cup of tea, she only nodded at me silently, with the +faintest ghost of a smile on her tight-set lips. I imagine she must have +been a maiden sister of Mrs. B— come to help nurse her brother-in-law. +His youngest boy, a late-comer, a great cricketer it seemed, twelve years +old or thereabouts, chattered enthusiastically of the exploits of W. G. +Grace. And I remember his eldest son, too, a newly-fledged doctor, who +took me out to smoke in the garden, and, shaking his head with +professional gravity, but with genuine concern, muttered: “Yes, but he +doesn’t get back his appetite. I don’t like that—I don’t like that at +all.” The last sight of Captain B— I had was as he nodded his head to me +out of the bow window when I turned round to close the front gate. + +It was a distinct and complete impression, something that I don’t know +whether to call a Landfall or a Departure. Certainly he had gazed at +times very fixedly before him with the Landfall’s vigilant look, this +sea-captain seated incongruously in a deep-backed chair. He had not then +talked to me of employment, of ships, of being ready to take another +command; but he had discoursed of his early days, in the abundant but +thin flow of a wilful invalid’s talk. The women looked worried, but sat +still, and I learned more of him in that interview than in the whole +eighteen months we had sailed together. It appeared he had “served his +time” in the copper-ore trade, the famous copper-ore trade of old days +between Swansea and the Chilian coast, coal out and ore in, deep-loaded +both ways, as if in wanton defiance of the great Cape Horn seas—a work, +this, for staunch ships, and a great school of staunchness for +West-Country seamen. A whole fleet of copper-bottomed barques, as strong +in rib and planking, as well-found in gear, as ever was sent upon the +seas, manned by hardy crews and commanded by young masters, was engaged +in that now long defunct trade. “That was the school I was trained in,” +he said to me almost boastfully, lying back amongst his pillows with a +rug over his legs. And it was in that trade that he obtained his first +command at a very early age. It was then that he mentioned to me how, as +a young commander, he was always ill for a few days before making land +after a long passage. But this sort of sickness used to pass off with +the first sight of a familiar landmark. Afterwards, he added, as he grew +older, all that nervousness wore off completely; and I observed his weary +eyes gaze steadily ahead, as if there had been nothing between him and +the straight line of sea and sky, where whatever a seaman is looking for +is first bound to appear. But I have also seen his eyes rest fondly upon +the faces in the room, upon the pictures on the wall, upon all the +familiar objects of that home, whose abiding and clear image must have +flashed often on his memory in times of stress and anxiety at sea. Was +he looking out for a strange Landfall, or taking with an untroubled mind +the bearings for his last Departure? + +It is hard to say; for in that voyage from which no man returns Landfall +and Departure are instantaneous, merging together into one moment of +supreme and final attention. Certainly I do not remember observing any +sign of faltering in the set expression of his wasted face, no hint of +the nervous anxiety of a young commander about to make land on an +uncharted shore. He had had too much experience of Departures and +Landfalls! And had he not “served his time” in the famous copper-ore +trade out of the Bristol Channel, the work of the staunchest ships +afloat, and the school of staunch seamen? + + + + +IV. + + +BEFORE an anchor can ever be raised, it must be let go; and this +perfectly obvious truism brings me at once to the subject of the +degradation of the sea language in the daily press of this country. + +Your journalist, whether he takes charge of a ship or a fleet, almost +invariably “casts” his anchor. Now, an anchor is never cast, and to take +a liberty with technical language is a crime against the clearness, +precision, and beauty of perfected speech. + +An anchor is a forged piece of iron, admirably adapted to its end, and +technical language is an instrument wrought into perfection by ages of +experience, a flawless thing for its purpose. An anchor of yesterday +(because nowadays there are contrivances like mushrooms and things like +claws, of no particular expression or shape—just hooks)—an anchor of +yesterday is in its way a most efficient instrument. To its perfection +its size bears witness, for there is no other appliance so small for the +great work it has to do. Look at the anchors hanging from the cat-heads +of a big ship! How tiny they are in proportion to the great size of the +hull! Were they made of gold they would look like trinkets, like +ornamental toys, no bigger in proportion than a jewelled drop in a +woman’s ear. And yet upon them will depend, more than once, the very +life of the ship. + +An anchor is forged and fashioned for faithfulness; give it ground that +it can bite, and it will hold till the cable parts, and then, whatever +may afterwards befall its ship, that anchor is “lost.” The honest, rough +piece of iron, so simple in appearance, has more parts than the human +body has limbs: the ring, the stock, the crown, the flukes, the palms, +the shank. All this, according to the journalist, is “cast” when a ship +arriving at an anchorage is brought up. + +This insistence in using the odious word arises from the fact that a +particularly benighted landsman must imagine the act of anchoring as a +process of throwing something overboard, whereas the anchor ready for its +work is already overboard, and is not thrown over, but simply allowed to +fall. It hangs from the ship’s side at the end of a heavy, projecting +timber called the cat-head, in the bight of a short, thick chain whose +end link is suddenly released by a blow from a top-maul or the pull of a +lever when the order is given. And the order is not “Heave over!” as the +paragraphist seems to imagine, but “Let go!” + +As a matter of fact, nothing is ever cast in that sense on board ship but +the lead, of which a cast is taken to search the depth of water on which +she floats. A lashed boat, a spare spar, a cask or what not secured +about the decks, is “cast adrift” when it is untied. Also the ship +herself is “cast to port or starboard” when getting under way. She, +however, never “casts” her anchor. + +To speak with severe technicality, a ship or a fleet is “brought up”—the +complementary words unpronounced and unwritten being, of course, “to an +anchor.” Less technically, but not less correctly, the word “anchored,” +with its characteristic appearance and resolute sound, ought to be good +enough for the newspapers of the greatest maritime country in the world. +“The fleet anchored at Spithead”: can anyone want a better sentence for +brevity and seamanlike ring? But the “cast-anchor” trick, with its +affectation of being a sea-phrase—for why not write just as well “threw +anchor,” “flung anchor,” or “shied anchor”?—is intolerably odious to a +sailor’s ear. I remember a coasting pilot of my early acquaintance (he +used to read the papers assiduously) who, to define the utmost degree of +lubberliness in a landsman, used to say, “He’s one of them poor, +miserable ‘cast-anchor’ devils.” + + + + +V. + + +From first to last the seaman’s thoughts are very much concerned with his +anchors. It is not so much that the anchor is a symbol of hope as that +it is the heaviest object that he has to handle on board his ship at sea +in the usual routine of his duties. The beginning and the end of every +passage are marked distinctly by work about the ship’s anchors. A vessel +in the Channel has her anchors always ready, her cables shackled on, and +the land almost always in sight. The anchor and the land are +indissolubly connected in a sailor’s thoughts. But directly she is clear +of the narrow seas, heading out into the world with nothing solid to +speak of between her and the South Pole, the anchors are got in and the +cables disappear from the deck. But the anchors do not disappear. +Technically speaking, they are “secured in-board”; and, on the forecastle +head, lashed down to ring-bolts with ropes and chains, under the +straining sheets of the head-sails, they look very idle and as if asleep. +Thus bound, but carefully looked after, inert and powerful, those emblems +of hope make company for the look-out man in the night watches; and so +the days glide by, with a long rest for those characteristically shaped +pieces of iron, reposing forward, visible from almost every part of the +ship’s deck, waiting for their work on the other side of the world +somewhere, while the ship carries them on with a great rush and splutter +of foam underneath, and the sprays of the open sea rust their heavy +limbs. + +The first approach to the land, as yet invisible to the crew’s eyes, is +announced by the brisk order of the chief mate to the boatswain: “We will +get the anchors over this afternoon” or “first thing to-morrow morning,” +as the case may be. For the chief mate is the keeper of the ship’s +anchors and the guardian of her cable. There are good ships and bad +ships, comfortable ships and ships where, from first day to last of the +voyage, there is no rest for a chief mate’s body and soul. And ships are +what men make them: this is a pronouncement of sailor wisdom, and, no +doubt, in the main it is true. + +However, there are ships where, as an old grizzled mate once told me, +“nothing ever seems to go right!” And, looking from the poop where we +both stood (I had paid him a neighbourly call in dock), he added: “She’s +one of them.” He glanced up at my face, which expressed a proper +professional sympathy, and set me right in my natural surmise: “Oh no; +the old man’s right enough. He never interferes. Anything that’s done +in a seamanlike way is good enough for him. And yet, somehow, nothing +ever seems to go right in this ship. I tell you what: she is naturally +unhandy.” + +The “old man,” of course, was his captain, who just then came on deck in +a silk hat and brown overcoat, and, with a civil nod to us, went ashore. +He was certainly not more than thirty, and the elderly mate, with a +murmur to me of “That’s my old man,” proceeded to give instances of the +natural unhandiness of the ship in a sort of deprecatory tone, as if to +say, “You mustn’t think I bear a grudge against her for that.” + +The instances do not matter. The point is that there are ships where +things _do_ go wrong; but whatever the ship—good or bad, lucky or +unlucky—it is in the forepart of her that her chief mate feels most at +home. It is emphatically _his_ end of the ship, though, of course, he is +the executive supervisor of the whole. There are _his_ anchors, _his_ +headgear, his foremast, his station for manoeuvring when the captain is +in charge. And there, too, live the men, the ship’s hands, whom it is +his duty to keep employed, fair weather or foul, for the ship’s welfare. +It is the chief mate, the only figure of the ship’s afterguard, who comes +bustling forward at the cry of “All hands on deck!” He is the satrap of +that province in the autocratic realm of the ship, and more personally +responsible for anything that may happen there. + +There, too, on the approach to the land, assisted by the boatswain and +the carpenter, he “gets the anchors over” with the men of his own watch, +whom he knows better than the others. There he sees the cable ranged, +the windlass disconnected, the compressors opened; and there, after +giving his own last order, “Stand clear of the cable!” he waits +attentive, in a silent ship that forges slowly ahead towards her +picked-out berth, for the sharp shout from aft, “Let go!” Instantly +bending over, he sees the trusty iron fall with a heavy plunge under his +eyes, which watch and note whether it has gone clear. + +For the anchor “to go clear” means to go clear of its own chain. Your +anchor must drop from the bow of your ship with no turn of cable on any +of its limbs, else you would be riding to a foul anchor. Unless the pull +of the cable is fair on the ring, no anchor can be trusted even on the +best of holding ground. In time of stress it is bound to drag, for +implements and men must be treated fairly to give you the “virtue” which +is in them. The anchor is an emblem of hope, but a foul anchor is worse +than the most fallacious of false hopes that ever lured men or nations +into a sense of security. And the sense of security, even the most +warranted, is a bad councillor. It is the sense which, like that +exaggerated feeling of well-being ominous of the coming on of madness, +precedes the swift fall of disaster. A seaman labouring under an undue +sense of security becomes at once worth hardly half his salt. Therefore, +of all my chief officers, the one I trusted most was a man called B—. He +had a red moustache, a lean face, also red, and an uneasy eye. He was +worth all his salt. + +On examining now, after many years, the residue of the feeling which was +the outcome of the contact of our personalities, I discover, without much +surprise, a certain flavour of dislike. Upon the whole, I think he was +one of the most uncomfortable shipmates possible for a young commander. +If it is permissible to criticise the absent, I should say he had a +little too much of the sense of insecurity which is so invaluable in a +seaman. He had an extremely disturbing air of being everlastingly ready +(even when seated at table at my right hand before a plate of salt beef) +to grapple with some impending calamity. I must hasten to add that he +had also the other qualification necessary to make a trustworthy +seaman—that of an absolute confidence in himself. What was really wrong +with him was that he had these qualities in an unrestful degree. His +eternally watchful demeanour, his jerky, nervous talk, even his, as it +were, determined silences, seemed to imply—and, I believe, they did +imply—that to his mind the ship was never safe in my hands. Such was the +man who looked after the anchors of a less than five-hundred-ton barque, +my first command, now gone from the face of the earth, but sure of a +tenderly remembered existence as long as I live. No anchor could have +gone down foul under Mr. B—’s piercing eye. It was good for one to be +sure of that when, in an open roadstead, one heard in the cabin the wind +pipe up; but still, there were moments when I detested Mr. B— +exceedingly. From the way he used to glare sometimes, I fancy that more +than once he paid me back with interest. It so happened that we both +loved the little barque very much. And it was just the defect of Mr. +B—’s inestimable qualities that he would never persuade himself to +believe that the ship was safe in my hands. To begin with, he was more +than five years older than myself at a time of life when five years +really do count, I being twenty-nine and he thirty-four; then, on our +first leaving port (I don’t see why I should make a secret of the fact +that it was Bangkok), a bit of manoeuvring of mine amongst the islands of +the Gulf of Siam had given him an unforgettable scare. Ever since then +he had nursed in secret a bitter idea of my utter recklessness. But upon +the whole, and unless the grip of a man’s hand at parting means nothing +whatever, I conclude that we did like each other at the end of two years +and three months well enough. + +The bond between us was the ship; and therein a ship, though she has +female attributes and is loved very unreasonably, is different from a +woman. That I should have been tremendously smitten with my first +command is nothing to wonder at, but I suppose I must admit that Mr. B—’s +sentiment was of a higher order. Each of us, of course, was extremely +anxious about the good appearance of the beloved object; and, though I +was the one to glean compliments ashore, B— had the more intimate pride +of feeling, resembling that of a devoted handmaiden. And that sort of +faithful and proud devotion went so far as to make him go about flicking +the dust off the varnished teak-wood rail of the little craft with a silk +pocket-handkerchief—a present from Mrs. B—, I believe. + +That was the effect of his love for the barque. The effect of his +admirable lack of the sense of security once went so far as to make him +remark to me: “Well, sir, you _are_ a lucky man!” + +It was said in a tone full of significance, but not exactly offensive, +and it was, I suppose, my innate tact that prevented my asking, “What on +earth do you mean by that?” + +Later on his meaning was illustrated more fully on a dark night in a +tight corner during a dead on-shore gale. I had called him up on deck to +help me consider our extremely unpleasant situation. There was not much +time for deep thinking, and his summing-up was: “It looks pretty bad, +whichever we try; but, then, sir, you always do get out of a mess +somehow.” + + + + +VI. + + +It is difficult to disconnect the idea of ships’ anchors from the idea of +the ship’s chief mate—the man who sees them go down clear and come up +sometimes foul; because not even the most unremitting care can always +prevent a ship, swinging to winds and tide, from taking an awkward turn +of the cable round stock or fluke. Then the business of “getting the +anchor” and securing it afterwards is unduly prolonged, and made a +weariness to the chief mate. He is the man who watches the growth of the +cable—a sailor’s phrase which has all the force, precision, and imagery +of technical language that, created by simple men with keen eyes for the +real aspect of the things they see in their trade, achieves the just +expression seizing upon the essential, which is the ambition of the +artist in words. Therefore the sailor will never say, “cast anchor,” and +the ship-master aft will hail his chief mate on the forecastle in +impressionistic phrase: “How does the cable grow?” Because “grow” is the +right word for the long drift of a cable emerging aslant under the +strain, taut as a bow-string above the water. And it is the voice of the +keeper of the ship’s anchors that will answer: “Grows right ahead, sir,” +or “Broad on the bow,” or whatever concise and deferential shout will fit +the case. + +There is no order more noisily given or taken up with lustier shouts on +board a homeward-bound merchant ship than the command, “Man the +windlass!” The rush of expectant men out of the forecastle, the +snatching of hand-spikes, the tramp of feet, the clink of the pawls, make +a stirring accompaniment to a plaintive up-anchor song with a roaring +chorus; and this burst of noisy activity from a whole ship’s crew seems +like a voiceful awakening of the ship herself, till then, in the +picturesque phrase of Dutch seamen, “lying asleep upon her iron.” + +For a ship with her sails furled on her squared yards, and reflected from +truck to water-line in the smooth gleaming sheet of a landlocked harbour, +seems, indeed, to a seaman’s eye the most perfect picture of slumbering +repose. The getting of your anchor was a noisy operation on board a +merchant ship of yesterday—an inspiring, joyous noise, as if, with the +emblem of hope, the ship’s company expected to drag up out of the depths, +each man all his personal hopes into the reach of a securing hand—the +hope of home, the hope of rest, of liberty, of dissipation, of hard +pleasure, following the hard endurance of many days between sky and +water. And this noisiness, this exultation at the moment of the ship’s +departure, make a tremendous contrast to the silent moments of her +arrival in a foreign roadstead—the silent moments when, stripped of her +sails, she forges ahead to her chosen berth, the loose canvas fluttering +softly in the gear above the heads of the men standing still upon her +decks, the master gazing intently forward from the break of the poop. +Gradually she loses her way, hardly moving, with the three figures on her +forecastle waiting attentively about the cat-head for the last order of, +perhaps, full ninety days at sea: “Let go!” + +This is the final word of a ship’s ended journey, the closing word of her +toil and of her achievement. In a life whose worth is told out in +passages from port to port, the splash of the anchor’s fall and the +thunderous rumbling of the chain are like the closing of a distinct +period, of which she seems conscious with a slight deep shudder of all +her frame. By so much is she nearer to her appointed death, for neither +years nor voyages can go on for ever. It is to her like the striking of +a clock, and in the pause which follows she seems to take count of the +passing time. + +This is the last important order; the others are mere routine directions. +Once more the master is heard: “Give her forty-five fathom to the water’s +edge,” and then he, too, is done for a time. For days he leaves all the +harbour work to his chief mate, the keeper of the ship’s anchor and of +the ship’s routine. For days his voice will not be heard raised about +the decks, with that curt, austere accent of the man in charge, till, +again, when the hatches are on, and in a silent and expectant ship, he +shall speak up from aft in commanding tones: “Man the windlass!” + + + + +VII. + + +THE other year, looking through a newspaper of sound principles, but +whose staff _will_ persist in “casting” anchors and going to sea “on” a +ship (ough!), I came across an article upon the season’s yachting. And, +behold! it was a good article. To a man who had but little to do with +pleasure sailing (though all sailing is a pleasure), and certainly +nothing whatever with racing in open waters, the writer’s strictures upon +the handicapping of yachts were just intelligible and no more. And I do +not pretend to any interest in the enumeration of the great races of that +year. As to the 52-foot linear raters, praised so much by the writer, I +am warmed up by his approval of their performances; but, as far as any +clear conception goes, the descriptive phrase, so precise to the +comprehension of a yachtsman, evokes no definite image in my mind. + +The writer praises that class of pleasure vessels, and I am willing to +endorse his words, as any man who loves every craft afloat would be ready +to do. I am disposed to admire and respect the 52-foot linear raters on +the word of a man who regrets in such a sympathetic and understanding +spirit the threatened decay of yachting seamanship. + +Of course, yacht racing is an organized pastime, a function of social +idleness ministering to the vanity of certain wealthy inhabitants of +these isles nearly as much as to their inborn love of the sea. But the +writer of the article in question goes on to point out, with insight and +justice, that for a great number of people (20,000, I think he says) it +is a means of livelihood—that it is, in his own words, an industry. Now, +the moral side of an industry, productive or unproductive, the redeeming +and ideal aspect of this bread-winning, is the attainment and +preservation of the highest possible skill on the part of the craftsmen. +Such skill, the skill of technique, is more than honesty; it is something +wider, embracing honesty and grace and rule in an elevated and clear +sentiment, not altogether utilitarian, which may be called the honour of +labour. It is made up of accumulated tradition, kept alive by individual +pride, rendered exact by professional opinion, and, like the higher arts, +it spurred on and sustained by discriminating praise. + +This is why the attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your skill with +attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter of vital +concern. Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached +naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond—a +higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond +mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish +which is almost art—which _is_ art. + +As men of scrupulous honour set up a high standard of public conscience +above the dead-level of an honest community, so men of that skill which +passes into art by ceaseless striving raise the dead-level of correct +practice in the crafts of land and sea. The conditions fostering the +growth of that supreme, alive excellence, as well in work as in play, +ought to be preserved with a most careful regard lest the industry or the +game should perish of an insidious and inward decay. Therefore I have +read with profound regret, in that article upon the yachting season of a +certain year, that the seamanship on board racing yachts is not now what +it used to be only a few, very few, years ago. + +For that was the gist of that article, written evidently by a man who not +only knows but _understands_—a thing (let me remark in passing) much +rarer than one would expect, because the sort of understanding I mean is +inspired by love; and love, though in a sense it may be admitted to be +stronger than death, is by no means so universal and so sure. In fact, +love is rare—the love of men, of things, of ideas, the love of perfected +skill. For love is the enemy of haste; it takes count of passing days, +of men who pass away, of a fine art matured slowly in the course of years +and doomed in a short time to pass away too, and be no more. Love and +regret go hand in hand in this world of changes swifter than the shifting +of the clouds reflected in the mirror of the sea. + +To penalize a yacht in proportion to the fineness of her performance is +unfair to the craft and to her men. It is unfair to the perfection of +her form and to the skill of her servants. For we men are, in fact, the +servants of our creations. We remain in everlasting bondage to the +productions of our brain and to the work of our hands. A man is born to +serve his time on this earth, and there is something fine in the service +being given on other grounds than that of utility. The bondage of art is +very exacting. And, as the writer of the article which started this +train of thought says with lovable warmth, the sailing of yachts is a +fine art. + +His contention is that racing, without time allowances for anything else +but tonnage—that is, for size—has fostered the fine art of sailing to the +pitch of perfection. Every sort of demand is made upon the master of a +sailing-yacht, and to be penalized in proportion to your success may be +of advantage to the sport itself, but it has an obviously deteriorating +effect upon the seamanship. The fine art is being lost. + + + + +VIII. + + +The sailing and racing of yachts has developed a class of fore-and-aft +sailors, men born and bred to the sea, fishing in winter and yachting in +summer; men to whom the handling of that particular rig presents no +mystery. It is their striving for victory that has elevated the sailing +of pleasure craft to the dignity of a fine art in that special sense. As +I have said, I know nothing of racing and but little of fore-and-aft rig; +but the advantages of such a rig are obvious, especially for purposes of +pleasure, whether in cruising or racing. It requires less effort in +handling; the trimming of the sail-planes to the wind can be done with +speed and accuracy; the unbroken spread of the sail-area is of infinite +advantage; and the greatest possible amount of canvas can be displayed +upon the least possible quantity of spars. Lightness and concentrated +power are the great qualities of fore-and-aft rig. + +A fleet of fore-and-afters at anchor has its own slender graciousness. +The setting of their sails resembles more than anything else the +unfolding of a bird’s wings; the facility of their evolutions is a +pleasure to the eye. They are birds of the sea, whose swimming is like +flying, and resembles more a natural function than the handling of +man-invented appliances. The fore-and-aft rig in its simplicity and the +beauty of its aspect under every angle of vision is, I believe, +unapproachable. A schooner, yawl, or cutter in charge of a capable man +seems to handle herself as if endowed with the power of reasoning and the +gift of swift execution. One laughs with sheer pleasure at a smart piece +of manoeuvring, as at a manifestation of a living creature’s quick wit +and graceful precision. + +Of those three varieties of fore-and-aft rig, the cutter—the racing rig +_par excellence_—is of an appearance the most imposing, from the fact +that practically all her canvas is in one piece. The enormous mainsail +of a cutter, as she draws slowly past a point of land or the end of a +jetty under your admiring gaze, invests her with an air of lofty and +silent majesty. At anchor a schooner looks better; she has an aspect of +greater efficiency and a better balance to the eye, with her two masts +distributed over the hull with a swaggering rake aft. The yawl rig one +comes in time to love. It is, I should think, the easiest of all to +manage. + +For racing, a cutter; for a long pleasure voyage, a schooner; for +cruising in home waters, the yawl; and the handling of them all is indeed +a fine art. It requires not only the knowledge of the general principles +of sailing, but a particular acquaintance with the character of the +craft. All vessels are handled in the same way as far as theory goes, +just as you may deal with all men on broad and rigid principles. But if +you want that success in life which comes from the affection and +confidence of your fellows, then with no two men, however similar they +may appear in their nature, will you deal in the same way. There may be +a rule of conduct; there is no rule of human fellowship. To deal with +men is as fine an art as it is to deal with ships. Both men and ships +live in an unstable element, are subject to subtle and powerful +influences, and want to have their merits understood rather than their +faults found out. + +It is not what your ship will _not_ do that you want to know to get on +terms of successful partnership with her; it is, rather, that you ought +to have a precise knowledge of what she will do for you when called upon +to put forth what is in her by a sympathetic touch. At first sight the +difference does not seem great in either line of dealing with the +difficult problem of limitations. But the difference is great. The +difference lies in the spirit in which the problem is approached. After +all, the art of handling ships is finer, perhaps, than the art of +handling men. + +And, like all fine arts, it must be based upon a broad, solid sincerity, +which, like a law of Nature, rules an infinity of different phenomena. +Your endeavour must be single-minded. You would talk differently to a +coal-heaver and to a professor. But is this duplicity? I deny it. The +truth consists in the genuineness of the feeling, in the genuine +recognition of the two men, so similar and so different, as your two +partners in the hazard of life. Obviously, a humbug, thinking only of +winning his little race, would stand a chance of profiting by his +artifices. Men, professors or coal-heavers, are easily deceived; they +even have an extraordinary knack of lending themselves to deception, a +sort of curious and inexplicable propensity to allow themselves to be led +by the nose with their eyes open. But a ship is a creature which we have +brought into the world, as it were on purpose to keep us up to the mark. +In her handling a ship will not put up with a mere pretender, as, for +instance, the public will do with Mr. X, the popular statesman, Mr. Y, +the popular scientist, or Mr. Z, the popular—what shall we say?—anything +from a teacher of high morality to a bagman—who have won their little +race. But I would like (though not accustomed to betting) to wager a +large sum that not one of the few first-rate skippers of racing yachts +has ever been a humbug. It would have been too difficult. The +difficulty arises from the fact that one does not deal with ships in a +mob, but with a ship as an individual. So we may have to do with men. +But in each of us there lurks some particle of the mob spirit, of the mob +temperament. No matter how earnestly we strive against each other, we +remain brothers on the lowest side of our intellect and in the +instability of our feelings. With ships it is not so. Much as they are +to us, they are nothing to each other. Those sensitive creatures have no +ears for our blandishments. It takes something more than words to cajole +them to do our will, to cover us with glory. Luckily, too, or else there +would have been more shoddy reputations for first-rate seamanship. Ships +have no ears, I repeat, though, indeed, I think I have known ships who +really seemed to have had eyes, or else I cannot understand on what +ground a certain 1,000-ton barque of my acquaintance on one particular +occasion refused to answer her helm, thereby saving a frightful smash to +two ships and to a very good man’s reputation. I knew her intimately for +two years, and in no other instance either before or since have I known +her to do that thing. The man she had served so well (guessing, perhaps, +at the depths of his affection for her) I have known much longer, and in +bare justice to him I must say that this confidence-shattering experience +(though so fortunate) only augmented his trust in her. Yes, our ships +have no ears, and thus they cannot be deceived. I would illustrate my +idea of fidelity as between man and ship, between the master and his art, +by a statement which, though it might appear shockingly sophisticated, is +really very simple. I would say that a racing-yacht skipper who thought +of nothing else but the glory of winning the race would never attain to +any eminence of reputation. The genuine masters of their craft—I say +this confidently from my experience of ships—have thought of nothing but +of doing their very best by the vessel under their charge. To forget +one’s self, to surrender all personal feeling in the service of that fine +art, is the only way for a seaman to the faithful discharge of his trust. + +Such is the service of a fine art and of ships that sail the sea. And +therein I think I can lay my finger upon the difference between the +seamen of yesterday, who are still with us, and the seamen of to-morrow, +already entered upon the possession of their inheritance. History +repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is +never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of +a destroyed wild bird. Nothing will awaken the same response of +pleasurable emotion or conscientious endeavour. And the sailing of any +vessel afloat is an art whose fine form seems already receding from us on +its way to the overshadowed Valley of Oblivion. The taking of a modern +steamship about the world (though one would not minimize its +responsibilities) has not the same quality of intimacy with nature, +which, after all, is an indispensable condition to the building up of an +art. It is less personal and a more exact calling; less arduous, but +also less gratifying in the lack of close communion between the artist +and the medium of his art. It is, in short, less a matter of love. Its +effects are measured exactly in time and space as no effect of an art can +be. It is an occupation which a man not desperately subject to +sea-sickness can be imagined to follow with content, without enthusiasm, +with industry, without affection. Punctuality is its watchword. The +incertitude which attends closely every artistic endeavour is absent from +its regulated enterprise. It has no great moments of self-confidence, or +moments not less great of doubt and heart-searching. It is an industry +which, like other industries, has its romance, its honour and its +rewards, its bitter anxieties and its hours of ease. But such sea-going +has not the artistic quality of a single-handed struggle with something +much greater than yourself; it is not the laborious absorbing practice of +an art whose ultimate result remains on the knees of the gods. It is not +an individual, temperamental achievement, but simply the skilled use of a +captured force, merely another step forward upon the way of universal +conquest. + + + + +IX. + + +Every passage of a ship of yesterday, whose yards were braced round +eagerly the very moment the pilot, with his pockets full of letters, had +got over the side, was like a race—a race against time, against an ideal +standard of achievement outstripping the expectations of common men. +Like all true art, the general conduct of a ship and her handling in +particular cases had a technique which could be discussed with delight +and pleasure by men who found in their work, not bread alone, but an +outlet for the peculiarities of their temperament. To get the best and +truest effect from the infinitely varying moods of sky and sea, not +pictorially, but in the spirit of their calling, was their vocation, one +and all; and they recognised this with as much sincerity, and drew as +much inspiration from this reality, as any man who ever put brush to +canvas. The diversity of temperaments was immense amongst those masters +of the fine art. + +Some of them were like Royal Academicians of a certain kind. They never +startled you by a touch of originality, by a fresh audacity of +inspiration. They were safe, very safe. They went about solemnly in the +assurance of their consecrated and empty reputation. Names are odious, +but I remember one of them who might have been their very president, the +P.R.A. of the sea-craft. His weather-beaten and handsome face, his +portly presence, his shirt-fronts and broad cuffs and gold links, his air +of bluff distinction, impressed the humble beholders (stevedores, tally +clerks, tide-waiters) as he walked ashore over the gangway of his ship +lying at the Circular Quay in Sydney. His voice was deep, hearty, and +authoritative—the voice of a very prince amongst sailors. He did +everything with an air which put your attention on the alert and raised +your expectations, but the result somehow was always on stereotyped +lines, unsuggestive, empty of any lesson that one could lay to heart. He +kept his ship in apple-pie order, which would have been seamanlike enough +but for a finicking touch in its details. His officers affected a +superiority over the rest of us, but the boredom of their souls appeared +in their manner of dreary submission to the fads of their commander. It +was only his apprenticed boys whose irrepressible spirits were not +affected by the solemn and respectable mediocrity of that artist. There +were four of these youngsters: one the son of a doctor, another of a +colonel, the third of a jeweller; the name of the fourth was Twentyman, +and this is all I remember of his parentage. But not one of them seemed +to possess the smallest spark of gratitude in his composition. Though +their commander was a kind man in his way, and had made a point of +introducing them to the best people in the town in order that they should +not fall into the bad company of boys belonging to other ships, I regret +to say that they made faces at him behind his back, and imitated the +dignified carriage of his head without any concealment whatever. + +This master of the fine art was a personage and nothing more; but, as I +have said, there was an infinite diversity of temperament amongst the +masters of the fine art I have known. Some were great impressionists. +They impressed upon you the fear of God and Immensity—or, in other words, +the fear of being drowned with every circumstance of terrific grandeur. +One may think that the locality of your passing away by means of +suffocation in water does not really matter very much. I am not so sure +of that. I am, perhaps, unduly sensitive, but I confess that the idea of +being suddenly spilt into an infuriated ocean in the midst of darkness +and uproar affected me always with a sensation of shrinking distaste. To +be drowned in a pond, though it might be called an ignominious fate by +the ignorant, is yet a bright and peaceful ending in comparison with some +other endings to one’s earthly career which I have mentally quaked at in +the intervals or even in the midst of violent exertions. + +But let that pass. Some of the masters whose influence left a trace upon +my character to this very day, combined a fierceness of conception with a +certitude of execution upon the basis of just appreciation of means and +ends which is the highest quality of the man of action. And an artist is +a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, +or finds the issue of a complicated situation. + +There were masters, too, I have known, whose very art consisted in +avoiding every conceivable situation. It is needless to say that they +never did great things in their craft; but they were not to be despised +for that. They were modest; they understood their limitations. Their +own masters had not handed the sacred fire into the keeping of their cold +and skilful hands. One of those last I remember specially, now gone to +his rest from that sea which his temperament must have made a scene of +little more than a peaceful pursuit. Once only did he attempt a stroke +of audacity, one early morning, with a steady breeze, entering a crowded +roadstead. But he was not genuine in this display which might have been +art. He was thinking of his own self; he hankered after the meretricious +glory of a showy performance. + +As, rounding a dark, wooded point, bathed in fresh air and sunshine, we +opened to view a crowd of shipping at anchor lying half a mile ahead of +us perhaps, he called me aft from my station on the forecastle head, and, +turning over and over his binoculars in his brown hands, said: “Do you +see that big, heavy ship with white lower masts? I am going to take up a +berth between her and the shore. Now do you see to it that the men jump +smartly at the first order.” + +I answered, “Ay, ay, sir,” and verily believed that this would be a fine +performance. We dashed on through the fleet in magnificent style. There +must have been many open mouths and following eyes on board those +ships—Dutch, English, with a sprinkling of Americans and a German or +two—who had all hoisted their flags at eight o’clock as if in honour of +our arrival. It would have been a fine performance if it had come off, +but it did not. Through a touch of self-seeking that modest artist of +solid merit became untrue to his temperament. It was not with him art +for art’s sake: it was art for his own sake; and a dismal failure was the +penalty he paid for that greatest of sins. It might have been even +heavier, but, as it happened, we did not run our ship ashore, nor did we +knock a large hole in the big ship whose lower masts were painted white. +But it is a wonder that we did not carry away the cables of both our +anchors, for, as may be imagined, I did not stand upon the order to “Let +go!” that came to me in a quavering, quite unknown voice from his +trembling lips. I let them both go with a celerity which to this day +astonishes my memory. No average merchantman’s anchors have ever been +let go with such miraculous smartness. And they both held. I could have +kissed their rough, cold iron palms in gratitude if they had not been +buried in slimy mud under ten fathoms of water. Ultimately they brought +us up with the jibboom of a Dutch brig poking through our spanker—nothing +worse. And a miss is as good as a mile. + +But not in art. Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble, “She +wouldn’t luff up in time, somehow. What’s the matter with her?” And I +made no answer. + +Yet the answer was clear. The ship had found out the momentary weakness +of her man. Of all the living creatures upon land and sea, it is ships +alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretences, that will not put up +with bad art from their masters. + + + + +X. + + +FROM the main truck of the average tall ship the horizon describes a +circle of many miles, in which you can see another ship right down to her +water-line; and these very eyes which follow this writing have counted in +their time over a hundred sail becalmed, as if within a magic ring, not +very far from the Azores—ships more or less tall. There were hardly two +of them heading exactly the same way, as if each had meditated breaking +out of the enchanted circle at a different point of the compass. But the +spell of the calm is a strong magic. The following day still saw them +scattered within sight of each other and heading different ways; but +when, at last, the breeze came with the darkling ripple that ran very +blue on a pale sea, they all went in the same direction together. For +this was the homeward-bound fleet from the far-off ends of the earth, and +a Falmouth fruit-schooner, the smallest of them all, was heading the +flight. One could have imagined her very fair, if not divinely tall, +leaving a scent of lemons and oranges in her wake. + +The next day there were very few ships in sight from our mast-heads—seven +at most, perhaps, with a few more distant specks, hull down, beyond the +magic ring of the horizon. The spell of the fair wind has a subtle power +to scatter a white-winged company of ships looking all the same way, each +with its white fillet of tumbling foam under the bow. It is the calm +that brings ships mysteriously together; it is your wind that is the +great separator. + +The taller the ship, the further she can be seen; and her white tallness +breathed upon by the wind first proclaims her size. The tall masts +holding aloft the white canvas, spread out like a snare for catching the +invisible power of the air, emerge gradually from the water, sail after +sail, yard after yard, growing big, till, under the towering structure of +her machinery, you perceive the insignificant, tiny speck of her hull. + +The tall masts are the pillars supporting the balanced planes that, +motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship’s motive-power, as it +were a gift from Heaven vouchsafed to the audacity of man; and it is the +ship’s tall spars, stripped and shorn of their white glory, that incline +themselves before the anger of the clouded heaven. + +When they yield to a squall in a gaunt and naked submission, their +tallness is brought best home even to the mind of a seaman. The man who +has looked upon his ship going over too far is made aware of the +preposterous tallness of a ship’s spars. It seems impossible but that +those gilt trucks which one had to tilt one’s head back to see, now +falling into the lower plane of vision, must perforce hit the very edge +of the horizon. Such an experience gives you a better impression of the +loftiness of your spars than any amount of running aloft could do. And +yet in my time the royal yards of an average profitable ship were a good +way up above her decks. + +No doubt a fair amount of climbing up iron ladders can be achieved by an +active man in a ship’s engine-room, but I remember moments when even to +my supple limbs and pride of nimbleness the sailing-ship’s machinery +seemed to reach up to the very stars. + +For machinery it is, doing its work in perfect silence and with a +motionless grace, that seems to hide a capricious and not always +governable power, taking nothing away from the material stores of the +earth. Not for it the unerring precision of steel moved by white steam +and living by red fire and fed with black coal. The other seems to draw +its strength from the very soul of the world, its formidable ally, held +to obedience by the frailest bonds, like a fierce ghost captured in a +snare of something even finer than spun silk. For what is the array of +the strongest ropes, the tallest spars and the stoutest canvas against +the mighty breath of the infinite, but thistle stalks, cobwebs and +gossamer? + + + + +XI. + + +Indeed, it is less than nothing, and I have seen, when the great soul of +the world turned over with a heavy sigh, a perfectly new, extra-stout +foresail vanish like a bit of some airy stuff much lighter than gossamer. +Then was the time for the tall spars to stand fast in the great uproar. +The machinery must do its work even if the soul of the world has gone +mad. + +The modern steamship advances upon a still and overshadowed sea with a +pulsating tremor of her frame, an occasional clang in her depths, as if +she had an iron heart in her iron body; with a thudding rhythm in her +progress and the regular beat of her propeller, heard afar in the night +with an august and plodding sound as of the march of an inevitable +future. But in a gale, the silent machinery of a sailing-ship would +catch not only the power, but the wild and exulting voice of the world’s +soul. Whether she ran with her tall spars swinging, or breasted it with +her tall spars lying over, there was always that wild song, deep like a +chant, for a bass to the shrill pipe of the wind played on the sea-tops, +with a punctuating crash, now and then, of a breaking wave. At times the +weird effects of that invisible orchestra would get upon a man’s nerves +till he wished himself deaf. + +And this recollection of a personal wish, experienced upon several +oceans, where the soul of the world has plenty of room to turn over with +a mighty sigh, brings me to the remark that in order to take a proper +care of a ship’s spars it is just as well for a seaman to have nothing +the matter with his ears. Such is the intimacy with which a seaman had +to live with his ship of yesterday that his senses were like her senses, +that the stress upon his body made him judge of the strain upon the +ship’s masts. + +I had been some time at sea before I became aware of the fact that +hearing plays a perceptible part in gauging the force of the wind. It +was at night. The ship was one of those iron wool-clippers that the +Clyde had floated out in swarms upon the world during the seventh decade +of the last century. It was a fine period in ship-building, and also, I +might say, a period of over-masting. The spars rigged up on the narrow +hulls were indeed tall then, and the ship of which I think, with her +coloured-glass skylight ends bearing the motto, “Let Glasgow Flourish,” +was certainly one of the most heavily-sparred specimens. She was built +for hard driving, and unquestionably she got all the driving she could +stand. Our captain was a man famous for the quick passages he had been +used to make in the old _Tweed_, a ship famous the world over for her +speed. The _Tweed_ had been a wooden vessel, and he brought the +tradition of quick passages with him into the iron clipper. I was the +junior in her, a third mate, keeping watch with the chief officer; and it +was just during one of the night watches in a strong, freshening breeze +that I overheard two men in a sheltered nook of the main deck exchanging +these informing remarks. Said one: + +“Should think ’twas time some of them light sails were coming off her.” + +And the other, an older man, uttered grumpily: “No fear! not while the +chief mate’s on deck. He’s that deaf he can’t tell how much wind there +is.” + +And, indeed, poor P—, quite young, and a smart seaman, was very hard of +hearing. At the same time, he had the name of being the very devil of a +fellow for carrying on sail on a ship. He was wonderfully clever at +concealing his deafness, and, as to carrying on heavily, though he was a +fearless man, I don’t think that he ever meant to take undue risks. I +can never forget his naïve sort of astonishment when remonstrated with +for what appeared a most dare-devil performance. The only person, of +course, that could remonstrate with telling effect was our captain, +himself a man of dare-devil tradition; and really, for me, who knew under +whom I was serving, those were impressive scenes. Captain S— had a great +name for sailor-like qualities—the sort of name that compelled my +youthful admiration. To this day I preserve his memory, for, indeed, it +was he in a sense who completed my training. It was often a stormy +process, but let that pass. I am sure he meant well, and I am certain +that never, not even at the time, could I bear him malice for his +extraordinary gift of incisive criticism. And to hear _him_ make a fuss +about too much sail on the ship seemed one of those incredible +experiences that take place only in one’s dreams. + +It generally happened in this way: Night, clouds racing overhead, wind +howling, royals set, and the ship rushing on in the dark, an immense +white sheet of foam level with the lee rail. Mr. P—, in charge of the +deck, hooked on to the windward mizzen rigging in a state of perfect +serenity; myself, the third mate, also hooked on somewhere to windward of +the slanting poop, in a state of the utmost preparedness to jump at the +very first hint of some sort of order, but otherwise in a perfectly +acquiescent state of mind. Suddenly, out of the companion would appear a +tall, dark figure, bareheaded, with a short white beard of a +perpendicular cut, very visible in the dark—Captain S—, disturbed in his +reading down below by the frightful bounding and lurching of the ship. +Leaning very much against the precipitous incline of the deck, he would +take a turn or two, perfectly silent, hang on by the compass for a while, +take another couple of turns, and suddenly burst out: + +“What are you trying to do with the ship?” + +And Mr. P—, who was not good at catching what was shouted in the wind, +would say interrogatively: + +“Yes, sir?” + +Then in the increasing gale of the sea there would be a little private +ship’s storm going on in which you could detect strong language, +pronounced in a tone of passion and exculpatory protestations uttered +with every possible inflection of injured innocence. + +“By Heavens, Mr. P-! I used to carry on sail in my time, but—” + +And the rest would be lost to me in a stormy gust of wind. + +Then, in a lull, P—’s protesting innocence would become audible: + +“She seems to stand it very well.” + +And then another burst of an indignant voice: + +“Any fool can carry sail on a ship—” + +And so on and so on, the ship meanwhile rushing on her way with a heavier +list, a noisier splutter, a more threatening hiss of the white, almost +blinding, sheet of foam to leeward. For the best of it was that Captain +S— seemed constitutionally incapable of giving his officers a definite +order to shorten sail; and so that extraordinarily vague row would go on +till at last it dawned upon them both, in some particularly alarming +gust, that it was time to do something. There is nothing like the +fearful inclination of your tall spars overloaded with canvas to bring a +deaf man and an angry one to their senses. + + + + +XII. + + +So sail did get shortened more or less in time even in that ship, and her +tall spars never went overboard while I served in her. However, all the +time I was with them, Captain S— and Mr. P— did not get on very well +together. If P— carried on “like the very devil” because he was too deaf +to know how much wind there was, Captain S— (who, as I have said, seemed +constitutionally incapable of ordering one of his officers to shorten +sail) resented the necessity forced upon him by Mr. P—’s desperate goings +on. It was in Captain S—’s tradition rather to reprove his officers for +not carrying on quite enough—in his phrase “for not taking every ounce of +advantage of a fair wind.” But there was also a psychological motive +that made him extremely difficult to deal with on board that iron +clipper. He had just come out of the marvellous _Tweed_, a ship, I have +heard, heavy to look at but of phenomenal speed. In the middle sixties +she had beaten by a day and a half the steam mail-boat from Hong Kong to +Singapore. There was something peculiarly lucky, perhaps, in the placing +of her masts—who knows? Officers of men-of-war used to come on board to +take the exact dimensions of her sail-plan. Perhaps there had been a +touch of genius or the finger of good fortune in the fashioning of her +lines at bow and stern. It is impossible to say. She was built in the +East Indies somewhere, of teak-wood throughout, except the deck. She had +a great sheer, high bows, and a clumsy stern. The men who had seen her +described her to me as “nothing much to look at.” But in the great +Indian famine of the seventies that ship, already old then, made some +wonderful dashes across the Gulf of Bengal with cargoes of rice from +Rangoon to Madras. + +She took the secret of her speed with her, and, unsightly as she was, her +image surely has its glorious place in the mirror of the old sea. + +The point, however, is that Captain S—, who used to say frequently, “She +never made a decent passage after I left her,” seemed to think that the +secret of her speed lay in her famous commander. No doubt the secret of +many a ship’s excellence does lie with the man on board, but it was +hopeless for Captain S— to try to make his new iron clipper equal the +feats which made the old _Tweed_ a name of praise upon the lips of +English-speaking seamen. There was something pathetic in it, as in the +endeavour of an artist in his old age to equal the masterpieces of his +youth—for the _Tweed’s_ famous passages were Captain S—’s masterpieces. +It was pathetic, and perhaps just the least bit dangerous. At any rate, +I am glad that, what between Captain S—’s yearning for old triumphs and +Mr. P—’s deafness, I have seen some memorable carrying on to make a +passage. And I have carried on myself upon the tall spars of that Clyde +shipbuilder’s masterpiece as I have never carried on in a ship before or +since. + +The second mate falling ill during the passage, I was promoted to officer +of the watch, alone in charge of the deck. Thus the immense leverage of +the ship’s tall masts became a matter very near my own heart. I suppose +it was something of a compliment for a young fellow to be trusted, +apparently without any supervision, by such a commander as Captain S—; +though, as far as I can remember, neither the tone, nor the manner, nor +yet the drift of Captain S—’s remarks addressed to myself did ever, by +the most strained interpretation, imply a favourable opinion of my +abilities. And he was, I must say, a most uncomfortable commander to get +your orders from at night. If I had the watch from eight till midnight, +he would leave the deck about nine with the words, “Don’t take any sail +off her.” Then, on the point of disappearing down the companion-way, he +would add curtly: “Don’t carry anything away.” I am glad to say that I +never did; one night, however, I was caught, not quite prepared, by a +sudden shift of wind. + +There was, of course, a good deal of noise—running about, the shouts of +the sailors, the thrashing of the sails—enough, in fact, to wake the +dead. But S— never came on deck. When I was relieved by the chief mate +an hour afterwards, he sent for me. I went into his state-room; he was +lying on his couch wrapped up in a rug, with a pillow under his head. + +“What was the matter with you up there just now?” he asked. + +“Wind flew round on the lee quarter, sir,” I said. + +“Couldn’t you see the shift coming?” + +“Yes, sir, I thought it wasn’t very far off.” + +“Why didn’t you have your courses hauled up at once, then?” he asked in a +tone that ought to have made my blood run cold. + +But this was my chance, and I did not let it slip. + +“Well, sir,” I said in an apologetic tone, “she was going eleven knots +very nicely, and I thought she would do for another half-hour or so.” + +He gazed at me darkly out of his head, lying very still on the white +pillow, for a time. + +“Ah, yes, another half-hour. That’s the way ships get dismasted.” + +And that was all I got in the way of a wigging. I waited a little while +and then went out, shutting carefully the door of the state-room after +me. + +Well, I have loved, lived with, and left the sea without ever seeing a +ship’s tall fabric of sticks, cobwebs and gossamer go by the board. +Sheer good luck, no doubt. But as to poor P—, I am sure that he would +not have got off scot-free like this but for the god of gales, who called +him away early from this earth, which is three parts ocean, and therefore +a fit abode for sailors. A few years afterwards I met in an Indian port +a man who had served in the ships of the same company. Names came up in +our talk, names of our colleagues in the same employ, and, naturally +enough, I asked after P—. Had he got a command yet? And the other man +answered carelessly: + +“No; but he’s provided for, anyhow. A heavy sea took him off the poop in +the run between New Zealand and the Horn.” + +Thus P— passed away from amongst the tall spars of ships that he had +tried to their utmost in many a spell of boisterous weather. He had +shown me what carrying on meant, but he was not a man to learn discretion +from. He could not help his deafness. One can only remember his cheery +temper, his admiration for the jokes in _Punch_, his little oddities—like +his strange passion for borrowing looking-glasses, for instance. Each of +our cabins had its own looking-glass screwed to the bulkhead, and what he +wanted with more of them we never could fathom. He asked for the loan in +confidential tones. Why? Mystery. We made various surmises. No one +will ever know now. At any rate, it was a harmless eccentricity, and may +the god of gales, who took him away so abruptly between New Zealand and +the Horn, let his soul rest in some Paradise of true seamen, where no +amount of carrying on will ever dismast a ship! + + + + +XIII. + + +THERE has been a time when a ship’s chief mate, pocket-book in hand and +pencil behind his ear, kept one eye aloft upon his riggers and the other +down the hatchway on the stevedores, and watched the disposition of his +ship’s cargo, knowing that even before she started he was already doing +his best to secure for her an easy and quick passage. + +The hurry of the times, the loading and discharging organization of the +docks, the use of hoisting machinery which works quickly and will not +wait, the cry for prompt despatch, the very size of his ship, stand +nowadays between the modern seaman and the thorough knowledge of his +craft. + +There are profitable ships and unprofitable ships. The profitable ship +will carry a large load through all the hazards of the weather, and, when +at rest, will stand up in dock and shift from berth to berth without +ballast. There is a point of perfection in a ship as a worker when she +is spoken of as being able to _sail_ without ballast. I have never met +that sort of paragon myself, but I have seen these paragons advertised +amongst ships for sale. Such excess of virtue and good-nature on the +part of a ship always provoked my mistrust. It is open to any man to say +that his ship will sail without ballast; and he will say it, too, with +every mark of profound conviction, especially if he is not going to sail +in her himself. The risk of advertising her as able to sail without +ballast is not great, since the statement does not imply a warranty of +her arriving anywhere. Moreover, it is strictly true that most ships +will sail without ballast for some little time before they turn turtle +upon the crew. + +A shipowner loves a profitable ship; the seaman is proud of her; a doubt +of her good looks seldom exists in his mind; but if he can boast of her +more useful qualities it is an added satisfaction for his self-love. + +The loading of ships was once a matter of skill, judgment, and knowledge. +Thick books have been written about it. “Stevens on Stowage” is a portly +volume with the renown and weight (in its own world) of Coke on +Littleton. Stevens is an agreeable writer, and, as is the case with men +of talent, his gifts adorn his sterling soundness. He gives you the +official teaching on the whole subject, is precise as to rules, mentions +illustrative events, quotes law cases where verdicts turned upon a point +of stowage. He is never pedantic, and, for all his close adherence to +broad principles, he is ready to admit that no two ships can be treated +exactly alike. + +Stevedoring, which had been a skilled labour, is fast becoming a labour +without the skill. The modern steamship with her many holds is not +loaded within the sailor-like meaning of the word. She is filled up. +Her cargo is not stowed in any sense; it is simply dumped into her +through six hatchways, more or less, by twelve winches or so, with +clatter and hurry and racket and heat, in a cloud of steam and a mess of +coal-dust. As long as you keep her propeller under water and take care, +say, not to fling down barrels of oil on top of bales of silk, or deposit +an iron bridge-girder of five ton or so upon a bed of coffee-bags, you +have done about all in the way of duty that the cry for prompt despatch +will allow you to do. + + + + +XIV. + + +The sailing-ship, when I knew her in her days of perfection, was a +sensible creature. When I say her days of perfection, I mean perfection +of build, gear, seaworthy qualities and ease of handling, not the +perfection of speed. That quality has departed with the change of +building material. No iron ship of yesterday ever attained the marvels +of speed which the seamanship of men famous in their time had obtained +from their wooden, copper-sheeted predecessors. Everything had been done +to make the iron ship perfect, but no wit of man had managed to devise an +efficient coating composition to keep her bottom clean with the smooth +cleanness of yellow metal sheeting. After a spell of a few weeks at sea, +an iron ship begins to lag as if she had grown tired too soon. It is +only her bottom that is getting foul. A very little affects the speed of +an iron ship which is not driven on by a merciless propeller. Often it +is impossible to tell what inconsiderate trifle puts her off her stride. +A certain mysteriousness hangs around the quality of speed as it was +displayed by the old sailing-ships commanded by a competent seaman. In +those days the speed depended upon the seaman; therefore, apart from the +laws, rules, and regulations for the good preservation of his cargo, he +was careful of his loading,—or what is technically called the trim of his +ship. Some ships sailed fast on an even keel, others had to be trimmed +quite one foot by the stern, and I have heard of a ship that gave her +best speed on a wind when so loaded as to float a couple of inches by the +head. + +I call to mind a winter landscape in Amsterdam—a flat foreground of waste +land, with here and there stacks of timber, like the huts of a camp of +some very miserable tribe; the long stretch of the Handelskade; cold, +stone-faced quays, with the snow-sprinkled ground and the hard, frozen +water of the canal, in which were set ships one behind another with their +frosty mooring-ropes hanging slack and their decks idle and deserted, +because, as the master stevedore (a gentle, pale person, with a few +golden hairs on his chin and a reddened nose) informed me, their cargoes +were frozen-in up-country on barges and schuyts. In the distance, beyond +the waste ground, and running parallel with the line of ships, a line of +brown, warm-toned houses seemed bowed under snow-laden roofs. From afar +at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air the tinkle of +bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and disappearing in the opening +between the buildings, like little toy carriages harnessed with toy +horses and played with by people that appeared no bigger than children. + +I was, as the French say, biting my fists with impatience for that cargo +frozen up-country; with rage at that canal set fast, at the wintry and +deserted aspect of all those ships that seemed to decay in grim +depression for want of the open water. I was chief mate, and very much +alone. Directly I had joined I received from my owners instructions to +send all the ship’s apprentices away on leave together, because in such +weather there was nothing for anybody to do, unless to keep up a fire in +the cabin stove. That was attended to by a snuffy and mop-headed, +inconceivably dirty, and weirdly toothless Dutch ship-keeper, who could +hardly speak three words of English, but who must have had some +considerable knowledge of the language, since he managed invariably to +interpret in the contrary sense everything that was said to him. + +Notwithstanding the little iron stove, the ink froze on the swing-table +in the cabin, and I found it more convenient to go ashore stumbling over +the arctic waste-land and shivering in glazed tramcars in order to write +my evening letter to my owners in a gorgeous café in the centre of the +town. It was an immense place, lofty and gilt, upholstered in red plush, +full of electric lights and so thoroughly warmed that even the marble +tables felt tepid to the touch. The waiter who brought me my cup of +coffee bore, by comparison with my utter isolation, the dear aspect of an +intimate friend. There, alone in a noisy crowd, I would write slowly a +letter addressed to Glasgow, of which the gist would be: There is no +cargo, and no prospect of any coming till late spring apparently. And +all the time I sat there the necessity of getting back to the ship bore +heavily on my already half-congealed spirits—the shivering in glazed +tramcars, the stumbling over the snow-sprinkled waste ground, the vision +of ships frozen in a row, appearing vaguely like corpses of black vessels +in a white world, so silent, so lifeless, so soulless they seemed to be. + +With precaution I would go up the side of my own particular corpse, and +would feel her as cold as ice itself and as slippery under my feet. My +cold berth would swallow up like a chilly burial niche my bodily shivers +and my mental excitement. It was a cruel winter. The very air seemed as +hard and trenchant as steel; but it would have taken much more than this +to extinguish my sacred fire for the exercise of my craft. No young man +of twenty-four appointed chief mate for the first time in his life would +have let that Dutch tenacious winter penetrate into his heart. I think +that in those days I never forgot the fact of my elevation for five +consecutive minutes. I fancy it kept me warm, even in my slumbers, +better than the high pile of blankets, which positively crackled with +frost as I threw them off in the morning. And I would get up early for +no reason whatever except that I was in sole charge. The new captain had +not been appointed yet. + +Almost each morning a letter from my owners would arrive, directing me to +go to the charterers and clamour for the ship’s cargo; to threaten them +with the heaviest penalties of demurrage; to demand that this assortment +of varied merchandise, set fast in a landscape of ice and windmills +somewhere up-country, should be put on rail instantly, and fed up to the +ship in regular quantities every day. After drinking some hot coffee, +like an Arctic explorer setting off on a sledge journey towards the North +Pole, I would go ashore and roll shivering in a tramcar into the very +heart of the town, past clean-faced houses, past thousands of brass +knockers upon a thousand painted doors glimmering behind rows of trees of +the pavement species, leafless, gaunt, seemingly dead for ever. + +That part of the expedition was easy enough, though the horses were +painfully glistening with icicles, and the aspect of the tram-conductors’ +faces presented a repulsive blending of crimson and purple. But as to +frightening or bullying, or even wheedling some sort of answer out of Mr. +Hudig, that was another matter altogether. He was a big, swarthy +Netherlander, with black moustaches and a bold glance. He always began +by shoving me into a chair before I had time to open my mouth, gave me +cordially a large cigar, and in excellent English would start to talk +everlastingly about the phenomenal severity of the weather. It was +impossible to threaten a man who, though he possessed the language +perfectly, seemed incapable of understanding any phrase pronounced in a +tone of remonstrance or discontent. As to quarrelling with him, it would +have been stupid. The weather was too bitter for that. His office was +so warm, his fire so bright, his sides shook so heartily with laughter, +that I experienced always a great difficulty in making up my mind to +reach for my hat. + +At last the cargo did come. At first it came dribbling in by rail in +trucks, till the thaw set in; and then fast, in a multitude of barges, +with a great rush of unbound waters. The gentle master stevedore had his +hands very full at last; and the chief mate became worried in his mind as +to the proper distribution of the weight of his first cargo in a ship he +did not personally know before. + +Ships do want humouring. They want humouring in handling; and if you +mean to handle them well, they must have been humoured in the +distribution of the weight which you ask them to carry through the good +and evil fortune of a passage. Your ship is a tender creature, whose +idiosyncrasies must be attended to if you mean her to come with credit to +herself and you through the rough-and-tumble of her life. + + + + +XV. + + +So seemed to think the new captain, who arrived the day after we had +finished loading, on the very eve of the day of sailing. I first beheld +him on the quay, a complete stranger to me, obviously not a Hollander, in +a black bowler and a short drab overcoat, ridiculously out of tone with +the winter aspect of the waste-lands, bordered by the brown fronts of +houses with their roofs dripping with melting snow. + +This stranger was walking up and down absorbed in the marked +contemplation of the ship’s fore and aft trim; but when I saw him squat +on his heels in the slush at the very edge of the quay to peer at the +draught of water under her counter, I said to myself, “This is the +captain.” And presently I descried his luggage coming along—a real +sailor’s chest, carried by means of rope-beckets between two men, with a +couple of leather portmanteaus and a roll of charts sheeted in canvas +piled upon the lid. The sudden, spontaneous agility with which he +bounded aboard right off the rail afforded me the first glimpse of his +real character. Without further preliminaries than a friendly nod, he +addressed me: “You have got her pretty well in her fore and aft trim. +Now, what about your weights?” + +I told him I had managed to keep the weight sufficiently well up, as I +thought, one-third of the whole being in the upper part “above the +beams,” as the technical expression has it. He whistled “Phew!” +scrutinizing me from head to foot. A sort of smiling vexation was +visible on his ruddy face. + +“Well, we shall have a lively time of it this passage, I bet,” he said. + +He knew. It turned out he had been chief mate of her for the two +preceding voyages; and I was already familiar with his handwriting in the +old log-books I had been perusing in my cabin with a natural curiosity, +looking up the records of my new ship’s luck, of her behaviour, of the +good times she had had, and of the troubles she had escaped. + +He was right in his prophecy. On our passage from Amsterdam to Samarang +with a general cargo, of which, alas! only one-third in weight was stowed +“above the beams,” we had a lively time of it. It was lively, but not +joyful. There was not even a single moment of comfort in it, because no +seaman can feel comfortable in body or mind when he has made his ship +uneasy. + +To travel along with a cranky ship for ninety days or so is no doubt a +nerve-trying experience; but in this case what was wrong with our craft +was this: that by my system of loading she had been made much too stable. + +Neither before nor since have I felt a ship roll so abruptly, so +violently, so heavily. Once she began, you felt that she would never +stop, and this hopeless sensation, characterizing the motion of ships +whose centre of gravity is brought down too low in loading, made everyone +on board weary of keeping on his feet. I remember once over-hearing one +of the hands say: “By Heavens, Jack! I feel as if I didn’t mind how soon +I let myself go, and let the blamed hooker knock my brains out if she +likes.” The captain used to remark frequently: “Ah, yes; I dare say +one-third weight above beams would have been quite enough for most ships. +But then, you see, there’s no two of them alike on the seas, and she’s an +uncommonly ticklish jade to load.” + +Down south, running before the gales of high latitudes, she made our life +a burden to us. There were days when nothing would keep even on the +swing-tables, when there was no position where you could fix yourself so +as not to feel a constant strain upon all the muscles of your body. She +rolled and rolled with an awful dislodging jerk and that dizzily fast +sweep of her masts on every swing. It was a wonder that the men sent +aloft were not flung off the yards, the yards not flung off the masts, +the masts not flung overboard. The captain in his armchair, holding on +grimly at the head of the table, with the soup-tureen rolling on one side +of the cabin and the steward sprawling on the other, would observe, +looking at me: “That’s your one-third above the beams. The only thing +that surprises me is that the sticks have stuck to her all this time.” + +Ultimately some of the minor spars did go—nothing important: +spanker-booms and such-like—because at times the frightful impetus of her +rolling would part a fourfold tackle of new three-inch Manilla line as if +it were weaker than pack-thread. + +It was only poetic justice that the chief mate who had made a +mistake—perhaps a half-excusable one—about the distribution of his ship’s +cargo should pay the penalty. A piece of one of the minor spars that did +carry away flew against the chief mate’s back, and sent him sliding on +his face for quite a considerable distance along the main deck. +Thereupon followed various and unpleasant consequences of a physical +order—“queer symptoms,” as the captain, who treated them, used to say; +inexplicable periods of powerlessness, sudden accesses of mysterious +pain; and the patient agreed fully with the regretful mutters of his very +attentive captain wishing that it had been a straightforward broken leg. +Even the Dutch doctor who took the case up in Samarang offered no +scientific explanation. All he said was: “Ah, friend, you are young yet; +it may be very serious for your whole life. You must leave your ship; +you must quite silent be for three months—quite silent.” + +Of course, he meant the chief mate to keep quiet—to lay up, as a matter +of fact. His manner was impressive enough, if his English was childishly +imperfect when compared with the fluency of Mr. Hudig, the figure at the +other end of that passage, and memorable enough in its way. In a great +airy ward of a Far Eastern hospital, lying on my back, I had plenty of +leisure to remember the dreadful cold and snow of Amsterdam, while +looking at the fronds of the palm-trees tossing and rustling at the +height of the window. I could remember the elated feeling and the +soul-gripping cold of those tramway journeys taken into town to put what +in diplomatic language is called pressure upon the good Hudig, with his +warm fire, his armchair, his big cigar, and the never-failing suggestion +in his good-natured voice: “I suppose in the end it is you they will +appoint captain before the ship sails?” It may have been his extreme +good-nature, the serious, unsmiling good-nature of a fat, swarthy man +with coal-black moustache and steady eyes; but he might have been a bit +of a diplomatist, too. His enticing suggestions I used to repel modestly +by the assurance that it was extremely unlikely, as I had not enough +experience. “You know very well how to go about business matters,” he +used to say, with a sort of affected moodiness clouding his serene round +face. I wonder whether he ever laughed to himself after I had left the +office. I dare say he never did, because I understand that diplomatists, +in and out of the career, take themselves and their tricks with an +exemplary seriousness. + +But he had nearly persuaded me that I was fit in every way to be trusted +with a command. There came three months of mental worry, hard rolling, +remorse, and physical pain to drive home the lesson of insufficient +experience. + +Yes, your ship wants to be humoured with knowledge. You must treat with +an understanding consideration the mysteries of her feminine nature, and +then she will stand by you faithfully in the unceasing struggle with +forces wherein defeat is no shame. It is a serious relation, that in +which a man stands to his ship. She has her rights as though she could +breathe and speak; and, indeed, there are ships that, for the right man, +will do anything but speak, as the saying goes. + +A ship is not a slave. You must make her easy in a seaway, you must +never forget that you owe her the fullest share of your thought, of your +skill, of your self-love. If you remember that obligation, naturally and +without effort, as if it were an instinctive feeling of your inner life, +she will sail, stay, run for you as long as she is able, or, like a +sea-bird going to rest upon the angry waves, she will lay out the +heaviest gale that ever made you doubt living long enough to see another +sunrise. + + + + +XVI. + + +Often I turn with melancholy eagerness to the space reserved in the +newspapers under the general heading of “Shipping Intelligence.” I meet +there the names of ships I have known. Every year some of these names +disappear—the names of old friends. “Tempi passati!” + +The different divisions of that kind of news are set down in their order, +which varies but slightly in its arrangement of concise headlines. And +first comes “Speakings”—reports of ships met and signalled at sea, name, +port, where from, where bound for, so many days out, ending frequently +with the words “All well.” Then come “Wrecks and Casualties”—a longish +array of paragraphs, unless the weather has been fair and clear, and +friendly to ships all over the world. + +On some days there appears the heading “Overdue”—an ominous threat of +loss and sorrow trembling yet in the balance of fate. There is something +sinister to a seaman in the very grouping of the letters which form this +word, clear in its meaning, and seldom threatening in vain. + +Only a very few days more—appallingly few to the hearts which had set +themselves bravely to hope against hope—three weeks, a month later, +perhaps, the name of ships under the blight of the “Overdue” heading +shall appear again in the column of “Shipping Intelligence,” but under +the final declaration of “Missing.” + +“The ship, or barque, or brig So-and-so, bound from such a port, with +such and such cargo, for such another port, having left at such and such +a date, last spoken at sea on such a day, and never having been heard of +since, was posted to-day as missing.” Such in its strictly official +eloquence is the form of funeral orations on ships that, perhaps wearied +with a long struggle, or in some unguarded moment that may come to the +readiest of us, had let themselves be overwhelmed by a sudden blow from +the enemy. + +Who can say? Perhaps the men she carried had asked her to do too much, +had stretched beyond breaking-point the enduring faithfulness which seems +wrought and hammered into that assemblage of iron ribs and plating, of +wood and steel and canvas and wire, which goes to the making of a ship—a +complete creation endowed with character, individuality, qualities and +defects, by men whose hands launch her upon the water, and that other men +shall learn to know with an intimacy surpassing the intimacy of man with +man, to love with a love nearly as great as that of man for woman, and +often as blind in its infatuated disregard of defects. + +There are ships which bear a bad name, but I have yet to meet one whose +crew for the time being failed to stand up angrily for her against every +criticism. One ship which I call to mind now had the reputation of +killing somebody every voyage she made. This was no calumny, and yet I +remember well, somewhere far back in the late seventies, that the crew of +that ship were, if anything, rather proud of her evil fame, as if they +had been an utterly corrupt lot of desperadoes glorying in their +association with an atrocious creature. We, belonging to other vessels +moored all about the Circular Quay in Sydney, used to shake our heads at +her with a great sense of the unblemished virtue of our own well-loved +ships. + +I shall not pronounce her name. She is “missing” now, after a sinister +but, from the point of view of her owners, a useful career extending over +many years, and, I should say, across every ocean of our globe. Having +killed a man for every voyage, and perhaps rendered more misanthropic by +the infirmities that come with years upon a ship, she had made up her +mind to kill all hands at once before leaving the scene of her exploits. +A fitting end, this, to a life of usefulness and crime—in a last outburst +of an evil passion supremely satisfied on some wild night, perhaps, to +the applauding clamour of wind and wave. + +How did she do it? In the word “missing” there is a horrible depth of +doubt and speculation. Did she go quickly from under the men’s feet, or +did she resist to the end, letting the sea batter her to pieces, start +her butts, wrench her frame, load her with an increasing weight of salt +water, and, dismasted, unmanageable, rolling heavily, her boats gone, her +decks swept, had she wearied her men half to death with the unceasing +labour at the pumps before she sank with them like a stone? + +However, such a case must be rare. I imagine a raft of some sort could +always be contrived; and, even if it saved no one, it would float on and +be picked up, perhaps conveying some hint of the vanished name. Then +that ship would not be, properly speaking, missing. She would be “lost +with all hands,” and in that distinction there is a subtle +difference—less horror and a less appalling darkness. + + + + +XVII. + + +The unholy fascination of dread dwells in the thought of the last moments +of a ship reported as “missing” in the columns of the _Shipping Gazette_. +Nothing of her ever comes to light—no grating, no lifebuoy, no piece of +boat or branded oar—to give a hint of the place and date of her sudden +end. The _Shipping Gazette_ does not even call her “lost with all +hands.” She remains simply “missing”; she has disappeared enigmatically +into a mystery of fate as big as the world, where your imagination of a +brother-sailor, of a fellow-servant and lover of ships, may range +unchecked. + +And yet sometimes one gets a hint of what the last scene may be like in +the life of a ship and her crew, which resembles a drama in its struggle +against a great force bearing it up, formless, ungraspable, chaotic and +mysterious, as fate. + +It was on a gray afternoon in the lull of a three days’ gale that had +left the Southern Ocean tumbling heavily upon our ship, under a sky hung +with rags of clouds that seemed to have been cut and hacked by the keen +edge of a sou’-west gale. + +Our craft, a Clyde-built barque of 1,000 tons, rolled so heavily that +something aloft had carried away. No matter what the damage was, but it +was serious enough to induce me to go aloft myself with a couple of hands +and the carpenter to see the temporary repairs properly done. + +Sometimes we had to drop everything and cling with both hands to the +swaying spars, holding our breath in fear of a terribly heavy roll. And, +wallowing as if she meant to turn over with us, the barque, her decks +full of water, her gear flying in bights, ran at some ten knots an hour. +We had been driven far south—much farther that way than we had meant to +go; and suddenly, up there in the slings of the foreyard, in the midst of +our work, I felt my shoulder gripped with such force in the carpenter’s +powerful paw that I positively yelled with unexpected pain. The man’s +eyes stared close in my face, and he shouted, “Look, sir! look! What’s +this?” pointing ahead with his other hand. + +At first I saw nothing. The sea was one empty wilderness of black and +white hills. Suddenly, half-concealed in the tumult of the foaming +rollers I made out awash, something enormous, rising and +falling—something spread out like a burst of foam, but with a more +bluish, more solid look. + +It was a piece of an ice-floe melted down to a fragment, but still big +enough to sink a ship, and floating lower than any raft, right in our +way, as if ambushed among the waves with murderous intent. There was no +time to get down on deck. I shouted from aloft till my head was ready to +split. I was heard aft, and we managed to clear the sunken floe which +had come all the way from the Southern ice-cap to have a try at our +unsuspecting lives. Had it been an hour later, nothing could have saved +the ship, for no eye could have made out in the dusk that pale piece of +ice swept over by the white-crested waves. + +And as we stood near the taffrail side by side, my captain and I, looking +at it, hardly discernible already, but still quite close-to on our +quarter, he remarked in a meditative tone: + +“But for the turn of that wheel just in time, there would have been +another case of a ‘missing’ ship.” + +Nobody ever comes back from a “missing” ship to tell how hard was the +death of the craft, and how sudden and overwhelming the last anguish of +her men. Nobody can say with what thoughts, with what regrets, with what +words on their lips they died. But there is something fine in the sudden +passing away of these hearts from the extremity of struggle and stress +and tremendous uproar—from the vast, unrestful rage of the surface to the +profound peace of the depths, sleeping untroubled since the beginning of +ages. + + + + +XVIII. + + +But if the word “missing” brings all hope to an end and settles the loss +of the underwriters, the word “overdue” confirms the fears already born +in many homes ashore, and opens the door of speculation in the market of +risks. + +Maritime risks, be it understood. There is a class of optimists ready to +reinsure an “overdue” ship at a heavy premium. But nothing can insure +the hearts on shore against the bitterness of waiting for the worst. + +For if a “missing” ship has never turned up within the memory of seamen +of my generation, the name of an “overdue” ship, trembling as it were on +the edge of the fatal heading, has been known to appear as “arrived.” + +It must blaze up, indeed, with a great brilliance the dull printer’s ink +expended on the assemblage of the few letters that form the ship’s name +to the anxious eyes scanning the page in fear and trembling. It is like +the message of reprieve from the sentence of sorrow suspended over many a +home, even if some of the men in her have been the most homeless mortals +that you may find among the wanderers of the sea. + +The reinsurer, the optimist of ill-luck and disaster, slaps his pocket +with satisfaction. The underwriter, who had been trying to minimize the +amount of impending loss, regrets his premature pessimism. The ship has +been stauncher, the skies more merciful, the seas less angry, or perhaps +the men on board of a finer temper than he has been willing to take for +granted. + +“The ship So-and-so, bound to such a port, and posted as ‘overdue,’ has +been reported yesterday as having arrived safely at her destination.” + +Thus run the official words of the reprieve addressed to the hearts +ashore lying under a heavy sentence. And they come swiftly from the +other side of the earth, over wires and cables, for your electric +telegraph is a great alleviator of anxiety. Details, of course, shall +follow. And they may unfold a tale of narrow escape, of steady ill-luck, +of high winds and heavy weather, of ice, of interminable calms or endless +head-gales; a tale of difficulties overcome, of adversity defied by a +small knot of men upon the great loneliness of the sea; a tale of +resource, of courage—of helplessness, perhaps. + +Of all ships disabled at sea, a steamer who has lost her propeller is the +most helpless. And if she drifts into an unpopulated part of the ocean +she may soon become overdue. The menace of the “overdue” and the +finality of “missing” come very quickly to steamers whose life, fed on +coals and breathing the black breath of smoke into the air, goes on in +disregard of wind and wave. Such a one, a big steamship, too, whose +working life had been a record of faithful keeping time from land to +land, in disregard of wind and sea, once lost her propeller down south, +on her passage out to New Zealand. + +It was the wintry, murky time of cold gales and heavy seas. With the +snapping of her tail-shaft her life seemed suddenly to depart from her +big body, and from a stubborn, arrogant existence she passed all at once +into the passive state of a drifting log. A ship sick with her own +weakness has not the pathos of a ship vanquished in a battle with the +elements, wherein consists the inner drama of her life. No seaman can +look without compassion upon a disabled ship, but to look at a +sailing-vessel with her lofty spars gone is to look upon a defeated but +indomitable warrior. There is defiance in the remaining stumps of her +masts, raised up like maimed limbs against the menacing scowl of a stormy +sky; there is high courage in the upward sweep of her lines towards the +bow; and as soon as, on a hastily-rigged spar, a strip of canvas is shown +to the wind to keep her head to sea, she faces the waves again with an +unsubdued courage. + + + + +XIX. + + +The efficiency of a steamship consists not so much in her courage as in +the power she carries within herself. It beats and throbs like a +pulsating heart within her iron ribs, and when it stops, the steamer, +whose life is not so much a contest as the disdainful ignoring of the +sea, sickens and dies upon the waves. The sailing-ship, with her +unthrobbing body, seemed to lead mysteriously a sort of unearthly +existence, bordering upon the magic of the invisible forces, sustained by +the inspiration of life-giving and death-dealing winds. + +So that big steamer, dying by a sudden stroke, drifted, an unwieldy +corpse, away from the track of other ships. And she would have been +posted really as “overdue,” or maybe as “missing,” had she not been +sighted in a snowstorm, vaguely, like a strange rolling island, by a +whaler going north from her Polar cruising ground. There was plenty of +food on board, and I don’t know whether the nerves of her passengers were +at all affected by anything else than the sense of interminable boredom +or the vague fear of that unusual situation. Does a passenger ever feel +the life of the ship in which he is being carried like a sort of honoured +bale of highly sensitive goods? For a man who has never been a passenger +it is impossible to say. But I know that there is no harder trial for a +seaman than to feel a dead ship under his feet. + +There is no mistaking that sensation, so dismal, so tormenting and so +subtle, so full of unhappiness and unrest. I could imagine no worse +eternal punishment for evil seamen who die unrepentant upon the earthly +sea than that their souls should be condemned to man the ghosts of +disabled ships, drifting for ever across a ghostly and tempestuous ocean. + +She must have looked ghostly enough, that broken-down steamer, rolling in +that snowstorm—a dark apparition in a world of white snowflakes to the +staring eyes of that whaler’s crew. Evidently they didn’t believe in +ghosts, for on arrival into port her captain unromantically reported +having sighted a disabled steamer in latitude somewhere about 50 degrees +S. and a longitude still more uncertain. Other steamers came out to look +for her, and ultimately towed her away from the cold edge of the world +into a harbour with docks and workshops, where, with many blows of +hammers, her pulsating heart of steel was set going again to go forth +presently in the renewed pride of its strength, fed on fire and water, +breathing black smoke into the air, pulsating, throbbing, shouldering its +arrogant way against the great rollers in blind disdain of winds and sea. + +The track she had made when drifting while her heart stood still within +her iron ribs looked like a tangled thread on the white paper of the +chart. It was shown to me by a friend, her second officer. In that +surprising tangle there were words in minute letters—“gales,” “thick +fog,” “ice”—written by him here and there as memoranda of the weather. +She had interminably turned upon her tracks, she had crossed and +recrossed her haphazard path till it resembled nothing so much as a +puzzling maze of pencilled lines without a meaning. But in that maze +there lurked all the romance of the “overdue” and a menacing hint of +“missing.” + +“We had three weeks of it,” said my friend, “just think of that!” + +“How did you feel about it?” I asked. + +He waved his hand as much as to say: It’s all in the day’s work. But +then, abruptly, as if making up his mind: + +“I’ll tell you. Towards the last I used to shut myself up in my berth +and cry.” + +“Cry?” + +“Shed tears,” he explained briefly, and rolled up the chart. + +I can answer for it, he was a good man—as good as ever stepped upon a +ship’s deck—but he could not bear the feeling of a dead ship under his +feet: the sickly, disheartening feeling which the men of some “overdue” +ships that come into harbour at last under a jury-rig must have felt, +combated, and overcome in the faithful discharge of their duty. + + + + +XX. + + +IT is difficult for a seaman to believe that his stranded ship does not +feel as unhappy at the unnatural predicament of having no water under her +keel as he is himself at feeling her stranded. + +Stranding is, indeed, the reverse of sinking. The sea does not close +upon the water-logged hull with a sunny ripple, or maybe with the angry +rush of a curling wave, erasing her name from the roll of living ships. +No. It is as if an invisible hand had been stealthily uplifted from the +bottom to catch hold of her keel as it glides through the water. + +More than any other event does stranding bring to the sailor a sense of +utter and dismal failure. There are strandings and strandings, but I am +safe to say that 90 per cent. of them are occasions in which a sailor, +without dishonour, may well wish himself dead; and I have no doubt that +of those who had the experience of their ship taking the ground, 90 per +cent. did actually for five seconds or so wish themselves dead. + +“Taking the ground” is the professional expression for a ship that is +stranded in gentle circumstances. But the feeling is more as if the +ground had taken hold of her. It is for those on her deck a surprising +sensation. It is as if your feet had been caught in an imponderable +snare; you feel the balance of your body threatened, and the steady poise +of your mind is destroyed at once. This sensation lasts only a second, +for even while you stagger something seems to turn over in your head, +bringing uppermost the mental exclamation, full of astonishment and +dismay, “By Jove! she’s on the ground!” + +And that is very terrible. After all, the only mission of a seaman’s +calling is to keep ships’ keels off the ground. Thus the moment of her +stranding takes away from him every excuse for his continued existence. +To keep ships afloat is his business; it is his trust; it is the +effective formula of the bottom of all these vague impulses, dreams, and +illusions that go to the making up of a boy’s vocation. The grip of the +land upon the keel of your ship, even if nothing worse comes of it than +the wear and tear of tackle and the loss of time, remains in a seaman’s +memory an indelibly fixed taste of disaster. + +“Stranded” within the meaning of this paper stands for a more or less +excusable mistake. A ship may be “driven ashore” by stress of weather. +It is a catastrophe, a defeat. To be “run ashore” has the littleness, +poignancy, and bitterness of human error. + + + + +XXI. + + +That is why your “strandings” are for the most part so unexpected. In +fact, they are all unexpected, except those heralded by some short +glimpse of the danger, full of agitation and excitement, like an +awakening from a dream of incredible folly. + +The land suddenly at night looms up right over your bows, or perhaps the +cry of “Broken water ahead!” is raised, and some long mistake, some +complicated edifice of self-delusion, over-confidence, and wrong +reasoning is brought down in a fatal shock, and the heart-searing +experience of your ship’s keel scraping and scrunching over, say, a coral +reef. It is a sound, for its size, far more terrific to your soul than +that of a world coming violently to an end. But out of that chaos your +belief in your own prudence and sagacity reasserts itself. You ask +yourself, Where on earth did I get to? How on earth did I get there? +with a conviction that it could not be your own act, that there has been +at work some mysterious conspiracy of accident; that the charts are all +wrong, and if the charts are not wrong, that land and sea have changed +their places; that your misfortune shall for ever remain inexplicable, +since you have lived always with the sense of your trust, the last thing +on closing your eyes, the first on opening them, as if your mind had kept +firm hold of your responsibility during the hours of sleep. + +You contemplate mentally your mischance, till little by little your mood +changes, cold doubt steals into the very marrow of your bones, you see +the inexplicable fact in another light. That is the time when you ask +yourself, How on earth could I have been fool enough to get there? And +you are ready to renounce all belief in your good sense, in your +knowledge, in your fidelity, in what you thought till then was the best +in you, giving you the daily bread of life and the moral support of other +men’s confidence. + +The ship is lost or not lost. Once stranded, you have to do your best by +her. She may be saved by your efforts, by your resource and fortitude +bearing up against the heavy weight of guilt and failure. And there are +justifiable strandings in fogs, on uncharted seas, on dangerous shores, +through treacherous tides. But, saved or not saved, there remains with +her commander a distinct sense of loss, a flavour in the mouth of the +real, abiding danger that lurks in all the forms of human existence. It +is an acquisition, too, that feeling. A man may be the better for it, +but he will not be the same. Damocles has seen the sword suspended by a +hair over his head, and though a good man need not be made less valuable +by such a knowledge, the feast shall not henceforth have the same +flavour. + +Years ago I was concerned as chief mate in a case of stranding which was +not fatal to the ship. We went to work for ten hours on end, laying out +anchors in readiness to heave off at high water. While I was still busy +about the decks forward I heard the steward at my elbow saying: “The +captain asks whether you mean to come in, sir, and have something to eat +to-day.” + +I went into the cuddy. My captain sat at the head of the table like a +statue. There was a strange motionlessness of everything in that pretty +little cabin. The swing-table which for seventy odd days had been always +on the move, if ever so little, hung quite still above the soup-tureen. +Nothing could have altered the rich colour of my commander’s complexion, +laid on generously by wind and sea; but between the two tufts of fair +hair above his ears, his skull, generally suffused with the hue of blood, +shone dead white, like a dome of ivory. And he looked strangely untidy. +I perceived he had not shaved himself that day; and yet the wildest +motion of the ship in the most stormy latitudes we had passed through, +never made him miss one single morning ever since we left the Channel. +The fact must be that a commander cannot possibly shave himself when his +ship is aground. I have commanded ships myself, but I don’t know; I have +never tried to shave in my life. + +He did not offer to help me or himself till I had coughed markedly +several times. I talked to him professionally in a cheery tone, and +ended with the confident assertion: + +“We shall get her off before midnight, sir.” + +He smiled faintly without looking up, and muttered as if to himself: + +“Yes, yes; the captain put the ship ashore and we got her off.” + +Then, raising his head, he attacked grumpily the steward, a lanky, +anxious youth with a long, pale face and two big front teeth. + +“What makes this soup so bitter? I am surprised the mate can swallow the +beastly stuff. I’m sure the cook’s ladled some salt water into it by +mistake.” + +The charge was so outrageous that the steward for all answer only dropped +his eyelids bashfully. + +There was nothing the matter with the soup. I had a second helping. My +heart was warm with hours of hard work at the head of a willing crew. I +was elated with having handled heavy anchors, cables, boats without the +slightest hitch; pleased with having laid out scientifically bower, +stream, and kedge exactly where I believed they would do most good. On +that occasion the bitter taste of a stranding was not for my mouth. That +experience came later, and it was only then that I understood the +loneliness of the man in charge. + +It’s the captain who puts the ship ashore; it’s we who get her off. + + + + +XXII. + + +IT seems to me that no man born and truthful to himself could declare +that he ever saw the sea looking young as the earth looks young in +spring. But some of us, regarding the ocean with understanding and +affection, have seen it looking old, as if the immemorial ages had been +stirred up from the undisturbed bottom of ooze. For it is a gale of wind +that makes the sea look old. + +From a distance of years, looking at the remembered aspects of the storms +lived through, it is that impression which disengages itself clearly from +the great body of impressions left by many years of intimate contact. + +If you would know the age of the earth, look upon the sea in a storm. +The grayness of the whole immense surface, the wind furrows upon the +faces of the waves, the great masses of foam, tossed about and waving, +like matted white locks, give to the sea in a gale an appearance of hoary +age, lustreless, dull, without gleams, as though it had been created +before light itself. + +Looking back after much love and much trouble, the instinct of primitive +man, who seeks to personify the forces of Nature for his affection and +for his fear, is awakened again in the breast of one civilized beyond +that stage even in his infancy. One seems to have known gales as +enemies, and even as enemies one embraces them in that affectionate +regret which clings to the past. + +Gales have their personalities, and, after all, perhaps it is not +strange; for, when all is said and done, they are adversaries whose wiles +you must defeat, whose violence you must resist, and yet with whom you +must live in the intimacies of nights and days. + +Here speaks the man of masts and sails, to whom the sea is not a +navigable element, but an intimate companion. The length of passages, +the growing sense of solitude, the close dependence upon the very forces +that, friendly to-day, without changing their nature, by the mere putting +forth of their might, become dangerous to-morrow, make for that sense of +fellowship which modern seamen, good men as they are, cannot hope to +know. And, besides, your modern ship which is a steamship makes her +passages on other principles than yielding to the weather and humouring +the sea. She receives smashing blows, but she advances; it is a slogging +fight, and not a scientific campaign. The machinery, the steel, the +fire, the steam, have stepped in between the man and the sea. A modern +fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway. +The modern ship is not the sport of the waves. Let us say that each of +her voyages is a triumphant progress; and yet it is a question whether it +is not a more subtle and more human triumph to be the sport of the waves +and yet survive, achieving your end. + +In his own time a man is always very modern. Whether the seamen of three +hundred years hence will have the faculty of sympathy it is impossible to +say. An incorrigible mankind hardens its heart in the progress of its +own perfectability. How will they feel on seeing the illustrations to +the sea novels of our day, or of our yesterday? It is impossible to +guess. But the seaman of the last generation, brought into sympathy with +the caravels of ancient time by his sailing-ship, their lineal +descendant, cannot look upon those lumbering forms navigating the naïve +seas of ancient woodcuts without a feeling of surprise, of affectionate +derision, envy, and admiration. For those things, whose +unmanageableness, even when represented on paper, makes one gasp with a +sort of amused horror, were manned by men who are his direct professional +ancestors. + +No; the seamen of three hundred years hence will probably be neither +touched nor moved to derision, affection, or admiration. They will +glance at the photogravures of our nearly defunct sailing-ships with a +cold, inquisitive and indifferent eye. Our ships of yesterday will stand +to their ships as no lineal ancestors, but as mere predecessors whose +course will have been run and the race extinct. Whatever craft he +handles with skill, the seaman of the future shall be, not our +descendant, but only our successor. + + + + +XXIII. + + +And so much depends upon the craft which, made by man, is one with man, +that the sea shall wear for him another aspect. I remember once seeing +the commander—officially the master, by courtesy the captain—of a fine +iron ship of the old wool fleet shaking his head at a very pretty +brigantine. She was bound the other way. She was a taut, trim, neat +little craft, extremely well kept; and on that serene evening when we +passed her close she looked the embodiment of coquettish comfort on the +sea. It was somewhere near the Cape—_The_ Cape being, of course, the +Cape of Good Hope, the Cape of Storms of its Portuguese discoverer. And +whether it is that the word “storm” should not be pronounced upon the sea +where the storms dwell thickly, or because men are shy of confessing +their good hopes, it has become the nameless cape—the Cape _tout court_. +The other great cape of the world, strangely enough, is seldom if ever +called a cape. We say, “a voyage round the Horn”; “we rounded the Horn”; +“we got a frightful battering off the Horn”; but rarely “Cape Horn,” and, +indeed, with some reason, for Cape Horn is as much an island as a cape. +The third stormy cape of the world, which is the Leeuwin, receives +generally its full name, as if to console its second-rate dignity. These +are the capes that look upon the gales. + +The little brigantine, then, had doubled the Cape. Perhaps she was +coming from Port Elizabeth, from East London—who knows? It was many +years ago, but I remember well the captain of the wool-clipper nodding at +her with the words, “Fancy having to go about the sea in a thing like +that!” + +He was a man brought up in big deep-water ships, and the size of the +craft under his feet was a part of his conception of the sea. His own +ship was certainly big as ships went then. He may have thought of the +size of his cabin, or—unconsciously, perhaps—have conjured up a vision of +a vessel so small tossing amongst the great seas. I didn’t inquire, and +to a young second mate the captain of the little pretty brigantine, +sitting astride a camp stool with his chin resting on his hands that were +crossed upon the rail, might have appeared a minor king amongst men. We +passed her within earshot, without a hail, reading each other’s names +with the naked eye. + +Some years later, the second mate, the recipient of that almost +involuntary mutter, could have told his captain that a man brought up in +big ships may yet take a peculiar delight in what we should both then +have called a small craft. Probably the captain of the big ship would +not have understood very well. His answer would have been a gruff, “Give +me size,” as I heard another man reply to a remark praising the handiness +of a small vessel. It was not a love of the grandiose or the prestige +attached to the command of great tonnage, for he continued, with an air +of disgust and contempt, “Why, you get flung out of your bunk as likely +as not in any sort of heavy weather.” + +I don’t know. I remember a few nights in my lifetime, and in a big ship, +too (as big as they made them then), when one did not get flung out of +one’s bed simply because one never even attempted to get in; one had been +made too weary, too hopeless, to try. The expedient of turning your +bedding out on to a damp floor and lying on it there was no earthly good, +since you could not keep your place or get a second’s rest in that or any +other position. But of the delight of seeing a small craft run bravely +amongst the great seas there can be no question to him whose soul does +not dwell ashore. Thus I well remember a three days’ run got out of a +little barque of 400 tons somewhere between the islands of St. Paul and +Amsterdam and Cape Otway on the Australian coast. It was a hard, long +gale, gray clouds and green sea, heavy weather undoubtedly, but still +what a sailor would call manageable. Under two lower topsails and a +reefed foresail the barque seemed to race with a long, steady sea that +did not becalm her in the troughs. The solemn thundering combers caught +her up from astern, passed her with a fierce boiling up of foam level +with the bulwarks, swept on ahead with a swish and a roar: and the little +vessel, dipping her jib-boom into the tumbling froth, would go on running +in a smooth, glassy hollow, a deep valley between two ridges of the sea, +hiding the horizon ahead and astern. There was such fascination in her +pluck, nimbleness, the continual exhibition of unfailing seaworthiness, +in the semblance of courage and endurance, that I could not give up the +delight of watching her run through the three unforgettable days of that +gale which my mate also delighted to extol as “a famous shove.” + +And this is one of those gales whose memory in after-years returns, +welcome in dignified austerity, as you would remember with pleasure the +noble features of a stranger with whom you crossed swords once in +knightly encounter and are never to see again. In this way gales have +their physiognomy. You remember them by your own feelings, and no two +gales stamp themselves in the same way upon your emotions. Some cling to +you in woebegone misery; others come back fiercely and weirdly, like +ghouls bent upon sucking your strength away; others, again, have a +catastrophic splendour; some are unvenerated recollections, as of +spiteful wild-cats clawing at your agonized vitals; others are severe, +like a visitation; and one or two rise up draped and mysterious, with an +aspect of ominous menace. In each of them there is a characteristic +point at which the whole feeling seems contained in one single moment. +Thus there is a certain four o’clock in the morning in the confused roar +of a black and white world when coming on deck to take charge of my watch +I received the instantaneous impression that the ship could not live for +another hour in such a raging sea. + +I wonder what became of the men who silently (you couldn’t hear yourself +speak) must have shared that conviction with me. To be left to write +about it is not, perhaps, the most enviable fate; but the point is that +this impression resumes in its intensity the whole recollection of days +and days of desperately dangerous weather. We were then, for reasons +which it is not worth while to specify, in the close neighbourhood of +Kerguelen Land; and now, when I open an atlas and look at the tiny dots +on the map of the Southern Ocean, I see as if engraved upon the paper the +enraged physiognomy of that gale. + +Another, strangely, recalls a silent man. And yet it was not din that +was wanting; in fact, it was terrific. That one was a gale that came +upon the ship swiftly, like a parnpero, which last is a very sudden wind +indeed. Before we knew very well what was coming all the sails we had +set had burst; the furled ones were blowing loose, ropes flying, sea +hissing—it hissed tremendously—wind howling, and the ship lying on her +side, so that half of the crew were swimming and the other half clawing +desperately at whatever came to hand, according to the side of the deck +each man had been caught on by the catastrophe, either to leeward or to +windward. The shouting I need not mention—it was the merest drop in an +ocean of noise—and yet the character of the gale seems contained in the +recollection of one small, not particularly impressive, sallow man +without a cap and with a very still face. Captain Jones—let us call him +Jones—had been caught unawares. Two orders he had given at the first +sign of an utterly unforeseen onset; after that the magnitude of his +mistake seemed to have overwhelmed him. We were doing what was needed +and feasible. The ship behaved well. Of course, it was some time before +we could pause in our fierce and laborious exertions; but all through the +work, the excitement, the uproar, and some dismay, we were aware of this +silent little man at the break of the poop, perfectly motionless, +soundless, and often hidden from us by the drift of sprays. + +When we officers clambered at last upon the poop, he seemed to come out +of that numbed composure, and shouted to us down wind: “Try the pumps.” +Afterwards he disappeared. As to the ship, I need not say that, although +she was presently swallowed up in one of the blackest nights I can +remember, she did not disappear. In truth, I don’t fancy that there had +ever been much danger of that, but certainly the experience was noisy and +particularly distracting—and yet it is the memory of a very quiet silence +that survives. + + + + +XXIV. + + +For, after all, a gale of wind, the thing of mighty sound, is +inarticulate. It is man who, in a chance phrase, interprets the +elemental passion of his enemy. Thus there is another gale in my memory, +a thing of endless, deep, humming roar, moonlight, and a spoken sentence. + +It was off that other cape which is always deprived of its title as the +Cape of Good Hope is robbed of its name. It was off the Horn. For a +true expression of dishevelled wildness there is nothing like a gale in +the bright moonlight of a high latitude. + +The ship, brought-to and bowing to enormous flashing seas, glistened wet +from deck to trucks; her one set sail stood out a coal-black shape upon +the gloomy blueness of the air. I was a youngster then, and suffering +from weariness, cold, and imperfect oilskins which let water in at every +seam. I craved human companionship, and, coming off the poop, took my +place by the side of the boatswain (a man whom I did not like) in a +comparatively dry spot where at worst we had water only up to our knees. +Above our heads the explosive booming gusts of wind passed continuously, +justifying the sailor’s saying “It blows great guns.” And just from that +need of human companionship, being very close to the man, I said, or +rather shouted: + +“Blows very hard, boatswain.” + +His answer was: + +“Ay, and if it blows only a little harder things will begin to go. I +don’t mind as long as everything holds, but when things begin to go it’s +bad.” + +The note of dread in the shouting voice, the practical truth of these +words, heard years ago from a man I did not like, have stamped its +peculiar character on that gale. + +A look in the eyes of a shipmate, a low murmur in the most sheltered spot +where the watch on duty are huddled together, a meaning moan from one to +the other with a glance at the windward sky, a sigh of weariness, a +gesture of disgust passing into the keeping of the great wind, become +part and parcel of the gale. The olive hue of hurricane clouds presents +an aspect peculiarly appalling. The inky ragged wrack, flying before a +nor’-west wind, makes you dizzy with its headlong speed that depicts the +rush of the invisible air. A hard sou’-wester startles you with its +close horizon and its low gray sky, as if the world were a dungeon +wherein there is no rest for body or soul. And there are black squalls, +white squalls, thunder squalls, and unexpected gusts that come without a +single sign in the sky; and of each kind no one of them resembles +another. + +There is infinite variety in the gales of wind at sea, and except for the +peculiar, terrible, and mysterious moaning that may be heard sometimes +passing through the roar of a hurricane—except for that unforgettable +sound, as if the soul of the universe had been goaded into a mournful +groan—it is, after all, the human voice that stamps the mark of human +consciousness upon the character of a gale. + + + + +XXV. + + +THERE is no part of the world of coasts, continents, oceans, seas, +straits, capes, and islands which is not under the sway of a reigning +wind, the sovereign of its typical weather. The wind rules the aspects +of the sky and the action of the sea. But no wind rules unchallenged his +realm of land and water. As with the kingdoms of the earth, there are +regions more turbulent than others. In the middle belt of the earth the +Trade Winds reign supreme, undisputed, like monarchs of long-settled +kingdoms, whose traditional power, checking all undue ambitions, is not +so much an exercise of personal might as the working of long-established +institutions. The intertropical kingdoms of the Trade Winds are +favourable to the ordinary life of a merchantman. The trumpet-call of +strife is seldom borne on their wings to the watchful ears of men on the +decks of ships. The regions ruled by the north-east and south-east Trade +Winds are serene. In a southern-going ship, bound out for a long voyage, +the passage through their dominions is characterized by a relaxation of +strain and vigilance on the part of the seamen. Those citizens of the +ocean feel sheltered under the ægis of an uncontested law, of an +undisputed dynasty. There, indeed, if anywhere on earth, the weather may +be trusted. + +Yet not too implicitly. Even in the constitutional realm of Trade Winds, +north and south of the equator, ships are overtaken by strange +disturbances. Still, the easterly winds, and, generally speaking, the +easterly weather all the world over, is characterized by regularity and +persistence. + +As a ruler, the East Wind has a remarkable stability; as an invader of +the high latitudes lying under the tumultuous sway of his great brother, +the Wind of the West, he is extremely difficult to dislodge, by the +reason of his cold craftiness and profound duplicity. + +The narrow seas around these isles, where British admirals keep watch and +ward upon the marches of the Atlantic Ocean, are subject to the turbulent +sway of the West Wind. Call it north-west or south-west, it is all one—a +different phase of the same character, a changed expression on the same +face. In the orientation of the winds that rule the seas, the north and +south directions are of no importance. There are no North and South +Winds of any account upon this earth. The North and South Winds are but +small princes in the dynasties that make peace and war upon the sea. +They never assert themselves upon a vast stage. They depend upon local +causes—the configuration of coasts, the shapes of straits, the accidents +of bold promontories round which they play their little part. In the +polity of winds, as amongst the tribes of the earth, the real struggle +lies between East and West. + + + + +XXVI. + + +The West Wind reigns over the seas surrounding the coasts of these +kingdoms; and from the gateways of the channels, from promontories as if +from watch-towers, from estuaries of rivers as if from postern gates, +from passage-ways, inlets, straits, firths, the garrison of the Isle and +the crews of the ships going and returning look to the westward to judge +by the varied splendours of his sunset mantle the mood of that arbitrary +ruler. The end of the day is the time to gaze at the kingly face of the +Westerly Weather, who is the arbiter of ships’ destinies. Benignant and +splendid, or splendid and sinister, the western sky reflects the hidden +purposes of the royal mind. Clothed in a mantle of dazzling gold or +draped in rags of black clouds like a beggar, the might of the Westerly +Wind sits enthroned upon the western horizon with the whole North +Atlantic as a footstool for his feet and the first twinkling stars making +a diadem for his brow. Then the seamen, attentive courtiers of the +weather, think of regulating the conduct of their ships by the mood of +the master. The West Wind is too great a king to be a dissembler: he is +no calculator plotting deep schemes in a sombre heart; he is too strong +for small artifices; there is passion in all his moods, even in the soft +mood of his serene days, in the grace of his blue sky whose immense and +unfathomable tenderness reflected in the mirror of the sea embraces, +possesses, lulls to sleep the ships with white sails. He is all things +to all oceans; he is like a poet seated upon a throne—magnificent, +simple, barbarous, pensive, generous, impulsive, changeable, +unfathomable—but when you understand him, always the same. Some of his +sunsets are like pageants devised for the delight of the multitude, when +all the gems of the royal treasure-house are displayed above the sea. +Others are like the opening of his royal confidence, tinged with thoughts +of sadness and compassion in a melancholy splendour meditating upon the +short-lived peace of the waters. And I have seen him put the pent-up +anger of his heart into the aspect of the inaccessible sun, and cause it +to glare fiercely like the eye of an implacable autocrat out of a pale +and frightened sky. + +He is the war-lord who sends his battalions of Atlantic rollers to the +assault of our seaboard. The compelling voice of the West Wind musters +up to his service all the might of the ocean. At the bidding of the West +Wind there arises a great commotion in the sky above these Islands, and a +great rush of waters falls upon our shores. The sky of the westerly +weather is full of flying clouds, of great big white clouds coming +thicker and thicker till they seem to stand welded into a solid canopy, +upon whose gray face the lower wrack of the gale, thin, black and +angry-looking, flies past with vertiginous speed. Denser and denser +grows this dome of vapours, descending lower and lower upon the sea, +narrowing the horizon around the ship. And the characteristic aspect of +westerly weather, the thick, gray, smoky and sinister tone sets in, +circumscribing the view of the men, drenching their bodies, oppressing +their souls, taking their breath away with booming gusts, deafening, +blinding, driving, rushing them onwards in a swaying ship towards our +coasts lost in mists and rain. + +The caprice of the winds, like the wilfulness of men, is fraught with the +disastrous consequences of self-indulgence. Long anger, the sense of his +uncontrolled power, spoils the frank and generous nature of the West +Wind. It is as if his heart were corrupted by a malevolent and brooding +rancour. He devastates his own kingdom in the wantonness of his force. +South-west is the quarter of the heavens where he presents his darkened +brow. He breathes his rage in terrific squalls, and overwhelms his realm +with an inexhaustible welter of clouds. He strews the seeds of anxiety +upon the decks of scudding ships, makes the foam-stripped ocean look old, +and sprinkles with gray hairs the heads of ship-masters in the +homeward-bound ships running for the Channel. The Westerly Wind +asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch +gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his +courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death. + +The south-westerly weather is the thick weather _par excellence_. It is +not the thickness of the fog; it is rather a contraction of the horizon, +a mysterious veiling of the shores with clouds that seem to make a +low-vaulted dungeon around the running ship. It is not blindness; it is +a shortening of the sight. The West Wind does not say to the seaman, +“You shall be blind”; it restricts merely the range of his vision and +raises the dread of land within his breast. It makes of him a man robbed +of half his force, of half his efficiency. Many times in my life, +standing in long sea-boots and streaming oilskins at the elbow of my +commander on the poop of a homeward-bound ship making for the Channel, +and gazing ahead into the gray and tormented waste, I have heard a weary +sigh shape itself into a studiously casual comment: + +“Can’t see very far in this weather.” + +And have made answer in the same low, perfunctory tone + +“No, sir.” + +It would be merely the instinctive voicing of an ever-present thought +associated closely with the consciousness of the land somewhere ahead and +of the great speed of the ship. Fair wind, fair wind! Who would dare to +grumble at a fair wind? It was a favour of the Western King, who rules +masterfully the North Atlantic from the latitude of the Azores to the +latitude of Cape Farewell. A famous shove this to end a good passage +with; and yet, somehow, one could not muster upon one’s lips the smile of +a courtier’s gratitude. This favour was dispensed to you from under an +overbearing scowl, which is the true expression of the great autocrat +when he has made up his mind to give a battering to some ships and to +hunt certain others home in one breath of cruelty and benevolence, +equally distracting. + +“No, sir. Can’t see very far.” + +Thus would the mate’s voice repeat the thought of the master, both gazing +ahead, while under their feet the ship rushes at some twelve knots in the +direction of the lee shore; and only a couple of miles in front of her +swinging and dripping jib-boom, carried naked with an upward slant like a +spear, a gray horizon closes the view with a multitude of waves surging +upwards violently as if to strike at the stooping clouds. + +Awful and threatening scowls darken the face of the West Wind in his +clouded, south-west mood; and from the King’s throne-hall in the western +board stronger gusts reach you, like the fierce shouts of raving fury to +which only the gloomy grandeur of the scene imparts a saving dignity. A +shower pelts the deck and the sails of the ship as if flung with a scream +by an angry hand; and when the night closes in, the night of a +south-westerly gale, it seems more hopeless than the shade of Hades. The +south-westerly mood of the great West Wind is a lightless mood, without +sun, moon, or stars, with no gleam of light but the phosphorescent +flashes of the great sheets of foam that, boiling up on each side of the +ship, fling bluish gleams upon her dark and narrow hull, rolling as she +runs, chased by enormous seas, distracted in the tumult. + +There are some bad nights in the kingdom of the West Wind for +homeward-bound ships making for the Channel; and the days of wrath dawn +upon them colourless and vague like the timid turning up of invisible +lights upon the scene of a tyrannical and passionate outbreak, awful in +the monotony of its method and the increasing strength of its violence. +It is the same wind, the same clouds, the same wildly racing seas, the +same thick horizon around the ship. Only the wind is stronger, the +clouds seem denser and more overwhelming, the waves appear to have grown +bigger and more threatening during the night. The hours, whose minutes +are marked by the crash of the breaking seas, slip by with the screaming, +pelting squalls overtaking the ship as she runs on and on with darkened +canvas, with streaming spars and dripping ropes. The down-pours thicken. +Preceding each shower a mysterious gloom, like the passage of a shadow +above the firmament of gray clouds, filters down upon the ship. Now and +then the rain pours upon your head in streams as if from spouts. It +seems as if your ship were going to be drowned before she sank, as if all +atmosphere had turned to water. You gasp, you splutter, you are blinded +and deafened, you are submerged, obliterated, dissolved, annihilated, +streaming all over as if your limbs, too, had turned to water. And every +nerve on the alert you watch for the clearing-up mood of the Western +King, that shall come with a shift of wind as likely as not to whip all +the three masts out of your ship in the twinkling of an eye. + + + + +XXVII. + + +Heralded by the increasing fierceness of the squalls, sometimes by a +faint flash of lightning like the signal of a lighted torch waved far +away behind the clouds, the shift of wind comes at last, the crucial +moment of the change from the brooding and veiled violence of the +south-west gale to the sparkling, flashing, cutting, clear-eyed anger of +the King’s north-westerly mood. You behold another phase of his passion, +a fury bejewelled with stars, mayhap bearing the crescent of the moon on +its brow, shaking the last vestiges of its torn cloud-mantle in +inky-black squalls, with hail and sleet descending like showers of +crystals and pearls, bounding off the spars, drumming on the sails, +pattering on the oilskin coats, whitening the decks of homeward-bound +ships. Faint, ruddy flashes of lightning flicker in the starlight upon +her mastheads. A chilly blast hums in the taut rigging, causing the ship +to tremble to her very keel, and the soaked men on her decks to shiver in +their wet clothes to the very marrow of their bones. Before one squall +has flown over to sink in the eastern board, the edge of another peeps up +already above the western horizon, racing up swift, shapeless, like a +black bag full of frozen water ready to burst over your devoted head. +The temper of the ruler of the ocean has changed. Each gust of the +clouded mood that seemed warmed by the heat of a heart flaming with anger +has its counterpart in the chilly blasts that seem blown from a breast +turned to ice with a sudden revulsion of feeling. Instead of blinding +your eyes and crushing your soul with a terrible apparatus of cloud and +mists and seas and rain, the King of the West turns his power to +contemptuous pelting of your back with icicles, to making your weary eyes +water as if in grief, and your worn-out carcass quake pitifully. But +each mood of the great autocrat has its own greatness, and each is hard +to bear. Only the north-west phase of that mighty display is not +demoralizing to the same extent, because between the hail and sleet +squalls of a north-westerly gale one can see a long way ahead. + +To see! to see!—this is the craving of the sailor, as of the rest of +blind humanity. To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of +every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence. I have +heard a reserved, silent man, with no nerves to speak of, after three +days of hard running in thick south-westerly weather, burst out +passionately: “I wish to God we could get sight of something!” + +We had just gone down below for a moment to commune in a battened-down +cabin, with a large white chart lying limp and damp upon a cold and +clammy table under the light of a smoky lamp. Sprawling over that +seaman’s silent and trusted adviser, with one elbow upon the coast of +Africa and the other planted in the neighbourhood of Cape Hatteras (it +was a general track-chart of the North Atlantic), my skipper lifted his +rugged, hairy face, and glared at me in a half-exasperated, +half-appealing way. We have seen no sun, moon, or stars for something +like seven days. By the effect of the West Wind’s wrath the celestial +bodies had gone into hiding for a week or more, and the last three days +had seen the force of a south-west gale grow from fresh, through strong, +to heavy, as the entries in my log-book could testify. Then we +separated, he to go on deck again, in obedience to that mysterious call +that seems to sound for ever in a shipmaster’s ears, I to stagger into my +cabin with some vague notion of putting down the words “Very heavy +weather” in a log-book not quite written up-to-date. But I gave it up, +and crawled into my bunk instead, boots and hat on, all standing (it did +not matter; everything was soaking wet, a heavy sea having burst the poop +skylights the night before), to remain in a nightmarish state between +waking and sleeping for a couple of hours of so-called rest. + +The south-westerly mood of the West Wind is an enemy of sleep, and even +of a recumbent position, in the responsible officers of a ship. After +two hours of futile, light-headed, inconsequent thinking upon all things +under heaven in that dark, dank, wet and devastated cabin, I arose +suddenly and staggered up on deck. The autocrat of the North Atlantic +was still oppressing his kingdom and its outlying dependencies, even as +far as the Bay of Biscay, in the dismal secrecy of thick, very thick, +weather. The force of the wind, though we were running before it at the +rate of some ten knots an hour, was so great that it drove me with a +steady push to the front of the poop, where my commander was holding on. + +“What do you think of it?” he addressed me in an interrogative yell. + +What I really thought was that we both had had just about enough of it. +The manner in which the great West Wind chooses at times to administer +his possessions does not commend itself to a person of peaceful and +law-abiding disposition, inclined to draw distinctions between right and +wrong in the face of natural forces, whose standard, naturally, is that +of might alone. But, of course, I said nothing. For a man caught, as it +were, between his skipper and the great West Wind silence is the safest +sort of diplomacy. Moreover, I knew my skipper. He did not want to know +what I thought. Shipmasters hanging on a breath before the thrones of +the winds ruling the seas have their psychology, whose workings are as +important to the ship and those on board of her as the changing moods of +the weather. The man, as a matter of fact, under no circumstances, ever +cared a brass farthing for what I or anybody else in his ship thought. +He had had just about enough of it, I guessed, and what he was at really +was a process of fishing for a suggestion. It was the pride of his life +that he had never wasted a chance, no matter how boisterous, threatening, +and dangerous, of a fair wind. Like men racing blindfold for a gap in a +hedge, we were finishing a splendidly quick passage from the Antipodes, +with a tremendous rush for the Channel in as thick a weather as any I can +remember, but his psychology did not permit him to bring the ship to with +a fair wind blowing—at least not on his own initiative. And yet he felt +that very soon indeed something would have to be done. He wanted the +suggestion to come from me, so that later on, when the trouble was over, +he could argue this point with his own uncompromising spirit, laying the +blame upon my shoulders. I must render him the justice that this sort of +pride was his only weakness. + +But he got no suggestion from me. I understood his psychology. Besides, +I had my own stock of weaknesses at the time (it is a different one now), +and amongst them was the conceit of being remarkably well up in the +psychology of the Westerly weather. I believed—not to mince matters—that +I had a genius for reading the mind of the great ruler of high latitudes. +I fancied I could discern already the coming of a change in his royal +mood. And all I said was: + +“The weather’s bound to clear up with the shift of wind.” + +“Anybody knows that much!” he snapped at me, at the highest pitch of his +voice. + +“I mean before dark!” I cried. + +This was all the opening he ever got from me. The eagerness with which +he seized upon it gave me the measure of the anxiety he had been +labouring under. + +“Very well,” he shouted, with an affectation of impatience, as if giving +way to long entreaties. “All right. If we don’t get a shift by then +we’ll take that foresail off her and put her head under her wing for the +night.” + +I was struck by the picturesque character of the phrase as applied to a +ship brought-to in order to ride out a gale with wave after wave passing +under her breast. I could see her resting in the tumult of the elements +like a sea-bird sleeping in wild weather upon the raging waters with its +head tucked under its wing. In imaginative precision, in true feeling, +this is one of the most expressive sentences I have ever heard on human +lips. But as to taking the foresail off that ship before we put her head +under her wing, I had my grave doubts. They were justified. That long +enduring piece of canvas was confiscated by the arbitrary decree of the +West Wind, to whom belong the lives of men and the contrivances of their +hands within the limits of his kingdom. With the sound of a faint +explosion it vanished into the thick weather bodily, leaving behind of +its stout substance not so much as one solitary strip big enough to be +picked into a handful of lint for, say, a wounded elephant. Torn out of +its bolt-ropes, it faded like a whiff of smoke in the smoky drift of +clouds shattered and torn by the shift of wind. For the shift of wind +had come. The unveiled, low sun glared angrily from a chaotic sky upon a +confused and tremendous sea dashing itself upon a coast. We recognised +the headland, and looked at each other in the silence of dumb wonder. +Without knowing it in the least, we had run up alongside the Isle of +Wight, and that tower, tinged a faint evening red in the salt wind-haze, +was the lighthouse on St. Catherine’s Point. + +My skipper recovered first from his astonishment. His bulging eyes sank +back gradually into their orbits. His psychology, taking it all round, +was really very creditable for an average sailor. He had been spared the +humiliation of laying his ship to with a fair wind; and at once that man, +of an open and truthful nature, spoke up in perfect good faith, rubbing +together his brown, hairy hands—the hands of a master-craftsman upon the +sea: + +“Humph! that’s just about where I reckoned we had got to.” + +The transparency and ingenuousness, in a way, of that delusion, the airy +tone, the hint of already growing pride, were perfectly delicious. But, +in truth, this was one of the greatest surprises ever sprung by the +clearing up mood of the West Wind upon one of the most accomplished of +his courtiers. + + + + +XXVIII. + + +The winds of North and South are, as I have said, but small princes +amongst the powers of the sea. They have no territory of their own; they +are not reigning winds anywhere. Yet it is from their houses that the +reigning dynasties which have shared between them the waters of the earth +are sprung. All the weather of the world is based upon the contest of +the Polar and Equatorial strains of that tyrannous race. The West Wind +is the greatest king. The East rules between the Tropics. They have +shared each ocean between them. Each has his genius of supreme rule. +The King of the West never intrudes upon the recognised dominion of his +kingly brother. He is a barbarian, of a northern type. Violent without +craftiness, and furious without malice, one may imagine him seated +masterfully with a double-edged sword on his knees upon the painted and +gilt clouds of the sunset, bowing his shock head of golden locks, a +flaming beard over his breast, imposing, colossal, mighty-limbed, with a +thundering voice, distended cheeks and fierce blue eyes, urging the speed +of his gales. The other, the East king, the king of blood-red sunrises, +I represent to myself as a spare Southerner with clear-cut features, +black-browed and dark-eyed, gray-robed, upright in sunshine, resting a +smooth-shaven cheek in the palm of his hand, impenetrable, secret, full +of wiles, fine-drawn, keen—meditating aggressions. + +The West Wind keeps faith with his brother, the King of the Easterly +weather. “What we have divided we have divided,” he seems to say in his +gruff voice, this ruler without guile, who hurls as if in sport enormous +masses of cloud across the sky, and flings the great waves of the +Atlantic clear across from the shores of the New World upon the hoary +headlands of Old Europe, which harbours more kings and rulers upon its +seamed and furrowed body than all the oceans of the world together. +“What we have divided we have divided; and if no rest and peace in this +world have fallen to my share, leave me alone. Let me play at quoits +with cyclonic gales, flinging the discs of spinning cloud and whirling +air from one end of my dismal kingdom to the other: over the Great Banks +or along the edges of pack-ice—this one with true aim right into the +bight of the Bay of Biscay, that other upon the fiords of Norway, across +the North Sea where the fishermen of many nations look watchfully into my +angry eye. This is the time of kingly sport.” + +And the royal master of high latitudes sighs mightily, with the sinking +sun upon his breast and the double-edged sword upon his knees, as if +wearied by the innumerable centuries of a strenuous rule and saddened by +the unchangeable aspect of the ocean under his feet—by the endless vista +of future ages where the work of sowing the wind and reaping the +whirlwind shall go on and on till his realm of living waters becomes a +frozen and motionless ocean. But the other, crafty and unmoved, nursing +his shaven chin between the thumb and forefinger of his slim and +treacherous hand, thinks deep within his heart full of guile: “Aha! our +brother of the West has fallen into the mood of kingly melancholy. He is +tired of playing with circular gales, and blowing great guns, and +unrolling thick streamers of fog in wanton sport at the cost of his own +poor, miserable subjects. Their fate is most pitiful. Let us make a +foray upon the dominions of that noisy barbarian, a great raid from +Finisterre to Hatteras, catching his fishermen unawares, baffling the +fleets that trust to his power, and shooting sly arrows into the livers +of men who court his good graces. He is, indeed, a worthless fellow.” +And forthwith, while the West Wind meditates upon the vanity of his +irresistible might, the thing is done, and the Easterly weather sets in +upon the North Atlantic. + +The prevailing weather of the North Atlantic is typical of the way in +which the West Wind rules his realm on which the sun never sets. North +Atlantic is the heart of a great empire. It is the part of the West +Wind’s dominions most thickly populated with generations of fine ships +and hardy men. Heroic deeds and adventurous exploits have been performed +there, within the very stronghold of his sway. The best sailors in the +world have been born and bred under the shadow of his sceptre, learning +to manage their ships with skill and audacity before the steps of his +stormy throne. Reckless adventurers, toiling fishermen, admirals as wise +and brave as the world has ever known, have waited upon the signs of his +westerly sky. Fleets of victorious ships have hung upon his breath. He +has tossed in his hand squadrons of war-scarred three-deckers, and +shredded out in mere sport the bunting of flags hallowed in the +traditions of honour and glory. He is a good friend and a dangerous +enemy, without mercy to unseaworthy ships and faint-hearted seamen. In +his kingly way he has taken but little account of lives sacrificed to his +impulsive policy; he is a king with a double-edged sword bared in his +right hand. The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly +weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind +his back for a treacherous stab. + +In his forays into the North Atlantic the East Wind behaves like a subtle +and cruel adventurer without a notion of honour or fair play. Veiling +his clear-cut, lean face in a thin layer of a hard, high cloud, I have +seen him, like a wizened robber sheik of the sea, hold up large caravans +of ships to the number of three hundred or more at the very gates of the +English Channel. And the worst of it was that there was no ransom that +we could pay to satisfy his avidity; for whatever evil is wrought by the +raiding East Wind, it is done only to spite his kingly brother of the +West. We gazed helplessly at the systematic, cold, gray-eyed obstinacy +of the Easterly weather, while short rations became the order of the day, +and the pinch of hunger under the breast-bone grew familiar to every +sailor in that held-up fleet. Every day added to our numbers. In knots +and groups and straggling parties we flung to and fro before the closed +gate. And meantime the outward-bound ships passed, running through our +humiliated ranks under all the canvas they could show. It is my idea +that the Easterly Wind helps the ships away from home in the wicked hope +that they shall all come to an untimely end and be heard of no more. For +six weeks did the robber sheik hold the trade route of the earth, while +our liege lord, the West Wind, slept profoundly like a tired Titan, or +else remained lost in a mood of idle sadness known only to frank natures. +All was still to the westward; we looked in vain towards his stronghold: +the King slumbered on so deeply that he let his foraging brother steal +the very mantle of gold-lined purple clouds from his bowed shoulders. +What had become of the dazzling hoard of royal jewels exhibited at every +close of day? Gone, disappeared, extinguished, carried off without +leaving a single gold band or the flash of a single sunbeam in the +evening sky! Day after day through a cold streak of heavens as bare and +poor as the inside of a rifled safe a rayless and despoiled sun would +slink shamefacedly, without pomp or show, to hide in haste under the +waters. And still the King slept on, or mourned the vanity of his might +and his power, while the thin-lipped intruder put the impress of his cold +and implacable spirit upon the sky and sea. With every daybreak the +rising sun had to wade through a crimson stream, luminous and sinister, +like the spilt blood of celestial bodies murdered during the night. + +In this particular instance the mean interloper held the road for some +six weeks on end, establishing his particular administrative methods over +the best part of the North Atlantic. It looked as if the easterly +weather had come to stay for ever, or, at least, till we had all starved +to death in the held-up fleet—starved within sight, as it were, of +plenty, within touch, almost, of the bountiful heart of the Empire. +There we were, dotting with our white dry sails the hard blueness of the +deep sea. There we were, a growing company of ships, each with her +burden of grain, of timber, of wool, of hides, and even of oranges, for +we had one or two belated fruit schooners in company. There we were, in +that memorable spring of a certain year in the late seventies, dodging to +and fro, baffled on every tack, and with our stores running down to +sweepings of bread-lockers and scrapings of sugar-casks. It was just +like the East Wind’s nature to inflict starvation upon the bodies of +unoffending sailors, while he corrupted their simple souls by an +exasperation leading to outbursts of profanity as lurid as his blood-red +sunrises. They were followed by gray days under the cover of high, +motionless clouds that looked as if carved in a slab of ash-coloured +marble. And each mean starved sunset left us calling with imprecations +upon the West Wind even in its most veiled misty mood to wake up and give +us our liberty, if only to rush on and dash the heads of our ships +against the very walls of our unapproachable home. + + + + +XXIX. + + +In the atmosphere of the Easterly weather, as pellucid as a piece of +crystal and refracting like a prism, we could see the appalling numbers +of our helpless company, even to those who in more normal conditions +would have remained invisible, sails down under the horizon. It is the +malicious pleasure of the East Wind to augment the power of your +eyesight, in order, perhaps, that you should see better the perfect +humiliation, the hopeless character of your captivity. Easterly weather +is generally clear, and that is all that can be said for it—almost +supernaturally clear when it likes; but whatever its mood, there is +something uncanny in its nature. Its duplicity is such that it will +deceive a scientific instrument. No barometer will give warning of an +easterly gale, were it ever so wet. It would be an unjust and ungrateful +thing to say that a barometer is a stupid contrivance. It is simply that +the wiles of the East Wind are too much for its fundamental honesty. +After years and years of experience the most trusty instrument of the +sort that ever went to sea screwed on to a ship’s cabin bulkhead will, +almost invariably, be induced to rise by the diabolic ingenuity of the +Easterly weather, just at the moment when the Easterly weather, +discarding its methods of hard, dry, impassive cruelty, contemplates +drowning what is left of your spirit in torrents of a peculiarly cold and +horrid rain. The sleet-and-hail squalls following the lightning at the +end of a westerly gale are cold and benumbing and stinging and cruel +enough. But the dry, Easterly weather, when it turns to wet, seems to +rain poisoned showers upon your head. It is a sort of steady, +persistent, overwhelming, endlessly driving downpour, which makes your +heart sick, and opens it to dismal forebodings. And the stormy mood of +the Easterly weather looms black upon the sky with a peculiar and amazing +blackness. The West Wind hangs heavy gray curtains of mist and spray +before your gaze, but the Eastern interloper of the narrow seas, when he +has mustered his courage and cruelty to the point of a gale, puts your +eyes out, puts them out completely, makes you feel blind for life upon a +lee-shore. It is the wind, also, that brings snow. + +Out of his black and merciless heart he flings a white blinding sheet +upon the ships of the sea. He has more manners of villainy, and no more +conscience than an Italian prince of the seventeenth century. His weapon +is a dagger carried under a black cloak when he goes out on his unlawful +enterprises. The mere hint of his approach fills with dread every craft +that swims the sea, from fishing-smacks to four-masted ships that +recognise the sway of the West Wind. Even in his most accommodating mood +he inspires a dread of treachery. I have heard upwards of ten score of +windlasses spring like one into clanking life in the dead of night, +filling the Downs with a panic-struck sound of anchors being torn +hurriedly out of the ground at the first breath of his approach. +Fortunately, his heart often fails him: he does not always blow home upon +our exposed coast; he has not the fearless temper of his Westerly +brother. + +The natures of those two winds that share the dominions of the great +oceans are fundamentally different. It is strange that the winds which +men are prone to style capricious remain true to their character in all +the various regions of the earth. To us here, for instance, the East +Wind comes across a great continent, sweeping over the greatest body of +solid land upon this earth. For the Australian east coast the East Wind +is the wind of the ocean, coming across the greatest body of water upon +the globe; and yet here and there its characteristics remain the same +with a strange consistency in everything that is vile and base. The +members of the West Wind’s dynasty are modified in a way by the regions +they rule, as a Hohenzollern, without ceasing to be himself, becomes a +Roumanian by virtue of his throne, or a Saxe-Coburg learns to put the +dress of Bulgarian phrases upon his particular thoughts, whatever they +are. + +The autocratic sway of the West Wind, whether forty north or forty south +of the Equator, is characterized by an open, generous, frank, barbarous +recklessness. For he is a great autocrat, and to be a great autocrat you +must be a great barbarian. I have been too much moulded to his sway to +nurse now any idea of rebellion in my heart. Moreover, what is a +rebellion within the four walls of a room against the tempestuous rule of +the West Wind? I remain faithful to the memory of the mighty King with a +double-edged sword in one hand, and in the other holding out rewards of +great daily runs and famously quick passages to those of his courtiers +who knew how to wait watchfully for every sign of his secret mood. As we +deep-water men always reckoned, he made one year in three fairly lively +for anybody having business upon the Atlantic or down there along the +“forties” of the Southern Ocean. You had to take the bitter with the +sweet; and it cannot be denied he played carelessly with our lives and +fortunes. But, then, he was always a great king, fit to rule over the +great waters where, strictly speaking, a man would have no business +whatever but for his audacity. + +The audacious should not complain. A mere trader ought not to grumble at +the tolls levied by a mighty king. His mightiness was sometimes very +overwhelming; but even when you had to defy him openly, as on the banks +of the Agulhas homeward bound from the East Indies, or on the outward +passage round the Horn, he struck at you fairly his stinging blows (full +in the face, too), and it was your business not to get too much +staggered. And, after all, if you showed anything of a countenance, the +good-natured barbarian would let you fight your way past the very steps +of his throne. It was only now and then that the sword descended and a +head fell; but if you fell you were sure of impressive obsequies and of a +roomy, generous grave. + +Such is the king to whom Viking chieftains bowed their heads, and whom +the modern and palatial steamship defies with impunity seven times a +week. And yet it is but defiance, not victory. The magnificent +barbarian sits enthroned in a mantle of gold-lined clouds looking from on +high on great ships gliding like mechanical toys upon his sea and on men +who, armed with fire and iron, no longer need to watch anxiously for the +slightest sign of his royal mood. He is disregarded; but he has kept all +his strength, all his splendour, and a great part of his power. Time +itself, that shakes all the thrones, is on the side of that king. The +sword in his hand remains as sharp as ever upon both its edges; and he +may well go on playing his royal game of quoits with hurricanes, tossing +them over from the continent of republics to the continent of kingdoms, +in the assurance that both the new republics and the old kingdoms, the +heat of fire and the strength of iron, with the untold generations of +audacious men, shall crumble to dust at the steps of his throne, and pass +away, and be forgotten before his own rule comes to an end. + + + + +XXX. + + +THE estuaries of rivers appeal strongly to an adventurous imagination. +This appeal is not always a charm, for there are estuaries of a +particularly dispiriting ugliness: lowlands, mud-flats, or perhaps barren +sandhills without beauty of form or amenity of aspect, covered with a +shabby and scanty vegetation conveying the impression of poverty and +uselessness. Sometimes such an ugliness is merely a repulsive mask. A +river whose estuary resembles a breach in a sand rampart may flow through +a most fertile country. But all the estuaries of great rivers have their +fascination, the attractiveness of an open portal. Water is friendly to +man. The ocean, a part of Nature furthest removed in the +unchangeableness and majesty of its might from the spirit of mankind, has +ever been a friend to the enterprising nations of the earth. And of all +the elements this is the one to which men have always been prone to trust +themselves, as if its immensity held a reward as vast as itself. + +From the offing the open estuary promises every possible fruition to +adventurous hopes. That road open to enterprise and courage invites the +explorer of coasts to new efforts towards the fulfilment of great +expectations. The commander of the first Roman galley must have looked +with an intense absorption upon the estuary of the Thames as he turned +the beaked prow of his ship to the westward under the brow of the North +Foreland. The estuary of the Thames is not beautiful; it has no noble +features, no romantic grandeur of aspect, no smiling geniality; but it is +wide open, spacious, inviting, hospitable at the first glance, with a +strange air of mysteriousness which lingers about it to this very day. +The navigation of his craft must have engrossed all the Roman’s attention +in the calm of a summer’s day (he would choose his weather), when the +single row of long sweeps (the galley would be a light one, not a +trireme) could fall in easy cadence upon a sheet of water like +plate-glass, reflecting faithfully the classic form of his vessel and the +contour of the lonely shores close on his left hand. I assume he +followed the land and passed through what is at present known as Margate +Roads, groping his careful way along the hidden sandbanks, whose every +tail and spit has its beacon or buoy nowadays. He must have been +anxious, though no doubt he had collected beforehand on the shores of the +Gauls a store of information from the talk of traders, adventurers, +fishermen, slave-dealers, pirates—all sorts of unofficial men connected +with the sea in a more or less reputable way. He would have heard of +channels and sandbanks, of natural features of the land useful for +sea-marks, of villages and tribes and modes of barter and precautions to +take: with the instructive tales about native chiefs dyed more or less +blue, whose character for greediness, ferocity, or amiability must have +been expounded to him with that capacity for vivid language which seems +joined naturally to the shadiness of moral character and recklessness of +disposition. With that sort of spiced food provided for his anxious +thought, watchful for strange men, strange beasts, strange turns of the +tide, he would make the best of his way up, a military seaman with a +short sword on thigh and a bronze helmet on his head, the pioneer +post-captain of an imperial fleet. Was the tribe inhabiting the Isle of +Thanet of a ferocious disposition, I wonder, and ready to fall with +stone-studded clubs and wooden lances hardened in the fire, upon the +backs of unwary mariners? + +Amongst the great commercial streams of these islands, the Thames is the +only one, I think, open to romantic feeling, from the fact that the sight +of human labour and the sounds of human industry do not come down its +shores to the very sea, destroying the suggestion of mysterious vastness +caused by the configuration of the shore. The broad inlet of the shallow +North Sea passes gradually into the contracted shape of the river; but +for a long time the feeling of the open water remains with the ship +steering to the westward through one of the lighted and buoyed +passage-ways of the Thames, such as Queen’s Channel, Prince’s Channel, +Four-Fathom Channel; or else coming down the Swin from the north. The +rush of the yellow flood-tide hurries her up as if into the unknown +between the two fading lines of the coast. There are no features to this +land, no conspicuous, far-famed landmarks for the eye; there is nothing +so far down to tell you of the greatest agglomeration of mankind on earth +dwelling no more than five and twenty miles away, where the sun sets in a +blaze of colour flaming on a gold background, and the dark, low shores +trend towards each other. And in the great silence the deep, faint +booming of the big guns being tested at Shoeburyness hangs about the +Nore—a historical spot in the keeping of one of England’s appointed +guardians. + + + + +XXXI. + + +The Nore sand remains covered at low-water, and never seen by human eye; +but the Nore is a name to conjure with visions of historical events, of +battles, of fleets, of mutinies, of watch and ward kept upon the great +throbbing heart of the State. This ideal point of the estuary, this +centre of memories, is marked upon the steely gray expanse of the waters +by a lightship painted red that, from a couple of miles off, looks like a +cheap and bizarre little toy. I remember how, on coming up the river for +the first time, I was surprised at the smallness of that vivid object—a +tiny warm speck of crimson lost in an immensity of gray tones. I was +startled, as if of necessity the principal beacon in the water-way of the +greatest town on earth should have presented imposing proportions. And, +behold! the brown sprit-sail of a barge hid it entirely from my view. + +Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the lightship +marking the part of the river committed to the charge of an Admiral (the +Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates the dreariness and the great +breadth of the Thames Estuary. But soon the course of the ship opens the +entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war moored in line, and the long +wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with its few low buildings like the +beginning of a hasty settlement upon a wild and unexplored shore. The +famous Thames barges sit in brown clusters upon the water with an effect +of birds floating upon a pond. On the imposing expanse of the great +estuary the traffic of the port where so much of the world’s work and the +world’s thinking is being done becomes insignificant, scattered, +streaming away in thin lines of ships stringing themselves out into the +eastern quarter through the various navigable channels of which the Nore +lightship marks the divergence. The coasting traffic inclines to the +north; the deep-water ships steer east with a southern inclination, on +through the Downs, to the most remote ends of the world. In the widening +of the shores sinking low in the gray, smoky distances the greatness of +the sea receives the mercantile fleet of good ships that London sends out +upon the turn of every tide. They follow each other, going very close by +the Essex shore. Such as the beads of a rosary told by business-like +shipowners for the greater profit of the world they slip one by one into +the open: while in the offing the inward-bound ships come up singly and +in bunches from under the sea horizon closing the mouth of the river +between Orfordness and North Foreland. They all converge upon the Nore, +the warm speck of red upon the tones of drab and gray, with the distant +shores running together towards the west, low and flat, like the sides of +an enormous canal. The sea-reach of the Thames is straight, and, once +Sheerness is left behind, its banks seem very uninhabited, except for the +cluster of houses which is Southend, or here and there a lonely wooden +jetty where petroleum ships discharge their dangerous cargoes, and the +oil-storage tanks, low and round with slightly-domed roofs, peep over the +edge of the fore-shore, as it were a village of Central African huts +imitated in iron. Bordered by the black and shining mud-flats, the level +marsh extends for miles. Away in the far background the land rises, +closing the view with a continuous wooded slope, forming in the distance +an interminable rampart overgrown with bushes. + +Then, on the slight turn of the Lower Hope Reach, clusters of factory +chimneys come distinctly into view, tall and slender above the squat +ranges of cement works in Grays and Greenhithe. Smoking quietly at the +top against the great blaze of a magnificent sunset, they give an +industrial character to the scene, speak of work, manufactures, and +trade, as palm-groves on the coral strands of distant islands speak of +the luxuriant grace, beauty and vigour of tropical nature. The houses of +Gravesend crowd upon the shore with an effect of confusion as if they had +tumbled down haphazard from the top of the hill at the back. The +flatness of the Kentish shore ends there. A fleet of steam-tugs lies at +anchor in front of the various piers. A conspicuous church spire, the +first seen distinctly coming from the sea, has a thoughtful grace, the +serenity of a fine form above the chaotic disorder of men’s houses. But +on the other side, on the flat Essex side, a shapeless and desolate red +edifice, a vast pile of bricks with many windows and a slate roof more +inaccessible than an Alpine slope, towers over the bend in monstrous +ugliness, the tallest, heaviest building for miles around, a thing like +an hotel, like a mansion of flats (all to let), exiled into these fields +out of a street in West Kensington. Just round the corner, as it were, +on a pier defined with stone blocks and wooden piles, a white mast, +slender like a stalk of straw and crossed by a yard like a +knitting-needle, flying the signals of flag and balloon, watches over a +set of heavy dock-gates. Mast-heads and funnel-tops of ships peep above +the ranges of corrugated iron roofs. This is the entrance to Tilbury +Dock, the most recent of all London docks, the nearest to the sea. + +Between the crowded houses of Gravesend and the monstrous red-brick pile +on the Essex shore the ship is surrendered fairly to the grasp of the +river. That hint of loneliness, that soul of the sea which had +accompanied her as far as the Lower Hope Reach, abandons her at the turn +of the first bend above. The salt, acrid flavour is gone out of the air, +together with a sense of unlimited space opening free beyond the +threshold of sandbanks below the Nore. The waters of the sea rush on +past Gravesend, tumbling the big mooring buoys laid along the face of the +town; but the sea-freedom stops short there, surrendering the salt tide +to the needs, the artifices, the contrivances of toiling men. Wharves, +landing-places, dock-gates, waterside stairs, follow each other +continuously right up to London Bridge, and the hum of men’s work fills +the river with a menacing, muttering note as of a breathless, +ever-driving gale. The water-way, so fair above and wide below, flows +oppressed by bricks and mortar and stone, by blackened timber and grimed +glass and rusty iron, covered with black barges, whipped up by paddles +and screws, overburdened with craft, overhung with chains, overshadowed +by walls making a steep gorge for its bed, filled with a haze of smoke +and dust. + +This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks is to +other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be to a +garden. It is a thing grown up, not made. It recalls a jungle by the +confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the +shore, not according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung up by +accident from scattered seeds. Like the matted growth of bushes and +creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness, they hide +the depths of London’s infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life. In +other river ports it is not so. They lie open to their stream, with +quays like broad clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick +timber for the convenience of trade. I am thinking now of river ports I +have seen—of Antwerp, for instance; of Nantes or Bordeaux, or even old +Rouen, where the night-watchmen of ships, elbows on rail, gaze at +shop-windows and brilliant cafés, and see the audience go in and come out +of the opera-house. But London, the oldest and greatest of river ports, +does not possess as much as a hundred yards of open quays upon its river +front. Dark and impenetrable at night, like the face of a forest, is the +London waterside. It is the waterside of watersides, where only one +aspect of the world’s life can be seen, and only one kind of men toils on +the edge of the stream. The lightless walls seem to spring from the very +mud upon which the stranded barges lie; and the narrow lanes coming down +to the foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes and crumbled earth +where big game comes to drink on the banks of tropical streams. + +Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London spread out +unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the buildings like dark +lagoons hidden in a thick forest. They lie concealed in the intricate +growth of houses with a few stalks of mastheads here and there +overtopping the roof of some four-story warehouse. + +It is a strange conjunction this of roofs and mastheads, of walls and +yard-arms. I remember once having the incongruity of the relation +brought home to me in a practical way. I was the chief officer of a fine +ship, just docked with a cargo of wool from Sydney, after a ninety days’ +passage. In fact, we had not been in more than half an hour and I was +still busy making her fast to the stone posts of a very narrow quay in +front of a lofty warehouse. An old man with a gray whisker under the +chin and brass buttons on his pilot-cloth jacket, hurried up along the +quay hailing my ship by name. He was one of those officials called +berthing-masters—not the one who had berthed us, but another, who, +apparently, had been busy securing a steamer at the other end of the +dock. I could see from afar his hard blue eyes staring at us, as if +fascinated, with a queer sort of absorption. I wondered what that worthy +sea-dog had found to criticise in my ship’s rigging. And I, too, glanced +aloft anxiously. I could see nothing wrong there. But perhaps that +superannuated fellow-craftsman was simply admiring the ship’s perfect +order aloft, I thought, with some secret pride; for the chief officer is +responsible for his ship’s appearance, and as to her outward condition, +he is the man open to praise or blame. Meantime the old salt +(“ex-coasting skipper” was writ large all over his person) had hobbled up +alongside in his bumpy, shiny boots, and, waving an arm, short and thick +like the flipper of a seal, terminated by a paw red as an uncooked +beef-steak, addressed the poop in a muffled, faint, roaring voice, as if +a sample of every North-Sea fog of his life had been permanently lodged +in his throat: “Haul ’em round, Mr. Mate!” were his words. “If you don’t +look sharp, you’ll have your topgallant yards through the windows of that +’ere warehouse presently!” This was the only cause of his interest in +the ship’s beautiful spars. I own that for a time I was struck dumb by +the bizarre associations of yard-arms and window-panes. To break windows +is the last thing one would think of in connection with a ship’s +topgallant yard, unless, indeed, one were an experienced berthing-master +in one of the London docks. This old chap was doing his little share of +the world’s work with proper efficiency. His little blue eyes had made +out the danger many hundred yards off. His rheumaticky feet, tired with +balancing that squat body for many years upon the decks of small +coasters, and made sore by miles of tramping upon the flagstones of the +dock side, had hurried up in time to avert a ridiculous catastrophe. I +answered him pettishly, I fear, and as if I had known all about it +before. + +“All right, all right! can’t do everything at once.” + +He remained near by, muttering to himself till the yards had been hauled +round at my order, and then raised again his foggy, thick voice: + +“None too soon,” he observed, with a critical glance up at the towering +side of the warehouse. “That’s a half-sovereign in your pocket, Mr. +Mate. You should always look first how you are for them windows before +you begin to breast in your ship to the quay.” + +It was good advice. But one cannot think of everything or foresee +contacts of things apparently as remote as stars and hop-poles. + + + + +XXXII. + + +The view of ships lying moored in some of the older docks of London has +always suggested to my mind the image of a flock of swans kept in the +flooded backyard of grim tenement houses. The flatness of the walls +surrounding the dark pool on which they float brings out wonderfully the +flowing grace of the lines on which a ship’s hull is built. The +lightness of these forms, devised to meet the winds and the seas, makes, +by contrast with the great piles of bricks, the chains and cables of +their moorings appear very necessary, as if nothing less could prevent +them from soaring upwards and over the roofs. The least puff of wind +stealing round the corners of the dock buildings stirs these captives +fettered to rigid shores. It is as if the soul of a ship were impatient +of confinement. Those masted hulls, relieved of their cargo, become +restless at the slightest hint of the wind’s freedom. However tightly +moored, they range a little at their berths, swaying imperceptibly the +spire-like assemblages of cordage and spars. You can detect their +impatience by watching the sway of the mastheads against the motionless, +the soulless gravity of mortar and stones. As you pass alongside each +hopeless prisoner chained to the quay, the slight grinding noise of the +wooden fenders makes a sound of angry muttering. But, after all, it may +be good for ships to go through a period of restraint and repose, as the +restraint and self-communion of inactivity may be good for an unruly +soul—not, indeed, that I mean to say that ships are unruly; on the +contrary, they are faithful creatures, as so many men can testify. And +faithfulness is a great restraint, the strongest bond laid upon the +self-will of men and ships on this globe of land and sea. + +This interval of bondage in the docks rounds each period of a ship’s life +with the sense of accomplished duty, of an effectively played part in the +work of the world. The dock is the scene of what the world would think +the most serious part in the light, bounding, swaying life of a ship. +But there are docks and docks. The ugliness of some docks is appalling. +Wild horses would not drag from me the name of a certain river in the +north whose narrow estuary is inhospitable and dangerous, and whose docks +are like a nightmare of dreariness and misery. Their dismal shores are +studded thickly with scaffold-like, enormous timber structures, whose +lofty heads are veiled periodically by the infernal gritty night of a +cloud of coal-dust. The most important ingredient for getting the +world’s work along is distributed there under the circumstances of the +greatest cruelty meted out to helpless ships. Shut up in the desolate +circuit of these basins, you would think a free ship would droop and die +like a wild bird put into a dirty cage. But a ship, perhaps because of +her faithfulness to men, will endure an extraordinary lot of ill-usage. +Still, I have seen ships issue from certain docks like half-dead +prisoners from a dungeon, bedraggled, overcome, wholly disguised in dirt, +and with their men rolling white eyeballs in black and worried faces +raised to a heaven which, in its smoky and soiled aspect, seemed to +reflect the sordidness of the earth below. One thing, however, may be +said for the docks of the Port of London on both sides of the river: for +all the complaints of their insufficient equipment, of their obsolete +rules, of failure (they say) in the matter of quick despatch, no ship +need ever issue from their gates in a half-fainting condition. London is +a general cargo port, as is only proper for the greatest capital of the +world to be. General cargo ports belong to the aristocracy of the +earth’s trading places, and in that aristocracy London, as it is its way, +has a unique physiognomy. + +The absence of picturesqueness cannot be laid to the charge of the docks +opening into the Thames. For all my unkind comparisons to swans and +backyards, it cannot be denied that each dock or group of docks along the +north side of the river has its own individual attractiveness. Beginning +with the cosy little St. Katherine’s Dock, lying overshadowed and black +like a quiet pool amongst rocky crags, through the venerable and +sympathetic London Docks, with not a single line of rails in the whole of +their area and the aroma of spices lingering between its warehouses, with +their far-famed wine-cellars—down through the interesting group of West +India Docks, the fine docks at Blackwall, on past the Galleons Reach +entrance of the Victoria and Albert Docks, right down to the vast gloom +of the great basins in Tilbury, each of those places of restraint for +ships has its own peculiar physiognomy, its own expression. And what +makes them unique and attractive is their common trait of being romantic +in their usefulness. + +In their way they are as romantic as the river they serve is unlike all +the other commercial streams of the world. The cosiness of the St. +Katherine’s Dock, the old-world air of the London Docks, remain impressed +upon the memory. The docks down the river, abreast of Woolwich, are +imposing by their proportions and the vast scale of the ugliness that +forms their surroundings—ugliness so picturesque as to become a delight +to the eye. When one talks of the Thames docks, “beauty” is a vain word, +but romance has lived too long upon this river not to have thrown a +mantle of glamour upon its banks. + +The antiquity of the port appeals to the imagination by the long chain of +adventurous enterprises that had their inception in the town and floated +out into the world on the waters of the river. Even the newest of the +docks, the Tilbury Dock, shares in the glamour conferred by historical +associations. Queen Elizabeth has made one of her progresses down there, +not one of her journeys of pomp and ceremony, but an anxious business +progress at a crisis of national history. The menace of that time has +passed away, and now Tilbury is known by its docks. These are very +modern, but their remoteness and isolation upon the Essex marsh, the days +of failure attending their creation, invested them with a romantic air. +Nothing in those days could have been more striking than the vast, empty +basins, surrounded by miles of bare quays and the ranges of cargo-sheds, +where two or three ships seemed lost like bewitched children in a forest +of gaunt, hydraulic cranes. One received a wonderful impression of utter +abandonment, of wasted efficiency. From the first the Tilbury Docks were +very efficient and ready for their task, but they had come, perhaps, too +soon into the field. A great future lies before Tilbury Docks. They +shall never fill a long-felt want (in the sacramental phrase that is +applied to railways, tunnels, newspapers, and new editions of books). +They were too early in the field. The want shall never be felt because, +free of the trammels of the tide, easy of access, magnificent and +desolate, they are already there, prepared to take and keep the biggest +ships that float upon the sea. They are worthy of the oldest river port +in the world. + +And, truth to say, for all the criticisms flung upon the heads of the +dock companies, the other docks of the Thames are no disgrace to the town +with a population greater than that of some commonwealths. The growth of +London as a well-equipped port has been slow, while not unworthy of a +great capital, of a great centre of distribution. It must not be +forgotten that London has not the backing of great industrial districts +or great fields of natural exploitation. In this it differs from +Liverpool, from Cardiff, from Newcastle, from Glasgow; and therein the +Thames differs from the Mersey, from the Tyne, from the Clyde. It is an +historical river; it is a romantic stream flowing through the centre of +great affairs, and for all the criticism of the river’s administration, +my contention is that its development has been worthy of its dignity. +For a long time the stream itself could accommodate quite easily the +oversea and coasting traffic. That was in the days when, in the part +called the Pool, just below London Bridge, the vessels moored stem and +stern in the very strength of the tide formed one solid mass like an +island covered with a forest of gaunt, leafless trees; and when the trade +had grown too big for the river there came the St. Katherine’s Docks and +the London Docks, magnificent undertakings answering to the need of their +time. The same may be said of the other artificial lakes full of ships +that go in and out upon this high road to all parts of the world. The +labour of the imperial waterway goes on from generation to generation, +goes on day and night. Nothing ever arrests its sleepless industry but +the coming of a heavy fog, which clothes the teeming stream in a mantle +of impenetrable stillness. + +After the gradual cessation of all sound and movement on the faithful +river, only the ringing of ships’ bells is heard, mysterious and muffled +in the white vapour from London Bridge right down to the Nore, for miles +and miles in a decrescendo tinkling, to where the estuary broadens out +into the North Sea, and the anchored ships lie scattered thinly in the +shrouded channels between the sand-banks of the Thames’ mouth. Through +the long and glorious tale of years of the river’s strenuous service to +its people these are its only breathing times. + + + + +XXXIII. + + +A SHIP in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the +appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free +spirit put under restraint. Chain cables and stout ropes keep her bound +to stone posts at the edge of a paved shore, and a berthing-master, with +brass buttons on his coat, walks about like a weather-beaten and ruddy +gaoler, casting jealous, watchful glances upon the moorings that fetter a +ship lying passive and still and safe, as if lost in deep regrets of her +days of liberty and danger on the sea. + +The swarm of renegades—dock-masters, berthing-masters, gatemen, and such +like—appear to nurse an immense distrust of the captive ship’s +resignation. There never seem chains and ropes enough to satisfy their +minds concerned with the safe binding of free ships to the strong, muddy, +enslaved earth. “You had better put another bight of a hawser astern, +Mr. Mate,” is the usual phrase in their mouth. I brand them for +renegades, because most of them have been sailors in their time. As if +the infirmities of old age—the gray hair, the wrinkles at the corners of +the eyes, and the knotted veins of the hands—were the symptoms of moral +poison, they prowl about the quays with an underhand air of gloating over +the broken spirit of noble captives. They want more fenders, more +breasting-ropes; they want more springs, more shackles, more fetters; +they want to make ships with volatile souls as motionless as square +blocks of stone. They stand on the mud of pavements, these degraded +sea-dogs, with long lines of railway-trucks clanking their couplings +behind their backs, and run malevolent glances over your ship from +headgear to taffrail, only wishing to tyrannize over the poor creature +under the hypocritical cloak of benevolence and care. Here and there +cargo cranes looking like instruments of torture for ships swing cruel +hooks at the end of long chains. Gangs of dock-labourers swarm with +muddy feet over the gangways. It is a moving sight this, of so many men +of the earth, earthy, who never cared anything for a ship, trampling +unconcerned, brutal and hob-nailed upon her helpless body. + +Fortunately, nothing can deface the beauty of a ship. That sense of a +dungeon, that sense of a horrible and degrading misfortune overtaking a +creature fair to see and safe to trust, attaches only to ships moored in +the docks of great European ports. You feel that they are dishonestly +locked up, to be hunted about from wharf to wharf on a dark, greasy, +square pool of black water as a brutal reward at the end of a faithful +voyage. + +A ship anchored in an open roadstead, with cargo-lighters alongside and +her own tackle swinging the burden over the rail, is accomplishing in +freedom a function of her life. There is no restraint; there is space: +clear water around her, and a clear sky above her mastheads, with a +landscape of green hills and charming bays opening around her anchorage. +She is not abandoned by her own men to the tender mercies of shore +people. She still shelters, and is looked after by, her own little +devoted band, and you feel that presently she will glide between the +headlands and disappear. It is only at home, in dock, that she lies +abandoned, shut off from freedom by all the artifices of men that think +of quick despatch and profitable freights. It is only then that the +odious, rectangular shadows of walls and roofs fall upon her decks, with +showers of soot. + +To a man who has never seen the extraordinary nobility, strength, and +grace that the devoted generations of ship-builders have evolved from +some pure nooks of their simple souls, the sight that could be seen +five-and-twenty years ago of a large fleet of clippers moored along the +north side of the New South Dock was an inspiring spectacle. Then there +was a quarter of a mile of them, from the iron dockyard-gates guarded by +policemen, in a long, forest-like perspective of masts, moored two and +two to many stout wooden jetties. Their spars dwarfed with their +loftiness the corrugated-iron sheds, their jibbooms extended far over the +shore, their white-and-gold figure-heads, almost dazzling in their +purity, overhung the straight, long quay above the mud and dirt of the +wharfside, with the busy figures of groups and single men moving to and +fro, restless and grimy under their soaring immobility. + +At tide-time you would see one of the loaded ships with battened-down +hatches drop out of the ranks and float in the clear space of the dock, +held by lines dark and slender, like the first threads of a spider’s web, +extending from her bows and her quarters to the mooring-posts on shore. +There, graceful and still, like a bird ready to spread its wings, she +waited till, at the opening of the gates, a tug or two would hurry in +noisily, hovering round her with an air of fuss and solicitude, and take +her out into the river, tending, shepherding her through open bridges, +through dam-like gates between the flat pier-heads, with a bit of green +lawn surrounded by gravel and a white signal-mast with yard and gaff, +flying a couple of dingy blue, red, or white flags. + +This New South Dock (it was its official name), round which my earlier +professional memories are centred, belongs to the group of West India +Docks, together with two smaller and much older basins called Import and +Export respectively, both with the greatness of their trade departed from +them already. Picturesque and clean as docks go, these twin basins +spread side by side the dark lustre of their glassy water, sparely +peopled by a few ships laid up on buoys or tucked far away from each +other at the end of sheds in the corners of empty quays, where they +seemed to slumber quietly remote, untouched by the bustle of men’s +affairs—in retreat rather than in captivity. They were quaint and +sympathetic, those two homely basins, unfurnished and silent, with no +aggressive display of cranes, no apparatus of hurry and work on their +narrow shores. No railway-lines cumbered them. The knots of labourers +trooping in clumsily round the corners of cargo-sheds to eat their food +in peace out of red cotton handkerchiefs had the air of picnicking by the +side of a lonely mountain pool. They were restful (and I should say very +unprofitable), those basins, where the chief officer of one of the ships +involved in the harassing, strenuous, noisy activity of the New South +Dock only a few yards away could escape in the dinner-hour to stroll, +unhampered by men and affairs, meditating (if he chose) on the vanity of +all things human. At one time they must have been full of good old slow +West Indiamen of the square-stern type, that took their captivity, one +imagines, as stolidly as they had faced the buffeting of the waves with +their blunt, honest bows, and disgorged sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, or +logwood sedately with their own winch and tackle. But when I knew them, +of exports there was never a sign that one could detect; and all the +imports I have ever seen were some rare cargoes of tropical timber, +enormous baulks roughed out of iron trunks grown in the woods about the +Gulf of Mexico. They lay piled up in stacks of mighty boles, and it was +hard to believe that all this mass of dead and stripped trees had come +out of the flanks of a slender, innocent-looking little barque with, as +likely as not, a homely woman’s name—Ellen this or Annie that—upon her +fine bows. But this is generally the case with a discharged cargo. Once +spread at large over the quay, it looks the most impossible bulk to have +all come there out of that ship alongside. + +They were quiet, serene nooks in the busy world of docks, these basins +where it has never been my good luck to get a berth after some more or +less arduous passage. But one could see at a glance that men and ships +were never hustled there. They were so quiet that, remembering them +well, one comes to doubt that they ever existed—places of repose for +tired ships to dream in, places of meditation rather than work, where +wicked ships—the cranky, the lazy, the wet, the bad sea boats, the wild +steerers, the capricious, the pig-headed, the generally +ungovernable—would have full leisure to take count and repent of their +sins, sorrowful and naked, with their rent garments of sailcloth stripped +off them, and with the dust and ashes of the London atmosphere upon their +mastheads. For that the worst of ships would repent if she were ever +given time I make no doubt. I have known too many of them. No ship is +wholly bad; and now that their bodies that had braved so many tempests +have been blown off the face of the sea by a puff of steam, the evil and +the good together into the limbo of things that have served their time, +there can be no harm in affirming that in these vanished generations of +willing servants there never has been one utterly unredeemable soul. + +In the New South Dock there was certainly no time for remorse, +introspection, repentance, or any phenomena of inner life either for the +captive ships or for their officers. From six in the morning till six at +night the hard labour of the prison-house, which rewards the valiance of +ships that win the harbour went on steadily, great slings of general +cargo swinging over the rail, to drop plumb into the hatchways at the +sign of the gangway-tender’s hand. The New South Dock was especially a +loading dock for the Colonies in those great (and last) days of smart +wool-clippers, good to look at and—well—exciting to handle. Some of them +were more fair to see than the others; many were (to put it mildly) +somewhat over-masted; all were expected to make good passages; and of all +that line of ships, whose rigging made a thick, enormous network against +the sky, whose brasses flashed almost as far as the eye of the policeman +at the gates could reach, there was hardly one that knew of any other +port amongst all the ports on the wide earth but London and Sydney, or +London and Melbourne, or London and Adelaide, perhaps with Hobart Town +added for those of smaller tonnage. One could almost have believed, as +her gray-whiskered second mate used to say of the old _Duke of S—_, that +they knew the road to the Antipodes better than their own skippers, who, +year in, year out, took them from London—the place of captivity—to some +Australian port where, twenty-five years ago, though moored well and +tight enough to the wooden wharves, they felt themselves no captives, but +honoured guests. + + + + +XXXIV. + + +These towns of the Antipodes, not so great then as they are now, took an +interest in the shipping, the running links with “home,” whose numbers +confirmed the sense of their growing importance. They made it part and +parcel of their daily interests. This was especially the case in Sydney, +where, from the heart of the fair city, down the vista of important +streets, could be seen the wool-clippers lying at the Circular Quay—no +walled prison-house of a dock that, but the integral part of one of the +finest, most beautiful, vast, and safe bays the sun ever shone upon. Now +great steam-liners lie at these berths, always reserved for the sea +aristocracy—grand and imposing enough ships, but here to-day and gone +next week; whereas the general cargo, emigrant, and passenger clippers of +my time, rigged with heavy spars, and built on fine lines, used to remain +for months together waiting for their load of wool. Their names attained +the dignity of household words. On Sundays and holidays the citizens +trooped down, on visiting bent, and the lonely officer on duty solaced +himself by playing the cicerone—especially to the citizenesses with +engaging manners and a well-developed sense of the fun that may be got +out of the inspection of a ship’s cabins and state-rooms. The tinkle of +more or less untuned cottage pianos floated out of open stern-ports till +the gas-lamps began to twinkle in the streets, and the ship’s +night-watchman, coming sleepily on duty after his unsatisfactory day +slumbers, hauled down the flags and fastened a lighted lantern at the +break of the gangway. The night closed rapidly upon the silent ships +with their crews on shore. Up a short, steep ascent by the King’s Head +pub., patronized by the cooks and stewards of the fleet, the voice of a +man crying “Hot saveloys!” at the end of George Street, where the cheap +eating-houses (sixpence a meal) were kept by Chinamen (Sun-kum-on’s was +not bad), is heard at regular intervals. I have listened for hours to +this most pertinacious pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a +fortune), while sitting on the rail of the old _Duke of S—_ (she’s dead, +poor thing! a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by +the monotony, the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and so +exasperated at the absurd spell, that I wished the fellow would choke +himself to death with a mouthful of his own infamous wares. + +A stupid job, and fit only for an old man, my comrades used to tell me, +to be the night-watchman of a captive (though honoured) ship. And +generally the oldest of the able seamen in a ship’s crew does get it. +But sometimes neither the oldest nor any other fairly steady seaman is +forthcoming. Ships’ crews had the trick of melting away swiftly in those +days. So, probably on account of my youth, innocence, and pensive habits +(which made me sometimes dilatory in my work about the rigging), I was +suddenly nominated, in our chief mate Mr. B—’s most sardonic tones, to +that enviable situation. I do not regret the experience. The night +humours of the town descended from the street to the waterside in the +still watches of the night: larrikins rushing down in bands to settle +some quarrel by a stand-up fight, away from the police, in an indistinct +ring half hidden by piles of cargo, with the sounds of blows, a groan now +and then, the stamping of feet, and the cry of “Time!” rising suddenly +above the sinister and excited murmurs; night-prowlers, pursued or +pursuing, with a stifled shriek followed by a profound silence, or +slinking stealthily alongside like ghosts, and addressing me from the +quay below in mysterious tones with incomprehensible propositions. The +cabmen, too, who twice a week, on the night when the A.S.N. Company’s +passenger-boat was due to arrive, used to range a battalion of blazing +lamps opposite the ship, were very amusing in their way. They got down +from their perches and told each other impolite stories in racy language, +every word of which reached me distinctly over the bulwarks as I sat +smoking on the main-hatch. On one occasion I had an hour or so of a most +intellectual conversation with a person whom I could not see distinctly, +a gentleman from England, he said, with a cultivated voice, I on deck and +he on the quay sitting on the case of a piano (landed out of our hold +that very afternoon), and smoking a cigar which smelt very good. We +touched, in our discourse, upon science, politics, natural history, and +operatic singers. Then, after remarking abruptly, “You seem to be rather +intelligent, my man,” he informed me pointedly that his name was Mr. +Senior, and walked off—to his hotel, I suppose. Shadows! Shadows! I +think I saw a white whisker as he turned under the lamp-post. It is a +shock to think that in the natural course of nature he must be dead by +now. There was nothing to object to in his intelligence but a little +dogmatism maybe. And his name was Senior! Mr. Senior! + +The position had its drawbacks, however. One wintry, blustering, dark +night in July, as I stood sleepily out of the rain under the break of the +poop something resembling an ostrich dashed up the gangway. I say +ostrich because the creature, though it ran on two legs, appeared to help +its progress by working a pair of short wings; it was a man, however, +only his coat, ripped up the back and flapping in two halves above his +shoulders, gave him that weird and fowl-like appearance. At least, I +suppose it was his coat, for it was impossible to make him out +distinctly. How he managed to come so straight upon me, at speed and +without a stumble over a strange deck, I cannot imagine. He must have +been able to see in the dark better than any cat. He overwhelmed me with +panting entreaties to let him take shelter till morning in our +forecastle. Following my strict orders, I refused his request, mildly at +first, in a sterner tone as he insisted with growing impudence. + +“For God’s sake let me, matey! Some of ’em are after me—and I’ve got +hold of a ticker here.” + +“You clear out of this!” I said. + +“Don’t be hard on a chap, old man!” he whined pitifully. + +“Now then, get ashore at once. Do you hear?” + +Silence. He appeared to cringe, mute, as if words had failed him through +grief; then—bang! came a concussion and a great flash of light in which +he vanished, leaving me prone on my back with the most abominable black +eye that anybody ever got in the faithful discharge of duty. Shadows! +Shadows! I hope he escaped the enemies he was fleeing from to live and +flourish to this day. But his fist was uncommonly hard and his aim +miraculously true in the dark. + +There were other experiences, less painful and more funny for the most +part, with one amongst them of a dramatic complexion; but the greatest +experience of them all was Mr. B—, our chief mate himself. + +He used to go ashore every night to foregather in some hotel’s parlour +with his crony, the mate of the barque _Cicero_, lying on the other side +of the Circular Quay. Late at night I would hear from afar their +stumbling footsteps and their voices raised in endless argument. The +mate of the _Cicero_ was seeing his friend on board. They would continue +their senseless and muddled discourse in tones of profound friendship for +half an hour or so at the shore end of our gangway, and then I would hear +Mr. B— insisting that he must see the other on board his ship. And away +they would go, their voices, still conversing with excessive amity, being +heard moving all round the harbour. It happened more than once that they +would thus perambulate three or four times the distance, each seeing the +other on board his ship out of pure and disinterested affection. Then, +through sheer weariness, or perhaps in a moment of forgetfulness, they +would manage to part from each other somehow, and by-and-by the planks of +our long gangway would bend and creak under the weight of Mr. B— coming +on board for good at last. + +On the rail his burly form would stop and stand swaying. + +“Watchman!” + +“Sir.” + +A pause. + +He waited for a moment of steadiness before negotiating the three steps +of the inside ladder from rail to deck; and the watchman, taught by +experience, would forbear offering help which would be received as an +insult at that particular stage of the mate’s return. But many times I +trembled for his neck. He was a heavy man. + +Then with a rush and a thump it would be done. He never had to pick +himself up; but it took him a minute or so to pull himself together after +the descent. + +“Watchman!” + +“Sir.” + +“Captain aboard?” + +“Yes, sir.” + +Pause. + +“Dog aboard?” + +“Yes, sir.” + +Pause. + +Our dog was a gaunt and unpleasant beast, more like a wolf in poor health +than a dog, and I never noticed Mr. B— at any other time show the +slightest interest in the doings of the animal. But that question never +failed. + +“Let’s have your arm to steady me along.” + +I was always prepared for that request. He leaned on me heavily till +near enough the cabin-door to catch hold of the handle. Then he would +let go my arm at once. + +“That’ll do. I can manage now.” + +And he could manage. He could manage to find his way into his berth, +light his lamp, get into his bed—ay, and get out of it when I called him +at half-past five, the first man on deck, lifting the cup of morning +coffee to his lips with a steady hand, ready for duty as though he had +virtuously slept ten solid hours—a better chief officer than many a man +who had never tasted grog in his life. He could manage all that, but +could never manage to get on in life. + +Only once he failed to seize the cabin-door handle at the first grab. He +waited a little, tried again, and again failed. His weight was growing +heavier on my arm. He sighed slowly. + +“D—n that handle!” + +Without letting go his hold of me he turned about, his face lit up bright +as day by the full moon. + +“I wish she were out at sea,” he growled savagely. + +“Yes, sir.” + +I felt the need to say something, because he hung on to me as if lost, +breathing heavily. + +“Ports are no good—ships rot, men go to the devil!” + +I kept still, and after a while he repeated with a sigh. + +“I wish she were at sea out of this.” + +“So do I, sir,” I ventured. + +Holding my shoulder, he turned upon me. + +“You! What’s that to you where she is? You don’t—drink.” + +And even on that night he “managed it” at last. He got hold of the +handle. But he did not manage to light his lamp (I don’t think he even +tried), though in the morning as usual he was the first on deck, +bull-necked, curly-headed, watching the hands turn-to with his sardonic +expression and unflinching gaze. + +I met him ten years afterwards, casually, unexpectedly, in the street, on +coming out of my consignee office. I was not likely to have forgotten +him with his “I can manage now.” He recognised me at once, remembered my +name, and in what ship I had served under his orders. He looked me over +from head to foot. + +“What are you doing here?” he asked. + +“I am commanding a little barque,” I said, “loading here for Mauritius.” +Then, thoughtlessly, I added: “And what are you doing, Mr. B-?” + +“I,” he said, looking at me unflinchingly, with his old sardonic grin—“I +am looking for something to do.” + +I felt I would rather have bitten out my tongue. His jet-black, curly +hair had turned iron-gray; he was scrupulously neat as ever, but +frightfully threadbare. His shiny boots were worn down at heel. But he +forgave me, and we drove off together in a hansom to dine on board my +ship. He went over her conscientiously, praised her heartily, +congratulated me on my command with absolute sincerity. At dinner, as I +offered him wine and beer he shook his head, and as I sat looking at him +interrogatively, muttered in an undertone: + +“I’ve given up all that.” + +After dinner we came again on deck. It seemed as though he could not +tear himself away from the ship. We were fitting some new lower rigging, +and he hung about, approving, suggesting, giving me advice in his old +manner. Twice he addressed me as “My boy,” and corrected himself quickly +to “Captain.” My mate was about to leave me (to get married), but I +concealed the fact from Mr. B—. I was afraid he would ask me to give him +the berth in some ghastly jocular hint that I could not refuse to take. +I was afraid. It would have been impossible. I could not have given +orders to Mr. B—, and I am sure he would not have taken them from me very +long. He could not have managed that, though he had managed to break +himself from drink—too late. + +He said good-bye at last. As I watched his burly, bull-necked figure +walk away up the street, I wondered with a sinking heart whether he had +much more than the price of a night’s lodging in his pocket. And I +understood that if that very minute I were to call out after him, he +would not even turn his head. He, too, is no more than a shadow, but I +seem to hear his words spoken on the moonlit deck of the old _Duke_ —: + +“Ports are no good—ships rot, men go to the devil!” + + + + +XXXV. + + +“Ships!” exclaimed an elderly seaman in clean shore togs. “Ships”—and +his keen glance, turning away from my face, ran along the vista of +magnificent figure-heads that in the late seventies used to overhang in a +serried rank the muddy pavement by the side of the New South Dock—“ships +are all right; it’s the men in ’em. . .” + +Fifty hulls, at least, moulded on lines of beauty and speed—hulls of +wood, of iron, expressing in their forms the highest achievement of +modern ship-building—lay moored all in a row, stem to quay, as if +assembled there for an exhibition, not of a great industry, but of a +great art. Their colours were gray, black, dark green, with a narrow +strip of yellow moulding defining their sheer, or with a row of painted +ports decking in warlike decoration their robust flanks of cargo-carriers +that would know no triumph but of speed in carrying a burden, no glory +other than of a long service, no victory but that of an endless, obscure +contest with the sea. The great empty hulls with swept holds, just out +of dry-dock, with their paint glistening freshly, sat high-sided with +ponderous dignity alongside the wooden jetties, looking more like +unmovable buildings than things meant to go afloat; others, half loaded, +far on the way to recover the true sea-physiognomy of a ship brought down +to her load-line, looked more accessible. Their less steeply slanting +gangways seemed to invite the strolling sailors in search of a berth to +walk on board and try “for a chance” with the chief mate, the guardian of +a ship’s efficiency. As if anxious to remain unperceived amongst their +overtopping sisters, two or three “finished” ships floated low, with an +air of straining at the leash of their level headfasts, exposing to view +their cleared decks and covered hatches, prepared to drop stern first out +of the labouring ranks, displaying the true comeliness of form which only +her proper sea-trim gives to a ship. And for a good quarter of a mile, +from the dockyard gate to the farthest corner, where the old housed-in +hulk, the _President_ (drill-ship, then, of the Naval Reserve), used to +lie with her frigate side rubbing against the stone of the quay, above +all these hulls, ready and unready, a hundred and fifty lofty masts, more +or less, held out the web of their rigging like an immense net, in whose +close mesh, black against the sky, the heavy yards seemed to be entangled +and suspended. + +It was a sight. The humblest craft that floats makes its appeal to a +seaman by the faithfulness of her life; and this was the place where one +beheld the aristocracy of ships. It was a noble gathering of the fairest +and the swiftest, each bearing at the bow the carved emblem of her name, +as in a gallery of plaster-casts, figures of women with mural crowns, +women with flowing robes, with gold fillets on their hair or blue scarves +round their waists, stretching out rounded arms as if to point the way; +heads of men helmeted or bare; full lengths of warriors, of kings, of +statesmen, of lords and princesses, all white from top to toe; with here +and there a dusky turbaned figure, bedizened in many colours, of some +Eastern sultan or hero, all inclined forward under the slant of mighty +bowsprits as if eager to begin another run of 11,000 miles in their +leaning attitudes. These were the fine figure-heads of the finest ships +afloat. But why, unless for the love of the life those effigies shared +with us in their wandering impassivity, should one try to reproduce in +words an impression of whose fidelity there can be no critic and no +judge, since such an exhibition of the art of shipbuilding and the art of +figure-head carving as was seen from year’s end to year’s end in the +open-air gallery of the New South Dock no man’s eye shall behold again? +All that patient, pale company of queens and princesses, of kings and +warriors, of allegorical women, of heroines and statesmen and heathen +gods, crowned, helmeted, bare-headed, has run for good off the sea +stretching to the last above the tumbling foam their fair, rounded arms; +holding out their spears, swords, shields, tridents in the same +unwearied, striving forward pose. And nothing remains but lingering +perhaps in the memory of a few men, the sound of their names, vanished a +long time ago from the first page of the great London dailies; from big +posters in railway-stations and the doors of shipping offices; from the +minds of sailors, dockmasters, pilots, and tugmen; from the hail of gruff +voices and the flutter of signal flags exchanged between ships closing +upon each other and drawing apart in the open immensity of the sea. + +The elderly, respectable seaman, withdrawing his gaze from that multitude +of spars, gave me a glance to make sure of our fellowship in the craft +and mystery of the sea. We had met casually, and had got into contact as +I had stopped near him, my attention being caught by the same peculiarity +he was looking at in the rigging of an obviously new ship, a ship with +her reputation all to make yet in the talk of the seamen who were to +share their life with her. Her name was already on their lips. I had +heard it uttered between two thick, red-necked fellows of the +semi-nautical type at the Fenchurch Street Railway-station, where, in +those days, the everyday male crowd was attired in jerseys and +pilot-cloth mostly, and had the air of being more conversant with the +times of high-water than with the times of the trains. I had noticed +that new ship’s name on the first page of my morning paper. I had stared +at the unfamiliar grouping of its letters, blue on white ground, on the +advertisement-boards, whenever the train came to a standstill alongside +one of the shabby, wooden, wharf-like platforms of the dock railway-line. +She had been named, with proper observances, on the day she came off the +stocks, no doubt, but she was very far yet from “having a name.” +Untried, ignorant of the ways of the sea, she had been thrust amongst +that renowned company of ships to load for her maiden voyage. There was +nothing to vouch for her soundness and the worth of her character, but +the reputation of the building-yard whence she was launched headlong into +the world of waters. She looked modest to me. I imagined her diffident, +lying very quiet, with her side nestling shyly against the wharf to which +she was made fast with very new lines, intimidated by the company of her +tried and experienced sisters already familiar with all the violences of +the ocean and the exacting love of men. They had had more long voyages +to make their names in than she had known weeks of carefully tended life, +for a new ship receives as much attention as if she were a young bride. +Even crabbed old dock-masters look at her with benevolent eyes. In her +shyness at the threshold of a laborious and uncertain life, where so much +is expected of a ship, she could not have been better heartened and +comforted, had she only been able to hear and understand, than by the +tone of deep conviction in which my elderly, respectable seaman repeated +the first part of his saying, “Ships are all right . . .” + +His civility prevented him from repeating the other, the bitter part. It +had occurred to him that it was perhaps indelicate to insist. He had +recognised in me a ship’s officer, very possibly looking for a berth like +himself, and so far a comrade, but still a man belonging to that +sparsely-peopled after-end of a ship, where a great part of her +reputation as a “good ship,” in seaman’s parlance, is made or marred. + +“Can you say that of all ships without exception?” I asked, being in an +idle mood, because, if an obvious ship’s officer, I was not, as a matter +of fact, down at the docks to “look for a berth,” an occupation as +engrossing as gambling, and as little favourable to the free exchange of +ideas, besides being destructive of the kindly temper needed for casual +intercourse with one’s fellow-creatures. + +“You can always put up with ’em,” opined the respectable seaman +judicially. + +He was not averse from talking, either. If he had come down to the dock +to look for a berth, he did not seem oppressed by anxiety as to his +chances. He had the serenity of a man whose estimable character is +fortunately expressed by his personal appearance in an unobtrusive, yet +convincing, manner which no chief officer in want of hands could resist. +And, true enough, I learned presently that the mate of the _Hyperion_ had +“taken down” his name for quarter-master. “We sign on Friday, and join +next day for the morning tide,” he remarked, in a deliberate, careless +tone, which contrasted strongly with his evident readiness to stand there +yarning for an hour or so with an utter stranger. + +“_Hyperion_,” I said. “I don’t remember ever seeing that ship anywhere. +What sort of a name has she got?” + +It appeared from his discursive answer that she had not much of a name +one way or another. She was not very fast. It took no fool, though, to +steer her straight, he believed. Some years ago he had seen her in +Calcutta, and he remembered being told by somebody then, that on her +passage up the river she had carried away both her hawse-pipes. But that +might have been the pilot’s fault. Just now, yarning with the +apprentices on board, he had heard that this very voyage, brought up in +the Downs, outward bound, she broke her sheer, struck adrift, and lost an +anchor and chain. But that might have occurred through want of careful +tending in a tideway. All the same, this looked as though she were +pretty hard on her ground-tackle. Didn’t it? She seemed a heavy ship to +handle, anyway. For the rest, as she had a new captain and a new mate +this voyage, he understood, one couldn’t say how she would turn out. . . . + +In such marine shore-talk as this is the name of a ship slowly +established, her fame made for her, the tale of her qualities and of her +defects kept, her idiosyncrasies commented upon with the zest of personal +gossip, her achievements made much of, her faults glossed over as things +that, being without remedy in our imperfect world, should not be dwelt +upon too much by men who, with the help of ships, wrest out a bitter +living from the rough grasp of the sea. All that talk makes up her +“name,” which is handed over from one crew to another without bitterness, +without animosity, with the indulgence of mutual dependence, and with the +feeling of close association in the exercise of her perfections and in +the danger of her defects. + +This feeling explains men’s pride in ships. “Ships are all right,” as my +middle-aged, respectable quartermaster said with much conviction and some +irony; but they are not exactly what men make them. They have their own +nature; they can of themselves minister to our self-esteem by the demand +their qualities make upon our skill and their shortcomings upon our +hardiness and endurance. Which is the more flattering exaction it is +hard to say; but there is the fact that in listening for upwards of +twenty years to the sea-talk that goes on afloat and ashore I have never +detected the true note of animosity. I won’t deny that at sea, +sometimes, the note of profanity was audible enough in those chiding +interpellations a wet, cold, weary seaman addresses to his ship, and in +moments of exasperation is disposed to extend to all ships that ever were +launched—to the whole everlastingly exacting brood that swims in deep +waters. And I have heard curses launched at the unstable element itself, +whose fascination, outlasting the accumulated experience of ages, had +captured him as it had captured the generations of his forebears. + +For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) +have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been the +object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At +most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness, and playing the +part of dangerous abettor of world-wide ambitions. Faithful to no race +after the manner of the kindly earth, receiving no impress from valour +and toil and self-sacrifice, recognising no finality of dominion, the sea +has never adopted the cause of its masters like those lands where the +victorious nations of mankind have taken root, rocking their cradles and +setting up their gravestones. He—man or people—who, putting his trust in +the friendship of the sea, neglects the strength and cunning of his right +hand, is a fool! As if it were too great, too mighty for common virtues, +the ocean has no compassion, no faith, no law, no memory. Its fickleness +is to be held true to men’s purposes only by an undaunted resolution and +by a sleepless, armed, jealous vigilance, in which, perhaps, there has +always been more hate than love. _Odi et amo_ may well be the confession +of those who consciously or blindly have surrendered their existence to +the fascination of the sea. All the tempestuous passions of mankind’s +young days, the love of loot and the love of glory, the love of adventure +and the love of danger, with the great love of the unknown and vast +dreams of dominion and power, have passed like images reflected from a +mirror, leaving no record upon the mysterious face of the sea. +Impenetrable and heartless, the sea has given nothing of itself to the +suitors for its precarious favours. Unlike the earth, it cannot be +subjugated at any cost of patience and toil. For all its fascination +that has lured so many to a violent death, its immensity has never been +loved as the mountains, the plains, the desert itself, have been loved. +Indeed, I suspect that, leaving aside the protestations and tributes of +writers who, one is safe in saying, care for little else in the world +than the rhythm of their lines and the cadence of their phrase, the love +of the sea, to which some men and nations confess so readily, is a +complex sentiment wherein pride enters for much, necessity for not a +little, and the love of ships—the untiring servants of our hopes and our +self-esteem—for the best and most genuine part. For the hundreds who +have reviled the sea, beginning with Shakespeare in the line— + + “More fell than hunger, anguish, or the sea,” + +down to the last obscure sea-dog of the “old model,” having but few words +and still fewer thoughts, there could not be found, I believe, one sailor +who has ever coupled a curse with the good or bad name of a ship. If +ever his profanity, provoked by the hardships of the sea, went so far as +to touch his ship, it would be lightly, as a hand may, without sin, be +laid in the way of kindness on a woman. + + + + +XXXVI. + + +The love that is given to ships is profoundly different from the love men +feel for every other work of their hands—the love they bear to their +houses, for instance—because it is untainted by the pride of possession. +The pride of skill, the pride of responsibility, the pride of endurance +there may be, but otherwise it is a disinterested sentiment. No seaman +ever cherished a ship, even if she belonged to him, merely because of the +profit she put in his pocket. No one, I think, ever did; for a +ship-owner, even of the best, has always been outside the pale of that +sentiment embracing in a feeling of intimate, equal fellowship the ship +and the man, backing each other against the implacable, if sometimes +dissembled, hostility of their world of waters. The sea—this truth must +be confessed—has no generosity. No display of manly qualities—courage, +hardihood, endurance, faithfulness—has ever been known to touch its +irresponsible consciousness of power. The ocean has the conscienceless +temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation. He cannot brook +the slightest appearance of defiance, and has remained the irreconcilable +enemy of ships and men ever since ships and men had the unheard of +audacity to go afloat together in the face of his frown. From that day +he has gone on swallowing up fleets and men without his resentment being +glutted by the number of victims—by so many wrecked ships and wrecked +lives. To-day, as ever, he is ready to beguile and betray, to smash and +to drown the incorrigible optimism of men who, backed by the fidelity of +ships, are trying to wrest from him the fortune of their house, the +dominion of their world, or only a dole of food for their hunger. If not +always in the hot mood to smash, he is always stealthily ready for a +drowning. The most amazing wonder of the deep is its unfathomable +cruelty. + +I felt its dread for the first time in mid-Atlantic one day, many years +ago, when we took off the crew of a Danish brig homeward bound from the +West Indies. A thin, silvery mist softened the calm and majestic +splendour of light without shadows—seemed to render the sky less remote +and the ocean less immense. It was one of the days, when the might of +the sea appears indeed lovable, like the nature of a strong man in +moments of quiet intimacy. At sunrise we had made out a black speck to +the westward, apparently suspended high up in the void behind a stirring, +shimmering veil of silvery blue gauze that seemed at times to stir and +float in the breeze which fanned us slowly along. The peace of that +enchanting forenoon was so profound, so untroubled, that it seemed that +every word pronounced loudly on our deck would penetrate to the very +heart of that infinite mystery born from the conjunction of water and +sky. We did not raise our voices. “A water-logged derelict, I think, +sir,” said the second officer quietly, coming down from aloft with the +binoculars in their case slung across his shoulders; and our captain, +without a word, signed to the helmsman to steer for the black speck. +Presently we made out a low, jagged stump sticking up forward—all that +remained of her departed masts. + +The captain was expatiating in a low conversational tone to the chief +mate upon the danger of these derelicts, and upon his dread of coming +upon them at night, when suddenly a man forward screamed out, “There’s +people on board of her, sir! I see them!” in a most extraordinary +voice—a voice never heard before in our ship; the amazing voice of a +stranger. It gave the signal for a sudden tumult of shouts. The watch +below ran up the forecastle head in a body, the cook dashed out of the +galley. Everybody saw the poor fellows now. They were there! And all +at once our ship, which had the well-earned name of being without a rival +for speed in light winds, seemed to us to have lost the power of motion, +as if the sea, becoming viscous, had clung to her sides. And yet she +moved. Immensity, the inseparable companion of a ship’s life, chose that +day to breathe upon her as gently as a sleeping child. The clamour of +our excitement had died out, and our living ship, famous for never losing +steerage way as long as there was air enough to float a feather, stole, +without a ripple, silent and white as a ghost, towards her mutilated and +wounded sister, come upon at the point of death in the sunlit haze of a +calm day at sea. + +With the binoculars glued to his eyes, the captain said in a quavering +tone: “They are waving to us with something aft there.” He put down the +glasses on the skylight brusquely, and began to walk about the poop. “A +shirt or a flag,” he ejaculated irritably. “Can’t make it out. . . Some +damn rag or other!” He took a few more turns on the poop, glancing down +over the rail now and then to see how fast we were moving. His nervous +footsteps rang sharply in the quiet of the ship, where the other men, all +looking the same way, had forgotten themselves in a staring immobility. +“This will never do!” he cried out suddenly. “Lower the boats at once! +Down with them!” + +Before I jumped into mine he took me aside, as being an inexperienced +junior, for a word of warning: + +“You look out as you come alongside that she doesn’t take you down with +her. You understand?” + +He murmured this confidentially, so that none of the men at the falls +should overhear, and I was shocked. “Heavens! as if in such an emergency +one stopped to think of danger!” I exclaimed to myself mentally, in scorn +of such cold-blooded caution. + +It takes many lessons to make a real seaman, and I got my rebuke at once. +My experienced commander seemed in one searching glance to read my +thoughts on my ingenuous face. + +“What you’re going for is to save life, not to drown your boat’s crew for +nothing,” he growled severely in my ear. But as we shoved off he leaned +over and cried out: “It all rests on the power of your arms, men. Give +way for life!” + +We made a race of it, and I would never have believed that a common +boat’s crew of a merchantman could keep up so much determined fierceness +in the regular swing of their stroke. What our captain had clearly +perceived before we left had become plain to all of us since. The issue +of our enterprise hung on a hair above that abyss of waters which will +not give up its dead till the Day of Judgment. It was a race of two +ship’s boats matched against Death for a prize of nine men’s lives, and +Death had a long start. We saw the crew of the brig from afar working at +the pumps—still pumping on that wreck, which already had settled so far +down that the gentle, low swell, over which our boats rose and fell +easily without a check to their speed, welling up almost level with her +head-rails, plucked at the ends of broken gear swinging desolately under +her naked bowsprit. + +We could not, in all conscience, have picked out a better day for our +regatta had we had the free choice of all the days that ever dawned upon +the lonely struggles and solitary agonies of ships since the Norse rovers +first steered to the westward against the run of Atlantic waves. It was +a very good race. At the finish there was not an oar’s length between +the first and second boat, with Death coming in a good third on the top +of the very next smooth swell, for all one knew to the contrary. The +scuppers of the brig gurgled softly all together when the water rising +against her sides subsided sleepily with a low wash, as if playing about +an immovable rock. Her bulwarks were gone fore and aft, and one saw her +bare deck low-lying like a raft and swept clean of boats, spars, +houses—of everything except the ringbolts and the heads of the pumps. I +had one dismal glimpse of it as I braced myself up to receive upon my +breast the last man to leave her, the captain, who literally let himself +fall into my arms. + +It had been a weirdly silent rescue—a rescue without a hail, without a +single uttered word, without a gesture or a sign, without a conscious +exchange of glances. Up to the very last moment those on board stuck to +their pumps, which spouted two clear streams of water upon their bare +feet. Their brown skin showed through the rents of their shirts; and the +two small bunches of half-naked, tattered men went on bowing from the +waist to each other in their back-breaking labour, up and down, absorbed, +with no time for a glance over the shoulder at the help that was coming +to them. As we dashed, unregarded, alongside a voice let out one, only +one hoarse howl of command, and then, just as they stood, without caps, +with the salt drying gray in the wrinkles and folds of their hairy, +haggard faces, blinking stupidly at us their red eyelids, they made a +bolt away from the handles, tottering and jostling against each other, +and positively flung themselves over upon our very heads. The clatter +they made tumbling into the boats had an extraordinarily destructive +effect upon the illusion of tragic dignity our self-esteem had thrown +over the contests of mankind with the sea. On that exquisite day of +gently breathing peace and veiled sunshine perished my romantic love to +what men’s imagination had proclaimed the most august aspect of Nature. +The cynical indifference of the sea to the merits of human suffering and +courage, laid bare in this ridiculous, panic-tainted performance extorted +from the dire extremity of nine good and honourable seamen, revolted me. +I saw the duplicity of the sea’s most tender mood. It was so because it +could not help itself, but the awed respect of the early days was gone. +I felt ready to smile bitterly at its enchanting charm and glare +viciously at its furies. In a moment, before we shoved off, I had looked +coolly at the life of my choice. Its illusions were gone, but its +fascination remained. I had become a seaman at last. + +We pulled hard for a quarter of an hour, then laid on our oars waiting +for our ship. She was coming down on us with swelling sails, looking +delicately tall and exquisitely noble through the mist. The captain of +the brig, who sat in the stern sheets by my side with his face in his +hands, raised his head and began to speak with a sort of sombre +volubility. They had lost their masts and sprung a leak in a hurricane; +drifted for weeks, always at the pumps, met more bad weather; the ships +they sighted failed to make them out, the leak gained upon them slowly, +and the seas had left them nothing to make a raft of. It was very hard +to see ship after ship pass by at a distance, “as if everybody had agreed +that we must be left to drown,” he added. But they went on trying to +keep the brig afloat as long as possible, and working the pumps +constantly on insufficient food, mostly raw, till “yesterday evening,” he +continued monotonously, “just as the sun went down, the men’s hearts +broke.” + +He made an almost imperceptible pause here, and went on again with +exactly the same intonation: + +“They told me the brig could not be saved, and they thought they had done +enough for themselves. I said nothing to that. It was true. It was no +mutiny. I had nothing to say to them. They lay about aft all night, as +still as so many dead men. I did not lie down. I kept a look-out. When +the first light came I saw your ship at once. I waited for more light; +the breeze began to fail on my face. Then I shouted out as loud as I was +able, ‘Look at that ship!’ but only two men got up very slowly and came +to me. At first only we three stood alone, for a long time, watching you +coming down to us, and feeling the breeze drop to a calm almost; but +afterwards others, too, rose, one after another, and by-and-by I had all +my crew behind me. I turned round and said to them that they could see +the ship was coming our way, but in this small breeze she might come too +late after all, unless we turned to and tried to keep the brig afloat +long enough to give you time to save us all. I spoke like that to them, +and then I gave the command to man the pumps.” + +He gave the command, and gave the example, too, by going himself to the +handles, but it seems that these men did actually hang back for a moment, +looking at each other dubiously before they followed him. “He! he! he!” +He broke out into a most unexpected, imbecile, pathetic, nervous little +giggle. “Their hearts were broken so! They had been played with too +long,” he explained apologetically, lowering his eyes, and became silent. + +Twenty-five years is a long time—a quarter of a century is a dim and +distant past; but to this day I remember the dark-brown feet, hands, and +faces of two of these men whose hearts had been broken by the sea. They +were lying very still on their sides on the bottom boards between the +thwarts, curled up like dogs. My boat’s crew, leaning over the looms of +their oars, stared and listened as if at the play. The master of the +brig looked up suddenly to ask me what day it was. + +They had lost the date. When I told him it was Sunday, the 22nd, he +frowned, making some mental calculation, then nodded twice sadly to +himself, staring at nothing. + +His aspect was miserably unkempt and wildly sorrowful. Had it not been +for the unquenchable candour of his blue eyes, whose unhappy, tired +glance every moment sought his abandoned, sinking brig, as if it could +find rest nowhere else, he would have appeared mad. But he was too +simple to go mad, too simple with that manly simplicity which alone can +bear men unscathed in mind and body through an encounter with the deadly +playfulness of the sea or with its less abominable fury. + +Neither angry, nor playful, nor smiling, it enveloped our distant ship +growing bigger as she neared us, our boats with the rescued men and the +dismantled hull of the brig we were leaving behind, in the large and +placid embrace of its quietness, half lost in the fair haze, as if in a +dream of infinite and tender clemency. There was no frown, no wrinkle on +its face, not a ripple. And the run of the slight swell was so smooth +that it resembled the graceful undulation of a piece of shimmering gray +silk shot with gleams of green. We pulled an easy stroke; but when the +master of the brig, after a glance over his shoulder, stood up with a low +exclamation, my men feathered their oars instinctively, without an order, +and the boat lost her way. + +He was steadying himself on my shoulder with a strong grip, while his +other arm, flung up rigidly, pointed a denunciatory finger at the immense +tranquillity of the ocean. After his first exclamation, which stopped +the swing of our oars, he made no sound, but his whole attitude seemed to +cry out an indignant “Behold!” . . . I could not imagine what vision of +evil had come to him. I was startled, and the amazing energy of his +immobilized gesture made my heart beat faster with the anticipation of +something monstrous and unsuspected. The stillness around us became +crushing. + +For a moment the succession of silky undulations ran on innocently. I +saw each of them swell up the misty line of the horizon, far, far away +beyond the derelict brig, and the next moment, with a slight friendly +toss of our boat, it had passed under us and was gone. The lulling +cadence of the rise and fall, the invariable gentleness of this +irresistible force, the great charm of the deep waters, warmed my breast +deliciously, like the subtle poison of a love-potion. But all this +lasted only a few soothing seconds before I jumped up too, making the +boat roll like the veriest landlubber. + +Something startling, mysterious, hastily confused, was taking place. I +watched it with incredulous and fascinated awe, as one watches the +confused, swift movements of some deed of violence done in the dark. As +if at a given signal, the run of the smooth undulations seemed checked +suddenly around the brig. By a strange optical delusion the whole sea +appeared to rise upon her in one overwhelming heave of its silky surface, +where in one spot a smother of foam broke out ferociously. And then the +effort subsided. It was all over, and the smooth swell ran on as before +from the horizon in uninterrupted cadence of motion, passing under us +with a slight friendly toss of our boat. Far away, where the brig had +been, an angry white stain undulating on the surface of steely-gray +waters, shot with gleams of green, diminished swiftly, without a hiss, +like a patch of pure snow melting in the sun. And the great stillness +after this initiation into the sea’s implacable hate seemed full of dread +thoughts and shadows of disaster. + +“Gone!” ejaculated from the depths of his chest my bowman in a final +tone. He spat in his hands, and took a better grip on his oar. The +captain of the brig lowered his rigid arm slowly, and looked at our faces +in a solemnly conscious silence, which called upon us to share in his +simple-minded, marvelling awe. All at once he sat down by my side, and +leaned forward earnestly at my boat’s crew, who, swinging together in a +long, easy stroke, kept their eyes fixed upon him faithfully. + +“No ship could have done so well,” he addressed them firmly, after a +moment of strained silence, during which he seemed with trembling lips to +seek for words fit to bear such high testimony. “She was small, but she +was good. I had no anxiety. She was strong. Last voyage I had my wife +and two children in her. No other ship could have stood so long the +weather she had to live through for days and days before we got dismasted +a fortnight ago. She was fairly worn out, and that’s all. You may +believe me. She lasted under us for days and days, but she could not +last for ever. It was long enough. I am glad it is over. No better +ship was ever left to sink at sea on such a day as this.” + +He was competent to pronounce the funereal oration of a ship, this son of +ancient sea-folk, whose national existence, so little stained by the +excesses of manly virtues, had demanded nothing but the merest foothold +from the earth. By the merits of his sea-wise forefathers and by the +artlessness of his heart, he was made fit to deliver this excellent +discourse. There was nothing wanting in its orderly arrangement—neither +piety nor faith, nor the tribute of praise due to the worthy dead, with +the edifying recital of their achievement. She had lived, he had loved +her; she had suffered, and he was glad she was at rest. It was an +excellent discourse. And it was orthodox, too, in its fidelity to the +cardinal article of a seaman’s faith, of which it was a single-minded +confession. “Ships are all right.” They are. They who live with the +sea have got to hold by that creed first and last; and it came to me, as +I glanced at him sideways, that some men were not altogether unworthy in +honour and conscience to pronounce the funereal eulogium of a ship’s +constancy in life and death. + +After this, sitting by my side with his loosely-clasped hands hanging +between his knees, he uttered no word, made no movement till the shadow +of our ship’s sails fell on the boat, when, at the loud cheer greeting +the return of the victors with their prize, he lifted up his troubled +face with a faint smile of pathetic indulgence. This smile of the worthy +descendant of the most ancient sea-folk whose audacity and hardihood had +left no trace of greatness and glory upon the waters, completed the cycle +of my initiation. There was an infinite depth of hereditary wisdom in +its pitying sadness. It made the hearty bursts of cheering sound like a +childish noise of triumph. Our crew shouted with immense +confidence—honest souls! As if anybody could ever make sure of having +prevailed against the sea, which has betrayed so many ships of great +“name,” so many proud men, so many towering ambitions of fame, power, +wealth, greatness! + +As I brought the boat under the falls my captain, in high good-humour, +leaned over, spreading his red and freckled elbows on the rail, and +called down to me sarcastically, out of the depths of his cynic +philosopher’s beard: + +“So you have brought the boat back after all, have you?” + +Sarcasm was “his way,” and the most that can be said for it is that it +was natural. This did not make it lovable. But it is decorous and +expedient to fall in with one’s commander’s way. “Yes. I brought the +boat back all right, sir,” I answered. And the good man believed me. It +was not for him to discern upon me the marks of my recent initiation. +And yet I was not exactly the same youngster who had taken the boat +away—all impatience for a race against death, with the prize of nine +men’s lives at the end. + +Already I looked with other eyes upon the sea. I knew it capable of +betraying the generous ardour of youth as implacably as, indifferent to +evil and good, it would have betrayed the basest greed or the noblest +heroism. My conception of its magnanimous greatness was gone. And I +looked upon the true sea—the sea that plays with men till their hearts +are broken, and wears stout ships to death. Nothing can touch the +brooding bitterness of its heart. Open to all and faithful to none, it +exercises its fascination for the undoing of the best. To love it is not +well. It knows no bond of plighted troth, no fidelity to misfortune, to +long companionship, to long devotion. The promise it holds out +perpetually is very great; but the only secret of its possession is +strength, strength—the jealous, sleepless strength of a man guarding a +coveted treasure within his gates. + + + + +XXXVII. + + +THE cradle of oversea traffic and of the art of naval combats, the +Mediterranean, apart from all the associations of adventure and glory, +the common heritage of all mankind, makes a tender appeal to a seaman. +It has sheltered the infancy of his craft. He looks upon it as a man may +look at a vast nursery in an old, old mansion where innumerable +generations of his own people have learned to walk. I say his own people +because, in a sense, all sailors belong to one family: all are descended +from that adventurous and shaggy ancestor who, bestriding a shapeless log +and paddling with a crooked branch, accomplished the first coasting-trip +in a sheltered bay ringing with the admiring howls of his tribe. It is a +matter of regret that all those brothers in craft and feeling, whose +generations have learned to walk a ship’s deck in that nursery, have been +also more than once fiercely engaged in cutting each other’s throats +there. But life, apparently, has such exigencies. Without human +propensity to murder and other sorts of unrighteousness there would have +been no historical heroism. It is a consoling reflection. And then, if +one examines impartially the deeds of violence, they appear of but small +consequence. From Salamis to Actium, through Lepanto and the Nile to the +naval massacre of Navarino, not to mention other armed encounters of +lesser interest, all the blood heroically spilt into the Mediterranean +has not stained with a single trail of purple the deep azure of its +classic waters. + +Of course, it may be argued that battles have shaped the destiny of +mankind. The question whether they have shaped it well would remain +open, however. But it would be hardly worth discussing. It is very +probable that, had the Battle of Salamis never been fought, the face of +the world would have been much as we behold it now, fashioned by the +mediocre inspiration and the short-sighted labours of men. From a long +and miserable experience of suffering, injustice, disgrace and aggression +the nations of the earth are mostly swayed by fear—fear of the sort that +a little cheap oratory turns easily to rage, hate, and violence. +Innocent, guileless fear has been the cause of many wars. Not, of +course, the fear of war itself, which, in the evolution of sentiments and +ideas, has come to be regarded at last as a half-mystic and glorious +ceremony with certain fashionable rites and preliminary incantations, +wherein the conception of its true nature has been lost. To apprehend +the true aspect, force, and morality of war as a natural function of +mankind one requires a feather in the hair and a ring in the nose, or, +better still, teeth filed to a point and a tattooed breast. +Unfortunately, a return to such simple ornamentation is impossible. We +are bound to the chariot of progress. There is no going back; and, as +bad luck would have it, our civilization, which has done so much for the +comfort and adornment of our bodies and the elevation of our minds, has +made lawful killing frightfully and needlessly expensive. + +The whole question of improved armaments has been approached by the +governments of the earth in a spirit of nervous and unreflecting haste, +whereas the right way was lying plainly before them, and had only to be +pursued with calm determination. The learned vigils and labours of a +certain class of inventors should have been rewarded with honourable +liberality as justice demanded; and the bodies of the inventors should +have been blown to pieces by means of their own perfected explosives and +improved weapons with extreme publicity as the commonest prudence +dictated. By this method the ardour of research in that direction would +have been restrained without infringing the sacred privileges of science. +For the lack of a little cool thinking in our guides and masters this +course has not been followed, and a beautiful simplicity has been +sacrificed for no real advantage. A frugal mind cannot defend itself +from considerable bitterness when reflecting that at the Battle of Actium +(which was fought for no less a stake than the dominion of the world) the +fleet of Octavianus Cæsar and the fleet of Antonius, including the +Egyptian division and Cleopatra’s galley with purple sails, probably cost +less than two modern battleships, or, as the modern naval book-jargon has +it, two capital units. But no amount of lubberly book-jargon can +disguise a fact well calculated to afflict the soul of every sound +economist. It is not likely that the Mediterranean will ever behold a +battle with a greater issue; but when the time comes for another +historical fight its bottom will be enriched as never before by a +quantity of jagged scrap-iron, paid for at pretty nearly its weight of +gold by the deluded populations inhabiting the isles and continents of +this planet. + + + + +XXXVIII. + + +Happy he who, like Ulysses, has made an adventurous voyage; and there is +no such sea for adventurous voyages as the Mediterranean—the inland sea +which the ancients looked upon as so vast and so full of wonders. And, +indeed, it was terrible and wonderful; for it is we alone who, swayed by +the audacity of our minds and the tremors of our hearts, are the sole +artisans of all the wonder and romance of the world. + +It was for the Mediterranean sailors that fair-haired sirens sang among +the black rocks seething in white foam and mysterious voices spoke in the +darkness above the moving wave—voices menacing, seductive, or prophetic, +like that voice heard at the beginning of the Christian era by the master +of an African vessel in the Gulf of Syrta, whose calm nights are full of +strange murmurs and flitting shadows. It called him by name, bidding him +go and tell all men that the great god Pan was dead. But the great +legend of the Mediterranean, the legend of traditional song and grave +history, lives, fascinating and immortal, in our minds. + +The dark and fearful sea of the subtle Ulysses’ wanderings, agitated by +the wrath of Olympian gods, harbouring on its isles the fury of strange +monsters and the wiles of strange women; the highway of heroes and sages, +of warriors, pirates, and saints; the workaday sea of Carthaginian +merchants and the pleasure lake of the Roman Cæsars, claims the +veneration of every seaman as the historical home of that spirit of open +defiance against the great waters of the earth which is the very soul of +his calling. Issuing thence to the west and south, as a youth leaves the +shelter of his parental house, this spirit found the way to the Indies, +discovered the coasts of a new continent, and traversed at last the +immensity of the great Pacific, rich in groups of islands remote and +mysterious like the constellations of the sky. + +The first impulse of navigation took its visible form in that tideless +basin freed from hidden shoals and treacherous currents, as if in tender +regard for the infancy of the art. The steep shores of the Mediterranean +favoured the beginners in one of humanity’s most daring enterprises, and +the enchanting inland sea of classic adventure has led mankind gently +from headland to headland, from bay to bay, from island to island, out +into the promise of world-wide oceans beyond the Pillars of Hercules. + + + + +XXXIX. + + +The charm of the Mediterranean dwells in the unforgettable flavour of my +early days, and to this hour this sea, upon which the Romans alone ruled +without dispute, has kept for me the fascination of youthful romance. +The very first Christmas night I ever spent away from land was employed +in running before a Gulf of Lions gale, which made the old ship groan in +every timber as she skipped before it over the short seas until we +brought her to, battered and out of breath, under the lee of Majorca, +where the smooth water was torn by fierce cat’s-paws under a very stormy +sky. + +We—or, rather, they, for I had hardly had two glimpses of salt water in +my life till then—kept her standing off and on all that day, while I +listened for the first time with the curiosity of my tender years to the +song of the wind in a ship’s rigging. The monotonous and vibrating note +was destined to grow into the intimacy of the heart, pass into blood and +bone, accompany the thoughts and acts of two full decades, remain to +haunt like a reproach the peace of the quiet fireside, and enter into the +very texture of respectable dreams dreamed safely under a roof of rafters +and tiles. The wind was fair, but that day we ran no more. + +The thing (I will not call her a ship twice in the same half-hour) +leaked. She leaked fully, generously, overflowingly, all over—like a +basket. I took an enthusiastic part in the excitement caused by that +last infirmity of noble ships, without concerning myself much with the +why or the wherefore. The surmise of my maturer years is that, bored by +her interminable life, the venerable antiquity was simply yawning with +ennui at every seam. But at the time I did not know; I knew generally +very little, and least of all what I was doing in that _galère_. + +I remember that, exactly as in the comedy of Molière, my uncle asked the +precise question in the very words—not of my confidential valet, however, +but across great distances of land, in a letter whose mocking but +indulgent turn ill concealed his almost paternal anxiety. I fancy I +tried to convey to him my (utterly unfounded) impression that the West +Indies awaited my coming. I had to go there. It was a sort of mystic +conviction—something in the nature of a call. But it was difficult to +state intelligibly the grounds of this belief to that man of rigorous +logic, if of infinite charity. + +The truth must have been that, all unversed in the arts of the wily +Greek, the deceiver of gods, the lover of strange women, the evoker of +bloodthirsty shades, I yet longed for the beginning of my own obscure +Odyssey, which, as was proper for a modern, should unroll its wonders and +terrors beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The disdainful ocean did not +open wide to swallow up my audacity, though the ship, the ridiculous and +ancient _galère_ of my folly, the old, weary, disenchanted sugar-waggon, +seemed extremely disposed to open out and swallow up as much salt water +as she could hold. This, if less grandiose, would have been as final a +catastrophe. + +But no catastrophe occurred. I lived to watch on a strange shore a black +and youthful Nausicaa, with a joyous train of attendant maidens, carrying +baskets of linen to a clear stream overhung by the heads of slender +palm-trees. The vivid colours of their draped raiment and the gold of +their earrings invested with a barbaric and regal magnificence their +figures, stepping out freely in a shower of broken sunshine. The +whiteness of their teeth was still more dazzling than the splendour of +jewels at their ears. The shaded side of the ravine gleamed with their +smiles. They were as unabashed as so many princesses, but, alas! not one +of them was the daughter of a jet-black sovereign. Such was my +abominable luck in being born by the mere hair’s breadth of twenty-five +centuries too late into a world where kings have been growing scarce with +scandalous rapidity, while the few who remain have adopted the +uninteresting manners and customs of simple millionaires. Obviously it +was a vain hope in 187– to see the ladies of a royal household walk in +chequered sunshine, with baskets of linen on their heads, to the banks of +a clear stream overhung by the starry fronds of palm-trees. It was a +vain hope. If I did not ask myself whether, limited by such discouraging +impossibilities, life were still worth living, it was only because I had +then before me several other pressing questions, some of which have +remained unanswered to this day. The resonant, laughing voices of these +gorgeous maidens scared away the multitude of humming-birds, whose +delicate wings wreathed with the mist of their vibration the tops of +flowering bushes. + +No, they were not princesses. Their unrestrained laughter filling the +hot, fern-clad ravine had a soulless limpidity, as of wild, inhuman +dwellers in tropical woodlands. Following the example of certain prudent +travellers, I withdrew unseen—and returned, not much wiser, to the +Mediterranean, the sea of classic adventures. + + + + +XL. + + +IT was written that there, in the nursery of our navigating ancestors, I +should learn to walk in the ways of my craft and grow in the love of the +sea, blind as young love often is, but absorbing and disinterested as all +true love must be. I demanded nothing from it—not even adventure. In +this I showed, perhaps, more intuitive wisdom than high self-denial. No +adventure ever came to one for the asking. He who starts on a deliberate +quest of adventure goes forth but to gather dead-sea fruit, unless, +indeed, he be beloved of the gods and great amongst heroes, like that +most excellent cavalier Don Quixote de la Mancha. By us ordinary mortals +of a mediocre animus that is only too anxious to pass by wicked giants +for so many honest windmills, adventures are entertained like visiting +angels. They come upon our complacency unawares. As unbidden guests are +apt to do, they often come at inconvenient times. And we are glad to let +them go unrecognised, without any acknowledgment of so high a favour. +After many years, on looking back from the middle turn of life’s way at +the events of the past, which, like a friendly crowd, seem to gaze sadly +after us hastening towards the Cimmerian shore, we may see here and +there, in the gray throng, some figure glowing with a faint radiance, as +though it had caught all the light of our already crepuscular sky. And +by this glow we may recognise the faces of our true adventures, of the +once unbidden guests entertained unawares in our young days. + +If the Mediterranean, the venerable (and sometimes atrociously +ill-tempered) nurse of all navigators, was to rock my youth, the +providing of the cradle necessary for that operation was entrusted by +Fate to the most casual assemblage of irresponsible young men (all, +however, older than myself) that, as if drunk with Provençal sunshine, +frittered life away in joyous levity on the model of Balzac’s “Histoire +des Treize” qualified by a dash of romance _de cape et d’épée_. + +She who was my cradle in those years had been built on the River of +Savona by a famous builder of boats, was rigged in Corsica by another +good man, and was described on her papers as a ‘tartane’ of sixty tons. +In reality, she was a true balancelle, with two short masts raking +forward and two curved yards, each as long as her hull; a true child of +the Latin lake, with a spread of two enormous sails resembling the +pointed wings on a sea-bird’s slender body, and herself, like a bird +indeed, skimming rather than sailing the seas. + +Her name was the _Tremolino_. How is this to be translated? The +_Quiverer_? What a name to give the pluckiest little craft that ever +dipped her sides in angry foam! I had felt her, it is true, trembling +for nights and days together under my feet, but it was with the +high-strung tenseness of her faithful courage. In her short, but +brilliant, career she has taught me nothing, but she has given me +everything. I owe to her the awakened love for the sea that, with the +quivering of her swift little body and the humming of the wind under the +foot of her lateen sails, stole into my heart with a sort of gentle +violence, and brought my imagination under its despotic sway. The +_Tremolino_! To this day I cannot utter or even write that name without +a strange tightening of the breast and the gasp of mingled delight and +dread of one’s first passionate experience. + + + + +XLI. + + +We four formed (to use a term well understood nowadays in every social +sphere) a “syndicate” owning the _Tremolino_: an international and +astonishing syndicate. And we were all ardent Royalists of the +snow-white Legitimist complexion—Heaven only knows why! In all +associations of men there is generally one who, by the authority of age +and of a more experienced wisdom, imparts a collective character to the +whole set. If I mention that the oldest of us was very old, extremely +old—nearly thirty years old—and that he used to declare with gallant +carelessness, “I live by my sword,” I think I have given enough +information on the score of our collective wisdom. He was a North +Carolinian gentleman, J. M. K. B. were the initials of his name, and he +really did live by the sword, as far as I know. He died by it, too, +later on, in a Balkanian squabble, in the cause of some Serbs or else +Bulgarians, who were neither Catholics nor gentlemen—at least, not in the +exalted but narrow sense he attached to that last word. + +Poor J. M. K. B., _Américain_, _Catholique_, _et gentilhomme_, as he was +disposed to describe himself in moments of lofty expansion! Are there +still to be found in Europe gentlemen keen of face and elegantly slight +of body, of distinguished aspect, with a fascinating drawing-room manner +and with a dark, fatal glance, who live by their swords, I wonder? His +family had been ruined in the Civil War, I fancy, and seems for a decade +or so to have led a wandering life in the Old World. As to Henry C—, the +next in age and wisdom of our band, he had broken loose from the +unyielding rigidity of his family, solidly rooted, if I remember rightly, +in a well-to-do London suburb. On their respectable authority he +introduced himself meekly to strangers as a “black sheep.” I have never +seen a more guileless specimen of an outcast. Never. + +However, his people had the grace to send him a little money now and +then. Enamoured of the South, of Provence, of its people, its life, its +sunshine and its poetry, narrow-chested, tall and short-sighted, he +strode along the streets and the lanes, his long feet projecting far in +advance of his body, and his white nose and gingery moustache buried in +an open book: for he had the habit of reading as he walked. How he +avoided falling into precipices, off the quays, or down staircases is a +great mystery. The sides of his overcoat bulged out with pocket editions +of various poets. When not engaged in reading Virgil, Homer, or Mistral, +in parks, restaurants, streets, and suchlike public places, he indited +sonnets (in French) to the eyes, ears, chin, hair, and other visible +perfections of a nymph called Thérèse, the daughter, honesty compels me +to state, of a certain Madame Leonore who kept a small café for sailors +in one of the narrowest streets of the old town. + +No more charming face, clear-cut like an antique gem, and delicate in +colouring like the petal of a flower, had ever been set on, alas! a +somewhat squat body. He read his verses aloud to her in the very café +with the innocence of a little child and the vanity of a poet. We +followed him there willingly enough, if only to watch the divine Thérèse +laugh, under the vigilant black eyes of Madame Leonore, her mother. She +laughed very prettily, not so much at the sonnets, which she could not +but esteem, as at poor Henry’s French accent, which was unique, +resembling the warbling of birds, if birds ever warbled with a +stuttering, nasal intonation. + +Our third partner was Roger P. de la S—, the most Scandinavian-looking of +Provençal squires, fair, and six feet high, as became a descendant of +sea-roving Northmen, authoritative, incisive, wittily scornful, with a +comedy in three acts in his pocket, and in his breast a heart blighted by +a hopeless passion for his beautiful cousin, married to a wealthy hide +and tallow merchant. He used to take us to lunch at their house without +ceremony. I admired the good lady’s sweet patience. The husband was a +conciliatory soul, with a great fund of resignation, which he expended on +“Roger’s friends.” I suspect he was secretly horrified at these +invasions. But it was a Carlist salon, and as such we were made welcome. +The possibility of raising Catalonia in the interest of the _Rey netto_, +who had just then crossed the Pyrenees, was much discussed there. + +Don Carlos, no doubt, must have had many queer friends (it is the common +lot of all Pretenders), but amongst them none more extravagantly +fantastic than the _Tremolino_ Syndicate, which used to meet in a tavern +on the quays of the old port. The antique city of Massilia had surely +never, since the days of the earliest Phoenicians, known an odder set of +ship-owners. We met to discuss and settle the plan of operations for +each voyage of the _Tremolino_. In these operations a banking-house, +too, was concerned—a very respectable banking-house. But I am afraid I +shall end by saying too much. Ladies, too, were concerned (I am really +afraid I am saying too much)—all sorts of ladies, some old enough to know +better than to put their trust in princes, others young and full of +illusions. + +One of these last was extremely amusing in the imitations, she gave us in +confidence, of various highly-placed personages she was perpetually +rushing off to Paris to interview in the interests of the cause—_Por el +Rey_! For she was a Carlist, and of Basque blood at that, with something +of a lioness in the expression of her courageous face (especially when +she let her hair down), and with the volatile little soul of a sparrow +dressed in fine Parisian feathers, which had the trick of coming off +disconcertingly at unexpected moments. + +But her imitations of a Parisian personage, very highly placed indeed, as +she represented him standing in the corner of a room with his face to the +wall, rubbing the back of his head and moaning helplessly, “Rita, you are +the death of me!” were enough to make one (if young and free from cares) +split one’s sides laughing. She had an uncle still living, a very +effective Carlist, too, the priest of a little mountain parish in +Guipuzcoa. As the sea-going member of the syndicate (whose plans +depended greatly on Doña Rita’s information), I used to be charged with +humbly affectionate messages for the old man. These messages I was +supposed to deliver to the Arragonese muleteers (who were sure to await +at certain times the _Tremolino_ in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of +Rosas), for faithful transportation inland, together with the various +unlawful goods landed secretly from under the _Tremolino’s_ hatches. + +Well, now, I have really let out too much (as I feared I should in the +end) as to the usual contents of my sea-cradle. But let it stand. And +if anybody remarks cynically that I must have been a promising infant in +those days, let that stand, too. I am concerned but for the good name of +the _Tremolino_, and I affirm that a ship is ever guiltless of the sins, +transgressions, and follies of her men. + + + + +XLII. + + +It was not _Tremolino’s_ fault that the syndicate depended so much on the +wit and wisdom and the information of Doña Rita. She had taken a little +furnished house on the Prado for the good of the cause—_Por el Rey_! She +was always taking little houses for somebody’s good, for the sick or the +sorry, for broken-down artists, cleaned-out gamblers, temporarily unlucky +speculators—_vieux amis_—old friends, as she used to explain +apologetically, with a shrug of her fine shoulders. + +Whether Don Carlos was one of the “old friends,” too, it’s hard to say. +More unlikely things have been heard of in smoking-rooms. All I know is +that one evening, entering incautiously the salon of the little house +just after the news of a considerable Carlist success had reached the +faithful, I was seized round the neck and waist and whirled recklessly +three times round the room, to the crash of upsetting furniture and the +humming of a valse tune in a warm contralto voice. + +When released from the dizzy embrace, I sat down on the carpet—suddenly, +without affectation. In this unpretentious attitude I became aware that +J. M. K. B. had followed me into the room, elegant, fatal, correct and +severe in a white tie and large shirt-front. In answer to his politely +sinister, prolonged glance of inquiry, I overheard Doña Rita murmuring, +with some confusion and annoyance, “_Vous êtes bête mon cher_. _Voyons_! +_Ça n’a aucune conséquence_.” Well content in this case to be of no +particular consequence, I had already about me the elements of some +worldly sense. + +Rearranging my collar, which, truth to say, ought to have been a round +one above a short jacket, but was not, I observed felicitously that I had +come to say good-bye, being ready to go off to sea that very night with +the _Tremolino_. Our hostess, slightly panting yet, and just a shade +dishevelled, turned tartly upon J. M. K. B., desiring to know when _he_ +would be ready to go off by the _Tremolino_, or in any other way, in +order to join the royal headquarters. Did he intend, she asked +ironically, to wait for the very eve of the entry into Madrid? Thus by a +judicious exercise of tact and asperity we re-established the atmospheric +equilibrium of the room long before I left them a little before midnight, +now tenderly reconciled, to walk down to the harbour and hail the +_Tremolino_ by the usual soft whistle from the edge of the quay. It was +our signal, invariably heard by the ever-watchful Dominic, the _padrone_. + +He would raise a lantern silently to light my steps along the narrow, +springy plank of our primitive gangway. “And so we are going off,” he +would murmur directly my foot touched the deck. I was the harbinger of +sudden departures, but there was nothing in the world sudden enough to +take Dominic unawares. His thick black moustaches, curled every morning +with hot tongs by the barber at the corner of the quay, seemed to hide a +perpetual smile. But nobody, I believe, had ever seen the true shape of +his lips. From the slow, imperturbable gravity of that broad-chested man +you would think he had never smiled in his life. In his eyes lurked a +look of perfectly remorseless irony, as though he had been provided with +an extremely experienced soul; and the slightest distension of his +nostrils would give to his bronzed face a look of extraordinary boldness. +This was the only play of feature of which he seemed capable, being a +Southerner of a concentrated, deliberate type. His ebony hair curled +slightly on the temples. He may have been forty years old, and he was a +great voyager on the inland sea. + +Astute and ruthless, he could have rivalled in resource the unfortunate +son of Laertes and Anticlea. If he did not pit his craft and audacity +against the very gods, it is only because the Olympian gods are dead. +Certainly no woman could frighten him. A one-eyed giant would not have +had the ghost of a chance against Dominic Cervoni, of Corsica, not +Ithaca; and no king, son of kings, but of very respectable +family—authentic Caporali, he affirmed. But that is as it may be. The +Caporali families date back to the twelfth century. + +For want of more exalted adversaries Dominic turned his audacity fertile +in impious stratagems against the powers of the earth, as represented by +the institution of Custom-houses and every mortal belonging +thereto—scribes, officers, and guardacostas afloat and ashore. He was +the very man for us, this modern and unlawful wanderer with his own +legend of loves, dangers, and bloodshed. He told us bits of it sometimes +in measured, ironic tones. He spoke Catalonian, the Italian of Corsica +and the French of Provençe with the same easy naturalness. Dressed in +shore-togs, a white starched shirt, black jacket, and round hat, as I +took him once to see Doña Rita, he was extremely presentable. He could +make himself interesting by a tactful and rugged reserve set off by a +grim, almost imperceptible, playfulness of tone and manner. + +He had the physical assurance of strong-hearted men. After half an +hour’s interview in the dining-room, during which they got in touch with +each other in an amazing way, Rita told us in her best _grande dame_ +manner: “_Mais il esi parfait_, _cet homme_.” He was perfect. On board +the _Tremolino_, wrapped up in a black _caban_, the picturesque cloak of +Mediterranean seamen, with those massive moustaches and his remorseless +eyes set off by the shadow of the deep hood, he looked piratical and +monkish and darkly initiated into the most awful mysteries of the sea. + + + + +XLIII. + + +Anyway, he was perfect, as Doña Rita had declared. The only thing +unsatisfactory (and even inexplicable) about our Dominic was his nephew, +Cesar. It was startling to see a desolate expression of shame veil the +remorseless audacity in the eyes of that man superior to all scruples and +terrors. + +“I would never have dared to bring him on board your balancelle,” he once +apologized to me. “But what am I to do? His mother is dead, and my +brother has gone into the bush.” + +In this way I learned that our Dominic had a brother. As to “going into +the bush,” this only means that a man has done his duty successfully in +the pursuit of a hereditary vendetta. The feud which had existed for +ages between the families of Cervoni and Brunaschi was so old that it +seemed to have smouldered out at last. One evening Pietro Brunaschi, +after a laborious day amongst his olive-trees, sat on a chair against the +wall of his house with a bowl of broth on his knees and a piece of bread +in his hand. Dominic’s brother, going home with a gun on his shoulder, +found a sudden offence in this picture of content and rest so obviously +calculated to awaken the feelings of hatred and revenge. He and Pietro +had never had any personal quarrel; but, as Dominic explained, “all our +dead cried out to him.” He shouted from behind a wall of stones, “O +Pietro! Behold what is coming!” And as the other looked up innocently +he took aim at the forehead and squared the old vendetta account so +neatly that, according to Dominic, the dead man continued to sit with the +bowl of broth on his knees and the piece of bread in his hand. + +This is why—because in Corsica your dead will not leave you +alone—Dominic’s brother had to go into the _maquis_, into the bush on the +wild mountain-side, to dodge the gendarmes for the insignificant +remainder of his life, and Dominic had charge of his nephew with a +mission to make a man of him. + +No more unpromising undertaking could be imagined. The very material for +the task seemed wanting. The Cervonis, if not handsome men, were good +sturdy flesh and blood. But this extraordinarily lean and livid youth +seemed to have no more blood in him than a snail. + +“Some cursed witch must have stolen my brother’s child from the cradle +and put that spawn of a starved devil in its place,” Dominic would say to +me. “Look at him! Just look at him!” + +To look at Cesar was not pleasant. His parchment skin, showing dead +white on his cranium through the thin wisps of dirty brown hair, seemed +to be glued directly and tightly upon his big bones, Without being in any +way deformed, he was the nearest approach which I have ever seen or could +imagine to what is commonly understood by the word “monster.” That the +source of the effect produced was really moral I have no doubt. An +utterly, hopelessly depraved nature was expressed in physical terms, that +taken each separately had nothing positively startling. You imagined him +clammily cold to the touch, like a snake. The slightest reproof, the +most mild and justifiable remonstrance, would be met by a resentful glare +and an evil shrinking of his thin dry upper lip, a snarl of hate to which +he generally added the agreeable sound of grinding teeth. + +It was for this venomous performance rather than for his lies, impudence, +and laziness that his uncle used to knock him down. It must not be +imagined that it was anything in the nature of a brutal assault. +Dominic’s brawny arm would be seen describing deliberately an ample +horizontal gesture, a dignified sweep, and Cesar would go over suddenly +like a ninepin—which was funny to see. But, once down, he would writhe +on the deck, gnashing his teeth in impotent rage—which was pretty +horrible to behold. And it also happened more than once that he would +disappear completely—which was startling to observe. This is the exact +truth. Before some of these majestic cuffs Cesar would go down and +vanish. He would vanish heels overhead into open hatchways, into +scuttles, behind up-ended casks, according to the place where he happened +to come into contact with his uncle’s mighty arm. + +Once—it was in the old harbour, just before the _Tremolino’s_ last +voyage—he vanished thus overboard to my infinite consternation. Dominic +and I had been talking business together aft, and Cesar had sneaked up +behind us to listen, for, amongst his other perfections, he was a +consummate eavesdropper and spy. At the sound of the heavy plop +alongside horror held me rooted to the spot; but Dominic stepped quietly +to the rail and leaned over, waiting for his nephew’s miserable head to +bob up for the first time. + +“Ohé, Cesar!” he yelled contemptuously to the spluttering wretch. “Catch +hold of that mooring hawser—_charogne_!” + +He approached me to resume the interrupted conversation. + +“What about Cesar?” I asked anxiously. + +“Canallia! Let him hang there,” was his answer. And he went on talking +over the business in hand calmly, while I tried vainly to dismiss from my +mind the picture of Cesar steeped to the chin in the water of the old +harbour, a decoction of centuries of marine refuse. I tried to dismiss +it, because the mere notion of that liquid made me feel very sick. +Presently Dominic, hailing an idle boatman, directed him to go and fish +his nephew out; and by-and-by Cesar appeared walking on board from the +quay, shivering, streaming with filthy water, with bits of rotten straws +in his hair and a piece of dirty orange-peel stranded on his shoulder. +His teeth chattered; his yellow eyes squinted balefully at us as he +passed forward. I thought it my duty to remonstrate. + +“Why are you always knocking him about, Dominic?” I asked. Indeed, I +felt convinced it was no earthly good—a sheer waste of muscular force. + +“I must try to make a man of him,” Dominic answered hopelessly. + +I restrained the obvious retort that in this way he ran the risk of +making, in the words of the immortal Mr. Mantalini, “a demnition damp, +unpleasant corpse of him.” + +“He wants to be a locksmith!” burst out Cervoni. “To learn how to pick +locks, I suppose,” he added with sardonic bitterness. + +“Why not let him be a locksmith?” I ventured. + +“Who would teach him?” he cried. “Where could I leave him?” he asked, +with a drop in his voice; and I had my first glimpse of genuine despair. +“He steals, you know, alas! _Par ta Madonne_! I believe he would put +poison in your food and mine—the viper!” + +He raised his face and both his clenched fists slowly to heaven. +However, Cesar never dropped poison into our cups. One cannot be sure, +but I fancy he went to work in another way. + +This voyage, of which the details need not be given, we had to range far +afield for sufficient reasons. Coming up from the South to end it with +the important and really dangerous part of the scheme in hand, we found +it necessary to look into Barcelona for certain definite information. +This appears like running one’s head into the very jaws of the lion, but +in reality it was not so. We had one or two high, influential friends +there, and many others humble but valuable because bought for good hard +cash. We were in no danger of being molested; indeed, the important +information reached us promptly by the hands of a Custom-house officer, +who came on board full of showy zeal to poke an iron rod into the layer +of oranges which made the visible part of our cargo in the hatchway. + +I forgot to mention before that the _Tremolino_ was officially known as a +fruit and cork-wood trader. The zealous officer managed to slip a useful +piece of paper into Dominic’s hand as he went ashore, and a few hours +afterwards, being off duty, he returned on board again athirst for drinks +and gratitude. He got both as a matter of course. While he sat sipping +his liqueur in the tiny cabin, Dominic plied him with questions as to the +whereabouts of the guardacostas. The preventive service afloat was +really the one for us to reckon with, and it was material for our success +and safety to know the exact position of the patrol craft in the +neighbourhood. The news could not have been more favourable. The +officer mentioned a small place on the coast some twelve miles off, +where, unsuspicious and unready, she was lying at anchor, with her sails +unbent, painting yards and scraping spars. Then he left us after the +usual compliments, smirking reassurringly over his shoulder. + +I had kept below pretty close all day from excess of prudence. The stake +played on that trip was big. + +“We are ready to go at once, but for Cesar, who has been missing ever +since breakfast,” announced Dominic to me in his slow, grim way. + +Where the fellow had gone, and why, we could not imagine. The usual +surmises in the case of a missing seaman did not apply to Cesar’s +absence. He was too odious for love, friendship, gambling, or even +casual intercourse. But once or twice he had wandered away like this +before. + +Dominic went ashore to look for him, but returned at the end of two hours +alone and very angry, as I could see by the token of the invisible smile +under his moustache being intensified. We wondered what had become of +the wretch, and made a hurried investigation amongst our portable +property. He had stolen nothing. + +“He will be back before long,” I said confidently. + +Ten minutes afterwards one of the men on deck called out loudly: + +“I can see him coming.” + +Cesar had only his shirt and trousers on. He had sold his coat, +apparently for pocket-money. + +“You knave!” was all Dominic said, with a terrible softness of voice. He +restrained his choler for a time. “Where have you been, vagabond?” he +asked menacingly. + +Nothing would induce Cesar to answer that question. It was as if he even +disdained to lie. He faced us, drawing back his lips and gnashing his +teeth, and did not shrink an inch before the sweep of Dominic’s arm. He +went down as if shot, of course. But this time I noticed that, when +picking himself up, he remained longer than usual on all fours, baring +his big teeth over his shoulder and glaring upwards at his uncle with a +new sort of hate in his round, yellow eyes. That permanent sentiment +seemed pointed at that moment by especial malice and curiosity. I became +quite interested. If he ever manages to put poison in the dishes, I +thought to myself, this is how he will look at us as we sit at our meal. +But I did not, of course, believe for a moment that he would ever put +poison in our food. He ate the same things himself. Moreover, he had no +poison. And I could not imagine a human being so blinded by cupidity as +to sell poison to such an atrocious creature. + + + + +XLIV. + + +We slipped out to sea quietly at dusk, and all through the night +everything went well. The breeze was gusty; a southerly blow was making +up. It was fair wind for our course. Now and then Dominic slowly and +rhythmically struck his hands together a few times, as if applauding the +performance of the _Tremolino_. The balancelle hummed and quivered as +she flew along, dancing lightly under our feet. + +At daybreak I pointed out to Dominic, amongst the several sail in view +running before the gathering storm, one particular vessel. The press of +canvas she carried made her loom up high, end-on, like a gray column +standing motionless directly in our wake. + +“Look at this fellow, Dominic,” I said. “He seems to be in a hurry.” + +The Padrone made no remark, but, wrapping his black cloak close about +him, stood up to look. His weather-tanned face, framed in the hood, had +an aspect of authority and challenging force, with the deep-set eyes +gazing far away fixedly, without a wink, like the intent, merciless, +steady eyes of a sea-bird. + +“_Chi va piano va sano_,” he remarked at last, with a derisive glance +over the side, in ironic allusion to our own tremendous speed. + +The _Tremolino_ was doing her best, and seemed to hardly touch the great +burst of foam over which she darted. I crouched down again to get some +shelter from the low bulwark. After more than half an hour of swaying +immobility expressing a concentrated, breathless watchfulness, Dominic +sank on the deck by my side. Within the monkish cowl his eyes gleamed +with a fierce expression which surprised me. All he said was: + +“He has come out here to wash the new paint off his yards, I suppose.” + +“What?” I shouted, getting up on my knees. “Is she the guardacosta?” + +The perpetual suggestion of a smile under Dominic’s piratical moustaches +seemed to become more accentuated—quite real, grim, actually almost +visible through the wet and uncurled hair. Judging by that symptom, he +must have been in a towering rage. But I could also see that he was +puzzled, and that discovery affected me disagreeably. Dominic puzzled! +For a long time, leaning against the bulwark, I gazed over the stern at +the gray column that seemed to stand swaying slightly in our wake always +at the same distance. + +Meanwhile Dominic, black and cowled, sat cross-legged on the deck, with +his back to the wind, recalling vaguely an Arab chief in his burnuss +sitting on the sand. Above his motionless figure the little cord and +tassel on the stiff point of the hood swung about inanely in the gale. +At last I gave up facing the wind and rain, and crouched down by his +side. I was satisfied that the sail was a patrol craft. Her presence +was not a thing to talk about, but soon, between two clouds charged with +hail-showers, a burst of sunshine fell upon her sails, and our men +discovered her character for themselves. From that moment I noticed that +they seemed to take no heed of each other or of anything else. They +could spare no eyes and no thought but for the slight column-shape astern +of us. Its swaying had become perceptible. For a moment she remained +dazzlingly white, then faded away slowly to nothing in a squall, only to +reappear again, nearly black, resembling a post stuck upright against the +slaty background of solid cloud. Since first noticed she had not gained +on us a foot. + +“She will never catch the _Tremolino_,” I said exultingly. + +Dominic did not look at me. He remarked absently, but justly, that the +heavy weather was in our pursuer’s favour. She was three times our size. +What we had to do was to keep our distance till dark, which we could +manage easily, and then haul off to seaward and consider the situation. +But his thoughts seemed to stumble in the darkness of some not-solved +enigma, and soon he fell silent. We ran steadily, wing-and-wing. Cape +San Sebastian nearly ahead seemed to recede from us in the squalls of +rain, and come out again to meet our rush, every time more distinct +between the showers. + +For my part I was by no means certain that this _gabelou_ (as our men +alluded to her opprobriously) was after us at all. There were nautical +difficulties in such a view which made me express the sanguine opinion +that she was in all innocence simply changing her station. At this +Dominic condescended to turn his head. + +“I tell you she is in chase,” he affirmed moodily, after one short glance +astern. + +I never doubted his opinion. But with all the ardour of a neophyte and +the pride of an apt learner I was at that time a great nautical casuist. + +“What I can’t understand,” I insisted subtly, “is how on earth, with this +wind, she has managed to be just where she was when we first made her +out. It is clear that she could not, and did not, gain twelve miles on +us during the night. And there are other impossibilities. . . .” + +Dominic had been sitting motionless, like an inanimate black cone posed +on the stern deck, near the rudder-head, with a small tassel fluttering +on its sharp point, and for a time he preserved the immobility of his +meditation. Then, bending over with a short laugh, he gave my ear the +bitter fruit of it. He understood everything now perfectly. She was +where we had seen her first, not because she had caught us up, but +because we had passed her during the night while she was already waiting +for us, hove-to, most likely, on our very track. + +“Do you understand—already?” Dominic muttered in a fierce undertone. +“Already! You know we left a good eight hours before we were expected to +leave, otherwise she would have been in time to lie in wait for us on the +other side of the Cape, and”—he snapped his teeth like a wolf close to my +face—“and she would have had us like—that.” + +I saw it all plainly enough now. They had eyes in their heads and all +their wits about them in that craft. We had passed them in the dark as +they jogged on easily towards their ambush with the idea that we were yet +far behind. At daylight, however, sighting a balancelle ahead under a +press of canvas, they had made sail in chase. But if that was so, then— + +Dominic seized my arm. + +“Yes, yes! She came out on an information—do you see, it?—on +information. . . . We have been sold—betrayed. Why? How? What for? We +always paid them all so well on shore. . . . No! But it is my head that +is going to burst.” + +He seemed to choke, tugged at the throat button of the cloak, jumped up +open-mouthed as if to hurl curses and denunciation, but instantly +mastered himself, and, wrapping up the cloak closer about him, sat down +on the deck again as quiet as ever. + +“Yes, it must be the work of some scoundrel ashore,” I observed. + +He pulled the edge of the hood well forward over his brow before he +muttered: + +“A scoundrel. . . . Yes. . . . It’s evident.” + +“Well,” I said, “they can’t get us, that’s clear.” + +“No,” he assented quietly, “they cannot.” + +We shaved the Cape very close to avoid an adverse current. On the other +side, by the effect of the land, the wind failed us so completely for a +moment that the _Tremolino’s_ two great lofty sails hung idle to the +masts in the thundering uproar of the seas breaking upon the shore we had +left behind. And when the returning gust filled them again, we saw with +amazement half of the new mainsail, which we thought fit to drive the +boat under before giving way, absolutely fly out of the bolt-ropes. We +lowered the yard at once, and saved it all, but it was no longer a sail; +it was only a heap of soaked strips of canvas cumbering the deck and +weighting the craft. Dominic gave the order to throw the whole lot +overboard. + +I would have had the yard thrown overboard, too, he said, leading me aft +again, “if it had not been for the trouble. Let no sign escape you,” he +continued, lowering his voice, “but I am going to tell you something +terrible. Listen: I have observed that the roping stitches on that sail +have been cut! You hear? Cut with a knife in many places. And yet it +stood all that time. Not enough cut. That flap did it at last. What +matters it? But look! there’s treachery seated on this very deck. By +the horns of the devil! seated here at our very backs. Do not turn, +signorine.” + +We were facing aft then. + +“What’s to be done?” I asked, appalled. + +“Nothing. Silence! Be a man, signorine.” + +“What else?” I said. + +To show I could be a man, I resolved to utter no sound as long as Dominic +himself had the force to keep his lips closed. Nothing but silence +becomes certain situations. Moreover, the experience of treachery seemed +to spread a hopeless drowsiness over my thoughts and senses. For an hour +or more we watched our pursuer surging out nearer and nearer from amongst +the squalls that sometimes hid her altogether. But even when not seen, +we felt her there like a knife at our throats. She gained on us +frightfully. And the _Tremolino_, in a fierce breeze and in much +smoother water, swung on easily under her one sail, with something +appallingly careless in the joyous freedom of her motion. Another +half-hour went by. I could not stand it any longer. + +“They will get the poor barky,” I stammered out suddenly, almost on the +verge of tears. + +Dominic stirred no more than a carving. A sense of catastrophic +loneliness overcame my inexperienced soul. The vision of my companions +passed before me. The whole Royalist gang was in Monte Carlo now, I +reckoned. And they appeared to me clear-cut and very small, with +affected voices and stiff gestures, like a procession of rigid +marionettes upon a toy stage. I gave a start. What was this? A +mysterious, remorseless whisper came from within the motionless black +hood at my side. + +“_Il faul la tuer_.” + +I heard it very well. + +“What do you say, Dominic?” I asked, moving nothing but my lips. + +And the whisper within the hood repeated mysteriously, “She must be +killed.” + +My heart began to beat violently. + +“That’s it,” I faltered out. “But how?” + +“You love her well?” + +“I do.” + +“Then you must find the heart for that work too. You must steer her +yourself, and I shall see to it that she dies quickly, without leaving as +much as a chip behind.” + +“Can you?” I murmured, fascinated by the black hood turned immovably over +the stern, as if in unlawful communion with that old sea of magicians, +slave-dealers, exiles and warriors, the sea of legends and terrors, where +the mariners of remote antiquity used to hear the restless shade of an +old wanderer weep aloud in the dark. + +“I know a rock,” whispered the initiated voice within the hood secretly. +“But—caution! It must be done before our men perceive what we are about. +Whom can we trust now? A knife drawn across the fore halyards would +bring the foresail down, and put an end to our liberty in twenty minutes. +And the best of our men may be afraid of drowning. There is our little +boat, but in an affair like this no one can be sure of being saved.” + +The voice ceased. We had started from Barcelona with our dinghy in tow; +afterwards it was too risky to try to get her in, so we let her take her +chance of the seas at the end of a comfortable scope of rope. Many times +she had seemed to us completely overwhelmed, but soon we would see her +bob up again on a wave, apparently as buoyant and whole as ever. + +“I understand,” I said softly. “Very well, Dominic. When?” + +“Not yet. We must get a little more in first,” answered the voice from +the hood in a ghostly murmur. + + + + +XLV. + + +It was settled. I had now the courage to turn about. Our men crouched +about the decks here and there with anxious, crestfallen faces, all +turned one way to watch the chaser. For the first time that morning I +perceived Cesar stretched out full length on the deck near the foremast +and wondered where he had been skulking till then. But he might in truth +have been at my elbow all the time for all I knew. We had been too +absorbed in watching our fate to pay attention to each other. Nobody had +eaten anything that morning, but the men had been coming constantly to +drink at the water-butt. + +I ran down to the cabin. I had there, put away in a locker, ten thousand +francs in gold of whose presence on board, so far as I was aware, not a +soul, except Dominic had the slightest inkling. When I emerged on deck +again Dominic had turned about and was peering from under his cowl at the +coast. Cape Creux closed the view ahead. To the left a wide bay, its +waters torn and swept by fierce squalls, seemed full of smoke. Astern +the sky had a menacing look. + +Directly he saw me, Dominic, in a placid tone, wanted to know what was +the matter. I came close to him and, looking as unconcerned as I could, +told him in an undertone that I had found the locker broken open and the +money-belt gone. Last evening it was still there. + +“What did you want to do with it?” he asked me, trembling violently. + +“Put it round my waist, of course,” I answered, amazed to hear his teeth +chattering. + +“Cursed gold!” he muttered. “The weight of the money might have cost you +your life, perhaps.” He shuddered. “There is no time to talk about that +now.” + +“I am ready.” + +“Not yet. I am waiting for that squall to come over,” he muttered. And +a few leaden minutes passed. + +The squall came over at last. Our pursuer, overtaken by a sort of murky +whirlwind, disappeared from our sight. The _Tremolino_ quivered and +bounded forward. The land ahead vanished, too, and we seemed to be left +alone in a world of water and wind. + +“_Prenez la barre_, _monsieur_,” Dominic broke the silence suddenly in an +austere voice. “Take hold of the tiller.” He bent his hood to my ear. +“The balancelle is yours. Your own hands must deal the blow. I—I have +yet another piece of work to do.” He spoke up loudly to the man who +steered. “Let the signorino take the tiller, and you with the others +stand by to haul the boat alongside quickly at the word.” + +The man obeyed, surprised, but silent. The others stirred, and pricked +up their ears at this. I heard their murmurs. “What now? Are we going +to run in somewhere and take to our heels? The Padrone knows what he is +doing.” + +Dominic went forward. He paused to look down at Cesar, who, as I have +said before, was lying full length face down by the foremast, then +stepped over him, and dived out of my sight under the foresail. I saw +nothing ahead. It was impossible for me to see anything except the +foresail open and still, like a great shadowy wing. But Dominic had his +bearings. His voice came to me from forward, in a just audible cry: + +“Now, signorino!” + +I bore on the tiller, as instructed before. Again I heard him faintly, +and then I had only to hold her straight. No ship ran so joyously to her +death before. She rose and fell, as if floating in space, and darted +forward, whizzing like an arrow. Dominic, stooping under the foot of the +foresail, reappeared, and stood steadying himself against the mast, with +a raised forefinger in an attitude of expectant attention. A second +before the shock his arm fell down by his side. At that I set my teeth. +And then— + +Talk of splintered planks and smashed timbers! This shipwreck lies upon +my soul with the dread and horror of a homicide, with the unforgettable +remorse of having crushed a living, faithful heart at a single blow. At +one moment the rush and the soaring swing of speed; the next a crash, and +death, stillness—a moment of horrible immobility, with the song of the +wind changed to a strident wail, and the heavy waters boiling up menacing +and sluggish around the corpse. I saw in a distracting minute the +foreyard fly fore and aft with a brutal swing, the men all in a heap, +cursing with fear, and hauling frantically at the line of the boat. With +a strange welcoming of the familiar I saw also Cesar amongst them, and +recognised Dominic’s old, well-known, effective gesture, the horizontal +sweep of his powerful arm. I recollect distinctly saying to myself, +“Cesar must go down, of course,” and then, as I was scrambling on all +fours, the swinging tiller I had let go caught me a crack under the ear, +and knocked me over senseless. + +I don’t think I was actually unconscious for more than a few minutes, but +when I came to myself the dinghy was driving before the wind into a +sheltered cove, two men just keeping her straight with their oars. +Dominic, with his arm round my shoulders, supported me in the +stern-sheets. + +We landed in a familiar part of the country. Dominic took one of the +boat’s oars with him. I suppose he was thinking of the stream we would +have presently to cross, on which there was a miserable specimen of a +punt, often robbed of its pole. But first of all we had to ascend the +ridge of land at the back of the Cape. He helped me up. I was dizzy. +My head felt very large and heavy. At the top of the ascent I clung to +him, and we stopped to rest. + +To the right, below us, the wide, smoky bay was empty. Dominic had kept +his word. There was not a chip to be seen around the black rock from +which the _Tremolino_, with her plucky heart crushed at one blow, had +slipped off into deep water to her eternal rest. The vastness of the +open sea was smothered in driving mists, and in the centre of the +thinning squall, phantom-like, under a frightful press of canvas, the +unconscious guardacosta dashed on, still chasing to the northward. Our +men were already descending the reverse slope to look for that punt which +we knew from experience was not always to be found easily. I looked +after them with dazed, misty eyes. One, two, three, four. + +“Dominic, where’s Cesar?” I cried. + +As if repulsing the very sound of the name, the Padrone made that ample, +sweeping, knocking-down gesture. I stepped back a pace and stared at him +fearfully. His open shirt uncovered his muscular neck and the thick hair +on his chest. He planted the oar upright in the soft soil, and rolling +up slowly his right sleeve, extended the bare arm before my face. + +“This,” he began, with an extreme deliberation, whose superhuman +restraint vibrated with the suppressed violence of his feelings, “is the +arm which delivered the blow. I am afraid it is your own gold that did +the rest. I forgot all about your money.” He clasped his hands together +in sudden distress. “I forgot, I forgot,” he repeated disconsolately. + +“Cesar stole the belt?” I stammered out, bewildered. + +“And who else? _Canallia_! He must have been spying on you for days. +And he did the whole thing. Absent all day in Barcelona. _Traditore_! +Sold his jacket—to hire a horse. Ha! ha! A good affair! I tell you it +was he who set him at us. . . .” + +Dominic pointed at the sea, where the guardacosta was a mere dark speck. +His chin dropped on his breast. + +“. . . On information,” he murmured, in a gloomy voice. “A Cervoni! Oh! +my poor brother! . . .” + +“And you drowned him,” I said feebly. + +“I struck once, and the wretch went down like a stone—with the gold. +Yes. But he had time to read in my eyes that nothing could save him +while I was alive. And had I not the right—I, Dominic Cervoni, Padrone, +who brought him aboard your fellucca—my nephew, a traitor?” + +He pulled the oar out of the ground and helped me carefully down the +slope. All the time he never once looked me in the face. He punted us +over, then shouldered the oar again and waited till our men were at some +distance before he offered me his arm. After we had gone a little way, +the fishing hamlet we were making for came into view. Dominic stopped. + +“Do you think you can make your way as far as the houses by yourself?” he +asked me quietly. + +“Yes, I think so. But why? Where are you going, Dominic?” + +“Anywhere. What a question! Signorino, you are but little more than a +boy to ask such a question of a man having this tale in his family. +_Ah_! _Traditore_! What made me ever own that spawn of a hungry devil +for our own blood! Thief, cheat, coward, liar—other men can deal with +that. But I was his uncle, and so . . . I wish he had poisoned +me—_charogne_! But this: that I, a confidential man and a Corsican, +should have to ask your pardon for bringing on board your vessel, of +which I was Padrone, a Cervoni, who has betrayed you—a traitor!—that is +too much. It is too much. Well, I beg your pardon; and you may spit in +Dominic’s face because a traitor of our blood taints us all. A theft may +be made good between men, a lie may be set right, a death avenged, but +what can one do to atone for a treachery like this? . . . Nothing.” + +He turned and walked away from me along the bank of the stream, +flourishing a vengeful arm and repeating to himself slowly, with savage +emphasis: “_Ah_! _Canaille_! _Canaille_! _Canaille_! . . .” He left +me there trembling with weakness and mute with awe. Unable to make a +sound, I gazed after the strangely desolate figure of that seaman +carrying an oar on his shoulder up a barren, rock-strewn ravine under the +dreary leaden sky of _Tremolino’s_ last day. Thus, walking deliberately, +with his back to the sea, Dominic vanished from my sight. + +With the quality of our desires, thoughts, and wonder proportioned to our +infinite littleness, we measure even time itself by our own stature. +Imprisoned in the house of personal illusions, thirty centuries in +mankind’s history seem less to look back upon than thirty years of our +own life. And Dominic Cervoni takes his place in my memory by the side +of the legendary wanderer on the sea of marvels and terrors, by the side +of the fatal and impious adventurer, to whom the evoked shade of the +soothsayer predicted a journey inland with an oar on his shoulder, till +he met men who had never set eyes on ships and oars. It seems to me I +can see them side by side in the twilight of an arid land, the +unfortunate possessors of the secret lore of the sea, bearing the emblem +of their hard calling on their shoulders, surrounded by silent and +curious men: even as I, too, having turned my back upon the sea, am +bearing those few pages in the twilight, with the hope of finding in an +inland valley the silent welcome of some patient listener. + + + + +XLVI. + + +“A FELLOW has now no chance of promotion unless he jumps into the muzzle +of a gun and crawls out of the touch-hole.” + +He who, a hundred years ago, more or less, pronounced the above words in +the uneasiness of his heart, thirsting for professional distinction, was +a young naval officer. Of his life, career, achievements, and end +nothing is preserved for the edification of his young successors in the +fleet of to-day—nothing but this phrase, which, sailor-like in the +simplicity of personal sentiment and strength of graphic expression, +embodies the spirit of the epoch. This obscure but vigorous testimony +has its price, its significance, and its lesson. It comes to us from a +worthy ancestor. We do not know whether he lived long enough for a +chance of that promotion whose way was so arduous. He belongs to the +great array of the unknown—who are great, indeed, by the sum total of the +devoted effort put out, and the colossal scale of success attained by +their insatiable and steadfast ambition. We do not know his name; we +only know of him what is material for us to know—that he was never +backward on occasions of desperate service. We have this on the +authority of a distinguished seaman of Nelson’s time. Departing this +life as Admiral of the Fleet on the eve of the Crimean War, Sir Thomas +Byam Martin has recorded for us amongst his all too short +autobiographical notes these few characteristic words uttered by one +young man of the many who must have felt that particular inconvenience of +a heroic age. + +The distinguished Admiral had lived through it himself, and was a good +judge of what was expected in those days from men and ships. A brilliant +frigate captain, a man of sound judgment, of dashing bravery and of +serene mind, scrupulously concerned for the welfare and honour of the +navy, he missed a larger fame only by the chances of the service. We may +well quote on this day the words written of Nelson, in the decline of a +well-spent life, by Sir T. B. Martin, who died just fifty years ago on +the very anniversary of Trafalgar. + +“Nelson’s nobleness of mind was a prominent and beautiful part of his +character. His foibles—faults if you like—will never be dwelt upon in +any memorandum of mine,” he declares, and goes on—“he whose splendid and +matchless achievements will be remembered with admiration while there is +gratitude in the hearts of Britons, or while a ship floats upon the +ocean; he whose example on the breaking out of the war gave so chivalrous +an impulse to the younger men of the service that all rushed into rivalry +of daring which disdained every warning of prudence, and led to acts of +heroic enterprise which tended greatly to exalt the glory of our nation.” + +These are his words, and they are true. The dashing young frigate +captain, the man who in middle age was nothing loth to give chase +single-handed in his seventy-four to a whole fleet, the man of enterprise +and consummate judgment, the old Admiral of the Fleet, the good and +trusted servant of his country under two kings and a queen, had felt +correctly Nelson’s influence, and expressed himself with precision out of +the fulness of his seaman’s heart. + +“Exalted,” he wrote, not “augmented.” And therein his feeling and his +pen captured the very truth. Other men there were ready and able to add +to the treasure of victories the British navy has given to the nation. +It was the lot of Lord Nelson to exalt all this glory. Exalt! the word +seems to be created for the man. + + + + +XLVII. + + +The British navy may well have ceased to count its victories. It is rich +beyond the wildest dreams of success and fame. It may well, rather, on a +culminating day of its history, cast about for the memory of some +reverses to appease the jealous fates which attend the prosperity and +triumphs of a nation. It holds, indeed, the heaviest inheritance that +has ever been entrusted to the courage and fidelity of armed men. + +It is too great for mere pride. It should make the seamen of to-day +humble in the secret of their hearts, and indomitable in their unspoken +resolution. In all the records of history there has never been a time +when a victorious fortune has been so faithful to men making war upon the +sea. And it must be confessed that on their part they knew how to be +faithful to their victorious fortune. They were exalted. They were +always watching for her smile; night or day, fair weather or foul, they +waited for her slightest sign with the offering of their stout hearts in +their hands. And for the inspiration of this high constancy they were +indebted to Lord Nelson alone. Whatever earthly affection he abandoned +or grasped, the great Admiral was always, before all, beyond all, a lover +of Fame. He loved her jealously, with an inextinguishable ardour and an +insatiable desire—he loved her with a masterful devotion and an infinite +trustfulness. In the plenitude of his passion he was an exacting lover. +And she never betrayed the greatness of his trust! She attended him to +the end of his life, and he died pressing her last gift (nineteen prizes) +to his heart. “Anchor, Hardy—anchor!” was as much the cry of an ardent +lover as of a consummate seaman. Thus he would hug to his breast the +last gift of Fame. + +It was this ardour which made him great. He was a flaming example to the +wooers of glorious fortune. There have been great officers before—Lord +Hood, for instance, whom he himself regarded as the greatest sea officer +England ever had. A long succession of great commanders opened the sea +to the vast range of Nelson’s genius. His time had come; and, after the +great sea officers, the great naval tradition passed into the keeping of +a great man. Not the least glory of the navy is that it understood +Nelson. Lord Hood trusted him. Admiral Keith told him: “We can’t spare +you either as Captain or Admiral.” Earl St. Vincent put into his hands, +untrammelled by orders, a division of his fleet, and Sir Hyde Parker gave +him two more ships at Copenhagen than he had asked for. So much for the +chiefs; the rest of the navy surrendered to him their devoted affection, +trust, and admiration. In return he gave them no less than his own +exalted soul. He breathed into them his own ardour and his own ambition. +In a few short years he revolutionized, not the strategy or tactics of +sea-warfare, but the very conception of victory itself. And this is +genius. In that alone, through the fidelity of his fortune and the power +of his inspiration, he stands unique amongst the leaders of fleets and +sailors. He brought heroism into the line of duty. Verily he is a +terrible ancestor. + +And the men of his day loved him. They loved him not only as victorious +armies have loved great commanders; they loved him with a more intimate +feeling as one of themselves. In the words of a contemporary, he had “a +most happy way of gaining the affectionate respect of all who had the +felicity to serve under his command.” + +To be so great and to remain so accessible to the affection of one’s +fellow-men is the mark of exceptional humanity. Lord Nelson’s greatness +was very human. It had a moral basis; it needed to feel itself +surrounded by the warm devotion of a band of brothers. He was vain and +tender. The love and admiration which the navy gave him so unreservedly +soothed the restlessness of his professional pride. He trusted them as +much as they trusted him. He was a seaman of seamen. Sir T. B. Martin +states that he never conversed with any officer who had served under +Nelson “without hearing the heartiest expressions of attachment to his +person and admiration of his frank and conciliatory manner to his +subordinates.” And Sir Robert Stopford, who commanded one of the ships +with which Nelson chased to the West Indies a fleet nearly double in +number, says in a letter: “We are half-starved and otherwise +inconvenienced by being so long out of port, but our reward is that we +are with Nelson.” + +This heroic spirit of daring and endurance, in which all public and +private differences were sunk throughout the whole fleet, is Lord +Nelson’s great legacy, triply sealed by the victorious impress of the +Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. This is a legacy whose value the +changes of time cannot affect. The men and the ships he knew how to lead +lovingly to the work of courage and the reward of glory have passed away, +but Nelson’s uplifting touch remains in the standard of achievement he +has set for all time. The principles of strategy may be immutable. It +is certain they have been, and shall be again, disregarded from timidity, +from blindness, through infirmity of purpose. The tactics of great +captains on land and sea can be infinitely discussed. The first object +of tactics is to close with the adversary on terms of the greatest +possible advantage; yet no hard-and-fast rules can be drawn from +experience, for this capital reason, amongst others—that the quality of +the adversary is a variable element in the problem. The tactics of Lord +Nelson have been amply discussed, with much pride and some profit. And +yet, truly, they are already of but archaic interest. A very few years +more and the hazardous difficulties of handling a fleet under canvas +shall have passed beyond the conception of seamen who hold in trust for +their country Lord Nelson’s legacy of heroic spirit. The change in the +character of the ships is too great and too radical. It is good and +proper to study the acts of great men with thoughtful reverence, but +already the precise intention of Lord Nelson’s famous memorandum seems to +lie under that veil which Time throws over the clearest conceptions of +every great art. It must not be forgotten that this was the first time +when Nelson, commanding in chief, had his opponents under way—the first +time and the last. Had he lived, had there been other fleets left to +oppose him, we would, perhaps, have learned something more of his +greatness as a sea officer. Nothing could have been added to his +greatness as a leader. All that can be affirmed is, that on no other day +of his short and glorious career was Lord Nelson more splendidly true to +his genius and to his country’s fortune. + + + + +XLVIII. + + +And yet the fact remains that, had the wind failed and the fleet lost +steerage way, or, worse still, had it been taken aback from the eastward, +with its leaders within short range of the enemy’s guns, nothing, it +seems, could have saved the headmost ships from capture or destruction. +No skill of a great sea officer would have availed in such a contingency. +Lord Nelson was more than that, and his genius would have remained +undiminished by defeat. But obviously tactics, which are so much at the +mercy of irremediable accident, must seem to a modern seaman a poor +matter of study. The Commander-in-Chief in the great fleet action that +will take its place next to the Battle of Trafalgar in the history of the +British navy will have no such anxiety, and will feel the weight of no +such dependence. For a hundred years now no British fleet has engaged +the enemy in line of battle. A hundred years is a long time, but the +difference of modern conditions is enormous. The gulf is great. Had the +last great fight of the English navy been that of the First of June, for +instance, had there been no Nelson’s victories, it would have been +wellnigh impassable. The great Admiral’s slight and passion-worn figure +stands at the parting of the ways. He had the audacity of genius, and a +prophetic inspiration. + +The modern naval man must feel that the time has come for the tactical +practice of the great sea officers of the past to be laid by in the +temple of august memories. The fleet tactics of the sailing days have +been governed by two points: the deadly nature of a raking fire, and the +dread, natural to a commander dependent upon the winds, to find at some +crucial moment part of his fleet thrown hopelessly to leeward. These two +points were of the very essence of sailing tactics, and these two points +have been eliminated from the modern tactical problem by the changes of +propulsion and armament. Lord Nelson was the first to disregard them +with conviction and audacity sustained by an unbounded trust in the men +he led. This conviction, this audacity and this trust stand out from +amongst the lines of the celebrated memorandum, which is but a +declaration of his faith in a crushing superiority of fire as the only +means of victory and the only aim of sound tactics. Under the +difficulties of the then existing conditions he strove for that, and for +that alone, putting his faith into practice against every risk. And in +that exclusive faith Lord Nelson appears to us as the first of the +moderns. + +Against every risk, I have said; and the men of to-day, born and bred to +the use of steam, can hardly realize how much of that risk was in the +weather. Except at the Nile, where the conditions were ideal for +engaging a fleet moored in shallow water, Lord Nelson was not lucky in +his weather. Practically it was nothing but a quite unusual failure of +the wind which cost him his arm during the Teneriffe expedition. On +Trafalgar Day the weather was not so much unfavourable as extremely +dangerous. + +It was one of these covered days of fitful sunshine, of light, unsteady +winds, with a swell from the westward, and hazy in general, but with the +land about the Cape at times distinctly visible. It has been my lot to +look with reverence upon the very spot more than once, and for many hours +together. All but thirty years ago, certain exceptional circumstances +made me very familiar for a time with that bight in the Spanish coast +which would be enclosed within a straight line drawn from Faro to +Spartel. My well-remembered experience has convinced me that, in that +corner of the ocean, once the wind has got to the northward of west (as +it did on the 20th, taking the British fleet aback), appearances of +westerly weather go for nothing, and that it is infinitely more likely to +veer right round to the east than to shift back again. It was in those +conditions that, at seven on the morning of the 21st, the signal for the +fleet to bear up and steer east was made. Holding a clear recollection +of these languid easterly sighs rippling unexpectedly against the run of +the smooth swell, with no other warning than a ten-minutes’ calm and a +queer darkening of the coast-line, I cannot think, without a gasp of +professional awe, of that fateful moment. Perhaps personal experience, +at a time of life when responsibility had a special freshness and +importance, has induced me to exaggerate to myself the danger of the +weather. The great Admiral and good seaman could read aright the signs +of sea and sky, as his order to prepare to anchor at the end of the day +sufficiently proves; but, all the same, the mere idea of these baffling +easterly airs, coming on at any time within half an hour or so, after the +firing of the first shot, is enough to take one’s breath away, with the +image of the rearmost ships of both divisions falling off, unmanageable, +broadside on to the westerly swell, and of two British Admirals in +desperate jeopardy. To this day I cannot free myself from the impression +that, for some forty minutes, the fate of the great battle hung upon a +breath of wind such as I have felt stealing from behind, as it were, upon +my cheek while engaged in looking to the westward for the signs of the +true weather. + +Never more shall British seamen going into action have to trust the +success of their valour to a breath of wind. The God of gales and +battles favouring her arms to the last, has let the sun of England’s +sailing-fleet and of its greatest master set in unclouded glory. And now +the old ships and their men are gone; the new ships and the new men, many +of them bearing the old, auspicious names, have taken up their watch on +the stern and impartial sea, which offers no opportunities but to those +who know how to grasp them with a ready hand and an undaunted heart. + + + + +XLIX. + + +This the navy of the Twenty Years’ War knew well how to do, and never +better than when Lord Nelson had breathed into its soul his own passion +of honour and fame. It was a fortunate navy. Its victories were no mere +smashing of helpless ships and massacres of cowed men. It was spared +that cruel favour, for which no brave heart had ever prayed. It was +fortunate in its adversaries. I say adversaries, for on recalling such +proud memories we should avoid the word “enemies,” whose hostile sound +perpetuates the antagonisms and strife of nations, so irremediable +perhaps, so fateful—and also so vain. War is one of the gifts of life; +but, alas! no war appears so very necessary when time has laid its +soothing hand upon the passionate misunderstandings and the passionate +desires of great peoples. “Le temps,” as a distinguished Frenchman has +said, “est un galant homme.” He fosters the spirit of concord and +justice, in whose work there is as much glory to be reaped as in the +deeds of arms. + +One of them disorganized by revolutionary changes, the other rusted in +the neglect of a decayed monarchy, the two fleets opposed to us entered +the contest with odds against them from the first. By the merit of our +daring and our faithfulness, and the genius of a great leader, we have in +the course of the war augmented our advantage and kept it to the last. +But in the exulting illusion of irresistible might a long series of +military successes brings to a nation the less obvious aspect of such a +fortune may perchance be lost to view. The old navy in its last days +earned a fame that no belittling malevolence dare cavil at. And this +supreme favour they owe to their adversaries alone. + +Deprived by an ill-starred fortune of that self-confidence which +strengthens the hands of an armed host, impaired in skill but not in +courage, it may safely be said that our adversaries managed yet to make a +better fight of it in 1797 than they did in 1793. Later still, the +resistance offered at the Nile was all, and more than all, that could be +demanded from seamen, who, unless blind or without understanding, must +have seen their doom sealed from the moment that the _Goliath_, bearing +up under the bows of the _Guerrier_, took up an inshore berth. The +combined fleets of 1805, just come out of port, and attended by nothing +but the disturbing memories of reverses, presented to our approach a +determined front, on which Captain Blackwood, in a knightly spirit, +congratulated his Admiral. By the exertions of their valour our +adversaries have but added a greater lustre to our arms. No friend could +have done more, for even in war, which severs for a time all the +sentiments of human fellowship, this subtle bond of association remains +between brave men—that the final testimony to the value of victory must +be received at the hands of the vanquished. + +Those who from the heat of that battle sank together to their repose in +the cool depths of the ocean would not understand the watchwords of our +day, would gaze with amazed eyes at the engines of our strife. All +passes, all changes: the animosity of peoples, the handling of fleets, +the forms of ships; and even the sea itself seems to wear a different and +diminished aspect from the sea of Lord Nelson’s day. In this ceaseless +rush of shadows and shades, that, like the fantastic forms of clouds cast +darkly upon the waters on a windy day, fly past us to fall headlong below +the hard edge of an implacable horizon, we must turn to the national +spirit, which, superior in its force and continuity to good and evil +fortune, can alone give us the feeling of an enduring existence and of an +invincible power against the fates. + +Like a subtle and mysterious elixir poured into the perishable clay of +successive generations, it grows in truth, splendour, and potency with +the march of ages. In its incorruptible flow all round the globe of the +earth it preserves from the decay and forgetfulness of death the +greatness of our great men, and amongst them the passionate and gentle +greatness of Nelson, the nature of whose genius was, on the faith of a +brave seaman and distinguished Admiral, such as to “Exalt the glory of +our nation.” + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIRROR OF THE SEA*** + + +******* This file should be named 1058-0.txt or 1058-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/5/1058 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1059-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1059-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7522795c --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1059-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6857 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1059 *** + +[Illustration] + + + + +The World Set Free + +by H.G. Wells + + +We Are All Things That Make And Pass, +Striving Upon A Hidden Mission, +Out To The Open Sea. + +TO +Frederick Soddy’s +‘Interpretation Of Radium’ +This Story, +Which Owes Long Passages +To The Eleventh Chapter Of That Book, +Acknowledges And Inscribes Itself + + +Contents + + PREFACE + PRELUDE. THE SUN SNARERS + CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY + CHAPTER THE SECOND. THE LAST WAR + CHAPTER THE THIRD. THE ENDING OF WAR + CHAPTER THE FOURTH. THE NEW PHASE + CHAPTER THE FIFTH. THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN + + + + +PREFACE + + +_The World Set Free_ was written in 1913 and published early in 1914, +and it is the latest of a series of three fantasias of possibility, +stories which all turn on the possible developments in the future of +some contemporary force or group of forces. _The World Set Free_ was +written under the immediate shadow of the Great War. Every intelligent +person in the world felt that disaster was impending and knew no way of +averting it, but few of us realised in the earlier half of 1914 how +near the crash was to us. The reader will be amused to find that here +it is put off until the year 1956. He may naturally want to know the +reason for what will seem now a quite extraordinary delay. As a +prophet, the author must confess he has always been inclined to be +rather a slow prophet. The war aeroplane in the world of reality, for +example, beat the forecast in _Anticipations_ by about twenty years or +so. I suppose a desire not to shock the sceptical reader’s sense of use +and wont and perhaps a less creditable disposition to hedge, have +something to do with this dating forward of one’s main events, but in +the particular case of _The World Set Free_ there was, I think, another +motive in holding the Great War back, and that was to allow the chemist +to get well forward with his discovery of the release of atomic energy. +1956—or for that matter 2056—may be none too late for that crowning +revolution in human potentialities. And apart from this procrastination +of over forty years, the guess at the opening phase of the war was +fairly lucky; the forecast of an alliance of the Central Empires, the +opening campaign through the Netherlands, and the despatch of the +British Expeditionary Force were all justified before the book had been +published six months. And the opening section of Chapter the Second +remains now, after the reality has happened, a fairly adequate +diagnosis of the essentials of the matter. One happy hit (in Chapter +the Second, Section 2), on which the writer may congratulate himself, +is the forecast that under modern conditions it would be quite +impossible for any great general to emerge to supremacy and concentrate +the enthusiasm of the armies of either side. There could be no +Alexanders or Napoleons. And we soon heard the scientific corps +muttering, ‘These old fools,’ exactly as it is here foretold. + +These, however, are small details, and the misses in the story far +outnumber the hits. It is the main thesis which is still of interest +now; the thesis that because of the development of scientific +knowledge, separate sovereign states and separate sovereign empires are +no longer possible in the world, that to attempt to keep on with the +old system is to heap disaster upon disaster for mankind and perhaps to +destroy our race altogether. The remaining interest of this book now is +the sustained validity of this thesis and the discussion of the +possible ending of war on the earth. I have supposed a sort of epidemic +of sanity to break out among the rulers of states and the leaders of +mankind. I have represented the native common sense of the French mind +and of the English mind—for manifestly King Egbert is meant to be +‘God’s Englishman’—leading mankind towards a bold and resolute effort +of salvage and reconstruction. Instead of which, as the school book +footnotes say, compare to-day’s newspaper. Instead of a frank and +honourable gathering of leading men, Englishman meeting German and +Frenchman Russian, brothers in their offences and in their disaster, +upon the hills of Brissago, beheld in Geneva at the other end of +Switzerland a poor little League of (Allied) Nations (excluding the +United States, Russia, and most of the ‘subject peoples’ of the world), +meeting obscurely amidst a world-wide disregard to make impotent +gestures at the leading problems of the debacle. Either the disaster +has not been vast enough yet or it has not been swift enough to inflict +the necessary moral shock and achieve the necessary moral revulsion. +Just as the world of 1913 was used to an increasing prosperity and +thought that increase would go on for ever, so now it would seem the +world is growing accustomed to a steady glide towards social +disintegration, and thinks that that too can go on continually and +never come to a final bump. So soon do use and wont establish +themselves, and the most flaming and thunderous of lessons pale into +disregard. + +The question whether a Leblanc is still possible, the question whether +it is still possible to bring about an outbreak of creative sanity in +mankind, to avert this steady glide to destruction, is now one of the +most urgent in the world. It is clear that the writer is +temperamentally disposed to hope that there is such a possibility. But +he has to confess that he sees few signs of any such breadth of +understanding and steadfastness of will as an effectual effort to turn +the rush of human affairs demands. The inertia of dead ideas and old +institutions carries us on towards the rapids. Only in one direction is +there any plain recognition of the idea of a human commonweal as +something overriding any national and patriotic consideration, and that +is in the working class movement throughout the world. And labour +internationalism is closely bound up with conceptions of a profound +social revolution. If world peace is to be attained through labour +internationalism, it will have to be attained at the price of the +completest social and economic reconstruction and by passing through a +phase of revolution that will certainly be violent, that may be very +bloody, which may be prolonged through a long period, and may in the +end fail to achieve anything but social destruction. Nevertheless, the +fact remains that it is in the labour class, and the labour class +alone, that any conception of a world rule and a world peace has so far +appeared. The dream of _The World Set Free_, a dream of highly educated +and highly favoured leading and ruling men, voluntarily setting +themselves to the task of reshaping the world, has thus far remained a +dream. + +H. G. WELLS. + +EASTON GLEBE, DUNMOW, 1921. + + + + +PRELUDE +THE SUN SNARERS + + +Section I + +The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external +power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal. From the outset of +his terrestrial career we find him supplementing the natural strength +and bodily weapons of a beast by the heat of burning and the rough +implement of stone. So he passed beyond the ape. From that he expands. +Presently he added to himself the power of the horse and the ox, he +borrowed the carrying strength of water and the driving force of the +wind, he quickened his fire by blowing, and his simple tools, pointed +first with copper and then with iron, increased and varied and became +more elaborate and efficient. He sheltered his heat in houses and made +his way easier by paths and roads. He complicated his social +relationships and increased his efficiency by the division of labour. +He began to store up knowledge. Contrivance followed contrivance, each +making it possible for a man to do more. Always down the lengthening +record, save for a set-back ever and again, he is doing more.... A +quarter of a million years ago the utmost man was a savage, a being +scarcely articulate, sheltering in holes in the rocks, armed with a +rough-hewn flint or a fire-pointed stick, naked, living in small family +groups, killed by some younger man so soon as his first virile activity +declined. Over most of the great wildernesses of earth you would have +sought him in vain; only in a few temperate and sub-tropical river +valleys would you have found the squatting lairs of his little herds, a +male, a few females, a child or so. + +He knew no future then, no kind of life except the life he led. He fled +the cave-bear over the rocks full of iron ore and the promise of sword +and spear; he froze to death upon a ledge of coal; he drank water muddy +with the clay that would one day make cups of porcelain; he chewed the +ear of wild wheat he had plucked and gazed with a dim speculation in +his eyes at the birds that soared beyond his reach. Or suddenly he +became aware of the scent of another male and rose up roaring, his +roars the formless precursors of moral admonitions. For he was a great +individualist, that original, he suffered none other than himself. + +So through the long generations, this heavy precursor, this ancestor of +all of us, fought and bred and perished, changing almost imperceptibly. + +Yet he changed. That keen chisel of necessity which sharpened the +tiger’s claw age by age and fined down the clumsy Orchippus to the +swift grace of the horse, was at work upon him—is at work upon him +still. The clumsier and more stupidly fierce among him were killed +soonest and oftenest; the finer hand, the quicker eye, the bigger +brain, the better balanced body prevailed; age by age, the implements +were a little better made, the man a little more delicately adjusted to +his possibilities. He became more social; his herd grew larger; no +longer did each man kill or drive out his growing sons; a system of +taboos made them tolerable to him, and they revered him alive and soon +even after he was dead, and were his allies against the beasts and the +rest of mankind. (But they were forbidden to touch the women of the +tribe, they had to go out and capture women for themselves, and each +son fled from his stepmother and hid from her lest the anger of the Old +Man should be roused. All the world over, even to this day, these +ancient inevitable taboos can be traced.) And now instead of caves came +huts and hovels, and the fire was better tended and there were +wrappings and garments; and so aided, the creature spread into colder +climates, carrying food with him, storing food—until sometimes the +neglected grass-seed sprouted again and gave a first hint of +agriculture. + +And already there were the beginnings of leisure and thought. + +Man began to think. There were times when he was fed, when his lusts +and his fears were all appeased, when the sun shone upon the +squatting-place and dim stirrings of speculation lit his eyes. He +scratched upon a bone and found resemblance and pursued it and began +pictorial art, moulded the soft, warm clay of the river brink between +his fingers, and found a pleasure in its patternings and repetitions, +shaped it into the form of vessels, and found that it would hold water. +He watched the streaming river, and wondered from what bountiful breast +this incessant water came; he blinked at the sun and dreamt that +perhaps he might snare it and spear it as it went down to its +resting-place amidst the distant hills. Then he was roused to convey to +his brother that once indeed he had done so—at least that some one had +done so—he mixed that perhaps with another dream almost as daring, that +one day a mammoth had been beset; and therewith began fiction—pointing +a way to achievement—and the august prophetic procession of tales. + +For scores and hundreds of centuries, for myriads of generations that +life of our fathers went on. From the beginning to the ripening of that +phase of human life, from the first clumsy eolith of rudely chipped +flint to the first implements of polished stone, was two or three +thousand centuries, ten or fifteen thousand generations. So slowly, by +human standards, did humanity gather itself together out of the dim +intimations of the beast. And that first glimmering of speculation, +that first story of achievement, that story-teller bright-eyed and +flushed under his matted hair, gesticulating to his gaping, incredulous +listener, gripping his wrist to keep him attentive, was the most +marvellous beginning this world has ever seen. It doomed the mammoths, +and it began the setting of that snare that shall catch the sun. + +Section 2 + +That dream was but a moment in a man’s life, whose proper business it +seemed was to get food and kill his fellows and beget after the manner +of all that belongs to the fellowship of the beasts. About him, hidden +from him by the thinnest of veils, were the untouched sources of Power, +whose magnitude we scarcely do more than suspect even to-day, Power +that could make his every conceivable dream come real. But the feet of +the race were in the way of it, though he died blindly unknowing. + +At last, in the generous levels of warm river valleys, where food is +abundant and life very easy, the emerging human overcoming his earlier +jealousies, becoming, as necessity persecuted him less urgently, more +social and tolerant and amenable, achieved a larger community. There +began a division of labour, certain of the older men specialised in +knowledge and direction, a strong man took the fatherly leadership in +war, and priest and king began to develop their _rôles_ in the opening +drama of man’s history. The priest’s solicitude was seed-time and +harvest and fertility, and the king ruled peace and war. In a hundred +river valleys about the warm, temperate zone of the earth there were +already towns and temples, a score of thousand years ago. They +flourished unrecorded, ignoring the past and unsuspicious of the +future, for as yet writing had still to begin. + +Very slowly did man increase his demand upon the illimitable wealth of +Power that offered itself on every hand to him. He tamed certain +animals, he developed his primordially haphazard agriculture into a +ritual, he added first one metal to his resources and then another, +until he had copper and tin and iron and lead and gold and silver to +supplement his stone, he hewed and carved wood, made pottery, paddled +down his river until he came to the sea, discovered the wheel and made +the first roads. But his chief activity for a hundred centuries and +more, was the subjugation of himself and others to larger and larger +societies. The history of man is not simply the conquest of external +power; it is first the conquest of those distrusts and fiercenesses, +that self-concentration and intensity of animalism, that tie his hands +from taking his inheritance. The ape in us still resents association. +From the dawn of the age of polished stone to the achievement of the +Peace of the World, man’s dealings were chiefly with himself and his +fellow man, trading, bargaining, law-making, propitiating, enslaving, +conquering, exterminating, and every little increment in Power, he +turned at once and always turns to the purposes of this confused +elaborate struggle to socialise. To incorporate and comprehend his +fellow men into a community of purpose became the last and greatest of +his instincts. Already before the last polished phase of the stone age +was over he had become a political animal. He made astonishingly +far-reaching discoveries within himself, first of counting and then of +writing and making records, and with that his town communities began to +stretch out to dominion; in the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates, and +the great Chinese rivers, the first empires and the first written laws +had their beginnings. Men specialised for fighting and rule as soldiers +and knights. Later, as ships grew seaworthy, the Mediterranean which +had been a barrier became a highway, and at last out of a tangle of +pirate polities came the great struggle of Carthage and Rome. The +history of Europe is the history of the victory and breaking up of the +Roman Empire. Every ascendant monarch in Europe up to the last, aped +Cæsar and called himself Kaiser or Tsar or Imperator or Kasir-i-Hind. +Measured by the duration of human life it is a vast space of time +between that first dynasty in Egypt and the coming of the aeroplane, +but by the scale that looks back to the makers of the eoliths, it is +all of it a story of yesterday. + +Now during this period of two hundred centuries or more, this period of +the warring states, while men’s minds were chiefly preoccupied by +politics and mutual aggression, their progress in the acquirement of +external Power was slow—rapid in comparison with the progress of the +old stone age, but slow in comparison with this new age of systematic +discovery in which we live. They did not very greatly alter the weapons +and tactics of warfare, the methods of agriculture, seamanship, their +knowledge of the habitable globe, or the devices and utensils of +domestic life between the days of the early Egyptians and the days when +Christopher Columbus was a child. Of course, there were inventions and +changes, but there were also retrogressions; things were found out and +then forgotten again; it was, on the whole, a progress, but it +contained no steps; the peasant life was the same, there were already +priests and lawyers and town craftsmen and territorial lords and +rulers, doctors, wise women, soldiers and sailors in Egypt and China +and Assyria and south-eastern Europe at the beginning of that period, +and they were doing much the same things and living much the same life +as they were in Europe in A.D. 1500. The English excavators of the year +A.D. 1900 could delve into the remains of Babylon and Egypt and +disinter legal documents, domestic accounts, and family correspondence +that they could read with the completest sympathy. There were great +religious and moral changes throughout the period, empires and +republics replaced one another, Italy tried a vast experiment in +slavery, and indeed slavery was tried again and again and failed and +failed and was still to be tested again and rejected again in the New +World; Christianity and Mohammedanism swept away a thousand more +specialised cults, but essentially these were progressive adaptations +of mankind to material conditions that must have seemed fixed for ever. +The idea of revolutionary changes in the material conditions of life +would have been entirely strange to human thought through all that +time. + +Yet the dreamer, the story-teller, was there still, waiting for his +opportunity amidst the busy preoccupations, the comings and goings, the +wars and processions, the castle building and cathedral building, the +arts and loves, the small diplomacies and incurable feuds, the crusades +and trading journeys of the middle ages. He no longer speculated with +the untrammelled freedom of the stone-age savage; authoritative +explanations of everything barred his path; but he speculated with a +better brain, sat idle and gazed at circling stars in the sky and mused +upon the coin and crystal in his hand. Whenever there was a certain +leisure for thought throughout these times, then men were to be found +dissatisfied with the appearances of things, dissatisfied with the +assurances of orthodox belief, uneasy with a sense of unread symbols in +the world about them, questioning the finality of scholastic wisdom. +Through all the ages of history there were men to whom this whisper had +come of hidden things about them. They could no longer lead ordinary +lives nor content themselves with the common things of this world once +they had heard this voice. And mostly they believed not only that all +this world was as it were a painted curtain before things unguessed at, +but that these secrets were Power. Hitherto Power had come to men by +chance, but now there were these seekers seeking, seeking among rare +and curious and perplexing objects, sometimes finding some odd +utilisable thing, sometimes deceiving themselves with fancied +discovery, sometimes pretending to find. The world of every day laughed +at these eccentric beings, or found them annoying and ill-treated them, +or was seized with fear and made saints and sorcerers and warlocks of +them, or with covetousness and entertained them hopefully; but for the +greater part heeded them not at all. Yet they were of the blood of him +who had first dreamt of attacking the mammoth; every one of them was of +his blood and descent; and the thing they sought, all unwittingly, was +the snare that will some day catch the sun. + +Section 3 + +Such a man was that Leonardo da Vinci, who went about the court of +Sforza in Milan in a state of dignified abstraction. His common-place +books are full of prophetic subtlety and ingenious anticipations of the +methods of the early aviators. Dürer was his parallel and Roger +Bacon—whom the Franciscans silenced—of his kindred. Such a man again in +an earlier city was Hero of Alexandria, who knew of the power of steam +nineteen hundred years before it was first brought into use. And +earlier still was Archimedes of Syracuse, and still earlier the +legendary Daedalus of Cnossos. All up and down the record of history +whenever there was a little leisure from war and brutality the seekers +appeared. And half the alchemists were of their tribe. + +When Roger Bacon blew up his first batch of gunpowder one might have +supposed that men would have gone at once to the explosive engine. But +they could see nothing of the sort. They were not yet beginning to +think of seeing things; their metallurgy was all too poor to make such +engines even had they thought of them. For a time they could not make +instruments sound enough to stand this new force even for so rough a +purpose as hurling a missile. Their first guns had barrels of coopered +timber, and the world waited for more than five hundred years before +the explosive engine came. + +Even when the seekers found, it was at first a long journey before the +world could use their findings for any but the roughest, most obvious +purposes. If man in general was not still as absolutely blind to the +unconquered energies about him as his paleolithic precursor, he was at +best purblind. + +Section 4 + +The latent energy of coal and the power of steam waited long on the +verge of discovery, before they began to influence human lives. + +There were no doubt many such devices as Hero’s toys devised and +forgotten, time after time, in courts and palaces, but it needed that +coal should be mined and burning with plenty of iron at hand before it +dawned upon men that here was something more than a curiosity. And it +is to be remarked that the first recorded suggestion for the use of +steam was in war; there is an Elizabethan pamphlet in which it is +proposed to fire shot out of corked iron bottles full of heated water. +The mining of coal for fuel, the smelting of iron upon a larger scale +than men had ever done before, the steam pumping engine, the +steam-engine and the steam-boat, followed one another in an order that +had a kind of logical necessity. It is the most interesting and +instructive chapter in the history of the human intelligence, the +history of steam from its beginning as a fact in human consciousness to +the perfection of the great turbine engines that preceded the +utilisation of intra-molecular power. Nearly every human being must +have seen steam, seen it incuriously for many thousands of years; the +women in particular were always heating water, boiling it, seeing it +boil away, seeing the lids of vessels dance with its fury; millions of +people at different times must have watched steam pitching rocks out of +volcanoes like cricket balls and blowing pumice into foam, and yet you +may search the whole human record through, letters, books, +inscriptions, pictures, for any glimmer of a realisation that here was +force, here was strength to borrow and use.... Then suddenly man woke +up to it, the railways spread like a network over the globe, the ever +enlarging iron steamships began their staggering fight against wind and +wave. + +Steam was the first-comer in the new powers, it was the beginning of +the Age of Energy that was to close the long history of the Warring +States. + +But for a long time men did not realise the importance of this novelty. +They would not recognise, they were not able to recognise that anything +fundamental had happened to their immemorial necessities. They called +the steam-engine the ‘iron horse’ and pretended that they had made the +most partial of substitutions. Steam machinery and factory production +were visibly revolutionising the conditions of industrial production, +population was streaming steadily in from the country-side and +concentrating in hitherto unthought-of masses about a few city centres, +food was coming to them over enormous distances upon a scale that made +the one sole precedent, the corn ships of imperial Rome, a petty +incident; and a huge migration of peoples between Europe and Western +Asia and America was in Progress, and—nobody seems to have realised +that something new had come into human life, a strange swirl different +altogether from any previous circling and mutation, a swirl like the +swirl when at last the lock gates begin to open after a long phase of +accumulating water and eddying inactivity.... + +The sober Englishman at the close of the nineteenth century could sit +at his breakfast-table, decide between tea from Ceylon or coffee from +Brazil, devour an egg from France with some Danish ham, or eat a New +Zealand chop, wind up his breakfast with a West Indian banana, glance +at the latest telegrams from all the world, scrutinise the prices +current of his geographically distributed investments in South Africa, +Japan, and Egypt, and tell the two children he had begotten (in the +place of his father’s eight) that he thought the world changed very +little. They must play cricket, keep their hair cut, go to the old +school he had gone to, shirk the lessons he had shirked, learn a few +scraps of Horace and Virgil and Homer for the confusion of cads, and +all would be well with them.... + +Section 5 + +Electricity, though it was perhaps the earlier of the two to be +studied, invaded the common life of men a few decades after the +exploitation of steam. To electricity also, in spite of its provocative +nearness all about him, mankind had been utterly blind for incalculable +ages. Could anything be more emphatic than the appeal of electricity +for attention? It thundered at man’s ears, it signalled to him in +blinding flashes, occasionally it killed him, and he could not see it +as a thing that concerned him enough to merit study. It came into the +house with the cat on any dry day and crackled insinuatingly whenever +he stroked her fur. It rotted his metals when he put them together.... +There is no single record that any one questioned why the cat’s fur +crackles or why hair is so unruly to brush on a frosty day, before the +sixteenth century. For endless years man seems to have done his very +successful best not to think about it at all; until this new spirit of +the Seeker turned itself to these things. + +How often things must have been seen and dismissed as unimportant, +before the speculative eye and the moment of vision came! It was +Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth’s court physician, who first puzzled his +brains with rubbed amber and bits of glass and silk and shellac, and so +began the quickening of the human mind to the existence of this +universal presence. And even then the science of electricity remained a +mere little group of curious facts for nearly two hundred years, +connected perhaps with magnetism—a mere guess that—perhaps with the +lightning. Frogs’ legs must have hung by copper hooks from iron +railings and twitched upon countless occasions before Galvani saw them. +Except for the lightning conductor, it was 250 years after Gilbert +before electricity stepped out of the cabinet of scientific curiosities +into the life of the common man.... Then suddenly, in the half-century +between 1880 and 1930, it ousted the steam-engine and took over +traction, it ousted every other form of household heating, abolished +distance with the perfected wireless telephone and the +telephotograph.... + +Section 6 + +And there was an extraordinary mental resistance to discovery and +invention for at least a hundred years after the scientific revolution +had begun. Each new thing made its way into practice against a +scepticism that amounted at times to hostility. One writer upon these +subjects gives a funny little domestic conversation that happened, he +says, in the year 1898, within ten years, that is to say, of the time +when the first aviators were fairly on the wing. He tells us how he sat +at his desk in his study and conversed with his little boy. + +His little boy was in profound trouble. He felt he had to speak very +seriously to his father, and as he was a kindly little boy he did not +want to do it too harshly. + +This is what happened. + +‘I wish, Daddy,’ he said, coming to his point, ‘that you wouldn’t write +all this stuff about flying. The chaps rot me.’ + +‘Yes!’ said his father. + +‘And old Broomie, the Head I mean, he rots me. Everybody rots me.’ + +‘But there is going to be flying—quite soon.’ + +The little boy was too well bred to say what he thought of that. +‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t write about it.’ + +‘You’ll fly—lots of times—before you die,’ the father assured him. + +The little boy looked unhappy. + +The father hesitated. Then he opened a drawer and took out a blurred +and under-developed photograph. ‘Come and look at this,’ he said. + +The little boy came round to him. The photograph showed a stream and a +meadow beyond, and some trees, and in the air a black, pencil-like +object with flat wings on either side of it. It was the first record of +the first apparatus heavier than air that ever maintained itself in the +air by mechanical force. Across the margin was written: ‘Here we go up, +up, up—from S. P. Langley, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.’ + +The father watched the effect of this reassuring document upon his son. +‘Well?’ he said. + +‘That,’ said the schoolboy, after reflection, ‘is only a model.’ + +‘Model to-day, man to-morrow.’ + +The boy seemed divided in his allegiance. Then he decided for what he +believed quite firmly to be omniscience. ‘But old Broomie,’ he said, +‘he told all the boys in his class only yesterday, “no man will ever +fly.” No one, he says, who has ever shot grouse or pheasants on the +wing would ever believe anything of the sort....’ + +Yet that boy lived to fly across the Atlantic and edit his father’s +reminiscences. + +Section 7 + +At the close of the nineteenth century as a multitude of passages in +the literature of that time witness, it was thought that the fact that +man had at last had successful and profitable dealings with the steam +that scalded him and the electricity that flashed and banged about the +sky at him, was an amazing and perhaps a culminating exercise of his +intelligence and his intellectual courage. The air of ‘Nunc Dimittis’ +sounds in same of these writings. ‘The great things are discovered,’ +wrote Gerald Brown in his summary of the nineteenth century. ‘For us +there remains little but the working out of detail.’ The spirit of the +seeker was still rare in the world; education was unskilled, +unstimulating, scholarly, and but little valued, and few people even +then could have realised that Science was still but the flimsiest of +trial sketches and discovery scarcely beginning. No one seems to have +been afraid of science and its possibilities. Yet now where there had +been but a score or so of seekers, there were many thousands, and for +one needle of speculation that had been probing the curtain of +appearances in 1800, there were now hundreds. And already Chemistry, +which had been content with her atoms and molecules for the better part +of a century, was preparing herself for that vast next stride that was +to revolutionise the whole life of man from top to bottom. + +One realises how crude was the science of that time when one considers +the case of the composition of air. This was determined by that strange +genius and recluse, that man of mystery, that disembowelled +intelligence, Henry Cavendish, towards the end of the eighteenth +century. So far as he was concerned the work was admirably done. He +separated all the known ingredients of the air with a precision +altogether remarkable; he even put it upon record that he had some +doubt about the purity of the nitrogen. For more than a hundred years +his determination was repeated by chemists all the world over, his +apparatus was treasured in London, he became, as they used to say, +‘classic,’ and always, at every one of the innumerable repetitions of +his experiment, that sly element argon was hiding among the nitrogen +(and with a little helium and traces of other substances, and indeed +all the hints that might have led to the new departures of the +twentieth-century chemistry), and every time it slipped unobserved +through the professorial fingers that repeated his procedure. + +Is it any wonder then with this margin of inaccuracy, that up to the +very dawn of the twentieth-century scientific discovery was still +rather a procession of happy accidents than an orderly conquest of +nature? + +Yet the spirit of seeking was spreading steadily through the world. +Even the schoolmaster could not check it. For the mere handful who grew +up to feel wonder and curiosity about the secrets of nature in the +nineteenth century, there were now, at the beginning of the twentieth, +myriads escaping from the limitations of intellectual routine and the +habitual life, in Europe, in America, North and South, in Japan, in +China, and all about the world. + +It was in 1910 that the parents of young Holsten, who was to be called +by a whole generation of scientific men, ‘the greatest of European +chemists,’ were staying in a villa near Santo Domenico, between Fiesole +and Florence. He was then only fifteen, but he was already +distinguished as a mathematician and possessed by a savage appetite to +understand. He had been particularly attracted by the mystery of +phosphorescence and its apparent unrelatedness to every other source of +light. He was to tell afterwards in his reminiscences how he watched +the fireflies drifting and glowing among the dark trees in the garden +of the villa under the warm blue night sky of Italy; how he caught and +kept them in cages, dissected them, first studying the general anatomy +of insects very elaborately, and how he began to experiment with the +effect of various gases and varying temperature upon their light. Then +the chance present of a little scientific toy invented by Sir William +Crookes, a toy called the spinthariscope, on which radium particles +impinge upon sulphide of zinc and make it luminous, induced him to +associate the two sets of phenomena. It was a happy association for his +inquiries. It was a rare and fortunate thing, too, that any one with +the mathematical gift should have been taken by these curiosities. + +Section 8 + +And while the boy Holsten was mooning over his fireflies at Fiesole, a +certain professor of physics named Rufus was giving a course of +afternoon lectures upon Radium and Radio-Activity in Edinburgh. They +were lectures that had attracted a very considerable amount of +attention. He gave them in a small lecture-theatre that had become more +and more congested as his course proceeded. At his concluding +discussion it was crowded right up to the ceiling at the back, and +there people were standing, standing without any sense of fatigue, so +fascinating did they find his suggestions. One youngster in particular, +a chuckle-headed, scrub-haired lad from the Highlands, sat hugging his +knee with great sand-red hands and drinking in every word, eyes aglow, +cheeks flushed, and ears burning. + +‘And so,’ said the professor, ‘we see that this Radium, which seemed at +first a fantastic exception, a mad inversion of all that was most +established and fundamental in the constitution of matter, is really at +one with the rest of the elements. It does noticeably and forcibly what +probably all the other elements are doing with an imperceptible +slowness. It is like the single voice crying aloud that betrays the +silent breathing multitude in the darkness. Radium is an element that +is breaking up and flying to pieces. But perhaps all elements are doing +that at less perceptible rates. Uranium certainly is; thorium—the stuff +of this incandescent gas mantle—certainly is; actinium. I feel that we +are but beginning the list. And we know now that the atom, that once we +thought hard and impenetrable, and indivisible and final +and—lifeless—lifeless, is really a reservoir of immense energy. That is +the most wonderful thing about all this work. A little while ago we +thought of the atoms as we thought of bricks, as solid building +material, as substantial matter, as unit masses of lifeless stuff, and +behold! these bricks are boxes, treasure boxes, boxes full of the +intensest force. This little bottle contains about a pint of uranium +oxide; that is to say, about fourteen ounces of the element uranium. It +is worth about a pound. And in this bottle, ladies and gentlemen, in +the atoms in this bottle there slumbers at least as much energy as we +could get by burning a hundred and sixty tons of coal. If at a word, in +one instant I could suddenly release that energy here and now it would +blow us and everything about us to fragments; if I could turn it into +the machinery that lights this city, it could keep Edinburgh brightly +lit for a week. But at present no man knows, no man has an inkling of +how this little lump of stuff can be made to hasten the release of its +store. It does release it, as a burn trickles. Slowly the uranium +changes into radium, the radium changes into a gas called the radium +emanation, and that again to what we call radium A, and so the process +goes on, giving out energy at every stage, until at last we reach the +last stage of all, which is, so far as we can tell at present, lead. +But we cannot hasten it.’ + +‘I take ye, man,’ whispered the chuckle-headed lad, with his red hands +tightening like a vice upon his knee. ‘I take ye, man. Go on! Oh, go +on!’ + +The professor went on after a little pause. ‘Why is the change +gradual?’ he asked. ‘Why does only a minute fraction of the radium +disintegrate in any particular second? Why does it dole itself out so +slowly and so exactly? Why does not all the uranium change to radium +and all the radium change to the next lowest thing at once? Why this +decay by driblets; why not a decay _en masse?_ . . . Suppose presently +we find it is possible to quicken that decay?’ + +The chuckle-headed lad nodded rapidly. The wonderful inevitable idea +was coming. He drew his knee up towards his chin and swayed in his seat +with excitement. ‘Why not?’ he echoed, ‘why not?’ + +The professor lifted his forefinger. + +‘Given that knowledge,’ he said, ‘mark what we should be able to do! We +should not only be able to use this uranium and thorium; not only +should we have a source of power so potent that a man might carry in +his hand the energy to light a city for a year, fight a fleet of +battleships, or drive one of our giant liners across the Atlantic; but +we should also have a clue that would enable us at last to quicken the +process of disintegration in all the other elements, where decay is +still so slow as to escape our finest measurements. Every scrap of +solid matter in the world would become an available reservoir of +concentrated force. Do you realise, ladies and gentlemen, what these +things would mean for us?’ + +The scrub head nodded. ‘Oh! go on. Go on.’ + +‘It would mean a change in human conditions that I can only compare to +the discovery of fire, that first discovery that lifted man above the +brute. We stand to-day towards radio-activity as our ancestor stood +towards fire before he had learnt to make it. He knew it then only as a +strange thing utterly beyond his control, a flare on the crest of the +volcano, a red destruction that poured through the forest. So it is +that we know radio-activity to-day. This—this is the dawn of a new day +in human living. At the climax of that civilisation which had its +beginning in the hammered flint and the fire-stick of the savage, just +when it is becoming apparent that our ever-increasing needs cannot be +borne indefinitely by our present sources of energy, we discover +suddenly the possibility of an entirely new civilisation. The energy we +need for our very existence, and with which Nature supplies us still so +grudgingly, is in reality locked up in inconceivable quantities all +about us. We cannot pick that lock at present, but——’ + +He paused. His voice sank so that everybody strained a little to hear +him. + +‘——we will.’ + +He put up that lean finger again, his solitary gesture. + +‘And then,’ he said.... + +‘Then that perpetual struggle for existence, that perpetual struggle to +live on the bare surplus of Nature’s energies will cease to be the lot +of Man. Man will step from the pinnacle of this civilisation to the +beginning of the next. I have no eloquence, ladies and gentlemen, to +express the vision of man’s material destiny that opens out before me. +I see the desert continents transformed, the poles no longer +wildernesses of ice, the whole world once more Eden. I see the power of +man reach out among the stars....’ + +He stopped abruptly with a catching of the breath that many an actor or +orator might have envied. + +The lecture was over, the audience hung silent for a few seconds, +sighed, became audible, stirred, fluttered, prepared for dispersal. +More light was turned on and what had been a dim mass of figures became +a bright confusion of movement. Some of the people signalled to +friends, some crowded down towards the platform to examine the +lecturer’s apparatus and make notes of his diagrams. But the +chuckle-headed lad with the scrub hair wanted no such detailed +frittering away of the thoughts that had inspired him. He wanted to be +alone with them; he elbowed his way out almost fiercely, he made +himself as angular and bony as a cow, fearing lest some one should +speak to him, lest some one should invade his glowing sphere of +enthusiasm. + +He went through the streets with a rapt face, like a saint who sees +visions. He had arms disproportionately long, and ridiculous big feet. + +He must get alone, get somewhere high out of all this crowding of +commonness, of everyday life. + +He made his way to the top of Arthur’s Seat, and there he sat for a +long time in the golden evening sunshine, still, except that ever and +again he whispered to himself some precious phrase that had stuck in +his mind. + +‘If,’ he whispered, ‘if only we could pick that lock....’ + +The sun was sinking over the distant hills. Already it was shorn of its +beams, a globe of ruddy gold, hanging over the great banks of cloud +that would presently engulf it. + +‘Eh!’ said the youngster. ‘Eh!’ + +He seemed to wake up at last out of his entrancement, and the red sun +was there before his eyes. He stared at it, at first without +intelligence, and then with a gathering recognition. Into his mind came +a strange echo of that ancestral fancy, that fancy of a Stone Age +savage, dead and scattered bones among the drift two hundred thousand +years ago. + +‘Ye auld thing,’ he said—and his eyes were shining, and he made a kind +of grabbing gesture with his hand; ‘ye auld red thing.... We’ll have ye +_yet_.’ + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST +THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY + + +Section I + +The problem which was already being mooted by such scientific men as +Ramsay, Rutherford, and Soddy, in the very beginning of the twentieth +century, the problem of inducing radio-activity in the heavier elements +and so tapping the internal energy of atoms, was solved by a wonderful +combination of induction, intuition, and luck by Holsten so soon as the +year 1933. From the first detection of radio-activity to its first +subjugation to human purpose measured little more than a quarter of a +century. For twenty years after that, indeed, minor difficulties +prevented any striking practical application of his success, but the +essential thing was done, this new boundary in the march of human +progress was crossed, in that year. He set up atomic disintegration in +a minute particle of bismuth; it exploded with great violence into a +heavy gas of extreme radio-activity, which disintegrated in its turn in +the course of seven days, and it was only after another year’s work +that he was able to show practically that the last result of this rapid +release of energy was gold. But the thing was done—at the cost of a +blistered chest and an injured finger, and from the moment when the +invisible speck of bismuth flashed into riving and rending energy, +Holsten knew that he had opened a way for mankind, however narrow and +dark it might still be, to worlds of limitless power. He recorded as +much in the strange diary biography he left the world, a diary that was +up to that particular moment a mass of speculations and calculations, +and which suddenly became for a space an amazingly minute and human +record of sensations and emotions that all humanity might understand. + +He gives, in broken phrases and often single words, it is true, but +none the less vividly for that, a record of the twenty-four hours +following the demonstration of the correctness of his intricate tracery +of computations and guesses. ‘I thought I should not sleep,’ he +writes—the words he omitted are supplied in brackets—(on account of) +‘pain in (the) hand and chest and (the) wonder of what I had done.... +Slept like a child.’ + +He felt strange and disconcerted the next morning; he had nothing to +do, he was living alone in apartments in Bloomsbury, and he decided to +go up to Hampstead Heath, which he had known when he was a little boy +as a breezy playground. He went up by the underground tube that was +then the recognised means of travel from one part of London to another, +and walked up Heath Street from the tube station to the open heath. He +found it a gully of planks and scaffoldings between the hoardings of +house-wreckers. The spirit of the times had seized upon that narrow, +steep, and winding thoroughfare, and was in the act of making it +commodious and interesting, according to the remarkable ideals of +Neo-Georgian æstheticism. Such is the illogical quality of humanity +that Holsten, fresh from work that was like a petard under the seat of +current civilisation, saw these changes with regret. He had come up +Heath Street perhaps a thousand times, had known the windows of all the +little shops, spent hours in the vanished cinematograph theatre, and +marvelled at the high-flung early Georgian houses upon the westward +bank of that old gully of a thoroughfare; he felt strange with all +these familiar things gone. He escaped at last with a feeling of relief +from this choked alley of trenches and holes and cranes, and emerged +upon the old familiar scene about the White Stone Pond. That, at least, +was very much as it used to be. + +There were still the fine old red-brick houses to left and right of +him; the reservoir had been improved by a portico of marble, the +white-fronted inn with the clustering flowers above its portico still +stood out at the angle of the ways, and the blue view to Harrow Hill +and Harrow spire, a view of hills and trees and shining waters and +wind-driven cloud shadows, was like the opening of a great window to +the ascending Londoner. All that was very reassuring. There was the +same strolling crowd, the same perpetual miracle of motors dodging +through it harmlessly, escaping headlong into the country from the +Sabbatical stuffiness behind and below them. There was a band still, a +women’s suffrage meeting—for the suffrage women had won their way back +to the tolerance, a trifle derisive, of the populace again—socialist +orators, politicians, a band, and the same wild uproar of dogs, frantic +with the gladness of their one blessed weekly release from the back +yard and the chain. And away along the road to the Spaniards strolled a +vast multitude, saying, as ever, that the view of London was +exceptionally clear that day. + +Young Holsten’s face was white. He walked with that uneasy affectation +of ease that marks an overstrained nervous system and an +under-exercised body. He hesitated at the White Stone Pond whether to +go to the left of it or the right, and again at the fork of the roads. +He kept shifting his stick in his hand, and every now and then he would +get in the way of people on the footpath or be jostled by them because +of the uncertainty of his movements. He felt, he confesses, ‘inadequate +to ordinary existence.’ He seemed to himself to be something inhuman +and mischievous. All the people about him looked fairly prosperous, +fairly happy, fairly well adapted to the lives they had to lead—a week +of work and a Sunday of best clothes and mild promenading—and he had +launched something that would disorganise the entire fabric that held +their contentments and ambitions and satisfactions together. ‘Felt like +an imbecile who has presented a box full of loaded revolvers to a +Crêche,’ he notes. + +He met a man named Lawson, an old school-fellow, of whom history now +knows only that he was red-faced and had a terrier. He and Holsten +walked together and Holsten was sufficiently pale and jumpy for Lawson +to tell him he overworked and needed a holiday. They sat down at a +little table outside the County Council house of Golders Hill Park and +sent one of the waiters to the Bull and Bush for a couple of bottles of +beer, no doubt at Lawson’s suggestion. The beer warmed Holsten’s rather +dehumanised system. He began to tell Lawson as clearly as he could to +what his great discovery amounted. Lawson feigned attention, but indeed +he had neither the knowledge nor the imagination to understand. ‘In the +end, before many years are out, this must eventually change war, +transit, lighting, building, and every sort of manufacture, even +agriculture, every material human concern——’ + +Then Holsten stopped short. Lawson had leapt to his feet. ‘Damn that +dog!’ cried Lawson. ‘Look at it now. Hi! Here! _Phewoo-phewoo-phewoo!_ +Come _here, Bobs!_ Come _here!_’ + +The young scientific man, with his bandaged hand, sat at the green +table, too tired to convey the wonder of the thing he had sought so +long, his friend whistled and bawled for his dog, and the Sunday people +drifted about them through the spring sunshine. For a moment or so +Holsten stared at Lawson in astonishment, for he had been too intent +upon what he had been saying to realise how little Lawson had attended. + +Then he remarked, ‘_Well!_’ and smiled faintly, and—finished the +tankard of beer before him. + +Lawson sat down again. ‘One must look after one’s dog,’ he said, with a +note of apology. ‘What was it you were telling me?’ + +Section 2 + +In the evening Holsten went out again. He walked to Saint Paul’s +Cathedral, and stood for a time near the door listening to the evening +service. The candles upon the altar reminded him in some odd way of the +fireflies at Fiesole. Then he walked back through the evening lights to +Westminster. He was oppressed, he was indeed scared, by his sense of +the immense consequences of his discovery. He had a vague idea that +night that he ought not to publish his results, that they were +premature, that some secret association of wise men should take care of +his work and hand it on from generation to generation until the world +was riper for its practical application. He felt that nobody in all the +thousands of people he passed had really awakened to the fact of +change, they trusted the world for what it was, not to alter too +rapidly, to respect their trusts, their assurances, their habits, their +little accustomed traffics and hard-won positions. + +He went into those little gardens beneath the over-hanging, +brightly-lit masses of the Savoy Hotel and the Hotel Cecil. He sat down +on a seat and became aware of the talk of the two people next to him. +It was the talk of a young couple evidently on the eve of marriage. The +man was congratulating himself on having regular employment at last; +‘they like me,’ he said, ‘and I like the job. If I work up—in’r dozen +years or so I ought to be gettin’ somethin’ pretty comfortable. That’s +the plain sense of it, Hetty. There ain’t no reason whatsoever why we +shouldn’t get along very decently—very decently indeed.’ + +The desire for little successes amidst conditions securely fixed! So it +struck upon Holsten’s mind. He added in his diary, ‘I had a sense of +all this globe as that....’ + +By that phrase he meant a kind of clairvoyant vision of this populated +world as a whole, of all its cities and towns and villages, its high +roads and the inns beside them, its gardens and farms and upland +pastures, its boatmen and sailors, its ships coming along the great +circles of the ocean, its time-tables and appointments and payments and +dues as it were one unified and progressive spectacle. Sometimes such +visions came to him; his mind, accustomed to great generalisations and +yet acutely sensitive to detail, saw things far more comprehensively +than the minds of most of his contemporaries. Usually the teeming +sphere moved on to its predestined ends and circled with a stately +swiftness on its path about the sun. Usually it was all a living +progress that altered under his regard. But now fatigue a little +deadened him to that incessancy of life, it seemed now just an eternal +circling. He lapsed to the commoner persuasion of the great fixities +and recurrencies of the human routine. The remoter past of wandering +savagery, the inevitable changes of to-morrow were veiled, and he saw +only day and night, seed-time and harvest, loving and begetting, births +and deaths, walks in the summer sunlight and tales by the winter +fireside, the ancient sequence of hope and acts and age perennially +renewed, eddying on for ever and ever, save that now the impious hand +of research was raised to overthrow this drowsy, gently humming, +habitual, sunlit spinning-top of man’s existence.... + +For a time he forgot wars and crimes and hates and persecutions, famine +and pestilence, the cruelties of beasts, weariness and the bitter wind, +failure and insufficiency and retrocession. He saw all mankind in terms +of the humble Sunday couple upon the seat beside him, who schemed their +inglorious outlook and improbable contentments. ‘I had a sense of all +this globe as that.’ + +His intelligence struggled against this mood and struggled for a time +in vain. He reassured himself against the invasion of this +disconcerting idea that he was something strange and inhuman, a loose +wanderer from the flock returning with evil gifts from his sustained +unnatural excursions amidst the darknesses and phosphorescences beneath +the fair surfaces of life. Man had not been always thus; the instincts +and desires of the little home, the little plot, was not all his +nature; also he was an adventurer, an experimenter, an unresting +curiosity, an insatiable desire. For a few thousand generations indeed +he had tilled the earth and followed the seasons, saying his prayers, +grinding his corn and trampling the October winepress, yet not for so +long but that he was still full of restless stirrings. + +‘If there have been home and routine and the field,’ thought Holsten, +‘there have also been wonder and the sea.’ + +He turned his head and looked up over the back of the seat at the great +hotels above him, full of softly shaded lights and the glow and colour +and stir of feasting. Might his gift to mankind mean simply more of +that? . . . + +He got up and walked out of the garden, surveyed a passing tram-car, +laden with warm light, against the deep blues of evening, dripping and +trailing long skirts of shining reflection; he crossed the Embankment +and stood for a time watching the dark river and turning ever and again +to the lit buildings and bridges. His mind began to scheme conceivable +replacements of all those clustering arrangements.... + +‘It has begun,’ he writes in the diary in which these things are +recorded. ‘It is not for me to reach out to consequences I cannot +foresee. I am a part, not a whole; I am a little instrument in the +armoury of Change. If I were to burn all these papers, before a score +of years had passed, some other man would be doing this. . . + +Section 3 + +Holsten, before he died, was destined to see atomic energy dominating +every other source of power, but for some years yet a vast network of +difficulties in detail and application kept the new discovery from any +effective invasion of ordinary life. The path from the laboratory to +the workshop is sometimes a tortuous one; electro-magnetic radiations +were known and demonstrated for twenty years before Marconi made them +practically available, and in the same way it was twenty years before +induced radio-activity could be brought to practical utilisation. The +thing, of course, was discussed very much, more perhaps at the time of +its discovery than during the interval of technical adaptation, but +with very little realisation of the huge economic revolution that +impended. What chiefly impressed the journalists of 1933 was the +production of gold from bismuth and the realisation albeit upon +unprofitable lines of the alchemist’s dreams; there was a considerable +amount of discussion and expectation in that more intelligent section +of the educated publics of the various civilised countries which +followed scientific development; but for the most part the world went +about its business—as the inhabitants of those Swiss villages which +live under the perpetual threat of overhanging rocks and mountains go +about their business—just as though the possible was impossible, as +though the inevitable was postponed for ever because it was delayed. + +It was in 1953 that the first Holsten-Roberts engine brought induced +radio-activity into the sphere of industrial production, and its first +general use was to replace the steam-engine in electrical generating +stations. Hard upon the appearance of this came the Dass-Tata +engine—the invention of two among the brilliant galaxy of Bengali +inventors the modernisation of Indian thought was producing at this +time—which was used chiefly for automobiles, aeroplanes, waterplanes, +and such-like, mobile purposes. The American Kemp engine, differing +widely in principle but equally practicable, and the Krupp-Erlanger +came hard upon the heels of this, and by the autumn of 1954 a gigantic +replacement of industrial methods and machinery was in progress all +about the habitable globe. Small wonder was this when the cost, even of +these earliest and clumsiest of atomic engines, is compared with that +of the power they superseded. Allowing for lubrication the Dass-Tata +engine, once it was started cost a penny to run thirty-seven miles, and +added only nine and quarter pounds to the weight of the carriage it +drove. It made the heavy alcohol-driven automobile of the time +ridiculous in appearance as well as preposterously costly. For many +years the price of coal and every form of liquid fuel had been +clambering to levels that made even the revival of the draft horse seem +a practicable possibility, and now with the abrupt relaxation of this +stringency, the change in appearance of the traffic upon the world’s +roads was instantaneous. In three years the frightful armoured monsters +that had hooted and smoked and thundered about the world for four awful +decades were swept away to the dealers in old metal, and the highways +thronged with light and clean and shimmering shapes of silvered steel. +At the same time a new impetus was given to aviation by the relatively +enormous power for weight of the atomic engine, it was at last possible +to add Redmayne’s ingenious helicopter ascent and descent engine to the +vertical propeller that had hitherto been the sole driving force of the +aeroplane without overweighting the machine, and men found themselves +possessed of an instrument of flight that could hover or ascend or +descend vertically and gently as well as rush wildly through the air. +The last dread of flying vanished. As the journalists of the time +phrased it, this was the epoch of the Leap into the Air. The new atomic +aeroplane became indeed a mania; every one of means was frantic to +possess a thing so controllable, so secure and so free from the dust +and danger of the road, and in France alone in the year 1943 thirty +thousand of these new aeroplanes were manufactured and licensed, and +soared humming softly into the sky. + +And with an equal speed atomic engines of various types invaded +industrialism. The railways paid enormous premiums for priority in the +delivery of atomic traction engines, atomic smelting was embarked upon +so eagerly as to lead to a number of disastrous explosions due to +inexperienced handling of the new power, and the revolutionary +cheapening of both materials and electricity made the entire +reconstruction of domestic buildings a matter merely dependent upon a +reorganisation of the methods of the builder and the house-furnisher. +Viewed from the side of the new power and from the point of view of +those who financed and manufactured the new engines and material it +required the age of the Leap into the Air was one of astonishing +prosperity. Patent-holding companies were presently paying dividends of +five or six hundred per cent. and enormous fortunes were made and +fantastic wages earned by all who were concerned in the new +developments. This prosperity was not a little enhanced by the fact +that in both the Dass-Tata and Holsten-Roberts engines one of the +recoverable waste products was gold—the former disintegrated dust of +bismuth and the latter dust of lead—and that this new supply of gold +led quite naturally to a rise in prices throughout the world. + +This spectacle of feverish enterprise was productivity, this crowding +flight of happy and fortunate rich people—every great city was as if a +crawling ant-hill had suddenly taken wing—was the bright side of the +opening phase of the new epoch in human history. Beneath that +brightness was a gathering darkness, a deepening dismay. If there was a +vast development of production there was also a huge destruction of +values. These glaring factories working night and day, these glittering +new vehicles swinging noiselessly along the roads, these flights of +dragon-flies that swooped and soared and circled in the air, were +indeed no more than the brightnesses of lamps and fires that gleam out +when the world sinks towards twilight and the night. Between these high +lights accumulated disaster, social catastrophe. The coal mines were +manifestly doomed to closure at no very distant date, the vast amount +of capital invested in oil was becoming unsaleable, millions of coal +miners, steel workers upon the old lines, vast swarms of unskilled or +under-skilled labourers in innumerable occupations, were being flung +out of employment by the superior efficiency of the new machinery, the +rapid fall in the cost of transit was destroying high land values at +every centre of population, the value of existing house property had +become problematical, gold was undergoing headlong depreciation, all +the securities upon which the credit of the world rested were slipping +and sliding, banks were tottering, the stock exchanges were scenes of +feverish panic;—this was the reverse of the spectacle, these were the +black and monstrous under-consequences of the Leap into the Air. + +There is a story of a demented London stockbroker running out into +Threadneedle Street and tearing off his clothes as he ran. ‘The Steel +Trust is scrapping the whole of its plant,’ he shouted. ‘The State +Railways are going to scrap all their engines. Everything’s going to be +scrapped—everything. Come and scrap the mint, you fellows, come and +scrap the mint!’ + +In the year 1955 the suicide rate for the United States of America +quadrupled any previous record. There was an enormous increase also in +violent crime throughout the world. The thing had come upon an +unprepared humanity; it seemed as though human society was to be +smashed by its own magnificent gains. + +For there had been no foresight of these things. There had been no +attempt anywhere even to compute the probable dislocations this flood +of inexpensive energy would produce in human affairs. The world in +these days was not really governed at all, in the sense in which +government came to be understood in subsequent years. Government was a +treaty, not a design; it was forensic, conservative, disputatious, +unseeing, unthinking, uncreative; throughout the world, except where +the vestiges of absolutism still sheltered the court favourite and the +trusted servant, it was in the hands of the predominant caste of +lawyers, who had an enormous advantage in being the only trained caste. +Their professional education and every circumstance in the manipulation +of the fantastically naïve electoral methods by which they clambered to +power, conspired to keep them contemptuous of facts, conscientiously +unimaginative, alert to claim and seize advantages and suspicious of +every generosity. Government was an obstructive business of energetic +fractions, progress went on outside of and in spite of public +activities, and legislation was the last crippling recognition of needs +so clamorous and imperative and facts so aggressively established as to +invade even the dingy seclusions of the judges and threaten the very +existence of the otherwise inattentive political machine. + +The world was so little governed that with the very coming of plenty, +in the full tide of an incalculable abundance, when everything +necessary to satisfy human needs and everything necessary to realise +such will and purpose as existed then in human hearts was already at +hand, one has still to tell of hardship, famine, anger, confusion, +conflict, and incoherent suffering. There was no scheme for the +distribution of this vast new wealth that had come at last within the +reach of men; there was no clear conception that any such distribution +was possible. As one attempts a comprehensive view of those opening +years of the new age, as one measures it against the latent achievement +that later years have demonstrated, one begins to measure the +blindness, the narrowness, the insensate unimaginative individualism of +the pre-atomic time. Under this tremendous dawn of power and freedom, +under a sky ablaze with promise, in the very presence of science +standing like some bountiful goddess over all the squat darknesses of +human life, holding patiently in her strong arms, until men chose to +take them, security, plenty, the solution of riddles, the key of the +bravest adventures, in her very presence, and with the earnest of her +gifts in court, the world was to witness such things as the squalid +spectacle of the Dass-Tata patent litigation. + +There in a stuffy court in London, a grimy oblong box of a room, during +the exceptional heat of the May of 1956, the leading counsel of the day +argued and shouted over a miserable little matter of more royalties or +less and whether the Dass-Tata company might not bar the +Holsten-Roberts’ methods of utilising the new power. The Dass-Tata +people were indeed making a strenuous attempt to secure a world +monopoly in atomic engineering. The judge, after the manner of those +times, sat raised above the court, wearing a preposterous gown and a +foolish huge wig, the counsel also wore dirty-looking little wigs and +queer black gowns over their usual costume, wigs and gowns that were +held to be necessary to their pleading, and upon unclean wooden benches +stirred and whispered artful-looking solicitors, busily scribbling +reporters, the parties to the case, expert witnesses, interested +people, and a jostling confusion of subpoenaed persons, briefless young +barristers (forming a style on the most esteemed and truculent +examples) and casual eccentric spectators who preferred this pit of +iniquity to the free sunlight outside. Every one was damply hot, the +examining King’s Counsel wiped the perspiration from his huge, +clean-shaven upper lip; and into this atmosphere of grasping contention +and human exhalations the daylight filtered through a window that was +manifestly dirty. The jury sat in a double pew to the left of the +judge, looking as uncomfortable as frogs that have fallen into an +ash-pit, and in the witness-box lied the would-be omnivorous Dass, +under cross-examination.... + +Holsten had always been accustomed to publish his results so soon as +they appeared to him to be sufficiently advanced to furnish a basis for +further work, and to that confiding disposition and one happy flash of +adaptive invention the alert Dass owed his claim.... + +But indeed a vast multitude of such sharp people were clutching, +patenting, pre-empting, monopolising this or that feature of the new +development, seeking to subdue this gigantic winged power to the +purposes of their little lusts and avarice. That trial is just one of +innumerable disputes of the same kind. For a time the face of the world +festered with patent legislation. It chanced, however, to have one +oddly dramatic feature in the fact that Holsten, after being kept +waiting about the court for two days as a beggar might have waited at a +rich man’s door, after being bullied by ushers and watched by +policemen, was called as a witness, rather severely handled by counsel, +and told not to ‘quibble’ by the judge when he was trying to be +absolutely explicit. + +The judge scratched his nose with a quill pen, and sneered at Holsten’s +astonishment round the corner of his monstrous wig. Holsten was a great +man, was he? Well, in a law-court great men were put in their places. + +‘We want to know has the plaintiff added anything to this or hasn’t +he?’ said the judge, ‘we don’t want to have your views whether Sir +Philip Dass’s improvements were merely superficial adaptations or +whether they were implicit in your paper. No doubt—after the manner of +inventors—you think most things that were ever likely to be discovered +are implicit in your papers. No doubt also you think too that most +subsequent additions and modifications are merely superficial. +Inventors have a way of thinking that. The law isn’t concerned with +that sort of thing. The law has nothing to do with the vanity of +inventors. The law is concerned with the question whether these patent +rights have the novelty the plantiff claims for them. What that +admission may or may not stop, and all these other things you are +saying in your overflowing zeal to answer more than the questions +addressed to you—none of these things have anything whatever to do with +the case in hand. It is a matter of constant astonishment to me in this +court to see how you scientific men, with all your extraordinary claims +to precision and veracity, wander and wander so soon as you get into +the witness-box. I know no more unsatisfactory class of witness. The +plain and simple question is, has Sir Philip Dass made any real +addition to existing knowledge and methods in this matter or has he +not? We don’t want to know whether they were large or small additions +nor what the consequences of your admission may be. That you will leave +to us.’ + +Holsten was silent. + +‘Surely?’ said the judge, almost pityingly. + +‘No, he hasn’t,’ said Holsten, perceiving that for once in his life he +must disregard infinitesimals. + +‘Ah!’ said the judge, ‘now why couldn’t you say that when counsel put +the question? . . .’ + +An entry in Holsten’s diary-autobiography, dated five days later, runs: +‘Still amazed. The law is the most dangerous thing in this country. It +is hundreds of years old. It hasn’t an idea. The oldest of old bottles +and this new wine, the most explosive wine. Something will overtake +them.’ + +Section 4 + +There was a certain truth in Holsten’s assertion that the law was +‘hundreds of years old.’ It was, in relation to current thought and +widely accepted ideas, an archaic thing. While almost all the material +and methods of life had been changing rapidly and were now changing +still more rapidly, the law-courts and the legislatures of the world +were struggling desperately to meet modern demands with devices and +procedures, conceptions of rights and property and authority and +obligation that dated from the rude compromises of relatively barbaric +times. The horse-hair wigs and antic dresses of the British judges, +their musty courts and overbearing manners, were indeed only the +outward and visible intimations of profounder anachronisms. The legal +and political organisation of the earth in the middle twentieth century +was indeed everywhere like a complicated garment, outworn yet strong, +that now fettered the governing body that once it had protected. + +Yet that same spirit of free-thinking and outspoken publication that in +the field of natural science had been the beginning of the conquest of +nature, was at work throughout all the eighteenth and nineteenth +centuries preparing the spirit of the new world within the degenerating +body of the old. The idea of a greater subordination of individual +interests and established institutions to the collective future, is +traceable more and more clearly in the literature of those times, and +movement after movement fretted itself away in criticism of and +opposition to first this aspect and then that of the legal, social, and +political order. Already in the early nineteenth century Shelley, with +no scrap of alternative, is denouncing the established rulers of the +world as Anarchs, and the entire system of ideas and suggestions that +was known as Socialism, and more particularly its international side, +feeble as it was in creative proposals or any method of transition, +still witnesses to the growth of a conception of a modernised system of +inter-relationships that should supplant the existing tangle of +proprietary legal ideas. + +The word ‘Sociology’ was invented by Herbert Spencer, a popular writer +upon philosophical subjects, who flourished about the middle of the +nineteenth century, but the idea of a state, planned as an +electric-traction system is planned, without reference to pre-existing +apparatus, upon scientific lines, did not take a very strong hold upon +the popular imagination of the world until the twentieth century. Then, +the growing impatience of the American people with the monstrous and +socially paralysing party systems that had sprung out of their absurd +electoral arrangements, led to the appearance of what came to be called +the ‘Modern State’ movement, and a galaxy of brilliant writers, in +America, Europe, and the East, stirred up the world to the thought of +bolder rearrangements of social interaction, property, employment, +education, and government, than had ever been contemplated before. No +doubt these Modern State ideas were very largely the reflection upon +social and political thought of the vast revolution in material things +that had been in progress for two hundred years, but for a long time +they seemed to be having no more influence upon existing institutions +than the writings of Rousseau and Voltaire seemed to have had at the +time of the death of the latter. They were fermenting in men’s minds, +and it needed only just such social and political stresses as the +coming of the atomic mechanisms brought about, to thrust them forward +abruptly into crude and startling realisation. + +Section 5 + +Frederick Barnet’s _Wander Jahre_ is one of those autobiographical +novels that were popular throughout the third and fourth decades of the +twentieth century. It was published in 1970, and one must understand +Wander Jahre rather in a spiritual and intellectual than in a literal +sense. It is indeed an allusive title, carrying the world back to the +_Wilhelm Meister_ of Goethe, a century and a half earlier. + +Its author, Frederick Barnet, gives a minute and curious history of his +life and ideas between his nineteenth and his twenty-third birthdays. +He was neither a very original nor a very brilliant man, but he had a +trick of circumstantial writing; and though no authentic portrait was +to survive for the information of posterity, he betrays by a score of +casual phrases that he was short, sturdy, inclined to be plump, with a +‘rather blobby’ face, and full, rather projecting blue eyes. He +belonged until the financial _débâcle_ of 1956 to the class of fairly +prosperous people, he was a student in London, he aeroplaned to Italy +and then had a pedestrian tour from Genoa to Rome, crossed in the air +to Greece and Egypt, and came back over the Balkans and Germany. His +family fortunes, which were largely invested in bank shares, coal +mines, and house property, were destroyed. Reduced to penury, he sought +to earn a living. He suffered great hardship, and was then caught up by +the war and had a year of soldiering, first as an officer in the +English infantry and then in the army of pacification. His book tells +all these things so simply and at the same time so explicitly, that it +remains, as it were, an eye by which future generations may have at +least one man’s vision of the years of the Great Change. + +And he was, he tells us, a ‘Modern State’ man ‘by instinct’ from the +beginning. He breathed in these ideas in the class rooms and +laboratories of the Carnegie Foundation school that rose, a long and +delicately beautiful facade, along the South Bank of the Thames +opposite the ancient dignity of Somerset House. Such thought was +interwoven with the very fabric of that pioneer school in the +educational renascence in England. After the customary exchange years +in Heidelberg and Paris, he went into the classical school of London +University. The older so-called ‘classical’ education of the British +pedagogues, probably the most paralysing, ineffective, and foolish +routine that ever wasted human life, had already been swept out of this +great institution in favour of modern methods; and he learnt Greek and +Latin as well as he had learnt German, Spanish, and French, so that he +wrote and spoke them freely, and used them with an unconscious ease in +his study of the foundation civilisations of the European system to +which they were the key. (This change was still so recent that he +mentions an encounter in Rome with an ‘Oxford don’ who ‘spoke Latin +with a Wiltshire accent and manifest discomfort, wrote Greek letters +with his tongue out, and seemed to think a Greek sentence a charm when +it was a quotation and an impropriety when it wasn’t.’) + +Barnet saw the last days of the coal-steam engines upon the English +railways and the gradual cleansing of the London atmosphere as the +smoke-creating sea-coal fires gave place to electric heating. The +building of laboratories at Kensington was still in progress, and he +took part in the students’ riots that delayed the removal of the Albert +Memorial. He carried a banner with ‘We like Funny Statuary’ on one +side, and on the other ‘Seats and Canopies for Statues, Why should our +Great Departed Stand in the Rain?’ He learnt the rather athletic +aviation of those days at the University grounds at Sydenham, and he +was fined for flying over the new prison for political libellers at +Wormwood Scrubs, ‘in a manner calculated to exhilarate the prisoners +while at exercise.’ That was the time of the attempted suppression of +any criticism of the public judicature and the place was crowded with +journalists who had ventured to call attention to the dementia of Chief +Justice Abrahams. Barnet was not a very good aviator, he confesses he +was always a little afraid of his machine—there was excellent reason +for every one to be afraid of those clumsy early types—and he never +attempted steep descents or very high flying. He also, he records, +owned one of those oil-driven motor-bicycles whose clumsy complexity +and extravagant filthiness still astonish the visitors to the museum of +machinery at South Kensington. He mentions running over a dog and +complains of the ruinous price of ‘spatchcocks’ in Surrey. +‘Spatchcocks,’ it seems, was a slang term for crushed hens. + +He passed the examinations necessary to reduce his military service to +a minimum, and his want of any special scientific or technical +qualification and a certain precocious corpulence that handicapped his +aviation indicated the infantry of the line as his sphere of training. +That was the most generalised form of soldiering. The development of +the theory of war had been for some decades but little assisted by any +practical experience. What fighting had occurred in recent years, had +been fighting in minor or uncivilised states, with peasant or barbaric +soldiers and with but a small equipment of modern contrivances, and the +great powers of the world were content for the most part to maintain +armies that sustained in their broader organisation the traditions of +the European wars of thirty and forty years before. There was the +infantry arm to which Barnet belonged and which was supposed to fight +on foot with a rifle and be the main portion of the army. There were +cavalry forces (horse soldiers), having a ratio to the infantry that +had been determined by the experiences of the Franco-German war in +1871. There was also artillery, and for some unexplained reason much of +this was still drawn by horses; though there were also in all the +European armies a small number of motor-guns with wheels so constructed +that they could go over broken ground. In addition there were large +developments of the engineering arm, concerned with motor transport, +motor-bicycle scouting, aviation, and the like. + +No first-class intelligence had been sought to specialise in and work +out the problem of warfare with the new appliances and under modern +conditions, but a succession of able jurists, Lord Haldane, Chief +Justice Briggs, and that very able King’s Counsel, Philbrick, had +reconstructed the army frequently and thoroughly and placed it at last, +with the adoption of national service, upon a footing that would have +seemed very imposing to the public of 1900. At any moment the British +Empire could now put a million and a quarter of arguable soldiers upon +the board of Welt-Politik. The traditions of Japan and the Central +European armies were more princely and less forensic; the Chinese still +refused resolutely to become a military power, and maintained a small +standing army upon the American model that was said, so far as it went, +to be highly efficient, and Russia, secured by a stringent +administration against internal criticism, had scarcely altered the +design of a uniform or the organisation of a battery since the opening +decades of the century. Barnet’s opinion of his military training was +manifestly a poor one, his Modern State ideas disposed him to regard it +as a bore, and his common sense condemned it as useless. Moreover, his +habit of body made him peculiarly sensitive to the fatigues and +hardships of service. + +‘For three days in succession we turned out before dawn and—for no +earthly reason—without breakfast,’ he relates. ‘I suppose that is to +show us that when the Day comes the first thing will be to get us +thoroughly uncomfortable and rotten. We then proceeded to Kriegspiel, +according to the mysterious ideas of those in authority over us. On the +last day we spent three hours under a hot if early sun getting over +eight miles of country to a point we could have reached in a motor +omnibus in nine minutes and a half—I did it the next day in that—and +then we made a massed attack upon entrenchments that could have shot us +all about three times over if only the umpires had let them. Then came +a little bayonet exercise, but I doubt if I am sufficiently a barbarian +to stick this long knife into anything living. Anyhow in this battle I +shouldn’t have had a chance. Assuming that by some miracle I hadn’t +been shot three times over, I was far too hot and blown when I got up +to the entrenchments even to lift my beastly rifle. It was those others +would have begun the sticking.... + +‘For a time we were watched by two hostile aeroplanes; then our own +came up and asked them not to, and—the practice of aerial warfare still +being unknown—they very politely desisted and went away and did dives +and circles of the most charming description over the Fox Hills.’ + +All Barnet’s accounts of his military training were written in the same +half-contemptuous, half-protesting tone. He was of opinion that his +chances of participating in any real warfare were very slight, and +that, if after all he should participate, it was bound to be so +entirely different from these peace manœuvres that his only course as a +rational man would be to keep as observantly out of danger as he could +until he had learnt the tricks and possibilities of the new conditions. +He states this quite frankly. Never was a man more free from sham +heroics. + +Section 6 + +Barnet welcomed the appearance of the atomic engine with the zest of +masculine youth in all fresh machinery, and it is evident that for some +time he failed to connect the rush of wonderful new possibilities with +the financial troubles of his family. ‘I knew my father was worried,’ +he admits. That cast the smallest of shadows upon his delighted +departure for Italy and Greece and Egypt with three congenial +companions in one of the new atomic models. They flew over the Channel +Isles and Touraine, he mentions, and circled about Mont Blanc—‘These +new helicopters, we found,’ he notes, ‘had abolished all the danger and +strain of sudden drops to which the old-time aeroplanes were +liable’—and then he went on by way of Pisa, Paestum, Ghirgenti, and +Athens, to visit the pyramids by moonlight, flying thither from Cairo, +and to follow the Nile up to Khartum. Even by later standards, it must +have been a very gleeful holiday for a young man, and it made the +tragedy of his next experiences all the darker. A week after his return +his father, who was a widower, announced himself ruined, and committed +suicide by means of an unscheduled opiate. + +At one blow Barnet found himself flung out of the possessing, spending, +enjoying class to which he belonged, penniless and with no calling by +which he could earn a living. He tried teaching and some journalism, +but in a little while he found himself on the underside of a world in +which he had always reckoned to live in the sunshine. For innumerable +men such an experience has meant mental and spiritual destruction, but +Barnet, in spite of his bodily gravitation towards comfort, showed +himself when put to the test, of the more valiant modern quality. He +was saturated with the creative stoicism of the heroic times that were +already dawning, and he took his difficulties and discomforts stoutly +as his appointed material, and turned them to expression. + +Indeed, in his book, he thanks fortune for them. ‘I might have lived +and died,’ he says, ‘in that neat fool’s paradise of secure lavishness +above there. I might never have realised the gathering wrath and sorrow +of the ousted and exasperated masses. In the days of my own prosperity +things had seemed to me to be very well arranged.’ Now from his new +point of view he was to find they were not arranged at all; that +government was a compromise of aggressions and powers and lassitudes, +and law a convention between interests, and that the poor and the weak, +though they had many negligent masters, had few friends. + +‘I had thought things were looked after,’ he wrote. ‘It was with a kind +of amazement that I tramped the roads and starved—and found that no one +in particular cared.’ + +He was turned out of his lodging in a backward part of London. + +‘It was with difficulty I persuaded my landlady—she was a needy widow, +poor soul, and I was already in her debt—to keep an old box for me in +which I had locked a few letters, keepsakes, and the like. She lived in +great fear of the Public Health and Morality Inspectors, because she +was sometimes too poor to pay the customary tip to them, but at last +she consented to put it in a dark tiled place under the stairs, and +then I went forth into the world—to seek first the luck of a meal and +then shelter.’ + +He wandered down into the thronging gayer parts of London, in which a +year or so ago he had been numbered among the spenders. + +London, under the Visible Smoke Law, by which any production of visible +smoke with or without excuse was punishable by a fine, had already +ceased to be the sombre smoke-darkened city of the Victorian time; it +had been, and indeed was, constantly being rebuilt, and its main +streets were already beginning to take on those characteristics that +distinguished them throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. +The insanitary horse and the plebeian bicycle had been banished from +the roadway, which was now of a resilient, glass-like surface, +spotlessly clean; and the foot passenger was restricted to a narrow +vestige of the ancient footpath on either side of the track and +forbidden at the risk of a fine, if he survived, to cross the roadway. +People descended from their automobiles upon this pavement and went +through the lower shops to the lifts and stairs to the new ways for +pedestrians, the Rows, that ran along the front of the houses at the +level of the first story, and, being joined by frequent bridges, gave +the newer parts of London a curiously Venetian appearance. In some +streets there were upper and even third-story Rows. For most of the day +and all night the shop windows were lit by electric light, and many +establishments had made, as it were, canals of public footpaths through +their premises in order to increase their window space. + +Barnet made his way along this night-scene rather apprehensively since +the police had power to challenge and demand the Labour Card of any +indigent-looking person, and if the record failed to show he was in +employment, dismiss him to the traffic pavement below. + +But there was still enough of his former gentility about Barnet’s +appearance and bearing to protect him from this; the police, too, had +other things to think of that night, and he was permitted to reach the +galleries about Leicester Square—that great focus of London life and +pleasure. + +He gives a vivid description of the scene that evening. In the centre +was a garden raised on arches lit by festoons of lights and connected +with the Rows by eight graceful bridges, beneath which hummed the +interlacing streams of motor traffic, pulsating as the current +alternated between east and west and north and south. Above rose great +frontages of intricate rather than beautiful reinforced porcelain, +studded with lights, barred by bold illuminated advertisements, and +glowing with reflections. There were the two historical music halls of +this place, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, in which the municipal +players revolved perpetually through the cycle of Shakespeare’s plays, +and four other great houses of refreshment and entertainment whose +pinnacles streamed up into the blue obscurity of the night. The south +side of the square was in dark contrast to the others; it was still +being rebuilt, and a lattice of steel bars surmounted by the frozen +gestures of monstrous cranes rose over the excavated sites of vanished +Victorian buildings. + +This framework attracted Barnet’s attention for a time to the exclusion +of other interests. It was absolutely still, it had a dead rigidity, a +stricken inaction, no one was at work upon it and all its machinery was +quiet; but the constructor’s globes of vacuum light filled its every +interstice with a quivering green moonshine and showed alert but +motionless—soldier sentinels! + +He asked a passing stroller, and was told that the men had struck that +day against the use of an atomic riveter that would have doubled the +individual efficiency and halved the number of steel workers. + +‘Shouldn’t wonder if they didn’t get chucking bombs,’ said Barnet’s +informant, hovered for a moment, and then went on his way to the +Alhambra music hall. + +Barnet became aware of an excitement in the newspaper kiosks at the +corners of the square. Something very sensational had been flashed upon +the transparencies. Forgetting for a moment his penniless condition, he +made his way over a bridge to buy a paper, for in those days the +papers, which were printed upon thin sheets of metallic foil, were sold +at determinate points by specially licensed purveyors. Half over, he +stopped short at a change in the traffic below; and was astonished to +see that the police signals were restricting vehicles to the half +roadway. When presently he got within sight of the transparencies that +had replaced the placards of Victorian times, he read of the Great +March of the Unemployed that was already in progress through the West +End, and so without expenditure he was able to understand what was +coming. + +He watched, and his book describes this procession which the police had +considered it unwise to prevent and which had been spontaneously +organised in imitation of the Unemployed Processions of earlier times. +He had expected a mob but there was a kind of sullen discipline about +the procession when at last it arrived. What seemed for a time an +unending column of men marched wearily, marched with a kind of +implacable futility, along the roadway underneath him. He was, he says, +moved to join them, but instead he remained watching. They were a +dingy, shabby, ineffective-looking multitude, for the most part +incapable of any but obsolete and superseded types of labour. They bore +a few banners with the time-honoured inscription: ‘Work, not Charity,’ +but otherwise their ranks were unadorned. + +They were not singing, they were not even talking, there was nothing +truculent nor aggressive in their bearing, they had no definite +objective they were just marching and showing themselves in the more +prosperous parts of London. They were a sample of that great mass of +unskilled cheap labour which the now still cheaper mechanical powers +had superseded for evermore. They were being ‘scrapped’—as horses had +been ‘scrapped.’ + +Barnet leant over the parapet watching them, his mind quickened by his +own precarious condition. For a time, he says, he felt nothing but +despair at the sight; what should be done, what could be done for this +gathering surplus of humanity? They were so manifestly useless—and +incapable—and pitiful. + +What were they asking for? + +They had been overtaken by unexpected things. Nobody had foreseen—— + +It flashed suddenly into his mind just what the multitudinous shambling +enigma below meant. It was an appeal against the unexpected, an appeal +to those others who, more fortunate, seemed wiser and more powerful, +for something—for _intelligence_. This mute mass, weary footed, rank +following rank, protested its persuasion that some of these others must +have foreseen these dislocations—that anyhow they ought to have +foreseen—and arranged. + +That was what this crowd of wreckage was feeling and seeking so dumbly +to assert. + +‘Things came to me like the turning on of a light in a darkened room,’ +he says. ‘These men were praying to their fellow creatures as once they +prayed to God! The last thing that men will realise about anything is +that it is inanimate. They had transferred their animation to mankind. +They still believed there was intelligence somewhere, even if it was +careless or malignant.... It had only to be aroused to be +conscience-stricken, to be moved to exertion.... And I saw, too, that +as yet _there was no such intelligence_. The world waits for +intelligence. That intelligence has still to be made, that will for +good and order has still to be gathered together, out of scraps of +impulse and wandering seeds of benevolence and whatever is fine and +creative in our souls, into a common purpose. It’s something still to +come....’ + +It is characteristic of the widening thought of the time that this not +very heroical young man who, in any previous age, might well have been +altogether occupied with the problem of his own individual necessities, +should be able to stand there and generalise about the needs of the +race. + +But upon all the stresses and conflicts of that chaotic time there was +already dawning the light of a new era. The spirit of humanity was +escaping, even then it was escaping, from its extreme imprisonment in +individuals. Salvation from the bitter intensities of self, which had +been a conscious religious end for thousands of years, which men had +sought in mortifications, in the wilderness, in meditation, and by +innumerable strange paths, was coming at last with the effect of +naturalness into the talk of men, into the books they read, into their +unconscious gestures, into their newspapers and daily purposes and +everyday acts. The broad horizons, the magic possibilities that the +spirit of the seeker had revealed to them, were charming them out of +those ancient and instinctive preoccupations from which the very threat +of hell and torment had failed to drive them. And this young man, +homeless and without provision even for the immediate hours, in the +presence of social disorganisation, distress, and perplexity, in a +blazing wilderness of thoughtless pleasure that blotted out the stars, +could think as he tells us he thought. + +‘I saw life plain,’ he wrote. ‘I saw the gigantic task before us, and +the very splendour of its intricate and immeasurable difficulty filled +me with exaltation. I saw that we have still to discover government, +that we have still to discover education, which is the necessary +reciprocal of government, and that all this—in which my own little +speck of a life was so manifestly overwhelmed—this and its yesterday in +Greece and Rome and Egypt were nothing, the mere first dust swirls of +the beginning, the movements and dim murmurings of a sleeper who will +presently be awake....’ + +Section 7 + +And then the story tells, with an engaging simplicity, of his descent +from this ecstatic vision of reality. + +‘Presently I found myself again, and I was beginning to feel cold and a +little hungry.’ + +He bethought himself of the John Burns Relief Offices which stood upon +the Thames Embankment. He made his way through the galleries of the +booksellers and the National Gallery, which had been open continuously +day and night to all decently dressed people now for more than twelve +years, and across the rose-gardens of Trafalgar Square, and so by the +hotel colonnade to the Embankment. He had long known of these admirable +offices, which had swept the last beggars and matchsellers and all the +casual indigent from the London streets, and he believed that he would, +as a matter of course, be able to procure a ticket for food and a +night’s lodgings and some indication of possible employment. + +But he had not reckoned upon the new labour troubles, and when he got +to the Embankment he found the offices hopelessly congested and +besieged by a large and rather unruly crowd. He hovered for a time on +the outskirts of the waiting multitude, perplexed and dismayed, and +then he became aware of a movement, a purposive trickling away of +people, up through the arches of the great buildings that had arisen +when all the railway stations were removed to the south side of the +river, and so to the covered ways of the Strand. And here, in the open +glare of midnight, he found unemployed men begging, and not only +begging, but begging with astonishing assurance, from the people who +were emerging from the small theatres and other such places of +entertainment which abounded in that thoroughfare. + +This was an altogether unexampled thing. There had been no begging in +London streets for a quarter of a century. But that night the police +were evidently unwilling or unable to cope with the destitute who were +invading those well-kept quarters of the town. They had become stonily +blind to anything but manifest disorder. + +Barnet walked through the crowd, unable to bring himself to ask; indeed +his bearing must have been more valiant than his circumstances, for +twice he says that he was begged from. Near the Trafalgar Square +gardens, a girl with reddened cheeks and blackened eyebrows, who was +walking alone, spoke to him with a peculiar friendliness. + +‘I’m starving,’ he said to her abruptly. + +‘Oh! poor dear!’ she said; and with the impulsive generosity of her +kind, glanced round and slipped a silver piece into his hand.... + +It was a gift that, in spite of the precedent of De Quincey, might +under the repressive social legislation of those times, have brought +Barnet within reach of the prison lash. But he took it, he confesses, +and thanked her as well as he was able, and went off very gladly to get +food. + +Section 8 + +A day or so later—and again his freedom to go as he pleased upon the +roads may be taken as a mark of increasing social disorganisation and +police embarrassment—he wandered out into the open country. He speaks +of the roads of that plutocratic age as being ‘fenced with barbed wire +against unpropertied people,’ of the high-walled gardens and trespass +warnings that kept him to the dusty narrowness of the public ways. In +the air, happy rich people were flying, heedless of the misfortunes +about them, as he himself had been flying two years ago, and along the +road swept the new traffic, light and swift and wonderful. One was +rarely out of earshot of its whistles and gongs and siren cries even in +the field paths or over the open downs. The officials of the labour +exchanges were everywhere overworked and infuriated, the casual wards +were so crowded that the surplus wanderers slept in ranks under sheds +or in the open air, and since giving to wayfarers had been made a +punishable offence there was no longer friendship or help for a man +from the rare foot passenger or the wayside cottage.... + +‘I wasn’t angry,’ said Barnet. ‘I saw an immense selfishness, a +monstrous disregard for anything but pleasure and possession in all +those people above us, but I saw how inevitable that was, how certainly +if the richest had changed places with the poorest, that things would +have been the same. What else can happen when men use science and every +new thing that science gives, and all their available intelligence and +energy to manufacture wealth and appliances, and leave government and +education to the rustling traditions of hundreds of years ago? Those +traditions come from the dark ages when there was really not enough for +every one, when life was a fierce struggle that might be masked but +could not be escaped. Of course this famine grabbing, this fierce +dispossession of others, must follow from such a disharmony between +material and training. Of course the rich were vulgar and the poor grew +savage and every added power that came to men made the rich richer and +the poor less necessary and less free. The men I met in the casual +wards and the relief offices were all smouldering for revolt, talking +of justice and injustice and revenge. I saw no hope in that talk, nor +in anything but patience....’ + +But he did not mean a passive patience. He meant that the method of +social reconstruction was still a riddle, that no effectual +rearrangement was possible until this riddle in all its tangled aspects +was solved. ‘I tried to talk to those discontented men,’ he wrote, ‘but +it was hard for them to see things as I saw them. When I talked of +patience and the larger scheme, they answered, “But then we shall all +be dead”—and I could not make them see, what is so simple to my own +mind, that that did not affect the question. Men who think in lifetimes +are of no use to statesmanship.’ + +He does not seem to have seen a newspaper during those wanderings, and +a chance sight of the transparency of a kiosk in the market-place at +Bishop’s Stortford announcing a ‘Grave International Situation’ did not +excite him very much. There had been so many grave international +situations in recent years. + +This time it was talk of the Central European powers suddenly attacking +the Slav Confederacy, with France and England going to the help of the +Slavs. + +But the next night he found a tolerable meal awaiting the vagrants in +the casual ward, and learnt from the workhouse master that all +serviceable trained men were to be sent back on the morrow to their +mobilisation centres. The country was on the eve of war. He was to go +back through London to Surrey. His first feeling, he records, was one +of extreme relief that his days of ‘hopeless battering at the underside +of civilisation’ were at an end. Here was something definite to do, +something definitely provided for. But his relief was greatly modified +when he found that the mobilisation arrangements had been made so +hastily and carelessly that for nearly thirty-six hours at the +improvised depôt at Epsom he got nothing either to eat or to drink but +a cup of cold water. The depôt was absolutely unprovisioned, and no one +was free to leave it. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND +THE LAST WAR + + +Section I + +Viewed from the standpoint of a sane and ambitious social order, it is +difficult to understand, and it would be tedious to follow, the motives +that plunged mankind into the war that fills the histories of the +middle decades of the twentieth century. + +It must always be remembered that the political structure of the world +at that time was everywhere extraordinarily behind the collective +intelligence. That is the central fact of that history. For two hundred +years there had been no great changes in political or legal methods and +pretensions, the utmost change had been a certain shifting of +boundaries and slight readjustment of procedure, while in nearly every +other aspect of life there had been fundamental revolutions, gigantic +releases, and an enormous enlargement of scope and outlook. The +absurdities of courts and the indignities of representative +parliamentary government, coupled with the opening of vast fields of +opportunity in other directions, had withdrawn the best intelligences +more and more from public affairs. The ostensible governments of the +world in the twentieth century were following in the wake of the +ostensible religions. They were ceasing to command the services of any +but second-rate men. After the middle of the eighteenth century there +are no more great ecclesiastics upon the world’s memory, after the +opening of the twentieth no more statesmen. Everywhere one finds an +energetic, ambitious, short-sighted, common-place type in the seats of +authority, blind to the new possibilities and litigiously reliant upon +the traditions of the past. + +Perhaps the most dangerous of those outworn traditions were the +boundaries of the various ‘sovereign states,’ and the conception of a +general predominance in human affairs on the part of some one +particular state. The memory of the empires of Rome and Alexander +squatted, an unlaid carnivorous ghost, in the human imagination—it +bored into the human brain like some grisly parasite and filled it with +disordered thoughts and violent impulses. For more than a century the +French system exhausted its vitality in belligerent convulsions, and +then the infection passed to the German-speaking peoples who were the +heart and centre of Europe, and from them onward to the Slavs. Later +ages were to store and neglect the vast insane literature of this +obsession, the intricate treaties, the secret agreements, the infinite +knowingness of the political writer, the cunning refusals to accept +plain facts, the strategic devices, the tactical manœuvres, the records +of mobilisations and counter-mobilisations. It ceased to be credible +almost as soon as it ceased to happen, but in the very dawn of the new +age their state craftsmen sat with their historical candles burning, +and, in spite of strange, new reflections and unfamiliar lights and +shadows, still wrangling and planning to rearrange the maps of Europe +and the world. + +It was to become a matter for subtle inquiry how far the millions of +men and women outside the world of these specialists sympathised and +agreed with their portentous activities. One school of psychologists +inclined to minimise this participation, but the balance of evidence +goes to show that there were massive responses to these suggestions of +the belligerent schemer. Primitive man had been a fiercely combative +animal; innumerable generations had passed their lives in tribal +warfare, and the weight of tradition, the example of history, the +ideals of loyalty and devotion fell in easily enough with the +incitements of the international mischief-maker. The political ideas of +the common man were picked up haphazard, there was practically nothing +in such education as he was given that was ever intended to fit him for +citizenship as such (that conception only appeared, indeed, with the +development of Modern State ideas), and it was therefore a +comparatively easy matter to fill his vacant mind with the sounds and +fury of exasperated suspicion and national aggression. + +For example, Barnet describes the London crowd as noisily patriotic +when presently his battalion came up from the depôt to London, to +entrain for the French frontier. He tells of children and women and +lads and old men cheering and shouting, of the streets and rows hung +with the flags of the Allied Powers, of a real enthusiasm even among +the destitute and unemployed. The Labour Bureaux were now partially +transformed into enrolment offices, and were centres of hotly patriotic +excitement. At every convenient place upon the line on either side of +the Channel Tunnel there were enthusiastic spectators, and the feeling +in the regiment, if a little stiffened and darkened by grim +anticipations, was none the less warlike. + +But all this emotion was the fickle emotion of minds without +established ideas; it was with most of them, Barnet says, as it was +with himself, a natural response to collective movement, and to martial +sounds and colours, and the exhilarating challenge of vague dangers. +And people had been so long oppressed by the threat of and preparation +for war that its arrival came with an effect of positive relief. + +Section 2 + +The plan of campaign of the Allies assigned the defence of the lower +Meuse to the English, and the troop-trains were run direct from the +various British depôts to the points in the Ardennes where they were +intended to entrench themselves. + +Most of the documents bearing upon the campaign were destroyed during +the war, from the first the scheme of the Allies seems to have been +confused, but it is highly probable that the formation of an aerial +park in this region, from which attacks could be made upon the vast +industrial plant of the lower Rhine, and a flanking raid through +Holland upon the German naval establishments at the mouth of the Elbe, +were integral parts of the original project. Nothing of this was known +to such pawns in the game as Barnet and his company, whose business it +was to do what they were told by the mysterious intelligences at the +direction of things in Paris, to which city the Whitehall staff had +also been transferred. From first to last these directing intelligences +remained mysterious to the body of the army, veiled under the name of +‘Orders.’ There was no Napoleon, no Cæsar to embody enthusiasm. Barnet +says, ‘We talked of Them. _They_ are sending us up into Luxembourg. +_They_ are going to turn the Central European right.’ + +Behind the veil of this vagueness the little group of more or less +worthy men which constituted Headquarters was beginning to realise the +enormity of the thing it was supposed to control.... + +In the great hall of the War Control, whose windows looked out across +the Seine to the Trocadero and the palaces of the western quarter, a +series of big-scale relief maps were laid out upon tables to display +the whole seat of war, and the staff-officers of the control were +continually busy shifting the little blocks which represented the +contending troops, as the reports and intelligence came drifting in to +the various telegraphic bureaux in the adjacent rooms. In other smaller +apartments there were maps of a less detailed sort, upon which, for +example, the reports of the British Admiralty and of the Slav +commanders were recorded as they kept coming to hand. Upon these maps, +as upon chessboards, Marshal Dubois, in consultation with General Viard +and the Earl of Delhi, was to play the great game for world supremacy +against the Central European powers. Very probably he had a definite +idea of his game; very probably he had a coherent and admirable plan. + +But he had reckoned without a proper estimate either of the new +strategy of aviation or of the possibilities of atomic energy that +Holsten had opened for mankind. While he planned entrenchments and +invasions and a frontier war, the Central European generalship was +striking at the eyes and the brain. And while, with a certain diffident +hesitation, he developed his gambit that night upon the lines laid down +by Napoleon and Moltke, his own scientific corps in a state of mutinous +activity was preparing a blow for Berlin. ‘These old fools!’ was the +key in which the scientific corps was thinking. + +The War Control in Paris, on the night of July the second, was an +impressive display of the paraphernalia of scientific military +organisation, as the first half of the twentieth century understood it. +To one human being at least the consulting commanders had the likeness +of world-wielding gods. + +She was a skilled typist, capable of nearly sixty words a minute, and +she had been engaged in relay with other similar women to take down +orders in duplicate and hand them over to the junior officers in +attendance, to be forwarded and filed. There had come a lull, and she +had been sent out from the dictating room to take the air upon the +terrace before the great hall and to eat such scanty refreshment as she +had brought with her until her services were required again. + +From her position upon the terrace this young woman had a view not only +of the wide sweep of the river below her, and all the eastward side of +Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to Saint Cloud, great blocks and masses +of black or pale darkness with pink and golden flashes of illumination +and endless interlacing bands of dotted lights under a still and +starless sky, but also the whole spacious interior of the great hall +with its slender pillars and gracious arching and clustering lamps was +visible to her. There, over a wilderness of tables, lay the huge maps, +done on so large a scale that one might fancy them small countries; the +messengers and attendants went and came perpetually, altering, moving +the little pieces that signified hundreds and thousands of men, and the +great commander and his two consultants stood amidst all these things +and near where the fighting was nearest, scheming, directing. They had +but to breathe a word and presently away there, in the world of +reality, the punctual myriads moved. Men rose up and went forward and +died. The fate of nations lay behind the eyes of these three men. +Indeed they were like gods. + +Most godlike of the three was Dubois. It was for him to decide; the +others at most might suggest. Her woman’s soul went out to this grave, +handsome, still, old man, in a passion of instinctive worship. + +Once she had taken words of instruction from him direct. She had +awaited them in an ecstasy of happiness—and fear. For her exaltation +was made terrible by the dread that some error might dishonour her.... + +She watched him now through the glass with all the unpenetrating +minuteness of an impassioned woman’s observation. + +He said little, she remarked. He looked but little at the maps. The +tall Englishman beside him was manifestly troubled by a swarm of ideas, +conflicting ideas; he craned his neck at every shifting of the little +red, blue, black, and yellow pieces on the board, and wanted to draw +the commander’s attention to this and that. Dubois listened, nodded, +emitted a word and became still again, brooding like the national +eagle. + +His eyes were so deeply sunken under his white eyebrows that she could +not see his eyes; his moustache overhung the mouth from which those +words of decision came. Viard, too, said little; he was a dark man with +a drooping head and melancholy, watchful eyes. He was more intent upon +the French right, which was feeling its way now through Alsace to the +Rhine. He was, she knew, an old colleague of Dubois; he knew him +better, she decided, he trusted him more than this unfamiliar +Englishman.... + +Not to talk, to remain impassive and as far as possible in profile; +these were the lessons that old Dubois had mastered years ago. To seem +to know all, to betray no surprise, to refuse to hurry—itself a +confession of miscalculation; by attention to these simple rules, +Dubois had built up a steady reputation from the days when he had been +a promising junior officer, a still, almost abstracted young man, +deliberate but ready. Even then men had looked at him and said: ‘He +will go far.’ Through fifty years of peace he had never once been found +wanting, and at manœuvres his impassive persistence had perplexed and +hypnotised and defeated many a more actively intelligent man. Deep in +his soul Dubois had hidden his one profound discovery about the modern +art of warfare, the key to his career. And this discovery was that +_nobody knew_, that to act therefore was to blunder, that to talk was +to confess; and that the man who acted slowly and steadfastly and above +all silently, had the best chance of winning through. Meanwhile one fed +the men. Now by this same strategy he hoped to shatter those mysterious +unknowns of the Central European command. Delhi might talk of a great +flank march through Holland, with all the British submarines and +hydroplanes and torpedo craft pouring up the Rhine in support of it; +Viard might crave for brilliance with the motor bicycles, aeroplanes, +and ski-men among the Swiss mountains, and a sudden swoop upon Vienna; +the thing was to listen—and wait for the other side to begin +experimenting. It was all experimenting. And meanwhile he remained in +profile, with an air of assurance—like a man who sits in an automobile +after the chauffeur has had his directions. + +And every one about him was the stronger and surer for that quiet face, +that air of knowledge and unruffled confidence. The clustering lights +threw a score of shadows of him upon the maps, great bunches of him, +versions of a commanding presence, lighter or darker, dominated the +field, and pointed in every direction. Those shadows symbolised his +control. When a messenger came from the wireless room to shift this or +that piece in the game, to replace under amended reports one Central +European regiment by a score, to draw back or thrust out or distribute +this or that force of the Allies, the Marshal would turn his head and +seem not to see, or look and nod slightly, as a master nods who +approves a pupil’s self-correction. ‘Yes, that’s better.’ + +How wonderful he was, thought the woman at the window, how wonderful it +all was. This was the brain of the western world, this was Olympus with +the warring earth at its feet. And he was guiding France, France so +long a resentful exile from imperialism, back to her old predominance. + +It seemed to her beyond the desert of a woman that she should be +privileged to participate.... + +It is hard to be a woman, full of the stormy impulse to personal +devotion, and to have to be impersonal, abstract, exact, punctual. She +must control herself.... + +She gave herself up to fantastic dreams, dreams of the days when the +war would be over and victory enthroned. Then perhaps this harshness, +this armour would be put aside and the gods might unbend. Her eyelids +drooped.... + +She roused herself with a start. She became aware that the night +outside was no longer still. That there was an excitement down below on +the bridge and a running in the street and a flickering of searchlights +among the clouds from some high place away beyond the Trocadero. And +then the excitement came surging up past her and invaded the hall +within. + +One of the sentinels from the terrace stood at the upper end of the +room, gesticulating and shouting something. + +And all the world had changed. A kind of throbbing. She couldn’t +understand. It was as if all the water-pipes and concealed machinery +and cables of the ways beneath, were beating—as pulses beat. And about +her blew something like a wind—a wind that was dismay. + +Her eyes went to the face of the Marshal as a frightened child might +look towards its mother. + +He was still serene. He was frowning slightly, she thought, but that +was natural enough, for the Earl of Delhi, with one hand gauntly +gesticulating, had taken him by the arm and was all too manifestly +disposed to drag him towards the great door that opened on the terrace. +And Viard was hurrying towards the huge windows and doing so in the +strangest of attitudes, bent forward and with eyes upturned. + +Something up there? + +And then it was as if thunder broke overhead. + +The sound struck her like a blow. She crouched together against the +masonry and looked up. She saw three black shapes swooping down through +the torn clouds, and from a point a little below two of them, there had +already started curling trails of red.... + +Everything else in her being was paralysed, she hung through moments +that seemed infinities, watching those red missiles whirl down towards +her. + +She felt torn out of the world. There was nothing else in the world but +a crimson-purple glare and sound, deafening, all-embracing, continuing +sound. Every other light had gone out about her and against this glare +hung slanting walls, pirouetting pillars, projecting fragments of +cornices, and a disorderly flight of huge angular sheets of glass. She +had an impression of a great ball of crimson-purple fire like a +maddened living thing that seemed to be whirling about very rapidly +amidst a chaos of falling masonry, that seemed to be attacking the +earth furiously, that seemed to be burrowing into it like a blazing +rabbit.... + +She had all the sensations of waking up out of a dream. + +She found she was lying face downward on a bank of mould and that a +little rivulet of hot water was running over one foot. She tried to +raise herself and found her leg was very painful. She was not clear +whether it was night or day nor where she was; she made a second +effort, wincing and groaning, and turned over and got into a sitting +position and looked about her. + +Everything seemed very silent. She was, in fact, in the midst of a vast +uproar, but she did not realise this because her hearing had been +destroyed. + +At first she could not join on what she saw to any previous experience. + +She seemed to be in a strange world, a soundless, ruinous world, a +world of heaped broken things. And it was lit—and somehow this was more +familiar to her mind than any other fact about her—by a flickering, +purplish-crimson light. Then close to her, rising above a confusion of +_débris_, she recognised the Trocadero; it was changed, something had +gone from it, but its outline was unmistakable. It stood out against a +streaming, whirling uprush of red-lit steam. And with that she recalled +Paris and the Seine and the warm, overcast evening and the beautiful, +luminous organisation of the War Control.... + +She drew herself a little way up the slope of earth on which she lay, +and examined her surroundings with an increasing understanding.... + +The earth on which she was lying projected like a cape into the river. +Quite close to her was a brimming lake of dammed-up water, from which +these warm rivulets and torrents were trickling. Wisps of vapour came +into circling existence a foot or so from its mirror-surface. Near at +hand and reflected exactly in the water was the upper part of a +familiar-looking stone pillar. On the side of her away from the water +the heaped ruins rose steeply in a confused slope up to a glaring +crest. Above and reflecting this glare towered pillowed masses of steam +rolling swiftly upward to the zenith. It was from this crest that the +livid glow that lit the world about her proceeded, and slowly her mind +connected this mound with the vanished buildings of the War Control. + +‘_Mais!_’ she whispered, and remained with staring eyes quite +motionless for a time, crouching close to the warm earth. + +Then presently this dim, broken human thing began to look about it +again. She began to feel the need of fellowship. She wanted to +question, wanted to speak, wanted to relate her experience. And her +foot hurt her atrociously. There ought to be an ambulance. A little +gust of querulous criticisms blew across her mind. This surely was a +disaster! Always after a disaster there should be ambulances and +helpers moving about.... + +She craned her head. There was something there. But everything was so +still! + +‘_Monsieur!_’ she cried. Her ears, she noted, felt queer, and she began +to suspect that all was not well with them. + +It was terribly lonely in this chaotic strangeness, and perhaps this +man—if it was a man, for it was difficult to see—might for all his +stillness be merely insensible. He might have been stunned.... + +The leaping glare beyond sent a ray into his corner and for a moment +every little detail was distinct. It was Marshal Dubois. He was lying +against a huge slab of the war map. To it there stuck and from it there +dangled little wooden objects, the symbols of infantry and cavalry and +guns, as they were disposed upon the frontier. He did not seem to be +aware of this at his back, he had an effect of inattention, not +indifferent attention, but as if he were thinking.... + +She could not see the eyes beneath his shaggy brows, but it was evident +he frowned. He frowned slightly, he had an air of not wanting to be +disturbed. His face still bore that expression of assured confidence, +that conviction that if things were left to him France might obey in +security.... + +She did not cry out to him again, but she crept a little nearer. A +strange surmise made her eyes dilate. With a painful wrench she pulled +herself up so that she could see completely over the intervening lumps +of smashed-up masonry. Her hand touched something wet, and after one +convulsive movement she became rigid. + +It was not a whole man there; it was a piece of a man, the head and +shoulders of a man that trailed down into a ragged darkness and a pool +of shining black.... + +And even as she stared the mound above her swayed and crumbled, and a +rush of hot water came pouring over her. Then it seemed to her that she +was dragged downward.... + +Section 3 + +When the rather brutish young aviator with the bullet head and the +black hair close-cropped _en brosse_, who was in charge of the French +special scientific corps, heard presently of this disaster to the War +Control, he was so wanting in imagination in any sphere but his own, +that he laughed. Small matter to him that Paris was burning. His mother +and father and sister lived at Caudebec; and the only sweetheart he had +ever had, and it was poor love-making then, was a girl in Rouen. He +slapped his second-in-command on the shoulder. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘there’s +nothing on earth to stop us going to Berlin and giving them +tit-for-tat.... Strategy and reasons of state—they’re over.... Come +along, my boy, and we’ll just show these old women what we can do when +they let us have our heads.’ + +He spent five minutes telephoning and then he went out into the +courtyard of the chateau in which he had been installed and shouted for +his automobile. Things would have to move quickly because there was +scarcely an hour and a half before dawn. He looked at the sky and noted +with satisfaction a heavy bank of clouds athwart the pallid east. + +He was a young man of infinite shrewdness, and his material and +aeroplanes were scattered all over the country-side, stuck away in +barns, covered with hay, hidden in woods. A hawk could not have +discovered any of them without coming within reach of a gun. But that +night he only wanted one of the machines, and it was handy and quite +prepared under a tarpaulin between two ricks not a couple of miles +away; he was going to Berlin with that and just one other man. Two men +would be enough for what he meant to do.... + +He had in his hands the black complement to all those other gifts +science was urging upon unregenerate mankind, the gift of destruction, +and he was an adventurous rather than a sympathetic type.... + +He was a dark young man with something negroid about his gleaming face. +He smiled like one who is favoured and anticipates great pleasures. +There was an exotic richness, a chuckling flavour, about the voice in +which he gave his orders, and he pointed his remarks with the long +finger of a hand that was hairy and exceptionally big. + +‘We’ll give them tit-for-tat,’ he said. ‘We’ll give them tit-for-tat. +No time to lose, boys....’ + +And presently over the cloud-banks that lay above Westphalia and Saxony +the swift aeroplane, with its atomic engine as noiseless as a dancing +sunbeam and its phosphorescent gyroscopic compass, flew like an arrow +to the heart of the Central European hosts. + +It did not soar very high; it skimmed a few hundred feet above the +banked darknesses of cumulus that hid the world, ready to plunge at +once into their wet obscurities should some hostile flier range into +vision. The tense young steersman divided his attention between the +guiding stars above and the level, tumbled surfaces of the vapour +strata that hid the world below. Over great spaces those banks lay as +even as a frozen lava-flow and almost as still, and then they were rent +by ragged areas of translucency, pierced by clear chasms, so that dim +patches of the land below gleamed remotely through abysses. Once he saw +quite distinctly the plan of a big railway station outlined in lamps +and signals, and once the flames of a burning rick showing livid +through a boiling drift of smoke on the side of some great hill. But if +the world was masked it was alive with sounds. Up through that vapour +floor came the deep roar of trains, the whistles of horns of +motor-cars, a sound of rifle fire away to the south, and as he drew +near his destination the crowing of cocks.... + +The sky above the indistinct horizons of this cloud sea was at first +starry and then paler with a light that crept from north to east as the +dawn came on. The Milky Way was invisible in the blue, and the lesser +stars vanished. The face of the adventurer at the steering-wheel, +darkly visible ever and again by the oval greenish glow of the compass +face, had something of that firm beauty which all concentrated purpose +gives, and something of the happiness of an idiot child that has at +last got hold of the matches. His companion, a less imaginative type, +sat with his legs spread wide over the long, coffin-shaped box which +contained in its compartments the three atomic bombs, the new bombs +that would continue to explode indefinitely and which no one so far had +ever seen in action. Hitherto Carolinum, their essential substance, had +been tested only in almost infinitesimal quantities within steel +chambers embedded in lead. Beyond the thought of great destruction +slumbering in the black spheres between his legs, and a keen resolve to +follow out very exactly the instructions that had been given him, the +man’s mind was a blank. His aquiline profile against the starlight +expressed nothing but a profound gloom. + +The sky below grew clearer as the Central European capital was +approached. + +So far they had been singularly lucky and had been challenged by no +aeroplanes at all. The frontier scouts they must have passed in the +night; probably these were mostly under the clouds; the world was wide +and they had had luck in not coming close to any soaring sentinel. +Their machine was painted a pale gray, that lay almost invisibly over +the cloud levels below. But now the east was flushing with the near +ascent of the sun, Berlin was but a score of miles ahead, and the luck +of the Frenchmen held. By imperceptible degrees the clouds below +dissolved.... + +Away to the north-eastward, in a cloudless pool of gathering light and +with all its nocturnal illuminations still blazing, was Berlin. The +left finger of the steersman verified roads and open spaces below upon +the mica-covered square of map that was fastened by his wheel. There in +a series of lake-like expansions was the Havel away to the right; over +by those forests must be Spandau; there the river split about the +Potsdam island; and right ahead was Charlottenburg cleft by a great +thoroughfare that fell like an indicating beam of light straight to the +imperial headquarters. There, plain enough, was the Thiergarten; beyond +rose the imperial palace, and to the right those tall buildings, those +clustering, beflagged, bemasted roofs, must be the offices in which the +Central European staff was housed. It was all coldly clear and +colourless in the dawn. + +He looked up suddenly as a humming sound grew out of nothing and became +swiftly louder. Nearly overhead a German aeroplane was circling down +from an immense height to challenge him. He made a gesture with his +left arm to the gloomy man behind and then gripped his little wheel +with both hands, crouched over it, and twisted his neck to look upward. +He was attentive, tightly strung, but quite contemptuous of their +ability to hurt him. No German alive, he was assured, could outfly him, +or indeed any one of the best Frenchmen. He imagined they might strike +at him as a hawk strikes, but they were men coming down out of the +bitter cold up there, in a hungry, spiritless, morning mood; they came +slanting down like a sword swung by a lazy man, and not so rapidly but +that he was able to slip away from under them and get between them and +Berlin. They began challenging him in German with a megaphone when they +were still perhaps a mile away. The words came to him, rolled up into a +mere blob of hoarse sound. Then, gathering alarm from his grim silence, +they gave chase and swept down, a hundred yards above him perhaps, and +a couple of hundred behind. They were beginning to understand what he +was. He ceased to watch them and concentrated himself on the city +ahead, and for a time the two aeroplanes raced.... + +A bullet came tearing through the air by him, as though some one was +tearing paper. A second followed. Something tapped the machine. + +It was time to act. The broad avenues, the park, the palaces below +rushed widening out nearer and nearer to them. ‘Ready!’ said the +steersman. + +The gaunt face hardened to grimness, and with both hands the +bomb-thrower lifted the big atomic bomb from the box and steadied it +against the side. It was a black sphere two feet in diameter. Between +its handles was a little celluloid stud, and to this he bent his head +until his lips touched it. Then he had to bite in order to let the air +in upon the inducive. Sure of its accessibility, he craned his neck +over the side of the aeroplane and judged his pace and distance. Then +very quickly he bent forward, bit the stud, and hoisted the bomb over +the side. + +‘Round,’ he whispered inaudibly. + +The bomb flashed blinding scarlet in mid-air, and fell, a descending +column of blaze eddying spirally in the midst of a whirlwind. Both the +aeroplanes were tossed like shuttlecocks, hurled high and sideways and +the steersman, with gleaming eyes and set teeth, fought in great +banking curves for a balance. The gaunt man clung tight with hand and +knees; his nostrils dilated, his teeth biting his lips. He was firmly +strapped.... + +When he could look down again it was like looking down upon the crater +of a small volcano. In the open garden before the Imperial castle a +shuddering star of evil splendour spurted and poured up smoke and flame +towards them like an accusation. They were too high to distinguish +people clearly, or mark the bomb’s effect upon the building until +suddenly the facade tottered and crumbled before the flare as sugar +dissolves in water. The man stared for a moment, showed all his long +teeth, and then staggered into the cramped standing position his straps +permitted, hoisted out and bit another bomb, and sent it down after its +fellow. + +The explosion came this time more directly underneath the aeroplane and +shot it upward edgeways. The bomb box tipped to the point of +disgorgement, and the bomb-thrower was pitched forward upon the third +bomb with his face close to its celluloid stud. He clutched its +handles, and with a sudden gust of determination that the thing should +not escape him, bit its stud. Before he could hurl it over, the +monoplane was slipping sideways. Everything was falling sideways. +Instinctively he gave himself up to gripping, his body holding the bomb +in its place. + +Then that bomb had exploded also, and steersman, thrower, and aeroplane +were just flying rags and splinters of metal and drops of moisture in +the air, and a third column of fire rushed eddying down upon the doomed +buildings below.... + +Section 4 + +Never before in the history of warfare had there been a continuing +explosive; indeed, up to the middle of the twentieth century the only +explosives known were combustibles whose explosiveness was due entirely +to their instantaneousness; and these atomic bombs which science burst +upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them. +Those used by the Allies were lumps of pure Carolinum, painted on the +outside with unoxidised cydonator inducive enclosed hermetically in a +case of membranium. A little celluloid stud between the handles by +which the bomb was lifted was arranged so as to be easily torn off and +admit air to the inducive, which at once became active and set up +radio-activity in the outer layer of the Carolinum sphere. This +liberated fresh inducive, and so in a few minutes the whole bomb was a +blazing continual explosion. The Central European bombs were the same, +except that they were larger and had a more complicated arrangement for +animating the inducive. + +Always before in the development of warfare the shells and rockets +fired had been but momentarily explosive, they had gone off in an +instant once for all, and if there was nothing living or valuable +within reach of the concussion and the flying fragments then they were +spent and over. But Carolinum, which belonged to the β-Group of +Hyslop’s so-called ‘suspended degenerator’ elements, once its +degenerative process had been induced, continued a furious radiation of +energy and nothing could arrest it. Of all Hyslop’s artificial +elements, Carolinum was the most heavily stored with energy and the +most dangerous to make and handle. To this day it remains the most +potent degenerator known. What the earlier twentieth-century chemists +called its half period was seventeen days; that is to say, it poured +out half of the huge store of energy in its great molecules in the +space of seventeen days, the next seventeen days’ emission was a half +of that first period’s outpouring, and so on. As with all radio-active +substances this Carolinum, though every seventeen days its power is +halved, though constantly it diminishes towards the imperceptible, is +never entirely exhausted, and to this day the battle-fields and bomb +fields of that frantic time in human history are sprinkled with radiant +matter, and so centres of inconvenient rays. + +What happened when the celluloid stud was opened was that the inducive +oxidised and became active. Then the surface of the Carolinum began to +degenerate. This degeneration passed only slowly into the substance of +the bomb. A moment or so after its explosion began it was still mainly +an inert sphere exploding superficially, a big, inanimate nucleus +wrapped in flame and thunder. Those that were thrown from aeroplanes +fell in this state, they reached the ground still mainly solid, and, +melting soil and rock in their progress, bored into the earth. There, +as more and more of the Carolinum became active, the bomb spread itself +out into a monstrous cavern of fiery energy at the base of what became +very speedily a miniature active volcano. The Carolinum, unable to +disperse, freely drove into and mixed up with a boiling confusion of +molten soil and superheated steam, and so remained spinning furiously +and maintaining an eruption that lasted for years or months or weeks +according to the size of the bomb employed and the chances of its +dispersal. Once launched, the bomb was absolutely unapproachable and +uncontrollable until its forces were nearly exhausted, and from the +crater that burst open above it, puffs of heavy incandescent vapour and +fragments of viciously punitive rock and mud, saturated with Carolinum, +and each a centre of scorching and blistering energy, were flung high +and far. + +Such was the crowning triumph of military science, the ultimate +explosive that was to give the ‘decisive touch’ to war.... + +Section 5 + +A recent historical writer has described the world of that time as one +that ‘believed in established words and was invincibly blind to the +obvious in things.’ Certainly it seems now that nothing could have been +more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the +rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they +did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in +their fumbling hands. Yet the broad facts must have glared upon any +intelligent mind. All through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries +the amount of energy that men were able to command was continually +increasing. Applied to warfare that meant that the power to inflict a +blow, the power to destroy, was continually increasing. There was no +increase whatever in the ability to escape. Every sort of passive +defence, armour, fortifications, and so forth, was being outmastered by +this tremendous increase on the destructive side. Destruction was +becoming so facile that any little body of malcontents could use it; it +was revolutionising the problems of police and internal rule. Before +the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could +carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck +half a city. These facts were before the minds of everybody; the +children in the streets knew them. And yet the world still, as the +Americans used to phrase it, ‘fooled around’ with the paraphernalia and +pretensions of war. + +It is only by realising this profound, this fantastic divorce between +the scientific and intellectual movement on the one hand, and the world +of the lawyer-politician on the other, that the men of a later time can +hope to understand this preposterous state of affairs. Social +organisation was still in the barbaric stage. There were already great +numbers of actively intelligent men and much private and commercial +civilisation, but the community, as a whole, was aimless, untrained and +unorganised to the pitch of imbecility. Collective civilisation, the +‘Modern State,’ was still in the womb of the future.... + +Section 6 + +But let us return to Frederick Barnet’s _Wander Jahre_ and its account +of the experiences of a common man during the war time. While these +terrific disclosures of scientific possibility were happening in Paris +and Berlin, Barnet and his company were industriously entrenching +themselves in Belgian Luxembourg. + +He tells of the mobilisation and of his summer day’s journey through +the north of France and the Ardennes in a few vivid phrases. The +country was browned by a warm summer, the trees a little touched with +autumnal colour, and the wheat already golden. When they stopped for an +hour at Hirson, men and women with tricolour badges upon the platform +distributed cakes and glasses of beer to the thirsty soldiers, and +there was much cheerfulness. ‘Such good, cool beer it was,’ he wrote. +‘I had had nothing to eat nor drink since Epsom.’ + +A number of monoplanes, ‘like giant swallows,’ he notes, were scouting +in the pink evening sky. + +Barnet’s battalion was sent through the Sedan country to a place called +Virton, and thence to a point in the woods on the line to Jemelle. Here +they detrained, bivouacked uneasily by the railway—trains and stores +were passing along it all night—and next morning he marched eastward +through a cold, overcast dawn, and a morning, first cloudy and then +blazing, over a large spacious country-side interspersed by forest +towards Arlon. + +There the infantry were set to work upon a line of masked entrenchments +and hidden rifle pits between St Hubert and Virton that were designed +to check and delay any advance from the east upon the fortified line of +the Meuse. They had their orders, and for two days they worked without +either a sight of the enemy or any suspicion of the disaster that had +abruptly decapitated the armies of Europe, and turned the west of Paris +and the centre of Berlin into blazing miniatures of the destruction of +Pompeii. + +And the news, when it did come, came attenuated. ‘We heard there had +been mischief with aeroplanes and bombs in Paris,’ Barnet relates; ‘but +it didn’t seem to follow that “They” weren’t still somewhere +elaborating their plans and issuing orders. When the enemy began to +emerge from the woods in front of us, we cheered and blazed away, and +didn’t trouble much more about anything but the battle in hand. If now +and then one cocked up an eye into the sky to see what was happening +there, the rip of a bullet soon brought one down to the horizontal +again.... + +That battle went on for three days all over a great stretch of country +between Louvain on the north and Longwy to the south. It was +essentially a rifle and infantry struggle. The aeroplanes do not seem +to have taken any decisive share in the actual fighting for some days, +though no doubt they effected the strategy from the first by preventing +surprise movements. They were aeroplanes with atomic engines, but they +were not provided with atomic bombs, which were manifestly unsuitable +for field use, nor indeed had they any very effective kind of bomb. And +though they manœuvred against each other, and there was rifle shooting +at them and between them, there was little actual aerial fighting. +Either the airmen were indisposed to fight or the commanders on both +sides preferred to reserve these machines for scouting.... + +After a day or so of digging and scheming, Barnet found himself in the +forefront of a battle. He had made his section of rifle pits chiefly +along a line of deep dry ditch that gave a means of +inter-communication, he had had the earth scattered over the adjacent +field, and he had masked his preparations with tussocks of corn and +poppy. The hostile advance came blindly and unsuspiciously across the +fields below and would have been very cruelly handled indeed, if some +one away to the right had not opened fire too soon. + +‘It was a queer thrill when these fellows came into sight,’ he +confesses; ‘and not a bit like manœuvres. They halted for a time on the +edge of the wood and then came forward in an open line. They kept +walking nearer to us and not looking at us, but away to the right of +us. Even when they began to be hit, and their officers’ whistles woke +them up, they didn’t seem to see us. One or two halted to fire, and +then they all went back towards the wood again. They went slowly at +first, looking round at us, then the shelter of the wood seemed to draw +them, and they trotted. I fired rather mechanically and missed, then I +fired again, and then I became earnest to hit something, made sure of +my sighting, and aimed very carefully at a blue back that was dodging +about in the corn. At first I couldn’t satisfy myself and didn’t shoot, +his movements were so spasmodic and uncertain; then I think he came to +a ditch or some such obstacle and halted for a moment. “_Got_ you,” I +whispered, and pulled the trigger. + +‘I had the strangest sensations about that man. In the first instance, +when I felt that I had hit him I was irradiated with joy and pride.... + +‘I sent him spinning. He jumped and threw up his arms.... + +‘Then I saw the corn tops waving and had glimpses of him flapping +about. Suddenly I felt sick. I hadn’t killed him.... + +‘In some way he was disabled and smashed up and yet able to struggle +about. I began to think.... + +‘For nearly two hours that Prussian was agonising in the corn. Either +he was calling out or some one was shouting to him.... + +‘Then he jumped up—he seemed to try to get up upon his feet with one +last effort; and then he fell like a sack and lay quite still and never +moved again. + +‘He had been unendurable, and I believe some one had shot him dead. I +had been wanting to do so for some time....’ + +The enemy began sniping the rifle pits from shelters they made for +themselves in the woods below. A man was hit in the pit next to Barnet, +and began cursing and crying out in a violent rage. Barnet crawled +along the ditch to him and found him in great pain, covered with blood, +frantic with indignation, and with the half of his right hand smashed +to a pulp. ‘Look at this,’ he kept repeating, hugging it and then +extending it. ‘Damned foolery! Damned foolery! My right hand, sir! My +right hand!’ + +For some time Barnet could do nothing with him. The man was consumed by +his tortured realisation of the evil silliness of war, the realisation +which had come upon him in a flash with the bullet that had destroyed +his skill and use as an artificer for ever. He was looking at the +vestiges with a horror that made him impenetrable to any other idea. At +last the poor wretch let Barnet tie up his bleeding stump and help him +along the ditch that conducted him deviously out of range.... + +When Barnet returned his men were already calling out for water, and +all day long the line of pits suffered greatly from thirst. For food +they had chocolate and bread. + +‘At first,’ he says, ‘I was extraordinarily excited by my baptism of +fire. Then as the heat of the day came on I experienced an enormous +tedium and discomfort. The flies became extremely troublesome, and my +little grave of a rifle pit was invaded by ants. I could not get up or +move about, for some one in the trees had got a mark on me. I kept +thinking of the dead Prussian down among the corn, and of the bitter +outcries of my own man. Damned foolery! It _was_ damned foolery. But +who was to blame? How had we got to this? . . . + +‘Early in the afternoon an aeroplane tried to dislodge us with dynamite +bombs, but she was hit by bullets once or twice, and suddenly dived +down over beyond the trees. + +‘“From Holland to the Alps this day,” I thought, “there must be +crouching and lying between half and a million of men, trying to +inflict irreparable damage upon one another. The thing is idiotic to +the pitch of impossibility. It is a dream. Presently I shall wake up.” +. . . + +‘Then the phrase changed itself in my mind. “Presently mankind will +wake up.” + +‘I lay speculating just how many thousands of men there were among +these hundreds of thousands, whose spirits were in rebellion against +all these ancient traditions of flag and empire. Weren’t we, perhaps, +already in the throes of the last crisis, in that darkest moment of a +nightmare’s horror before the sleeper will endure no more of it—and +wakes? + +‘I don’t know how my speculations ended. I think they were not so much +ended as distracted by the distant thudding of the guns that were +opening fire at long range upon Namur.’ + +Section 7 + +But as yet Barnet had seen no more than the mildest beginnings of +modern warfare. So far he had taken part only in a little shooting. The +bayonet attack by which the advanced line was broken was made at a +place called Croix Rouge, more than twenty miles away, and that night +under cover of the darkness the rifle pits were abandoned and he got +his company away without further loss. + +His regiment fell back unpressed behind the fortified lines between +Namur and Sedan, entrained at a station called Mettet, and was sent +northward by Antwerp and Rotterdam to Haarlem. Hence they marched into +North Holland. It was only after the march into Holland that he began +to realise the monstrous and catastrophic nature of the struggle in +which he was playing his undistinguished part. + +He describes very pleasantly the journey through the hills and open +land of Brabant, the repeated crossing of arms of the Rhine, and the +change from the undulating scenery of Belgium to the flat, rich +meadows, the sunlit dyke roads, and the countless windmills of the +Dutch levels. In those days there was unbroken land from Alkmaar and +Leiden to the Dollart. Three great provinces, South Holland, North +Holland, and Zuiderzeeland, reclaimed at various times between the +early tenth century and 1945 and all many feet below the level of the +waves outside the dykes, spread out their lush polders to the northern +sun and sustained a dense industrious population. An intricate web of +laws and custom and tradition ensured a perpetual vigilance and a +perpetual defence against the beleaguering sea. For more than two +hundred and fifty miles from Walcheren to Friesland stretched a line of +embankments and pumping stations that was the admiration of the world. + +If some curious god had chosen to watch the course of events in those +northern provinces while that flanking march of the British was in +progress, he would have found a convenient and appropriate seat for his +observation upon one of the great cumulus clouds that were drifting +slowly across the blue sky during all these eventful days before the +great catastrophe. For that was the quality of the weather, hot and +clear, with something of a breeze, and underfoot dry and a little +inclined to be dusty. This watching god would have looked down upon +broad stretches of sunlit green, sunlit save for the creeping patches +of shadow cast by the clouds, upon sky-reflecting meres, fringed and +divided up by masses of willow and large areas of silvery weeds, upon +white roads lying bare to the sun and upon a tracery of blue canals. +The pastures were alive with cattle, the roads had a busy traffic, of +beasts and bicycles and gaily coloured peasants’ automobiles, the hues +of the innumerable motor barges in the canal vied with the eventfulness +of the roadways; and everywhere in solitary steadings, amidst ricks and +barns, in groups by the wayside, in straggling villages, each with its +fine old church, or in compact towns laced with canals and abounding in +bridges and clipped trees, were human habitations. + +The people of this country-side were not belligerents. The interests +and sympathies alike of Holland had been so divided that to the end she +remained undecided and passive in the struggle of the world powers. And +everywhere along the roads taken by the marching armies clustered +groups and crowds of impartially observant spectators, women and +children in peculiar white caps and old-fashioned sabots, and elderly, +clean-shaven men quietly thoughtful over their long pipes. They had no +fear of their invaders; the days when ‘soldiering’ meant bands of +licentious looters had long since passed away.... + +That watcher among the clouds would have seen a great distribution of +khaki-uniformed men and khaki-painted material over the whole of the +sunken area of Holland. He would have marked the long trains, packed +with men or piled with great guns and war material, creeping slowly, +alert for train-wreckers, along the north-going lines; he would have +seen the Scheldt and Rhine choked with shipping, and pouring out still +more men and still more material; he would have noticed halts and +provisionings and detrainments, and the long, bustling caterpillars of +cavalry and infantry, the maggot-like wagons, the huge beetles of great +guns, crawling under the poplars along the dykes and roads northward, +along ways lined by the neutral, unmolested, ambiguously observant +Dutch. All the barges and shipping upon the canals had been +requisitioned for transport. In that clear, bright, warm weather, it +would all have looked from above like some extravagant festival of +animated toys. + +As the sun sank westward the spectacle must have become a little +indistinct because of a golden haze; everything must have become warmer +and more glowing, and because of the lengthening of the shadows more +manifestly in relief. The shadows of the tall churches grew longer and +longer, until they touched the horizon and mingled in the universal +shadow; and then, slow, and soft, and wrapping the world in fold after +fold of deepening blue, came the night—the night at first obscurely +simple, and then with faint points here and there, and then jewelled in +darkling splendour with a hundred thousand lights. Out of that mingling +of darkness and ambiguous glares the noise of an unceasing activity +would have arisen, the louder and plainer now because there was no +longer any distraction of sight. + +It may be that watcher drifting in the pellucid gulf beneath the stars +watched all through the night; it may be that he dozed. But if he gave +way to so natural a proclivity, assuredly on the fourth night of the +great flank march he was aroused, for that was the night of the battle +in the air that decided the fate of Holland. The aeroplanes were +fighting at last, and suddenly about him, above and below, with cries +and uproar rushing out of the four quarters of heaven, striking, +plunging, oversetting, soaring to the zenith and dropping to the +ground, they came to assail or defend the myriads below. + +Secretly the Central European power had gathered his flying machines +together, and now he threw them as a giant might fling a handful of ten +thousand knives over the low country. And amidst that swarming flight +were five that drove headlong for the sea walls of Holland, carrying +atomic bombs. From north and west and south, the allied aeroplanes rose +in response and swept down upon this sudden attack. So it was that war +in the air began. Men rode upon the whirlwind that night and slew and +fell like archangels. The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth. +Surely the last fights of mankind were the best. What was the heavy +pounding of your Homeric swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of +chariots, beside this swift rush, this crash, this giddy triumph, this +headlong swoop to death? + +And then athwart this whirling rush of aerial duels that swooped and +locked and dropped in the void between the lamp-lights and the stars, +came a great wind and a crash louder than thunder, and first one and +then a score of lengthening fiery serpents plunged hungrily down upon +the Dutchmen’s dykes and struck between land and sea and flared up +again in enormous columns of glare and crimsoned smoke and steam. + +And out of the darkness leapt the little land, with its spires and +trees, aghast with terror, still and distinct, and the sea, tumbled +with anger, red-foaming like a sea of blood.... + +Over the populous country below went a strange multitudinous crying and +a flurry of alarm bells.... + +The surviving aeroplanes turned about and fled out of the sky, like +things that suddenly know themselves to be wicked.... + +Through a dozen thunderously flaming gaps that no water might quench, +the waves came roaring in upon the land.... + +Section 8 + +‘We had cursed our luck,’ says Barnet, ‘that we could not get to our +quarters at Alkmaar that night. There, we were told, were provisions, +tobacco, and everything for which we craved. But the main canal from +Zaandam and Amsterdam was hopelessly jammed with craft, and we were +glad of a chance opening that enabled us to get out of the main column +and lie up in a kind of little harbour very much neglected and +weedgrown before a deserted house. We broke into this and found some +herrings in a barrel, a heap of cheeses, and stone bottles of gin in +the cellar; and with this I cheered my starving men. We made fires and +toasted the cheese and grilled our herrings. None of us had slept for +nearly forty hours, and I determined to stay in this refuge until dawn +and then if the traffic was still choked leave the barge and march the +rest of the way into Alkmaar. + +‘This place we had got into was perhaps a hundred yards from the canal +and underneath a little brick bridge we could see the flotilla still, +and hear the voices of the soldiers. Presently five or six other barges +came through and lay up in the mere near by us, and with two of these, +full of men of the Antrim regiment, I shared my find of provisions. In +return we got tobacco. A large expanse of water spread to the westward +of us and beyond were a cluster of roofs and one or two church towers. +The barge was rather cramped for so many men, and I let several squads, +thirty or forty perhaps altogether, bivouac on the bank. I did not let +them go into the house on account of the furniture, and I left a note +of indebtedness for the food we had taken. We were particularly glad of +our tobacco and fires, because of the numerous mosquitoes that rose +about us. + +‘The gate of the house from which we had provisioned ourselves was +adorned with the legend, _Vreugde bij Vrede_, “Joy with Peace,” and it +bore every mark of the busy retirement of a comfort-loving proprietor. +I went along his garden, which was gay and delightful with big bushes +of rose and sweet brier, to a quaint little summer-house, and there I +sat and watched the men in groups cooking and squatting along the bank. +The sun was setting in a nearly cloudless sky. + +‘For the last two weeks I had been a wholly occupied man, intent only +upon obeying the orders that came down to me. All through this time I +had been working to the very limit of my mental and physical faculties, +and my only moments of rest had been devoted to snatches of sleep. Now +came this rare, unexpected interlude, and I could look detachedly upon +what I was doing and feel something of its infinite wonderfulness. I +was irradiated with affection for the men of my company and with +admiration at their cheerful acquiescence in the subordination and +needs of our positions. I watched their proceedings and heard their +pleasant voices. How willing those men were! How ready to accept +leadership and forget themselves in collective ends! I thought how +manfully they had gone through all the strains and toil of the last two +weeks, how they had toughened and shaken down to comradeship together, +and how much sweetness there is after all in our foolish human blood. +For they were just one casual sample of the species—their patience and +readiness lay, as the energy of the atom had lain, still waiting to be +properly utilised. Again it came to me with overpowering force that the +supreme need of our race is leading, that the supreme task is to +discover leading, to forget oneself in realising the collective purpose +of the race. Once more I saw life plain....’ + +Very characteristic is that of the ‘rather too corpulent’ young +officer, who was afterwards to set it all down in the _Wander Jahre_. +Very characteristic, too, it is of the change in men’s hearts that was +even then preparing a new phase of human history. + +He goes on to write of the escape from individuality in science and +service, and of his discovery of this ‘salvation.’ All that was then, +no doubt, very moving and original; now it seems only the most obvious +commonplace of human life. + +The glow of the sunset faded, the twilight deepened into night. The +fires burnt the brighter, and some Irishmen away across the mere +started singing. But Barnet’s men were too weary for that sort of +thing, and soon the bank and the barge were heaped with sleeping forms. + +‘I alone seemed unable to sleep. I suppose I was over-weary, and after +a little feverish slumber by the tiller of the barge I sat up, awake +and uneasy.... + +‘That night Holland seemed all sky. There was just a little black lower +rim to things, a steeple, perhaps, or a line of poplars, and then the +great hemisphere swept over us. As at first the sky was empty. Yet my +uneasiness referred itself in some vague way to the sky. + +‘And now I was melancholy. I found something strangely sorrowful and +submissive in the sleepers all about me, those men who had marched so +far, who had left all the established texture of their lives behind +them to come upon this mad campaign, this campaign that signified +nothing and consumed everything, this mere fever of fighting. I saw how +little and feeble is the life of man, a thing of chances, +preposterously unable to find the will to realise even the most timid +of its dreams. And I wondered if always it would be so, if man was a +doomed animal who would never to the last days of his time take hold of +fate and change it to his will. Always, it may be, he will remain +kindly but jealous, desirous but discursive, able and unwisely +impulsive, until Saturn who begot him shall devour him in his turn.... + +‘I was roused from these thoughts by the sudden realisation of the +presence of a squadron of aeroplanes far away to the north-east and +very high. They looked like little black dashes against the midnight +blue. I remember that I looked up at them at first rather idly—as one +might notice a flight of birds. Then I perceived that they were only +the extreme wing of a great fleet that was advancing in a long line +very swiftly from the direction of the frontier and my attention +tightened. + +‘Directly I saw that fleet I was astonished not to have seen it before. + +‘I stood up softly, undesirous of disturbing my companions, but with my +heart beating now rather more rapidly with surprise and excitement. I +strained my ears for any sound of guns along our front. Almost +instinctively I turned about for protection to the south and west, and +peered; and then I saw coming as fast and much nearer to me, as if they +had sprung out of the darkness, three banks of aeroplanes; a group of +squadrons very high, a main body at a height perhaps of one or two +thousand feet, and a doubtful number flying low and very indistinct. +The middle ones were so thick they kept putting out groups of stars. +And I realised that after all there was to be fighting in the air. + +‘There was something extraordinarily strange in this swift, noiseless +convergence of nearly invisible combatants above the sleeping hosts. +Every one about me was still unconscious; there was no sign as yet of +any agitation among the shipping on the main canal, whose whole course, +dotted with unsuspicious lights and fringed with fires, must have been +clearly perceptible from above. Then a long way off towards Alkmaar I +heard bugles, and after that shots, and then a wild clamour of bells. I +determined to let my men sleep on for as long as they could.... + +‘The battle was joined with the swiftness of dreaming. I do not think +it can have been five minutes from the moment when I first became aware +of the Central European air fleet to the contact of the two forces. I +saw it quite plainly in silhouette against the luminous blue of the +northern sky. The allied aeroplanes—they were mostly French—came +pouring down like a fierce shower upon the middle of the Central +European fleet. They looked exactly like a coarser sort of rain. There +was a crackling sound—the first sound I heard—it reminded one of the +Aurora Borealis, and I supposed it was an interchange of rifle shots. +There were flashes like summer lightning; and then all the sky became a +whirling confusion of battle that was still largely noiseless. Some of +the Central European aeroplanes were certainly charged and overset; +others seemed to collapse and fall and then flare out with so bright a +light that it took the edge off one’s vision and made the rest of the +battle disappear as though it had been snatched back out of sight. + +‘And then, while I still peered and tried to shade these flames from my +eyes with my hand, and while the men about me were beginning to stir, +the atomic bombs were thrown at the dykes. They made a mighty thunder +in the air, and fell like Lucifer in the picture, leaving a flaring +trail in the sky. The night, which had been pellucid and detailed and +eventful, seemed to vanish, to be replaced abruptly by a black +background to these tremendous pillars of fire.... + +‘Hard upon the sound of them came a roaring wind, and the sky was +filled with flickering lightnings and rushing clouds.... + +‘There was something discontinuous in this impact. At one moment I was +a lonely watcher in a sleeping world; the next saw every one about me +afoot, the whole world awake and amazed.... + +‘And then the wind had struck me a buffet, taken my helmet and swept +aside the summerhouse of _Vreugde bij Vrede_, as a scythe sweeps away +grass. I saw the bombs fall, and then watched a great crimson flare +leap responsive to each impact, and mountainous masses of red-lit steam +and flying fragments clamber up towards the zenith. Against the glare I +saw the country-side for miles standing black and clear, churches, +trees, chimneys. And suddenly I understood. The Central Europeans had +burst the dykes. Those flares meant the bursting of the dykes, and in a +little while the sea-water would be upon us....’ + +He goes on to tell with a certain prolixity of the steps he took—and +all things considered they were very intelligent steps—to meet this +amazing crisis. He got his men aboard and hailed the adjacent barges; +he got the man who acted as barge engineer at his post and the engines +working, he cast loose from his moorings. Then he bethought himself of +food, and contrived to land five men, get in a few dozen cheeses, and +ship his men again before the inundation reached them. + +He is reasonably proud of this piece of coolness. His idea was to take +the wave head-on and with his engines full speed ahead. And all the +while he was thanking heaven he was not in the jam of traffic in the +main canal. He rather, I think, overestimated the probable rush of +waters; he dreaded being swept away, he explains, and smashed against +houses and trees. + +He does not give any estimate of the time it took between the bursting +of the dykes and the arrival of the waters, but it was probably an +interval of about twenty minutes or half an hour. He was working now in +darkness—save for the light of his lantern—and in a great wind. He hung +out head and stern lights.... + +Whirling torrents of steam were pouring up from the advancing waters, +which had rushed, it must be remembered, through nearly incandescent +gaps in the sea defences, and this vast uprush of vapour soon veiled +the flaring centres of explosion altogether. + +‘The waters came at last, an advancing cascade. It was like a broad +roller sweeping across the country. They came with a deep, roaring +sound. I had expected a Niagara, but the total fall of the front could +not have been much more than twelve feet. Our barge hesitated for a +moment, took a dose over her bows, and then lifted. I signalled for +full speed ahead and brought her head upstream, and held on like grim +death to keep her there. + +‘There was a wind about as strong as the flood, and I found we were +pounding against every conceivable buoyant object that had been between +us and the sea. The only light in the world now came from our lamps, +the steam became impenetrable at a score of yards from the boat, and +the roar of the wind and water cut us off from all remoter sounds. The +black, shining waters swirled by, coming into the light of our lamps +out of an ebony blackness and vanishing again into impenetrable black. +And on the waters came shapes, came things that flashed upon us for a +moment, now a half-submerged boat, now a cow, now a huge fragment of a +house’s timberings, now a muddle of packing-cases and scaffolding. The +things clapped into sight like something shown by the opening of a +shutter, and then bumped shatteringly against us or rushed by us. Once +I saw very clearly a man’s white face.... + +‘All the while a group of labouring, half-submerged trees remained +ahead of us, drawing very slowly nearer. I steered a course to avoid +them. They seemed to gesticulate a frantic despair against the black +steam clouds behind. Once a great branch detached itself and tore +shuddering by me. We did, on the whole, make headway. The last I saw of +_Vreugde bij Vrede_ before the night swallowed it, was almost dead +astern of us....’ + +Section 9 + +Morning found Barnet still afloat. The bows of his barge had been badly +strained, and his men were pumping or baling in relays. He had got +about a dozen half-drowned people aboard whose boat had capsized near +him, and he had three other boats in tow. He was afloat, and somewhere +between Amsterdam and Alkmaar, but he could not tell where. It was a +day that was still half night. Gray waters stretched in every direction +under a dark gray sky, and out of the waves rose the upper parts of +houses, in many cases ruined, the tops of trees, windmills, in fact the +upper third of all the familiar Dutch scenery; and on it there drifted +a dimly seen flotilla of barges, small boats, many overturned, +furniture, rafts, timbering, and miscellaneous objects. + +The drowned were under water that morning. Only here and there did a +dead cow or a stiff figure still clinging stoutly to a box or chair or +such-like buoy hint at the hidden massacre. It was not till the +Thursday that the dead came to the surface in any quantity. The view +was bounded on every side by a gray mist that closed overhead in a gray +canopy. The air cleared in the afternoon, and then, far away to the +west under great banks of steam and dust, the flaming red eruption of +the atomic bombs came visible across the waste of water. + +They showed flat and sullen through the mist, like London sunsets. +‘They sat upon the sea,’ says Barnet, ‘like frayed-out waterlilies of +flame.’ + +Barnet seems to have spent the morning in rescue work along the track +of the canal, in helping people who were adrift, in picking up derelict +boats, and in taking people out of imperilled houses. He found other +military barges similarly employed, and it was only as the day wore on +and the immediate appeals for aid were satisfied that he thought of +food and drink for his men, and what course he had better pursue. They +had a little cheese, but no water. ‘Orders,’ that mysterious direction, +had at last altogether disappeared. He perceived he had now to act upon +his own responsibility. + +‘One’s sense was of a destruction so far-reaching and of a world so +altered that it seemed foolish to go in any direction and expect to +find things as they had been before the war began. I sat on the +quarter-deck with Mylius my engineer and Kemp and two others of the +non-commissioned officers, and we consulted upon our line of action. We +were foodless and aimless. We agreed that our fighting value was +extremely small, and that our first duty was to get ourselves in touch +with food and instructions again. Whatever plan of campaign had +directed our movements was manifestly smashed to bits. Mylius was of +opinion that we could take a line westward and get back to England +across the North Sea. He calculated that with such a motor barge as +ours it would be possible to reach the Yorkshire coast within +four-and-twenty hours. But this idea I overruled because of the +shortness of our provisions, and more particularly because of our +urgent need of water. + +‘Every boat we drew near now hailed us for water, and their demands did +much to exasperate our thirst. I decided that if we went away to the +south we should reach hilly country, or at least country that was not +submerged, and then we should be able to land, find some stream, drink, +and get supplies and news. Many of the barges adrift in the haze about +us were filled with British soldiers and had floated up from the Nord +See Canal, but none of them were any better informed than ourselves of +the course of events. “Orders” had, in fact, vanished out of the sky. + +‘“Orders” made a temporary reappearance late that evening in the form +of a megaphone hail from a British torpedo boat, announcing a truce, +and giving the welcome information that food and water were being +hurried down the Rhine and were to be found on the barge flotilla lying +over the old Rhine above Leiden.’... + +We will not follow Barnet, however, in the description of his strange +overland voyage among trees and houses and churches by Zaandam and +between Haarlem and Amsterdam, to Leiden. It was a voyage in a red-lit +mist, in a world of steamy silhouette, full of strange voices and +perplexity, and with every other sensation dominated by a feverish +thirst. ‘We sat,’ he says, ‘in a little huddled group, saying very +little, and the men forward were mere knots of silent endurance. Our +only continuing sound was the persistent mewing of a cat one of the men +had rescued from a floating hayrick near Zaandam. We kept a southward +course by a watch-chain compass Mylius had produced.... + +‘I do not think any of us felt we belonged to a defeated army, nor had +we any strong sense of the war as the dominating fact about us. Our +mental setting had far more of the effect of a huge natural +catastrophe. The atomic bombs had dwarfed the international issues to +complete insignificance. When our minds wandered from the +preoccupations of our immediate needs, we speculated upon the +possibility of stopping the use of these frightful explosives before +the world was utterly destroyed. For to us it seemed quite plain that +these bombs and the still greater power of destruction of which they +were the precursors might quite easily shatter every relationship and +institution of mankind. + +‘“What will they be doing,” asked Mylius, “what will they be doing? +It’s plain we’ve got to put an end to war. It’s plain things have to be +run some way. _This_—all this—is impossible.” + +‘I made no immediate answer. Something—I cannot think what—had brought +back to me the figure of that man I had seen wounded on the very first +day of actual fighting. I saw again his angry, tearful eyes, and that +poor, dripping, bloody mess that had been a skilful human hand five +minutes before, thrust out in indignant protest. “Damned foolery,” he +had stormed and sobbed, “damned foolery. My right hand, sir! My _right_ +hand. . . .” + +‘My faith had for a time gone altogether out of me. “I think we are +too—too silly,” I said to Mylius, “ever to stop war. If we’d had the +sense to do it, we should have done it before this. I think this——” I +pointed to the gaunt black outline of a smashed windmill that stuck up, +ridiculous and ugly, above the blood-lit waters—“this is the end.”’ + +Section 10 + +But now our history must part company with Frederick Barnet and his +barge-load of hungry and starving men. + +For a time in western Europe at least it was indeed as if civilisation +had come to a final collapse. These crowning buds upon the tradition +that Napoleon planted and Bismarck watered, opened and flared ‘like +waterlilies of flame’ over nations destroyed, over churches smashed or +submerged, towns ruined, fields lost to mankind for ever, and a million +weltering bodies. Was this lesson enough for mankind, or would the +flames of war still burn amidst the ruins? + +Neither Barnet nor his companions, it is clear, had any assurance in +their answers to that question. Already once in the history of mankind, +in America, before its discovery by the whites, an organised +civilisation had given way to a mere cult of warfare, specialised and +cruel, and it seemed for a time to many a thoughtful man as if the +whole world was but to repeat on a larger scale this ascendancy of the +warrior, this triumph of the destructive instincts of the race. + +The subsequent chapters of Barnet’s narrative do but supply body to +this tragic possibility. He gives a series of vignettes of +civilisation, shattered, it seemed, almost irreparably. He found the +Belgian hills swarming with refugees and desolated by cholera; the +vestiges of the contending armies keeping order under a truce, without +actual battles, but with the cautious hostility of habit, and a great +absence of plan everywhere. + +Overhead aeroplanes went on mysterious errands, and there were rumours +of cannibalism and hysterical fanaticisms in the valleys of the Semoy +and the forest region of the eastern Ardennes. There was the report of +an attack upon Russia by the Chinese and Japanese, and of some huge +revolutionary outbreak in America. The weather was stormier than men +had ever known it in those regions, with much thunder and lightning and +wild cloud-bursts of rain.... + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD +THE ENDING OF WAR + + +Section 1 + +On the mountain-side above the town of Brissago and commanding two long +stretches of Lake Maggiore, looking eastward to Bellinzona, and +southward to Luino, there is a shelf of grass meadows which is very +beautiful in springtime with a great multitude of wild flowers. More +particularly is this so in early June, when the slender asphodel Saint +Bruno’s lily, with its spike of white blossom, is in flower. To the +westward of this delightful shelf there is a deep and densely wooded +trench, a great gulf of blue some mile or so in width out of which +arise great precipices very high and wild. Above the asphodel fields +the mountains climb in rocky slopes to solitudes of stone and sunlight +that curve round and join that wall of cliffs in one common skyline. +This desolate and austere background contrasts very vividly with the +glowing serenity of the great lake below, with the spacious view of +fertile hills and roads and villages and islands to south and east, and +with the hotly golden rice flats of the Val Maggia to the north. And +because it was a remote and insignificant place, far away out of the +crowding tragedies of that year of disaster, away from burning cities +and starving multitudes, bracing and tranquillising and hidden, it was +here that there gathered the conference of rulers that was to arrest, +if possible, before it was too late, the _débâcle_ of civilisation. +Here, brought together by the indefatigable energy of that impassioned +humanitarian, Leblanc, the French ambassador at Washington, the chief +Powers of the world were to meet in a last desperate conference to +‘save humanity.’ + +Leblanc was one of those ingenuous men whose lot would have been +insignificant in any period of security, but who have been caught up to +an immortal _rôle_ in history by the sudden simplification of human +affairs through some tragical crisis, to the measure of their +simplicity. Such a man was Abraham Lincoln, and such was Garibaldi. And +Leblanc, with his transparent childish innocence, his entire +self-forgetfulness, came into this confusion of distrust and intricate +disaster with an invincible appeal for the manifest sanities of the +situation. His voice, when he spoke, was ‘full of remonstrance.’ He was +a little bald, spectacled man, inspired by that intellectual idealism +which has been one of the peculiar gifts of France to humanity. He was +possessed of one clear persuasion, that war must end, and that the only +way to end war was to have but one government for mankind. He brushed +aside all other considerations. At the very outbreak of the war, so +soon as the two capitals of the belligerents had been wrecked, he went +to the president in the White House with this proposal. He made it as +if it was a matter of course. He was fortunate to be in Washington and +in touch with that gigantic childishness which was the characteristic +of the American imagination. For the Americans also were among the +simple peoples by whom the world was saved. He won over the American +president and the American government to his general ideas; at any rate +they supported him sufficiently to give him a standing with the more +sceptical European governments, and with this backing he set to work—it +seemed the most fantastic of enterprises—to bring together all the +rulers of the world and unify them. He wrote innumerable letters, he +sent messages, he went desperate journeys, he enlisted whatever support +he could find; no one was too humble for an ally or too obstinate for +his advances; through the terrible autumn of the last wars this +persistent little visionary in spectacles must have seemed rather like +a hopeful canary twittering during a thunderstorm. And no accumulation +of disasters daunted his conviction that they could be ended. + +For the whole world was flaring then into a monstrous phase of +destruction. Power after Power about the armed globe sought to +anticipate attack by aggression. They went to war in a delirium of +panic, in order to use their bombs first. China and Japan had assailed +Russia and destroyed Moscow, the United States had attacked Japan, +India was in anarchistic revolt with Delhi a pit of fire spouting death +and flame; the redoubtable King of the Balkans was mobilising. It must +have seemed plain at last to every one in those days that the world was +slipping headlong to anarchy. By the spring of 1959 from nearly two +hundred centres, and every week added to their number, roared the +unquenchable crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs, the flimsy +fabric of the world’s credit had vanished, industry was completely +disorganised and every city, every thickly populated area was starving +or trembled on the verge of starvation. Most of the capital cities of +the world were burning; millions of people had already perished, and +over great areas government was at an end. Humanity has been compared +by one contemporary writer to a sleeper who handles matches in his +sleep and wakes to find himself in flames. + +For many months it was an open question whether there was to be found +throughout all the race the will and intelligence to face these new +conditions and make even an attempt to arrest the downfall of the +social order. For a time the war spirit defeated every effort to rally +the forces of preservation and construction. Leblanc seemed to be +protesting against earthquakes, and as likely to find a spirit of +reason in the crater of Etna. Even though the shattered official +governments now clamoured for peace, bands of irreconcilables and +invincible patriots, usurpers, adventurers, and political desperadoes, +were everywhere in possession of the simple apparatus for the +disengagement of atomic energy and the initiation of new centres of +destruction. The stuff exercised an irresistible fascination upon a +certain type of mind. Why should any one give in while he can still +destroy his enemies? Surrender? While there is still a chance of +blowing them to dust? The power of destruction which had once been the +ultimate privilege of government was now the only power left in the +world—and it was everywhere. There were few thoughtful men during that +phase of blazing waste who did not pass through such moods of despair +as Barnet describes, and declare with him: ‘This is the end....’ + +And all the while Leblanc was going to and fro with glittering glasses +and an inexhaustible persuasiveness, urging the manifest reasonableness +of his view upon ears that ceased presently to be inattentive. Never at +any time did he betray a doubt that all this chaotic conflict would +end. No nurse during a nursery uproar was ever so certain of the +inevitable ultimate peace. From being treated as an amiable dreamer he +came by insensible degrees to be regarded as an extravagant +possibility. Then he began to seem even practicable. The people who +listened to him in 1958 with a smiling impatience, were eager before +1959 was four months old to know just exactly what he thought might be +done. He answered with the patience of a philosopher and the lucidity +of a Frenchman. He began to receive responses of a more and more +hopeful type. He came across the Atlantic to Italy, and there he +gathered in the promises for this congress. He chose those high meadows +above Brissago for the reasons we have stated. ‘We must get away,’ he +said, ‘from old associations.’ He set to work requisitioning material +for his conference with an assurance that was justified by the replies. +With a slight incredulity the conference which was to begin a new order +in the world, gathered itself together. Leblanc summoned it without +arrogance, he controlled it by virtue of an infinite humility. Men +appeared upon those upland slopes with the apparatus for wireless +telegraphy; others followed with tents and provisions; a little cable +was flung down to a convenient point upon the Locarno road below. +Leblanc arrived, sedulously directing every detail that would affect +the tone of the assembly. He might have been a courier in advance +rather than the originator of the gathering. And then there arrived, +some by the cable, most by aeroplane, a few in other fashions, the men +who had been called together to confer upon the state of the world. It +was to be a conference without a name. Nine monarchs, the presidents of +four republics, a number of ministers and ambassadors, powerful +journalists, and such-like prominent and influential men, took part in +it. There were even scientific men; and that world-famous old man, +Holsten, came with the others to contribute his amateur statecraft to +the desperate problem of the age. Only Leblanc would have dared so to +summon figure heads and powers and intelligence, or have had the +courage to hope for their agreement.... + +Section 2 + +And one at least of those who were called to this conference of +governments came to it on foot. This was King Egbert, the young king of +the most venerable kingdom in Europe. He was a rebel, and had always +been of deliberate choice a rebel against the magnificence of his +position. He affected long pedestrian tours and a disposition to sleep +in the open air. He came now over the Pass of Sta Maria Maggiore and by +boat up the lake to Brissago; thence he walked up the mountain, a +pleasant path set with oaks and sweet chestnut. For provision on the +walk, for he did not want to hurry, he carried with him a pocketful of +bread and cheese. A certain small retinue that was necessary to his +comfort and dignity upon occasions of state he sent on by the cable +car, and with him walked his private secretary, Firmin, a man who had +thrown up the Professorship of World Politics in the London School of +Sociology, Economics, and Political Science, to take up these duties. +Firmin was a man of strong rather than rapid thought, he had +anticipated great influence in this new position, and after some years +he was still only beginning to apprehend how largely his function was +to listen. Originally he had been something of a thinker upon +international politics, an authority upon tariffs and strategy, and a +valued contributor to various of the higher organs of public opinion, +but the atomic bombs had taken him by surprise, and he had still to +recover completely from his pre-atomic opinions and the silencing +effect of those sustained explosives. + +The king’s freedom from the trammels of etiquette was very complete. In +theory—and he abounded in theory—his manners were purely democratic. It +was by sheer habit and inadvertency that he permitted Firmin, who had +discovered a rucksack in a small shop in the town below, to carry both +bottles of beer. The king had never, as a matter of fact, carried +anything for himself in his life, and he had never noted that he did +not do so. + +‘We will have nobody with us,’ he said, ‘at all. We will be perfectly +simple.’ + +So Firmin carried the beer. + +As they walked up—it was the king made the pace rather than Firmin—they +talked of the conference before them, and Firmin, with a certain want +of assurance that would have surprised him in himself in the days of +his Professorship, sought to define the policy of his companion. ‘In +its broader form, sir,’ said Firmin; ‘I admit a certain plausibility in +this project of Leblanc’s, but I feel that although it may be advisable +to set up some sort of general control for International affairs—a sort +of Hague Court with extended powers—that is no reason whatever for +losing sight of the principles of national and imperial autonomy.’ + +‘Firmin,’ said the king, ‘I am going to set my brother kings a good +example.’ + +Firmin intimated a curiosity that veiled a dread. + +‘By chucking all that nonsense,’ said the king. + +He quickened his pace as Firmin, who was already a little out of +breath, betrayed a disposition to reply. + +‘I am going to chuck all that nonsense,’ said the king, as Firmin +prepared to speak. ‘I am going to fling my royalty and empire on the +table—and declare at once I don’t mean to haggle. It’s haggling—about +rights—has been the devil in human affairs, for—always. I am going to +stop this nonsense.’ + +Firmin halted abruptly. ‘But, sir!’ he cried. + +The king stopped six yards ahead of him and looked back at his +adviser’s perspiring visage. + +‘Do you really think, Firmin, that I am here as—as an infernal +politician to put my crown and my flag and my claims and so forth in +the way of peace? That little Frenchman is right. You know he is right +as well as I do. Those things are over. We—we kings and rulers and +representatives have been at the very heart of the mischief. Of course +we imply separation, and of course separation means the threat of war, +and of course the threat of war means the accumulation of more and more +atomic bombs. The old game’s up. But, I say, we mustn’t stand here, you +know. The world waits. Don’t you think the old game’s up, Firmin?’ + +Firmin adjusted a strap, passed a hand over his wet forehead, and +followed earnestly. ‘I admit, sir,’ he said to a receding back, ‘that +there has to be some sort of hegemony, some sort of Amphictyonic +council——’ + +‘There’s got to be one simple government for all the world,’ said the +king over his shoulder. + +‘But as for a reckless, unqualified abandonment, sir——’ + +‘_Bang!_’ cried the king. + +Firmin made no answer to this interruption. But a faint shadow of +annoyance passed across his heated features. + +‘Yesterday,’ said the king, by way of explanation, ‘the Japanese very +nearly got San Francisco.’ + +‘I hadn’t heard, sir.’ + +‘The Americans ran the Japanese aeroplane down into the sea and there +the bomb got busted.’ + +‘Under the sea, sir?’ + +‘Yes. Submarine volcano. The steam is in sight of the Californian +coast. It was as near as that. And with things like this happening, you +want me to go up this hill and haggle. Consider the effect of that upon +my imperial cousin—and all the others!’ + +‘_He_ will haggle, sir.’ + +‘Not a bit of it,’ said the king. + +‘But, sir.’ + +‘Leblanc won’t let him.’ + +Firmin halted abruptly and gave a vicious pull at the offending strap. +‘Sir, he will listen to his advisers,’ he said, in a tone that in some +subtle way seemed to implicate his master with the trouble of the +knapsack. + +The king considered him. + +‘We will go just a little higher,’ he said. ‘I want to find this +unoccupied village they spoke of, and then we will drink that beer. It +can’t be far. We will drink the beer and throw away the bottles. And +then, Firmin, I shall ask you to look at things in a more generous +light.... Because, you know, you must....’ + +He turned about and for some time the only sound they made was the +noise of their boots upon the loose stones of the way and the irregular +breathing of Firmin. + +At length, as it seemed to Firmin, or quite soon, as it seemed to the +king, the gradient of the path diminished, the way widened out, and +they found themselves in a very beautiful place indeed. It was one of +those upland clusters of sheds and houses that are still to be found in +the mountains of North Italy, buildings that were used only in the high +summer, and which it was the custom to leave locked up and deserted +through all the winter and spring, and up to the middle of June. The +buildings were of a soft-toned gray stone, buried in rich green grass, +shadowed by chestnut trees and lit by an extraordinary blaze of yellow +broom. Never had the king seen broom so glorious; he shouted at the +light of it, for it seemed to give out more sunlight even than it +received; he sat down impulsively on a lichenous stone, tugged out his +bread and cheese, and bade Firmin thrust the beer into the shaded weeds +to cool. + +‘The things people miss, Firmin,’ he said, ‘who go up into the air in +ships!’ + +Firmin looked around him with an ungenial eye. ‘You see it at its best, +sir,’ he said, ‘before the peasants come here again and make it +filthy.’ + +‘It would be beautiful anyhow,’ said the king. + +‘Superficially, sir,’ said Firmin. ‘But it stands for a social order +that is fast vanishing away. Indeed, judging by the grass between the +stones and in the huts, I am inclined to doubt if it is in use even +now.’ + +‘I suppose,’ said the king, ‘they would come up immediately the hay on +this flower meadow is cut. It would be those slow, creamy-coloured +beasts, I expect, one sees on the roads below, and swarthy girls with +red handkerchiefs over their black hair.... It is wonderful to think +how long that beautiful old life lasted. In the Roman times and long +ages before ever the rumour of the Romans had come into these parts, +men drove their cattle up into these places as the summer came on.... +How haunted is this place! There have been quarrels here, hopes, +children have played here and lived to be old crones and old gaffers, +and died, and so it has gone on for thousands of lives. Lovers, +innumerable lovers, have caressed amidst this golden broom....’ + +He meditated over a busy mouthful of bread and cheese. + +‘We ought to have brought a tankard for that beer,’ he said. + +Firmin produced a folding aluminium cup, and the king was pleased to +drink. + +‘I wish, sir,’ said Firmin suddenly, ‘I could induce you at least to +delay your decision——’ + +‘It’s no good talking, Firmin,’ said the king. ‘My mind’s as clear as +daylight.’ + +‘Sire,’ protested Firmin, with his voice full of bread and cheese and +genuine emotion, ‘have you no respect for your kingship?’ + +The king paused before he answered with unwonted gravity. ‘It’s just +because I have, Firmin, that I won’t be a puppet in this game of +international politics.’ He regarded his companion for a moment and +then remarked: ‘Kingship!—what do _you_ know of kingship, Firmin? + +‘Yes,’ cried the king to his astonished counsellor. ‘For the first time +in my life I am going to be a king. I am going to lead, and lead by my +own authority. For a dozen generations my family has been a set of +dummies in the hands of their advisers. Advisers! Now I am going to be +a real king—and I am going to—to abolish, dispose of, finish, the crown +to which I have been a slave. But what a world of paralysing shams this +roaring stuff has ended! The rigid old world is in the melting-pot +again, and I, who seemed to be no more than the stuffing inside a regal +robe, I am a king among kings. I have to play my part at the head of +things and put an end to blood and fire and idiot disorder.’ + +‘But, sir,’ protested Firmin. + +‘This man Leblanc is right. The whole world has got to be a Republic, +one and indivisible. You know that, and my duty is to make that easy. A +king should lead his people; you want me to stick on their backs like +some Old Man of the Sea. To-day must be a sacrament of kings. Our trust +for mankind is done with and ended. We must part our robes among them, +we must part our kingship among them, and say to them all, now the king +in every one must rule the world.... Have you no sense of the +magnificence of this occasion? You want me, Firmin, you want me to go +up there and haggle like a damned little solicitor for some price, some +compensation, some qualification....’ + +Firmin shrugged his shoulders and assumed an expression of despair. +Meanwhile, he conveyed, one must eat. + +For a time neither spoke, and the king ate and turned over in his mind +the phrases of the speech he intended to make to the conference. By +virtue of the antiquity of his crown he was to preside, and he intended +to make his presidency memorable. Reassured of his eloquence, he +considered the despondent and sulky Firmin for a space. + +‘Firmin,’ he said, ‘you have idealised kingship.’ + +‘It has been my dream, sir,’ said Firmin sorrowfully, ‘to serve.’ + +‘At the levers, Firmin,’ said the king. + +‘You are pleased to be unjust,’ said Firmin, deeply hurt. + +‘I am pleased to be getting out of it,’ said the king. + +‘Oh, Firmin,’ he went on, ‘have you no thought for me? Will you never +realise that I am not only flesh and blood but an imagination—with its +rights. I am a king in revolt against that fetter they put upon my +head. I am a king awake. My reverend grandparents never in all their +august lives had a waking moment. They loved the job that you, you +advisers, gave them; they never had a doubt of it. It was like giving a +doll to a woman who ought to have a child. They delighted in +processions and opening things and being read addresses to, and +visiting triplets and nonagenarians and all that sort of thing. +Incredibly. They used to keep albums of cuttings from all the +illustrated papers showing them at it, and if the press-cutting parcels +grew thin they were worried. It was all that ever worried them. But +there is something atavistic in me; I hark back to unconstitutional +monarchs. They christened me too retrogressively, I think. I wanted to +get things done. I was bored. I might have fallen into vice, most +intelligent and energetic princes do, but the palace precautions were +unusually thorough. I was brought up in the purest court the world has +ever seen.... Alertly pure.... So I read books, Firmin, and went about +asking questions. The thing was bound to happen to one of us sooner or +later. Perhaps, too, very likely I’m not vicious. I don’t think I am.’ + +He reflected. ‘No,’ he said. + +Firmin cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think you are, sir,’ he said. ‘You +prefer——’ + +He stopped short. He had been going to say ‘talking.’ He substituted +‘ideas.’ + +‘That world of royalty!’ the king went on. ‘In a little while no one +will understand it any more. It will become a riddle.... + +‘Among other things, it was a world of perpetual best clothes. +Everything was in its best clothes for us, and usually wearing bunting. +With a cinema watching to see we took it properly. If you are a king, +Firmin, and you go and look at a regiment, it instantly stops whatever +it is doing, changes into full uniform and presents arms. When my +august parents went in a train the coal in the tender used to be +whitened. It did, Firmin, and if coal had been white instead of black I +have no doubt the authorities would have blackened it. That was the +spirit of our treatment. People were always walking about with their +faces to us. One never saw anything in profile. One got an impression +of a world that was insanely focused on ourselves. And when I began to +poke my little questions into the Lord Chancellor and the archbishop +and all the rest of them, about what I should see if people turned +round, the general effect I produced was that I wasn’t by any means +displaying the Royal Tact they had expected of me....’ + +He meditated for a time. + +‘And yet, you know, there is something in the kingship, Firmin. It +stiffened up my august little grandfather. It gave my grandmother a +kind of awkward dignity even when she was cross—and she was very often +cross. They both had a profound sense of responsibility. My poor +father’s health was wretched during his brief career; nobody outside +the circle knows just how he screwed himself up to things. “My people +expect it,” he used to say of this tiresome duty or that. Most of the +things they made him do were silly—it was part of a bad tradition, but +there was nothing silly in the way he set about them.... The spirit of +kingship is a fine thing, Firmin; I feel it in my bones; I do not know +what I might not be if I were not a king. I could die for my people, +Firmin, and you couldn’t. No, don’t say you could die for me, because I +know better. Don’t think I forget my kingship, Firmin, don’t imagine +that. I am a king, a kingly king, by right divine. The fact that I am +also a chattering young man makes not the slightest difference to that. +But the proper text-book for kings, Firmin, is none of the court +memoirs and Welt-Politik books you would have me read; it is old +Fraser’s _Golden Bough_. Have you read that, Firmin?’ + +Firmin had. ‘Those were the authentic kings. In the end they were cut +up and a bit given to everybody. They sprinkled the nations—with +Kingship.’ + +Firmin turned himself round and faced his royal master. + +‘What do you intend to do, sir?’ he asked. ‘If you will not listen to +me, what do you propose to do this afternoon?’ + +The king flicked crumbs from his coat. + +‘Manifestly war has to stop for ever, Firmin. Manifestly this can only +be done by putting all the world under one government. Our crowns and +flags are in the way. Manifestly they must go.’ + +‘Yes, sir,’ interrupted Firmin, ‘but _what_ government? I don’t see +what government you get by a universal abdication!’ + +‘Well,’ said the king, with his hands about his knees, ‘_We_ shall be +the government.’ + +‘The conference?’ exclaimed Firmin. + +‘Who else?’ asked the king simply. + +‘It’s perfectly simple,’ he added to Firmin’s tremendous silence. + +‘But,’ cried Firmin, ‘you must have sanctions! Will there be no form of +election, for example?’ + +‘Why should there be?’ asked the king, with intelligent curiosity. + +‘The consent of the governed.’ + +‘Firmin, we are just going to lay down our differences and take over +government. Without any election at all. Without any sanction. The +governed will show their consent by silence. If any effective +opposition arises we shall ask it to come in and help. The true +sanction of kingship is the grip upon the sceptre. We aren’t going to +worry people to vote for us. I’m certain the mass of men does not want +to be bothered with such things.... We’ll contrive a way for any one +interested to join in. That’s quite enough in the way of democracy. +Perhaps later—when things don’t matter.... We shall govern all right, +Firmin. Government only becomes difficult when the lawyers get hold of +it, and since these troubles began the lawyers are shy. Indeed, come to +think of it, I wonder where all the lawyers are.... Where are they? A +lot, of course, were bagged, some of the worst ones, when they blew up +my legislature. You never knew the late Lord Chancellor.... + +‘Necessities bury rights. And create them. Lawyers live on dead rights +disinterred.... We’ve done with that way of living. We won’t have more +law than a code can cover and beyond that government will be free.... + +‘Before the sun sets to-day, Firmin, trust me, we shall have made our +abdications, all of us, and declared the World Republic, supreme and +indivisible. I wonder what my august grandmother would have made of it! +All my rights! . . . And then we shall go on governing. What else is +there to do? All over the world we shall declare that there is no +longer mine or thine, but ours. China, the United States, two-thirds of +Europe, will certainly fall in and obey. They will have to do so. What +else can they do? Their official rulers are here with us. They won’t be +able to get together any sort of idea of not obeying us.... Then we +shall declare that every sort of property is held in trust for the +Republic....’ + +‘But, sir!’ cried Firmin, suddenly enlightened. ‘Has this been arranged +already?’ + +‘My dear Firmin, do you think we have come here, all of us, to talk at +large? The talking has been done for half a century. Talking and +writing. We are here to set the new thing, the simple, obvious, +necessary thing, going.’ + +He stood up. + +Firmin, forgetting the habits of a score of years, remained seated. + +‘_Well_,’ he said at last. ‘And I have known nothing!’ + +The king smiled very cheerfully. He liked these talks with Firmin. + +Section 3 + +That conference upon the Brissago meadows was one of the most +heterogeneous collections of prominent people that has ever met +together. Principalities and powers, stripped and shattered until all +their pride and mystery were gone, met in a marvellous new humility. +Here were kings and emperors whose capitals were lakes of flaming +destruction, statesmen whose countries had become chaos, scared +politicians and financial potentates. Here were leaders of thought and +learned investigators dragged reluctantly to the control of affairs. +Altogether there were ninety-three of them, Leblanc’s conception of the +head men of the world. They had all come to the realisation of the +simple truths that the indefatigable Leblanc had hammered into them; +and, drawing his resources from the King of Italy, he had provisioned +his conference with a generous simplicity quite in accordance with the +rest of his character, and so at last was able to make his astonishing +and entirely rational appeal. He had appointed King Egbert the +president, he believed in this young man so firmly that he completely +dominated him, and he spoke himself as a secretary might speak from the +president’s left hand, and evidently did not realise himself that he +was telling them all exactly what they had to do. He imagined he was +merely recapitulating the obvious features of the situation for their +convenience. He was dressed in ill-fitting white silk clothes, and he +consulted a dingy little packet of notes as he spoke. They put him out. +He explained that he had never spoken from notes before, but that this +occasion was exceptional. + +And then King Egbert spoke as he was expected to speak, and Leblanc’s +spectacles moistened at that flow of generous sentiment, most amiably +and lightly expressed. ‘We haven’t to stand on ceremony,’ said the +king, ‘we have to govern the world. We have always pretended to govern +the world and here is our opportunity.’ + +‘Of course,’ whispered Leblanc, nodding his head rapidly, ‘of course.’ + +‘The world has been smashed up, and we have to put it on its wheels +again,’ said King Egbert. ‘And it is the simple common sense of this +crisis for all to help and none to seek advantage. Is that our tone or +not?’ + +The gathering was too old and seasoned and miscellaneous for any great +displays of enthusiasm, but that was its tone, and with an astonishment +that somehow became exhilarating it began to resign, repudiate, and +declare its intentions. Firmin, taking notes behind his master, heard +everything that had been foretold among the yellow broom, come true. +With a queer feeling that he was dreaming, he assisted at the +proclamation of the World State, and saw the message taken out to the +wireless operators to be throbbed all round the habitable globe. ‘And +next,’ said King Egbert, with a cheerful excitement in his voice, ‘we +have to get every atom of Carolinum and all the plant for making it, +into our control....’ + +Firmin was not alone in his incredulity. Not a man there who was not a +very amiable, reasonable, benevolent creature at bottom; some had been +born to power and some had happened upon it, some had struggled to get +it, not clearly knowing what it was and what it implied, but none was +irreconcilably set upon its retention at the price of cosmic disaster. +Their minds had been prepared by circumstances and sedulously +cultivated by Leblanc; and now they took the broad obvious road along +which King Egbert was leading them, with a mingled conviction of +strangeness and necessity. Things went very smoothly; the King of Italy +explained the arrangements that had been made for the protection of the +camp from any fantastic attack; a couple of thousand of aeroplanes, +each carrying a sharpshooter, guarded them, and there was an excellent +system of relays, and at night all the sky would be searched by scores +of lights, and the admirable Leblanc gave luminous reasons for their +camping just where they were and going on with their administrative +duties forthwith. He knew of this place, because he had happened upon +it when holiday-making with Madame Leblanc twenty years and more ago. +‘There is very simple fare at present,’ he explained, ‘on account of +the disturbed state of the countries about us. But we have excellent +fresh milk, good red wine, beef, bread, salad, and lemons.... In a few +days I hope to place things in the hands of a more efficient +caterer....’ + +The members of the new world government dined at three long tables on +trestles, and down the middle of these tables Leblanc, in spite of the +barrenness of his menu, had contrived to have a great multitude of +beautiful roses. There was similar accommodation for the secretaries +and attendants at a lower level down the mountain. The assembly dined +as it had debated, in the open air, and over the dark crags to the west +the glowing June sunset shone upon the banquet. There was no precedency +now among the ninety-three, and King Egbert found himself between a +pleasant little Japanese stranger in spectacles and his cousin of +Central Europe, and opposite a great Bengali leader and the President +of the United States of America. Beyond the Japanese was Holsten, the +old chemist, and Leblanc was a little way down the other side. + +The king was still cheerfully talkative and abounded in ideas. He fell +presently into an amiable controversy with the American, who seemed to +feel a lack of impressiveness in the occasion. + +It was ever the Transatlantic tendency, due, no doubt, to the necessity +of handling public questions in a bulky and striking manner, to +over-emphasise and over-accentuate, and the president was touched by +his national failing. He suggested now that there should be a new era, +starting from that day as the first day of the first year. + +The king demurred. + +‘From this day forth, sir, man enters upon his heritage,’ said the +American. + +‘Man,’ said the king, ‘is always entering upon his heritage. You +Americans have a peculiar weakness for anniversaries—if you will +forgive me saying so. Yes—I accuse you of a lust for dramatic effect. +Everything is happening always, but you want to say this or this is the +real instant in time and subordinate all the others to it.’ + +The American said something about an epoch-making day. + +‘But surely,’ said the king, ‘you don’t want us to condemn all humanity +to a world-wide annual Fourth of July for ever and ever more. On +account of this harmless necessary day of declarations. No conceivable +day could ever deserve that. Ah! you do not know, as I do, the +devastations of the memorable. My poor grandparents were—_rubricated_. +The worst of these huge celebrations is that they break up the +dignified succession of one’s contemporary emotions. They interrupt. +They set back. Suddenly out come the flags and fireworks, and the old +enthusiasms are furbished up—and it’s sheer destruction of the proper +thing that ought to be going on. Sufficient unto the day is the +celebration thereof. Let the dead past bury its dead. You see, in +regard to the calendar, I am for democracy and you are for aristocracy. +All things I hold, are august, and have a right to be lived through on +their merits. No day should be sacrificed on the grave of departed +events. What do you think of it, Wilhelm?’ + +‘For the noble, yes, all days should be noble.’ + +‘Exactly my position,’ said the king, and felt pleased at what he had +been saying. + +And then, since the American pressed his idea, the king contrived to +shift the talk from the question of celebrating the epoch they were +making to the question of the probabilities that lay ahead. Here every +one became diffident. They could see the world unified and at peace, +but what detail was to follow from that unification they seemed +indisposed to discuss. This diffidence struck the king as remarkable. +He plunged upon the possibilities of science. All the huge expenditure +that had hitherto gone into unproductive naval and military +preparations, must now, he declared, place research upon a new footing. +‘Where one man worked we will have a thousand.’ He appealed to Holsten. +‘We have only begun to peep into these possibilities,’ he said. ‘You at +any rate have sounded the vaults of the treasure house.’ + +‘They are unfathomable,’ smiled Holsten. + +‘Man,’ said the American, with a manifest resolve to justify and +reinstate himself after the flickering contradictions of the king, +‘Man, I say, is only beginning to enter upon his heritage.’ + +‘Tell us some of the things you believe we shall presently learn, give +us an idea of the things we may presently do,’ said the king to +Holsten. + +Holsten opened out the vistas.... + +‘Science,’ the king cried presently, ‘is the new king of the world.’ + +‘_Our_ view,’ said the president, ‘is that sovereignty resides with the +people.’ + +‘No!’ said the king, ‘the sovereign is a being more subtle than that. +And less arithmetical. Neither my family nor your emancipated people. +It is something that floats about us, and above us, and through us. It +is that common impersonal will and sense of necessity of which Science +is the best understood and most typical aspect. It is the mind of the +race. It is that which has brought us here, which has bowed us all to +its demands....’ + +He paused and glanced down the table at Leblanc, and then re-opened at +his former antagonist. + +‘There is a disposition,’ said the king, ‘to regard this gathering as +if it were actually doing what it appears to be doing, as if we +ninety-odd men of our own free will and wisdom were unifying the world. +There is a temptation to consider ourselves exceptionally fine fellows, +and masterful men, and all the rest of it. We are not. I doubt if we +should average out as anything abler than any other casually selected +body of ninety-odd men. We are no creators, we are consequences, we are +salvagers—or salvagees. The thing to-day is not ourselves but the wind +of conviction that has blown us hither....’ + +The American had to confess he could hardly agree with the king’s +estimate of their average. + +‘Holsten, perhaps, and one or two others, might lift us a little,’ the +king conceded. ‘But the rest of us?’ + +His eyes flitted once more towards Leblanc. + +‘Look at Leblanc,’ he said. ‘He’s just a simple soul. There are +hundreds and thousands like him. I admit, a certain dexterity, a +certain lucidity, but there is not a country town in France where there +is not a Leblanc or so to be found about two o’clock in its principal +café. It’s just that he isn’t complicated or Super-Mannish, or any of +those things that has made all he has done possible. But in happier +times, don’t you think, Wilhelm, he would have remained just what his +father was, a successful _épicier_, very clean, very accurate, very +honest. And on holidays he would have gone out with Madame Leblanc and +her knitting in a punt with a jar of something gentle and have sat +under a large reasonable green-lined umbrella and fished very neatly +and successfully for gudgeon....’ + +The president and the Japanese prince in spectacles protested together. + +‘If I do him an injustice,’ said the king, ‘it is only because I want +to elucidate my argument. I want to make it clear how small are men and +days, and how great is man in comparison....’ + +Section 4 + +So it was King Egbert talked at Brissago after they had proclaimed the +unity of the world. Every evening after that the assembly dined +together and talked at their ease and grew accustomed to each other and +sharpened each other’s ideas, and every day they worked together, and +really for a time believed that they were inventing a new government +for the world. They discussed a constitution. But there were matters +needing attention too urgently to wait for any constitution. They +attended to these incidentally. The constitution it was that waited. It +was presently found convenient to keep the constitution waiting +indefinitely as King Egbert had foreseen, and meanwhile, with an +increasing self-confidence, that council went on governing.... + +On this first evening of all the council’s gatherings, after King +Egbert had talked for a long time and drunken and praised very +abundantly the simple red wine of the country that Leblanc had procured +for them, he gathered about him a group of congenial spirits and fell +into a discourse upon simplicity, praising it above all things and +declaring that the ultimate aim of art, religion, philosophy, and +science alike was to simplify. He instanced himself as a devotee to +simplicity. And Leblanc he instanced as a crowning instance of the +splendour of this quality. Upon that they all agreed. + +When at last the company about the tables broke up, the king found +himself brimming over with a peculiar affection and admiration for +Leblanc, he made his way to him and drew him aside and broached what he +declared was a small matter. There was, he said, a certain order in his +gift that, unlike all other orders and decorations in the world, had +never been corrupted. It was reserved for elderly men of supreme +distinction, the acuteness of whose gifts was already touched to +mellowness, and it had included the greatest names of every age so far +as the advisers of his family had been able to ascertain them. At +present, the king admitted, these matters of stars and badges were +rather obscured by more urgent affairs, for his own part he had never +set any value upon them at all, but a time might come when they would +be at least interesting, and in short he wished to confer the Order of +Merit upon Leblanc. His sole motive in doing so, he added, was his +strong desire to signalise his personal esteem. He laid his hand upon +the Frenchman’s shoulder as he said these things, with an almost +brotherly affection. Leblanc received this proposal with a modest +confusion that greatly enhanced the king’s opinion of his admirable +simplicity. He pointed out that eager as he was to snatch at the +proffered distinction, it might at the present stage appear invidious, +and he therefore suggested that the conferring of it should be +postponed until it could be made the crown and conclusion of his +services. The king was unable to shake this resolution, and the two men +parted with expressions of mutual esteem. + +The king then summoned Firmin in order to make a short note of a number +of things that he had said during the day. But after about twenty +minutes’ work the sweet sleepiness of the mountain air overcame him, +and he dismissed Firmin and went to bed and fell asleep at once, and +slept with extreme satisfaction. He had had an active, agreeable day. + +Section 5 + +The establishment of the new order that was thus so humanly begun, was, +if one measures it by the standard of any preceding age, a rapid +progress. The fighting spirit of the world was exhausted. Only here or +there did fierceness linger. For long decades the combative side in +human affairs had been monstrously exaggerated by the accidents of +political separation. This now became luminously plain. An enormous +proportion of the force that sustained armaments had been nothing more +aggressive than the fear of war and warlike neighbours. It is doubtful +if any large section of the men actually enlisted for fighting ever at +any time really hungered and thirsted for bloodshed and danger. That +kind of appetite was probably never very strong in the species after +the savage stage was past. The army was a profession, in which killing +had become a disagreeable possibility rather than an eventful +certainty. If one reads the old newspapers and periodicals of that +time, which did so much to keep militarism alive, one finds very little +about glory and adventure and a constant harping on the +disagreeableness of invasion and subjugation. In one word, militarism +was funk. The belligerent resolution of the armed Europe of the +twentieth century was the resolution of a fiercely frightened sheep to +plunge. And now that its weapons were exploding in its hands, Europe +was only too eager to drop them, and abandon this fancied refuge of +violence. + +For a time the whole world had been shocked into frankness; nearly all +the clever people who had hitherto sustained the ancient belligerent +separations had now been brought to realise the need for simplicity of +attitude and openness of mind; and in this atmosphere of moral +renascence, there was little attempt to get negotiable advantages out +of resistance to the new order. Human beings are foolish enough no +doubt, but few have stopped to haggle in a fire-escape. The council had +its way with them. The band of ‘patriots’ who seized the laboratories +and arsenal just outside Osaka and tried to rouse Japan to revolt +against inclusion in the Republic of Mankind, found they had +miscalculated the national pride and met the swift vengeance of their +own countrymen. That fight in the arsenal was a vivid incident in this +closing chapter of the history of war. To the last the ‘patriots’ were +undecided whether, in the event of a defeat, they would explode their +supply of atomic bombs or not. They were fighting with swords outside +the iridium doors, and the moderates of their number were at bay and on +the verge of destruction, only ten, indeed, remained unwounded, when +the republicans burst in to the rescue.... + +Section 6 + +One single monarch held out against the general acquiescence in the new +rule, and that was that strange survival of mediaevalism, the ‘Slavic +Fox,’ the King of the Balkans. He debated and delayed his submissions. +He showed an extraordinary combination of cunning and temerity in his +evasion of the repeated summonses from Brissago. He affected ill-health +and a great preoccupation with his new official mistress, for his +semi-barbaric court was arranged on the best romantic models. His +tactics were ably seconded by Doctor Pestovitch, his chief minister. +Failing to establish his claims to complete independence, King +Ferdinand Charles annoyed the conference by a proposal to be treated as +a protected state. Finally he professed an unconvincing submission, and +put a mass of obstacles in the way of the transfer of his national +officials to the new government. In these things he was +enthusiastically supported by his subjects, still for the most part an +illiterate peasantry, passionately if confusedly patriotic, and so far +with no practical knowledge of the effect of atomic bombs. More +particularly he retained control of all the Balkan aeroplanes. + +For once the extreme _naïveté_ of Leblanc seems to have been mitigated +by duplicity. He went on with the general pacification of the world as +if the Balkan submission was made in absolute good faith, and he +announced the disbandment of the force of aeroplanes that hitherto +guarded the council at Brissago upon the approaching fifteenth of July. +But instead he doubled the number upon duty on that eventful day, and +made various arrangements for their disposition. He consulted certain +experts, and when he took King Egbert into his confidence there was +something in his neat and explicit foresight that brought back to that +ex-monarch’s mind his half-forgotten fantasy of Leblanc as a fisherman +under a green umbrella. + +About five o’clock in the morning of the seventeenth of July one of the +outer sentinels of the Brissago fleet, which was soaring unobtrusively +over the lower end of the lake of Garda, sighted and hailed a strange +aeroplane that was flying westward, and, failing to get a satisfactory +reply, set its wireless apparatus talking and gave chase. A swarm of +consorts appeared very promptly over the westward mountains, and before +the unknown aeroplane had sighted Como, it had a dozen eager attendants +closing in upon it. Its driver seems to have hesitated, dropped down +among the mountains, and then turned southward in flight, only to find +an intercepting biplane sweeping across his bows. He then went round +into the eye of the rising sun, and passed within a hundred yards of +his original pursuer. + +The sharpshooter therein opened fire at once, and showed an intelligent +grasp of the situation by disabling the passenger first. The man at the +wheel must have heard his companion cry out behind him, but he was too +intent on getting away to waste even a glance behind. Twice after that +he must have heard shots. He let his engine go, he crouched down, and +for twenty minutes he must have steered in the continual expectation of +a bullet. It never came, and when at last he glanced round, three great +planes were close upon him, and his companion, thrice hit, lay dead +across his bombs. His followers manifestly did not mean either to upset +or shoot him, but inexorably they drove him down, down. At last he was +curving and flying a hundred yards or less over the level fields of +rice and maize. Ahead of him and dark against the morning sunrise was a +village with a very tall and slender campanile and a line of cable +bearing metal standards that he could not clear. He stopped his engine +abruptly and dropped flat. He may have hoped to get at the bombs when +he came down, but his pitiless pursuers drove right over him and shot +him as he fell. + +Three other aeroplanes curved down and came to rest amidst grass close +by the smashed machine. Their passengers descended, and ran, holding +their light rifles in their hands towards the _débris_ and the two dead +men. The coffin-shaped box that had occupied the centre of the machine +had broken, and three black objects, each with two handles like the +ears of a pitcher, lay peacefully amidst the litter. + +These objects were so tremendously important in the eyes of their +captors that they disregarded the two dead men who lay bloody and +broken amidst the wreckage as they might have disregarded dead frogs by +a country pathway. + +‘By God,’ cried the first. ‘Here they are!’ + +‘And unbroken!’ said the second. + +‘I’ve never seen the things before,’ said the first. + +‘Bigger than I thought,’ said the second. + +The third comer arrived. He stared for a moment at the bombs and then +turned his eyes to the dead man with a crushed chest who lay in a muddy +place among the green stems under the centre of the machine. + +‘One can take no risks,’ he said, with a faint suggestion of apology. + +The other two now also turned to the victims. ‘We must signal,’ said +the first man. A shadow passed between them and the sun, and they +looked up to see the aeroplane that had fired the last shot. ‘Shall we +signal?’ came a megaphone hail. + +‘Three bombs,’ they answered together. + +‘Where do they come from?’ asked the megaphone. + +The three sharpshooters looked at each other and then moved towards the +dead men. One of them had an idea. ‘Signal that first,’ he said, ‘while +we look.’ They were joined by their aviators for the search, and all +six men began a hunt that was necessarily brutal in its haste, for some +indication of identity. They examined the men’s pockets, their +bloodstained clothes, the machine, the framework. They turned the +bodies over and flung them aside. There was not a tattoo mark.... +Everything was elaborately free of any indication of its origin. + +‘We can’t find out!’ they called at last. + +‘Not a sign?’ + +‘Not a sign.’ + +‘I’m coming down,’ said the man overhead.... + +Section 7 + +The Slavic fox stood upon a metal balcony in his picturesque Art +Nouveau palace that gave upon the precipice that overhung his bright +little capital, and beside him stood Pestovitch, grizzled and cunning, +and now full of an ill-suppressed excitement. Behind them the window +opened into a large room, richly decorated in aluminium and crimson +enamel, across which the king, as he glanced ever and again over his +shoulder with a gesture of inquiry, could see through the two open +doors of a little azure walled antechamber the wireless operator in the +turret working at his incessant transcription. Two pompously uniformed +messengers waited listlessly in this apartment. The room was furnished +with a stately dignity, and had in the middle of it a big green +baize-covered table with the massive white metal inkpots and antiquated +sandboxes natural to a new but romantic monarchy. It was the king’s +council chamber and about it now, in attitudes of suspended intrigue, +stood the half-dozen ministers who constituted his cabinet. They had +been summoned for twelve o’clock, but still at half-past twelve the +king loitered in the balcony and seemed to be waiting for some news +that did not come. + +The king and his minister had talked at first in whispers; they had +fallen silent, for they found little now to express except a vague +anxiety. Away there on the mountain side were the white metal roofs of +the long farm buildings beneath which the bomb factory and the bombs +were hidden. (The chemist who had made all these for the king had died +suddenly after the declaration of Brissago.) Nobody knew of that store +of mischief now but the king and his adviser and three heavily faithful +attendants; the aviators who waited now in the midday blaze with their +bomb-carrying machines and their passenger bomb-throwers in the +exercising grounds of the motor-cyclist barracks below were still in +ignorance of the position of the ammunition they were presently to take +up. It was time they started if the scheme was to work as Pestovitch +had planned it. It was a magnificent plan. It aimed at no less than the +Empire of the World. The government of idealists and professors away +there at Brissago was to be blown to fragments, and then east, west, +north, and south those aeroplanes would go swarming over a world that +had disarmed itself, to proclaim Ferdinand Charles, the new Cæsar, the +Master, Lord of the Earth. It was a magnificent plan. But the tension +of this waiting for news of the success of the first blow +was—considerable. + +The Slavic fox was of a pallid fairness, he had a remarkably long nose, +a thick, short moustache, and small blue eyes that were a little too +near together to be pleasant. It was his habit to worry his moustache +with short, nervous tugs whenever his restless mind troubled him, and +now this motion was becoming so incessant that it irked Pestovitch +beyond the limits of endurance. + +‘I will go,’ said the minister, ‘and see what the trouble is with the +wireless. They give us nothing, good or bad.’ + +Left to himself, the king could worry his moustache without stint; he +leant his elbows forward on the balcony and gave both of his long white +hands to the work, so that he looked like a pale dog gnawing a bone. +Suppose they caught his men, what should he do? Suppose they caught his +men? + +The clocks in the light gold-capped belfries of the town below +presently intimated the half-hour after midday. + +Of course, he and Pestovitch had thought it out. Even if they had +caught those men, they were pledged to secrecy.... Probably they would +be killed in the catching.... One could deny anyhow, deny and deny. + +And then he became aware of half a dozen little shining specks very +high in the blue.... Pestovitch came out to him presently. ‘The +government messages, sire, have all dropped into cipher,’ he said. ‘I +have set a man——’ + +‘_look!_’ interrupted the king, and pointed upward with a long, lean +finger. + +Pestovitch followed that indication and then glanced for one +questioning moment at the white face before him. + +‘We have to face it out, sire,’ he said. + +For some moments they watched the steep spirals of the descending +messengers, and then they began a hasty consultation.... + +They decided that to be holding a council upon the details of an +ultimate surrender to Brissago was as innocent-looking a thing as the +king could well be doing, and so, when at last the ex-king Egbert, whom +the council had sent as its envoy, arrived upon the scene, he +discovered the king almost theatrically posed at the head of his +councillors in the midst of his court. The door upon the wireless +operators was shut. + +The ex-king from Brissago came like a draught through the curtains and +attendants that gave a wide margin to King Ferdinand’s state, and the +familiar confidence of his manner belied a certain hardness in his eye. +Firmin trotted behind him, and no one else was with him. And as +Ferdinand Charles rose to greet him, there came into the heart of the +Balkan king again that same chilly feeling that he had felt upon the +balcony—and it passed at the careless gestures of his guest. For surely +any one might outwit this foolish talker who, for a mere idea and at +the command of a little French rationalist in spectacles, had thrown +away the most ancient crown in all the world. + +One must deny, deny.... + +And then slowly and quite tiresomely he realised that there was nothing +to deny. His visitor, with an amiable ease, went on talking about +everything in debate between himself and Brissago except——. + +Could it be that they had been delayed? Could it be that they had had +to drop for repairs and were still uncaptured? Could it be that even +now while this fool babbled, they were over there among the mountains +heaving their deadly charge over the side of the aeroplane? + +Strange hopes began to lift the tail of the Slavic fox again. + +What was the man saying? One must talk to him anyhow until one knew. At +any moment the little brass door behind him might open with the news of +Brissago blown to atoms. Then it would be a delightful relief to the +present tension to arrest this chatterer forthwith. He might be killed +perhaps. What? + +The king was repeating his observation. ‘They have a ridiculous fancy +that your confidence is based on the possession of atomic bombs.’ + +King Ferdinand Charles pulled himself together. He protested. + +‘Oh, quite so,’ said the ex-king, ‘quite so.’ + +‘What grounds?’ The ex-king permitted himself a gesture and the ghost +of a chuckle—why the devil should he chuckle? ‘Practically none,’ he +said. ‘But of course with these things one has to be so careful.’ + +And then again for an instant something—like the faintest shadow of +derision—gleamed out of the envoy’s eyes and recalled that chilly +feeling to King Ferdinand’s spine. + +Some kindred depression had come to Pestovitch, who had been watching +the drawn intensity of Firmin’s face. He came to the help of his +master, who, he feared, might protest too much. + +‘A search!’ cried the king. ‘An embargo on our aeroplanes.’ + +‘Only a temporary expedient,’ said the ex-king Egbert, ‘while the +search is going on.’ + +The king appealed to his council. + +‘The people will never permit it, sire,’ said a bustling little man in +a gorgeous uniform. + +‘You’ll have to make ‘em,’ said the ex-king, genially addressing all +the councillors. + +King Ferdinand glanced at the closed brass door through which no news +would come. + +‘When would you want to have this search?’ + +The ex-king was radiant. ‘We couldn’t possibly do it until the day +after to-morrow,’ he said. + +‘Just the capital?’ + +‘Where else?’ asked the ex-king, still more cheerfully. + +‘For my own part,’ said the ex-king confidentially, ‘I think the whole +business ridiculous. Who would be such a fool as to hide atomic bombs? +Nobody. Certain hanging if he’s caught—certain, and almost certain +blowing up if he isn’t. But nowadays I have to take orders like the +rest of the world. And here I am.’ + +The king thought he had never met such detestable geniality. He glanced +at Pestovitch, who nodded almost imperceptibly. It was well, anyhow, to +have a fool to deal with. They might have sent a diplomatist. ‘Of +course,’ said the king, ‘I recognise the overpowering force—and a kind +of logic—in these orders from Brissago.’ + +‘I knew you would,’ said the ex-king, with an air of relief, ‘and so +let us arrange——’ + +They arranged with a certain informality. No Balkan aeroplane was to +adventure into the air until the search was concluded, and meanwhile +the fleets of the world government would soar and circle in the sky. +The towns were to be placarded with offers of reward to any one who +would help in the discovery of atomic bombs.... + +‘You will sign that,’ said the ex-king. + +‘Why?’ + +‘To show that we aren’t in any way hostile to you.’ + +Pestovitch nodded ‘yes’ to his master. + +‘And then, you see,’ said the ex-king in that easy way of his, ‘we’ll +have a lot of men here, borrow help from your police, and run through +all your things. And then everything will be over. Meanwhile, if I may +be your guest....’ When presently Pestovitch was alone with the king +again, he found him in a state of jangling emotions. His spirit was +tossing like a wind-whipped sea. One moment he was exalted and full of +contempt for ‘that ass’ and his search; the next he was down in a pit +of dread. ‘They will find them, Pestovitch, and then he’ll hang us.’ + +‘Hang us?’ + +The king put his long nose into his councillor’s face. ‘That grinning +brute _wants_ to hang us,’ he said. ‘And hang us he will, if we give +him a shadow of a chance.’ + +‘But all their Modern State Civilisation!’ + +‘Do you think there’s any pity in that crew of Godless, Vivisecting +Prigs?’ cried this last king of romance. ‘Do you think, Pestovitch, +they understand anything of a high ambition or a splendid dream? Do you +think that our gallant and sublime adventure has any appeal to them? +Here am I, the last and greatest and most romantic of the Cæsars, and +do you think they will miss the chance of hanging me like a dog if they +can, killing me like a rat in a hole? And that renegade! He who was +once an anointed king! . . . + +‘I hate that sort of eye that laughs and keeps hard,’ said the king. + +‘I won’t sit still here and be caught like a fascinated rabbit,’ said +the king in conclusion. ‘We must shift those bombs.’ + +‘Risk it,’ said Pestovitch. ‘Leave them alone.’ + +‘No,’ said the king. ‘Shift them near the frontier. Then while they +watch us here—they will always watch us here now—we can buy an +aeroplane abroad, and pick them up....’ + +The king was in a feverish, irritable mood all that evening, but he +made his plans nevertheless with infinite cunning. They must get the +bombs away; there must be a couple of atomic hay lorries, the bombs +could be hidden under the hay.... Pestovitch went and came, instructing +trusty servants, planning and replanning.... The king and the ex-king +talked very pleasantly of a number of subjects. All the while at the +back of King Ferdinand Charles’s mind fretted the mystery of his +vanished aeroplane. There came no news of its capture, and no news of +its success. At any moment all that power at the back of his visitor +might crumble away and vanish.... + +It was past midnight, when the king, in a cloak and slouch hat that +might equally have served a small farmer, or any respectable +middle-class man, slipped out from an inconspicuous service gate on the +eastward side of his palace into the thickly wooded gardens that sloped +in a series of terraces down to the town. Pestovitch and his +guard-valet Peter, both wrapped about in a similar disguise, came out +among the laurels that bordered the pathway and joined him. It was a +clear, warm night, but the stars seemed unusually little and remote +because of the aeroplanes, each trailing a searchlight, that drove +hither and thither across the blue. One great beam seemed to rest on +the king for a moment as he came out of the palace; then instantly and +reassuringly it had swept away. But while they were still in the palace +gardens another found them and looked at them. + +‘They see us,’ cried the king. + +‘They make nothing of us,’ said Pestovitch. + +The king glanced up and met a calm, round eye of light, that seemed to +wink at him and vanish, leaving him blinded.... + +The three men went on their way. Near the little gate in the garden +railings that Pestovitch had caused to be unlocked, the king paused +under the shadow of an ilex and looked back at the place. It was very +high and narrow, a twentieth-century rendering of mediaevalism, +mediaevalism in steel and bronze and sham stone and opaque glass. +Against the sky it splashed a confusion of pinnacles. High up in the +eastward wing were the windows of the apartments of the ex-king Egbert. +One of them was brightly lit now, and against the light a little black +figure stood very still and looked out upon the night. + +The king snarled. + +‘He little knows how we slip through his fingers,’ said Pestovitch. + +And as he spoke they saw the ex-king stretch out his arms slowly, like +one who yawns, knuckle his eyes and turn inward—no doubt to his bed. + +Down through the ancient winding back streets of his capital hurried +the king, and at an appointed corner a shabby atomic-automobile waited +for the three. It was a hackney carriage of the lowest grade, with +dinted metal panels and deflated cushions. The driver was one of the +ordinary drivers of the capital, but beside him sat the young secretary +of Pestovitch, who knew the way to the farm where the bombs were +hidden. + +The automobile made its way through the narrow streets of the old town, +which were still lit and uneasy—for the fleet of airships overhead had +kept the cafés open and people abroad—over the great new bridge, and so +by straggling outskirts to the country. And all through his capital the +king who hoped to outdo Cæsar, sat back and was very still, and no one +spoke. And as they got out into the dark country they became aware of +the searchlights wandering over the country-side like the uneasy ghosts +of giants. The king sat forward and looked at these flitting +whitenesses, and every now and then peered up to see the flying ships +overhead. + +‘I don’t like them,’ said the king. + +Presently one of these patches of moonlight came to rest about them and +seemed to be following their automobile. The king drew back. + +‘The things are confoundedly noiseless,’ said the king. ‘It’s like +being stalked by lean white cats.’ + +He peered again. ‘That fellow is watching us,’ he said. + +And then suddenly he gave way to panic. ‘Pestovitch,’ he said, +clutching his minister’s arm, ‘they are watching us. I’m not going +through with this. They are watching us. I’m going back.’ + +Pestovitch remonstrated. ‘Tell him to go back,’ said the king, and +tried to open the window. For a few moments there was a grim struggle +in the automobile; a gripping of wrists and a blow. ‘I can’t go through +with it,’ repeated the king, ‘I can’t go through with it.’ + +‘But they’ll hang us,’ said Pestovitch. + +‘Not if we were to give up now. Not if we were to surrender the bombs. +It is you who brought me into this....’ + +At last Pestovitch compromised. There was an inn perhaps half a mile +from the farm. They could alight there and the king could get brandy, +and rest his nerves for a time. And if he still thought fit to go back +he could go back. + +‘See,’ said Pestovitch, ‘the light has gone again.’ + +The king peered up. ‘I believe he’s following us without a light,’ said +the king. + +In the little old dirty inn the king hung doubtful for a time, and was +for going back and throwing himself on the mercy of the council. ‘If +there is a council,’ said Pestovitch. ‘By this time your bombs may have +settled it. + +‘But if so, these infernal aeroplanes would go.’ + +‘They may not know yet.’ + +‘But, Pestovitch, why couldn’t you do all this without me?’ + +Pestovitch made no answer for a moment. ‘I was for leaving the bombs in +their place,’ he said at last, and went to the window. About their +conveyance shone a circle of bright light. Pestovitch had a brilliant +idea. ‘I will send my secretary out to make a kind of dispute with the +driver. Something that will make them watch up above there. Meanwhile +you and I and Peter will go out by the back way and up by the hedges to +the farm....’ + +It was worthy of his subtle reputation and it answered passing well. + +In ten minutes they were tumbling over the wall of the farm-yard, wet, +muddy, and breathless, but unobserved. But as they ran towards the +barns the king gave vent to something between a groan and a curse, and +all about them shone the light—and passed. + +But had it passed at once or lingered for just a second? + +‘They didn’t see us,’ said Peter. + +‘I don’t think they saw us,’ said the king, and stared as the light +went swooping up the mountain side, hung for a second about a hayrick, +and then came pouring back. + +‘In the barn!’ cried the king. + +He bruised his shin against something, and then all three men were +inside the huge steel-girdered barn in which stood the two motor hay +lorries that were to take the bombs away. Kurt and Abel, the two +brothers of Peter, had brought the lorries thither in daylight. They +had the upper half of the loads of hay thrown off, ready to cover the +bombs, so soon as the king should show the hiding-place. ‘There’s a +sort of pit here,’ said the king. ‘Don’t light another lantern. This +key of mine releases a ring....’ + +For a time scarcely a word was spoken in the darkness of the barn. +There was the sound of a slab being lifted and then of feet descending +a ladder into a pit. Then whispering and then heavy breathing as Kurt +came struggling up with the first of the hidden bombs. + +‘We shall do it yet,’ said the king. And then he gasped. ‘Curse that +light. Why in the name of Heaven didn’t we shut the barn door?’ For the +great door stood wide open and all the empty, lifeless yard outside and +the door and six feet of the floor of the barn were in the blue glare +of an inquiring searchlight. + +‘Shut the door, Peter,’ said Pestovitch. + +‘No,’ cried the king, too late, as Peter went forward into the light. +‘Don’t show yourself!’ cried the king. Kurt made a step forward and +plucked his brother back. For a time all five men stood still. It +seemed that light would never go and then abruptly it was turned off, +leaving them blinded. ‘Now,’ said the king uneasily, ‘now shut the +door.’ + +‘Not completely,’ cried Pestovitch. ‘Leave a chink for us to go out +by....’ + +It was hot work shifting those bombs, and the king worked for a time +like a common man. Kurt and Abel carried the great things up and Peter +brought them to the carts, and the king and Pestovitch helped him to +place them among the hay. They made as little noise as they could.... + +‘Ssh!’ cried the king. ‘What’s that?’ + +But Kurt and Abel did not hear, and came blundering up the ladder with +the last of the load. + +‘Ssh!’ Peter ran forward to them with a whispered remonstrance. Now +they were still. + +The barn door opened a little wider, and against the dim blue light +outside they saw the black shape of a man. + +‘Any one here?’ he asked, speaking with an Italian accent. + +The king broke into a cold perspiration. Then Pestovitch answered: +‘Only a poor farmer loading hay,’ he said, and picked up a huge hay +fork and went forward softly. + +‘You load your hay at a very bad time and in a very bad light,’ said +the man at the door, peering in. ‘Have you no electric light here?’ + +Then suddenly he turned on an electric torch, and as he did so +Pestovitch sprang forward. ‘Get out of my barn!’ he cried, and drove +the fork full at the intruder’s chest. He had a vague idea that so he +might stab the man to silence. But the man shouted loudly as the prongs +pierced him and drove him backward, and instantly there was a sound of +feet running across the yard. + +‘Bombs,’ cried the man upon the ground, struggling with the prongs in +his hand, and as Pestovitch staggered forward into view with the force +of his own thrust, he was shot through the body by one of the two +new-comers. + +The man on the ground was badly hurt but plucky. ‘Bombs,’ he repeated, +and struggled up into a kneeling position and held his electric torch +full upon the face of the king. ‘Shoot them,’ he cried, coughing and +spitting blood, so that the halo of light round the king’s head danced +about. + +For a moment in that shivering circle of light the two men saw the king +kneeling up in the cart and Peter on the barn floor beside him. The old +fox looked at them sideways—snared, a white-faced evil thing. And then, +as with a faltering suicidal heroism, he leant forward over the bomb +before him, they fired together and shot him through the head. + +The upper part of his face seemed to vanish. + +‘Shoot them,’ cried the man who had been stabbed. ‘Shoot them all!’ + +And then his light went out, and he rolled over with a groan at the +feet of his comrades. + +But each carried a light of his own, and in another moment everything +in the barn was visible again. They shot Peter even as he held up his +hands in sign of surrender. + +Kurt and Abel at the head of the ladder hesitated for a moment, and +then plunged backward into the pit. ‘If we don’t kill them,’ said one +of the sharpshooters, ‘they’ll blow us to rags. They’ve gone down that +hatchway. Come! . . . + +‘Here they are. Hands up! I say. Hold your light while I shoot....’ + +Section 8 + +It was still quite dark when his valet and Firmin came together and +told the ex-king Egbert that the business was settled. + +He started up into a sitting position on the side of his bed. + +‘Did he go out?’ asked the ex-king. + +‘He is dead,’ said Firmin. ‘He was shot.’ + +The ex-king reflected. ‘That’s about the best thing that could have +happened,’ he said. ‘Where are the bombs? In that farm-house on the +opposite hill-side! Why! the place is in sight! Let us go. I’ll dress. +Is there any one in the place, Firmin, to get us a cup of coffee?’ + +Through the hungry twilight of the dawn the ex-king’s automobile +carried him to the farm-house where the last rebel king was lying among +his bombs. The rim of the sky flashed, the east grew bright, and the +sun was just rising over the hills when King Egbert reached the +farm-yard. There he found the hay lorries drawn out from the barn with +the dreadful bombs still packed upon them. A couple of score of +aviators held the yard, and outside a few peasants stood in a little +group and stared, ignorant as yet of what had happened. Against the +stone wall of the farm-yard five bodies were lying neatly side by side, +and Pestovitch had an expression of surprise on his face and the king +was chiefly identifiable by his long white hands and his blonde +moustache. The wounded aeronaut had been carried down to the inn. And +after the ex-king had given directions in what manner the bombs were to +be taken to the new special laboratories above Zurich, where they could +be unpacked in an atmosphere of chlorine, he turned to these five still +shapes. + +Their five pairs of feet stuck out with a curious stiff unanimity.... + +‘What else was there to do?’ he said in answer to some internal +protest. + +‘I wonder, Firmin, if there are any more of them?’ + +‘Bombs, sir?’ asked Firmin. + +‘No, such kings.... + +‘The pitiful folly of it!’ said the ex-king, following his thoughts. +‘Firmin, as an ex-professor of International Politics, I think it falls +to you to bury them. There? . . . No, don’t put them near the well. +People will have to drink from that well. Bury them over there, some +way off in the field.’ + + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH +THE NEW PHASE + + +Section 1 + +The task that lay before the Assembly of Brissago, viewed as we may +view it now from the clarifying standpoint of things accomplished, was +in its broad issues a simple one. Essentially it was to place social +organisation upon the new footing that the swift, accelerated advance +of human knowledge had rendered necessary. The council was gathered +together with the haste of a salvage expedition, and it was confronted +with wreckage; but the wreckage was irreparable wreckage, and the only +possibilities of the case were either the relapse of mankind to the +agricultural barbarism from which it had emerged so painfully or the +acceptance of achieved science as the basis of a new social order. The +old tendencies of human nature, suspicion, jealousy, particularism, and +belligerency, were incompatible with the monstrous destructive power of +the new appliances the inhuman logic of science had produced. The +equilibrium could be restored only by civilisation destroying itself +down to a level at which modern apparatus could no longer be produced, +or by human nature adapting itself in its institutions to the new +conditions. It was for the latter alternative that the assembly +existed. + +Sooner or later this choice would have confronted mankind. The sudden +development of atomic science did but precipitate and render rapid and +dramatic a clash between the new and the customary that had been +gathering since ever the first flint was chipped or the first fire +built together. From the day when man contrived himself a tool and +suffered another male to draw near him, he ceased to be altogether a +thing of instinct and untroubled convictions. From that day forth a +widening breach can be traced between his egotistical passions and the +social need. Slowly he adapted himself to the life of the homestead, +and his passionate impulses widened out to the demands of the clan and +the tribe. But widen though his impulses might, the latent hunter and +wanderer and wonderer in his imagination outstripped their development. +He was never quite subdued to the soil nor quite tamed to the home. +Everywhere it needed teaching and the priest to keep him within the +bounds of the plough-life and the beast-tending. Slowly a vast system +of traditional imperatives superposed itself upon his instincts, +imperatives that were admirably fitted to make him that cultivator, +that cattle-mincer, who was for twice ten thousand years the normal +man. + +And, unpremeditated, undesired, out of the accumulations of his tilling +came civilisation. Civilisation was the agricultural surplus. It +appeared as trade and tracks and roads, it pushed boats out upon the +rivers and presently invaded the seas, and within its primitive courts, +within temples grown rich and leisurely and amidst the gathering medley +of the seaport towns rose speculation and philosophy and science, and +the beginning of the new order that has at last established itself as +human life. Slowly at first, as we traced it, and then with an +accumulating velocity, the new powers were fabricated. Man as a whole +did not seek them nor desire them; they were thrust into his hand. For +a time men took up and used these new things and the new powers +inadvertently as they came to him, recking nothing of the consequences. +For endless generations change led him very gently. But when he had +been led far enough, change quickened the pace. It was with a series of +shocks that he realised at last that he was living the old life less +and less and a new life more and more. + +Already before the release of atomic energy the tensions between the +old way of living and the new were intense. They were far intenser than +they had been even at the collapse of the Roman imperial system. On the +one hand was the ancient life of the family and the small community and +the petty industry, on the other was a new life on a larger scale, with +remoter horizons and a strange sense of purpose. Already it was growing +clear that men must live on one side or the other. One could not have +little tradespeople and syndicated businesses in the same market, +sleeping carters and motor trolleys on the same road, bows and arrows +and aeroplane sharpshooters in the same army, or illiterate peasant +industries and power-driven factories in the same world. And still less +it was possible that one could have the ideas and ambitions and greed +and jealousy of peasants equipped with the vast appliances of the new +age. If there had been no atomic bombs to bring together most of the +directing intelligence of the world to that hasty conference at +Brissago, there would still have been, extended over great areas and a +considerable space of time perhaps, a less formal conference of +responsible and understanding people upon the perplexities of this +world-wide opposition. If the work of Holsten had been spread over +centuries and imparted to the world by imperceptible degrees, it would +nevertheless have made it necessary for men to take counsel upon and +set a plan for the future. Indeed already there had been accumulating +for a hundred years before the crisis a literature of foresight; there +was a whole mass of ‘Modern State’ scheming available for the +conference to go upon. These bombs did but accentuate and dramatise an +already developing problem. + +Section 2 + +This assembly was no leap of exceptional minds and super-intelligences +into the control of affairs. It was teachable, its members trailed +ideas with them to the gathering, but these were the consequences of +the ‘moral shock’ the bombs had given humanity, and there is no reason +for supposing its individual personalities were greatly above the +average. It would be possible to cite a thousand instances of error and +inefficiency in its proceedings due to the forgetfulness, irritability, +or fatigue of its members. It experimented considerably and blundered +often. Excepting Holsten, whose gift was highly specialised, it is +questionable whether there was a single man of the first order of human +quality in the gathering. But it had a modest fear of itself, and a +consequent directness that gave it a general distinction. There was, of +course, a noble simplicity about Leblanc, but even of him it may be +asked whether he was not rather good and honest-minded than in the +fuller sense great. + +The ex-king had wisdom and a certain romantic dash, he was a man among +thousands, even if he was not a man among millions, but his memoirs, +and indeed his decision to write memoirs, give the quality of himself +and his associates. The book makes admirable but astonishing reading. +Therein he takes the great work the council was doing for granted as a +little child takes God. It is as if he had no sense of it at all. He +tells amusing trivialities about his cousin Wilhelm and his secretary +Firmin, he pokes fun at the American president, who was, indeed, rather +a little accident of the political machine than a representative +American, and he gives a long description of how he was lost for three +days in the mountains in the company of the only Japanese member, a +loss that seems to have caused no serious interruption of the work of +the council.... + +The Brissago conference has been written about time after time, as +though it were a gathering of the very flower of humanity. Perched up +there by the freak or wisdom of Leblanc, it had a certain Olympian +quality, and the natural tendency of the human mind to elaborate such a +resemblance would have us give its members the likenesses of gods. It +would be equally reasonable to compare it to one of those enforced +meetings upon the mountain-tops that must have occurred in the opening +phases of the Deluge. The strength of the council lay not in itself but +in the circumstances that had quickened its intelligence, dispelled its +vanities, and emancipated it from traditional ambitions and +antagonisms. It was stripped of the accumulation of centuries, a naked +government with all that freedom of action that nakedness affords. And +its problems were set before it with a plainness that was out of all +comparison with the complicated and perplexing intimations of the +former time. + +The world on which the council looked did indeed present a task quite +sufficiently immense and altogether too urgent for any wanton +indulgence in internal dissension. It may be interesting to sketch in a +few phrases the condition of mankind at the close of the period of +warring states, in the year of crisis that followed the release of +atomic power. It was a world extraordinarily limited when one measures +it by later standards, and it was now in a state of the direst +confusion and distress. + +It must be remembered that at this time men had still to spread into +enormous areas of the land surface of the globe. There were vast +mountain wildernesses, forest wildernesses, sandy deserts, and frozen +lands. Men still clung closely to water and arable soil in temperate or +sub-tropical climates, they lived abundantly only in river valleys, and +all their great cities had grown upon large navigable rivers or close +to ports upon the sea. Over great areas even of this suitable land +flies and mosquitoes, armed with infection, had so far defeated human +invasion, and under their protection the virgin forests remained +untouched. Indeed, the whole world even in its most crowded districts +was filthy with flies and swarming with needless insect life to an +extent which is now almost incredible. A population map of the world in +1950 would have followed seashore and river course so closely in its +darker shading as to give an impression that _homo sapiens_ was an +amphibious animal. His roads and railways lay also along the lower +contours, only here and there to pierce some mountain barrier or reach +some holiday resort did they clamber above 3000 feet. And across the +ocean his traffic passed in definite lines; there were hundreds of +thousands of square miles of ocean no ship ever traversed except by +mischance. + +Into the mysteries of the solid globe under his feet he had not yet +pierced for five miles, and it was still not forty years since, with a +tragic pertinacity, he had clambered to the poles of the earth. The +limitless mineral wealth of the Arctic and Antarctic circles was still +buried beneath vast accumulations of immemorial ice, and the secret +riches of the inner zones of the crust were untapped and indeed +unsuspected. The higher mountain regions were known only to a +sprinkling of guide-led climbers and the frequenters of a few gaunt +hotels, and the vast rainless belts of land that lay across the +continental masses, from Gobi to Sahara and along the backbone of +America, with their perfect air, their daily baths of blazing sunshine, +their nights of cool serenity and glowing stars, and their reservoirs +of deep-lying water, were as yet only desolations of fear and death to +the common imagination. + +And now under the shock of the atomic bombs, the great masses of +population which had gathered into the enormous dingy town centres of +that period were dispossessed and scattered disastrously over the +surrounding rural areas. It was as if some brutal force, grown +impatient at last at man’s blindness, had with the deliberate intention +of a rearrangement of population upon more wholesome lines, shaken the +world. The great industrial regions and the large cities that had +escaped the bombs were, because of their complete economic collapse, in +almost as tragic plight as those that blazed, and the country-side was +disordered by a multitude of wandering and lawless strangers. In some +parts of the world famine raged, and in many regions there was +plague.... The plains of north India, which had become more and more +dependent for the general welfare on the railways and that great system +of irrigation canals which the malignant section of the patriots had +destroyed, were in a state of peculiar distress, whole villages lay +dead together, no man heeding, and the very tigers and panthers that +preyed upon the emaciated survivors crawled back infected into the +jungle to perish. Large areas of China were a prey to brigand bands.... + +It is a remarkable thing that no complete contemporary account of the +explosion of the atomic bombs survives. There are, of course, +innumerable allusions and partial records, and it is from these that +subsequent ages must piece together the image of these devastations. + +The phenomena, it must be remembered, changed greatly from day to day, +and even from hour to hour, as the exploding bomb shifted its position, +threw off fragments or came into contact with water or a fresh texture +of soil. Barnet, who came within forty miles of Paris early in October, +is concerned chiefly with his account of the social confusion of the +country-side and the problems of his command, but he speaks of heaped +cloud masses of steam. ‘All along the sky to the south-west’ and of a +red glare beneath these at night. Parts of Paris were still burning, +and numbers of people were camped in the fields even at this distance +watching over treasured heaps of salvaged loot. He speaks too of the +distant rumbling of the explosion—‘like trains going over iron +bridges.’ + +Other descriptions agree with this; they all speak of the ‘continuous +reverberations,’ or of the ‘thudding and hammering,’ or some such +phrase; and they all testify to a huge pall of steam, from which rain +would fall suddenly in torrents and amidst which lightning played. +Drawing nearer to Paris an observer would have found the salvage camps +increasing in number and blocking up the villages, and large numbers of +people, often starving and ailing, camping under improvised tents +because there was no place for them to go. The sky became more and more +densely overcast until at last it blotted out the light of day and left +nothing but a dull red glare ‘extraordinarily depressing to the +spirit.’ In this dull glare, great numbers of people were still living, +clinging to their houses and in many cases subsisting in a state of +partial famine upon the produce in their gardens and the stores in the +shops of the provision dealers. + +Coming in still closer, the investigator would have reached the police +cordon, which was trying to check the desperate enterprise of those who +would return to their homes or rescue their more valuable possessions +within the ‘zone of imminent danger.’ + +That zone was rather arbitrarily defined. If our spectator could have +got permission to enter it, he would have entered also a zone of +uproar, a zone of perpetual thunderings, lit by a strange purplish-red +light, and quivering and swaying with the incessant explosion of the +radio-active substance. Whole blocks of buildings were alight and +burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged flames looking pale and ghastly +and attenuated in comparison with the full-bodied crimson glare beyond. +The shells of other edifices already burnt rose, pierced by rows of +window sockets against the red-lit mist. + +Every step farther would have been as dangerous as a descent within the +crater of an active volcano. These spinning, boiling bomb centres would +shift or break unexpectedly into new regions, great fragments of earth +or drain or masonry suddenly caught by a jet of disruptive force might +come flying by the explorer’s head, or the ground yawn a fiery grave +beneath his feet. Few who adventured into these areas of destruction +and survived attempted any repetition of their experiences. There are +stories of puffs of luminous, radio-active vapour drifting sometimes +scores of miles from the bomb centre and killing and scorching all they +overtook. And the first conflagrations from the Paris centre spread +westward half-way to the sea. + +Moreover, the air in this infernal inner circle of red-lit ruins had a +peculiar dryness and a blistering quality, so that it set up a soreness +of the skin and lungs that was very difficult to heal.... + +Such was the last state of Paris, and such on a larger scale was the +condition of affairs in Chicago, and the same fate had overtaken +Berlin, Moscow, Tokio, the eastern half of London, Toulon, Kiel, and +two hundred and eighteen other centres of population or armament. Each +was a flaming centre of radiant destruction that only time could +quench, that indeed in many instances time has still to quench. To this +day, though indeed with a constantly diminishing uproar and vigour, +these explosions continue. In the map of nearly every country of the +world three or four or more red circles, a score of miles in diameter, +mark the position of the dying atomic bombs and the death areas that +men have been forced to abandon around them. Within these areas +perished museums, cathedrals, palaces, libraries, galleries of +masterpieces, and a vast accumulation of human achievement, whose +charred remains lie buried, a legacy of curious material that only +future generations may hope to examine.... + +Section 3 + +The state of mind of the dispossessed urban population which swarmed +and perished so abundantly over the country-side during the dark days +of the autumnal months that followed the Last War, was one of blank +despair. Barnet gives sketch after sketch of groups of these people, +camped among the vineyards of Champagne, as he saw them during his +period of service with the army of pacification. + +There was, for example, that ‘man-milliner’ who came out from a field +beside the road that rises up eastward out of Epernay, and asked how +things were going in Paris. He was, says Barnet, a round-faced man, +dressed very neatly in black—so neatly that it was amazing to discover +he was living close at hand in a tent made of carpets—and he had ‘an +urbane but insistent manner,’ a carefully trimmed moustache and beard, +expressive eyebrows, and hair very neatly brushed. + +‘No one goes into Paris,’ said Barnet. + +‘But, Monsieur, that is very unenterprising,’ the man by the wayside +submitted. + +‘The danger is too great. The radiations eat into people’s skins.’ + +The eyebrows protested. ‘But is nothing to be done?’ + +‘Nothing can be done.’ + +‘But, Monsieur, it is extraordinarily inconvenient, this living in +exile and waiting. My wife and my little boy suffer extremely. There is +a lack of amenity. And the season advances. I say nothing of the +expense and difficulty in obtaining provisions.... When does Monsieur +think that something will be done to render Paris—possible?’ + +Barnet considered his interlocutor. + +‘I’m told,’ said Barnet, ‘that Paris is not likely to be possible again +for several generations.’ + +‘Oh! but this is preposterous! Consider, Monsieur! What are people like +ourselves to do in the meanwhile? I am a costumier. All my connections +and interests, above all my style, demand Paris....’ + +Barnet considered the sky, from which a light rain was beginning to +fall, the wide fields about them from which the harvest had been taken, +the trimmed poplars by the wayside. + +‘Naturally,’ he agreed, ‘you want to go to Paris. But Paris is over.’ + +‘Over!’ + +‘Finished.’ + +‘But then, Monsieur—what is to become—of _me?_’ + +Barnet turned his face westward, whither the white road led. + +‘Where else, for example, may I hope to find—opportunity?’ + +Barnet made no reply. + +‘Perhaps on the Riviera. Or at some such place as Homburg. Or some +place perhaps.’ + +‘All that,’ said Barnet, accepting for the first time facts that had +lain evident in his mind for weeks; ‘all that must be over, too.’ + +There was a pause. Then the voice beside him broke out. ‘But, Monsieur, +it is impossible! It leaves—nothing.’ + +‘No. Not very much.’ + +‘One cannot suddenly begin to grow potatoes!’ + +‘It would be good if Monsieur could bring himself——’ + +‘To the life of a peasant! And my wife——You do not know the +distinguished delicacy of my wife, a refined helplessness, a peculiar +dependent charm. Like some slender tropical creeper—with great white +flowers.... But all this is foolish talk. It is impossible that Paris, +which has survived so many misfortunes, should not presently revive.’ + +‘I do not think it will ever revive. Paris is finished. London, too, I +am told—Berlin. All the great capitals were stricken....’ + +‘But——! Monsieur must permit me to differ.’ + +‘It is so.’ + +‘It is impossible. Civilisations do not end in this manner. Mankind +will insist.’ + +‘On Paris?’ + +‘On Paris.’ + +‘Monsieur, you might as well hope to go down the Maelstrom and resume +business there.’ + +‘I am content, Monsieur, with my own faith.’ + +‘The winter comes on. Would not Monsieur be wiser to seek a house?’ + +‘Farther from Paris? No, Monsieur. But it is not possible, Monsieur, +what you say, and you are under a tremendous mistake.... Indeed you are +in error.... I asked merely for information....’ + +‘When last I saw him,’ said Barnet, ‘he was standing under the signpost +at the crest of the hill, gazing wistfully, yet it seemed to me a +little doubtfully, now towards Paris, and altogether heedless of a +drizzling rain that was wetting him through and through....’ + +Section 4 + +This effect of chill dismay, of a doom as yet imperfectly apprehended +deepens as Barnet’s record passes on to tell of the approach of winter. +It was too much for the great mass of those unwilling and incompetent +nomads to realise that an age had ended, that the old help and guidance +existed no longer, that times would not mend again, however patiently +they held out. They were still in many cases looking to Paris when the +first snowflakes of that pitiless January came swirling about them. The +story grows grimmer.... + +If it is less monstrously tragic after Barnet’s return to England, it +is, if anything, harder. England was a spectacle of fear-embittered +householders, hiding food, crushing out robbery, driving the starving +wanderers from every faltering place upon the roads lest they should +die inconveniently and reproachfully on the doorsteps of those who had +failed to urge them onward.... + +The remnants of the British troops left France finally in March, after +urgent representations from the provisional government at Orleans that +they could be supported no longer. They seem to have been a fairly +well-behaved, but highly parasitic force throughout, though Barnet is +clearly of opinion that they did much to suppress sporadic brigandage +and maintain social order. He came home to a famine-stricken country, +and his picture of the England of that spring is one of miserable +patience and desperate expedients. The country was suffering much more +than France, because of the cessation of the overseas supplies on which +it had hitherto relied. His troops were given bread, dried fish, and +boiled nettles at Dover, and marched inland to Ashford and paid off. On +the way thither they saw four men hanging from the telegraph posts by +the roadside, who had been hung for stealing swedes. The labour refuges +of Kent, he discovered, were feeding their crowds of casual wanderers +on bread into which clay and sawdust had been mixed. In Surrey there +was a shortage of even such fare as that. He himself struck across +country to Winchester, fearing to approach the bomb-poisoned district +round London, and at Winchester he had the luck to be taken on as one +of the wireless assistants at the central station and given regular +rations. The station stood in a commanding position on the chalk hill +that overlooks the town from the east.... + +Thence he must have assisted in the transmission of the endless cipher +messages that preceded the gathering at Brissago, and there it was that +the Brissago proclamation of the end of the war and the establishment +of a world government came under his hands. + +He was feeling ill and apathetic that day, and he did not realise what +it was he was transcribing. He did it mechanically, as a part of his +tedious duty. + +Afterwards there came a rush of messages arising out of the declaration +that strained him very much, and in the evening when he was relieved, +he ate his scanty supper and then went out upon the little balcony +before the station, to smoke and rest his brains after this sudden and +as yet inexplicable press of duty. It was a very beautiful, still +evening. He fell talking to a fellow operator, and for the first time, +he declares, ‘I began to understand what it was all about. I began to +see just what enormous issues had been under my hands for the past four +hours. But I became incredulous after my first stimulation. “This is +some sort of Bunkum,” I said very sagely. + +‘My colleague was more hopeful. “It means an end to bomb-throwing and +destruction,” he said. “It means that presently corn will come from +America.” + +‘“Who is going to send corn when there is no more value in money?” I +asked. + +‘Suddenly we were startled by a clashing from the town below. The +cathedral bells, which had been silent ever since I had come into the +district, were beginning, with a sort of rheumatic difficulty, to ring. +Presently they warmed a little to the work, and we realised what was +going on. They were ringing a peal. We listened with an unbelieving +astonishment and looking into each other’s yellow faces. + +‘“They mean it,” said my colleague. + +‘“But what can they do now?” I asked. “Everything is broken down....”’ + +And on that sentence, with an unexpected artistry, Barnet abruptly ends +his story. + +Section 5 + +From the first the new government handled affairs with a certain +greatness of spirit. Indeed, it was inevitable that they should act +greatly. From the first they had to see the round globe as one problem; +it was impossible any longer to deal with it piece by piece. They had +to secure it universally from any fresh outbreak of atomic destruction, +and they had to ensure a permanent and universal pacification. On this +capacity to grasp and wield the whole round globe their existence +depended. There was no scope for any further performance. + +So soon as the seizure of the existing supplies of atomic ammunition +and the apparatus for synthesising Carolinum was assured, the +disbanding or social utilisation of the various masses of troops still +under arms had to be arranged, the salvation of the year’s harvests, +and the feeding, housing, and employment of the drifting millions of +homeless people. In Canada, in South America, and Asiatic Russia there +were vast accumulations of provision that was immovable only because of +the breakdown of the monetary and credit systems. These had to be +brought into the famine districts very speedily if entire depopulation +was to be avoided, and their transportation and the revival of +communications generally absorbed a certain proportion of the soldiery +and more able unemployed. The task of housing assumed gigantic +dimensions, and from building camps the housing committee of the +council speedily passed to constructions of a more permanent type. They +found far less friction than might have been expected in turning the +loose population on their hands to these things. People were +extraordinarily tamed by that year of suffering and death; they were +disillusioned of their traditions, bereft of once obstinate prejudices; +they felt foreign in a strange world, and ready to follow any confident +leadership. The orders of the new government came with the best of all +credentials, rations. The people everywhere were as easy to control, +one of the old labour experts who had survived until the new time +witnesses, ‘as gangs of emigrant workers in a new land.’ And now it was +that the social possibilities of the atomic energy began to appear. The +new machinery that had come into existence before the last wars +increased and multiplied, and the council found itself not only with +millions of hands at its disposal but with power and apparatus that +made its first conceptions of the work it had to do seem pitifully +timid. The camps that were planned in iron and deal were built in stone +and brass; the roads that were to have been mere iron tracks became +spacious ways that insisted upon architecture; the cultivations of +foodstuffs that were to have supplied emergency rations, were +presently, with synthesisers, fertilisers, actinic light, and +scientific direction, in excess of every human need. + +The government had begun with the idea of temporarily reconstituting +the social and economic system that had prevailed before the first +coming of the atomic engine, because it was to this system that the +ideas and habits of the great mass of the world’s dispossessed +population was adapted. Subsequent rearrangement it had hoped to leave +to its successors—whoever they might be. But this, it became more and +more manifest, was absolutely impossible. As well might the council +have proposed a revival of slavery. The capitalist system had already +been smashed beyond repair by the onset of limitless gold and energy; +it fell to pieces at the first endeavour to stand it up again. Already +before the war half of the industrial class had been out of work, the +attempt to put them back into wages employment on the old lines was +futile from the outset—the absolute shattering of the currency system +alone would have been sufficient to prevent that, and it was necessary +therefore to take over the housing, feeding, and clothing of this +worldwide multitude without exacting any return in labour whatever. In +a little while the mere absence of occupation for so great a multitude +of people everywhere became an evident social danger, and the +government was obliged to resort to such devices as simple decorative +work in wood and stone, the manufacture of hand-woven textiles, +fruit-growing, flower-growing, and landscape gardening on a grand scale +to keep the less adaptable out of mischief, and of paying wages to the +younger adults for attendance at schools that would equip them to use +the new atomic machinery.... So quite insensibly the council drifted +into a complete reorganisation of urban and industrial life, and indeed +of the entire social system. + +Ideas that are unhampered by political intrigue or financial +considerations have a sweeping way with them, and before a year was out +the records of the council show clearly that it was rising to its +enormous opportunity, and partly through its own direct control and +partly through a series of specific committees, it was planning a new +common social order for the entire population of the earth. ‘There can +be no real social stability or any general human happiness while large +areas of the world and large classes of people are in a phase of +civilisation different from the prevailing mass. It is impossible now +to have great blocks of population misunderstanding the generally +accepted social purpose or at an economic disadvantage to the rest.’ So +the council expressed its conception of the problem it had to solve. +The peasant, the field-worker, and all barbaric cultivators were at an +‘economic disadvantage’ to the more mobile and educated classes, and +the logic of the situation compelled the council to take up +systematically the supersession of this stratum by a more efficient +organisation of production. It developed a scheme for the progressive +establishment throughout the world of the ‘modern system’ in +agriculture, a system that should give the full advantages of a +civilised life to every agricultural worker, and this replacement has +been going on right up to the present day. The central idea of the +modern system is the substitution of cultivating guilds for the +individual cultivator, and for cottage and village life altogether. +These guilds are associations of men and women who take over areas of +arable or pasture land, and make themselves responsible for a certain +average produce. They are bodies small enough as a rule to be run on a +strictly democratic basis, and large enough to supply all the labour, +except for a certain assistance from townspeople during the harvest, +needed upon the land farmed. They have watchers’ bungalows or chalets +on the ground cultivated, but the ease and the costlessness of modern +locomotion enables them to maintain a group of residences in the +nearest town with a common dining-room and club house, and usually also +a guild house in the national or provincial capital. Already this +system has abolished a distinctively ‘rustic’ population throughout +vast areas of the old world, where it has prevailed immemorially. That +shy, unstimulated life of the lonely hovel, the narrow scandals and +petty spites and persecutions of the small village, that hoarding, half +inanimate existence away from books, thought, or social participation +and in constant contact with cattle, pigs, poultry, and their +excrement, is passing away out of human experience. In a little while +it will be gone altogether. In the nineteenth century it had already +ceased to be a necessary human state, and only the absence of any +collective intelligence and an imagined need for tough and +unintelligent soldiers and for a prolific class at a low level, +prevented its systematic replacement at that time.... + +And while this settlement of the country was in progress, the urban +camps of the first phase of the council’s activities were rapidly +developing, partly through the inherent forces of the situation and +partly through the council’s direction, into a modern type of town.... + +Section 6 + +It is characteristic of the manner in which large enterprises forced +themselves upon the Brissago council, that it was not until the end of +the first year of their administration and then only with extreme +reluctance that they would take up the manifest need for a _lingua +franca_ for the world. They seem to have given little attention to the +various theoretical universal languages which were proposed to them. +They wished to give as little trouble to hasty and simple people as +possible, and the world-wide distribution of English gave them a bias +for it from the beginning. The extreme simplicity of its grammar was +also in its favour. + +It was not without some sacrifices that the English-speaking peoples +were permitted the satisfaction of hearing their speech used +universally. The language was shorn of a number of grammatical +peculiarities, the distinctive forms for the subjunctive mood for +example and most of its irregular plurals were abolished; its spelling +was systematised and adapted to the vowel sounds in use upon the +continent of Europe, and a process of incorporating foreign nouns and +verbs commenced that speedily reached enormous proportions. Within ten +years from the establishment of the World Republic the New English +Dictionary had swelled to include a vocabulary of 250,000 words, and a +man of 1900 would have found considerable difficulty in reading an +ordinary newspaper. On the other hand, the men of the new time could +still appreciate the older English literature.... Certain minor acts of +uniformity accompanied this larger one. The idea of a common +understanding and a general simplification of intercourse once it was +accepted led very naturally to the universal establishment of the +metric system of weights and measures, and to the disappearance of the +various makeshift calendars that had hitherto confused chronology. The +year was divided into thirteen months of four weeks each, and New +Year’s Day and Leap Year’s Day were made holidays, and did not count at +all in the ordinary week. So the weeks and the months were brought into +correspondence. And moreover, as the king put it to Firmin, it was +decided to ‘nail down Easter.’ . . . In these matters, as in so many +matters, the new civilisation came as a simplification of ancient +complications; the history of the calendar throughout the world is a +history of inadequate adjustments, of attempts to fix seed-time and +midwinter that go back into the very beginning of human society; and +this final rectification had a symbolic value quite beyond its +practical convenience. But the council would have no rash nor harsh +innovations, no strange names for the months, and no alteration in the +numbering of the years. + +The world had already been put upon one universal monetary basis. For +some months after the accession of the council, the world’s affairs had +been carried on without any sound currency at all. Over great regions +money was still in use, but with the most extravagant variations in +price and the most disconcerting fluctuations of public confidence. The +ancient rarity of gold upon which the entire system rested was gone. +Gold was now a waste product in the release of atomic energy, and it +was plain that no metal could be the basis of the monetary system +again. Henceforth all coins must be token coins. Yet the whole world +was accustomed to metallic money, and a vast proportion of existing +human relationships had grown up upon a cash basis, and were almost +inconceivable without that convenient liquidating factor. It seemed +absolutely necessary to the life of the social organisation to have +some sort of currency, and the council had therefore to discover some +real value upon which to rest it. Various such apparently stable values +as land and hours of work were considered. Ultimately the government, +which was now in possession of most of the supplies of energy-releasing +material, fixed a certain number of units of energy as the value of a +gold sovereign, declared a sovereign to be worth exactly twenty marks, +twenty-five francs, five dollars, and so forth, with the other current +units of the world, and undertook, under various qualifications and +conditions, to deliver energy upon demand as payment for every +sovereign presented. On the whole, this worked satisfactorily. They +saved the face of the pound sterling. Coin was rehabilitated, and after +a phase of price fluctuations, began to settle down to definite +equivalents and uses again, with names and everyday values familiar to +the common run of people.... + +Section 7 + +As the Brissago council came to realise that what it had supposed to be +temporary camps of refugees were rapidly developing into great towns of +a new type, and that it was remoulding the world in spite of itself, it +decided to place this work of redistributing the non-agricultural +population in the hands of a compactor and better qualified special +committee. That committee is now, far more than the council of any +other of its delegated committees, the active government of the world. +Developed from an almost invisible germ of ‘town-planning’ that came +obscurely into existence in Europe or America (the question is still in +dispute) somewhere in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, +its work, the continual active planning and replanning of the world as +a place of human habitation, is now so to speak the collective material +activity of the race. The spontaneous, disorderly spreadings and +recessions of populations, as aimless and mechanical as the trickling +of spilt water, which was the substance of history for endless years, +giving rise here to congestions, here to chronic devastating wars, and +everywhere to a discomfort and disorderliness that was at its best only +picturesque, is at an end. Men spread now, with the whole power of the +race to aid them, into every available region of the earth. Their +cities are no longer tethered to running water and the proximity of +cultivation, their plans are no longer affected by strategic +considerations or thoughts of social insecurity. The aeroplane and the +nearly costless mobile car have abolished trade routes; a common +language and a universal law have abolished a thousand restraining +inconveniences, and so an astonishing dispersal of habitations has +begun. One may live anywhere. And so it is that our cities now are true +social gatherings, each with a character of its own and distinctive +interests of its own, and most of them with a common occupation. They +lie out in the former deserts, these long wasted sun-baths of the race, +they tower amidst eternal snows, they hide in remote islands, and bask +on broad lagoons. For a time the whole tendency of mankind was to +desert the river valleys in which the race had been cradled for half a +million years, but now that the War against Flies has been waged so +successfully that this pestilential branch of life is nearly extinct, +they are returning thither with a renewed appetite for gardens laced by +watercourses, for pleasant living amidst islands and houseboats and +bridges, and for nocturnal lanterns reflected by the sea. + +Man who is ceasing to be an agricultural animal becomes more and more a +builder, a traveller, and a maker. How much he ceases to be a +cultivator of the soil the returns of the Redistribution Committee +showed. Every year the work of our scientific laboratories increases +the productivity and simplifies the labour of those who work upon the +soil, and the food now of the whole world is produced by less than one +per cent. of its population, a percentage which still tends to +decrease. Far fewer people are needed upon the land than training and +proclivity dispose towards it, and as a consequence of this excess of +human attention, the garden side of life, the creation of groves and +lawns and vast regions of beautiful flowers, has expanded enormously +and continues to expand. For, as agricultural method intensifies and +the quota is raised, one farm association after another, availing +itself of the 1975 regulations, elects to produce a public garden and +pleasaunce in the place of its former fields, and the area of freedom +and beauty is increased. And the chemists’ triumphs of synthesis, which +could now give us an entirely artificial food, remain largely in +abeyance because it is so much more pleasant and interesting to eat +natural produce and to grow such things upon the soil. Each year adds +to the variety of our fruits and the delightfulness of our flowers. + +Section 8 + +The early years of the World Republic witnessed a certain recrudescence +of political adventure. There was, it is rather curious to note, no +revival of separatism after the face of King Ferdinand Charles had +vanished from the sight of men, but in a number of countries, as the +first urgent physical needs were met, there appeared a variety of +personalities having this in common, that they sought to revive +political trouble and clamber by its aid to positions of importance and +satisfaction. In no case did they speak in the name of kings, and it is +clear that monarchy must have been far gone in obsolescence before the +twentieth century began, but they made appeals to the large survivals +of nationalist and racial feeling that were everywhere to be found, +they alleged with considerable justice that the council was overriding +racial and national customs and disregarding religious rules. The great +plain of India was particularly prolific in such agitators. The revival +of newspapers, which had largely ceased during the terrible year +because of the dislocation of the coinage, gave a vehicle and a method +of organisation to these complaints. At first the council disregarded +this developing opposition, and then it recognised it with an entirely +devastating frankness. + +Never, of course, had there been so provisional a government. It was of +an extravagant illegality. It was, indeed, hardly more than a club, a +club of about a hundred persons. At the outset there were ninety-three, +and these were increased afterwards by the issue of invitations which +more than balanced its deaths, to as many at one time as one hundred +and nineteen. Always its constitution has been miscellaneous. At no +time were these invitations issued with an admission that they +recognised a right. The old institution or monarchy had come out +unexpectedly well in the light of the new _régime_. Nine of the +original members of the first government were crowned heads who had +resigned their separate sovereignty, and at no time afterwards did the +number of its royal members sink below six. In their case there was +perhaps a kind of attenuated claim to rule, but except for them and the +still more infinitesimal pretensions of one or two ex-presidents of +republics, no member of the council had even the shade of a right to +his participation in its power. It was natural, therefore, that its +opponents should find a common ground in a clamour for representative +government, and build high hopes upon a return, to parliamentary +institutions. + +The council decided to give them everything they wanted, but in a form +that suited ill with their aspirations. It became at one stroke a +representative body. It became, indeed, magnificently representative. +It became so representative that the politicians were drowned in a +deluge of votes. Every adult of either sex from pole to pole was given +a vote, and the world was divided into ten constituencies, which voted +on the same day by means of a simple modification of the world post. +Membership of the government, it was decided, must be for life, save in +the exceptional case of a recall; but the elections, which were held +quinquennially, were arranged to add fifty members on each occasion. +The method of proportional representation with one transferable vote +was adopted, and the voter might also write upon his voting paper in a +specially marked space, the name of any of his representatives that he +wished to recall. A ruler was recallable by as many votes as the quota +by which he had been elected, and the original members by as many votes +in any constituency as the returning quotas in the first election. + +Upon these conditions the council submitted itself very cheerfully to +the suffrages of the world. None of its members were recalled, and its +fifty new associates, which included twenty-seven which it had seen fit +to recommend, were of an altogether too miscellaneous quality to +disturb the broad trend of its policy. Its freedom from rules or +formalities prevented any obstructive proceedings, and when one of the +two newly arrived Home Rule members for India sought for information +how to bring in a bill, they learnt simply that bills were not brought +in. They asked for the speaker, and were privileged to hear much ripe +wisdom from the ex-king Egbert, who was now consciously among the +seniors of the gathering. Thereafter they were baffled men.... + +But already by that time the work of the council was drawing to an end. +It was concerned not so much for the continuation of its construction +as for the preservation of its accomplished work from the dramatic +instincts of the politician. + +The life of the race becomes indeed more and more independent of the +formal government. The council, in its opening phase, was heroic in +spirit; a dragon-slaying body, it slashed out of existence a vast, +knotted tangle of obsolete ideas and clumsy and jealous +proprietorships; it secured by a noble system of institutional +precautions, freedom of inquiry, freedom of criticism, free +communications, a common basis of education and understanding, and +freedom from economic oppression. With that its creative task was +accomplished. It became more and more an established security and less +and less an active intervention. There is nothing in our time to +correspond with the continual petty making and entangling of laws in an +atmosphere of contention that is perhaps the most perplexing aspect of +constitutional history in the nineteenth century. In that age they seem +to have been perpetually making laws when we should alter regulations. +The work of change which we delegate to these scientific committees of +specific general direction which have the special knowledge needed, and +which are themselves dominated by the broad intellectual process of the +community, was in those days inextricably mixed up with legislation. +They fought over the details; we should as soon think of fighting over +the arrangement of the parts of a machine. We know nowadays that such +things go on best within laws, as life goes on between earth and sky. +And so it is that government gathers now for a day or so in each year +under the sunshine of Brissago when Saint Bruno’s lilies are in flower, +and does little more than bless the work of its committees. And even +these committees are less originative and more expressive of the +general thought than they were at first. It becomes difficult to mark +out the particular directive personalities of the world. Continually we +are less personal. Every good thought contributes now, and every able +brain falls within that informal and dispersed kingship which gathers +together into one purpose the energies of the race. + +Section 9 + +It is doubtful if we shall ever see again a phase of human existence in +which ‘politics,’ that is to say a partisan interference with the +ruling sanities of the world, will be the dominant interest among +serious men. We seem to have entered upon an entirely new phase in +history in which contention as distinguished from rivalry, has almost +abruptly ceased to be the usual occupation, and has become at most a +subdued and hidden and discredited thing. Contentious professions cease +to be an honourable employment for men. The peace between nations is +also a peace between individuals. We live in a world that comes of age. +Man the warrior, man the lawyer, and all the bickering aspects of life, +pass into obscurity; the grave dreamers, man the curious learner, and +man the creative artist, come forward to replace these barbaric aspects +of existence by a less ignoble adventure. + +There is no natural life of man. He is, and always has been, a sheath +of varied and even incompatible possibilities, a palimpsest of +inherited dispositions. It was the habit of many writers in the early +twentieth century to speak of competition and the narrow, private life +of trade and saving and suspicious isolation as though such things were +in some exceptional way proper to the human constitution, and as though +openness of mind and a preference for achievement over possession were +abnormal and rather unsubstantial qualities. How wrong that was the +history of the decades immediately following the establishment of the +world republic witnesses. Once the world was released from the +hardening insecurities of a needless struggle for life that was +collectively planless and individually absorbing, it became apparent +that there was in the vast mass of people a long, smothered passion to +make things. The world broke out into making, and at first mainly into +æsthetic making. This phase of history, which has been not inaptly +termed the ‘Efflorescence,’ is still, to a large extent, with us. The +majority of our population consists of artists, and the bulk of +activity in the world lies no longer with necessities but with their +elaboration, decoration, and refinement. There has been an evident +change in the quality of this making during recent years. It becomes +more purposeful than it was, losing something of its first elegance and +prettiness and gaining in intensity; but that is a change rather of hue +than of nature. That comes with a deepening philosophy and a sounder +education. For the first joyous exercises of fancy we perceive now the +deliberation of a more constructive imagination. There is a natural +order in these things, and art comes before science as the satisfaction +of more elemental needs must come before art, and as play and pleasure +come in a human life before the development of a settled purpose.... + +For thousands of years this gathering impulse to creative work must +have struggled in man against the limitations imposed upon him by his +social ineptitude. It was a long smouldering fire that flamed out at +last in all these things. The evidence of a pathetic, perpetually +thwarted urgency to make something, is one of the most touching aspects +of the relics and records of our immediate ancestors. There exists +still in the death area about the London bombs, a region of deserted +small homes that furnish the most illuminating comment on the old state +of affairs. These homes are entirely horrible, uniform, square, squat, +hideously proportioned, uncomfortable, dingy, and in some respects +quite filthy, only people in complete despair of anything better could +have lived in them, but to each is attached a ridiculous little +rectangle of land called ‘the garden,’ containing usually a prop for +drying clothes and a loathsome box of offal, the dustbin, full of +egg-shells, cinders, and such-like refuse. Now that one may go about +this region in comparative security—for the London radiations have +dwindled to inconsiderable proportions—it is possible to trace in +nearly every one of these gardens some effort to make. Here it is a +poor little plank summer-house, here it is a ‘fountain’ of bricks and +oyster-shells, here a ‘rockery,’ here a ‘workshop.’ And in the houses +everywhere there are pitiful little decorations, clumsy models, feeble +drawings. These efforts are almost incredibly inept, like the drawings +of blindfolded men, they are only one shade less harrowing to a +sympathetic observer than the scratchings one finds upon the walls of +the old prisons, but there they are, witnessing to the poor buried +instincts that struggled up towards the light. That god of joyous +expression our poor fathers ignorantly sought, our freedom has declared +to us.... + +In the old days the common ambition of every simple soul was to possess +a little property, a patch of land, a house uncontrolled by others, an +‘independence’ as the English used to put it. And what made this desire +for freedom and prosperity so strong, was very evidently the dream of +self-expression, of doing something with it, of playing with it, of +making a personal delightfulness, a distinctiveness. Property was never +more than a means to an end, nor avarice more than a perversion. Men +owned in order to do freely. Now that every one has his own apartments +and his own privacy secure, this disposition to own has found its +release in a new direction. Men study and save and strive that they may +leave behind them a series of panels in some public arcade, a row of +carven figures along a terrace, a grove, a pavilion. Or they give +themselves to the penetration of some still opaque riddle in phenomena +as once men gave themselves to the accumulation of riches. The work +that was once the whole substance of social existence—for most men +spent all their lives in earning a living—is now no more than was the +burden upon one of those old climbers who carried knapsacks of +provisions on their backs in order that they might ascend mountains. It +matters little to the easy charities of our emancipated time that most +people who have made their labour contribution produce neither new +beauty nor new wisdom, but are simply busy about those pleasant +activities and enjoyments that reassure them that they are alive. They +help, it may be, by reception and reverberation, and they hinder +nothing. ... + +Section 10 + +Now all this phase of gigantic change in the contours and appearances +of human life which is going on about us, a change as rapid and as +wonderful as the swift ripening of adolescence to manhood after the +barbaric boyish years, is correlated with moral and mental changes at +least as unprecedented. It is not as if old things were going out of +life and new things coming in, it is rather that the altered +circumstances of men are making an appeal to elements in his nature +that have hitherto been suppressed, and checking tendencies that have +hitherto been over-stimulated and over-developed. He has not so much +grown and altered his essential being as turned new aspects to the +light. Such turnings round into a new attitude the world has seen on a +less extensive scale before. The Highlanders of the seventeenth +century, for example, were cruel and bloodthirsty robbers, in the +nineteenth their descendants were conspicuously trusty and honourable +men. There was not a people in Western Europe in the early twentieth +century that seemed capable of hideous massacres, and none that had not +been guilty of them within the previous two centuries. The free, frank, +kindly, gentle life of the prosperous classes in any European country +before the years of the last wars was in a different world of thought +and feeling from that of the dingy, suspicious, secretive, and +uncharitable existence of the respectable poor, or the constant +personal violence, the squalor and naïve passions of the lowest +stratum. Yet there were no real differences of blood and inherent +quality between these worlds; their differences were all in +circumstances, suggestion, and habits of mind. And turning to more +individual instances the constantly observed difference between one +portion of a life and another consequent upon a religious conversion, +were a standing example of the versatile possibilities of human nature. + +The catastrophe of the atomic bombs which shook men out of cities and +businesses and economic relations shook them also out of their old +established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and +prejudices that came down to them from the past. To borrow a word from +the old-fashioned chemists, men were made nascent; they were released +from old ties; for good or evil they were ready for new associations. +The council carried them forward for good; perhaps if his bombs had +reached their destination King Ferdinand Charles might have carried +them back to an endless chain of evils. But his task would have been a +harder one than the council’s. The moral shock of the atomic bombs had +been a profound one, and for a while the cunning side of the human +animal was overpowered by its sincere realisation of the vital +necessity for reconstruction. The litigious and trading spirits cowered +together, scared at their own consequences; men thought twice before +they sought mean advantages in the face of the unusual eagerness to +realise new aspirations, and when at last the weeds revived again and +‘claims’ began to sprout, they sprouted upon the stony soil of +law-courts reformed, of laws that pointed to the future instead of the +past, and under the blazing sunshine of a transforming world. A new +literature, a new interpretation of history were springing into +existence, a new teaching was already in the schools, a new faith in +the young. The worthy man who forestalled the building of a research +city for the English upon the Sussex downs by buying up a series of +estates, was dispossessed and laughed out of court when he made his +demand for some preposterous compensation; the owner of the discredited +Dass patents makes his last appearance upon the scroll of history as +the insolvent proprietor of a paper called _The Cry for Justice_, in +which he duns the world for a hundred million pounds. That was the +ingenuous Dass’s idea of justice, that he ought to be paid about five +million pounds annually because he had annexed the selvage of one of +Holsten’s discoveries. Dass came at last to believe quite firmly in his +right, and he died a victim of conspiracy mania in a private hospital +at Nice. Both of these men would probably have ended their days +enormously wealthy, and of course ennobled in the England of the +opening twentieth century, and it is just this novelty of their fates +that marks the quality of the new age. + +The new government early discovered the need of a universal education +to fit men to the great conceptions of its universal rule. It made no +wrangling attacks on the local, racial, and sectarian forms of +religious profession that at that time divided the earth into a +patchwork of hatreds and distrusts; it left these organisations to make +their peace with God in their own time; but it proclaimed as if it were +a mere secular truth that sacrifice was expected from all, that respect +had to be shown to all; it revived schools or set them up afresh all +around the world, and everywhere these schools taught the history of +war and the consequences and moral of the Last War; everywhere it was +taught not as a sentiment but as a matter of fact that the salvation of +the world from waste and contention was the common duty and occupation +of all men and women. These things which are now the elementary +commonplaces of human intercourse seemed to the councillors of +Brissago, when first they dared to proclaim them, marvellously daring +discoveries, not untouched by doubt, that flushed the cheek and fired +the eye. + +The council placed all this educational reconstruction in the hands of +a committee of men and women, which did its work during the next few +decades with remarkable breadth and effectiveness. This educational +committee was, and is, the correlative upon the mental and spiritual +side of the redistribution committee. And prominent upon it, and indeed +for a time quite dominating it, was a Russian named Karenin, who was +singular in being a congenital cripple. His body was bent so that he +walked with difficulty, suffered much pain as he grew older, and had at +last to undergo two operations. The second killed him. Already +malformation, which was to be seen in every crowd during the middle +ages so that the crippled beggar was, as it were, an essential feature +of the human spectacle, was becoming a strange thing in the world. It +had a curious effect upon Karenin’s colleagues; their feeling towards +him was mingled with pity and a sense of inhumanity that it needed +usage rather than reason to overcome. He had a strong face, with little +bright brown eyes rather deeply sunken and a large resolute thin-lipped +mouth. His skin was very yellow and wrinkled, and his hair iron gray. +He was at all times an impatient and sometimes an angry man, but this +was forgiven him because of the hot wire of suffering that was +manifestly thrust through his being. At the end of his life his +personal prestige was very great. To him far more than to any +contemporary is it due that self-abnegation, self-identification with +the world spirit, was made the basis of universal education. That +general memorandum to the teachers which is the key-note of the modern +educational system, was probably entirely his work. + +‘Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it,’ he wrote. ‘That is the +device upon the seal of this document, and the starting point of all we +have to do. It is a mistake to regard it as anything but a plain +statement of fact. It is the basis for your work. You have to teach +self-forgetfulness, and everything else that you have to teach is +contributory and subordinate to that end. Education is the release of +man from self. You have to widen the horizons of your children, +encourage and intensify their curiosity and their creative impulses, +and cultivate and enlarge their sympathies. That is what you are for. +Under your guidance and the suggestions you will bring to bear on them, +they have to shed the old Adam of instinctive suspicions, hostilities, +and passions, and to find themselves again in the great being of the +universe. The little circles of their egotisms have to be opened out +until they become arcs in the sweep of the racial purpose. And this +that you teach to others you must learn also sedulously yourselves. +Philosophy, discovery, art, every sort of skill, every sort of service, +love: these are the means of salvation from that narrow loneliness of +desire, that brooding preoccupation with self and egotistical +relationships, which is hell for the individual, treason to the race, +and exile from God....’ + +Section 11 + +As things round themselves off and accomplish themselves, one begins +for the first time to see them clearly. From the perspectives of a new +age one can look back upon the great and widening stream of literature +with a complete understanding. Things link up that seemed disconnected, +and things that were once condemned as harsh and aimless are seen to be +but factors in the statement of a gigantic problem. An enormous bulk of +the sincerer writing of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth +centuries falls together now into an unanticipated unanimity; one sees +it as a huge tissue of variations upon one theme, the conflict of human +egotism and personal passion and narrow imaginations on the one hand, +against the growing sense of wider necessities and a possible, more +spacious life. + +That conflict is in evidence in so early a work as Voltaire’s +_Candide_, for example, in which the desire for justice as well as +happiness beats against human contrariety and takes refuge at last in a +forced and inconclusive contentment with little things. _Candide_ was +but one of the pioneers of a literature of uneasy complaint that was +presently an innumerable multitude of books. The novels more +particularly of the nineteenth century, if one excludes the mere +story-tellers from our consideration, witness to this uneasy +realisation of changes that call for effort and of the lack of that +effort. In a thousand aspects, now tragically, now comically, now with +a funny affectation of divine detachment, a countless host of witnesses +tell their story of lives fretting between dreams and limitations. Now +one laughs, now one weeps, now one reads with a blank astonishment at +this huge and almost unpremeditated record of how the growing human +spirit, now warily, now eagerly, now furiously, and always, as it +seems, unsuccessfully, tried to adapt itself to the maddening misfit of +its patched and ancient garments. And always in these books as one +draws nearer to the heart of the matter there comes a disconcerting +evasion. It was the fantastic convention of the time that a writer +should not touch upon religion. To do so was to rouse the jealous fury +of the great multitude of professional religious teachers. It was +permitted to state the discord, but it was forbidden to glance at any +possible reconciliation. Religion was the privilege of the pulpit.... + +It was not only from the novels that religion was omitted. It was +ignored by the newspapers; it was pedantically disregarded in the +discussion of business questions, it played a trivial and apologetic +part in public affairs. And this was done not out of contempt but +respect. The hold of the old religious organisations upon men’s respect +was still enormous, so enormous that there seemed to be a quality of +irreverence in applying religion to the developments of every day. This +strange suspension of religion lasted over into the beginnings of the +new age. It was the clear vision of Marcus Karenin much more than any +other contemporary influence which brought it back into the texture of +human life. He saw religion without hallucinations, without +superstitious reverence, as a common thing as necessary as food and +air, as land and energy to the life of man and the well-being of the +Republic. He saw that indeed it had already percolated away from the +temples and hierarchies and symbols in which men had sought to imprison +it, that it was already at work anonymously and obscurely in the +universal acceptance of the greater state. He gave it clearer +expression, rephrased it to the lights and perspectives of the new +dawn.... + +But if we return to our novels for our evidence of the spirit of the +times it becomes evident as one reads them in their chronological +order, so far as that is now ascertainable, that as one comes to the +latter nineteenth and the earlier twentieth century the writers are +much more acutely aware of secular change than their predecessors were. +The earlier novelists tried to show ‘life as it is,’ the latter showed +life as it changes. More and more of their characters are engaged in +adaptation to change or suffering from the effects of world changes. +And as we come up to the time of the Last Wars, this newer conception +of the everyday life as a reaction to an accelerated development is +continually more manifest. Barnet’s book, which has served us so well, +is frankly a picture of the world coming about like a ship that sails +into the wind. Our later novelists give a vast gallery of individual +conflicts in which old habits and customs, limited ideas, ungenerous +temperaments, and innate obsessions are pitted against this great +opening out of life that has happened to us. They tell us of the +feelings of old people who have been wrenched away from familiar +surroundings, and how they have had to make peace with uncomfortable +comforts and conveniences that are still strange to them. They give us +the discord between the opening egotisms of youths and the ill-defined +limitations of a changing social life. They tell of the universal +struggle of jealousy to capture and cripple our souls, of romantic +failures and tragical misconceptions of the trend of the world, of the +spirit of adventure, and the urgency of curiosity, and how these serve +the universal drift. And all their stories lead in the end either to +happiness missed or happiness won, to disaster or salvation. The +clearer their vision and the subtler their art, the more certainly do +these novels tell of the possibility of salvation for all the world. +For any road in life leads to religion for those upon it who will +follow it far enough.... + +It would have seemed a strange thing to the men of the former time that +it should be an open question as it is to-day whether the world is +wholly Christian or not Christian at all. But assuredly we have the +spirit, and as surely have we left many temporary forms behind. +Christianity was the first expression of world religion, the first +complete repudiation of tribalism and war and disputation. That it fell +presently into the ways of more ancient rituals cannot alter that. The +common sense of mankind has toiled through two thousand years of +chastening experience to find at last how sound a meaning attaches to +the familiar phrases of the Christian faith. The scientific thinker as +he widens out to the moral problems of the collective life, comes +inevitably upon the words of Christ, and as inevitably does the +Christian, as his thought grows clearer, arrive at the world republic. +As for the claims of the sects, as for the use of a name and +successions, we live in a time that has shaken itself free from such +claims and consistencies. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH +THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN + + +Section 1 + +The second operation upon Marcus Karenin was performed at the new +station for surgical work at Paran, high in the Himalayas above the +Sutlej Gorge, where it comes down out of Thibet. + +It is a place of such wildness and beauty as no other scenery in the +world affords. The granite terrace which runs round the four sides of +the low block of laboratories looks out in every direction upon +mountains. Far below in the hidden depths of a shadowy blue cleft, the +river pours down in its tumultuous passage to the swarming plains of +India. No sound of its roaring haste comes up to those serenities. +Beyond that blue gulf, in which whole forests of giant deodars seem no +more than small patches of moss, rise vast precipices of many-coloured +rock, fretted above, lined by snowfalls, and jagged into pinnacles. +These are the northward wall of a towering wilderness of ice and snow +which clambers southward higher and wilder and vaster to the +culminating summits of our globe, to Dhaulagiri and Everest. Here are +cliffs of which no other land can show the like, and deep chasms in +which Mt. Blanc might be plunged and hidden. Here are icefields as big +as inland seas on which the tumbled boulders lie so thickly that +strange little flowers can bloom among them under the untempered +sunshine. To the northward, and blocking out any vision of the uplands +of Thibet, rises that citadel of porcelain, that gothic pile, the Lio +Porgyul, walls, towers, and peaks, a clear twelve thousand feet of +veined and splintered rock above the river. And beyond it and eastward +and westward rise peaks behind peaks, against the dark blue Himalayan +sky. Far away below to the south the clouds of the Indian rains pile up +abruptly and are stayed by an invisible hand. + +Hither it was that with a dreamlike swiftness Karenin flew high over +the irrigations of Rajputana and the towers and cupolas of the ultimate +Delhi; and the little group of buildings, albeit the southward wall +dropped nearly five hundred feet, seemed to him as he soared down to it +like a toy lost among these mountain wildernesses. No road came up to +this place; it was reached only by flight. + +His pilot descended to the great courtyard, and Karenin assisted by his +secretary clambered down through the wing fabric and made his way to +the officials who came out to receive him. + +In this place, beyond infections and noise and any distractions, +surgery had made for itself a house of research and a healing fastness. +The building itself would have seemed very wonderful to eyes accustomed +to the flimsy architecture of an age when power was precious. It was +made of granite, already a little roughened on the outside by frost, +but polished within and of a tremendous solidity. And in a honeycomb of +subtly lit apartments, were the spotless research benches, the +operating tables, the instruments of brass, and fine glass and platinum +and gold. Men and women came from all parts of the world for study or +experimental research. They wore a common uniform of white and ate at +long tables together, but the patients lived in an upper part of the +buildings, and were cared for by nurses and skilled attendants.... + +The first man to greet Karenin was Ciana, the scientific director of +the institution. Beside him was Rachel Borken, the chief organiser. +‘You are tired?’ she asked, and old Karenin shook his head. + +‘Cramped,’ he said. ‘I have wanted to visit such a place as this.’ + +He spoke as if he had no other business with them. + +There was a little pause. + +‘How many scientific people have you got here now?’ he asked. + +‘Just three hundred and ninety-two,’ said Rachel Borken. + +‘And the patients and attendants and so on?’ + +‘Two thousand and thirty.’ + +‘I shall be a patient,’ said Karenin. ‘I shall have to be a patient. +But I should like to see things first. Presently I will be a patient.’ + +‘You will come to my rooms?’ suggested Ciana. + +‘And then I must talk to this doctor of yours,’ said Karenin. ‘But I +would like to see a bit of this place and talk to some of your people +before it comes to that.’ + +He winced and moved forward. + +‘I have left most of my work in order,’ he said. + +‘You have been working hard up to now?’ asked Rachel Borken. + +‘Yes. And now I have nothing more to do—and it seems strange.... And +it’s a bother, this illness and having to come down to oneself. This +doorway and the row of windows is well done; the gray granite and just +the line of gold, and then those mountains beyond through that arch. +It’s very well done....’ + +Section 2 + +Karenin lay on the bed with a soft white rug about him, and Fowler, who +was to be his surgeon sat on the edge of the bed and talked to him. An +assistant was seated quietly in the shadow behind the bed. The +examination had been made, and Karenin knew what was before him. He was +tired but serene. + +‘So I shall die,’ he said, ‘unless you operate?’ + +Fowler assented. ‘And then,’ said Karenin, smiling, ‘probably I shall +die.’ + +‘Not certainly.’ + +‘Even if I do not die; shall I be able to work?’ + +‘There is just a chance....’ + +‘So firstly I shall probably die, and if I do not, then perhaps I shall +be a useless invalid?’ + +‘I think if you live, you may be able to go on—as you do now.’ + +‘Well, then, I suppose I must take the risk of it. Yet couldn’t you, +Fowler, couldn’t you drug me and patch me instead of all +this—vivisection? A few days of drugged and active life—and then the +end?’ + +Fowler thought. ‘We are not sure enough yet to do things like that,’ he +said. + +‘But a day is coming when you will be certain.’ + +Fowler nodded. + +‘You make me feel as though I was the last of deformity—Deformity is +uncertainty—inaccuracy. My body works doubtfully, it is not even sure +that it will die or live. I suppose the time is not far off when such +bodies as mine will no longer be born into the world.’ + +‘You see,’ said Fowler, after a little pause, ‘it is necessary that +spirits such as yours should be born into the world.’ + +‘I suppose,’ said Karenin, ‘that my spirit has had its use. But if you +think that is because my body is as it is I think you are mistaken. +There is no peculiar virtue in defect. I have always chafed against—all +this. If I could have moved more freely and lived a larger life in +health I could have done more. But some day perhaps you will be able to +put a body that is wrong altogether right again. Your science is only +beginning. It’s a subtler thing than physics and chemistry, and it +takes longer to produce its miracles. And meanwhile a few more of us +must die in patience.’ + +‘Fine work is being done and much of it,’ said Fowler. ‘I can say as +much because I have nothing to do with it. I can understand a lesson, +appreciate the discoveries of abler men and use my hands, but those +others, Pigou, Masterton, Lie, and the others, they are clearing the +ground fast for the knowledge to come. Have you had time to follow +their work?’ + +Karenin shook his head. ‘But I can imagine the scope of it,’ he said. + +‘We have so many men working now,’ said Fowler. ‘I suppose at present +there must be at least a thousand thinking hard, observing, +experimenting, for one who did so in nineteen hundred.’ + +‘Not counting those who keep the records?’ + +‘Not counting those. Of course, the present indexing of research is in +itself a very big work, and it is only now that we are getting it +properly done. But already we are feeling the benefit of that. Since it +ceased to be a paid employment and became a devotion we have had only +those people who obeyed the call of an aptitude at work upon these +things. Here—I must show you it to-day, because it will interest you—we +have our copy of the encyclopaedic index—every week sheets are taken +out and replaced by fresh sheets with new results that are brought to +us by the aeroplanes of the Research Department. It is an index of +knowledge that grows continually, an index that becomes continually +truer. There was never anything like it before.’ + +‘When I came into the education committee,’ said Karenin, ‘that index +of human knowledge seemed an impossible thing. Research had produced a +chaotic mountain of results, in a hundred languages and a thousand +different types of publication....’ He smiled at his memories. ‘How we +groaned at the job!’ + +‘Already the ordering of that chaos is nearly done. You shall see.’ + +‘I have been so busy with my own work——Yes, I shall be glad to see.’ + +The patient regarded the surgeon for a time with interested eyes. + +‘You work here always?’ he asked abruptly. + +‘No,’ said Fowler. + +‘But mostly you work here?’ + +‘I have worked about seven years out of the past ten. At times I go +away—down there. One has to. At least I have to. There is a sort of +grayness comes over all this, one feels hungry for life, real, personal +passionate life, love-making, eating and drinking for the fun of the +thing, jostling crowds, having adventures, laughter—above all +laughter——’ + +‘Yes,’ said Karenin understandingly. + +‘And then one day, suddenly one thinks of these high mountains +again....’ + +‘That is how I would have lived, if it had not been for my—defects,’ +said Karenin. ‘Nobody knows but those who have borne it the +exasperation of abnormality. It will be good when you have nobody alive +whose body cannot live the wholesome everyday life, whose spirit cannot +come up into these high places as it wills.’ + +‘We shall manage that soon,’ said Fowler. + +‘For endless generations man has struggled upward against the +indignities of his body—and the indignities of his soul. Pains, +incapacities, vile fears, black moods, despairs. How well I’ve known +them. They’ve taken more time than all your holidays. It is true, is it +not, that every man is something of a cripple and something of a beast? +I’ve dipped a little deeper than most; that’s all. It’s only now when +he has fully learnt the truth of that, that he can take hold of himself +to be neither beast nor cripple. Now that he overcomes his servitude to +his body, he can for the first time think of living the full life of +his body.... Before another generation dies you’ll have the thing in +hand. You’ll do as you please with the old Adam and all the vestiges +from the brutes and reptiles that lurk in his body and spirit. Isn’t +that so?’ + +‘You put it boldly,’ said Fowler. + +Karenin laughed cheerfully at his caution.... ‘When,’ asked Karenin +suddenly, ‘when will you operate?’ + +‘The day after to-morrow,’ said Fowler. ‘For a day I want you to drink +and eat as I shall prescribe. And you may think and talk as you +please.’ + +‘I should like to see this place.’ + +‘You shall go through it this afternoon. I will have two men carry you +in a litter. And to-morrow you shall lie out upon the terrace. Our +mountains here are the most beautiful in the world....’ + +Section 3 + +The next morning Karenin got up early and watched the sun rise over the +mountains, and breakfasted lightly, and then young Gardener, his +secretary, came to consult him upon the spending of his day. Would he +care to see people? Or was this gnawing pain within him too much to +permit him to do that? + +‘I’d like to talk,’ said Karenin. ‘There must be all sorts of +lively-minded people here. Let them come and gossip with me. It will +distract me—and I can’t tell you how interesting it makes everything +that is going on to have seen the dawn of one’s own last day.’ + +‘Your last day!’ + +‘Fowler will kill me.’ + +‘But he thinks not.’ + +‘Fowler will kill me. If he does not he will not leave very much of me. +So that this is my last day anyhow, the days afterwards if they come at +all to me, will be refuse. I know....’ + +Gardener was about to speak when Karenin went on again. + +‘I hope he kills me, Gardener. Don’t be—old-fashioned. The thing I am +most afraid of is that last rag of life. I may just go on—a scarred +salvage of suffering stuff. And then—all the things I have hidden and +kept down or discounted or set right afterwards will get the better of +me. I shall be peevish. I may lose my grip upon my own egotism. It’s +never been a very firm grip. No, no, Gardener, don’t say that! You know +better, you’ve had glimpses of it. Suppose I came through on the other +side of this affair, belittled, vain, and spiteful, using the prestige +I have got among men by my good work in the past just to serve some +small invalid purpose....’ + +He was silent for a time, watching the mists among the distant +precipices change to clouds of light, and drift and dissolve before the +searching rays of the sunrise. + +‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘I am afraid of these anæsthetics and these fag +ends of life. It’s life we are all afraid of. Death!—nobody minds just +death. Fowler is clever—but some day surgery will know its duty better +and not be so anxious just to save something . . . provided only that +it quivers. I’ve tried to hold my end up properly and do my work. After +Fowler has done with me I am certain I shall be unfit for work—and what +else is there for me? . . . I know I shall not be fit for work.... + +‘I do not see why life should be judged by its last trailing thread of +vitality.... I know it for the splendid thing it is—I who have been a +diseased creature from the beginning. I know it well enough not to +confuse it with its husks. Remember that, Gardener, if presently my +heart fails me and I despair, and if I go through a little phase of +pain and ingratitude and dark forgetfulness before the end.... Don’t +believe what I may say at the last.... If the fabric is good enough the +selvage doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. So long as you are alive you +are just the moment, perhaps, but when you are dead then you are all +your life from the first moment to the last....’ + +Section 4 + +Presently, in accordance with his wish, people came to talk to him, and +he could forget himself again. Rachel Borken sat for a long time with +him and talked chiefly of women in the world, and with her was a girl +named Edith Haydon who was already very well known as a cytologist. And +several of the younger men who were working in the place and a patient +named Kahn, a poet, and Edwards, a designer of plays and shows, spent +some time with him. The talk wandered from point to point and came back +upon itself, and became now earnest and now trivial as the chance +suggestions determined. But soon afterwards Gardener wrote down notes +of things he remembered, and it is possible to put together again the +outlook of Karenin upon the world and how he thought and felt about +many of the principal things in life. + +‘Our age,’ he said, ‘has been so far an age of scene-shifting. We have +been preparing a stage, clearing away the setting of a drama that was +played out and growing tiresome.... If I could but sit out the first +few scenes of the new spectacle.... + +‘How encumbered the world had become! It was ailing as I am ailing with +a growth of unmeaning things. It was entangled, feverish, confused. It +was in sore need of release, and I suppose that nothing less than the +violence of those bombs could have released it and made it a healthy +world again. I suppose they were necessary. Just as everything turns to +evil in a fevered body so everything seemed turning to evil in those +last years of the old time. Everywhere there were obsolete +organisations seizing upon all the new fine things that science was +giving to the world, nationalities, all sorts of political bodies, the +churches and sects, proprietorship, seizing upon those treat powers and +limitless possibilities and turning them to evil uses. And they would +not suffer open speech, they would not permit of education, they would +let no one be educated to the needs of the new time.... You who are +younger cannot imagine the mixture of desperate hope and protesting +despair in which we who could believe in the possibilities of science +lived in those years before atomic energy came.... + +‘It was not only that the mass of people would not attend, would not +understand, but that those who did understand lacked the power of real +belief. They said the things, they saw the things, and the things meant +nothing to them.... + +‘I have been reading some old papers lately. It is wonderful how our +fathers bore themselves towards science. They hated it. They feared it. +They permitted a few scientific men to exist and work—a pitiful +handful.... “Don’t find out anything about us,” they said to them; +“don’t inflict vision upon us, spare our little ways of life from the +fearful shaft of understanding. But do tricks for us, little limited +tricks. Give us cheap lighting. And cure us of certain disagreeable +things, cure us of cancer, cure us of consumption, cure our colds and +relieve us after repletion....” We have changed all that, Gardener. +Science is no longer our servant. We know it for something greater than +our little individual selves. It is the awakening mind of the race, and +in a little while——In a little while——I wish indeed I could watch for +that little while, now that the curtain has risen.... + +‘While I lie here they are clearing up what is left of the bombs in +London,’ he said. ‘Then they are going to repair the ruins and make it +all as like as possible to its former condition before the bombs fell. +Perhaps they will dig out the old house in St John’s Wood to which my +father went after his expulsion from Russia.... That London of my +memories seems to me like a place in another world. For you younger +people it must seem like a place that could never have existed.’ + +‘Is there much left standing?’ asked Edith Haydon. + +‘Square miles that are scarcely shaken in the south and north-west, +they say; and most of the bridges and large areas of dock. Westminster, +which held most of the government offices, suffered badly from the +small bomb that destroyed the Parliament, there are very few traces of +the old thoroughfare of Whitehall or the Government region thereabout, +but there are plentiful drawings to scale of its buildings, and the +great hole in the east of London scarcely matters. That was a poor +district and very like the north and the south.... It will be possible +to reconstruct most of it.... It is wanted. Already it becomes +difficult to recall the old time—even for us who saw it.’ + +‘It seems very distant to me,’ said the girl. + +‘It was an unwholesome world,’ reflected Karenin. ‘I seem to remember +everybody about my childhood as if they were ill. They were ill. They +were sick with confusion. Everybody was anxious about money and +everybody was doing uncongenial things. They ate a queer mixture of +foods, either too much or too little, and at odd hours. One sees how +ill they were by their advertisements. All this new region of London +they are opening up now is plastered with advertisements of pills. +Everybody must have been taking pills. In one of the hotel rooms in the +Strand they have found the luggage of a lady covered up by falling +rubble and unburnt, and she was equipped with nine different sorts of +pill and tabloid. The pill-carrying age followed the weapon-carrying +age. They are equally strange to us. People’s skins must have been in a +vile state. Very few people were properly washed; they carried the +filth of months on their clothes. All the clothes they wore were old +clothes; our way of pulping our clothes again after a week or so of +wear would have seemed fantastic to them. Their clothing hardly bears +thinking about. And the congestion of them! Everybody was jostling +against everybody in those awful towns. In an uproar. People were run +over and crushed by the hundred; every year in London the cars and +omnibuses alone killed or disabled twenty thousand people, in Paris it +was worse; people used to fall dead for want of air in the crowded +ways. The irritation of London, internal and external, must have been +maddening. It was a maddened world. It is like thinking of a sick +child. One has the same effect of feverish urgencies and acute +irrational disappointments. + +‘All history,’ he said, ‘is a record of a childhood.... + +‘And yet not exactly a childhood. There is something clean and keen +about even a sick child—and something touching. But so much of the old +times makes one angry. So much they did seems grossly stupid, +obstinately, outrageously stupid, which is the very opposite to being +fresh and young. + +‘I was reading only the other day about Bismarck, that hero of +nineteenth-century politics, that sequel to Napoleon, that god of blood +and iron. And he was just a beery, obstinate, dull man. Indeed, that is +what he was, the commonest, coarsest man, who ever became great. I +looked at his portraits, a heavy, almost froggish face, with projecting +eyes and a thick moustache to hide a poor mouth. He aimed at nothing +but Germany, Germany emphasised, indurated, enlarged; Germany and his +class in Germany; beyond that he had no ideas, he was inaccessible to +ideas; his mind never rose for a recorded instant above a bumpkin’s +elaborate cunning. And he was the most influential man in the world, in +the whole world, no man ever left so deep a mark on it, because +everywhere there were gross men to resonate to the heavy notes he +emitted. He trampled on ten thousand lovely things, and a kind of +malice in these louts made it pleasant to them to see him trample. +No—he was no child; the dull, national aggressiveness he stood for, no +childishness. Childhood is promise. He was survival. + +‘All Europe offered its children to him, it sacrificed education, art, +happiness and all its hopes of future welfare to follow the clatter of +his sabre. The monstrous worship of that old fool’s “blood and iron” +passed all round the earth. Until the atomic bombs burnt our way to +freedom again....’ + +‘One thinks of him now as one thinks of the megatherium,’ said one of +the young men. + +‘From first to last mankind made three million big guns and a hundred +thousand complicated great ships for no other purpose but war.’ + +‘Were there no sane men in those days,’ asked the young man, ‘to stand +against that idolatry?’ + +‘In a state of despair,’ said Edith Haydon. + +‘He is so far off—and there are men alive still who were alive when +Bismarck died!’ . . . said the young man.... + +Section 5 + +‘And yet it may be I am unjust to Bismarck,’ said Karenin, following +his own thoughts. ‘You see, men belong to their own age; we stand upon +a common stock of thought and we fancy we stand upon the ground. I met +a pleasant man the other day, a Maori, whose great-grandfather was a +cannibal. It chanced he had a daguerreotype of the old sinner, and the +two were marvellously alike. One felt that a little juggling with time +and either might have been the other. People are cruel and stupid in a +stupid age who might be gentle and splendid in a gracious one. The +world also has its moods. Think of the mental food of Bismarck’s +childhood; the humiliations of Napoleon’s victories, the crowded, +crowning victory of the Battle of the Nations.... Everybody in those +days, wise or foolish, believed that the division of the world under a +multitude of governments was inevitable, and that it was going on for +thousands of years more. It _was_ inevitable until it was impossible. +Any one who had denied that inevitability publicly would have been +counted—oh! a _silly_ fellow. Old Bismarck was only just a +little—forcible, on the lines of the accepted ideas. That is all. He +thought that since there had to be national governments he would make +one that was strong at home and invincible abroad. Because he had fed +with a kind of rough appetite upon what we can see now were very stupid +ideas, that does not make him a stupid man. We’ve had advantages; we’ve +had unity and collectivism blasted into our brains. Where should we be +now but for the grace of science? I should have been an embittered, +spiteful, downtrodden member of the Russian Intelligenza, a +conspirator, a prisoner, or an assassin. You, my dear, would have been +breaking dingy windows as a suffragette.’ + +‘_Never_,’ said Edith stoutly.... + +For a time the talk broke into humorous personalities, and the young +people gibed at each other across the smiling old administrator, and +then presently one of the young scientific men gave things a new turn. +He spoke like one who was full to the brim. + +‘You know, sir, I’ve a fancy—it is hard to prove such things—that +civilisation was very near disaster when the atomic bombs came banging +into it, that if there had been no Holsten and no induced +radio-activity, the world would have—smashed—much as it did. Only +instead of its being a smash that opened a way to better things, it +might have been a smash without a recovery. It is part of my business +to understand economics, and from that point of view the century before +Holsten was just a hundred years’ crescendo of waste. Only the extreme +individualism of that period, only its utter want of any collective +understanding or purpose can explain that waste. Mankind used up +material—insanely. They had got through three-quarters of all the coal +in the planet, they had used up most of the oil, they had swept away +their forests, and they were running short of tin and copper. Their +wheat areas were getting weary and populous, and many of the big towns +had so lowered the water level of their available hills that they +suffered a drought every summer. The whole system was rushing towards +bankruptcy. And they were spending every year vaster and vaster amounts +of power and energy upon military preparations, and continually +expanding the debt of industry to capital. The system was already +staggering when Holsten began his researches. So far as the world in +general went there was no sense of danger and no desire for inquiry. +They had no belief that science could save them, nor any idea that +there was a need to be saved. They could not, they would not, see the +gulf beneath their feet. It was pure good luck for mankind at large +that any research at all was in progress. And as I say, sir, if that +line of escape hadn’t opened, before now there might have been a crash, +revolution, panic, social disintegration, famine, and—it is +conceivable—complete disorder.... The rails might have rusted on the +disused railways by now, the telephone poles have rotted and fallen, +the big liners dropped into sheet-iron in the ports; the burnt, +deserted cities become the ruinous hiding-places of gangs of robbers. +We might have been brigands in a shattered and attenuated world. Ah, +you may smile, but that had happened before in human history. The world +is still studded with the ruins of broken-down civilisations. Barbaric +bands made their fastness upon the Acropolis, and the tomb of Hadrian +became a fortress that warred across the ruins of Rome against the +Colosseum.... Had all that possibility of reaction ended so certainly +in 1940? Is it all so very far away even now?’ + +‘It seems far enough away now,’ said Edith Haydon. + +‘But forty years ago?’ + +‘No,’ said Karenin with his eyes upon the mountains, ‘I think you +underrate the available intelligence in those early decades of the +twentieth century. Officially, I know, politically, that intelligence +didn’t tell—but it was there. And I question your hypothesis. I doubt +if that discovery could have been delayed. There is a kind of +inevitable logic now in the progress of research. For a hundred years +and more thought and science have been going their own way regardless +of the common events of life. You see—_they have got loose_. If there +had been no Holsten there would have been some similar man. If atomic +energy had not come in one year it would have come in another. In +decadent Rome the march of science had scarcely begun.... Nineveh, +Babylon, Athens, Syracuse, Alexandria, these were the first rough +experiments in association that made a security, a breathing-space, in +which inquiry was born. Man had to experiment before he found out the +way to begin. But already two hundred years ago he had fairly begun.... +The politics and dignities and wars of the nineteenth and twentieth +centuries were only the last phoenix blaze of the former civilisation +flaring up about the beginnings of the new. Which we serve.... ‘Man +lives in the dawn for ever,’ said Karenin. ‘Life is beginning and +nothing else but beginning. It begins everlastingly. Each step seems +vaster than the last, and does but gather us together for the nest. +This Modern State of ours, which would have been a Utopian marvel a +hundred years ago, is already the commonplace of life. But as I sit +here and dream of the possibilities in the mind of man that now gather +to a head beneath the shelter of its peace, these great mountains here +seem but little things....’ + +Section 6 + +About eleven Karenin had his midday meal, and afterwards he slept among +his artificial furs and pillows for two hours. Then he awoke and some +tea was brought to him, and he attended to a small difficulty in +connection with the Moravian schools in the Labrador country and in +Greenland that Gardener knew would interest him. He remained alone for +a little while after that, and then the two women came to him again. +Afterwards Edwards and Kahn joined the group, and the talk fell upon +love and the place of women in the renascent world. The cloudbanks of +India lay under a quivering haze, and the blaze of the sun fell full +upon the eastward precipices. Ever and again as they talked, some vast +splinter of rock would crack and come away from these, or a wild rush +of snow and ice and stone, pour down in thunder, hang like a wet thread +into the gulfs below, and cease.... + +Section 7 + +For a time Karenin said very little, and Kahn, the popular poet, talked +of passionate love. He said that passionate, personal love had been the +abiding desire of humanity since ever humanity had begun, and now only +was it becoming a possible experience. It had been a dream that +generation after generation had pursued, that always men had lost on +the verge of attainment. To most of those who had sought it obstinately +it had brought tragedy. Now, lifted above sordid distresses, men and +women might hope for realised and triumphant love. This age was the +Dawn of Love.... + +Karenin remained downcast and thoughtful while Kahn said these things. +Against that continued silence Kahn’s voice presently seemed to beat +and fail. He had begun by addressing Karenin, but presently he was +including Edith Haydon and Rachel Borken in his appeal. Rachel listened +silently; Edith watched Karenin and very deliberately avoided Kahn’s +eyes. + +‘I know,’ said Karenin at last, ‘that many people are saying this sort +of thing. I know that there is a vast release of love-making in the +world. This great wave of decoration and elaboration that has gone +about the world, this Efflorescence, has of course laid hold of that. I +know that when you say that the world is set free, you interpret that +to mean that the world is set free for love-making. Down there,—under +the clouds, the lovers foregather. I know your songs, Kahn, your +half-mystical songs, in which you represent this old hard world +dissolving into a luminous haze of love—sexual love.... I don’t think +you are right or true in that. You are a young, imaginative man, and +you see life—ardently—with the eyes of youth. But the power that has +brought man into these high places under this blue-veiled blackness of +the sky and which beckons us on towards the immense and awful future of +our race, is riper and deeper and greater than any such emotions.... + +‘All through my life—it has been a necessary part of my work—I have had +to think of this release of sexual love and the riddles that perfect +freedom and almost limitless power will put to the soul of our race. I +can see now, all over the world, a beautiful ecstasy of waste; “Let us +sing and rejoice and be lovely and wonderful.” . . . The orgy is only +beginning, Kahn.... It was inevitable—but it is not the end of +mankind.... + +‘Think what we are. It is but a yesterday in the endlessness of time +that life was a dreaming thing, dreaming so deeply that it forgot +itself as it dreamt, its lives, its individual instincts, its moments, +were born and wondered and played and desired and hungered and grew +weary and died. Incalculable successions of vision, visions of sunlit +jungle, river wilderness, wild forest, eager desire, beating hearts, +soaring wings and creeping terror flamed hotly and then were as though +they had never been. Life was an uneasiness across which lights played +and vanished. And then we came, man came, and opened eyes that were a +question and hands that were a demand and began a mind and memory that +dies not when men die, but lives and increases for ever, an over-mind, +a dominating will, a question and an aspiration that reaches to the +stars.... Hunger and fear and this that you make so much of, this sex, +are but the elementals of life out of which we have arisen. All these +elementals, I grant you, have to be provided for, dealt with, +satisfied, but all these things have to be left behind.’ + +‘But Love,’ said Kahn. + +‘I speak of sexual love and the love of intimate persons. And that is +what you mean, Kahn.’ + +Karenin shook his head. ‘You cannot stay at the roots and climb the +tree,’ he said.... + +‘No,’ he said after a pause, ‘this sexual excitement, this love story, +is just a part of growing up and we grow out of it. So far literature +and art and sentiment and all our emotional forms have been almost +altogether adolescent, plays and stories, delights and hopes, they have +all turned on that marvellous discovery of the love interest, but life +lengthens out now and the mind of adult humanity detaches itself. Poets +who used to die at thirty live now to eighty-five. You, too, Kahn! +There are endless years yet for you—and all full of learning.... We +carry an excessive burden of sex and sexual tradition still, and we +have to free ourselves from it. We do free ourselves from it. We have +learnt in a thousand different ways to hold back death, and this sex, +which in the old barbaric days was just sufficient to balance our +dying, is now like a hammer that has lost its anvil, it plunges through +human life. You poets, you young people want to turn it to delight. +Turn it to delight. That may be one way out. In a little while, if you +have any brains worth thinking about, you will be satisfied, and then +you will come up here to the greater things. The old religions and +their new offsets want still, I see, to suppress all these things. Let +them suppress. If they can suppress. In their own people. Either road +will bring you here at last to the eternal search for knowledge and the +great adventure of power.’ + +‘But incidentally,’ said Rachel Borken; ‘incidentally you have half of +humanity, you have womankind, very much specialised for—for this love +and reproduction that is so much less needed than it was.’ + +‘Both sexes are specialised for love and reproduction,’ said Karenin. + +‘But the women carry the heavier burden.’ + +‘Not in their imaginations,’ said Edwards. + +‘And surely,’ said Kahn, ‘when you speak of love as a phase—isn’t it a +necessary phase? Quite apart from reproduction the love of the sexes is +necessary. Isn’t it love, sexual love, which has released the +imagination? Without that stir, without that impulse to go out from +ourselves, to be reckless of ourselves and wonderful, would our lives +be anything more than the contentment of the stalled ox?’ + +‘The key that opens the door,’ said Karenin, ‘is not the goal of the +journey.’ + +‘But women!’ cried Rachel. ‘Here we are! What is our future—as women? +Is it only that we have unlocked the doors of the imagination for you +men? Let us speak of this question now. It is a thing constantly in my +thoughts, Karenin. What do you think of us? You who must have thought +so much of these perplexities.’ + +Karenin seemed to weigh his words. He spoke very deliberately. ‘I do +not care a rap about your future—as women. I do not care a rap about +the future of men—as males. I want to destroy these peculiar futures. I +care for your future as intelligences, as parts of and contribution to +the universal mind of the race. Humanity is not only naturally +over-specialised in these matters, but all its institutions, its +customs, everything, exaggerate, intensify this difference. I want to +unspecialise women. No new idea. Plato wanted exactly that. I do not +want to go on as we go now, emphasising this natural difference; I do +not deny it, but I want to reduce it and overcome it.’ + +‘And—we remain women,’ said Rachel Borken. ‘Need you remain thinking of +yourselves as women?’ + +‘It is forced upon us,’ said Edith Haydon. + +‘I do not think a woman becomes less of a woman because she dresses and +works like a man,’ said Edwards. ‘You women here, I mean you scientific +women, wear white clothing like the men, twist up your hair in the +simplest fashion, go about your work as though there was only one sex +in the world. You are just as much women, even if you are not so +feminine, as the fine ladies down below there in the plains who dress +for excitement and display, whose only thoughts are of lovers, who +exaggerate every difference.... Indeed we love you more.’ + +‘But we go about our work,’ said Edith Haydon. + +‘So does it matter?’ asked Rachel. + +‘If you go about your work and if the men go about their work then for +Heaven’s sake be as much woman as you wish,’ said Karenin. ‘When I ask +you to unspecialise, I am thinking not of the abolition of sex, but the +abolition of the irksome, restricting, obstructive obsession with sex. +It may be true that sex made society, that the first society was the +sex-cemented family, the first state a confederacy of blood relations, +the first laws sexual taboos. Until a few years ago morality meant +proper sexual behaviour. Up to within a few years of us the chief +interest and motive of an ordinary man was to keep and rule a woman and +her children and the chief concern of a woman was to get a man to do +that. That was the drama, that was life. And the jealousy of these +demands was the master motive in the world. You said, Kahn, a little +while ago that sexual love was the key that let one out from the +solitude of self, but I tell you that so far it has only done so in +order to lock us all up again in a solitude of two.... All that may +have been necessary but it is necessary no longer. All that has changed +and changes still very swiftly. Your future, Rachel, _as women_, is a +diminishing future.’ + +‘Karenin?’ asked Rachel, ‘do you mean that women are to become men?’ + +‘Men and women have to become human beings.’ + +‘You would abolish women? But, Karenin, listen! There is more than sex +in this. Apart from sex we are different from you. We take up life +differently. Forget we are—females, Karenin, and still we are a +different sort of human being with a different use. In some things we +are amazingly secondary. Here am I in this place because of my trick of +management, and Edith is here because of her patient, subtle hands. +That does not alter the fact that nearly the whole body of science is +man made; that does not alter the fact that men do so predominatingly +make history, that you could nearly write a complete history of the +world without mentioning a woman’s name. And on the other hand we have +a gift of devotion, of inspiration, a distinctive power for truly +loving beautiful things, a care for life and a peculiar keen close eye +for behaviour. You know men are blind beside us in these last matters. +You know they are restless—and fitful. We have a steadfastness. We may +never draw the broad outlines nor discover the new paths, but in the +future isn’t there a confirming and sustaining and supplying _rôle_ for +us? As important, perhaps, as yours? Equally important. We hold the +world up, Karenin, though you may have raised it.’ + +‘You know very well, Rachel, that I believe as you believe. I am not +thinking of the abolition of woman. But I do want to abolish—the +heroine, the sexual heroine. I want to abolish the woman whose support +is jealousy and whose gift possession. I want to abolish the woman who +can be won as a prize or locked up as a delicious treasure. And away +down there the heroine flares like a divinity.’ + +‘In America,’ said Edwards, ‘men are fighting duels over the praises of +women and holding tournaments before Queens of Beauty.’ + +‘I saw a beautiful girl in Lahore,’ said Kahn, ‘she sat under a golden +canopy like a goddess, and three fine men, armed and dressed like the +ancient paintings, sat on steps below her to show their devotion. And +they wanted only her permission to fight for her.’ + +‘That is the men’s doing,’ said Edith Haydon. + +‘I _said_,’ cried Edwards, ‘that man’s imagination was more specialised +for sex than the whole being of woman. What woman would do a thing like +that? Women do but submit to it or take advantage of it.’ + +‘There is no evil between men and women that is not a common evil,’ +said Karenin. ‘It is you poets, Kahn, with your love songs which turn +the sweet fellowship of comrades into this woman-centred excitement. +But there is something in women, in many women, which responds to these +provocations; they succumb to a peculiarly self-cultivating egotism. +They become the subjects of their own artistry. They develop and +elaborate themselves as scarcely any man would ever do. They _look_ for +golden canopies. And even when they seem to react against that, they +may do it still. I have been reading in the old papers of the movements +to emancipate women that were going on before the discovery of atomic +force. These things which began with a desire to escape from the +limitations and servitude of sex, ended in an inflamed assertion of +sex, and women more heroines than ever. Helen of Holloway was at last +as big a nuisance in her way as Helen of Troy, and so long as you think +of yourselves as women’—he held out a finger at Rachel and smiled +gently—‘instead of thinking of yourselves as intelligent beings, you +will be in danger of—Helenism. To think of yourselves as women is to +think of yourselves in relation to men. You can’t escape that +consequence. You have to learn to think of yourselves—for our sakes and +your own sakes—in relation to the sun and stars. You have to cease to +be our adventure, Rachel, and come with us upon our adventures. ...’ He +waved his hand towards the dark sky above the mountain crests. + +Section 8 + +‘These questions are the next questions to which research will bring us +answers,’ said Karenin. ‘While we sit here and talk idly and inexactly +of what is needed and what may be, there are hundreds of keen-witted +men and women who are working these things out, dispassionately and +certainly, for the love of knowledge. The next sciences to yield great +harvests now will be psychology and neural physiology. These +perplexities of the situation between man and woman and the trouble +with the obstinacy of egotism, these are temporary troubles, the issue +of our own times. Suddenly all these differences that seem so fixed +will dissolve, all these incompatibles will run together, and we shall +go on to mould our bodies and our bodily feelings and personal +reactions as boldly as we begin now to carve mountains and set the seas +in their places and change the currents of the wind.’ + +‘It is the next wave,’ said Fowler, who had come out upon the terrace +and seated himself silently behind Karenin’s chair. + +‘Of course, in the old days,’ said Edwards, ‘men were tied to their +city or their country, tied to the homes they owned or the work they +did....’ + +‘I do not see,’ said Karenin, ‘that there is any final limit to man’s +power of self-modification. + +‘There is none,’ said Fowler, walking forward and sitting down upon the +parapet in front of Karenin so that he could see his face. ‘There is no +absolute limit to either knowledge or power.... I hope you do not tire +yourself talking.’ + +‘I am interested,’ said Karenin. ‘I suppose in a little while men will +cease to be tired. I suppose in a little time you will give us +something that will hurry away the fatigue products and restore our +jaded tissues almost at once. This old machine may be made to run +without slacking or cessation.’ + +‘That is possible, Karenin. But there is much to learn.’ + +‘And all the hours we give to digestion and half living; don’t you +think there will be some way of saving these?’ + +Fowler nodded assent. + +‘And then sleep again. When man with his blazing lights made an end to +night in his towns and houses—it is only a hundred years or so ago that +that was done—then it followed he would presently resent his eight +hours of uselessness. Shan’t we presently take a tabloid or lie in some +field of force that will enable us to do with an hour or so of slumber +and rise refreshed again?’ + +‘Frobisher and Ameer Ali have done work in that direction.’ + +‘And then the inconveniences of age and those diseases of the system +that come with years; steadily you drive them back and you lengthen and +lengthen the years that stretch between the passionate tumults of youth +and the contractions of senility. Man who used to weaken and die as his +teeth decayed now looks forward to a continually lengthening, +continually fuller term of years. And all those parts of him that once +gathered evil against him, the vestigial structures and odd, +treacherous corners of his body, you know better and better how to deal +with. You carve his body about and leave it re-modelled and unscarred. +The psychologists are learning how to mould minds, to reduce and remove +bad complexes of thought and motive, to relieve pressures and broaden +ideas. So that we are becoming more and more capable of transmitting +what we have learnt and preserving it for the race. The race, the +racial wisdom, science, gather power continually to subdue the +individual man to its own end. Is that not so?’ + +Fowler said that it was, and for a time he was telling Karenin of new +work that was in progress in India and Russia. ‘And how is it with +heredity?’ asked Karenin. + +Fowler told them of the mass of inquiry accumulated and arranged by the +genius of Tchen, who was beginning to define clearly the laws of +inheritance and how the sex of children and the complexions and many of +the parental qualities could be determined. + +‘He can actually _do_——?’ + +‘It is still, so to speak, a mere laboratory triumph,’ said Fowler, +‘but to-morrow it will be practicable.’ + +‘You see,’ cried Karenin, turning a laughing face to Rachel and Edith, +‘while we have been theorising about men and women, here is science +getting the power for us to end that old dispute for ever. If woman is +too much for us, we’ll reduce her to a minority, and if we do not like +any type of men and women, we’ll have no more of it. These old bodies, +these old animal limitations, all this earthly inheritance of gross +inevitabilities falls from the spirit of man like the shrivelled cocoon +from an imago. And for my own part, when I hear of these things I feel +like that—like a wet, crawling new moth that still fears to spread its +wings. Because where do these things take us?’ + +‘Beyond humanity,’ said Kahn. + +‘No,’ said Karenin. ‘We can still keep our feet upon the earth that +made us. But the air no longer imprisons us, this round planet is no +longer chained to us like the ball of a galley slave.... + +‘In a little while men who will know how to bear the strange +gravitations, the altered pressures, the attenuated, unfamiliar gases +and all the fearful strangenesses of space will be venturing out from +this earth. This ball will be no longer enough for us; our spirit will +reach out.... Cannot you see how that little argosy will go glittering +up into the sky, twinkling and glittering smaller and smaller until the +blue swallows it up. They may succeed out there; they may perish, but +other men will follow them.... + +‘It is as if a great window opened,’ said Karenin. + +Section 9 + +As the evening drew on Karenin and those who were about him went up +upon the roof of the buildings, so that they might the better watch the +sunset and the flushing of the mountains and the coming of the +afterglow. They were joined by two of the surgeons from the +laboratories below, and presently by a nurse who brought Karenin +refreshment in a thin glass cup. It was a cloudless, windless evening +under the deep blue sky, and far away to the north glittered two +biplanes on the way to the observatories on Everest, two hundred miles +distant over the precipices to the east. The little group of people +watched them pass over the mountains and vanish into the blue, and then +for a time they talked of the work that the observatory was doing. From +that they passed to the whole process of research about the world, and +so Karenin’s thoughts returned again to the mind of the world and the +great future that was opening upon man’s imagination. He asked the +surgeons many questions upon the detailed possibilities of their +science, and he was keenly interested and excited by the things they +told him. And as they talked the sun touched the mountains, and became +very swiftly a blazing and indented hemisphere of liquid flame and +sank. + +Karenin looked blinking at the last quivering rim of incandescence, and +shaded his eyes and became silent. + +Presently he gave a little start. + +‘What?’ asked Rachel Borken. + +‘I had forgotten,’ he said. + +‘What had you forgotten?’ + +‘I had forgotten about the operation to-morrow. I have been so +interested as Man to-day that I have nearly forgotten Marcus Karenin. +Marcus Karenin must go under your knife to-morrow, Fowler, and very +probably Marcus Karenin will die.’ He raised his slightly shrivelled +hand. ‘It does not matter, Fowler. It scarcely matters even to me. For +indeed is it Karenin who has been sitting here and talking; is it not +rather a common mind, Fowler, that has played about between us? You and +I and all of us have added thought to thought, but the thread is +neither you nor me. What is true we all have; when the individual has +altogether brought himself to the test and winnowing of expression, +then the individual is done. I feel as though I had already been +emptied out of that little vessel, that Marcus Karenin, which in my +youth held me so tightly and completely. Your beauty, dear Edith, and +your broad brow, dear Rachel, and you, Fowler, with your firm and +skilful hands, are now almost as much to me as this hand that beats the +arm of my chair. And as little me. And the spirit that desires to know, +the spirit that resolves to do, that spirit that lives and has talked +in us to-day, lived in Athens, lived in Florence, lives on, I know, for +ever.... + +‘And you, old Sun, with your sword of flame searing these poor eyes of +Marcus for the last time of all, beware of me! You think I die—and +indeed I am only taking off one more coat to get at you. I have +threatened you for ten thousand years, and soon I warn you I shall be +coming. When I am altogether stripped and my disguises thrown away. +Very soon now, old Sun, I shall launch myself at you, and I shall reach +you and I shall put my foot on your spotted face and tug you about by +your fiery locks. One step I shall take to the moon, and then I shall +leap at you. I’ve talked to you before, old Sun, I’ve talked to you a +million times, and now I am beginning to remember. Yes—long ago, long +ago, before I had stripped off a few thousand generations, dust now and +forgotten, I was a hairy savage and I pointed my hand at you +and—clearly I remember it!—I saw you in a net. Have you forgotten that, +old Sun? . . . + +‘Old Sun, I gather myself together out of the pools of the individual +that have held me dispersed so long. I gather my billion thoughts into +science and my million wills into a common purpose. Well may you slink +down behind the mountains from me, well may you cower....’ + +Section 10 + +Karenin desired that he might dream alone for a little while before he +returned to the cell in which he was to sleep. He was given relief for +a pain that began to trouble him and wrapped warmly about with furs, +for a great coldness was creeping over all things, and so they left +him, and he sat for a long time watching the afterglow give place to +the darkness of night. + +It seemed to those who had to watch over him unobtrusively lest he +should be in want of any attention, that he mused very deeply. + +The white and purple peaks against the golden sky sank down into cold, +blue remoteness, glowed out again and faded again, and the burning +cressets of the Indian stars, that even the moonrise cannot altogether +quench, began their vigil. The moon rose behind the towering screen of +dark precipices to the east, and long before it emerged above these, +its slanting beams had filled the deep gorges below with luminous mist +and turned the towers and pinnacles of Lio Porgyul to a magic +dreamcastle of radiance and wonder.... + +Came a great uprush of ghostly light above the black rim of rocks, and +then like a bubble that is blown and detaches itself the moon floated +off clear into the unfathomable dark sky.... + +And then Karenin stood up. He walked a few paces along the terrace and +remained for a time gazing up at that great silver disc, that silvery +shield that must needs be man’s first conquest in outer space.... + +Presently he turned about and stood with his hands folded behind him, +looking at the northward stars.... + +At length he went to his own cell. He lay down there and slept +peacefully till the morning. And early in the morning they came to him +and the anæsthetic was given him and the operation performed. + +It was altogether successful, but Karenin was weak and he had to lie +very still; and about seven days later a blood clot detached itself +from the healing scar and travelled to his heart, and he died in an +instant in the night. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1059 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1060-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1060-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..69a3f0c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1060-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3077 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Grass of Parnassus, by Andrew Lang + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Grass of Parnassus + Rhymes Old and New + + +Author: Andrew Lang + + + +Release Date: September 16, 2014 [eBook #1060] +[This file was first posted on 8 October 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRASS OF PARNASSUS*** + + +Transcribed from the 1888 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + GRASS OF PARNASSUS + + + RHYMES OLD AND NEW + + BY ANDREW LANG + + * * * * * + + LONDON + LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. + AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET + + _All rights reserved_ + + * * * * * + + PRINTED BY + SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE + LONDON + + * * * * * + + + + +TO +E. M. S. + + + * * * * * + + _Primâ dicta mihi_, _summâ dicenda Camenâ_. + + * * * * * + + The years will pass, and hearts will range, + _You_ conquer Time, and Care, and Change. + Though Time doth still delight to shed + The dust on many a younger head; + Though Care, oft coming, hath the guile + From younger lips to steal the smile; + Though Change makes younger hearts wax cold, + And sells new loves for loves of old, + Time, Change, nor Care, hath learned the art + To fleck your hair, to chill your heart, + To touch your tresses with the snow, + To mar your mirth of long ago. + Change, Care, nor Time, while life endure, + Shall spoil our ancient friendship sure, + The love which flows from sacred springs, + In ‘old unhappy far-off things,’ + From sympathies in grief and joy, + Through all the years of man and boy. + + Therefore, to you, the rhymes I strung + When even this ‘brindled’ head was young + I bring, and later rhymes I bring + That flit upon as weak a wing, + But still for you, for yours, they sing! + + * * * * * + +MANY of the verses and translations in this volume were published first +in _Ballads and Lyrics of Old France_ (1872). Though very sensible that +they have the demerits of imitative and even of undergraduate rhyme, I +print them again because people I like have liked them. The rest are of +different dates, and lack (though doubtless they need) the excuse of +having been written, like some of the earlier pieces, during College +Lectures. I would gladly have added to this volume what other more or +less serious rhymes I have written, but circumstances over which I have +no control have bound them up with _Ballades_, and other toys of that +sort. + +It may be as well to repeat in prose, what has already been said in +verse, that Grass of Parnassus, the pretty Autumn flower, grows in the +marshes at the foot of the Muses’ Hill, and other hills, not at the top +by any means. + +Several of the versions from the Greek Anthology have been published in +the _Fortnightly Review_, and the sonnet on Colonel Burnaby appeared in +_Punch_. These, with pieces from other serials, are reprinted by the +courteous permission of the Editors. + +The verses that were published in _Ballades and Lyrics_, and in _Ballads +and Verses Vain_ (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York), are marked in the +contents with an asterisk. + + + + +CONTENTS + + _DEEDS OF MEN_ + PAGE +SEEKERS FOR A CITY 3 +THE WHITE PACHA 6 +MIDNIGHT, JANUARY 25, 1886 8 +ADVANCE, AUSTRALIA 9 +COLONEL BURNABY 11 +MELVILLE AND COGHILL 12 + _RHODOCLEIA_ +TO RHODOCLEIA 15 + _AVE_ +CLEVEDON CHURCH 21 +TWILIGHT ON TWEED * 23 +METEMPSYCHOSIS * 25 +LOST IN HADES * 26 +A STAR IN THE NIGHT * 27 +A SUNSET ON YARROW * 28 +ANOTHER WAY 29 + _HESPEROTHEN_ * +THE SEEKERS FOR PHÆACIA 33 +A SONG OF PHÆACIA 35 +THE DEPARTURE FROM PHÆACIA 37 +A BALLAD OF DEPARTURE 39 +THEY HEAR THE SIRENS FOR THE SECOND TIME 40 +CIRCE’S ISLE REVISITED 42 +THE LIMIT OF LANDS 44 + _VERSES_ +MARTIAL IN TOWN 49 +APRIL ON TWEED 51 +TIRED OF TOWNS 53 +SCYTHE SONG 55 +PEN AND INK 56 +A DREAM 58 +THE SINGING ROSE 59 +A REVIEW IN RHYME 62 +COLINETTE * 63 +A SUNSET OF WATTEAU * 65 +NIGHTINGALE WEATHER * 67 +LOVE AND WISDOM * 69 +GOOD-BYE * 71 +AN OLD PRAYER * 73 +À LA BELLE HÉLÈNE * 74 +SYLVIE ET AURÉLIE * 76 +A LOST PATH * 78 +THE SHADE OF HELEN * 79 + _SONNETS_ +SHE 83 +HERODOTUS IN EGYPT 84 +GÉRARD DE NERVAL * 85 +RONSARD * 86 +LOVE’S MIRACLE * 87 +DREAMS * 88 +TWO SONNETS OF THE SIRENS * 89 + _TRANSLATIONS_ +HYMN TO THE WINDS * 93 +MOONLIGHT * 94 +THE GRAVE AND THE ROSE * 95 +A VOW TO HEAVENLY VENUS * 96 +OF HIS LADY’S OLD AGE * 97 +SHADOWS OF HIS LADY * 98 +APRIL * 99 +AN OLD TUNE * 103 +OLD LOVES * 104 +A LADY OF HIGH DEGREE * 106 +IANNOULA * 108 +THE MILK WHITE DOE * 109 +HELIODORE 112 +THE PROPHET 113 +LAIS 114 +CLEARISTA 115 +THE FISHERMAN’S TOMB 116 +OF HIS DEATH 117 +RHODOPE 118 +TO A GIRL 119 +TO THE SHIPS 120 +A LATE CONVERT 121 +THE LIMIT OF LIFE 122 +TO DANIEL ELZEVIR 123 + _THE LAST CHANCE_ +THE LAST CHANCE 127 + +GRASS OF PARNASSUS. + + + _PALE star that by the lochs of Galloway_, + _In wet green places ’twixt the depth and height_ + _Dost keep thine hour while Autumn ebbs away_, + _When now the moors have doffed the heather bright_, + _Grass of Parnassus_, _flower of my delight_, + _How gladly with the unpermitted bay_— + _Garlands not mine_, _and leaves that not decay_— + _How gladly would I twine thee if I might_! + + _The bays are out of reach_! _But far below_ + _The peaks forbidden of the Muses’ Hill_, + _Grass of Parnassus_, _thy returning snow_ + _Between September and October chill_ + _Doth speak to me of Autumns long ago_, + _And these kind faces that are with me still_. + + + + +DEEDS OF MEN + + + αειδε δ’ αρα κλέα ανδρων + + TO + _COLONEL IAN HAMILTON_ + + To you, who know the face of war, + You, that for England wander far, + You that have seen the Ghazis fly + From English lads not sworn to die, + You that have lain where, deadly chill, + The mist crept o’er the Shameful Hill, + You that have conquered, mile by mile, + The currents of unfriendly Nile, + And cheered the march, and eased the strain + When Politics made valour vain, + Ian, to you, from banks of Ken, + We send our lays of Englishmen! + + + + +SEEKERS FOR A CITY. + + + “Believe me, if that blissful, that beautiful place, were set on a + hill visible to all the world, I should long ago have journeyed + thither. . . But the number and variety of the ways! For you know, + _There is but one road that leads to Corinth_.” + + HERMOTIMUS (Mr Pater’s Version). + + “The Poet says, _dear city of Cecrops_, and wilt thou not say, _dear + city of Zeus_?” + + M. ANTONINUS. + + _TO Corinth leads one road_, you say: + Is there a Corinth, or a way? + Each bland or blatant preacher hath + His painful or his primrose path, + And not a soul of all of these + But knows the city ’twixt the seas, + Her fair unnumbered homes and all + Her gleaming amethystine wall! + + Blind are the guides who know the way, + The guides who write, and preach, and pray, + I watch their lives, and I divine + They differ not from yours and mine! + + One man we knew, and only one, + Whose seeking for a city’s done, + For what he greatly sought he found, + A city girt with fire around, + A city in an empty land + Between the wastes of sky and sand, + A city on a river-side, + Where by the folk he loved, he died. {4a} + + Alas! it is not ours to tread + That path wherein his life he led, + Not ours his heart to dare and feel, + Keen as the fragrant Syrian steel; + Yet are we not quite city-less, + Not wholly left in our distress— + Is it not said by One of old, + _Sheep have I of another fold_? + Ah! faint of heart, and weak of will, + For us there is a city still! + + _Dear city of Zeus_, the Stoic says, {4b} + The Voice from Rome’s imperial days, + _In Thee meet all things_, _and disperse_, + _In Thee_, _for Thee_, _O Universe_! + _To me all’s fruit thy seasons bring_, + _Alike thy summer and thy spring_; + _The winds that wail_, _the suns that burn_, + _From Thee proceed_, _to Thee return_. + + _Dear city of Zeus_, shall _we_ not say, + Home to which none can lose the way! + Born in that city’s flaming bound, + We do not find her, but are found. + Within her wide and viewless wall + The Universe is girdled all. + All joys and pains, all wealth and dearth, + All things that travail on the earth, + God’s will they work, if God there be, + If not, what is my life to me? + + Seek we no further, but abide + Within this city great and wide, + In her and for her living, we + Have no less joy than to be free; + Nor death nor grief can quite appal + The folk that dwell within her wall, + Nor aught but with our will befall! + + + + +THE WHITE PACHA. + + + VAIN is the dream! However Hope may rave, + He perished with the folk he could not save, + And though none surely told us he is dead, + And though perchance another in his stead, + Another, not less brave, when all was done, + Had fled unto the southward and the sun, + Had urged a way by force, or won by guile + To streams remotest of the secret Nile, + Had raised an army of the Desert men, + And, waiting for his hour, had turned again + And fallen on that False Prophet, yet we know + GORDON is dead, and these things are not so! + Nay, not for England’s cause, nor to restore + Her trampled flag—for he loved Honour more— + Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory, + Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die. + He will not come again, whate’er our need, + He will not come, who is happy, being freed + From the deathly flesh and perishable things, + And lies of statesmen and rewards of kings. + Nay, somewhere by the sacred River’s shore + He sleeps like those who shall return no more, + No more return for all the prayers of men— + Arthur and Charles—they never come again! + They shall not wake, though fair the vision seem: + Whate’er sick Hope may whisper, vain the dream! + + + + +MIDNIGHT, JANUARY 25, 1886. + + + TO-MORROW is a year since Gordon died! + A year ago to-night, the Desert still + Crouched on the spring, and panted for its fill + Of lust and blood. Their old art statesmen plied, + And paltered, and evaded, and denied; + Guiltless as yet, except for feeble will, + And craven heart, and calculated skill + In long delays, of their great homicide. + + A year ago to-night ’twas not too late. + The thought comes through our mirth, again, again; + Methinks I hear the halting foot of Fate + Approaching and approaching us; and then + Comes cackle of the House, and the Debate! + Enough; he is forgotten amongst men. + + + + +ADVANCE, AUSTRALIA. + + + ON THE OFFER OF HELP FROM THE AUSTRALIANS AFTER THE FALL OF KHARTOUM. + + Sons of the giant Ocean isle + In sport our friendly foes for long, + Well England loves you, and we smile + When you outmatch us many a while, + So fleet you are, so keen and strong. + + You, like that fairy people set + Of old in their enchanted sea + Far off from men, might well forget + An elder nation’s toil and fret, + Might heed not aught but game and glee. + + But what your fathers were you are + In lands the fathers never knew, + ’Neath skies of alien sign and star + You rally to the English war; + Your hearts are English, kind and true. + + And now, when first on England falls + The shadow of a darkening fate, + You hear the Mother ere she calls, + You leave your ocean-girdled walls, + And face her foemen in the gate. + + + + +COLONEL BURNABY. + + + συ δ’ εν στροφάλιγγι κονίης + κεισο μέγας μεγαλωστι, λελασμένος ιπποσυνάων + + THOU that on every field of earth and sky + Didst hunt for Death, who seemed to flee and fear, + How great and greatly fallen dost thou lie + Slain in the Desert by some wandering spear: + ‘Not here, alas!’ may England say, ‘not here + Nor in this quarrel was it meet to die, + But in that dreadful battle drawing nigh + To thunder through the Afghan passes sheer: + + Like Aias by the ships shouldst thou have stood, + And in some glen have stayed the stream of flight, + The bulwark of thy people and their shield, + When Indus or when Helmund ran with blood, + Till back into the Northland and the Night + The smitten Eagles scattered from the field.’ + + + + +MELVILLE AND COGHILL. + + + (THE PLACE OF THE LITTLE HAND.) + + DEAD, with their eyes to the foe, + Dead, with the foe at their feet, + Under the sky laid low + Truly their slumber is sweet, + Though the wind from the Camp of the Slain Men blow, + And the rain on the wilderness beat. + + Dead, for they chose to die + When that wild race was run; + Dead, for they would not fly, + Deeming their work undone, + Nor cared to look on the face of the sky, + Nor loved the light of the sun. + + Honour we give them and tears, + And the flag they died to save, + Rent from the rain of the spears, + Wet from the war and the wave, + Shall waft men’s thoughts through the dust of the years, + Back to their lonely grave! + + + + +RHODOCLEIA + + +TO RHODOCLEIA +ON HER MELANCHOLY SINGING. + + + (Rhodocleia was beloved by Rufinus, one of the late poets of the Greek + Anthology.) + + STILL, Rhodocleia, brooding on the dead, + Still singing of the meads of asphodel, + Lands desolate of delight? + Say, hast thou dreamed of, or rememberèd, + The shores where shadows dwell, + Nor know the sun, nor see the stars of night? + + There, ’midst thy music, doth thy spirit gaze + As a girl pines for home, + Looking along the way that she hath come, + Sick to return, and counts the weary days! + So wouldst thou flee + Back to the multitude whose days are done, + Wouldst taste the fruit that lured Persephone, + The sacrament of death; and die, and be + No more in the wind and sun! + + Thou hast not dreamed it, but rememberèd + I know thou hast been there, + Hast seen the stately dwellings of the dead + Rise in the twilight air, + And crossed the shadowy bridge the spirits tread, + And climbed the golden stair! + + Nay, by thy cloudy hair + And lips that were so fair, + Sad lips now mindful of some ancient smart, + And melancholy eyes, the haunt of Care, + I know thee who thou art! + That Rhodocleia, Glory of the Rose, + Of Hellas, ere her close, + That Rhodocleia who, when all was done + The golden time of Greece, and fallen her sun, + Swayed her last poet’s heart. + + With roses did he woo thee, and with song, + With thine own rose, and with the lily sweet, + The dark-eyed violet, + Garlands of wind-flowers wet, + And fragrant love-lamps that the whole night long + Burned till the dawn was burning in the skies, + Praising _thy golden eyes_, + _And feet more silvery than Thetis’ feet_! + + But thou didst die and flit + Among the tribes outworn, + The unavailing myriads of the past: + Oft he beheld thy face in dreams of morn, + And, waking, wept for it, + Till his own time came at last, + And then he sought thee in the dusky land! + Wide are the populous places of the dead + Where souls on earth once wed + May never meet, nor each take other’s hand, + Each far from the other fled! + + So all in vain he sought for thee, but thou + Didst never taste of the Lethæan stream, + Nor that forgetful fruit, + The mystic pom’granate; + But from the Mighty Warden fledst; and now, + The fugitive of Fate, + Thou farest in our life as in a dream, + Still wandering with thy lute, + Like that sweet paynim lady of old song, + Who sang and wandered long, + For love of her Aucassin, seeking him! + So with thy minstrelsy + Thou roamest, dreaming of the country dim, + Below the veilèd sky! + + There doth thy lover dwell, + Singing, and seeking still to find thy face + In that forgetful place: + Thou shalt not meet him here, + Not till thy singing clear + Through all the murmur of the streams of hell + Wins to the Maiden’s ear! + May she, perchance, have pity on thee and call + Thine eager spirit to sit beside her feet, + Passing throughout the long unechoing hall + Up to the shadowy throne, + Where the lost lovers of the ages meet; + Till then thou art alone! + + + + +AVE. + + + ‘_Our Faith and Troth_ + _All time and space controules_ + _Above the highest sphere we meet_ + _Unseen_, _unknowne_, _and greet as Angels greet_.’ + + Col. RICHARD LOVELACE. 1649 + + + +CLEVEDON CHURCH. + + + IN MEMORIAM + H. B. + + WESTWARD I watch the low green hills of Wales, + The low sky silver grey, + The turbid Channel with the wandering sails + Moans through the winter day. + There is no colour but one ashen light + On tower and lonely tree, + The little church upon the windy height + Is grey as sky or sea. + But there hath he that woke the sleepless Love + Slept through these fifty years, + There is the grave that has been wept above + With more than mortal tears. + And far below I hear the Channel sweep + And all his waves complain, + As Hallam’s dirge through all the years must keep + Its monotone of pain. + + * * * * * + + Grey sky, brown waters, as a bird that flies, + My heart flits forth from these + Back to the winter rose of northern skies, + Back to the northern seas. + And lo, the long waves of the ocean beat + Below the minster grey, + Caverns and chapels worn of saintly feet, + And knees of them that pray. + And I remember me how twain were one + Beside that ocean dim, + I count the years passed over since the sun + That lights me looked on him, + And dreaming of the voice that, save in sleep, + Shall greet me not again, + Far, far below I hear the Channel sweep + And all his waves complain. + + + +TWILIGHT ON TWEED. + + + THREE crests against the saffron sky, + Beyond the purple plain, + The kind remembered melody + Of Tweed once more again. + + Wan water from the border hills, + Dear voice from the old years, + Thy distant music lulls and stills, + And moves to quiet tears. + + Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood + Fleets through the dusky land; + Where Scott, come home to die, has stood, + My feet returning stand. + + A mist of memory broods and floats, + The Border waters flow; + The air is full of ballad notes, + Borne out of long ago. + + Old songs that sung themselves to me, + Sweet through a boy’s day dream, + While trout below the blossom’d tree + Plashed in the golden steam. + + * * * * * + + Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill, + Fair and too fair you be; + You tell me that the voice is still + That should have welcomed me. + + 1870. + + + +METEMPSYCHOSIS. + + + I SHALL not see thee, nay, but I shall know + Perchance, the grey eyes in another’s eyes, + Shall guess thy curls in gracious locks that flow + On purest brows, yea, and the swift surmise + Shall follow and track, and find thee in disguise + Of all sad things, and fair, where sunsets glow, + When through the scent of heather, faint and low, + The weak wind whispers to the day that dies. + + From all sweet art, and out of all old rhyme, + Thine eyes and lips are light and song to me; + The shadows of the beauty of all time, + In song or story are but shapes of thee; + Alas, the shadowy shapes! ah, sweet my dear, + Shall life or death bring all thy being near? + + + +LOST IN HADES. + + + I DREAMED that somewhere in the shadowy place, + Grief of farewell unspoken was forgot + In welcome, and regret remembered not; + And hopeless prayer accomplished turned to praise + On lips that had been songless many days; + Hope had no more to hope for, and desire + And dread were overpast, in white attire + New born we walked among the new world’s ways. + + Then from the press of shades a spirit threw + Towards me such apples as these gardens bear; + And turning, I was ’ware of her, and knew + And followed her fleet voice and flying hair,— + Followed, and found her not, and seeking you + I found you never, dearest, anywhere. + + + +A STAR IN THE NIGHT. + + + THE perfect piteous beauty of thy face + Is like a star the dawning drives away; + Mine eyes may never see in the bright day + Thy pallid halo, thy supernal grace; + But in the night from forth the silent place + Thou comest, dim in dreams, as doth a stray + Star of the starry flock that in the grey + Is seen, and lost, and seen a moment’s space. + + And as the earth at night turns to a star, + Loved long ago, and dearer than the sun, + So in the spiritual place afar, + At night our souls are mingled and made one, + And wait till one night fall, and one dawn rise, + That brings no noon too splendid for your eyes. + + + +A SUNSET ON YARROW. + + + The wind and the day had lived together, + They died together, and far away + Spoke farewell in the sultry weather, + Out of the sunset, over the heather, + The dying wind and the dying day. + + Far in the south, the summer levin + Flushed, a flame in the grey soft air: + We seemed to look on the hills of heaven; + You saw within, but to me ’twas given + To see your face, as an angel’s, there. + + Never again, ah surely never + Shall we wait and watch, where of old we stood, + The low good-night of the hill and the river, + The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver, + Twain grown one in the solitude. + + + +ANOTHER WAY. + + + _COME to me in my dreams_, _and then_, + _One saith_, _I shall be well again_, + _For then the night will more than pay_ + _The hopeless longing of the day_. + + Nay, come not _thou_ in dreams, my sweet, + With shadowy robes, and silent feet, + And with the voice, and with the eyes + That greet me in a soft surprise. + + Last night, last night, in dreams we met, + And how, to-day, shall I forget, + Or how, remembering, restrain + Mine incommunicable pain? + + Nay, where thy land and people are, + Dwell thou remote, apart, afar, + Nor mingle with the shapes that sweep + The melancholy ways of Sleep. + + But if, perchance, the shadows break, + If dreams depart, and men awake, + If face to face at length we see, + Be thine the voice to welcome me. + + + + +HESPEROTHEN + + + By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned + from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods, + seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair + Phæacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end + miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth the _Vanity of + Melancholy_. And by the land of Phæacia is to be understood the place + of Art and of fair Pleasures; and by Circe’s Isle, the place of bodily + delights, whereof men, falling aweary, attain to Eld, and to the + darkness of that age. Which thing Master Françoys Rabelais feigned, + under the similitude of the Isle of the Macræones. + + + +THE SEEKERS FOR PHÆACIA. + + + THERE is a land in the remotest day, + Where the soft night is born, and sunset dies; + The eastern shore sees faint tides fade away, + That wash the lands where laughter, tears, and sighs + Make life,—the lands below the blue of common skies. + + But in the west is a mysterious sea, + (What sails have seen it, or what shipmen known?) + With coasts enchanted where the Sirens be, + With islands where a Goddess walks alone, + And in the cedar trees the magic winds make moan. + + Eastward the human cares of house and home, + Cities, and ships, and unknown gods, and loves; + Westward, strange maidens fairer than the foam, + And lawless lives of men, and haunted groves, + Wherein a god may dwell, and where the Dryad roves. + + The gods are careless of the days and death + Of toilsome men, beyond the western seas; + The gods are heedless of their painful breath, + And love them not, for they are not as these; + But in the golden west they live and lie at ease. + + Yet the Phæacians well they love, who live + At the light’s limit, passing careless hours, + Most like the gods; and they have gifts to give, + Even wine, and fountains musical, and flowers, + And song, and if they will, swift ships, and magic powers. + + It is a quiet midland; in the cool + Of the twilight comes the god, though no man prayed, + To watch the maids and young men beautiful + Dance, and they see him, and are not afraid, + For they are neat of kin to gods, and undismayed. + + Ah, would the bright red prows might bring us nigh + The dreamy isles that the Immortals keep! + But with a mist they hide them wondrously, + And far the path and dim to where they sleep,— + The loved, the shadowy lands, along the shadowy deep. + + + +A SONG OF PHÆACIA. + + + THE languid sunset, mother of roses, + Lingers, a light on the magic seas, + The wide fire flames, as a flower uncloses, + Heavy with odour, and loose to the breeze. + + The red rose clouds, without law or leader, + Gather and float in the airy plain; + The nightingale sings to the dewy cedar, + The cedar scatters his scent to the main. + + The strange flowers’ perfume turns to singing, + Heard afar over moonlit seas: + The Siren’s song, grown faint in winging, + Falls in scent on the cedar trees. + + As waifs blown out of the sunset, flying, + Purple, and rosy, and grey, the birds + Brighten the air with their wings; their crying + Wakens a moment the weary herds. + + Butterflies flit from the fairy garden, + Living blossoms of flying flowers; + Never the nights with winter harden, + Nor moons wax keen in this land of ours. + + Great fruits, fragrant, green and golden, + Gleam in the green, and droop and fall; + Blossom, and bud, and flower unfolden, + Swing, and cling to the garden wall. + + Deep in the woods as twilight darkens, + Glades are red with the scented fire; + Far in the dells the white maid hearkens, + Song and sigh of the heart’s desire. + + Ah, and as moonlight fades in morning, + Maiden’s song in the matin grey, + Faints as the first bird’s note, a warning, + Wakes and wails to the new-born day. + + The waking song and the dying measure + Meet, and the waxing and waning light + Meet, and faint with the hours of pleasure, + The rose of the sea and the sky is white. + + + +THE DEPARTURE FROM PHÆACIA. + + + THE PHÆACIANS. + + WHY from the dreamy meadows, + More fair than any dream, + Why seek ye for the shadows + Beyond the ocean stream? + + Through straits of storm and peril, + Through firths unsailed before, + Why make you for the sterile, + The dark Kimmerian shore? + + There no bright streams are flowing, + There day and night are one, + No harvest time, no sowing, + No sight of any sun; + + No sound of song or tabor, + No dance shall greet you there; + No noise of mortal labour + Breaks on the blind chill air. + + Are ours not happy places, + Where gods with mortals trod? + Saw not our sires the faces + Of many a present god? + + THE SEEKERS. + + Nay, now no god comes hither, + In shape that men may see; + They fare we know not whither, + We know not what they be. + + Yea, though the sunset lingers + Far in your fairy glades, + Though yours the sweetest singers, + Though yours the kindest maids, + + Yet here be the true shadows, + Here in the doubtful light; + Amid the dreamy meadows + No shadow haunts the night. + + We seek a city splendid, + With light beyond the sun; + Or lands where dreams are ended, + And works and days are done. + + + +A BALLAD OF DEPARTURE. {39} + + + FAIR white bird, what song art thou singing + In wintry weather of lands o’er sea? + Dear white bird, what way art thou winging, + Where no grass grows, and no green tree? + + I looked at the far-off fields and grey, + There grew no tree but the cypress tree, + That bears sad fruits with the flowers of May, + And whoso looks on it, woe is he. + + And whoso eats of the fruit thereof + Has no more sorrow, and no more love; + And who sets the same in his garden stead, + In a little space he is waste and dead. + + + +THEY HEAR THE SIRENS FOR THE SECOND TIME. + + + THE weary sails a moment slept, + The oars were silent for a space, + As past Hesperian shores we swept, + That were as a remembered face + Seen after lapse of hopeless years, + In Hades, when the shadows meet, + Dim through the mist of many tears, + And strange, and though a shadow, sweet. + + So seemed the half-remembered shore, + That slumbered, mirrored in the blue, + With havens where we touched of yore, + And ports that over well we knew. + Then broke the calm before a breeze + That sought the secret of the west; + And listless all we swept the seas + Towards the Islands of the Blest. + + Beside a golden sanded bay + We saw the Sirens, very fair + The flowery hill whereon they lay, + The flowers set upon their hair. + Their old sweet song came down the wind, + Remembered music waxing strong,— + Ah now no need of cords to bind, + No need had we of Orphic song. + + It once had seemed a little thing + To lay our lives down at their feet, + That dying we might hear them sing, + And dying see their faces sweet; + But now, we glanced, and passing by, + No care had we to tarry long; + Faint hope, and rest, and memory + Were more than any Siren’s song. + + + +CIRCE’S ISLE REVISITED. + + + Ah, Circe, Circe! in the wood we cried; + Ah, Circe, Circe! but no voice replied; + No voice from bowers o’ergrown and ruinous + As fallen rocks upon the mountain side. + + There was no sound of singing in the air; + Faded or fled the maidens that were fair, + No more for sorrow or joy were seen of us, + No light of laughing eyes, or floating hair. + + The perfume, and the music, and the flame + Had passed away; the memory of shame + Alone abode, and stings of faint desire, + And pulses of vague quiet went and came. + + Ah, Circe! in thy sad changed fairy place, + Our dead youth came and looked on us a space, + With drooping wings, and eyes of faded fire. + And wasted hair about a weary face. + + Why had we ever sought the magic isle + That seemed so happy in the days erewhile? + Why did we ever leave it, where we met + A world of happy wonders in one smile? + + Back to the westward and the waning light + We turned, we fled; the solitude of night + Was better than the infinite regret, + In fallen places of our dead delight. + + + +THE LIMIT OF LANDS. + + + BETWEEN the circling ocean sea + And the poplars of Persephone + There lies a strip of barren sand, + Flecked with the sea’s last spray, and strown + With waste leaves of the poplars, blown + From gardens of the shadow land. + + With altars of old sacrifice + The shore is set, in mournful wise + The mists upon the ocean brood; + Between the water and the air + The clouds are born that float and fare + Between the water and the wood. + + Upon the grey sea never sail + Of mortals passed within our hail, + Where the last weak waves faint and flow; + We heard within the poplar pale + The murmur of a doubtful wail + Of voices loved so long ago. + + We scarce had care to die or live, + We had no honey cake to give, + No wine of sacrifice to shed; + There lies no new path over sea, + And now we know how faint they be, + The feasts and voices of the dead. + + Ah, flowers and dance! ah, sun and snow! + Glad life, sad life we did forego + To dream of quietness and rest; + Ah, would the fleet sweet roses here + Poured light and perfume through the drear + Pale year, and wan land of the west. + + Sad youth, that let the spring go by + Because the spring is swift to fly, + Sad youth, that feared to mourn or love, + Behold how sadder far is this, + To know that rest is nowise bliss, + And darkness is the end thereof. + + + + +VERSES + + +MARTIAL IN TOWN. + + + LAST night, within the stifling train, + Lit by the foggy lamp o’erhead, + Sick of the sad Last News, I read + Verse of that joyous child of Spain, + + Who dwelt when Rome was waxing cold, + Within the Roman din and smoke. + And like my heart to me they spoke, + These accents of his heart of old:— + + “_Brother_, _had we but time to live_, + _And fleet the careless hours together_, + _With all that leisure has to give_ + _Of perfect life and peaceful weather_, + + “_The Rich Man’s halls_, _the anxious faces_, + _The weary Forum_, _courts_, _and cases_ + _Should know us not_; _but quiet nooks_, + _But summer shade by field and well_, + _But county rides_, _and talk of books_, + _At home_, _with these_, _we fain would dwell_! + + “_Now neither lives_, _but day by day_ + _Sees the suns wasting in the west_, + _And feels their flight_, _and doth delay_ + _To lead the life he loveth best_.” + + So from thy city prison broke, + Martial, thy wail for life misspent, + And so, through London’s noise and smoke + My heart replies to the lament. + + For dear as Tagus with his gold, + And swifter Salo, were to thee, + So dear to me the woods that fold + The streams that circle Fernielea! + + + +APRIL ON TWEED. + + + AS birds are fain to build their nest + The first soft sunny day, + So longing wakens in my breast + A month before the May, + When now the wind is from the West, + And Winter melts away. + + The snow lies yet on Eildon Hill, + But soft the breezes blow. + If melting snows the waters fill, + We nothing heed the snow, + But we must up and take our will,— + A fishing will we go! + + Below the branches brown and bare, + Beneath the primrose lea, + The trout lies waiting for his fare, + A hungry trout is he; + He’s hooked, and springs and splashes there + Like salmon from the sea! + + Oh, April tide’s a pleasant tide, + However times may fall, + And sweet to welcome Spring, the Bride, + You hear the mavis call; + But all adown the water-side + The Spring’s most fair of all. + + + +TIRED OF TOWNS. + + + ‘When we spoke to her of the New Jerusalem, she said she would rather + go to a country place in Heaven.’ + + _Letters from the Black Country_. + + I’M weary of towns, it seems a’most a pity + We didn’t stop down i’ the country and clem, + And you say that I’m bound for another city, + For the streets o’ the New Jerusalem. + + And the streets are never like Sheffield, here, + Nor the smoke don’t cling like a smut to _them_; + But the water o’ life flows cool and clear + Through the streets o’ the New Jerusalem. + + And the houses, you say, are of jasper cut, + And the gates are gaudy wi’ gold and gem; + But there’s times I could wish as the gates was shut— + The gates o’ the New Jerusalem. + + For I come from a country that’s over-built + Wi’ streets that stifle, and walls that hem, + And the gorse on a common’s worth all the gilt + And the gold of your New Jerusalem. + + And I hope that they’ll bring me, in Paradise, + To green lanes leafy wi’ bough and stem— + To a country place in the land o’ the skies, + And not to the New Jerusalem. + + + +SCYTHE SONG. + + + MOWERS, weary and brown, and blithe, + What is the word methinks ye know, + Endless over-word that the Scythe + Sings to the blades of the grass below? + Scythes that swing in the grass and clover, + Something, still, they say as they pass; + What is the word that, over and over, + Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass? + + _Hush_, _ah hush_, the Scythes are saying, + _Hush_, _and heed not_, _and fall asleep_; + _Hush_, they say to the grasses swaying, + _Hush_, they sing to the clover deep! + _Hush_—’tis the lullaby Time is singing— + _Hush_, _and heed not_, _for all things pass_, + _Hush_, _ah hush_! and the Scythes are swinging + Over the clover, over the grass! + + + +PEN AND INK. + + + YE wanderers that were my sires, + Who read men’s fortunes in the hand, + Who voyaged with your smithy fires + From waste to waste across the land, + Why did you leave for garth and town + Your life by heath and river’s brink, + Why lay your gipsy freedom down + And doom your child to Pen and Ink? + + You wearied of the wild-wood meal + That crowned, or failed to crown, the day; + Too honest or too tame to steal + You broke into the beaten way; + Plied loom or awl like other men, + And learned to love the guineas’ chink— + Oh, recreant sires, who doomed me then + To earn so few—with Pen and Ink! + + Where it hath fallen the tree must lie. + ’Tis over late for _me_ to roam, + Yet the caged bird who hears the cry + Of his wild fellows fleeting home, + May feel no sharper pang than mine, + Who seem to hear, whene’er I think, + Spate in the stream, and wind in pine, + Call me to quit dull Pen and Ink. + + For then the spirit wandering, + That slept within the blood, awakes; + For then the summer and the spring + I fain would meet by streams and lakes; + But ah, my Birthright long is sold, + But custom chains me, link on link, + And I must get me, as of old, + Back to my tools, to Pen and Ink. + + + +A DREAM. + + + WHY will you haunt my sleep? + You know it may not be, + The grave is wide and deep, + That sunders you and me; + In bitter dreams we reap + The sorrow we have sown, + And I would I were asleep, + Forgotten and alone! + + We knew and did not know, + We saw and did not see, + The nets that long ago + Fate wove for you and me; + The cruel nets that keep + The birds that sob and moan, + And I would we were asleep, + Forgotten and alone! + + + +THE SINGING ROSE. + + + ‘_La Rose qui chante et l’herbe qui égare_.’ + + _WHITE Rose on the grey garden wall_, + _Where now no night-wind whispereth_, + _Call to the far-off flowers_, _and call_ + _With murmured breath and musical_ + _Till all the Roses hear_, _and all_ + _Sing to my Love what the White Rose saith_. + + White Rose on the grey garden wall + That long ago we sung! + Again you come at Summer’s call,— + Again beneath my windows all + With trellised flowers is hung, + With clusters of the roses white + Like fragrant stars in a green night. + + Once more I hear the sister towers + Each unto each reply, + The bloom is on those limes of ours, + The weak wind shakes the bloom in showers, + Snow from a cloudless sky; + There is no change this happy day + Within the College Gardens grey! + + St. Mary’s, Merton, Magdalen—still + Their sweet bells chime and swing, + The old years answer them, and thrill + A wintry heart against its will + With memories of the Spring— + That Spring we sought the gardens through + For flowers which ne’er in gardens grew! + + For we, beside our nurse’s knee, + In fairy tales had heard + Of that strange Rose which blossoms free + On boughs of an enchanted tree, + And sings like any bird! + And of the weed beside the way + That leadeth lovers’ steps astray! + + In vain we sought the Singing Rose + Whereof old legends tell, + Alas, we found it not mid those + Within the grey old College close, + That budded, flowered, and fell,— + We found that herb called ‘Wandering’ + And meet no more, no more in Spring! + + Yes, unawares the unhappy grass + That leadeth steps astray, + We trod, and so it came to pass + That never more we twain, alas, + Shall walk the self-same way. + And each must deem, though neither knows, + That _neither_ found the Singing Rose! + + + +A REVIEW IN RHYME. + + + A LITTLE of Horace, a little of Prior, + A sketch of a Milkmaid, a lay of the Squire— + These, these are ‘on draught’ ‘At the Sign of the Lyre!’ + + A child in Blue Ribbons that sings to herself, + A talk of the Books on the Sheraton shelf, + A sword of the Stuarts, a wig of the Guelph, + + A _lai_, a _pantoum_, a _ballade_, a _rondeau_, + A pastel by Greuze, and a sketch by Moreau, + And the chimes of the rhymes that sing sweet as they go, + + A fan, and a folio, a ringlet, a glove, + ’Neath a dance by Laguerre on the ceiling above, + And a dream of the days when the bard was in love, + + A scent of dead roses, a glance at a pun, + A toss of old powder, a glint of the sun, + They meet in the volume that Dobson has done! + + If there’s more that the heart of a man can desire, + He may search, in his Swinburne, for fury and fire; + If he’s wise—he’ll alight ‘At the Sign of the Lyre!’ + + + +COLINETTE. + + + FOR A SKETCH BY MR. G. LESLIE, R.A. + + FRANCE your country, as we know; + Room enough for guessing yet, + What lips now or long ago, + Kissed and named you—Colinette. + In what fields from sea to sea, + By what stream your home was set, + Loire or Seine was glad of thee, + Marne or Rhone, O Colinette? + + Did you stand with maidens ten, + Fairer maids were never seen, + When the young king and his men + Passed among the orchards green? + Nay, old ballads have a note + Mournful, we would fain forget; + No such sad old air should float + Round your young brows, Colinette. + + Say, did Ronsard sing to you, + Shepherdess, to lull his pain, + When the court went wandering through + Rose pleasances of Touraine? + Ronsard and his famous Rose + Long are dust the breezes fret; + You, within the garden close, + You are blooming, Colinette. + + Have I seen you proud and gay, + With a patched and perfumed beau, + Dancing through the summer day, + Misty summer of Watteau? + Nay, so sweet a maid as you + Never walked a minuet + With the splendid courtly crew; + Nay, forgive me, Colinette. + + Not from Greuze’s canvases + Do you cast a glance, a smile; + You are not as one of these, + Yours is beauty without guile. + Round your maiden brows and hair + Maidenhood and Childhood met + Crown and kiss you, sweet and fair, + New art’s blossom, Colinette. + + + +A SUNSET OF WATTEAU. + + + LUI. + + The silk sail fills, the soft winds wake, + Arise and tempt the seas; + Our ocean is the Palace lake, + Our waves the ripples that we make + Among the mirrored trees. + + ELLE. + + Nay, sweet the shore, and sweet the song, + And dear the languid dream; + The music mingled all day long + With paces of the dancing throng, + And murmur of the stream. + + An hour ago, an hour ago, + We rested in the shade; + And now, why should we seek to know + What way the wilful waters flow? + There is no fairer glade. + + LUI. + + Nay, pleasure flits, and we must sail, + And seek him everywhere; + Perchance in sunset’s golden pale + He listens to the nightingale, + Amid the perfumed air. + + Come, he has fled; you are not you, + And I no more am I; + Delight is changeful as the hue + Of heaven, that is no longer blue + In yonder sunset sky. + + ELLE. + + Nay, if we seek we shall not find, + If we knock none openeth; + Nay, see, the sunset fades behind + The mountains, and the cold night wind + Blows from the house of Death. + + + +NIGHTINGALE WEATHER. + + + ‘Serai-je nonnette, oui ou non? + Semi-je nonnette? je crois que non. + Derrière chez mon père + Il est un bois taillis, + Le rossignol y chante + Et le jour et la nuit. + Il chante pour les filles + Qui n’ont pas d’ami; + Il ne chant pas pour moi, + J’en ai un, Dieu merci.’—_Old French_. + + * * * * * + + I’LL never be a nun, I trow, + While apple bloom is white as snow, + But far more fair to see; + I’ll never wear nun’s black and white + While nightingales make sweet the night + Within the apple tree. + + Ah, listen! ’tis the nightingale, + And in the wood he makes his wail, + Within the apple tree; + He singeth of the sore distress + Of many ladies loverless; + Thank God, no song for me. + + For when the broad May moon is low, + A gold fruit seen where blossoms blow + In the boughs of the apple tree, + A step I know is at the gate; + Ah love, but it is long to wait + Until night’s noon bring thee! + + Between lark’s song and nightingale’s + A silent space, while dawning pales, + The birds leave still and free + For words and kisses musical, + For silence and for sighs that fall + In the dawn, ’twixt him and me. + + + +LOVE AND WISDOM. + + + ‘When last we gathered roses in the garden + I found my wits, but truly you lost yours.’ + + _The Broken Heart_. + + JULY and June brought flowers and love + To you, but I would none thereof, + Whose heart kept all through summer time + A flower of frost and winter rime. + Yours was true wisdom—was it not? + Even love; but I had clean forgot, + Till seasons of the falling leaf, + All loves, but one that turned to grief. + At length at touch of autumn tide + When roses fell, and summer died, + All in a dawning deep with dew, + Love flew to me, Love fled from you. + The roses drooped their weary heads, + I spoke among the garden beds; + You would not hear, you could not know, + Summer and love seemed long ago, + As far, as faint, as dim a dream, + As to the dead this world may seem. + Ah sweet, in winter’s miseries, + Perchance you may remember this, + How Wisdom was not justified + In summer time or autumn tide, + Though for this once below the sun, + Wisdom and Love were made at one; + But Love was bitter-bought enough, + And Wisdom light of wing as Love. + + + +GOOD-BYE. + + + KISS me, and say good-bye; + Good-bye, there is no word to say but this, + Nor any lips left for my lips to kiss, + Nor any tears to shed, when these tears dry; + Kiss me, and say, good-bye. + + Farewell, be glad, forget; + There is no need to say ‘forget,’ I know, + For youth is youth, and time will have it so, + And though your lips are pale, and your eyes wet, + Farewell, you must forget. + + You shall bring home your sheaves, + Many, and heavy, and with blossoms twined + Of memories that go not out of mind; + Let this one sheaf be twined with poppy leaves + When you bring home your sheaves. + + In garnered loves of thine, + The ripe good fruit of many hearts and years, + Somewhere let this lie, grey and salt with tears; + It grew too near the sea wind, and the brine + Of life, this love of mine. + + This sheaf was spoiled in spring, + And over-long was green, and early sere, + And never gathered gold in the late year + From autumn suns, and moons of harvesting, + But failed in frosts of spring. + + Yet was it thine, my sweet, + This love, though weak as young corn withered, + Whereof no man may gather and make bread; + Thine, though it never knew the summer heat; + Forget not quite, my sweet. + + + +AN OLD PRAYER. + + + Χαιρέ μοι, ω βασίλεια, διαμπερες, εις ο κε γηρας + Ελθη και θάνατος, τά τ’ επ’ ανθρώποισι πέλονται. + + _Odyssey_, XIII. + + MY prayer an old prayer borroweth, + Of ancient love and memory— + ‘Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death, + That come to all men, come to thee.’ + Gently as winter’s early breath, + Scarce felt, what time the swallows flee, + To lands whereof no man knoweth + Of summer, over land and sea; + So with thy soul may summer be, + Even as the ancient singer saith, + ‘Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death, + That come to all men, come to thee.’ + + + +À LA BELLE HÉLÈNE. + + + AFTER RONSARD. + + MORE closely than the clinging vine + About the wedded tree, + Clasp thou thine arms, ah, mistress mine! + About the heart of me. + Or seem to sleep, and stoop your face + Soft on my sleeping eyes, + Breathe in your life, your heart, your grace, + Through me, in kissing wise. + Bow down, bow down your face, I pray, + To me, that swoon to death, + Breathe back the life you kissed away, + Breathe back your kissing breath. + So by your eyes I swear and say, + My mighty oath and sure, + From your kind arms no maiden may + My loving heart allure. + I’ll bear your yoke, that’s light enough, + And to the Elysian plain, + When we are dead of love, my love, + One boat shall bear us twain. + They’ll flock around you, fleet and fair, + All true loves that have been, + And you of all the shadows there, + Shall be the shadow queen. + Ah, shadow-loves and shadow-lips! + Ah, while ’tis called to-day, + Love me, my love, for summer slips, + And August ebbs away. + + + +SYLVIE ET AURÉLIE. + + + IN MEMORY OF GÉRARD DE NERVAL. + + TWO loves there were, and one was born + Between the sunset and the rain; + Her singing voice went through the corn, + Her dance was woven ’neath the thorn, + On grass the fallen blossoms stain; + And suns may set, and moons may wane, + But this love comes no more again. + + There were two loves and one made white, + Thy singing lips, and golden hair; + Born of the city’s mire and light, + The shame and splendour of the night, + She trapped and fled thee unaware; + Not through the lamplight and the rain + Shalt thou behold this love again. + + Go forth and seek, by wood and hill, + Thine ancient love of dawn and dew; + There comes no voice from mere or rill, + Her dance is over, fallen still + The ballad burdens that she knew: + And thou must wait for her in vain, + Till years bring back thy youth again. + + That other love, afield, afar + Fled the light love, with lighter feet. + Nay, though thou seek where gravesteads are, + And flit in dreams from star to star, + That dead love shalt thou never meet, + Till through bleak dawn and blowing rain + Thy soul shall find her soul again. + + + +A LOST PATH. + + +Plotinus, the Greek philosopher, had a certain proper mode of ecstasy, +whereby, as Porphyry saith, his soul, becoming free from the deathly +flesh, was made one with the Spirit that is in the world. + + ALAS, the path is lost, we cannot leave + Our bright, our clouded life, and pass away + As through strewn clouds, that stain the quiet eve, + To heights remoter of the purer day. + The soul may not, returning whence she came, + Bathe herself deep in Being, and forget + The joys that fever, and the cares that fret, + Made once more one with the eternal flame + That breathes in all things ever more the same. + She would be young again, thus drinking deep + Of her old life; and this has been, men say, + But this we know not, who have only sleep + To soothe us, sleep more terrible than day, + Where dead delights, and fair lost faces stray, + To make us weary at our wakening; + And of that long lost path to the Divine + We dream, as some Greek shepherd erst might sing, + Half credulous, of easy Proserpine, + And of the lands that lie ‘beneath the day’s decline.’ + + + +THE SHADE OF HELEN. + + +Some say that Helen went never to Troy, but abode in Egypt; for the gods, +having made in her semblance a woman out of clouds and shadows, sent the +same to be wife to Paris. For this shadow then the Greeks and Trojans +slew each other. + + WHY from the quiet hollows of the hills, + And extreme meeting place of light and shade, + Wherein soft rains fell slowly, and became + Clouds among sister clouds, where fair spent beams + And dying glories of the sun would dwell, + Why have they whom I know not, nor may know, + Strange hands, unseen and ruthless, fashioned me, + And borne me from the silent shadowy hills, + Hither, to noise and glow of alien life, + To harsh and clamorous swords, and sound of war? + + One speaks unto me words that would be sweet, + Made harsh, made keen with love that knows me not, + And some strange force, within me or around, + Makes answer, kiss for kiss, and sigh for sigh, + And somewhere there is fever in the halls + That troubles me, for no such trouble came + To vex the cool far hollows of the hills. + + The foolish folk crowd round me, and they cry, + That house, and wife, and lands, and all Troy town, + Are little to lose, if they may keep me here, + And see me flit, a pale and silent shade, + Among the streets bereft, and helpless shrines. + + At other hours another life seems mine, + Where one great river runs unswollen of rain, + By pyramids of unremembered kings, + And homes of men obedient to the Dead. + There dark and quiet faces come and go + Around me, then again the shriek of arms, + And all the turmoil of the Ilian men. + + What are they? even shadows such as I. + What make they? Even this—the sport of gods— + The sport of gods, however free they seem. + Ah, would the game were ended, and the light, + The blinding light, and all too mighty suns, + Withdrawn, and I once more with sister shades, + Unloved, forgotten, mingled with the mist, + Dwelt in the hollows of the shadowy hills. + + + + +SONNETS + + +SHE. + + + To H. R. H. + + NOT in the waste beyond the swamps and sand, + The fever-haunted forest and lagoon, + Mysterious Kôr thy walls forsaken stand, + Thy lonely towers beneath the lonely moon, + Not there doth Ayesha linger, rune by rune + Spelling strange scriptures of a people banned. + The world is disenchanted; over soon + Shall Europe send her spies through all the land. + + Nay, not in Kôr, but in whatever spot, + In town or field, or by the insatiate sea, + Men brood on buried loves, and unforgot, + Or break themselves on some divine decree, + Or would o’erleap the limits of their lot, + There, in the tombs and deathless, dwelleth SHE! + + + +HERODOTUS IN EGYPT. + + + HE left the land of youth, he left the young, + The smiling gods of Greece; he passed the isle + Where Jason loitered, and where Sappho sung, + He sought the secret-founted wave of Nile, + And of their old world, dead a weary while, + Heard the priests murmur in their mystic tongue, + And through the fanes went voyaging, among + Dark tribes that worshipped Cat and Crocodile. + + He learned the tales of death Divine and birth, + Strange loves of Hawk and Serpent, Sky and Earth, + The marriage, and the slaying of the Sun. + The shrines of gods and beasts he wandered through, + And mocked not at their godhead, for he knew + Behind all creeds the Spirit that is One. + + + +GÉRARD DE NERVAL. + + + OF all that were thy prisons—ah, untamed, + Ah, light and sacred soul!—none holds thee now; + No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thou + Art free and happy in the lands unnamed, + Within whose gates, on weary wings and maimed, + Thou still would’st bear that mystic golden bough + The Sibyl doth to singing men allow, + Yet thy report folk heeded not, but blamed. + And they would smile and wonder, seeing where + Thou stood’st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind, + Dreamily murmuring a ballad air, + Caught from the Valois peasants; dost thou find + A new life gladder than the old times were, + A love more fair than Sylvie, and as kind? + + + +RONSARD. + + + MASTER, I see thee with the locks of grey, + Crowned by the Muses with the laurel-wreath; + I see the roses hiding underneath, + Cassandra’s gift; she was less dear than they. + Thou, Master, first hast roused the lyric lay, + The sleeping song that the dead years bequeath, + Hast sung thine answer to the lays that breathe + Through ages, and through ages far away. + + And thou hast heard the pulse of Pindar beat, + Known Horace by the fount Bandusian! + Their deathless line thy living strains repeat, + But ah, thy voice is sad, thy roses wan, + But ah, thy honey is not honey-sweet, + Thy bees have fed on yews Sardinian! + + + +LOVE’S MIRACLE. + + + WITH other helpless folk about the gate, + The gate called Beautiful, with weary eyes + That take no pleasure in the summer skies, + Nor all things that are fairest, does she wait; + So bleak a time, so sad a changeless fate + Makes her with dull experience early wise, + And in the dawning and the sunset, sighs + That all hath been, and shall be, desolate. + + Ah, if Love come not soon, and bid her live, + And know herself the fairest of fair things, + Ah, if he have no healing gift to give, + Warm from his breast, and holy from his wings, + Or if at least Love’s shadow in passing by + Touch not and heal her, surely she must die. + + + +DREAMS. + + + HE spake not truth, however wise, who said + That happy, and that hapless men in sleep + Have equal fortune, fallen from care as deep + As countless, careless, races of the dead. + Not so, for alien paths of dreams we tread, + And one beholds the faces that he sighs + In vain to bring before his daylit eyes, + And waking, he remembers on his bed; + + And one with fainting heart and feeble hand + Fights a dim battle in a doubtful land + Where strength and courage were of no avail; + And one is borne on fairy breezes far + To the bright harbours of a golden star + Down fragrant fleeting waters rosy pale. + + + +TWO SONNETS OF THE SIRENS. + + + ‘Les Sirènes estoient tant intimes amies et fidelles compagnes de + Proserpine, qu’elles estoient toujours ensemble. Esmues du juste + deul de la perte de leur chère compagne, et enuyées jusques au + desepoir, elles s’arrestèrent à la mer Sicilienne, où par leurs + chants elles attiroient les navigans, mais l’unique fin de la volupté + de leur musique est la Mort.’ + + PONTUS DE TYARD, 1570 + + THE Sirens once were maidens innocent + That through the water-meads with Proserpine + Plucked no fire-hearted flowers, but were content + Cool fritillaries and flag-flowers to twine, + With lilies woven and with wet woodbine; + Till once they sought the bright Ætnæan flowers, + And their glad mistress fled from summer hours + With Hades, far from olive, corn, and vine. + And they have sought her all the wide world through + Till many years, and wisdom, and much wrong + Have filled and changed their song, and o’er the blue + Rings deadly sweet the magic of the song, + And whoso hears must listen till he die + Far on the flowery shores of Sicily. + + So is it with this singing art of ours, + That once with maids went maidenlike, and played + With woven dances in the poplar-shade, + And all her song was but of lady’s bowers + And the returning swallows, and spring flowers, + Till forth to seek a shadow-queen she strayed, + A shadowy land; and now hath overweighed + Her singing chaplet with the snow and showers. + Yes, fair well-water for the bitter brine + She left, and by the margin of life’s sea + Sings, and her song is full of the sea’s moan, + And wild with dread, and love of Proserpine; + And whoso once has listened to her, he + His whole life long is slave to her alone. + + + + +TRANSLATIONS + + +HYMN TO THE WINDS. + + + THE WINDS ARE INVOKED BY THE WINNOWERS OF CORN. + + DU BELLAY, 1550. + + TO you, troop so fleet, + That with winged wandering feet, + Through the wide world pass, + And with soft murmuring + Toss the green shades of spring + In woods and grass, + Lily and violet + I give, and blossoms wet, + Roses and dew; + This branch of blushing roses, + Whose fresh bud uncloses, + Wind-flowers too. + + Ah, winnow with sweet breath, + Winnow the holt and heath, + Round this retreat; + Where all the golden mom + We fan the gold o’ the corn, + In the sun’s heat. + + + +MOONLIGHT. + + + JACQUES TAHUREAU. + + THE high Midnight was garlanding her head + With many a shining star in shining skies, + And, of her grace, a slumber on mine eyes, + And, after sorrow, quietness was shed. + Far in dim fields cicalas jargonèd + A thin shrill clamour of complaints and cries; + And all the woods were pallid, in strange wise, + With pallor of the sad moon overspread. + + Then came my lady to that lonely place, + And, from her palfrey stooping, did embrace + And hang upon my neck, and kissed me over; + Wherefore the day is far less dear than night, + And sweeter is the shadow than the light, + Since night has made me such a happy lover. + + + +THE GRAVE AND THE ROSE. + + + VICTOR HUGO. + + THE Grave said to the Rose, + ‘What of the dews of morn, + Love’s flower, what end is theirs?’ + ‘And what of souls outworn, + Of them whereon doth close + The tomb’s mouth unawares?’ + The Rose said to the Grave. + + The Rose said, ‘In the shade + From the dawn’s tears is made + A perfume faint and strange, + Amber and honey sweet.’ + ‘And all the spirits fleet + Do suffer a sky-change, + More strangely than the dew, + To God’s own angels new,’ + The Grave said to the Rose. + + + +A VOW TO HEAVENLY VENUS. + + + DU BELLAY. + + We that with like hearts love, we lovers twain, + New wedded in the village by thy fane, + Lady of all chaste love, to thee it is + We bring these amaranths, these white lilies, + A sign, and sacrifice; may Love, we pray, + Like amaranthine flowers, feel no decay; + Like these cool lilies may our loves remain, + Perfect and pure, and know not any stain; + And be our hearts, from this thy holy hour, + Bound each to each, like flower to wedded flower. + + + +OF HIS LADY’S OLD AGE. + + + RONSARD. + + When you are very old, at evening + You’ll sit and spin beside the fire, and say, + Humming my songs, ‘Ah well, ah well-a-day! + When I was young, of me did Ronsard sing.’ + None of your maidens that doth hear the thing, + Albeit with her weary task foredone, + But wakens at my name, and calls you one + Blest, to be held in long remembering. + + I shall be low beneath the earth, and laid + On sleep, a phantom in the myrtle shade, + While you beside the fire, a grandame grey, + My love, your pride, remember and regret; + Ah, love me, love! we may be happy yet, + And gather roses, while ’t is called to-day. + + + +SHADOWS OF HIS LADY. + + + JACQUES TAHUREAU. + + WITHIN the sand of what far river lies + The gold that gleams in tresses of my Love? + What highest circle of the Heavens above + Is jewelled with such stars as are her eyes? + And where is the rich sea whose coral vies + With her red lips, that cannot kiss enough? + What dawn-lit garden knew the rose, whereof + The fled soul lives in her cheeks’ rosy guise? + + What Parian marble that is loveliest + Can match the whiteness of her brow and breast? + When drew she breath from the Sabæan glade? + Oh happy rock and river, sky and sea, + Gardens, and glades Sabæan, all that be + The far-off splendid semblance of my maid! + + + +APRIL. + + + RÉMY BELLEAU, 1560. + + APRIL, pride of woodland ways, + Of glad days, + April, bringing hope of prime, + To the young flowers that beneath + Their bud sheath + Are guarded in their tender time; + + April, pride of fields that be + Green and free, + That in fashion glad and gay, + Stud with flowers red and blue, + Every hue, + Their jewelled spring array; + + April, pride of murmuring + Winds of spring, + That beneath the winnowed air, + Trap with subtle nets and sweet + Flora’s feet, + Flora’s feet, the fleet and fair; + + April, by thy hand caressed, + From her breast, + Nature scatters everywhere + Handfuls of all sweet perfumes, + Buds and blooms, + Making faint the earth and air. + + April, joy of the green hours, + Clothes with flowers + Over all her locks of gold + My sweet Lady; and her breast + With the blest + Buds of summer manifold. + + April, with thy gracious wiles, + Like the smiles, + Smiles of Venus; and thy breath + Like her breath, the gods’ delight, + (From their height + They take the happy air beneath;) + + It is thou that, of thy grace, + From their place + In the far-off isles dost bring + Swallows over earth and sea, + Glad to be + Messengers of thee, and Spring. + + Daffodil and eglantine, + And woodbine, + Lily, violet, and rose + Plentiful in April fair, + To the air, + Their pretty petals to unclose. + + Nightingales ye now may hear, + Piercing clear, + Singing in the deepest shade; + Many and many a babbled note + Chime and float, + Woodland music through the glade. + + April, all to welcome thee, + Spring sets free + Ancient flames, and with low breath + Wakes the ashes grey and old + That the cold + Chilled within our hearts to death. + + Thou beholdest in the warm + Hours, the swarm + Of the thievish bees, that flies + Evermore from bloom to bloom + For perfume, + Hid away in tiny thighs. + + Her cool shadows May can boast, + Fruits almost + Ripe, and gifts of fertile dew, + Manna-sweet and honey-sweet, + That complete + Her flower garland fresh and new. + + Nay, but I will give my praise + To these days, + Named with the glad name of Her {102} + That from out the foam o’ the sea + Came to be + Sudden light on earth and air. + + + +AN OLD TUNE. + + + GÉRARD DE NERVAL. + + THERE is an air for which I would disown + Mozart’s, Rossini’s, Weber’s melodies,— + A sweet sad air that languishes and sighs, + And keeps its secret charm for me alone. + + Whene’er I hear that music vague and old, + Two hundred years are mist that rolls away; + The thirteenth Louis reigns, and I behold + A green land golden in the dying day. + + An old red castle, strong with stony towers, + The windows gay with many-coloured glass; + Wide plains, and rivers flowing among flowers, + That bathe the castle basement as they pass. + + In antique weed, with dark eyes and gold hair, + A lady looks forth from her window high; + It may be that I knew and found her fair, + In some forgotten life, long time gone by. + + + +OLD LOVES. + + + HENRI MURGER. + + LOUISE, have you forgotten yet + The corner of the flowery land, + The ancient garden where we met, + My hand that trembled in your hand? + Our lips found words scarce sweet enough, + As low beneath the willow-trees + We sat; have you forgotten, love? + Do you remember, love Louise? + + Marie, have you forgotten yet + The loving barter that we made? + The rings we changed, the suns that set, + The woods fulfilled with sun and shade? + The fountains that were musical + By many an ancient trysting tree— + Marie, have you forgotten all? + Do you remember, love Marie? + + Christine, do you remember yet + Your room with scents and roses gay? + My garret—near the sky ’twas set— + The April hours, the nights of May? + The clear calm nights—the stars above + That whispered they were fairest seen + Through no cloud-veil? Remember, love! + Do you remember, love Christine? + + Louise is dead, and, well-a-day! + Marie a sadder path has ta’en; + And pale Christine has passed away + In southern suns to bloom again. + Alas! for one and all of us— + Marie, Louise, Christine forget; + Our bower of love is ruinous, + And I alone remember yet. + + + +A LADY OF HIGH DEGREE. + + + I be pareld most of prise, + I ride after the wild fee. + + * * * * * + + Will ye that I should sing + Of the love of a goodly thing, + Was no vilein’s may? + ’Tis all of a knight so free, + Under the olive tree, + Singing this lay. + + Her weed was of samite fine, + Her mantle of white ermine, + Green silk her hose; + Her shoon with silver gay, + Her sandals flowers of May, + Laced small and close. + + Her belt was of fresh spring buds, + Set with gold clasps and studs, + Fine linen her shift; + Her purse it was of love, + Her chain was the flower thereof, + And Love’s gift. + + Upon a mule she rode, + The selle was of brent gold, + The bits of silver made; + Three red rose trees there were + That overshadowed her, + For a sun shade. + + She riding on a day, + Knights met her by the way, + They did her grace: + ‘Fair lady, whence be ye?’ + ‘France it is my countrie, + I come of a high race. + + ‘My sire is the nightingale, + That sings, making his wail, + In the wild wood, clear; + The mermaid is mother to me, + That sings in the salt sea, + In the ocean mere.’ + + ‘Ye come of a right good race, + And are born of a high place, + And of high degree; + Would to God that ye were + Given unto me, being fair, + My lady and love to be.’ + + + +IANNOULA. + + + ROMAIC FOLK-SONG. + + ALL the maidens were merry and wed + All to lovers so fair to see; + The lover I took to my bridal bed + He is not long for love and me. + + I spoke to him and he nothing said, + I gave him bread of the wheat so fine; + He did not eat of the bridal bread, + He did not drink of the bridal wine. + + I made him a bed was soft and deep, + I made him a bed to sleep with me; + ‘Look on me once before you sleep, + And look on the flower of my fair body. + + ‘Flowers of April, and fresh May-dew, + Dew of April and buds of May; + Two white blossoms that bud for you, + Buds that blossom before the day.’ + + + +THE MILK-WHITE DOE. + + + FRENCH VOLKS-LIED. + + IT was a mother and a maid + That walked the woods among, + And still the maid went slow and sad, + And still the mother sung. + + ‘What ails you, daughter Margaret? + Why go you pale and wan? + Is it for a cast of bitter love, + Or for a false leman?’ + + ‘It is not for a false lover + That I go sad to see; + But it is for a weary life + Beneath the greenwood tree. + + ‘For ever in the good daylight + A maiden may I go, + But always on the ninth midnight + I change to a milk-white doe. + + ‘They hunt me through the green forest + With hounds and hunting men; + And ever it is my fair brother + That is so fierce and keen.’ + + * * * * * + + ‘Good-morrow, mother.’ ‘Good-morrow, son; + Where are your hounds so good?’ + ‘Oh, they are hunting a white doe + Within the glad greenwood. + + ‘And three times have they hunted her, + And thrice she’s won away; + The fourth time that they follow her + That white doe they shall slay.’ + + * * * * * + + Then out and spoke the forester, + As he came from the wood, + ‘Now never saw I maid’s gold hair + Among the wild deer’s blood. + + ‘And I have hunted the wild deer + In east lands and in west; + And never saw I white doe yet + That had a maiden’s breast.’ + + Then up and spake her fair brother, + Between the wine and bread: + ‘Behold I had but one sister, + And I have been her dead. + + ‘But ye must bury my sweet sister + With a stone at her foot and her head, + And ye must cover her fair body + With the white roses and red. + + ‘And I must out to the greenwood, + The roof shall never shelter me; + And I shall lie for seven long years + On the grass below the hawthorn tree.’ + + + +HELIODORE. + + + (MELEAGER.) + + POUR wine, and cry again, again, again! + _To Heliodore_! + And mingle the sweet word ye call in vain + With that ye pour! + And bring to me her wreath of yesterday + That’s dank with myrrh; + _Hesternæ Rosæ_, ah my friends, but they + Remember her! + Lo the kind roses, loved of lovers, weep + As who repine, + For if on any breast they see her sleep + It is not mine! + + + +THE PROPHET. + + + (ANTIPHILUS.) + + I KNEW it in your childish grace + The dawning of Desire, + ‘Who lives,’ I said, ‘will see that face + Set all the world on fire!’ + They mocked; but Time has brought to pass + The saying over-true; + Prophet and martyr now, alas, + I burn for Truth,—and you! + + + +LAIS. + + + (POMPEIUS.) + + LAIS that bloomed for all the world’s delight, + Crowned with all love lilies, the fair and dear, + Sleeps the predestined sleep, nor knows the flight + Of Helios, the gold-reined charioteer: + Revel, and kiss, and love, and hate, one Night + Darkens, that never lamp of Love may cheer! + + + +CLEARISTA. + + + (MELEAGER.) + + FOR Death, not for Love, hast thou + Loosened thy zone! + Flutes filled thy bower but now, + Morning brings moan! + Maids round thy bridal bed + Hushed are in gloom, + Torches to Love that led + Light to the tomb! + + + +THE FISHERMAN’S TOMB. + + + (LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM.) + + THERIS the Old, the waves that harvested + More keen than birds that labour in the sea, + With spear and net, by shore and rocky bed, + Not with the well-manned galley laboured he; + Him not the star of storms, nor sudden sweep + Of wind with all his years hath smitten and bent, + But in his hut of reeds he fell asleep, + As fades a lamp when all the oil is spent: + This tomb nor wife nor children raised, but we + His fellow-toilers, fishers of the sea. + + + +OF HIS DEATH. + + + (MELEAGER.) + + AH Love, my Master, hear me swear + By all the locks of Timo’s hair, + By Demo, and that fragrant spell + Wherewith her body doth enchant + Such dreams as drowsy lovers haunt, + By Ilias’ mirth delectable. + And by the lamp that sheds his light + On love and lovers all the night, + By those, ah Love, I swear that thou + Hast left me but one breath, and now + Upon my lips it fluttereth, + Yet _this_ I’ll yield, my latest breath, + Even this, oh Love, for thee to Death! + + + +RHODOPE. + + + (RUFINUS.) + + THOU hast Hera’s eyes, thou hast Pallas’ hands, + And the feet of the Queen of the yellow sands, + Thou hast beautiful Aphrodite’s breast, + Thou art made of each goddess’s loveliest! + Happy is he who sees thy face, + Happy who hears thy words of grace, + And he that shall kiss thee is half divine, + But a god who shall win that heart of thine! + + + +TO A GIRL. + + + (ASCLEPIADES.) + + BELIEVE me, love, it is not good + To hoard a mortal maidenhood; + In Hades thou wilt never find, + Maiden, a lover to thy mind; + Love’s for the living! presently + Ashes and dust in death are we! + + + +TO THE SHIPS. + + + (MELEAGER.) + + O GENTLE ships that skim the seas, + And cleave the strait where Hellé fell, + Catch in your sails the Northern breeze, + And speed to Cos, where she doth dwell, + My Love, and see you greet her well! + And if she looks across the blue, + Speak, gentle ships, and tell her true, + ‘He comes, for Love hath brought him back, + No sailor, on the landward tack.’ + + If thus, oh gentle ships, ye do, + Then may ye win the fairest gales, + And swifter speed across the blue, + While Zeus breathes friendly on your sails. + + + +A LATE CONVERT. + + + (PAULUS SILENTIARIUS.) + + I THAT in youth had never been + The servant of the Paphian Queen, + I that in youth had never felt + The shafts of Eros pierce and melt, + Cypris! in later age, half grey, + I bow the neck to _thee_ to-day. + Pallas, that was my lady, thou + Dost more triumphant vanquish now, + Than when thou gained’st, over seas, + The apple of the Hesperides. + + + +THE LIMIT OF LIFE. + + + THIRTY-SIX is the term that the prophets assign, + And the students of stars to the years that are mine; + Nay, let thirty suffice, for the man who hath passed + Thirty years is a Nestor, and _he_ died at last! + + + +TO DANIEL ELZEVIR. + + + (FROM THE LATIN OF MÉNAGE.) + + WHAT do I see! Oh gods divine + And goddesses,—this Book of mine,— + This child of many hopes and fears,— + Is published by the Elzevirs! + Oh perfect Publishers complete! + Oh dainty volume, new and neat! + The Paper doth outshine the snow, + The Print is blacker than the crow, + The Title-Page, with crimson bright, + The vellum cover smooth and white, + All sorts of readers do invite, + Ay, and will keep them reading still, + Against their will, or with their will! + Thus what of grace the Rhymes may lack + The Publisher has given them back, + As Milliners adorn the fair + Whose charms are something skimp and spare. + Oh _dulce decus_, Elzevirs! + The pride of dead and dawning years, + How can a poet best repay + The debt he owes your House to-day? + May this round world, while aught endures, + Applaud, and buy, these books of yours! + May purchasers incessant pop, + My Elzevirs, within your shop, + And learned bards salute, with cheers, + The volumes of the Elzevirs, + Till your renown fills earth and sky, + Till men forget the Stephani, + And all that Aldus wrought, and all + Turnebus sold in shop or stall, + While still may Fate’s (and Binders’) shears + Respect, and spare, the Elzevirs! + + + + +THE LAST CHANCE. + + +THE LAST CHANCE. + + + WITHIN the streams, Pausanias saith, + That down Cocytus valley flow, + Girdling the grey domain of Death, + The spectral fishes come and go; + The ghosts of trout flit to and fro. + Persephone, fulfil my wish, + And grant that in the shades below + My ghost may land the ghosts of fish. + + Φη λογοποιος ανήρ, δνοφερων εντοσθε ρεέθρων + οσσα πέριξ Αιδην εις ’Αχέροντα ρέει + ιχθύες ως αν’ αφεγγες υδωρ σκιαι αισσουσιν + ειδωλ’ ειδώλοις νηχόμενα πτερύγων. + Φερσεφόνη, συ θανόντι δ’ εμοι κρήηνον εέλδωρ, + καν Αιδη σκιερους ιχθύας εξερύσαι. + + L. C. + + * * * * * + + PRINTED BY + SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE + LONDON + + * * * * * + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{4a} January 26, 1885. + +{4b} M. Antoninus iv 23. + +{39} From the Romaic. + +{102} Aphrodite—Avril. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRASS OF PARNASSUS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1060-0.txt or 1060-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/6/1060 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1061-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1061-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..03e3a2dd --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1061-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7139 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1061 *** + +MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS + +Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology + +By John Fiske + + + + +La mythologie, cette science toute nouvelle, qui nous fait suivre +les croyances de nos peres, depuis le berceau du monde jusqu'aux +superstitions de nos campagnes.--EDMOND SCHERER + + + +TO MY DEAR FRIEND, WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, IN REMEMBRANCE OF PLEASANT +AUTUMN EVENINGS SPENT AMONG WEREWOLVES AND TROLLS AND NIXIES, I dedicate +THIS RECORD OF OUR ADVENTURES. + + + + +PREFACE. + +IN publishing this somewhat rambling and unsystematic series of papers, +in which I have endeavoured to touch briefly upon a great many of the +most important points in the study of mythology, I think it right to +observe that, in order to avoid confusing the reader with intricate +discussions, I have sometimes cut the matter short, expressing myself +with dogmatic definiteness where a sceptical vagueness might perhaps +have seemed more becoming. In treating of popular legends and +superstitions, the paths of inquiry are circuitous enough, and seldom +can we reach a satisfactory conclusion until we have travelled all the +way around Robin Hood's barn and back again. I am sure that the reader +would not have thanked me for obstructing these crooked lanes with the +thorns and brambles of philological and antiquarian discussion, to such +an extent as perhaps to make him despair of ever reaching the high road. +I have not attempted to review, otherwise than incidentally, the works +of Grimm, Muller, Kuhn, Breal, Dasent, and Tylor; nor can I pretend +to have added anything of consequence, save now and then some bit of +explanatory comment, to the results obtained by the labour of these +scholars; but it has rather been my aim to present these results in such +a way as to awaken general interest in them. And accordingly, in dealing +with a subject which depends upon philology almost as much as astronomy +depends upon mathematics, I have omitted philological considerations +wherever it has been possible to do so. Nevertheless, I believe that +nothing has been advanced as established which is not now generally +admitted by scholars, and that nothing has been advanced as probable for +which due evidence cannot be produced. Yet among many points which are +proved, and many others which are probable, there must always remain +many other facts of which we cannot feel sure that our own explanation +is the true one; and the student who endeavours to fathom the primitive +thoughts of mankind, as enshrined in mythology, will do well to bear in +mind the modest words of Jacob Grimm,--himself the greatest scholar and +thinker who has ever dealt with this class of subjects,--"I shall indeed +interpret all that I can, but I cannot interpret all that I should +like." + +PETERSHAM, September 6, 1872. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + I. THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE + + II. THE DESCENT OF FIRE + + III. WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS + + IV. LIGHT AND DARKNESS + + V. MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD + + VI. JUVENTUS MUNDI + + VII. THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD + + NOTE + + + + +MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS. + + + + +I. THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. + +FEW mediaeval heroes are so widely known as William Tell. His exploits +have been celebrated by one of the greatest poets and one of the most +popular musicians of modern times. They are doubtless familiar to +many who have never heard of Stauffacher or Winkelried, who are quite +ignorant of the prowess of Roland, and to whom Arthur and Lancelot, nay, +even Charlemagne, are but empty names. + +Nevertheless, in spite of his vast reputation, it is very likely that +no such person as William Tell ever existed, and it is certain that the +story of his shooting the apple from his son's head has no historical +value whatever. In spite of the wrath of unlearned but patriotic Swiss, +especially of those of the cicerone class, this conclusion is forced +upon us as soon as we begin to study the legend in accordance with the +canons of modern historical criticism. It is useless to point to Tell's +lime-tree, standing to-day in the centre of the market-place at Altdorf, +or to quote for our confusion his crossbow preserved in the arsenal at +Zurich, as unimpeachable witnesses to the truth of the story. It is in +vain that we are told, "The bricks are alive to this day to testify to +it; therefore, deny it not." These proofs are not more valid than the +handkerchief of St. Veronica, or the fragments of the true cross. For if +relics are to be received as evidence, we must needs admit the truth of +every miracle narrated by the Bollandists. + +The earliest work which makes any allusion to the adventures of William +Tell is the chronicle of the younger Melchior Russ, written in 1482. As +the shooting of the apple was supposed to have taken place in 1296, this +leaves an interval of one hundred and eighty-six years, during which +neither a Tell, nor a William, nor the apple, nor the cruelty of +Gessler, received any mention. It may also be observed, parenthetically, +that the charters of Kussenach, when examined, show that no man by +the name of Gessler ever ruled there. The chroniclers of the fifteenth +century, Faber and Hammerlin, who minutely describe the tyrannical acts +by which the Duke of Austria goaded the Swiss to rebellion, do not +once mention Tell's name, or betray the slightest acquaintance with his +exploits or with his existence. In the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he is +not alluded to. But we have still better negative evidence. John of +Winterthur, one of the best chroniclers of the Middle Ages, was living +at the time of the battle of Morgarten (1315), at which his father was +present. He tells us how, on the evening of that dreadful day, he saw +Duke Leopold himself in his flight from the fatal field, half dead with +fear. He describes, with the loving minuteness of a contemporary, all +the incidents of the Swiss revolution, but nowhere does he say a word +about William Tell. This is sufficiently conclusive. These mediaeval +chroniclers, who never failed to go out of their way after a bit of the +epigrammatic and marvellous, who thought far more of a pointed story +than of historical credibility, would never have kept silent about the +adventures of Tell, if they had known anything about them. + +After this, it is not surprising to find that no two authors who +describe the deeds of William Tell agree in the details of topography +and chronology. Such discrepancies never fail to confront us when +we leave the solid ground of history and begin to deal with floating +legends. Yet, if the story be not historical, what could have been +its origin? To answer this question we must considerably expand the +discussion. + +The first author of any celebrity who doubted the story of William Tell +was Guillimann, in his work on Swiss Antiquities, published in 1598. +He calls the story a pure fable, but, nevertheless, eating his words, +concludes by proclaiming his belief in it, because the tale is so +popular! Undoubtedly he acted a wise part; for, in 1760, as we are +told, Uriel Freudenberger was condemned by the canton of Uri to be burnt +alive, for publishing his opinion that the legend of Tell had a Danish +origin. [1] + +The bold heretic was substantially right, however, like so many other +heretics, earlier and later. The Danish account of Tell is given as +follows, by Saxo Grammaticus:-- + +"A certain Palnatoki, for some time among King Harold's body-guard, had +made his bravery odious to very many of his fellow-soldiers by the zeal +with which he surpassed them in the discharge of his duty. This man +once, when talking tipsily over his cups, had boasted that he was so +skilled an archer that he could hit the smallest apple placed a long way +off on a wand at the first shot; which talk, caught up at first by the +ears of backbiters, soon came to the hearing of the king. Now, mark +how the wickedness of the king turned the confidence of the sire to the +peril of the son, by commanding that this dearest pledge of his life +should be placed instead of the wand, with a threat that, unless the +author of this promise could strike off the apple at the first flight of +the arrow, he should pay the penalty of his empty boasting by the loss +of his head. The king's command forced the soldier to perform more +than he had promised, and what he had said, reported, by the tongues of +slanderers, bound him to accomplish what he had NOT said. Yet did not +his sterling courage, though caught in the snare of slander, suffer him +to lay aside his firmness of heart; nay, he accepted the trial the more +readily because it was hard. So Palnatoki warned the boy urgently when +he took his stand to await the coming of the hurtling arrow with calm +ears and unbent head, lest, by a slight turn of his body, he should +defeat the practised skill of the bowman; and, taking further counsel to +prevent his fear, he turned away his face, lest he should be scared at +the sight of the weapon. Then, taking three arrows from the quiver, he +struck the mark given him with the first he fitted to the string..... +But Palnatoki, when asked by the king why he had taken more arrows from +the quiver, when it had been settled that he should only try the fortune +of the bow ONCE, made answer, 'That I might avenge on thee the swerving +of the first by the points of the rest, lest perchance my innocence +might have been punished, while your violence escaped scot-free.'" [2] + +This ruthless king is none other than the famous Harold Blue-tooth, and +the occurrence is placed by Saxo in the year 950. But the story appears +not only in Denmark, but in England, in Norway, in Finland and Russia, +and in Persia, and there is some reason for supposing that it was known +in India. In Norway we have the adventures of Pansa the Splay-footed, +and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold Hardrada, who invaded England in +1066. In Iceland there is the kindred legend of Egil brother of Wayland +Smith, the Norse Vulcan. In England there is the ballad of William of +Cloudeslee, which supplied Scott with many details of the archery scene +in "Ivanhoe." Here, says the dauntless bowman, + + "I have a sonne seven years old; + Hee is to me full deere; + I will tye him to a stake-- + All shall see him that bee here-- + And lay an apple upon his head, + And goe six paces him froe, + And I myself with a broad arrowe + Shall cleave the apple in towe." + +In the Malleus Maleficarum a similar story is told Puncher, a famous +magician on the Upper Rhine. The great ethnologist Castren dug up the +same legend in Finland. It is common, as Dr. Dasent observes, to the +Turks and Mongolians; "and a legend of the wild Samoyeds, who never +heard of Tell or saw a book in their lives relates it, chapter and +verse, of one of their marksmen." Finally, in the Persian poem of +Farid-Uddin Attar, born in 1119, we read a story of a prince who shoots +an apple from the head of a beloved page. In all these stories, names +and motives of course differ; but all contain the same essential +incidents. It is always an unerring archer who, at the capricious +command of a tyrant, shoots from the head of some one dear to him a +small object, be it an apple, a nut, or a piece of coin. The archer +always provides himself with a second arrow, and, when questioned as to +the use he intended to make of his extra weapon, the invariable reply +is, "To kill thee, tyrant, had I slain my son." Now, when a marvellous +occurrence is said to have happened everywhere, we may feel sure that +it never happened anywhere. Popular fancies propagate themselves +indefinitely, but historical events, especially the striking and +dramatic ones, are rarely repeated. The facts here collected lead +inevitably to the conclusion that the Tell myth was known, in its +general features, to our Aryan ancestors, before ever they left their +primitive dwelling-place in Central Asia. + +It may, indeed, be urged that some one of these wonderful marksmen may +really have existed and have performed the feat recorded in the legend; +and that his true story, carried about by hearsay tradition from one +country to another and from age to age, may have formed the theme for +all the variations above mentioned, just as the fables of La Fontaine +were patterned after those of AEsop and Phaedrus, and just as many of +Chaucer's tales were consciously adopted from Boccaccio. No doubt there +has been a good deal of borrowing and lending among the legends of +different peoples, as well as among the words of different languages; +and possibly even some picturesque fragment of early history may have +now and then been carried about the world in this manner. But as the +philologist can with almost unerring certainty distinguish between the +native and the imported words in any Aryan language, by examining their +phonetic peculiarities, so the student of popular traditions, though +working with far less perfect instruments, can safely assert, with +reference to a vast number of legends, that they cannot have been +obtained by any process of conscious borrowing. The difficulties +inseparable from any such hypothesis will become more and more apparent +as we proceed to examine a few other stories current in different +portions of the Aryan domain. + +As the Swiss must give up his Tell, so must the Welshman be deprived of +his brave dog Gellert, over whose cruel fate I confess to having shed +more tears than I should regard as well bestowed upon the misfortunes +of many a human hero of romance. Every one knows how the dear old brute +killed the wolf which had come to devour Llewellyn's child, and how the +prince, returning home and finding the cradle upset and the dog's mouth +dripping blood, hastily slew his benefactor, before the cry of the child +from behind the cradle and the sight of the wolf's body had rectified +his error. To this day the visitor to Snowdon is told the touching +story, and shown the place, called Beth-Gellert, [3] where the dog's +grave is still to be seen. Nevertheless, the story occurs in the +fireside lore of nearly every Aryan people. Under the Gellert-form it +started in the Panchatantra, a collection of Sanskrit fables; and it +has even been discovered in a Chinese work which dates from A. D. 668. +Usually the hero is a dog, but sometimes a falcon, an ichneumon, an +insect, or even a man. In Egypt it takes the following comical shape: +"A Wali once smashed a pot full of herbs which a cook had prepared. +The exasperated cook thrashed the well-intentioned but unfortunate Wali +within an inch of his life, and when he returned, exhausted with his +efforts at belabouring the man, to examine the broken pot, he discovered +amongst the herbs a poisonous snake." [4] Now this story of the Wali is +as manifestly identical with the legend of Gellert as the English word +FATHER is with the Latin pater; but as no one would maintain that +the word father is in any sense derived from pater, so it would be +impossible to represent either the Welsh or the Egyptian legend as a +copy of the other. Obviously the conclusion is forced upon us that the +stories, like the words, are related collaterally, having descended from +a common ancestral legend, or having been suggested by one and the same +primeval idea. + +Closely connected with the Gellert myth are the stories of Faithful John +and of Rama and Luxman. In the German story, Faithful John accompanies +the prince, his master, on a journey in quest of a beautiful maiden, +whom he wishes to make his bride. As they are carrying her home across +the seas, Faithful John hears some crows, whose language he understands, +foretelling three dangers impending over the prince, from which his +friend can save him only by sacrificing his own life. As soon as they +land, a horse will spring toward the king, which, if he mounts it, will +bear him away from his bride forever; but whoever shoots the horse, and +tells the king the reason, will be turned into stone from toe to knee. +Then, before the wedding a bridal garment will lie before the king, +which, if he puts it on, will burn him like the Nessos-shirt of +Herakles; but whoever throws the shirt into the fire and tells the +king the reason, will be turned into stone from knee to heart. Finally, +during the wedding-festivities, the queen will suddenly fall in a swoon, +and "unless some one takes three drops of blood from her right breast +she will die"; but whoever does so, and tells the king the reason, will +be turned into stone from head to foot. Thus forewarned, Faithful John +saves his master from all these dangers; but the king misinterprets +his motive in bleeding his wife, and orders him to be hanged. On the +scaffold he tells his story, and while the king humbles himself in an +agony of remorse, his noble friend is turned into stone. + +In the South Indian tale Luxman accompanies Rama, who is carrying home +his bride. Luxman overhears two owls talking about the perils that await +his master and mistress. First he saves them from being crushed by the +falling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags them away from an arch +which immediately after gives way. By and by, as they rest under a tree, +the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen, and Luxman kills +it with his sword; but, as the owls had foretold, a drop of the cobra's +blood falls on the queen's forehead. As Luxman licks off the blood, +the king starts up, and, thinking that his vizier is kissing his wife, +upbraids him with his ingratitude, whereupon Luxman, through grief at +this unkind interpretation of his conduct, is turned into stone. [5] + +For further illustration we may refer to the Norse tale of the "Giant +who had no Heart in his Body," as related by Dr. Dasent. This burly +magician having turned six brothers with their wives into stone, the +seventh brother--the crafty Boots or many-witted Odysseus of European +folk-lore--sets out to obtain vengeance if not reparation for the evil +done to his kith and kin. On the way he shows the kindness of his nature +by rescuing from destruction a raven, a salmon, and a wolf. The grateful +wolf carries him on his back to the giant's castle, where the lovely +princess whom the monster keeps in irksome bondage promises to act, +in behalf of Boots, the part of Delilah, and to find out, if possible, +where her lord keeps his heart. The giant, like the Jewish hero, finally +succumbs to feminine blandishments. "Far, far away in a lake lies an +island; on that island stands a church; in that church is a well; in +that well swims a duck; in that duck there is an egg; and in that egg +there lies my heart, you darling." Boots, thus instructed, rides on the +wolf's back to the island; the raven flies to the top of the steeple and +gets the church-keys; the salmon dives to the bottom of the well, and +brings up the egg from the place where the duck had dropped it; and +so Boots becomes master of the situation. As he squeezes the egg, +the giant, in mortal terror, begs and prays for his life, which Boots +promises to spare on condition that his brothers and their brides should +be released from their enchantment. But when all has been duly effected, +the treacherous youth squeezes the egg in two, and the giant instantly +bursts. + +The same story has lately been found in Southern India, and is published +in Miss Frere's remarkable collection of tales entitled "Old Deccan +Days." In the Hindu version the seven daughters of a rajah, with +their husbands, are transformed into stone by the great magician +Punchkin,--all save the youngest daughter, whom Punchkin keeps shut up +in a tower until by threats or coaxing he may prevail upon her to marry +him. But the captive princess leaves a son at home in the cradle, who +grows up to manhood unmolested, and finally undertakes the rescue of his +family. After long and weary wanderings he finds his mother shut up in +Punchkin's tower, and persuades her to play the part of the princess +in the Norse legend. The trick is equally successful. "Hundreds of +thousands of miles away there lies a desolate country covered with thick +jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm-trees, and in +the centre of the circle stand six jars full of water, piled one above +another; below the sixth jar is a small cage which contains a little +green parrot; on the life of the parrot depends my life, and if the +parrot is killed I must die." [6] The young prince finds the place +guarded by a host of dragons, but some eaglets whom he has saved from a +devouring serpent in the course of his journey take him on their +crossed wings and carry him to the place where the jars are standing. He +instantly overturns the jars, and seizing the parrot, obtains from the +terrified magician full reparation. As soon as his own friends and a +stately procession of other royal or noble victims have been set at +liberty, he proceeds to pull the parrot to pieces. As the wings and legs +come away, so tumble off the arms and legs of the magician; and finally +as the prince wrings the bird's neck, Punchkin twists his own head round +and dies. + +The story is also told in the highlands of Scotland, and some portions +of it will be recognized by the reader as incidents in the Arabian +tale of the Princess Parizade. The union of close correspondence in +conception with manifest independence in the management of the details +of these stories is striking enough, but it is a phenomenon with which +we become quite familiar as we proceed in the study of Aryan popular +literature. The legend of the Master Thief is no less remarkable than +that of Punchkin. In the Scandinavian tale the Thief, wishing to get +possession of a farmer's ox, carefully hangs himself to a tree by the +roadside. The farmer, passing by with his ox, is indeed struck by the +sight of the dangling body, but thinks it none of his business, and +does not stop to interfere. No sooner has he passed than the Thief lets +himself down, and running swiftly along a by-path, hangs himself with +equal precaution to a second tree. This time the farmer is astonished +and puzzled; but when for the third time he meets the same unwonted +spectacle, thinking that three suicides in one morning are too much for +easy credence, he leaves his ox and runs back to see whether the other +two bodies are really where he thought he saw them. While he is framing +hypotheses of witchcraft by which to explain the phenomenon, the Thief +gets away with the ox. In the Hitopadesa the story receives a finer +point. "A Brahman, who had vowed a sacrifice, went to the market to buy +a goat. Three thieves saw him, and wanted to get hold of the goat. They +stationed themselves at intervals on the high road. When the Brahman, +who carried the goat on his back, approached the first thief, the +thief said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your back?' The Brahman +replied, 'It is not a dog, it is a goat.' A little while after he was +accosted by the second thief, who said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog +on your back?' The Brahman felt perplexed, put the goat down, examined +it, took it up again, and walked on. Soon after he was stopped by the +third thief, who said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your back?' +Then the Brahman was frightened, threw down the goat, and walked home to +perform his ablutions for having touched an unclean animal. The thieves +took the goat and ate it." The adroitness of the Norse King in "The +Three Princesses of Whiteland" shows but poorly in comparison with the +keen psychological insight and cynical sarcasm of these Hindu sharpers. +In the course of his travels this prince met three brothers fighting +on a lonely moor. They had been fighting for a hundred years about the +possession of a hat, a cloak, and a pair of boots, which would make the +wearer invisible, and convey him instantly whithersoever he might wish +to go. The King consents to act as umpire, provided he may once try the +virtue of the magic garments; but once clothed in them, of course he +disappears, leaving the combatants to sit down and suck their thumbs. +Now in the "Sea of Streams of Story," written in the twelfth century by +Somadeva of Cashmere, the Indian King Putraka, wandering in the Vindhya +Mountains, similarly discomfits two brothers who are quarrelling over +a pair of shoes, which are like the sandals of Hermes, and a bowl which +has the same virtue as Aladdin's lamp. "Why don't you run a race for +them?" suggests Putraka; and, as the two blockheads start furiously off, +he quietly picks up the bowl, ties on the shoes, and flies away! [7] + +It is unnecessary to cite further illustrations. The tales here quoted +are fair samples of the remarkable correspondence which holds good +through all the various sections of Aryan folk-lore. The hypothesis +of lateral diffusion, as we may call it, manifestly fails to explain +coincidences which are maintained on such an immense scale. It is quite +credible that one nation may have borrowed from another a solitary +legend of an archer who performs the feats of Tell and Palnatoki; but it +is utterly incredible that ten thousand stories, constituting the entire +mass of household mythology throughout a dozen separate nations, should +have been handed from one to another in this way. No one would venture +to suggest that the old grannies of Iceland and Norway, to whom we owe +such stories as the Master Thief and the Princesses of Whiteland, had +ever read Somadeva or heard of the treasures of Rhampsinitos. A large +proportion of the tales with which we are dealing were utterly unknown +to literature until they were taken down by Grimm and Frere and +Castren and Campbell, from the lips of ignorant peasants, nurses, or +house-servants, in Germany and Hindustan, in Siberia and Scotland. +Yet, as Mr. Cox observes, these old men and women, sitting by the +chimney-corner and somewhat timidly recounting to the literary explorer +the stories which they had learned in childhood from their own +nurses and grandmas, "reproduce the most subtle turns of thought and +expression, and an endless series of complicated narratives, in which +the order of incidents and the words of the speakers are preserved +with a fidelity nowhere paralleled in the oral tradition of historical +events. It may safely be said that no series of stories introduced +in the form of translations from other languages could ever thus have +filtered down into the lowest strata of society, and thence have sprung +up again, like Antaios, with greater energy and heightened beauty." +There is indeed no alternative for us but to admit that these fireside +tales have been handed down from parent to child for more than a hundred +generations; that the primitive Aryan cottager, as he took his evening +meal of yava and sipped his fermented mead, listened with his children +to the stories of Boots and Cinderella and the Master Thief, in the days +when the squat Laplander was master of Europe and the dark-skinned Sudra +was as yet unmolested in the Punjab. Only such community of origin +can explain the community in character between the stories told by the +Aryan's descendants, from the jungles of Ceylon to the highlands of +Scotland. + +This conclusion essentially modifies our view of the origin and growth +of a legend like that of William Tell. The case of the Tell legend is +radically different from the case of the blindness of Belisarius or +the burning of the Alexandrian library by order of Omar. The latter are +isolated stories or beliefs; the former is one of a family of stories or +beliefs. The latter are untrustworthy traditions of doubtful events; but +in dealing with the former, we are face to face with a MYTH. + +What, then, is a myth? The theory of Euhemeros, which was so fashionable +a century ago, in the days of the Abbe Banier, has long since been so +utterly abandoned that to refute it now is but to slay the slain. The +peculiarity of this theory was that it cut away all the extraordinary +features of a given myth, wherein dwelt its inmost significance, and to +the dull and useless residuum accorded the dignity of primeval history. +In this way the myth was lost without compensation, and the student, +in seeking good digestible bread, found but the hardest of pebbles. +Considered merely as a pretty story, the legend of the golden fruit +watched by the dragon in the garden of the Hesperides is not without its +value. But what merit can there be in the gratuitous statement which, +degrading the grand Doric hero to a level with any vulgar fruit-stealer, +makes Herakles break a close with force and arms, and carry off a crop +of oranges which had been guarded by mastiffs? It is still worse when +we come to the more homely folk-lore with which the student of mythology +now has to deal. The theories of Banier, which limped and stumbled +awkwardly enough when it was only a question of Hermes and Minos and +Odin, have fallen never to rise again since the problems of Punchkin +and Cinderella and the Blue Belt have begun to demand solution. +The conclusion has been gradually forced upon the student, that the +marvellous portion of these old stories is no illegitimate extres-cence, +but was rather the pith and centre of the whole, [8] in days when there +was no supernatural, because it had not yet been discovered that there +was such a thing as nature. The religious myths of antiquity and the +fireside legends of ancient and modern times have their common root in +the mental habits of primeval humanity. They are the earliest recorded +utterances of men concerning the visible phenomena of the world into +which they were born. + +That prosaic and coldly rational temper with which modern men are wont +to regard natural phenomena was in early times unknown. We have come +to regard all events as taking place regularly, in strict conformity to +law: whatever our official theories may be, we instinctively take this +view of things. But our primitive ancestors knew nothing about laws of +nature, nothing about physical forces, nothing about the relations of +cause and effect, nothing about the necessary regularity of things. +There was a time in the history of mankind when these things had never +been inquired into, and when no generalizations about them had been +framed, tested, or established. There was no conception of an order of +nature, and therefore no distinct conception of a supernatural order of +things. There was no belief in miracles as infractions of natural laws, +but there was a belief in the occurrence of wonderful events too mighty +to have been brought about by ordinary means. There was an unlimited +capacity for believing and fancying, because fancy and belief had not +yet been checked and headed off in various directions by established +rules of experience. Physical science is a very late acquisition of the +human mind, but we are already sufficiently imbued with it to be almost +completely disabled from comprehending the thoughts of our ancestors. +"How Finn cosmogonists could have believed the earth and heaven to be +made out of a severed egg, the upper concave shell representing +heaven, the yolk being earth, and the crystal surrounding fluid the +circumambient ocean, is to us incomprehensible; and yet it remains a +fact that they did so regard them. How the Scandinavians could have +supposed the mountains to be the mouldering bones of a mighty Jotun, +and the earth to be his festering flesh, we cannot conceive; yet such a +theory was solemnly taught and accepted. How the ancient Indians could +regard the rain-clouds as cows with full udders milked by the winds +of heaven is beyond our comprehension, and yet their Veda contains +indisputable testimony to the fact that they were so regarded." We have +only to read Mr. Baring-Gould's book of "Curious Myths," from which +I have just quoted, or to dip into Mr. Thorpe's treatise on "Northern +Mythology," to realize how vast is the difference between our +stand-point and that from which, in the later Middle Ages, our immediate +forefathers regarded things. The frightful superstition of werewolves is +a good instance. In those days it was firmly believed that men could be, +and were in the habit of being, transformed into wolves. It was believed +that women might bring forth snakes or poodle-dogs. It was believed that +if a man had his side pierced in battle, you could cure him by nursing +the sword which inflicted the wound. "As late as 1600 a German writer +would illustrate a thunder-storm destroying a crop of corn by a picture +of a dragon devouring the produce of the field with his flaming tongue +and iron teeth." + +Now if such was the condition of the human intellect only three or four +centuries ago, what must it have been in that dark antiquity when not +even the crudest generalizations of Greek or of Oriental science had +been reached? The same mighty power of imagination which now, restrained +and guided by scientific principles, leads us to discoveries and +inventions, must then have wildly run riot in mythologic fictions +whereby to explain the phenomena of nature. Knowing nothing whatever +of physical forces, of the blind steadiness with which a given effect +invariably follows its cause, the men of primeval antiquity could +interpret the actions of nature only after the analogy of their own +actions. The only force they knew was the force of which they were +directly conscious,--the force of will. Accordingly, they imagined all +the outward world to be endowed with volition, and to be directed by it. +They personified everything,--sky, clouds, thunder, sun, moon, ocean, +earthquake, whirlwind. [9] The comparatively enlightened Athenians of +the age of Perikles addressed the sky as a person, and prayed to it to +rain upon their gardens. [10] And for calling the moon a mass of dead +matter, Anaxagoras came near losing his life. To the ancients the moon +was not a lifeless ball of stones and clods: it was the horned huntress, +Artemis, coursing through the upper ether, or bathing herself in the +clear lake; or it was Aphrodite, protectress of lovers, born of the +sea-foam in the East near Cyprus. The clouds were no bodies of vaporized +water: they were cows with swelling udders, driven to the milking by +Hermes, the summer wind; or great sheep with moist fleeces, slain by +the unerring arrows of Bellerophon, the sun; or swan-maidens, flitting +across the firmament, Valkyries hovering over the battle-field to +receive the souls of falling heroes; or, again, they were mighty +mountains piled one above another, in whose cavernous recesses the +divining-wand of the storm-god Thor revealed hidden treasures. The +yellow-haired sun, Phoibos, drove westerly all day in his flaming +chariot; or perhaps, as Meleagros, retired for a while in disgust from +the sight of men; wedded at eventide the violet light (Oinone, Iole), +which he had forsaken in the morning; sank, as Herakles, upon a blazing +funeral-pyre, or, like Agamemnon, perished in a blood-stained bath; or, +as the fish-god, Dagon, swam nightly through the subterranean waters, +to appear eastward again at daybreak. Sometimes Phaethon, his rash, +inexperienced son, would take the reins and drive the solar chariot too +near the earth, causing the fruits to perish, and the grass to wither, +and the wells to dry up. Sometimes, too, the great all-seeing divinity, +in his wrath at the impiety of men, would shoot down his scorching +arrows, causing pestilence to spread over the land. Still other +conceptions clustered around the sun. Now it was the wonderful +treasure-house, into which no one could look and live; and again it +was Ixion himself, bound on the fiery wheel in punishment for violence +offered to Here, the queen of the blue air. + +This theory of ancient mythology is not only beautiful and plausible, +it is, in its essential points, demonstrated. It stands on as firm a +foundation as Grimm's law in philology, or the undulatory theory in +molecular physics. It is philology which has here enabled us to read the +primitive thoughts of mankind. A large number of the names of Greek gods +and heroes have no meaning in the Greek language; but these names occur +also in Sanskrit, with plain physical meanings. In the Veda we find +Zeus or Jupiter (Dyaus-pitar) meaning the sky, and Sarameias or Hermes, +meaning the breeze of a summer morning. We find Athene (Ahana), meaning +the light of daybreak; and we are thus enabled to understand why the +Greek described her as sprung from the forehead of Zeus. There too +we find Helena (Sarama), the fickle twilight, whom the Panis, or +night-demons, who serve as the prototypes of the Hellenic Paris, strive +to seduce from her allegiance to the solar monarch. Even Achilleus +(Aharyu) again confronts us, with his captive Briseis (Brisaya's +offspring); and the fierce Kerberos (Carvara) barks on Vedic ground in +strict conformity to the laws of phonetics. [11] Now, when the Hindu +talked about Father Dyaus, or the sleek kine of Siva, he thought of the +personified sky and clouds; he had not outgrown the primitive mental +habits of the race. But the Greek, in whose language these physical +meanings were lost, had long before the Homeric epoch come to regard +Zeus and Hermes, Athene, Helena, Paris, and Achilleus, as mere persons, +and in most cases the originals of his myths were completely forgotten. +In the Vedas the Trojan War is carried on in the sky, between the bright +deities and the demons of night; but the Greek poet, influenced perhaps +by some dim historical tradition, has located the contest on the shore +of the Hellespont, and in his mind the actors, though superhuman, are +still completely anthropomorphic. Of the true origin of his epic story +he knew as little as Euhemeros, or Lord Bacon, or the Abbe Banier. + +After these illustrations, we shall run no risk of being misunderstood +when we define a myth as, in its origin, an explanation, by the +uncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon; not an allegory, not an +esoteric symbol,--for the ingenuity is wasted which strives to detect in +myths the remnants of a refined primeval science,--but an explanation. +Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of +allegory, nor were they such sorry pedants as to talk in riddles when +plain language would serve their purpose. Their minds, we may be sure, +worked like our own, and when they spoke of the far-darting sun-god, +they meant just what they said, save that where we propound a scientific +theorem, they constructed a myth. [12] A thing is said to be explained +when it is classified with other things with which we are already +acquainted. That is the only kind of explanation of which the highest +science is capable. We explain the origin, progress, and ending of a +thunder-storm, when we classify the phenomena presented by it along with +other more familiar phenomena of vaporization and condensation. But the +primitive man explained the same thing to his own satisfaction when he +had classified it along with the well-known phenomena of human volition, +by constructing a theory of a great black dragon pierced by the unerring +arrows of a heavenly archer. We consider the nature of the stars to +a certain extent explained when they are classified as suns; but the +Mohammedan compiler of the "Mishkat-ul-Ma'sabih" was content to explain +them as missiles useful for stoning the Devil! Now, as soon as the old +Greek, forgetting the source of his conception, began to talk of a human +Oidipous slaying a leonine Sphinx, and as soon as the Mussulman began, +if he ever did, to tell his children how the Devil once got a good +pelting with golden bullets, then both the one and the other were +talking pure mythology. + +We are justified, accordingly, in distinguishing between a myth and +a legend. Though the words are etymologically parallel, and though in +ordinary discourse we may use them interchangeably, yet when strict +accuracy is required, it is well to keep them separate. And it is +perhaps needless, save for the sake of completeness, to say that +both are to be distinguished from stories which have been designedly +fabricated. The distinction may occasionally be subtle, but is usually +broad enough. Thus, the story that Philip II. murdered his wife +Elizabeth, is a misrepresentation; but the story that the same Elizabeth +was culpably enamoured of her step-son Don Carlos, is a legend. The +story that Queen Eleanor saved the life of her husband, Edward I., by +sucking a wound made in his arm by a poisoned arrow, is a legend; but +the story that Hercules killed a great robber, Cacus, who had stolen his +cattle, conceals a physical meaning, and is a myth. While a legend is +usually confined to one or two localities, and is told of not more than +one or two persons, it is characteristic of a myth that it is spread, +in one form or another, over a large part of the earth, the leading +incidents remaining constant, while the names and often the motives +vary with each locality. This is partly due to the immense antiquity +of myths, dating as they do from a period when many nations, now widely +separated, had not yet ceased to form one people. Thus many elements of +the myth of the Trojan War are to be found in the Rig-Veda; and the myth +of St. George and the Dragon is found in all the Aryan nations. But we +must not always infer that myths have a common descent, merely because +they resemble each other. We must remember that the proceedings of the +uncultivated mind are more or less alike in all latitudes, and that +the same phenomenon might in various places independently give rise to +similar stories. [13] The myth of Jack and the Beanstalk is found not +only among people of Aryan descent, but also among the Zulus of South +Africa, and again among the American Indians. Whenever we can trace a +story in this way from one end of the world to the other, or through a +whole family of kindred nations, we are pretty safe in assuming that we +are dealing with a true myth, and not with a mere legend. + +Applying these considerations to the Tell myth, we at once obtain a +valid explanation of its origin. The conception of infallible skill +in archery, which underlies such a great variety of myths and popular +fairy-tales, is originally derived from the inevitable victory of the +sun over his enemies, the demons of night, winter, and tempest. Arrows +and spears which never miss their mark, swords from whose blow no armour +can protect, are invariably the weapons of solar divinities or heroes. +The shafts of Bellerophon never fail to slay the black demon of the +rain-cloud, and the bolt of Phoibos Chrysaor deals sure destruction +to the serpent of winter. Odysseus, warring against the impious +night-heroes, who have endeavoured throughout ten long years or hours of +darkness to seduce from her allegiance his twilight-bride, the weaver +of the never-finished web of violet clouds,--Odysseus, stripped of +his beggar's raiment and endowed with fresh youth and beauty by the +dawn-goddess, Athene, engages in no doubtful conflict as he raises the +bow which none but himself can bend. Nor is there less virtue in the +spear of Achilleus, in the swords of Perseus and Sigurd, in Roland's +stout blade Durandal, or in the brand Excalibur, with which Sir Bedivere +was so loath to part. All these are solar weapons, and so, too, are +the arrows of Tell and Palnatoki, Egil and Hemingr, and William of +Cloudeslee, whose surname proclaims him an inhabitant of the Phaiakian +land. William Tell, whether of Cloudland or of Altdorf, is the last +reflection of the beneficent divinity of daytime and summer, constrained +for a while to obey the caprice of the powers of cold and darkness, as +Apollo served Laomedon, and Herakles did the bidding of Eurystheus. +His solar character is well preserved, even in the sequel of the Swiss +legend, in which he appears no less skilful as a steersman than as an +archer, and in which, after traversing, like Dagon, the tempestuous sea +of night, he leaps at daybreak in regained freedom upon the land, and +strikes down the oppressor who has held him in bondage. + +But the sun, though ever victorious in open contest with his enemies, +is nevertheless not invulnerable. At times he succumbs to treachery, +is bound by the frost-giants, or slain by the demons of darkness. The +poisoned shirt of the cloud-fiend Nessos is fatal even to the mighty +Herakles, and the prowess of Siegfried at last fails to save him from +the craft of Hagen. In Achilleus and Meleagros we see the unhappy solar +hero doomed to toil for the profit of others, and to be cut off by an +untimely death. The more fortunate Odysseus, who lives to a ripe old +age, and triumphs again and again over all the powers of darkness, must +nevertheless yield to the craving desire to visit new cities and look +upon new works of strange men, until at last he is swallowed up in the +western sea. That the unrivalled navigator of the celestial ocean should +disappear beneath the western waves is as intelligible as it is that the +horned Venus or Astarte should rise from the sea in the far east. It is +perhaps less obvious that winter should be so frequently symbolized as a +thorn or sharp instrument. Achilleus dies by an arrow-wound in the +heel; the thigh of Adonis is pierced by the boar's tusk, while Odysseus +escapes with an ugly scar, which afterwards secures his recognition by +his old servant, the dawn-nymph Eurykleia; Sigurd is slain by a thorn, +and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe; and in the myth of the +Sleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into her long winter sleep when +pricked by the point of the spindle. In her cosmic palace, all is locked +in icy repose, naught thriving save the ivy which defies the cold, until +the kiss of the golden-haired sun-god reawakens life and activity. + +The wintry sleep of nature is symbolized in innumerable stories of +spell-bound maidens and fair-featured youths, saints, martyrs, and +heroes. Sometimes it is the sun, sometimes the earth, that is supposed +to slumber. Among the American Indians the sun-god Michabo is said to +sleep through the winter months; and at the time of the falling leaves, +by way of composing himself for his nap, he fills his great pipe and +divinely smokes; the blue clouds, gently floating over the landscape, +fill the air with the haze of Indian summer. In the Greek myth the +shepherd Endymion preserves his freshness in a perennial slumber. The +German Siegfried, pierced by the thorn of winter, is sleeping until +he shall be again called forth to fight. In Switzerland, by the +Vierwald-stattersee, three Tells are awaiting the hour when their +country shall again need to be delivered from the oppressor. Charlemagne +is reposing in the Untersberg, sword in hand, waiting for the coming of +Antichrist; Olger Danske similarly dreams away his time in Avallon; and +in a lofty mountain in Thuringia, the great Emperor Yrederic Barbarossa +slumbers with his knights around him, until the time comes for him to +sally forth and raise Germany to the first rank among the kingdoms of +the world. The same story is told of Olaf Tryggvesson, of Don Sebastian +of Portugal, and of the Moorish King Boabdil. The Seven Sleepers of +Ephesus, having taken refuge in a cave from the persecutions of the +heathen Decius, slept one hundred and sixty-four years, and awoke to +find a Christian emperor on the throne. The monk of Hildesheim, in the +legend so beautifully rendered by Longfellow, doubting how with God +a thousand years ago could be as yesterday, listened three minutes +entranced by the singing of a bird in the forest, and found, on waking +from his revery, that a thousand years had flown. To the same family of +legends belong the notion that St. John is sleeping at Ephesus until the +last days of the world; the myth of the enchanter Merlin, spell-bound by +Vivien; the story of the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, who dozed away +fifty-seven years in a cave; and Rip Van Winkle's nap in the Catskills. +[14] + +We might go on almost indefinitely citing household tales of wonderful +sleepers; but, on the principle of the association of opposites, we +are here reminded of sundry cases of marvellous life and wakefulness, +illustrated in the Wandering Jew; the dancers of Kolbeck; Joseph of +Arimathaea with the Holy Grail; the Wild Huntsman who to all eternity +chases the red deer; the Captain of the Phantom Ship; the classic +Tithonos; and the Man in the Moon. + +The lunar spots have afforded a rich subject for the play of human +fancy. Plutarch wrote a treatise on them, but the myth-makers had been +before him. "Every one," says Mr. Baring-Gould, "knows that the moon +is inhabited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his back, who has been +exiled thither for many centuries, and who is so far off that he is +beyond the reach of death. He has once visited this earth, if the +nursery rhyme is to be credited when it asserts that + + 'The Man in the Moon + Came down too soon + And asked his way to Norwich'; + +but whether he ever reached that city the same authority does not +state." Dante calls him Cain; Chaucer has him put up there as a +punishment for theft, and gives him a thorn-bush to carry; Shakespeare +also loads him with the thorns, but by way of compensation gives him a +dog for a companion. Ordinarily, however, his offence is stated to have +been, not stealing, but Sabbath-breaking,--an idea derived from the Old +Testament. Like the man mentioned in the Book of Numbers, he is caught +gathering sticks on the Sabbath; and, as an example to mankind, he is +condemned to stand forever in the moon, with his bundle on his back. +Instead of a dog, one German version places with him a woman, whose +crime was churning butter on Sunday. She carries her butter-tub; and +this brings us to Mother Goose again:-- + + "Jack and Jill went up the hill + To get a pail of water. + Jack fell down and broke his crown, + And Jill came tumbling after." + +This may read like mere nonsense; but there is a point of view from +which it may be safely said that there is very little absolute nonsense +in the world. The story of Jack and Jill is a venerable one. In +Icelandic mythology we read that Jack and Jill were two children whom +the moon once kidnapped and carried up to heaven. They had been drawing +water in a bucket, which they were carrying by means of a pole placed +across their shoulders; and in this attitude they have stood to the +present day in the moon. Even now this explanation of the moon-spots +is to be heard from the mouths of Swedish peasants. They fall away one +after the other, as the moon wanes, and their water-pail symbolizes the +supposed connection of the moon with rain-storms. Other forms of the +myth occur in Sanskrit. + +The moon-goddess, or Aphrodite, of the ancient Germans, was called +Horsel, or Ursula, who figures in Christian mediaeval mythology as a +persecuted saint, attended by a troop of eleven thousand virgins, +who all suffer martyrdom as they journey from England to Cologne. The +meaning of the myth is obvious. In German mythology, England is the +Phaiakian land of clouds and phantoms; the succubus, leaving her lover +before daybreak, excuses herself on the plea that "her mother is calling +her in England." [15] The companions of Ursula are the pure stars, who +leave the cloudland and suffer martyrdom as they approach the regions +of day. In the Christian tradition, Ursula is the pure Artemis; but, +in accordance with her ancient character, she is likewise the sensual +Aphrodite, who haunts the Venusberg; and this brings us to the story of +Tannhauser. + +The Horselberg, or mountain of Venus, lies in Thuringia, between +Eisenach and Gotha. High up on its slope yawns a cavern, the +Horselloch, or cave of Venus within which is heard a muffled roar, as +of subterranean water. From this cave, in old times, the frightened +inhabitants of the neighbouring valley would hear at night wild moans +and cries issuing, mingled with peals of demon-like laughter. Here it +was believed that Venus held her court; "and there were not a few who +declared that they had seen fair forms of female beauty beckoning them +from the mouth of the chasm." [16] Tannhauser was a Frankish knight and +famous minnesinger, who, travelling at twilight past the Horselberg, +"saw a white glimmering figure of matchless beauty standing before him +and beckoning him to her." Leaving his horse, he went up to meet her, +whom he knew to be none other than Venus. He descended to her palace +in the heart of the mountain, and there passed seven years in careless +revelry. Then, stricken with remorse and yearning for another glimpse +of the pure light of day, he called in agony upon the Virgin Mother, who +took compassion on him and released him. He sought a village church, and +to priest after priest confessed his sin, without obtaining absolution, +until finally he had recourse to the Pope. But the holy father, +horrified at the enormity of his misdoing, declared that guilt such as +his could never be remitted sooner should the staff in his hand grow +green and blossom. "Then Tannhauser, full of despair and with his soul +darkened, went away, and returned to the only asylum open to him, the +Venusberg. But lo! three days after he had gone, Pope Urban discovered +that his pastoral staff had put forth buds and had burst into flower. +Then he sent messengers after Tannhauser, and they reached the Horsel +vale to hear that a wayworn man, with haggard brow and bowed head, had +just entered the Horselloch. Since then Tannhauser has not been seen." +(p. 201.) + +As Mr. Baring-Gould rightly observes, this sad legend, in its +Christianized form, is doubtless descriptive of the struggle between +the new and the old faiths. The knightly Tannhauser, satiated with +pagan sensuality, turns to Christianity for relief, but, repelled by +the hypocrisy, pride, and lack of sympathy of its ministers, gives up in +despair, and returns to drown his anxieties in his old debauchery. + +But this is not the primitive form of the myth, which recurs in the +folk-lore of every people of Aryan descent. Who, indeed, can read it +without being at once reminded of Thomas of Erceldoune (or Horsel-hill), +entranced by the sorceress of the Eilden; of the nightly visits of Numa +to the grove of the nymph Egeria; of Odysseus held captive by the Lady +Kalypso; and, last but not least, of the delightful Arabian tale of +Prince Ahmed and the Peri Banou? On his westward journey, Odysseus is +ensnared and kept in temporary bondage by the amorous nymph of darkness, +Kalypso (kalnptw, to veil or cover). So the zone of the moon-goddess +Aphrodite inveigles all-seeing Zeus to treacherous slumber on Mount +Ida; and by a similar sorcery Tasso's great hero is lulled in unseemly +idleness in Armida's golden paradise, at the western verge of the world. +The disappearance of Tannhauser behind the moonlit cliff, lured by Venus +Ursula, the pale goddess of night, is a precisely parallel circumstance. + +But solar and lunar phenomena are by no means the only sources of +popular mythology. Opposite my writing-table hangs a quaint German +picture, illustrating Goethe's ballad of the Erlking, in which the whole +wild pathos of the story is compressed into one supreme moment; we see +the fearful, half-gliding rush of the Erlking, his long, spectral arms +outstretched to grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse, the +alarmed father clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace, +the siren-like elves hovering overhead, to lure the little soul with +their weird harps. There can be no better illustration than is furnished +by this terrible scene of the magic power of mythology to invest the +simplest physical phenomena with the most intense human interest; for +the true significance of the whole picture is contained in the father's +address to his child, + + "Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind; + In durren Blattern sauselt der Wind." + +The story of the Piper of Hamelin, well known in the version of Robert +Browning, leads to the same conclusion. In 1284 the good people of +Hamelin could obtain no rest, night or day, by reason of the direful +host of rats which infested their town. One day came a strange man in a +bunting-suit, and offered for five hundred guilders to rid the town of +the vermin. The people agreed: whereupon the man took out a pipe and +piped, and instantly all the rats in town, in an army which blackened +the face of the earth, came forth from their haunts, and followed the +piper until he piped them to the river Weser, where they alls jumped +in and were drowned. But as soon as the torment was gone, the townsfolk +refused to pay the piper on the ground that he was evidently a wizard. +He went away, vowing vengeance, and on St. John's day reappeared, and +putting his pipe to his mouth blew a different air. Whereat all the +little, plump, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired children came merrily running +after him, their parents standing aghast, not knowing what to do, +while he led them up a hill in the neighbourhood. A door opened in the +mountain-side, through which he led them in, and they never were seen +again; save one lame boy, who hobbled not fast enough to get in before +the door shut, and who lamented for the rest of his life that he had not +been able to share the rare luck of his comrades. In the street through +which this procession passed no music was ever afterwards allowed to be +played. For a long time the town dated its public documents from this +fearful calamity, and many authorities have treated it as an historical +event. [17] Similar stories are told of other towns in Germany, and, +strange to say, in remote Abyssinia also. Wesleyan peasants in England +believe that angels pipe to children who are about to die; and in +Scandinavia, youths are said to have been enticed away by the songs of +elf-maidens. In Greece, the sirens by their magic lay allured voyagers +to destruction; and Orpheus caused the trees and dumb beasts to follow +him. Here we reach the explanation. For Orpheus is the wind sighing +through untold acres of pine forest. "The piper is no other than the +wind, and the ancients held that in the wind were the souls of the +dead." To this day the English peasantry believe that they hear the wail +of the spirits of unbaptized children, as the gale sweeps past their +cottage doors. The Greek Hermes resulted from the fusion of two deities. +He is the sun and also the wind; and in the latter capacity he bears +away the souls of the dead. So the Norse Odin, who like Hermes fillfils +a double function, is supposed to rush at night over the tree-tops, +"accompanied by the scudding train of brave men's spirits." And readers +of recent French literature cannot fail to remember Erokmann-Chatrian's +terrible story of the wild huntsman Vittikab, and how he sped through +the forest, carrying away a young girl's soul. + +Thus, as Tannhauser is the Northern Ulysses, so is Goethe's Erlking none +other than the Piper of Hamelin. And the piper, in turn, is the classic +Hermes or Orpheus, the counterpart of the Finnish Wainamoinen and the +Sanskrit Gunadhya. His wonderful pipe is the horn of Oberon, the lyre of +Apollo (who, like the piper, was a rat-killer), the harp stolen by +Jack when he climbed the bean-stalk to the ogre's castle. [18] And the +father, in Goethe's ballad, is no more than right when he assures his +child that the siren voice which tempts him is but the rustle of the +wind among the dried leaves; for from such a simple class of phenomena +arose this entire family of charming legends. + +But why does the piper, who is a leader of souls (Psychopompos), also +draw rats after him? In answering this we shall have occasion to note +that the ancients by no means shared that curious prejudice against the +brute creation which is indulged in by modern anti-Darwinians. In many +countries, rats and mice have been regarded as sacred animals; but in +Germany they were thought to represent the human soul. One story out of +a hundred must suffice to illustrate this. "In Thuringia, at Saalfeld, a +servant-girl fell asleep whilst her companions were shelling nuts. They +observed a little red mouse creep from her mouth and run out of the +window. One of the fellows present shook the sleeper, but could not wake +her, so he moved her to another place. Presently the mouse ran back to +the former place and dashed about, seeking the girl; not finding her, +it vanished; at the same moment the girl died." [19] This completes the +explanation of the piper, and it also furnishes the key to the horrible +story of Bishop Hatto. + +This wicked prelate lived on the bank of the Rhine, in the middle of +which stream he possessed a tower, now pointed out to travellers as the +Mouse Tower. In the year 970 there was a dreadful famine, and people +came from far and near craving sustenance out of the Bishop's ample and +well-filled granaries. Well, he told them all to go into the barn, and +when they had got in there, as many as could stand, he set fire to the +barn and burnt them all up, and went home to eat a merry supper. But +when he arose next morning, he heard that an army of rats had eaten all +the corn in his granaries, and was now advancing to storm the palace. +Looking from his window, he saw the roads and fields dark with them, +as they came with fell purpose straight toward his mansion. In frenzied +terror he took his boat and rowed out to the tower in the river. But it +was of no use: down into the water marched the rats, and swam across, +and scaled the walls, and gnawed through the stones, and came swarming +in about the shrieking Bishop, and ate him up, flesh, bones, and all. +Now, bearing in mind what was said above, there can be no doubt that +these rats were the souls of those whom the Bishop had murdered. There +are many versions of the story in different Teutonic countries, and +in some of them the avenging rats or mice issue directly, by a strange +metamorphosis, from the corpses of the victims. St. Gertrude, moreover, +the heathen Holda, was symbolized as a mouse, and was said Go lead an +army of mice; she was the receiver of children's souls. Odin, also, in +his character of a Psychopompos, was followed by a host of rats. [20] + +As the souls of the departed are symbolized as rats, so is the +psychopomp himself often figured as a dog. Sarameias, the Vedic +counterpart of Hermes and Odin, sometimes appears invested with canine +attributes; and countless other examples go to show that by the early +Aryan mind the howling wind was conceived as a great dog or wolf. As the +fearful beast was heard speeding by the windows or over the house-top, +the inmates trembled, for none knew but his own soul might forthwith be +required of him. Hence, to this day, among ignorant people, the howling +of a dog under the window is supposed to portend a death in the family. +It is the fleet greyhound of Hermes, come to escort the soul to the +river Styx. [21] + +But the wind-god is not always so terrible. Nothing can be more +transparent than the phraseology of the Homeric Hymn, in which Hermes is +described as acquiring the strength of a giant while yet a babe in the +cradle, as sallying out and stealing the cattle (clouds) of Apollo, +and driving them helter-skelter in various directions, then as crawling +through the keyhole, and with a mocking laugh shrinking into his cradle. +He is the Master Thief, who can steal the burgomaster's horse from under +him and his wife's mantle from off her back, the prototype not only of +the crafty architect of Rhampsinitos, but even of the ungrateful slave +who robs Sancho of his mule in the Sierra Morena. He furnishes in part +the conceptions of Boots and Reynard; he is the prototype of Paul Pry +and peeping Tom of Coventry; and in virtue of his ability to contract or +expand himself at pleasure, he is both the Devil in the Norse Tale, [22] +whom the lad persuades to enter a walnut, and the Arabian Efreet, whom +the fisherman releases from the bottle. + +The very interesting series of myths and popular superstitions suggested +by the storm-cloud and the lightning must be reserved for a future +occasion. When carefully examined, they will richly illustrate the +conclusion which is the result of the present inquiry, that the +marvellous tales and quaint superstitions current in every Aryan +household have a common origin with the classic legends of gods and +heroes, which formerly were alone thought worthy of the student's +serious attention. These stories--some of them familiar to us in +infancy, others the delight of our maturer years--constitute the debris, +or alluvium, brought down by the stream of tradition from the distant +highlands of ancient mythology. + +September, 1870. + + + + +II. THE DESCENT OF FIRE. + +IN the course of my last summer's vacation, which was spent at a small +inland village, I came upon an unexpected illustration of the tenacity +with which conceptions descended from prehistoric antiquity have now +and then kept their hold upon life. While sitting one evening under the +trees by the roadside, my attention was called to the unusual conduct of +half a dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An elderly man +was moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forked +twig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turned +upward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that the +shank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certain +spot, the twig would gradually bend downwards until it had assumed the +likeness of a Y in its natural position, where it would remain pointing +to something in the ground beneath. One by one the bystanders proceeded +to try the experiment, but with no variation in the result. Something in +the ground seemed to fascinate the bit of hazel, for it could not pass +over that spot without bending down and pointing to it. + +My thoughts reverted at once to Jacques Aymar and Dousterswivel, as +I perceived that these men were engaged in sorcery. During the long +drought more than half the wells in the village had become dry, and here +was an attempt to make good the loss by the aid of the god Thor. These +men were seeking water with a divining-rod. Here, alive before my eyes, +was a superstitious observance, which I had supposed long since dead and +forgotten by all men except students interested in mythology. + +As I crossed the road to take part in the ceremony a farmer's boy came +up, stoutly affirming his incredulity, + +and offering to show the company how he could carry the rod motionless +across the charmed spot. But when he came to take the weird twig he +trembled with an ill-defined feeling of insecurity as to the soundness +of his conclusions, and when he stood over the supposed rivulet the rod +bent in spite of him,--as was not so very strange. For, with all his +vague scepticism, the honest lad had not, and could not be supposed to +have, the foi scientifique of which Littre speaks. [23] + +Hereupon I requested leave to try the rod; but something in my manner +seemed at once to excite the suspicion and scorn of the sorcerer. "Yes, +take it," said he, with uncalled-for vehemence, "but you can't stop it; +there's water below here, and you can't help its bending, if you break +your back trying to hold it." So he gave me the twig, and awaited, with +a smile which was meant to express withering sarcasm, the discomfiture +of the supposed scoffer. But when I proceeded to walk four or five times +across the mysterious place, the rod pointing steadfastly toward the +zenith all the while, our friend became grave and began to philosophize. +"Well," said he, "you see, your temperament is peculiar; the conditions +ain't favourable in your case; there are some people who never can work +these things. But there's water below here, for all that, as you'll +find, if you dig for it; there's nothing like a hazel-rod for finding +out water." + +Very true: there are some persons who never can make such things work; +who somehow always encounter "unfavourable conditions" when they wish +to test the marvellous powers of a clairvoyant; who never can make +"Planchette" move in conformity to the requirements of any known +alphabet; who never see ghosts, and never have "presentiments," save +such as are obviously due to association of ideas. The ill-success of +these persons is commonly ascribed to their lack of faith; but, in the +majority of cases, it might be more truly referred to the strength of +their faith,--faith in the constancy of nature, and in the adequacy +of ordinary human experience as interpreted by science. [24] La foi +scientifique is an excellent preventive against that obscure, though not +uncommon, kind of self-deception which enables wooden tripods to write +and tables to tip and hazel-twigs to twist upside-down, without the +conscious intervention of the performer. It was this kind of faith, no +doubt, which caused the discomfiture of Jacques Aymar on his visit to +Paris, [25] and which has in late years prevented persons from obtaining +the handsome prize offered by the French Academy for the first authentic +case of clairvoyance. + +But our village friend, though perhaps constructively right in his +philosophizing, was certainly very defective in his acquaintance with +the time-honoured art of rhabdomancy. Had he extended his inquiries so +as to cover the field of Indo-European tradition, he would have learned +that the mountain-ash, the mistletoe, the white and black thorn, the +Hindu asvattha, and several other woods, are quite as efficient as the +hazel for the purpose of detecting water in times of drought; and in due +course of time he would have perceived that the divining-rod itself +is but one among a large class of things to which popular belief has +ascribed, along with other talismanic properties, the power of opening +the ground or cleaving rocks, in order to reveal hidden treasures. +Leaving him in peace, then, with his bit of forked hazel, to seek for +cooling springs in some future thirsty season, let us endeavour to +elucidate the origin of this curious superstition. + +The detection of subterranean water is by no means the only use to +which the divining-rod has been put. Among the ancient Frisians it was +regularly used for the detection of criminals; and the reputation of +Jacques Aymar was won by his discovery of the perpetrator of a horrible +murder at Lyons. Throughout Europe it has been used from time immemorial +by miners for ascertaining the position of veins of metal; and in the +days when talents were wrapped in napkins and buried in the field, +instead of being exposed to the risks of financial speculation, the +divining-rod was employed by persons covetous of their neighbours' +wealth. If Boulatruelle had lived in the sixteenth century, he would +have taken a forked stick of hazel when he went to search for the buried +treasures of Jean Valjean. It has also been applied to the cure of +disease, and has been kept in households, like a wizard's charm, to +insure general good-fortune and immunity from disaster. + +As we follow the conception further into the elf-land of popular +tradition, we come upon a rod which not only points out the situation of +hidden treasure, but even splits open the ground and reveals the mineral +wealth contained therein. In German legend, "a shepherd, who was driving +his flock over the Ilsenstein, having stopped to rest, leaning on his +staff, the mountain suddenly opened, for there was a springwort in his +staff without his knowing it, and the princess [Ilse] stood before him. +She bade him follow her, and when he was inside the mountain she told +him to take as much gold as he pleased. The shepherd filled all his +pockets, and was going away, when the princess called after him, 'Forget +not the best.' So, thinking she meant that he had not taken enough, +he filled his hat also; but what she meant was his staff with the +springwort, which he had laid against the wall as soon as he stepped +in. But now, just as he was going out at the opening, the rock suddenly +slammed together and cut him in two." [26] + +Here the rod derives its marvellous properties from the enclosed +springwort, but in many cases a leaf or flower is itself competent to +open the hillside. The little blue flower, forget-me-not, about which +so many sentimental associations have clustered, owes its name to the +legends told of its talismanic virtues. [27] A man, travelling on a +lonely mountain, picks up a little blue flower and sticks it in his hat. +Forthwith an iron door opens, showing up a lighted passage-way, through +which the man advances into a magnificent hall, where rubies and +diamonds and all other kinds of gems are lying piled in great heaps on +the floor. As he eagerly fills his pockets his hat drops from his head, +and when he turns to go out the little flower calls after him, "Forget +me not!" He turns back and looks around, but is too bewildered with his +good fortune to think of his bare head or of the luck-flower which he +has let fall. He selects several more of the finest jewels he can +find, and again starts to go out; but as he passes through the door the +mountain closes amid the crashing of thunder, and cuts off one of his +heels. Alone, in the gloom of the forest, he searches in vain for the +mysterious door: it has disappeared forever, and the traveller goes on +his way, thankful, let us hope, that he has fared no worse. + +Sometimes it is a white lady, like the Princess Ilse, who invites the +finder of the luck-flower to help himself to her treasures, and who +utters the enigmatical warning. The mountain where the event occurred +may be found almost anywhere in Germany, and one just like it stood in +Persia, in the golden prime of Haroun Alraschid. In the story of the +Forty Thieves, the mere name of the plant sesame serves as a talisman to +open and shut the secret door which leads into the robbers' cavern; and +when the avaricious Cassim Baba, absorbed in the contemplation of the +bags of gold and bales of rich merchandise, forgets the magic formula, +he meets no better fate than the shepherd of the Ilsenstein. In the +story of Prince Ahmed, it is an enchanted arrow which guides the young +adventurer through the hillside to the grotto of the Peri Banou. In +the tale of Baba Abdallah, it is an ointment rubbed on the eyelid which +reveals at a single glance all the treasures hidden in the bowels of the +earth. + +The ancient Romans also had their rock-breaking plant, called Saxifraga, +or "sassafras." And the further we penetrate into this charmed circle +of traditions the more evident does it appear that the power of cleaving +rocks or shattering hard substances enters, as a primitive element, into +the conception of these treasure-showing talismans. Mr. Baring-Gould +has given an excellent account of the rabbinical legends concerning the +wonderful schamir, by the aid of which Solomon was said to have built +his temple. From Asmodeus, prince of the Jann, Benaiah, the son of +Jehoiada, wrested the secret of a worm no bigger than a barley-corn, +which could split the hardest substance. This worm was called schamir. +"If Solomon desired to possess himself of the worm, he must find the +nest of the moor-hen, and cover it with a plate of glass, so that the +mother bird could not get at her young without breaking the glass. She +would seek schamir for the purpose, and the worm must be obtained from +her." As the Jewish king did need the worm in order to hew the stones +for that temple which was to be built without sound of hammer, or axe, +or any tool of iron, [28] he sent Benaiah to obtain it. According to +another account, schamir was a mystic stone which enabled Solomon to +penetrate the earth in search of mineral wealth. Directed by a Jinni, +the wise king covered a raven's eggs with a plate of crystal, and thus +obtained schamir which the bird brought in order to break the plate. +[29] + +In these traditions, which may possibly be of Aryan descent, due to the +prolonged intercourse between the Jews and the Persians, a new feature +is added to those before enumerated: the rock-splitting talisman is +always found in the possession of a bird. The same feature in the myth +reappears on Aryan soil. The springwort, whose marvellous powers we have +noticed in the case of the Ilsenstein shepherd, is obtained, according +to Pliny, by stopping up the hole in a tree where a woodpecker keeps its +young. The bird flies away, and presently returns with the springwort, +which it applies to the plug, causing it to shoot out with a loud +explosion. The same account is given in German folk-lore. Elsewhere, +as in Iceland, Normandy, and ancient Greece, the bird is an eagle, a +swallow, an ostrich, or a hoopoe. + +In the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the schamir, or "raven-stone," +also renders its possessor invisible,--a property which it shares with +one of the treasure-finding plants, the fern. [30] In this respect +it resembles the ring of Gyges, as in its divining and rock-splitting +qualities it resembles that other ring which the African magrician gave +to Aladdin, to enable him to descend into the cavern where stood the +wonderful lamp. + +According to one North German tradition, the luck-flower also will make +its finder invisible at pleasure. But, as the myth shrewdly adds, it is +absolutely essential that the flower be found by accident: he who seeks +for it never finds it! Thus all cavils are skilfully forestalled, +even if not satisfactorily disposed of. The same kind of reasoning is +favoured by our modern dealers in mystery: somehow the "conditions" +always are askew whenever a scientific observer wishes to test their +pretensions. + +In the North of Europe schamir appears strangely and grotesquely +metamorphosed. The hand of a man that has been hanged, when dried and +prepared with certain weird unguents and set on fire, is known as the +Hand of Glory; and as it not only bursts open all safe-locks, but also +lulls to sleep all persons within the circle of its influence, it is of +course invaluable to thieves and burglars. I quote the following story +from Thorpe's "Northern Mythology": "Two fellows once came to Huy, who +pretended to be exceedingly fatigued, and when they had supped would +not retire to a sleeping-room, but begged their host would allow them +to take a nap on the hearth. But the maid-servant, who did not like the +looks of the two guests, remained by the kitchen door and peeped through +a chink, when she saw that one of them drew a thief's hand from his +pocket, the fingers of which, after having rubbed them with an ointment, +he lighted, and they all burned except one. Again they held this finger +to the fire, but still it would not burn, at which they appeared much +surprised, and one said, 'There must surely be some one in the house +who is not yet asleep.' They then hung the hand with its four burning +fingers by the chimney, and went out to call their associates. But the +maid followed them instantly and made the door fast, then ran up stairs, +where the landlord slept, that she might wake him, but was unable, +notwithstanding all her shaking and calling. In the mean time the +thieves had returned and were endeavouring to enter the house by a +window, but the maid cast them down from the ladder. They then took a +different course, and would have forced an entrance, had it not occurred +to the maid that the burning fingers might probably be the cause of her +master's profound sleep. Impressed with this idea she ran to the kitchen +and blew them out, when the master and his men-servants instantly +awoke, and soon drove away the robbers." The same event is said to have +occurred at Stainmore in England; and Torquermada relates of Mexican +thieves that they carry with them the left hand of a woman who has died +in her first childbed, before which talisman all bolts yield and all +opposition is benumbed. In 1831 "some Irish thieves attempted to commit +a robbery on the estate of Mr. Naper, of Loughcrew, county Meath. They +entered the house armed with a dead man's hand with a lighted candle in +it, believing in the superstitious notion that a candle placed in a dead +man's hand will not be seen by any but those by whom it is used; and +also that if a candle in a dead hand be introduced into a house, it will +prevent those who may be asleep from awaking. The inmates, however, were +alarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the hand behind them." [31] + +In the Middle Ages the hand of glory was used, just like the +divining-rod, for the detection of buried treasures. + +Here, then, we have a large and motley group of objects--the forked +rod of ash or hazel, the springwort and the luck-flower, leaves, +worms, stones, rings, and dead men's hands--which are for the most part +competent to open the way into cavernous rocks, and which all agree +in pointing out hidden wealth. We find, moreover, that many of these +charmed objects are carried about by birds, and that some of them +possess, in addition to their generic properties, the specific power of +benumbing people's senses. What, now, is the common origin of this whole +group of superstitions? And since mythology has been shown to be the +result of primeval attempts to explain the phenomena of nature, what +natural phenomenon could ever have given rise to so many seemingly +wanton conceptions? Hopeless as the problem may at first sight seem, it +has nevertheless been solved. In his great treatise on "The Descent +of Fire," Dr. Kuhn has shown that all these legends and traditions are +descended from primitive myths explanatory of the lightning and the +storm-cloud. [32] + +To us, who are nourished from childhood on the truths revealed by +science, the sky is known to be merely an optical appearance due to the +partial absorption of the solar rays in passing through a thick stratum +of atmospheric air; the clouds are known to be large masses of watery +vapour, which descend in rain-drops when sufficiently condensed; and +the lightning is known to be a flash of light accompanying an electric +discharge. But these conceptions are extremely recondite, and have been +attained only through centuries of philosophizing and after careful +observation and laborious experiment. To the untaught mind of a child or +of an uncivilized man, it seems far more natural and plausible to regard +the sky as a solid dome of blue crystal, the clouds as snowy mountains, +or perhaps even as giants or angels, the lightning as a flashing dart or +a fiery serpent. In point of fact, we find that the conceptions actually +entertained are often far more grotesque than these. I can recollect +once framing the hypothesis that the flaming clouds of sunset were +transient apparitions, vouchsafed us by way of warning, of that burning +Calvinistic hell with which my childish imagination had been unwisely +terrified; [33] and I have known of a four-year-old boy who thought that +the snowy clouds of noonday were the white robes of the angels hung out +to dry in the sun. [34] My little daughter is anxious to know whether +it is necessary to take a balloon in order to get to the place where +God lives, or whether the same end can be accomplished by going to the +horizon and crawling up the sky; [35] the Mohammedan of old was working +at the same problem when he called the rainbow the bridge Es-Sirat, over +which souls must pass on their way to heaven. According to the ancient +Jew, the sky was a solid plate, hammered out by the gods, and spread +over the earth in order to keep up the ocean overhead; [36] but the +plate was full of little windows, which were opened whenever it became +necessary to let the rain come through. [37] With equal plausibility +the Greek represented the rainy sky as a sieve in which the daughters +of Danaos were vainly trying to draw water; while to the Hindu the +rain-clouds were celestial cattle milked by the wind-god. In primitive +Aryan lore, the sky itself was a blue sea, and the clouds were ships +sailing over it; and an English legend tells how one of these ships +once caught its anchor on a gravestone in the churchyard, to the great +astonishment of the people who were coming out of church. Charon's +ferry-boat was one of these vessels, and another was Odin's golden ship, +in which the souls of slain heroes were conveyed to Valhalla. Hence it +was once the Scandinavian practice to bury the dead in boats; and in +Altmark a penny is still placed in the mouth of the corpse, that it may +have the means of paying its fare to the ghostly ferryman. [38] In such +a vessel drifted the Lady of Shalott on her fatal voyage; and of similar +nature was the dusky barge, "dark as a funeral-scarf from stem to +stern," in which Arthur was received by the black-hooded queens. [39] + +But the fact that a natural phenomenon was explained in one way did not +hinder it from being explained in a dozen other ways. The fact that the +sun was generally regarded as an all-conquering hero did not prevent +its being called an egg, an apple, or a frog squatting on the waters, or +Ixion's wheel, or the eye of Polyphemos, or the stone of Sisyphos, which +was no sooner pushed to the zenith than it rolled down to the horizon. +So the sky was not only a crystal dome, or a celestial ocean, but it was +also the Aleian land through which Bellerophon wandered, the country of +the Lotos-eaters, or again the realm of the Graiai beyond the twilight; +and finally it was personified and worshipped as Dyaus or Varuna, the +Vedic prototypes of the Greek Zeus and Ouranos. The clouds, too, had +many other representatives besides ships and cows. In a future paper it +will be shown that they were sometimes regarded as angels or houris; at +present it more nearly concerns us to know that they appear, throughout +all Aryan mythology, under the form of birds. It used to be a matter of +hopeless wonder to me that Aladdin's innocent request for a roc's egg +to hang in the dome of his palace should have been regarded as a crime +worthy of punishment by the loss of the wonderful lamp; the obscurest +part of the whole affair being perhaps the Jinni's passionate allusion +to the egg as his master: "Wretch! dost thou command me to bring thee +my master, and hang him up in the midst of this vaulted dome?" But the +incident is to some extent cleared of its mystery when we learn that +the roc's egg is the bright sun, and that the roc itself is the rushing +storm-cloud which, in the tale of Sindbad, haunts the sparkling starry +firmament, symbolized as a valley of diamonds. [40] According to one +Arabic authority, the length of its wings is ten thousand fathoms. But +in European tradition it dwindles from these huge dimensions to the size +of an eagle, a raven, or a woodpecker. Among the birds enumerated by +Kuhn and others as representing the storm-cloud are likewise the wren +or "kinglet" (French roitelet); the owl, sacred to Athene; the cuckoo, +stork, and sparrow; and the red-breasted robin, whose name Robert was +originally an epithet of the lightning-god Thor. In certain parts of +France it is still believed that the robbing of a wren's nest will +render the culprit liable to be struck by lightning. The same belief was +formerly entertained in Teutonic countries with respect to the robin; +and I suppose that from this superstition is descended the prevalent +notion, which I often encountered in childhood, that there is something +peculiarly wicked in killing robins. + +Now, as the raven or woodpecker, in the various myths of schamir, is the +dark storm-cloud, so the rock-splitting worm or plant or pebble which +the bird carries in its beak and lets fall to the ground is nothing more +or less than the flash of lightning carried and dropped by the cloud. +"If the cloud was supposed to be a great bird, the lightnings were +regarded as writhing worms or serpents in its beak. These fiery +serpents, elikiai gram-moeidws feromenoi, are believed in to this day by +the Canadian Indians, who call the thunder their hissing." [41] + +But these are not the only mythical conceptions which are to be found +wrapped up in the various myths of schamir and the divining-rod. The +persons who told these stories were not weaving ingenious allegories +about thunder-storms; they were telling stories, or giving utterance +to superstitions, of which the original meaning was forgotten. The old +grannies who, along with a stoical indifference to the fate of quails +and partridges, used to impress upon me the wickedness of killing +robins, did not add that I should be struck by lightning if I failed to +heed their admonitions. They had never heard that the robin was the bird +of Thor; they merely rehearsed the remnant of the superstition which +had survived to their own times, while the essential part of it had long +since faded from recollection. The reason for regarding a robin's +life as more sacred than a partridge's had been forgotten; but it left +behind, as was natural, a vague recognition of that mythical sanctity. +The primitive meaning of a myth fades away as inevitably as the +primitive meaning of a word or phrase; and the rabbins who told of a +worm which shatters rocks no more thought of the writhing thunderbolts +than the modern reader thinks of oyster-shells when he sees the word +ostracism, or consciously breathes a prayer as he writes the phrase good +bye. It is only in its callow infancy that the full force of a myth is +felt, and its period of luxuriant development dates from the time when +its physical significance is lost or obscured. It was because the Greek +had forgotten that Zeus meant the bright sky, that he could make him +king over an anthropomorphic Olympos. The Hindu Dyaus, who carried his +significance in his name as plainly as the Greek Helios, never attained +such an exalted position; he yielded to deities of less obvious +pedigree, such as Brahma and Vishnu. + +Since, therefore, the myth-tellers recounted merely the wonderful +stories which their own nurses and grandmas had told them, and had no +intention of weaving subtle allegories or wrapping up a physical +truth in mystic emblems, it follows that they were not bound to +avoid incongruities or to preserve a philosophical symmetry in their +narratives. In the great majority of complex myths, no such symmetry is +to be found. A score of different mythical conceptions would get wrought +into the same story, and the attempt to pull them apart and construct a +single harmonious system of conceptions out of the pieces must often end +in ingenious absurdity. If Odysseus is unquestionably the sun, so is the +eye of Polyphemos, which Odysseus puts out. [42] But the Greek poet knew +nothing of the incongruity, for he was thinking only of a superhuman +hero freeing himself from a giant cannibal; he knew nothing of Sanskrit, +or of comparative mythology, and the sources of his myths were as +completely hidden from his view as the sources of the Nile. + +We need not be surprised, then, to find that in one version of the +schamir-myth the cloud is the bird which carries the worm, while in +another version the cloud is the rock or mountain which the talisman +cleaves open; nor need we wonder at it, if we find stories in which the +two conceptions are mingled together without regard to an incongruity +which in the mind of the myth-teller no longer exists. [43] + +In early Aryan mythology there is nothing by which the clouds are +more frequently represented than by rocks or mountains. Such were the +Symplegades, which, charmed by the harp of the wind-god Orpheus, parted +to make way for the talking ship Argo, with its crew of solar heroes. +[44] Such, too, were the mountains Ossa and Pelion, which the giants +piled up one upon another in their impious assault upon Zeus, the lord +of the bright sky. As Mr. Baring-Gould observes: "The ancient Aryan had +the same name for cloud and mountain. To him the piles of vapour on the +horizon were so like Alpine ranges, that he had but one word whereby to +designate both. [45] These great mountains of heaven were opened by the +lightning. In the sudden flash he beheld the dazzling splendour within, +but only for a moment, and then, with a crash, the celestial rocks +closed again. Believing these vaporous piles to contain resplendent +treasures of which partial glimpse was obtained by mortals in a +momentary gleam, tales were speedily formed, relating the adventures of +some who had succeeded in entering these treasure-mountains." + +This sudden flash is the smiting of the cloud-rock by the arrow of +Ahmed, the resistless hammer of Thor, the spear of Odin, the trident +of Poseidon, or the rod of Hermes. The forked streak of light is the +archetype of the divining-rod in its oldest form,--that in which it +not only indicates the hidden treasures, but, like the staff of the +Ilsenstein shepherd, bursts open the enchanted crypt and reveals them +to the astonished wayfarer. Hence the one thing essential to the +divining-rod, from whatever tree it be chosen, is that it shall be +forked. + +It is not difficult to comprehend the reasons which led the ancients +to speak of the lightning as a worm, serpent, trident, arrow, or forked +wand; but when we inquire why it was sometimes symbolized as a flower or +leaf; or when we seek to ascertain why certain trees, such as the ash, +hazel, white-thorn, and mistletoe, were supposed to be in a certain +sense embodiments of it, we are entering upon a subject too complicated +to be satisfactorily treated within the limits of the present paper. It +has been said that the point of resemblance between a cow and a comet, +that both have tails, was quite enough for the primitive word-maker: it +was certainly enough for the primitive myth-teller. [46] Sometimes the +pinnate shape of a leaf, the forking of a branch, the tri-cleft corolla, +or even the red colour of a flower, seems to have been sufficient to +determine the association of ideas. The Hindu commentators of the Veda +certainly lay great stress on the fact that the palasa, one of their +lightning-trees, is trident-leaved. The mistletoe branch is forked, like +a wish-bone, [47] and so is the stem which bears the forget-me-not or +wild scorpion grass. So too the leaves of the Hindu ficus religiosa +resemble long spear-heads. [48] But in many cases it is impossible +for us to determine with confidence the reasons which may have guided +primitive men in their choice of talismanic plants. In the case of some +of these stories, it would no doubt be wasting ingenuity to attempt to +assign a mythical origin for each point of detail. The ointment of the +dervise, for instance, in the Arabian tale, has probably no special +mythical significance, but was rather suggested by the exigencies of the +story, in an age when the old mythologies were so far disintegrated and +mingled together that any one talisman would serve as well as another +the purposes of the narrator. But the lightning-plants of Indo-European +folk-lore cannot be thus summarily disposed of; for however difficult it +may be for us to perceive any connection between them and the celestial +phenomena which they represent, the myths concerning them are so +numerous and explicit as to render it certain that some such connection +was imagined by the myth-makers. The superstition concerning the hand +of glory is not so hard to interpret. In the mythology of the Finns, the +storm-cloud is a black man with a bright copper hand; and in Hindustan, +Indra Savitar, the deity who slays the demon of the cloud, is +golden-handed. The selection of the hand of a man who has been hanged +is probably due to the superstition which regarded the storm-god Odin +as peculiarly the lord of the gallows. The man who is raised upon the +gallows is placed directly in the track of the wild huntsman, who comes +with his hounds to carry off the victim; and hence the notion, which, +according to Mr. Kelly, is "very common in Germany and not extinct in +England," that every suicide by hanging is followed by a storm. + +The paths of comparative mythology are devious, but we have now pursued +them long enough I believe, to have arrived at a tolerably clear +understanding of the original nature of the divining-rod. Its power of +revealing treasures has been sufficiently explained; and its affinity +for water results so obviously from the character of the lightning-myth +as to need no further comment. But its power of detecting criminals +still remains to be accounted for. + +In Greek mythology, the being which detects and punishes crime is the +Erinys, the prototype of the Latin Fury, figured by late writers as a +horrible monster with serpent locks. But this is a degradation of the +original conception. The name Erinys did not originally mean Fury, and +it cannot be explained from Greek sources alone. It appears in Sanskrit +as Saranyu, a word which signifies the light of morning creeping over +the sky. And thus we are led to the startling conclusion that, as the +light of morning reveals the evil deeds done under the cover of night, +so the lovely Dawn, or Erinys, came to be regarded under one aspect +as the terrible detector and avenger of iniquity. Yet startling as the +conclusion is, it is based on established laws of phonetic change, and +cannot be gainsaid. + +But what has the avenging daybreak to do with the lightning and the +divining-rod? To the modern mind the association is not an obvious one: +in antiquity it was otherwise. Myths of the daybreak and myths of +the lightning often resemble each other so closely that, except by a +delicate philological analysis, it is difficult to distinguish the one +from the other. The reason is obvious. In each case the phenomenon to be +explained is the struggle between the day-god and one of the demons +of darkness. There is essentially no distinction to the mind of the +primitive man between the Panis, who steal Indra's bright cows and +keep them in a dark cavern all night, and the throttling snake Ahi or +Echidna, who imprisons the waters in the stronghold of the thunder-cloud +and covers the earth with a short-lived darkness. And so the poisoned +arrows of Bellerophon, which slay the storm-dragon, differ in no +essential respect from the shafts with which Odysseus slaughters the +night-demons who have for ten long hours beset his mansion. Thus the +divining-rod, representing as it does the weapon of the god of day, +comes legitimately enough by its function of detecting and avenging +crime. + +But the lightning not only reveals strange treasures and gives water to +the thirsty land and makes plain what is doing under cover of darkness; +it also sometimes kills, benumbs, or paralyzes. Thus the head of the +Gorgon Medusa turns into stone those who look upon it. Thus the ointment +of the dervise, in the tale of Baba Abdallah, not only reveals all the +treasures of the earth, but instantly thereafter blinds the unhappy man +who tests its powers. And thus the hand of glory, which bursts open bars +and bolts, benumbs also those who happen to be near it. Indeed, few of +the favoured mortals who were allowed to visit the caverns opened by +sesame or the luck-flower, escaped without disaster. The monkish tale of +"The Clerk and the Image," in which the primeval mythical features are +curiously distorted, well illustrates this point. + +In the city of Rome there formerly stood an image with its right hand +extended and on its forefinger the words "strike here." Many wise men +puzzled in vain over the meaning of the inscription; but at last a +certain priest observed that whenever the sun shone on the figure, the +shadow of the finger was discernible on the ground at a little distance +from the statue. Having marked the spot, he waited until midnight, and +then began to dig. At last his spade struck upon something hard. It +was a trap-door, below which a flight of marble steps descended into a +spacious hall, where many men were sitting in solemn silence amid piles +of gold and diamonds and long rows of enamelled vases. Beyond this he +found another room, a gynaecium filled with beautiful women reclining +on richly embroidered sofas; yet here, too, all was profound silence. +A superb banqueting-hall next met his astonished gaze; then a silent +kitchen; then granaries loaded with forage; then a stable crowded +with motionless horses. The whole place was brilliantly lighted by a +carbuncle which was suspended in one corner of the reception-room; and +opposite stood an archer, with his bow and arrow raised, in the act of +taking aim at the jewel. As the priest passed back through this hall, he +saw a diamond-hilted knife lying on a marble table; and wishing to carry +away something wherewith to accredit his story, he reached out his +hand to take it; but no sooner had he touched it than all was dark. The +archer had shot with his arrow, the bright jewel was shivered into a +thousand pieces, the staircase had fled, and the priest found himself +buried alive. [49] + +Usually, however, though the lightning is wont to strike dead, with its +basilisk glance, those who rashly enter its mysterious caverns, it is +regarded rather as a benefactor than as a destroyer. The feelings with +which the myth-making age contemplated the thunder-shower as it +revived the earth paralyzed by a long drought, are shown in the myth of +Oidipous. The Sphinx, whose name signifies "the one who binds," is the +demon who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons the rain, muttering, dark +sayings which none but the all-knowing sun may understand. The flash +of solar light which causes the monster to fling herself down from the +cliff with a fearful roar, restores the land to prosperity. But besides +this, the association of the thunder-storm with the approach of summer +has produced many myths in which the lightning is symbolized as the +life-renewing wand of the victorious sun-god. Hence the use of the +divining-rod in the cure of disease; and hence the large family of +schamir-myths in which the dead are restored to life by leaves or herbs. +In Grimm's tale of the "Three Snake Leaves," a prince is buried alive +(like Sindbad) with his dead wife, and seeing a snake approaching her +body, he cuts it in three pieces. Presently another snake, crawling from +the corner, saw the other lying dead, and going, away soon returned +with three green leaves in its mouth; then laying the parts of the body +together so as to join, it put one leaf on each wound, and the dead +snake was alive again. The prince, applying the leaves to his wife's +body, restores her also to life." [50] In the Greek story, told by +AElian and Apollodoros, Polyidos is shut up with the corpse of Glaukos, +which he is ordered to restore to life. He kills a dragon which is +approaching the body, but is presently astonished at seeing another +dragon come with a blade of grass and place it upon its dead companion, +which instantly rises from the ground. Polyidos takes the same blade of +grass, and with it resuscitates Glaukos. The same incident occurs in the +Hindu story of Panch Phul Ranee, and in Fouque's "Sir Elidoc," which is +founded on a Breton legend. + +We need not wonder, then, at the extraordinary therapeutic +properties which are in all Aryan folk-lore ascribed to the +various lightning-plants. In Sweden sanitary amulets are made of +mistletoe-twigs, and the plant is supposed to be a specific against +epilepsy and an antidote for poisons. In Cornwall children are passed +through holes in ash-trees in order to cure them of hernia. Ash rods are +used in some parts of England for the cure of diseased sheep, cows, and +horses; and in particular they are supposed to neutralize the venom +of serpents. The notion that snakes are afraid of an ash-tree is not +extinct even in the United States. The other day I was told, not by an +old granny, but by a man fairly educated and endowed with a very unusual +amount of good common-sense, that a rattlesnake will sooner go through +fire than creep over ash leaves or into the shadow of an ash-tree. +Exactly the same statement is made by Piny, who adds that if you draw +a circle with an ash rod around the spot of ground on which a snake +is lying, the animal must die of starvation, being as effectually +imprisoned as Ugolino in the dungeon at Pisa. In Cornwall it is believed +that a blow from an ash stick will instantly kill any serpent. The ash +shares this virtue with the hazel and fern. A Swedish peasant will tell +you that snakes may be deprived of their venom by a touch with a hazel +wand; and when an ancient Greek had occasion to make his bed in the +woods, he selected fern leaves if possible, in the belief that the smell +of them would drive away poisonous animals. [51] + +But the beneficent character of the lightning appears still more clearly +in another class of myths. To the primitive man the shaft of light +coming down from heaven was typical of the original descent of fire for +the benefit and improvement of the human race. The Sioux Indians account +for the origin of fire by a myth of unmistakable kinship; they say that +"their first ancestor obtained his fire from the sparks which a friendly +panther struck from the rocks as he scampered up a stony hill." [52] +This panther is obviously the counterpart of the Aryan bird which +drops schamir. But the Aryan imagination hit upon a far more remarkable +conception. The ancient Hindus obtained fire by a process similar to +that employed by Count Rumford in his experiments on the generation of +heat by friction. They first wound a couple of cords around a pointed +stick in such a way that the unwinding of the one would wind up the +other, and then, placing the point of the stick against a circular disk +of wood, twirled it rapidly by alternate pulls on the two strings. This +instrument is called a chark, and is still used in South Africa, [53] +in Australia, in Sumatra, and among the Veddahs of Ceylon. The Russians +found it in Kamtchatka; and it was formerly employed in America, from +Labrador to the Straits of Magellan. [54] The Hindus churned milk by +a similar process; [55] and in order to explain the thunder-storm, a +Sanskrit poem tells how "once upon a time the Devas, or gods, and their +opponents, the Asuras, made a truce, and joined together in churning +the ocean to procure amrita, the drink of immortality. They took Mount +Mandara for a churning-stick, and, wrapping the great serpent Sesha +round it for a rope, they made the mountain spin round to and fro, the +Devas pulling at the serpent's tail, and the Asuras at its head." [56] +In this myth the churning-stick, with its flying serpent-cords, is +the lightning, and the armrita, or drink of immortality, is simply the +rain-water, which in Aryan folk-lore possesses the same healing virtues +as the lightning. "In Sclavonic myths it is the water of life which +restores the dead earth, a water brought by a bird from the depths of a +gloomy cave." [57] It is the celestial soma or mead which Indra loves +to drink; it is the ambrosial nectar of the Olympian gods; it is the +charmed water which in the Arabian Nights restores to human shape +the victims of wicked sorcerers; and it is the elixir of life which +mediaeval philosophers tried to discover, and in quest of which Ponce de +Leon traversed the wilds of Florida. [58] + +"Jacky's next proceeding was to get some dry sticks and wood, and +prepare a fire, which, to George's astonishment, he lighted thus. He got +a block of wood, in the middle of which he made a hole; then he cut and +pointed a long stick, and inserting the point into the block, worked +it round between his palms for some time and with increasing rapidity. +Presently there came a smell of burning wood, and soon after it burst +into a flame at the point of contact. Jacky cut slices of shark and +roasted them."--Reade, Never too Late to Mend, chap. xxxviii. + +The most interesting point in this Hindu myth is the name of the peaked +mountain Mandara, or Manthara, which the gods and devils took for their +churning-stick. The word means "a churning-stick," and it appears also, +with a prefixed preposition, in the name of the fire-drill, pramantha. +Now Kuhn has proved that this name, pramantha, is etymologically +identical with Prometheus, the name of the beneficent Titan, who stole +fire from heaven and bestowed it upon mankind as the richest of boons. +This sublime personage was originally nothing but the celestial drill +which churns fire out of the clouds; but the Greeks had so entirely +forgotten his origin that they interpreted his name as meaning "the one +who thinks beforehand," and accredited him with a brother, Epimetheus, +or "the one who thinks too late." The Greeks had adopted another name, +trypanon, for their fire-drill, and thus the primitive character of +Prometheus became obscured. + +I have said above that it was regarded as absolutely essential that +the divining-rod should be forked. To this rule, however, there was one +exception, and if any further evidence be needed to convince the +most sceptical that the divining-rod is nothing but a symbol of +the lightning, that exception will furnish such evidence. For this +exceptional kind of divining-rod was made of a pointed stick rotating +in a block of wood, and it was the presence of hidden water or treasure +which was supposed to excite the rotatory motion. + +In the myths relating to Prometheus, the lightning-god appears as the +originator of civilization, sometimes as the creator of the human race, +and always as its friend, [59] suffering in its behalf the most fearful +tortures at the hands of the jealous Zeus. In one story he creates man +by making a clay image and infusing into it a spark of the fire which he +had brought from heaven; in another story he is himself the first man. +In the Peloponnesian myth Phoroneus, who is Prometheus under another +name, is the first man, and his mother was an ash-tree. In Norse +mythology, also, the gods were said to have made the first man out of +the ash-tree Yggdrasil. The association of the heavenly fire with +the life-giving forces of nature is very common in the myths of both +hemispheres, and in view of the facts already cited it need not surprise +us. Hence the Hindu Agni and the Norse Thor were patrons of marriage, +and in Norway, the most lucky day on which to be married is still +supposed to be Thursday, which in old times was the day of the +fire-god. [60] Hence the lightning-plants have divers virtues in +matters pertaining to marriage. The Romans made their wedding torches +of whitethorn; hazel-nuts are still used all over Europe in divinations +relating to the future lover or sweetheart; [61] and under a mistletoe +bough it is allowable for a gentleman to kiss a lady. A vast number of +kindred superstitions are described by Mr. Kelly, to whom I am indebted +for many of these examples. [62] + +Thus we reach at last the completed conception of the divining-rod, or +as it is called in this sense the wish-rod, with its kindred talismans, +from Aladdin's lamp and the purse of Bedreddin Hassan, to the Sangreal, +the philosopher's stone, and the goblets of Oberon and Tristram. These +symbols of the reproductive energies of nature, which give to the +possessor every good and perfect gift, illustrate the uncurbed belief in +the power of wish which the ancient man shared with modern children. In +the Norse story of Frodi's quern, the myth assumes a whimsical shape. +The prose Edda tells of a primeval age of gold, when everybody had +whatever he wanted. This was because the giant Frodi had a mill which +ground out peace and plenty and abundance of gold withal, so that it lay +about the roads like pebbles. Through the inexcusable avarice of +Frodi, this wonderful implement was lost to the world. For he kept his +maid-servants working at the mill until they got out of patience, and +began to make it grind out hatred and war. Then came a mighty sea-rover +by night and slew Frodi and carried away the maids and the quern. When +he got well out to sea, he told them to grind out salt, and so they did +with a vengeance. They ground the ship full of salt and sank it, and so +the quern was lost forever, but the sea remains salt unto this day. + +Mr. Kelly rightly identifies Frodi with the sun-god Fro or Freyr, and +observes that the magic mill is only another form of the fire-churn, or +chark. According to another version the quern is still grinding away +and keeping the sea salt, and over the place where it lies there is a +prodigious whirlpool or maelstrom which sucks down ships. + +In its completed shape, the lightning-wand is the caduceus, or rod of +Hermes. I observed, in the preceding paper, that in the Greek conception +of Hermes there have been fused together the attributes of two deities +who were originally distinct. The Hermes of the Homeric Hymn is a +wind-god; but the later Hermes Agoraios, the patron of gymnasia, the +mutilation of whose statues caused such terrible excitement in Athens +during the Peloponnesian War, is a very different personage. He is +a fire-god, invested with many solar attributes, and represents the +quickening forces of nature. In this capacity the invention of fire was +ascribed to him as well as to Prometheus; he was said to be the friend +of mankind, and was surnamed Ploutodotes, or "the giver of wealth." + +The Norse wind-god Odin has in like manner acquired several of the +attributes of Freyr and Thor. [63] His lightning-spear, which is +borrowed from Thor, appears by a comical metamorphosis as a wish-rod +which will administer a sound thrashing to the enemies of its possessor. +Having cut a hazel stick, you have only to lay down an old coat, name +your intended victim, wish he was there, and whack away: he will howl +with pain at every blow. This wonderful cudgel appears in Dasent's tale +of "The Lad who went to the North Wind," with which we may conclude +this discussion. The story is told, with little variation, in Hindustan, +Germany, and Scandinavia. + +The North Wind, representing the mischievous Hermes, once blew away a +poor woman's meal. So her boy went to the North Wind and demanded his +rights for the meal his mother had lost. "I have n't got your meal," +said the Wind, "but here's a tablecloth which will cover itself with an +excellent dinner whenever you tell it to." So the lad took the cloth and +started for home. At nightfall he stopped at an inn, spread his cloth +on the table, and ordered it to cover itself with good things, and so +it did. But the landlord, who thought it would be money in his pocket +to have such a cloth, stole it after the boy had gone to bed, and +substituted another just like it in appearance. Next day the boy went +home in great glee to show off for his mother's astonishment what the +North Wind had given him, but all the dinner he got that day was what +the old woman cooked for him. In his despair he went back to the North +Wind and called him a liar, and again demanded his rights for the meal +he had lost. "I have n't got your meal," said the Wind, "but here's a +ram which will drop money out of its fleece whenever you tell it to." So +the lad travelled home, stopping over night at the same inn, and when he +got home he found himself with a ram which did n't drop coins out of its +fleece. A third time he visited the North Wind, and obtained a bag with +a stick in it which, at the word of command, would jump out of the bag +and lay on until told to stop. Guessing how matters stood as to his +cloth and ram, he turned in at the same tavern, and going to a bench lay +down as if to sleep. The landlord thought that a stick carried about in +a bag must be worth something, and so he stole quietly up to the bag, +meaning to get the stick out and change it. But just as he got within +whacking distance, the boy gave the word, and out jumped the stick +and beat the thief until he promised to give back the ram and the +tablecloth. And so the boy got his rights for the meal which the North +Wind had blown away. October, 1870. + + + + +III. WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. + +IT is related by Ovid that Lykaon, king of Arkadia, once invited Zeus +to dinner, and served up for him a dish of human flesh, in order to test +the god's omniscience. But the trick miserably failed, and the impious +monarch received the punishment which his crime had merited. He was +transformed into a wolf, that he might henceforth feed upon the viands +with which he had dared to pollute the table of the king of Olympos. +From that time forth, according to Pliny, a noble Arkadian was each +year, on the festival of Zeus Lykaios, led to the margin of a certain +lake. Hanging his clothes upon a tree, he then plunged into the water +and became a wolf. For the space of nine years he roamed about the +adjacent woods, and then, if he had not tasted human flesh during all +this time, he was allowed to swim back to the place where his clothes +were hanging, put them on, and return to his natural form. It is further +related of a certain Demainetos, that, having once been present at +a human sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, he ate of the flesh, and was +transformed into a wolf for a term of ten years. [64] + +These and other similar mythical germs were developed by the mediaeval +imagination into the horrible superstition of werewolves. + +A werewolf, or loup-garou [65] was a person who had the power of +transforming himself into a wolf, being endowed, while in the lupine +state, with the intelligence of a man, the ferocity of a wolf, and the +irresistible strength of a demon. The ancients believed in the existence +of such persons; but in the Middle Ages the metamorphosis was supposed +to be a phenomenon of daily occurrence, and even at the present day, +in secluded portions of Europe, the superstition is still cherished +by peasants. The belief, moreover, is supported by a vast amount +of evidence, which can neither be argued nor pooh-poohed into +insignificance. It is the business of the comparative mythologist to +trace the pedigree of the ideas from which such a conception may have +sprung; while to the critical historian belongs the task of ascertaining +and classifying the actual facts which this particular conception was +used to interpret. + +The mediaeval belief in werewolves is especially adapted to illustrate +the complicated manner in which divers mythical conceptions and +misunderstood natural occurrences will combine to generate a +long-enduring superstition. Mr. Cox, indeed, would have us believe that +the whole notion arose from an unintentional play upon words; but +the careful survey of the field, which has been taken by Hertz and +Baring-Gould, leads to the conclusion that many other circumstances +have been at work. The delusion, though doubtless purely mythical in its +origin, nevertheless presents in its developed state a curious mixture +of mythical and historical elements. + +With regard to the Arkadian legend, taken by itself, Mr. Cox is probably +right. The story seems to belong to that large class of myths which have +been devised in order to explain the meaning of equivocal words whose +true significance has been forgotten. The epithet Lykaios, as applied to +Zeus, had originally no reference to wolves: it means "the bright one," +and gave rise to lycanthropic legends only because of the similarity +in sound between the names for "wolf" and "brightness." Aryan mythology +furnishes numerous other instances of this confusion. The solar deity, +Phoibos Lykegenes, was originally the "offspring of light"; but popular +etymology made a kind of werewolf of him by interpreting his name as +the "wolf-born." The name of the hero Autolykos means simply the +"self-luminous"; but it was more frequently interpreted as meaning "a +very wolf," in allusion to the supposed character of its possessor. +Bazra, the name of the citadel of Carthage, was the Punic word for +"fortress"; but the Greeks confounded it with byrsa, "a hide," and hence +the story of the ox-hides cut into strips by Dido in order to measure +the area of the place to be fortified. The old theory that the Irish +were Phoenicians had a similar origin. The name Fena, used to designate +the old Scoti or Irish, is the plural of Fion, "fair," seen in the +name of the hero Fion Gall, or "Fingal"; but the monkish chroniclers +identified Fena with phoinix, whence arose the myth; and by a like +misunderstanding of the epithet Miledh, or "warrior," applied to Fion by +the Gaelic bards, there was generated a mythical hero, Milesius, and the +soubriquet "Milesian," colloquially employed in speaking of the Irish. +[66] So the Franks explained the name of the town Daras, in Mesopotamia, +by the story that the Emperor Justinian once addressed the chief +magistrate with the exclamation, daras, "thou shalt give": [67] the +Greek chronicler, Malalas, who spells the name Doras, informs us +with equal complacency that it was the place where Alexander overcame +Codomannus with dorn, "the spear." A certain passage in the Alps is +called Scaletta, from its resemblance to a staircase; but according to a +local tradition it owes its name to the bleaching skeletons of a +company of Moors who were destroyed there in the eighth century, while +attempting to penetrate into Northern Italy. The name of Antwerp denotes +the town built at a "wharf"; but it sounds very much like the Flemish +handt werpen, "hand-throwing": "hence arose the legend of the giant +who cut of the hands of those who passed his castle without paying him +black-mail, and threw them into the Scheldt." [68] In the myth of Bishop +Hatto, related in a previous paper, the Mause-thurm is a corruption of +maut-thurm; it means "customs-tower," and has nothing to do with mice +or rats. Doubtless this etymology was the cause of the floating myth +getting fastened to this particular place; that it did not give rise +to the myth itself is shown by the existence of the same tale in other +places. Somewhere in England there is a place called Chateau Vert; the +peasantry have corrupted it into Shotover, and say that it has +borne that name ever since Little John shot over a high hill in the +neighbourhood. [69] Latium means "the flat land"; but, according to +Virgil, it is the place where Saturn once hid (latuisset) from the wrath +of his usurping son Jupiter. [70] + +It was in this way that the constellation of the Great Bear received +its name. The Greek word arktos, answering to the Sanskrit riksha, meant +originally any bright object, and was applied to the bear--for what +reason it would not be easy to state--and to that constellation which +was most conspicuous in the latitude of the early home of the Aryans. +When the Greeks had long forgotten why these stars were called arktoi, +they symbolized them as a Great Bear fixed in the sky. So that, as +Max Muller observes, "the name of the Arctic regions rests on a +misunderstanding of a name framed thousands of years ago in Central +Asia, and the surprise with which many a thoughtful observer has looked +at these seven bright stars, wondering why they were ever called the +Bear, is removed by a reference to the early annals of human speech." +Among the Algonquins the sun-god Michabo was represented as a hare, his +name being compounded of michi, "great," and wabos, "a hare"; yet wabos +also meant "white," so that the god was doubtless originally called +simply "the Great White One." The same naive process has made bears of +the Arkadians, whose name, like that of the Lykians, merely signified +that they were "children of light"; and the metamorphosis of Kallisto, +mother of Arkas, into a bear, and of Lykaon into a wolf, rests +apparently upon no other foundation than an erroneous etymology. +Originally Lykaon was neither man nor wolf; he was but another form of +Phoibos Lykegenes, the light-born sun, and, as Mr. Cox has shown, his +legend is but a variation of that of Tantalos, who in time of drought +offers to Zeus the flesh of his own offspring, the withered fruits, and +is punished for his impiety. + +It seems to me, however, that this explanation, though valid as far +as it goes, is inadequate to explain all the features of the werewolf +superstition, or to account for its presence in all Aryan countries and +among many peoples who are not of Aryan origin. There can be no doubt +that the myth-makers transformed Lykaon into a wolf because of his +unlucky name; because what really meant "bright man" seemed to them +to mean "wolf-man"; but it has by no means been proved that a similar +equivocation occurred in the case of all the primitive Aryan werewolves, +nor has it been shown to be probable that among each people the +being with the uncanny name got thus accidentally confounded with the +particular beast most dreaded by that people. Etymology alone does not +explain the fact that while Gaul has been the favourite haunt of the +man-wolf, Scandinavia has been preferred by the man-bear, and Hindustan +by the man-tiger. To account for such a widespread phenomenon we must +seek a more general cause. + +Nothing is more strikingly characteristic of primitive thinking than the +close community of nature which it assumes between man and brute. The +doctrine of metempsychosis, which is found in some shape or other all +over the world, implies a fundamental identity between the two; the +Hindu is taught to respect the flocks browsing in the meadow, and will +on no account lift his hand against a cow, for who knows but it may +he his own grandmother? The recent researches of Mr. M`Lennan and Mr. +Herbert Spencer have served to connect this feeling with the primeval +worship of ancestors and with the savage customs of totemism. [71] + +The worship of ancestors seems to have been every where the oldest +systematized form of fetichistic religion. The reverence paid to the +chieftain of the tribe while living was continued and exaggerated after +his death The uncivilized man is everywhere incapable of grasping +the idea of death as it is apprehended by civilized people. He cannot +understand that a man should pass away so as to be no longer capable of +communicating with his fellows. The image of his dead chief or comrade +remains in his mind, and the savage's philosophic realism far surpasses +that of the most extravagant mediaeval schoolmen; to him the persistence +of the idea implies the persistence of the reality. The dead man, +accordingly, is not really dead; he has thrown off his body like a husk, +yet still retains his old appearance, and often shows himself to his old +friends, especially after nightfall. He is no doubt possessed of more +extensive powers than before his transformation, [72] and may very +likely have a share in regulating the weather, granting or withholding +rain. Therefore, argues the uncivilized mind, he is to be cajoled and +propitiated more sedulously now than before his strange transformation. + +This kind of worship still maintains a languid existence as the state +religion of China, and it still exists as a portion of Brahmanism; but +in the Vedic religion it is to be seen in all its vigour and in all +its naive simplicity. According to the ancient Aryan, the pitris, or +"Fathers" (Lat. patres), live in the sky along with Yama, the great +original Pitri of mankind. This first man came down from heaven in the +lightning, and back to heaven both himself and all his offspring must +have gone. There they distribute light unto men below, and they shine +themselves as stars; and hence the Christianized German peasant, fifty +centuries later, tells his children that the stars are angels' eyes, and +the English cottager impresses it on the youthful mind that it is wicked +to point at the stars, though why he cannot tell. But the Pitris are not +stars only, nor do they content themselves with idly looking down on +the affairs of men, after the fashion of the laissez-faire divinities of +Lucretius. They are, on the contrary, very busy with the weather; +they send rain, thunder, and lightning; and they especially delight +in rushing over the housetops in a great gale of wind, led on by their +chief, the mysterious huntsman, Hermes or Odin. + +It has been elsewhere shown that the howling dog, or wish-hound of +Hermes, whose appearance under the windows of a sick person is such +an alarming portent, is merely the tempest personified. Throughout +all Aryan mythology the souls of the dead are supposed to ride on the +night-wind, with their howling dogs, gathering into their throng the +souls of those just dying as they pass by their houses. [73] Sometimes +the whole complex conception is wrapped up in the notion of a single +dog, the messenger of the god of shades, who comes to summon the +departing soul. Sometimes, instead of a dog, we have a great ravening +wolf who comes to devour its victim and extinguish the sunlight of life, +as that old wolf of the tribe of Fenrir devoured little Red Riding-Hood +with her robe of scarlet twilight. [74] Thus we arrive at a true +werewolf myth. The storm-wind, or howling Rakshasa of Hindu folk-lore, +is "a great misshapen giant with red beard and red hair, with pointed +protruding teeth, ready to lacerate and devour human flesh; his body is +covered with coarse, bristling hair, his huge mouth is open, he looks +from side to side as he walks, lusting after the flesh and blood of men, +to satisfy his raging hunger and quench his consuming thirst. Towards +nightfall his strength increases manifold; he can change his shape at +will; he haunts the woods, and roams howling through the jungle." [75] + +Now if the storm-wind is a host of Pitris, or one great Pitri who +appears as a fearful giant, and is also a pack of wolves or wish-hounds, +or a single savage dog or wolf, the inference is obvious to the +mythopoeic mind that men may become wolves, at least after death. And to +the uncivilized thinker this inference is strengthened, as Mr. Spencer +has shown, by evidence registered on his own tribal totem or heraldic +emblem. The bears and lions and leopards of heraldry are the degenerate +descendants of the totem of savagery which designated the tribe by a +beast-symbol. To the untutored mind there is everything in a name; and +the descendant of Brown Bear or Yellow Tiger or Silver Hyaena cannot be +pronounced unfaithful to his own style of philosophizing, if he regards +his ancestors, who career about his hut in the darkness of night, +as belonging to whatever order of beasts his totem associations may +suggest. + +Thus we not only see a ray of light thrown on the subject of +metempsychosis, but we get a glimpse of the curious process by which +the intensely realistic mind of antiquity arrived at the notion that +men could be transformed into beasts. For the belief that the soul +can temporarily quit the body during lifetime has been universally +entertained; and from the conception of wolf-like ghosts it was but a +short step to the conception of corporeal werewolves. In the Middle Ages +the phenomena of trance and catalepsy were cited in proof of the theory +that the soul can leave the body and afterwards return to it. Hence it +was very difficult for a person accused of witchcraft to prove an alibi; +for to any amount of evidence showing that the body was innocently +reposing at home and in bed, the rejoinder was obvious that the soul may +nevertheless have been in attendance at the witches' Sabbath or busied +in maiming a neighbour's cattle. According to one mediaeval notion, the +soul of the werewolf quit its human body, which remained in a trance +until its return. [76] + +The mythological basis of the werewolf superstition is now, I believe, +sufficiently indicated. The belief, however, did not reach its complete +development, or acquire its most horrible features, until the pagan +habits of thought which had originated it were modified by contact +with Christian theology. To the ancient there was nothing necessarily +diabolical in the transformation of a man into a beast. But +Christianity, which retained such a host of pagan conceptions under such +strange disguises, which degraded the "All-father" Odin into the ogre +of the castle to which Jack climbed on his bean-stalk, and which blended +the beneficent lightning-god Thor and the mischievous Hermes and the +faun-like Pan into the grotesque Teutonic Devil, did not fail to impart +a new and fearful character to the belief in werewolves. Lycanthropy +became regarded as a species of witchcraft; the werewolf was supposed +to have obtained his peculiar powers through the favour or connivance +of the Devil; and hundreds of persons were burned alive or broken on +the wheel for having availed themselves of the privilege of +beast-metamorphosis. The superstition, thus widely extended and greatly +intensified, was confirmed by many singular phenomena which cannot +be omitted from any thorough discussion of the nature and causes of +lycanthropy. + +The first of these phenomena is the Berserker insanity, characteristic +of Scandinavia, but not unknown in other countries. In times when +killing one's enemies often formed a part of the necessary business of +life, persons were frequently found who killed for the mere love of the +thing; with whom slaughter was an end desirable in itself, not merely +a means to a desirable end. What the miser is in an age which worships +mammon, such was the Berserker in an age when the current idea of heaven +was that of a place where people could hack each other to pieces through +all eternity, and when the man who refused a challenge was punished with +confiscation of his estates. With these Northmen, in the ninth century, +the chief business and amusement in life was to set sail for some +pleasant country, like Spain or France, and make all the coasts and +navigable rivers hideous with rapine and massacre. When at home, in the +intervals between their freebooting expeditions, they were liable to +become possessed by a strange homicidal madness, during which they would +array themselves in the skins of wolves or bears, and sally forth by +night to crack the backbones, smash the skulls, and sometimes to drink +with fiendish glee the blood of unwary travellers or loiterers. These +fits of madness were usually followed by periods of utter exhaustion and +nervous depression. [77] + +Such, according to the unanimous testimony of historians, was the +celebrated "Berserker rage," not peculiar to the Northland, although +there most conspicuously manifested. Taking now a step in advance, we +find that in comparatively civilized countries there have been many +cases of monstrous homicidal insanity. The two most celebrated cases, +among those collected by Mr. Baring-Gould, are those of the Marechal +de Retz, in 1440, and of Elizabeth, a Hungarian countess, in the +seventeenth century. The Countess Elizabeth enticed young girls into +her palace on divers pretexts, and then coolly murdered them, for the +purpose of bathing in their blood. The spectacle of human suffering +became at last such a delight to her, that she would apply with her +own hands the most excruciating tortures, relishing the shrieks of her +victims as the epicure relishes each sip of his old Chateau Margaux. +In this way she is said to have murdered six hundred and fifty +persons before her evil career was brought to an end; though, when one +recollects the famous men in buckram and the notorious trio of crows, +one is inclined to strike off a cipher, and regard sixty-five as a +sufficiently imposing and far less improbable number. But the case of +the Marechal de Retz is still more frightful. A marshal of France, a +scholarly man, a patriot, and a man of holy life, he became suddenly +possessed by an uncontrollable desire to murder children. During seven +years he continued to inveigle little boys and girls into his castle, +at the rate of about TWO EACH WEEK, (?) and then put them to death in +various ways, that he might witness their agonies and bathe in their +blood; experiencing after each occasion the most dreadful remorse, +but led on by an irresistible craving to repeat the crime. When this +unparalleled iniquity was finally brought to light, the castle was found +to contain bins full of children's bones. The horrible details of the +trial are to be found in the histories of France by Michelet and Martin. + +Going a step further, we find cases in which the propensity to murder +has been accompanied by cannibalism. In 1598 a tailor of Chalons was +sentenced by the parliament of Paris to be burned alive for lycanthropy. +"This wretched man had decoyed children into his shop, or attacked them +in the gloaming when they strayed in the woods, had torn them with his +teeth and killed them, after which he seems calmly to have dressed their +flesh as ordinary meat, and to have eaten it with a great relish. The +number of little innocents whom he destroyed is unknown. A whole caskful +of bones was discovered in his house." [78] About 1850 a beggar in the +village of Polomyia, in Galicia, was proved to have killed and eaten +fourteen children. A house had one day caught fire and burnt to the +ground, roasting one of the inmates, who was unable to escape. The +beggar passed by soon after, and, as he was suffering from excessive +hunger, could not resist the temptation of making a meal off the charred +body. From that moment he was tormented by a craving for human flesh. +He met a little orphan girl, about nine years old, and giving her a +pinchbeck ring told her to seek for others like it under a tree in the +neighbouring wood. She was slain, carried to the beggar's hovel, and +eaten. In the course of three years thirteen other children mysteriously +disappeared, but no one knew whom to suspect. At last an innkeeper +missed a pair of ducks, and having no good opinion of this beggar's +honesty, went unexpectedly to his cabin, burst suddenly in at the door, +and to his horror found him in the act of hiding under his cloak a +severed head; a bowl of fresh blood stood under the oven, and pieces of +a thigh were cooking over the fire. [79] + +This occurred only about twenty years ago, and the criminal, though +ruled by an insane appetite, is not known to have been subject to any +mental delusion. But there have been a great many similar cases, in +which the homicidal or cannibal craving has been accompanied by genuine +hallucination. Forms of insanity in which the afflicted persons imagine +themselves to be brute animals are not perhaps very common, but they are +not unknown. I once knew a poor demented old man who believed himself +to be a horse, and would stand by the hour together before a manger, +nibbling hay, or deluding himself with the presence of so doing. Many +of the cannibals whose cases are related by Mr. Baring-Gould, in +his chapter of horrors, actually believed themselves to have been +transformed into wolves or other wild animals. Jean Grenier was a boy of +thirteen, partially idiotic, and of strongly marked canine physiognomy; +his jaws were large and projected forward, and his canine teeth were +unnaturally long, so as to protrude beyond the lower lip. He believed +himself to be a werewolf. One evening, meeting half a dozen young girls, +he scared them out of their wits by telling them that as soon as the sun +had set he would turn into a wolf and eat them for supper. A few days +later, one little girl, having gone out at nightfall to look after the +sheep, was attacked by some creature which in her terror she mistook for +a wolf, but which afterwards proved to be none other than Jean Grenier. +She beat him off with her sheep-staff, and fled home. As several +children had mysteriously disappeared from the neighbourhood, Grenier +was at once suspected. Being brought before the parliament of Bordeaux, +he stated that two years ago he had met the Devil one night in the woods +and had signed a compact with him and received from him a wolf-skin. +Since then he had roamed about as a wolf after dark, resuming his human +shape by daylight. He had killed and eaten several children whom he had +found alone in the fields, and on one occasion he had entered a house +while the family were out and taken the baby from its cradle. A careful +investigation proved the truth of these statements, so far as the +cannibalism was concerned. There is no doubt that the missing children +were eaten by Jean Grenier, and there is no doubt that in his own mind +the halfwitted boy was firmly convinced that he was a wolf. Here the +lycanthropy was complete. + +In the year 1598, "in a wild and unfrequented spot near Caude, some +countrymen came one day upon the corpse of a boy of fifteen, horribly +mutilated and bespattered with blood. As the men approached, two wolves, +which had been rending the body, bounded away into the thicket. The men +gave chase immediately, following their bloody tracks till they lost +them; when, suddenly crouching among the bushes, his teeth chattering +with fear, they found a man half naked, with long hair and beard, and +with his hands dyed in blood. His nails were long as claws, and were +clotted with fresh gore and shreds of human flesh." [80] + +This man, Jacques Roulet, was a poor, half-witted creature under the +dominion of a cannibal appetite. He was employed in tearing to pieces +the corpse of the boy when these countrymen came up. Whether there were +any wolves in the case, except what the excited imaginations of the men +may have conjured up, I will not presume to determine; but it is certain +that Roulet supposed himself to be a wolf, and killed and ate several +persons under the influence of the delusion. He was sentenced to death, +but the parliament of Paris reversed the sentence, and charitably shut +him up in a madhouse. + +The annals of the Middle Ages furnish many cases similar to these of +Grenier and Roulet. Their share in maintaining the werewolf superstition +is undeniable; but modern science finds in them nothing that cannot be +readily explained. That stupendous process of breeding, which we call +civilization, has been for long ages strengthening those kindly social +feelings by the possession of which we are chiefly distinguished from +the brutes, leaving our primitive bestial impulses to die for want of +exercise, or checking in every possible way their further expansion by +legislative enactments. But this process, which is transforming us from +savages into civilized men, is a very slow one; and now and then there +occur cases of what physiologists call atavism, or reversion to an +ancestral type of character. Now and then persons are born, in civilized +countries, whose intellectual powers are on a level with those of the +most degraded Australian savage, and these we call idiots. And now and +then persons are born possessed of the bestial appetites and cravings +of primitive man, his fiendish cruelty and his liking for human flesh. +Modern physiology knows how to classify and explain these abnormal +cases, but to the unscientific mediaeval mind they were explicable only +on the hypothesis of a diabolical metamorphosis. And there is nothing +strange in the fact that, in an age when the prevailing habits of +thought rendered the transformation of men into beasts an easily +admissible notion, these monsters of cruelty and depraved appetite +should have been regarded as capable of taking on bestial forms. Nor is +it strange that the hallucination under which these unfortunate wretches +laboured should have taken such a shape as to account to their feeble +intelligence for the existence of the appetites which they were +conscious of not sharing with their neighbours and contemporaries. If +a myth is a piece of unscientific philosophizing, it must sometimes +be applied to the explanation of obscure psychological as well as of +physical phenomena. Where the modern calmly taps his forehead and says, +"Arrested development," the terrified ancient made the sign of the cross +and cried, "Werewolf." + +We shall be assisted in this explanation by turning aside for a +moment to examine the wild superstitions about "changelings," which +contributed, along with so many others, to make the lives of our +ancestors anxious and miserable. These superstitions were for the most +part attempts to explain the phenomena of insanity, epilepsy, and other +obscure nervous diseases. A man who has hitherto enjoyed perfect health, +and whose actions have been consistent and rational, suddenly loses all +self-control and seems actuated by a will foreign to himself. Modern +science possesses the key to this phenomenon; but in former times it was +explicable only on the hypothesis that a demon had entered the body +of the lunatic, or else that the fairies had stolen the real man and +substituted for him a diabolical phantom exactly like him in stature and +features. Hence the numerous legends of changelings, some of which +are very curious. In Irish folk-lore we find the story of one Rickard, +surnamed the Rake, from his worthless character. A good-natured, idle +fellow, he spent all his evenings in dancing,--an accomplishment in +which no one in the village could rival him. One night, in the midst of +a lively reel, he fell down in a fit. "He's struck with a fairy-dart," +exclaimed all the friends, and they carried him home and nursed him; but +his face grew so thin and his manner so morose that by and by all began +to suspect that the true Rickard was gone and a changeling put in his +place. Rickard, with all his accomplishments, was no musician; and so, +in order to put the matter to a crucial test, a bagpipe was left in the +room by the side of his bed. The trick succeeded. One hot summer's day, +when all were supposed to be in the field making hay, some members +of the family secreted in a clothes-press saw the bedroom door open a +little way, and a lean, foxy face, with a pair of deep-sunken eyes, peer +anxiously about the premises. Having satisfied itself that the coast +was clear, the face withdrew, the door was closed, and presently such +ravishing strains of music were heard as never proceeded from a bagpipe +before or since that day. Soon was heard the rustle of innumerable +fairies, come to dance to the changeling's music. Then the "fairy-man" +of the village, who was keeping watch with the family, heated a pair +of tongs red-hot, and with deafening shouts all burst at once into the +sick-chamber. The music had ceased and the room was empty, but in at the +window glared a fiendish face, with such fearful looks of hatred, that +for a moment all stood motionless with terror. But when the fairy-man, +recovering himself, advanced with the hot tongs to pinch its nose, it +vanished with an unearthly yell, and there on the bed was Rickard, safe +and sound, and cured of his epilepsy. [81] + +Comparing this legend with numerous others relating to changelings, +and stripping off the fantastic garb of fairy-lore with which popular +imagination has invested them, it seems impossible to doubt that they +have arisen from myths devised for the purpose of explaining the obscure +phenomena of mental disease. If this be so, they afford an excellent +collateral illustration of the belief in werewolves. The same mental +habits which led men to regard the insane or epileptic person as a +changeling, and which allowed them to explain catalepsy as the temporary +departure of a witch's soul from its body, would enable them to +attribute a wolf's nature to the maniac or idiot with cannibal +appetites. And when the myth-forming process had got thus far, it would +not stop short of assigning to the unfortunate wretch a tangible lupine +body; for all ancient mythology teemed with precedents for such a +transformation. + +It remains for us to sum up,--to tie into a bunch the keys which +have helped us to penetrate into the secret causes of the werewolf +superstition. In a previous paper we saw what a host of myths, +fairy-tales, and superstitious observances have sprung from attempts to +interpret one simple natural phenomenon,--the descent of fire from the +clouds. Here, on the other hand, we see what a heterogeneous multitude +of mythical elements may combine to build up in course of time a single +enormous superstition, and we see how curiously fact and fancy have +co-operated in keeping the superstition from falling. In the first place +the worship of dead ancestors with wolf totems originated the notion +of the transformation of men into divine or superhuman wolves; and this +notion was confirmed by the ambiguous explanation of the storm-wind +as the rushing of a troop of dead men's souls or as the howling of +wolf-like monsters. Mediaeval Christianity retained these conceptions, +merely changing the superhuman wolves into evil demons; and finally the +occurrence of cases of Berserker madness and cannibalism, accompanied by +lycanthropic hallucinations, being interpreted as due to such demoniacal +metamorphosis, gave rise to the werewolf superstition of the Middle +Ages. The etymological proceedings, to which Mr. Cox would incontinently +ascribe the origin of the entire superstition, seemed to me to have +played a very subordinate part in the matter. To suppose that Jean +Grenier imagined himself to be a wolf, because the Greek word for wolf +sounded like the word for light, and thus gave rise to the story of a +light-deity who became a wolf, seems to me quite inadmissible. Yet as +far as such verbal equivocations may have prevailed, they doubtless +helped to sustain the delusion. + +Thus we need no longer regard our werewolf as an inexplicable creature +of undetermined pedigree. But any account of him would be quite +imperfect which should omit all consideration of the methods by which +his change of form was accomplished. By the ancient Romans the werewolf +was commonly called a "skin-changer" or "turn-coat" (versipellis), and +similar epithets were applied to him in the Middle Ages The mediaeval +theory was that, while the werewolf kept his human form, his hair grew +inwards; when he wished to become a wolf, he simply turned himself +inside out. In many trials on record, the prisoners were closely +interrogated as to how this inversion might be accomplished; but I am +not aware that any one of them ever gave a satisfactory answer. At +the moment of change their memories seem to have become temporarily +befogged. Now and then a poor wretch had his arms and legs cut off, +or was partially flayed, in order that the ingrowing hair might be +detected. [82] Another theory was, that the possessed person had merely +to put on a wolf's skin, in order to assume instantly the lupine form +and character; and in this may perhaps be seen a vague reminiscence of +the alleged fact that Berserkers were in the habit of haunting the woods +by night, clothed in the hides of wolves or bears. [83] Such a wolfskin +was kept by the boy Grenier. Roulet, on the other hand, confessed to +using a magic salve or ointment. A fourth method of becoming a werewolf +was to obtain a girdle, usually made of human skin. Several cases are +related in Thorpe's "Northern Mythology." One hot day in harvest-time +some reapers lay down to sleep in the shade; when one of them, who could +not sleep, saw the man next him arise quietly and gird him with a strap, +whereupon he instantly vanished, and a wolf jumped up from among the +sleepers and ran off across the fields. Another man, who possessed such +a girdle, once went away from home without remembering to lock it +up. His little son climbed up to the cupboard and got it, and as he +proceeded to buckle it around his waist, he became instantly transformed +into a strange-looking beast. Just then his father came in, and seizing +the girdle restored the child to his natural shape. The boy said that no +sooner had he buckled it on than he was tormented with a raging hunger. + +Sometimes the werewolf transformation led to unlucky accidents. At +Caseburg, as a man and his wife were making hay, the woman threw down +her pitchfork and went away, telling her husband that if a wild beast +should come to him during her absence he must throw his hat at it. +Presently a she-wolf rushed towards him. The man threw his hat at it, +but a boy came up from another part of the field and stabbed the animal +with his pitchfork, whereupon it vanished, and the woman's dead body lay +at his feet. + +A parallel legend shows that this woman wished to have the hat thrown +at her, in order that she might be henceforth free from her liability +to become a werewolf. A man was one night returning with his wife from +a merry-making when he felt the change coming on. Giving his wife the +reins, he jumped from the wagon, telling her to strike with her apron +at any animal which might come to her. In a few moments a wolf ran up to +the side of the vehicle, and, as the woman struck out with her apron, it +bit off a piece and ran away. Presently the man returned with the +piece of apron in his mouth and consoled his terrified wife with the +information that the enchantment had left him forever. + +A terrible case at a village in Auvergne has found its way into the +annals of witchcraft. "A gentleman while hunting was suddenly attacked +by a savage wolf of monstrous size. Impenetrable by his shot, the beast +made a spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle luckily, +or unluckily for the unfortunate lady, contrived to cut off one of its +fore-paws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the best of +his way homewards in safety. On the road he met a friend, to whom he +exhibited a bleeding paw, or rather (as it now appeared) a woman's hand, +upon which was a wedding-ring. His wife's ring was at once recognized by +the other. His suspicions aroused, he immediately went in search of his +wife, who was found sitting by the fire in the kitchen, her arm hidden +beneath her apron, when the husband, seizing her by the arm, found his +terrible suspicions verified. The bleeding stump was there, evidently +just fresh from the wound. She was given into custody, and in the event +was burned at Riom, in presence of thousands of spectators." [84] + +Sometimes a werewolf was cured merely by recognizing him while in his +brute shape. A Swedish legend tells of a cottager who, on entering the +forest one day without recollecting to say his Patter Noster, got into +the power of a Troll, who changed him into a wolf. For many years his +wife mourned him as dead. But one Christmas eve the old Troll, disguised +as a beggarwoman, came to the house for alms; and being taken in and +kindly treated, told the woman that her husband might very likely appear +to her in wolf-shape. Going at night to the pantry to lay aside a joint +of meat for tomorrow's dinner, she saw a wolf standing with its paws on +the window-sill, looking wistfully in at her. "Ah, dearest," said she, +"if I knew that thou wert really my husband, I would give thee a bone." +Whereupon the wolf-skin fell off, and her husband stood before her in +the same old clothes which he had on the day that the Troll got hold of +him. + +In Denmark it was believed that if a woman were to creep through a +colt's placental membrane stretched between four sticks, she would for +the rest of her life bring forth children without pain or illness; but +all the boys would in such case be werewolves, and all the girls Maras, +or nightmares. In this grotesque superstition appears that curious +kinship between the werewolf and the wife or maiden of supernatural +race, which serves admirably to illustrate the nature of both +conceptions, and the elucidation of which shall occupy us throughout the +remainder of this paper. + +It is, perhaps, needless to state that in the personality of the +nightmare, or Mara, there was nothing equine. The Mara was a female +demon, [85] who would come at night and torment men or women by +crouching on their chests or stomachs and stopping their respiration. +The scene is well enough represented in Fuseli's picture, though the +frenzied-looking horse which there accompanies the demon has no place +in the original superstition. A Netherlandish story illustrates the +character of the Mara. Two young men were in love with the same damsel. +One of them, being tormented every night by a Mara, sought advice from +his rival, and it was a treacherous counsel that he got. "Hold a sharp +knife with the point towards your breast, and you'll never see the Mara +again," said this false friend. The lad thanked him, but when he lay +down to rest he thought it as well to be on the safe side, and so held +the knife handle downward. So when the Mara came, instead of forcing the +blade into his breast, she cut herself badly, and fled howling; and let +us hope, though the legend here leaves us in the dark, that this poor +youth, who is said to have been the comelier of the two, revenged +himself on his malicious rival by marrying the young lady. + +But the Mara sometimes appeared in less revolting shape, and became the +mistress or even the wife of some mortal man to whom she happened to +take a fancy. In such cases she would vanish on being recognized. There +is a well-told monkish tale of a pious knight who, journeying one day +through the forest, found a beautiful lady stripped naked and tied to a +tree, her back all covered with deep gashes streaming with blood, from a +flogging which some bandits had given her. Of course he took her home +to his castle and married her, and for a while they lived very happily +together, and the fame of the lady's beauty was so great that kings and +emperors held tournaments in honor of her. But this pious knight used +to go to mass every Sunday, and greatly was he scandalized when he found +that his wife would never stay to assist in the Credo, but would always +get up and walk out of church just as the choir struck up. All her +husband's coaxing was of no use; threats and entreaties were alike +powerless even to elicit an explanation of this strange conduct. At last +the good man determined to use force; and so one Sunday, as the lady got +up to go out, according to custom, he seized her by the arm and sternly +commanded her to remain. Her whole frame was suddenly convulsed, and her +dark eyes gleamed with weird, unearthly brilliancy. The services paused +for a moment, and all eyes were turned toward the knight and his +lady. "In God's name, tell me what thou art," shouted the knight; and +instantly, says the chronicler, "the bodily form of the lady melted +away, and was seen no more; whilst, with a cry of anguish and of terror, +an evil spirit of monstrous form rose from the ground, clave the chapel +roof asunder, and disappeared in the air." + +In a Danish legend, the Mara betrays her affinity to the Nixies, or +Swan-maidens. A peasant discovered that his sweetheart was in the habit +of coming to him by night as a Mara. He kept strict watch until he +discovered her creeping into the room through a small knot-hole in the +door. Next day he made a peg, and after she had come to him, drove in +the peg so that she was unable to escape. They were married and lived +together many years; but one night it happened that the man, joking with +his wife about the way in which he had secured her, drew the peg from +the knot-hole, that she might see how she had entered his room. As she +peeped through, she became suddenly quite small, passed out, and was +never seen again. + +The well-known pathological phenomena of nightmare are sufficient to +account for the mediaeval theory of a fiend who sits upon one's bosom +and hinders respiration; but as we compare these various legends +relating to the Mara, we see that a more recondite explanation is needed +to account for all her peculiarities. Indigestion may interfere with our +breathing, but it does not make beautiful women crawl through keyholes, +nor does it bring wives from the spirit-world. The Mara belongs to an +ancient family, and in passing from the regions of monkish superstition +to those of pure mythology we find that, like her kinsman the werewolf, +she had once seen better days. Christianity made a demon of the Mara, +and adopted the theory that Satan employed these seductive creatures as +agents for ruining human souls. Such is the character of the knight's +wife, in the monkish legend just cited. But in the Danish tale the +Mara appears as one of that large family of supernatural wives who are +permitted to live with mortal men under certain conditions, but who are +compelled to flee away when these conditions are broken, as is always +sure to be the case. The eldest and one of the loveliest of this family +is the Hindu nymph Urvasi, whose love adventures with Pururavas are +narrated in the Puranas, and form the subject of the well-known and +exquisite Sanskrit drama by Kalidasa. Urvasi is allowed to live with +Pururavas so long as she does not see him undressed. But one night her +kinsmen, the Gandharvas, or cloud-demons, vexed at her long absence from +heaven, resolved to get her away from her mortal companion, They stole +a pet lamb which had been tied at the foot of her couch, whereat she +bitterly upbraided her husband. In rage and mortification, Pururavas +sprang up without throwing on his tunic, and grasping his sword sought +the robber. Then the wicked Gandharvas sent a flash of lightning, and +Urvasi, seeing her naked husband, instantly vanished. + +The different versions of this legend, which have been elaborately +analyzed by comparative mythologists, leave no doubt that Urvasi is +one of the dawn-nymphs or bright fleecy clouds of early morning, which +vanish as the splendour of the sun is unveiled. We saw, in the preceding +paper, that the ancient Aryans regarded the sky as a sea or great lake, +and that the clouds were explained variously as Phaiakian ships with +bird-like beaks sailing over this lake, or as bright birds of divers +shapes and hues. The light fleecy cirrhi were regarded as mermaids, or +as swans, or as maidens with swan's plumage. In Sanskrit they are called +Apsaras, or "those who move in the water," and the Elves and Maras of +Teutonic mythology have the same significance. Urvasi appears in one +legend as a bird; and a South German prescription for getting rid of +the Mara asserts that if she be wrapped up in the bedclothes and +firmly held, a white dove will forthwith fly from the room, leaving the +bedclothes empty. [86] + +In the story of Melusina the cloud-maiden appears as a kind of mermaid, +but in other respects the legend resembles that of Urvasi. Raymond, +Count de la Foret, of Poitou, having by an accident killed his patron +and benefactor during a hunting excursion, fled in terror and despair +into the deep recesses of the forest. All the afternoon and evening he +wandered through the thick dark woods, until at midnight he came upon +a strange scene. All at once "the boughs of the trees became less +interlaced, and the trunks fewer; next moment his horse, crashing +through the shrubs, brought him out on a pleasant glade, white with +rime, and illumined by the new moon; in the midst bubbled up a limpid +fountain, and flowed away over a pebbly-floor with a soothing murmur. +Near the fountain-head sat three maidens in glimmering white dresses, +with long waving golden hair, and faces of inexpressible beauty." [87] +One of them advanced to meet Raymond, and according to all mythological +precedent, they were betrothed before daybreak. In due time the +fountain-nymph [88] became Countess de la Foret, but her husband was +given to understand that all her Saturdays would be passed in strictest +seclusion, upon which he must never dare to intrude, under penalty of +losing her forever. For many years all went well, save that the fair +Melusina's children were, without exception, misshapen or disfigured. +But after a while this strange weekly seclusion got bruited about all +over the neighbourhood, and people shook their heads and looked grave +about it. So many gossiping tales came to the Count's ears, that he +began to grow anxious and suspicious, and at last he determined to know +the worst. He went one Saturday to Melusina's private apartments, and +going through one empty room after another, at last came to a locked +door which opened into a bath; looking through a keyhole, there he +saw the Countess transformed from the waist downwards into a fish, +disporting herself like a mermaid in the water. Of course he could not +keep the secret, but when some time afterwards they quarrelled, must +needs address her as "a vile serpent, contaminator of his honourable +race." So she disappeared through the window, but ever afterward hovered +about her husband's castle of Lusignan, like a Banshee, whenever one of +its lords was about to die. + +The well-known story of Undine is similar to that of Melusina, save that +the naiad's desire to obtain a human soul is a conception foreign to +the spirit of the myth, and marks the degradation which Christianity had +inflicted upon the denizens of fairy-land. In one of Dasent's tales the +water-maiden is replaced by a kind of werewolf. A white bear marries a +young girl, but assumes the human shape at night. She is never to look +upon him in his human shape, but how could a young bride be expected +to obey such an injunction as that? She lights a candle while he is +sleeping, and discovers the handsomest prince in the world; unluckily +she drops tallow on his shirt, and that tells the story. But she is more +fortunate than poor Raymond, for after a tiresome journey to the "land +east of the sun and west of the moon," and an arduous washing-match +with a parcel of ugly Trolls, she washes out the spots, and ends her +husband's enchantment. [89] + +In the majority of these legends, however, the Apsaras, or cloud-maiden, +has a shirt of swan's feathers which plays the same part as the wolfskin +cape or girdle of the werewolf. If you could get hold of a werewolf's +sack and burn it, a permanent cure was effected. No danger of a relapse, +unless the Devil furnished him with a new wolfskin. So the swan-maiden +kept her human form, as long as she was deprived of her tunic of +feathers. Indo-European folk-lore teems with stories of swan-maidens +forcibly wooed and won by mortals who had stolen their clothes. A man +travelling along the road passes by a lake where several lovely girls +are bathing; their dresses, made of feathers curiously and daintily +woven, lie on the shore. He approaches the place cautiously and steals +one of these dresses. [90] When the girls have finished their bathing, +they all come and get their dresses and swim away as swans; but the one +whose dress is stolen must needs stay on shore and marry the thief. It +is needless to add that they live happily together for many years, +or that finally the good man accidentally leaves the cupboard door +unlocked, whereupon his wife gets back her swan-shirt and flies away +from him, never to return. But it is not always a shirt of feathers. In +one German story, a nobleman hunting deer finds a maiden bathing in a +clear pool in the forest. He runs stealthily up to her and seizes her +necklace, at which she loses the power to flee. They are married, and +she bears seven sons at once, all of whom have gold chains about their +necks, and are able to transform themselves into swans whenever they +like. A Flemish legend tells of three Nixies, or water-sprites, who came +out of the Meuse one autumn evening, and helped the villagers celebrate +the end of the vintage. Such graceful dancers had never been seen in +Flanders, and they could sing as well as they could dance. As the night +was warm, one of them took off her gloves and gave them to her partner +to hold for her. When the clock struck twelve the other two started off +in hot haste, and then there was a hue and cry for gloves. The lad would +keep them as love-tokens, and so the poor Nixie had to go home without +them; but she must have died on the way, for next morning the waters of +the Meuse were blood-red, and those damsels never returned. + +In the Faro Islands it is believed that seals cast off their skins every +ninth night, assume human forms, and sing and dance like men and women +until daybreak, when they resume their skins and their seal natures. +Of course a man once found and hid one of these sealskins, and so got +a mermaid for a wife; and of course she recovered the skin and escaped. +[91] On the coasts of Ireland it is supposed to be quite an ordinary +thing for young sea-fairies to get human husbands in this way; the +brazen things even come to shore on purpose, and leave their red caps +lying around for young men to pick up; but it behooves the husband to +keep a strict watch over the red cap, if he would not see his children +left motherless. + +This mermaid's cap has contributed its quota to the superstitions of +witchcraft. An Irish story tells how Red James was aroused from sleep +one night by noises in the kitchen. Going down to the door, he saw a +lot of old women drinking punch around the fireplace, and laughing and +joking with his housekeeper. When the punchbowl was empty, they all put +on red caps, and singing + + "By yarrow and rue, + And my red cap too, + Hie me over to England," + +they flew up chimney. So Jimmy burst into the room, and seized the +housekeeper's cap, and went along with them. They flew across the sea to +a castle in England, passed through the keyholes from room to room and +into the cellar, where they had a famous carouse. Unluckily Jimmy, being +unused to such good cheer, got drunk, and forgot to put on his cap when +the others did. So next morning the lord's butler found him dead-drunk +on the cellar floor, surrounded by empty casks. He was sentenced to be +hung without any trial worth speaking of; but as he was carted to the +gallows an old woman cried out, "Ach, Jimmy alanna! Would you be afther +dyin' in a strange land without your red birredh?" The lord made no +objections, and so the red cap was brought and put on him. Accordingly +when Jimmy had got to the gallows and was making his last speech for the +edification of the spectators, he unexpectedly and somewhat irrelevantly +exclaimed, "By yarrow and rue," etc., and was off like a rocket, +shooting through the blue air en route for old Ireland. [92] + +In another Irish legend an enchanted ass comes into the kitchen of a +great house every night, and washes the dishes and scours the tins, +so that the servants lead an easy life of it. After a while in their +exuberant gratitude they offer him any present for which he may feel +inclined to ask. He desires only "an ould coat, to keep the chill off of +him these could nights"; but as soon as he gets into the coat he resumes +his human form and bids them good by, and thenceforth they may wash +their own dishes and scour their own tins, for all him. + +But we are diverging from the subject of swan-maidens, and are in danger +of losing ourselves in that labyrinth of popular fancies which is more +intricate than any that Daidalos ever planned. The significance of +all these sealskins and feather-dresses and mermaid caps and +werewolf-girdles may best be sought in the etymology of words like the +German leichnam, in which the body is described as a garment of flesh +for the soul. [93] In the naive philosophy of primitive thinkers, the +soul, in passing from one visible shape to another, had only to put on +the outward integument of the creature in which it wished to incarnate +itself. With respect to the mode of metamorphosis, there is little +difference between the werewolf and the swan-maiden; and the similarity +is no less striking between the genesis of the two conceptions. The +original werewolf is the night-wind, regarded now as a manlike deity and +now as a howling lupine fiend; and the original swan-maiden is the +light fleecy cloud, regarded either as a woman-like goddess or as a +bird swimming in the sky sea. The one conception has been productive of +little else but horrors; the other has given rise to a great variety +of fanciful creations, from the treacherous mermaid and the fiendish +nightmare to the gentle Undine, the charming Nausikaa, and the stately +Muse of classic antiquity. + +We have seen that the original werewolf, howling in the wintry blast, +is a kind of psychopomp, or leader of departed souls; he is the +wild ancestor of the death-dog, whose voice under the window of a +sick-chamber is even now a sound of ill-omen. The swan-maiden has also +been supposed to summon the dying to her home in the Phaiakian land. +The Valkyries, with their shirts of swan-plumage, who hovered over +Scandinavian battle-fields to receive the souls of falling heroes, were +identical with the Hindu Apsaras; and the Houris of the Mussulman belong +to the same family. Even for the angels,--women with large wings, who +are seen in popular pictures bearing mortals on high towards heaven,--we +can hardly claim a different kinship. Melusina, when she leaves +the castle of Lusignan, becomes a Banshee; and it has been a common +superstition among sailors, that the appearance of a mermaid, with her +comb and looking-glass, foretokens shipwreck, with the loss of all on +board. + +October, 1870. + + + + +IV. LIGHT AND DARKNESS. + +WHEN Maitland blasphemously asserted that God was but "a Bogie of +the nursery," he unwittingly made a remark as suggestive in point of +philology as it was crude and repulsive in its atheism. When examined +with the lenses of linguistic science, the "Bogie" or "Bug-a-boo" or +"Bugbear" of nursery lore turns out to be identical, not only with +the fairy "Puck," whom Shakespeare has immortalized, but also with the +Slavonic "Bog" and the "Baga" of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, both +of which are names for the Supreme Being. If we proceed further, and +inquire after the ancestral form of these epithets,--so strangely +incongruous in their significations,--we shall find it in the Old Aryan +"Bhaga," which reappears unchanged in the Sanskrit of the Vedas, and has +left a memento of itself in the surname of the Phrygian Zeus "Bagaios." +It seems originally to have denoted either the unclouded sun or the sky +of noonday illumined by the solar rays. In Sayana's commentary on the +Rig-Veda, Bhaga is enumerated among the seven (or eight) sons of Aditi, +the boundless Orient; and he is elsewhere described as the lord of life, +the giver of bread, and the bringer of happiness. [94] + +Thus the same name which, to the Vedic poet, to the Persian of the time +of Xerxes, and to the modern Russian, suggests the supreme majesty +of deity, is in English associated with an ugly and ludicrous fiend, +closely akin to that grotesque Northern Devil of whom Southey was unable +to think without laughing. Such is the irony of fate toward a deposed +deity. The German name for idol--Abgott, that is, "ex-god," or +"dethroned god"--sums up in a single etymology the history of the +havoc wrought by monotheism among the ancient symbols of deity. In +the hospitable Pantheon of the Greeks and Romans a niche was always +in readiness for every new divinity who could produce respectable +credentials; but the triumph of monotheism converted the stately mansion +into a Pandemonium peopled with fiends. To the monotheist an "ex-god" +was simply a devilish deceiver of mankind whom the true God had +succeeded in vanquishing; and thus the word demon, which to the ancient +meant a divine or semi-divine being, came to be applied to fiends +exclusively. Thus the Teutonic races, who preserved the name of their +highest divinity, Odin,--originally, Guodan,--by which to designate +the God of the Christian, [95] were unable to regard the Bog of ancient +tradition as anything but an "ex-god," or vanquished demon. + +The most striking illustration of this process is to be found in the +word devil itself: To a reader unfamiliar with the endless tricks which +language delights in playing, it may seem shocking to be told that the +Gypsies use the word devil as the name of God. [96] This, however, is +not because these people have made the archfiend an object of worship, +but because the Gypsy language, descending directly from the Sanskrit, +has retained in its primitive exalted sense a word which the English +language has received only in its debased and perverted sense. The +Teutonic words devil, teufel, diuval, djofull, djevful, may all +be traced back to the Zend dev, [97] a name in which is implicitly +contained the record of the oldest monotheistic revolution known to +history. The influence of the so-called Zoroastrian reform upon the +long-subsequent development of Christianity will receive further notice +in the course of this paper; for the present it is enough to know that +it furnished for all Christendom the name by which it designates the +author of evil. To the Parsee follower of Zarathustra the name of the +Devil has very nearly the same signification as to the Christian; yet, +as Grimm has shown, it is nothing else than a corruption of deva, the +Sanskrit name for God. When Zarathustra overthrew the primeval Aryan +nature-worship in Bactria, this name met the same evil fate which in +early Christian times overtook the word demon, and from a symbol of +reverence became henceforth a symbol of detestation. [98] But throughout +the rest of the Aryan world it achieved a nobler career, producing the +Greek theos, the Lithuanian diewas, the Latin deus, and hence the modern +French Dieu, all meaning God. + +If we trace back this remarkable word to its primitive source in that +once lost but now partially recovered mother-tongue from which all our +Aryan languages are descended, we find a root div or dyu, meaning "to +shine." From the first-mentioned form comes deva, with its numerous +progeny of good and evil appellatives; from the latter is derived the +name of Dyaus, with its brethren, Zeus and Jupiter. In Sanskrit dyu, +as a noun, means "sky" and "day"; and there are many passages in the +Rig-Veda where the character of the god Dyaus, as the personification +of the sky or the brightness of the ethereal heavens, is unmistakably +apparent. This key unlocks for us one of the secrets of Greek mythology. +So long as there was for Zeus no better etymology than that which +assigned it to the root zen, "to live," [99] there was little hope +of understanding the nature of Zeus. But when we learn that Zeus is +identical with Dyaus, the bright sky, we are enabled to understand +Horace's expression, "sub Jove frigido," and the prayer of the +Athenians, "Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the land of the Athenians, and on +the fields." [100] Such expressions as these were retained by the Greeks +and Romans long after they had forgotten that their supreme deity +was once the sky. Yet even the Brahman, from whose mind the physical +significance of the god's name never wholly disappeared, could speak of +him as Father Dyaus, the great Pitri, or ancestor of gods and men; and +in this reverential name Dyaus pitar may be seen the exact equivalent of +the Roman's Jupiter, or Jove the Father. The same root can be followed +into Old German, where Zio is the god of day; and into Anglo-Saxon, +where Tiwsdaeg, or the day of Zeus, is the ancestral form of Tuesday. + +Thus we again reach the same results which were obtained from the +examination of the name Bhaga. These various names for the supreme Aryan +god, which without the help afforded by the Vedas could never have +been interpreted, are seen to have been originally applied to the +sun-illumined firmament. Countless other examples, when similarly +analyzed, show that the earliest Aryan conception of a Divine Power, +nourishing man and sustaining the universe, was suggested by the light +of the mighty Sun; who, as modern science has shown, is the originator +of all life and motion upon the globe, and whom the ancients delighted +to believe the source, not only of "the golden light," [101] but of +everything that is bright, joy-giving, and pure. Nevertheless, in +accepting this conclusion as well established by linguistic science, we +must be on our guard against an error into which writers on mythology +are very liable to fall. Neither sky nor sun nor light of day, neither +Zeus nor Apollo, neither Dyaus nor Indra, was ever worshipped by the +ancient Aryan in anything like a monotheistic sense. To interpret Zeus +or Jupiter as originally the supreme Aryan god, and to regard classic +paganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is to +sin against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy. Philology itself +teaches us that this could not have been so. Father Dyaus was originally +the bright sky and nothing more. Although his name became generalized, +in the classic languages, into deus, or God, it is quite certain that in +early days, before the Aryan separation, it had acquired no such exalted +significance. It was only in Greece and Rome--or, we may say, among +the still united Italo-Hellenic tribes--that Jupiter-Zeus attained a +pre-eminence over all other deities. The people of Iran quite +rejected him, the Teutons preferred Thor and Odin, and in India he was +superseded, first by Indra, afterwards by Brahma and Vishnu. We need +not, therefore, look for a single supreme divinity among the old Aryans; +nor may we expect to find any sense, active or dormant, of monotheism in +the primitive intelligence of uncivilized men. [102] The whole fabric +of comparative mythology, as at present constituted, and as described +above, in the first of these papers, rests upon the postulate that the +earliest religion was pure fetichism. + +In the unsystematic nature-worship of the old Aryans the gods are +presented to us only as vague powers, with their nature and attributes +dimly defined, and their relations to each other fluctuating and often +contradictory. There is no theogony, no regular subordination of one +deity to another. The same pair of divinities appear now as father and +daughter, now as brother and sister, now as husband and wife; and again +they quite lose their personality, and are represented as mere natural +phenomena. As Muller observes, "The poets of the Veda indulged freely in +theogonic speculations without being frightened by any contradictions. +They knew of Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the god +of gods, they knew of Varuna as the ruler of all; but they were by no +means startled at the idea that their Indra had a mother, or that +their Agni [Latin ignis] was born like a babe from the friction of two +fire-sticks, or that Varuna and his brother Mitra were nursed in the lap +of Aditi." [103] Thus we have seen Bhaga, the daylight, represented +as the offspring, of Aditi, the boundless Orient; but he had several +brothers, and among them were Mitra, the sun, Varuna, the overarching +firmament, and Vivasvat, the vivifying sun. Manifestly we have here +but so many different names for what is at bottom one and the same +conception. The common element which, in Dyaus and Varuna, in Bhaga and +Indra, was made an object of worship, is the brightness, warmth, and +life of day, as contrasted with the darkness, cold, and seeming death +of the night-time. And this common element was personified in as many +different ways as the unrestrained fancy of the ancient worshipper saw +fit to devise. [104] + +Thus we begin to see why a few simple objects, like the sun, the sky, +the dawn, and the night, should be represented in mythology by such +a host of gods, goddesses, and heroes. For at one time the Sun is +represented as the conqueror of hydras and dragons who hide away from +men the golden treasures of light and warmth, and at another time he is +represented as a weary voyager traversing the sky-sea amid many perils, +with the steadfast purpose of returning to his western home and +his twilight bride; hence the different conceptions of Herakles, +Bellerophon, and Odysseus. Now he is represented as the son of the Dawn, +and again, with equal propriety, as the son of the Night, and the fickle +lover of the Dawn; hence we have, on the one hand, stories of a virgin +mother who dies in giving birth to a hero, and, on the other hand, +stories of a beautiful maiden who is forsaken and perhaps cruelly slain +by her treacherous lover. Indeed, the Sun's adventures with so many +dawn-maidens have given him quite a bad character, and the legends are +numerous in which he appears as the prototype of Don Juan. Yet again his +separation from the bride of his youth is described as due to no fault +of his own, but to a resistless decree of fate, which hurries him away +as Aineias was compelled to abandon Dido. Or, according to a third +and equally plausible notion, he is a hero of ascetic virtues, and the +dawn-maiden is a wicked enchantress, daughter of the sensual Aphrodite, +who vainly endeavours to seduce him. In the story of Odysseus these +various conceptions are blended together. When enticed by artful women, +[105] he yields for a while to the temptation; but by and by his longing +to see Penelope takes him homeward, albeit with a record which Penelope +might not altogether have liked. Again, though the Sun, "always roaming +with a hungry heart," has seen many cities and customs of strange men, +he is nevertheless confined to a single path,--a circumstance which +seems to have occasioned much speculation in the primeval mind. +Garcilaso de la Vega relates of a certain Peruvian Inca, who seems to +have been an "infidel" with reference to the orthodox mythology of his +day, that he thought the Sun was not such a mighty god after all; for +if he were, he would wander about the heavens at random instead of +going forever, like a horse in a treadmill, along the same course. The +American Indians explained this circumstance by myths which told how the +Sun was once caught and tied with a chain which would only let him swing +a little way to one side or the other. The ancient Aryan developed the +nobler myth of the labours of Herakles, performed in obedience to the +bidding of Eurystheus. Again, the Sun must needs destroy its parents, +the Night and the Dawn; and accordingly his parents, forewarned by +prophecy, expose him in infancy, or order him to be put to death; but +his tragic destiny never fails to be accomplished to the letter. +And again the Sun, who engages in quarrels not his own, is sometimes +represented as retiring moodily from the sight of men, like Achilleus +and Meleagros: he is short-lived and ill-fated, born to do much good +and to be repaid with ingratitude; his life depends on the duration of a +burning brand, and when that is extinguished he must die. + +The myth of the great Theban hero, Oidipous, well illustrates the +multiplicity of conceptions which clustered about the daily career of +the solar orb. His father, Laios, had been warned by the Delphic oracle +that he was in danger of death from his own son. The newly born Oidipous +was therefore exposed on the hillside, but, like Romulus and Remus, and +all infants similarly situated in legend, was duly rescued. He was taken +to Corinth, where he grew up to manhood. Journeying once to Thebes, he +got into a quarrel with an old man whom he met on the road, and slew +him, who was none other than his father, Laios. Reaching Thebes, he +found the city harassed by the Sphinx, who afflicted the land with +drought until she should receive an answer to her riddles. Oidipous +destroyed the monster by solving her dark sayings, and as a reward +received the kingdom, with his own mother, Iokaste, as his bride. Then +the Erinyes hastened the discovery of these dark deeds; Iokaste died in +her bridal chamber; and Oidipous, having blinded himself, fled to the +grove of the Eumenides, near Athens, where, amid flashing lightning and +peals of thunder, he died. + +Oidipous is the Sun. Like all the solar heroes, from Herakles and +Perseus to Sigurd and William Tell, he performs his marvellous deeds at +the behest of others. His father, Laios, is none other than the +Vedic Dasyu, the night-demon who is sure to be destroyed by his solar +offspring In the evening, Oidipous is united to the Dawn, the mother who +had borne him at daybreak; and here the original story doubtless ended. +In the Vedic hymns we find Indra, the Sun, born of Dahana (Daphne), +the Dawn, whom he afterwards, in the evening twilight, marries. To the +Indian mind the story was here complete; but the Greeks had forgotten +and outgrown the primitive signification of the myth. To them Oidipous +and Iokaste were human, or at least anthropomorphic beings; and a +marriage between them was a fearful crime which called for bitter +expiation. Thus the latter part of the story arose in the effort to +satisfy a moral feeling As the name of Laios denotes the dark night, so, +like Iole, Oinone, and Iamos, the word Iokaste signifies the delicate +violet tints of the morning and evening clouds. Oidipous was exposed, +like Paris upon Ida (a Vedic word meaning "the earth"), because the +sunlight in the morning lies upon the hillside. [106] He is borne on +to the destruction of his father and the incestuous marriage with his +mother by an irresistible Moira, or Fate; the sun cannot but slay the +darkness and hasten to the couch of the violet twilight. [107] The +Sphinx is the storm-demon who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons the +rain; she is the same as Medusa, Ahi, or Echidna, and Chimaira, and is +akin to the throttling snakes of darkness which the jealous Here sent to +destroy Herakles in his cradle. The idea was not derived from Egypt, but +the Greeks, on finding Egyptian figures resembling their conception of +the Sphinx, called them by the same name. The omniscient Sun comprehends +the sense of her dark mutterings, and destroys her, as Indra slays +Vritra, bringing down rain upon the parched earth. The Erinyes, who +bring to light the crimes of Oidipous, have been explained, in a +previous paper, as the personification of daylight, which reveals the +evil deeds done under the cover of night. The grove of the Erinyes, like +the garden of the Hyperboreans, represents "the fairy network of clouds, +which are the first to receive and the last to lose the light of the sun +in the morning and in the evening; hence, although Oidipous dies in a +thunder-storm, yet the Eumenides are kind to him, and his last hour is +one of deep peace and tranquillity." [108] To the last remains with him +his daughter Antigone, "she who is born opposite," the pale light which +springs up opposite to the setting sun. + +These examples show that a story-root may be as prolific of +heterogeneous offspring as a word-root. Just as we find the root spak, +"to look," begetting words so various as sceptic, bishop, speculate, +conspicsuous, species, and spice, we must expect to find a simple +representation of the diurnal course of the sun, like those lyrically +given in the Veda, branching off into stories as diversified as those +of Oidipous, Herakles, Odysseus, and Siegfried. In fact, the types +upon which stories are constructed are wonderfully few. Some clever +playwright--I believe it was Scribe--has said that there are only seven +possible dramatic situations; that is, all the plays in the world may be +classed with some one of seven archetypal dramas. [109] If this be +true, the astonishing complexity of mythology taken in the concrete, as +compared with its extreme simplicity when analyzed, need not surprise +us. + +The extreme limits of divergence between stories descended from a common +root are probably reached in the myths of light and darkness with which +the present discussion is mainly concerned The subject will be best +elucidated by taking a single one of these myths and following its +various fortunes through different regions of the Aryan world. The myth +of Hercules and Cacus has been treated by M. Breal in an essay which +is one of the most valuable contributions ever made to the study of +comparative mythology; and while following his footsteps our task will +be an easy one. + +The battle between Hercules and Cacus, although one of the oldest of the +traditions common to the whole Indo-European race, appears in Italy as +a purely local legend, and is narrated as such by Virgil, in the eighth +book of the AEneid; by Livy, at the beginning of his history; and +by Propertius and Ovid. Hercules, journeying through Italy after his +victory over Geryon, stops to rest by the bank of the Tiber. While he is +taking his repose, the three-headed monster Cacus, a son of Vulcan and +a formidable brigand, comes and steals his cattle, and drags them +tail-foremost to a secret cavern in the rocks. But the lowing of the +cows arouses Hercules, and he runs toward the cavern where the robber, +already frightened, has taken refuge. Armed with a huge flinty rock, he +breaks open the entrance of the cavern, and confronts the demon within, +who vomits forth flames at him and roars like the thunder in the +storm-cloud. After a short combat, his hideous body falls at the feet +of the invincible hero, who erects on the spot an altar to Jupiter +Inventor, in commemoration of the recovery of his cattle. Ancient Rome +teemed with reminiscences of this event, which Livy regarded as first +in the long series of the exploits of his countrymen. The place where +Hercules pastured his oxen was known long after as the Forum Boarium; +near it the Porta Trigemina preserved the recollection of the monster's +triple head; and in the time of Diodorus Siculus sight-seers were shown +the cavern of Cacus on the slope of the Aventine. Every tenth day +the earlier generations of Romans celebrated the victory with solemn +sacrifices at the Ara Maxima; and on days of triumph the fortunate +general deposited there a tithe of his booty, to be distributed among +the citizens. + +In this famous myth, however, the god Hercules did not originally +figure. The Latin Hercules was an essentially peaceful and domestic +deity, watching over households and enclosures, and nearly akin to +Terminus and the Penates. He does not appear to have been a solar +divinity at all. But the purely accidental resemblance of his name to +that of the Greek deity Herakles, [110] and the manifest identity of the +Cacus-myth with the story of the victory of Herakles over Geryon, led +to the substitution of Hercules for the original hero of the legend, +who was none other than Jupiter, called by his Sabine name Sancus. Now +Johannes Lydus informs us that, in Sabine, Sancus signified "the sky," +a meaning which we have already seen to belong to the name Jupiter. The +same substitution of the Greek hero for the Roman divinity led to the +alteration of the name of the demon overcome by his thunderbolts. The +corrupted title Cacus was supposed to be identical with the Greek word +kakos, meaning "evil" and the corruption was suggested by the epithet of +Herakles, Alexikakos, or "the averter of ill." Originally, however, +the name was Caecius, "he who blinds or darkens," and it corresponds +literally to the name of the Greek demon Kaikias, whom an old proverb, +preserved by Aulus Gellius, describes as a stealer of the clouds. [111] + +Thus the significance of the myth becomes apparent. The three-headed +Cacus is seen to be a near kinsman of Geryon's three-headed dog Orthros, +and of the three-headed Kerberos, the hell-hound who guards the dark +regions below the horizon. He is the original werewolf or Rakshasa, the +fiend of the storm who steals the bright cattle of Helios, and hides +them in the black cavernous rock, from which they are afterwards rescued +by the schamir or lightning-stone of the solar hero. The physical +character of the myth is apparent even in the description of Virgil, +which reads wonderfully like a Vedic hymn in celebration of the exploits +of Indra. But when we turn to the Veda itself, we find the correctness +of the interpretation demonstrated again and again, with inexhaustible +prodigality of evidence. Here we encounter again the three-headed +Orthros under the identical title of Vritra, "he who shrouds or +envelops," called also Cushna, "he who parches," Pani, "the robber," and +Ahi, "the strangler." In many hymns of the Rig-Veda the story is told +over and over, like a musical theme arranged with variations. Indra, +the god of light, is a herdsman who tends a herd of bright golden or +violet-coloured cattle. Vritra, a snake-like monster with three heads, +steals them and hides them in a cavern, but Indra slays him as Jupiter +slew Caecius, and the cows are recovered. The language of the myth is +so significant, that the Hindu commentators of the Veda have +themselves given explanations of it similar to those proposed by modern +philologists. To them the legend never became devoid of sense, as the +myth of Geryon appeared to Greek scholars like Apollodoros. [112] + +These celestial cattle, with their resplendent coats of purple and gold, +are the clouds lit up by the solar rays; but the demon who steals them +is not always the fiend of the storm, acting in that capacity. They are +stolen every night by Vritra the concealer, and Caecius the darkener, +and Indra is obliged to spend hours in looking for them, sending Sarama, +the inconstant twilight, to negotiate for their recovery. Between +the storm-myth and the myth of night and morning the resemblance is +sometimes so close as to confuse the interpretation of the two. Many +legends which Max Muller explains as myths of the victory of day over +night are explained by Dr. Kuhn as storm-myths; and the disagreement +between two such powerful champions would be a standing reproach to what +is rather prematurely called the SCIENCE of comparative mythology, +were it not easy to show that the difference is merely apparent and +non-essential. It is the old story of the shield with two sides; and a +comparison of the ideas fundamental to these myths will show that there +is no valid ground for disagreement in the interpretation of them. The +myths of schamir and the divining-rod, analyzed in a previous paper, +explain the rending of the thunder-cloud and the procuring of water +without especial reference to any struggle between opposing divinities. +But in the myth of Hercules and Cacus, the fundamental idea is the +victory of the solar god over the robber who steals the light. Now +whether the robber carries off the light in the evening when Indra has +gone to sleep, or boldly rears his black form against the sky during the +daytime, causing darkness to spread over the earth, would make little +difference to the framers of the myth. To a chicken a solar eclipse +is the same thing as nightfall, and he goes to roost accordingly. Why, +then, should the primitive thinker have made a distinction between +the darkening of the sky caused by black clouds and that caused by +the rotation of the earth? He had no more conception of the scientific +explanation of these phenomena than the chicken has of the scientific +explanation of an eclipse. For him it was enough to know that the solar +radiance was stolen, in the one case as in the other, and to suspect +that the same demon was to blame for both robberies. + +The Veda itself sustains this view. It is certain that the victory of +Indra over Vritra is essentially the same as his victory over the Panis. +Vritra, the storm-fiend, is himself called one of the Panis; yet the +latter are uniformly represented as night-demons. They steal Indra's +golden cattle and drive them by circuitous paths to a dark hiding-place +near the eastern horizon. Indra sends the dawn-nymph, Sarama, to search +for them, but as she comes within sight of the dark stable, the Panis +try to coax her to stay with them: "Let us make thee our sister, do not +go away again; we will give thee part of the cows, O darling." [113] +According to the text of this hymn, she scorns their solicitations, but +elsewhere the fickle dawn-nymph is said to coquet with the powers of +darkness. She does not care for their cows, but will take a drink of +milk, if they will be so good as to get it for her. Then she goes back +and tells Indra that she cannot find the cows. He kicks her with his +foot, and she runs back to the Panis, followed by the god, who smites +them all with his unerring arrows and recovers the stolen light. From +such a simple beginning as this has been deduced the Greek myth of the +faithlessness of Helen. [114] + +These night-demons, the Panis, though not apparently regarded with any +strong feeling of moral condemnation, are nevertheless hated and dreaded +as the authors of calamity. They not only steal the daylight, but they +parch the earth and wither the fruits, and they slay vegetation during +the winter months. As Caecius, the "darkener," became ultimately changed +into Cacus, the "evil one," so the name of Vritra, the "concealer," the +most famous of the Panis, was gradually generalized until it came to +mean "enemy," like the English word fiend, and began to be applied +indiscriminately to any kind of evil spirit. In one place he is called +Adeva, the "enemy of the gods," an epithet exactly equivalent to the +Persian dev. + +In the Zendavesta the myth of Hercules and Cacus has given rise to a +vast system of theology. The fiendish Panis are concentrated in Ahriman +or Anro-mainyas, whose name signifies the "spirit of darkness," and +who carries on a perpetual warfare against Ormuzd or Ahuramazda, who +is described by his ordinary surname, Spentomainyas, as the "spirit of +light." The ancient polytheism here gives place to a refined dualism, +not very different from what in many Christian sects has passed current +as monotheism. Ahriman is the archfiend, who struggles with Ormuzd, not +for the possession of a herd of perishable cattle, but for the dominion +of the universe. Ormuzd creates the world pure and beautiful, but +Ahriman comes after him and creates everything that is evil in it. He +not only keeps the earth covered with darkness during half of the day, +and withholds the rain and destroys the crops, but he is the author of +all evil thoughts and the instigator of all wicked actions. Like his +progenitor Vritra and his offspring Satan, he is represented under the +form of a serpent; and the destruction which ultimately awaits these +demons is also in reserve for him. Eventually there is to be a day of +reckoning, when Ahriman will be bound in chains and rendered powerless, +or when, according to another account, he will be converted to +righteousness, as Burns hoped and Origen believed would be the case with +Satan. + +This dualism of the ancient Persians has exerted a powerful influence +upon the development of Christian theology. The very idea of an +archfiend Satan, which Christianity received from Judaism, seems either +to have been suggested by the Persian Ahriman, or at least to have +derived its principal characteristics from that source. There is no +evidence that the Jews, previous to the Babylonish captivity, possessed +the conception of a Devil as the author of all evil. In the earlier +books of the Old Testament Jehovah is represented as dispensing with his +own hand the good and the evil, like the Zeus of the Iliad. [115] The +story of the serpent in Eden--an Aryan story in every particular, +which has crept into the Pentateuch--is not once alluded to in the Old +Testament; and the notion of Satan as the author of evil appears only +in the later books, composed after the Jews had come into close contact +with Persian ideas. [116] In the Book of Job, as Reville observes, Satan +is "still a member of the celestial court, being one of the sons of the +Elohim, but having as his special office the continual accusation of +men, and having become so suspicious by his practice as public accuser, +that he believes in the virtue of no one, and always presupposes +interested motives for the purest manifestations of human piety." In +this way the character of this angel became injured, and he became more +and more an object of dread and dislike to men, until the later Jews +ascribed to him all the attributes of Ahriman, and in this singularly +altered shape he passed into Christian theology. Between the Satan of +the Book of Job and the mediaeval Devil the metamorphosis is as great +as that which degraded the stern Erinys, who brings evil deeds to light, +into the demon-like Fury who torments wrong-doers in Tartarus; and, +making allowance for difference of circumstances, the process of +degradation has been very nearly the same in the two cases. + +The mediaeval conception of the Devil is a grotesque compound of +elements derived from all the systems of pagan mythology which +Christianity superseded. He is primarily a rebellious angel, expelled +from heaven along with his followers, like the giants who attempted +to scale Olympos, and like the impious Efreets of Arabian legend who +revolted against the beneficent rule of Solomon. As the serpent prince +of the outer darkness, he retains the old characteristics of Vritra, +Ahi, Typhon, and Echidna. As the black dog which appears behind the +stove in Dr. Faust's study, he is the classic hell-hound Kerberos, the +Vedic Carvara. From the sylvan deity Pan he gets his goat-like body, his +horns and cloven hoofs. Like the wind-god Orpheus, to whose music the +trees bent their heads to listen, he is an unrivalled player on the +bagpipes. Like those other wind-gods the psychopomp Hermes and the wild +huntsman Odin, he is the prince of the powers of the air: his flight +through the midnight sky, attended by his troop of witches mounted on +their brooms, which sometimes break the boughs and sweep the leaves from +the trees, is the same as the furious chase of the Erlking Odin or the +Burckar Vittikab. He is Dionysos, who causes red wine to flow from +the dry wood, alike on the deck of the Tyrrhenian pirate-ship and in +Auerbach's cellar at Leipzig. He is Wayland, the smith, a skilful +worker in metals and a wonderful architect, like the classic fire-god +Hephaistos or Vulcan; and, like Hephaistos, he is lame from the effects +of his fall from heaven. From the lightning-god Thor he obtains his red +beard, his pitchfork, and his power over thunderbolts; and, like that +ancient deity, he is in the habit of beating his wife behind the door +when the rain falls during sunshine. Finally, he takes a hint from +Poseidon and from the swan-maidens, and appears as a water-imp or Nixy +(whence probably his name of Old Nick), and as the Davy (deva) whose +"locker" is situated at the bottom of the sea. [117] + +According to the Scotch divines of the seventeenth century, the Devil is +a learned scholar and profound thinker. Having profited by six thousand +years of intense study and meditation, he has all science, philosophy, +and theology at his tongue's end; and, as his skill has increased with +age, he is far more than a match for mortals in cunning. [118] Such, +however, is not the view taken by mediaeval mythology, which usually +represents his stupidity as equalling his malignity. The victory of +Hercules over Cacus is repeated in a hundred mediaeval legends in which +the Devil is overreached and made a laughing-stock. The germ of this +notion may be found in the blinding of Polyphemos by Odysseus, which +is itself a victory of the sun-hero over the night-demon, and which +curiously reappears in a Middle-Age story narrated by Mr. Cox. "The +Devil asks a man who is moulding buttons what he may be doing; and when +the man answers that he is moulding eyes, asks him further whether he +can give him a pair of new eyes. He is told to come again another day; +and when he makes his appearance accordingly, the man tells him that the +operation cannot be performed rightly unless he is first tightly bound +with his back fastened to a bench. While he is thus pinioned he asks the +man's name. The reply is Issi (`himself'). When the lead is melted, the +Devil opens his eyes wide to receive the deadly stream. As soon as he is +blinded, he starts up in agony, bearing away the bench to which he had +been bound; and when some workpeople in the fields ask him who had thus +treated him, his answer is, 'Issi teggi' (`Self did it'). With a laugh +they bid him lie on the bed which he has made: 'selbst gethan, selbst +habe.' The Devil died of his new eyes, and was never seen again." + +In his attempts to obtain human souls the Devil is frequently foiled by +the superior cunning of mortals. Once, he agreed to build a house for +a peasant in exchange for the peasant's soul; but if the house were not +finished before cockcrow, the contract was to be null and void. Just as +the Devil was putting on the last tile the man imitated a cockcrow and +waked up all the roosters in the neighbourhood, so that the fiend had +his labour for his pains. A merchant of Louvain once sold himself to +the Devil, who heaped upon him all manner of riches for seven years, and +then came to get him. The merchant "took the Devil in a friendly manner +by the hand and, as it was just evening, said, 'Wife, bring a light +quickly for the gentleman.' 'That is not at all necessary,' said the +Devil; 'I am merely come to fetch you.' 'Yes, yes, that I know very +well,' said the merchant, 'only just grant me the time till this little +candle-end is burnt out, as I have a few letters to sign and to put +on my coat.' 'Very well,' said the Devil, 'but only till the candle is +burnt out.' 'Good,' said the merchant, and going into the next room, +ordered the maid-servant to place a large cask full of water close to a +very deep pit that was dug in the garden. The men-servants also carried, +each of them, a cask to the spot; and when all was done, they were +ordered each to take a shovel, and stand round the pit. The merchant +then returned to the Devil, who seeing that not more than about an inch +of candle remained, said, laughing, 'Now get yourself ready, it will +soon be burnt out.' 'That I see, and am content; but I shall hold you to +your word, and stay till it IS burnt.' 'Of course,' answered the Devil; +'I stick to my word.' 'It is dark in the next room,' continued the +merchant, 'but I must find the great book with clasps, so let me just +take the light for one moment.' 'Certainly,' said the Devil, 'but I'll +go with you.' He did so, and the merchant's trepidation was now on the +increase. When in the next room he said on a sudden, 'Ah, now I know, +the key is in the garden door.' And with these words he ran out with the +light into the garden, and before the Devil could overtake him, threw it +into the pit, and the men and the maids poured water upon it, and then +filled up the hole with earth. Now came the Devil into the garden and +asked, 'Well, did you get the key? and how is it with the candle? where +is it?' 'The candle?' said the merchant. 'Yes, the candle.' 'Ha, ha, ha! +it is not yet burnt out,' answered the merchant, laughing, 'and will not +be burnt out for the next fifty years; it lies there a hundred fathoms +deep in the earth.' When the Devil heard this he screamed awfully, and +went off with a most intolerable stench." [119] + +One day a fowler, who was a terrible bungler and could n't hit a bird +at a dozen paces, sold his soul to the Devil in order to become a +Freischutz. The fiend was to come for him in seven years, but must be +always able to name the animal at which he was shooting, otherwise the +compact was to be nullified. After that day the fowler never missed his +aim, and never did a fowler command such wages. When the seven years +were out the fowler told all these things to his wife, and the twain hit +upon an expedient for cheating the Devil. The woman stripped herself, +daubed her whole body with molasses, and rolled herself up in a +feather-bed, cut open for this purpose. Then she hopped and skipped +about the field where her husband stood parleying with Old Nick. +"there's a shot for you, fire away," said the Devil. "Of course I'll +fire, but do you first tell me what kind of a bird it is; else our +agreement is cancelled, Old Boy." There was no help for it; the +Devil had to own himself nonplussed, and off he fled, with a whiff of +brimstone which nearly suffocated the Freischutz and his good woman. +[120] + +In the legend of Gambrinus, the fiend is still more ingloriously +defeated. Gambrinus was a fiddler, who, being jilted by his sweetheart, +went out into the woods to hang himself. As he was sitting on the bough, +with the cord about his neck, preparatory to taking the fatal plunge, +suddenly a tall man in a green coat appeared before him, and offered +his services. He might become as wealthy as he liked, and make his +sweetheart burst with vexation at her own folly, but in thirty years +he must give up his soul to Beelzebub. The bargain was struck, for +Gambrinus thought thirty years a long time to enjoy one's self in, and +perhaps the Devil might get him in any event; as well be hung for a +sheep as for a lamb. Aided by Satan, he invented chiming-bells and +lager-beer, for both of which achievements his name is held in grateful +remembrance by the Teuton. No sooner had the Holy Roman Emperor quaffed +a gallon or two of the new beverage than he made Gambrinus Duke of +Brabant and Count of Flanders, and then it was the fiddler's turn to +laugh at the discomfiture of his old sweetheart. Gambrinus kept clear of +women, says the legend, and so lived in peace. For thirty years he sat +beneath his belfry with the chimes, meditatively drinking beer with his +nobles and burghers around him. Then Beelzebub sent Jocko, one of his +imps, with orders to bring back Gambrinus before midnight. But Jocko +was, like Swiveller's Marchioness, ignorant of the taste of beer, never +having drunk of it even in a sip, and the Flemish schoppen were too much +for him. He fell into a drunken sleep, and did not wake up until noon +next day, at which he was so mortified that he had not the face to go +back to hell at all. So Gambrinus lived on tranquilly for a century or +two, and drank so much beer that he turned into a beer-barrel. [121] + +The character of gullibility attributed to the Devil in these legends +is probably derived from the Trolls, or "night-folk," of Northern +mythology. In most respects the Trolls resemble the Teutonic elves +and fairies, and the Jinn or Efreets of the Arabian Nights; but their +pedigree is less honourable. The fairies, or "White Ladies," were +not originally spirits of darkness, but were nearly akin to the +swan-maidens, dawn-nymphs, and dryads, and though their wrath was to +be dreaded, they were not malignant by nature. Christianity, having no +place for such beings, degraded them into something like imps; the most +charitable theory being that they were angels who had remained neutral +during Satan's rebellion, in punishment for which Michael expelled them +from heaven, but has left their ultimate fate unannounced until the day +of judgment. The Jinn appear to have been similarly degraded on the rise +of Mohammedanism. But the Trolls were always imps of darkness. They are +descended from the Jotuns, or Frost-Giants of Northern paganism, and +they correspond to the Panis, or night-demons of the Veda. In many Norse +tales they are said to burst when they see the risen sun. [122] They eat +human flesh, are ignorant of the simplest arts, and live in the deepest +recesses of the forest or in caverns on the hillside, where the sunlight +never penetrates. Some of these characteristics may very likely have +been suggested by reminiscences of the primeval Lapps, from whom the +Aryan invaders wrested the dominion of Europe. [123] In some legends the +Trolls are represented as an ancient race of beings now superseded by +the human race. "'What sort of an earth-worm is this?' said one Giant to +another, when they met a man as they walked. 'These are the earth-worms +that will one day eat us up, brother,' answered the other; and soon +both Giants left that part of Germany." "'See what pretty playthings, +mother!' cries the Giant's daughter, as she unties her apron, and shows +her a plough, and horses, and a peasant. 'Back with them this instant,' +cries the mother in wrath, 'and put them down as carefully as you can, +for these playthings can do our race great harm, and when these come we +must budge.'" Very naturally the primitive Teuton, possessing already +the conception of night-demons, would apply it to these men of the +woods whom even to this day his uneducated descendants believe to be +sorcerers, able to turn men into wolves. But whatever contributions +historical fact may have added to his character, the Troll is originally +a creation of mythology, like Polyphemos, whom he resembles in his +uncouth person, his cannibal appetite, and his lack of wit. His ready +gullibility is shown in the story of "Boots who ate a Match with the +Troll." Boots, the brother of Cinderella, and the counterpart alike +of Jack the Giant-killer, and of Odysseus, is the youngest of three +brothers who go into a forest to cut wood. The Troll appears and +threatens to kill any one who dares to meddle with his timber. The elder +brothers flee, but Boots puts on a bold face. He pulled a cheese out of +his scrip and squeezed it till the whey began to spurt out. "Hold your +tongue, you dirty Troll," said he, "or I'll squeeze you as I squeeze +this stone." So the Troll grew timid and begged to be spared, [124] and +Boots let him off on condition that he would hew all day with him. +They worked till nightfall, and the Troll's giant strength accomplished +wonders. Then Boots went home with the Troll, having arranged that he +should get the water while his host made the fire. When they reached the +hut there were two enormous iron pails, so heavy that none but a Troll +could lift them, but Boots was not to be frightened. "Bah!" said he. "Do +you suppose I am going to get water in those paltry hand-basins? Hold +on till I go and get the spring itself!" "O dear!" said the Troll, "I'd +rather not; do you make the fire, and I'll get the water." Then when the +soup was made, Boots challenged his new friend to an eating-match; and +tying his scrip in front of him, proceeded to pour soup into it by the +ladleful. By and by the giant threw down his spoon in despair, and owned +himself conquered. "No, no! don't give it up yet," said Boots, "just cut +a hole in your stomach like this, and you can eat forever." And suiting +the action to the words, he ripped open his scrip. So the silly Troll +cut himself open and died, and Boots carried off all his gold and +silver. + +Once there was a Troll whose name was Wind-and-Weather, and Saint Olaf +hired him to build a church. If the church were completed within a +certain specified time, the Troll was to get possession of Saint Olaf. +The saint then planned such a stupendous edifice that he thought the +giant would be forever building it; but the work went on briskly, and at +the appointed day nothing remained but to finish the point of the spire. +In his consternation Olaf rushed about until he passed by the Troll's +den, when he heard the giantess telling her children that their father, +Wind-and-Weather, was finishing his church, and would be home to-morrow +with Saint Olaf. So the saint ran back to the church and bawled out, +"Hold on, Wind-and-Weather, your spire is crooked!" Then the giant +tumbled down from the roof and broke into a thousand pieces. As in the +cases of the Mara and the werewolf, the enchantment was at an end as +soon as the enchanter was called by name. + +These Trolls, like the Arabian Efreets, had an ugly habit of carrying +off beautiful princesses. This is strictly in keeping with their +character as night-demons, or Panis. In the stories of Punchkin and +the Heartless Giant, the night-demon carries off the dawn-maiden after +having turned into stone her solar brethren. But Boots, or Indra, in +search of his kinsfolk, by and by arrives at the Troll's castle, and +then the dawn-nymph, true to her fickle character, cajoles the Giant +and enables Boots to destroy him. In the famous myth which serves as the +basis for the Volsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied, the dragon Fafnir +steals the Valkyrie Brynhild and keeps her shut up in a castle on the +Glistening Heath, until some champion shall be found powerful enough +to rescue her. The castle is as hard to enter as that of the Sleeping +Beauty; but Sigurd, the Northern Achilleus, riding on his deathless +horse, and wielding his resistless sword Gram, forces his way in, slays +Fafnir, and recovers the Valkyrie. + +In the preceding paper the Valkyries were shown to belong to the class +of cloud-maidens; and between the tale of Sigurd and that of Hercules +and Cacus there is no difference, save that the bright sunlit clouds +which are represented in the one as cows are in the other represented +as maidens. In the myth of the Argonauts they reappear as the Golden +Fleece, carried to the far east by Phrixos and Helle, who are themselves +Niblungs, or "Children of the Mist" (Nephele), and there guarded by a +dragon. In all these myths a treasure is stolen by a fiend of darkness, +and recovered by a hero of light, who slays the demon. And--remembering +what Scribe said about the fewness of dramatic types--I believe we are +warranted in asserting that all the stories of lovely women held in +bondage by monsters, and rescued by heroes who perform wonderful tasks, +such as Don Quixote burned to achieve, are derived ultimately from solar +myths, like the myth of Sigurd and Brynhild. I do not mean to say that +the story-tellers who beguiled their time in stringing together the +incidents which make up these legends were conscious of their solar +character. They did not go to work, with malice prepense, to weave +allegories and apologues. The Greeks who first told the story of Perseus +and Andromeda, the Arabians who devised the tale of Codadad and +his brethren, the Flemings who listened over their beer-mugs to +the adventures of Culotte-Verte, were not thinking of sun-gods or +dawn-maidens, or night-demons; and no theory of mythology can be sound +which implies such an extravagance. Most of these stories have lived +on the lips of the common people; and illiterate persons are not in +the habit of allegorizing in the style of mediaeval monks or rabbinical +commentators. But what has been amply demonstrated is, that the sun +and the clouds, the light and the darkness, were once supposed to +be actuated by wills analogous to the human will; that they were +personified and worshipped or propitiated by sacrifice; and that their +doings were described in language which applied so well to the deeds of +human or quasi-human beings that in course of time its primitive purport +faded from recollection. No competent scholar now doubts that the myths +of the Veda and the Edda originated in this way, for philology itself +shows that the names employed in them are the names of the great +phenomena of nature. And when once a few striking stories had thus +arisen,--when once it had been told how Indra smote the Panis, and how +Sigurd rescued Brynhild, and how Odysseus blinded the Kyklops,--then +certain mythic or dramatic types had been called into existence; and to +these types, preserved in the popular imagination, future stories would +inevitably conform. We need, therefore, have no hesitation in admitting +a common origin for the vanquished Panis and the outwitted Troll or +Devil; we may securely compare the legends of St. George and Jack the +Giant-killer with the myth of Indra slaying Vritra; we may see in the +invincible Sigurd the prototype of many a doughty knight-errant of +romance; and we may learn anew the lesson, taught with fresh emphasis by +modern scholarship, that in the deepest sense there is nothing new under +the sun. + +I am the more explicit on this point, because it seems to me that the +unguarded language of many students of mythology is liable to give rise +to misapprehensions, and to discredit both the method which they employ +and the results which they have obtained. If we were to give full weight +to the statements which are sometimes made, we should perforce believe +that primitive men had nothing to do but to ponder about the sun and the +clouds, and to worry themselves over the disappearance of daylight. But +there is nothing in the scientific interpretation of myths which obliges +us to go any such length. I do not suppose that any ancient Aryan, +possessed of good digestive powers and endowed with sound common-sense, +ever lay awake half the night wondering whether the sun would come back +again. [125] The child and the savage believe of necessity that the +future will resemble the past, and it is only philosophy which raises +doubts on the subject. [126] The predominance of solar legends in most +systems of mythology is not due to the lack of "that Titanic assurance +with which we say, the sun MUST rise"; [127] nor again to the fact +that the phenomena of day and night are the most striking phenomena in +nature. Eclipses and earthquakes and floods are phenomena of the most +terrible and astounding kind, and they have all generated myths; +yet their contributions to folk-lore are scanty compared with those +furnished by the strife between the day-god and his enemies. The +sun-myths have been so prolific because the dramatic types to which +they have given rise are of surpassing human interest. The dragon who +swallows the sun is no doubt a fearful personage; but the hero who toils +for others, who slays hydra-headed monsters, and dries the tears +of fair-haired damsels, and achieves success in spite of incredible +obstacles, is a being with whom we can all sympathize, and of whom we +never weary of hearing. + +With many of these legends which present the myth of light and darkness +in its most attractive form, the reader is already acquainted, and it is +needless to retail stories which have been told over and over again in +books which every one is presumed to have read. I will content myself +with a weird Irish legend, narrated by Mr. Patrick Kennedy, [128] +in which we here and there catch glimpses of the primitive mythical +symbols, as fragments of gold are seen gleaming through the crystal of +quartz. + +Long before the Danes ever came to Ireland, there died at Muskerry a +Sculloge, or country farmer, who by dint of hard work and close economy +had amassed enormous wealth. His only son did not resemble him. When the +young Sculloge looked about the house, the day after his father's +death, and saw the big chests full of gold and silver, and the cupboards +shining with piles of sovereigns, and the old stockings stuffed with +large and small coin, he said to himself, "Bedad, how shall I ever be +able to spend the likes o' that!" And so he drank, and gambled, and +wasted his time in hunting and horse-racing, until after a while he +found the chests empty and the cupboards poverty-stricken, and the +stockings lean and penniless. Then he mortgaged his farm-house and +gambled away all the money he got for it, and then he bethought him that +a few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he went to +look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a thimbleful of water +in the mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the thatch of the house all +gone, and the upper millstone lying flat on the lower one, and a coat +of dust and mould over everything." So he made up his mind to borrow a +horse and take one more hunt to-morrow and then reform his habits. + +As he was returning late in the evening from this farewell hunt, passing +through a lonely glen he came upon an old man playing backgammon, +betting on his left hand against his right, and crying and cursing +because the right WOULD win. "Come and bet with me," said he to +Sculloge. "Faith, I have but a sixpence in the world," was the reply; +"but, if you like, I'll wager that on the right." "Done," said the old +man, who was a Druid; "if you win I'll give you a hundred guineas." So +the game was played, and the old man, whose right hand was always the +winner, paid over the guineas and told Sculloge to go to the Devil with +them. + +Instead of following this bit of advice, however, the young farmer went +home and began to pay his debts, and next week he went to the glen +and won another game, and made the Druid rebuild his mill. So Sculloge +became prosperous again, and by and by he tried his luck a third time, +and won a game played for a beautiful wife. The Druid sent her to his +house the next morning before he was out of bed, and his servants came +knocking at the door and crying, "Wake up! wake up! Master Sculloge, +there's a young lady here to see you." "Bedad, it's the vanithee [129] +herself," said Sculloge; and getting up in a hurry, he spent three +quarters of an hour in dressing himself. At last he went down stairs, +and there on the sofa was the prettiest lady ever seen in Ireland! +Naturally, Sculloge's heart beat fast and his voice trembled, as he +begged the lady's pardon for this Druidic style of wooing, and besought +her not to feel obliged to stay with him unless she really liked him. +But the young lady, who was a king's daughter from a far country, was +wondrously charmed with the handsome farmer, and so well did they get +along that the priest was sent for without further delay, and they were +married before sundown. Sabina was the vanithee's name; and she warned +her husband to have no more dealings with Lassa Buaicht, the old man of +the glen. So for a while all went happily, and the Druidic bride was as +good as she was beautiful But by and by Sculloge began to think he was +not earning money fast enough. He could not bear to see his wife's white +hands soiled with work, and thought it would be a fine thing if he could +only afford to keep a few more servants, and drive about with Sabina +in an elegant carriage, and see her clothed in silk and adorned with +jewels. + +"I will play one more game and set the stakes high," said Sculloge to +himself one evening, as he sat pondering over these things; and so, +without consulting Sabina, he stole away to the glen, and played a game +for ten thousand guineas. But the evil Druid was now ready to pounce +on his prey, and he did not play as of old. Sculloge broke into a cold +sweat with agony and terror as he saw the left hand win! Then the face +of Lassa Buaicht grew dark and stern, and he laid on Sculloge the curse +which is laid upon the solar hero in misfortune, that he should never +sleep twice under the same roof, or ascend the couch of the dawn-nymph, +his wife, until he should have procured and brought to him the sword of +light. When Sculloge reached home, more dead than alive, he saw that his +wife knew all. Bitterly they wept together, but she told him that with +courage all might be set right. She gave him a Druidic horse, which bore +him swiftly over land and sea, like the enchanted steed of the Arabian +Nights, until he reached the castle of his wife's father who, as +Sculloge now learned, was a good Druid, the brother of the evil Lassa +Buaicht. This good Druid told him that the sword of light was kept by +a third brother, the powerful magician, Fiach O'Duda, who dwelt in an +enchanted castle, which many brave heroes had tried to enter, but +the dark sorcerer had slain them all. Three high walls surrounded +the castle, and many had scaled the first of these, but none had ever +returned alive. But Sculloge was not to be daunted, and, taking from +his father-in-law a black steed, he set out for the fortress of Fiach +O'Duda. Over the first high wall nimbly leaped the magic horse, and +Sculloge called aloud on the Druid to come out and surrender his sword. +Then came out a tall, dark man, with coal-black eyes and hair and +melancholy visage, and made a furious sweep at Sculloge with the flaming +blade. But the Druidic beast sprang back over the wall in the twinkling +of an eye and rescued his rider, leaving, however, his tail behind in +the court-yard. Then Sculloge returned in triumph to his father-in-law's +palace, and the night was spent in feasting and revelry. + +Next day Sculloge rode out on a white horse, and when he got to Fiach's +castle, he saw the first wall lying in rubbish. He leaped the second, +and the same scene occurred as the day before, save that the horse +escaped unharmed. + +The third day Sculloge went out on foot, with a harp like that of +Orpheus in his hand, and as he swept its strings the grass bent to +listen and the trees bowed their heads. The castle walls all lay in +ruins, and Sculloge made his way unhindered to the upper room, where +Fiach lay in Druidic slumber, lulled by the harp. He seized the sword +of light, which was hung by the chimney sheathed in a dark scabbard, and +making the best of his way back to the good king's palace, mounted his +wife's steed, and scoured over land and sea until he found himself in +the gloomy glen where Lassa Buaicht was still crying and cursing and +betting on his left hand against his right. + +"Here, treacherous fiend, take your sword of light!" shouted Sculloge in +tones of thunder; and as he drew it from its sheath the whole valley +was lighted up as with the morning sun, and next moment the head of the +wretched Druid was lying at his feet, and his sweet wife, who had come +to meet him, was laughing and crying in his arms. November, 1870. + + + + +V. MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. + +THE theory of mythology set forth in the four preceding papers, and +illustrated by the examination of numerous myths relating to the +lightning, the storm-wind, the clouds, and the sunlight, was originally +framed with reference solely to the mythic and legendary lore of the +Aryan world. The phonetic identity of the names of many Western gods and +heroes with the names of those Vedic divinities which are obviously +the personifications of natural phenomena, suggested the theory which +philosophical considerations had already foreshadowed in the works +of Hume and Comte, and which the exhaustive analysis of Greek, Hindu, +Keltic, and Teutonic legends has amply confirmed. Let us now, before +proceeding to the consideration of barbaric folk-lore, briefly +recapitulate the results obtained by modern scholarship working strictly +within the limits of the Aryan domain. + +In the first place, it has been proved once for all that the languages +spoken by the Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Slaves, and +Teutons are all descended from a single ancestral language, the Old +Aryan, in the same sense that French, Italian, and Spanish are descended +from the Latin. And from this undisputed fact it is an inevitable +inference that these various races contain, along with other elements, +a race-element in common, due to their Aryan pedigree. That the +Indo-European races are wholly Aryan is very improbable, for in every +case the countries overrun by them were occupied by inferior races, +whose blood must have mingled in varying degrees with that of their +conquerors; but that every Indo-European people is in great part +descended from a common Aryan stock is not open to question. + +In the second place, along with a common fund of moral and religious +ideas and of legal and ceremonial observances, we find these kindred +peoples possessed of a common fund of myths, superstitions, proverbs, +popular poetry, and household legends. The Hindu mother amuses her child +with fairy-tales which often correspond, even in minor incidents, with +stories in Scottish or Scandinavian nurseries; and she tells them in +words which are phonetically akin to words in Swedish and Gaelic. No +doubt many of these stories might have been devised in a dozen different +places independently of each other; and no doubt many of them have +been transmitted laterally from one people to another; but a careful +examination shows that such cannot have been the case with the great +majority of legends and beliefs. The agreement between two such stories, +for instance, as those of Faithful John and Rama and Luxman is so +close as to make it incredible that they should have been independently +fabricated, while the points of difference are so important as to make +it extremely improbable that the one was ever copied from the other. +Besides which, the essential identity of such myths as those of Sigurd +and Theseus, or of Helena and Sarama, carries us back historically to a +time when the scattered Indo-European tribes had not yet begun to +hold commercial and intellectual intercourse with each other, and +consequently could not have interchanged their epic materials or their +household stories. We are therefore driven to the conclusion--which, +startling as it may seem, is after all the most natural and plausible +one that can be stated--that the Aryan nations, which have inherited +from a common ancestral stock their languages and their customs, have +inherited also from the same common original their fireside legends. +They have preserved Cinderella and Punchkin just as they have preserved +the words for father and mother, ten and twenty; and the former case, +though more imposing to the imagination, is scientifically no less +intelligible than the latter. + +Thirdly, it has been shown that these venerable tales may be grouped in +a few pretty well defined classes; and that the archetypal myth of each +class--the primitive story in conformity to which countless subsequent +tales have been generated--was originally a mere description of physical +phenomena, couched in the poetic diction of an age when everything was +personified, because all natural phenomena were supposed to be due to +the direct workings of a volition like that of which men were conscious +within themselves. Thus we are led to the striking conclusion that +mythology has had a common root, both with science and with religious +philosophy. The myth of Indra conquering Vritra was one of the theorems +of primitive Aryan science; it was a provisional explanation of the +thunder-storm, satisfactory enough until extended observation and +reflection supplied a better one. It also contained the germs of a +theology; for the life-giving solar light furnished an important part +of the primeval conception of deity. And finally, it became the fruitful +parent of countless myths, whether embodied in the stately epics of +Homer and the bards of the Nibelungenlied, or in the humbler legends of +St. George and William Tell and the ubiquitous Boots. + +Such is the theory which was suggested half a century ago by the +researches of Jacob Grimm, and which, so far as concerns the mythology +of the Aryan race, is now victorious along the whole line. It remains +for us to test the universality of the general principles upon which it +is founded, by a brief analysis of sundry legends and superstitions +of the barbaric world. Since the fetichistic habit of explaining the +outward phenomena of nature after the analogy of the inward phenomena of +conscious intelligence is not a habit peculiar to our Aryan ancestors, +but is, as psychology shows, the inevitable result of the conditions +under which uncivilized thinking proceeds, we may expect to find the +barbaric mind personifying the powers of nature and making myths about +their operations the whole world over. And we need not be surprised if +we find in the resulting mythologic structures a strong resemblance to +the familiar creations of the Aryan intelligence. In point of fact, we +shall often be called upon to note such resemblance; and it accordingly +behooves us at the outset to inquire how far a similarity between +mythical tales shall be taken as evidence of a common traditional +origin, and how far it may be interpreted as due merely to the similar +workings of the untrained intelligence in all ages and countries. + +Analogies drawn from the comparison of languages will here be of service +to us, if used discreetly; otherwise they are likely to bewilder far +more than to enlighten us. A theorem which Max Muller has laid down +for our guidance in this kind of investigation furnishes us with an +excellent example of the tricks which a superficial analogy may play +even with the trained scholar, when temporarily off his guard. Actuated +by a praiseworthy desire to raise the study of myths to something like +the high level of scientific accuracy already attained by the study of +words, Max Muller endeavours to introduce one of the most useful canons +of philology into a department of inquiry where its introduction could +only work the most hopeless confusion. One of the earliest lessons to be +learned by the scientific student of linguistics is the uselessness of +comparing together directly the words contained in derivative languages. +For example, you might set the English twelve side by side with the +Latin duodecim, and then stare at the two words to all eternity without +any hope of reaching a conclusion, good or bad, about either of them: +least of all would you suspect that they are descended from the same +radical. But if you take each word by itself and trace it back to its +primitive shape, explaining every change of every letter as you go, you +will at last reach the old Aryan dvadakan, which is the parent of both +these strangely metamorphosed words. [130] Nor will it do, on the other +hand, to trust to verbal similarity without a historical inquiry into +the origin of such similarity. Even in the same language two words of +quite different origin may get their corners rubbed off till they look +as like one another as two pebbles. The French words souris, a "mouse," +and souris, a "smile," are spelled exactly alike; but the one comes from +Latin sorex and the other from Latin subridere. + +Now Max Muller tells us that this principle, which is indispensable +in the study of words, is equally indispensable in the study of myths. +[131] That is, you must not rashly pronounce the Norse story of the +Heartless Giant identical with the Hindu story of Punchkin, although the +two correspond in every essential incident. In both legends a magician +turns several members of the same family into stone; the youngest member +of the family comes to the rescue, and on the way saves the lives of +sundry grateful beasts; arrived at the magician's castle, he finds +a captive princess ready to accept his love and to play the part of +Delilah to the enchanter. In both stories the enchanter's life +depends on the integrity of something which is elaborately hidden in +a far-distant island, but which the fortunate youth, instructed by +the artful princess and assisted by his menagerie of grateful beasts, +succeeds in obtaining. In both stories the youth uses his advantage +to free all his friends from their enchantment, and then proceeds to +destroy the villain who wrought all this wickedness. Yet, in spite of +this agreement, Max Muller, if I understand him aright, would not have +us infer the identity of the two stories until we have taken each +one separately and ascertained its primitive mythical significance. +Otherwise, for aught we can tell, the resemblance may be purely +accidental, like that of the French words for "mouse" and "smile." + +A little reflection, however, will relieve us from this perplexity, and +assure us that the alleged analogy between the comparison of words and +the comparison of stories is utterly superficial. The transformations +of words--which are often astounding enough--depend upon a few +well-established physiological principles of utterance; and since +philology has learned to rely upon these principles, it has become +nearly as sure in its methods and results as one of the so-called "exact +sciences." Folly enough is doubtless committed within its precincts by +writers who venture there without the laborious preparation which this +science, more than almost any other, demands. But the proceedings of +the trained philologist are no more arbitrary than those of the trained +astronomer. And though the former may seem to be straining at a gnat and +swallowing a camel when he coolly tells you that violin and fiddle are +the same word, while English care and Latin cura have nothing to do with +each other, he is nevertheless no more indulging in guess-work than the +astronomer who confesses his ignorance as to the habitability of Venus +while asserting his knowledge of the existence of hydrogen in the +atmosphere of Sirius. To cite one example out of a hundred, every +philologist knows that s may become r, and that the broad a-sound may +dwindle into the closer o-sound; but when you adduce some plausible +etymology based on the assumption that r has changed into s, or o into +a, apart from the demonstrable influence of some adjacent letter, the +philologist will shake his head. + +Now in the study of stories there are no such simple rules all cut and +dried for us to go by. There is no uniform psychological principle +which determines that the three-headed snake in one story shall become a +three-headed man in the next. There is no Grimm's Law in mythology which +decides that a Hindu magician shall always correspond to a Norwegian +Troll or a Keltic Druid. The laws of association of ideas are not so +simple in application as the laws of utterance. In short, the study of +myths, though it can be made sufficiently scientific in its methods and +results, does not constitute a science by itself, like philology. It +stands on a footing similar to that occupied by physical geography, +or what the Germans call "earth-knowledge." No one denies that all the +changes going on over the earth's surface conform to physical laws; but +then no one pretends that there is any single proximate principle which +governs all the phenomena of rain-fall, of soil-crumbling, of magnetic +variation, and of the distribution of plants and animals. All these +things are explained by principles obtained from the various sciences +of physics, chemistry, geology, and physiology. And in just the same way +the development and distribution of stories is explained by the help +of divers resources contributed by philology, psychology, and history. +There is therefore no real analogy between the cases cited by Max +Muller. Two unrelated words may be ground into exactly the same shape, +just as a pebble from the North Sea may be undistinguishable from +another pebble on the beach of the Adriatic; but two stories like +those of Punchkin and the Heartless Giant are no more likely to arise +independently of each other than two coral reefs on opposite sides of +the globe are likely to develop into exactly similar islands. + +Shall we then say boldly, that close similarity between legends is proof +of kinship, and go our way without further misgivings? Unfortunately +we cannot dispose of the matter in quite so summary a fashion; for it +remains to decide what kind and degree of similarity shall be considered +satisfactory evidence of kinship. And it is just here that doctors may +disagree. Here is the point at which our "science" betrays its weakness +as compared with the sister study of philology. Before we can decide +with confidence in any case, a great mass of evidence must be brought +into court. So long as we remained on Aryan ground, all went smoothly +enough, because all the external evidence was in our favour. We knew +at the outset, that the Aryans inherit a common language and a common +civilization, and therefore we found no difficulty in accepting the +conclusion that they have inherited, among other things, a common stock +of legends. In the barbaric world it is quite otherwise. Philology does +not pronounce in favour of a common origin for all barbaric culture, +such as it is. The notion of a single primitive language, standing in +the same relation to all existing dialects as the relation of old Aryan +to Latin and English, or that of old Semitic to Hebrew and Arabic, was a +notion suited only to the infancy of linguistic science. As the case now +stands, it is certain that all the languages actually existing cannot be +referred to a common ancestor, and it is altogether probable that +there never was any such common ancestor. I am not now referring to the +question of the unity of the human race. That question lies entirely +outside the sphere of philology. The science of language has nothing to +do with skulls or complexions, and no comparison of words can tell us +whether the black men are brethren of the white men, or whether +yellow and red men have a common pedigree: these questions belong to +comparative physiology. But the science of language can and does tell us +that a certain amount of civilization is requisite for the production +of a language sufficiently durable and wide-spread to give birth to +numerous mutually resembling offspring Barbaric languages are neither +widespread nor durable. Among savages each little group of families has +its own dialect, and coins its own expressions at pleasure; and in the +course of two or three generations a dialect gets so strangely altered +as virtually to lose its identity. Even numerals and personal pronouns, +which the Aryan has preserved for fifty centuries, get lost every few +years in Polynesia. Since the time of Captain Cook the Tahitian language +has thrown away five out of its ten simple numerals, and replaced them +by brand-new ones; and on the Amazon you may acquire a fluent command +of some Indian dialect, and then, coming back after twenty years, find +yourself worse off than Rip Van Winkle, and your learning all antiquated +and useless. How absurd, therefore, to suppose that primeval savages +originated a language which has held its own like the old Aryan and +become the prolific mother of the three or four thousand dialects now +in existence! Before a durable language can arise, there must be an +aggregation of numerous tribes into a people, so that there may be +need of communication on a large scale, and so that tradition may be +strengthened. Wherever mankind have associated in nations, permanent +languages have arisen, and their derivative dialects bear the +conspicuous marks of kinship; but where mankind have remained in their +primitive savage isolation, their languages have remained sporadic and +transitory, incapable of organic development, and showing no traces of a +kinship which never existed. + +The bearing of these considerations upon the origin and diffusion of +barbaric myths is obvious. The development of a common stock of legends +is, of course, impossible, save where there is a common language; and +thus philology pronounces against the kinship of barbaric myths with +each other and with similar myths of the Aryan and Semitic worlds. +Similar stories told in Greece and Norway are likely to have a common +pedigree, because the persons who have preserved them in recollection +speak a common language and have inherited the same civilization. But +similar stories told in Labrador and South Africa are not likely to +be genealogically related, because it is altogether probable that the +Esquimaux and the Zulu had acquired their present race characteristics +before either of them possessed a language or a culture sufficient +for the production of myths. According to the nature and extent of the +similarity, it must be decided whether such stories have been carried +about from one part of the world to another, or have been independently +originated in many different places. + +Here the methods of philology suggest a rule which will often be found +useful. In comparing, the vocabularies of different languages, those +words which directly imitate natural sounds--such as whiz, crash, +crackle--are not admitted as evidence of kinship between the languages +in which they occur. Resemblances between such words are obviously no +proof of a common ancestry; and they are often met with in languages +which have demonstrably had no connection with each other. So in +mythology, where we find two stories of which the primitive character is +perfectly transparent, we need have no difficulty in supposing them to +have originated independently. The myth of Jack and his Beanstalk is +found all over the world; but the idea of a country above the sky, to +which persons might gain access by climbing, is one which could hardly +fail to occur to every barbarian. Among the American tribes, as well +as among the Aryans, the rainbow and the Milky-Way have contributed the +idea of a Bridge of the Dead, over which souls must pass on the way to +the other world. In South Africa, as well as in Germany, the habits of +the fox and of his brother the jackal have given rise to fables in which +brute force is overcome by cunning. In many parts of the world we find +curiously similar stories devised to account for the stumpy tails of the +bear and hyaena, the hairless tail of the rat, and the blindness of +the mole. And in all countries may be found the beliefs that men may be +changed into beasts, or plants, or stones; that the sun is in some way +tethered or constrained to follow a certain course; that the storm-cloud +is a ravenous dragon; and that there are talismans which will +reveal hidden treasures. All these conceptions are so obvious to the +uncivilized intelligence, that stories founded upon them need not +be supposed to have a common origin, unless there turns out to be a +striking similarity among their minor details. On the other hand, the +numerous myths of an all-destroying deluge have doubtless arisen partly +from reminiscences of actually occurring local inundations, and partly +from the fact that the Scriptural account of a deluge has been carried +all over the world by Catholic and Protestant missionaries. [132] + +By way of illustrating these principles, let us now cite a few of the +American myths so carefully collected by Dr. Brinton in his admirable +treatise. We shall not find in the mythology of the New World the wealth +of wit and imagination which has so long delighted us in the stories +of Herakles, Perseus, Hermes, Sigurd, and Indra. The mythic lore of +the American Indians is comparatively scanty and prosaic, as befits the +product of a lower grade of culture and a more meagre intellect. Not +only are the personages less characteristically pourtrayed, but there +is a continual tendency to extravagance, the sure index of an inferior +imagination. Nevertheless, after making due allowances for differences +in the artistic method of treatment, there is between the mythologies of +the Old and the New Worlds a fundamental resemblance. We come upon solar +myths and myths of the storm curiously blended with culture-myths, as in +the cases of Hermes, Prometheus, and Kadmos. The American parallels to +these are to be found in the stories of Michabo, Viracocha, Ioskeha, and +Quetzalcoatl. "As elsewhere the world over, so in America, many tribes +had to tell of.... an august character, who taught them what they +knew,--the tillage of the soil, the properties of plants, the art of +picture-writing, the secrets of magic; who founded their institutions +and established their religions; who governed them long with glory +abroad and peace at home; and finally did not die, but, like Frederic +Barbarossa, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and all great heroes, vanished +mysteriously, and still lives somewhere, ready at the right moment to +return to his beloved people and lead them to victory and happiness." +[133] Everyone is familiar with the numerous legends of white-skinned, +full-bearded heroes, like the mild Quetzalcoatl, who in times long +previous to Columbus came from the far East to impart the rudiments of +civilization and religion to the red men. By those who first heard +these stories they were supposed, with naive Euhemerism, to refer to +pre-Columbian visits of Europeans to this continent, like that of the +Northmen in the tenth century. But a scientific study of the subject has +dissipated such notions. These legends are far too numerous, they are +too similar to each other, they are too manifestly symbolical, to admit +of any such interpretation. By comparing them carefully with each other, +and with correlative myths of the Old World, their true character soon +becomes apparent. + +One of the most widely famous of these culture-heroes was Manabozho or +Michabo, the Great Hare. With entire unanimity, says Dr. Brinton, the +various branches of the Algonquin race, "the Powhatans of Virginia, the +Lenni Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the +Ottawas of the far North, and the Western tribes, perhaps without +exception, spoke of this chimerical beast,' as one of the old +missionaries calls it, as their common ancestor. The totem, or clan, +which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar respect." Not only +was Michabo the ruler and guardian of these numerous tribes,--he was the +founder of their religious rites, the inventor of picture-writing, the +ruler of the weather, the creator and preserver of earth and heaven. +"From a grain of sand brought from the bottom of the primeval ocean he +fashioned the habitable land, and set it floating on the waters till it +grew to such a size that a strong young wolf, running constantly, died +of old age ere he reached its limits." He was also, like Nimrod, a +mighty hunter. "One of his footsteps measured eight leagues, the Great +Lakes were the beaver-dams he built, and when the cataracts impeded his +progress he tore them away with his hands." "Sometimes he was said +to dwell in the skies with his brother, the Snow, or, like many great +spirits, to have built his wigwam in the far North on some floe of ice +in the Arctic Ocean..... But in the oldest accounts of the missionaries +he was alleged to reside toward the East; and in the holy formulae of +the meda craft, when the winds are invoked to the medicine lodge, the +East is summoned in his name, the door opens in that direction, and +there, at the edge of the earth where the sun rises, on the shore of the +infinite ocean that surrounds the land, he has his house, and sends the +luminaries forth on their daily journeys." [134] From such accounts as +this we see that Michabo was no more a wise instructor and legislator +than Minos or Kadmos. Like these heroes, he is a personification of the +solar life-giving power, which daily comes forth from its home in the +east, making the earth to rejoice. The etymology of his name confirms +the otherwise clear indications of the legend itself. It is compounded +of michi, "great," and wabos, which means alike "hare" and "white." +"Dialectic forms in Algonquin for white are wabi, wape, wampi, etc.; for +morning, wapan, wapanch, opah; for east, wapa, wanbun, etc.; for day, +wompan, oppan; for light, oppung." So that Michabo is the Great White +One, the God of the Dawn and the East. And the etymological confusion, +by virtue of which he acquired his soubriquet of the Great Hare, affords +a curious parallel to what has often happened in Aryan and Semitic +mythology, as we saw when discussing the subject of werewolves. + +Keeping in mind this solar character of Michabo, let us note how full +of meaning are the myths concerning him. In the first cycle of these +legends, "he is grandson of the Moon, his father is the West Wind, +and his mother, a maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment of +conception. For the Moon is the goddess of night; the Dawn is her +daughter, who brings forth the Morning, and perishes herself in the act; +and the West, the spirit of darkness, as the East is of light, precedes, +and as it were begets the latter, as the evening does the morning. +Straightway, however, continues the legend, the son sought the unnatural +father to revenge the death of his mother, and then commenced a long and +desperate struggle. It began on the mountains. The West was forced to +give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers and over mountains and +lakes, and at last he came to the brink of this world. 'Hold,' cried he, +'my son, you know my power, and that it is impossible to kill me.' What +is this but the diurnal combat of light and darkness, carried on from +what time 'the jocund morn stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops,' +across the wide world to the sunset, the struggle that knows no end, for +both the opponents are immortal?" [135] + +Even the Veda nowhere affords a more transparent narrative than this. +The Iroquois tradition is very similar. In it appear twin brothers, +[136] born of a virgin mother, daughter of the Moon, who died in giving +them life. Their names, Ioskeha and Tawiskara, signify in the Oneida +dialect the White One and the Dark One. Under the influence of Christian +ideas the contest between the brothers has been made to assume a moral +character, like the strife between Ormuzd and Ahriman. But no such +intention appears in the original myth, and Dr. Brinton has shown that +none of the American tribes had any conception of a Devil. When the +quarrel came to blows, the dark brother was signally discomfited; and +the victorious Ioskeha, returning to his grandmother, "established his +lodge in the far East, on the horders of the Great Ocean, whence the sun +comes. In time he became the father of mankind, and special guardian of +the Iroquois." He caused the earth to bring forth, he stocked the woods +with game, and taught his children the use of fire. "He it was who +watched and watered their crops; 'and, indeed, without his aid,' says +the old missionary, quite out of patience with their puerilities, +'they think they could not boil a pot.'" There was more in it than poor +Brebouf thought, as we are forcibly reminded by recent discoveries in +physical science. Even civilized men would find it difficult to boil a +pot without the aid of solar energy. Call him what we will,--Ioskeha, +Michabo, or Phoibos,--the beneficent Sun is the master and sustainer +of us all; and if we were to relapse into heathenism, like +Erckmann-Chatrian's innkeeper, we could not do better than to select him +as our chief object of worship. + +The same principles by which these simple cases are explained furnish +also the key to the more complicated mythology of Mexico and Peru. Like +the deities just discussed, Viracocha, the supreme god of the Quichuas, +rises from the bosom of Lake Titicaca and journeys westward, slaying +with his lightnings the creatures who oppose him, until he finally +disappears in the Western Ocean. Like Aphrodite, he bears in his name +the evidence of his origin, Viracocha signifying "foam of the sea"; and +hence the "White One" (l'aube), the god of light rising white on the +horizon, like the foam on the surface of the waves. The Aymaras spoke +of their original ancestors as white; and to this day, as Dr. Brinton +informs us, the Peruvians call a white man Viracocha. The myth of +Quetzalcoatl is of precisely the same character. All these solar heroes +present in most of their qualities and achievements a striking likeness +to those of the Old World. They combine the attributes of Apollo, +Herakles, and Hermes. Like Herakles, they journey from east to west, +smiting the powers of darkness, storm, and winter with the thunderbolts +of Zeus or the unerring arrows of Phoibos, and sinking in a blaze +of glory on the western verge of the world, where the waves meet the +firmament. Or like Hermes, in a second cycle of legends, they rise with +the soft breezes of a summer morning, driving before them the bright +celestial cattle whose udders are heavy with refreshing rain, fanning +the flames which devour the forests, blustering at the doors of wigwams, +and escaping with weird laughter through vents and crevices. The white +skins and flowing beards of these American heroes may be aptly compared +to the fair faces and long golden locks of their Hellenic compeers. +Yellow hair was in all probability as rare in Greece as a full beard +in Peru or Mexico; but in each case the description suits the solar +character of the hero. One important class of incidents, however is +apparently quite absent from the American legends. We frequently see the +Dawn described as a virgin mother who dies in giving birth to the Day; +but nowhere do we remember seeing her pictured as a lovely or valiant or +crafty maiden, ardently wooed, but speedily forsaken by her solar lover. +Perhaps in no respect is the superior richness and beauty of the Aryan +myths more manifest than in this. Brynhild, Urvasi, Medeia, Ariadne, +Oinone, and countless other kindred heroines, with their brilliant +legends, could not be spared from the mythology of our ancestors +without, leaving it meagre indeed. These were the materials which +Kalidasa, the Attic dramatists, and the bards of the Nibelungen found +ready, awaiting their artistic treatment. But the mythology of the New +World, with all its pretty and agreeable naivete, affords hardly enough, +either of variety in situation or of complexity in motive, for a grand +epic or a genuine tragedy. + +But little reflection is needed to assure us that the imagination of the +barbarian, who either carries away his wife by brute force or buys her +from her relatives as he would buy a cow, could never have originated +legends in which maidens are lovingly solicited, or in which their +favour is won by the performance of deeds of valour. These stories +owe their existence to the romantic turn of mind which has always +characterized the Aryan, whose civilization, even in the times before +the dispersion of his race, was sufficiently advanced to allow of his +entertaining such comparatively exalted conceptions of the relations +between men and women. The absence of these myths from barbaric +folk-lore is, therefore, just what might be expected; but it is a fact +which militates against any possible hypothesis of the common origin +of Aryan and barbaric mythology. If there were any genetic relationship +between Sigurd and Ioskeha, between Herakles and Michabo, it would be +hard to tell why Brynhild and Iole should have disappeared entirely +from one whole group of legends, while retained, in some form or +other, throughout the whole of the other group. On the other hand, the +resemblances above noticed between Aryan and American mythology fall +very far short of the resemblances between the stories told in different +parts of the Aryan domain. No barbaric legend, of genuine barbaric +growth, has yet been cited which resembles any Aryan legend as the story +of Punchkin resembles the story of the Heartless Giant. The myths +of Michabo and Viracocha are direct copies, so to speak, of natural +phenomena, just as imitative words are direct copies of natural sounds. +Neither the Redskin nor the Indo-European had any choice as to the main +features of the career of his solar divinity. He must be born of the +Night,--or of the Dawn,--must travel westward, must slay harassing +demons. Eliminating these points of likeness, the resemblance between +the Aryan and barbaric legends is at once at an end. Such an identity +in point of details as that between the wooden horse which enters +Ilion, and the horse which bears Sigurd into the place where Brynhild +is imprisoned, and the Druidic steed which leaps with Sculloge over the +walls of Fiach's enchanted castle, is, I believe, nowhere to be found +after we leave Indo-European territory. + +Our conclusion, therefore, must be, that while the legends of the Aryan +and the non-Aryan worlds contain common mythical elements, the legends +themselves are not of common origin. The fact that certain mythical +ideas are possessed alike by different races, shows that in each case +a similar human intelligence has been at work explaining similar +phenomena; but in order to prove a family relationship between the +culture of these different races, we need something more than this. +We need to prove not only a community of mythical ideas, but also a +community between the stories based upon these ideas. We must show not +only that Michabo is like Herakles in those striking features which +the contemplation of solar phenomena would necessarily suggest to +the imagination of the primitive myth-maker, but also that the two +characters are similarly conceived, and that the two careers agree in +seemingly arbitrary points of detail, as is the case in the stories of +Punchkin and the Heartless Giant. The mere fact that solar heroes, all +over the world, travel in a certain path and slay imps of darkness is of +great value as throwing light upon primeval habits of thought, but it +is of no value as evidence for or against an alleged community of +civilization between different races. The same is true of the sacredness +universally attached to certain numbers. Dr. Blinton's opinion that the +sanctity of the number four in nearly all systems of mythology is due to +a primitive worship of the cardinal points, becomes very probable +when we recollect that the similar pre-eminence of seven is almost +demonstrably connected with the adoration of the sun, moon, and +five visible planets, which has left its record in the structure and +nomenclature of the Aryan and Semitic week. [137] + +In view of these considerations, the comparison of barbaric myths +with each other and with the legends of the Aryan world becomes doubly +interesting, as illustrating the similarity in the workings of the +untrained intelligence the world over. In our first paper we saw how +the moon-spots have been variously explained by Indo-Europeans, as a +man with a thorn-bush or as two children bearing a bucket of water on a +pole. In Ceylon it is said that as Sakyamuni was one day wandering half +starved in the forest, a pious hare met him, and offered itself to him +to be slain and cooked for dinner; whereupon the holy Buddha set it on +high in the moon, that future generations of men might see it and marvel +at its piety. In the Samoan Islands these dark patches are supposed +to be portions of a woman's figure. A certain woman was once hammering +something with a mallet, when the moon arose, looking so much like a +bread-fruit that the woman asked it to come down and let her child +eat off a piece of it; but the moon, enraged at the insult, gobbled up +woman, mallet, and child, and there, in the moon's belly, you may still +behold them. According to the Hottentots, the Moon once sent the Hare to +inform men that as she died away and rose again, so should men die +and again come to life. But the stupid Hare forgot the purport of the +message, and, coming down to the earth, proclaimed it far and wide that +though the Moon was invariably resuscitated whenever she died, mankind, +on the other hand, should die and go to the Devil. When the silly brute +returned to the lunar country and told what he had done, the Moon was so +angry that she took up an axe and aimed a blow at his head to split it. +But the axe missed and only cut his lip open; and that was the origin +of the "hare-lip." Maddened by the pain and the insult, the Hare flew at +the Moon and almost scratched her eyes out; and to this day she bears on +her face the marks of the Hare's claws. [138] + +Again, every reader of the classics knows how Selene cast Endymion into +a profound slumber because he refused her love, and how at sundown she +used to come and stand above him on the Latmian hill, and watch him as +he lay asleep on the marble steps of a temple half hidden among drooping +elm-trees, over which clambered vines heavy with dark blue grapes. This +represents the rising moon looking down on the setting sun; in Labrador +a similar phenomenon has suggested a somewhat different story. Among +the Esquimaux the Sun is a maiden and the Moon is her brother, who +is overcome by a wicked passion for her. Once, as this girl was at a +dancing-party in a friend's hut, some one came up and took hold of her +by the shoulders and shook her, which is (according to the legend) the +Esquimaux manner of declaring one's love. She could not tell who it was +in the dark, and so she dipped her hand in some soot and smeared one of +his cheeks with it. When a light was struck in the hut, she saw, to her +dismay, that it was her brother, and, without waiting to learn any more, +she took to her heels. He started in hot pursuit, and so they ran till +they got to the end of the world,--the jumping-off place,--when they +both jumped into the sky. There the Moon still chases his sister, the +Sun; and every now and then he turns his sooty cheek toward the earth, +when he becomes so dark that you cannot see him. [139] + +Another story, which I cite from Mr. Tylor, shows that Malays, as well +as Indo-Europeans, have conceived of the clouds as swan-maidens. In the +island of Celebes it is said that "seven heavenly nymphs came down from +the sky to bathe, and they were seen by Kasimbaha, who thought first +that they were white doves, but in the bath he saw that they were women. +Then he stole one of the thin robes that gave the nymphs their power of +flying, and so he caught Utahagi, the one whose robe he had stolen, +and took her for his wife, and she bore him a son. Now she was called +Utahagi from a single white hair she had, which was endowed with magic +power, and this hair her husband pulled out. As soon as he had done +it, there arose a great storm, and Utahagi went up to heaven. The child +cried for its mother, and Kasimbaha was in great grief, and cast about +how he should follow Utahagi up into the sky." Here we pass to the myth +of Jack and the Beanstalk. "A rat gnawed the thorns off the rattans, and +Kasimbaha clambered up by them with his son upon his back, till he came +to heaven. There a little bird showed him the house of Utahagi, and +after various adventures he took up his abode among the gods." [140] + +In Siberia we find a legend of swan-maidens, which also reminds us of +the story of the Heartless Giant. A certain Samojed once went out to +catch foxes, and found seven maidens swimming in a lake surrounded by +gloomy pine-trees, while their feather dresses lay on the shore. He +crept up and stole one of these dresses, and by and by the swan-maiden +came to him shivering with cold and promising to become his wife if he +would only give her back her garment of feathers. The ungallant fellow, +however, did not care for a wife, but a little revenge was not unsuited +to his way of thinking. There were seven robbers who used to prowl about +the neighbourhood, and who, when they got home, finding their hearts +in the way, used to hang them up on some pegs in the tent. One of these +robbers had killed the Samojed's mother; and so he promised to return +the swan-maiden's dress after she should have procured for him these +seven hearts. So she stole the hearts, and the Samojed smashed six of +them, and then woke up the seventh robber, and told him to restore his +mother to life, on pain of instant death, Then the robber produced a +purse containing the old woman's soul, and going to the graveyard shook +it over her bones, and she revived at once. Then the Samojed smashed the +seventh heart, and the robber died; and so the swan-maiden got back her +plumage and flew away rejoicing. [141] + +Swan-maidens are also, according to Mr. Baring-Gould, found among the +Minussinian Tartars. But there they appear as foul demons, like the +Greek Harpies, who delight in drinking the blood of men slain in battle. +There are forty of them, who darken the whole firmament in their flight; +but sometimes they all coalesce into one great black storm-fiend, who +rages for blood, like a werewolf. + +In South Africa we find the werewolf himself. [142] A certain Hottentot +was once travelling with a Bushwoman and her child, when they perceived +at a distance a troop of wild horses. The man, being hungry, asked the +woman to turn herself into a lioness and catch one of these horses, that +they might eat of it; whereupon the woman set down her child, and taking +off a sort of petticoat made of human skin became instantly transformed +into a lioness, which rushed across the plain, struck down a wild horse +and lapped its blood. The man climbed a tree in terror, and conjured his +companion to resume her natural shape. Then the lioness came back, and +putting on the skirt made of human skin reappeared as a woman, and took +up her child, and the two friends resumed their journey after making a +meal of the horse's flesh. [143] + +The werewolf also appears in North America, duly furnished with his +wolf-skin sack; but neither in America nor in Africa is he the genuine +European werewolf, inspired by a diabolic frenzy, and ravening for human +flesh. The barbaric myths testify to the belief that men can be changed +into beasts or have in some cases descended from beast ancestors, but +the application of this belief to the explanation of abnormal cannibal +cravings seems to have been confined to Europe. The werewolf of +the Middle Ages was not merely a transformed man,--he was an insane +cannibal, whose monstrous appetite, due to the machinations of the +Devil, showed its power over his physical organism by changing the shape +of it. The barbaric werewolf is the product of a lower and simpler kind +of thinking. There is no diabolism about him; for barbaric races, while +believing in the existence of hurtful and malicious fiends, have not a +sufficiently vivid sense of moral abnormity to form the conception of +diabolism. And the cannibal craving, which to the mediaeval European was +a phenomenon so strange as to demand a mythological explanation, +would not impress the barbarian as either very exceptional or very +blameworthy. + +In the folk-lore of the Zulus, one of the most quick-witted and +intelligent of African races, the cannibal possesses many features in +common with the Scandinavian Troll, who also has a liking for human +flesh. As we saw in the preceding paper, the Troll has very likely +derived some of his characteristics from reminiscences of the barbarous +races who preceded the Aryans in Central and Northern Europe. In like +manner the long-haired cannibal of Zulu nursery literature, who is +always represented as belonging to a distinct race, has been supposed to +be explained by the existence of inferior races conquered and displaced +by the Zulus. Nevertheless, as Dr. Callaway observes, neither the +long-haired mountain cannibals of Western Africa, nor the Fulahs, +nor the tribes of Eghedal described by Barth, "can be considered as +answering to the description of long-haired as given in the Zulu legends +of cannibals; neither could they possibly have formed their historical +basis..... It is perfectly clear that the cannibals of the Zulu legends +are not common men; they are magnified into giants and magicians; they +are remarkably swift and enduring; fierce and terrible warriors." Very +probably they may have a mythical origin in modes of thought akin to +those which begot the Panis of the Veda and the Northern Trolls. The +parallelism is perhaps the most remarkable one which can be found in +comparing barbaric with Aryan folk-lore. Like the Panis and Trolls, the +cannibals are represented as the foes of the solar hero Uthlakanyana, +who is almost as great a traveller as Odysseus, and whose presence of +mind amid trying circumstances is not to be surpassed by that of the +incomparable Boots. Uthlakanyana is as precocious as Herakles or Hermes. +He speaks before he is born, and no sooner has he entered the world than +he begins to outwit other people and get possession of their property. +He works bitter ruin for the cannibals, who, with all their strength and +fleetness, are no better endowed with quick wit than the Trolls, whom +Boots invariably victimizes. On one of his journeys, Uthlakanyana fell +in with a cannibal. Their greetings were cordial enough, and they ate a +bit of leopard together, and began to build a house, and killed a couple +of cows, but the cannibal's cow was lean, while Uthlakanyana's was fat. +Then the crafty traveller, fearing that his companion might insist upon +having the fat cow, turned and said, "'Let the house be thatched now +then we can eat our meat. You see the sky, that we shall get wet.' The +cannibal said, 'You are right, child of my sister; you are a man indeed +in saying, let us thatch the house, for we shall get wet.' +Uthlakanyana said, 'Do you do it then; I will go inside, and push the +thatching-needle for you, in the house.' The cannibal went up. His hair +was very, very long. Uthlakanyana went inside and pushed the needle for +him. He thatched in the hair of the cannibal, tying it very tightly; he +knotted it into the thatch constantly, taking it by separate locks and +fastening it firmly, that it might be tightly fastened to the house." +Then the rogue went outside and began to eat of the cow which was +roasted. "The cannibal said, 'What are you about, child of my sister? +Let us just finish the house; afterwards we can do that; we will do it +together.' Uthlakanyana replied, 'Come down then. I cannot go into the +house any more. The thatching is finished.' The cannibal assented. When +he thought he was going to quit the house, he was unable to quit it. +He cried out saying, 'Child of my sister, how have you managed your +thatching?' Uthlakanyana said, 'See to it yourself. I have thatched +well, for I shall not have any dispute. Now I am about to eat in peace; +I no longer dispute with anybody, for I am now alone with my cow.'" +So the cannibal cried and raved and appealed in vain to Uthlakanyana's +sense of justice, until by and by "the sky came with hailstones and +lightning Uthlakanyana took all the meat into the house; he stayed in +the house and lit a fire. It hailed and rained. The cannibal cried on +the top of the house; he was struck with the hailstones, and died there +on the house. It cleared. Uthlakanyana went out and said, 'Uncle, just +come down, and come to me. It has become clear. It no longer rains, and +there is no more hail, neither is there any more lightning. Why are you +silent?' So Uthlakanyana ate his cow alone, until he had finished it. He +then went on his way." [144] + +In another Zulu legend, a girl is stolen by cannibals, and shut up +in the rock Itshe-likantunjambili, which, like the rock of the Forty +Thieves, opens and shuts at the command of those who understand its +secret. She gets possession of the secret and escapes, and when the +monsters pursue her she throws on the ground a calabash full of sesame, +which they stop to eat. At last, getting tired of running, she climbs a +tree, and there she finds her brother, who, warned by a dream, has come +out to look for her. They ascend the tree together until they come to a +beautiful country well stocked with fat oxen. They kill an ox, and while +its flesh is roasting they amuse themselves by making a stout thong of +its hide. By and by one of the cannibals, smelling the cooking meat, +comes to the foot of the tree, and looking up discovers the boy and girl +in the sky-country! They invite him up there; to share in their feast, +and throw him an end of the thong by which to climb up. When the +cannibal is dangling midway between earth and heaven, they let go the +rope, and down he falls with a terrible crash. [145] + +In this story the enchanted rock opened by a talismanic formula brings +us again into contact with Indo-European folk-lore. And that the +conception has in both cases been suggested by the same natural +phenomenon is rendered probable by another Zulu tale, in which the +cannibal's cave is opened by a swallow which flies in the air. Here we +have the elements of a genuine lightning-myth. We see that among these +African barbarians, as well as among our own forefathers, the clouds +have been conceived as birds carrying the lightning which can cleave +the rocks. In America we find the same notion prevalent. The Dakotahs +explain the thunder as "the sound of the cloud-bird flapping his wings," +and the Caribs describe the lightning as a poisoned dart which the bird +blows through a hollow reed, after the Carib style of shooting. [146] +On the other hand, the Kamtchatkans know nothing of a cloud-bird, but +explain the lightning as something analogous to the flames of a volcano. +The Kamtchatkans say that when the mountain goblins have got their +stoves well heated up, they throw overboard, with true barbaric +shiftlessness, all the brands not needed for immediate use, which makes +a volcanic eruption. So when it is summer on earth, it is winter in +heaven; and the gods, after heating up their stoves, throw away their +spare kindlingwood, which makes the lightning. [147] + +When treating of Indo-European solar myths, we saw the unvarying, +unresting course of the sun variously explained as due to the subjection +of Herakles to Eurystheus, to the anger of Poseidon at Odysseus, or to +the curse laid upon the Wandering Jew. The barbaric mind has worked +at the same problem; but the explanations which it has given are more +childlike and more grotesque. A Polynesian myth tells how the Sun used +to race through the sky so fast that men could not get enough daylight +to hunt game for their subsistence. By and by an inventive genius, named +Maui, conceived the idea of catching the Sun in a noose and making +him go more deliberately. He plaited ropes and made a strong net, and, +arming himself with the jawbone of his ancestress, Muri-ranga-whenua, +called together all his brethren, and they journeyed to the place where +the Sun rises, and there spread the net. When the Sun came up, he stuck +his head and fore-paws into the net, and while the brothers tightened +the ropes so that they cut him and made him scream for mercy, Maui beat +him with the jawbone until he became so weak that ever since he has +only been able to crawl through the sky. According to another Polynesian +myth, there was once a grumbling Radical, who never could be satisfied +with the way in which things are managed on this earth. This bold +Radical set out to build a stone house which should last forever; but +the days were so short and the stones so heavy that he despaired of +ever accomplishing his project. One night, as he lay awake thinking the +matter over, it occurred to him that if he could catch the Sun in a net, +he could have as much daylight as was needful in order to finish his +house. So he borrowed a noose from the god Itu, and, it being autumn, +when the Sun gets sleepy and stupid, he easily caught the luminary. The +Sun cried till his tears made a great freshet which nearly drowned the +island; but it was of no use; there he is tethered to this day. + +Similar stories are met with in North America. A Dog-Rib Indian once +chased a squirrel up a tree until he reached the sky. There he set a +snare for the squirrel and climbed down again. Next day the Sun was +caught in the snare, and night came on at once. That is to say, the sun +was eclipsed. "Something wrong up there," thought the Indian, "I must +have caught the Sun"; and so he sent up ever so many animals to release +the captive. They were all burned to ashes, but at last the mole, going +up and burrowing out through the GROUND OF THE SKY, (!) succeeded in +gnawing asunder the cords of the snare. Just as it thrust its head out +through the opening made in the sky-ground, it received a flash of light +which put its eyes out, and that is why the mole is blind. The Sun got +away, but has ever since travelled more deliberately. [148] + +These sun-myths, many more of which are to be found collected in Mr. +Tylor's excellent treatise on "The Early History of Mankind," well +illustrate both the similarity and the diversity of the results obtained +by the primitive mind, in different times and countries, when engaged +upon similar problems. No one would think of referring these stories to +a common traditional origin with the myths of Herakles and Odysseus; yet +both classes of tales were devised to explain the same phenomenon. Both +to the Aryan and to the Polynesian the steadfast but deliberate journey +of the sun through the firmament was a strange circumstance which called +for explanation; but while the meagre intelligence of the barbarian +could only attain to the quaint conception of a man throwing a noose +over the sun's head, the rich imagination of the Indo-European created +the noble picture of Herakles doomed to serve the son of Sthenelos, in +accordance with the resistless decree of fate. + +Another world-wide myth, which shows how similar are the mental habits +of uncivilized men, is the myth of the tortoise. The Hindu notion of a +great tortoise that lies beneath the earth and keeps it from falling +is familiar to every reader. According to one account, this tortoise, +swimming in the primeval ocean, bears the earth on his back; but by and +by, when the gods get ready to destroy mankind, the tortoise will grow +weary and sink under his load, and then the earth will be overwhelmed +by a deluge. Another legend tells us that when the gods and demons +took Mount Mandara for a churning-stick and churned the ocean to make +ambrosia, the god Vishnu took on the form of a tortoise and lay at the +bottom of the sea, as a pivot for the whirling mountain to rest upon. +But these versions of the myth are not primitive. In the original +conception the world is itself a gigantic tortoise swimming in a +boundless ocean; the flat surface of the earth is the lower plate which +covers the reptile's belly; the rounded shell which covers his back is +the sky; and the human race lives and moves and has its being inside of +the tortoise. Now, as Mr. Tylor has pointed out, many tribes of Redskins +hold substantially the same theory of the universe. They regard the +tortoise as the symbol of the world, and address it as the mother of +mankind. Once, before the earth was made, the king of heaven quarrelled +with his wife, and gave her such a terrible kick that she fell down into +the sea. Fortunately a tortoise received her on his back, and proceeded +to raise up the earth, upon which the heavenly woman became the mother +of mankind. These first men had white faces, and they used to dig in the +ground to catch badgers. One day a zealous burrower thrust his knife too +far and stabbed the tortoise, which immediately sank into the sea and +drowned all the human race save one man. [149] In Finnish mythology the +world is not a tortoise, but it is an egg, of which the white part is +the ocean, the yolk is the earth, and the arched shell is the sky. In +India this is the mundane egg of Brahma; and it reappears among the +Yorubas as a pair of calabashes put together like oyster-shells, one +making a dome over the other. In Zulu-land the earth is a huge beast +called Usilosimapundu, whose face is a rock, and whose mouth is very +large and broad and red: "in some countries which were on his body it +was winter, and in others it was early harvest." Many broad rivers flow +over his back, and he is covered with forests and hills, as is indicated +in his name, which means "the rugose or knotty-backed beast." In this +group of conceptions may be seen the origin of Sindbad's great fish, +which lay still so long that sand and clay gradually accumulated upon +its back, and at last it became covered with trees. And lastly, passing +from barbaric folk-lore and from the Arabian Nights to the highest level +of Indo-European intelligence, do we not find both Plato and Kepler +amusing themselves with speculations in which the earth figures as a +stupendous animal? + + + + +VI. JUVENTUS MUNDI. [150] + + +TWELVE years ago, when, in concluding his "Studies on Homer and the +Homeric Age," Mr. Gladstone applied to himself the warning addressed by +Agamemnon to the priest of Apollo, + + "Let not Nemesis catch me by the swift ships." + +he would seem to have intended it as a last farewell to classical +studies. Yet, whatever his intentions may have been, they have yielded +to the sweet desire of revisiting familiar ground,--a desire as strong +in the breast of the classical scholar as was the yearning which led +Odysseus to reject the proffered gift of immortality, so that he might +but once more behold the wreathed smoke curling about the roofs of his +native Ithaka. In this new treatise, on the "Youth of the World," Mr. +Gladstone discusses the same questions which were treated in his earlier +work; and the main conclusions reached in the "Studies on Homer" +are here so little modified with reference to the recent progress of +archaeological inquiries, that the book can hardly be said to have had +any other reason for appearing, save the desire of loitering by the +ships of the Argives, and of returning thither as often as possible. + +The title selected by Mr. Gladstone for his new work is either a very +appropriate one or a strange misnomer, according to the point of +view from which it is regarded. Such being the case, we might readily +acquiesce in its use, and pass it by without comment, trusting that +the author understood himself when he adopted it, were it not that by +incidental references, and especially by his allusions to the legendary +literature of the Jews, Mr. Gladstone shows that he means more by the +title than it can fairly be made to express. An author who seeks to +determine prehistoric events by references to Kadmos, and Danaos, and +Abraham, is at once liable to the suspicion of holding very inadequate +views as to the character of the epoch which may properly be termed the +"youth of the world." Often in reading Mr. Gladstone we are reminded +of Renan's strange suggestion that an exploration of the Hindu Kush +territory, whence probably came the primitive Aryans, might throw some +new light on the origin of language. Nothing could well be more futile. +The primitive Aryan language has already been partly reconstructed for +us; its grammatical forms and syntactic devices are becoming familiar to +scholars; one great philologist has even composed a tale in it; yet +in studying this long-buried dialect we are not much nearer the first +beginnings of human speech than in studying the Greek of Homer, the +Sanskrit of the Vedas, or the Umbrian of the Igovine Inscriptions. The +Aryan mother-tongue had passed into the last of the three stages of +linguistic growth long before the break-up of the tribal communities +in Aryana-vaedjo, and at that early date presented a less primitive +structure than is to be seen in the Chinese or the Mongolian of our own +times. So the state of society depicted in the Homeric poems, and well +illustrated by Mr. Gladstone, is many degrees less primitive than that +which is revealed to us by the archaeological researches either of +Pictet and Windischmann, or of Tylor, Lubbock, and M'Lennan. We shall +gather evidences of this as we proceed. Meanwhile let us remember that +at least eleven thousand years before the Homeric age men lived in +communities, and manufactured pottery on the banks of the Nile; and let +us not leave wholly out of sight that more distant period, perhaps a +million years ago, when sparse tribes of savage men, contemporaneous +with the mammoths of Siberia and the cave-tigers of Britain, struggled +against the intense cold of the glacial winters. + +Nevertheless, though the Homeric age appears to be a late one when +considered with reference to the whole career of the human race, there +is a point of view from which it may be justly regarded as the "youth of +the world." However long man may have existed upon the earth, he becomes +thoroughly and distinctly human in the eyes of the historian only at the +epoch at which he began to create for himself a literature. As far back +as we can trace the progress of the human race continuously by means of +the written word, so far do we feel a true historical interest in its +fortunes, and pursue our studies with a sympathy which the mere lapse of +time is powerless to impair. But the primeval man, whose history never +has been and never will be written, whose career on the earth, dateless +and chartless, can be dimly revealed to us only by palaeontology, +excites in us a very different feeling. Though with the keenest interest +we ransack every nook and corner of the earth's surface for information +about him, we are all the while aware that what we are studying is +human zoology and not history. Our Neanderthal man is a specimen, not a +character. We cannot ask him the Homeric question, what is his name, who +were his parents, and how did he get where we found him. His language +has died with him, and he can render no account of himself. We can only +regard him specifically as Homo Anthropos, a creature of bigger brain +than his congener Homo Pithekos, and of vastly greater promise. But +this, we say, is physical science, and not history. + +For the historian, therefore, who studies man in his various social +relations, the youth of the world is the period at which literature +begins. We regard the history of the western world as beginning about +the tenth century before the Christian era, because at that date we find +literature, in Greece and Palestine, beginning to throw direct light +upon the social and intellectual condition of a portion of mankind. +That great empires, rich in historical interest and in materials for +sociological generalizations, had existed for centuries before that +date, in Egypt and Assyria, we do not doubt, since they appear at the +dawn of history with all the marks of great antiquity; but the only +steady historical light thrown upon them shines from the pages of Greek +and Hebrew authors, and these know them only in their latest period. For +information concerning their early careers we must look, not to history, +but to linguistic archaeology, a science which can help us to general +results, but cannot enable us to fix dates, save in the crudest manner. + +We mention the tenth century before Christ as the earliest period at +which we can begin to study human society in general and Greek society +in particular, through the medium of literature. But, strictly speaking, +the epoch in question is one which cannot be fixed with accuracy. The +earliest ascertainable date in Greek history is that of the Olympiad +of Koroibos, B. C. 776. There is no doubt that the Homeric poems +were written before this date, and that Homer is therefore strictly +prehistoric. Had this fact been duly realized by those scholars who have +not attempted to deny it, a vast amount of profitless discussion might +have been avoided. Sooner or later, as Grote says, "the lesson must +be learnt, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of +critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy from +reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence." We do not +know who Homer was; we do not know where or when he lived; and in all +probability we shall never know. The data for settling the question +are not now accessible, and it is not likely that they will ever be +discovered. Even in early antiquity the question was wrapped in an +obscurity as deep as that which shrouds it to-day. The case between the +seven or eight cities which claimed to be the birthplace of the +poet, and which Welcker has so ably discussed, cannot be decided. The +feebleness of the evidence brought into court may be judged from the +fact that the claims of Chios and the story of the poet's blindness rest +alike upon a doubtful allusion in the Hymn to Apollo, which Thukydides +(III. 104) accepted as authentic. The majority of modern critics have +consoled themselves with the vague conclusion that, as between the two +great divisions of the early Greek world, Homer at least belonged to +the Asiatic. But Mr. Gladstone has shown good reasons for doubting this +opinion. He has pointed out several instances in which the poems seem +to betray a closer topographical acquaintance with European than with +Asiatic Greece, and concludes that Athens and Argos have at least as +good a claim to Homer as Chios or Smyrna. + +It is far more desirable that we should form an approximate opinion as +to the date of the Homeric poems, than that we should seek to determine +the exact locality in which they originated. Yet the one question is +hardly less obscure than the other. Different writers of antiquity +assigned eight different epochs to Homer, of which the earliest is +separated from the most recent by an interval of four hundred and sixty +years,--a period as long as that which separates the Black Prince from +the Duke of Wellington, or the age of Perikles from the Christian era. +While Theopompos quite preposterously brings him down as late as the +twenty-third Olympiad, Krates removes him to the twelfth century B. C. +The date ordinarily accepted by modern critics is the one assigned by +Herodotos, 880 B. C. Yet Mr. Gladstone shows reasons, which appear to me +convincing, for doubting or rejecting this date. + +I refer to the much-abused legend of the Children of Herakles, which +seems capable of yielding an item of trustworthy testimony, provided +it be circumspectly dealt with. I differ from Mr. Gladstone in +not regarding the legend as historical in its present shape. In my +apprehension, Hyllos and Oxylos, as historical personages, have no value +whatever; and I faithfully follow Mr. Grote, in refusing to accept any +date earlier than the Olympiad of Koroibos. The tale of the "Return of +the Herakleids" is undoubtedly as unworthy of credit as the legend +of Hengst and Horsa; yet, like the latter, it doubtless embodies +a historical occurrence. One cannot approve, as scholarlike or +philosophical, the scepticism of Mr. Cox, who can see in the whole +narrative nothing but a solar myth. There certainly was a time when the +Dorian tribes--described in the legend as the allies of the Children of +Herakles--conquered Peloponnesos; and that time was certainly subsequent +to the composition of the Homeric poems. It is incredible that the Iliad +and the Odyssey should ignore the existence of Dorians in Peloponnesos, +if there were Dorians not only dwelling but ruling there at the time +when the poems were written. The poems are very accurate and rigorously +consistent in their use of ethnical appellatives; and their author, in +speaking of Achaians and Argives, is as evidently alluding to peoples +directly known to him, as is Shakespeare when he mentions Danes and +Scotchmen. Now Homer knows Achaians, Argives, and Pelasgians dwelling in +Peloponnesos; and he knows Dorians also, but only as a people inhabiting +Crete. (Odyss. XIX. 175.) With Homer, moreover, the Hellenes are not the +Greeks in general but only a people dwelling in the north, in Thessaly. +When these poems were written, Greece was not known as Hellas, but +as Achaia,--the whole country taking its name from the Achaians, +the dominant race in Peloponnesos. Now at the beginning of the truly +historical period, in the eighth century B. C., all this is changed. +The Greeks as a people are called Hellenes; the Dorians rule in +Peloponnesos, while their lands are tilled by Argive Helots; and the +Achaians appear only as an insignificant people occupying the southern +shore of the Corinthian Gulf. How this change took place we cannot tell. +The explanation of it can never be obtained from history, though some +light may perhaps be thrown upon it by linguistic archaeology. But at +all events it was a great change, and could not have taken place in a +moment. It is fair to suppose that the Helleno-Dorian conquest must have +begun at least a century before the first Olympiad; for otherwise the +geographical limits of the various Greek races would not have been so +completely established as we find them to have been at that date. The +Greeks, indeed, supposed it to have begun at least three centuries +earlier, but it is impossible to collect evidence which will either +refute or establish that opinion. For our purposes it is enough to know +that the conquest could not have taken place later than 900 B. C.; and +if this be the case, the MINIMUM DATE for the composition of the Homeric +poems must be the tenth century before Christ; which is, in fact, the +date assigned by Aristotle. Thus far, and no farther, I believe it +possible to go with safety. Whether the poems were composed in the +tenth, eleventh, or twelfth century cannot be determined. We +are justified only in placing them far enough back to allow the +Helleno-Dorian conquest to intervene between their composition and the +beginning of recorded history. The tenth century B. C. is the latest +date which will account for all the phenomena involved in the case, and +with this result we must be satisfied. Even on this showing, the Iliad +and Odyssey appear as the oldest existing specimens of Aryan literature, +save perhaps the hymns of the Rig-Veda and the sacred books of the +Avesta. + +The apparent difficulty of preserving such long poems for three or four +centuries without the aid of writing may seem at first sight to justify +the hypothesis of Wolf, that they are mere collections of ancient +ballads, like those which make up the Mahabharata, preserved in the +memories of a dozen or twenty bards, and first arranged under the orders +of Peisistratos. But on a careful examination this hypothesis is seen to +raise more difficulties than it solves. What was there in the position +of Peisistratos, or of Athens itself in the sixth century B. C., so +authoritative as to compel all Greeks to recognize the recension then +and there made of their revered poet? Besides which the celebrated +ordinance of Solon respecting the rhapsodes at the Panathenaia obliges +us to infer the existence of written manuscripts of Homer previous to +550 B. C. As Mr. Grote well observes, the interference of Peisistratos +"presupposes a certain foreknown and ancient aggregate, the main +lineaments of which were familiar to the Grecian public, although many +of the rhapsodes in their practice may have deviated from it both by +omission and interpolation. In correcting the Athenian recitations +conformably with such understood general type, Peisistratos might hope +both to procure respect for Athens and to constitute a fashion for the +rest of Greece. But this step of 'collecting the torn body of sacred +Homer' is something generically different from the composition of a new +Iliad out of pre-existing songs: the former is as easy, suitable, and +promising as the latter is violent and gratuitous." [151] + +As for Wolf's objection, that the Iliad and Odyssey are too long to +have been preserved by memory, it may be met by a simple denial. It is a +strange objection indeed, coming from a man of Wolf's retentive memory. +I do not see how the acquisition of the two poems can be regarded as +such a very arduous task; and if literature were as scanty now as in +Greek antiquity, there are doubtless many scholars who would long since +have had them at their tongues' end. Sir G. C. Lewis, with but little +conscious effort, managed to carry in his head a very considerable +portion of Greek and Latin classic literature; and Niebuhr (who +once restored from recollection a book of accounts which had been +accidentally destroyed) was in the habit of referring to book and +chapter of an ancient author without consulting his notes. Nay, there +is Professor Sophocles, of Harvard University, who, if you suddenly stop +and interrogate him in the street, will tell you just how many times any +given Greek word occurs in Thukydides, or in AEschylos, or in Plato, and +will obligingly rehearse for you the context. If all extant copies of +the Homeric poems were to be gathered together and burnt up to-day, +like Don Quixote's library, or like those Arabic manuscripts of which +Cardinal Ximenes made a bonfire in the streets of Granada, the poems +could very likely be reproduced and orally transmitted for several +generations; and much easier must it have been for the Greeks +to preserve these books, which their imagination invested with a +quasi-sanctity, and which constituted the greater part of the literary +furniture of their minds. In Xenophon's time there were educated +gentlemen at Athens who could repeat both Iliad and Odyssey verbatim. +(Xenoph. Sympos., III. 5.) Besides this, we know that at Chios there was +a company of bards, known as Homerids, whose business it was to recite +these poems from memory; and from the edicts of Solon and the Sikyonian +Kleisthenes (Herod., V. 67), we may infer that the case was the same in +other parts of Greece. Passages from the Iliad used to be sung at the +Pythian festivals, to the accompaniment of the harp (Athenaeus, XIV. +638), and in at least two of the Ionic islands of the AEgaean there were +regular competitive exhibitions by trained young men, at which prizes +were given to the best reciter. The difficulty of preserving the poems, +under such circumstances, becomes very insignificant; and the Wolfian +argument quite vanishes when we reflect that it would have been no +easier to preserve a dozen or twenty short poems than two long ones. +Nay, the coherent, orderly arrangement of the Iliad and Odyssey would +make them even easier to remember than a group of short rhapsodies not +consecutively arranged. + +When we come to interrogate the poems themselves, we find in them quite +convincing evidence that they were originally composed for the ear +alone, and without reference to manuscript assistance. They abound in +catchwords, and in verbal repetitions. The "Catalogue of Ships," as Mr. +Gladstone has acutely observed, is arranged in well-defined sections, +in such a way that the end of each section suggests the beginning of +the next one. It resembles the versus memoriales found in old-fashioned +grammars. But the most convincing proof of all is to be found in the +changes which Greek pronunciation went through between the ages of +Homer and Peisistratos. "At the time when these poems were composed, the +digamma (or w) was an effective consonant, and figured as such in the +structure of the verse; at the time when they were committed to writing, +it had ceased to be pronounced, and therefore never found a place in any +of the manuscripts,--insomuch that the Alexandrian critics, though they +knew of its existence in the much later poems of Alkaios and Sappho, +never recognized it in Homer. The hiatus, and the various perplexities +of metre, occasioned by the loss of the digamma, were corrected by +different grammatical stratagems. But the whole history of this lost +letter is very curious, and is rendered intelligible only by the +supposition that the Iliad and Odyssey belonged for a wide space of time +to the memory, the voice, and the ear exclusively." [152] + +Many of these facts are of course fully recognized by the Wolfians; but +the inference drawn from them, that the Homeric poems began to exist in +a piecemeal condition, is, as we have seen, unnecessary. These poems may +indeed be compared, in a certain sense, with the early sacred and +epic literature of the Jews, Indians, and Teutons. But if we assign a +plurality of composers to the Psalms and Pentateuch, the Mahabharata, +the Vedas, and the Edda, we do so because of internal evidence furnished +by the books themselves, and not because these books could not have been +preserved by oral tradition. Is there, then, in the Homeric poems any +such internal evidence of dual or plural origin as is furnished by +the interlaced Elohistic and Jehovistic documents of the Pentateuch? A +careful investigation will show that there is not. Any scholar who +has given some attention to the subject can readily distinguish the +Elohistic from the Jehovistic portions of the Pentateuch; and, save in +the case of a few sporadic verses, most Biblical critics coincide in the +separation which they make between the two. But the attempts which have +been made to break up the Iliad and Odyssey have resulted in no such +harmonious agreement. There are as many systems as there are critics, +and naturally enough. For the Iliad and the Odyssey are as much alike +as two peas, and the resemblance which holds between the two holds also +between the different parts of each poem. From the appearance of the +injured Chryses in the Grecian camp down to the intervention of Athene +on the field of contest at Ithaka, we find in each book and in each +paragraph the same style, the same peculiarities of expression, the same +habits of thought, the same quite unique manifestations of the faculty +of observation. Now if the style were commonplace, the observation +slovenly, or the thought trivial, as is wont to be the case in +ballad-literature, this argument from similarity might not carry with it +much conviction. But when we reflect that throughout the whole course +of human history no other works, save the best tragedies of Shakespeare, +have ever been written which for combined keenness of observation, +elevation of thought, and sublimity of style can compare with the +Homeric poems, we must admit that the argument has very great weight +indeed. Let us take, for example, the sixth and twenty-fourth books +of the Iliad. According to the theory of Lachmann, the most eminent +champion of the Wolfian hypothesis, these are by different authors. +Human speech has perhaps never been brought so near to the limit of its +capacity of expressing deep emotion as in the scene between Priam and +Achilleus in the twenty-fourth book; while the interview between Hektor +and Andromache in the sixth similarly wellnigh exhausts the power of +language. Now, the literary critic has a right to ask whether it +is probable that two such passages, agreeing perfectly in turn of +expression, and alike exhibiting the same unapproachable degree of +excellence, could have been produced by two different authors. And the +physiologist--with some inward misgivings suggested by Mr. Galton's +theory that the Greeks surpassed us in genius even as we surpass the +negroes--has a right to ask whether it is in the natural course of +things for two such wonderful poets, strangely agreeing in their +minutest psychological characteristics, to be produced at the same time. +And the difficulty thus raised becomes overwhelming when we reflect that +it is the coexistence of not two only, but at least twenty such geniuses +which the Wolfian hypothesis requires us to account for. That theory +worked very well as long as scholars thoughtlessly assumed that the +Iliad and Odyssey were analogous to ballad poetry. But, except in the +simplicity of the primitive diction, there is no such analogy. The +power and beauty of the Iliad are never so hopelessly lost as when it is +rendered into the style of a modern ballad. One might as well attempt +to preserve the grandeur of the triumphant close of Milton's Lycidas by +turning it into the light Anacreontics of the ode to "Eros stung by a +Bee." The peculiarity of the Homeric poetry, which defies translation, +is its union of the simplicity characteristic of an early age with a +sustained elevation of style, which can be explained only as due to +individual genius. + +The same conclusion is forced upon us when we examine the artistic +structure of these poems. With regard to the Odyssey in particular, +Mr. Grote has elaborately shown that its structure is so thoroughly +integral, that no considerable portion could be subtracted without +converting the poem into a more or less admirable fragment. The +Iliad stands in a somewhat different position. There are unmistakable +peculiarities in its structure, which have led even Mr. Grote, who +utterly rejects the Wolfian hypothesis, to regard it as made up of +two poems; although he inclines to the belief that the later poem +was grafted upon the earlier by its own author, by way of further +elucidation and expansion; just as Goethe, in his old age, added a +new part to "Faust." According to Mr. Grote, the Iliad, as originally +conceived, was properly an Achilleis; its design being, as indicated in +the opening lines of the poem, to depict the wrath of Achilleus and +the unutterable woes which it entailed upon the Greeks The plot of +this primitive Achilleis is entirely contained in Books I., VIII., and +XI.-XXII.; and, in Mr. Grote's opinion, the remaining books injure the +symmetry of this plot by unnecessarily prolonging the duration of +the Wrath, while the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, unduly +anticipates the conduct of Agamemnon in the nineteenth, and is +therefore, as a piece of bungling work, to be referred to the hands of +an inferior interpolator. Mr. Grote thinks it probable that these books, +with the exception of the ninth, were subsequently added by the poet, +with a view to enlarging the original Achilleis into a real Iliad, +describing the war of the Greeks against Troy. With reference to this +hypothesis, I gladly admit that Mr. Grote is, of all men now living, the +one best entitled to a reverential hearing on almost any point connected +with Greek antiquity. Nevertheless it seems to me that his theory rests +solely upon imagined difficulties which have no real existence. I doubt +if any scholar, reading the Iliad ever so much, would ever be struck by +these alleged inconsistencies of structure, unless they were suggested +by some a priori theory. And I fear that the Wolfian theory, in spite of +Mr. Grote's emphatic rejection of it, is responsible for some of these +over-refined criticisms. Even as it stands, the Iliad is not an account +of the war against Troy. It begins in the tenth year of the siege, and +it does not continue to the capture of the city. It is simply occupied +with an episode in the war,--with the wrath of Achilleus and its +consequences, according to the plan marked out in the opening lines. The +supposed additions, therefore, though they may have given to the poem +a somewhat wider scope, have not at any rate changed its primitive +character of an Achilleis. To my mind they seem even called for by the +original conception of the consequences of the wrath. To have inserted +the battle at the ships, in which Sarpedon breaks down the wall of the +Greeks, immediately after the occurrences of the first book, would have +been too abrupt altogether. Zeus, after his reluctant promise to Thetis, +must not be expected so suddenly to exhibit such fell determination. And +after the long series of books describing the valorous deeds of Aias, +Diomedes, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Menelaos, the powerful intervention +of Achilleus appears in far grander proportions than would otherwise +be possible. As for the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, I +am unable to see how the final reconciliation with Agamemnon would be +complete without it. As Mr. Gladstone well observes, what Achilleus +wants is not restitution, but apology; and Agamemnon offers no apology +until the nineteenth book. In his answer to the ambassadors, Achilleus +scornfully rejects the proposals which imply that the mere return of +Briseis will satisfy his righteous resentment, unless it be accompanied +with that public humiliation to which circumstances have not yet +compelled the leader of the Greeks to subject himself. Achilleus is not +to be bought or cajoled. Even the extreme distress of the Greeks in the +thirteenth book does not prevail upon him; nor is there anything in the +poem to show that he ever would have laid aside his wrath, had not the +death of Patroklos supplied him with a new and wholly unforeseen motive. +It seems to me that his entrance into the battle after the death of his +friend would lose half its poetic effect, were it not preceded by some +such scene as that in the ninth book, in which he is represented as deaf +to all ordinary inducements. As for the two concluding books, which Mr. +Grote is inclined to regard as a subsequent addition, not necessitated +by the plan of the poem, I am at a loss to see how the poem can be +considered complete without them. To leave the bodies of Patroklos +and Hektor unburied would be in the highest degree shocking to Greek +religious feelings. Remembering the sentence incurred, in far less +superstitious times, by the generals at Arginusai, it is impossible to +believe that any conclusion which left Patroklos's manes unpropitiated, +and the mutilated corpse of Hektor unransomed, could have satisfied +either the poet or his hearers. For further particulars I must refer +the reader to the excellent criticisms of Mr. Gladstone, and also to the +article on "Greek History and Legend" in the second volume of Mr. Mill's +"Dissertations and Discussions." A careful study of the arguments of +these writers, and, above all, a thorough and independent examination of +the Iliad itself, will, I believe, convince the student that this great +poem is from beginning to end the consistent production of a single +author. + +The arguments of those who would attribute the Iliad and Odyssey, taken +as wholes, to two different authors, rest chiefly upon some apparent +discrepancies in the mythology of the two poems; but many of these +difficulties have been completely solved by the recent progress of the +science of comparative mythology. Thus, for example, the fact that, +in the Iliad, Hephaistos is called the husband of Charis, while in the +Odyssey he is called the husband of Aphrodite, has been cited even by +Mr. Grote as evidence that the two poems are not by the same author. It +seems to me that one such discrepancy, in the midst of complete general +agreement, would be much better explained as Cervantes explained his own +inconsistency with reference to the stealing of Sancho's mule, in the +twenty-second chapter of "Don Quixote." But there is no discrepancy. +Aphrodite, though originally the moon-goddess, like the German +Horsel, had before Homer's time acquired many of the attributes of the +dawn-goddess Athene, while her lunar characteristics had been to a +great extent transferred to Artemis and Persephone. In her renovated +character, as goddess of the dawn, Aphrodite became identified with +Charis, who appears in the Rig-Veda as dawn-goddess. In the post-Homeric +mythology, the two were again separated, and Charis, becoming divided in +personality, appears as the Charites, or Graces, who were supposed to be +constant attendants of Aphrodite. But in the Homeric poems the two are +still identical, and either Charis or Aphrodite may be called the wife +of the fire-god, without inconsistency. + +Thus to sum up, I believe that Mr. Gladstone is quite right in +maintaining that both the Iliad and Odyssey are, from beginning to end, +with the exception of a few insignificant interpolations, the work of a +single author, whom we have no ground for calling by any other name than +that of Homer. I believe, moreover, that this author lived before the +beginning of authentic history, and that we can determine neither his +age nor his country with precision. We can only decide that he was a +Greek who lived at some time previous to the year 900 B.C. + +Here, however, I must begin to part company with Mr. Gladstone, and +shall henceforth unfortunately have frequent occasion to differ from him +on points of fundamental importance. For Mr. Gladstone not only regards +the Homeric age as strictly within the limits of authentic history, but +he even goes much further than this. He would not only fix the date of +Homer positively in the twelfth century B. C., but he regards the +Trojan war as a purely historical event, of which Homer is the authentic +historian and the probable eye-witness. Nay, he even takes the word +of the poet as proof conclusive of the historical character of events +happening several generations before the Troika, according to the +legendary chronology. He not only regards Agamemnon, Achilleus, +and Paris as actual personages, but he ascribes the same reality to +characters like Danaos, Kadmos, and Perseus, and talks of the Pelopid +and Aiolid dynasties, and the empire of Minos, with as much confidence +as if he were dealing with Karlings or Capetians, or with the epoch of +the Crusades. + +It is disheartening, at the present day, and after so much has been +finally settled by writers like Grote, Mommsen, and Sir G. C. Lewis, +to come upon such views in the work of a man of scholarship and +intelligence. One begins to wonder how many more times it will be +necessary to prove that dates and events are of no historical value, +unless attested by nearly contemporary evidence. Pausanias and Plutarch +were able men no doubt, and Thukydides was a profound historian; but +what these writers thought of the Herakleid invasion, the age of +Homer, and the war of Troy, can have no great weight with the critical +historian, since even in the time of Thukydides these events were +as completely obscured by lapse of time as they are now. There is no +literary Greek history before the age of Hekataios and Herodotos, three +centuries subsequent to the first recorded Olympiad. A portion of this +period is satisfactorily covered by inscriptions, but even these fail us +before we get within a century of this earliest ascertainable date. +Even the career of the lawgiver Lykourgos, which seems to belong to +the commencement of the eighth century B. C., presents us, from lack of +anything like contemporary records, with many insoluble problems. The +Helleno-Dorian conquest, as we have seen, must have occurred at some +time or other; but it evidently did not occur within two centuries of +the earliest known inscription, and it is therefore folly to imagine +that we can determine its date or ascertain the circumstances which +attended it. Anterior to this event there is but one fact in Greek +antiquity directly known to us,--the existence of the Homeric poems. The +belief that there was a Trojan war rests exclusively upon the contents +of those poems: there is no other independent testimony to it whatever. +But the Homeric poems are of no value as testimony to the truth of the +statements contained in them, unless it can be proved that their author +was either contemporary with the Troika, or else derived his information +from contemporary witnesses. This can never be proved. To assume, as Mr. +Gladstone does, that Homer lived within fifty years after the Troika, is +to make a purely gratuitous assumption. For aught the wisest historian +can tell, the interval may have been five hundred years, or a thousand. +Indeed the Iliad itself expressly declares that it is dealing with an +ancient state of things which no longer exists. It is difficult to see +what else can be meant by the statement that the heroes of the Troika +belong to an order of men no longer seen upon the earth. (Iliad, V. +304.) Most assuredly Achilleus the son of Thetis, and Sarpedon the son +of Zeus, and Helena the daughter of Zeus, are no ordinary mortals, such +as might have been seen and conversed with by the poet's grandfather. +They belong to an inferior order of gods, according to the peculiar +anthropomorphism of the Greeks, in which deity and humanity are so +closely mingled that it is difficult to tell where the one begins and +the other ends. Diomedes, single-handed, vanquishes not only the gentle +Aphrodite, but even the god of battles himself, the terrible Ares. +Nestor quaffs lightly from a goblet which, we are told, not two men +among the poet's contemporaries could by their united exertions raise +and place upon a table. Aias and Hektor and Aineias hurl enormous masses +of rock as easily as an ordinary man would throw a pebble. All this +shows that the poet, in his naive way, conceiving of these heroes as +personages of a remote past, was endeavouring as far as possible to +ascribe to them the attributes of superior beings. If all that were +divine, marvellous, or superhuman were to be left out of the poems, the +supposed historical residue would hardly be worth the trouble of saving. +As Mr. Cox well observes, "It is of the very essence of the narrative +that Paris, who has deserted Oinone, the child of the stream Kebren, and +before whom Here, Athene, and Aphrodite had appeared as claimants +for the golden apple, steals from Sparta the beautiful sister of the +Dioskouroi; that the chiefs are summoned together for no other purpose +than to avenge her woes and wrongs; that Achilleus, the son of the +sea-nymph Thetis, the wielder of invincible weapons and the lord of +undying horses, goes to fight in a quarrel which is not his own; that +his wrath is roused because he is robbed of the maiden Briseis, and that +henceforth he takes no part in the strife until his friend Patroklos has +been slain; that then he puts on the new armour which Thetis brings to +him from the anvil of Hephaistos, and goes forth to win the victory. The +details are throughout of the same nature. Achilleus sees and converses +with Athene; Aphrodite is wounded by Diomedes, and Sleep and Death bear +away the lifeless Sarpedon on their noiseless wings to the far-off +land of light." In view of all this it is evident that Homer was not +describing, like a salaried historiographer, the state of things which +existed in the time of his father or grandfather. To his mind the +occurrences which he described were those of a remote, a wonderful, a +semi-divine past. + +This conclusion, which I have thus far supported merely by reference to +the Iliad itself, becomes irresistible as soon as we take into account +the results obtained during the past thirty years by the science of +comparative mythology. As long as our view was restricted to Greece, +it was perhaps excusable that Achilleus and Paris should be taken for +exaggerated copies of actual persons. Since the day when Grimm laid the +foundations of the science of mythology, all this has been changed. It +is now held that Achilleus and Paris and Helena are to be found, not +only in the Iliad, but also in the Rig-Veda, and therefore, as mythical +conceptions, date, not from Homer, but from a period preceding the +dispersion of the Aryan nations. The tale of the Wrath of Achilleus, far +from originating with Homer, far from being recorded by the author of +the Iliad as by an eyewitness, must have been known in its essential +features in Aryana-vaedjo, at that remote epoch when the Indian, the +Greek, and the Teuton were as yet one and the same. For the story has +been retained by the three races alike, in all its principal features; +though the Veda has left it in the sky where it originally belonged, +while the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied have brought it down to earth, +the one locating it in Asia Minor, and the other in Northwestern Europe. +[153] + +In the Rig-Veda the Panis are the genii of night and winter, +corresponding to the Nibelungs, or "Children of the Mist," in the +Teutonic legend, and to the children of Nephele (cloud) in the Greek +myth of the Golden Fleece. The Panis steal the cattle of the Sun (Indra, +Helios, Herakles), and carry them by an unknown route to a dark cave +eastward. Sarama, the creeping Dawn, is sent by Indra to find and +recover them. The Panis then tamper with Sarama, and try their best to +induce her to betray her solar lord. For a while she is prevailed +upon to dally with them; yet she ultimately returns to give Indra the +information needful in order that he might conquer the Panis, just +as Helena, in the slightly altered version, ultimately returns to her +western home, carrying with her the treasures (ktemata, Iliad, II. 285) +of which Paris had robbed Menelaos. But, before the bright Indra and his +solar heroes can reconquer their treasures they must take captive the +offspring of Brisaya, the violet light of morning. Thus Achilleus, +answering to the solar champion Aharyu, takes captive the daughter of +Brises. But as the sun must always be parted from the morning-light, to +return to it again just before setting, so Achilleus loses Briseis, +and regains her only just before his final struggle. In similar wise +Herakles is parted from Iole ("the violet one"), and Sigurd from +Brynhild. In sullen wrath the hero retires from the conflict, and his +Myrmidons are no longer seen on the battle-field, as the sun hides +behind the dark cloud and his rays no longer appear about him. Yet +toward the evening, as Briseis returns, he appears in his might, clothed +in the dazzling armour wrought for him by the fire-god Hephaistos, and +with his invincible spear slays the great storm-cloud, which during his +absence had wellnigh prevailed over the champions of the daylight. But +his triumph is short-lived; for having trampled on the clouds that had +opposed him, while yet crimsoned with the fierce carnage, the sharp +arrow of the night-demon Paris slays him at the Western Gates. We have +not space to go into further details. In Mr. Cox's "Mythology of the +Aryan Nations," and "Tales of Ancient Greece," the reader will find the +entire contents of the Iliad and Odyssey thus minutely illustrated by +comparison with the Veda, the Edda, and the Lay of the Nibelungs. + +Ancient as the Homeric poems undoubtedly are, they are modern in +comparison with the tale of Achilleus and Helena, as here unfolded. The +date of the entrance of the Greeks into Europe will perhaps never be +determined; but I do not see how any competent scholar can well place it +at less than eight hundred or a thousand years before the time of Homer. +Between the two epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and Keltic lauguages +had time to acquire distinct individualities. Far earlier, therefore, +than the Homeric "juventus mundi" was that "youth of the world," in +which the Aryan forefathers, knowing no abstract terms, and possessing +no philosophy but fetichism, deliberately spoke of the Sun, and the +Dawn, and the Clouds, as persons or as animals. The Veda, +though composed much later than this,--perhaps as late as the +Iliad,--nevertheless preserves the record of the mental life of this +period. The Vedic poet is still dimly aware that Sarama is the fickle +twilight, and the Panis the night-demons who strive to coax her from her +allegiance to the day-god. He keeps the scene of action in the sky. But +the Homeric Greek had long since forgotten that Helena and Paris were +anything more than semi-divine mortals, the daughter of Zeus and the +son of the Zeus-descended Priam. The Hindu understood that Dyaus ("the +bright one") meant the sky, and Sarama ("the creeping one") the dawn, +and spoke significantly when he called the latter the daughter of the +former. But the Greek could not know that Zeus was derived from a root +div, "to shine," or that Helena belonged to a root sar, "to creep." +Phonetic change thus helped him to rise from fetichism to polytheism. +His nature-gods became thoroughly anthropomorphic; and he probably no +more remembered that Achilleus originally signified the sun, than we +remember that the word God, which we use to denote the most vast of +conceptions, originally meant simply the Storm-wind. Indeed, when the +fetichistic tendency led the Greek again to personify the powers of +nature, he had recourse to new names formed from his own language. Thus, +beside Apollo we have Helios; Selene beside Artemis and Persephone; Eos +beside Athene; Gaia beside Demeter. As a further consequence of this +decomposition and new development of the old Aryan mythology, we find, +as might be expected, that the Homeric poems are not always consistent +in their use of their mythic materials. Thus, Paris, the night-demon, +is--to Max Muller's perplexity--invested with many of the attributes of +the bright solar heroes. "Like Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus, and Cyrus, he +is doomed to bring ruin on his parents; like them he is exposed in +his infancy on the hillside, and rescued by a shepherd." All the solar +heroes begin life in this way. Whether, like Apollo, born of the dark +night (Leto), or like Oidipous, of the violet dawn (Iokaste), they are +alike destined to bring destruction on their parents, as the night and +the dawn are both destroyed by the sun. The exposure of the child in +infancy represents the long rays of the morning-sun resting on the +hillside. Then Paris forsakes Oinone ("the wine-coloured one"), but +meets her again at the gloaming when she lays herself by his side amid +the crimson flames of the funeral pyre. Sarpedon also, a solar hero, is +made to fight on the side of the Niblungs or Trojans, attended by his +friend Glaukos ("the brilliant one"). They command the Lykians, or +"children of light"; and with them comes also Memnon, son of the Dawn, +from the fiery land of the Aithiopes, the favourite haunt of Zeus and +the gods of Olympos. + +The Iliad-myth must therefore have been current many ages before +the Greeks inhabited Greece, long before there was any Ilion to be +conquered. Nevertheless, this does not forbid the supposition that the +legend, as we have it, may have been formed by the crystallization of +mythical conceptions about a nucleus of genuine tradition. In this view +I am upheld by a most sagacious and accurate scholar, Mr. E. A. Freeman, +who finds in Carlovingian romance an excellent illustration of the +problem before us. + +The Charlemagne of romance is a mythical personage. He is supposed to +have been a Frenchman, at a time when neither the French nation nor +the French language can properly be said to have existed; and he is +represented as a doughty crusader, although crusading was not thought of +until long after the Karolingian era. The legendary deeds of Charlemagne +are not conformed to the ordinary rules of geography and chronology. +He is a myth, and, what is more, he is a solar myth,--an avatar, or at +least a representative, of Odin in his solar capacity. If in his case +legend were not controlled and rectified by history, he would be for us +as unreal as Agamemnon. + +History, however, tells us that there was an Emperor Karl, German in +race, name, and language, who was one of the two or three greatest men +of action that the world has ever seen, and who in the ninth century +ruled over all Western Europe. To the historic Karl corresponds in many +particulars the mythical Charlemagne. The legend has preserved the fact, +which without the information supplied by history we might perhaps set +down as a fiction, that there was a time when Germany, Gaul, Italy, +and part of Spain formed a single empire. And, as Mr. Freeman has well +observed, the mythical crusades of Charlemagne are good evidence that +there were crusades, although the real Karl had nothing whatever to do +with one. + +Now the case of Agamemnon may be much like that of Charlemagne, except +that we no longer have history to help us in rectifying the legend. +The Iliad preserves the tradition of a time when a large portion of +the islands and mainland of Greece were at least partially subject to a +common suzerain; and, as Mr. Freeman has again shrewdly suggested, +the assignment of a place like Mykenai, instead of Athens or Sparta +or Argos, as the seat of the suzerainty, is strong evidence of the +trustworthiness of the tradition. It appears to show that the legend was +constrained by some remembered fact, instead of being guided by general +probability. Charlemagne's seat of government has been transferred in +romance from Aachen to Paris; had it really been at Paris, says Mr. +Freeman, no one would have thought of transferring it to Aachen. +Moreover, the story of Agamemnon, though uncontrolled by historic +records, is here at least supported by archaeologic remains, which prove +Mykenai to have been at some time or other a place of great consequence. +Then, as to the Trojan war, we know that the Greeks several times +crossed the AEgaean and colonized a large part of the seacoast of Asia +Minor. In order to do this it was necessary to oust from their homes +many warlike communities of Lydians and Bithynians, and we may be +sure that this was not done without prolonged fighting. There may very +probably have been now and then a levy en masse in prehistoric Greece, +as there was in mediaeval Europe; and whether the great suzerain at +Mykenai ever attended one or not, legend would be sure to send him on +such an expedition, as it afterwards sent Charlemagne on a crusade. + +It is therefore quite possible that Agamemnon and Menelaos may represent +dimly remembered sovereigns or heroes, with their characters and actions +distorted to suit the exigencies of a narrative founded upon a solar +myth. The character of the Nibelungenlied here well illustrates that of +the Iliad. Siegfried and Brunhild, Hagen and Gunther, seem to be mere +personifications of physical phenomena; but Etzel and Dietrich are none +other than Attila and Theodoric surrounded with mythical attributes; and +even the conception of Brunhild has been supposed to contain elements +derived from the traditional recollection of the historical Brunehault. +When, therefore, Achilleus is said, like a true sun-god, to have died by +a wound from a sharp instrument in the only vulnerable part of his body, +we may reply that the legendary Charlemagne conducts himself in many +respects like a solar deity. If Odysseus detained by Kalypso represents +the sun ensnared and held captive by the pale goddess of night, the +legend of Frederic Barbarossa asleep in a Thuringian mountain embodies +a portion of a kindred conception. We know that Charlemagne and Frederic +have been substituted for Odin; we may suspect that with the mythical +impersonations of Achilleus and Odysseus some traditional figures may +be blended. We should remember that in early times the solar-myth was a +sort of type after which all wonderful stories would be patterned, and +that to such a type tradition also would be made to conform. + +In suggesting this view, we are not opening the door to Euhemerism. +If there is any one conclusion concerning the Homeric poems which +the labours of a whole generation of scholars may be said to have +satisfactorily established, it is this, that no trustworthy history can +be obtained from either the Iliad or the Odyssey merely by sifting out +the mythical element. Even if the poems contain the faint reminiscence +of an actual event, that event is inextricably wrapped up in mythical +phraseology, so that by no cunning of the scholar can it be construed +into history. In view of this it is quite useless for Mr. Gladstone +to attempt to base historical conclusions upon the fact that Helena is +always called "Argive Helen," or to draw ethnological inferences from +the circumstances that Menelaos, Achilleus, and the rest of the Greek +heroes, have yellow hair, while the Trojans are never so described. The +Argos of the myth is not the city of Peloponnesos, though doubtless +so construed even in Homer's time. It is "the bright land" where Zeus +resides, and the epithet is applied to his wife Here and his daughter +Helena, as well as to the dog of Odysseus, who reappears with Sarameyas +in the Veda. As for yellow hair, there is no evidence that Greeks have +ever commonly possessed it; but no other colour would do for a solar +hero, and it accordingly characterizes the entire company of them, +wherever found, while for the Trojans, or children of night, it is not +required. + +A wider acquaintance with the results which have been obtained during +the past thirty years by the comparative study of languages and +mythologies would have led Mr. Gladstone to reconsider many of his views +concerning the Homeric poems, and might perhaps have led him to cut out +half or two thirds of his book as hopelessly antiquated. The chapter on +the divinities of Olympos would certainly have had to be rewritten, and +the ridiculous theory of a primeval revelation abandoned. One can hardly +preserve one's gravity when Mr. Gladstone derives Apollo from the +Hebrew Messiah, and Athene from the Logos. To accredit Homer with an +acquaintance with the doctrine of the Logos, which did not exist until +the time of Philo, and did not receive its authorized Christian form +until the middle of the second century after Christ, is certainly a +strange proceeding. We shall next perhaps be invited to believe that the +authors of the Volsunga Saga obtained the conception of Sigurd from +the "Thirty-Nine Articles." It is true that these deities, Athene and +Apollo, are wiser, purer, and more dignified, on the whole, than any +of the other divinities of the Homeric Olympos. They alone, as Mr. +Gladstone truly observes, are never deceived or frustrated. For all +Hellas, Apollo was the interpreter of futurity, and in the maid Athene +we have perhaps the highest conception of deity to which the Greek mind +had attained in the early times. In the Veda, Athene is nothing but the +dawn; but in the Greek mythology, while the merely sensuous glories of +daybreak are assigned to Eos, Athene becomes the impersonation of the +illuminating and knowledge-giving light of the sky. As the dawn, she +is daughter of Zeus, the sky, and in mythic language springs from his +forehead; but, according to the Greek conception, this imagery signifies +that she shares, more than any other deity, in the boundless wisdom +of Zeus. The knowledge of Apollo, on the other hand, is the peculiar +privilege of the sun, who, from his lofty position, sees everything that +takes place upon the earth. Even the secondary divinity Helios possesses +this prerogative to a certain extent. + +Next to a Hebrew, Mr. Gladstone prefers a Phoenician ancestry for the +Greek divinities. But the same lack of acquaintance with the old Aryan +mythology vitiates all his conclusions. No doubt the Greek mythology is +in some particulars tinged with Phoenician conceptions. Aphrodite was +originally a purely Greek divinity, but in course of time she acquired +some of the attributes of the Semitic Astarte, and was hardly improved +by the change. Adonis is simply a Semitic divinity, imported into +Greece. But the same cannot be proved of Poseidon; [154] far less of +Hermes, who is identical with the Vedic Sarameyas, the rising wind, +the son of Sarama the dawn, the lying, tricksome wind-god, who invented +music, and conducts the souls of dead men to the house of Hades, even +as his counterpart the Norse Odin rushes over the tree-tops leading +the host of the departed. When one sees Iris, the messenger of Zeus, +referred to a Hebrew original, because of Jehovah's promise to Noah, one +is at a loss to understand the relationship between the two conceptions. +Nothing could be more natural to the Greeks than to call the rainbow the +messenger of the sky-god to earth-dwelling men; to call it a token set +in the sky by Jehovah, as the Hebrews did, was a very different thing. +We may admit the very close resemblance between the myth of Bellerophon +and Anteia, and that of Joseph and Zuleikha; but the fact that the Greek +story is explicable from Aryan antecedents, while the Hebrew story is +isolated, might perhaps suggest the inference that the Hebrews were the +borrowers, as they undoubtedly were in the case of the myth of Eden. +Lastly, to conclude that Helios is an Eastern deity, because he reigns +in the East over Thrinakia, is wholly unwarranted. Is not Helios pure +Greek for the sun? and where should his sacred island be placed, if not +in the East? As for his oxen, which wrought such dire destruction to the +comrades of Odysseus, and which seem to Mr. Gladstone so anomalous, they +are those very same unhappy cattle, the clouds, which were stolen by the +storm-demon Cacus and the wind-deity Hermes, and which furnished endless +material for legends to the poets of the Veda. + +But the whole subject of comparative mythology seems to be terra +incognita to Mr. Gladstone. He pursues the even tenour of his way in +utter disregard of Grimm, and Kuhn, and Breal, and Dasent, and Burnouf. +He takes no note of the Rig-Veda, nor does he seem to realize that there +was ever a time when the ancestors of the Greeks and Hindus worshipped +the same gods. Two or three times he cites Max Muller, but makes no +use of the copious data which might be gathered from him. The only work +which seems really to have attracted his attention is M. Jacolliot's +very discreditable performance called "The Bible in India." Mr. +Gladstone does not, indeed, unreservedly approve of this book; but +neither does he appear to suspect that it is a disgraceful piece of +charlatanry, written by a man ignorant of the very rudiments of the +subject which he professes to handle. + +Mr. Gladstone is equally out of his depth when he comes to treat purely +philological questions. Of the science of philology, as based upon +established laws of phonetic change, he seems to have no knowledge +whatever. He seems to think that two words are sufficiently proved to +be connected when they are seen to resemble each other in spelling or in +sound. Thus he quotes approvingly a derivation of the name Themis from +an assumed verb them, "to speak," whereas it is notoriously derived from +tiqhmi, as statute comes ultimately from stare. His reference of hieros, +"a priest," and geron, "an old man," to the same root, is utterly +baseless; the one is the Sanskrit ishiras, "a powerful man," the other +is the Sanskrit jaran, "an old man." The lists of words on pages 96-100 +are disfigured by many such errors; and indeed the whole purpose for +which they are given shows how sadly Mr. Gladstone's philology is in +arrears. The theory of Niebuhr--that the words common to Greek and +Latin, mostly descriptive of peaceful occupations, are Pelasgian--was +serviceable enough in its day, but is now rendered wholly antiquated +by the discovery that such words are Aryan, in the widest sense. The +Pelasgian theory works very smoothly so long as we only compare the +Greek with the Latin words,--as, for instance, sugon with jugum; but +when we add the English yoke and the Sanskrit yugam, it is evident that +we have got far out of the range of the Pelasgoi. But what shall we say +when we find Mr. Gladstone citing the Latin thalamus in support of +this antiquated theory? Doubtless the word thalamus is, or should be, +significative of peaceful occupations; but it is not a Latin word at +all, except by adoption. One might as well cite the word ensemble to +prove the original identity or kinship between English and French. + +When Mr. Gladstone, leaving the dangerous ground of pure and applied +philology, confines himself to illustrating the contents of the Homeric +poems, he is always excellent. His chapter on the "Outer Geography" of +the Odyssey is exceedingly interesting; showing as it does how much +may be obtained from the patient and attentive study of even a single +author. Mr. Gladstone's knowledge of the SURFACE of the Iliad and +Odyssey, so to speak, is extensive and accurate. It is when he attempts +to penetrate beneath the surface and survey the treasures hidden in the +bowels of the earth, that he shows himself unprovided with the talisman +of the wise dervise, which alone can unlock those mysteries. But modern +philology is an exacting science: to approach its higher problems +requires an amount of preparation sufficient to terrify at the outset +all but the boldest; and a man who has had to regulate taxation, and +make out financial statements, and lead a political party in a great +nation, may well be excused for ignorance of philology. It is difficult +enough for those who have little else to do but to pore over treatises +on phonetics, and thumb their lexicons, to keep fully abreast with the +latest views in linguistics. In matters of detail one can hardly ever +broach a new hypothesis without misgivings lest somebody, in some weekly +journal published in Germany, may just have anticipated and refuted it. +Yet while Mr. Gladstone may be excused for being unsound in philology, +it is far less excusable that he should sit down to write a book about +Homer, abounding in philological statements, without the slightest +knowledge of what has been achieved in that science for several years +past. In spite of all drawbacks, however, his book shows an abiding +taste for scholarly pursuits, and therefore deserves a certain kind +of praise. I hope,--though just now the idea savours of the +ludicrous,--that the day may some time arrive when OUR Congressmen and +Secretaries of the Treasury will spend their vacations in writing books +about Greek antiquities, or in illustrating the meaning of Homeric +phrases. + +July, 1870. + + + + +VII. THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. + +NO earnest student of human culture can as yet have forgotten or wholly +outlived the feeling of delight awakened by the first perusal of Max +Muller's brilliant "Essay on Comparative Mythology,"--a work in which +the scientific principles of myth-interpretation, though not newly +announced, were at least brought home to the reader with such an amount +of fresh and striking concrete illustration as they had not before +received. Yet it must have occurred to more than one reader that, while +the analyses of myths contained in this noble essay are in the main +sound in principle and correct in detail, nevertheless the author's +theory of the genesis of myth is expressed, and most likely conceived, +in a way that is very suggestive of carelessness and fallacy. There are +obvious reasons for doubting whether the existence of mythology can be +due to any "disease," abnormity, or hypertrophy of metaphor in language; +and the criticism at once arises, that with the myth-makers it was not +so much the character of the expression which originated the thought, +as it was the thought which gave character to the expression. It is not +that the early Aryans were myth-makers because their language abounded +in metaphor; it is that the Aryan mother-tongue abounded in metaphor +because the men and women who spoke it were myth-makers. And they were +myth-makers because they had nothing but the phenomena of human will and +effort with which to compare objective phenomena. Therefore it was that +they spoke of the sun as an unwearied voyager or a matchless archer, +and classified inanimate no less than animate objects as masculine and +feminine. Max Muller's way of stating his theory, both in this Essay +and in his later Lectures, affords one among several instances of the +curious manner in which he combines a marvellous penetration into the +significance of details with a certain looseness of general conception. +[155] The principles of philological interpretation are an indispensable +aid to us in detecting the hidden meaning of many a legend in which the +powers of nature are represented in the guise of living and thinking +persons; but before we can get at the secret of the myth-making tendency +itself, we must leave philology and enter upon a psychological study. +We must inquire into the characteristics of that primitive style of +thinking to which it seemed quite natural that the sun should be an +unerring archer, and the thunder-cloud a black demon or gigantic robber +finding his richly merited doom at the hands of the indignant Lord of +Light. + +Among recent treatises which have dealt with this interesting problem, +we shall find it advantageous to give especial attention to Mr. Tylor's +"Primitive Culture," [156] one of the few erudite works which are at +once truly great and thoroughly entertaining. The learning displayed +in it would do credit to a German specialist, both for extent and for +minuteness, while the orderly arrangement of the arguments and the +elegant lucidity of the style are such as we are accustomed to expect +from French essay-writers. And what is still more admirable is the +way in which the enthusiasm characteristic of a genial and original +speculator is tempered by the patience and caution of a cool-headed +critic. Patience and caution are nowhere more needed than in writers +who deal with mythology and with primitive religious ideas; but these +qualities are too seldom found in combination with the speculative +boldness which is required when fresh theories are to be framed or new +paths of investigation opened. The state of mind in which the explaining +powers of a favourite theory are fondly contemplated is, to some extent, +antagonistic to the state of mind in which facts are seen, with the +eye of impartial criticism, in all their obstinate and uncompromising +reality. To be able to preserve the balance between the two opposing +tendencies is to give evidence of the most consummate scientific +training. It is from the want of such a balance that the recent great +work of Mr. Cox is at times so unsatisfactory. It may, I fear, seem +ill-natured to say so, but the eagerness with which Mr. Cox waylays +every available illustration of the physical theory of the origin of +myths has now and then the curious effect of weakening the reader's +conviction of the soundness of the theory. For my own part, though by no +means inclined to waver in adherence to a doctrine once adopted on good +grounds, I never felt so much like rebelling against the mythologic +supremacy of the Sun and the Dawn as when reading Mr. Cox's volumes. +That Mr. Tylor, while defending the same fundamental theory, awakens no +such rebellious feelings, is due to his clear perception and realization +of the fact that it is impossible to generalize in a single formula +such many-sided correspondences as those which primitive poetry end +philosophy have discerned between the life of man and the life of +outward nature. Whoso goes roaming up and down the elf-land of popular +fancies, with sole intent to resolve each episode of myth into some +answering physical event, his only criterion being outward resemblance, +cannot be trusted in his conclusions, since wherever he turns for +evidence he is sure to find something that can be made to serve as such. +As Mr. Tylor observes, no household legend or nursery rhyme is safe from +his hermeneutics. "Should he, for instance, demand as his property +the nursery 'Song of Sixpence,' his claim would be easily +established,--obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds are the +four-and-twenty hours, and the pie that holds them is the underlying +earth covered with the overarching sky,--how true a touch of nature +it is that when the pie is opened, that is, when day breaks, the birds +begin to sing; the King is the Sun, and his counting out his money is +pouring out the sunshine, the golden shower of Danae; the Queen is +the Moon, and her transparent honey the moonlight; the Maid is the +'rosy-fingered' Dawn, who rises before the Sun, her master, and hangs +out the clouds, his clothes, across the sky; the particular blackbird, +who so tragically ends the tale by snipping off her nose, is the hour of +sunrise." In all this interpretation there is no a priori improbability, +save, perhaps, in its unbroken symmetry and completeness. That +some points, at least, of the story are thus derived from antique +interpretations of physical events, is in harmony with all that we know +concerning nursery rhymes. In short, "the time-honoured rhyme really +wants but one thing to prove it a sun-myth, that one thing being a proof +by some argument more valid than analogy." The character of the argument +which is lacking may be illustrated by a reference to the rhyme about +Jack and Jill, explained some time since in the paper on "The Origins of +Folk Lore." If the argument be thought valid which shows these ill-fated +children to be the spots on the moon, it is because the proof consists, +not in the analogy, which is in this case not especially obvious, but +in the fact that in the Edda, and among ignorant Swedish peasants of our +own day, the story of Jack and Jill is actually given as an explanation +of the moon-spots. To the neglect of this distinction between what is +plausible and what is supported by direct evidence, is due much of the +crude speculation which encumbers the study of myths. + +It is when Mr. Tylor merges the study of mythology into the wider +inquiry into the characteristic features of the mode of thinking in +which myths originated, that we can best appreciate the practical +value of that union of speculative boldness and critical sobriety which +everywhere distinguishes him. It is pleasant to meet with a writer who +can treat of primitive religious ideas without losing his head over +allegory and symbolism, and who duly realizes the fact that a savage +is not a rabbinical commentator, or a cabalist, or a Rosicrucian, but +a plain man who draws conclusions like ourselves, though with feeble +intelligence and scanty knowledge. The mystic allegory with which such +modern writers as Lord Bacon have invested the myths of antiquity is +no part of their original clothing, but is rather the late product of +a style of reasoning from analogy quite similar to that which we +shall perceive to have guided the myth-makers in their primitive +constructions. The myths and customs and beliefs which, in an advanced +stage of culture, seem meaningless save when characterized by +some quaintly wrought device of symbolic explanation, did not seem +meaningless in the lower culture which gave birth to them. Myths, like +words, survive their primitive meanings. In the early stage the myth is +part and parcel of the current mode of philosophizing; the explanation +which it offers is, for the time, the natural one, the one which would +most readily occur to any one thinking on the theme with which the myth +is concerned. But by and by the mode of philosophizing has changed; +explanations which formerly seemed quite obvious no longer occur to any +one, but the myth has acquired an independent substantive existence, and +continues to be handed down from parents to children as something true, +though no one can tell why it is true: Lastly, the myth itself +gradually fades from remembrance, often leaving behind it some utterly +unintelligible custom or seemingly absurd superstitious notion. For +example,--to recur to an illustration already cited in a previous +paper,--it is still believed here and there by some venerable granny +that it is wicked to kill robins; but he who should attribute the belief +to the old granny's refined sympathy with all sentient existence, would +be making one of the blunders which are always committed by those +who reason a priori about historical matters without following the +historical method. At an earlier date the superstition existed in the +shape of a belief that the killing of a robin portends some calamity; +in a still earlier form the calamity is specified as death; and again, +still earlier, as death by lightning. Another step backward reveals that +the dread sanctity of the robin is owing to the fact that he is the bird +of Thor, the lightning god; and finally we reach that primitive stage +of philosophizing in which the lightning is explained as a red bird +dropping from its beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks. Again, the +belief that some harm is sure to come to him who saves the life of +a drowning man, is unintelligible until it is regarded as a case of +survival in culture. In the older form of the superstition it is held +that the rescuer will sooner or later be drowned himself; and thus we +pass to the fetichistic interpretation of drowning as the seizing of the +unfortunate person by the water-spirit or nixy, who is naturally angry +at being deprived of his victim, and henceforth bears a special grudge +against the bold mortal who has thus dared to frustrate him. + +The interpretation of the lightning as a red bird, and of drowning as +the work of a smiling but treacherous fiend, are parts of that primitive +philosophy of nature in which all forces objectively existing are +conceived as identical with the force subjectively known as volition. +It is this philosophy, currently known as fetichism, but treated by Mr. +Tylor under the somewhat more comprehensive name of "animism," which +we must now consider in a few of its most conspicuous exemplifications. +When we have properly characterized some of the processes which the +untrained mind habitually goes through, we shall have incidentally +arrived at a fair solution of the genesis of mythology. + +Let us first note the ease with which the barbaric or uncultivated mind +reaches all manner of apparently fanciful conclusions through reckless +reasoning from analogy. It is through the operation of certain laws of +ideal association that all human thinking, that of the highest as well +as that of the lowest minds, is conducted: the discovery of the law of +gravitation, as well as the invention of such a superstition as the +Hand of Glory, is at bottom but a case of association of ideas. The +difference between the scientific and the mythologic inference consists +solely in the number of checks which in the former case combine to +prevent any other than the true conclusion from being framed into a +proposition to which the mind assents. Countless accumulated experiences +have taught the modern that there are many associations of ideas which +do not correspond to any actual connection of cause and effect in the +world of phenomena; and he has learned accordingly to apply to his newly +framed notions the rigid test of verification. Besides which the same +accumulation of experiences has built up an organized structure of ideal +associations into which only the less extravagant newly framed notions +have any chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the modern savage who +is to some extent his counterpart, must reason without the aid of these +multifarious checks. That immense mass of associations which answer to +what are called physical laws, and which in the mind of the civilized +modern have become almost organic, have not been formed in the mind of +the savage; nor has he learned the necessity of experimentally testing +any of his newly framed notions, save perhaps a few of the commonest. +Consequently there is nothing but superficial analogy to guide the +course of his thought hither or thither, and the conclusions at which he +arrives will be determined by associations of ideas occurring apparently +at haphazard. Hence the quaint or grotesque fancies with which European +and barbaric folk-lore is filled, in the framing of which the myth-maker +was but reasoning according to the best methods at his command. To this +simplest class, in which the association of ideas is determined by mere +analogy, belong such cases as that of the Zulu, who chews a piece of +wood in order to soften the heart of the man with whom he is about +to trade for cows, or the Hessian lad who "thinks he may escape the +conscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his pocket,--a symbolic +way of repudiating manhood." [157] A similar style of thinking underlies +the mediaeval necromancer's practice of making a waxen image of his +enemy and shooting at it with arrows, in order to bring about the +enemy's death; as also the case of the magic rod, mentioned in a +previous paper, by means of which a sound thrashing can be administered +to an absent foe through the medium of an old coat which is imagined +to cover him. The principle involved here is one which is doubtless +familiar to most children, and is closely akin to that which Irving so +amusingly illustrates in his doughty general who struts through a field +of cabbages or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and +imagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-handed a host of +caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the fancies that the breaking of +a mirror heralds a death in the family,--probably because of the +destruction of the reflected human image; that the "hair of the dog that +bit you" will prevent hydrophobia if laid upon the wound; or that the +tears shed by human victims, sacrificed to mother earth, will bring down +showers upon the land. Mr. Tylor cites Lord Chesterfield's remark, "that +the king had been ill, and that people generally expected the illness +to be fatal, because the oldest lion in the Tower, about the king's age, +had just died. 'So wild and capricious is the human mind,'" observes +the elegant letter-writer. But indeed, as Mr. Tylor justly remarks, "the +thought was neither wild nor capricious; it was simply such an argument +from analogy as the educated world has at length painfully learned to be +worthless, but which, it is not too much to declare, would to this +day carry considerable weight to the minds of four fifths of the human +race." Upon such symbolism are based most of the practices of divination +and the great pseudo-science of astrology. "It is an old story, that +when two brothers were once taken ill together, Hippokrates, the +physician, concluded from the coincidence that they were twins, but +Poseidonios, the astrologer, considered rather that they were born under +the same constellation; we may add that either argument would be thought +reasonable by a savage." So when a Maori fortress is attacked, the +besiegers and besieged look to see if Venus is near the moon. The moon +represents the fortress; and if it appears below the companion planet, +the besiegers will carry the day, otherwise they will be repulsed. +Equally primitive and childlike was Rousseau's train of thought on the +memorable day at Les Charmettes when, being distressed with doubts as to +the safety of his soul, he sought to determine the point by throwing a +stone at a tree. "Hit, sign of salvation; miss, sign of damnation!" +The tree being a large one and very near at hand, the result of the +experiment was reassuring, and the young philosopher walked away without +further misgivings concerning this momentous question. [158] + +When the savage, whose highest intellectual efforts result only in +speculations of this childlike character, is confronted with the +phenomena of dreams, it is easy to see what he will make of them. +His practical knowledge of psychology is too limited to admit of his +distinguishing between the solidity of waking experience and what we may +call the unsubstantialness of the dream. He may, indeed, have learned +that the dream is not to be relied on for telling the truth; the Zulu, +for example, has even reached the perverse triumph of critical logic +achieved by our own Aryan ancestors in the saying that "dreams go by +contraries." But the Zulu has not learned, nor had the primeval Aryan +learned, to disregard the utterances of the dream as being purely +subjective phenomena. To the mind as yet untouched by modern culture, +the visions seen and the voices heard in sleep possess as much objective +reality as the gestures and shouts of waking hours. When the savage +relates his dream, he tells how he SAW certain dogs, dead warriors, +or demons last night, the implication being that the things seen were +objects external to himself. As Mr. Spencer observes, "his rude language +fails to state the difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, +doing and dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his language +it not only results that he cannot truly represent this difference to +others, but also that he cannot truly represent it to himself. Hence in +the absence of an alternative interpretation, his belief, and that of +those to whom he tells his adventures, is that his OTHER SELF has been +away and came back when he awoke. And this belief, which we find among +various existing savage tribes, we equally find in the traditions of the +early civilized races." [159] + +Let us consider, for a moment, this assumption of the OTHER SELF, for +upon this is based the great mass of crude inference which constitutes +the primitive man's philosophy of nature. The hypothesis of the OTHER +SELF, which serves to account for the savage's wanderings during sleep +in strange lands and among strange people, serves also to account for +the presence in his dreams of parents, comrades, or enemies, known to be +dead and buried. The other self of the dreamer meets and converses with +the other selves of his dead brethren, joins with them in the hunt, or +sits down with them to the wild cannibal banquet. Thus arises the belief +in an ever-present world of souls or ghosts, a belief which the entire +experience of uncivilized man goes to strengthen and expand. The +existence of some tribe or tribes of savages wholly destitute of +religious belief has often been hastily asserted and as often called in +question. But there is no question that, while many savages are unable +to frame a conception so general as that of godhood, on the other hand +no tribe has ever been found so low in the scale of intelligence as +not to have framed the conception of ghosts or spiritual personalities, +capable of being angered, propitiated, or conjured with. Indeed it is +not improbable a priori that the original inference involved in the +notion of the other self may be sufficiently simple and obvious to fall +within the capacity of animals even less intelligent than uncivilized +man. An authentic case is on record of a Skye terrier who, being +accustomed to obtain favours from his master by sitting on his +haunches, will also sit before his pet india-rubber ball placed on the +chimney-piece, evidently beseeching it to jump down and play with him. +[160] Such a fact as this is quite in harmony with Auguste Comte's +suggestion that such intelligent animals as dogs, apes, and elephants +may be capable of forming a few fetichistic notions. The behaviour of +the terrier here rests upon the assumption that the ball is open to the +same sort of entreaty which prevails with the master; which implies, not +that the wistful brute accredits the ball with a soul, but that in his +mind the distinction between life and inanimate existence has never been +thoroughly established. Just this confusion between things living +and things not living is present throughout the whole philosophy of +fetichism; and the confusion between things seen and things dreamed, +which suggests the notion of another self, belongs to this same +twilight stage of intelligence in which primeval man has not yet clearly +demonstrated his immeasurable superiority to the brutes. [161] + +The conception of a soul or other self, capable of going away from +the body and returning to it, receives decisive confirmation from the +phenomena of fainting, trance, catalepsy, and ecstasy, [162] which occur +less rarely among savages, owing to their irregular mode of life, than +among civilized men. "Further verification," observes Mr. Spencer, "is +afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body, during the absence +of the other self, some enemy has entered; for how else does it happen +that the other self on returning denies all knowledge of what his body +has been doing? And this supposition, that the body has been 'possessed' +by some other being, is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism and +insanity." Still further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we recollect +that savages are very generally unwilling to have their portraits taken, +lest a portion of themselves should get carried off and be exposed to +foul play, [163] we must readily admit that the weird reflection of the +person and imitation of the gestures in rivers or still woodland pools +will go far to intensify the belief in the other self. Less frequent but +uniform confirmation is to be found in echoes, which in Europe within +two centuries have been commonly interpreted as the voices of mocking +fiends or wood-nymphs, and which the savage might well regard as the +utterances of his other self. + +With the savage's unwillingness to have his portrait taken, lest it fall +into the hands of some enemy who may injure him by conjuring with it, +may be compared the reluctance which he often shows toward telling +his name, or mentioning the name of his friend, or king, or tutelar +ghost-deity. In fetichistic thought, the name is an entity mysteriously +associated with its owner, and it is not well to run the risk of its +getting into hostile hands. Along with this caution goes the similarly +originated fear that the person whose name is spoken may resent such +meddling with his personality. For the latter reason the Dayak will +not allude by name to the small pox, but will call it "the chief" or +"jungle-leaves"; the Laplander speaks of the bear as the "old man with +the fur coat"; in Annam the tiger is called "grandfather" or "Lord"; +while in more civilized communities such sayings are current as "talk +of the Devil, and he will appear," with which we may also compare such +expressions as "Eumenides" or "gracious ones" for the Furies, and other +like euphemisms. Indeed, the maxim nil mortuis nisi bonum had most +likely at one time a fetichistic flavour. + +In various islands of the Pacific, for both the reasons above specified, +the name of the reigning chief is so rigorously "tabu," that common +words and even syllables resembling that name in sound must be omitted +from the language. In New Zealand, where a chiefs name was Maripi, or +"knife," it became necessary to call knives nekra; and in Tahiti, fetu, +"star," had to be changed into fetia, and tui, "to strike," became tiai, +etc., because the king's name was Tu. Curious freaks are played with the +languages of these islands by this ever-recurring necessity. Among the +Kafirs the women have come to speak a different dialect from the men, +because words resembling the names of their lords or male relatives are +in like manner "tabu." The student of human culture will trace among +such primeval notions the origin of the Jew's unwillingness to pronounce +the name of Jehovah; and hence we may perhaps have before us the +ultimate source of the horror with which the Hebraizing Puritan regards +such forms of light swearing--"Mon Dieu," etc.--as are still tolerated +on the continent of Europe, but have disappeared from good society in +Puritanic England and America. The reader interested in this group of +ideas and customs may consult Tylor, Early History of Mankind, pp. +142, 363; Max Muller, Science of Language, 6th edition, Vol. II. p. 37; +Mackay, Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews, Vol. I. p. 146. + +Chamisso's well-known tale of Peter Schlemihl belongs to a widely +diffused family of legends, which show that a man's shadow has been +generally regarded not only as an entity, but as a sort of spiritual +attendant of the body, which under certain circumstances it may +permanently forsake. It is in strict accordance with this idea that not +only in the classic languages, but in various barbaric tongues, the +word for "shadow" expresses also the soul or other self. Tasmanians, +Algonquins, Central-Americans, Abipones, Basutos, and Zulus are cited by +Mr. Tylor as thus implicitly asserting the identity of the shadow with +the ghost or phantasm seen in dreams; the Basutos going so far as to +think "that if a man walks on the river-bank, a crocodile may seize his +shadow in the water and draw him in." Among the Algonquins a sick person +is supposed to have his shadow or other self temporarily detached from +his body, and the convalescent is at times "reproached for exposing +himself before his shadow was safely settled down in him." If the sick +man has been plunged into stupor, it is because his other self has +travelled away as far as the brink of the river of death, but not being +allowed to cross has come back and re-entered him. And acting upon a +similar notion the ailing Fiji will sometimes lie down and raise a hue +and cry for his soul to be brought back. Thus, continues Mr. Tylor, "in +various countries the bringing back of lost souls becomes a regular part +of the sorcerer's or priest's profession." [164] On Aryan soil we find +the notion of a temporary departure of the soul surviving to a late date +in the theory that the witch may attend the infernal Sabbath while her +earthly tabernacle is quietly sleeping at home. The primeval conception +reappears, clothed in bitterest sarcasm, in Dante's reference to his +living contemporaries whose souls he met with in the vaults of hell, +while their bodies were still walking about on the earth, inhabited by +devils. + +The theory which identifies the soul with the shadow, and supposes the +shadow to depart with the sickness and death of the body, would seem +liable to be attended with some difficulties in the way of verification, +even to the dim intelligence of the savage. But the propriety of +identifying soul and breath is borne out by all primeval experience. The +breath, which really quits the body at its decease, has furnished the +chief name for the soul, not only to the Hebrew, the Sanskrit, and the +classic tongues; not only to German and English, where geist, and ghost, +according to Max Muller, have the meaning of "breath," and are akin +to such words as gas, gust, and geyser; but also to numerous barbaric +languages. Among the natives of Nicaragua and California, in Java and in +West Australia, the soul is described as the air or breeze which +passes in and out through the nostrils and mouth; and the Greenlanders, +according to Cranz, reckon two separate souls, the breath and +the shadow. "Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died in +childbirth, the infant was held over her face to receive her parting +spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for its future use..... +Their state of mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese peasants, who +can still fancy a good man's soul to issue from his mouth at death like +a little white cloud." [165] It is kept up, too, in Lancashire, where a +well-known witch died a few years since; "but before she could 'shuffle +off this mortal coil' she must needs TRANSFER HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT to +some trusty successor. An intimate acquaintance from a neighbouring +township was consequently sent for in all haste, and on her arrival was +immediately closeted with her dying friend. What passed between them has +never fully transpired, but it is confidently affirmed that at the close +of the interview this associate RECEIVED THE WITCH'S LAST BREATH INTO +HER MOUTH AND WITH IT HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT. The dreaded woman thus +ceased to exist, but her powers for good or evil were transferred to her +companion; and on passing along the road from Burnley to Blackburn we +can point out a farmhouse at no great distance with whose thrifty matron +no neighbouring farmer will yet dare to quarrel." [166] + +Of the theory of embodiment there will be occasion to speak further on. +At present let us not pass over the fact that the other self is not only +conceived as shadow or breath, which can at times quit the body during +life, but is also supposed to become temporarily embodied in the visible +form of some bird or beast. In discussing elsewhere the myth of Bishop +Hatto, we saw that the soul is sometimes represented in the form of a +rat or mouse; and in treating of werewolves we noticed the belief that +the spirits of dead ancestors, borne along in the night-wind, have +taken on the semblance of howling dogs or wolves. "Consistent with these +quaint ideas are ceremonies in vogue in China of bringing home in a cock +(live or artificial) the spirit of a man deceased in a distant place, +and of enticing into a sick man's coat the departing spirit which has +already left his body and so conveying it back." [167] In Castren's +great work on Finnish mythology, we find the story of the giant who +could not be killed because he kept his soul hidden in a twelve-headed +snake which he carried in a bag as he rode on horseback; only when the +secret was discovered and the snake carefully killed, did the giant +yield up his life. In this Finnish legend we have one of the thousand +phases of the story of the "Giant who had no Heart in his Body," but +whose heart was concealed, for safe keeping, in a duck's egg, or in a +pigeon, carefully disposed in some belfry at the world's end a million +miles away, or encased in a wellnigh infinite series of Chinese boxes. +[168] Since, in spite of all these precautions, the poor giant's heart +invariably came to grief, we need not wonder at the Karen superstition +that the soul is in danger when it quits the body on its excursions, as +exemplified in countless Indo-European stories of the accidental killing +of the weird mouse or pigeon which embodies the wandering spirit. +Conversely it is held that the detachment of the other self is fraught +with danger to the self which remains. In the philosophy of "wraiths" +and "fetches," the appearance of a double, like that which troubled +Mistress Affery in her waking dreams of Mr. Flintwinch, has been from +time out of mind a signal of alarm. "In New Zealand it is ominous to see +the figure of an absent person, for if it be shadowy and the face not +visible, his death may erelong be expected, but if the face be seen he +is dead already. A party of Maoris (one of whom told the story) were +seated round a fire in the open air, when there appeared, seen only by +two of them, the figure of a relative, left ill at home; they exclaimed, +the figure vanished, and on the return of the party it appeared that +the sick man had died about the time of the vision." [169] The belief in +wraiths has survived into modern times, and now and then appears in the +records of that remnant of primeval philosophy known as "spiritualism," +as, for example, in the case of the lady who "thought she saw her own +father look in at the church-window at the moment he was dying in his +own house." + +The belief in the "death-fetch," like the doctrine which identifies +soul with shadow, is instructive as showing that in barbaric thought the +other self is supposed to resemble the material self with which it has +customarily been associated. In various savage superstitions the minute +resemblance of soul to body is forcibly stated. The Australian, for +instance, not content with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right thumb +of the corpse, so that the departed soul may be incapacitated from +throwing a spear. Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer crucifixion +to decapitation, that their souls may not wander headless about the +spirit-world. [171] Thus we see how far removed from the Christian +doctrine of souls is the primeval theory of the soul or other self +that figures in dreamland. So grossly materialistic is the primitive +conception that the savage who cherishes it will bore holes in the +coffin of his dead friend, so that the soul may again have a chance, if +it likes, to revisit the body. To this day, among the peasants in some +parts of Northern Europe, when Odin, the spectral hunter, rides by +attended by his furious host, the windows in every sick-room are opened, +in order that the soul, if it chooses to depart, may not be hindered +from joining in the headlong chase. And so, adds Mr. Tylor, after +the Indians of North America had spent a riotous night in singeing an +unfortunate captive to death with firebrands, they would howl like the +fiends they were, and beat the air with brushwood, to drive away the +distressed and revengeful ghost. "With a kindlier feeling, the Congo +negroes abstained for a whole year after a death from sweeping the +house, lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of the ghost"; +and even now, "it remains a German peasant saying that it is wrong +to slam a door, lest one should pinch a soul in it." [172] Dante's +experience with the ghosts in hell and purgatory, who were astonished at +his weighing down the boat in which they were carried, is belied by the +sweet German notion "that the dead mother's coming back in the night to +suckle the baby she has left on earth may be known by the hollow pressed +down in the bed where she lay." Almost universally ghosts, however +impervious to thrust of sword or shot of pistol, can eat and drink like +Squire Westerns. And lastly, we have the grotesque conception of souls +sufficiently material to be killed over again, as in the case of the +negro widows who, wishing to marry a second time, will go and duck +themselves in the pond, in order to drown the souls of their departed +husbands, which are supposed to cling about their necks; while, +according to the Fiji theory, the ghost of every dead warrior must go +through a terrible fight with Samu and his brethren, in which, if he +succeeds, he will enter Paradise, but if he fails he will be killed over +again and finally eaten by the dreaded Samu and his unearthly company. + +From the conception of souls embodied in beast-forms, as above +illustrated, it is not a wide step to the conception of beast-souls +which, like human souls, survive the death of the tangible body. The +wide-spread superstitions concerning werewolves and swan-maidens, and +the hardly less general belief in metempsychosis, show that primitive +culture has not arrived at the distinction attained by modern philosophy +between the immortal man and the soulless brute. Still more direct +evidence is furnished by sundry savage customs. The Kafir who has +killed an elephant will cry that he did n't mean to do it, and, lest the +elephant's soul should still seek vengeance, he will cut off and bury +the trunk, so that the mighty beast may go crippled to the spirit-land. +In like manner, the Samoyeds, after shooting a bear, will gather about +the body offering excuses and laying the blame on the Russians; and the +American redskin will even put the pipe of peace into the dead animal's +mouth, and beseech him to forgive the deed. In Assam it is believed that +the ghosts of slain animals will become in the next world the property +of the hunter who kills them; and the Kamtchadales expressly declare +that all animals, even flies and bugs, will live after death,--a belief, +which, in our own day, has been indorsed on philosophical grounds by an +eminent living naturalist. [173] The Greenlanders, too, give evidence +of the same belief by supposing that when after an exhausting fever the +patient comes up in unprecedented health and vigour, it is because he +has lost his former soul and had it replaced by that of a young child +or a reindeer. In a recent work in which the crudest fancies of primeval +savagery are thinly disguised in a jargon learned from the superficial +reading of modern books of science, M. Figuier maintains that human +souls are for the most part the surviving souls of deceased animals; in +general, the souls of precocious musical children like Mozart come from +nightingales, while the souls of great architects have passed into them +from beavers, etc., etc. [174] + +The practice of begging pardon of the animal one has just slain is in +some parts of the world extended to the case of plants. When the +Talein offers a prayer to the tree which he is about to cut down, it is +obviously because he regards the tree as endowed with a soul or ghost +which in the next life may need to be propitiated. And the doctrine of +transmigration distinctly includes plants along with animals among the +future existences into which the human soul may pass. + +As plants, like animals, manifest phenomena of life, though to a much +less conspicuous degree, it is not incomprehensible that the +savage should attribute souls to them. But the primitive process of +anthropomorphisation does not end here. Not only the horse and dog, +the bamboo, and the oak-tree, but even lifeless objects, such as the +hatchet, or bow and arrows, or food and drink of the dead man, possess +other selves which pass into the world of ghosts. Fijis and other +contemporary savages, when questioned, expressly declare that this is +their belief. "If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away +flies its soul for the service of the gods." The Algonquins told +Charlevoix that since hatchets and kettles have shadows, no less than +men and women, it follows, of course, that these shadows (or souls) must +pass along with human shadows (or souls) into the spirit-land. In this +we see how simple and consistent is the logic which guides the savage, +and how inevitable is the genesis of the great mass of beliefs, to our +minds so arbitrary and grotesque, which prevail throughout the barbaric +world. However absurd the belief that pots and kettles have souls +may seem to us, it is nevertheless the only belief which can be held +consistently by the savage to whom pots and kettles, no less than human +friends or enemies, may appear in his dreams; who sees them followed +by shadows as they are moved about; who hears their voices, dull +or ringing, when they are struck; and who watches their doubles +fantastically dancing in the water as they are carried across the +stream. [175] To minds, even in civilized countries, which are unused to +the severe training of science, no stronger evidence can be alleged +than what is called "the evidence of the senses"; for it is only long +familiarity with science which teaches us that the evidence of the +senses is trustworthy only in so far as it is correctly interpreted by +reason. For the truth of his belief in the ghosts of men and beasts, +trees and axes, the savage has undeniably the evidence of his senses +which have so often seen, heard, and handled these other selves. + +The funeral ceremonies of uncultured races freshly illustrate this crude +philosophy, and receive fresh illustration from it. On the primitive +belief in the ghostly survival of persons and objects rests the almost +universal custom of sacrificing the wives, servants, horses, and dogs of +the departed chief of the tribe, as well as of presenting at his shrine +sacred offerings of food, ornaments, weapons, and money. Among the +Kayans the slaves who are killed at their master's tomb are enjoined to +take great care of their master's ghost, to wash and shampoo it, and to +nurse it when sick. Other savages think that "all whom they kill in this +world shall attend them as slaves after death," and for this reason the +thrifty Dayaks of Borneo until lately would not allow their young men to +marry until they had acquired some post mortem property by procuring at +least one human head. It is hardly necessary to do more than allude +to the Fiji custom of strangling all the wives of the deceased at his +funeral, or to the equally well-known Hindu rite of suttee. Though, as +Wilson has shown, the latter rite is not supported by any genuine Vedic +authority, but only by a shameless Brahmanic corruption of the sacred +text, Mr. Tylor is nevertheless quite right in arguing that unless the +horrible custom had received the sanction of a public opinion bequeathed +from pre-Vedic times, the Brahmans would have had no motive for +fraudulently reviving it; and this opinion is virtually established +by the fact of the prevalence of widow sacrifice among Gauls, +Scandinavians, Slaves, and other European Aryans. [176] Though under +English rule the rite has been forcibly suppressed, yet the archaic +sentiments which so long maintained it are not yet extinct. Within the +present year there has appeared in the newspapers a not improbable story +of a beautiful and accomplished Hindu lady who, having become the wife +of a wealthy Englishman, and after living several years in England amid +the influences of modern society, nevertheless went off and privately +burned herself to death soon after her husband's decease. + +The reader who thinks it far-fetched to interpret funeral offerings of +food, weapons, ornaments, or money, on the theory of object-souls, will +probably suggest that such offerings may be mere memorials of affection +or esteem for the dead man. Such, indeed, they have come to be in many +countries after surviving the phase of culture in which they originated; +but there is ample evidence to show that at the outset they were +presented in the belief that their ghosts would be eaten or otherwise +employed by the ghost of the dead man. The stout club which is buried +with the dead Fiji sends its soul along with him that he may be able to +defend himself against the hostile ghosts which will lie in ambush for +him on the road to Mbulu, seeking to kill and eat him. Sometimes the +club is afterwards removed from the grave as of no further use, since +its ghost is all that the dead man needs. In like manner, "as the Greeks +gave the dead man the obolus for Charon's toll, and the old Prussians +furnished him with spending money, to buy refreshment on his weary +journey, so to this day German peasants bury a corpse with money in +his mouth or hand," and this is also said to be one of the regular +ceremonies of an Irish wake. Of similar purport were the funeral feasts +and oblations of food in Greece and Italy, the "rice-cakes made with +ghee" destined for the Hindu sojourning in Yama's kingdom, and the meat +and gruel offered by the Chinaman to the manes of his ancestors. "Many +travellers have described the imagination with which the Chinese +make such offerings. It is that the spirits of the dead consume the +impalpable essence of the food, leaving behind its coarse material +substance, wherefore the dutiful sacrificers, having set out sumptuous +feasts for ancestral souls, allow them a proper time to satisfy +their appetite, and then fall to themselves." [177] So in the Homeric +sacrifice to the gods, after the deity has smelled the sweet savour +and consumed the curling steam that rises ghost-like from the roasting +viands, "the assembled warriors devour the remains." [178] + +Thus far the course of fetichistic thought which we have traced out, +with Mr. Tylor's aid, is such as is not always obvious to the modern +inquirer without considerable concrete illustration. The remainder +of the process, resulting in that systematic and complete +anthropomorphisation of nature which has given rise to mythology, may +be more succinctly described. Gathering together the conclusions already +obtained, we find that daily or frequent experience of the phenomena +of shadows and dreams has combined with less frequent experience of the +phenomena of trance, ecstasy, and insanity, to generate in the mind of +uncultured man the notion of a twofold existence appertaining alike to +all animate or inanimate objects: as all alike possess material +bodies, so all alike possess ghosts or souls. Now when the theory +of object-souls is expanded into a general doctrine of spirits, the +philosophic scheme of animism is completed. Once habituated to the +conception of souls of knives and tobacco-pipes passing to the land +of ghosts, the savage cannot avoid carrying the interpretation still +further, so that wind and water, fire and storm, are accredited with +indwelling spirits akin by nature to the soul which inhabits the human +frame. That the mighty spirit or demon by whose impelling will the +trees are rooted up and the storm-clouds driven across the sky should +resemble a freed human soul, is a natural inference, since uncultured +man has not attained to the conception of physical force acting in +accordance with uniform methods, and hence all events are to his mind +the manifestations of capricious volition. If the fire burns down his +hut, it is because the fire is a person with a soul, and is angry with +him, and needs to be coaxed into a kindlier mood by means of prayer or +sacrifice. Thus the savage has a priori no alternative but to regard +fire-soul as something akin to human-soul; and in point of fact we find +that savage philosophy makes no distinction between the human ghost +and the elemental demon or deity. This is sufficiently proved by +the universal prevalence of the worship of ancestors. The essential +principle of manes-worship is that the tribal chief or patriarch, who +has governed the community during life, continues also to govern it +after death, assisting it in its warfare with hostile tribes, rewarding +brave warriors, and punishing traitors and cowards. Thus from the +conception of the living king we pass to the notion of what Mr. Spencer +calls "the god-king," and thence to the rudimentary notion of deity. +Among such higher savages as the Zulus, the doctrine of divine ancestors +has been developed to the extent of recognizing a first ancestor, the +Great Father, Unkulunkulu, who made the world. But in the stratum of +savage thought in which barbaric or Aryan folk-lore is for the most part +based, we find no such exalted speculation. The ancestors of the rude +Veddas and of the Guinea negroes, the Hindu pitris (patres, "fathers"), +and the Roman manes have become elemental deities which send rain or +sunshine, health or sickness, plenty or famine, and to which their +living offspring appeal for guidance amid the vicissitudes of life. +[179] The theory of embodiment, already alluded to, shows how thoroughly +the demons which cause disease are identified with human and object +souls. In Australasia it is a dead man's ghost which creeps up into +the liver of the impious wretch who has ventured to pronounce his +name; while conversely in the well-known European theory of demoniacal +possession, it is a fairy from elf-land, or an imp from hell, which +has entered the body of the sufferer. In the close kinship, moreover, +between disease-possession and oracle-possession, where the body of the +Pythia, or the medicine-man, is placed under the direct control of +some great deity, [180] we may see how by insensible transitions +the conception of the human ghost passes into the conception of the +spiritual numen, or divinity. + +To pursue this line of inquiry through the countless nymphs and dryads +and nixies of the higher nature-worship up to the Olympian divinities +of classic polytheism, would be to enter upon the history of religious +belief, and in so doing to lose sight of our present purpose, which has +merely been to show by what mental process the myth-maker can speak +of natural objects in language which implies that they are animated +persons. Brief as our account of this process has been, I believe +that enough has been said, not only to reveal the inadequacy of purely +philological solutions (like those contained in Max Muller's famous +Essay) to explain the growth of myths, but also to exhibit the vast +importance for this purpose of the kind of psychological inquiry into +the mental habits of savages which Mr. Tylor has so ably conducted. +Indeed, however lacking we may still be in points of detail, I think we +have already reached a very satisfactory explanation of the genesis of +mythology. Since the essential characteristic of a myth is that it is +an attempt to explain some natural phenomenon by endowing with human +feelings and capacities the senseless factors in the phenomenon, and +since it has here been shown how uncultured man, by the best use he can +make of his rude common sense, must inevitably come, and has invariably +come, to regard all objects as endowed with souls, and all nature as +peopled with supra-human entities shaped after the general pattern of +the human soul, I am inclined to suspect that we have got very near to +the root of the whole matter. We can certainly find no difficulty in +seeing why a water-spout should be described in the "Arabian Nights" as +a living demon: "The sea became troubled before them, and there arose +from it a black pillar, ascending towards the sky, and approaching the +meadow,.... and behold it was a Jinni, of gigantic stature." We can see +why the Moslem camel-driver should find it most natural to regard the +whirling simoom as a malignant Jinni; we may understand how it is that +the Persian sees in bodily shape the scarlet fever as "a blushing maid +with locks of flame and cheeks all rosy red"; and we need not consider +it strange that the primeval Aryan should have regarded the sun as a +voyager, a climber, or an archer, and the clouds as cows driven by the +wind-god Hermes to their milking. The identification of William Tell +with the sun becomes thoroughly intelligible; nor can we be longer +surprised at the conception of the howling night-wind as a ravenous +wolf. When pots and kettles are thought to have souls that live +hereafter, there is no difficulty in understanding how the blue sky can +have been regarded as the sire of gods and men. And thus, as the elves +and bogarts of popular lore are in many cases descended from ancient +divinities of Olympos and Valhalla, so these in turn must acknowledge +their ancestors in the shadowy denizens of the primeval ghost-world. + +August, 1872. + + + + +NOTE. + +THE following are some of the modern works most likely to be of use to +the reader who is interested in the legend of William Tell. + +HISELY, J. J. Dissertatio historiea inauguralis de Oulielmo Tellio, etc. +Groningae, 1824. + +IDELER, J. L. Die Sage von dem Schuss des Tell. Berlin, 1836. + +HAUSSER, L. Die Sage von Tell aufs Neue kritisch untersucht. Heidelberg, +1840. + +HISELY, J. J. Recherches critiques sur l'histoire de Guillaume Tell. +Lausanne, 1843. + +LIEBENAU, H. Die Tell-Sage zu dem Jahre 1230 historisoh nach neuesten +Quellen. Aarau, 1864. + +VISCHER, W. Die Sage von der Befreinng der Waldstatte, etc. Nebst einer +Beilage: das alteste Tellensehauspiel. Leipzig, 1867. + +BORDIER, H. L. Le Grutli et Guillaume Tell, ou defense de la tradition +vulgaire sur les origines de la confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, +1869. + +The same. La querelle sur les traditions concernant l'origine de la +confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869. + +RILLIET, A. Les origines de la confederation suisse: histoire et +legende. 2eS ed., revue et corrigee. Geneve et Bale, 1869. + +The same. Lettre a M. Henri Bordier a propos de sa defense de la +tradition vulgaire sur les origines de la confederation suisse. Geneve +et Bale, 1869. + +HUNGERBUHLER, H. Etude critique sur les traditions relatives aux +origines de la confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869. + +MEYER, KARL. Die Tellsage. [In Bartsch, Germanistische Studien, I. +159-170. Wien, 1872.] + +See also the articles by M. Scherer, in Le Temps, 18 Feb., 1868; by M. +Reuss, in the Revue critique d'histoire, 1868; by M. de Wiss, in the +Journal de Geneve, 7 July, 1868; also Revue critique, 17 July, 1869; +Journal de Geneve, 24 Oct., 1868; Gazette de Lausanne, feuilleton +litteraire, 2-5 Nov., 1868, "Les origines de la confederation suisse," +par M. Secretan; Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1869, "The Legend of Tell and +Rutli." + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + + +[Footnote 1: See Delepierre, Historical Difficulties, p. 75.] + +[Footnote 2: Saxo Grammaticus, Bk. X. p. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576.] + +[Footnote 3: According to Mr. Isaac Taylor, the name is really derived +from "St. Celert, a Welsh saint of the fifth century, to whom the church +of Llangeller is consecrated." (Words and Places, p. 339.)] + +[Footnote 4: Compare Krilof's story of the Gnat and the Shepherd, in +Mr. Ralston's excellent version, Krilof and his Fables, p. 170. Many +parallel examples are cited by Mr. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. +pp. 126-136. See also the story of Folliculus,--Swan, Gesta Romanorum, +ad. Wright, Vol. I. p. lxxxii] + +[Footnote 5: See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. I. pp. +145-149.] + +[Footnote 6: The same incident occurs in the Arabian story of +Seyf-el-Mulook and Bedeea-el-Jemal, where the Jinni's soul is enclosed +in the crop of a sparrow, and the sparrow imprisoned in a small box, and +this enclosed in another small box, and this again in seven other boxes, +which are put into seven chests, contained in a coffer of marble, which +is sunk in the ocean that surrounds the world. Seyf-el-Mulook raises +the coffer by the aid of Suleyman's seal-ring, and having extricated the +sparrow, strangles it, whereupon the Jinni's body is converted into +a heap of black ashes, and Seyf-el-Mulook escapes with the maiden +Dolet-Khatoon. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 316.] + +[Footnote 7: The same incident is repeated in the story of Hassan of +El-Basrah. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III p. 452.] + +[Footnote 8: "Retrancher le merveilleux d'un mythe, c'est le +supprimer."--Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 50.] + +[Footnote 9: "No distinction between the animate and inanimate is made +in the languages of the Eskimos, the Choctaws, the Muskoghee, and the +Caddo. Only the Iroquois, Cherokee, and the Algonquin-Lenape have it, so +far as is known, and with them it is partial." According to the Fijians, +"vegetables and stones, nay, even tools and weapons, pots and canoes, +have souls that are immortal, and that, like the souls of men, pass on +at last to Mbulu, the abode of departed spirits."--M'Lennan, The Worship +of Animals and Plants, Fortnightly Review, Vol. XII. p, 416.] + +[Footnote 10: Marcus Aurelius, V. 7.] + +[Footnote 11: Some of these etymologies are attacked by Mr. Mahaffy in +his Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 49. After long consideration I am +still disposed to follow Max Muller in adopting them, with the possible +exception of Achilleus. With Mr. Mahaffy s suggestion (p. 52) that many +of the Homeric legends may have clustered around some historical basis, +I fully agree; as will appear, further on, from my paper on "Juventus +Mundi."] + +[Footnote 12: Les facultes qui engendrent la mythologie sont les memes +que celles qui engendront la philosophie, et ce n'est pas sans raison +que l'Inde et la Grece nous presentent le phenomene de la plus riche +mythologie a cote de la plus profonde metaphysique. "La conception de +la multiplicite dans l'univers, c'est le polytheisme chez les peuples +enfants; c'est la science chez les peuples arrives a l'age mur."--Renan, +Hist. des Langues Semitiques, Tom. I. p. 9.] + +[Footnote 13: Cases coming under this head are discussed further on, in +my paper on "Myths of the Barbaric World."] + +[Footnote 14: A collection of these interesting legends may be found in +Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," of which work this +paper was originally a review.] + +[Footnote 15: See Procopius, De Bello Gothico, IV. 20; Villemarque, +Barzas Breiz, I. 136. As a child I was instructed by an old nurse that +Vas Diemen's Land is the home of ghosts and departed spirits.] + +[Footnote 16: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. p. 197.] + +[Footnote 17: Hence perhaps the adage, "Always remember to pay the +piper."] + +[Footnote 18: And it reappears as the mysterious lyre of the Gaelic +musician, who + + "Could harp a fish out o' the water, + Or bluid out of a stane, + Or milk out of a maiden's breast, + That bairns had never nane."] + +[Footnote 19: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 159.] + +[Footnote 20: Perhaps we may trace back to this source the frantic +terror which Irish servant-girls often manifest at sight of a mouse.] + +[Footnote 21: In Persia a dog is brought to the bedside of the person +who is dying, in order that the soul may be sure of a prompt escort. The +same custom exists in India. Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 123.] + +[Footnote 22: The Devil, who is proverbially "active in a gale of wind," +is none other than Hermes.] + +[Footnote 23: "Il faut que la coeur devienne ancien parmi les aneiennes +choses, et la plenitude de l'histoire ne se devoile qu'a celui qui +descend, ainsi dispose, dans le passe. Mais il faut que l'esprit demeure +moderne, et n'oublie jamais qu'il n'y a pour lui d'autre foi que la foi +scientifique."--LITTRS.] + +[Footnote 24: For an admirable example of scientific self-analysis +tracing one of these illusions to its psychological sources, see +the account of Dr. Lazarus, in Taine, De l'Intelligence, Vol. I. pp. +121-125.] + +[Footnote 25: See the story of Aymar in Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, +Vol. I. pp. 57-77. The learned author attributes the discomfiture to +the uncongenial Parisian environment; which is a style of reasoning much +like that of my village sorcerer, I fear.] + +[Footnote 26: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 177.] + +[Footnote 27: The story of the luck-flower is well told in verse by Mr. +Baring Gould, in his Silver Store, p. 115, seq.] + +[Footnote 28: 1 Kings vi. 7.] + +[Footnote 29: Compare the Mussulman account of the building of the +temple, in Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, +pp. 337, 338. And see the story of Diocletian's ostrich, Swan, Gesta +Romanorum, ed. Wright, Vol I. p. lxiv. See also the pretty story of the +knight unjustly imprisoned, id. p. cii.] + +[Footnote 30: "We have the receipt of fern-seed. We walk invisible." +--Shakespeare, Henry IV. See Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 98] + +[Footnote 31: Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, +p. 202] + +[Footnote 32: Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks. +Berlin, 1859.] + +[Footnote 33: "Saga me forwhan byth seo sunne read on aefen? Ic the +secge, forthon heo locath on helle.--Tell me, why is the sun red at +even? I tell thee, because she looketh on hell." Thorpe, Analecta +Anglo-Saxonica, p. 115, apud Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 63. +Barbaric thought had partly anticipated my childish theory.] + +[Footnote 34: "Still in North Germany does the peasant say of thunder, +that the angels are playing skittles aloft, and of the snow, that they +are shaking up the feather beds in heaven."--Baring-Gould, Book of +Werewolves, p. 172.] + +[Footnote 35: "The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the +horizon and encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners papalangi, or +'heaven-bursters,' as having broken in from another world outside."--Max +Muller, Chips, II. 268.] + +[Footnote 36: "--And said the gods, let there be a hammered plate in the +midst of the waters, and let it be dividing between waters and waters." +Genesis i. 6.] + +[Footnote 37: Genesis vii. 11.] + +[Footnote 38: See Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p 120; who states also +that in Bengal the Garrows burn their dead in a small boat, placed on +top of the funeral-pile. In their character of cows, also, the clouds +were regarded as psychopomps; and hence it is still a popular +superstition that a cow breaking into the yard foretokens a death +in the family.] + +[Footnote 39: The sun-god Freyr had a cloud-ship called Skithblathnir, +which is thus described in Dasent's Prose Edda: "She is so great, that +all the AEsir, with their weapons and war-gear, may find room on board +her"; but "when there is no need of faring on the sea in her, she is +made.... with so much craft that Freyr may fold her together like a +cloth, and keep her in his bag." This same virtue was possessed by the +fairy pavilion which the Peri Banou gave to Ahmed; the cloud which is no +bigger than a man's hand may soon overspread the whole heaven, and shade +the Sultan's army from the solar rays.] + +[Footnote 40: Euhemerism has done its best with this bird, representing +it as an immense vulture or condor or as a reminiscence of the extinct +dodo. But a Chinese myth, cited by Klaproth, well preserves its true +character when it describes it as "a bird which in flying obscures +the sun, and of whose quills are made water-tuns." See Nouveau Journal +Asiatique, Tom. XII. p. 235. The big bird in the Norse tale of the "Blue +Belt" belongs to the same species.] + +[Footnote 41: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 146. Compare +Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 237, seq.] + +[Footnote 42: "If Polyphemos's eye be the sun, then Odysseus, the solar +hero, extinguishes himself, a very primitive instance of suicide." +Mahaffy, Prolegomena, p. 57. See also Brown, Poseidon, pp. 39, 40. +This objection would be relevant only in case Homer were supposed to be +constructing an allegory with entire knowledge of its meaning. It has no +validity whatever when we recollect that Homer could have known nothing +of the incongruity.] + +[Footnote 43: The Sanskrit myth-teller indeed mixes up his materials in +a way which seems ludicrous to a Western reader. He describes Indra (the +sun-god) as not only cleaving the cloud-mountains with his sword, but +also cutting off their wings and hurling them from the sky. See Burnouf, +Bhagavata Purana, VI. 12, 26.] + +[Footnote 44: Mr. Tylor offers a different, and possibly a better, +explanation of the Symplegades as the gates of Night through which +the solar ship, having passed successfully once, may henceforth pass +forever. See the details of the evidence in his Primitive Culture, I. +315.] + +[Footnote 45: The Sanskrit parvata, a bulging or inflated body, means +both "cloud" and "mountain." "In the Edda, too, the rocks, said to have +been fashioned out of Ymir's bones, are supposed to be intended for +clouds. In Old Norse Klakkr means both cloud and rock; nay, the English +word CLOUD itself has been identified with the Anglo-Saxon clud, rock. +See Justi, Orient und Occident, Vol. II. p. 62." Max Muller, Rig-Veda, +Vol. 1. p. 44.] + +[Footnote 46: In accordance with the mediaeval "doctrine of signatures," +it was maintained "that the hard, stony seeds of the Gromwell must be +good for gravel, and the knotty tubers of scrophularia for scrofulous +glands; while the scaly pappus of scaliosa showed it to be a specific +in leprous diseases, the spotted leaves of pulmonaria that it was a +sovereign remedy for tuberculous lungs, and the growth of saxifrage in +the fissures of rocks that it would disintegrate stone in the bladder." +Prior, Popular Names of British Plants, Introd., p. xiv. See also +Chapiel, La Doctrine des Signatures. Paris, 1866.] + +[Footnote 47: Indeed, the wish-bone, or forked clavicle of a fowl, +itself belongs to the same family of talismans as the divining-rod.] + +[Footnote 48: The ash, on the other hand, has been from time immemorial +used for spears in many parts of the Aryan domain. The word oesc meant, +in Anglo-Saxon, indifferently "ash-tree," or "spear"; and the same is, +or has been, true of the French fresne and the Greek melia. The root of +oesc appears in the Sanskrit as, "to throw" or "lance," whence asa, "a +bow," and asana, "an arrow." See Pictet, Origines Indo-Europeennes, I. +222.] + +[Footnote 49: Compare Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, in the "Faery +Queen," where, however, the knight fares better than this poor priest. +Usually these lightning-caverns were like Ixion's treasure-house, into +which none might look and live. This conception is the foundation of +part of the story of Blue-Beard and of the Arabian tale of the third +one-eyed Calender] + +[Footnote 50: Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. 1. p. 161.] + +[Footnote 51: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, pp. 147, 183, 186, 193.] + +[Footnote 52: Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 151.] + +[Footnote 53: Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 173, Note 12.] + +[Footnote 54: Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 238; Primitive +Culture, Vol. II. p. 254; Darwin, Naturalist's Voyage, p. 409.] + +[Footnote 55: The production of fire by the drill is often called +churning, e. g. "He took the uvati [chark], and sat down and churned it, +and kindled a fire." Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 174.] + +[Footnote 56: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 39. Burnouf, Bhagavata +Purana, VIII. 6, 32.] + +[Footnote 57: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, p. 149.] + +[Footnote 58: It is also the regenerating water of baptism, and the +"holy water" of the Roman Catholic.] + +[Footnote 59: In the Vedas the rain-god Soma, originally the +personification of the sacrificial ambrosia, is the deity who imparts to +men life, knowledge, and happiness. See Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 85. +Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 277.] + +[Footnote 60: We may, perhaps, see here the reason for making the Greek +fire-god Hephaistos the husband of Aphrodite.] + +[Footnote 61: "Our country maidens are well aware that triple leaves +plucked at hazard from the common ash are worn in the breast, for the +purpose of causing prophetic dreams respecting a dilatory lover. +The leaves of the yellow trefoil are supposed to possess similar +virtues."--Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 20.] + +[Footnote 62: In Peru, a mighty and far-worshipped deity was Catequil, +the thunder-god,.... "he who in thunder-flash and clap hurls from his +sling the small, round, smooth thunder-stones, treasured in the villages +as fire-fetishes and charms to kindle the flames of love."--Tylor, op. +cit. Vol. II. p. 239] + +[Footnote 63: In Polynesia, "the great deity Maui adds a new +complication to his enigmatic solar-celestial character by appearing as +a wind-god."--Tylor, op. cit. Vol. II. p. 242.] + +[Footnote 64: Compare Plato, Republic, VIII. 15.] + +[Footnote 65: Were-wolf = man-wolf, wer meaning "man." Garou is a +Gallic corruption of werewolf, so that loup-garou is a tautological +expression.] + +[Footnote 66: Meyer, in Bunsen's Philosophy of Universal History, Vol. +I. p. 151.] + +[Footnote 67: Aimoin, De Gestis Francorum, II. 5.] + +[Footnote 68: Taylor, Words and Places, p. 393.] + +[Footnote 69: Very similar to this is the etymological confusion upon +which is based the myth of the "confusion of tongues" in the eleventh +chapter of Genesis. The name "Babel" is really Bab-Il, or "the gate of +God"; but the Hebrew writer erroneously derives the word from the root +balal, "to confuse"; and hence arises the mythical explanation,--that +Babel was a place where human speech became confused. See Rawlinson, +in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I. p. 149; Renan, Histoire des +Langues Semitiques, Vol. I. p. 32; Donaldson, New Cratylus, p. 74, note; +Colenso on the Pentateuch, Vol. IV. p. 268.] + +[Footnote 70: Vilg. AEn. VIII. 322. With Latium compare plat?s, Skr. +prath (to spread out), Eng. flat. Ferrar, Comparative Grammar of Greek, +Latin, and Sanskrit, Vol. I. p. 31.] + +[Footnote 71: M`Lennan, "The Worship of Animals and Plants," Fortnightly +Review, N. S. Vol. VI. pp. 407-427, 562-582, Vol. VII. pp 194-216; +Spencer, "The Origin of Animal Worship," Id. Vol. VII. pp. 535-550, +reprinted in his Recent Discussions in Science, etc., pp. 31-56.] + +[Footnote 72: Thus is explained the singular conduct of the Hindu, who +slays himself before his enemy's door, in order to acquire greater power +of injuring him. "A certain Brahman, on whose lands a Kshatriya raja had +built a house, ripped himself up in revenge, and became a demon of the +kind called Brahmadasyu, who has been ever since the terror of the whole +country, and is the most common village-deity in Kharakpur. Toward the +close of the last century there were two Brahmans, out of whose house a +man had wrongfully, as they thought, taken forty rupees; whereupon one +of the Brahmans proceeded to cut off his own mother's head, with the +professed view, entertained by both mother and son, that her spirit, +excited by the beating of a large drum during forty days might haunt, +torment, and pursue to death the taker of their money and those +concerned with him." Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 103.] + +[Footnote 73: Hence, in many parts of Europe, it is still customary to +open the windows when a person dies, in order that the soul may not be +hindered in joining the mystic cavalcade.] + +[Footnote 74: The story of little Red Riding-Hood is "mutilated in the +English version, but known more perfectly by old wives in Germany, who +can tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was +swallowed with her grandmother by the wolf, till they both came out safe +and sound when the hunter cut open the sleeping beast." Tylor, Primitive +Culture, I. 307, where also see the kindred Russian story of Vasilissa +the Beautiful. Compare the case of Tom Thumb, who "was swallowed by the +cow and came out unhurt"; the story of Saktideva swallowed by the fish +and cut out again, in Somadeva Bhatta, II. 118-184; and the story +of Jonah swallowed by the whale, in the Old Testament. All these +are different versions of the same myth, and refer to the alternate +swallowing up and casting forth of Day by Night, which is commonly +personified as a wolf, and now and then as a great fish. Compare Grimm's +story of the Wolf and Seven Kids, Tylor, loc. cit., and see Early +History of Mankind, p. 337; Hardy, Manual of Budhism, p. 501.] + +[Footnote 75: Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 178; Muir, Sanskrit +Texts, II. 435.] + +[Footnote 76: In those days even an after-dinner nap seems to have been +thought uncanny. See Dasent, Burnt Njal, I. xxi.] + +[Footnote 77: See Dasent, Burnt Njai, Vol. I. p. xxii.; Grettis Saga, by +Magnusson and Morris, chap. xix.; Viga Glum's Saga, by Sir Edmund Head, +p. 13, note, where the Berserkers are said to have maddened themselves +with drugs. Dasent compares them with the Malays, who work themselves +into a frenzy by means of arrack, or hasheesh, and run amuck.] + +[Footnote 78: Baring-Gould, Werewolves, p. 81.] + +[Footnote 79: Baring-Gould, op. cit. chap. xiv.] + +[Footnote 80: Baring-Gould, op. cit. p. 82.] + +[Footnote 81: Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 90.] + +[Footnote 82: "En 1541, a Padoue, dit Wier, un homme qui se croyait +change en loup courait la campagne, attaquant et mettant a mort ceux +qu'il rencontrait. Apres bien des difficultes, on parvint s'emparer de +lui. Il dit en confidence a ceux qui l'arreterent: Je suis vraiment +un loup, et si ma peau ne parait pas etre celle d'un loup, c'est parce +qu'elle est retournee et que les poils sont en dedans.--Pour s'assurer +du fait, on coupa le malheureux aux differentes parties du corps, on lui +emporta les bras et les jambes."--Taine, De l'Intelligence, Tom. II. +p. 203. See the account of Slavonic werewolves in Ralston, Songs of the +Russian People, pp. 404-418.] + +[Footnote 83: Mr. Cox, whose scepticism on obscure points in history +rather surpasses that of Sir G. C. Lewis, dismisses with a sneer +the subject of the Berserker madness, observing that "the unanimous +testimony of the Norse historians is worth as much and as little as the +convictions of Glanvil and Hale on the reality of witchcraft." I have +not the special knowledge requisite for pronouncing an opinion on this +point, but Mr. Cox's ordinary methods of disposing of such questions +are not such as to make one feel obliged to accept his bare assertion, +unaccompanied by critical arguments. The madness of the bearsarks may, +no doubt, be the same thing us the frenzy of Herakles; but something +more than mere dogmatism is needed to prove it.] + +[Footnote 84: Williams, Superstitions of Witchcraft, p. 179. See a +parallel case of a cat-woman, in Thorpe's Northern Mythology, II. 26. +"Certain witches at Thurso for a long time tormented an honest fellow +under the usual form of cats, till one night he put them to flight with +his broadsword, and cut off the leg of one less nimble than the rest; +taking it up, to his amazement he found it to be a woman's leg, and +next morning he discovered the old hag its owner with but one leg +left."--Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 283.] + +[Footnote 85: "The mare in nightmare means spirit, elf, or nymph; +compare Anglo-Saxon wudurmaere (wood-mare) = echo."--Tylor, Primitive +Culture, Vol. II. p. 173.] + +[Footnote 86: See Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 91; Weber, Indische +Studien. I. 197; Wolf, Beitrage zur deutschen Mythologie, II. 233-281 +Muller, Chips, II. 114-128.] + +[Footnote 87: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 207.] + +[Footnote 88: The word nymph itself means "cloud-maiden," as is +illustrated by the kinship between the Greek numph and the Latin nubes.] + +[Footnote 89: This is substantially identical with the stories of Beauty +and the Beast, Eros and Psyche, Gandharba Sena, etc.] + +[Footnote 90: The feather-dress reappears in the Arabian story of Hasssn +of El-Basrah, who by stealing it secures possession of the Jinniya. See +Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 380. Ralston, Songs of the Russian +People, p. 179.] + +[Footnote 91: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, III. 173; Kennedy, Fictions of +the Irish Celts, p. 123.] + +[Footnote 92: Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 168.] + +[Footnote 93: Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 133.] + +[Footnote 94: Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. IV. p. 12; Muller, Rig-Veda +Sanhita, Vol. I. pp. 230-251; Fick, Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen +Grundsprache, p. 124, s v. Bhaga.] + +[Footnote 95: In the North American Review, October, 1869, p. 354, +I have collected a number of facts which seem to me to prove beyond +question that the name God is derived from Guodan, the original form of +Odin, the supreme deity of our Pagan forefathers. The case is exactly +parallel to that of the French Dieu, which is descended from the Deus of +the pagan Roman.] + +[Footnote 96: See Pott, Die Zigeuner, II. 311; Kuhn, Beitrage, I. 147. +Yet in the worship of dewel by the Gypsies is to be found the element of +diabolism invariably present in barbaric worship. "Dewel, the great +god in heaven (dewa, deus), is rather feared than loved by these +weather-beaten outcasts, for he harms them on their wanderings with his +thunder and lightning, his snow and rain, and his stars interfere with +their dark doings. Therefore they curse him foully when misfortune +falls on them; and when a child dies, they say that Dewel has eaten it." +Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 248.] + +[Footnote 97: See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 939.] + +[Footnote 98: The Buddhistic as well as the Zarathustrian reformation +degraded the Vedic gods into demons. "In Buddhism we find these ancient +devas, Indra and the rest, carried about at shows, as servants of +Buddha, as goblins, or fabulous heroes." Max Muller, Chips, I. 25. This +is like the Christian change of Odin into an ogre, and of Thor into the +Devil.] + +[Footnote 99: Zeus--Dia--Zhna--di on............ Plato Kratylos, p. 396, +A., with Stallbaum's note. See also Proklos, Comm. ad Timaeum, II. p. +226, Schneider; and compare Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, p. 401, a, 15, +who adopts the etymology. See also Diogenes Laertius, VII. 147.] + +[Footnote 100: Marcus Aurelius, v. 7; Hom. Iliad, xii. 25, cf. Petronius +Arbiter, Sat. xliv.] + +[Footnote 101: "Il Sol, dell aurea luce eterno forte." Tasso, +Gerusalemme, XV. 47; ef. Dante, Paradiso, X. 28.] + +[Footnote 102: The Aryans were, however, doubtless better off than +the tribes of North America. "In no Indian language could the early +missionaries find a word to express the idea of God. Manitou and Oki +meant anything endowed with supernatural powers, from a snake-skin or +a greasy Indian conjurer up to Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were +forced to use a circumlocution,--`the great chief of men,' or 'he who +lives in the sky.'" Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. lxxix. "The +Algonquins used no oaths, for their language supplied none; doubtless +because their mythology had no beings sufficiently distinct to swear +by." Ibid, p. 31.] + +[Footnote 103: Muller, Rig-Veda-Sanhita, I. 230.] + +[Footnote 104: Compare the remarks of Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 13.] + +[Footnote 105: It should be borne in mind, however, that one of +the women who tempt Odysseus is not a dawn-maiden, but a goddess of +darkness; Kalypso answers to Venus-Ursula in the myth of Tannhauser. +Kirke, on the other hand, seems to be a dawn-maiden, like Medeia, +whom she resembles. In her the wisdom of the dawn-goddess Athene, +the loftiest of Greek divinities, becomes degraded into the art of an +enchantress. She reappears, in the Arabian Nights, as the wicked Queen +Labe, whose sorcery none of her lovers can baffle, save Beder, king of +Persia.] + +[Footnote 106: The Persian Cyrus is an historical personage; but the +story of his perils in infancy belongs to solar mythology as much as +the stories of the magic sleep of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. His +grandfather, Astyages, is purely a mythical creation, his name being +identical with that of the night-demon, Azidahaka, who appears in the +Shah-Nameh as the biting serpent Zohak. See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan +Nations, II. 358.] + +[Footnote 107: In mediaeval legend this resistless Moira is transformed +into the curse which prevents the Wandering Jew from resting until the +day of judgment.] + +[Footnote 108: Cox, Manual of Mythology, p. 134.] + +[Footnote 109: In his interesting appendix to Henderson's Folk Lore of +the Northern Counties of England, Mr. Baring-Gould has made an ingenious +and praiseworthy attempt to reduce the entire existing mass of household +legends to about fifty story-roots; and his list, though both redundant +and defective, is nevertheless, as an empirical classification, very +instructive.] + +[Footnote 110: There is nothing in common between the names Hercules and +Herakles. The latter is a compound, formed like Themistokles; the +former is a simple derivative from the root of hercere, "to enclose." If +Herakles had any equivalent in Latin, it would necessarily begin with S, +and not with H, as septa corresponds to epta, sequor to epomai, etc. +It should be noted, however, that Mommsen, in the fourth edition of +his History, abandons this view, and observes: "Auch der griechische +Herakles ist fruh als Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules in Italien einheimisch +und dort in eigenthumlicher Weise aufgefasst worden, wie es scheint +zunachst als Gott des gewagten Gewinns und der ausserordentlichen +Vermogensvermehrung." Romische Geschichte, I. 181. One would gladly +learn Mommsen's reasons for recurring to this apparently less defensible +opinion.] + +[Footnote 111: For the relations between Sancus and Herakles, see +Preller, Romische Mythologie, p. 635; Vollmer, Mythologie, p. 970.] + +[Footnote 112: Burnouf, Bhagavata-Purana, III. p. lxxxvi; Breal, op. +cit. p. 98.] + +[Footnote 113: Max Muller, Science of Language, II 484.] + +[Footnote 114: As Max Muller observes, "apart from all mythological +considerations, Sarama in Sanskrit is the same word as Helena in Greek." +Op. cit. p. 490. The names correspond phonetically letter for letter, +as, Surya corresponds to Helios, Sarameyas to Hermeias, and Aharyu to +Achilleus. Muller has plausibly suggested that Paris similarly answers +to the Panis.] + +[Footnote 115: "I create evil," Isaiah xiv. 7; "Shall there be evil in +the city, and the Lord hath not done it?" Amos iii. 6; cf. Iliad, xxiv. +527, and contrast 2 Samuel xxiv. 1 with 1 Chronicles xxi. 1.] + +[Footnote 116: Nor is there any ground for believing that the serpent in +the Eden myth is intended for Satan. The identification is entirely the +work of modern dogmatic theology, and is due, naturally enough, to the +habit, so common alike among theologians and laymen, of reasoning about +the Bible as if it were a single book, and not a collection of +writings of different ages and of very different degrees of historic +authenticity. In a future work, entitled "Aryana Vaedjo," I hope to +examine, at considerable length, this interesting myth of the garden of +Eden.] + +[Footnote 117: For further particulars see Cox, Mythology of the Aryan +Nations, Vol. II. pp 358, 366; to which I am indebted for several of the +details here given. Compare Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, I. 661, +seq.] + +[Footnote 118: Many amusing passages from Scotch theologians are cited +in Buckle's History of Civilization, Vol. II. p. 368. The same belief +is implied in the quaint monkish tale of "Celestinus and the Miller's +Horse." See Tales from the Gesta Romanorum, p. 134.] + +[Footnote 119: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. 11. p. 258.] + +[Footnote 120: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. II. p. 259. In the Norse +story of "Not a Pin to choose between them," the old woman is in doubt +as to her own identity, on waking up after the butcher has dipped her in +a tar-barrel and rolled her on a heap of feathers; and when Tray barks +at her, her perplexity is as great as the Devil's when fooled by the +Frenschutz. See Dasent, Norse Tales, p. 199.] + +[Footnote 121: See Deulin, Contes d'un Buveur de Biere, pp. 3-29.] + +[Footnote 122: Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, No. III. and No. +XLII.] + +[Footnote 123: See Dasent's Introduction, p. cxxxix; Campbell, Tales of +the West Highlands, Vol. IV. p. 344; and Williams, Indian Epic Poetry, +p. 10.] + +[Footnote 124: "A Leopard was returning home from hunting on one +occasion, when he lighted on the kraal of a Ram. Now the Leopard had +never seen a Ram before, and accordingly, approaching submissively, he +said, 'Good day, friend! what may your name be?' The other, in his gruff +voice, and striking his breast with his forefoot, said, 'I am a Ram; +who are you?' 'A Leopard,' answered the other, more dead than alive; and +then, taking leave of the Ram, he ran home as fast as he could." Bleek, +Hottentot Fables, p. 24.] + +[Footnote 125: I agree, most heartily, with Mr. Mahaffy's remarks, +Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 69.] + +[Footnote 126: Sir George Grey once told some Australian natives about +the countries within the arctic circle where during part of the year the +sun never sets. "Their astonishment now knew no bounds. 'Ah! that must +be another sun, not the same as the one we see here,' said an old man; +and in spite of all my arguments to the contrary, the others adopted +this opinion." Grey's Journals, I. 293, cited in Tylor, Early History of +Mankind, p. 301.] + +[Footnote 127: Max Muller, Chips, II. 96.] + +[Footnote 128: Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 255-270.] + +[Footnote 129: A corruption of Gaelic bhan a teaigh, "lady of the +house."] + +[Footnote 130: For the analysis of twelve, see my essay on "The Genesis +of Language," North American Review, October 1869, p. 320.] + +[Footnote 131: Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. II. p. 246.] + +[Footnote 132: For various legends of a deluge, see Baring-Gould, +Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 85-106.] + +[Footnote 133: Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 160.] + +[Footnote 134: Brinton, op. cit. p. 163.] + +[Footnote 135: Brinton, op. cit. p. 167.] + +[Footnote 136: Corresponding, in various degrees, to the Asvins, the +Dioskouroi, and the brothers True and Untrue of Norse mythology.] + +[Footnote 137: See Humboldt's Kosmos, Tom. III. pp. 469-476. A +fetichistic regard for the cardinal points has not always been absent +from the minds of persons instructed in a higher theology as witness a +well-known passage in Irenaeus, and also the custom, well-nigh universal +in Europe, of building Christian churches in a line east and west.] + +[Footnote 138: Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 72. Compare the +Fiji story of Ra Vula, the Moon, and Ra Kalavo, the Rat, in Tylor, +Primitive Culture, I. 321.] + +[Footnote 139: Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 327.] + +[Footnote 140: Tylor, op. cit., p. 346.] + +[Footnote 141: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 299-302.] + +[Footnote 142: Speaking of beliefs in the Malay Archipelago, Mr. Wallace +says: "It is universally believed in Lombock that some men have the +power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sake +of devouring their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such +transformations." Wallace, Malay Archipelago, Vol. I. p. 251.] + +[Footnote 143: Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 58.] + +[Footnote 144: Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, pp. 27-30.] + +[Footnote 145: Callaway, op. cit. pp. 142-152; cf. a similar story in +which the lion is fooled by the jackal. Bleek, op. cit. p. 7. I omit the +sequel of the tale.] + +[Footnote 146: Brinton, op. cit. p. 104.] + +[Footnote 147: Tylor, op. cit. p. 320.] + +[Footnote 148: Tylor, op. cit. pp. 338-343.] + +[Footnote 149: Tylor, op. cit. p. 336. November, 1870] + +[Footnote 150: Juventus Mundi. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. +By the Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. +1869.] + +[Footnote 151: Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 208.] + +[Footnote 152: Grote, Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 198.] + +[Footnote 153: For the precise extent to which I would indorse the +theory that the Iliad-myth is an account of the victory of light over +darkness, let me refer to what I have said above on p. 134. I do not +suppose that the struggle between light and darkness was Homer's subject +in the Iliad any more than it was Shakespeare's subject in "Hamlet." +Homer's subject was the wrath of the Greek hero, as Shakespeare's +subject was the vengeance of the Danish prince. Nevertheless, the story +of Hamlet, when traced back to its Norse original, is unmistakably the +story of the quarrel between summer and winter; and the moody prince +is as much a solar hero as Odin himself. See Simrock, Die Quellen des +Shakespeare, I. 127-133. Of course Shakespeare knew nothing of this, +as Homer knew nothing of the origin of his Achilleus. The two stories, +therefore, are not to be taken as sun-myths in their present form. +They are the offspring of other stories which were sun-myths; they +are stories which conform to the sun-myth type after the manner above +illustrated in the paper on Light and Darkness. [Hence there is nothing +unintelligible in the inconsistency--which seems to puzzle Max Muller +(Science of Language, 6th ed. Vol. II. p. 516, note 20)--of investing +Paris with many of the characteristics of the children of light. +Supposing, as we must, that the primitive sense of the Iliad-myth had as +entirely disappeared in the Homeric age, as the primitive sense of the +Hamlet-myth had disappeared in the times of Elizabeth, the fit ground +for wonder is that such inconsistencies are not more numerous.] The +physical theory of myths will be properly presented and comprehended, +only when it is understood that we accept the physical derivation of +such stories as the Iliad-myth in much the same way that we are bound to +accept the physical etymologies of such words as soul, consider, truth, +convince, deliberate, and the like. The late Dr. Gibbs of Yale College, +in his "Philological Studies,"--a little book which I used to read with +delight when a boy,--describes such etymologies as "faded metaphors." +In similar wise, while refraining from characterizing the Iliad or the +tragedy of Hamlet--any more than I would characterize Le Juif Errant by +Sue, or La Maison Forestiere by Erckmann-Chatrian--as nature-myths, I +would at the same time consider these poems well described as embodying +"faded nature-myths."] + +[Footnote 154: I have no opinion as to the nationality of the +Earth-shaker, and, regarding the etymology of his name, I believe we can +hardly do better than acknowledge, with Mr. Cox, that it is unknown. +It may well be doubted, however, whether much good is likely to come +of comparisons between Poseidon, Dagon, Oannes, and Noah, or of +distinctions between the children of Shem and the children of Ham. See +Brown's Poseidon; a Link between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan, London, +1872,--a book which is open to several of the criticisms here directed +against Mr. Gladstone's manner of theorizing.] + +[Footnote 155: "The expression that the Erinys, Saranyu, the Dawn, finds +out the criminal, was originally quite free from mythology; IT MEANT +NO MORE THAN THAT CRIME WOULD BE BROUGHT TO LIGHT SOME DAY OR OTHER. +It became mythological, however, as soon as the etymological meaning +of Erinys was forgotten, and as soon as the Dawn, a portion of time, +assumed the rank of a personal being."--Science of Language, 6th +edition, II. 615. This paragraph, in which the italicizing is mine, +contains Max Muller's theory in a nutshell. It seems to me wholly at +variance with the facts of history. The facts concerning primitive +culture which are to be cited in this paper will show that the case +is just the other way. Instead of the expression "Erinys finds the +criminal" being originally a metaphor, it was originally a literal +statement of what was believed to be fact. The Dawn (not "a portion of +time,"(!) but the rosy flush of the morning sky) was originally regarded +as a real person. Primitive men, strictly speaking, do not talk in +metaphors; they believe in the literal truth of their similes and +personifications, from which, by survival in culture, our poetic +metaphors are lineally descended. Homer's allusion to a rolling stone as +essumenos or "yearning" (to keep on rolling), is to us a mere figurative +expression; but to the savage it is the description of a fact.] + +[Footnote 156: Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of +Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom By Edward B. Tylor. 2 +vols. 8vo. London. 1871.] + +[Footnote 157: Tylor, op. cit. I. 107.] + +[Footnote 158: Rousseau, Confessions, I. vi. For further illustration, +see especially the note on the "doctrine of signatures," supra, p. 55.] + +[Footnote 159: Spencer, Recent Discussions in Science, etc., p. 36, "The +Origin of Animal Worship."] + +[Footnote 160: See Nature, Vol. VI. p. 262, August 1, 1872. The +circumstances narrated are such as to exclude the supposition that the +sitting up is intended to attract the master's attention. The dog has +frequently been seen trying to soften the heart of the ball, while +observed unawares by his master.] + +[Footnote 161: "We would, however, commend to Mr. Fiske's attention +Mr. Mark Twain's dog, who 'couldn't be depended on for a special +providence,' as being nearer to the actual dog of every-day life than +is the Skye terrier mentioned by a certain correspondent of Nature, to +whose letter Mr. Fiske refers. The terrier is held to have had 'a few +fetichistic notions,' because he was found standing up on his hind legs +in front of a mantel-piece, upon which lay an india-rubber ball with +which he wished to play, but which he could not reach, and which, says +the letter-writer, he was evidently beseeching to come down and play +with him. We consider it more reasonable to suppose that a dog who had +been drilled into a belief that standing upon his hind legs was very +pleasing to his master, and who, therefore, had accustomed himself to +stand on his hind legs whenever he desired anything, and whose usual way +of getting what he desired was to induce somebody to get it for him, may +have stood up in front of the mantel-piece rather from force of habit +and eagerness of desire than because he had any fetichistic notions, or +expected the india-rubber ball to listen to his supplications. We admit, +however, to avoid polemical controversy, that in matter of religion the +dog is capable of anything." The Nation, Vol. XV. p. 284, October 1, +1872. To be sure, I do not know for certain what was going on in the +dog's mind; and so, letting both explanations stand, I will only add +another fact of similar import. "The tendency in savages to imagine +that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living +essences is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed: +my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn +during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze +occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly +disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time +that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. +He must, I think, have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and unconscious +manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence +of some strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on his +territory." Darwin, Descent of Man, Vol. 1. p. 64. Without insisting +upon all the details of this explanation, one may readily grant, I +think, that in the dog, as in the savage, there is an undisturbed +association between motion and a living motor agency; and that out of a +multitude of just such associations common to both, the savage, with his +greater generalizing power, frames a truly fetichistic conception.] + +[Footnote 162: Note the fetichism wrapped up in the etymologies of these +Greek words. Catalepsy, katalhyis, a seizing of the body by some spirit +or demon, who holds it rigid. Ecstasy, ekstasis, a displacement or +removal of the soul from the body, into which the demon enters and +causes strange laughing, crying, or contortions. It is not metaphor, but +the literal belief ill a ghost-world, which has given rise to such +words as these, and to such expressions as "a man beside himself or +transported."] + +[Footnote 163: Something akin to the savage's belief in the animation +of pictures may be seen in young children. I have often been asked by my +three-year-old boy, whether the dog in a certain picture would bite him +if he were to go near it; and I can remember that, in my own childhood, +when reading a book about insects, which had the formidable likeness of +a spider stamped on the centre of the cover, I was always uneasy lest +my finger should come in contact with the dreaded thing as I held the +book.] + +[Footnote 164: Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 394. "The Zulus hold that a +dead body can cast no shadow, because that appurtenance departed from +it at the close of life." Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and +Folk-Lore, p. 123.] + +[Footnote 165: Tylor, op. cit. I. 391.] + +[Footnote 166: Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, 1867, p. +210.] + +[Footnote 167: Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.] + +[Footnote 168: In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to be +embodied in pigeons or crows. "Thus when the Deacon Theodore and his +three schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681, the souls of the martyrs, +as the 'Old Believers' affirm, appeared in the air as pigeons. In +Volhynia dead children are supposed to come back in the spring to their +native village under the semblance of swallows and other small birds, +and to seek by soft twittering or song to console their sorrowing +parents." Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118.] + +[Footnote 169: Tylor, op. cit. I. 404.] + +[Footnote 171: Tylor, op. cit. I. 407.] + +[Footnote 172: Tylor, op. cit. I. 410. In the next stage of survival +this belief will take the shape that it is wrong to slam a door, no +reason being assigned; and in the succeeding stage, when the child asks +why it is naughty to slam a door, he will be told, because it is an +evidence of bad temper. Thus do old-world fancies disappear before the +inroads of the practical sense.] + +[Footnote 173: Agassiz, Essay on Classification, pp. 97-99.] + +[Footnote 174: Figuier, The To-morrow of Death, p. 247.] + +[Footnote 175: Here, as usually, the doctrine of metempsychosis comes +in to complete the proof. "Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in Keeling +Island, who had a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll; this +spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired +at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively like a table +or a hat at a modern spirit-seance." Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.] + +[Footnote 176: Tylor, op. cit. I. 414-422.] + +[Footnote 177: Tylor, op. cit. I. 435, 446; II. 30, 36.] + +[Footnote 178: According to the Karens, blindness occurs when the SOUL +OF THE EYE is eaten by demons. Id., II. 353.] + +[Footnote 179: The following citation is interesting as an illustration +of the directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to Christian +saint-worship: "It is well known that Romulus, mindful of his own +adventurous infancy, became after death a Roman deity, propitious to the +health and safety of young children, so that nurses and mothers would +carry sickly infants to present them in his little round temple at +the foot of the Palatine. In after ages the temple was replaced by +the church of St. Theodorus, and there Dr. Conyers Middleton, who drew +public attention to its curious history, used to look in and see ten +or a dozen women, each with a sick child in her lap, sitting in silent +reverence before the altar of the saint. The ceremony of blessing +children, especially after vaccination, may still be seen there on +Thursday mornings." Op. cit. II. 111.] + +[Footnote 180: Want of space prevents me from remarking at length +upon Mr. Tylor's admirable treatment of the phenomena of oracular +inspiration. Attention should be called, however, to the brilliant +explanation of the importance accorded by all religions to the rite of +fasting. Prolonged abstinence from food tends to bring on a mental +state which is favourable to visions. The savage priest or medicine-man +qualifies himself for the performance of his duties by fasting, and +where this is not sufficient, often uses intoxicating drugs; whence +the sacredness of the hasheesh, as also of the Vedic soma-juice. The +practice of fasting among civilized peoples is an instance of survival.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths and Myth-Makers, by John Fiske + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1061 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1062-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1062-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..79bfd49e --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1062-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,740 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1062 *** + +This is our second experimental effort at cataloguing multiple items in +a single file. In the first instance we use the same index number for +each item, and just used multiple entries for that file in the index. +In this, the second instance, we have used separate index numbers for +the collection and for all the entries in that collection. Let us know +which you prefer. We have traditionally used the smallest number of +index entries--as somewhat of a protest against others who have copied +Etexts and wanted it to appear as if they had more Etext than Project +Gutenberg or various other etext collections. We want to make our +Etexts as easy as possible to find and work with, but, not to "pad" our +work. However, we prefer to post short works for you in collections, +to eliminate you having to download all 11 kilobytes of our header and +"legal fine print" to get files of sizes less than the headers. Please +email me on this. Thanks! Michael S. Hart, hart@pobox.com + + + + +The Raven + +by Edgar Allan Poe + +October, 1997 [Etext #1064]* + + + +THE RAVEN + + + + Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, + Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-- + While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, + As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. + "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-- + Only this and nothing more." + + Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, + And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. + Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow + From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore-- + For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- + Nameless here for evermore. + + And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain + Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; + So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating + "'Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door-- + Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door; + This it is and nothing more." + + Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, + "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; + But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, + And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, + That I scarce was sure I heard you"--here I opened wide the door-- + Darkness there and nothing more. + + Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, + Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; + But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, + And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" + This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"-- + Merely this and nothing more. + + Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, + Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before. + "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; + Let me see, then, what thereat is and this mystery explore-- + Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-- + 'Tis the wind and nothing more. + + Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, + In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. + Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he, + But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-- + Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-- + Perched, and sat, and nothing more. + + Then the ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, + By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, + "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, + Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore-- + Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." + + Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, + Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore; + For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being + Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door-- + Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, + With such name as "Nevermore." + + But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only + That one word, as if its soul in that one word he did outpour + Nothing farther then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered-- + Till I scarcely more than muttered: "Other friends have flown before-- + On the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before." + Then the bird said "Nevermore." + + Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, + "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, + Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster + Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore-- + Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore + Of 'Never--nevermore.'" + + But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, + Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; + Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking + Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-- + What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore + Meant in croaking "Nevermore." + + This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing + To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; + This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining + On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, + But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er + _She_ shall press, ah, nevermore! + + Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer + Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. + "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee + Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! + Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." + + "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!-- + Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, + Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-- + On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore-- + Is there--_is_ there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." + + "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil! + By that Heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore-- + Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, + It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- + Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." + Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." + + "Be that our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting-- + "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! + Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul has spoken! + Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! + Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" + Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." + + And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting + On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; + And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming + And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadows on the floor; + And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor + Shall be lifted--nevermore! + + + + +The Masque of the Red Death + +by Edgar Allan Poe + +October, 1997 [Etext #1064]* + + + + +The Masque of the Red Death + + +The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had +ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its +seal--the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and +sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with +dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the +face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid +and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, +progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an +hour. + +But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his +dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand +hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his +court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his +castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, +the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong +and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The +courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and +welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor +egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The +abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might +bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of +itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The +prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were +buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there +were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and +security were within. Without was the "Red Death". + +It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, +and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince +Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most +unusual magnificence. + +It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of +the rooms in which it was held. These were seven--an imperial suite. +In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, +while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, +so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the +case was very different, as might have been expected from the duke's +love of the _bizarre_. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that +the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a +sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel +effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and +narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued +the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose +colour varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations +of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was +hung, for example in blue--and vividly blue were its windows. The +second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the +panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the +casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange--the fifth +with white--the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely +shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and +down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same +material and hue. But in this chamber only, the colour of the windows +failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were +scarlet--a deep blood colour. Now in no one of the seven apartments +was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden +ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. +There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the +suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there +stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of +fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly +illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and +fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect +of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the +blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a +look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of +the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all. + +It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western +wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a +dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the +circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from +the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep +and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, +at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were +constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to +the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and +there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the +chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew +pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows +as if in confused revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully +ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians +looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and +folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next +chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and +then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand +and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another +chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and +tremulousness and meditation as before. + +But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The +tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colours and +effects. He disregarded the _decora_ of mere fashion. His plans were +bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There +are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he +was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be _sure_ +that he was not. + +He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven +chambers, upon occasion of this great _fête_; and it was his own guiding +taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were +grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and +phantasm--much of what has been since seen in "Hernani". There were +arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were +delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the +beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the _bizarre_, something of the +terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. +To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of +dreams. And these--the dreams--writhed in and about taking hue from +the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the +echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which +stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is +still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are +stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away--they +have endured but an instant--and a light, half-subdued laughter floats +after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the +dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue +from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the +tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, +there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning +away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-coloured panes; +and the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot +falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a +muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches _their_ ears +who indulged in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments. + +But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat +feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until +at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And +then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the +waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things +as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell +of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought +crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among +those who revelled. And thus too, it happened, perhaps, that before the +last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were +many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of +the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no +single individual before. And the rumour of this new presence having +spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole +company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and +surprise--then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust. + +In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be +supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. +In truth the masquerade licence of the night was nearly unlimited; but +the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the +bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the +hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. +Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, +there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, +indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of +the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall +and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the +grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to +resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest +scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all +this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers +around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the +Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in _blood_--and his broad brow, with +all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror. + +When the eyes of the Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image +(which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain +its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be +convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror +or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage. + +"Who dares,"--he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near +him--"who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and +unmask him--that we may know whom we have to hang, at sunrise, from the +battlements!" + +It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince +Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven +rooms loudly and clearly, for the prince was a bold and robust man, and +the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand. + +It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale +courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight +rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at +the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately +step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless +awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole +party, there were found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that, +unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's person; and, while +the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of +the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the +same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the +first, through the blue chamber to the purple--through the purple to +the green--through the green to the orange--through this again to the +white--and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been +made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, +maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, +rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on +account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a +drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three +or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained +the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted +his pursuer. There was a sharp cry--and the dagger dropped gleaming +upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate +in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of +despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the +black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect +and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in +unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask, +which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any +tangible form. + +And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come +like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the +blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing +posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with +that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. +And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over +all. + + + + +The Cask of Amontillado + +by Edgar Allan Poe + +October, 1997 [Etext #1065]* + + + +The Cask of Amontillado + + +The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but +when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know +the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance +to a threat. _At length_ I would be avenged; this was a point +definitely settled--but the very definitiveness with which it was +resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but +punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution +overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger +fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. + +It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given +Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to +smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile _now_ was at +the thought of his immolation. + +He had a weak point--this Fortunato--although in other regards he was a +man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his +connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. +For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and +opportunity--to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian +_millionaires_. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, +was a quack--but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this +respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skillful in the +Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could. + +It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the +carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with +excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. +He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was +surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him, +that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand. + +I said to him--"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably +well you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe of what passes +for Amontillado, and I have my doubts." + +"How?" said he. "Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible! And in the middle +of the carnival!" + +"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full +Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to +be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain." + +"Amontillado!" + +"I have my doubts." + +"Amontillado!" + +"And I must satisfy them." + +"Amontillado!" + +"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a +critical turn, it is he. He will tell me--" + +"Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry." + +"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your +own." + +"Come, let us go." + +"Whither?" + +"To your vaults." + +"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive +you have an engagement. Luchesi--" + +"I have no engagement;--come." + +"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with +which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. +They are encrusted with nitre." + +"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! You +have been imposed upon. And as for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish +Sherry from Amontillado." + +Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask +of black silk, and drawing a _roquelaire_ closely about my person, I +suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo. + +There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in +honour of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the +morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. +These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate +disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned. + +I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato, +bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led into +the vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him +to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the +descent, and stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the +Montresors. + +The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled +as he strode. + +"The pipe," said he. + +"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white web-work which +gleams from these cavern walls." + +He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that +distilled the rheum of intoxication. + +"Nitre?" he asked, at length. + +"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?" + +"Ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! +ugh! ugh!" + +My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes. + +"It is nothing," he said, at last. + +"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is +precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as +once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We +will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, +there is Luchesi--" + +"Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I +shall not die of a cough." + +"True--true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming +you unnecessarily--but you should use all proper caution. A draught of +this Medoc will defend us from the damps." + +Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of +its fellows that lay upon the mould. + +"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine. + +He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me +familiarly, while his bells jingled. + +"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us." + +"And I to your long life." + +He again took my arm, and we proceeded. + +"These vaults," he said, "are extensive." + +"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family." + +"I forget your arms." + +"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent +rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel." + +"And the motto?" + +"_Nemo me impune lacessit_." + +"Good!" he said. + +The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew +warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with +casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of +catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize +Fortunato by an arm above the elbow. + +"The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the +vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle +among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your +cough--" + +"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of +the Medoc." + +I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a +breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw +the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand. + +I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement--a grotesque one. + +"You do not comprehend?" he said. + +"Not I," I replied. + +"Then you are not of the brotherhood." + +"How?" + +"You are not of the masons." + +"Yes, yes," I said; "yes, yes." + +"You? Impossible! A mason?" + +"A mason," I replied. + +"A sign," he said, "a sign." + +"It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of +my _roquelaire_. + +"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed +to the Amontillado." + +"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak and again +offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our +route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low +arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep +crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to +glow than flame. + +At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less +spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the +vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three +sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From +the fourth side the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously +upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the +wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a still +interior recess, in depth about four feet in width three, in height six +or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial use +within itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the +colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one +of their circumscribing walls of solid granite. + +It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavoured to +pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did +not enable us to see. + +"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi--" + +"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily +forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he +had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress +arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I +had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, +distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of +these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the +links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure +it. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key I +stepped back from the recess. + +"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the +nitre. Indeed, it is _very_ damp. Once more let me _implore_ you to +return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render +you all the little attentions in my power." + +"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his +astonishment. + +"True," I replied; "the Amontillado." + +As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which +I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity +of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of +my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche. + +I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered +that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The +earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth +of the recess. It was _not_ the cry of a drunken man. There was then a +long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and +the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The +noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I might hearken to +it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labours and sat down upon +the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I resumed the trowel, +and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh +tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again +paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few +feeble rays upon the figure within. + +A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the +throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a +brief moment I hesitated--I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began +to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant +reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, +and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall; I replied to the yells of +him who clamoured. I re-echoed--I aided--I surpassed them in volume +and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still. + +It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had +completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a +portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone +to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed +it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the +niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was +succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that +of the noble Fortunato. The voice said-- + +"Ha! ha! ha!--he! he! he!--a very good joke indeed--an excellent jest. +We shall have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo--he! he! +he!--over our wine--he! he! he!" + +"The Amontillado!" I said. + +"He! he! he!--he! he! he!--yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting +late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato +and the rest? Let us be gone." + +"Yes," I said, "let us be gone." + +"_For the love of God, Montresor!_" + +"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!" + +But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. +I called aloud-- + +"Fortunato!" + +No answer. I called again-- + +"Fortunato--" + +No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and +let it fall within. There came forth in reply only a jingling of the +bells. My heart grew sick on account of the dampness of the catacombs. +I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into +its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected +the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has +disturbed them. _In pace requiescat!_ + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of First Gutenberg Collection of Edgar +Allan Poe, by Edgar Allan Poe + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1062 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1063-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1063-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7628ba80 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1063-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,343 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1063 *** + +The Cask of Amontillado + + +by + +Edgar Allan Poe + + + +The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but +when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know +the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance +to a threat. _At length_ I would be avenged; this was a point definitely +settled--but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, +precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with +impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its +redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make +himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. + +It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given +Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to +smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile _now_ was at +the thought of his immolation. + +He had a weak point--this Fortunato--although in other regards he was a +man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his +connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. +For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and +opportunity--to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian +_millionaires_. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, +was a quack--but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this +respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skillful in the +Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could. + +It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the +carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with +excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. +He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was +surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him, +that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand. + +I said to him--"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably +well you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe of what passes +for Amontillado, and I have my doubts." + +"How?" said he. "Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible! And in the middle +of the carnival!" + +"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full +Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to +be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain." + +"Amontillado!" + +"I have my doubts." + +"Amontillado!" + +"And I must satisfy them." + +"Amontillado!" + +"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a +critical turn, it is he. He will tell me--" + +"Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry." + +"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your +own." + +"Come, let us go." + +"Whither?" + +"To your vaults." + +"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive +you have an engagement. Luchesi--" + +"I have no engagement;--come." + +"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with +which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. +They are encrusted with nitre." + +"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! +You have been imposed upon. And as for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish +Sherry from Amontillado." + +Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask +of black silk, and drawing a _roquelaire_ closely about my person, I +suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo. + +There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in +honour of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the +morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. +These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate +disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned. + +I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato, +bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led into +the vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him +to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the +descent, and stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the +Montresors. + +The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled +as he strode. + +"The pipe," said he. + +"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white web-work which +gleams from these cavern walls." + +He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that +distilled the rheum of intoxication. + +"Nitre?" he asked, at length. + +"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?" + +"Ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! +ugh! ugh!" + +My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes. + +"It is nothing," he said, at last. + +"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is +precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as +once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We +will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, +there is Luchesi--" + +"Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. +I shall not die of a cough." + +"True--true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming +you unnecessarily--but you should use all proper caution. A draught of +this Medoc will defend us from the damps." + +Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of +its fellows that lay upon the mould. + +"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine. + +He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me +familiarly, while his bells jingled. + +"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us." + +"And I to your long life." + +He again took my arm, and we proceeded. + +"These vaults," he said, "are extensive." + +"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family." + +"I forget your arms." + +"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent +rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel." + +"And the motto?" + +"_Nemo me impune lacessit_." + +"Good!" he said. + +The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew +warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with +casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of +catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize +Fortunato by an arm above the elbow. + +"The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the +vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle +among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your +cough--" + +"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of +the Medoc." + +I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a +breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw +the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand. + +I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement--a grotesque one. + +"You do not comprehend?" he said. + +"Not I," I replied. + +"Then you are not of the brotherhood." + +"How?" + +"You are not of the masons." + +"Yes, yes," I said; "yes, yes." + +"You? Impossible! A mason?" + +"A mason," I replied. + +"A sign," he said, "a sign." + +"It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of +my _roquelaire_. + +"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed +to the Amontillado." + +"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak and again +offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our +route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low +arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep +crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to +glow than flame. + +At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less +spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the +vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three +sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. +From the fourth side the bones had been thrown down, and lay +promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some +size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we +perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet in width +three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for +no especial use within itself, but formed merely the interval between +two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was +backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite. + +It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavoured to +pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did +not enable us to see. + +"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi--" + +"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily +forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he +had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress +arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I +had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, +distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of +these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the +links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure +it. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key I +stepped back from the recess. + +"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the +nitre. Indeed, it is _very_ damp. Once more let me _implore_ you to +return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first +render you all the little attentions in my power." + +"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his +astonishment. + +"True," I replied; "the Amontillado." + +As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which +I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity +of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of +my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche. + +I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered +that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The +earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth +of the recess. It was _not_ the cry of a drunken man. There was then a +long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and +the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The +noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I might hearken to +it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labours and sat down upon +the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I resumed the trowel, +and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh +tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again +paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few +feeble rays upon the figure within. + +A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the +throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a +brief moment I hesitated--I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began +to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant +reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, +and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall; I replied to the yells of +him who clamoured. I re-echoed--I aided--I surpassed them in volume +and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still. + +It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had +completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a +portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone +to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed +it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the +niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was +succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that +of the noble Fortunato. The voice said-- + +"Ha! ha! ha!--he! he! he!--a very good joke indeed--an excellent jest. +We shall have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo--he! he! +he!--over our wine--he! he! he!" + +"The Amontillado!" I said. + +"He! he! he!--he! he! he!--yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting +late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato +and the rest? Let us be gone." + +"Yes," I said, "let us be gone." + +"_For the love of God, Montresor!_" + +"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!" + +But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. +I called aloud-- + +"Fortunato!" + +No answer. I called again-- + +"Fortunato--" + +No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and +let it fall within. There came forth in reply only a jingling of the +bells. My heart grew sick on account of the dampness of the catacombs. +I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into +its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected +the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has +disturbed them. _In pace requiescat!_ + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Cask of Amontillado, by Edgar Allan Poe + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1063 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1064-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1064-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..054dff86 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1064-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,216 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1064 *** + +The Masque of the Red Death + +by Edgar Allan Poe + + +The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had +ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the +redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, +and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains +upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban +which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And +the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents +of half an hour. + +But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his +dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale +and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and +with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This +was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s +own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This +wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and +massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of +ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. +The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid +defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the +meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the +appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there +were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. +All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death”. + +It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and +while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero +entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual +magnificence. + +It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms +in which it was held. These were seven—an imperial suite. In many +palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding +doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the +whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different, as might +have been expected from the duke’s love of the _bizarre_. The +apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little +more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty +yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of +each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor +which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass +whose colour varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of +the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for +example in blue—and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was +purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The +third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished +and lighted with orange—the fifth with white—the sixth with violet. +The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung +all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet +of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the colour of the +windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were +scarlet—a deep blood colour. Now in no one of the seven apartments was +there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay +scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind +emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the +corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a +heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the +tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a +multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black +chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings +through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so +wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of +the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all. + +It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a +gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, +monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and +the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a +sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so +peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of +the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to +harken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; +and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the +chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and +the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused +reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter +at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as +if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the +other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar +emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three +thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet +another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and +tremulousness and meditation as before. + +But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes +of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colours and effects. He +disregarded the _decora_ of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, +and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have +thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear +and see and touch him to be _sure_ that he was not. + +He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven +chambers, upon occasion of this great _fête_; and it was his own guiding +taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were +grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and +phantasm—much of what has been since seen in “Hernani”. There +were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were +delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the +beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the _bizarre_, something of the +terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro +in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And +these—the dreams—writhed in and about taking hue from the rooms, +and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. +And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the +velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice +of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the +chime die away—they have endured but an instant—and a light, +half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music +swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, +taking hue from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the +tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are +now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there +flows a ruddier light through the blood-coloured panes; and the blackness of +the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, +there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic +than any which reaches _their_ ears who indulged in the more remote +gaieties of the other apartments. + +But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly +the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there +commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, +as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was +an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes +to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that +more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the +thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus too, it happened, perhaps, that +before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there +were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the +presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single +individual before. And the rumour of this new presence having spread itself +whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or +murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of +terror, of horror, and of disgust. + +In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed +that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the +masquerade licence of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in +question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the +prince’s indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most +reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, +to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest +can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the +costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The +figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of +the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble +the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had +difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if +not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to +assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in +_blood_—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was +besprinkled with the scarlet horror. + +When the eyes of the Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which, with +a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to +and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment +with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow +reddened with rage. + +“Who dares,”—he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood +near him—“who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize +him and unmask him—that we may know whom we have to hang, at sunrise, +from the battlements!” + +It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero as he +uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly, +for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed at +the waving of his hand. + +It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers +by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this +group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also near at +hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the +speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the +mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth hand +to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince’s +person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the +centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with +the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, +through the blue chamber to the purple—through the purple to the +green—through the green to the orange—through this again to the +white—and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made +to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with +rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the +six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had +seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid +impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the +latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly +and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry—and the dagger dropped +gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell +prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of +despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black +apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and +motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror +at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask, which they handled with so +violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form. + +And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a +thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed +halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And +the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the +flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held +illimitable dominion over all. + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1064 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1065-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1065-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ca832f5a --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1065-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,137 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1065 *** + +The Raven + + +by + +Edgar Allan Poe + + + Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, + Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— + While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, + As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. + “’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— + Only this and nothing more.” + + Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, + And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. + Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow + From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— + For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— + Nameless here for evermore. + + And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain + Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; + So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating + “’Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door— + Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door; + This it is and nothing more.” + + Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, + “Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; + But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, + And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, + That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door— + Darkness there and nothing more. + + Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, + Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; + But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, + And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?” + This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”— + Merely this and nothing more. + + Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, + Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before. + “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice; + Let me see, then, what thereat is and this mystery explore— + Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;— + ’Tis the wind and nothing more.” + + Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, + In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. + Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he, + But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— + Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door— + Perched, and sat, and nothing more. + + Then the ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, + By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, + “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, + Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— + Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” + Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.” + + Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, + Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; + For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being + Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door— + Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, + With such name as “Nevermore.” + + But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only + That one word, as if its soul in that one word he did outpour + Nothing farther then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered— + Till I scarcely more than muttered: “Other friends have flown before— + On the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.” + Then the bird said “Nevermore.” + + Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, + “Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store, + Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster + Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore— + Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore + Of ‘Never—nevermore.’” + + But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, + Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; + Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking + Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore— + What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore + Meant in croaking “Nevermore.” + + This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing + To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core; + This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining + On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er, + But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er + _She_ shall press, ah, nevermore! + + Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer + Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. + “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee + Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! + Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!” + Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.” + + “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!— + Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, + Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted— + On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore— + Is there—_is_ there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!” + Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.” + + “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil! + By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore— + Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, + It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore— + Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.” + Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.” + + “Be that our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting— + “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! + Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul has spoken! + Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! + Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” + Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.” + + And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting + On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; + And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming + And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadows on the floor; + And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor + Shall be lifted—nevermore! + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1065 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1066-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1066-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5ca425ae --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1066-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5413 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, William the Conqueror, by Edward Augustus +Freeman + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: William the Conqueror + + +Author: Edward Augustus Freeman + + + +Release Date: March 20, 2013 [eBook #1066] +[This file was first posted on February 12, 1998] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR*** + + +Transcribed from the 1913 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR + + + * * * * * + + BY + EDWARD A. FREEMAN + D.C.L., LL.D. + + REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD + + * * * * * + + MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED + ST. MARTIN’S SQUARE, LONDON + + 1913 + + * * * * * + + COPYRIGHT + + _First Edition printed March_ 1888. + _Reprinted July_ 1888, 1890, 1894, 1898, 1903, 1907, 1913 + + + + +PREFACE + + +THIS small volume, written as the first of a series, is meant to fill +quite another place from the _Short History of the Norman Conquest_, by +the same author. That was a narrative of events reaching over a +considerable time. This is the portrait of a man in his personal +character, a man whose life takes up only a part of the time treated of +in the other work. We have now to look on William as one who, though +stranger and conqueror, is yet worthily entitled to a place on the list +of English statesmen. There is perhaps no man before or after him whose +personal character and personal will have had so direct an effect on the +course which the laws and constitution of England have taken since his +time. Norman as a Conqueror, as a statesman he is English, and, on this +side of him at least, he worthily begins the series. + +16 ST. GILES’, OXFORD, + 6_th_ _February_ 1888. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + CHAPTER I +INTRODUCTION 1 + CHAPTER II +THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM 6 + CHAPTER III +WILLIAM’S FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND 26 + CHAPTER IV +THE REIGN OF WILLIAM IN NORMANDY 34 + CHAPTER V +HAROLD’S OATH TO WILLIAM 51 + CHAPTER VI +THE NEGOTIATIONS OF DUKE WILLIAM 63 + CHAPTER VII +WILLIAM’S INVASION OF ENGLAND 82 + CHAPTER VIII +THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 100 + CHAPTER IX +THE SETTLEMENT OF ENGLAND 122 + CHAPTER X +THE REVOLTS AGAINST WILLIAM 147 + CHAPTER XI +THE LAST YEARS OF WILLIAM 181 + + + + +CHAPTER I. +INTRODUCTION. + + +THE history of England, like the land and its people, has been specially +insular, and yet no land has undergone deeper influences from without. +No land has owed more than England to the personal action of men not of +native birth. Britain was truly called another world, in opposition to +the world of the European mainland, the world of Rome. In every age the +history of Britain is the history of an island, of an island great enough +to form a world of itself. In speaking of Celts or Teutons in Britain, +we are speaking, not simply of Celts and Teutons, but of Celts and +Teutons parted from their kinsfolk on the mainland, and brought under the +common influences of an island world. The land has seen several +settlements from outside, but the settlers have always been brought under +the spell of their insular position. Whenever settlement has not meant +displacement, the new comers have been assimilated by the existing people +of the land. When it has meant displacement, they have still become +islanders, marked off from those whom they left behind by characteristics +which were the direct result of settlement in an island world. + +The history of Britain then, and specially the history of England, has +been largely a history of elements absorbed and assimilated from without. +But each of those elements has done somewhat to modify the mass into +which it was absorbed. The English land and nation are not as they might +have been if they had never in later times absorbed the Fleming, the +French Huguenot, the German Palatine. Still less are they as they might +have been, if they had not in earlier times absorbed the greater elements +of the Dane and the Norman. Both were assimilated; but both modified the +character and destiny of the people into whose substance they were +absorbed. The conquerors from Normandy were silently and peacefully lost +in the greater mass of the English people; still we can never be as if +the Norman had never come among us. We ever bear about us the signs of +his presence. Our colonists have carried those signs with them into +distant lands, to remind men that settlers in America and Australia came +from a land which the Norman once entered as a conqueror. But that those +signs of his presence hold the place which they do hold in our mixed +political being, that, badges of conquest as they are, no one feels them +to be badges of conquest—all this comes of the fact that, if the Norman +came as a conqueror, he came as a conqueror of a special, perhaps almost +of an unique kind. The Norman Conquest of England has, in its nature and +in its results, no exact parallel in history. And that it has no exact +parallel in history is largely owing to the character and position of the +man who wrought it. That the history of England for the last eight +hundred years has been what it has been has largely come of the personal +character of a single man. That we are what we are to this day largely +comes of the fact that there was a moment when our national destiny might +be said to hang on the will of a single man, and that that man was +William, surnamed at different stages of his life and memory, the +Bastard, the Conqueror, and the Great. + +With perfect fitness then does William the Norman, William the Norman +Conqueror of England, take his place in a series of English statesmen. +That so it should be is characteristic of English history. Our history +has been largely wrought for us by men who have come in from without, +sometimes as conquerors, sometimes as the opposite of conquerors; but in +whatever character they came, they had to put on the character of +Englishmen, and to make their work an English work. From whatever land +they came, on whatever mission they came, as statesmen they were English. +William, the greatest of his class, is still but a member of a class. +Along with him we must reckon a crowd of kings, bishops, and high +officials in many ages of our history. Theodore of Tarsus and Cnut of +Denmark, Lanfranc of Pavia and Anselm of Aosta, Randolf Flambard and +Roger of Salisbury, Henry of Anjou and Simon of Montfort, are all written +on a list of which William is but the foremost. The largest number come +in William’s own generation and in the generations just before and after +it. But the breed of England’s adopted children and rulers never died +out. The name of William the Deliverer stands, if not beside that of his +namesake the Conqueror, yet surely alongside of the lawgiver from Anjou. +And we count among the later worthies of England not a few men sprung +from other lands, who did and are doing their work among us, and who, as +statesmen at least, must count as English. As we look along the whole +line, even among the conquering kings and their immediate instruments, +their work never takes the shape of the rooting up of the earlier +institutions of the land. Those institutions are modified, sometimes +silently by the mere growth of events, sometimes formally and of set +purpose. Old institutions get new names; new institutions are set up +alongside of them. But the old ones are never swept away; they sometimes +die out; they are never abolished. This comes largely of the absorbing +and assimilating power of the island world. But it comes no less of +personal character and personal circumstances, and pre-eminently of the +personal character of the Norman Conqueror and of the circumstances in +which he found himself. + + * * * * * + +Our special business now is with the personal acts and character of +William, and above all with his acts and character as an English +statesman. But the English reign of William followed on his earlier +Norman reign, and its character was largely the result of his earlier +Norman reign. A man of the highest natural gifts, he had gone through +such a schooling from his childhood upwards as falls to the lot of few +princes. Before he undertook the conquest of England, he had in some +sort to work the conquest of Normandy. Of the ordinary work of a +sovereign in a warlike age, the defence of his own land, the annexation +of other lands, William had his full share. With the land of his +overlord he had dealings of the most opposite kinds. He had to call in +the help of the French king to put down rebellion in the Norman duchy, +and he had to drive back more than one invasion of the French king at the +head of an united Norman people. He added Domfront and Maine to his +dominions, and the conquest of Maine, the work as much of statesmanship +as of warfare, was the rehearsal of the conquest of England. There, +under circumstances strangely like those of England, he learned his trade +as conqueror, he learned to practise on a narrower field the same arts +which he afterwards practised on a wider. But after all, William’s own +duchy was his special school; it was his life in his own duchy which +specially helped to make him what he was. Surrounded by trials and +difficulties almost from his cradle, he early learned the art of enduring +trials and overcoming difficulties; he learned how to deal with men; he +learned when to smite and when to spare; and it is not a little to his +honour that, in the long course of such a reign as his, he almost always +showed himself far more ready to spare than to smite. + +Before then we can look at William as an English statesman, we must first +look on him in the land in which he learned the art of statesmanship. We +must see how one who started with all the disadvantages which are implied +in his earlier surname of the Bastard came to win and to deserve his +later surnames of the Conqueror and the Great. + + + + +CHAPTER II. +THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM. +A.D. 1028–1051. + + +IF William’s early reign in Normandy was his time of schooling for his +later reign in England, his school was a stern one, and his schooling +began early. His nominal reign began at the age of seven years, and his +personal influence on events began long before he had reached the usual +years of discretion. And the events of his minority might well harden +him, while they could not corrupt him in the way in which so many princes +have been corrupted. His whole position, political and personal, could +not fail to have its effect in forming the man. He was Duke of the +Normans, sixth in succession from Rolf, the founder of the Norman state. +At the time of his accession, rather more than a hundred and ten years +had passed since plunderers, occasionally settlers, from Scandinavia, had +changed into acknowledged members of the Western or Karolingian kingdom. +The Northmen, changed, name and thing, into _Normans_, were now in all +things members of the Christian and French-speaking world. But French as +the Normans of William’s day had become, their relation to the kings and +people of France was not a friendly one. At the time of the settlement +of Rolf, the western kingdom of the Franks had not yet finally passed to +the _Duces Francorum_ at Paris; Rolf became the man of the Karolingian +king at Laon. France and Normandy were two great duchies, each owning a +precarious supremacy in the king of the West-Franks. On the one hand, +Normandy had been called into being by a frightful dismemberment of the +French duchy, from which the original Norman settlement had been cut off. +France had lost in Rouen one of her greatest cities, and she was cut off +from the sea and from the lower course of her own river. On the other +hand, the French and the Norman dukes had found their interest in a close +alliance; Norman support had done much to transfer the crown from Laon to +Paris, and to make the _Dux Francorum_ and the _Rex Francorum_ the same +person. It was the adoption of the French speech and manners by the +Normans, and their steady alliance with the French dukes, which finally +determined that the ruling element in Gaul should be Romance and not +Teutonic, and that, of its Romance elements, it should be French and not +Aquitanian. If the creation of Normandy had done much to weaken France +as a duchy, it had done not a little towards the making of France as a +kingdom. Laon and its crown, the undefined influence that went with the +crown, the prospect of future advance to the south, had been bought by +the loss of Rouen and of the mouth of the Seine. + +There was much therefore at the time of William’s accession to keep the +French kings and the Norman dukes on friendly terms. The old alliance +had been strengthened by recent good offices. The reigning king, Henry +the First, owed his crown to the help of William’s father Robert. On the +other hand, the original ground of the alliance, mutual support against +the Karolingian king, had passed away. A King of the French reigning at +Paris was more likely to remember what the Normans had cost him as duke +than what they had done for him as king. And the alliance was only an +alliance of princes. The mutual dislike between the people of the two +countries was strong. The Normans had learned French ways, but French +and Normans had not become countrymen. And, as the fame of Normandy +grew, jealousy was doubtless mingled with dislike. William, in short, +inherited a very doubtful and dangerous state of relations towards the +king who was at once his chief neighbour and his overlord. + +More doubtful and dangerous still were the relations which the young duke +inherited towards the people of his own duchy and the kinsfolk of his own +house. William was not as yet the Great or the Conqueror, but he was the +Bastard from the beginning. There was then no generally received +doctrine as to the succession to kingdoms and duchies. Everywhere a +single kingly or princely house supplied, as a rule, candidates for the +succession. Everywhere, even where the elective doctrine was strong, a +full-grown son was always likely to succeed his father. The growth of +feudal notions too had greatly strengthened the hereditary principle. +Still no rule had anywhere been laid down for cases where the late prince +had not left a full-grown son. The question as to legitimate birth was +equally unsettled. Irregular unions of all kinds, though condemned by +the Church, were tolerated in practice, and were nowhere more common than +among the Norman dukes. In truth the feeling of the kingliness of the +stock, the doctrine that the king should be the son of a king, is better +satisfied by the succession of the late king’s bastard son than by +sending for some distant kinsman, claiming perhaps only through females. +Still bastardy, if it was often convenient to forget it, could always be +turned against a man. The succession of a bastard was never likely to be +quite undisputed or his reign to be quite undisturbed. + +Now William succeeded to his duchy under the double disadvantage of being +at once bastard and minor. He was born at Falaise in 1027 or 1028, being +the son of Robert, afterwards duke, but then only Count of Hiesmois, by +Herleva, commonly called Arletta, the daughter of Fulbert the tanner. +There was no pretence of marriage between his parents; yet his father, +when he designed William to succeed him, might have made him legitimate, +as some of his predecessors had been made, by a marriage with his mother. +In 1028 Robert succeeded his brother Richard in the duchy. In 1034 or +1035 he determined to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He called on his +barons to swear allegiance to his bastard of seven years old as his +successor in case he never came back. Their wise counsel to stay at +home, to look after his dominions and to raise up lawful heirs, was +unheeded. Robert carried his point. The succession of young William was +accepted by the Norman nobles, and was confirmed by the overlord Henry +King of the French. The arrangement soon took effect. Robert died on +his way back before the year 1035 was out, and his son began, in name at +least, his reign of fifty-two years over the Norman duchy. + +The succession of one who was at once bastard and minor could happen only +when no one else had a distinctly better claim William could never have +held his ground for a moment against a brother of his father of full age +and undoubted legitimacy. But among the living descendants of former +dukes some were themselves of doubtful legitimacy, some were shut out by +their profession as churchmen, some claimed only through females. Robert +had indeed two half-brothers, but they were young and their legitimacy +was disputed; he had an uncle, Robert Archbishop of Rouen, who had been +legitimated by the later marriage of his parents. The rival who in the +end gave William most trouble was his cousin Guy of Burgundy, son of a +daughter of his grandfather Richard the Good. Though William’s +succession was not liked, no one of these candidates was generally +preferred to him. He therefore succeeded; but the first twelve years of +his reign were spent in the revolts and conspiracies of unruly nobles, +who hated the young duke as the one representative of law and order, and +who were not eager to set any one in his place who might be better able +to enforce them. + +Nobility, so variously defined in different lands, in Normandy took in +two classes of men. All were noble who had any kindred or affinity, +legitimate or otherwise, with the ducal house. The natural children of +Richard the Fearless were legitimated by his marriage with their mother +Gunnor, and many of the great houses of Normandy sprang from her brothers +and sisters. The mother of William received no such exaltation as this. +Besides her son, she had borne to Robert a daughter Adelaide, and, after +Robert’s death, she married a Norman knight named Herlwin of Conteville. +To him, besides a daughter, she bore two sons, Ode and Robert. They rose +to high posts in Church and State, and played an important part in their +half-brother’s history. Besides men whose nobility was of this kind, +there were also Norman houses whose privileges were older than the amours +or marriages of any duke, houses whose greatness was as old as the +settlement of Rolf, as old that is as the ducal power itself. The great +men of both these classes were alike hard to control. A Norman baron of +this age was well employed when he was merely rebelling against his +prince or waging private war against a fellow baron. What specially +marks the time is the frequency of treacherous murders wrought by men of +the highest rank, often on harmless neighbours or unsuspecting guests. +But victims were also found among those guardians of the young duke whose +faithful discharge of their duties shows that the Norman nobility was not +wholly corrupt. One indeed was a foreign prince, Alan Count of the +Bretons, a grandson of Richard the Fearless through a daughter. Two +others, the seneschal Osbern and Gilbert Count of Eu, were irregular +kinsmen of the duke. All these were murdered, the Breton count by +poison. Such a childhood as this made William play the man while he was +still a child. The helpless boy had to seek for support of some kind. +He got together the chief men of his duchy, and took a new guardian by +their advice. But it marks the state of things that the new guardian was +one of the murderers of those whom he succeeded. This was Ralph of +Wacey, son of William’s great-uncle, Archbishop Robert. Murderer as he +was, he seems to have discharged his duty faithfully. There are men who +are careless of general moral obligations, but who will strictly carry +out any charge which appeals to personal honour. Anyhow Ralph’s +guardianship brought with it a certain amount of calm. But men, high in +the young duke’s favour, were still plotting against him, and they +presently began to plot, not only against their prince but against their +country. The disaffected nobles of Normandy sought for a helper against +young William in his lord King Henry of Paris. + +The art of diplomacy had never altogether slumbered since much earlier +times. The king who owed his crown to William’s father, and who could +have no ground of offence against William himself, easily found good +pretexts for meddling in Norman affairs. It was not unnatural in the +King of the French to wish to win back a sea-board which had been given +up more than a hundred years before to an alien power, even though that +power had, for much more than half of that time, acted more than a +friendly part towards France. It was not unnatural that the French +people should cherish a strong national dislike to the Normans and a +strong wish that Rouen should again be a French city. But such motives +were not openly avowed then any more than now. The alleged ground was +quite different. The counts of Chartres were troublesome neighbours to +the duchy, and the castle of Tillières had been built as a defence +against them. An advance of the King’s dominions had made Tillières a +neighbour of France, and, as a neighbour, it was said to be a standing +menace. The King of the French, acting in concert with the disaffected +party in Normandy, was a dangerous enemy, and the young Duke and his +counsellors determined to give up Tillières. Now comes the first +distinct exercise of William’s personal will. We are without exact +dates, but the time can be hardly later than 1040, when William was from +twelve to thirteen years old. At his special request, the defender of +Tillières, Gilbert Crispin, who at first held out against French and +Normans alike, gave up the castle to Henry. The castle was burned; the +King promised not to repair it for four years. Yet he is said to have +entered Normandy, to have laid waste William’s native district of +Hiesmois, to have supplied a French garrison to a Norman rebel named +Thurstan, who held the castle of Falaise against the Duke, and to have +ended by restoring Tillières as a menace against Normandy. And now the +boy whose destiny had made him so early a leader of men had to bear his +first arms against the fortress which looked down on his birth-place. +Thurstan surrendered and went into banishment. William could set down +his own Falaise as the first of a long list of towns and castles which he +knew how to win without shedding of blood. + +When we next see William’s distinct personal action, he is still young, +but no longer a child or even a boy. At nineteen or thereabouts he is a +wise and valiant man, and his valour and wisdom are tried to the +uttermost. A few years of comparative quiet were chiefly occupied, as a +quiet time in those days commonly was, with ecclesiastical affairs. One +of these specially illustrates the state of things with which William had +to deal. In 1042, when the Duke was about fourteen, Normandy adopted the +Truce of God in its later shape. It no longer attempted to establish +universal peace; it satisfied itself with forbidding, under the strongest +ecclesiastical censures, all private war and violence of any kind on +certain days of the week. Legislation of this kind has two sides. It +was an immediate gain if peace was really enforced for four days in the +week; but that which was not forbidden on the other three could no longer +be denounced as in itself evil. We are told that in no land was the +Truce more strictly observed than in Normandy. But we may be sure that, +when William was in the fulness of his power, the stern weight of the +ducal arm was exerted to enforce peace on Mondays and Tuesdays as well as +on Thursdays and Fridays. + +It was in the year 1047 that William’s authority was most dangerously +threatened and that he was first called on to show in all their fulness +the powers that were in him. He who was to be conqueror of Maine and +conqueror of England was first to be conqueror of his own duchy. The +revolt of a large part of the country, contrasted with the firm loyalty +of another part, throws a most instructive light on the internal state of +the duchy. There was, as there still is, a line of severance between the +districts which formed the first grant to Rolf and those which were +afterwards added. In these last a lingering remnant of old Teutonic life +had been called into fresh strength by new settlements from Scandinavia. +At the beginning of the reign of Richard the Fearless, Rouen, the +French-speaking city, is emphatically contrasted with Bayeux, the once +Saxon city and land, now the headquarters of the Danish speech. At that +stage the Danish party was distinctly a heathen party. We are not told +whether Danish was still spoken so late as the time of William’s youth. +We can hardly believe that the Scandinavian gods still kept any avowed +worshippers. But the geographical limits of the revolt exactly fall in +with the boundary which had once divided French and Danish speech, +Christian and heathen worship. There was a wide difference in feeling on +the two sides of the Dive. The older Norman settlements, now thoroughly +French in tongue and manners, stuck faithfully to the Duke; the lands to +the west rose against him. Rouen and Evreux were firmly loyal to +William; Saxon Bayeux and Danish Coutances were the headquarters of his +enemies. + +When the geographical division took this shape, we are surprised at the +candidate for the duchy who was put forward by the rebels. William was a +Norman born and bred; his rival was in every sense a Frenchman. This was +William’s cousin Guy of Burgundy, whose connexion with the ducal house +was only by the spindle-side. But his descent was of uncontested +legitimacy, which gave him an excuse for claiming the duchy in opposition +to the bastard grandson of the tanner. By William he had been enriched +with great possessions, among which was the island fortress of Brionne in +the Risle. The real object of the revolt was the partition of the duchy. +William was to be dispossessed; Guy was to be duke in the lands east of +Dive; the great lords of Western Normandy were to be left independent. +To this end the lords of the Bessin and the Côtentin revolted, their +leader being Neal, Viscount of Saint-Sauveur in the Côtentin. We are +told that the mass of the people everywhere wished well to their duke; in +the common sovereign lay their only chance of protection against their +immediate lords. But the lords had armed force of the land at their +bidding. They first tried to slay or seize the Duke himself, who chanced +to be in the midst of them at Valognes. He escaped; we hear a stirring +tale of his headlong ride from Valognes to Falaise. Safe among his own +people, he planned his course of action. He first sought help of the man +who could give him most help, but who had most wronged him. He went into +France; he saw King Henry at Poissy, and the King engaged to bring a +French force to William’s help under his own command. + +This time Henry kept his promise. The dismemberment of Normandy might +have been profitable to France by weakening the power which had become so +special an object of French jealousy; but with a king the common interest +of princes against rebellious barons came first. Henry came with a +French army, and fought well for his ally on the field of Val-ès-dunes. +Now came the Conqueror’s first battle, a tourney of horsemen on an open +table-land just within the land of the rebels between Caen and Mezidon. +The young duke fought well and manfully; but the Norman writers allow +that it was French help that gained him the victory. Yet one of the many +anecdotes of the battle points to a source of strength which was always +ready to tell for any lord against rebellious vassals. One of the +leaders of the revolt, Ralph of Tesson, struck with remorse and stirred +by the prayers of his knights, joined the Duke just before the battle. +He had sworn to smite William wherever he found him, and he fulfilled his +oath by giving the Duke a harmless blow with his glove. How far an oath +to do an unlawful act is binding is a question which came up again at +another stage of William’s life. + +The victory at Val-ès-dunes was decisive, and the French King, whose help +had done so much to win it, left William to follow it up. He met with +but little resistance except at the stronghold of Brionne. Guy himself +vanishes from Norman history. William had now conquered his own duchy, +and conquered it by foreign help. For the rest of his Norman reign he +had often to strive with enemies at home, but he had never to put down +such a rebellion again as that of the lords of western Normandy. That +western Normandy, the truest Normandy, had to yield to the more +thoroughly Romanized lands to the east. The difference between them +never again takes a political shape. William was now lord of all +Normandy, and able to put down all later disturbers of the peace. His +real reign now begins; from the age of nineteen or twenty, his acts are +his own. According to his abiding practice, he showed himself a merciful +conqueror. Through his whole reign he shows a distinct unwillingness to +take human life except in fair fighting on the battle-field. No blood +was shed after the victory of Val-ès-dunes; one rebel died in bonds; the +others underwent no harder punishment than payment of fines, giving of +hostages, and destruction of their castles. These castles were not as +yet the vast and elaborate structures which arose in after days. A +single strong square tower, or even a defence of wood on a steep mound +surrounded by a ditch, was enough to make its owner dangerous. The +possession of these strongholds made every baron able at once to defy his +prince and to make himself a scourge to his neighbours. Every season of +anarchy is marked by the building of castles; every return of order +brings with it their overthrow as a necessary condition of peace. + + * * * * * + +Thus, in his lonely and troubled childhood, William had been schooled for +the rule of men. He had now, in the rule of a smaller dominion, in +warfare and conquest on a smaller scale, to be schooled for the conquest +and the rule of a greater dominion. William had the gifts of a born +ruler, and he was in no way disposed to abuse them. We know his rule in +Normandy only through the language of panegyric; but the facts speak for +themselves. He made Normandy peaceful and flourishing, more peaceful and +flourishing perhaps than any other state of the European mainland. He is +set before us as in everything a wise and beneficent ruler, the protector +of the poor and helpless, the patron of commerce and of all that might +profit his dominions. For defensive wars, for wars waged as the faithful +man of his overlord, we cannot blame him. But his main duty lay at home. +He still had revolts to put down, and he put them down. But to put them +down was the first of good works. He had to keep the peace of the land, +to put some cheek on the unruly wills of those turbulent barons on whom +only an arm like his could put any cheek. He had, in the language of his +day, to do justice, to visit wrong with sure and speedy punishment, +whoever was the wrong-doer. If a ruler did this first of duties well, +much was easily forgiven him in other ways. But William had as yet +little to be forgiven. Throughout life he steadily practised some +unusual virtues. His strict attention to religion was always marked. +And his religion was not that mere lavish bounty to the Church which was +consistent with any amount of cruelty or license. William’s religion +really influenced his life, public and private. He set an unusual +example of a princely household governed according to the rules of +morality, and he dealt with ecclesiastical matters in the spirit of a +true reformer. He did not, like so many princes of his age, make +ecclesiastical preferments a source of corrupt gain, but promoted good +men from all quarters. His own education is not likely to have received +much attention; it is not clear whether he had mastered the rarer art of +writing or the more usual one of reading; but both his promotion of +learned churchmen and the care given to the education of some of his +children show that he at least valued the best attainments of his time. +Had William’s whole life been spent in the duties of a Norman duke, +ruling his duchy wisely, defending it manfully, the world might never +have known him for one of its foremost men, but his life on that narrower +field would have been useful and honourable almost without a drawback. +It was the fatal temptation of princes, the temptation to territorial +aggrandizement, which enabled him fully to show the powers that were in +him, but which at the same time led to his moral degradation. The +defender of his own land became the invader of other lands, and the +invader could not fail often to sink into the oppressor. Each step in +his career as Conqueror was a step downwards. Maine was a neighbouring +land, a land of the same speech, a land which, if the feelings of the +time could have allowed a willing union, would certainly have lost +nothing by an union with Normandy. England, a land apart, a land of +speech, laws, and feelings, utterly unlike those of any part of Gaul, was +in another case. There the Conqueror was driven to be the oppressor. +Wrong, as ever, was punished by leading to further wrong. + +With the two fields, nearer and more distant, narrower and wider, on +which William was to appear as Conqueror he has as yet nothing to do. It +is vain to guess at what moment the thought of the English succession may +have entered his mind or that of his advisers. When William began his +real reign after Val-ès-dunes, Norman influence was high in England. +Edward the Confessor had spent his youth among his Norman kinsfolk; he +loved Norman ways and the company of Normans and other men of French +speech. Strangers from the favoured lands held endless posts in Church +and State; above all, Robert of Jumièges, first Bishop of London and then +Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King’s special favourite and adviser. +These men may have suggested the thought of William’s succession very +early. On the other hand, at this time it was by no means clear that +Edward might not leave a son of his own. He had been only a few years +married, and his alleged vow of chastity is very doubtful. William’s +claim was of the flimsiest kind. By English custom the king was chosen +out of a single kingly house, and only those who were descended from +kings in the male line were counted as members of that house. William +was not descended, even in the female line, from any English king; his +whole kindred with Edward was that Edward’s mother Emma, a daughter of +Richard the Fearless, was William’s great-aunt. Such a kindred, to say +nothing of William’s bastardy, could give no right to the crown according +to any doctrine of succession that ever was heard of. It could at most +point him out as a candidate for adoption, in case the reigning king +should be disposed and allowed to choose his successor. William or his +advisers may have begun to weigh this chance very early; but all that is +really certain is that William was a friend and favourite of his elder +kinsman, and that events finally brought his succession to the English +crown within the range of things that might be. + +But, before this, William was to show himself as a warrior beyond the +bounds of his own duchy, and to take seizin, as it were, of his great +continental conquest. William’s first war out of Normandy was waged in +common with King Henry against Geoffrey Martel Count of Anjou, and waged +on the side of Maine. William undoubtedly owed a debt of gratitude to +his overlord for good help given at Val-ès-dunes, and excuses were never +lacking for a quarrel between Anjou and Normandy. Both powers asserted +rights over the intermediate land of Maine. In 1048 we find William +giving help to Henry in a war with Anjou, and we hear wonderful but vague +tales of his exploits. The really instructive part of the story deals +with two border fortresses on the march of Normandy and Maine. Alençon +lay on the Norman side of the Sarthe; but it was disloyal to Normandy. +Brionne was still holding out for Guy of Burgundy. The town was a +lordship of the house of Bellême, a house renowned for power and +wickedness, and which, as holding great possessions alike of Normandy and +of France, ranked rather with princes than with ordinary nobles. The +story went that William Talvas, lord of Bellême, one of the fiercest of +his race, had cursed William in his cradle, as one by whom he and his +should be brought to shame. Such a tale set forth the noblest side of +William’s character, as the man who did something to put down such +enemies of mankind as he who cursed him. The possessions of William +Talvas passed through his daughter Mabel to Roger of Montgomery, a man +who plays a great part in William’s history; but it is the disloyalty of +the burghers, not of their lord, of which we hear just now. They +willingly admitted an Angevin garrison. William in return laid siege to +Domfront on the Varenne, a strong castle which was then an outpost of +Maine against Normandy. A long skirmishing warfare, in which William won +for himself a name by deeds of personal prowess, went on during the +autumn and winter (1048–49). One tale specially illustrates more than +one point in the feelings of the time. The two princes, William and +Geoffrey, give a mutual challenge; each gives the other notice of the +garb and shield that he will wear that he may not be mistaken. The +spirit of knight-errantry was coming in, and we see that William himself +in his younger days was touched by it. But we see also that coat-armour +was as yet unknown. Geoffrey and his host, so the Normans say, shrink +from the challenge and decamp in the night, leaving the way open for a +sudden march upon Alençon. The disloyal burghers received the duke with +mockery of his birth. They hung out skins, and shouted, “Hides for the +Tanner.” Personal insult is always hard for princes to bear, and the +wrath of William was stirred up to a pitch which made him for once depart +from his usual moderation towards conquered enemies. He swore that the +men who had jeered at him should be dealt with like a tree whose branches +are cut off with the pollarding-knife. The town was taken by assault, +and William kept his oath. The castle held out; the hands and feet of +thirty-two pollarded burghers of Alençon were thrown over its walls, and +the threat implied drove the garrison to surrender on promise of safety +for life and limb. The defenders of Domfront, struck with fear, +surrendered also, and kept their arms as well as their lives and limbs. +William had thus won back his own rebellious town, and had enlarged his +borders by his first conquest. He went farther south, and fortified +another castle at Ambrières; but Ambrières was only a temporary conquest. +Domfront has ever since been counted as part of Normandy. But, as +ecclesiastical divisions commonly preserve the secular divisions of an +earlier time, Domfront remained down to the great French Revolution in +the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops of Le Mans. + + * * * * * + +William had now shown himself in Maine as conqueror, and he was before +long to show himself in England, though not yet as conqueror. If our +chronology is to be trusted, he had still in this interval to complete +his conquest of his own duchy by securing the surrender of Brionne; and +two other events, both characteristic, one of them memorable, fill up the +same time. William now banished a kinsman of his own name, who held the +great county of Mortain, _Moretoliam_ or _Moretonium_, in the diocese of +Avranches, which must be carefully distinguished from Mortagne-en-Perche, +_Mauritania_ or _Moretonia_ in the diocese of Seez. This act, of +somewhat doubtful justice, is noteworthy on two grounds. First, the +accuser of the banished count was one who was then a poor serving-knight +of his own, but who became the forefather of a house which plays a great +part in English history, Robert surnamed the Bigod. Secondly, the vacant +county was granted by William to his own half-brother Robert. He had +already in 1048 bestowed the bishopric of Bayeux on his other +half-brother Odo, who cannot at that time have been more than twelve +years old. He must therefore have held the see for a good while without +consecration, and at no time of his fifty years’ holding of it did he +show any very episcopal merits. This was the last case in William’s +reign of an old abuse by which the chief church preferments in Normandy +had been turned into means of providing for members, often unworthy +members, of the ducal family; and it is the only one for which William +can have been personally responsible. Both his brothers were thus placed +very early in life among the chief men of Normandy, as they were in later +years to be placed among the chief men of England. But William’s +affection for his brothers, amiable as it may have been personally, was +assuredly not among the brighter parts of his character as a sovereign. + +The other chief event of this time also concerns the domestic side of +William’s life. The long story of his marriage now begins. The date is +fixed by one of the decrees of the council of Rheims held in 1049 by Pope +Leo the Ninth, in which Baldwin Count of Flanders is forbidden to give +his daughter to William the Norman. This implies that the marriage was +already thought of, and further that it was looked on as uncanonical. +The bride whom William sought, Matilda daughter of Baldwin the Fifth, was +connected with him by some tie of kindred or affinity which made a +marriage between them unlawful by the rules of the Church. But no +genealogist has yet been able to find out exactly what the canonical +hindrance was. It is hard to trace the descent of William and Matilda up +to any common forefather. But the light which the story throws on +William’s character is the same in any case. Whether he was seeking a +wife or a kingdom, he would have his will, but he could wait for it. In +William’s doubtful position, a marriage with the daughter of the Count of +Flanders would be useful to him in many ways; and Matilda won her +husband’s abiding love and trust. Strange tales are told of William’s +wooing. Tales are told also of Matilda’s earlier love for the Englishman +Brihtric, who is said to have found favour in her eyes when he came as +envoy from England to her father’s court. All that is certain is that +the marriage had been thought of and had been forbidden before the next +important event in William’s life that we have to record. + +Was William’s Flemish marriage in any way connected with his hopes of +succession to the English crown? Had there been any available bride for +him in England, it might have been for his interest to seek for her +there. But it should be noticed, though no ancient writer points out the +fact, that Matilda was actually descended from Alfred in the female line; +so that William’s children, though not William himself, had some few +drops of English blood in their veins. William or his advisers, in +weighing every chance which might help his interests in the direction of +England, may have reckoned this piece of rather ancient genealogy among +the advantages of a Flemish alliance. But it is far more certain that, +between the forbidding of the marriage and the marriage itself, a direct +hope of succession to the English crown had been opened to the Norman +duke. + + + + +CHAPTER III. +WILLIAM’S FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. +A.D. 1051–1052. + + +WHILE William was strengthening himself in Normandy, Norman influence in +England had risen to its full height. The king was surrounded by foreign +favourites. The only foreign earl was his nephew Ralph of Mentes, the +son of his sister Godgifu. But three chief bishoprics were held by +Normans, Robert of Canterbury, William of London, and Ulf of Dorchester. +William bears a good character, and won the esteem of Englishmen; but the +unlearned Ulf is emphatically said to have done “nought bishoplike.” +Smaller preferments in Church and State, estates in all parts of the +kingdom, were lavishly granted to strangers. They built castles, and +otherwise gave offence to English feeling. Archbishop Robert, above all, +was ever plotting against Godwine, Earl of the West-Saxons, the head of +the national party. At last, in the autumn of 1051, the national +indignation burst forth. The immediate occasion was a visit paid to the +King by Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had just married the widowed +Countess Godgifu. The violent dealings of his followers towards the +burghers of Dover led to resistance on their part, and to a long series +of marches and negotiations, which ended in the banishment of Godwine and +his son, and the parting of his daughter Edith, the King’s wife, from her +husband. From October 1051 to September 1052, the Normans had their own +way in England. And during that time King Edward received a visitor of +greater fame than his brother-in-law from Boulogne in the person of his +cousin from Rouen. + +Of his visit we only read that “William Earl came from beyond sea with +mickle company of Frenchmen, and the king him received, and as many of +his comrades as to him seemed good, and let him go again.” Another +account adds that William received great gifts from the King. But +William himself in several documents speaks of Edward as his lord; he +must therefore at some time have done to Edward an act of homage, and +there is no time but this at which we can conceive such an act being +done. Now for what was the homage paid? Homage was often paid on very +trifling occasions, and strange conflicts of allegiance often followed. +No such conflict was likely to arise if the Duke of the Normans, already +the man of the King of the French for his duchy, became the man of the +King of the English on any other ground. Betwixt England and France +there was as yet no enmity or rivalry. England and France became enemies +afterwards because the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans +were one person. And this visit, this homage, was the first step towards +making the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans the same +person. The claim William had to the English crown rested mainly on an +alleged promise of the succession made by Edward. This claim is not +likely to have been a mere shameless falsehood. That Edward did make +some promise to William—as that Harold, at a later stage, did take some +oath to William—seems fully proved by the fact that, while such Norman +statements as could be denied were emphatically denied by the English +writers, on these two points the most patriotic Englishmen, the strongest +partisans of Harold, keep a marked silence. We may be sure therefore +that some promise was made; for that promise a time must be found, and no +time seems possible except this time of William’s visit to Edward. The +date rests on no direct authority, but it answers every requirement. +Those who spoke of the promise as being made earlier, when William and +Edward were boys together in Normandy, forgot that Edward was many years +older than William. The only possible moment earlier than the visit was +when Edward was elected king in 1042. Before that time he could hardly +have thought of disposing of a kingdom which was not his, and at that +time he might have looked forward to leaving sons to succeed him. Still +less could the promise have been made later than the visit. From 1053 to +the end of his life Edward was under English influences, which led him +first to send for his nephew Edward from Hungary as his successor, and in +the end to make a recommendation in favour of Harold. But in 1051–52 +Edward, whether under a vow or not, may well have given up the hope of +children; he was surrounded by Norman influences; and, for the only time +in the last twenty-four years of their joint lives, he and William met +face to face. The only difficulty is one to which no contemporary writer +makes any reference. If Edward wished to dispose of his crown in favour +of one of his French-speaking kinsmen, he had a nearer kinsman of whom he +might more naturally have thought. His own nephew Ralph was living in +England and holding an English earldom. He had the advantage over both +William and his own older brother Walter of Mantes, in not being a +reigning prince elsewhere. We can only say that there is evidence that +Edward did think of William, that there is no evidence that he ever +thought of Ralph. And, except the tie of nearer kindred, everything +would suggest William rather than Ralph. The personal comparison is +almost grotesque; and Edward’s early associations and the strongest +influences around him, were not vaguely French but specially Norman. +Archbishop Robert would plead for his own native sovereign only. In +short, we may be as nearly sure as we can be of any fact for which there +is no direct authority, that Edward’s promise to William was made at the +time of William’s visit to England, and that William’s homage to Edward +was done in the character of a destined successor to the English crown. + +William then came to England a mere duke and went back to Normandy a king +expectant. But the value of his hopes, to the value of the promise made +to him, are quite another matter. Most likely they were rated on both +sides far above their real value. King and duke may both have believed +that they were making a settlement which the English nation was bound to +respect. If so, Edward at least was undeceived within a few months. + + * * * * * + +The notion of a king disposing of his crown by his own act belongs to the +same range of ideas as the law of strict hereditary succession. It +implies that kingship is a possession and not an office. Neither the +heathen nor the Christian English had ever admitted that doctrine; but it +was fast growing on the continent. Our forefathers had always combined +respect for the kingly house with some measure of choice among the +members of that house. Edward himself was not the lawful heir according +to the notions of a modern lawyer; for he was chosen while the son of his +elder brother was living. Every English king held his crown by the gift +of the great assembly of the nation, though the choice of the nation was +usually limited to the descendants of former kings, and though the +full-grown son of the late king was seldom opposed. Christianity had +strengthened the election principle. The king lost his old sanctity as +the son of Woden; he gained a new sanctity as the Lord’s anointed. But +kingship thereby became more distinctly an office, a great post, like a +bishopric, to which its holder had to be lawfully chosen and admitted by +solemn rites. But of that office he could be lawfully deprived, nor +could he hand it on to a successor either according to his own will or +according to any strict law of succession. The wishes of the late king, +like the wishes of the late bishop, went for something with the electors. +But that was all. All that Edward could really do for his kinsmen was to +promise to make, when the time came, a recommendation to the Witan in his +favour. The Witan might then deal as they thought good with a +recommendation so unusual as to choose to the kingship of England a man +who was neither a native nor a conqueror of England nor the descendant of +any English king. + +When the time came, Edward did make a recommendation to the Witan, but it +was not in favour of William. The English influences under which he was +brought during his last fourteen years taught him better what the law of +England was and what was the duty of an English king. But at the time of +William’s visit Edward may well have believed that he could by his own +act settle his crown on his Norman kinsman as his undoubted successor in +case he died without a son. And it may be that Edward was bound by a vow +not to leave a son. And if Edward so thought, William naturally thought +so yet more; he would sincerely believe himself to be the lawful heir of +the crown of England, the sole lawful successor, except in one +contingency which was perhaps impossible and certainly unlikely. + +The memorials of these times, so full on some points, are meagre on +others. Of those writers who mention the bequest or promise none mention +it at any time when it is supposed to have happened; they mention it at +some later time when it began to be of practical importance. No English +writer speaks of William’s claim till the time when he was about +practically to assert it; no Norman writer speaks of it till he tells the +tale of Harold’s visit and oath to William. We therefore cannot say how +far the promise was known either in England or on the continent. But it +could not be kept altogether hid, even if either party wished it to be +hid. English statesmen must have known of it, and must have guided their +policy accordingly, whether it was generally known in the country or not. +William’s position, both in his own duchy and among neighbouring princes, +would be greatly improved if he could be looked upon as a future king. +As heir to the crown of England, he may have more earnestly wooed the +descendant of former wearers of the crown; and Matilda and her father may +have looked more favourably on a suitor to whom the crown of England was +promised. On the other hand, the existence of such a foreign claimant +made it more needful than ever for Englishmen to be ready with an English +successor, in the royal house or out of it, the moment the reigning king +should pass away. + + * * * * * + +It was only for a short time that William could have had any reasonable +hope of a peaceful succession. The time of Norman influence in England +was short. The revolution of September 1052 brought Godwine back, and +placed the rule of England again in English hands. Many Normans were +banished, above all Archbishop Robert and Bishop Ulf. The death of +Godwine the next year placed the chief power in the hands of his son +Harold. This change undoubtedly made Edward more disposed to the +national cause. Of Godwine, the man to whom he owed his crown, he was +clearly in awe; to Godwine’s sons he was personally attached. We know +not how Edward was led to look on his promise to William as void. That +he was so led is quite plain. He sent for his nephew the Ætheling Edward +from Hungary, clearly as his intended successor. When the Ætheling died +in 1057, leaving a son under age, men seem to have gradually come to look +to Harold as the probable successor. He clearly held a special position +above that of an ordinary earl; but there is no need to suppose any +formal act in his favour till the time of the King’s death, January 5, +1066. On his deathbed Edward did all that he legally could do on behalf +of Harold by recommending him to the Witan for election as the next king. +That he then either made a new or renewed an old nomination in favour of +William is a fable which is set aside by the witness of the contemporary +English writers. William’s claim rested wholly on that earlier +nomination which could hardly have been made at any other time than his +visit to England. + + * * * * * + +We have now to follow William back to Normandy, for the remaining years +of his purely ducal reign. The expectant king had doubtless thoughts and +hopes which he had not had before. But we can guess at them only: they +are not recorded. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. +THE REIGN OF WILLIAM IN NORMANDY. +A.D. 1052–1063. + + +IF William came back from England looking forward to a future crown, the +thought might even then flash across his mind that he was not likely to +win that crown without fighting for it. As yet his business was still to +fight for the duchy of Normandy. But he had now to fight, not to win his +duchy, but only to keep it. For five years he had to strive both against +rebellious subjects and against invading enemies, among whom King Henry +of Paris is again the foremost. Whatever motives had led the French king +to help William at Val-ès-dunes had now passed away. He had fallen back +on his former state of abiding enmity towards Normandy and her duke. But +this short period definitely fixed the position of Normandy and her duke +in Gaul and in Europe. At its beginning William is still the Bastard of +Falaise, who may or may not be able to keep himself in the ducal chair, +his right to which is still disputed. At the end of it, if he is not yet +the Conqueror and the Great, he has shown all the gifts that were needed +to win him either name. He is the greatest vassal of the French crown, a +vassal more powerful than the overlord whose invasions of his duchy he +has had to drive back. + +These invasions of Normandy by the King of the French and his allies fall +into two periods. At first Henry appears in Normandy as the supporter of +Normans in open revolt against their duke. But revolts are personal and +local; there is no rebellion like that which was crushed at Val-ès-dunes, +spreading over a large part of the duchy. In the second period, the +invaders have no such starting-point. There are still traitors; there +are still rebels; but all that they can do is to join the invaders after +they have entered the land. William is still only making his way to the +universal good will of his duchy: but he is fast making it. + +There is, first of all, an obscure tale of a revolt of an unfixed date, +but which must have happened between 1048 and 1053. The rebel, William +Busac of the house of Eu, is said to have defended the castle of Eu +against the duke and to have gone into banishment in France. But the +year that followed William’s visit to England saw the far more memorable +revolt of William Count of Arques. He had drawn the Duke’s suspicions on +him, and he had to receive a ducal garrison in his great fortress by +Dieppe. But the garrison betrayed the castle to its own master. Open +revolt and havoc followed, in which Count William was supported by the +king and by several other princes. Among them was Ingelram Count of +Ponthieu, husband of the duke’s sister Adelaide. Another enemy was Guy +Count of Gascony, afterwards Duke William the Eighth of Aquitaine. What +quarrel a prince in the furthest corner of Gaul could have with the Duke +of the Normans does not appear; but neither Count William nor his allies +could withstand the loyal Normans and their prince. Count Ingelram was +killed; the other princes withdrew to devise greater efforts against +Normandy. Count William lost his castle and part of his estates, and +left the duchy of his free will. The Duke’s politic forbearance at last +won him the general good will of his subjects. We hear of no more open +revolts till that of William’s own son many years after. But the +assaults of foreign enemies, helped sometimes by Norman traitors, begin +again the next year on a greater scale. + + * * * * * + +William the ruler and warrior had now a short breathing-space. He had +doubtless come back from England more bent than ever on his marriage with +Matilda of Flanders. Notwithstanding the decree of a Pope and a Council +entitled to special respect, the marriage was celebrated, not very long +after William’s return to Normandy, in the year of the revolt of William +of Arques. In the course of the year 1053 Count Baldwin brought his +daughter to the Norman frontier at Eu, and there she became the bride of +William. We know not what emboldened William to risk so daring a step at +this particular time, or what led Baldwin to consent to it. If it was +suggested by the imprisonment of Pope Leo by William’s countrymen in +Italy, in the hope that a consent to the marriage would be wrung out of +the captive pontiff, that hope was disappointed. The marriage raised +much opposition in Normandy. It was denounced by Archbishop Malger of +Rouen, the brother of the dispossessed Count of Arques. His character +certainly added no weight to his censures; but the same act in a saint +would have been set down as a sign of holy boldness. Presently, whether +for his faults or for his merits, Malger was deposed in a synod of the +Norman Church, and William found him a worthier successor in the learned +and holy Maurilius. But a greater man than Malger also opposed the +marriage, and the controversy thus introduces us to one who fills a place +second only to that of William himself in the Norman and English history +of the time. + +This was Lanfranc of Pavia, the lawyer, the scholar, the model monk, the +ecclesiastical statesman, who, as prior of the newly founded abbey of +Bec, was already one of the innermost counsellors of the Duke. As duke +and king, as prior, abbot, and archbishop, William and Lanfranc ruled +side by side, each helping the work of the other till the end of their +joint lives. Once only, at this time, was their friendship broken for a +moment. Lanfranc spoke against the marriage, and ventured to rebuke the +Duke himself. William’s wrath was kindled; he ordered Lanfranc into +banishment and took a baser revenge by laying waste part of the lands of +the abbey. But the quarrel was soon made up. Lanfranc presently left +Normandy, not as a banished man, but as the envoy of its sovereign, +commissioned to work for the confirmation of the marriage at the papal +court. He worked, and his work was crowned with success, but not with +speedy success. It was not till six years after the marriage, not till +the year 1059, that Lanfranc obtained the wished for confirmation, not +from Leo, but from his remote successor Nicolas the Second. The sin of +those who had contracted the unlawful union was purged by various good +works, among which the foundation of the two stately abbeys of Caen was +conspicuous. + +This story illustrates many points in the character of William and of his +time. His will is not to be thwarted, whether in a matter of marriage or +of any other. But he does not hurry matters; he waits for a favourable +opportunity. Something, we know not what, must have made the year 1053 +more favourable than the year 1049. We mark also William’s relations to +the Church. He is at no time disposed to submit quietly to the bidding +of the spiritual power, when it interferes with his rights or even when +it crosses his will. Yet he is really anxious for ecclesiastical reform; +he promotes men like Maurilius and Lanfranc; perhaps he is not displeased +when the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline, in the case of Malger, +frees him from a troublesome censor. But the worse side of him also +comes out. William could forgive rebels, but he could not bear the +personal rebuke even of his friend. Under this feeling he punishes a +whole body of men for the offence of one. To lay waste the lands of Bec +for the rebuke of Lanfranc was like an ordinary prince of the time; it +was unlike William, if he had not been stirred up by a censure which +touched his wife as well as himself. But above all, the bargain between +William and Lanfranc is characteristic of the man and the age. Lanfranc +goes to Rome to support a marriage which he had censured in Normandy. +But there is no formal inconsistency, no forsaking of any principle. +Lanfranc holds an uncanonical marriage to be a sin, and he denounces it. +He does not withdraw his judgement as to its sinfulness. He simply uses +his influence with a power that can forgive the sin to get it forgiven. + +While William’s marriage was debated at Rome, he had to fight hard in +Normandy. His warfare and his negotiations ended about the same time, +and the two things may have had their bearing on one another. William +had now to undergo a new form of trial. The King of the French had never +put forth his full strength when he was simply backing Norman rebels. +William had now, in two successive invasions, to withstand the whole +power of the King, and of as many of his vassals as the King could bring +to his standard. In the first invasion, in 1054, the Norman writers +speak rhetorically of warriors from Burgundy, Auvergne, and Gascony; but +it is hard to see any troops from a greater distance than Bourges. The +princes who followed Henry seem to have been only the nearer vassals of +the Crown. Chief among them are Theobald Count of Chartres, of a house +of old hostile to Normandy, and Guy the new Count of Ponthieu, to be +often heard of again. If not Geoffrey of Anjou himself, his subjects +from Tours were also there. Normandy was to be invaded on two sides, on +both banks of the Seine. The King and his allies sought to wrest from +William the western part of Normandy, the older and the more thoroughly +French part. No attack seems to have been designed on the Bessin or the +Côtentin. William was to be allowed to keep those parts of his duchy, +against which he had to fight when the King was his ally at Val-ès-dunes. + +The two armies entered Normandy; that which was to act on the left of the +Seine was led by the King, the other by his brother Odo. Against the +King William made ready to act himself; eastern Normandy was left to its +own loyal nobles. But all Normandy was now loyal; the men of the Saxon +and Danish lands were as ready to fight for their duke against the King +as they had been to fight against King and Duke together. But William +avoided pitched battles; indeed pitched battles are rare in the +continental warfare of the time. War consists largely in surprises, and +still more in the attack and defence of fortified places. The plan of +William’s present campaign was wholly defensive; provisions and cattle +were to be carried out of the French line of march; the Duke on his side, +the other Norman leaders on the other side, were to watch the enemy and +attack them at any favourable moment. The commanders east of the Seine, +Count Robert of Eu, Hugh of Gournay, William Crispin, and Walter Giffard, +found their opportunity when the French had entered the unfortified town +of Mortemer and had given themselves up to revelry. Fire and sword did +the work. The whole French army was slain, scattered, or taken +prisoners. Ode escaped; Guy of Ponthieu was taken. The Duke’s success +was still easier. The tale runs that the news from Mortemer, suddenly +announced to the King’s army in the dead of the night, struck them with +panic, and led to a hasty retreat out of the land. + +This campaign is truly Norman; it is wholly unlike the simple warfare of +England. A traitorous Englishman did nothing or helped the enemy; a +patriotic Englishman gave battle to the enemy the first time he had a +chance. But no English commander of the eleventh century was likely to +lay so subtle a plan as this, and, if he had laid such a plan, he would +hardly have found an English army able to carry it out. Harold, who +refused to lay waste a rood of English ground, would hardly have looked +quietly on while many roods of English ground were wasted by the enemy. +With all the valour of the Normans, what before all things distinguished +them from other nations was their craft. William could indeed fight a +pitched battle when a pitched battle served his purpose; but he could +control himself, he could control his followers, even to the point of +enduring to look quietly on the havoc of their own land till the right +moment. He who could do this was indeed practising for his calling as +Conqueror. And if the details of the story, details specially +characteristic, are to be believed, William showed something also of that +grim pleasantry which was another marked feature in the Norman character. +The startling message which struck the French army with panic was +deliberately sent with that end. The messenger sent climbs a tree or a +rock, and, with a voice as from another world, bids the French awake; +they are sleeping too long; let them go and bury their friends who are +lying dead at Mortemer. These touches bring home to us the character of +the man and the people with whom our forefathers had presently to deal. +William was the greatest of his race, but he was essentially of his race; +he was Norman to the backbone. + +Of the French army one division had been surprised and cut to pieces, the +other had left Normandy without striking a blow. The war was not yet +quite over; the French still kept Tillières; William accordingly +fortified the stronghold of Breteuil as a cheek upon it. And he +entrusted the command to a man who will soon be memorable, his personal +friend William, son of his old guardian Osbern. King Henry was now glad +to conclude a peace on somewhat remarkable terms. William had the king’s +leave to take what he could from Count Geoffrey of Anjou. He now annexed +Cenomannian—that is just now Angevin—territory at more points than one, +but chiefly on the line of his earlier advances to Domfront and +Ambrières. Ambrières had perhaps been lost; for William now sent +Geoffrey a challenge to come on the fortieth day. He came on the +fortieth day, and found Ambrières strongly fortified and occupied by a +Norman garrison. With Geoffrey came the Breton prince Ode, and William +or Peter Duke of Aquitaine. They besieged the castle; but Norman +accounts add that they all fled on William’s approach to relieve it. + + * * * * * + +Three years of peace now followed, but in 1058 King Henry, this time in +partnership with Geoffrey of Anjou, ventured another invasion of +Normandy. He might say that he had never been fairly beaten in his +former campaign, but that he had been simply cheated out of the land by +Norman wiles. This time he had a second experience of Norman wiles and +of Norman strength too. King and Count entered the land and ravaged far +and wide. William, as before, allowed the enemy to waste the land. He +watched and followed them till he found a favourable moment for attack. +The people in general zealously helped the Duke’s schemes, but some +traitors of rank were still leagued with the Count of Anjou. While +William bided his time, the invaders burned Caen. This place, so famous +in Norman history, was not one of the ancient cities of the land. It was +now merely growing into importance, and it was as yet undefended by walls +or castle. But when the ravagers turned eastward, William found the +opportunity that he had waited for. As the French were crossing the ford +of Varaville on the Dive, near the mouth of that river, he came suddenly +on them, and slaughtered a large part of the army under the eyes of the +king who had already crossed. The remnant marched out of Normandy. + +Henry now made peace, and restored Tillières. Not long after, in 1060, +the King died, leaving his young son Philip, who had been already +crowned, as his successor, under the guardianship of William’s +father-in-law Baldwin. Geoffrey of Anjou and William of Aquitaine also +died, and the Angevin power was weakened by the division of Geoffrey’s +dominions between his nephews. William’s position was greatly +strengthened, now that France, under the new regent, had become friendly, +while Anjou was no longer able to do mischief. William had now nothing +to fear from his neighbours, and the way was soon opened for his great +continental conquest. But what effect had these events on William’s +views on England? About the time of the second French invasion of +Normandy Earl Harold became beyond doubt the first man in England, and +for the first time a chance of the royal succession was opened to him. +In 1057, the year before Varaville, the Ætheling Edward, the King’s +selected successor, died soon after his coming to England; in the same +year died the King’s nephew Earl Ralph and Leofric Earl of the Mercians, +the only Englishmen whose influence could at all compare with that of +Harold. Harold’s succession now became possible; it became even likely, +if Edward should die while Edgar the son of the Ætheling was still under +age. William had no shadow of excuse for interfering, but he doubtless +was watching the internal affairs of England. Harold was certainly +watching the affairs of Gaul. About this time, most likely in the year +1058, he made a pilgrimage to Rome, and on his way back he looked +diligently into the state of things among the various vassals of the +French crown. His exact purpose is veiled in ambiguous language; but we +can hardly doubt that his object was to contract alliances with the +continental enemies of Normandy. Such views looked to the distant +future, as William had as yet been guilty of no unfriendly act towards +England. But it was well to come to an understanding with King Henry, +Count Geoffrey, and Duke William of Aquitaine, in case a time should come +when their interests and those of England would be the same. But the +deaths of all those princes must have put an end to all hopes of common +action between England and any Gaulish power. The Emperor Henry also, +the firm ally of England, was dead. It was now clear that, if England +should ever have to withstand a Norman attack, she would have to +withstand it wholly by her own strength, or with such help as she might +find among the kindred powers of the North. + + * * * * * + +William’s great continental conquest is drawing nigh; but between the +campaign of Varaville and the campaign of Le Mans came the tardy papal +confirmation of William’s marriage. The Duke and Duchess, now at last +man and wife in the eye of the Church, began to carry out the works of +penance which were allotted to them. The abbeys of Caen, William’s Saint +Stephen’s, Matilda’s Holy Trinity, now began to arise. Yet, at this +moment of reparation, one or two facts seem to place William’s government +of his duchy in a less favourable light than usual. The last French +invasion was followed by confiscations and banishments among the chief +men of Normandy. Roger of Montgomery and his wife Mabel, who certainly +was capable of any deed of blood or treachery, are charged with acting as +false accusers. We see also that, as late as the day of Varaville, there +were Norman traitors. Robert of Escalfoy had taken the Angevin side, and +had defended his castle against the Duke. He died in a strange way, +after snatching an apple from the hand of his own wife. His nephew +Arnold remained in rebellion three years, and was simply required to go +to the wars in Apulia. It is hard to believe that the Duke had poisoned +the apple, if poisoned it was; but finding treason still at work among +his nobles, he may have too hastily listened to charges against men who +had done him good service, and who were to do him good service again. + +Five years after the combat at Varaville, William really began to +deserve, though not as yet to receive, the name of Conqueror. For he now +did a work second only to the conquest of England. He won the city of Le +Mans and the whole land of Maine. Between the tale of Maine and the tale +of England there is much of direct likeness. Both lands were won against +the will of their inhabitants; but both conquests were made with an +elaborate show of legal right. William’s earlier conquests in Maine had +been won, not from any count of Maine, but from Geoffrey of Anjou, who +had occupied the country to the prejudice of two successive counts, Hugh +and Herbert. He had further imprisoned the Bishop of Le Mans, Gervase of +the house of Bellême, though the King of the French had at his request +granted to the Count of Anjou for life royal rights over the bishopric of +Le Mans. The bishops of Le Mans, who thus, unlike the bishops of +Normandy, held their temporalities of the distant king and not of the +local count, held a very independent position. The citizens of Le Mans +too had large privileges and a high spirit to defend them; the city was +in a marked way the head of the district. Thus it commonly carried with +it the action of the whole country. In Maine there were three rival +powers, the prince, the Church, and the people. The position of the +counts was further weakened by the claims to their homage made by the +princes on either side of them in Normandy and Anjou; the position of the +Bishop, vassal, till Gervase’s late act, of the King only, was really a +higher one. Geoffrey had been received at Le Mans with the good will of +the citizens, and both Bishop and Count sought shelter with William. +Gervase was removed from the strife by promotion to the highest place in +the French kingdom, the archbishopric of Rheims. The young Count +Herbert, driven from his county, commended himself to William. He became +his man; he agreed to hold his dominions of him, and to marry one of his +daughters. If he died childless, his father-in-law was to take the fief +into his own hands. But to unite the old and new dynasties, Herbert’s +youngest sister Margaret was to marry William’s eldest son Robert. If +female descent went for anything, it is not clear why Herbert passed by +the rights of his two elder sisters, Gersendis, wife of Azo Marquess of +Liguria, and Paula, wife of John of La Flèche on the borders of Maine and +Anjou. And sons both of Gersendis and of Paula did actually reign at Le +Mans, while no child either of Herbert or of Margaret ever came into +being. + +If Herbert ever actually got possession of his country, his possession of +it was short. He died in 1063 before either of the contemplated +marriages had been carried out. William therefore stood towards Maine as +he expected to stand with regard to England. The sovereign of each +country had made a formal settlement of his dominions in his favour. It +was to be seen whether those who were most immediately concerned would +accept that settlement. Was the rule either of Maine or of England to be +handed over in this way, like a mere property, without the people who +were to be ruled speaking their minds on the matter? What the people of +England said to this question in 1066 we shall hear presently; what the +people of Maine said in 1063 we hear now. We know not why they had +submitted to the Angevin count; they had now no mind to merge their +country in the dominions of the Norman duke. The Bishop was neutral; but +the nobles and the citizens of Le Mans were of one mind in refusing +William’s demand to be received as count by virtue of the agreement with +Herbert. They chose rulers for themselves. Passing by Gersendis and +Paula and their sons, they sent for Herbert’s aunt Biota and her husband +Walter Count of Mantes. Strangely enough, Walter, son of Godgifu +daughter of Æthelred, was a possible, though not a likely, candidate for +the rule of England as well as of Maine. The people of Maine are not +likely to have thought of this bit of genealogy. But it was doubtless +present to the minds alike of William and of Harold. + +William thus, for the first but not for the last time, claimed the rule +of a people who had no mind to have him as their ruler. Yet, morally +worthless as were his claims over Maine, in the merely technical way of +looking at things, he had more to say than most princes have who annex +the lands of their neighbours. He had a perfectly good right by the +terms of the agreement with Herbert. And it might be argued by any who +admitted the Norman claim to the homage of Maine, that on the failure of +male heirs the country reverted to the overlord. Yet female succession +was now coming in. Anjou had passed to the sons of Geoffrey’s sister; it +had not fallen back to the French king. There was thus a twofold answer +to William’s claim, that Herbert could not grant away even the rights of +his sisters, still less the rights of his people. Still it was +characteristic of William that he had a case that might be plausibly +argued. The people of Maine had fallen back on the old Teutonic right. +They had chosen a prince connected with the old stock, but who was not +the next heir according to any rule of succession. Walter was hardly +worthy of such an exceptional honour; he showed no more energy in Maine +than his brother Ralph had shown in England. The city was defended by +Geoffrey, lord of Mayenne, a valiant man who fills a large place in the +local history. But no valour or skill could withstand William’s plan of +warfare. He invaded Maine in much the same sort in which he had defended +Normandy. He gave out that he wished to win Maine without shedding man’s +blood. He fought no battles; he did not attack the city, which he left +to be the last spot that should be devoured. He harried the open +country, he occupied the smaller posts, till the citizens were driven, +against Geoffrey’s will, to surrender. William entered Le Mans; he was +received, we are told, with joy. When men make the best of a bad +bargain, they sometimes persuade themselves that they are really pleased. +William, as ever, shed no blood; he harmed none of the men who had become +his subjects; but Le Mans was to be bridled; its citizens needed a castle +and a Norman garrison to keep them in their new allegiance. Walter and +Biota surrendered their claims on Maine and became William’s guests at +Falaise. Meanwhile Geoffrey of Mayenne refused to submit, and withstood +the new Count of Maine in his stronghold. William laid siege to Mayenne, +and took it by the favoured Norman argument of fire. All Maine was now +in the hands of the Conqueror. + +William had now made a greater conquest than any Norman duke had made +before him. He had won a county and a noble city, and he had won them, +in the ideas of his own age, with honour. Are we to believe that he +sullied his conquest by putting his late competitors, his present guests, +to death by poison? They died conveniently for him, and they died in his +own house. Such a death was strange; but strange things do happen. +William gradually came to shrink from no crime for which he could find a +technical defence; but no advocate could have said anything on behalf of +the poisoning of Walter and Biota. Another member of the house of Maine, +Margaret the betrothed of his son Robert, died about the same time; and +her at least William had every motive to keep alive. One who was more +dangerous than Walter, if he suffered anything, only suffered banishment. +Of Geoffrey of Mayenne we hear no more till William had again to fight +for the possession of Maine. + + * * * * * + +William had thus, in the year 1063, reached the height of his power and +fame as a continental prince. In a conquest on Gaulish soil he had +rehearsed the greater conquest which he was before long to make beyond +sea. Three years, eventful in England, outwardly uneventful in Normandy, +still part us from William’s second visit to our shores. But in the +course of these three years one event must have happened, which, without +a blow being struck or a treaty being signed, did more for his hopes than +any battle or any treaty. At some unrecorded time, but at a time which +must come within these years, Harold Earl of the West-Saxons became the +guest and the man of William Duke of the Normans. + + + + +CHAPTER V. +HAROLD’S OATH TO WILLIAM. +A.D. 1064? + + +THE lord of Normandy and Maine could now stop and reckon his chances of +becoming lord of England also. While our authorities enable us to put +together a fairly full account of both Norman and English events, they +throw no light on the way in which men in either land looked at events in +the other. Yet we might give much to know what William and Harold at +this time thought of one another. Nothing had as yet happened to make +the two great rivals either national or personal enemies. England and +Normandy were at peace, and the great duke and the great earl had most +likely had no personal dealings with one another. They were rivals in +the sense that each looked forward to succeed to the English crown +whenever the reigning king should die. But neither had as yet put +forward his claim in any shape that the other could look on as any formal +wrong to himself. If William and Harold had ever met, it could have been +only during Harold’s journey in Gaul. Whatever negotiations Harold made +during that journey were negotiations unfriendly to William; still he +may, in the course of that journey, have visited Normandy as well as +France or Anjou. It is hard to avoid the thought that the tale of +Harold’s visit to William, of his oath to William, arose out of something +that happened on Harold’s way back from his Roman pilgrimage. To that +journey we can give an approximate date. Of any other journey we have no +date and no certain detail. We can say only that the fact that no +English writer makes any mention of any such visit, of any such oath, is, +under the circumstances, the strongest proof that the story of the visit +and the oath has some kind of foundation. Yet if we grant thus much, the +story reads on the whole as if it happened a few years later than the +English earl’s return from Rome. + +It is therefore most likely that Harold did pay a second visit to Gaul, +whether a first or a second visit to Normandy, at some time nearer to +Edward’s death than the year 1058. The English writers are silent; the +Norman writers give no date or impossible dates; they connect the visit +with a war in Britanny; but that war is without a date. We are driven to +choose the year which is least rich in events in the English annals. +Harold could not have paid a visit of several months to Normandy either +in 1063 or in 1065. Of those years the first was the year of Harold’s +great war in Wales, when he found how the Britons might be overcome by +their own arms, when he broke the power of Gruffydd, and granted the +Welsh kingdom to princes who became the men of Earl Harold as well as of +King Edward. Harold’s visit to Normandy is said to have taken place in +the summer and autumn mouths; but the summer and autumn of 1065 were +taken up by the building and destruction of Harold’s hunting-seat in +Wales and by the greater events of the revolt and pacification of +Northumberland. But the year 1064 is a blank in the English annals till +the last days of December, and no action of Harold’s in that year is +recorded. It is therefore the only possible year among those just before +Edward’s death. Harold’s visit and oath to William may very well have +taken place in that year; but that is all. + +We know as little for certain as to the circumstances of the visit or the +nature of the oath. We can say only that Harold did something which +enabled William to charge him with perjury and breach of the duty of a +vassal. It is inconceivable in itself, and unlike the formal +scrupulousness of William’s character, to fancy that he made his appeal +to all Christendom without any ground at all. The Norman writers +contradict one another so thoroughly in every detail of the story that we +can look on no part of it as trustworthy. Yet such a story can hardly +have grown up so near to the alleged time without some kernel of truth in +it. And herein comes the strong corroborative witness that the English +writers, denying every other charge against Harold, pass this one by +without notice. We can hardly doubt that Harold swore some oath to +William which he did not keep. More than this it would be rash to say +except as an avowed guess. + +As our nearest approach to fixing the date is to take that year which is +not impossible, so, to fix the occasion of the visit, we can only take +that one among the Norman versions which is also not impossible. All the +main versions represent Harold as wrecked on the coast of Ponthieu, as +imprisoned, according to the barbarous law of wreck, by Count Guy, and as +delivered by the intervention of William. If any part of the story is +true, this is. But as to the circumstances which led to the shipwreck +there is no agreement. Harold assuredly was not sent to announce to +William a devise of the crown in his favour made with the consent of the +Witan of England and confirmed by the oaths of Stigand, Godwine, Siward, +and Leofric. Stigand became Archbishop in September 1052: Godwine died +at Easter 1053. The devise must therefore have taken place, and Harold’s +journey must have taken place, within those few most unlikely months, the +very time when Norman influence was overthrown. Another version makes +Harold go, against the King’s warnings, to bring back his brother +Wulfnoth and his nephew Hakon, who had been given as hostages on the +return of Godwine, and had been entrusted by the King to the keeping of +Duke William. This version is one degree less absurd; but no such +hostages are known to have been given, and if they were, the patriotic +party, in the full swing of triumph, would hardly have allowed them to be +sent to Normandy. A third version makes Harold’s presence the result of +mere accident. He is sailing to Wales or Flanders, or simply taking his +pleasure in the Channel, when he is cast by a storm on the coast of +Ponthieu. Of these three accounts we may choose the third as the only +one that is possible. It is also one out of which the others may have +grown, while it is hard to see how the third could have arisen out of +either of the others. Harold then, we may suppose, fell accidentally +into the clutches of Guy, and was rescued from them, at some cost in +ransom and in grants of land, by Guy’s overlord Duke William. + +The whole story is eminently characteristic of William. He would be +honestly indignant at Guy’s base treatment of Harold, and he would feel +it his part as Guy’s overlord to redress the wrong. But he would also be +alive to the advantage of getting his rival into his power on so +honourable a pretext. Simply to establish a claim to gratitude on the +part of Harold would be something. But he might easily do more, and, +according to all accounts, he did more. Harold, we are told, as the +Duke’s friend and guest, returns the obligation under which the Duke has +laid him by joining him in one or more expeditions against the Bretons. +The man who had just smitten the Bret-Welsh of the island might well be +asked to fight, and might well be ready to fight, against the Bret-Welsh +of the mainland. The services of Harold won him high honour; he was +admitted into the ranks of Norman knighthood, and engaged to marry one of +William’s daughters. Now, at any time to which we can fix Harold’s +visit, all William’s daughters must have been mere children. Harold, on +the other hand, seems to have been a little older than William. Yet +there is nothing unlikely in the engagement, and it is the one point in +which all the different versions, contradicting each other on every other +point, agree without exception. Whatever else Harold promises, he +promises this, and in some versions he does not promise anything else. + +Here then we surely have the kernel of truth round which a mass of fable, +varying in different reports, has gathered. On no other point is there +any agreement. The place is unfixed; half a dozen Norman towns and +castles are made the scene of the oath. The form of the oath is unfixed; +in some accounts it is the ordinary oath of homage; in others it is an +oath of fearful solemnity, taken on the holiest relics. In one +well-known account, Harold is even made to swear on hidden relics, not +knowing on what he is swearing. Here is matter for much thought. To +hold that one form of oath or promise is more binding than another upsets +all true confidence between man and man. The notion of the specially +binding nature of the oath by relies assumes that, in case of breach of +the oath, every holy person to whose relies despite has been done will +become the personal enemy of the perjurer. But the last story of all is +the most instructive. William’s formal, and more than formal, religion +abhorred a false oath, in himself or in another man. But, so long as he +keeps himself personally clear from the guilt, he does not scruple to put +another man under special temptation, and, while believing in the power +of the holy relics, he does not scruple to abuse them to a purpose of +fraud. Surely, if Harold did break his oath, the wrath of the saints +would fall more justly on William. Whether the tale be true or false, it +equally illustrates the feelings of the time, and assuredly its truth or +falsehood concerns the character of William far more than that of Harold. + +What it was that Harold swore, whether in this specially solemn fashion +or in any other, is left equally uncertain. In any case he engages to +marry a daughter of William—as to which daughter the statements are +endless—and in most versions he engages to do something more. He becomes +the man of William, much as William had become the man of Edward. He +promises to give his sister in marriage to an unnamed Norman baron. +Moreover he promises to secure the kingdom of England for William at +Edward’s death. Perhaps he is himself to hold the kingdom or part of it +under William; in any case William is to be the overlord; in the more +usual story, William is to be himself the immediate king, with Harold as +his highest and most favoured subject. Meanwhile Harold is to act in +William’s interest, to receive a Norman garrison in Dover castle, and to +build other castles at other points. But no two stories agree, and not a +few know nothing of anything beyond the promise of marriage. + +Now if William really required Harold to swear to all these things, it +must have been simply in order to have an occasion against him. If +Harold really swore to all of them, it must have been simply because he +felt that he was practically in William’s power, without any serious +intention of keeping the oath. If Harold took any such oath, he +undoubtedly broke it; but we may safely say that any guilt on his part +lay wholly in taking the oath, not in breaking it. For he swore to do +what he could not do, and what it would have been a crime to do, if he +could. If the King himself could not dispose of the crown, still less +could the most powerful subject. Harold could at most promise William +his “vote and interest,” whenever the election came. But no one can +believe that even Harold’s influence could have obtained the crown for +William. His influence lay in his being the embodiment of the national +feeling; for him to appear as the supporter of William would have been to +lose the crown for himself without gaining it for William. Others in +England and in Scandinavia would have been glad of it. And the +engagements to surrender Dover castle and the like were simply +engagements on the part of an English earl to play the traitor against +England. If William really called on Harold to swear to all this, he did +so, not with any hope that the oath would be kept, but simply to put his +competitor as far as possible in the wrong. But most likely Harold swore +only to something much simpler. Next to the universal agreement about +the marriage comes the very general agreement that Harold became +William’s man. In these two statements we have probably the whole truth. +In those days men took the obligation of homage upon themselves very +easily. Homage was no degradation, even in the highest; a man often did +homage to any one from whom he had received any great benefit, and Harold +had received a very great benefit from William. Nor did homage to a new +lord imply treason to the old one. Harold, delivered by William from +Guy’s dungeon, would be eager to do for William any act of friendship. +The homage would be little more than binding himself in the strongest +form so to do. The relation of homage could be made to mean anything or +nothing, as might be convenient. The man might often understand it in +one sense and the lord in another. If Harold became the man of William, +he would look on the act as little more than an expression of good will +and gratitude towards his benefactor, his future father-in-law, his +commander in the Breton war. He would not look on it as forbidding him +to accept the English crown if it were offered to him. Harold, the man +of Duke William, might become a king, if he could, just as William, the +man of King Philip, might become a king, if he could. As things went in +those days, both the homage and the promise of marriage were capable of +being looked on very lightly. + +But it was not in the temper or in the circumstances of William to put +any such easy meaning on either promise. The oath might, if needful, be +construed very strictly, and William was disposed to construe it very +strictly. Harold had not promised William a crown, which was not his to +promise; but he had promised to do that which might be held to forbid him +to take a crown which William held to be his own. If the man owed his +lord any duty at all, it was surely his duty not to thwart his lord’s +wishes in such a matter. If therefore, when the vacancy of the throne +came, Harold took the crown himself, or even failed to promote William’s +claim to it, William might argue that he had not rightly discharged the +duty of a man to his lord. He could make an appeal to the world against +the new king, as a perjured man, who had failed to help his lord in the +matter where his lord most needed his help. And, if the oath really had +been taken on relics of special holiness, he could further appeal to the +religious feelings of the time against the man who had done despite to +the saints. If he should be driven to claim the crown by arms, he could +give the war the character of a crusade. All this in the end William +did, and all this, we may be sure, he looked forward to doing, when he +caused Harold to become his man. The mere obligation of homage would, in +the skilful hands of William and Lanfranc, be quite enough to work on +men’s minds, as William wished to work on them. To Harold meanwhile and +to those in England who heard the story, the engagement would not seem to +carry any of these consequences. The mere homage then, which Harold +could hardly refuse, would answer William’s purpose nearly as well as any +of these fuller obligations which Harold would surely have refused. And +when a man older than William engaged to marry William’s child-daughter, +we must bear in mind the lightness with which such promises were made. +William could not seriously expect that this engagement would be kept, if +anything should lead Harold to another marriage. The promise was meant +simply to add another count to the charges against Harold when the time +should come. Yet on this point it is not clear that the oath was broken. +Harold undoubtedly married Ealdgyth, daughter of Ælfgar and widow of +Gruffydd, and not any daughter of William. But in one version Harold is +made to say that the daughter of William whom he had engaged to marry was +dead. And that one of William’s daughters did die very early there seems +little doubt. + + * * * * * + +Whatever William did Lanfranc no doubt at least helped to plan. The +Norman duke was subtle, but the Italian churchman was subtler still. In +this long series of schemes and negotiations which led to the conquest of +England, we are dealing with two of the greatest recorded masters of +statecraft. We may call their policy dishonest and immoral, and so it +was. But it was hardly more dishonest and immoral than most of the +diplomacy of later times. William’s object was, without any formal +breach of faith on his own part, to entrap Harold into an engagement +which might be understood in different senses, and which, in the sense +which William chose to put upon it, Harold was sure to break. Two men, +themselves of virtuous life, a rigid churchman and a layman of unusual +religious strictness, do not scruple to throw temptation in the way of a +fellow man in the hope that he will yield to that temptation. They exact +a promise, because the promise is likely to be broken, and because its +breach would suit their purposes. Through all William’s policy a strong +regard for formal right as he chose to understand formal right, is not +only found in company with much practical wrong, but is made the direct +instrument of carrying out that wrong. Never was trap more cunningly +laid than that in which William now entangled Harold. Never was greater +wrong done without the breach of any formal precept of right. William +and Lanfranc broke no oath themselves, and that was enough for them. But +it was no sin in their eyes to beguile another into engagements which he +would understand in one way and they in another; they even, as their +admirers tell the story, beguile him into engagements at once unlawful +and impossible, because their interests would be promoted by his breach +of those engagements. William, in short, under the spiritual guidance of +Lanfranc, made Harold swear because he himself would gain by being able +to denounce Harold as perjured. + +The moral question need not be further discussed; but we should greatly +like to know how far the fact of Harold’s oath, whatever its nature, was +known in England? On this point we have no trustworthy authority. The +English writers say nothing about the whole matter; to the Norman writers +this point was of no interest. No one mentions this point, except +Harold’s romantic biographer at the beginning of the thirteenth century. +His statements are of no value, except as showing how long Harold’s +memory was cherished. According to him, Harold formally laid the matter +before the Witan, and they unanimously voted that the oath—more, in his +version, than a mere oath of homage—was not binding. It is not likely +that such a vote was ever formally passed, but its terms would only +express what every Englishman would feel. The oath, whatever its terms, +had given William a great advantage; but every Englishman would argue +both that the oath, whatever its terms, could not hinder the English +nation from offering Harold the crown, and that it could not bind Harold +to refuse the crown if it should be so offered. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. +THE NEGOTIATIONS OF DUKE WILLIAM. +JANUARY-OCTOBER 1066. + + +IF the time that has been suggested was the real time of Harold’s oath to +William, its fulfilment became a practical question in little more than a +year. How the year 1065 passed in Normandy we have no record; in England +its later months saw the revolt of Northumberland against Harold’s +brother Tostig, and the reconciliation which Harold made between the +revolters and the king to the damage of his brother’s interests. Then +came Edward’s sickness, of which he died on January 5, 1066. He had on +his deathbed recommended Harold to the assembled Witan as his successor +in the kingdom. The candidate was at once elected. Whether William, +Edgar, or any other, was spoken of we know not; but as to the +recommendation of Edward and the consequent election of Harold the +English writers are express. The next day Edward was buried, and Harold +was crowned in regular form by Ealdred Archbishop of York in Edward’s new +church at Westminster. Northumberland refused to acknowledge him; but +the malcontents were won over by the coming of the king and his friend +Saint Wulfstan Bishop of Worcester. It was most likely now, as a seal of +this reconciliation, that Harold married Ealdgyth, the sister of the two +northern earls Edwin and Morkere, and the widow of the Welsh king +Gruffydd. He doubtless hoped in this way to win the loyalty of the earls +and their followers. + +The accession of Harold was perfectly regular according to English law. +In later times endless fables arose; but the Norman writers of the time +do not deny the facts of the recommendation, election, and coronation. +They slur them over, or, while admitting the mere facts, they represent +each act as in some way invalid. No writer near the time asserts a +deathbed nomination of William; they speak only of a nomination at some +earlier time. But some Norman writers represent Harold as crowned by +Stigand Archbishop of Canterbury. This was not, in the ideas of those +times, a trifling question. A coronation was then not a mere pageant; it +was the actual admission to the kingly office. Till his crowning and +anointing, the claimant of the crown was like a bishop-elect before his +consecration. He had, by birth or election, the sole right to become +king; it was the coronation that made him king. And as the ceremony took +the form of an ecclesiastical sacrament, its validity might seem to +depend on the lawful position of the officiating bishop. In England to +perform that ceremony was the right and duty of the Archbishop of +Canterbury; but the canonical position of Stigand was doubtful. He had +been appointed on the flight of Robert; he had received the _pallium_, +the badge of arch-episcopal rank, only from the usurping Benedict the +Tenth. It was therefore good policy in Harold to be crowned by Ealdred, +to whose position there was no objection. This is the only difference of +fact between the English and Norman versions at this stage. And the +difference is easily explained. At William’s coronation the king walked +to the altar between the two archbishops, but it was Ealdred who actually +performed the ceremony. Harold’s coronation doubtless followed the same +order. But if Stigand took any part in that coronation, it was easy to +give out that he took that special part on which the validity of the rite +depended. + +Still, if Harold’s accession was perfectly lawful, it was none the less +strange and unusual. Except the Danish kings chosen under more or less +of compulsion, he was the first king who did not belong to the West-Saxon +kingly house. Such a choice could be justified only on the ground that +that house contained no qualified candidate. Its only known members were +the children of the Ætheling Edward, young Edgar and his sisters. Now +Edgar would certainly have been passed by in favour of any better +qualified member of the kingly house, as his father had been passed by in +favour of King Edward. And the same principle would, as things stood, +justify passing him by in favour of a qualified candidate not of the +kingly house. But Edgar’s right to the crown is never spoken of till a +generation or two later, when the doctrines of hereditary right had +gained much greater strength, and when Henry the Second, great-grandson +through his mother of Edgar’s sister Margaret, insisted on his descent +from the old kings. This distinction is important, because Harold is +often called an usurper, as keeping out Edgar the heir by birth. But +those who called him an usurper at the time called him so as keeping out +William the heir by bequest. William’s own election was out of the +question. He was no more of the English kingly house than Harold; he was +a foreigner and an utter stranger. Had Englishmen been minded to choose +a foreigner, they doubtless would have chosen Swegen of Denmark. He had +found supporters when Edward was chosen; he was afterwards appealed to to +deliver England from William. He was no more of the English kingly house +than Harold or William; but he was grandson of a man who had reigned over +England, Northumberland might have preferred him to Harold; any part of +England would have preferred him to William. In fact any choice that +could have been made must have had something strange about it. Edgar +himself, the one surviving male of the old stock, besides his youth, was +neither born in the land nor the son of a crowned king. Those two +qualifications had always been deemed of great moment; an elaborate +pedigree went for little; actual royal birth went for a great deal. +There was now no son of a king to choose. Had there been even a child +who was at once a son of Edward and a sister’s son of Harold, he might +have reigned with his uncle as his guardian and counsellor. As it was, +there was nothing to do but to choose the man who, though not of kingly +blood, had ruled England well for thirteen years. + +The case thus put seemed plain to every Englishman, at all events to +every man in Wessex, East-Anglia, and southern Mercia. But it would not +seem so plain in _other_ lands. To the greater part of Western Europe +William’s claim might really seem the better. William himself doubtless +thought his own claim the better; he deluded himself as he deluded +others. But we are more concerned with William as a statesman; and if it +be statesmanship to adapt means to ends, whatever the ends may be, if it +be statesmanship to make men believe that the worse cause is the better, +then no man ever showed higher statesmanship than William showed in his +great pleading before all Western Christendom. It is a sign of the times +that it was a pleading before all Western Christendom. Others had +claimed crowns; none had taken such pains to convince all mankind that +the claim was a good one. Such an appeal to public opinion marks on one +side a great advance. It was a great step towards the ideas of +International Law and even of European concert. It showed that the days +of mere force were over, that the days of subtle diplomacy had begun. +Possibly the change was not without its dark side; it may be doubted +whether a change from force to fraud is wholly a gain. Still it was an +appeal from the mere argument of the sword to something which at least +professed to be right and reason. William does not draw the sword till +he has convinced himself and everybody else that he is drawing it in a +just cause. In that age the appeal naturally took a religious shape. +Herein lay its immediate strength; herein lay its weakness as regarded +the times to come. William appealed to Emperor, kings, princes, +Christian men great and small, in every Christian land. He would +persuade all; he would ask help of all. But above all he appealed to the +head of Christendom, the Bishop of Rome. William in his own person could +afford to do so; where he reigned, in Normandy or in England, there was +no fear of Roman encroachments; he was fully minded to be in all causes +and over all persons within his dominions supreme. While he lived, no +Pope ventured to dispute his right. But by acknowledging the right of +the Pope to dispose of crowns, or at least to judge as to the right to +crowns, he prepared many days of humiliation for kings in general and +specially for his own successors. One man in Western Europe could see +further than William, perhaps even further than Lanfranc. The chief +counsellor of Pope Alexander the Second was the Archdeacon Hildebrand, +the future Gregory the Seventh. If William outwitted the world, +Hildebrand outwitted William. William’s appeal to the Pope to decide +between two claimants for the English crown strengthened Gregory not a +little in his daring claim to dispose of the crowns of Rome, of Italy, +and of Germany. Still this recognition of Roman claims led more directly +to the humiliation of William’s successor in his own kingdom. Moreover +William’s successful attempt to represent his enterprise as a holy war, a +crusade before crusades were heard of, did much to suggest and to make +ready the way for the real crusades a generation later. It was not till +after William’s death that Urban preached the crusade, but it was during +William’s life that Gregory planned it. + +The appeal was strangely successful. William convinced, or seemed to +convince, all men out of England and Scandinavia that his claim to the +English crown was just and holy, and that it was a good work to help him +to assert it in arms. He persuaded his own subjects; he certainly did +not constrain them. He persuaded some foreign princes to give him actual +help, some to join his muster in person; he persuaded all to help him so +far as not to hinder their subjects from joining him as volunteers. And +all this was done by sheer persuasion, by argument good or bad. In +adapting of means to ends, in applying to each class of men that kind of +argument which best suited it, the diplomacy, the statesmanship, of +William was perfect. Again we ask, How far was it the statesmanship of +William, how far of Lanfranc? But a prince need not do everything with +his own hands and say everything with his own tongue. It was no small +part of the statesmanship of William to find out Lanfranc, to appreciate +him and to trust him. And when two subtle brains were at work, more +could be done by the two working in partnership than by either working +alone. + +By what arguments did the Duke of the Normans and the Prior of Bec +convince mankind that the worse cause was the better? We must always +remember the transitional character of the age. England was in political +matters in advance of other Western lands; that is, it lagged behind +other Western lands. It had not gone so far on the downward course. It +kept far more than Gaul or even Germany of the old Teutonic institutions, +the substance of which later ages have won back under new shapes. Many +things were understood in England which are now again understood +everywhere, but which were no longer understood in France or in the lands +held of the French crown. The popular election of kings comes foremost. +Hugh Capet was an elective king as much as Harold; but the French kings +had made their crown the most strictly hereditary of all crowns. They +avoided any interregnum by having their sons crowned in their lifetime. +So with the great fiefs of the crown. The notion of kingship as an +office conferred by the nation, of a duchy or county as an office held +under the king, was still fully alive in England; in Gaul it was +forgotten. Kingdom, duchies, counties, had all become possessions +instead of offices, possessions passing by hereditary succession of some +kind. But no rule of hereditary succession was universally or generally +accepted. To this day the kingdoms of Europe differ as to the question +of female succession, and it is but slowly that the doctrine of +representation has ousted the more obvious doctrine of nearness of kin. +All these points were then utterly unsettled; crowns, save of course that +of the Empire, were to pass by hereditary right; only what was hereditary +right? At such a time claims would be pressed which would have seemed +absurd either earlier or later. To Englishmen, if it seemed strange to +elect one who was not of the stock of Cerdic, it seemed much more strange +to be called on to accept without election, or to elect as a matter of +course, one who was not of the stock of Cerdic and who was a stranger +into the bargain. Out of England it would not seem strange when William +set forth that Edward, having no direct heirs, had chosen his near +kinsman William as his successor. Put by itself, that statement had a +plausible sound. The transmission of a crown by bequest belongs to the +same range of ideas as its transmission by hereditary right; both assume +the crown to be a property and not an office. Edward’s nomination of +Harold, the election of Harold, the fact that William’s kindred to Edward +lay outside the royal line of England, the fact that there was, in the +person of Edgar, a nearer kinsman within that royal line, could all be +slurred over or explained away or even turned to William’s profit. Let +it be that Edward on his death-bed had recommended Harold, and that the +Witan had elected Harold. The recommendation was wrung from a dying man +in opposition to an earlier act done when he was able to act freely. The +election was brought about by force or fraud; if it was free, it was of +no force against William’s earlier claim of kindred and bequest. As for +Edgar, as few people in England thought of him, still fewer out of +England would have ever heard of him. It is more strange that the +bastardy of William did not tell against him, as it had once told in his +own duchy. But this fact again marks the transitional age. Altogether +the tale that a man who was no kinsman of the late king had taken to +himself the crown which the king had bequeathed to a kinsman, might, even +without further aggravation, be easily made to sound like a tale of +wrong. + +But the case gained tenfold strength when William added that the doer of +the wrong was of all men the one most specially bound not to do it. The +usurper was in any case William’s man, bound to act in all things for his +lord. Perhaps he was more; perhaps he had directly sworn to receive +William as king. Perhaps he had promised all this with an oath of +special solemnity. It would be easy to enlarge on all these further +counts as making up an amount of guilt which William not only had the +right to chastise, but which he would be lacking in duty if he failed to +chastise. He had to punish the perjurer, to avenge the wrongs of the +saints. Surely all who should help him in so doing would be helping in a +righteous work. + +The answer to all this was obvious. Putting the case at the very worst, +assuming that Harold had sworn all that he is ever said to have sworn, +assuming that he swore it in the most solemn way in which he is ever said +to have sworn it, William’s claim was not thereby made one whit better. +Whatever Harold’s own guilt might be, the people of England had no share +in it. Nothing that Harold had done could bar their right to choose +their king freely. Even if Harold declined the crown, that would not +bind the electors to choose William. But when the notion of choosing +kings had begun to sound strange, all this would go for nothing. There +would be no need even to urge that in any case the wrong done by Harold +to William gave William a _casus belli_ against Harold, and that William, +if victorious, might claim the crown of England, as a possession of +Harold’s, by right of conquest. In fact William never claimed the crown +by conquest, as conquest is commonly understood. He always represented +himself as the lawful heir, unhappily driven to use force to obtain his +rights. The other pleas were quite enough to satisfy most men out of +England and Scandinavia. William’s work was to claim the crown of which +he was unjustly deprived, and withal to deal out a righteous chastisement +on the unrighteous and ungodly man by whom he had been deprived of it. + +In the hands of diplomatists like William and Lanfranc, all these +arguments, none of which had in itself the slightest strength, were +enough to turn the great mass of continental opinion in William’s favour. +But he could add further arguments specially adapted to different classes +of minds. He could hold out the prospect of plunder, the prospect of +lands and honours in a land whose wealth was already proverbial. It +might of course be answered that the enterprise against England was +hazardous and its success unlikely. But in such matters, men listen +rather to their hopes than to their fears. To the Normans it would be +easy, not only to make out a case against Harold, but to rake up old +grudges against the English nation. Under Harold the son of Cnut, +Alfred, a prince half Norman by birth, wholly Norman by education, the +brother of the late king, the lawful heir to the crown, had been betrayed +and murdered by somebody. A widespread belief laid the deed to the +charge of the father of the new king. This story might easily be made a +ground of national complaint by Normandy against England, and it was easy +to infer that Harold had some share in the alleged crime of Godwine. It +was easy to dwell on later events, on the driving of so many Normans out +of England, with Archbishop Robert at their head. Nay, not only had the +lawful primate been driven out, but an usurper had been set in his place, +and this usurping archbishop had been made to bestow a mockery of +consecration on the usurping king. The proposed aggression on England +was even represented as a missionary work, undertaken for the good of the +souls of the benighted islanders. For, though the English were +undoubtedly devout after their own fashion, there was much in the +ecclesiastical state of England which displeased strict churchmen beyond +sea, much that William, when he had the power, deemed it his duty to +reform. The insular position of England naturally parted it in many +things from the usages and feelings of the mainland, and it was not hard +to get up a feeling against the nation as well as against its king. All +this could not really strengthen William’s claim; but it made men look +more favourably on his enterprise. + + * * * * * + +The fact that the Witan were actually in session at Edward’s death had +made it possible to carry out Harold’s election and coronation with +extreme speed. The electors had made their choice before William had any +opportunity of formally laying his claim before them. This was really an +advantage to him; he could the better represent the election and +coronation as invalid. His first step was of course to send an embassy +to Harold to call on him even now to fulfil his oath. The accounts of +this embassy, of which we have no English account, differ as much as the +different accounts of the oath. Each version of course makes William +demand and Harold refuse whatever it had made Harold swear. These +demands and refusals range from the resignation of the kingdom to a +marriage with William’s daughter. And it is hard to separate this +embassy from later messages between the rivals. In all William demands, +Harold refuses; the arguments on each side are likely to be genuine. +Harold is called on to give up the crown to William, to hold it of +William, to hold part of the kingdom of William, to submit the question +to the judgement of the Pope, lastly, if he will do nothing else, at +least to marry William’s daughter. Different writers place these demands +at different times, immediately after Harold’s election or immediately +before the battle. The last challenge to a single combat between Harold +and William of course appears only on the eve of the battle. Now none of +these accounts come from contemporary partisans of Harold; every one is +touched by hostile feeling towards him. Thus the constitutional language +that is put into his mouth, almost startling from its modern sound, has +greater value. A King of the English can do nothing without the consent +of his Witan. They gave him the kingdom; without their consent, he +cannot resign it or dismember it or agree to hold it of any man; without +their consent, he cannot even marry a foreign wife. Or he answers that +the daughter of William whom he promised to marry is dead, and that the +sister whom he promised to give to a Norman is dead also. Harold does +not deny the fact of his oath—whatever its nature; he justifies its +breach because it was taken against is will, and because it was in itself +of no strength, as binding him to do impossible things. He does not deny +Edward’s earlier promise to William; but, as a testament is of no force +while the testator liveth, he argues that it is cancelled by Edward’s +later nomination of himself. In truth there is hardly any difference +between the disputants as to matters of fact. One side admits at least a +plighting of homage on the part of Harold; the other side admits Harold’s +nomination and election. The real difference is as to the legal effect +of either. Herein comes William’s policy. The question was one of +English law and of nothing else, a matter for the Witan of England and +for no other judges. William, by ingeniously mixing all kinds of +irrelevant issues, contrived to remove the dispute from the region of +municipal into that of international law, a law whose chief +representative was the Bishop of Rome. By winning the Pope to his side, +William could give his aggression the air of a religious war; but in so +doing, he unwittingly undermined the throne that he was seeking and the +thrones of all other princes. + +The answers which Harold either made, or which writers of his time +thought that he ought to have made, are of the greatest moment in our +constitutional history. The King is the doer of everything; but he can +do nothing of moment without the consent of his Witan. They can say Yea +or Nay to every proposal of the King. An energetic and popular king +would get no answer but Yea to whatever he chose to ask. A king who +often got the answer of Nay, Nay, was in great danger of losing his +kingdom. The statesmanship of William knew how to turn this +constitutional system, without making any change in the letter, into a +despotism like that of Constantinople or Cordova. But the letter lived, +to come to light again on occasion. The Revolution of 1399 was a falling +back on the doctrines of 1066, and the Revolution of 1688 was a falling +back on the doctrines of 1399. The principle at all three periods is +that the power of the King is strictly limited by law, but that, within +the limits which the law sets to his power, he acts according to his own +discretion. King and Witan stand out as distinct powers, each of which +needs the assent of the other to its acts, and which may always refuse +that assent. The political work of the last two hundred years has been +to hinder these direct collisions between King and Parliament by the +ingenious conventional device of a body of men who shall be in name the +ministers of the Crown, but in truth the ministers of one House of +Parliament. We do not understand our own political history, still less +can we understand the position and the statesmanship of the Conqueror, +unless we fully take in what the English constitution in the eleventh +century really was, how very modern-sounding are some of its doctrines, +some of its forms. Statesmen of our own day might do well to study the +meagre records of the Gemót of 1047. There is the earliest recorded +instance of a debate on a question of foreign policy. Earl Godwine +proposes to give help to Denmark, then at war with Norway. He is +outvoted on the motion of Earl Leofric, the man of moderate politics, who +appears as leader of the party of non-intervention. It may be that in +some things we have not always advanced in the space of eight hundred +years. + + * * * * * + +The negotiations of William with his own subjects, with foreign powers, +and with the Pope, are hard to arrange in order. Several negotiations +were doubtless going on at the same time. The embassy to Harold would of +course come first of all. Till his demand had been made and refused, +William could make no appeal elsewhere. We know not whether the embassy +was sent before or after Harold’s journey to Northumberland, before or +after his marriage with Ealdgyth. If Harold was already married, the +demand that he should marry William’s daughter could have been meant only +in mockery. Indeed, the whole embassy was so far meant in mockery that +it was sent without any expectation that its demands would be listened +to. It was sent to put Harold, from William’s point of view, more +thoroughly in the wrong, and to strengthen William’s case against him. +It would therefore be sent at the first moment; the only statement, from +a very poor authority certainly, makes the embassy come on the tenth day +after Edward’s death. Next after the embassy would come William’s appeal +to his own subjects, though Lanfranc might well be pleading at Rome while +William was pleading at Lillebonne. The Duke first consulted a select +company, who promised their own services, but declined to pledge any one +else. It was held that no Norman was bound to follow the Duke in an +attempt to win for himself a crown beyond the sea. But voluntary help +was soon ready. A meeting of the whole baronage of Normandy was held at +Lillebonne. The assembly declined any obligation which could be turned +into a precedent, and passed no general vote at all. But the barons were +won over one by one, and each promised help in men and ships according to +his means. + +William had thus, with some difficulty, gained the support of his own +subjects; but when he had once gained it, it was a zealous support. And +as the flame spread from one part of Europe to another, the zeal of +Normandy would wax keener and keener. The dealings of William with +foreign powers are told us in a confused, piecemeal, and sometimes +contradictory way. We hear that embassies went to the young King Henry +of Germany, son of the great Emperor, the friend of England, and also to +Swegen of Denmark. The Norman story runs that both princes promised +William their active support. Yet Swegen, the near kinsman of Harold, +was a friend of England, and the same writer who puts this promise into +his mouth makes him send troops to help his English cousin. Young Henry +or his advisers could have no motive for helping William; but subjects of +the Empire were at least not hindered from joining his banner. To the +French king William perhaps offered the bait of holding the crown of +England of him; but Philip is said to have discouraged William’s +enterprise as much as he could. Still he did not hinder French subjects +from taking a part in it. Of the princes who held of the French crown, +Eustace of Boulogne, who joined the muster in person, and Guy of +Ponthieu, William’s own vassal, who sent his son, seem to have been the +only ones who did more than allow the levying of volunteers in their +dominions. A strange tale is told that Conan of Britanny took this +moment for bringing up his own forgotten pretensions to the Norman duchy. +If William was going to win England, let him give up Normandy to him. He +presently, the tale goes, died of a strange form of poisoning, in which +it is implied that William had a hand. This is the story of Walter and +Biota over again. It is perhaps enough to say that the Breton writers +know nothing of the tale. + +But the great negotiation of all was with the Papal court. We might have +thought that the envoy would be Lanfranc, so well skilled in Roman ways; +but William perhaps needed him as a constant adviser by his own person. +Gilbert, Archdeacon of Lisieux, was sent to Pope Alexander. No +application could better suit papal interests than the one that was now +made; but there were some moral difficulties. Not a few of the +cardinals, Hildebrand tells us himself, argued, not without strong +language towards Hildebrand, that the Church had nothing to do with such +matters, and that it was sinful to encourage a claim which could not be +enforced without bloodshed. But with many, with Hildebrand among them, +the notion of the Church as a party or a power came before all thoughts +of its higher duties. One side was carefully heard; the other seems not +to have been heard at all. We hear of no summons to Harold, and the King +of the English could not have pleaded at the Pope’s bar without +acknowledging that his case was at least doubtful. The judgement of +Alexander or of Hildebrand was given for William. Harold was declared to +be an usurper, perhaps declared excommunicated. The right to the English +crown was declared to be in the Duke of the Normans, and William was +solemnly blessed in the enterprise in which he was at once to win his own +rights, to chastise the wrong-doer, to reform the spiritual state of the +misguided islanders, to teach them fuller obedience to the Roman See and +more regular payment of its temporal dues. William gained his immediate +point; but his successors on the English throne paid the penalty. +Hildebrand gained his point for ever, or for as long a time as men might +be willing to accept the Bishop of Rome as a judge in any matters. The +precedent by which Hildebrand, under another name, took on him to dispose +of a higher crown than that of England was now fully established. + +As an outward sign of papal favour, William received a consecrated banner +and a ring containing a hair of Saint Peter. Here was something for men +to fight for. The war was now a holy one. All who were ready to promote +their souls’ health by slaughter and plunder might flock to William’s +standard, to the standard of Saint Peter. Men came from most +French-speaking lands, the Normans of Apulia and Sicily being of course +not slow to take up the quarrel of their kinsfolk. But, next to his own +Normandy, the lands which sent most help were Flanders, the land of +Matilda, and Britanny, where the name of the Saxon might still be +hateful. We must never forget that the host of William, the men who won +England, the men who settled in England, were not an exclusively Norman +body. Not Norman, but _French_, is the name most commonly opposed to +_English_, as the name of the conquering people. Each Norman severally +would have scorned that name for himself personally; but it was the only +name that could mark the whole of which he and his countrymen formed a +part. Yet, if the Normans were but a part, they were the greatest and +the noblest part; their presence alone redeemed the enterprise from being +a simple enterprise of brigandage. The Norman Conquest was after all a +Norman Conquest; men of other lands were merely helpers. So far as it +was not Norman, it was Italian; the subtle wit of Lombard Lanfranc and +Tuscan Hildebrand did as much to overthrow us as the lance and bow of +Normandy. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. +WILLIAM’S INVASION OF ENGLAND. +AUGUST-DECEMBER 1066. + + +THE statesmanship of William had triumphed. The people of England had +chosen their king, and a large part of the world had been won over by the +arts of a foreign prince to believe that it was a righteous and holy work +to set him on the throne to which the English people had chosen the +foremost man among themselves. No diplomatic success was ever more +thorough. Unluckily we know nothing of the state of feeling in England +while William was plotting and pleading beyond the sea. Nor do we know +how much men in England knew of what was going on in other lands, or what +they thought when they heard of it. We know only that, after Harold had +won over Northumberland, he came back and held the Easter Gemót at +Westminster. Then in the words of the Chronicler, “it was known to him +that William Bastard, King Edward’s kinsman, would come hither and win +this land.” This is all that our own writers tell us about William +Bastard, between his peaceful visit to England in 1052 and his warlike +visit in 1066. But we know that King Harold did all that man could do to +defeat his purposes, and that he was therein loyally supported by the +great mass of the English nation, we may safely say by all, save his two +brothers-in-law and so many as they could influence. + +William’s doings we know more fully. The military events of this +wonderful year there is no need to tell in detail. But we see that +William’s generalship was equal to his statesmanship, and that it was met +by equal generalship on the side of Harold. Moreover, the luck of +William is as clear as either his statesmanship or his generalship. When +Harold was crowned on the day of the Epiphany, he must have felt sure +that he would have to withstand an invasion of England before the year +was out. But it could not have come into the mind of Harold, William, or +Lanfranc, or any other man, that he would have to withstand two invasions +of England at the same moment. + +It was the invasion of Harold of Norway, at the same time as the invasion +of William, which decided the fate of England. The issue of the struggle +might have gone against England, had she had to strive against one enemy +only; as it was, it was the attack made by two enemies at once which +divided her strength, and enabled the Normans to land without resistance. +The two invasions came as nearly as possible at the same moment. Harold +Hardrada can hardly have reached the Yorkshire coast before September; +the battle of Fulford was fought on September 20th and that of +Stamfordbridge on September 25th. William landed on September 28th, and +the battle of Senlac was fought on October 14th. Moreover William’s +fleet was ready by August 12th; his delay in crossing was owing to his +waiting for a favourable wind. When William landed, the event of the +struggle in the North could not have been known in Sussex. He might have +had to strive, not with Harold of England, but with Harold of Norway as +his conqueror. + +At what time of the year Harold Hardrada first planned his invasion of +England is quite uncertain. We can say nothing of his doings till he is +actually afloat. And with the three mighty forms of William and the two +Harolds on the scene, there is something at once grotesque and perplexing +in the way in which an English traitor flits about among them. The +banished Tostig, deprived of his earldom in the autumn of 1065, had then +taken refuge in Flanders. He now plays a busy part, the details of which +are lost in contradictory accounts. But it is certain that in May 1066 +he made an ineffectual attack on England. And this attack was most +likely made with the connivance of William. It suited William to use +Tostig as an instrument, and to encourage so restless a spirit in +annoying the common enemy. It is also certain that Tostig was with the +Norwegian fleet in September, and that he died at Stamfordbridge. We +know also that he was in Scotland between May and September. It is +therefore hard to believe that Tostig had so great a hand in stirring up +Harold Hardrada to his expedition as the Norwegian story makes out. Most +likely Tostig simply joined the expedition which Harold Hardrada +independently planned. One thing is certain, that, when Harold of +England was attacked by two enemies at once, it was not by two enemies +acting in concert. The interests of William and of Harold of Norway were +as much opposed to one another as either of them was to the interests of +Harold of England. + +One great difficulty beset Harold and William alike. Either in Normandy +or in England it was easy to get together an army ready to fight a +battle; it was not easy to keep a large body of men under arms for any +long time without fighting. It was still harder to keep them at once +without fighting and without plundering. What William had done in this +way in two invasions of Normandy, he was now called on to do on a greater +scale. His great and motley army was kept during a great part of August +and September, first at the Dive, then at Saint Valery, waiting for the +wind that was to take it to England. And it was kept without doing any +serious damage to the lands where they were encamped. In a holy war, +this time was of course largely spent in appeals to the religious +feelings of the army. Then came the wonderful luck of William, which +enabled him to cross at the particular moment when he did cross. A +little earlier or later, he would have found his landing stoutly +disputed; as it was, he landed without resistance. Harold of England, +not being able, in his own words, to be everywhere at once, had done what +he could. He and his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine undertook the defence +of southern England against the Norman; the earls of the North, his +brothers-in-law Edwin and Morkere, were to defend their own land against +the Norwegians. His own preparations were looked on with wonder. To +guard the long line of coast against the invader, he got together such a +force both by sea and land as no king had ever got together before, and +he kept it together for a longer time than William did, through four +months of inaction, save perhaps some small encounters by sea. At last, +early in September, provisions failed; men were no doubt clamouring to go +back for the harvest, and the great host had to be disbanded. Could +William have sailed as soon as his fleet was ready, he would have found +southern England thoroughly prepared to meet him. Meanwhile the northern +earls had clearly not kept so good watch as the king. Harold Hardrada +harried the Yorkshire coast; he sailed up the Ouse, and landed without +resistance. At last the earls met him in arms and were defeated by the +Northmen at Fulford near York. Four days later York capitulated, and +agreed to receive Harold Hardrada as king. Meanwhile the news reached +Harold of England; he got together his housecarls and such other troops +as could be mustered at the moment, and by a march of almost incredible +speed he was able to save the city and all northern England. The fight +of Stamfordbridge, the defeat and death of the most famous warrior of the +North, was the last and greatest success of Harold of England. But his +northward march had left southern England utterly unprotected. Had the +south wind delayed a little longer, he might, before the second enemy +came, have been again on the South-Saxon coast. As it was, three days +after Stamfordbridge, while Harold of England was still at York, William +of Normandy landed without opposition at Pevensey. + +Thus wonderfully had an easy path into England been opened for William. +The Norwegian invasion had come at the best moment for his purposes, and +the result had been what he must have wished. With one Harold he must +fight, and to fight with Harold of England was clearly best for his ends. +His work would not have been done, if another had stepped in to chastise +the perjurer. Now that he was in England, it became a trial of +generalship between him and Harold. William’s policy was to provoke +Harold to fight at once. It was perhaps Harold’s policy—so at least +thought Gyrth—to follow yet more thoroughly William’s own example in the +French invasions. Let him watch and follow the enemy, let him avoid all +action, and even lay waste the land between London and the south coast, +and the strength of the invaders would gradually be worn out. But it +might have been hard to enforce such a policy on men whose hearts were +stirred by the invasion, and one part of whom, the King’s own thegns and +housecarls, were eager to follow up their victory over the Northern with +a yet mightier victory over the Norman. And Harold spoke as an English +king should speak, when he answered that he would never lay waste a +single rood of English ground, that he would never harm the lands or the +goods of the men who had chosen him to be their king. In the trial of +skill between the two commanders, each to some extent carried his point. +William’s havoc of a large part of Sussex compelled Harold to march at +once to give battle. But Harold was able to give battle at a place of +his own choosing, thoroughly suited for the kind of warfare which he had +to wage. + +Harold was blamed, as defeated generals are blamed, for being too eager +to fight and not waiting for more troops. But to any one who studies the +ground it is plain that Harold needed, not more troops, but to some +extent better troops, and that he would not have got those better troops +by waiting. From York Harold had marched to London, as the meeting-place +for southern and eastern England, as well as for the few who actually +followed him from the North and those who joined him on the march. Edwin +and Morkere were bidden to follow with the full force of their earldoms. +This they took care not to do. Harold and his West-Saxons had saved +them, but they would not strike a blow back again. Both now and earlier +in the year they doubtless aimed at a division of the kingdom, such as +had been twice made within fifty years. Either Harold or William might +reign in Wessex and East-Anglia; Edwin should reign in Northumberland and +Mercia. William, the enemy of Harold but no enemy of theirs, might be +satisfied with the part of England which was under the immediate rule of +Harold and his brothers, and might allow the house of Leofric to keep at +least an under-kingship in the North. That the brother earls held back +from the King’s muster is undoubted, and this explanation fits in with +their whole conduct both before and after. Harold had thus at his +command the picked men of part of England only, and he had to supply the +place of those who were lacking with such forces as he could get. The +lack of discipline on the part of these inferior troops lost Harold the +battle. But matters would hardly have been mended by waiting for men who +had made up their minds not to come. + +The messages exchanged between King and Duke immediately before the +battle, as well as at an earlier time, have been spoken of already. The +challenge to single combat at least comes now. When Harold refused every +demand, William called on Harold to spare the blood of his followers, and +decide his claims by battle in his own person. Such a challenge was in +the spirit of Norman jurisprudence, which in doubtful cases looked for +the judgement of God, not, as the English did, by the ordeal, but by the +personal combat of the two parties. Yet this challenge too was surely +given in the hope that Harold would refuse it, and would thereby put +himself, in Norman eyes, yet more thoroughly in the wrong. For the +challenge was one which Harold could not but refuse. William looked on +himself as one who claimed his own from one who wrongfully kept him out +of it. He was plaintiff in a suit in which Harold was defendant; that +plaintiff and defendant were both accompanied by armies was an accident +for which the defendant, who had refused all peaceful means of +settlement, was to blame. But Harold and his people could not look on +the matter as a mere question between two men. The crown was Harold’s by +the gift of the nation, and he could not sever his own cause from the +cause of the nation. The crown was his; but it was not his to stake on +the issue of a single combat. If Harold were killed, the nation might +give the crown to whom they thought good; Harold’s death could not make +William’s claim one jot better. The cause was not personal, but +national. The Norman duke had, by a wanton invasion, wronged, not the +King only, but every man in England, and every man might claim to help in +driving him out. Again, in an ordinary wager of battle, the judgement +can be enforced; here, whether William slew Harold or Harold slew +William, there was no means of enforcing the judgement except by the +strength of the two armies. If Harold fell, the English army were not +likely to receive William as king; if William fell, the Norman army was +still less likely to go quietly out of England. The challenge was meant +as a mere blind; it would raise the spirit of William’s followers; it +would be something for his poets and chroniclers to record in his honour; +that was all. + + * * * * * + +The actual battle, fought on Senlac, on Saint Calixtus’ day, was more +than a trial of skill and courage between two captains and two armies. +It was, like the old battles of Macedonian and Roman, a trial between two +modes of warfare. The English clave to the old Teutonic tactics. They +fought on foot in the close array of the shield-wall. Those who rode to +the field dismounted when the fight began. They first hurled their +javelins, and then took to the weapons of close combat. Among these the +Danish axe, brought in by Cnut, had nearly displaced the older English +broadsword. Such was the array of the housecarls and of the thegns who +had followed Harold from York or joined him on his march. But the +treason of Edwin and Morkere had made it needful to supply the place of +the picked men of Northumberland with irregular levies, armed almost +anyhow. Of their weapons of various kinds the bow was the rarest. The +strength of the Normans lay in the arms in which the English were +lacking, in horsemen and archers. These last seem to have been a force +of William’s training; we first hear of the Norman bowmen at Varaville. +These two ways of fighting were brought each one to perfection by the +leaders on each side. They had not yet been tried against one another. +At Stamfordbridge Harold had defeated an enemy whose tactics were the +same as his own. William had not fought a pitched battle since +Val-ès-dunes in his youth. Indeed pitched battles, such as English and +Scandinavian warriors were used to in the wars of Edmund and Cnut, were +rare in continental warfare. That warfare mainly consisted in the attack +and defence of strong places, and in skirmishes fought under their walls. +But William knew how to make use of troops of different kinds and to +adapt them to any emergency. Harold too was a man of resources; he had +gained his Welsh successes by adapting his men to the enemy’s way of +fighting. To withstand the charge of the Norman horsemen, Harold clave +to the national tactics, but he chose for the place of battle a spot +where those tactics would have the advantage. A battle on the low ground +would have been favourable to cavalry; Harold therefore occupied and +fenced in a hill, the hill of Senlac, the site in after days of the abbey +and town of Battle, and there awaited the Norman attack. The Norman +horsemen had thus to make their way up the hill under the shower of the +English javelins, and to meet the axes as soon as they reached the +barricade. And these tactics were thoroughly successful, till the +inferior troops were tempted to come down from the hill and chase the +Bretons whom they had driven back. This suggested to William the device +of the feigned flight; the English line of defence was broken, and the +advantage of ground was lost. Thus was the great battle lost. And the +war too was lost by the deaths of Harold and his brothers, which left +England without leaders, and by the unyielding valour of Harold’s +immediate following. They were slain to a man, and south-eastern England +was left defenceless. + + * * * * * + +William, now truly the Conqueror in the vulgar sense, was still far from +having full possession of his conquest. He had military possession of +part of one shire only; he had to look for further resistance, and he met +with not a little. But his combined luck and policy served him well. He +could put on the form of full possession before he had the reality; he +could treat all further resistance as rebellion against an established +authority; he could make resistance desultory and isolated. William had +to subdue England in detail; he had never again to fight what the English +Chroniclers call a _folk-fight_. His policy after his victory was +obvious. Still uncrowned, he was not, even in his own view, king, but he +alone had the right to become king. He had thus far been driven to +maintain his rights by force; he was not disposed to use force any +further, if peaceful possession was to be had. His course was therefore +to show himself stern to all who withstood him, but to take all who +submitted into his protection and favour. He seems however to have +looked for a speedier submission than really happened. He waited a while +in his camp for men to come in and acknowledge him. As none came, he set +forth to win by the strong arm the land which he claimed of right. + +Thus to look for an immediate submission was not unnatural; fully +believing in the justice of his own cause, William would believe in it +all the more after the issue of the battle. God, Harold had said, should +judge between himself and William, and God had judged in William’s +favour. With all his clear-sightedness, he would hardly understand how +differently things looked in English eyes. Some indeed, specially +churchmen, specially foreign churchmen, now began to doubt whether to +fight against William was not to fight against God. But to the nation at +large William was simply as Hubba, Swegen, and Cnut in past times. +England had before now been conquered, but never in a single fight. +Alfred and Edmund had fought battle after battle with the Dane, and men +had no mind to submit to the Norman because he had been once victorious. +But Alfred and Edmund, in alternate defeat and victory, lived to fight +again; their people had not to choose a new king; the King had merely to +gather a new army. But Harold was slain, and the first question was how +to fill his place. The Witan, so many as could be got together, met to +choose a king, whose first duty would be to meet William the Conqueror in +arms. The choice was not easy. Harold’s sons were young, and not born +Æthelings. His brothers, of whom Gyrth at least must have been fit to +reign, had fallen with him. Edwin and Morkere were not at the battle, +but they were at the election. But schemes for winning the crown for the +house of Leofric would find no favour in an assembly held in London. For +lack of any better candidate, the hereditary sentiment prevailed. Young +Edgar was chosen. But the bishops, it is said, did not agree; they must +have held that God had declared in favour of William. Edwin and Morkere +did agree; but they withdrew to their earldoms, still perhaps cherishing +hopes of a divided kingdom. Edgar, as king-elect, did at least one act +of kingship by confirming the election of an abbot of Peterborough; but +of any general preparation for warfare there is not a sign. The local +resistance which William met with shows that, with any combined action, +the case was not hopeless. But with Edgar for king, with the northern +earls withdrawing their forces, with the bishops at least lukewarm, +nothing could be done. The Londoners were eager to fight; so doubtless +were others; but there was no leader. So far from there being another +Harold or Edmund to risk another battle, there was not even a leader to +carry out the policy of Fabius and Gyrth. + +Meanwhile the Conqueror was advancing, by his own road and after his own +fashion. We must remember the effect of the mere slaughter of the great +battle. William’s own army had suffered severely: he did not leave +Hastings till he had received reinforcements from Normandy. But to +England the battle meant the loss of the whole force of the south-eastern +shires. A large part of England was left helpless. William followed +much the same course as he had followed in Maine. A legal claimant of +the crown, it was his interest as soon as possible to become a crowned +king, and that in his kinsman’s church at Westminster. But it was not +his interest to march straight on London and demand the crown, sword in +hand. He saw that, without the support of the northern earls, Edgar +could not possibly stand, and that submission to himself was only a +question of time. He therefore chose a roundabout course through those +south-eastern shires which were wholly without means of resisting him. +He marched from Sussex into Kent, harrying the land as he went, to +frighten the people into submission. The men of Romney had before the +battle cut in pieces a party of Normans who had fallen into their hands, +most likely by sea. William took some undescribed vengeance for their +slaughter. Dover and its castle, the castle which, in some accounts, +Harold had sworn to surrender to William, yielded without a blow. Here +then he was gracious. When some of his unruly followers set fire to the +houses of the town, William made good the losses of their owners. +Canterbury submitted; from thence, by a bold stroke, he sent messengers +who received the submission of Winchester. He marched on, ravaging as he +went, to the immediate neighbourhood of London, but keeping ever on the +right bank of the Thames. But a gallant sally of the citizens was +repulsed by the Normans, and the suburb of Southwark was burned. William +marched along the river to Wallingford. Here he crossed, receiving for +the first time the active support of an Englishman of high rank, Wiggod +of Wallingford, sheriff of Oxfordshire. He became one of a small class +of Englishmen who were received to William’s fullest favour, and kept at +least as high a position under him as they had held before. William +still kept on, marching and harrying, to the north of London, as he had +before done to the south. The city was to be isolated within a cordon of +wasted lands. His policy succeeded. As no succours came from the North, +the hearts of those who had chosen them a king failed at the approach of +his rival. At Berkhampstead Edgar himself, with several bishops and +chief men, came to make their submission. They offered the crown to +William, and, after some debate, he accepted it. But before he came in +person, he took means to secure the city. The beginnings of the fortress +were now laid which, in the course of William’s reign, grew into the +mighty Tower of London. + +It may seem strange that when his great object was at last within his +grasp, William should have made his acceptance of it a matter of debate. +He claims the crown as his right; the crown is offered to him; and yet he +doubts about taking it. Ought he, he asks, to take the crown of a +kingdom of which he has not as yet full possession? At that time the +territory of which William had even military possession could not have +stretched much to the north-west of a line drawn from Winchester to +Norwich. Outside that line men were, as William is made to say, still in +rebellion. His scruples were come over by an orator who was neither +Norman nor English, but one of his foreign followers, Haimer Viscount of +Thouars. The debate was most likely got up at William’s bidding, but it +was not got up without a motive. William, ever seeking outward legality, +seeking to do things peaceably when they could be done peaceably, seeking +for means to put every possible enemy in the wrong, wished to make his +acceptance of the English crown as formally regular as might be. Strong +as he held his claim to be by the gift of Edward, it would be better to +be, if not strictly chosen, at least peacefully accepted, by the chief +men of England. It might some day serve his purpose to say that the +crown had been offered to him, and that he had accepted it only after a +debate in which the chief speaker was an impartial stranger. Having +gained this point more, William set out from Berkhampstead, already, in +outward form, King-elect of the English. + +The rite which was to change him from king-elect into full king took +place in Eadward’s church of Westminster on Christmas day, 1066, somewhat +more than two months after the great battle, somewhat less than twelve +months after the death of Edward and the coronation of Harold. Nothing +that was needed for a lawful crowning was lacking. The consent of the +people, the oath of the king, the anointing by the hands of a lawful +metropolitan, all were there. Ealdred acted as the actual celebrant, +while Stigand took the second place in the ceremony. But this outward +harmony between the nation and its new king was marred by an unhappy +accident. Norman horsemen stationed outside the church mistook the shout +with which the people accepted the new king for the shout of men who were +doing him damage. But instead of going to his help, they began, in true +Norman fashion, to set fire to the neighbouring houses. The havoc and +plunder that followed disturbed the solemnities of the day and were a bad +omen for the new reign. It was no personal fault of William’s; in +putting himself in the hands of subjects of such new and doubtful +loyalty, he needed men near at hand whom he could trust. But then it was +his doing that England had to receive a king who needed foreign soldiers +to guard him. + + * * * * * + +William was now lawful King of the English, so far as outward ceremonies +could make him so. But he knew well how far he was from having won real +kingly authority over the whole kingdom. Hardly a third part of the land +was in his obedience. He had still, as he doubtless knew, to win his +realm with the edge of the sword. But he could now go forth to further +conquests, not as a foreign invader, but as the king of the land, putting +down rebellion among his own subjects. If the men of Northumberland +should refuse to receive him, he could tell them that he was their lawful +king, anointed by their own archbishop. It was sound policy to act as +king of the whole land, to exercise a semblance of authority where he had +none in fact. And in truth he was king of the whole land, so far as +there was no other king. The unconquered parts of the land were in no +mood to submit; but they could not agree on any common plan of resistance +under any common leader. Some were still for Edgar, some for Harold’s +sons, some for Swegen of Denmark. Edwin and Morkere doubtless were for +themselves. If one common leader could have been found even now, the +throne of the foreign king would have been in no small danger. But no +such leader came: men stood still, or resisted piecemeal, so the land was +conquered piecemeal, and that under cover of being brought under the +obedience of its lawful king. + + * * * * * + +Now that the Norman duke has become an English king, his career as an +English statesman strictly begins, and a wonderful career it is. Its +main principle was to respect formal legality wherever he could. All +William’s purposes were to be carried out, as far as possible, under +cover of strict adherence to the law of the land of which he had become +the lawful ruler. He had sworn at his crowning to keep the laws of the +land, and to rule his kingdom as well as any king that had gone before +him. And assuredly he meant to keep his oath. But a foreign king, at +the head of a foreign army, and who had his foreign followers to reward, +could keep that oath only in its letter and not in its spirit. But it is +wonderful how nearly he came to keep it in the letter. He contrived to +do his most oppressive acts, to deprive Englishmen of their lands and +offices, and to part them out among strangers, under cover of English +law. He could do this. A smaller man would either have failed to carry +out his purposes at all, or he could have carried them out only by +reckless violence. When we examine the administration of William more in +detail, we shall see that its effects in the long run were rather to +preserve than to destroy our ancient institutions. He knew the strength +of legal fictions; by legal fictions he conquered and he ruled. But +every legal fiction is outward homage to the principle of law, an outward +protest against unlawful violence. That England underwent a Norman +Conquest did in the end only make her the more truly England. But that +this could be was because that conquest was wrought by the Bastard of +Falaise and by none other. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. +THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. +DECEMBER 1066-MARCH 1070. + + +THE coronation of William had its effect in a moment. It made him really +king over part of England; it put him into a new position with regard to +the rest. As soon as there was a king, men flocked to swear oaths to him +and become his men. They came from shires where he had no real +authority. It was most likely now, rather than at Berkhampstead, that +Edwin and Morkere at last made up their minds to acknowledge some king. +They became William’s men and received again their lands and earldoms as +his grant. Other chief men from the North also submitted and received +their lands and honours again. But Edwin and Morkere were not allowed to +go back to their earldoms. William thought it safer to keep them near +himself, under the guise of honour—Edwin was even promised one of his +daughters in marriage—but really half as prisoners, half as hostages. Of +the two other earls, Waltheof son of Siward, who held the shires of +Northampton and Huntingdon, and Oswulf who held the earldom of Bernicia +or modern Northumberland, we hear nothing at this moment. As for +Waltheof, it is strange if he were not at Senlac; it is strange if he +were there and came away alive. But we only know that he was in +William’s allegiance a few months later. Oswulf must have held out in +some marked way. It was William’s policy to act as king even where he +had no means of carrying out his kingly orders. He therefore in February +1067 granted the Bernician earldom to an Englishman named Copsige, who +had acted as Tostig’s lieutenant. This implies the formal deprivation of +Oswulf. But William sent no force with the new earl, who had to take +possession as he could. That is to say, of two parties in a local +quarrel, one hoped to strengthen itself by making use of William’s name. +And William thought that it would strengthen his position to let at least +his name be heard in every corner of the kingdom. The rest of the story +stands rather aloof from the main history. Copsige got possession of the +earldom for a moment. He was then killed by Oswulf and his partisans, +and Oswulf himself was killed in the course of the year by a common +robber. At Christmas, 1067, William again granted or sold the earldom to +another of the local chiefs, Gospatric. But he made no attempt to +exercise direct authority in those parts till the beginning of the year +1069. + +All this illustrates William’s general course. Crowned king over the +land, he would first strengthen himself in that part of the kingdom which +he actually held. Of the passive disobedience of other parts he would +take no present notice. In northern and central England William could +exercise no authority; but those lands were not in arms against him, nor +did they acknowledge any other king. Their earls, now his earls, were +his favoured courtiers. He could afford to be satisfied with this +nominal kingship, till a fit opportunity came to make it real. He could +afford to lend his name to the local enterprise of Copsige. It would at +least be another count against the men of Bernicia that they had killed +the earl whom King William gave them. + +Meanwhile William was taking very practical possession in the shires +where late events had given him real authority. His policy was to assert +his rights in the strongest form, but to show his mildness and good will +by refraining from carrying them out to the uttermost. By right of +conquest William claimed nothing. He had come to take his crown, and he +had unluckily met with some opposition in taking it. The crown lands of +King Edward passed of course to his successor. As for the lands of other +men, in William’s theory all was forfeited to the crown. The lawful heir +had been driven to seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman had helped +him; many Englishmen had fought against him. All then were directly or +indirectly traitors. The King might lawfully deal with the lands of all +as his own. But in the greater part of the kingdom it was impossible, in +no part was it prudent, to carry out this doctrine in its fulness. A +passage in Domesday, compared with a passage in the English Chronicles, +shows that, soon after William’s coronation, the English as a body, +within the lands already conquered, redeemed their lands. They bought +them back at a price, and held them as a fresh grant from King William. +Some special offenders, living and dead, were exempted from this favour. +The King took to himself the estates of the house of Godwine, save those +of Edith, the widow of his revered predecessor, whom it was his policy to +treat with all honour. The lands too of those who had died on Senlac +were granted back to their heirs only of special favour, sometimes under +the name of alms. Thus, from the beginning of his reign, William began +to make himself richer than any king that had been before him in England +or than any other Western king of his day. He could both punish his +enemies and reward his friends. Much of what he took he kept; much he +granted away, mainly to his foreign followers, but sometimes also to +Englishmen who had in any way won his favour. Wiggod of Wallingford was +one of the very few Englishmen who kept and received estates which put +them alongside of the great Norman landowners. The doctrine that all +land was held of the King was now put into a practical shape. All, +Englishmen and strangers, not only became William’s subjects, but his men +and his grantees. Thus he went on during his whole reign. There was no +sudden change from the old state of things to the new. After the general +redemption of lands, gradually carried out as William’s power advanced, +no general blow was dealt at Englishmen as such. They were not, like +some conquered nations, formally degraded or put under any legal +incapacities in their own land. William simply distinguished between his +loyal and his disloyal subjects, and used his opportunities for punishing +the disloyal and rewarding the loyal. Such punishments and rewards +naturally took the shape of confiscations and grants of land. If +punishment was commonly the lot of the Englishman, and reward was the lot +of the stranger, that was only because King William treated all men as +they deserved. Most Englishmen were disloyal; most strangers were loyal. +But disloyal strangers and loyal Englishmen fared according to their +deserts. The final result of this process, begun now and steadily +carried on, was that, by the end of William’s reign, the foreign king was +surrounded by a body of foreign landowners and office-bearers of foreign +birth. When, in the early days of his conquest, he gathered round him +the great men of his realm, it was still an English assembly with a +sprinkling of strangers. By the end of his reign it had changed, step by +step, into an assembly of strangers with a sprinkling of Englishmen. + +This revolution, which practically transferred the greater part of the +soil of England to the hands of strangers, was great indeed. But it must +not be mistaken for a sudden blow, for an irregular scramble, for a +formal proscription of Englishmen as such. William, according to his +character and practice, was able to do all this gradually, according to +legal forms, and without drawing any formal distinction between natives +and strangers. All land was held of the King of the English, according +to the law of England. It may seem strange how such a process of +spoliation, veiled under a legal fiction, could have been carried out +without resistance. It was easier because it was gradual and piecemeal. +The whole country was not touched at once, nor even the whole of any one +district. One man lost his land while his neighbour kept his, and he who +kept his land was not likely to join in the possible plots of the other. +And though the land had never seen so great a confiscation, or one so +largely for the behoof of foreigners, yet there was nothing new in the +thing itself. Danes had settled under Cnut, and Normans and other +Frenchmen under Edward. Confiscation of land was the everyday punishment +for various public and private crimes. In any change, such as we should +call a change of ministry, as at the fall and the return of Godwine, +outlawry and forfeiture of lands was the usual doom of the weaker party, +a milder doom than the judicial massacres of later ages. Even a conquest +of England was nothing new, and William at this stage contrasted +favourably with Cnut, whose early days were marked by the death of not a +few. William, at any rate since his crowning, had shed the blood of no +man. Men perhaps thought that things might have been much worse, and +that they were not unlikely to mend. Anyhow, weakened, cowed, isolated, +the people of the conquered shires submitted humbly to the Conqueror’s +will. It needed a kind of oppression of which William himself was never +guilty to stir them into actual revolt. + + * * * * * + +The provocation was not long in coming. Within three months after his +coronation, William paid a visit to his native duchy. The ruler of two +states could not be always in either; he owed it to his old subjects to +show himself among them in his new character; and his absence might pass +as a sign of the trust he put in his new subjects. But the means which +he took to secure their obedience brought out his one weak point. We +cannot believe that he really wished to goad the people into rebellion; +yet the choice of his lieutenants might seem almost like it. He was led +astray by partiality for his brother and for his dearest friend. To +Bishop Ode of Bayeux, and to William Fitz-Osbern, the son of his early +guardian, he gave earldoms, that of Kent to Odo, that of Hereford to +William. The Conqueror was determined before all things that his kingdom +should be united and obedient; England should not be split up like Gaul +and Germany; he would have no man in England whose formal homage should +carry with it as little of practical obedience as his own homage to the +King of the French. A Norman earl of all Wessex or all Mercia might +strive after such a position. William therefore forsook the old practice +of dividing the whole kingdom into earldoms. In the peaceful central +shires he would himself rule through his sheriffs and other immediate +officers; he would appoint earls only in dangerous border districts where +they were needed as military commanders. All William’s earls were in +fact _marquesses_, guardians of a march or frontier. Ode had to keep +Kent against attacks from the continent; William Fitz-Osbern had to keep +Herefordshire against the Welsh and the independent English. This last +shire had its own local warfare. William’s authority did not yet reach +over all the shires beyond London and Hereford; but Harold had allowed +some of Edward’s Norman favourites to keep power there. Hereford then +and part of its shire formed an isolated part of William’s dominions, +while the lands around remained unsubdued. William Fitz-Osbern had to +guard this dangerous land as earl. But during the King’s absence both he +and Ode received larger commissions as viceroys over the whole kingdom. +Ode guarded the South and William the North and North-East. Norwich, a +town dangerous from its easy communication with Denmark, was specially +under his care. The nominal earls of the rest of the land, Edwin, +Morkere, and Waltheof, with Edgar, King of a moment, Archbishop Stigand, +and a number of other chief men, William took with him to Normandy. +Nominally his cherished friends and guests, they went in truth, as one of +the English Chroniclers calls them, as hostages. + +William’s stay in Normandy lasted about six months. It was chiefly +devoted to rejoicings and religious ceremonies, but partly to Norman +legislation. Rich gifts from the spoils of England were given to the +churches of Normandy; gifts richer still were sent to the Church of Rome +whose favour had wrought so much for William. In exchange for the banner +of Saint Peter, Harold’s standard of the Fighting-man was sent as an +offering to the head of all churches. While William was in Normandy, +Archbishop Maurilius of Rouen died. The whole duchy named Lanfranc as +his successor; but he declined the post, and was himself sent to Rome to +bring the pallium for the new archbishop John, a kinsman of the ducal +house. Lanfranc doubtless refused the see of Rouen only because he was +designed for a yet greater post in England; the subtlest diplomatist in +Europe was not sent to Rome merely to ask for the pallium for Archbishop +John. + +Meanwhile William’s choice of lieutenants bore its fruit in England. +They wrought such oppression as William himself never wrought. The +inferior leaders did as they thought good, and the two earls restrained +them not. The earls meanwhile were in one point there faithfully +carrying out the policy of their master in the building of castles; a +work, which specially when the work of Ode and William Fitz-Osbern, is +always spoken of by the native writers with marked horror. The castles +were the badges and the instruments of the Conquest, the special means of +holding the land in bondage. Meanwhile tumults broke forth in various +parts. The slaughter of Copsige, William’s earl in Northumberland, took +place about the time of the King’s sailing for Normandy. In independent +Herefordshire the leading Englishman in those parts, Eadric, whom the +Normans called the _Wild_, allied himself with the Welsh, harried the +obedient lands, and threatened the castle of Hereford. Nothing was done +on either side beyond harrying and skirmishes; but Eadric’s corner of the +land remained unsubdued. The men of Kent made a strange foreign alliance +with Eustace of Boulogne, the brother-in-law of Edward, the man whose +deeds had led to the great movement of Edward’s reign, to the banishment +and the return of Godwine. He had fought against England on Senlac, and +was one of four who had dealt the last blow to the wounded Harold. But +the oppression of Ode made the Kentishmen glad to seek any help against +him. Eustace, now William’s enemy, came over, and gave help in an +unsuccessful attack on Dover castle. Meanwhile in the obedient shires +men were making ready for revolt; in the unsubdued lands they were making +ready for more active defence. Many went beyond sea to ask for foreign +help, specially in the kindred lands of Denmark and Northern Germany. +Against this threatening movement William’s strength lay in the +incapacity of his enemies for combined action. The whole land never rose +at once, and Danish help did not come at the times or in the shape when +it could have done most good. + + * * * * * + +The news of these movements brought William back to England in December. +He kept the Midwinter feast and assembly at Westminster; there the absent +Eustace was, by a characteristic stroke of policy, arraigned as a +traitor. He was a foreign prince against whom the Duke of the Normans +might have led a Norman army. But he had also become an English +landowner, and in that character he was accountable to the King and Witan +of England. He suffered the traitor’s punishment of confiscation of +lands. Afterwards he contrived to win back William’s favour, and he left +great English possessions to his second wife and his son. Another stroke +of policy was to send an embassy to Denmark, to ward off the hostile +purposes of Swegen, and to choose as ambassador an English prelate who +had been in high favour with both Edward and Harold, Æthelsige, Abbot of +Ramsey. It came perhaps of his mission that Swegen practically did +nothing for two years. The envoy’s own life was a chequered one. He +lost William’s favour, and sought shelter in Denmark. He again regained +William’s favour—perhaps by some service at the Danish court—and died in +possession of his abbey. + +It is instructive to see how in this same assembly William bestowed +several great offices. The earldom of Northumberland was vacant by the +slaughter of two earls, the bishopric of Dorchester by the peaceful death +of its bishop. William had no real authority in any part of +Northumberland, or in more than a small part of the diocese of +Dorchester. But he dealt with both earldom and bishopric as in his own +power. It was now that he granted Northumberland to Gospatric. The +appointment to the bishopric was the beginning of a new system. +Englishmen were now to give way step by step to strangers in the highest +offices and greatest estates of the land. He had already made two Norman +earls, but they were to act as military commanders. He now made an +English earl, whose earldom was likely to be either nominal or fatal. +The appointment of Remigius of Fécamp to the see of Dorchester was of +more real importance. It is the beginning of William’s ecclesiastical +reign, the first step in William’s scheme of making the Church his +instrument in keeping down the conquered. While William lived, no +Englishman was appointed to a bishopric. As bishoprics became vacant by +death, foreigners were nominated, and excuses were often found for +hastening a vacancy by deprivation. At the end of William’s reign one +English bishop only was left. With abbots, as having less temporal power +than bishops, the rule was less strict. Foreigners were preferred, but +Englishmen were not wholly shut out. And the general process of +confiscation and regrant of lands was vigorously carried out. The +Kentish revolt and the general movement must have led to many forfeitures +and to further grants to loyal men of either nation. As the English +Chronicles pithily puts it, “the King gave away every man’s land.” + + * * * * * + +William could soon grant lands in new parts of England. In February 1068 +he for the first time went forth to warfare with those whom he called his +subjects, but who had never submitted to him. In the course of the year +a large part of England was in arms against him. But there was no +concert; the West rose and the North rose; but the West rose first, and +the North did not rise till the West had been subdued. Western England +threw off the purely passive state which had lasted through the year +1067. Hitherto each side had left the other alone. But now the men of +the West made ready for a more direct opposition to the foreign +government. If they could not drive William out of what he had already +won, they would at least keep him from coming any further. Exeter, the +greatest city of the West, was the natural centre of resistance; the +smaller towns, at least of Devonshire and Dorset entered into a league +with the capital. They seem to have aimed, like Italian cities in the +like case, at the formation of a civic confederation, which might perhaps +find it expedient to acknowledge William as an external lord, but which +would maintain perfect internal independence. Still, as Gytha, widow of +Godwine, mother of Harold, was within the walls of Exeter, the movement +was doubtless also in some sort on behalf of the House of Godwine. In +any case, Exeter and the lands and towns in its alliance with Exeter +strengthened themselves in every way against attack. + +Things were not now as on the day of Senlac, when Englishmen on their own +soil withstood one who, however he might cloke his enterprise, was to +them simply a foreign invader. But William was not yet, as he was in +some later struggles, the _de facto_ king of the whole land, whom all had +acknowledged, and opposition to whom was in form rebellion. He now held +an intermediate position. He was still an invader; for Exeter had never +submitted to him; but the crowned King of the English, peacefully ruling +over many shires, was hardly a mere invader; resistance to him would have +the air of rebellion in the eyes of many besides William and his +flatterers. And they could not see, what we plainly see, what William +perhaps dimly saw, that it was in the long run better for Exeter, or any +other part of England, to share, even in conquest, the fate of the whole +land, rather than to keep on a precarious independence to the aggravation +of the common bondage. This we feel throughout; William, with whatever +motive, is fighting for the unity of England. We therefore cannot +seriously regret his successes. But none the less honour is due to the +men whom the duty of the moment bade to withstand him. They could not +see things as we see them by the light of eight hundred years. + +The movement evidently stirred several shires; but it is only of Exeter +that we hear any details. William never used force till he had tried +negotiation. He sent messengers demanding that the citizens should take +oaths to him and receive him within their walls. The choice lay now +between unconditional submission and valiant resistance. But the chief +men of the city chose a middle course which could gain nothing. They +answered as an Italian city might have answered a Swabian Emperor. They +would not receive the King within their walls; they would take no oaths +to him; but they would pay him the tribute which they had paid to earlier +kings. That is, they would not have him as king, but only as overlord +over a commonwealth otherwise independent. William’s answer was short; +“It is not my custom to take subjects on those conditions.” He set out +on his march; his policy was to overcome the rebellious English by the +arms of the loyal English. He called out the _fyrd_, the militia, of all +or some of the shires under his obedience. They answered his call; to +disobey it would have needed greater courage than to wield the axe on +Senlac. This use of English troops became William’s custom in all his +later wars, in England and on the mainland; but of course he did not +trust to English troops only. The plan of the campaign was that which +had won Le Mans and London. The towns of Dorset were frightfully harried +on the march to the capital of the West. Disunion at once broke out; the +leading men in Exeter sent to offer unconditional submission and to give +hostages. But the commonalty disowned the agreement; notwithstanding the +blinding of one of the hostages before the walls, they defended the city +valiantly for eighteen days. It was only when the walls began to crumble +away beneath William’s mining-engines that the men of Exeter at last +submitted to his mercy. And William’s mercy could be trusted. No man +was harmed in life, limb, or goods. But, to hinder further revolts, a +castle was at once begun, and the payments made by the city to the King +were largely raised. + +Gytha, when the city yielded, withdrew to the Steep Holm, and thence to +Flanders. Her grandsons fled to Ireland; from thence, in the course of +the same year and the next, they twice landed in Somerset and Devonshire. +The Irish Danes who followed them could not be kept back from plunder. +Englishmen as well as Normans withstood them, and the hopes of the House +of Godwine came to an end. + + * * * * * + +On the conquest of Exeter followed the submission of the whole West. All +the land south of the Thames was now in William’s obedience. +Gloucestershire seems to have submitted at the same time; the submission +of Worcestershire is without date. A vast confiscation of lands +followed, most likely by slow degrees. Its most memorable feature is +that nearly all Cornwall was granted to William’s brother Robert Count of +Mortain. His vast estate grew into the famous Cornish earldom and duchy +of later times. Southern England was now conquered, and, as the North +had not stirred during the stirring of the West, the whole land was +outwardly at peace. William now deemed it safe to bring his wife to +share his new greatness. The Duchess Matilda came over to England, and +was hallowed to Queen at Westminster by Archbishop Ealdred. We may +believe that no part of his success gave William truer pleasure. But the +presence of the Lady was important in another way. It was doubtless by +design that she gave birth on English soil to her youngest son, +afterwards the renowned King Henry the First. He alone of William’s +children was in any sense an Englishman. Born on English ground, son of +a crowned King and his Lady, Englishmen looked on him as a countryman. +And his father saw the wisdom of encouraging such a feeling. Henry, +surnamed in after days the Clerk, was brought up with special care; he +was trained in many branches of learning unusual among the princes of his +age, among them in a thorough knowledge of the tongue of his native land. + + * * * * * + +The campaign of Exeter is of all William’s English campaigns the richest +in political teaching. We see how near the cities of England came for a +moment—as we shall presently see a chief city of northern Gaul—to running +the same course as the cities of Italy and Provence. Signs of the same +tendency may sometimes be suspected elsewhere, but they are not so +clearly revealed. William’s later campaigns are of the deepest +importance in English history; they are far richer in recorded personal +actors than the siege of Exeter; but they hardly throw so much light on +the character of William and his statesmanship. William is throughout +ever ready, but never hasty—always willing to wait when waiting seems the +best policy—always ready to accept a nominal success when there is a +chance of turning it into a real one, but never accepting nominal success +as a cover for defeat, never losing an inch of ground without at once +taking measures to recover it. By this means, he has in the former part +of 1068 extended his dominion to the Land’s End; before the end of the +year he extends it to the Tees. In the next year he has indeed to win it +back again; but he does win it back and more also. Early in 1070 he was +at last, in deed as well as in name, full King over all England. + +The North was making ready for war while the war in the West went on, but +one part of England did nothing to help the other. In the summer the +movement in the North took shape. The nominal earls Edwin, Morkere, and +Gospatric, with the Ætheling Edgar and others, left William’s court to +put themselves at the head of the movement. Edwin was specially +aggrieved, because the king had promised him one of his daughters in +marriage, but had delayed giving her to him. The English formed +alliances with the dependent princes of Wales and Scotland, and stood +ready to withstand any attack. William set forth; as he had taken +Exeter, he took Warwick, perhaps Leicester. This was enough for Edwin +and Morkere. They submitted, and were again received to favour. More +valiant spirits withdrew northward, ready to defend Durham as the last +shelter of independence, while Edgar and Gospatric fled to the court of +Malcolm of Scotland. William went on, receiving the submission of +Nottingham and York; thence he turned southward, receiving on his way the +submission of Lincoln, Cambridge, and Huntingdon. Again he deemed it his +policy to establish his power in the lands which he had already won +rather than to jeopard matters by at once pressing farther. In the +conquered towns he built castles, and he placed permanent garrisons in +each district by granting estates to his Norman and other followers. +Different towns and districts suffered in different degrees, according +doubtless to the measure of resistance met with in each. Lincoln and +Lincolnshire were on the whole favourably treated. An unusual number of +Englishmen kept lands and offices in city and shire. At Leicester and +Northampton, and in their shires, the wide confiscations and great +destruction of houses point to a stout resistance. And though Durham was +still untouched, and though William had assuredly no present purpose of +attacking Scotland, he found it expedient to receive with all favour a +nominal submission brought from the King of Scots by the hands of the +Bishop of Durham. + +If William’s policy ever seems less prudent than usual, it was at the +beginning of the next year, 1069. The extreme North still stood out. +William had twice commissioned English earls of Northumberland to take +possession if they could. He now risked the dangerous step of sending a +stranger. Robert of Comines was appointed to the earldom forfeited by +the flight of Gospatric. While it was still winter, he went with his +force to Durham. By help of the Bishop, he was admitted into the city, +but he and his whole force were cut off by the people of Durham and its +neighbourhood. Robert’s expedition in short led only to a revolt of +York, where Edgar was received and siege was laid to the castle. William +marched in person with all speed; he relieved the castle; he recovered +the city and strengthened it by a second castle on the other side of the +river. Still he thought it prudent to take no present steps against +Durham. Soon after this came the second attempt of Harold’s sons in the +West. + +Later in this year William’s final warfare for the kingdom began. In +August, 1069 the long-promised help from Denmark came. Swegen sent his +brother Osbeorn and his sons Harold and Cnut, at the head of the whole +strength of Denmark and of other Northern lands. If the two enterprises +of Harold’s sons had been planned in concert with their Danish kinsmen, +the invaders or deliverers from opposite sides had failed to act +together. Nor are Swegen’s own objects quite clear. He sought to +deliver England from William and his Normans, but it is not so plain in +whose interest he acted. He would naturally seek the English crown for +himself or for one of his sons; the sons of Harold he would rather make +earls than kings. But he could feel no interest in the kingship of +Edgar. Yet, when the Danish fleet entered the Humber, and the whole +force of the North came to meet it, the English host had the heir of +Cerdic at its head. It is now that Waltheof the son of Siward, Earl of +Northampton and Huntingdon, first stands out as a leading actor. +Gospatric too was there; but this time not Edwin and Morkere. Danes and +English joined and marched upon York; the city was occupied; the castles +were taken; the Norman commanders were made prisoners, but not till they +had set fire to the city and burned the greater part of it, along with +the metropolitan minster. It is amazing to read that, after breaking +down the castles, the English host dispersed, and the Danish fleet +withdrew into the Humber. + +England was again ruined by lack of concert. The news of the coming of +the Danes led only to isolated movements which were put down piecemeal. +The men of Somerset and Dorset and the men of Devonshire and Cornwall +were put down separately, and the movement in Somerset was largely put +down by English troops. The citizens of Exeter, as well as the Norman +garrison of the castle, stood a siege on behalf of William. A rising on +the Welsh border under Eadric led only to the burning of Shrewsbury; a +rising in Staffordshire was held by William to call for his own presence. +But he first marched into Lindesey, and drove the crews of the Danish +ships across into Holderness; there he left two Norman leaders, one of +them his brother Robert of Mortain and Cornwall; he then went westward +and subdued Staffordshire, and marched towards York by way of Nottingham. +A constrained delay by the Aire gave him an opportunity for negotiation +with the Danish leaders. Osbeorn took bribes to forsake the English +cause, and William reached and entered York without resistance. He +restored the castles and kept his Christmas in the half-burned city. And +now William forsook his usual policy of clemency. The Northern shires +had been too hard to win. To weaken them, he decreed a merciless +harrying of the whole land, the direct effects of which were seen for +many years, and which left its mark on English history for ages. Till +the growth of modern industry reversed the relative position of Northern +and Southern England, the old Northumbrian kingdom never fully recovered +from the blow dealt by William, and remained the most backward part of +the land. Herein comes one of the most remarkable results of William’s +coming. His greatest work was to make England a kingdom which no man +henceforth thought of dividing. But the circumstances of his conquest of +Northern England ruled that for several centuries the unity of England +should take the form of a distinct preponderance of Southern England over +Northern. William’s reign strengthened every tendency that way, chiefly +by the fearful blow now dealt to the physical strength and well-being of +the Northern shires. From one side indeed the Norman Conquest was truly +a Saxon conquest. The King of London and Winchester became more fully +than ever king over the whole land. + + * * * * * + +The Conqueror had now only to gather in what was still left to conquer. +But, as military exploits, none are more memorable than the winter +marches which put William into full possession of England. The lands +beyond Tees still held out; in January 1070 he set forth to subdue them. +The Earls Waltheof and Gospatric made their submission, Waltheof in +person, Gospatric by proxy. William restored both of them to their +earldoms, and received Waltheof to his highest favour, giving him his +niece Judith in marriage. But he systematically wasted the land, as he +had wasted Yorkshire. He then returned to York, and thence set forth to +subdue the last city and shire that held out. A fearful march led him to +the one remaining fragment of free England, the unconquered land of +Chester. We know not how Chester fell; but the land was not won without +fighting, and a frightful harrying was the punishment. In all this we +see a distinct stage of moral downfall in the character of the Conqueror. +Yet it is thoroughly characteristic. All is calm, deliberate, politic. +William will have no more revolts, and he will at any cost make the land +incapable of revolt. Yet, as ever, there is no blood shed save in +battle. If men died of hunger, that was not William’s doing; nay, +charitable people like Abbot Æthelwig of Evesham might do what they could +to help the sufferers. But the lawful king, kept so long out of his +kingdom, would, at whatever price, be king over the whole land. And the +great harrying of the northern shires was the price paid for William’s +kingship over them. + +At Chester the work was ended which had begun at Pevensey. Less than +three years and a half, with intervals of peace, had made the Norman +invader king over all England. He had won the kingdom; he had now to +keep it. He had for seventeen years to deal with revolts on both sides +of the sea, with revolts both of Englishmen and of his own followers. +But in England his power was never shaken; in England he never knew +defeat. His English enemies he had subdued; the Danes were allowed to +remain and in some sort to help in his work by plundering during the +winter. The King now marched to the Salisbury of that day, the deeply +fenced hill of Old Sarum. The men who had conquered England were +reviewed in the great plain, and received their rewards. Some among them +had by failures of duty during the winter marches lost their right to +reward. Their punishment was to remain under arms forty days longer than +their comrades. William could trust himself to the very mutineers whom +he had picked out for punishment. He had now to begin his real reign; +and the champion of the Church had before all things to reform the evil +customs of the benighted islanders, and to give them shepherds of their +souls who might guide them in the right way. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. +THE SETTLEMENT OF ENGLAND. +1070–1086. + + +ENGLAND was now fully conquered, and William could for a moment sit down +quietly to the rule of the kingdom that he had won. The time that +immediately followed is spoken of as a time of comparative quiet, and of +less oppression than the times either before or after. Before and after, +warfare, on one side of the sea or the other, was the main business. +Hitherto William has been winning his kingdom in arms. Afterwards he was +more constantly called away to his foreign dominions, and his absence +always led to greater oppression in England. Just now he had a moment of +repose, when he could give his mind to the affairs of Church and State in +England. Peace indeed was not quite unbroken. Events were tending to +that famous revolt in the Fenland which is perhaps the best remembered +part of William’s reign. But even this movement was merely local, and +did not seriously interfere with William’s government. He was now +striving to settle the land in peace, and to make his rule as little +grievous to the conquered as might be. The harrying of Northumberland +showed that he now shrank from no harshness that would serve his ends; +but from mere purposeless oppression he was still free. Nor was he ever +inclined to needless change or to that scorn of the conquered which +meaner conquerors have often shown. He clearly wished both to change and +to oppress as little as he could. This is a side of him which has been +greatly misunderstood, largely through the book that passes for the +History of Ingulf Abbot of Crowland. Ingulf was William’s English +secretary; a real history of his writing would be most precious. But the +book that goes by his name is a forgery not older than the fourteenth +century, and is in all points contradicted by the genuine documents of +the time. Thus the forger makes William try to abolish the English +language and order the use of French in legal writings. This is pure +fiction. The truth is that, from the time of William’s coming, English +goes out of use in legal writings, but only gradually, and not in favour +of French. Ever since the coming of Augustine, English and Latin had +been alternative tongues; after the coming of William English becomes +less usual, and in the course of the twelfth century it goes out of use +in favour of Latin. There are no French documents till the thirteenth +century, and in that century English begins again. Instead of abolishing +the English tongue, William took care that his English-born son should +learn it, and he even began to learn it himself. A king of those days +held it for his duty to hear and redress his subjects’ complaints; he had +to go through the land and see for himself that those who acted in his +name did right among his people. This earlier kings had done; this +William wished to do; but he found his ignorance of English a hindrance. +Cares of other kinds checked his English studies, but he may have learned +enough to understand the meaning of his own English charters. Nor did +William try, as he is often imagined to have done, to root out the +ancient institutions of England, and to set up in their stead either the +existing institutions of Normandy or some new institutions of his own +devising. The truth is that with William began a gradual change in the +laws and customs of England, undoubtedly great, but far less than is +commonly thought. French names have often supplanted English, and have +made the amount of change seem greater than it really was. Still much +change did follow on the Norman Conquest, and the Norman Conquest was so +completely William’s own act that all that came of it was in some sort +his act also. But these changes were mainly the gradual results of the +state of things which followed William’s coming; they were but very +slightly the results of any formal acts of his. With a foreign king and +foreigners in all high places, much practical change could not fail to +follow, even where the letter of the law was unchanged. Still the +practical change was less than if the letter of the law had been changed +as well. English law was administered by foreign judges; the foreign +grantees of William held English land according to English law. The +Norman had no special position as a Norman; in every rank except perhaps +the very highest and the very lowest, he had Englishmen to his fellows. +All this helped to give the Norman Conquest of England its peculiar +character, to give it an air of having swept away everything English, +while its real work was to turn strangers into Englishmen. And that +character was impressed on William’s work by William himself. The king +claiming by legal right, but driven to assert his right by the sword, was +unlike both the foreign king who comes in by peaceful succession and the +foreign king who comes in without even the pretext of law. The Normans +too, if born soldiers, were also born lawyers, and no man was more deeply +impressed with the legal spirit than William himself. He loved neither +to change the law nor to transgress the law, and he had little need to do +either. He knew how to make the law his instrument, and, without either +changing or transgressing it, to use it to make himself all-powerful. He +thoroughly enjoyed that system of legal fictions and official euphemisms +which marks his reign. William himself became in some sort an +Englishman, and those to whom he granted English lands had in some sort +to become Englishmen in order to hold them. The Norman stepped into the +exact place of the Englishman whose land he held; he took his rights and +his burthens, and disputes about those rights and burthens were judged +according to English law by the witness of Englishmen. Reigning over two +races in one land, William would be lord of both alike, able to use +either against the other in case of need. He would make the most of +everything in the feelings and customs of either that tended to +strengthen his own hands. And, in the state of things in which men then +found themselves, whatever strengthened William’s hands strengthened law +and order in his kingdom. + +There was therefore nothing to lead William to make any large changes in +the letter of the English law. The powers of a King of the English, +wielded as he knew how to wield them, made him as great as he could wish +to be. Once granting the original wrong of his coming at all and +bringing a host of strangers with him, there is singularly little to +blame in the acts of the Conqueror. Of bloodshed, of wanton interference +with law and usage, there is wonderfully little. Englishmen and Normans +were held to have settled down in peace under the equal protection of +King William. The two races were drawing together; the process was +beginning which, a hundred years later, made it impossible, in any rank +but the highest and the lowest, to distinguish Norman from Englishman. +Among the smaller landowners and the townsfolk this intermingling had +already begun, while earls and bishops were not yet so exclusively +Norman, nor had the free churls of England as yet sunk so low as at a +later stage. Still some legislation was needed to settle the relations +of the two races. King William proclaimed the “renewal of the law of +King Edward.” This phrase has often been misunderstood; it is a common +form when peace and good order are restored after a period of +disturbance. The last reign which is looked back to as to a time of good +government becomes the standard of good government, and it is agreed +between king and people, between contending races or parties, that things +shall be as they were in the days of the model ruler. So we hear in +Normandy of the renewal of the law of Rolf, and in England of the renewal +of the law of Cnut. So at an earlier time Danes and Englishmen agreed in +the renewal of the law of Edgar. So now Normans and Englishmen agreed in +the renewal of the law of Edward. There was no code either of Edward’s +or of William’s making. William simply bound himself to rule as Edward +had ruled. But in restoring the law of King Edward, he added, “with the +additions which I have decreed for the advantage of the people of the +English.” + +These few words are indeed weighty. The little legislation of William’s +reign takes throughout the shape of additions. Nothing old is repealed; +a few new enactments are set up by the side of the old ones. And these +words describe, not only William’s actual legislation, but the widest +general effect of his coming. The Norman Conquest did little towards any +direct abolition of the older English laws or institutions. But it set +up some new institutions alongside of old ones; and it brought in not a +few names, habits, and ways of looking at things, which gradually did +their work. In England no man has pulled down; many have added and +modified. Our law is still the law of King Edward with the additions of +King William. Some old institutions took new names; some new +institutions with new names sprang up by the side of old ones. Sometimes +the old has lasted, sometimes the new. We still have a _king_ and not a +_roy_; but he gathers round him a _parliament_ and not a _vitenagemót_. +We have a _sheriff_ and not a _viscount_; but his district is more +commonly called a _county_ than a _shire_. But _county_ and _shire_ are +French and English for the same thing, and “parliament” is simply French +for the “deep speech” which King William had with his Witan. The +National Assembly of England has changed its name and its constitution +more than once; but it has never been changed by any sudden revolution, +never till later times by any formal enactment. There was no moment when +one kind of assembly supplanted another. And this has come because our +Conqueror was, both by his disposition and his circumstances, led to act +as a preserver and not as a destroyer. + +The greatest recorded acts of William, administrative and legislative, +come in the last days of his reign. But there are several enactments of +William belonging to various periods of his reign, and some of them to +this first moment of peace. Here we distinctly see William as an English +statesman, as a statesman who knew how to work a radical change under +conservative forms. One enactment, perhaps the earliest of all, provided +for the safety of the strangers who had come with him to subdue and to +settle in the land. The murder of a Norman by an Englishman, especially +of a Norman intruder by a dispossessed Englishman, was a thing that +doubtless often happened. William therefore provides for the safety of +those whom he calls “the men whom I brought with me or who have come +after me;” that is, the warriors of Senlac, Exeter, and York. These men +are put within his own peace; wrong done to them is wrong done to the +King, his crown and dignity. If the murderer cannot be found, the lord +and, failing him, the hundred, must make payment to the King. Of this +grew the presentment of _Englishry_, one of the few formal badges of +distinction between the conquering and the conquered race. Its practical +need could not have lasted beyond a generation or two, but it went on as +a form ages after it had lost all meaning. An unknown corpse, unless it +could be proved that the dead man was English, was assumed to be that of +a man who had come with King William, and the fine was levied. Some +other enactments were needed when two nations lived side by side in the +same land. As in earlier times, Roman and barbarian each kept his own +law, so now for some purposes the Frenchman—“Francigena”—and the +Englishman kept their own law. This is chiefly with regard to the modes +of appealing to God’s judgement in doubtful cases. The English did this +by ordeal, the Normans by wager of battle. When a man of one nation +appealed a man of the other, the accused chose the mode of trial. If an +Englishman appealed a Frenchman and declined to prove his charge either +way, the Frenchman might clear himself by oath. But these privileges +were strictly confined to Frenchmen who had come with William and after +him. Frenchmen who had in Edward’s time settled in England as the land +of their own choice, reckoned as Englishmen. Other enactments, fresh +enactments of older laws, touched both races. The slave trade was rife +in its worst form; men were sold out of the land, chiefly to the Danes of +Ireland. Earlier kings had denounced the crime, and earlier bishops had +preached against it. William denounced it again under the penalty of +forfeiture of all lands and goods, and Saint Wulfstan, the Bishop of +Worcester, persuaded the chief offenders, Englishmen of Bristol, to give +up their darling sin for a season. Yet in the next reign Anselm and his +synod had once more to denounce the crime under spiritual penalties, when +they had no longer the strong arm of William to enforce them. + +Another law bears more than all the personal impress of William. In it +he at once, on one side, forestalls the most humane theories of modern +times, and on the other sins most directly against them. His remarkable +unwillingness to put any man to death, except among the chances of the +battle-field, was to some extent the feeling of his age. With him the +feeling takes the shape of a formal law. He forbids the infliction of +death for any crime whatever. But those who may on this score be +disposed to claim the Conqueror as a sympathizer will be shocked at the +next enactment. Those crimes which kings less merciful than William +would have punished with death are to be punished with loss of eyes or +other foul and cruel mutilations. Punishments of this kind now seem more +revolting than death, though possibly, now as then, the sufferer himself +might think otherwise. But in those days to substitute mutilation for +death, in the case of crimes which were held to deserve death, was +universally deemed an act of mercy. Grave men shrank from sending their +fellow-creatures out of the world, perhaps without time for repentance; +but physical sympathy with physical suffering had little place in their +minds. In the next century a feeling against bodily mutilation gradually +comes in; but as yet the mildest and most thoughtful men, Anselm himself, +make no protest against it when it is believed to be really deserved. +There is no sign of any general complaint on this score. The English +Chronicler applauds the strict police of which mutilation formed a part, +and in one case he deliberately holds it to be the fitting punishment of +the offence. In fact, when penal settlements were unknown and legal +prisons were few and loathsome, there was something to be said for a +punishment which disabled the criminal from repeating his offence. In +William’s jurisprudence mutilation became the ordinary sentence of the +murderer, the robber, the ravisher, sometimes also of English revolters +against William’s power. We must in short balance his mercy against the +mercy of Kirk and Jeffreys. + +The ground on which the English Chronicler does raise his wail on behalf +of his countrymen is the special jurisprudence of the forests and the +extortions of money with which he charges the Conqueror. In both these +points the royal hand became far heavier under the Norman rule. In both +William’s character grew darker as he grew older. He is charged with +unlawful exactions of money, in his character alike of sovereign and of +landlord. We read of his sharp practice in dealing with the profits of +the royal demesnes. He would turn out the tenant to whom he had just let +the land, if another offered a higher rent. But with regard to taxation, +we must remember that William’s exactions, however heavy at the time, +were a step in the direction of regular government. In those days all +taxation was disliked. Direct taking of the subject’s money by the King +was deemed an extraordinary resource to be justified only by some +extraordinary emergency, to buy off the Danes or to hire soldiers against +them. Men long after still dreamed that the King could “live of his +own,” that he could pay all expenses of his court and government out of +the rents and services due to him as a landowner, without asking his +people for anything in the character of sovereign. Demands of money on +behalf of the King now became both heavier and more frequent. And +another change which had long been gradually working now came to a head. +When, centuries later, the King was bidden to “live of his own,” men had +forgotten that the land of the King had once been the land of the nation. +In all Teutonic communities, great and small, just as in the city +communities of Greece and Italy, the community itself was a chief +landowner. The nation had its _folkland_, its _ager publicus_, the +property of no one man but of the whole state. Out of this, by the +common consent, portions might be cut off and _booked_—granted by a +written document—to particular men as their own _bookland_. The King +might have his private estate, to be dealt with at his own pleasure, but +of the _folkland_, the land of the nation, he was only the chief +administrator, bound to act by the advice of his Witan. But in this case +more than in others, the advice of the Witan could not fail to become +formal; the _folkland_, ever growing through confiscations, ever +lessening through grants, gradually came to be looked on as the land of +the King, to be dealt with as he thought good. We must not look for any +change formally enacted; but in Edward’s day the notion of _folkland_, as +the possession of the nation and not of the King, could have been only a +survival, and in William’s day even the survival passed away. The land +which was practically the land of King Edward became, as a matter of +course, _Terra Regis_, the land of King William. That land was now +enlarged by greater confiscations and lessened by greater grants than +ever. For a moment, every lay estate had been part of the land of +William. And far more than had been the land of the nation remained the +land of the King, to be dealt with as he thought good. + +In the tenure of land William seems to have made no formal change. But +the circumstances of his reign gave increased strength to certain +tendencies which had been long afloat. And out of them, in the next +reign, the malignant genius of Randolf Flambard devised a systematic code +of oppression. Yet even in his work there is little of formal change. +There are no laws of William Rufus. The so called feudal incidents, the +claims of marriage, wardship, and the like, on the part of the lord, the +ancient _heriot_ developed into the later _relief_, all these things were +in the germ under William, as they had been in the germ long before him. +In the hands of Randolf Flambard they stiffen into established custom; +their legal acknowledgement comes from the charter of Henry the First +which promises to reform their abuses. Thus the Conqueror clearly +claimed the right to interfere with the marriages of his nobles, at any +rate to forbid a marriage to which he objected on grounds of policy. +Under Randolf Flambard this became a regular claim, which of course was +made a means of extorting money. Under Henry the claim is regulated and +modified, but by being regulated and modified, it is legally established. + +The ordinary administration of the kingdom went on under William, greatly +modified by the circumstances of his reign, but hardly at all changed in +outward form. Like the kings that were before him, he “wore his crown” +at the three great feasts, at Easter at Winchester, at Pentecost at +Westminster, at Christmas at Gloucester. Like the kings that were before +him, he gathered together the great men of the realm, and when need was, +the small men also. Nothing seems to have been changed in the +constitution or the powers of the assembly; but its spirit must have been +utterly changed. The innermost circle, earls, bishops, great officers of +state and household, gradually changed from a body of Englishmen with a +few strangers among them into a body of strangers among whom two or three +Englishmen still kept their places. The result of their “deep speech” +with William was not likely to be other than an assent to William’s will. +The ordinary freeman did not lose his abstract right to come and shout +“Yea, yea,” to any addition that King William made to the law of King +Edward. But there would be nothing to tempt him to come, unless King +William thought fit to bid him. But once at least William did gather +together, if not every freeman, at least all freeholders of the smallest +account. On one point the Conqueror had fully made up his mind; on one +point he was to be a benefactor to his kingdom through all succeeding +ages. The realm of England was to be one and indivisible. No ruler or +subject in the kingdom of England should again dream that that kingdom +could be split asunder. When he offered Harold the underkingship of the +realm or of some part of it, he did so doubtless only in the full +conviction that the offer would be refused. No such offer should be +heard of again. There should be no such division as had been between +Cnut and Edmund, between Harthacnut and the first Harold, such as Edwin +and Morkere had dreamed of in later times. Nor should the kingdom be +split asunder in that subtler way which William of all men best +understood, the way in which the Frankish kingdoms, East and West, had +split asunder. He would have no dukes or earls who might become kings in +all but name, each in his own duchy or earldom. No man in his realm +should be to him as he was to his overlord at Paris. No man in his realm +should plead duty towards an immediate lord as an excuse for breach of +duty towards the lord of that immediate lord. Hence William’s policy +with regard to earldoms. There was to be nothing like the great +governments which had been held by Godwine, Leofric, and Siward; an Earl +of the West-Saxons or the Northumbrians was too like a Duke of the +Normans to be endured by one who was Duke of the Normans himself. The +earl, even of the king’s appointment, still represented the separate +being of the district over which he was set. He was the king’s +representative rather than merely his officer; if he was a magistrate and +not a prince, he often sat in the seat of former princes, and might +easily grow into a prince. And at last, at the very end of his reign, as +the finishing of his work, he took the final step that made England for +ever one. In 1086 every landowner in England swore to be faithful to +King William within and without England and to defend him against his +enemies. The subject’s duty to the King was to any duty which the vassal +might owe to any inferior lord. When the King was the embodiment of +national unity and orderly government, this was the greatest of all steps +in the direction of both. Never did William or any other man act more +distinctly as an English statesman, never did any one act tell more +directly towards the later making of England, than this memorable act of +the Conqueror. Here indeed is an addition which William made to the law +of Edward for the truest good of the English folk. And yet no enactment +has ever been more thoroughly misunderstood. Lawyer after lawyer has set +down in his book that, at the assembly of Salisbury in 1086, William +introduced “the feudal system.” If the words “feudal system” have any +meaning, the object of the law now made was to hinder any “feudal system” +from coming into England. William would be king of a kingdom, head of a +commonwealth, personal lord of every man in his realm, not merely, like a +King of the French, external lord of princes whose subjects owed him no +allegiance. This greatest monument of the Conqueror’s statesmanship was +carried into effect in a special assembly of the English nation gathered +on the first day of August 1086 on the great plain of Salisbury. Now, +perhaps for the first time, we get a distinct foreshadowing of Lords and +Commons. The Witan, the great men of the realm, and “the landsitting +men,” the whole body of landowners, are now distinguished. The point is +that William required the personal presence of every man whose personal +allegiance he thought worth having. Every man in the mixed assembly, +mixed indeed in race and speech, the King’s own men and the men of other +lords, took the oath and became the man of King William. On that day +England became for ever a kingdom one and indivisible, which since that +day no man has dreamed of parting asunder. + + * * * * * + +The great assembly of 1086 will come again among the events of William’s +later reign; it comes here as the last act of that general settlement +which began in 1070. That settlement, besides its secular side, has also +an ecclesiastical side of a somewhat different character. In both +William’s coming brought the island kingdom into a closer connexion with +the continent; and brought a large displacement of Englishmen and a large +promotion of strangers. But on the ecclesiastical side, though the +changes were less violent, there was a more marked beginning of a new +state of things. The religious missionary was more inclined to innovate +than the military conqueror. Here William not only added but changed; on +one point he even proclaimed that the existing law of England was bad. +Certainly the religious state of England was likely to displease +churchmen from the mainland. The English Church, so directly the child +of the Roman, was, for that very reason, less dependent on her parent. +She was a free colony, not a conquered province. The English Church too +was most distinctly national; no land came so near to that ideal state of +things in which the Church is the nation on its religious side. Papal +authority therefore was weaker in England than elsewhere, and a less +careful line was drawn between spiritual and temporal things and +jurisdictions. Two friendly powers could take liberties with each other. +The national assemblies dealt with ecclesiastical as well as with +temporal matters; one indeed among our ancient laws blames any assembly +that did otherwise. Bishop and earl sat together in the local _Gemót_, +to deal with many matters which, according to continental ideas, should +have been dealt with in separate courts. And, by what in continental +eyes seemed a strange laxity of discipline, priests, bishops, members of +capitular bodies, were often married. The English diocesan arrangements +were unlike continental models. In Gaul, by a tradition of Roman date, +the bishop was bishop of the city. His diocese was marked by the extent +of the civil jurisdiction of the city. His home, his head church, his +_bishopstool_ in the head church, were all in the city. In Teutonic +England the bishop was commonly bishop, not of a city but of a tribe or +district; his style was that of a tribe; his home, his head church, his +bishopstool, might be anywhere within the territory of that tribe. +Still, on the greatest point of all, matters in England were thoroughly +to William’s liking; nowhere did the King stand forth more distinctly as +the Supreme Governor of the Church. In England, as in Normandy, the +right of the sovereign to the investiture of ecclesiastical benefices was +ancient and undisputed. What Edward had freely done, William went on +freely doing, and Hildebrand himself never ventured on a word of +remonstrance against a power which he deemed so wrongful in the hands of +his own sovereign. William had but to stand on the rights of his +predecessors. When Gregory asked for homage for the crown which he had +in some sort given, William answered indeed as an English king. What the +kings before him had done for or paid to the Roman see, that would he do +and pay; but this no king before him had ever done, nor would he be the +first to do it. But while William thus maintained the rights of his +crown, he was willing and eager to do all that seemed needful for +ecclesiastical reform. And the general result of his reform was to +weaken the insular independence of England, to make her Church more like +the other Churches of the West, and to increase the power of the Roman +Bishop. + +William had now a fellow-worker in his taste. The subtle spirit which +had helped to win his kingdom was now at his side to help him to rule it. +Within a few months after the taking of Chester Lanfranc sat on the +throne of Augustine. As soon as the actual Conquest was over, William +began to give his mind to ecclesiastical matters. It might look like +sacrilege when he caused all the monasteries of England to be harried. +But no harm was done to the monks or to their possessions. The holy +houses were searched for the hoards which the rich men of England, +fearing the new king, had laid up in the monastic treasuries. William +looked on these hoards as part of the forfeited goods of rebels, and +carried them off during the Lent of 1070. This done, he sat steadily +down to the reform of the English Church. + +He had three papal legates to guide him, one of whom, Ermenfrid, Bishop +of Sitten, had come in on a like errand in the time of Edward. It was a +kind of solemn confirmation of the Conquest, when, at the assembly held +at Winchester in 1070, the King’s crown was placed on his head by +Ermenfrid. The work of deposing English prelates and appointing foreign +successors now began. The primacy of York was regularly vacant; Ealdred +had died as the Danes sailed up the Humber to assault or to deliver his +city. The primacy of Canterbury was to be made vacant by the deposition +of Stigand. His canonical position had always been doubtful; neither +Harold nor William had been crowned by him; yet William had treated him +hitherto with marked courtesy, and he had consecrated at least one Norman +bishop, Remigius of Dorchester. He was now deprived both of the +archbishopric and of the bishopric of Winchester which he held with it, +and was kept under restraint for the rest of his life. According to +foreign canonical rules the sentence may pass as just; but it marked a +stage in the conquest of England when a stout-hearted Englishman was +removed from the highest place in the English Church to make way for the +innermost counsellor of the Conqueror. In the Pentecostal assembly, held +at Windsor, Lanfranc was appointed archbishop; his excuses were overcome +by his old master Herlwin of Bec; he came to England, and on August 15, +1070 he was consecrated to the primacy. + +Other deprivations and appointments took place in these assemblies. The +see of York was given to Thomas, a canon of Bayeux, a man of high +character and memorable in the local history of his see. The abbey of +Peterborough was vacant by the death of Brand, who had received the staff +from the uncrowned Eadgar. It was only by rich gifts that he had turned +away the wrath of William from his house. The Fenland was perhaps +already stirring, and the Abbot of Peterborough might have to act as a +military commander. In this case the prelate appointed, a Norman named +Turold, was accordingly more of a soldier than of a monk. From these +assemblies of 1070 the series of William’s ecclesiastical changes goes +on. As the English bishops die or are deprived, strangers take their +place. They are commonly Normans, but Walcher, who became Bishop of +Durham in 1071, was one of those natives of Lorraine who had been largely +favoured in Edward’s day. At the time of William’s death Wulfstan was +the only Englishman who kept a bishopric. Even his deprivation had once +been thought of. The story takes a legendary shape, but it throws an +important light on the relations of Church and State in England. In an +assembly held in the West Minster Wulfstan is called on by William and +Lanfranc to give up his staff. He refuses; he will give it back to him +who gave it, and places it on the tomb of his dead master Edward. No of +his enemies can move it. The sentence is recalled, and the staff yields +to his touch. Edward was not yet a canonized saint; the appeal is simply +from the living and foreign king to the dead and native king. This +legend, growing up when Western Europe was torn in pieces by the struggle +about investitures, proves better than the most authentic documents how +the right which Popes denied to Emperors was taken for granted in the +case of an English king. But, while the spoils of England, temporal and +spiritual, were thus scattered abroad among men of the conquering race, +two men at least among them refused all share in plunder which they +deemed unrighteous. One gallant Norman knight, Gulbert of Hugleville, +followed William through all his campaigns, but when English estates were +offered as his reward, he refused to share in unrighteous gains, and went +back to the lands of his fathers which he could hold with a good +conscience. And one monk, Wimund of Saint-Leutfried, not only refused +bishoprics and abbeys, but rebuked the Conqueror for wrong and robbery. +And William bore no grudge against his censor, but, when the +archbishopric of Rouen became vacant, he offered it to the man who had +rebuked him. Among the worthies of England Gulbert and Wimund can hardly +claim a place, but a place should surely be theirs among the men whom +England honours. + + * * * * * + +The primacy of Lanfranc is one of the most memorable in our history. In +the words of the parable put forth by Anselm in the next reign, the +plough of the English Church was for seventeen years drawn by two oxen of +equal strength. By ancient English custom the Archbishop of Canterbury +was the King’s special counsellor, the special representative of his +Church and people. Lanfranc cannot be charged with any direct +oppression; yet in the hands of a stranger who had his spiritual conquest +to make, the tribunitian office of former archbishops was lost in that of +chief minister of the sovereign. In the first action of their joint +rule, the interest of king and primate was the same. Lanfranc sought for +a more distinct acknowledgement of the superiority of Canterbury over the +rival metropolis of York. And this fell in with William’s schemes for +the consolidation of the kingdom. The political motive is avowed. +Northumberland, which had been so hard to subdue and which still lay open +to Danish invaders or deliverers, was still dangerous. An independent +Archbishop of York might consecrate a King of the Northumbrians, native +or Danish, who might grow into a King of the English. The Northern +metropolitan had unwillingly to admit the superiority, and something +more, of the Southern. The caution of William and his ecclesiastical +adviser reckoned it among possible chances that even Thomas of Bayeux +might crown an invading Cnut or Harold in opposition to his native +sovereign and benefactor. + +For some of his own purposes, William had perhaps chosen his minister too +wisely. The objects of the two colleagues were not always the same. +Lanfranc, sprung from Imperialist Pavia, was no zealot for extravagant +papal claims. The caution with which he bore himself during the schism +which followed the strife between Gregory and Henry brought on him more +than one papal censure. Yet the general tendency of his administration +was towards the growth of ecclesiastical, and even of papal, claims. +William never dreamed of giving up his ecclesiastical supremacy or of +exempting churchmen from the ordinary power of the law. But the division +of the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the increased frequency of +synods distinct from the general assemblies of the realm—even though the +acts of those synods needed the royal assent—were steps towards that +exemption of churchmen from the civil power which was asserted in one +memorable saying towards the end of William’s own reign. William could +hold his own against Hildebrand himself; yet the increased intercourse +with Rome, the more frequent presence of Roman Legates, all tended to +increase the papal claims and the deference yielded to them. William +refused homage to Gregory; but it is significant that Gregory asked for +it. It was a step towards the day when a King of England was glad to +offer it. The increased strictness as to the marriage of the clergy +tended the same way. Lanfranc did not at once enforce the full rigour of +Hildebrand’s decrees. Marriage was forbidden for the future; the +capitular clergy had to part from their wives; but the vested interest of +the parish priest was respected. In another point William directly +helped to undermine his own authority and the independence of his +kingdom. He exempted his abbey of the Battle from the authority of the +diocesan bishop. With this began a crowd of such exemptions, which, by +weakening local authority, strengthened the power of the Roman see. All +these things helped on Hildebrand’s great scheme which made the clergy +everywhere members of one distinct and exclusive body, with the Roman +Bishop at their head. Whatever tended to part the clergy from other men +tended to weaken the throne of every king. While William reigned with +Lanfranc at his side, these things were not felt; but the seed was sown +for the controversy between Henry and Thomas and for the humiliation of +John. + +Even those changes of Lanfranc’s primacy which seem of purely +ecclesiastical concern all helped, in some way to increase the +intercourse between England and the continent or to break down some +insular peculiarity. And whatever did this increased the power of Rome. +Even the decree of 1075 that bishoprics should be removed to the chief +cities of their dioceses helped to make England more like Gaul or Italy. +So did the fancy of William’s bishops and abbots for rebuilding their +churches on a greater scale and in the last devised continental style. +All tended to make England less of another world. On the other hand, one +insular peculiarity well served the purposes of the new primate. +Monastic chapters in episcopal churches were almost unknown out of +England. Lanfranc, himself a monk, favoured monks in this matter also. +In several churches the secular canons were displaced by monks. The +corporate spirit of the regulars, and their dependence on Rome, was far +stronger than that of the secular clergy. The secular chapters could be +refractory, but the disputes between them and their bishops were mainly +of local importance; they form no such part of the general story of +ecclesiastical and papal advance as the long tale of the quarrel between +the archbishops and the monks of Christ Church. + +Lanfranc survived William, and placed the crown on the head of his +successor. The friendship between king and archbishop remained unbroken +through their joint lives. Lanfranc’s acts were William’s acts; what the +Primate did must have been approved by the King. How far William’s acts +were Lanfranc’s acts it is less easy to say. But the Archbishop was ever +a trusted minister, and a trusted counsellor, and in the King’s frequent +absences from England, he often acted as his lieutenant. We do not find +him actually taking a part in warfare, but he duly reports military +successes to his sovereign. It was William’s combined wisdom and good +luck to provide himself with a counsellor than whom for his immediate +purposes none could be better. A man either of a higher or a lower moral +level than Lanfranc, a saint like Anselm or one of the mere worldly +bishops of the time, would not have done his work so well. William +needed an ecclesiastical statesman, neither unscrupulous nor +over-scrupulous, and he found him in the lawyer of Pavia, the doctor of +Avranches, the monk of Bec, the abbot of Saint Stephen’s. If Lanfranc +sometimes unwittingly outwitted both his master and himself, if his +policy served the purposes of Rome more than suited the purposes of +either, that is the common course of human affairs. Great men are apt to +forget that systems which they can work themselves cannot be worked by +smaller men. From this error neither William nor Lanfranc was free. +But, from their own point of view, it was their only error. Their work +was to subdue England, soul and body; and they subdued it. That work +could not be done without great wrong: but no other two men of that day +could have done it with so little wrong. The shrinking from needless and +violent change which is so strongly characteristic of William, and less +strongly of Lanfranc also, made their work at the time easier to be done; +in the course of ages it made it easier to be undone. + + + + +CHAPTER X. +THE REVOLTS AGAINST WILLIAM. +1070–1086. + + +THE years which saw the settlement of England, though not years of +constant fighting like the two years between the march to Exeter and the +fall of Chester, were not years of perfect peace. William had to +withstand foes on both sides of the sea, to withstand foes in his own +household, to undergo his first defeat, to receive his first wound in +personal conflict. Nothing shook his firm hold either on duchy or +kingdom; but in his later years his good luck forsook him. And men did +not fail to connect this change in his future with a change in himself, +above all with one deed of blood which stands out as utterly unlike all +his other recorded acts. + +But the amount of warfare which William had to go through in these later +years was small compared with the great struggles of his earlier days. +There is no tale to tell like the war of Val-ès-dunes, like the French +invasions of Normandy, like the campaigns that won England. One event +only of the earlier time is repeated almost as exactly as an event can be +repeated. William had won Maine once; he had now to win it again, and +less thoroughly. As Conqueror his work is done; a single expedition into +Wales is the only campaign of this part of his life that led to any +increase of territory. + +When William sat down to the settlement of his kingdom after the fall of +Chester, he was in the strictest sense full king over all England. For +the moment the whole land obeyed him; at no later moment did any large +part of the land fail to obey him. All opposition was now revolt. Men +were no longer keeping out an invader; when they rose, they rose against +a power which, however wrongfully, was the established government of the +land. Two such movements took place. One was a real revolt of +Englishmen against foreign rule. The other was a rebellion of William’s +own earls in their own interests, in which English feeling went with the +King. Both were short sharp struggles which stand out boldly in the +tale. More important in the general story, though less striking in +detail, are the relations of William to the other powers in and near the +isle of Britain. With the crown of the West-Saxon kings, he had taken up +their claims to supremacy over the whole island, and probably beyond it. +And even without such claims, border warfare with his Welsh and Scottish +neighbours could not be avoided. Counting from the completion of the +real conquest of England in 1070, there were in William’s reign three +distinct sources of disturbance. There were revolts within the kingdom +of England. There was border warfare in Britain. There were revolts in +William’s continental dominions. And we may add actual foreign warfare +or threats of foreign warfare, affecting William, sometimes in his +Norman, sometimes in his English character. + +With the affairs of Wales William had little personally to do. In this +he is unlike those who came immediately before and after him. In the +lives of Harold and of William Rufus personal warfare against the Welsh +forms an important part. William the Great commonly left this kind of +work to the earls of the frontier, to Hugh of Chester, Roger of +Shrewsbury, and to his early friend William of Hereford, so long as that +fierce warrior’s life lasted. These earls were ever at war with the +Welsh princes, and they extended the English kingdom at their cost. Once +only did the King take a personal share in the work, when he entered +South Wales, in 1081. We hear vaguely of his subduing the land and +founding castles; we see more distinctly that he released many subjects +who were in British bondage, and that he went on a religious pilgrimage +to Saint David’s. This last journey is in some accounts connected with +schemes for the conquest of Ireland. And in one most remarkable passage +of the English Chronicle, the writer for once speculates as to what might +have happened but did not. Had William lived two years longer, he would +have won Ireland by his wisdom without weapons. And if William had won +Ireland either by wisdom or by weapons, he would assuredly have known +better how to deal with it than most of those who have come after him. +If any man could have joined together the lands which God has put +asunder, surely it was he. This mysterious saying must have a reference +to some definite act or plan of which we have no other record. And some +slight approach to the process of winning Ireland without weapons does +appear in the ecclesiastical intercourse between England and Ireland +which now begins. Both the native Irish princes and the Danes of the +east coast begin to treat Lanfranc as their metropolitan, and to send +bishops to him for consecration. The name of the King of the English is +never mentioned in the letters which passed between the English primate +and the kings and bishops of Ireland. It may be that William was biding +his time for some act of special wisdom; but our speculations cannot go +any further than those of the Peterborough Chronicler. + +Revolt within the kingdom and invasion from without both began in the +year in which the Conquest was brought to an end. William’s +ecclesiastical reforms were interrupted by the revolt of the Fenland. +William’s authority had never been fully acknowledged in that corner of +England, while he wore his crown and held his councils elsewhere. But +the place where disturbances began, the abbey of Peterborough, was +certainly in William’s obedience. The warfare made memorable by the name +of Hereward began in June 1070, and a Scottish harrying of Northern +England, the second of five which are laid to the charge of Malcolm, took +place in the same year, and most likely about the same time. The English +movement is connected alike with the course of the Danish fleet and with +the appointment of Turold to the abbey of Peterborough. William had +bribed the Danish commanders to forsake their English allies, and he +allowed them to ravage the coast. A later bribe took them back to +Denmark; but not till they had shown themselves in the waters of Ely. +The people, largely of Danish descent, flocked to them, thinking, as the +Chronicler says, that they would win the whole land. The movement was +doubtless in favour of the kingship of Swegen. But nothing was done by +Danes and English together save to plunder Peterborough abbey. Hereward, +said to have been the nephew of Turold’s English predecessor, doubtless +looked on the holy place, under a Norman abbot, as part of the enemy’s +country. + +The name of Hereward has gathered round it such a mass of fiction, old +and new, that it is hard to disentangle the few details of his real +history. His descent and birth-place are uncertain; but he was assuredly +a man of Lincolnshire, and assuredly not the son of Earl Leofric. For +some unknown cause, he had been banished in the days of Edward or of +Harold. He now came back to lead his countrymen against William. He was +the soul of the movement of which the abbey of Ely became the centre. +The isle, then easily defensible, was the last English ground on which +the Conqueror was defied by Englishmen fighting for England. The men of +the Fenland were zealous; the monks of Ely were zealous; helpers came in +from other parts of England. English leaders left their shelter in +Scotland to share the dangers of their countrymen; even Edwin and Morkere +at last plucked up heart to leave William’s court and join the patriotic +movement. Edwin was pursued; he was betrayed by traitors; he was +overtaken and slain, to William’s deep grief, we are told. His brother +reached the isle, and helped in its defence. William now felt that the +revolt called for his own presence and his full energies. The isle was +stoutly attacked and stoutly defended, till, according to one version, +the monks betrayed the stronghold to the King. According to another, +Morkere was induced to surrender by promises of mercy which William +failed to fulfil. In any case, before the year 1071 was ended, the isle +of Ely was in William’s hands. Hereward alone with a few companions made +their way out by sea. William was less merciful than usual; still no man +was put to death. Some were mutilated, some imprisoned; Morkere and +other chief men spent the rest of their days in bonds. The temper of the +Conqueror had now fearfully hardened. Still he could honour a valiant +enemy; those who resisted to the last fared best. All the legends of +Hereward’s later days speak of him as admitted to William’s peace and +favour. One makes him die quietly, another kills him at the hands of +Norman enemies, but not at William’s bidding or with William’s knowledge. +Evidence a little better suggests that he bore arms for his new sovereign +beyond the sea; and an entry in Domesday also suggests that he held lands +under Count Robert of Mortain in Warwickshire. It would suit William’s +policy, when he received Hereward to his favour, to make him exchange +lands near to the scene of his exploits for lands in a distant shire held +under the lordship of the King’s brother. + +Meanwhile, most likely in the summer months of 1070, Malcolm ravaged +Cleveland, Durham, and other districts where there must have been little +left to ravage. Meanwhile the Ætheling Edgar and his sisters, with other +English exiles, sought shelter in Scotland, and were hospitably received. +At the same time Gospatric, now William’s earl in Northumberland, +retaliated by a harrying of Scottish Cumberland, which provoked Malcolm +to greater cruelties. It was said that there was no house in Scotland so +poor that it had not an English bondman. Presently some of Malcolm’s +English guests joined the defenders of Ely; those of highest birth stayed +in Scotland, and Malcolm, after much striving, persuaded Margaret the +sister of Edgar to become his wife. Her praises are written in Scottish +history, and the marriage had no small share in the process which made +the Scottish kings and the lands which formed their real kingdom +practically English. The sons and grandsons of Margaret, sprung of the +Old-English kingly house, were far more English within their own realm +than the Norman and Angevin kings of Southern England. But within the +English border men looked at things with other eyes. Thrice again did +Malcolm ravage England; two and twenty years later he was slain in his +last visit of havoc. William meanwhile and his earls at least drew to +themselves some measure of loyalty from the men of Northern England as +the guardians of the land against the Scot. + +For the present however Malcolm’s invasion was only avenged by +Gospatric’s harrying in Cumberland. The year 1071 called William to Ely; +in the early part of 1072 his presence was still needed on the mainland; +in August he found leisure for a march against Scotland. He went as an +English king, to assert the rights of the English crown, to avenge wrongs +done to the English land; and on such an errand Englishmen followed him +gladly. Eadric, the defender of Herefordshire, had made his peace with +the King, and he now held a place of high honour in his army. But if +William met with any armed resistance on his Scottish expedition, it did +not amount to a pitched battle. He passed through Lothian into Scotland; +he crossed Forth and drew near to Tay, and there, by the round tower of +Abernethy, the King of Scots swore oaths and gave hostages and became the +man of the King of the English. William might now call himself, like his +West-Saxon predecessors, _Bretwalda_ and _Basileus_ of the isle of +Britain. This was the highest point of his fortune. Duke of the +Normans, King of the English, he was undisputed lord from the march of +Anjou to the narrow sea between Caithness and Orkney. + +The exact terms of the treaty between William’s royal vassal and his +overlord are unknown. But one of them was clearly the removal of Edgar +from Scotland. Before long he was on the continent. William had not yet +learned that Edgar was less dangerous in Britain than in any other part +of the world, and that he was safest of all in William’s own court. +Homage done and hostages received, the Lord of all Britain returned to +his immediate kingdom. His march is connected with many legendary +stories. In real history it is marked by the foundation of the castle of +Durham, and by the Conqueror’s confirmation of the privileges of the +palatine bishops. If all the earls of England had been like the earls of +Chester, and all the bishops like the bishops of Durham, England would +assuredly have split up, like Germany, into a loose federation of +temporal and spiritual princes. This it was William’s special work to +hinder; but he doubtless saw that the exceptional privileges of one or +two favoured lordships, standing in marked contrast to the rest, would +not really interfere with his great plan of union. And William would +hardly have confirmed the sees of London or Winchester in the privileges +which he allowed to the distant see of Durham. He now also made a grant +of earldoms, the object of which is less clear than that of most of his +actions. It is not easy to say why Gospatric was deprived of his +earldom. His former acts of hostility to William had been covered by his +pardon and reappointment in 1069; and since then he had acted as a loyal, +if perhaps an indiscreet, guardian of the land. Two greater earldoms +than his had become vacant by the revolt, the death, the imprisonment, of +Edwin and Morkere. But these William had no intention of filling. He +would not have in his realm anything so dangerous as an earl of the +Mercian’s or the Northumbrians in the old sense, whether English or +Norman. But the defence of the northern frontier needed an earl to rule +Northumberland in the later sense, the land north of the Tyne. And after +the fate of Robert of Comines, William could not as yet put a Norman earl +in so perilous a post. But the Englishman whom he chose was open to the +same charges as the deposed Gospatric. For he was Waltheof the son of +Siward, the hero of the storm of York in 1069. Already Earl of +Northampton and Huntingdon, he was at this time high in the King’s +personal favour, perhaps already the husband of the King’s niece. One +side of William’s policy comes out here. Union was sometimes helped by +division. There were men whom William loved to make great, but whom he +had no mind to make dangerous. He gave them vast estates, but estates +for the most part scattered over different parts of the kingdom. It was +only in the border earldoms and in Cornwall that he allowed anything at +all near to the lordship of a whole shire to be put in the hands of a +single man. One Norman and one Englishman held two earldoms together; +but they were earldoms far apart. Roger of Montgomery held the earldoms +of Shrewsbury and Sussex, and Waltheof to his midland earldom of +Northampton and Huntingdon now added the rule of distant Northumberland. +The men who had fought most stoutly against William were the men whom he +most willingly received to favour. Eadric and Hereward were honoured; +Waltheof was honoured more highly. He ranked along with the greatest +Normans; his position was perhaps higher than any but the King’s born +kinsmen. But the whole tale of Waltheof is a problem that touches the +character of the king under whom he rose and fell. Lifted up higher than +any other man among the conquered, he was the one man whom William put to +death on a political charge. It is hard to see the reasons for either +his rise or his fall. It was doubtless mainly his end which won him the +abiding reverence of his countrymen. His valour and his piety are loudly +praised. But his valour we know only from his one personal exploit at +York; his piety was consistent with a base murder. In other matters, he +seems amiable, irresolute, and of a scrupulous conscience, and +Northumbrian morality perhaps saw no great crime in a murder committed +under the traditions of a Northumbrian deadly feud. Long before Waltheof +was born, his grandfather Earl Ealdred had been killed by a certain Carl. +The sons of Carl had fought by his side at York; but, notwithstanding +this comradeship, the first act of Waltheof’s rule in Northumberland was +to send men to slay them beyond the bounds of his earldom. A crime that +was perhaps admired in Northumberland and unheard of elsewhere did not +lose him either the favour of the King or the friendship of his neighbour +Bishop Walcher, a reforming prelate with whom Waltheof acted in concert. +And when he was chosen as the single exception to William’s merciful +rule, it was not for this undoubted crime, but on charges of which, even +if guilty, he might well have been forgiven. + + * * * * * + +The sojourn of William on the continent in 1072 carries us out of England +and Normandy into the general affairs of Europe. Signs may have already +showed themselves of what was coming to the south of Normandy; but the +interest of the moment lay in the country of Matilda. Flanders, long the +firm ally of Normandy, was now to change into a bitter enemy. Count +Baldwin died in 1067; his successor of the same name died three years +later, and a war followed between his widow Richildis, the guardian of +his young son Arnulf, and his brother Robert the Frisian. Robert had won +fame in the East; he had received the sovereignty of Friesland—a name +which takes in Holland and Zealand—and he was now invited to deliver +Flanders from the oppressions of Richildis. Meanwhile, Matilda was +acting as regent of Normandy, with Earl William of Hereford as her +counsellor. Richildis sought help of her son’s two overlords, King Henry +of Germany and King Philip of France. Philip came in person; the German +succours were too late. From Normandy came Earl William with a small +party of knights. The kings had been asked for armies; to the Earl she +offered herself, and he came to fight for his bride. But early in 1071 +Philip, Arnulf, and William, were all overthrown by Robert the Frisian in +the battle of Cassel. Arnulf and Earl William were killed; Philip made +peace with Robert, henceforth undisputed Count of Flanders. + +All this brought King William to the continent, while the invasion of +Malcolm was still unavenged. No open war followed between Normandy and +Flanders; but for the rest of their lives Robert and William were +enemies, and each helped the enemies of the other. William gave his +support to Baldwin brother of the slain Arnulf, who strove to win +Flanders from Robert. But the real interest of this episode lies in the +impression which was made in the lands east of Flanders. In the troubled +state of Germany, when Henry the Fourth was striving with the Saxons, +both sides seem to have looked to the Conqueror of England with hope and +with fear. On this matter our English and Norman authorities are silent, +and the notices in the contemporary German writers are strangely unlike +one another. But they show at least that the prince who ruled on both +sides of the sea was largely in men’s thoughts. The Saxon enemy of Henry +describes him in his despair as seeking help in Denmark, France, +Aquitaine, and also of the King of the English, promising him the like +help, if he should ever need it. William and Henry had both to guard +against Saxon enmity, but the throne at Winchester stood firmer than the +throne at Goslar. But the historian of the continental Saxons puts into +William’s mouth an answer utterly unsuited to his position. He is made, +when in Normandy, to answer that, having won his kingdom by force, he +fears to leave it, lest he might not find his way back again. Far more +striking is the story told three years later by Lambert of Herzfeld. +Henry, when engaged in an Hungarian war, heard that the famous Archbishop +Hanno of Köln had leagued with William _Bostar_—so is his earliest +surname written—King of the English, and that a vast army was coming to +set the island monarch on the German throne. The host never came; but +Henry hastened back to guard his frontier against _barbarians_. By that +phrase a Teutonic writer can hardly mean the insular part of William’s +subjects. + +Now assuredly William never cherished, as his successor probably did, so +wild a dream as that of a kingly crowning at Aachen, to be followed +perhaps by an imperial crowning at Rome. But that such schemes were +looked on as a practical danger against which the actual German King had +to guard, at least shows the place which the Conqueror of England held in +European imagination. + +For the three or four years immediately following the surrender of Ely, +William’s journeys to and fro between his kingdom and his duchy were +specially frequent. Matilda seems to have always stayed in Normandy; she +is never mentioned in England after the year of her coronation and the +birth of her youngest son, and she commonly acted as regent of the duchy. +In the course of 1072 we see William in England, in Normandy, again in +England, and in Scotland. In 1073 he was called beyond sea by a +formidable movement. His great continental conquest had risen against +him; Le Mans and all Maine were again independent. City and land chose +for them a prince who came by female descent from the stock of their +ancient counts. This was Hugh the son of Azo Marquess of Liguria and of +Gersendis the sister of the last Count Herbert. The Normans were driven +out of Le Mans; Azo came to take possession in the name of his son, but +he and the citizens did not long agree. He went back, leaving his wife +and son under the guardianship of Geoffrey of Mayenne. Presently the men +of Le Mans threw off princely rule altogether and proclaimed the earliest +_commune_ in Northern Gaul. Here then, as at Exeter, William had to +strive against an armed commonwealth, and, as at Exeter, we specially +wish to know what were to be the relations between the capital and the +county at large. The mass of the people throughout Maine threw +themselves zealously into the cause of the commonwealth. But their zeal +might not have lasted long, if, according to the usual run of things in +such cases, they had simply exchanged the lordship of their hereditary +masters for the corporate lordship of the citizens of Le Mans. To the +nobles the change was naturally distasteful. They had to swear to the +_commune_, but many of them, Geoffrey for one, had no thought of keeping +their oaths. Dissensions arose; Hugh went back to Italy; Geoffrey +occupied the castle of Le Mans, and the citizens dislodged him only by +the dangerous help of the other prince who claimed the overlordship of +Maine, Count Fulk of Anjou. + +If Maine was to have a master from outside, the lord of Anjou hardly +promised better than the lord of Normandy. But men in despair grasp at +anything. The strange thing is that Fulk disappears now from the story; +William steps in instead. And it was at least as much in his English as +in his Norman character that the Duke and King won back the revolted +land. A place in his army was held by English warriors, seemingly under +the command of Hereward himself. Men who had fought for freedom in their +own land now fought at the bidding of their Conqueror to put down freedom +in another land. They went willingly; the English Chronicler describes +the campaign with glee, and breaks into verse—or incorporates a +contemporary ballad—at the tale of English victory. Few men of that day +would see that the cause of Maine was in truth the cause of England. If +York and Exeter could not act in concert with one another, still less +could either act in concert with Le Mans. Englishmen serving in Maine +would fancy that they were avenging their own wrongs by laying waste the +lands of any man who spoke the French tongue. On William’s part, the +employment of Englishmen, the employment of Hereward, was another stroke +of policy. It was more fully following out the system which led +Englishmen against Exeter, which led Eadric and his comrades into +Scotland. For in every English soldier whom William carried into Maine +he won a loyal English subject. To men who had fought under his banners +beyond the sea he would be no longer the Conqueror but the victorious +captain; they would need some very special oppression at home to make +them revolt against the chief whose laurels they had helped to win. As +our own gleeman tells the tale, they did little beyond harrying the +helpless land; but in continental writers we can trace a regular +campaign, in which we hear of no battles, but of many sieges. William, +as before, subdued the land piecemeal, keeping the city for the last. +When he drew near to Le Mans, its defenders surrendered at his summons, +to escape fire and slaughter by speedy submission. The new _commune_ was +abolished, but the Conqueror swore to observe all the ancient rights of +the city. + +All this time we have heard nothing of Count Fulk. Presently we find him +warring against nobles of Maine who had taken William’s part, and +leaguing with the Bretons against William himself. The King set forth +with his whole force, Norman and English; but peace was made by the +mediation of an unnamed Roman cardinal, abetted, we are told, by the +chief Norman nobles. Success against confederated Anjou and Britanny +might be doubtful, with Maine and England wavering in their allegiance, +and France, Scotland, and Flanders, possible enemies in the distance. +The rights of the Count of Anjou over Maine were formally acknowledged, +and William’s eldest son Robert did homage to Fulk for the county. Each +prince stipulated for the safety and favour of all subjects of the other +who had taken his side. Between Normandy and Anjou there was peace +during the rest of the days of William; in Maine we shall see yet another +revolt, though only a partial one. + +William went back to England in 1073. In 1074 he went to the continent +for a longer absence. As the time just after the first completion of the +Conquest is spoken of as a time when Normans and English were beginning +to sit down side by side in peace, so the years which followed the +submission of Ely are spoken of as a time of special oppression. This +fact is not unconnected with the King’s frequent absences from England. +Whatever we say of William’s own position, he was a check on smaller +oppressors. Things were always worse when the eye of the great master +was no longer watching. William’s one weakness was that of putting +overmuch trust in his immediate kinsfolk and friends. Of the two special +oppressors, William Fitz-Osbern had thrown away his life in Flanders; but +Bishop Ode was still at work, till several years later his king and +brother struck him down with a truly righteous blow. + +The year 1074, not a year of fighting, was pro-eminently a year of +intrigue. William’s enemies on the continent strove to turn the +representative of the West-Saxon kings to help their ends. Edgar flits +to and fro between Scotland and Flanders, and the King of the French +tempts him with the offer of a convenient settlement on the march of +France, Normandy, and Flanders. Edgar sets forth from Scotland, but is +driven back by a storm; Malcolm and Margaret then change their minds, and +bid him make his peace with King William. William gladly accepts his +submission; an embassy is sent to bring him with all worship to the King +in Normandy. He abides for several years in William’s court contented +and despised, receiving a daily pension and the profits of estates in +England of no great extent which the King of a moment held by the grant +of a rival who could afford to be magnanimous. + + * * * * * + +Edgar’s after-life showed that he belonged to that class of men who, as a +rule slothful and listless, can yet on occasion act with energy, and who +act most creditably on behalf of others. But William had no need to fear +him, and he was easily turned into a friend and a dependant. Edgar, +first of Englishmen by descent, was hardly an Englishman by birth. +William had now to deal with the Englishman who stood next to Edgar in +dignity and far above him in personal estimation. We have reached the +great turning-point in William’s reign and character, the black and +mysterious tale of the fate of Waltheof. The Earl of Northumberland, +Northampton, and Huntingdon, was not the only earl in England of English +birth. The earldom of the East-Angles was held by a born Englishman who +was more hateful than any stranger. Ralph of Wader was the one +Englishman who had fought at William’s side against England. He often +passes for a native of Britanny, and he certainly held lands and castles +in that country; but he was Breton only by the mother’s side. For +Domesday and the Chronicles show that he was the son of an elder Earl +Ralph, who had been _staller_ or master of the horse in Edward’s days, +and who is expressly said to have been born in Norfolk. The unusual name +suggests that the elder Ralph was not of English descent. He survived +the coming of William, and his son fought on Senlac among the countrymen +of his mother. This treason implies an unrecorded banishment in the days +of Edward or Harold. Already earl in 1069, he had in that year acted +vigorously for William against the Danes. But he now conspired against +him along with Roger, the younger son of William Fitz-Osbern, who had +succeeded his father in the earldom of Hereford, while his Norman estates +had passed to his elder brother William. What grounds of complaint +either Ralph or Roger had against William we know not; but that the +loyalty of the Earl of Hereford was doubtful throughout the year 1074 +appears from several letters of rebuke and counsel sent to him by the +Regent Lanfranc. At last the wielder of both swords took to his +spiritual arms, and pronounced the Earl excommunicate, till he should +submit to the King’s mercy and make restitution to the King and to all +men whom he had wronged. Roger remained stiff-necked under the Primate’s +censure, and presently committed an act of direct disobedience. The next +year, 1075, he gave his sister Emma in marriage to Earl Ralph. This +marriage the King had forbidden, on some unrecorded ground of state +policy. Most likely he already suspected both earls, and thought any tie +between them dangerous. The notice shows William stepping in to do, as +an act of policy, what under his successors became a matter of course, +done with the sole object of making money. The _bride-ale_—the name that +lurks in the modern shape of _bridal_—was held at Exning in +Cambridgeshire; bishops and abbots were guests of the excommunicated +Roger; Waltheof was there, and many Breton comrades of Ralph. In their +cups they began to plot how they might drive the King out of the kingdom. +Charges, both true and false, were brought against William; in a mixed +gathering of Normans, English, and Bretons, almost every act of William’s +life might pass as a wrong done to some part of the company, even though +some others of the company were his accomplices. Above all, the two +earls Ralph and Roger made a distinct proposal to their fellow-earl +Waltheof. King William should be driven out of the land; one of the +three should be King; the other two should remain earls, ruling each over +a third of the kingdom. Such a scheme might attract earls, but no one +else; it would undo William’s best and greatest work; it would throw back +the growing unity of the kingdom by all the steps that it had taken +during several generations. + +Now what amount of favour did Waltheof give to these schemes? Weighing +the accounts, it would seem that, in the excitement of the bride-ale, he +consented to the treason, but that he thought better of it the next +morning. He went to Lanfranc, at once regent and ghostly father, and +confessed to him whatever he had to confess. The Primate assigned his +penitent some ecclesiastical penances; the Regent bade the Earl go into +Normandy and tell the whole tale to the King. Waltheof went, with gifts +in hand; he told his story and craved forgiveness. William made light of +the matter, and kept Waltheof with him, but seemingly not under +restraint, till he came back to England. + +Meanwhile the other two earls were in open rebellion. Ralph, half Breton +by birth and earl of a Danish land, asked help in Britanny and Denmark. +Bretons from Britanny and Bretons settled in England flocked to him. +King Swegen, now almost at the end of his reign and life, listened to the +call of the rebels, and sent a fleet under the command of his son Cnut, +the future saint, together with an earl named Hakon. The revolt in +England was soon put down, both in East and West. The rebel earls met +with no support save from those who were under their immediate influence. +The country acted zealously for the King. Lanfranc could report that +Earl Ralph and his army were fleeing, and that the King’s men, French and +English, were chasing them. In another letter he could add, with some +strength of language, that the kingdom was cleansed from the filth of the +Bretons. At Norwich only the castle was valiantly defended by the newly +married Countess Emma. Roger was taken prisoner; Ralph fled to Britanny; +their followers were punished with various mutilations, save the +defenders of Norwich, who were admitted to terms. The Countess joined +her husband in Britanny, and in days to come Ralph did something to +redeem so many treasons by dying as an armed pilgrim in the first +crusade. + +The main point of this story is that the revolt met with no English +support whatever. Not only did Bishop Wulfstan march along with his +fierce Norman brethren Ode and Geoffrey; the English people everywhere +were against the rebels. For this revolt offered no attraction to +English feeling; had the undertaking been less hopeless, nothing could +have been gained by exchanging the rule of William for that of Ralph or +Roger. It might have been different if the Danes had played their part +better. The rebellion broke out while William was in Normandy; it was +the sailing of the Danish fleet which brought him back to England. But +never did enterprise bring less honour on its leaders than this last +Danish voyage up the Humber. All that the holy Cnut did was to plunder +the minster of Saint Peter at York and to sail away. + +His coming however seems to have altogether changed the King’s feelings +with regard to Waltheof. As yet he had not been dealt with as a prisoner +or an enemy. He now came back to England with the King, and William’s +first act was to imprison both Waltheof and Roger. The imprisonment of +Roger, a rebel taken in arms, was a matter of course. As for Waltheof, +whatever he had promised at the bride-ale, he had done no disloyal act; +he had had no share in the rebellion, and he had told the King all that +he knew. But he had listened to traitors, and it might be dangerous to +leave him at large when a Danish fleet, led by his old comrade Cnut, was +actually afloat. Still what followed is strange indeed, specially +strange with William as its chief doer. + +At the Midwinter Gemót of 1075–1076 Roger and Waltheof were brought to +trial. Ralph was condemned in absence, like Eustace of Boulogne. Roger +was sentenced to forfeiture and imprisonment for life. Waltheof made his +defence; his sentence was deferred; he was kept at Winchester in a +straiter imprisonment than before. At the Pentecostal Gemót of 1076, +held at Westminster, his case was again argued, and he was sentenced to +death. On the last day of May the last English earl was beheaded on the +hills above Winchester. + +Such a sentence and execution, strange at any time, is specially strange +under William. Whatever Waltheof had done, his offence was lighter than +that of Roger; yet Waltheof has the heavier and Roger the lighter +punishment. With Scroggs or Jeffreys on the bench, it might have been +argued that Waltheof’s confession to the King did not, in strictness of +law, wipe out the guilt of his original promise to the conspirators; but +William the Great did not commonly act after the fashion of Scroggs and +Jeffreys. To deprive Waltheof of his earldom might doubtless be prudent; +a man who had even listened to traitors might be deemed unfit for such a +trust. It might be wise to keep him safe under the King’s eye, like +Edwin, Morkere, and Edgar. But why should he be picked out for death, +when the far more guilty Roger was allowed to live? Why should he be +chosen as the one victim of a prince who never before or after, in +Normandy or in England, doomed any man to die on a political charge? +These are questions hard to answer. It is not enough to say that +Waltheof was an Englishman, that it was William’s policy gradually to get +rid of Englishmen in high places, and that the time was now come to get +rid of the last. For such a policy forfeiture, or at most imprisonment, +would have been enough. While other Englishmen lost lands, honours, at +most liberty, Waltheof alone lost his life by a judicial sentence. It is +likely enough that many Normans hungered for the lands and honours of the +one Englishman who still held the highest rank in England. Still +forfeiture without death might have satisfied even them. But Waltheof +was not only earl of three shires; he was husband of the King’s near +kinswoman. We are told that Judith was the enemy and accuser of her +husband. This may have touched William’s one weak point. Yet he would +hardly have swerved from the practice of his whole life to please the +bloody caprice of a niece who longed for the death of her husband. And +if Judith longed for Waltheof’s death, it was not from a wish to supply +his place with another. Legend says that she refused a second husband +offered her by the King; it is certain that she remained a widow. + +Waltheof’s death must thus remain a mystery, an isolated deed of blood +unlike anything else in William’s life. It seems to have been impolitic; +it led to no revolt, but it called forth a new burst of English feeling. +Waltheof was deemed the martyr of his people; he received the same +popular canonization as more than one English patriot. Signs and wonders +were wrought at his tomb at Crowland, till displays of miraculous power +which were so inconsistent with loyalty and good order were straitly +forbidden. The act itself marks a stage in the downward course of +William’s character. In itself, the harrying of Northumberland, the very +invasion of England, with all the bloodshed that they caused, might be +deemed blacker crimes than the unjust death of a single man. But as +human nature stands, the less crime needs a worse man to do it. Crime, +as ever, led to further crime and was itself the punishment of crime. In +the eyes of William’s contemporaries the death of Waltheof, the blackest +act of William’s life, was also its turning-point. From the day of the +martyrdom on Saint Giles’ hill the magic of William’s name and William’s +arms passed away. Unfailing luck no longer waited on him; after +Waltheof’s death he never, till his last campaign of all, won a battle or +took a town. In this change of William’s fortunes the men of his own day +saw the judgement of God upon his crime. And in the fact at least they +were undoubtedly right. Henceforth, though William’s real power abides +unshaken, the tale of his warfare is chiefly a tale of petty defeats. +The last eleven years of his life would never have won him the name of +Conqueror. But in the higher walk of policy and legislation never was +his nobler surname more truly deserved. Never did William the Great show +himself so truly great as in these later years. + + * * * * * + +The death of Waltheof and the popular judgement on it suggest another act +of William’s which cannot have been far from it in point of time, and +about which men spoke in his own day in the same spirit. If the +judgement of God came on William for the beheading of Waltheof, it came +on him also for the making of the New Forest. As to that forest there is +a good deal of ancient exaggeration and a good deal of modern +misconception. The word _forest_ is often misunderstood. In its older +meaning, a meaning which it still keeps in some parts, a forest has +nothing to do with trees. It is a tract of land put outside the common +law and subject to a stricter law of its own, and that commonly, probably +always, to secure for the King the freer enjoyment of the pleasure of +hunting. Such a forest William made in Hampshire; the impression which +it made on men’s minds at the time is shown by its having kept the name +of the New Forest for eight hundred years. There is no reason to think +that William laid waste any large tract of specially fruitful country, +least of all that he laid waste a land thickly inhabited; for most of the +Forest land never can have been such. But it is certain from Domesday +and the Chronicle that William did _afforest_ a considerable tract of +land in Hampshire; he set it apart for the purposes of hunting; he fenced +it in by special and cruel laws—stopping indeed short of death—for the +protection of his pleasures, and in this process some men lost their +lands, and were driven from their homes. Some destruction of houses is +here implied; some destruction of churches is not unlikely. The popular +belief, which hardly differs from the account of writers one degree later +than Domesday and the Chronicle, simply exaggerates the extent of +destruction. There was no such wide-spread laying waste as is often +supposed, because no such wide-spread laying waste was needed. But +whatever was needed for William’s purpose was done; and Domesday gives us +the record. And the act surely makes, like the death of Waltheof, a +downward stage in William’s character. The harrying of Northumberland +was in itself a far greater crime, and involved far more of human +wretchedness. But it is not remembered in the same way, because it has +left no such abiding memorial. But here again the lesser crime needed a +worse man to do it. The harrying of Northumberland was a crime done with +a political object; it was the extreme form of military severity; it was +not vulgar robbery done with no higher motive than to secure the fuller +enjoyment of a brutal sport. To this level William had now sunk. It was +in truth now that hunting in England finally took the character of a mere +sport. Hunting was no new thing; in an early state of society it is +often a necessary thing. The hunting of Alfred is spoken of as a grave +matter of business, as part of his kingly duty. He had to make war on +the wild beasts, as he had to make war on the Danes. The hunting of +William is simply a sport, not his duty or his business, but merely his +pleasure. And to this pleasure, the pleasure of inflicting pain and +slaughter, he did not scruple to sacrifice the rights of other men, and +to guard his enjoyment by ruthless laws at which even in that rough age +men shuddered. + +For this crime the men of his day saw the punishment in the strange and +frightful deaths of his offspring, two sons and a grandson, on the scene +of his crime. One of these himself he saw, the death of his second son +Richard, a youth of great promise, whose prolonged life might have saved +England from the rule of William Rufus. He died in the Forest, about the +year 1081, to the deep grief of his parents. And Domesday contains a +touching entry, how William gave back his land to a despoiled Englishman +as an offering for Richard’s soul. + + * * * * * + +The forfeiture of three earls, the death of one, threw their honours and +estates into the King’s hands. Another fresh source of wealth came by +the death of the Lady Edith, who had kept her royal rank and her great +estates, and who died while the proceedings against Waltheof were going +on. It was not now so important for William as it had been in the first +years of the Conquest to reward his followers; he could now think of the +royal hoard in the first place. Of the estates which now fell in to the +Crown large parts were granted out. The house of Bigod, afterwards so +renowned as Earls of Norfolk, owe their rise to their forefather’s share +in the forfeited lands of Earl Ralph. But William kept the greater part +to himself; one lordship in Somerset, part of the lands of the Lady, he +gave to the church of Saint Peter at Rome. Of the three earldoms, those +of Hereford and East-Anglia were not filled up; the later earldoms of +those lands have no connexion with the earls of William’s day. +Waltheof’s southern earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon became the +dowry of his daughter Matilda; that of Huntingdon passed to his +descendants the Kings of Scots. But Northumberland, close on the +Scottish border, still needed an earl; but there is something strange in +the choice of Bishop Walcher of Durham. It is possible that this +appointment was a concession to English feeling stirred to wrath at the +death of Waltheof. The days of English earls were over, and a Norman +would have been looked on as Waltheof’s murderer. The Lotharingian +bishop was a stranger; but he was not a Norman, and he was no oppressor +of Englishmen. But he was strangely unfit for the place. Not a fighting +bishop like Ode and Geoffrey, he was chiefly devoted to spiritual +affairs, specially to the revival of the monastic life, which had died +out in Northern England since the Danish invasions. But his weak trust +in unworthy favourites, English and foreign, led him to a fearful and +memorable end. The Bishop was on terms of close friendship with Ligulf, +an Englishman of the highest birth and uncle by marriage to Earl +Waltheof. He had kept his estates; but the insolence of his Norman +neighbours had caused him to come and live in the city of Durham near his +friend the Bishop. His favour with Walcher roused the envy of some of +the Bishop’s favourites, who presently contrived his death. The Bishop +lamented, and rebuked them; but he failed to “do justice,” to punish the +offenders sternly and speedily. He was therefore believed to be himself +guilty of Ligulf’s death. One of the most striking and instructive +events of the time followed. On May 14, 1080, a full Gemót of the +earldom was held at Gateshead to deal with the murder of Ligulf. This +was one of those rare occasions when a strong feeling led every man to +the assembly. The local Parliament took its ancient shape of an armed +crowd, headed by the noblest Englishmen left in the earldom. There was +no vote, no debate; the shout was “Short rede good rede, slay ye the +Bishop.” And to that cry, Walcher himself and his companions, the +murderers of Ligulf among them, were slaughtered by the raging multitude +who had gathered to avenge him. + +The riot in which Walcher died was no real revolt against William’s +government. Such a local rising against a local wrong might have +happened in the like case under Edward or Harold. No government could +leave such a deed unpunished; but William’s own ideas of justice would +have been fully satisfied by the blinding or mutilation of a few +ringleaders. But William was in Normandy in the midst of domestic and +political cares. He sent his brother Ode to restore order, and his +vengeance was frightful. The land was harried; innocent men were +mutilated and put to death; others saved their lives by bribes. Earl +after earl was set over a land so hard to rule. A certain Alberie was +appointed, but he was removed as unfit. The fierce Bishop Geoffrey of +Coutances tried his hand and resigned. At the time of William’s death +the earldom was held by Geoffrey’s nephew Robert of Mowbray, a stern and +gloomy stranger, but whom Englishmen reckoned among “good men,” when he +guarded the marches of England against the Scot. + + * * * * * + +After the death of Waltheof William seems to have stayed in Normandy for +several years. His ill luck now began. Before the year 1076 was out, he +entered, we know not why, on a Breton campaign. But he was driven from +Dol by the combined forces of Britanny and France; Philip was ready to +help any enemy of William. The Conqueror had now for the first time +suffered defeat in his own person. He made peace with both enemies, +promising his daughter Constance to Alan of Britanny. But the marriage +did not follow till ten years later. The peace with France, as the +English Chronicle says, “held little while;” Philip could not resist the +temptation of helping William’s eldest son Robert when the reckless young +man rebelled against his father. With most of the qualities of an +accomplished knight, Robert had few of those which make either a wise +ruler or an honest man. A brave soldier, even a skilful captain, he was +no general; ready of speech and free of hand, he was lavish rather than +bountiful. He did not lack generous and noble feelings; but of a steady +course, even in evil, he was incapable. As a ruler, he was no oppressor +in his own person; but sloth, carelessness, love of pleasure, incapacity +to say No, failure to do justice, caused more wretchedness than the +oppression of those tyrants who hinder the oppressions of others. +William would not set such an one over any part of his dominions before +his time, and it was his policy to keep his children dependent on him. +While he enriched his brothers, he did not give the smallest scrap of the +spoils of England to his sons. But Robert deemed that he had a right to +something greater than private estates. The nobles of Normandy had done +homage to him as William’s successor; he had done homage to Fulk for +Maine, as if he were himself its count. He was now stirred up by evil +companions to demand that, if his father would not give him part of his +kingdom—the spirit of Edwin and Morkere had crossed the sea—he would at +least give him Normandy and Maine. William refused with many pithy +sayings. It was not his manner to take off his clothes till he went to +bed. Robert now, with a band of discontented young nobles, plunged into +border warfare against his father. He then wandered over a large part of +Europe, begging and receiving money and squandering all that he got. His +mother too sent him money, which led to the first quarrel between William +and Matilda after so many years of faithful union. William rebuked his +wife for helping his enemy in breach of his orders: she pleaded the +mother’s love for her first-born. The mother was forgiven, but her +messenger, sentenced to loss of eyes, found shelter in a monastery. + +At last in 1079 Philip gave Robert a settled dwelling-place in the +border-fortress of Gerberoi. The strife between father and son became +dangerous. William besieged the castle, to undergo before its walls his +second defeat, to receive his first wound, and that at the hands of his +own son. Pierced in the hand by the lance of Robert, his horse smitten +by an arrow, the Conqueror fell to the ground, and was saved only by an +Englishman, Tokig, son of Wiggod of Wallingford, who gave his life for +his king. It seems an early softening of the tale which says that Robert +dismounted and craved his father’s pardon; it seems a later hardening +which says that William pronounced a curse on his son. William Rufus +too, known as yet only as the dutiful son of his father, was wounded in +his defence. The blow was not only grievous to William’s feelings as a +father; it was a serious military defeat. The two wounded Williams and +the rest of the besiegers escaped how they might, and the siege of +Gerberoi was raised. + +We next find the wise men of Normandy debating how to make peace between +father and son. In the course of the year 1080 a peace was patched up, +and a more honourable sphere was found for Robert’s energies in an +expedition into Scotland. In the autumn of the year of Gerberoi Malcolm +had made another wasting inroad into Northumberland. With the King +absent and Northumberland in confusion through the death of Walcher, this +wrong went unavenged till the autumn of 1080. Robert gained no special +glory in Scotland; a second quarrel with his father followed, and Robert +remained a banished man during the last seven years of William’s reign. + +In this same year 1080 a synod of the Norman Church was held, the Truce +of God again renewed which we heard of years ago. The forms of outrage +on which the Truce was meant to put a cheek, and which the strong hand of +William had put down more thoroughly than the Truce would do, had clearly +begun again during the confusions caused by the rebellion of Robert. + +The two next years, 1081–1082, William was in England. His home sorrows +were now pressing heavily on him. His eldest son was a rebel and an +exile; about this time his second son died in the New Forest; according +to one version, his daughter, the betrothed of Edwin, who had never +forgotten her English lover, was now promised to the Spanish King +Alfonso, and died—in answer to her own prayers—before the marriage was +celebrated. And now the partner of William’s life was taken from him +four years after his one difference with her. On November 3, 1083, +Matilda died after a long sickness, to her husband’s lasting grief. She +was buried in her own church at Caen, and churches in England received +gifts from William on behalf of her soul. + +The mourner had soon again to play the warrior. Nearly the whole of +William’s few remaining years were spent in a struggle which in earlier +times he would surely have ended in a day. Maine, city and county, did +not call for a third conquest; but a single baron of Maine defied +William’s power, and a single castle of Maine held out against him for +three years. Hubert, Viscount of Beaumont and Fresnay, revolted on some +slight quarrel. The siege of his castle of Sainte-Susanne went on from +the death of Matilda till the last year but one of William’s reign. The +tale is full of picturesque detail; but William had little personal share +in it. The best captains of Normandy tried their strength in vain +against this one donjon on its rock. William at last made peace with the +subject who was too strong for him. Hubert came to England and received +the King’s pardon. Practically the pardon was the other way. + +Thus for the last eleven years of his life William ceased to be the +Conqueror. Engaged only in small enterprises, he was unsuccessful in +all. One last success was indeed in store for him; but that was to be +purchased with his own life. As he turned away in defeat from this +castle and that, as he felt the full bitterness of domestic sorrow, he +may have thought, as others thought for him, that the curse of Waltheof, +the curse of the New Forest, was ever tracking his steps. If so, his +crimes were done in England, and their vengeance came in Normandy. In +England there was no further room for his mission as Conqueror; he had no +longer foes to overcome. He had an act of justice to do, and he did it. +He had his kingdom to guard, and he guarded it. He had to take the great +step which should make his kingdom one for ever; and he had, perhaps +without fully knowing what he did, to bid the picture of his reign be +painted for all time as no reign before or after has been painted. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. +THE LAST YEARS OF WILLIAM. +1081–1087. + + +OF two events of these last years of the Conqueror’s reign, events of +very different degrees of importance, we have already spoken. The Welsh +expedition of William was the only recorded fighting on British ground, +and that lay without the bounds of the kingdom of England. William now +made Normandy his chief dwelling-place, but he was constantly called over +to England. The Welsh campaign proves his presence in England in 1081; +he was again in England in 1082, but he went back to Normandy between the +two visits. The visit of 1082 was a memorable one; there is no more +characteristic act of the Conqueror than the deed which marks it. The +cruelty and insolence of his brother Ode, whom he had trusted so much +more than he deserved, had passed all bounds. In avenging the death of +Walcher he had done deeds such as William never did himself or allowed +any other man to do. And now, beguiled by a soothsayer who said that one +of his name should be the next Pope, he dreamed of succeeding to the +throne of Gregory the Seventh. He made all kinds of preparations to +secure his succession, and he was at last about to set forth for Italy at +the head of something like an army. His schemes were by no means to the +liking of his brother. William came suddenly over from Normandy, and met +Ode in the Isle of Wight. There the King got together as many as he +could of the great men of the realm. Before them he arraigned Ode for +all his crimes. He had left him as the lieutenant of his kingdom, and he +had shown himself the common oppressor of every class of men in the +realm. Last of all, he had beguiled the warriors who were needed for the +defence of England against the Danes and Irish to follow him on his wild +schemes in Italy. How was he to deal with such a brother, William asked +of his wise men. + +He had to answer himself; no other man dared to speak. William then gave +his judgement. The common enemy of the whole realm should not be spared +because he was the King’s brother. He should be seized and put in ward. +As none dared to seize him, the King seized him with his own hands. And +now, for the first time in England, we hear words which were often heard +again. The bishop stained with blood and sacrilege appealed to the +privileges of his order. He was a clerk, a bishop; no man might judge +him but the Pope. William, taught, so men said, by Lanfranc, had his +answer ready. “I do not seize a clerk or a bishop; I seize my earl whom +I set over my kingdom.” So the Earl of Kent was carried off to a prison +in Normandy, and Pope Gregory himself pleaded in vain for the release of +the Bishop of Bayeux. + +The mind of William was just now mainly given to the affairs of his +island kingdom. In the winter of 1083 he hastened from the death-bed of +his wife to the siege of Sainte-Susanne, and thence to the Midwinter +Gemót in England. The chief object of the assembly was the specially +distasteful one of laying on of a tax. In the course of the next year, +six shillings was levied on every hide of land to meet a pressing need. +The powers of the North were again threatening; the danger, if it was +danger, was greater than when Waltheof smote the Normans in the gate at +York. Swegen and his successor Harold were dead. Cnut the Saint reigned +in Denmark, the son-in-law of Robert of Flanders. This alliance with +William’s enemy joined with his remembrance of his own two failures to +stir up the Danish king to a yearning for some exploit in England. +English exiles were still found to urge him to the enterprise. William’s +conquest had scattered banished or discontented Englishmen over all +Europe. Many had made their way to the Eastern Rome; they had joined the +Warangian guard, the surest support of the Imperial throne, and at +Dyrrhachion, as on Senlac, the axe of England had met the lance of +Normandy in battle. Others had fled to the North; they prayed Cnut to +avenge the death of his kinsman Harold and to deliver England from the +yoke of men—so an English writer living in Denmark spoke of them—of Roman +speech. Thus the Greek at one end of Europe, the Norman at the other, +still kept on the name of Rome. The fleet of Denmark was joined by the +fleet of Flanders; a smaller contingent was promised by the devout and +peaceful Olaf of Norway, who himself felt no call to take a share in the +work of war. + +Against this danger William strengthened himself by the help of the tax +that he had just levied. He could hardly have dreamed of defending +England against Danish invaders by English weapons only. But he thought +as little of trusting the work to his own Normans. With the money of +England he hired a host of mercenaries, horse and foot, from France and +Britanny, even from Maine where Hubert was still defying him at +Sainte-Susanne. He gathered this force on the mainland, and came back at +its head, a force such as England had never before seen; men wondered how +the land might feed them all. The King’s men, French and English, had to +feed them, each man according to the amount of his land. And now William +did what Harold had refused to do; he laid waste the whole coast that lay +open to attack from Denmark and Flanders. But no Danes, no Flemings, +came. Disputes arose between Cnut and his brother Olaf, and the great +enterprise came to nothing. William kept part of his mercenaries in +England, and part he sent to their homes. Cnut was murdered in a church +by his own subjects, and was canonized as _Sanctus Canutus_ by a Pope who +could not speak the Scandinavian name. + +Meanwhile, at the Midwinter Gemót of 1085–1086, held in due form at +Gloucester, William did one of his greatest acts. “The King had mickle +thought and sooth deep speech with his Witan about his land, how it were +set and with whilk men.” In that “deep speech,” so called in our own +tongue, lurks a name well known and dear to every Englishman. The result +of that famous parliament is set forth at length by the Chronicler. The +King sent his men into each shire, men who did indeed set down in their +writ how the land was set and of what men. In that writ we have a record +in the Roman tongue no less precious than the Chronicles in our own. For +that writ became the Book of Winchester, the book to which our fathers +gave the name of Domesday, the book of judgement that spared no man. + +The Great Survey was made in the course of the first seven months of the +year 1086. Commissioners were sent into every shire, who inquired by the +oaths of the men of the hundreds by whom the land had been held in King +Edward’s days and what it was worth then, by whom it was held at the time +of the survey and what it was worth then; and lastly, whether its worth +could be raised. Nothing was to be left out. “So sooth narrowly did he +let spear it out, that there was not a hide or a yard of land, nor +further—it is shame to tell, and it thought him no shame to do—an ox nor +a cow nor a swine was left that was not set in his writ.” This kind of +searching inquiry, never liked at any time, would be specially grievous +then. The taking of the survey led to disturbances in many places, in +which not a few lives were lost. While the work was going on, William +went to and fro till he knew thoroughly how this land was set and of what +men. He had now a list of all men, French and English, who held land in +his kingdom. And it was not enough to have their names in a writ; he +would see them face to face. On the making of the survey followed that +great assembly, that great work of legislation, which was the crown of +William’s life as a ruler and lawgiver of England. The usual assemblies +of the year had been held at Winchester and Westminster. An +extraordinary assembly was held in the plain of Salisbury on the first +day of August. The work of that assembly has been already spoken of. It +was now that all the owners of land in the kingdom became the men of the +King; it was now that England became one, with no fear of being again +parted asunder. + + * * * * * + +The close connexion between the Great Survey and the law and the oath of +Salisbury is plain. It was a great matter for the King to get in the +gold certainly and, we may add, fairly. William would deal with no man +otherwise than according to law as he understood the law. But he sought +for more than this. He would not only know what this land could be made +to pay; he would know the state of his kingdom in every detail; he would +know its military strength; he would know whether his own will, in the +long process of taking from this man and giving to that, had been really +carried out. Domesday is before all things a record of the great +confiscation, a record of that gradual change by which, in less than +twenty years, the greater part of the land of England had been +transferred from native to foreign owners. And nothing shows like +Domesday in what a formally legal fashion that transfer was carried out. +What were the principles on which it was carried out, we have already +seen. All private property in land came only from the grant of King +William. It had all passed into his hands by lawful forfeiture; he might +keep it himself; he might give it back to its old owner or grant it to a +new one. So it was at the general redemption of lands; so it was +whenever fresh conquests or fresh revolts threw fresh lands into the +King’s hands. The principle is so thoroughly taken for granted, that we +are a little startled to find it incidentally set forth in so many words +in a case of no special importance. A priest named Robert held a single +yardland in alms of the King; he became a monk in the monastery of +Stow-in-Lindesey, and his yardland became the property of the house. One +hardly sees why this case should have been picked out for a solemn +declaration of the general law. Yet, as “the day on which the English +redeemed their lands” is spoken of only casually in the case of a +particular estate, so the principle that no man could hold lands except +by the King’s grant (“Non licet terram alicui habere nisi regis +concessu”) is brought in only to illustrate the wrongful dealing of +Robert and the monks of Stow in the case of a very small holding indeed. + +All this is a vast system of legal fictions; for William’s whole +position, the whole scheme of his government, rested on a system of legal +fictions. Domesday is full of them; one might almost say that there is +nothing else there. A very attentive study of Domesday might bring out +the fact that William was a foreign conqueror, and that the book itself +was a record of the process by which he took the lands of the natives who +had fought against him to reward the strangers who had fought for him. +But nothing of this kind appears on the surface of the record. The great +facts of the Conquest are put out of sight. William is taken for +granted, not only as the lawful king, but as the immediate successor of +Edward. The “time of King Edward” and the “time of King William” are the +two times that the law knows of. The compilers of the record are put to +some curious shifts to describe the time between “the day when King +Edward was alive and dead” and the day “when King William came into +England.” That coming might have been as peaceful as the coming of James +the First or George the First. The two great battles are more than once +referred to, but only casually in the mention of particular persons. A +very sharp critic might guess that one of them had something to do with +King William’s coming into England; but that is all. Harold appears only +as Earl; it is only in two or three places that we hear of a “time of +Harold,” and even of Harold “seizing the kingdom” and “reigning.” These +two or three places stand out in such contrast to the general language of +the record that we are led to think that the scribe must have copied some +earlier record or taken down the words of some witness, and must have +forgotten to translate them into more loyal formulæ. So in recording who +held the land in King Edward’s day and who in King William’s, there is +nothing to show that in so many cases the holder under Edward had been +turned out to make room for the holder under William. The former holder +is marked by the perfectly colourless word “ancestor” (“antecessor”), a +word as yet meaning, not “forefather,” but “predecessor” of any kind. In +Domesday the word is most commonly an euphemism for “dispossessed +Englishman.” It is a still more distinct euphemism where the Norman +holder is in more than one place called the “heir” of the dispossessed +Englishmen. + +The formulæ of Domesday are the most speaking witness to the spirit of +outward legality which ruled every act of William. In this way they are +wonderfully instructive; but from the formulæ alone no one could ever +make the real facts of William’s coming and reign. It is the incidental +notices which make us more at home in the local and personal life of this +reign than of any reign before or for a long time after. The +Commissioners had to report whether the King’s will had been everywhere +carried out, whether every man, great and small, French and English, had +what the King meant him to have, neither more nor less. And they had +often to report a state of things different from what the King had meant +to be. Many men had not all that King William had meant them to have, +and many others had much more. Normans had taken both from Englishmen +and from other Normans. Englishmen had taken from Englishmen; some had +taken from ecclesiastical bodies; some had taken from King William +himself; nay King William himself holds lands which he ought to give up +to another man. This last entry at least shows that William was fully +ready to do right, according to his notions of right. So also the King’s +two brothers are set down among the chief offenders. Of these unlawful +holdings of land, marked in the technical language of the Survey as +_invasiones_ and _occupationes_, many were doubtless real cases of +violent seizure, without excuse even according to William’s reading of +the law. But this does not always follow, even when the language of the +Survey would seem to imply it. Words implying violence, _per vim_ and +the like, are used in the legal language of all ages, where no force has +been used, merely to mark a possession as illegal. We are startled at +finding the Apostle Paul set down as one of the offenders; but the words +“sanctus Paulus invasit” mean no more than that the canons of Saint +Paul’s church in London held lands to which the Commissioners held that +they had no good title. It is these cases where one man held land which +another claimed that gave opportunity for those personal details, +stories, notices of tenures and customs, which make Domesday the most +precious store of knowledge of the time. + +One fruitful and instructive source of dispute comes from the way in +which the lands in this or that district were commonly granted out. The +in-comer, commonly a foreigner, received all the lands which such and +such a man, commonly a dispossessed Englishman, held in that shire or +district. The grantee stepped exactly into the place of the +_antecessor_; he inherited all his rights and all his burthens. He +inherited therewith any disputes as to the extent of the lands of the +_antecessor_ or as to the nature of his tenure. And new disputes arose +in the process of transfer. One common source of dispute was when the +former owner, besides lands which were strictly his own, held lands on +lease, subject to a reversionary interest on the part of the Crown or the +Church. The lease or sale—_emere_ is the usual word—of Church lands for +three lives to return to the Church at the end of the third life was very +common. If the _antecessor_ was himself the third life, the grantee, his +_heir_, had no claim to the land; and in any case he could take in only +with all its existing liabilities. But the grantee often took possession +of the whole of the land held by the _antecessor_, as if it were all +alike his own. A crowd of complaints followed from all manner of injured +persons and bodies, great and small, French and English, lay and +clerical. The Commissioners seem to have fairly heard all, and to have +fairly reported all for the King to judge of. It is their care to do +right to all men which has given us such strange glimpses of the inner +life of an age which had none like it before or after. + + * * * * * + +The general Survey followed by the general homage might seem to mark +William’s work in England, his work as an English statesman, as done. He +could hardly have had time to redress the many cases of wrong which the +Survey laid before him; but he was able to wring yet another tax out of +the nation according to his new and more certain register. He then, for +the last time, crossed to Normandy with his new hoard. The Chronicler +and other writers of the time dwell on the physical portents of these two +years, the storms, the fires, the plagues, the sharp hunger, the deaths +of famous men on both sides of the sea. Of the year 1087, the last year +of the Conqueror, it needs the full strength of our ancient tongue to set +forth the signs and wonders. The King had left England safe, peaceful, +thoroughly bowed down under the yoke, cursing the ruler who taxed her and +granted away her lands, yet half blessing him for the “good frith” that +he made against the murderer, the robber, and the ravisher. But the land +that he had won was neither to see his end nor to shelter his dust. One +last gleam of success was, after so many reverses, to crown his arms; but +it was success which was indeed unworthy of the Conqueror who had entered +Exeter and Le Mans in peaceful triumph. And the death-blow was now to +come to him who, after so many years of warfare, stooped at last for the +first time to cruel and petty havoc without an object. + +The border-land of France and Normandy, the French Vexin, the land of +which Mantes is the capital, had always been disputed between kingdom and +duchy. Border wars had been common; just at this time the inroads of the +French commanders at Mantes are said to have been specially destructive. +William not only demanded redress from the King, but called for the +surrender of the whole Vexin. What followed is a familiar story. Philip +makes a foolish jest on the bodily state of his great rival, unable just +then to carry out his threats. “The King of the English lies in at +Rouen; there will be a great show of candles at his churching.” As at +Alençon in his youth, so now, William, who could pass by real injuries, +was stung to the uttermost by personal mockery. By the splendour of God, +when he rose up again, he would light a hundred thousand candles at +Philip’s cost. He kept his word at the cost of Philip’s subjects. The +ballads of the day told how he went forth and gathered the fruits of +autumn in the fields and orchards and vineyards of the enemy. But he did +more than gather fruits; the candles of his churching were indeed lighted +in the burning streets of Mantes. The picture of William the Great +directing in person mere brutal havoc like this is strange even after the +harrying of Northumberland and the making of the New Forest. Riding to +and fro among the flames, bidding his men with glee to heap on the fuel, +gladdened at the sight of burning houses and churches, a false step of +his horse gave him his death-blow. Carried to Rouen, to the priory of +Saint Gervase near the city, he lingered from August 15 to September 7, +and then the reign and life of the Conqueror came to an end. Forsaken by +his children, his body stripped and well nigh forgotten, the loyalty of +one honest knight, Herlwin of Conteville, bears his body to his grave in +his own church at Caen. His very grave is disputed—a dispossessed +_antecessor_ claims the ground as his own, and the dead body of the +Conqueror has to wait while its last resting-place is bought with money. +Into that resting-place force alone can thrust his bulky frame, and the +rites of his burial are as wildly cut short as were the rites of his +crowning. With much striving he had at last won his seven feet of +ground; but he was not to keep it for ever. Religious warfare broke down +his tomb and scattered his bones, save one treasured relic. Civil +revolution swept away the one remaining fragment. And now, while we seek +in vain beneath the open sky for the rifled tombs of Harold and of +Waltheof, a stone beneath the vault of Saint Stephen’s still tells us +where the bones of William once lay but where they lie no longer. + + * * * * * + +There is no need to doubt the striking details of the death and burial of +the Conqueror. We shrink from giving the same trust to the long tale of +penitence which is put into the mouth of the dying King. He may, in that +awful hour, have seen the wrong-doing of the last one-and-twenty years of +his life; he hardly threw his repentance into the shape of a detailed +autobiographical confession. But the more authentic sayings and doings +of William’s death-bed enable us to follow his course as an English +statesman almost to his last moments. His end was one of devotion, of +prayers and almsgiving, and of opening of the prison to them that were +bound. All save one of his political prisoners, English and Norman, he +willingly set free. Morkere and his companions from Ely, Walfnoth son of +Godwine, hostage for Harold’s faith, Wulf son of Harold and Ealdgyth, +taken, we can hardly doubt, as a babe when Chester opened its gates to +William, were all set free; some indeed were put in bonds again by the +King’s successor. But Ode William would not set free; he knew too well +how many would suffer if he were again let loose upon the world. But +love of kindred was still strong; at last he yielded, sorely against his +will, to the prayers and pledges of his other brother. Ode went forth +from his prison, again Bishop of Bayeux, soon again to be Earl of Kent, +and soon to prove William’s foresight by his deeds. + +William’s disposal of his dominions on his death-bed carries on his +political history almost to his last breath. Robert, the banished rebel, +might seem to have forfeited all claims to the succession. But the +doctrine of hereditary right had strengthened during the sixty years of +William’s life. He is made to say that, though he foresees the +wretchedness of any land over which Robert should be the ruler, still he +cannot keep him out of the duchy of Normandy which is his birthright. Of +England he will not dare to dispose; he leaves the decision to God, +seemingly to Archbishop Lanfranc as the vicar of God. He will only say +that his wish is for his son William to succeed him in his kingdom, and +he prays Lanfranc to crown him king, if he deem such a course to be +right. Such a message was a virtual nomination, and William the Red +succeeded his father in England, but kept his crown only by the help of +loyal Englishmen against Norman rebels. William Rufus, it must be +remembered, still under the tutelage of his father and Lanfranc, had not +yet shown his bad qualities; he was known as yet only as the dutiful son +who fought for his father against the rebel Robert. By ancient English +law, that strong preference which was all that any man could claim of +right belonged beyond doubt to the youngest of William’s sons, the +English Ætheling Henry. He alone was born in the land; he alone was the +son of a crowned King and his Lady. It is perhaps with a knowledge of +what followed that William is made to bid his youngest son wait while his +eldest go before him; that he left him landless, but master of a hoard of +silver, there is no reason to doubt. English feeling, which welcomed +Henry thirteen years later, would doubtless have gladly seen his +immediate accession; but it might have been hard, in dividing William’s +dominions, to have shut out the second son in favour of the third. And +in the scheme of events by which conquered England was to rise again, the +reign of Rufus, at the moment the darkest time of all, had its appointed +share. + + * * * * * + +That England could rise again, that she could rise with a new life, +strengthened by her momentary overthrow, was before all things owing to +the lucky destiny which, if she was to be conquered, gave her William the +Great as her Conqueror. It is as it is in all human affairs. William +himself could not have done all that he did, wittingly and unwittingly, +unless circumstances had been favourable to him; but favourable +circumstances would have been useless, unless there had been a man like +William to take advantage of them. What he did, wittingly or +unwittingly, he did by virtue of his special position, the position of a +foreign conqueror veiling his conquest under a legal claim. The hour and +the man were alike needed. The man in his own hour wrought a work, +partly conscious, partly unconscious. The more clearly any man +understands his conscious work, the more sure is that conscious work to +lead to further results of which he dreams not. So it was with the +Conqueror of England. His purpose was to win and to keep the kingdom of +England, and to hand it on to those who should come after him more firmly +united than it had ever been before. In this work his spirit of formal +legality, his shrinking from needless change, stood him in good stead. +He saw that as the kingdom of England could best be won by putting forth +a legal claim to it, so it could best be kept by putting on the character +of a legal ruler, and reigning as the successor of the old kings seeking +the unity of the kingdom; he saw, from the example both of England and of +other lands, the dangers which threatened that unity; he saw what +measures were needed to preserve it in his own day, measures which have +preserved it ever since. Here is a work, a conscious work, which +entitles the foreign Conqueror to a place among English statesmen, and to +a place in their highest rank. Further than this we cannot conceive +William himself to have looked. All that was to come of his work in +future ages was of necessity hidden from his eyes, no less than from the +eyes of smaller men. He had assuredly no formal purpose to make England +Norman; but still less had he any thought that the final outcome of his +work would make England on one side more truly English than if he had +never crossed the sea. In his ecclesiastical work he saw the future +still less clearly. He designed to reform what he deemed abuses, to +bring the English Church into closer conformity with the other Churches +of the West; he assuredly never dreamed that the issue of his reform +would be the strife between Henry and Thomas and the humiliation of John. +His error was that of forgetting that he himself could wield powers, that +he could hold forces in check, which would be too strong for those who +should come after him. At his purposes with regard to the relations of +England and Normandy it would be vain to guess. The mere leaving of +kingdom and duchy to different sons would not necessarily imply that he +designed a complete or lasting separation. But assuredly William did not +foresee that England, dragged into wars with France as the ally of +Normandy, would remain the lasting rival of France after Normandy had +been swallowed up in the French kingdom. If rivalry between England and +France had not come in this way, it would doubtless have come in some +other way; but this is the way in which it did come about. As a result +of the union of Normandy and England under one ruler, it was part of +William’s work, but a work of which William had no thought. So it was +with the increased connexion of every kind between England and the +continent of Europe which followed on William’s coming. With one part of +Europe indeed the connexion of England was lessened. For three centuries +before William’s coming, dealings in war and peace with the Scandinavian +kingdoms had made up a large part of English history. Since the baffled +enterprise of the holy Cnut, our dealings with that part of Europe have +been of only secondary account. + +But in our view of William as an English statesman, the main feature of +all is that spirit of formal legality of which we have so often spoken. +Its direct effects, partly designed, partly undesigned, have affected our +whole history to this day. It was his policy to disguise the fact of +conquest, to cause all the spoils of conquest to be held, in outward +form, according to the ancient law of England. The fiction became a +fact, and the fact greatly helped in the process of fusion between +Normans and English. The conquering race could not keep itself distinct +from the conquered, and the form which the fusion took was for the +conquerors to be lost in the greater mass of the conquered. William +founded no new state, no new nation, no new constitution; he simply kept +what he found, with such modifications as his position made needful. But +without any formal change in the nature of English kingship, his position +enabled him to clothe the crown with a practical power such as it had +never held before, to make his rule, in short, a virtual despotism. +These two facts determined the later course of English history, and they +determined it to the lasting good of the English nation. The +conservative instincts of William allowed our national life and our +national institutions to live on unbroken through his conquest. But it +was before all things the despotism of William, his despotism under legal +forms, which preserved our national institutions to all time. As a less +discerning conqueror might have swept our ancient laws and liberties +away, so under a series of native kings those laws and liberties might +have died out, as they died out in so many continental lands. But the +despotism of the crown called forth the national spirit in a conscious +and antagonistic shape; it called forth that spirit in men of both races +alike, and made Normans and English one people. The old institutions +lived on, to be clothed with a fresh life, to be modified as changed +circumstances might make needful. The despotism of the Norman kings, the +peculiar character of that despotism, enabled the great revolution of the +thirteenth century to take the forms, which it took, at once conservative +and progressive. So it was when, more than four centuries after +William’s day, England again saw a despotism carried on under the forms +of law. Henry the Eighth reigned as William had reigned; he did not +reign like his brother despots on the continent; the forms of law and +freedom lived on. In the seventeenth century therefore, as in the +thirteenth, the forms stood ready to be again clothed with a new life, to +supply the means for another revolution, again at once conservative and +progressive. It has been remarked a thousand times that, while other +nations have been driven to destroy and to rebuild the political fabric, +in England we have never had to destroy and to rebuild, but have found it +enough to repair, to enlarge, and to improve. This characteristic of +English history is mainly owing to the events of the eleventh century, +and owing above all to the personal agency of William. As far as mortal +man can guide the course of things when he is gone, the course of our +national history since William’s day has been the result of William’s +character and of William’s acts. Well may we restore to him the surname +that men gave him in his own day. He may worthily take his place as +William the Great alongside of Alexander, Constantine, and Charles. They +may have wrought in some sort a greater work, because they had a wider +stage to work it on. But no man ever wrought a greater and more abiding +work on the stage that fortune gave him than he + + “Qui dux Normannis, qui Cæsar præfuit Anglis.” + +Stranger and conqueror, his deeds won him a right to a place on the roll +of English statesmen, and no man that came after him has won a right to a +higher place. + + * * * * * + + THE END. + + * * * * * + + _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARKE, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR*** + + +******* This file should be named 1066-0.txt or 1066-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/6/1066 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1067-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1067-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4cd25dd6 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1067-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11955 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1067 *** + +PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF U. S. GRANT + +Volume I. + +by U. S. Grant + + + + +PREFACE. + +"Man proposes and God disposes." There are but few important events in +the affairs of men brought about by their own choice. + +Although frequently urged by friends to write my memoirs I had +determined never to do so, nor to write anything for publication. At +the age of nearly sixty-two I received an injury from a fall, which +confined me closely to the house while it did not apparently affect my +general health. This made study a pleasant pastime. Shortly after, the +rascality of a business partner developed itself by the announcement of +a failure. This was followed soon after by universal depression of all +securities, which seemed to threaten the extinction of a good part of +the income still retained, and for which I am indebted to the kindly act +of friends. At this juncture the editor of the Century Magazine asked +me to write a few articles for him. I consented for the money it gave +me; for at that moment I was living upon borrowed money. The work I +found congenial, and I determined to continue it. The event is an +important one for me, for good or evil; I hope for the former. + +In preparing these volumes for the public, I have entered upon the task +with the sincere desire to avoid doing injustice to any one, whether on +the National or Confederate side, other than the unavoidable injustice +of not making mention often where special mention is due. There must be +many errors of omission in this work, because the subject is too large +to be treated of in two volumes in such way as to do justice to all the +officers and men engaged. There were thousands of instances, during the +rebellion, of individual, company, regimental and brigade deeds of +heroism which deserve special mention and are not here alluded to. The +troops engaged in them will have to look to the detailed reports of +their individual commanders for the full history of those deeds. + +The first volume, as well as a portion of the second, was written before +I had reason to suppose I was in a critical condition of health. Later +I was reduced almost to the point of death, and it became impossible for +me to attend to anything for weeks. I have, however, somewhat regained +my strength, and am able, often, to devote as many hours a day as a +person should devote to such work. I would have more hope of satisfying +the expectation of the public if I could have allowed myself more time. +I have used my best efforts, with the aid of my eldest son, F. D. Grant, +assisted by his brothers, to verify from the records every statement of +fact given. The comments are my own, and show how I saw the matters +treated of whether others saw them in the same light or not. + +With these remarks I present these volumes to the public, asking no +favor but hoping they will meet the approval of the reader. + +U. S. GRANT. + +MOUNT MACGREGOR, NEW YORK, July 1, 1885. + + +CONTENTS + +VOLUME I. + +CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY--BIRTH--BOYHOOD. + +CHAPTER II. WEST POINT--GRADUATION. + +CHAPTER III. ARMY LIFE--CAUSES OF THE MEXICAN WAR--CAMP SALUBRITY. + +CHAPTER IV. CORPUS CHRISTI--MEXICAN SMUGGLING--SPANISH RULE IN MEXICO +--SUPPLYING TRANSPORTATION. + +CHAPTER V. TRIP TO AUSTIN--PROMOTION TO FULL SECOND-LIEUTENANT--ARMY OF +OCCUPATION. + +CHAPTER VI. ADVANCE OF THE ARMY--CROSSING THE COLORADO--THE RIO GRANDE. + +CHAPTER VII. THE MEXICAN WAR--THE BATTLE OF PALO ALTO--THE BATTLE OF +RESACA DE LA PALMA--ARMY OF INVASION--GENERAL TAYLOR--MOVEMENT ON +CAMARGO. + +CHAPTER VIII. ADVANCE ON MONTEREY--THE BLACK FORT--THE BATTLE OF +MONTEREY--SURRENDER OF THE CITY. + +CHAPTER IX. POLITICAL INTRIGUE--BUENA VISTA--MOVEMENT AGAINST VERA CRUZ +--SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF VERA CRUZ. + +CHAPTER X. MARCH TO JALAPA--BATTLE OF CERRO GORDO--PEROTE--PUEBLA--SCOTT +AND TAYLOR. + +CHAPTER XI. ADVANCE ON THE CITY OF MEXICO--BATTLE OF CONTRERAS--ASSAULT +AT CHURUBUSCO--NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE--BATTLE OF MOLINO DEL REY +--STORMING OF CHAPULTEPEC--SAN COSME--EVACUATION OF THE CITY--HALLS OF +THE MONTEZUMAS. + +CHAPTER XII. PROMOTION TO FIRST LIEUTENANT--CAPTURE OF THE CITY OF +MEXICO--THE ARMY--MEXICAN SOLDIERS--PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. + +CHAPTER XIII. TREATY OF PEACE--MEXICAN BULL FIGHTS--REGIMENTAL +QUARTERMASTER--TRIP TO POPOCATAPETL--TRIP TO THE CAVES OF MEXICO. + +CHAPTER XIV. RETURN OF THE ARMY--MARRIAGE--ORDERED TO THE PACIFIC COAST +--CROSSING THE ISTHMUS--ARRIVAL AT SAN FRANCISCO. + +CHAPTER XV. SAN FRANCISCO--EARLY CALIFORNIA EXPERIENCES--LIFE ON THE +PACIFIC COAST--PROMOTED CAPTAIN--FLUSH TIMES IN CALIFORNIA. + +CHAPTER XVI. RESIGNATION--PRIVATE LIFE--LIFE AT GALENA--THE COMING +CRISIS. + +CHAPTER XVII. OUTBREAK OF THE REBELLION--PRESIDING AT A UNION MEETING +--MUSTERING OFFICER OF STATE TROOPS--LYON AT CAMP JACKSON--SERVICES +TENDERED TO THE GOVERNMENT. + +CHAPTER XVIII. APPOINTED COLONEL OF THE 21ST ILLINOIS--PERSONNEL OF THE +REGIMENT--GENERAL LOGAN--MARCH TO MISSOURI--MOVEMENT AGAINST HARRIS AT +FLORIDA, MO.--GENERAL POPE IN COMMAND--STATIONED AT MEXICO, MO. + +CHAPTER XIX. COMMISSIONED BRIGADIER-GENERAL--COMMAND AT IRONTON, MO. +--JEFFERSON CITY--CAPE GIRARDEAU--GENERAL PRENTISS--SEIZURE OF PADUCAH +--HEADQUARTERS AT CAIRO. + +CHAPTER XX. GENERAL FREMONT IN COMMAND--MOVEMENT AGAINST BELMONT--BATTLE +OF BELMONT--A NARROW ESCAPE--AFTER THE BATTLE. + +CHAPTER XXI. GENERAL HALLECK IN COMMAND--COMMANDING THE DISTRICT OF +CAIRO--MOVEMENT ON FORT HENRY--CAPTURE OF FORT HENRY. + +CHAPTER XXII. INVESTMENT OF FORT DONELSON--THE NAVAL OPERATIONS--ATTACK +OF THE ENEMY--ASSAULTING THE WORKS--SURRENDER OF THE FORT. + +CHAPTER XXIII. PROMOTED MAJOR-GENERAL OF VOLUNTEERS--UNOCCUPIED +TERRITORY--ADVANCE UPON NASHVILLE--SITUATION OF THE TROOPS--CONFEDERATE +RETREAT--RELIEVED OF THE COMMAND--RESTORED TO THE COMMAND--GENERAL +SMITH. + +CHAPTER XXIV. THE ARMY AT PITTSBURG LANDING--INJURED BY A FALL--THE +CONFEDERATE ATTACK AT SHILOH--THE FIRST DAY'S FIGHT AT SHILOH--GENERAL +SHERMAN--CONDITION OF THE ARMY--CLOSE OF THE FIRST DAY'S FIGHT--THE +SECOND DAY'S FIGHT--RETREAT AND DEFEAT OF THE CONFEDERATES. + +CHAPTER XXV. STRUCK BY A BULLET--PRECIPITATE RETREAT OF THE +CONFEDERATES--INTRENCHMENTS AT SHILOH--GENERAL BUELL--GENERAL JOHNSTON +--REMARKS ON SHILOH. + +CHAPTER XXVI. HALLECK ASSUMES COMMAND IN THE FIELD--THE ADVANCE UPON +CORINTH--OCCUPATION OF CORINTH--THE ARMY SEPARATED. + +CHAPTER XXVII. HEADQUARTERS MOVED TO MEMPHIS--ON THE ROAD TO MEMPHIS +--ESCAPING JACKSON--COMPLAINTS AND REQUESTS--HALLECK APPOINTED +COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF--RETURN TO CORINTH--MOVEMENTS OF BRAGG--SURRENDER +OF CLARKSVILLE--THE ADVANCE UPON CHATTANOOGA--SHERIDAN COLONEL OF A +MICHIGAN REGIMENT. + +CHAPTER XXVIII. ADVANCE OF VAN DORN AND PRICE--PRICE ENTERS IUKA--BATTLE +OF IUKA. + +CHAPTER XXIX. VAN DORN'S MOVEMENTS--BATTLE OF CORINTH--COMMAND OF THE +DEPARTMENT OF THE TENNESSEE. + +CHAPTER XXX. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST VICKSBURG--EMPLOYING THE FREEDMEN +--OCCUPATION OF HOLLY SPRINGS--SHERMAN ORDERED TO MEMPHIS--SHERMAN'S +MOVEMENTS DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI--VAN DORN CAPTURES HOLLY SPRINGS +--COLLECTING FORAGE AND FOOD. + +CHAPTER XXXI. HEADQUARTERS MOVED TO HOLLY SPRINGS--GENERAL MCCLERNAND IN +COMMAND--ASSUMING COMMAND AT YOUNG'S POINT--OPERATIONS ABOVE VICKSBURG +--FORTIFICATIONS ABOUT VICKSBURG--THE CANAL--LAKE PROVIDENCE--OPERATIONS +AT YAZOO PASS. + +CHAPTER XXXII. THE BAYOUS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI--CRITICISMS OF THE +NORTHERN PRESS--RUNNING THE BATTERIES--LOSS OF THE INDIANOLA +--DISPOSITION OF THE TROOPS. + +CHAPTER XXXIII. ATTACK ON GRAND GULF--OPERATIONS BELOW VICKSBURG. + +CHAPTER XXXIV. CAPTURE OF PORT GIBSON--GRIERSON'S RAID--OCCUPATION OF +GRAND GULF--MOVEMENT UP THE BIG BLACK--BATTLE OF RAYMOND. + +CHAPTER XXXV. MOVEMENT AGAINST JACKSON--FALL OF JACKSON--INTERCEPTING +THE ENEMY--BATTLE OF CHAMPION'S HILL. + +CHAPTER XXXVI. BATTLE OF BLACK RIVER BRIDGE--CROSSING THE BIG BLACK +--INVESTMENT OF VICKSBURG--ASSAULTING THE WORKS. + +CHAPTER XXXVII. SIEGE OF VICKSBURG. + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. JOHNSTON'S MOVEMENTS--FORTIFICATIONS AT HAINES'S BLUFF +--EXPLOSION OF THE MINE--EXPLOSION OF THE SECOND MINE--PREPARING FOR THE +ASSAULT--THE FLAG OF TRUCE--MEETING WITH PEMBERTON--NEGOTIATIONS FOR +SURRENDER--ACCEPTING THE TERMS--SURRENDER OF VICKSBURG. + +CHAPTER XXXIX. RETROSPECT OF THE CAMPAIGN--SHERMAN'S MOVEMENTS--PROPOSED +MOVEMENT UPON MOBILE--A PAINFUL ACCIDENT--ORDERED TO REPORT AT CAIRO. + + + +Volume one begins: + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +ANCESTRY--BIRTH--BOYHOOD. + +My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its +branches, direct and collateral. + +Mathew Grant, the founder of the branch in America, of which I am a +descendant, reached Dorchester, Massachusetts, in May, 1630. In 1635 he +moved to what is now Windsor, Connecticut, and was the surveyor for that +colony for more than forty years. He was also, for many years of the +time, town clerk. He was a married man when he arrived at Dorchester, +but his children were all born in this country. His eldest son, Samuel, +took lands on the east side of the Connecticut River, opposite Windsor, +which have been held and occupied by descendants of his to this day. + +I am of the eighth generation from Mathew Grant, and seventh from +Samuel. Mathew Grant's first wife died a few years after their +settlement in Windsor, and he soon after married the widow Rockwell, +who, with her first husband, had been fellow-passengers with him and his +first wife, on the ship Mary and John, from Dorchester, England, in +1630. Mrs. Rockwell had several children by her first marriage, and +others by her second. By intermarriage, two or three generations later, +I am descended from both the wives of Mathew Grant. + +In the fifth descending generation my great grandfather, Noah Grant, and +his younger brother, Solomon, held commissions in the English army, in +1756, in the war against the French and Indians. Both were killed that +year. + +My grandfather, also named Noah, was then but nine years old. At the +breaking out of the war of the Revolution, after the battles of Concord +and Lexington, he went with a Connecticut company to join the +Continental army, and was present at the battle of Bunker Hill. He +served until the fall of Yorktown, or through the entire Revolutionary +war. He must, however, have been on furlough part of the time--as I +believe most of the soldiers of that period were--for he married in +Connecticut during the war, had two children, and was a widower at the +close. Soon after this he emigrated to Westmoreland County, +Pennsylvania, and settled near the town of Greensburg in that county. +He took with him the younger of his two children, Peter Grant. The +elder, Solomon, remained with his relatives in Connecticut until old +enough to do for himself, when he emigrated to the British West Indies. + +Not long after his settlement in Pennsylvania, my grandfather, Captain +Noah Grant, married a Miss Kelly, and in 1799 he emigrated again, this +time to Ohio, and settled where the town of Deerfield now stands. He +had now five children, including Peter, a son by his first marriage. My +father, Jesse R. Grant, was the second child--oldest son, by the second +marriage. + +Peter Grant went early to Maysville, Kentucky, where he was very +prosperous, married, had a family of nine children, and was drowned at +the mouth of the Kanawha River, Virginia, in 1825, being at the time one +of the wealthy men of the West. + +My grandmother Grant died in 1805, leaving seven children. This broke +up the family. Captain Noah Grant was not thrifty in the way of "laying +up stores on earth," and, after the death of his second wife, he went, +with the two youngest children, to live with his son Peter, in +Maysville. The rest of the family found homes in the neighborhood of +Deerfield, my father in the family of judge Tod, the father of the late +Governor Tod, of Ohio. His industry and independence of character were +such, that I imagine his labor compensated fully for the expense of his +maintenance. + +There must have been a cordiality in his welcome into the Tod family, +for to the day of his death he looked upon judge Tod and his wife, with +all the reverence he could have felt if they had been parents instead of +benefactors. I have often heard him speak of Mrs. Tod as the most +admirable woman he had ever known. He remained with the Tod family only +a few years, until old enough to learn a trade. He went first, I +believe, with his half-brother, Peter Grant, who, though not a tanner +himself, owned a tannery in Maysville, Kentucky. Here he learned his +trade, and in a few years returned to Deerfield and worked for, and +lived in the family of a Mr. Brown, the father of John Brown--"whose +body lies mouldering in the grave, while his soul goes marching on." I +have often heard my father speak of John Brown, particularly since the +events at Harper's Ferry. Brown was a boy when they lived in the same +house, but he knew him afterwards, and regarded him as a man of great +purity of character, of high moral and physical courage, but a fanatic +and extremist in whatever he advocated. It was certainly the act of an +insane man to attempt the invasion of the South, and the overthrow of +slavery, with less than twenty men. + +My father set up for himself in business, establishing a tannery at +Ravenna, the county seat of Portage County. In a few years he removed +from Ravenna, and set up the same business at Point Pleasant, Clermont +County, Ohio. + +During the minority of my father, the West afforded but poor facilities +for the most opulent of the youth to acquire an education, and the +majority were dependent, almost exclusively, upon their own exertions +for whatever learning they obtained. I have often heard him say that +his time at school was limited to six months, when he was very young, +too young, indeed, to learn much, or to appreciate the advantages of an +education, and to a "quarter's schooling" afterwards, probably while +living with judge Tod. But his thirst for education was intense. He +learned rapidly, and was a constant reader up to the day of his death in +his eightieth year. Books were scarce in the Western Reserve during his +youth, but he read every book he could borrow in the neighborhood where +he lived. This scarcity gave him the early habit of studying everything +he read, so that when he got through with a book, he knew everything in +it. The habit continued through life. Even after reading the daily +papers--which he never neglected--he could give all the important +information they contained. He made himself an excellent English +scholar, and before he was twenty years of age was a constant +contributor to Western newspapers, and was also, from that time until he +was fifty years old, an able debater in the societies for this purpose, +which were common in the West at that time. He always took an active +part in politics, but was never a candidate for office, except, I +believe, that he was the first Mayor of Georgetown. He supported +Jackson for the Presidency; but he was a Whig, a great admirer of Henry +Clay, and never voted for any other democrat for high office after +Jackson. + +My mother's family lived in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for several +generations. I have little information about her ancestors. Her family +took no interest in genealogy, so that my grandfather, who died when I +was sixteen years old, knew only back to his grandfather. On the other +side, my father took a great interest in the subject, and in his +researches, he found that there was an entailed estate in Windsor, +Connecticut, belonging to the family, to which his nephew, Lawson Grant +--still living--was the heir. He was so much interested in the subject +that he got his nephew to empower him to act in the matter, and in 1832 +or 1833, when I was a boy ten or eleven years old, he went to Windsor, +proved the title beyond dispute, and perfected the claim of the owners +for a consideration--three thousand dollars, I think. I remember the +circumstance well, and remember, too, hearing him say on his return that +he found some widows living on the property, who had little or nothing +beyond their homes. From these he refused to receive any recompense. + +My mother's father, John Simpson, moved from Montgomery County, +Pennsylvania, to Clermont County, Ohio, about the year 1819, taking with +him his four children, three daughters and one son. My mother, Hannah +Simpson, was the third of these children, and was then over twenty years +of age. Her oldest sister was at that time married, and had several +children. She still lives in Clermont County at this writing, October +5th, 1884, and is over ninety ears of age. Until her memory failed her, +a few years ago, she thought the country ruined beyond recovery when the +Democratic party lost control in 1860. Her family, which was large, +inherited her views, with the exception of one son who settled in +Kentucky before the war. He was the only one of the children who +entered the volunteer service to suppress the rebellion. + +Her brother, next of age and now past eighty-eight, is also still living +in Clermont County, within a few miles of the old homestead, and is as +active in mind as ever. He was a supporter of the Government during the +war, and remains a firm believer, that national success by the +Democratic party means irretrievable ruin. + +In June, 1821, my father, Jesse R. Grant, married Hannah Simpson. I was +born on the 27th of April, 1822, at Point Pleasant, Clermont County, +Ohio. In the fall of 1823 we moved to Georgetown, the county seat of +Brown, the adjoining county east. This place remained my home, until at +the age of seventeen, in 1839, I went to West Point. + +The schools, at the time of which I write, were very indifferent. There +were no free schools, and none in which the scholars were classified. +They were all supported by subscription, and a single teacher--who was +often a man or a woman incapable of teaching much, even if they imparted +all they knew--would have thirty or forty scholars, male and female, +from the infant learning the A B C's up to the young lady of eighteen +and the boy of twenty, studying the highest branches taught--the three +R's, "Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic." I never saw an algebra, or other +mathematical work higher than the arithmetic, in Georgetown, until after +I was appointed to West Point. I then bought a work on algebra in +Cincinnati; but having no teacher it was Greek to me. + +My life in Georgetown was uneventful. From the age of five or six until +seventeen, I attended the subscription schools of the village, except +during the winters of 1836-7 and 1838-9. The former period was spent in +Maysville, Kentucky, attending the school of Richardson and Rand; the +latter in Ripley, Ohio, at a private school. I was not studious in +habit, and probably did not make progress enough to compensate for the +outlay for board and tuition. At all events both winters were spent in +going over the same old arithmetic which I knew every word of before, +and repeating: "A noun is the name of a thing," which I had also heard +my Georgetown teachers repeat, until I had come to believe it--but I +cast no reflections upon my old teacher, Richardson. He turned out +bright scholars from his school, many of whom have filled conspicuous +places in the service of their States. Two of my contemporaries there +--who, I believe, never attended any other institution of learning--have +held seats in Congress, and one, if not both, other high offices; these +are Wadsworth and Brewster. + +My father was, from my earliest recollection, in comfortable +circumstances, considering the times, his place of residence, and the +community in which he lived. Mindful of his own lack of facilities for +acquiring an education, his greatest desire in maturer years was for the +education of his children. Consequently, as stated before, I never +missed a quarter from school from the time I was old enough to attend +till the time of leaving home. This did not exempt me from labor. In +my early days, every one labored more or less, in the region where my +youth was spent, and more in proportion to their private means. It was +only the very poor who were exempt. While my father carried on the +manufacture of leather and worked at the trade himself, he owned and +tilled considerable land. I detested the trade, preferring almost any +other labor; but I was fond of agriculture, and of all employment in +which horses were used. We had, among other lands, fifty acres of +forest within a mile of the village. In the fall of the year choppers +were employed to cut enough wood to last a twelve-month. When I was +seven or eight years of age, I began hauling all the wood used in the +house and shops. I could not load it on the wagons, of course, at that +time, but I could drive, and the choppers would load, and some one at +the house unload. When about eleven years old, I was strong enough to +hold a plough. From that age until seventeen I did all the work done +with horses, such as breaking up the land, furrowing, ploughing corn and +potatoes, bringing in the crops when harvested, hauling all the wood, +besides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, and sawing wood for +stoves, etc., while still attending school. For this I was compensated +by the fact that there was never any scolding or punishing by my +parents; no objection to rational enjoyments, such as fishing, going to +the creek a mile away to swim in summer, taking a horse and visiting my +grandparents in the adjoining county, fifteen miles off, skating on the +ice in winter, or taking a horse and sleigh when there was snow on the +ground. + +While still quite young I had visited Cincinnati, forty-five miles away, +several times, alone; also Maysville, Kentucky, often, and once +Louisville. The journey to Louisville was a big one for a boy of that +day. I had also gone once with a two-horse carriage to Chilicothe, +about seventy miles, with a neighbor's family, who were removing to +Toledo, Ohio, and returned alone; and had gone once, in like manner, to +Flat Rock, Kentucky, about seventy miles away. On this latter occasion +I was fifteen years of age. While at Flat Rock, at the house of a Mr. +Payne, whom I was visiting with his brother, a neighbor of ours in +Georgetown, I saw a very fine saddle horse, which I rather coveted, and +proposed to Mr. Payne, the owner, to trade him for one of the two I was +driving. Payne hesitated to trade with a boy, but asking his brother +about it, the latter told him that it would be all right, that I was +allowed to do as I pleased with the horses. I was seventy miles from +home, with a carriage to take back, and Mr. Payne said he did not know +that his horse had ever had a collar on. I asked to have him hitched to +a farm wagon and we would soon see whether he would work. It was soon +evident that the horse had never worn harness before; but he showed no +viciousness, and I expressed a confidence that I could manage him. A +trade was at once struck, I receiving ten dollars difference. + +The next day Mr. Payne, of Georgetown, and I started on our return. We +got along very well for a few miles, when we encountered a ferocious dog +that frightened the horses and made them run. The new animal kicked at +every jump he made. I got the horses stopped, however, before any +damage was done, and without running into anything. After giving them a +little rest, to quiet their fears, we started again. That instant the +new horse kicked, and started to run once more. The road we were on, +struck the turnpike within half a mile of the point where the second +runaway commenced, and there there was an embankment twenty or more feet +deep on the opposite side of the pike. I got the horses stopped on the +very brink of the precipice. My new horse was terribly frightened and +trembled like an aspen; but he was not half so badly frightened as my +companion, Mr. Payne, who deserted me after this last experience, and +took passage on a freight wagon for Maysville. Every time I attempted +to start, my new horse would commence to kick. I was in quite a dilemma +for a time. Once in Maysville I could borrow a horse from an uncle who +lived there; but I was more than a day's travel from that point. +Finally I took out my bandanna--the style of handkerchief in universal +use then--and with this blindfolded my horse. In this way I reached +Maysville safely the next day, no doubt much to the surprise of my +friend. Here I borrowed a horse from my uncle, and the following day we +proceeded on our journey. + +About half my school-days in Georgetown were spent at the school of John +D. White, a North Carolinian, and the father of Chilton White who +represented the district in Congress for one term during the rebellion. +Mr. White was always a Democrat in politics, and Chilton followed his +father. He had two older brothers--all three being school-mates of mine +at their father's school--who did not go the same way. The second +brother died before the rebellion began; he was a Whig, and afterwards a +Republican. His oldest brother was a Republican and brave soldier +during the rebellion. Chilton is reported as having told of an earlier +horse-trade of mine. As he told the story, there was a Mr. Ralston +living within a few miles of the village, who owned a colt which I very +much wanted. My father had offered twenty dollars for it, but Ralston +wanted twenty-five. I was so anxious to have the colt, that after the +owner left, I begged to be allowed to take him at the price demanded. +My father yielded, but said twenty dollars was all the horse was worth, +and told me to offer that price; if it was not accepted I was to offer +twenty-two and a half, and if that would not get him, to give the +twenty-five. I at once mounted a horse and went for the colt. When I +got to Mr. Ralston's house, I said to him: "Papa says I may offer you +twenty dollars for the colt, but if you won't take that, I am to offer +twenty-two and a half, and if you won't take that, to give you +twenty-five." It would not require a Connecticut man to guess the price +finally agreed upon. This story is nearly true. I certainly showed +very plainly that I had come for the colt and meant to have him. I +could not have been over eight years old at the time. This transaction +caused me great heart-burning. The story got out among the boys of the +village, and it was a long time before I heard the last of it. Boys +enjoy the misery of their companions, at least village boys in that day +did, and in later life I have found that all adults are not free from +the peculiarity. I kept the horse until he was four years old, when he +went blind, and I sold him for twenty dollars. When I went to Maysville +to school, in 1836, at the age of fourteen, I recognized my colt as one +of the blind horses working on the tread-wheel of the ferry-boat. + +I have describes enough of my early life to give an impression of the +whole. I did not like to work; but I did as much of it, while young, as +grown men can be hired to do in these days, and attended school at the +same time. I had as many privileges as any boy in the village, and +probably more than most of them. I have no recollection of ever having +been punished at home, either by scolding or by the rod. But at school +the case was different. The rod was freely used there, and I was not +exempt from its influence. I can see John D. White--the school teacher +--now, with his long beech switch always in his hand. It was not always +the same one, either. Switches were brought in bundles, from a beech +wood near the school house, by the boys for whose benefit they were +intended. Often a whole bundle would be used up in a single day. I +never had any hard feelings against my teacher, either while attending +the school, or in later years when reflecting upon my experience. Mr. +White was a kindhearted man, and was much respected by the community in +which he lived. He only followed the universal custom of the period, +and that under which he had received his own education. + + + +CHAPTER II. + +WEST POINT--GRADUATION. + +In the winter of 1838-9 I was attending school at Ripley, only ten miles +distant from Georgetown, but spent the Christmas holidays at home. +During this vacation my father received a letter from the Honorable +Thomas Morris, then United States Senator from Ohio. When he read it he +said to me, "Ulysses, I believe you are going to receive the +appointment." "What appointment?" I inquired. "To West Point; I have +applied for it." "But I won't go," I said. He said he thought I would, +AND I THOUGHT SO TOO, IF HE DID. I really had no objection to going to +West Point, except that I had a very exalted idea of the acquirements +necessary to get through. I did not believe I possessed them, and could +not bear the idea of failing. There had been four boys from our +village, or its immediate neighborhood, who had been graduated from West +Point, and never a failure of any one appointed from Georgetown, except +in the case of the one whose place I was to take. He was the son of Dr. +Bailey, our nearest and most intimate neighbor. Young Bailey had been +appointed in 1837. Finding before the January examination following, +that he could not pass, he resigned and went to a private school, and +remained there until the following year, when he was reappointed. +Before the next examination he was dismissed. Dr. Bailey was a proud +and sensitive man, and felt the failure of his son so keenly that he +forbade his return home. There were no telegraphs in those days to +disseminate news rapidly, no railroads west of the Alleghanies, and but +few east; and above all, there were no reporters prying into other +people's private affairs. Consequently it did not become generally +known that there was a vacancy at West Point from our district until I +was appointed. I presume Mrs. Bailey confided to my mother the fact +that Bartlett had been dismissed, and that the doctor had forbidden his +son's return home. + +The Honorable Thomas L. Hamer, one of the ablest men Ohio ever produced, +was our member of Congress at the time, and had the right of nomination. +He and my father had been members of the same debating society (where +they were generally pitted on opposite sides), and intimate personal +friends from their early manhood up to a few years before. In politics +they differed. Hamer was a life-long Democrat, while my father was a +Whig. They had a warm discussion, which finally became angry--over some +act of President Jackson, the removal of the deposit of public moneys, I +think--after which they never spoke until after my appointment. I know +both of them felt badly over this estrangement, and would have been glad +at any time to come to a reconciliation; but neither would make the +advance. Under these circumstances my father would not write to Hamer +for the appointment, but he wrote to Thomas Morris, United States +Senator from Ohio, informing him that there was a vacancy at West Point +from our district, and that he would be glad if I could be appointed to +fill it. This letter, I presume, was turned over to Mr. Hamer, and, as +there was no other applicant, he cheerfully appointed me. This healed +the breach between the two, never after reopened. + +Besides the argument used by my father in favor of my going to West +Point--that "he thought I would go"--there was another very strong +inducement. I had always a great desire to travel. I was already the +best travelled boy in Georgetown, except the sons of one man, John +Walker, who had emigrated to Texas with his family, and immigrated back +as soon as he could get the means to do so. In his short stay in Texas +he acquired a very different opinion of the country from what one would +form going there now. + +I had been east to Wheeling, Virginia, and north to the Western Reserve, +in Ohio, west to Louisville, and south to Bourbon County, Kentucky, +besides having driven or ridden pretty much over the whole country +within fifty miles of home. Going to West Point would give me the +opportunity of visiting the two great cities of the continent, +Philadelphia and New York. This was enough. When these places were +visited I would have been glad to have had a steamboat or railroad +collision, or any other accident happen, by which I might have received +a temporary injury sufficient to make me ineligible, for a time, to +enter the Academy. Nothing of the kind occurred, and I had to face the +music. + +Georgetown has a remarkable record for a western village. It is, and +has been from its earliest existence, a democratic town. There was +probably no time during the rebellion when, if the opportunity could +have been afforded, it would not have voted for Jefferson Davis for +President of the United States, over Mr. Lincoln, or any other +representative of his party; unless it was immediately after some of +John Morgan's men, in his celebrated raid through Ohio, spent a few +hours in the village. The rebels helped themselves to whatever they +could find, horses, boots and shoes, especially horses, and many ordered +meals to be prepared for them by the families. This was no doubt a far +pleasanter duty for some families than it would have been to render a +like service for Union soldiers. The line between the Rebel and Union +element in Georgetown was so marked that it led to divisions even in the +churches. There were churches in that part of Ohio where treason was +preached regularly, and where, to secure membership, hostility to the +government, to the war and to the liberation of the slaves, was far more +essential than a belief in the authenticity or credibility of the Bible. +There were men in Georgetown who filled all the requirements for +membership in these churches. + +Yet this far-off western village, with a population, including old and +young, male and female, of about one thousand--about enough for the +organization of a single regiment if all had been men capable of bearing +arms--furnished the Union army four general officers and one colonel, +West Point graduates, and nine generals and field officers of +Volunteers, that I can think of. Of the graduates from West Point, all +had citizenship elsewhere at the breaking out of the rebellion, except +possibly General A. V. Kautz, who had remained in the army from his +graduation. Two of the colonels also entered the service from other +localities. The other seven, General McGroierty, Colonels White, Fyffe, +Loudon and Marshall, Majors King and Bailey, were all residents of +Georgetown when the war broke out, and all of them, who were alive at +the close, returned there. Major Bailey was the cadet who had preceded +me at West Point. He was killed in West Virginia, in his first +engagement. As far as I know, every boy who has entered West Point from +that village since my time has been graduated. + +I took passage on a steamer at Ripley, Ohio, for Pittsburg, about the +middle of May, 1839. Western boats at that day did not make regular +trips at stated times, but would stop anywhere, and for any length of +time, for passengers or freight. I have myself been detained two or +three days at a place after steam was up, the gang planks, all but one, +drawn in, and after the time advertised for starting had expired. On +this occasion we had no vexatious delays, and in about three days +Pittsburg was reached. From Pittsburg I chose passage by the canal to +Harrisburg, rather than by the more expeditious stage. This gave a +better opportunity of enjoying the fine scenery of Western Pennsylvania, +and I had rather a dread of reaching my destination at all. At that +time the canal was much patronized by travellers, and, with the +comfortable packets of the period, no mode of conveyance could be more +pleasant, when time was not an object. From Harrisburg to Philadelphia +there was a railroad, the first I had ever seen, except the one on which +I had just crossed the summit of the Alleghany Mountains, and over which +canal boats were transported. In travelling by the road from +Harrisburg, I thought the perfection of rapid transit had been reached. +We travelled at least eighteen miles an hour, when at full speed, and +made the whole distance averaging probably as much as twelve miles an +hour. This seemed like annihilating space. I stopped five days in +Philadelphia, saw about every street in the city, attended the theatre, +visited Girard College (which was then in course of construction), and +got reprimanded from home afterwards, for dallying by the way so long. +My sojourn in New York was shorter, but long enough to enable me to see +the city very well. I reported at West Point on the 30th or 31st of +May, and about two weeks later passed my examination for admission, +without difficulty, very much to my surprise. + +A military life had no charms for me, and I had not the faintest idea of +staying in the army even if I should be graduated, which I did not +expect. The encampment which preceded the commencement of academic +studies was very wearisome and uninteresting. When the 28th of August +came--the date for breaking up camp and going into barracks--I felt as +though I had been at West Point always, and that if I staid to +graduation, I would have to remain always. I did not take hold of my +studies with avidity, in fact I rarely ever read over a lesson the +second time during my entire cadetship. I could not sit in my room +doing nothing. There is a fine library connected with the Academy from +which cadets can get books to read in their quarters. I devoted more +time to these, than to books relating to the course of studies. Much of +the time, I am sorry to say, was devoted to novels, but not those of a +trashy sort. I read all of Bulwer's then published, Cooper's, +Marryat's, Scott's, Washington Irving's works, Lever's, and many others +that I do not now remember. Mathematics was very easy to me, so that +when January came, I passed the examination, taking a good standing in +that branch. In French, the only other study at that time in the first +year's course, my standing was very low. In fact, if the class had been +turned the other end foremost I should have been near head. I never +succeeded in getting squarely at either end of my class, in any one +study, during the four years. I came near it in French, artillery, +infantry and cavalry tactics, and conduct. + +Early in the session of the Congress which met in December, 1839, a bill +was discussed abolishing the Military Academy. I saw in this an +honorable way to obtain a discharge, and read the debates with much +interest, but with impatience at the delay in taking action, for I was +selfish enough to favor the bill. It never passed, and a year later, +although the time hung drearily with me, I would have been sorry to have +seen it succeed. My idea then was to get through the course, secure a +detail for a few years as assistant professor of mathematics at the +Academy, and afterwards obtain a permanent position as professor in some +respectable college; but circumstances always did shape my course +different from my plans. + +At the end of two years the class received the usual furlough, extending +from the close of the June examination to the 28th of August. This I +enjoyed beyond any other period of my life. My father had sold out his +business in Georgetown--where my youth had been spent, and to which my +day-dreams carried me back as my future home, if I should ever be able +to retire on a competency. He had moved to Bethel, only twelve miles +away, in the adjoining county of Clermont, and had bought a young horse +that had never been in harness, for my special use under the saddle +during my furlough. Most of my time was spent among my old +school-mates--these ten weeks were shorter than one week at West Point. + +Persons acquainted with the Academy know that the corps of cadets is +divided into four companies for the purpose of military exercises. +These companies are officered from the cadets, the superintendent and +commandant selecting the officers for their military bearing and +qualifications. The adjutant, quartermaster, four captains and twelve +lieutenants are taken from the first, or Senior class; the sergeants +from the second, or junior class; and the corporals from the third, or +Sophomore class. I had not been "called out" as a corporal, but when I +returned from furlough I found myself the last but one--about my +standing in all the tactics--of eighteen sergeants. The promotion was +too much for me. That year my standing in the class--as shown by the +number of demerits of the year--was about the same as it was among the +sergeants, and I was dropped, and served the fourth year as a private. + +During my first year's encampment General Scott visited West Point, and +reviewed the cadets. With his commanding figure, his quite colossal +size and showy uniform, I thought him the finest specimen of manhood my +eyes had ever beheld, and the most to be envied. I could never resemble +him in appearance, but I believe I did have a presentiment for a moment +that some day I should occupy his place on review--although I had no +intention then of remaining in the army. My experience in a horse-trade +ten years before, and the ridicule it caused me, were too fresh in my +mind for me to communicate this presentiment to even my most intimate +chum. The next summer Martin Van Buren, then President of the United +States, visited West Point and reviewed the cadets; he did not impress +me with the awe which Scott had inspired. In fact I regarded General +Scott and Captain C. F. Smith, the Commandant of Cadets, as the two men +most to be envied in the nation. I retained a high regard for both up +to the day of their death. + +The last two years wore away more rapidly than the first two, but they +still seemed about five times as long as Ohio years, to me. At last all +the examinations were passed, and the members of the class were called +upon to record their choice of arms of service and regiments. I was +anxious to enter the cavalry, or dragoons as they were then called, but +there was only one regiment of dragoons in the Army at that time, and +attached to that, besides the full complement of officers, there were at +least four brevet second lieutenants. I recorded therefore my first +choice, dragoons; second, 4th infantry; and got the latter. Again there +was a furlough--or, more properly speaking, leave of absence for the +class were now commissioned officers--this time to the end of September. +Again I went to Ohio to spend my vacation among my old school-mates; and +again I found a fine saddle horse purchased for my special use, besides +a horse and buggy that I could drive--but I was not in a physical +condition to enjoy myself quite as well as on the former occasion. For +six months before graduation I had had a desperate cough ("Tyler's grip" +it was called), and I was very much reduced, weighing but one hundred +and seventeen pounds, just my weight at entrance, though I had grown six +inches in stature in the mean time. There was consumption in my +father's family, two of his brothers having died of that disease, which +made my symptoms more alarming. The brother and sister next younger +than myself died, during the rebellion, of the same disease, and I +seemed the most promising subject for it of the three in 1843. + +Having made alternate choice of two different arms of service with +different uniforms, I could not get a uniform suit until notified of my +assignment. I left my measurement with a tailor, with directions not to +make the uniform until I notified him whether it was to be for infantry +or dragoons. Notice did not reach me for several weeks, and then it +took at least a week to get the letter of instructions to the tailor and +two more to make the clothes and have them sent to me. This was a time +of great suspense. I was impatient to get on my uniform and see how it +looked, and probably wanted my old school-mates, particularly the girls, +to see me in it. + +The conceit was knocked out of me by two little circumstances that +happened soon after the arrival of the clothes, which gave me a distaste +for military uniform that I never recovered from. Soon after the +arrival of the suit I donned it, and put off for Cincinnati on +horseback. While I was riding along a street of that city, imagining +that every one was looking at me, with a feeling akin to mine when I +first saw General Scott, a little urchin, bareheaded, footed, with dirty +and ragged pants held up by bare a single gallows--that's what +suspenders were called then--and a shirt that had not seen a wash-tub +for weeks, turned to me and cried: "Soldier! will you work? No, +sir--ee; I'll sell my shirt first!!" The horse trade and its dire +consequences were recalled to mind. + +The other circumstance occurred at home. Opposite our house in Bethel +stood the old stage tavern where "man and beast" found accommodation, +The stable-man was rather dissipated, but possessed of some humor. On +my return I found him parading the streets, and attending in the stable, +barefooted, but in a pair of sky-blue nankeen pantaloons--just the color +of my uniform trousers--with a strip of white cotton sheeting sewed down +the outside seams in imitation of mine. The joke was a huge one in the +mind of many of the people, and was much enjoyed by them; but I did not +appreciate it so highly. + +During the remainder of my leave of absence, my time was spent in +visiting friends in Georgetown and Cincinnati, and occasionally other +towns in that part of the State. + + + +CHAPTER III. + +ARMY LIFE--CAUSES OF THE MEXICAN WAR--CAMP SALUBRITY. + +On the 30th of September I reported for duty at Jefferson Barracks, St. +Louis, with the 4th United States infantry. It was the largest military +post in the country at that time, being garrisoned by sixteen companies +of infantry, eight of the 3d regiment, the remainder of the 4th. +Colonel Steven Kearney, one of the ablest officers of the day, commanded +the post, and under him discipline was kept at a high standard, but +without vexatious rules or regulations. Every drill and roll-call had +to be attended, but in the intervals officers were permitted to enjoy +themselves, leaving the garrison, and going where they pleased, without +making written application to state where they were going for how long, +etc., so that they were back for their next duty. It did seem to me, in +my early army days, that too many of the older officers, when they came +to command posts, made it a study to think what orders they could +publish to annoy their subordinates and render them uncomfortable. I +noticed, however, a few years later, when the Mexican war broke out, +that most of this class of officers discovered they were possessed of +disabilities which entirely incapacitated them for active field service. +They had the moral courage to proclaim it, too. They were right; but +they did not always give their disease the right name. + +At West Point I had a class-mate--in the last year of our studies he was +room-mate also--F. T. Dent, whose family resided some five miles west of +Jefferson Barracks. Two of his unmarried brothers were living at home +at that time, and as I had taken with me from Ohio, my horse, saddle and +bridle, I soon found my way out to White Haven, the name of the Dent +estate. As I found the family congenial my visits became frequent. +There were at home, besides the young men, two daughters, one a school +miss of fifteen, the other a girl of eight or nine. There was still an +older daughter of seventeen, who had been spending several years at +boarding-school in St. Louis, but who, though through school, had not +yet returned home. She was spending the winter in the city with +connections, the family of Colonel John O'Fallon, well known in St. +Louis. In February she returned to her country home. After that I do +not know but my visits became more frequent; they certainly did become +more enjoyable. We would often take walks, or go on horseback to visit +the neighbors, until I became quite well acquainted in that vicinity. +Sometimes one of the brothers would accompany us, sometimes one of the +younger sisters. If the 4th infantry had remained at Jefferson Barracks +it is possible, even probable, that this life might have continued for +some years without my finding out that there was anything serious the +matter with me; but in the following May a circumstance occurred which +developed my sentiment so palpably that there was no mistaking it. + +The annexation of Texas was at this time the subject of violent +discussion in Congress, in the press, and by individuals. The +administration of President Tyler, then in power, was making the most +strenuous efforts to effect the annexation, which was, indeed, the great +and absorbing question of the day. During these discussions the greater +part of the single rifle regiment in the army--the 2d dragoons, which +had been dismounted a year or two before, and designated "Dismounted +Rifles"--was stationed at Fort Jessup, Louisiana, some twenty-five miles +east of the Texas line, to observe the frontier. About the 1st of May +the 3d infantry was ordered from Jefferson Barracks to Louisiana, to go +into camp in the neighborhood of Fort Jessup, and there await further +orders. The troops were embarked on steamers and were on their way down +the Mississippi within a few days after the receipt of this order. +About the time they started I obtained a leave of absence for twenty +days to go to Ohio to visit my parents. I was obliged to go to St. +Louis to take a steamer for Louisville or Cincinnati, or the first +steamer going up the Ohio River to any point. Before I left St. Louis +orders were received at Jefferson Barracks for the 4th infantry to +follow the 3d. A messenger was sent after me to stop my leaving; but +before he could reach me I was off, totally ignorant of these events. A +day or two after my arrival at Bethel I received a letter from a +classmate and fellow lieutenant in the 4th, informing me of the +circumstances related above, and advising me not to open any letter post +marked St. Louis or Jefferson Barracks, until the expiration of my +leave, and saying that he would pack up my things and take them along +for me. His advice was not necessary, for no other letter was sent to +me. I now discovered that I was exceedingly anxious to get back to +Jefferson Barracks, and I understood the reason without explanation from +any one. My leave of absence required me to report for duty, at +Jefferson Barracks, at the end of twenty days. I knew my regiment had +gone up the Red River, but I was not disposed to break the letter of my +leave; besides, if I had proceeded to Louisiana direct, I could not have +reached there until after the expiration of my leave. Accordingly, at +the end of the twenty days, I reported for duty to Lieutenant Ewell, +commanding at Jefferson Barracks, handing him at the same time my leave +of absence. After noticing the phraseology of the order--leaves of +absence were generally worded, "at the end of which time he will report +for duty with his proper command"--he said he would give me an order to +join my regiment in Louisiana. I then asked for a few days' leave +before starting, which he readily granted. This was the same Ewell who +acquired considerable reputation as a Confederate general during the +rebellion. He was a man much esteemed, and deservedly so, in the old +army, and proved himself a gallant and efficient officer in two wars +--both in my estimation unholy. + +I immediately procured a horse and started for the country, taking no +baggage with me, of course. There is an insignificant creek--the +Gravois--between Jefferson Barracks and the place to which I was going, +and at that day there was not a bridge over it from its source to its +mouth. There is not water enough in the creek at ordinary stages to run +a coffee mill, and at low water there is none running whatever. On this +occasion it had been raining heavily, and, when the creek was reached, I +found the banks full to overflowing, and the current rapid. I looked at +it a moment to consider what to do. One of my superstitions had always +been when I started to go any where, or to do anything, not to turn +back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished. I have +frequently started to go to places where I had never been and to which I +did not know the way, depending upon making inquiries on the road, and +if I got past the place without knowing it, instead of turning back, I +would go on until a road was found turning in the right direction, take +that, and come in by the other side. So I struck into the stream, and +in an instant the horse was swimming and I being carried down by the +current. I headed the horse towards the other bank and soon reached it, +wet through and without other clothes on that side of the stream. I +went on, however, to my destination and borrowed a dry suit from my +--future--brother-in-law. We were not of the same size, but the clothes +answered every purpose until I got more of my own. + +Before I returned I mustered up courage to make known, in the most +awkward manner imaginable, the discovery I had made on learning that the +4th infantry had been ordered away from Jefferson Barracks. The young +lady afterwards admitted that she too, although until then she had never +looked upon me other than as a visitor whose company was agreeable to +her, had experienced a depression of spirits she could not account for +when the regiment left. Before separating it was definitely understood +that at a convenient time we would join our fortunes, and not let the +removal of a regiment trouble us. This was in May, 1844. It was the +22d of August, 1848, before the fulfilment of this agreement. My duties +kept me on the frontier of Louisiana with the Army of Observation during +the pendency of Annexation; and afterwards I was absent through the war +with Mexico, provoked by the action of the army, if not by the +annexation itself. During that time there was a constant correspondence +between Miss Dent and myself, but we only met once in the period of four +years and three months. In May, 1845, I procured a leave for twenty +days, visited St. Louis, and obtained the consent of the parents for the +union, which had not been asked for before. + +As already stated, it was never my intention to remain in the army long, +but to prepare myself for a professorship in some college. Accordingly, +soon after I was settled at Jefferson Barracks, I wrote a letter to +Professor Church--Professor of Mathematics at West Point--requesting him +to ask my designation as his assistant, when next a detail had to be +made. Assistant professors at West Point are all officers of the army, +supposed to be selected for their special fitness for the particular +branch of study they are assigned to teach. The answer from Professor +Church was entirely satisfactory, and no doubt I should have been +detailed a year or two later but for the Mexican War coming on. +Accordingly I laid out for myself a course of studies to be pursued in +garrison, with regularity, if not persistency. I reviewed my West Point +course of mathematics during the seven months at Jefferson Barracks, and +read many valuable historical works, besides an occasional novel. To +help my memory I kept a book in which I would write up, from time to +time, my recollections of all I had read since last posting it. When +the regiment was ordered away, I being absent at the time, my effects +were packed up by Lieutenant Haslett, of the 4th infantry, and taken +along. I never saw my journal after, nor did I ever keep another, +except for a portion of the time while travelling abroad. Often since a +fear has crossed my mind lest that book might turn up yet, and fall into +the hands of some malicious person who would publish it. I know its +appearance would cause me as much heart-burning as my youthful +horse-trade, or the later rebuke for wearing uniform clothes. + +The 3d infantry had selected camping grounds on the reservation at Fort +Jessup, about midway between the Red River and the Sabine. Our orders +required us to go into camp in the same neighborhood, and await further +instructions. Those authorized to do so selected a place in the pine +woods, between the old town of Natchitoches and Grand Ecore, about three +miles from each, and on high ground back from the river. The place was +given the name of Camp Salubrity, and proved entitled to it. The camp +was on a high, sandy, pine ridge, with spring branches in the valley, in +front and rear. The springs furnished an abundance of cool, pure water, +and the ridge was above the flight of mosquitoes, which abound in that +region in great multitudes and of great voracity. In the valley they +swarmed in myriads, but never came to the summit of the ridge. The +regiment occupied this camp six months before the first death occurred, +and that was caused by an accident. + +There was no intimation given that the removal of the 3d and 4th +regiments of infantry to the western border of Louisiana was occasioned +in any way by the prospective annexation of Texas, but it was generally +understood that such was the case. Ostensibly we were intended to +prevent filibustering into Texas, but really as a menace to Mexico in +case she appeared to contemplate war. Generally the officers of the +army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but +not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, +and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most +unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an +instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, +in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional +territory. Texas was originally a state belonging to the republic of +Mexico. It extended from the Sabine River on the east to the Rio Grande +on the west, and from the Gulf of Mexico on the south and east to the +territory of the United States and New Mexico--another Mexican state at +that time--on the north and west. An empire in territory, it had but a +very sparse population, until settled by Americans who had received +authority from Mexico to colonize. These colonists paid very little +attention to the supreme government, and introduced slavery into the +state almost from the start, though the constitution of Mexico did not, +nor does it now, sanction that institution. Soon they set up an +independent government of their own, and war existed, between Texas and +Mexico, in name from that time until 1836, when active hostilities very +nearly ceased upon the capture of Santa Anna, the Mexican President. +Before long, however, the same people--who with permission of Mexico had +colonized Texas, and afterwards set up slavery there, and then seceded +as soon as they felt strong enough to do so--offered themselves and the +State to the United States, and in 1845 their offer was accepted. The +occupation, separation and annexation were, from the inception of the +movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory +out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union. + +Even if the annexation itself could be justified, the manner in which +the subsequent war was forced upon Mexico cannot. The fact is, +annexationists wanted more territory than they could possibly lay any +claim to, as part of the new acquisition. Texas, as an independent +State, never had exercised jurisdiction over the territory between the +Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Mexico had never recognized the +independence of Texas, and maintained that, even if independent, the +State had no claim south of the Nueces. I am aware that a treaty, made +by the Texans with Santa Anna while he was under duress, ceded all the +territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande--, but he was a prisoner +of war when the treaty was made, and his life was in jeopardy. He knew, +too, that he deserved execution at the hands of the Texans, if they +should ever capture him. The Texans, if they had taken his life, would +have only followed the example set by Santa Anna himself a few years +before, when he executed the entire garrison of the Alamo and the +villagers of Goliad. + +In taking military possession of Texas after annexation, the army of +occupation, under General Taylor, was directed to occupy the disputed +territory. The army did not stop at the Nueces and offer to negotiate +for a settlement of the boundary question, but went beyond, apparently +in order to force Mexico to initiate war. It is to the credit of the +American nation, however, that after conquering Mexico, and while +practically holding the country in our possession, so that we could have +retained the whole of it, or made any terms we chose, we paid a round +sum for the additional territory taken; more than it was worth, or was +likely to be, to Mexico. To us it was an empire and of incalculable +value; but it might have been obtained by other means. The Southern +rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like +individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our +punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times. + +The 4th infantry went into camp at Salubrity in the month of May, 1844, +with instructions, as I have said, to await further orders. At first, +officers and men occupied ordinary tents. As the summer heat increased +these were covered by sheds to break the rays of the sun. The summer +was whiled away in social enjoyments among the officers, in visiting +those stationed at, and near, Fort Jessup, twenty-five miles away, +visiting the planters on the Red River, and the citizens of Natchitoches +and Grand Ecore. There was much pleasant intercourse between the +inhabitants and the officers of the army. I retain very agreeable +recollections of my stay at Camp Salubrity, and of the acquaintances +made there, and no doubt my feeling is shared by the few officers living +who were there at the time. I can call to mind only two officers of the +4th infantry, besides myself, who were at Camp Salubrity with the +regiment, who are now alive. + +With a war in prospect, and belonging to a regiment that had an unusual +number of officers detailed on special duty away from the regiment, my +hopes of being ordered to West Point as instructor vanished. At the +time of which I now write, officers in the quartermaster's, commissary's +and adjutant--general's departments were appointed from the line of the +army, and did not vacate their regimental commissions until their +regimental and staff commissions were for the same grades. Generally +lieutenants were appointed to captaincies to fill vacancies in the staff +corps. If they should reach a captaincy in the line before they arrived +at a majority in the staff, they would elect which commission they would +retain. In the 4th infantry, in 1844, at least six line officers were +on duty in the staff, and therefore permanently detached from the +regiment. Under these circumstances I gave up everything like a special +course of reading, and only read thereafter for my own amusement, and +not very much for that, until the war was over. I kept a horse and +rode, and staid out of doors most of the time by day, and entirely +recovered from the cough which I had carried from West Point, and from +all indications of consumption. I have often thought that my life was +saved, and my health restored, by exercise and exposure, enforced by an +administrative act, and a war, both of which I disapproved. + +As summer wore away, and cool days and colder nights came upon us, the +tents e were occupying ceased to afford comfortable quarters; and +"further orders" not reaching us, we began to look about to remedy the +hardship. Men were put to work getting out timber to build huts, and in +a very short time all were comfortably housed--privates as well as +officers. The outlay by the government in accomplishing this was +nothing, or nearly nothing. The winter was spent more agreeably than +the summer had been. There were occasional parties given by the +planters along the "coast"--as the bottom lands on the Red River were +called. The climate was delightful. + +Near the close of the short session of Congress of 1844-5, the bill for +the annexation of Texas to the United States was passed. It reached +President Tyler on the 1st of March, 1845, and promptly received his +approval. When the news reached us we began to look again for "further +orders." They did not arrive promptly, and on the 1st of May following +I asked and obtained a leave of absence for twenty days, for the purpose +of visiting--St. Louis. The object of this visit has been before +stated. + +Early in July the long expected orders were received, but they only took +the regiment to New Orleans Barracks. We reached there before the +middle of the month, and again waited weeks for still further orders. +The yellow fever was raging in New Orleans during the time we remained +there, and the streets of the city had the appearance of a continuous +well-observed Sunday. I recollect but one occasion when this observance +seemed to be broken by the inhabitants. One morning about daylight I +happened to be awake, and, hearing the discharge of a rifle not far off, +I looked out to ascertain where the sound came from. I observed a +couple of clusters of men near by, and learned afterwards that "it was +nothing; only a couple of gentlemen deciding a difference of opinion +with rifles, at twenty paces." I do not remember if either was killed, +or even hurt, but no doubt the question of difference was settled +satisfactorily, and "honorably," in the estimation of the parties +engaged. I do not believe I ever would have the courage to fight a +duel. If any man should wrong me to the extent of my being willing to +kill him, I would not be willing to give him the choice of weapons with +which it should be done, and of the time, place and distance separating +us, when I executed him. If I should do another such a wrong as to +justify him in killing me, I would make any reasonable atonement within +my power, if convinced of the wrong done. I place my opposition to +duelling on higher grounds than here stated. No doubt a majority of the +duels fought have been for want of moral courage on the part of those +engaged to decline. + +At Camp Salubrity, and when we went to New Orleans Barracks, the 4th +infantry was commanded by Colonel Vose, then an old gentleman who had +not commanded on drill for a number of years. He was not a man to +discover infirmity in the presence of danger. It now appeared that war +was imminent, and he felt that it was his duty to brush up his tactics. +Accordingly, when we got settled down at our new post, he took command +of the regiment at a battalion drill. Only two or three evolutions had +been gone through when he dismissed the battalion, and, turning to go to +his own quarters, dropped dead. He had not been complaining of ill +health, but no doubt died of heart disease. He was a most estimable +man, of exemplary habits, and by no means the author of his own disease. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +CORPUS CHRISTI--MEXICAN SMUGGLING--SPANISH RULE IN MEXICO--SUPPLYING +TRANSPORTATION. + +Early in September the regiment left New Orleans for Corpus Christi, now +in Texas. Ocean steamers were not then common, and the passage was made +in sailing vessels. At that time there was not more than three feet of +water in the channel at the outlet of Corpus Christi Bay; the +debarkation, therefore, had to take place by small steamers, and at an +island in the channel called Shell Island, the ships anchoring some +miles out from shore. This made the work slow, and as the army was only +supplied with one or two steamers, it took a number of days to effect +the landing of a single regiment with its stores, camp and garrison +equipage, etc. There happened to be pleasant weather while this was +going on, but the land-swell was so great that when the ship and steamer +were on opposite sides of the same wave they would be at considerable +distance apart. The men and baggage were let down to a point higher +than the lower deck of the steamer, and when ship and steamer got into +the trough between the waves, and were close together, the load would be +drawn over the steamer and rapidly run down until it rested on the deck. + +After I had gone ashore, and had been on guard several days at Shell +Island, quite six miles from the ship, I had occasion for some reason or +other to return on board. While on the Suviah--I think that was the +name of our vessel--I heard a tremendous racket at the other end of the +ship, and much and excited sailor language, such as "damn your eyes," +etc. In a moment or two the captain, who was an excitable little man, +dying with consumption, and not weighing much over a hundred pounds, +came running out, carrying a sabre nearly as large and as heavy as he +was, and crying, that his men had mutinied. It was necessary to sustain +the captain without question, and in a few minutes all the sailors +charged with mutiny were in irons. I rather felt for a time a wish that +I had not gone aboard just then. As the men charged with mutiny +submitted to being placed in irons without resistance, I always doubted +if they knew that they had mutinied until they were told. + +By the time I was ready to leave the ship again I thought I had learned +enough of the working of the double and single pulley, by which +passengers were let down from the upper deck of the ship to the steamer +below, and determined to let myself down without assistance. Without +saying anything of my intentions to any one, I mounted the railing, and +taking hold of the centre rope, just below the upper block, I put one +foot on the hook below the lower block, and stepped off just as I did so +some one called out "hold on." It was too late. I tried to "hold on" +with all my might, but my heels went up, and my head went down so +rapidly that my hold broke, and I plunged head foremost into the water, +some twenty-five feet below, with such velocity that it seemed to me I +never would stop. When I came to the surface again, being a fair +swimmer, and not having lost my presence of mind, I swam around until a +bucket was let down for me, and I was drawn up without a scratch or +injury. I do not believe there was a man on board who sympathized with +me in the least when they found me uninjured. I rather enjoyed the joke +myself. The captain of the Suviah died of his disease a few months later, +and I believe before the mutineers were tried. I hope they got clear, +because, as before stated, I always thought the mutiny was all in the +brain of a very weak and sick man. + +After reaching shore, or Shell Island, the labor of getting to Corpus +Christi was slow and tedious. There was, if my memory serves me, but +one small steamer to transport troops and baggage when the 4th infantry +arrived. Others were procured later. The distance from Shell Island to +Corpus Christi was some sixteen or eighteen miles. The channel to the +bay was so shallow that the steamer, small as it was, had to be dragged +over the bottom when loaded. Not more than one trip a day could be +effected. Later this was remedied, by deepening the channel and +increasing the number of vessels suitable to its navigation. + +Corpus Christi is near the head of the bay of the same name, formed by +the entrance of the Nueces River into tide-water, and is on the west +bank of that bay. At the time of its first occupancy by United States +troops there was a small Mexican hamlet there, containing probably less +than one hundred souls. There was, in addition, a small American trading +post, at which goods were sold to Mexican smugglers. All goods were put +up in compact packages of about one hundred pounds each, suitable for +loading on pack mules. Two of these packages made a load for an +ordinary Mexican mule, and three for the larger ones. The bulk of the +trade was in leaf tobacco, and domestic cotton-cloths and calicoes. The +Mexicans had, before the arrival of the army, but little to offer in +exchange except silver. The trade in tobacco was enormous, considering +the population to be supplied. Almost every Mexican above the age of +ten years, and many much younger, smoked the cigarette. Nearly every +Mexican carried a pouch of leaf tobacco, powdered by rolling in the +hands, and a roll of corn husks to make wrappers. The cigarettes were +made by the smokers as they used them. + +Up to the time of which I write, and for years afterwards--I think until +the administration of President Juarez--the cultivation, manufacture and +sale of tobacco constituted a government monopoly, and paid the bulk of +the revenue collected from internal sources. The price was enormously +high, and made successful smuggling very profitable. The difficulty of +obtaining tobacco is probably the reason why everybody, male and female, +used it at that time. I know from my own experience that when I was at +West Point, the fact that tobacco, in every form, was prohibited, and +the mere possession of the weed severely punished, made the majority of +the cadets, myself included, try to acquire the habit of using it. I +failed utterly at the time and for many years afterward; but the +majority accomplished the object of their youthful ambition. + +Under Spanish rule Mexico was prohibited from producing anything that +the mother-country could supply. This rule excluded the cultivation of +the grape, olive and many other articles to which the soil and climate +were well adapted. The country was governed for "revenue only;" and +tobacco, which cannot be raised in Spain, but is indigenous to Mexico, +offered a fine instrumentality for securing this prime object of +government. The native population had been in the habit of using "the +weed" from a period, back of any recorded history of this continent. +Bad habits--if not restrained by law or public opinion--spread more +rapidly and universally than good ones, and the Spanish colonists +adopted the use of tobacco almost as generally as the natives. Spain, +therefore, in order to secure the largest revenue from this source, +prohibited the cultivation, except in specified localities--and in these +places farmed out the privilege at a very high price. The tobacco when +raised could only be sold to the government, and the price to the +consumer was limited only by the avarice of the authorities, and the +capacity of the people to pay. + +All laws for the government of the country were enacted in Spain, and +the officers for their execution were appointed by the Crown, and sent +out to the New El Dorado. The Mexicans had been brought up ignorant of +how to legislate or how to rule. When they gained their independence, +after many years of war, it was the most natural thing in the world that +they should adopt as their own the laws then in existence. The only +change was, that Mexico became her own executor of the laws and the +recipient of the revenues. The tobacco tax, yielding so large a revenue +under the law as it stood, was one of the last, if not the very last, of +the obnoxious imposts to be repealed. Now, the citizens are allowed to +cultivate any crops the soil will yield. Tobacco is cheap, and every +quality can be produced. Its use is by no means so general as when I +first visited the country. + +Gradually the "Army of Occupation" assembled at Corpus Christi. When it +was all together it consisted of seven companies of the 2d regiment of +dragoons, four companies of light artillery, five regiments of infantry +--the 3d, 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th--and one regiment of artillery acting as +infantry--not more than three thousand men in all. General Zachary +Taylor commanded the whole. There were troops enough in one body to +establish a drill and discipline sufficient to fit men and officers for +all they were capable of in case of battle. The rank and file were +composed of men who had enlisted in time of peace, to serve for seven +dollars a month, and were necessarily inferior as material to the +average volunteers enlisted later in the war expressly to fight, and +also to the volunteers in the war for the preservation of the Union. +The men engaged in the Mexican war were brave, and the officers of the +regular army, from highest to lowest, were educated in their profession. +A more efficient army for its number and armament, I do not believe ever +fought a battle than the one commanded by General Taylor in his first +two engagements on Mexican--or Texan soil. + +The presence of United States troops on the edge of the disputed +territory furthest from the Mexican settlements, was not sufficient to +provoke hostilities. We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was +essential that Mexico should commence it. It was very doubtful whether +Congress would declare war; but if Mexico should attack our troops, the +Executive could announce, "Whereas, war exists by the acts of, etc.," +and prosecute the contest with vigor. Once initiated there were but few +public men who would have the courage to oppose it. Experience proves +that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no +matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or +history. Better for him, individually, to advocate "war, pestilence, +and famine," than to act as obstructionist to a war already begun. The +history of the defeated rebel will be honorable hereafter, compared with +that of the Northern man who aided him by conspiring against his +government while protected by it. The most favorable posthumous history +the stay-at-home traitor can hope for is--oblivion. + +Mexico showing no willingness to come to the Nueces to drive the +invaders from her soil, it became necessary for the "invaders" to +approach to within a convenient distance to be struck. Accordingly, +preparations were begun for moving the army to the Rio Grande, to a +point near Matamoras. It was desirable to occupy a position near the +largest centre of population possible to reach, without absolutely +invading territory to which we set up no claim whatever. + +The distance from Corpus Christi to Matamoras is about one hundred and +fifty miles. The country does not abound in fresh water, and the length +of the marches had to be regulated by the distance between water +supplies. Besides the streams, there were occasional pools, filled +during the rainy season, some probably made by the traders, who +travelled constantly between Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande, and some +by the buffalo. There was not at that time a single habitation, +cultivated field, or herd of domestic animals, between Corpus Christi +and Matamoras. It was necessary, therefore, to have a wagon train +sufficiently large to transport the camp and garrison equipage, +officers' baggage, rations for the army, and part rations of grain for +the artillery horses and all the animals taken from the north, where +they had been accustomed to having their forage furnished them. The +army was but indifferently supplied with transportation. Wagons and +harness could easily be supplied from the north but mules and horses +could not so readily be brought. The American traders and Mexican +smugglers came to the relief. Contracts were made for mules at from +eight to eleven dollars each. The smugglers furnished the animals, and +took their pay in goods of the description before mentioned. I doubt +whether the Mexicans received in value from the traders five dollars per +head for the animals they furnished, and still more, whether they paid +anything but their own time in procuring them. Such is trade; such is +war. The government paid in hard cash to the contractor the stipulated +price. + +Between the Rio Grande and the Nueces there was at that time a large +band of wild horses feeding; as numerous, probably, as the band of +buffalo roaming further north was before its rapid extermination +commenced. The Mexicans used to capture these in large numbers and +bring them into the American settlements and sell them. A picked animal +could be purchased at from eight to twelve dollars, but taken at +wholesale, they could be bought for thirty-six dollars a dozen. Some of +these were purchased for the army, and answered a most useful purpose. +The horses were generally very strong, formed much like the Norman +horse, and with very heavy manes and tails. A number of officers +supplied themselves with these, and they generally rendered as useful +service as the northern animal in fact they were much better when +grazing was the only means of supplying forage. + +There was no need for haste, and some months were consumed in the +necessary preparations for a move. In the meantime the army was engaged +in all the duties pertaining to the officer and the soldier. Twice, +that I remember, small trains were sent from Corpus Christi, with +cavalry escorts, to San Antonio and Austin, with paymasters and funds to +pay off small detachments of troops stationed at those places. General +Taylor encouraged officers to accompany these expeditions. I +accompanied one of them in December, 1845. The distance from Corpus +Christi to San Antonio was then computed at one hundred and fifty miles. +Now that roads exist it is probably less. From San Antonio to Austin we +computed the distance at one hundred and ten miles, and from the latter +place back to Corpus Christi at over two hundred miles. I know the +distance now from San Antonio to Austin is but little over eighty miles, +so that our computation was probably too high. + +There was not at the time an individual living between Corpus Christi +and San Antonio until within about thirty miles of the latter point, +where there were a few scattering Mexican settlements along the San +Antonio River. The people in at least one of these hamlets lived +underground for protection against the Indians. The country abounded in +game, such as deer and antelope, with abundance of wild turkeys along +the streams and where there were nut-bearing woods. On the Nueces, +about twenty-five miles up from Corpus Christi, were a few log cabins, +the remains of a town called San Patricio, but the inhabitants had all +been massacred by the Indians, or driven away. + +San Antonio was about equally divided in population between Americans +and Mexicans. From there to Austin there was not a single residence +except at New Braunfels, on the Guadalupe River. At that point was a +settlement of Germans who had only that year come into the State. At +all events they were living in small huts, about such as soldiers would +hastily construct for temporary occupation. From Austin to Corpus +Christi there was only a small settlement at Bastrop, with a few farms +along the Colorado River; but after leaving that, there were no +settlements except the home of one man, with one female slave, at the +old town of Goliad. Some of the houses were still standing. Goliad had +been quite a village for the period and region, but some years before +there had been a Mexican massacre, in which every inhabitant had been +killed or driven away. This, with the massacre of the prisoners in the +Alamo, San Antonio, about the same time, more than three hundred men in +all, furnished the strongest justification the Texans had for carrying +on the war with so much cruelty. In fact, from that time until the +Mexican war, the hostilities between Texans and Mexicans was so great +that neither was safe in the neighborhood of the other who might be in +superior numbers or possessed of superior arms. The man we found living +there seemed like an old friend; he had come from near Fort Jessup, +Louisiana, where the officers of the 3d and 4th infantry and the 2d +dragoons had known him and his family. He had emigrated in advance of +his family to build up a home for them. + + + +CHAPTER V. + +TRIP TO AUSTIN--PROMOTION TO FULL SECOND LIEUTENANT--ARMY OF OCCUPATION. + +When our party left Corpus Christi it was quite large, including the +cavalry escort, Paymaster, Major Dix, his clerk and the officers who, +like myself, were simply on leave; but all the officers on leave, except +Lieutenant Benjamin--afterwards killed in the valley of Mexico +--Lieutenant, now General, Augur, and myself, concluded to spend their +allotted time at San Antonio and return from there. We were all to be +back at Corpus Christi by the end of the month. The paymaster was +detained in Austin so long that, if we had waited for him, we would have +exceeded our leave. We concluded, therefore, to start back at once with +the animals we had, and having to rely principally on grass for their +food, it was a good six days' journey. We had to sleep on the prairie +every night, except at Goliad, and possibly one night on the Colorado, +without shelter and with only such food as we carried with us, and +prepared ourselves. The journey was hazardous on account of Indians, +and there were white men in Texas whom I would not have cared to meet in +a secluded place. Lieutenant Augur was taken seriously sick before we +reached Goliad and at a distance from any habitation. To add to the +complication, his horse--a mustang that had probably been captured from +the band of wild horses before alluded to, and of undoubted longevity at +his capture--gave out. It was absolutely necessary to get for ward to +Goliad to find a shelter for our sick companion. By dint of patience +and exceedingly slow movements, Goliad was at last reached, and a +shelter and bed secured for our patient. We remained over a day, hoping +that Augur might recover sufficiently to resume his travels. He did +not, however, and knowing that Major Dix would be along in a few days, +with his wagon-train, now empty, and escort, we arranged with our +Louisiana friend to take the best of care of the sick lieutenant until +thus relieved, and went on. + +I had never been a sportsman in my life; had scarcely ever gone in +search of game, and rarely seen any when looking for it. On this trip +there was no minute of time while travelling between San Patricio and +the settlements on the San Antonio River, from San Antonio to Austin, +and again from the Colorado River back to San Patricio, when deer or +antelope could not be seen in great numbers. Each officer carried a +shot-gun, and every evening, after going into camp, some would go out +and soon return with venison and wild turkeys enough for the entire +camp. I, however, never went out, and had no occasion to fire my gun; +except, being detained over a day at Goliad, Benjamin and I concluded to +go down to the creek--which was fringed with timber, much of it the +pecan--and bring back a few turkeys. We had scarcely reached the edge +of the timber when I heard the flutter of wings overhead, and in an +instant I saw two or three turkeys flying away. These were soon +followed by more, then more, and more, until a flock of twenty or thirty +had left from just over my head. All this time I stood watching the +turkeys to see where they flew--with my gun on my shoulder, and never +once thought of levelling it at the birds. When I had time to reflect +upon the matter, I came to the conclusion that as a sportsman I was a +failure, and went back to the house. Benjamin remained out, and got as +many turkeys as he wanted to carry back. + +After the second night at Goliad, Benjamin and I started to make the +remainder of the journey alone. We reached Corpus Christi just in time +to avoid "absence without leave." We met no one not even an Indian +--during the remainder of our journey, except at San Patricio. A new +settlement had been started there in our absence of three weeks, induced +possibly by the fact that there were houses already built, while the +proximity of troops gave protection against the Indians. On the evening +of the first day out from Goliad we heard the most unearthly howling of +wolves, directly in our front. The prairie grass was tall and we could +not see the beasts, but the sound indicated that they were near. To my +ear it appeared that there must have been enough of them to devour our +party, horses and all, at a single meal. The part of Ohio that I hailed +from was not thickly settled, but wolves had been driven out long before +I left. Benjamin was from Indiana, still less populated, where the wolf +yet roamed over the prairies. He understood the nature of the animal +and the capacity of a few to make believe there was an unlimited number +of them. He kept on towards the noise, unmoved. I followed in his +trail, lacking moral courage to turn back and join our sick companion. +I have no doubt that if Benjamin had proposed returning to Goliad, I +would not only have "seconded the motion" but have suggested that it +was very hard-hearted in us to leave Augur sick there in the first +place; but Benjamin did not propose turning back. When he did speak it +was to ask: "Grant, how many wolves do you think there are in that +pack?" Knowing where he was from, and suspecting that he thought I would +over-estimate the number, I determined to show my acquaintance with the +animal by putting the estimate below what possibly could be correct, and +answered: "Oh, about twenty," very indifferently. He smiled and rode +on. In a minute we were close upon them, and before they saw us. There +were just TWO of them. Seated upon their haunches, with their mouths +close together, they had made all the noise we had been hearing for the +past ten minutes. I have often thought of this incident since when I +have heard the noise of a few disappointed politicians who had deserted +their associates. There are always more of them before they are +counted. + +A week or two before leaving Corpus Christi on this trip, I had been +promoted from brevet second-lieutenant, 4th infantry, to full +second-lieutenant, 7th infantry. Frank Gardner,(*1) of the 7th, was +promoted to the 4th in the same orders. We immediately made application +to be transferred, so as to get back to our old regiments. On my +return, I found that our application had been approved at Washington. +While in the 7th infantry I was in the company of Captain Holmes, +afterwards a Lieutenant-general in the Confederate army. I never came in +contact with him in the war of the Rebellion, nor did he render any very +conspicuous service in his high rank. My transfer carried me to the +company of Captain McCall, who resigned from the army after the Mexican +war and settled in Philadelphia. He was prompt, however, to volunteer +when the rebellion broke out, and soon rose to the rank of major-general +in the Union army. I was not fortunate enough to meet him after he +resigned. In the old army he was esteemed very highly as a soldier and +gentleman. Our relations were always most pleasant. + +The preparations at Corpus Christi for an advance progressed as rapidly +in the absence of some twenty or more lieutenants as if we had been +there. The principal business consisted in securing mules, and getting +them broken to harness. The process was slow but amusing. The animals +sold to the government were all young and unbroken, even to the saddle, +and were quite as wild as the wild horses of the prairie. Usually a +number would be brought in by a company of Mexicans, partners in the +delivery. The mules were first driven into a stockade, called a corral, +inclosing an acre or more of ground. The Mexicans,--who were all +experienced in throwing the lasso,--would go into the corral on +horseback, with their lassos attached to the pommels of their saddles. +Soldiers detailed as teamsters and black smiths would also enter the +corral, the former with ropes to serve as halters, the latter with +branding irons and a fire to keep the irons heated. A lasso was then +thrown over the neck of a mule, when he would immediately go to the +length of his tether, first one end, then the other in the air. While +he was thus plunging and gyrating, another lasso would be thrown by +another Mexican, catching the animal by a fore-foot. This would bring +the mule to the ground, when he was seized and held by the teamsters +while the blacksmith put upon him, with hot irons, the initials "U. S." +Ropes were then put about the neck, with a slipnoose which would tighten +around the throat if pulled. With a man on each side holding these +ropes, the mule was released from his other bindings and allowed to +rise. With more or less difficulty he would be conducted to a picket +rope outside and fastened there. The delivery of that mule was then +complete. This process was gone through with every mule and wild horse +with the army of occupation. + +The method of breaking them was less cruel and much more amusing. It is +a well-known fact that where domestic animals are used for specific +purposes from generation to generation, the descendants are easily, as a +rule, subdued to the same uses. At that time in Northern Mexico the +mule, or his ancestors, the horse and the ass, was seldom used except +for the saddle or pack. At all events the Corpus Christi mule resisted +the new use to which he was being put. The treatment he was subjected +to in order to overcome his prejudices was summary and effective. + +The soldiers were principally foreigners who had enlisted in our large +cities, and, with the exception of a chance drayman among them, it is +not probable that any of the men who reported themselves as competent +teamsters had ever driven a mule-team in their lives, or indeed that +many had had any previous experience in driving any animal whatever to +harness. Numbers together can accomplish what twice their number acting +individually could not perform. Five mules were allotted to each wagon. +A teamster would select at the picket rope five animals of nearly the +same color and general appearance for his team. With a full corps of +assistants, other teamsters, he would then proceed to get his mules +together. In two's the men would approach each animal selected, +avoiding as far as possible its heels. Two ropes would be put about the +neck of each animal, with a slip noose, so that he could be choked if +too unruly. They were then led out, harnessed by force and hitched to +the wagon in the position they had to keep ever after. Two men remained +on either side of the leader, with the lassos about its neck, and one +man retained the same restraining influence over each of the others. +All being ready, the hold would be slackened and the team started. The +first motion was generally five mules in the air at one time, backs +bowed, hind feet extended to the rear. After repeating this movement a +few times the leaders would start to run. This would bring the +breeching tight against the mules at the wheels, which these last seemed +to regard as a most unwarrantable attempt at coercion and would resist +by taking a seat, sometimes going so far as to lie down. In time all +were broken in to do their duty submissively if not cheerfully, but +there never was a time during the war when it was safe to let a Mexican +mule get entirely loose. Their drivers were all teamsters by the time +they got through. + +I recollect one case of a mule that had worked in a team under the +saddle, not only for some time at Corpus Christi, where he was broken, +but all the way to the point opposite Matamoras, then to Camargo, where +he got loose from his fastenings during the night. He did not run away +at first, but staid in the neighborhood for a day or two, coming up +sometimes to the feed trough even; but on the approach of the teamster +he always got out of the way. At last, growing tired of the constant +effort to catch him, he disappeared altogether. Nothing short of a +Mexican with his lasso could have caught him. Regulations would not +have warranted the expenditure of a dollar in hiring a man with a lasso +to catch that mule; but they did allow the expenditure "of the mule," on +a certificate that he had run away without any fault of the +quartermaster on whose returns he was borne, and also the purchase of +another to take his place. I am a competent witness, for I was +regimental quartermaster at the time. + +While at Corpus Christi all the officers who had a fancy for riding kept +horses. The animals cost but little in the first instance, and when +picketed they would get their living without any cost. I had three not +long before the army moved, but a sad accident bereft me of them all at +one time. A colored boy who gave them all the attention they got +--besides looking after my tent and that of a class-mate and +fellow-lieutenant and cooking for us, all for about eight dollars per +month, was riding one to water and leading the other two. The led +horses pulled him from his seat and all three ran away. They never were +heard of afterwards. Shortly after that some one told Captain Bliss, +General Taylor's Adjutant-General, of my misfortune. "Yes; I heard +Grant lost five or six dollars' worth of horses the other day," he +replied. That was a slander; they were broken to the saddle when I got +them and cost nearly twenty dollars. I never suspected the colored boy +of malicious intent in letting them get away, because, if they had not +escaped, he could have had one of them to ride on the long march then in +prospect. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +ADVANCE OF THE ARMY--CROSSING THE COLORADO--THE RIO GRANDE. + +At last the preparations were complete and orders were issued for the +advance to begin on the 8th of March. General Taylor had an army of not +more than three thousand men. One battery, the siege guns and all the +convalescent troops were sent on by water to Brazos Santiago, at the +mouth of the Rio Grande. A guard was left back at Corpus Christi to +look after public property and to take care of those who were too sick +to be removed. The remainder of the army, probably not more than twenty +five hundred men, was divided into three brigades, with the cavalry +independent. Colonel Twiggs, with seven companies of dragoons and a +battery of light artillery, moved on the 8th. He was followed by the +three infantry brigades, with a day's interval between the commands. +Thus the rear brigade did not move from Corpus Christi until the 11th of +March. In view of the immense bodies of men moved on the same day over +narrow roads, through dense forests and across large streams, in our +late war, it seems strange now that a body of less than three thousand +men should have been broken into four columns, separated by a day's +march. + +General Taylor was opposed to anything like plundering by the troops, +and in this instance, I doubt not, he looked upon the enemy as the +aggrieved party and was not willing to injure them further than his +instructions from Washington demanded. His orders to the troops +enjoined scrupulous regard for the rights of all peaceable persons and +the payment of the highest price for all supplies taken for the use of +the army. + +All officers of foot regiments who had horses were permitted to ride +them on the march when it did not interfere with their military duties. +As already related, having lost my "five or six dollars' worth of +horses" but a short time before I determined not to get another, but to +make the journey on foot. My company commander, Captain McCall, had two +good American horses, of considerably more value in that country, where +native horses were cheap, than they were in the States. He used one +himself and wanted the other for his servant. He was quite anxious to +know whether I did not intend to get me another horse before the march +began. I told him No; I belonged to a foot regiment. I did not +understand the object of his solicitude at the time, but, when we were +about to start, he said: "There, Grant, is a horse for you." I found +that he could not bear the idea of his servant riding on a long march +while his lieutenant went a-foot. He had found a mustang, a three-year +old colt only recently captured, which had been purchased by one of the +colored servants with the regiment for the sum of three dollars. It was +probably the only horse at Corpus Christi that could have been purchased +just then for any reasonable price. Five dollars, sixty-six and +two-thirds per cent. advance, induced the owner to part with the +mustang. I was sorry to take him, because I really felt that, belonging +to a foot regiment, it was my duty to march with the men. But I saw the +Captain's earnestness in the matter, and accepted the horse for the +trip. The day we started was the first time the horse had ever been +under saddle. I had, however, but little difficulty in breaking him, +though for the first day there were frequent disagreements between us as +to which way we should go, and sometimes whether we should go at all. +At no time during the day could I choose exactly the part of the column +I would march with; but after that, I had as tractable a horse as any +with the army, and there was none that stood the trip better. He never +ate a mouthful of food on the journey except the grass he could pick +within the length of his picket rope. + +A few days out from Corpus Christi, the immense herd of wild horses that +ranged at that time between the Nueces and the Rio Grande was seen +directly in advance of the head of the column and but a few miles off. +It was the very band from which the horse I was riding had been captured +but a few weeks before. The column was halted for a rest, and a number +of officers, myself among them, rode out two or three miles to the right +to see the extent of the herd. The country was a rolling prairie, and, +from the higher ground, the vision was obstructed only by the earth's +curvature. As far as the eye could reach to our right, the herd +extended. To the left, it extended equally. There was no estimating the +number of animals in it; I have no idea that they could all have been +corralled in the State of Rhode Island, or Delaware, at one time. If +they had been, they would have been so thick that the pasturage would +have given out the first day. People who saw the Southern herd of +buffalo, fifteen or twenty years ago, can appreciate the size of the +Texas band of wild horses in 1846. + +At the point where the army struck the Little Colorado River, the stream +was quite wide and of sufficient depth for navigation. The water was +brackish and the banks were fringed with timber. Here the whole army +concentrated before attempting to cross. The army was not accompanied by +a pontoon train, and at that time the troops were not instructed in +bridge building. To add to the embarrassment of the situation, the army +was here, for the first time, threatened with opposition. Buglers, +concealed from our view by the brush on the opposite side, sounded the +"assembly," and other military calls. Like the wolves before spoken of, +they gave the impression that there was a large number of them and that, +if the troops were in proportion to the noise, they were sufficient to +devour General Taylor and his army. There were probably but few troops, +and those engaged principally in watching the movements of the +"invader." A few of our cavalry dashed in, and forded and swam the +stream, and all opposition was soon dispersed. I do not remember that a +single shot was fired. + +The troops waded the stream, which was up to their necks in the deepest +part. Teams were crossed by attaching a long rope to the end of the +wagon tongue passing it between the two swing mules and by the side of +the leader, hitching his bridle as well as the bridle of the mules in +rear to it, and carrying the end to men on the opposite shore. The bank +down to the water was steep on both sides. A rope long enough to cross +the river, therefore, was attached to the back axle of the wagon, and +men behind would hold the rope to prevent the wagon "beating" the mules +into the water. This latter rope also served the purpose of bringing +the end of the forward one back, to be used over again. The water was +deep enough for a short distance to swim the little Mexican mules which +the army was then using, but they, and the wagons, were pulled through +so fast by the men at the end of the rope ahead, that no time was left +them to show their obstinacy. In this manner the artillery and +transportation of the "army of occupation" crossed the Colorado River. + +About the middle of the month of March the advance of the army reached +the Rio Grande and went into camp near the banks of the river, opposite +the city of Matamoras and almost under the guns of a small fort at the +lower end of the town. There was not at that time a single habitation +from Corpus Christi until the Rio Grande was reached. + +The work of fortifying was commenced at once. The fort was laid out by +the engineers, but the work was done by the soldiers under the +supervision of their officers, the chief engineer retaining general +directions. The Mexicans now became so incensed at our near approach +that some of their troops crossed the river above us, and made it unsafe +for small bodies of men to go far beyond the limits of camp. They +captured two companies of dragoons, commanded by Captains Thornton and +Hardee. The latter figured as a general in the late war, on the +Confederate side, and was author of the tactics first used by both +armies. Lieutenant Theodric Porter, of the 4th infantry, was killed +while out with a small detachment; and Major Cross, the assistant +quartermaster-general, had also been killed not far from camp. + +There was no base of supplies nearer than Point Isabel, on the coast, +north of the mouth of the Rio Grande and twenty-five miles away. The +enemy, if the Mexicans could be called such at this time when no war had +been declared, hovered about in such numbers that it was not safe to +send a wagon train after supplies with any escort that could be spared. +I have already said that General Taylor's whole command on the Rio +Grande numbered less than three thousand men. He had, however, a few +more troops at Point Isabel or Brazos Santiago. The supplies brought +from Corpus Christi in wagons were running short. Work was therefore +pushed with great vigor on the defences, to enable the minimum number of +troops to hold the fort. All the men who could be employed, were kept +at work from early dawn until darkness closed the labors of the day. +With all this the fort was not completed until the supplies grew so +short that further delay in obtaining more could not be thought of. By +the latter part of April the work was in a partially defensible +condition, and the 7th infantry, Major Jacob Brown commanding, was +marched in to garrison it, with some few pieces of artillery. All the +supplies on hand, with the exception of enough to carry the rest of the +army to Point Isabel, were left with the garrison, and the march was +commenced with the remainder of the command, every wagon being taken +with the army. Early on the second day after starting the force reached +its destination, without opposition from the Mexicans. There was some +delay in getting supplies ashore from vessels at anchor in the open +roadstead. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE MEXICAN WAR--THE BATTLE OF PALO ALTO--THE BATTLE OF RESACA DE LA +PALMA--ARMY OF INVASION--GENERAL TAYLOR--MOVEMENT ON CAMARGO. + +While General Taylor was away with the bulk of his army, the little +garrison up the river was besieged. As we lay in our tents upon the +sea-shore, the artillery at the fort on the Rio Grande could be +distinctly heard. + +The war had begun. + +There were no possible means of obtaining news from the garrison, and +information from outside could not be otherwise than unfavorable. What +General Taylor's feelings were during this suspense I do not know; but +for myself, a young second-lieutenant who had never heard a hostile gun +before, I felt sorry that I had enlisted. A great many men, when they +smell battle afar off, chafe to get into the fray. When they say so +themselves they generally fail to convince their hearers that they are +as anxious as they would like to make believe, and as they approach +danger they become more subdued. This rule is not universal, for I have +known a few men who were always aching for a fight when there was no +enemy near, who were as good as their word when the battle did come. +But the number of such men is small. + +On the 7th of May the wagons were all loaded and General Taylor started +on his return, with his army reinforced at Point Isabel, but still less +than three thousand strong, to relieve the garrison on the Rio Grande. +The road from Point Isabel to Matamoras is over an open, rolling, +treeless prairie, until the timber that borders the bank of the Rio +Grande is reached. This river, like the Mississippi, flows through a +rich alluvial valley in the most meandering manner, running towards all +points of the compass at times within a few miles. Formerly the river +ran by Resaca de la Palma, some four or five miles east of the present +channel. The old bed of the river at Resaca had become filled at +places, leaving a succession of little lakes. The timber that had +formerly grown upon both banks, and for a considerable distance out, was +still standing. This timber was struck six or eight miles out from the +besieged garrison, at a point known as Palo Alto--"Tall trees" or +"woods." + +Early in the forenoon of the 8th of May as Palo Alto was approached, an +army, certainly outnumbering our little force, was seen, drawn up in +line of battle just in front of the timber. Their bayonets and +spearheads glistened in the sunlight formidably. The force was composed +largely of cavalry armed with lances. Where we were the grass was tall, +reaching nearly to the shoulders of the men, very stiff, and each stock +was pointed at the top, and hard and almost as sharp as a +darning-needle. General Taylor halted his army before the head of column +came in range of the artillery of the Mexicans. He then formed a line +of battle, facing the enemy. His artillery, two batteries and two +eighteen-pounder iron guns, drawn by oxen, were placed in position at +intervals along the line. A battalion was thrown to the rear, commanded +by Lieutenant-Colonel Childs, of the artillery, as reserves. These +preparations completed, orders were given for a platoon of each company +to stack arms and go to a stream off to the right of the command, to +fill their canteens and also those of the rest of their respective +companies. When the men were all back in their places in line, the +command to advance was given. As I looked down that long line of about +three thousand armed men, advancing towards a larger force also armed, +I thought what a fearful responsibility General Taylor must feel, +commanding such a host and so far away from friends. The Mexicans +immediately opened fire upon us, first with artillery and then with +infantry. At first their shots did not reach us, and the advance was +continued. As we got nearer, the cannon balls commenced going through +the ranks. They hurt no one, however, during this advance, because they +would strike the ground long before they reached our line, and +ricochetted through the tall grass so slowly that the men would see them +and open ranks and let them pass. When we got to a point where the +artillery could be used with effect, a halt was called, and the battle +opened on both sides. + +The infantry under General Taylor was armed with flint-lock muskets, and +paper cartridges charged with powder, buck-shot and ball. At the +distance of a few hundred yards a man might fire at you all day without +your finding it out. The artillery was generally six-pounder brass guns +throwing only solid shot; but General Taylor had with him three or four +twelve-pounder howitzers throwing shell, besides his eighteen-pounders +before spoken of, that had a long range. This made a powerful armament. +The Mexicans were armed about as we were so far as their infantry was +concerned, but their artillery only fired solid shot. We had greatly +the advantage in this arm. + +The artillery was advanced a rod or two in front of the line, and opened +fire. The infantry stood at order arms as spectators, watching the +effect of our shots upon the enemy, and watching his shots so as to step +out of their way. It could be seen that the eighteen-pounders and the +howitzers did a great deal of execution. On our side there was little +or no loss while we occupied this position. During the battle Major +Ringgold, an accomplished and brave artillery officer, was mortally +wounded, and Lieutenant Luther, also of the artillery, was struck. +During the day several advances were made, and just at dusk it became +evident that the Mexicans were falling back. We again advanced, and +occupied at the close of the battle substantially the ground held by the +enemy at the beginning. In this last move there was a brisk fire upon +our troops, and some execution was done. One cannon-ball passed through +our ranks, not far from me. It took off the head of an enlisted man, +and the under jaw of Captain Page of my regiment, while the splinters +from the musket of the killed soldier, and his brains and bones, knocked +down two or three others, including one officer, Lieutenant Wallen, +--hurting them more or less. Our casualties for the day were nine killed +and forty-seven wounded. + +At the break of day on the 9th, the army under Taylor was ready to renew +the battle; but an advance showed that the enemy had entirely left our +front during the night. The chaparral before us was impenetrable except +where there were roads or trails, with occasionally clear or bare spots +of small dimensions. A body of men penetrating it might easily be +ambushed. It was better to have a few men caught in this way than the +whole army, yet it was necessary that the garrison at the river should +be relieved. To get to them the chaparral had to be passed. Thus I +assume General Taylor reasoned. He halted the army not far in advance +of the ground occupied by the Mexicans the day before, and selected +Captain C. F. Smith, of the artillery, and Captain McCall, of my +company, to take one hundred and fifty picked men each and find where +the enemy had gone. This left me in command of the company, an honor +and responsibility I thought very great. + +Smith and McCall found no obstruction in the way of their advance until +they came up to the succession of ponds, before describes, at Resaca. +The Mexicans had passed them and formed their lines on the opposite +bank. This position they had strengthened a little by throwing up dead +trees and brush in their front, and by placing artillery to cover the +approaches and open places. Smith and McCall deployed on each side of +the road as well as they could, and engaged the enemy at long range. +Word was sent back, and the advance of the whole army was at once +commenced. As we came up we were deployed in like manner. I was with +the right wing, and led my company through the thicket wherever a +penetrable place could be found, taking advantage of any clear spot that +would carry me towards the enemy. At last I got pretty close up without +knowing it. The balls commenced to whistle very thick overhead, cutting +the limbs of the chaparral right and left. We could not see the enemy, +so I ordered my men to lie down, an order that did not have to be +enforced. We kept our position until it became evident that the enemy +were not firing at us, and then withdrew to find better ground to +advance upon. + +By this time some progress had been made on our left. A section of +artillery had been captured by the cavalry, and some prisoners had been +taken. The Mexicans were giving way all along the line, and many of +them had, no doubt, left early. I at last found a clear space +separating two ponds. There seemed to be a few men in front and I +charged upon them with my company. + +There was no resistance, and we captured a Mexican colonel, who had been +wounded, and a few men. Just as I was sending them to the rear with a +guard of two or three men, a private came from the front bringing back +one of our officers, who had been badly wounded in advance of where I +was. The ground had been charged over before. My exploit was equal to +that of the soldier who boasted that he had cut off the leg of one of +the enemy. When asked why he did not cut off his head, he replied: +"Some one had done that before." This left no doubt in my mind but that +the battle of Resaca de la Palma would have been won, just as it was, if +I had not been there. There was no further resistance. The evening of +the 9th the army was encamped on its old ground near the Fort, and the +garrison was relieved. The siege had lasted a number of days, but the +casualties were few in number. Major Jacob Brown, of the 7th infantry, +the commanding officer, had been killed, and in his honor the fort was +named. Since then a town of considerable importance has sprung up on the +ground occupied by the fort and troops, which has also taken his name. + +The battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma seemed to us engaged, as +pretty important affairs; but we had only a faint conception of their +magnitude until they were fought over in the North by the Press and the +reports came back to us. At the same time, or about the same time, we +learned that war existed between the United States and Mexico, by the +acts of the latter country. On learning this fact General Taylor +transferred our camps to the south or west bank of the river, and +Matamoras was occupied. We then became the "Army of Invasion." + +Up to this time Taylor had none but regular troops in his command; but +now that invasion had already taken place, volunteers for one year +commenced arriving. The army remained at Matamoras until sufficiently +reinforced to warrant a movement into the interior. General Taylor was +not an officer to trouble the administration much with his demands, but +was inclined to do the best he could with the means given him. He felt +his responsibility as going no further. If he had thought that he was +sent to perform an impossibility with the means given him, he would +probably have informed the authorities of his opinion and left them to +determine what should be done. If the judgment was against him he would +have gone on and done the best he could with the means at hand without +parading his grievance before the public. No soldier could face either +danger or responsibility more calmly than he. These are qualities more +rarely found than genius or physical courage. + +General Taylor never made any great show or parade, either of uniform or +retinue. In dress he was possibly too plain, rarely wearing anything in +the field to indicate his rank, or even that he was an officer; but he +was known to every soldier in his army, and was respected by all. I can +call to mind only one instance when I saw him in uniform, and one other +when I heard of his wearing it, On both occasions he was unfortunate. +The first was at Corpus Christi. He had concluded to review his army +before starting on the march and gave orders accordingly. Colonel +Twiggs was then second in rank with the army, and to him was given the +command of the review. Colonel and Brevet Brigadier-General Worth, a +far different soldier from Taylor in the use of the uniform, was next to +Twiggs in rank, and claimed superiority by virtue of his brevet rank +when the accidents of service threw them where one or the other had to +command. Worth declined to attend the review as subordinate to Twiggs +until the question was settled by the highest authority. This broke up +the review, and the question was referred to Washington for final +decision. + +General Taylor was himself only a colonel, in real rank, at that time, +and a brigadier-general by brevet. He was assigned to duty, however, by +the President, with the rank which his brevet gave him. Worth was not +so assigned, but by virtue of commanding a division he must, under the +army regulations of that day, have drawn the pay of his brevet rank. +The question was submitted to Washington, and no response was received +until after the army had reached the Rio Grande. It was decided against +General Worth, who at once tendered his resignation and left the army, +going north, no doubt, by the same vessel that carried it. This kept +him out of the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. Either the +resignation was not accepted, or General Worth withdrew it before action +had been taken. At all events he returned to the army in time to +command his division in the battle of Monterey, and served with it to +the end of the war. + +The second occasion on which General Taylor was said to have donned his +uniform, was in order to receive a visit from the Flag Officer of the +naval squadron off the mouth of the Rio Grande. While the army was on +that river the Flag Officer sent word that he would call on the General +to pay his respects on a certain day. General Taylor, knowing that +naval officers habitually wore all the uniform the "law allowed" on all +occasions of ceremony, thought it would be only civil to receive his +guest in the same style. His uniform was therefore got out, brushed up, +and put on, in advance of the visit. The Flag Officer, knowing General +Taylor's aversion to the wearing of the uniform, and feeling that it +would be regarded as a compliment should he meet him in civilian's +dress, left off his uniform for this occasion. The meeting was said to +have been embarrassing to both, and the conversation was principally +apologetic. + +The time was whiled away pleasantly enough at Matamoras, while we were +waiting for volunteers. It is probable that all the most important +people of the territory occupied by our army left their homes before we +got there, but with those remaining the best of relations apparently +existed. It was the policy of the Commanding General to allow no +pillaging, no taking of private property for public or individual use +without satisfactory compensation, so that a better market was afforded +than the people had ever known before. + +Among the troops that joined us at Matamoras was an Ohio regiment, of +which Thomas L. Hamer, the Member of Congress who had given me my +appointment to West Point, was major. He told me then that he could +have had the colonelcy, but that as he knew he was to be appointed a +brigadier-general, he preferred at first to take the lower grade. I +have said before that Hamer was one of the ablest men Ohio ever +produced. At that time he was in the prime of life, being less than +fifty years of age, and possessed an admirable physique, promising long +life. But he was taken sick before Monterey, and died within a few +days. I have always believed that had his life been spared, he would +have been President of the United States during the term filled by +President Pierce. Had Hamer filled that office his partiality for me +was such, there is but little doubt I should have been appointed to one +of the staff corps of the army--the Pay Department probably--and would +therefore now be preparing to retire. Neither of these speculations is +unreasonable, and they are mentioned to show how little men control +their own destiny. + +Reinforcements having arrived, in the month of August the movement +commenced from Matamoras to Camargo, the head of navigation on the Rio +Grande. The line of the Rio Grande was all that was necessary to hold, +unless it was intended to invade Mexico from the North. In that case +the most natural route to take was the one which General Taylor +selected. It entered a pass in the Sierra Madre Mountains, at Monterey, +through which the main road runs to the City of Mexico. Monterey itself +was a good point to hold, even if the line of the Rio Grande covered all +the territory we desired to occupy at that time. It is built on a plain +two thousand feet above tide water, where the air is bracing and the +situation healthy. + +On the 19th of August the army started for Monterey, leaving a small +garrison at Matamoras. The troops, with the exception of the artillery, +cavalry, and the brigade to which I belonged, were moved up the river to +Camargo on steamers. As there were but two or three of these, the boats +had to make a number of trips before the last of the troops were +up. Those who marched did so by the south side of the river. +Lieutenant-Colonel Garland, of the 4th infantry, was the brigade +commander, and on this occasion commanded the entire marching force. +One day out convinced him that marching by day in that latitude, in the +month of August, was not a beneficial sanitary measure, particularly for +Northern men. The order of marching was changed and night marches were +substituted with the best results. + +When Camargo was reached, we found a city of tents outside the Mexican +hamlet. I was detailed to act as quartermaster and commissary to the +regiment. The teams that had proven abundantly sufficient to transport +all supplies from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande over the level +prairies of Texas, were entirely inadequate to the needs of the +reinforced army in a mountainous country. To obviate the deficiency, +pack mules were hired, with Mexicans to pack and drive them. I had +charge of the few wagons allotted to the 4th infantry and of the pack +train to supplement them. There were not men enough in the army to +manage that train without the help of Mexicans who had learned how. As +it was the difficulty was great enough. The troops would take up their +march at an early hour each day. After they had started, the tents and +cooking utensils had to be made into packages, so that they could be +lashed to the backs of the mules. Sheet-iron kettles, tent-poles and +mess chests were inconvenient articles to transport in that way. It +took several hours to get ready to start each morning, and by the time +we were ready some of the mules first loaded would be tired of standing +so long with their loads on their backs. Sometimes one would start to +run, bowing his back and kicking up until he scattered his load; others +would lie down and try to disarrange their loads by attempting to get on +the top of them by rolling on them; others with tent-poles for part of +their loads would manage to run a tent-pole on one side of a sapling +while they would take the other. I am not aware of ever having used a +profane expletive in my life; but I would have the charity to excuse +those who may have done so, if they were in charge of a train of Mexican +pack mules at the time. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +ADVANCE ON MONTEREY--THE BLACK FORT--THE BATTLE OF MONTEREY--SURRENDER +OF THE CITY. + +The advance from Camargo was commenced on the 5th of September. The army +was divided into four columns, separated from each other by one day's +march. The advance reached Cerralvo in four days and halted for the +remainder of the troops to come up. By the 13th the rear-guard had +arrived, and the same day the advance resumed its march, followed as +before, a day separating the divisions. The forward division halted +again at Marin, twenty-four miles from Monterey. Both this place and +Cerralvo were nearly deserted, and men, women and children were seen +running and scattered over the hills as we approached; but when the +people returned they found all their abandoned property safe, which must +have given them a favorable opinion of Los Grengos--"the Yankees." From +Marin the movement was in mass. On the 19th General Taylor, with is +army, was encamped at Walnut Springs, within three miles of Monterey. + +The town is on a small stream coming out of the mountain-pass, and is +backed by a range of hills of moderate elevation. To the north, between +the city and Walnut Springs, stretches an extensive plain. On this +plain, and entirely outside of the last houses of the city, stood a +strong fort, enclosed on all sides, to which our army gave the name of +"Black Fort." Its guns commanded the approaches to the city to the full +extent of their range. There were two detached spurs of hills or +mountains to the north and northwest of the city, which were also +fortified. On one of these stood the Bishop's Palace. The road to +Saltillo leaves the upper or western end of the city under the fire of +the guns from these heights. The lower or eastern end was defended by +two or three small detached works, armed with artillery and infantry. +To the south was the mountain stream before mentioned, and back of that +the range of foot-hills. The plaza in the centre of the city was the +citadel, properly speaking. All the streets leading from it were swept +by artillery, cannon being intrenched behind temporary parapets. The +house-tops near the plaza were converted into infantry fortifications by +the use of sand-bags for parapets. Such were the defences of Monterey +in September, 1847. General Ampudia, with a force of certainly ten +thousand men, was in command. + +General Taylor's force was about six thousand five hundred strong, in +three divisions, under Generals Butler, Twiggs and Worth. The troops +went into camp at Walnut Springs, while the engineer officers, under +Major Mansfield--a General in the late war--commenced their +reconnoissance. Major Mansfield found that it would be practicable to +get troops around, out of range of the Black Fort and the works on the +detached hills to the north-west of the city, to the Saltillo road. +With this road in our possession, the enemy would be cut off from +receiving further supplies, if not from all communication with the +interior. General Worth, with his division somewhat reinforced, was +given the task of gaining possession of the Saltillo road, and of +carrying the detached works outside the city, in that quarter. He +started on his march early in the afternoon of the 20th. The divisions +under Generals Butler and Twiggs were drawn up to threaten the east and +north sides of the city and the works on those fronts, in support of the +movement under General Worth. Worth's was regarded as the main attack on +Monterey, and all other operations were in support of it. His march +this day was uninterrupted; but the enemy was seen to reinforce heavily +about the Bishop's Palace and the other outside fortifications on their +left. General Worth reached a defensible position just out of range of +the enemy's guns on the heights north-west of the city, and bivouacked +for the night. The engineer officers with him--Captain Sanders and +Lieutenant George G. Meade, afterwards the commander of the victorious +National army at the battle of Gettysburg--made a reconnoissance to the +Saltillo road under cover of night. + +During the night of the 20th General Taylor had established a battery, +consisting of two twenty-four-pounder howitzers and a ten inch mortar, +at a point from which they could play upon Black Fort. A natural +depression in the plain, sufficiently deep to protect men standing in it +from the fire from the fort, was selected and the battery established on +the crest nearest the enemy. The 4th infantry, then consisting of but +six reduced companies, was ordered to support the artillerists while +they were intrenching themselves and their guns. I was regimental +quartermaster at the time and was ordered to remain in charge of camp +and the public property at Walnut Springs. It was supposed that the +regiment would return to its camp in the morning. + +The point for establishing the siege battery was reached and the work +performed without attracting the attention of the enemy. At daylight +the next morning fire was opened on both sides and continued with, what +seemed to me at that day, great fury. My curiosity got the better of my +judgment, and I mounted a horse and rode to the front to see what was +going on. I had been there but a short time when an order to charge was +given, and lacking the moral courage to return to camp--where I had been +ordered to stay--I charged with the regiment As soon as the troops were +out of the depression they came under the fire of Black Fort. As they +advanced they got under fire from batteries guarding the east, or lower, +end of the city, and of musketry. About one-third of the men engaged in +the charge were killed or wounded in the space of a few minutes. We +retreated to get out of fire, not backward, but eastward and +perpendicular to the direct road running into the city from Walnut +Springs. I was, I believe, the only person in the 4th infantry in the +charge who was on horseback. When we got to a lace of safety the +regiment halted and drew itself together--what was left of it. The +adjutant of the regiment, Lieutenant Hoskins, who was not in robust +health, found himself very much fatigued from running on foot in the +charge and retreat, and, seeing me on horseback, expressed a wish that +he could be mounted also. I offered him my horse and he accepted the +offer. A few minutes later I saw a soldier, a quartermaster's man, +mounted, not far away. I ran to him, took his horse and was back with +the regiment in a few minutes. In a short time we were off again; and +the next place of safety from the shots of the enemy that I recollect of +being in, was a field of cane or corn to the north-east of the lower +batteries. The adjutant to whom I had loaned my horse was killed, and I +was designated to act in his place. + +This charge was ill-conceived, or badly executed. We belonged to the +brigade commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Garland, and he had received +orders to charge the lower batteries of the city, and carry them if he +could without too much loss, for the purpose of creating a diversion in +favor of Worth, who was conducting the movement which it was intended +should be decisive. By a movement by the left flank Garland could have +led his men beyond the range of the fire from Black Fort and advanced +towards the northeast angle of the city, as well covered from fire as +could be expected. There was no undue loss of life in reaching the +lower end of Monterey, except that sustained by Garland's command. + +Meanwhile Quitman's brigade, conducted by an officer of engineers, had +reached the eastern end of the city, and was placed under cover of the +houses without much loss. Colonel Garland's brigade also arrived at the +suburbs, and, by the assistance of some of our troops that had reached +house-tops from which they could fire into a little battery covering the +approaches to the lower end of the city, the battery was speedily +captured and its guns were turned upon another work of the enemy. An +entrance into the east end of the city was now secured, and the houses +protected our troops so long as they were inactive. On the west General +Worth had reached the Saltillo road after some fighting but without +heavy loss. He turned from his new position and captured the forts on +both heights in that quarter. This gave him possession of the upper or +west end of Monterey. Troops from both Twiggs's and Butler's divisions +were in possession of the east end of the town, but the Black Fort to +the north of the town and the plaza in the centre were still in the +possession of the enemy. Our camps at Walnut Springs, three miles away, +were guarded by a company from each regiment. A regiment of Kentucky +volunteers guarded the mortars and howitzers engaged against Black Fort. +Practically Monterey was invested. + +There was nothing done on the 22d by the United States troops; but the +enemy kept up a harmless fire upon us from Black Fort and the batteries +still in their possession at the east end of the city. During the night +they evacuated these; so that on the morning of the 23d we held +undisputed possession of the east end of Monterey. + +Twiggs's division was at the lower end of the city, and well covered +from the fire of the enemy. But the streets leading to the plaza--all +Spanish or Spanish-American towns have near their centres a square +called a plaza--were commanded from all directions by artillery. The +houses were flat-roofed and but one or two stories high, and about the +plaza the roofs were manned with infantry, the troops being protected +from our fire by parapets made of sand-bags. All advances into the city +were thus attended with much danger. While moving along streets which +did not lead to the plaza, our men were protected from the fire, and +from the view, of the enemy except at the crossings; but at these a +volley of musketry and a discharge of grape-shot were invariably +encountered. The 3d and 4th regiments of infantry made an advance +nearly to the plaza in this way and with heavy loss. The loss of the 3d +infantry in commissioned officers was especially severe. There were +only five companies of the regiment and not over twelve officers +present, and five of these officers were killed. When within a square +of the plaza this small command, ten companies in all, was brought to a +halt. Placing themselves under cover from the shots of the enemy, the +men would watch to detect a head above the sand-bags on the neighboring +houses. The exposure of a single head would bring a volley from our +soldiers. + +We had not occupied this position long when it was discovered that our +ammunition was growing low. I volunteered to go back (*2) to the point +we had started from, report our position to General Twiggs, and ask for +ammunition to be forwarded. We were at this time occupying ground off +from the street, in rear of the houses. My ride back was an exposed +one. Before starting I adjusted myself on the side of my horse furthest +from the enemy, and with only one foot holding to the cantle of the +saddle, and an arm over the neck of the horse exposed, I started at full +run. It was only at street crossings that my horse was under fire, but +these I crossed at such a flying rate that generally I was past and +under cover of the next block of houses before the enemy fired. I got +out safely without a scratch. + +At one place on my ride, I saw a sentry walking in front of a house, and +stopped to inquire what he was doing there. Finding that the house was +full of wounded American officers and soldiers, I dismounted and went +in. I found there Captain Williams, of the Engineer Corps, wounded in +the head, probably fatally, and Lieutenant Territt, also badly wounded +his bowels protruding from his wound. There were quite a number of +soldiers also. Promising them to report their situation, I left, +readjusted myself to my horse, recommenced the run, and was soon with +the troops at the east end. Before ammunition could be collected, the +two regiments I had been with were seen returning, running the same +gauntlet in getting out that they had passed in going in, but with +comparatively little loss. The movement was countermanded and the +troops were withdrawn. The poor wounded officers and men I had found, +fell into the hands of the enemy during the night, and died. + +While this was going on at the east, General Worth, with a small +division of troops, was advancing towards the plaza from the opposite +end of the city. He resorted to a better expedient for getting to the +plaza--the citadel--than we did on the east. Instead of moving by the +open streets, he advanced through the houses, cutting passageways from +one to another. Without much loss of life, he got so near the plaza +during the night that before morning, Ampudia, the Mexican commander, +made overtures for the surrender of the city and garrison. This stopped +all further hostilities. The terms of surrender were soon agreed upon. +The prisoners were paroled and permitted to take their horses and +personal property with them. + +My pity was aroused by the sight of the Mexican garrison of Monterey +marching out of town as prisoners, and no doubt the same feeling was +experienced by most of our army who witnessed it. Many of the prisoners +were cavalry, armed with lances, and mounted on miserable little +half-starved horses that did not look as if they could carry their +riders out of town. The men looked in but little better condition. I +thought how little interest the men before me had in the results of the +war, and how little knowledge they had of "what it was all about." + +After the surrender of the garrison of Monterey a quiet camp life was +led until midwinter. As had been the case on the Rio Grande, the people +who remained at their homes fraternized with the "Yankees" in the +pleasantest manner. In fact, under the humane policy of our commander, +I question whether the great majority of the Mexican people did not +regret our departure as much as they had regretted our coming. Property +and person were thoroughly protected, and a market was afforded for all +the products of the country such as the people had never enjoyed before. +The educated and wealthy portion of the population here, as elsewhere, +abandoned their homes and remained away from them as long as they were +in the possession of the invaders; but this class formed a very small +percentage of the whole population. + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +POLITICAL INTRIGUE--BUENA VISTA--MOVEMENT AGAINST VERA CRUZ--SIEGE AND +CAPTURE OF VERA CRUZ. + +The Mexican war was a political war, and the administration conducting +it desired to make party capital out of it. General Scott was at the +head of the army, and, being a soldier of acknowledged professional +capacity, his claim to the command of the forces in the field was almost +indisputable and does not seem to have been denied by President Polk, or +Marcy, his Secretary of War. Scott was a Whig and the administration +was democratic. General Scott was also known to have political +aspirations, and nothing so popularizes a candidate for high civil +positions as military victories. It would not do therefore to give him +command of the "army of conquest." The plans submitted by Scott for a +campaign in Mexico were disapproved by the administration, and he +replied, in a tone possibly a little disrespectful, to the effect that, +if a soldier's plans were not to be supported by the administration, +success could not be expected. This was on the 27th of May, 1846. Four +days later General Scott was notified that he need not go to Mexico. +General Gaines was next in rank, but he was too old and feeble to take +the field. Colonel Zachary Taylor--a brigadier-general by brevet--was +therefore left in command. He, too, was a Whig, but was not supposed to +entertain any political ambitions; nor did he; but after the fall of +Monterey, his third battle and third complete victory, the Whig papers +at home began to speak of him as the candidate of their party for the +Presidency. Something had to be done to neutralize his growing +popularity. He could not be relieved from duty in the field where all +his battles had been victories: the design would have been too +transparent. It was finally decided to send General Scott to Mexico in +chief command, and to authorize him to carry out his own original plan: +that is, capture Vera Cruz and march upon the capital of the country. +It was no doubt supposed that Scott's ambition would lead him to +slaughter Taylor or destroy his chances for the Presidency, and yet it +was hoped that he would not make sufficient capital himself to secure +the prize. + +The administration had indeed a most embarrassing problem to solve. It +was engaged in a war of conquest which must be carried to a successful +issue, or the political object would be unattained. Yet all the capable +officers of the requisite rank belonged to the opposition, and the man +selected for his lack of political ambition had himself become a +prominent candidate for the Presidency. It was necessary to destroy his +chances promptly. The problem was to do this without the loss of +conquest and without permitting another general of the same political +party to acquire like popularity. The fact is, the administration of +Mr. Polk made every preparation to disgrace Scott, or, to speak more +correctly, to drive him to such desperation that he would disgrace +himself. + +General Scott had opposed conquest by the way of the Rio Grande, +Matamoras and Saltillo from the first. Now that he was in command of +all the forces in Mexico, he withdrew from Taylor most of his regular +troops and left him only enough volunteers, as he thought, to hold the +line then in possession of the invading army. Indeed Scott did not deem +it important to hold anything beyond the Rio Grande, and authorized +Taylor to fall back to that line if he chose. General Taylor protested +against the depletion of his army, and his subsequent movement upon +Buena Vista would indicate that he did not share the views of his chief +in regard to the unimportance of conquest beyond the Rio Grande. + +Scott had estimated the men and material that would be required to +capture Vera Cruz and to march on the capital of the country, two +hundred and sixty miles in the interior. He was promised all he asked +and seemed to have not only the confidence of the President, but his +sincere good wishes. The promises were all broken. Only about half the +troops were furnished that had been pledged, other war material was +withheld and Scott had scarcely started for Mexico before the President +undertook to supersede him by the appointment of Senator Thomas H. +Benton as lieutenant-general. This being refused by Congress, the +President asked legislative authority to place a junior over a senior of +the same grade, with the view of appointing Benton to the rank of +major-general and then placing him in command of the army, but Congress +failed to accede to this proposition as well, and Scott remained in +command: but every general appointed to serve under him was politically +opposed to the chief, and several were personally hostile. + +General Scott reached Brazos Santiago or Point Isabel, at the mouth of +the Rio Grande, late in December, 1846, and proceeded at once up the +river to Camargo, where he had written General Taylor to meet him. +Taylor, however, had gone to, or towards Tampico, for the purpose of +establishing a post there. He had started on this march before he was +aware of General Scott being in the country. Under these circumstances +Scott had to issue his orders designating the troops to be withdrawn +from Taylor, without the personal consultation he had expected to hold +with his subordinate. + +General Taylor's victory at Buena Vista, February 22d, 23d, and 24th, +1847, with an army composed almost entirely of volunteers who had not +been in battle before, and over a vastly superior force numerically, +made his nomination for the Presidency by the Whigs a foregone +conclusion. He was nominated and elected in 1848. I believe that he +sincerely regretted this turn in his fortunes, preferring the peace +afforded by a quiet life free from abuse to the honor of filling the +highest office in the gift of any people, the Presidency of the United +States. + +When General Scott assumed command of the army of invasion, I was in the +division of General David Twiggs, in Taylor's command; but under the new +orders my regiment was transferred to the division of General William +Worth, in which I served to the close of the war. The troops withdrawn +from Taylor to form part of the forces to operate against Vera Cruz, +were assembled at the mouth of the Rio Grande preparatory to embarkation +for their destination. I found General Worth a different man from any I +had before served directly under. He was nervous, impatient and +restless on the march, or when important or responsible duty confronted +him. There was not the least reason for haste on the march, for it was +known that it would take weeks to assemble shipping enough at the point +of our embarkation to carry the army, but General Worth moved his +division with a rapidity that would have been commendable had he been +going to the relief of a beleaguered garrison. The length of the +marches was regulated by the distances between places affording a supply +of water for the troops, and these distances were sometimes long and +sometimes short. General Worth on one occasion at least, after having +made the full distance intended for the day, and after the troops were +in camp and preparing their food, ordered tents struck and made the +march that night which had been intended for the next day. Some +commanders can move troops so as to get the maximum distance out of them +without fatigue, while others can wear them out in a few days without +accomplishing so much. General Worth belonged to this latter class. He +enjoyed, however, a fine reputation for his fighting qualities, and thus +attached his officers and men to him. + +The army lay in camp upon the sand-beach in the neighborhood of the +mouth of the Rio Grande for several weeks, awaiting the arrival of +transports to carry it to its new field of operations. The transports +were all sailing vessels. The passage was a tedious one, and many of +the troops were on shipboard over thirty days from the embarkation at +the mouth of the Rio Grande to the time of debarkation south of Vera +Cruz. The trip was a comfortless one for officers and men. The +transports used were built for carrying freight and possessed but +limited accommodations for passengers, and the climate added to the +discomfort of all. + +The transports with troops were assembled in the harbor of Anton +Lizardo, some sixteen miles south of Vera Cruz, as they arrived, and +there awaited the remainder of the fleet, bringing artillery, ammunition +and supplies of all kinds from the North. With the fleet there was a +little steam propeller dispatch-boat--the first vessel of the kind I had +ever seen, and probably the first of its kind ever seen by any one then +with the army. At that day ocean steamers were rare, and what there +were were sidewheelers. This little vessel, going through the fleet so +fast, so noiselessly and with its propeller under water out of view, +attracted a great deal of attention. I recollect that Lieutenant Sidney +Smith, of the 4th infantry, by whom I happened to be standing on the +deck of a vessel when this propeller was passing, exclaimed, "Why, the +thing looks as if it was propelled by the force of circumstances." + +Finally on the 7th of March, 1847, the little army of ten or twelve +thousand men, given Scott to invade a country with a population of seven +or eight millions, a mountainous country affording the greatest possible +natural advantages for defence, was all assembled and ready to commence +the perilous task of landing from vessels lying in the open sea. + +The debarkation took place inside of the little island of Sacrificios, +some three miles south of Vera Cruz. The vessels could not get anywhere +near shore, so that everything had to be landed in lighters or +surf-boats; General Scott had provided these before leaving the North. +The breakers were sometimes high, so that the landing was tedious. The +men were got ashore rapidly, because they could wade when they came to +shallow water; but the camp and garrison equipage, provisions, +ammunition and all stores had to be protected from the salt water, and +therefore their landing took several days. The Mexicans were very kind +to us, however, and threw no obstacles in the way of our landing except +an occasional shot from their nearest fort. During the debarkation one +shot took off the head of Major Albertis. No other, I believe, reached +anywhere near the same distance. On the 9th of March the troops were +landed and the investment of Vera Cruz, from the Gulf of Mexico south of +the city to the Gulf again on the north, was soon and easily effected. +The landing of stores was continued until everything was got ashore. + +Vera Cruz, at the time of which I write and up to 1880, was a walled +city. The wall extended from the water's edge south of the town to the +water again on the north. There were fortifications at intervals along +the line and at the angles. In front of the city, and on an island half +a mile out in the Gulf, stands San Juan de Ulloa, an enclosed +fortification of large dimensions and great strength for that period. +Against artillery of the present day the land forts and walls would +prove elements of weakness rather than strength. After the invading +army had established their camps out of range of the fire from the city, +batteries were established, under cover of night, far to the front of +the line where the troops lay. These batteries were intrenched and the +approaches sufficiently protected. If a sortie had been made at any +time by the Mexicans, the men serving the batteries could have been +quickly reinforced without great exposure to the fire from the enemy's +main line. No serious attempt was made to capture the batteries or to +drive our troops away. + +The siege continued with brisk firing on our side till the 27th of +March, by which time a considerable breach had been made in the wall +surrounding the city. Upon this General Morales, who was Governor of +both the city and of San Juan de Ulloa, commenced a correspondence with +General Scott looking to the surrender of the town, forts and garrison. +On the 29th Vera Cruz and San Juan de Ulloa were occupied by Scott's +army. About five thousand prisoners and four hundred pieces of +artillery, besides large amounts of small arms and ammunition, fell into +the hands of the victorious force. The casualties on our side during +the siege amounted to sixty-four officers and men, killed and wounded. + + + +CHAPTER X. + +MARCH TO JALAPA--BATTLE OF CERRO GORDO--PEROTE--PUEBLA--SCOTT AND +TAYLOR. + +General Scott had less than twelve thousand men at Vera Cruz. He had +been promised by the administration a very much larger force, or claimed +that he had, and he was a man of veracity. Twelve thousand was a very +small army with which to penetrate two hundred and sixty miles into an +enemy's country, and to besiege the capital; a city, at that time, of +largely over one hundred thousand inhabitants. Then, too, any line of +march that could be selected led through mountain passes easily +defended. In fact, there were at that time but two roads from Vera Cruz +to the City of Mexico that could be taken by an army; one by Jalapa and +Perote, the other by Cordova and Orizaba, the two coming together on the +great plain which extends to the City of Mexico after the range of +mountains is passed. + +It was very important to get the army away from Vera Cruz as soon as +possible, in order to avoid the yellow fever, or vomito, which usually +visits that city early in the year, and is very fatal to persons not +acclimated; but transportation, which was expected from the North, was +arriving very slowly. It was absolutely necessary to have enough to +supply the army to Jalapa, sixty-five miles in the interior and above +the fevers of the coast. At that point the country is fertile, and an +army of the size of General Scott's could subsist there for an +indefinite period. Not counting the sick, the weak and the garrisons +for the captured city and fort, the moving column was now less than ten +thousand strong. This force was composed of three divisions, under +Generals Twiggs, Patterson, and Worth. The importance of escaping the +vomito was so great that as soon as transportation enough could be got +together to move a division the advance was commenced. On the 8th of +April, Twiggs's division started for Jalapa. He was followed very soon +by Patterson, with his division. General Worth was to bring up the rear +with his command as soon as transportation enough was assembled to carry +six days' rations for his troops with the necessary ammunition and camp +and garrison equipage. It was the 13th of April before this division +left Vera Cruz. + +The leading division ran against the enemy at Cerro Gordo, some fifty +miles west, on the road to Jalapa, and went into camp at Plan del Rio, +about three miles from the fortifications. General Patterson reached +Plan del Rio with his division soon after Twiggs arrived. The two were +then secure against an attack from Santa Anna, who commanded the Mexican +forces. At all events they confronted the enemy without reinforcements +and without molestation, until the 18th of April. General Scott had +remained at Vera Cruz to hasten preparations for the field; but on the +12th, learning the situation at the front, he hastened on to take +personal supervision. He at once commenced his preparations for the +capture of the position held by Santa Anna and of the troops holding it. + +Cerro Gordo is one of the higher spurs of the mountains some twelve to +fifteen miles east of Jalapa, and Santa Anna had selected this point as +the easiest to defend against an invading army. The road, said to have +been built by Cortez, zigzags around the mountain-side and was defended +at every turn by artillery. On either side were deep chasms or mountain +walls. A direct attack along the road was an impossibility. A flank +movement seemed equally impossible. After the arrival of the +commanding-general upon the scene, reconnoissances were sent out to +find, or to make, a road by which the rear of the enemy's works might be +reached without a front attack. These reconnoissances were made under +the supervision of Captain Robert E. Lee, assisted by Lieutenants P. G. +T. Beauregard, Isaac I. Stevens, Z. B. Tower, G. W. Smith, George B. +McClellan, and J. G. Foster, of the corps of engineers, all officers who +attained rank and fame, on one side or the other, in the great conflict +for the preservation of the unity of the nation. The reconnoissance was +completed, and the labor of cutting out and making roads by the flank of +the enemy was effected by the 17th of the month. This was accomplished +without the knowledge of Santa Anna or his army, and over ground where +he supposed it impossible. On the same day General Scott issued his +order for the attack on the 18th. + +The attack was made as ordered, and perhaps there was not a battle of +the Mexican war, or of any other, where orders issued before an +engagement were nearer being a correct report of what afterwards took +place. Under the supervision of the engineers, roadways had been opened +over chasms to the right where the walls were so steep that men could +barely climb them. Animals could not. These had been opened under +cover of night, without attracting the notice of the enemy. The +engineers, who had directed the opening, led the way and the troops +followed. Artillery was let down the steep slopes by hand, the men +engaged attaching a strong rope to the rear axle and letting the guns +down, a piece at a time, while the men at the ropes kept their ground on +top, paying out gradually, while a few at the front directed the course +of the piece. In like manner the guns were drawn by hand up the +opposite slopes. In this way Scott's troops reached their assigned +position in rear of most of the intrenchments of the enemy, unobserved. +The attack was made, the Mexican reserves behind the works beat a hasty +retreat, and those occupying them surrendered. On the left General +Pillow's command made a formidable demonstration, which doubtless held a +part of the enemy in his front and contributed to the victory. I am not +pretending to give full details of all the battles fought, but of the +portion that I saw. There were troops engaged on both sides at other +points in which both sustained losses; but the battle was won as here +narrated. + +The surprise of the enemy was complete, the victory overwhelming; some +three thousand prisoners fell into Scott's hands, also a large amount of +ordnance and ordnance stores. The prisoners were paroled, the artillery +parked and the small arms and ammunition destroyed. The battle of Buena +Vista was probably very important to the success of General Scott at +Cerro Gordo and in his entire campaign from Vera Cruz to the great +plains reaching to the City of Mexico. The only army Santa Anna had to +protect his capital and the mountain passes west of Vera Cruz, was the +one he had with him confronting General Taylor. It is not likely that he +would have gone as far north as Monterey to attack the United States +troops when he knew his country was threatened with invasion further +south. When Taylor moved to Saltillo and then advanced on to Buena +Vista, Santa Anna crossed the desert confronting the invading army, +hoping no doubt to crush it and get back in time to meet General Scott +in the mountain passes west of Vera Cruz. His attack on Taylor was +disastrous to the Mexican army, but, notwithstanding this, he marched +his army to Cerro Gordo, a distance not much short of one thousand miles +by the line he had to travel, in time to intrench himself well before +Scott got there. If he had been successful at Buena Vista his troops +would no doubt have made a more stubborn resistance at Cerro Gordo. Had +the battle of Buena Vista not been fought Santa Anna would have had time +to move leisurely to meet the invader further south and with an army not +demoralized nor depleted by defeat. + +After the battle the victorious army moved on to Jalapa, where it was in +a beautiful, productive and healthy country, far above the fevers of the +coast. Jalapa, however, is still in the mountains, and between there +and the great plain the whole line of the road is easy of defence. It +was important, therefore, to get possession of the great highway between +the sea-coast and the capital up to the point where it leaves the +mountains, before the enemy could have time to re-organize and fortify +in our front. Worth's division was selected to go forward to secure this +result. The division marched to Perote on the great plain, not far from +where the road debouches from the mountains. There is a low, strong +fort on the plain in front of the town, known as the Castle of Perote. +This, however, offered no resistance and fell into our hands, with its +armament. + +General Scott having now only nine or ten thousand men west of Vera +Cruz, and the time of some four thousand of them being about to expire, +a long delay was the consequence. The troops were in a healthy climate, +and where they could subsist for an indefinite period even if their line +back to Vera Cruz should be cut off. It being ascertained that the men +whose time would expire before the City of Mexico could possibly fall +into the hands of the American army, would not remain beyond the term +for which they had volunteered, the commanding-general determined to +discharge them at once, for a delay until the expiration of their time +would have compelled them to pass through Vera Cruz during the season of +the vomito. This reduced Scott's force in the field to about five +thousand men. + +Early in May, Worth, with his division, left Perote and marched on to +Puebla. The roads were wide and the country open except through one +pass in a spur of mountains coming up from the south, through which the +road runs. Notwithstanding this the small column was divided into two +bodies, moving a day apart. Nothing occurred on the march of special +note, except that while lying at the town of Amozoque--an easy day's +march east of Puebla--a body of the enemy's cavalry, two or three +thousand strong, was seen to our right, not more than a mile away. A +battery or two, with two or three infantry regiments, was sent against +them and they soon disappeared. On the 15th of May we entered the city +of Puebla. + +General Worth was in command at Puebla until the latter end of May, when +General Scott arrived. Here, as well as on the march up, his +restlessness, particularly under responsibilities, showed itself. +During his brief command he had the enemy hovering around near the city, +in vastly superior numbers to his own. The brigade to which I was +attached changed quarters three different times in about a week, +occupying at first quarters near the plaza, in the heart of the city; +then at the western entrance; then at the extreme east. On one occasion +General Worth had the troops in line, under arms, all day, with three +days' cooked rations in their haversacks. He galloped from one command +to another proclaiming the near proximity of Santa Anna with an army +vastly superior to his own. General Scott arrived upon the scene the +latter part of the month, and nothing more was heard of Santa Anna and +his myriads. There were, of course, bodies of mounted Mexicans hovering +around to watch our movements and to pick up stragglers, or small bodies +of troops, if they ventured too far out. These always withdrew on the +approach of any considerable number of our soldiers. After the arrival +of General Scott I was sent, as quartermaster, with a large train of +wagons, back two days' march at least, to procure forage. We had less +than a thousand men as escort, and never thought of danger. We procured +full loads for our entire train at two plantations, which could easily +have furnished as much more. + +There had been great delay in obtaining the authority of Congress for +the raising of the troops asked for by the administration. A bill was +before the National Legislature from early in the session of 1846-7, +authorizing the creation of ten additional regiments for the war to be +attached to the regular army, but it was the middle of February before +it became a law. Appointments of commissioned officers had then to be +made; men had to be enlisted, the regiments equipped and the whole +transported to Mexico. It was August before General Scott received +reinforcement sufficient to warrant an advance. His moving column, not +even now more than ten thousand strong, was in four divisions, commanded +by Generals Twiggs, Worth, Pillow and Quitman. There was also a cavalry +corps under General Harney, composed of detachments of the 1st, 2d, and +3d dragoons. The advance commenced on the 7th of August with Twiggs's +division in front. The remaining three divisions followed, with an +interval of a day between. The marches were short, to make +concentration easier in case of attack. + +I had now been in battle with the two leading commanders conducting +armies in a foreign land. The contrast between the two was very marked. +General Taylor never wore uniform, but dressed himself entirely for +comfort. He moved about the field in which he was operating to see +through his own eyes the situation. Often he would be without staff +officers, and when he was accompanied by them there was no prescribed +order in which they followed. He was very much given to sit his horse +side-ways--with both feet on one side--particularly on the battlefield. +General Scott was the reverse in all these particulars. He always wore +all the uniform prescribed or allowed by law when he inspected his +lines; word would be sent to all division and brigade commanders in +advance, notifying them of the hour when the commanding general might be +expected. This was done so that all the army might be under arms to +salute their chief as he passed. On these occasions he wore his dress +uniform, cocked hat, aiguillettes, sabre and spurs. His staff proper, +besides all officers constructively on his staff--engineers, inspectors, +quartermasters, etc., that could be spared--followed, also in uniform +and in prescribed order. Orders were prepared with great care and +evidently with the view that they should be a history of what followed. + +In their modes of expressing thought, these two generals contrasted +quite as strongly as in their other characteristics. General Scott was +precise in language, cultivated a style peculiarly his own; was proud of +his rhetoric; not averse to speaking of himself, often in the third +person, and he could bestow praise upon the person he was talking about +without the least embarrassment. Taylor was not a conversationalist, +but on paper he could put his meaning so plainly that there could be no +mistaking it. He knew how to express what he wanted to say in the +fewest well-chosen words, but would not sacrifice meaning to the +construction of high-sounding sentences. But with their opposite +characteristics both were great and successful soldiers; both were true, +patriotic and upright in all their dealings. Both were pleasant to +serve under--Taylor was pleasant to serve with. Scott saw more through +the eyes of his staff officers than through his own. His plans were +deliberately prepared, and fully expressed in orders. Taylor saw for +himself, and gave orders to meet the emergency without reference to how +they would read in history. + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +ADVANCE ON THE CITY OF MEXICO--BATTLE OF CONTRERAS--ASSAULT AT +CHURUBUSCO--NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE--BATTLE OF MOLINO DEL REY--STORMING +OF CHAPULTEPEC--SAN COSME--EVACUATION OF THE CITY--HALLS OF THE +MONTEZUMAS. + +The route followed by the army from Puebla to the City of Mexico was +over Rio Frio mountain, the road leading over which, at the highest +point, is about eleven thousand feet above tide water. The pass through +this mountain might have been easily defended, but it was not; and the +advanced division reached the summit in three days after leaving Puebla. +The City of Mexico lies west of Rio Frio mountain, on a plain backed by +another mountain six miles farther west, with others still nearer on the +north and south. Between the western base of Rio Frio and the City of +Mexico there are three lakes, Chalco and Xochimilco on the left and +Texcoco on the right, extending to the east end of the City of Mexico. +Chalco and Texcoco are divided by a narrow strip of land over which the +direct road to the city runs. Xochimilco is also to the left of the +road, but at a considerable distance south of it, and is connected with +Lake Chalco by a narrow channel. There is a high rocky mound, called El +Penon, on the right of the road, springing up from the low flat ground +dividing the lakes. This mound was strengthened by intrenchments at its +base and summit, and rendered a direct attack impracticable. + +Scott's army was rapidly concentrated about Ayotla and other points near +the eastern end of Lake Chalco. Reconnoissances were made up to within +gun-shot of El Penon, while engineers were seeking a route by the south +side of Lake Chalco to flank the city, and come upon it from the south +and south-west. A way was found around the lake, and by the 18th of +August troops were in St. Augustin Tlalpam, a town about eleven miles +due south from the plaza of the capital. Between St. Augustin Tlalpam +and the city lie the hacienda of San Antonio and the village of +Churubusco, and south-west of them is Contreras. All these points, +except St. Augustin Tlalpam, were intrenched and strongly garrisoned. +Contreras is situated on the side of a mountain, near its base, where +volcanic rocks are piled in great confusion, reaching nearly to San +Antonio. This made the approach to the city from the south very +difficult. + +The brigade to which I was attached--Garland's, of Worth's division--was +sent to confront San Antonio, two or three miles from St. Augustin +Tlalpam, on the road to Churubusco and the City of Mexico. The ground +on which San Antonio stands is completely in the valley, and the surface +of the land is only a little above the level of the lakes, and, except +to the south-west, it was cut up by deep ditches filled with water. To +the south-west is the Pedregal--the volcanic rock before spoken of--over +which cavalry or artillery could not be passed, and infantry would make +but poor progress if confronted by an enemy. From the position occupied +by Garland's brigade, therefore, no movement could be made against the +defences of San Antonio except to the front, and by a narrow causeway, +over perfectly level ground, every inch of which was commanded by the +enemy's artillery and infantry. If Contreras, some three miles west and +south, should fall into our hands, troops from there could move to the +right flank of all the positions held by the enemy between us and the +city. Under these circumstances General Scott directed the holding of +the front of the enemy without making an attack until further orders. + +On the 18th of August, the day of reaching San Augustin Tlalpam, +Garland's brigade secured a position within easy range of the advanced +intrenchments of San Antonio, but where his troops were protected by an +artificial embankment that had been thrown up for some other purpose +than defense. General Scott at once set his engineers reconnoitring the +works about Contreras, and on the 19th movements were commenced to get +troops into positions from which an assault could be made upon the force +occupying that place. The Pedregal on the north and north-east, and the +mountain on the south, made the passage by either flank of the enemy's +defences difficult, for their work stood exactly between those natural +bulwarks; but a road was completed during the day and night of the 19th, +and troops were got to the north and west of the enemy. + +This affair, like that of Cerro Gordo, was an engagement in which the +officers of the engineer corps won special distinction. In fact, in +both cases, tasks which seemed difficult at first sight were made easier +for the troops that had to execute them than they would have been on an +ordinary field. The very strength of each of these positions was, by +the skill of the engineers, converted into a defence for the assaulting +parties while securing their positions for final attack. All the troops +with General Scott in the valley of Mexico, except a part of the +division of General Quitman at San Augustin Tlalpam and the brigade of +Garland (Worth's division) at San Antonio, were engaged at the battle of +Contreras, or were on their way, in obedience to the orders of their +chief, to reinforce those who were engaged. The assault was made on the +morning of the 20th, and in less than half an hour from the sound of the +advance the position was in our hands, with many prisoners and large +quantities of ordnance and other stores. The brigade commanded by +General Riley was from its position the most conspicuous in the final +assault, but all did well, volunteers and regulars. + +From the point occupied by Garland's brigade we could see the progress +made at Contreras and the movement of troops toward the flank and rear +of the enemy opposing us. The Mexicans all the way back to the city +could see the same thing, and their conduct showed plainly that they did +not enjoy the sight. We moved out at once, and found them gone from our +immediate front. Clarke's brigade of Worth's division now moved west +over the point of the Pedregal, and after having passed to the north +sufficiently to clear San Antonio, turned east and got on the causeway +leading to Churubusco and the City of Mexico. When he approached +Churubusco his left, under Colonel Hoffman, attacked a tete-de-pont at +that place and brought on an engagement. About an hour after, Garland +was ordered to advance directly along the causeway, and got up in time +to take part in the engagement. San Antonio was found evacuated, the +evacuation having probably taken place immediately upon the enemy seeing +the stars and stripes waving over Contreras. + +The troops that had been engaged at Contreras, and even then on their +way to that battle-field, were moved by a causeway west of, and parallel +to the one by way of San Antonio and Churubusco. It was expected by the +commanding general that these troops would move north sufficiently far +to flank the enemy out of his position at Churubusco, before turning +east to reach the San Antonio road, but they did not succeed in this, +and Churubusco proved to be about the severest battle fought in the +valley of Mexico. General Scott coming upon the battle-field about this +juncture, ordered two brigades, under Shields, to move north and turn +the right of the enemy. This Shields did, but not without hard fighting +and heavy loss. The enemy finally gave way, leaving in our hands +prisoners, artillery and small arms. The balance of the causeway held +by the enemy, up to the very gates of the city, fell in like manner. I +recollect at this place that some of the gunners who had stood their +ground, were deserters from General Taylor's army on the Rio Grande. + +Both the strategy and tactics displayed by General Scott in these +various engagements of the 20th of August, 1847, were faultless as I +look upon them now, after the lapse of so many years. As before stated, +the work of the engineer officers who made the reconnoissances and led +the different commands to their destinations, was so perfect that the +chief was able to give his orders to his various subordinates with all +the precision he could use on an ordinary march. I mean, up to the +points from which the attack was to commence. After that point is +reached the enemy often induces a change of orders not before +contemplated. The enemy outside the city outnumbered our soldiery quite +three to one, but they had become so demoralized by the succession of +defeats this day, that the City of Mexico could have been entered +without much further bloodshed. In fact, Captain Philip Kearney +--afterwards a general in the war of the rebellion--rode with a squadron +of cavalry to the very gates of the city, and would no doubt have +entered with his little force, only at that point he was badly wounded, +as were several of his officers. He had not heard the call for a halt. + +General Franklin Pierce had joined the army in Mexico, at Puebla, a +short time before the advance upon the capital commenced. He had +consequently not been in any of the engagements of the war up to the +battle of Contreras. By an unfortunate fall of his horse on the +afternoon of the 19th he was painfully injured. The next day, when his +brigade, with the other troops engaged on the same field, was ordered +against the flank and rear of the enemy guarding the different points of +the road from San Augustin Tlalpam to the city, General Pierce attempted +to accompany them. He was not sufficiently recovered to do so, and +fainted. This circumstance gave rise to exceedingly unfair and unjust +criticisms of him when he became a candidate for the Presidency. +Whatever General Pierce's qualifications may have been for the +Presidency, he was a gentleman and a man of courage. I was not a +supporter of him politically, but I knew him more intimately than I did +any other of the volunteer generals. + +General Scott abstained from entering the city at this time, because Mr. +Nicholas P. Trist, the commissioner on the part of the United States to +negotiate a treaty of peace with Mexico, was with the army, and either +he or General Scott thought--probably both of them--that a treaty would +be more possible while the Mexican government was in possession of the +capital than if it was scattered and the capital in the hands of an +invader. Be this as it may, we did not enter at that time. The army +took up positions along the slopes of the mountains south of the city, +as far west as Tacubaya. Negotiations were at once entered into with +Santa Anna, who was then practically THE GOVERNMENT and the immediate +commander of all the troops engaged in defence of the country. A truce +was signed which denied to either party the right to strengthen its +position, or to receive reinforcements during the continuance of the +armistices, but authorized General Scott to draw supplies for his army +from the city in the meantime. + +Negotiations were commenced at once and were kept up vigorously between +Mr. Trist and the commissioners appointed on the part of Mexico, until +the 2d of September. At that time Mr. Trist handed in his ultimatum. +Texas was to be given up absolutely by Mexico, and New Mexico and +California ceded to the United States for a stipulated sum to be +afterwards determined. I do not suppose Mr. Trist had any discretion +whatever in regard to boundaries. The war was one of conquest, in the +interest of an institution, and the probabilities are that private +instructions were for the acquisition of territory out of which new +States might be carved. At all events the Mexicans felt so outraged at +the terms proposed that they commenced preparations for defence, without +giving notice of the termination of the armistice. The terms of the +truce had been violated before, when teams had been sent into the city +to bring out supplies for the army. The first train entering the city +was very severely threatened by a mob. This, however, was apologized for +by the authorities and all responsibility for it denied; and thereafter, +to avoid exciting the Mexican people and soldiery, our teams with their +escorts were sent in at night, when the troops were in barracks and the +citizens in bed. The circumstance was overlooked and negotiations +continued. As soon as the news reached General Scott of the second +violation of the armistice, about the 4th of September, he wrote a +vigorous note to President Santa Anna, calling his attention to it, and, +receiving an unsatisfactory reply, declared the armistice at an end. + +General Scott, with Worth's division, was now occupying Tacubaya, a +village some four miles south-west of the City of Mexico, and extending +from the base up the mountain-side for the distance of half a mile. +More than a mile west, and also a little above the plain, stands Molino +del Rey. The mill is a long stone structure, one story high and several +hundred feet in length. At the period of which I speak General Scott +supposed a portion of the mill to be used as a foundry for the casting +of guns. This, however, proved to be a mistake. It was valuable to the +Mexicans because of the quantity of grain it contained. The building is +flat roofed, and a line of sand-bags over the outer walls rendered the +top quite a formidable defence for infantry. Chapultepec is a mound +springing up from the plain to the height of probably three hundred +feet, and almost in a direct line between Molino del Rey and the western +part of the city. It was fortified both on the top and on the rocky and +precipitous sides. + +The City of Mexico is supplied with water by two aqueducts, resting on +strong stone arches. One of these aqueducts draws its supply of water +from a mountain stream coming into it at or near Molino del Rey, and +runs north close to the west base of Chapultepec; thence along the +centre of a wide road, until it reaches the road running east into the +city by the Garita San Cosme; from which point the aqueduct and road +both run east to the city. The second aqueduct starts from the east +base of Chapultepec, where it is fed by a spring, and runs north-east to +the city. This aqueduct, like the other, runs in the middle of a broad +road-way, thus leaving a space on each side. The arches supporting the +aqueduct afforded protection for advancing troops as well as to those +engaged defensively. At points on the San Cosme road parapets were +thrown across, with an embrasure for a single piece of artillery in +each. At the point where both road and aqueduct turn at right angles +from north to east, there was not only one of these parapets supplied by +one gun and infantry supports, but the houses to the north of the San +Cosme road, facing south and commanding a view of the road back to +Chapultepec, were covered with infantry, protected by parapets made of +sandbags. The roads leading to garitas (the gates) San Cosme and Belen, +by which these aqueducts enter the city, were strongly intrenched. +Deep, wide ditches, filled with water, lined the sides of both roads. +Such were the defences of the City of Mexico in September, 1847, on the +routes over which General Scott entered. + +Prior to the Mexican war General Scott had been very partial to General +Worth--indeed he continued so up to the close of hostilities--but, for +some reason, Worth had become estranged from his chief. Scott evidently +took this coldness somewhat to heart. He did not retaliate, however, +but on the contrary showed every disposition to appease his subordinate. +It was understood at the time that he gave Worth authority to plan and +execute the battle of Molino del Rey without dictation or interference +from any one, for the very purpose of restoring their former relations. +The effort failed, and the two generals remained ever after cold and +indifferent towards each other, if not actually hostile. + +The battle of Molino del Rey was fought on the 8th of September. The +night of the 7th, Worth sent for his brigade and regimental commanders, +with their staffs, to come to his quarters to receive instructions for +the morrow. These orders contemplated a movement up to within striking +distance of the Mills before daylight. The engineers had reconnoitred +the ground as well as possible, and had acquired all the information +necessary to base proper orders both for approach and attack. + +By daylight on the morning of the 8th, the troops to be engaged at +Molino were all at the places designated. The ground in front of the +Mills, to the south, was commanded by the artillery from the summit of +Chapultepec as well as by the lighter batteries at hand; but a charge +was made, and soon all was over. Worth's troops entered the Mills by +every door, and the enemy beat a hasty retreat back to Chapultepec. Had +this victory been followed up promptly, no doubt Americans and Mexicans +would have gone over the defences of Chapultepec so near together that +the place would have fallen into our hands without further loss. The +defenders of the works could not have fired upon us without endangering +their own men. This was not done, and five days later more valuable +lives were sacrificed to carry works which had been so nearly in our +possession on the 8th. I do not criticise the failure to capture +Chapultepec at this time. The result that followed the first assault +could not possibly have been foreseen, and to profit by the unexpected +advantage, the commanding general must have been on the spot and given +the necessary instructions at the moment, or the troops must have kept +on without orders. It is always, however, in order to follow a +retreating foe, unless stopped or otherwise directed. The loss on our +side at Molino del Rey was severe for the numbers engaged. It was +especially so among commissioned officers. + +I was with the earliest of the troops to enter the Mills. In passing +through to the north side, looking towards Chapultepec, I happened to +notice that there were armed Mexicans still on top of the building, only +a few feet from many of our men. Not seeing any stairway or ladder +reaching to the top of the building, I took a few soldiers, and had a +cart that happened to be standing near brought up, and, placing the +shafts against the wall and chocking the wheels so that the cart could +not back, used the shafts as a sort of ladder extending to within three +or four feet of the top. By this I climbed to the roof of the building, +followed by a few men, but found a private soldier had preceded me by +some other way. There were still quite a number of Mexicans on the +roof, among them a major and five or six officers of lower grades, who +had not succeeded in getting away before our troops occupied the +building. They still had their arms, while the soldier before mentioned +was walking as sentry, guarding the prisoners he had SURROUNDED, all by +himself. I halted the sentinel, received the swords from the +commissioned officers, and proceeded, with the assistance of the +soldiers now with me, to disable the muskets by striking them against +the edge of the wall, and throw them to the ground below. + +Molino del Rey was now captured, and the troops engaged, with the +exception of an appropriate guard over the captured position and +property, were marched back to their quarters in Tacubaya. The +engagement did not last many minutes, but the killed and wounded were +numerous for the number of troops engaged. + +During the night of the 11th batteries were established which could play +upon the fortifications of Chapultepec. The bombardment commenced early +on the morning of the 12th, but there was no further engagement during +this day than that of the artillery. General Scott assigned the capture +of Chapultepec to General Pillow, but did not leave the details to his +judgment. Two assaulting columns, two hundred and fifty men each, +composed of volunteers for the occasion, were formed. They were +commanded by Captains McKinzie and Casey respectively. The assault was +successful, but bloody. + +In later years, if not at the time, the battles of Molino del Rey and +Chapultepec have seemed to me to have been wholly unnecessary. When the +assaults upon the garitas of San Cosme and Belen were determined upon, +the road running east to the former gate could have been reached easily, +without an engagement, by moving along south of the Mills until west of +them sufficiently far to be out of range, thence north to the road above +mentioned; or, if desirable to keep the two attacking columns nearer +together, the troops could have been turned east so as to come on the +aqueduct road out of range of the guns from Chapultepec. In like +manner, the troops designated to act against Belen could have kept east +of Chapultepec, out of range, and come on to the aqueduct, also out of +range of Chapultepec. Molino del Rey and Chapultepec would both have +been necessarily evacuated if this course had been pursued, for they +would have been turned. + +General Quitman, a volunteer from the State of Mississippi, who stood +well with the army both as a soldier and as a man, commanded the column +acting against Belen. General Worth commanded the column against San +Cosme. When Chapultepec fell the advance commenced along the two +aqueduct roads. I was on the road to San Cosme, and witnessed most that +took place on that route. When opposition was encountered our troops +sheltered themselves by keeping under the arches supporting the +aqueduct, advancing an arch at a time. We encountered no serious +obstruction until within gun-shot of the point where the road we were on +intersects that running east to the city, the point where the aqueduct +turns at a right angle. I have described the defences of this position +before. There were but three commissioned officers besides myself, that +I can now call to mind, with the advance when the above position was +reached. One of these officers was a Lieutenant Semmes, of the Marine +Corps. I think Captain Gore, and Lieutenant Judah, of the 4th infantry, +were the others. Our progress was stopped for the time by the single +piece of artillery at the angle of the roads and the infantry occupying +the house-tops back from it. + +West of the road from where we were, stood a house occupying the +south-west angle made by the San Cosme road and the road we were moving +upon. A stone wall ran from the house along each of these roads for a +considerable distance and thence back until it joined, enclosing quite a +yard about the house. I watched my opportunity and skipped across the +road and behind the south wall. Proceeding cautiously to the west +corner of the enclosure, I peeped around and seeing nobody, continued, +still cautiously, until the road running east and west was reached. I +then returned to the troops, and called for volunteers. All that were +close to me, or that heard me, about a dozen, offered their services. +Commanding them to carry their arms at a trail, I watched our +opportunity and got them across the road and under cover of the wall +beyond, before the enemy had a shot at us. Our men under cover of the +arches kept a close watch on the intrenchments that crossed our path and +the house-tops beyond, and whenever a head showed itself above the +parapets they would fire at it. Our crossing was thus made practicable +without loss. + +When we reached a safe position I instructed my little command again to +carry their arms at a trail, not to fire at the enemy until they were +ordered, and to move very cautiously following me until the San Cosme +road was reached; we would then be on the flank of the men serving the +gun on the road, and with no obstruction between us and them. When we +reached the south-west corner of the enclosure before described, I saw +some United States troops pushing north through a shallow ditch near by, +who had come up since my reconnaissance. This was the company of +Captain Horace Brooks, of the artillery, acting as infantry. I +explained to Brooks briefly what I had discovered and what I was about +to do. He said, as I knew the ground and he did not, I might go on and +he would follow. As soon as we got on the road leading to the city the +troops serving the gun on the parapet retreated, and those on the +house-tops near by followed; our men went after them in such close +pursuit--the troops we had left under the arches joining--that a second +line across the road, about half-way between the first and the garita, +was carried. No reinforcements had yet come up except Brooks's company, +and the position we had taken was too advanced to be held by so small a +force. It was given up, but retaken later in the day, with some loss. + +Worth's command gradually advanced to the front now open to it. Later +in the day in reconnoitring I found a church off to the south of the +road, which looked to me as if the belfry would command the ground back +of the garita San Cosme. I got an officer of the voltigeurs, with a +mountain howitzer and men to work it, to go with me. The road being in +possession of the enemy, we had to take the field to the south to reach +the church. This took us over several ditches breast deep in water and +grown up with water plants. These ditches, however, were not over eight +or ten feet in width. The howitzer was taken to pieces and carried by +the men to its destination. When I knocked for admission a priest came +to the door who, while extremely polite, declined to admit us. With the +little Spanish then at my command, I explained to him that he might save +property by opening the door, and he certainly would save himself from +becoming a prisoner, for a time at least; and besides, I intended to go +in whether he consented or not. He began to see his duty in the same +light that I did, and opened the door, though he did not look as if it +gave him special pleasure to do so. The gun was carried to the belfry +and put together. We were not more than two or three hundred yards from +San Cosme. The shots from our little gun dropped in upon the enemy and +created great confusion. Why they did not send out a small party and +capture us, I do not know. We had no infantry or other defences besides +our one gun. + +The effect of this gun upon the troops about the gate of the city was so +marked that General Worth saw it from his position. (*3) He was so +pleased that he sent a staff officer, Lieutenant Pemberton--later +Lieutenant-General commanding the defences of Vicksburg--to bring me to +him. He expressed his gratification at the services the howitzer in the +church steeple was doing, saying that every shot was effective, and +ordered a captain of voltigeurs to report to me with another howitzer to +be placed along with the one already rendering so much service. I could +not tell the General that there was not room enough in the steeple for +another gun, because he probably would have looked upon such a statement +as a contradiction from a second lieutenant. I took the captain with +me, but did not use his gun. + +The night of the 13th of September was spent by the troops under General +Worth in the houses near San Cosme, and in line confronting the general +line of the enemy across to Belen. The troops that I was with were in +the houses north of the road leading into the city, and were engaged +during the night in cutting passage-ways from one house to another +towards the town. During the night Santa Anna, with his army--except +the deserters--left the city. He liberated all the convicts confined in +the town, hoping, no doubt, that they would inflict upon us some injury +before daylight; but several hours after Santa Anna was out of the way, +the city authorities sent a delegation to General Scott to ask--if not +demand--an armistice, respecting church property, the rights of citizens +and the supremacy of the city government in the management of municipal +affairs. General Scott declined to trammel himself with conditions, but +gave assurances that those who chose to remain within our lines would be +protected so long as they behaved themselves properly. + +General Quitman had advanced along his line very successfully on the +13th, so that at night his command occupied nearly the same position at +Belen that Worth's troops did about San Cosme. After the interview above +related between General Scott and the city council, orders were issued +for the cautious entry of both columns in the morning. The troops under +Worth were to stop at the Alameda, a park near the west end of the city. +Quitman was to go directly to the Plaza, and take possession of the +Palace--a mass of buildings on the east side in which Congress has its +sessions, the national courts are held, the public offices are all +located, the President resides, and much room is left for museums, +receptions, etc. This is the building generally designated as the +"Halls of the Montezumas." + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +PROMOTION TO FIRST LIEUTENANT--CAPTURE OF THE CITY OF MEXICO--THE ARMY +--MEXICAN SOLDIERS--PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. + +On entering the city the troops were fired upon by the released +convicts, and possibly by deserters and hostile citizens. The streets +were deserted, and the place presented the appearance of a "city of the +dead," except for this firing by unseen persons from house-tops, +windows, and around corners. In this firing the lieutenant-colonel of +my regiment, Garland, was badly wounded, Lieutenant Sidney Smith, of the +4th infantry, was also wounded mortally. He died a few days after, and +by his death I was promoted to the grade of first lieutenant.(*4) I had +gone into the battle of Palo Alto in May, 1846, a second lieutenant, and +I entered the city of Mexico sixteen months later with the same rank, +after having been in all the engagements possible for any one man and in +a regiment that lost more officers during the war than it ever had +present at any one engagement. My regiment lost four commissioned +officers, all senior to me, by steamboat explosions during the Mexican +war. The Mexicans were not so discriminating. They sometimes picked +off my juniors. + +General Scott soon followed the troops into the city, in state. I +wonder that he was not fired upon, but I believe he was not; at all +events he was not hurt. He took quarters at first in the "Halls of the +Montezumas," and from there issued his wise and discreet orders for the +government of a conquered city, and for suppressing the hostile acts of +liberated convicts already spoken of--orders which challenge the respect +of all who study them. Lawlessness was soon suppressed, and the City of +Mexico settled down into a quiet, law-abiding place. The people began +to make their appearance upon the streets without fear of the invaders. +Shortly afterwards the bulk of the troops were sent from the city to the +villages at the foot of the mountains, four or five miles to the south +and south-west. + +Whether General Scott approved of the Mexican war and the manner in +which it was brought about, I have no means of knowing. His orders to +troops indicate only a soldierly spirit, with probably a little regard +for the perpetuation of his own fame. On the other hand, General +Taylor's, I think, indicate that he considered the administration +accountable for the war, and felt no responsibility resting on himself +further than for the faithful performance of his duties. Both generals +deserve the commendations of their countrymen and to live in the +grateful memory of this people to the latest generation. + +Earlier in this narrative I have stated that the plain, reached after +passing the mountains east of Perote, extends to the cities of Puebla +and Mexico. The route travelled by the army before reaching Puebla, +goes over a pass in a spur of mountain coming up from the south. This +pass is very susceptible of defence by a smaller against a larger force. +Again, the highest point of the road-bed between Vera Cruz and the City +of Mexico is over Rio Frio mountain, which also might have been +successfully defended by an inferior against a superior force. But by +moving north of the mountains, and about thirty miles north of Puebla, +both of these passes would have been avoided. The road from Perote to +the City of Mexico, by this latter route, is as level as the prairies in +our West. Arriving due north from Puebla, troops could have been +detached to take possession of that place, and then proceeding west with +the rest of the army no mountain would have been encountered before +reaching the City of Mexico. It is true this road would have brought +troops in by Guadalupe--a town, church and detached spur of mountain +about two miles north of the capital, all bearing the same general name +--and at this point Lake Texcoco comes near to the mountain, which was +fortified both at the base and on the sides: but troops could have +passed north of the mountain and come in only a few miles to the +north-west, and so flanked the position, as they actually did on the +south. + +It has always seemed to me that this northern route to the City of +Mexico, would have been the better one to have taken. But my later +experience has taught me two lessons: first, that things are seen +plainer after the events have occurred; second, that the most confident +critics are generally those who know the least about the matter +criticised. I know just enough about the Mexican war to approve +heartily of most of the generalship, but to differ with a little of it. +It is natural that an important city like Puebla should not have been +passed with contempt; it may be natural that the direct road to it +should have been taken; but it could have been passed, its evacuation +insured and possession acquired without danger of encountering the enemy +in intricate mountain defiles. In this same way the City of Mexico +could have been approached without any danger of opposition, except in +the open field. + +But General Scott's successes are an answer to all criticism. He invaded +a populous country, penetrating two hundred and sixty miles into the +interior, with a force at no time equal to one-half of that opposed to +him; he was without a base; the enemy was always intrenched, always on +the defensive; yet he won every battle, he captured the capital, and +conquered the government. Credit is due to the troops engaged, it is +true, but the plans and the strategy were the general's. + +I had now made marches and been in battle under both General Scott and +General Taylor. The former divided his force of 10,500 men into four +columns, starting a day apart, in moving from Puebla to the capital of +the nation, when it was known that an army more than twice as large as +his own stood ready to resist his coming. The road was broad and the +country open except in crossing the Rio Frio mountain. General Taylor +pursued the same course in marching toward an enemy. He moved even in +smaller bodies. I never thought at the time to doubt the infallibility +of these two generals in all matters pertaining to their profession. I +supposed they moved in small bodies because more men could not be passed +over a single road on the same day with their artillery and necessary +trains. Later I found the fallacy of this belief. The rebellion, which +followed as a sequence to the Mexican war, never could have been +suppressed if larger bodies of men could not have been moved at the same +time than was the custom under Scott and Taylor. + +The victories in Mexico were, in every instance, over vastly superior +numbers. There were two reasons for this. Both General Scott and +General Taylor had such armies as are not often got together. At the +battles of Palo Alto and Resaca-de-la-Palma, General Taylor had a small +army, but it was composed exclusively of regular troops, under the best +of drill and discipline. Every officer, from the highest to the lowest, +was educated in his profession, not at West Point necessarily, but in +the camp, in garrison, and many of them in Indian wars. The rank and +file were probably inferior, as material out of which to make an army, +to the volunteers that participated in all the later battles of the war; +but they were brave men, and then drill and discipline brought out all +there was in them. A better army, man for man, probably never faced an +enemy than the one commanded by General Taylor in the earliest two +engagements of the Mexican war. The volunteers who followed were of +better material, but without drill or discipline at the start. They +were associated with so many disciplined men and professionally educated +officers, that when they went into engagements it was with a confidence +they would not have felt otherwise. They became soldiers themselves +almost at once. All these conditions we would enjoy again in case of +war. + +The Mexican army of that day was hardly an organization. The private +soldier was picked up from the lower class of the inhabitants when +wanted; his consent was not asked; he was poorly clothed, worse fed, and +seldom paid. He was turned adrift when no longer wanted. The officers +of the lower grades were but little superior to the men. With all this +I have seen as brave stands made by some of these men as I have ever +seen made by soldiers. Now Mexico has a standing army larger than that +of the United States. They have a military school modelled after West +Point. Their officers are educated and, no doubt, generally brave. The +Mexican war of 1846-8 would be an impossibility in this generation. + +The Mexicans have shown a patriotism which it would be well if we would +imitate in part, but with more regard to truth. They celebrate the +anniversaries of Chapultepec and Molino del Rey as of very great +victories. The anniversaries are recognized as national holidays. At +these two battles, while the United States troops were victorious, it +was at very great sacrifice of life compared with what the Mexicans +suffered. The Mexicans, as on many other occasions, stood up as well as +any troops ever did. The trouble seemed to be the lack of experience +among the officers, which led them after a certain time to simply quit, +without being particularly whipped, but because they had fought enough. +Their authorities of the present day grow enthusiastic over their theme +when telling of these victories, and speak with pride of the large sum +of money they forced us to pay in the end. With us, now twenty years +after the close of the most stupendous war ever known, we have writers +--who profess devotion to the nation--engaged in trying to prove that the +Union forces were not victorious; practically, they say, we were slashed +around from Donelson to Vicksburg and to Chattanooga; and in the East +from Gettysburg to Appomattox, when the physical rebellion gave out from +sheer exhaustion. There is no difference in the amount of romance in +the two stories. + +I would not have the anniversaries of our victories celebrated, nor +those of our defeats made fast days and spent in humiliation and prayer; +but I would like to see truthful history written. Such history will do +full credit to the courage, endurance and soldierly ability of the +American citizen, no matter what section of the country he hailed from, +or in what ranks he fought. The justice of the cause which in the end +prevailed, will, I doubt not, come to be acknowledged by every citizen +of the land, in time. For the present, and so long as there are living +witnesses of the great war of sections, there will be people who will +not be consoled for the loss of a cause which they believed to be holy. +As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it +was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified +institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man. + +After the fall of the capital and the dispersal of the government of +Mexico, it looked very much as if military occupation of the country for +a long time might be necessary. General Scott at once began the +preparation of orders, regulations and laws in view of this contingency. +He contemplated making the country pay all the expenses of the +occupation, without the army becoming a perceptible burden upon the +people. His plan was to levy a direct tax upon the separate states, and +collect, at the ports left open to trade, a duty on all imports. From +the beginning of the war private property had not been taken, either for +the use of the army or of individuals, without full compensation. This +policy was to be pursued. There were not troops enough in the valley of +Mexico to occupy many points, but now that there was no organized army +of the enemy of any size, reinforcements could be got from the Rio +Grande, and there were also new volunteers arriving from time to time, +all by way of Vera Cruz. Military possession was taken of Cuernavaca, +fifty miles south of the City of Mexico; of Toluca, nearly as far west, +and of Pachuca, a mining town of great importance, some sixty miles to +the north-east. Vera Cruz, Jalapa, Orizaba, and Puebla were already in +our possession. + +Meanwhile the Mexican government had departed in the person of Santa +Anna, and it looked doubtful for a time whether the United States +commissioner, Mr. Trist, would find anybody to negotiate with. A +temporary government, however, was soon established at Queretaro, and +Trist began negotiations for a conclusion of the war. Before terms were +finally agreed upon he was ordered back to Washington, but General Scott +prevailed upon him to remain, as an arrangement had been so nearly +reached, and the administration must approve his acts if he succeeded in +making such a treaty as had been contemplated in his instructions. The +treaty was finally signed the 2d of February, 1848, and accepted by the +government at Washington. It is that known as the "Treaty of Guadalupe +Hidalgo," and secured to the United States the Rio Grande as the +boundary of Texas, and the whole territory then included in New Mexico +and Upper California, for the sum of $15,000,000. + +Soon after entering the city of Mexico, the opposition of Generals +Pillow, Worth and Colonel Duncan to General Scott became very marked. +Scott claimed that they had demanded of the President his removal. I do +not know whether this is so or not, but I do know of their unconcealed +hostility to their chief. At last he placed them in arrest, and +preferred charges against them of insubordination and disrespect. This +act brought on a crisis in the career of the general commanding. He had +asserted from the beginning that the administration was hostile to him; +that it had failed in its promises of men and war material; that the +President himself had shown duplicity if not treachery in the endeavor +to procure the appointment of Benton: and the administration now gave +open evidence of its enmity. About the middle of February orders came +convening a court of inquiry, composed of Brevet Brigadier-General +Towson, the paymaster-general of the army, Brigadier-General Cushing and +Colonel Belknap, to inquire into the conduct of the accused and the +accuser, and shortly afterwards orders were received from Washington, +relieving Scott of the command of the army in the field and assigning +Major-General William O. Butler of Kentucky to the place. This order +also released Pillow, Worth and Duncan from arrest. + +If a change was to be made the selection of General Butler was agreeable +to every one concerned, so far as I remember to have heard expressions +on the subject. There were many who regarded the treatment of General +Scott as harsh and unjust. It is quite possible that the vanity of the +General had led him to say and do things that afforded a plausible +pretext to the administration for doing just what it did and what it had +wanted to do from the start. The court tried the accuser quite as much +as the accused. It was adjourned before completing its labors, to meet +in Frederick, Maryland. General Scott left the country, and never after +had more than the nominal command of the army until early in 1861. He +certainly was not sustained in his efforts to maintain discipline in +high places. + +The efforts to kill off politically the two successful generals, made +them both candidates for the Presidency. General Taylor was nominated +in 1848, and was elected. Four years later General Scott received the +nomination but was badly beaten, and the party nominating him died with +his defeat.(*5) + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +TREATY OF PEACE--MEXICAN BULL FIGHTS--REGIMENTAL QUARTERMASTER--TRIP TO +POPOCATAPETL--TRIP TO THE CAVES OF MEXICO. + +The treaty of peace between the two countries was signed by the +commissioners of each side early in February, 1848. It took a +considerable time for it to reach Washington, receive the approval of +the administration, and be finally ratified by the Senate. It was +naturally supposed by the army that there would be no more fighting, and +officers and men were of course anxious to get home, but knowing there +must be delay they contented themselves as best they could. Every +Sunday there was a bull fight for the amusement of those who would pay +their fifty cents. I attended one of them--just one--not wishing to +leave the country without having witnessed the national sport. The +sight to me was sickening. I could not see how human beings could enjoy +the sufferings of beasts, and often of men, as they seemed to do on +these occasions. + +At these sports there are usually from four to six bulls sacrificed. +The audience occupies seats around the ring in which the exhibition is +given, each seat but the foremost rising higher than the one in front, +so that every one can get a full view of the sport. When all is ready a +bull is turned into the ring. Three or four men come in, mounted on the +merest skeletons of horses blind or blind-folded and so weak that they +could not make a sudden turn with their riders without danger of falling +down. The men are armed with spears having a point as sharp as a +needle. Other men enter the arena on foot, armed with red flags and +explosives about the size of a musket cartridge. To each of these +explosives is fastened a barbed needle which serves the purpose of +attaching them to the bull by running the needle into the skin. Before +the animal is turned loose a lot of these explosives are attached to +him. The pain from the pricking of the skin by the needles is +exasperating; but when the explosions of the cartridges commence the +animal becomes frantic. As he makes a lunge towards one horseman, +another runs a spear into him. He turns towards his last tormentor when +a man on foot holds out a red flag; the bull rushes for this and is +allowed to take it on his horns. The flag drops and covers the eyes of +the animal so that he is at a loss what to do; it is jerked from him and +the torment is renewed. When the animal is worked into an +uncontrollable frenzy, the horsemen withdraw, and the matadores +--literally murderers--enter, armed with knives having blades twelve or +eighteen inches long, and sharp. The trick is to dodge an attack from +the animal and stab him to the heart as he passes. If these efforts fail +the bull is finally lassoed, held fast and killed by driving a knife +blade into the spinal column just back of the horns. He is then dragged +out by horses or mules, another is let into the ring, and the same +performance is renewed. + +On the occasion when I was present one of the bulls was not turned aside +by the attacks in the rear, the presentations of the red flag, etc., +etc., but kept right on, and placing his horns under the flanks of a +horse threw him and his rider to the ground with great force. The horse +was killed and the rider lay prostrate as if dead. The bull was then +lassoed and killed in the manner above described. Men came in and +carried the dead man off in a litter. When the slaughtered bull and +horse were dragged out, a fresh bull was turned into the ring. +Conspicuous among the spectators was the man who had been carried out on +a litter but a few minutes before. He was only dead so far as that +performance went; but the corpse was so lively that it could not forego +the chance of witnessing the discomfiture of some of his brethren who +might not be so fortunate. There was a feeling of disgust manifested by +the audience to find that he had come to life again. I confess that I +felt sorry to see the cruelty to the bull and the horse. I did not stay +for the conclusion of the performance; but while I did stay, there was +not a bull killed in the prescribed way. + +Bull fights are now prohibited in the Federal District--embracing a +territory around the City of Mexico, somewhat larger than the District +of Columbia--and they are not an institution in any part of the country. +During one of my recent visits to Mexico, bull fights were got up in my +honor at Puebla and at Pachuca. I was not notified in advance so as to +be able to decline and thus prevent the performance; but in both cases I +civilly declined to attend. + +Another amusement of the people of Mexico of that day, and one which +nearly all indulged in, male and female, old and young, priest and +layman, was Monte playing. Regular feast weeks were held every year at +what was then known as St. Augustin Tlalpam, eleven miles out of town. +There were dealers to suit every class and condition of people. In many +of the booths tlackos--the copper coin of the country, four of them +making six and a quarter cents of our money--were piled up in great +quantities, with some silver, to accommodate the people who could not +bet more than a few pennies at a time. In other booths silver formed +the bulk of the capital of the bank, with a few doubloons to be changed +if there should be a run of luck against the bank. In some there was no +coin except gold. Here the rich were said to bet away their entire +estates in a single day. All this is stopped now. + +For myself, I was kept somewhat busy during the winter of 1847-8. My +regiment was stationed in Tacubaya. I was regimental quartermaster and +commissary. General Scott had been unable to get clothing for the +troops from the North. The men were becoming--well, they needed +clothing. Material had to be purchased, such as could be obtained, and +people employed to make it up into "Yankee uniforms." A quartermaster +in the city was designated to attend to this special duty; but clothing +was so much needed that it was seized as fast as made up. A regiment +was glad to get a dozen suits at a time. I had to look after this +matter for the 4th infantry. Then our regimental fund had run down and +some of the musicians in the band had been without their extra pay for a +number of months. + +The regimental bands at that day were kept up partly by pay from the +government, and partly by pay from the regimental fund. There was +authority of law for enlisting a certain number of men as musicians. So +many could receive the pay of non-commissioned officers of the various +grades, and the remainder the pay of privates. This would not secure a +band leader, nor good players on certain instruments. In garrison there +are various ways of keeping up a regimental fund sufficient to give +extra pay to musicians, establish libraries and ten-pin alleys, +subscribe to magazines and furnish many extra comforts to the men. The +best device for supplying the fund is to issue bread to the soldiers +instead of flour. The ration used to be eighteen ounces per day of +either flour or bread; and one hundred pounds of flour will make one +hundred and forty pounds of bread. This saving was purchased by the +commissary for the benefit of the fund. In the emergency the 4th +infantry was laboring under, I rented a bakery in the city, hired +bakers--Mexicans--bought fuel and whatever was necessary, and I also got +a contract from the chief commissary of the army for baking a large +amount of hard bread. In two months I made more money for the fund than +my pay amounted to during the entire war. While stationed at Monterey I +had relieved the post fund in the same way. There, however, was no +profit except in the saving of flour by converting it into bread. + +In the spring of 1848 a party of officers obtained leave to visit +Popocatapetl, the highest volcano in America, and to take an escort. I +went with the party, many of whom afterwards occupied conspicuous +positions before the country. Of those who "went south," and attained +high rank, there was Lieutenant Richard Anderson, who commanded a corps +at Spottsylvania; Captain Sibley, a major-general, and, after the war, +for a number of years in the employ of the Khedive of Egypt; Captain +George Crittenden, a rebel general; S. B. Buckner, who surrendered Fort +Donelson; and Mansfield Lovell, who commanded at New Orleans before that +city fell into the hands of the National troops. Of those who remained +on our side there were Captain Andrew Porter, Lieutenant C. P. Stone and +Lieutenant Z. B. Tower. There were quite a number of other officers, +whose names I cannot recollect. + +At a little village (Ozumba) near the base of Popocatapetl, where we +purposed to commence the ascent, we procured guides and two pack mules +with forage for our horses. High up on the mountain there was a +deserted house of one room, called the Vaqueria, which had been occupied +years before by men in charge of cattle ranging on the mountain. The +pasturage up there was very fine when we saw it, and there were still +some cattle, descendants of the former domestic herd, which had now +become wild. It was possible to go on horseback as far as the Vaqueria, +though the road was somewhat hazardous in places. Sometimes it was very +narrow with a yawning precipice on one side, hundreds of feet down to a +roaring mountain torrent below, and almost perpendicular walls on the +other side. At one of these places one of our mules loaded with two +sacks of barley, one on each side, the two about as big as he was, +struck his load against the mountain-side and was precipitated to the +bottom. The descent was steep but not perpendicular. The mule rolled +over and over until the bottom was reached, and we supposed of course +the poor animal was dashed to pieces. What was our surprise, not long +after we had gone into bivouac, to see the lost mule, cargo and owner +coming up the ascent. The load had protected the animal from serious +injury; and his owner had gone after him and found a way back to the +path leading up to the hut where we were to stay. + +The night at the Vaqueria was one of the most unpleasant I ever knew. +It was very cold and the rain fell in torrents. A little higher up the +rain ceased and snow began. The wind blew with great velocity. The +log-cabin we were in had lost the roof entirely on one side, and on the +other it was hardly better then a sieve. There was little or no sleep +that night. As soon as it was light the next morning, we started to +make the ascent to the summit. The wind continued to blow with violence +and the weather was still cloudy, but there was neither rain nor snow. +The clouds, however, concealed from our view the country below us, +except at times a momentary glimpse could be got through a clear space +between them. The wind carried the loose snow around the mountain-sides +in such volumes as to make it almost impossible to stand up against it. +We labored on and on, until it became evident that the top could not be +reached before night, if at all in such a storm, and we concluded to +return. The descent was easy and rapid, though dangerous, until we got +below the snow line. At the cabin we mounted our horses, and by night +were at Ozumba. + +The fatigues of the day and the loss of sleep the night before drove us +to bed early. Our beds consisted of a place on the dirt-floor with a +blanket under us. Soon all were asleep; but long before morning first +one and then another of our party began to cry out with excruciating +pain in the eyes. Not one escaped it. By morning the eyes of half the +party were so swollen that they were entirely closed. The others +suffered pain equally. The feeling was about what might be expected +from the prick of a sharp needle at a white heat. We remained in +quarters until the afternoon bathing our eyes in cold water. This +relieved us very much, and before night the pain had entirely left. The +swelling, however, continued, and about half the party still had their +eyes entirely closed; but we concluded to make a start back, those who +could see a little leading the horses of those who could not see at all. +We moved back to the village of Ameca Ameca, some six miles, and stopped +again for the night. The next morning all were entirely well and free +from pain. The weather was clear and Popocatapetl stood out in all its +beauty, the top looking as if not a mile away, and inviting us to +return. About half the party were anxious to try the ascent again, and +concluded to do so. The remainder--I was with the remainder--concluded +that we had got all the pleasure there was to be had out of mountain +climbing, and that we would visit the great caves of Mexico, some ninety +miles from where we then were, on the road to Acapulco. + +The party that ascended the mountain the second time succeeded in +reaching the crater at the top, with but little of the labor they +encountered in their first attempt. Three of them--Anderson, Stone and +Buckner--wrote accounts of their journey, which were published at the +time. I made no notes of this excursion, and have read nothing about it +since, but it seems to me that I can see the whole of it as vividly as +if it were but yesterday. I have been back at Ameca Ameca, and the +village beyond, twice in the last five years. The scene had not changed +materially from my recollection of it. + +The party which I was with moved south down the valley to the town of +Cuantla, some forty miles from Ameca Ameca. The latter stands on the +plain at the foot of Popocatapetl, at an elevation of about eight +thousand feet above tide water. The slope down is gradual as the +traveller moves south, but one would not judge that, in going to +Cuantla, descent enough had been made to occasion a material change in +the climate and productions of the soil; but such is the case. In the +morning we left a temperate climate where the cereals and fruits are +those common to the United States, we halted in the evening in a +tropical climate where the orange and banana, the coffee and the +sugar-cane were flourishing. We had been travelling, apparently, +on a plain all day, but in the direction of the flow of water. + +Soon after the capture of the City of Mexico an armistice had been +agreed to, designating the limits beyond which troops of the respective +armies were not to go during its continuance. Our party knew nothing +about these limits. As we approached Cuantla bugles sounded the +assembly, and soldiers rushed from the guard-house in the edge of the +town towards us. Our party halted, and I tied a white pocket +handkerchief to a stick and, using it as a flag of truce, proceeded on +to the town. Captains Sibley and Porter followed a few hundred yards +behind. I was detained at the guard-house until a messenger could be +dispatched to the quarters of the commanding general, who authorized +that I should be conducted to him. I had been with the general but a +few minutes when the two officers following announced themselves. The +Mexican general reminded us that it was a violation of the truce for us +to be there. However, as we had no special authority from our own +commanding general, and as we knew nothing about the terms of the truce, +we were permitted to occupy a vacant house outside the guard for the +night, with the promise of a guide to put us on the road to Cuernavaca +the next morning. + +Cuernavaca is a town west of Guantla. The country through which we +passed, between these two towns, is tropical in climate and productions +and rich in scenery. At one point, about half-way between the two +places, the road goes over a low pass in the mountains in which there is +a very quaint old town, the inhabitants of which at that day were nearly +all full-blooded Indians. Very few of them even spoke Spanish. The +houses were built of stone and generally only one story high. The +streets were narrow, and had probably been paved before Cortez visited +the country. They had not been graded, but the paving had been done on +the natural surface. We had with us one vehicle, a cart, which was +probably the first wheeled vehicle that had ever passed through that +town. + +On a hill overlooking this town stands the tomb of an ancient king; and +it was understood that the inhabitants venerated this tomb very highly, +as well as the memory of the ruler who was supposed to be buried in it. +We ascended the mountain and surveyed the tomb; but it showed no +particular marks of architectural taste, mechanical skill or advanced +civilization. The next day we went into Cuernavaca. + +After a day's rest at Cuernavaca our party set out again on the journey +to the great caves of Mexico. We had proceeded but a few miles when we +were stopped, as before, by a guard and notified that the terms of the +existing armistice did not permit us to go further in that direction. +Upon convincing the guard that we were a mere party of pleasure seekers +desirous of visiting the great natural curiosities of the country which +we expected soon to leave, we were conducted to a large hacienda near +by, and directed to remain there until the commanding general of that +department could be communicated with and his decision obtained as to +whether we should be permitted to pursue our journey. The guard +promised to send a messenger at once, and expected a reply by night. At +night there was no response from the commanding general, but the captain +of the guard was sure he would have a reply by morning. Again in the +morning there was no reply. The second evening the same thing happened, +and finally we learned that the guard had sent no message or messenger +to the department commander. We determined therefore to go on unless +stopped by a force sufficient to compel obedience. + +After a few hours' travel we came to a town where a scene similar to the +one at Cuantia occurred. The commanding officer sent a guide to conduct +our party around the village and to put us upon our road again. This +was the last interruption: that night we rested at a large coffee +plantation, some eight miles from the cave we were on the way to visit. +It must have been a Saturday night; the peons had been paid off, and +spent part of the night in gambling away their scanty week's earnings. +Their coin was principally copper, and I do not believe there was a man +among them who had received as much as twenty-five cents in money. They +were as much excited, however, as if they had been staking thousands. I +recollect one poor fellow, who had lost his last tlacko, pulled off his +shirt and, in the most excited manner, put that up on the turn of a +card. Monte was the game played, the place out of doors, near the +window of the room occupied by the officers of our party. + +The next morning we were at the mouth of the cave at an early hour, +provided with guides, candles and rockets. We explored to a distance of +about three miles from the entrance, and found a succession of chambers +of great dimensions and of great beauty when lit up with our rockets. +Stalactites and stalagmites of all sizes were discovered. Some of the +former were many feet in diameter and extended from ceiling to floor; +some of the latter were but a few feet high from the floor; but the +formation is going on constantly, and many centuries hence these +stalagmites will extend to the ceiling and become complete columns. The +stalagmites were all a little concave, and the cavities were filled with +water. The water percolates through the roof, a drop at a time--often +the drops several minutes apart--and more or less charged with mineral +matter. Evaporation goes on slowly, leaving the mineral behind. This +in time makes the immense columns, many of them thousands of tons in +weight, which serve to support the roofs over the vast chambers. I +recollect that at one point in the cave one of these columns is of such +huge proportions that there is only a narrow passage left on either side +of it. Some of our party became satisfied with their explorations +before we had reached the point to which the guides were accustomed to +take explorers, and started back without guides. Coming to the large +column spoken of, they followed it entirely around, and commenced +retracing their steps into the bowels of the mountain, without being +aware of the fact. When the rest of us had completed our explorations, +we started out with our guides, but had not gone far before we saw the +torches of an approaching party. We could not conceive who these could +be, for all of us had come in together, and there were none but +ourselves at the entrance when we started in. Very soon we found it was +our friends. It took them some time to conceive how they had got where +they were. They were sure they had kept straight on for the mouth of +the cave, and had gone about far enough to have reached it. + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +RETURN OF THE ARMY--MARRIAGE--ORDERED TO THE PACIFIC COAST--CROSSING THE +ISTHMUS--ARRIVAL AT SAN FRANCISCO. + +My experience in the Mexican war was of great advantage to me +afterwards. Besides the many practical lessons it taught, the war +brought nearly all the officers of the regular army together so as to +make them personally acquainted. It also brought them in contact with +volunteers, many of whom served in the war of the rebellion afterwards. +Then, in my particular case, I had been at West Point at about the right +time to meet most of the graduates who were of a suitable age at the +breaking out of the rebellion to be trusted with large commands. +Graduating in 1843, I was at the military academy from one to four years +with all cadets who graduated between 1840 and 1846--seven classes. +These classes embraced more than fifty officers who afterwards became +generals on one side or the other in the rebellion, many of them holding +high commands. All the older officers, who became conspicuous in the +rebellion, I had also served with and known in Mexico: Lee, J. E. +Johnston, A. S. Johnston, Holmes, Hebert and a number of others on the +Confederate side; McCall, Mansfield, Phil. Kearney and others on the +National side. The acquaintance thus formed was of immense service to +me in the war of the rebellion--I mean what I learned of the characters +of those to whom I was afterwards opposed. I do not pretend to say that +all movements, or even many of them, were made with special reference to +the characteristics of the commander against whom they were directed. +But my appreciation of my enemies was certainly affected by this +knowledge. The natural disposition of most people is to clothe a +commander of a large army whom they do not know, with almost superhuman +abilities. A large part of the National army, for instance, and most of +the press of the country, clothed General Lee with just such qualities, +but I had known him personally, and knew that he was mortal; and it was +just as well that I felt this. + +The treaty of peace was at last ratified, and the evacuation of Mexico +by United States troops was ordered. Early in June the troops in the +City of Mexico began to move out. Many of them, including the brigade +to which I belonged, were assembled at Jalapa, above the vomito, to +await the arrival of transports at Vera Cruz: but with all this +precaution my regiment and others were in camp on the sand beach in a +July sun, for about a week before embarking, while the fever raged with +great virulence in Vera Cruz, not two miles away. I can call to mind +only one person, an officer, who died of the disease. My regiment was +sent to Pascagoula, Mississippi, to spend the summer. As soon as it was +settled in camp I obtained a leave of absence for four months and +proceeded to St. Louis. On the 22d of August, 1848, I was married to +Miss Julia Dent, the lady of whom I have before spoken. We visited my +parents and relations in Ohio, and, at the end of my leave, proceeded to +my post at Sackett's Harbor, New York. In April following I was ordered +to Detroit, Michigan, where two years were spent with but few important +incidents. + +The present constitution of the State of Michigan was ratified during +this time. By the terms of one of its provisions, all citizens of the +United States residing within the State at the time of the ratification +became citizens of Michigan also. During my stay in Detroit there was an +election for city officers. Mr. Zachariah Chandler was the candidate of +the Whigs for the office of Mayor, and was elected, although the city +was then reckoned democratic. All the officers stationed there at the +time who offered their votes were permitted to cast them. I did not +offer mine, however, as I did not wish to consider myself a citizen of +Michigan. This was Mr. Chandler's first entry into politics, a career +he followed ever after with great success, and in which he died enjoying +the friendship, esteem and love of his countrymen. + +In the spring of 1851 the garrison at Detroit was transferred to +Sackett's Harbor, and in the following spring the entire 4th infantry +was ordered to the Pacific Coast. It was decided that Mrs. Grant should +visit my parents at first for a few months, and then remain with her own +family at their St. Louis home until an opportunity offered of sending +for her. In the month of April the regiment was assembled at Governor's +Island, New York Harbor, and on the 5th of July eight companies sailed +for Aspinwall. We numbered a little over seven hundred persons, +including the families of officers and soldiers. Passage was secured +for us on the old steamer Ohio, commanded at the time by Captain +Schenck, of the navy. It had not been determined, until a day or two +before starting, that the 4th infantry should go by the Ohio; +consequently, a complement of passengers had already been secured. The +addition of over seven hundred to this list crowded the steamer most +uncomfortably, especially for the tropics in July. + +In eight days Aspinwall was reached. At that time the streets of the +town were eight or ten inches under water, and foot passengers passed +from place to place on raised foot-walks. July is at the height of the +wet season, on the Isthmus. At intervals the rain would pour down in +streams, followed in not many minutes by a blazing, tropical summer's +sun. These alternate changes, from rain to sunshine, were continuous in +the afternoons. I wondered how any person could live many months in +Aspinwall, and wondered still more why any one tried. + +In the summer of 1852 the Panama railroad was completed only to the +point where it now crosses the Chagres River. From there passengers +were carried by boats to Gorgona, at which place they took mules for +Panama, some twenty-five miles further. Those who travelled over the +Isthmus in those days will remember that boats on the Chagres River were +propelled by natives not inconveniently burdened with clothing. These +boats carried thirty to forty passengers each. The crews consisted of +six men to a boat, armed with long poles. There were planks wide enough +for a man to walk on conveniently, running along the sides of each boat +from end to end. The men would start from the bow, place one end of +their poles against the river bottom, brace their shoulders against the +other end, and then walk to the stern as rapidly as they could. In this +way from a mile to a mile and a half an hour could be made, against the +current of the river. + +I, as regimental quartermaster, had charge of the public property and +had also to look after the transportation. A contract had been entered +into with the steamship company in New York for the transportation of +the regiment to California, including the Isthmus transit. A certain +amount of baggage was allowed per man, and saddle animals were to be +furnished to commissioned officers and to all disabled persons. The +regiment, with the exception of one company left as guards to the public +property--camp and garrison equipage principally--and the soldiers with +families, took boats, propelled as above described, for Gorgona. From +this place they marched to Panama, and were soon comfortably on the +steamer anchored in the bay, some three or four miles from the town. I, +with one company of troops and all the soldiers with families, all the +tents, mess chests and camp kettles, was sent to Cruces, a town a few +miles higher up the Chagres River than Gorgona. There I found an +impecunious American who had taken the contract to furnish +transportation for the regiment at a stipulated price per hundred pounds +for the freight and so much for each saddle animal. But when we reached +Cruces there was not a mule, either for pack or saddle, in the place. +The contractor promised that the animals should be on hand in the +morning. In the morning he said that they were on the way from some +imaginary place, and would arrive in the course of the day. This went +on until I saw that he could not procure the animals at all at the price +he had promised to furnish them for. The unusual number of passengers +that had come over on the steamer, and the large amount of freight to +pack, had created an unprecedented demand for mules. Some of the +passengers paid as high as forty dollars for the use of a mule to ride +twenty-five miles, when the mule would not have sold for ten dollars in +that market at other times. Meanwhile the cholera had broken out, and +men were dying every hour. To diminish the food for the disease, I +permitted the company detailed with me to proceed to Panama. The +captain and the doctors accompanied the men, and I was left alone with +the sick and the soldiers who had families. The regiment at Panama was +also affected with the disease; but there were better accommodations for +the well on the steamer, and a hospital, for those taken with the +disease, on an old hulk anchored a mile off. There were also hospital +tents on shore on the island of Flamingo, which stands in the bay. + +I was about a week at Cruces before transportation began to come in. +About one-third of the people with me died, either at Cruces or on the +way to Panama. There was no agent of the transportation company at +Cruces to consult, or to take the responsibility of procuring +transportation at a price which would secure it. I therefore myself +dismissed the contractor and made a new contract with a native, at more +than double the original price. Thus we finally reached Panama. The +steamer, however, could not proceed until the cholera abated, and the +regiment was detained still longer. Altogether, on the Isthmus and on +the Pacific side, we were delayed six weeks. About one-seventh of those +who left New York harbor with the 4th infantry on the 5th of July, now +lie buried on the Isthmus of Panama or on Flamingo island in Panama Bay. + +One amusing circumstance occurred while we were lying at anchor in +Panama Bay. In the regiment there was a Lieutenant Slaughter who was +very liable to sea-sickness. It almost made him sick to see the wave of +a table-cloth when the servants were spreading it. Soon after his +graduation, Slaughter was ordered to California and took passage by a +sailing vessel going around Cape Horn. The vessel was seven months +making the voyage, and Slaughter was sick every moment of the time, +never more so than while lying at anchor after reaching his place of +destination. On landing in California he found orders which had come by +the Isthmus, notifying him of a mistake in his assignment; he should +have been ordered to the northern lakes. He started back by the Isthmus +route and was sick all the way. But when he arrived at the East he was +again ordered to California, this time definitely, and at this date was +making his third trip. He was as sick as ever, and had been so for more +than a month while lying at anchor in the bay. I remember him well, +seated with his elbows on the table in front of him, his chin between +his hands, and looking the picture of despair. At last he broke out, "I +wish I had taken my father's advice; he wanted me to go into the navy; +if I had done so, I should not have had to go to sea so much." Poor +Slaughter! it was his last sea voyage. He was killed by Indians in +Oregon. + +By the last of August the cholera had so abated that it was deemed safe +to start. The disease did not break out again on the way to California, +and we reached San Francisco early in September. + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +SAN FRANCISCO--EARLY CALIFORNIA EXPERIENCES--LIFE ON THE PACIFIC COAST +--PROMOTED CAPTAIN--FLUSH TIMES IN CALIFORNIA. + +San Francisco at that day was a lively place. Gold, or placer digging +as it was called, was at its height. Steamers plied daily between San +Francisco and both Stockton and Sacramento. Passengers and gold from the +southern mines came by the Stockton boat; from the northern mines by +Sacramento. In the evening when these boats arrived, Long Wharf--there +was but one wharf in San Francisco in 1852--was alive with people +crowding to meet the miners as they came down to sell their "dust" and +to "have a time." Of these some were runners for hotels, boarding +houses or restaurants; others belonged to a class of impecunious +adventurers, of good manners and good presence, who were ever on the +alert to make the acquaintance of people with some ready means, in the +hope of being asked to take a meal at a restaurant. Many were young men +of good family, good education and gentlemanly instincts. Their parents +had been able to support them during their minority, and to give them +good educations, but not to maintain them afterwards. From 1849 to 1853 +there was a rush of people to the Pacific coast, of the class described. +All thought that fortunes were to be picked up, without effort, in the +gold fields on the Pacific. Some realized more than their most sanguine +expectations; but for one such there were hundreds disappointed, many of +whom now fill unknown graves; others died wrecks of their former selves, +and many, without a vicious instinct, became criminals and outcasts. +Many of the real scenes in early California life exceed in strangeness +and interest any of the mere products of the brain of the novelist. + +Those early days in California brought out character. It was a long way +off then, and the journey was expensive. The fortunate could go by Cape +Horn or by the Isthmus of Panama; but the mass of pioneers crossed the +plains with their ox-teams. This took an entire summer. They were very +lucky when they got through with a yoke of worn-out cattle. All other +means were exhausted in procuring the outfit on the Missouri River. The +immigrant, on arriving, found himself a stranger, in a strange land, far +from friends. Time pressed, for the little means that could be realized +from the sale of what was left of the outfit would not support a man +long at California prices. Many became discouraged. Others would take +off their coats and look for a job, no matter what it might be. These +succeeded as a rule. There were many young men who had studied +professions before they went to California, and who had never done a +day's manual labor in their lives, who took in the situation at once and +went to work to make a start at anything they could get to do. Some +supplied carpenters and masons with material--carrying plank, brick, or +mortar, as the case might be; others drove stages, drays, or baggage +wagons, until they could do better. More became discouraged early and +spent their time looking up people who would "treat," or lounging about +restaurants and gambling houses where free lunches were furnished daily. +They were welcomed at these places because they often brought in miners +who proved good customers. + +My regiment spent a few weeks at Benicia barracks, and then was ordered +to Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, then in Oregon Territory. +During the winter of 1852-3 the territory was divided, all north of the +Columbia River being taken from Oregon to make Washington Territory. + +Prices for all kinds of supplies were so high on the Pacific coast from +1849 until at least 1853--that it would have been impossible for +officers of the army to exist upon their pay, if it had not been that +authority was given them to purchase from the commissary such supplies +as he kept, at New Orleans wholesale prices. A cook could not be hired +for the pay of a captain. The cook could do better. At Benicia, in +1852, flour was 25 cents per pound; potatoes were 16 cents; beets, +turnips and cabbage, 6 cents; onions, 37 1/2 cents; meat and other +articles in proportion. In 1853 at Vancouver vegetables were a little +lower. I with three other officers concluded that we would raise a crop +for ourselves, and by selling the surplus realize something handsome. I +bought a pair of horses that had crossed the plains that summer and were +very poor. They recuperated rapidly, however, and proved a good team to +break up the ground with. I performed all the labor of breaking up the +ground while the other officers planted the potatoes. Our crop was +enormous. Luckily for us the Columbia River rose to a great height from +the melting of the snow in the mountains in June, and overflowed and +killed most of our crop. This saved digging it up, for everybody on the +Pacific coast seemed to have come to the conclusion at the same time +that agriculture would be profitable. In 1853 more than three-quarters +of the potatoes raised were permitted to rot in the ground, or had to be +thrown away. The only potatoes we sold were to our own mess. + +While I was stationed on the Pacific coast we were free from Indian +wars. There were quite a number of remnants of tribes in the vicinity +of Portland in Oregon, and of Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory. +They had generally acquired some of the vices of civilization, but none +of the virtues, except in individual cases. The Hudson's Bay Company +had held the North-west with their trading posts for many years before +the United States was represented on the Pacific coast. They still +retained posts along the Columbia River and one at Fort Vancouver, when +I was there. Their treatment of the Indians had brought out the better +qualities of the savages. Farming had been undertaken by the company to +supply the Indians with bread and vegetables; they raised some cattle +and horses; and they had now taught the Indians to do the labor of the +farm and herd. They always compensated them for their labor, and always +gave them goods of uniform quality and at uniform price. + +Before the advent of the American, the medium of exchange between the +Indian and the white man was pelts. Afterward it was silver coin. If +an Indian received in the sale of a horse a fifty dollar gold piece, not +an infrequent occurrence, the first thing he did was to exchange it for +American half dollars. These he could count. He would then commence his +purchases, paying for each article separately, as he got it. He would +not trust any one to add up the bill and pay it all at once. At that +day fifty dollar gold pieces, not the issue of the government, were +common on the Pacific coast. They were called slugs. + +The Indians, along the lower Columbia as far as the Cascades and on the +lower Willamette, died off very fast during the year I spent in that +section; for besides acquiring the vices of the white people they had +acquired also their diseases. The measles and the small-pox were both +amazingly fatal. In their wild state, before the appearance of the +white man among them, the principal complaints they were subject to were +those produced by long involuntary fasting, violent exercise in pursuit +of game, and over-eating. Instinct more than reason had taught them a +remedy for these ills. It was the steam bath. Something like a +bake-oven was built, large enough to admit a man lying down. Bushes were +stuck in the ground in two rows, about six feet long and some two or +three feet apart; other bushes connected the rows at one end. The tops +of the bushes were drawn together to interlace, and confined in that +position; the whole was then plastered over with wet clay until every +opening was filled. Just inside the open end of the oven the floor was +scooped out so as to make a hole that would hold a bucket or two of +water. These ovens were always built on the banks of a stream, a big +spring, or pool of water. When a patient required a bath, a fire was +built near the oven and a pile of stones put upon it. The cavity at the +front was then filled with water. When the stones were sufficiently +heated, the patient would draw himself into the oven; a blanket would be +thrown over the open end, and hot stones put into the water until the +patient could stand it no longer. He was then withdrawn from his steam +bath and doused into the cold stream near by. This treatment may have +answered with the early ailments of the Indians. With the measles or +small-pox it would kill every time. + +During my year on the Columbia River, the small-pox exterminated one +small remnant of a band of Indians entirely, and reduced others +materially. I do not think there was a case of recovery among them, +until the doctor with the Hudson Bay Company took the matter in hand and +established a hospital. Nearly every case he treated recovered. I +never, myself, saw the treatment described in the preceding paragraph, +but have heard it described by persons who have witnessed it. The +decimation among the Indians I knew of personally, and the hospital, +established for their benefit, was a Hudson's Bay building not a stone's +throw from my own quarters. + +The death of Colonel Bliss, of the Adjutant General's department, which +occurred July 5th, 1853, promoted me to the captaincy of a company then +stationed at Humboldt Bay, California. The notice reached me in +September of the same year, and I very soon started to join my new +command. There was no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to +take passage on a San Francisco sailing vessel going after lumber. Red +wood, a species of cedar, which on the Pacific coast takes the place +filled by white pine in the East, then abounded on the banks of Humboldt +Bay. There were extensive saw-mills engaged in preparing this lumber +for the San Francisco market, and sailing vessels, used in getting it to +market, furnished the only means of communication between Humboldt and +the balance of the world. + +I was obliged to remain in San Francisco for several days before I found +a vessel. This gave me a good opportunity of comparing the San +Francisco of 1852 with that of 1853. As before stated, there had been +but one wharf in front of the city in 1852--Long Wharf. In 1853 the +town had grown out into the bay beyond what was the end of this wharf +when I first saw it. Streets and houses had been built out on piles +where the year before the largest vessels visiting the port lay at +anchor or tied to the wharf. There was no filling under the streets or +houses. San Francisco presented the same general appearance as the year +before; that is, eating, drinking and gambling houses were conspicuous +for their number and publicity. They were on the first floor, with +doors wide open. At all hours of the day and night in walking the +streets, the eye was regaled, on every block near the water front, by +the sight of players at faro. Often broken places were found in the +street, large enough to let a man down into the water below. I have but +little doubt that many of the people who went to the Pacific coast in +the early days of the gold excitement, and have never been heard from +since, or who were heard from for a time and then ceased to write, found +watery graves beneath the houses or streets built over San Francisco +Bay. + +Besides the gambling in cards there was gambling on a larger scale in +city lots. These were sold "On Change," much as stocks are now sold on +Wall Street. Cash, at time of purchase, was always paid by the broker; +but the purchaser had only to put up his margin. He was charged at the +rate of two or three per cent. a month on the difference, besides +commissions. The sand hills, some of them almost inaccessible to +foot-passengers, were surveyed off and mapped into fifty vara lots--a +vara being a Spanish yard. These were sold at first at very low prices, +but were sold and resold for higher prices until they went up to many +thousands of dollars. The brokers did a fine business, and so did many +such purchasers as were sharp enough to quit purchasing before the final +crash came. As the city grew, the sand hills back of the town furnished +material for filling up the bay under the houses and streets, and still +further out. The temporary houses, first built over the water in the +harbor, soon gave way to more solid structures. The main business part +of the city now is on solid ground, made where vessels of the largest +class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San Francisco again in +1854. Gambling houses had disappeared from public view. The city had +become staid and orderly. + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +RESIGNATION--PRIVATE LIFE--LIFE AT GALENA--THE COMING CRISIS. + +My family, all this while, was at the East. It consisted now of a wife +and two children. I saw no chance of supporting them on the Pacific +coast out of my pay as an army officer. I concluded, therefore, to +resign, and in March applied for a leave of absence until the end of the +July following, tendering my resignation to take effect at the end of +that time. I left the Pacific coast very much attached to it, and with +the full expectation of making it my future home. That expectation and +that hope remained uppermost in my mind until the Lieutenant-Generalcy +bill was introduced into Congress in the winter of 1863-4. The passage +of that bill, and my promotion, blasted my last hope of ever becoming a +citizen of the further West. + +In the late summer of 1854 I rejoined my family, to find in it a son +whom I had never seen, born while I was on the Isthmus of Panama. I was +now to commence, at the age of thirty-two, a new struggle for our +support. My wife had a farm near St. Louis, to which we went, but I had +no means to stock it. A house had to be built also. I worked very +hard, never losing a day because of bad weather, and accomplished the +object in a moderate way. If nothing else could be done I would load a +cord of wood on a wagon and take it to the city for sale. I managed to +keep along very well until 1858, when I was attacked by fever and ague. +I had suffered very severely and for a long time from this disease, +while a boy in Ohio. It lasted now over a year, and, while it did not +keep me in the house, it did interfere greatly with the amount of work I +was able to perform. In the fall of 1858 I sold out my stock, crops and +farming utensils at auction, and gave up farming. + +In the winter I established a partnership with Harry Boggs, a cousin of +Mrs. Grant, in the real estate agency business. I spent that winter at +St. Louis myself, but did not take my family into town until the spring. +Our business might have become prosperous if I had been able to wait for +it to grow. As it was, there was no more than one person could attend +to, and not enough to support two families. While a citizen of St. +Louis and engaged in the real estate agency business, I was a candidate +for the office of county engineer, an office of respectability and +emolument which would have been very acceptable to me at that time. The +incumbent was appointed by the county court, which consisted of five +members. My opponent had the advantage of birth over me (he was a +citizen by adoption) and carried off the prize. I now withdrew from the +co-partnership with Boggs, and, in May, 1860, removed to Galena, +Illinois, and took a clerkship in my father's store. + +While a citizen of Missouri, my first opportunity for casting a vote at +a Presidential election occurred. I had been in the army from before +attaining my majority and had thought but little about politics, +although I was a Whig by education and a great admirer of Mr. Clay. But +the Whig party had ceased to exist before I had an opportunity of +exercising the privilege of casting a ballot; the Know-Nothing party had +taken its place, but was on the wane; and the Republican party was in a +chaotic state and had not yet received a name. It had no existence in +the Slave States except at points on the borders next to Free States. +In St. Louis City and County, what afterwards became the Republican +party was known as the Free-Soil Democracy, led by the Honorable Frank +P. Blair. Most of my neighbors had known me as an officer of the army +with Whig proclivities. They had been on the same side, and, on the +death of their party, many had become Know-Nothings, or members of the +American party. There was a lodge near my new home, and I was invited to +join it. I accepted the invitation; was initiated; attended a meeting +just one week later, and never went to another afterwards. + +I have no apologies to make for having been one week a member of the +American party; for I still think native-born citizens of the United +States should have as much protection, as many privileges in their +native country, as those who voluntarily select it for a home. But all +secret, oath-bound political parties are dangerous to any nation, no +matter how pure or how patriotic the motives and principles which first +bring them together. No political party can or ought to exist when one +of its corner-stones is opposition to freedom of thought and to the +right to worship God "according to the dictate of one's own conscience," +or according to the creed of any religious denomination whatever. +Nevertheless, if a sect sets up its laws as binding above the State +laws, wherever the two come in conflict this claim must be resisted and +suppressed at whatever cost. + +Up to the Mexican war there were a few out and out abolitionists, men +who carried their hostility to slavery into all elections, from those +for a justice of the peace up to the Presidency of the United States. +They were noisy but not numerous. But the great majority of people at +the North, where slavery did not exist, were opposed to the institution, +and looked upon its existence in any part of the country as unfortunate. +They did not hold the States where slavery existed responsible for it; +and believed that protection should be given to the right of property in +slaves until some satisfactory way could be reached to be rid of the +institution. Opposition to slavery was not a creed of either political +party. In some sections more anti-slavery men belonged to the +Democratic party, and in others to the Whigs. But with the inauguration +of the Mexican war, in fact with the annexation of Texas, "the +inevitable conflict" commenced. + +As the time for the Presidential election of 1856--the first at which I +had the opportunity of voting--approached, party feeling began to run +high. The Republican party was regarded in the South and the border +States not only as opposed to the extension of slavery, but as favoring +the compulsory abolition of the institution without compensation to the +owners. The most horrible visions seemed to present themselves to the +minds of people who, one would suppose, ought to have known better. +Many educated and, otherwise, sensible persons appeared to believe that +emancipation meant social equality. Treason to the Government was +openly advocated and was not rebuked. It was evident to my mind that +the election of a Republican President in 1856 meant the secession of +all the Slave States, and rebellion. Under these circumstances I +preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or +postpone secession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of +which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous +vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for +four years. I very much hoped that the passions of the people would +subside in that time, and the catastrophe be averted altogether; if it +was not, I believed the country would be better prepared to receive the +shock and to resist it. I therefore voted for James Buchanan for +President. Four years later the Republican party was successful in +electing its candidate to the Presidency. The civilized world has +learned the consequence. Four millions of human beings held as chattels +have been liberated; the ballot has been given to them; the free schools +of the country have been opened to their children. The nation still +lives, and the people are just as free to avoid social intimacy with the +blacks as ever they were, or as they are with white people. + +While living in Galena I was nominally only a clerk supporting myself +and family on a stipulated salary. In reality my position was +different. My father had never lived in Galena himself, but had +established my two brothers there, the one next younger than myself in +charge of the business, assisted by the youngest. When I went there it +was my father's intention to give up all connection with the business +himself, and to establish his three sons in it: but the brother who had +really built up the business was sinking with consumption, and it was +not thought best to make any change while he was in this condition. He +lived until September, 1861, when he succumbed to that insidious disease +which always flatters its victims into the belief that they are growing +better up to the close of life. A more honorable man never transacted +business. In September, 1861, I was engaged in an employment which +required all my attention elsewhere. + +During the eleven months that I lived in Galena prior to the first call +for volunteers, I had been strictly attentive to my business, and had +made but few acquaintances other than customers and people engaged in +the same line with myself. When the election took place in November, +1860, I had not been a resident of Illinois long enough to gain +citizenship and could not, therefore, vote. I was really glad of this +at the time, for my pledges would have compelled me to vote for Stephen +A. Douglas, who had no possible chance of election. The contest was +really between Mr. Breckinridge and Mr. Lincoln; between minority rule +and rule by the majority. I wanted, as between these candidates, to see +Mr. Lincoln elected. Excitement ran high during the canvass, and +torch-light processions enlivened the scene in the generally quiet +streets of Galena many nights during the campaign. I did not parade +with either party, but occasionally met with the "wide awakes" +--Republicans--in their rooms, and superintended their drill. It was +evident, from the time of the Chicago nomination to the close of the +canvass, that the election of the Republican candidate would be the +signal for some of the Southern States to secede. I still had hopes +that the four years which had elapsed since the first nomination of a +Presidential candidate by a party distinctly opposed to slavery +extension, had given time for the extreme pro-slavery sentiment to cool +down; for the Southerners to think well before they took the awful leap +which they had so vehemently threatened. But I was mistaken. + +The Republican candidate was elected, and solid substantial people of +the North-west, and I presume the same order of people throughout the +entire North, felt very serious, but determined, after this event. It +was very much discussed whether the South would carry out its threat to +secede and set up a separate government, the corner-stone of which +should be, protection to the "Divine" institution of slavery. For there +were people who believed in the "divinity" of human slavery, as there +are now people who believe Mormonism and Polygamy to be ordained by the +Most High. We forgive them for entertaining such notions, but forbid +their practice. It was generally believed that there would be a flurry; +that some of the extreme Southern States would go so far as to pass +ordinances of secession. But the common impression was that this step +was so plainly suicidal for the South, that the movement would not +spread over much of the territory and would not last long. + +Doubtless the founders of our government, the majority of them at least, +regarded the confederation of the colonies as an experiment. Each +colony considered itself a separate government; that the confederation +was for mutual protection against a foreign foe, and the prevention of +strife and war among themselves. If there had been a desire on the part +of any single State to withdraw from the compact at any time while the +number of States was limited to the original thirteen, I do not suppose +there would have been any to contest the right, no matter how much the +determination might have been regretted. The problem changed on the +ratification of the Constitution by all the colonies; it changed still +more when amendments were added; and if the right of any one State to +withdraw continued to exist at all after the ratification of the +Constitution, it certainly ceased on the formation of new States, at +least so far as the new States themselves were concerned. It was never +possessed at all by Florida or the States west of the Mississippi, all +of which were purchased by the treasury of the entire nation. Texas and +the territory brought into the Union in consequence of annexation, were +purchased with both blood and treasure; and Texas, with a domain greater +than that of any European state except Russia, was permitted to retain +as state property all the public lands within its borders. It would +have been ingratitude and injustice of the most flagrant sort for this +State to withdraw from the Union after all that had been spent and done +to introduce her; yet, if separation had actually occurred, Texas must +necessarily have gone with the South, both on account of her +institutions and her geographical position. Secession was illogical as +well as impracticable; it was revolution. + +Now, the right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are +oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to +relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, either +by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a +government more acceptable. But any people or part of a people who +resort to this remedy, stake their lives, their property, and every +claim for protection given by citizenship--on the issue. Victory, or +the conditions imposed by the conqueror--must be the result. + +In the case of the war between the States it would have been the exact +truth if the South had said,--"We do not want to live with you Northern +people any longer; we know our institution of slavery is obnoxious to +you, and, as you are growing numerically stronger than we, it may at +some time in the future be endangered. So long as you permitted us to +control the government, and with the aid of a few friends at the North +to enact laws constituting your section a guard against the escape of +our property, we were willing to live with you. You have been +submissive to our rule heretofore; but it looks now as if you did not +intend to continue so, and we will remain in the Union no longer." +Instead of this the seceding States cried lustily,--"Let us alone; you +have no constitutional power to interfere with us." Newspapers and +people at the North reiterated the cry. Individuals might ignore the +constitution; but the Nation itself must not only obey it, but must +enforce the strictest construction of that instrument; the construction +put upon it by the Southerners themselves. The fact is the constitution +did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to +1865. Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring. If +they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned +the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should +be war between brothers. + +The framers were wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best +possible to secure their own liberty and independence, and that also of +their descendants to the latest days. It is preposterous to suppose +that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules +of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen +contingencies. At the time of the framing of our constitution the only +physical forces that had been subdued and made to serve man and do his +labor, were the currents in the streams and in the air we breathe. Rude +machinery, propelled by water power, had been invented; sails to propel +ships upon the waters had been set to catch the passing breeze--but the +application of steam to propel vessels against both wind and current, +and machinery to do all manner of work had not been thought of. The +instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of +electricity would probably at that day have been attributed to +witchcraft or a league with the Devil. Immaterial circumstances had +changed as greatly as material ones. We could not and ought not to be +rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different +for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would +have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not +irrevocable. They would surely have resisted secession could they have +lived to see the shape it assumed. + +I travelled through the Northwest considerably during the winter of +1860-1. We had customers in all the little towns in south-west +Wisconsin, south-east Minnesota and north-east Iowa. These generally +knew I had been a captain in the regular army and had served through the +Mexican war. Consequently wherever I stopped at night, some of the +people would come to the public-house where I was, and sit till a late +hour discussing the probabilities of the future. My own views at that +time were like those officially expressed by Mr. Seward at a later day, +that "the war would be over in ninety days." I continued to entertain +these views until after the battle of Shiloh. I believe now that there +would have been no more battles at the West after the capture of Fort +Donelson if all the troops in that region had been under a single +commander who would have followed up that victory. + +There is little doubt in my mind now that the prevailing sentiment of +the South would have been opposed to secession in 1860 and 1861, if +there had been a fair and calm expression of opinion, unbiased by +threats, and if the ballot of one legal voter had counted for as much as +that of any other. But there was no calm discussion of the question. +Demagogues who were too old to enter the army if there should be a war, +others who entertained so high an opinion of their own ability that they +did not believe they could be spared from the direction of the affairs +of state in such an event, declaimed vehemently and unceasingly against +the North; against its aggressions upon the South; its interference with +Southern rights, etc., etc. They denounced the Northerners as cowards, +poltroons, negro-worshippers; claimed that one Southern man was equal to +five Northern men in battle; that if the South would stand up for its +rights the North would back down. Mr. Jefferson Davis said in a speech, +delivered at La Grange, Mississippi, before the secession of that State, +that he would agree to drink all the blood spilled south of Mason and +Dixon's line if there should be a war. The young men who would have the +fighting to do in case of war, believed all these statements, both in +regard to the aggressiveness of the North and its cowardice. They, too, +cried out for a separation from such people. The great bulk of the +legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were +generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating +their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very +limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was, +if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too +needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by +those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as +poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they cast it +according to direction. + +I am aware that this last statement may be disputed and individual +testimony perhaps adduced to show that in ante-bellum days the ballot +was as untrammelled in the south as in any section of the country; but +in the face of any such contradiction I reassert the statement. The +shot-gun was not resorted to. Masked men did not ride over the country +at night intimidating voters; but there was a firm feeling that a class +existed in every State with a sort of divine right to control public +affairs. If they could not get this control by one means they must by +another. The end justified the means. The coercion, if mild, was +complete. + +There were two political parties, it is true, in all the States, both +strong in numbers and respectability, but both equally loyal to the +institution which stood paramount in Southern eyes to all other +institutions in state or nation. The slave-owners were the minority, +but governed both parties. Had politics ever divided the slave-holders +and the non-slave-holders, the majority would have been obliged to +yield, or internecine war would have been the consequence. I do not +know that the Southern people were to blame for this condition of +affairs. There was a time when slavery was not profitable, and the +discussion of the merits of the institution was confined almost +exclusively to the territory where it existed. The States of Virginia +and Kentucky came near abolishing slavery by their own acts, one State +defeating the measure by a tie vote and the other only lacking one. But +when the institution became profitable, all talk of its abolition ceased +where it existed; and naturally, as human nature is constituted, +arguments were adduced in its support. The cotton-gin probably had much +to do with the justification of slavery. + +The winter of 1860-1 will be remembered by middle-aged people of to-day +as one of great excitement. South Carolina promptly seceded after the +result of the Presidential election was known. Other Southern States +proposed to follow. In some of them the Union sentiment was so strong +that it had to be suppressed by force. Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and +Missouri, all Slave States, failed to pass ordinances of secession; but +they were all represented in the so-called congress of the so-called +Confederate States. The Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Missouri, +in 1861, Jackson and Reynolds, were both supporters of the rebellion and +took refuge with the enemy. The governor soon died, and the +lieutenant-governor assumed his office; issued proclamations as governor +of the State; was recognized as such by the Confederate Government, and +continued his pretensions until the collapse of the rebellion. The South +claimed the sovereignty of States, but claimed the right to coerce into +their confederation such States as they wanted, that is, all the States +where slavery existed. They did not seem to think this course +inconsistent. The fact is, the Southern slave-owners believed that, in +some way, the ownership of slaves conferred a sort of patent of +nobility--a right to govern independent of the interest or wishes of +those who did not hold such property. They convinced themselves, first, +of the divine origin of the institution and, next, that that particular +institution was not safe in the hands of any body of legislators but +themselves. + +Meanwhile the Administration of President Buchanan looked helplessly on +and proclaimed that the general government had no power to interfere; +that the Nation had no power to save its own life. Mr. Buchanan had in +his cabinet two members at least, who were as earnest--to use a mild +term--in the cause of secession as Mr. Davis or any Southern statesman. +One of them, Floyd, the Secretary of War, scattered the army so that +much of it could be captured when hostilities should commence, and +distributed the cannon and small arms from Northern arsenals throughout +the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them. The navy was +scattered in like manner. The President did not prevent his cabinet +preparing for war upon their government, either by destroying its +resources or storing them in the South until a de facto government was +established with Jefferson Davis as its President, and Montgomery, +Alabama, as the Capital. The secessionists had then to leave the +cabinet. In their own estimation they were aliens in the country which +had given them birth. Loyal men were put into their places. Treason in +the executive branch of the government was estopped. But the harm had +already been done. The stable door was locked after the horse had been +stolen. + +During all of the trying winter of 1860-1, when the Southerners were so +defiant that they would not allow within their borders the expression of +a sentiment hostile to their views, it was a brave man indeed who could +stand up and proclaim his loyalty to the Union. On the other hand men +at the North--prominent men--proclaimed that the government had no power +to coerce the South into submission to the laws of the land; that if the +North undertook to raise armies to go south, these armies would have to +march over the dead bodies of the speakers. A portion of the press of +the North was constantly proclaiming similar views. When the time +arrived for the President-elect to go to the capital of the Nation to be +sworn into office, it was deemed unsafe for him to travel, not only as a +President-elect, but as any private citizen should be allowed to do. +Instead of going in a special car, receiving the good wishes of his +constituents at all the stations along the road, he was obliged to stop +on the way and to be smuggled into the capital. He disappeared from +public view on his journey, and the next the country knew, his arrival +was announced at the capital. There is little doubt that he would have +been assassinated if he had attempted to travel openly throughout his +journey. + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +OUTBREAK OF THE REBELLION--PRESIDING AT A UNION MEETING--MUSTERING +OFFICER OF STATE TROOPS--LYON AT CAMP JACKSON--SERVICES TENDERED TO THE +GOVERNMENT. + +The 4th of March, 1861, came, and Abraham Lincoln was sworn to maintain +the Union against all its enemies. The secession of one State after +another followed, until eleven had gone out. On the 11th of April Fort +Sumter, a National fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was +fired upon by the Southerners and a few days after was captured. The +Confederates proclaimed themselves aliens, and thereby debarred +themselves of all right to claim protection under the Constitution of +the United States. We did not admit the fact that they were aliens, but +all the same, they debarred themselves of the right to expect better +treatment than people of any other foreign state who make war upon an +independent nation. Upon the firing on Sumter President Lincoln issued +his first call for troops and soon after a proclamation convening +Congress in extra session. The call was for 75,000 volunteers for +ninety days' service. If the shot fired at Fort Sumter "was heard +around the world," the call of the President for 75,000 men was heard +throughout the Northern States. There was not a state in the North of a +million of inhabitants that would not have furnished the entire number +faster than arms could have been supplied to them, if it had been +necessary. + +As soon as the news of the call for volunteers reached Galena, posters +were stuck up calling for a meeting of the citizens at the court-house +in the evening. Business ceased entirely; all was excitement; for a +time there were no party distinctions; all were Union men, determined to +avenge the insult to the national flag. In the evening the court-house +was packed. Although a comparative stranger I was called upon to +preside; the sole reason, possibly, was that I had been in the army and +had seen service. With much embarrassment and some prompting I made out +to announce the object of the meeting. Speeches were in order, but it +is doubtful whether it would have been safe just then to make other than +patriotic ones. There was probably no one in the house, however, who +felt like making any other. The two principal speeches were by B. B. +Howard, the post-master and a Breckinridge Democrat at the November +election the fall before, and John A. Rawlins, an elector on the Douglas +ticket. E. B. Washburne, with whom I was not acquainted at that time, +came in after the meeting had been organized, and expressed, I +understood afterwards, a little surprise that Galena could not furnish a +presiding officer for such an occasion without taking a stranger. He +came forward and was introduced, and made a speech appealing to the +patriotism of the meeting. + +After the speaking was over volunteers were called for to form a +company. The quota of Illinois had been fixed at six regiments; and it +was supposed that one company would be as much as would be accepted from +Galena. The company was raised and the officers and non-commissioned +officers elected before the meeting adjourned. I declined the captaincy +before the balloting, but announced that I would aid the company in +every way I could and would be found in the service in some position if +there should be a war. I never went into our leather store after that +meeting, to put up a package or do other business. + +The ladies of Galena were quite as patriotic as the men. They could not +enlist, but they conceived the idea of sending their first company to +the field uniformed. They came to me to get a description of the United +States uniform for infantry; subscribed and bought the material; +procured tailors to cut out the garments, and the ladies made them up. +In a few days the company was in uniform and ready to report at the +State capital for assignment. The men all turned out the morning after +their enlistment, and I took charge, divided them into squads and +superintended their drill. When they were ready to go to Springfield I +went with them and remained there until they were assigned to a +regiment. + +There were so many more volunteers than had been called for that the +question whom to accept was quite embarrassing to the governor, Richard +Yates. The legislature was in session at the time, however, and came to +his relief. A law was enacted authorizing the governor to accept the +services of ten additional regiments, one from each congressional +district, for one month, to be paid by the State, but pledged to go into +the service of the United States if there should be a further call +during their term. Even with this relief the governor was still very +much embarrassed. Before the war was over he was like the President +when he was taken with the varioloid: "at last he had something he +could give to all who wanted it." + +In time the Galena company was mustered into the United States service, +forming a part of the 11th Illinois volunteer infantry. My duties, I +thought, had ended at Springfield, and I was prepared to start home by +the evening train, leaving at nine o'clock. Up to that time I do not +think I had been introduced to Governor Yates, or had ever spoken to +him. I knew him by sight, however, because he was living at the same +hotel and I often saw him at table. The evening I was to quit the +capital I left the supper room before the governor and was standing at +the front door when he came out. He spoke to me, calling me by my old +army title "Captain," and said he understood that I was about leaving +the city. I answered that I was. He said he would be glad if I would +remain over-night and call at the Executive office the next morning. +I complied with his request, and was asked to go into the +Adjutant-General's office and render such assistance as I could, the +governor saying that my army experience would be of great service there. +I accepted the proposition. + +My old army experience I found indeed of very great service. I was no +clerk, nor had I any capacity to become one. The only place I ever +found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again was either a side +coat-pocket or the hands of a clerk or secretary more careful than +myself. But I had been quartermaster, commissary and adjutant in the +field. The army forms were familiar to me and I could direct how they +should be made out. There was a clerk in the office of the +Adjutant-General who supplied my deficiencies. The ease with which the +State of Illinois settled its accounts with the government at the close +of the war is evidence of the efficiency of Mr. Loomis as an accountant +on a large scale. He remained in the office until that time. + +As I have stated, the legislature authorized the governor to accept the +services of ten additional regiments. I had charge of mustering these +regiments into the State service. They were assembled at the most +convenient railroad centres in their respective congressional districts. +I detailed officers to muster in a portion of them, but mustered three +in the southern part of the State myself. One of these was to assemble +at Belleville, some eighteen miles south-east of St. Louis. When I got +there I found that only one or two companies had arrived. There was no +probability of the regiment coming together under five days. This gave +me a few idle days which I concluded to spend in St. Louis. + +There was a considerable force of State militia at Camp Jackson, on the +outskirts of St. Louis, at the time. There is but little doubt that it +was the design of Governor Claiborn Jackson to have these troops ready +to seize the United States arsenal and the city of St. Louis. Why they +did not do so I do not know. There was but a small garrison, two +companies I think, under Captain N. Lyon at the arsenal, and but for the +timely services of the Hon. F. P. Blair, I have little doubt that St. +Louis would have gone into rebel hands, and with it the arsenal with all +its arms and ammunition. + +Blair was a leader among the Union men of St. Louis in 1861. There was +no State government in Missouri at the time that would sanction the +raising of troops or commissioned officers to protect United States +property, but Blair had probably procured some form of authority from +the President to raise troops in Missouri and to muster them into the +service of the United States. At all events, he did raise a regiment +and took command himself as Colonel. With this force he reported to +Captain Lyon and placed himself and regiment under his orders. It was +whispered that Lyon thus reinforced intended to break up Camp Jackson +and capture the militia. I went down to the arsenal in the morning to +see the troops start out. I had known Lyon for two years at West Point +and in the old army afterwards. Blair I knew very well by sight. I had +heard him speak in the canvass of 1858, possibly several times, but I +had never spoken to him. As the troops marched out of the enclosure +around the arsenal, Blair was on his horse outside forming them into +line preparatory to their march. I introduced myself to him and had a +few moments' conversation and expressed my sympathy with his purpose. +This was my first personal acquaintance with the Honorable--afterwards +Major-General F. P. Blair. Camp Jackson surrendered without a fight and +the garrison was marched down to the arsenal as prisoners of war. + +Up to this time the enemies of the government in St. Louis had been bold +and defiant, while Union men were quiet but determined. The enemies had +their head-quarters in a central and public position on Pine Street, +near Fifth--from which the rebel flag was flaunted boldly. The Union +men had a place of meeting somewhere in the city, I did not know where, +and I doubt whether they dared to enrage the enemies of the government +by placing the national flag outside their head-quarters. As soon as +the news of the capture of Camp Jackson reached the city the condition +of affairs was changed. Union men became rampant, aggressive, and, if +you will, intolerant. They proclaimed their sentiments boldly, and were +impatient at anything like disrespect for the Union. The secessionists +became quiet but were filled with suppressed rage. They had been +playing the bully. The Union men ordered the rebel flag taken down from +the building on Pine Street. The command was given in tones of +authority and it was taken down, never to be raised again in St. Louis. + +I witnessed the scene. I had heard of the surrender of the camp and +that the garrison was on its way to the arsenal. I had seen the troops +start out in the morning and had wished them success. I now determined +to go to the arsenal and await their arrival and congratulate them. I +stepped on a car standing at the corner of 4th and Pine streets, and saw +a crowd of people standing quietly in front of the head-quarters, who +were there for the purpose of hauling down the flag. There were squads +of other people at intervals down the street. They too were quiet but +filled with suppressed rage, and muttered their resentment at the insult +to, what they called, "their" flag. Before the car I was in had +started, a dapper little fellow--he would be called a dude at this day +--stepped in. He was in a great state of excitement and used adjectives +freely to express his contempt for the Union and for those who had just +perpetrated such an outrage upon the rights of a free people. There was +only one other passenger in the car besides myself when this young man +entered. He evidently expected to find nothing but sympathy when he got +away from the "mud sills" engaged in compelling a "free people" to pull +down a flag they adored. He turned to me saying: "Things have come to +a ---- pretty pass when a free people can't choose their own flag. +Where I came from if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union we +hang him to a limb of the first tree we come to." I replied that "after +all we were not so intolerant in St. Louis as we might be; I had not +seen a single rebel hung yet, nor heard of one; there were plenty of +them who ought to be, however." The young man subsided. He was so +crestfallen that I believe if I had ordered him to leave the car he +would have gone quietly out, saying to himself: "More Yankee +oppression." + +By nightfall the late defenders of Camp Jackson were all within the +walls of the St. Louis arsenal, prisoners of war. The next day I left +St. Louis for Mattoon, Illinois, where I was to muster in the regiment +from that congressional district. This was the 21st Illinois infantry, +the regiment of which I subsequently became colonel. I mustered one +regiment afterwards, when my services for the State were about closed. + +Brigadier-General John Pope was stationed at Springfield, as United +States mustering officer, all the time I was in the State service. He +was a native of Illinois and well acquainted with most of the prominent +men in the State. I was a carpet-bagger and knew but few of them. +While I was on duty at Springfield the senators, representatives in +Congress, ax-governors and the State legislators were nearly all at the +State capital. The only acquaintance I made among them was with the +governor, whom I was serving, and, by chance, with Senator S. A. +Douglas. The only members of Congress I knew were Washburne and Philip +Foulk. With the former, though he represented my district and we were +citizens of the same town, I only became acquainted at the meeting when +the first company of Galena volunteers was raised. Foulk I had known in +St. Louis when I was a citizen of that city. I had been three years at +West Point with Pope and had served with him a short time during the +Mexican war, under General Taylor. I saw a good deal of him during my +service with the State. On one occasion he said to me that I ought to +go into the United States service. I told him I intended to do so if +there was a war. He spoke of his acquaintance with the public men of +the State, and said he could get them to recommend me for a position and +that he would do all he could for me. I declined to receive endorsement +for permission to fight for my country. + +Going home for a day or two soon after this conversation with General +Pope, I wrote from Galena the following letter to the Adjutant-General +of the Army. + + +GALENA, ILLINOIS, May 24, 1861. + +COL. L. THOMAS Adjt. Gen. U. S. A., Washington, D. C. + +SIR:--Having served for fifteen years in the regular army, including +four years at West Point, and feeling it the duty of every one who has +been educated at the Government expense to offer their services for the +support of that Government, I have the honor, very respectfully, to +tender my services, until the close of the war, in such capacity as may +be offered. I would say, in view of my present age and length of +service, I feel myself competent to command a regiment, if the +President, in his judgment, should see fit to intrust one to me. + +Since the first call of the President I have been serving on the staff +of the Governor of this State, rendering such aid as I could in the +organization of our State militia, and am still engaged in that +capacity. A letter addressed to me at Springfield, Illinois, will reach +me. + +I am very respectfully, Your obt. svt., U. S. GRANT. + + +This letter failed to elicit an answer from the Adjutant-General of the +Army. I presume it was hardly read by him, and certainly it could not +have been submitted to higher authority. Subsequent to the war General +Badeau having heard of this letter applied to the War Department for a +copy of it. The letter could not be found and no one recollected ever +having seen it. I took no copy when it was written. Long after the +application of General Badeau, General Townsend, who had become +Adjutant-General of the Army, while packing up papers preparatory to the +removal of his office, found this letter in some out-of-the-way place. +It had not been destroyed, but it had not been regularly filed away. + +I felt some hesitation in suggesting rank as high as the colonelcy of a +regiment, feeling somewhat doubtful whether I would be equal to the +position. But I had seen nearly every colonel who had been mustered in +from the State of Illinois, and some from Indiana, and felt that if they +could command a regiment properly, and with credit, I could also. + +Having but little to do after the muster of the last of the regiments +authorized by the State legislature, I asked and obtained of the +governor leave of absence for a week to visit my parents in Covington, +Kentucky, immediately opposite Cincinnati. General McClellan had been +made a major-general and had his headquarters at Cincinnati. In reality +I wanted to see him. I had known him slightly at West Point, where we +served one year together, and in the Mexican war. I was in hopes that +when he saw me he would offer me a position on his staff. I called on +two successive days at his office but failed to see him on either +occasion, and returned to Springfield. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +APPOINTED COLONEL OF THE 21ST ILLINOIS--PERSONNEL OF THE REGIMENT +--GENERAL LOGAN--MARCH TO MISSOURI--MOVEMENT AGAINST HARRIS AT FLORIDA, +MO.--GENERAL POPE IN COMMAND--STATIONED AT MEXICO, MO. + +While I was absent from the State capital on this occasion the +President's second call for troops was issued. This time it was for +300,000 men, for three years or the war. This brought into the United +States service all the regiments then in the State service. These had +elected their officers from highest to lowest and were accepted with +their organizations as they were, except in two instances. A Chicago +regiment, the 19th infantry, had elected a very young man to the +colonelcy. When it came to taking the field the regiment asked to have +another appointed colonel and the one they had previously chosen made +lieutenant-colonel. The 21st regiment of infantry, mustered in by me at +Mattoon, refused to go into the service with the colonel of their +selection in any position. While I was still absent Governor Yates +appointed me colonel of this latter regiment. A few days after I was in +charge of it and in camp on the fair grounds near Springfield. + +My regiment was composed in large part of young men of as good social +position as any in their section of the State. It embraced the sons of +farmers, lawyers, physicians, politicians, merchants, bankers and +ministers, and some men of maturer years who had filled such positions +themselves. There were also men in it who could be led astray; and the +colonel, elected by the votes of the regiment, had proved to be fully +capable of developing all there was in his men of recklessness. It was +said that he even went so far at times as to take the guard from their +posts and go with them to the village near by and make a night of it. +When there came a prospect of battle the regiment wanted to have some +one else to lead them. I found it very hard work for a few days to +bring all the men into anything like subordination; but the great +majority favored discipline, and by the application of a little regular +army punishment all were reduced to as good discipline as one could ask. + +The ten regiments which had volunteered in the State service for thirty +days, it will be remembered, had done so with a pledge to go into the +National service if called upon within that time. When they volunteered +the government had only called for ninety days' enlistments. Men were +called now for three years or the war. They felt that this change of +period released them from the obligation of re-volunteering. When I was +appointed colonel, the 21st regiment was still in the State service. +About the time they were to be mustered into the United States service, +such of them as would go, two members of Congress from the State, +McClernand and Logan, appeared at the capital and I was introduced to +them. I had never seen either of them before, but I had read a great +deal about them, and particularly about Logan, in the newspapers. Both +were democratic members of Congress, and Logan had been elected from the +southern district of the State, where he had a majority of eighteen +thousand over his Republican competitor. His district had been settled +originally by people from the Southern States, and at the breaking out +of secession they sympathized with the South. At the first outbreak of +war some of them joined the Southern army; many others were preparing to +do so; others rode over the country at night denouncing the Union, and +made it as necessary to guard railroad bridges over which National +troops had to pass in southern Illinois, as it was in Kentucky or any of +the border slave states. Logan's popularity in this district was +unbounded. He knew almost enough of the people in it by their Christian +names, to form an ordinary congressional district. As he went in +politics, so his district was sure to go. The Republican papers had +been demanding that he should announce where he stood on the questions +which at that time engrossed the whole of public thought. Some were +very bitter in their denunciations of his silence. Logan was not a man +to be coerced into an utterance by threats. He did, however, come out +in a speech before the adjournment of the special session of Congress +which was convened by the President soon after his inauguration, and +announced his undying loyalty and devotion to the Union. But I had not +happened to see that speech, so that when I first met Logan my +impressions were those formed from reading denunciations of him. +McClernand, on the other hand, had early taken strong grounds for the +maintenance of the Union and had been praised accordingly by the +Republican papers. The gentlemen who presented these two members of +Congress asked me if I would have any objections to their addressing my +regiment. I hesitated a little before answering. It was but a few days +before the time set for mustering into the United States service such of +the men as were willing to volunteer for three years or the war. I had +some doubt as to the effect a speech from Logan might have; but as he +was with McClernand, whose sentiments on the all-absorbing questions of +the day were well known, I gave my consent. McClernand spoke first; and +Logan followed in a speech which he has hardly equalled since for force +and eloquence. It breathed a loyalty and devotion to the Union which +inspired my men to such a point that they would have volunteered to +remain in the army as long as an enemy of the country continued to bear +arms against it. They entered the United States service almost to a +man. + +General Logan went to his part of the State and gave his attention to +raising troops. The very men who at first made it necessary to guard +the roads in southern Illinois became the defenders of the Union. Logan +entered the service himself as colonel of a regiment and rapidly rose to +the rank of major-general. His district, which had promised at first to +give much trouble to the government, filled every call made upon it for +troops, without resorting to the draft. There was no call made when +there were not more volunteers than were asked for. That congressional +district stands credited at the War Department to-day with furnishing +more men for the army than it was called on to supply. + +I remained in Springfield with my regiment until the 3d of July, when I +was ordered to Quincy, Illinois. By that time the regiment was in a +good state of discipline and the officers and men were well up in the +company drill. There was direct railroad communication between +Springfield and Quincy, but I thought it would be good preparation for +the troops to march there. We had no transportation for our camp and +garrison equipage, so wagons were hired for the occasion and on the 3d +of July we started. There was no hurry, but fair marches were made +every day until the Illinois River was crossed. There I was overtaken +by a dispatch saying that the destination of the regiment had been +changed to Ironton, Missouri, and ordering me to halt where I was and +await the arrival of a steamer which had been dispatched up the Illinois +River to take the regiment to St. Louis. The boat, when it did come, +grounded on a sand-bar a few miles below where we were in camp. We +remained there several days waiting to have the boat get off the bar, +but before this occurred news came that an Illinois regiment was +surrounded by rebels at a point on the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad +some miles west of Palmyra, in Missouri, and I was ordered to proceed +with all dispatch to their relief. We took the cars and reached Quincy +in a few hours. + +When I left Galena for the last time to take command of the 21st +regiment I took with me my oldest son, Frederick D. Grant, then a lad of +eleven years of age. On receiving the order to take rail for Quincy I +wrote to Mrs. Grant, to relieve what I supposed would be her great +anxiety for one so young going into danger, that I would send Fred home +from Quincy by river. I received a prompt letter in reply decidedly +disapproving my proposition, and urging that the lad should be allowed +to accompany me. It came too late. Fred was already on his way up the +Mississippi bound for Dubuque, Iowa, from which place there was a +railroad to Galena. + +My sensations as we approached what I supposed might be "a field of +battle" were anything but agreeable. I had been in all the engagements +in Mexico that it was possible for one person to be in; but not in +command. If some one else had been colonel and I had been +lieutenant-colonel I do not think I would have felt any trepidation. +Before we were prepared to cross the Mississippi River at Quincy my +anxiety was relieved; for the men of the besieged regiment came +straggling into town. I am inclined to think both sides got frightened +and ran away. + +I took my regiment to Palmyra and remained there for a few days, until +relieved by the 19th Illinois infantry. From Palmyra I proceeded to +Salt River, the railroad bridge over which had been destroyed by the +enemy. Colonel John M. Palmer at that time commanded the 13th Illinois, +which was acting as a guard to workmen who were engaged in rebuilding +this bridge. Palmer was my senior and commanded the two regiments as +long as we remained together. The bridge was finished in about two +weeks, and I received orders to move against Colonel Thomas Harris, who +was said to be encamped at the little town of Florida, some twenty-five +miles south of where we then were. + +At the time of which I now write we had no transportation and the +country about Salt River was sparsely settled, so that it took some days +to collect teams and drivers enough to move the camp and garrison +equipage of a regiment nearly a thousand strong, together with a week's +supply of provision and some ammunition. While preparations for the +move were going on I felt quite comfortable; but when we got on the road +and found every house deserted I was anything but easy. In the +twenty-five miles we had to march we did not see a person, old or young, +male or female, except two horsemen who were on a road that crossed +ours. As soon as they saw us they decamped as fast as their horses +could carry them. I kept my men in the ranks and forbade their entering +any of the deserted houses or taking anything from them. We halted at +night on the road and proceeded the next morning at an early hour. +Harris had been encamped in a creek bottom for the sake of being near +water. The hills on either side of the creek extend to a considerable +height, possibly more than a hundred feet. As we approached the brow of +the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris' camp, and +possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept getting +higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I +would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had +not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on. +When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view I +halted. The place where Harris had been encamped a few days before was +still there and the marks of a recent encampment were plainly visible, +but the troops were gone. My heart resumed its place. It occurred to +me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of +him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it +was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the +war, I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I +always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as much +reason to fear my forces as I had his. The lesson was valuable. + +Inquiries at the village of Florida divulged the fact that Colonel +Harris, learning of my intended movement, while my transportation was +being collected took time by the forelock and left Florida before I had +started from Salt River. He had increased the distance between us by +forty miles. The next day I started back to my old camp at Salt River +bridge. The citizens living on the line of our march had returned to +their houses after we passed, and finding everything in good order, +nothing carried away, they were at their front doors ready to greet us +now. They had evidently been led to believe that the National troops +carried death and devastation with them wherever they went. + +In a short time after our return to Salt River bridge I was ordered with +my regiment to the town of Mexico. General Pope was then commanding the +district embracing all of the State of Missouri between the Mississippi +and Missouri rivers, with his headquarters in the village of Mexico. I +was assigned to the command of a sub-district embracing the troops in +the immediate neighborhood, some three regiments of infantry and a +section of artillery. There was one regiment encamped by the side of +mine. I assumed command of the whole and the first night sent the +commander of the other regiment the parole and countersign. Not wishing +to be outdone in courtesy, he immediately sent me the countersign for +his regiment for the night. When he was informed that the countersign +sent to him was for use with his regiment as well as mine, it was +difficult to make him understand that this was not an unwarranted +interference of one colonel over another. No doubt he attributed it for +the time to the presumption of a graduate of West Point over a volunteer +pure and simple. But the question was soon settled and we had no +further trouble. + +My arrival in Mexico had been preceded by that of two or three regiments +in which proper discipline had not been maintained, and the men had been +in the habit of visiting houses without invitation and helping +themselves to food and drink, or demanding them from the occupants. +They carried their muskets while out of camp and made every man they +found take the oath of allegiance to the government. I at once +published orders prohibiting the soldiers from going into private houses +unless invited by the inhabitants, and from appropriating private +property to their own or to government uses. The people were no longer +molested or made afraid. I received the most marked courtesy from the +citizens of Mexico as long as I remained there. + +Up to this time my regiment had not been carried in the school of the +soldier beyond the company drill, except that it had received some +training on the march from Springfield to the Illinois River. There was +now a good opportunity of exercising it in the battalion drill. While I +was at West Point the tactics used in the army had been Scott's and the +musket the flint lock. I had never looked at a copy of tactics from the +time of my graduation. My standing in that branch of studies had been +near the foot of the class. In the Mexican war in the summer of 1846, I +had been appointed regimental quartermaster and commissary and had not +been at a battalion drill since. The arms had been changed since then +and Hardee's tactics had been adopted. I got a copy of tactics and +studied one lesson, intending to confine the exercise of the first day +to the commands I had thus learned. By pursuing this course from day to +day I thought I would soon get through the volume. + +We were encamped just outside of town on the common, among scattering +suburban houses with enclosed gardens, and when I got my regiment in +line and rode to the front I soon saw that if I attempted to follow the +lesson I had studied I would have to clear away some of the houses and +garden fences to make room. I perceived at once, however, that Hardee's +tactics--a mere translation from the French with Hardee's name attached +--was nothing more than common sense and the progress of the age applied +to Scott's system. The commands were abbreviated and the movement +expedited. Under the old tactics almost every change in the order of +march was preceded by a "halt," then came the change, and then the +"forward march." With the new tactics all these changes could be made +while in motion. I found no trouble in giving commands that would take +my regiment where I wanted it to go and carry it around all obstacles. +I do not believe that the officers of the regiment ever discovered that +I had never studied the tactics that I used. + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +COMMISSIONED BRIGADIER-GENERAL--COMMAND AT IRONTON, MO.--JEFFERSON CITY +--CAPE GIRARDEAU--GENERAL PRENTISS--SEIZURE OF PADUCAH--HEADQUARTERS AT +CAIRO. + +I had not been in Mexico many weeks when, reading a St. Louis paper, +I found the President had asked the Illinois delegation in Congress +to recommend some citizens of the State for the position of +brigadier-general, and that they had unanimously recommended me as first +on a list of seven. I was very much surprised because, as I have said, +my acquaintance with the Congressmen was very limited and I did not know +of anything I had done to inspire such confidence. The papers of the +next day announced that my name, with three others, had been sent to the +Senate, and a few days after our confirmation was announced. + +When appointed brigadier-general I at once thought it proper that one of +my aides should come from the regiment I had been commanding, and so +selected Lieutenant C. B. Lagow. While living in St. Louis, I had had a +desk in the law office of McClellan, Moody and Hillyer. Difference in +views between the members of the firm on the questions of the day, and +general hard times in the border cities, had broken up this firm. +Hillyer was quite a young man, then in his twenties, and very brilliant. +I asked him to accept a place on my staff. I also wanted to take one +man from my new home, Galena. The canvass in the Presidential campaign +the fall before had brought out a young lawyer by the name of John A. +Rawlins, who proved himself one of the ablest speakers in the State. He +was also a candidate for elector on the Douglas ticket. When Sumter was +fired upon and the integrity of the Union threatened, there was no man +more ready to serve his country than he. I wrote at once asking him to +accept the position of assistant adjutant-general with the rank of +captain, on my staff. He was about entering the service as major of a +new regiment then organizing in the north-western part of the State; but +he threw this up and accepted my offer. + +Neither Hillyer nor Lagow proved to have any particular taste or special +qualifications for the duties of the soldier, and the former resigned +during the Vicksburg campaign; the latter I relieved after the battle of +Chattanooga. Rawlins remained with me as long as he lived, and rose to +the rank of brigadier general and chief-of-staff to the General of the +Army--an office created for him--before the war closed. He was an able +man, possessed of great firmness, and could say "no" so emphatically to +a request which he thought should not be granted that the person he was +addressing would understand at once that there was no use of pressing +the matter. General Rawlins was a very useful officer in other ways +than this. I became very much attached to him. + +Shortly after my promotion I was ordered to Ironton, Missouri, to +command a district in that part of the State, and took the 21st +Illinois, my old regiment, with me. Several other regiments were +ordered to the same destination about the same time. Ironton is on the +Iron Mountain railroad, about seventy miles south of St. Louis, and +situated among hills rising almost to the dignity of mountains. When I +reached there, about the 8th of August, Colonel B. Gratz Brown +--afterwards Governor of Missouri and in 1872 Vice-Presidential candidate +--was in command. Some of his troops were ninety days' men and their +time had expired some time before. The men had no clothing but what +they had volunteered in, and much of this was so worn that it would +hardly stay on. General Hardee--the author of the tactics I did not +study--was at Greenville some twenty-five miles further south, it was +said, with five thousand Confederate troops. Under these circumstances +Colonel Brown's command was very much demoralized. A squadron of +cavalry could have ridden into the valley and captured the entire force. +Brown himself was gladder to see me on that occasion than he ever has +been since. I relieved him and sent all his men home within a day or +two, to be mustered out of service. + +Within ten days after reading Ironton I was prepared to take the +offensive against the enemy at Greenville. I sent a column east out of +the valley we were in, with orders to swing around to the south and west +and come into the Greenville road ten miles south of Ironton. Another +column marched on the direct road and went into camp at the point +designated for the two columns to meet. I was to ride out the next +morning and take personal command of the movement. My experience +against Harris, in northern Missouri, had inspired me with confidence. +But when the evening train came in, it brought General B. M. Prentiss +with orders to take command of the district. His orders did not relieve +me, but I knew that by law I was senior, and at that time even the +President did not have the authority to assign a junior to command a +senior of the same grade. I therefore gave General Prentiss the +situation of the troops and the general condition of affairs, and +started for St. Louis the same day. The movement against the rebels at +Greenville went no further. + +From St. Louis I was ordered to Jefferson City, the capital of the +State, to take command. General Sterling Price, of the Confederate +army, was thought to be threatening the capital, Lexington, Chillicothe +and other comparatively large towns in the central part of Missouri. I +found a good many troops in Jefferson City, but in the greatest +confusion, and no one person knew where they all were. Colonel +Mulligan, a gallant man, was in command, but he had not been educated as +yet to his new profession and did not know how to maintain discipline. +I found that volunteers had obtained permission from the department +commander, or claimed they had, to raise, some of them, regiments; some +battalions; some companies--the officers to be commissioned according to +the number of men they brought into the service. There were recruiting +stations all over town, with notices, rudely lettered on boards over the +doors, announcing the arm of service and length of time for which +recruits at that station would be received. The law required all +volunteers to serve for three years or the war. But in Jefferson City +in August, 1861, they were recruited for different periods and on +different conditions; some were enlisted for six months, some for a +year, some without any condition as to where they were to serve, others +were not to be sent out of the State. The recruits were principally men +from regiments stationed there and already in the service, bound for +three years if the war lasted that long. + +The city was filled with Union fugitives who had been driven by guerilla +bands to take refuge with the National troops. They were in a +deplorable condition and must have starved but for the support the +government gave them. They had generally made their escape with a team +or two, sometimes a yoke of oxen with a mule or a horse in the lead. A +little bedding besides their clothing and some food had been thrown into +the wagon. All else of their worldly goods were abandoned and +appropriated by their former neighbors; for the Union man in Missouri +who staid at home during the rebellion, if he was not immediately under +the protection of the National troops, was at perpetual war with his +neighbors. I stopped the recruiting service, and disposed the troops +about the outskirts of the city so as to guard all approaches. Order +was soon restored. + +I had been at Jefferson City but a few days when I was directed from +department headquarters to fit out an expedition to Lexington, +Booneville and Chillicothe, in order to take from the banks in those +cities all the funds they had and send them to St. Louis. The western +army had not yet been supplied with transportation. It became necessary +therefore to press into the service teams belonging to sympathizers with +the rebellion or to hire those of Union men. This afforded an +opportunity of giving employment to such of the refugees within our +lines as had teams suitable for our purposes. They accepted the service +with alacrity. As fast as troops could be got off they were moved west +some twenty miles or more. In seven or eight days from my assuming +command at Jefferson City, I had all the troops, except a small +garrison, at an advanced position and expected to join them myself the +next day. + +But my campaigns had not yet begun, for while seated at my office door, +with nothing further to do until it was time to start for the front, I +saw an officer of rank approaching, who proved to be Colonel Jefferson +C. Davis. I had never met him before, but he introduced himself by +handing me an order for him to proceed to Jefferson City and relieve me +of the command. The orders directed that I should report at department +headquarters at St. Louis without delay, to receive important special +instructions. It was about an hour before the only regular train of the +day would start. I therefore turned over to Colonel Davis my orders, +and hurriedly stated to him the progress that had been made to carry out +the department instructions already described. I had at that time but +one staff officer, doing myself all the detail work usually performed by +an adjutant-general. In an hour after being relieved from the command I +was on my way to St. Louis, leaving my single staff officer(*6) to +follow the next day with our horses and baggage. + +The "important special instructions" which I received the next day, +assigned me to the command of the district of south-east Missouri, +embracing all the territory south of St. Louis, in Missouri, as well as +all southern Illinois. At first I was to take personal command of a +combined expedition that had been ordered for the capture of Colonel +Jeff. Thompson, a sort of independent or partisan commander who was +disputing with us the possession of south-east Missouri. Troops had +been ordered to move from Ironton to Cape Girardeau, sixty or seventy +miles to the south-east, on the Mississippi River; while the forces at +Cape Girardeau had been ordered to move to Jacksonville, ten miles out +towards Ironton; and troops at Cairo and Bird's Point, at the junction +of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, were to hold themselves in readiness +to go down the Mississippi to Belmont, eighteen miles below, to be moved +west from there when an officer should come to command them. I was the +officer who had been selected for this purpose. Cairo was to become my +headquarters when the expedition terminated. + +In pursuance of my orders I established my temporary headquarters at +Cape Girardeau and sent instructions to the commanding officer at +Jackson, to inform me of the approach of General Prentiss from Ironton. +Hired wagons were kept moving night and day to take additional rations +to Jackson, to supply the troops when they started from there. Neither +General Prentiss nor Colonel Marsh, who commanded at Jackson, knew their +destination. I drew up all the instructions for the contemplated move, +and kept them in my pocket until I should hear of the junction of our +troops at Jackson. Two or three days after my arrival at Cape +Girardeau, word came that General Prentiss was approaching that place +(Jackson). I started at once to meet him there and to give him his +orders. As I turned the first corner of a street after starting, I saw +a column of cavalry passing the next street in front of me. I turned +and rode around the block the other way, so as to meet the head of the +column. I found there General Prentiss himself, with a large escort. +He had halted his troops at Jackson for the night, and had come on +himself to Cape Girardeau, leaving orders for his command to follow him +in the morning. I gave the General his orders--which stopped him at +Jackson--but he was very much aggrieved at being placed under another +brigadier-general, particularly as he believed himself to be the senior. +He had been a brigadier, in command at Cairo, while I was mustering +officer at Springfield without any rank. But we were nominated at the +same time for the United States service, and both our commissions bore +date May 17th, 1861. By virtue of my former army rank I was, by law, +the senior. General Prentiss failed to get orders to his troops to +remain at Jackson, and the next morning early they were reported as +approaching Cape Girardeau. I then ordered the General very +peremptorily to countermarch his command and take it back to Jackson. +He obeyed the order, but bade his command adieu when he got them to +Jackson, and went to St. Louis and reported himself. This broke up the +expedition. But little harm was done, as Jeff. Thompson moved light and +had no fixed place for even nominal headquarters. He was as much at +home in Arkansas as he was in Missouri and would keep out of the way of +a superior force. Prentiss was sent to another part of the State. + +General Prentiss made a great mistake on the above occasion, one that he +would not have committed later in the war. When I came to know him +better, I regretted it much. In consequence of this occurrence he was +off duty in the field when the principal campaign at the West was going +on, and his juniors received promotion while he was where none could be +obtained. He would have been next to myself in rank in the district of +south-east Missouri, by virtue of his services in the Mexican war. He +was a brave and very earnest soldier. No man in the service was more +sincere in his devotion to the cause for which we were battling; none +more ready to make sacrifices or risk life in it. + +On the 4th of September I removed my headquarters to Cairo and found +Colonel Richard Oglesby in command of the post. We had never met, at +least not to my knowledge. After my promotion I had ordered my +brigadier-general's uniform from New York, but it had not yet arrived, +so that I was in citizen's dress. The Colonel had his office full of +people, mostly from the neighboring States of Missouri and Kentucky, +making complaints or asking favors. He evidently did not catch my name +when I was presented, for on my taking a piece of paper from the table +where he was seated and writing the order assuming command of the +district of south-east Missouri, Colonel Richard J. Oglesby to command +the post at Bird's Point, and handing it to him, he put on an expression +of surprise that looked a little as if he would like to have some one +identify me. But he surrendered the office without question. + +The day after I assumed command at Cairo a man came to me who said he +was a scout of General Fremont. He reported that he had just come from +Columbus, a point on the Mississippi twenty miles below on the Kentucky +side, and that troops had started from there, or were about to start, to +seize Paducah, at the mouth of the Tennessee. There was no time for +delay; I reported by telegraph to the department commander the +information I had received, and added that I was taking steps to get off +that night to be in advance of the enemy in securing that important +point. There was a large number of steamers lying at Cairo and a good +many boatmen were staying in the town. It was the work of only a few +hours to get the boats manned, with coal aboard and steam up. Troops +were also designated to go aboard. The distance from Cairo to Paducah +is about forty-five miles. I did not wish to get there before daylight +of the 6th, and directed therefore that the boats should lie at anchor +out in the stream until the time to start. Not having received an +answer to my first dispatch, I again telegraphed to department +headquarters that I should start for Paducah that night unless I +received further orders. Hearing nothing, we started before midnight +and arrived early the following morning, anticipating the enemy by +probably not over six or eight hours. It proved very fortunate that the +expedition against Jeff. Thompson had been broken up. Had it not been, +the enemy would have seized Paducah and fortified it, to our very great +annoyance. + +When the National troops entered the town the citizens were taken by +surprise. I never after saw such consternation depicted on the faces of +the people. Men, women and children came out of their doors looking +pale and frightened at the presence of the invader. They were expecting +rebel troops that day. In fact, nearly four thousand men from Columbus +were at that time within ten or fifteen miles of Paducah on their way to +occupy the place. I had but two regiments and one battery with me, but +the enemy did not know this and returned to Columbus. I stationed my +troops at the best points to guard the roads leading into the city, left +gunboats to guard the river fronts and by noon was ready to start on my +return to Cairo. Before leaving, however, I addressed a short printed +proclamation to the citizens of Paducah assuring them of our peaceful +intentions, that we had come among them to protect them against the +enemies of our country, and that all who chose could continue their +usual avocations with assurance of the protection of the government. +This was evidently a relief to them; but the majority would have much +preferred the presence of the other army. I reinforced Paducah rapidly +from the troops at Cape Girardeau; and a day or two later General C. F. +Smith, a most accomplished soldier, reported at Cairo and was assigned +to the command of the post at the mouth of the Tennessee. In a short +time it was well fortified and a detachment was sent to occupy +Smithland, at the mouth of the Cumberland. + +The State government of Kentucky at that time was rebel in sentiment, +but wanted to preserve an armed neutrality between the North and the +South, and the governor really seemed to think the State had a perfect +right to maintain a neutral position. The rebels already occupied two +towns in the State, Columbus and Hickman, on the Mississippi; and at the +very moment the National troops were entering Paducah from the Ohio +front, General Lloyd Tilghman--a Confederate--with his staff and a small +detachment of men, were getting out in the other direction, while, as I +have already said, nearly four thousand Confederate troops were on +Kentucky soil on their way to take possession of the town. But, in the +estimation of the governor and of those who thought with him, this did +not justify the National authorities in invading the soil of Kentucky. +I informed the legislature of the State of what I was doing, and my +action was approved by the majority of that body. On my return to Cairo +I found authority from department headquarters for me to take Paducah +"if I felt strong enough," but very soon after I was reprimanded from +the same quarters for my correspondence with the legislature and warned +against a repetition of the offence. + +Soon after I took command at Cairo, General Fremont entered into +arrangements for the exchange of the prisoners captured at Camp Jackson +in the month of May. I received orders to pass them through my lines to +Columbus as they presented themselves with proper credentials. Quite a +number of these prisoners I had been personally acquainted with before +the war. Such of them as I had so known were received at my +headquarters as old acquaintances, and ordinary routine business was not +disturbed by their presence. On one occasion when several were present +in my office my intention to visit Cape Girardeau the next day, to +inspect the troops at that point, was mentioned. Something transpired +which postponed my trip; but a steamer employed by the government was +passing a point some twenty or more miles above Cairo, the next day, +when a section of rebel artillery with proper escort brought her to. A +major, one of those who had been at my headquarters the day before, came +at once aboard and after some search made a direct demand for my +delivery. It was hard to persuade him that I was not there. This +officer was Major Barrett, of St. Louis. I had been acquainted with his +family before the war. + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +GENERAL FREMONT IN COMMAND--MOVEMENT AGAINST BELMONT--BATTLE OF BELMONT +--A NARROW ESCAPE--AFTER THE BATTLE. + +From the occupation of Paducah up to the early part of November nothing +important occurred with the troops under my command. I was reinforced +from time to time and the men were drilled and disciplined preparatory +for the service which was sure to come. By the 1st of November I had +not fewer than 20,000 men, most of them under good drill and ready to +meet any equal body of men who, like themselves, had not yet been in an +engagement. They were growing impatient at lying idle so long, almost +in hearing of the guns of the enemy they had volunteered to fight +against. I asked on one or two occasions to be allowed to move against +Columbus. It could have been taken soon after the occupation of +Paducah; but before November it was so strongly fortified that it would +have required a large force and a long siege to capture it. + +In the latter part of October General Fremont took the field in person +and moved from Jefferson City against General Sterling Price, who was +then in the State of Missouri with a considerable command. About the +first of November I was directed from department headquarters to make a +demonstration on both sides of the Mississippi River with the view of +detaining the rebels at Columbus within their lines. Before my troops +could be got off, I was notified from the same quarter that there were +some 3,000 of the enemy on the St. Francis River about fifty miles west, +or south-west, from Cairo, and was ordered to send another force against +them. I dispatched Colonel Oglesby at once with troops sufficient to +compete with the reported number of the enemy. On the 5th word came +from the same source that the rebels were about to detach a large force +from Columbus to be moved by boats down the Mississippi and up the White +River, in Arkansas, in order to reinforce Price, and I was directed to +prevent this movement if possible. I accordingly sent a regiment from +Bird's Point under Colonel W. H. L. Wallace to overtake and reinforce +Oglesby, with orders to march to New Madrid, a point some distance below +Columbus, on the Missouri side. At the same time I directed General C. +F. Smith to move all the troops he could spare from Paducah directly +against Columbus, halting them, however, a few miles from the town to +await further orders from me. Then I gathered up all the troops at +Cairo and Fort Holt, except suitable guards, and moved them down the +river on steamers convoyed by two gunboats, accompanying them myself. +My force consisted of a little over 3,000 men and embraced five +regiments of infantry, two guns and two companies of cavalry. We +dropped down the river on the 6th to within about six miles of Columbus, +debarked a few men on the Kentucky side and established pickets to +connect with the troops from Paducah. + +I had no orders which contemplated an attack by the National troops, nor +did I intend anything of the kind when I started out from Cairo; but +after we started I saw that the officers and men were elated at the +prospect of at last having the opportunity of doing what they had +volunteered to do--fight the enemies of their country. I did not see +how I could maintain discipline, or retain the confidence of my command, +if we should return to Cairo without an effort to do something. +Columbus, besides being strongly fortified, contained a garrison much +more numerous than the force I had with me. It would not do, therefore, +to attack that point. About two o'clock on the morning of the 7th, I +learned that the enemy was crossing troops from Columbus to the west +bank to be dispatched, presumably, after Oglesby. I knew there was a +small camp of Confederates at Belmont, immediately opposite Columbus, +and I speedily resolved to push down the river, land on the Missouri +side, capture Belmont, break up the camp and return. Accordingly, the +pickets above Columbus were drawn in at once, and about daylight the +boats moved out from shore. In an hour we were debarking on the west +bank of the Mississippi, just out of range of the batteries at Columbus. + +The ground on the west shore of the river, opposite Columbus, is low and +in places marshy and cut up with sloughs. The soil is rich and the +timber large and heavy. There were some small clearings between Belmont +and the point where we landed, but most of the country was covered with +the native forests. We landed in front of a cornfield. When the +debarkation commenced, I took a regiment down the river to post it as a +guard against surprise. At that time I had no staff officer who could +be trusted with that duty. In the woods, at a short distance below the +clearing, I found a depression, dry at the time, but which at high water +became a slough or bayou. I placed the men in the hollow, gave them +their instructions and ordered them to remain there until they were +properly relieved. These troops, with the gunboats, were to protect our +transports. + +Up to this time the enemy had evidently failed to divine our intentions. +From Columbus they could, of course, see our gunboats and transports +loaded with troops. But the force from Paducah was threatening them +from the land side, and it was hardly to be expected that if Columbus +was our object we would separate our troops by a wide river. They +doubtless thought we meant to draw a large force from the east bank, +then embark ourselves, land on the east bank and make a sudden assault +on Columbus before their divided command could be united. + +About eight o'clock we started from the point of debarkation, marching +by the flank. After moving in this way for a mile or a mile and a half, +I halted where there was marshy ground covered with a heavy growth of +timber in our front, and deployed a large part of my force as +skirmishers. By this time the enemy discovered that we were moving upon +Belmont and sent out troops to meet us. Soon after we had started in +line, his skirmishers were encountered and fighting commenced. This +continued, growing fiercer and fiercer, for about four hours, the enemy +being forced back gradually until he was driven into his camp. Early in +this engagement my horse was shot under me, but I got another from one +of my staff and kept well up with the advance until the river was +reached. + +The officers and men engaged at Belmont were then under fire for the +first time. Veterans could not have behaved better than they did up to +the moment of reaching the rebel camp. At this point they became +demoralized from their victory and failed to reap its full reward. The +enemy had been followed so closely that when he reached the clear ground +on which his camp was pitched he beat a hasty retreat over the river +bank, which protected him from our shots and from view. This +precipitate retreat at the last moment enabled the National forces to +pick their way without hinderance through the abatis--the only +artificial defence the enemy had. The moment the camp was reached our +men laid down their arms and commenced rummaging the tents to pick up +trophies. Some of the higher officers were little better than the +privates. They galloped about from one cluster of men to another and at +every halt delivered a short eulogy upon the Union cause and the +achievements of the command. + +All this time the troops we had been engaged with for four hours, lay +crouched under cover of the river bank, ready to come up and surrender +if summoned to do so; but finding that they were not pursued, they +worked their way up the river and came up on the bank between us and our +transports. I saw at the same time two steamers coming from the +Columbus side towards the west shore, above us, black--or gray--with +soldiers from boiler-deck to roof. Some of my men were engaged in +firing from captured guns at empty steamers down the river, out of +range, cheering at every shot. I tried to get them to turn their guns +upon the loaded steamers above and not so far away. My efforts were in +vain. At last I directed my staff officers to set fire to the camps. +This drew the fire of the enemy's guns located on the heights of +Columbus. They had abstained from firing before, probably because they +were afraid of hitting their own men; or they may have supposed, until +the camp was on fire, that it was still in the possession of their +friends. About this time, too, the men we had driven over the bank were +seen in line up the river between us and our transports. The alarm +"surrounded" was given. The guns of the enemy and the report of being +surrounded, brought officers and men completely under control. At first +some of the officers seemed to think that to be surrounded was to be +placed in a hopeless position, where there was nothing to do but +surrender. But when I announced that we had cut our way in and could +cut our way out just as well, it seemed a new revelation to officers and +soldiers. They formed line rapidly and we started back to our boats, +with the men deployed as skirmishers as they had been on entering camp. +The enemy was soon encountered, but his resistance this time was feeble. +Again the Confederates sought shelter under the river banks. We could +not stop, however, to pick them up, because the troops we had seen +crossing the river had debarked by this time and were nearer our +transports than we were. It would be prudent to get them behind us; but +we were not again molested on our way to the boats. + +From the beginning of the fighting our wounded had been carried to the +houses at the rear, near the place of debarkation. I now set the troops +to bringing their wounded to the boats. After this had gone on for some +little time I rode down the road, without even a staff officer, to visit +the guard I had stationed over the approach to our transports. I knew +the enemy had crossed over from Columbus in considerable numbers and +might be expected to attack us as we were embarking. This guard would +be encountered first and, as they were in a natural intrenchment, would +be able to hold the enemy for a considerable time. My surprise was +great to find there was not a single man in the trench. Riding back to +the boat I found the officer who had commanded the guard and learned +that he had withdrawn his force when the main body fell back. At first +I ordered the guard to return, but finding that it would take some time +to get the men together and march them back to their position, I +countermanded the order. Then fearing that the enemy we had seen +crossing the river below might be coming upon us unawares, I rode out in +the field to our front, still entirely alone, to observe whether the +enemy was passing. The field was grown up with corn so tall and thick +as to cut off the view of even a person on horseback, except directly +along the rows. Even in that direction, owing to the overhanging blades +of corn, the view was not extensive. I had not gone more than a few +hundred yards when I saw a body of troops marching past me not fifty +yards away. I looked at them for a moment and then turned my horse +towards the river and started back, first in a walk, and when I thought +myself concealed from the view of the enemy, as fast as my horse could +carry me. When at the river bank I still had to ride a few hundred +yards to the point where the nearest transport lay. + +The cornfield in front of our transports terminated at the edge of a +dense forest. Before I got back the enemy had entered this forest and +had opened a brisk fire upon the boats. Our men, with the exception of +details that had gone to the front after the wounded, were now either +aboard the transports or very near them. Those who were not aboard soon +got there, and the boats pushed off. I was the only man of the National +army between the rebels and our transports. The captain of a boat that +had just pushed out but had not started, recognized me and ordered the +engineer not to start the engine; he then had a plank run out for me. +My horse seemed to take in the situation. There was no path down the +bank and every one acquainted with the Mississippi River knows that its +banks, in a natural state, do not vary at any great angle from the +perpendicular. My horse put his fore feet over the bank without +hesitation or urging, and with his hind feet well under him, slid down +the bank and trotted aboard the boat, twelve or fifteen feet away, over +a single gang plank. I dismounted and went at once to the upper deck. + +The Mississippi River was low on the 7th of November, 1861, so that the +banks were higher than the heads of men standing on the upper decks of +the steamers. The rebels were some distance back from the river, so +that their fire was high and did us but little harm. Our smoke-stack +was riddled with bullets, but there were only three men wounded on the +boats, two of whom were soldiers. When I first went on deck I entered +the captain's room adjoining the pilot-house, and threw myself on a +sofa. I did not keep that position a moment, but rose to go out on the +deck to observe what was going on. I had scarcely left when a musket +ball entered the room, struck the head of the sofa, passed through it +and lodged in the foot. + +When the enemy opened fire on the transports our gunboats returned it +with vigor. They were well out in the stream and some distance down, so +that they had to give but very little elevation to their guns to clear +the banks of the river. Their position very nearly enfiladed the line +of the enemy while he was marching through the cornfield. The execution +was very great, as we could see at the time and as I afterwards learned +more positively. We were very soon out of range and went peacefully on +our way to Cairo, every man feeling that Belmont was a great victory and +that he had contributed his share to it. + +Our loss at Belmont was 485 in killed, wounded and missing. About 125 of +our wounded fell into the hands of the enemy. We returned with 175 +prisoners and two guns, and spiked four other pieces. The loss of the +enemy, as officially reported, was 642 men, killed, wounded and missing. +We had engaged about 2,500 men, exclusive of the guard left with the +transports. The enemy had about 7,000; but this includes the troops +brought over from Columbus who were not engaged in the first defence of +Belmont. + +The two objects for which the battle of Belmont was fought were fully +accomplished. The enemy gave up all idea of detaching troops from +Columbus. His losses were very heavy for that period of the war. +Columbus was beset by people looking for their wounded or dead kin, to +take them home for medical treatment or burial. I learned later, when I +had moved further south, that Belmont had caused more mourning than +almost any other battle up to that time. The National troops acquired a +confidence in themselves at Belmont that did not desert them through the +war. + +The day after the battle I met some officers from General Polk's +command, arranged for permission to bury our dead at Belmont and also +commenced negotiations for the exchange of prisoners. When our men went +to bury their dead, before they were allowed to land they were conducted +below the point where the enemy had engaged our transports. Some of the +officers expressed a desire to see the field; but the request was +refused with the statement that we had no dead there. + +While on the truce-boat I mentioned to an officer, whom I had known both +at West Point and in the Mexican war, that I was in the cornfield near +their troops when they passed; that I had been on horseback and had worn +a soldier's overcoat at the time. This officer was on General Polk's +staff. He said both he and the general had seen me and that Polk had +said to his men, "There is a Yankee; you may try your marksmanship on +him if you wish," but nobody fired at me. + +Belmont was severely criticised in the North as a wholly unnecessary +battle, barren of results, or the possibility of them from the +beginning. If it had not been fought, Colonel Oglesby would probably +have been captured or destroyed with his three thousand men. Then I +should have been culpable indeed. + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +GENERAL HALLECK IN COMMAND--COMMANDING THE DISTRICT OF CAIRO--MOVEMENT +ON FORT HENRY--CAPTURE OF FORT HENRY. + +While at Cairo I had frequent opportunities of meeting the rebel +officers of the Columbus garrison. They seemed to be very fond of +coming up on steamers under flags of truce. On two or three occasions I +went down in like manner. When one of their boats was seen coming up +carrying a white flag, a gun would be fired from the lower battery at +Fort Holt, throwing a shot across the bow as a signal to come no +farther. I would then take a steamer and, with my staff and +occasionally a few other officers, go down to receive the party. There +were several officers among them whom I had known before, both at West +Point and in Mexico. Seeing these officers who had been educated for the +profession of arms, both at school and in actual war, which is a far +more efficient training, impressed me with the great advantage the South +possessed over the North at the beginning of the rebellion. They had +from thirty to forty per cent. of the educated soldiers of the Nation. +They had no standing army and, consequently, these trained soldiers had +to find employment with the troops from their own States. In this way +what there was of military education and training was distributed +throughout their whole army. The whole loaf was leavened. + +The North had a great number of educated and trained soldiers, but the +bulk of them were still in the army and were retained, generally with +their old commands and rank, until the war had lasted many months. In +the Army of the Potomac there was what was known as the "regular +brigade," in which, from the commanding officer down to the youngest +second lieutenant, every one was educated to his profession. So, too, +with many of the batteries; all the officers, generally four in number +to each, were men educated for their profession. Some of these went +into battle at the beginning under division commanders who were entirely +without military training. This state of affairs gave me an idea which +I expressed while at Cairo; that the government ought to disband the +regular army, with the exception of the staff corps, and notify the +disbanded officers that they would receive no compensation while the war +lasted except as volunteers. The register should be kept up, but the +names of all officers who were not in the volunteer service at the +close, should be stricken from it. + +On the 9th of November, two days after the battle of Belmont, +Major-General H. W. Halleck superseded General Fremont in command of the +Department of the Missouri. The limits of his command took in Arkansas +and west Kentucky east to the Cumberland River. From the battle of +Belmont until early in February, 1862, the troops under my command did +little except prepare for the long struggle which proved to be before +them. + +The enemy at this time occupied a line running from the Mississippi +River at Columbus to Bowling Green and Mill Springs, Kentucky. Each of +these positions was strongly fortified, as were also points on the +Tennessee and Cumberland rivers near the Tennessee state line. The +works on the Tennessee were called Fort Heiman and Fort Henry, and that +on the Cumberland was Fort Donelson. At these points the two rivers +approached within eleven miles of each other. The lines of rifle pits +at each place extended back from the water at least two miles, so that +the garrisons were in reality only seven miles apart. These positions +were of immense importance to the enemy; and of course correspondingly +important for us to possess ourselves of. With Fort Henry in our hands +we had a navigable stream open to us up to Muscle Shoals, in Alabama. +The Memphis and Charleston Railroad strikes the Tennessee at Eastport, +Mississippi, and follows close to the banks of the river up to the +shoals. This road, of vast importance to the enemy, would cease to be +of use to them for through traffic the moment Fort Henry became ours. +Fort Donelson was the gate to Nashville--a place of great military and +political importance--and to a rich country extending far east in +Kentucky. These two points in our possession the enemy would +necessarily be thrown back to the Memphis and Charleston road, or to the +boundary of the cotton states, and, as before stated, that road would be +lost to them for through communication. + +The designation of my command had been changed after Halleck's arrival, +from the District of South-east Missouri to the District of Cairo, and +the small district commanded by General C. F. Smith, embracing the +mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, had been added to my +jurisdiction. Early in January, 1862, I was directed by General +McClellan, through my department commander, to make a reconnoissance in +favor of Brigadier-General Don Carlos Buell, who commanded the +Department of the Ohio, with headquarters at Louisville, and who was +confronting General S. B. Buckner with a larger Confederate force at +Bowling Green. It was supposed that Buell was about to make some move +against the enemy, and my demonstration was intended to prevent the +sending of troops from Columbus, Fort Henry or Donelson to Buckner. I +at once ordered General Smith to send a force up the west bank of the +Tennessee to threaten forts Heiman and Henry; McClernand at the same +time with a force of 6,000 men was sent out into west Kentucky, +threatening Columbus with one column and the Tennessee River with +another. I went with McClernand's command. The weather was very bad; +snow and rain fell; the roads, never good in that section, were +intolerable. We were out more than a week splashing through the mud, +snow and rain, the men suffering very much. The object of the +expedition was accomplished. The enemy did not send reinforcements to +Bowling Green, and General George H. Thomas fought and won the battle of +Mill Springs before we returned. + +As a result of this expedition General Smith reported that he thought it +practicable to capture Fort Heiman. This fort stood on high ground, +completely commanding Fort Henry on the opposite side of the river, and +its possession by us, with the aid of our gunboats, would insure the +capture of Fort Henry. This report of Smith's confirmed views I had +previously held, that the true line of operations for us was up the +Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. With us there, the enemy would be +compelled to fall back on the east and west entirely out of the State of +Kentucky. On the 6th of January, before receiving orders for this +expedition, I had asked permission of the general commanding the +department to go to see him at St. Louis. My object was to lay this +plan of campaign before him. Now that my views had been confirmed by so +able a general as Smith, I renewed my request to go to St. Louis on what +I deemed important military business. The leave was granted, but not +graciously. I had known General Halleck but very slightly in the old +army, not having met him either at West Point or during the Mexican war. +I was received with so little cordiality that I perhaps stated the +object of my visit with less clearness than I might have done, and I had +not uttered many sentences before I was cut short as if my plan was +preposterous. I returned to Cairo very much crestfallen. + +Flag-officer Foote commanded the little fleet of gunboats then in the +neighborhood of Cairo and, though in another branch of the service, was +subject to the command of General Halleck. He and I consulted freely +upon military matters and he agreed with me perfectly as to the +feasibility of the campaign up the Tennessee. Notwithstanding the +rebuff I had received from my immediate chief, I therefore, on the 28th +of January, renewed the suggestion by telegraph that "if permitted, I +could take and hold Fort Henry on the Tennessee." This time I was +backed by Flag-officer Foote, who sent a similar dispatch. On the 29th +I wrote fully in support of the proposition. On the 1st of February I +received full instructions from department headquarters to move upon +Fort Henry. On the 2d the expedition started. + +In February, 1862, there were quite a good many steamers laid up at +Cairo for want of employment, the Mississippi River being closed against +navigation below that point. There were also many men in the town whose +occupation had been following the river in various capacities, from +captain down to deck hand But there were not enough of either boats or +men to move at one time the 17,000 men I proposed to take with me up the +Tennessee. I loaded the boats with more than half the force, however, +and sent General McClernand in command. I followed with one of the +later boats and found McClernand had stopped, very properly, nine miles +below Fort Henry. Seven gunboats under Flag-officer Foote had +accompanied the advance. The transports we had with us had to return to +Paducah to bring up a division from there, with General C. F. Smith in +command. + +Before sending the boats back I wanted to get the troops as near to the +enemy as I could without coming within range of their guns. There was a +stream emptying into the Tennessee on the east side, apparently at about +long range distance below the fort. On account of the narrow water-shed +separating the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers at that point, the stream +must be insignificant at ordinary stages, but when we were there, in +February, it was a torrent. It would facilitate the investment of Fort +Henry materially if the troops could be landed south of that stream. To +test whether this could be done I boarded the gunboat Essex and +requested Captain Wm. Porter commanding it, to approach the fort to draw +its fire. After we had gone some distance past the mouth of the stream +we drew the fire of the fort, which fell much short of us. In +consequence I had made up my mind to return and bring the troops to the +upper side of the creek, when the enemy opened upon us with a rifled gun +that sent shot far beyond us and beyond the stream. One shot passed +very near where Captain Porter and I were standing, struck the deck near +the stern, penetrated and passed through the cabin and so out into the +river. We immediately turned back, and the troops were debarked below +the mouth of the creek. + +When the landing was completed I returned with the transports to Paducah +to hasten up the balance of the troops. I got back on the 5th with the +advance the remainder following as rapidly as the steamers could carry +them. At ten o'clock at night, on the 5th, the whole command was not +yet up. Being anxious to commence operations as soon as possible before +the enemy could reinforce heavily, I issued my orders for an advance at +11 A.M. on the 6th. I felt sure that all the troops would be up by that +time. + +Fort Henry occupies a bend in the river which gave the guns in the water +battery a direct fire down the stream. The camp outside the fort was +intrenched, with rifle pits and outworks two miles back on the road to +Donelson and Dover. The garrison of the fort and camp was about 2,800, +with strong reinforcements from Donelson halted some miles out. There +were seventeen heavy guns in the fort. The river was very high, the +banks being overflowed except where the bluffs come to the water's edge. +A portion of the ground on which Fort Henry stood was two feet deep in +water. Below, the water extended into the woods several hundred yards +back from the bank on the east side. On the west bank Fort Heiman stood +on high ground, completely commanding Fort Henry. The distance from +Fort Henry to Donelson is but eleven miles. The two positions were so +important to the enemy, AS HE SAW HIS INTEREST, that it was natural to +suppose that reinforcements would come from every quarter from which +they could be got. Prompt action on our part was imperative. + +The plan was for the troops and gunboats to start at the same moment. +The troops were to invest the garrison and the gunboats to attack the +fort at close quarters. General Smith was to land a brigade of his +division on the west bank during the night of the 5th and get it in rear +of Heiman. + +At the hour designated the troops and gunboats started. General Smith +found Fort Heiman had been evacuated before his men arrived. The +gunboats soon engaged the water batteries at very close quarters, but +the troops which were to invest Fort Henry were delayed for want of +roads, as well as by the dense forest and the high water in what would +in dry weather have been unimportant beds of streams. This delay made +no difference in the result. On our first appearance Tilghman had sent +his entire command, with the exception of about one hundred men left to +man the guns in the fort, to the outworks on the road to Dover and +Donelson, so as to have them out of range of the guns of our navy; and +before any attack on the 6th he had ordered them to retreat on Donelson. +He stated in his subsequent report that the defence was intended solely +to give his troops time to make their escape. + +Tilghman was captured with his staff and ninety men, as well as the +armament of the fort, the ammunition and whatever stores were there. +Our cavalry pursued the retreating column towards Donelson and picked up +two guns and a few stragglers; but the enemy had so much the start, that +the pursuing force did not get in sight of any except the stragglers. + +All the gunboats engaged were hit many times. The damage, however, +beyond what could be repaired by a small expenditure of money, was +slight, except to the Essex. A shell penetrated the boiler of that +vessel and exploded it, killing and wounding forty-eight men, nineteen +of whom were soldiers who had been detailed to act with the navy. On +several occasions during the war such details were made when the +complement of men with the navy was insufficient for the duty before +them. After the fall of Fort Henry Captain Phelps, commanding the +iron-clad Carondelet, at my request ascended the Tennessee River and +thoroughly destroyed the bridge of the Memphis and Ohio Railroad. + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +INVESTMENT OF FORT DONELSON--THE NAVAL OPERATIONS--ATTACK OF THE ENEMY +--ASSAULTING THE WORKS--SURRENDER OF THE FORT. + +I informed the department commander of our success at Fort Henry and +that on the 8th I would take Fort Donelson. But the rain continued to +fall so heavily that the roads became impassable for artillery and wagon +trains. Then, too, it would not have been prudent to proceed without +the gunboats. At least it would have been leaving behind a valuable +part of our available force. + +On the 7th, the day after the fall of Fort Henry, I took my staff and +the cavalry--a part of one regiment--and made a reconnoissance to within +about a mile of the outer line of works at Donelson. I had known +General Pillow in Mexico, and judged that with any force, no matter how +small, I could march up to within gunshot of any intrenchments he was +given to hold. I said this to the officers of my staff at the time. I +knew that Floyd was in command, but he was no soldier, and I judged that +he would yield to Pillow's pretensions. I met, as I expected, no +opposition in making the reconnoissance and, besides learning the +topography of the country on the way and around Fort Donelson, found +that there were two roads available for marching; one leading to the +village of Dover, the other to Donelson. + +Fort Donelson is two miles north, or down the river, from Dover. The +fort, as it stood in 1861, embraced about one hundred acres of land. On +the east it fronted the Cumberland; to the north it faced Hickman's +creek, a small stream which at that time was deep and wide because of +the back-water from the river; on the south was another small stream, or +rather a ravine, opening into the Cumberland. This also was filled with +back-water from the river. The fort stood on high ground, some of it as +much as a hundred feet above the Cumberland. Strong protection to the +heavy guns in the water batteries had been obtained by cutting away +places for them in the bluff. To the west there was a line of rifle +pits some two miles back from the river at the farthest point. This +line ran generally along the crest of high ground, but in one place +crossed a ravine which opens into the river between the village and the +fort. The ground inside and outside of this intrenched line was very +broken and generally wooded. The trees outside of the rifle-pits had +been cut down for a considerable way out, and had been felled so that +their tops lay outwards from the intrenchments. The limbs had been +trimmed and pointed, and thus formed an abatis in front of the greater +part of the line. Outside of this intrenched line, and extending about +half the entire length of it, is a ravine running north and south and +opening into Hickman creek at a point north of the fort. The entire +side of this ravine next to the works was one long abatis. + +General Halleck commenced his efforts in all quarters to get +reinforcements to forward to me immediately on my departure from Cairo. +General Hunter sent men freely from Kansas, and a large division under +General Nelson, from Buell's army, was also dispatched. Orders went out +from the War Department to consolidate fragments of companies that were +being recruited in the Western States so as to make full companies, and +to consolidate companies into regiments. General Halleck did not +approve or disapprove of my going to Fort Donelson. He said nothing +whatever to me on the subject. He informed Buell on the 7th that I +would march against Fort Donelson the next day; but on the 10th he +directed me to fortify Fort Henry strongly, particularly to the land +side, saying that he forwarded me intrenching tools for that purpose. I +received this dispatch in front of Fort Donelson. + +I was very impatient to get to Fort Donelson because I knew the +importance of the place to the enemy and supposed he would reinforce it +rapidly. I felt that 15,000 men on the 8th would be more effective than +50,000 a month later. I asked Flag-officer Foote, therefore, to order +his gunboats still about Cairo to proceed up the Cumberland River and +not to wait for those gone to Eastport and Florence; but the others got +back in time and we started on the 12th. I had moved McClernand out a +few miles the night before so as to leave the road as free as possible. + +Just as we were about to start the first reinforcement reached me on +transports. It was a brigade composed of six full regiments commanded +by Colonel Thayer, of Nebraska. As the gunboats were going around to +Donelson by the Tennessee, Ohio and Cumberland rivers, I directed Thayer +to turn about and go under their convoy. + +I started from Fort Henry with 15,000 men, including eight batteries and +part of a regiment of cavalry, and, meeting with no obstruction to +detain us, the advance arrived in front of the enemy by noon. That +afternoon and the next day were spent in taking up ground to make the +investment as complete as possible. General Smith had been directed to +leave a portion of his division behind to guard forts Henry and Heiman. +He left General Lew. Wallace with 2,500 men. With the remainder of his +division he occupied our left, extending to Hickman creek. McClernand +was on the right and covered the roads running south and south-west from +Dover. His right extended to the back-water up the ravine opening into +the Cumberland south of the village. The troops were not intrenched, but +the nature of the ground was such that they were just as well protected +from the fire of the enemy as if rifle-pits had been thrown up. Our +line was generally along the crest of ridges. The artillery was +protected by being sunk in the ground. The men who were not serving the +guns were perfectly covered from fire on taking position a little back +from the crest. The greatest suffering was from want of shelter. It +was midwinter and during the siege we had rain and snow, thawing and +freezing alternately. It would not do to allow camp-fires except far +down the hill out of sight of the enemy, and it would not do to allow +many of the troops to remain there at the same time. In the march over +from Fort Henry numbers of the men had thrown away their blankets and +overcoats. There was therefore much discomfort and absolute suffering. + +During the 12th and 13th, and until the arrival of Wallace and Thayer on +the 14th, the National forces, composed of but 15,000 men, without +intrenchments, confronted an intrenched army of 21,000, without conflict +further than what was brought on by ourselves. Only one gunboat had +arrived. There was a little skirmishing each day, brought on by the +movement of our troops in securing commanding positions; but there was +no actual fighting during this time except once, on the 13th, in front +of McClernand's command. That general had undertaken to capture a +battery of the enemy which was annoying his men. Without orders or +authority he sent three regiments to make the assault. The battery was +in the main line of the enemy, which was defended by his whole army +present. Of course the assault was a failure, and of course the loss on +our side was great for the number of men engaged. In this assault +Colonel William Morrison fell badly wounded. Up to this time the +surgeons with the army had no difficulty in finding room in the houses +near our line for all the sick and wounded; but now hospitals were +overcrowded. Owing, however, to the energy and skill of the surgeons the +suffering was not so great as it might have been. The hospital +arrangements at Fort Donelson were as complete as it was possible to +make them, considering the inclemency of the weather and the lack of +tents, in a sparsely settled country where the houses were generally of +but one or two rooms. + +On the return of Captain Walke to Fort Henry on the 10th, I had +requested him to take the vessels that had accompanied him on his +expedition up the Tennessee, and get possession of the Cumberland as far +up towards Donelson as possible. He started without delay, taking, +however, only his own gunboat, the Carondelet, towed by the steamer +Alps. Captain Walke arrived a few miles below Donelson on the 12th, a +little after noon. About the time the advance of troops reached a point +within gunshot of the fort on the land side, he engaged the water +batteries at long range. On the 13th I informed him of my arrival the +day before and of the establishment of most of our batteries, requesting +him at the same time to attack again that day so that I might take +advantage of any diversion. The attack was made and many shots fell +within the fort, creating some consternation, as we now know. The +investment on the land side was made as complete as the number of troops +engaged would admit of. + +During the night of the 13th Flag-officer Foote arrived with the +iron-clads St. Louis, Louisville and Pittsburg and the wooden gunboats +Tyler and Conestoga, convoying Thayer's brigade. On the morning of the +14th Thayer was landed. Wallace, whom I had ordered over from Fort +Henry, also arrived about the same time. Up to this time he had been +commanding a brigade belonging to the division of General C. F. Smith. +These troops were now restored to the division they belonged to, and +General Lew. Wallace was assigned to the command of a division composed +of the brigade of Colonel Thayer and other reinforcements that arrived +the same day. This new division was assigned to the centre, giving the +two flanking divisions an opportunity to close up and form a stronger +line. + +The plan was for the troops to hold the enemy within his lines, while +the gunboats should attack the water batteries at close quarters and +silence his guns if possible. Some of the gunboats were to run the +batteries, get above the fort and above the village of Dover. I had +ordered a reconnoissance made with the view of getting troops to the +river above Dover in case they should be needed there. That position +attained by the gunboats it would have been but a question of time--and +a very short time, too--when the garrison would have been compelled to +surrender. + +By three in the afternoon of the 14th Flag-officer Foote was ready, and +advanced upon the water batteries with his entire fleet. After coming +in range of the batteries of the enemy the advance was slow, but a +constant fire was delivered from every gun that could be brought to bear +upon the fort. I occupied a position on shore from which I could see +the advancing navy. The leading boat got within a very short distance of +the water battery, not further off I think than two hundred yards, and I +soon saw one and then another of them dropping down the river, visibly +disabled. Then the whole fleet followed and the engagement closed for +the day. The gunboat which Flag-officer Foote was on, besides having +been hit about sixty times, several of the shots passing through near +the waterline, had a shot enter the pilot-house which killed the pilot, +carried away the wheel and wounded the flag-officer himself. The +tiller-ropes of another vessel were carried away and she, too, dropped +helplessly back. Two others had their pilot-houses so injured that they +scarcely formed a protection to the men at the wheel. + +The enemy had evidently been much demoralized by the assault, but they +were jubilant when they saw the disabled vessels dropping down the river +entirely out of the control of the men on board. Of course I only +witnessed the falling back of our gunboats and felt sad enough at the +time over the repulse. Subsequent reports, now published, show that the +enemy telegraphed a great victory to Richmond. The sun went down on the +night of the 14th of February, 1862, leaving the army confronting Fort +Donelson anything but comforted over the prospects. The weather had +turned intensely cold; the men were without tents and could not keep up +fires where most of them had to stay, and, as previously stated, many +had thrown away their overcoats and blankets. Two of the strongest of +our gunboats had been disabled, presumably beyond the possibility of +rendering any present assistance. I retired this night not knowing but +that I would have to intrench my position, and bring up tents for the +men or build huts under the cover of the hills. + +On the morning of the 15th, before it was yet broad day, a messenger +from Flag-officer Foote handed me a note, expressing a desire to see me +on the flag-ship and saying that he had been injured the day before so +much that he could not come himself to me. I at once made my +preparations for starting. I directed my adjutant-general to notify +each of the division commanders of my absence and instruct them to do +nothing to bring on an engagement until they received further orders, +but to hold their positions. From the heavy rains that had fallen for +days and weeks preceding and from the constant use of the roads between +the troops and the landing four to seven miles below, these roads had +become cut up so as to be hardly passable. The intense cold of the +night of the 14th-15th had frozen the ground solid. This made travel on +horseback even slower than through the mud; but I went as fast as the +roads would allow. + +When I reached the fleet I found the flag-ship was anchored out in the +stream. A small boat, however, awaited my arrival and I was soon on +board with the flag-officer. He explained to me in short the condition +in which he was left by the engagement of the evening before, and +suggested that I should intrench while he returned to Mound City with +his disabled boats, expressing at the time the belief that he could have +the necessary repairs made and be back in ten days. I saw the absolute +necessity of his gunboats going into hospital and did not know but I +should be forced to the alternative of going through a siege. But the +enemy relieved me from this necessity. + +When I left the National line to visit Flag-officer Foote I had no idea +that there would be any engagement on land unless I brought it on +myself. The conditions for battle were much more favorable to us than +they had been for the first two days of the investment. From the 12th +to the 14th we had but 15,000 men of all arms and no gunboats. Now we +had been reinforced by a fleet of six naval vessels, a large division of +troops under General L. Wallace and 2,500 men brought over from Fort +Henry belonging to the division of C. F. Smith. The enemy, however, had +taken the initiative. Just as I landed I met Captain Hillyer of my +staff, white with fear, not for his personal safety, but for the safety +of the National troops. He said the enemy had come out of his lines in +full force and attacked and scattered McClernand's division, which was +in full retreat. The roads, as I have said, were unfit for making fast +time, but I got to my command as soon as possible. The attack had been +made on the National right. I was some four or five miles north of our +left. The line was about three miles long. In reaching the point where +the disaster had occurred I had to pass the divisions of Smith and +Wallace. I saw no sign of excitement on the portion of the line held by +Smith; Wallace was nearer the scene of conflict and had taken part in +it. He had, at an opportune time, sent Thayer's brigade to the support +of McClernand and thereby contributed to hold the enemy within his +lines. + +I saw everything favorable for us along the line of our left and centre. +When I came to the right appearances were different. The enemy had come +out in full force to cut his way out and make his escape. McClernand's +division had to bear the brunt of the attack from this combined force. +His men had stood up gallantly until the ammunition in their +cartridge-boxes gave out. There was abundance of ammunition near by +lying on the ground in boxes, but at that stage of the war it was not +all of our commanders of regiments, brigades, or even divisions, who had +been educated up to the point of seeing that their men were constantly +supplied with ammunition during an engagement. When the men found +themselves without ammunition they could not stand up against troops who +seemed to have plenty of it. The division broke and a portion fled, but +most of the men, as they were not pursued, only fell back out of range +of the fire of the enemy. It must have been about this time that Thayer +pushed his brigade in between the enemy and those of our troops that +were without ammunition. At all events the enemy fell back within his +intrenchments and was there when I got on the field. + +I saw the men standing in knots talking in the most excited manner. No +officer seemed to be giving any directions. The soldiers had their +muskets, but no ammunition, while there were tons of it close at hand. +I heard some of the men say that the enemy had come out with knapsacks, +and haversacks filled with rations. They seemed to think this indicated +a determination on his part to stay out and fight just as long as the +provisions held out. I turned to Colonel J. D. Webster, of my staff, +who was with me, and said: "Some of our men are pretty badly +demoralized, but the enemy must be more so, for he has attempted to +force his way out, but has fallen back: the one who attacks first now +will be victorious and the enemy will have to be in a hurry if he gets +ahead of me." I determined to make the assault at once on our left. It +was clear to my mind that the enemy had started to march out with his +entire force, except a few pickets, and if our attack could be made on +the left before the enemy could redistribute his forces along the line, +we would find but little opposition except from the intervening abatis. +I directed Colonel Webster to ride with me and call out to the men as we +passed: "Fill your cartridge-boxes, quick, and get into line; the enemy +is trying to escape and he must not be permitted to do so." This acted +like a charm. The men only wanted some one to give them a command. We +rode rapidly to Smith's quarters, when I explained the situation to him +and directed him to charge the enemy's works in his front with his whole +division, saying at the same time that he would find nothing but a very +thin line to contend with. The general was off in an incredibly short +time, going in advance himself to keep his men from firing while they +were working their way through the abatis intervening between them and +the enemy. The outer line of rifle-pits was passed, and the night of +the 15th General Smith, with much of his division, bivouacked within the +lines of the enemy. There was now no doubt but that the Confederates +must surrender or be captured the next day. + +There seems from subsequent accounts to have been much consternation, +particularly among the officers of high rank, in Dover during the night +of the 15th. General Floyd, the commanding officer, who was a man of +talent enough for any civil position, was no soldier and, possibly, did +not possess the elements of one. He was further unfitted for command, +for the reason that his conscience must have troubled him and made him +afraid. As Secretary of War he had taken a solemn oath to maintain the +Constitution of the United States and to uphold the same against all its +enemies. He had betrayed that trust. As Secretary of War he was +reported through the northern press to have scattered the little army +the country had so that the most of it could be picked up in detail when +secession occurred. About a year before leaving the Cabinet he had +removed arms from northern to southern arsenals. He continued in the +Cabinet of President Buchanan until about the 1st of January, 1861, +while he was working vigilantly for the establishment of a confederacy +made out of United States territory. Well may he have been afraid to +fall into the hands of National troops. He would no doubt have been +tried for misappropriating public property, if not for treason, had he +been captured. General Pillow, next in command, was conceited, and +prided himself much on his services in the Mexican war. He telegraphed +to General Johnston, at Nashville, after our men were within the rebel +rifle-pits, and almost on the eve of his making his escape, that the +Southern troops had had great success all day. Johnston forwarded the +dispatch to Richmond. While the authorities at the capital were reading +it Floyd and Pillow were fugitives. + +A council of war was held by the enemy at which all agreed that it would +be impossible to hold out longer. General Buckner, who was third in +rank in the garrison but much the most capable soldier, seems to have +regarded it a duty to hold the fort until the general commanding the +department, A. S. Johnston, should get back to his headquarters at +Nashville. Buckner's report shows, however, that he considered Donelson +lost and that any attempt to hold the place longer would be at the +sacrifice of the command. Being assured that Johnston was already in +Nashville, Buckner too agreed that surrender was the proper thing. +Floyd turned over the command to Pillow, who declined it. It then +devolved upon Buckner, who accepted the responsibility of the position. +Floyd and Pillow took possession of all the river transports at Dover +and before morning both were on their way to Nashville, with the brigade +formerly commanded by Floyd and some other troops, in all about 3,000. +Some marched up the east bank of the Cumberland; others went on the +steamers. During the night Forrest also, with his cavalry and some +other troops about a thousand in all, made their way out, passing +between our right and the river. They had to ford or swim over the +back-water in the little creek just south of Dover. + +Before daylight General Smith brought to me the following letter from +General Buckner: + + +HEADQUARTERS, FORT DONELSON, February 16, 1862. + +SIR:--In consideration of all the circumstances governing the present +situation of affairs at this station, I propose to the Commanding +Officer of the Federal forces the appointment of Commissioners to agree +upon terms of capitulation of the forces and fort under my command, and +in that view suggest an armistice until 12 o'clock to-day. + +I am, sir, very respectfully, Your ob't se'v't, S. B. BUCKNER, Brig. +Gen. C. S. A. + +To Brigadier-General U. S. Grant, Com'ding U. S. Forces, Near Fort +Donelson. + + +To this I responded as follows: + + +HEADQUARTERS ARMY IN THE FIELD, Camp near Donelson, February 16, 1862. + +General S. B. BUCKNER, Confederate Army. + +SIR:--Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of +Commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No +terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. +I propose to move immediately upon your works. + +I am, sir, very respectfully, Your ob't se'v't, U. S. GRANT, Brig. Gen. + + +To this I received the following reply: + + +HEADQUARTERS, DOVER, TENNESSEE, February 16, 1862. + +To Brig. Gen'l U. S. GRANT, U. S. Army. + +SIR:--The distribution of the forces under my command, incident to an +unexpected change of commanders, and the overwhelming force under your +command, compel me, notwithstanding the brilliant success of the +Confederate arms yesterday, to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous +terms which you propose. + +I am, sir, Your very ob't se'v't, S. B. BUCKNER, Brig. Gen. C. S. A. + + +General Buckner, as soon as he had dispatched the first of the above +letters, sent word to his different commanders on the line of +rifle-pits, notifying them that he had made a proposition looking to the +surrender of the garrison, and directing them to notify National troops +in their front so that all fighting might be prevented. White flags +were stuck at intervals along the line of rifle-pits, but none over the +fort. As soon as the last letter from Buckner was received I mounted my +horse and rode to Dover. General Wallace, I found, had preceded me an +hour or more. I presume that, seeing white flags exposed in his front, +he rode up to see what they meant and, not being fired upon or halted, +he kept on until he found himself at the headquarters of General +Buckner. + +I had been at West Point three years with Buckner and afterwards served +with him in the army, so that we were quite well acquainted. In the +course of our conversation, which was very friendly, he said to me that +if he had been in command I would not have got up to Donelson as easily +as I did. I told him that if he had been in command I should not have +tried in the way I did: I had invested their lines with a smaller force +than they had to defend them, and at the same time had sent a brigade +full 5,000 strong, around by water; I had relied very much upon their +commander to allow me to come safely up to the outside of their works. +I asked General Buckner about what force he had to surrender. He +replied that he could not tell with any degree of accuracy; that all the +sick and weak had been sent to Nashville while we were about Fort Henry; +that Floyd and Pillow had left during the night, taking many men with +them; and that Forrest, and probably others, had also escaped during the +preceding night: the number of casualties he could not tell; but he +said I would not find fewer than 12,000, nor more than 15,000. + +He asked permission to send parties outside of the lines to bury his +dead, who had fallen on the 15th when they tried to get out. I gave +directions that his permit to pass our limits should be recognized. I +have no reason to believe that this privilege was abused, but it +familiarized our guards so much with the sight of Confederates passing +to and fro that I have no doubt many got beyond our pickets unobserved +and went on. The most of the men who went in that way no doubt thought +they had had war enough, and left with the intention of remaining out of +the army. Some came to me and asked permission to go, saying that they +were tired of the war and would not be caught in the ranks again, and I +bade them go. + +The actual number of Confederates at Fort Donelson can never be given +with entire accuracy. The largest number admitted by any writer on the +Southern side, is by Colonel Preston Johnston. He gives the number at +17,000. But this must be an underestimate. The commissary general of +prisoners reported having issued rations to 14,623 Fort Donelson +prisoners at Cairo, as they passed that point. General Pillow reported +the killed and wounded at 2,000; but he had less opportunity of knowing +the actual numbers than the officers of McClernand's division, for most +of the killed and wounded fell outside their works, in front of that +division, and were buried or cared for by Buckner after the surrender +and when Pillow was a fugitive. It is known that Floyd and Pillow +escaped during the night of the 15th, taking with them not less than +3,000 men. Forrest escaped with about 1,000 and others were leaving +singly and in squads all night. It is probable that the Confederate +force at Donelson, on the 15th of February, 1862, was 21,000 in round +numbers. + +On the day Fort Donelson fell I had 27,000 men to confront the +Confederate lines and guard the road four or five miles to the left, +over which all our supplies had to be drawn on wagons. During the 16th, +after the surrender, additional reinforcements arrived. + +During the siege General Sherman had been sent to Smithland, at the +mouth of the Cumberland River, to forward reinforcements and supplies to +me. At that time he was my senior in rank and there was no authority of +law to assign a junior to command a senior of the same grade. But every +boat that came up with supplies or reinforcements brought a note of +encouragement from Sherman, asking me to call upon him for any +assistance he could render and saying that if he could be of service at +the front I might send for him and he would waive rank. + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +PROMOTED MAJOR-GENERAL OF VOLUNTEERS--UNOCCUPIED TERRITORY--ADVANCE UPON +NASHVILLE--SITUATION OF THE TROOPS--CONFEDERATE RETREAT--RELIEVED OF THE +COMMAND--RESTORED TO THE COMMAND--GENERAL SMITH. + +The news of the fall of Fort Donelson caused great delight all over the +North. At the South, particularly in Richmond, the effect was +correspondingly depressing. I was promptly promoted to the grade of +Major-General of Volunteers, and confirmed by the Senate. All three of +my division commanders were promoted to the same grade and the colonels +who commanded brigades were made brigadier-generals in the volunteer +service. My chief, who was in St. Louis, telegraphed his +congratulations to General Hunter in Kansas for the services he had +rendered in securing the fall of Fort Donelson by sending reinforcements +so rapidly. To Washington he telegraphed that the victory was due to +General C. F. Smith; "promote him," he said, "and the whole country will +applaud." On the 19th there was published at St. Louis a formal order +thanking Flag-officer Foote and myself, and the forces under our +command, for the victories on the Tennessee and the Cumberland. I +received no other recognition whatever from General Halleck. But +General Cullum, his chief of staff, who was at Cairo, wrote me a warm +congratulatory letter on his own behalf. I approved of General Smith's +promotion highly, as I did all the promotions that were made. + +My opinion was and still is that immediately after the fall of Fort +Donelson the way was opened to the National forces all over the +South-west without much resistance. If one general who would have taken +the responsibility had been in command of all the troops west of the +Alleghanies, he could have marched to Chattanooga, Corinth, Memphis and +Vicksburg with the troops we then had, and as volunteering was going on +rapidly over the North there would soon have been force enough at all +these centres to operate offensively against any body of the enemy that +might be found near them. Rapid movements and the acquisition of +rebellious territory would have promoted volunteering, so that +reinforcements could have been had as fast as transportation could have +been obtained to carry them to their destination. On the other hand +there were tens of thousands of strong able-bodied young men still at +their homes in the South-western States, who had not gone into the +Confederate army in February, 1862, and who had no particular desire to +go. If our lines had been extended to protect their homes, many of them +never would have gone. Providence ruled differently. Time was given +the enemy to collect armies and fortify his new positions; and twice +afterwards he came near forcing his north-western front up to the Ohio +River. + +I promptly informed the department commander of our success at Fort +Donelson and that the way was open now to Clarksville and Nashville; and +that unless I received orders to the contrary I should take Clarksville +on the 21st and Nashville about the 1st of March. Both these places are +on the Cumberland River above Fort Donelson. As I heard nothing from +headquarters on the subject, General C. F. Smith was sent to Clarksville +at the time designated and found the place evacuated. The capture of +forts Henry and Donelson had broken the line the enemy had taken from +Columbus to Bowling Green, and it was known that he was falling back +from the eastern point of this line and that Buell was following, or at +least advancing. I should have sent troops to Nashville at the time I +sent to Clarksville, but my transportation was limited and there were +many prisoners to be forwarded north. + +None of the reinforcements from Buell's army arrived until the 24th of +February. Then General Nelson came up, with orders to report to me with +two brigades, he having sent one brigade to Cairo. I knew General Buell +was advancing on Nashville from the north, and I was advised by scouts +that the rebels were leaving that place, and trying to get out all the +supplies they could. Nashville was, at that time, one of the best +provisioned posts in the South. I had no use for reinforcements now, +and thinking Buell would like to have his troops again, I ordered Nelson +to proceed to Nashville without debarking at Fort Donelson. I sent a +gunboat also as a convoy. The Cumberland River was very high at the +time; the railroad bridge at Nashville had been burned, and all river +craft had been destroyed, or would be before the enemy left. Nashville +is on the west bank of the Cumberland, and Buell was approaching from +the east. I thought the steamers carrying Nelson's division would be +useful in ferrying the balance of Buell's forces across. I ordered +Nelson to put himself in communication with Buell as soon as possible, +and if he found him more than two days off from Nashville to return +below the city and await orders. Buell, however, had already arrived in +person at Edgefield, opposite Nashville, and Mitchell's division of his +command reached there the same day. Nelson immediately took possession +of the city. + +After Nelson had gone and before I had learned of Buell's arrival, I +sent word to department headquarters that I should go to Nashville +myself on the 28th if I received no orders to the contrary. Hearing +nothing, I went as I had informed my superior officer I would do. On +arriving at Clarksville I saw a fleet of steamers at the shore--the same +that had taken Nelson's division--and troops going aboard. I landed and +called on the commanding officer, General C. F. Smith. As soon as he +saw me he showed an order he had just received from Buell in these +words: + + +NASHVILLE, February 25, 1862. + +GENERAL C. F. SMITH, Commanding U. S. Forces, Clarksville. + +GENERAL:--The landing of a portion of our troops, contrary to my +intentions, on the south side of the river has compelled me to hold this +side at every hazard. If the enemy should assume the offensive, and I +am assured by reliable persons that in view of my position such is his +intention, my force present is altogether inadequate, consisting of only +15,000 men. I have to request you, therefore, to come forward with all +the available force under your command. So important do I consider the +occasion that I think it necessary to give this communication all the +force of orders, and I send four boats, the Diana, Woodford, John Rain, +and Autocrat, to bring you up. In five or six days my force will +probably be sufficient to relieve you. + +Very respectfully, your ob't srv't, D. C. BUELL, Brigadier-General +Comd'g. + +P. S.--The steamers will leave here at 12 o'clock to-night. + + +General Smith said this order was nonsense. But I told him it was +better to obey it. The General replied, "of course I must obey," and +said his men were embarking as fast as they could. I went on up to +Nashville and inspected the position taken by Nelson's troops. I did +not see Buell during the day, and wrote him a note saying that I had +been in Nashville since early morning and had hoped to meet him. On my +return to the boat we met. His troops were still east of the river, and +the steamers that had carried Nelson's division up were mostly at +Clarksville to bring Smith's division. I said to General Buell my +information was that the enemy was retreating as fast as possible. +General Buell said there was fighting going on then only ten or twelve +miles away. I said: "Quite probably; Nashville contained valuable +stores of arms, ammunition and provisions, and the enemy is probably +trying to carry away all he can. The fighting is doubtless with the +rear-guard who are trying to protect the trains they are getting away +with." Buell spoke very positively of the danger Nashville was in of an +attack from the enemy. I said, in the absence of positive information, +I believed my information was correct. He responded that he "knew." +"Well," I said, "I do not know; but as I came by Clarksville General +Smith's troops were embarking to join you." + +Smith's troops were returned the same day. The enemy were trying to get +away from Nashville and not to return to it. + +At this time General Albert Sidney Johnston commanded all the +Confederate troops west of the Alleghany Mountains, with the exception +of those in the extreme south. On the National side the forces +confronting him were divided into, at first three, then four separate +departments. Johnston had greatly the advantage in having supreme +command over all troops that could possibly be brought to bear upon one +point, while the forces similarly situated on the National side, divided +into independent commands, could not be brought into harmonious action +except by orders from Washington. + +At the beginning of 1862 Johnston's troops east of the Mississippi +occupied a line extending from Columbus, on his left, to Mill Springs, +on his right. As we have seen, Columbus, both banks of the Tennessee +River, the west bank of the Cumberland and Bowling Green, all were +strongly fortified. Mill Springs was intrenched. The National troops +occupied no territory south of the Ohio, except three small garrisons +along its bank and a force thrown out from Louisville to confront that +at Bowling Green. Johnston's strength was no doubt numerically inferior +to that of the National troops; but this was compensated for by the +advantage of being sole commander of all the Confederate forces at the +West, and of operating in a country where his friends would take care of +his rear without any detail of soldiers. But when General George H. +Thomas moved upon the enemy at Mill Springs and totally routed him, +inflicting a loss of some 300 killed and wounded, and forts Henry and +Heiman fell into the hands of the National forces, with their armaments +and about 100 prisoners, those losses seemed to dishearten the +Confederate commander so much that he immediately commenced a retreat +from Bowling Green on Nashville. He reached this latter place on the +14th of February, while Donelson was still besieged. Buell followed +with a portion of the Army of the Ohio, but he had to march and did not +reach the east bank of the Cumberland opposite Nashville until the 24th +of the month, and then with only one division of his army. + +The bridge at Nashville had been destroyed and all boats removed or +disabled, so that a small garrison could have held the place against any +National troops that could have been brought against it within ten days +after the arrival of the force from Bowling Green. Johnston seemed to +lie quietly at Nashville to await the result at Fort Donelson, on which +he had staked the possession of most of the territory embraced in the +States of Kentucky and Tennessee. It is true, the two generals senior +in rank at Fort Donelson were sending him encouraging dispatches, even +claiming great Confederate victories up to the night of the 16th when +they must have been preparing for their individual escape. Johnston made +a fatal mistake in intrusting so important a command to Floyd, who he +must have known was no soldier even if he possessed the elements of one. +Pillow's presence as second was also a mistake. If these officers had +been forced upon him and designated for that particular command, then he +should have left Nashville with a small garrison under a trusty officer, +and with the remainder of his force gone to Donelson himself. If he had +been captured the result could not have been worse than it was. + +Johnston's heart failed him upon the first advance of National troops. +He wrote to Richmond on the 8th of February, "I think the gunboats of +the enemy will probably take Fort Donelson without the necessity of +employing their land force in cooperation." After the fall of that +place he abandoned Nashville and Chattanooga without an effort to save +either, and fell back into northern Mississippi, where, six weeks later, +he was destined to end his career. + +From the time of leaving Cairo I was singularly unfortunate in not +receiving dispatches from General Halleck. The order of the 10th of +February directing me to fortify Fort Henry strongly, particularly to +the land side, and saying that intrenching tools had been sent for that +purpose, reached me after Donelson was invested. I received nothing +direct which indicated that the department commander knew we were in +possession of Donelson. I was reporting regularly to the chief of +staff, who had been sent to Cairo, soon after the troops left there, to +receive all reports from the front and to telegraph the substance to the +St. Louis headquarters. Cairo was at the southern end of the telegraph +wire. Another line was started at once from Cairo to Paducah and +Smithland, at the mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland respectively. +My dispatches were all sent to Cairo by boat, but many of those +addressed to me were sent to the operator at the end of the advancing +wire and he failed to forward them. This operator afterwards proved to +be a rebel; he deserted his post after a short time and went south +taking his dispatches with him. A telegram from General McClellan to me +of February 16th, the day of the surrender, directing me to report in +full the situation, was not received at my headquarters until the 3d of +March. + +On the 2d of March I received orders dated March 1st to move my command +back to Fort Henry, leaving only a small garrison at Donelson. From +Fort Henry expeditions were to be sent against Eastport, Mississippi, +and Paris, Tennessee. We started from Donelson on the 4th, and the same +day I was back on the Tennessee River. On March 4th I also received the +following dispatch from General Halleck: + + +MAJ.-GEN. U. S. GRANT, Fort Henry: + +You will place Maj.-Gen. C. F. Smith in command of expedition, and +remain yourself at Fort Henry. Why do you not obey my orders to report +strength and positions of your command? + +H. W. HALLECK, Major-General. + + +I was surprised. This was the first intimation I had received that +General Halleck had called for information as to the strength of my +command. On the 6th he wrote to me again. "Your going to Nashville +without authority, and when your presence with your troops was of the +utmost importance, was a matter of very serious complaint at Washington, +so much so that I was advised to arrest you on your return." This was +the first I knew of his objecting to my going to Nashville. That place +was not beyond the limits of my command, which, it had been expressly +declared in orders, were "not defined." Nashville is west of the +Cumberland River, and I had sent troops that had reported to me for duty +to occupy the place. I turned over the command as directed and then +replied to General Halleck courteously, but asked to be relieved from +further duty under him. + +Later I learned that General Halleck had been calling lustily for more +troops, promising that he would do something important if he could only +be sufficiently reinforced. McClellan asked him what force he then had. +Halleck telegraphed me to supply the information so far as my command +was concerned, but I received none of his dispatches. At last Halleck +reported to Washington that he had repeatedly ordered me to give the +strength of my force, but could get nothing out of me; that I had gone +to Nashville, beyond the limits of my command, without his authority, +and that my army was more demoralized by victory than the army at Bull +Run had been by defeat. General McClellan, on this information, ordered +that I should be relieved from duty and that an investigation should be +made into any charges against me. He even authorized my arrest. Thus +in less than two weeks after the victory at Donelson, the two leading +generals in the army were in correspondence as to what disposition +should be made of me, and in less than three weeks I was virtually in +arrest and without a command. + +On the 13th of March I was restored to command, and on the 17th Halleck +sent me a copy of an order from the War Department which stated that +accounts of my misbehavior had reached Washington and directed him to +investigate and report the facts. He forwarded also a copy of a +detailed dispatch from himself to Washington entirely exonerating me; +but he did not inform me that it was his own reports that had created +all the trouble. On the contrary, he wrote to me, "Instead of relieving +you, I wish you, as soon as your new army is in the field, to assume +immediate command, and lead it to new victories." In consequence I felt +very grateful to him, and supposed it was his interposition that had set +me right with the government. I never knew the truth until General +Badeau unearthed the facts in his researches for his history of my +campaigns. + +General Halleck unquestionably deemed General C. F. Smith a much fitter +officer for the command of all the forces in the military district than +I was, and, to render him available for such command, desired his +promotion to antedate mine and those of the other division commanders. +It is probable that the general opinion was that Smith's long services +in the army and distinguished deeds rendered him the more proper person +for such command. Indeed I was rather inclined to this opinion myself +at that time, and would have served as faithfully under Smith as he had +done under me. But this did not justify the dispatches which General +Halleck sent to Washington, or his subsequent concealment of them from +me when pretending to explain the action of my superiors. + +On receipt of the order restoring me to command I proceeded to Savannah +on the Tennessee, to which point my troops had advanced. General Smith +was delighted to see me and was unhesitating in his denunciation of the +treatment I had received. He was on a sick bed at the time, from which +he never came away alive. His death was a severe loss to our western +army. His personal courage was unquestioned, his judgment and +professional acquirements were unsurpassed, and he had the confidence +of those he commanded as well as of those over him. + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +THE ARMY AT PITTSBURG LANDING--INJURED BY A FALL--THE CONFEDERATE ATTACK +AT SHILOH--THE FIRST DAY'S FIGHT AT SHILOH--GENERAL SHERMAN--CONDITION +OF THE ARMY--CLOSE OF THE FIRST DAY'S FIGHT--THE SECOND DAY'S FIGHT +--RETREAT AND DEFEAT OF THE CONFEDERATES. + +When I reassumed command on the 17th of March I found the army divided, +about half being on the east bank of the Tennessee at Savannah, while +one division was at Crump's landing on the west bank about four miles +higher up, and the remainder at Pittsburg landing, five miles above +Crump's. The enemy was in force at Corinth, the junction of the two +most important railroads in the Mississippi valley--one connecting +Memphis and the Mississippi River with the East, and the other leading +south to all the cotton states. Still another railroad connects Corinth +with Jackson, in west Tennessee. If we obtained possession of Corinth +the enemy would have no railroad for the transportation of armies or +supplies until that running east from Vicksburg was reached. It was the +great strategic position at the West between the Tennessee and the +Mississippi rivers and between Nashville and Vicksburg. + +I at once put all the troops at Savannah in motion for Pittsburg +landing, knowing that the enemy was fortifying at Corinth and collecting +an army there under Johnston. It was my expectation to march against +that army as soon as Buell, who had been ordered to reinforce me with +the Army of the Ohio, should arrive; and the west bank of the river was +the place to start from. Pittsburg is only about twenty miles from +Corinth, and Hamburg landing, four miles further up the river, is a mile +or two nearer. I had not been in command long before I selected Hamburg +as the place to put the Army of the Ohio when it arrived. The roads +from Pittsburg and Hamburg to Corinth converge some eight miles out. +This disposition of the troops would have given additional roads to +march over when the advance commenced, within supporting distance of +each other. + +Before I arrived at Savannah, Sherman, who had joined the Army of the +Tennessee and been placed in command of a division, had made an +expedition on steamers convoyed by gunboats to the neighborhood of +Eastport, thirty miles south, for the purpose of destroying the railroad +east of Corinth. The rains had been so heavy for some time before that +the low-lands had become impassable swamps. Sherman debarked his troops +and started out to accomplish the object of the expedition; but the +river was rising so rapidly that the back-water up the small tributaries +threatened to cut off the possibility of getting back to the boats, and +the expedition had to return without reaching the railroad. The guns +had to be hauled by hand through the water to get back to the boats. + +On the 17th of March the army on the Tennessee River consisted of five +divisions, commanded respectively by Generals C. F. Smith, McClernand, +L. Wallace, Hurlbut and Sherman. General W. H. L. Wallace was +temporarily in command of Smith's division, General Smith, as I have +said, being confined to his bed. Reinforcements were arriving daily and +as they came up they were organized, first into brigades, then into a +division, and the command given to General Prentiss, who had been +ordered to report to me. General Buell was on his way from Nashville +with 40,000 veterans. On the 19th of March he was at Columbia, +Tennessee, eighty-five miles from Pittsburg. When all reinforcements +should have arrived I expected to take the initiative by marching on +Corinth, and had no expectation of needing fortifications, though this +subject was taken into consideration. McPherson, my only military +engineer, was directed to lay out a line to intrench. He did so, but +reported that it would have to be made in rear of the line of encampment +as it then ran. The new line, while it would be nearer the river, was +yet too far away from the Tennessee, or even from the creeks, to be +easily supplied with water, and in case of attack these creeks would be +in the hands of the enemy. The fact is, I regarded the campaign we were +engaged in as an offensive one and had no idea that the enemy would +leave strong intrenchments to take the initiative when he knew he would +be attacked where he was if he remained. This view, however, did not +prevent every precaution being taken and every effort made to keep +advised of all movements of the enemy. + +Johnston's cavalry meanwhile had been well out towards our front, and +occasional encounters occurred between it and our outposts. On the 1st +of April this cavalry became bold and approached our lines, showing that +an advance of some kind was contemplated. On the 2d Johnston left +Corinth in force to attack my army. On the 4th his cavalry dashed down +and captured a small picket guard of six or seven men, stationed some +five miles out from Pittsburg on the Corinth road. Colonel Buckland +sent relief to the guard at once and soon followed in person with an +entire regiment, and General Sherman followed Buckland taking the +remainder of a brigade. The pursuit was kept up for some three miles +beyond the point where the picket guard had been captured, and after +nightfall Sherman returned to camp and reported to me by letter what had +occurred. + +At this time a large body of the enemy was hovering to the west of us, +along the line of the Mobile and Ohio railroad. My apprehension was +much greater for the safety of Crump's landing than it was for +Pittsburg. I had no apprehension that the enemy could really capture +either place. But I feared it was possible that he might make a rapid +dash upon Crump's and destroy our transports and stores, most of which +were kept at that point, and then retreat before Wallace could be +reinforced. Lew. Wallace's position I regarded as so well chosen that +he was not removed. + +At this time I generally spent the day at Pittsburg and returned to +Savannah in the evening. I was intending to remove my headquarters to +Pittsburg, but Buell was expected daily and would come in at Savannah. +I remained at this point, therefore, a few days longer than I otherwise +should have done, in order to meet him on his arrival. The skirmishing +in our front, however, had been so continuous from about the 3d of April +that I did not leave Pittsburg each night until an hour when I felt +there would be no further danger before the morning. + +On Friday the 4th, the day of Buckland's advance, I was very much +injured by my horse falling with me, and on me, while I was trying to +get to the front where firing had been heard. The night was one of +impenetrable darkness, with rain pouring down in torrents; nothing was +visible to the eye except as revealed by the frequent flashes of +lightning. Under these circumstances I had to trust to the horse, +without guidance, to keep the road. I had not gone far, however, when I +met General W. H. L. Wallace and Colonel (afterwards General) McPherson +coming from the direction of the front. They said all was quiet so far +as the enemy was concerned. On the way back to the boat my horse's feet +slipped from under him, and he fell with my leg under his body. The +extreme softness of the ground, from the excessive rains of the few +preceding days, no doubt saved me from a severe injury and protracted +lameness. As it was, my ankle was very much injured, so much so that my +boot had to be cut off. For two or three days after I was unable to +walk except with crutches. + +On the 5th General Nelson, with a division of Buell's army, arrived at +Savannah and I ordered him to move up the east bank of the river, to be +in a position where he could be ferried over to Crump's landing or +Pittsburg as occasion required. I had learned that General Buell +himself would be at Savannah the next day, and desired to meet me on his +arrival. Affairs at Pittsburg landing had been such for several days +that I did not want to be away during the day. I determined, therefore, +to take a very early breakfast and ride out to meet Buell, and thus save +time. He had arrived on the evening of the 5th, but had not advised me +of the fact and I was not aware of it until some time after. While I +was at breakfast, however, heavy firing was heard in the direction of +Pittsburg landing, and I hastened there, sending a hurried note to Buell +informing him of the reason why I could not meet him at Savannah. On +the way up the river I directed the dispatch-boat to run in close to +Crump's landing, so that I could communicate with General Lew. Wallace. +I found him waiting on a boat apparently expecting to see me, and I +directed him to get his troops in line ready to execute any orders he +might receive. He replied that his troops were already under arms and +prepared to move. + +Up to that time I had felt by no means certain that Crump's landing +might not be the point of attack. On reaching the front, however, about +eight A.M., I found that the attack on Pittsburg was unmistakable, and +that nothing more than a small guard, to protect our transports and +stores, was needed at Crump's. Captain Baxter, a quartermaster on my +staff, was accordingly directed to go back and order General Wallace to +march immediately to Pittsburg by the road nearest the river. Captain +Baxter made a memorandum of this order. About one P.M., not hearing +from Wallace and being much in need of reinforcements, I sent two more +of my staff, Colonel McPherson and Captain Rowley, to bring him up with +his division. They reported finding him marching towards Purdy, Bethel, +or some point west from the river, and farther from Pittsburg by several +miles than when he started. The road from his first position to +Pittsburg landing was direct and near the river. Between the two points +a bridge had been built across Snake Creek by our troops, at which +Wallace's command had assisted, expressly to enable the troops at the +two places to support each other in case of need. Wallace did not +arrive in time to take part in the first day's fight. General Wallace +has since claimed that the order delivered to him by Captain Baxter was +simply to join the right of the army, and that the road over which he +marched would have taken him to the road from Pittsburg to Purdy where +it crosses Owl Creek on the right of Sherman; but this is not where I +had ordered him nor where I wanted him to go. + +I never could see and do not now see why any order was necessary further +than to direct him to come to Pittsburg landing, without specifying by +what route. His was one of three veteran divisions that had been in +battle, and its absence was severely felt. Later in the war General +Wallace would not have made the mistake that he committed on the 6th of +April, 1862. I presume his idea was that by taking the route he did he +would be able to come around on the flank or rear of the enemy, and thus +perform an act of heroism that would redound to the credit of his +command, as well as to the benefit of his country. + +Some two or three miles from Pittsburg landing was a log meeting-house +called Shiloh. It stood on the ridge which divides the waters of Snake +and Lick creeks, the former emptying into the Tennessee just north of +Pittsburg landing, and the latter south. This point was the key to our +position and was held by Sherman. His division was at that time wholly +raw, no part of it ever having been in an engagement; but I thought this +deficiency was more than made up by the superiority of the commander. +McClernand was on Sherman's left, with troops that had been engaged at +forts Henry and Donelson and were therefore veterans so far as western +troops had become such at that stage of the war. Next to McClernand +came Prentiss with a raw division, and on the extreme left, Stuart with +one brigade of Sherman's division. Hurlbut was in rear of Prentiss, +massed, and in reserve at the time of the onset. The division of +General C. F. Smith was on the right, also in reserve. General Smith +was still sick in bed at Savannah, but within hearing of our guns. His +services would no doubt have been of inestimable value had his health +permitted his presence. The command of his division devolved upon +Brigadier-General W. H. L. Wallace, a most estimable and able officer; a +veteran too, for he had served a year in the Mexican war and had been +with his command at Henry and Donelson. Wallace was mortally wounded in +the first day's engagement, and with the change of commanders thus +necessarily effected in the heat of battle the efficiency of his +division was much weakened. + +The position of our troops made a continuous line from Lick Creek on the +left to Owl Creek, a branch of Snake Creek, on the right, facing nearly +south and possibly a little west. The water in all these streams was +very high at the time and contributed to protect our flanks. The enemy +was compelled, therefore, to attack directly in front. This he did with +great vigor, inflicting heavy losses on the National side, but suffering +much heavier on his own. + +The Confederate assaults were made with such a disregard of losses on +their own side that our line of tents soon fell into their hands. The +ground on which the battle was fought was undulating, heavily timbered +with scattered clearings, the woods giving some protection to the troops +on both sides. There was also considerable underbrush. A number of +attempts were made by the enemy to turn our right flank, where Sherman +was posted, but every effort was repulsed with heavy loss. But the +front attack was kept up so vigorously that, to prevent the success of +these attempts to get on our flanks, the National troops were compelled, +several times, to take positions to the rear nearer Pittsburg landing. +When the firing ceased at night the National line was all of a mile in +rear of the position it had occupied in the morning. + +In one of the backward moves, on the 6th, the division commanded by +General Prentiss did not fall back with the others. This left his +flanks exposed and enabled the enemy to capture him with about 2,200 of +his officers and men. General Badeau gives four o'clock of the 6th as +about the time this capture took place. He may be right as to the time, +but my recollection is that the hour was later. General Prentiss +himself gave the hour as half-past five. I was with him, as I was with +each of the division commanders that day, several times, and my +recollection is that the last time I was with him was about half-past +four, when his division was standing up firmly and the General was as +cool as if expecting victory. But no matter whether it was four or +later, the story that he and his command were surprised and captured in +their camps is without any foundation whatever. If it had been true, as +currently reported at the time and yet believed by thousands of people, +that Prentiss and his division had been captured in their beds, there +would not have been an all-day struggle, with the loss of thousands +killed and wounded on the Confederate side. + +With the single exception of a few minutes after the capture of +Prentiss, a continuous and unbroken line was maintained all day from +Snake Creek or its tributaries on the right to Lick Creek or the +Tennessee on the left above Pittsburg. + +There was no hour during the day when there was not heavy firing and +generally hard fighting at some point on the line, but seldom at all +points at the same time. It was a case of Southern dash against +Northern pluck and endurance. Three of the five divisions engaged on +Sunday were entirely raw, and many of the men had only received their +arms on the way from their States to the field. Many of them had +arrived but a day or two before and were hardly able to load their +muskets according to the manual. Their officers were equally ignorant +of their duties. Under these circumstances it is not astonishing that +many of the regiments broke at the first fire. In two cases, as I now +remember, colonels led their regiments from the field on first hearing +the whistle of the enemy's bullets. In these cases the colonels were +constitutional cowards, unfit for any military position; but not so the +officers and men led out of danger by them. Better troops never went +upon a battle-field than many of these, officers and men, afterwards +proved themselves to be, who fled panic stricken at the first whistle of +bullets and shell at Shiloh. + +During the whole of Sunday I was continuously engaged in passing from +one part of the field to another, giving directions to division +commanders. In thus moving along the line, however, I never deemed it +important to stay long with Sherman. Although his troops were then +under fire for the first time, their commander, by his constant presence +with them, inspired a confidence in officers and men that enabled them +to render services on that bloody battle-field worthy of the best of +veterans. McClernand was next to Sherman, and the hardest fighting was +in front of these two divisions. McClernand told me on that day, the +6th, that he profited much by having so able a commander supporting him. +A casualty to Sherman that would have taken him from the field that day +would have been a sad one for the troops engaged at Shiloh. And how +near we came to this! On the 6th Sherman was shot twice, once in the +hand, once in the shoulder, the ball cutting his coat and making a +slight wound, and a third ball passed through his hat. In addition to +this he had several horses shot during the day. + +The nature of this battle was such that cavalry could not be used in +front; I therefore formed ours into line in rear, to stop stragglers--of +whom there were many. When there would be enough of them to make a +show, and after they had recovered from their fright, they would be sent +to reinforce some part of the line which needed support, without regard +to their companies, regiments or brigades. + +On one occasion during the day I rode back as far as the river and met +General Buell, who had just arrived; I do not remember the hour, but at +that time there probably were as many as four or five thousand +stragglers lying under cover of the river bluff, panic-stricken, most of +whom would have been shot where they lay, without resistance, before +they would have taken muskets and marched to the front to protect +themselves. This meeting between General Buell and myself was on the +dispatch-boat used to run between the landing and Savannah. It was +brief, and related specially to his getting his troops over the river. +As we left the boat together, Buell's attention was attracted by the men +lying under cover of the river bank. I saw him berating them and trying +to shame them into joining their regiments. He even threatened them +with shells from the gunboats near by. But it was all to no effect. +Most of these men afterward proved themselves as gallant as any of those +who saved the battle from which they had deserted. I have no doubt that +this sight impressed General Buell with the idea that a line of retreat +would be a good thing just then. If he had come in by the front instead +of through the stragglers in the rear, he would have thought and felt +differently. Could he have come through the Confederate rear, he would +have witnessed there a scene similar to that at our own. The distant +rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to +judge correctly what is going on in front. Later in the war, while +occupying the country between the Tennessee and the Mississippi, I +learned that the panic in the Confederate lines had not differed much +from that within our own. Some of the country people estimated the +stragglers from Johnston's army as high as 20,000. Of course this was +an exaggeration. + +The situation at the close of Sunday was as follows: along the top of +the bluff just south of the log-house which stood at Pittsburg landing, +Colonel J. D. Webster, of my staff, had arranged twenty or more pieces +of artillery facing south or up the river. This line of artillery was +on the crest of a hill overlooking a deep ravine opening into the +Tennessee. Hurlbut with his division intact was on the right of this +artillery, extending west and possibly a little north. McClernand came +next in the general line, looking more to the west. His division was +complete in its organization and ready for any duty. Sherman came next, +his right extending to Snake Creek. His command, like the other two, was +complete in its organization and ready, like its chief, for any service +it might be called upon to render. All three divisions were, as a +matter of course, more or less shattered and depleted in numbers from +the terrible battle of the day. The division of W. H. L. Wallace, as +much from the disorder arising from changes of division and brigade +commanders, under heavy fire, as from any other cause, had lost its +organization and did not occupy a place in the line as a division. +Prentiss' command was gone as a division, many of its members having +been killed, wounded or captured, but it had rendered valiant services +before its final dispersal, and had contributed a good share to the +defence of Shiloh. + +The right of my line rested near the bank of Snake Creek, a short +distance above the bridge which had been built by the troops for the +purpose of connecting Crump's landing and Pittsburg landing. Sherman +had posted some troops in a log-house and out-buildings which overlooked +both the bridge over which Wallace was expected and the creek above that +point. In this last position Sherman was frequently attacked before +night, but held the point until he voluntarily abandoned it to advance +in order to make room for Lew. Wallace, who came up after dark. + +There was, as I have said, a deep ravine in front of our left. The +Tennessee River was very high and there was water to a considerable +depth in the ravine. Here the enemy made a last desperate effort to +turn our flank, but was repelled. The gunboats Tyler and Lexington, +Gwin and Shirk commanding, with the artillery under Webster, aided the +army and effectually checked their further progress. Before any of +Buell's troops had reached the west bank of the Tennessee, firing had +almost entirely ceased; anything like an attempt on the part of the +enemy to advance had absolutely ceased. There was some artillery firing +from an unseen enemy, some of his shells passing beyond us; but I do not +remember that there was the whistle of a single musket-ball heard. As +his troops arrived in the dusk General Buell marched several of his +regiments part way down the face of the hill where they fired briskly +for some minutes, but I do not think a single man engaged in this firing +received an injury. The attack had spent its force. + +General Lew. Wallace, with 5,000 effective men, arrived after firing had +ceased for the day, and was placed on the right. Thus night came, +Wallace came, and the advance of Nelson's division came; but none +--unless night--in time to be of material service to the gallant men who +saved Shiloh on that first day against large odds. Buell's loss on the +6th of April was two men killed and one wounded, all members of the 36th +Indiana infantry. The Army of the Tennessee lost on that day at least +7,000 men. The presence of two or three regiments of Buell's army on +the west bank before firing ceased had not the slightest effect in +preventing the capture of Pittsburg landing. + +So confident was I before firing had ceased on the 6th that the next day +would bring victory to our arms if we could only take the initiative, +that I visited each division commander in person before any +reinforcements had reached the field. I directed them to throw out +heavy lines of skirmishers in the morning as soon as they could see, and +push them forward until they found the enemy, following with their +entire divisions in supporting distance, and to engage the enemy as soon +as found. To Sherman I told the story of the assault at Fort Donelson, +and said that the same tactics would win at Shiloh. Victory was assured +when Wallace arrived, even if there had been no other support. I was +glad, however, to see the reinforcements of Buell and credit them with +doing all there was for them to do. + +During the night of the 6th the remainder of Nelson's division, Buell's +army crossed the river and were ready to advance in the morning, forming +the left wing. Two other divisions, Crittenden's and McCook's, came up +the river from Savannah in the transports and were on the west bank +early on the 7th. Buell commanded them in person. My command was thus +nearly doubled in numbers and efficiency. + +During the night rain fell in torrents and our troops were exposed to +the storm without shelter. I made my headquarters under a tree a few +hundred yards back from the river bank. My ankle was so much swollen +from the fall of my horse the Friday night preceding, and the bruise was +so painful, that I could get no rest. + +The drenching rain would have precluded the possibility of sleep without +this additional cause. Some time after midnight, growing restive under +the storm and the continuous pain, I moved back to the log-house under +the bank. This had been taken as a hospital, and all night wounded men +were being brought in, their wounds dressed, a leg or an arm amputated +as the case might require, and everything being done to save life or +alleviate suffering. The sight was more unendurable than encountering +the enemy's fire, and I returned to my tree in the rain. + +The advance on the morning of the 7th developed the enemy in the camps +occupied by our troops before the battle began, more than a mile back +from the most advanced position of the Confederates on the day before. +It is known now that they had not yet learned of the arrival of Buell's +command. Possibly they fell back so far to get the shelter of our tents +during the rain, and also to get away from the shells that were dropped +upon them by the gunboats every fifteen minutes during the night. + +The position of the Union troops on the morning of the 7th was as +follows: General Lew. Wallace on the right; Sherman on his left; then +McClernand and then Hurlbut. Nelson, of Buell's army, was on our +extreme left, next to the river. + +Crittenden was next in line after Nelson and on his right, McCook +followed and formed the extreme right of Buell's command. My old +command thus formed the right wing, while the troops directly under +Buell constituted the left wing of the army. These relative positions +were retained during the entire day, or until the enemy was driven from +the field. + +In a very short time the battle became general all along the line. This +day everything was favorable to the Union side. We had now become the +attacking party. The enemy was driven back all day, as we had been the +day before, until finally he beat a precipitate retreat. The last point +held by him was near the road leading from the landing to Corinth, on +the left of Sherman and right of McClernand. About three o'clock, being +near that point and seeing that the enemy was giving way everywhere +else, I gathered up a couple of regiments, or parts of regiments, from +troops near by, formed them in line of battle and marched them forward, +going in front myself to prevent premature or long-range firing. At +this point there was a clearing between us and the enemy favorable for +charging, although exposed. I knew the enemy were ready to break and +only wanted a little encouragement from us to go quickly and join their +friends who had started earlier. After marching to within musket-range +I stopped and let the troops pass. The command, CHARGE, was given, and +was executed with loud cheers and with a run; when the last of the enemy +broke. (*7) + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +STRUCK BY A BULLET--PRECIPITATE RETREAT OF THE CONFEDERATES +--INTRENCHMENTS AT SHILOH--GENERAL BUELL--GENERAL JOHNSTON--REMARKS ON +SHILOH. + +During this second day of the battle I had been moving from right to +left and back, to see for myself the progress made. In the early part +of the afternoon, while riding with Colonel McPherson and Major Hawkins, +then my chief commissary, we got beyond the left of our troops. We were +moving along the northern edge of a clearing, very leisurely, toward the +river above the landing. There did not appear to be an enemy to our +right, until suddenly a battery with musketry opened upon us from the +edge of the woods on the other side of the clearing. The shells and +balls whistled about our ears very fast for about a minute. I do not +think it took us longer than that to get out of range and out of sight. +In the sudden start we made, Major Hawkins lost his hat. He did not +stop to pick it up. When we arrived at a perfectly safe position we +halted to take an account of damages. McPherson's horse was panting as +if ready to drop. On examination it was found that a ball had struck +him forward of the flank just back of the saddle, and had gone entirely +through. In a few minutes the poor beast dropped dead; he had given no +sign of injury until we came to a stop. A ball had struck the metal +scabbard of my sword, just below the hilt, and broken it nearly off; +before the battle was over it had broken off entirely. There were +three of us: one had lost a horse, killed; one a hat and one a +sword-scabbard. All were thankful that it was no worse. + +After the rain of the night before and the frequent and heavy rains for +some days previous, the roads were almost impassable. The enemy +carrying his artillery and supply trains over them in his retreat, made +them still worse for troops following. I wanted to pursue, but had not +the heart to order the men who had fought desperately for two days, +lying in the mud and rain whenever not fighting, and I did (*8) not feel +disposed to positively order Buell, or any part of his command, to +pursue. Although the senior in rank at the time I had been so only a +few weeks. Buell was, and had been for some time past, a department +commander, while I commanded only a district. I did not meet Buell in +person until too late to get troops ready and pursue with effect; but +had I seen him at the moment of the last charge I should have at least +requested him to follow. + +I rode forward several miles the day after the battle, and found that +the enemy had dropped much, if not all, of their provisions, some +ammunition and the extra wheels of their caissons, lightening their +loads to enable them to get off their guns. About five miles out we +found their field hospital abandoned. An immediate pursuit must have +resulted in the capture of a considerable number of prisoners and +probably some guns. + +Shiloh was the severest battle fought at the West during the war, and +but few in the East equalled it for hard, determined fighting. I saw an +open field, in our possession on the second day, over which the +Confederates had made repeated charges the day before, so covered with +dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing, in +any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the +ground. On our side National and Confederate troops were mingled +together in about equal proportions; but on the remainder of the field +nearly all were Confederates. On one part, which had evidently not been +ploughed for several years, probably because the land was poor, bushes +had grown up, some to the height of eight or ten feet. There was not one +of these left standing unpierced by bullets. The smaller ones were all +cut down. + +Contrary to all my experience up to that time, and to the experience of +the army I was then commanding, we were on the defensive. We were +without intrenchments or defensive advantages of any sort, and more than +half the army engaged the first day was without experience or even drill +as soldiers. The officers with them, except the division commanders and +possibly two or three of the brigade commanders, were equally +inexperienced in war. The result was a Union victory that gave the men +who achieved it great confidence in themselves ever after. + +The enemy fought bravely, but they had started out to defeat and destroy +an army and capture a position. They failed in both, with very heavy +loss in killed and wounded, and must have gone back discouraged and +convinced that the "Yankee" was not an enemy to be despised. + +After the battle I gave verbal instructions to division commanders to +let the regiments send out parties to bury their own dead, and to detail +parties, under commissioned officers from each division, to bury the +Confederate dead in their respective fronts and to report the numbers so +buried. The latter part of these instructions was not carried out by +all; but they were by those sent from Sherman's division, and by some of +the parties sent out by McClernand. The heaviest loss sustained by the +enemy was in front of these two divisions. + +The criticism has often been made that the Union troops should have been +intrenched at Shiloh. Up to that time the pick and spade had been but +little resorted to at the West. I had, however, taken this subject +under consideration soon after re-assuming command in the field, and, as +already stated, my only military engineer reported unfavorably. Besides +this, the troops with me, officers and men, needed discipline and drill +more than they did experience with the pick, shovel and axe. +Reinforcements were arriving almost daily, composed of troops that had +been hastily thrown together into companies and regiments--fragments of +incomplete organizations, the men and officers strangers to each other. +Under all these circumstances I concluded that drill and discipline were +worth more to our men than fortifications. + +General Buell was a brave, intelligent officer, with as much +professional pride and ambition of a commendable sort as I ever knew. I +had been two years at West Point with him, and had served with him +afterwards, in garrison and in the Mexican war, several years more. He +was not given in early life or in mature years to forming intimate +acquaintances. He was studious by habit, and commanded the confidence +and respect of all who knew him. He was a strict disciplinarian, and +perhaps did not distinguish sufficiently between the volunteer who +"enlisted for the war" and the soldier who serves in time of peace. One +system embraced men who risked life for a principle, and often men of +social standing, competence, or wealth and independence of character. +The other includes, as a rule, only men who could not do as well in any +other occupation. General Buell became an object of harsh criticism +later, some going so far as to challenge his loyalty. No one who knew +him ever believed him capable of a dishonorable act, and nothing could +be more dishonorable than to accept high rank and command in war and +then betray the trust. When I came into command of the army in 1864, I +requested the Secretary of War to restore General Buell to duty. + +After the war, during the summer of 1865, I travelled considerably +through the North, and was everywhere met by large numbers of people. +Every one had his opinion about the manner in which the war had been +conducted: who among the generals had failed, how, and why. +Correspondents of the press were ever on hand to hear every word +dropped, and were not always disposed to report correctly what did not +confirm their preconceived notions, either about the conduct of the war +or the individuals concerned in it. The opportunity frequently occurred +for me to defend General Buell against what I believed to be most unjust +charges. On one occasion a correspondent put in my mouth the very +charge I had so often refuted--of disloyalty. This brought from General +Buell a very severe retort, which I saw in the New York World some time +before I received the letter itself. I could very well understand his +grievance at seeing untrue and disgraceful charges apparently sustained +by an officer who, at the time, was at the head of the army. I replied +to him, but not through the press. I kept no copy of my letter, nor did +I ever see it in print; neither did I receive an answer. + +General Albert Sidney Johnston, who commanded the Confederate forces at +the beginning of the battle, was disabled by a wound on the afternoon of +the first day. This wound, as I understood afterwards, was not +necessarily fatal, or even dangerous. But he was a man who would not +abandon what he deemed an important trust in the face of danger and +consequently continued in the saddle, commanding, until so exhausted by +the loss of blood that he had to be taken from his horse, and soon after +died. The news was not long in reaching our side and I suppose was +quite an encouragement to the National soldiers. + +I had known Johnston slightly in the Mexican war and later as an officer +in the regular army. He was a man of high character and ability. His +contemporaries at West Point, and officers generally who came to know +him personally later and who remained on our side, expected him to prove +the most formidable man to meet that the Confederacy would produce. + +I once wrote that nothing occurred in his brief command of an army to +prove or disprove the high estimate that had been placed upon his +military ability; but after studying the orders and dispatches of +Johnston I am compelled to materially modify my views of that officer's +qualifications as a soldier. My judgment now is that he was vacillating +and undecided in his actions. + +All the disasters in Kentucky and Tennessee were so discouraging to the +authorities in Richmond that Jefferson Davis wrote an unofficial letter +to Johnston expressing his own anxiety and that of the public, and +saying that he had made such defence as was dictated by long friendship, +but that in the absence of a report he needed facts. The letter was not +a reprimand in direct terms, but it was evidently as much felt as though +it had been one. General Johnston raised another army as rapidly as he +could, and fortified or strongly intrenched at Corinth. He knew the +National troops were preparing to attack him in his chosen position. +But he had evidently become so disturbed at the results of his +operations that he resolved to strike out in an offensive campaign which +would restore all that was lost, and if successful accomplish still +more. We have the authority of his son and biographer for saying that +his plan was to attack the forces at Shiloh and crush them; then to +cross the Tennessee and destroy the army of Buell, and push the war +across the Ohio River. The design was a bold one; but we have the same +authority for saying that in the execution Johnston showed vacillation +and indecision. He left Corinth on the 2d of April and was not ready to +attack until the 6th. The distance his army had to march was less than +twenty miles. Beauregard, his second in command, was opposed to the +attack for two reasons: first, he thought, if let alone the National +troops would attack the Confederates in their intrenchments; second, we +were in ground of our own choosing and would necessarily be intrenched. +Johnston not only listened to the objection of Beauregard to an attack, +but held a council of war on the subject on the morning of the 5th. On +the evening of the same day he was in consultation with some of his +generals on the same subject, and still again on the morning of the 6th. +During this last consultation, and before a decision had been reached, +the battle began by the National troops opening fire on the enemy. This +seemed to settle the question as to whether there was to be any battle +of Shiloh. It also seems to me to settle the question as to whether +there was a surprise. + +I do not question the personal courage of General Johnston, or his +ability. But he did not win the distinction predicted for him by many +of his friends. He did prove that as a general he was over-estimated. + +General Beauregard was next in rank to Johnston and succeeded to the +command, which he retained to the close of the battle and during the +subsequent retreat on Corinth, as well as in the siege of that place. +His tactics have been severely criticised by Confederate writers, but I +do not believe his fallen chief could have done any better under the +circumstances. Some of these critics claim that Shiloh was won when +Johnston fell, and that if he had not fallen the army under me would +have been annihilated or captured. IFS defeated the Confederates at +Shiloh. There is little doubt that we would have been disgracefully +beaten IF all the shells and bullets fired by us had passed harmlessly +over the enemy and IF all of theirs had taken effect. Commanding +generals are liable to be killed during engagements; and the fact that +when he was shot Johnston was leading a brigade to induce it to make a +charge which had been repeatedly ordered, is evidence that there was +neither the universal demoralization on our side nor the unbounded +confidence on theirs which has been claimed. There was, in fact, no +hour during the day when I doubted the eventual defeat of the enemy, +although I was disappointed that reinforcements so near at hand did not +arrive at an earlier hour. + +The description of the battle of Shiloh given by Colonel Wm. Preston +Johnston is very graphic and well told. The reader will imagine that he +can see each blow struck, a demoralized and broken mob of Union +soldiers, each blow sending the enemy more demoralized than ever towards +the Tennessee River, which was a little more than two miles away at the +beginning of the onset. If the reader does not stop to inquire why, with +such Confederate success for more than twelve hours of hard fighting, +the National troops were not all killed, captured or driven into the +river, he will regard the pen picture as perfect. But I witnessed the +fight from the National side from eight o'clock in the morning until +night closed the contest. I see but little in the description that I +can recognize. The Confederate troops fought well and deserve +commendation enough for their bravery and endurance on the 6th of April, +without detracting from their antagonists or claiming anything more than +their just dues. + +The reports of the enemy show that their condition at the end of the +first day was deplorable; their losses in killed and wounded had been +very heavy, and their stragglers had been quite as numerous as on the +National side, with the difference that those of the enemy left the +field entirely and were not brought back to their respective commands +for many days. On the Union side but few of the stragglers fell back +further than the landing on the river, and many of these were in line +for duty on the second day. The admissions of the highest Confederate +officers engaged at Shiloh make the claim of a victory for them absurd. +The victory was not to either party until the battle was over. It was +then a Union victory, in which the Armies of the Tennessee and the Ohio +both participated. But the Army of the Tennessee fought the entire +rebel army on the 6th and held it at bay until near night; and night +alone closed the conflict and not the three regiments of Nelson's +division. + +The Confederates fought with courage at Shiloh, but the particular skill +claimed I could not and still cannot see; though there is nothing to +criticise except the claims put forward for it since. But the +Confederate claimants for superiority in strategy, superiority in +generalship and superiority in dash and prowess are not so unjust to the +Union troops engaged at Shiloh as are many Northern writers. The troops +on both sides were American, and united they need not fear any foreign +foe. It is possible that the Southern man started in with a little more +dash than his Northern brother; but he was correspondingly less +enduring. + +The endeavor of the enemy on the first day was simply to hurl their men +against ours--first at one point, then at another, sometimes at several +points at once. This they did with daring and energy, until at night +the rebel troops were worn out. Our effort during the same time was to +be prepared to resist assaults wherever made. The object of the +Confederates on the second day was to get away with as much of their +army and material as possible. Ours then was to drive them from our +front, and to capture or destroy as great a part as possible of their +men and material. We were successful in driving them back, but not so +successful in captures as if farther pursuit could have been made. As +it was, we captured or recaptured on the second day about as much +artillery as we lost on the first; and, leaving out the one great +capture of Prentiss, we took more prisoners on Monday than the enemy +gained from us on Sunday. On the 6th Sherman lost seven pieces of +artillery, McClernand six, Prentiss eight, and Hurlbut two batteries. +On the 7th Sherman captured seven guns, McClernand three and the Army of +the Ohio twenty. + +At Shiloh the effective strength of the Union forces on the morning of +the 6th was 33,000 men. Lew. Wallace brought 5,000 more after +nightfall. Beauregard reported the enemy's strength at 40,955. +According to the custom of enumeration in the South, this number +probably excluded every man enlisted as musician or detailed as guard or +nurse, and all commissioned officers--everybody who did not carry a +musket or serve a cannon. With us everybody in the field receiving pay +from the government is counted. Excluding the troops who fled, +panic-stricken, before they had fired a shot, there was not a time +during the 6th when we had more than 25,000 men in line. On the 7th +Buell brought 20,000 more. Of his remaining two divisions, Thomas's did +not reach the field during the engagement; Wood's arrived before firing +had ceased, but not in time to be of much service. + +Our loss in the two days' fight was 1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded and +2,885 missing. Of these, 2,103 were in the Army of the Ohio. +Beauregard reported a total loss of 10,699, of whom 1,728 were killed, +8,012 wounded and 957 missing. This estimate must be incorrect. We +buried, by actual count, more of the enemy's dead in front of the +divisions of McClernand and Sherman alone than here reported, and 4,000 +was the estimate of the burial parties of the whole field. Beauregard +reports the Confederate force on the 6th at over 40,000, and their total +loss during the two days at 10,699; and at the same time declares that +he could put only 20,000 men in battle on the morning of the 7th. + +The navy gave a hearty support to the army at Shiloh, as indeed it +always did both before and subsequently when I was in command. The +nature of the ground was such, however, that on this occasion it could +do nothing in aid of the troops until sundown on the first day. The +country was broken and heavily timbered, cutting off all view of the +battle from the river, so that friends would be as much in danger from +fire from the gunboats as the foe. But about sundown, when the National +troops were back in their last position, the right of the enemy was near +the river and exposed to the fire of the two gun-boats, which was +delivered with vigor and effect. After nightfall, when firing had +entirely ceased on land, the commander of the fleet informed himself, +approximately, of the position of our troops and suggested the idea of +dropping a shell within the lines of the enemy every fifteen minutes +during the night. This was done with effect, as is proved by the +Confederate reports. + +Up to the battle of Shiloh I, as well as thousands of other citizens, +believed that the rebellion against the Government would collapse +suddenly and soon, if a decisive victory could be gained over any of its +armies. Donelson and Henry were such victories. An army of more than +21,000 men was captured or destroyed. Bowling Green, Columbus and +Hickman, Kentucky, fell in consequence, and Clarksville and Nashville, +Tennessee, the last two with an immense amount of stores, also fell into +our hands. The Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, from their mouths to +the head of navigation, were secured. But when Confederate armies were +collected which not only attempted to hold a line farther south, from +Memphis to Chattanooga, Knoxville and on to the Atlantic, but assumed +the offensive and made such a gallant effort to regain what had been +lost, then, indeed, I gave up all idea of saving the Union except by +complete conquest. Up to that time it had been the policy of our army, +certainly of that portion commanded by me, to protect the property of +the citizens whose territory was invaded, without regard to their +sentiments, whether Union or Secession. After this, however, I regarded +it as humane to both sides to protect the persons of those found at +their homes, but to consume everything that could be used to support or +supply armies. Protection was still continued over such supplies as +were within lines held by us and which we expected to continue to hold; +but such supplies within the reach of Confederate armies I regarded as +much contraband as arms or ordnance stores. Their destruction was +accomplished without bloodshed and tended to the same result as the +destruction of armies. I continued this policy to the close of the war. +Promiscuous pillaging, however, was discouraged and punished. +Instructions were always given to take provisions and forage under the +direction of commissioned officers who should give receipts to owners, +if at home, and turn the property over to officers of the quartermaster +or commissary departments to be issued as if furnished from our Northern +depots. But much was destroyed without receipts to owners, when it +could not be brought within our lines and would otherwise have gone to +the support of secession and rebellion. + +This policy I believe exercised a material influence in hastening the +end. + +The battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg landing, has been perhaps less +understood, or, to state the case more accurately, more persistently +misunderstood, than any other engagement between National and +Confederate troops during the entire rebellion. Correct reports of the +battle have been published, notably by Sherman, Badeau and, in a speech +before a meeting of veterans, by General Prentiss; but all of these +appeared long subsequent to the close of the rebellion and after public +opinion had been most erroneously formed. + +I myself made no report to General Halleck, further than was contained +in a letter, written immediately after the battle informing him that an +engagement had been fought and announcing the result. A few days +afterwards General Halleck moved his headquarters to Pittsburg landing +and assumed command of the troops in the field. Although next to him in +rank, and nominally in command of my old district and army, I was +ignored as much as if I had been at the most distant point of territory +within my jurisdiction; and although I was in command of all the troops +engaged at Shiloh I was not permitted to see one of the reports of +General Buell or his subordinates in that battle, until they were +published by the War Department long after the event. For this reason I +never made a full official report of this engagement. + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +HALLECK ASSUMES COMMAND IN THE FIELD--THE ADVANCE UPON CORINTH +--OCCUPATION OF CORINTH--THE ARMY SEPARATED. + +General Halleck arrived at Pittsburg landing on the 11th of April and +immediately assumed command in the field. On the 21st General Pope +arrived with an army 30,000 strong, fresh from the capture of Island +Number Ten in the Mississippi River. He went into camp at Hamburg +landing five miles above Pittsburg. Halleck had now three armies: the +Army of the Ohio, Buell commanding; the Army of the Mississippi, Pope +commanding; and the Army of the Tennessee. His orders divided the +combined force into the right wing, reserve, centre and left wing. +Major-General George H. Thomas, who had been in Buell's army, was +transferred with his division to the Army of the Tennessee and given +command of the right wing, composed of all of that army except +McClernand's and Lew. Wallace's divisions. McClernand was assigned to +the command of the reserve, composed of his own and Lew. Wallace's +divisions. Buell commanded the centre, the Army of the Ohio; and Pope +the left wing, the Army of the Mississippi. I was named second in +command of the whole, and was also supposed to be in command of the +right wing and reserve. + +Orders were given to all the commanders engaged at Shiloh to send in +their reports without delay to department headquarters. Those from +officers of the Army of the Tennessee were sent through me; but from the +Army of the Ohio they were sent by General Buell without passing through +my hands. General Halleck ordered me, verbally, to send in my report, +but I positively declined on the ground that he had received the reports +of a part of the army engaged at Shiloh without their coming through me. +He admitted that my refusal was justifiable under the circumstances, but +explained that he had wanted to get the reports off before moving the +command, and as fast as a report had come to him he had forwarded it to +Washington. + +Preparations were at once made upon the arrival of the new commander for +an advance on Corinth. Owl Creek, on our right, was bridged, and +expeditions were sent to the north-west and west to ascertain if our +position was being threatened from those quarters; the roads towards +Corinth were corduroyed and new ones made; lateral roads were also +constructed, so that in case of necessity troops marching by different +routes could reinforce each other. All commanders were cautioned +against bringing on an engagement and informed in so many words that it +would be better to retreat than to fight. By the 30th of April all +preparations were complete; the country west to the Mobile and Ohio +railroad had been reconnoitred, as well as the road to Corinth as far as +Monterey twelve miles from Pittsburg. Everywhere small bodies of the +enemy had been encountered, but they were observers and not in force to +fight battles. + +Corinth, Mississippi, lies in a south-westerly direction from Pittsburg +landing and about nineteen miles away as the bird would fly, but +probably twenty-two by the nearest wagon-road. It is about four miles +south of the line dividing the States of Tennessee and Mississippi, and +at the junction of the Mississippi and Chattanooga railroad with the +Mobile and Ohio road which runs from Columbus to Mobile. From Pittsburg +to Corinth the land is rolling, but at no point reaching an elevation +that makes high hills to pass over. In 1862 the greater part of the +country was covered with forest with intervening clearings and houses. +Underbrush was dense in the low grounds along the creeks and ravines, +but generally not so thick on the high land as to prevent men passing +through with ease. There are two small creeks running from north of the +town and connecting some four miles south, where they form Bridge Creek +which empties into the Tuscumbia River. Corinth is on the ridge between +these streams and is a naturally strong defensive position. The creeks +are insignificant in volume of water, but the stream to the east widens +out in front of the town into a swamp impassable in the presence of an +enemy. On the crest of the west bank of this stream the enemy was +strongly intrenched. + +Corinth was a valuable strategic point for the enemy to hold, and +consequently a valuable one for us to possess ourselves of. We ought to +have seized it immediately after the fall of Donelson and Nashville, +when it could have been taken without a battle, but failing then it +should have been taken, without delay on the concentration of troops at +Pittsburg landing after the battle of Shiloh. In fact the arrival of +Pope should not have been awaited. There was no time from the battle of +Shiloh up to the evacuation of Corinth when the enemy would not have +left if pushed. The demoralization among the Confederates from their +defeats at Henry and Donelson; their long marches from Bowling Green, +Columbus, and Nashville, and their failure at Shiloh; in fact from +having been driven out of Kentucky and Tennessee, was so great that a +stand for the time would have been impossible. Beauregard made +strenuous efforts to reinforce himself and partially succeeded. He +appealed to the people of the South-west for new regiments, and received +a few. A. S. Johnston had made efforts to reinforce in the same +quarter, before the battle of Shiloh, but in a different way. He had +negroes sent out to him to take the place of teamsters, company cooks +and laborers in every capacity, so as to put all his white men into the +ranks. The people, while willing to send their sons to the field, were +not willing to part with their negroes. It is only fair to state that +they probably wanted their blacks to raise supplies for the army and for +the families left at home. + +Beauregard, however, was reinforced by Van Dorn immediately after Shiloh +with 17,000 men. Interior points, less exposed, were also depleted to +add to the strength at Corinth. With these reinforcements and the new +regiments, Beauregard had, during the month of May, 1862, a large force +on paper, but probably not much over 50,000 effective men. We estimated +his strength at 70,000. Our own was, in round numbers, 120,000. The +defensible nature of the ground at Corinth, and the fortifications, made +50,000 then enough to maintain their position against double that number +for an indefinite time but for the demoralization spoken of. + +On the 30th of April the grand army commenced its advance from Shiloh +upon Corinth. The movement was a siege from the start to the close. +The National troops were always behind intrenchments, except of course +the small reconnoitring parties sent to the front to clear the way for +an advance. Even the commanders of these parties were cautioned, "not +to bring on an engagement." "It is better to retreat than to fight." +The enemy were constantly watching our advance, but as they were simply +observers there were but few engagements that even threatened to become +battles. All the engagements fought ought to have served to encourage +the enemy. Roads were again made in our front, and again corduroyed; a +line was intrenched, and the troops were advanced to the new position. +Cross roads were constructed to these new positions to enable the troops +to concentrate in case of attack. The National armies were thoroughly +intrenched all the way from the Tennessee River to Corinth. + +For myself I was little more than an observer. Orders were sent direct +to the right wing or reserve, ignoring me, and advances were made from +one line of intrenchments to another without notifying me. My position +was so embarrassing in fact that I made several applications during the +siege to be relieved. + +General Halleck kept his headquarters generally, if not all the time, +with the right wing. Pope being on the extreme left did not see so much +of his chief, and consequently got loose as it were at times. On the 3d +of May he was at Seven Mile Creek with the main body of his command, but +threw forward a division to Farmington, within four miles of Corinth. +His troops had quite a little engagement at Farmington on that day, but +carried the place with considerable loss to the enemy. There would then +have been no difficulty in advancing the centre and right so as to form +a new line well up to the enemy, but Pope was ordered back to conform +with the general line. On the 8th of May he moved again, taking his +whole force to Farmington, and pushed out two divisions close to the +rebel line. Again he was ordered back. By the 4th of May the centre +and right wing reached Monterey, twelve miles out. Their advance was +slow from there, for they intrenched with every forward movement. The +left wing moved up again on the 25th of May and intrenched itself close +to the enemy. The creek with the marsh before described, separated the +two lines. Skirmishers thirty feet apart could have maintained either +line at this point. + +Our centre and right were, at this time, extended so that the right of +the right wing was probably five miles from Corinth and four from the +works in their front. The creek, which was a formidable obstacle for +either side to pass on our left, became a very slight obstacle on our +right. Here the enemy occupied two positions. One of them, as much as +two miles out from his main line, was on a commanding elevation and +defended by an intrenched battery with infantry supports. A heavy wood +intervened between this work and the National forces. In rear to the +south there was a clearing extending a mile or more, and south of this +clearing a log-house which had been loop-holed and was occupied by +infantry. Sherman's division carried these two positions with some loss +to himself, but with probably greater to the enemy, on the 28th of May, +and on that day the investment of Corinth was complete, or as complete +as it was ever made. Thomas' right now rested west of the Mobile and +Ohio railroad. Pope's left commanded the Memphis and Charleston railroad +east of Corinth. + +Some days before I had suggested to the commanding general that I +thought if he would move the Army of the Mississippi at night, by the +rear of the centre and right, ready to advance at daylight, Pope would +find no natural obstacle in his front and, I believed, no serious +artificial one. The ground, or works, occupied by our left could be +held by a thin picket line, owing to the stream and swamp in front. To +the right the troops would have a dry ridge to march over. I was +silenced so quickly that I felt that possibly I had suggested an +unmilitary movement. + +Later, probably on the 28th of May, General Logan, whose command was +then on the Mobile and Ohio railroad, said to me that the enemy had been +evacuating for several days and that if allowed he could go into Corinth +with his brigade. Trains of cars were heard coming in and going out of +Corinth constantly. Some of the men who had been engaged in various +capacities on railroads before the war claimed that they could tell, by +putting their ears to the rail, not only which way the trains were +moving but which trains were loaded and which were empty. They said +loaded trains had been going out for several days and empty ones coming +in. Subsequent events proved the correctness of their judgment. +Beauregard published his orders for the evacuation of Corinth on the +26th of May and fixed the 29th for the departure of his troops, and on +the 30th of May General Halleck had his whole army drawn up prepared for +battle and announced in orders that there was every indication that our +left was to be attacked that morning. Corinth had already been +evacuated and the National troops marched on and took possession without +opposition. Everything had been destroyed or carried away. The +Confederate commander had instructed his soldiers to cheer on the +arrival of every train to create the impression among the Yankees that +reinforcements were arriving. There was not a sick or wounded man left +by the Confederates, nor stores of any kind. Some ammunition had been +blown up--not removed--but the trophies of war were a few Quaker guns, +logs of about the diameter of ordinary cannon, mounted on wheels of +wagons and pointed in the most threatening manner towards us. + +The possession of Corinth by the National troops was of strategic +importance, but the victory was barren in every other particular. It +was nearly bloodless. It is a question whether the MORALE of the +Confederate troops engaged at Corinth was not improved by the immunity +with which they were permitted to remove all public property and then +withdraw themselves. On our side I know officers and men of the Army of +the Tennessee--and I presume the same is true of those of the other +commands--were disappointed at the result. They could not see how the +mere occupation of places was to close the war while large and effective +rebel armies existed. They believed that a well-directed attack would +at least have partially destroyed the army defending Corinth. For +myself I am satisfied that Corinth could have been captured in a two +days' campaign commenced promptly on the arrival of reinforcements after +the battle of Shiloh. + +General Halleck at once commenced erecting fortifications around Corinth +on a scale to indicate that this one point must be held if it took the +whole National army to do it. All commanding points two or three miles +to the south, south-east and south-west were strongly fortified. It was +expected in case of necessity to connect these forts by rifle-pits. +They were laid out on a scale that would have required 100,000 men to +fully man them. It was probably thought that a final battle of the war +would be fought at that point. These fortifications were never used. +Immediately after the occupation of Corinth by the National troops, +General Pope was sent in pursuit of the retreating garrison and General +Buell soon followed. Buell was the senior of the two generals and +commanded the entire column. The pursuit was kept up for some thirty +miles, but did not result in the capture of any material of war or +prisoners, unless a few stragglers who had fallen behind and were +willing captives. On the 10th of June the pursuing column was all back +at Corinth. The Army of the Tennessee was not engaged in any of these +movements. + +The Confederates were now driven out of West Tennessee, and on the 6th +of June, after a well-contested naval battle, the National forces took +possession of Memphis and held the Mississippi river from its source to +that point. The railroad from Columbus to Corinth was at once put in +good condition and held by us. We had garrisons at Donelson, +Clarksville and Nashville, on the Cumberland River, and held the +Tennessee River from its mouth to Eastport. New Orleans and Baton Rouge +had fallen into the possession of the National forces, so that now the +Confederates at the west were narrowed down for all communication with +Richmond to the single line of road running east from Vicksburg. To +dispossess them of this, therefore, became a matter of the first +importance. The possession of the Mississippi by us from Memphis to +Baton Rouge was also a most important object. It would be equal to the +amputation of a limb in its weakening effects upon the enemy. + +After the capture of Corinth a movable force of 80,000 men, besides +enough to hold all the territory acquired, could have been set in motion +for the accomplishment of any great campaign for the suppression of the +rebellion. In addition to this fresh troops were being raised to swell +the effective force. But the work of depletion commenced. Buell with +the Army of the Ohio was sent east, following the line of the Memphis +and Charleston railroad. This he was ordered to repair as he advanced +--only to have it destroyed by small guerilla bands or other troops as +soon as he was out of the way. If he had been sent directly to +Chattanooga as rapidly as he could march, leaving two or three divisions +along the line of the railroad from Nashville forward, he could have +arrived with but little fighting, and would have saved much of the loss +of life which was afterwards incurred in gaining Chattanooga. Bragg +would then not have had time to raise an army to contest the possession +of middle and east Tennessee and Kentucky; the battles of Stone River +and Chickamauga would not necessarily have been fought; Burnside would +not have been besieged in Knoxville without the power of helping himself +or escaping; the battle of Chattanooga would not have been fought. +These are the negative advantages, if the term negative is applicable, +which would probably have resulted from prompt movements after Corinth +fell into the possession of the National forces. The positive results +might have been: a bloodless advance to Atlanta, to Vicksburg, or to +any other desired point south of Corinth in the interior of Mississippi. + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +HEADQUARTERS MOVED TO MEMPHIS--ON THE ROAD TO MEMPHIS--ESCAPING JACKSON +--COMPLAINTS AND REQUESTS--HALLECK APPOINTED COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF--RETURN +TO CORINTH--MOVEMENTS OF BRAGG--SURRENDER OF CLARKSVILLE--THE ADVANCE +UPON CHATTANOOGA--SHERIDAN COLONEL OF A MICHIGAN REGIMENT. + +My position at Corinth, with a nominal command and yet no command, +became so unbearable that I asked permission of Halleck to remove my +headquarters to Memphis. I had repeatedly asked, between the fall of +Donelson and the evacuation of Corinth, to be relieved from duty under +Halleck; but all my applications were refused until the occupation of +the town. I then obtained permission to leave the department, but +General Sherman happened to call on me as I was about starting and urged +me so strongly not to think of going, that I concluded to remain. My +application to be permitted to remove my headquarters to Memphis was, +however, approved, and on the 21st of June I started for that point with +my staff and a cavalry escort of only a part of one company. There was +a detachment of two or three companies going some twenty-five miles west +to be stationed as a guard to the railroad. I went under cover of this +escort to the end of their march, and the next morning proceeded to La +Grange with no convoy but the few cavalry men I had with me. + +From La Grange to Memphis the distance is forty-seven miles. There were +no troops stationed between these two points, except a small force +guarding a working party which was engaged in repairing the railroad. +Not knowing where this party would be found I halted at La Grange. +General Hurlbut was in command there at the time and had his +headquarters tents pitched on the lawn of a very commodious country +house. The proprietor was at home and, learning of my arrival, he +invited General Hurlbut and me to dine with him. I accepted the +invitation and spent a very pleasant afternoon with my host, who was a +thorough Southern gentleman fully convinced of the justice of secession. +After dinner, seated in the capacious porch, he entertained me with a +recital of the services he was rendering the cause. He was too old to +be in the ranks himself--he must have been quite seventy then--but his +means enabled him to be useful in other ways. In ordinary times the +homestead where he was now living produced the bread and meat to supply +the slaves on his main plantation, in the low-lands of Mississippi. Now +he raised food and forage on both places, and thought he would have that +year a surplus sufficient to feed three hundred families of poor men who +had gone into the war and left their families dependent upon the +"patriotism" of those better off. The crops around me looked fine, and +I had at the moment an idea that about the time they were ready to be +gathered the "Yankee" troops would be in the neighborhood and harvest +them for the benefit of those engaged in the suppression of the +rebellion instead of its support. I felt, however, the greatest respect +for the candor of my host and for his zeal in a cause he thoroughly +believed in, though our views were as wide apart as it is possible to +conceive. + +The 23d of June, 1862, on the road from La Grange to Memphis was very +warm, even for that latitude and season. With my staff and small escort +I started at an early hour, and before noon we arrived within twenty +miles of Memphis. At this point I saw a very comfortable-looking +white-haired gentleman seated at the front of his house, a little +distance from the road. I let my staff and escort ride ahead while I +halted and, for an excuse, asked for a glass of water. I was invited at +once to dismount and come in. I found my host very genial and +communicative, and staid longer than I had intended, until the lady of +the house announced dinner and asked me to join them. The host, +however, was not pressing, so that I declined the invitation and, +mounting my horse, rode on. + +About a mile west from where I had been stopping a road comes up from +the southeast, joining that from La Grange to Memphis. A mile west of +this junction I found my staff and escort halted and enjoying the shade +of forest trees on the lawn of a house located several hundred feet back +from the road, their horses hitched to the fence along the line of the +road. I, too, stopped and we remained there until the cool of the +afternoon, and then rode into Memphis. + +The gentleman with whom I had stopped twenty miles from Memphis was a +Mr. De Loche, a man loyal to the Union. He had not pressed me to tarry +longer with him because in the early part of my visit a neighbor, a Dr. +Smith, had called and, on being presented to me, backed off the porch as +if something had hit him. Mr. De Loche knew that the rebel General +Jackson was in that neighborhood with a detachment of cavalry. His +neighbor was as earnest in the southern cause as was Mr. De Loche in +that of the Union. The exact location of Jackson was entirely unknown +to Mr. De Loche; but he was sure that his neighbor would know it and +would give information of my presence, and this made my stay unpleasant +to him after the call of Dr. Smith. + +I have stated that a detachment of troops was engaged in guarding +workmen who were repairing the railroad east of Memphis. On the day I +entered Memphis, Jackson captured a small herd of beef cattle which had +been sent east for the troops so engaged. The drovers were not enlisted +men and he released them. A day or two after one of these drovers came +to my headquarters and, relating the circumstances of his capture, said +Jackson was very much disappointed that he had not captured me; that he +was six or seven miles south of the Memphis and Charleston railroad when +he learned that I was stopping at the house of Mr. De Loche, and had +ridden with his command to the junction of the road he was on with that +from La Grange and Memphis, where he learned that I had passed +three-quarters of an hour before. He thought it would be useless to +pursue with jaded horses a well-mounted party with so much of a start. +Had he gone three-quarters of a mile farther he would have found me with +my party quietly resting under the shade of trees and without even arms +in our hands with which to defend ourselves. + +General Jackson of course did not communicate his disappointment at not +capturing me to a prisoner, a young drover; but from the talk among the +soldiers the facts related were learned. A day or two later Mr. De +Loche called on me in Memphis to apologize for his apparent incivility +in not insisting on my staying for dinner. He said that his wife +accused him of marked discourtesy, but that, after the call of his +neighbor, he had felt restless until I got away. I never met General +Jackson before the war, nor during it, but have met him since at his +very comfortable summer home at Manitou Springs, Colorado. I reminded +him of the above incident, and this drew from him the response that he +was thankful now he had not captured me. I certainly was very thankful +too. + +My occupation of Memphis as district headquarters did not last long. +The period, however, was marked by a few incidents which were novel to +me. Up to that time I had not occupied any place in the South where the +citizens were at home in any great numbers. Dover was within the +fortifications at Fort Donelson, and, as far as I remember, every +citizen was gone. There were no people living at Pittsburg landing, and +but very few at Corinth. Memphis, however, was a populous city, and +there were many of the citizens remaining there who were not only +thoroughly impressed with the justice of their cause, but who thought +that even the "Yankee soldiery" must entertain the same views if they +could only be induced to make an honest confession. It took hours of my +time every day to listen to complaints and requests. The latter were +generally reasonable, and if so they were granted; but the complaints +were not always, or even often, well founded. Two instances will mark +the general character. First: the officer who commanded at Memphis +immediately after the city fell into the hands of the National troops +had ordered one of the churches of the city to be opened to the +soldiers. Army chaplains were authorized to occupy the pulpit. Second: +at the beginning of the war the Confederate Congress had passed a law +confiscating all property of "alien enemies" at the South, including the +debts of Southerners to Northern men. In consequence of this law, when +Memphis was occupied the provost-marshal had forcibly collected all the +evidences he could obtain of such debts. + +Almost the first complaints made to me were these two outrages. The +gentleman who made the complaints informed me first of his own high +standing as a lawyer, a citizen and a Christian. He was a deacon in the +church which had been defiled by the occupation of Union troops, and by +a Union chaplain filling the pulpit. He did not use the word "defile," +but he expressed the idea very clearly. He asked that the church be +restored to the former congregation. I told him that no order had been +issued prohibiting the congregation attending the church. He said of +course the congregation could not hear a Northern clergyman who differed +so radically with them on questions of government. I told him the +troops would continue to occupy that church for the present, and that +they would not be called upon to hear disloyal sentiments proclaimed +from the pulpit. This closed the argument on the first point. + +Then came the second. The complainant said that he wanted the papers +restored to him which had been surrendered to the provost-marshal under +protest; he was a lawyer, and before the establishment of the +"Confederate States Government" had been the attorney for a number of +large business houses at the North; that "his government" had +confiscated all debts due "alien enemies," and appointed commissioners, +or officers, to collect such debts and pay them over to the +"government": but in his case, owing to his high standing, he had been +permitted to hold these claims for collection, the responsible officials +knowing that he would account to the "government" for every dollar +received. He said that his "government," when it came in possession of +all its territory, would hold him personally responsible for the claims +he had surrendered to the provost-marshal. His impudence was so sublime +that I was rather amused than indignant. I told him, however, that if +he would remain in Memphis I did not believe the Confederate government +would ever molest him. He left, no doubt, as much amazed at my +assurance as I was at the brazenness of his request. + +On the 11th of July General Halleck received telegraphic orders +appointing him to the command of all the armies, with headquarters in +Washington. His instructions pressed him to proceed to his new field of +duty with as little delay as was consistent with the safety and +interests of his previous command. I was next in rank, and he +telegraphed me the same day to report at department headquarters at +Corinth. I was not informed by the dispatch that my chief had been +ordered to a different field and did not know whether to move my +headquarters or not. I telegraphed asking if I was to take my staff +with me, and received word in reply: "This place will be your +headquarters. You can judge for yourself." I left Memphis for my new +field without delay, and reached Corinth on the 15th of the month. +General Halleck remained until the 17th of July; but he was very +uncommunicative, and gave me no information as to what I had been called +to Corinth for. + +When General Halleck left to assume the duties of general-in-chief I +remained in command of the district of West Tennessee. Practically I +became a department commander, because no one was assigned to that +position over me and I made my reports direct to the general-in-chief; +but I was not assigned to the position of department commander until the +25th of October. General Halleck while commanding the Department of the +Mississippi had had control as far east as a line drawn from Chattanooga +north. My district only embraced West Tennessee and Kentucky west of +the Cumberland River. Buell, with the Army of the Ohio, had, as +previously stated, been ordered east towards Chattanooga, with +instructions to repair the Memphis and Charleston railroad as he +advanced. Troops had been sent north by Halleck along the line of the +Mobile and Ohio railroad to put it in repair as far as Columbus. Other +troops were stationed on the railroad from Jackson, Tennessee, to Grand +Junction, and still others on the road west to Memphis. + +The remainder of the magnificent army of 120,000 men which entered +Corinth on the 30th of May had now become so scattered that I was put +entirely on the defensive in a territory whose population was hostile to +the Union. One of the first things I had to do was to construct +fortifications at Corinth better suited to the garrison that could be +spared to man them. The structures that had been built during the +months of May and June were left as monuments to the skill of the +engineer, and others were constructed in a few days, plainer in design +but suited to the command available to defend them. + +I disposed the troops belonging to the district in conformity with the +situation as rapidly as possible. The forces at Donelson, Clarksville +and Nashville, with those at Corinth and along the railroad eastward, I +regarded as sufficient for protection against any attack from the west. +The Mobile and Ohio railroad was guarded from Rienzi, south of Corinth, +to Columbus; and the Mississippi Central railroad from Jackson, +Tennessee, to Bolivar. Grand Junction and La Grange on the Memphis +railroad were abandoned. + +South of the Army of the Tennessee, and confronting it, was Van Dorn, +with a sufficient force to organize a movable army of thirty-five to +forty thousand men, after being reinforced by Price from Missouri. This +movable force could be thrown against either Corinth, Bolivar or +Memphis; and the best that could be done in such event would be to +weaken the points not threatened in order to reinforce the one that was. +Nothing could be gained on the National side by attacking elsewhere, +because the territory already occupied was as much as the force present +could guard. The most anxious period of the war, to me, was during the +time the Army of the Tennessee was guarding the territory acquired by +the fall of Corinth and Memphis and before I was sufficiently reinforced +to take the offensive. The enemy also had cavalry operating in our +rear, making it necessary to guard every point of the railroad back to +Columbus, on the security of which we were dependent for all our +supplies. Headquarters were connected by telegraph with all points of +the command except Memphis and the Mississippi below Columbus. With +these points communication was had by the railroad to Columbus, then +down the river by boat. To reinforce Memphis would take three or four +days, and to get an order there for troops to move elsewhere would have +taken at least two days. Memphis therefore was practically isolated +from the balance of the command. But it was in Sherman's hands. Then +too the troops were well intrenched and the gunboats made a valuable +auxiliary. + +During the two months after the departure of General Halleck there was +much fighting between small bodies of the contending armies, but these +encounters were dwarfed by the magnitude of the main battles so as to be +now almost forgotten except by those engaged in them. Some of them, +however, estimated by the losses on both sides in killed and wounded, +were equal in hard fighting to most of the battles of the Mexican war +which attracted so much of the attention of the public when they +occurred. About the 23d of July Colonel Ross, commanding at Bolivar, +was threatened by a large force of the enemy so that he had to be +reinforced from Jackson and Corinth. On the 27th there was skirmishing +on the Hatchie River, eight miles from Bolivar. On the 30th I learned +from Colonel P. H. Sheridan, who had been far to the south, that Bragg +in person was at Rome, Georgia, with his troops moving by rail (by way +of Mobile) to Chattanooga and his wagon train marching overland to join +him at Rome. Price was at this time at Holly Springs, Mississippi, with +a large force, and occupied Grand Junction as an outpost. I proposed to +the general-in-chief to be permitted to drive him away, but was informed +that, while I had to judge for myself, the best use to make of my troops +WAS NOT TO SCATTER THEM, but hold them ready to reinforce Buell. + +The movement of Bragg himself with his wagon trains to Chattanooga +across country, while his troops were transported over a long +round-about road to the same destination, without need of guards except +when in my immediate front, demonstrates the advantage which troops +enjoy while acting in a country where the people are friendly. Buell +was marching through a hostile region and had to have his communications +thoroughly guarded back to a base of supplies. More men were required +the farther the National troops penetrated into the enemy's country. I, +with an army sufficiently powerful to have destroyed Bragg, was purely +on the defensive and accomplishing no more than to hold a force far +inferior to my own. + +On the 2d of August I was ordered from Washington to live upon the +country, on the resources of citizens hostile to the government, so far +as practicable. I was also directed to "handle rebels within our lines +without gloves," to imprison them, or to expel them from their homes and +from our lines. I do not recollect having arrested and confined a +citizen (not a soldier) during the entire rebellion. I am aware that a +great many were sent to northern prisons, particularly to Joliet, +Illinois, by some of my subordinates with the statement that it was my +order. I had all such released the moment I learned of their arrest; +and finally sent a staff officer north to release every prisoner who was +said to be confined by my order. There were many citizens at home who +deserved punishment because they were soldiers when an opportunity was +afforded to inflict an injury to the National cause. This class was not +of the kind that were apt to get arrested, and I deemed it better that a +few guilty men should escape than that a great many innocent ones should +suffer. + +On the 14th of August I was ordered to send two more divisions to Buell. +They were sent the same day by way of Decatur. On the 22d Colonel +Rodney Mason surrendered Clarksville with six companies of his regiment. + +Colonel Mason was one of the officers who had led their regiments off +the field at almost the first fire of the rebels at Shiloh. He was by +nature and education a gentleman, and was terribly mortified at his +action when the battle was over. He came to me with tears in his eyes +and begged to be allowed to have another trial. I felt great sympathy +for him and sent him, with his regiment, to garrison Clarksville and +Donelson. He selected Clarksville for his headquarters, no doubt +because he regarded it as the post of danger, it being nearer the enemy. +But when he was summoned to surrender by a band of guerillas, his +constitutional weakness overcame him. He inquired the number of men the +enemy had, and receiving a response indicating a force greater than his +own he said if he could be satisfied of that fact he would surrender. +Arrangements were made for him to count the guerillas, and having +satisfied himself that the enemy had the greater force he surrendered +and informed his subordinate at Donelson of the fact, advising him to do +the same. The guerillas paroled their prisoners and moved upon +Donelson, but the officer in command at that point marched out to meet +them and drove them away. + +Among other embarrassments, at the time of which I now write, was the +fact that the government wanted to get out all the cotton possible from +the South and directed me to give every facility toward that end. Pay +in gold was authorized, and stations on the Mississippi River and on the +railroad in our possession had to be designated where cotton would be +received. This opened to the enemy not only the means of converting +cotton into money, which had a value all over the world and which they +so much needed, but it afforded them means of obtaining accurate and +intelligent information in regard to our position and strength. It was +also demoralizing to the troops. Citizens obtaining permits from the +treasury department had to be protected within our lines and given +facilities to get out cotton by which they realized enormous profits. +Men who had enlisted to fight the battles of their country did not like +to be engaged in protecting a traffic which went to the support of an +enemy they had to fight, and the profits of which went to men who shared +none of their dangers. + +On the 30th of August Colonel M. D. Leggett, near Bolivar, with the 20th +and 29th Ohio volunteer infantry, was attacked by a force supposed to be +about 4,000 strong. The enemy was driven away with a loss of more than +one hundred men. On the 1st of September the bridge guard at Medon was +attacked by guerillas. The guard held the position until reinforced, +when the enemy were routed leaving about fifty of their number on the +field dead or wounded, our loss being only two killed and fifteen +wounded. On the same day Colonel Dennis, with a force of less than 500 +infantry and two pieces of artillery, met the cavalry of the enemy in +strong force, a few miles west of Medon, and drove them away with great +loss. Our troops buried 179 of the enemy's dead, left upon the field. +Afterwards it was found that all the houses in the vicinity of the +battlefield were turned into hospitals for the wounded. Our loss, as +reported at the time, was forty-five killed and wounded. On the 2d of +September I was ordered to send more reinforcements to Buell. Jackson +and Bolivar were yet threatened, but I sent the reinforcements. On the +4th I received direct orders to send Granger's division also to +Louisville, Kentucky. + +General Buell had left Corinth about the 10th of June to march upon +Chattanooga; Bragg, who had superseded Beauregard in command, sent one +division from Tupelo on the 27th of June for the same place. This gave +Buell about seventeen days' start. If he had not been required to repair +the railroad as he advanced, the march could have been made in eighteen +days at the outside, and Chattanooga must have been reached by the +National forces before the rebels could have possibly got there. The +road between Nashville and Chattanooga could easily have been put in +repair by other troops, so that communication with the North would have +been opened in a short time after the occupation of the place by the +National troops. If Buell had been permitted to move in the first +instance, with the whole of the Army of the Ohio and that portion of the +Army of the Mississippi afterwards sent to him, he could have thrown +four divisions from his own command along the line of road to repair and +guard it. + +Granger's division was promptly sent on the 4th of September. I was at +the station at Corinth when the troops reached that point, and found +General P. H. Sheridan with them. I expressed surprise at seeing him +and said that I had not expected him to go. He showed decided +disappointment at the prospect of being detained. I felt a little +nettled at his desire to get away and did not detain him. + +Sheridan was a first lieutenant in the regiment in which I had served +eleven years, the 4th infantry, and stationed on the Pacific coast when +the war broke out. He was promoted to a captaincy in May, 1861, and +before the close of the year managed in some way, I do not know how, to +get East. He went to Missouri. Halleck had known him as a very +successful young officer in managing campaigns against the Indians on +the Pacific coast, and appointed him acting-quartermaster in south-west +Missouri. There was no difficulty in getting supplies forward while +Sheridan served in that capacity; but he got into difficulty with his +immediate superiors because of his stringent rules for preventing the +use of public transportation for private purposes. He asked to be +relieved from further duty in the capacity in which he was engaged and +his request was granted. When General Halleck took the field in April, +1862, Sheridan was assigned to duty on his staff. During the advance on +Corinth a vacancy occurred in the colonelcy of the 2d Michigan cavalry. +Governor Blair, of Michigan, telegraphed General Halleck asking him to +suggest the name of a professional soldier for the vacancy, saying he +would appoint a good man without reference to his State. Sheridan was +named; and was so conspicuously efficient that when Corinth was reached +he was assigned to command a cavalry brigade in the Army of the +Mississippi. He was in command at Booneville on the 1st of July with +two small regiments, when he was attacked by a force full three times +as numerous as his own. By very skilful manoeuvres and boldness of +attack he completely routed the enemy. For this he was made a +brigadier-general and became a conspicuous figure in the army about +Corinth. On this account I was sorry to see him leaving me. His +departure was probably fortunate, for he rendered distinguished services +in his new field. + +Granger and Sheridan reached Louisville before Buell got there, and on +the night of their arrival Sheridan with his command threw up works +around the railroad station for the defence of troops as they came from +the front. + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +ADVANCE OF VAN DORN AND PRICE--PRICE ENTERS IUKA--BATTLE OF IUKA. + +At this time, September 4th, I had two divisions of the Army of the +Mississippi stationed at Corinth, Rienzi, Jacinto and Danville. There +were at Corinth also Davies' division and two brigades of McArthur's, +besides cavalry and artillery. This force constituted my left wing, of +which Rosecrans was in command. General Ord commanded the centre, from +Bethel to Humboldt on the Mobile and Ohio railroad and from Jackson to +Bolivar where the Mississippi Central is crossed by the Hatchie River. +General Sherman commanded on the right at Memphis with two of his +brigades back at Brownsville, at the crossing of the Hatchie River by +the Memphis and Ohio railroad. This made the most convenient +arrangement I could devise for concentrating all my spare forces upon +any threatened point. All the troops of the command were within +telegraphic communication of each other, except those under Sherman. By +bringing a portion of his command to Brownsville, from which point there +was a railroad and telegraph back to Memphis, communication could be had +with that part of my command within a few hours by the use of couriers. +In case it became necessary to reinforce Corinth, by this arrangement +all the troops at Bolivar, except a small guard, could be sent by rail +by the way of Jackson in less than twenty-four hours; while the troops +from Brownsville could march up to Bolivar to take their place. + +On the 7th of September I learned of the advance of Van Dorn and Price, +apparently upon Corinth. One division was brought from Memphis to +Bolivar to meet any emergency that might arise from this move of the +enemy. I was much concerned because my first duty, after holding the +territory acquired within my command, was to prevent further reinforcing +of Bragg in Middle Tennessee. Already the Army of Northern Virginia had +defeated the army under General Pope and was invading Maryland. In the +Centre General Buell was on his way to Louisville and Bragg marching +parallel to him with a large Confederate force for the Ohio River. + +I had been constantly called upon to reinforce Buell until at this time +my entire force numbered less than 50,000 men, of all arms. This +included everything from Cairo south within my jurisdiction. If I too +should be driven back, the Ohio River would become the line dividing the +belligerents west of the Alleghanies, while at the East the line was +already farther north than when hostilities commenced at the opening of +the war. It is true Nashville was never given up after its first +capture, but it would have been isolated and the garrison there would +have been obliged to beat a hasty retreat if the troops in West +Tennessee had been compelled to fall back. To say at the end of the +second year of the war the line dividing the contestants at the East was +pushed north of Maryland, a State that had not seceded, and at the West +beyond Kentucky, another State which had been always loyal, would have +been discouraging indeed. As it was, many loyal people despaired in the +fall of 1862 of ever saving the Union. The administration at Washington +was much concerned for the safety of the cause it held so dear. But I +believe there was never a day when the President did not think that, in +some way or other, a cause so just as ours would come out triumphant. + +Up to the 11th of September Rosecrans still had troops on the railroad +east of Corinth, but they had all been ordered in. By the 12th all were +in except a small force under Colonel Murphy of the 8th Wisconsin. He +had been detained to guard the remainder of the stores which had not yet +been brought in to Corinth. + +On the 13th of September General Sterling Price entered Iuka, a town +about twenty miles east of Corinth on the Memphis and Charleston +railroad. Colonel Murphy with a few men was guarding the place. He +made no resistance, but evacuated the town on the approach of the enemy. +I was apprehensive lest the object of the rebels might be to get troops +into Tennessee to reinforce Bragg, as it was afterwards ascertained to +be. The authorities at Washington, including the general-in-chief of +the army, were very anxious, as I have said, about affairs both in East +and Middle Tennessee; and my anxiety was quite as great on their account +as for any danger threatening my command. I had not force enough at +Corinth to attack Price even by stripping everything; and there was +danger that before troops could be got from other points he might be far +on his way across the Tennessee. To prevent this all spare forces at +Bolivar and Jackson were ordered to Corinth, and cars were concentrated +at Jackson for their transportation. Within twenty-four hours from the +transmission of the order the troops were at their destination, although +there had been a delay of four hours resulting from the forward train +getting off the track and stopping all the others. This gave a +reinforcement of near 8,000 men, General Ord in command. General +Rosecrans commanded the district of Corinth with a movable force of +about 9,000 independent of the garrison deemed necessary to be left +behind. It was known that General Van Dorn was about a four days' march +south of us, with a large force. It might have been part of his plan to +attack at Corinth, Price coming from the east while he came up from the +south. My desire was to attack Price before Van Dorn could reach +Corinth or go to his relief. + +General Rosecrans had previously had his headquarters at Iuka, where his +command was spread out along the Memphis and Charleston railroad +eastward. While there he had a most excellent map prepared showing all +the roads and streams in the surrounding country. He was also +personally familiar with the ground, so that I deferred very much to him +in my plans for the approach. We had cars enough to transport all of +General Ord's command, which was to go by rail to Burnsville, a point on +the road about seven miles west of Iuka. From there his troops were to +march by the north side of the railroad and attack Price from the +north-west, while Rosecrans was to move eastward from his position south +of Corinth by way of the Jacinto road. A small force was to hold the +Jacinto road where it turns to the north-east, while the main force +moved on the Fulton road which comes into Iuka further east. This plan +was suggested by Rosecrans. + +Bear Creek, a few miles to the east of the Fulton road, is a formidable +obstacle to the movement of troops in the absence of bridges, all of +which, in September, 1862, had been destroyed in that vicinity. The +Tennessee, to the north-east, not many miles away, was also a formidable +obstacle for an army followed by a pursuing force. Ord was on the +north-west, and even if a rebel movement had been possible in that +direction it could have brought only temporary relief, for it would have +carried Price's army to the rear of the National forces and isolated it +from all support. It looked to me that, if Price would remain in Iuka +until we could get there, his annihilation was inevitable. + +On the morning of the 18th of September General Ord moved by rail to +Burnsville, and there left the cars and moved out to perform his part of +the programme. He was to get as near the enemy as possible during the +day and intrench himself so as to hold his position until the next +morning. Rosecrans was to be up by the morning of the 19th on the two +roads before described, and the attack was to be from all three quarters +simultaneously. Troops enough were left at Jacinto and Rienzi to detain +any cavalry that Van Dorn might send out to make a sudden dash into +Corinth until I could be notified. There was a telegraph wire along the +railroad, so there would be no delay in communication. I detained cars +and locomotives enough at Burnsville to transport the whole of Ord's +command at once, and if Van Dorn had moved against Corinth instead of +Iuka I could have thrown in reinforcements to the number of 7,000 or +8,000 before he could have arrived. I remained at Burnsville with a +detachment of about 900 men from Ord's command and communicated with my +two wings by courier. Ord met the advance of the enemy soon after +leaving Burnsville. Quite a sharp engagement ensued, but he drove the +rebels back with considerable loss, including one general officer +killed. He maintained his position and was ready to attack by daylight +the next morning. I was very much disappointed at receiving a dispatch +from Rosecrans after midnight from Jacinto, twenty-two miles from Iuka, +saying that some of his command had been delayed, and that the rear of +his column was not yet up as far as Jacinto. He said, however, that he +would still be at Iuka by two o'clock the next day. I did not believe +this possible because of the distance and the condition of the roads, +which was bad; besides, troops after a forced march of twenty miles are +not in a good condition for fighting the moment they get through. It +might do in marching to relieve a beleaguered garrison, but not to make +an assault. I immediately sent Ord a copy of Rosecrans' dispatch and +ordered him to be in readiness to attack the moment he heard the sound +of guns to the south or south-east. He was instructed to notify his +officers to be on the alert for any indications of battle. During the +19th the wind blew in the wrong direction to transmit sound either +towards the point where Ord was, or to Burnsville where I had remained. + +A couple of hours before dark on the 19th Rosecrans arrived with the +head of his column at garnets, the point where the Jacinto road to Iuka +leaves the road going east. He here turned north without sending any +troops to the Fulton road. While still moving in column up the Jacinto +road he met a force of the enemy and had his advance badly beaten and +driven back upon the main road. In this short engagement his loss was +considerable for the number engaged, and one battery was taken from him. +The wind was still blowing hard and in the wrong direction to transmit +sounds towards either Ord or me. Neither he nor I nor any one in either +command heard a gun that was fired upon the battle-field. After the +engagement Rosecrans sent me a dispatch announcing the result. This was +brought by a courier. There was no road between Burnsville and the +position then occupied by Rosecrans and the country was impassable for a +man on horseback. The courier bearing the message was compelled to move +west nearly to Jacinto before he found a road leading to Burnsville. +This made it a late hour of the night before I learned of the battle +that had taken place during the afternoon. I at once notified Ord of +the fact and ordered him to attack early in the morning. The next +morning Rosecrans himself renewed the attack and went into Iuka with but +little resistance. Ord also went in according to orders, without +hearing a gun from the south of town but supposing the troops coming +from the south-west must be up by that time. Rosecrans, however, had +put no troops upon the Fulton road, and the enemy had taken advantage of +this neglect and retreated by that road during the night. Word was soon +brought to me that our troops were in Iuka. I immediately rode into +town and found that the enemy was not being pursued even by the cavalry. +I ordered pursuit by the whole of Rosecrans' command and went on with +him a few miles in person. He followed only a few miles after I left +him and then went into camp, and the pursuit was continued no further. +I was disappointed at the result of the battle of Iuka--but I had so +high an opinion of General Rosecrans that I found no fault at the time. + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +VAN DORN'S MOVEMENTS--BATTLE OF CORINTH--COMMAND OF THE DEPARTMENT OF +THE TENNESSEE. + +On the 19th of September General Geo. H. Thomas was ordered east to +reinforce Buell. This threw the army at my command still more on the +defensive. The Memphis and Charleston railroad was abandoned, except at +Corinth, and small forces were left at Chewalla and Grand Junction. +Soon afterwards the latter of these two places was given up and Bolivar +became our most advanced position on the Mississippi Central railroad. +Our cavalry was kept well to the front and frequent expeditions were +sent out to watch the movements of the enemy. We were in a country +where nearly all the people, except the negroes, were hostile to us and +friendly to the cause we were trying to suppress. It was easy, +therefore, for the enemy to get early information of our every move. +We, on the contrary, had to go after our information in force, and then +often returned without it. + +On the 22d Bolivar was threatened by a large force from south of Grand +Junction, supposed to be twenty regiments of infantry with cavalry and +artillery. I reinforced Bolivar, and went to Jackson in person to +superintend the movement of troops to whatever point the attack might be +made upon. The troops from Corinth were brought up in time to repel the +threatened movement without a battle. Our cavalry followed the enemy +south of Davis' mills in Mississippi. + +On the 30th I found that Van Dorn was apparently endeavoring to strike +the Mississippi River above Memphis. At the same time other points +within my command were so threatened that it was impossible to +concentrate a force to drive him away. There was at this juncture a +large Union force at Helena, Arkansas, which, had it been within my +command, I could have ordered across the river to attack and break up +the Mississippi Central railroad far to the south. This would not only +have called Van Dorn back, but would have compelled the retention of a +large rebel force far to the south to prevent a repetition of such raids +on the enemy's line of supplies. Geographical lines between the +commands during the rebellion were not always well chosen, or they were +too rigidly adhered to. + +Van Dorn did not attempt to get upon the line above Memphis, as had +apparently been his intention. He was simply covering a deeper design; +one much more important to his cause. By the 1st of October it was +fully apparent that Corinth was to be attacked with great force and +determination, and that Van Dorn, Lovell, Price, Villepigue and Rust had +joined their strength for this purpose. There was some skirmishing +outside of Corinth with the advance of the enemy on the 3d. The rebels +massed in the north-west angle of the Memphis and Charleston and the +Mobile and Ohio railroads, and were thus between the troops at Corinth +and all possible reinforcements. Any fresh troops for us must come by a +circuitous route. + +On the night of the 3d, accordingly, I ordered General McPherson, who +was at Jackson, to join Rosecrans at Corinth with reinforcements picked +up along the line of the railroad equal to a brigade. Hurlbut had been +ordered from Bolivar to march for the same destination; and as Van Dorn +was coming upon Corinth from the north-west some of his men fell in with +the advance of Hurlbut's and some skirmishing ensued on the evening of +the 3d. On the 4th Van Dorn made a dashing attack, hoping, no doubt, to +capture Rosecrans before his reinforcements could come up. In that case +the enemy himself could have occupied the defences of Corinth and held +at bay all the Union troops that arrived. In fact he could have taken +the offensive against the reinforcements with three or four times their +number and still left a sufficient garrison in the works about Corinth +to hold them. He came near success, some of his troops penetrating the +National lines at least once, but the works that were built after +Halleck's departure enabled Rosecrans to hold his position until the +troops of both McPherson and Hurlbut approached towards the rebel front +and rear. The enemy was finally driven back with great slaughter: all +their charges, made with great gallantry, were repulsed. The loss on +our side was heavy, but nothing to compare with Van Dorn's. McPherson +came up with the train of cars bearing his command as close to the enemy +as was prudent, debarked on the rebel flank and got in to the support of +Rosecrans just after the repulse. His approach, as well as that of +Hurlbut, was known to the enemy and had a moral effect. General +Rosecrans, however, failed to follow up the victory, although I had +given specific orders in advance of the battle for him to pursue the +moment the enemy was repelled. He did not do so, and I repeated the +order after the battle. In the first order he was notified that the +force of 4,000 men which was going to his assistance would be in great +peril if the enemy was not pursued. + +General Ord had joined Hurlbut on the 4th and being senior took command +of his troops. This force encountered the head of Van Dorn's retreating +column just as it was crossing the Hatchie by a bridge some ten miles +out from Corinth. The bottom land here was swampy and bad for the +operations of troops, making a good place to get an enemy into. Ord +attacked the troops that had crossed the bridge and drove them back in a +panic. Many were killed, and others were drowned by being pushed off +the bridge in their hurried retreat. Ord followed and met the main +force. He was too weak in numbers to assault, but he held the bridge +and compelled the enemy to resume his retreat by another bridge higher +up the stream. Ord was wounded in this engagement and the command +devolved on Hurlbut. + +Rosecrans did not start in pursuit till the morning of the 5th and then +took the wrong road. Moving in the enemy's country he travelled with a +wagon train to carry his provisions and munitions of war. His march was +therefore slower than that of the enemy, who was moving towards his +supplies. Two or three hours of pursuit on the day of battle, without +anything except what the men carried on their persons, would have been +worth more than any pursuit commenced the next day could have possibly +been. Even when he did start, if Rosecrans had followed the route taken +by the enemy, he would have come upon Van Dorn in a swamp with a stream +in front and Ord holding the only bridge; but he took the road leading +north and towards Chewalla instead of west, and, after having marched as +far as the enemy had moved to get to the Hatchie, he was as far from +battle as when he started. Hurlbut had not the numbers to meet any such +force as Van Dorn's if they had been in any mood for fighting, and he +might have been in great peril. + +I now regarded the time to accomplish anything by pursuit as past and, +after Rosecrans reached Jonesboro, I ordered him to return. He kept on +to Ripley, however, and was persistent in wanting to go farther. I +thereupon ordered him to halt and submitted the matter to the +general-in-chief, who allowed me to exercise my judgment in the matter, +but inquired "why not pursue?" Upon this I ordered Rosecrans back. Had +he gone much farther he would have met a greater force than Van Dorn had +at Corinth and behind intrenchments or on chosen ground, and the +probabilities are he would have lost his army. + +The battle of Corinth was bloody, our loss being 315 killed, 1,812 +wounded and 232 missing. The enemy lost many more. Rosecrans reported +1,423 dead and 2,225 prisoners. We fought behind breastworks, which +accounts in some degree for the disparity. Among the killed on our side +was General Hackelman. General Oglesby was badly, it was for some time +supposed mortally, wounded. I received a congratulatory letter from the +President, which expressed also his sorrow for the losses. + +This battle was recognized by me as being a decided victory, though not +so complete as I had hoped for, nor nearly so complete as I now think +was within the easy grasp of the commanding officer at Corinth. Since +the war it is known that the result, as it was, was a crushing blow to +the enemy, and felt by him much more than it was appreciated at the +North. The battle relieved me from any further anxiety for the safety +of the territory within my jurisdiction, and soon after receiving +reinforcements I suggested to the general-in-chief a forward movement +against Vicksburg. + +On the 23d of October I learned of Pemberton's being in command at Holly +Springs and much reinforced by conscripts and troops from Alabama and +Texas. The same day General Rosecrans was relieved from duty with my +command, and shortly after he succeeded Buell in the command of the army +in Middle Tennessee. I was delighted at the promotion of General +Rosecrans to a separate command, because I still believed that when +independent of an immediate superior the qualities which I, at that +time, credited him with possessing, would show themselves. As a +subordinate I found that I could not make him do as I wished, and had +determined to relieve him from duty that very day. + +At the close of the operations just described my force, in round +numbers, was 48,500. Of these 4,800 were in Kentucky and Illinois, +7,000 in Memphis, 19,200 from Mound City south, and 17,500 at Corinth. +General McClernand had been authorized from Washington to go north and +organize troops to be used in opening the Mississippi. These new levies +with other reinforcements now began to come in. + +On the 25th of October I was placed in command of the Department of the +Tennessee. Reinforcements continued to come from the north and by the +2d of November I was prepared to take the initiative. This was a great +relief after the two and a half months of continued defence over a large +district of country, and where nearly every citizen was an enemy ready +to give information of our every move. I have described very +imperfectly a few of the battles and skirmishes that took place during +this time. To describe all would take more space than I can allot to +the purpose; to make special mention of all the officers and troops who +distinguished themselves, would take a volume. (*9) + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST VICKSBURG--EMPLOYING THE FREEDMEN--OCCUPATION OF +HOLLY SPRINGS--SHERMAN ORDERED TO MEMPHIS--SHERMAN'S MOVEMENTS DOWN THE +MISSISSIPPI--VAN DORN CAPTURES HOLLY SPRINGS--COLLECTING FORAGE AND +FOOD. + +Vicksburg was important to the enemy because it occupied the first high +ground coming close to the river below Memphis. From there a railroad +runs east, connecting with other roads leading to all points of the +Southern States. A railroad also starts from the opposite side of the +river, extending west as far as Shreveport, Louisiana. Vicksburg was +the only channel, at the time of the events of which this chapter +treats, connecting the parts of the Confederacy divided by the +Mississippi. So long as it was held by the enemy, the free navigation +of the river was prevented. Hence its importance. Points on the river +between Vicksburg and Port Hudson were held as dependencies; but their +fall was sure to follow the capture of the former place. + +The campaign against Vicksburg commenced on the 2d of November as +indicated in a dispatch to the general-in-chief in the following words: +"I have commenced a movement on Grand Junction, with three divisions +from Corinth and two from Bolivar. Will leave here [Jackson, Tennessee] +to-morrow, and take command in person. If found practicable, I will go +to Holly Springs, and, may be, Grenada, completing railroad and +telegraph as I go." + +At this time my command was holding the Mobile and Ohio railroad from +about twenty-five miles south of Corinth, north to Columbus, Kentucky; +the Mississippi Central from Bolivar north to its junction with the +Mobile and Ohio; the Memphis and Charleston from Corinth east to Bear +Creek, and the Mississippi River from Cairo to Memphis. My entire +command was no more than was necessary to hold these lines, and hardly +that if kept on the defensive. By moving against the enemy and into his +unsubdued, or not yet captured, territory, driving their army before us, +these lines would nearly hold themselves; thus affording a large force +for field operations. My moving force at that time was about 30,000 +men, and I estimated the enemy confronting me, under Pemberton, at about +the same number. General McPherson commanded my left wing and General +C. S. Hamilton the centre, while Sherman was at Memphis with the right +wing. Pemberton was fortified at the Tallahatchie, but occupied Holly +Springs and Grand Junction on the Mississippi Central railroad. On the +8th we occupied Grand Junction and La Grange, throwing a considerable +force seven or eight miles south, along the line of the railroad. The +road from Bolivar forward was repaired and put in running order as the +troops advanced. + +Up to this time it had been regarded as an axiom in war that large +bodies of troops must operate from a base of supplies which they always +covered and guarded in all forward movements. There was delay therefore +in repairing the road back, and in gathering and forwarding supplies to +the front. + +By my orders, and in accordance with previous instructions from +Washington, all the forage within reach was collected under the +supervision of the chief quartermaster and the provisions under the +chief commissary, receipts being given when there was any one to take +them; the supplies in any event to be accounted for as government +stores. The stock was bountiful, but still it gave me no idea of the +possibility of supplying a moving column in an enemy's country from the +country itself. + +It was at this point, probably, where the first idea of a "Freedman's +Bureau" took its origin. Orders of the government prohibited the +expulsion of the negroes from the protection of the army, when they came +in voluntarily. Humanity forbade allowing them to starve. With such an +army of them, of all ages and both sexes, as had congregated about Grand +Junction, amounting to many thousands, it was impossible to advance. +There was no special authority for feeding them unless they were +employed as teamsters, cooks and pioneers with the army; but only +able-bodied young men were suitable for such work. This labor would +support but a very limited percentage of them. The plantations were all +deserted; the cotton and corn were ripe: men, women and children above +ten years of age could be employed in saving these crops. To do this +work with contrabands, or to have it done, organization under a +competent chief was necessary. On inquiring for such a man Chaplain +Eaton, now and for many years the very able United States Commissioner +of Education, was suggested. He proved as efficient in that field as he +has since done in his present one. I gave him all the assistants and +guards he called for. We together fixed the prices to be paid for the +negro labor, whether rendered to the government or to individuals. The +cotton was to be picked from abandoned plantations, the laborers to +receive the stipulated price (my recollection is twelve and a half cents +per pound for picking and ginning) from the quartermaster, he shipping +the cotton north to be sold for the benefit of the government. Citizens +remaining on their plantations were allowed the privilege of having +their crops saved by freedmen on the same terms. + +At once the freedmen became self-sustaining. The money was not paid to +them directly, but was expended judiciously and for their benefit. They +gave me no trouble afterwards. + +Later the freedmen were engaged in cutting wood along the Mississippi +River to supply the large number of steamers on that stream. A good +price was paid for chopping wood used for the supply of government +steamers (steamers chartered and which the government had to supply with +fuel). Those supplying their own fuel paid a much higher price. In +this way a fund was created not only sufficient to feed and clothe all, +old and young, male and female, but to build them comfortable cabins, +hospitals for the sick, and to supply them with many comforts they had +never known before. + +At this stage of the campaign against Vicksburg I was very much +disturbed by newspaper rumors that General McClernand was to have a +separate and independent command within mine, to operate against +Vicksburg by way of the Mississippi River. Two commanders on the same +field are always one too many, and in this case I did not think the +general selected had either the experience or the qualifications to fit +him for so important a position. I feared for the safety of the troops +intrusted to him, especially as he was to raise new levies, raw troops, +to execute so important a trust. But on the 12th I received a dispatch +from General Halleck saying that I had command of all the troops sent to +my department and authorizing me to fight the enemy where I pleased. +The next day my cavalry was in Holly Springs, and the enemy fell back +south of the Tallahatchie. + +Holly Springs I selected for my depot of supplies and munitions of war, +all of which at that time came by rail from Columbus, Kentucky, except +the few stores collected about La Grange and Grand Junction. This was a +long line (increasing in length as we moved south) to maintain in an +enemy's country. On the 15th of November, while I was still at Holly +Springs, I sent word to Sherman to meet me at Columbus. We were but +forty-seven miles apart, yet the most expeditious way for us to meet was +for me to take the rail to Columbus and Sherman a steamer for the same +place. At that meeting, besides talking over my general plans I gave +him his orders to join me with two divisions and to march them down the +Mississippi Central railroad if he could. Sherman, who was always +prompt, was up by the 29th to Cottage Hill, ten miles north of Oxford. +He brought three divisions with him, leaving a garrison of only four +regiments of infantry, a couple of pieces of artillery and a small +detachment of cavalry. Further reinforcements he knew were on their way +from the north to Memphis. About this time General Halleck ordered +troops from Helena, Arkansas (territory west of the Mississippi was not +under my command then) to cut the road in Pemberton's rear. The +expedition was under Generals Hovey and C. C. Washburn and was +successful so far as reaching the railroad was concerned, but the damage +done was very slight and was soon repaired. + +The Tallahatchie, which confronted me, was very high, the railroad +bridge destroyed and Pemberton strongly fortified on the south side. A +crossing would have been impossible in the presence of an enemy. I sent +the cavalry higher up the stream and they secured a crossing. This +caused the enemy to evacuate their position, which was possibly +accelerated by the expedition of Hovey and Washburn. The enemy was +followed as far south as Oxford by the main body of troops, and some +seventeen miles farther by McPherson's command. Here the pursuit was +halted to repair the railroad from the Tallahatchie northward, in order +to bring up supplies. The piles on which the railroad bridge rested had +been left standing. The work of constructing a roadway for the troops +was but a short matter, and, later, rails were laid for cars. + +During the delay at Oxford in repairing railroads I learned that an +expedition down the Mississippi now was inevitable and, desiring to have +a competent commander in charge, I ordered Sherman on the 8th of +December back to Memphis to take charge. The following were his orders: + +Headquarters 13th Army Corps, Department of the Tennessee. OXFORD, +MISSISSIPPI, December 8,1862. + +MAJOR-GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN, Commanding Right Wing: + +You will proceed, with as little delay as possible, to Memphis, +Tennessee, taking with you one division of your present command. On +your arrival at Memphis you will assume command of all the troops there, +and that portion of General Curtis's forces at present east of the +Mississippi River, and organize them into brigades and divisions in your +own army. As soon as possible move with them down the river to the +vicinity of Vicksburg, and with the co-operation of the gunboat fleet +under command of Flag-officer Porter proceed to the reduction of that +place in such a manner as circumstances, and your own judgment, may +dictate. + +The amount of rations, forage, land transportation, etc., necessary to +take, will be left entirely with yourself. The Quartermaster at St. +Louis will be instructed to send you transportation for 30,000 men; +should you still find yourself deficient, your quartermaster will be +authorized to make up the deficiency from such transports as may come +into the port of Memphis. + +On arriving in Memphis, put yourself in communication with Admiral +Porter, and arrange with him for his co-operation. + +Inform me at the earliest practicable day of the time when you will +embark, and such plans as may then be matured. I will hold the forces +here in readiness to co-operate with you in such manner as the movements +of the enemy may make necessary. + +Leave the District of Memphis in the command of an efficient officer, +and with a garrison of four regiments of infantry, the siege guns, and +whatever cavalry may be there. + +U. S. GRANT, Major-General. + + +This idea had presented itself to my mind earlier, for on the 3d of +December I asked Halleck if it would not be well to hold the enemy south +of the Yallabusha and move a force from Helena and Memphis on Vicksburg. +On the 5th again I suggested, from Oxford, to Halleck that if the Helena +troops were at my command I though it would be possible to take them and +the Memphis forces south of the mouth of the Yazoo River, and thus +secure Vicksburg and the State of Mississippi. Halleck on the same day, +the 5th of December, directed me not to attempt to hold the country +south of the Tallahatchie, but to collect 25,000 troops at Memphis by +the 20th for the Vicksburg expedition. I sent Sherman with two +divisions at once, informed the general-in-chief of the fact, and asked +whether I should command the expedition down the river myself or send +Sherman. I was authorized to do as I though best for the accomplishment +of the great object in view. I sent Sherman and so informed General +Halleck. + +As stated, my action in sending Sherman back was expedited by a desire +to get him in command of the forces separated from my direct +supervision. I feared that delay might bring McClernand, who was his +senior and who had authority from the President and Secretary of War to +exercise that particular command,--and independently. I doubted +McClernand's fitness; and I had good reason to believe that in +forestalling him I was by no means giving offence to those whose +authority to command was above both him and me. + +Neither my orders to General Sherman, nor the correspondence between us +or between General Halleck and myself, contemplated at the time my going +further south than the Yallabusha. Pemberton's force in my front was the +main part of the garrison of Vicksburg, as the force with me was the +defence of the territory held by us in West Tennessee and Kentucky. I +hoped to hold Pemberton in my front while Sherman should get in his rear +and into Vicksburg. The further north the enemy could be held the +better. + +It was understood, however, between General Sherman and myself that our +movements were to be co-operative; if Pemberton could not be held away +from Vicksburg I was to follow him; but at that time it was not expected +to abandon the railroad north of the Yallabusha. With that point as a +secondary base of supplies, the possibility of moving down the Yazoo +until communications could be opened with the Mississippi was +contemplated. + +It was my intention, and so understood by Sherman and his command, that +if the enemy should fall back I would follow him even to the gates of +Vicksburg. I intended in such an event to hold the road to Grenada on +the Yallabusha and cut loose from there, expecting to establish a new +base of supplies on the Yazoo, or at Vicksburg itself, with Grenada to +fall back upon in case of failure. It should be remembered that at the +time I speak of it had not been demonstrated that an army could operate +in an enemy's territory depending upon the country for supplies. A halt +was called at Oxford with the advance seventeen miles south of there, to +bring up the road to the latter point and to bring supplies of food, +forage and munitions to the front. + +On the 18th of December I received orders from Washington to divide my +command into four army corps, with General McClernand to command one of +them and to be assigned to that part of the army which was to operate +down the Mississippi. This interfered with my plans, but probably +resulted in my ultimately taking the command in person. McClernand was +at that time in Springfield, Illinois. The order was obeyed without any +delay. Dispatches were sent to him the same day in conformity. + +On the 20th General Van Dorn appeared at Holly Springs, my secondary +base of supplies, captured the garrison of 1,500 men commanded by +Colonel Murphy, of the 8th Wisconsin regiment, and destroyed all our +munitions of war, food and forage. The capture was a disgraceful one to +the officer commanding but not to the troops under him. At the same +time Forrest got on our line of railroad between Jackson, Tennessee, and +Columbus, Kentucky, doing much damage to it. This cut me off from all +communication with the north for more than a week, and it was more than +two weeks before rations or forage could be issued from stores obtained +in the regular way. This demonstrated the impossibility of maintaining +so long a line of road over which to draw supplies for an army moving in +an enemy's country. I determined, therefore, to abandon my campaign +into the interior with Columbus as a base, and returned to La Grange and +Grand Junction destroying the road to my front and repairing the road to +Memphis, making the Mississippi river the line over which to draw +supplies. Pemberton was falling back at the same time. + +The moment I received the news of Van Dorn's success I sent the cavalry +at the front back to drive him from the country. He had start enough to +move north destroying the railroad in many places, and to attack several +small garrisons intrenched as guards to the railroad. All these he +found warned of his coming and prepared to receive him. Van Dorn did +not succeed in capturing a single garrison except the one at Holly +Springs, which was larger than all the others attacked by him put +together. Murphy was also warned of Van Dorn's approach, but made no +preparations to meet him. He did not even notify his command. + +Colonel Murphy was the officer who, two months before, had evacuated +Iuka on the approach of the enemy. General Rosecrans denounced him for +the act and desired to have him tried and punished. I sustained the +colonel at the time because his command was a small one compared with +that of the enemy--not one-tenth as large--and I thought he had done +well to get away without falling into their hands. His leaving large +stores to fall into Price's possession I looked upon as an oversight and +excused it on the ground of inexperience in military matters. He should, +however, have destroyed them. This last surrender demonstrated to my +mind that Rosecrans' judgment of Murphy's conduct at Iuka was correct. +The surrender of Holly Springs was most reprehensible and showed either +the disloyalty of Colonel Murphy to the cause which he professed to +serve, or gross cowardice. + +After the war was over I read from the diary of a lady who accompanied +General Pemberton in his retreat from the Tallahatchie, that the retreat +was almost a panic. The roads were bad and it was difficult to move the +artillery and trains. Why there should have been a panic I do not see. +No expedition had yet started down the Mississippi River. Had I known +the demoralized condition of the enemy, or the fact that central +Mississippi abounded so in all army supplies, I would have been in +pursuit of Pemberton while his cavalry was destroying the roads in my +rear. + +After sending cavalry to drive Van Dorn away, my next order was to +dispatch all the wagons we had, under proper escort, to collect and +bring in all supplies of forage and food from a region of fifteen miles +east and west of the road from our front back to Grand Junction, leaving +two months' supplies for the families of those whose stores were taken. +I was amazed at the quantity of supplies the country afforded. It +showed that we could have subsisted off the country for two months +instead of two weeks without going beyond the limits designated. This +taught me a lesson which was taken advantage of later in the campaign +when our army lived twenty days with the issue of only five days' +rations by the commissary. Our loss of supplies was great at Holly +Springs, but it was more than compensated for by those taken from the +country and by the lesson taught. + +The news of the capture of Holly Springs and the destruction of our +supplies caused much rejoicing among the people remaining in Oxford. +They came with broad smiles on their faces, indicating intense joy, to +ask what I was going to do now without anything for my soldiers to eat. +I told them that I was not disturbed; that I had already sent troops and +wagons to collect all the food and forage they could find for fifteen +miles on each side of the road. Countenances soon changed, and so did +the inquiry. The next was, "What are WE to do?" My response was that +we had endeavored to feed ourselves from our own northern resources +while visiting them; but their friends in gray had been uncivil enough +to destroy what we had brought along, and it could not be expected that +men, with arms in their hands, would starve in the midst of plenty. I +advised them to emigrate east, or west, fifteen miles and assist in +eating up what we left. + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +HEADQUARTERS MOVED TO HOLLY SPRINGS--GENERAL M'CLERNAND IN COMMAND +--ASSUMING COMMAND AT YOUNG'S POINT--OPERATIONS ABOVE VICKSBURG +--FORTIFICATIONS ABOUT VICKSBURG--THE CANAL--LAKE PROVIDENCE +--OPERATIONS AT YAZOO PASS. + +This interruption in my communications north--I was really cut off from +communication with a great part of my own command during this time +--resulted in Sherman's moving from Memphis before McClernand could +arrive, for my dispatch of the 18th did not reach McClernand. Pemberton +got back to Vicksburg before Sherman got there. The rebel positions +were on a bluff on the Yazoo River, some miles above its mouth. The +waters were high so that the bottoms were generally overflowed, leaving +only narrow causeways of dry land between points of debarkation and the +high bluffs. These were fortified and defended at all points. The +rebel position was impregnable against any force that could be brought +against its front. Sherman could not use one-fourth of his force. His +efforts to capture the city, or the high ground north of it, were +necessarily unavailing. + +Sherman's attack was very unfortunate, but I had no opportunity of +communicating with him after the destruction of the road and telegraph +to my rear on the 20th. He did not know but what I was in the rear of +the enemy and depending on him to open a new base of supplies for the +troops with me. I had, before he started from Memphis, directed him to +take with him a few small steamers suitable for the navigation of the +Yazoo, not knowing but that I might want them to supply me after cutting +loose from my base at Grenada. + +On the 23d I removed my headquarters back to Holly Springs. The troops +were drawn back gradually, but without haste or confusion, finding +supplies abundant and no enemy following. The road was not damaged +south of Holly Springs by Van Dorn, at least not to an extent to cause +any delay. As I had resolved to move headquarters to Memphis, and to +repair the road to that point, I remained at Holly Springs until this +work was completed. + +On the 10th of January, the work on the road from Holly Springs to Grand +Junction and thence to Memphis being completed, I moved my headquarters +to the latter place. During the campaign here described, the losses +(mostly captures) were about equal, crediting the rebels with their +Holly Springs capture, which they could not hold. + +When Sherman started on his expedition down the river he had 20,000 men, +taken from Memphis, and was reinforced by 12,000 more at Helena, +Arkansas. The troops on the west bank of the river had previously been +assigned to my command. McClernand having received the orders for his +assignment reached the mouth of the Yazoo on the 2d of January, and +immediately assumed command of all the troops with Sherman, being a part +of his own corps, the 13th, and all of Sherman's, the 15th. Sherman, +and Admiral Porter with the fleet, had withdrawn from the Yazoo. After +consultation they decided that neither the army nor navy could render +service to the cause where they were, and learning that I had withdrawn +from the interior of Mississippi, they determined to return to the +Arkansas River and to attack Arkansas Post, about fifty miles up that +stream and garrisoned by about five or six thousand men. Sherman had +learned of the existence of this force through a man who had been +captured by the enemy with a steamer loaded with ammunition and other +supplies intended for his command. The man had made his escape. +McClernand approved this move reluctantly, as Sherman says. No obstacle +was encountered until the gunboats and transports were within range of +the fort. After three days' bombardment by the navy an assault was made +by the troops and marines, resulting in the capture of the place, and in +taking 5,000 prisoners and 17 guns. I was at first disposed to +disapprove of this move as an unnecessary side movement having no +especial bearing upon the work before us; but when the result was +understood I regarded it as very important. Five thousand Confederate +troops left in the rear might have caused us much trouble and loss of +property while navigating the Mississippi. + +Immediately after the reduction of Arkansas Post and the capture of the +garrison, McClernand returned with his entire force to Napoleon, at the +mouth of the Arkansas River. From here I received messages from both +Sherman and Admiral Porter, urging me to come and take command in +person, and expressing their distrust of McClernand's ability and +fitness for so important and intricate an expedition. + +On the 17th I visited McClernand and his command at Napoleon. It was +here made evident to me that both the army and navy were so distrustful +of McClernand's fitness to command that, while they would do all they +could to insure success, this distrust was an element of weakness. It +would have been criminal to send troops under these circumstances into +such danger. By this time I had received authority to relieve +McClernand, or to assign any person else to the command of the river +expedition, or to assume command in person. I felt great embarrassment +about McClernand. He was the senior major-general after myself within +the department. It would not do, with his rank and ambition, to assign +a junior over him. Nothing was left, therefore, but to assume the +command myself. I would have been glad to put Sherman in command, to +give him an opportunity to accomplish what he had failed in the December +before; but there seemed no other way out of the difficulty, for he was +junior to McClernand. Sherman's failure needs no apology. + +On the 20th I ordered General McClernand with the entire command, to +Young's Point and Milliken's Bend, while I returned to Memphis to make +all the necessary preparation for leaving the territory behind me +secure. General Hurlbut with the 16th corps was left in command. The +Memphis and Charleston railroad was held, while the Mississippi Central +was given up. Columbus was the only point between Cairo and Memphis, on +the river, left with a garrison. All the troops and guns from the posts +on the abandoned railroad and river were sent to the front. + +On the 29th of January I arrived at Young's Point and assumed command +the following day. General McClernand took exception in a most +characteristic way--for him. His correspondence with me on the subject +was more in the nature of a reprimand than a protest. It was highly +insubordinate, but I overlooked it, as I believed, for the good of the +service. General McClernand was a politician of very considerable +prominence in his State; he was a member of Congress when the secession +war broke out; he belonged to that political party which furnished all +the opposition there was to a vigorous prosecution of the war for saving +the Union; there was no delay in his declaring himself for the Union at +all hazards, and there was no uncertain sound in his declaration of +where he stood in the contest before the country. He also gave up his +seat in Congress to take the field in defence of the principles he had +proclaimed. + +The real work of the campaign and siege of Vicksburg now began. The +problem was to secure a footing upon dry ground on the east side of the +river from which the troops could operate against Vicksburg. The +Mississippi River, from Cairo south, runs through a rich alluvial valley +of many miles in width, bound on the east by land running from eighty up +to two or more hundred feet above the river. On the west side the +highest land, except in a few places, is but little above the highest +water. Through this valley the river meanders in the most tortuous way, +varying in direction to all points of the compass. At places it runs to +the very foot of the bluffs. After leaving Memphis, there are no such +highlands coming to the water's edge on the east shore until Vicksburg +is reached. + +The intervening land is cut up by bayous filled from the river in high +water--many of them navigable for steamers. All of them would be, +except for overhanging trees, narrowness and tortuous course, making it +impossible to turn the bends with vessels of any considerable length. +Marching across this country in the face of an enemy was impossible; +navigating it proved equally impracticable. The strategical way +according to the rule, therefore, would have been to go back to Memphis; +establish that as a base of supplies; fortify it so that the storehouses +could be held by a small garrison, and move from there along the line of +railroad, repairing as we advanced, to the Yallabusha, or to Jackson, +Mississippi. At this time the North had become very much discouraged. +Many strong Union men believed that the war must prove a failure. The +elections of 1862 had gone against the party which was for the +prosecution of the war to save the Union if it took the last man and the +last dollar. Voluntary enlistments had ceased throughout the greater +part of the North, and the draft had been resorted to to fill up our +ranks. It was my judgment at the time that to make a backward movement +as long as that from Vicksburg to Memphis, would be interpreted, by many +of those yet full of hope for the preservation of the Union, as a +defeat, and that the draft would be resisted, desertions ensue and the +power to capture and punish deserters lost. There was nothing left to be +done but to go FORWARD TO A DECISIVE VICTORY. This was in my mind from +the moment I took command in person at Young's Point. + +The winter of 1862-3 was a noted one for continuous high water in the +Mississippi and for heavy rains along the lower river. To get dry land, +or rather land above the water, to encamp the troops upon, took many +miles of river front. We had to occupy the levees and the ground +immediately behind. This was so limited that one corps, the 17th, under +General McPherson, was at Lake Providence, seventy miles above +Vicksburg. + +It was in January the troops took their position opposite Vicksburg. +The water was very high and the rains were incessant. There seemed no +possibility of a land movement before the end of March or later, and it +would not do to lie idle all this time. The effect would be +demoralizing to the troops and injurious to their health. Friends in +the North would have grown more and more discouraged, and enemies in the +same section more and more insolent in their gibes and denunciation of +the cause and those engaged in it. + +I always admired the South, as bad as I thought their cause, for the +boldness with which they silenced all opposition and all croaking, by +press or by individuals, within their control. War at all times, +whether a civil war between sections of a common country or between +nations, ought to be avoided, if possible with honor. But, once entered +into, it is too much for human nature to tolerate an enemy within their +ranks to give aid and comfort to the armies of the opposing section or +nation. + +Vicksburg, as stated before, is on the first high land coming to the +river's edge, below that on which Memphis stands. The bluff, or high +land, follows the left bank of the Yazoo for some distance and continues +in a southerly direction to the Mississippi River, thence it runs along +the Mississippi to Warrenton, six miles below. The Yazoo River leaves +the high land a short distance below Haines' Bluff and empties into the +Mississippi nine miles above Vicksburg. Vicksburg is built on this high +land where the Mississippi washes the base of the hill. Haines' Bluff, +eleven miles from Vicksburg, on the Yazoo River, was strongly fortified. +The whole distance from there to Vicksburg and thence to Warrenton was +also intrenched, with batteries at suitable distances and rifle-pits +connecting them. + +From Young's Point the Mississippi turns in a north-easterly direction +to a point just above the city, when it again turns and runs +south-westerly, leaving vessels, which might attempt to run the blockade, +exposed to the fire of batteries six miles below the city before they +were in range of the upper batteries. Since then the river has made a +cut-off, leaving what was the peninsula in front of the city, an island. +North of the Yazoo was all a marsh, heavily timbered, cut up with +bayous, and much overflowed. A front attack was therefore impossible, +and was never contemplated; certainly not by me. The problem then +became, how to secure a landing on high ground east of the Mississippi +without an apparent retreat. Then commenced a series of experiments to +consume time, and to divert the attention of the enemy, of my troops and +of the public generally. I, myself, never felt great confidence that +any of the experiments resorted to would prove successful. Nevertheless +I was always prepared to take advantage of them in case they did. + +In 1862 General Thomas Williams had come up from New Orleans and cut a +ditch ten or twelve feet wide and about as deep, straight across from +Young's Point to the river below. The distance across was a little over +a mile. It was Williams' expectation that when the river rose it would +cut a navigable channel through; but the canal started in an eddy from +both ends, and, of course, it only filled up with water on the rise +without doing any execution in the way of cutting. Mr. Lincoln had +navigated the Mississippi in his younger days and understood well its +tendency to change its channel, in places, from time to time. He set +much store accordingly by this canal. General McClernand had been, +therefore, directed before I went to Young's Point to push the work of +widening and deepening this canal. After my arrival the work was +diligently pushed with about 4,000 men--as many as could be used to +advantage--until interrupted by a sudden rise in the river that broke a +dam at the upper end, which had been put there to keep the water out +until the excavation was completed. This was on the 8th of March. + +Even if the canal had proven a success, so far as to be navigable for +steamers, it could not have been of much advantage to us. It runs in a +direction almost perpendicular to the line of bluffs on the opposite +side, or east bank, of the river. As soon as the enemy discovered what +we were doing he established a battery commanding the canal throughout +its length. This battery soon drove out our dredges, two in number, +which were doing the work of thousands of men. Had the canal been +completed it might have proven of some use in running transports +through, under the cover of night, to use below; but they would yet have +to run batteries, though for a much shorter distance. + +While this work was progressing we were busy in other directions, trying +to find an available landing on high ground on the east bank of the +river, or to make water-ways to get below the city, avoiding the +batteries. + +On the 30th of January, the day after my arrival at the front, I ordered +General McPherson, stationed with his corps at Lake Providence, to cut +the levee at that point. If successful in opening a channel for +navigation by this route, it would carry us to the Mississippi River +through the mouth of the Red River, just above Port Hudson and four +hundred miles below Vicksburg by the river. + +Lake Providence is a part of the old bed of the Mississippi, about a +mile from the present channel. It is six miles long and has its outlet +through Bayou Baxter, Bayou Macon, and the Tensas, Washita and Red +Rivers. The last three are navigable streams at all seasons. Bayous +Baxter and Macon are narrow and tortuous, and the banks are covered with +dense forests overhanging the channel. They were also filled with +fallen timber, the accumulation of years. The land along the +Mississippi River, from Memphis down, is in all instances highest next +to the river, except where the river washes the bluffs which form the +boundary of the valley through which it winds. Bayou Baxter, as it +reaches lower land, begins to spread out and disappears entirely in a +cypress swamp before it reaches the Macon. There was about two feet of +water in this swamp at the time. To get through it, even with vessels +of the lightest draft, it was necessary to clear off a belt of heavy +timber wide enough to make a passage way. As the trees would have to be +cut close to the bottom--under water--it was an undertaking of great +magnitude. + +On the 4th of February I visited General McPherson, and remained with +him several days. The work had not progressed so far as to admit the +water from the river into the lake, but the troops had succeeded in +drawing a small steamer, of probably not over thirty tons' capacity, +from the river into the lake. With this we were able to explore the +lake and bayou as far as cleared. I saw then that there was scarcely a +chance of this ever becoming a practicable route for moving troops +through an enemy's country. The distance from Lake Providence to the +point where vessels going by that route would enter the Mississippi +again, is about four hundred and seventy miles by the main river. The +distance would probably be greater by the tortuous bayous through which +this new route would carry us. The enemy held Port Hudson, below where +the Red River debouches, and all the Mississippi above to Vicksburg. +The Red River, Washita and Tensas were, as has been said, all navigable +streams, on which the enemy could throw small bodies of men to obstruct +our passage and pick off our troops with their sharpshooters. I let the +work go on, believing employment was better than idleness for the men. +Then, too, it served as a cover for other efforts which gave a better +prospect of success. This work was abandoned after the canal proved a +failure. + +Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson of my staff was sent to Helena, Arkansas, to +examine and open a way through Moon Lake and the Yazoo Pass if possible. +Formerly there was a route by way of an inlet from the Mississippi River +into Moon Lake, a mile east of the river, thence east through Yazoo Pass +to Coldwater, along the latter to the Tallahatchie, which joins the +Yallabusha about two hundred and fifty miles below Moon Lake and forms +the Yazoo River. These were formerly navigated by steamers trading with +the rich plantations along their banks; but the State of Mississippi had +built a strong levee across the inlet some years before, leaving the +only entrance for vessels into this rich region the one by way of the +mouth of the Yazoo several hundreds of miles below. + +On the 2d of February this dam, or levee, was cut. The river being high +the rush of water through the cut was so great that in a very short time +the entire obstruction was washed away. The bayous were soon filled and +much of the country was overflowed. This pass leaves the Mississippi +River but a few miles below Helena. On the 24th General Ross, with his +brigade of about 4,500 men on transports, moved into this new water-way. +The rebels had obstructed the navigation of Yazoo Pass and the Coldwater +by felling trees into them. Much of the timber in this region being of +greater specific gravity than water, and being of great size, their +removal was a matter of great labor; but it was finally accomplished, +and on the 11th of March Ross found himself, accompanied by two gunboats +under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Watson Smith, confronting a +fortification at Greenwood, where the Tallahatchie and Yallabusha unite +and the Yazoo begins. The bends of the rivers are such at this point as +to almost form an island, scarcely above water at that stage of the +river. This island was fortified and manned. It was named Fort +Pemberton after the commander at Vicksburg. No land approach was +accessible. The troops, therefore, could render no assistance towards +an assault further than to establish a battery on a little piece of +ground which was discovered above water. The gunboats, however, +attacked on the 11th and again on the 13th of March. Both efforts were +failures and were not renewed. One gunboat was disabled and we lost six +men killed and twenty-five wounded. The loss of the enemy was less. + +Fort Pemberton was so little above the water that it was thought that a +rise of two feet would drive the enemy out. In hope of enlisting the +elements on our side, which had been so much against us up to this time, +a second cut was made in the Mississippi levee, this time directly +opposite Helena, or six miles above the former cut. It did not +accomplish the desired result, and Ross, with his fleet, started back. +On the 22d he met Quinby with a brigade at Yazoo Pass. Quinby was the +senior of Ross, and assumed command. He was not satisfied with +returning to his former position without seeing for himself whether +anything could be accomplished. Accordingly Fort Pemberton was +revisited by our troops; but an inspection was sufficient this time +without an attack. Quinby, with his command, returned with but little +delay. In the meantime I was much exercised for the safety of Ross, not +knowing that Quinby had been able to join him. Reinforcements were of +no use in a country covered with water, as they would have to remain on +board of their transports. Relief had to come from another quarter. So +I determined to get into the Yazoo below Fort Pemberton. + +Steel's Bayou empties into the Yazoo River between Haines' Bluff and its +mouth. It is narrow, very tortuous, and fringed with a very heavy +growth of timber, but it is deep. It approaches to within one mile of +the Mississippi at Eagle Bend, thirty miles above Young's Point. +Steel's Bayou connects with Black Bayou, Black Bayou with Deer Creek, +Deer Creek with Rolling Fork, Rolling Fork with the Big Sunflower River, +and the Big Sunflower with the Yazoo River about ten miles above Haines' +Bluff in a right line but probably twenty or twenty-five miles by the +winding of the river. All these waterways are of about the same nature +so far as navigation is concerned, until the Sunflower is reached; this +affords free navigation. + +Admiral Porter explored this waterway as far as Deer Creek on the 14th +of March, and reported it navigable. On the next day he started with +five gunboats and four mortar-boats. I went with him for some distance. +The heavy overhanging timber retarded progress very much, as did also +the short turns in so narrow a stream. The gunboats, however, ploughed +their way through without other damage than to their appearance. The +transports did not fare so well although they followed behind. The road +was somewhat cleared for them by the gunboats. In the evening I +returned to headquarters to hurry up reinforcements. Sherman went in +person on the 16th, taking with him Stuart's division of the 15th corps. +They took large river transports to Eagle Bend on the Mississippi, where +they debarked and marched across to Steel's Bayou, where they +re-embarked on the transports. The river steamers, with their tall +smokestacks and light guards extending out, were so much impeded that +the gunboats got far ahead. Porter, with his fleet, got within a few +hundred yards of where the sailing would have been clear and free from +the obstructions caused by felling trees into the water, when he +encountered rebel sharp-shooters, and his progress was delayed by +obstructions in his front. He could do nothing with gunboats against +sharpshooters. The rebels, learning his route, had sent in about 4,000 +men--many more than there were sailors in the fleet. + +Sherman went back, at the request of the admiral, to clear out Black +Bayou and to hurry up reinforcements, which were far behind. On the +night of the 19th he received notice from the admiral that he had been +attacked by sharp-shooters and was in imminent peril. Sherman at once +returned through Black Bayou in a canoe, and passed on until he met a +steamer, with the last of the reinforcements he had, coming up. They +tried to force their way through Black Bayou with their steamer, but, +finding it slow and tedious work, debarked and pushed forward on foot. +It was night when they landed, and intensely dark. There was but a +narrow strip of land above water, and that was grown up with underbrush +or cane. The troops lighted their way through this with candles carried +in their hands for a mile and a half, when they came to an open +plantation. Here the troops rested until morning. They made twenty-one +miles from this resting-place by noon the next day, and were in time to +rescue the fleet. Porter had fully made up his mind to blow up the +gunboats rather than have them fall into the hands of the enemy. More +welcome visitors he probably never met than the "boys in blue" on this +occasion. The vessels were backed out and returned to their rendezvous +on the Mississippi; and thus ended in failure the fourth attempt to get +in rear of Vicksburg. + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +THE BAYOUS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI--CRITICISMS OF THE NORTHERN PRESS +--RUNNING THE BATTERIES--LOSS OF THE INDIANOLA--DISPOSITION OF THE +TROOPS. + +The original canal scheme was also abandoned on the 27th of March. The +effort to make a waterway through Lake Providence and the connecting +bayous was abandoned as wholly impracticable about the same time. + +At Milliken's Bend, and also at Young's Point, bayous or channels start, +which connecting with other bayous passing Richmond, Louisiana, enter +the Mississippi at Carthage twenty-five or thirty miles above Grand +Gulf. The Mississippi levee cuts the supply of water off from these +bayous or channels, but all the rainfall behind the levee, at these +points, is carried through these same channels to the river below. In +case of a crevasse in this vicinity, the water escaping would find its +outlet through the same channels. The dredges and laborers from the +canal having been driven out by overflow and the enemy's batteries, I +determined to open these other channels, if possible. If successful the +effort would afford a route, away from the enemy's batteries, for our +transports. There was a good road back of the levees, along these +bayous, to carry the troops, artillery and wagon trains over whenever +the water receded a little, and after a few days of dry weather. +Accordingly, with the abandonment of all the other plans for reaching a +base heretofore described, this new one was undertaken. + +As early as the 4th of February I had written to Halleck about this +route, stating that I thought it much more practicable than the other +undertaking (the Lake Providence route), and that it would have been +accomplished with much less labor if commenced before the water had got +all over the country. + +The upper end of these bayous being cut off from a water supply, further +than the rainfall back of the levees, was grown up with dense timber for +a distance of several miles from their source. It was necessary, +therefore, to clear this out before letting in the water from the river. +This work was continued until the waters of the river began to recede +and the road to Richmond, Louisiana, emerged from the water. One small +steamer and some barges were got through this channel, but no further +use could be made of it because of the fall in the river. Beyond this it +was no more successful than the other experiments with which the winter +was whiled away. All these failures would have been very discouraging +if I had expected much from the efforts; but I had not. From the first +the most I hoped to accomplish was the passage of transports, to be used +below Vicksburg, without exposure to the long line of batteries +defending that city. + +This long, dreary and, for heavy and continuous rains and high water, +unprecedented winter was one of great hardship to all engaged about +Vicksburg. The river was higher than its natural banks from December, +1862, to the following April. The war had suspended peaceful pursuits +in the South, further than the production of army supplies, and in +consequence the levees were neglected and broken in many places and the +whole country was covered with water. Troops could scarcely find dry +ground on which to pitch their tents. Malarial fevers broke out among +the men. Measles and small-pox also attacked them. The hospital +arrangements and medical attendance were so perfect, however, that the +loss of life was much less than might have been expected. Visitors to +the camps went home with dismal stories to relate; Northern papers came +back to the soldiers with these stories exaggerated. Because I would +not divulge my ultimate plans to visitors, they pronounced me idle, +incompetent and unfit to command men in an emergency, and clamored for +my removal. They were not to be satisfied, many of them, with my simple +removal, but named who my successor should be. McClernand, Fremont, +Hunter and McClellan were all mentioned in this connection. I took no +steps to answer these complaints, but continued to do my duty, as I +understood it, to the best of my ability. Every one has his +superstitions. One of mine is that in positions of great responsibility +every one should do his duty to the best of his ability where assigned +by competent authority, without application or the use of influence to +change his position. While at Cairo I had watched with very great +interest the operations of the Army of the Potomac, looking upon that as +the main field of the war. I had no idea, myself, of ever having any +large command, nor did I suppose that I was equal to one; but I had the +vanity to think that as a cavalry officer I might succeed very well in +the command of a brigade. On one occasion, in talking about this to my +staff officers, all of whom were civilians without any military +education whatever, I said that I would give anything if I were +commanding a brigade of cavalry in the Army of the Potomac and I +believed I could do some good. Captain Hillyer spoke up and suggested +that I make application to be transferred there to command the cavalry. +I then told him that I would cut my right arm off first, and mentioned +this superstition. + +In time of war the President, being by the Constitution +Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, is responsible for the +selection of commanders. He should not be embarrassed in making his +selections. I having been selected, my responsibility ended with my +doing the best I knew how. If I had sought the place, or obtained it +through personal or political influence, my belief is that I would have +feared to undertake any plan of my own conception, and would probably +have awaited direct orders from my distant superiors. Persons obtaining +important commands by application or political influence are apt to keep +a written record of complaints and predictions of defeat, which are +shown in case of disaster. Somebody must be responsible for their +failures. + +With all the pressure brought to bear upon them, both President Lincoln +and General Halleck stood by me to the end of the campaign. I had never +met Mr. Lincoln, but his support was constant. + +At last the waters began to recede; the roads crossing the peninsula +behind the levees of the bayous, were emerging from the waters; the +troops were all concentrated from distant points at Milliken's Bend +preparatory to a final move which was to crown the long, tedious and +discouraging labors with success. + +I had had in contemplation the whole winter the movement by land to a +point below Vicksburg from which to operate, subject only to the +possible but not expected success of some one of the expedients resorted +to for the purpose of giving us a different base. This could not be +undertaken until the waters receded. I did not therefore communicate +this plan, even to an officer of my staff, until it was necessary to +make preparations for the start. My recollection is that Admiral Porter +was the first one to whom I mentioned it. The co-operation of the navy +was absolutely essential to the success (even to the contemplation) of +such an enterprise. I had no more authority to command Porter than he +had to command me. It was necessary to have part of his fleet below +Vicksburg if the troops went there. Steamers to use as ferries were +also essential. The navy was the only escort and protection for these +steamers, all of which in getting below had to run about fourteen miles +of batteries. Porter fell into the plan at once, and suggested that he +had better superintend the preparation of the steamers selected to run +the batteries, as sailors would probably understand the work better than +soldiers. I was glad to accept his proposition, not only because I +admitted his argument, but because it would enable me to keep from the +enemy a little longer our designs. Porter's fleet was on the east side +of the river above the mouth of the Yazoo, entirely concealed from the +enemy by the dense forests that intervened. Even spies could not get +near him, on account of the undergrowth and overflowed lands. +Suspicions of some mysterious movements were aroused. Our river guards +discovered one day a small skiff moving quietly and mysteriously up the +river near the east shore, from the direction of Vicksburg, towards the +fleet. On overhauling the boat they found a small white flag, not much +larger than a handkerchief, set up in the stern, no doubt intended as a +flag of truce in case of discovery. The boat, crew and passengers were +brought ashore to me. The chief personage aboard proved to be Jacob +Thompson, Secretary of the Interior under the administration of +President Buchanan. After a pleasant conversation of half an hour or +more I allowed the boat and crew, passengers and all, to return to +Vicksburg, without creating a suspicion that there was a doubt in my +mind as to the good faith of Mr. Thompson and his flag. + +Admiral Porter proceeded with the preparation of the steamers for their +hazardous passage of the enemy's batteries. The great essential was to +protect the boilers from the enemy's shot, and to conceal the fires +under the boilers from view. This he accomplished by loading the +steamers, between the guards and boilers on the boiler deck up to the +deck above, with bales of hay and cotton, and the deck in front of the +boilers in the same way, adding sacks of grain. The hay and grain would +be wanted below, and could not be transported in sufficient quantity by +the muddy roads over which we expected to march. + +Before this I had been collecting, from St. Louis and Chicago, yawls and +barges to be used as ferries when we got below. By the 16th of April +Porter was ready to start on his perilous trip. The advance, flagship +Benton, Porter commanding, started at ten o'clock at night, followed at +intervals of a few minutes by the Lafayette with a captured steamer, the +Price, lashed to her side, the Louisville, Mound City, Pittsburgh and +Carondelet--all of these being naval vessels. Next came the transports +--Forest Queen, Silver Wave and Henry Clay, each towing barges loaded +with coal to be used as fuel by the naval and transport steamers when +below the batteries. The gunboat Tuscumbia brought up the rear. Soon +after the start a battery between Vicksburg and Warrenton opened fire +across the intervening peninsula, followed by the upper batteries, and +then by batteries all along the line. The gunboats ran up close under +the bluffs, delivering their fire in return at short distances, probably +without much effect. They were under fire for more than two hours and +every vessel was struck many times, but with little damage to the +gunboats. The transports did not fare so well. The Henry Clay was +disabled and deserted by her crew. Soon after a shell burst in the +cotton packed about the boilers, set the vessel on fire and burned her +to the water's edge. The burning mass, however, floated down to +Carthage before grounding, as did also one of the barges in tow. + +The enemy were evidently expecting our fleet, for they were ready to +light up the river by means of bonfires on the east side and by firing +houses on the point of land opposite the city on the Louisiana side. +The sight was magnificent, but terrible. I witnessed it from the deck +of a river transport, run out into the middle of the river and as low +down as it was prudent to go. My mind was much relieved when I learned +that no one on the transports had been killed and but few, if any, +wounded. During the running of the batteries men were stationed in the +holds of the transports to partially stop with cotton shot-holes that +might be made in the hulls. All damage was afterwards soon repaired +under the direction of Admiral Porter. + +The experiment of passing batteries had been tried before this, however, +during the war. Admiral Farragut had run the batteries at Port Hudson +with the flagship Hartford and one iron-clad and visited me from below +Vicksburg. The 13th of February Admiral Porter had sent the gunboat +Indianola, Lieutenant-Commander George Brown commanding, below. She met +Colonel Ellet of the Marine brigade below Natchez on a captured steamer. +Two of the Colonel's fleet had previously run the batteries, producing +the greatest consternation among the people along the Mississippi from +Vicksburg (*10) to the Red River. + +The Indianola remained about the mouth of the Red River some days, and +then started up the Mississippi. The Confederates soon raised the Queen +of the West, (*11) and repaired her. With this vessel and the ram Webb, +which they had had for some time in the Red River, and two other +steamers, they followed the Indianola. The latter was encumbered with +barges of coal in tow, and consequently could make but little speed +against the rapid current of the Mississippi. The Confederate fleet +overtook her just above Grand Gulf, and attacked her after dark on the +24th of February. The Indianola was superior to all the others in +armament, and probably would have destroyed them or driven them away, +but for her encumbrance. As it was she fought them for an hour and a +half, but, in the dark, was struck seven or eight times by the ram and +other vessels, and was finally disabled and reduced to a sinking +condition. The armament was thrown overboard and the vessel run ashore. +Officers and crew then surrendered. + +I had started McClernand with his corps of four divisions on the 29th of +March, by way of Richmond, Louisiana, to New Carthage, hoping that he +might capture Grand Gulf before the balance of the troops could get +there; but the roads were very bad, scarcely above water yet. Some +miles from New Carthage the levee to Bayou Vidal was broken in several +places, overflowing the roads for the distance of two miles. Boats were +collected from the surrounding bayous, and some constructed on the spot +from such material as could be collected, to transport the troops across +the overflowed interval. By the 6th of April McClernand had reached New +Carthage with one division and its artillery, the latter ferried through +the woods by these boats. On the 17th I visited New Carthage in person, +and saw that the process of getting troops through in the way we were +doing was so tedious that a better method must be devised. The water +was falling, and in a few days there would not be depth enough to use +boats; nor would the land be dry enough to march over. McClernand had +already found a new route from Smith's plantation where the crevasse +occurred, to Perkins' plantation, eight to twelve miles below New +Carthage. This increased the march from Milliken's Bend from +twenty-seven to nearly forty miles. Four bridges had to be built across +bayous, two of them each over six hundred feet long, making about two +thousand feet of bridging in all. The river falling made the current in +these bayous very rapid, increasing the difficulty of building and +permanently fastening these bridges; but the ingenuity of the "Yankee +soldier" was equal to any emergency. The bridges were soon built of +such material as could be found near by, and so substantial were they +that not a single mishap occurred in crossing all the army with +artillery, cavalry and wagon trains, except the loss of one siege gun +(a thirty-two pounder). This, if my memory serves me correctly, broke +through the only pontoon bridge we had in all our march across the +peninsula. These bridges were all built by McClernand's command, under +the supervision of Lieutenant Hains of the Engineer Corps. + +I returned to Milliken's Bend on the 18th or 19th, and on the 20th +issued the following final order for the movement of troops: + + +HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE TENNESSEE, MILLIKEN'S BEND, LOUISIANA, +April 20, 1863. + +Special Orders, No. 110. * * * * * * +* VIII. The following orders are published for the information and +guidance of the "Army in the Field," in its present movement to obtain a +foothold on the east bank of the Mississippi River, from which Vicksburg +can be approached by practicable roads. + +First.--The Thirteenth army corps, Major-General John A. McClernand +commanding, will constitute the right wing. + +Second.--The Fifteenth army corps, Major-General W. T. Sherman +commanding, will constitute the left wing. + +Third.--The Seventeenth army corps, Major-General James B. McPherson +commanding, will constitute the centre. + +Fourth.--The order of march to New Carthage will be from right to left. + +Fifth.--Reserves will be formed by divisions from each army corps; or, +an entire army corps will be held as a reserve, as necessity may +require. When the reserve is formed by divisions, each division will +remain under the immediate command of its respective corps commander, +unless otherwise specially ordered for a particular emergency. + +Sixth.--Troops will be required to bivouac, until proper facilities can +be afforded for the transportation of camp equipage. + +Seventh.--In the present movement, one tent will be allowed to each +company for the protection of rations from rain; one wall tent for each +regimental headquarters; one wall tent for each brigade headquarters; +and one wall tent for each division headquarters; corps commanders +having the books and blanks of their respective commands to provide for, +are authorized to take such tents as are absolutely necessary, but not +to exceed the number allowed by General Orders No. 160, A. G. O., series +of 1862. + +Eighth.--All the teams of the three army corps, under the immediate +charge of the quartermasters bearing them on their returns, will +constitute a train for carrying supplies and ordnance and the authorized +camp equipage of the army. + +Ninth.--As fast as the Thirteenth army corps advances, the Seventeenth +army corps will take its place; and it, in turn, will be followed in +like manner by the Fifteenth army corps. + +Tenth.--Two regiments from each army corps will be detailed by corps +commanders, to guard the lines from Richmond to New Carthage. + +Eleventh.--General hospitals will be established by the medical director +between Duckport and Milliken's Bend. All sick and disabled soldiers +will be left in these hospitals. Surgeons in charge of hospitals will +report convalescents as fast as they become fit for duty. Each corps +commander will detail an intelligent and good drill officer, to remain +behind and take charge of the convalescents of their respective corps; +officers so detailed will organize the men under their charge into +squads and companies, without regard to the regiments they belong to; +and in the absence of convalescent commissioned officers to command +them, will appoint non-commissioned officers or privates. The force so +organized will constitute the guard of the line from Duckport to +Milliken's Bend. They will furnish all the guards and details required +for general hospitals, and with the contrabands that may be about the +camps, will furnish all the details for loading and unloading boats. + +Twelfth.--The movement of troops from Milliken's Bend to New Carthage +will be so conducted as to allow the transportation of ten days' supply +of rations, and one-half the allowance of ordnance, required by previous +orders. + +Thirteenth.--Commanders are authorized and enjoined to collect all the +beef cattle, corn and other necessary supplies on the line of march; but +wanton destruction of property, taking of articles useless for military +purposes, insulting citizens, going into and searching houses without +proper orders from division commanders, are positively prohibited. All +such irregularities must be summarily punished. + +Fourteenth.--Brigadier-General J. C. Sullivan is appointed to the +command of all the forces detailed for the protection of the line from +here to New Carthage. His particular attention is called to General +Orders, No. 69, from Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, of date +March 20, 1863. + +By order of MAJOR-GENERAL U. S. GRANT. + + +McClernand was already below on the Mississippi. Two of McPherson's +divisions were put upon the march immediately. The third had not yet +arrived from Lake Providence; it was on its way to Milliken's Bend and +was to follow on arrival. + +Sherman was to follow McPherson. Two of his divisions were at Duckport +and Young's Point, and the third under Steele was under orders to return +from Greenville, Mississippi, where it had been sent to expel a rebel +battery that had been annoying our transports. + +It had now become evident that the army could not be rationed by a wagon +train over the single narrow and almost impassable road between +Milliken's Bend and Perkins' plantation. Accordingly six more steamers +were protected as before, to run the batteries, and were loaded with +supplies. They took twelve barges in tow, loaded also with rations. On +the night of the 22d of April they ran the batteries, five getting +through more or less disabled while one was sunk. About half the barges +got through with their needed freight. + +When it was first proposed to run the blockade at Vicksburg with river +steamers there were but two captains or masters who were willing to +accompany their vessels, and but one crew. Volunteers were called for +from the army, men who had had experience in any capacity in navigating +the western rivers. Captains, pilots, mates, engineers and deck-hands +enough presented themselves to take five times the number of vessels we +were moving through this dangerous ordeal. Most of them were from +Logan's division, composed generally of men from the southern part of +Illinois and from Missouri. All but two of the steamers were commanded +by volunteers from the army, and all but one so manned. In this +instance, as in all others during the war, I found that volunteers could +be found in the ranks and among the commissioned officers to meet every +call for aid whether mechanical or professional. Colonel W. S. Oliver +was master of transportation on this occasion by special detail. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +ATTACK ON GRAND GULF--OPERATIONS BELOW VICKSBURG. + +On the 24th my headquarters were with the advance at Perkins' +plantation. Reconnoissances were made in boats to ascertain whether +there was high land on the east shore of the river where we might land +above Grand Gulf. There was none practicable. Accordingly the troops +were set in motion for Hard Times, twenty-two miles farther down the +river and nearly opposite Grand Gulf. The loss of two steamers and six +barges reduced our transportation so that only 10,000 men could be moved +by water. Some of the steamers that had got below were injured in their +machinery, so that they were only useful as barges towed by those less +severely injured. All the troops, therefore, except what could be +transported in one trip, had to march. The road lay west of Lake St. +Joseph. Three large bayous had to be crossed. They were rapidly +bridged in the same manner as those previously encountered. (*12) + +On the 27th McClernand's corps was all at Hard Times, and McPherson's +was following closely. I had determined to make the attempt to effect a +landing on the east side of the river as soon as possible. Accordingly, +on the morning of the 29th, McClernand was directed to embark all the +troops from his corps that our transports and barges could carry. About +10,000 men were so embarked. The plan was to have the navy silence the +guns at Grand Gulf, and to have as many men as possible ready to debark +in the shortest possible time under cover of the fire of the navy and +carry the works by storm. The following order was issued: + +PERKINS PLANTATION, LA., April 27,1863. + +MAJOR-GENERAL J. A. MCCLERNAND, Commanding 13th A. C. + +Commence immediately the embarkation of your corps, or so much of it as +there is transportation for. Have put aboard the artillery and every +article authorized in orders limiting baggage, except the men, and hold +them in readiness, with their places assigned, to be moved at a moment's +warning. + +All the troops you may have, except those ordered to remain behind, send +to a point nearly opposite Grand Gulf, where you see, by special orders +of this date, General McPherson is ordered to send one division. + +The plan of the attack will be for the navy to attack and silence all +the batteries commanding the river. Your corps will be on the river, +ready to run to and debark on the nearest eligible land below the +promontory first brought to view passing down the river. Once on shore, +have each commander instructed beforehand to form his men the best the +ground will admit of, and take possession of the most commanding points, +but avoid separating your command so that it cannot support itself. The +first object is to get a foothold where our troops can maintain +themselves until such time as preparations can be made and troops +collected for a forward movement. + +Admiral Porter has proposed to place his boats in the position indicated +to you a few days ago, and to bring over with them such troops as may be +below the city after the guns of the enemy are silenced. + +It may be that the enemy will occupy positions back from the city, out +of range of the gunboats, so as to make it desirable to run past Grand +Gulf and land at Rodney. In case this should prove the plan, a signal +will be arranged and you duly informed, when the transports are to start +with this view. Or, it may be expedient for the boats to run past, but +not the men. In this case, then, the transports would have to be +brought back to where the men could land and move by forced marches to +below Grand Gulf, re-embark rapidly and proceed to the latter place. +There will be required, then, three signals; one, to indicate that the +transports can run down and debark the troops at Grand Gulf; one, that +the transports can run by without the troops; and the last, that the +transports can run by with the troops on board. + +Should the men have to march, all baggage and artillery will be left to +run the blockade. + +If not already directed, require your men to keep three days' rations in +their haversacks, not to be touched until a movement commences. + +U. S. GRANT, Major-General. + + +At 8 o'clock A.M., 29th, Porter made the attack with his entire strength +present, eight gunboats. For nearly five and a half hours the attack +was kept up without silencing a single gun of the enemy. All this time +McClernand's 10,000 men were huddled together on the transports in the +stream ready to attempt a landing if signalled. I occupied a tug from +which I could see the effect of the battle on both sides, within range +of the enemy's guns; but a small tug, without armament, was not +calculated to attract the fire of batteries while they were being +assailed themselves. About half-past one the fleet withdrew, seeing +their efforts were entirely unavailing. The enemy ceased firing as soon +as we withdrew. I immediately signalled the Admiral and went aboard his +ship. The navy lost in this engagement eighteen killed and fifty-six +wounded. A large proportion of these were of the crew of the flagship, +and most of those from a single shell which penetrated the ship's side +and exploded between decks where the men were working their guns. The +sight of the mangled and dying men which met my eye as I boarded the +ship was sickening. + +Grand Gulf is on a high bluff where the river runs at the very foot of +it. It is as defensible upon its front as Vicksburg and, at that time, +would have been just as impossible to capture by a front attack. I +therefore requested Porter to run the batteries with his fleet that +night, and to take charge of the transports, all of which would be +wanted below. + +There is a long tongue of land from the Louisiana side extending towards +Grand Gulf, made by the river running nearly east from about three miles +above and nearly in the opposite direction from that point for about the +same distance below. The land was so low and wet that it would not have +been practicable to march an army across but for a levee. I had had +this explored before, as well as the east bank below to ascertain if +there was a possible point of debarkation north of Rodney. It was found +that the top of the levee afforded a good road to march upon. + +Porter, as was always the case with him, not only acquiesced in the +plan, but volunteered to use his entire fleet as transports. I had +intended to make this request, but he anticipated me. At dusk, when +concealed from the view of the enemy at Grand Gulf, McClernand landed +his command on the west bank. The navy and transports ran the batteries +successfully. The troops marched across the point of land under cover of +night, unobserved. By the time it was light the enemy saw our whole +fleet, ironclads, gunboats, river steamers and barges, quietly moving +down the river three miles below them, black, or rather blue, with +National troops. + +When the troops debarked, the evening of the 29th, it was expected that +we would have to go to Rodney, about nine miles below, to find a +landing; but that night a colored man came in who informed me that a +good landing would be found at Bruinsburg, a few miles above Rodney, +from which point there was a good road leading to Port Gibson some +twelve miles in the interior. The information was found correct, and +our landing was effected without opposition. + +Sherman had not left his position above Vicksburg yet. On the morning +of the 27th I ordered him to create a diversion by moving his corps up +the Yazoo and threatening an attack on Haines' Bluff. + +My object was to compel Pemberton to keep as much force about Vicksburg +as I could, until I could secure a good footing on high land east of the +river. The move was eminently successful and, as we afterwards learned, +created great confusion about Vicksburg and doubts about our real +design. Sherman moved the day of our attack on Grand Gulf, the 29th, +with ten regiments of his command and eight gunboats which Porter had +left above Vicksburg. + +He debarked his troops and apparently made every preparation to attack +the enemy while the navy bombarded the main forts at Haines' Bluff. +This move was made without a single casualty in either branch of the +service. On the first of May Sherman received orders from me (sent from +Hard Times the evening of the 29th of April) to withdraw from the front +of Haines' Bluff and follow McPherson with two divisions as fast as he +could. + +I had established a depot of supplies at Perkins' plantation. Now that +all our gunboats were below Grand Gulf it was possible that the enemy +might fit out boats in the Big Black with improvised armament and +attempt to destroy these supplies. McPherson was at Hard Times with a +portion of his corps, and the depot was protected by a part of his +command. The night of the 29th I directed him to arm one of the +transports with artillery and send it up to Perkins' plantation as a +guard; and also to have the siege guns we had brought along moved there +and put in position. + +The embarkation below Grand Gulf took place at De Shroon's, Louisiana, +six miles above Bruinsburg, Mississippi. Early on the morning of 30th +of April McClernand's corps and one division of McPherson's corps were +speedily landed. + +When this was effected I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equalled +since. Vicksburg was not yet taken it is true, nor were its defenders +demoralized by any of our previous moves. I was now in the enemy's +country, with a vast river and the stronghold of Vicksburg between me +and my base of supplies. But I was on dry ground on the same side of +the river with the enemy. All the campaigns, labors, hardships and +exposures from the month of December previous to this time that had been +made and endured, were for the accomplishment of this one object. + +I had with me the 13th corps, General McClernand commanding, and two +brigades of Logan's division of the 17th corps, General McPherson +commanding--in all not more than twenty thousand men to commence the +campaign with. These were soon reinforced by the remaining brigade of +Logan's division and Crocker's division of the 17th corps. On the 7th +of May I was further reinforced by Sherman with two divisions of his, +the 15th corps. My total force was then about thirty-three thousand +men. + +The enemy occupied Grand Gulf, Haines' Bluff and Jackson with a force of +nearly sixty thousand men. Jackson is fifty miles east of Vicksburg and +is connected with it by a railroad. My first problem was to capture +Grand Gulf to use as a base. + +Bruinsburg is two miles from high ground. The bottom at that point is +higher than most of the low land in the valley of the Mississippi, and a +good road leads to the bluff. It was natural to expect the garrison +from Grand Gulf to come out to meet us and prevent, if they could, our +reaching this solid base. Bayou Pierre enters the Mississippi just +above Bruinsburg and, as it is a navigable stream and was high at the +time, in order to intercept us they had to go by Port Gibson, the +nearest point where there was a bridge to cross upon. This more than +doubled the distance from Grand Gulf to the high land back of +Bruinsburg. No time was to be lost in securing this foothold. Our +transportation was not sufficient to move all the army across the river +at one trip, or even two; but the landing of the 13th corps and one +division of the 17th was effected during the day, April 30th, and early +evening. McClernand was advanced as soon as ammunition and two days' +rations (to last five) could be issued to his men. The bluffs were +reached an hour before sunset and McClernand was pushed on, hoping to +reach Port Gibson and save the bridge spanning the Bayou Pierre before +the enemy could get there; for crossing a stream in the presence of an +enemy is always difficult. Port Gibson, too, is the starting point of +roads to Grand Gulf, Vicksburg and Jackson. + +McClernand's advance met the enemy about five miles west of Port Gibson +at Thompson's plantation. There was some firing during the night, but +nothing rising to the dignity of a battle until daylight. The enemy had +taken a strong natural position with most of the Grand Gulf garrison, +numbering about seven or eight thousand men, under General Bowen. His +hope was to hold me in check until reinforcements under Loring could +reach him from Vicksburg; but Loring did not come in time to render much +assistance south of Port Gibson. Two brigades of McPherson's corps +followed McClernand as fast as rations and ammunition could be issued, +and were ready to take position upon the battlefield whenever the 13th +corps could be got out of the way. + +The country in this part of Mississippi stands on edge, as it were, the +roads running along the ridges except when they occasionally pass from +one ridge to another. Where there are no clearings the sides of the +hills are covered with a very heavy growth of timber and with +undergrowth, and the ravines are filled with vines and canebrakes, +almost impenetrable. This makes it easy for an inferior force to delay, +if not defeat, a far superior one. + +Near the point selected by Bowen to defend, the road to Port Gibson +divides, taking two ridges which do not diverge more than a mile or two +at the widest point. These roads unite just outside the town. This +made it necessary for McClernand to divide his force. It was not only +divided, but it was separated by a deep ravine of the character above +described. One flank could not reinforce the other except by marching +back to the junction of the roads. McClernand put the divisions of +Hovey, Carr and A. J. Smith upon the right-hand branch and Osterhaus on +the left. I was on the field by ten A.M., and inspected both flanks in +person. On the right the enemy, if not being pressed back, was at least +not repulsing our advance. On the left, however, Osterhaus was not +faring so well. He had been repulsed with some loss. As soon as the +road could be cleared of McClernand's troops I ordered up McPherson, who +was close upon the rear of the 13th corps, with two brigades of Logan's +division. This was about noon. I ordered him to send one brigade +(General John E. Smith's was selected) to support Osterhaus, and to move +to the left and flank the enemy out of his position. This movement +carried the brigade over a deep ravine to a third ridge and, when +Smith's troops were seen well through the ravine, Osterhaus was directed +to renew his front attack. It was successful and unattended by heavy +loss. The enemy was sent in full retreat on their right, and their left +followed before sunset. While the movement to our left was going on, +McClernand, who was with his right flank, sent me frequent requests for +reinforcements, although the force with him was not being pressed. I +had been upon the ground and knew it did not admit of his engaging all +the men he had. We followed up our victory until night overtook us +about two miles from Port Gibson; then the troops went into bivouac for +the night. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +CAPTURE OF PORT GIBSON--GRIERSON'S RAID--OCCUPATION OF GRAND GULF +--MOVEMENT UP THE BIG BLACK--BATTLE OF RAYMOND. + +We started next morning for Port Gibson as soon as it was light enough +to see the road. We were soon in the town, and I was delighted to find +that the enemy had not stopped to contest our crossing further at the +bridge, which he had burned. The troops were set to work at once to +construct a bridge across the South Fork of the Bayou Pierre. At this +time the water was high and the current rapid. What might be called a +raft-bridge was soon constructed from material obtained from wooden +buildings, stables, fences, etc., which sufficed for carrying the whole +army over safely. Colonel J. H. Wilson, a member of my staff, planned +and superintended the construction of this bridge, going into the water +and working as hard as any one engaged. Officers and men generally +joined in this work. When it was finished the army crossed and marched +eight miles beyond to the North Fork that day. One brigade of Logan's +division was sent down the stream to occupy the attention of a rebel +battery, which had been left behind with infantry supports to prevent +our repairing the burnt railroad bridge. Two of his brigades were sent +up the bayou to find a crossing and reach the North Fork to repair the +bridge there. The enemy soon left when he found we were building a +bridge elsewhere. Before leaving Port Gibson we were reinforced by +Crocker's division, McPherson's corps, which had crossed the Mississippi +at Bruinsburg and come up without stopping except to get two days' +rations. McPherson still had one division west of the Mississippi +River, guarding the road from Milliken's Bend to the river below until +Sherman's command should relieve it. + +On leaving Bruinsburg for the front I left my son Frederick, who had +joined me a few weeks before, on board one of the gunboats asleep, and +hoped to get away without him until after Grand Gulf should fall into +our hands; but on waking up he learned that I had gone, and being guided +by the sound of the battle raging at Thompson's Hill--called the Battle +of Port Gibson--found his way to where I was. He had no horse to ride +at the time, and I had no facilities for even preparing a meal. He, +therefore, foraged around the best he could until we reached Grand Gulf. +Mr. C. A. Dana, then an officer of the War Department, accompanied me on +the Vicksburg campaign and through a portion of the siege. He was in +the same situation as Fred so far as transportation and mess +arrangements were concerned. The first time I call to mind seeing +either of them, after the battle, they were mounted on two enormous +horses, grown white from age, each equipped with dilapidated saddles and +bridles. + +Our trains arrived a few days later, after which we were all perfectly +equipped. + +My son accompanied me throughout the campaign and siege, and caused no +anxiety either to me or to his mother, who was at home. He looked out +for himself and was in every battle of the campaign. His age, then not +quite thirteen, enabled him to take in all he saw, and to retain a +recollection of it that would not be possible in more mature years. + +When the movement from Bruinsburg commenced we were without a wagon +train. The train still west of the Mississippi was carried around with +proper escort, by a circuitous route from Milliken's Bend to Hard Times +seventy or more miles below, and did not get up for some days after the +battle of Port Gibson. My own horses, headquarters' transportation, +servants, mess chest, and everything except what I had on, was with this +train. General A. J. Smith happened to have an extra horse at Bruinsburg +which I borrowed, with a saddle-tree without upholstering further than +stirrups. I had no other for nearly a week. + +It was necessary to have transportation for ammunition. Provisions could +be taken from the country; but all the ammunition that can be carried on +the person is soon exhausted when there is much fighting. I directed, +therefore, immediately on landing that all the vehicles and draft +animals, whether horses, mules, or oxen, in the vicinity should be +collected and loaded to their capacity with ammunition. Quite a train +was collected during the 30th, and a motley train it was. In it could +be found fine carriages, loaded nearly to the top with boxes of +cartridges that had been pitched in promiscuously, drawn by mules with +plough, harness, straw collars, rope-lines, etc.; long-coupled wagons, +with racks for carrying cotton bales, drawn by oxen, and everything that +could be found in the way of transportation on a plantation, either for +use or pleasure. The making out of provision returns was stopped for +the time. No formalities were to retard our progress until a position +was secured when the time could be spared to observe them. + +It was at Port Gibson I first heard through a Southern paper of the +complete success of Colonel Grierson, who was making a raid through +central Mississippi. He had started from La Grange April 17th with +three regiments of about 1,700 men. On the 21st he had detached Colonel +Hatch with one regiment to destroy the railroad between Columbus and +Macon and then return to La Grange. Hatch had a sharp fight with the +enemy at Columbus and retreated along the railroad, destroying it at +Okalona and Tupelo, and arriving in La Grange April 26. Grierson +continued his movement with about 1,000 men, breaking the Vicksburg and +Meridian railroad and the New Orleans and Jackson railroad, arriving at +Baton Rouge May 2d. This raid was of great importance, for Grierson had +attracted the attention of the enemy from the main movement against +Vicksburg. + +During the night of the 2d of May the bridge over the North Fork was +repaired, and the troops commenced crossing at five the next morning. +Before the leading brigade was over it was fired upon by the enemy from +a commanding position; but they were soon driven off. It was evident +that the enemy was covering a retreat from Grand Gulf to Vicksburg. +Every commanding position from this (Grindstone) crossing to Hankinson's +ferry over the Big Black was occupied by the retreating foe to delay our +progress. McPherson, however, reached Hankinson's ferry before night, +seized the ferry boat, and sent a detachment of his command across and +several miles north on the road to Vicksburg. When the junction of the +road going to Vicksburg with the road from Grand Gulf to Raymond and +Jackson was reached, Logan with his division was turned to the left +towards Grand Gulf. I went with him a short distance from this +junction. McPherson had encountered the largest force yet met since the +battle of Port Gibson and had a skirmish nearly approaching a battle; +but the road Logan had taken enabled him to come up on the enemy's right +flank, and they soon gave way. McPherson was ordered to hold +Hankinson's ferry and the road back to Willow Springs with one division; +McClernand, who was now in the rear, was to join in this as well as to +guard the line back down the bayou. I did not want to take the chances +of having an enemy lurking in our rear. + +On the way from the junction to Grand Gulf, where the road comes into +the one from Vicksburg to the same place six or seven miles out, I +learned that the last of the enemy had retreated past that place on +their way to Vicksburg. I left Logan to make the proper disposition of +his troops for the night, while I rode into the town with an escort of +about twenty cavalry. Admiral Porter had already arrived with his +fleet. The enemy had abandoned his heavy guns and evacuated the place. + +When I reached Grand Gulf May 3d I had not been with my baggage since +the 27th of April and consequently had had no change of underclothing, +no meal except such as I could pick up sometimes at other headquarters, +and no tent to cover me. The first thing I did was to get a bath, +borrow some fresh underclothing from one of the naval officers and +get a good meal on the flag-ship. Then I wrote letters to the +general-in-chief informing him of our present position, dispatches to be +telegraphed from Cairo, orders to General Sullivan commanding above +Vicksburg, and gave orders to all my corps commanders. About twelve +o'clock at night I was through my work and started for Hankinson's +ferry, arriving there before daylight. While at Grand Gulf I heard from +Banks, who was on the Red River, and who said that he could not be at +Port Hudson before the 10th of May and then with only 15,000 men. Up to +this time my intention had been to secure Grand Gulf, as a base of +supplies, detach McClernand's corps to Banks and co-operate with him in +the reduction of Port Hudson. + +The news from Banks forced upon me a different plan of campaign from the +one intended. To wait for his co-operation would have detained me at +least a month. The reinforcements would not have reached ten thousand +men after deducting casualties and necessary river guards at all high +points close to the river for over three hundred miles. The enemy would +have strengthened his position and been reinforced by more men than +Banks could have brought. I therefore determined to move independently +of Banks, cut loose from my base, destroy the rebel force in rear of +Vicksburg and invest or capture the city. + +Grand Gulf was accordingly given up as a base and the authorities at +Washington were notified. I knew well that Halleck's caution would lead +him to disapprove of this course; but it was the only one that gave any +chance of success. The time it would take to communicate with +Washington and get a reply would be so great that I could not be +interfered with until it was demonstrated whether my plan was +practicable. Even Sherman, who afterwards ignored bases of supplies +other than what were afforded by the country while marching through four +States of the Confederacy with an army more than twice as large as mine +at this time, wrote me from Hankinson's ferry, advising me of the +impossibility of supplying our army over a single road. He urged me to +"stop all troops till your army is partially supplied with wagons, and +then act as quick as possible; for this road will be jammed, as sure as +life." To this I replied: "I do not calculate upon the possibility of +supplying the army with full rations from Grand Gulf. I know it will be +impossible without constructing additional roads. What I do expect is +to get up what rations of hard bread, coffee and salt we can, and make +the country furnish the balance." We started from Bruinsburg with an +average of about two days' rations, and received no more from our own +supplies for some days; abundance was found in the mean time. A delay +would give the enemy time to reinforce and fortify. + +McClernand's and McPherson's commands were kept substantially as they +were on the night of the 2d, awaiting supplies sufficient to give them +three days' rations in haversacks. Beef, mutton, poultry and forage +were found in abundance. Quite a quantity of bacon and molasses was +also secured from the country, but bread and coffee could not be +obtained in quantity sufficient for all the men. Every plantation, +however, had a run of stone, propelled by mule power, to grind corn for +the owners and their slaves. All these were kept running while we were +stopping, day and night, and when we were marching, during the night, at +all plantations covered by the troops. But the product was taken by the +troops nearest by, so that the majority of the command was destined to +go without bread until a new base was established on the Yazoo above +Vicksburg. + +While the troops were awaiting the arrival of rations I ordered +reconnoissances made by McClernand and McPherson, with the view of +leading the enemy to believe that we intended to cross the Big Black and +attack the city at once. + +On the 6th Sherman arrived at Grand Gulf and crossed his command that +night and the next day. Three days' rations had been brought up from +Grand Gulf for the advanced troops and were issued. Orders were given +for a forward movement the next day. Sherman was directed to order up +Blair, who had been left behind to guard the road from Milliken's Bend +to Hard Times with two brigades. + +The quartermaster at Young's Point was ordered to send two hundred +wagons with Blair, and the commissary was to load them with hard bread, +coffee, sugar, salt and one hundred thousand pounds of salt meat. + +On the 3d Hurlbut, who had been left at Memphis, was ordered to send +four regiments from his command to Milliken's Bend to relieve Blair's +division, and on the 5th he was ordered to send Lauman's division in +addition, the latter to join the army in the field. The four regiments +were to be taken from troops near the river so that there would be no +delay. + +During the night of the 6th McPherson drew in his troops north of the +Big Black and was off at an early hour on the road to Jackson, via Rocky +Springs, Utica and Raymond. That night he and McClernand were both at +Rocky Springs ten miles from Hankinson's ferry. McPherson remained +there during the 8th, while McClernand moved to Big Sandy and Sherman +marched from Grand Gulf to Hankinson's ferry. The 9th, McPherson moved +to a point within a few miles west of Utica; McClernand and Sherman +remained where they were. On the 10th McPherson moved to Utica, Sherman +to Big Sandy; McClernand was still at Big Sandy. The 11th, McClernand +was at Five Mile Creek; Sherman at Auburn; McPherson five miles advanced +from Utica. May 12th, McClernand was at Fourteen Mile Creek; Sherman at +Fourteen Mile Creek; McPherson at Raymond after a battle. + +After McPherson crossed the Big Black at Hankinson's ferry Vicksburg +could have been approached and besieged by the south side. It is not +probable, however, that Pemberton would have permitted a close +besiegement. The broken nature of the ground would have enabled him to +hold a strong defensible line from the river south of the city to the +Big Black, retaining possession of the railroad back to that point. It +was my plan, therefore, to get to the railroad east of Vicksburg, and +approach from that direction. Accordingly, McPherson's troops that had +crossed the Big Black were withdrawn and the movement east to Jackson +commenced. + +As has been stated before, the country is very much broken and the roads +generally confined to the tops of the hills. The troops were moved one +(sometimes two) corps at a time to reach designated points out parallel +to the railroad and only from six to ten miles from it. McClernand's +corps was kept with its left flank on the Big Black guarding all the +crossings. Fourteen Mile Creek, a stream substantially parallel with +the railroad, was reached and crossings effected by McClernand and +Sherman with slight loss. McPherson was to the right of Sherman, +extending to Raymond. The cavalry was used in this advance in +reconnoitring to find the roads: to cover our advances and to find the +most practicable routes from one command to another so they could +support each other in case of an attack. In making this move I +estimated Pemberton's movable force at Vicksburg at about eighteen +thousand men, with smaller forces at Haines' Bluff and Jackson. It +would not be possible for Pemberton to attack me with all his troops at +one place, and I determined to throw my army between his and fight him +in detail. This was done with success, but I found afterwards that I +had entirely under-estimated Pemberton's strength. + +Up to this point our movements had been made without serious opposition. +My line was now nearly parallel with the Jackson and Vicksburg railroad +and about seven miles south of it. The right was at Raymond eighteen +miles from Jackson, McPherson commanding; Sherman in the centre on +Fourteen Mile Creek, his advance thrown across; McClernand to the left, +also on Fourteen Mile Creek, advance across, and his pickets within two +miles of Edward's station, where the enemy had concentrated a +considerable force and where they undoubtedly expected us to attack. +McClernand's left was on the Big Black. In all our moves, up to this +time, the left had hugged the Big Black closely, and all the ferries had +been guarded to prevent the enemy throwing a force on our rear. + +McPherson encountered the enemy, five thousand strong with two batteries +under General Gregg, about two miles out of Raymond. This was about two +P.M. Logan was in advance with one of his brigades. He deployed and +moved up to engage the enemy. McPherson ordered the road in rear to be +cleared of wagons, and the balance of Logan's division, and Crocker's, +which was still farther in rear, to come forward with all dispatch. The +order was obeyed with alacrity. Logan got his division in position for +assault before Crocker could get up, and attacked with vigor, carrying +the enemy's position easily, sending Gregg flying from the field not to +appear against our front again until we met at Jackson. + +In this battle McPherson lost 66 killed, 339 wounded, and 37 missing +--nearly or quite all from Logan's division. The enemy's loss was 100 +killed, 305 wounded, besides 415 taken prisoners. + +I regarded Logan and Crocker as being as competent division commanders +as could be found in or out of the army and both equal to a much higher +command. Crocker, however, was dying of consumption when he +volunteered. His weak condition never put him on the sick report when +there was a battle in prospect, as long as he could keep on his feet. +He died not long after the close of the rebellion. + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +MOVEMENT AGAINST JACKSON--FALL OF JACKSON--INTERCEPTING THE ENEMY +--BATTLE OF CHAMPION'S HILL. + +When the news reached me of McPherson's victory at Raymond about sundown +my position was with Sherman. I decided at once to turn the whole +column towards Jackson and capture that place without delay. + +Pemberton was now on my left, with, as I supposed, about 18,000 men; in +fact, as I learned afterwards, with nearly 50,000. A force was also +collecting on my right, at Jackson, the point where all the railroads +communicating with Vicksburg connect. All the enemy's supplies of men +and stores would come by that point. As I hoped in the end to besiege +Vicksburg I must first destroy all possibility of aid. I therefore +determined to move swiftly towards Jackson, destroy or drive any force +in that direction and then turn upon Pemberton. But by moving against +Jackson, I uncovered my own communication. So I finally decided to have +none--to cut loose altogether from my base and move my whole force +eastward. I then had no fears for my communications, and if I moved +quickly enough could turn upon Pemberton before he could attack me in +the rear. + +Accordingly, all previous orders given during the day for movements on +the 13th were annulled by new ones. McPherson was ordered at daylight +to move on Clinton, ten miles from Jackson; Sherman was notified of my +determination to capture Jackson and work from there westward. He was +ordered to start at four in the morning and march to Raymond. +McClernand was ordered to march with three divisions by Dillon's to +Raymond. One was left to guard the crossing of the Big Black. + +On the 10th I had received a letter from Banks, on the Red River, asking +reinforcements. Porter had gone to his assistance with a part of his +fleet on the 3d, and I now wrote to him describing my position and +declining to send any troops. I looked upon side movements as long as +the enemy held Port Hudson and Vicksburg as a waste of time and +material. + +General Joseph E. Johnston arrived at Jackson in the night of the 13th +from Tennessee, and immediately assumed command of all the Confederate +troops in Mississippi. I knew he was expecting reinforcements from the +south and east. On the 6th I had written to General Halleck: +"Information from the other side leaves me to believe the enemy are +bringing forces from Tullahoma." + +Up to this time my troops had been kept in supporting distances of each +other, as far as the nature of the country would admit. Reconnoissances +were constantly made from each corps to enable them to acquaint +themselves with the most practicable routes from one to another in case +a union became necessary. + +McPherson reached Clinton with the advance early on the 13th and +immediately set to work destroying the railroad. Sherman's advance +reached Raymond before the last of McPherson's command had got out of +the town. McClernand withdrew from the front of the enemy, at Edward's +station, with much skill and without loss, and reached his position for +the night in good order. On the night of the 13th, McPherson was +ordered to march at early dawn upon Jackson, only fifteen miles away. +Sherman was given the same order; but he was to move by the direct road +from Raymond to Jackson, which is south of the road McPherson was on and +does not approach within two miles of it at the point where it crossed +the line of intrenchments which, at that time, defended the city. +McClernand was ordered to move one division of his command to Clinton, +one division a few miles beyond Mississippi Springs following Sherman's +line, and a third to Raymond. He was also directed to send his siege +guns, four in number with the troops going by Mississippi Springs. +McClernand's position was an advantageous one in any event. With one +division at Clinton he was in position to reinforce McPherson, at +Jackson, rapidly if it became necessary; the division beyond Mississippi +Springs was equally available to reinforce Sherman; the one at Raymond +could take either road. He still had two other divisions farther back +now that Blair had come up, available within a day at Jackson. If this +last command should not be wanted at Jackson, they were already one +day's march from there on their way to Vicksburg and on three different +roads leading to the latter city. But the most important consideration +in my mind was to have a force confronting Pemberton if he should come +out to attack my rear. This I expected him to do; as shown further on, +he was directed by Johnston to make this very move. + +I notified General Halleck that I should attack the State capital on the +14th. A courier carried the dispatch to Grand Gulf through an +unprotected country. + +Sherman and McPherson communicated with each other during the night and +arranged to reach Jackson at about the same hour. It rained in torrents +during the night of the 13th and the fore part of the day of the 14th. +The roads were intolerable, and in some places on Sherman's line, where +the land was low, they were covered more than a foot deep with water. +But the troops never murmured. By nine o'clock Crocker, of McPherson's +corps, who was now in advance, came upon the enemy's pickets and +speedily drove them in upon the main body. They were outside of the +intrenchments in a strong position, and proved to be the troops that had +been driven out of Raymond. Johnston had been reinforced; during the +night by Georgia and South Carolina regiments, so that his force +amounted to eleven thousand men, and he was expecting still more. + +Sherman also came upon the rebel pickets some distance out from the +town, but speedily drove them in. He was now on the south and +south-west of Jackson confronting the Confederates behind their +breastworks, while McPherson's right was nearly two miles north, +occupying a line running north and south across the Vicksburg railroad. +Artillery was brought up and reconnoissances made preparatory to an +assault. McPherson brought up Logan's division while he deployed +Crocker's for the assault. Sherman made similar dispositions on the +right. By eleven A.M. both were ready to attack. Crocker moved his +division forward, preceded by a strong skirmish line. These troops at +once encountered the enemy's advance and drove it back on the main body, +when they returned to their proper regiment and the whole division +charged, routing the enemy completely and driving him into this main +line. This stand by the enemy was made more than two miles outside of +his main fortifications. McPherson followed up with his command until +within range of the guns of the enemy from their intrenchments, when he +halted to bring his troops into line and reconnoitre to determine the +next move. It was now about noon. + +While this was going on Sherman was confronting a rebel battery which +enfiladed the road on which he was marching--the Mississippi Springs +road--and commanded a bridge spanning a stream over which he had to +pass. By detaching right and left the stream was forced and the enemy +flanked and speedily driven within the main line. This brought our +whole line in front of the enemy's line of works, which was continuous +on the north, west and south sides from the Pearl River north of the +city to the same river south. I was with Sherman. He was confronted by +a force sufficient to hold us back. Appearances did not justify an +assault where we were. I had directed Sherman to send a force to the +right, and to reconnoitre as far as to the Pearl River. This force, +Tuttle's division, not returning I rode to the right with my staff, and +soon found that the enemy had left that part of the line. Tuttle's +movement or McPherson's pressure had no doubt led Johnston to order a +retreat, leaving only the men at the guns to retard us while he was +getting away. Tuttle had seen this and, passing through the lines +without resistance, came up in the rear of the artillerists confronting +Sherman and captured them with ten pieces of artillery. I rode +immediately to the State House, where I was soon followed by Sherman. +About the same time McPherson discovered that the enemy was leaving his +front, and advanced Crocker, who was so close upon the enemy that they +could not move their guns or destroy them. He captured seven guns and, +moving on, hoisted the National flag over the rebel capital of +Mississippi. Stevenson's brigade was sent to cut off the rebel retreat, +but was too late or not expeditious enough. + +Our loss in this engagement was: McPherson, 37 killed, 228 wounded; +Sherman, 4 killed and 21 wounded and missing. The enemy lost 845 +killed, wounded and captured. Seventeen guns fell into our hands, and +the enemy destroyed by fire their store-houses, containing a large +amount of commissary stores. + +On this day Blair reached New Auburn and joined McClernand's 4th +division. He had with him two hundred wagons loaded with rations, the +only commissary supplies received during the entire campaign. + +I slept that night in the room that Johnston was said to have occupied +the night before. + +About four in the afternoon I sent for the corps commanders and directed +the dispositions to be made of their troops. Sherman was to remain in +Jackson until he destroyed that place as a railroad centre, and +manufacturing city of military supplies. He did the work most +effectually. Sherman and I went together into a manufactory which had +not ceased work on account of the battle nor for the entrance of Yankee +troops. Our presence did not seem to attract the attention of either +the manager or the operatives, most of whom were girls. We looked on +for a while to see the tent cloth which they were making roll out of the +looms, with "C. S. A." woven in each bolt. There was an immense amount +of cotton, in bales, stacked outside. Finally I told Sherman I thought +they had done work enough. The operatives were told they could leave +and take with them what cloth they could carry. In a few minutes cotton +and factory were in a blaze. The proprietor visited Washington while I +was President to get his pay for this property, claiming that it was +private. He asked me to give him a statement of the fact that his +property had been destroyed by National troops, so that he might use it +with Congress where he was pressing, or proposed to press, his claim. I +declined. + +On the night of the 13th Johnston sent the following dispatch to +Pemberton at Edward's station: "I have lately arrived, and learn that +Major-General Sherman is between us with four divisions at Clinton. It +is important to establish communication, that you may be reinforced. If +practicable, come up in his rear at once. To beat such a detachment +would be of immense value. All the troops you can quickly assemble +should be brought. Time is all-important." This dispatch was sent in +triplicate, by different messengers. One of the messengers happened to +be a loyal man who had been expelled from Memphis some months before by +Hurlbut for uttering disloyal and threatening sentiments. There was a +good deal of parade about his expulsion, ostensibly as a warning to +those who entertained the sentiments he expressed; but Hurlbut and the +expelled man understood each other. He delivered his copy of Johnston's +dispatch to McPherson who forwarded it to me. + +Receiving this dispatch on the 14th I ordered McPherson to move promptly +in the morning back to Bolton, the nearest point where Johnston could +reach the road. Bolton is about twenty miles west of Jackson. I also +informed McClernand of the capture of Jackson and sent him the following +order: "It is evidently the design of the enemy to get north of us and +cross the Big Black, and beat us into Vicksburg. We must not allow them +to do this. Turn all your forces towards Bolton station, and make all +dispatch in getting there. Move troops by the most direct road from +wherever they may be on the receipt of this order." + +And to Blair I wrote: "Their design is evidently to cross the Big Black +and pass down the peninsula between the Big Black and Yazoo rivers. We +must beat them. Turn your troops immediately to Bolton; take all the +trains with you. Smith's division, and any other troops now with you, +will go to the same place. If practicable, take parallel roads, so as +to divide your troops and train." + +Johnston stopped on the Canton road only six miles north of Jackson, the +night of the 14th. He sent from there to Pemberton dispatches +announcing the loss of Jackson, and the following order: + +"As soon as the reinforcements are all up, they must be united to the +rest of the army. I am anxious to see a force assembled that may be +able to inflict a heavy blow upon the enemy. Can Grant supply himself +from the Mississippi? Can you not cut him off from it, and above all, +should he be compelled to fall back for want of supplies, beat him." + +The concentration of my troops was easy, considering the character of +the country. McPherson moved along the road parallel with and near the +railroad. McClernand's command was, one division (Hovey's) on the road +McPherson had to take, but with a start of four miles. One (Osterhaus) +was at Raymond, on a converging road that intersected the other near +Champion's Hill; one (Carr's) had to pass over the same road with +Osterhaus, but being back at Mississippi Springs, would not be detained +by it; the fourth (Smith's) with Blair's division, was near Auburn with +a different road to pass over. McClernand faced about and moved +promptly. His cavalry from Raymond seized Bolton by half-past nine in +the morning, driving out the enemy's pickets and capturing several men. + +The night of the 15th Hovey was at Bolton; Carr and Osterhaus were about +three miles south, but abreast, facing west; Smith was north of Raymond +with Blair in his rear. + +McPherson's command, with Logan in front, had marched at seven o'clock, +and by four reached Hovey and went into camp; Crocker bivouacked just in +Hovey's rear on the Clinton road. Sherman with two divisions, was in +Jackson, completing the destruction of roads, bridges and military +factories. I rode in person out to Clinton. On my arrival I ordered +McClernand to move early in the morning on Edward's station, cautioning +him to watch for the enemy and not bring on an engagement unless he felt +very certain of success. + +I naturally expected that Pemberton would endeavor to obey the orders of +his superior, which I have shown were to attack us at Clinton. This, +indeed, I knew he could not do; but I felt sure he would make the +attempt to reach that point. It turned out, however, that he had +decided his superior's plans were impracticable, and consequently +determined to move south from Edward's station and get between me and my +base. I, however, had no base, having abandoned it more than a week +before. On the 15th Pemberton had actually marched south from Edward's +station, but the rains had swollen Baker's Creek, which he had to cross +so much that he could not ford it, and the bridges were washed away. +This brought him back to the Jackson road, on which there was a good +bridge over Baker's Creek. Some of his troops were marching until +midnight to get there. Receiving here early on the 16th a repetition of +his order to join Johnston at Clinton, he concluded to obey, and sent a +dispatch to his chief, informing him of the route by which he might be +expected. + +About five o'clock in the morning (16th) two men, who had been employed +on the Jackson and Vicksburg railroad, were brought to me. They +reported that they had passed through Pemberton's army in the night, and +that it was still marching east. They reported him to have eighty +regiments of infantry and ten batteries; in all, about twenty-five +thousand men. + +I had expected to leave Sherman at Jackson another day in order to +complete his work; but getting the above information I sent him orders +to move with all dispatch to Bolton, and to put one division with an +ammunition train on the road at once, with directions to its commander +to march with all possible speed until he came up to our rear. Within +an hour after receiving this order Steele's division was on the road. +At the same time I dispatched to Blair, who was near Auburn, to move +with all speed to Edward's station. McClernand was directed to embrace +Blair in his command for the present. Blair's division was a part of +the 15th army corps (Sherman's); but as it was on its way to join its +corps, it naturally struck our left first, now that we had faced about +and were moving west. The 15th corps, when it got up, would be on our +extreme right. McPherson was directed to get his trains out of the way +of the troops, and to follow Hovey's division as closely as possible. +McClernand had two roads about three miles apart, converging at Edward's +station, over which to march his troops. Hovey's division of his corps +had the advance on a third road (the Clinton) still farther north. +McClernand was directed to move Blair's and A. J. Smith's divisions by +the southernmost of these roads, and Osterhaus and Carr by the middle +road. Orders were to move cautiously with skirmishers to the front to +feel for the enemy. + +Smith's division on the most southern road was the first to encounter +the enemy's pickets, who were speedily driven in. Osterhaus, on the +middle road, hearing the firing, pushed his skirmishers forward, found +the enemy's pickets and forced them back to the main line. About the +same time Hovey encountered the enemy on the northern or direct wagon +road from Jackson to Vicksburg. McPherson was hastening up to join +Hovey, but was embarrassed by Hovey's trains occupying the roads. I was +still back at Clinton. McPherson sent me word of the situation, and +expressed the wish that I was up. By half-past seven I was on the road +and proceeded rapidly to the front, ordering all trains that were in +front of troops off the road. When I arrived Hovey's skirmishing +amounted almost to a battle. + +McClernand was in person on the middle road and had a shorter distance +to march to reach the enemy's position than McPherson. I sent him word +by a staff officer to push forward and attack. These orders were +repeated several times without apparently expediting McClernand's +advance. + +Champion's Hill, where Pemberton had chosen his position to receive us, +whether taken by accident or design, was well selected. It is one of +the highest points in that section, and commanded all the ground in +range. On the east side of the ridge, which is quite precipitous, is a +ravine running first north, then westerly, terminating at Baker's Creek. +It was grown up thickly with large trees and undergrowth, making it +difficult to penetrate with troops, even when not defended. The ridge +occupied by the enemy terminated abruptly where the ravine turns +westerly. The left of the enemy occupied the north end of this ridge. +The Bolton and Edward's station wagon-road turns almost due south at +this point and ascends the ridge, which it follows for about a mile; +then turning west, descends by a gentle declivity to Baker's Creek, +nearly a mile away. On the west side the slope of the ridge is gradual +and is cultivated from near the summit to the creek. There was, when we +were there, a narrow belt of timber near the summit west of the road. + +From Raymond there is a direct road to Edward's station, some three +miles west of Champion's Hill. There is one also to Bolton. From this +latter road there is still another, leaving it about three and a half +miles before reaching Bolton and leads direct to the same station. It +was along these two roads that three divisions of McClernand's corps, +and Blair of Sherman's, temporarily under McClernand, were moving. +Hovey of McClernand's command was with McPherson, farther north on the +road from Bolton direct to Edward's station. The middle road comes into +the northern road at the point where the latter turns to the west and +descends to Baker's Creek; the southern road is still several miles +south and does not intersect the others until it reaches Edward's +station. Pemberton's lines covered all these roads, and faced east. +Hovey's line, when it first drove in the enemy's pickets, was formed +parallel to that of the enemy and confronted his left. + +By eleven o'clock the skirmishing had grown into a hard-contested +battle. Hovey alone, before other troops could be got to assist him, +had captured a battery of the enemy. But he was not able to hold his +position and had to abandon the artillery. McPherson brought up his +troops as fast as possible, Logan in front, and posted them on the right +of Hovey and across the flank of the enemy. Logan reinforced Hovey with +one brigade from his division; with his other two he moved farther west +to make room for Crocker, who was coming up as rapidly as the roads +would admit. Hovey was still being heavily pressed, and was calling on +me for more reinforcements. I ordered Crocker, who was now coming up, +to send one brigade from his division. McPherson ordered two batteries +to be stationed where they nearly enfiladed the enemy's line, and they +did good execution. + +From Logan's position now a direct forward movement carried him over +open fields, in rear of the enemy and in a line parallel with them. He +did make exactly this move, attacking, however, the enemy through the +belt of woods covering the west slope of the hill for a short distance. +Up to this time I had kept my position near Hovey where we were the most +heavily pressed; but about noon I moved with a part of my staff by our +right around, until I came up with Logan himself. I found him near the +road leading down to Baker's Creek. He was actually in command of the +only road over which the enemy could retreat; Hovey, reinforced by two +brigades from McPherson's command, confronted the enemy's left; Crocker, +with two brigades, covered their left flank; McClernand two hours +before, had been within two miles and a half of their centre with two +divisions, and the two divisions, Blair's and A. J. Smith's, were +confronting the rebel right; Ransom, with a brigade of McArthur's +division of the 17th corps (McPherson's), had crossed the river at Grand +Gulf a few days before, and was coming up on their right flank. Neither +Logan nor I knew that we had cut off the retreat of the enemy. Just at +this juncture a messenger came from Hovey, asking for more +reinforcements. There were none to spare. I then gave an order to move +McPherson's command by the left flank around to Hovey. This uncovered +the rebel line of retreat, which was soon taken advantage of by the +enemy. + +During all this time, Hovey, reinforced as he was by a brigade from +Logan and another from Crocker, and by Crocker gallantly coming up with +two other brigades on his right, had made several assaults, the last one +about the time the road was opened to the rear. The enemy fled +precipitately. This was between three and four o'clock. I rode +forward, or rather back, to where the middle road intersects the north +road, and found the skirmishers of Carr's division just coming in. +Osterhaus was farther south and soon after came up with skirmishers +advanced in like manner. Hovey's division, and McPherson's two +divisions with him, had marched and fought from early dawn, and were not +in the best condition to follow the retreating foe. I sent orders to +Osterhaus to pursue the enemy, and to Carr, whom I saw personally, I +explained the situation and directed him to pursue vigorously as far as +the Big Black, and to cross it if he could; Osterhaus to follow him. +The pursuit was continued until after dark. + +The battle of Champion's Hill lasted about four hours, hard fighting, +preceded by two or three hours of skirmishing, some of which almost rose +to the dignity of battle. Every man of Hovey's division and of +McPherson's two divisions was engaged during the battle. No other part +of my command was engaged at all, except that as described before. +Osterhaus's and A. J. Smith's divisions had encountered the rebel +advanced pickets as early as half-past seven. Their positions were +admirable for advancing upon the enemy's line. McClernand, with two +divisions, was within a few miles of the battle-field long before noon +and in easy hearing. I sent him repeated orders by staff officers fully +competent to explain to him the situation. These traversed the wood +separating us, without escort, and directed him to push forward; but he +did not come. It is true, in front of McClernand there was a small +force of the enemy and posted in a good position behind a ravine +obstructing his advance; but if he had moved to the right by the road my +staff officers had followed the enemy must either have fallen back or +been cut off. Instead of this he sent orders to Hovey, who belonged to +his corps, to join on to his right flank. Hovey was bearing the brunt +of the battle at the time. To obey the order he would have had to pull +out from the front of the enemy and march back as far as McClernand had +to advance to get into battle and substantially over the same ground. +Of course I did not permit Hovey to obey the order of his intermediate +superior. + +We had in this battle about 15,000 men absolutely engaged. This +excludes those that did not get up, all of McClernand's command except +Hovey. Our loss was 410 killed, 1,844 wounded and 187 missing. Hovey +alone lost 1,200 killed, wounded and missing--more than one-third of his +division. + +Had McClernand come up with reasonable promptness, or had I known the +ground as I did afterwards, I cannot see how Pemberton could have +escaped with any organized force. As it was he lost over three thousand +killed and wounded and about three thousand captured in battle and in +pursuit. Loring's division, which was the right of Pemberton's line, +was cut off from the retreating army and never got back into Vicksburg. +Pemberton himself fell back that night to the Big Black River. His +troops did not stop before midnight and many of them left before the +general retreat commenced, and no doubt a good part of them returned to +their homes. Logan alone captured 1,300 prisoners and eleven guns. +Hovey captured 300 under fire and about 700 in all, exclusive of 500 +sick and wounded whom he paroled, thus making 1,200. + +McPherson joined in the advance as soon as his men could fill their +cartridge-boxes, leaving one brigade to guard our wounded. The pursuit +was continued as long as it was light enough to see the road. The night +of the 16th of May found McPherson's command bivouacked from two to six +miles west of the battlefield, along the line of the road to Vicksburg. +Carr and Osterhaus were at Edward's station, and Blair was about three +miles south-east; Hovey remained on the field where his troops had +fought so bravely and bled so freely. Much war material abandoned by +the enemy was picked up on the battle-field, among it thirty pieces of +artillery. I pushed through the advancing column with my staff and kept +in advance until after night. Finding ourselves alone we stopped and +took possession of a vacant house. As no troops came up we moved back a +mile or more until we met the head of the column just going into bivouac +on the road. We had no tents, so we occupied the porch of a house which +had been taken for a rebel hospital and which was filled with wounded +and dying who had been brought from the battle-field we had just left. + +While a battle is raging one can see his enemy mowed down by the +thousand, or the ten thousand, with great composure; but after the +battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to do +as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy as a friend. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + +BATTLE OF BLACK RIVER BRIDGE--CROSSING THE BIG BLACK--INVESTMENT OF +VICKSBURG--ASSAULTING THE WORKS. + +We were now assured of our position between Johnston and Pemberton, +without a possibility of a junction of their forces. Pemberton might +have made a night march to the Big Black, crossed the bridge there and, +by moving north on the west side, have eluded us and finally returned to +Johnston. But this would have given us Vicksburg. It would have been +his proper move, however, and the one Johnston would have made had he +been in Pemberton's place. In fact it would have been in conformity +with Johnston's orders to Pemberton. + +Sherman left Jackson with the last of his troops about noon on the 16th +and reached Bolton, twenty miles west, before halting. His rear guard +did not get in until two A.M. the 17th, but renewed their march by +daylight. He paroled his prisoners at Jackson, and was forced to leave +his own wounded in care of surgeons and attendants. At Bolton he was +informed of our victory. He was directed to commence the march early +next day, and to diverge from the road he was on to Bridgeport on the +Big Black River, some eleven miles above the point where we expected to +find the enemy. Blair was ordered to join him there with the pontoon +train as early as possible. + +This movement brought Sherman's corps together, and at a point where I +hoped a crossing of the Big Black might be effected and Sherman's corps +used to flank the enemy out of his position in our front, thus opening a +crossing for the remainder of the army. I informed him that I would +endeavor to hold the enemy in my front while he crossed the river. + +The advance division, Carr's (McClernand's corps), resumed the pursuit +at half-past three A.M. on the 17th, followed closely by Osterhaus, +McPherson bringing up the rear with his corps. As I expected, the enemy +was found in position on the Big Black. The point was only six miles +from that where my advance had rested for the night, and was reached at +an early hour. Here the river makes a turn to the west, and has washed +close up to the high land; the east side is a low bottom, sometimes +overflowed at very high water, but was cleared and in cultivation. A +bayou runs irregularly across this low land, the bottom of which, +however, is above the surface of the Big Black at ordinary stages. When +the river is full water runs through it, converting the point of land +into an island. The bayou was grown up with timber, which the enemy had +felled into the ditch. At this time there was a foot or two of water in +it. The rebels had constructed a parapet along the inner bank of this +bayou by using cotton bales from the plantation close by and throwing +dirt over them. The whole was thoroughly commanded from the height west +of the river. At the upper end of the bayou there was a strip of +uncleared land which afforded a cover for a portion of our men. Carr's +division was deployed on our right, Lawler's brigade forming his extreme +right and reaching through these woods to the river above. Osterhaus' +division was deployed to the left of Carr and covered the enemy's entire +front. McPherson was in column on the road, the head close by, ready to +come in wherever he could be of assistance. + +While the troops were standing as here described an officer from Banks' +staff came up and presented me with a letter from General Halleck, dated +the 11th of May. It had been sent by the way of New Orleans to Banks to +be forwarded to me. It ordered me to return to Grand Gulf and to +co-operate from there with Banks against Port Hudson, and then to return +with our combined forces to besiege Vicksburg. I told the officer that +the order came too late, and that Halleck would not give it now if he +knew our position. The bearer of the dispatch insisted that I ought to +obey the order, and was giving arguments to support his position when I +heard great cheering to the right of our line and, looking in that +direction, saw Lawler in his shirt sleeves leading a charge upon the +enemy. I immediately mounted my horse and rode in the direction of the +charge, and saw no more of the officer who delivered the dispatch; I +think not even to this day. + +The assault was successful. But little resistance was made. The enemy +fled from the west bank of the river, burning the bridge behind him and +leaving the men and guns on the east side to fall into our hands. Many +tried to escape by swimming the river. Some succeeded and some were +drowned in the attempt. Eighteen guns were captured and 1,751 prisoners. +Our loss was 39 killed, 237 wounded and 3 missing. The enemy probably +lost but few men except those captured and drowned. But for the +successful and complete destruction of the bridge, I have but little +doubt that we should have followed the enemy so closely as to prevent +his occupying his defences around Vicksburg. + +As the bridge was destroyed and the river was high, new bridges had to +be built. It was but little after nine o'clock A.M. when the capture +took place. As soon as work could be commenced, orders were given for +the construction of three bridges. One was taken charge of by +Lieutenant Hains, of the Engineer Corps, one by General McPherson +himself and one by General Ransom, a most gallant and intelligent +volunteer officer. My recollection is that Hains built a raft bridge; +McPherson a pontoon, using cotton bales in large numbers, for pontoons; +and that Ransom felled trees on opposite banks of the river, cutting +only on one side of the tree, so that they would fall with their tops +interlacing in the river, without the trees being entirely severed from +their stumps. A bridge was then made with these trees to support the +roadway. Lumber was taken from buildings, cotton gins and wherever +found, for this purpose. By eight o'clock in the morning of the 18th +all three bridges were complete and the troops were crossing. + +Sherman reached Bridgeport about noon of the 17th and found Blair with +the pontoon train already there. A few of the enemy were intrenched on +the west bank, but they made little resistance and soon surrendered. +Two divisions were crossed that night and the third the following +morning. + +On the 18th I moved along the Vicksburg road in advance of the troops +and as soon as possible joined Sherman. My first anxiety was to secure +a base of supplies on the Yazoo River above Vicksburg. Sherman's line +of march led him to the very point on Walnut Hills occupied by the enemy +the December before when he was repulsed. Sherman was equally anxious +with myself. Our impatience led us to move in advance of the column and +well up with the advanced skirmishers. There were some detached works +along the crest of the hill. These were still occupied by the enemy, or +else the garrison from Haines' Bluff had not all got past on their way +to Vicksburg. At all events the bullets of the enemy whistled by thick +and fast for a short time. In a few minutes Sherman had the pleasure of +looking down from the spot coveted so much by him the December before on +the ground where his command had lain so helpless for offensive action. +He turned to me, saying that up to this minute he had felt no positive +assurance of success. This, however, he said was the end of one of the +greatest campaigns in history and I ought to make a report of it at +once. Vicksburg was not yet captured, and there was no telling what +might happen before it was taken; but whether captured or not, this was +a complete and successful campaign. I do not claim to quote Sherman's +language; but the substance only. My reason for mentioning this +incident will appear further on. + +McPherson, after crossing the Big Black, came into the Jackson and +Vicksburg road which Sherman was on, but to his rear. He arrived at +night near the lines of the enemy, and went into camp. McClernand moved +by the direct road near the railroad to Mount Albans, and then turned to +the left and put his troops on the road from Baldwin's ferry to +Vicksburg. This brought him south of McPherson. I now had my three +corps up the works built for the defence of Vicksburg, on three roads +--one to the north, one to the east and one to the south-east of the city. +By the morning of the 19th the investment was as complete as my limited +number of troops would allow. Sherman was on the right, and covered the +high ground from where it overlooked the Yazoo as far south-east as his +troops would extend. McPherson joined on to his left, and occupied +ground on both sides of the Jackson road. McClernand took up the ground +to his left and extended as far towards Warrenton as he could, keeping a +continuous line. + +On the 19th there was constant skirmishing with the enemy while we were +getting into better position. The enemy had been much demoralized by +his defeats at Champion's Hill and the Big Black, and I believed he +would not make much effort to hold Vicksburg. Accordingly, at two +o'clock I ordered an assault. It resulted in securing more advanced +positions for all our troops where they were fully covered from the fire +of the enemy. + +The 20th and 21st were spent in strengthening our position and in making +roads in rear of the army, from Yazoo River or Chickasaw Bayou. Most of +the army had now been for three weeks with only five days' rations +issued by the commissary. They had an abundance of food, however, but +began to feel the want of bread. I remember that in passing around to +the left of the line on the 21st, a soldier, recognizing me, said in +rather a low voice, but yet so that I heard him, "Hard tack." In a +moment the cry was taken up all along the line, "Hard tack! Hard tack!" +I told the men nearest to me that we had been engaged ever since the +arrival of the troops in building a road over which to supply them with +everything they needed. The cry was instantly changed to cheers. By +the night of the 21st all the troops had full rations issued to them. +The bread and coffee were highly appreciated. + +I now determined on a second assault. Johnston was in my rear, only +fifty miles away, with an army not much inferior in numbers to the one I +had with me, and I knew he was being reinforced. There was danger of his +coming to the assistance of Pemberton, and after all he might defeat my +anticipations of capturing the garrison if, indeed, he did not prevent +the capture of the city. The immediate capture of Vicksburg would save +sending me the reinforcements which were so much wanted elsewhere, and +would set free the army under me to drive Johnston from the State. But +the first consideration of all was--the troops believed they could carry +the works in their front, and would not have worked so patiently in the +trenches if they had not been allowed to try. + +The attack was ordered to commence on all parts of the line at ten +o'clock A.M. on the 22d with a furious cannonade from every battery in +position. All the corps commanders set their time by mine so that all +might open the engagement at the same minute. The attack was gallant, +and portions of each of the three corps succeeded in getting up to the +very parapets of the enemy and in planting their battle flags upon them; +but at no place were we able to enter. General McClernand reported that +he had gained the enemy's intrenchments at several points, and wanted +reinforcements. I occupied a position from which I believed I could see +as well as he what took place in his front, and I did not see the +success he reported. But his request for reinforcements being repeated +I could not ignore it, and sent him Quinby's division of the 17th corps. +Sherman and McPherson were both ordered to renew their assaults as a +diversion in favor of McClernand. This last attack only served to +increase our casualties without giving any benefit whatever. As soon as +it was dark our troops that had reached the enemy's line and been +obliged to remain there for security all day, were withdrawn; and thus +ended the last assault upon Vicksburg. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +SIEGE OF VICKSBURG. + +I now determined upon a regular siege--to "out-camp the enemy," as it +were, and to incur no more losses. The experience of the 22d convinced +officers and men that this was best, and they went to work on the +defences and approaches with a will. With the navy holding the river, +the investment of Vicksburg was complete. As long as we could hold our +position the enemy was limited in supplies of food, men and munitions of +war to what they had on hand. These could not last always. + +The crossing of troops at Bruinsburg commenced April 30th. On the 18th +of May the army was in rear of Vicksburg. On the 19th, just twenty days +after the crossing, the city was completely invested and an assault had +been made: five distinct battles (besides continuous skirmishing) had +been fought and won by the Union forces; the capital of the State had +fallen and its arsenals, military manufactories and everything useful +for military purposes had been destroyed; an average of about one +hundred and eighty miles had been marched by the troops engaged; but +five days' rations had been issued, and no forage; over six thousand +prisoners had been captured, and as many more of the enemy had been +killed or wounded; twenty-seven heavy cannon and sixty-one field-pieces +had fallen into our hands; and four hundred miles of the river, from +Vicksburg to Port Hudson, had become ours. The Union force that had +crossed the Mississippi River up to this time was less than forty-three +thousand men. One division of these, Blair's, only arrived in time to +take part in the battle of Champion's Hill, but was not engaged there; +and one brigade, Ransom's of McPherson's corps, reached the field after +the battle. The enemy had at Vicksburg, Grand Gulf, Jackson, and on the +roads between these places, over sixty thousand men. They were in their +own country, where no rear guards were necessary. The country is +admirable for defence, but difficult for the conduct of an offensive +campaign. All their troops had to be met. We were fortunate, to say +the least, in meeting them in detail: at Port Gibson seven or eight +thousand; at Raymond, five thousand; at Jackson, from eight to eleven +thousand; at Champion's Hill, twenty-five thousand; at the Big Black, +four thousand. A part of those met at Jackson were all that was left of +those encountered at Raymond. They were beaten in detail by a force +smaller than their own, upon their own ground. Our loss up to this time +was: + + KILLED WOUNDED MISSING + + Port Gibson..... 131 719 25 + South Fork Bayou Pierre..... .. 1 .. + Skirmishes, May 3 ..... 1 9 .. + Fourteen Mile Creek..... 6 24 .. + Raymond............... 66 339 39 + Jackson..... 42 251 7 + Champion's Hill..... 410 1,844 187 + Big Black..... 39 237 3 + Bridgeport..... .. 1 .. + Total..... 695 3,425 259 + + +Of the wounded many were but slightly so, and continued on duty. Not +half of them were disabled for any length of time. + +After the unsuccessful assault of the 22d the work of the regular siege +began. Sherman occupied the right starting from the river above +Vicksburg, McPherson the centre (McArthur's division now with him) and +McClernand the left, holding the road south to Warrenton. Lauman's +division arrived at this time and was placed on the extreme left of the +line. + +In the interval between the assaults of the 19th and 22d, roads had been +completed from the Yazoo River and Chickasaw Bayou, around the rear of +the army, to enable us to bring up supplies of food and ammunition; +ground had been selected and cleared on which the troops were to be +encamped, and tents and cooking utensils were brought up. The troops +had been without these from the time of crossing the Mississippi up to +this time. All was now ready for the pick and spade. Prentiss and +Hurlbut were ordered to send forward every man that could be spared. +Cavalry especially was wanted to watch the fords along the Big Black, +and to observe Johnston. I knew that Johnston was receiving +reinforcements from Bragg, who was confronting Rosecrans in Tennessee. +Vicksburg was so important to the enemy that I believed he would make +the most strenuous efforts to raise the siege, even at the risk of +losing ground elsewhere. + +My line was more than fifteen miles long, extending from Haines' Bluff +to Vicksburg, thence to Warrenton. The line of the enemy was about +seven. In addition to this, having an enemy at Canton and Jackson, in +our rear, who was being constantly reinforced, we required a second line +of defence facing the other way. I had not troops enough under my +command to man these. General Halleck appreciated the situation and, +without being asked, forwarded reinforcements with all possible +dispatch. + +The ground about Vicksburg is admirable for defence. On the north it is +about two hundred feet above the Mississippi River at the highest point +and very much cut up by the washing rains; the ravines were grown up +with cane and underbrush, while the sides and tops were covered with a +dense forest. Farther south the ground flattens out somewhat, and was +in cultivation. But here, too, it was cut up by ravines and small +streams. The enemy's line of defence followed the crest of a ridge from +the river north of the city eastward, then southerly around to the +Jackson road, full three miles back of the city; thence in a +southwesterly direction to the river. Deep ravines of the description +given lay in front of these defences. As there is a succession of +gullies, cut out by rains along the side of the ridge, the line was +necessarily very irregular. To follow each of these spurs with +intrenchments, so as to command the slopes on either side, would have +lengthened their line very much. Generally therefore, or in many places, +their line would run from near the head of one gully nearly straight to +the head of another, and an outer work triangular in shape, generally +open in the rear, was thrown up on the point; with a few men in this +outer work they commanded the approaches to the main line completely. + +The work to be done, to make our position as strong against the enemy as +his was against us, was very great. The problem was also complicated by +our wanting our line as near that of the enemy as possible. We had but +four engineer officers with us. Captain Prime, of the Engineer Corps, +was the chief, and the work at the beginning was mainly directed by him. +His health soon gave out, when he was succeeded by Captain Comstock, +also of the Engineer Corps. To provide assistants on such a long line I +directed that all officers who had graduated at West Point, where they +had necessarily to study military engineering, should in addition to +their other duties assist in the work. + +The chief quartermaster and the chief commissary were graduates. The +chief commissary, now the Commissary-General of the Army, begged off, +however, saying that there was nothing in engineering that he was good +for unless he would do for a sap-roller. As soldiers require rations +while working in the ditches as well as when marching and fighting, and +as we would be sure to lose him if he was used as a sap-roller, I let +him off. The general is a large man; weighs two hundred and twenty +pounds, and is not tall. + +We had no siege guns except six thirty-two pounders, and there were none +at the West to draw from. Admiral Porter, however, supplied us with a +battery of navy-guns of large calibre, and with these, and the field +artillery used in the campaign, the siege began. The first thing to do +was to get the artillery in batteries where they would occupy commanding +positions; then establish the camps, under cover from the fire of the +enemy but as near up as possible; and then construct rifle-pits and +covered ways, to connect the entire command by the shortest route. The +enemy did not harass us much while we were constructing our batteries. +Probably their artillery ammunition was short; and their infantry was +kept down by our sharpshooters, who were always on the alert and ready +to fire at a head whenever it showed itself above the rebel works. + +In no place were our lines more than six hundred yards from the enemy. +It was necessary, therefore, to cover our men by something more than +the ordinary parapet. To give additional protection sand bags, +bullet-proof, were placed along the tops of the parapets far enough +apart to make loop-holes for musketry. On top of these, logs were put. +By these means the men were enabled to walk about erect when off duty, +without fear of annoyance from sharpshooters. The enemy used in their +defence explosive musket-balls, no doubt thinking that, bursting over +our men in the trenches, they would do some execution; but I do not +remember a single case where a man was injured by a piece of one of +these shells. When they were hit and the ball exploded, the wound was +terrible. In these cases a solid ball would have hit as well. Their +use is barbarous, because they produce increased suffering without any +corresponding advantage to those using them. + +The enemy could not resort to our method to protect their men, because +we had an inexhaustible supply of ammunition to draw upon and used it +freely. Splinters from the timber would have made havoc among the men +behind. + +There were no mortars with the besiegers, except what the navy had in +front of the city; but wooden ones were made by taking logs of the +toughest wood that could be found, boring them out for six or twelve +pound shells and binding them with strong iron bands. These answered as +cochorns, and shells were successfully thrown from them into the +trenches of the enemy. + +The labor of building the batteries and intrenching was largely done by +the pioneers, assisted by negroes who came within our lines and who were +paid for their work; but details from the troops had often to be made. +The work was pushed forward as rapidly as possible, and when an advanced +position was secured and covered from the fire of the enemy the +batteries were advanced. By the 30th of June there were two hundred and +twenty guns in position, mostly light field-pieces, besides a battery of +heavy guns belonging to, manned and commanded by the navy. We were now +as strong for defence against the garrison of Vicksburg as they were +against us; but I knew that Johnston was in our rear, and was receiving +constant reinforcements from the east. He had at this time a larger +force than I had had at any time prior to the battle of Champion's Hill. + +As soon as the news of the arrival of the Union army behind Vicksburg +reached the North, floods of visitors began to pour in. Some came to +gratify curiosity; some to see sons or brothers who had passed through +the terrible ordeal; members of the Christian and Sanitary Associations +came to minister to the wants of the sick and the wounded. Often those +coming to see a son or brother would bring a dozen or two of poultry. +They did not know how little the gift would be appreciated. Many of the +soldiers had lived so much on chickens, ducks and turkeys without bread +during the march, that the sight of poultry, if they could get bacon, +almost took away their appetite. But the intention was good. + +Among the earliest arrivals was the Governor of Illinois, with most of +the State officers. I naturally wanted to show them what there was of +most interest. In Sherman's front the ground was the most broken and +most wooded, and more was to be seen without exposure. I therefore took +them to Sherman's headquarters and presented them. Before starting out +to look at the lines--possibly while Sherman's horse was being saddled +--there were many questions asked about the late campaign, about which +the North had been so imperfectly informed. There was a little knot +around Sherman and another around me, and I heard Sherman repeating, in +the most animated manner, what he had said to me when we first looked +down from Walnut Hills upon the land below on the 18th of May, adding: +"Grant is entitled to every bit of the credit for the campaign; I +opposed it. I wrote him a letter about it." But for this speech it is +not likely that Sherman's opposition would have ever been heard of. His +untiring energy and great efficiency during the campaign entitle him to +a full share of all the credit due for its success. He could not have +done more if the plan had been his own. (*13) + +On the 26th of May I sent Blair's division up the Yazoo to drive out a +force of the enemy supposed to be between the Big Black and the Yazoo. +The country was rich and full of supplies of both food and forage. +Blair was instructed to take all of it. The cattle were to be driven in +for the use of our army, and the food and forage to be consumed by our +troops or destroyed by fire; all bridges were to be destroyed, and the +roads rendered as nearly impassable as possible. Blair went forty-five +miles and was gone almost a week. His work was effectually done. I +requested Porter at this time to send the marine brigade, a floating +nondescript force which had been assigned to his command and which +proved very useful, up to Haines' Bluff to hold it until reinforcements +could be sent. + +On the 26th I also received a letter from Banks, asking me to reinforce +him with ten thousand men at Port Hudson. Of course I could not comply +with his request, nor did I think he needed them. He was in no danger +of an attack by the garrison in his front, and there was no army +organizing in his rear to raise the siege. + +On the 3d of June a brigade from Hurlbut's command arrived, General +Kimball commanding. It was sent to Mechanicsburg, some miles north-east +of Haines' Bluff and about midway between the Big Black and the Yazoo. +A brigade of Blair's division and twelve hundred cavalry had already, on +Blair's return from the Yazoo, been sent to the same place with +instructions to watch the crossings of the Big Black River, to destroy +the roads in his (Blair's) front, and to gather or destroy all supplies. + +On the 7th of June our little force of colored and white troops across +the Mississippi, at Milliken's Bend, were attacked by about 3,000 men +from Richard Taylor's trans-Mississippi command. With the aid of the +gunboats they were speedily repelled. I sent Mower's brigade over with +instructions to drive the enemy beyond the Tensas Bayou; and we had no +further trouble in that quarter during the siege. This was the first +important engagement of the war in which colored troops were under fire. +These men were very raw, having all been enlisted since the beginning of +the siege, but they behaved well. + +On the 8th of June a full division arrived from Hurlbut's command, under +General Sooy Smith. It was sent immediately to Haines' Bluff, and +General C. C. Washburn was assigned to the general command at that +point. + +On the 11th a strong division arrived from the Department of the +Missouri under General Herron, which was placed on our left. This cut +off the last possible chance of communication between Pemberton and +Johnston, as it enabled Lauman to close up on McClernand's left while +Herron intrenched from Lauman to the water's edge. At this point the +water recedes a few hundred yards from the high land. Through this +opening no doubt the Confederate commanders had been able to get +messengers under cover of night. + +On the 14th General Parke arrived with two divisions of Burnside's +corps, and was immediately dispatched to Haines' Bluff. These latter +troops--Herron's and Parke's--were the reinforcements already spoken of +sent by Halleck in anticipation of their being needed. They arrived +none too soon. + +I now had about seventy-one thousand men. More than half were disposed +across the peninsula, between the Yazoo at Haines' Bluff and the Big +Black, with the division of Osterhaus watching the crossings of the +latter river farther south and west from the crossing of the Jackson +road to Baldwin's ferry and below. + +There were eight roads leading into Vicksburg, along which and their +immediate sides, our work was specially pushed and batteries advanced; +but no commanding point within range of the enemy was neglected. + +On the 17th I received a letter from General Sherman and one on the 18th +from General McPherson, saying that their respective commands had +complained to them of a fulsome, congratulatory order published by +General McClernand to the 13th corps, which did great injustice to the +other troops engaged in the campaign. This order had been sent North +and published, and now papers containing it had reached our camps. The +order had not been heard of by me, and certainly not by troops outside +of McClernand's command until brought in this way. I at once wrote to +McClernand, directing him to send me a copy of this order. He did so, +and I at once relieved him from the command of the 13th army corps and +ordered him back to Springfield, Illinois. The publication of his order +in the press was in violation of War Department orders and also of mine. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + +JOHNSTON'S MOVEMENTS--FORTIFICATIONS AT HAINES' BLUFF--EXPLOSION OF THE +MINE--EXPLOSION OF THE SECOND MINE--PREPARING FOR THE ASSAULT--THE FLAG +OF TRUCE--MEETING WITH PEMBERTON--NEGOTIATIONS FOR SURRENDER--ACCEPTING +THE TERMS--SURRENDER OF VICKSBURG. + +On the 22d of June positive information was received that Johnston had +crossed the Big Black River for the purpose of attacking our rear, to +raise the siege and release Pemberton. The correspondence between +Johnston and Pemberton shows that all expectation of holding Vicksburg +had by this time passed from Johnston's mind. I immediately ordered +Sherman to the command of all the forces from Haines' Bluff to the Big +Black River. This amounted now to quite half the troops about Vicksburg. +Besides these, Herron and A. J. Smith's divisions were ordered to hold +themselves in readiness to reinforce Sherman. Haines' Bluff had been +strongly fortified on the land side, and on all commanding points from +there to the Big Black at the railroad crossing batteries had been +constructed. The work of connecting by rifle-pits where this was not +already done, was an easy task for the troops that were to defend them. + +We were now looking west, besieging Pemberton, while we were also +looking east to defend ourselves against an expected siege by Johnston. +But as against the garrison of Vicksburg we were as substantially +protected as they were against us. Where we were looking east and north +we were strongly fortified, and on the defensive. Johnston evidently +took in the situation and wisely, I think, abstained from making an +assault on us because it would simply have inflicted loss on both sides +without accomplishing any result. We were strong enough to have taken +the offensive against him; but I did not feel disposed to take any risk +of losing our hold upon Pemberton's army, while I would have rejoiced at +the opportunity of defending ourselves against an attack by Johnston. + +From the 23d of May the work of fortifying and pushing forward our +position nearer to the enemy had been steadily progressing. At three +points on the Jackson road, in front of Leggett's brigade, a sap was run +up to the enemy's parapet, and by the 25th of June we had it undermined +and the mine charged. The enemy had countermined, but did not succeed in +reaching our mine. At this particular point the hill on which the rebel +work stands rises abruptly. Our sap ran close up to the outside of the +enemy's parapet. In fact this parapet was also our protection. The +soldiers of the two sides occasionally conversed pleasantly across this +barrier; sometimes they exchanged the hard bread of the Union soldiers +for the tobacco of the Confederates; at other times the enemy threw over +hand-grenades, and often our men, catching them in their hands, returned +them. + +Our mine had been started some distance back down the hill; consequently +when it had extended as far as the parapet it was many feet below it. +This caused the failure of the enemy in his search to find and destroy +it. On the 25th of June at three o'clock, all being ready, the mine was +exploded. A heavy artillery fire all along the line had been ordered to +open with the explosion. The effect was to blow the top of the hill off +and make a crater where it stood. The breach was not sufficient to +enable us to pass a column of attack through. In fact, the enemy having +failed to reach our mine had thrown up a line farther back, where most +of the men guarding that point were placed. There were a few men, +however, left at the advance line, and others working in the +countermine, which was still being pushed to find ours. All that were +there were thrown into the air, some of them coming down on our side, +still alive. I remember one colored man, who had been under ground at +work when the explosion took place, who was thrown to our side. He was +not much hurt, but terribly frightened. Some one asked him how high he +had gone up. "Dun no, massa, but t'ink 'bout t'ree mile," was his +reply. General Logan commanded at this point and took this colored man +to his quarters, where he did service to the end of the siege. + +As soon as the explosion took place the crater was seized by two +regiments of our troops who were near by, under cover, where they had +been placed for the express purpose. The enemy made a desperate effort +to expel them, but failed, and soon retired behind the new line. From +here, however, they threw hand-grenades, which did some execution. The +compliment was returned by our men, but not with so much effect. The +enemy could lay their grenades on the parapet, which alone divided the +contestants, and roll them down upon us; while from our side they had to +be thrown over the parapet, which was at considerable elevation. During +the night we made efforts to secure our position in the crater against +the missiles of the enemy, so as to run trenches along the outer base of +their parapet, right and left; but the enemy continued throwing their +grenades, and brought boxes of field ammunition (shells), the fuses of +which they would light with portfires, and throw them by hand into our +ranks. We found it impossible to continue this work. Another mine was +consequently started which was exploded on the 1st of July, destroying +an entire rebel redan, killing and wounding a considerable number of its +occupants and leaving an immense chasm where it stood. No attempt to +charge was made this time, the experience of the 25th admonishing us. +Our loss in the first affair was about thirty killed and wounded. The +enemy must have lost more in the two explosions than we did in the +first. We lost none in the second. + +From this time forward the work of mining and pushing our position +nearer to the enemy was prosecuted with vigor, and I determined to +explode no more mines until we were ready to explode a number at +different points and assault immediately after. We were up now at three +different points, one in front of each corps, to where only the parapet +of the enemy divided us. + +At this time an intercepted dispatch from Johnston to Pemberton informed +me that Johnston intended to make a determined attack upon us in order +to relieve the garrison at Vicksburg. I knew the garrison would make no +formidable effort to relieve itself. The picket lines were so close to +each other--where there was space enough between the lines to post +pickets--that the men could converse. On the 21st of June I was +informed, through this means, that Pemberton was preparing to escape, by +crossing to the Louisiana side under cover of night; that he had +employed workmen in making boats for that purpose; that the men had been +canvassed to ascertain if they would make an assault on the "Yankees" to +cut their way out; that they had refused, and almost mutinied, because +their commander would not surrender and relieve their sufferings, and +had only been pacified by the assurance that boats enough would be +finished in a week to carry them all over. The rebel pickets also said +that houses in the city had been pulled down to get material to build +these boats with. Afterwards this story was verified: on entering the +city we found a large number of very rudely constructed boats. + +All necessary steps were at once taken to render such an attempt +abortive. Our pickets were doubled; Admiral Porter was notified, so +that the river might be more closely watched; material was collected on +the west bank of the river to be set on fire and light up the river if +the attempt was made; and batteries were established along the levee +crossing the peninsula on the Louisiana side. Had the attempt been made +the garrison of Vicksburg would have been drowned, or made prisoners on +the Louisiana side. General Richard Taylor was expected on the west +bank to co-operate in this movement, I believe, but he did not come, nor +could he have done so with a force sufficient to be of service. The +Mississippi was now in our possession from its source to its mouth, +except in the immediate front of Vicksburg and of Port Hudson. We had +nearly exhausted the country, along a line drawn from Lake Providence to +opposite Bruinsburg. The roads west were not of a character to draw +supplies over for any considerable force. + +By the 1st of July our approaches had reached the enemy's ditch at a +number of places. At ten points we could move under cover to within +from five to one hundred yards of the enemy. Orders were given to make +all preparations for assault on the 6th of July. The debouches were +ordered widened to afford easy egress, while the approaches were also to +be widened to admit the troops to pass through four abreast. Plank, and +bags filled with cotton packed in tightly, were ordered prepared, to +enable the troops to cross the ditches. + +On the night of the 1st of July Johnston was between Brownsville and the +Big Black, and wrote Pemberton from there that about the 7th of the +month an attempt would be made to create a diversion to enable him to +cut his way out. Pemberton was a prisoner before this message reached +him. + +On July 1st Pemberton, seeing no hope of outside relief, addressed the +following letter to each of his four division commanders: + +"Unless the siege of Vicksburg is raised, or supplies are thrown in, it +will become necessary very shortly to evacuate the place. I see no +prospect of the former, and there are many great, if not insuperable +obstacles in the way of the latter. You are, therefore, requested to +inform me with as little delay as possible, as to the condition of your +troops and their ability to make the marches and undergo the fatigues +necessary to accomplish a successful evacuation." + +Two of his generals suggested surrender, and the other two practically +did the same. They expressed the opinion that an attempt to evacuate +would fail. Pemberton had previously got a message to Johnston +suggesting that he should try to negotiate with me for a release of the +garrison with their arms. Johnston replied that it would be a +confession of weakness for him to do so; but he authorized Pemberton to +use his name in making such an arrangement. + +On the 3d about ten o'clock A.M. white flags appeared on a portion of +the rebel works. Hostilities along that part of the line ceased at +once. Soon two persons were seen coming towards our lines bearing a +white flag. They proved to be General Bowen, a division commander, and +Colonel Montgomery, aide-de-camp to Pemberton, bearing the following +letter to me: + +"I have the honor to propose an armistice for--hours, with the view to +arranging terms for the capitulation of Vicksburg. To this end, if +agreeable to you, I will appoint three commissioners, to meet a like +number to be named by yourself at such place and hour to-day as you may +find convenient. I make this proposition to save the further effusion +of blood, which must otherwise be shed to a frightful extent, feeling +myself fully able to maintain my position for a yet indefinite period. +This communication will be handed you under a flag of truce, by +Major-General John S. Bowen." + +It was a glorious sight to officers and soldiers on the line where these +white flags were visible, and the news soon spread to all parts of the +command. The troops felt that their long and weary marches, hard +fighting, ceaseless watching by night and day, in a hot climate, +exposure to all sorts of weather, to diseases and, worst of all, to the +gibes of many Northern papers that came to them saying all their +suffering was in vain, that Vicksburg would never be taken, were at last +at an end and the Union sure to be saved. + +Bowen was received by General A. J. Smith, and asked to see me. I had +been a neighbor of Bowen's in Missouri, and knew him well and favorably +before the war; but his request was refused. He then suggested that I +should meet Pemberton. To this I sent a verbal message saying that, if +Pemberton desired it, I would meet him in front of McPherson's corps at +three o'clock that afternoon. I also sent the following written reply +to Pemberton's letter: + +"Your note of this date is just received, proposing an armistice for +several hours, for the purpose of arranging terms of capitulation +through commissioners, to be appointed, etc. The useless effusion of +blood you propose stopping by this course can be ended at any time you +may choose, by the unconditional surrender of the city and garrison. +Men who have shown so much endurance and courage as those now in +Vicksburg, will always challenge the respect of an adversary, and I can +assure you will be treated with all the respect due to prisoners of war. +I do not favor the proposition of appointing commissioners to arrange +the terms of capitulation, because I have no terms other than those +indicated above." + +At three o'clock Pemberton appeared at the point suggested in my verbal +message, accompanied by the same officers who had borne his letter of +the morning. Generals Ord, McPherson, Logan and A. J. Smith, and +several officers of my staff, accompanied me. Our place of meeting was +on a hillside within a few hundred feet of the rebel lines. Near by +stood a stunted oak-tree, which was made historical by the event. It +was but a short time before the last vestige of its body, root and limb +had disappeared, the fragments taken as trophies. Since then the same +tree has furnished as many cords of wood, in the shape of trophies, as +"The True Cross." + +Pemberton and I had served in the same division during part of the +Mexican War. I knew him very well therefore, and greeted him as an old +acquaintance. He soon asked what terms I proposed to give his army if +it surrendered. My answer was the same as proposed in my reply to his +letter. Pemberton then said, rather snappishly, "The conference might +as well end," and turned abruptly as if to leave. I said, "Very well." +General Bowen, I saw, was very anxious that the surrender should be +consummated. His manner and remarks while Pemberton and I were talking, +showed this. He now proposed that he and one of our generals should +have a conference. I had no objection to this, as nothing could be made +binding upon me that they might propose. Smith and Bowen accordingly had +a conference, during which Pemberton and I, moving a short distance away +towards the enemy's lines were in conversation. After a while Bowen +suggested that the Confederate army should be allowed to march out with +the honors of war, carrying their small arms and field artillery. This +was promptly and unceremoniously rejected. The interview here ended, I +agreeing, however, to send a letter giving final terms by ten o'clock +that night. + +Word was sent to Admiral Porter soon after the correspondence with +Pemberton commenced, so that hostilities might be stopped on the part of +both army and navy. It was agreed on my paging with Pemberton that they +should not be renewed until our correspondence ceased. + +When I returned to my headquarters I sent for all the corps and division +commanders with the army immediately confronting Vicksburg. Half the +army was from eight to twelve miles off, waiting for Johnston. I +informed them of the contents of Pemberton's letters, of my reply and +the substance of the interview, and that I was ready to hear any +suggestion; but would hold the power of deciding entirely in my own +hands. This was the nearest approach to a "council of war" I ever held. +Against the general, and almost unanimous judgment of the council I sent +the following letter: + +"In conformity with agreement of this afternoon, I will submit the +following proposition for the surrender of the City of Vicksburg, public +stores, etc. On your accepting the terms proposed, I will march in one +division as a guard, and take possession at eight A.M. to-morrow. As +soon as rolls can be made out, and paroles be signed by officers and +men, you will be allowed to march out of our lines, the officers taking +with them their side-arms and clothing, and the field, staff and cavalry +officers one horse each. The rank and file will be allowed all their +clothing, but no other property. If these conditions are accepted, any +amount of rations you may deem necessary can be taken from the stores +you now have, and also the necessary cooking utensils for preparing +them. Thirty wagons also, counting two two-horse or mule teams as one, +will be allowed to transport such articles as cannot be carried along. +The same conditions will be allowed to all sick and wounded officers and +soldiers as fast as they become able to travel. The paroles for these +latter must be signed, however, whilst officers present are authorized +to sign the roll of prisoners." + +By the terms of the cartel then in force, prisoners captured by either +army were required to be forwarded as soon as possible to either Aiken's +landing below Dutch Gap on the James River, or to Vicksburg, there to be +exchanged, or paroled until they could be exchanged. There was a +Confederate commissioner at Vicksburg, authorized to make the exchange. +I did not propose to take him a prisoner, but to leave him free to +perform the functions of his office. Had I insisted upon an +unconditional surrender there would have been over thirty thousand men +to transport to Cairo, very much to the inconvenience of the army on the +Mississippi. Thence the prisoners would have had to be transported by +rail to Washington or Baltimore; thence again by steamer to Aiken's--all +at very great expense. At Aiken's they would have had to be paroled, +because the Confederates did not have Union prisoners to give in +exchange. Then again Pemberton's army was largely composed of men whose +homes were in the South-west; I knew many of them were tired of the war +and would get home just as soon as they could. A large number of them +had voluntarily come into our lines during the siege, and requested to +be sent north where they could get employment until the war was over and +they could go to their homes. + +Late at night I received the following reply to my last letter: + +"I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of +this date, proposing terms of capitulation for this garrison and post. +In the main your terms are accepted; but, in justice both to the honor +and spirit of my troops manifested in the defence of Vicksburg, I have +to submit the following amendments, which, if acceded to by you, will +perfect the agreement between us. At ten o'clock A.M. to-morrow, I +propose to evacuate the works in and around Vicksburg, and to surrender +the city and garrison under my command, by marching out with my colors +and arms, stacking them in front of my present lines. After which you +will take possession. Officers to retain their side-arms and personal +property, and the rights and property of citizens to be respected." + +This was received after midnight. My reply was as follows: + +"I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of 3d +July. The amendment proposed by you cannot be acceded to in full. It +will be necessary to furnish every officer and man with a parole signed +by himself, which, with the completion of the roll of prisoners, will +necessarily take some time. Again, I can make no stipulations with +regard to the treatment of citizens and their private property. While I +do not propose to cause them any undue annoyance or loss, I cannot +consent to leave myself under any restraint by stipulations. The +property which officers will be allowed to take with them will be as +stated in my proposition of last evening; that is, officers will be +allowed their private baggage and side-arms, and mounted officers one +horse each. If you mean by your proposition for each brigade to march +to the front of the lines now occupied by it, and stack arms at ten +o'clock A.M., and then return to the inside and there remain as +prisoners until properly paroled, I will make no objection to it. +Should no notification be received of your acceptance of my terms by +nine o'clock A.M. I shall regard them as having been rejected, and shall +act accordingly. Should these terms be accepted, white flags should be +displayed along your lines to prevent such of my troops as may not have +been notified, from firing upon your men." + +Pemberton promptly accepted these terms. + +During the siege there had been a good deal of friendly sparring between +the soldiers of the two armies, on picket and where the lines were close +together. All rebels were known as "Johnnies," all Union troops as +"Yanks." Often "Johnny" would call: "Well, Yank, when are you coming +into town?" The reply was sometimes: "We propose to celebrate the 4th +of July there." Sometimes it would be: "We always treat our prisoners +with kindness and do not want to hurt them;" or, "We are holding you as +prisoners of war while you are feeding yourselves." The garrison, from +the commanding general down, undoubtedly expected an assault on the +fourth. They knew from the temper of their men it would be successful +when made; and that would be a greater humiliation than to surrender. +Besides it would be attended with severe loss to them. + +The Vicksburg paper, which we received regularly through the courtesy of +the rebel pickets, said prior to the fourth, in speaking of the "Yankee" +boast that they would take dinner in Vicksburg that day, that the best +receipt for cooking a rabbit was "First ketch your rabbit." The paper +at this time and for some time previous was printed on the plain side of +wall paper. The last number was issued on the fourth and announced that +we had "caught our rabbit." + +I have no doubt that Pemberton commenced his correspondence on the third +with a two-fold purpose: first, to avoid an assault, which he knew +would be successful, and second, to prevent the capture taking place on +the great national holiday, the anniversary of the Declaration of +American Independence. Holding out for better terms as he did he +defeated his aim in the latter particular. + +At the appointed hour the garrison of Vicksburg marched out of their +works and formed line in front, stacked arms and marched back in good +order. Our whole army present witnessed this scene without cheering. +Logan's division, which had approached nearest the rebel works, was the +first to march in; and the flag of one of the regiments of his division +was soon floating over the court-house. Our soldiers were no sooner +inside the lines than the two armies began to fraternize. Our men had +had full rations from the time the siege commenced, to the close. The +enemy had been suffering, particularly towards the last. I myself saw +our men taking bread from their haversacks and giving it to the enemy +they had so recently been engaged in starving out. It was accepted with +avidity and with thanks. + +Pemberton says in his report: + +"If it should be asked why the 4th of July was selected as the day for +surrender, the answer is obvious. I believed that upon that day I +should obtain better terms. Well aware of the vanity of our foe, I knew +they would attach vast importance to the entrance on the 4th of July +into the stronghold of the great river, and that, to gratify their +national vanity, they would yield then what could not be extorted from +them at any other time." + +This does not support my view of his reasons for selecting the day he +did for surrendering. But it must be recollected that his first letter +asking terms was received about 10 o'clock A.M., July 3d. It then could +hardly be expected that it would take twenty-four hours to effect a +surrender. He knew that Johnston was in our rear for the purpose of +raising the siege, and he naturally would want to hold out as long as he +could. He knew his men would not resist an assault, and one was +expected on the fourth. In our interview he told me he had rations +enough to hold out for some time--my recollection is two weeks. It was +this statement that induced me to insert in the terms that he was to +draw rations for his men from his own supplies. + +On the 4th of July General Holmes, with an army of eight or nine +thousand men belonging to the trans-Mississippi department, made an +attack upon Helena, Arkansas. He was totally defeated by General +Prentiss, who was holding Helena with less than forty-two hundred +soldiers. Holmes reported his loss at 1,636, of which 173 were killed; +but as Prentiss buried 400, Holmes evidently understated his losses. +The Union loss was 57 killed, 127 wounded, and between 30 and 40 +missing. This was the last effort on the part of the Confederacy to +raise the siege of Vicksburg. + +On the third, as soon as negotiations were commenced, I notified Sherman +and directed him to be ready to take the offensive against Johnston, +drive him out of the State and destroy his army if he could. Steele and +Ord were directed at the same time to be in readiness to join Sherman as +soon as the surrender took place. Of this Sherman was notified. + +I rode into Vicksburg with the troops, and went to the river to exchange +congratulations with the navy upon our joint victory. At that time I +found that many of the citizens had been living under ground. The +ridges upon which Vicksburg is built, and those back to the Big Black, +are composed of a deep yellow clay of great tenacity. Where roads and +streets are cut through, perpendicular banks are left and stand as well +as if composed of stone. The magazines of the enemy were made by +running passage-ways into this clay at places where there were deep +cuts. Many citizens secured places of safety for their families by +carving out rooms in these embankments. A door-way in these cases would +be cut in a high bank, starting from the level of the road or street, +and after running in a few feet a room of the size required was carved +out of the clay, the dirt being removed by the door-way. In some +instances I saw where two rooms were cut out, for a single family, with +a door-way in the clay wall separating them. Some of these were +carpeted and furnished with considerable elaboration. In these the +occupants were fully secure from the shells of the navy, which were +dropped into the city night and dav without intermission. + +I returned to my old headquarters outside in the afternoon, and did not +move into the town until the sixth. On the afternoon of the fourth I +sent Captain Wm. M. Dunn of my staff to Cairo, the nearest point where +the telegraph could be reached, with a dispatch to the general-in-chief. +It was as follows: + +"The enemy surrendered this morning. The only terms allowed is their +parole as prisoners of war. This I regard as a great advantage to us at +this moment. It saves, probably, several days in the capture, and +leaves troops and transports ready for immediate service. Sherman, with +a large force, moves immediately on Johnston, to drive him from the +State. I will send troops to the relief of Banks, and return the 9th +army corps to Burnside." + +This news, with the victory at Gettysburg won the same day, lifted a +great load of anxiety from the minds of the President, his Cabinet and +the loyal people all over the North. The fate of the Confederacy was +sealed when Vicksburg fell. Much hard fighting was to be done +afterwards and many precious lives were to be sacrificed; but the MORALE +was with the supporters of the Union ever after. + +I at the same time wrote to General Banks informing him of the fall and +sending him a copy of the terms; also saying I would send him all the +troops he wanted to insure the capture of the only foothold the enemy +now had on the Mississippi River. General Banks had a number of copies +of this letter printed, or at least a synopsis of it, and very soon a +copy fell into the hands of General Gardner, who was then in command of +Port Hudson. Gardner at once sent a letter to the commander of the +National forces saying that he had been informed of the surrender of +Vicksburg and telling how the information reached him. He added that if +this was true, it was useless for him to hold out longer. General Banks +gave him assurances that Vicksburg had been surrendered, and General +Gardner surrendered unconditionally on the 9th of July. Port Hudson +with nearly 6,000 prisoners, 51 guns, 5,000 small-arms and other stores +fell into the hands of the Union forces: from that day to the close of +the rebellion the Mississippi River, from its source to its mouth, +remained in the control of the National troops. + +Pemberton and his army were kept in Vicksburg until the whole could be +paroled. The paroles were in duplicate, by organization (one copy for +each, Federals and Confederates), and signed by the commanding officers +of the companies or regiments. Duplicates were also made for each +soldier and signed by each individually, one to be retained by the +soldier signing and one to be retained by us. Several hundred refused +to sign their paroles, preferring to be sent to the North as prisoners +to being sent back to fight again. Others again kept out of the way, +hoping to escape either alternative. + +Pemberton appealed to me in person to compel these men to sign their +paroles, but I declined. It also leaked out that many of the men who +had signed their paroles, intended to desert and go to their homes as +soon as they got out of our lines. Pemberton hearing this, again +appealed to me to assist him. He wanted arms for a battalion, to act as +guards in keeping his men together while being marched to a camp of +instruction, where he expected to keep them until exchanged. This +request was also declined. It was precisely what I expected and hoped +that they would do. I told him, however, that I would see that they +marched beyond our lines in good order. By the eleventh, just one week +after the surrender, the paroles were completed and the Confederate +garrison marched out. Many deserted, and fewer of them were ever +returned to the ranks to fight again than would have been the case had +the surrender been unconditional and the prisoners sent to the James +River to be paroled. + +As soon as our troops took possession of the city guards were +established along the whole line of parapet, from the river above to the +river below. The prisoners were allowed to occupy their old camps +behind the intrenchments. No restraint was put upon them, except by +their own commanders. They were rationed about as our own men, and from +our supplies. The men of the two armies fraternized as if they had been +fighting for the same cause. When they passed out of the works they had +so long and so gallantly defended, between lines of their late +antagonists, not a cheer went up, not a remark was made that would give +pain. Really, I believe there was a feeling of sadness just then in the +breasts of most of the Union soldiers at seeing the dejection of their +late antagonists. + +The day before the departure the following order was issued: + +"Paroled prisoners will be sent out of here to-morrow. They will be +authorized to cross at the railroad bridge, and move from there to +Edward's Ferry, (*14) and on by way of Raymond. Instruct the commands to +be orderly and quiet as these prisoners pass, to make no offensive +remarks, and not to harbor any who fall out of ranks after they have +passed." + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +RETROSPECT OF THE CAMPAIGN--SHERMAN'S MOVEMENTS--PROPOSED MOVEMENT UPON +MOBILE--A PAINFUL ACCIDENT--ORDERED TO REPORT AT CAIRO. + +The capture of Vicksburg, with its garrison, ordnance and ordnance +stores, and the successful battles fought in reaching them, gave new +spirit to the loyal people of the North. New hopes for the final +success of the cause of the Union were inspired. The victory gained at +Gettysburg, upon the same day, added to their hopes. Now the +Mississippi River was entirely in the possession of the National troops; +for the fall of Vicksburg gave us Port Hudson at once. The army of +northern Virginia was driven out of Pennsylvania and forced back to +about the same ground it occupied in 1861. The Army of the Tennessee +united with the Army of the Gulf, dividing the Confederate States +completely. + +The first dispatch I received from the government after the fall of +Vicksburg was in these words: + +"I fear your paroling the prisoners at Vicksburg, without actual +delivery to a proper agent as required by the seventh article of the +cartel, may be construed into an absolute release, and that the men will +immediately be placed in the ranks of the enemy. Such has been the case +elsewhere. If these prisoners have not been allowed to depart, you will +detain them until further orders." + +Halleck did not know that they had already been delivered into the hands +of Major Watts, Confederate commissioner for the exchange of prisoners. + +At Vicksburg 31,600 prisoners were surrendered, together with 172 cannon +about 60,000 muskets and a large amount of ammunition. The small-arms +of the enemy were far superior to the bulk of ours. Up to this time our +troops at the West had been limited to the old United States flint-lock +muskets changed into percussion, or the Belgian musket imported early in +the war--almost as dangerous to the person firing it as to the one aimed +at--and a few new and improved arms. These were of many different +calibers, a fact that caused much trouble in distributing ammunition +during an engagement. The enemy had generally new arms which had run +the blockade and were of uniform caliber. After the surrender I +authorized all colonels whose regiments were armed with inferior +muskets, to place them in the stack of captured arms and replace them +with the latter. A large number of arms turned in to the Ordnance +Department as captured, were thus arms that had really been used by the +Union army in the capture of Vicksburg. + +In this narrative I have not made the mention I should like of officers, +dead and alive, whose services entitle them to special mention. Neither +have I made that mention of the navy which its services deserve. +Suffice it to say, the close of the siege of Vicksburg found us with an +army unsurpassed, in proportion to its numbers, taken as a whole of +officers and men. A military education was acquired which no other +school could have given. Men who thought a company was quite enough for +them to command properly at the beginning, would have made good +regimental or brigade commanders; most of the brigade commanders were +equal to the command of a division, and one, Ransom, would have been +equal to the command of a corps at least. Logan and Crocker ended the +campaign fitted to command independent armies. + +General F. P. Blair joined me at Milliken's Bend a full-fledged general, +without having served in a lower grade. He commanded a division in the +campaign. I had known Blair in Missouri, where I had voted against him +in 1858 when he ran for Congress. I knew him as a frank, positive and +generous man, true to his friends even to a fault, but always a leader. +I dreaded his coming; I knew from experience that it was more difficult +to command two generals desiring to be leaders than it was to command +one army officered intelligently and with subordination. It affords me +the greatest pleasure to record now my agreeable disappointment in +respect to his character. There was no man braver than he, nor was +there any who obeyed all orders of his superior in rank with more +unquestioning alacrity. He was one man as a soldier, another as a +politician. + +The navy under Porter was all it could be, during the entire campaign. +Without its assistance the campaign could not have been successfully +made with twice the number of men engaged. It could not have been made +at all, in the way it was, with any number of men without such +assistance. The most perfect harmony reigned between the two arms of +the service. There never was a request made, that I am aware of, either +of the flag-officer or any of his subordinates, that was not promptly +complied with. + +The campaign of Vicksburg was suggested and developed by circumstances. +The elections of 1862 had gone against the prosecution of the war. +Voluntary enlistments had nearly ceased and the draft had been resorted +to; this was resisted, and a defeat or backward movement would have made +its execution impossible. A forward movement to a decisive victory was +necessary. Accordingly I resolved to get below Vicksburg, unite with +Banks against Port Hudson, make New Orleans a base and, with that base +and Grand Gulf as a starting point, move our combined forces against +Vicksburg. Upon reaching Grand Gulf, after running its batteries and +fighting a battle, I received a letter from Banks informing me that he +could not be at Port Hudson under ten days, and then with only fifteen +thousand men. The time was worth more than the reinforcements; I +therefore determined to push into the interior of the enemy's country. + +With a large river behind us, held above and below by the enemy, rapid +movements were essential to success. Jackson was captured the day after +a new commander had arrived, and only a few days before large +reinforcements were expected. A rapid movement west was made; the +garrison of Vicksburg was met in two engagements and badly defeated, and +driven back into its stronghold and there successfully besieged. It +looks now as though Providence had directed the course of the campaign +while the Army of the Tennessee executed the decree. + +Upon the surrender of the garrison of Vicksburg there were three things +that required immediate attention. The first was to send a force to +drive the enemy from our rear, and out of the State. The second was to +send reinforcements to Banks near Port Hudson, if necessary, to complete +the triumph of opening the Mississippi from its source to its mouth to +the free navigation of vessels bearing the Stars and Stripes. The third +was to inform the authorities at Washington and the North of the good +news, to relieve their long suspense and strengthen their confidence in +the ultimate success of the cause they had so much at heart. + +Soon after negotiations were opened with General Pemberton for the +surrender of the city, I notified Sherman, whose troops extended from +Haines' Bluff on the left to the crossing of the Vicksburg and Jackson +road over the Big Black on the right, and directed him to hold his +command in readiness to advance and drive the enemy from the State as +soon as Vicksburg surrendered. Steele and Ord were directed to be in +readiness to join Sherman in his move against General Johnston, and +Sherman was advised of this also. Sherman moved promptly, crossing the +Big Black at three different points with as many columns, all +concentrating at Bolton, twenty miles west of Jackson. + +Johnston heard of the surrender of Vicksburg almost as soon as it +occurred, and immediately fell back on Jackson. On the 8th of July +Sherman was within ten miles of Jackson and on the 11th was close up to +the defences of the city and shelling the town. The siege was kept up +until the morning of the 17th, when it was found that the enemy had +evacuated during the night. The weather was very hot, the roads dusty +and the water bad. Johnston destroyed the roads as he passed and had so +much the start that pursuit was useless; but Sherman sent one division, +Steele's, to Brandon, fourteen miles east of Jackson. + +The National loss in the second capture of Jackson was less than one +thousand men, killed, wounded and missing. The Confederate loss was +probably less, except in captured. More than this number fell into our +hands as prisoners. + +Medicines and food were left for the Confederate wounded and sick who +had to be left behind. A large amount of rations was issued to the +families that remained in Jackson. Medicine and food were also sent to +Raymond for the destitute families as well as the sick and wounded, as I +thought it only fair that we should return to these people some of the +articles we had taken while marching through the country. I wrote to +Sherman: "Impress upon the men the importance of going through the State +in an orderly manner, abstaining from taking anything not absolutely +necessary for their subsistence while travelling. They should try to +create as favorable an impression as possible upon the people." +Provisions and forage, when called for by them, were issued to all the +people, from Bruinsburg to Jackson and back to Vicksburg, whose +resources had been taken for the supply of our army. Very large +quantities of groceries and provisions were so issued. + +Sherman was ordered back to Vicksburg, and his troops took much the same +position they had occupied before--from the Big Black to Haines' Bluff. +Having cleaned up about Vicksburg and captured or routed all regular +Confederate forces for more than a hundred miles in all directions, I +felt that the troops that had done so much should be allowed to do more +before the enemy could recover from the blow he had received, and while +important points might be captured without bloodshed. I suggested to +the General-in-chief the idea of a campaign against Mobile, starting +from Lake Pontchartrain. Halleck preferred another course. The +possession of the trans-Mississippi by the Union forces seemed to +possess more importance in his mind than almost any campaign east of the +Mississippi. I am well aware that the President was very anxious to +have a foothold in Texas, to stop the clamor of some of the foreign +governments which seemed to be seeking a pretext to interfere in the +war, at least so far as to recognize belligerent rights to the +Confederate States. This, however, could have been easily done without +wasting troops in western Louisiana and eastern Texas, by sending a +garrison at once to Brownsville on the Rio Grande. + +Halleck disapproved of my proposition to go against Mobile, so that I +was obliged to settle down and see myself put again on the defensive as +I had been a year before in west Tennessee. It would have been an easy +thing to capture Mobile at the time I proposed to go there. Having that +as a base of operations, troops could have been thrown into the interior +to operate against General Bragg's army. This would necessarily have +compelled Bragg to detach in order to meet this fire in his rear. If he +had not done this the troops from Mobile could have inflicted +inestimable damage upon much of the country from which his army and +Lee's were yet receiving their supplies. I was so much impressed with +this idea that I renewed my request later in July and again about the +1st of August, and proposed sending all the troops necessary, asking +only the assistance of the navy to protect the debarkation of troops at +or near Mobile. I also asked for a leave of absence to visit New +Orleans, particularly if my suggestion to move against Mobile should be +approved. Both requests were refused. So far as my experience with +General Halleck went it was very much easier for him to refuse a favor +than to grant one. But I did not regard this as a favor. It was simply +in line of duty, though out of my department. + +The General-in-chief having decided against me, the depletion of an +army, which had won a succession of great victories, commenced, as had +been the case the year before after the fall of Corinth when the army +was sent where it would do the least good. By orders, I sent to Banks a +force of 4,000 men; returned the 9th corps to Kentucky and, when +transportation had been collected, started a division of 5,000 men to +Schofield in Missouri where Price was raiding the State. I also +detached a brigade under Ransom to Natchez, to garrison that place +permanently. This latter move was quite fortunate as to the time when +Ransom arrived there. The enemy happened to have a large number, about +5,000 head, of beef cattle there on the way from Texas to feed the +Eastern armies, and also a large amount of munitions of war which had +probably come through Texas from the Rio Grande and which were on the +way to Lee's and other armies in the East. + +The troops that were left with me around Vicksburg were very busily and +unpleasantly employed in making expeditions against guerilla bands and +small detachments of cavalry which infested the interior, and in +destroying mills, bridges and rolling stock on the railroads. The +guerillas and cavalry were not there to fight but to annoy, and +therefore disappeared on the first approach of our troops. + +The country back of Vicksburg was filled with deserters from Pemberton's +army and, it was reported, many from Johnston's also. The men +determined not to fight again while the war lasted. Those who lived +beyond the reach of the Confederate army wanted to get to their homes. +Those who did not, wanted to get North where they could work for their +support till the war was over. Besides all this there was quite a peace +feeling, for the time being, among the citizens of that part of +Mississippi, but this feeling soon subsided. It is not probable that +Pemberton got off with over 4,000 of his army to the camp where he +proposed taking them, and these were in a demoralized condition. + +On the 7th of August I further depleted my army by sending the 13th +corps, General Ord commanding, to Banks. Besides this I received orders +to co-operate with the latter general in movements west of the +Mississippi. Having received this order I went to New Orleans to confer +with Banks about the proposed movement. All these movements came to +naught. + +During this visit I reviewed Banks' army a short distance above +Carrollton. The horse I rode was vicious and but little used, and on my +return to New Orleans ran away and, shying at a locomotive in the +street, fell, probably on me. I was rendered insensible, and when I +regained consciousness I found myself in a hotel near by with several +doctors attending me. My leg was swollen from the knee to the thigh, +and the swelling, almost to the point of bursting, extended along the +body up to the arm-pit. The pain was almost beyond endurance. I lay at +the hotel something over a week without being able to turn myself in +bed. I had a steamer stop at the nearest point possible, and was +carried to it on a litter. I was then taken to Vicksburg, where I +remained unable to move for some time afterwards. + +While I was absent General Sherman declined to assume command because, +he said, it would confuse the records; but he let all the orders be made +in my name, and was glad to render any assistance he could. No orders +were issued by my staff, certainly no important orders, except upon +consultation with and approval of Sherman. + +On the 13th of September, while I was still in New Orleans, Halleck +telegraphed to me to send all available forces to Memphis and thence to +Tuscumbia, to co-operate with Rosecrans for the relief of Chattanooga. +On the 15th he telegraphed again for all available forces to go to +Rosecrans. This was received on the 27th. I was still confined to my +bed, unable to rise from it without assistance; but I at once ordered +Sherman to send one division to Memphis as fast as transports could be +provided. The division of McPherson's corps, which had got off and was +on the way to join Steele in Arkansas, was recalled and sent, likewise, +to report to Hurlbut at Memphis. Hurlbut was directed to forward these +two divisions with two others from his own corps at once, and also to +send any other troops that might be returning there. Halleck suggested +that some good man, like Sherman or McPherson, should be sent to Memphis +to take charge of the troops going east. On this I sent Sherman, as +being, I thought, the most suitable person for an independent command, +and besides he was entitled to it if it had to be given to any one. He +was directed to take with him another division of his corps. This left +one back, but having one of McPherson's divisions he had still the +equivalent. + +Before the receipt by me of these orders the battle of Chickamauga had +been fought and Rosecrans forced back into Chattanooga. The +administration as well as the General-in-chief was nearly frantic at the +situation of affairs there. Mr. Charles A. Dana, an officer of the War +Department, was sent to Rosecrans' headquarters. I do not know what his +instructions were, but he was still in Chattanooga when I arrived there +at a later period. + +It seems that Halleck suggested that I should go to Nashville as soon as +able to move and take general direction of the troops moving from the +west. I received the following dispatch dated October 3d: "It is the +wish of the Secretary of War that as soon as General Grant is able he +will come to Cairo and report by telegraph." I was still very lame, but +started without delay. Arriving at Columbus on the 16th I reported by +telegraph: "Your dispatch from Cairo of the 3d directing me to report +from Cairo was received at 11.30 on the 10th. Left the same day with +staff and headquarters and am here en route for Cairo." + +END OF VOLUME I. + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1067 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1068-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1068-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e661af7d --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1068-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15602 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1068 *** + +PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF U. S. GRANT + +VOLUME II. + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER XL. FIRST MEETING WITH SECRETARY STANTON--GENERAL ROSECRANS +--COMMANDING MILITARY DIVISION OF MISSISSIPPI--ANDREW JOHNSON'S ADDRESS +--ARRIVAL AT CHATTANOOGA. + +CHAPTER XLI. ASSUMING THE COMMAND AT CHATTANOOGA--OPENING A LINE OF +SUPPLIES--BATTLE OF WAUHATCHIE--ON THE PICKET LINE. + +CHAPTER XLII. CONDITION OF THE ARMY--REBUILDING THE RAILROAD--GENERAL +BURNSIDE'S SITUATION--ORDERS FOR BATTLE--PLANS FOR THE ATTACK--HOOKER'S +POSITION--SHERMAN'S MOVEMENTS. + +CHAPTER XLIII. PREPARATIONS FOR BATTLE--THOMAS CARRIES THE FIRST LINE OF +THE ENEMY--SHERMAN CARRIES MISSIONARY RIDGE--BATTLE OF LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN +--GENERAL HOOKER'S FIGHT. + +CHAPTER XLIV. BATTLE OF CHATTANOOGA--A GALLANT CHARGE--COMPLETE ROUT OF +THE ENEMY--PURSUIT OF THE CONFEDERATES--GENERAL BRAGG--REMARKS ON +CHATTANOOGA. + +CHAPTER XLV. THE RELIEF OF KNOXVILLE--HEADQUARTERS MOVED TO NASHVILLE +--VISITING KNOXVILLE--CIPHER DISPATCHES--WITHHOLDING ORDERS. + +CHAPTER XLVI. OPERATIONS IN MISSISSIPPI--LONGSTREET IN EAST TENNESSEE +--COMMISSIONED LIEUTENANT-GENERAL--COMMANDING THE ARMIES OF THE UNITED +STATES--FIRST INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT LINCOLN. + +CHAPTER XLVII. THE MILITARY SITUATION--PLANS FOR THE CAMPAIGN--SHERIDAN +ASSIGNED TO COMMAND OF THE CAVALRY--FLANK MOVEMENTS--FORREST AT FORT +PILLOW--GENERAL BANKS'S EXPEDITION--COLONEL MOSBY--AN INCIDENT OF THE +WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN. + +CHAPTER XLVIII. COMMENCEMENT OF THE GRAND CAMPAIGN--GENERAL BUTLER'S +POSITION--SHERIDAN'S FIRST RAID. + +CHAPTER XLIX. SHERMAN S CAMPAIGN IN GEORGIA--SIEGE OF ATLANTA--DEATH OF +GENERAL MCPHERSON--ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE ANDERSONVILLE--CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. + +CHAPTER L. GRAND MOVEMENT OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC--CROSSING THE +RAPIDAN--ENTERING THE WILDERNESS--BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS. + +CHAPTER LI. AFTER THE BATTLE--TELEGRAPH AND SIGNAL SERVICE--MOVEMENT BY +THE LEFT FLANK. + +CHAPTER LII. BATTLE OF SPOTTSYLVANIA--HANCOCK'S POSITION--ASSAULT OF +WARREN'S AND WRIGHT'S CORPS--UPTON PROMOTED ON THE FIELD--GOOD NEWS FROM +BUTLER AND SHERIDAN. + +CHAPTER LIII. HANCOCK'S ASSAULT--LOSSES OF THE CONFEDERATES--PROMOTIONS +RECOMMENDED--DISCOMFITURE OF THE ENEMY--EWELL'S ATTACK--REDUCING THE +ARTILLERY. + +CHAPTER LIV. MOVEMENT BY THE LEFT FLANK--BATTLE OF NORTH ANNA--AN +INCIDENT OF THE MARCH--MOVING ON RICHMOND--SOUTH OF THE PAMUNKEY +--POSITION OF THE NATIONAL ARMY. + +CHAPTER LV. ADVANCE ON COLD HARBOR--AN ANECDOTE OF THE WAR--BATTLE OF +COLD HARBOR--CORRESPONDENCE WITH LEE RETROSPECTIVE. + +CHAPTER LVI. LEFT FLANK MOVEMENT ACROSS THE CHICKAHOMINY AND JAMES +--GENERAL LEE--VISIT TO BUTLER--THE MOVEMENT ON PETERSBURG +--THE INVESTMENT OF PETERSBURG. + +CHAPTER LVII. RAID ON THE VIRGINIA CENTRAL RAILROAD--RAID ON THE WELDON +RAILROAD--EARLY'S MOVEMENT UPON WASHINGTON--MINING THE WORKS BEFORE +PETERSBURG--EXPLOSION OF THE MINE BEFORE PETERSBURG--CAMPAIGN IN THE +SHENANDOAH VALLEY--CAPTURE OF THE WELDON RAILROAD. + +CHAPTER LVIII. SHERIDAN'S ADVANCE--VISIT TO SHERIDAN--SHERIDAN'S VICTORY +IN THE SHENANDOAH--SHERIDAN'S RIDE TO WINCHESTER--CLOSE OF THE CAMPAIGN +FOR THE WINTER. + +CHAPTER LIX. THE CAMPAIGN IN GEORGIA--SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA--WAR +ANECDOTES--THE MARCH ON SAVANNAH--INVESTMENT OF SAVANNAH--CAPTURE OF +SAVANNAH. + +CHAPTER LX. THE BATTLE OF FRANKLIN--THE BATTLE OF NASHVILLE + +CHAPTER LXI. EXPEDITION AGAINST FORT FISHER--ATTACK ON THE FORT--FAILURE +OF THE EXPEDITION--SECOND EXPEDITION AGAINST THE FORT--CAPTURE OF FORT +FISHER. + +CHAPTER LXII. SHERMAN'S MARCH NORTH--SHERIDAN ORDERED TO LYNCHBURG +--CANBY ORDERED TO MOVE AGAINST MOBILE--MOVEMENTS OF SCHOFIELD AND THOMAS +--CAPTURE OF COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA--SHERMAN IN THE CAROLINAS. + +CHAPTER LXIII. ARRIVAL OF THE PEACE COMMISSIONERS--LINCOLN AND THE PEACE +COMMISSIONERS--AN ANECDOTE OF LINCOLN--THE WINTER BEFORE PETERSBURG +--SHERIDAN DESTROYS THE RAILROAD--GORDON CARRIES THE PICKET LINE--PARKE +RECAPTURES THE LINE--THE BATTLE OF WHITE OAK ROAD. + +CHAPTER LXIV. INTERVIEW WITH SHERIDAN--GRAND MOVEMENT OF THE ARMY OF THE +POTOMAC--SHERIDAN'S ADVANCE ON FIVE FORKS--BATTLE OF FIVE FORKS--PARKE +AND WRIGHT STORM THE ENEMY'S LINE--BATTLES BEFORE PETERSBURG. + +CHAPTER LXV. THE CAPTURE OF PETERSBURG--MEETING PRESIDENT LINCOLN IN +PETERSBURG--THE CAPTURE OF RICHMOND--PURSUING THE ENEMY--VISIT TO +SHERIDAN AND MEADE. + +CHAPTER LXVI. BATTLE OF SAILOR'S CREEK--ENGAGEMENT AT FARMVILLE +--CORRESPONDENCE WITH GENERAL LEE--SHERIDAN INTERCEPTS THE ENEMY. + +CHAPTER LXVII. NEGOTIATIONS AT APPOMATTOX--INTERVIEW WITH LEE AT +MCLEAN'S HOUSE--THE TERMS OF SURRENDER--LEE'S SURRENDER--INTERVIEW WITH +LEE AFTER THE SURRENDER. + +CHAPTER LXVIII. MORALE OF THE TWO ARMIES--RELATIVE CONDITIONS OF THE +NORTH AND SOUTH--PRESIDENT LINCOLN VISITS RICHMOND--ARRIVAL AT +WASHINGTON--PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S ASSASSINATION--PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S +POLICY. + +CHAPTER LXIX. SHERMAN AND JOHNSTON--JOHNSTON'S SURRENDER TO SHERMAN +--CAPTURE OF MOBILE--WILSON'S EXPEDITION--CAPTURE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS +--GENERAL THOMAS'S QUALITIES--ESTIMATE OF GENERAL CANBY. + +CHAPTER LXX. THE END OF THE WAR--THE MARCH TO WASHINGTON--ONE OF +LINCOLN'S ANECDOTES--GRAND REVIEW AT WASHINGTON--CHARACTERISTICS OF +LINCOLN AND STANTON--ESTIMATE OF THE DIFFERENT CORPS COMMANDERS. + +CONCLUSION + +APPENDIX + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + +FIRST MEETING WITH SECRETARY STANTON--GENERAL ROSECRANS--COMMANDING +MILITARY DIVISION OF MISSISSIPPI--ANDREW JOHNSON'S ADDRESS--ARRIVAL AT +CHATTANOOGA. + +The reply (to my telegram of October 16, 1863, from Cairo, announcing my +arrival at that point) came on the morning of the 17th, directing me to +proceed immediately to the Galt House, Louisville, where I would meet an +officer of the War Department with my instructions. I left Cairo within +an hour or two after the receipt of this dispatch, going by rail via +Indianapolis. Just as the train I was on was starting out of the depot +at Indianapolis a messenger came running up to stop it, saying the +Secretary of War was coming into the station and wanted to see me. + +I had never met Mr. Stanton up to that time, though we had held frequent +conversations over the wires the year before, when I was in Tennessee. +Occasionally at night he would order the wires between the War +Department and my headquarters to be connected, and we would hold a +conversation for an hour or two. On this occasion the Secretary was +accompanied by Governor Brough of Ohio, whom I had never met, though he +and my father had been old acquaintances. Mr. Stanton dismissed the +special train that had brought him to Indianapolis, and accompanied me +to Louisville. + +Up to this time no hint had been given me of what was wanted after I +left Vicksburg, except the suggestion in one of Halleck's dispatches +that I had better go to Nashville and superintend the operation of +troops sent to relieve Rosecrans. Soon after we started the Secretary +handed me two orders, saying that I might take my choice of them. The +two were identical in all but one particular. Both created the +"Military Division of Mississippi," (giving me the command) composed of +the Departments of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee, and all +the territory from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi River north of +Banks's command in the south-west. One order left the department +commanders as they were, while the other relieved Rosecrans and assigned +Thomas to his place. I accepted the latter. We reached Louisville +after night and, if I remember rightly, in a cold, drizzling rain. The +Secretary of War told me afterwards that he caught a cold on that +occasion from which he never expected to recover. He never did. + +A day was spent in Louisville, the Secretary giving me the military news +at the capital and talking about the disappointment at the results of +some of the campaigns. By the evening of the day after our arrival all +matters of discussion seemed exhausted, and I left the hotel to spend +the evening away, both Mrs. Grant (who was with me) and myself having +relatives living in Louisville. In the course of the evening Mr. +Stanton received a dispatch from Mr. C. A. Dana, then in Chattanooga, +informing him that unless prevented Rosecrans would retreat, and +advising peremptory orders against his doing so. + +As stated before, after the fall of Vicksburg I urged strongly upon the +government the propriety of a movement against Mobile. General +Rosecrans had been at Murfreesboro', Tennessee, with a large and +well-equipped army from early in the year 1863, with Bragg confronting +him with a force quite equal to his own at first, considering it was on +the defensive. But after the investment of Vicksburg Bragg's army was +largely depleted to strengthen Johnston, in Mississippi, who was being +reinforced to raise the siege. I frequently wrote General Halleck +suggesting that Rosecrans should move against Bragg. By so doing he +would either detain the latter's troops where they were or lay +Chattanooga open to capture. General Halleck strongly approved the +suggestion, and finally wrote me that he had repeatedly ordered +Rosecrans to advance, but that the latter had constantly failed to +comply with the order, and at last, after having held a council of war, +had replied in effect that it was a military maxim "not to fight two +decisive battles at the same time." If true, the maxim was not +applicable in this case. It would be bad to be defeated in two decisive +battles fought the same day, but it would not be bad to win them. I, +however, was fighting no battle, and the siege of Vicksburg had drawn +from Rosecrans' front so many of the enemy that his chances of victory +were much greater than they would be if he waited until the siege was +over, when these troops could be returned. Rosecrans was ordered to +move against the army that was detaching troops to raise the siege. +Finally he did move, on the 24th of June, but ten days afterwards +Vicksburg surrendered, and the troops sent from Bragg were free to +return. + +It was at this time that I recommended to the general-in-chief the +movement against Mobile. I knew the peril the Army of the Cumberland +was in, being depleted continually, not only by ordinary casualties, but +also by having to detach troops to hold its constantly extending line +over which to draw supplies, while the enemy in front was as constantly +being strengthened. Mobile was important to the enemy, and in the +absence of a threatening force was guarded by little else than +artillery. If threatened by land and from the water at the same time +the prize would fall easily, or troops would have to be sent to its +defence. Those troops would necessarily come from Bragg. My judgment +was overruled, and the troops under my command were dissipated over +other parts of the country where it was thought they could render the +most service. + +Soon it was discovered in Washington that Rosecrans was in trouble and +required assistance. The emergency was now too immediate to allow us to +give this assistance by making an attack in rear of Bragg upon Mobile. +It was therefore necessary to reinforce directly, and troops were sent +from every available point. + +Rosecrans had very skilfully manoeuvred Bragg south of the Tennessee +River, and through and beyond Chattanooga. If he had stopped and +intrenched, and made himself strong there, all would have been right and +the mistake of not moving earlier partially compensated. But he pushed +on, with his forces very much scattered, until Bragg's troops from +Mississippi began to join him. Then Bragg took the initiative. +Rosecrans had to fall back in turn, and was able to get his army +together at Chickamauga, some miles south-east of Chattanooga, before +the main battle was brought on. The battle was fought on the 19th and +20th of September, and Rosecrans was badly defeated, with a heavy loss +in artillery and some sixteen thousand men killed, wounded and captured. +The corps under Major-General George H. Thomas stood its ground, while +Rosecrans, with Crittenden and McCook, returned to Chattanooga. Thomas +returned also, but later, and with his troops in good order. Bragg +followed and took possession of Missionary Ridge, overlooking +Chattanooga. He also occupied Lookout Mountain, west of the town, which +Rosecrans had abandoned, and with it his control of the river and the +river road as far back as Bridgeport. The National troops were now +strongly intrenched in Chattanooga Valley, with the Tennessee River +behind them and the enemy occupying commanding heights to the east and +west, with a strong line across the valley from mountain to mountain, +and with Chattanooga Creek, for a large part of the way, in front of +their line. + +On the 29th Halleck telegraphed me the above results, and directed all +the forces that could be spared from my department to be sent to +Rosecrans. Long before this dispatch was received Sherman was on his +way, and McPherson was moving east with most of the garrison of +Vicksburg. + +A retreat at that time would have been a terrible disaster. It would +not only have been the loss of a most important strategic position to +us, but it would have been attended with the loss of all the artillery +still left with the Army of the Cumberland and the annihilation of that +army itself, either by capture or demoralization. + +All supplies for Rosecrans had to be brought from Nashville. The +railroad between this base and the army was in possession of the +government up to Bridgeport, the point at which the road crosses to the +south side of the Tennessee River; but Bragg, holding Lookout and +Raccoon mountains west of Chattanooga, commanded the railroad, the river +and the shortest and best wagon-roads, both south and north of the +Tennessee, between Chattanooga and Bridgeport. The distance between +these two places is but twenty-six miles by rail, but owing to the +position of Bragg, all supplies for Rosecrans had to be hauled by a +circuitous route north of the river and over a mountainous country, +increasing the distance to over sixty miles. + +This country afforded but little food for his animals, nearly ten +thousand of which had already starved, and not enough were left to draw +a single piece of artillery or even the ambulances to convey the sick. +The men had been on half rations of hard bread for a considerable time, +with but few other supplies except beef driven from Nashville across the +country. The region along the road became so exhausted of food for the +cattle that by the time they reached Chattanooga they were much in the +condition of the few animals left alive there--"on the lift." Indeed, +the beef was so poor that the soldiers were in the habit of saying, with +a faint facetiousness, that they were living on "half rations of hard +bread and BEEF DRIED ON THE HOOF." + +Nothing could be transported but food, and the troops were without +sufficient shoes or other clothing suitable for the advancing season. +What they had was well worn. The fuel within the Federal lines was +exhausted, even to the stumps of trees. There were no teams to draw it +from the opposite bank, where it was abundant. The only way of +supplying fuel, for some time before my arrival, had been to cut trees +on the north bank of the river at a considerable distance up the stream, +form rafts of it and float it down with the current, effecting a landing +on the south side within our lines by the use of paddles or poles. It +would then be carried on the shoulders of the men to their camps. + +If a retreat had occurred at this time it is not probable that any of +the army would have reached the railroad as an organized body, if +followed by the enemy. + +On the receipt of Mr. Dana's dispatch Mr. Stanton sent for me. Finding +that I was out he became nervous and excited, inquiring of every person +he met, including guests of the house, whether they knew where I was, +and bidding them find me and send me to him at once. About eleven +o'clock I returned to the hotel, and on my way, when near the house, +every person met was a messenger from the Secretary, apparently +partaking of his impatience to see me. I hastened to the room of the +Secretary and found him pacing the floor rapidly in his dressing-gown. +Saying that the retreat must be prevented, he showed me the dispatch. I +immediately wrote an order assuming command of the Military Division of +the Mississippi, and telegraphed it to General Rosecrans. I then +telegraphed to him the order from Washington assigning Thomas to the +command of the Army of the Cumberland; and to Thomas that he must hold +Chattanooga at all hazards, informing him at the same time that I would +be at the front as soon as possible. A prompt reply was received from +Thomas, saying, "We will hold the town till we starve." I appreciated +the force of this dispatch later when I witnessed the condition of +affairs which prompted it. It looked, indeed, as if but two courses +were open: one to starve, the other to surrender or be captured. + +On the morning of the 20th of October I started, with my staff, and +proceeded as far as Nashville. At that time it was not prudent to +travel beyond that point by night, so I remained in Nashville until the +next morning. Here I met for the first time Andrew Johnson, Military +Governor of Tennessee. He delivered a speech of welcome. His composure +showed that it was by no means his maiden effort. It was long, and I +was in torture while he was delivering it, fearing something would be +expected from me in response. I was relieved, however, the people +assembled having apparently heard enough. At all events they commenced +a general hand-shaking, which, although trying where there is so much of +it, was a great relief to me in this emergency. + +From Nashville I telegraphed to Burnside, who was then at Knoxville, +that important points in his department ought to be fortified, so that +they could be held with the least number of men; to Admiral Porter at +Cairo, that Sherman's advance had passed Eastport, Mississippi, that +rations were probably on their way from St. Louis by boat for supplying +his army, and requesting him to send a gunboat to convoy them; and to +Thomas, suggesting that large parties should be put at work on the +wagon-road then in use back to Bridgeport. + +On the morning of the 21st we took the train for the front, reaching +Stevenson Alabama, after dark. Rosecrans was there on his way north. +He came into my car and we held a brief interview, in which he described +very clearly the situation at Chattanooga, and made some excellent +suggestions as to what should be done. My only wonder was that he had +not carried them out. We then proceeded to Bridgeport, where we stopped +for the night. From here we took horses and made our way by Jasper and +over Waldron's Ridge to Chattanooga. There had been much rain, and the +roads were almost impassable from mud, knee-deep in places, and from +wash-outs on the mountain sides. I had been on crutches since the time +of my fall in New Orleans, and had to be carried over places where it +was not safe to cross on horseback. The roads were strewn with the +debris of broken wagons and the carcasses of thousands of starved mules +and horses. At Jasper, some ten or twelve miles from Bridgeport, there +was a halt. General O. O. Howard had his headquarters there. From this +point I telegraphed Burnside to make every effort to secure five hundred +rounds of ammunition for his artillery and small-arms. We stopped for +the night at a little hamlet some ten or twelve miles farther on. The +next day we reached Chattanooga a little before dark. I went directly +to General Thomas's headquarters, and remaining there a few days, until +I could establish my own. + +During the evening most of the general officers called in to pay their +respects and to talk about the condition of affairs. They pointed out +on the map the line, marked with a red or blue pencil, which Rosecrans +had contemplated falling back upon. If any of them had approved the +move they did not say so to me. I found General W. F. Smith occupying +the position of chief engineer of the Army of the Cumberland. I had +known Smith as a cadet at West Point, but had no recollection of having +met him after my graduation, in 1843, up to this time. He explained the +situation of the two armies and the topography of the country so plainly +that I could see it without an inspection. I found that he had +established a saw-mill on the banks of the river, by utilizing an old +engine found in the neighborhood; and, by rafting logs from the north +side of the river above, had got out the lumber and completed pontoons +and roadway plank for a second bridge, one flying bridge being there +already. He was also rapidly getting out the materials and constructing +the boats for a third bridge. In addition to this he had far under way +a steamer for plying between Chattanooga and Bridgeport whenever we +might get possession of the river. This boat consisted of a scow, made +of the plank sawed out at the mill, housed in, and a stern wheel +attached which was propelled by a second engine taken from some shop or +factory. + +I telegraphed to Washington this night, notifying General Halleck of my +arrival, and asking to have General Sherman assigned to the command of +the Army of the Tennessee, headquarters in the field. The request was +at once complied with. + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +ASSUMING THE COMMAND AT CHATTANOOGA--OPENING A LINE OF SUPPLIES--BATTLE +OF WAUHATCHIE--ON THE PICKET LINE. + +The next day, the 24th, I started out to make a personal inspection, +taking Thomas and Smith with me, besides most of the members of my +personal staff. We crossed to the north side of the river, and, moving +to the north of detached spurs of hills, reached the Tennessee at +Brown's Ferry, some three miles below Lookout Mountain, unobserved by +the enemy. Here we left our horses back from the river and approached +the water on foot. There was a picket station of the enemy on the +opposite side, of about twenty men, in full view, and we were within +easy range. They did not fire upon us nor seem to be disturbed by our +presence. They must have seen that we were all commissioned officers. +But, I suppose, they looked upon the garrison of Chattanooga as +prisoners of war, feeding or starving themselves, and thought it would +be inhuman to kill any of them except in self-defence. + +That night I issued orders for opening the route to Bridgeport--a +cracker line, as the soldiers appropriately termed it. They had been so +long on short rations that my first thought was the establishment of a +line over which food might reach them. + +Chattanooga is on the south bank of the Tennessee, where that river runs +nearly due west. It is at the northern end of a valley five or six +miles in width, through which Chattanooga Creek runs. To the east of +the valley is Missionary Ridge, rising from five to eight hundred feet +above the creek and terminating somewhat abruptly a half mile or more +before reaching the Tennessee. On the west of the valley is Lookout +Mountain, twenty-two hundred feet above-tide water. Just below the town +the Tennessee makes a turn to the south and runs to the base of Lookout +Mountain, leaving no level ground between the mountain and river. The +Memphis and Charleston Railroad passes this point, where the mountain +stands nearly perpendicular. East of Missionary Ridge flows the South +Chickamauga River; west of Lookout Mountain is Lookout Creek; and west +of that, Raccoon Mountains. Lookout Mountain, at its northern end, +rises almost perpendicularly for some distance, then breaks off in a +gentle slope of cultivated fields to near the summit, where it ends in a +palisade thirty or more feet in height. On the gently sloping ground, +between the upper and lower palisades, there is a single farmhouse, +which is reached by a wagon-road from the valley east. + +The intrenched line of the enemy commenced on the north end of +Missionary Ridge and extended along the crest for some distance south, +thence across Chattanooga valley to Lookout Mountain. Lookout Mountain +was also fortified and held by the enemy, who also kept troops in +Lookout valley west, and on Raccoon Mountain, with pickets extending +down the river so as to command the road on the north bank and render it +useless to us. In addition to this there was an intrenched line in +Chattanooga valley extending from the river east of the town to Lookout +Mountain, to make the investment complete. Besides the fortifications +on Mission Ridge, there was a line at the base of the hill, with +occasional spurs of rifle-pits half-way up the front. The enemy's +pickets extended out into the valley towards the town, so far that the +pickets of the two armies could converse. At one point they were +separated only by the narrow creek which gives its name to the valley +and town, and from which both sides drew water. The Union lines were +shorter than those of the enemy. + +Thus the enemy, with a vastly superior force, was strongly fortified to +the east, south, and west, and commanded the river below. Practically, +the Army of the Cumberland was besieged. The enemy had stopped with his +cavalry north of the river the passing of a train loaded with ammunition +and medical supplies. The Union army was short of both, not having +ammunition enough for a day's fighting. + +General Halleck had, long before my coming into this new field, ordered +parts of the 11th and 12th corps, commanded respectively by Generals +Howard and Slocum, Hooker in command of the whole, from the Army of the +Potomac to reinforce Rosecrans. It would have been folly to send them +to Chattanooga to help eat up the few rations left there. They were +consequently left on the railroad, where supplies could be brought to +them. Before my arrival, Thomas ordered their concentration at +Bridgeport. + +General W. F. Smith had been so instrumental in preparing for the move +which I was now about to make, and so clear in his judgment about the +manner of making it, that I deemed it but just to him that he should +have command of the troops detailed to execute the design, although he +was then acting as a staff officer and was not in command of troops. + +On the 24th of October, after my return to Chattanooga, the following +details were made: General Hooker, who was now at Bridgeport, was +ordered to cross to the south side of the Tennessee and march up by +Whitesides and Wauhatchie to Brown's Ferry. General Palmer, with a +division of the 14th corps, Army of the Cumberland, was ordered to move +down the river on the north side, by a back road, until opposite +Whitesides, then cross and hold the road in Hooker's rear after he had +passed. Four thousand men were at the same time detailed to act under +General Smith directly from Chattanooga. Eighteen hundred of them, under +General Hazen, were to take sixty pontoon boats, and under cover of +night float by the pickets of the enemy at the north base of Lookout, +down to Brown's Ferry, then land on the south side and capture or drive +away the pickets at that point. Smith was to march with the remainder +of the detail, also under cover of night, by the north bank of the river +to Brown's Ferry, taking with him all the material for laying the bridge +as soon as the crossing was secured. + +On the 26th, Hooker crossed the river at Bridgeport and commenced his +eastward march. At three o'clock on the morning of the 27th, Hazen +moved into the stream with his sixty pontoons and eighteen hundred brave +and well-equipped men. Smith started enough in advance to be near the +river when Hazen should arrive. There are a number of detached spurs of +hills north of the river at Chattanooga, back of which is a good road +parallel to the stream, sheltered from the view from the top of Lookout. +It was over this road Smith marched. At five o'clock Hazen landed at +Brown's Ferry, surprised the picket guard, and captured most of it. By +seven o'clock the whole of Smith's force was ferried over and in +possession of a height commanding the ferry. This was speedily +fortified, while a detail was laying the pontoon bridge. By ten o'clock +the bridge was laid, and our extreme right, now in Lookout valley, was +fortified and connected with the rest of the army. The two bridges over +the Tennessee River--a flying one at Chattanooga and the new one at +Brown's Ferry--with the road north of the river, covered from both the +fire and the view of the enemy, made the connection complete. Hooker +found but slight obstacles in his way, and on the afternoon of the 28th +emerged into Lookout valley at Wauhatchie. Howard marched on to Brown's +Ferry, while Geary, who commanded a division in the 12th corps, stopped +three miles south. The pickets of the enemy on the river below were now +cut off, and soon came in and surrendered. + +The river was now opened to us from Lookout valley to Bridgeport. +Between Brown's Ferry and Kelly's Ferry the Tennessee runs through a +narrow gorge in the mountains, which contracts the stream so much as to +increase the current beyond the capacity of an ordinary steamer to stem +it. To get up these rapids, steamers must be cordelled; that is, pulled +up by ropes from the shore. But there is no difficulty in navigating +the stream from Bridgeport to Kelly's Ferry. The latter point is only +eight miles from Chattanooga and connected with it by a good wagon-road, +which runs through a low pass in the Raccoon Mountains on the south side +of the river to Brown's Ferry, thence on the north side to the river +opposite Chattanooga. There were several steamers at Bridgeport, and +abundance of forage, clothing and provisions. + +On the way to Chattanooga I had telegraphed back to Nashville for a good +supply of vegetables and small rations, which the troops had been so +long deprived of. Hooker had brought with him from the east a full +supply of land transportation. His animals had not been subjected to +hard work on bad roads without forage, but were in good condition. In +five days from my arrival in Chattanooga the way was open to Bridgeport +and, with the aid of steamers and Hooker's teams, in a week the troops +were receiving full rations. It is hard for any one not an eye-witness +to realize the relief this brought. The men were soon reclothed and +also well fed, an abundance of ammunition was brought up, and a +cheerfulness prevailed not before enjoyed in many weeks. Neither +officers nor men looked upon themselves any longer as doomed. The weak +and languid appearance of the troops, so visible before, disappeared at +once. I do not know what the effect was on the other side, but assume +it must have been correspondingly depressing. Mr. Davis had visited +Bragg but a short time before, and must have perceived our condition to +be about as Bragg described it in his subsequent report. "These +dispositions," he said, "faithfully sustained, insured the enemy's +speedy evacuation of Chattanooga for want of food and forage. Possessed +of the shortest route to his depot, and the one by which reinforcements +must reach him, we held him at our mercy, and his destruction was only a +question of time." But the dispositions were not "faithfully +sustained," and I doubt not but thousands of men engaged in trying to +"sustain" them now rejoice that they were not. There was no time during +the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was +more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the +people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and +prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution +abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which +degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. +With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have +extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor +allowed to become so. The whites could not toil without becoming +degraded, and those who did were denominated "poor white trash." The +system of labor would have soon exhausted the soil and left the people +poor. The non-slaveholders would have left the country, and the small +slaveholder must have sold out to his more fortunate neighbor. Soon the +slaves would have outnumbered the masters, and, not being in sympathy +with them, would have risen in their might and exterminated them. The +war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood +and treasure, but it was worth all it cost. + +The enemy was surprised by the movements which secured to us a line of +supplies. He appreciated its importance, and hastened to try to recover +the line from us. His strength on Lookout Mountain was not equal to +Hooker's command in the valley below. From Missionary Ridge he had to +march twice the distance we had from Chattanooga, in order to reach +Lookout Valley; but on the night of the 28th and 29th an attack was made +on Geary at Wauhatchie by Longstreet's corps. When the battle +commenced, Hooker ordered Howard up from Brown's Ferry. He had three +miles to march to reach Geary. On his way he was fired upon by rebel +troops from a foot-hill to the left of the road and from which the road +was commanded. Howard turned to the left, charged up the hill and +captured it before the enemy had time to intrench, taking many +prisoners. Leaving sufficient men to hold this height, he pushed on to +reinforce Geary. Before he got up, Geary had been engaged for about +three hours against a vastly superior force. The night was so dark that +the men could not distinguish one from another except by the light of +the flashes of their muskets. In the darkness and uproar Hooker's +teamsters became frightened and deserted their teams. The mules also +became frightened, and breaking loose from their fastenings stampeded +directly towards the enemy. The latter, no doubt, took this for a +charge, and stampeded in turn. By four o'clock in the morning the +battle had entirely ceased, and our "cracker line" was never afterward +disturbed. + +In securing possession of Lookout Valley, Smith lost one man killed and +four or five wounded. The enemy lost most of his pickets at the ferry, +captured. In the night engagement of the 28th-9th Hooker lost 416 +killed and wounded. I never knew the loss of the enemy, but our troops +buried over one hundred and fifty of his dead and captured more than a +hundred. + +After we had secured the opening of a line over which to bring our +supplies to the army, I made a personal inspection to see the situation +of the pickets of the two armies. As I have stated, Chattanooga Creek +comes down the centre of the valley to within a mile or such a matter of +the town of Chattanooga, then bears off westerly, then north-westerly, +and enters the Tennessee River at the foot of Lookout Mountain. This +creek, from its mouth up to where it bears off west, lay between the two +lines of pickets, and the guards of both armies drew their water from +the same stream. As I would be under short-range fire and in an open +country, I took nobody with me, except, I believe, a bugler, who stayed +some distance to the rear. I rode from our right around to our left. +When I came to the camp of the picket guard of our side, I heard the +call, "Turn out the guard for the commanding general." I replied, +"Never mind the guard," and they were dismissed and went back to their +tents. Just back of these, and about equally distant from the creek, +were the guards of the Confederate pickets. The sentinel on their post +called out in like manner, "Turn out the guard for the commanding +general," and, I believe, added, "General Grant." Their line in a +moment front-faced to the north, facing me, and gave a salute, which I +returned. + +The most friendly relations seemed to exist between the pickets of the +two armies. At one place there was a tree which had fallen across the +stream, and which was used by the soldiers of both armies in drawing +water for their camps. General Longstreet's corps was stationed there +at the time, and wore blue of a little different shade from our uniform. +Seeing a soldier in blue on this log, I rode up to him, commenced +conversing with him, and asked whose corps he belonged to. He was very +polite, and, touching his hat to me, said he belonged to General +Longstreet's corps. I asked him a few questions--but not with a view of +gaining any particular information--all of which he answered, and I rode +off. + + + +CHAPTER XLII. + +CONDITION OF THE ARMY--REBUILDING THE RAILROAD--GENERAL BURNSIDE'S +SITUATION--ORDERS FOR BATTLE--PLANS FOR THE ATTACK--HOOKER'S POSITION +--SHERMAN'S MOVEMENTS. + +Having got the Army of the Cumberland in a comfortable position, I now +began to look after the remainder of my new command. Burnside was in +about as desperate a condition as the Army of the Cumberland had been, +only he was not yet besieged. He was a hundred miles from the nearest +possible base, Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, and much farther +from any railroad we had possession of. The roads back were over +mountains, and all supplies along the line had long since been +exhausted. His animals, too, had been starved, and their carcasses +lined the road from Cumberland Gap, and far back towards Lexington, Ky. +East Tennessee still furnished supplies of beef, bread and forage, but +it did not supply ammunition, clothing, medical supplies, or small +rations, such as coffee, sugar, salt and rice. + +Sherman had started from Memphis for Corinth on the 11th of October. +His instructions required him to repair the road in his rear in order to +bring up supplies. The distance was about three hundred and thirty +miles through a hostile country. His entire command could not have +maintained the road if it had been completed. The bridges had all been +destroyed by the enemy, and much other damage done. A hostile community +lived along the road; guerilla bands infested the country, and more or +less of the cavalry of the enemy was still in the West. Often Sherman's +work was destroyed as soon as completed, and he only a short distance +away. + +The Memphis and Charleston Railroad strikes the Tennessee River at +Eastport, Mississippi. Knowing the difficulty Sherman would have to +supply himself from Memphis, I had previously ordered supplies sent from +St. Louis on small steamers, to be convoyed by the navy, to meet him at +Eastport. These he got. I now ordered him to discontinue his work of +repairing roads and to move on with his whole force to Stevenson, +Alabama, without delay. This order was borne to Sherman by a messenger, +who paddled down the Tennessee in a canoe and floated over Muscle +Shoals; it was delivered at Iuka on the 27th. In this Sherman was +notified that the rebels were moving a force towards Cleveland, East +Tennessee, and might be going to Nashville, in which event his troops +were in the best position to beat them there. Sherman, with his +characteristic promptness, abandoned the work he was engaged upon and +pushed on at once. On the 1st of November he crossed the Tennessee at +Eastport, and that day was in Florence, Alabama, with the head of +column, while his troops were still crossing at Eastport, with Blair +bringing up the rear. + +Sherman's force made an additional army, with cavalry, artillery, and +trains, all to be supplied by the single track road from Nashville. All +indications pointed also to the probable necessity of supplying +Burnside's command in East Tennessee, twenty-five thousand more, by the +same route. A single track could not do this. I gave, therefore, an +order to Sherman to halt General G. M. Dodge's command, of about eight +thousand men, at Athens, and subsequently directed the latter to arrange +his troops along the railroad from Decatur north towards Nashville, and +to rebuild that road. The road from Nashville to Decatur passes over a +broken country, cut up with innumerable streams, many of them of +considerable width, and with valleys far below the road-bed. All the +bridges over these had been destroyed, and the rails taken up and +twisted by the enemy. All the cars and locomotives not carried off had +been destroyed as effectually as they knew how to destroy them. All +bridges and culverts had been destroyed between Nashville and Decatur, +and thence to Stevenson, where the Memphis and Charleston and the +Nashville and Chattanooga roads unite. The rebuilding of this road +would give us two roads as far as Stevenson over which to supply the +army. From Bridgeport, a short distance farther east, the river +supplements the road. + +General Dodge, besides being a most capable soldier, was an experienced +railroad builder. He had no tools to work with except those of the +pioneers--axes, picks, and spades. With these he was able to intrench +his men and protect them against surprises by small parties of the +enemy. As he had no base of supplies until the road could be completed +back to Nashville, the first matter to consider after protecting his men +was the getting in of food and forage from the surrounding country. He +had his men and teams bring in all the grain they could find, or all +they needed, and all the cattle for beef, and such other food as could +be found. Millers were detailed from the ranks to run the mills along +the line of the army. When these were not near enough to the troops for +protection they were taken down and moved up to the line of the road. +Blacksmith shops, with all the iron and steel found in them, were moved +up in like manner. Blacksmiths were detailed and set to work making the +tools necessary in railroad and bridge building. Axemen were put to +work getting out timber for bridges and cutting fuel for locomotives +when the road should be completed. Car-builders were set to work +repairing the locomotives and cars. Thus every branch of railroad +building, making tools to work with, and supplying the workmen with +food, was all going on at once, and without the aid of a mechanic or +laborer except what the command itself furnished. But rails and cars +the men could not make without material, and there was not enough +rolling stock to keep the road we already had worked to its full +capacity. There were no rails except those in use. To supply these +deficiencies I ordered eight of the ten engines General McPherson had at +Vicksburg to be sent to Nashville, and all the cars he had except ten. +I also ordered the troops in West Tennessee to points on the river and +on the Memphis and Charleston road, and ordered the cars, locomotives +and rails from all the railroads except the Memphis and Charleston to +Nashville. The military manager of railroads also was directed to +furnish more rolling stock and, as far as he could, bridge material. +General Dodge had the work assigned him finished within forty days after +receiving his orders. The number of bridges to rebuild was one hundred +and eighty-two, many of them over deep and wide chasms; the length of +road repaired was one hundred and two miles. + +The enemy's troops, which it was thought were either moving against +Burnside or were going to Nashville, went no farther than Cleveland. +Their presence there, however, alarmed the authorities at Washington, +and, on account of our helpless condition at Chattanooga, caused me much +uneasiness. Dispatches were constantly coming, urging me to do +something for Burnside's relief; calling attention to the importance of +holding East Tennessee; saying the President was much concerned for the +protection of the loyal people in that section, etc. We had not at +Chattanooga animals to pull a single piece of artillery, much less a +supply train. Reinforcements could not help Burnside, because he had +neither supplies nor ammunition sufficient for them; hardly, indeed, +bread and meat for the men he had. There was no relief possible for him +except by expelling the enemy from Missionary Ridge and about +Chattanooga. + +On the 4th of November Longstreet left our front with about fifteen +thousand troops, besides Wheeler's cavalry, five thousand more, to go +against Burnside. The situation seemed desperate, and was more +aggravating because nothing could be done until Sherman should get up. +The authorities at Washington were now more than ever anxious for the +safety of Burnside's army, and plied me with dispatches faster than +ever, urging that something should be done for his relief. On the 7th, +before Longstreet could possibly have reached Knoxville, I ordered +Thomas peremptorily to attack the enemy's right, so as to force the +return of the troops that had gone up the valley. I directed him to +take mules, officers' horses, or animals wherever he could get them to +move the necessary artillery. But he persisted in the declaration that +he could not move a single piece of artillery, and could not see how he +could possibly comply with the order. Nothing was left to be done but +to answer Washington dispatches as best I could; urge Sherman forward, +although he was making every effort to get forward, and encourage +Burnside to hold on, assuring him that in a short time he should be +relieved. All of Burnside's dispatches showed the greatest confidence +in his ability to hold his position as long as his ammunition held out. +He even suggested the propriety of abandoning the territory he held +south and west of Knoxville, so as to draw the enemy farther from his +base and make it more difficult for him to get back to Chattanooga when +the battle should begin. Longstreet had a railroad as far as Loudon; +but from there to Knoxville he had to rely on wagon trains. Burnside's +suggestion, therefore, was a good one, and it was adopted. On the 14th +I telegraphed him: + +"Sherman's advance has reached Bridgeport. His whole force will be +ready to move from there by Tuesday at farthest. If you can hold +Longstreet in check until he gets up, or by skirmishing and falling back +can avoid serious loss to yourself and gain time, I will be able to +force the enemy back from here and place a force between Longstreet and +Bragg that must inevitably make the former take to the mountain-passes +by every available road, to get to his supplies. Sherman would have +been here before this but for high water in Elk River driving him some +thirty miles up that river to cross." + +And again later in the day, indicating my plans for his relief, as +follows: + +"Your dispatch and Dana's just received. Being there, you can tell +better how to resist Longstreet's attack than I can direct. With your +showing you had better give up Kingston at the last moment and save the +most productive part of your possessions. Every arrangement is now made +to throw Sherman's force across the river, just at and below the mouth +of Chickamauga Creek, as soon as it arrives. Thomas will attack on his +left at the same time, and together it is expected to carry Missionary +Ridge, and from there push a force on to the railroad between Cleveland +and Dalton. Hooker will at the same time attack, and, if he can, carry +Lookout Mountain. The enemy now seems to be looking for an attack on +his left flank. This favors us. To further confirm this, Sherman's +advance division will march direct from Whiteside to Trenton. The +remainder of his force will pass over a new road just made from +Whiteside to Kelly's Ferry, thus being concealed from the enemy, and +leave him to suppose the whole force is going up Lookout Valley. +Sherman's advance has only just reached Bridgeport. The rear will only +reach there on the 16th. This will bring it to the 19th as the earliest +day for making the combined movement as desired. Inform me if you think +you can sustain yourself until this time. I can hardly conceive of the +enemy breaking through at Kingston and pushing for Kentucky. If they +should, however, a new problem would be left for solution. Thomas has +ordered a division of cavalry to the vicinity of Sparta. I will +ascertain if they have started, and inform you. It will be entirely out +of the question to send you ten thousand men, not because they cannot be +spared, but how would they be fed after they got even one day east from +here?" + +Longstreet, for some reason or other, stopped at Loudon until the 13th. +That being the terminus of his railroad communications, it is probable +he was directed to remain there awaiting orders. He was in a position +threatening Knoxville, and at the same time where he could be brought +back speedily to Chattanooga. The day after Longstreet left Loudon, +Sherman reached Bridgeport in person and proceeded on to see me that +evening, the 14th, and reached Chattanooga the next day. + +My orders for battle were all prepared in advance of Sherman's arrival +(*15), except the dates, which could not be fixed while troops to be +engaged were so far away. The possession of Lookout Mountain was of no +special advantage to us now. Hooker was instructed to send Howard's +corps to the north side of the Tennessee, thence up behind the hills on +the north side, and to go into camp opposite Chattanooga; with the +remainder of the command, Hooker was, at a time to be afterwards +appointed, to ascend the western slope between the upper and lower +palisades, and so get into Chattanooga valley. + +The plan of battle was for Sherman to attack the enemy's right flank, +form a line across it, extend our left over South Chickamauga River so +as to threaten or hold the railroad in Bragg's rear, and thus force him +either to weaken his lines elsewhere or lose his connection with his +base at Chickamauga Station. Hooker was to perform like service on our +right. His problem was to get from Lookout Valley to Chattanooga Valley +in the most expeditious way possible; cross the latter valley rapidly to +Rossville, south of Bragg's line on Missionary Ridge, form line there +across the ridge facing north, with his right flank extended to +Chickamauga Valley east of the ridge, thus threatening the enemy's rear +on that flank and compelling him to reinforce this also. Thomas, with +the Army of the Cumberland, occupied the centre, and was to assault +while the enemy was engaged with most of his forces on his two flanks. + +To carry out this plan, Sherman was to cross the Tennessee at Brown's +Ferry and move east of Chattanooga to a point opposite the north end of +Mission Ridge, and to place his command back of the foot-hills out of +sight of the enemy on the ridge. There are two streams called +Chickamauga emptying into the Tennessee River east of Chattanooga--North +Chickamauga, taking its rise in Tennessee, flowing south, and emptying +into the river some seven or eight miles east; while the South +Chickamauga, which takes its rise in Georgia, flows northward, and +empties into the Tennessee some three or four miles above the town. +There were now one hundred and sixteen pontoons in the North Chickamauga +River, their presence there being unknown to the enemy. + +At night a division was to be marched up to that point, and at two +o'clock in the morning moved down with the current, thirty men in each +boat. A few were to land east of the mouth of the South Chickamauga, +capture the pickets there, and then lay a bridge connecting the two +banks of the river. The rest were to land on the south side of the +Tennessee, where Missionary Ridge would strike it if prolonged, and a +sufficient number of men to man the boats were to push to the north side +to ferry over the main body of Sherman's command while those left on the +south side intrenched themselves. Thomas was to move out from his lines +facing the ridge, leaving enough of Palmer's corps to guard against an +attack down the valley. Lookout Valley being of no present value to us, +and being untenable by the enemy if we should secure Missionary Ridge, +Hooker's orders were changed. His revised orders brought him to +Chattanooga by the established route north of the Tennessee. He was +then to move out to the right to Rossville. + +Hooker's position in Lookout Valley was absolutely essential to us so +long as Chattanooga was besieged. It was the key to our line for +supplying the army. But it was not essential after the enemy was +dispersed from our front, or even after the battle for this purpose was +begun. Hooker's orders, therefore, were designed to get his force past +Lookout Mountain and Chattanooga Valley, and up to Missionary Ridge. By +crossing the north face of Lookout the troops would come into +Chattanooga Valley in rear of the line held by the enemy across the +valley, and would necessarily force its evacuation. Orders were +accordingly given to march by this route. But days before the battle +began the advantages as well as the disadvantages of this plan of action +were all considered. The passage over the mountain was a difficult one +to make in the face of an enemy. It might consume so much time as to +lose us the use of the troops engaged in it at other points where they +were more wanted. After reaching Chattanooga Valley, the creek of the +same name, quite a formidable stream to get an army over, had to be +crossed. I was perfectly willing that the enemy should keep Lookout +Mountain until we got through with the troops on Missionary Ridge. By +marching Hooker to the north side of the river, thence up the stream, +and recrossing at the town, he could be got in position at any named +time; when in this new position, he would have Chattanooga Creek behind +him, and the attack on Missionary Ridge would unquestionably cause the +evacuation by the enemy of his line across the valley and on Lookout +Mountain. Hooker's order was changed accordingly. As explained +elsewhere, the original order had to be reverted to, because of a flood +in the river rendering the bridge at Brown's Ferry unsafe for the +passage of troops at the exact juncture when it was wanted to bring all +the troops together against Missionary Ridge. + +The next day after Sherman's arrival I took him, with Generals Thomas +and Smith and other officers, to the north side of the river, and showed +them the ground over which Sherman had to march, and pointed out +generally what he was expected to do. I, as well as the authorities in +Washington, was still in a great state of anxiety for Burnside's safety. +Burnside himself, I believe, was the only one who did not share in this +anxiety. Nothing could be done for him, however, until Sherman's troops +were up. As soon, therefore, as the inspection was over, Sherman +started for Bridgeport to hasten matters, rowing a boat himself, I +believe, from Kelly's Ferry. Sherman had left Bridgeport the night +of the 14th, reached Chattanooga the evening of the 15th, made the +above-described inspection on the morning of the 16th, and started back +the same evening to hurry up his command, fully appreciating the +importance of time. + +His march was conducted with as much expedition as the roads and season +would admit of. By the 20th he was himself at Brown's Ferry with the +head of column, but many of his troops were far behind, and one division +(Ewing's) was at Trenton, sent that way to create the impression that +Lookout was to be taken from the south. Sherman received his orders at +the ferry, and was asked if he could not be ready for the assault the +following morning. News had been received that the battle had been +commenced at Knoxville. Burnside had been cut off from telegraphic +communications. The President, the Secretary of War, and General +Halleck, were in an agony of suspense. My suspense was also great, but +more endurable, because I was where I could soon do something to relieve +the situation. It was impossible to get Sherman's troops up for the +next day. I then asked him if they could not be got up to make the +assault on the morning of the 22d, and ordered Thomas to move on that +date. But the elements were against us. It rained all the 20th and +21st. The river rose so rapidly that it was difficult to keep the +pontoons in place. + +General Orlando B. Willcox, a division commander under Burnside, was at +this time occupying a position farther up the valley than Knoxville +--about Maynardville--and was still in telegraphic communication with the +North. A dispatch was received from him saying that he was threatened +from the east. The following was sent in reply: + +"If you can communicate with General Burnside, say to him that our +attack on Bragg will commence in the morning. If successful, such a +move will be made as I think will relieve East Tennessee, if he can hold +out. Longstreet passing through our lines to Kentucky need not cause +alarm. He would find the country so bare that he would lose his +transportation and artillery before reaching Kentucky, and would meet +such a force before he got through, that he could not return." + +Meantime, Sherman continued his crossing without intermission as fast as +his troops could be got up. The crossing had to be effected in full +view of the enemy on the top of Lookout Mountain. Once over, however, +the troops soon disappeared behind the detached hill on the north side, +and would not come to view again, either to watchmen on Lookout Mountain +or Missionary Ridge, until they emerged between the hills to strike the +bank of the river. But when Sherman's advance reached a point opposite +the town of Chattanooga, Howard, who, it will be remembered, had been +concealed behind the hills on the north side, took up his line of march +to join the troops on the south side. His crossing was in full view +both from Missionary Ridge and the top of Lookout, and the enemy of +course supposed these troops to be Sherman's. This enabled Sherman to +get to his assigned position without discovery. + + + +CHAPTER XLIII. + +PREPARATIONS FOR BATTLE--THOMAS CARRIES THE FIRST LINE OF THE ENEMY +--SHERMAN CARRIES MISSIONARY RIDGE--BATTLE OF LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN +--GENERAL HOOKER'S FIGHT. + +On the 20th, when so much was occurring to discourage--rains falling so +heavily as to delay the passage of troops over the river at Brown's +Ferry and threatening the entire breaking of the bridge; news coming of +a battle raging at Knoxville; of Willcox being threatened by a force +from the east--a letter was received from Bragg which contained these +words: "As there may still be some non-combatants in Chattanooga, I +deem it proper to notify you that prudence would dictate their early +withdrawal." Of course, I understood that this was a device intended to +deceive; but I did not know what the intended deception was. On the +22d, however, a deserter came in who informed me that Bragg was leaving +our front, and on that day Buckner's division was sent to reinforce +Longstreet at Knoxville, and another division started to follow but was +recalled. The object of Bragg's letter, no doubt, was in some way to +detain me until Knoxville could be captured, and his troops there be +returned to Chattanooga. + +During the night of the 21st the rest of the pontoon boats, completed, +one hundred and sixteen in all, were carried up to and placed in North +Chickamauga. The material for the roadway over these was deposited out +of view of the enemy within a few hundred yards of the bank of the +Tennessee, where the north end of the bridge was to rest. + +Hearing nothing from Burnside, and hearing much of the distress in +Washington on his account, I could no longer defer operations for his +relief. I determined, therefore, to do on the 23d, with the Army of the +Cumberland, what had been intended to be done on the 24th. + +The position occupied by the Army of the Cumberland had been made very +strong for defence during the months it had been besieged. The line was +about a mile from the town, and extended from Citico Creek, a small +stream running near the base of Missionary Ridge and emptying into the +Tennessee about two miles below the mouth of the South Chickamauga, on +the left, to Chattanooga Creek on the right. All commanding points on +the line were well fortified and well equipped with artillery. The +important elevations within the line had all been carefully fortified +and supplied with a proper armament. Among the elevations so fortified +was one to the east of the town, named Fort Wood. It owed its +importance chiefly to the fact that it lay between the town and +Missionary Ridge, where most of the strength of the enemy was. Fort +Wood had in it twenty-two pieces of artillery, most of which would reach +the nearer points of the enemy's line. On the morning of the 23d +Thomas, according to instructions, moved Granger's corps of two +divisions, Sheridan and T. J. Wood commanding, to the foot of Fort Wood, +and formed them into line as if going on parade, Sheridan on the right, +Wood to the left, extending to or near Citico Creek. Palmer, commanding +the 14th corps, held that part of our line facing south and southwest. +He supported Sheridan with one division (Baird's), while his other +division under Johnson remained in the trenches, under arms, ready to be +moved to any point. Howard's corps was moved in rear of the centre. The +picket lines were within a few hundred yards of each other. At two +o'clock in the afternoon all were ready to advance. By this time the +clouds had lifted so that the enemy could see from his elevated position +all that was going on. The signal for advance was given by a booming of +cannon from Fort Wood and other points on the line. The rebel pickets +were soon driven back upon the main guards, which occupied minor and +detached heights between the main ridge and our lines. These too were +carried before halting, and before the enemy had time to reinforce their +advance guards. But it was not without loss on both sides. This +movement secured to us a line fully a mile in advance of the one we +occupied in the morning, and the one which the enemy had occupied up to +this time. The fortifications were rapidly turned to face the other +way. During the following night they were made strong. We lost in this +preliminary action about eleven hundred killed and wounded, while the +enemy probably lost quite as heavily, including the prisoners that were +captured. With the exception of the firing of artillery, kept up from +Missionary Ridge and Fort Wood until night closed in, this ended the +fighting for the first day. + +The advantage was greatly on our side now, and if I could only have been +assured that Burnside could hold out ten days longer I should have +rested more easily. But we were doing the best we could for him and the +cause. + +By the night of the 23d Sherman's command was in a position to move, +though one division (Osterhaus's) had not yet crossed the river at +Brown's Ferry. The continuous rise in the Tennessee had rendered it +impossible to keep the bridge at that point in condition for troops to +cross; but I was determined to move that night even without this +division. Orders were sent to Osterhaus accordingly to report to +Hooker, if he could not cross by eight o'clock on the morning of the +24th. Because of the break in the bridge, Hooker's orders were again +changed, but this time only back to those first given to him. + +General W. F. Smith had been assigned to duty as Chief Engineer of the +Military Division. To him were given the general direction of moving +troops by the boats from North Chickamauga, laying the bridge after they +reached their position, and generally all the duties pertaining to his +office of chief engineer. During the night General Morgan L. Smith's +division was marched to the point where the pontoons were, and the +brigade of Giles A. Smith was selected for the delicate duty of manning +the boats and surprising the enemy's pickets on the south bank of the +river. During this night also General J. M. Brannan, chief of +artillery, moved forty pieces of artillery, belonging to the Army of the +Cumberland, and placed them on the north side of the river so as to +command the ground opposite, to aid in protecting the approach to the +point where the south end of the bridge was to rest. He had to use +Sherman's artillery horses for this purpose, Thomas having none. + +At two o'clock in the morning, November 24th, Giles A. Smith pushed out +from the North Chickamauga with his one hundred and sixteen boats, each +loaded with thirty brave and well-armed men. The boats with their +precious freight dropped down quietly with the current to avoid +attracting the attention of any one who could convey information to the +enemy, until arriving near the mouth of South Chickamauga. Here a few +boats were landed, the troops debarked, and a rush was made upon the +picket guard known to be at that point. The guard were surprised, and +twenty of their number captured. The remainder of the troops effected a +landing at the point where the bridge was to start, with equally good +results. The work of ferrying over Sherman's command from the north +side of the Tennessee was at once commenced, using the pontoons for the +purpose. A steamer was also brought up from the town to assist. The +rest of M. L. Smith's division came first, then the division of John E. +Smith. The troops as they landed were put to work intrenching their +position. By daylight the two entire divisions were over, and well +covered by the works they had built. + +The work of laying the bridge, on which to cross the artillery and +cavalry, was now begun. The ferrying over the infantry was continued +with the steamer and the pontoons, taking the pontoons, however, as fast +as they were wanted to put in their place in the bridge. By a little +past noon the bridge was completed, as well as one over the South +Chickamauga connecting the troops left on that side with their comrades +below, and all the infantry and artillery were on the south bank of the +Tennessee. + +Sherman at once formed his troops for assault on Missionary Ridge. By +one o'clock he started with M. L. Smith on his left, keeping nearly the +course of Chickamauga River; J. E. Smith next to the right and a little +to the rear; and Ewing still farther to the right and also a little to +the rear of J. E. Smith's command, in column, ready to deploy to the +right if an enemy should come from that direction. A good skirmish line +preceded each of these columns. Soon the foot of the hill was reached; +the skirmishers pushed directly up, followed closely by their supports. +By half-past three Sherman was in possession of the height without +having sustained much loss. A brigade from each division was now +brought up, and artillery was dragged to the top of the hill by hand. +The enemy did not seem to be aware of this movement until the top of the +hill was gained. There had been a drizzling rain during the day, and +the clouds were so low that Lookout Mountain and the top of Missionary +Ridge were obscured from the view of persons in the valley. But now the +enemy opened fire upon their assailants, and made several attempts with +their skirmishers to drive them away, but without avail. Later in the +day a more determined attack was made, but this, too, failed, and +Sherman was left to fortify what he had gained. + +Sherman's cavalry took up its line of march soon after the bridge was +completed, and by half-past three the whole of it was over both bridges +and on its way to strike the enemy's communications at Chickamauga +Station. All of Sherman's command was now south of the Tennessee. +During the afternoon General Giles A. Smith was severely wounded and +carried from the field. + +Thomas having done on the 23d what was expected of him on the 24th, +there was nothing for him to do this day except to strengthen his +position. Howard, however, effected a crossing of Citico Creek and a +junction with Sherman, and was directed to report to him. With two or +three regiments of his command he moved in the morning along the banks +of the Tennessee, and reached the point where the bridge was being laid. +He went out on the bridge as far as it was completed from the south end, +and saw Sherman superintending the work from the north side and moving +himself south as fast as an additional boat was put in and the roadway +put upon it. Howard reported to his new chief across the chasm between +them, which was now narrow and in a few minutes closed. + +While these operations were going on to the east of Chattanooga, Hooker +was engaged on the west. He had three divisions: Osterhaus's, of the +15th corps, Army of the Tennessee; Geary's, 12th corps, Army of the +Potomac; and Cruft's, 14th corps, Army of the Cumberland. Geary was on +the right at Wauhatchie, Cruft at the centre, and Osterhaus near Brown's +Ferry. These troops were all west of Lookout Creek. The enemy had the +east bank of the creek strongly picketed and intrenched, and three +brigades of troops in the rear to reinforce them if attacked. These +brigades occupied the summit of the mountain. General Carter L. +Stevenson was in command of the whole. Why any troops, except artillery +with a small infantry guard, were kept on the mountain-top, I do not +see. A hundred men could have held the summit--which is a palisade for +more than thirty feet down--against the assault of any number of men +from the position Hooker occupied. + +The side of Lookout Mountain confronting Hooker's command was rugged, +heavily timbered, and full of chasms, making it difficult to advance +with troops, even in the absence of an opposing force. Farther up, the +ground becomes more even and level, and was in cultivation. On the east +side the slope is much more gradual, and a good wagon road, zigzagging +up it, connects the town of Chattanooga with the summit. + +Early on the morning of the 24th Hooker moved Geary's division, +supported by a brigade of Cruft's, up Lookout Creek, to effect a +crossing. The remainder of Cruft's division was to seize the bridge +over the creek, near the crossing of the railroad. Osterhaus was to move +up to the bridge and cross it. The bridge was seized by Gross's brigade +after a slight skirmish with the pickets guarding it. This attracted +the enemy so that Geary's movement farther up was not observed. A heavy +mist obscured him from the view of the troops on the top of the +mountain. He crossed the creek almost unobserved, and captured the +picket of over forty men on guard near by. He then commenced ascending +the mountain directly in his front. By this time the enemy was seen +coming down from their camps on the mountain slope, and filing into +their rifle-pits to contest the crossing of the bridge. By eleven +o'clock the bridge was complete. Osterhaus was up, and after some sharp +skirmishing the enemy was driven away with considerable loss in killed +and captured. + +While the operations at the bridge were progressing, Geary was pushing +up the hill over great obstacles, resisted by the enemy directly in his +front, and in face of the guns on top of the mountain. The enemy, +seeing their left flank and rear menaced, gave way, and were followed by +Cruft and Osterhaus. Soon these were up abreast of Geary, and the whole +command pushed up the hill, driving the enemy in advance. By noon Geary +had gained the open ground on the north slope of the mountain, with his +right close up to the base of the upper palisade, but there were strong +fortifications in his front. The rest of the command coming up, a line +was formed from the base of the upper palisade to the mouth of +Chattanooga Creek. + +Thomas and I were on the top of Orchard Knob. Hooker's advance now made +our line a continuous one. It was in full view, extending from the +Tennessee River, where Sherman had crossed, up Chickamauga River to the +base of Mission Ridge, over the top of the north end of the ridge to +Chattanooga Valley, then along parallel to the ridge a mile or more, +across the valley to the mouth of Chattanooga Creek, thence up the slope +of Lookout Mountain to the foot of the upper palisade. The day was +hazy, so that Hooker's operations were not visible to us except at +moments when the clouds would rise. But the sound of his artillery and +musketry was heard incessantly. The enemy on his front was partially +fortified, but was soon driven out of his works. During the afternoon +the clouds, which had so obscured the top of Lookout all day as to hide +whatever was going on from the view of those below, settled down and +made it so dark where Hooker was as to stop operations for the time. At +four o'clock Hooker reported his position as impregnable. By a little +after five direct communication was established, and a brigade of troops +was sent from Chattanooga to reinforce him. These troops had to cross +Chattanooga Creek and met with some opposition, but soon overcame it, +and by night the commander, General Carlin, reported to Hooker and was +assigned to his left. I now telegraphed to Washington: "The fight +to-day progressed favorably. Sherman carried the end of Missionary +Ridge, and his right is now at the tunnel, and his left at Chickamauga +Creek. Troops from Lookout Valley carried the point of the mountain, and +now hold the eastern slope and a point high up. Hooker reports two +thousand prisoners taken, besides which a small number have fallen into +our hands from Missionary Ridge." The next day the President replied: +"Your dispatches as to fighting on Monday and Tuesday are here. Well +done. Many thanks to all. Remember Burnside." And Halleck also +telegraphed: "I congratulate you on the success thus far of your plans. +I fear that Burnside is hard pushed, and that any further delay may +prove fatal. I know you will do all in your power to relieve him." + +The division of Jefferson C. Davis, Army of the Cumberland, had been +sent to the North Chickamauga to guard the pontoons as they were +deposited in the river, and to prevent all ingress or egress of +citizens. On the night of the 24th his division, having crossed with +Sherman, occupied our extreme left from the upper bridge over the plain +to the north base of Missionary Ridge. Firing continued to a late hour +in the night, but it was not connected with an assault at any point. + + + +CHAPTER XLIV. + +BATTLE OF CHATTANOOGA--A GALLANT CHARGE--COMPLETE ROUT OF THE ENEMY +--PURSUIT OF THE CONFEDERATES--GENERAL BRAGG--REMARKS ON CHATTANOOGA. + +At twelve o'clock at night, when all was quiet, I began to give orders +for the next day, and sent a dispatch to Willcox to encourage Burnside. +Sherman was directed to attack at daylight. Hooker was ordered to move +at the same hour, and endeavor to intercept the enemy's retreat if he +still remained; if he had gone, then to move directly to Rossville and +operate against the left and rear of the force on Missionary Ridge. +Thomas was not to move until Hooker had reached Missionary Ridge. As I +was with him on Orchard Knob, he would not move without further orders +from me. + +The morning of the 25th opened clear and bright, and the whole field was +in full view from the top of Orchard Knob. It remained so all day. +Bragg's headquarters were in full view, and officers--presumably staff +officers--could be seen coming and going constantly. + +The point of ground which Sherman had carried on the 24th was almost +disconnected from the main ridge occupied by the enemy. A low pass, over +which there is a wagon road crossing the hill, and near which there is a +railroad tunnel, intervenes between the two hills. The problem now was +to get to the main ridge. The enemy was fortified on the point; and back +farther, where the ground was still higher, was a second fortification +commanding the first. Sherman was out as soon as it was light enough to +see, and by sunrise his command was in motion. Three brigades held the +hill already gained. Morgan L. Smith moved along the east base of +Missionary Ridge; Loomis along the west base, supported by two brigades +of John E. Smith's division; and Corse with his brigade was between the +two, moving directly towards the hill to be captured. The ridge is +steep and heavily wooded on the east side, where M. L. Smith's troops +were advancing, but cleared and with a more gentle slope on the west +side. The troops advanced rapidly and carried the extreme end of the +rebel works. Morgan L. Smith advanced to a point which cut the enemy +off from the railroad bridge and the means of bringing up supplies by +rail from Chickamauga Station, where the main depot was located. The +enemy made brave and strenuous efforts to drive our troops from the +position we had gained, but without success. The contest lasted for two +hours. Corse, a brave and efficient commander, was badly wounded in +this assault. Sherman now threatened both Bragg's flank and his stores, +and made it necessary for him to weaken other points of his line to +strengthen his right. From the position I occupied I could see column +after column of Bragg's forces moving against Sherman. Every +Confederate gun that could be brought to bear upon the Union forces was +concentrated upon him. J. E. Smith, with two brigades, charged up the +west side of the ridge to the support of Corse's command, over open +ground and in the face of a heavy fire of both artillery and musketry, +and reached the very parapet of the enemy. He lay here for a time, but +the enemy coming with a heavy force upon his right flank, he was +compelled to fall back, followed by the foe. A few hundred yards +brought Smith's troops into a wood, where they were speedily reformed, +when they charged and drove the attacking party back to his +intrenchments. + +Seeing the advance, repulse, and second advance of J. E. Smith from the +position I occupied, I directed Thomas to send a division to reinforce +him. Baird's division was accordingly sent from the right of Orchard +Knob. It had to march a considerable distance directly under the eye of +the enemy to reach its position. Bragg at once commenced massing in the +same direction. This was what I wanted. But it had now got to be late +in the afternoon, and I had expected before this to see Hooker crossing +the ridge in the neighborhood of Rossville and compelling Bragg to mass +in that direction also. + +The enemy had evacuated Lookout Mountain during the night, as I expected +he would. In crossing the valley he burned the bridge over Chattanooga +Creek, and did all he could to obstruct the roads behind him. Hooker +was off bright and early, with no obstructions in his front but distance +and the destruction above named. He was detained four hours crossing +Chattanooga Creek, and thus was lost the immediate advantage I expected +from his forces. His reaching Bragg's flank and extending across it was +to be the signal for Thomas's assault of the ridge. But Sherman's +condition was getting so critical that the assault for his relief could +not be delayed any longer. + +Sheridan's and Wood's divisions had been lying under arms from early +morning, ready to move the instant the signal was given. I now directed +Thomas to order the charge at once (*16). I watched eagerly to see the +effect, and became impatient at last that there was no indication of any +charge being made. The centre of the line which was to make the charge +was near where Thomas and I stood, but concealed from view by an +intervening forest. Turning to Thomas to inquire what caused the delay, +I was surprised to see Thomas J. Wood, one of the division commanders +who was to make the charge, standing talking to him. I spoke to General +Wood, asking him why he did not charge as ordered an hour before. He +replied very promptly that this was the first he had heard of it, but +that he had been ready all day to move at a moment's notice. I told him +to make the charge at once. He was off in a moment, and in an +incredibly short time loud cheering was heard, and he and Sheridan were +driving the enemy's advance before them towards Missionary Ridge. The +Confederates were strongly intrenched on the crest of the ridge in front +of us, and had a second line half-way down and another at the base. Our +men drove the troops in front of the lower line of rifle-pits so +rapidly, and followed them so closely, that rebel and Union troops went +over the first line of works almost at the same time. Many rebels were +captured and sent to the rear under the fire of their own friends higher +up the hill. Those that were not captured retreated, and were pursued. +The retreating hordes being between friends and pursuers caused the +enemy to fire high to avoid killing their own men. In fact, on that +occasion the Union soldier nearest the enemy was in the safest position. +Without awaiting further orders or stopping to reform, on our troops +went to the second line of works; over that and on for the crest--thus +effectually carrying out my orders of the 18th for the battle and of the +24th (*17) for this charge. + +I watched their progress with intense interest. The fire along the +rebel line was terrific. Cannon and musket balls filled the air: but +the damage done was in small proportion to the ammunition expended. The +pursuit continued until the crest was reached, and soon our men were +seen climbing over the Confederate barriers at different points in front +of both Sheridan's and Wood's divisions. The retreat of the enemy along +most of his line was precipitate and the panic so great that Bragg and +his officers lost all control over their men. Many were captured, and +thousands threw away their arms in their flight. + +Sheridan pushed forward until he reached the Chickamauga River at a +point above where the enemy crossed. He met some resistance from troops +occupying a second hill in rear of Missionary Ridge, probably to cover +the retreat of the main body and of the artillery and trains. It was +now getting dark, but Sheridan, without halting on that account pushed +his men forward up this second hill slowly and without attracting the +attention of the men placed to defend it, while he detached to the right +and left to surround the position. The enemy discovered the movement +before these dispositions were complete, and beat a hasty retreat, +leaving artillery, wagon trains, and many prisoners in our hands. To +Sheridan's prompt movement the Army of the Cumberland, and the nation, +are indebted for the bulk of the capture of prisoners, artillery, and +small-arms that day. Except for his prompt pursuit, so much in this way +would not have been accomplished. + +While the advance up Mission Ridge was going forward, General Thomas +with staff, General Gordon Granger, commander of the corps making the +assault, and myself and staff occupied Orchard Knob, from which the +entire field could be observed. The moment the troops were seen going +over the last line of rebel defences, I ordered Granger to join his +command, and mounting my horse I rode to the front. General Thomas left +about the same time. Sheridan on the extreme right was already in +pursuit of the enemy east of the ridge. Wood, who commanded the +division to the left of Sheridan, accompanied his men on horseback in +the charge, but did not join Sheridan in the pursuit. To the left, in +Baird's front where Bragg's troops had massed against Sherman, the +resistance was more stubborn and the contest lasted longer. I ordered +Granger to follow the enemy with Wood's division, but he was so much +excited, and kept up such a roar of musketry in the direction the enemy +had taken, that by the time I could stop the firing the enemy had got +well out of the way. The enemy confronting Sherman, now seeing +everything to their left giving way, fled also. Sherman, however, was +not aware of the extent of our success until after nightfall, when he +received orders to pursue at daylight in the morning. + +As soon as Sherman discovered that the enemy had left his front he +directed his reserves, Davis's division of the Army of the Cumberland, +to push over the pontoon-bridge at the mouth of the Chickamauga, and to +move forward to Chickamauga Station. He ordered Howard to move up the +stream some two miles to where there was an old bridge, repair it during +the night, and follow Davis at four o'clock in the morning. Morgan L. +Smith was ordered to reconnoitre the tunnel to see if that was still +held. Nothing was found there but dead bodies of men of both armies. +The rest of Sherman's command was directed to follow Howard at daylight +in the morning to get on to the railroad towards Graysville. + +Hooker, as stated, was detained at Chattanooga Creek by the destruction +of the bridge at that point. He got his troops over, with the exception +of the artillery, by fording the stream at a little after three o'clock. +Leaving his artillery to follow when the bridge should be reconstructed, +he pushed on with the remainder of his command. At Rossville he came +upon the flank of a division of the enemy, which soon commenced a +retreat along the ridge. This threw them on Palmer. They could make +but little resistance in the position they were caught in, and as many +of them as could do so escaped. Many, however, were captured. Hooker's +position during the night of the 25th was near Rossville, extending east +of the ridge. Palmer was on his left, on the road to Graysville. + +During the night I telegraphed to Willcox that Bragg had been defeated, +and that immediate relief would be sent to Burnside if he could hold +out; to Halleck I sent an announcement of our victory, and informed him +that forces would be sent up the valley to relieve Burnside. + +Before the battle of Chattanooga opened I had taken measures for the +relief of Burnside the moment the way should be clear. Thomas was +directed to have the little steamer that had been built at Chattanooga +loaded to its capacity with rations and ammunition. Granger's corps was +to move by the south bank of the Tennessee River to the mouth of the +Holston, and up that to Knoxville accompanied by the boat. In addition +to the supplies transported by boat, the men were to carry forty rounds +of ammunition in their cartridge-boxes, and four days' rations in +haversacks. + +In the battle of Chattanooga, troops from the Army of the Potomac, from +the Army of the Tennessee, and from the Army of the Cumberland +participated. In fact, the accidents growing out of the heavy rains and +the sudden rise in the Tennessee River so mingled the troops that the +organizations were not kept together, under their respective commanders, +during the battle. Hooker, on the right, had Geary's division of the +12th corps, Army of the Potomac; Osterhaus's division of the 15th corps, +Army of the Tennessee; and Cruft's division of the Army of the +Cumberland. Sherman had three divisions of his own army, Howard's corps +from the Army of the Potomac, and Jefferson C. Davis's division of the +Army of the Cumberland. There was no jealousy--hardly rivalry. Indeed, +I doubt whether officers or men took any note at the time of the fact of +this intermingling of commands. All saw a defiant foe surrounding them, +and took it for granted that every move was intended to dislodge him, +and it made no difference where the troops came from so that the end was +accomplished. + +The victory at Chattanooga was won against great odds, considering the +advantage the enemy had of position, and was accomplished more easily +than was expected by reason of Bragg's making several grave mistakes: +first, in sending away his ablest corps commander with over twenty +thousand troops; second, in sending away a division of troops on the eve +of battle; third, in placing so much of a force on the plain in front of +his impregnable position. + +It was known that Mr. Jefferson Davis had visited Bragg on Missionary +Ridge a short time before my reaching Chattanooga. It was reported and +believed that he had come out to reconcile a serious difference between +Bragg and Longstreet, and finding this difficult to do, planned the +campaign against Knoxville, to be conducted by the latter general. I +had known both Bragg and Longstreet before the war, the latter very +well. We had been three years at West Point together, and, after my +graduation, for a time in the same regiment. Then we served together in +the Mexican War. I had known Bragg in Mexico, and met him occasionally +subsequently. I could well understand how there might be an +irreconcilable difference between them. + +Bragg was a remarkably intelligent and well-informed man, professionally +and otherwise. He was also thoroughly upright. But he was possessed of +an irascible temper, and was naturally disputatious. A man of the +highest moral character and the most correct habits, yet in the old army +he was in frequent trouble. As a subordinate he was always on the +lookout to catch his commanding officer infringing his prerogatives; as +a post commander he was equally vigilant to detect the slightest +neglect, even of the most trivial order. + +I have heard in the old army an anecdote very characteristic of Bragg. +On one occasion, when stationed at a post of several companies commanded +by a field officer, he was himself commanding one of the companies and +at the same time acting as post quartermaster and commissary. He was +first lieutenant at the time, but his captain was detached on other +duty. As commander of the company he made a requisition upon the +quartermaster--himself--for something he wanted. As quartermaster he +declined to fill the requisition, and endorsed on the back of it his +reasons for so doing. As company commander he responded to this, urging +that his requisition called for nothing but what he was entitled to, and +that it was the duty of the quartermaster to fill it. As quartermaster +he still persisted that he was right. In this condition of affairs +Bragg referred the whole matter to the commanding officer of the post. +The latter, when he saw the nature of the matter referred, exclaimed: +"My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarrelled with every officer in the army, +and now you are quarrelling with yourself!" + +Longstreet was an entirely different man. He was brave, honest, +intelligent, a very capable soldier, subordinate to his superiors, just +and kind to his subordinates, but jealous of his own rights, which he +had the courage to maintain. He was never on the lookout to detect a +slight, but saw one as soon as anybody when intentionally given. + +It may be that Longstreet was not sent to Knoxville for the reason +stated, but because Mr. Davis had an exalted opinion of his own military +genius, and thought he saw a chance of "killing two birds with one +stone." On several occasions during the war he came to the relief of +the Union army by means of his SUPERIOR MILITARY GENIUS. + +I speak advisedly when I saw Mr. Davis prided himself on his military +capacity. He says so himself, virtually, in his answer to the notice of +his nomination to the Confederate presidency. Some of his generals have +said so in their writings since the downfall of the Confederacy. + +My recollection is that my first orders for the battle of Chattanooga +were as fought. Sherman was to get on Missionary Ridge, as he did; +Hooker to cross the north end of Lookout Mountain, as he did, sweep +across Chattanooga Valley and get across the south end of the ridge near +Rossville. When Hooker had secured that position the Army of the +Cumberland was to assault in the centre. Before Sherman arrived, +however, the order was so changed as that Hooker was directed to come to +Chattanooga by the north bank of the Tennessee River. The waters in the +river, owing to heavy rains, rose so fast that the bridge at Brown's +Ferry could not be maintained in a condition to be used in crossing +troops upon it. For this reason Hooker's orders were changed by +telegraph back to what they were originally.------ + +NOTE.--From this point on this volume was written (with the exception of +the campaign in the Wilderness, which had been previously written) by +General Grant, after his great illness in April, and the present +arrangement of the subject-matter was made by him between the 10th and +18th of July, 1885. + + + +CHAPTER XLV. + +THE RELIEF OF KNOXVILLE--HEADQUARTERS MOVED TO NASHVILLE--VISITING +KNOXVILLE-CIPHER CIPHER DISPATCHES--WITHHOLDING ORDERS. + +Chattanooga now being secure to the National troops beyond any doubt, I +immediately turned my attention to relieving Knoxville, about the +situation of which the President, in particular, was very anxious. +Prior to the battles, I had made preparations for sending troops to the +relief of Burnside at the very earliest moment after securing +Chattanooga. We had there two little steamers which had been built and +fitted up from the remains of old boats and put in condition to run. +General Thomas was directed to have one of these boats loaded with +rations and ammunition and move up the Tennessee River to the mouth of +the Holston, keeping the boat all the time abreast of the troops. +General Granger, with the 4th corps reinforced to make twenty thousand +men, was to start the moment Missionary Ridge was carried, and under no +circumstances were the troops to return to their old camps. With the +provisions carried, and the little that could be got in the country, it +was supposed he could hold out until Longstreet was driven away, after +which event East Tennessee would furnish abundance of food for +Burnside's army and his own also. + +While following the enemy on the 26th, and again on the morning of the +27th, part of the time by the road to Ringgold, I directed Thomas, +verbally, not to start Granger until he received further orders from me; +advising him that I was going to the front to more fully see the +situation. I was not right sure but that Bragg's troops might be over +their stampede by the time they reached Dalton. In that case Bragg +might think it well to take the road back to Cleveland, move thence +towards Knoxville, and, uniting with Longstreet, make a sudden dash upon +Burnside. + +When I arrived at Ringgold, however, on the 27th, I saw that the retreat +was most earnest. The enemy had been throwing away guns, caissons and +small-arms, abandoning provisions, and, altogether, seemed to be moving +like a disorganized mob, with the exception of Cleburne's division, +which was acting as rear-guard to cover the retreat. + +When Hooker moved from Rossville toward Ringgold Palmer's division took +the road to Graysville, and Sherman moved by the way of Chickamauga +Station toward the same point. As soon as I saw the situation at +Ringgold I sent a staff officer back to Chattanooga to advise Thomas of +the condition of affairs, and direct him by my orders to start Granger +at once. Feeling now that the troops were already on the march for the +relief of Burnside I was in no hurry to get back, but stayed at Ringgold +through the day to prepare for the return of our troops. + +Ringgold is in a valley in the mountains, situated between East +Chickamauga Creek and Taylor's Ridge, and about twenty miles south-east +from Chattanooga. I arrived just as the artillery that Hooker had left +behind at Chattanooga Creek got up. His men were attacking Cleburne's +division, which had taken a strong position in the adjacent hills so as +to cover the retreat of the Confederate army through a narrow gorge +which presents itself at that point. Just beyond the gorge the valley +is narrow, and the creek so tortuous that it has to be crossed a great +many times in the course of the first mile. This attack was +unfortunate, and cost us some men unnecessarily. Hooker captured, +however, 3 pieces of artillery and 230 prisoners, and 130 rebel dead +were left upon the field. + +I directed General Hooker to collect the flour and wheat in the +neighboring mills for the use of the troops, and then to destroy the +mills and all other property that could be of use to the enemy, but not +to make any wanton destruction. + +At this point Sherman came up, having reached Graysville with his +troops, where he found Palmer had preceded him. Palmer had picked up +many prisoners and much abandoned property on the route. I went back in +the evening to Graysville with Sherman, remained there over night and +did not return to Chattanooga until the following night, the 29th. I +then found that Thomas had not yet started Granger, thus having lost a +full day which I deemed of so much importance in determining the fate of +Knoxville. Thomas and Granger were aware that on the 23d of the month +Burnside had telegraphed that his supplies would last for ten or twelve +days and during that time he could hold out against Longstreet, but if +not relieved within the time indicated he would be obliged to surrender +or attempt to retreat. To effect a retreat would have been an +impossibility. He was already very low in ammunition, and with an army +pursuing he would not have been able to gather supplies. + +Finding that Granger had not only not started but was very reluctant to +go, he having decided for himself that it was a very bad move to make, I +sent word to General Sherman of the situation and directed him to march +to the relief of Knoxville. I also gave him the problem that we had to +solve--that Burnside had now but four to six days supplies left, and +that he must be relieved within that time. + +Sherman, fortunately, had not started on his return from Graysville, +having sent out detachments on the railroad which runs from Dalton to +Cleveland and Knoxville to thoroughly destroy that road, and these +troops had not yet returned to camp. I was very loath to send Sherman, +because his men needed rest after their long march from Memphis and hard +fighting at Chattanooga. But I had become satisfied that Burnside would +not be rescued if his relief depended upon General Granger's movements. + +Sherman had left his camp on the north side of the Tennessee River, near +Chattanooga, on the night of the 23d, the men having two days' cooked +rations in their haversacks. Expecting to be back in their tents by +that time and to be engaged in battle while out, they took with them +neither overcoats nor blankets. The weather was already cold, and at +night they must have suffered more or less. The two days' rations had +already lasted them five days; and they were now to go through a country +which had been run over so much by Confederate troops that there was but +little probability of finding much food. They did, however, succeed in +capturing some flour. They also found a good deal of bran in some of +the mills, which the men made up into bread; and in this and other ways +they eked out an existence until they could reach Knoxville. + +I was so very anxious that Burnside should get news of the steps being +taken for his relief, and thus induce him to hold out a little longer if +it became necessary, that I determined to send a message to him. I +therefore sent a member of my staff, Colonel J. H. Wilson, to get into +Knoxville if he could report to Burnside the situation fully, and give +him all the encouragement possible. Mr. Charles A. Dana was at +Chattanooga during the battle, and had been there even before I assumed +command. Mr. Dana volunteered to accompany Colonel Wilson, and did +accompany him. I put the information of what was being done for the +relief of Knoxville into writing, and directed that in some way or other +it must be secretly managed so as to have a copy of this fall into the +hands of General Longstreet. They made the trip safely; General +Longstreet did learn of Sherman's coming in advance of his reaching +there, and Burnside was prepared to hold out even for a longer time if +it had been necessary. + +Burnside had stretched a boom across the Holston River to catch scows +and flats as they floated down. On these, by previous arrangements with +the loyal people of East Tennessee, were placed flour and corn, with +forage and provisions generally, and were thus secured for the use of +the Union troops. They also drove cattle into Knoxville by the east +side, which was not covered by the enemy; so that when relief arrived +Burnside had more provisions on hand than when he had last reported. + +Our total loss (not including Burnside's) in all these engagements +amounted to 757 killed, 4,529 wounded and 330 missing. We captured +6,142 prisoners--about 50 per cent. more than the enemy reported for +their total loss--40 pieces of artillery, 69 artillery carriages and +caissons and over 7,000 stands of small-arms. The enemy's loss in arms +was probably much greater than here reported, because we picked up a +great many that were found abandoned. + +I had at Chattanooga, in round numbers, about 60,000 men. Bragg had +about half this number, but his position was supposed to be impregnable. +It was his own fault that he did not have more men present. He had sent +Longstreet away with his corps swelled by reinforcements up to over +twenty thousand men, thus reducing his own force more than one-third and +depriving himself of the presence of the ablest general of his command. +He did this, too, after our troops had opened a line of communication by +way of Brown's and Kelly's ferries with Bridgeport, thus securing full +rations and supplies of every kind; and also when he knew reinforcements +were coming to me. Knoxville was of no earthly use to him while +Chattanooga was in our hands. If he should capture Chattanooga, +Knoxville with its garrison would have fallen into his hands without a +struggle. I have never been able to see the wisdom of this move. + +Then, too, after Sherman had arrived, and when Bragg knew that he was on +the north side of the Tennessee River, he sent Buckner's division to +reinforce Longstreet. He also started another division a day later, but +our attack having commenced before it reached Knoxville Bragg ordered it +back. It had got so far, however, that it could not return to +Chattanooga in time to be of service there. It is possible this latter +blunder may have been made by Bragg having become confused as to what +was going on on our side. Sherman had, as already stated, crossed to +the north side of the Tennessee River at Brown's Ferry, in full view of +Bragg's troops from Lookout Mountain, a few days before the attack. +They then disappeared behind foot hills, and did not come to the view of +the troops on Missionary Ridge until they met their assault. Bragg knew +it was Sherman's troops that had crossed, and, they being so long out of +view, may have supposed that they had gone up the north bank of the +Tennessee River to the relief of Knoxville and that Longstreet was +therefore in danger. But the first great blunder, detaching Longstreet, +cannot be accounted for in any way I know of. If he had captured +Chattanooga, East Tennessee would have fallen without a struggle. It +would have been a victory for us to have got our army away from +Chattanooga safely. It was a manifold greater victory to drive away the +besieging army; a still greater one to defeat that army in his chosen +ground and nearly annihilate it. + +The probabilities are that our loss in killed was the heavier, as we +were the attacking party. The enemy reported his loss in killed at 361: +but as he reported his missing at 4,146, while we held over 6,000 of +them as prisoners, and there must have been hundreds if not thousands +who deserted, but little reliance can be placed on this report. There +was certainly great dissatisfaction with Bragg on the part of the +soldiers for his harsh treatment of them, and a disposition to get away +if they could. Then, too, Chattanooga, following in the same half year +with Gettysburg in the East and Vicksburg in the West, there was much +the same feeling in the South at this time that there had been in the +North the fall and winter before. If the same license had been allowed +the people and press in the South that was allowed in the North, +Chattanooga would probably have been the last battle fought for the +preservation of the Union. + +General William F. Smith's services in these battles had been such that +I thought him eminently entitled to promotion. I was aware that he had +previously been named by the President for promotion to the grade of +major-general, but that the Senate had rejected the nomination. I was +not aware of the reasons for this course, and therefore strongly +recommended him for a major-generalcy. My recommendation was heeded and +the appointment made. + +Upon the raising of the siege of Knoxville I, of course, informed the +authorities at Washington--the President and Secretary of War--of the +fact, which caused great rejoicing there. The President especially was +rejoiced that Knoxville had been relieved (*18) without further +bloodshed. The safety of Burnside's army and the loyal people of East +Tennessee had been the subject of much anxiety to the President for +several months, during which time he was doing all he could to relieve +the situation; sending a new commander (*19) with a few thousand troops +by the way of Cumberland Gap, and telegraphing me daily, almost hourly, +to "remember Burnside," "do something for Burnside," and other appeals +of like tenor. He saw no escape for East Tennessee until after our +victory at Chattanooga. Even then he was afraid that Burnside might be +out of ammunition, in a starving condition, or overpowered: and his +anxiety was still intense until he heard that Longstreet had been driven +from the field. + +Burnside followed Longstreet only to Strawberry Plains, some twenty +miles or more east, and then stopped, believing that Longstreet would +leave the State. The latter did not do so, however, but stopped only a +short distance farther on and subsisted his army for the entire winter +off East Tennessee. Foster now relieved Burnside. Sherman made +disposition of his troops along the Tennessee River in accordance with +instructions. I left Thomas in command at Chattanooga, and, about the +20th of December, moved my headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee. + +Nashville was the most central point from which to communicate with my +entire military division, and also with the authorities at Washington. +While remaining at Chattanooga I was liable to have my telegraphic +communications cut so as to throw me out of communication with both my +command and Washington. + +Nothing occurred at Nashville worthy of mention during the winter, (*20) +so I set myself to the task of having troops in positions from which +they could move to advantage, and in collecting all necessary supplies +so as to be ready to claim a due share of the enemy's attention upon the +appearance of the first good weather in the spring. I expected to +retain the command I then had, and prepared myself for the campaign +against Atlanta. I also had great hopes of having a campaign made +against Mobile from the Gulf. I expected after Atlanta fell to occupy +that place permanently, and to cut off Lee's army from the West by way +of the road running through Augusta to Atlanta and thence south-west. I +was preparing to hold Atlanta with a small garrison, and it was my +expectation to push through to Mobile if that city was in our +possession: if not, to Savannah; and in this manner to get possession +of the only east and west railroad that would then be left to the enemy. +But the spring campaign against Mobile was not made. + +The Army of the Ohio had been getting supplies over Cumberland Gap until +their animals had nearly all starved. I now determined to go myself to +see if there was any possible chance of using that route in the spring, +and if not to abandon it. Accordingly I left Nashville in the latter +part of December by rail for Chattanooga. From Chattanooga I took one of +the little steamers previously spoken of as having been built there, +and, putting my horses aboard, went up to the junction of the Clinch +with the Tennessee. From that point the railroad had been repaired up +to Knoxville and out east to Strawberry Plains. I went by rail +therefore to Knoxville, where I remained for several days. General John +G. Foster was then commanding the Department of the Ohio. It was an +intensely cold winter, the thermometer being down as low as zero every +morning for more than a week while I was at Knoxville and on my way from +there on horseback to Lexington, Kentucky, the first point where I could +reach rail to carry me back to my headquarters at Nashville. + +The road over Cumberland Gap, and back of it, was strewn with debris of +broken wagons and dead animals, much as I had found it on my first trip +to Chattanooga over Waldron's Ridge. The road had been cut up to as +great a depth as clay could be by mules and wagons, and in that +condition frozen; so that the ride of six days from Strawberry Plains to +Lexington over these holes and knobs in the road was a very cheerless +one, and very disagreeable. + +I found a great many people at home along that route, both in Tennessee +and Kentucky, and, almost universally, intensely loyal. They would +collect in little places where we would stop of evenings, to see me, +generally hearing of my approach before we arrived. The people +naturally expected to see the commanding general the oldest person in +the party. I was then forty-one years of age, while my medical director +was gray-haired and probably twelve or more years my senior. The crowds +would generally swarm around him, and thus give me an opportunity of +quietly dismounting and getting into the house. It also gave me an +opportunity of hearing passing remarks from one spectator to another +about their general. Those remarks were apt to be more complimentary to +the cause than to the appearance of the supposed general, owing to his +being muffled up, and also owing to the travel-worn condition we were +all in after a hard day's ride. I was back in Nashville by the 13th of +January, 1864. + +When I started on this trip it was necessary for me to have some person +along who could turn dispatches into cipher, and who could also read the +cipher dispatches which I was liable to receive daily and almost hourly. +Under the rules of the War Department at that time, Mr. Stanton had +taken entire control of the matter of regulating the telegraph and +determining how it should be used, and of saying who, and who alone, +should have the ciphers. The operators possessed of the ciphers, as +well as the ciphers used, were practically independent of the commanders +whom they were serving immediately under, and had to report to the War +Department through General Stager all the dispatches which they received +or forwarded. + +I was obliged to leave the telegraphic operator back at Nashville, +because that was the point at which all dispatches to me would come, to +be forwarded from there. As I have said, it was necessary for me also +to have an operator during this inspection who had possession of this +cipher to enable me to telegraph to my division and to the War +Department without my dispatches being read by all the operators along +the line of wires over which they were transmitted. Accordingly I +ordered the cipher operator to turn over the key to Captain Cyrus B. +Comstock, of the Corps of Engineers, whom I had selected as a wise and +discreet man who certainly could be trusted with the cipher if the +operator at my headquarters could. + +The operator refused point blank to turn over the key to Captain +Comstock as directed by me, stating that his orders from the War +Department were not to give it to anybody--the commanding general or any +one else. I told him I would see whether he would or not. He said that +if he did he would be punished. I told him if he did not he most +certainly would be punished. Finally, seeing that punishment was certain +if he refused longer to obey my order, and being somewhat remote (even +if he was not protected altogether from the consequences of his +disobedience to his orders) from the War Department, he yielded. When I +returned from Knoxville I found quite a commotion. The operator had +been reprimanded very severely and ordered to be relieved. I informed +the Secretary of War, or his assistant secretary in charge of the +telegraph, Stager, that the man could not be relieved, for he had only +obeyed my orders. It was absolutely necessary for me to have the +cipher, and the man would most certainly have been punished if he had +not delivered it; that they would have to punish me if they punished +anybody, or words to that effect. + +This was about the only thing approaching a disagreeable difference +between the Secretary of War and myself that occurred until the war was +over, when we had another little spat. Owing to his natural disposition +to assume all power and control in all matters that he had anything +whatever to do with, he boldly took command of the armies, and, while +issuing no orders on the subject, prohibited any order from me going out +of the adjutant-general's office until he had approved it. This was +done by directing the adjutant-general to hold any orders that came from +me to be issued from the adjutant-general's office until he had examined +them and given his approval. He never disturbed himself, either, in +examining my orders until it was entirely convenient for him; so that +orders which I had prepared would often lie there three or four days +before he would sanction them. I remonstrated against this in writing, +and the Secretary apologetically restored me to my rightful position of +General-in-Chief of the Army. But he soon lapsed again and took control +much as before. + +After the relief of Knoxville Sherman had proposed to Burnside that he +should go with him to drive Longstreet out of Tennessee; but Burnside +assured him that with the troops which had been brought by Granger, and +which were to be left, he would be amply prepared to dispose of +Longstreet without availing himself of this offer. As before stated +Sherman's command had left their camps north of the Tennessee, near +Chattanooga, with two days' rations in their haversacks, without coats +or blankets, and without many wagons, expecting to return to their camps +by the end of that time. The weather was now cold and they were +suffering, but still they were ready to make the further sacrifice, had +it been required, for the good of the cause which had brought them into +service. Sherman, having accomplished the object for which he was sent, +marched back leisurely to his old camp on the Tennessee River. + + + +CHAPTER XLVI. + +OPERATIONS IN MISSISSIPPI--LONGSTREET IN EAST TENNESSEE--COMMISSIONED +LIEUTENANT-GENERAL--COMMANDING THE ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES--FIRST +INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT LINCOLN. + +Soon after his return from Knoxville I ordered Sherman to distribute his +forces from Stevenson to Decatur and thence north to Nashville; Sherman +suggested that he be permitted to go back to Mississippi, to the limits +of his own department and where most of his army still remained, for the +purpose of clearing out what Confederates might still be left on the +east bank of the Mississippi River to impede its navigation by our +boats. He expected also to have the co-operation of Banks to do the +same thing on the west shore. Of course I approved heartily. + +About the 10th of January Sherman was back in Memphis, where Hurlbut +commanded, and got together his Memphis men, or ordered them collected +and sent to Vicksburg. He then went to Vicksburg and out to where +McPherson was in command, and had him organize his surplus troops so as +to give him about 20,000 men in all. + +Sherman knew that General (Bishop) Polk was occupying Meridian with his +headquarters, and had two divisions of infantry with a considerable +force of cavalry scattered west of him. He determined, therefore, to +move directly upon Meridian. + +I had sent some 2,500 cavalry under General Sooy Smith to Sherman's +department, and they had mostly arrived before Sherman got to Memphis. +Hurlbut had 7,000 cavalry, and Sherman ordered him to reinforce Smith so +as to give the latter a force of about 7,000 with which to go against +Forrest, who was then known to be south-east from Memphis. Smith was +ordered to move about the 1st of February. + +While Sherman was waiting at Vicksburg for the arrival of Hurlbut with +his surplus men, he sent out scouts to ascertain the position and +strength of the enemy and to bring back all the information they could +gather. When these scouts returned it was through them that he got the +information of General Polk's being at Meridian, and of the strength and +disposition of his command. + +Forrest had about 4,000 cavalry with him, composed of thoroughly +well-disciplined men, who under so able a leader were very effective. +Smith's command was nearly double that of Forrest, but not equal, man to +man, for the lack of a successful experience such as Forrest's men had +had. The fact is, troops who have fought a few battles and won, and +followed up their victories, improve upon what they were before to an +extent that can hardly be counted by percentage. The difference in +result is often decisive victory instead of inglorious defeat. This +same difference, too, is often due to the way troops are officered, and +for the particular kind of warfare which Forrest had carried on neither +army could present a more effective officer than he was. + +Sherman got off on the 3d of February and moved out on his expedition, +meeting with no opposition whatever until he crossed the Big Black, and +with no great deal of opposition after that until he reached Jackson, +Mississippi. This latter place he reached on the 6th or 7th, Brandon on +the 8th, and Morton on the 9th. Up to this time he moved in two columns +to enable him to get a good supply of forage, etc., and expedite the +march. Here, however, there were indications of the concentration of +Confederate infantry, and he was obliged to keep his army close +together. He had no serious engagement; but he met some of the enemy +who destroyed a few of his wagons about Decatur, Mississippi, where, by +the way, Sherman himself came near being picked up. + +He entered Meridian on the 14th of the month, the enemy having retreated +toward Demopolis, Alabama. He spent several days in Meridian in +thoroughly destroying the railroad to the north and south, and also for +the purpose of hearing from Sooy Smith, who he supposed had met Forrest +before this time and he hoped had gained a decisive victory because of a +superiority of numbers. Hearing nothing of him, however, he started on +his return trip to Vicksburg. There he learned that Smith, while +waiting for a few of his men who had been ice-bound in the Ohio River, +instead of getting off on the 1st as expected, had not left until the +11th. Smith did meet Forrest, but the result was decidedly in Forrest's +favor. + +Sherman had written a letter to Banks, proposing a co-operative movement +with him against Shreveport, subject to my approval. I disapproved of +Sherman's going himself, because I had other important work for him to +do, but consented that he might send a few troops to the aid of Banks, +though their time to remain absent must be limited. We must have them +for the spring campaign. The trans-Mississippi movement proved +abortive. + +My eldest son, who had accompanied me on the Vicksburg campaign and +siege, had while there contracted disease, which grew worse, until he +had grown so dangerously ill that on the 24th of January I obtained +permission to go to St. Louis, where he was staying at the time, to see +him, hardly expecting to find him alive on my arrival. While I was +permitted to go, I was not permitted to turn over my command to any one +else, but was directed to keep the headquarters with me and to +communicate regularly with all parts of my division and with Washington, +just as though I had remained at Nashville. + +When I obtained this leave I was at Chattanooga, having gone there again +to make preparations to have the troops of Thomas in the southern part +of Tennessee co-operate with Sherman's movement in Mississippi. I +directed Thomas, and Logan who was at Scottsboro, Alabama, to keep up a +threatening movement to the south against J. E. Johnston, who had again +relieved Bragg, for the purpose of making him keep as many troops as +possible there. + +I learned through Confederate sources that Johnston had already sent two +divisions in the direction of Mobile, presumably to operate against +Sherman, and two more divisions to Longstreet in East Tennessee. Seeing +that Johnston had depleted in this way, I directed Thomas to send at +least ten thousand men, besides Stanley's division which was already to +the east, into East Tennessee, and notified Schofield, who was now in +command in East Tennessee, of this movement of troops into his +department and also of the reinforcements Longstreet had received. My +object was to drive Longstreet out of East Tennessee as a part of the +preparations for my spring campaign. + +About this time General Foster, who had been in command of the +Department of the Ohio after Burnside until Schofield relieved him +(*21), advised me that he thought it would be a good thing to keep +Longstreet just where he was; that he was perfectly quiet in East +Tennessee, and if he was forced to leave there, his whole well-equipped +army would be free to go to any place where it could effect the most for +their cause. I thought the advice was good, and, adopting that view, +countermanded the orders for pursuit of Longstreet. + +On the 12th of February I ordered Thomas to take Dalton and hold it, if +possible; and I directed him to move without delay. Finding that he had +not moved, on the 17th I urged him again to start, telling him how +important it was, that the object of the movement was to co-operate with +Sherman, who was moving eastward and might be in danger. Then again on +the 21st, he not yet having started, I asked him if he could not start +the next day. He finally got off on the 22d or 23d. The enemy fell +back from his front without a battle, but took a new position quite as +strong and farther to the rear. Thomas reported that he could not go +any farther, because it was impossible with his poor teams, nearly +starved, to keep up supplies until the railroads were repaired. He soon +fell back. + +Schofield also had to return for the same reason. He could not carry +supplies with him, and Longstreet was between him and the supplies still +left in the country. Longstreet, in his retreat, would be moving +towards his supplies, while our forces, following, would be receding +from theirs. On the 2d of March, however, I learned of Sherman's +success, which eased my mind very much. The next day, the 3d, I was +ordered to Washington. + +The bill restoring the grade of lieutenant-general of the army had +passed through Congress and became a law on the 26th of February. My +nomination had been sent to the Senate on the 1st of March and confirmed +the next day (the 2d). I was ordered to Washington on the 3d to receive +my commission, and started the day following that. The commission was +handed to me on the 9th. It was delivered to me at the Executive +Mansion by President Lincoln in the presence of his Cabinet, my eldest +son, those of my staff who were with me and and a few other visitors. + +The President in presenting my commission read from a paper--stating, +however, as a preliminary, and prior to the delivery of it, that he had +drawn that up on paper, knowing my disinclination to speak in public, +and handed me a copy in advance so that I might prepare a few lines of +reply. The President said: + +"General Grant, the nation's appreciation of what you have done, and its +reliance upon you for what remains to be done in the existing great +struggle, are now presented, with this commission constituting you +lieutenant-general in the Army of the United States. With this high +honor, devolves upon you, also, a corresponding responsibility. As the +country herein trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain you. I +scarcely need to add, that, with what I here speak for the nation, goes +my own hearty personal concurrence." + +To this I replied: "Mr. President, I accept the commission, with +gratitude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of the noble +armies that have fought in so many fields for our common country, it +will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expectations. I feel +the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me; and I know +that if they are met, it will be due to those armies, and above all, to +the favor of that Providence which leads both nations and men." + +On the 10th I visited the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac at +Brandy Station; then returned to Washington, and pushed west at once to +make my arrangements for turning over the commands there and giving +general directions for the preparations to be made for the spring +campaign. + +It had been my intention before this to remain in the West, even if I +was made lieutenant-general; but when I got to Washington and saw the +situation it was plain that here was the point for the commanding +general to be. No one else could, probably, resist the pressure that +would be brought to bear upon him to desist from his own plans and +pursue others. I determined, therefore, before I started back to have +Sherman advanced to my late position, McPherson to Sherman's in command +of the department, and Logan to the command of McPherson's corps. These +changes were all made on my recommendation and without hesitation. My +commission as lieutenant-general was given to me on the 9th of March, +1864. On the following day, as already stated, I visited General Meade, +commanding the Army of the Potomac, at his headquarters at Brandy +Station, north of the Rapidan. I had known General Meade slightly in +the Mexican war, but had not met him since until this visit. I was a +stranger to most of the Army of the Potomac, I might say to all except +the officers of the regular army who had served in the Mexican war. +There had been some changes ordered in the organization of that army +before my promotion. One was the consolidation of five corps into +three, thus throwing some officers of rank out of important commands. +Meade evidently thought that I might want to make still one more change +not yet ordered. He said to me that I might want an officer who had +served with me in the West, mentioning Sherman specially, to take his +place. If so, he begged me not to hesitate about making the change. He +urged that the work before us was of such vast importance to the whole +nation that the feeling or wishes of no one person should stand in the +way of selecting the right men for all positions. For himself, he would +serve to the best of his ability wherever placed. I assured him that I +had no thought of substituting any one for him. As to Sherman, he could +not be spared from the West. + +This incident gave me even a more favorable opinion of Meade than did +his great victory at Gettysburg the July before. It is men who wait to +be selected, and not those who seek, from whom we may always expect the +most efficient service. + +Meade's position afterwards proved embarrassing to me if not to him. He +was commanding an army and, for nearly a year previous to my taking +command of all the armies, was in supreme command of the Army of the +Potomac--except from the authorities at Washington. All other general +officers occupying similar positions were independent in their commands +so far as any one present with them was concerned. I tried to make +General Meade's position as nearly as possible what it would have been +if I had been in Washington or any other place away from his command. I +therefore gave all orders for the movements of the Army of the Potomac +to Meade to have them executed. To avoid the necessity of having to +give orders direct, I established my headquarters near his, unless there +were reasons for locating them elsewhere. This sometimes happened, and +I had on occasions to give orders direct to the troops affected. On the +11th I returned to Washington and, on the day after, orders were +published by the War Department placing me in command of all the armies. +I had left Washington the night before to return to my old command in +the West and to meet Sherman whom I had telegraphed to join me in +Nashville. + +Sherman assumed command of the military division of the Mississippi on +the 18th of March, and we left Nashville together for Cincinnati. I had +Sherman accompany me that far on my way back to Washington so that we +could talk over the matters about which I wanted to see him, without +losing any more time from my new command than was necessary. The first +point which I wished to discuss was particularly about the co-operation +of his command with mine when the spring campaign should commence. There +were also other and minor points, minor as compared with the great +importance of the question to be decided by sanguinary war--the +restoration to duty of officers who had been relieved from important +commands, namely McClellan, Burnside and Fremont in the East, and Buell, +McCook, Negley and Crittenden in the West. + +Some time in the winter of 1863-64 I had been invited by the +general-in-chief to give my views of the campaign I thought advisable +for the command under me--now Sherman's. General J. E. Johnston was +defending Atlanta and the interior of Georgia with an army, the largest +part of which was stationed at Dalton, about 38 miles south of +Chattanooga. Dalton is at the junction of the railroad from Cleveland +with the one from Chattanooga to Atlanta. + +There could have been no difference of opinion as to the first duty of +the armies of the military division of the Mississippi. Johnston's army +was the first objective, and that important railroad centre, Atlanta, +the second. At the time I wrote General Halleck giving my views of the +approaching campaign, and at the time I met General Sherman, it was +expected that General Banks would be through with the campaign which he +had been ordered upon before my appointment to the command of all the +armies, and would be ready to co-operate with the armies east of the +Mississippi, his part in the programme being to move upon Mobile by land +while the navy would close the harbor and assist to the best of its +ability. (*22) The plan therefore was for Sherman to attack Johnston and +destroy his army if possible, to capture Atlanta and hold it, and with +his troops and those of Banks to hold a line through to Mobile, or at +least to hold Atlanta and command the railroad running east and west, +and the troops from one or other of the armies to hold important points +on the southern road, the only east and west road that would be left in +the possession of the enemy. This would cut the Confederacy in two +again, as our gaining possession of the Mississippi River had done +before. Banks was not ready in time for the part assigned to him, and +circumstances that could not be foreseen determined the campaign which +was afterwards made, the success and grandeur of which has resounded +throughout all lands. + +In regard to restoring officers who had been relieved from important +commands to duty again, I left Sherman to look after those who had been +removed in the West while I looked out for the rest. I directed, +however, that he should make no assignment until I could speak to the +Secretary of War about the matter. I shortly after recommended to the +Secretary the assignment of General Buell to duty. I received the +assurance that duty would be offered to him; and afterwards the +Secretary told me that he had offered Buell an assignment and that the +latter had declined it, saying that it would be degradation to accept +the assignment offered. I understood afterwards that he refused to +serve under either Sherman or Canby because he had ranked them both. +Both graduated before him and ranked him in the old army. Sherman +ranked him as a brigadier-general. All of them ranked me in the old +army, and Sherman and Buell did as brigadiers. The worst excuse a +soldier can make for declining service is that he once ranked the +commander he is ordered to report to. + +On the 23d of March I was back in Washington, and on the 26th took up my +headquarters at Culpeper Court-House, a few miles south of the +headquarters of the Army of the Potomac. + +Although hailing from Illinois myself, the State of the President, I +never met Mr. Lincoln until called to the capital to receive my +commission as lieutenant-general. I knew him, however, very well and +favorably from the accounts given by officers under me at the West who +had known him all their lives. I had also read the remarkable series of +debates between Lincoln and Douglas a few years before, when they were +rival candidates for the United States Senate. I was then a resident of +Missouri, and by no means a "Lincoln man" in that contest; but I +recognized then his great ability. + +In my first interview with Mr. Lincoln alone he stated to me that he had +never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be +conducted, and never wanted to interfere in them: but that +procrastination on the part of commanders, and the pressure from the +people at the North and Congress, WHICH WAS ALWAYS WITH HIM, forced him +into issuing his series of "Military Orders"--one, two, three, etc. He +did not know but they were all wrong, and did know that some of them +were. All he wanted or had ever wanted was some one who would take the +responsibility and act, and call on him for all the assistance needed, +pledging himself to use all the power of the government in rendering +such assistance. Assuring him that I would do the best I could with the +means at hand, and avoid as far as possible annoying him or the War +Department, our first interview ended. + +The Secretary of War I had met once before only, but felt that I knew +him better. + +While commanding in West Tennessee we had occasionally held +conversations over the wires, at night, when they were not being +otherwise used. He and General Halleck both cautioned me against giving +the President my plans of campaign, saying that he was so kind-hearted, +so averse to refusing anything asked of him, that some friend would be +sure to get from him all he knew. I should have said that in our +interview the President told me he did not want to know what I proposed +to do. But he submitted a plan of campaign of his own which he wanted +me to hear and then do as I pleased about. He brought out a map of +Virginia on which he had evidently marked every position occupied by the +Federal and Confederate armies up to that time. He pointed out on the +map two streams which empty into the Potomac, and suggested that the +army might be moved on boats and landed between the mouths of these +streams. We would then have the Potomac to bring our supplies, and the +tributaries would protect our flanks while we moved out. I listened +respectfully, but did not suggest that the same streams would protect +Lee's flanks while he was shutting us up. + +I did not communicate my plans to the President, nor did I to the +Secretary of War or to General Halleck. + +March the 26th my headquarters were, as stated, at Culpeper, and the +work of preparing for an early campaign commenced. + + + +CHAPTER XLVII. + +THE MILITARY SITUATION--PLANS FOR THE CAMPAIGN--SHERIDAN ASSIGNED TO +COMMAND OF THE CAVALRY--FLANK MOVEMENTS--FORREST AT FORT PILLOW--GENERAL +BANKS'S EXPEDITION--COLONEL MOSBY--AN INCIDENT OF THE WILDERNESS +CAMPAIGN. + +When I assumed command of all the armies the situation was about this: +the Mississippi River was guarded from St. Louis to its mouth; the line +of the Arkansas was held, thus giving us all the North-west north of +that river. A few points in Louisiana not remote from the river were +held by the Federal troops, as was also the mouth of the Rio Grande. +East of the Mississippi we held substantially all north of the Memphis +and Charleston Railroad as far east as Chattanooga, thence along the +line of the Tennessee and Holston rivers, taking in nearly all of the +State of Tennessee. West Virginia was in our hands; and that part of +old Virginia north of the Rapidan and east of the Blue Ridge we also +held. On the sea-coast we had Fortress Monroe and Norfolk in Virginia; +Plymouth, Washington and New Berne in North Carolina; Beaufort, Folly +and Morris islands, Hilton Head, Port Royal and Fort Pulaski in South +Carolina and Georgia; Fernandina, St. Augustine, Key West and Pensacola +in Florida. The balance of the Southern territory, an empire in extent, +was still in the hands of the enemy. + +Sherman, who had succeeded me in the command of the military division of +the Mississippi, commanded all the troops in the territory west of the +Alleghanies and north of Natchez, with a large movable force about +Chattanooga. His command was subdivided into four departments, but the +commanders all reported to Sherman and were subject to his orders. This +arrangement, however, insured the better protection of all lines of +communication through the acquired territory, for the reason that these +different department commanders could act promptly in case of a sudden +or unexpected raid within their respective jurisdictions without +awaiting the orders of the division commander. + +In the East the opposing forces stood in substantially the same +relations towards each other as three years before, or when the war +began; they were both between the Federal and Confederate capitals. It +is true, footholds had been secured by us on the sea-coast, in Virginia +and North Carolina, but, beyond that, no substantial advantage had been +gained by either side. Battles had been fought of as great severity as +had ever been known in war, over ground from the James River and +Chickahominy, near Richmond, to Gettysburg and Chambersburg, in +Pennsylvania, with indecisive results, sometimes favorable to the +National army, sometimes to the Confederate army; but in every instance, +I believe, claimed as victories for the South by the Southern press if +not by the Southern generals. The Northern press, as a whole, did not +discourage these claims; a portion of it always magnified rebel success +and belittled ours, while another portion, most sincerely earnest in +their desire for the preservation of the Union and the overwhelming +success of the Federal armies, would nevertheless generally express +dissatisfaction with whatever victories were gained because they were +not more complete. + +That portion of the Army of the Potomac not engaged in guarding lines of +communication was on the northern bank of the Rapidan. The Army of +Northern Virginia confronting it on the opposite bank of the same river, +was strongly intrenched and commanded by the acknowledged ablest general +in the Confederate army. The country back to the James River is cut up +with many streams, generally narrow, deep, and difficult to cross except +where bridged. The region is heavily timbered, and the roads narrow, +and very bad after the least rain. Such an enemy was not, of course, +unprepared with adequate fortifications at convenient intervals all the +way back to Richmond, so that when driven from one fortified position +they would always have another farther to the rear to fall back into. + +To provision an army, campaigning against so formidable a foe through +such a country, from wagons alone seemed almost impossible. System and +discipline were both essential to its accomplishment. + +The Union armies were now divided into nineteen departments, though four +of them in the West had been concentrated into a single military +division. The Army of the Potomac was a separate command and had no +territorial limits. There were thus seventeen distinct commanders. +Before this time these various armies had acted separately and +independently of each other, giving the enemy an opportunity often of +depleting one command, not pressed, to reinforce another more actively +engaged. I determined to stop this. To this end I regarded the Army of +the Potomac as the centre, and all west to Memphis along the line +described as our position at the time, and north of it, the right wing; +the Army of the James, under General Butler, as the left wing, and all +the troops south, as a force in rear of the enemy. Some of these latter +were occupying positions from which they could not render service +proportionate to their numerical strength. All such were depleted to +the minimum necessary to hold their positions as a guard against +blockade runners; where they could not do this their positions were +abandoned altogether. In this way ten thousand men were added to the +Army of the James from South Carolina alone, with General Gillmore in +command. It was not contemplated that General Gillmore should leave his +department; but as most of his troops were taken, presumably for active +service, he asked to accompany them and was permitted to do so. +Officers and soldiers on furlough, of whom there were many thousands, +were ordered to their proper commands; concentration was the order of +the day, and to have it accomplished in time to advance at the earliest +moment the roads would permit was the problem. + +As a reinforcement to the Army of the Potomac, or to act in support of +it, the 9th army corps, over twenty thousand strong, under General +Burnside, had been rendezvoused at Annapolis, Maryland. This was an +admirable position for such a reinforcement. The corps could be brought +at the last moment as a reinforcement to the Army of the Potomac, or it +could be thrown on the sea-coast, south of Norfolk, in Virginia or North +Carolina, to operate against Richmond from that direction. In fact +Burnside and the War Department both thought the 9th corps was intended +for such an expedition up to the last moment. + +My general plan now was to concentrate all the force possible against +the Confederate armies in the field. There were but two such, as we +have seen, east of the Mississippi River and facing north. The Army of +Northern Virginia, General Robert E. Lee commanding, was on the south +bank of the Rapidan, confronting the Army of the Potomac; the second, +under General Joseph E. Johnston, was at Dalton, Georgia, opposed to +Sherman who was still at Chattanooga. Beside these main armies the +Confederates had to guard the Shenandoah Valley, a great storehouse to +feed their armies from, and their line of communications from Richmond +to Tennessee. Forrest, a brave and intrepid cavalry general, was in the +West with a large force; making a larger command necessary to hold what +we had gained in Middle and West Tennessee. We could not abandon any +territory north of the line held by the enemy because it would lay the +Northern States open to invasion. But as the Army of the Potomac was +the principal garrison for the protection of Washington even while it +was moving on Lee, so all the forces to the west, and the Army of the +James, guarded their special trusts when advancing from them as well as +when remaining at them. Better indeed, for they forced the enemy to +guard his own lines and resources at a greater distance from ours, and +with a greater force. Little expeditions could not so well be sent out +to destroy a bridge or tear up a few miles of railroad track, burn a +storehouse, or inflict other little annoyances. Accordingly I arranged +for a simultaneous movement all along the line. Sherman was to move +from Chattanooga, Johnston's army and Atlanta being his objective +points. (*23) Crook, commanding in West Virginia, was to move from the +mouth of the Gauley River with a cavalry force and some artillery, the +Virginia and Tennessee Railroad to be his objective. Either the enemy +would have to keep a large force to protect their communications, or see +them destroyed and a large amount of forage and provision, which they so +much needed, fall into our hands. Sigel was in command in the Valley of +Virginia. He was to advance up the valley, covering the North from an +invasion through that channel as well while advancing as by remaining +near Harper's Ferry. Every mile he advanced also gave us possession of +stores on which Lee relied. Butler was to advance by the James River, +having Richmond and Petersburg as his objective. + +Before the advance commenced I visited Butler at Fort Monroe. This was +the first time I had ever met him. Before giving him any order as to +the part he was to play in the approaching campaign I invited his views. +They were very much such as I intended to direct, and as I did direct +(*24), in writing, before leaving. + +General W. F. Smith, who had been promoted to the rank of major-general +shortly after the battle of Chattanooga on my recommendation, had not +yet been confirmed. I found a decided prejudice against his +confirmation by a majority of the Senate, but I insisted that his +services had been such that he should be rewarded. My wishes were now +reluctantly complied with, and I assigned him to the command of one of +the corps under General Butler. I was not long in finding out that the +objections to Smith's promotion were well founded. + +In one of my early interviews with the President I expressed my +dissatisfaction with the little that had been accomplished by the +cavalry so far in the war, and the belief that it was capable of +accomplishing much more than it had done if under a thorough leader. I +said I wanted the very best man in the army for that command. Halleck +was present and spoke up, saying: "How would Sheridan do?" I replied: +"The very man I want." The President said I could have anybody I wanted. +Sheridan was telegraphed for that day, and on his arrival was assigned +to the command of the cavalry corps with the Army of the Potomac. This +relieved General Alfred Pleasonton. It was not a reflection on that +officer, however, for I did not know but that he had been as efficient +as any other cavalry commander. + +Banks in the Department of the Gulf was ordered to assemble all the +troops he had at New Orleans in time to join in the general move, Mobile +to be his objective. + +At this time I was not entirely decided as to whether I should move the +Army of the Potomac by the right flank of the enemy, or by his left. +Each plan presented advantages. (*25) If by his right--my left--the +Potomac, Chesapeake Bay and tributaries would furnish us an easy hauling +distance of every position the army could occupy from the Rapidan to the +James River. But Lee could, if he chose, detach or move his whole army +north on a line rather interior to the one I would have to take in +following. A movement by his left--our right--would obviate this; but +all that was done would have to be done with the supplies and ammunition +we started with. All idea of adopting this latter plan was abandoned +when the limited quantity of supplies possible to take with us was +considered. The country over which we would have to pass was so +exhausted of all food or forage that we would be obliged to carry +everything with us. + +While these preparations were going on the enemy was not entirely idle. +In the West Forrest made a raid in West Tennessee up to the northern +border, capturing the garrison of four or five hundred men at Union +City, and followed it up by an attack on Paducah, Kentucky, on the banks +of the Ohio. While he was able to enter the city he failed to capture +the forts or any part of the garrison. On the first intelligence of +Forrest's raid I telegraphed Sherman to send all his cavalry against +him, and not to let him get out of the trap he had put himself into. +Sherman had anticipated me by sending troops against him before he got +my order. + +Forrest, however, fell back rapidly, and attacked the troops at Fort +Pillow, a station for the protection of the navigation of the +Mississippi River. The garrison consisted of a regiment of colored +troops, infantry, and a detachment of Tennessee cavalry. These troops +fought bravely, but were overpowered. I will leave Forrest in his +dispatches to tell what he did with them. + +"The river was dyed," he says, "with the blood of the slaughtered for +two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred +killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty +killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern +people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners." Subsequently +Forrest made a report in which he left out the part which shocks +humanity to read. + +At the East, also, the rebels were busy. I had said to Halleck that +Plymouth and Washington, North Carolina, were unnecessary to hold. It +would be better to have the garrisons engaged there added to Butler's +command. If success attended our arms both places, and others too, +would fall into our hands naturally. These places had been occupied by +Federal troops before I took command of the armies, and I knew that the +Executive would be reluctant to abandon them, and therefore explained my +views; but before my views were carried out the rebels captured the +garrison at Plymouth. I then ordered the abandonment of Washington, but +directed the holding of New Berne at all hazards. This was essential +because New Berne was a port into which blockade runners could enter. + +General Banks had gone on an expedition up the Red River long before my +promotion to general command. I had opposed the movement strenuously, +but acquiesced because it was the order of my superior at the time. By +direction of Halleck I had reinforced Banks with a corps of about ten +thousand men from Sherman's command. This reinforcement was wanted back +badly before the forward movement commenced. But Banks had got so far +that it seemed best that he should take Shreveport on the Red River, and +turn over the line of that river to Steele, who commanded in Arkansas, +to hold instead of the line of the Arkansas. Orders were given +accordingly, and with the expectation that the campaign would be ended +in time for Banks to return A. J. Smith's command to where it belonged +and get back to New Orleans himself in time to execute his part in the +general plan. But the expedition was a failure. Banks did not get back +in time to take part in the programme as laid down. Nor was Smith +returned until long after the movements of May, 1864, had been begun. +The services of forty thousand veteran troops, over and above the number +required to hold all that was necessary in the Department of the Gulf, +were thus paralyzed. It is but just to Banks, however, to say that his +expedition was ordered from Washington and he was in no way responsible +except for the conduct of it. I make no criticism on this point. He +opposed the expedition. + +By the 27th of April spring had so far advanced as to justify me in +fixing a day for the great move. On that day Burnside left Annapolis to +occupy Meade's position between Bull Run and the Rappahannock. Meade +was notified and directed to bring his troops forward to his advance. +On the following day Butler was notified of my intended advance on the +4th of May, and he was directed to move the night of the same day and +get as far up the James River as possible by daylight, and push on from +there to accomplish the task given him. He was also notified that +reinforcements were being collected in Washington City, which would be +forwarded to him should the enemy fall back into the trenches at +Richmond. The same day Sherman was directed to get his forces up ready +to advance on the 5th. Sigel was in Winchester and was notified to move +in conjunction with the others. + +The criticism has been made by writers on the campaign from the Rapidan +to the James River that all the loss of life could have been obviated by +moving the army there on transports. Richmond was fortified and +intrenched so perfectly that one man inside to defend was more than +equal to five outside besieging or assaulting. To get possession of +Lee's army was the first great object. With the capture of his army +Richmond would necessarily follow. It was better to fight him outside +of his stronghold than in it. If the Army of the Potomac had been moved +bodily to the James River by water Lee could have moved a part of his +forces back to Richmond, called Beauregard from the south to reinforce +it, and with the balance moved on to Washington. Then, too, I ordered a +move, simultaneous with that of the Army of the Potomac, up the James +River by a formidable army already collected at the mouth of the river. + +While my headquarters were at Culpeper, from the 26th of March to the +4th of May, I generally visited Washington once a week to confer with +the Secretary of War and President. On the last occasion, a few days +before moving, a circumstance occurred which came near postponing my +part in the campaign altogether. Colonel John S. Mosby had for a long +time been commanding a partisan corps, or regiment, which operated in +the rear of the Army of the Potomac. On my return to the field on this +occasion, as the train approached Warrenton Junction, a heavy cloud of +dust was seen to the east of the road as if made by a body of cavalry on +a charge. Arriving at the junction the train was stopped and inquiries +made as to the cause of the dust. There was but one man at the station, +and he informed us that Mosby had crossed a few minutes before at full +speed in pursuit of Federal cavalry. Had he seen our train coming, no +doubt he would have let his prisoners escape to capture the train. I +was on a special train, if I remember correctly, without any guard. + +Since the close of the war I have come to know Colonel Mosby personally, +and somewhat intimately. He is a different man entirely from what I had +supposed. He is slender, not tall, wiry, and looks as if he could +endure any amount of physical exercise. He is able, and thoroughly +honest and truthful. There were probably but few men in the South who +could have commanded successfully a separate detachment in the rear of +an opposing army, and so near the border of hostilities, as long as he +did without losing his entire command. + +On this same visit to Washington I had my last interview with the +President before reaching the James River. He had of course become +acquainted with the fact that a general movement had been ordered all +along the line, and seemed to think it a new feature in war. I +explained to him that it was necessary to have a great number of troops +to guard and hold the territory we had captured, and to prevent +incursions into the Northern States. These troops could perform this +service just as well by advancing as by remaining still; and by +advancing they would compel the enemy to keep detachments to hold them +back, or else lay his own territory open to invasion. His answer was: +"Oh, yes! I see that. As we say out West, if a man can't skin he must +hold a leg while somebody else does." + +There was a certain incident connected with the Wilderness campaign of +which it may not be out of place to speak; and to avoid a digression +further on I will mention it here. + +A few days before my departure from Culpeper the Honorable E. B. +Washburne visited me there, and remained with my headquarters for some +distance south, through the battle in the Wilderness and, I think, to +Spottsylvania. He was accompanied by a Mr. Swinton, whom he presented as +a literary gentleman who wished to accompany the army with a view of +writing a history of the war when it was over. He assured me--and I +have no doubt Swinton gave him the assurance--that he was not present as +a correspondent of the press. I expressed an entire willingness to have +him (Swinton) accompany the army, and would have allowed him to do so as +a correspondent, restricted, however, in the character of the +information he could give. We received Richmond papers with about as +much regularity as if there had been no war, and knew that our papers +were received with equal regularity by the Confederates. It was +desirable, therefore, that correspondents should not be privileged spies +of the enemy within our lines. + +Probably Mr. Swinton expected to be an invited guest at my headquarters, +and was disappointed that he was not asked to become so. At all events +he was not invited, and soon I found that he was corresponding with some +paper (I have now forgotten which one), thus violating his word either +expressed or implied. He knew of the assurance Washburne had given as +to the character of his mission. I never saw the man from the day of +our introduction to the present that I recollect. He accompanied us, +however, for a time at least. + +The second night after crossing the Rapidan (the night of the 5th of +May) Colonel W. R. Rowley, of my staff, was acting as night officer at +my headquarters. A short time before midnight I gave him verbal +instructions for the night. Three days later I read in a Richmond paper +a verbatim report of these instructions. + +A few nights still later (after the first, and possibly after the +second, day's fighting in the Wilderness) General Meade came to my tent +for consultation, bringing with him some of his staff officers. Both +his staff and mine retired to the camp-fire some yards in front of the +tent, thinking our conversation should be private. There was a stump a +little to one side, and between the front of the tent and camp-fire. +One of my staff, Colonel T. S. Bowers, saw what he took to be a man +seated on the ground and leaning against the stump, listening to the +conversation between Meade and myself. He called the attention of +Colonel Rowley to it. The latter immediately took the man by the +shoulder and asked him, in language more forcible than polite, what he +was doing there. The man proved to be Swinton, the "historian," and his +replies to the question were evasive and unsatisfactory, and he was +warned against further eaves-dropping. + +The next I heard of Mr. Swinton was at Cold Harbor. General Meade came +to my headquarters saying that General Burnside had arrested Swinton, +who at some previous time had given great offence, and had ordered him +to be shot that afternoon. I promptly ordered the prisoner to be +released, but that he must be expelled from the lines of the army not to +return again on pain of punishment. + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII. + +COMMENCEMENT OF THE GRAND CAMPAIGN--GENERAL BUTLER'S POSITION +--SHERIDAN'S FIRST RAID. + +The armies were now all ready to move for the accomplishment of a single +object. They were acting as a unit so far as such a thing was possible +over such a vast field. Lee, with the capital of the Confederacy, was +the main end to which all were working. Johnston, with Atlanta, was an +important obstacle in the way of our accomplishing the result aimed at, +and was therefore almost an independent objective. It was of less +importance only because the capture of Johnston and his army would not +produce so immediate and decisive a result in closing the rebellion as +would the possession of Richmond, Lee and his army. All other troops +were employed exclusively in support of these two movements. This was +the plan; and I will now endeavor to give, as concisely as I can, the +method of its execution, outlining first the operations of minor +detached but co-operative columns. + +As stated before, Banks failed to accomplish what he had been sent to do +on the Red River, and eliminated the use of forty thousand veterans +whose cooperation in the grand campaign had been expected--ten thousand +with Sherman and thirty thousand against Mobile. + +Sigel's record is almost equally brief. He moved out, it is true, +according to programme; but just when I was hoping to hear of good work +being done in the valley I received instead the following announcement +from Halleck: "Sigel is in full retreat on Strasburg. He will do +nothing but run; never did anything else." The enemy had intercepted +him about New Market and handled him roughly, leaving him short six +guns, and some nine hundred men out of his six thousand. + +The plan had been for an advance of Sigel's forces in two columns. +Though the one under his immediate command failed ingloriously the other +proved more fortunate. Under Crook and Averell his western column +advanced from the Gauley in West Virginia at the appointed time, and +with more happy results. They reached the Virginia and Tennessee +Railroad at Dublin and destroyed a depot of supplies, besides tearing up +several miles of road and burning the bridge over New River. Having +accomplished this they recrossed the Alleghanies to Meadow Bluffs and +there awaited further orders. + +Butler embarked at Fort Monroe with all his command, except the cavalry +and some artillery which moved up the south bank of the James River. +His steamers moved first up Chesapeake Bay and York River as if +threatening the rear of Lee's army. At midnight they turned back, and +Butler by daylight was far up the James River. He seized City Point and +Bermuda Hundred early in the day, without loss and, no doubt, very much +to the surprise of the enemy. + +This was the accomplishment of the first step contemplated in my +instructions to Butler. He was to act from here, looking to Richmond as +his objective point. I had given him to understand that I should aim to +fight Lee between the Rapidan and Richmond if he would stand; but should +Lee fall back into Richmond I would follow up and make a junction of the +armies of the Potomac and the James on the James River. He was directed +to secure a footing as far up the south side of the river as he could at +as early a date as possible. + +Butler was in position by the 6th of May and had begun intrenching, and +on the 7th he sent out his cavalry from Suffolk to cut the Weldon +Railroad. He also sent out detachments to destroy the railroad between +Petersburg and Richmond, but no great success attended these latter +efforts. He made no great effort to establish himself on that road and +neglected to attack Petersburg, which was almost defenceless. About the +11th he advanced slowly until he reached the works at Drury's Bluff, +about half way between Bermuda Hundred and Richmond. In the mean time +Beauregard had been gathering reinforcements. On the 16th he attacked +Butler with great vigor, and with such success as to limit very +materially the further usefulness of the Army of the James as a distinct +factor in the campaign. I afterward ordered a portion of it to join the +Army of the Potomac, leaving a sufficient force with Butler to man his +works, hold securely the footing he had already gained and maintain a +threatening front toward the rear of the Confederate capital. + +The position which General Butler had chosen between the two rivers, the +James and Appomattox, was one of great natural strength, one where a +large area of ground might be thoroughly inclosed by means of a single +intrenched line, and that a very short one in comparison with the extent +of territory which it thoroughly protected. His right was protected by +the James River, his left by the Appomattox, and his rear by their +junction--the two streams uniting near by. The bends of the two streams +shortened the line that had been chosen for intrenchments, while it +increased the area which the line inclosed. + +Previous to ordering any troops from Butler I sent my chief engineer, +General Barnard, from the Army of the Potomac to that of the James to +inspect Butler's position and ascertain whether I could again safely +make an order for General Butler's movement in co-operation with mine, +now that I was getting so near Richmond; or, if I could not, whether his +position was strong enough to justify me in withdrawing some of his +troops and having them brought round by water to White House to join me +and reinforce the Army of the Potomac. General Barnard reported the +position very strong for defensive purposes, and that I could do the +latter with great security; but that General Butler could not move from +where he was, in co-operation, to produce any effect. He said that the +general occupied a place between the James and Appomattox rivers which +was of great strength, and where with an inferior force he could hold it +for an indefinite length of time against a superior; but that he could +do nothing offensively. I then asked him why Butler could not move out +from his lines and push across the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad to +the rear and on the south side of Richmond. He replied that it was +impracticable, because the enemy had substantially the same line across +the neck of land that General Butler had. He then took out his pencil +and drew a sketch of the locality, remarking that the position was like +a bottle and that Butler's line of intrenchments across the neck +represented the cork; that the enemy had built an equally strong line +immediately in front of him across the neck; and it was therefore as if +Butler was in a bottle. He was perfectly safe against an attack; but, +as Barnard expressed it, the enemy had corked the bottle and with a +small force could hold the cork in its place. This struck me as being +very expressive of his position, particularly when I saw the hasty +sketch which General Barnard had drawn; and in making my subsequent +report I used that expression without adding quotation marks, never +thinking that anything had been said that would attract attention--as +this did, very much to the annoyance, no doubt, of General Butler and, I +know, very much to my own. I found afterwards that this was mentioned +in the notes of General Badeau's book, which, when they were shown to +me, I asked to have stricken out; yet it was retained there, though +against my wishes. + +I make this statement here because, although I have often made it +before, it has never been in my power until now to place it where it +will correct history; and I desire to rectify all injustice that I may +have done to individuals, particularly to officers who were gallantly +serving their country during the trying period of the war for the +preservation of the Union. General Butler certainly gave his very +earnest support to the war; and he gave his own best efforts personally +to the suppression of the rebellion. + +The further operations of the Army of the James can best be treated of +in connection with those of the Army of the Potomac, the two being so +intimately associated and connected as to be substantially one body in +which the individuality of the supporting wing is merged. + +Before giving the reader a summary of Sherman's great Atlanta campaign, +which must conclude my description of the various co-operative movements +preparatory to proceeding with that of the operations of the centre, I +will briefly mention Sheridan's first raid upon Lee's communications +which, though an incident of the operations on the main line and not +specifically marked out in the original plan, attained in its brilliant +execution and results all the proportions of an independent campaign. +By thus anticipating, in point of time, I will be able to more perfectly +observe the continuity of events occurring in my immediate front when I +shall have undertaken to describe our advance from the Rapidan. + +On the 8th of May, just after the battle of the Wilderness and when we +were moving on Spottsylvania I directed Sheridan verbally to cut loose +from the Army of the Potomac, pass around the left of Lee's army and +attack his cavalry: to cut the two roads--one running west through +Gordonsville, Charlottesville and Lynchburg, the other to Richmond, and, +when compelled to do so for want of forage and rations, to move on to +the James River and draw these from Butler's supplies. This move took +him past the entire rear of Lee's army. These orders were also given in +writing through Meade. + +The object of this move was three-fold. First, if successfully +executed, and it was, he would annoy the enemy by cutting his line of +supplies and telegraphic communications, and destroy or get for his own +use supplies in store in the rear and coming up. Second, he would draw +the enemy's cavalry after him, and thus better protect our flanks, rear +and trains than by remaining with the army. Third, his absence would +save the trains drawing his forage and other supplies from +Fredericksburg, which had now become our base. He started at daylight +the next morning, and accomplished more than was expected. It was +sixteen days before he got back to the Army of the Potomac. + +The course Sheridan took was directly to Richmond. Before night Stuart, +commanding the Confederate cavalry, came on to the rear of his command. +But the advance kept on, crossed the North Anna, and at Beaver Dam, a +station on the Virginia Central Railroad, recaptured four hundred Union +prisoners on their way to Richmond, destroyed the road and used and +destroyed a large amount of subsistence and medical stores. + +Stuart, seeing that our cavalry was pushing towards Richmond, abandoned +the pursuit on the morning of the 10th and, by a detour and an +exhausting march, interposed between Sheridan and Richmond at Yellow +Tavern, only about six miles north of the city. Sheridan destroyed the +railroad and more supplies at Ashland, and on the 11th arrived in +Stuart's front. A severe engagement ensued in which the losses were +heavy on both sides, but the rebels were beaten, their leader mortally +wounded, and some guns and many prisoners were captured. + +Sheridan passed through the outer defences of Richmond, and could, no +doubt, have passed through the inner ones. But having no supports near +he could not have remained. After caring for his wounded he struck for +the James River below the city, to communicate with Butler and to rest +his men and horses as well as to get food and forage for them. + +He moved first between the Chickahominy and the James, but in the +morning (the 12th) he was stopped by batteries at Mechanicsville. He +then turned to cross to the north side of the Chickahominy by Meadow +Bridge. He found this barred, and the defeated Confederate cavalry, +reorganized, occupying the opposite side. The panic created by his +first entrance within the outer works of Richmond having subsided troops +were sent out to attack his rear. + +He was now in a perilous position, one from which but few generals could +have extricated themselves. The defences of Richmond, manned, were to +the right, the Chickahominy was to the left with no bridge remaining and +the opposite bank guarded, to the rear was a force from Richmond. This +force was attacked and beaten by Wilson's and Gregg's divisions, while +Sheridan turned to the left with the remaining division and hastily +built a bridge over the Chickahominy under the fire of the enemy, forced +a crossing and soon dispersed the Confederates he found there. The enemy +was held back from the stream by the fire of the troops not engaged in +bridge building. + +On the 13th Sheridan was at Bottom's Bridge, over the Chickahominy. On +the 14th he crossed this stream and on that day went into camp on the +James River at Haxall's Landing. He at once put himself into +communication with General Butler, who directed all the supplies he +wanted to be furnished. + +Sheridan had left the Army of the Potomac at Spottsylvania, but did not +know where either this or Lee's army was now. Great caution therefore +had to be exercised in getting back. On the 17th, after resting his +command for three days, he started on his return. He moved by the way +of White House. The bridge over the Pamunkey had been burned by the +enemy, but a new one was speedily improvised and the cavalry crossed +over it. On the 22d he was at Aylett's on the Matapony, where he +learned the position of the two armies. On the 24th he joined us on the +march from North Anna to Cold Harbor, in the vicinity of Chesterfield. + +Sheridan in this memorable raid passed entirely around Lee's army: +encountered his cavalry in four engagements, and defeated them in all; +recaptured four hundred Union prisoners and killed and captured many of +the enemy; destroyed and used many supplies and munitions of war; +destroyed miles of railroad and telegraph, and freed us from annoyance +by the cavalry of the enemy for more than two weeks. + + + +CHAPTER XLIX. + +SHERMAN'S CAMPAIGN IN GEORGIA--SIEGE OF ATLANTA--DEATH OF GENERAL +MCPHERSON--ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE ANDERSONVILLE--CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. + +After separating from Sherman in Cincinnati I went on to Washington, as +already stated, while he returned to Nashville to assume the duties of +his new command. His military division was now composed of four +departments and embraced all the territory west of the Alleghany +Mountains and east of the Mississippi River, together with the State of +Arkansas in the trans-Mississippi. The most easterly of these was the +Department of the Ohio, General Schofield commanding; the next was the +Department of the Cumberland, General Thomas commanding; the third the +Department of the Tennessee, General McPherson commanding; and General +Steele still commanded the trans-Mississippi, or Department of Arkansas. +The last-named department was so far away that Sherman could not +communicate with it very readily after starting on his spring campaign, +and it was therefore soon transferred from his military division to that +of the Gulf, where General Canby, who had relieved General Banks, was in +command. + +The movements of the armies, as I have stated in a former chapter, were +to be simultaneous, I fixing the day to start when the season should be +far enough advanced, it was hoped, for the roads to be in a condition +for the troops to march. + +General Sherman at once set himself to work preparing for the task which +was assigned him to accomplish in the spring campaign. McPherson lay at +Huntsville with about twenty-four thousand men, guarding those points of +Tennessee which were regarded as most worth holding; Thomas, with over +sixty thousand men of the Army of the Cumberland, was at Chattanooga; +and Schofield, with about fourteen thousand men, was at Knoxville. With +these three armies, numbering about one hundred thousand men in all, +Sherman was to move on the day fixed for the general advance, with a +view of destroying Johnston's army and capturing Atlanta. He visited +each of these commands to inform himself as to their condition, and it +was found to be, speaking generally, good. + +One of the first matters to turn his attention to was that of getting, +before the time arrived for starting, an accumulation of supplies +forward to Chattanooga, sufficiently large to warrant a movement. He +found, when he got to that place, that the trains over the single-track +railroad, which was frequently interrupted for a day or two at a time, +were only sufficient to meet the daily wants of the troops without +bringing forward any surplus of any kind. He found, however, that +trains were being used to transport all the beef cattle, horses for the +cavalry, and even teams that were being brought to the front. He at +once changed all this, and required beef cattle, teams, cavalry horses, +and everything that could travel, even the troops, to be marched, and +used the road exclusively for transporting supplies. In this way he was +able to accumulate an abundance before the time finally fixed upon for +the move, the 4th of May. + +As I have said already, Johnston was at Dalton, which was nearly +one-fourth of the way between Chattanooga and Atlanta. The country is +mountainous all the way to Atlanta, abounding in mountain streams, some +of them of considerable volume. Dalton is on ground where water drains +towards Atlanta and into one of the main streams rising north-east from +there and flowing south-west--this being the general direction which all +the main streams of that section take, with smaller tributaries entering +into them. Johnston had been preparing himself for this campaign during +the entire winter. The best positions for defence had been selected all +the way from Dalton back to Atlanta, and very strongly intrenched; so +that, as he might be forced to fall back from one position, he would +have another to fall into in his rear. His position at Dalton was so +very strongly intrenched that no doubt he expected, or at least hoped, +to hold Sherman there and prevent him from getting any further. With a +less skilful general, and one disposed to take no risks, I have no doubt +that he would have succeeded. + +Sherman's plan was to start Schofield, who was farthest back, a few days +in advance from Knoxville, having him move on the direct road to Dalton. +Thomas was to move out to Ringgold. It had been Sherman's intention to +cross McPherson over the Tennessee River at Huntsville or Decatur, and +move him south from there so as to have him come into the road running +from Chattanooga to Atlanta a good distance to the rear of the point +Johnston was occupying; but when that was contemplated it was hoped that +McPherson alone would have troops enough to cope with Johnston, if the +latter should move against him while unsupported by the balance of the +army. In this he was disappointed. Two of McPherson's veteran +divisions had re-enlisted on the express provision that they were to +have a furlough. This furlough had not yet expired, and they were not +back. + +Then, again, Sherman had lent Banks two divisions under A. J. Smith, the +winter before, to co-operate with the trans-Mississippi forces, and this +with the express pledge that they should be back by a time specified, so +as to be prepared for this very campaign. It is hardly necessary to say +they were not returned. That department continued to absorb troops to +no purpose to the end of the war. This left McPherson so weak that the +part of the plan above indicated had to be changed. He was therefore +brought up to Chattanooga and moved from there on a road to the right of +Thomas--the two coming together about Dalton. The three armies were +abreast, all ready to start promptly on time. + +Sherman soon found that Dalton was so strongly fortified that it was +useless to make any attempt to carry it by assault; and even to carry it +by regular approaches was impracticable. There was a narrowing up in +the mountain, between the National and Confederate armies, through which +a stream, a wagon road and a railroad ran. Besides, the stream had been +dammed so that the valley was a lake. Through this gorge the troops +would have to pass. McPherson was therefore sent around by the right, +to come out by the way of Snake Creek Gap into the rear of the enemy. +This was a surprise to Johnston, and about the 13th he decided to +abandon his position at Dalton. + +On the 15th there was very hard fighting about Resaca; but our cavalry +having been sent around to the right got near the road in the enemy's +rear. Again Johnston fell back, our army pursuing. The pursuit was +continued to Kingston, which was reached on the 19th with very little +fighting, except that Newton's division overtook the rear of Johnston's +army and engaged it. Sherman was now obliged to halt for the purpose of +bringing up his railroad trains. He was depending upon the railroad for +all of his supplies, and as of course the railroad was wholly destroyed +as Johnston fell back, it had to be rebuilt. This work was pushed +forward night and day, and caused much less delay than most persons +would naturally expect in a mountainous country where there were so many +bridges to be rebuilt. + +The campaign to Atlanta was managed with the most consummate skill, the +enemy being flanked out of one position after another all the way there. +It is true this was not accomplished without a good deal of fighting +--some of it very hard fighting, rising to the dignity of very important +battles--neither were single positions gained in a day. On the +contrary, weeks were spent at some; and about Atlanta more than a month +was consumed. + +It was the 23d of May before the road was finished up to the rear of +Sherman's army and the pursuit renewed. This pursuit brought him up to +the vicinity of Allatoona. This place was very strongly intrenched, and +naturally a very defensible position. An assault upon it was not thought +of, but preparations were made to flank the enemy out of it. This was +done by sending a large force around our right, by the way of Dallas, to +reach the rear of the enemy. Before reaching there, however, they found +the enemy fortified in their way, and there resulted hard fighting for +about a week at a place called New Hope Church. On the left our troops +also were fortified, and as close up to the enemy as they could get. +They kept working still farther around to the left toward the railroad. +This was the case more particularly with the cavalry. By the 4th of +June Johnston found that he was being hemmed in so rapidly that he drew +off and Allatoona was left in our possession. + +Allatoona, being an important place, was strongly intrenched for +occupation by our troops before advancing farther, and made a secondary +base of supplies. The railroad was finished up to that point, the +intrenchments completed, storehouses provided for food, and the army got +in readiness for a further advance. The rains, however, were falling in +such torrents that it was impossible to move the army by the side roads +which they would have to move upon in order to turn Johnston out of his +new position. + +While Sherman's army lay here, General F. P. Blair returned to it, +bringing with him the two divisions of veterans who had been on +furlough. + +Johnston had fallen back to Marietta and Kenesaw Mountain, where strong +intrenchments awaited him. At this latter place our troops made an +assault upon the enemy's lines after having got their own lines up close +to him, and failed, sustaining considerable loss. But during the +progress of the battle Schofield was gaining ground to the left; and the +cavalry on his left were gaining still more toward the enemy's rear. +These operations were completed by the 3d of July, when it was found +that Johnston had evacuated the place. He was pursued at once. Sherman +had made every preparation to abandon the railroad, leaving a strong +guard in his intrenchments. He had intended, moving out with twenty +days' rations and plenty of ammunition, to come in on the railroad again +at the Chattahoochee River. Johnston frustrated this plan by himself +starting back as above stated. This time he fell back to the +Chattahoochee. + +About the 5th of July he was besieged again, Sherman getting easy +possession of the Chattahoochee River both above and below him. The +enemy was again flanked out of his position, or so frightened by +flanking movements that on the night of the 9th he fell back across the +river. + +Here Johnston made a stand until the 17th, when Sherman's old tactics +prevailed again and the final movement toward Atlanta began. Johnston +was now relieved of the command, and Hood superseded him. + +Johnston's tactics in this campaign do not seem to have met with much +favor, either in the eyes of the administration at Richmond, or of the +people of that section of the South in which he was commanding. The +very fact of a change of commanders being ordered under such +circumstances was an indication of a change of policy, and that now they +would become the aggressors--the very thing our troops wanted. + +For my own part, I think that Johnston's tactics were right. Anything +that could have prolonged the war a year beyond the time that it did +finally close, would probably have exhausted the North to such an extent +that they might then have abandoned the contest and agreed to a +separation. + +Atlanta was very strongly intrenched all the way around in a circle +about a mile and a half outside of the city. In addition to this, there +were advanced intrenchments which had to be taken before a close siege +could be commenced. + +Sure enough, as indicated by the change of commanders, the enemy was +about to assume the offensive. On the 20th he came out and attacked the +Army of the Cumberland most furiously. Hooker's corps, and Newton's and +Johnson's divisions were the principal ones engaged in this contest, +which lasted more than an hour; but the Confederates were then forced to +fall back inside their main lines. The losses were quite heavy on both +sides. On this day General Gresham, since our Postmaster-General, was +very badly wounded. During the night Hood abandoned his outer lines, +and our troops were advanced. The investment had not been relinquished +for a moment during the day. + +During the night of the 21st Hood moved out again, passing by our left +flank, which was then in motion to get a position farther in rear of +him, and a desperate battle ensued, which lasted most of the day of the +22d. At first the battle went very much in favor of the Confederates, +our troops being somewhat surprised. While our troops were advancing +they were struck in flank, and their flank was enveloped. But they had +become too thorough veterans to be thrown into irreparable confusion by +an unexpected attack when off their guard, and soon they were in order +and engaging the enemy, with the advantage now of knowing where their +antagonist was. The field of battle continued to expand until it +embraced about seven miles of ground. Finally, however, and before +night, the enemy was driven back into the city (*26). + +It was during this battle that McPherson, while passing from one column +to another, was instantly killed. In his death the army lost one of its +ablest, purest and best generals. + +Garrard had been sent out with his cavalry to get upon the railroad east +of Atlanta and to cut it in the direction of Augusta. He was successful +in this, and returned about the time of the battle. Rousseau had also +come up from Tennessee with a small division of cavalry, having crossed +the Tennessee River about Decatur and made a raid into Alabama. Finally, +when hard pressed, he had come in, striking the railroad in rear of +Sherman, and reported to him about this time. + +The battle of the 22d is usually known as the Battle of Atlanta, +although the city did not fall into our hands until the 2d of September. +Preparations went on, as before, to flank the enemy out of his position. +The work was tedious, and the lines that had to be maintained were very +long. Our troops were gradually worked around to the east until they +struck the road between Decatur and Atlanta. These lines were strongly +fortified, as were those to the north and west of the city--all as close +up to the enemy's lines as practicable--in order to hold them with the +smallest possible number of men, the design being to detach an army to +move by our right and try to get upon the railroad down south of +Atlanta. + +On the 27th the movement by the right flank commenced. On the 28th the +enemy struck our right flank, General Logan commanding, with great +vigor. Logan intrenched himself hastily, and by that means was enabled +to resist all assaults and inflict a great deal of damage upon the +enemy. These assaults were continued to the middle of the afternoon, +and resumed once or twice still later in the day. The enemy's losses in +these unsuccessful assaults were fearful. + +During that evening the enemy in Logan's front withdrew into the town. +This now left Sherman's army close up to the Confederate lines, +extending from a point directly east of the city around by the north and +west of it for a distance of fully ten miles; the whole of this line +being intrenched, and made stronger every day they remained there. + +In the latter part of July Sherman sent Stoneman to destroy the +railroads to the south, about Macon. He was then to go east and, if +possible, release our prisoners about Andersonville. There were painful +stories current at the time about the great hardships these prisoners +had to endure in the way of general bad treatment, in the way in which +they were housed, and in the way in which they were fed. Great sympathy +was felt for them; and it was thought that even if they could be turned +loose upon the country it would be a great relief to them. But the +attempt proved a failure. McCook, who commanded a small brigade, was +first reported to have been captured; but he got back, having inflicted +a good deal of damage upon the enemy. He had also taken some prisoners; +but encountering afterwards a largely superior force of the enemy he was +obliged to drop his prisoners and get back as best he could with what +men he had left. He had lost several hundred men out of his small +command. On the 4th of August Colonel Adams, commanding a little +brigade of about a thousand men, returned reporting Stoneman and all but +himself as lost. I myself had heard around Richmond of the capture of +Stoneman, and had sent Sherman word, which he received. The rumor was +confirmed there, also, from other sources. A few days after Colonel +Adams's return Colonel Capron also got in with a small detachment and +confirmed the report of the capture of Stoneman with something less than +a thousand men. + +It seems that Stoneman, finding the escape of all his force was +impossible, had made arrangements for the escape of two divisions. He +covered the movement of these divisions to the rear with a force of +about seven hundred men, and at length surrendered himself and this +detachment to the commanding Confederate. In this raid, however, much +damage was inflicted upon the enemy by the destruction of cars, +locomotives, army wagons, manufactories of military supplies, etc. + +On the 4th and 5th Sherman endeavored to get upon the railroad to our +right, where Schofield was in command, but these attempts failed +utterly. General Palmer was charged with being the cause of this +failure, to a great extent, by both General Sherman and General +Schofield; but I am not prepared to say this, although a question seems +to have arisen with Palmer as to whether Schofield had any right to +command him. If he did raise this question while an action was going +on, that act alone was exceedingly reprehensible. + +About the same time Wheeler got upon our railroad north of Resaca and +destroyed it nearly up to Dalton. This cut Sherman off from +communication with the North for several days. Sherman responded to +this attack on his lines of communication by directing one upon theirs. + +Kilpatrick started on the night of the 18th of August to reach the Macon +road about Jonesboro. He succeeded in doing so, passed entirely around +the Confederate lines of Atlanta, and was back again in his former +position on our left by the 22d. These little affairs, however, +contributed but very little to the grand result. They annoyed, it is +true, but any damage thus done to a railroad by any cavalry expedition +is soon repaired. + +Sherman made preparations for a repetition of his tactics; that is, for +a flank movement with as large a force as could be got together to some +point in the enemy's rear. Sherman commenced this last movement on the +25th of August, and on the 1st of September was well up towards the +railroad twenty miles south of Atlanta. Here he found Hardee +intrenched, ready to meet him. A battle ensued, but he was unable to +drive Hardee away before night set in. Under cover of the night, +however, Hardee left of his own accord. That night Hood blew up his +military works, such as he thought would be valuable in our hands, and +decamped. + +The next morning at daylight General H. W. Slocum, who was commanding +north of the city, moved in and took possession of Atlanta, and notified +Sherman. Sherman then moved deliberately back, taking three days to +reach the city, and occupied a line extending from Decatur on the left +to Atlanta in the centre, with his troops extending out of the city for +some distance to the right. + +The campaign had lasted about four months, and was one of the most +memorable in history. There was but little if anything in the whole +campaign, now that it is over, to criticise at all, and nothing to +criticise severely. It was creditable alike to the general who +commanded and the army which had executed it. Sherman had on this +campaign some bright, wide-awake division and brigade commanders whose +alertness added a host to the efficiency of his command. + +The troops now went to work to make themselves comfortable, and to enjoy +a little rest after their arduous campaign. The city of Atlanta was +turned into a military base. The citizens were all compelled to leave. +Sherman also very wisely prohibited the assembling of the army of +sutlers and traders who always follow in the wake of an army in the +field, if permitted to do so, from trading with the citizens and getting +the money of the soldiers for articles of but little use to them, and +for which they are made to pay most exorbitant prices. He limited the +number of these traders to one for each of his three armies. + +The news of Sherman's success reached the North instantaneously, and set +the country all aglow. This was the first great political campaign for +the Republicans in their canvass of 1864. It was followed later by +Sheridan's campaign in the Shenandoah Valley; and these two campaigns +probably had more effect in settling the election of the following +November than all the speeches, all the bonfires, and all the parading +with banners and bands of music in the North. + + + + +CHAPTER L. + +GRAND MOVEMENT OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC--CROSSING THE RAPIDAN +--ENTERING THE WILDERNESS--BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS. + +Soon after midnight, May 3d-4th, the Army of the Potomac moved out from +its position north Rapidan, to start upon that memorable campaign, +destined to result in the capture of the Confederate capital and the +army defending it. This was not to be accomplished, however, without as +desperate fighting as the world has ever witnessed; not to be +consummated in a day, a week, a month, single season. The losses +inflicted, and endured, were destined to be severe; but the armies now +confronting each other had already been in deadly conflict for a period +of three years, with immense losses in killed, by death from sickness, +captured and wounded; and neither had made any real progress +accomplishing the final end. It is true the Confederates had, so far, +held their capital, and they claimed this to be their sole object. But +previously they had boldly proclaimed their intention to capture +Philadelphia, New York, and the National Capital, and had made several +attempts to do so, and once or twice had come fearfully near making +their boast good--too near for complacent contemplation by the loyal +North. They had also come near losing their own capital on at least one +occasion. So here was a stand-off. The campaign now begun was destined +to result in heavier losses, to both armies, in a given time, than any +previously suffered; but the carnage was to be limited to a single year, +and to accomplish all that had been anticipated or desired at the +beginning in that time. We had to have hard fighting to achieve this. +The two armies had been confronting each other so long, without any +decisive result, that they hardly knew which could whip. + +Ten days' rations, with a supply of forage and ammunition were taken in +wagons. Beef cattle were driven with the trains, and butchered as +wanted. Three days rations in addition, in haversacks, and fifty rounds +of cartridges, were carried on the person of each soldier. + +The country over which the army had to operate, from the Rapidan to the +crossing of the James River, is rather flat, and is cut by numerous +streams which make their way to the Chesapeake Bay. The crossings of +these streams by the army were generally made not far above tide-water, +and where they formed a considerable obstacle to the rapid advance of +troops even when the enemy did not appear in opposition. The country +roads were narrow and poor. Most of the country is covered with a dense +forest, in places, like the Wilderness and along the Chickahominy, +almost impenetrable even for infantry except along the roads. All +bridges were naturally destroyed before the National troops came to +them. + +The Army of the Potomac was composed of three infantry and one cavalry +corps, commanded respectively by Generals W. S. Hancock, G. K. Warren, +(*27) John Sedgwick and P. H. Sheridan. The artillery was commanded by +General Henry J. Hunt. This arm was in such abundance that the fourth +of it could not be used to advantage in such a country as we were +destined to pass through. The surplus was much in the way, taking up as +it did so much of the narrow and bad roads, and consuming so much of the +forage and other stores brought up by the trains. + +The 5th corps, General Warren commanding, was in advance on the right, +and marched directly for Germania Ford, preceded by one division of +cavalry, under General J. H. Wilson. General Sedgwick followed Warren +with the 6th corps. Germania Ford was nine or ten miles below the right +of Lee's line. Hancock, with the 2d corps, moved by another road, +farther east, directly upon Ely's Ford, six miles below Germania, +preceded by Gregg's division of cavalry, and followed by the artillery. +Torbert's division of cavalry was left north of the Rapidan, for the +time, to picket the river and prevent the enemy from crossing and +getting into our rear. The cavalry seized the two crossings before +daylight, drove the enemy's pickets guarding them away, and by six +o'clock A.M. had the pontoons laid ready for the crossing of the +infantry and artillery. This was undoubtedly a surprise to Lee. The +fact that the movement was unopposed proves this. + +Burnside, with the 9th corps, was left back at Warrenton, guarding the +railroad from Bull Run forward to preserve control of it in case our +crossing the Rapidan should be long delayed. He was instructed, however, +to advance at once on receiving notice that the army had crossed; and a +dispatch was sent to him a little after one P.M. giving the information +that our crossing had been successful. + +The country was heavily wooded at all the points of crossing, +particularly on the south side of the river. The battle-field from the +crossing of the Rapidan until the final movement from the Wilderness +toward Spottsylvania was of the same character. There were some +clearings and small farms within what might be termed the battle-field; +but generally the country was covered with a dense forest. The roads +were narrow and bad. All the conditions were favorable for defensive +operations. + +There are two roads, good for that part of Virginia, running from Orange +Court House to the battle-field. The most southerly of these roads is +known as the Orange Court House Plank Road, the northern one as the +Orange Turnpike. There are also roads from east of the battle-field +running to Spottsylvania Court House, one from Chancellorsville, +branching at Aldrich's; the western branch going by Piney Branch Church, +Alsop's, thence by the Brock Road to Spottsylvania; the east branch goes +by Gates's, thence to Spottsylvania. The Brock Road runs from Germania +Ford through the battle-field and on to the Court House. As +Spottsylvania is approached the country is cut up with numerous roads, +some going to the town direct, and others crossing so as to connect the +farms with roads going there. + +Lee's headquarters were at Orange Court House. From there to +Fredericksburg he had the use of the two roads above described running +nearly parallel to the Wilderness. This gave him unusual facilities, +for that country, for concentrating his forces to his right. These +roads strike the road from Germania Ford in the Wilderness. + +As soon as the crossing of the infantry was assured, the cavalry pushed +forward, Wilson's division by Wilderness Tavern to Parker's store, on +the Orange Plank Road; Gregg to the left towards Chancellorsville. +Warren followed Wilson and reached the Wilderness Tavern by noon, took +position there and intrenched. Sedgwick followed Warren. He was across +the river and in camp on the south bank, on the right of Warren, by +sundown. Hancock, with the 2d corps, moved parallel with Warren and +camped about six miles east of him. Before night all the troops, and by +the evening of the 5th the trains of more than four thousand wagons, +were safely on the south side of the river. + +There never was a corps better organized than was the quartermaster's +corps with the Army of the Potomac in 1864. With a wagon-train that +would have extended from the Rapidan to Richmond, stretched along in +single file and separated as the teams necessarily would be when moving, +we could still carry only three days' forage and about ten to twelve +days' rations, besides a supply of ammunition. To overcome all +difficulties, the chief quartermaster, General Rufus Ingalls, had marked +on each wagon the corps badge with the division color and the number of +the brigade. At a glance, the particular brigade to which any wagon +belonged could be told. The wagons were also marked to note the +contents: if ammunition, whether for artillery or infantry; if forage, +whether grain or hay; if rations, whether, bread, pork, beans, rice, +sugar, coffee or whatever it might be. Empty wagons were never allowed +to follow the army or stay in camp. As soon as a wagon was empty it +would return to the base of supply for a load of precisely the same +article that had been taken from it. Empty trains were obliged to leave +the road free for loaded ones. Arriving near the army they would be +parked in fields nearest to the brigades they belonged to. Issues, +except of ammunition, were made at night in all cases. By this system +the hauling of forage for the supply train was almost wholly dispensed +with. They consumed theirs at the depots. + +I left Culpeper Court House after all the troops had been put in motion, +and passing rapidly to the front, crossed the Rapidan in advance of +Sedgwick's corps; and established headquarters for the afternoon and +night in a deserted house near the river. + +Orders had been given, long before this movement began, to cut down the +baggage of officers and men to the lowest point possible. +Notwithstanding this I saw scattered along the road from Culpeper to +Germania Ford wagon-loads of new blankets and overcoats, thrown away by +the troops to lighten their knapsacks; an improvidence I had never +witnessed before. + +Lee, while his pickets and signal corps must have discovered at a very +early hour on the morning of the 4th of May, that the Army of the +Potomac was moving, evidently did not learn until about one o'clock in +the afternoon by what route we would confront his army. This I judge +from the fact that at 1.15 P.M., an hour and a quarter after Warren had +reached Old Wilderness Tavern, our officers took off rebel signals +which, when translated, were seen to be an order to his troops to occupy +their intrenchments at Mine Run. + +Here at night dispatches were received announcing that Sherman, Butler +and Crook had moved according to programme. + +On discovering the advance of the Army of the Potomac, Lee ordered Hill, +Ewell and Longstreet, each commanding corps, to move to the right to +attack us, Hill on the Orange Plank Road, Longstreet to follow on the +same road. Longstreet was at this time--middle of the afternoon--at +Gordonsville, twenty or more miles away. Ewell was ordered by the +Orange Pike. He was near by and arrived some four miles east of Mine +Run before bivouacking for the night. + +My orders were given through General Meade for an early advance on the +morning of the 5th. Warren was to move to Parker's store, and Wilson's +cavalry--then at Parker's store--to move on to Craig's meeting-house. +Sedgwick followed Warren, closing in on his right. The Army of the +Potomac was facing to the west, though our advance was made to the +south, except when facing the enemy. Hancock was to move south-westward +to join on the left of Warren, his left to reach to Shady Grove Church. + +At six o'clock, before reaching Parker's store, Warren discovered the +enemy. He sent word back to this effect, and was ordered to halt and +prepare to meet and attack him. Wright, with his division of Sedgwick's +corps, was ordered, by any road he could find, to join on to Warren's +right, and Getty with his division, also of Sedgwick's corps, was +ordered to move rapidly by Warren's rear and get on his left. This was +the speediest way to reinforce Warren who was confronting the enemy on +both the Orange plank and turnpike roads. + +Burnside had moved promptly on the 4th, on receiving word that the Army +of the Potomac had safely crossed the Rapidan. By making a night march, +although some of his troops had to march forty miles to reach the river, +he was crossing with the head of his column early on the morning of the +5th. Meade moved his headquarters on to Old Wilderness Tavern, four +miles south of the river, as soon as it was light enough to see the +road. I remained to hasten Burnside's crossing and to put him in +position. Burnside at this time was not under Meade's command, and was +his senior in rank. Getting information of the proximity of the enemy, +I informed Meade, and without waiting to see Burnside, at once moved +forward my headquarters to where Meade was. + +It was my plan then, as it was on all other occasions, to take the +initiative whenever the enemy could be drawn from his intrenchments if +we were not intrenched ourselves. Warren had not yet reached the point +where he was to halt, when he discovered the enemy near by. Neither +party had any advantage of position. Warren was, therefore, ordered to +attack as soon as he could prepare for it. At nine o'clock Hancock was +ordered to come up to the support of Getty. He himself arrived at +Getty's front about noon, but his troops were yet far in the rear. +Getty was directed to hold his position at all hazards until relieved. +About this hour Warren was ready, and attacked with favorable though not +decisive results. Getty was somewhat isolated from Warren and was in a +precarious condition for a time. Wilson, with his division of cavalry, +was farther south, and was cut off from the rest of the army. At two +o'clock Hancock's troops began to arrive, and immediately he was ordered +to join Getty and attack the enemy. But the heavy timber and narrow +roads prevented him from getting into position for attack as promptly as +he generally did when receiving such orders. At four o'clock he again +received his orders to attack, and General Getty received orders from +Meade a few minutes later to attack whether Hancock was ready or not. +He met the enemy under Heth within a few hundred yards. + +Hancock immediately sent two divisions, commanded by Birney and Mott, +and later two brigades, Carroll's and Owen's, to the support of Getty. +This was timely and saved Getty. During the battle Getty and Carroll +were wounded, but remained on the field. One of Birney's most gallant +brigade commanders--Alexander Hays--was killed. + +I had been at West Point with Hays for three years, and had served with +him through the Mexican war, a portion of the time in the same regiment. +He was a most gallant officer, ready to lead his command wherever +ordered. With him it was "Come, boys," not "Go." + +Wadsworth's division and Baxter's brigade of the 2d division were sent +to reinforce Hancock and Getty; but the density of the intervening +forest was such that, there being no road to march upon, they did not +get up with the head of column until night, and bivouacked where they +were without getting into position. + +During the afternoon Sheridan sent Gregg's division of cavalry to Todd's +Tavern in search of Wilson. This was fortunate. He found Wilson +engaged with a superior force under General Rosser, supported by +infantry, and falling back before it. Together they were strong enough +to turn the tables upon the enemy and themselves become aggressive. +They soon drove the rebel cavalry back beyond Corbin's Bridge. + +Fighting between Hancock and Hill continued until night put a close to +it. Neither side made any special progress. + +After the close of the battle of the 5th of May my orders were given for +the following morning. We knew Longstreet with 12,000 men was on his +way to join Hill's right, near the Brock Road, and might arrive during +the night. I was anxious that the rebels should not take the initiative +in the morning, and therefore ordered Hancock to make an assault at 4.30 +o'clock. Meade asked to have the hour changed to six. Deferring to his +wishes as far as I was willing, the order was modified and five was +fixed as the hour to move. + +Hancock had now fully one-half of the Army of the Potomac. Wadsworth +with his division, which had arrived the night before, lay in a line +perpendicular to that held by Hill, and to the right of Hancock. He was +directed to move at the same time, and to attack Hill's left. + +Burnside, who was coming up with two divisions, was directed to get in +between Warren and Wadsworth, and attack as soon as he could get in +position to do so. Sedgwick and Warren were to make attacks in their +front, to detain as many of the enemy as they could and to take +advantage of any attempt to reinforce Hill from that quarter. Burnside +was ordered if he should succeed in breaking the enemy's centre, to +swing around to the left and envelop the right of Lee's army. Hancock +was informed of all the movements ordered. + +Burnside had three divisions, but one of them--a colored division--was +sent to guard the wagon train, and he did not see it again until July. + +Lee was evidently very anxious that there should be no battle on his +right until Longstreet got up. This is evident from the fact that +notwithstanding the early hour at which I had ordered the assault, both +for the purpose of being the attacking party and to strike before +Longstreet got up, Lee was ahead in his assault on our right. His +purpose was evident, but he failed. + +Hancock was ready to advance by the hour named, but learning in time +that Longstreet was moving a part of his corps by the Catharpin Road, +thus threatening his left flank, sent a division of infantry, commanded +by General Barlow, with all his artillery, to cover the approaches by +which Longstreet was expected. This disposition was made in time to +attack as ordered. Hancock moved by the left of the Orange Plank Road, +and Wadsworth by the right of it. The fighting was desperate for about +an hour, when the enemy began to break up in great confusion. + +I believed then, and see no reason to change that opinion now, that if +the country had been such that Hancock and his command could have seen +the confusion and panic in the lines of the enemy, it would have been +taken advantage of so effectually that Lee would not have made another +stand outside of his Richmond defences. + +Gibbon commanded Hancock's left, and was ordered to attack, but was not +able to accomplish much. + +On the morning of the 6th Sheridan was sent to connect with Hancock's +left and attack the enemy's cavalry who were trying to get on our left +and rear. He met them at the intersection of the Furnace and Brock +roads and at Todd's Tavern, and defeated them at both places. Later he +was attacked, and again the enemy was repulsed. + +Hancock heard the firing between Sheridan and Stuart, and thinking the +enemy coming by that road, still further reinforced his position +guarding the entrance to the Brock Road. Another incident happened +during the day to further induce Hancock to weaken his attacking column. +Word reached him that troops were seen moving towards him from the +direction of Todd's Tavern, and Brooke's brigade was detached to meet +this new enemy; but the troops approaching proved to be several hundred +convalescents coming from Chancellorsville, by the road Hancock had +advanced upon, to join their respective commands. At 6.50 o'clock A.M., +Burnside, who had passed Wilderness Tavern at six o'clock, was ordered +to send a division to the support of Hancock, but to continue with the +remainder of his command in the execution of his previous order. The +difficulty of making a way through the dense forests prevented Burnside +from getting up in time to be of any service on the forenoon of the +sixth. + +Hancock followed Hill's retreating forces, in the morning, a mile or +more. He maintained this position until, along in the afternoon, +Longstreet came upon him. The retreating column of Hill meeting +reinforcements that had not yet been engaged, became encouraged and +returned with them. They were enabled, from the density of the forest, +to approach within a few hundred yards of our advance before being +discovered. Falling upon a brigade of Hancock's corps thrown to the +advance, they swept it away almost instantly. The enemy followed up his +advantage and soon came upon Mott's division, which fell back in great +confusion. Hancock made dispositions to hold his advanced position, but +after holding it for a time, fell back into the position that he had +held in the morning, which was strongly intrenched. In this engagement +the intrepid Wadsworth while trying to rally his men was mortally +wounded and fell into the hands of the enemy. The enemy followed up, +but made no immediate attack. + +The Confederate General Jenkins was killed and Longstreet seriously +wounded in this engagement. Longstreet had to leave the field, not to +resume command for many weeks. His loss was a severe one to Lee, and +compensated in a great measure for the mishap, or misapprehensions, +which had fallen to our lot during the day. + +After Longstreet's removal from the field Lee took command of his right +in person. He was not able, however, to rally his men to attack +Hancock's position, and withdrew from our front for the purpose of +reforming. Hancock sent a brigade to clear his front of all remnants +that might be left of Longstreet's or Hill's commands. This brigade +having been formed at right angles to the intrenchments held by +Hancock's command, swept down the whole length of them from left to +right. A brigade of the enemy was encountered in this move; but it +broke and disappeared without a contest. + +Firing was continued after this, but with less fury. Burnside had not +yet been able to get up to render any assistance. But it was now only +about nine in the morning, and he was getting into position on Hancock's +right. + +At 4.15 in the afternoon Lee attacked our left. His line moved up to +within a hundred yards of ours and opened a heavy fire. This status was +maintained for about half an hour. Then a part of Mott's division and +Ward's brigade of Birney's division gave way and retired in disorder. +The enemy under R. H. Anderson took advantage of this and pushed through +our line, planting their flags on a part of the intrenchments not on +fire. But owing to the efforts of Hancock, their success was but +temporary. Carroll, of Gibbon's division, moved at a double quick with +his brigade and drove back the enemy, inflicting great loss. Fighting +had continued from five in the morning sometimes along the whole line, +at other times only in places. The ground fought over had varied in +width, but averaged three-quarters of a mile. The killed, and many of +the severely wounded, of both armies, lay within this belt where it was +impossible to reach them. The woods were set on fire by the bursting +shells, and the conflagration raged. The wounded who had not strength +to move themselves were either suffocated or burned to death. Finally +the fire communicated with our breastworks, in places. Being +constructed of wood, they burned with great fury. But the battle still +raged, our men firing through the flames until it became too hot to +remain longer. + +Lee was now in distress. His men were in confusion, and his personal +efforts failed to restore order. These facts, however, were learned +subsequently, or we would have taken advantage of his condition and no +doubt gained a decisive success. His troops were withdrawn now, but I +revoked the order, which I had given previously to this assault, for +Hancock to attack, because his troops had exhausted their ammunition and +did not have time to replenish from the train, which was at some +distance. + +Burnside, Sedgwick, and Warren had all kept up an assault during all +this time; but their efforts had no other effect than to prevent the +enemy from reinforcing his right from the troops in their front. + +I had, on the 5th, ordered all the bridges over the Rapidan to be taken +up except one at Germania Ford. + +The troops on Sedgwick's right had been sent to enforce our left. This +left our right in danger of being turned, and us of being cut off from +all present base of supplies. Sedgwick had refused his right and +intrenched it for protection against attack. But late in the afternoon +of the 6th Early came out from his lines in considerable force and got +in upon Sedgwick's right, notwithstanding the precautions taken, and +created considerable confusion. Early captured several hundred +prisoners, among them two general officers. The defence, however, was +vigorous; and night coming on, the enemy was thrown into as much +confusion as our troops, engaged, were. Early says in his Memoirs that +if we had discovered the confusion in his lines we might have brought +fresh troops to his great discomfort. Many officers, who had not been +attacked by Early, continued coming to my headquarters even after +Sedgwick had rectified his lines a little farther to the rear, with news +of the disaster, fully impressed with the idea that the enemy was +pushing on and would soon be upon me. + +During the night all of Lee's army withdrew within their intrenchments. +On the morning of the 7th General Custer drove the enemy's cavalry from +Catharpin Furnace to Todd's Tavern. Pickets and skirmishers were sent +along our entire front to find the position of the enemy. Some went as +far as a mile and a half before finding him. But Lee showed no +disposition to come out of his Works. There was no battle during the +day, and but little firing except in Warren's front; he being directed +about noon to make a reconnoissance in force. This drew some sharp +firing, but there was no attempt on the part of Lee to drive him back. +This ended the Battle of the Wilderness. + + + +CHAPTER LI. + +AFTER THE BATTLE--TELEGRAPH AND SIGNAL SERVICE--MOVEMENT BY THE LEFT +FLANK. + +More desperate fighting has not been witnessed on this continent than +that of the 5th and 6th of May. Our victory consisted in having +successfully crossed a formidable stream, almost in the face of an +enemy, and in getting the army together as a unit. We gained an +advantage on the morning of the 6th, which, if it had been followed up, +must have proven very decisive. In the evening the enemy gained an +advantage; but was speedily repulsed. As we stood at the close, the two +armies were relatively in about the same condition to meet each other as +when the river divided them. But the fact of having safely crossed was +a victory. + +Our losses in the Wilderness were very severe. Those of the +Confederates must have been even more so; but I have no means of +speaking with accuracy upon this point. The Germania Ford bridge was +transferred to Ely's Ford to facilitate the transportation of the +wounded to Washington. + +It may be as well here as elsewhere to state two things connected with +all movements of the Army of the Potomac: first, in every change of +position or halt for the night, whether confronting the enemy or not, +the moment arms were stacked the men intrenched themselves. For this +purpose they would build up piles of logs or rails if they could be +found in their front, and dig a ditch, throwing the dirt forward on the +timber. Thus the digging they did counted in making a depression to +stand in, and increased the elevation in front of them. It was +wonderful how quickly they could in this way construct defences of +considerable strength. When a halt was made with the view of assaulting +the enemy, or in his presence, these would be strengthened or their +positions changed under the direction of engineer officers. The second +was, the use made of the telegraph and signal corps. Nothing could be +more complete than the organization and discipline of this body of brave +and intelligent men. Insulated wires--insulated so that they would +transmit messages in a storm, on the ground or under water--were wound +upon reels, making about two hundred pounds weight of wire to each reel. +Two men and one mule were detailed to each reel. The pack-saddle on +which this was carried was provided with a rack like a sawbuck placed +crosswise of the saddle, and raised above it so that the reel, with its +wire, would revolve freely. There was a wagon, supplied with a +telegraph operator, battery and telegraph instruments for each division, +each corps, each army, and one for my headquarters. There were wagons +also loaded with light poles, about the size and length of a wall tent +pole, supplied with an iron spike in one end, used to hold the wires up +when laid, so that wagons and artillery would not run over them. The +mules thus loaded were assigned to brigades, and always kept with the +command they were assigned to. The operators were also assigned to +particular headquarters, and never changed except by special orders. + +The moment the troops were put in position to go into camp all the men +connected with this branch of service would proceed to put up their +wires. A mule loaded with a coil of wire would be led to the rear of +the nearest flank of the brigade he belonged to, and would be led in a +line parallel thereto, while one man would hold an end of the wire and +uncoil it as the mule was led off. When he had walked the length of the +wire the whole of it would be on the ground. This would be done in rear +of every brigade at the same time. The ends of all the wires would then +be joined, making a continuous wire in the rear of the whole army. The +men, attached to brigades or divisions, would all commence at once +raising the wires with their telegraph poles. This was done by making a +loop in the wire and putting it over the spike and raising the pole to a +perpendicular position. At intervals the wire would be attached to +trees, or some other permanent object, so that one pole was sufficient +at a place. In the absence of such a support two poles would have to be +used, at intervals, placed at an angle so as to hold the wire firm in +its place. While this was being done the telegraph wagons would take +their positions near where the headquarters they belonged to were to be +established, and would connect with the wire. Thus, in a few minutes +longer time than it took a mule to walk the length of its coil, +telegraphic communication would be effected between all the headquarters +of the army. No orders ever had to be given to establish the telegraph. + +The signal service was used on the march. The men composing this corps +were assigned to specified commands. When movements were made, they +would go in advance, or on the flanks, and seize upon high points of +ground giving a commanding view of the country, if cleared, or would +climb tall trees on the highest points if not cleared, and would denote, +by signals, the positions of different parts of our own army, and often +the movements of the enemy. They would also take off the signals of the +enemy and transmit them. It would sometimes take too long a time to +make translations of intercepted dispatches for us to receive any +benefit from them. But sometimes they gave useful information. + +On the afternoon of the 7th I received news from Washington announcing +that Sherman had probably attacked Johnston that day, and that Butler +had reached City Point safely and taken it by surprise on the 5th. I +had given orders for a movement by the left flank, fearing that Lee +might move rapidly to Richmond to crush Butler before I could get there. + +My order for this movement was as follows: + + +HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE U. S., May 7, 1864, 6.30 A.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Commanding A. P. + +Make all preparations during the day for a night march to take position +at Spottsylvania C. H. with one army corps, at Todd's Tavern with one, +and another near the intersection of the Piney Branch and Spottsylvania +road with the road from Alsop's to Old Court House. If this move is +made the trains should be thrown forward early in the morning to the Ny +River. + +I think it would be advisable in making the change to leave Hancock +where he is until Warren passes him. He could then follow and become +the right of the new line. Burnside will move to Piney Branch Church. +Sedgwick can move along the pike to Chancellorsville and on to his +destination. Burnside will move on the plank road to the intersection +of it with the Orange and Fredericksburg plank road, then follow +Sedgwick to his place of destination. + +All vehicles should be got out of hearing of the enemy before the troops +move, and then move off quietly. + +It is more than probable that the enemy concentrate for a heavy attack +on Hancock this afternoon. In case they do we must be prepared to +resist them, and follow up any success we may gain, with our whole +force. Such a result would necessarily modify these instructions. + +All the hospitals should be moved to-day to Chancellorsville. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +During the 7th Sheridan had a fight with the rebel cavalry at Todd's +Tavern, but routed them, thus opening the way for the troops that were +to go by that route at night. Soon after dark Warren withdrew from the +front of the enemy, and was soon followed by Sedgwick. Warren's march +carried him immediately behind the works where Hancock's command lay on +the Brock Road. With my staff and a small escort of cavalry I preceded +the troops. Meade with his staff accompanied me. The greatest +enthusiasm was manifested by Hancock's men as we passed by. No doubt it +was inspired by the fact that the movement was south. It indicated to +them that they had passed through the "beginning of the end" in the +battle just fought. The cheering was so lusty that the enemy must have +taken it for a night attack. At all events it drew from him a furious +fusillade of artillery and musketry, plainly heard but not felt by us. + +Meade and I rode in advance. We had passed but a little way beyond our +left when the road forked. We looked to see, if we could, which road +Sheridan had taken with his cavalry during the day. It seemed to be the +right-hand one, and accordingly we took it. We had not gone far, +however, when Colonel C. B. Comstock, of my staff, with the instinct of +the engineer, suspecting that we were on a road that would lead us into +the lines of the enemy, if he, too, should be moving, dashed by at a +rapid gallop and all alone. In a few minutes he returned and reported +that Lee was moving, and that the road we were on would bring us into +his lines in a short distance. We returned to the forks of the road, +left a man to indicate the right road to the head of Warren's column +when it should come up, and continued our journey to Todd's Tavern, +where we arrived after midnight. + +My object in moving to Spottsylvania was two-fold: first, I did not +want Lee to get back to Richmond in time to attempt to crush Butler +before I could get there; second, I wanted to get between his army and +Richmond if possible; and, if not, to draw him into the open field. But +Lee, by accident, beat us to Spottsylvania. Our wagon trains had been +ordered easterly of the roads the troops were to march upon before the +movement commenced. Lee interpreted this as a semi-retreat of the Army +of the Potomac to Fredericksburg, and so informed his government. +Accordingly he ordered Longstreet's corps--now commanded by Anderson--to +move in the morning (the 8th) to Spottsylvania. But the woods being +still on fire, Anderson could not go into bivouac, and marched directly +on to his destination that night. By this accident Lee got possession +of Spottsylvania. It is impossible to say now what would have been the +result if Lee's orders had been obeyed as given; but it is certain that +we would have been in Spottsylvania, and between him and his capital. +My belief is that there would have been a race between the two armies to +see which could reach Richmond first, and the Army of the Potomac would +have had the shorter line. Thus, twice since crossing the Rapidan we +came near closing the campaign, so far as battles were concerned, from +the Rapidan to the James River or Richmond. The first failure was +caused by our not following up the success gained over Hill's corps on +the morning of the 6th, as before described: the second, when fires +caused by that battle drove Anderson to make a march during the night of +the 7th-8th which he was ordered to commence on the morning of the 8th. +But accident often decides the fate of battle. + +Sheridan's cavalry had had considerable fighting during the afternoon of +the 7th, lasting at Todd's Tavern until after night, with the field his +at the close. He issued the necessary orders for seizing Spottsylvania +and holding the bridge over the Po River, which Lee's troops would have +to cross to get to Spottsylvania. But Meade changed Sheridan's orders +to Merritt--who was holding the bridge--on his arrival at Todd's Tavern, +and thereby left the road free for Anderson when he came up. Wilson, +who was ordered to seize the town, did so, with his division of cavalry; +but he could not hold it against the Confederate corps which had not +been detained at the crossing of the Po, as it would have been but for +the unfortunate change in Merritt's orders. Had he been permitted to +execute the orders Sheridan gave him, he would have been guarding with +two brigades of cavalry the bridge over the Po River which Anderson had +to cross, and must have detained him long enough to enable Warren to +reinforce Wilson and hold the town. + +Anderson soon intrenched himself--if indeed the intrenchments were not +already made--immediately across Warren's front. Warren was not aware of +his presence, but probably supposed it was the cavalry which Merritt had +engaged earlier in the day. He assaulted at once, but was repulsed. He +soon organized his men, as they were not pursued by the enemy, and made +a second attack, this time with his whole corps. This time he succeeded +in gaining a position immediately in the enemy's front, where he +intrenched. His right and left divisions--the former Crawford's, the +latter Wadsworth's, now commanded by Cutler--drove the enemy back some +distance. + +At this time my headquarters had been advanced to Piney Branch Church. +I was anxious to crush Anderson before Lee could get a force to his +support. To this end Sedgwick who was at Piney Branch Church, was +ordered to Warren's support. Hancock, who was at Todd's Tavern, was +notified of Warren's engagement, and was directed to be in readiness to +come up. Burnside, who was with the wagon trains at Aldrich's on our +extreme left, received the same instructions. Sedgwick was slow in +getting up for some reason--probably unavoidable, because he was never +at fault when serious work was to be done--so that it was near night +before the combined forces were ready to attack. Even then all of +Sedgwick's command did not get into the engagement. Warren led the last +assault, one division at a time, and of course it failed. + +Warren's difficulty was twofold: when he received an order to do +anything, it would at once occur to his mind how all the balance of the +army should be engaged so as properly to co-operate with him. His ideas +were generally good, but he would forget that the person giving him +orders had thought of others at the time he had of him. In like manner, +when he did get ready to execute an order, after giving most intelligent +instructions to division commanders, he would go in with one division, +holding the others in reserve until he could superintend their movements +in person also, forgetting that division commanders could execute an +order without his presence. His difficulty was constitutional and +beyond his control. He was an officer of superior ability, quick +perceptions, and personal courage to accomplish anything that could be +done with a small command. + +Lee had ordered Hill's corps--now commanded by Early--to move by the +very road we had marched upon. This shows that even early in the +morning of the 8th Lee had not yet become acquainted with my move, but +still thought that the Army of the Potomac had gone to Fredericksburg. +Indeed, he informed the authorities at Richmond he had possession of +Spottsylvania and was on my flank. Anderson was in possession of +Spottsylvania, through no foresight of Lee, however. Early only found +that he had been following us when he ran against Hancock at Todd's +Tavern. His coming detained Hancock from the battle-field of +Spottsylvania for that day; but he, in like manner, kept Early back and +forced him to move by another route. + +Had I ordered the movement for the night of the 7th by my left flank, it +would have put Hancock in the lead. It would also have given us an hour +or earlier start. It took all that time for Warren to get the head of +his column to the left of Hancock after he had got his troops out of +their line confronting the enemy. This hour, and Hancock's capacity to +use his whole force when necessary, would, no doubt, have enabled him to +crush Anderson before he could be reinforced. But the movement made was +tactical. It kept the troops in mass against a possible assault by the +enemy. Our left occupied its intrenchments while the two corps to the +right passed. If an attack had been made by the enemy he would have +found the 2d corps in position, fortified, and, practically, the 5th and +6th corps in position as reserves, until his entire front was passed. +By a left flank movement the army would have been scattered while still +passing the front of the enemy, and before the extreme right had got by +it would have been very much exposed. Then, too, I had not yet learned +the special qualifications of the different corps commanders. At that +time my judgment was that Warren was the man I would suggest to succeed +Meade should anything happen to that gallant soldier to take him from +the field. As I have before said, Warren was a gallant soldier, an able +man; and he was beside thoroughly imbued with the solemnity and +importance of the duty he had to perform. + + + +CHAPTER LII. + +BATTLE OF SPOTTSYLVANIA--HANCOCK'S POSITION--ASSAULT OF WARREN'S AND +WRIGHT'S CORPS--UPTON PROMOTED ON THE FIELD--GOOD NEWS FROM BUTLER AND +SHERIDAN. + +The Mattapony River is formed by the junction of the Mat, the Ta, the Po +and the Ny rivers, the last being the northernmost of the four. It +takes its rise about a mile south and a little east of the Wilderness +Tavern. The Po rises south-west of the place, but farther away. +Spottsylvania is on the ridge dividing these two streams, and where they +are but a few miles apart. The Brock Road reaches Spottsylvania without +crossing either of these streams. Lee's army coming up by the Catharpin +Road, had to cross the Po at Wooden Bridge. Warren and Hancock came by +the Brock Road. Sedgwick crossed the Ny at Catharpin Furnace. Burnside +coming by Aldrich's to Gates's house, had to cross the Ny near the +enemy. He found pickets at the bridge, but they were soon driven off by +a brigade of Willcox's division, and the stream was crossed. This +brigade was furiously attacked; but the remainder of the division coming +up, they were enabled to hold their position, and soon fortified it. + +About the time I received the news of this attack, word came from +Hancock that Early had left his front. He had been forced over to the +Catharpin Road, crossing the Po at Corbin's and again at Wooden Bridge. +These are the bridges Sheridan had given orders to his cavalry to occupy +on the 8th, while one division should occupy Spottsylvania. These +movements of the enemy gave me the idea that Lee was about to make the +attempt to get to, or towards, Fredericksburg to cut off my supplies. I +made arrangements to attack his right and get between him and Richmond +if he should try to execute this design. If he had any such intention +it was abandoned as soon as Burnside was established south of the Ny. + +The Po and the Ny are narrow little streams, but deep, with abrupt +banks, and bordered by heavily wooded and marshy bottoms--at the time we +were there--and difficult to cross except where bridged. The country +about was generally heavily timbered, but with occasional clearings. It +was a much better country to conduct a defensive campaign in than an +offensive one. + +By noon of the 9th the position of the two armies was as follows: Lee +occupied a semicircle facing north, north-west and north-east, inclosing +the town. Anderson was on his left extending to the Po, Ewell came +next, then Early. Warren occupied our right, covering the Brock and +other roads converging at Spottsylvania; Sedgwick was to his left and +Burnside on our extreme left. Hancock was yet back at Todd's Tavern, +but as soon as it was known that Early had left Hancock's front the +latter was ordered up to Warren's right. He formed a line with three +divisions on the hill overlooking the Po early in the afternoon, and was +ordered to cross the Po and get on the enemy's flank. The fourth +division of Hancock's corps, Mott commanding, was left at Todd's when +the corps first came up; but in the afternoon it was brought up and +placed to the left of Sedgwick's--now Wright's--6th corps. In the +morning General Sedgwick had been killed near the right of his +intrenchments by rebel sharpshooters. His loss was a severe one to the +Army of the Potomac and to the Nation. General H. G. Wright succeeded +him in the command of his corps. + +Hancock was now, nine P.M. of the 9th of May, across the left flank of +Lee's army, but separated from it, and also from the remainder of +Meade's army, by the Po River. But for the lateness of the hour and the +darkness of the night he would have attempted to cross the river again +at Wooden Bridge, thus bringing himself on the same side with both +friend and foe. + +The Po at the points where Hancock's corps crossed runs nearly due east. +Just below his lower crossing--the troops crossed at three points--it +turns due south, and after passing under Wooden Bridge soon resumes a +more easterly direction. During the night this corps built three +bridges over the Po; but these were in rear. + +The position assumed by Hancock's corps forced Lee to reinforce his left +during the night. Accordingly on the morning of the 10th, when Hancock +renewed his effort to get over the Po to his front, he found himself +confronted by some of Early's command, which had been brought from the +extreme right of the enemy during the night. He succeeded in effecting +a crossing with one brigade, however, but finding the enemy intrenched +in his front, no more were crossed. + +Hancock reconnoitred his front on the morning of the 10th, with the view +of forcing a crossing, if it was found that an advantage could be +gained. The enemy was found strongly intrenched on the high ground +overlooking the river, and commanding the Wooden Bridge with artillery. +Anderson's left rested on the Po, where it turns south; therefore, for +Hancock to cross over--although it would bring him to the same side of +the stream with the rest of the army--would still farther isolate him +from it. The stream would have to be crossed twice in the face of the +enemy to unite with the main body. The idea of crossing was therefore +abandoned. + +Lee had weakened the other parts of his line to meet this movement of +Hancock's, and I determined to take advantage of it. Accordingly in the +morning, orders were issued for an attack in the afternoon on the centre +by Warren's and Wright's corps, Hancock to command all the attacking +force. Two of his divisions were brought to the north side of the Po. +Gibbon was placed to the right of Warren, and Birney in his rear as a +reserve. Barlow's division was left south of the stream, and Mott of +the same corps was still to the left of Wright's corps. Burnside was +ordered to reconnoitre his front in force, and, if an opportunity +presented, to attack with vigor. The enemy seeing Barlow's division +isolated from the rest of the army, came out and attacked with fury. +Barlow repulsed the assault with great slaughter, and with considerable +loss to himself. But the enemy reorganized and renewed the assault. +Birney was now moved to the high ground overlooking the river crossings +built by our troops, and covered the crossings. The second assault was +repulsed, again with severe loss to the enemy, and Barlow was withdrawn +without further molestation. General T. G. Stevenson was killed in this +move. + +Between the lines, where Warren's assault was to take place, there was a +ravine grown up with large trees and underbrush, making it almost +impenetrable by man. The slopes on both sides were also covered with a +heavy growth of timber. Warren, before noon, reconnoitred his front +twice, the first time with one and the second with two divisions. He +was repulsed on both occasions, but gained such information of the +ground as to induce him to report recommending the assault. + +Wright also reconnoitred his front and gained a considerably advanced +position from the one he started from. He then organized a storming +party, consisting of twelve regiments, and assigned Colonel Emory Upton, +of the 121st New York Volunteers, to the command of it. About four +o'clock in the afternoon the assault was ordered, Warren's and Wright's +corps, with Mott's division of Hancock's corps, to move simultaneously. +The movement was prompt, and in a few minutes the fiercest of struggles +began. The battle-field was so densely covered with forest that but +little could be seen, by any one person, as to the progress made. Meade +and I occupied the best position we could get, in rear of Warren. + +Warren was repulsed with heavy loss, General J. C. Rice being among the +killed. He was not followed, however, by the enemy, and was thereby +enabled to reorganize his command as soon as covered from the guns of +the enemy. To the left our success was decided, but the advantage was +lost by the feeble action of Mott. Upton with his assaulting party +pushed forward and crossed the enemy's intrenchments. Turning to the +right and left he captured several guns and some hundreds of prisoners. +Mott was ordered to his assistance but failed utterly. So much time was +lost in trying to get up the troops which were in the right position to +reinforce, that I ordered Upton to withdraw; but the officers and men of +his command were so averse to giving up the advantage they had gained +that I withdrew the order. To relieve them, I ordered a renewal of the +assault. By this time Hancock, who had gone with Birney's division to +relieve Barlow, had returned, bringing the division with him. His corps +was now joined with Warren's and Wright's in this last assault. It was +gallantly made, many men getting up to, and over, the works of the +enemy; but they were not able to hold them. At night they were +withdrawn. Upton brought his prisoners with him, but the guns he had +captured he was obliged to abandon. Upton had gained an important +advantage, but a lack in others of the spirit and dash possessed by him +lost it to us. Before leaving Washington I had been authorized to +promote officers on the field for special acts of gallantry. By this +authority I conferred the rank of brigadier-general upon Upton on the +spot, and this act was confirmed by the President. Upton had been badly +wounded in this fight. + +Burnside on the left had got up to within a few hundred yards of +Spottsylvania Court House, completely turning Lee's right. He was not +aware of the importance of the advantage he had gained, and I, being +with the troops where the heavy fighting was, did not know of it at the +time. He had gained his position with but little fighting, and almost +without loss. Burnside's position now separated him widely from +Wright's corps, the corps nearest to him. At night he was ordered to +join on to this. This brought him back about a mile, and lost to us an +important advantage. I attach no blame to Burnside for this, but I do +to myself for not having had a staff officer with him to report to me +his position. + +The enemy had not dared to come out of his line at any point to follow +up his advantage, except in the single instance of his attack on Barlow. +Then he was twice repulsed with heavy loss, though he had an entire +corps against two brigades. Barlow took up his bridges in the presence +of this force. + +On the 11th there was no battle and but little firing; none except by +Mott who made a reconnoissance to ascertain if there was a weak point in +the enemy's line. + +I wrote the following letter to General Halleck: + + +NEAR SPOTTSYLVANIA C. H., May 11, 1864--8.30 A.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Chief of Staff of the Army, Washington, D. C. + +We have now ended the 6th day of very hard fighting. The result up to +this time is much in our favor. But our losses have been heavy as well +as those of the enemy. We have lost to this time eleven general +officers killed, wounded and missing, and probably twenty thousand men. +I think the loss of the enemy must be greater--we having taken over four +thousand prisoners in battle, whilst he has taken from us but few except +a few stragglers. I am now sending back to Belle Plain all my wagons +for a fresh supply of provisions and ammunition, and purpose to fight it +out on this line if it takes all summer. + +The arrival of reinforcements here will be very encouraging to the men, +and I hope they will be sent as fast as possible, and in as great +numbers. My object in having them sent to Belle Plain was to use them +as an escort to our supply trains. If it is more convenient to send +them out by train to march from the railroad to Belle Plain or +Fredericksburg, send them so. + +I am satisfied the enemy are very shaky, and are only kept up to the +mark by the greatest exertions on the part of their officers, and by +keeping them intrenched in every position they take. + +Up to this time there is no indication of any portion of Lee's army +being detached for the defence of Richmond. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +And also, I received information, through the War Department, from +General Butler that his cavalry under Kautz had cut the railroad south +of Petersburg, separating Beauregard from Richmond, and had whipped +Hill, killing, wounding and capturing many. Also that he was +intrenched, and could maintain himself. On this same day came news from +Sheridan to the effect that he had destroyed ten miles of the railroad +and telegraph between Lee and Richmond, one and a half million rations, +and most of the medical stores for his army. + +On the 8th I had directed Sheridan verbally to cut loose from the Army +of the Potomac and pass around the left of Lee's army and attack his +cavalry and communications, which was successfully executed in the +manner I have already described. + + + +CHAPTER LIII. + +HANCOCK'S ASSAULT-LOSSES OF THE CONFEDERATES--PROMOTIONS RECOMMENDED +--DISCOMFITURE OF THE ENEMY--EWELL'S ATTACK-REDUCING THE ARTILLERY. + +In the reconnoissance made by Mott on the 11th, a salient was discovered +at the right centre. I determined that an assault should be made at that +point. (*28) Accordingly in the afternoon Hancock was ordered to move +his command by the rear of Warren and Wright, under cover of night, to +Wright's left, and there form it for an assault at four o'clock the next +morning. The night was dark, it rained heavily, and the road was +difficult, so that it was midnight when he reached the point where he +was to halt. It took most of the night to get the men in position for +their advance in the morning. The men got but little rest. Burnside +was ordered to attack (*29) on the left of the salient at the same hour. +I sent two of my staff officers to impress upon him the importance of +pushing forward vigorously. Hancock was notified of this. Warren and +Wright were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to join in the +assault if circumstances made it advisable. I occupied a central +position most convenient for receiving information from all points. +Hancock put Barlow on his left, in double column, and Birney to his +right. Mott followed Birney, and Gibbon was held in reserve. + +The morning of the 12th opened foggy, delaying the start more than half +an hour. + +The ground over which Hancock had to pass to reach the enemy, was +ascending and heavily wooded to within two or three hundred yards of the +enemy's intrenchments. In front of Birney there was also a marsh to +cross. But, notwithstanding all these difficulties, the troops pushed +on in quick time without firing a gun, and when within four or five +hundred yards of the enemy's line broke out in loud cheers, and with a +rush went up to and over the breastworks. Barlow and Birney entered +almost simultaneously. Here a desperate hand-to-hand conflict took +place. The men of the two sides were too close together to fire, but +used their guns as clubs. The hand conflict was soon over. Hancock's +corps captured some four thousand prisoners among them a division and a +brigade commander twenty or more guns with their horses, caissons, and +ammunition, several thousand stand of arms, and many colors. Hancock, +as soon as the hand-to-hand conflict was over, turned the guns of the +enemy against him and advanced inside the rebel lines. About six +o'clock I ordered Warren's corps to the support of Hancock's. Burnside, +on the left, had advanced up east of the salient to the very parapet of +the enemy. Potter, commanding one of his divisions, got over but was +not able to remain there. However, he inflicted a heavy loss upon the +enemy; but not without loss in return. + +This victory was important, and one that Lee could not afford to leave +us in full possession of. He made the most strenuous efforts to regain +the position he had lost. Troops were brought up from his left and +attacked Hancock furiously. Hancock was forced to fall back: but he +did so slowly, with his face to the enemy, inflicting on him heavy loss, +until behind the breastworks he had captured. These he turned, facing +them the other way, and continued to hold. Wright was ordered up to +reinforce Hancock, and arrived by six o'clock. He was wounded soon +after coming up but did not relinquish the command of his corps, +although the fighting lasted until one o'clock the next morning. At +eight o'clock Warren was ordered up again, but was so slow in making his +dispositions that his orders were frequently repeated, and with +emphasis. At eleven o'clock I gave Meade written orders to relieve +Warren from his command if he failed to move promptly. Hancock placed +batteries on high ground in his rear, which he used against the enemy, +firing over the heads of his own troops. + +Burnside accomplished but little on our left of a positive nature, but +negatively a great deal. He kept Lee from reinforcing his centre from +that quarter. If the 5th corps, or rather if Warren, had been as prompt +as Wright was with the 6th corps, better results might have been +obtained. + +Lee massed heavily from his left flank on the broken point of his line. +Five times during the day he assaulted furiously, but without dislodging +our troops from their new position. His losses must have been fearful. +Sometimes the belligerents would be separated by but a few feet. In one +place a tree, eighteen inches in diameter, was cut entirely down by +musket balls. All the trees between the lines were very much cut to +pieces by artillery and musketry. It was three o'clock next morning +before the fighting ceased. Some of our troops had then been twenty +hours under fire. In this engagement we did not lose a single +organization, not even a company. The enemy lost one division with its +commander, one brigade and one regiment, with heavy losses +elsewhere.(*30) Our losses were heavy, but, as stated, no whole company +was captured. At night Lee took a position in rear of his former one, +and by the following morning he was strongly intrenched in it. + +Warren's corps was now temporarily broken up, Cutler's division sent to +Wright, and Griffin's to Hancock. Meade ordered his chief of staff, +General Humphreys, to remain with Warren and the remaining division, and +authorized him to give it orders in his name. + +During the day I was passing along the line from wing to wing +continuously. About the centre stood a house which proved to be +occupied by an old lady and her daughter. She showed such unmistakable +signs of being strongly Union that I stopped. She said she had not seen +a Union flag for so long a time that it did her heart good to look upon +it again. She said her husband and son, being, Union men, had had to +leave early in the war, and were now somewhere in the Union army, if +alive. She was without food or nearly so, so I ordered rations issued +to her, and promised to find out if I could where the husband and son +were. + +There was no fighting on the 13th, further than a little skirmishing +between Mott's division and the enemy. I was afraid that Lee might be +moving out, and I did not want him to go without my knowing it. The +indications were that he was moving, but it was found that he was only +taking his new position back from the salient that had been captured. +Our dead were buried this day. Mott's division was reduced to a +brigade, and assigned to Birney's division. + +During this day I wrote to Washington recommending Sherman and Meade +(*31) for promotion to the grade of Major-General in the regular army; +Hancock for Brigadier-General; Wright, Gibbon and Humphreys to be +Major-Generals of Volunteers; and Upton and Carroll to be Brigadiers. +Upton had already been named as such, but the appointment had to be +confirmed by the Senate on the nomination of the President. + +The night of the 13th Warren and Wright were moved by the rear to the +left of Burnside. The night was very dark and it rained heavily, the +roads were so bad that the troops had to cut trees and corduroy the road +a part of the way, to get through. It was midnight before they got to +the point where they were to halt, and daylight before the troops could +be organized to advance to their position in line. They gained their +position in line, however, without any fighting, except a little in +Wright's front. Here Upton had to contend for an elevation which we +wanted and which the enemy was not disposed to yield. Upton first drove +the enemy, and was then repulsed in turn. Ayres coming to his support +with his brigade (of Griffin's division, Warren's corps), the position +was secured and fortified. There was no more battle during the 14th. +This brought our line east of the Court House and running north and +south and facing west. + +During the night of the 14th-15th Lee moved to cover this new front. +This left Hancock without an enemy confronting him. He was brought to +the rear of our new centre, ready to be moved in any direction he might +be wanted. + +On the 15th news came from Butler and Averill. The former reported the +capture of the outer works at Drury's Bluff, on the James River, and +that his cavalry had cut the railroad and telegraph south of Richmond on +the Danville road: and the latter, the destruction of a depot of +supplies at Dublin, West Virginia, and the breaking of New River Bridge +on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. The next day news came from +Sherman and Sheridan. Sherman had forced Johnston out of Dalton, +Georgia, and was following him south. The report from Sheridan embraced +his operations up to his passing the outer defences of Richmond. The +prospect must now have been dismal in Richmond. The road and telegraph +were cut between the capital and Lee. The roads and wires were cut in +every direction from the rebel capital. Temporarily that city was cut +off from all communication with the outside except by courier. This +condition of affairs, however, was of but short duration. + +I wrote Halleck: + + +NEAR SPOTTSYLVANIA C. H., May 16, 1864, 8 A.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Washington, D. C.: + +We have had five days almost constant rain without any prospect yet of +it clearing up. The roads have now become so impassable that ambulances +with wounded men can no longer run between here and Fredericksburg. All +offensive operations necessarily cease until we can have twenty-four +hours of dry weather. The army is in the best of spirits, and feel the +greatest confidence of ultimate success. * * * * +* * You can assure the President and Secretary of War that the +elements alone have suspended hostilities, and that it is in no manner +due to weakness or exhaustion on our part. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +The condition of the roads was such that nothing was done on the 17th. +But that night Hancock and Wright were to make a night march back to +their old positions, and to make an assault at four o'clock in the +morning. Lee got troops back in time to protect his old line, so the +assault was unsuccessful. On this day (18th) the news was almost as +discouraging to us as it had been two days before in the rebel capital. +As stated above, Hancock's and Wright's corps had made an unsuccessful +assault. News came that Sigel had been defeated at New Market, badly, +and was retreating down the valley. Not two hours before, I had sent +the inquiry to Halleck whether Sigel could not get to Staunton to stop +supplies coming from there to Lee. I asked at once that Sigel might be +relieved, and some one else put in his place. Hunter's name was +suggested, and I heartily approved. Further news from Butler reported +him driven from Drury's Bluff, but still in possession of the Petersburg +road. Banks had been defeated in Louisiana, relieved, and Canby put in +his place. This change of commander was not on my suggestion. All this +news was very discouraging. All of it must have been known by the enemy +before it was by me. In fact, the good news (for the enemy) must have +been known to him at the moment I thought he was in despair, and his +anguish had been already relieved when we were enjoying his supposed +discomfiture, But this was no time for repining. I immediately gave +orders for a movement by the left flank, on towards Richmond, to +commence on the night of the 19th. I also asked Halleck to secure the +cooperation of the navy in changing our base of supplies from +Fredericksburg to Port Royal, on the Rappahannock. + +Up to this time I had received no reinforcements, except six thousand +raw troops under Brigadier General Robert O. Tyler, just arrived. They +had not yet joined their command, Hancock's corps, but were on our +right. This corps had been brought to the rear of the centre, ready to +move in any direction. Lee, probably suspecting some move on my part, +and seeing our right entirely abandoned, moved Ewell's corps about five +o'clock in the afternoon, with Early's as a reserve, to attack us in +that quarter. Tyler had come up from Fredericksburg, and had been +halted on the road to the right of our line, near Kitching's brigade of +Warren's corps. Tyler received the attack with his raw troops, and they +maintained their position, until reinforced, in a manner worthy of +veterans. + +Hancock was in a position to reinforce speedily, and was the soldier to +do it without waiting to make dispositions. Birney was thrown to +Tyler's right and Crawford to his left, with Gibbon as a reserve; and +Ewell was whirled back speedily and with heavy loss. + +Warren had been ordered to get on Ewell's flank and in his rear, to cut +him off from his intrenchments. But his efforts were so feeble that +under the cover of night Ewell got back with only the loss of a few +hundred prisoners, besides his killed and wounded. The army being +engaged until after dark, I rescinded the order for the march by our +left flank that night. + +As soon as it was discovered that the enemy were coming out to attack, I +naturally supposed they would detach a force to destroy our trains. The +withdrawal of Hancock from the right uncovered one road from +Spottsylvania to Fredericksburg over which trains drew our supplies. +This was guarded by a division of colored troops, commanded by General +Ferrero, belonging to Burnside's corps. Ferrero was therefore promptly +notified, and ordered to throw his cavalry pickets out to the south and +be prepared to meet the enemy if he should come; if he had to retreat to +do so towards Fredericksburg. The enemy did detach as expected, and +captured twenty-five or thirty wagons which, however, were soon retaken. + +In consequence of the disasters that had befallen us in the past few +days, Lee could be reinforced largely, and I had no doubt he would be. +Beauregard had come up from the south with troops to guard the +Confederate capital when it was in danger. Butler being driven back, +most of the troops could be sent to Lee. Hoke was no longer needed in +North Carolina; and Sigel's troops having gone back to Cedar Creek, +whipped, many troops could be spared from the valley. + +The Wilderness and Spottsylvania battles convinced me that we had more +artillery than could ever be brought into action at any one time. It +occupied much of the road in marching, and taxed the trains in bringing +up forage. Artillery is very useful when it can be brought into action, +but it is a very burdensome luxury where it cannot be used. Before +leaving Spottsylvania, therefore, I sent back to the defences of +Washington over one hundred pieces of artillery, with the horses and +caissons. This relieved the roads over which we were to march of more +than two hundred six-horse teams, and still left us more artillery than +could be advantageously used. In fact, before reaching the James River +I again reduced the artillery with the army largely. + +I believed that, if one corps of the army was exposed on the road to +Richmond, and at a distance from the main army, Lee would endeavor to +attack the exposed corps before reinforcements could come up; in which +case the main army could follow Lee up and attack him before he had time +to intrench. So I issued the following orders: + + +NEAR SPOTTSYLVANIA C. H., VA., May 18, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Commanding Army of the Potomac. + +Before daylight to-morrow morning I propose to draw Hancock and Burnside +from the position they now hold, and put Burnside to the left of Wright. +Wright and Burnside should then force their way up as close to the enemy +as they can get without a general engagement, or with a general +engagement if the enemy will come out of their works to fight, and +intrench. Hancock should march and take up a position as if in support +of the two left corps. To-morrow night, at twelve or one o'clock, he +will be moved south-east with all his force and as much cavalry as can +be given to him, to get as far towards Richmond on the line of the +Fredericksburg Railroad as he can make, fighting the enemy in whatever +force he can find him. If the enemy make a general move to meet this, +they will be followed by the other three corps of the army, and +attacked, if possible, before time is given to intrench. + +Suitable directions will at once be given for all trains and surplus +artillery to conform to this movement. + +U. S. GRANT. + + +On the 20th, Lee showing no signs of coming out of his lines, orders +were renewed for a left-flank movement, to commence after night. + + + +CHAPTER LIV. + +MOVEMENT BY THE LEFT FLANK--BATTLE OF NORTH ANNA--AN INCIDENT OF THE +MARCH--MOVING ON RICHMOND--SOUTH OF THE PAMUNKEY--POSITION OF THE +NATIONAL ARMY. + +We were now to operate in a different country from any we had before +seen in Virginia. The roads were wide and good, and the country well +cultivated. No men were seen except those bearing arms, even the black +man having been sent away. The country, however, was new to us, and we +had neither guides nor maps to tell us where the roads were, or where +they led to. Engineer and staff officers were put to the dangerous duty +of supplying the place of both maps and guides. By reconnoitring they +were enabled to locate the roads in the vicinity of each army corps. +Our course was south, and we took all roads leading in that direction +which would not separate the army too widely. + +Hancock who had the lead had marched easterly to Guiney's Station, on +the Fredericksburg Railroad, thence southerly to Bowling Green and +Milford. He was at Milford by the night of the 21st. Here he met a +detachment of Pickett's division coming from Richmond to reinforce Lee. +They were speedily driven away, and several hundred captured. Warren +followed on the morning of the 21st, and reached Guiney's Station that +night without molestation. Burnside and Wright were retained at +Spottsylvania to keep up the appearance of an intended assault, and to +hold Lee, if possible, while Hancock and Warren should get start enough +to interpose between him and Richmond. + +Lee had now a superb opportunity to take the initiative either by +attacking Wright and Burnside alone, or by following by the Telegraph +Road and striking Hancock's and Warren's corps, or even Hancock's alone, +before reinforcements could come up. But he did not avail himself of +either opportunity. He seemed really to be misled as to my designs; but +moved by his interior line--the Telegraph Road--to make sure of keeping +between his capital and the Army of the Potomac. He never again had +such an opportunity of dealing a heavy blow. + +The evening of the 21st Burnside, 9th corps, moved out followed by +Wright, 6th corps. Burnside was to take the Telegraph Road; but finding +Stanard's Ford, over the Po, fortified and guarded, he turned east to +the road taken by Hancock and Warren without an attempt to dislodge the +enemy. The night of the 21st I had my headquarters near the 6th corps, +at Guiney's Station, and the enemy's cavalry was between us and Hancock. +There was a slight attack on Burnside's and Wright's corps as they moved +out of their lines; but it was easily repulsed. The object probably was +only to make sure that we were not leaving a force to follow upon the +rear of the Confederates. + +By the morning of the 22d Burnside and Wright were at Guiney's Station. +Hancock's corps had now been marching and fighting continuously for +several days, not having had rest even at night much of the time. They +were, therefore, permitted to rest during the 22d. But Warren was +pushed to Harris's Store, directly west of Milford, and connected with +it by a good road, and Burnside was sent to New Bethel Church. Wright's +corps was still back at Guiney's Station. + +I issued the following order for the movement of the troops the next +day: + + +NEW BETHEL, VA., May 22, 1864 + +MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Commanding Army of the Potomac. + +Direct corps commanders to hold their troops in readiness to march at +five A.M. to-morrow. At that hour each command will send out cavalry +and infantry on all roads to their front leading south, and ascertain, +if possible, where the enemy is. If beyond the South Anna, the 5th and +6th corps will march to the forks of the road, where one branch leads to +Beaver Dam Station, the other to Jericho Bridge, then south by roads +reaching the Anna, as near to and east of Hawkins Creek as they can be +found. + +The 2d corps will move to Chesterfield Ford. The 9th corps will be +directed to move at the same time to Jericho Bridge. The map only shows +two roads for the four corps to march upon, but, no doubt, by the use of +plantation roads, and pressing in guides, others can be found, to give +one for each corps. + +The troops will follow their respective reconnoitring parties. The +trains will be moved at the same time to Milford Station. + +Headquarters will follow the 9th corps. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +Warren's corps was moved from Harris's Store to Jericho Ford, Wright's +following. Warren arrived at the ford early in the afternoon, and by +five o'clock effected a crossing under the protection of sharpshooters. +The men had to wade in water up to their waists. As soon as enough +troops were over to guard the ford, pontoons were laid and the artillery +and the rest of the troops crossed. The line formed was almost +perpendicular to the course of the river--Crawford on the left, next to +the river, Griffin in the centre, and Cutler on the right. Lee was +found intrenched along the front of their line. The whole of Hill's +corps was sent against Warren's right before it had got in position. A +brigade of Cutler's division was driven back, the enemy following, but +assistance coming up the enemy was in turn driven back into his trenches +with heavy loss in killed and wounded, with about five hundred prisoners +left in our hands. By night Wright's corps was up ready to reinforce +Warren. + +On the 23d Hancock's corps was moved to the wooden bridge which spans +the North Anna River just west of where the Fredericksburg Railroad +crosses. It was near night when the troops arrived. They found the +bridge guarded, with troops intrenched, on the north side. Hancock sent +two brigades, Egan's and Pierce's, to the right and left, and when +properly disposed they charged simultaneously. The bridge was carried +quickly, the enemy retreating over it so hastily that many were shoved +into the river, and some of them were drowned. Several hundred +prisoners were captured. The hour was so late that Hancock did not +cross until next morning. + +Burnside's corps was moved by a middle road running between those +described above, and which strikes the North Anna at Ox Ford, midway +between Telegraph Road and Jericho Ford. The hour of its arrival was +too late to cross that night. + +On the 24th Hancock's corps crossed to the south side of the river +without opposition, and formed line facing nearly west. The railroad in +rear was taken possession of and destroyed as far as possible. Wright's +corps crossed at Jericho early the same day, and took position to the +right of Warren's corps, extending south of the Virginia Central +Railroad. This road was torn up for a considerable distance to the rear +(west), the ties burned, and the rails bent and twisted by heating them +over the burning ties. It was found, however, that Burnside's corps +could not cross at Ox Ford. Lee had taken a position with his centre on +the river at this point, with the two wings thrown back, his line making +an acute angle where it overlooked the river. + +Before the exact position of the whole of Lee's line was accurately +known, I directed Hancock and Warren each to send a brigade to Ox Ford +by the south side of the river. They found the enemy too strong to +justify a serious attack. A third ford was found between Ox Ford and +Jericho. Burnside was directed to cross a division over this ford, and +to send one division to Hancock. Crittenden was crossed by this +newly-discovered ford, and formed up the river to connect with +Crawford's left. Potter joined Hancock by way of the wooden bridge. +Crittenden had a severe engagement with some of Hill's corps on his +crossing the river, and lost heavily. When joined to Warren's corps he +was no further molested. Burnside still guarded Ox Ford from the north +side. + +Lee now had his entire army south of the North Anna. Our lines covered +his front, with the six miles separating the two wings guarded by but a +single division. To get from one wing to the other the river would have +to be crossed twice. Lee could reinforce any part of his line from all +points of it in a very short march; or could concentrate the whole of it +wherever he might choose to assault. We were, for the time, practically +two armies besieging. + +Lee had been reinforced, and was being reinforced, largely. About this +time the very troops whose coming I had predicted, had arrived or were +coming in. Pickett with a full division from Richmond was up; Hoke from +North Carolina had come with a brigade; and Breckinridge was there: in +all probably not less than fifteen thousand men. But he did not attempt +to drive us from the field. + +On the 22d or 23d I received dispatches from Washington saying that +Sherman had taken Kingston, crossed the Etowah River and was advancing +into Georgia. + +I was seated at the time on the porch of a fine plantation house waiting +for Burnside's corps to pass. Meade and his staff, besides my own +staff, were with me. The lady of the house, a Mrs. Tyler, and an +elderly lady, were present. Burnside seeing us, came up on the porch, +his big spurs and saber rattling as he walked. He touched his hat +politely to the ladies, and remarked that he supposed they had never +seen so many "live Yankees" before in their lives. The elderly lady +spoke up promptly saying, "Oh yes, I have; many more." "Where?" said +Burnside. "In Richmond." Prisoners, of course, was understood. + +I read my dispatch aloud, when it was received. This threw the younger +lady into tears. I found the information she had received (and I suppose +it was the information generally in circulation through the South) was +that Lee was driving us from the State in the most demoralized condition +and that in the South-west our troops were but little better than +prisoners of war. Seeing our troops moving south was ocular proof that +a part of her information was incorrect, and she asked me if my news +from Sherman was true. I assured her that there was no doubt about it. +I left a guard to protect the house from intrusion until the troops +should have all passed, and assured her that if her husband was in +hiding she could bring him in and he should be protected also. But I +presume he was in the Confederate army. + +On the 25th I gave orders, through Halleck, to Hunter, who had relieved +Sigel, to move up the Valley of Virginia, cross over the Blue Ridge to +Charlottesville and go as far as Lynchburg if possible, living upon the +country and cutting the railroads and canal as he went. After doing +this he could find his way back to his base, or join me. + +On the same day news was received that Lee was falling back on Richmond. +This proved not to be true. But we could do nothing where we were +unless Lee would assume the offensive. I determined, therefore, to draw +out of our present position and make one more effort to get between him +and Richmond. I had no expectation now, however, of succeeding in this; +but I did expect to hold him far enough west to enable me to reach the +James River high up. Sheridan was now again with the Army of the +Potomac. + +On the 26th I informed the government at Washington of the position of +the two armies; of the reinforcements the enemy had received; of the +move I proposed to make (*32); and directed that our base of supplies +should be shifted to White House, on the Pamunkey. The wagon train and +guards moved directly from Port Royal to White House. Supplies moved +around by water, guarded by the navy. Orders had previously been sent, +through Halleck, for Butler to send Smith's corps to White House. This +order was repeated on the 25th, with directions that they should be +landed on the north side of the Pamunkey, and marched until they joined +the Army of the Potomac. + +It was a delicate move to get the right wing of the Army of the Potomac +from its position south of the North Anna in the presence of the enemy. +To accomplish it, I issued the following order: + + +QUARLES' MILLS, VA., May 25, 1864. + +MAJOR GENERAL MEADE, Commanding A. P. + +Direct Generals Warren and Wright to withdraw all their teams and +artillery, not in position, to the north side of the river to-morrow. +Send that belonging to General Wright's corps as far on the road to +Hanover Town as it can go, without attracting attention to the fact. +Send with it Wright's best division or division under his ablest +commander. Have their places filled up in the line so if possible the +enemy will not notice their withdrawal. Send the cavalry to-morrow +afternoon, or as much of it as you may deem necessary, to watch and +seize, if they can, Littlepage's Bridge and Taylor's Ford, and to remain +on one or other side of the river at these points until the infantry and +artillery all pass. As soon as it is dark to-morrow night start the +division which you withdraw first from Wright's corps to make a forced +march to Hanover Town, taking with them no teams to impede their march. +At the same time this division starts commence withdrawing all of the +5th and 6th corps from the south side of the river, and march them for +the same place. The two divisions of the 9th corps not now with +Hancock, may be moved down the north bank of the river where they will +be handy to support Hancock if necessary, or will be that much on their +road to follow the 5th and 6th corps. Hancock should hold his command +in readiness to follow as soon as the way is clear for him. To-morrow it +will leave nothing for him to do, but as soon as he can he should get +all his teams and spare artillery on the road or roads which he will +have to take. As soon as the troops reach Hanover Town they should get +possession of all the crossings they can in that neighborhood. I think +it would be well to make a heavy cavalry demonstration on the enemy's +left, to-morrow afternoon, also. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +Wilson's division of cavalry was brought up from the left and moved by +our right south to Little River. Here he manoeuvred to give the +impression that we were going to attack the left flank of Lee's army. + +Under cover of night our right wing was withdrawn to the north side of +the river, Lee being completely deceived by Wilson's feint. On the +afternoon of the 26th Sheridan moved, sending Gregg's and Torbert's +cavalry to Taylor's and Littlepage's fords towards Hanover. As soon as +it was dark both divisions moved quietly to Hanover Ferry, leaving small +guards behind to keep up the impression that crossings were to be +attempted in the morning. Sheridan was followed by a division of +infantry under General Russell. On the morning of the 27th the crossing +was effected with but little loss, the enemy losing thirty or forty, +taken prisoners. Thus a position was secured south of the Pamunkey. + +Russell stopped at the crossing while the cavalry pushed on to Hanover +Town. Here Barringer's, formerly Gordon's, brigade of rebel cavalry was +encountered, but it was speedily driven away. + +Warren's and Wright's corps were moved by the rear of Burnside's and +Hancock's corps. When out of the way these latter corps followed, +leaving pickets confronting the enemy. Wilson's cavalry followed last, +watching all the fords until everything had recrossed; then taking up +the pontoons and destroying other bridges, became the rear-guard. + +Two roads were traversed by the troops in this move. The one nearest to +and north of the North Anna and Pamunkey was taken by Wright, followed +by Hancock. Warren, followed by Burnside, moved by a road farther +north, and longer. The trains moved by a road still farther north, and +had to travel a still greater distance. All the troops that had crossed +the Pamunkey on the morning of the 27th remained quiet during the rest +of the day, while the troops north of that stream marched to reach the +crossing that had been secured for them. + +Lee had evidently been deceived by our movement from North Anna; for on +the morning of the 27th he telegraphed to Richmond: "Enemy crossed to +north side, and cavalry and infantry crossed at Hanover Town." The +troops that had then crossed left his front the night of the 25th. + +The country we were now in was a difficult one to move troops over. The +streams were numerous, deep and sluggish, sometimes spreading out into +swamps grown up with impenetrable growths of trees and underbrush. The +banks were generally low and marshy, making the streams difficult to +approach except where there were roads and bridges. + +Hanover Town is about twenty miles from Richmond. There are two roads +leading there; the most direct and shortest one crossing the +Chickahominy at Meadow Bridge, near the Virginia Central Railroad, the +second going by New and Old Cold Harbor. A few miles out from Hanover +Town there is a third road by way of Mechanicsville to Richmond. New +Cold Harbor was important to us because while there we both covered the +roads back to White House (where our supplies came from), and the roads +south-east over which we would have to pass to get to the James River +below the Richmond defences. + +On the morning of the 28th the army made an early start, and by noon all +had crossed except Burnside's corps. This was left on the north side +temporarily to guard the large wagon train. A line was at once formed +extending south from the river, Wright's corps on the right, Hancock's +in the centre, and Warren's on the left, ready to meet the enemy if he +should come. + +At the same time Sheridan was directed to reconnoitre towards +Mechanicsville to find Lee's position. At Hawes' Shop, just where the +middle road leaves the direct road to Richmond, he encountered the +Confederate cavalry dismounted and partially intrenched. Gregg attacked +with his division, but was unable to move the enemy. In the evening +Custer came up with a brigade. The attack was now renewed, the cavalry +dismounting and charging as infantry. This time the assault was +successful, both sides losing a considerable number of men. But our +troops had to bury the dead, and found that more Confederate than Union +soldiers had been killed. The position was easily held, because our +infantry was near. + +On the 29th a reconnoissance was made in force, to find the position of +Lee. Wright's corps pushed to Hanover Court House. Hancock's corps +pushed toward Totopotomoy Creek; Warren's corps to the left on the Shady +Grove Church Road, while Burnside was held in reserve. Our advance was +pushed forward three miles on the left with but little fighting. There +was now an appearance of a movement past our left flank, and Sheridan +was sent to meet it. + +On the 30th Hancock moved to the Totopotomoy, where he found the enemy +strongly fortified. Wright was moved to the right of Hancock's corps, +and Burnside was brought forward and crossed, taking position to the +left of Hancock. Warren moved up near Huntley Corners on the Shady +Grove Church Road. There was some skirmishing along the centre, and in +the evening Early attacked Warren with some vigor, driving him back at +first, and threatening to turn our left flank. As the best means of +reinforcing the left, Hancock was ordered to attack in his front. He +carried and held the rifle-pits. While this was going on Warren got his +men up, repulsed Early, and drove him more than a mile. + +On this day I wrote to Halleck ordering all the pontoons in Washington +to be sent to City Point. + +In the evening news was received of the arrival of Smith with his corps +at White House. I notified Meade, in writing, as follows: + + +NEAR HAWES' SHOP, VA., 6.40 P.M., May 30, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Commanding A. P. + +General Smith will debark his force at the White House tonight and start +up the south bank of the Pamunkey at an early hour, probably at 3 A.M. +in the morning. It is not improbable that the enemy, being aware of +Smith's movement, will be feeling to get on our left flank for the +purpose of cutting him off, or by a dash to crush him and get back +before we are aware of it. Sheridan ought to be notified to watch the +enemy's movements well out towards Cold Harbor, and also on the +Mechanicsville road. Wright should be got well massed on Hancock's +right, so that, if it becomes necessary, he can take the place of the +latter readily whilst troops are being thrown east of the Totopotomoy if +necessary. + +I want Sheridan to send a cavalry force of at least half a brigade, if +not a whole brigade, at 5 A.M. in the morning, to communicate with Smith +and to return with him. I will send orders for Smith by the messenger +you send to Sheridan with his orders. + +U. S. GRANT. + + +I also notified Smith of his danger, and the precautions that would be +taken to protect him. + +The night of the 30th Lee's position was substantially from Atlee's +Station on the Virginia Central Railroad south and east to the vicinity +of Cold Harbor. Ours was: The left of Warren's corps was on the Shady +Grove Road, extending to the Mechanicsville Road and about three miles +south of the Totopotomoy. Burnside to his right, then Hancock, and +Wright on the extreme right, extending towards Hanover Court House, six +miles south-east of it. Sheridan with two divisions of cavalry was +watching our left front towards Cold Harbor. Wilson with his division +on our right was sent to get on the Virginia Central Railroad and +destroy it as far back as possible. He got possession of Hanover Court +House the next day after a skirmish with Young's cavalry brigade. The +enemy attacked Sheridan's pickets, but reinforcements were sent up and +the attack was speedily repulsed and the enemy followed some distance +towards Cold Harbor. + + + +CHAPTER LV. + +ADVANCE ON COLD HARBOR--AN ANECDOTE OF THE WAR--BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR +--CORRESPONDENCE WITH LEE--RETROSPECTIVE. + +On the 31st Sheridan advanced to near Old Cold Harbor. He found it +intrenched and occupied by cavalry and infantry. A hard fight ensued +but the place was carried. The enemy well knew the importance of Cold +Harbor to us, and seemed determined that we should not hold it. He +returned with such a large force that Sheridan was about withdrawing +without making any effort to hold it against such odds; but about the +time he commenced the evacuation he received orders to hold the place at +all hazards, until reinforcements could be sent to him. He speedily +turned the rebel works to face against them and placed his men in +position for defence. Night came on before the enemy was ready for +assault. + +Wright's corps was ordered early in the evening to march directly to +Cold Harbor passing by the rear of the army. It was expected to arrive +by daylight or before; but the night was dark and the distance great, so +that it was nine o'clock the 1st of June before it reached its +destination. Before the arrival of Wright the enemy had made two +assaults on Sheridan, both of which were repulsed with heavy loss to the +enemy. Wright's corps coming up, there was no further assault on Cold +Harbor. + +Smith, who was coming up from White House, was also directed to march +directly to Cold Harbor, and was expected early on the morning of the +1st of June; but by some blunder the order which reached Smith directed +him to Newcastle instead of Cold Harbor. Through this blunder Smith did +not reach his destination until three o'clock in the afternoon, and then +with tired and worn-out men from their long and dusty march. He landed +twelve thousand five hundred men from Butler's command, but a division +was left at White House temporarily and many men had fallen out of ranks +in their long march. + +Before the removal of Wright's corps from our right, after dark on the +31st, the two lines, Federal and Confederate, were so close together at +that point that either side could detect directly any movement made by +the other. Finding at daylight that Wright had left his front, Lee +evidently divined that he had gone to our left. At all events, soon +after light on the 1st of June Anderson, who commanded the corps on +Lee's left, was seen moving along Warren's front. Warren was ordered to +attack him vigorously in flank, while Wright was directed to move out +and get on his front. Warren fired his artillery at the enemy; but lost +so much time in making ready that the enemy got by, and at three o'clock +he reported the enemy was strongly intrenched in his front, and besides +his lines were so long that he had no mass of troops to move with. He +seemed to have forgotten that lines in rear of an army hold themselves +while their defenders are fighting in their front. Wright reconnoitred +some distance to his front: but the enemy finding Old Cold Harbor +already taken had halted and fortified some distance west. + +By six o'clock in the afternoon Wright and Smith were ready to make an +assault. In front of both the ground was clear for several hundred +yards and then became wooded. Both charged across this open space and +into the wood, capturing and holding the first line of rifle-pits of the +enemy, and also capturing seven or eight hundred prisoners. + +While this was going on, the enemy charged Warren three separate times +with vigor, but were repulsed each time with loss. There was no officer +more capable, nor one more prompt in acting, than Warren when the enemy +forced him to it. There was also an attack upon Hancock's and +Burnside's corps at the same time; but it was feeble and probably only +intended to relieve Anderson who was being pressed by Wright and Smith. + +During the night the enemy made frequent attacks with the view of +dispossessing us of the important position we had gained, but without +effecting their object. + +Hancock was moved from his place in line during the night and ordered to +the left of Wright. I expected to take the offensive on the morning of +the 2d, but the night was so dark, the heat and dust so excessive and +the roads so intricate and hard to keep, that the head of column only +reached Old Cold Harbor at six o'clock, but was in position at 7.30 A.M. +Preparations were made for an attack in the afternoon, but did not take +place until the next morning. Warren's corps was moved to the left to +connect with Smith: Hancock's corps was got into position to the left +of Wright's, and Burnside was moved to Bethesda Church in reserve. While +Warren and Burnside were making these changes the enemy came out several +times and attacked them, capturing several hundred prisoners. The +attacks were repulsed, but not followed up as they should have been. I +was so annoyed at this that I directed Meade to instruct his corps +commanders that they should seize all such opportunities when they +occurred, and not wait for orders, all of our manoeuvres being made for +the very purpose of getting the enemy out of his cover. + +On this day Wilson returned from his raid upon the Virginia Central +Railroad, having damaged it considerably. But, like ourselves, the +rebels had become experts in repairing such damage. Sherman, in his +memoirs, relates an anecdote of his campaign to Atlanta that well +illustrates this point. The rebel cavalry lurking in his rear to burn +bridges and obstruct his communications had become so disgusted at +hearing trains go whistling by within a few hours after a bridge had +been burned, that they proposed to try blowing up some of the tunnels. +One of them said, "No use, boys, Old Sherman carries duplicate tunnels +with him, and will replace them as fast as you can blow them up; better +save your powder." + +Sheridan was engaged reconnoitring the banks of the Chickahominy, to +find crossings and the condition of the roads. He reported favorably. + +During the night Lee moved his left up to make his line correspond to +ours. His lines extended now from the Totopotomoy to New Cold Harbor. +Mine from Bethesda Church by Old Cold Harbor to the Chickahominy, with a +division of cavalry guarding our right. An assault was ordered for the +3d, to be made mainly by the corps of Hancock, Wright and Smith; but +Warren and Burnside were to support it by threatening Lee's left, and to +attack with great earnestness if he should either reinforce more +threatened points by drawing from that quarter or if a favorable +opportunity should present itself. + +The corps commanders were to select the points in their respective +fronts where they would make their assaults. The move was to commence +at half-past four in the morning. Hancock sent Barlow and Gibbon +forward at the appointed hour, with Birney as a reserve. Barlow pushed +forward with great vigor, under a heavy fire of both artillery and +musketry, through thickets and swamps. Notwithstanding all the +resistance of the enemy and the natural obstructions to overcome, he +carried a position occupied by the enemy outside their main line where +the road makes a deep cut through a bank affording as good a shelter for +troops as if it had been made for that purpose. Three pieces of +artillery had been captured here, and several hundred prisoners. The +guns were immediately turned against the men who had just been using +them. No (*33) assistance coming to him, he (Barlow) intrenched under +fire and continued to hold his place. Gibbon was not so fortunate in +his front. He found the ground over which he had to pass cut up with +deep ravines, and a morass difficult to cross. But his men struggled on +until some of them got up to the very parapet covering the enemy. +Gibbon gained ground much nearer the enemy than that which he left, and +here he intrenched and held fast. + +Wright's corps moving in two lines captured the outer rifle-pits in +their front, but accomplished nothing more. Smith's corps also gained +the outer rifle-pits in its front. The ground over which this corps +(18th) had to move was the most exposed of any over which charges were +made. An open plain intervened between the contending forces at this +point, which was exposed both to a direct and a cross fire. Smith, +however, finding a ravine running towards his front, sufficiently deep +to protect men in it from cross fire, and somewhat from a direct fire, +put Martindale's division in it, and with Brooks supporting him on the +left and Devens on the right succeeded in gaining the outer--probably +picket--rifle-pits. Warren and Burnside also advanced and gained +ground--which brought the whole army on one line. + +This assault cost us heavily and probably without benefit to compensate: +but the enemy was not cheered by the occurrence sufficiently to induce +him to take the offensive. In fact, nowhere after the battle of the +Wilderness did Lee show any disposition to leave his defences far behind +him. + +Fighting was substantially over by half-past seven in the morning. At +eleven o'clock I started to visit all the corps commanders to see for +myself the different positions gained and to get their opinion of the +practicability of doing anything more in their respective fronts. + +Hancock gave the opinion that in his front the enemy was too strong to +make any further assault promise success. Wright thought he could gain +the lines of the enemy, but it would require the cooperation of +Hancock's and Smith's corps. Smith thought a lodgment possible, but was +not sanguine: Burnside thought something could be done in his front, +but Warren differed. I concluded, therefore to make no more assaults, +and a little after twelve directed in the following letter that all +offensive action should cease. + + +COLD HARBOR, June 3, 1864.-12.30 P.M. MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, + +Commanding A. P. + +The opinion of corps commanders not being sanguine of success in case an +assault is ordered, you may direct a suspension of farther advance for +the present. Hold our most advanced positions and strengthen them. +Whilst on the defensive our line may be contracted from the right if +practicable. + +Reconnoissances should be made in front of every corps and advances made +to advantageous positions by regular approaches. To aid the expedition +under General Hunter it is necessary that we should detain all the army +now with Lee until the former gets well on his way to Lynchburg. To do +this effectually it will be better to keep the enemy out of the +intrenchments of Richmond than to have them go back there. + +Wright and Hancock should be ready to assault in case the enemy should +break through General Smith's lines, and all should be ready to resist +an assault. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +The remainder of the day was spent in strengthening the line we now +held. By night we were as strong against Lee as he was against us. + +During the night the enemy quitted our right front, abandoning some of +their wounded, and without burying their dead. These we were able to +care for. But there were many dead and wounded men between the lines of +the contending forces, which were now close together, who could not be +cared for without a cessation of hostilities. + +So I wrote the following: + + +COLD HARBOR, VA., June 5, 1864. + +GENERAL R. E. LEE, Commanding Confederate Army. + +It is reported to me that there are wounded men, probably of both +armies, now lying exposed and suffering between the lines occupied +respectively by the two armies. Humanity would dictate that some +provision should be made to provide against such hardships. I would +propose, therefore, that hereafter, when no battle is raging, either +party be authorized to send to any point between the pickets or skirmish +lines, unarmed men bearing litters to pick up their dead or wounded, +without being fired upon by the other party. Any other method, equally +fair to both parties, you may propose for meeting the end desired will +be accepted by me. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +Lee replied that he feared such an arrangement would lead to +misunderstanding, and proposed that in future, when either party wished +to remove their dead and wounded, a flag of truce be sent. I answered +this immediately by saying: + + +COLD HARBOR, VA., June 6, 1864. + +GENERAL R. E. LEE, Commanding Army of N. Va. + +Your communication of yesterday's date is received. I will send +immediately, as you propose, to collect the dead and wounded between the +lines of the two armies, and will also instruct that you be allowed to +do the same. I propose that the time for doing this be between the +hours of 12 M. and 3 P.M. to-day. I will direct all parties going out +to bear a white flag, and not to attempt to go beyond where we have dead +or wounded, and not beyond or on ground occupied by your troops. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +Lee's response was that he could not consent to the burial of the dead +and removal of the wounded in the way I proposed, but when either party +desired such permission it should be asked for by flag of truce and he +had directed that any parties I may have sent out, as mentioned in my +letter, to be turned back. I answered: + + +COLD HARBOR, VA, June 6, 1864. + +GENERAL R. E. LEE. Commanding Army, N. Va. + +The knowledge that wounded men are now suffering from want of attention, +between the two armies, compels me to ask a suspension of hostilities +for sufficient time to collect them in, say two hours. Permit me to say +that the hours you may fix upon for this will be agreeable to me, and +the same privilege will be extended to such parties as you may wish to +send out on the same duty without further application. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +Lee acceded to this; but delays in transmitting the correspondence +brought it to the 7th of June--forty-eight hours after it commenced +--before parties were got out to collect the men left upon the field. +In the meantime all but two of the wounded had died. And I wrote to +Lee: + + +COLD HARBOR, VA., June 7, 1864. 10.30 A.M. + +GEN. R. E. LEE, Commanding Army of N. Va. + +I regret that your note of seven P.M. yesterday should have been +received at the nearest corps headquarters, to where it was delivered, +after the hour which had been given for the removal of the dead and +wounded had expired; 10.45 P.M. was the hour at which it was received at +corps headquarters, and between eleven and twelve it reached my +headquarters. As a consequence, it was not understood by the troops of +this army that there was a cessation of hostilities for the purpose of +collecting the dead and wounded, and none were collected. Two officers +and six men of the 8th and 25th North Carolina Regts., who were out in +search of the bodies of officers of their respective regiments, were +captured and brought into our lines, owing to this want of +understanding. I regret this, but will state that as soon as I learned +the fact, I directed that they should not be held as prisoners, but must +be returned to their commands. These officers and men having been +carelessly brought through our lines to the rear have not determined +whether they will be sent back the way they came, or whether they will +be sent by some other route. + +Regretting that all my efforts for alleviating the sufferings of wounded +men left upon the battle-field have been rendered nugatory, I remain, +&c., + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever +made. I might say the same thing of the assault of the 22d of May, +1863, at Vicksburg. At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to +compensate for the heavy loss we sustained. Indeed, the advantages +other than those of relative losses, were on the Confederate side. +Before that, the Army of Northern Virginia seemed to have acquired a +wholesome regard for the courage, endurance, and soldierly qualities +generally of the Army of the Potomac. They no longer wanted to fight +them "one Confederate to five Yanks." Indeed, they seemed to have given +up any idea of gaining any advantage of their antagonist in the open +field. They had come to much prefer breastworks in their front to the +Army of the Potomac. This charge seemed to revive their hopes +temporarily; but it was of short duration. The effect upon the Army of +the Potomac was the reverse. When we reached the James River, however, +all effects of the battle of Cold Harbor seemed to have disappeared. + +There was more justification for the assault at Vicksburg. We were in a +Southern climate, at the beginning of the hot season. The Army of the +Tennessee had won five successive victories over the garrison of +Vicksburg in the three preceding weeks. They had driven a portion of +that army from Port Gibson with considerable loss, after having flanked +them out of their stronghold at Grand Gulf. They had attacked another +portion of the same army at Raymond, more than fifty miles farther in +the interior of the State, and driven them back into Jackson with great +loss in killed, wounded, captured and missing, besides loss of large and +small arms: they had captured the capital of the State of Mississippi, +with a large amount of materials of war and manufactures. Only a few +days before, they had beaten the enemy then penned up in the town first +at Champion's Hill, next at Big Black River Bridge, inflicting upon him +a loss of fifteen thousand or more men (including those cut off from +returning) besides large losses in arms and ammunition. The Army of the +Tennessee had come to believe that they could beat their antagonist +under any circumstances. There was no telling how long a regular siege +might last. As I have stated, it was the beginning of the hot season in +a Southern climate. There was no telling what the casualties might be +among Northern troops working and living in trenches, drinking surface +water filtered through rich vegetation, under a tropical sun. If +Vicksburg could have been carried in May, it would not only have saved +the army the risk it ran of a greater danger than from the bullets of +the enemy, but it would have given us a splendid army, well equipped and +officered, to operate elsewhere with. These are reasons justifying the +assault. The only benefit we gained--and it was a slight one for so +great a sacrifice--was that the men worked cheerfully in the trenches +after that, being satisfied with digging the enemy out. Had the assault +not been made, I have no doubt that the majority of those engaged in the +siege of Vicksburg would have believed that had we assaulted it would +have proven successful, and would have saved life, health and comfort. + + + +CHAPTER LVI. + +LEFT FLANK MOVEMENT ACROSS THE CHICKAHOMINY AND JAMES--GENERAL LEE +--VISIT TO BUTLER--THE MOVEMENT ON PETERSBURG--THE INVESTMENT OF +PETERSBURG. + +Lee's position was now so near Richmond, and the intervening swamps of +the Chickahominy so great an obstacle to the movement of troops in the +face of an enemy, that I determined to make my next left flank move +carry the Army of the Potomac south of the James River. (*34) +Preparations for this were promptly commenced. The move was a hazardous +one to make: the Chickahominy River, with its marshy and heavily +timbered approaches, had to be crossed; all the bridges over it east of +Lee were destroyed; the enemy had a shorter line and better roads to +travel on to confront me in crossing; more than fifty miles intervened +between me and Butler, by the roads I should have to travel, with both +the James and the Chickahominy unbridged to cross; and last, the Army of +the Potomac had to be got out of a position but a few hundred yards from +the enemy at the widest place. Lee, if he did not choose to follow me, +might, with his shorter distance to travel and his bridges over the +Chickahominy and the James, move rapidly on Butler and crush him before +the army with me could come to his relief. Then too he might spare +troops enough to send against Hunter who was approaching Lynchburg, +living upon the country he passed through, and without ammunition +further than what he carried with him. + +But the move had to be made, and I relied upon Lee's not seeing my +danger as I saw it. Besides we had armies on both sides of the James +River and not far from the Confederate capital. I knew that its safety +would be a matter of the first consideration with the executive, +legislative and judicial branches of the so-called Confederate +government, if it was not with the military commanders. But I took all +the precaution I knew of to guard against all dangers. + +Sheridan was sent with two divisions, to communicate with Hunter and to +break up the Virginia Central Railroad and the James River Canal, on the +7th of June, taking instructions to Hunter to come back with him (*35). +Hunter was also informed by way of Washington and the Valley that +Sheridan was on the way to meet him. The canal and Central Road, and +the regions penetrated by them, were of vast importance to the enemy, +furnishing and carrying a large per cent. of all the supplies for the +Army of Northern Virginia and the people of Richmond. Before Sheridan +got off on the 7th news was received from Hunter reporting his advance +to Staunton and successful engagement with the enemy near that place on +the 5th, in which the Confederate commander, W. S. Jones, was killed. +On the 4th of June the enemy having withdrawn his left corps, Burnside +on our right was moved up between Warren and Smith. On the 5th Birney +returned to Hancock, which extended his left now to the Chickahominy, +and Warren was withdrawn to Cold Harbor. Wright was directed to send +two divisions to the left to extend down the banks of that stream to +Bottom's Bridge. The cavalry extended still farther east to Jones's +Bridge. + +On the 7th Abercrombie--who was in command at White House, and who had +been in command at our base of supplies in all the changes made from the +start--was ordered to take up the iron from the York River Railroad and +put it on boats, and to be in readiness to move by water to City Point. + +On the 8th Meade was directed to fortify a line down the bank +overlooking the Chickahominy, under cover of which the army could move. + +On the 9th Abercrombie was directed to send all organized troops +arriving at White House, without debarking from their transports, to +report to Butler. Halleck was at this time instructed to send all +reinforcements to City Point. + +On the 11th I wrote: + + +COLD HARBOR, VA., June 11, 1864. + +MAJOR-GEN. B. F. BUTLER, Commanding Department of Va. and N. C. + +The movement to transfer this army to the south side of the James River +will commence after dark to-morrow night. Col. Comstock, of my staff, +was sent specially to ascertain what was necessary to make your position +secure in the interval during which the enemy might use most of his +force against you, and also, to ascertain what point on the river we +should reach to effect a crossing if it should not be practicable to +reach this side of the river at Bermuda Hundred. Colonel Comstock has +not yet returned, so that I cannot make instructions as definite as I +would wish, but the time between this and Sunday night being so short in +which to get word to you, I must do the best I can. Colonel Dent goes +to the Chickahominy to take to you the 18th corps. The corps will leave +its position in the trenches as early in the evening, tomorrow, as +possible, and make a forced march to Cole's Landing or Ferry, where it +should reach by ten A.M. the following morning. This corps numbers now +15,300 men. They take with them neither wagons nor artillery; these +latter marching with the balance of the army to the James River. The +remainder of the army will cross the Chickahominy at Long Bridge and at +Jones's, and strike the river at the most practicable crossing below +City Point. + +I directed several days ago that all reinforcements for the army should +be sent to you. I am not advised of the number that may have gone, but +suppose you have received from six to ten thousand. General Smith will +also reach you as soon as the enemy could, going by the way of Richmond. + +The balance of the force will not be more than one day behind, unless +detained by the whole of Lee's army, in which case you will be strong +enough. + +I wish you would direct the proper staff officers, your chief-engineer +and your chief-quartermaster, to commence at once the collection of all +the means in their reach for crossing the army on its arrival. If there +is a point below City Point where a pontoon bridge can be thrown, have +it laid. + +Expecting the arrival of the 18th corps by Monday night, if you deem it +practicable from the force you have to seize and hold Petersburg, you +may prepare to start, on the arrival of troops to hold your present +lines. I do not want Petersburg visited, however, unless it is held, +nor an attempt to take it, unless you feel a reasonable degree of +confidence of success. If you should go there, I think troops should +take nothing with them except what they can carry, depending upon +supplies being sent after the place is secured. If Colonel Dent should +not succeed in securing the requisite amount of transportation for the +18th corps before reaching you, please have the balance supplied. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + +P. S.--On reflection I will send the 18th corps by way of White House. +The distance which they will have to march will be enough shorter to +enable them to reach you about the same time, and the uncertainty of +navigation on the Chickahominy will be avoided. + +U. S. GRANT. + + +COLD HARBOR, VA., June 11,1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL G. G. MEADE, Commanding Army of the Potomac. + +Colonel Comstock, who visited the James River for the purpose of +ascertaining the best point below Bermuda Hundred to which to march the +army has not yet returned. It is now getting so late, however, that all +preparations may be made for the move to-morrow night without waiting +longer. + +The movement will be made as heretofore agreed upon, that is, the 18th +corps make a rapid march with the infantry alone, their wagons and +artillery accompanying the balance of the army to Cole's Landing or +Ferry, and there embark for City Point, losing no time for rest until +they reach the latter point. + +The 5th corps will seize Long Bridge and move out on the Long Bridge +Road to its junction with Quaker Road, or until stopped by the enemy. + +The other three corps will follow in such order as you may direct, one +of them crossing at Long Bridge, and two at Jones's Bridge. After the +crossing is effected, the most practicable roads will be taken to reach +about Fort Powhattan. Of course, this is supposing the enemy makes no +opposition to our advance. The 5th corps, after securing the passage of +the balance of the army, will join or follow in rear of the corps which +crosses the same bridge with themselves. The wagon trains should be +kept well east of the troops, and if a crossing can be found, or made +lower down than Jones's they should take it. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + +P. S.--In view of the long march to reach Cole's Landing, and the +uncertainty of being able to embark a large number of men there, the +direction of the 18th corps may be changed to White House. They should +be directed to load up transports, and start them as fast as loaded +without waiting for the whole corps or even whole divisions to go +together. + +U. S. GRANT. + + +About this time word was received (through the Richmond papers of the +11th) that Crook and Averell had united and were moving east. This, +with the news of Hunter's successful engagement near Staunton, was no +doubt known to Lee before it was to me. Then Sheridan leaving with two +divisions of cavalry, looked indeed threatening, both to Lee's +communications and supplies. Much of his cavalry was sent after +Sheridan, and Early with Ewell's entire corps was sent to the Valley. +Supplies were growing scarce in Richmond, and the sources from which to +draw them were in our hands. People from outside began to pour into +Richmond to help eat up the little on hand. Consternation reigned +there. + +On the 12th Smith was ordered to move at night to White House, not to +stop until he reached there, and to take boats at once for City Point, +leaving his trains and artillery to move by land. + +Soon after dark some of the cavalry at Long Bridge effected a crossing +by wading and floundering through the water and mud, leaving their +horses behind, and drove away the cavalry pickets. A pontoon bridge was +speedily thrown across, over which the remainder of the army soon passed +and pushed out for a mile or two to watch and detain any advance that +might be made from the other side. Warren followed the cavalry, and by +the morning of the 13th had his whole corps over. Hancock followed +Warren. Burnside took the road to Jones's Bridge, followed by Wright. +Ferrero's division, with the wagon train, moved farther east, by Window +Shades and Cole's Ferry, our rear being covered by cavalry. + +It was known that the enemy had some gunboats at Richmond. These might +run down at night and inflict great damage upon us before they could be +sunk or captured by our navy. General Butler had, in advance, loaded +some vessels with stone ready to be sunk so as to obstruct the channel +in an emergency. On the 13th I sent orders to have these sunk as high +up the river as we could guard them, and prevent their removal by the +enemy. + +As soon as Warren's corps was over the Chickahominy it marched out and +joined the cavalry in holding the roads from Richmond while the army +passed. No attempt was made by the enemy to impede our march, however, +but Warren and Wilson reported the enemy strongly fortified in their +front. By the evening of the 13th Hancock's corps was at Charles City +Court House on the James River. Burnside's and Wright's corps were on +the Chickahominy, and crossed during the night, Warren's corps and the +cavalry still covering the army. The material for a pontoon bridge was +already at hand and the work of laying it was commenced immediately, +under the superintendence of Brigadier-General Benham, commanding the +engineer brigade. On the evening of the 14th the crossing commenced, +Hancock in advance, using both the bridge and boats. + +When the Wilderness campaign commenced the Army of the Potomac, +including Burnside's--which was a separate command until the 24th of May +when it was incorporated with the main army--numbered about 116,000 men. +During the progress of the campaign about 40,000 reinforcements were +received. At the crossing of the James River June 14th-15th the army +numbered about 115,000. Besides the ordinary losses incident to a +campaign of six weeks' nearly constant fighting or skirmishing, about +one-half of the artillery was sent back to Washington, and many men were +discharged by reason of the expiration of their term of service.* In +estimating our strength every enlisted man and every commissioned +officer present is included, no matter how employed; in bands, sick in +field hospitals, hospital attendants, company cooks and all. Operating +in an enemy's country, and being supplied always from a distant base, +large detachments had at all times to be sent from the front, not only +to guard the base of supplies and the roads to it, but all the roads +leading to our flanks and rear. We were also operating in a country +unknown to us, and without competent guides or maps showing the roads +accurately. + +The manner of estimating numbers in the two armies differs materially. +In the Confederate army often only bayonets are taken into account, +never, I believe, do they estimate more than are handling the guns of +the artillery and armed with muskets (*36) or carbines. Generally the +latter are far enough away to be excluded from the count in any one +field. Officers and details of enlisted men are not included. In the +Northern armies the estimate is most liberal, taking in all connected +with the army and drawing pay. + +Estimated in the same manner as ours, Lee had not less than 80,000 men +at the start. His reinforcements were about equal to ours during the +campaign, deducting the discharged men and those sent back. He was on +the defensive, and in a country in which every stream, every road, every +obstacle to the movement of troops and every natural defence was +familiar to him and his army. The citizens were all friendly to him and +his cause, and could and did furnish him with accurate reports of our +every move. Rear guards were not necessary for him, and having always a +railroad at his back, large wagon trains were not required. All +circumstances considered we did not have any advantage in numbers. + +General Lee, who had led the Army of Northern Virginia in all these +contests, was a very highly estimated man in the Confederate army and +States, and filled also a very high place in the estimation of the +people and press of the Northern States. His praise was sounded +throughout the entire North after every action he was engaged in: the +number of his forces was always lowered and that of the National forces +exaggerated. He was a large, austere man, and I judge difficult of +approach to his subordinates. To be extolled by the entire press of the +South after every engagement, and by a portion of the press North with +equal vehemence, was calculated to give him the entire confidence of his +troops and to make him feared by his antagonists. It was not an +uncommon thing for my staff-officers to hear from Eastern officers, +"Well, Grant has never met Bobby Lee yet." There were good and true +officers who believe now that the Army of Northern Virginia was superior +to the Army of the Potomac man to man. I do not believe so, except as +the advantages spoken of above made them so. Before the end I believe +the difference was the other way. The Army of Northern Virginia became +despondent and saw the end. It did not please them. The National army +saw the same thing, and were encouraged by it. + +The advance of the Army of the Potomac reached the James on the 14th of +June. Preparations were at once commenced for laying the pontoon +bridges and crossing the river. As already stated, I had previously +ordered General Butler to have two vessels loaded with stone and carried +up the river to a point above that occupied by our gunboats, where the +channel was narrow, and sunk there so as to obstruct the passage and +prevent Confederate gunboats from coming down the river. Butler had had +these boats filled and put in position, but had not had them sunk before +my arrival. I ordered this done, and also directed that he should turn +over all material and boats not then in use in the river to be used in +ferrying the troops across. + +I then, on the 14th, took a steamer and ran up to Bermuda Hundred to see +General Butler for the purpose of directing a movement against +Petersburg, while our troops of the Army of the Potomac were crossing. + +I had sent General W. F. Smith back from Cold Harbor by the way of White +House, thence on steamers to City Point for the purpose of giving +General Butler more troops with which to accomplish this result. +General Butler was ordered to send Smith with his troops reinforced, as +far as that could be conveniently done, from other parts of the Army of +the James. He gave Smith about six thousand reinforcements, including +some twenty-five hundred cavalry under Kautz, and about thirty-five +hundred colored infantry under Hinks. + +The distance which Smith had to move to reach the enemy's lines was +about six miles, and the Confederate advance line of works was but two +miles outside of Petersburg. Smith was to move under cover of night, up +close to the enemy's works, and assault as soon as he could after +daylight. I believed then, and still believe, that Petersburg could +have been easily captured at that time. It only had about 2,500 men in +the defences besides some irregular troops, consisting of citizens and +employees in the city who took up arms in case of emergency. Smith +started as proposed, but his advance encountered a rebel force +intrenched between City Point and their lines outside of Petersburg. +This position he carried, with some loss to the enemy; but there was so +much delay that it was daylight before his troops really got off from +there. While there I informed General Butler that Hancock's corps would +cross the river and move to Petersburg to support Smith in case the +latter was successful, and that I could reinforce there more rapidly +than Lee could reinforce from his position. + +I returned down the river to where the troops of the Army of the Potomac +now were, communicated to General Meade, in writing, the directions I +had given to General Butler and directed him (Meade) to cross Hancock's +corps over under cover of night, and push them forward in the morning to +Petersburg; halting them, however, at a designated point until they +could hear from Smith. I also informed General Meade that I had ordered +rations from Bermuda Hundred for Hancock's corps, and desired him to +issue them speedily, and to lose no more time than was absolutely +necessary. The rations did not reach him, however, and Hancock, while +he got all his corps over during the night, remained until half-past ten +in the hope of receiving them. He then moved without them, and on the +road received a note from General W. F. Smith, asking him to come on. +This seems to be the first information that General Hancock had received +of the fact that he was to go to Petersburg, or that anything particular +was expected of him. Otherwise he would have been there by four o'clock +in the afternoon. + +Smith arrived in front of the enemy's lines early in the forenoon of the +15th, and spent the day until after seven o'clock in the evening in +reconnoitering what appeared to be empty works. The enemy's line +consisted of redans occupying commanding positions, with rifle-pits +connecting them. To the east side of Petersburg, from the Appomattox +back, there were thirteen of these redans extending a distance of +several miles, probably three. If they had been properly manned they +could have held out against any force that could have attacked them, at +least until reinforcements could have got up from the north of Richmond. + +Smith assaulted with the colored troops, and with success. By nine +o'clock at night he was in possession of five of these redans and, of +course, of the connecting lines of rifle-pits. All of them contained +artillery, which fell into our hands. Hancock came up and proposed to +take any part assigned to him; and Smith asked him to relieve his men +who were in the trenches. + +Next morning, the 16th, Hancock himself was in command, and captured +another redan. Meade came up in the afternoon and succeeded Hancock, +who had to be relieved, temporarily, from the command of his corps on +account of the breaking out afresh of the wound he had received at +Gettysburg. During the day Meade assaulted and carried one more redan +to his right and two to his left. In all this we lost very heavily. +The works were not strongly manned, but they all had guns in them which +fell into our hands, together with the men who were handling them in the +effort to repel these assaults. + +Up to this time Beauregard, who had commanded south of Richmond, had +received no reinforcements, except Hoke's division from Drury's +Bluff,(*37) which had arrived on the morning of the 16th; though he had +urged the authorities very strongly to send them, believing, as he did, +that Petersburg would be a valuable prize which we might seek. + +During the 17th the fighting was very severe and the losses heavy; and +at night our troops occupied about the same position they had occupied +in the morning, except that they held a redan which had been captured by +Potter during the day. During the night, however, Beauregard fell back +to the line which had been already selected, and commenced fortifying +it. Our troops advanced on the 18th to the line which he had abandoned, +and found that the Confederate loss had been very severe, many of the +enemy's dead still remaining in the ditches and in front of them. + +Colonel J. L. Chamberlain, of the 20th Maine, was wounded on the 18th. +He was gallantly leading his brigade at the time, as he had been in +the habit of doing in all the engagements in which he had previously +been engaged. He had several times been recommended for a +brigadier-generalcy for gallant and meritorious conduct. On this +occasion, however, I promoted him on the spot, and forwarded a copy of +my order to the War Department, asking that my act might be confirmed +and Chamberlain's name sent to the Senate for confirmation without any +delay. This was done, and at last a gallant and meritorious officer +received partial justice at the hands of his government, which he had +served so faithfully and so well. + +If General Hancock's orders of the 15th had been communicated to him, +that officer, with his usual promptness, would undoubtedly have been +upon the ground around Petersburg as early as four o'clock in the +afternoon of the 15th. The days were long and it would have given him +considerable time before night. I do not think there is any doubt that +Petersburg itself could have been carried without much loss; or, at +least, if protected by inner detached works, that a line could have been +established very much in rear of the one then occupied by the enemy. +This would have given us control of both the Weldon and South Side +railroads. This would also have saved an immense amount of hard +fighting which had to be done from the 15th to the 18th, and would have +given us greatly the advantage in the long siege which ensued. + +I now ordered the troops to be put under cover and allowed some of the +rest which they had so long needed. They remained quiet, except that +there was more or less firing every day, until the 22d, when General +Meade ordered an advance towards the Weldon Railroad. We were very +anxious to get to that road, and even round to the South Side Railroad +if possible. + +Meade moved Hancock's corps, now commanded by Birney, to the left, with +a view to at least force the enemy to stay within the limits of his own +line. General Wright, with the 6th corps, was ordered by a road farther +south, to march directly for the Weldon road. The enemy passed in +between these two corps and attacked vigorously, and with very serious +results to the National troops, who were then withdrawn from their +advanced position. + +The Army of the Potomac was given the investment of Petersburg, while +the Army of the James held Bermuda Hundred and all the ground we +possessed north of the James River. The 9th corps, Burnside's, was +placed upon the right at Petersburg; the 5th, Warren's, next; the 2d, +Birney's, next; then the 6th, Wright's, broken off to the left and +south. Thus began the siege of Petersburg. + + + +CHAPTER LVII. + +RAID ON THE VIRGINIA CENTRAL RAILROAD--RAID ON THE WELDON RAILROAD +--EARLY 'S MOVEMENT UPON WASHINGTON--MINING THE WORKS BEFORE PETERSBURG +--EXPLOSION OF THE MINE BEFORE PETERSBURG--CAMPAIGN IN THE SHENANDOAH +VALLEY--CAPTURE OF THE WELDON RAILROAD. + +On the 7th of June, while at Cold Harbor, I had as already indicated +sent Sheridan with two divisions of cavalry to destroy as much as he +could of the Virginia Central Railroad. General Hunter had been +operating up the Shenandoah Valley with some success, having fought a +battle near Staunton where he captured a great many prisoners, besides +killing and wounding a good many men. After the battle he formed a +junction at Staunton with Averell and Crook, who had come up from the +Kanawha, or Gauley River. It was supposed, therefore, that General +Hunter would be about Charlottesville, Virginia, by the time Sheridan +could get there, doing on the way the damage that he was sent to do. + +I gave Sheridan instructions to have Hunter, in case he should meet him +about Charlottesville, join and return with him to the Army of the +Potomac. Lee, hearing of Hunter's success in the valley, started +Breckinridge out for its defence at once. Learning later of Sheridan's +going with two divisions, he also sent Hampton with two divisions of +cavalry, his own and Fitz-Hugh Lee's. + +Sheridan moved to the north side of the North Anna to get out west, and +learned of the movement of these troops to the south side of the same +stream almost as soon as they had started. He pushed on to get to +Trevilian Station to commence his destruction at that point. On the +night of the 10th he bivouacked some six or seven miles east of +Trevilian, while Fitz-Hugh Lee was the same night at Trevilian Station +and Hampton but a few miles away. + +During the night Hampton ordered an advance on Sheridan, hoping, no +doubt, to surprise and very badly cripple him. Sheridan, however, by a +counter move sent Custer on a rapid march to get between the two +divisions of the enemy and into their rear. This he did successfully, so +that at daylight, when the assault was made, the enemy found himself at +the same time resisted in front and attacked in rear, and broke in some +confusion. The losses were probably very light on both sides in killed +and wounded, but Sheridan got away with some five hundred prisoners and +sent them to City Point. + +During that day, the 11th, Sheridan moved into Trevilian Station, and +the following day proceeded to tear up the road east and west. There +was considerable fighting during the whole of the day, but the work of +destruction went on. In the meantime, at night, the enemy had taken +possession of the crossing which Sheridan had proposed to take to go +north when he left Trevilian. Sheridan learned, however, from some of +the prisoners he had captured here, that General Hunter was about +Lynchburg, and therefore that there was no use of his going on to +Charlottesville with a view to meet him. + +Sheridan started back during the night of the 12th, and made his way +north and farther east, coming around by the north side of White House, +and arriving there on the 21st. Here he found an abundance of forage +for his animals, food for his men, and security while resting. He had +been obliged to leave about ninety of his own men in the field-hospital +which he had established near Trevilian, and these necessarily fell into +the hands of the enemy. + +White House up to this time had been a depot; but now that our troops +were all on the James River, it was no longer wanted as a store of +supplies. Sheridan was, therefore, directed to break it up; which he +did on the 22d of June, bringing the garrison and an immense wagon train +with him. All these were over the James River by the 26th of the month, +and Sheridan ready to follow. + +In the meantime Meade had sent Wilson's division on a raid to destroy +the Weldon and South Side roads. Now that Sheridan was safe and Hampton +free to return to Richmond with his cavalry, Wilson's position became +precarious. Meade therefore, on the 27th, ordered Sheridan over the +river to make a demonstration in favor of Wilson. Wilson got back, +though not without severe loss, having struck both roads, but the damage +done was soon repaired. + +After these events comparative quiet reigned about Petersburg until late +in July. The time, however, was spent in strengthening the +intrenchments and making our position generally more secure against a +sudden attack. In the meantime I had to look after other portions of my +command, where things had not been going on so favorably, always, as I +could have wished. + +General Hunter who had been appointed to succeed Sigel in the Shenandoah +Valley immediately took up the offensive. He met the enemy on the 5th +of June at Piedmont, and defeated him. On the 8th he formed a junction +with Crook and Averell at Staunton, from which place he moved direct on +Lynchburg, via Lexington, which he reached and invested on the 16th. Up +to this time he was very successful; and but for the difficulty of +taking with him sufficient ordnance stores over so long a march, through +a hostile country, he would, no doubt, have captured Lynchburg. The +destruction of the enemy's supplies and manufactories had been very +great. To meet this movement under General Hunter, General Lee sent +Early with his corps, a part of which reached Lynchburg before Hunter. +After some skirmishing on the 17th and 18th, General Hunter, owing to a +want of ammunition to give battle, retired from before the place. +Unfortunately, this want of ammunition left him no choice of route for +his return but by the way of the Gauley and Kanawha rivers, thence up +the Ohio River, returning to Harper's Ferry by way of the Baltimore and +Ohio Railroad. A long time was consumed in making this movement. +Meantime the valley was left open to Early's troops, and others in that +quarter; and Washington also was uncovered. Early took advantage of this +condition of affairs and moved on Washington. + +In the absence of Hunter, General Lew Wallace, with headquarters at +Baltimore, commanded the department in which the Shenandoah lay. His +surplus of troops with which to move against the enemy was small in +number. Most of these were raw and, consequently, very much inferior to +our veterans and to the veterans which Early had with him; but the +situation of Washington was precarious, and Wallace moved with +commendable promptitude to meet the enemy at the Monocacy. He could +hardly have expected to defeat him badly, but he hoped to cripple and +delay him until Washington could be put into a state of preparation for +his reception. I had previously ordered General Meade to send a +division to Baltimore for the purpose of adding to the defences of +Washington, and he had sent Ricketts's division of the 6th corps +(Wright's), which arrived in Baltimore on the 8th of July. Finding that +Wallace had gone to the front with his command, Ricketts immediately +took the cars and followed him to the Monocacy with his entire division. +They met the enemy and, as might have been expected, were defeated; but +they succeeded in stopping him for the day on which the battle took +place. The next morning Early started on his march to the capital of +the Nation, arriving before it on the 11th. + +Learning of the gravity of the situation I had directed General Meade to +also order Wright with the rest of his corps directly to Washington for +the relief of that place, and the latter reached there the very day that +Early arrived before it. The 19th corps, which had been stationed in +Louisiana, having been ordered up to reinforce the armies about +Richmond, had about this time arrived at Fortress Monroe, on their way +to join us. I diverted them from that point to Washington, which place +they reached, almost simultaneously with Wright, on the 11th. The 19th +corps was commanded by Major-General Emory. + +Early made his reconnoissance with a view of attacking on the following +morning, the 12th; but the next morning he found our intrenchments, +which were very strong, fully manned. He at once commenced to retreat, +Wright following. There is no telling how much this result was +contributed to by General Lew Wallace's leading what might well be +considered almost a forlorn hope. If Early had been but one day earlier +he might have entered the capital before the arrival of the +reinforcements I had sent. Whether the delay caused by the battle +amounted to a day or not, General Wallace contributed on this occasion, +by the defeat of the troops under him a greater benefit to the cause +than often falls to the lot of a commander of an equal force to render +by means of a victory. + +Farther west also the troubles were threatening. Some time before, +Forrest had met Sturgis in command of some of our cavalry in Mississippi +and handled him very roughly, gaining a very great victory over him. +This left Forrest free to go almost where he pleased, and to cut the +roads in rear of Sherman who was then advancing. Sherman was abundantly +able to look after the army that he was immediately with, and all of his +military division so long as he could communicate with it; but it was my +place to see that he had the means with which to hold his rear. Two +divisions under A. J. Smith had been sent to Banks in Louisiana some +months before. Sherman ordered these back, with directions to attack +Forrest. Smith met and defeated him very badly. I then directed that +Smith should hang to Forrest and not let him go; and to prevent by all +means his getting upon the Memphis and Nashville Railroad. Sherman had +anticipated me in this matter, and given the same orders in substance; +but receiving my directions for this order to Smith, he repeated it. + +On the 25th of June General Burnside had commenced running a mine from +about the centre of his front under the Confederate works confronting +him. He was induced to do this by Colonel Pleasants, of the +Pennsylvania Volunteers, whose regiment was mostly composed of miners, +and who was himself a practical miner. Burnside had submitted the +scheme to Meade and myself, and we both approved of it, as a means of +keeping the men occupied. His position was very favorable for carrying +on this work, but not so favorable for the operations to follow its +completion. The position of the two lines at that point were only about +a hundred yards apart with a comparatively deep ravine intervening. In +the bottom of this ravine the work commenced. The position was +unfavorable in this particular: that the enemy's line at that point was +re-entering, so that its front was commanded by their own lines both to +the right and left. Then, too, the ground was sloping upward back of +the Confederate line for a considerable distance, and it was presumable +that the enemy had, at least, a detached work on this highest point. +The work progressed, and on the 23d of July the mine was finished ready +for charging; but I had this work of charging deferred until we were +ready for it. + +On the 17th of July several deserters came in and said that there was +great consternation in Richmond, and that Lee was coming out to make an +attack upon us the object being to put us on the defensive so that he +might detach troops to go to Georgia where the army Sherman was +operating against was said to be in great trouble. I put the army +commanders, Meade and Butler, on the lookout, but the attack was not +made. + +I concluded, then, a few days later, to do something in the way of +offensive movement myself, having in view something of the same object +that Lee had had. Wright's and Emory's corps were in Washington, and +with this reduction of my force Lee might very readily have spared some +troops from the defences to send West. I had other objects in view, +however, besides keeping Lee where he was. The mine was constructed and +ready to be exploded, and I wanted to take that occasion to carry +Petersburg if I could. It was the object, therefore, to get as many of +Lee's troops away from the south side of the James River as possible. +Accordingly, on the 26th, we commenced a movement with Hancock's corps +and Sheridan's cavalry to the north side by the way of Deep Bottom, +where Butler had a pontoon bridge laid. The plan, in the main, was to +let the cavalry cut loose and, joining with Kautz's cavalry of the Army +of the James, get by Lee's lines and destroy as much as they could of +the Virginia Central Railroad, while, in the mean time, the infantry was +to move out so as to protect their rear and cover their retreat back +when they should have got through with their work. We were successful +in drawing the enemy's troops to the north side of the James as I +expected. The mine was ordered to be charged, and the morning of the +30th of July was the time fixed for its explosion. I gave Meade minute +orders (*38) on the 24th directing how I wanted the assault conducted, +which orders he amplified into general instructions for the guidance of +the troops that were to be engaged. + +Meade's instructions, which I, of course, approved most heartily, were +all that I can see now was necessary. The only further precaution which +he could have taken, and which he could not foresee, would have been to +have different men to execute them. + +The gallery to the mine was over five hundred feet long from where it +entered the ground to the point where it was under the enemy's works, +and with a cross gallery of something over eighty feet running under +their lines. Eight chambers had been left, requiring a ton of powder +each to charge them. All was ready by the time I had prescribed; and on +the 29th Hancock and Sheridan were brought back near the James River +with their troops. Under cover of night they started to recross the +bridge at Deep Bottom, and to march directly for that part of our lines +in front of the mine. + +Warren was to hold his line of intrenchments with a sufficient number of +men and concentrate the balance on the right next to Burnside's corps, +while Ord, now commanding the 18th corps, temporarily under Meade, was +to form in the rear of Burnside to support him when he went in. All +were to clear off the parapets and the _abatis_ in their front so as to +leave the space as open as possible, and be able to charge the moment +the mine had been sprung and Burnside had taken possession. Burnside's +corps was not to stop in the crater at all but push on to the top of the +hill, supported on the right and left by Ord's and Warren's corps. + +Warren and Ord fulfilled their instructions perfectly so far as making +ready was concerned. Burnside seemed to have paid no attention whatever +to the instructions, and left all the obstruction in his own front for +his troops to get over in the best way they could. The four divisions +of his corps were commanded by Generals Potter, Willcox, Ledlie and +Ferrero. The last was a colored division; and Burnside selected it to +make the assault. Meade interfered with this. Burnside then took +Ledlie's division--a worse selection than the first could have been. In +fact, Potter and Willcox were the only division commanders Burnside had +who were equal to the occasion. Ledlie besides being otherwise +inefficient, proved also to possess disqualification less common among +soldiers. + +There was some delay about the explosion of the mine so that it did not +go off until about five o'clock in the morning. When it did explode it +was very successful, making a crater twenty feet deep and something like +a hundred feet in length. Instantly one hundred and ten cannon and +fifty mortars, which had been placed in the most commanding positions +covering the ground to the right and left of where the troops were to +enter the enemy's lines, commenced playing. Ledlie's division marched +into the crater immediately on the explosion, but most of the men +stopped there in the absence of any one to give directions; their +commander having found some safe retreat to get into before they +started. There was some delay on the left and right in advancing, but +some of the troops did get in and turn to the right and left, carrying +the rifle-pits as I expected they would do. + +There had been great consternation in Petersburg, as we were well aware, +about a rumored mine that we were going to explode. They knew we were +mining, and they had failed to cut our mine off by countermining, though +Beauregard had taken the precaution to run up a line of intrenchments to +the rear of that part of their line fronting where they could see that +our men were at work. We had learned through deserters who had come in +that the people had very wild rumors about what was going on on our +side. They said that we had undermined the whole of Petersburg; that +they were resting upon a slumbering volcano and did not know at what +moment they might expect an eruption. I somewhat based my calculations +upon this state of feeling, and expected that when the mine was exploded +the troops to the right and left would flee in all directions, and that +our troops, if they moved promptly, could get in and strengthen +themselves before the enemy had come to a realization of the true +situation. It was just as I expected it would be. We could see the men +running without any apparent object except to get away. It was half an +hour before musketry firing, to amount to anything, was opened upon our +men in the crater. It was an hour before the enemy got artillery up to +play upon them; and it was nine o'clock before Lee got up reinforcements +from his right to join in expelling our troops. + +The effort was a stupendous failure. It cost us about four thousand +men, mostly, however, captured; and all due to inefficiency on the part +of the corps commander and the incompetency of the division commander +who was sent to lead the assault. + +After being fully assured of the failure of the mine, and finding that +most of that part of Lee's army which had been drawn north of the James +River were still there, I gave Meade directions to send a corps of +infantry and the cavalry next morning, before Lee could get his forces +back, to destroy fifteen or twenty miles of the Weldon Railroad. But +misfortunes never come singly. I learned during that same afternoon +that Wright's pursuit of Early was feeble because of the constant and +contrary orders he had been receiving from Washington, while I was cut +off from immediate communication by reason of our cable across +Chesapeake Bay being broken. Early, however, was not aware of the fact +that Wright was not pursuing until he had reached Strasburg. Finding +that he was not pursued he turned back to Winchester, where Crook was +stationed with a small force, and drove him out. He then pushed north +until he had reached the Potomac, then he sent McCausland across to +Chambersburg, Pa., to destroy that town. Chambersburg was a purely +defenceless town with no garrison whatever, and no fortifications; yet +McCausland, under Early's orders, burned the place and left about three +hundred families houseless. This occurred on the 30th of July. I +rescinded my orders for the troops to go out to destroy the Weldon +Railroad, and directed them to embark for Washington City. After +burning Chambersburg McCausland retreated, pursued by our cavalry, +towards Cumberland. They were met and defeated by General Kelley and +driven into Virginia. + +The Shenandoah Valley was very important to the Confederates, because it +was the principal storehouse they now had for feeding their armies about +Richmond. It was well known that they would make a desperate struggle +to maintain it. It had been the source of a great deal of trouble to us +heretofore to guard that outlet to the north, partly because of the +incompetency of some of the commanders, but chiefly because of +interference from Washington. + +It seemed to be the policy of General Halleck and Secretary Stanton to +keep any force sent there, in pursuit of the invading army, moving right +and left so as to keep between the enemy and our capital; and, generally +speaking, they pursued this policy until all knowledge of the +whereabouts of the enemy was lost. They were left, therefore, free to +supply themselves with horses, beef cattle, and such provisions as they +could carry away from Western Maryland and Pennsylvania. I determined +to put a stop to this. I started Sheridan at once for that field of +operation, and on the following day sent another division of his +cavalry. + +I had previously asked to have Sheridan assigned to that command, but +Mr. Stanton objected, on the ground that he was too young for so +important a command. On the 1st of August when I sent reinforcements +for the protection of Washington, I sent the following orders: + + +CITY POINT, VA., + +August 1, 1864, 11.30 A.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Washington D. C. + +I am sending General Sheridan for temporary duty whilst the enemy is +being expelled from the border. Unless General Hunter is in the field +in person, I want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the +field, with instructions to put himself south of the enemy and follow +him to the death. Wherever the enemy goes let our troops go also. Once +started up the valley they ought to be followed until we get possession +of the Virginia Central Railroad. If General Hunter is in the field, +give Sheridan direct command of the 6th corps and cavalry division. All +the cavalry, I presume, will reach Washington in the course of +to-morrow. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +The President in some way or other got to see this dispatch of mine +directing certain instructions to be given to the commanders in the +field, operating against Early, and sent me the following very +characteristic dispatch: + + +OFFICE U. S. MILITARY TELEGRAPH, WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., +August 3, 1864. + +Cypher. 6 P.M., + +LT. GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va. + +I have seen your despatch in which you say, "I want Sheridan put in +command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put himself +south of the enemy, and follow him to the death. Wherever the enemy +goes, let our troops go also." This, I think, is exactly right, as to +how our forces should move. But please look over the despatches you may +have received from here, even since you made that order, and discover, +if you can, that there is any idea in the head of any one here, of +"putting our army south of the enemy," or of "following him to the +death" in any direction. I repeat to you it will neither be done nor +attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it. + +A. LINCOLN. + + +I replied to this that "I would start in two hours for Washington," and +soon got off, going directly to the Monocacy without stopping at +Washington on my way. I found General Hunter's army encamped there, +scattered over the fields along the banks of the Monocacy, with many +hundreds of cars and locomotives, belonging to the Baltimore and Ohio +Railroad, which he had taken the precaution to bring back and collect at +that point. I asked the general where the enemy was. He replied that +he did not know. He said the fact was, that he was so embarrassed with +orders from Washington moving him first to the right and then to the +left that he had lost all trace of the enemy. + +I then told the general that I would find out where the enemy was, and +at once ordered steam got up and trains made up, giving directions to +push for Halltown, some four miles above Harper's Ferry, in the +Shenandoah Valley. The cavalry and the wagon trains were to march, but +all the troops that could be transported by the cars were to go in that +way. I knew that the valley was of such importance to the enemy that, +no matter how much he was scattered at that time, he would in a very +short time be found in front of our troops moving south. + +I then wrote out General Hunter's instructions. (*39) I told him that +Sheridan was in Washington, and still another division was on its way; +and suggested that he establish the headquarters of the department at +any point that would suit him best, Cumberland, Baltimore, or elsewhere, +and give Sheridan command of the troops in the field. The general +replied to this, that he thought he had better be relieved entirely. He +said that General Halleck seemed so much to distrust his fitness for the +position he was in that he thought somebody else ought to be there. He +did not want, in any way, to embarrass the cause; thus showing a +patriotism that was none too common in the army. There were not many +major-generals who would voluntarily have asked to have the command of a +department taken from them on the supposition that for some particular +reason, or for any reason, the service would be better performed. I +told him, "very well then," and telegraphed at once for Sheridan to come +to the Monocacy, and suggested that I would wait and meet him there. + +Sheridan came at once by special train, but reached there after the +troops were all off. I went to the station and remained there until he +arrived. Myself and one or two of my staff were about all the Union +people, except General Hunter and his staff, who were left at the +Monocacy when Sheridan arrived. I hastily told Sheridan what had been +done and what I wanted him to do, giving him, at the same time, the +written instructions which had been prepared for General Hunter and +directed to that officer. + +Sheridan now had about 30,000 men to move with, 8,000 of them being +cavalry. Early had about the same number, but the superior ability of +the National commander over the Confederate commander was so great that +all the latter's advantage of being on the defensive was more than +counterbalanced by this circumstance. As I had predicted, Early was +soon found in front of Sheridan in the valley, and Pennsylvania and +Maryland were speedily freed from the invaders. The importance of the +valley was so great to the Confederates that Lee reinforced Early, but +not to the extent that we thought and feared he would. + +To prevent as much as possible these reinforcements from being sent out +from Richmond, I had to do something to compel Lee to retain his forces +about his capital. I therefore gave orders for another move to the +north side of the James River, to threaten Richmond. Hancock's corps, +part of the 10th corps under Birney, and Gregg's division of cavalry +were crossed to the north side of the James during the night of the +13th-14th of August. A threatening position was maintained for a number +of days, with more or less skirmishing, and some tolerably hard +fighting; although it was my object and my instructions that anything +like a battle should be avoided, unless opportunities should present +themselves which would insure great success. General Meade was left in +command of the few troops around Petersburg, strongly intrenched; and +was instructed to keep a close watch upon the enemy in that quarter, and +himself to take advantage of any weakening that might occur through an +effort on the part of the enemy to reinforce the north side. There was +no particular victory gained on either side; but during that time no +more reinforcements were sent to the valley. + +I informed Sheridan of what had been done to prevent reinforcements +being sent from Richmond against him, and also that the efforts we had +made had proven that one of the divisions which we supposed had gone to +the valley was still at Richmond, because we had captured six or seven +hundred prisoners from that division, each of its four brigades having +contributed to our list of captures. I also informed him that but one +division had gone, and it was possible that I should be able to prevent +the going of any more. + +To add to my embarrassment at this time Sherman, who was now near +Atlanta, wanted reinforcements. He was perfectly willing to take the +raw troops then being raised in the North-west, saying that he could +teach them more soldiering in one day among his troops than they would +learn in a week in a camp of instruction. I therefore asked that all +troops in camps of instruction in the North-west be sent to him. +Sherman also wanted to be assured that no Eastern troops were moving out +against him. I informed him of what I had done and assured him that I +would hold all the troops there that it was possible for me to hold, and +that up to that time none had gone. I also informed him that his real +danger was from Kirby Smith, who commanded the trans-Mississippi +Department. If Smith should escape Steele, and get across the +Mississippi River, he might move against him. I had, therefore, asked +to have an expedition ready to move from New Orleans against Mobile in +case Kirby Smith should get across. This would have a tendency to draw +him to the defence of that place, instead of going against Sherman. + +Right in the midst of all these embarrassments Halleck informed me that +there was an organized scheme on foot in the North to resist the draft, +and suggested that it might become necessary to draw troops from the +field to put it down. He also advised taking in sail, and not going too +fast. + +The troops were withdrawn from the north side of the James River on the +night of the 20th. Before they were withdrawn, however, and while most +of Lee's force was on that side of the river, Warren had been sent with +most of the 5th corps to capture the Weldon Railroad. He took up his +line of march well back to the rear, south of the enemy, while the +troops remaining in the trenches extended so as to cover that part of +the line which he had vacated by moving out. From our left, near the +old line, it was about three miles to the Weldon Railroad. A division +was ordered from the right of the Petersburg line to reinforce Warren, +while a division was brought back from the north side of the James River +to take its place. + +This road was very important to the enemy. The limits from which his +supplies had been drawn were already very much contracted, and I knew +that he must fight desperately to protect it. Warren carried the road, +though with heavy loss on both sides. He fortified his new position, +and our trenches were then extended from the left of our main line to +connect with his new one. Lee made repeated attempts to dislodge +Warren's corps, but without success, and with heavy loss. + +As soon as Warren was fortified and reinforcements reached him, troops +were sent south to destroy the bridges on the Weldon Railroad; and with +such success that the enemy had to draw in wagons, for a distance of +about thirty miles, all the supplies they got thereafter from that +source. It was on the 21st that Lee seemed to have given up the Weldon +Railroad as having been lost to him; but along about the 24th or 25th he +made renewed attempts to recapture it; again he failed and with very +heavy losses to him as compared with ours. + +On the night of the 20th our troops on the north side of the James were +withdrawn, and Hancock and Gregg were sent south to destroy the Weldon +Railroad. They were attacked on the 25th at Reams's Station, and after +desperate fighting a part of our line gave way, losing five pieces of +artillery. But the Weldon Railroad never went out of our possession +from the 18th of August to the close of the war. + + + +CHAPTER LVIII. + +SHERIDAN'S ADVANCE--VISIT TO SHERIDAN--SHERIDAN'S VICTORY IN THE +SHENANDOAH--SHERIDAN'S RIDE TO WINCHESTER--CLOSE OF THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE +WINTER. + +We had our troops on the Weldon Railroad contending against a large +force that regarded this road of so much importance that they could +afford to expend many lives in retaking it; Sherman just getting through +to Atlanta with great losses of men from casualties, discharges and +detachments left along as guards to occupy and hold the road in rear of +him; Washington threatened but a short time before, and now Early being +strengthened in the valley so as, probably, to renew that attempt. It +kept me pretty active in looking after all these points. + +On the 10th of August Sheridan had advanced on Early up the Shenandoah +Valley, Early falling back to Strasburg. On the 12th I learned that Lee +had sent twenty pieces of artillery, two divisions of infantry and a +considerable cavalry force to strengthen Early. It was important that +Sheridan should be informed of this, so I sent the information to +Washington by telegraph, and directed a courier to be sent from there to +get the message to Sheridan at all hazards, giving him the information. +The messenger, an officer of the army, pushed through with great energy +and reached Sheridan just in time. The officer went through by way of +Snicker's Gap, escorted by some cavalry. He found Sheridan just making +his preparations to attack Early in his chosen position. Now, however, +he was thrown back on the defensive. + +On the 15th of September I started to visit General Sheridan in the +Shenandoah Valley. My purpose was to have him attack Early, or drive +him out of the valley and destroy that source of supplies for Lee's +army. I knew it was impossible for me to get orders through Washington +to Sheridan to make a move, because they would be stopped there and such +orders as Halleck's caution (and that of the Secretary of War) would +suggest would be given instead, and would, no doubt, be contradictory to +mine. I therefore, without stopping at Washington, went directly +through to Charlestown, some ten miles above Harper's Ferry, and waited +there to see General Sheridan, having sent a courier in advance to +inform him where to meet me. + +When Sheridan arrived I asked him if he had a map showing the positions +of his army and that of the enemy. He at once drew one out of his side +pocket, showing all roads and streams, and the camps of the two armies. +He said that if he had permission he would move so and so (pointing out +how) against the Confederates, and that he could "whip them." Before +starting I had drawn up a plan of campaign for Sheridan, which I had +brought with me; but, seeing that he was so clear and so positive in his +views and so confident of success, I said nothing about this and did not +take it out of my pocket. + +Sheridan's wagon trains were kept at Harper's Ferry, where all of his +stores were. By keeping the teams at that place, their forage did not +have to be hauled to them. As supplies of ammunition, provisions and +rations for the men were wanted, trains would be made up to deliver the +stores to the commissaries and quartermasters encamped at Winchester. +Knowing that he, in making preparations to move at a given day, would +have to bring up wagons trains from Harper's Ferry, I asked him if he +could be ready to get off by the following Tuesday. This was on Friday. +"O Yes," he said, he "could be off before daylight on Monday." I told +him then to make the attack at that time and according to his own plan; +and I immediately started to return to the army about Richmond. After +visiting Baltimore and Burlington, New Jersey, I arrived at City Point +on the 19th. + +On the way out to Harper's Ferry I had met Mr. Robert Garrett, President +of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He seemed very anxious to know when +workmen might be put upon the road again so as to make repairs and put +it in shape for running. It was a large piece of property to have +standing idle. I told him I could not answer then positively but would +try and inform him before a great while. On my return Mr. Garrett met +me again with the same and I told him I thought that by the Wednesday he +might send his workmen out on his road. I gave him no further +information however, and he had no suspicion of how I expected to have +the road cleared for his workmen. + +Sheridan moved at the time he had fixed upon. He met Early at the +crossing of Opequon Creek, a most decisive victory--one which the +country. Early had invited this attack himself by his bad generalship +and made the victory easy. He had sent G. T. Anderson's division east +of the Blue Ridge before I went to Harper's Ferry; and about the time I +arrived there he started other divisions (leaving but two in their +camps) to march to Martinsburg for the purpose destroying the Baltimore +and Ohio Railroad at that point. Early here learned that I had been +with Sheridan and, supposing there was some movement on foot, started +back as soon as he got the information. But his forces were separated +and, as I have said, he was very badly defeated. He fell back to +Fisher's Hill, Sheridan following. + +The valley is narrow at that point, and Early made another stand there, +behind works which extended across. But Sheridan turned both his flanks +and again sent him speeding up the valley, following in hot pursuit. +The pursuit was continued up the valley to Mount Jackson and New Market. +Sheridan captured about eleven hundred prisoners and sixteen guns. The +houses which he passed all along the route were found to be filled with +Early's wounded, and the country swarmed with his deserters. Finally, +on the 25th, Early turned from the valley eastward, leaving Sheridan at +Harrisonburg in undisputed possession. + +Now one of the main objects of the expedition began to be accomplished. +Sheridan went to work with his command, gathering in the crops, cattle, +and everything in the upper part of the valley required by our troops; +and especially taking what might be of use to the enemy. What he could +not take away he destroyed, so that the enemy would not be invited to +come back there. I congratulated Sheridan upon his recent great victory +and had a salute of a hundred guns fired in honor of it, the guns being +aimed at the enemy around Petersburg. I also notified the other +commanders throughout the country, who also fired salutes in honor of +his victory. + +I had reason to believe that the administration was a little afraid to +have a decisive battle at that time, for fear it might go against us and +have a bad effect on the November elections. The convention which had +met and made its nomination of the Democratic candidate for the +presidency had declared the war a failure. Treason was talked as boldly +in Chicago at that convention as ever been in Charleston. It was a +question whether the government would then have had the power to make +arrests and punish those who talked treason. But this decisive victory +was the most effective campaign argument made in the canvass. + +Sheridan, in his pursuit, got beyond where they could hear from him in +Washington, and the President became very much frightened about him. He +was afraid that the hot pursuit had been a little like that of General +Cass was said to have been, in one of our Indian wars, when he was an +officer of army. Cass was pursuing the Indians so closely that the +first thing he knew he found himself in front, and the Indians pursuing +him. The President was afraid that Sheridan had got on the other side +of Early and that Early was in behind him. He was afraid that Sheridan +was getting so far away that reinforcements would be sent out from +Richmond to enable Early to beat him. I replied to the President that I +had taken steps to prevent Lee from sending reinforcements to Early, by +attacking the former where he was. + +On the 28th of September, to retain Lee in his position, I sent Ord with +the 18th corps and Birney with the 10th corps to make an advance on +Richmond, to threaten it. Ord moved with the left wing up to Chaffin's +Bluff; Birney with the 10th corps took a road farther north; while Kautz +with the cavalry took the Darby road, still farther to the north. They +got across the river by the next morning, and made an effort to surprise +the enemy. In that, however, they were unsuccessful. + +The enemy's lines were very strong and very intricate. Stannard's +division of the 18th corps with General Burnham's brigade leading, tried +an assault against Fort Harrison and captured it with sixteen guns and a +good many prisoners. Burnham was killed in the assault. Colonel Stevens +who succeeded him was badly wounded; and his successor also fell in the +same way. Some works to the right and left were also carried with the +guns in them--six in number--and a few more prisoners. Birney's troops +to the right captured the enemy's intrenched picket-lines, but were +unsuccessful in their efforts upon the main line. + +Our troops fortified their new position, bringing Fort Harrison into the +new line and extending it to the river. This brought us pretty close to +the enemy on the north side of the James, and the two opposing lines +maintained their relative positions to the close of the siege. + +In the afternoon a further attempt was made to advance, but it failed. +Ord fell badly wounded, and had to be relieved; the command devolved +upon General Heckman, and later General Weitzel was assigned to the +command of the 18th corps. During the night Lee reinforced his troops +about Fort Gilmer, which was at the right of Fort Harrison, by eight +additional brigades from Petersburg, and attempted to retake the works +which we had captured by concentrating ten brigades against them. All +their efforts failed, their attacks being all repulsed with very heavy +loss. In one of these assaults upon us General Stannard, a gallant +officer who was defending Fort Harrison, lost an arm. Our casualties +during these operations amounted to 394 killed, I,554 wounded and 324 +missing. + +Whilst this was going on General Meade was instructed to keep up an +appearance of moving troops to our extreme left. Parke and Warren were +kept with two divisions, each under arms, ready to move leaving their +enclosed batteries manned, with a scattering line on the other +intrenchments. The object of this was to prevent reinforcements from +going to the north side of the river. Meade was instructed to watch the +enemy closely and, if Lee weakened his lines, to make an attack. + +On the 30th these troops moved out, under Warren, and captured an +advanced intrenched camp at Peeble's farm, driving the enemy back to the +main line. Our troops followed and made an attack in the hope of +carrying the enemy's main line; but in this they were unsuccessful and +lost a large number of men, mostly captured. The number of killed and +wounded was not large. The next day our troops advanced again and +established themselves, intrenching a new line about a mile in front of +the enemy. This advanced Warren's position on the Weldon Railroad very +considerably. + +Sheridan having driven the enemy out of the valley, and taken the +productions of the valley so that instead of going there for supplies +the enemy would have to bring his provisions with him if he again +entered it, recommended a reduction of his own force, the surplus to be +sent where it could be of more use. I approved of his suggestion, and +ordered him to send Wright's corps back to the James River. I further +directed him to repair the railroad up the Shenandoah Valley towards the +advanced position which we would hold with a small force. The troops +were to be sent to Washington by the way of Culpeper, in order to watch +the east side of the Blue Ridge, and prevent the enemy from getting into +the rear of Sheridan while he was still doing his work of destruction. + +The valley was so very important, however, to the Confederate army that, +contrary to our expectations, they determined to make one more strike, +and save it if possible before the supplies should be all destroyed. +Reinforcements were sent therefore to Early, and this before any of our +troops had been withdrawn. Early prepared to strike Sheridan at +Harrisonburg; but the latter had not remained there. + +On the 6th of October Sheridan commenced retiring down the valley, +taking or destroying all the food and forage and driving the cattle +before him, Early following. At Fisher's Hill Sheridan turned his +cavalry back on that of Early, which, under the lead of Rosser, was +pursuing closely, and routed it most completely, capturing eleven guns +and a large number of prisoners. Sheridan lost only about sixty men. +His cavalry pursued the enemy back some twenty-five miles. On the 10th +of October the march down the valley was again resumed, Early again +following. + +I now ordered Sheridan to halt, and to improve the opportunity if +afforded by the enemy's having been sufficiently weakened, to move back +again and cut the James River Canal and Virginia Central Railroad. But +this order had to go through Washington where it was intercepted; and +when Sheridan received what purported to be a statement of what I wanted +him to do it was something entirely different. Halleck informed +Sheridan that it was my wish for him to hold a forward position as a +base from which to act against Charlottesville and Gordonsville; that he +should fortify this position and provision it. + +Sheridan objected to this most decidedly; and I was impelled to +telegraph him, on the 14th, as follows: + + +CITY POINT, VA., October 14, 1864.--12.30 P.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL SHERIDAN, Cedar Creek, Va. + +What I want is for you to threaten the Virginia Central Railroad and +canal in the manner your judgment tells you is best, holding yourself +ready to advance, if the enemy draw off their forces. If you make the +enemy hold a force equal to your own for the protection of those +thoroughfares, it will accomplish nearly as much as their destruction. +If you cannot do this, then the next best thing to do is to send here +all the force you can. I deem a good cavalry force necessary for your +offensive, as well as defensive operations. You need not therefore send +here more than one division of cavalry. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +Sheridan having been summoned to Washington City, started on the 15th +leaving Wright in command. His army was then at Cedar Creek, some +twenty miles south of Winchester. The next morning while at Front +Royal, Sheridan received a dispatch from Wright, saying that a dispatch +from Longstreet to Early had been intercepted. It directed the latter +to be ready to move and to crush Sheridan as soon as he, Longstreet, +arrived. On the receipt of this news Sheridan ordered the cavalry up +the valley to join Wright. + +On the 18th of October Early was ready to move, and during the night +succeeded in getting his troops in the rear of our left flank, which +fled precipitately and in great confusion down the valley, losing +eighteen pieces of artillery and a thousand or more prisoners. The +right under General Getty maintained a firm and steady front, falling +back to Middletown where it took a position and made a stand. The +cavalry went to the rear, seized the roads leading to Winchester and +held them for the use of our troops in falling back, General Wright +having ordered a retreat back to that place. + +Sheridan having left Washington on the 18th, reached Winchester that +night. The following morning he started to join his command. He had +scarcely got out of town, when he met his men returning in panic from +the front and also heard heavy firing to the south. He immediately +ordered the cavalry at Winchester to be deployed across the valley to +stop the stragglers. Leaving members of his staff to take care of +Winchester and the public property there, he set out with a small escort +directly for the scene of battle. As he met the fugitives he ordered +them to turn back, reminding them that they were going the wrong way. +His presence soon restored confidence. Finding themselves worse +frightened than hurt the men did halt and turn back. Many of those who +had run ten miles got back in time to redeem their reputation as gallant +soldiers before night. + +When Sheridan got to the front he found Getty and Custer still holding +their ground firmly between the Confederates and our retreating troops. +Everything in the rear was now ordered up. Sheridan at once proceeded to +intrench his position; and he awaited an assault from the enemy. This +was made with vigor, and was directed principally against Emory's corps, +which had sustained the principal loss in the first attack. By one +o'clock the attack was repulsed. Early was so badly damaged that he +seemed disinclined to make another attack, but went to work to intrench +himself with a view to holding the position he had already gained. He +thought, no doubt, that Sheridan would be glad enough to leave him +unmolested; but in this he was mistaken. + +About the middle of the afternoon Sheridan advanced. He sent his +cavalry by both flanks, and they penetrated to the enemy's rear. The +contest was close for a time, but at length the left of the enemy broke, +and disintegration along the whole line soon followed. Early tried to +rally his men, but they were followed so closely that they had to give +way very quickly every time they attempted to make a stand. Our +cavalry, having pushed on and got in the rear of the Confederates, +captured twenty-four pieces of artillery, besides retaking what had been +lost in the morning. This victory pretty much closed the campaigning in +the Valley of Virginia. All the Confederate troops were sent back to +Richmond with the exception of one division of infantry and a little +cavalry. Wright's corps was ordered back to the Army of the Potomac, +and two other divisions were withdrawn from the valley. Early had lost +more men in killed, wounded and captured in the valley than Sheridan had +commanded from first to last. + +On more than one occasion in these engagements General R. B. Hayes, who +succeeded me as President of the United States, bore a very honorable +part. His conduct on the field was marked by conspicuous gallantry as +well as the display of qualities of a higher order than that of mere +personal daring. This might well have been expected of one who could +write at the time he is said to have done so: "Any officer fit for duty +who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in +Congress, ought to be scalped." Having entered the army as a Major of +Volunteers at the beginning of the war, General Hayes attained by +meritorious service the rank of Brevet Major-General before its close. + +On the north side of the James River the enemy attacked Kautz's cavalry +on the 7th of October, and drove it back with heavy loss in killed, +wounded and prisoners, and the loss of all the artillery. This was +followed up by an attack on our intrenched infantry line, but was +repulsed with severe slaughter. On the 13th a reconnoissance was sent +out by General Butler, with a view to drive the enemy from some new +works he was constructing, which resulted in heavy loss to us. + +On the 24th I ordered General Meade to attempt to get possession of the +South Side Railroad, and for that purpose to advance on the 27th. The +attempt proved a failure, however, the most advanced of our troops not +getting nearer than within six miles of the point aimed for. Seeing the +impossibility of its accomplishment I ordered the troops to withdraw, +and they were all back in their former positions the next day. + +Butler, by my directions, also made a demonstration on the north side of +the James River in order to support this move, by detaining there the +Confederate troops who were on that side. He succeeded in this, but +failed of further results by not marching past the enemy's left before +turning in on the Darby road and by reason of simply coming up against +their lines in place. + +This closed active operations around Richmond for the winter. Of course +there was frequent skirmishing between pickets, but no serious battle +was fought near either Petersburg or Richmond. It would prolong this +work to give a detailed account of all that took place from day to day +around Petersburg and at other parts of my command, and it would not +interest the general reader if given. All these details can be found by +the military student in a series of books published by the Scribners, +Badeau's history of my campaigns, and also in the publications of the +War Department, including both the National and Confederate reports. + +In the latter part of November General Hancock was relieved from the +command of the 2d corps by the Secretary of War and ordered to +Washington, to organize and command a corps of veteran troops to be +designated the 1st corps. It was expected that this would give him a +large command to co-operate with in the spring. It was my expectation, +at the time, that in the final operations Hancock should move either up +the valley, or else east of the Blue Ridge to Lynchburg; the idea being +to make the spring campaign the close of the war. I expected, with +Sherman coming up from the South, Meade south of Petersburg and around +Richmond, and Thomas's command in Tennessee with depots of supplies +established in the eastern part of that State, to move from the +direction of Washington or the valley towards Lynchburg. We would then +have Lee so surrounded that his supplies would be cut off entirely, +making it impossible for him to support his army. + +General Humphreys, chief-of-staff of the Army of the Potomac, was +assigned to the command of the 2d corps, to succeed Hancock. + + + +CHAPTER LIX. + +THE CAMPAIGN IN GEORGIA--SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA--WAR ANECDOTES--THE +MARCH ON SAVANNAH--INVESTMENT OF SAVANNAH--CAPTURE OF SAVANNAH. + +Let us now return to the operations in the military division of the +Mississippi, and accompany Sherman in his march to the sea. + +The possession of Atlanta by us narrowed the territory of the enemy very +materially and cut off one of his two remaining lines of roads from east +to west. + +A short time after the fall of Atlanta Mr. Davis visited Palmetto and +Macon and made speeches at each place. He spoke at Palmetto on the 20th +of September, and at Macon on the 22d. Inasmuch as he had relieved +Johnston and appointed Hood, and Hood had immediately taken the +initiative, it is natural to suppose that Mr. Davis was disappointed +with General Johnston's policy. My own judgment is that Johnston acted +very wisely: he husbanded his men and saved as much of his territory as +he could, without fighting decisive battles in which all might be lost. +As Sherman advanced, as I have show, his army became spread out, until, +if this had been continued, it would have been easy to destroy it in +detail. I know that both Sherman and I were rejoiced when we heard of +the change. Hood was unquestionably a brave, gallant soldier and not +destitute of ability; but unfortunately his policy was to fight the +enemy wherever he saw him, without thinking much of the consequences of +defeat. + +In his speeches Mr. Davis denounced Governor Brown, of Georgia, and +General Johnston in unmeasured terms, even insinuating that their +loyalty to the Southern cause was doubtful. So far as General Johnston +is concerned, I think Davis did him a great injustice in this +particular. I had know the general before the war and strongly believed +it would be impossible for him to accept a high commission for the +purpose of betraying the cause he had espoused. There, as I have said, +I think that his policy was the best one that could have been pursued by +the whole South--protract the war, which was all that was necessary to +enable them to gain recognition in the end. The North was already +growing weary, as the South evidently was also, but with this +difference. In the North the people governed, and could stop +hostilities whenever they chose to stop supplies. The South was a +military camp, controlled absolutely by the government with soldiers to +back it, and the war could have been protracted, no matter to what +extent the discontent reached, up to the point of open mutiny of the +soldiers themselves. Mr. Davis's speeches were frank appeals to the +people of Georgia and that portion of the South to come to their relief. +He tried to assure his frightened hearers that the Yankees were rapidly +digging their own graves; that measures were already being taken to cut +them off from supplies from the North; and that with a force in front, +and cut off from the rear, they must soon starve in the midst of a +hostile people. Papers containing reports of these speeches immediately +reached the Northern States, and they were republished. Of course, that +caused no alarm so long as telegraphic communication was kept up with +Sherman. + +When Hood was forced to retreat from Atlanta he moved to the south-west +and was followed by a portion of Sherman's army. He soon appeared upon +the railroad in Sherman's rear, and with his whole army began destroying +the road. At the same time also the work was begun in Tennessee and +Kentucky which Mr. Davis had assured his hearers at Palmetto and Macon +would take place. He ordered Forrest (about the ablest cavalry general +in the South) north for this purpose; and Forrest and Wheeler carried +out their orders with more or less destruction, occasionally picking up +a garrison. Forrest indeed performed the very remarkable feat of +capturing, with cavalry, two gunboats and a number of transports, +something the accomplishment of which is very hard to account for. +Hood's army had been weakened by Governor Brown's withdrawing the +Georgia State troops for the purpose of gathering in the season's crops +for the use of the people and for the use of the army. This not only +depleted Hood's forces but it served a most excellent purpose in +gathering in supplies of food and forage for the use of our army in its +subsequent march. Sherman was obliged to push on with his force and go +himself with portions of it hither and thither, until it was clearly +demonstrated to him that with the army he then had it would be +impossible to hold the line from Atlanta back and leave him any force +whatever with which to take the offensive. Had that plan been adhered +to, very large reinforcements would have been necessary; and Mr. Davis's +prediction of the destruction of the army would have been realized, or +else Sherman would have been obliged to make a successful retreat, which +Mr. Davis said in his speeches would prove more disastrous than +Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. + +These speeches of Mr. Davis were not long in reaching Sherman. He took +advantage of the information they gave, and made all the preparation +possible for him to make to meet what now became expected, attempts to +break his communications. Something else had to be done: and to +Sherman's sensible and soldierly mind the idea was not long in dawning +upon him, not only that something else had to be done, but what that +something else should be. + +On September 10th I telegraphed Sherman as follows: + + +CITY POINT, VA., Sept. 10, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN, Atlanta, Georgia. + +So soon as your men are sufficiently rested, and preparations can be +made, it is desirable that another campaign should be commenced. We +want to keep the enemy constantly pressed to the end of the war. If we +give him no peace whilst the war lasts, the end cannot be distant. Now +that we have all of Mobile Bay that is valuable, I do not know but it +will be the best move to transfer Canby's troops to act upon Savannah, +whilst you move on Augusta. I should like to hear from you, however, in +this matter. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +Sherman replied promptly: + +"If I could be sure of finding provisions and ammunition at Augusta, or +Columbus, Georgia, I can march to Milledgeville, and compel Hood to give +up Augusta or Macon, and then turn on the other. * * * If you can +manage to take the Savannah River as high up as Augusta, or the +Chattahoochee as far up as Columbus, I can sweep the whole State of +Georgia." + +On the 12th I sent a special messenger, one of my own staff, with a +letter inviting Sherman's views about the next campaign. + +CITY POINT, VA., Sept. 12, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN, Commanding Mill Division of the +Mississippi. + +I send Lieutenant-Colonel Porter, of my staff, with this. Colonel Porter +will explain to you the exact condition of affairs here better than I +can do in the limits of a letter. Although I feel myself strong enough +for offensive operations, I am holding on quietly to get advantage of +recruits and convalescents, who are coming forward very rapidly. My +lines are necessarily very long, extending from Deep Bottom north of the +James across the peninsula formed by the Appomattox and the James, and +south of the Appomattox to the Weldon Road. This line is very strongly +fortified, and can be held with comparatively few men, but from its +great length takes many in the aggregate. I propose, when I do move, to +extend my left so as to control what is known as the South Side, or +Lynchburg and Petersburg Road, then if possible to keep the Danville +Road cut. At the same time this move is made, I want to send a force of +from six to ten thousand men against Wilmington. + +The way I propose to do this is to land the men north of Fort Fisher, +and hold that point. At the same time a large naval fleet will be +assembled there, and the iron-clads will run the batteries as they did +at Mobile. This will give us the same control of the harbor of +Wilmington that we now have of the harbor of Mobile. What you are to do +with the forces at your command, I do not see. The difficulties of +supplying your army, except when you are constantly moving, beyond where +you are, I plainly see. If it had not been for Price's movements Canby +would have sent twelve thousand more men to Mobile. From your command +on the Mississippi an equal number could have been taken. With these +forces my idea would have been to divide them, sending one half to +Mobile and the other half to Savannah. You could then move as proposed +in your telegram, so as to threaten Macon and Augusta equally. +Whichever was abandoned by the enemy you could take and open up a new +base of supplies. My object now in sending a staff officer is not so +much to suggest operations for you, as to get your views and have plans +matured by the time everything can be got ready. It will probably be +the 5th of October before any of the plans herein indicated will be +executed. + +If you have any promotions to recommend, send the names forward and I +will approve them. * * * + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +This reached Sherman on September 20th. + +On the 25th of September Sherman reported to Washington that Hood's +troops were in his rear. He had provided against this by sending a +division to Chattanooga and a division to Rome, Georgia, which was in +the rear of Hood, supposing that Hood would fall back in the direction +from which he had come to reach the railroad. At the same time Sherman +and Hood kept up a correspondence relative to the exchange of prisoners, +the treatment of citizens, and other matters suitable to be arranged +between hostile commanders in the field. On the 27th of September I +telegraphed Sherman as follows: + + +CITY POINT, VA., September 27, 1864--10.30 A.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN: + +I have directed all recruits and new troops from the Western States to +be sent to Nashville, to receive their further orders from you. * * * + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +On the 29th Sherman sent Thomas back to Chattanooga, and afterwards to +Nashville, with another division (Morgan's) of the advanced army. +Sherman then suggested that, when he was prepared, his movements should +take place against Milledgeville and then to Savannah. His expectation +at that time was, to make this movement as soon as he could get up his +supplies. Hood was moving in his own country, and was moving light so +that he could make two miles to Sherman's one. He depended upon the +country to gather his supplies, and so was not affected by delays. + +As I have said, until this unexpected state of affairs happened, Mobile +had been looked upon as the objective point of Sherman's army. It had +been a favorite move of mine from 1862, when I first suggested to the +then commander-in-chief that the troops in Louisiana, instead of +frittering away their time in the trans-Mississippi, should move +against Mobile. I recommended this from time to time until I came into +command of the army, the last of March 1864. Having the power in my own +hands, I now ordered the concentration of supplies, stores and troops, +in the department of the Gulf about New Orleans, with a view to a move +against Mobile, in support of, and in conjunction with, the other armies +operating in the field. Before I came into command, these troops had +been scattered over the trans-Mississippi department in such a way that +they could not be, or were not, gotten back in time to take any part in +the original movement; hence the consideration, which had caused Mobile +to be selected as the objective point for Sherman's army to find his +next base of supplies after having cut loose from Atlanta, no longer +existed. + +General G. M. Dodge, an exceedingly efficient officer, having been badly +wounded, had to leave the army about the first of October. He was in +command of two divisions of the 16th corps, consolidated into one. +Sherman then divided his army into the right and left wings the right +commanded by General O. O. Howard and the left by General Slocum. +General Dodge's two divisions were assigned, one to each of these wings. +Howard's command embraced the 15th and 17th corps, and Slocum's the 14th +and 20th corps, commanded by Generals Jeff. C. Davis and A. S. Williams. +Generals Logan and Blair commanded the two corps composing the right +wing. About this time they left to take part in the presidential +election, which took place that year, leaving their corps to Osterhaus +and Ransom. I have no doubt that their leaving was at the earnest +solicitation of the War Department. General Blair got back in time to +resume his command and to proceed with it throughout the march to the +sea and back to the grand review at Washington. General Logan did not +return to his command until after it reached Savannah. + +Logan felt very much aggrieved at the transfer of General Howard from +that portion of the Army of the Potomac which was then with the Western +Army, to the command of the Army of the Tennessee, with which army +General Logan had served from the battle of Belmont to the fall of +Atlanta--having passed successively through all grades from colonel +commanding a regiment to general commanding a brigade, division and army +corps, until upon the death of McPherson the command of the entire Army +of the Tennessee devolved upon him in the midst of a hotly contested +battle. He conceived that he had done his full duty as commander in +that engagement; and I can bear testimony, from personal observation, +that he had proved himself fully equal to all the lower positions which +he had occupied as a soldier. I will not pretend to question the motive +which actuated Sherman in taking an officer from another army to +supersede General Logan. I have no doubt, whatever, that he did this +for what he considered would be to the good of the service, which was +more important than that the personal feelings of any individual should +not be aggrieved; though I doubt whether he had an officer with him who +could have filled the place as Logan would have done. Differences of +opinion must exist between the best of friends as to policies in war, +and of judgment as to men's fitness. The officer who has the command, +however, should be allowed to judge of the fitness of the officers under +him, unless he is very manifestly wrong. + +Sherman's army, after all the depletions, numbered about sixty thousand +effective men. All weak men had been left to hold the rear, and those +remaining were not only well men, but strong and hardy, so that he had +sixty thousand as good soldiers as ever trod the earth; better than any +European soldiers, because they not only worked like a machine but the +machine thought. European armies know very little what they are fighting +for, and care less. Included in these sixty thousand troops, there were +two small divisions of cavalry, numbering altogether about four thousand +men. Hood had about thirty-five to forty thousand men, independent of +Forrest, whose forces were operating in Tennessee and Kentucky, as Mr. +Davis had promised they should. This part of Mr. Davis's military plan +was admirable, and promised the best results of anything he could have +done, according to my judgment. I say this because I have criticised his +military judgment in the removal of Johnston, and also in the +appointment of Hood. I am aware, however, that there was high feeling +existing at that time between Davis and his subordinate, whom I regarded +as one of his ablest lieutenants. + +On the 5th of October the railroad back from Atlanta was again very +badly broken, Hood having got on the track with his army. Sherman saw +after night, from a high point, the road burning for miles. The defence +of the railroad by our troops was very gallant, but they could not hold +points between their intrenched positions against Hood's whole army; in +fact they made no attempt to do so; but generally the intrenched +positions were held, as well as important bridges, and store located at +them. Allatoona, for instance, was defended by a small force of men +under the command of General Corse, one of the very able and efficient +volunteer officers produced by the war. He, with a small force, was cut +off from the remainder of the National army and was attacked with great +vigor by many times his own number. Sherman from his high position could +see the battle raging, with the Confederate troops between him and his +subordinate. He sent men, of course, to raise the temporary siege, but +the time that would be necessarily consumed in reaching Corse, would be +so great that all occupying the intrenchments might be dead. Corse was +a man who would never surrender. From a high position some of Sherman's +signal corps discovered a signal flag waving from a hole in the block +house at Allatoona. It was from Corse. He had been shot through the +face, but he signalled to his chief a message which left no doubt of his +determination to hold his post at all hazards. It was at this point +probably, that Sherman first realized that with the forces at his +disposal, the keeping open of his line of communication with the North +would be impossible if he expected to retain any force with which to +operate offensively beyond Atlanta. He proposed, therefore, to destroy +the roads back to Chattanooga, when all ready to move, and leave the +latter place garrisoned. Yet, before abandoning the railroad, it was +necessary that he should repair damages already done, and hold the road +until he could get forward such supplies, ordnance stores and small +rations, as he wanted to carry with him on his proposed march, and to +return to the north his surplus artillery; his object being to move +light and to have no more artillery than could be used to advantage on +the field. + +Sherman thought Hood would follow him, though he proposed to prepare for +the contingency of the latter moving the other way while he was moving +south, by making Thomas strong enough to hold Tennessee and Kentucky. +I, myself, was thoroughly satisfied that Hood would go north, as he did. +On the 2d of November I telegraphed Sherman authorizing him definitely +to move according to the plan he had proposed: that is, cutting loose +from his base, giving up Atlanta and the railroad back to Chattanooga. +To strengthen Thomas he sent Stanley (4th corps) back, and also ordered +Schofield, commanding the Army of the Ohio, twelve thousand strong, to +report to him. In addition to this, A. J. Smith, who, with two +divisions of Sherman's army, was in Missouri aiding Rosecrans in driving +the enemy from that State, was under orders to return to Thomas and, +under the most unfavorable circumstances, might be expected to arrive +there long before Hood could reach Nashville. + +In addition to this, the new levies of troops that were being raised in +the North-west went to Thomas as rapidly as enrolled and equipped. +Thomas, without any of these additions spoken of, had a garrison at +Chattanooga which had been strengthened by one division and garrisons at +Bridgeport, Stevenson, Decatur, Murfreesboro, and Florence. There were +already with him in Nashville ten thousand soldiers in round numbers, +and many thousands of employees in the quartermaster's and other +departments who could be put in the intrenchments in front of Nashville, +for its defence. Also, Wilson was there with ten thousand dismounted +cavalrymen, who were being equipped for the field. Thomas had at this +time about forty-five thousand men without any of the reinforcements +here above enumerated. These reinforcements gave him altogether about +seventy thousand men, without counting what might be added by the new +levies already spoken of. + +About this time Beauregard arrived upon the field, not to supersede Hood +in command, but to take general charge over the entire district in which +Hood and Sherman were, or might be, operating. He made the most frantic +appeals to the citizens for assistance to be rendered in every way: by +sending reinforcements, by destroying supplies on the line of march of +the invaders, by destroying the bridges over which they would have to +cross, and by, in every way, obstructing the roads to their front. But +it was hard to convince the people of the propriety of destroying +supplies which were so much needed by themselves, and each one hoped +that his own possessions might escape. + +Hood soon started north, and went into camp near Decatur, Alabama, where +he remained until the 29th of October, but without making an attack on +the garrison of that place. + +The Tennessee River was patrolled by gunboats, from Muscle Shoals east; +and, also, below the second shoals out to the Ohio River. These, with +the troops that might be concentrated from the garrisons along the river +at any point where Hood might choose to attempt to cross, made it +impossible for him to cross the Tennessee at any place where it was +navigable. But Muscle Shoals is not navigable, and below them again is +another shoal which also obstructs navigation. Hood therefore moved +down to a point nearly opposite Florence, Alabama, crossed over and +remained there for some time, collecting supplies of food, forage and +ammunition. All of these had to come from a considerable distance south, +because the region in which he was then situated was mountainous, with +small valleys which produced but little, and what they had produced had +long since been exhausted. On the 1st of November I suggested to +Sherman, and also asked his views thereon, the propriety of destroying +Hood before he started on his campaign. + +On the 2d of November, as stated, I approved definitely his making his +proposed campaign through Georgia, leaving Hood behind to the tender +mercy of Thomas and the troops in his command. Sherman fixed the 10th +of November as the day of starting. + +Sherman started on that day to get back to Atlanta, and on the 15th the +real march to the sea commenced. The right wing, under Howard, and the +cavalry went to Jonesboro, Milledgeville, then the capital of Georgia, +being Sherman's objective or stopping place on the way to Savannah. The +left wing moved to Stone Mountain, along roads much farther east than +those taken by the right wing. Slocum was in command, and threatened +Augusta as the point to which he was moving, but he was to turn off and +meet the right wing at Milledgeville. + +Atlanta was destroyed so far as to render it worthless for military +purposes before starting, Sherman himself remaining over a day to +superintend the work, and see that it was well done. Sherman's orders +for this campaign were perfect. Before starting, he had sent back all +sick, disabled and weak men, retaining nothing but the hardy, +well-inured soldiers to accompany him on his long march in prospect. +His artillery was reduced to sixty-five guns. The ammunition carried +with them was two hundred rounds for musket and gun. Small rations were +taken in a small wagon train, which was loaded to its capacity for rapid +movement. The army was expected to live on the country, and to always +keep the wagons full of forage and provisions against a possible delay +of a few days. + +The troops, both of the right and left wings, made most of their advance +along the line of railroads, which they destroyed. The method adopted +to perform this work, was to burn and destroy all the bridges and +culverts, and for a long distance, at places, to tear up the track and +bend the rails. Soldiers to do this rapidly would form a line along one +side of the road with crowbars and poles, place these under the rails +and, hoisting all at once, turn over many rods of road at one time. The +ties would then be placed in piles, and the rails, as they were +loosened, would be carried and put across these log heaps. When a +sufficient number of rails were placed upon a pile of ties it would be +set on fire. This would heat the rails very much more in the middle, +that being over the main part of the fire, than at the ends, so that +they would naturally bend of their own weight; but the soldiers, to +increase the damage, would take tongs and, one or two men at each end of +the rail, carry it with force against the nearest tree and twist it +around, thus leaving rails forming bands to ornament the forest trees of +Georgia. All this work was going on at the same time, there being a +sufficient number of men detailed for that purpose. Some piled the logs +and built the fire; some put the rails upon the fire; while others would +bend those that were sufficiently heated: so that, by the time the last +bit of road was torn up, that it was designed to destroy at a certain +place, the rails previously taken up were already destroyed. + +The organization for supplying the army was very complete. Each brigade +furnished a company to gather supplies of forage and provisions for the +command to which they belonged. Strict injunctions were issued against +pillaging, or otherwise unnecessarily annoying the people; but +everything in shape of food for man and forage for beast was taken. The +supplies were turned over to the brigade commissary and quartermaster, +and were issued by them to their respective commands precisely the same +as if they had been purchased. The captures consisted largely of +cattle, sheep, poultry, some bacon, cornmeal, often molasses, and +occasionally coffee or other small rations. + +The skill of these men, called by themselves and the army "bummers," in +collecting their loads and getting back to their respective commands, +was marvellous. When they started out in the morning, they were always +on foot; but scarcely one of them returned in the evening without being +mounted on a horse or mule. These would be turned in for the general use +of the army, and the next day these men would start out afoot and return +again in the evening mounted. + +Many of the exploits of these men would fall under the head of romance; +indeed, I am afraid that in telling some of their experiences, the +romance got the better of the truth upon which the story was founded, +and that, in the way many of these anecdotes are told, very little of +the foundation is left. I suspect that most of them consist chiefly of +the fiction added to make the stories better. In one instance it was +reported that a few men of Sherman's army passed a house where they +discovered some chickens under the dwelling. They immediately proceeded +to capture them, to add to the army's supplies. The lady of the house, +who happened to be at home, made piteous appeals to have these spared, +saying they were a few she had put away to save by permission of other +parties who had preceded and who had taken all the others that she had. +The soldiers seemed moved at her appeal; but looking at the chickens +again they were tempted and one of them replied: "The rebellion must be +suppressed if it takes the last chicken in the Confederacy," and +proceeded to appropriate the last one. + +Another anecdote characteristic of these times has been told. The South, +prior to the rebellion, kept bloodhounds to pursue runaway slaves who +took refuge in the neighboring swamps, and also to hunt convicts. +Orders were issued to kill all these animals as they were met with. On +one occasion a soldier picked up a poodle, the favorite pet of its +mistress, and was carrying it off to execution when the lady made a +strong appeal to him to spare it. The soldier replied, "Madam, our +orders are to kill every bloodhound." "But this is not a bloodhound," +said the lady. "Well, madam, we cannot tell what it will grow into if +we leave it behind," said the soldier as he went off with it. + +Notwithstanding these anecdotes, and the necessary hardship they would +seem to imply, I do not believe there was much unwarrantable pillaging +considering that we were in the enemy's territory and without any +supplies except such as the country afforded. + +On the 23d Sherman, with the left wing, reached Milledgeville. The right +wing was not far off: but proceeded on its way towards Savannah +destroying the road as it went. The troops at Milledgeville remained +over a day to destroy factories, buildings used for military purposes, +etc., before resuming its march. + +The governor, who had been almost defying Mr. Davis before this, now +fled precipitately, as did the legislature of the State and all the +State officers. The governor, Sherman says, was careful to carry away +even his garden vegetables, while he left the archives of the State to +fall into our hands. The only military force that was opposed to +Sherman's forward march was the Georgia militia, a division under the +command of General G. W. Smith, and a battalion under Harry Wayne. +Neither the quality of the forces nor their numbers was sufficient to +even retard the progress of Sherman's army. + +The people at the South became so frantic at this time at the successful +invasion of Georgia that they took the cadets from the military college +and added them to the ranks of the militia. They even liberated the +State convicts under promise from them that they would serve in the +army. I have but little doubt that the worst acts that were attributed +to Sherman's army were committed by these convicts, and by other +Southern people who ought to have been under sentence--such people as +could be found in every community, North and South--who took advantage +of their country being invaded to commit crime. They were in but little +danger of detection, or of arrest even if detected. + +The Southern papers in commenting upon Sherman's movements pictured him +as in the most deplorable condition: stating that his men were +starving, that they were demoralized and wandering about almost without +object, aiming only to reach the sea coast and get under the protection +of our navy. These papers got to the North and had more or less effect +upon the minds of the people, causing much distress to all loyal persons +particularly to those who had husbands, sons or brothers with Sherman. +Mr. Lincoln seeing these accounts, had a letter written asking me if I +could give him anything that he could say to the loyal people that would +comfort them. I told him there was not the slightest occasion for +alarm; that with 60,000 such men as Sherman had with him, such a +commanding officer as he was could not be cut off in the open country. +He might possibly be prevented from reaching the point he had started +out to reach, but he would get through somewhere and would finally get +to his chosen destination: and even if worst came to worst he could +return North. I heard afterwards of Mr. Lincoln's saying, to those who +would inquire of him as to what he thought about the safety of Sherman's +army, that Sherman was all right: "Grant says they are safe with such a +general, and that if they cannot get out where they want to, they can +crawl back by the hole they went in at." + +While at Milledgeville the soldiers met at the State House, organized a +legislature, and proceeded to business precisely as if they were the +legislative body belonging to the State of Georgia. The debates were +exciting, and were upon the subject of the situation the South was in at +that time, particularly the State of Georgia. They went so far as to +repeal, after a spirited and acrimonious debate, the ordinance of +secession. + +The next day (24th) Sherman continued his march, going by the way of +Waynesboro and Louisville, Millen being the next objective and where the +two columns (the right and left wings) were to meet. The left wing +moved to the left of the direct road, and the cavalry still farther off +so as to make it look as though Augusta was the point they were aiming +for. They moved on all the roads they could find leading in that +direction. The cavalry was sent to make a rapid march in hope of +surprising Millen before the Union prisoners could be carried away; but +they failed in this. + +The distance from Milledgeville to Millen was about one hundred miles. +At this point Wheeler, who had been ordered from Tennessee, arrived and +swelled the numbers and efficiency of the troops confronting Sherman. +Hardee, a native of Georgia, also came, but brought no troops with him. +It was intended that he should raise as large an army as possible with +which to intercept Sherman's march. He did succeed in raising some +troops, and with these and those under the command of Wheeler and Wayne, +had an army sufficient to cause some annoyance but no great detention. +Our cavalry and Wheeler's had a pretty severe engagement, in which +Wheeler was driven towards Augusta, thus giving the idea that Sherman +was probably making for that point. + +Millen was reached on the 3d of December, and the march was resumed the +following day for Savannah, the final objective. Bragg had now been sent +to Augusta with some troops. Wade Hampton was there also trying to +raise cavalry sufficient to destroy Sherman's army. If he ever raised a +force it was too late to do the work expected of it. Hardee's whole +force probably numbered less than ten thousand men. + +From Millen to Savannah the country is sandy and poor, and affords but +very little forage other than rice straw, which was then growing. This +answered a very good purpose as forage, and the rice grain was an +addition to the soldier's rations. No further resistance worthy of note +was met with, until within a few miles of Savannah. This place was +found to be intrenched and garrisoned. Sherman proceeded at once on his +arrival to invest the place, and found that the enemy had placed +torpedoes in the ground, which were to explode when stepped on by man or +beast. One of these exploded under an officer's horse, blowing the +animal to pieces and tearing one of the legs of the officer so badly +that it had to be amputated. Sherman at once ordered his prisoners to +the front, moving them in a compact body in advance, to either explode +the torpedoes or dig them up. No further explosion took place. + +On the 10th of December the siege of Savannah commenced. Sherman then, +before proceeding any further with operations for the capture of the +place, started with some troops to open communication with our fleet, +which he expected to find in the lower harbor or as near by as the forts +of the enemy would permit. In marching to the coast he encountered Fort +McAllister, which it was necessary to reduce before the supplies he +might find on shipboard could be made available. Fort McAllister was +soon captured by an assault made by General Hazen's division. +Communication was then established with the fleet. The capture of +Savannah then only occupied a few days, and involved no great loss of +life. The garrison, however, as we shall see, was enabled to escape by +crossing the river and moving eastward. + +When Sherman had opened communication with the fleet he found there a +steamer, which I had forwarded to him, carrying the accumulated mails +for his army, also supplies which I supposed he would be in need of. +General J. G. Foster, who commanded all the troops south of North +Carolina on the Atlantic sea-board, visited General Sherman before he +had opened communication with the fleet, with the view of ascertaining +what assistance he could be to him. Foster returned immediately to his +own headquarters at Hilton Head, for the purpose of sending Sherman +siege guns, and also if he should find he had them to spare, supplies of +clothing, hard bread, etc., thinking that these articles might not be +found outside. The mail on the steamer which I sent down, had been +collected by Colonel A. H. Markland of the Post Office Department, who +went in charge of it. On this same vessel I sent an officer of my staff +(Lieutenant Dunn) with the following letter to General Sherman: + + +CITY POINT, VA., Dec. 3, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN, Commanding Armies near Savannah, Ga. + +The little information gleaned from the Southern press, indicating no +great obstacle to your progress, I have directed your mails (which had +been previously collected at Baltimore by Colonel Markland, Special +Agent of the Post Office Department) to be sent as far as the blockading +squadron off Savannah, to be forwarded to you as soon as heard from on +the coast. + +Not liking to rejoice before the victory is assured, I abstain from +congratulating you and those under your command, until bottom has been +struck. I have never had a fear, however, for the result. + +Since you left Atlanta, no very great progress has been made here. The +enemy has been closely watched though, and prevented from detaching +against you. I think not one man has gone from here, except some twelve +or fifteen hundred dismounted cavalry. Bragg has gone from Wilmington. +I am trying to take advantage of his absence to get possession of that +place. Owing to some preparations Admiral Porter and General Butler are +making to blow up Fort Fisher (which, while hoping for the best, I do +not believe a particle in), there is a delay in getting this expedition +off. I hope they will be ready to start by the 7th, and that Bragg will +not have started back by that time. + +In this letter I do not intend to give you anything like directions for +future action, but will state a general idea I have, and will get your +views after you have established yourself on the sea-coast. With your +veteran army I hope to get control of the only two through routes from +east to west possessed by the enemy before the fall of Atlanta. The +condition will be filled by holding Savannah and Augusta, or by holding +any other port to the east of Savannah and Branchville. If Wilmington +falls, a force from there can co-operate with you. + +Thomas has got back into the defences of Nashville, with Hood close upon +him. Decatur has been abandoned, and so have all the roads except the +main one leading to Chattanooga. Part of this falling back was +undoubtedly necessary and all of it may have been. It did not look so, +however, to me. In my opinion, Thomas far outnumbers Hood in infantry. +In cavalry, Hood has the advantage in morale and numbers. I hope yet +that Hood will be badly crippled if not destroyed. The general news you +will learn from the papers better than I could give it. + +After all becomes quiet, and roads become so bad up here that there is +likely to be a week or two when nothing can be done, I will run down the +coast to see you. If you desire it, I will ask Mrs. Sherman to go with +me. + +Yours truly, U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General + + +I quote this letter because it gives the reader a full knowledge of the +events of that period. + +Sherman now (the 15th) returned to Savannah to complete its investment +and insure the surrender of the garrison. The country about Savannah is +low and marshy, and the city was well intrenched from the river above to +the river below; and assaults could not be made except along a +comparatively narrow causeway. For this reason assaults must have +resulted in serious destruction of life to the Union troops, with the +chance of failing altogether. Sherman therefore decided upon a complete +investment of the place. When he believed this investment completed, he +summoned the garrison to surrender. General Hardee, who was in command, +replied in substance that the condition of affairs was not such as +Sherman had described. He said he was in full communication with his +department and was receiving supplies constantly. + +Hardee, however, was cut off entirely from all communication with the +west side of the river, and by the river itself to the north and south. +On the South Carolina side the country was all rice fields, through +which it would have been impossible to bring supplies so that Hardee had +no possible communication with the outside world except by a dilapidated +plank road starting from the west bank of the river. Sherman, receiving +this reply, proceeded in person to a point on the coast, where General +Foster had troops stationed under General Hatch, for the purpose of +making arrangements with the latter officer to go through by one of the +numerous channels running inland along that part of the coast of South +Carolina, to the plank road which General Hardee still possessed, and +thus to cut him off from the last means he had of getting supplies, if +not of communication. + +While arranging for this movement, and before the attempt to execute the +plan had been commenced, Sherman received information through one of his +staff officers that the enemy had evacuated Savannah the night before. +This was the night of the 21st of December. Before evacuating the place +Hardee had blown up the navy yard. Some iron-clads had been destroyed, +as well as other property that might have been valuable to us; but he +left an immense amount of stores untouched, consisting of cotton, +railroad cars, workshops, numerous pieces of artillery, and several +thousand stands of small arms. + +A little incident occurred, soon after the fall of Savannah, which +Sherman relates in his Memoirs, and which is worthy of repetition. +Savannah was one of the points where blockade runners entered. Shortly +after the city fell into our possession, a blockade runner came sailing +up serenely, not doubting but the Confederates were still in possession. +It was not molested, and the captain did not find out his mistake until +he had tied up and gone to the Custom House, where he found a new +occupant of the building, and made a less profitable disposition of his +vessel and cargo than he had expected. + +As there was some discussion as to the authorship of Sherman's march to +the sea, by critics of his book when it appeared before the public, I +want to state here that no question upon that subject was ever raised +between General Sherman and myself. Circumstances made the plan on which +Sherman expected to act impracticable, as as commander of the forces he +necessarily had to devise a new on which would give more promise of +success: consequently he recommended the destruction of the railroad +back to Chattanooga, and that he should be authorized then to move, as +he did, from Atlanta forward. His suggestions were finally approved, +although they did not immediately find favor in Washington. Even when +it came to the time of starting, the greatest apprehension, as to the +propriety of the campaign he was about commence, filled the mind of the +President, induced no doubt by his advisers. This went so far as to +move the President to ask me to suspend Sherman's march for a day or two +until I could think the matter over. My recollection is, though I find +no record to show it, that out of deference to the President's wish I +did send a dispatch to Sherman asking him to wait a day or two, or else +the connections between us were already cut so that I could not do so. +However this may be, the question of who devised the plan of march from +Atlanta to Savannah is easily answered: it was clearly Sherman, and to +him also belongs the credit of its brilliant execution. It was hardly +possible that any one else than those on the spot could have devised a +new plan of campaign to supersede one that did not promise success. +(*40) + +I was in favor of Sherman's plan from the time it was first submitted to +me. My chief of staff, however, was very bitterly opposed to it and, as +I learned subsequently, finding that he could not move me, he appealed +to the authorities at Washington to stop it. + + + +CHAPTER LX. + +THE BATTLE OF FRANKLIN--THE BATTLE OF NASHVILLE. + +As we have seen, Hood succeeded in crossing the Tennessee River between +Muscle Shoals and the lower shoals at the end of October, 1864. Thomas +sent Schofield with the 4th and 23d corps, together with three brigades +of Wilson's cavalry to Pulaski to watch him. On the 17th of November +Hood started and moved in such a manner as to avoid Schofield, thereby +turning his position. Hood had with him three infantry corps, commanded +respectively by Stephen D. Lee, Stewart and Cheatham. These, with his +cavalry, numbered about forty-five thousand men. Schofield had, of all +arms, about thirty thousand. Thomas's orders were, therefore, for +Schofield to watch the movements of the enemy, but not to fight a battle +if he could avoid it; but to fall back in case of an advance on +Nashville, and to fight the enemy, as he fell back, so as to retard the +enemy's movements until he could be reinforced by Thomas himself. As +soon as Schofield saw this movement of Hood's, he sent his trains to the +rear, but did not fall back himself until the 21st, and then only to +Columbia. At Columbia there was a slight skirmish but no battle. From +this place Schofield then retreated to Franklin. He had sent his wagons +in advance, and Stanley had gone with them with two divisions to protect +them. Cheatham's corps of Hood's army pursued the wagon train and went +into camp at Spring Hill, for the night of the 29th. + +Schofield retreating from Columbia on the 29th, passed Spring Hill, +where Cheatham was bivouacked, during the night without molestation, +though within half a mile of where the Confederates were encamped. On +the morning of the 30th he had arrived at Franklin. + +Hood followed closely and reached Franklin in time to make an attack the +same day. The fight was very desperate and sanguinary. The Confederate +generals led their men in the repeated charges, and the loss among them +was of unusual proportions. This fighting continued with great severity +until long after the night closed in, when the Confederates drew off. +General Stanley, who commanded two divisions of the Union troops, and +whose troops bore the brunt of the battle, was wounded in the fight, but +maintained his position. + +The enemy's loss at Franklin, according to Thomas's report, was 1,750 +buried upon the field by our troops, 3,800 in the hospital, and 702 +prisoners besides. Schofield's loss, as officially reported, was 189 +killed, 1,033 wounded, and 1,104 captured and missing. + +Thomas made no effort to reinforce Schofield at Franklin, as it seemed +to me at the time he should have done, and fight out the battle there. +He simply ordered Schofield to continue his retreat to Nashville, which +the latter did during that night and the next day. + +Thomas, in the meantime, was making his preparations to receive Hood. +The road to Chattanooga was still well guarded with strong garrisons at +Murfreesboro, Stevenson, Bridgeport and Chattanooga. Thomas had +previously given up Decatur and had been reinforced by A. J. Smith's two +divisions just returned from Missouri. He also had Steedman's division +and R. S. Granger's, which he had drawn from the front. His +quartermaster's men, about ten thousand in number, had been organized +and armed under the command of the chief quartermaster, General J. L. +Donaldson, and placed in the fortifications under the general +supervision of General Z. B. Tower, of the United States Engineers. + +Hood was allowed to move upon Nashville, and to invest that place almost +without interference. Thomas was strongly fortified in his position, so +that he would have been safe against the attack of Hood. He had troops +enough even to annihilate him in the open field. To me his delay was +unaccountable--sitting there and permitting himself to be invested, so +that, in the end, to raise the siege he would have to fight the enemy +strongly posted behind fortifications. It is true the weather was very +bad. The rain was falling and freezing as it fell, so that the ground +was covered with a sheet of ice, that made it very difficult to move. +But I was afraid that the enemy would find means of moving, elude Thomas +and manage to get north of the Cumberland River. If he did this, I +apprehended most serious results from the campaign in the North, and was +afraid we might even have to send troops from the East to head him off +if he got there, General Thomas's movements being always so deliberate +and so slow, though effective in defence. + +I consequently urged Thomas in frequent dispatches sent from City +Point(*41) to make the attack at once. The country was alarmed, the +administration was alarmed, and I was alarmed lest the very thing would +take place which I have just described that is, Hood would get north. +It was all without avail further than to elicit dispatches from Thomas +saying that he was getting ready to move as soon as he could, that he +was making preparations, etc. At last I had to say to General Thomas +that I should be obliged to remove him unless he acted promptly. He +replied that he was very sorry, but he would move as soon as he could. + +General Logan happening to visit City Point about that time, and knowing +him as a prompt, gallant and efficient officer, I gave him an order to +proceed to Nashville to relieve Thomas. I directed him, however, not to +deliver the order or publish it until he reached there, and if Thomas +had moved, then not to deliver it at all, but communicate with me by +telegraph. After Logan started, in thinking over the situation, I +became restless, and concluded to go myself. I went as far as +Washington City, when a dispatch was received from General Thomas +announcing his readiness at last to move, and designating the time of +his movement. I concluded to wait until that time. He did move, and was +successful from the start. This was on the 15th of December. General +Logan was at Louisville at the time this movement was made, and +telegraphed the fact to Washington, and proceeded no farther himself. + +The battle during the 15th was severe, but favorable to the Union +troops, and continued until night closed in upon the combat. The next +day the battle was renewed. After a successful assault upon Hood's men +in their intrenchments the enemy fled in disorder, routed and broken, +leaving their dead, their artillery and small arms in great numbers on +the field, besides the wounded that were captured. Our cavalry had +fought on foot as infantry, and had not their horses with them; so that +they were not ready to join in the pursuit the moment the enemy +retreated. They sent back, however, for their horses, and endeavored to +get to Franklin ahead of Hood's broken army by the Granny White Road, +but too much time was consumed in getting started. They had got but a +few miles beyond the scene of the battle when they found the enemy's +cavalry dismounted and behind intrenchments covering the road on which +they were advancing. Here another battle ensued, our men dismounting and +fighting on foot, in which the Confederates were again routed and driven +in great disorder. Our cavalry then went into bivouac, and renewed the +pursuit on the following morning. They were too late. The enemy +already had possession of Franklin, and was beyond them. It now became a +chase in which the Confederates had the lead. + +Our troops continued the pursuit to within a few miles of Columbia, +where they found the rebels had destroyed the railroad bridge as well as +all other bridges over Duck River. The heavy rains of a few days before +had swelled the stream into a mad torrent, impassable except on bridges. +Unfortunately, either through a mistake in the wording of the order or +otherwise, the pontoon bridge which was to have been sent by rail out to +Franklin, to be taken thence with the pursuing column, had gone toward +Chattanooga. There was, consequently, a delay of some four days in +building bridges out of the remains of the old railroad bridge. Of +course Hood got such a start in this time that farther pursuit was +useless, although it was continued for some distance, but without coming +upon him again. + + + +CHAPTER LXI. + +EXPEDITION AGAINST FORT FISHER--ATTACK ON THE FORT--FAILURE OF THE +EXPEDITION--SECOND EXPEDITION AGAINST THE FORT--CAPTURE OF FORT FISHER. + +Up to January, 1865, the enemy occupied Fort Fisher, at the mouth of +Cape Fear River and below the City of Wilmington. This port was of +immense importance to the Confederates, because it formed their +principal inlet for blockade runners by means of which they brought in +from abroad such supplies and munitions of war as they could not produce +at home. It was equally important to us to get possession of it, not +only because it was desirable to cut off their supplies so as to insure +a speedy termination of the war, but also because foreign governments, +particularly the British Government, were constantly threatening that +unless ours could maintain the blockade of that coast they should cease +to recognize any blockade. For these reasons I determined, with the +concurrence of the Navy Department, in December, to send an expedition +against Fort Fisher for the purpose of capturing it. + +To show the difficulty experienced in maintaining the blockade, I will +mention a circumstance that took place at Fort Fisher after its fall. +Two English blockade runners came in at night. Their commanders, not +supposing the fort had fallen, worked their way through all our fleet +and got into the river unobserved. They then signalled the fort, +announcing their arrival. There was a colored man in the fort who had +been there before and who understood these signals. He informed General +Terry what reply he should make to have them come in, and Terry did as +he advised. The vessels came in, their officers entirely unconscious +that they were falling into the hands of the Union forces. Even after +they were brought in to the fort they were entertained in conversation +for some little time before suspecting that the Union troops were +occupying the fort. They were finally informed that their vessels and +cargoes were prizes. + +I selected General Weitzel, of the Army of the James, to go with the +expedition, but gave instructions through General Butler. He commanded +the department within whose geographical limits Fort Fisher was +situated, as well as Beaufort and other points on that coast held by our +troops; he was, therefore, entitled to the right of fitting out the +expedition against Fort Fisher. + +General Butler conceived the idea that if a steamer loaded heavily with +powder could be run up to near the shore under the fort and exploded, it +would create great havoc and make the capture an easy matter. Admiral +Porter, who was to command the naval squadron, seemed to fall in with +the idea, and it was not disapproved of in Washington; the navy was +therefore given the task of preparing the steamer for this purpose. I +had no confidence in the success of the scheme, and so expressed myself; +but as no serious harm could come of the experiment, and the authorities +at Washington seemed desirous to have it tried, I permitted it. The +steamer was sent to Beaufort, North Carolina, and was there loaded with +powder and prepared for the part she was to play in the reduction of +Fort Fisher. + +General Butler chose to go in command of the expedition himself, and was +all ready to sail by the 9th of December (1864). Very heavy storms +prevailed, however, at that time along that part of the sea-coast, and +prevented him from getting off until the 13th or 14th. His advance +arrived off Fort Fisher on the 15th. The naval force had been already +assembled, or was assembling, but they were obliged to run into Beaufort +for munitions, coal, etc.; then, too, the powder-boat was not yet fully +prepared. The fleet was ready to proceed on the 18th; but Butler, who +had remained outside from the 15th up to that time, now found himself +out of coal, fresh water, etc., and had to put into Beaufort to +replenish. Another storm overtook him, and several days more were lost +before the army and navy were both ready at the same time to co-operate. + +On the night of the 23d the powder-boat was towed in by a gunboat as +near to the fort as it was safe to run. She was then propelled by her +own machinery to within about five hundred yards of the shore. There +the clockwork, which was to explode her within a certain length of time, +was set and she was abandoned. Everybody left, and even the vessels put +out to sea to prevent the effect of the explosion upon them. At two +o'clock in the morning the explosion took place--and produced no more +effect on the fort, or anything else on land, than the bursting of a +boiler anywhere on the Atlantic Ocean would have done. Indeed when the +troops in Fort Fisher heard the explosion they supposed it was the +bursting of a boiler in one of the Yankee gunboats. + +Fort Fisher was situated upon a low, flat peninsula north of Cape Fear +River. The soil is sandy. Back a little the peninsula is very heavily +wooded, and covered with fresh-water swamps. The fort ran across this +peninsula, about five hundred yards in width, and extended along the sea +coast about thirteen hundred yards. The fort had an armament of 21 guns +and 3 mortars on the land side, and 24 guns on the sea front. At that +time it was only garrisoned by four companies of infantry, one light +battery and the gunners at the heavy guns less than seven hundred men +with a reserve of less than a thousand men five miles up the peninsula. +General Whiting of the Confederate army was in command, and General +Bragg was in command of the force at Wilmington. Both commenced calling +for reinforcements the moment they saw our troops landing. The Governor +of North Carolina called for everybody who could stand behind a parapet +and shoot a gun, to join them. In this way they got two or three +hundred additional men into Fort Fisher; and Hoke's division, five or +six thousand strong, was sent down from Richmond. A few of these troops +arrived the very day that Butler was ready to advance. + +On the 24th the fleet formed for an attack in arcs of concentric +circles, their heavy iron-clads going in very close range, being nearest +the shore, and leaving intervals or spaces so that the outer vessels +could fire between them. Porter was thus enabled to throw one hundred +and fifteen shells per minute. The damage done to the fort by these +shells was very slight, only two or three cannon being disabled in the +fort. But the firing silenced all the guns by making it too hot for the +men to maintain their positions about them and compelling them to seek +shelter in the bomb-proofs. + +On the next day part of Butler's troops under General Adelbert Ames +effected a landing out of range of the fort without difficulty. This +was accomplished under the protection of gunboats sent for the purpose, +and under cover of a renewed attack upon the fort by the fleet. They +formed a line across the peninsula and advanced, part going north and +part toward the fort, covering themselves as they did so. Curtis pushed +forward and came near to Fort Fisher, capturing the small garrison at +what was called the Flag Pond Battery. Weitzel accompanied him to +within a half a mile of the works. Here he saw that the fort had not +been injured, and so reported to Butler, advising against an assault. +Ames, who had gone north in his advance, captured 228 of the reserves. +These prisoners reported to Butler that sixteen hundred of Hoke's +division of six thousand from Richmond had already arrived and the rest +would soon be in his rear. + +Upon these reports Butler determined to withdraw his troops from the +peninsula and return to the fleet. At that time there had not been a +man on our side injured except by one of the shells from the fleet. +Curtis had got within a few yards of the works. Some of his men had +snatched a flag from the parapet of the fort, and others had taken a +horse from the inside of the stockade. At night Butler informed Porter +of his withdrawal, giving the reasons above stated, and announced his +purpose as soon as his men could embark to start for Hampton Roads. +Porter represented to him that he had sent to Beaufort for more +ammunition. He could fire much faster than he had been doing, and would +keep the enemy from showing himself until our men were within twenty +yards of the fort, and he begged that Butler would leave some brave +fellows like those who had snatched the flag from the parapet and taken +the horse from the fort. + +Butler was unchangeable. He got all his troops aboard, except Curtis's +brigade, and started back. In doing this, Butler made a fearful +mistake. My instructions to him, or to the officer who went in command +of the expedition, were explicit in the statement that to effect a +landing would be of itself a great victory, and if one should be +effected, the foothold must not be relinquished; on the contrary, a +regular siege of the fort must be commenced and, to guard against +interference by reason of storms, supplies of provisions must be laid in +as soon as they could be got on shore. But General Butler seems to have +lost sight of this part of his instructions, and was back at Fort Monroe +on the 28th. + +I telegraphed to the President as follows: + + +CITY POINT, VA., Dec. 28, 1864.--8.30 P.M. + +The Wilmington expedition has proven a gross and culpable failure. Many +of the troops are back here. Delays and free talk of the object of the +expedition enabled the enemy to move troops to Wilmington to defeat it. +After the expedition sailed from Fort Monroe, three days of fine weather +were squandered, during which the enemy was without a force to protect +himself. Who is to blame will, I hope, be known. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +Porter sent dispatches to the Navy Department in which he complained +bitterly of having been abandoned by the army just when the fort was +nearly in our possession, and begged that our troops might be sent back +again to cooperate, but with a different commander. As soon as I heard +this I sent a messenger to Porter with a letter asking him to hold on. +I assured him that I fully sympathized with him in his disappointment, +and that I would send the same troops back with a different commander, +with some reinforcements to offset those which the enemy had received. +I told him it would take some little time to get transportation for the +additional troops; but as soon as it could be had the men should be on +their way to him, and there would be no delay on my part. I selected A. +H. Terry to command. + +It was the 6th of January before the transports could be got ready and +the troops aboard. They sailed from Fortress Monroe on that day. The +object and destination of the second expedition were at the time kept a +secret to all except a few in the Navy Department and in the army to +whom it was necessary to impart the information. General Terry had not +the slightest idea of where he was going or what he was to do. He +simply knew that he was going to sea and that he had his orders with +him, which were to be opened when out at sea. + +He was instructed to communicate freely with Porter and have entire +harmony between army and navy, because the work before them would +require the best efforts of both arms of service. They arrived off +Beaufort on the 8th. A heavy storm, however, prevented a landing at +Forth Fisher until the 13th. The navy prepared itself for attack about +as before, and the same time assisted the army in landing, this time +five miles away. Only iron-clads fired at first; the object being to +draw the fire of the enemy's guns so as to ascertain their positions. +This object being accomplished, they then let in their shots thick and +fast. Very soon the guns were all silenced, and the fort showed evident +signs of being much injured. + +Terry deployed his men across the peninsula as had been done before, and +at two o'clock on the following morning was up within two miles of the +fort with a respectable abatis in front of his line. His artillery was +all landed on that day, the 14th. Again Curtis's brigade of Ame's +division had the lead. By noon they had carried an unfinished work less +than a half mile from the fort, and turned it so as to face the other +way. + +Terry now saw Porter and arranged for an assault on the following day. +The two commanders arranged their signals so that they could communicate +with each other from time to time as they might have occasion. At day +light the fleet commenced its firing. The time agreed upon for the +assault was the middle of the afternoon, and Ames who commanded the +assaulting column moved at 3.30. Porter landed a force of sailors and +marines to move against the sea-front in co-operation with Ames's +assault. They were under Commander Breese of the navy. These sailors +and marines had worked their way up to within a couple of hundred yards +of the fort before the assault. The signal was given and the assault +was made; but the poor sailors and marines were repulsed and very badly +handled by the enemy, losing 280 killed and wounded out of their number. + +Curtis's brigade charged successfully though met by a heavy fire, some +of the men having to wade through the swamp up to their waists to reach +the fort. Many were wounded, of course, and some killed; but they soon +reached the palisades. These they cut away, and pushed on through. The +other troops then came up, Pennypacker's following Curtis, and Bell, who +commanded the 3d brigade of Ames's division, following Pennypacker. But +the fort was not yet captured though the parapet was gained. + +The works were very extensive. The large parapet around the work would +have been but very little protection to those inside except when they +were close up under it. Traverses had, therefore, been run until really +the work was a succession of small forts enclosed by a large one. The +rebels made a desperate effort to hold the fort, and had to be driven +from these traverses one by one. The fight continued till long after +night. Our troops gained first one traverse and then another, and by 10 +o'clock at night the place was carried. During this engagement the +sailors, who had been repulsed in their assault on the bastion, rendered +the best service they could by reinforcing Terry's northern line--thus +enabling him to send a detachment to the assistance of Ames. The fleet +kept up a continuous fire upon that part of the fort which was still +occupied by the enemy. By means of signals they could be informed where +to direct their shots. + +During the succeeding nights the enemy blew up Fort Caswell on the +opposite side of Cape Fear River, and abandoned two extensive works on +Smith's Island in the river. + +Our captures in all amounted to 169 guns, besides small-arms, with full +supplies of ammunition, and 2,083 prisoners. In addition to these, +there were about 700 dead and wounded left there. We had lost 110 +killed and 536 wounded. + +In this assault on Fort Fisher, Bell, one of the brigade commanders, was +killed, and two, Curtis and Pennypacker, were badly wounded. + +Secretary Stanton, who was on his way back from Savannah, arrived off +Fort Fisher soon after it fell. When he heard the good news he promoted +all the officers of any considerable rank for their conspicuous +gallantry. Terry had been nominated for major-general, but had not been +confirmed. This confirmed him; and soon after I recommended him for a +brigadier-generalcy in the regular army, and it was given to him for +this victory. + + + +CHAPTER LXII. + +SHERMAN'S MARCH NORTH--SHERIDAN ORDERED TO LYNCHBURG--CANBY ORDERED TO +MOVE AGAINST MOBILE--MOVEMENTS OF SCHOFIELD AND THOMAS--CAPTURE OF +COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA--SHERMAN IN THE CAROLINAS. + +When news of Sherman being in possession of Savannah reached the North, +distinguished statesmen and visitors began to pour in to see him. Among +others who went was the Secretary of War, who seemed much pleased at the +result of his campaign. Mr. Draper, the collector of customs of New +York, who was with Mr. Stanton's party, was put in charge of the public +property that had been abandoned and captured. Savannah was then turned +over to General Foster's command to hold, so that Sherman might have his +own entire army free to operate as might be decided upon in the future. +I sent the chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac (General Barnard) +with letters to General Sherman. He remained some time with the +general, and when he returned brought back letters, one of which +contained suggestions from Sherman as to what ought to be done in +co-operation with him, when he should have started upon his march +northward. + +I must not neglect to state here the fact that I had no idea originally +of having Sherman march from Savannah to Richmond, or even to North +Carolina. The season was bad, the roads impassable for anything except +such an army as he had, and I should not have thought of ordering such a +move. I had, therefore, made preparations to collect transports to +carry Sherman and his army around to the James River by water, and so +informed him. On receiving this letter he went to work immediately to +prepare for the move, but seeing that it would require a long time to +collect the transports, he suggested the idea then of marching up north +through the Carolinas. I was only too happy to approve this; for if +successful, it promised every advantage. His march through Georgia had +thoroughly destroyed all lines of transportation in that State, and had +completely cut the enemy off from all sources of supply to the west of +it. If North and South Carolina were rendered helpless so far as +capacity for feeding Lee's army was concerned, the Confederate garrison +at Richmond would be reduced in territory, from which to draw supplies, +to very narrow limits in the State of Virginia; and, although that +section of the country was fertile, it was already well exhausted of +both forage and food. I approved Sherman's suggestion therefore at +once. + +The work of preparation was tedious, because supplies, to load the +wagons for the march, had to be brought from a long distance. Sherman +would now have to march through a country furnishing fewer provisions +than that he had previously been operating in during his march to the +sea. Besides, he was confronting, or marching toward, a force of the +enemy vastly superior to any his troops had encountered on their +previous march; and the territory through which he had to pass had now +become of such vast importance to the very existence of the Confederate +army, that the most desperate efforts were to be expected in order to +save it. + +Sherman, therefore, while collecting the necessary supplies to start +with, made arrangements with Admiral Dahlgren, who commanded that part +of the navy on the South Carolina and Georgia coast, and General Foster, +commanding the troops, to take positions, and hold a few points on the +sea coast, which he (Sherman) designated, in the neighborhood of +Charleston. + +This provision was made to enable him to fall back upon the sea coast, +in case he should encounter a force sufficient to stop his onward +progress. He also wrote me a letter, making suggestions as to what he +would like to have done in support of his movement farther north. This +letter was brought to City Point by General Barnard at a time when I +happened to be going to Washington City, where I arrived on the 21st of +January. I cannot tell the provision I had already made to co-operate +with Sherman, in anticipation of his expected movement, better than by +giving my reply to this letter. + + +HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES, WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 21, +1865. + +MAJOR-GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN, Commanding Mill Div. of the Mississippi. + +GENERAL:--Your letters brought by General Barnard were received at City +Point, and read with interest. Not having them with me, however, I +cannot say that in this I will be able to satisfy you on all points of +recommendation. As I arrived here at one P.M., and must leave at six +P.M., having in the meantime spent over three hours with the Secretary +and General Halleck, I must be brief. Before your last request to have +Thomas make a campaign into the heart of Alabama, I had ordered +Schofield to Annapolis, Md., with his corps. The advance (six thousand) +will reach the seaboard by the 23d, the remainder following as rapidly +as railroad transportation can be procured from Cincinnati. The corps +numbers over twenty-one thousand men. I was induced to do this because +I did not believe Thomas could possibly be got off before spring. His +pursuit of Hood indicated a sluggishness that satisfied me that he would +never do to conduct one of your campaigns. The command of the advance +of the pursuit was left to subordinates, whilst Thomas followed far +behind. When Hood had crossed the Tennessee, and those in pursuit had +reached it, Thomas had not much more than half crossed the State, from +whence he returned to Nashville to take steamer for Eastport. He is +possessed of excellent judgment, great coolness and honesty, but he is +not good on a pursuit. He also reported his troops fagged, and that it +was necessary to equip up. This report and a determination to give the +enemy no rest determined me to use his surplus troops elsewhere. + +Thomas is still left with a sufficient force surplus to go to Selma +under an energetic leader. He has been telegraphed to, to know whether +he could go, and, if so, which of the several routes he would select. +No reply is yet received. Canby has been ordered to act offensively +from the sea-coast to the interior, towards Montgomery and Selma. +Thomas's forces will move from the north at an early day, or some of his +troops will be sent to Canby. Without further reinforcements Canby will +have a moving column of twenty thousand men. + +Fort Fisher, you are aware, has been captured. We have a force there of +eight thousand effective. At New Bern about half the number. It is +rumored, through deserters, that Wilmington also has fallen. I am +inclined to believe the rumor, because on the 17th we knew the enemy +were blowing up their works about Fort Caswell, and that on the 18th +Terry moved on Wilmington. + +If Wilmington is captured, Schofield will go there. If not, he will be +sent to New Bern. In either event, all the surplus forces at the two +points will move to the interior toward Goldsboro' in co-operation with +your movements. From either point, railroad communications can be run +out, there being here abundance of rolling-stock suited to the gauge of +those roads. + +There have been about sixteen thousand men sent from Lee's army south. +Of these, you will have fourteen thousand against you, if Wilmington is +not held by the enemy, casualties at Fort Fisher having overtaken about +two thousand. + +All these troops are subject to your orders as you come in communication +with them. They will be so instructed. From about Richmond I will +watch Lee closely, and if he detaches much more, or attempts to +evacuate, will pitch in. In the meantime, should you be brought to a +halt anywhere, I can send two corps of thirty thousand effective men to +your support, from the troops about Richmond. + +To resume: Canby is ordered to operate to the interior from the Gulf. +A. J. Smith may go from the north, but I think it doubtful. A force of +twenty-eight or thirty thousand will co-operate with you from New Bern +or Wilmington, or both. You can call for reinforcements. + +This will be handed you by Captain Hudson, of my staff, who will return +with any message you may have for me. If there is anything I can do for +you in the way of having supplies on ship-board, at any point on the +sea-coast, ready for you, let me know it. + +Yours truly, U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +I had written on the 18th of January to General Sherman, giving him the +news of the battle of Nashville. He was much pleased at the result, +although, like myself, he had been very much disappointed at Thomas for +permitting Hood to cross the Tennessee River and nearly the whole State +of Tennessee, and come to Nashville to be attacked there. He, however, +as I had done, sent Thomas a warm congratulatory letter. + +On the 10th of January, 1865, the resolutions of thanks to Sherman and +his army passed by Congress were approved. + +Sherman, after the capture, at once had the debris cleared up, +commencing the work by removing the piling and torpedoes from the river, +and taking up all obstructions. He had then intrenched the city, so +that it could be held by a small garrison. By the middle of January all +his work was done, except the accumulation of supplies to commence his +movement with. + +He proposed to move in two columns, one from Savannah, going along by +the river of the same name, and the other by roads farther east, +threatening Charleston. He commenced the advance by moving his right +wing to Beaufort, South Carolina, then to Pocotaligo by water. This +column, in moving north, threatened Charleston, and, indeed, it was not +determined at first that they would have a force visit Charleston. +South Carolina had done so much to prepare the public mind of the South +for secession, and had been so active in precipitating the decision of +the question before the South was fully prepared to meet it, that there +was, at that time, a feeling throughout the North and also largely +entertained by people of the South, that the State of South Carolina, +and Charleston, the hot-bed of secession in particular, ought to have a +heavy hand laid upon them. In fact, nothing but the decisive results +that followed, deterred the radical portion of the people from +condemning the movement, because Charleston had been left out. To pass +into the interior would, however, be to insure the evacuation of the +city, and its possession by the navy and Foster's troops. It is so +situated between two formidable rivers that a small garrison could have +held it against all odds as long as their supplies would hold out. +Sherman therefore passed it by. + +By the first of February all preparations were completed for the final +march, Columbia, South Carolina, being the first objective; +Fayetteville, North Carolina, the second; and Goldsboro, or +neighborhood, the final one, unless something further should be +determined upon. The right wing went from Pocotaligo, and the left from +about Hardeeville on the Savannah River, both columns taking a pretty +direct route for Columbia. The cavalry, however, were to threaten +Charleston on the right, and Augusta on the left. + +On the 15th of January Fort Fisher had fallen, news of which Sherman had +received before starting out on his march. We already had New Bern and +had soon Wilmington, whose fall followed that of Fort Fisher; as did +other points on the sea coast, where the National troops were now in +readiness to co-operate with Sherman's advance when he had passed +Fayetteville. + +On the 18th of January I ordered Canby, in command at New Orleans, to +move against Mobile, Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, for the purpose of +destroying roads, machine shops, etc. On the 8th of February I ordered +Sheridan, who was in the Valley of Virginia, to push forward as soon as +the weather would permit and strike the canal west of Richmond at or +about Lynchburg; and on the 20th I made the order to go to Lynchburg as +soon as the roads would permit, saying: "As soon as it is possible to +travel, I think you will have no difficulty about reaching Lynchburg +with a cavalry force alone. From there you could destroy the railroad +and canal in every direction, so as to be of no further use to the +rebellion. * * * This additional raid, with one starting from East +Tennessee under Stoneman, numbering about four or five thousand cavalry; +one from Eastport, Mississippi, ten thousand cavalry; Canby, from Mobile +Bay, with about eighteen thousand mixed troops--these three latter +pushing for Tuscaloosa, Selma and Montgomery; and Sherman with a large +army eating out the vitals of South Carolina--is all that will be wanted +to leave nothing for the rebellion to stand upon. I would advise you to +overcome great obstacles to accomplish this. Charleston was evacuated +on Tuesday last." + +On the 27th of February, more than a month after Canby had received his +orders, I again wrote to him, saying that I was extremely anxious to +hear of his being in Alabama. I notified him, also, that I had sent +Grierson to take command of his cavalry, he being a very efficient +officer. I further suggested that Forrest was probably in Mississippi, +and if he was there, he would find him an officer of great courage and +capacity whom it would be difficult to get by. I still further informed +him that Thomas had been ordered to start a cavalry force into +Mississippi on the 20th of February, or as soon as possible thereafter. +This force did not get off however. + +All these movements were designed to be in support of Sherman's march, +the object being to keep the Confederate troops in the West from leaving +there. But neither Canby nor Thomas could be got off in time. I had +some time before depleted Thomas's army to reinforce Canby, for the +reason that Thomas had failed to start an expedition which he had been +ordered to send out, and to have the troops where they might do +something. Canby seemed to be equally deliberate in all of his +movements. I ordered him to go in person; but he prepared to send a +detachment under another officer. General Granger had got down to New +Orleans, in some way or other, and I wrote Canby that he must not put +him in command of troops. In spite of this he asked the War Department +to assign Granger to the command of a corps. + +Almost in despair of having adequate service rendered to the cause in +that quarter, I said to Canby: "I am in receipt of a dispatch * * * +informing me that you have made requisitions for a construction corps +and material to build seventy miles of railroad. I have directed that +none be sent. Thomas's army has been depleted to send a force to you +that they might be where they could act in winter, and at least detain +the force the enemy had in the West. If there had been any idea of +repairing railroads, it could have been done much better from the North, +where we already had the troops. I expected your movements to be +co-operative with Sherman's last. This has now entirely failed. I +wrote to you long ago, urging you to push promptly and to live upon the +country, and destroy railroads, machine shops, etc., not to build them. +Take Mobile and hold it, and push your forces to the interior--to +Montgomery and to Selma. Destroy railroads, rolling stock, and +everything useful for carrying on war, and, when you have done this, +take such positions as can be supplied by water. By this means alone +you can occupy positions from which the enemy's roads in the interior +can be kept broken." + +Most of these expeditions got off finally, but too late to render any +service in the direction for which they were designed. + +The enemy, ready to intercept his advance, consisted of Hardee's troops +and Wheeler's cavalry, perhaps less than fifteen thousand men in all; +but frantic efforts were being made in Richmond, as I was sure would be +the case, to retard Sherman's movements. Everything possible was being +done to raise troops in the South. Lee dispatched against Sherman the +troops which had been sent to relieve Fort Fisher, which, including +those of the other defences of the harbor and its neighborhood, +amounted, after deducting the two thousand killed, wounded and captured, +to fourteen thousand men. After Thomas's victory at Nashville what +remained, of Hood's army were gathered together and forwarded as rapidly +as possible to the east to co-operate with these forces; and, finally, +General Joseph E. Johnston, one of the ablest commanders of the South +though not in favor with the administration (or at least with Mr. +Davis), was put in command of all the troops in North and South +Carolina. + +Schofield arrived at Annapolis in the latter part of January, but before +sending his troops to North Carolina I went with him down the coast to +see the situation of affairs, as I could give fuller directions after +being on the ground than I could very well have given without. We soon +returned, and the troops were sent by sea to Cape Fear River. Both New +Bern and Wilmington are connected with Raleigh by railroads which unite +at Goldsboro. Schofield was to land troops at Smithville, near the +mouth of the Cape Fear River on the west side, and move up to secure the +Wilmington and Charlotteville Railroad. This column took their pontoon +bridges with them, to enable them to cross over to the island south of +the city of Wilmington. A large body was sent by the north side to +co-operate with them. They succeeded in taking the city on the 22d of +February. I took the precaution to provide for Sherman's army, in case +he should be forced to turn in toward the sea coast before reaching +North Carolina, by forwarding supplies to every place where he was +liable to have to make such a deflection from his projected march. I +also sent railroad rolling stock, of which we had a great abundance, now +that we were not operating the roads in Virginia. The gauge of the +North Carolina railroads being the same as the Virginia railroads had +been altered too; these cars and locomotives were ready for use there +without any change. + +On the 31st of January I countermanded the orders given to Thomas to +move south to Alabama and Georgia. (I had previously reduced his force +by sending a portion of it to Terry.) I directed in lieu of this +movement, that he should send Stoneman through East Tennessee, and push +him well down toward Columbia, South Carolina, in support of Sherman. +Thomas did not get Stoneman off in time, but, on the contrary, when I +had supposed he was on his march in support of Sherman I heard of his +being in Louisville, Kentucky. I immediately changed the order, and +directed Thomas to send him toward Lynchburg. Finally, however, on the +12th of March, he did push down through the north-western end of South +Carolina, creating some consternation. I also ordered Thomas to send +the 4th corps (Stanley's) to Bull Gap and to destroy no more roads east +of that. I also directed him to concentrate supplies at Knoxville, with +a view to a probable movement of his army through that way toward +Lynchburg. + +Goldsboro is four hundred and twenty-five miles from Savannah. Sherman's +march was without much incident until he entered Columbia, on the 17th +of February. He was detained in his progress by having to repair and +corduroy the roads, and rebuild the bridges. There was constant +skirmishing and fighting between the cavalry of the two armies, but this +did not retard the advance of the infantry. Four days, also, were lost +in making complete the destruction of the most important railroads south +of Columbia; there was also some delay caused by the high water, and the +destruction of the bridges on the line of the road. A formidable river +had to be crossed near Columbia, and that in the face of a small +garrison under General Wade Hampton. There was but little delay, +however, further than that caused by high water in the stream. Hampton +left as Sherman approached, and the city was found to be on fire. + +There has since been a great deal of acrimony displayed in discussions +of the question as to who set Columbia on fire. Sherman denies it on the +part of his troops, and Hampton denies it on the part of the +Confederates. One thing is certain: as soon as our troops took +possession, they at once proceeded to extinguish the flames to the best +of their ability with the limited means at hand. In any case, the +example set by the Confederates in burning the village of Chambersburg, +Pa., a town which was not garrisoned, would seem to make a defence of +the act of firing the seat of government of the State most responsible +for the conflict then raging, not imperative. + +The Confederate troops having vacated the city, the mayor took +possession, and sallied forth to meet the commander of the National +forces for the purpose of surrendering the town, making terms for the +protection of property, etc. Sherman paid no attention at all to the +overture, but pushed forward and took the town without making any +conditions whatever with its citizens. He then, however, co-operated +with the mayor in extinguishing the flames and providing for the people +who were rendered destitute by this destruction of their homes. When he +left there he even gave the mayor five hundred head of cattle to be +distributed among the citizens, to tide them over until some arrangement +could be made for their future supplies. He remained in Columbia until +the roads, public buildings, workshops and everything that could be +useful to the enemy were destroyed. While at Columbia, Sherman learned +for the first time that what remained of Hood's army was confronting +him, under the command of General Beauregard. + +Charleston was evacuated on the 18th of February, and Foster garrisoned +the place. Wilmington was captured on the 22d. Columbia and Cheraw +farther north, were regarded as so secure from invasion that the wealthy +people of Charleston and Augusta had sent much of their valuable +property to these two points to be stored. Among the goods sent there +were valuable carpets, tons of old Madeira, silverware, and furniture. +I am afraid much of these goods fell into the hands of our troops. +There was found at Columbia a large amount of powder, some artillery, +small-arms and fixed ammunition. These, of course were among the +articles destroyed. While here, Sherman also learned of Johnston's +restoration to command. The latter was given, as already stated, all +troops in North and South Carolina. After the completion of the +destruction of public property about Columbia, Sherman proceeded on his +march and reached Cheraw without any special opposition and without +incident to relate. The railroads, of course, were thoroughly destroyed +on the way. Sherman remained a day or two at Cheraw; and, finally, on +the 6th of March crossed his troops over the Pedee and advanced straight +for Fayetteville. Hardee and Hampton were there, and barely escaped. +Sherman reached Fayetteville on the 11th of March. He had dispatched +scouts from Cheraw with letters to General Terry, at Wilmington, asking +him to send a steamer with some supplies of bread, clothing and other +articles which he enumerated. The scouts got through successfully, and +a boat was sent with the mail and such articles for which Sherman had +asked as were in store at Wilmington; unfortunately, however, those +stores did not contain clothing. + +Four days later, on the 15th, Sherman left Fayetteville for Goldsboro. +The march, now, had to be made with great caution, for he was +approaching Lee's army and nearing the country that still remained open +to the enemy. Besides, he was confronting all that he had had to +confront in his previous march up to that point, reinforced by the +garrisons along the road and by what remained of Hood's army. Frantic +appeals were made to the people to come in voluntarily and swell the +ranks of our foe. I presume, however, that Johnston did not have in all +over 35,000 or 40,000 men. The people had grown tired of the war, and +desertions from the Confederate army were much more numerous than the +voluntary accessions. + +There was some fighting at Averysboro on the 16th between Johnston's +troops and Sherman's, with some loss; and at Bentonville on the 19th and +21st of March, but Johnston withdrew from the contest before the morning +of the 22d. Sherman's loss in these last engagements in killed, +wounded, and missing, was about sixteen hundred. Sherman's troops at +last reached Goldsboro on the 23d of the month and went into bivouac; +and there his men were destined to have a long rest. Schofield was +there to meet him with the troops which had been sent to Wilmington. + +Sherman was no longer in danger. He had Johnston confronting him; but +with an army much inferior to his own, both in numbers and morale. He +had Lee to the north of him with a force largely superior; but I was +holding Lee with a still greater force, and had he made his escape and +gotten down to reinforce Johnston, Sherman, with the reinforcements he +now had from Schofield and Terry, would have been able to hold the +Confederates at bay for an indefinite period. He was near the sea-shore +with his back to it, and our navy occupied the harbors. He had a +railroad to both Wilmington and New Bern, and his flanks were thoroughly +protected by streams, which intersect that part of the country and +deepen as they approach the sea. Then, too, Sherman knew that if Lee +should escape me I would be on his heels, and he and Johnson together +would be crushed in one blow if they attempted to make a stand. With +the loss of their capital, it is doubtful whether Lee's army would have +amounted to much as an army when it reached North Carolina. Johnston's +army was demoralized by constant defeat and would hardly have made an +offensive movement, even if they could have been induced to remain on +duty. The men of both Lee's and Johnston's armies were, like their +brethren of the North, as brave as men can be; but no man is so brave +that he may not meet such defeats and disasters as to discourage him and +dampen his ardor for any cause, no matter how just he deems it. + + + +CHAPTER LXIII. + +ARRIVAL OF THE PEACE COMMISSIONERS--LINCOLN AND THE PEACE COMMISSIONERS +--AN ANECDOTE OF LINCOLN--THE WINTER BEFORE PETERSBURG--SHERIDAN DESTROYS +THE RAILROAD--GORDON CARRIES THE PICKET LINE--PARKE RECAPTURES THE LINE +--THE LINE OF BATTLE OF WHITE OAK ROAD. + +On the last of January, 1865, peace commissioners from the so-called +Confederate States presented themselves on our lines around Petersburg, +and were immediately conducted to my headquarters at City Point. They +proved to be Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, +Judge Campbell, Assistant-Secretary of War, and R. M. T. Hunt, formerly +United States Senator and then a member of the Confederate Senate. + +It was about dark when they reached my headquarters, and I at once +conducted them to the steam Mary Martin, a Hudson River boat which was +very comfortably fitted up for the use of passengers. I at once +communicated by telegraph with Washington and informed the Secretary of +War and the President of the arrival of these commissioners and that +their object was to negotiate terms of peace between he United States +and, as they termed it, the Confederate Government. I was instructed to +retain them at City Point, until the President, or some one whom he +would designate, should come to meet them. They remained several days +as guests on board the boat. I saw them quite frequently, though I have +no recollection of having had any conversation whatever with them on the +subject of their mission. It was something I had nothing to do with, +and I therefore did not wish to express any views on the subject. For +my own part I never had admitted, and never was ready to admit, that +they were the representatives of a GOVERNMENT. There had been too great +a waste of blood and treasure to concede anything of the kind. As long +as they remained there, however, our relations were pleasant and I found +them all very agreeable gentlemen. I directed the captain to furnish +them with the best the boat afforded, and to administer to their comfort +in every way possible. No guard was placed over them and no restriction +was put upon their movements; nor was there any pledge asked that they +would not abuse the privileges extended to them. They were permitted to +leave the boat when they felt like it, and did so, coming up on the bank +and visiting me at my headquarters. + +I had never met either of these gentlemen before the war, but knew them +well by reputation and through their public services, and I had been a +particular admirer of Mr. Stephens. I had always supposed that he was a +very small man, but when I saw him in the dusk of the evening I was very +much surprised to find so large a man as he seemed to be. When he got +down on to the boat I found that he was wearing a coarse gray woollen +overcoat, a manufacture that had been introduced into the South during +the rebellion. The cloth was thicker than anything of the kind I had +ever seen, even in Canada. The overcoat extended nearly to his feet, +and was so large that it gave him the appearance of being an +average-sized man. He took this off when he reached the cabin of the +boat, and I was struck with the apparent change in size, in the coat and +out of it. + +After a few days, about the 2d of February, I received a dispatch from +Washington, directing me to send the commissioners to Hampton Roads to +meet the President and a member of the cabinet. Mr. Lincoln met them +there and had an interview of short duration. It was not a great while +after they met that the President visited me at City Point. He spoke of +his having met the commissioners, and said he had told them that there +would be no use in entering into any negotiations unless they would +recognize, first: that the Union as a whole must be forever preserved, +and second: that slavery must be abolished. If they were willing to +concede these two points, then he was ready to enter into negotiations +and was almost willing to hand them a blank sheet of paper with his +signature attached for them to fill in the terms upon which they were +willing to live with us in the Union and be one people. He always +showed a generous and kindly spirit toward the Southern people, and I +never heard him abuse an enemy. Some of the cruel things said about +President Lincoln, particularly in the North, used to pierce him to the +heart; but never in my presence did he evince a revengeful disposition +and I saw a great deal of him at City Point, for he seemed glad to get +away from the cares and anxieties of the capital. + +Right here I might relate an anecdote of Mr. Lincoln. It was on the +occasion of his visit to me just after he had talked with the peace +commissioners at Hampton Roads. After a little conversation, he asked +me if I had seen that overcoat of Stephens's. I replied that I had. +"Well," said he, "did you see him take it off?" I said yes. "Well," +said he, "didn't you think it was the biggest shuck and the littlest ear +that ever you did see?" Long afterwards I told this story to the +Confederate General J. B. Gordon, at the time a member of the Senate. +He repeated it to Stephens, and, as I heard afterwards, Stephens laughed +immoderately at the simile of Mr. Lincoln. + +The rest of the winter, after the departure of the peace commissioners, +passed off quietly and uneventfully, except for two or three little +incidents. On one occasion during this period, while I was visiting +Washington City for the purpose of conferring with the administration, +the enemy's cavalry under General Wade Hampton, passing our extreme left +and then going to the south, got in east of us. Before their presence +was known, they had driven off a large number of beef cattle that were +grazing in that section. It was a fair capture, and they were +sufficiently needed by the Confederates. It was only retaliating for +what we had done, sometimes for many weeks at a time, when out of +supplies taking what the Confederate army otherwise would have gotten. +As appears in this book, on one single occasion we captured five +thousand head of cattle which were crossing the Mississippi River near +Port Hudson on their way from Texas to supply the Confederate army in +the East. + +One of the most anxious periods of my experience during the rebellion +was the last few weeks before Petersburg. I felt that the situation of +the Confederate army was such that they would try to make an escape at +the earliest practicable moment, and I was afraid, every morning, that I +would awake from my sleep to hear that Lee had gone, and that nothing +was left but a picket line. He had his railroad by the way of Danville +south, and I was afraid that he was running off his men and all stores +and ordnance except such as it would be necessary to carry with him for +his immediate defence. I knew he could move much more lightly and more +rapidly than I, and that, if he got the start, he would leave me behind +so that we would have the same army to fight again farther south and the +war might be prolonged another year. + +I was led to this fear by the fact that I could not see how it was +possible for the Confederates to hold out much longer where they were. +There is no doubt that Richmond would have been evacuated much sooner +than it was, if it had not been that it was the capital of the so-called +Confederacy, and the fact of evacuating the capital would, of course, +have had a very demoralizing effect upon the Confederate army. When it +was evacuated (as we shall see further on), the Confederacy at once +began to crumble and fade away. Then, too, desertions were taking +place, not only among those who were with General Lee in the +neighborhood of their capital, but throughout the whole Confederacy. I +remember that in a conversation with me on one occasion long prior to +this, General Butler remarked that the Confederates would find great +difficulty in getting more men for their army; possibly adding, though I +am not certain as to this, "unless they should arm the slave." + +The South, as we all knew, were conscripting every able-bodied man +between the ages of eighteen and forty-five; and now they had passed a +law for the further conscription of boys from fourteen to eighteen, +calling them the junior reserves, and men from forty-five to sixty to be +called the senior reserves. The latter were to hold the necessary +points not in immediate danger, and especially those in the rear. +General Butler, in alluding to this conscription, remarked that they +were thus "robbing both the cradle and the grave," an expression which I +afterwards used in writing a letter to Mr. Washburn. + +It was my belief that while the enemy could get no more recruits they +were losing at least a regiment a day, taking it throughout the entire +army, by desertions alone. Then by casualties of war, sickness, and +other natural causes, their losses were much heavier. It was a mere +question of arithmetic to calculate how long they could hold out while +that rate of depletion was going on. Of course long before their army +would be thus reduced to nothing the army which we had in the field +would have been able to capture theirs. Then too I knew from the great +number of desertions, that the men who had fought so bravely, so +gallantly and so long for the cause which they believed in--and as +earnestly, I take it, as our men believed in the cause for which they +were fighting--had lost hope and become despondent. Many of them were +making application to be sent North where they might get employment +until the war was over, when they could return to their Southern homes. + +For these and other reasons I was naturally very impatient for the time +to come when I could commence the spring campaign, which I thoroughly +believed would close the war. + +There were two considerations I had to observe, however, and which +detained me. One was the fact that the winter had been one of heavy +rains, and the roads were impassable for artillery and teams. It was +necessary to wait until they had dried sufficiently to enable us to move +the wagon trains and artillery necessary to the efficiency of an army +operating in the enemy's country. The other consideration was that +General Sheridan with the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac was +operating on the north side of the James River, having come down from +the Shenandoah. It was necessary that I should have his cavalry with me, +and I was therefore obliged to wait until he could join me south of the +James River. + +Let us now take account of what he was doing. + +On the 5th of March I had heard from Sheridan. He had met Early between +Staunton and Charlottesville and defeated him, capturing nearly his +entire command. Early and some of his officers escaped by finding +refuge in the neighboring houses or in the woods. + +On the 12th I heard from him again. He had turned east, to come to +White House. He could not go to Lynchburg as ordered, because the rains +had been so very heavy and the streams were so very much swollen. He +had a pontoon train with him, but it would not reach half way across +some of the streams, at their then stage of water, which he would have +to get over in going south as first ordered. + +I had supplies sent around to White House for him, and kept the depot +there open until he arrived. We had intended to abandon it because the +James River had now become our base of supplies. + +Sheridan had about ten thousand cavalry with him, divided into two +divisions commanded respectively by Custer and Devin. General Merritt +was acting as chief of cavalry. Sheridan moved very light, carrying +only four days' provisions with him, with a larger supply of coffee, +salt and other small rations, and a very little else besides ammunition. +They stopped at Charlottesville and commenced tearing up the railroad +back toward Lynchburg. He also sent a division along the James River +Canal to destroy locks, culverts etc. All mills and factories along the +lines of march of his troops were destroyed also. + +Sheridan had in this way consumed so much time that his making a march +to White House was now somewhat hazardous. He determined therefore to +fight his way along the railroad and canal till he was as near to +Richmond as it was possible to get, or until attacked. He did this, +destroying the canal as far as Goochland, and the railroad to a point as +near Richmond as he could get. On the 10th he was at Columbia. Negroes +had joined his column to the number of two thousand or more, and they +assisted considerably in the work of destroying the railroads and the +canal. His cavalry was in as fine a condition as when he started, +because he had been able to find plenty of forage. He had captured most +of Early's horses and picked up a good many others on the road. When he +reached Ashland he was assailed by the enemy in force. He resisted +their assault with part of his command, moved quickly across the South +and North Anna, going north, and reached White House safely on the 19th. + +The time for Sherman to move had to be fixed with reference to the time +he could get away from Goldsboro where he then was. Supplies had to be +got up to him which would last him through a long march, as there would +probably not be much to be obtained in the country through which he +would pass. I had to arrange, therefore, that he should start from +where he was, in the neighborhood of Goldsboro on the 18th of April, the +earliest day at which he supposed he could be ready. + +Sherman was anxious that I should wait where I was until he could come +up, and make a sure thing of it; but I had determined to move as soon as +the roads and weather would admit of my doing so. I had been tied down +somewhat in the matter of fixing any time at my pleasure for starting, +until Sheridan, who was on his way from the Shenandoah Valley to join +me, should arrive, as both his presence and that of his cavalry were +necessary to the execution of the plans which I had in mind. However, +having arrived at White House on the 19th of March, I was enabled to +make my plans. + +Prompted by my anxiety lest Lee should get away some night before I was +aware of it, and having the lead of me, push into North Carolina to join +with Johnston in attempting to crush out Sherman, I had, as early as the +1st of the month of March, given instructions to the troops around +Petersburg to keep a sharp lookout to see that such a movement should +not escape their notice, and to be ready strike at once if it was +undertaken. + +It is now known that early in the month of March Mr. Davis and General +Lee had a consultation about the situation of affairs in and about and +Petersburg, and they both agreed places were no longer tenable for them, +and that they must get away as soon as possible. They, too, were +waiting for dry roads, or a condition of the roads which would make it +possible to move. + +General Lee, in aid of his plan of escape, and to secure a wider opening +to enable them to reach the Danville Road with greater security than he +would have in the way the two armies were situated, determined upon an +assault upon the right of our lines around Petersburg. The night of the +24th of March was fixed upon for this assault, and General Gordon was +assigned to the execution of the plan. The point between Fort Stedman +and Battery No. 10, where our lines were closest together, was selected +as the point of his attack. The attack was to be made at night, and the +troops were to get possession of the higher ground in the rear where +they supposed we had intrenchments, then sweep to the right and left, +create a panic in the lines of our army, and force me to contract my +lines. Lee hoped this would detain me a few days longer and give him an +opportunity of escape. The plan was well conceived and the execution of +it very well done indeed, up to the point of carrying a portion of our +line. + +Gordon assembled his troops under the cover of night, at the point at +which they were to make their charge, and got possession of our +picket-line, entirely without the knowledge of the troops inside of our +main line of intrenchments; this reduced the distance he would have to +charge over to not much more than fifty yards. For some time before the +deserters had been coming in with great frequency, often bringing their +arms with them, and this the Confederate general knew. Taking advantage +of this knowledge he sent his pickets, with their arms, creeping through +to ours as if to desert. When they got to our lines they at once took +possession and sent our pickets to the rear as prisoners. In the main +line our men were sleeping serenely, as if in great security. This plan +was to have been executed and much damage done before daylight; but the +troops that were to reinforce Gordon had to be brought from the north +side of the James River and, by some accident on the railroad on their +way over, they were detained for a considerable time; so that it got to +be nearly daylight before they were ready to make the charge. + +The charge, however, was successful and almost without loss, the enemy +passing through our lines between Fort Stedman and Battery No. 10. Then +turning to the right and left they captured the fort and the battery, +with all the arms and troops in them. Continuing the charge, they also +carried batteries Eleven and Twelve to our left, which they turned +toward City Point. + +Meade happened to be at City Point that night, and this break in his +line cut him off from all communication with his headquarters. Parke, +however, commanding the 9th corps when this breach took place, +telegraphed the facts to Meade's headquarters, and learning that the +general was away, assumed command himself and with commendable +promptitude made all preparations to drive the enemy back. General +Tidball gathered a large number of pieces of artillery and planted them +in rear of the captured works so as to sweep the narrow space of ground +between the lines very thoroughly. Hartranft was soon out with his +division, as also was Willcox. Hartranft to the right of the breach +headed the rebels off in that direction and rapidly drove them back into +Fort Stedman. On the other side they were driven back into the +intrenchments which they had captured, and batteries eleven and twelve +were retaken by Willcox early in the morning. + +Parke then threw a line around outside of the captured fort and +batteries, and communication was once more established. The artillery +fire was kept up so continuously that it was impossible for the +Confederates to retreat, and equally impossible for reinforcements to +join them. They all, therefore, fell captives into our hands. This +effort of Lee's cost him about four thousand men, and resulted in their +killing, wounding and capturing about two thousand of ours. + +After the recapture of the batteries taken by the Confederates, our +troops made a charge and carried the enemy's intrenched picket line, +which they strengthened and held. This, in turn, gave us but a short +distance to charge over when our attack came to be made a few days +later. + +The day that Gordon was making dispositions for this attack (24th of +March) I issued my orders for the movement to commence on the 29th. +Ord, with three divisions of infantry and Mackenzie's cavalry, was to +move in advance on the night of the 27th, from the north side of the +James River and take his place on our extreme left, thirty miles away. +He left Weitzel with the rest of the Army of the James to hold Bermuda +Hundred and the north of the James River. The engineer brigade was to +be left at City Point, and Parke's corps in the lines about Petersburg. +(*42) + +Ord was at his place promptly. Humphreys and Warren were then on our +extreme left with the 2d and 5th corps. They were directed on the +arrival of Ord, and on his getting into position in their places, to +cross Hatcher's Run and extend out west toward Five Forks, the object +being to get into a position from which we could strike the South Side +Railroad and ultimately the Danville Railroad. There was considerable +fighting in taking up these new positions for the 2d and 5th corps, in +which the Army of the James had also to participate somewhat, and the +losses were quite severe. + +This was what was known as the Battle of White Oak Road. + + + +CHAPTER LXIV. + +INTERVIEW WITH SHERIDAN--GRAND MOVEMENT OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC +--SHERIDAN'S ADVANCE ON FIVE FORKS--BATTLE OF FIVE FORKS--PARKE AND +WRIGHT STORM THE ENEMY'S LINE--BATTLES BEFORE PETERSBURG. + +Sheridan reached City Point on the 26th day of March. His horses, of +course, were jaded and many of them had lost their shoes. A few days of +rest were necessary to recuperate the animals and also to have them shod +and put in condition for moving. Immediately on General Sheridan's +arrival at City Point I prepared his instructions for the move which I +had decided upon. The movement was to commence on the 29th of the +month. + +After reading the instructions I had given him, Sheridan walked out of +my tent, and I followed to have some conversation with him by himself +--not in the presence of anybody else, even of a member of my staff. In +preparing his instructions I contemplated just what took place; that is +to say, capturing Five Forks, driving the enemy from Petersburg and +Richmond and terminating the contest before separating from the enemy. +But the Nation had already become restless and discouraged at the +prolongation of the war, and many believed that it would never terminate +except by compromise. Knowing that unless my plan proved an entire +success it would be interpreted as a disastrous defeat, I provided in +these instructions that in a certain event he was to cut loose from the +Army of the Potomac and his base of supplies, and living upon the +country proceed south by the way of the Danville Railroad, or near it, +across the Roanoke, get in the rear of Johnston, who was guarding that +road, and cooperate with Sherman in destroying Johnston; then with these +combined forces to help carry out the instructions which Sherman already +had received, to act in cooperation with the armies around Petersburg +and Richmond. + +I saw that after Sheridan had read his instructions he seemed somewhat +disappointed at the idea, possibly, of having to cut loose again from +the Army of the Potomac, and place himself between the two main armies +of the enemy. I said to him: "General, this portion of your +instructions I have put in merely as a blind;" and gave him the reason +for doing so, heretofore described. I told him that, as a matter of +fact, I intended to close the war right here, with this movement, and +that he should go no farther. His face at once brightened up, and +slapping his hand on his leg he said: "I am glad to hear it, and we can +do it." + +Sheridan was not however to make his movement against Five Forks until +he got further instructions from me. + +One day, after the movement I am about to describe had commenced, and +when his cavalry was on our extreme left and far to the rear, south, +Sheridan rode up to where my headquarters were then established, at +Dabney's Mills. He met some of my staff officers outside, and was +highly jubilant over the prospects of success, giving reasons why he +believed this would prove the final and successful effort. Although my +chief-of-staff had urged very strongly that we return to our position +about City Point and in the lines around Petersburg, he asked Sheridan +to come in to see me and say to me what he had been saying to them. +Sheridan felt a little modest about giving his advice where it had not +been asked; so one of my staff came in and told me that Sheridan had +what they considered important news, and suggested that I send for him. +I did so, and was glad to see the spirit of confidence with which he was +imbued. Knowing as I did from experience, of what great value that +feeling of confidence by a commander was, I determined to make a +movement at once, although on account of the rains which had fallen +after I had started out the roads were still very heavy. Orders were +given accordingly. + +Finally the 29th of March came, and fortunately there having been a few +days free from rain, the surface of the ground was dry, giving +indications that the time had come when we could move. On that date I +moved out with all the army available after leaving sufficient force to +hold the line about Petersburg. It soon set in raining again however, +and in a very short time the roads became practically impassable for +teams, and almost so for cavalry. Sometimes a horse or mule would be +standing apparently on firm ground, when all at once one foot would +sink, and as he commenced scrambling to catch himself all his feet would +sink and he would have to be drawn by hand out of the quicksands so +common in that part of Virginia and other southern States. It became +necessary therefore to build corduroy roads every foot of the way as we +advanced, to move our artillery upon. The army had become so accustomed +to this kind of work, and were so well prepared for it, that it was done +very rapidly. The next day, March 30th, we had made sufficient progress +to the south-west to warrant me in starting Sheridan with his cavalry +over by Dinwiddie with instructions to then come up by the road leading +north-west to Five Forks, thus menacing the right of Lee's line. + +This movement was made for the purpose of extending our lines to the +west as far as practicable towards the enemy's extreme right, or Five +Forks. The column moving detached from the army still in the trenches +was, excluding the cavalry, very small. The forces in the trenches were +themselves extending to the left flank. Warren was on the extreme left +when the extension began, but Humphreys was marched around later and +thrown into line between him and Five Forks. + +My hope was that Sheridan would be able to carry Five Forks, get on the +enemy's right flank and rear, and force them to weaken their centre to +protect their right so that an assault in the centre might be +successfully made. General Wright's corps had been designated to make +this assault, which I intended to order as soon as information reached +me of Sheridan's success. He was to move under cover as close to the +enemy as he could get. + +It is natural to suppose that Lee would understand my design to be to +get up to the South Side and ultimately to the Danville Railroad, as +soon as he had heard of the movement commenced on the 29th. These roads +were so important to his very existence while he remained in Richmond +and Petersburg, and of such vital importance to him even in case of +retreat, that naturally he would make most strenuous efforts to defend +them. He did on the 30th send Pickett with five brigades to reinforce +Five Forks. He also sent around to the right of his army some two or +three other divisions, besides directing that other troops be held in +readiness on the north side of the James River to come over on call. He +came over himself to superintend in person the defence of his right +flank. + +Sheridan moved back to Dinwiddie Court-House on the night of the 30th, +and then took a road leading north-west to Five Forks. He had only his +cavalry with him. Soon encountering the rebel cavalry he met with a +very stout resistance. He gradually drove them back however until in +the neighborhood of Five Forks. Here he had to encounter other troops +besides those he had been contending with, and was forced to give way. + +In this condition of affairs he notified me of what had taken place and +stated that he was falling back toward Dinwiddie gradually and slowly, +and asked me to send Wright's corps to his assistance. I replied to him +that it was impossible to send Wright's corps because that corps was +already in line close up to the enemy, where we should want to assault +when the proper time came, and was besides a long distance from him; but +the 2d (Humphreys's) and 5th (Warren's) corps were on our extreme left +and a little to the rear of it in a position to threaten the left flank +of the enemy at Five Forks, and that I would send Warren. + +Accordingly orders were sent to Warren to move at once that night (the +31st) to Dinwiddie Court House and put himself in communication with +Sheridan as soon as possible, and report to him. He was very slow in +moving, some of his troops not starting until after 5 o'clock next +morning. When he did move it was done very deliberately, and on +arriving at Gravelly Run he found the stream swollen from the recent +rains so that he regarded it as not fordable. Sheridan of course knew +of his coming, and being impatient to get the troops up as soon as +possible, sent orders to him to hasten. He was also hastened or at +least ordered to move up rapidly by General Meade. He now felt that he +could not cross that creek without bridges, and his orders were changed +to move so as to strike the pursuing enemy in flank or get in their +rear; but he was so late in getting up that Sheridan determined to move +forward without him. However, Ayres's division of Warren's corps +reached him in time to be in the fight all day, most of the time +separated from the remainder of the 5th corps and fighting directly +under Sheridan. + +Warren reported to Sheridan about 11 o'clock on the 1st, but the whole +of his troops were not up so as to be much engaged until late in the +afternoon. Griffin's division in backing to get out of the way of a +severe cross fire of the enemy was found marching away from the +fighting. This did not continue long, however; the division was brought +back and with Ayres's division did most excellent service during the +day. Crawford's division of the same corps had backed still farther +off, and although orders were sent repeatedly to bring it up, it was +late before it finally got to where it could be of material assistance. +Once there it did very excellent service. + +Sheridan succeeded by the middle of the afternoon or a little later, in +advancing up to the point from which to make his designed assault upon +Five Forks itself. He was very impatient to make the assault and have +it all over before night, because the ground he occupied would be +untenable for him in bivouac during the night. Unless the assault was +made and was successful, he would be obliged to return to Dinwiddie +Court-House, or even further than that for the night. + +It was at this junction of affairs that Sheridan wanted to get +Crawford's division in hand, and he also wanted Warren. He sent staff +officer after staff officer in search of Warren, directing that general +to report to him, but they were unable to find him. At all events +Sheridan was unable to get that officer to him. Finally he went +himself. He issued an order relieving Warren and assigning Griffin to +the command of the 5th corps. The troops were then brought up and the +assault successfully made. + +I was so much dissatisfied with Warren's dilatory movements in the +battle of White Oak Road and in his failure to reach Sheridan in time, +that I was very much afraid that at the last moment he would fail +Sheridan. He was a man of fine intelligence, great earnestness, quick +perception, and could make his dispositions as quickly as any officer, +under difficulties where he was forced to act. But I had before +discovered a defect which was beyond his control, that was very +prejudicial to his usefulness in emergencies like the one just before +us. He could see every danger at a glance before he had encountered it. +He would not only make preparations to meet the danger which might +occur, but he would inform his commanding officer what others should do +while he was executing his move. + +I had sent a staff officer to General Sheridan to call his attention to +these defects, and to say that as much as I liked General Warren, now +was not a time when we could let our personal feelings for any one stand +in the way of success; and if his removal was necessary to success, not +to hesitate. It was upon that authorization that Sheridan removed +Warren. I was very sorry that it had been done, and regretted still +more that I had not long before taken occasion to assign him to another +field of duty. + +It was dusk when our troops under Sheridan went over the parapets of the +enemy. The two armies were mingled together there for a time in such +manner that it was almost a question which one was going to demand the +surrender of the other. Soon, however, the enemy broke and ran in every +direction; some six thousand prisoners, besides artillery and small-arms +in large quantities, falling into our hands. The flying troops were +pursued in different directions, the cavalry and 5th corps under +Sheridan pursuing the larger body which moved north-west. + +This pursuit continued until about nine o'clock at night, when Sheridan +halted his troops, and knowing the importance to him of the part of the +enemy's line which had been captured, returned, sending the 5th corps +across Hatcher's Run to just south-west of Petersburg, and facing them +toward it. Merritt, with the cavalry, stopped and bivouacked west of +Five Forks. + +This was the condition which affairs were in on the night of the 1st of +April. I then issued orders for an assault by Wright and Parke at four +o'clock on the morning of the 2d. I also ordered the 2d corps, General +Humphreys, and General Ord with the Army of the James, on the left, to +hold themselves in readiness to take any advantage that could be taken +from weakening in their front. + +I notified Mr. Lincoln at City Point of the success of the day; in fact +I had reported to him during the day and evening as I got news, because +he was so much interested in the movements taking place that I wanted to +relieve his mind as much as I could. I notified Weitzel on the north +side of the James River, directing him, also, to keep close up to the +enemy, and take advantage of the withdrawal of troops from there to +promptly enter the city of Richmond. + +I was afraid that Lee would regard the possession of Five Forks as of so +much importance that he would make a last desperate effort to retake it, +risking everything upon the cast of a single die. It was for this +reason that I had ordered the assault to take place at once, as soon as +I had received the news of the capture of Five Forks. The corps +commanders, however, reported that it was so dark that the men could not +see to move, and it would be impossible to make the assault then. But we +kept up a continuous artillery fire upon the enemy around the whole line +including that north of the James River, until it was light enough to +move, which was about a quarter to five in the morning. + +At that hour Parke's and Wright's corps moved out as directed, brushed +the abatis from their front as they advanced under a heavy fire of +musketry and artillery, and went without flinching directly on till they +mounted the parapets and threw themselves inside of the enemy's line. +Parke, who was on the right, swept down to the right and captured a very +considerable length of line in that direction, but at that point the +outer was so near the inner line which closely enveloped the city of +Petersburg that he could make no advance forward and, in fact, had a +very serious task to turn the lines which he had captured to the defence +of his own troops and to hold them; but he succeeded in this. + +Wright swung around to his left and moved to Hatcher's Run, sweeping +everything before him. The enemy had traverses in rear of his captured +line, under cover of which he made something of a stand, from one to +another, as Wright moved on; but the latter met no serious obstacle. As +you proceed to the left the outer line becomes gradually much farther +from the inner one, and along about Hatcher's Run they must be nearly +two miles apart. Both Parke and Wright captured a considerable amount of +artillery and some prisoners--Wright about three thousand of them. + +In the meantime Ord and Humphreys, in obedience to the instructions they +had received, had succeeded by daylight, or very early in the morning, +in capturing the intrenched picket-lines in their front; and before +Wright got up to that point, Ord had also succeeded in getting inside of +the enemy's intrenchments. The second corps soon followed; and the +outer works of Petersburg were in the hands of the National troops, +never to be wrenched from them again. When Wright reached Hatcher's +Run, he sent a regiment to destroy the South Side Railroad just outside +of the city. + +My headquarters were still at Dabney's saw-mills. As soon as I received +the news of Wright's success, I sent dispatches announcing the fact to +all points around the line, including the troops at Bermuda Hundred and +those on the north side of the James, and to the President at City +Point. Further dispatches kept coming in, and as they did I sent the +additional news to these points. Finding at length that they were all +in, I mounted my horse to join the troops who were inside the works. +When I arrived there I rode my horse over the parapet just as Wright's +three thousand prisoners were coming out. I was soon joined inside by +General Meade and his staff. + +Lee made frantic efforts to recover at least part of the lost ground. +Parke on our right was repeatedly assaulted, but repulsed every effort. +Before noon Longstreet was ordered up from the north side of the James +River thus bringing the bulk of Lee's army around to the support of his +extreme right. As soon as I learned this I notified Weitzel and +directed him to keep up close to the enemy and to have Hartsuff, +commanding the Bermuda Hundred front, to do the same thing, and if they +found any break to go in; Hartsuff especially should do so, for this +would separate Richmond and Petersburg. + +Sheridan, after he had returned to Five Forks, swept down to Petersburg, +coming in on our left. This gave us a continuous line from the +Appomattox River below the city to the same river above. At eleven +o'clock, not having heard from Sheridan, I reinforced Parke with two +brigades from City Point. With this additional force he completed his +captured works for better defence, and built back from his right, so as +to protect his flank. He also carried in and made an abatis between +himself and the enemy. Lee brought additional troops and artillery +against Parke even after this was done, and made several assaults with +very heavy losses. + +The enemy had in addition to their intrenched line close up to +Petersburg, two enclosed works outside of it, Fort Gregg and Fort +Whitworth. We thought it had now become necessary to carry them by +assault. About one o'clock in the day, Fort Gregg was assaulted by +Foster's division of the 24th corps (Gibbon's), supported by two +brigades from Ord's command. The battle was desperate and the National +troops were repulsed several times; but it was finally carried, and +immediately the troops in Fort Whitworth evacuated the place. The guns +of Fort Gregg were turned upon the retreating enemy, and the commanding +officer with some sixty of the men of Fort Whitworth surrendered. + +I had ordered Miles in the morning to report to Sheridan. In moving to +execute this order he came upon the enemy at the intersection of the +White Oak Road and the Claiborne Road. The enemy fell back to +Sutherland Station on the South Side Road and were followed by Miles. +This position, naturally a strong and defensible one, was also strongly +intrenched. Sheridan now came up and Miles asked permission from him to +make the assault, which Sheridan gave. By this time Humphreys had got +through the outer works in his front, and came up also and assumed +command over Miles, who commanded a division in his corps. I had sent +an order to Humphreys to turn to his right and move towards Petersburg. +This order he now got, and started off, thus leaving Miles alone. The +latter made two assaults, both of which failed, and he had to fall back +a few hundred yards. + +Hearing that Miles had been left in this position, I directed Humphreys +to send a division back to his relief. He went himself. + +Sheridan before starting to sweep down to Petersburg had sent Merritt +with his cavalry to the west to attack some Confederate cavalry that had +assembled there. Merritt drove them north to the Appomattox River. +Sheridan then took the enemy at Sutherland Station on the reverse side +from where Miles was, and the two together captured the place, with a +large number of prisoners and some pieces of artillery, and put the +remainder, portions of three Confederate corps, to flight. Sheridan +followed, and drove them until night, when further pursuit was stopped. +Miles bivouacked for the night on the ground which he with Sheridan had +carried so handsomely by assault. I cannot explain the situation here +better than by giving my dispatch to City Point that evening: + + +BOYDTON ROAD, NEAR PETERSBURG, April 2, 1865.--4.40 P.M. + +COLONEL T. S. BOWERS, City Point. + +We are now up and have a continuous line of troops, and in a few hours +will be intrenched from the Appomattox below Petersburg to the river +above. Heth's and Wilcox's divisions, such part of them as were not +captured, were cut off from town, either designedly on their part or +because they could not help it. Sheridan with the cavalry and 5th corps +is above them. Miles's division, 2d corps, was sent from the White Oak +Road to Sutherland Station on the South Side Railroad, where he met +them, and at last accounts was engaged with them. Not knowing whether +Sheridan would get up in time, General Humphreys was sent with another +division from here. The whole captures since the army started out +gunning will amount to not less than twelve thousand men, and probably +fifty pieces of artillery. I do not know the number of men and guns +accurately however. * * * I think the President might come out and pay +us a visit tomorrow. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +During the night of April 2d our line was intrenched from the river +above to the river below. I ordered a bombardment to be commenced the +next morning at five A.M., to be followed by an assault at six o'clock; +but the enemy evacuated Petersburg early in the morning. + + + +CHAPTER LXV. + +THE CAPTURE OF PETERSBURG--MEETING PRESIDENT LINCOLN IN PETERSBURG--THE +CAPTURE OF RICHMOND--PURSUING THE ENEMY--VISIT TO SHERIDAN AND MEADE. + +General Meade and I entered Petersburg on the morning of the 3d and took +a position under cover of a house which protected us from the enemy's +musketry which was flying thick and fast there. As we would +occasionally look around the corner we could see the streets and the +Appomattox bottom, presumably near the bridge, packed with the +Confederate army. I did not have artillery brought up, because I was +sure Lee was trying to make his escape, and I wanted to push immediately +in pursuit. At all events I had not the heart to turn the artillery +upon such a mass of defeated and fleeing men, and I hoped to capture +them soon. + +Soon after the enemy had entirely evacuated Petersburg, a man came in +who represented himself to be an engineer of the Army of Northern +Virginia. He said that Lee had for some time been at work preparing a +strong enclosed intrenchment, into which he would throw himself when +forced out of Petersburg, and fight his final battle there; that he was +actually at that time drawing his troops from Richmond, and falling back +into this prepared work. This statement was made to General Meade and +myself when we were together. I had already given orders for the +movement up the south side of the Appomattox for the purpose of heading +off Lee; but Meade was so much impressed by this man's story that he +thought we ought to cross the Appomattox there at once and move against +Lee in his new position. I knew that Lee was no fool, as he would have +been to have put himself and his army between two formidable streams +like the James and Appomattox rivers, and between two such armies as +those of the Potomac and the James. Then these streams coming together +as they did to the east of him, it would be only necessary to close up +in the west to have him thoroughly cut off from all supplies or +possibility of reinforcement. It would only have been a question of +days, and not many of them, if he had taken the position assigned to him +by the so-called engineer, when he would have been obliged to surrender +his army. Such is one of the ruses resorted to in war to deceive your +antagonist. My judgment was that Lee would necessarily have to evacuate +Richmond, and that the only course for him to pursue would be to follow +the Danville Road. Accordingly my object was to secure a point on that +road south of Lee, and I told Meade this. He suggested that if Lee was +going that way we would follow him. My reply was that we did not want +to follow him; we wanted to get ahead of him and cut him off, and if he +would only stay in the position he (Meade) believed him to be in at that +time, I wanted nothing better; that when we got in possession of the +Danville Railroad, at its crossing of the Appomattox River, if we still +found him between the two rivers, all we had to do was to move eastward +and close him up. That we would then have all the advantage we could +possibly have by moving directly against him from Petersburg, even if he +remained in the position assigned him by the engineer officer. + +I had held most of the command aloof from the intrenchments, so as to +start them out on the Danville Road early in the morning, supposing that +Lee would be gone during the night. During the night I strengthened +Sheridan by sending him Humphreys's corps. + +Lee, as we now know, had advised the authorities at Richmond, during the +day, of the condition of affairs, and told them it would be impossible +for him to hold out longer than night, if he could hold out that long. +Davis was at church when he received Lee's dispatch. The congregation +was dismissed with the notice that there would be no evening service. +The rebel government left Richmond about two o'clock in the afternoon of +the 2d. + +At night Lee ordered his troops to assemble at Amelia Court House, his +object being to get away, join Johnston if possible, and to try to crush +Sherman before I could get there. As soon as I was sure of this I +notified Sheridan and directed him to move out on the Danville Railroad +to the south side of the Appomattox River as speedily as possible. He +replied that he already had some of his command nine miles out. I then +ordered the rest of the Army of the Potomac under Meade to follow the +same road in the morning. Parke's corps followed by the same road, and +the Army of the James was directed to follow the road which ran +alongside of the South Side Railroad to Burke's Station, and to repair +the railroad and telegraph as they proceeded. That road was a 5 feet +gauge, while our rolling stock was all of the 4 feet 8 1/2 inches gauge; +consequently the rail on one side of the track had to be taken up +throughout the whole length and relaid so as to conform to the gauge of +our cars and locomotives. + +Mr. Lincoln was at City Point at the time, and had been for some days. +I would have let him know what I contemplated doing, only while I felt a +strong conviction that the move was going to be successful, yet it might +not prove so; and then I would have only added another to the many +disappointments he had been suffering for the past three years. But +when we started out he saw that we were moving for a purpose, and +bidding us Godspeed, remained there to hear the result. + +The next morning after the capture of Petersburg, I telegraphed Mr. +Lincoln asking him to ride out there and see me, while I would await his +arrival. I had started all the troops out early in the morning, so that +after the National army left Petersburg there was not a soul to be seen, +not even an animal in the streets. There was absolutely no one there, +except my staff officers and, possibly, a small escort of cavalry. We +had selected the piazza of a deserted house, and occupied it until the +President arrived. + +About the first thing that Mr. Lincoln said to me, after warm +congratulations for the victory, and thanks both to myself and to the +army which had accomplished it, was: "Do you know, general, that I have +had a sort of a sneaking idea for some days that you intended to do +something like this." Our movements having been successful up to this +point, I no longer had any object in concealing from the President all +my movements, and the objects I had in view. He remained for some days +near City Point, and I communicated with him frequently and fully by +telegraph. + +Mr. Lincoln knew that it had been arranged for Sherman to join me at a +fixed time, to co-operate in the destruction of Lee's army. I told him +that I had been very anxious to have the Eastern armies vanquish their +old enemy who had so long resisted all their repeated and gallant +attempts to subdue them or drive them from their capital. The Western +armies had been in the main successful until they had conquered all the +territory from the Mississippi River to the State of North Carolina, and +were now almost ready to knock at the back door of Richmond, asking +admittance. I said to him that if the Western armies should be even +upon the field, operating against Richmond and Lee, the credit would be +given to them for the capture, by politicians and non-combatants from +the section of country which those troops hailed from. It might lead to +disagreeable bickerings between members of Congress of the East and +those of the West in some of their debates. Western members might be +throwing it up to the members of the East that in the suppression of the +rebellion they were not able to capture an army, or to accomplish much +in the way of contributing toward that end, but had to wait until the +Western armies had conquered all the territory south and west of them, +and then come on to help them capture the only army they had been +engaged with. + +Mr. Lincoln said he saw that now, but had never thought of it before, +because his anxiety was so great that he did not care where the aid came +from so the work was done. + +The Army of the Potomac has every reason to be proud of its four years' +record in the suppression of the rebellion. The army it had to fight +was the protection to the capital of a people which was attempting to +found a nation upon the territory of the United States. Its loss would +be the loss of the cause. Every energy, therefore, was put forth by the +Confederacy to protect and maintain their capital. Everything else +would go if it went. Lee's army had to be strengthened to enable it to +maintain its position, no matter what territory was wrested from the +South in another quarter. + +I never expected any such bickering as I have indicated, between the +soldiers of the two sections; and, fortunately, there has been none +between the politicians. Possibly I am the only one who thought of the +liability of such a state of things in advance. + +When our conversation was at an end Mr. Lincoln mounted his horse and +started on his return to City Point, while I and my staff started to +join the army, now a good many miles in advance. Up to this time I had +not received the report of the capture of Richmond. + +Soon after I left President Lincoln I received a dispatch from General +Weitzel which notified me that he had taken possession of Richmond at +about 8.15 o'clock in the morning of that day, the 3d, and that he had +found the city on fire in two places. The city was in the most utter +confusion. The authorities had taken the precaution to empty all the +liquor into the gutter, and to throw out the provisions which the +Confederate government had left, for the people to gather up. The city +had been deserted by the authorities, civil and military, without any +notice whatever that they were about to leave. In fact, up to the very +hour of the evacuation the people had been led to believe that Lee had +gained an important victory somewhere around Petersburg. + +Weitzel's command found evidence of great demoralization in Lee's army, +there being still a great many men and even officers in the town. The +city was on fire. Our troops were directed to extinguish the flames, +which they finally succeeded in doing. The fire had been started by some +one connected with the retreating army. All authorities deny that it +was authorized, and I presume it was the work of excited men who were +leaving what they regarded as their capital and may have felt that it +was better to destroy it than have it fall into the hands of their +enemy. Be that as it may, the National troops found the city in flames, +and used every effort to extinguish them. + +The troops that had formed Lee's right, a great many of them, were cut +off from getting back into Petersburg, and were pursued by our cavalry +so hotly and closely that they threw away caissons, ammunition, +clothing, and almost everything to lighten their loads, and pushed along +up the Appomattox River until finally they took water and crossed over. + +I left Mr. Lincoln and started, as I have already said, to join the +command, which halted at Sutherland Station, about nine miles out. We +had still time to march as much farther, and time was an object; but the +roads were bad and the trains belonging to the advance corps had blocked +up the road so that it was impossible to get on. Then, again, our +cavalry had struck some of the enemy and were pursuing them; and the +orders were that the roads should be given up to the cavalry whenever +they appeared. This caused further delay. + +General Wright, who was in command of one of the corps which were left +back, thought to gain time by letting his men go into bivouac and trying +to get up some rations for them, and clearing out the road, so that when +they did start they would be uninterrupted. Humphreys, who was far +ahead, was also out of rations. They did not succeed in getting them up +through the night; but the Army of the Potomac, officers and men, were +so elated by the reflection that at last they were following up a +victory to its end, that they preferred marching without rations to +running a possible risk of letting the enemy elude them. So the march +was resumed at three o'clock in the morning. + +Merritt's cavalry had struck the enemy at Deep Creek, and driven them +north to the Appomattox, where, I presume, most of them were forced to +cross. + +On the morning of the 4th I learned that Lee had ordered rations up from +Danville for his famishing army, and that they were to meet him at +Farmville. This showed that Lee had already abandoned the idea of +following the railroad down to Danville, but had determined to go +farther west, by the way of Farmville. I notified Sheridan of this and +directed him to get possession of the road before the supplies could +reach Lee. He responded that he had already sent Crook's division to +get upon the road between Burkesville and Jetersville, then to face +north and march along the road upon the latter place; and he thought +Crook must be there now. The bulk of the army moved directly for +Jetersville by two roads. + +After I had received the dispatch from Sheridan saying that Crook was on +the Danville Road, I immediately ordered Meade to make a forced march +with the Army of the Potomac, and to send Parke's corps across from the +road they were on to the South Side Railroad, to fall in the rear of the +Army of the James and to protect the railroad which that army was +repairing as it went along. + +Our troops took possession of Jetersville and in the telegraph office, +they found a dispatch from Lee, ordering two hundred thousand rations +from Danville. The dispatch had not been sent, but Sheridan sent a +special messenger with it to Burkesville and had it forwarded from +there. In the meantime, however, dispatches from other sources had +reached Danville, and they knew there that our army was on the line of +the road; so that they sent no further supplies from that quarter. + +At this time Merritt and Mackenzie, with the cavalry, were off between +the road which the Army of the Potomac was marching on and the +Appomattox River, and were attacking the enemy in flank. They picked up +a great many prisoners and forced the abandonment of some property. + +Lee intrenched himself at Amelia Court House, and also his advance north +of Jetersville, and sent his troops out to collect forage. The country +was very poor and afforded but very little. His foragers scattered a +great deal; many of them were picked up by our men, and many others +never returned to the Army of Northern Virginia. + +Griffin's corps was intrenched across the railroad south of Jetersville, +and Sheridan notified me of the situation. I again ordered Meade up +with all dispatch, Sheridan having but the one corps of infantry with a +little cavalry confronting Lee's entire army. Meade, always prompt in +obeying orders, now pushed forward with great energy, although he was +himself sick and hardly able to be out of bed. Humphreys moved at two, +and Wright at three o'clock in the morning, without rations, as I have +said, the wagons being far in the rear. + +I stayed that night at Wilson's Station on the South Side Railroad. On +the morning of the 5th I sent word to Sheridan of the progress Meade was +making, and suggested that he might now attack Lee. We had now no other +objective than the Confederate armies, and I was anxious to close the +thing up at once. + +On the 5th I marched again with Ord's command until within about ten +miles of Burkesville, where I stopped to let his army pass. I then +received from Sheridan the following dispatch: + +"The whole of Lee's army is at or near Amelia Court House, and on this +side of it. General Davies, whom I sent out to Painesville on their +right flank, has just captured six pieces of artillery and some wagons. +We can capture the Army of Northern Virginia if force enough can be +thrown to this point, and then advance upon it. My cavalry was at +Burkesville yesterday, and six miles beyond, on the Danville Road, last +night. General Lee is at Amelia Court House in person. They are out of +rations, or nearly so. They were advancing up the railroad towards +Burkesville yesterday, when we intercepted them at this point." + +It now became a life and death struggle with Lee to get south to his +provisions. + +Sheridan, thinking the enemy might turn off immediately towards +Farmville, moved Davies's brigade of cavalry out to watch him. Davies +found the movement had already commenced. He attacked and drove away +their cavalry which was escorting wagons to the west, capturing and +burning 180 wagons. He also captured five pieces of artillery. The +Confederate infantry then moved against him and probably would have +handled him very roughly, but Sheridan had sent two more brigades of +cavalry to follow Davies, and they came to his relief in time. A sharp +engagement took place between these three brigades of cavalry and the +enemy's infantry, but the latter was repulsed. + +Meade himself reached Jetersville about two o'clock in the afternoon, +but in advance of all his troops. The head of Humphreys's corps +followed in about an hour afterwards. Sheridan stationed the troops as +they came up, at Meade's request, the latter still being very sick. He +extended two divisions of this corps off to the west of the road to the +left of Griffin's corps, and one division to the right. The cavalry by +this time had also come up, and they were put still farther off to the +left, Sheridan feeling certain that there lay the route by which the +enemy intended to escape. He wanted to attack, feeling that if time was +given, the enemy would get away; but Meade prevented this, preferring to +wait till his troops were all up. + +At this juncture Sheridan sent me a letter which had been handed to him +by a colored man, with a note from himself saying that he wished I was +there myself. The letter was dated Amelia Court House, April 5th, and +signed by Colonel Taylor. It was to his mother, and showed the +demoralization of the Confederate army. Sheridan's note also gave me the +information as here related of the movements of that day. I received a +second message from Sheridan on the 5th, in which he urged more +emphatically the importance of my presence. This was brought to me by a +scout in gray uniform. It was written on tissue paper, and wrapped up +in tin-foil such as chewing tobacco is folded in. This was a precaution +taken so that if the scout should be captured he could take this +tin-foil out of his pocket and putting it into his mouth, chew it. It +would cause no surprise at all to see a Confederate soldier chewing +tobacco. It was nearly night when this letter was received. I gave Ord +directions to continue his march to Burkesville and there intrench +himself for the night, and in the morning to move west to cut off all +the roads between there and Farmville. + +I then started with a few of my staff and a very small escort of +cavalry, going directly through the woods, to join Meade's army. The +distance was about sixteen miles; but the night being dark our progress +was slow through the woods in the absence of direct roads. However, we +got to the outposts about ten o'clock in the evening, and after some +little parley convinced the sentinels of our identity and were conducted +in to where Sheridan was bivouacked. We talked over the situation for +some little time, Sheridan explaining to me what he thought Lee was +trying to do, and that Meade's orders, if carried out, moving to the +right flank, would give him the coveted opportunity of escaping us and +putting us in rear of him. + +We then together visited Meade, reaching his headquarters about +midnight. I explained to Meade that we did not want to follow the +enemy; we wanted to get ahead of him, and that his orders would allow +the enemy to escape, and besides that, I had no doubt that Lee was +moving right then. Meade changed his orders at once. They were now +given for an advance on Amelia Court House, at an early hour in the +morning, as the army then lay; that is, the infantry being across the +railroad, most of it to the west of the road, with the cavalry swung out +still farther to the left. + + + +CHAPTER LXVI. + +BATTLE OF SAILOR'S CREEK--ENGAGEMENT AT FARMVILLE--CORRESPONDENCE WITH +GENERAL LEE--SHERIDAN INTERCEPTS THE ENEMY. + +The Appomattox, going westward, takes a long sweep to the south-west +from the neighborhood of the Richmond and Danville Railroad bridge, and +then trends north-westerly. Sailor's Creek, an insignificant stream, +running northward, empties into the Appomattox between the High Bridge +and Jetersville. Near the High Bridge the stage road from Petersburg to +Lynchburg crosses the Appomattox River, also on a bridge. The railroad +runs on the north side of the river to Farmville, a few miles west, and +from there, recrossing, continues on the south side of it. The roads +coming up from the south-east to Farmville cross the Appomattox River +there on a bridge and run on the north side, leaving the Lynchburg and +Petersburg Railroad well to the left. + +Lee, in pushing out from Amelia Court House, availed himself of all the +roads between the Danville Road and Appomattox River to move upon, and +never permitted the head of his columns to stop because of any fighting +that might be going on in his rear. In this way he came very near +succeeding in getting to his provision trains and eluding us with at +least part of his army. + +As expected, Lee's troops had moved during the night before, and our +army in moving upon Amelia Court House soon encountered them. There was +a good deal of fighting before Sailor's Creek was reached. Our cavalry +charged in upon a body of theirs which was escorting a wagon train in +order to get it past our left. A severe engagement ensued, in which we +captured many prisoners, and many men also were killed and wounded. +There was as much gallantry displayed by some of the Confederates in +these little engagements as was displayed at any time during the war, +notwithstanding the sad defeats of the past week. + +The armies finally met on Sailor's Creek, when a heavy engagement took +place, in which infantry, artillery and cavalry were all brought into +action. Our men on the right, as they were brought in against the +enemy, came in on higher ground, and upon his flank, giving us every +advantage to be derived from the lay of the country. Our firing was +also very much more rapid, because the enemy commenced his retreat +westward and in firing as he retreated had to turn around every time he +fired. The enemy's loss was very heavy, as well in killed and wounded +as in captures. Some six general officers fell into our hands in this +engagement, and seven thousand men were made prisoners. This engagement +was commenced in the middle of the afternoon of the 6th, and the retreat +and pursuit were continued until nightfall, when the armies bivouacked +upon the ground where the night had overtaken them. + +When the move towards Amelia Court House had commenced that morning, I +ordered Wright's corps, which was on the extreme right, to be moved to +the left past the whole army, to take the place of Griffin's, and +ordered the latter at the same time to move by and place itself on the +right. The object of this movement was to get the 6th corps, Wright's, +next to the cavalry, with which they had formerly served so harmoniously +and so efficiently in the valley of Virginia. + +The 6th corps now remained with the cavalry and under Sheridan's direct +command until after the surrender. + +Ord had been directed to take possession of all the roads southward +between Burkesville and the High Bridge. On the morning of the 6th he +sent Colonel Washburn with two infantry regiments with instructions to +destroy High Bridge and to return rapidly to Burkesville Station; and he +prepared himself to resist the enemy there. Soon after Washburn had +started Ord became a little alarmed as to his safety and sent Colonel +Read, of his staff, with about eighty cavalrymen, to overtake him and +bring him back. Very shortly after this he heard that the head of Lee's +column had got up to the road between him and where Washburn now was, +and attempted to send reinforcements, but the reinforcements could not +get through. Read, however, had got through ahead of the enemy. He +rode on to Farmville and was on his way back again when he found his +return cut off, and Washburn confronting apparently the advance of Lee's +army. Read drew his men up into line of battle, his force now +consisting of less than six hundred men, infantry and cavalry, and rode +along their front, making a speech to his men to inspire them with the +same enthusiasm that he himself felt. He then gave the order to charge. +This little band made several charges, of course unsuccessful ones, but +inflicted a loss upon the enemy more than equal to their own entire +number. Colonel Read fell mortally wounded, and then Washburn; and at +the close of the conflict nearly every officer of the command and most +of the rank and file had been either killed or wounded. The remainder +then surrendered. The Confederates took this to be only the advance of +a larger column which had headed them off, and so stopped to intrench; +so that this gallant band of six hundred had checked the progress of a +strong detachment of the Confederate army. + +This stoppage of Lee's column no doubt saved to us the trains following. +Lee himself pushed on and crossed the wagon road bridge near the High +Bridge, and attempted to destroy it. He did set fire to it, but the +flames had made but little headway when Humphreys came up with his corps +and drove away the rear-guard which had been left to protect it while it +was being burned up. Humphreys forced his way across with some loss, +and followed Lee to the intersection of the road crossing at Farmville +with the one from Petersburg. Here Lee held a position which was very +strong, naturally, besides being intrenched. Humphreys was alone, +confronting him all through the day, and in a very hazardous position. +He put on a bold face, however, and assaulted with some loss, but was +not assaulted in return. + +Our cavalry had gone farther south by the way of Prince Edward's Court +House, along with the 5th corps (Griffin's), Ord falling in between +Griffin and the Appomattox. Crook's division of cavalry and Wright's +corps pushed on west of Farmville. When the cavalry reached Farmville +they found that some of the Confederates were in ahead of them, and had +already got their trains of provisions back to that point; but our +troops were in time to prevent them from securing anything to eat, +although they succeeded in again running the trains off, so that we did +not get them for some time. These troops retreated to the north side of +the Appomattox to join Lee, and succeeded in destroying the bridge after +them. Considerable fighting ensued there between Wright's corps and a +portion of our cavalry and the Confederates, but finally the cavalry +forded the stream and drove them away. Wright built a foot-bridge for +his men to march over on and then marched out to the junction of the +roads to relieve Humphreys, arriving there that night. I had stopped +the night before at Burkesville Junction. Our troops were then pretty +much all out of the place, but we had a field hospital there, and Ord's +command was extended from that point towards Farmville. + +Here I met Dr. Smith, a Virginian and an officer of the regular army, +who told me that in a conversation with General Ewell, one of the +prisoners and a relative of his, Ewell had said that when we had got +across the James River he knew their cause was lost, and it was the duty +of their authorities to make the best terms they could while they still +had a right to claim concessions. The authorities thought differently, +however. Now the cause was lost and they had no right to claim +anything. He said further, that for every man that was killed after +this in the war somebody is responsible, and it would be but very little +better than murder. He was not sure that Lee would consent to surrender +his army without being able to consult with the President, but he hoped +he would. + +I rode in to Farmville on the 7th, arriving there early in the day. +Sheridan and Ord were pushing through, away to the south. Meade was +back towards the High Bridge, and Humphreys confronting Lee as before +stated. After having gone into bivouac at Prince Edward's Court House, +Sheridan learned that seven trains of provisions and forage were at +Appomattox, and determined to start at once and capture them; and a +forced march was necessary in order to get there before Lee's army could +secure them. He wrote me a note telling me this. This fact, together +with the incident related the night before by Dr. Smith, gave me the +idea of opening correspondence with General Lee on the subject of the +surrender of his army. I therefore wrote to him on this day, as +follows: + + +HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE U. S., 5 P.M., April 7, 1865. + +GENERAL R. E. LEE Commanding C. S. A. + +The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of +further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this +struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from +myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of +you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known +as the Army of Northern Virginia. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +Lee replied on the evening of the same day as follows: + + +April 7, 1865. + +GENERAL: I have received your note of this day. Though not +entertaining the opinion you express on the hopelessness of further +resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia, I reciprocate +your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, and therefore before +considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on condition +of its surrender. + +R. E. LEE, General. + +LIEUT.-GENERAL U. S. GRANT, Commanding Armies of the U. S. + + +This was not satisfactory, but I regarded it as deserving another letter +and wrote him as follows: + + +April 8, 1865. + +GENERAL R. E. LEE, Commanding C. S. A. + +Your note of last evening in reply to mine of same date, asking the +condition on which I will accept the surrender of the Army of Northern +Virginia is just received. In reply I would say that, peace being my +great desire, there is but one condition I would insist upon, namely: +that the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified for taking +up arms again against the Government of the United States until properly +exchanged. I will meet you, or will designate officers to meet any +officers you may name for the same purpose, at any point agreeable to +you, for the purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which the +surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia will be received. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +Lee's army was rapidly crumbling. Many of his soldiers had enlisted +from that part of the State where they now were, and were continually +dropping out of the ranks and going to their homes. I know that I +occupied a hotel almost destitute of furniture at Farmville, which had +probably been used as a Confederate hospital. The next morning when I +came out I found a Confederate colonel there, who reported to me and +said that he was the proprietor of that house, and that he was a colonel +of a regiment that had been raised in that neighborhood. He said that +when he came along past home, he found that he was the only man of the +regiment remaining with Lee's army, so he just dropped out, and now +wanted to surrender himself. I told him to stay there and he would not +be molested. That was one regiment which had been eliminated from Lee's +force by this crumbling process. + +Although Sheridan had been marching all day, his troops moved with +alacrity and without any straggling. They began to see the end of what +they had been fighting four years for. Nothing seemed to fatigue them. +They were ready to move without rations and travel without rest until +the end. Straggling had entirely ceased, and every man was now a rival +for the front. The infantry marched about as rapidly as the cavalry +could. + +Sheridan sent Custer with his division to move south of Appomattox +Station, which is about five miles south-west of the Court House, to get +west of the trains and destroy the roads to the rear. They got there +the night of the 8th, and succeeded partially; but some of the train men +had just discovered the movement of our troops and succeeded in running +off three of the trains. The other four were held by Custer. + +The head of Lee's column came marching up there on the morning of the +9th, not dreaming, I suppose, that there were any Union soldiers near. +The Confederates were surprised to find our cavalry had possession of +the trains. However, they were desperate and at once assaulted, hoping +to recover them. In the melee that ensued they succeeded in burning one +of the trains, but not in getting anything from it. Custer then ordered +the other trains run back on the road towards Farmville, and the fight +continued. + +So far, only our cavalry and the advance of Lee's army were engaged. +Soon, however, Lee's men were brought up from the rear, no doubt +expecting they had nothing to meet but our cavalry. But our infantry +had pushed forward so rapidly that by the time the enemy got up they +found Griffin's corps and the Army of the James confronting them. A +sharp engagement ensued, but Lee quickly set up a white flag. + + + +CHAPTER LXVII. + +NEGOTIATIONS AT APPOMATTOX--INTERVIEW WITH LEE AT MCLEAN'S HOUSE--THE +TERMS OF SURRENDER--LEE'S SURRENDER--INTERVIEW WITH LEE AFTER THE +SURRENDER. + +On the 8th I had followed the Army of the Potomac in rear of Lee. I was +suffering very severely with a sick headache, and stopped at a farmhouse +on the road some distance in rear of the main body of the army. I spent +the night in bathing my feet in hot water and mustard, and putting +mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of my neck, hoping to be +cured by morning. During the night I received Lee's answer to my letter +of the 8th, inviting an interview between the lines on the following +morning. (*43) But it was for a different purpose from that of +surrendering his army, and I answered him as follows: + + +HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE U. S., April 9, 1865. + +GENERAL R. E. LEE, Commanding C. S. A. + +Your note of yesterday is received. As I have no authority to treat on +the subject of peace, the meeting proposed for ten A.M. to-day could +lead to no good. I will state, however, General, that I am equally +anxious for peace with yourself, and the whole North entertains the same +feeling. The terms upon which peace can be had are well understood. By +the South laying down their arms they will hasten that most desirable +event, save thousands of human lives and hundreds of millions of +property not yet destroyed. Sincerely hoping that all our difficulties +may be settled without the loss of another life, I subscribe myself, +etc., + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +I proceeded at an early hour in the morning, still suffering with the +headache, to get to the head of the column. I was not more than two or +three miles from Appomattox Court House at the time, but to go direct I +would have to pass through Lee's army, or a portion of it. I had +therefore to move south in order to get upon a road coming up from +another direction. + +When the white flag was put out by Lee, as already described, I was in +this way moving towards Appomattox Court House, and consequently could +not be communicated with immediately, and be informed of what Lee had +done. Lee, therefore, sent a flag to the rear to advise Meade and one +to the front to Sheridan, saying that he had sent a message to me for +the purpose of having a meeting to consult about the surrender of his +army, and asked for a suspension of hostilities until I could be +communicated with. As they had heard nothing of this until the fighting +had got to be severe and all going against Lee, both of these commanders +hesitated very considerably about suspending hostilities at all. They +were afraid it was not in good faith, and we had the Army of Northern +Virginia where it could not escape except by some deception. They, +however, finally consented to a suspension of hostilities for two hours +to give an opportunity of communicating with me in that time, if +possible. It was found that, from the route I had taken, they would +probably not be able to communicate with me and get an answer back +within the time fixed unless the messenger should pass through the rebel +lines. + +Lee, therefore, sent an escort with the officer bearing this message +through his lines to me. + + +April 9, 1865. + +GENERAL: I received your note of this morning on the picket-line +whither I had come to meet you and ascertain definitely what terms were +embraced in your proposal of yesterday with reference to the surrender +of this army. I now request an interview in accordance with the offer +contained in your letter of yesterday for that purpose. + +R. E. LEE, General. + +LIEUTENANT-GENERAL U. S. GRANT Commanding U. S. Armies. + + +When the officer reached me I was still suffering with the sick +headache, but the instant I saw the contents of the note I was cured. I +wrote the following note in reply and hastened on: + + +April 9, 1865. + +GENERAL R. E. LEE, Commanding C. S. Armies. + +Your note of this date is but this moment (11.50 A.M.) received, in +consequence of my having passed from the Richmond and Lynchburg road to +the Farmville and Lynchburg road. I am at this writing about four miles +west of Walker's Church and will push forward to the front for the +purpose of meeting you. Notice sent to me on this road where you wish +the interview to take place will meet me. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + + +I was conducted at once to where Sheridan was located with his troops +drawn up in line of battle facing the Confederate army near by. They +were very much excited, and expressed their view that this was all a +ruse employed to enable the Confederates to get away. They said they +believed that Johnston was marching up from North Carolina now, and Lee +was moving to join him; and they would whip the rebels where they now +were in five minutes if I would only let them go in. But I had no doubt +about the good faith of Lee, and pretty soon was conducted to where he +was. I found him at the house of a Mr. McLean, at Appomattox Court +House, with Colonel Marshall, one of his staff officers, awaiting my +arrival. The head of his column was occupying a hill, on a portion of +which was an apple orchard, beyond a little valley which separated it +from that on the crest of which Sheridan's forces were drawn up in line +of battle to the south. + +Before stating what took place between General Lee and myself, I will +give all there is of the story of the famous apple tree. + +Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they +are believed to be true. The war of the rebellion was no exception to +this rule, and the story of the apple tree is one of those fictions +based on a slight foundation of fact. As I have said, there was an apple +orchard on the side of the hill occupied by the Confederate forces. +Running diagonally up the hill was a wagon road, which, at one point, +ran very near one of the trees, so that the wheels of vehicles had, on +that side, cut off the roots of this tree, leaving a little embankment. +General Babcock, of my staff, reported to me that when he first met +General Lee he was sitting upon this embankment with his feet in the +road below and his back resting against the tree. The story had no +other foundation than that. Like many other stories, it would be very +good if it was only true. + +I had known General Lee in the old army, and had served with him in the +Mexican War; but did not suppose, owing to the difference in our age and +rank, that he would remember me, while I would more naturally remember +him distinctly, because he was the chief of staff of General Scott in +the Mexican War. + +When I had left camp that morning I had not expected so soon the result +that was then taking place, and consequently was in rough garb. I was +without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on the field, and +wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank +to indicate to the army who I was. When I went into the house I found +General Lee. We greeted each other, and after shaking hands took our +seats. I had my staff with me, a good portion of whom were in the room +during the whole of the interview. + +What General Lee's feelings were I do not know. As he was a man of much +dignity, with an impassible face, it was impossible to say whether he +felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the +result, and was too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, they were +entirely concealed from my observation; but my own feelings, which had +been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad and +depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall +of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much +for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for +which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least +excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of +those who were opposed to us. + +General Lee was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely new, and +was wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which +had been presented by the State of Virginia; at all events, it was an +entirely different sword from the one that would ordinarily be worn in +the field. In my rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private with +the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must have contrasted very +strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six feet high and of +faultless form. But this was not a matter that I thought of until +afterwards. + +We soon fell into a conversation about old army times. He remarked that +he remembered me very well in the old army; and I told him that as a +matter of course I remembered him perfectly, but from the difference in +our rank and years (there being about sixteen years' difference in our +ages), I had thought it very likely that I had not attracted his +attention sufficiently to be remembered by him after such a long +interval. Our conversation grew so pleasant that I almost forgot the +object of our meeting. After the conversation had run on in this style +for some time, General Lee called my attention to the object of our +meeting, and said that he had asked for this interview for the purpose +of getting from me the terms I proposed to give his army. I said that I +meant merely that his army should lay down their arms, not to take them +up again during the continuance of the war unless duly and properly +exchanged. He said that he had so understood my letter. + +Then we gradually fell off again into conversation about matters foreign +to the subject which had brought us together. This continued for some +little time, when General Lee again interrupted the course of the +conversation by suggesting that the terms I proposed to give his army +ought to be written out. I called to General Parker, secretary on my +staff, for writing materials, and commenced writing out the following +terms: + + +APPOMATTOX C. H., VA., + +Ap 19th, 1865. + +GEN. R. E. LEE, Comd'g C. S. A. + +GEN: In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th +inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the +following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made +in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the +other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. +The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms +against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, +and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men +of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked +and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive +them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their +private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be +allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States +authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force +where they may reside. + +Very respectfully, U. S. GRANT, Lt. Gen. + + +When I put my pen to the paper I did not know the first word that I +should make use of in writing the terms. I only knew what was in my +mind, and I wished to express it clearly, so that there could be no +mistaking it. As I wrote on, the thought occurred to me that the +officers had their own private horses and effects, which were important +to them, but of no value to us; also that it would be an unnecessary +humiliation to call upon them to deliver their side arms. + +No conversation, not one word, passed between General Lee and myself, +either about private property, side arms, or kindred subjects. He +appeared to have no objections to the terms first proposed; or if he had +a point to make against them he wished to wait until they were in +writing to make it. When he read over that part of the terms about side +arms, horses and private property of the officers, he remarked, with +some feeling, I thought, that this would have a happy effect upon his +army. + +Then, after a little further conversation, General Lee remarked to me +again that their army was organized a little differently from the army +of the United States (still maintaining by implication that we were two +countries); that in their army the cavalrymen and artillerists owned +their own horses; and he asked if he was to understand that the men who +so owned their horses were to be permitted to retain them. I told him +that as the terms were written they would not; that only the officers +were permitted to take their private property. He then, after reading +over the terms a second time, remarked that that was clear. + +I then said to him that I thought this would be about the last battle of +the war--I sincerely hoped so; and I said further I took it that most of +the men in the ranks were small farmers. The whole country had been so +raided by the two armies that it was doubtful whether they would be able +to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next +winter without the aid of the horses they were then riding. The United +States did not want them and I would, therefore, instruct the officers I +left behind to receive the paroles of his troops to let every man of the +Confederate army who claimed to own a horse or mule take the animal to +his home. Lee remarked again that this would have a happy effect. + +He then sat down and wrote out the following letter: + + +HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, April 9, 1865. + +GENERAL:--I received your letter of this date containing the terms of +the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia as proposed by you. As +they are substantially the same as those expressed in your letter of the +8th inst., they are accepted. I will proceed to designate the proper +officers to carry the stipulations into effect. + +R. E. LEE, General. LIEUT.-GENERAL U. S. GRANT. + + +While duplicates of the two letters were being made, the Union generals +present were severally presented to General Lee. + +The much talked of surrendering of Lee's sword and my handing it back, +this and much more that has been said about it is the purest romance. +The word sword or side arms was not mentioned by either of us until I +wrote it in the terms. There was no premeditation, and it did not occur +to me until the moment I wrote it down. If I had happened to omit it, +and General Lee had called my attention to it, I should have put it in +the terms precisely as I acceded to the provision about the soldiers +retaining their horses. + +General Lee, after all was completed and before taking his leave, +remarked that his army was in a very bad condition for want of food, and +that they were without forage; that his men had been living for some +days on parched corn exclusively, and that he would have to ask me for +rations and forage. I told him "certainly," and asked for how many men +he wanted rations. His answer was "about twenty-five thousand;" and I +authorized him to send his own commissary and quartermaster to +Appomattox Station, two or three miles away, where he could have, out of +the trains we had stopped, all the provisions wanted. As for forage, we +had ourselves depended almost entirely upon the country for that. + +Generals Gibbon, Griffin and Merritt were designated by me to carry into +effect the paroling of Lee's troops before they should start for their +homes--General Lee leaving Generals Longstreet, Gordon and Pendleton for +them to confer with in order to facilitate this work. Lee and I then +separated as cordially as we had met, he returning to his own lines, and +all went into bivouac for the night at Appomattox. + +Soon after Lee's departure I telegraphed to Washington as follows: + + +HEADQUARTERS APPOMATTOX C. H., VA., April 9th, 1865, 4.30 P.M. + +HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War, Washington. + +General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia this afternoon on +terms proposed by myself. The accompanying additional correspondence +will show the conditions fully. + +U. S. GRANT, Lieut.-General. + + +When news of the surrender first reached our lines our men commenced +firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of the victory. I at once +sent word, however, to have it stopped. The Confederates were now our +prisoners, and we did not want to exult over their downfall. + +I determined to return to Washington at once, with a view to putting a +stop to the purchase of supplies, and what I now deemed other useless +outlay of money. Before leaving, however, I thought I (*44) would like +to see General Lee again; so next morning I rode out beyond our lines +towards his headquarters, preceded by a bugler and a staff-officer +carrying a white flag. + +Lee soon mounted his horse, seeing who it was, and met me. We had there +between the lines, sitting on horseback, a very pleasant conversation of +over half an hour, in the course of which Lee said to me that the South +was a big country and that we might have to march over it three or four +times before the war entirely ended, but that we would now be able to do +it as they could no longer resist us. He expressed it as his earnest +hope, however, that we would not be called upon to cause more loss and +sacrifice of life; but he could not foretell the result. I then +suggested to General Lee that there was not a man in the Confederacy +whose influence with the soldiery and the whole people was as great as +his, and that if he would now advise the surrender of all the armies I +had no doubt his advice would be followed with alacrity. But Lee said, +that he could not do that without consulting the President first. I +knew there was no use to urge him to do anything against his ideas of +what was right. + +I was accompanied by my staff and other officers, some of whom seemed to +have a great desire to go inside the Confederate lines. They finally +asked permission of Lee to do so for the purpose of seeing some of their +old army friends, and the permission was granted. They went over, had a +very pleasant time with their old friends, and brought some of them back +with them when they returned. + +When Lee and I separated he went back to his lines and I returned to the +house of Mr. McLean. Here the officers of both armies came in great +numbers, and seemed to enjoy the meeting as much as though they had been +friends separated for a long time while fighting battles under the same +flag. For the time being it looked very much as if all thought of the +war had escaped their minds. After an hour pleasantly passed in this +way I set out on horseback, accompanied by my staff and a small escort, +for Burkesville Junction, up to which point the railroad had by this +time been repaired. + + + +CHAPTER LXVIII. + +MORALE OF THE TWO ARMIES--RELATIVE CONDITIONS OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH +--PRESIDENT LINCOLN VISITS RICHMOND--ARRIVAL AT WASHINGTON--PRESIDENT +LINCOLN'S ASSASSINATION--PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. + +After the fall of Petersburg, and when the armies of the Potomac and the +James were in motion to head off Lee's army, the morale of the National +troops had greatly improved. There was no more straggling, no more rear +guards. The men who in former times had been falling back, were now, as +I have already stated, striving to get to the front. For the first time +in four weary years they felt that they were now nearing the time when +they could return to their homes with their country saved. On the other +hand, the Confederates were more than correspondingly depressed. Their +despondency increased with each returning day, and especially after the +battle of Sailor's Creek. They threw away their arms in constantly +increasing numbers, dropping out of the ranks and betaking themselves to +the woods in the hope of reaching their homes. I have already instanced +the case of the entire disintegration of a regiment whose colonel I met +at Farmville. As a result of these and other influences, when Lee +finally surrendered at Appomattox, there were only 28,356 officers and +men left to be paroled, and many of these were without arms. It was +probably this latter fact which gave rise to the statement sometimes +made, North and South, that Lee surrendered a smaller number of men than +what the official figures show. As a matter of official record, and in +addition to the number paroled as given above, we captured between March +29th and the date of surrender 19,132 Confederates, to say nothing of +Lee's other losses, killed, wounded and missing, during the series of +desperate conflicts which marked his headlong and determined flight. +The same record shows the number of cannon, including those at +Appomattox, to have been 689 between the dates named. + +There has always been a great conflict of opinion as to the number of +troops engaged in every battle, or all important battles, fought between +the sections, the South magnifying the number of Union troops engaged +and belittling their own. Northern writers have fallen, in many +instances, into the same error. I have often heard gentlemen, who were +thoroughly loyal to the Union, speak of what a splendid fight the South +had made and successfully continued for four years before yielding, with +their twelve million of people against our twenty, and of the twelve +four being colored slaves, non-combatants. I will add to their +argument. We had many regiments of brave and loyal men who volunteered +under great difficulty from the twelve million belonging to the South. + +But the South had rebelled against the National government. It was not +bound by any constitutional restrictions. The whole South was a +military camp. The occupation of the colored people was to furnish +supplies for the army. Conscription was resorted to early, and embraced +every male from the age of eighteen to forty-five, excluding only those +physically unfit to serve in the field, and the necessary number of +civil officers of State and intended National government. The old and +physically disabled furnished a good portion of these. The slaves, the +non-combatants, one-third of the whole, were required to work in the +field without regard to sex, and almost without regard to age. Children +from the age of eight years could and did handle the hoe; they were not +much older when they began to hold the plough. The four million of +colored non-combatants were equal to more than three times their number +in the North, age for age and sex for sex, in supplying food from the +soil to support armies. Women did not work in the fields in the North, +and children attended school. + +The arts of peace were carried on in the North. Towns and cities grew +during the war. Inventions were made in all kinds of machinery to +increase the products of a day's labor in the shop, and in the field. +In the South no opposition was allowed to the government which had been +set up and which would have become real and respected if the rebellion +had been successful. No rear had to be protected. All the troops in +service could be brought to the front to contest every inch of ground +threatened with invasion. The press of the South, like the people who +remained at home, were loyal to the Southern cause. + +In the North, the country, the towns and the cities presented about the +same appearance they do in time of peace. The furnace was in blast, the +shops were filled with workmen, the fields were cultivated, not only to +supply the population of the North and the troops invading the South, +but to ship abroad to pay a part of the expense of the war. In the +North the press was free up to the point of open treason. The citizen +could entertain his views and express them. Troops were necessary in +the Northern States to prevent prisoners from the Southern army being +released by outside force, armed and set at large to destroy by fire our +Northern cities. Plans were formed by Northern and Southern citizens to +burn our cities, to poison the water supplying them, to spread infection +by importing clothing from infected regions, to blow up our river and +lake steamers--regardless of the destruction of innocent lives. The +copperhead disreputable portion of the press magnified rebel successes, +and belittled those of the Union army. It was, with a large following, +an auxiliary to the Confederate army. The North would have been much +stronger with a hundred thousand of these men in the Confederate ranks +and the rest of their kind thoroughly subdued, as the Union sentiment +was in the South, than we were as the battle was fought. + +As I have said, the whole South was a military camp. The colored +people, four million in number, were submissive, and worked in the field +and took care of the families while the able-bodied white men were at +the front fighting for a cause destined to defeat. The cause was +popular, and was enthusiastically supported by the young men. The +conscription took all of them. Before the war was over, further +conscriptions took those between fourteen and eighteen years of age as +junior reserves, and those between forty-five and sixty as senior +reserves. It would have been an offence, directly after the war, and +perhaps it would be now, to ask any able-bodied man in the South, who +was between the ages of fourteen and sixty at any time during the war, +whether he had been in the Confederate army. He would assert that he +had, or account for his absence from the ranks. Under such +circumstances it is hard to conceive how the North showed such a +superiority of force in every battle fought. I know they did not. + +During 1862 and '3, John H. Morgan, a partisan officer, of no military +education, but possessed of courage and endurance, operated in the rear +of the Army of the Ohio in Kentucky and Tennessee. He had no base of +supplies to protect, but was at home wherever he went. The army +operating against the South, on the contrary, had to protect its lines +of communication with the North, from which all supplies had to come to +the front. Every foot of road had to be guarded by troops stationed at +convenient distances apart. These guards could not render assistance +beyond the points where stationed. Morgan Was foot-loose and could +operate where, his information--always correct--led him to believe he +could do the greatest damage. During the time he was operating in this +way he killed, wounded and captured several times the number he ever had +under his command at any one time. He destroyed many millions of +property in addition. Places he did not attack had to be guarded as if +threatened by him. Forrest, an abler soldier, operated farther west, +and held from the National front quite as many men as could be spared +for offensive operations. It is safe to say that more than half the +National army was engaged in guarding lines of supplies, or were on +leave, sick in hospital or on detail which prevented their bearing arms. +Then, again, large forces were employed where no Confederate army +confronted them. I deem it safe to say that there were no large +engagements where the National numbers compensated for the advantage of +position and intrenchment occupied by the enemy. + +While I was in pursuit of General Lee, the President went to Richmond in +company with Admiral Porter, and on board his flagship. He found the +people of that city in great consternation. The leading citizens among +the people who had remained at home surrounded him, anxious that +something should be done to relieve them from suspense. General Weitzel +was not then in the city, having taken offices in one of the neighboring +villages after his troops had succeeded in subduing the conflagration +which they had found in progress on entering the Confederate capital. +The President sent for him, and, on his arrival, a short interview was +had on board the vessel, Admiral Porter and a leading citizen of +Virginia being also present. After this interview the President wrote an +order in about these words, which I quote from memory: "General Weitzel +is authorized to permit the body calling itself the Legislature of +Virginia to meet for the purpose of recalling the Virginia troops from +the Confederate armies." + +Immediately some of the gentlemen composing that body wrote out a call +for a meeting and had it published in their papers. This call, however, +went very much further than Mr. Lincoln had contemplated, as he did not +say the "Legislature of Virginia" but "the body which called itself the +Legislature of Virginia." Mr. Stanton saw the call as published in the +Northern papers the very next issue and took the liberty of +countermanding the order authorizing any meeting of the Legislature, or +any other body, and this notwithstanding the fact that the President was +nearer the spot than he was. + +This was characteristic of Mr. Stanton. He was a man who never +questioned his own authority, and who always did in war time what he +wanted to do. He was an able constitutional lawyer and jurist; but the +Constitution was not an impediment to him while the war lasted. In this +latter particular I entirely agree with the view he evidently held. The +Constitution was not framed with a view to any such rebellion as that of +1861-5. While it did not authorize rebellion it made no provision +against it. Yet the right to resist or suppress rebellion is as +inherent as the right of self-defence, and as natural as the right of an +individual to preserve his life when in jeopardy. The Constitution was +therefore in abeyance for the time being, so far as it in any way +affected the progress and termination of the war. + +Those in rebellion against the government of the United States were not +restricted by constitutional provisions, or any other, except the acts +of their Congress, which was loyal and devoted to the cause for which +the South was then fighting. It would be a hard case when one-third of +a nation, united in rebellion against the national authority, is +entirely untrammeled, that the other two-thirds, in their efforts to +maintain the Union intact, should be restrained by a Constitution +prepared by our ancestors for the express purpose of insuring the +permanency of the confederation of the States. + +After I left General Lee at Appomattox Station, I went with my staff and +a few others directly to Burkesville Station on my way to Washington. +The road from Burkesville back having been newly repaired and the ground +being soft, the train got off the track frequently, and, as a result, it +was after midnight of the second day when I reached City Point. As soon +as possible I took a dispatch-boat thence to Washington City. + +While in Washington I was very busy for a time in preparing the +necessary orders for the new state of affairs; communicating with my +different commanders of separate departments, bodies of troops, etc. +But by the 14th I was pretty well through with this work, so as to be +able to visit my children, who were then in Burlington, New Jersey, +attending school. Mrs. Grant was with me in Washington at the time, and +we were invited by President and Mrs. Lincoln to accompany them to the +theatre on the evening of that day. I replied to the President's verbal +invitation to the effect, that if we were in the city we would take +great pleasure in accompanying them; but that I was very anxious to get +away and visit my children, and if I could get through my work during +the day I should do so. I did get through and started by the evening +train on the 14th, sending Mr. Lincoln word, of course, that I would not +be at the theatre. + +At that time the railroad to New York entered Philadelphia on Broad +Street; passengers were conveyed in ambulances to the Delaware River, +and then ferried to Camden, at which point they took the cars again. +When I reached the ferry, on the east side of the City of Philadelphia, +I found people awaiting my arrival there; and also dispatches informing +me of the assassination of the President and Mr. Seward, and of the +probable assassination of the Vice President, Mr. Johnson, and +requesting my immediate return. + +It would be impossible for me to describe the feeling that overcame me +at the news of these assassinations, more especially the assassination +of the President. I knew his goodness of heart, his generosity, his +yielding disposition, his desire to have everybody happy, and above all +his desire to see all the people of the United States enter again upon +the full privileges of citizenship with equality among all. I knew also +the feeling that Mr. Johnson had expressed in speeches and conversation +against the Southern people, and I feared that his course towards them +would be such as to repel, and make them unwilling citizens; and if they +became such they would remain so for a long while. I felt that +reconstruction had been set back, no telling how far. + +I immediately arranged for getting a train to take me back to Washington +City; but Mrs. Grant was with me; it was after midnight and Burlington +was but an hour away. Finding that I could accompany her to our house +and return about as soon as they would be ready to take me from the +Philadelphia station, I went up with her and returned immediately by the +same special train. The joy that I had witnessed among the people in +the street and in public places in Washington when I left there, had +been turned to grief; the city was in reality a city of mourning. I +have stated what I believed then the effect of this would be, and my +judgment now is that I was right. I believe the South would have been +saved from very much of the hardness of feeling that was engendered by +Mr. Johnson's course towards them during the first few months of his +administration. Be this as it may, Mr. Lincoln's assassination was +particularly unfortunate for the entire nation. + +Mr. Johnson's course towards the South did engender bitterness of +feeling. His denunciations of treason and his ever-ready remark, +"Treason is a crime and must be made odious," was repeated to all those +men of the South who came to him to get some assurances of safety so +that they might go to work at something with the feeling that what they +obtained would be secure to them. He uttered his denunciations with +great vehemence, and as they were accompanied with no assurances of +safety, many Southerners were driven to a point almost beyond endurance. + +The President of the United States is, in a large degree, or ought to +be, a representative of the feeling, wishes and judgment of those over +whom he presides; and the Southerners who read the denunciations of +themselves and their people must have come to the conclusion that he +uttered the sentiments of the Northern people; whereas, as a matter of +fact, but for the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, I believe the great +majority of the Northern people, and the soldiers unanimously, would +have been in favor of a speedy reconstruction on terms that would be the +least humiliating to the people who had rebelled against their +government. They believed, I have no doubt, as I did, that besides +being the mildest, it was also the wisest, policy. + +The people who had been in rebellion must necessarily come back into the +Union, and be incorporated as an integral part of the nation. Naturally +the nearer they were placed to an equality with the people who had not +rebelled, the more reconciled they would feel with their old +antagonists, and the better citizens they would be from the beginning. +They surely would not make good citizens if they felt that they had a +yoke around their necks. + +I do not believe that the majority of the Northern people at that time +were in favor of negro suffrage. They supposed that it would naturally +follow the freedom of the negro, but that there would be a time of +probation, in which the ex-slaves could prepare themselves for the +privileges of citizenship before the full right would be conferred; but +Mr. Johnson, after a complete revolution of sentiment, seemed to regard +the South not only as an oppressed people, but as the people best +entitled to consideration of any of our citizens. This was more than +the people who had secured to us the perpetuation of the Union were +prepared for, and they became more radical in their views. The +Southerners had the most power in the executive branch, Mr. Johnson +having gone to their side; and with a compact South, and such sympathy +and support as they could get from the North, they felt that they would +be able to control the nation at once, and already many of them acted as +if they thought they were entitled to do so. + +Thus Mr. Johnson, fighting Congress on the one hand, and receiving the +support of the South on the other, drove Congress, which was +overwhelmingly republican, to the passing of first one measure and then +another to restrict his power. There being a solid South on one side +that was in accord with the political party in the North which had +sympathized with the rebellion, it finally, in the judgment of Congress +and of the majority of the legislatures of the States, became necessary +to enfranchise the negro, in all his ignorance. In this work, I shall +not discuss the question of how far the policy of Congress in this +particular proved a wise one. It became an absolute necessity, however, +because of the foolhardiness of the President and the blindness of the +Southern people to their own interest. As to myself, while strongly +favoring the course that would be the least humiliating to the people +who had been in rebellion, I gradually worked up to the point where, +with the majority of the people, I favored immediate enfranchisement. + + + +CHAPTER LXIX. + +SHERMAN AND JOHNSTON--JOHNSTON'S SURRENDER TO SHERMAN--CAPTURE OF +MOBILE--WILSON'S EXPEDITION--CAPTURE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS--GENERAL +THOMAS'S QUALITIES--ESTIMATE OF GENERAL CANBY. + +When I left Appomattox I ordered General Meade to proceed leisurely back +to Burkesville Station with the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the +James, and to go into camp there until further orders from me. General +Johnston, as has been stated before, was in North Carolina confronting +General Sherman. It could not be known positively, of course, whether +Johnston would surrender on the news of Lee's surrender, though I +supposed he would; and if he did not, Burkesville Station was the +natural point from which to move to attack him. The army which I could +have sent against him was superior to his, and that with which Sherman +confronted him was also superior; and between the two he would +necessarily have been crushed, or driven away. With the loss of their +capital and the Army of Northern Virginia it was doubtful whether +Johnston's men would have the spirit to stand. My belief was that he +would make no such attempt; but I adopted this course as a precaution +against what might happen, however improbable. + +Simultaneously with my starting from City Point, I sent a messenger to +North Carolina by boat with dispatches to General Sherman, informing him +of the surrender of Lee and his army; also of the terms which I had +given him; and I authorized Sherman to give the same terms to Johnston +if the latter chose to accept them. The country is familiar with the +terms that Sherman agreed to CONDITIONALLY, because they embraced a +political question as well as a military one and he would therefore have +to confer with the government before agreeing to them definitely. + +General Sherman had met Mr. Lincoln at City Point while visiting there +to confer with me about our final movement, and knew what Mr. Lincoln +had said to the peace commissioners when he met them at Hampton Roads, +viz.: that before he could enter into negotiations with them they would +have to agree to two points: one being that the Union should be +preserved, and the other that slavery should be abolished; and if they +were ready to concede these two points he was almost ready to sign his +name to a blank piece of paper and permit them to fill out the balance +of the terms upon which we would live together. He had also seen +notices in the newspapers of Mr. Lincoln's visit to Richmond, and had +read in the same papers that while there he had authorized the convening +of the Legislature of Virginia. + +Sherman thought, no doubt, in adding to the terms that I had made with +general Lee, that he was but carrying out the wishes of the President of +the United States. But seeing that he was going beyond his authority, +he made it a point that the terms were only conditional. They signed +them with this understanding, and agreed to a truce until the terms +could be sent to Washington for approval; if approved by the proper +authorities there, they would then be final; if not approved, then he +would give due notice, before resuming hostilities. As the world knows, +Sherman, from being one of the most popular generals of the land +(Congress having even gone so far as to propose a bill providing for a +second lieutenant-general for the purpose of advancing him to that +grade), was denounced by the President and Secretary of War in very +bitter terms. Some people went so far as to denounce him as a traitor +--a most preposterous term to apply to a man who had rendered so much +service as he had, even supposing he had made a mistake in granting such +terms as he did to Johnston and his army. If Sherman had taken +authority to send Johnston with his army home, with their arms to be put +in the arsenals of their own States, without submitting the question to +the authorities at Washington, the suspicions against him might have +some foundation. But the feeling against Sherman died out very rapidly, +and it was not many weeks before he was restored to the fullest +confidence of the American people. + +When, some days after my return to Washington, President Johnson and the +Secretary of war received the terms which General Sherman had forwarded +for approval, a cabinet meeting was immediately called and I was sent +for. There seemed to be the greatest consternation, lest Sherman would +commit the government to terms which they were not willing to accede to +and which he had no right to grant. A message went out directing the +troops in the South not to obey General Sherman. I was ordered to +proceed at once to North Carolina and take charge of matter there +myself. Of course I started without delay, and reached there as soon as +possible. I repaired to Raleigh, where Sherman was, as quietly as +possible, hoping to see him without even his army learning of my +presence. + +When I arrived I went to Sherman's headquarters, and we were at once +closeted together. I showed him the instruction and orders under which +I visited him. I told him that I wanted him to notify General Johnston +that the terms which they had conditionally agreed upon had not been +approved in Washington, and that he was authorized to offer the same +terms I had given General Lee. I sent Sherman to do this himself. I +did not wish the knowledge of my presence to be known to the army +generally; so I left it to Sherman to negotiate the terms of the +surrender solely by himself, and without the enemy knowing that I was +anywhere near the field. As soon as possible I started to get away, to +leave Sherman quite free and untrammelled. + +At Goldsboro', on my way back, I met a mail, containing the last +newspapers, and I found in them indications of great excitement in the +North over the terms Sherman had given Johnston; and harsh orders that +had been promulgated by the President and Secretary of War. I knew that +Sherman must see these papers, and I fully realized what great +indignation they would cause him, though I do not think his feelings +could have been more excited than were my own. But like the true and +loyal soldier that he was, he carried out the instructions I had given +him, obtained the surrender of Johnston's army, and settled down in his +camp about Raleigh, to await final orders. + +There were still a few expeditions out in the South that could not be +communicated with, and had to be left to act according to the judgment +of their respective commanders. With these it was impossible to tell +how the news of the surrender of Lee and Johnston, of which they must +have heard, might affect their judgment as to what was best to do. + +The three expeditions which I had tried so hard to get off from the +commands of Thomas and Canby did finally get off: one under Canby +himself, against Mobile, late in March; that under Stoneman from East +Tennessee on the 20th; and the one under Wilson, starting from Eastport, +Mississippi, on the 22d of March. They were all eminently successful, +but without any good result. Indeed much valuable property was destroyed +and many lives lost at a time when we would have liked to spare them. +The war was practically over before their victories were gained. They +were so late in commencing operations, that they did not hold any troops +away that otherwise would have been operating against the armies which +were gradually forcing the Confederate armies to a surrender. The only +possible good that we may have experienced from these raids was by +Stoneman's getting near Lynchburg about the time the armies of the +Potomac and the James were closing in on Lee at Appomattox. + +Stoneman entered North Carolina and then pushed north to strike the +Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. He got upon that road, destroyed its +bridges at different places and rendered the road useless to the enemy +up to within a few miles of Lynchburg. His approach caused the +evacuation of that city about the time we were at Appomattox, and was +the cause of a commotion we heard of there. He then pushed south, and +was operating in the rear of Johnston's army about the time the +negotiations were going on between Sherman and Johnston for the latter's +surrender. In this raid Stoneman captured and destroyed a large amount +of stores, while fourteen guns and nearly two thousand prisoners were +the trophies of his success. + +Canby appeared before Mobile on the 27th of March. The city of Mobile +was protected by two forts, besides other intrenchments--Spanish Fort, +on the east side of the bay, and Fort Blakely, north of the city. These +forts were invested. On the night of the 8th of April, the National +troops having carried the enemy's works at one point, Spanish Fort was +evacuated; and on the 9th, the very day of Lee's surrender, Blakely was +carried by assault, with a considerable loss to us. On the 11th the +city was evacuated. + +I had tried for more than two years to have an expedition sent against +Mobile when its possession by us would have been of great advantage. It +finally cost lives to take it when its possession was of no importance, +and when, if left alone, it would within a few days have fallen into our +hands without any bloodshed whatever. + +Wilson moved out with full 12,000 men, well equipped and well armed. He +was an energetic officer and accomplished his work rapidly. Forrest was +in his front, but with neither his old-time army nor his old-time +prestige. He now had principally conscripts. His conscripts were +generally old men and boys. He had a few thousand regular cavalry left, +but not enough to even retard materially the progress of Wilson's +cavalry. Selma fell on the 2d of April, with a large number of +prisoners and a large quantity of war material, machine shops, etc., to +be disposed of by the victors. Tuscaloosa, Montgomery and West Point +fell in quick succession. These were all important points to the enemy +by reason of their railroad connections, as depots of supplies, and +because of their manufactories of war material. They were fortified or +intrenched, and there was considerable fighting before they were +captured. Macon surrendered on the 21st of April. Here news was +received of the negotiations for the surrender of Johnston's army. +Wilson belonged to the military division commanded by Sherman, and of +course was bound by his terms. This stopped all fighting. + +General Richard Taylor had now become the senior Confederate officer +still at liberty east of the Mississippi River, and on the 4th of May he +surrendered everything within the limits of this extensive command. +General E. Kirby Smith surrendered the trans-Mississippi department on +the 26th of May, leaving no other Confederate army at liberty to +continue the war. + +Wilson's raid resulted in the capture of the fugitive president of the +defunct confederacy before he got out of the country. This occurred at +Irwinsville, Georgia, on the 11th of May. For myself, and I believe Mr. +Lincoln shared the feeling, I would have been very glad to have seen Mr. +Davis succeed in escaping, but for one reason: I feared that if not +captured, he might get into the trans-Mississippi region and there set +up a more contracted confederacy. The young men now out of homes and +out of employment might have rallied under his standard and protracted +the war yet another year. The Northern people were tired of the war, +they were tired of piling up a debt which would be a further mortgage +upon their homes. + +Mr. Lincoln, I believe, wanted Mr. Davis to escape, because he did not +wish to deal with the matter of his punishment. He knew there would be +people clamoring for the punishment of the ex-Confederate president, for +high treason. He thought blood enough had already been spilled to atone +for our wickedness as a nation. At all events he did not wish to be the +judge to decide whether more should be shed or not. But his own life +was sacrificed at the hands of an assassin before the ex-president of +the Confederacy was a prisoner in the hands of the government which he +had lent all his talent and all his energies to destroy. + +All things are said to be wisely directed, and for the best interest of +all concerned. This reflection does not, however, abate in the +slightest our sense of bereavement in the untimely loss of so good and +great a man as Abraham Lincoln. + +He would have proven the best friend the South could have had, and saved +much of the wrangling and bitterness of feeling brought out by +reconstruction under a President who at first wished to revenge himself +upon Southern men of better social standing than himself, but who still +sought their recognition, and in a short time conceived the idea and +advanced the proposition to become their Moses to lead them triumphantly +out of all their difficulties. + +The story of the legislation enacted during the reconstruction period to +stay the hands of the President is too fresh in the minds of the people +to be told now. Much of it, no doubt, was unconstitutional; but it was +hoped that the laws enacted would serve their purpose before the +question of constitutionality could be submitted to the judiciary and a +decision obtained. These laws did serve their purpose, and now remain "a +dead letter" upon the statute books of the United States, no one taking +interest enough in them to give them a passing thought. + +Much was said at the time about the garb Mr. Davis was wearing when he +was captured. I cannot settle this question from personal knowledge of +the facts; but I have been under the belief, from information given to +me by General Wilson shortly after the event, that when Mr. Davis +learned that he was surrounded by our cavalry he was in his tent dressed +in a gentleman's dressing gown. Naturally enough, Mr. Davis wanted to +escape, and would not reflect much how this should be accomplished +provided it might be done successfully. If captured, he would be no +ordinary prisoner. He represented all there was of that hostility to +the government which had caused four years of the bloodiest war--and the +most costly in other respects of which history makes any record. Every +one supposed he would be tried for treason if captured, and that he +would be executed. Had he succeeded in making his escape in any +disguise it would have been adjudged a good thing afterwards by his +admirers. + +As my official letters on file in the War Department, as well as my +remarks in this book, reflect upon General Thomas by dwelling somewhat +upon his tardiness, it is due to myself, as well as to him, that I give +my estimate of him as a soldier. The same remark will apply also in the +case of General Canby. I had been at West Point with Thomas one year, +and had known him later in the old army. He was a man of commanding +appearance, slow and deliberate in speech and action; sensible, honest +and brave. He possessed valuable soldierly qualities in an eminent +degree. He gained the confidence of all who served under him, and +almost their love. This implies a very valuable quality. It is a +quality which calls out the most efficient services of the troops +serving under the commander possessing it. + +Thomas's dispositions were deliberately made, and always good. He could +not be driven from a point he was given to hold. He was not as good, +however, in pursuit as he was in action. I do not believe that he could +ever have conducted Sherman's army from Chattanooga to Atlanta against +the defences and the commander guarding that line in 1864. On the other +hand, if it had been given him to hold the line which Johnston tried to +hold, neither that general nor Sherman, nor any other officer could have +done it better. + +Thomas was a valuable officer, who richly deserved, as he has received, +the plaudits of his countrymen for the part he played in the great +tragedy of 1861-5. + +General Canby was an officer of great merit. He was naturally studious, +and inclined to the law. There have been in the army but very few, if +any, officers who took as much interest in reading and digesting every +act of Congress and every regulation for the government of the army as +he. His knowledge gained in this way made him a most valuable staff +officer, a capacity in which almost all his army services were rendered +up to the time of his being assigned to the Military Division of the +Gulf. He was an exceedingly modest officer, though of great talent and +learning. I presume his feelings when first called upon to command a +large army against a fortified city, were somewhat like my own when +marching a regiment against General Thomas Harris in Missouri in 1861. +Neither of us would have felt the slightest trepidation in going into +battle with some one else commanding. Had Canby been in other +engagements afterwards, he would, I have no doubt, have advanced without +any fear arising from a sense of the responsibility. He was afterwards +killed in the lava beds of Southern Oregon, while in pursuit of the +hostile Modoc Indians. His character was as pure as his talent and +learning were great. His services were valuable during the war, but +principally as a bureau officer. I have no idea that it was from choice +that his services were rendered in an office, but because of his +superior efficiency there. + + + +CHAPTER LXX. + +THE END OF THE WAR--THE MARCH TO WASHINGTON--ONE OF LINCOLN'S ANECDOTES +--GRAND REVIEW AT WASHINGTON--CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLN AND STANTON +--ESTIMATE OF THE DIFFERENT CORPS COMMANDERS. + +Things began to quiet down, and as the certainty that there would be no +more armed resistance became clearer, the troops in North Carolina and +Virginia were ordered to march immediately to the capital, and go into +camp there until mustered out. Suitable garrisons were left at the +prominent places throughout the South to insure obedience to the laws +that might be enacted for the government of the several States, and to +insure security to the lives and property of all classes. I do not know +how far this was necessary, but I deemed it necessary, at that time, +that such a course should be pursued. I think now that these garrisons +were continued after they ceased to be absolutely required; but it is +not to be expected that such a rebellion as was fought between the +sections from 1861 to 1865 could terminate without leaving many serious +apprehensions in the mind of the people as to what should be done. + +Sherman marched his troops from Goldsboro, up to Manchester, on the +south side of the James River, opposite Richmond, and there put them in +camp, while he went back to Savannah to see what the situation was +there. + +It was during this trip that the last outrage was committed upon him. +Halleck had been sent to Richmond to command Virginia, and had issued +orders prohibiting even Sherman's own troops from obeying his, +Sherman's, orders. Sherman met the papers on his return, containing +this order of Halleck, and very justly felt indignant at the outrage. +On his arrival at Fortress Monroe returning from Savannah, Sherman +received an invitation from Halleck to come to Richmond and be his +guest. This he indignantly refused, and informed Halleck, furthermore, +that he had seen his order. He also stated that he was coming up to +take command of his troops, and as he marched through it would probably +be as well for Halleck not to show himself, because he (Sherman) would +not be responsible for what some rash person might do through +indignation for the treatment he had received. Very soon after that, +Sherman received orders from me to proceed to Washington City, and to go +into camp on the south side of the city pending the mustering-out of the +troops. + +There was no incident worth noting in the march northward from +Goldsboro, to Richmond, or in that from Richmond to Washington City. +The army, however, commanded by Sherman, which had been engaged in all +the battles of the West and had marched from the Mississippi through the +Southern States to the sea, from there to Goldsboro, and thence to +Washington City, had passed over many of the battle-fields of the Army +of the Potomac, thus having seen, to a greater extent than any other +body of troops, the entire theatre of the four years' war for the +preservation of the Union. + +The march of Sherman's army from Atlanta to the sea and north to +Goldsboro, while it was not accompanied with the danger that was +anticipated, yet was magnificent in its results, and equally magnificent +in the way it was conducted. It had an important bearing, in various +ways, upon the great object we had in view, that of closing the war. +All the States east of the Mississippi River up to the State of Georgia, +had felt the hardships of the war. Georgia, and South Carolina, and +almost all of North Carolina, up to this time, had been exempt from +invasion by the Northern armies, except upon their immediate sea coasts. +Their newspapers had given such an account of Confederate success, that +the people who remained at home had been convinced that the Yankees had +been whipped from first to last, and driven from pillar to post, and +that now they could hardly be holding out for any other purpose than to +find a way out of the war with honor to themselves. + +Even during this march of Sherman's the newspapers in his front were +proclaiming daily that his army was nothing better than a mob of men who +were frightened out of their wits and hastening, panic-stricken, to try +to get under the cover of our navy for protection against the Southern +people. As the army was seen marching on triumphantly, however, the +minds of the people became disabused and they saw the true state of +affairs. In turn they became disheartened, and would have been glad to +submit without compromise. + +Another great advantage resulting from this march, and which was +calculated to hasten the end, was the fact that the great storehouse of +Georgia was entirely cut off from the Confederate armies. As the troops +advanced north from Savannah, the destruction of the railroads in South +Carolina and the southern part of North Carolina, further cut off their +resources and left the armies still in Virginia and North Carolina +dependent for supplies upon a very small area of country, already very +much exhausted of food and forage. + +In due time the two armies, one from Burkesville Junction and the other +from the neighborhood of Raleigh, North Carolina, arrived and went into +camp near the Capital, as directed. The troops were hardy, being inured +to fatigue, and they appeared in their respective camps as ready and fit +for duty as they had ever been in their lives. I doubt whether an equal +body of men of any nation, take them man for man, officer for officer, +was ever gotten together that would have proved their equal in a great +battle. + +The armies of Europe are machines; the men are brave and the officers +capable; but the majority of the soldiers in most of the nations of +Europe are taken from a class of people who are not very intelligent and +who have very little interest in the contest in which they are called +upon to take part. Our armies were composed of men who were able to +read, men who knew what they were fighting for, and could not be induced +to serve as soldiers, except in an emergency when the safety of the +nation was involved, and so necessarily must have been more than equal +to men who fought merely because they were brave and because they were +thoroughly drilled and inured to hardships. + +There was nothing of particular importance occurred during the time +these troops were in camp before starting North. + +I remember one little incident which I will relate as an anecdote +characteristic of Mr. Lincoln. It occurred a day after I reached +Washington, and about the time General Meade reached Burkesville with +the army. Governor Smith of Virginia had left Richmond with the +Confederate States government, and had gone to Danville. Supposing I +was necessarily with the army at Burkesville, he addressed a letter to +me there informing me that, as governor of the Commonwealth of the State +of Virginia, he had temporarily removed the State capital from Richmond +to Danville, and asking if he would be permitted to perform the +functions of his office there without molestation by the Federal +authorities. I give this letter only in substance. He also inquired of +me whether in case he was not allowed to perform the duties of his +office, he with a few others might not be permitted to leave the country +and go abroad without interference. General Meade being informed that a +flag of truce was outside his pickets with a letter to me, at once sent +out and had the letter brought in without informing the officer who +brought it that I was not present. He read the letter and telegraphed +me its contents. Meeting Mr. Lincoln shortly after receiving this +dispatch, I repeated its contents to him. Mr. Lincoln, supposing I was +asking for instructions, said, in reply to that part of Governor Smith's +letter which inquired whether he with a few friends would be permitted +to leave the country unmolested, that his position was like that of a +certain Irishman (giving the name) he knew in Springfield who was very +popular with the people, a man of considerable promise, and very much +liked. Unfortunately he had acquired the habit of drinking, and his +friends could see that the habit was growing on him. These friends +determined to make an effort to save him, and to do this they drew up a +pledge to abstain from all alcoholic drinks. They asked Pat to join +them in signing the pledge, and he consented. He had been so long out +of the habit of using plain water as a beverage that he resorted to +soda-water as a substitute. After a few days this began to grow +distasteful to him. So holding the glass behind him, he said: "Doctor, +couldn't you drop a bit of brandy in that unbeknownst to myself." + +I do not remember what the instructions were the President gave me, but +I know that Governor Smith was not permitted to perform the duties of +his office. I also know that if Mr. Lincoln had been spared, there +would have been no efforts made to prevent any one from leaving the +country who desired to do so. He would have been equally willing to +permit the return of the same expatriated citizens after they had time +to repent of their choice. + +On the 18th of May orders were issued by the adjutant-general for a +grand review by the President and his cabinet of Sherman's and Meade's +armies. The review commenced on the 23d and lasted two days. Meade's +army occupied over six hours of the first day in passing the grand stand +which had been erected in front of the President's house. Sherman +witnessed this review from the grand stand which was occupied by the +President and his cabinet. Here he showed his resentment for the cruel +and harsh treatment that had unnecessarily been inflicted upon him by +the Secretary of War, by refusing to take his extended hand. + +Sherman's troops had been in camp on the south side of the Potomac. +During the night of the 23d he crossed over and bivouacked not far from +the Capitol. Promptly at ten o'clock on the morning of the 24th, his +troops commenced to pass in review. Sherman's army made a different +appearance from that of the Army of the Potomac. The latter had been +operating where they received directly from the North full supplies of +food and clothing regularly: the review of this army therefore was the +review of a body of 65,000 well-drilled, well-disciplined and orderly +soldiers inured to hardship and fit for any duty, but without the +experience of gathering their own food and supplies in an enemy's +country, and of being ever on the watch. Sherman's army was not so +well-dressed as the Army of the Potomac, but their marching could not +be excelled; they gave the appearance of men who had been thoroughly +drilled to endure hardships, either by long and continuous marches or +through exposure to any climate, without the ordinary shelter of a camp. +They exhibited also some of the order of march through Georgia where the +"sweet potatoes sprung up from the ground" as Sherman's army went +marching through. In the rear of a company there would be a captured +horse or mule loaded with small cooking utensils, captured chickens and +other food picked up for the use of the men. Negro families who had +followed the army would sometimes come along in the rear of a company, +with three or four children packed upon a single mule, and the mother +leading it. + +The sight was varied and grand: nearly all day for two successive days, +from the Capitol to the Treasury Building, could be seen a mass of +orderly soldiers marching in columns of companies. The National flag +was flying from almost every house and store; the windows were filled +with spectators; the door-steps and side-walks were crowded with colored +people and poor whites who did not succeed in securing better quarters +from which to get a view of the grand armies. The city was about as +full of strangers who had come to see the sights as it usually is on +inauguration day when a new President takes his seat. + +It may not be out of place to again allude to President Lincoln and the +Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, who were the great conspicuous figures in +the executive branch of the government. There is no great difference of +opinion now, in the public mind, as to the characteristics of the +President. With Mr. Stanton the case is different. They were the very +opposite of each other in almost every particular, except that each +possessed great ability. Mr. Lincoln gained influence over men by +making them feel that it was a pleasure to serve him. He preferred +yielding his own wish to gratify others, rather than to insist upon +having his own way. It distressed him to disappoint others. In matters +of public duty, however, he had what he wished, but in the least +offensive way. Mr. Stanton never questioned his own authority to +command, unless resisted. He cared nothing for the feeling of others. +In fact it seemed to be pleasanter to him to disappoint than to gratify. +He felt no hesitation in assuming the functions of the executive, or in +acting without advising with him. If his act was not sustained, he +would change it--if he saw the matter would be followed up until he did +so. + +It was generally supposed that these two officials formed the complement +of each other. The Secretary was required to prevent the President's +being imposed upon. The President was required in the more responsible +place of seeing that injustice was not done to others. I do not know +that this view of these two men is still entertained by the majority of +the people. It is not a correct view, however, in my estimation. Mr. +Lincoln did not require a guardian to aid him in the fulfilment of a +public trust. + +Mr. Lincoln was not timid, and he was willing to trust his generals in +making and executing their plans. The Secretary was very timid, and it +was impossible for him to avoid interfering with the armies covering the +capital when it was sought to defend it by an offensive movement against +the army guarding the Confederate capital. He could see our weakness, +but he could not see that the enemy was in danger. The enemy would not +have been in danger if Mr. Stanton had been in the field. These +characteristics of the two officials were clearly shown shortly after +Early came so near getting into the capital. + +Among the army and corps commanders who served with me during the war +between the States, and who attracted much public attention, but of +whose ability as soldiers I have not yet given any estimate, are Meade, +Hancock, Sedgwick, Burnside, Terry and Hooker. There were others of +great merit, such as Griffin, Humphreys, Wright and Mackenzie. Of those +first named, Burnside at one time had command of the Army of the +Potomac, and later of the Army of the Ohio. Hooker also commanded the +Army of the Potomac for a short time. + +General Meade was an officer of great merit, with drawbacks to his +usefulness that were beyond his control. He had been an officer of the +engineer corps before the war, and consequently had never served with +troops until he was over forty-six years of age. He never had, I +believe, a command of less than a brigade. He saw clearly and +distinctly the position of the enemy, and the topography of the country +in front of his own position. His first idea was to take advantage of +the lay of the ground, sometimes without reference to the direction we +wanted to move afterwards. He was subordinate to his superiors in rank +to the extent that he could execute an order which changed his own plans +with the same zeal he would have displayed if the plan had been his own. +He was brave and conscientious, and commanded the respect of all who +knew him. He was unfortunately of a temper that would get beyond his +control, at times, and make him speak to officers of high rank in the +most offensive manner. No one saw this fault more plainly than he +himself, and no one regretted it more. This made it unpleasant at +times, even in battle, for those around him to approach him even with +information. In spite of this defect he was a most valuable officer and +deserves a high place in the annals of his country. + +General Burnside was an officer who was generally liked and respected. +He was not, however, fitted to command an army. No one knew this better +than himself. He always admitted his blunders, and extenuated those of +officers under him beyond what they were entitled to. It was hardly his +fault that he was ever assigned to a separate command. + +Of Hooker I saw but little during the war. I had known him very well +before, however. Where I did see him, at Chattanooga, his achievement +in bringing his command around the point of Lookout Mountain and into +Chattanooga Valley was brilliant. I nevertheless regarded him as a +dangerous man. He was not subordinate to his superiors. He was +ambitious to the extent of caring nothing for the rights of others. His +disposition was, when engaged in battle, to get detached from the main +body of the army and exercise a separate command, gathering to his +standard all he could of his juniors. + +Hancock stands the most conspicuous figure of all the general officers +who did not exercise a separate command. He commanded a corps longer +than any other one, and his name was never mentioned as having committed +in battle a blunder for which he was responsible. He was a man of very +conspicuous personal appearance. Tall, well-formed and, at the time of +which I now write, young and fresh-looking, he presented an appearance +that would attract the attention of an army as he passed. His genial +disposition made him friends, and his personal courage and his presence +with his command in the thickest of the fight won for him the confidence +of troops serving under him. No matter how hard the fight, the 2d corps +always felt that their commander was looking after them. + +Sedgwick was killed at Spottsylvania before I had an opportunity of +forming an estimate of his qualifications as a soldier from personal +observation. I had known him in Mexico when both of us were +lieutenants, and when our service gave no indication that either of us +would ever be equal to the command of a brigade. He stood very high in +the army, however, as an officer and a man. He was brave and +conscientious. His ambition was not great, and he seemed to dread +responsibility. He was willing to do any amount of battling, but always +wanted some one else to direct. He declined the command of the Army of +the Potomac once, if not oftener. + +General Alfred H. Terry came into the army as a volunteer without a +military education. His way was won without political influence up to +an important separate command--the expedition against Fort Fisher, in +January, 1865. His success there was most brilliant, and won for him +the rank of brigadier-general in the regular army and of major-general +of volunteers. He is a man who makes friends of those under him by his +consideration of their wants and their dues. As a commander, he won +their confidence by his coolness in action and by his clearness of +perception in taking in the situation under which he was placed at any +given time. + +Griffin, Humphreys, and Mackenzie were good corps commanders, but came +into that position so near to the close of the war as not to attract +public attention. All three served as such, in the last campaign of the +armies of the Potomac and the James, which culminated at Appomattox +Court House, on the 9th of April, 1865. The sudden collapse of the +rebellion monopolized attention to the exclusion of almost everything +else. I regarded Mackenzie as the most promising young officer in the +army. Graduating at West Point, as he did, during the second year of +the war, he had won his way up to the command of a corps before its +close. This he did upon his own merit and without influence. + + + +CONCLUSION. + +The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United Status +will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war +began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half +slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, +or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of +the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole +question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true. + +Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its +security wherever it existed; and in a country like ours where the +larger portion of it was free territory inhabited by an intelligent and +well-to-do population, the people would naturally have but little +sympathy with demands upon them for its protection. Hence the people of +the South were dependent upon keeping control of the general government +to secure the perpetuation of their favorite institution. They were +enabled to maintain this control long after the States where slavery +existed had ceased to have the controlling power, through the assistance +they received from odd men here and there throughout the Northern +States. They saw their power waning, and this led them to encroach upon +the prerogatives and independence of the Northern States by enacting +such laws as the Fugitive Slave Law. By this law every Northern man +was obliged, when properly summoned, to turn out and help apprehend +the runaway slave of a Southern man. Northern marshals became +slave-catchers, and Northern courts had to contribute to the support +and protection of the institution. + +This was a degradation which the North would not permit any longer than +until they could get the power to expunge such laws from the statute +books. Prior to the time of these encroachments the great majority of +the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long +as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not +willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of +this particular institution. + +In the early days of the country, before we had railroads, telegraphs +and steamboats--in a word, rapid transit of any sort--the States were +each almost a separate nationality. At that time the subject of slavery +caused but little or no disturbance to the public mind. But the country +grew, rapid transit was established, and trade and commerce between the +States got to be so much greater than before, that the power of the +National government became more felt and recognized and, therefore, had +to be enlisted in the cause of this institution. + +It is probably well that we had the war when we did. We are better off +now than we would have been without it, and have made more rapid +progress than we otherwise should have made. The civilized nations of +Europe have been stimulated into unusual activity, so that commerce, +trade, travel, and thorough acquaintance among people of different +nationalities, has become common; whereas, before, it was but the few +who had ever had the privilege of going beyond the limits of their own +country or who knew anything about other people. Then, too, our +republican institutions were regarded as experiments up to the breaking +out of the rebellion, and monarchical Europe generally believed that our +republic was a rope of sand that would part the moment the slightest +strain was brought upon it. Now it has shown itself capable of dealing +with one of the greatest wars that was ever made, and our people have +proven themselves to be the most formidable in war of any nationality. + +But this war was a fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of +avoiding wars in the future. + +The conduct of some of the European states during our troubles shows the +lack of conscience of communities where the responsibility does not come +upon a single individual. Seeing a nation that extended from ocean to +ocean, embracing the better part of a continent, growing as we were +growing in population, wealth and intelligence, the European nations +thought it would be well to give us a check. We might, possibly, after +a while threaten their peace, or, at least, the perpetuity of their +institutions. Hence, England was constantly finding fault with the +administration at Washington because we were not able to keep up an +effective blockade. She also joined, at first, with France and Spain in +setting up an Austrian prince upon the throne in Mexico, totally +disregarding any rights or claims that Mexico had of being treated as an +independent power. It is true they trumped up grievances as a pretext, +but they were only pretexts which can always be found when wanted. + +Mexico, in her various revolutions, had been unable to give that +protection to the subjects of foreign nations which she would have liked +to give, and some of her revolutionary leaders had forced loans from +them. Under pretence of protecting their citizens, these nations seized +upon Mexico as a foothold for establishing a European monarchy upon our +continent, thus threatening our peace at home. I, myself, regarded this +as a direct act of war against the United States by the powers engaged, +and supposed as a matter of course that the United States would treat it +as such when their hands were free to strike. I often spoke of the +matter to Mr. Lincoln and the Secretary of War, but never heard any +special views from them to enable me to judge what they thought or felt +about it. I inferred that they felt a good deal as I did, but were +unwilling to commit themselves while we had our own troubles upon our +hands. + +All of the powers except France very soon withdrew from the armed +intervention for the establishment of an Austrian prince upon the throne +of Mexico; but the governing people of these countries continued to the +close of the war to throw obstacles in our way. After the surrender of +Lee, therefore, entertaining the opinion here expressed, I sent Sheridan +with a corps to the Rio Grande to have him where he might aid Juarez in +expelling the French from Mexico. These troops got off before they +could be stopped; and went to the Rio Grande, where Sheridan distributed +them up and down the river, much to the consternation of the troops in +the quarter of Mexico bordering on that stream. This soon led to a +request from France that we should withdraw our troops from the Rio +Grande and to negotiations for the withdrawal of theirs. Finally +Bazaine was withdrawn from Mexico by order of the French Government. +From that day the empire began to totter. Mexico was then able to +maintain her independence without aid from us. + +France is the traditional ally and friend of the United States. I did +not blame France for her part in the scheme to erect a monarchy upon the +ruins of the Mexican Republic. That was the scheme of one man, an +imitator without genius or merit. He had succeeded in stealing the +government of his country, and made a change in its form against the +wishes and instincts of his people. He tried to play the part of the +first Napoleon, without the ability to sustain that role. He sought by +new conquests to add to his empire and his glory; but the signal failure +of his scheme of conquest was the precursor of his own overthrow. + +Like our own war between the States, the Franco-Prussian war was an +expensive one; but it was worth to France all it cost her people. It +was the completion of the downfall of Napoleon III. The beginning was +when he landed troops on this continent. Failing here, the prestige of +his name--all the prestige he ever had--was gone. He must achieve a +success or fall. He tried to strike down his neighbor, Prussia--and +fell. + +I never admired the character of the first Napoleon; but I recognize his +great genius. His work, too, has left its impress for good on the face +of Europe. The third Napoleon could have no claim to having done a good +or just act. + +To maintain peace in the future it is necessary to be prepared for war. +There can scarcely be a possible chance of a conflict, such as the last +one, occurring among our own people again; but, growing as we are, in +population, wealth and military power, we may become the envy of nations +which led us in all these particulars only a few years ago; and unless +we are prepared for it we may be in danger of a combined movement being +some day made to crush us out. Now, scarcely twenty years after the +war, we seem to have forgotten the lessons it taught, and are going on +as if in the greatest security, without the power to resist an invasion +by the fleets of fourth-rate European powers for a time until we could +prepare for them. + +We should have a good navy, and our sea-coast defences should be put in +the finest possible condition. Neither of these cost much when it is +considered where the money goes, and what we get in return. Money +expended in a fine navy, not only adds to our security and tends to +prevent war in the future, but is very material aid to our commerce with +foreign nations in the meantime. Money spent upon sea-coast defences is +spent among our own people, and all goes back again among the people. +The work accomplished, too, like that of the navy, gives us a feeling of +security. + +England's course towards the United States during the rebellion +exasperated the people of this country very much against the mother +country. I regretted it. England and the United States are natural +allies, and should be the best of friends. They speak one language, and +are related by blood and other ties. We together, or even either +separately, are better qualified than any other people to establish +commerce between all the nationalities of the world. + +England governs her own colonies, and particularly those embracing +the people of different races from her own, better than any other +nation. She is just to the conquered, but rigid. She makes them +self-supporting, but gives the benefit of labor to the laborer. She +does not seem to look upon the colonies as outside possessions which she +is at liberty to work for the support and aggrandizement of the home +government. + +The hostility of England to the United States during our rebellion was +not so much real as it was apparent. It was the hostility of the +leaders of one political party. I am told that there was no time during +the civil war when they were able to get up in England a demonstration +in favor of secession, while these were constantly being gotten up in +favor of the Union, or, as they called it, in favor of the North. Even +in Manchester, which suffered so fearfully by having the cotton cut off +from her mills, they had a monster demonstration in favor of the North +at the very time when their workmen were almost famishing. + +It is possible that the question of a conflict between races may come up +in the future, as did that between freedom and slavery before. The +condition of the colored man within our borders may become a source of +anxiety, to say the least. But he was brought to our shores by +compulsion, and he now should be considered as having as good a right to +remain here as any other class of our citizens. It was looking to a +settlement of this question that led me to urge the annexation of Santo +Domingo during the time I was President of the United States. + +Santo Domingo was freely offered to us, not only by the administration, +but by all the people, almost without price. The island is upon our +shores, is very fertile, and is capable of supporting fifteen millions +of people. The products of the soil are so valuable that labor in her +fields would be so compensated as to enable those who wished to go there +to quickly repay the cost of their passage. I took it that the colored +people would go there in great numbers, so as to have independent states +governed by their own race. They would still be States of the Union, +and under the protection of the General Government; but the citizens +would be almost wholly colored. + +By the war with Mexico, we had acquired, as we have seen, territory +almost equal in extent to that we already possessed. It was seen that +the volunteers of the Mexican war largely composed the pioneers to +settle up the Pacific coast country. Their numbers, however, were +scarcely sufficient to be a nucleus for the population of the important +points of the territory acquired by that war. After our rebellion, when +so many young men were at liberty to return to their homes, they found +they were not satisfied with the farm, the store, or the work-shop of +the villages, but wanted larger fields. The mines of the mountains +first attracted them; but afterwards they found that rich valleys and +productive grazing and farming lands were there. This territory, the +geography of which was not known to us at the close of the rebellion, is +now as well mapped as any portion of our country. Railroads traverse it +in every direction, north, south, east, and west. The mines are worked. +The high lands are used for grazing purposes, and rich agricultural +lands are found in many of the valleys. This is the work of the +volunteer. It is probable that the Indians would have had control of +these lands for a century yet but for the war. We must conclude, +therefore, that wars are not always evils unmixed with some good. + +Prior to the rebellion the great mass of the people were satisfied to +remain near the scenes of their birth. In fact an immense majority of +the whole people did not feel secure against coming to want should they +move among entire strangers. So much was the country divided into small +communities that localized idioms had grown up, so that you could almost +tell what section a person was from by hearing him speak. Before, new +territories were settled by a "class"; people who shunned contact with +others; people who, when the country began to settle up around them, +would push out farther from civilization. Their guns furnished meat, +and the cultivation of a very limited amount of the soil, their bread +and vegetables. All the streams abounded with fish. Trapping would +furnish pelts to be brought into the States once a year, to pay for +necessary articles which they could not raise--powder, lead, whiskey, +tobacco and some store goods. Occasionally some little articles of +luxury would enter into these purchases--a quarter of a pound of tea, +two or three pounds of coffee, more of sugar, some playing cards, and if +anything was left over of the proceeds of the sale, more whiskey. + +Little was known of the topography of the country beyond the settlements +of these frontiersmen. This is all changed now. The war begot a spirit +of independence and enterprise. The feeling now is, that a youth must +cut loose from his old surroundings to enable him to get up in the +world. There is now such a commingling of the people that particular +idioms and pronunciation are no longer localized to any great extent; +the country has filled up "from the centre all around to the sea"; +railroads connect the two oceans and all parts of the interior; maps, +nearly perfect, of every part of the country are now furnished the +student of geography. + +The war has made us a nation of great power and intelligence. We have +but little to do to preserve peace, happiness and prosperity at home, +and the respect of other nations. Our experience ought to teach us the +necessity of the first; our power secures the latter. + +I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great +harmony between the Federal and Confederate. I cannot stay to be a +living witness to the correctness of this prophecy; but I feel it within +me that it is to be so. The universally kind feeling expressed for me +at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last, seemed +to me the beginning of the answer to "Let us have peace." + +The expression of these kindly feelings were not restricted to a section +of the country, nor to a division of the people. They came from +individual citizens of all nationalities; from all denominations--the +Protestant, the Catholic, and the Jew; and from the various societies of +the land--scientific, educational, religious or otherwise. Politics did +not enter into the matter at all. + +I am not egotist enough to suppose all this significance should be given +because I was the object of it. But the war between the States was a +very bloody and a very costly war. One side or the other had to yield +principles they deemed dearer than life before it could be brought to an +end. I commanded the whole of the mighty host engaged on the victorious +side. I was, no matter whether deservedly so or not, a representative +of that side of the controversy. It is a significant and gratifying +fact that Confederates should have joined heartily in this spontaneous +move. I hope the good feeling inaugurated may continue to the end. + + + +APPENDIX. + +REPORT OF LIEUTENANT-GENERAL U. S. GRANT, OF THE UNITED STATES ARMIES +1864-65. + +HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES, WASHINGTON, D. C., July 22, +1865. + +HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War. + +SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of the operations +of the Armies of the United States from the date of my appointment to +command the same. + +From an early period in the rebellion I had been impressed with the idea +that active and continuous operations of all the troops that could be +brought into the field, regardless of season and weather, were necessary +to a speedy termination of the war. The resources of the enemy and his +numerical strength were far inferior to ours; but as an offset to this, +we had a vast territory, with a population hostile to the government, to +garrison, and long lines of river and railroad communications to +protect, to enable us to supply the operating armies. + +The armies in the East and West acted independently and without concert, +like a balky team, no two ever pulling together, enabling the enemy to +use to great advantage his interior lines of communication for +transporting troops from East to West, reinforcing the army most +vigorously pressed, and to furlough large numbers, during seasons of +inactivity on our part, to go to their homes and do the work of +producing, for the support of their armies. It was a question whether +our numerical strength and resources were not more than balanced by +these disadvantages and the enemy's superior position. + +From the first, I was firm in the conviction that no peace could be had +that would be stable and conducive to the happiness of the people, both +North and South, until the military power of the rebellion was entirely +broken. + +I therefore determined, first, to use the greatest number of troops +practicable against the armed force of the enemy; preventing him from +using the same force at different seasons against first one and then +another of our armies, and the possibility of repose for refitting and +producing necessary supplies for carrying on resistance. Second, to +hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his +resources, until by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be +nothing left to him but an equal submission with the loyal section of +our common country to the constitution and laws of the land. + +These views have been kept constantly in mind, and orders given and +campaigns made to carry them out. Whether they might have been better +in conception and execution is for the people, who mourn the loss of +friends fallen, and who have to pay the pecuniary cost, to say. All I +can say is, that what I have done has been done conscientiously, to the +best of my ability, and in what I conceived to be for the best interests +of the whole country. + +At the date when this report begins, the situation of the contending +forces was about as follows: The Mississippi River was strongly +garrisoned by Federal troops, from St. Louis, Missouri, to its mouth. +The line of the Arkansas was also held, thus giving us armed possession +of all west of the Mississippi, north of that stream. A few points in +Southern Louisiana, not remote from the river, were held by us, together +with a small garrison at and near the mouth of the Rio Grande. All the +balance of the vast territory of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas was in +the almost undisputed possession of the enemy, with an army of probably +not less than eighty thousand effective men, that could have been +brought into the field had there been sufficient opposition to have +brought them out. The let-alone policy had demoralized this force so +that probably but little more than one-half of it was ever present in +garrison at any one time. But the one-half, or forty thousand men, with +the bands of guerillas scattered through Missouri, Arkansas, and along +the Mississippi River, and the disloyal character of much of the +population, compelled the use of a large number of troops to keep +navigation open on the river, and to protect the loyal people to the +west of it. To the east of the Mississippi we held substantially with +the line of the Tennessee and Holston rivers, running eastward to +include nearly all of the State of Tennessee. South of Chattanooga, a +small foothold had been obtained in Georgia, sufficient to protect East +Tennessee from incursions from the enemy's force at Dalton, Georgia. +West Virginia was substantially within our lines. Virginia, with the +exception of the northern border, the Potomac River, a small area about +the mouth of James River, covered by the troops at Norfolk and Fort +Monroe, and the territory covered by the Army of the Potomac lying along +the Rapidan, was in the possession of the enemy. Along the sea-coast +footholds had been obtained at Plymouth, Washington, and New Bern, in +North Carolina; Beaufort, Folly and Morris Islands, Hilton Head, Fort +Pulaski, and Port Royal, in South Carolina; Fernandina and St. +Augustine, in Florida. Key West and Pensacola were also in our +possession, while all the important ports were blockaded by the navy. +The accompanying map, a copy of which was sent to General Sherman and +other commanders in March, 1864, shows by red lines the territory +occupied by us at the beginning of the rebellion, and at the opening of +the campaign of 1864, while those in blue are the lines which it was +proposed to occupy. + +Behind the Union lines there were many bands of guerillas and a large +population disloyal to the government, making it necessary to guard +every foot of road or river used in supplying our armies. In the South, +a reign of military despotism prevailed, which made every man and boy +capable of bearing arms a soldier; and those who could not bear arms in +the field acted as provosts for collecting deserters and returning them. +This enabled the enemy to bring almost his entire strength into the +field. + +The enemy had concentrated the bulk of his forces east of the +Mississippi into two armies, commanded by Generals R. E. Lee and J. E. +Johnston, his ablest and best generals. The army commanded by Lee +occupied the south bank of the Rapidan, extending from Mine Run +westward, strongly intrenched, covering and defending Richmond, the +rebel capital, against the Army of the Potomac. The army under Johnston +occupied a strongly intrenched position at Dalton, Georgia, covering and +defending Atlanta, Georgia, a place of great importance as a railroad +centre, against the armies under Major-General W. T. Sherman. In +addition to these armies he had a large cavalry force under Forrest, in +North-east Mississippi; a considerable force, of all arms, in the +Shenandoah Valley, and in the western part of Virginia and extreme +eastern part of Tennessee; and also confronting our sea-coast garrisons, +and holding blockaded ports where we had no foothold upon land. + +These two armies, and the cities covered and defended by them, were the +main objective points of the campaign. + +Major-General W. T. Sherman, who was appointed to the command of the +Military Division of the Mississippi, embracing all the armies and +territory east of the Mississippi River to the Alleghanies and the +Department of Arkansas, west of the Mississippi, had the immediate +command of the armies operating against Johnston. + +Major-General George G. Meade had the immediate command of the Army of +the Potomac, from where I exercised general supervision of the movements +of all our armies. + +General Sherman was instructed to move against Johnston's army, to break +it up, and to go into the interior of the enemy's country as far as he +could, inflicting all the damage he could upon their war resources. If +the enemy in his front showed signs of joining Lee, to follow him up to +the full extent of his ability, while I would prevent the concentration +of Lee upon him, if it was in the power of the Army of the Potomac to do +so. More specific written instructions were not given, for the reason +that I had talked over with him the plans of the campaign, and was +satisfied that he understood them and would execute them to the fullest +extent possible. + +Major-General N. P. Banks, then on an expedition up Red River against +Shreveport, Louisiana (which had been organized previous to my +appointment to command), was notified by me on the 15th of March, of the +importance it was that Shreveport should be taken at the earliest +possible day, and that if he found that the taking of it would occupy +from ten to fifteen days' more time than General Sherman had given his +troops to be absent from their command, he would send them back at the +time specified by General Sherman, even if it led to the abandonment of +the main object of the Red River expedition, for this force was +necessary to movements east of the Mississippi; that should his +expedition prove successful, he would hold Shreveport and the Red River +with such force as he might deem necessary, and return the balance of +his troops to the neighborhood of New Orleans, commencing no move for +the further acquisition of territory, unless it was to make that then +held by him more easily held; that it might be a part of the spring +campaign to move against Mobile; that it certainly would be, if troops +enough could be obtained to make it without embarrassing other +movements; that New Orleans would be the point of departure for such an +expedition; also, that I had directed General Steele to make a real move +from Arkansas, as suggested by him (General Banks), instead of a +demonstration, as Steele thought advisable. + +On the 31st of March, in addition to the foregoing notification and +directions, he was instructed as follows: + + +"1st. If successful in your expedition against Shreveport, that you +turn over the defence of the Red River to General Steele and the navy. + +"2d. That you abandon Texas entirely, with the exception of your hold +upon the Rio Grande. This can be held with four thousand men, if they +will turn their attention immediately to fortifying their positions. At +least one-half of the force required for this service might be taken +from the colored troops. + +"3d. By properly fortifying on the Mississippi River, the force to +guard it from Port Hudson to New Orleans can be reduced to ten thousand +men, if not to a less number. Six thousand more would then hold all the +rest of the territory necessary to hold until active operations can +again be resumed west of the river. According to your last return, this +would give you a force of over thirty thousand effective men with which +to move against Mobile. To this I expect to add five thousand men from +Missouri. If however, you think the force here stated too small to hold +the territory regarded as necessary to hold possession of, I would say +concentrate at least twenty-five thousand men of your present command +for operations against Mobile. With these and such additions as I can +give you from elsewhere, lose no time in making a demonstration, to be +followed by an attack upon Mobile. Two or more iron-clads will be +ordered to report to Admiral Farragut. This gives him a strong naval +fleet with which to co-operate. You can make your own arrangements with +the admiral for his co-operation, and select your own line of approach. +My own idea of the matter is that Pascagoula should be your base; but, +from your long service in the Gulf Department, you will know best about +the matter. It is intended that your movements shall be co-operative +with movements elsewhere, and you cannot now start too soon. All I +would now add is, that you commence the concentration of your forces at +once. Preserve a profound secrecy of what you intend doing, and start +at the earliest possible moment. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL N. P. BANKS." + + +Major-General Meade was instructed that Lee's army would be his +objective point; that wherever Lee went he would go also. For his +movement two plans presented themselves: One to cross the Rapidan below +Lee, moving by his right flank; the other above, moving by his left. +Each presented advantages over the other, with corresponding objections. +By crossing above, Lee would be cut off from all chance of ignoring +Richmond or going north on a raid. But if we took this route, all we +did would have to be done whilst the rations we started with held out; +besides, it separated us from Butler, so that he could not be directed +how to cooperate. If we took the other route, Brandy Station could be +used as a base of supplies until another was secured on the York or +James rivers. Of these, however, it was decided to take the lower +route. + +The following letter of instruction was addressed to Major-General B. F. +Butler: + + +"FORT MONROE, VIRGINIA, April 2, 1864. + +"GENERAL:-In the spring campaign, which it is desirable shall commence +at as early a day as practicable, it is proposed to have cooperative +action of all the armies in the field, as far as this object can be +accomplished. + +"It will not be possible to unite our armies into two or three large +ones to act as so many units, owing to the absolute necessity of holding +on to the territory already taken from the enemy. But, generally +speaking, concentration can be practically effected by armies moving to +the interior of the enemy's country from the territory they have to +guard. By such movement, they interpose themselves between the enemy +and the country to be guarded, thereby reducing the number necessary to +guard important points, or at least occupy the attention of a part of +the enemy's force, if no greater object is gained. Lee's army and +Richmond being the greater objects towards which our attention must be +directed in the next campaign, it is desirable to unite all the force we +can against them. The necessity of covering Washington with the Army of +the Potomac, and of covering your department with your army, makes it +impossible to unite these forces at the beginning of any move. I +propose, therefore, what comes nearest this of anything that seems +practicable: The Army of the Potomac will act from its present base, +Lee's army being the objective point. You will collect all the forces +from your command that can be spared from garrison duty--I should say +not less than twenty thousand effective men--to operate on the south +side of James River, Richmond being your objective point. To the force +you already have will be added about ten thousand men from South +Carolina, under Major-General Gillmore, who will command them in person. +Major-General W. F. Smith is ordered to report to you, to command the +troops sent into the field from your own department. + +"General Gillmore will be ordered to report to you at Fortress Monroe, +with all the troops on transports, by the 18th instant, or as soon +thereafter as practicable. Should you not receive notice by that time +to move, you will make such disposition of them and your other forces as +you may deem best calculated to deceive the enemy as to the real move to +be made. + +"When you are notified to move, take City Point with as much force as +possible. Fortify, or rather intrench, at once, and concentrate all +your troops for the field there as rapidly as you can. From City Point +directions cannot be given at this time for your further movements. + +"The fact that has already been stated--that is, that Richmond is to be +your objective point, and that there is to be co-operation between your +force and the Army of the Potomac--must be your guide. This indicates +the necessity of your holding close to the south bank of the James River +as you advance. Then, should the enemy be forced into his intrenchments +in Richmond, the Army of the Potomac would follow, and by means of +transports the two armies would become a unit. + +"All the minor details of your advance are left entirely to your +direction. If, however, you think it practicable to use your cavalry +south of you, so as to cut the railroad about Hicksford, about the time +of the general advance, it would be of immense advantage. + +"You will please forward for my information, at the earliest practicable +day, all orders, details, and instructions you may give for the +execution of this order. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL B. F. BUTLER." + + +On the 16th these instructions were substantially reiterated. On the +19th, in order to secure full co-operation between his army and that of +General Meade, he was informed that I expected him to move from Fort +Monroe the same day that General Meade moved from Culpeper. The exact +time I was to telegraph him as soon as it was fixed, and that it would +not be earlier than the 27th of April; that it was my intention to fight +Lee between Culpeper and Richmond, if he would stand. Should he, +however, fall back into Richmond, I would follow up and make a junction +with his (General Butler's) army on the James River; that, could I be +certain he would be able to invest Richmond on the south side, so as to +have his left resting on the James, above the city, I would form the +junction there; that circumstances might make this course advisable +anyhow; that he should use every exertion to secure footing as far up +the south side of the river as he could, and as soon as possible after +the receipt of orders to move; that if he could not carry the city, he +should at least detain as large a force there as possible. + +In co-operation with the main movements against Lee and Johnston, I was +desirous of using all other troops necessarily kept in departments +remote from the fields of immediate operations, and also those kept in +the background for the protection of our extended lines between the +loyal States and the armies operating against them. + +A very considerable force, under command of Major-General Sigel, was so +held for the protection of West Virginia, and the frontiers of Maryland +and Pennsylvania. Whilst these troops could not be withdrawn to distant +fields without exposing the North to invasion by comparatively small +bodies of the enemy, they could act directly to their front, and give +better protection than if lying idle in garrison. By such a movement +they would either compel the enemy to detach largely for the protection +of his supplies and lines of communication, or he would lose them. +General Sigel was therefore directed to organize all his available force +into two expeditions, to move from Beverly and Charleston, under command +of Generals Ord and Crook, against the East Tennessee and Virginia +Railroad. Subsequently, General Ord having been relieved at his own +request, General Sigel was instructed at his own suggestion, to give up +the expedition by Beverly, and to form two columns, one under General +Crook, on the Kanawha, numbering about ten thousand men, and one on the +Shenandoah, numbering about seven thousand men. The one on the +Shenandoah to assemble between Cumberland and the Shenandoah, and the +infantry and artillery advanced to Cedar Creek with such cavalry as +could be made available at the moment, to threaten the enemy in the +Shenandoah Valley, and advance as far as possible; while General Crook +would take possession of Lewisburg with part of his force and move down +the Tennessee Railroad, doing as much damage as he could, destroying the +New River Bridge and the salt-works, at Saltville, Va. + +Owing to the weather and bad condition of the roads, operations were +delayed until the 1st of May, when, everything being in readiness and +the roads favorable, orders were given for a general movement of all the +armies not later than the 4th of May. + +My first object being to break the military power of the rebellion, and +capture the enemy's important strongholds, made me desirous that General +Butler should succeed in his movement against Richmond, as that would +tend more than anything else, unless it were the capture of Lee's army, +to accomplish this desired result in the East. If he failed, it was my +determination, by hard fighting, either to compel Lee to retreat, or to +so cripple him that he could not detach a large force to go north, and +still retain enough for the defence of Richmond. It was well +understood, by both Generals Butler and Meade, before starting on the +campaign, that it was my intention to put both their armies south of the +James River, in case of failure to destroy Lee without it. + +Before giving General Butler his instructions, I visited him at Fort +Monroe, and in conversation pointed out the apparent importance of +getting possession of Petersburg, and destroying railroad communication +as far south as possible. Believing, however, in the practicability of +capturing Richmond unless it was reinforced, I made that the objective +point of his operations. As the Army of the Potomac was to move +simultaneously with him, Lee could not detach from his army with safety, +and the enemy did not have troops elsewhere to bring to the defence of +the city in time to meet a rapid movement from the north of James River. + +I may here state that, commanding all the armies as I did, I tried, as +far as possible, to leave General Meade in independent command of the +Army of the Potomac. My instructions for that army were all through +him, and were general in their nature, leaving all the details and the +execution to him. The campaigns that followed proved him to be the +right man in the right place. His commanding always in the presence of +an officer superior to him in rank, has drawn from him much of that +public attention that his zeal and ability entitle him to, and which he +would otherwise have received. + +The movement of the Army of the Potomac commenced early on the morning +of the 4th of May, under the immediate direction and orders of +Major-General Meade, pursuant to instructions. Before night, the whole +army was across the Rapidan (the fifth and sixth corps crossing at +Germania Ford, and the second corps at Ely's Ford, the cavalry, under +Major-General Sheridan, moving in advance,) with the greater part of its +trains, numbering about four thousand wagons, meeting with but slight +opposition. The average distance travelled by the troops that day was +about twelve miles. This I regarded as a great success, and it removed +from my mind the most serious apprehensions I had entertained, that of +crossing the river in the face of an active, large, well-appointed, and +ably commanded army, and how so large a train was to be carried through +a hostile country, and protected. Early on the 5th, the advance corps +(the fifth, Major-General G. K. Warren commanding) met and engaged the +enemy outside his intrenchments near Mine Run. The battle raged +furiously all day, the whole army being brought into the fight as fast +as the corps could be got upon the field, which, considering the density +of the forest and narrowness of the roads, was done with commendable +promptness. + +General Burnside, with the ninth corps, was, at the time the Army of the +Potomac moved, left with the bulk of his corps at the crossing of the +Rappahannock River and Alexandria Railroad, holding the road back to +Bull Run, with instructions not to move until he received notice that a +crossing of the Rapidan was secured, but to move promptly as soon as +such notice was received. This crossing he was apprised of on the +afternoon of the 4th. By six o'clock of the morning of the 6th he was +leading his corps into action near the Wilderness Tavern, some of his +troops having marched a distance of over thirty miles, crossing both the +Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers. Considering that a large proportion, +probably two-thirds of his command, was composed of new troops, +unaccustomed to marches, and carrying the accoutrements of a soldier, +this was a remarkable march. + +The battle of the Wilderness was renewed by us at five o'clock on the +morning of the 6th, and continued with unabated fury until darkness set +in, each army holding substantially the same position that they had on +the evening of the 5th. After dark, the enemy made a feeble attempt to +turn our right flank, capturing several hundred prisoners and creating +considerable confusion. But the promptness of General Sedgwick, who was +personally present and commanded that part of our line, soon reformed it +and restored order. On the morning of the 7th, reconnoissances showed +that the enemy had fallen behind his intrenched lines, with pickets to +the front, covering a part of the battle-field. From this it was +evident to my mind that the two days' fighting had satisfied him of his +inability to further maintain the contest in the open field, +notwithstanding his advantage of position, and that he would wait an +attack behind his works. I therefore determined to push on and put my +whole force between him and Richmond; and orders were at once issued for +a movement by his right flank. On the night of the 7th, the march was +commenced towards Spottsylvania Court House, the fifth corps moving on +the most direct road. But the enemy having become apprised of our +movement, and having the shorter line, was enabled to reach there first. +On the 8th, General Warren met a force of the enemy, which had been sent +out to oppose and delay his advance, to gain time to fortify the line +taken up at Spottsylvania. This force was steadily driven back on the +main force, within the recently constructed works, after considerable +fighting, resulting in severe loss to both sides. On the morning of the +9th, General Sheridan started on a raid against the enemy's lines of +communication with Richmond. The 9th, 10th, and 11th were spent in +manoeuvring and fighting, without decisive results. Among the killed on +the 9th was that able and distinguished soldier Major-General John +Sedgwick, commanding the sixth army corps. Major-General H. G. Wright +succeeded him in command. Early on the morning of the 12th a general +attack was made on the enemy in position. The second corps, +Major-General Hancock commanding, carried a salient of his line, +capturing most of Johnson's division of Ewell's corps and twenty pieces +of artillery. But the resistance was so obstinate that the advantage +gained did not prove decisive. The 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and +18th, were consumed in manoeuvring and awaiting the arrival of +reinforcements from Washington. Deeming it impracticable to make any +further attack upon the enemy at Spottsylvania Court House, orders were +issued on the 15th with a view to a movement to the North Anna, to +commence at twelve o'clock on the night of the 19th. Late in the +afternoon of the 19th, Ewell's corps came out of its works on our +extreme right flank; but the attack was promptly repulsed, with heavy +loss. This delayed the movement to the North Anna until the night of the +21st, when it was commenced. But the enemy again, having the shorter +line, and being in possession of the main roads, was enabled to reach +the North Anna in advance of us, and took position behind it. The fifth +corps reached the North Anna on the afternoon of the 23d, closely +followed by the sixth corps. The second and ninth corps got up about the +same time, the second holding the railroad bridge, and the ninth lying +between that and Jericho Ford. General Warren effected a crossing the +same afternoon, and got a position without much opposition. Soon after +getting into position he was violently attacked, but repulsed the enemy +with great slaughter. On the 25th, General Sheridan rejoined the Army +of the Potomac from the raid on which he started from Spottsylvania, +having destroyed the depots at Beaver Dam and Ashland stations, four +trains of cars, large supplies of rations, and many miles of +railroad-track; recaptured about four hundred of our men on their way to +Richmond as prisoners of war; met and defeated the enemy's cavalry at +Yellow Tavern; carried the first line of works around Richmond (but +finding the second line too strong to be carried by assault), recrossed +to the north bank of the Chickahominy at Meadow Bridge under heavy fire, +and moved by a detour to Haxall's Landing, on the James River, where he +communicated with General Butler. This raid had the effect of drawing +off the whole of the enemy's cavalry force, making it comparatively easy +to guard our trains. + +General Butler moved his main force up the James River, in pursuance of +instructions, on the 4th of May, General Gillmore having joined him with +the tenth corps. At the same time he sent a force of one thousand eight +hundred cavalry, by way of West Point, to form a junction with him +wherever he might get a foothold, and a force of three thousand cavalry, +under General Kautz, from Suffolk, to operate against the road south of +Petersburg and Richmond. On the 5th, he occupied, without opposition, +both City Point and Bermuda Hundred, his movement being a complete +surprise. On the 6th, he was in position with his main army, and +commenced intrenching. On the 7th he made a reconnoissance against the +Petersburg and Richmond Railroad, destroying a portion of it after some +fighting. On the 9th he telegraphed as follows: + + +"HEADQUARTERS, NEAR BERMUDA LANDING, May 9, 1864. + +"HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War. + +"Our operations may be summed up in a few words. With one thousand +seven hundred cavalry we have advanced up the Peninsula, forced the +Chickahominy, and have safely, brought them to their present position. +These were colored cavalry, and are now holding our advance pickets +towards Richmond. + +"General Kautz, with three thousand cavalry from Suffolk, on the same +day with our movement up James River, forced the Black Water, burned the +railroad bridge at Stony Creek, below Petersburg, cutting into +Beauregard's force at that point. + +"We have landed here, intrenched ourselves, destroyed many miles of +railroad, and got a position which, with proper supplies, we can hold +out against the whole of Lee's army. I have ordered up the supplies. + +"Beauregard, with a large portion of his force, was left south by the +cutting of the railroads by Kautz. That portion which reached +Petersburg under Hill I have whipped to-day, killing and wounding many, +and taking many prisoners, after a severe and well-contested fight. + +"General Grant will not be troubled with any further reinforcements to +Lee from Beauregard's force. + +"BENJ. F. BUTLER, Major-General." + + +On the evening of the 13th and morning of the 14th he carried a portion +of the enemy's first line of defences at Drury's Bluff, or Fort Darling, +with small loss. The time thus consumed from the 6th lost to us the +benefit of the surprise and capture of Richmond and Petersburg, +enabling, as it did, Beauregard to collect his loose forces in North and +South Carolina, and bring them to the defence of those places. On the +16th, the enemy attacked General Butler in his position in front of +Drury's Bluff. He was forced back, or drew back, into his intrenchments +between the forks of the James and Appomattox rivers, the enemy +intrenching strongly in his front, thus covering his railroads, the +city, and all that was valuable to him. His army, therefore, though in +a position of great security, was as completely shut off from further +operations directly against Richmond as if it had been in a bottle +strongly corked. It required but a comparatively small force of the +enemy to hold it there. + +On the 12th, General Kautz, with his cavalry, was started on a raid +against the Danville Railroad, which he struck at Coalfield, Powhatan, +and Chula Stations, destroying them, the railroad-track, two freight +trains, and one locomotive, together with large quantities of commissary +and other stores; thence, crossing to the South Side Road, struck it at +Wilson's, Wellsville, and Black's and White's Stations, destroying the +road and station-houses; thence he proceeded to City Point, which he +reached on the 18th. + +On the 19th of April, and prior to the movement of General Butler, the +enemy, with a land force under General Hoke and an iron-clad ram, +attacked Plymouth, N. C., commanded by General H. W. Wessells, and our +gunboats there, and, after severe fighting, the place was carried by +assault, and the entire garrison and armament captured. The gunboat +Smithfield was sunk, and the Miami disabled. + +The army sent to operate against Richmond having hermetically sealed +itself up at Bermuda Hundred, the enemy was enabled to bring the most, +if not all, the reinforcements brought from the south by Beauregard +against the Army of the Potomac. In addition to this reinforcement, a +very considerable one, probably not less than fifteen thousand men, was +obtained by calling in the scattered troops under Breckinridge from the +western part of Virginia. + +The position of Bermuda Hundred was as easy to defend as it was +difficult to operate from against the enemy. I determined, therefore, +to bring from it all available forces, leaving enough only to secure +what had been gained; and accordingly, on the 22d, I directed that they +be sent forward, under command of Major-General W. F. Smith, to join the +Army of the Potomac. + +On the 24th of May, the 9th army corps, commanded by Major-General A. E. +Burnside, was assigned to the Army of the Potomac, and from this time +forward constituted a portion of Major-General Meade's command. + +Finding the enemy's position on the North Anna stronger than either of +his previous ones, I withdrew on the night of the 26th to the north bank +of the North Anna, and moved via Hanover Town to turn the enemy's +position by his right. + +Generals Torbert's and Merritt's divisions of cavalry, under Sheridan, +and the 6th corps, led the advance, crossed the Pamunkey River at +Hanover Town, after considerable fighting, and on the 28th the two +divisions of cavalry had a severe, but successful engagement with the +enemy at Hawes's Shop. On the 29th and 30th we advanced, with heavy +skirmishing, to the Hanover Court House and Cold Harbor Road, and +developed the enemy's position north of the Chickahominy. Late on the +evening of the last day the enemy came out and attacked our left, but +was repulsed with very considerable loss. An attack was immediately +ordered by General Meade, along his whole line, which resulted in +driving the enemy from a part of his intrenched skirmish line. + +On the 31st, General Wilson's division of cavalry destroyed the railroad +bridges over the South Anna River, after defeating the enemy's cavalry. +General Sheridan, on the same day, reached Cold Harbor, and held it +until relieved by the 6th corps and General Smith's command, which had +just arrived, via White House, from General Butler's army. + +On the 1st day of June an attack was made at five P.M. by the 6th corps +and the troops under General Smith, the other corps being held in +readiness to advance on the receipt of orders. This resulted in our +carrying and holding the enemy's first line of works in front of the +right of the 6th corps, and in front of General Smith. During the +attack the enemy made repeated assaults on each of the corps not engaged +in the main attack, but was repulsed with heavy loss in every instance. +That night he made several assaults to regain what he had lost in the +day, but failed. The 2d was spent in getting troops into position for +an attack on the 3d. On the 3d of June we again assaulted the enemy's +works, in the hope of driving him from his position. In this attempt +our loss was heavy, while that of the enemy, I have reason to believe, +was comparatively light. It was the only general attack made from the +Rapidan to the James which did not inflict upon the enemy losses to +compensate for our own losses. I would not be understood as saying that +all previous attacks resulted in victories to our arms, or accomplished +as much as I had hoped from them; but they inflicted upon the enemy +severe losses, which tended, in the end, to the complete overthrow of +the rebellion. + +From the proximity of the enemy to his defences around Richmond, it was +impossible, by any flank movement, to interpose between him and the +city. I was still in a condition to either move by his left flank, and +invest Richmond from the north side, or continue my move by his right +flank to the south side of the James. While the former might have been +better as a covering for Washington, yet a full survey of all the ground +satisfied me that it would be impracticable to hold a line north and +east of Richmond that would protect the Fredericksburg Railroad, a long, +vulnerable line, which would exhaust much of our strength to guard, and +that would have to be protected to supply the army, and would leave open +to the enemy all his lines of communication on the south side of the +James. My idea, from the start, had been to beat Lee's army north of +Richmond, if possible. Then, after destroying his lines of +communication north of the James River, to transfer the army to the +south side, and besiege Lee in Richmond, or follow him south if he +should retreat. After the battle of the Wilderness, it was evident that +the enemy deemed it of the first importance to run no risks with the +army he then had. He acted purely on the defensive, behind breastworks, +or feebly on the offensive immediately in front of them, and where, in +case of repulse, he could easily retire behind them. Without a greater +sacrifice of life than I was willing to make, all could not be +accomplished that I had designed north of Richmond. I therefore +determined to continue to hold substantially the ground we then +occupied, taking advantage of any favorable circumstances that might +present themselves, until the cavalry could be sent to Charlottesville +and Gordonsville to effectually break up the railroad connection between +Richmond and the Shenandoah Valley and Lynchburg; and when the cavalry +got well off, to move the army to the south side of the James River, by +the enemy's right flank, where I felt I could cut off all his sources of +supply, except by the canal. + +On the 7th, two divisions of cavalry, under General Sheridan, got off on +the expedition against the Virginia Central Railroad, with instructions +to Hunter, whom I hoped he would meet near Charlottesville, to join his +forces to Sheridan's, and after the work laid out for them was +thoroughly done, to join the Army of the Potomac by the route laid down +in Sheridan's instructions. + +On the 10th of June, General Butler sent a force of infantry, under +General Gillmore, and of cavalry under General Kautz, to capture +Petersburg, if possible, and destroy the railroad and common bridges +across the Appomattox. The cavalry carried the works on the south side, +and penetrated well in towards the town, but were forced to retire. +General Gillmore, finding the works which he approached very strong, and +deeming an assault impracticable, returned to Bermuda Hundred without +attempting one. + +Attaching great importance to the possession of Petersburg, I sent back +to Bermuda Hundred and City Point, General Smith's command by water, via +the White House, to reach there in advance of the Army of the Potomac. +This was for the express purpose of securing Petersburg before the +enemy, becoming aware of our intention, could reinforce the place. + +The movement from Cold Harbor commenced after dark on the evening of the +12th. One division of cavalry, under General Wilson, and the 5th corps, +crossed the Chickahominy at Long Bridge, and moved out to White Oak +Swamp, to cover the crossings of the other corps. The advance corps +reached James River, at Wilcox's Landing and Charles City Court House, +on the night of the 13th. + +During three long years the Armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia +had been confronting each other. In that time they had fought more +desperate battles than it probably ever before fell to the lot of two +armies to fight, without materially changing the vantage ground of +either. The Southern press and people, with more shrewdness than was +displayed in the North, finding that they had failed to capture +Washington and march on to New York, as they had boasted they would do, +assumed that they only defended their Capital and Southern territory. +Hence, Antietam, Gettysburg, and all the other battles that had been +fought, were by them set down as failures on our part, and victories for +them. Their army believed this. It produced a morale which could only +be overcome by desperate and continuous hard fighting. The battles of +the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna and Cold Harbor, bloody and +terrible as they were on our side, were even more damaging to the enemy, +and so crippled him as to make him wary ever after of taking the +offensive. His losses in men were probably not so great, owing to the +fact that we were, save in the Wilderness, almost invariably the +attacking party; and when he did attack, it was in the open field. The +details of these battles, which for endurance and bravery on the part of +the soldiery, have rarely been surpassed, are given in the report of +Major-General Meade, and the subordinate reports accompanying it. + +During the campaign of forty-three days, from the Rapidan to the James +River, the army had to be supplied from an ever-shifting base, by +wagons, over narrow roads, through a densely wooded country, with a lack +of wharves at each new base from which to conveniently discharge +vessels. Too much credit cannot, therefore, be awarded to the +quartermaster and commissary departments for the zeal and efficiency +displayed by them. Under the general supervision of the chief +quartermaster, Brigadier-General R. Ingalls, the trains were made to +occupy all the available roads between the army and our water-base, and +but little difficulty was experienced in protecting them. + +The movement in the Kanawha and Shenandoah valleys, under General Sigel, +commenced on the 1st of May. General Crook, who had the immediate +command of the Kanawha expedition, divided his forces into two columns, +giving one, composed of cavalry, to General Averell. They crossed the +mountains by separate routes. Averell struck the Tennessee and Virginia +Railroad, near Wytheville, on the 10th, and proceeding to New River and +Christiansburg, destroyed the road, several important bridges and +depots, including New River Bridge, forming a junction with Crook at +Union on the 15th. General Sigel moved up the Shenandoah Valley, met +the enemy at New Market on the 15th, and, after a severe engagement, was +defeated with heavy loss, and retired behind Cedar Creek. Not regarding +the operations of General Sigel as satisfactory, I asked his removal +from command, and Major-General Hunter appointed to supersede him. His +instructions were embraced in the following dispatches to Major-General +H. W. Halleck, chief of staff of the army: + + +"NEAR SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE, VA. "May 20, 1864. + +* * * * * * * "The enemy are +evidently relying for supplies greatly on such as are brought over the +branch road running through Staunton. On the whole, therefore, I think +it would be better for General Hunter to move in that direction; reach +Staunton and Gordonsville or Charlottesville, if he does not meet too +much opposition. If he can hold at bay a force equal to his own, he +will be doing good service. * * * + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL H. W. HALLECK." + + +"JERICHO FORD, VA., May 25, 1864. + +"If Hunter can possibly get to Charlottesville and Lynchburg, he should +do so, living on the country. The railroads and canal should be +destroyed beyond possibility of repairs for weeks. Completing this, he +could find his way back to his original base, or from about Gordonsville +join this army. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL H. W. HALLECK." + + +General Hunter immediately took up the offensive, and, moving up the +Shenandoah Valley, met the enemy on the 5th of June at Piedmont, and, +after a battle of ten hours, routed and defeated him, capturing on the +field of battle one thousand five hundred men, three pieces of +artillery, and three hundred stand of small arms. On the 8th of the +same month he formed a junction with Crook and Averell at Staunton, from +which place he moved direct on Lynchburg, via Lexington, which place he +reached and invested on the 16th day of June. Up to this time he was +very successful; and but for the difficulty of taking with him +sufficient ordnance stores over so long a march, through a hostile +country, he would, no doubt, have captured that, to the enemy important, +point. The destruction of the enemy's supplies and manufactories was +very great. To meet this movement under General Hunter, General Lee +sent a force, perhaps equal to a corps, a part of which reached +Lynchburg a short time before Hunter. After some skirmishing on the +17th and 18th, General Hunter, owing to a want of ammunition to give +battle, retired from before the place. Unfortunately, this want of +ammunition left him no choice of route for his return but by way of +Kanawha. This lost to us the use of his troops for several weeks from +the defence of the North. + +Had General Hunter moved by way of Charlottesville, instead of +Lexington, as his instructions contemplated, he would have been in a +position to have covered the Shenandoah Valley against the enemy, should +the force he met have seemed to endanger it. If it did not, he would +have been within easy distance of the James River Canal, on the main +line of communication between Lynchburg and the force sent for its +defence. I have never taken exception to the operations of General +Hunter, and am not now disposed to find fault with him, for I have no +doubt he acted within what he conceived to be the spirit of his +instructions and the interests of the service. The promptitude of his +movements and his gallantry should entitle him to the commendation of +his country. + +To return to the Army of the Potomac: The 2d corps commenced crossing +the James River on the morning of the 14th by ferry-boats at Wilcox's +Landing. The laying of the pontoon-bridge was completed about midnight +of the 14th, and the crossing of the balance of the army was rapidly +pushed forward by both bridge and ferry. + +After the crossing had commenced, I proceeded by steamer to Bermuda +Hundred to give the necessary orders for the immediate capture of +Petersburg. + +The instructions to General Butler were verbal, and were for him to send +General Smith immediately, that night, with all the troops he could give +him without sacrificing the position he then held. I told him that I +would return at once to the Army of the Potomac, hasten its crossing and +throw it forward to Petersburg by divisions as rapidly as it could be +done, that we could reinforce our armies more rapidly there than the +enemy could bring troops against us. General Smith got off as directed, +and confronted the enemy's pickets near Petersburg before daylight next +morning, but for some reason that I have never been able to +satisfactorily understand, did not get ready to assault his main lines +until near sundown. Then, with a part of his command only, he made the +assault, and carried the lines north-east of Petersburg from the +Appomattox River, for a distance of over two and a half miles, capturing +fifteen pieces of artillery and three hundred prisoners. This was about +seven P.M. Between the line thus captured and Petersburg there were no +other works, and there was no evidence that the enemy had reinforced +Petersburg with a single brigade from any source. The night was clear +the moon shining brightly and favorable to further operations. General +Hancock, with two divisions of the 2d corps, reached General Smith just +after dark, and offered the service of these troops as he (Smith) might +wish, waiving rank to the named commander, who he naturally supposed +knew best the position of affairs, and what to do with the troops. But +instead of taking these troops and pushing at once into Petersburg, he +requested General Hancock to relieve a part of his line in the captured +works, which was done before midnight. + +By the time I arrived the next morning the enemy was in force. An attack +was ordered to be made at six o'clock that evening by the troops under +Smith and the 2d and 9th corps. It required until that time for the 9th +corps to get up and into position. The attack was made as ordered, and +the fighting continued with but little intermission until six o'clock +the next morning, and resulted in our carrying the advance and some of +the main works of the enemy to the right (our left) of those previously +captured by General Smith, several pieces of artillery, and over four +hundred prisoners. + +The 5th corps having got up, the attacks were renewed and persisted in +with great vigor on the 17th and 18th, but only resulted in forcing the +enemy into an interior line, from which he could not be dislodged. The +advantages of position gained by us were very great. The army then +proceeded to envelop Petersburg towards the South Side Railroad as far +as possible without attacking fortifications. + +On the 16th the enemy, to reinforce Petersburg, withdrew from a part of +his intrenchment in front of Bermuda Hundred, expecting, no doubt, to +get troops from north of the James to take the place of those withdrawn +before we could discover it. General Butler, taking advantage of this, +at once moved a force on the railroad between Petersburg and Richmond. +As soon as I was apprised of the advantage thus gained, to retain it I +ordered two divisions of the 6th corps, General Wright commanding, that +were embarking at Wilcox's Landing, under orders for City Point, to +report to General Butler at Bermuda Hundred, of which General Butler was +notified, and the importance of holding a position in advance of his +present line urged upon him. + +About two o'clock in the afternoon General Butler was forced back to the +line the enemy had withdrawn from in the morning. General Wright, with +his two divisions, joined General Butler on the forenoon of the 17th, +the latter still holding with a strong picket-line the enemy's works. +But instead of putting these divisions into the enemy's works to hold +them, he permitted them to halt and rest some distance in the rear of +his own line. Between four and five o'clock in the afternoon the enemy +attacked and drove in his pickets and re-occupied his old line. + +On the night of the 20th and morning of the 21st a lodgment was effected +by General Butler, with one brigade of infantry, on the north bank of +the James, at Deep Bottom, and connected by pontoon-bridge with Bermuda +Hundred. + +On the 19th, General Sheridan, on his return from his expedition against +the Virginia Central Railroad, arrived at the White House just as the +enemy's cavalry was about to attack it, and compelled it to retire. The +result of this expedition was, that General Sheridan met the enemy's +cavalry near Trevilian Station, on the morning of the 11th of June, whom +he attacked, and after an obstinate contest drove from the field in +complete rout. He left his dead and nearly all his wounded in our +hands, and about four hundred prisoners and several hundred horses. On +the 12th he destroyed the railroad from Trevilian Station to Louisa +Court House. This occupied until three o'clock P.M., when he advanced +in the direction of Gordonsville. He found the enemy reinforced by +infantry, behind well-constructed rifle-pits, about five miles from the +latter place and too strong to successfully assault. On the extreme +right, however, his reserve brigade carried the enemy's works twice, and +was twice driven therefrom by infantry. Night closed the contest. Not +having sufficient ammunition to continue the engagement, and his animals +being without forage (the country furnishing but inferior grazing), and +hearing nothing from General Hunter, he withdrew his command to the +north side of the North Anna, and commenced his return march, reaching +White House at the time before stated. After breaking up the depot at +that place, he moved to the James River, which he reached safely after +heavy fighting. He commenced crossing on the 25th, near Fort Powhatan, +without further molestation, and rejoined the Army of the Potomac. + +On the 22d, General Wilson, with his own division of cavalry of the Army +of the Potomac, and General Kautz's division of cavalry of the Army of +the James moved against the enemy's railroads south of Richmond. +Striking the Weldon Railroad at Reams's Station, destroying the depot +and several miles of the road, and the South Side road about fifteen +miles from Petersburg, to near Nottoway Station, where he met and +defeated a force of the enemy's cavalry. He reached Burkesville Station +on the afternoon of the 23d, and from there destroyed the Danville +Railroad to Roanoke Bridge, a distance of twenty-five miles, where he +found the enemy in force, and in a position from which he could not +dislodge him. He then commenced his return march, and on the 28th met +the enemy's cavalry in force at the Weldon Railroad crossing of Stony +Creek, where he had a severe but not decisive engagement. Thence he +made a detour from his left with a view of reaching Reams's Station +(supposing it to be in our possession). At this place he was met by the +enemy's cavalry, supported by infantry, and forced to retire, with the +loss of his artillery and trains. In this last encounter, General +Kautz, with a part of his command, became separated, and made his way +into our lines. General Wilson, with the remainder of his force, +succeeded in crossing the Nottoway River and coming in safely on our +left and rear. The damage to the enemy in this expedition more than +compensated for the losses we sustained. It severed all connection by +railroad with Richmond for several weeks. + +With a view of cutting the enemy's railroad from near Richmond to the +Anna rivers, and making him wary of the situation of his army in the +Shenandoah, and, in the event of failure in this, to take advantage of +his necessary withdrawal of troops from Petersburg, to explode a mine +that had been prepared in front of the 9th corps and assault the enemy's +lines at that place, on the night of the 26th of July the 2d corps and +two divisions of the cavalry corps and Kautz's cavalry were crossed to +the north bank of the James River and joined the force General Butler +had there. On the 27th the enemy was driven from his intrenched +position, with the loss of four pieces of artillery. On the 28th our +lines were extended from Deep Bottom to New Market Road, but in getting +this position were attacked by the enemy in heavy force. The fighting +lasted for several hours, resulting in considerable loss to both sides. +The first object of this move having failed, by reason of the very large +force thrown there by the enemy, I determined to take advantage of the +diversion made, by assaulting Petersburg before he could get his force +back there. One division of the 2d corps was withdrawn on the night of +the 28th, and moved during the night to the rear of the 18th corps, to +relieve that corps in the line, that it might be foot-loose in the +assault to be made. The other two divisions of the 2d corps and +Sheridan's cavalry were crossed over on the night of the 29th and moved +in front of Petersburg. On the morning of the 30th, between four and +five o'clock, the mine was sprung, blowing up a battery and most of a +regiment, and the advance of the assaulting column, formed of the 9th +corps, immediately took possession of the crater made by the explosion, +and the line for some distance to the right and left of it, and a +detached line in front of it, but for some cause failed to advance +promptly to the ridge beyond. Had they done this, I have every reason +to believe that Petersburg would have fallen. Other troops were +immediately pushed forward, but the time consumed in getting them up +enabled the enemy to rally from his surprise (which had been complete), +and get forces to this point for its defence. The captured line thus +held being untenable, and of no advantage to us, the troops were +withdrawn, but not without heavy loss. Thus terminated in disaster what +promised to be the most successful assault of the campaign. + +Immediately upon the enemy's ascertaining that General Hunter was +retreating from Lynchburg by way of the Kanawha River, thus laying the +Shenandoah Valley open for raid into Maryland and Pennsylvania, he +returned northward and moved down that valley. As soon as this movement +of the enemy was ascertained, General Hunter, who had reached the +Kanawha River, was directed to move his troops without delay, by river +and railroad, to Harper's Ferry; but owing to the difficulty of +navigation by reason of low water and breaks in the railroad, great +delay was experienced in getting there. It became necessary, therefore, +to find other troops to check this movement of the enemy. For this +purpose the 6th corps was taken from the armies operating against +Richmond, to which was added the 19th corps, then fortunately beginning +to arrive in Hampton Roads from the Gulf Department, under orders issued +immediately after the ascertainment of the result of the Red River +expedition. The garrisons of Baltimore and Washington were at this time +made up of heavy-artillery regiments, hundred days' men, and detachments +from the invalid corps. One division under command of General Ricketts, +of the 6th corps, was sent to Baltimore, and the remaining two divisions +of the 6th corps, under General Wright, were subsequently sent to +Washington. On the 3d of July the enemy approached Martinsburg. +General Sigel, who was in command of our forces there, retreated across +the Potomac at Shepherdtown; and General Weber, commanding at Harper's +Ferry, crossed the occupied Hagerstown, moving a strong column towards +Frederick City. General Wallace, with Rickett's division and his own +command, the latter mostly new and undisciplined troops, pushed out from +Baltimore with great promptness, and met the enemy in force on the +Monocacy, near the crossing of the railroad bridge. His force was not +sufficient to insure success, but he fought the enemy nevertheless, and +although it resulted in a defeat to our arms, yet it detained the enemy, +and thereby served to enable General Wright to reach Washington with two +division of the 6th corps, and the advance of the 19th corps, before +him. From Monocacy the enemy moved on Washington, his cavalry advance +reaching Rockville on the evening of the 10th. On the 12th a +reconnoissance was thrown out in front of Fort Stevens, to ascertain the +enemy's position and force. A severe skirmish ensued, in which we lost +about two hundred and eighty in killed and wounded. The enemy's loss +was probably greater. He commenced retreating during the night. +Learning the exact condition of affairs at Washington, I requested by +telegraph, at forty-five minutes past eleven P.M., on the 12th, the +assignment of Major-General H. G. Wright to the command of all the +troops that could be made available to operate in the field against the +enemy, and directed that he should get outside of the trenches with all +the force he could, and push Early to the last moment. General Wright +commenced the pursuit on the 13th; on the 18th the enemy was overtaken +at Snicker's Ferry, on the Shenandoah, when a sharp skirmish occurred; +and on the 20th, General Averell encountered and defeated a portion of +the rebel army at Winchester, capturing four pieces of artillery and +several hundred prisoners. + +Learning that Early was retreating south towards Lynchburg or Richmond, +I directed that the 6th and 19th corps be got back to the armies +operating against Richmond, so that they might be used in a movement +against Lee before the return of the troops sent by him into the valley; +and that Hunter should remain in the Shenandoah Valley, keeping between +any force of the enemy and Washington, acting on the defensive as much +as possible. I felt that if the enemy had any notion of returning, the +fact would be developed before the 6th and 19th corps could leave +Washington. Subsequently, the 19th corps was excepted form the order to +return to the James. + +About the 25th it became evident that the enemy was again advancing upon +Maryland and Pennsylvania, and the 6th corps, then at Washington, was +ordered back to the vicinity of Harper's Ferry. The rebel force moved +down the valley, and sent a raiding party into Pennsylvania which on the +30th burned Chambersburg, and then retreated, pursued by our cavalry, +towards Cumberland. They were met and defeated by General Kelley, and +with diminished numbers escaped into the mountains of West Virginia. +From the time of the first raid the telegraph wires were frequently down +between Washington and City Point, making it necessary to transmit +messages a part of the way by boat. It took from twenty-four to +thirty-six hours to get dispatches through and return answers would be +received showing a different state of facts from those on which they +were based, causing confusion and apparent contradiction of orders that +must have considerably embarrassed those who had to execute them, and +rendered operations against the enemy less effective than they otherwise +would have been. To remedy this evil, it was evident to my mind that +some person should have the supreme command of all the forces in the +Department of West Virginia, Washington, Susquehanna, and the Middle +Department, and I so recommended. + +On the 2d of August, I ordered General Sheridan to report in person to +Major-General Halleck, chief of staff, at Washington, with a view to his +assignment to the command of all the forces against Early. At this time +the enemy was concentrated in the neighborhood of Winchester, while our +forces, under General Hunter, were concentrated on the Monocacy, at the +crossing of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, leaving open to the enemy +Western Maryland and Southern Pennsylvania. From where I was, I +hesitated to give positive orders for the movement of our forces at +Monocacy, lest by so doing I should expose Washington. Therefore, on the +4th, I left City Point to visit Hunter's command, and determine for +myself what was best to be done. On arrival there, and after +consultation with General Hunter, I issued to him the following +instructions: + + +"MONOCACY BRIDGE, MARYLAND, August 5, 1864--8 P.M. + +"GENERAL:--Concentrate all your available force without delay in the +vicinity of Harper's Ferry, leaving only such railroad guards and +garrisons for public property as may be necessary. Use, in this +concentrating, the railroad, if by so doing time can be saved. From +Harper's Ferry, if it is found that the enemy has moved north of the +Potomac in large force, push north, following him and attacking him +wherever found; follow him, if driven south of the Potomac, as long as +it is safe to do so. If it is ascertained that the enemy has but a +small force north of the Potomac, then push south with the main force, +detaching under a competent commander, a sufficient force to look after +the raiders, and drive them to their homes. In detaching such a force, +the brigade of the cavalry now en route from Washington via Rockville +may be taken into account. + +"There are now on their way to join you three other brigades of the best +cavalry, numbering at least five thousand men and horses. These will be +instructed, in the absence of further orders, to join you by the south +side of the Potomac. One brigade will probably start to-morrow. In +pushing up the Shenandoah Valley, where it is expected you will have to +go first or last, it is desirable that nothing should be left to invite +the enemy to return. Take all provisions, forage, and stock wanted for +the use of your command; such as cannot be consumed, destroy. It is not +desirable that the buildings should be destroyed--they should rather be +protected; but the people should be informed that, so long as an army +can subsist among them, recurrence of theses raids must be expected, and +we are determined to stop them at all hazards. + +"Bear in mind, the object is to drive the enemy south; and to do this +you want to keep him always in sight. Be guided in your course by the +course he takes. + +"Make your own arrangements for supplies of all kinds, giving regular +vouchers for such as may be taken from loyal citizens in the country +through which you march. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL D. HUNTER." + + +The troops were immediately put in motion, and the advance reached +Halltown that night. + +General Hunter having, in our conversation, expressed a willingness to +be relieved from command, I telegraphed to have General Sheridan, then +at Washington, sent to Harper's Ferry by the morning train, with orders +to take general command of all the troops in the field, and to call on +General Hunter at Monocacy, who would turn over to him my letter of +instructions. I remained at Monocacy until General Sheridan arrived, on +the morning of the 6th, and, after a conference with him in relation to +military affairs in that vicinity, I returned to City Point by way of +Washington. + +On the 7th of August, the Middle Department, and the Departments of West +Virginia, Washington, and Susquehanna, were constituted into the "Middle +Military Division," and Major-General Sheridan was assigned to +temporary command of the same. + +Two divisions of cavalry, commanded by Generals Torbert and Wilson, were +sent to Sheridan from the Army of the Potomac. The first reached him at +Harper's Ferry about the 11th of August. + +His operations during the month of August and the fore part of September +were both of an offensive and defensive character, resulting in many +severe skirmishes, principally by the cavalry, in which we were +generally successful, but no general engagement took place. The two +armies lay in such a position--the enemy on the west bank of the Opequon +Creek covering Winchester, and our forces in front of Berryville--that +either could bring on a battle at any time. Defeat to us would lay open +to the enemy the States of Maryland and Pennsylvania for long distances +before another army could be interposed to check him. Under these +circumstances I hesitated about allowing the initiative to be taken. +Finally, the use of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the Chesapeake +and Ohio Canal, which were both obstructed by the enemy, became so +indispensably necessary to us, and the importance of relieving +Pennsylvania and Maryland from continuously threatened invasion so +great, that I determined the risk should be taken. But fearing to +telegraph the order for an attack without knowing more than I did of +General Sheridan's feelings as to what would be the probable result, I +left City Point on the 15th of September to visit him at his +headquarters, to decide, after conference with him, what should be done. +I met him at Charlestown, and he pointed out so distinctly how each army +lay; what he could do the moment he was authorized, and expressed such +confidence of success, that I saw there were but two words of +instructions necessary--Go in! For the conveniences of forage, the +teams for supplying the army were kept at Harper's Ferry. I asked him +if he could get out his teams and supplies in time to make an attack on +the ensuing Tuesday morning. His reply was, that he could before +daylight on Monday. He was off promptly to time, and I may here add, +that the result was such that I have never since deemed it necessary to +visit General Sheridan before giving him orders. + +Early on the morning of the 19th, General Sheridan attacked General +Early at the crossing on the Opequon Creek, and after a most sanguinary +and bloody battle, lasting until five o'clock in the evening, defeated +him with heavy loss, carrying his entire position from Opequon Creek to +Winchester, capturing several thousand prisoners and five pieces of +artillery. The enemy rallied, and made a stand in a strong position at +Fisher's Hill, where he was attacked, and again defeated with heavy loss +on the 20th [22d]. Sheridan pursued him with great energy through +Harrisonburg, Staunton, and the gaps of the Blue Ridge. After stripping +the upper valley of most of the supplies and provisions for the rebel +army, he returned to Strasburg, and took position on the north side of +Cedar Creek. + +Having received considerable reinforcements, General Early again +returned to the valley, and, on the 9th of October, his cavalry +encountered ours near Strasburg, where the rebels were defeated, with +the loss of eleven pieces of artillery and three hundred and fifty +prisoners. On the night of the 18th, the enemy crossed the mountains +which separate the branches of the Shenandoah, forded the North Fork, +and early on the morning of the 19th, under cover of the darkness and +the fog, surprised and turned our left flank, and captured the batteries +which enfiladed our whole line. Our troops fell back with heavy loss +and in much confusion, but were finally rallied between Middletown and +Newtown. At this juncture, General Sheridan, who was at Winchester when +the battle commenced arrived on the field, arranged his lines just in +time to repulse a heavy attack of the enemy, and immediately assuming +the offensive, he attacked in turn with great vigor. The enemy was +defeated with great slaughter, and the loss of most of his artillery and +trains, and the trophies he had captured in the morning. The wreck of +his army escaped during the night, and fled in the direction of Staunton +and Lynchburg. Pursuit was made to Mount Jackson. Thus ended this, the +enemy's last attempt to invade the North via the Shenandoah Valley. I +was now enabled to return the 6th corps to the Army of the Potomac, and +to send one division from Sheridan's army to the Army of the James, and +another to Savannah, Georgia, to hold Sherman's new acquisitions on the +sea-coast, and thus enable him to move without detaching from his force +for that purpose. + +Reports from various sources led me to believe that the enemy had +detached three divisions from Petersburg to reinforce Early in the +Shenandoah Valley. I therefore sent the 2d corps and Gregg's division +of cavalry, of the Army of the Potomac, and a force of General Butler's +army, on the night of the 13th of August, to threaten Richmond from the +north side of the James, to prevent him from sending troops away, and, +if possible, to draw back those sent. In this move we captured six +pieces of artillery and several hundred prisoners, detained troops that +were under marching orders, and ascertained that but one division +(Kershaw's), of the three reputed detached, had gone. + +The enemy having withdrawn heavily from Petersburg to resist this +movement, the 5th corps, General Warren commanding, was moved out on the +18th, and took possession of the Weldon Railroad. During the day he had +considerable fighting. To regain possession of the road, the enemy made +repeated and desperate assaults, but was each time repulsed with great +loss. On the night of the 20th, the troops on the north side of the +James were withdrawn, and Hancock and Gregg returned to the front at +Petersburg. On the 25th, the 2d corps and Gregg's division of cavalry, +while at Reams's Station destroying the railroad, were attacked, and +after desperate fighting, a part of our line gave way, and five pieces +of artillery fell into the hands of the enemy. + +By the 12th of September, a branch railroad was completed from the City +Point and Petersburg Railroad to the Weldon Railroad, enabling us to +supply, without difficulty, in all weather, the army in front of +Petersburg. + +The extension of our lines across the Weldon Railroad compelled the +enemy to so extend his, that it seemed he could have but few troops +north of the James for the defence of Richmond. On the night of the +28th, the 10th corps, Major-General Birney, and the 18th corps, +Major-General Ord commanding, of General Butler's army, were crossed to +the north side of the James, and advanced on the morning of the 29th, +carrying the very strong fortifications and intrenchments below +Chaffin's Farm, known as Fort Harrison, capturing fifteen pieces of +artillery, and the New Market Road and intrenchments. This success was +followed up by a gallant assault upon Fort Gilmer, immediately in front +of the Chaffin Farm fortifications, in which we were repulsed with heavy +loss. Kautz's cavalry was pushed forward on the road to the right of +this, supported by infantry, and reached the enemy's inner line, but was +unable to get further. The position captured from the enemy was so +threatening to Richmond, that I determined to hold it. The enemy made +several desperate attempts to dislodge us, all of which were +unsuccessful, and for which he paid dearly. On the morning of the 30th, +General Meade sent out a reconnoissance with a view to attacking the +enemy's line, if it was found sufficiently weakened by withdrawal of +troops to the north side. In this reconnoissance we captured and held +the enemy's works near Poplar Spring Church. In the afternoon, troops +moving to get to the left of the point gained were attacked by the enemy +in heavy force, and compelled to fall back until supported by the forces +holding the captured works. Our cavalry under Gregg was also attacked, +but repulsed the enemy with great loss. + +On the 7th of October, the enemy attacked Kautz's cavalry north of the +James, and drove it back with heavy loss in killed, wounded, and +prisoners, and the loss of all the artillery eight or nine pieces. This +he followed up by an attack on our intrenched infantry line, but was +repulsed with severe slaughter. On the 13th, a reconnoissance was sent +out by General Butler, with a view to drive the enemy from some new +works he was constructing, which resulted in very heavy loss to us. + +On the 27th, the Army of the Potomac, leaving only sufficient men to +hold its fortified line, moved by the enemy's right flank. The 2d +corps, followed by two divisions of the 5th corps, with the cavalry in +advance and covering our left flank, forced a passage of Hatcher's Run, +and moved up the south side of it towards the South Side Railroad, until +the 2d corps and part of the cavalry reached the Boydton Plank Road +where it crosses Hatcher's Run. At this point we were six miles distant +from the South Side Railroad, which I had hoped by this movement to +reach and hold. But finding that we had not reached the end of the +enemy's fortifications, and no place presenting itself for a successful +assault by which he might be doubled up and shortened, I determined to +withdraw to within our fortified line. Orders were given accordingly. +Immediately upon receiving a report that General Warren had connected +with General Hancock, I returned to my headquarters. Soon after I left +the enemy moved out across Hatcher's Run, in the gap between Generals +Hancock and Warren, which was not closed as reported, and made a +desperate attack on General Hancock's right and rear. General Hancock +immediately faced his corps to meet it, and after a bloody combat drove +the enemy within his works, and withdrew that night to his old position. + +In support of this movement, General Butler made a demonstration on the +north side of the James, and attacked the enemy on the Williamsburg +Road, and also on the York River Railroad. In the former he was +unsuccessful; in the latter he succeeded in carrying a work which was +afterwards abandoned, and his forces withdrawn to their former +positions. + +From this time forward the operations in front of Petersburg and +Richmond, until the spring campaign of 1865, were confined to the +defence and extension of our lines, and to offensive movements for +crippling the enemy's lines of communication, and to prevent his +detaching any considerable force to send south. By the 7th of February, +our lines were extended to Hatcher's Run, and the Weldon Railroad had +been destroyed to Hicksford. + +General Sherman moved from Chattanooga on the 6th of May, with the +Armies of the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Ohio, commanded, respectively, +by Generals Thomas McPherson, and Schofield, upon Johnston's army at +Dalton; but finding the enemy's position at Buzzard's Roost, covering +Dalton, too strong to be assaulted, General McPherson was sent through +Snake Gap to turn it, while Generals Thomas and Schofield threatened it +in front and on the north. This movement was successful. Johnston, +finding his retreat likely to be cut off, fell back to his fortified +position at Resaca, where he was attacked on the afternoon of May 15th. +A heavy battle ensued. During the night the enemy retreated south. +Late on the 17th, his rear-guard was overtaken near Adairsville, and +heavy skirmishing followed. The next morning, however, he had again +disappeared. He was vigorously pursued, and was overtaken at Cassville +on the 19th, but during the ensuing night retreated across the Etowah. +While these operations were going on, General Jefferson C. Davis's +division of Thomas's army was sent to Rome, capturing it with its forts +and artillery, and its valuable mills and foundries. General Sherman, +having give his army a few days' rest at this point, again put it in +motion on the 23d, for Dallas, with a view of turning the difficult pass +at Allatoona. On the afternoon of the 25th, the advance, under General +Hooker, had a severe battle with the enemy, driving him back to New Hope +Church, near Dallas. Several sharp encounters occurred at this point. +The most important was on the 28th, when the enemy assaulted General +McPherson at Dallas, but received a terrible and bloody repulse. + +On the 4th of June, Johnston abandoned his intrenched position at New +Hope Church, and retreated to the strong positions of Kenesaw, Pine, and +Lost mountains. He was forced to yield the two last-named places, and +concentrate his army on Kenesaw, where, on the 27th, Generals Thomas and +McPherson made a determined but unsuccessful assault. On the night of +the 2d of July, Sherman commenced moving his army by the right flank, +and on the morning of the 3d, found that the enemy, in consequence of +this movement, had abandoned Kenesaw and retreated across the +Chattahoochee. + +General Sherman remained on the Chattahoochee to give his men rest and +get up stores until the 17th of July, when he resumed his operations, +crossed the Chattahoochee, destroyed a large portion of the railroad to +Augusta, and drove the enemy back to Atlanta. At this place General Hood +succeeded General Johnston in command of the rebel army, and assuming +the offensive-defensive policy, made several severe attacks upon Sherman +in the vicinity of Atlanta, the most desperate and determined of which +was on the 22d of July. About one P.M. of this day the brave, +accomplished, and noble-hearted McPherson was killed. General Logan +succeeded him, and commanded the Army of the Tennessee through this +desperate battle, and until he was superseded by Major-General Howard, +on the 26th, with the same success and ability that had characterized +him in the command of a corps or division. + +In all these attacks the enemy was repulsed with great loss. Finding it +impossible to entirely invest the place, General Sherman, after securing +his line of communications across the Chattahoochee, moved his main +force round by the enemy's left flank upon the Montgomery and Macon +roads, to draw the enemy from his fortifications. In this he succeeded, +and after defeating the enemy near Rough-and-Ready, Jonesboro, and +Lovejoy's, forcing him to retreat to the south, on the 2d of September +occupied Atlanta, the objective point of his campaign. + +About the time of this move, the rebel cavalry, under Wheeler, attempted +to cut his communications in the rear, but was repulsed at Dalton, and +driven into East Tennessee, whence it proceeded west to McMinnville, +Murfreesboro, and Franklin, and was finally driven south of the +Tennessee. The damage done by this raid was repaired in a few days. + +During the partial investment of Atlanta, General Rousseau joined +General Sherman with a force of cavalry from Decatur, having made a +successful raid upon the Atlanta and Montgomery Railroad, and its +branches near Opelika. Cavalry raids were also made by Generals McCook, +Garrard, and Stoneman, to cut the remaining Railroad communication with +Atlanta. The first two were successful the latter, disastrous. + +General Sherman's movement from Chattanooga to Atlanta was prompt, +skilful, and brilliant. The history of his flank movements and battles +during that memorable campaign will ever be read with an interest +unsurpassed by anything in history. + +His own report, and those of his subordinate commanders, accompanying +it, give the details of that most successful campaign. + +He was dependent for the supply of his armies upon a single-track +railroad from Nashville to the point where he was operating. This +passed the entire distance through a hostile country, and every foot of +it had to be protected by troops. The cavalry force of the enemy under +Forrest, in Northern Mississippi, was evidently waiting for Sherman to +advance far enough into the mountains of Georgia, to make a retreat +disastrous, to get upon this line and destroy it beyond the possibility +of further use. To guard against this danger, Sherman left what he +supposed to be a sufficient force to operate against Forrest in West +Tennessee. He directed General Washburn, who commanded there, to send +Brigadier-General S. D. Sturgis in command of this force to attack him. +On the morning of the 10th of June, General Sturgis met the enemy near +Guntown, Mississippi, was badly beaten, and driven back in utter rout +and confusion to Memphis, a distance of about one hundred miles, hotly +pursued by the enemy. By this, however, the enemy was defeated in his +designs upon Sherman's line of communications. The persistency with +which he followed up this success exhausted him, and made a season for +rest and repairs necessary. In the meantime, Major-General A. J. Smith, +with the troops of the Army of the Tennessee that had been sent by +General Sherman to General Banks, arrived at Memphis on their return +from Red River, where they had done most excellent service. He was +directed by General Sherman to immediately take the offensive against +Forrest. This he did with the promptness and effect which has +characterized his whole military career. On the 14th of July, he met +the enemy at Tupelo, Mississippi, and whipped him badly. The fighting +continued through three days. Our loss was small compared with that of +the enemy. Having accomplished the object of his expedition, General +Smith returned to Memphis. + +During the months of March and April this same force under Forrest +annoyed us considerably. On the 24th of March it captured Union City, +Kentucky, and its garrison, and on the 24th attacked Paducah, commanded +by Colonel S. G. Hicks, 40th Illinois Volunteers. Colonel H., having +but a small force, withdrew to the forts near the river, from where he +repulsed the enemy and drove him from the place. + +On the 13th of April, part of this force, under the rebel General +Buford, summoned the garrison of Columbus, Kentucky, to surrender, but +received for reply from Colonel Lawrence, 34th New Jersey Volunteers, +that being placed there by his Government with adequate force to hold +his post and repel all enemies from it, surrender was out of the +question. + +On the morning of the same day Forrest attacked Fort Pillow, Tennessee, +garrisoned by a detachment of Tennessee cavalry and the 1st Regiment +Alabama colored troops, commanded by Major Booth. The garrison fought +bravely until about three o'clock in the afternoon, when the enemy +carried the works by assault; and, after our men threw down their arms, +proceeded to an inhuman and merciless massacre of the garrison. + +On the 14th, General Buford, having failed at Columbus, appeared before +Paducah, but was again driven off. + +Guerillas and raiders, seemingly emboldened by Forrest's operations, +were also very active in Kentucky. The most noted of these was Morgan. +With a force of from two to three thousand cavalry, he entered the State +through Pound Gap in the latter part of May. On the 11th of June they +attacked and captured Cynthiana, with its entire garrison. On the 12th +he was overtaken by General Burbridge, and completely routed with heavy +loss, and was finally driven out of the State. This notorious guerilla +was afterwards surprised and killed near Greenville, Tennessee, and his +command captured and dispersed by General Gillem. + +In the absence of official reports of the commencement of the Red River +expedition, except so far as relates to the movements of the troops sent +by General Sherman under General A. J. Smith, I am unable to give the +date of its starting. The troops under General Smith, comprising two +divisions of the 16th and a detachment of the 17th army corps, left +Vicksburg on the 10th of March, and reached the designated point on Red +River one day earlier than that appointed by General Banks. The rebel +forces at Fort de Russy, thinking to defeat him, left the fort on the +14th to give him battle in the open field; but, while occupying the +enemy with skirmishing and demonstrations, Smith pushed forward to Fort +de Russy, which had been left with a weak garrison, and captured it with +its garrison about three hundred and fifty men, eleven pieces of +artillery, and many small-arms. Our loss was but slight. On the 15th +he pushed forward to Alexandria, which place he reached on the 18th. On +the 21st he had an engagement with the enemy at Henderson's Hill, in +which he defeated him, capturing two hundred and ten prisoners and four +pieces of artillery. + +On the 28th, he again attacked and defeated the enemy under the rebel +General Taylor, at Cane River. By the 26th, General Banks had assembled +his whole army at Alexandria, and pushed forward to Grand Ecore. On the +morning of April 6th he moved from Grand Ecore. On the afternoon of the +7th, he advanced and met the enemy near Pleasant Hill, and drove him +from the field. On the same afternoon the enemy made a stand eight +miles beyond Pleasant Hill, but was again compelled to retreat. On the +8th, at Sabine Cross Roads and Peach Hill, the enemy attacked and +defeated his advance, capturing nineteen pieces of artillery and an +immense amount of transportation and stores. During the night, General +Banks fell back to Pleasant Hill, where another battle was fought on the +9th, and the enemy repulsed with great loss. During the night, General +Banks continued his retrograde movement to Grand Ecore, and thence to +Alexandria, which he reached on the 27th of April. Here a serious +difficulty arose in getting Admiral Porter's fleet which accompanied the +expedition, over the rapids, the water having fallen so much since they +passed up as to prevent their return. At the suggestion of Colonel (now +Brigadier-General) Bailey, and under his superintendence, wing-dams were +constructed, by which the channel was contracted so that the fleet +passed down the rapids in safety. + +The army evacuated Alexandria on the 14th of May, after considerable +skirmishing with the enemy's advance, and reached Morganzia and Point +Coupee near the end of the month. The disastrous termination of this +expedition, and the lateness of the season, rendered impracticable the +carrying out of my plans of a movement in force sufficient to insure the +capture of Mobile. + +On the 23d of March, Major-General Steele left Little Rock with the 7th +army corps, to cooperate with General Banks's expedition on the Red +River, and reached Arkadelphia on the 28th. On the 16th of April, after +driving the enemy before him, he was joined, near Elkin's Ferry, in +Washita County, by General Thayer, who had marched from Fort Smith. +After several severe skirmishes, in which the enemy was defeated, +General Steele reached Camden, which he occupied about the middle of +April. + +On learning the defeat and consequent retreat of General Banks on Red +River, and the loss of one of his own trains at Mark's Mill, in Dallas +County, General Steele determined to fall back to the Arkansas River. +He left Camden on the 26th of April, and reached Little Rock on the 2d +of May. On the 30th of April, the enemy attacked him while crossing +Saline River at Jenkins's Ferry, but was repulsed with considerable +loss. Our loss was about six hundred in killed, wounded and prisoners. + +Major-General Canby, who had been assigned to the command of the +"Military Division of the West Mississippi," was therefore directed to +send the 19th army corps to join the armies operating against Richmond, +and to limit the remainder of his command to such operations as might be +necessary to hold the positions and lines of communications he then +occupied. + +Before starting General A. J. Smith's troops back to Sherman, General +Canby sent a part of it to disperse a force of the enemy that was +collecting near the Mississippi River. General Smith met and defeated +this force near Lake Chicot on the 5th of June. Our loss was about +forty killed and seventy wounded. + +In the latter part of July, General Canby sent Major-General Gordon +Granger, with such forces as he could collect, to co-operate with +Admiral Farragut against the defences of Mobile Bay. On the 8th of +August, Fort Gaines surrendered to the combined naval and land forces. +Fort Powell was blown up and abandoned. + +On the 9th, Fort Morgan was invested, and, after a severe bombardment, +surrendered on the 23d. The total captures amounted to one thousand +four hundred and sixty-four prisoners, and one hundred and four pieces +of artillery. + +About the last of August, it being reported that the rebel General +Price, with a force of about ten thousand men, had reached Jacksonport, +on his way to invade Missouri, General A. J. Smith's command, then en +route from Memphis to join Sherman, was ordered to Missouri. A cavalry +force was also, at the same time, sent from Memphis, under command of +Colonel Winslow. This made General Rosecrans's forces superior to those +of Price, and no doubt was entertained he would be able to check Price +and drive him back; while the forces under General Steele, in Arkansas, +would cut off his retreat. On the 26th day of September, Price attacked +Pilot Knob and forced the garrison to retreat, and thence moved north to +the Missouri River, and continued up that river towards Kansas. General +Curtis, commanding Department of Kansas, immediately collected such +forces as he could to repel the invasion of Kansas, while General +Rosecrans's cavalry was operating in his rear. + +The enemy was brought to battle on the Big Blue and defeated, with the +loss of nearly all his artillery and trains and a large number of +prisoners. He made a precipitate retreat to Northern Arkansas. The +impunity with which Price was enabled to roam over the State of Missouri +for a long time, and the incalculable mischief done by him, show to how +little purpose a superior force may be used. There is no reason why +General Rosecrans should not have concentrated his forces, and beaten +and driven Price before the latter reached Pilot Knob. + +September 20th, the enemy's cavalry, under Forrest, crossed the +Tennessee near Waterloo, Alabama, and on the 23d attacked the garrison +at Athens, consisting of six hundred men, which capitulated on the 24th. +Soon after the surrender two regiments of reinforcements arrived, and +after a severe fight were compelled to surrender. Forrest destroyed the +railroad westward, captured the garrison at Sulphur Branch trestle, +skirmished with the garrison at Pulaski on the 27th, and on the same day +cut the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad near Tullahoma and Dechard. +On the morning of the 30th, one column of Forrest's command, under +Buford, appeared before Huntsville, and summoned the surrender of the +garrison. Receiving an answer in the negative, he remained in the +vicinity of the place until next morning, when he again summoned its +surrender, and received the same reply as on the night before. He +withdrew in the direction of Athens which place had been regarrisoned, +and attacked it on the afternoon of the 1st of October, but without +success. On the morning of the 2d he renewed his attack, but was +handsomely repulsed. + +Another column under Forrest appeared before Columbia on the morning of +the 1st, but did not make an attack. On the morning of the 3d he moved +towards Mount Pleasant. While these operations were going on, every +exertion was made by General Thomas to destroy the forces under Forrest +before he could recross the Tennessee, but was unable to prevent his +escape to Corinth, Mississippi. + +In September, an expedition under General Burbridge was sent to destroy +the saltworks at Saltville, Virginia. He met the enemy on the 2d of +October, about three miles and a half from Saltville, and drove him into +his strongly intrenched position around the salt-works, from which he +was unable to dislodge him. During the night he withdrew his command +and returned to Kentucky. + +General Sherman, immediately after the fall of Atlanta, put his armies +in camp in and about the place, and made all preparations for refitting +and supplying them for future service. The great length of road from +Atlanta to the Cumberland River, however, which had to be guarded, +allowed the troops but little rest. + +During this time Jefferson Davis made a speech in Macon, Georgia, which +was reported in the papers of the South, and soon became known to the +whole country, disclosing the plans of the enemy, thus enabling General +Sherman to fully meet them. He exhibited the weakness of supposing that +an army that had been beaten and fearfully decimated in a vain attempt +at the defensive, could successfully undertake the offensive against the +army that had so often defeated it. + +In execution of this plan, Hood, with this army, was soon reported to +the south-west of Atlanta. Moving far to Sherman's right, he succeeded +in reaching the railroad about Big Shanty, and moved north on it. + +General Sherman, leaving a force to hold Atlanta, with the remainder of +his army fell upon him and drove him to Gadsden, Alabama. Seeing the +constant annoyance he would have with the roads to his rear if he +attempted to hold Atlanta, General Sherman proposed the abandonment and +destruction of that place, with all the railroads leading to it, and +telegraphed me as follows: + + +"CENTREVILLE, GEORGIA", October 10--noon. + +"Dispatch about Wilson just received. Hood is now crossing Coosa River, +twelve miles below Rome, bound west. If he passes over the Mobile and +Ohio road, had I not better execute the plan of my letter sent by +Colonel Porter, and leave General Thomas with the troops now in +Tennessee to defend the State? He will have an ample force when the +reinforcements ordered reach Nashville. + +"W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General. +"LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT." + + +For a full understanding of the plan referred to in this dispatch, I +quote from the letter sent by Colonel Porter: + +"I will therefore give my opinion, that your army and Canby's should be +reinforced to the maximum; that after you get Wilmington, you strike for +Savannah and the river; that Canby be instructed to hold the Mississippi +River, and send a force to get Columbus, Georgia, either by the way of +the Alabama or the Appalachicola, and that I keep Hood employed and put +my army in final order for a march on Augusta, Columbia, and Charleston, +to be ready as soon as Wilmington is sealed as to commerce and the city +of Savannah is in our possession." This was in reply to a letter of +mine of date September 12th, in answer to a dispatch of his containing +substantially the same proposition, and in which I informed him of a +proposed movement against Wilmington, and of the situation in Virginia, +etc. + + +"CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, + +"October 11, 1864--11 A.M. + +"Your dispatch of October 10th received. Does it not look as if Hood +was going to attempt the invasion of Middle Tennessee, using the Mobile +and Ohio and Memphis and Charleston roads to supply his base on the +Tennessee River, about Florence or Decatur? If he does this, he ought +to be met and prevented from getting north of the Tennessee River. If +you were to cut loose, I do not believe you would meet Hood's army, but +would be bushwhacked by all the old men and little boys, and such +railroad guards as are still left at home. Hood would probably strike +for Nashville, thinking that by going north he could inflict greater +damage upon us than we could upon the rebels by going south. If there +is any way of getting at Hood's army, I would prefer that, but I must +trust to your own judgment. I find I shall not be able to send a force +from here to act with you on Savannah. Your movements, therefore, will +be independent of mine; at least until the fall of Richmond takes place. +I am afraid Thomas, with such lines of road as he has to protect, could +not prevent Hood from going north. With Wilson turned loose, with all +your cavalry, you will find the rebels put much more on the defensive +than heretofore. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN." + + +"KINGSTON, GEORGIA, "October 11--11 A.M. + +"Hood moved his army from Palmetto Station across by Dallas and +Cedartown, and is now on the Coosa River, south of Rome. He threw one +corps on my road at Acworth, and I was forced to follow. I hold Atlanta +with the 20th corps, and have strong detachments along my line. This +reduces my active force to a comparatively small army. We cannot remain +here on the defensive. With the twenty-five thousand men, and the bold +cavalry he has, he can constantly break my roads. I would infinitely +prefer to make a wreck of the road, and of the country from Chattanooga +to Atlanta including the latter city send back all my wounded and +worthless, and with my effective army, move through Georgia, smashing +things, to the sea. Hood may turn into Tennessee and Kentucky, but I +believe he will be forced to follow me. Instead of my being on the +defensive, I would be on the offensive; instead of guessing at what he +means to do, he would have to guess at my plans. The difference in war +is full twenty-five per cent. I can make Savannah, Charleston, or the +mouth of the Chattahoochee. + +"Answer quick, as I know we will not have the telegraph long. + +"W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General. +"LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT." + + +"CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, "October 11,1864--11.30 P.M. + +"Your dispatch of to-day received. If you are satisfied the trip to the +sea-coast can be made, holding the line of the Tennessee River firmly, +you may make it, destroying all the railroad south of Dalton or +Chattanooga, as you think best. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN." + + +It was the original design to hold Atlanta, and by getting through to +the coast, with a garrison left on the southern railroads, leading east +and west, through Georgia, to effectually sever the east from the west. +In other words, cut the would-be Confederacy in two again, as it had +been cut once by our gaining possession of the Mississippi River. +General Sherman's plan virtually effected this object. + +General Sherman commenced at once his preparations for his proposed +movement, keeping his army in position in the meantime to watch Hood. +Becoming satisfied that Hood had moved westward from Gadsden across Sand +Mountain, General Sherman sent the 4th corps, Major-General Stanley +commanding, and the 23d corps, Major-General Schofield commanding, back +to Chattanooga to report to Major-General Thomas, at Nashville, whom he +had placed in command of all the troops of his military division, save +the four army corps and cavalry division he designed to move with +through Georgia. With the troops thus left at his disposal, there was +little doubt that General Thomas could hold the line of the Tennessee, +or, in the event Hood should force it, would be able to concentrate and +beat him in battle. It was therefore readily consented to that Sherman +should start for the sea-coast. + +Having concentrated his troops at Atlanta by the 14th of November, he +commenced his march, threatening both Augusta and Macon. His coming-out +point could not be definitely fixed. Having to gather his subsistence as +he marched through the country, it was not impossible that a force +inferior to his own might compel him to head for such point as he could +reach, instead of such as he might prefer. The blindness of the enemy, +however, in ignoring his movement, and sending Hood's army, the only +considerable force he had west of Richmond and east of the Mississippi +River, northward on an offensive campaign, left the whole country open, +and Sherman's route to his own choice. + +How that campaign was conducted, how little opposition was met with, the +condition of the country through which the armies passed, the capture of +Fort McAllister, on the Savannah River, and the occupation of Savannah +on the 21st of December, are all clearly set forth in General Sherman's +admirable report. + +Soon after General Sherman commenced his march from Atlanta, two +expeditions, one from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and one from Vicksburg, +Mississippi, were started by General Canby to cut the enemy's lines of +communication with Mobile and detain troops in that field. General +Foster, commanding Department of the South, also sent an expedition, via +Broad River, to destroy the railroad between Charleston and Savannah. +The expedition from Vicksburg, under command of Brevet Brigadier-General +E. D. Osband (colonel 3d United States colored cavalry), captured, on +the 27th of November, and destroyed the Mississippi Central Railroad +bridge and trestle-work over Big Black River, near Canton, thirty miles +of the road, and two locomotives, besides large amounts of stores. The +expedition from Baton Rouge was without favorable results. The +expedition from the Department of the South, under the immediate command +of Brigadier-General John P. Hatch, consisting of about five thousand +men of all arms, including a brigade from the navy, proceeded up Broad +River and debarked at Boyd's Neck on the 29th of November, from where it +moved to strike the railroad at Grahamsville. At Honey Hill, about +three miles from Grahamsville, the enemy was found and attacked in a +strongly fortified position, which resulted, after severe fighting, in +our repulse with a loss of seven hundred and forty-six in killed, +wounded, and missing. During the night General Hatch withdrew. On the +6th of December General Foster obtained a position covering the +Charleston and Savannah Railroad, between the Coosawhatchie and +Tulifinny rivers. + +Hood, instead of following Sherman, continued his move northward, which +seemed to me to be leading to his certain doom. At all events, had I +had the power to command both armies, I should not have changed the +orders under which he seemed to be acting. On the 26th of October, the +advance of Hood's army attacked the garrison at Decatur, Alabama, but +failing to carry the place, withdrew towards Courtland, and succeeded, +in the face of our cavalry, in effecting a lodgment on the north side of +the Tennessee River, near Florence. On the 28th, Forrest reached the +Tennessee, at Fort Heiman, and captured a gunboat and three transports. +On the 2d of November he planted batteries above and below Johnsonville, +on the opposite side of the river, isolating three gunboats and eight +transports. On the 4th the enemy opened his batteries upon the place, +and was replied to from the gunboats and the garrison. The gunboats +becoming disabled were set on fire, as also were the transports, to +prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy. About a million and +a half dollars' worth of store and property on the levee and in +storehouses was consumed by fire. On the 5th the enemy disappeared and +crossed to the north side of the Tennessee River, above Johnsonville, +moving towards Clifton, and subsequently joined Hood. On the night of +the 5th, General Schofield, with the advance of the 23d corps, reached +Johnsonville, but finding the enemy gone, was ordered to Pulaski, and +was put in command of all the troopers there, with instruction to watch +the movements of Hood and retard his advance, but not to risk a general +engagement until the arrival of General A. J. Smith's command from +Missouri, and until General Wilson could get his cavalry remounted. + +On the 19th, General Hood continued his advance. General Thomas, +retarding him as much as possible, fell back towards Nashville for the +purpose of concentrating his command and gaining time for the arrival of +reinforcements. The enemy coming up with our main force, commanded by +General Schofield, at Franklin, on the 30th, assaulted our works +repeatedly during the afternoon until late at night, but were in every +instance repulsed. His loss in this battle was one thousand seven +hundred and fifty killed, seven hundred and two prisoners, and three +thousand eight hundred wounded. Among his losses were six general +officers killed, six wounded, and one captured. Our entire loss was two +thousand three hundred. This was the first serious opposition the enemy +met with, and I am satisfied was the fatal blow to all his expectations. +During the night, General Schofield fell back towards Nashville. This +left the field to the enemy--not lost by battle, but voluntarily +abandoned--so that General Thomas's whole force might be brought +together. The enemy followed up and commenced the establishment of his +line in front of Nashville on the 2d of December. + +As soon as it was ascertained that Hood was crossing the Tennessee +River, and that Price was going out of Missouri, General Rosecrans was +ordered to send to General Thomas the troops of General A. J. Smith's +command, and such other troops as he could spare. The advance of this +reinforcement reached Nashville on the 30th of November. + +On the morning of the 15th December, General Thomas attacked Hood in +position, and, in a battle lasting two days, defeated and drove him from +the field in the utmost confusion, leaving in our hand most of his +artillery and many thousand prisoners, including four general officers. + +Before the battle of Nashville I grew very impatient over, as it +appeared to me, the unnecessary delay. This impatience was increased +upon learning that the enemy had sent a force of cavalry across the +Cumberland into Kentucky. I feared Hood would cross his whole army and +give us great trouble there. After urging upon General Thomas the +necessity of immediately assuming the offensive, I started West to +superintend matters there in person. Reaching Washington City, I +received General Thomas's dispatch announcing his attack upon the enemy, +and the result as far as the battle had progressed. I was delighted. +All fears and apprehensions were dispelled. I am not yet satisfied but +that General Thomas, immediately upon the appearance of Hood before +Nashville, and before he had time to fortify, should have moved out with +his whole force and given him battle, instead of waiting to remount his +cavalry, which delayed him until the inclemency of the weather made it +impracticable to attack earlier than he did. But his final defeat of +Hood was so complete, that it will be accepted as a vindication of that +distinguished officer's judgment. + +After Hood's defeat at Nashville he retreated, closely pursued by +cavalry and infantry, to the Tennessee River, being forced to abandon +many pieces of artillery and most of his transportation. On the 28th of +December our advanced forces ascertained that he had made good his +escape to the south side of the river. + +About this time, the rains having set in heavily in Tennessee and North +Alabama, making it difficult to move army transportation and artillery, +General Thomas stopped the pursuit by his main force at the Tennessee +River. A small force of cavalry, under Colonel W. J. Palmer, 15th +Pennsylvania Volunteers, continued to follow Hood for some distance, +capturing considerable transportation and all the enemy's +pontoon-bridge. The details of these operations will be found +clearly set forth in General Thomas's report. + +A cavalry expedition, under Brevet Major-General Grierson, started from +Memphis on the 21st of December. On the 25th he surprised and captured +Forrest's dismounted camp at Verona, Mississippi, on the Mobile and Ohio +Railroad, destroyed the railroad, sixteen cars loaded with wagons and +pontoons for Hood's army, four thousand new English carbines, and large +amounts of public stores. On the morning of the 28th he attacked and +captured a force of the enemy at Egypt, and destroyed a train of +fourteen cars; thence turning to the south-west, he struck the +Mississippi Central Railroad at Winona, destroyed the factories and +large amounts of stores at Bankston, and the machine-shops and public +property at Grenada, arriving at Vicksburg January 5th. + +During the operations in Middle Tennessee, the enemy, with a force under +General Breckinridge, entered East Tennessee. On the 13th of November +he attacked General Gillem, near Morristown, capturing his artillery and +several hundred prisoners. Gillem, with what was left of his command, +retreated to Knoxville. Following up his success, Breckinridge moved to +near Knoxville, but withdrew on the 18th, followed by General Ammen. +Under the directions of General Thomas, General Stoneman concentrated +the commands of Generals Burbridge and Gillem near Bean's Station to +operate against Breckinridge, and destroy or drive him into Virginia +--destroy the salt-works at Saltville, and the railroad into Virginia +as far as he could go without endangering his command. On the 12th of +December he commenced his movement, capturing and dispersing the enemy's +forces wherever he met them. On the 16th he struck the enemy, under +Vaughn, at Marion, completely routing and pursuing him to Wytheville, +capturing all his artillery, trains, and one hundred and ninety-eight +prisoners; and destroyed Wytheville, with its stores and supplies, and +the extensive lead-works near there. Returning to Marion, he met a force +under Breckinridge, consisting, among other troops, of the garrison of +Saltville, that had started in pursuit. He at once made arrangements to +attack it the next morning; but morning found Breckinridge gone. He +then moved directly to Saltville, and destroyed the extensive salt-works +at that place, a large amount of stores, and captured eight pieces of +artillery. Having thus successfully executed his instructions, he +returned General Burbridge to Lexington and General Gillem to Knoxville. + +Wilmington, North Carolina, was the most important sea-coast port left +to the enemy through which to get supplies from abroad, and send cotton +and other products out by blockade-runners, besides being a place of +great strategic value. The navy had been making strenuous exertions to +seal the harbor of Wilmington, but with only partial effect. The nature +of the outlet of Cape Fear River was such, that it required watching for +so great a distance that, without possession of the land north of New +Inlet, or Fort Fisher, it was impossible for the navy to entirely close +the harbor against the entrance of blockade-runners. + +To secure the possession of this land required the co-operation of a +land force, which I agreed to furnish. Immediately commenced the +assemblage in Hampton Roads, under Admiral D. D. Porter, of the most +formidable armada ever collected for concentration upon one given point. +This necessarily attracted the attention of the enemy, as well as that +of the loyal North; and through the imprudence of the public press, and +very likely of officers of both branches of service, the exact object of +the expedition became a subject of common discussion in the newspapers +both North and South. The enemy, thus warned, prepared to meet it. +This caused a postponement of the expedition until the later part of +November, when, being again called upon by Hon. G. V. Fox, Assistant +Secretary of the Navy, I agreed to furnish the men required at once, and +went myself, in company with Major-General Butler, to Hampton Roads, +where we had a conference with Admiral Porter as to the force required +and the time of starting. A force of six thousand five hundred men was +regarded as sufficient. The time of starting was not definitely +arranged, but it was thought all would be ready by the 6th of December, +if not before. Learning, on the 30th of November, that Bragg had gone +to Georgia, taking with him most of the forces about Wilmington, I +deemed it of the utmost importance that the expedition should reach its +destination before the return of Bragg, and directed General Butler to +make all arrangements for the departure of Major-General Weitzel, who +had been designated to command the land forces, so that the navy might +not be detained one moment. + +On the 6th of December, the following instructions were given: + + +"CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, December 6, 1864. + +"GENERAL: The first object of the expedition under General Weitzel is +to close to the enemy the port of Wilmington. If successful in this, +the second will be to capture Wilmington itself. There are reasonable +grounds to hope for success, if advantage can be taken of the absence of +the greater part of the enemy's forces now looking after Sherman in +Georgia. The directions you have given for the numbers and equipment of +the expedition are all right, except in the unimportant matter of where +they embark and the amount of intrenching tools to be taken. The object +of the expedition will be gained by effecting a landing on the main land +between Cape Fear River and the Atlantic, north of the north entrance to +the river. Should such landing be effected while the enemy still holds +Fort Fisher and the batteries guarding the entrance to the river, then +the troops should intrench themselves, and, by co-operating with the +navy, effect the reduction and capture of those places. These in our +hands, the navy could enter the harbor, and the port of Wilmington would +be sealed. Should Fort Fisher and the point of land on which it is +built fall into the hands of our troops immediately on landing, then it +will be worth the attempt to capture Wilmington by a forced march and +surprise. If time is consumed in gaining the first object of the +expedition, the second will become a matter of after consideration. + +"The details for execution are intrusted to you and the officer +immediately in command of the troops. + +"Should the troops under General Weitzel fail to effect a landing at or +near Fort Fisher, they will be returned to the armies operating against +Richmond without delay. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL B. F. BUTLER." + + +General Butler commanding the army from which the troops were taken for +this enterprise, and the territory within which they were to operate, +military courtesy required that all orders and instructions should go +through him. They were so sent, but General Weitzel has since +officially informed me that he never received the foregoing +instructions, nor was he aware of their existence, until he read General +Butler's published official report of the Fort Fisher failure, with my +indorsement and papers accompanying it. I had no idea of General +Butler's accompanying the expedition until the evening before it got off +from Bermuda Hundred, and then did not dream but that General Weitzel +had received all the instructions, and would be in command. I rather +formed the idea that General Butler was actuated by a desire to witness +the effect of the explosion of the powder-boat. The expedition was +detained several days at Hampton Roads, awaiting the loading of the +powder-boat. + +The importance of getting the Wilmington expedition off without any +delay, with or without the powder-boat, had been urged upon General +Butler, and he advised to so notify Admiral Porter. + +The expedition finally got off on the 13th of December, and arrived at +the place of rendezvous, off New Inlet, near Fort Fisher, on the evening +of the 15th. Admiral Porter arrived on the evening of the 18th, having +put in at Beaufort to get ammunition for the monitors. The sea becoming +rough, making it difficult to land troops, and the supply of water and +coal being about exhausted, the transport fleet put back to Beaufort to +replenish; this, with the state of the weather, delayed the return to +the place of rendezvous until the 24th. The powder-boat was exploded on +the morning of the 24th, before the return of General Butler from +Beaufort; but it would seem, from the notice taken of it in the Southern +newspapers, that the enemy were never enlightened as to the object of +the explosion until they were informed by the Northern press. + +On the 25th a landing was effected without opposition, and a +reconnoissance, under Brevet Brigadier-General Curtis, pushed up towards +the fort. But before receiving a full report of the result of this +reconnoissance, General Butler, in direct violation of the instructions +given, ordered the re-embarkation of the troops and the return of the +expedition. The re-embarkation was accomplished by the morning of the +27th. + +On the return of the expedition officers and men among them Brevet +Major-General (then Brevet Brigadier-General) N. M. Curtis, +First-Lieutenant G. W. Ross, 117th Regiment New York Volunteers, +First-Lieutenant William H. Walling, and Second-Lieutenant George +Simpson, 142d New York Volunteers voluntarily reported to me that when +recalled they were nearly into the fort, and, in their opinion, it could +have been taken without much loss. + +Soon after the return of the expedition, I received a dispatch from the +Secretary of the Navy, and a letter from Admiral Porter, informing me +that the fleet was still off Fort Fisher, and expressing the conviction +that, under a proper leader, the place could be taken. The natural +supposition with me was, that when the troops abandoned the expedition, +the navy would do so also. Finding it had not, however, I answered on +the 30th of December, advising Admiral Porter to hold on, and that I +would send a force and make another attempt to take the place. This +time I selected Brevet Major-General (now Major-General) A. H. Terry to +command the expedition. The troops composing it consisted of the same +that composed the former, with the addition of a small brigade, +numbering about one thousand five hundred, and a small siege train. The +latter it was never found necessary to land. I communicated direct to +the commander of the expedition the following instructions: + + +"CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, January 3, 1865. + +"GENERAL: The expedition intrusted to your command has been fitted out +to renew the attempt to capture Fort Fisher, N. C., and Wilmington +ultimately, if the fort falls. You will then proceed with as little +delay as possible to the naval fleet lying off Cape Fear River, and +report the arrival of yourself and command to Admiral D. D. Porter, +commanding North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. + +"It is exceedingly desirable that the most complete understanding should +exist between yourself and the naval commander. I suggest, therefore, +that you consult with Admiral Porter freely, and get from him the part +to be performed by each branch of the public service, so that there may +be unity of action. It would be well to have the whole programme laid +down in writing. I have served with Admiral Porter, and know that you +can rely on his judgment and his nerve to undertake what he proposes. I +would, therefore, defer to him as much as is consistent with your own +responsibilities. The first object to be attained is to get a firm +position on the spit of land on which Fort Fisher is built, from which +you can operate against that fort. You want to look to the +practicability of receiving your supplies, and to defending yourself +against superior forces sent against you by any of the avenues left open +to the enemy. If such a position can be obtained, the siege of Fort +Fisher will not be abandoned until its reduction is accomplished, or +another plan of campaign is ordered from these headquarters. + +"My own views are, that if you effect a landing, the navy ought to run a +portion of their fleet into Cape Fear River, while the balance of it +operates on the outside. Land forces cannot invest Fort Fisher, or cut +it off from supplies or reinforcements, while the river is in possession +of the enemy. + +"A siege-train will be loaded on vessels and sent to Fort Monroe, in +readiness to be sent to you if required. All other supplies can be +drawn from Beaufort as you need them. + +"Keep the fleet of vessels with you until your position is assured. +When you find they can be spared, order them back, or such of them as +you can spare, to Fort Monroe, to report for orders. + +"In case of failure to effect a landing, bring your command back to +Beaufort, and report to these headquarters for further instructions. +You will not debark at Beaufort until so directed. + +"General Sheridan has been ordered to send a division of troops to +Baltimore and place them on sea-going vessels. These troops will be +brought to Fort Monroe and kept there on the vessels until you are heard +from. Should you require them, they will be sent to you. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL A. H. TERRY." + + +Lieutenant-Colonel C. B. Comstock, aide-de-camp (now brevet +brigadier-general), who accompanied the former expedition, +was assigned, in orders, as chief-engineer to this. + +It will be seen that these instructions did not differ materially from +those given for the first expedition, and that in neither instance was +there an order to assault Fort Fisher. This was a matter left entirely +to the discretion of the commanding officer. + +The expedition sailed from Fort Monroe on the morning of the 6th, +arriving at the rendezvous, off Beaufort, on the 8th, where, owing to +the difficulties of the weather, it lay until the morning of the 12th, +when it got under way and reached its destination that evening. Under +cover of the fleet, the disembarkation of the troops commenced on the +morning of the 13th, and by three o'clock P.M. was completed without +loss. On the 14th a reconnoissance was pushed to within five hundred +yards of Fort Fisher, and a small advance work taken possession of and +turned into a defensive line against any attempt that might be made from +the fort. This reconnoissance disclosed the fact that the front of the +work had been seriously injured by the navy fire. In the afternoon of +the 15th the fort was assaulted, and after most desperate fighting was +captured, with its entire garrison and armament. Thus was secured, by +the combined efforts of the navy and army, one of the most important +successes of the war. Our loss was: killed, one hundred and ten; +wounded, five hundred and thirty-six. On the 16th and the 17th the +enemy abandoned and blew up Fort Caswell and the works on Smith's +Island, which were immediately occupied by us. This gave us entire +control of the mouth of the Cape Fear River. + +At my request, Mayor-General B. F. Butler was relieved, and +Major-General E. O. C. Ord assigned to the Department of Virginia and +North Carolina. + +The defence of the line of the Tennessee no longer requiring the force +which had beaten and nearly destroyed the only army now threatening it, +I determined to find other fields of operation for General Thomas's +surplus troops--fields from which they would co-operate with other +movements. General Thomas was therefore directed to collect all troops, +not essential to hold his communications at Eastport, in readiness for +orders. On the 7th of January, General Thomas was directed, if he was +assured of the departure of Hood south from Corinth, to send General +Schofield with his corps east with as little delay as possible. This +direction was promptly complied with, and the advance of the corps +reached Washington on the 23d of the same month, whence it was sent to +Fort Fisher and New Bern. On the 26th he was directed to send General +A. J. Smith's command and a division of cavalry to report to General +Canby. By the 7th of February the whole force was en route for its +destination. + +The State of North Carolina was constituted into a military department, +and General Schofield assigned to command, and placed under the orders +of Major-General Sherman. The following instructions were given him: + + +"CITY POINT, VA., January 31, 1865. + +"GENERAL:-- * * * Your movements are intended as co-operative +with Sherman's through the States of South and North Carolina. The +first point to be attained is to secure Wilmington. Goldsboro' will +then be your objective point, moving either from Wilmington or New Bern, +or both, as you deem best. Should you not be able to reach Goldsboro', +you will advance on the line or lines of railway connecting that place +with the sea-coast--as near to it as you can, building the road behind +you. The enterprise under you has two objects: the first is to give +General Sherman material aid, if needed, in his march north; the second, +to open a base of supplies for him on his line of march. As soon, +therefore, as you can determine which of the two points, Wilmington or +New Bern, you can best use for throwing supplies from, to the interior, +you will commence the accumulation of twenty days' rations and forage +for sixty thousand men and twenty thousand animals. You will get of +these as many as you can house and protect to such point in the interior +as you may be able to occupy. I believe General Palmer has received +some instructions direct from General Sherman on the subject of securing +supplies for his army. You will learn what steps he has taken, and be +governed in your requisitions accordingly. A supply of ordnance stores +will also be necessary. + +"Make all requisitions upon the chiefs of their respective departments +in the field with me at City Point. Communicate with me by every +opportunity, and should you deem it necessary at any time, send a +special boat to Fortress Monroe, from which point you can communicate by +telegraph. + +"The supplies referred to in these instructions are exclusive of those +required for your own command. + +"The movements of the enemy may justify, or even make it your imperative +duty, to cut loose from your base, and strike for the interior to aid +Sherman. In such case you will act on your own judgment without waiting +for instructions. You will report, however, what you purpose doing. +The details for carrying out these instructions are necessarily left to +you. I would urge, however, if I did not know that you are already +fully alive to the importance of it, prompt action. Sherman may be +looked for in the neighborhood of Goldsboro' any time from the 22d to +the 28th of February; this limits your time very materially. + +"If rolling-stock is not secured in the capture of Wilmington, it can be +supplied from Washington. A large force of railroad men have already +been sent to Beaufort, and other mechanics will go to Fort Fisher in a +day or two. On this point I have informed you by telegraph. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL J. M. SCHOFIELD." + + +Previous to giving these instructions I had visited Fort Fisher, +accompanied by General Schofield, for the purpose of seeing for myself +the condition of things, and personally conferring with General Terry +and Admiral Porter as to what was best to be done. + +Anticipating the arrival of General Sherman at Savannah his army +entirely foot-loose, Hood being then before Nashville, Tennessee, the +Southern railroads destroyed, so that it would take several months to +re-establish a through line from west to east, and regarding the capture +of Lee's army as the most important operation towards closing the +rebellion--I sent orders to General Sherman on the 6th of December, that +after establishing a base on the sea-coast, with necessary garrison, to +include all his artillery and cavalry, to come by water to City Point +with the balance of his command. + +On the 18th of December, having received information of the defeat and +utter rout of Hood's army by General Thomas, and that, owing to the +great difficulty of procuring ocean transportation, it would take over +two months to transport Sherman's army, and doubting whether he might +not contribute as much towards the desired result by operating from +where he was, I wrote to him to that effect, and asked him for his views +as to what would be best to do. A few days after this I received a +communication from General Sherman, of date 16th December, acknowledging +the receipt of my order of the 6th, and informing me of his preparations +to carry it into effect as soon as he could get transportation. Also +that he had expected, upon reducing Savannah, instantly to march to +Columbia, South Carolina, thence to Raleigh, and thence to report to me; +but that this would consume about six weeks' time after the fall of +Savannah, whereas by sea he could probably reach me by the middle of +January. The confidence he manifested in this letter of being able to +march up and join me pleased me, and, without waiting for a reply to my +letter of the 18th, I directed him, on the 28th of December, to make +preparations to start as he proposed, without delay, to break up the +railroads in North and South Carolina, and join the armies operating +against Richmond as soon as he could. + +On the 21st of January I informed General Sherman that I had ordered the +23d corps, Major-General Schofield commanding, east; that it numbered +about twenty-one thousand men; that we had at Fort Fisher, about eight +thousand men; at New Bern, about four thousand; that if Wilmington was +captured, General Schofield would go there; if not, he would be sent to +New Bern; that, in either event, all the surplus force at both points +would move to the interior towards Goldsboro', in co-operation with his +movement; that from either point railroad communication could be run +out; and that all these troops would be subject to his orders as he came +into communication with them. + +In obedience to his instructions, General Schofield proceeded to reduce +Wilmington, North Carolina, in co-operation with the navy under Admiral +Porter, moving his forces up both sides of the Cape Fear River. Fort +Anderson, the enemy's main defence on the west bank of the river, was +occupied on the morning of the 19th, the enemy having evacuated it after +our appearance before it. + +After fighting on 20th and 21st, our troops entered Wilmington on the +morning of the 22d, the enemy having retreated towards Goldsboro' during +the night. Preparations were at once made for a movement on Goldsboro' +in two columns--one from Wilmington, and the other from New Bern--and to +repair the railroad leading there from each place, as well as to supply +General Sherman by Cape Fear River, towards Fayetteville, if it became +necessary. The column from New Bern was attacked on the 8th of March, +at Wise's Forks, and driven back with the loss of several hundred +prisoners. On the 11th the enemy renewed his attack upon our intrenched +position, but was repulsed with severe loss, and fell back during the +night. On the 14th the Neuse River was crossed and Kinston occupied, +and on the 21st Goldsboro' was entered. The column from Wilmington +reached Cox's Bridge, on the Neuse River, ten miles above Goldsboro', on +the 22d. + +By the 1st of February, General Sherman's whole army was in motion from +Savannah. He captured Columbia, South Carolina, on the 17th; thence +moved on Goldsboro', North Carolina, via Fayetteville, reaching the +latter place on the 12th of March, opening up communication with General +Schofield by way of Cape Fear River. On the 15th he resumed his march +on Goldsboro'. He met a force of the enemy at Averysboro', and after a +severe fight defeated and compelled it to retreat. Our loss in this +engagement was about six hundred. The enemy's loss was much greater. +On the 18th the combined forces of the enemy, under Joe Johnston, +attacked his advance at Bentonville, capturing three guns and driving it +back upon the main body. General Slocum, who was in the advance +ascertaining that the whole of Johnston's army was in the front, +arranged his troops on the defensive, intrenched himself and awaited +reinforcements, which were pushed forward. On the night of the 21st the +enemy retreated to Smithfield, leaving his dead and wounded in our +hands. From there Sherman continued to Goldsboro', which place had been +occupied by General Schofield on the 21st (crossing the Neuse River ten +miles above there, at Cox's Bridge, where General Terry had got +possession and thrown a pontoon-bridge on the 22d), thus forming a +junction with the columns from New Bern and Wilmington. + +Among the important fruits of this campaign was the fall of Charleston, +South Carolina. It was evacuated by the enemy on the night of the 17th +of February, and occupied by our forces on the 18th. + +On the morning of the 31st of January, General Thomas was directed to +send a cavalry expedition, under General Stoneman, from East Tennessee, +to penetrate South Carolina well down towards Columbia, to destroy the +railroads and military resources of the country, and return, if he was +able, to East Tennessee by way of Salisbury, North Carolina, releasing +our prisoners there, if possible. Of the feasibility of this latter, +however, General Stoneman was to judge. Sherman's movements, I had no +doubt, would attract the attention of all the force the enemy could +collect, and facilitate the execution of this. General Stoneman was so +late in making his start on this expedition (and Sherman having passed +out of the State of South Carolina), on the 27th of February I directed +General Thomas to change his course, and order him to repeat his raid of +last fall, destroying the railroad towards Lynchburg as far as he could. +This would keep him between our garrisons in East Tennessee and the +enemy. I regarded it not impossible that in the event of the enemy +being driven from Richmond, he might fall back to Lynchburg and attempt +a raid north through East Tennessee. On the 14th of February the +following communication was sent to General Thomas: + + +"CITY POINT, VA., February 14, 1865. + +"General Canby is preparing a movement from Mobile Bay against Mobile +and the interior of Alabama. His force will consist of about twenty +thousand men, besides A. J. Smith's command. The cavalry you have sent +to Canby will be debarked at Vicksburg. It, with the available cavalry +already in that section, will move from there eastward, in co-operation. +Hood's army has been terribly reduced by the severe punishment you gave +it in Tennessee, by desertion consequent upon their defeat, and now by +the withdrawal of many of them to oppose Sherman. (I take it a large +portion of the infantry has been so withdrawn. It is so asserted in the +Richmond papers, and a member of the rebel Congress said a few days +since in a speech, that one-half of it had been brought to South +Carolina to oppose Sherman.) This being true, or even if it is not +true, Canby's movement will attract all the attention of the enemy, and +leave the advance from your standpoint easy. I think it advisable, +therefore, that you prepare as much of a cavalry force as you can spare, +and hold it in readiness to go south. The object would be threefold: +first, to attract as much of the enemy's force as possible, to insure +success to Canby; second, to destroy the enemy's line of communications +and military resources; third, to destroy or capture their forces +brought into the field. Tuscaloosa and Selma would probably be the +points to direct the expedition against. This, however, would not be so +important as the mere fact of penetrating deep into Alabama. Discretion +should be left to the officer commanding the expedition to go where, +according to the information he may receive, he will best secure the +objects named above. + +"Now that your force has been so much depleted, I do not know what +number of men you can put into the field. If not more than five +thousand men, however, all cavalry, I think it will be sufficient. It +is not desirable that you should start this expedition until the one +leaving Vicksburg has been three or four days out, or even a week. I do +not know when it will start, but will inform you by telegraph as soon as +I learn. If you should hear through other sources before hearing from +me, you can act on the information received. + +"To insure success your cavalry should go with as little wagon-train as +possible, relying upon the country for supplies. I would also reduce +the number of guns to a battery, or the number of batteries, and put the +extra teams to the guns taken. No guns or caissons should be taken with +less than eight horses. + +"Please inform me by telegraph, on receipt of this, what force you think +you will be able to send under these directions. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL G. H. THOMAS." + + +On the 15th, he was directed to start the expedition as soon after the +20th as he could get it off. + +I deemed it of the utmost importance, before a general movement of the +armies operating against Richmond, that all communications with the +city, north of James River, should be cut off. The enemy having +withdrawn the bulk of his force from the Shenandoah Valley and sent it +south, or replaced troops sent from Richmond, and desiring to reinforce +Sherman, if practicable, whose cavalry was greatly inferior in numbers +to that of the enemy, I determined to make a move from the Shenandoah, +which, if successful, would accomplish the first at least, and possibly +the latter of the objects. I therefore telegraphed General Sheridan as +follows: + + +"CITY POINT, VA., February 20, 1865--1 P.M. + +"GENERAL:--As soon as it is possible to travel, I think you will have no +difficulty about reaching Lynchburg with a cavalry force alone. From +there you could destroy the railroad and canal in every direction, so as +to be of no further use to the rebellion. Sufficient cavalry should be +left behind to look after Mosby's gang. From Lynchburg, if information +you might get there would justify it, you will strike south, heading the +streams in Virgina to the westward of Danville, and push on and join +General Sherman. This additional raid, with one now about starting from +East Tennessee under Stoneman, numbering four or give thousand cavalry, +one from Vicksburg, numbering seven or eight thousand cavalry, one from +Eastport, Mississippi, then thousand cavalry, Canby from Mobile Bay, +with about thirty-eight thousand mixed troops, these three latter +pushing for Tuscaloosa, Selma, and Montgomery, and Sherman with a large +army eating out the vitals of South Carolina, is all that will be wanted +to leave nothing for the rebellion to stand upon. I would advise you to +overcome great obstacles to accomplish this. Charleston was evacuated +on Tuesday 1st. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL P. H. SHERIDAN." + + +On the 25th I received a dispatch from General Sheridan, inquiring where +Sherman was aiming for, and if I could give him definite information as +to the points he might be expected to move on, this side of Charlotte, +North Carolina. In answer, the following telegram was sent him: + + +"CITY POINT, VA., February 25, 1865. + +"GENERAL:--Sherman's movements will depend on the amount of opposition +he meets with from the enemy. If strongly opposed, he may possibly have +to fall back to Georgetown, S. C., and fit out for a new start. I +think, however, all danger for the necessity of going to that point has +passed. I believe he has passed Charlotte. He may take Fayetteville on +his way to Goldsboro'. If you reach Lynchburg, you will have to be +guided in your after movements by the information you obtain. Before +you could possibly reach Sherman, I think you would find him moving from +Goldsboro' towards Raleigh, or engaging the enemy strongly posted at one +or the other of these places, with railroad communications opened from +his army to Wilmington or New Bern. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL P. H. SHERIDAN." + + +General Sheridan moved from Winchester on the 27th of February, with two +divisions of cavalry, numbering about five thousand each. On the 1st of +March he secured the bridge, which the enemy attempted to destroy, +across the middle fork of the Shenandoah, at Mount Crawford, and entered +Staunton on the 2d, the enemy having retreated to Waynesboro'. Thence +he pushed on to Waynesboro', where he found the enemy in force in an +intrenched position, under General Early. Without stopping to make a +reconnoissance, an immediate attack was made, the position was carried, +and sixteen hundred prisoners, eleven pieces of artillery, with horses +and caissons complete, two hundred wagons and teams loaded with +subsistence, and seventeen battle-flags, were captured. The prisoners, +under an escort of fifteen hundred men, were sent back to Winchester. +Thence he marched on Charlottesville, destroying effectually the +railroad and bridges as he went, which place he reached on the 3d. Here +he remained two days, destroying the railroad towards Richmond and +Lynchburg, including the large iron bridges over the north and south +forks of the Rivanna River and awaited the arrival of his trains. This +necessary delay caused him to abandon the idea of capturing Lynchburg. +On the morning of the 6th, dividing his force into two columns, he sent +one to Scottsville, whence it marched up the James River Canal to New +Market, destroying every lock, and in many places the bank of the canal. +From here a force was pushed out from this column to Duiguidsville, to +obtain possession of the bridge across the James River at that place, +but failed. The enemy burned it on our approach. The enemy also burned +the bridge across the river at Hardwicksville. The other column moved +down the railroad towards Lynchburg, destroying it as far as Amherst +Court House, sixteen miles from Lynchburg; thence across the country, +uniting with the column at New Market. The river being very high, his +pontoons would not reach across it; and the enemy having destroyed the +bridges by which he had hoped to cross the river and get on the South +Side Railroad about Farmville, and destroy it to Appomattox Court House, +the only thing left for him was to return to Winchester or strike a base +at the White House. Fortunately, he chose the latter. From New Market +he took up his line of march, following the canal towards Richmond, +destroying every lock upon it and cutting the banks wherever +practicable, to a point eight miles east of Goochland, concentrating the +whole force at Columbia on the 10th. Here he rested one day, and sent +through by scouts information of his whereabouts and purposes, and a +request for supplies to meet him at White House, which reached me on the +night of the 12th. An infantry force was immediately sent to get +possession of White House, and supplies were forwarded. Moving from +Columbia in a direction to threaten Richmond, to near Ashland Station, +he crossed the Annas, and after having destroyed all the bridges and +many miles of the railroad, proceeded down the north bank of the +Pamunkey to White House, which place he reached on the 19th. + +Previous to this the following communication was sent to General Thomas: + + +"CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, March 7, 1865--9.30 A.M. + +"GENERAL:--I think it will be advisable now for you to repair the +railroad in East Tennessee, and throw a good force up to Bull's Gap and +fortify there. Supplies at Knoxville could always be got forward as +required. With Bull's Gap fortified, you can occupy as outposts about +all of East Tennessee, and be prepared, if it should be required of you +in the spring, to make a campaign towards Lynchburg, or into North +Carolina. I do not think Stoneman should break the road until he gets +into Virginia, unless it should be to cut off rolling-stock that may be +caught west of that. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL G. H. THOMAS." + + +Thus it will be seen that in March, 1865, General Canby was moving an +adequate force against Mobile and the army defending it under General +Dick Taylor; Thomas was pushing out two large and well-appointed cavalry +expeditions--one from Middle Tennessee under Brevet Major-General Wilson +against the enemy's vital points in Alabama, the other from East +Tennessee, under Major-General Stoneman, towards Lynchburg--and +assembling the remainder of his available forces, preparatory to +commence offensive operations from East Tennessee; General Sheridan's +cavalry was at White House; the armies of the Potomac and James were +confronting the enemy, under Lee, in his defences of Richmond and +Petersburg; General Sherman with his armies, reinforced by that of +General Schofield, was at Goldsboro'; General Pope was making +preparations for a spring campaign against the enemy under Kirby Smith +and Price, west of the Mississippi; and General Hancock was +concentrating a force in the vicinity of Winchester, Virginia, to guard +against invasion or to operate offensively, as might prove necessary. + +After the long march by General Sheridan's cavalry over winter roads, it +was necessary to rest and refit at White House. At this time the +greatest source of uneasiness to me was the fear that the enemy would +leave his strong lines about Petersburg and Richmond for the purpose of +uniting with Johnston, and before he was driven from them by battle, or +I was prepared to make an effectual pursuit. On the 24th of March, +General Sheridan moved from White House, crossed the James River at +Jones's Landing, and formed a junction with the Army of the Potomac in +front of Petersburg on the 27th. During this move, General Ord sent +forces to cover the crossings of the Chickahominy. + +On the 24th of March the following instructions for a general movement +of the armies operating against Richmond were issued: + + +"CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, March 24, 1865. + +"GENERAL: On the 29th instant the armies operating against Richmond +will be moved by our left, for the double purpose of turning the enemy +out of his present position around Petersburg, and to insure the success +of the cavalry under General Sheridan, which will start at the same +time, in its efforts to reach and destroy the South Side and Danville +railroads. Two corps of the Army of the Potomac will be moved at first +in two columns, taking the two roads crossing Hatcher's Run, nearest +where the present line held by us strikes that stream, both moving +towards Dinwiddie Court House. + +"The cavalry under General Sheridan, joined by the division now under +General Davies, will move at the same time by the Weldon Road and the +Jerusalem Plank Road, turning west from the latter before crossing the +Nottoway, and west with the whole column before reaching Stony Creek. +General Sheridan will then move independently, under other instructions +which will be given him. All dismounted cavalry belonging to the Army +of the Potomac, and the dismounted cavalry from the Middle Military +Division not required for guarding property belonging to their arm of +service, will report to Brigadier-General Benham, to be added to the +defences of City Point. Major-General Parke will be left in command of +all the army left for holding the lines about Petersburg and City Point, +subject of course to orders from the commander of the Army of the +Potomac. The 9th army corps will be left intact, to hold the present +line of works so long as the whole line now occupied by us is held. If, +however, the troops to the left of the 9th corps are withdrawn, then the +left of the corps may be thrown back so as to occupy the position held +by the army prior to the capture of the Weldon Road. All troops to the +left of the 9th corps will be held in readiness to move at the shortest +notice by such route as may be designated when the order is given. + +"General Ord will detach three divisions, two white and one colored, or +so much of them as he can, and hold his present lines, and march for the +present left of the Army of the Potomac. In the absence of further +orders, or until further orders are given, the white divisions will +follow the left column of the Army of the Potomac, and the colored +division the right column. During the movement Major-General Weitzel +will be left in command of all the forces remaining behind from the Army +of the James. + +"The movement of troops from the Army of the James will commence on the +night of the 27th instant. General Ord will leave behind the minimum +number of cavalry necessary for picket duty, in the absence of the main +army. A cavalry expedition, from General Ord's command, will also be +started from Suffolk, to leave there on Saturday, the 1st of April, +under Colonel Sumner, for the purpose of cutting the railroad about +Hicksford. This, if accomplished, will have to be a surprise, and +therefore from three to five hundred men will be sufficient. They +should, however, be supported by all the infantry that can be spared +from Norfolk and Portsmouth, as far out as to where the cavalry crosses +the Blackwater. The crossing should probably be at Uniten. Should +Colonel Sumner succeed in reaching the Weldon Road, he will be +instructed to do all the damage possible to the triangle of roads +between Hicksford, Weldon, and Gaston. The railroad bridge at Weldon +being fitted up for the passage of carriages, it might be practicable to +destroy any accumulation of supplies the enemy may have collected south +of the Roanoke. All the troops will move with four days' rations in +haversacks and eight days' in wagons. To avoid as much hauling as +possible, and to give the Army of the James the same number of days' +supplies with the Army of the Potomac, General Ord will direct his +commissary and quartermaster to have sufficient supplies delivered at +the terminus of the road to fill up in passing. Sixty rounds of +ammunition per man will be taken in wagons, and as much grain as the +transportation on hand will carry, after taking the specified amount of +other supplies. The densely wooded country in which the army has to +operate making the use of much artillery impracticable, the amount taken +with the army will be reduced to six or eight guns to each division, at +the option of the army commanders. + +"All necessary preparations for carrying these directions into operation +may be commenced at once. The reserves of the 9th corps should be +massed as much as possible. While I would not now order an +unconditional attack on the enemy's line by them, they should be ready +and should make the attack if the enemy weakens his line in their front, +without waiting for orders. In case they carry the line, then the whole +of the 9th corps could follow up so as to join or co-operate with the +balance of the army. To prepare for this, the 9th corps will have +rations issued to them, same as the balance of the army. General +Weitzel will keep vigilant watch upon his front, and if found at all +practicable to break through at any point, he will do so. A success +north of the James should be followed up with great promptness. An +attack will not be feasible unless it is found that the enemy has +detached largely. In that case it may be regarded as evident that the +enemy are relying upon their local reserves principally for the defence +of Richmond. Preparations may be made for abandoning all the line north +of the James, except inclosed works only to be abandoned, however, after +a break is made in the lines of the enemy. + +"By these instructions a large part of the armies operating against +Richmond is left behind. The enemy, knowing this, may, as an only +chance, strip their lines to the merest skeleton, in the hope of +advantage not being taken of it, while they hurl everything against the +moving column, and return. It cannot be impressed too strongly upon +commanders of troops left in the trenches not to allow this to occur +without taking advantage of it. The very fact of the enemy coming out +to attack, if he does so, might be regarded as almost conclusive +evidence of such a weakening of his lines. I would have it particularly +enjoined upon corps commanders that, in case of an attack from the +enemy, those not attacked are not to wait for orders from the commanding +officer of the army to which they belong, but that they will move +promptly, and notify the commander of their action. I would also enjoin +the same action on the part of division commanders when other parts of +their corps are engaged. In like manner, I would urge the importance of +following up a repulse of the enemy. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERALS MEADE, ORD, AND SHERIDAN." + + +Early on the morning of the 25th the enemy assaulted our lines in front +of the 9th corps (which held from the Appomattox River towards our +left), and carried Fort Stedman, and a part of the line to the right and +left of it, established themselves and turned the guns of the fort +against us, but our troops on either flank held their ground until the +reserves were brought up, when the enemy was driven back with a heavy +loss in killed and wounded, and one thousand nine hundred prisoners. +Our loss was sixty-eight killed, three hundred and thirty-seven wounded, +and five hundred and six missing. General Meade at once ordered the +other corps to advance and feel the enemy in their respective fronts. +Pushing forward, they captured and held the enemy's strongly intrenched +picket-line in front of the 2d and 6th corps, and eight hundred and +thirty-four prisoners. The enemy made desperate attempts to retake this +line, but without success. Our loss in front of these was fifty-two +killed, eight hundred and sixty-four wounded, and two hundred and seven +missing. The enemy's loss in killed and wounded was far greater. + +General Sherman having got his troops all quietly in camp about +Goldsboro', and his preparations for furnishing supplies to them +perfected, visited me at City Point on the 27th of March, and stated +that he would be ready to move, as he had previously written me, by the +10th of April, fully equipped and rationed for twenty days, if it should +become necessary to bring his command to bear against Lee's army, in +co-operation with our forces in front of Richmond and Petersburg. +General Sherman proposed in this movement to threaten Raleigh, and then, +by turning suddenly to the right, reach the Roanoke at Gaston or +thereabouts, whence he could move on to the Richmond and Danville +Railroad, striking it in the vicinity of Burkesville, or join the armies +operating against Richmond, as might be deemed best. This plan he was +directed to carry into execution, if he received no further directions +in the meantime. I explained to him the movement I had ordered to +commence on the 29th of March. That if it should not prove as entirely +successful as I hoped, I would cut the cavalry loose to destroy the +Danville and South Side railroads, and thus deprive the enemy of further +supplies, and also to prevent the rapid concentration of Lee's and +Johnston's armies. + +I had spent days of anxiety lest each morning should bring the report +that the enemy had retreated the night before. I was firmly convinced +that Sherman's crossing the Roanoke would be the signal for Lee to +leave. With Johnston and him combined, a long, tedious, and expensive +campaign, consuming most of the summer, might become necessary. By +moving out I would put the army in better condition for pursuit, and +would at least, by the destruction of the Danville Road, retard the +concentration of the two armies of Lee and Johnston, and cause the enemy +to abandon much material that he might otherwise save. I therefore +determined not to delay the movement ordered. + +On the night of the 27th, Major-General Ord, with two divisions of the +24th corps, Major-General Gibbon commanding, and one division of the +25th corps, Brigadier-General Birney commanding, and MacKenzie's +cavalry, took up his line of march in pursuance of the foregoing +instructions, and reached the position assigned him near Hatcher's Run +on the morning of the 29th. On the 28th the following instructions were +given to General Sheridan: + + +"CITY POINT, VA., March 28, 1865. + +"GENERAL:--The 5th army corps will move by the Vaughn Road at three A.M. +to-morrow morning. The 2d moves at about nine A.M., having but about +three miles to march to reach the point designated for it to take on the +right of the 5th corps, after the latter reaching Dinwiddie Court House. +Move your cavalry at as early an hour as you can, and without being +confined to any particular road or roads. You may go out by the nearest +roads in rear of the 5th corps, pass by its left, and passing near to or +through Dinwiddie, reach the right and rear of the enemy as soon as you +can. It is not the intention to attack the enemy in his intrenched +position, but to force him out, if possible. Should he come out and +attack us, or get himself where he can be attacked, move in with your +entire force in your own way, and with the full reliance that the army +will engage or follow, as circumstances will dictate. I shall be on the +field, and will probably be able to communicate with you. Should I not +do so, and you find that the enemy keeps within his main intrenched +line, you may cut loose and push for the Danville Road. If you find it +practicable, I would like you to cross the South Side Road, between +Petersburg and Burkesville, and destroy it to some extent. I would not +advise much detention, however, until you reach the Danville Road, which +I would like you to strike as near to the Appomattox as possible. Make +your destruction on that road as complete as possible. You can then +pass on to the South Side Road, west of Burkesville, and destroy that in +like manner. + +"After having accomplished the destruction of the two railroads, which +are now the only avenues of supply to Lee's army, you may return to this +army, selecting your road further south, or you may go on into North +Carolina and join General Sherman. Should you select the latter course, +get the information to me as early as possible, so that I may send +orders to meet you at Goldsboro'. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL P. H. SHERIDAN." + + +On the morning of the 29th the movement commenced. At night the cavalry +was at Dinwiddie Court House, and the left of our infantry line extended +to the Quaker Road, near its intersection with the Boydton Plank Road. +The position of the troops from left to right was as follows: Sheridan, +Warren, Humphreys, Ord, Wright, Parke. + +Everything looked favorable to the defeat of the enemy and the capture +of Petersburg and Richmond, if the proper effort was made. I therefore +addressed the following communication to General Sheridan, having +previously informed him verbally not to cut loose for the raid +contemplated in his orders until he received notice from me to do so: + + +"GRAVELLY CREEK, March 29, 1865. + +"GENERAL:--Our line is now unbroken from the Appomattox to Dinwiddie. +We are all ready, however, to give up all, from the Jerusalem Plank Road +to Hatcher's Run, whenever the forces can be used advantageously. After +getting into line south of Hatcher's, we pushed forward to find the +enemy's position. General Griffin was attacked near where the Quaker +Road intersects the Boydton Road, but repulsed it easily, capturing +about one hundred men. Humphreys reached Dabney's Mill, and was pushing +on when last heard from. + +"I now feel like ending the matter, if it is possible to do so, before +going back. I do not want you, therefore, to cut loose and go after the +enemy's roads at present. In the morning push around the enemy, if you +can, and get on to his right rear. The movements of the enemy's cavalry +may, of course, modify your action. We will act all together as one +army here, until it is seen what can be done with the enemy. The +signal-officer at Cobb's Hill reported, at half-past eleven A.M., that a +cavalry column had passed that point from Richmond towards Petersburg, +taking forty minutes to pass. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL P. H. SHERIDAN." + + +From the night of the 29th to the morning of the 31st the rain fell in +such torrents as to make it impossible to move a wheeled vehicle, except +as corduroy roads were laid in front of them. During the 30th, Sheridan +advanced from Dinwiddie Court House towards Five Forks, where he found +the enemy in full force. General Warren advanced and extended his line +across the Boydton Plank Road to near the White Oak Road, with a view of +getting across the latter; but, finding the enemy strong in his front +and extending beyond his left, was directed to hold on where he was, and +fortify. General Humphreys drove the enemy from his front into his main +line on the Hatcher, near Burgess's Mills. Generals Ord, Wright, and +Parke made examinations in their fronts to determine the feasibility of +an assault on the enemy's lines. The two latter reported favorably. +The enemy confronting us as he did, at every point from Richmond to our +extreme left, I conceived his lines must be weakly held, and could be +penetrated if my estimate of his forces was correct. I determined, +therefore, to extend our line no farther, but to reinforce General +Sheridan with a corps of infantry, and thus enable him to cut loose and +turn the enemy's right flank, and with the other corps assault the +enemy's lines. The result of the offensive effort of the enemy the week +before, when he assaulted Fort Stedman, particularly favored this. The +enemy's intrenched picket-line captured by us at that time threw the +lines occupied by the belligerents so close together at some points that +it was but a moment's run from one to the other. Preparations were at +once made to relieve General Humphreys's corps, to report to General +Sheridan; but the condition of the roads prevented immediate movement. +On the morning of the 31st, General Warren reported favorably to getting +possession of the White Oak Road, and was directed to do so. To +accomplish this, he moved with one division, instead of his whole corps, +which was attacked by the enemy in superior force and driven back on the +2d division before it had time to form, and it, in turn, forced back +upon the 3d division, when the enemy was checked. A division of the 2d +corps was immediately sent to his support, the enemy driven back with +heavy loss, and possession of the White Oak Road gained. Sheridan +advanced, and with a portion of his cavalry got possession of the Five +Forks; but the enemy, after the affair with the 5th corps, reinforced +the rebel cavalry, defending that point with infantry, and forced him +back towards Dinwiddie Court House. Here General Sheridan displayed +great generalship. Instead of retreating with his whole command on the +main army, to tell the story of superior forces encountered, he deployed +his cavalry on foot, leaving only mounted men enough to take charge of +the horses. This compelled the enemy to deploy over a vast extent of +wooded and broken country, and made his progress slow. At this juncture +he dispatched to me what had taken place, and that he was dropping back +slowly on Dinwiddie Court House. General Mackenzie's cavalry and one +division of the 5th corps were immediately ordered to his assistance. +Soon after receiving a report from General Meade that Humphreys could +hold our position on the Boydton Road, and that the other two divisions +of the 5th corps could go to Sheridan, they were so ordered at once. +Thus the operations of the day necessitated the sending of Warren, +because of his accessibility, instead of Humphreys, as was intended, and +precipitated intended movements. On the morning of the 1st of April, +General Sheridan, reinforced by General Warren, drove the enemy back on +Five Forks, where, late in the evening, he assaulted and carried his +strongly fortified position, capturing all his artillery and between +five and six thousand prisoners. + +About the close of this battle, Brevet Major-General Charles Griffin +relieved Major-General Warren in command of the 5th corps. The report +of this reached me after nightfall. Some apprehensions filled my mind +lest the enemy might desert his lines during the night, and by falling +upon General Sheridan before assistance could reach him, drive him from +his position and open the way for retreat. To guard against this, +General Miles's division of Humphreys's corps was sent to reinforce him, +and a bombardment was commenced and kept up until four o'clock in the +morning (April 2), when an assault was ordered on the enemy's lines. +General Wright penetrated the lines with his whole corps, sweeping +everything before him, and to his left towards Hatcher's Run, capturing +many guns and several thousand prisoners. He was closely followed by +two divisions of General Ord's command, until he met the other division +of General Ord's that had succeeded in forcing the enemy's lines near +Hatcher's Run. Generals Wright and Ord immediately swung to the right, +and closed all of the enemy on that side of them in Petersburg, while +General Humphreys pushed forward with two divisions and joined General +Wright on the left. General Parke succeeded in carrying the enemy's +main line, capturing guns and prisoners, but was unable to carry his +inner line. General Sheridan being advised of the condition of affairs, +returned General Miles to his proper command. On reaching the enemy's +lines immediately surrounding Petersburg, a portion of General Gibbon's +corps, by a most gallant charge, captured two strong inclosed works--the +most salient and commanding south of Petersburg--thus materially +shortening the line of investment necessary for taking in the city. The +enemy south of Hatcher's Run retreated westward to Sutherland's Station, +where they were overtaken by Miles's division. A severe engagement +ensued, and lasted until both his right and left flanks were threatened +by the approach of General Sheridan, who was moving from Ford's Station +towards Petersburg, and a division sent by General Meade from the front +of Petersburg, when he broke in the utmost confusion, leaving in our +hands his guns and many prisoners. This force retreated by the main +road along the Appomattox River. During the night of the 2d the enemy +evacuated Petersburg and Richmond, and retreated towards Danville. On +the morning of the 3d pursuit was commenced. General Sheridan pushed +for the Danville Road, keeping near the Appomattox, followed by General +Meade with the 2d and 6th corps, while General Ord moved for +Burkesville, along the South Side Road; the 9th corps stretched along +that road behind him. On the 4th, General Sheridan struck the Danville +Road near Jetersville, where he learned that Lee was at Amelia Court +House. He immediately intrenched himself and awaited the arrival of +General Meade, who reached there the next day. General Ord reached +Burkesville on the evening of the 5th. + +On the morning of the 5th, I addressed Major-General Sherman the +following communication: + + +"WILSON'S STATION, April 5, 1865. + +"GENERAL: All indications now are that Lee will attempt to reach +Danville with the remnant of his force. Sheridan, who was up with him +last night, reports all that is left, horse, foot, and dragoons, at +twenty thousand, much demoralized. We hope to reduce this number +one-half. I shall push on to Burkesville, and if a stand is made at +Danville, will in a very few days go there. If you can possibly do so, +push on from where you are, and let us see if we cannot finish the job +with Lee's and Johnston's armies. Whether it will be better for you to +strike for Greensboro', or nearer to Danville, you will be better able +to judge when you receive this. Rebel armies now are the only strategic +points to strike at. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"MAJOR-GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN." + + +On the morning of the 6th, it was found that General Lee was moving west +of Jetersville, towards Danville. General Sheridan moved with his +cavalry (the 5th corps having been returned to General Meade on his +reaching Jetersville) to strike his flank, followed by the 6th corps, +while the 2d and 5th corps pressed hard after, forcing him to abandon +several hundred wagons and several pieces of artillery. General Ord +advanced from Burkesville towards Farmville, sending two regiments of +infantry and a squadron of cavalry, under Brevet Brigadier-General +Theodore Read, to reach and destroy the bridges. This advance met the +head of Lee's column near Farmville, which it heroically attacked and +detained until General Read was killed and his small force overpowered. +This caused a delay in the enemy's movements, and enabled General Ord to +get well up with the remainder of his force, on meeting which, the enemy +immediately intrenched himself. In the afternoon, General Sheridan +struck the enemy south of Sailors' Creek, captured sixteen pieces of +artillery and about four hundred wagons, and detained him until the 6th +corps got up, when a general attack of infantry and cavalry was made, +which resulted in the capture of six or seven thousand prisoners, among +whom were many general officers. The movements of the 2d corps and +General Ord's command contributed greatly to the day's success. + +On the morning of the 7th the pursuit was renewed, the cavalry, except +one division, and the 5th corps moving by Prince Edward's Court House; +the 6th corps, General Ord's command, and one division of cavalry, on +Farmville; and the 2d corps by the High Bridge Road. It was soon found +that the enemy had crossed to the north side of the Appomattox; but so +close was the pursuit, that the 2d corps got possession of the common +bridge at High Bridge before the enemy could destroy it, and immediately +crossed over. The 6th corps and a division of cavalry crossed at +Farmville to its support. + +Feeling now that General Lee's chance of escape was utterly hopeless, I +addressed him the following communication from Farmville: + + +"April 7, 1865. + +"GENERAL--The result of the last week must convince you of the +hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern +Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my +duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of +blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate +States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"GENERAL R. E. LEE." + + +Early on the morning of the 8th, before leaving, I received at Farmville +the following: + + +"April 7, 1865. + +"GENERAL: I have received your note of this date. Though not +entertaining the opinion you express on the hopelessness of further +resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia, I reciprocate +your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before +considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on condition +of its surrender. + +"R. E. LEE, General. +"LIEUTENANT-GENERAL U. S. GRANT." + + +To this I immediately replied: + + +"April 8, 1865. + +"GENERAL:--Your note of last evening, in reply to mine of same date, +asking the condition on which I will accept the surrender of the Army of +Northern Virginia, is just received. In reply, I would say, that peace +being my great desire, there is but one condition I would insist upon +--namely, That the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified for +taking up arms again against the Government of the United States until +properly exchanged. I will meet you, or will designate officers to meet +any officers you may name for the same purpose, at any point agreeable +to you, for the purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which the +surrender of the Army of the Northern Virginia will be received. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"GENERAL R. E. LEE." + + +Early on the morning of the 8th the pursuit was resumed. General Meade +followed north of the Appomattox, and General Sheridan, with all the +cavalry, pushed straight ahead for Appomattox Station, followed by +General Ord's command and the 5th corps. During the day General Meade's +advance had considerable fighting with the enemy's rear-guard, but was +unable to bring on a general engagement. Late in the evening General +Sheridan struck the railroad at Appomattox Station, drove the enemy from +there, and captured twenty-five pieces of artillery, a hospital train, +and four trains of cars loaded with supplies for Lee's army. During +this day I accompanied General Meade's column, and about midnight +received the following communication from General Lee: + + +April 8, 1865. + +"GENERAL:--I received, at a late hour, your note of to-day. In mine of +yesterday I did not intend to propose the surrender of the Army of +Northern Virginia, but to ask the terms of your proposition. To be +frank, I do not think the emergency has arisen to call for the surrender +of this army; but as the restoration of peace should be the sole object +of all, I desired to know whether your proposals would lead to that end. +I cannot, therefore, meet you with a view to the surrender of the Army +of Northern Virginia; but as far as your proposal may affect the +Confederate States forces under my command, and tend to the restoration +of peace, I should be pleased to meet you at ten A.M. to-morrow on the +old stage-road to Richmond, between the picket-lines of the two armies. + +"R. E. LEE, General. +"LIEUTENANT-GENERAL U. S. GRANT." + + +Early on the morning of the 9th I returned him an answer as follows, and +immediately started to join the column south of the Appomattox: + + +"April 9, 1865. + +"GENERAL:--Your note of yesterday is received. I have no authority to +treat on the subject of peace; the meeting proposed for ten A.M. to-day +could lead to no good. I will state, however, general, that I am +equally anxious for peace with yourself, and the whole North entertains +the same feeling. The terms upon which peace can be had are well +understood. By the South laying down their arms they will hasten that +most desirable event, save thousands of human lives, and hundreds of +millions of property not yet destroyed. Seriously hoping that all our +difficulties may be settled without the loss of another life, I +subscribe myself, etc. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"GENERAL R. E. LEE." + + +On this morning of the 9th, General Ord's command and the 5th corps +reached Appomattox Station just as the enemy was making a desperate +effort to break through our cavalry. The infantry was at once thrown +in. Soon after a white flag was received, requesting a suspension of +hostilities pending negotiations for a surrender. + +Before reaching General Sheridan's headquarters, I received the +following from General Lee: + + +"April 9, 1865. + +"GENERAL:--I received your note of this morning on the picket-line, +whither I had come to meet you, and ascertain definitely what terms were +embraced in your proposal of yesterday with reference to the surrender +of this army. I now ask an interview, in accordance with the offer +contained in your letter of yesterday, for that purpose. + +"R. E. LEE, General. +"LIEUTENANT-GENERAL U. S. GRANT." + + +The interview was held at Appomattox Court-House, the result of which is +set forth in the following correspondence: + + +APPOMATTOX COURT-HOUSE, Virginia, April 9, 1865. + +"GENERAL: In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the +8th instant, I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of Northern +Virginia on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and +men to be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer to be +designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers +as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not +to take up arms against the Government of the United States until +properly exchanged; and each company or regimental commander sign a like +parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery, and public +property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officers +appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of +the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each +officer and man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be +disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their +paroles and the laws in force where they may reside. + +"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. +"GENERAL R. E. LEE." + + +"HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, April 9, 1865. + +"GENERAL: I have received your letter of this date containing the terms +of surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia as proposed by you. As +they are substantially the same as those expressed in your letter of the +8th instant, they are accepted. I will proceed to designate the proper +officers to carry the stipulations into effect. + +"R. E. LEE, General. +"LIEUTENANT-GENERAL U. S. GRANT." + + +The command of Major-General Gibbon, the 5th army corps under Griffin, +and Mackenzie's cavalry, were designated to remain at Appomattox +Court-House until the paroling of the surrendered army was completed, +and to take charge of the public property. The remainder of the army +immediately returned to the vicinity of Burkesville. + +General Lee's great influence throughout the whole South caused his +example to be followed, and to-day the result is that the armies lately +under his leadership are at their homes, desiring peace and quiet, and +their arms are in the hands of our ordnance officers. + +On the receipt of my letter of the 5th, General Sherman moved directly +against Joe Johnston, who retreated rapidly on and through Raleigh, +which place General Sherman occupied on the morning of the 13th. The +day preceding, news of the surrender of General Lee reached him at +Smithfield. + +On the 14th a correspondence was opened between General Sherman and +General Johnston, which resulted on the 18th in an agreement for a +suspension of hostilities, and a memorandum or basis for peace, subject +to the approval of the President. This agreement was disapproved by the +President on the 21st, which disapproval, together with your +instructions, was communicated to General Sherman by me in person on the +morning of the 24th, at Raleigh, North Carolina, in obedience to your +orders. Notice was at once given by him to General Johnston for the +termination of the truce that had been entered into. On the 25th +another meeting between them was agreed upon, to take place on the 26th, +which terminated in the surrender and disbandment of Johnston's army +upon substantially the same terms as were given to General Lee. + +The expedition under General Stoneman from East Tennessee got off on the +20th of March, moving by way of Boone, North Carolina, and struck the +railroad at Wytheville, Chambersburg, and Big Lick. The force striking +it at Big Lick pushed on to within a few miles of Lynchburg, destroying +the important bridges, while with the main force he effectually +destroyed it between New River and Big Lick, and then turned for +Greensboro', on the North Carolina Railroad; struck that road and +destroyed the bridges between Danville and Greensboro', and between +Greensboro' and the Yadkin, together with the depots of supplies along +it, and captured four hundred prisoners. At Salisbury he attacked and +defeated a force of the enemy under General Gardiner, capturing fourteen +pieces of artillery and one thousand three hundred and sixty-four +prisoners, and destroyed large amounts of army stores. At this place he +destroyed fifteen miles of railroad and the bridges towards Charlotte. +Thence he moved to Slatersville. + +General Canby, who had been directed in January to make preparations for +a movement from Mobile Bay against Mobile and the interior of Alabama, +commenced his movement on the 20th of March. The 16th corps, +Major-General A. J. Smith commanding, moved from Fort Gaines by water to +Fish River; the 13th corps, under Major-General Gordon Granger, moved +from Fort Morgan and joined the 16th corps on Fish River, both moving +thence on Spanish Fort and investing it on the 27th; while Major-General +Steele's command moved from Pensacola, cut the railroad leading from +Tensas to Montgomery, effected a junction with them, and partially +invested Fort Blakely. After a severe bombardment of Spanish Fort, a +part of its line was carried on the 8th of April. During the night the +enemy evacuated the fort. Fort Blakely was carried by assault on the +9th, and many prisoners captured; our loss was considerable. These +successes practically opened to us the Alabama River, and enabled us to +approach Mobile from the north. On the night of the 11th the city was +evacuated, and was taken possession of by our forces on the morning of +the 12th. + +The expedition under command of Brevet Major-General Wilson, consisting +of twelve thousand five hundred mounted men, was delayed by rains until +March 22d, when it moved from Chickasaw, Alabama. On the 1st of April, +General Wilson encountered the enemy in force under Forrest near +Ebenezer Church, drove him in confusion, captured three hundred +prisoners and three guns, and destroyed the central bridge over the +Cahawba River. On the 2d he attacked and captured the fortified city of +Selma, defended by Forrest, with seven thousand men and thirty-two guns, +destroyed the arsenal, armory, naval foundry, machine-shops, vast +quantities of stores, and captured three thousand prisoners. On the 4th +he captured and destroyed Tuscaloosa. On the 10th he crossed the +Alabama River, and after sending information of his operations to +General Canby, marched on Montgomery, which place he occupied on the +14th, the enemy having abandoned it. At this place many stores and five +steamboats fell into our hands. Thence a force marched direct on +Columbus, and another on West Point, both of which places were assaulted +and captured on the 16th. At the former place we got one thousand five +hundred prisoners and fifty-two field-guns, destroyed two gunboats, the +navy yard, foundries, arsenal, many factories, and much other public +property. At the latter place we got three hundred prisoners, four +guns, and destroyed nineteen locomotives and three hundred cars. On the +20th he took possession of Macon, Georgia, with sixty field-guns, one +thousand two hundred militia, and five generals, surrendered by General +Howell Cobb. General Wilson, hearing that Jeff. Davis was trying to +make his escape, sent forces in pursuit and succeeded in capturing him +on the morning of May 11th. + +On the 4th day of May, General Dick Taylor surrendered to General Canby +all the remaining rebel forces east of the Mississippi. + +A force sufficient to insure an easy triumph over the enemy under Kirby +Smith, west of the Mississippi, was immediately put in motion for Texas, +and Major-General Sheridan designated for its immediate command; but on +the 26th day of May, and before they reached their destination, General +Kirby Smith surrendered his entire command to Major-General Canby. This +surrender did not take place, however, until after the capture of the +rebel President and Vice-President; and the bad faith was exhibited of +first disbanding most of his army and permitting an indiscriminate +plunder of public property. + +Owing to the report that many of those lately in arms against the +government had taken refuge upon the soil of Mexico, carrying with them +arms rightfully belonging to the United States, which had been +surrendered to us by agreement among them some of the leaders who had +surrendered in person and the disturbed condition of affairs on the Rio +Grande, the orders for troops to proceed to Texas were not changed. + +There have been severe combats, raids, expeditions, and movements to +defeat the designs and purposes of the enemy, most of them reflecting +great credit on our arms, and which contributed greatly to our final +triumph, that I have not mentioned. Many of these will be found clearly +set forth in the reports herewith submitted; some in the telegrams and +brief dispatches announcing them, and others, I regret to say, have not +as yet been officially reported. + +For information touching our Indian difficulties, I would respectfully +refer to the reports of the commanders of departments in which they have +occurred. + +It has been my fortune to see the armies of both the West and the East +fight battles, and from what I have seen I know there is no difference +in their fighting qualities. All that it was possible for men to do in +battle they have done. The Western armies commenced their battles in +the Mississippi Valley, and received the final surrender of the remnant +of the principal army opposed to them in North Carolina. The armies of +the East commenced their battles on the river from which the Army of the +Potomac derived its name, and received the final surrender of their old +antagonists at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The splendid +achievements of each have nationalized our victories removed all +sectional jealousies (of which we have unfortunately experienced too +much), and the cause of crimination and recrimination that might have +followed had either section failed in its duty. All have a proud +record, and all sections can well congratulate themselves and each other +for having done their full share in restoring the supremacy of law over +every foot of territory belonging to the United States. Let them hope +for perpetual peace and harmony with that enemy, whose manhood, however +mistaken the cause, drew forth such herculean deeds of valor. + +I have the honor to be, Very respectfully, your obedient servant, U. S. +GRANT, Lieutenant-General. + +THE END + + +__________ +FOOTNOTES + +(*1) Afterwards General Gardner, C.S.A. + + +(*2) General Garland expressed a wish to get a message back to +General Twiggs, his division commander, or General Taylor, to +the effect that he was nearly out of ammunition and must have +more sent to him, or otherwise be reinforced. Deeming the +return dangerous he did not like to order any one to carry it, +so he called for a volunteer. Lieutenant Grant offered his +services, which were accepted.--PUBLISHERS. + + +(*3) Mentioned in the reports of Major Lee, Colonel Garland and +General Worth.--PUBLISHERS. + + +(*4) NOTE.--It had been a favorite idea with General Scott for a +great many years before the Mexican war to have established in +the United States a soldiers' home, patterned after something of +the kind abroad, particularly, I believe, in France. He +recommended this uniformly, or at least frequently, in his +annual reports to the Secretary of War, but never got any +hearing. Now, as he had conquered the state, he made +assessments upon the different large towns and cities occupied +by our troops, in proportion to their capacity to pay, and +appointed officers to receive the money. In addition to the sum +thus realized he had derived, through capture at Cerro Gordo, +sales of captured government tobacco, etc., sums which swelled +the fund to a total of about $220,000. Portions of this fund +were distributed among the rank and file, given to the wounded +in hospital, or applied in other ways, leaving a balance of some +$118,000 remaining unapplied at the close of the war. After the +war was over and the troops all home, General Scott applied to +have this money, which had never been turned into the Treasury +of the United States, expended in establishing such homes as he +had previously recommended. This fund was the foundation of the +Soldiers' Home at Washington City, and also one at Harrodsburgh, +Kentucky. + +The latter went into disuse many years ago. In fact it never +had many soldiers in it, and was, I believe, finally sold. + + +(*5) The Mexican war made three presidential candidates, Scott, +Taylor and Pierce--and any number of aspirants for that high +office. It made also governors of States, members of the +cabinet, foreign ministers and other officers of high rank both +in state and nation. The rebellion, which contained more war in +a single day, at some critical periods, than the whole Mexican +war in two years, has not been so fruitful of political results +to those engaged on the Union side. On the other side, the side +of the South, nearly every man who holds office of any sort +whatever, either in the state or in the nation, was a +Confederate soldier, but this is easily accounted for from the +fact that the South was a military camp, and there were very few +people of a suitable age to be in the army who were not in it. + + +(*6) C. B. Lagow, the others not yet having joined me. + + +(*7) NOTE.--Since writing this chapter I have received from Mrs. +W. H. L. Wallace, widow of the gallant general who was killed in +the first day's fight on the field of Shiloh, a letter from +General Lew. Wallace to him dated the morning of the 5th. At +the date of this letter it was well known that the Confederates +had troops out along the Mobile & Ohio railroad west of Crump's +landing and Pittsburg landing, and were also collecting near +Shiloh. This letter shows that at that time General Lew. +Wallace was making preparations for the emergency that might +happen for the passing of reinforcements between Shiloh and his +position, extending from Crump's landing westward, and he sends +it over the road running from Adamsville to the Pittsburg +landing and Purdy road. These two roads intersect nearly a mile +west of the crossing of the latter over Owl Creek, where our +right rested. In this letter General Lew. Wallace advises +General W. H. L. Wallace that he will send "to-morrow" (and his +letter also says "April 5th," which is the same day the letter +was dated and which, therefore, must have been written on the +4th) some cavalry to report to him at his headquarters, and +suggesting the propriety of General W. H. L. Wallace's sending a +company back with them for the purpose of having the cavalry at +the two landings familiarize themselves with the road so that +they could "act promptly in case of emergency as guides to and +from the different camps." + +This modifies very materially what I have said, and what has +been said by others, of the conduct of General Lew. Wallace at +the battle of Shiloh. It shows that he naturally, with no more +experience than he had at the time in the profession of arms, +would take the particular road that he did start upon in the +absence of orders to move by a different road. + +The mistake he made, and which probably caused his apparent +dilatoriness, was that of advancing some distance after he found +that the firing, which would be at first directly to his front +and then off to the left, had fallen back until it had got very +much in rear of the position of his advance. This falling back +had taken place before I sent General Wallace orders to move up +to Pittsburg landing and, naturally, my order was to follow the +road nearest the river. But my order was verbal, and to a staff +officer who was to deliver it to General Wallace, so that I am +not competent to say just what order the General actually +received. + +General Wallace's division was stationed, the First brigade at +Crump's landing, the Second out two miles, and the Third two and +a half miles out. Hearing the sounds of battle General Wallace +early ordered his First and Third brigades to concentrate on the +Second. If the position of our front had not changed, the road +which Wallace took would have been somewhat shorter to our right +than the River road. + +U. S. GRANT. + +MOUNT MACGREGOR, NEW YORK, June 21, 1885. + + +(*8) NOTE: In an article on the battle of Shiloh which I wrote +for the Century Magazine, I stated that General A. McD. McCook, +who commanded a division of Buell's army, expressed some +unwillingness to pursue the enemy on Monday, April 7th, because +of the condition of his troops. General Badeau, in his history, +also makes the same statement, on my authority. Out of justice +to General McCook and his command, I must say that they left a +point twenty-two miles east of Savannah on the morning of the +6th. From the heavy rains of a few days previous and the +passage of trains and artillery, the roads were necessarily deep +in mud, which made marching slow. The division had not only +marched through this mud the day before, but it had been in the +rain all night without rest. It was engaged in the battle of +the second day and did as good service as its position +allowed. In fact an opportunity occurred for it to perform a +conspicuous act of gallantry which elicited the highest +commendation from division commanders in the Army of the +Tennessee. General Sherman both in his memoirs and report makes +mention of this fact. General McCook himself belongs to a family +which furnished many volunteers to the army. I refer to these +circumstances with minuteness because I did General McCook +injustice in my article in the Century, though not to the extent +one would suppose from the public press. I am not willing to do +any one an injustice, and if convinced that I have done one, I +am always willing to make the fullest admission. + + +(*9) NOTE.--For gallantry in the various engagements, from the +time I was left in command down to 26th of October and on my +recommendation, Generals McPherson and C. S. Hamilton were +promoted to be Major-Generals, and Colonels C. C. Marsh, 20th +Illinois, M. M. Crocker, 13th Iowa J. A. Mower, 11th Missouri, +M. D. Leggett, 78th Ohio, J. D. Stevenson, 7th Missouri, and +John E. Smith, 45th Illinois, to be Brigadiers. + + +(*10) Colonel Ellet reported having attacked a Confederate +battery on the Red River two days before with one of his boats, +the De Soto. Running aground, he was obliged to abandon his +vessel. However, he reported that he set fire to her and blew +her up. Twenty of his men fell into the hands of the enemy. +With the balance he escaped on the small captured steamer, the +New Era, and succeeded in passing the batteries at Grand Gulf +and reaching the vicinity of Vicksburg. + + +(*11) One of Colonel Ellet's vessels which had run the blockade +on February the 2d and been sunk in the Red River. + + +(*12) NOTE.--On this occasion Governor Richard Yates, of +Illinois, happened to be on a visit to the army and accompanied +me to Carthage. I furnished an ambulance for his use and that +of some of the State officers who accompanied him. + + +(*13) NOTE.--When General Sherman first learned of the move I +proposed to make, he called to see me about it. I recollect +that I had transferred my headquarters from a boat in the river +to a house a short distance back from the levee. I was seated +on the piazza engaged in conversation with my staff when Sherman +came up. After a few moments' conversation he said that he would +like to see me alone. We passed into the house together and shut +the door after us. Sherman then expressed his alarm at the move +I had ordered, saying that I was putting myself in a position +voluntarily which an enemy would be glad to manoeuvre a year--or +a long time--to get me in. I was going into the enemy's country, +with a large river behind me and the enemy holding points +strongly fortified above and below. He said that it was an +axiom in war that when any great body of troops moved against an +enemy they should do so from a base of supplies, which they would +guard as they would the apple of the eye, etc. He pointed out +all the difficulties that might be encountered in the campaign +proposed, and stated in turn what would be the true campaign to +make. This was, in substance, to go back until high ground +could be reached on the east bank of the river; fortify there +and establish a depot of supplies, and move from there, being +always prepared to fall back upon it in case of disaster. I +said this would take us back to Memphis. Sherman then said that +was the very place he would go to, and would move by railroad +from Memphis to Grenada, repairing the road as we advanced. To +this I replied, the country is already disheartened over the +lack of success on the part of our armies; the last election +went against the vigorous prosecution of the war, voluntary +enlistments had ceased throughout most of the North and +conscription was already resorted to, and if we went back so far +as Memphis it would discourage the people so much that bases of +supplies would be of no use: neither men to hold them nor +supplies to put in them would be furnished. The problem for us +was to move forward to a decisive victory, or our cause was +lost. No progress was being made in any other field, and we had +to go on. + +Sherman wrote to my adjutant general, Colonel J. A. Rawlins, +embodying his views of the campaign that should be made, and +asking him to advise me to at least get the views of my generals +upon the subject. Colonel Rawlins showed me the letter, but I +did not see any reason for changing my plans. The letter was +not answered and the subject was not subsequently mentioned +between Sherman and myself to the end of the war, that I +remember of. I did not regard the letter as official, and +consequently did not preserve it. General Sherman furnished a +copy himself to General Badeau, who printed it in his history of +my campaigns. I did not regard either the conversation between +us or the letter to my adjutant-general as protests, but simply +friendly advice which the relations between us fully +justified. Sherman gave the same energy to make the campaign a +success that he would or could have done if it had been ordered +by himself. I make this statement here to correct an impression +which was circulated at the close of the war to Sherman's +prejudice, and for which there was no fair foundation. + + +(*14) Meant Edward's Station. + +(*15) CHATTANOOGA, November 18, 1863. + +MAJOR-GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN: + +Enclosed herewith I send you copy of instructions to +Major-General Thomas. You having been over the ground in +person, and having heard the whole matter discussed, further +instructions will not be necessary for you. It is particularly +desirable that a force should be got through to the railroad +between Cleveland and Dalton, and Longstreet thus cut off from +communication with the South, but being confronted by a large +force here, strongly located, it is not easy to tell how this is +to be effected until the result of our first effort is known. + +I will add, however, what is not shown in my instructions to +Thomas, that a brigade of cavalry has been ordered here which, +if it arrives in time, will be thrown across the Tennessee above +Chickamauga, and may be able to make the trip to Cleveland or +thereabouts. + +U. S. GRANT +Maj.-Gen'l. + + +CHATTANOOGA, November 18, 1863. + +MAJOR-GENERAL GEO. H. THOMAS, +Chattanooga: + +All preparations should be made for attacking the enemy's +position on Missionary Ridge by Saturday at daylight. Not being +provided with a map giving names of roads, spurs of the +mountains, and other places, such definite instructions cannot +be given as might be desirable. However, the general plan, you +understand, is for Sherman, with the force brought with him +strengthened by a division from your command, to effect a +crossing of the Tennessee River just below the mouth of +Chickamauga; his crossing to be protected by artillery from the +heights on the north bank of the river (to be located by your +chief of artillery), and to secure the heights on the northern +extremity to about the railroad tunnel before the enemy can +concentrate against him. You will co-operate with Sherman. The +troops in Chattanooga Valley should be well concentrated on your +left flank, leaving only the necessary force to defend +fortifications on the right and centre, and a movable column of +one division in readiness to move wherever ordered. This +division should show itself as threateningly as possible on the +most practicable line for making an attack up the valley. Your +effort then will be to form a junction with Sherman, making your +advance well towards the northern end of Missionary Ridge, and +moving as near simultaneously with him as possible. The +junction once formed and the ridge carried, communications will +be at once established between the two armies by roads on the +south bank of the river. Further movements will then depend on +those of the enemy. Lookout Valley, I think, will be easily +held by Geary's division and what troops you may still have +there belonging to the old Army of the Cumberland. Howard's +corps can then be held in readiness to act either with you at +Chattanooga or with Sherman. It should be marched on Friday +night to a position on the north side of the river, not lower +down than the first pontoon-bridge, and there held in readiness +for such orders as may become necessary. All these troops will +be provided with two days' cooked rations in haversacks, and one +hundred rounds of ammunition on the person of each infantry +soldier. Special care should be taken by all officers to see +that ammunition is not wasted or unnecessarily fired away. You +will call on the engineer department for such preparations as +you may deem necessary for carrying your infantry and artillery +over the creek. + +U. S. GRANT, +Major-General. + + +(*16) In this order authority was given for the troops to reform +after taking the first line of rifle-pits preparatory to carrying +the ridge. + +(*17) CHATTANOOGA, November 24,1863. + +MAJOR-GENERAL. CEO. H. THOMAS, +Chattanooga + +General Sherman carried Missionary Ridge as far as the tunnel +with only slight skirmishing. His right now rests at the tunnel +and on top of the hill, his left at Chickamauga Creek. I have +instructed General Sherman to advance as soon as it is light in +the morning, and your attack, which will be simultaneous, will +be in cooperation. Your command will either carry the +rifle-pits and ridge directly in front of them, or move to the +left, as the presence of the enemy may require. If Hooker's +position on the mountain [cannot be maintained] with a small +force, and it is found impracticable to carry the top from where +he is, it would be advisable for him to move up the valley with +all the force he can spare, and ascend by the first practicable +road. + +U. S. GRANT, + +Major-General. + + +(*18) WASHINGTON, D. C., +December 8, 1863, 10.2 A.M. + +MAJ.-GENERAL U. S. GRANT: + +Understanding that your lodgment at Knoxville and at Chattanooga +is now secure, I wish to tender you, and all under your command, +my more than thanks, my profoundest gratitude for the skill, +courage, and perseverance with which you and they, over so great +difficulties, have effected that important object. God bless you +all, + +A. LINCOLN, + +President U. S. + + +(*19) General John G. Foster. + + +(*20) During this winter the citizens of Jo Davies County, Ill., +subscribed for and had a diamond-hilled sword made for General +Grant, which was always known as the Chattanooga sword. The +scabbard was of gold, and was ornamented with a scroll running +nearly its entire length, displaying in engraved letters the +names of the battles in which General Grant had participated. + +Congress also gave him a vote of thanks for the victories at +Chattanooga, and voted him a gold medal for Vicksburg and +Chattanooga. All such things are now in the possession of the +government at Washington. + + +(*21) WASHINGTON, D. C. +December 29, 1863. + +MAJ.-GENERAL U. S. GRANT: + +General Foster has asked to be relieved from his command on +account of disability from old wounds. Should his request be +granted, who would you like as his successor? It is possible +that Schofield will be sent to your command. + +H. W. HALLECK +General-in-Chief. +(OFFICIAL.) + + +(*22) See letter to Banks, in General Grant's report, Appendix. + + +(*23) [PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.] + +HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES, WASHINGTON, D. C., +April 4, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN, +Commanding Military Division of the Mississippi. + +GENERAL:--It is my design, if the enemy keep quiet and allow me +to take the initiative in the spring campaign, to work all parts +of the army together, and somewhat towards a common centre. For +your information I now write you my programme, as at present +determined upon. + +I have sent orders to Banks, by private messenger, to finish up +his present expedition against Shreveport with all dispatch; to +turn over the defence of Red River to General Steele and the +navy and to return your troops to you and his own to New +Orleans; to abandon all of Texas, except the Rio Grande, and to +hold that with not to exceed four thousand men; to reduce the +number of troops on the Mississippi to the lowest number +necessary to hold it, and to collect from his command not less +than twenty-five thousand men. To this I will add five thousand +men from Missouri. With this force he is to commence operations +against Mobile as soon as he can. It will be impossible for him +to commence too early. + +Gillmore joins Butler with ten thousand men, and the two operate +against Richmond from the south side of the James River. This +will give Butler thirty-three thousand men to operate with, W. +F. Smith commanding the right wing of his forces and Gillmore +the left wing. I will stay with the Army of the Potomac, +increased by Burnside's corps of not less than twenty-five +thousand effective men, and operate directly against Lee's army, +wherever it may be found. + +Sigel collects all his available force in two columns, one, +under Ord and Averell, to start from Beverly, Virginia, and the +other, under Crook, to start from Charleston on the Kanawha, to +move against the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. + +Crook will have all cavalry, and will endeavor to get in about +Saltville, and move east from there to join Ord. His force will +be all cavalry, while Ord will have from ten to twelve thousand +men of all arms. + +You I propose to move against Johnston's army, to break it up +and to get into the interior of the enemy's country as far as +you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war +resources. + +I do not propose to lay down for you a plan of campaign, but +simply lay down the work it is desirable to have done and leave +you free to execute it in your own way. Submit to me, however, +as early as you can, your plan of operations. + +As stated, Banks is ordered to commence operations as soon as he +can. Gillmore is ordered to report at Fortress Monroe by the +18th inst., or as soon thereafter as practicable. Sigel is +concentrating now. None will move from their places of +rendezvous until I direct, except Banks. I want to be ready to +move by the 25th inst., if possible. But all I can now direct +is that you get ready as soon as possible. I know you will have +difficulties to encounter in getting through the mountains to +where supplies are abundant, but I believe you will accomplish +it. + +From the expedition from the Department of West Virginia I do +not calculate on very great results; but it is the only way I +can take troops from there. With the long line of railroad +Sigel has to protect, he can spare no troops except to move +directly to his front. In this way he must get through to +inflict great damage on the enemy, or the enemy must detach from +one of his armies a large force to prevent it. In other words, +if Sigel can't skin himself he can hold a leg while some one +else skins. + +I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant, + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieutenant-General. + + +(*24) See instructions to Butler, in General Grant's report, +Appendix. + + +(*25) IN FIELD, CULPEPER C. H., VA., +April 9, 1864. + +MAJ.-GENERAL GEO. G. MEADE +Com'd'g Army of the Potomac. + +For information and as instruction to govern your preparations +for the coming campaign, the following is communicated +confidentially for your own perusal alone. + +So far as practicable all the armies are to move together, and +towards one common centre. Banks has been instructed to turn +over the guarding of the Red River to General Steele and the +navy, to abandon Texas with the exception of the Rio Grande, and +to concentrate all the force he can, not less than 25,000 men, to +move on Mobile. This he is to do without reference to other +movements. From the scattered condition of his command, +however, he cannot possibly get it together to leave New Orleans +before the 1st of May, if so soon. Sherman will move at the same +time you do, or two or three days in advance, Jo. Johnston's army +being his objective point, and the heart of Georgia his ultimate +aim. If successful he will secure the line from Chattanooga to +Mobile with the aid of Banks. + +Sigel cannot spare troops from his army to reinforce either of +the great armies, but he can aid them by moving directly to his +front. This he has been directed to do, and is now making +preparations for it. Two columns of his command will make south +at the same time with the general move; one from Beverly, from +ten to twelve thousand strong, under Major-General Ord; the +other from Charleston, Va., principally cavalry, under +Brig.-General Crook. The former of these will endeavor to reach +the Tennessee and Virginia Railroad, about south of Covington, +and if found practicable will work eastward to Lynchburg and +return to its base by way of the Shenandoah Valley, or join +you. The other will strike at Saltville, Va., and come eastward +to join Ord. The cavalry from Ord's command will try tributaries +would furnish us an easy line over which to bring all supplies to +within easy hauling distance of every position the army could +occupy from the Rapidan to the James River. But Lee could, if +he chose, detach or move his whole army north on a line rather +interior to the one I would have to take in following. A +movement by his left--our right--would obviate this; but all +that was done would have to be done with the supplies and +ammunition we started with. All idea of adopting this latter +plan was abandoned when the limited quantity of supplies +possible to take with us was considered. The country over which +we would have to pass was so exhausted of all food or forage that +we would be obliged to carry everything with us. + +While these preparations were going on the enemy was not +entirely idle. In the West Forrest made a raid in West +Tennessee up to the northern border, capturing the garrison of +four or five hundred men at Union City, and followed it up by an +attack on Paducah, Kentucky, on the banks of the Ohio. While he +was able to enter the city he failed to capture the forts or any +part of the garrison. On the first intelligence of Forrest's +raid I telegraphed Sherman to send all his cavalry against him, +and not to let him get out of the trap he had put himself +into. Sherman had anticipated me by sending troops against him +before he got my order. + +Forrest, however, fell back rapidly, and attacked the troops at +Fort Pillow, a station for the protection of the navigation of +the Mississippi River. The garrison to force a passage +southward, if they are successful in reaching the Virginia and +Tennessee Railroad, to cut the main lines of the road connecting +Richmond with all the South and South-west. + +Gillmore will join Butler with about 10,000 men from South +Carolina. Butler can reduce his garrison so as to take 23,000 +men into the field directly to his front. The force will be +commanded by Maj.-General W. F. Smith. With Smith and Gillmore, +Butler will seize City Point, and operate against Richmond from +the south side of the river. His movement will be simultaneous +with yours. + +Lee's army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, +there you will go also. The only point upon which I am now in +doubt is, whether it will be better to cross the Rapidan above +or below him. Each plan presents great advantages over the +other with corresponding objections. By crossing above, Lee is +cut off from all chance of ignoring Richmond and going north on +a raid. But if we take this route, all we do must be done +whilst the rations we start with hold out. We separate from +Butler so that he cannot be directed how to co-operate. By the +other route Brandy Station can be used as a base of supplies +until another is secured on the York or James rivers. + +These advantages and objections I will talk over with you more +fully than I can write them. + +Burnside with a force of probably 25,000 men will reinforce +you. Immediately upon his arrival, which will be shortly after +the 20th inst., I will give him the defence of the road from +Bull Run as far south as we wish to hold it. This will enable +you to collect all your strength about Brandy Station and to the +front. + +There will be naval co-operation on the James River, and +transports and ferries will be provided so that should Lee fall +back into his intrenchments at Richmond, Butler's force and +yours will be a unit, or at least can be made to act as such. +What I would direct then, is that you commence at once reducing +baggage to the very lowest possible standard. Two wagons to a +regiment of five hundred men is the greatest number that should +be allowed, for all baggage, exclusive of subsistence stores and +ordnance stores. One wagon to brigade and one to division +headquarters is sufficient and about two to corps headquarters. + +Should by Lee's right flank be our route, you will want to make +arrangements for having supplies of all sorts promptly forwarded +to White House on the Pamunkey. Your estimates for this +contingency should be made at once. If not wanted there, there +is every probability they will be wanted on the James River or +elsewhere. + +If Lee's left is turned, large provision will have to be made +for ordnance stores. I would say not much short of five hundred +rounds of infantry ammunition would do. By the other, half the +amount would be sufficient. + +U. S. GRANT, + +Lieutenant-General. + +(*26) General John A. Logan, upon whom devolved the command of +the Army of the Tennessee during this battle, in his report gave +our total loss in killed, wounded and missing at 3,521; and +estimated that of the enemy to be not less than 10,000: and +General G. M. Dodge, graphically describing to General Sherman +the enemy's attack, the full weight of which fell first upon and +was broken by his depleted command, remarks: "The disparity of +forces can be seen from the fact that in the charge made by my +two brigades under Fuller and Mersy they took 351 prisoners, +representing forty-nine different regiments, eight brigades and +three divisions; and brought back eight battle flags from the +enemy." + + +(*27) +UNION ARMY ON THE RAPIDAN, MAY 5, 1864. + +[COMPILED.] + +LIEUTENANT-GENERAL U. S. GRANT, Commander-in-Chief. + +MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE G. MEADE, Commanding Army of the Potomac. + + +MAJ.-GEN. W. S. HANCOCK, commanding Second Army Corps. + + First Division, Brig.-Gen. Francis C. Barlow. + First Brigade, Col. Nelson A. Miles. + Second Brigade, Col. Thomas A. Smyth. + Third Brigade, Col. Paul Frank. + Fourth Brigade, Col. John R. Brooke. + + Second Division, Brig.-Gen. John Gibbon. + First Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Alex. S. Webb. + Second Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Joshua T. Owen. + Third Brigade, Col. Samuel S. Carroll. + + Third Division, Maj.-Gen. David B. Birney. + First Brigade, Brig.-Gen. J. H. H. Ward. + Second Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Alexander Hays. + + Fourth Divisin, Brig.-Gen. Gershom Mott. + First Brigade, Col. Robert McAllister. + Second Brigade, Col. Wm. R. Brewster. + + Artillery Brigade, Col. John C. Tidball. + + +MAJ.-GEN. G. K. WARREN, commanding Fifth Army Corps. + + First Division, Brig.-Gen. Charles Griffin. + First Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Romeyn B. Ayres. + Second Brigade, Col. Jacob B. Sweitzer. + Third Brigade, Brig.-Gen. J. J. Bartlett. + + Second Division, Brig.-Gen. John C. Robinson. + First Brigade, Col. Samuel H. Leonard. + Second Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Henry Baxter. + Third Brigade, Col. Andrew W. Denison. + + Third Division, Brig.-Gen. Samuel W. Crawford. + First Brigade, Col. Wm McCandless. + Third Brigade, Col. Joseph W. Fisher. + + Fourth Division, Brig.-Gen. James S. Wadsworth. + First Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Lysander Cutler. + Second Brigade Brig.-Gen. James C. Rice. + Third Brigade, Col. Roy Stone + + Artillery Brigade, Col. S. S. Wainwright. + + +MAJ.-GEN. JOHN SEDGWICK, commanding Sixth Army Corps. + + First Division, Brig.-Gen. H. G. Wright. + First Brigade, Col. Henry W. Brown. + Second Brigade, Col. Emory Upton. + Third Brigade, Brig.-Gen. D. A. Russell. + Fourth Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Alexander Shaler. + + Second Division, Brig.-Gen. George W. Getty. + First Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Frank Wheaton. + Second Brigade, Col. Lewis A. Grant. + Third Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Thos. H. Neill. + Fourth Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Henry L. Eustis. + + Third Division, Brig.-Gen. James Ricketts. + First Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Wm. H. Morris. + Second Brigade, Brig.-Gen. T. Seymour. + + Artillery Brigade, Col. C. H. Tompkins + + +MAJ.-GEN. P. H. SHERIDAN, commanding Cavalry Corps. + + First Division, Brig.-Gen. A. T. A. Torbert. + First Brigade, Brig.-Gen. G. A. Custer. + Second Brigade, Col. Thos. C. Devin. + Reserve Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Wesley Merritt + + Second Division, Brig.-Gen. D. McM. Gregg. + First Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Henry E. Davies, Jr. + Second Brigade, Col. J. Irvin Gregg. + + Third Division, Brig.-Gen. J. H. Wilson. + First Brigade, Col. T. M. Bryan, Jr. + Second Brigade, Col. Geo. H. Chapman. + + +MAJ.-GEN. A. E. BURNSIDE, commanding Ninth Army Corps. + + First Division, Brig.-Gen. T. G. Stevenson. + First Brigade, Col. Sumner Carruth. + Second Brigade, Col. Daniel Leasure. + + Second Division, Brig.-Gen. Robert B. Potter. + First Brigade, Col. Zenas R. Bliss. + Second Brigade, Col. Simon G. Griffin. + + Third Division, Brig.-Gen. Orlando Willcox. + First Brigade, Col. John F. Hartranft. + Second Brigade, Col. Benj. C. Christ. + + Fourth Division, Brig.-Gen. Edward Ferrero. + First Brigade, Col. Joshua K. Sigfried. + Second Brigade, Col. Henry G. Thomas. + + Provisional Brigade, Col. Elisha G. Marshall. + + +BRIG.-GEN. HENRY J. HUNT, commanding Artillery. + + Reserve, Col. H. S. Burton. + First Brigade, Col. J. H. Kitching. + Second Brigade, Maj. J. A. Tompkins. + First Brig. Horse Art., Capt. J. M. Robertson. + Second Brigade, Horse Art., Capt. D. R. Ransom. + Third Brigade, Maj. R. H. Fitzhugh. + + +GENERAL HEADQUARTERS....... + Provost Guard, Brig.-Gen. M. R. Patrick. + Volunteer Engineers, Brig.-Gen. H. W. Benham. + + + +CONFEDERATE ARMY. + +Organization of the Army of Northern Virginia, Commanded by +GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, August 31st, 1834. + + First Army Corps: LIEUT.-GEN. R. H. ANDERSON, Commanding. + +MAJ.-GEN. GEO. E. PICKETT'S Division. + Brig.-Gen. Seth M. Barton's Brigade. (a) + Brig.-Gen. M. D. Corse's " + " Eppa Hunton's " + " Wm. R. Terry's " + +MAJ.-GEN. C. W. FIELD'S Division. (b) + Brig.-Gen. G. T. Anderson's Brigade + " E. M. Law's (c) " + " John Bratton's " + +MAJ.-GEN. J. B. KERSHAW'S Division. (d) + Brig.-Gen. W. T. Wofford's Brigade + " B. G. Humphreys' " + " Goode Bryan's " + " Kershaw's (Old) " + + + Second Army Corps: MAJOR-GENERAL JUBAL A. EARLY, Commanding + +MAJ.-GEN. JOHN B. GORDON'S Division. + Brig.-Gen. H. T. Hays' Brigade. (e) + " John Pegram 's " (f) + " Gordon's " (g) + Brig.-Gen. R. F. Hoke's " + +MAJ.-GEN. EDWARD JOHNSON'S Division. + Stonewall Brig. (Brig.-Gen. J. A. Walker). (h) + Brig.-Gen. J M Jones' Brigade. (h) + " Geo H. Stewart's " (h) + " L. A. Stafford's " (e) + +MAJ.-GEN. R. E. RODES' Division. + Brig.-Gen. J. Daniel's Brigade. (i) + " Geo. Dole's " (k) + " S. D. Ramseur's Brigade. + " C. A. Battle's " + " R. D. Johnston's " (f) + + + Third Army Corps: LIEUT.-GEN. A. P. HILL, Commanding. + +MAJ.-GEN. WM. MAHONE'S Division. (l) + Brig.-Gen. J. C. C. Sanders' Brigade. + Mahone's " + Brig.-Gen. N. H. Harris's " (m) + " A. R. Wright's " + " Joseph Finegan's " + +MAJ.-GEN. C. M. WILCOX'S Division. + Brig.-Gen. E. L. Thomas's Brigade (n) + " James H. Lane's " + " Sam'l McCowan's " + " Alfred M. Scale's " + +MAJ.-GEN. H. HETH'S Division. (o) + Brig.-Gen. J. R. Davis's Brigade. + " John R. Cooke's " + " D. McRae's " + " J. J. Archer's " + " H. H. Walker's " + + _unattached_: 5th Alabama Battalion. + + + Cavalry Corps: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL WADE HAMPTON, Commanding.(p) + +MAJ.-GEN. FITZHUGH LEE'S Division + Brig.-Gen. W. C. Wickham's Brigade + " L. L. Lomax's " + +MAJ.-GEN. M. C. BUTLER'S Division. + Brig.-Gen. John Dunovant's Brigade. + " P. M. B. Young's " + " Thomas L. Rosser's " + +MAJ.-GEN. W. H. F. LEE'S Division. + Brig.-Gen. Rufus Barringer's Brigade. + " J. R. Chambliss's " + + + Artillery Reserve: BRIG.-GEN. W. N. PENDLETON, Commanding. + +BRIG.-GEN. E. P. ALEXANDER'S DIVISION.* + Cabell's Battalion. + Manly's Battery. + 1st Co. Richmond Howitzers. + Carleton's Battery. + Calloway's Battery. + + Haskell's Battalion. + Branch's Battery. + Nelson's " + Garden's " + Rowan " + + Huger's Battalion. + Smith's Battery. + Moody " + Woolfolk " + Parker's " + Taylor's " + Fickling's " + Martin's " + + Gibb's Battalion. + Davidson's Battery. + Dickenson's " + Otey's " + + +BRIG.-GEN. A. L. LONG'S DIVISION. + + Braxton's Battalion. + Lee Battery. + 1st Md. Artillery. + Stafford " + Alleghany " + + Cutshaw's Battalion. + Charlotteville Artillery. + Staunton " + Courtney " + + Carter's Battalion. + Morris Artillery. + Orange " + King William Artillery. + Jeff Davis " + + Nelson's Battalion. + Amherst Artillery. + Milledge " + Fluvauna " + + Brown's Battalion. + Powhatan Artillery. + 2d Richmond Howitzers. + 3d " " + Rockbridge Artillery. + Salem Flying Artillery. + + +COL R. L.WALKER'S DIVISION. + + Cutt's Battalion. + Ross's Battery. + Patterson's Battery. + Irwin Artillery. + + Richardson's Battalion. + Lewis Artillery. + Donaldsonville Artillery. + Norfolk Light " + Huger " + + Mclntosh 's Battalion. + Johnson's Battery. + Hardaway Artillery. + Danville " + 2d Rockbridge Artillery. + + Pegram's Battalion. + Peedee Artillery. + Fredericksburg Artillery. + Letcher " + Purcell Battery. + Crenshaw's Battery. + + Poague's Battalion. + Madison Artillery. + Albemarle " + Brooke " + Charlotte " + + +NOTE. +(a) COL. W. R. Aylett was in command Aug. 29th, and probably at +above date. +(b) Inspection report of this division shows that it also +contained Benning's and Gregg's Brigades. (c) Commanded by +Colonel P. D. Bowles. +(d) Only two brigadier-generals reported for duty; names not +indicated. + +Organization of the Army of the Valley District. +(e) Constituting York's Brigade. +(f) In Ramseur's Division. +(g) Evan's Brigade, Colonel E. N. Atkinson commanding, and +containing 12th Georgia Battalion. +(h) The Virginia regiments constituted Terry's Brigade, Gordon's +Division. +(i) Grimes' Brigade. +(k) Cook's " + +(l) Returns report but one general officer present for duty; +name not indicated. +(m) Colonel Joseph M. Jayne, commanding. +(n) Colonel Thomas J. Simmons, commanding. (o) Four +brigadier-generals reported present for duty; names not +indicated. +(p) On face of returns appears to have consisted of Hampton's, +Fitz-Lee's, and W. H. F. Lee's Division, and Dearing's Brigade. + +*But one general officer reported present for duty in the +artillery, and Alexander's name not on the original. + + +(*28) HEADQUARTERS ARMIES U. S., +May II, 1864.--3 P.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, +Commanding Army of the Potomac. + +Move three divisions of the 2d corps by the rear of the 5th and +6th corps, under cover of night, so as to join the 9th corps in +a vigorous assault on the enemy at four o'clock A.M. to-morrow. +will send one or two staff officers over to-night to stay with +Burnside, and impress him with the importance of a prompt and +vigorous attack. Warren and Wright should hold their corps as +close to the enemy as possible, to take advantage of any +diversion caused by this attack, and to push in if any +opportunity presents itself. There is but little doubt in my +mind that the assault last evening would have proved entirely +successful if it had commenced one hour earlier and had been +heartily entered into by Mott's division and the 9th corps. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieut.-General. + + +(*29) HEADQUARTERS, ARMIES U. S., +May 11, 1864.-4 P.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE, +Commanding 9th Army Corps. + +Major-General Hancock has been ordered to move his corps under +cover of night to join you in a vigorous attack against the +enemy at 4 o'clock A.M. to-morrow. You will move against the +enemy with your entire force promptly and with all possible +vigor at precisely 4 o'clock A.M. to-morrow the 12th inst. Let +your preparations for this attack be conducted with the utmost +secrecy and veiled entirely from the enemy. + +I send two of my staff officers, Colonels Comstock and Babcock, +in whom I have great confidence and who are acquainted with the +direction the attack is to be made from here, to remain with you +and General Hancock with instructions to render you every +assistance in their power. Generals Warren and Wright will hold +their corps as close to the enemy as possible, to take advantage +of any diversion caused by yours and Hancock's attack, and will +push in their whole force if any opportunity presents itself. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieut.-General. + + +(*30) HEADQUARTERS ARMIES U. S., +May 12, 1864, 6.30 P.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, +Washington, D. C. + +The eighth day of the battle closes, leaving between three and +four thousand prisoners in our hands for the day's work, +including two general officers, and over thirty pieces of +artillery. The enemy are obstinate, and seem to have found the +last ditch. We have lost no organizations, not even that of a +company, whilst we have destroyed and captured one division +(Johnson's), one brigade (Doles'), and one regiment entire from +the enemy. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieut.-General. + + +(*31) SPOTTSYLVANIA C. H., May 13, 1864. + +HON E. M. STANTON, SECRETARY OF WAR, +Washington, D. C. + +I beg leave to recommend the following promotions be made for +gallant and distinguished services in the last eight days' +battles, to wit: Brigadier-General H. G. Wright and +Brigadier-General John Gibbon to be Major-Generals; Colonel S. +S. Carroll, 8th Ohio Volunteers Colonel E. Upton, 121st New York +Volunteers; Colonel William McCandless, 2d Pennsylvania Reserves, +to be Brigadier-Generals. I would also recommend Major-General W. +S. Hancock for Brigadier-General in the regular army. His +services and qualifications are eminently deserving of this +recognition. In making these recommendations I do not wish the +claims of General G. M. Dodge for promotion forgotten, but +recommend his name to be sent in at the same time. I would also +ask to have General Wright assigned to the command of the Sixth +Army Corps. I would further ask the confirmation of General +Humphreys to the rank of Major-General. + +General Meade has more than met my most sanguine expectations. +He and Sherman are the fittest officers for large commands I +have come in contact with. If their services can be rewarded by +promotion to the rank of Major-Generals in the regular army the +honor would be worthily bestowed, and I would feel personally +gratified. I would not like to see one of these promotions at +this time without seeing both. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieut.-General. + + +(*32) QUARLES' MILLS, VA., May 26, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, +Washington, D. C. + +The relative position of the two armies is now as follows: Lee's +right rests on a swamp east of the Richmond and Fredericksburg +road and south of the North Anna, his centre on the river at Ox +Ford, and his left at Little River with the crossings of Little +River guarded as far up as we have gone. Hancock with his corps +and one division of the 9th corps crossed at Chesterfield Ford +and covers the right wing of Lee's army. One division of the 9th +corps is on the north bank of the Anna at Ox Ford, with bridges +above and below at points nearest to it where both banks are +held by us, so that it could reinforce either wing of our army +with equal facility. The 5th and 6th corps with one division of +the 9th corps run from the south bank of the Anna from a short +distance above Ox Ford to Little River, and parallel with and +near to the enemy. + +To make a direct attack from either wing would cause a slaughter +of our men that even success would not justify. To turn the +enemy by his right, between the two Annas is impossible on +account of the swamp upon which his right rests. To turn him by +the left leaves Little River, New Found River and South Anna +River, all of them streams presenting considerable obstacles to +the movement of our army, to be crossed. I have determined +therefore to turn the enemy's right by crossing at or near +Hanover Town. This crosses all three streams at once, and +leaves us still where we can draw supplies. + +During the last night the teams and artillery not in position, +belonging to the right wing of our army, and one division of +that wing were quietly withdrawn to the north bank of the river +and moved down to the rear of the left. As soon as it is dark +this division with most of the cavalry will commence a forced +march for Hanover Town to seize and hold the crossings. The +balance of the right wing will withdraw at the same hour, and +follow as rapidly as possible. The left wing will also withdraw +from the south bank of the river to-night and follow in rear of +the right wing. Lee's army is really whipped. The prisoners we +now take show it, and the action of his army shows it +unmistakably. A battle with them outside of intrenchments +cannot be had. Our men feel that they have gained the MORALE +over the enemy, and attack him with confidence. I may be +mistaken, but I feel that our success over Lee's army is already +assured. The promptness and rapidity with which you have +forwarded reinforcements has contributed largely to the feeling +of confidence inspired in our men, and to break down that of the +enemy. + +We are destroying all the rails we can on the Central and +Fredericksburg roads. I want to leave a gap on the roads north +of Richmond so big that to get a single track they will have to +import rail from elsewhere. Even if a crossing is not effected +at Hanover Town it will probably be necessary for us to move on +down the Pamunkey until a crossing is effected. I think it +advisable therefore to change our base of supplies from Port +Royal to the White House. I wish you would direct this change +at once, and also direct Smith to put the railroad bridge there +in condition for crossing troops and artillery and leave men to +hold it. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieut.-General. + + +(*33) NEAR COLD HARBOR, June 3, 1864, 7 A.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, +Commanding A. P. + +The moment it becomes certain that an assault cannot succeed, +suspend the offensive; but when one does succeed, push it +vigorously and if necessary pile in troops at the successful +point from wherever they can be taken. I shall go to where you +are in the course of an hour. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieut.-General. + + +(*34) COLD HARBOR, June 5,1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Chief of Staff of the Army, Washington, +D. C. + +A full survey of all the ground satisfies me that it would be +impracticable to hold a line north-east of Richmond that would +protect the Fredericksburg Railroad to enable us to use that +road for supplying the army. To do so would give us a long +vulnerable line of road to protect, exhausting much of our +strength to guard it, and would leave open to the enemy all of +his lines of communication on the south side of the James. My +idea from the start has been to beat Lee's army if possible +north of Richmond; then after destroying his lines of +communication on the north side of the James River to transfer +the army to the south side and besiege Lee in Richmond, or +follow him south if he should retreat. + +I now find, after over thirty days of trial, the enemy deems it +of the first importance to run no risks with the armies they now +have. They act purely on the defensive behind breastworks, or +feebly on the offensive immediately in front of them, and where +in case of repulse they can instantly retire behind them. +Without a greater sacrifice of human life than I am willing to +make all cannot be accomplished that I had designed outside of +the city. I have therefore resolved upon the following plan: + +I will continue to hold substantially the ground now occupied by +the Army of the Potomac, taking advantage of any favorable +circumstance that may present itself until the cavalry can be +sent west to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad from about +Beaver Dam for some twenty-five or thirty miles west. When this +is effected I will move the army to the south side of the James +River, either by crossing the Chickahominy and marching near to +City Point, or by going to the mouth of the Chickahominy on +north side and crossing there. To provide for this last and +most possible contingency, several ferry-boats of the largest +class ought to be immediately provided. + +Once on the south side of the James River, I can cut off all +sources of supply to the enemy except what is furnished by the +canal. If Hunter succeeds in reaching Lynchburg, that will be +lost to him also. Should Hunter not succeed, I will still make +the effort to destroy the canal by sending cavalry up the south +side of the river with a pontoon train to cross wherever they +can. + +The feeling of the two armies now seems to be that the rebels +can protect themselves only by strong intrenchments, whilst our +army is not only confident of protecting itself without +intrenchments, but that it can beat and drive the enemy wherever +and whenever he can be found without this protection. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieutenant-General. + + +(*35) COLD HARBOR, VA., June 6, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL D. HUNTER + +Commanding Dept. W. Va. + +General Sheridan leaves here to-morrow morning, with +instructions to proceed to Charlottesville, Va., and to commence +there the destruction of the Va. Cen. R. R., destroying this way +as much as possible. The complete destruction of this road and +of the canal on James River is of great importance to us. +According to the instructions I sent to General Halleck for your +guidance, you were to proceed to Lynchburg and commence there. It +would be of great value to us to get possession of Lynchburg for +a single day. But that point is of so much importance to the +enemy, that in attempting to get it such resistance may be met +as to defeat your getting onto the road or canal at all. I see, +in looking over the letter to General Halleck on the subject of +your instructions, that it rather indicates that your route +should be from Staunton via Charlottesville. If you have so +understood it, you will be doing just what I want. The +direction I would now give is, that if this letter reaches you +in the valley between Staunton and Lynchburg, you immediately +turn east by the most practicable road. From thence move +eastward along the line of the road, destroying it completely +and thoroughly, until you join General Sheridan. After the work +laid out for General Sheridan and yourself is thoroughly done, +proceed to join the Army of the Potomac by the route laid out in +General Sheridan's instructions. + +If any portion of your force, especially your cavalry, is needed +back in your Department, you are authorized to send it back. + +If on receipt of this you should be near to Lynchburg and deem +it practicable to detach a cavalry force to destroy the canal. +Lose no opportunity to destroy the canal. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieut.-General. + + +(*36) FROM A STATEMENT OF LOSSES COMPILED IN THE +ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE. + +FIELD OF ACTION AND DATE. | KILLED. | WOUNDED. | MISSING. | +AGGREGATE. | + + +Wilderness, May 5th to 7th | 2,261 | 8,785 | 2,902 |13,948 | +Spottsylvania, May 8th to 21st | 2,271 | 9,360 | 1,970 | 13,601| +North Anna, May 23d to 27th | 186 | 792 | 165 | 1,143 | +Totopotomoy, May 27th to 31st | 99 | 358 | 52 | 509 | Cold +Harbor, May 31st to June 12th | 1,769 | 6,752 | 1,537 |10,058 | +Total ................ | 6,586 | 26,047 | 6,626 | 39,259 | + + +(*37) CITY POINT, VA., June 17, 1864. 11 A.M. + +MAJOR-GEN. HALLECK, +Washington, D. C. + + * * * * * * * + +The enemy in their endeavor to reinforce Petersburg abandoned +their intrenchments in front of Bermuda Hundred. They no doubt +expected troops from north of the James River to take their +place before we discovered it. General Butler took advantage of +this and moved a force at once upon the railroad and plank road +between Richmond and Petersburg, which I hope to retain +possession of. + +Too much credit cannot be given to the troops and their +commanders for the energy and fortitude displayed during the +last five days. Day and night has been all the same, no delays +being allowed on any account. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieut.-General. + + +(*38) CITY POINT, VA., July 24, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, +Commanding, etc. + +The engineer officers who made a survey of the front from +Bermuda Hundred report against the probability of success from +an attack there. The chances they think will be better on +Burnside's front. If this is attempted it will be necessary to +concentrate all the force possible at the point in the enemy's +line we expect to penetrate. All officers should be fully +impressed with the absolute necessity of pushing entirely beyond +the enemy's present line, if they should succeed in penetrating +it, and of getting back to their present line promptly if they +should not succeed in breaking through. + +To the right and left of the point of assault all the artillery +possible should be brought to play upon the enemy in front +during the assault. Their lines would be sufficient for the +support of the artillery, and all the reserves could be brought +on the flanks of their commands nearest to the point of assault, +ready to follow in if successful. The field artillery and +infantry held in the lines during the first assault should be in +readiness to move at a moment's notice either to their front or +to follow the main assault, as they should receive orders. One +thing, however, should be impressed on corps commanders. If +they see the enemy giving away on their front or moving from it +to reinforce a heavily assaulted portion of their line, they +should take advantage of such knowledge and act promptly without +waiting for orders from army commanders. General Ord can +co-operate with his corps in this movement, and about five +thousand troops from Bermuda Hundred can be sent to reinforce +you or can be used to threaten an assault between the Appomattox +and James rivers, as may be deemed best. + +This should be done by Tuesday morning, if done at all. If not +attempted, we will then start at the date indicated to destroy +the railroad as far as Hicksford at least, and to Weldon if +possible. + + * * * * * * * + +Whether we send an expedition on the road or assault at +Petersburg, Burnside's mine will be blown up.... + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieutenant-General. + + +(*39) See letter, August 5th, Appendix. + + +(*40) See Appendix, letters of Oct. 11th. + + +(*41) CITY POINT, VA., December 2,1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, +Nashville Tenn. + +If Hood is permitted to remain quietly about Nashville, you will +lose all the road back to Chattanooga and possibly have to +abandon the line of the Tennessee. Should he attack you it is +all well, but if he does not you should attack him before he +fortifies. Arm and put in the trenches your quartermaster +employees, citizens, etc. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieutenant-General. + + +CITY POINT, VA., December 2, 1864.--1.30 P.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, +Nashville, Tenn. + +With your citizen employees armed, you can move out of Nashville +with all your army and force the enemy to retire or fight upon +ground of your own choosing. After the repulse of Hood at +Franklin, it looks to me that instead of falling back to +Nashville we should have taken the offensive against the enemy +where he was. At this distance, however, I may err as to the +best method of dealing with the enemy. You will now suffer +incalculable injury upon your railroads if Hood is not speedily +disposed of. Put forth therefore every possible exertion to +attain this end. Should you get him to retreating give him no +peace. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieutenant-General. + + +CITY POINT, VA., December 5, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, +Nashville, Tenn. + +Is there not danger of Forrest moving down the Cumberland to +where he can cross it? It seems to me whilst you should be +getting up your cavalry as rapidly as possible to look after +Forrest, Hood should be attacked where he is. Time strengthens +him in all possibility as much as it does you. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieutenant-General. + + +CITY POINT, VA., December 6, 1864--4 P.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, +Nashville, Tenn. + +Attack Hood at once and wait no longer for a remnant of your +cavalry. There is great danger of delay resulting in a campaign +back to the Ohio River. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieutenant-General. + + +CITY POINT, VA., December 8, 1864.--8.30 P.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, +Nashville, Tenn. + +Your dispatch of yesterday received. It looks to me evident the +enemy are trying to cross the Cumberland River, and are +scattered. Why not attack at once? By all means avoid the +contingency of a foot race to see which, you or Hood, can beat +to the Ohio. If you think necessary call on the governors of +States to send a force into Louisville to meet the enemy if he +should cross the river. You clearly never should cross except +in rear of the enemy. Now is one of the finest opportunities +ever presented of destroying one of the three armies of the +enemy. If destroyed he never can replace it. Use the means at +your command, and you can do this and cause a rejoicing that +will resound from one end of the land to the other. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieutenant-General. + + +CITY POINT, VA., December 11, 1864.--4 P.M. + +MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, +Nashville, Tenn. + +If you delay attack longer the mortifying spectacle will be +witnessed of a rebel army moving for the Ohio River, and you +will be forced to act, accepting such weather as you find. Let +there be no further delay. Hood cannot even stand a drawn +battle so far from his supplies of ordnance stores. If he +retreats and you follow, he must lose his material and much of +his army. I am in hopes of receiving a dispatch from you to-day +announcing that you have moved. Delay no longer for weather or +reinforcements. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieutenant-General. + + +WASHINGTON, D. C., December 15, 1864. + +MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, +Nashville, Tenn. + +I was just on my way to Nashville, but receiving a dispatch from +Van Duzer detailing your splendid success of to-day, I shall go +no further. Push the enemy now and give him no rest until he is +entirely destroyed. Your army will cheerfully suffer many +privations to break up Hood's army and render it useless for +future operations. Do not stop for trains or supplies, but take +them from the country as the enemy have done. Much is now +expected. + +U. S. GRANT, +Lieutenant-General. + + +(*42) See orders to Major-General Meade, Ord, and Sheridan, +March 24th, Appendix. + + +(*43) See Appendix. + + +(*44) NOTE.--The fac-simile of the terms of Lee's surrender +inserted at this place, was copied from the original document +furnished the publishers through the courtesy of General Ely S. +Parker, Military Secretary on General Grant's staff at the time +of the surrender. + +Three pages of paper were prepared in General Grant's manifold +order book on which he wrote the terms, and the interlineations +and erasures were added by General Parker at the suggestion of +General Grant. After such alteration it was handed to General +Lee, who put on his glasses, read it, and handed it back to +General Grant. The original was then transcribed by General +Parker upon official headed paper and a copy furnished General +Lee. + +The fac-simile herewith shows the color of the paper of the +original document and all interlineations and erasures. + +There is a popular error to the effect that Generals Grant and +Lee each signed the articles of surrender. The document in the +form of a letter was signed only by General Grant, in the parlor +of McLean's house while General Lee was sitting in the room, and +General Lee immediately wrote a letter accepting the terms and +handed it to General Grant. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, +Volume Two, by Ulysses S. Grant + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1068 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1069-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1069-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..aac6c575 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1069-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22282 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1069 *** + +Four Short Stories + +By Émile Zola + + +Contents + + NANA + CHAPTER I + CHAPTER II + CHAPTER III + CHAPTER IV + CHAPTER V + CHAPTER VI + CHAPTER VII + CHAPTER VIII + CHAPTER IX + CHAPTER X + CHAPTER XI + CHAPTER XII + CHAPTER XIII + CHAPTER XIV + + THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER + CHAPTER I + CHAPTER II + CHAPTER III + CHAPTER IV + CHAPTER V + + CAPTAIN BURLE + CHAPTER I + CHAPTER II + CHAPTER III + CHAPTER IV + + THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BECAILLE + CHAPTER I + CHAPTER II + CHAPTER III + CHAPTER IV + CHAPTER V + + + + + NANA + + by Émile Zola + + + + + CHAPTER I + + +At nine o’clock in the evening the body of the house at the Theatres +des Variétés was still all but empty. A few individuals, it is true, +were sitting quietly waiting in the balcony and stalls, but these were +lost, as it were, among the ranges of seats whose coverings of cardinal +velvet loomed in the subdued light of the dimly burning luster. A +shadow enveloped the great red splash of the curtain, and not a sound +came from the stage, the unlit footlights, the scattered desks of the +orchestra. It was only high overhead in the third gallery, round the +domed ceiling where nude females and children flew in heavens which had +turned green in the gaslight, that calls and laughter were audible +above a continuous hubbub of voices, and heads in women’s and workmen’s +caps were ranged, row above row, under the wide-vaulted bays with their +gilt-surrounding adornments. Every few seconds an attendant would make +her appearance, bustling along with tickets in her hand and piloting in +front of her a gentleman and a lady, who took their seats, he in his +evening dress, she sitting slim and undulant beside him while her eyes +wandered slowly round the house. + +Two young men appeared in the stalls; they kept standing and looked +about them. + +“Didn’t I say so, Hector?” cried the elder of the two, a tall fellow +with little black mustaches. “We’re too early! You might quite well +have allowed me to finish my cigar.” + +An attendant was passing. + +“Oh, Monsieur Fauchery,” she said familiarly, “it won’t begin for half +an hour yet!” + +“Then why do they advertise for nine o’clock?” muttered Hector, whose +long thin face assumed an expression of vexation. “Only this morning +Clarisse, who’s in the piece, swore that they’d begin at nine o’clock +punctually.” + +For a moment they remained silent and, looking upward, scanned the +shadowy boxes. But the green paper with which these were hung rendered +them more shadowy still. Down below, under the dress circle, the lower +boxes were buried in utter night. In those on the second tier there was +only one stout lady, who was stranded, as it were, on the +velvet-covered balustrade in front of her. On the right hand and on the +left, between lofty pilasters, the stage boxes, bedraped with +long-fringed scalloped hangings, remained untenanted. The house with +its white and gold, relieved by soft green tones, lay only half +disclosed to view, as though full of a fine dust shed from the little +jets of flame in the great glass luster. + +“Did you get your stage box for Lucy?” asked Hector. + +“Yes,” replied his companion, “but I had some trouble to get it. Oh, +there’s no danger of Lucy coming too early!” + +He stifled a slight yawn; then after a pause: + +“You’re in luck’s way, you are, since you haven’t been at a first night +before. The Blonde Venus will be the event of the year. People have +been talking about it for six months. Oh, such music, my dear boy! Such +a sly dog, Bordenave! He knows his business and has kept this for the +exhibition season.” Hector was religiously attentive. He asked a +question. + +“And Nana, the new star who’s going to play Venus, d’you know her?” + +“There you are; you’re beginning again!” cried Fauchery, casting up his +arms. “Ever since this morning people have been dreeing me with Nana. +I’ve met more than twenty people, and it’s Nana here and Nana there! +What do I know? Am I acquainted with all the light ladies in Paris? +Nana is an invention of Bordenave’s! It must be a fine one!” + +He calmed himself, but the emptiness of the house, the dim light of the +luster, the churchlike sense of self-absorption which the place +inspired, full as it was of whispering voices and the sound of doors +banging—all these got on his nerves. + +“No, by Jove,” he said all of a sudden, “one’s hair turns gray here. +I—I’m going out. Perhaps we shall find Bordenave downstairs. He’ll give +us information about things.” + +Downstairs in the great marble-paved entrance hall, where the box +office was, the public were beginning to show themselves. Through the +three open gates might have been observed, passing in, the ardent life +of the boulevards, which were all astir and aflare under the fine April +night. The sound of carriage wheels kept stopping suddenly; carriage +doors were noisily shut again, and people began entering in small +groups, taking their stand before the ticket bureau and climbing the +double flight of stairs at the end of the hall, up which the women +loitered with swaying hips. Under the crude gaslight, round the pale, +naked walls of the entrance hall, which with its scanty First Empire +decorations suggested the peristyle of a toy temple, there was a +flaring display of lofty yellow posters bearing the name of “Nana” in +great black letters. Gentlemen, who seemed to be glued to the entry, +were reading them; others, standing about, were engaged in talk, +barring the doors of the house in so doing, while hard by the box +office a thickset man with an extensive, close-shaven visage was giving +rough answers to such as pressed to engage seats. + +“There’s Bordenave,” said Fauchery as he came down the stairs. But the +manager had already seen him. + +“Ah, ah! You’re a nice fellow!” he shouted at him from a distance. +“That’s the way you give me a notice, is it? Why, I opened my Figaro +this morning—never a word!” + +“Wait a bit,” replied Fauchery. “I certainly must make the acquaintance +of your Nana before talking about her. Besides, I’ve made no promises.” + +Then to put an end to the discussion, he introduced his cousin, M. +Hector de la Faloise, a young man who had come to finish his education +in Paris. The manager took the young man’s measure at a glance. But +Hector returned his scrutiny with deep interest. This, then, was that +Bordenave, that showman of the sex who treated women like a convict +overseer, that clever fellow who was always at full steam over some +advertising dodge, that shouting, spitting, thigh-slapping fellow, that +cynic with the soul of a policeman! Hector was under the impression +that he ought to discover some amiable observation for the occasion. + +“Your theater—” he began in dulcet tones. + +Bordenave interrupted him with a savage phrase, as becomes a man who +dotes on frank situations. + +“Call it my brothel!” + +At this Fauchery laughed approvingly, while La Faloise stopped with his +pretty speech strangled in his throat, feeling very much shocked and +striving to appear as though he enjoyed the phrase. The manager had +dashed off to shake hands with a dramatic critic whose column had +considerable influence. When he returned La Faloise was recovering. He +was afraid of being treated as a provincial if he showed himself too +much nonplused. + +“I have been told,” he began again, longing positively to find +something to say, “that Nana has a delicious voice.” + +“Nana?” cried the manager, shrugging his shoulders. “The voice of a +squirt!” + +The young man made haste to add: + +“Besides being a first-rate comedian!” + +“She? Why she’s a lump! She has no notion what to do with her hands and +feet.” + +La Faloise blushed a little. He had lost his bearings. He stammered: + +“I wouldn’t have missed this first representation tonight for the +world. I was aware that your theater—” + +“Call it my brothel,” Bordenave again interpolated with the frigid +obstinacy of a man convinced. + +Meanwhile Fauchery, with extreme calmness, was looking at the women as +they came in. He went to his cousin’s rescue when he saw him all at sea +and doubtful whether to laugh or to be angry. + +“Do be pleasant to Bordenave—call his theater what he wishes you to, +since it amuses him. And you, my dear fellow, don’t keep us waiting +about for nothing. If your Nana neither sings nor acts you’ll find +you’ve made a blunder, that’s all. It’s what I’m afraid of, if the +truth be told.” + +“A blunder! A blunder!” shouted the manager, and his face grew purple. +“Must a woman know how to act and sing? Oh, my chicken, you’re too +STOOPID. Nana has other good points, by heaven!—something which is as +good as all the other things put together. I’ve smelled it out; it’s +deuced pronounced with her, or I’ve got the scent of an idiot. You’ll +see, you’ll see! She’s only got to come on, and all the house will be +gaping at her.” + +He had held up his big hands which were trembling under the influence +of his eager enthusiasm, and now, having relieved his feelings, he +lowered his voice and grumbled to himself: + +“Yes, she’ll go far! Oh yes, s’elp me, she’ll go far! A skin—oh, what a +skin she’s got!” + +Then as Fauchery began questioning him he consented to enter into a +detailed explanation, couched in phraseology so crude that Hector de la +Faloise felt slightly disgusted. He had been thick with Nana, and he +was anxious to start her on the stage. Well, just about that time he +was in search of a Venus. He—he never let a woman encumber him for any +length of time; he preferred to let the public enjoy the benefit of her +forthwith. But there was a deuce of a row going on in his shop, which +had been turned topsy-turvy by that big damsel’s advent. Rose Mignon, +his star, a comic actress of much subtlety and an adorable singer, was +daily threatening to leave him in the lurch, for she was furious and +guessed the presence of a rival. And as for the bill, good God! What a +noise there had been about it all! It had ended by his deciding to +print the names of the two actresses in the same-sized type. But it +wouldn’t do to bother him. Whenever any of his little women, as he +called them—Simonne or Clarisse, for instance—wouldn’t go the way he +wanted her to he just up with his foot and caught her one in the rear. +Otherwise life was impossible. Oh yes, he sold ’em; HE knew what they +fetched, the wenches! + +“Tut!” he cried, breaking off short. “Mignon and Steiner. Always +together. You know, Steiner’s getting sick of Rose; that’s why the +husband dogs his steps now for fear of his slipping away.” + +On the pavement outside, the row of gas jets flaring on the cornice of +the theater cast a patch of brilliant light. Two small trees, violently +green, stood sharply out against it, and a column gleamed in such vivid +illumination that one could read the notices thereon at a distance, as +though in broad daylight, while the dense night of the boulevard beyond +was dotted with lights above the vague outline of an ever-moving crowd. +Many men did not enter the theater at once but stayed outside to talk +while finishing their cigars under the rays of the line of gas jets, +which shed a sallow pallor on their faces and silhouetted their short +black shadows on the asphalt. Mignon, a very tall, very broad fellow, +with the square-shaped head of a strong man at a fair, was forcing a +passage through the midst of the groups and dragging on his arm the +banker Steiner, an exceedingly small man with a corporation already in +evidence and a round face framed in a setting of beard which was +already growing gray. + +“Well,” said Bordenave to the banker, “you met her yesterday in my +office.” + +“Ah! It was she, was it?” ejaculated Steiner. “I suspected as much. +Only I was coming out as she was going in, and I scarcely caught a +glimpse of her.” + +Mignon was listening with half-closed eyelids and nervously twisting a +great diamond ring round his finger. He had quite understood that Nana +was in question. Then as Bordenave was drawing a portrait of his new +star, which lit a flame in the eyes of the banker, he ended by joining +in the conversation. + +“Oh, let her alone, my dear fellow; she’s a low lot! The public will +show her the door in quick time. Steiner, my laddie, you know that my +wife is waiting for you in her box.” + +He wanted to take possession of him again. But Steiner would not quit +Bordenave. In front of them a stream of people was crowding and +crushing against the ticket office, and there was a din of voices, in +the midst of which the name of Nana sounded with all the melodious +vivacity of its two syllables. The men who stood planted in front of +the notices kept spelling it out loudly; others, in an interrogative +tone, uttered it as they passed; while the women, at once restless and +smiling, repeated it softly with an air of surprise. Nobody knew Nana. +Whence had Nana fallen? And stories and jokes, whispered from ear to +ear, went the round of the crowd. The name was a caress in itself; it +was a pet name, the very familiarity of which suited every lip. Merely +through enunciating it thus, the throng worked itself into a state of +gaiety and became highly good natured. A fever of curiosity urged it +forward, that kind of Parisian curiosity which is as violent as an +access of positive unreason. Everybody wanted to see Nana. A lady had +the flounce of her dress torn off; a man lost his hat. + +“Oh, you’re asking me too many questions about it!” cried Bordenave, +whom a score of men were besieging with their queries. “You’re going to +see her, and I’m off; they want me.” + +He disappeared, enchanted at having fired his public. Mignon shrugged +his shoulders, reminding Steiner that Rose was awaiting him in order to +show him the costume she was about to wear in the first act. + +“By Jove! There’s Lucy out there, getting down from her carriage,” said +La Faloise to Fauchery. + +It was, in fact, Lucy Stewart, a plain little woman, some forty years +old, with a disproportionately long neck, a thin, drawn face, a heavy +mouth, but withal of such brightness, such graciousness of manner, that +she was really very charming. She was bringing with her Caroline Hequet +and her mother—Caroline a woman of a cold type of beauty, the mother a +person of a most worthy demeanor, who looked as if she were stuffed +with straw. + +“You’re coming with us? I’ve kept a place for you,” she said to +Fauchery. “Oh, decidedly not! To see nothing!” he made answer. “I’ve a +stall; I prefer being in the stalls.” + +Lucy grew nettled. Did he not dare show himself in her company? Then, +suddenly restraining herself and skipping to another topic: + +“Why haven’t you told me that you knew Nana?” + +“Nana! I’ve never set eyes on her.” + +“Honor bright? I’ve been told that you’ve been to bed with her.” + +But Mignon, coming in front of them, his finger to his lips, made them +a sign to be silent. And when Lucy questioned him he pointed out a +young man who was passing and murmured: + +“Nana’s fancy man.” + +Everybody looked at him. He was a pretty fellow. Fauchery recognized +him; it was Daguenet, a young man who had run through three hundred +thousand francs in the pursuit of women and who now was dabbling in +stocks, in order from time to time to treat them to bouquets and +dinners. Lucy made the discovery that he had fine eyes. + +“Ah, there’s Blanche!” she cried. “It’s she who told me that you had +been to bed with Nana.” + +Blanche de Sivry, a great fair girl, whose good-looking face showed +signs of growing fat, made her appearance in the company of a spare, +sedulously well-groomed and extremely distinguished man. + +“The Count Xavier de Vandeuvres,” Fauchery whispered in his companion’s +ear. + +The count and the journalist shook hands, while Blanche and Lucy +entered into a brisk, mutual explanation. One of them in blue, the +other in rose-pink, they stood blocking the way with their deeply +flounced skirts, and Nana’s name kept repeating itself so shrilly in +their conversation that people began to listen to them. The Count de +Vandeuvres carried Blanche off. But by this time Nana’s name was +echoing more loudly than ever round the four walls of the entrance hall +amid yearnings sharpened by delay. Why didn’t the play begin? The men +pulled out their watches; late-comers sprang from their conveyances +before these had fairly drawn up; the groups left the sidewalk, where +the passers-by were crossing the now-vacant space of gaslit pavement, +craning their necks, as they did so, in order to get a peep into the +theater. A street boy came up whistling and planted himself before a +notice at the door, then cried out, “Woa, Nana!” in the voice of a +tipsy man and hied on his way with a rolling gait and a shuffling of +his old boots. A laugh had arisen at this. Gentlemen of unimpeachable +appearance repeated: “Nana, woa, Nana!” People were crushing; a dispute +arose at the ticket office, and there was a growing clamor caused by +the hum of voices calling on Nana, demanding Nana in one of those +accesses of silly facetiousness and sheer animalism which pass over +mobs. + +But above all the din the bell that precedes the rise of the curtain +became audible. “They’ve rung; they’ve rung!” The rumor reached the +boulevard, and thereupon followed a stampede, everyone wanting to pass +in, while the servants of the theater increased their forces. Mignon, +with an anxious air, at last got hold of Steiner again, the latter not +having been to see Rose’s costume. At the very first tinkle of the bell +La Faloise had cloven a way through the crowd, pulling Fauchery with +him, so as not to miss the opening scene. But all this eagerness on the +part of the public irritated Lucy Stewart. What brutes were these +people to be pushing women like that! She stayed in the rear of them +all with Caroline Hequet and her mother. The entrance hall was now +empty, while beyond it was still heard the long-drawn rumble of the +boulevard. + +“As though they were always funny, those pieces of theirs!” Lucy kept +repeating as she climbed the stair. + +In the house Fauchery and La Faloise, in front of their stalls, were +gazing about them anew. By this time the house was resplendent. High +jets of gas illumined the great glass chandelier with a rustling of +yellow and rosy flames, which rained down a stream of brilliant light +from dome to floor. The cardinal velvets of the seats were shot with +hues of lake, while all the gilding shone again, the soft green +decorations chastening its effect beneath the too-decided paintings of +the ceiling. The footlights were turned up and with a vivid flood of +brilliance lit up the curtain, the heavy purple drapery of which had +all the richness befitting a palace in a fairy tale and contrasted with +the meanness of the proscenium, where cracks showed the plaster under +the gilding. The place was already warm. At their music stands the +orchestra were tuning their instruments amid a delicate trilling of +flutes, a stifled tooting of horns, a singing of violin notes, which +floated forth amid the increasing uproar of voices. All the spectators +were talking, jostling, settling themselves in a general assault upon +seats; and the hustling rush in the side passages was now so violent +that every door into the house was laboriously admitting the +inexhaustible flood of people. There were signals, rustlings of +fabrics, a continual march past of skirts and head dresses, accentuated +by the black hue of a dress coat or a surtout. Notwithstanding this, +the rows of seats were little by little getting filled up, while here +and there a light toilet stood out from its surroundings, a head with a +delicate profile bent forward under its chignon, where flashed the +lightning of a jewel. In one of the boxes the tip of a bare shoulder +glimmered like snowy silk. Other ladies, sitting at ease, languidly +fanned themselves, following with their gaze the pushing movements of +the crowd, while young gentlemen, standing up in the stalls, their +waistcoats cut very low, gardenias in their buttonholes, pointed their +opera glasses with gloved finger tips. + +It was now that the two cousins began searching for the faces of those +they knew. Mignon and Steiner were together in a lower box, sitting +side by side with their arms leaning for support on the velvet +balustrade. Blanche de Sivry seemed to be in sole possession of a stage +box on the level of the stalls. But La Faloise examined Daguenet before +anyone else, he being in occupation of a stall two rows in front of his +own. Close to him, a very young man, seventeen years old at the +outside, some truant from college, it may be, was straining wide a pair +of fine eyes such as a cherub might have owned. Fauchery smiled when he +looked at him. + +“Who is that lady in the balcony?” La Faloise asked suddenly. “The lady +with a young girl in blue beside her.” + +He pointed out a large woman who was excessively tight-laced, a woman +who had been a blonde and had now become white and yellow of tint, her +broad face, reddened with paint, looking puffy under a rain of little +childish curls. + +“It’s Gaga,” was Fauchery’s simple reply, and as this name seemed to +astound his cousin, he added: + +“You don’t know Gaga? She was the delight of the early years of Louis +Philippe. Nowadays she drags her daughter about with her wherever she +goes.” + +La Faloise never once glanced at the young girl. The sight of Gaga +moved him; his eyes did not leave her again. He still found her very +good looking but he dared not say so. + +Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra +attacked the overture. People still kept coming in; the stir and noise +were on the increase. Among that public, peculiar to first nights and +never subject to change, there were little subsections composed of +intimate friends, who smilingly forgathered again. Old first-nighters, +hat on head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and kept exchanging +salutations. All Paris was there, the Paris of literature, of finance +and of pleasure. There were many journalists, several authors, a number +of stock-exchange people and more courtesans than honest women. It was +a singularly mixed world, composed, as it was, of all the talents and +tarnished by all the vices, a world where the same fatigue and the same +fever played over every face. Fauchery, whom his cousin was +questioning, showed him the boxes devoted to the newspapers and to the +clubs and then named the dramatic critics—a lean, dried-up individual +with thin, spiteful lips and, chief of all, a big fellow with a +good-natured expression, lolling on the shoulder of his neighbor, a +young miss over whom he brooded with tender and paternal eyes. + +But he interrupted himself on seeing La Faloise in the act of bowing to +some persons who occupied the box opposite. He appeared surprised. + +“What?” he queried. “You know the Count Muffat de Beuville?” + +“Oh, for a long time back,” replied Hector. “The Muffats had a property +near us. I often go to their house. The count’s with his wife and his +father-in-law, the Marquis de Chouard.” + +And with some vanity—for he was happy in his cousin’s astonishment—he +entered into particulars. The marquis was a councilor of state; the +count had recently been appointed chamberlain to the empress. Fauchery, +who had caught up his opera glass, looked at the countess, a plump +brunette with a white skin and fine dark eyes. + +“You shall present me to them between the acts,” he ended by saying. “I +have already met the count, but I should like to go to them on their +Tuesdays.” + +Energetic cries of “Hush” came from the upper galleries. The overture +had begun, but people were still coming in. Late arrivals were obliging +whole rows of spectators to rise; the doors of boxes were banging; loud +voices were heard disputing in the passages. And there was no cessation +of the sound of many conversations, a sound similar to the loud +twittering of talkative sparrows at close of day. All was in confusion; +the house was a medley of heads and arms which moved to and fro, their +owners seating themselves or trying to make themselves comfortable or, +on the other hand, excitedly endeavoring to remain standing so as to +take a final look round. The cry of “Sit down, sit down!” came fiercely +from the obscure depths of the pit. A shiver of expectation traversed +the house: at last people were going to make the acquaintance of this +famous Nana with whom Paris had been occupying itself for a whole week! + +Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down among +occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech. And amid this swooning +murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra struck up the +small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm bubbling with +roguish laughter. The public were titillated; they were already on the +grin. But the gang of clappers in the foremost rows of the pit +applauded furiously. The curtain rose. + +“By George!” exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away. “There’s a man +with Lucy.” + +He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the +front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying. At the back of this +box were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline’s mother and the +side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light hair and an +irreproachable getup. + +“Do look!” La Faloise again insisted. “There’s a man there.” + +Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he +turned round again directly. + +“Oh, it’s Labordette,” he muttered in a careless voice, as though that +gentle man’s presence ought to strike all the world as though both +natural and immaterial. + +Behind the cousins people shouted “Silence!” They had to cease talking. +A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches of heads, +all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to topmost gallery. +The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in Olympus, a pasteboard +Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the throne of Jupiter on the +right of the stage. First of all Iris and Ganymede, aided by a troupe +of celestial attendants, sang a chorus while they arranged the seats of +the gods for the council. Once again the prearranged applause of the +clappers alone burst forth; the public, a little out of their depth, +sat waiting. Nevertheless, La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one +of Bordenave’s little women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with +a great scarf of the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her +waist. + +“You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on,” he said to +Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him. “We tried the +trick this morning. It was all up under her arms and round the small of +her back.” + +But a slight rustling movement ran through the house; Rose Mignon had +just come on the stage as Diana. Now though she had neither the face +nor the figure for the part, being thin and dark and of the adorable +type of ugliness peculiar to a Parisian street child, she nonetheless +appeared charming and as though she were a satire on the personage she +represented. Her song at her entrance on the stage was full of lines +quaint enough to make you cry with laughter and of complaints about +Mars, who was getting ready to desert her for the companionship of +Venus. She sang it with a chaste reserve so full of sprightly +suggestiveness that the public warmed amain. The husband and Steiner, +sitting side by side, were laughing complaisantly, and the whole house +broke out in a roar when Prullière, that great favorite, appeared as a +general, a masquerade Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging +along a sword, the hilt of which reached to his shoulder. As for him, +he had had enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him, +he averred. Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to +be revenged. The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prullière +delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat. He had about +him all the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman whose +love affairs prosper, and he rolled around the most swaggering glances, +which excited shrill feminine laughter in the boxes. + +Then the public cooled again, for the ensuing scenes were found +tiresome. Old Bosc, an imbecile Jupiter with head crushed beneath the +weight of an immense crown, only just succeeded in raising a smile +among his audience when he had a domestic altercation with Juno on the +subject of the cook’s accounts. The march past of the gods, Neptune, +Pluto, Minerva and the rest, was well-nigh spoiling everything. People +grew impatient; there was a restless, slowly growing murmur; the +audience ceased to take an interest in the performance and looked round +at the house. Lucy began laughing with Labordette; the Count de +Vandeuvres was craning his neck in conversation behind Blanche’s sturdy +shoulders, while Fauchery, out of the corners of his eyes, took stock +of the Muffats, of whom the count appeared very serious, as though he +had not understood the allusions, and the countess smiled vaguely, her +eyes lost in reverie. But on a sudden, in this uncomfortable state of +things, the applause of the clapping contingent rattled out with the +regularity of platoon firing. People turned toward the stage. Was it +Nana at last? This Nana made one wait with a vengeance. + +It was a deputation of mortals whom Ganymede and Iris had introduced, +respectable middle-class persons, deceived husbands, all of them, and +they came before the master of the gods to proffer a complaint against +Venus, who was assuredly inflaming their good ladies with an excess of +ardor. The chorus, in quaint, dolorous tones, broken by silences full +of pantomimic admissions, caused great amusement. A neat phrase went +the round of the house: “The cuckolds’ chorus, the cuckolds’ chorus,” +and it “caught on,” for there was an encore. The singers’ heads were +droll; their faces were discovered to be in keeping with the phrase, +especially that of a fat man which was as round as the moon. Meanwhile +Vulcan arrived in a towering rage, demanding back his wife who had +slipped away three days ago. The chorus resumed their plaint, calling +on Vulcan, the god of the cuckolds. Vulcan’s part was played by Fontan, +a comic actor of talent, at once vulgar and original, and he had a role +of the wildest whimsicality and was got up as a village blacksmith, +fiery red wig, bare arms tattooed with arrow-pierced hearts and all the +rest of it. A woman’s voice cried in a very high key, “Oh, isn’t he +ugly?” and all the ladies laughed and applauded. + +Then followed a scene which seemed interminable. Jupiter in the course +of it seemed never to be going to finish assembling the Council of Gods +in order to submit thereto the deceived husband’s requests. And still +no Nana! Was the management keeping Nana for the fall of the curtain +then? So long a period of expectancy had ended by annoying the public. +Their murmurings began again. + +“It’s going badly,” said Mignon radiantly to Steiner. “She’ll get a +pretty reception; you’ll see!” + +At that very moment the clouds at the back of the stage were cloven +apart and Venus appeared. Exceedingly tall, exceedingly strong, for her +eighteen years, Nana, in her goddess’s white tunic and with her light +hair simply flowing unfastened over her shoulders, came down to the +footlights with a quiet certainty of movement and a laugh of greeting +for the public and struck up her grand ditty: + +“When Venus roams at eventide.” + + +From the second verse onward people looked at each other all over the +house. Was this some jest, some wager on Bordenave’s part? Never had a +more tuneless voice been heard or one managed with less art. Her +manager judged of her excellently; she certainly sang like a squirt. +Nay, more, she didn’t even know how to deport herself on the stage: she +thrust her arms in front of her while she swayed her whole body to and +fro in a manner which struck the audience as unbecoming and +disagreeable. Cries of “Oh, oh!” were already rising in the pit and the +cheap places. There was a sound of whistling, too, when a voice in the +stalls, suggestive of a molting cockerel, cried out with great +conviction: + +“That’s very smart!” + +All the house looked round. It was the cherub, the truant from the +boarding-school, who sat with his fine eyes very wide open and his fair +face glowing very hotly at sight of Nana. When he saw everybody turning +toward him he grew extremely red at the thought of having thus +unconsciously spoken aloud. Daguenet, his neighbor, smilingly examined +him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and no longer anxious to +hiss; while the young gentlemen in white gloves, fascinated in their +turn by Nana’s gracious contours, lolled back in their seats and +applauded. + +“That’s it! Well done! Bravo!” + +Nana, in the meantime, seeing the house laughing, began to laugh +herself. The gaiety of all redoubled itself. She was an amusing +creature, all the same, was that fine girl! Her laughter made a love of +a little dimple appear in her chin. She stood there waiting, not bored +in the least, familiar with her audience, falling into step with them +at once, as though she herself were admitting with a wink that she had +not two farthings’ worth of talent but that it did not matter at all, +that, in fact, she had other good points. And then after having made a +sign to the conductor which plainly signified, “Go ahead, old boy!” she +began her second verse: + +“’Tis Venus who at midnight passes—” + + +Still the same acidulated voice, only that now it tickled the public in +the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to give a +little shiver of pleasure. Nana still smiled her smile: it lit up her +little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were of the +clearest blue. When she came to certain rather lively verses a delicate +sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, the rosy nostrils of which +lifted and fell, while a bright flush suffused her cheeks. She still +swung herself up and down, for she only knew how to do that. And the +trick was no longer voted ugly; on the contrary, the men raised their +opera glasses. When she came to the end of a verse her voice completely +failed her, and she was well aware that she never would get through +with it. Thereupon, rather than fret herself, she kicked up her leg, +which forthwith was roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent +sharply backward, so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and +stretched her arms out. Applause burst forth on all sides. In the +twinkling of an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the +stage, presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators’ gaze, a neck +where the red-gold hair showed like some animal’s fell. Then the +plaudits became frantic. + +The close of the act was not so exciting. Vulcan wanted to slap Venus. +The gods held a consultation and decided to go and hold an inquiry on +earth before granting the deceived husband satisfaction. It was then +that Diana surprised a tender conversation between Venus and Mars and +vowed that she would not take her eyes off them during the whole of the +voyage. There was also a scene where Love, played by a little +twelve-year-old chit, answered every question put to her with “Yes, +Mamma! No, Mamma!” in a winy-piny tone, her fingers in her nose. At +last Jupiter, with the severity of a master who is growing cross, shut +Love up in a dark closet, bidding her conjugate the verb “I love” +twenty times. The finale was more appreciated: it was a chorus which +both troupe and orchestra performed with great brilliancy. But the +curtain once down, the clappers tried in vain to obtain a call, while +the whole house was already up and making for the doors. + +The crowd trampled and jostled, jammed, as it were, between the rows of +seats, and in so doing exchanged expressions. One phrase only went +round: + +“It’s idiotic.” A critic was saying that it would be one’s duty to do a +pretty bit of slashing. The piece, however, mattered very little, for +people were talking about Nana before everything else. Fauchery and La +Faloise, being among the earliest to emerge, met Steiner and Mignon in +the passage outside the stalls. In this gaslit gut of a place, which +was as narrow and circumscribed as a gallery in a mine, one was +well-nigh suffocated. They stopped a moment at the foot of the stairs +on the right of the house, protected by the final curve of the +balusters. The audience from the cheap places were coming down the +steps with a continuous tramp of heavy boots; a stream of black dress +coats was passing, while an attendant was making every possible effort +to protect a chair, on which she had piled up coats and cloaks, from +the onward pushing of the crowd. + +“Surely I know her,” cried Steiner, the moment he perceived Fauchery. +“I’m certain I’ve seen her somewhere—at the casino, I imagine, and she +got herself taken up there—she was so drunk.” + +“As for me,” said the journalist, “I don’t quite know where it was. I +am like you; I certainly have come across her.” + +He lowered his voice and asked, laughing: + +“At the Tricons’, perhaps.” + +“Egad, it was in a dirty place,” Mignon declared. He seemed +exasperated. “It’s disgusting that the public give such a reception to +the first trollop that comes by. There’ll soon be no more decent women +on the stage. Yes, I shall end by forbidding Rose to play.” + +Fauchery could not restrain a smile. Meanwhile the downward shuffle of +the heavy shoes on the steps did not cease, and a little man in a +workman’s cap was heard crying in a drawling voice: + +“Oh my, she ain’t no wopper! There’s some pickings there!” + +In the passage two young men, delicately curled and formally +resplendent in turndown collars and the rest, were disputing together. +One of them was repeating the words, “Beastly, beastly!” without +stating any reasons; the other was replying with the words, “Stunning, +stunning!” as though he, too, disdained all argument. + +La Faloise declared her to be quite the thing; only he ventured to +opine that she would be better still if she were to cultivate her +voice. Steiner, who was no longer listening, seemed to awake with a +start. Whatever happens, one must wait, he thought. Perhaps everything +will be spoiled in the following acts. The public had shown +complaisance, but it was certainly not yet taken by storm. Mignon swore +that the piece would never finish, and when Fauchery and La Faloise +left them in order to go up to the foyer he took Steiner’s arm and, +leaning hard against his shoulder, whispered in his ear: + +“You’re going to see my wife’s costume for the second act, old fellow. +It IS just blackguardly.” + +Upstairs in the foyer three glass chandeliers burned with a brilliant +light. The two cousins hesitated an instant before entering, for the +widely opened glazed doors afforded a view right through the gallery—a +view of a surging sea of heads, which two currents, as it were, kept in +a continuous eddying movement. But they entered after all. Five or six +groups of men, talking very loudly and gesticulating, were obstinately +discussing the play amid these violent interruptions; others were +filing round, their heels, as they turned, sounding sharply on the +waxed floor. To right and left, between columns of variegated imitation +marble, women were sitting on benches covered with red velvet and +viewing the passing movement of the crowd with an air of fatigue as +though the heat had rendered them languid. In the lofty mirrors behind +them one saw the reflection of their chignons. At the end of the room, +in front of the bar, a man with a huge corporation was drinking a glass +of fruit syrup. + +But Fauchery, in order to breathe more freely, had gone to the balcony. +La Faloise, who was studying the photographs of actresses hung in +frames alternating with the mirrors between the columns, ended by +following him. They had extinguished the line of gas jets on the facade +of the theater, and it was dark and very cool on the balcony, which +seemed to them unoccupied. Solitary and enveloped in shadow, a young +man was standing, leaning his arms on the stone balustrade, in the +recess to the right. He was smoking a cigarette, of which the burning +end shone redly. Fauchery recognized Daguenet. They shook hands warmly. + +“What are you after there, my dear fellow?” asked the journalist. +“You’re hiding yourself in holes and crannies—you, a man who never +leaves the stalls on a first night!” + +“But I’m smoking, you see,” replied Daguenet. + +Then Fauchery, to put him out of countenance: + +“Well, well! What’s your opinion of the new actress? She’s being +roughly handled enough in the passages.” + +“Bah!” muttered Daguenet. “They’re people whom she’ll have had nothing +to do with!” + +That was the sum of his criticism of Nana’s talent. La Faloise leaned +forward and looked down at the boulevard. Over against them the windows +of a hotel and of a club were brightly lit up, while on the pavement +below a dark mass of customers occupied the tables of the Café de +Madrid. Despite the lateness of the hour the crowd were still crushing +and being crushed; people were advancing with shortened step; a throng +was constantly emerging from the Passage Jouffroy; individuals stood +waiting five or six minutes before they could cross the roadway, to +such a distance did the string of carriages extend. + +“What a moving mass! And what a noise!” La Faloise kept reiterating, +for Paris still astonished him. + +The bell rang for some time; the foyer emptied. There was a hurrying of +people in the passages. The curtain was already up when whole bands of +spectators re-entered the house amid the irritated expressions of those +who were once more in their places. Everyone took his seat again with +an animated look and renewed attention. La Faloise directed his first +glance in Gaga’s direction, but he was dumfounded at seeing by her side +the tall fair man who but recently had been in Lucy’s stage box. + +“What IS that man’s name?” he asked. + +Fauchery failed to observe him. + +“Ah yes, it’s Labordette,” he said at last with the same careless +movement. The scenery of the second act came as a surprise. It +represented a suburban Shrove Tuesday dance at the Boule Noire. +Masqueraders were trolling a catch, the chorus of which was accompanied +with a tapping of their heels. This ’Arryish departure, which nobody +had in the least expected, caused so much amusement that the house +encored the catch. And it was to this entertainment that the divine +band, let astray by Iris, who falsely bragged that he knew the Earth +well, were now come in order to proceed with their inquiry. They had +put on disguises so as to preserve their incognito. Jupiter came on the +stage as King Dagobert, with his breeches inside out and a huge tin +crown on his head. Phoebus appeared as the Postillion of Lonjumeau and +Minerva as a Norman nursemaid. Loud bursts of merriment greeted Mars, +who wore an outrageous uniform, suggestive of an Alpine admiral. But +the shouts of laughter became uproarious when Neptune came in view, +clad in a blouse, a high, bulging workman’s cap on his head, lovelocks +glued to his temples. Shuffling along in slippers, he cried in a thick +brogue. + +“Well, I’m blessed! When ye’re a masher it’ll never do not to let ’em +love yer!” + +There were some shouts of “Oh! Oh!” while the ladies held their fans +one degree higher. Lucy in her stage box laughed so obstreperously that +Caroline Hequet silenced her with a tap of her fan. + +From that moment forth the piece was saved—nay, more, promised a great +success. This carnival of the gods, this dragging in the mud of their +Olympus, this mock at a whole religion, a whole world of poetry, +appeared in the light of a royal entertainment. The fever of +irreverence gained the literary first-night world: legend was trampled +underfoot; ancient images were shattered. Jupiter’s make-up was +capital. Mars was a success. Royalty became a farce and the army a +thing of folly. When Jupiter, grown suddenly amorous of a little +laundress, began to knock off a mad cancan, Simonne, who was playing +the part of the laundress, launched a kick at the master of the +immortals’ nose and addressed him so drolly as “My big daddy!” that an +immoderate fit of laughter shook the whole house. While they were +dancing Phoebus treated Minerva to salad bowls of negus, and Neptune +sat in state among seven or eight women who regaled him with cakes. +Allusions were eagerly caught; indecent meanings were attached to them; +harmless phrases were diverted from their proper significations in the +light of exclamations issuing from the stalls. For a long time past the +theatrical public had not wallowed in folly more irreverent. It rested +them. + +Nevertheless, the action of the piece advanced amid these fooleries. +Vulcan, as an elegant young man clad, down to his gloves, entirely in +yellow and with an eyeglass stuck in his eye, was forever running after +Venus, who at last made her appearance as a fishwife, a kerchief on her +head and her bosom, covered with big gold trinkets, in great evidence. +Nana was so white and plump and looked so natural in a part demanding +wide hips and a voluptuous mouth that she straightway won the whole +house. On her account Rose Mignon was forgotten, though she was made up +as a delicious baby, with a wicker-work burlet on her head and a short +muslin frock and had just sighed forth Diana’s plaints in a sweetly +pretty voice. The other one, the big wench who slapped her thighs and +clucked like a hen, shed round her an odor of life, a sovereign +feminine charm, with which the public grew intoxicated. From the second +act onward everything was permitted her. She might hold herself +awkwardly; she might fail to sing some note in tune; she might forget +her words—it mattered not: she had only to turn and laugh to raise +shouts of applause. When she gave her famous kick from the hip the +stalls were fired, and a glow of passion rose upward, upward, from +gallery to gallery, till it reached the gods. It was a triumph, too, +when she led the dance. She was at home in that: hand on hip, she +enthroned Venus in the gutter by the pavement side. And the music +seemed made for her plebeian voice—shrill, piping music, with +reminiscences of Saint-Cloud Fair, wheezings of clarinets and playful +trills on the part of the little flutes. + +Two numbers were again encored. The opening waltz, that waltz with the +naughty rhythmic beat, had returned and swept the gods with it. Juno, +as a peasant woman, caught Jupiter and his little laundress cleverly +and boxed his ears. Diana, surprising Venus in the act of making an +assignation with Mars, made haste to indicate hour and place to Vulcan, +who cried, “I’ve hit on a plan!” The rest of the act did not seem very +clear. The inquiry ended in a final galop after which Jupiter, +breathless, streaming with perspiration and minus his crown, declared +that the little women of Earth were delicious and that the men were all +to blame. + +The curtain was falling, when certain voices, rising above the storm of +bravos, cried uproariously: + +“All! All!” + +Thereupon the curtain rose again; the artistes reappeared hand in hand. +In the middle of the line Nana and Rose Mignon stood side by side, +bowing and curtsying. The audience applauded; the clappers shouted +acclamations. Then little by little the house emptied. + +“I must go and pay my respects to the Countess Muffat,” said La +Faloise. “Exactly so; you’ll present me,” replied Fauchery; “we’ll go +down afterward.” + +But it was not easy to get to the first-tier boxes. In the passage at +the top of the stairs there was a crush. In order to get forward at all +among the various groups you had to make yourself small and to slide +along, using your elbows in so doing. Leaning under a copper lamp, +where a jet of gas was burning, the bulky critic was sitting in +judgment on the piece in presence of an attentive circle. People in +passing mentioned his name to each other in muttered tones. He had +laughed the whole act through—that was the rumor going the round of the +passages—nevertheless, he was now very severe and spoke of taste and +morals. Farther off the thin-lipped critic was brimming over with a +benevolence which had an unpleasant aftertaste, as of milk turned sour. + +Fauchery glanced along, scrutinizing the boxes through the round +openings in each door. But the Count de Vandeuvres stopped him with a +question, and when he was informed that the two cousins were going to +pay their respects to the Muffats, he pointed out to them box seven, +from which he had just emerged. Then bending down and whispering in the +journalist’s ear: + +“Tell me, my dear fellow,” he said, “this Nana—surely she’s the girl we +saw one evening at the corner of the Rue de Provence?” + +“By Jove, you’re right!” cried Fauchery. “I was saying that I had come +across her!” + +La Faloise presented his cousin to Count Muffat de Beuville, who +appeared very frigid. But on hearing the name Fauchery the countess +raised her head and with a certain reserve complimented the +paragraphist on his articles in the Figaro. Leaning on the +velvet-covered support in front of her, she turned half round with a +pretty movement of the shoulders. They talked for a short time, and the +Universal Exhibition was mentioned. + +“It will be very fine,” said the count, whose square-cut, +regular-featured face retained a certain gravity. + +“I visited the Champ de Mars today and returned thence truly +astonished.” + +“They say that things won’t be ready in time,” La Faloise ventured to +remark. “There’s infinite confusion there—” + +But the count interrupted him in his severe voice: + +“Things will be ready. The emperor desires it.” + +Fauchery gaily recounted how one day, when he had gone down thither in +search of a subject for an article, he had come near spending all his +time in the aquarium, which was then in course of construction. The +countess smiled. Now and again she glanced down at the body of the +house, raising an arm which a white glove covered to the elbow and +fanning herself with languid hand. The house dozed, almost deserted. +Some gentlemen in the stalls had opened out newspapers, and ladies +received visits quite comfortably, as though they were at their own +homes. Only a well-bred whispering was audible under the great +chandelier, the light of which was softened in the fine cloud of dust +raised by the confused movements of the interval. At the different +entrances men were crowding in order to talk to ladies who remained +seated. They stood there motionless for a few seconds, craning forward +somewhat and displaying the great white bosoms of their shirt fronts. + +“We count on you next Tuesday,” said the countess to La Faloise, and +she invited Fauchery, who bowed. + +Not a word was said of the play; Nana’s name was not once mentioned. +The count was so glacially dignified that he might have been supposed +to be taking part at a sitting of the legislature. In order to explain +their presence that evening he remarked simply that his father-in-law +was fond of the theater. The door of the box must have remained open, +for the Marquis de Chouard, who had gone out in order to leave his seat +to the visitors, was back again. He was straightening up his tall, old +figure. His face looked soft and white under a broad-brimmed hat, and +with his restless eyes he followed the movements of the women who +passed. + +The moment the countess had given her invitation Fauchery took his +leave, feeling that to talk about the play would not be quite the +thing. La Faloise was the last to quit the box. He had just noticed the +fair-haired Labordette, comfortably installed in the Count de +Vandeuvres’s stage box and chatting at very close quarters with Blanche +de Sivry. + +“Gad,” he said after rejoining his cousin, “that Labordette knows all +the girls then! He’s with Blanche now.” + +“Doubtless he knows them all,” replied Fauchery quietly. “What d’you +want to be taken for, my friend?” + +The passage was somewhat cleared of people, and Fauchery was just about +to go downstairs when Lucy Stewart called him. She was quite at the +other end of the corridor, at the door of her stage box. They were +getting cooked in there, she said, and she took up the whole corridor +in company with Caroline Hequet and her mother, all three nibbling +burnt almonds. A box opener was chatting maternally with them. Lucy +fell out with the journalist. He was a pretty fellow; to be sure! He +went up to see other women and didn’t even come and ask if they were +thirsty! Then, changing the subject: + +“You know, dear boy, I think Nana very nice.” + +She wanted him to stay in the stage box for the last act, but he made +his escape, promising to catch them at the door afterward. Downstairs +in front of the theater Fauchery and La Faloise lit cigarettes. A great +gathering blocked the sidewalk, a stream of men who had come down from +the theater steps and were inhaling the fresh night air in the +boulevards, where the roar and battle had diminished. + +Meanwhile Mignon had drawn Steiner away to the Café des Variétés. +Seeing Nana’s success, he had set to work to talk enthusiastically +about her, all the while observing the banker out of the corners of his +eyes. He knew him well; twice he had helped him to deceive Rose and +then, the caprice being over, had brought him back to her, faithful and +repentant. In the cafe the too numerous crowd of customers were +squeezing themselves round the marble-topped tables. Several were +standing up, drinking in a great hurry. The tall mirrors reflected this +thronging world of heads to infinity and magnified the narrow room +beyond measure with its three chandeliers, its moleskin-covered seats +and its winding staircase draped with red. Steiner went and seated +himself at a table in the first saloon, which opened full on the +boulevard, its doors having been removed rather early for the time of +year. As Fauchery and La Faloise were passing the banker stopped them. + +“Come and take a bock with us, eh?” they said. + +But he was too preoccupied by an idea; he wanted to have a bouquet +thrown to Nana. At last he called a waiter belonging to the cafe, whom +he familiarly addressed as Auguste. Mignon, who was listening, looked +at him so sharply that he lost countenance and stammered out: + +“Two bouquets, Auguste, and deliver them to the attendant. A bouquet +for each of these ladies! Happy thought, eh?” + +At the other end of the saloon, her shoulders resting against the frame +of a mirror, a girl, some eighteen years of age at the outside, was +leaning motionless in front of her empty glass as though she had been +benumbed by long and fruitless waiting. Under the natural curls of her +beautiful gray-gold hair a virginal face looked out at you with velvety +eyes, which were at once soft and candid. + +She wore a dress of faded green silk and a round hat which blows had +dinted. The cool air of the night made her look very pale. + +“Egad, there’s Satin,” murmured Fauchery when his eye lit upon her. + +La Faloise questioned him. Oh dear, yes, she was a streetwalker—she +didn’t count. But she was such a scandalous sort that people amused +themselves by making her talk. And the journalist, raising his voice: + +“What are you doing there, Satin?” + +“I’m bogging,” replied Satin quietly without changing position. + +The four men were charmed and fell a-laughing. Mignon assured them that +there was no need to hurry; it would take twenty minutes to set up the +scenery for the third act. But the two cousins, having drunk their +beer, wanted to go up into the theater again; the cold was making +itself felt. Then Mignon remained alone with Steiner, put his elbows on +the table and spoke to him at close quarters. + +“It’s an understood thing, eh? We are to go to her house, and I’m to +introduce you. You know the thing’s quite between ourselves—my wife +needn’t know.” + +Once more in their places, Fauchery and La Faloise noticed a pretty, +quietly dressed woman in the second tier of boxes. She was with a +serious-looking gentleman, a chief clerk at the office of the Ministry +of the Interior, whom La Faloise knew, having met him at the Muffats’. +As to Fauchery, he was under the impression that her name was Madame +Robert, a lady of honorable repute who had a lover, only one, and that +always a person of respectability. + +But they had to turn round, for Daguenet was smiling at them. Now that +Nana had had a success he no longer hid himself: indeed, he had just +been scoring triumphs in the passages. By his side was the young truant +schoolboy, who had not quitted his seat, so stupefying was the state of +admiration into which Nana had plunged him. That was it, he thought; +that was the woman! And he blushed as he thought so and dragged his +gloves on and off mechanically. Then since his neighbor had spoken of +Nana, he ventured to question him. + +“Will you pardon me for asking you, sir, but that lady who is acting—do +you know her?” + +“Yes, I do a little,” murmured Daguenet with some surprise and +hesitation. + +“Then you know her address?” + +The question, addressed as it was to him, came so abruptly that he felt +inclined to respond with a box on the ear. + +“No,” he said in a dry tone of voice. + +And with that he turned his back. The fair lad knew that he had just +been guilty of some breach of good manners. He blushed more hotly than +ever and looked scared. + +The traditional three knocks were given, and among the returning +throng, attendants, laden with pelisses and overcoats, bustled about at +a great rate in order to put away people’s things. The clappers +applauded the scenery, which represented a grotto on Mount Etna, +hollowed out in a silver mine and with sides glittering like new money. +In the background Vulcan’s forge glowed like a setting star. Diana, +since the second act, had come to a good understanding with the god, +who was to pretend that he was on a journey, so as to leave the way +clear for Venus and Mars. Then scarcely was Diana alone than Venus made +her appearance. A shiver of delight ran round the house. Nana was nude. +With quiet audacity she appeared in her nakedness, certain of the +sovereign power of her flesh. Some gauze enveloped her, but her rounded +shoulders, her Amazonian bosom, her wide hips, which swayed to and fro +voluptuously, her whole body, in fact, could be divined, nay discerned, +in all its foamlike whiteness of tint beneath the slight fabric she +wore. It was Venus rising from the waves with no veil save her tresses. +And when Nana lifted her arms the golden hairs in her armpits were +observable in the glare of the footlights. There was no applause. +Nobody laughed any more. The men strained forward with serious faces, +sharp features, mouths irritated and parched. A wind seemed to have +passed, a soft, soft wind, laden with a secret menace. Suddenly in the +bouncing child the woman stood discovered, a woman full of restless +suggestion, who brought with her the delirium of sex and opened the +gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was smiling still, but her +smile was now bitter, as of a devourer of men. + +“By God,” said Fauchery quite simply to La Faloise. + +Mars in the meantime, with his plume of feathers, came hurrying to the +trysting place and found himself between the two goddesses. Then ensued +a passage which Prullière played with great delicacy. Petted by Diana, +who wanted to make a final attack upon his feelings before delivering +him up to Vulcan, wheedled by Venus, whom the presence of her rival +excited, he gave himself up to these tender delights with the beatified +expression of a man in clover. Finally a grand trio brought the scene +to a close, and it was then that an attendant appeared in Lucy +Stewart’s box and threw on the stage two immense bouquets of white +lilacs. There was applause; Nana and Rose Mignon bowed, while Prullière +picked up the bouquets. Many of the occupants of the stalls turned +smilingly toward the ground-floor occupied by Steiner and Mignon. The +banker, his face blood-red, was suffering from little convulsive +twitchings of the chin, as though he had a stoppage in his throat. + +What followed took the house by storm completely. Diana had gone off in +a rage, and directly afterward, Venus, sitting on a moss-clad seat, +called Mars to her. Never yet had a more glowing scene of seduction +been ventured on. Nana, her arms round Prullière’s neck, was drawing +him toward her when Fontan, with comically furious mimicry and an +exaggerated imitation of the face of an outraged husband who surprises +his wife in FLAGRANTE DELICTO, appeared at the back of the grotto. He +was holding the famous net with iron meshes. For an instant he poised +and swung it, as a fisherman does when he is going to make a cast, and +by an ingenious twist Venus and Mars were caught in the snare; the net +wrapped itself round them and held them motionless in the attitude of +happy lovers. + +A murmur of applause swelled and swelled like a growing sigh. There was +some hand clapping, and every opera glass was fixed on Venus. Little by +little Nana had taken possession of the public, and now every man was +her slave. + +A wave of lust had flowed from her as from an excited animal, and its +influence had spread and spread and spread till the whole house was +possessed by it. At that moment her slightest movement blew the flame +of desire: with her little finger she ruled men’s flesh. Backs were +arched and quivered as though unseen violin bows had been drawn across +their muscles; upon men’s shoulders appeared fugitive hairs, which flew +in air, blown by warm and wandering breaths, breathed one knew not from +what feminine mouth. In front of him Fauchery saw the truant schoolboy +half lifted from his seat by passion. Curiosity led him to look at the +Count de Vandeuvres—he was extremely pale, and his lips looked +pinched—at fat Steiner, whose face was purple to the verge of apoplexy; +at Labordette, ogling away with the highly astonished air of a horse +dealer admiring a perfectly shaped mare; at Daguenet, whose ears were +blood-red and twitching with enjoyment. Then a sudden idea made him +glance behind, and he marveled at what he saw in the Muffats’ box. +Behind the countess, who was white and serious as usual, the count was +sitting straight upright, with mouth agape and face mottled with red, +while close by him, in the shadow, the restless eyes of the Marquis de +Chouard had become catlike phosphorescent, full of golden sparkles. The +house was suffocating; people’s very hair grew heavy on their +perspiring heads. For three hours back the breath of the multitude had +filled and heated the atmosphere with a scent of crowded humanity. +Under the swaying glare of the gas the dust clouds in mid-air had grown +constantly denser as they hung motionless beneath the chandelier. The +whole house seemed to be oscillating, to be lapsing toward dizziness in +its fatigue and excitement, full, as it was, of those drowsy midnight +desires which flutter in the recesses of the bed of passion. And Nana, +in front of this languorous public, these fifteen hundred human beings +thronged and smothered in the exhaustion and nervous exasperation which +belong to the close of a spectacle, Nana still triumphed by right of +her marble flesh and that sexual nature of hers, which was strong +enough to destroy the whole crowd of her adorers and yet sustain no +injury. + +The piece drew to a close. In answer to Vulcan’s triumphant summons all +the Olympians defiled before the lovers with ohs and ahs of +stupefaction and gaiety. Jupiter said, “I think it is light conduct on +your part, my son, to summon us to see such a sight as this.” Then a +reaction took place in favor of Venus. The chorus of cuckolds was again +ushered in by Iris and besought the master of the gods not to give +effect to its petition, for since women had lived at home, domestic +life was becoming impossible for the men: the latter preferred being +deceived and happy. That was the moral of the play. Then Venus was set +at liberty, and Vulcan obtained a partial divorce from her. Mars was +reconciled with Diana, and Jove, for the sake of domestic peace, packed +his little laundress off into a constellation. And finally they +extricated Love from his black hole, where instead of conjugating the +verb AMO he had been busy in the manufacture of “dollies.” The curtain +fell on an apotheosis, wherein the cuckolds’ chorus knelt and sang a +hymn of gratitude to Venus, who stood there with smiling lips, her +stature enhanced by her sovereign nudity. + +The audience, already on their feet, were making for the exits. The +authors were mentioned, and amid a thunder of applause there were two +calls before the curtain. The shout of “Nana! Nana!” rang wildly forth. +Then no sooner was the house empty than it grew dark: the footlights +went out; the chandelier was turned down; long strips of gray canvas +slipped from the stage boxes and swathed the gilt ornamentation of the +galleries, and the house, lately so full of heat and noise, lapsed +suddenly into a heavy sleep, while a musty, dusty odor began to pervade +it. In the front of her box stood the Countess Muffat. Very erect and +closely wrapped up in her furs, she stared at the gathering shadows and +waited for the crowd to pass away. + +In the passages the people were jostling the attendants, who hardly +knew what to do among the tumbled heaps of outdoor raiment. Fauchery +and La Faloise had hurried in order to see the crowd pass out. All +along the entrance hall men formed a living hedge, while down the +double staircase came slowly and in regular, complete formation two +interminable throngs of human beings. Steiner, in tow of Mignon, had +left the house among the foremost. The Count de Vandeuvres took his +departure with Blanche de Sivry on his arm. For a moment or two Gaga +and her daughter seemed doubtful how to proceed, but Labordette made +haste to go and fetch them a conveyance, the door whereof he gallantly +shut after them. Nobody saw Daguenet go by. As the truant schoolboy, +registering a mental vow to wait at the stage door, was running with +burning cheeks toward the Passage des Panoramas, of which he found the +gate closed, Satin, standing on the edge of the pavement, moved forward +and brushed him with her skirts, but he in his despair gave her a +savage refusal and vanished amid the crowd, tears of impotent desire in +his eyes. Members of the audience were lighting their cigars and +walking off, humming: + +When Venus roams at eventide. + + +Satin had gone back in front of the Café des Variétés, where Auguste +let her eat the sugar that remained over from the customers’ orders. A +stout man, who came out in a very heated condition, finally carried her +off in the shadow of the boulevard, which was now gradually going to +sleep. + +Still people kept coming downstairs. La Faloise was waiting for +Clarisse; Fauchery had promised to catch up Lucy Stewart with Caroline +Hequet and her mother. They came; they took up a whole corner of the +entrance hall and were laughing very loudly when the Muffats passed by +them with an icy expression. Bordenave had just then opened a little +door and, peeping out, had obtained from Fauchery the formal promise of +an article. He was dripping with perspiration, his face blazed, as +though he were drunk with success. + +“You’re good for two hundred nights,” La Faloise said to him with +civility. “The whole of Paris will visit your theater.” + +But Bordenave grew annoyed and, indicating with a jerk of his chin the +public who filled the entrance hall—a herd of men with parched lips and +ardent eyes, still burning with the enjoyment of Nana—he cried out +violently: + +“Say ‘my brothel,’ you obstinate devil!” + + + + + CHAPTER II + + +At ten o’clock the next morning Nana was still asleep. She occupied the +second floor of a large new house in the Boulevard Haussmann, the +landlord of which let flats to single ladies in order by their means to +dry the paint. A rich merchant from Moscow, who had come to pass a +winter in Paris, had installed her there after paying six months’ rent +in advance. The rooms were too big for her and had never been +completely furnished. The vulgar sumptuosity of gilded consoles and +gilded chairs formed a crude contrast therein to the bric-a-brac of a +secondhand furniture shop—to mahogany round tables, that is to say, and +zinc candelabras, which sought to imitate Florentine bronze. All of +which smacked of the courtesan too early deserted by her first serious +protector and fallen back on shabby lovers, of a precarious first +appearance of a bad start, handicapped by refusals of credit and +threats of eviction. + +Nana was sleeping on her face, hugging in her bare arms a pillow in +which she was burying cheeks grown pale in sleep. The bedroom and the +dressing room were the only two apartments which had been properly +furnished by a neighboring upholsterer. A ray of light, gliding in +under a curtain, rendered visible rosewood furniture and hangings and +chairbacks of figured damask with a pattern of big blue flowers on a +gray ground. But in the soft atmosphere of that slumbering chamber Nana +suddenly awoke with a start, as though surprised to find an empty place +at her side. She looked at the other pillow lying next to hers; there +was the dint of a human head among its flounces: it was still warm. And +groping with one hand, she pressed the knob of an electric bell by her +bed’s head. + +“He’s gone then?” she asked the maid who presented herself. + +“Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul went away not ten minutes back. As Madame +was tired, he did not wish to wake her. But he ordered me to tell +Madame that he would come tomorrow.” + +As she spoke Zoé, the lady’s maid, opened the outer shutter. A flood of +daylight entered. Zoé, a dark brunette with hair in little plaits, had +a long canine face, at once livid and full of seams, a snub nose, thick +lips and two black eyes in continual movement. + +“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” repeated Nana, who was not yet wide awake, “is +tomorrow the day?” + +“Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul has always come on the Wednesday.” + +“No, now I remember,” said the young woman, sitting up. “It’s all +changed. I wanted to tell him so this morning. He would run against the +nigger! We should have a nice to-do!” + +“Madame did not warn me; I couldn’t be aware of it,” murmured Zoé. +“When Madame changes her days she will do well to tell me so that I may +know. Then the old miser is no longer due on the Tuesday?” + +Between themselves they were wont thus gravely to nickname as “old +miser” and “nigger” their two paying visitors, one of whom was a +tradesman of economical tendencies from the Faubourg Saint-Denis, while +the other was a Walachian, a mock count, whose money, paid always at +the most irregular intervals, never looked as though it had been +honestly come by. Daguenet had made Nana give him the days subsequent +to the old miser’s visits, and as the trader had to be at home by eight +o’clock in the morning, the young man would watch for his departure +from Zoés kitchen and would take his place, which was still quite warm, +till ten o’clock. Then he, too, would go about his business. Nana and +he were wont to think it a very comfortable arrangement. + +“So much the worse,” said Nana; “I’ll write to him this afternoon. And +if he doesn’t receive my letter, then tomorrow you will stop him coming +in.” + +In the meantime Zoé was walking softly about the room. She spoke of +yesterday’s great hit. Madame had shown such talent; she sang so well! +Ah! Madame need not fret at all now! + +Nana, her elbow dug into her pillow, only tossed her head in reply. Her +nightdress had slipped down on her shoulders, and her hair, unfastened +and entangled, flowed over them in masses. + +“Without doubt,” she murmured, becoming thoughtful; “but what’s to be +done to gain time? I’m going to have all sorts of bothers today. Now +let’s see, has the porter come upstairs yet this morning?” + +Then both the women talked together seriously. Nana owed three +quarters’ rent; the landlord was talking of seizing the furniture. +Then, too, there was a perfect downpour of creditors; there was a +livery-stable man, a needlewoman, a ladies’ tailor, a charcoal dealer +and others besides, who came every day and settled themselves on a +bench in the little hall. The charcoal dealer especially was a dreadful +fellow—he shouted on the staircase. But Nana’s greatest cause of +distress was her little Louis, a child she had given birth to when she +was sixteen and now left in charge of a nurse in a village in the +neighborhood of Rambouillet. This woman was clamoring for the sum of +three hundred francs before she would consent to give the little Louis +back to her. Nana, since her last visit to the child, had been seized +with a fit of maternal love and was desperate at the thought that she +could not realize a project, which had now become a hobby with her. +This was to pay off the nurse and to place the little man with his +aunt, Mme Lerat, at the Batignolles, whither she could go and see him +as often as she liked. + +Meanwhile the lady’s maid kept hinting that her mistress ought to have +confided her necessities to the old miser. + +“To be sure, I told him everything,” cried Nana, “and he told me in +answer that he had too many big liabilities. He won’t go beyond his +thousand francs a month. The nigger’s beggared just at present; I +expect he’s lost at play. As to that poor Mimi, he stands in great need +of a loan himself; a fall in stocks has cleaned him out—he can’t even +bring me flowers now.” + +She was speaking of Daguenet. In the self-abandonment of her awakening +she had no secrets from Zoé, and the latter, inured to such +confidences, received them with respectful sympathy. Since Madame +condescended to speak to her of her affairs she would permit herself to +say what she thought. Besides, she was very fond of Madame; she had +left Mme Blanche for the express purpose of taking service with her, +and heaven knew Mme Blanche was straining every nerve to have her +again! Situations weren’t lacking; she was pretty well known, but she +would have stayed with Madame even in narrow circumstances, because she +believed in Madame’s future. And she concluded by stating her advice +with precision. When one was young one often did silly things. But this +time it was one’s duty to look alive, for the men only thought of +having their fun. Oh dear, yes! Things would right themselves. Madame +had only to say one word in order to quiet her creditors and find the +money she stood in need of. + +“All that doesn’t help me to three hundred francs,” Nana kept repeating +as she plunged her fingers into the vagrant convolutions of her back +hair. “I must have three hundred francs today, at once! It’s stupid not +to know anyone who’ll give you three hundred francs.” + +She racked her brains. She would have sent Mme Lerat, whom she was +expecting that very morning, to Rambouillet. The counteraction of her +sudden fancy spoiled for her the triumph of last night. Among all those +men who had cheered her, to think that there wasn’t one to bring her +fifteen louis! And then one couldn’t accept money in that way! Dear +heaven, how unfortunate she was! And she kept harking back again to the +subject of her baby—he had blue eyes like a cherub’s; he could lisp +“Mamma” in such a funny voice that you were ready to die of laughing! + +But at this moment the electric bell at the outer door was heard to +ring with its quick and tremulous vibration. Zoé returned, murmuring +with a confidential air: + +“It’s a woman.” + +She had seen this woman a score of times, only she made believe never +to recognize her and to be quite ignorant of the nature of her +relations with ladies in difficulties. + +“She has told me her name—Madame Tricon.” + +“The Tricon,” cried Nana. “Dear me! That’s true. I’d forgotten her. +Show her in.” + +Zoé ushered in a tall old lady who wore ringlets and looked like a +countess who haunts lawyers’ offices. Then she effaced herself, +disappearing noiselessly with the lithe, serpentine movement wherewith +she was wont to withdraw from a room on the arrival of a gentleman. +However, she might have stayed. The Tricon did not even sit down. Only +a brief exchange of words took place. + +“I have someone for you today. Do you care about it?” + +“Yes. How much?” + +“Twenty louis.” + +“At what o’clock?” + +“At three. It’s settled then?” + +“It’s settled.” + +Straightway the Tricon talked of the state of the weather. It was dry +weather, pleasant for walking. She had still four or five persons to +see. And she took her departure after consulting a small memorandum +book. When she was once more alone Nana appeared comforted. A slight +shiver agitated her shoulders, and she wrapped herself softly up again +in her warm bedclothes with the lazy movements of a cat who is +susceptible to cold. Little by little her eyes closed, and she lay +smiling at the thought of dressing Louiset prettily on the following +day, while in the slumber into which she once more sank last night’s +long, feverish dream of endlessly rolling applause returned like a +sustained accompaniment to music and gently soothed her lassitude. + +At eleven o’clock, when Zoé showed Mme Lerat into the room, Nana was +still asleep. But she woke at the noise and cried out at once: + +“It’s you. You’ll go to Rambouillet today?” + +“That’s what I’ve come for,” said the aunt. “There’s a train at twenty +past twelve. I’ve got time to catch it.” + +“No, I shall only have the money by and by,” replied the young woman, +stretching herself and throwing out her bosom. “You’ll have lunch, and +then we’ll see.” + +Zoé brought a dressing jacket. + +“The hairdresser’s here, madame,” she murmured. + +But Nana did not wish to go into the dressing room. And she herself +cried out: + +“Come in, Francis.” + +A well-dressed man pushed open the door and bowed. Just at that moment +Nana was getting out of bed, her bare legs in full view. But she did +not hurry and stretched her hands out so as to let Zoé draw on the +sleeves of the dressing jacket. Francis, on his part, was quite at his +ease and without turning away waited with a sober expression on his +face. + +“Perhaps Madame has not seen the papers. There’s a very nice article in +the Figaro.” + +He had brought the journal. Mme Lerat put on her spectacles and read +the article aloud, standing in front of the window as she did so. She +had the build of a policeman, and she drew herself up to her full +height, while her nostrils seemed to compress themselves whenever she +uttered a gallant epithet. It was a notice by Fauchery, written just +after the performance, and it consisted of a couple of very glowing +columns, full of witty sarcasm about the artist and of broad admiration +for the woman. + +“Excellent!” Francis kept repeating. + +Nana laughed good-humoredly at his chaffing her about her voice! He was +a nice fellow, was that Fauchery, and she would repay him for his +charming style of writing. Mme Lerat, after having reread the notice, +roundly declared that the men all had the devil in their shanks, and +she refused to explain her self further, being fully satisfied with a +brisk allusion of which she alone knew the meaning. Francis finished +turning up and fastening Nana’s hair. He bowed and said: + +“I’ll keep my eye on the evening papers. At half-past five as usual, +eh?” + +“Bring me a pot of pomade and a pound of burnt almonds from +Boissier’s,” Nana cried to him across the drawing room just as he was +shutting the door after him. + +Then the two women, once more alone, recollected that they had not +embraced, and they planted big kisses on each other’s cheeks. The +notice warmed their hearts. Nana, who up till now had been half asleep, +was again seized with the fever of her triumph. Dear, dear, ’twas Rose +Mignon that would be spending a pleasant morning! Her aunt having been +unwilling to go to the theater because, as she averred, sudden emotions +ruined her stomach, Nana set herself to describe the events of the +evening and grew intoxicated at her own recital, as though all Paris +had been shaken to the ground by the applause. Then suddenly +interrupting herself, she asked with a laugh if one would ever have +imagined it all when she used to go traipsing about the Rue de la +Goutte-d’Or. Mme Lerat shook her head. No, no, one never could have +foreseen it! And she began talking in her turn, assuming a serious air +as she did so and calling Nana “daughter.” Wasn’t she a second mother +to her since the first had gone to rejoin Papa and Grandmamma? Nana was +greatly softened and on the verge of tears. But Mme Lerat declared that +the past was the past—oh yes, to be sure, a dirty past with things in +it which it was as well not to stir up every day. She had left off +seeing her niece for a long time because among the family she was +accused of ruining herself along with the little thing. Good God, as +though that were possible! She didn’t ask for confidences; she believed +that Nana had always lived decently, and now it was enough for her to +have found her again in a fine position and to observe her kind +feelings toward her son. Virtue and hard work were still the only +things worth anything in this world. + +“Who is the baby’s father?” she said, interrupting herself, her eyes +lit up with an expression of acute curiosity. + +Nana was taken by surprise and hesitated a moment. + +“A gentleman,” she replied. + +“There now!” rejoined the aunt. “They declared that you had him by a +stonemason who was in the habit of beating you. Indeed, you shall tell +me all about it someday; you know I’m discreet! Tut, tut, I’ll look +after him as though he were a prince’s son.” + +She had retired from business as a florist and was living on her +savings, which she had got together sou by sou, till now they brought +her in an income of six hundred francs a year. Nana promised to rent +some pretty little lodgings for her and to give her a hundred francs a +month besides. At the mention of this sum the aunt forgot herself and +shrieked to her niece, bidding her squeeze their throats, since she had +them in her grasp. She was meaning the men, of course. Then they both +embraced again, but in the midst of her rejoicing Nana’s face, as she +led the talk back to the subject of Louiset, seemed to be overshadowed +by a sudden recollection. + +“Isn’t it a bore I’ve got to go out at three o’clock?” she muttered. +“It IS a nuisance!” + +Just then Zoé came in to say that lunch was on the table. They went +into the dining room, where an old lady was already seated at table. +She had not taken her hat off, and she wore a dark dress of an +indecisive color midway between puce and goose dripping. Nana did not +seem surprised at sight of her. She simply asked her why she hadn’t +come into the bedroom. + +“I heard voices,” replied the old lady. “I thought you had company.” + +Mme Maloir, a respectable-looking and mannerly woman, was Nana’s old +friend, chaperon and companion. Mme Lerat’s presence seemed to fidget +her at first. Afterward, when she became aware that it was Nana’s aunt, +she looked at her with a sweet expression and a die-away smile. In the +meantime Nana, who averred that she was as hungry as a wolf, threw +herself on the radishes and gobbled them up without bread. Mme Lerat +had become ceremonious; she refused the radishes as provocative of +phlegm. By and by when Zoé had brought in the cutlets Nana just chipped +the meat and contented herself with sucking the bones. Now and again +she scrutinized her old friend’s hat out of the corners of her eyes. + +“It’s the new hat I gave you?” she ended by saying. + +“Yes, I made it up,” murmured Mme Maloir, her mouth full of meat. + +The hat was smart to distraction. In front it was greatly exaggerated, +and it was adorned with a lofty feather. Mme Maloir had a mania for +doing up all her hats afresh; she alone knew what really became her, +and with a few stitches she could manufacture a toque out of the most +elegant headgear. Nana, who had bought her this very hat in order not +to be ashamed of her when in her company out of doors, was very near +being vexed. + +“Push it up, at any rate,” she cried. + +“No, thank you,” replied the old lady with dignity. “It doesn’t get in +my way; I can eat very comfortably as it is.” + +After the cutlets came cauliflowers and the remains of a cold chicken. +But at the arrival of each successive dish Nana made a little face, +hesitated, sniffed and left her plateful untouched. She finished her +lunch with the help of preserve. + +Dessert took a long time. Zoé did not remove the cloth before serving +the coffee. Indeed, the ladies simply pushed back their plates before +taking it. They talked continually of yesterday’s charming evening. +Nana kept rolling cigarettes, which she smoked, swinging up and down on +her backward-tilted chair. And as Zoé had remained behind and was +lounging idly against the sideboard, it came about that the company +were favored with her history. She said she was the daughter of a +midwife at Bercy who had failed in business. First of all she had taken +service with a dentist and after that with an insurance agent, but +neither place suited her, and she thereupon enumerated, not without a +certain amount of pride, the names of the ladies with whom she had +served as lady’s maid. Zoé spoke of these ladies as one who had had the +making of their fortunes. It was very certain that without her more +than one would have had some queer tales to tell. Thus one day, when +Mme Blanche was with M. Octave, in came the old gentleman. What did Zoé +do? She made believe to tumble as she crossed the drawing room; the old +boy rushed up to her assistance, flew to the kitchen to fetch her a +glass of water, and M. Octave slipped away. + +“Oh, she’s a good girl, you bet!” said Nana, who was listening to her +with tender interest and a sort of submissive admiration. + +“Now I’ve had my troubles,” began Mme Lerat. And edging up to Mme +Maloir, she imparted to her certain confidential confessions. Both +ladies took lumps of sugar dipped in cognac and sucked them. But Mme +Maloir was wont to listen to other people’s secrets without even +confessing anything concerning herself. People said that she lived on a +mysterious allowance in a room whither no one ever penetrated. + +All of a sudden Nana grew excited. + +“Don’t play with the knives, Aunt. You know it gives me a turn!” + +Without thinking about it Mme Lerat had crossed two knives on the table +in front of her. Notwithstanding this, the young woman defended herself +from the charge of superstition. Thus, if the salt were upset, it meant +nothing, even on a Friday; but when it came to knives, that was too +much of a good thing; that had never proved fallacious. There could be +no doubt that something unpleasant was going to happen to her. She +yawned, and then with an air, of profound boredom: + +“Two o’clock already. I must go out. What a nuisance!” + +The two old ladies looked at one another. The three women shook their +heads without speaking. To be sure, life was not always amusing. Nana +had tilted her chair back anew and lit a cigarette, while the others +sat pursing up their lips discreetly, thinking deeply philosophic +thoughts. + +“While waiting for you to return we’ll play a game of bezique,” said +Mme Maloir after a short silence. “Does Madame play bezique?” + +Certainly Mme Lerat played it, and that to perfection. It was no good +troubling Zoé, who had vanished—a corner of the table would do quite +well. And they pushed back the tablecloth over the dirty plates. But as +Mme Maloir was herself going to take the cards out of a drawer in the +sideboard, Nana remarked that before she sat down to her game it would +be very nice of her if she would write her a letter. It bored Nana to +write letters; besides, she was not sure of her spelling, while her old +friend could turn out the most feeling epistles. She ran to fetch some +good note paper in her bedroom. An inkstand consisting of a bottle of +ink worth about three sous stood untidily on one of the pieces of +furniture, with a pen deep in rust beside it. The letter was for +Daguenet. Mme Maloir herself wrote in her bold English hand, “My +darling little man,” and then she told him not to come tomorrow because +“that could not be” but hastened to add that “she was with him in +thought at every moment of the day, whether she were near or far away.” + +“And I end with ‘a thousand kisses,’” she murmured. + +Mme Lerat had shown her approval of each phrase with an emphatic nod. +Her eyes were sparkling; she loved to find herself in the midst of love +affairs. Nay, she was seized with a desire to add some words of her own +and, assuming a tender look and cooing like a dove, she suggested: + +“A thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes.” + +“That’s the thing: ‘a thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes’!” Nana +repeated, while the two old ladies assumed a beatified expression. + +Zoé was rung for and told to take the letter down to a commissionaire. +She had just been talking with the theater messenger, who had brought +her mistress the day’s playbill and rehearsal arrangements, which he +had forgotten in the morning. Nana had this individual ushered in and +got him to take the latter to Daguenet on his return. Then she put +questions to him. Oh yes! M. Bordenave was very pleased; people had +already taken seats for a week to come; Madame had no idea of the +number of people who had been asking her address since morning. When +the man had taken his departure Nana announced that at most she would +only be out half an hour. If there were any visitors Zoé would make +them wait. As she spoke the electric bell sounded. It was a creditor in +the shape of the man of whom she jobbed her carriages. He had settled +himself on the bench in the anteroom, and the fellow was free to +twiddle his thumbs till night—there wasn’t the least hurry now. + +“Come, buck up!” said Nana, still torpid with laziness and yawning and +stretching afresh. “I ought to be there now!” + +Yet she did not budge but kept watching the play of her aunt, who had +just announced four aces. Chin on hand, she grew quite engrossed in it +but gave a violent start on hearing three o’clock strike. + +“Good God!” she cried roughly. + +Then Mme Maloir, who was counting the tricks she had won with her tens +and aces, said cheeringly to her in her soft voice: + +“It would be better, dearie, to give up your expedition at once.” + +“No, be quick about it,” said Mme Lerat, shuffling the cards. “I shall +take the half-past four o’clock train if you’re back here with the +money before four o’clock.” + +“Oh, there’ll be no time lost,” she murmured. + +Ten minutes after Zoé helped her on with a dress and a hat. It didn’t +matter much if she were badly turned out. Just as she was about to go +downstairs there was a new ring at the bell. This time it was the +charcoal dealer. Very well, he might keep the livery-stable keeper +company—it would amuse the fellows. Only, as she dreaded a scene, she +crossed the kitchen and made her escape by the back stairs. She often +went that way and in return had only to lift up her flounces. + +“When one is a good mother anything’s excusable,” said Mme Maloir +sententiously when left alone with Mme Lerat. + +“Four kings,” replied this lady, whom the play greatly excited. + +And they both plunged into an interminable game. + +The table had not been cleared. The smell of lunch and the cigarette +smoke filled the room with an ambient, steamy vapor. The two ladies had +again set to work dipping lumps of sugar in brandy and sucking the +same. For twenty minutes at least they played and sucked simultaneously +when, the electric bell having rung a third time, Zoé bustled into the +room and roughly disturbed them, just as if they had been her own +friends. + +“Look here, that’s another ring. You can’t stay where you are. If many +folks call I must have the whole flat. Now off you go, off you go!” + +Mme Maloir was for finishing the game, but Zoé looked as if she was +going to pounce down on the cards, and so she decided to carry them off +without in any way altering their positions, while Mme Lerat undertook +the removal of the brandy bottle, the glasses and the sugar. Then they +both scudded to the kitchen, where they installed themselves at the +table in an empty space between the dishcloths, which were spread out +to dry, and the bowl still full of dishwater. + +“We said it was three hundred and forty. It’s your turn.” + +“I play hearts.” + +When Zoé returned she found them once again absorbed. After a silence, +as Mme Lerat was shuffling, Mme Maloir asked who it was. + +“Oh, nobody to speak of,” replied the servant carelessly; “a slip of a +lad! I wanted to send him away again, but he’s such a pretty boy with +never a hair on his chin and blue eyes and a girl’s face! So I told him +to wait after all. He’s got an enormous bouquet in his hand, which he +never once consented to put down. One would like to catch him one—a +brat like that who ought to be at school still!” + +Mme Lerat went to fetch a water bottle to mix herself some brandy and +water, the lumps of sugar having rendered her thirsty. Zoé muttered +something to the effect that she really didn’t mind if she drank +something too. Her mouth, she averred, was as bitter as gall. + +“So you put him—?” continued Mme Maloir. + +“Oh yes, I put him in the closet at the end of the room, the little +unfurnished one. There’s only one of my lady’s trunks there and a +table. It’s there I stow the lubbers.” + +And she was putting plenty of sugar in her grog when the electric bell +made her jump. Oh, drat it all! Wouldn’t they let her have a drink in +peace? If they were to have a peal of bells things promised well. +Nevertheless, she ran off to open the door. Returning presently, she +saw Mme Maloir questioning her with a glance. + +“It’s nothing,” she said, “only a bouquet.” + +All three refreshed themselves, nodding to each other in token of +salutation. Then while Zoé was at length busy clearing the table, +bringing the plates out one by one and putting them in the sink, two +other rings followed close upon one another. But they weren’t serious, +for while keeping the kitchen informed of what was going on she twice +repeated her disdainful expression: + +“Nothing, only a bouquet.” + +Notwithstanding which, the old ladies laughed between two of their +tricks when they heard her describe the looks of the creditors in the +anteroom after the flowers had arrived. Madame would find her bouquets +on her toilet table. What a pity it was they cost such a lot and that +you could only get ten sous for them! Oh dear, yes, plenty of money was +wasted! + +“For my part,” said Mme Maloir, “I should be quite content if every day +of my life I got what the men in Paris had spent on flowers for the +women.” + +“Now, you know, you’re not hard to please,” murmured Mme Lerat. “Why, +one would have only just enough to buy thread with. Four queens, my +dear.” + +It was ten minutes to four. Zoé was astonished, could not understand +why her mistress was out so long. Ordinarily when Madame found herself +obliged to go out in the afternoons she got it over in double-quick +time. But Mme Maloir declared that one didn’t always manage things as +one wished. Truly, life was beset with obstacles, averred Mme Lerat. +The best course was to wait. If her niece was long in coming it was +because her occupations detained her; wasn’t it so? Besides, they +weren’t overworked—it was comfortable in the kitchen. And as hearts +were out, Mme Lerat threw down diamonds. + +The bell began again, and when Zoé reappeared she was burning with +excitement. + +“My children, it’s fat Steiner!” she said in the doorway, lowering her +voice as she spoke. “I’ve put HIM in the little sitting room.” + +Thereupon Mme Maloir spoke about the banker to Mme Lerat, who knew no +such gentleman. Was he getting ready to give Rose Mignon the go-by? Zoé +shook her head; she knew a thing or two. But once more she had to go +and open the door. + +“Here’s bothers!” she murmured when she came back. “It’s the nigger! +’Twasn’t any good telling him that my lady’s gone out, and so he’s +settled himself in the bedroom. We only expected him this evening.” + +At a quarter past four Nana was not in yet. What could she be after? It +was silly of her! Two other bouquets were brought round, and Zoé, +growing bored looked to see if there were any coffee left. Yes, the +ladies would willingly finish off the coffee; it would waken them up. +Sitting hunched up on their chairs, they were beginning to fall asleep +through dint of constantly taking their cards between their fingers +with the accustomed movement. The half-hour sounded. Something must +decidedly have happened to Madame. And they began whispering to each +other. + +Suddenly Mme Maloir forgot herself and in a ringing voice announced: +“I’ve the five hundred! Trumps, Major Quint!” + +“Oh, do be quiet!” said Zoé angrily. “What will all those gentlemen +think?” And in the silence which ensued and amid the whispered +muttering of the two old women at strife over their game, the sound of +rapid footsteps ascended from the back stairs. It was Nana at last. +Before she had opened the door her breathlessness became audible. She +bounced abruptly in, looking very red in the face. Her skirt, the +string of which must have been broken, was trailing over the stairs, +and her flounces had just been dipped in a puddle of something +unpleasant which had oozed out on the landing of the first floor, where +the servant girl was a regular slut. + +“Here you are! It’s lucky!” said Mme Lerat, pursing up her lips, for +she was still vexed at Mme Maloir’s “five hundred.” “You may flatter +yourself at the way you keep folks waiting.” + +“Madame isn’t reasonable; indeed, she isn’t!” added Zoé. + +Nana was already harassed, and these reproaches exasperated her. Was +that the way people received her after the worry she had gone through? + +“Will you blooming well leave me alone, eh?” she cried. + +“Hush, ma’am, there are people in there,” said the maid. + +Then in lower tones the young Woman stuttered breathlessly: + +“D’you suppose I’ve been having a good time? Why, there was no end to +it. I should have liked to see you there! I was boiling with rage! I +felt inclined to smack somebody. And never a cab to come home in! +Luckily it’s only a step from here, but never mind that; I did just run +home.” + +“You have the money?” asked the aunt. + +“Dear, dear! That question!” rejoined Nana. + +She had sat herself down on a chair close up against the stove, for her +legs had failed her after so much running, and without stopping to take +breath she drew from behind her stays an envelope in which there were +four hundred-franc notes. They were visible through a large rent she +had torn with savage fingers in order to be sure of the contents. The +three women round about her stared fixedly at the envelope, a big, +crumpled, dirty receptacle, as it lay clasped in her small gloved +hands. + +It was too late now—Mme Lerat would not go to Rambouillet till +tomorrow, and Nana entered into long explanations. + +“There’s company waiting for you,” the lady’s maid repeated. + +But Nana grew excited again. The company might wait: she’d go to them +all in good time when she’d finished. And as her aunt began putting her +hand out for the money: + +“Ah no! Not all of it,” she said. “Three hundred francs for the nurse, +fifty for your journey and expenses, that’s three hundred and fifty. +Fifty francs I keep.” + +The big difficulty was how to find change. There were not ten francs in +the house. But they did not even address themselves to Mme Maloir who, +never having more than a six-sou omnibus fair upon her, was listening +in quite a disinterested manner. At length Zoé went out of the room, +remarking that she would go and look in her box, and she brought back a +hundred francs in hundred-sou pieces. They were counted out on a corner +of the table, and Mme Lerat took her departure at once after having +promised to bring Louiset back with her the following day. + +“You say there’s company there?” continued Nana, still sitting on the +chair and resting herself. + +“Yes, madame, three people.” + +And Zoé mentioned the banker first. Nana made a face. Did that man +Steiner think she was going to let herself be bored because he had +thrown her a bouquet yesterday evening? + +“Besides, I’ve had enough of it,” she declared. “I shan’t receive +today. Go and say you don’t expect me now.” + +“Madame will think the matter over; Madame will receive Monsieur +Steiner,” murmured Zoé gravely, without budging from her place. She was +annoyed to see her mistress on the verge of committing another foolish +mistake. + +Then she mentioned the Walachian, who ought by now to find time hanging +heavy on his hands in the bedroom. Whereupon Nana grew furious and more +obstinate than ever. No, she would see nobody, nobody! Who’d sent her +such a blooming leech of a man? + +“Chuck ’em all out! I—I’m going to play a game of bezique with Madame +Maloir. I prefer doing that.” + +The bell interrupted her remarks. That was the last straw. Another of +the beggars yet! She forbade Zoé to go and open the door, but the +latter had left the kitchen without listening to her, and when she +reappeared she brought back a couple of cards and said authoritatively: + +“I told them that Madame was receiving visitors. The gentlemen are in +the drawing room.” + +Nana had sprung up, raging, but the names of the Marquis de Chouard and +of Count Muffat de Beuville, which were inscribed on the cards, calmed +her down. For a moment or two she remained silent. + +“Who are they?” she asked at last. “You know them?” + +“I know the old fellow,” replied Zoé, discreetly pursing up her lips. + +And her mistress continuing to question her with her eyes, she added +simply: + +“I’ve seen him somewhere.” + +This remark seemed to decide the young woman. Regretfully she left the +kitchen, that asylum of steaming warmth, where you could talk and take +your ease amid the pleasant fumes of the coffeepot which was being kept +warm over a handful of glowing embers. She left Mme Maloir behind her. +That lady was now busy reading her fortune by the cards; she had never +yet taken her hat off, but now in order to be more at her ease she +undid the strings and threw them back over her shoulders. + +In the dressing room, where Zoé rapidly helped her on with a tea gown, +Nana revenged herself for the way in which they were all boring her by +muttering quiet curses upon the male sex. These big words caused the +lady’s maid not a little distress, for she saw with pain that her +mistress was not rising superior to her origin as quickly as she could +have desired. She even made bold to beg Madame to calm herself. + +“You bet,” was Nana’s crude answer; “they’re swine; they glory in that +sort of thing.” + +Nevertheless, she assumed her princesslike manner, as she was wont to +call it. But just when she was turning to go into the drawing room Zoé +held her back and herself introduced the Marquis de Chouard and the +Count Muffat into the dressing room. It was much better so. + +“I regret having kept you waiting, gentlemen,” said the young woman +with studied politeness. + +The two men bowed and seated themselves. A blind of embroidered tulle +kept the little room in twilight. It was the most elegant chamber in +the flat, for it was hung with some light-colored fabric and contained +a cheval glass framed in inlaid wood, a lounge chair and some others +with arms and blue satin upholsteries. On the toilet table the +bouquets—roses, lilacs and hyacinths—appeared like a very ruin of +flowers. Their perfume was strong and penetrating, while through the +dampish air of the place, which was full of the spoiled exhalations of +the washstand, came occasional whiffs of a more pungent scent, the +scent of some grains or dry patchouli ground to fine powder at the +bottom of a cup. And as she gathered herself together and drew up her +dressing jacket, which had been ill fastened, Nana had all the +appearance of having been surprised at her toilet: her skin was still +damp; she smiled and looked quite startled amid her frills and laces. + +“Madame, you will pardon our insistence,” said the Count Muffat +gravely. “We come on a quest. Monsieur and I are members of the +Benevolent Organization of the district.” + +The Marquis de Chouard hastened gallantly to add: + +“When we learned that a great artiste lived in this house we promised +ourselves that we would put the claims of our poor people before her in +a very special manner. Talent is never without a heart.” + +Nana pretended to be modest. She answered them with little assenting +movements of her head, making rapid reflections at the same time. It +must be the old man that had brought the other one: he had such wicked +eyes. And yet the other was not to be trusted either: the veins near +his temples were so queerly puffed up. He might quite well have come by +himself. Ah, now that she thought of it, it was this way: the porter +had given them her name, and they had egged one another on, each with +his own ends in view. + +“Most certainly, gentlemen, you were quite right to come up,” she said +with a very good grace. + +But the electric bell made her tremble again. Another call, and that +Zoé always opening the door! She went on: + +“One is only too happy to be able to give.” + +At bottom she was flattered. + +“Ah, madame,” rejoined the marquis, “if only you knew about it! there’s +such misery! Our district has more than three thousand poor people in +it, and yet it’s one of the richest. You cannot picture to yourself +anything like the present distress—children with no bread, women ill, +utterly without assistance, perishing of the cold!” + +“The poor souls!” cried Nana, very much moved. + +Such was her feeling of compassion that tears flooded her fine eyes. No +longer studying deportment, she leaned forward with a quick movement, +and under her open dressing jacket her neck became visible, while the +bent position of her knees served to outline the rounded contour of the +thigh under the thin fabric of her skirt. A little flush of blood +appeared in the marquis’s cadaverous cheeks. Count Muffat, who was on +the point of speaking, lowered his eyes. The air of that little room +was too hot: it had the close, heavy warmth of a greenhouse. The roses +were withering, and intoxicating odors floated up from the patchouli in +the cup. + +“One would like to be very rich on occasions like this,” added Nana. +“Well, well, we each do what we can. Believe me, gentlemen, if I had +known—” + +She was on the point of being guilty of a silly speech, so melted was +she at heart. But she did not end her sentence and for a moment was +worried at not being able to remember where she had put her fifty +francs on changing her dress. But she recollected at last: they must be +on the corner of her toilet table under an inverted pomatum pot. As she +was in the act of rising the bell sounded for quite a long time. +Capital! Another of them still! It would never end. The count and the +marquis had both risen, too, and the ears of the latter seemed to be +pricked up and, as it were, pointing toward the door; doubtless he knew +that kind of ring. Muffat looked at him; then they averted their gaze +mutually. They felt awkward and once more assumed their frigid bearing, +the one looking square-set and solid with his thick head of hair, the +other drawing back his lean shoulders, over which fell his fringe of +thin white locks. + +“My faith,” said Nana, bringing the ten big silver pieces and quite +determined to laugh about it, “I am going to entrust you with this, +gentlemen. It is for the poor.” + +And the adorable little dimple in her chin became apparent. She assumed +her favorite pose, her amiable baby expression, as she held the pile of +five-franc pieces on her open palm and offered it to the men, as though +she were saying to them, “Now then, who wants some?” The count was the +sharper of the two. He took fifty francs but left one piece behind and, +in order to gain possession of it, had to pick it off the young woman’s +very skin, a moist, supple skin, the touch of which sent a thrill +through him. She was thoroughly merry and did not cease laughing. + +“Come, gentlemen,” she continued. “Another time I hope to give more.” + +The gentlemen no longer had any pretext for staying, and they bowed and +went toward the door. But just as they were about to go out the bell +rang anew. The marquis could not conceal a faint smile, while a frown +made the count look more grave than before. Nana detained them some +seconds so as to give Zoé time to find yet another corner for the +newcomers. She did not relish meetings at her house. Only this time the +whole place must be packed! She was therefore much relieved when she +saw the drawing room empty and asked herself whether Zoé had really +stuffed them into the cupboards. + +“Au revoir, gentlemen,” she said, pausing on the threshold of the +drawing room. + +It was as though she lapped them in her laughing smile and clear, +unclouded glance. The Count Muffat bowed slightly. Despite his great +social experience he felt that he had lost his equilibrium. He needed +air; he was overcome with the dizzy feeling engendered in that dressing +room with a scent of flowers, with a feminine essence which choked him. +And behind his back, the Marquis de Chouard, who was sure that he could +not be seen, made so bold as to wink at Nana, his whole face suddenly +altering its expression as he did so, and his tongue nigh lolling from +his mouth. + +When the young woman re-entered the little room, where Zoé was awaiting +her with letters and visiting cards, she cried out, laughing more +heartily than ever: + +“There are a pair of beggars for you! Why, they’ve got away with my +fifty francs!” + +She wasn’t vexed. It struck her as a joke that MEN should have got +money out of her. All the same, they were swine, for she hadn’t a sou +left. But at sight of the cards and the letters her bad temper +returned. As to the letters, why, she said “pass” to them. They were +from fellows who, after applauding her last night, were now making +their declarations. And as to the callers, they might go about their +business! + +Zoé had stowed them all over the place, and she called attention to the +great capabilities of the flat, every room in which opened on the +corridor. That wasn’t the case at Mme Blanche’s, where people had all +to go through the drawing room. Oh yes, Mme Blanche had had plenty of +bothers over it! + +“You will send them all away,” continued Nana in pursuance of her idea. +“Begin with the nigger.” + +“Oh, as to him, madame, I gave him his marching orders a while ago,” +said Zoé with a grin. “He only wanted to tell Madame that he couldn’t +come to-night.” + +There was vast joy at this announcement, and Nana clapped her hands. He +wasn’t coming, what good luck! She would be free then! And she emitted +sighs of relief, as though she had been let off the most abominable of +tortures. Her first thought was for Daguenet. Poor duck, why, she had +just written to tell him to wait till Thursday! Quick, quick, Mme +Maloir should write a second letter! But Zoé announced that Mme Maloir +had slipped away unnoticed, according to her wont. Whereupon Nana, +after talking of sending someone to him, began to hesitate. She was +very tired. A long night’s sleep—oh, it would be so jolly! The thought +of such a treat overcame her at last. For once in a way she could allow +herself that! + +“I shall go to bed when I come back from the theater,” she murmured +greedily, “and you won’t wake me before noon.” + +Then raising her voice: + +“Now then, gee up! Shove the others downstairs!” + +Zoé did not move. She would never have dreamed of giving her mistress +overt advice, only now she made shift to give Madame the benefit of her +experience when Madame seemed to be running her hot head against a +wall. + +“Monsieur Steiner as well?” she queried curtly. + +“Why, certainly!” replied Nana. “Before all the rest.” + +The maid still waited, in order to give her mistress time for +reflection. Would not Madame be proud to get such a rich gentleman away +from her rival Rose Mignon—a man, moreover, who was known in all the +theaters? + +“Now make haste, my dear,” rejoined Nana, who perfectly understood the +situation, “and tell him he pesters me.” + +But suddenly there was a reversion of feeling. Tomorrow she might want +him. Whereupon she laughed, winked once or twice and with a naughty +little gesture cried out: + +“After all’s said and done, if I want him the best way even now is to +kick him out of doors.” + +Zoé seemed much impressed. Struck with a sudden admiration, she gazed +at her mistress and then went and chucked Steiner out of doors without +further deliberation. + +Meanwhile Nana waited patiently for a second or two in order to give +her time to sweep the place out, as she phrased it. No one would ever +have expected such a siege! She craned her head into the drawing room +and found it empty. The dining room was empty too. But as she continued +her visitation in a calmer frame of mind, feeling certain that nobody +remained behind, she opened the door of a closet and came suddenly upon +a very young man. He was sitting on the top of a trunk, holding a huge +bouquet on his knees and looking exceedingly quiet and extremely well +behaved. + +“Goodness gracious me!” she cried. “There’s one of ’em in there even +now!” The very young man had jumped down at sight of her and was +blushing as red as a poppy. He did not know what to do with his +bouquet, which he kept shifting from one hand to the other, while his +looks betrayed the extreme of emotion. His youth, his embarrassment and +the funny figure he cut in his struggles with his flowers melted Nana’s +heart, and she burst into a pretty peal of laughter. Well, now, the +very children were coming, were they? Men were arriving in long +clothes. So she gave up all airs and graces, became familiar and +maternal, tapped her leg and asked for fun: + +“You want me to wipe your nose; do you, baby?” + +“Yes,” replied the lad in a low, supplicating tone. + +This answer made her merrier than ever. He was seventeen years old, he +said. His name was Georges Hugon. He was at the Variétés last night and +now he had come to see her. + +“These flowers are for me?” + +“Yes.” + +“Then give ’em to me, booby!” + +But as she took the bouquet from him he sprang upon her hands and +kissed them with all the gluttonous eagerness peculiar to his charming +time of life. She had to beat him to make him let go. There was a +dreadful little dribbling customer for you! But as she scolded him she +flushed rosy-red and began smiling. And with that she sent him about +his business, telling him that he might call again. He staggered away; +he could not find the doors. + +Nana went back into her dressing room, where Francis made his +appearance almost simultaneously in order to dress her hair for the +evening. Seated in front of her mirror and bending her head beneath the +hairdresser’s nimble hands, she stayed silently meditative. Presently, +however, Zoé entered, remarking: + +“There’s one of them, madame, who refuses to go.” + +“Very well, he must be left alone,” she answered quietly. + +“If that comes to that they still keep arriving.” + +“Bah! Tell ’em to wait. When they begin to feel too hungry they’ll be +off.” Her humor had changed, and she was now delighted to make people +wait about for nothing. A happy thought struck her as very amusing; she +escaped from beneath Francis’ hands and ran and bolted the doors. They +might now crowd in there as much as they liked; they would probably +refrain from making a hole through the wall. Zoé could come in and out +through the little doorway leading to the kitchen. However, the +electric bell rang more lustily than ever. Every five minutes a clear, +lively little ting-ting recurred as regularly as if it had been +produced by some well-adjusted piece of mechanism. And Nana counted +these rings to while the time away withal. But suddenly she remembered +something. + +“I say, where are my burnt almonds?” + +Francis, too, was forgetting about the burnt almonds. But now he drew a +paper bag from one of the pockets of his frock coat and presented it to +her with the discreet gesture of a man who is offering a lady a +present. Nevertheless, whenever his accounts came to be settled, he +always put the burnt almonds down on his bill. Nana put the bag between +her knees and set to work munching her sweetmeats, turning her head +from time to time under the hairdresser’s gently compelling touch. + +“The deuce,” she murmured after a silence, “there’s a troop for you!” + +Thrice, in quick succession, the bell had sounded. Its summonses became +fast and furious. There were modest tintinnabulations which seemed to +stutter and tremble like a first avowal; there were bold rings which +vibrated under some rough touch and hasty rings which sounded through +the house with shivering rapidity. It was a regular peal, as Zoé said, +a peal loud enough to upset the neighborhood, seeing that a whole mob +of men were jabbing at the ivory button, one after the other. That old +joker Bordenave had really been far too lavish with her address. Why, +the whole of yesterday’s house was coming! + +“By the by, Francis, have you five louis?” said Nana. + +He drew back, looked carefully at her headdress and then quietly +remarked: + +“Five louis, that’s according!” + +“Ah, you know if you want securities . . .” she continued. + +And without finishing her sentence, she indicated the adjoining rooms +with a sweeping gesture. Francis lent the five louis. Zoé, during each +momentary respite, kept coming in to get Madame’s things ready. Soon +she came to dress her while the hairdresser lingered with the intention +of giving some finishing touches to the headdress. But the bell kept +continually disturbing the lady’s maid, who left Madame with her stays +half laced and only one shoe on. Despite her long experience, the maid +was losing her head. After bringing every nook and corner into +requisition and putting men pretty well everywhere, she had been driven +to stow them away in threes and fours, which was a course of procedure +entirely opposed to her principles. So much the worse for them if they +ate each other up! It would afford more room! And Nana, sheltering +behind her carefully bolted door, began laughing at them, declaring +that she could hear them pant. They ought to be looking lovely in there +with their tongues hanging out like a lot of bowwows sitting round on +their behinds. Yesterday’s success was not yet over, and this pack of +men had followed up her scent. + +“Provided they don’t break anything,” she murmured. + +She began to feel some anxiety, for she fancied she felt their hot +breath coming through chinks in the door. But Zoé ushered Labordette +in, and the young woman gave a little shout of relief. He was anxious +to tell her about an account he had settled for her at the justice of +peace’s court. But she did not attend and said: + +“I’ll take you along with me. We’ll have dinner together, and afterward +you shall escort me to the Variétés. I don’t go on before half-past +nine.” + +Good old Labordette, how lucky it was he had come! He was a fellow who +never asked for any favors. He was only the friend of the women, whose +little bits of business he arranged for them. Thus on his way in he had +dismissed the creditors in the anteroom. Indeed, those good folks +really didn’t want to be paid. On the contrary, if they HAD been +pressing for payment it was only for the sake of complimenting Madame +and of personally renewing their offers of service after her grand +success of yesterday. + +“Let’s be off, let’s be off,” said Nana, who was dressed by now. + +But at that moment Zoé came in again, shouting: + +“I refuse to open the door any more. They’re waiting in a crowd all +down the stairs.” + +A crowd all down the stairs! Francis himself, despite the English +stolidity of manner which he was wont to affect, began laughing as he +put up his combs. Nana, who had already taken Labordette’s arm, pushed +him into the kitchen and effected her escape. At last she was delivered +from the men and felt happily conscious that she might now enjoy his +society anywhere without fear of stupid interruptions. + +“You shall see me back to my door,” she said as they went down the +kitchen stairs. “I shall feel safe, in that case. Just fancy, I want to +sleep a whole night quite by myself—yes, a whole night! It’s sort of +infatuation, dear boy!” + + + + + CHAPTER III + + +The Countess Sabine, as it had become customary to call Mme Muffat de +Beuville in order to distinguish her from the count’s mother, who had +died the year before, was wont to receive every Tuesday in her house in +the Rue Miromesnil at the corner of the Rue de Pentièvre. It was a +great square building, and the Muffats had lived in it for a hundred +years or more. On the side of the street its frontage seemed to +slumber, so lofty was it and dark, so sad and convent-like, with its +great outer shutters, which were nearly always closed. And at the back +in a little dark garden some trees had grown up and were straining +toward the sunlight with such long slender branches that their tips +were visible above the roof. + +This particular Tuesday, toward ten o’clock in the evening, there were +scarcely a dozen people in the drawing room. When she was only +expecting intimate friends the countess opened neither the little +drawing room nor the dining room. One felt more at home on such +occasions and chatted round the fire. The drawing room was very large +and very lofty; its four windows looked out upon the garden, from +which, on this rainy evening of the close of April, issued a sensation +of damp despite the great logs burning on the hearth. The sun never +shone down into the room; in the daytime it was dimly lit up by a faint +greenish light, but at night, when the lamps and the chandelier were +burning, it looked merely a serious old chamber with its massive +mahogany First Empire furniture, its hangings and chair coverings of +yellow velvet, stamped with a large design. Entering it, one was in an +atmosphere of cold dignity, of ancient manners, of a vanished age, the +air of which seemed devotional. + +Opposite the armchair, however, in which the count’s mother had died—a +square armchair of formal design and inhospitable padding, which stood +by the hearthside—the Countess Sabine was seated in a deep and cozy +lounge, the red silk upholsteries of which were soft as eider down. It +was the only piece of modern furniture there, a fanciful item +introduced amid the prevailing severity and clashing with it. + +“So we shall have the shah of Persia,” the young woman was saying. + +They were talking of the crowned heads who were coming to Paris for the +exhibition. Several ladies had formed a circle round the hearth, and +Mme du Joncquoy, whose brother, a diplomat, had just fulfilled a +mission in the East, was giving some details about the court of +Nazr-ed-Din. + +“Are you out of sorts, my dear?” asked Mme Chantereau, the wife of an +ironmaster, seeing the countess shivering slightly and growing pale as +she did so. + +“Oh no, not at all,” replied the latter, smiling. “I felt a little +cold. This drawing room takes so long to warm.” + +And with that she raised her melancholy eyes and scanned the walls from +floor to ceiling. Her daughter Estelle, a slight, insignificant-looking +girl of sixteen, the thankless period of life, quitted the large +footstool on which she was sitting and silently came and propped up one +of the logs which had rolled from its place. But Mme de Chezelles, a +convent friend of Sabine’s and her junior by five years, exclaimed: + +“Dear me, I would gladly be possessed of a drawing room such as yours! +At any rate, you are able to receive visitors. They only build boxes +nowadays. Oh, if I were in your place!” + +She ran giddily on and with lively gestures explained how she would +alter the hangings, the seats—everything, in fact. Then she would give +balls to which all Paris should run. Behind her seat her husband, a +magistrate, stood listening with serious air. It was rumored that she +deceived him quite openly, but people pardoned her offense and received +her just the same, because, they said, “she’s not answerable for her +actions.” + +“Oh that Leonide!” the Countess Sabine contented herself by murmuring, +smiling her faint smile the while. + +With a languid movement she eked out the thought that was in her. After +having lived there seventeen years she certainly would not alter her +drawing room now. It would henceforth remain just such as her +mother-in-law had wished to preserve it during her lifetime. Then +returning to the subject of conversation: + +“I have been assured,” she said, “that we shall also have the king of +Prussia and the emperor of Russia.” + +“Yes, some very fine fêtes are promised,” said Mme du Joncquoy. + +The banker Steiner, not long since introduced into this circle by +Leonide de Chezelles, who was acquainted with the whole of Parisian +society, was sitting chatting on a sofa between two of the windows. He +was questioning a deputy, from whom he was endeavoring with much +adroitness to elicit news about a movement on the stock exchange of +which he had his suspicions, while the Count Muffat, standing in front +of them, was silently listening to their talk, looking, as he did so, +even grayer than was his wont. + +Four or five young men formed another group near the door round the +Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who in a low tone was telling them an +anecdote. It was doubtless a very risky one, for they were choking with +laughter. Companionless in the center of the room, a stout man, a chief +clerk at the Ministry of the Interior, sat heavily in an armchair, +dozing with his eyes open. But when one of the young men appeared to +doubt the truth of the anecdote Vandeuvres raised his voice. + +“You are too much of a skeptic, Foucarmont; you’ll spoil all your +pleasures that way.” + +And he returned to the ladies with a laugh. Last scion of a great +family, of feminine manners and witty tongue, he was at that time +running through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite which +nothing could appease. His racing stable, which was one of the best +known in Paris, cost him a fabulous amount of money; his betting losses +at the Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number of pounds, +while taking one year with another, his mistresses would be always +devouring now a farm, now some acres of arable land or forest, which +amounted, in fact, to quite a respectable slice of his vast estates in +Picardy. + +“I advise you to call other people skeptics! Why, you don’t believe a +thing yourself,” said Leonide, making shift to find him a little space +in which to sit down at her side. + +“It’s you who spoil your own pleasures.” + +“Exactly,” he replied. “I wish to make others benefit by my +experience.” + +But the company imposed silence on him: he was scandalizing M. Venot. +And, the ladies having changed their positions, a little old man of +sixty, with bad teeth and a subtle smile, became visible in the depths +of an easy chair. There he sat as comfortably as in his own house, +listening to everybody’s remarks and making none himself. With a slight +gesture he announced himself by no means scandalized. Vandeuvres once +more assumed his dignified bearing and added gravely: + +“Monsieur Venot is fully aware that I believe what it is one’s duty to +believe.” + +It was an act of faith, and even Leonide appeared satisfied. The young +men at the end of the room no longer laughed; the company were old +fogies, and amusement was not to be found there. A cold breath of wind +had passed over them, and amid the ensuing silence Steiner’s nasal +voice became audible. The deputy’s discreet answers were at last +driving him to desperation. For a second or two the Countess Sabine +looked at the fire; then she resumed the conversation. + +“I saw the king of Prussia at Baden-Baden last year. He’s still full of +vigor for his age.” + +“Count Bismarck is to accompany him,” said Mme du Joncquoy. “Do you +know the count? I lunched with him at my brother’s ages ago, when he +was representative of Prussia in Paris. There’s a man now whose latest +successes I cannot in the least understand.” + +“But why?” asked Mme Chantereau. + +“Good gracious, how am I to explain? He doesn’t please me. His +appearance is boorish and underbred. Besides, so far as I am concerned, +I find him stupid.” + +With that the whole room spoke of Count Bismarck, and opinions differed +considerably. Vandeuvres knew him and assured the company that he was +great in his cups and at play. But when the discussion was at its +height the door was opened, and Hector de la Falois made his +appearance. Fauchery, who followed in his wake, approached the countess +and, bowing: + +“Madame,” he said, “I have not forgotten your extremely kind +invitation.” + +She smiled and made a pretty little speech. The journalist, after +bowing to the count, stood for some moments in the middle of the +drawing room. He only recognized Steiner and accordingly looked rather +out of his element. But Vandeuvres turned and came and shook hands with +him. And forthwith, in his delight at the meeting and with a sudden +desire to be confidential, Fauchery buttonholed him and said in a low +voice: + +“It’s tomorrow. Are you going?” + +“Egad, yes.” + +“At midnight, at her house. + +“I know, I know. I’m going with Blanche.” + +He wanted to escape and return to the ladies in order to urge yet +another reason in M. de Bismarck’s favor. But Fauchery detained him. + +“You never will guess whom she has charged me to invite.” + +And with a slight nod he indicated Count Muffat, who was just then +discussing a knotty point in the budget with Steiner and the deputy. + +“It’s impossible,” said Vandeuvres, stupefaction and merriment in his +tones. “My word on it! I had to swear that I would bring him to her. +Indeed, that’s one of my reasons for coming here.” + +Both laughed silently, and Vandeuvres, hurriedly rejoining the circle +of ladies, cried out: + +“I declare that on the contrary Monsieur de Bismarck is exceedingly +witty. For instance, one evening he said a charmingly epigrammatic +thing in my presence.” + +La Faloise meanwhile had heard the few rapid sentences thus +whisperingly interchanged, and he gazed at Fauchery in hopes of an +explanation which was not vouchsafed him. Of whom were they talking, +and what were they going to do at midnight tomorrow? He did not leave +his cousin’s side again. The latter had gone and seated himself. He was +especially interested by the Countess Sabine. Her name had often been +mentioned in his presence, and he knew that, having been married at the +age of seventeen, she must now be thirty-four and that since her +marriage she had passed a cloistered existence with her husband and her +mother-in-law. In society some spoke of her as a woman of religious +chastity, while others pitied her and recalled to memory her charming +bursts of laughter and the burning glances of her great eyes in the +days prior to her imprisonment in this old town house. Fauchery +scrutinized her and yet hesitated. One of his friends, a captain who +had recently died in Mexico, had, on the very eve of his departure, +made him one of those gross postprandial confessions, of which even the +most prudent among men are occasionally guilty. But of this he only +retained a vague recollection; they had dined not wisely but too well +that evening, and when he saw the countess, in her black dress and with +her quiet smile, seated in that Old World drawing room, he certainly +had his doubts. A lamp which had been placed behind her threw into +clear relief her dark, delicate, plump side face, wherein a certain +heaviness in the contours of the mouth alone indicated a species of +imperious sensuality. + +“What do they want with their Bismarck?” muttered La Faloise, whose +constant pretense it was to be bored in good society. “One’s ready to +kick the bucket here. A pretty idea of yours it was to want to come!” + +Fauchery questioned him abruptly. + +“Now tell me, does the countess admit someone to her embraces?” + +“Oh dear, no, no! My dear fellow!” he stammered, manifestly taken aback +and quite forgetting his pose. “Where d’you think we are?” + +After which he was conscious of a want of up-to-dateness in this +outburst of indignation and, throwing himself back on a great sofa, he +added: + +“Gad! I say no! But I don’t know much about it. There’s a little chap +out there, Foucarmont they call him, who’s to be met with everywhere +and at every turn. One’s seen faster men than that, though, you bet. +However, it doesn’t concern me, and indeed, all I know is that if the +countess indulges in high jinks she’s still pretty sly about it, for +the thing never gets about—nobody talks.” + +Then although Fauchery did not take the trouble to question him, he +told him all he knew about the Muffats. Amid the conversation of the +ladies, which still continued in front of the hearth, they both spoke +in subdued tones, and, seeing them there with their white cravats and +gloves, one might have supposed them to be discussing in chosen +phraseology some really serious topic. Old Mme Muffat then, whom La +Faloise had been well acquainted with, was an insufferable old lady, +always hand in glove with the priests. She had the grand manner, +besides, and an authoritative way of comporting herself, which bent +everybody to her will. As to Muffat, he was an old man’s child; his +father, a general, had been created count by Napoleon I, and naturally +he had found himself in favor after the second of December. He hadn’t +much gaiety of manner either, but he passed for a very honest man of +straightforward intentions and understanding. Add to these a code of +old aristocratic ideas and such a lofty conception of his duties at +court, of his dignities and of his virtues, that he behaved like a god +on wheels. It was the Mamma Muffat who had given him this precious +education with its daily visits to the confessional, its complete +absence of escapades and of all that is meant by youth. He was a +practicing Christian and had attacks of faith of such fiery violence +that they might be likened to accesses of burning fever. Finally, in +order to add a last touch to the picture, La Faloise whispered +something in his cousin’s ear. + +“You don’t say so!” said the latter. + +“On my word of honor, they swore it was true! He was still like that +when he married.” + +Fauchery chuckled as he looked at the count, whose face, with its +fringe of whiskers and absence of mustaches, seemed to have grown +squarer and harder now that he was busy quoting figures to the +writhing, struggling Steiner. + +“My word, he’s got a phiz for it!” murmured Fauchery. “A pretty present +he made his wife! Poor little thing, how he must have bored her! She +knows nothing about anything, I’ll wager!” + +Just then the Countess Sabine was saying something to him. But he did +not hear her, so amusing and extraordinary did he esteem the Muffats’ +case. She repeated the question. + +“Monsieur Fauchery, have you not published a sketch of Monsieur de +Bismarck? You spoke with him once?” + +He got up briskly and approached the circle of ladies, endeavoring to +collect himself and soon with perfect ease of manner finding an answer: + +“Dear me, madame, I assure you I wrote that ‘portrait’ with the help of +biographies which had been published in Germany. I have never seen +Monsieur de Bismarck.” + +He remained beside the countess and, while talking with her, continued +his meditations. She did not look her age; one would have set her down +as being twenty-eight at most, for her eyes, above all, which were +filled with the dark blue shadow of her long eyelashes, retained the +glowing light of youth. Bred in a divided family, so that she used to +spend one month with the Marquis de Chouard, another with the marquise, +she had been married very young, urged on, doubtless, by her father, +whom she embarrassed after her mother’s death. A terrible man was the +marquis, a man about whom strange tales were beginning to be told, and +that despite his lofty piety! Fauchery asked if he should have the +honor of meeting him. Certainly her father was coming, but only very +late; he had so much work on hand! The journalist thought he knew where +the old gentleman passed his evenings and looked grave. But a mole, +which he noticed close to her mouth on the countess’s left cheek, +surprised him. Nana had precisely the same mole. It was curious. Tiny +hairs curled up on it, only they were golden in Nana’s case, black as +jet in this. Ah well, never mind! This woman enjoyed nobody’s embraces. + +“I have always felt a wish to know Queen Augusta,” she said. “They say +she is so good, so devout. Do you think she will accompany the king?” + +“It is not thought that she will, madame,” he replied. + +She had no lovers: the thing was only too apparent. One had only to +look at her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting so +insignificant and constrained on her footstool. That sepulchral drawing +room of hers, which exhaled odors suggestive of being in a church, +spoke as plainly as words could of the iron hand, the austere mode of +existence, that weighed her down. There was nothing suggestive of her +own personality in that ancient abode, black with the damps of years. +It was Muffat who made himself felt there, who dominated his +surroundings with his devotional training, his penances and his fasts. +But the sight of the little old gentleman with the black teeth and +subtle smile whom he suddenly discovered in his armchair behind the +group of ladies afforded him a yet more decisive argument. He knew the +personage. It was Theophile Venot, a retired lawyer who had made a +specialty of church cases. He had left off practice with a handsome +fortune and was now leading a sufficiently mysterious existence, for he +was received everywhere, treated with great deference and even somewhat +feared, as though he had been the representative of a mighty force, an +occult power, which was felt to be at his back. Nevertheless, his +behavior was very humble. He was churchwarden at the Madeleine Church +and had simply accepted the post of deputy mayor at the town house of +the Ninth Arrondissement in order, as he said, to have something to do +in his leisure time. Deuce take it, the countess was well guarded; +there was nothing to be done in that quarter. + +“You’re right, it’s enough to make one kick the bucket here,” said +Fauchery to his cousin when he had made good his escape from the circle +of ladies. “We’ll hook it!” + +But Steiner, deserted at last by the Count Muffat and the deputy, came +up in a fury. Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and he +grumbled huskily: + +“Gad! Let ’em tell me nothing, if nothing they want to tell me. I shall +find people who will talk.” + +Then he pushed the journalist into a corner and, altering his tone, +said in accents of victory: + +“It’s tomorrow, eh? I’m of the party, my bully!” + +“Indeed!” muttered Fauchery with some astonishment. + +“You didn’t know about it. Oh, I had lots of bother to find her at +home. Besides, Mignon never would leave me alone.” + +“But they’re to be there, are the Mignons.” + +“Yes, she told me so. In fact, she did receive my visit, and she +invited me. Midnight punctually, after the play.” + +The banker was beaming. He winked and added with a peculiar emphasis on +the words: + +“You’ve worked it, eh?” + +“Eh, what?” said Fauchery, pretending not to understand him. “She +wanted to thank me for my article, so she came and called on me.” + +“Yes, yes. You fellows are fortunate. You get rewarded. By the by, who +pays the piper tomorrow?” + +The journalist made a slight outward movement with his arms, as though +he would intimate that no one had ever been able to find out. But +Vandeuvres called to Steiner, who knew M. de Bismarck. Mme du Joncquoy +had almost convinced herself of the truth of her suppositions; she +concluded with these words: + +“He gave me an unpleasant impression. I think his face is evil. But I +am quite willing to believe that he has a deal of wit. It would account +for his successes.” + +“Without doubt,” said the banker with a faint smile. He was a Jew from +Frankfort. + +Meanwhile La Faloise at last made bold to question his cousin. He +followed him up and got inside his guard: + +“There’s supper at a woman’s tomorrow evening? With which of them, eh? +With which of them?” + +Fauchery motioned to him that they were overheard and must respect the +conventions here. The door had just been opened anew, and an old lady +had come in, followed by a young man in whom the journalist recognized +the truant schoolboy, perpetrator of the famous and as yet unforgotten +“trés chic” of the Blonde Venus first night. This lady’s arrival caused +a stir among the company. The Countess Sabine had risen briskly from +her seat in order to go and greet her, and she had taken both her hands +in hers and addressed her as her “dear Madame Hugon.” Seeing that his +cousin viewed this little episode with some curiosity, La Faloise +sought to arouse his interest and in a few brief phrases explained the +position. Mme Hugon, widow of a notary, lived in retirement at Les +Fondettes, an old estate of her family’s in the neighborhood of +Orleans, but she also kept up a small establishment in Paris in a house +belonging to her in the Rue de Richelieu and was now passing some weeks +there in order to settle her youngest son, who was reading the law and +in his “first year.” In old times she had been a dear friend of the +Marquise de Chouard and had assisted at the birth of the countess, who, +prior to her marriage, used to stay at her house for months at a time +and even now was quite familiarly treated by her. + +“I have brought Georges to see you,” said Mme Hugon to Sabine. “He’s +grown, I trust.” + +The young man with his clear eyes and the fair curls which suggested a +girl dressed up as a boy bowed easily to the countess and reminded her +of a bout of battledore and shuttlecock they had had together two years +ago at Les Fondettes. + +“Philippe is not in Paris?” asked Count Muffat. + +“Dear me, no!” replied the old lady. “He is always in garrison at +Bourges.” She had seated herself and began talking with considerable +pride of her eldest son, a great big fellow who, after enlisting in a +fit of waywardness, had of late very rapidly attained the rank of +lieutenant. All the ladies behaved to her with respectful sympathy, and +conversation was resumed in a tone at once more amiable and more +refined. Fauchery, at sight of that respectable Mme Hugon, that +motherly face lit up with such a kindly smile beneath its broad tresses +of white hair, thought how foolish he had been to suspect the Countess +Sabine even for an instant. + +Nevertheless, the big chair with the red silk upholsteries in which the +countess sat had attracted his attention. Its style struck him as +crude, not to say fantastically suggestive, in that dim old drawing +room. Certainly it was not the count who had inveigled thither that +nest of voluptuous idleness. One might have described it as an +experiment, marking the birth of an appetite and of an enjoyment. Then +he forgot where he was, fell into brown study and in thought even +harked back to that vague confidential announcement imparted to him one +evening in the dining room of a restaurant. Impelled by a sort of +sensuous curiosity, he had always wanted an introduction into the +Muffats’ circle, and now that his friend was in Mexico through all +eternity, who could tell what might happen? “We shall see,” he thought. +It was a folly, doubtless, but the idea kept tormenting him; he felt +himself drawn on and his animal nature aroused. The big chair had a +rumpled look—its nether cushions had been tumbled, a fact which now +amused him. + +“Well, shall we be off?” asked La Faloise, mentally vowing that once +outside he would find out the name of the woman with whom people were +going to sup. + +“All in good time,” replied Fauchery. + +But he was no longer in any hurry and excused himself on the score of +the invitation he had been commissioned to give and had as yet not +found a convenient opportunity to mention. The ladies were chatting +about an assumption of the veil, a very touching ceremony by which the +whole of Parisian society had for the last three days been greatly +moved. It was the eldest daughter of the Baronne de Fougeray, who, +under stress of an irresistible vocation, had just entered the +Carmelite Convent. Mme Chantereau, a distant cousin of the Fougerays, +told how the baroness had been obliged to take to her bed the day after +the ceremony, so overdone was she with weeping. + +“I had a very good place,” declared Leonide. “I found it interesting.” + +Nevertheless, Mme Hugon pitied the poor mother. How sad to lose a +daughter in such a way! + +“I am accused of being overreligious,” she said in her quiet, frank +manner, “but that does not prevent me thinking the children very cruel +who obstinately commit such suicide.” + +“Yes, it’s a terrible thing,” murmured the countess, shivering a +little, as became a chilly person, and huddling herself anew in the +depths of her big chair in front of the fire. + +Then the ladies fell into a discussion. But their voices were +discreetly attuned, while light trills of laughter now and again +interrupted the gravity of their talk. The two lamps on the chimney +piece, which had shades of rose-colored lace, cast a feeble light over +them while on scattered pieces of furniture there burned but three +other lamps, so that the great drawing room remained in soft shadow. + +Steiner was getting bored. He was describing to Fauchery an escapade of +that little Mme de Chezelles, whom he simply referred to as Leonide. “A +blackguard woman,” he said, lowering his voice behind the ladies’ +armchairs. Fauchery looked at her as she sat quaintly perched, in her +voluminous ball dress of pale blue satin, on the corner of her +armchair. She looked as slight and impudent as a boy, and he ended by +feeling astonished at seeing her there. People comported themselves +better at Caroline Hequet’s, whose mother had arranged her house on +serious principles. Here was a perfect subject for an article. What a +strange world was this world of Paris! The most rigid circles found +themselves invaded. Evidently that silent Theophile Venot, who +contented himself by smiling and showing his ugly teeth, must have been +a legacy from the late countess. So, too, must have been such ladies of +mature age as Mme Chantereau and Mme du Joncquoy, besides four or five +old gentlemen who sat motionless in corners. The Count Muffat attracted +to the house a series of functionaries, distinguished by the immaculate +personal appearance which was at that time required of the men at the +Tuileries. Among others there was the chief clerk, who still sat +solitary in the middle of the room with his closely shorn cheeks, his +vacant glance and his coat so tight of fit that he could scarce venture +to move. Almost all the young men and certain individuals with +distinguished, aristocratic manners were the Marquis de Chouard’s +contribution to the circle, he having kept touch with the Legitimist +party after making his peace with the empire on his entrance into the +Council of State. There remained Leonide de Chezelles and Steiner, an +ugly little knot against which Mme Hugon’s elderly and amiable serenity +stood out in strange contrast. And Fauchery, having sketched out his +article, named this last group “Countess Sabine’s little clique.” + +“On another occasion,” continued Steiner in still lower tones, “Leonide +got her tenor down to Montauban. She was living in the Château de +Beaurecueil, two leagues farther off, and she used to come in daily in +a carriage and pair in order to visit him at the Lion d’Or, where he +had put up. The carriage used to wait at the door, and Leonide would +stay for hours in the house, while a crowd gathered round and looked at +the horses.” + +There was a pause in the talk, and some solemn moments passed silently +by in the lofty room. Two young men were whispering, but they ceased in +their turn, and the hushed step of Count Muffat was alone audible as he +crossed the floor. The lamps seemed to have paled; the fire was going +out; a stern shadow fell athwart the old friends of the house where +they sat in the chairs they had occupied there for forty years back. It +was as though in a momentary pause of conversation the invited guests +had become suddenly aware that the count’s mother, in all her glacial +stateliness, had returned among them. + +But the Countess Sabine had once more resumed: + +“Well, at last the news of it got about. The young man was likely to +die, and that would explain the poor child’s adoption of the religious +life. Besides, they say that Monsieur de Fougeray would never have +given his consent to the marriage.” + +“They say heaps of other things too,” cried Leonide giddily. + +She fell a-laughing; she refused to talk. Sabine was won over by this +gaiety and put her handkerchief up to her lips. And in the vast and +solemn room their laughter sounded a note which struck Fauchery +strangely, the note of delicate glass breaking. Assuredly here was the +first beginning of the “little rift.” Everyone began talking again. Mme +du Joncquoy demurred; Mme Chantereau knew for certain that a marriage +had been projected but that matters had gone no further; the men even +ventured to give their opinions. For some minutes the conversation was +a babel of opinions, in which the divers elements of the circle, +whether Bonapartist or Legitimist or merely worldly and skeptical, +appeared to jostle one another simultaneously. Estelle had rung to +order wood to be put on the fire; the footman turned up the lamps; the +room seemed to wake from sleep. Fauchery began smiling, as though once +more at his ease. + +“Egad, they become the brides of God when they couldn’t be their +cousin’s,” said Vandeuvres between his teeth. + +The subject bored him, and he had rejoined Fauchery. + +“My dear fellow, have you ever seen a woman who was really loved become +a nun?” + +He did not wait for an answer, for he had had enough of the topic, and +in a hushed voice: + +“Tell me,” he said, “how many of us will there be tomorrow? There’ll be +the Mignons, Steiner, yourself, Blanche and I; who else?” + +“Caroline, I believe, and Simonne and Gaga without doubt. One never +knows exactly, does one? On such occasions one expects the party will +number twenty, and you’re really thirty.” + +Vandeuvres, who was looking at the ladies, passed abruptly to another +subject: + +“She must have been very nice-looking, that Du Joncquoy woman, some +fifteen years ago. Poor Estelle has grown lankier than ever. What a +nice lath to put into a bed!” + +But interrupting himself, he returned to the subject of tomorrow’s +supper. + +“What’s so tiresome of those shows is that it’s always the same set of +women. One wants a novelty. Do try and invent a new girl. By Jove, +happy thought! I’ll go and beseech that stout man to bring the woman he +was trotting about the other evening at the Variétés.” + +He referred to the chief clerk, sound asleep in the middle of the +drawing room. Fauchery, afar off, amused himself by following this +delicate negotiation. Vandeuvres had sat himself down by the stout man, +who still looked very sedate. For some moments they both appeared to be +discussing with much propriety the question before the house, which +was, “How can one discover the exact state of feeling that urges a +young girl to enter into the religious life?” Then the count returned +with the remark: + +“It’s impossible. He swears she’s straight. She’d refuse, and yet I +would have wagered that I once saw her at Laure’s.” + +“Eh, what? You go to Laure’s?” murmured Fauchery with a chuckle. “You +venture your reputation in places like that? I was under the impression +that it was only we poor devils of outsiders who—” + +“Ah, dear boy, one ought to see every side of life.” + +Then they sneered and with sparkling eyes they compared notes about the +table d’hôte in the Rue des Martyrs, where big Laure Piedefer ran a +dinner at three francs a head for little women in difficulties. A nice +hole, where all the little women used to kiss Laure on the lips! And as +the Countess Sabine, who had overheard a stray word or two, turned +toward them, they started back, rubbing shoulders in excited merriment. +They had not noticed that Georges Hugon was close by and that he was +listening to them, blushing so hotly the while that a rosy flush had +spread from his ears to his girlish throat. The infant was full of +shame and of ecstasy. From the moment his mother had turned him loose +in the room he had been hovering in the wake of Mme de Chezelles, the +only woman present who struck him as being the thing. But after all is +said and done, Nana licked her to fits! + +“Yesterday evening,” Mme Hugon was saying, “Georges took me to the +play. Yes, we went to the Variétés, where I certainly had not set foot +for the last ten years. That child adores music. As to me, I wasn’t in +the least amused, but he was so happy! They put extraordinary pieces on +the stage nowadays. Besides, music delights me very little, I confess.” + +“What! You don’t love music, madame?” cried Mme du Joncquoy, lifting +her eyes to heaven. “Is it possible there should be people who don’t +love music?” + +The exclamation of surprise was general. No one had dropped a single +word concerning the performance at the Variétés, at which the good Mme +Hugon had not understood any of the allusions. The ladies knew the +piece but said nothing about it, and with that they plunged into the +realm of sentiment and began discussing the masters in a tone of +refined and ecstatical admiration. Mme du Joncquoy was not fond of any +of them save Weber, while Mme Chantereau stood up for the Italians. The +ladies’ voices had turned soft and languishing, and in front of the +hearth one might have fancied one’s self listening in meditative, +religious retirement to the faint, discreet music of a little chapel. + +“Now let’s see,” murmured Vandeuvres, bringing Fauchery back into the +middle of the drawing room, “notwithstanding it all, we must invent a +woman for tomorrow. Shall we ask Steiner about it?” + +“Oh, when Steiner’s got hold of a woman,” said the journalist, “it’s +because Paris has done with her.” + +Vandeuvres, however, was searching about on every side. + +“Wait a bit,” he continued, “the other day I met Foucarmont with a +charming blonde. I’ll go and tell him to bring her.” + +And he called to Foucarmont. They exchanged a few words rapidly. There +must have been some sort of complication, for both of them, moving +carefully forward and stepping over the dresses of the ladies, went off +in quest of another young man with whom they continued the discussion +in the embrasure of a window. Fauchery was left to himself and had just +decided to proceed to the hearth, where Mme du Joncquoy was announcing +that she never heard Weber played without at the same time seeing +lakes, forests and sunrises over landscapes steeped in dew, when a hand +touched his shoulder and a voice behind him remarked: + +“It’s not civil of you.” + +“What d’you mean?” he asked, turning round and recognizing La Faloise. + +“Why, about that supper tomorrow. You might easily have got me +invited.” + +Fauchery was at length about to state his reasons when Vandeuvres came +back to tell him: + +“It appears it isn’t a girl of Foucarmont’s. It’s that man’s flame out +there. She won’t be able to come. What a piece of bad luck! But all the +same I’ve pressed Foucarmont into the service, and he’s going to try to +get Louise from the Palais-Royal.” + +“Is it not true, Monsieur de Vandeuvres,” asked Mme Chantereau, raising +her voice, “that Wagner’s music was hissed last Sunday?” + +“Oh, frightfully, madame,” he made answer, coming forward with his +usual exquisite politeness. + +Then, as they did not detain him, he moved off and continued whispering +in the journalist’s ear: + +“I’m going to press some more of them. These young fellows must know +some little ladies.” + +With that he was observed to accost men and to engage them in +conversation in his usual amiable and smiling way in every corner of +the drawing room. He mixed with the various groups, said something +confidently to everyone and walked away again with a sly wink and a +secret signal or two. It looked as though he were giving out a +watchword in that easy way of his. The news went round; the place of +meeting was announced, while the ladies’ sentimental dissertations on +music served to conceal the small, feverish rumor of these recruiting +operations. + +“No, do not speak of your Germans,” Mme Chantereau was saying. “Song is +gaiety; song is light. Have you heard Patti in the Barber of Seville?” + +“She was delicious!” murmured Leonide, who strummed none but operatic +airs on her piano. + +Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had rung. When on Tuesdays the number of +visitors was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself. While +directing a footman to clear a round table the countess followed the +Count de Vandeuvres with her eyes. She still smiled that vague smile +which slightly disclosed her white teeth, and as the count passed she +questioned him. + +“What ARE you plotting, Monsieur de Vandeuvres?” + +“What am I plotting, madame?” he answered quietly. “Nothing at all.” + +“Really! I saw you so busy. Pray, wait, you shall make yourself +useful!” + +She placed an album in his hands and asked him to put it on the piano. +But he found means to inform Fauchery in a low whisper that they would +have Tatan Nene, the most finely developed girl that winter, and Maria +Blond, the same who had just made her first appearance at the +Folies-Dramatiques. Meanwhile La Faloise stopped him at every step in +hopes of receiving an invitation. He ended by offering himself, and +Vandeuvres engaged him in the plot at once; only he made him promise to +bring Clarisse with him, and when La Faloise pretended to scruple about +certain points he quieted him by the remark: + +“Since I invite you that’s enough!” + +Nevertheless, La Faloise would have much liked to know the name of the +hostess. But the countess had recalled Vandeuvres and was questioning +him as to the manner in which the English made tea. He often betook +himself to England, where his horses ran. Then as though he had been +inwardly following up quite a laborious train of thought during his +remarks, he broke in with the question: + +“And the marquis, by the by? Are we not to see him?” + +“Oh, certainly you will! My father made me a formal promise that he +would come,” replied the countess. “But I’m beginning to be anxious. +His duties will have kept him.” + +Vandeuvres smiled a discreet smile. He, too, seemed to have his doubts +as to the exact nature of the Marquis de Chouard’s duties. Indeed, he +had been thinking of a pretty woman whom the marquis occasionally took +into the country with him. Perhaps they could get her too. + +In the meantime Fauchery decided that the moment had come in which to +risk giving Count Muff his invitation. The evening, in fact, was +drawing to a close. + +“Are you serious?” asked Vandeuvres, who thought a joke was intended. + +“Extremely serious. If I don’t execute my commission she’ll tear my +eyes out. It’s a case of landing her fish, you know.” + +“Well then, I’ll help you, dear boy.” + +Eleven o’clock struck. Assisted by her daughter, the countess was +pouring out the tea, and as hardly any guests save intimate friends had +come, the cups and the platefuls of little cakes were being circulated +without ceremony. Even the ladies did not leave their armchairs in +front of the fire and sat sipping their tea and nibbling cakes which +they held between their finger tips. From music the talk had declined +to purveyors. Boissier was the only person for sweetmeats and Catherine +for ices. Mme Chantereau, however, was all for Latinville. Speech grew +more and more indolent, and a sense of lassitude was lulling the room +to sleep. Steiner had once more set himself secretly to undermine the +deputy, whom he held in a state of blockade in the corner of a settee. +M. Venot, whose teeth must have been ruined by sweet things, was eating +little dry cakes, one after the other, with a small nibbling sound +suggestive of a mouse, while the chief clerk, his nose in a teacup, +seemed never to be going to finish its contents. As to the countess, +she went in a leisurely way from one guest to another, never pressing +them, indeed, only pausing a second or two before the gentlemen whom +she viewed with an air of dumb interrogation before she smiled and +passed on. The great fire had flushed all her face, and she looked as +if she were the sister of her daughter, who appeared so withered and +ungainly at her side. When she drew near Fauchery, who was chatting +with her husband and Vandeuvres, she noticed that they grew suddenly +silent; accordingly she did not stop but handed the cup of tea she was +offering to Georges Hugon beyond them. + +“It’s a lady who desires your company at supper,” the journalist gaily +continued, addressing Count Muffat. + +The last-named, whose face had worn its gray look all the evening, +seemed very much surprised. What lady was it? + +“Oh, Nana!” said Vandeuvres, by way of forcing the invitation. + +The count became more grave than before. His eyelids trembled just +perceptibly, while a look of discomfort, such as headache produces, +hovered for a moment athwart his forehead. + +“But I’m not acquainted with that lady,” he murmured. + +“Come, come, you went to her house,” remarked Vandeuvres. + +“What d’you say? I went to her house? Oh yes, the other day, in behalf +of the Benevolent Organization. I had forgotten about it. But, no +matter, I am not acquainted with her, and I cannot accept.” + +He had adopted an icy expression in order to make them understand that +this jest did not appear to him to be in good taste. A man of his +position did not sit down at tables of such women as that. Vandeuvres +protested: it was to be a supper party of dramatic and artistic people, +and talent excused everything. But without listening further to the +arguments urged by Fauchery, who spoke of a dinner where the Prince of +Scots, the son of a queen, had sat down beside an ex-music-hall singer, +the count only emphasized his refusal. In so doing, he allowed himself, +despite his great politeness, to be guilty of an irritated gesture. + +Georges and La Faloise, standing in front of each other drinking their +tea, had overheard the two or three phrases exchanged in their +immediate neighborhood. + +“Jove, it’s at Nana’s then,” murmured La Faloise. “I might have +expected as much!” + +Georges said nothing, but he was all aflame. His fair hair was in +disorder; his blue eyes shone like tapers, so fiercely had the vice, +which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed and stirred his +blood. At last he was going to plunge into all that he had dreamed of! + +“I don’t know the address,” La Faloise resumed. + +“She lives on a third floor in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the Rue +de l’Arcade and the Rue Pesquier,” said Georges all in a breath. + +And when the other looked at him in much astonishment, he added, +turning very red and fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment and +conceit: + +“I’m of the party. She invited me this morning.” + +But there was a great stir in the drawing room, and Vandeuvres and +Fauchery could not continue pressing the count. The Marquis de Chouard +had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet him. He had moved +painfully forward, his legs failing under him, and he now stood in the +middle of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking, as though he had +just come out of some dark alley and were blinded by the brightness of +the lamps. + +“I scarcely hoped to see you tonight, Father,” said the countess. “I +should have been anxious till the morning.” + +He looked at her without answering, as a man might who fails to +understand. His nose, which loomed immense on his shorn face, looked +like a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down. Seeing him such a +wreck, Mme Hugon, full of kind compassion, said pitying things to him. + +“You work too hard. You ought to rest yourself. At our age we ought to +leave work to the young people.” + +“Work! Ah yes, to be sure, work!” he stammered at last. “Always plenty +of work.” + +He began to pull himself together, straightening up his bent figure and +passing his hand, as was his wont, over his scant gray hair, of which a +few locks strayed behind his ears. + +“At what are you working as late as this?” asked Mme du Joncquoy. “I +thought you were at the financial minister’s reception?” + +But the countess intervened with: + +“My father had to study the question of a projected law.” + +“Yes, a projected law,” he said; “exactly so, a projected law. I shut +myself up for that reason. It refers to work in factories, and I was +anxious for a proper observance of the Lord’s day of rest. It is really +shameful that the government is unwilling to act with vigor in the +matter. Churches are growing empty; we are running headlong to ruin.” + +Vandeuvres had exchanged glances with Fauchery. They both happened to +be behind the marquis, and they were scanning him suspiciously. When +Vandeuvres found an opportunity to take him aside and to speak to him +about the good-looking creature he was in the habit of taking down into +the country, the old man affected extreme surprise. Perhaps someone had +seen him with the Baroness Decker, at whose house at Viroflay he +sometimes spent a day or so. Vandeuvres’s sole vengeance was an abrupt +question: + +“Tell me, where have you been straying to? Your elbow is covered with +cobwebs and plaster.” + +“My elbow,” he muttered, slightly disturbed. “Yes indeed, it’s true. A +speck or two, I must have come in for them on my way down from my +office.” + +Several people were taking their departure. It was close on midnight. +Two footmen were noiselessly removing the empty cups and the plates +with cakes. In front of the hearth the ladies had re-formed and, at the +same time, narrowed their circle and were chatting more carelessly than +before in the languid atmosphere peculiar to the close of a party. The +very room was going to sleep, and slowly creeping shadows were cast by +its walls. It was then Fauchery spoke of departure. Yet he once more +forgot his intention at sight of the Countess Sabine. She was resting +from her cares as hostess, and as she sat in her wonted seat, silent, +her eyes fixed on a log which was turning into embers, her face +appeared so white and so impassable that doubt again possessed him. In +the glow of the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner of +her lip became white. It was Nana’s very mole, down to the color of the +hair. He could not refrain from whispering something about it in +Vandeuvres’s ear. Gad, it was true; the other had never noticed it +before. And both men continued this comparison of Nana and the +countess. They discovered a vague resemblance about the chin and the +mouth, but the eyes were not at all alike. Then, too, Nana had a +good-natured expression, while with the countess it was hard to +decide—she might have been a cat, sleeping with claws withdrawn and +paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous quiver. + +“All the same, one could have her,” declared Fauchery. + +Vandeuvres stripped her at a glance. + +“Yes, one could, all the same,” he said. “But I think nothing of the +thighs, you know. Will you bet she has no thighs?” + +He stopped, for Fauchery touched him briskly on the arm and showed him +Estelle, sitting close to them on her footstool. They had raised their +voices without noticing her, and she must have overheard them. +Nevertheless, she continued sitting there stiff and motionless, not a +hair having lifted on her thin neck, which was that of a girl who has +shot up all too quickly. Thereupon they retired three or four paces, +and Vandeuvres vowed that the countess was a very honest woman. Just +then voices were raised in front of the hearth. Mme du Joncquoy was +saying: + +“I was willing to grant you that Monsieur de Bismarck was perhaps a +witty man. Only, if you go as far as to talk of genius—” + +The ladies had come round again to their earliest topic of +conversation. + +“What the deuce! Still Monsieur de Bismarck!” muttered Fauchery. “This +time I make my escape for good and all.” + +“Wait a bit,” said Vandeuvres, “we must have a definite no from the +count.” + +The Count Muffat was talking to his father-in-law and a certain +serious-looking gentleman. Vandeuvres drew him away and renewed the +invitation, backing it up with the information that he was to be at the +supper himself. A man might go anywhere; no one could think of +suspecting evil where at most there could only be curiosity. The count +listened to these arguments with downcast eyes and expressionless face. +Vandeuvres felt him to be hesitating when the Marquis de Chouard +approached with a look of interrogation. And when the latter was +informed of the question in hand and Fauchery had invited him in his +turn, he looked at his son-in-law furtively. There ensued an +embarrassed silence, but both men encouraged one another and would +doubtless have ended by accepting had not Count Muffat perceived M. +Venot’s gaze fixed upon him. The little old man was no longer smiling; +his face was cadaverous, his eyes bright and keen as steel. + +“No,” replied the count directly, in so decisive a tone that further +insistence became impossible. + +Then the marquis refused with even greater severity of expression. He +talked morality. The aristocratic classes ought to set a good example. +Fauchery smiled and shook hands with Vandeuvres. He did not wait for +him and took his departure immediately, for he was due at his newspaper +office. + +“At Nana’s at midnight, eh?” + +La Faloise retired too. Steiner had made his bow to the countess. Other +men followed them, and the same phrase went round—“At midnight, at +Nana’s”—as they went to get their overcoats in the anteroom. Georges, +who could not leave without his mother, had stationed himself at the +door, where he gave the exact address. “Third floor, door on your +left.” Yet before going out Fauchery gave a final glance. Vandeuvres +had again resumed his position among the ladies and was laughing with +Leonide de Chezelles. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard were +joining in the conversation, while the good Mme Hugon was falling +asleep open-eyed. Lost among the petticoats, M. Venot was his own small +self again and smiled as of old. Twelve struck slowly in the great +solemn room. + +“What—what do you mean?” Mme du Joncquoy resumed. “You imagine that +Monsieur de Bismarck will make war on us and beat us! Oh, that’s +unbearable!” + +Indeed, they were laughing round Mme Chantereau, who had just repeated +an assertion she had heard made in Alsace, where her husband owned a +foundry. + +“We have the emperor, fortunately,” said Count Muffat in his grave, +official way. + +It was the last phrase Fauchery was able to catch. He closed the door +after casting one more glance in the direction of the Countess Sabine. +She was talking sedately with the chief clerk and seemed to be +interested in that stout individual’s conversation. Assuredly he must +have been deceiving himself. There was no “little rift” there at all. +It was a pity. + +“You’re not coming down then?” La Faloise shouted up to him from the +entrance hall. + +And out on the pavement, as they separated, they once more repeated: + +“Tomorrow, at Nana’s.” + + + + + CHAPTER IV + + +Since morning Zoé had delivered up the flat to a managing man who had +come from Brebant’s with a staff of helpers and waiters. Brebant was to +supply everything, from the supper, the plates and dishes, the glass, +the linen, the flowers, down to the seats and footstools. Nana could +not have mustered a dozen napkins out of all her cupboards, and not +having had time to get a proper outfit after her new start in life and +scorning to go to the restaurant, she had decided to make the +restaurant come to her. It struck her as being more the thing. She +wanted to celebrate her great success as an actress with a supper which +should set people talking. As her dining room was too small, the +manager had arranged the table in the drawing room, a table with +twenty-five covers, placed somewhat close together. + +“Is everything ready?” asked Nana when she returned at midnight. + +“Oh! I don’t know,” replied Zoé roughly, looking beside herself with +worry. “The Lord be thanked, I don’t bother about anything. They’re +making a fearful mess in the kitchen and all over the flat! I’ve had to +fight my battles too. The other two came again. My eye! I did just +chuck ’em out!” + +She referred, of course, to her employer’s old admirers, the tradesman +and the Walachian, to whom Nana, sure of her future and longing to shed +her skin, as she phrased it, had decided to give the go-by. + +“There are a couple of leeches for you!” she muttered. + +“If they come back threaten to go to the police.” + +Then she called Daguenet and Georges, who had remained behind in the +anteroom, where they were hanging up their overcoats. They had both met +at the stage door in the Passage des Panoramas, and she had brought +them home with her in a cab. As there was nobody there yet, she shouted +to them to come into the dressing room while Zoé was touching up her +toilet. Hurriedly and without changing her dress she had her hair done +up and stuck white roses in her chignon and at her bosom. The little +room was littered with the drawing-room furniture, which the workmen +had been compelled to roll in there, and it was full of a motley +assemblage of round tables, sofas and armchairs, with their legs in air +for the most part. Nana was quite ready when her dress caught on a +castor and tore upward. At this she swore furiously; such things only +happened to her! Ragingly she took off her dress, a very simple affair +of white foulard, of so thin and supple a texture that it clung about +her like a long shift. But she put it on again directly, for she could +not find another to her taste, and with tears in her eyes declared that +she was dressed like a ragpicker. Daguenet and Georges had to patch up +the rent with pins, while Zoé once more arranged her hair. All three +hurried round her, especially the boy, who knelt on the floor with his +hands among her skirts. And at last she calmed down again when Daguenet +assured her it could not be later than a quarter past twelve, seeing +that by dint of scamping her words and skipping her lines she had +effectually shortened the third act of the Blonde Venus. + +“The play’s still far too good for that crowd of idiots,” she said. +“Did you see? There were thousands there tonight. Zoé, my girl, you +will wait in here. Don’t go to bed, I shall want you. By gum, it is +time they came. Here’s company!” + +She ran off while Georges stayed where he was with the skirts of his +coat brushing the floor. He blushed, seeing Daguenet looking at him. +Notwithstanding which, they had conceived a tender regard the one for +the other. They rearranged the bows of their cravats in front of the +big dressing glass and gave each other a mutual dose of the +clothesbrush, for they were all white from their close contact with +Nana. + +“One would think it was sugar,” murmured Georges, giggling like a +greedy little child. + +A footman hired for the evening was ushering the guests into the small +drawing room, a narrow slip of a place in which only four armchairs had +been left in order the better to pack in the company. From the large +drawing room beyond came a sound as of the moving of plates and silver, +while a clear and brilliant ray of light shone from under the door. At +her entrance Nana found Clarisse Besnus, whom La Faloise had brought, +already installed in one of the armchairs. + +“Dear me, you’re the first of ’em!” said Nana, who, now that she was +successful, treated her familiarly. + +“Oh, it’s his doing,” replied Clarisse. “He’s always afraid of not +getting anywhere in time. If I’d taken him at his word I shouldn’t have +waited to take off my paint and my wig.” + +The young man, who now saw Nana for the first time, bowed, paid her a +compliment and spoke of his cousin, hiding his agitation behind an +exaggeration of politeness. But Nana, neither listening to him nor +recognizing his face, shook hands with him and then went briskly toward +Rose Mignon, with whom she at once assumed a most distinguished manner. + +“Ah, how nice of you, my dear madame! I was so anxious to have you +here!” + +“It’s I who am charmed, I assure you,” said Rose with equal amiability. + +“Pray, sit down. Do you require anything?” + +“Thank you, no! Ah yes, I’ve left my fan in my pelisse, Steiner; just +look in the right-hand pocket.” + +Steiner and Mignon had come in behind Rose. The banker turned back and +reappeared with the fan while Mignon embraced Nana fraternally and +forced Rose to do so also. Did they not all belong to the same family +in the theatrical world? Then he winked as though to encourage Steiner, +but the latter was disconcerted by Rose’s clear gaze and contented +himself by kissing Nana’s hand. + +Just then the Count de Vandeuvres made his appearance with Blanche de +Sivry. There was an interchange of profound bows, and Nana with the +utmost ceremony conducted Blanche to an armchair. Meanwhile Vandeuvres +told them laughingly that Fauchery was engaged in a dispute at the foot +of the stairs because the porter had refused to allow Lucy Stewart’s +carriage to come in at the gate. They could hear Lucy telling the +porter he was a dirty blackguard in the anteroom. But when the footman +had opened the door she came forward with her laughing grace of manner, +announced her name herself, took both Nana’s hands in hers and told her +that she had liked her from the very first and considered her talent +splendid. Nana, puffed up by her novel role of hostess, thanked her and +was veritably confused. Nevertheless, from the moment of Fauchery’s +arrival she appeared preoccupied, and directly she could get near him +she asked him in a low voice: + +“Will he come?” + +“No, he did not want to,” was the journalist’s abrupt reply, for he was +taken by surprise, though he had got ready some sort of tale to explain +Count Muffat’s refusal. + +Seeing the young woman’s sudden pallor, he became conscious of his +folly and tried to retract his words. + +“He was unable to; he is taking the countess to the ball at the +Ministry of the Interior tonight.” + +“All right,” murmured Nana, who suspected him of ill will, “you’ll pay +me out for that, my pippin.” + +She turned on her heel, and so did he; they were angry. Just then +Mignon was pushing Steiner up against Nana, and when Fauchery had left +her he said to her in a low voice and with the good-natured cynicism of +a comrade in arms who wishes his friends to be happy: + +“He’s dying of it, you know, only he’s afraid of my wife. Won’t you +protect him?” + +Nana did not appear to understand. She smiled and looked at Rose, the +husband and the banker and finally said to the latter: + +“Monsieur Steiner, you will sit next to me.” + +With that there came from the anteroom a sound of laughter and +whispering and a burst of merry, chattering voices, which sounded as if +a runaway convent were on the premises. And Labordette appeared, towing +five women in his rear, his boarding school, as Lucy Stewart cruelly +phrased it. There was Gaga, majestic in a blue velvet dress which was +too tight for her, and Caroline Hequet, clad as usual in ribbed black +silk, trimmed with Chantilly lace. Léa de Horn came next, terribly +dressed up, as her wont was, and after her the big Tatan Nene, a +good-humored fair girl with the bosom of a wet nurse, at which people +laughed, and finally little Maria Blond, a young damsel of fifteen, as +thin and vicious as a street child, yet on the high road to success, +owing to her recent first appearance at the Folies. Labordette had +brought the whole collection in a single fly, and they were still +laughing at the way they had been squeezed with Maria Blond on her +knees. But on entering the room they pursed up their lips, and all grew +very conventional as they shook hands and exchanged salutations. Gaga +even affected the infantile and lisped through excess of genteel +deportment. Tatan Nene alone transgressed. They had been telling her as +they came along that six absolutely naked Negroes would serve up Nana’s +supper, and she now grew anxious about them and asked to see them. +Labordette called her a goose and besought her to be silent. + +“And Bordenave?” asked Fauchery. + +“Oh, you may imagine how miserable I am,” cried Nana; “he won’t be able +to join us.” + +“Yes,” said Rose Mignon, “his foot caught in a trap door, and he’s got +a fearful sprain. If only you could hear him swearing, with his leg +tied up and laid out on a chair!” + +Thereupon everybody mourned over Bordenave’s absence. No one ever gave +a good supper without Bordenave. Ah well, they would try and do without +him, and they were already talking about other matters when a burly +voice was heard: + +“What, eh, what? Is that the way they’re going to write my obituary +notice?” + +There was a shout, and all heads were turned round, for it was indeed +Bordenave. Huge and fiery-faced, he was standing with his stiff leg in +the doorway, leaning for support on Simonne Cabiroche’s shoulder. +Simonne was for the time being his mistress. This little creature had +had a certain amount of education and could play the piano and talk +English. She was a blonde on a tiny, pretty scale and so delicately +formed that she seemed to bend under Bordenave’s rude weight. Yet she +was smilingly submissive withal. He postured there for some moments, +for he felt that together they formed a tableau. + +“One can’t help liking ye, eh?” he continued. “Zounds, I was afraid I +should get bored, and I said to myself, ‘Here goes.’” + +But he interrupted himself with an oath. + +“Oh, damn!” + +Simonne had taken a step too quickly forward, and his foot had just +felt his full weight. He gave her a rough push, but she, still smiling +away and ducking her pretty head as some animal might that is afraid of +a beating, held him up with all the strength a little plump blonde can +command. Amid all these exclamations there was a rush to his +assistance. Nana and Rose Mignon rolled up an armchair, into which +Bordenave let himself sink, while the other women slid a second one +under his leg. And with that all the actresses present kissed him as a +matter of course. He kept grumbling and gasping. + +“Oh, damn! Oh, damn! Ah well, the stomach’s unhurt, you’ll see.” + +Other guests had arrived by this time, and motion became impossible in +the room. The noise of clinking plates and silver had ceased, and now a +dispute was heard going on in the big drawing room, where the voice of +the manager grumbled angrily. Nana was growing impatient, for she +expected no more invited guests and wondered why they did not bring in +supper. She had just sent Georges to find out what was going on when, +to her great surprise, she noticed the arrival of more guests, both +male and female. She did not know them in the least. Whereupon with +some embarrassment she questioned Bordenave, Mignon and Labordette +about them. They did not know them any more than she did, but when she +turned to the Count de Vandeuvres he seemed suddenly to recollect +himself. They were the young men he had pressed into her service at +Count Muffat’s. Nana thanked him. That was capital, capital! Only they +would all be terribly crowded, and she begged Labordette to go and have +seven more covers set. Scarcely had he left the room than the footman +ushered in three newcomers. Nay, this time the thing was becoming +ridiculous; one certainly could never take them all in. Nana was +beginning to grow angry and in her haughtiest manner announced that +such conduct was scarcely in good taste. But seeing two more arrive, +she began laughing; it was really too funny. So much the worse. People +would have to fit in anyhow! The company were all on their feet save +Gaga and Rose and Bordenave, who alone took up two armchairs. There was +a buzz of voices, people talking in low tones and stifling slight yawns +the while. + +“Now what d’you say, my lass,” asked Bordenave, “to our sitting down at +table as if nothing had happened? We are all here, don’t you think?” + +“Oh yes, we’re all here, I promise you!” she answered laughingly. + +She looked round her but grew suddenly serious, as though she were +surprised at not finding someone. Doubtless there was a guest missing +whom she did not mention. It was a case of waiting. But a minute or two +later the company noticed in their midst a tall gentleman with a fine +face and a beautiful white beard. The most astonishing thing about it +was that nobody had seen him come in; indeed, he must have slipped into +the little drawing room through the bedroom door, which had remained +ajar. Silence reigned, broken only by a sound of whispering. The Count +de Vandeuvres certainly knew who the gentleman was, for they both +exchanged a discreet handgrip, but to the questions which the women +asked him he replied by a smile only. Thereupon Caroline Hequet wagered +in a low voice that it was an English lord who was on the eve of +returning to London to be married. She knew him quite well—she had had +him. And this account of the matter went the round of the ladies +present, Maria Blond alone asserting that, for her part, she recognized +a German ambassador. She could prove it, because he often passed the +night with one of her friends. Among the men his measure was taken in a +few rapid phrases. A real swell, to judge by his looks! Perhaps he +would pay for the supper! Most likely. It looked like it. Bah! Provided +only the supper was a good one! In the end the company remained +undecided. Nay, they were already beginning to forget the old +white-bearded gentleman when the manager opened the door of the large +drawing room. + +“Supper is on the table, madame.” + +Nana had already accepted Steiner’s proffered arm without noticing a +movement on the part of the old gentleman, who started to walk behind +her in solitary state. Thus the march past could not be organized, and +men and women entered anyhow, joking with homely good humor over this +absence of ceremony. A long table stretched from one end to the other +of the great room, which had been entirely cleared of furniture, and +this same table was not long enough, for the plates thereon were +touching one another. Four candelabra, with ten candles apiece, lit up +the supper, and of these one was gorgeous in silver plate with sheaves +of flowers to right and left of it. Everything was luxurious after the +restaurant fashion; the china was ornamented with a gold line and +lacked the customary monogram; the silver had become worn and tarnished +through dint of continual washings; the glass was of the kind that you +can complete an odd set of in any cheap emporium. + +The scene suggested a premature housewarming in an establishment newly +smiled on by fortune and as yet lacking the necessary conveniences. +There was no central luster, and the candelabra, whose tall tapers had +scarcely burned up properly, cast a pale yellow light among the dishes +and stands on which fruit, cakes and preserves alternated +symmetrically. + +“You sit where you like, you know,” said Nana. “It’s more amusing that +way.” + +She remained standing midway down the side of the table. The old +gentleman whom nobody knew had placed himself on her right, while she +kept Steiner on her left hand. Some guests were already sitting down +when the sound of oaths came from the little drawing room. It was +Bordenave. The company had forgotten him, and he was having all the +trouble in the world to raise himself out of his two armchairs, for he +was howling amain and calling for that cat of a Simonne, who had +slipped off with the rest. The women ran in to him, full of pity for +his woes, and Bordenave appeared, supported, nay, almost carried, by +Caroline, Clarisse, Tatan Nene and Maria Blond. And there was much +to-do over his installation at the table. + +“In the middle, facing Nana!” was the cry. “Bordenave in the middle! +He’ll be our president!” + +Thereupon the ladies seated him in the middle. But he needed a second +chair for his leg, and two girls lifted it up and stretched it +carefully out. It wouldn’t matter; he would eat sideways. + +“God blast it all!” he grumbled. “We’re squashed all the same! Ah, my +kittens, Papa recommends himself to your tender care!” + +He had Rose Mignon on his right and Lucy Stewart on his left hand, and +they promised to take good care of him. Everybody was now getting +settled. Count de Vandeuvres placed himself between Lucy and Clarisse; +Fauchery between Rose Mignon and Caroline Hequet. On the other side of +the table Hector de la Faloise had rushed to get next Gaga, and that +despite the calls of Clarisse opposite, while Mignon, who never +deserted Steiner, was only separated from him by Blanche and had Tatan +Nene on his left. Then came Labordette and, finally, at the two ends of +the table were irregular crowding groups of young men and of women, +such as Simonne, Léa de Horn and Maria Blond. It was in this region +that Daguenet and Georges forgathered more warmly than ever while +smilingly gazing at Nana. + +Nevertheless, two people remained standing, and there was much joking +about it. The men offered seats on their knees. Clarisse, who could not +move her elbows, told Vandeuvres that she counted on him to feed her. +And then that Bordenave did just take up space with his chairs! There +was a final effort, and at last everybody was seated, but, as Mignon +loudly remarked, they were confoundedly like herrings in a barrel. + +“Thick asparagus soup à la comtesse, clear soup à la Deslignac,” +murmured the waiters, carrying about platefuls in rear of the guests. + +Bordenave was loudly recommending the thick soup when a shout arose, +followed by protests and indignant exclamations. The door had just +opened, and three late arrivals, a woman and two men, had just come in. +Oh dear, no! There was no space for them! Nana, however, without +leaving her chair, began screwing up her eyes in the effort to find out +whether she knew them. The woman was Louise Violaine, but she had never +seen the men before. + +“This gentleman, my dear,” said Vandeuvres, “is a friend of mine, a +naval officer, Monsieur de Foucarmont by name. I invited him.” + +Foucarmont bowed and seemed very much at ease, for he added: + +“And I took leave to bring one of my friends with me.” + +“Oh, it’s quite right, quite right!” said Nana. “Sit down, pray. Let’s +see, you—Clarisse—push up a little. You’re a good deal spread out down +there. That’s it—where there’s a will—” + +They crowded more tightly than ever, and Foucarmont and Louise were +given a little stretch of table, but the friend had to sit at some +distance from his plate and ate his supper through dint of making a +long arm between his neighbors’ shoulders. The waiters took away the +soup plates and circulated rissoles of young rabbit with truffles and +“niokys” and powdered cheese. Bordenave agitated the whole table with +the announcement that at one moment he had had the idea of bringing +with him Prullière, Fontan and old Bosc. At this Nana looked sedate and +remarked dryly that she would have given them a pretty reception. Had +she wanted colleagues, she would certainly have undertaken to ask them +herself. No, no, she wouldn’t have third-rate play actors. Old Bosc was +always drunk; Prullière was fond of spitting too much, and as to +Fontan, he made himself unbearable in society with his loud voice and +his stupid doings. Then, you know, third-rate play actors were always +out of place when they found themselves in the society of gentlemen +such as those around her. + +“Yes, yes, it’s true,” Mignon declared. + +All round the table the gentlemen in question looked unimpeachable in +the extreme, what with their evening dress and their pale features, the +natural distinction of which was still further refined by fatigue. The +old gentleman was as deliberate in his movements and wore as subtle a +smile as though he were presiding over a diplomatic congress, and +Vandeuvres, with his exquisite politeness toward the ladies next to +him, seemed to be at one of the Countess Muffat’s receptions. That very +morning Nana had been remarking to her aunt that in the matter of men +one could not have done better—they were all either wellborn or +wealthy, in fact, quite the thing. And as to the ladies, they were +behaving admirably. Some of them, such as Blanche, Léa and Louise, had +come in low dresses, but Gaga’s only was perhaps a little too low, the +more so because at her age she would have done well not to show her +neck at all. Now that the company were finally settled the laughter and +the light jests began to fail. Georges was under the impression that he +had assisted at merrier dinner parties among the good folks of Orleans. +There was scarcely any conversation. The men, not being mutually +acquainted, stared at one another, while the women sat quite quiet, and +it was this which especially surprised Georges. He thought them all +smugs—he had been under the impression that everybody would begin +kissing at once. + +The third course, consisting of a Rhine carp à la Chambord and a saddle +of venison à l’anglaise, was being served when Blanche remarked aloud: + +“Lucy, my dear, I met your Ollivier on Sunday. How he’s grown!” + +“Dear me, yes! He’s eighteen,” replied Lucy. “It doesn’t make me feel +any younger. He went back to his school yesterday.” + +Her son Ollivier, whom she was wont to speak of with pride, was a pupil +at the École de Marine. Then ensued a conversation about the young +people, during which all the ladies waxed very tender. Nana described +her own great happiness. Her baby, the little Louis, she said, was now +at the house of her aunt, who brought him round to her every morning at +eleven o’clock, when she would take him into her bed, where he played +with her griffon dog Lulu. It was enough to make one die of laughing to +see them both burying themselves under the clothes at the bottom of the +bed. The company had no idea how cunning Louiset had already become. + +“Oh, yesterday I did just pass a day!” said Rose Mignon in her turn. +“Just imagine, I went to fetch Charles and Henry at their boarding +school, and I had positively to take them to the theater at night. They +jumped; they clapped their little hands: ‘We shall see Mamma act! We +shall see Mamma act!’ Oh, it was a to-do!” + +Mignon smiled complaisantly, his eyes moist with paternal tenderness. + +“And at the play itself,” he continued, “they were so funny! They +behaved as seriously as grown men, devoured Rose with their eyes and +asked me why Mamma had her legs bare like that.” + +The whole table began laughing, and Mignon looked radiant, for his +pride as a father was flattered. He adored his children and had but one +object in life, which was to increase their fortunes by administering +the money gained by Rose at the theater and elsewhere with the +businesslike severity of a faithful steward. When as first fiddle in +the music hall where she used to sing he had married her, they had been +passionately fond of one another. Now they were good friends. There was +an understanding between them: she labored hard to the full extent of +her talent and of her beauty; he had given up his violin in order the +better to watch over her successes as an actress and as a woman. One +could not have found a more homely and united household anywhere! + +“What age is your eldest?” asked Vandeuvres. + +“Henry’s nine,” replied Mignon, “but such a big chap for his years!” + +Then he chaffed Steiner, who was not fond of children, and with quiet +audacity informed him that were he a father, he would make a less +stupid hash of his fortune. While talking he watched the banker over +Blanche’s shoulders to see if it was coming off with Nana. But for some +minutes Rose and Fauchery, who were talking very near him, had been +getting on his nerves. Was Rose going to waste time over such a folly +as that? In that sort of case, by Jove, he blocked the way. And diamond +on finger and with his fine hands in great evidence, he finished +discussing a fillet of venison. + +Elsewhere the conversation about children continued. La Faloise, +rendered very restless by the immediate proximity of Gaga, asked news +of her daughter, whom he had had the pleasure of noticing in her +company at the Variétés. Lili was quite well, but she was still such a +tomboy! He was astonished to learn that Lili was entering on her +nineteenth year. Gaga became even more imposing in his eyes, and when +he endeavored to find out why she had not brought Lili with her: + +“Oh no, no, never!” she said stiffly. “Not three months ago she +positively insisted on leaving her boarding school. I was thinking of +marrying her off at once, but she loves me so that I had to take her +home—oh, so much against my will!” + +Her blue eyelids with their blackened lashes blinked and wavered while +she spoke of the business of settling her young lady. If at her time of +life she hadn’t laid by a sou but was still always working to minister +to men’s pleasures, especially those very young men, whose grandmother +she might well be, it was truly because she considered a good match of +far greater importance than mere savings. And with that she leaned over +La Faloise, who reddened under the huge, naked, plastered shoulder with +which she well-nigh crushed him. + +“You know,” she murmured, “if she fails it won’t be my fault. But +they’re so strange when they’re young!” + +There was a considerable bustle round the table, and the waiters became +very active. After the third course the entrees had made their +appearance; they consisted of pullets à la marechale, fillets of sole +with shallot sauce and escalopes of Strasbourg paté. The manager, who +till then had been having Meursault served, now offered Chambertin and +Leoville. Amid the slight hubbub which the change of plates involved +Georges, who was growing momentarily more astonished, asked Daguenet if +all the ladies present were similarly provided with children, and the +other, who was amused by this question, gave him some further details. +Lucy Stewart was the daughter of a man of English origin who greased +the wheels of the trains at the Gare du Nord; she was thirty-nine years +old and had the face of a horse but was adorable withal and, though +consumptive, never died. In fact, she was the smartest woman there and +represented three princes and a duke. Caroline Hequet, born at +Bordeaux, daughter of a little clerk long since dead of shame, was +lucky enough to be possessed of a mother with a head on her shoulders, +who, after having cursed her, had made it up again at the end of a year +of reflection, being minded, at any rate, to save a fortune for her +daughter. The latter was twenty-five years old and very passionless and +was held to be one of the finest women it is possible to enjoy. Her +price never varied. The mother, a model of orderliness, kept the +accounts and noted down receipts and expenditures with severe +precision. She managed the whole household from some small lodging two +stories above her daughter’s, where, moreover, she had established a +workroom for dressmaking and plain sewing. As to Blanche de Sivry, +whose real name was Jacqueline Bandu, she hailed from a village near +Amiens. Magnificent in person, stupid and untruthful in character, she +gave herself out as the granddaughter of a general and never owned to +her thirty-two summers. The Russians had a great taste for her, owing +to her embonpoint. Then Daguenet added a rapid word or two about the +rest. There was Clarisse Besnus, whom a lady had brought up from +Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer in the capacity of maid while the lady’s husband +had started her in quite another line. There was Simonne Cabiroche, the +daughter of a furniture dealer in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, who had +been educated in a large boarding school with a view to becoming a +governess. Finally there were Maria Blond and Louise Violaine and Léa +de Horn, who had all shot up to woman’s estate on the pavements of +Paris, not to mention Tatan Nene, who had herded cows in Champagne till +she was twenty. + +Georges listened and looked at these ladies, feeling dizzy and excited +by the coarse recital thus crudely whispered in his ear, while behind +his chair the waiters kept repeating in respectful tones: + +“Pullets à la marechale; fillets of sole with ravigote sauce.” + +“My dear fellow,” said Daguenet, giving him the benefit of his +experience, “don’t take any fish; it’ll do you no good at this time of +night. And be content with Leoville: it’s less treacherous.” + +A heavy warmth floated upward from the candelabras, from the dishes +which were being handed round, from the whole table where thirty-eight +human beings were suffocating. And the waiters forgot themselves and +ran when crossing the carpet, so that it was spotted with grease. +Nevertheless, the supper grew scarce any merrier. The ladies trifled +with their meat, left half of it uneaten. Tatan Nene alone partook +gluttonously of every dish. At that advanced hour of the night hunger +was of the nervous order only, a mere whimsical craving born of an +exasperated stomach. + +At Nana’s side the old gentleman refused every dish offered him; he had +only taken a spoonful of soup, and he now sat in front of his empty +plate, gazing silently about. There was some subdued yawning, and +occasionally eyelids closed and faces became haggard and white. It was +unutterably slow, as it always was, according to Vandeuvres’s dictum. +This sort of supper should be served anyhow if it was to be funny, he +opined. Otherwise when elegantly and conventionally done you might as +well feed in good society, where you were not more bored than here. Had +it not been for Bordenave, who was still bawling away, everybody would +have fallen asleep. That rum old buffer Bordenave, with his leg duly +stretched on its chair, was letting his neighbors, Lucy and Rose, wait +on him as though he were a sultan. They were entirely taken up with +him, and they helped him and pampered him and watched over his glass +and his plate, and yet that did not prevent his complaining. + +“Who’s going to cut up my meat for me? I can’t; the table’s a league +away.” + +Every few seconds Simonne rose and took up a position behind his back +in order to cut his meat and his bread. All the women took a great +interest in the things he ate. The waiters were recalled, and he was +stuffed to suffocation. Simonne having wiped his mouth for him while +Rose and Lucy were changing his plate, her act struck him as very +pretty and, deigning at length to show contentment: + +“There, there, my daughter,” he said, “that’s as it should be. Women +are made for that!” + +There was a slight reawakening, and conversation became general as they +finished discussing some orange sherbet. The hot roast was a fillet +with truffles, and the cold roast a galantine of guinea fowl in jelly. +Nana, annoyed by the want of go displayed by her guests, had begun +talking with the greatest distinctness. + +“You know the Prince of Scots has already had a stage box reserved so +as to see the Blonde Venus when he comes to visit the exhibition.” + +“I very much hope that all the princes will come and see it,” declared +Bordenave with his mouth full. + +“They are expecting the shah of Persia next Sunday,” said Lucy Stewart. +Whereupon Rose Mignon spoke of the shah’s diamonds. He wore a tunic +entirely covered with gems; it was a marvel, a flaming star; it +represented millions. And the ladies, with pale faces and eyes +glittering with covetousness, craned forward and ran over the names of +the other kings, the other emperors, who were shortly expected. All of +them were dreaming of some royal caprice, some night to be paid for by +a fortune. + +“Now tell me, dear boy,” Caroline Hequet asked Vandeuvres, leaning +forward as she did so, “how old’s the emperor of Russia?” + +“Oh, he’s ‘present time,’” replied the count, laughing. “Nothing to be +done in that quarter, I warn you.” + +Nana made pretense of being hurt. The witticism appeared somewhat too +stinging, and there was a murmur of protest. But Blanche gave a +description of the king of Italy, whom she had once seen at Milan. He +was scarcely good looking, and yet that did not prevent him enjoying +all the women. She was put out somewhat when Fauchery assured her that +Victor Emmanuel could not come to the exhibition. Louise Violaine and +Léa favored the emperor of Austria, and all of a sudden little Maria +Blond was heard saying: + +“What an old stick the king of Prussia is! I was at Baden last year, +and one was always meeting him about with Count Bismarck.” + +“Dear me, Bismarck!” Simonne interrupted. “I knew him once, I did. A +charming man.” + +“That’s what I was saying yesterday,” cried Vandeuvres, “but nobody +would believe me.” + +And just as at Countess Sabine’s, there ensued a long discussion about +Bismarck. Vandeuvres repeated the same phrases, and for a moment or two +one was again in the Muffats’ drawing room, the only difference being +that the ladies were changed. Then, just as last night, they passed on +to a discussion on music, after which, Foucarmont having let slip some +mention of the assumption of the veil of which Paris was still talking, +Nana grew quite interested and insisted on details about Mlle de +Fougeray. Oh, the poor child, fancy her burying herself alive like +that! Ah well, when it was a question of vocation! All round the table +the women expressed themselves much touched, and Georges, wearied at +hearing these things a second time discussed, was beginning to ask +Daguenet about Nana’s ways in private life, when the conversation +veered fatefully back to Count Bismarck. Tatan Nene bent toward +Labordette to ask him privily who this Bismarck might be, for she did +not know him. Whereupon Labordette, in cold blood, told her some +portentous anecdotes. This Bismarck, he said, was in the habit of +eating raw meat and when he met a woman near his den would carry her +off thither on his back; at forty years of age he had already had as +many as thirty-two children that way. + +“Thirty-two children at forty!” cried Tatan Nene, stupefied and yet +convinced. “He must be jolly well worn out for his age.” + +There was a burst of merriment, and it dawned on her that she was being +made game of. + +“You sillies! How am I to know if you’re joking?” + +Gaga, meanwhile, had stopped at the exhibition. Like all these ladies, +she was delightedly preparing for the fray. A good season, provincials +and foreigners rushing into Paris! In the long run, perhaps, after the +close of the exhibition she would, if her business had flourished, be +able to retire to a little house at Jouvisy, which she had long had her +eye on. + +“What’s to be done?” she said to La Faloise. “One never gets what one +wants! Oh, if only one were still really loved!” + +Gaga behaved meltingly because she had felt the young man’s knee gently +placed against her own. He was blushing hotly and lisping as elegantly +as ever. She weighed him at a glance. Not a very heavy little +gentleman, to be sure, but then she wasn’t hard to please. La Faloise +obtained her address. + +“Just look there,” murmured Vandeuvres to Clarisse. “I think Gaga’s +doing you out of your Hector.” + +“A good riddance, so far as I’m concerned,” replied the actress. “That +fellow’s an idiot. I’ve already chucked him downstairs three times. You +know, I’m disgusted when dirty little boys run after old women.” + +She broke off and with a little gesture indicated Blanche, who from the +commencement of dinner had remained in a most uncomfortable attitude, +sitting up very markedly, with the intention of displaying her +shoulders to the old distinguished-looking gentleman three seats beyond +her. + +“You’re being left too,” she resumed. + +Vandeuvres smiled his thin smile and made a little movement to signify +he did not care. Assuredly ’twas not he who would ever have prevented +poor, dear Blanche scoring a success. He was more interested by the +spectacle which Steiner was presenting to the table at large. The +banker was noted for his sudden flames. That terrible German Jew who +brewed money, whose hands forged millions, was wont to turn imbecile +whenever he became enamored of a woman. He wanted them all too! Not one +could make her appearance on the stage but he bought her, however +expensive she might be. Vast sums were quoted. Twice had his furious +appetite for courtesans ruined him. The courtesans, as Vandeuvres used +to say, avenged public morality by emptying his moneybags. A big +operation in the saltworks of the Landes had rendered him powerful on +’change, and so for six weeks past the Mignons had been getting a +pretty slice out of those same saltworks. But people were beginning to +lay wagers that the Mignons would not finish their slice, for Nana was +showing her white teeth. Once again Steiner was in the toils, and so +deeply this time that as he sat by Nana’s side he seemed stunned; he +ate without appetite; his lip hung down; his face was mottled. She had +only to name a figure. Nevertheless, she did not hurry but continued +playing with him, breathing her merry laughter into his hairy ear and +enjoying the little convulsive movements which kept traversing his +heavy face. There would always be time enough to patch all that up if +that ninny of a Count Muffat were really to treat her as Joseph did +Potiphar’s wife. + +“Leoville or Chambertin?” murmured a waiter, who came craning forward +between Nana and Steiner just as the latter was addressing her in a low +voice. + +“Eh, what?” he stammered, losing his head. “Whatever you like—I don’t +care.” + +Vandeuvres gently nudged Lucy Stewart, who had a very spiteful tongue +and a very fierce invention when once she was set going. That evening +Mignon was driving her to exasperation. + +“He would gladly be bottleholder, you know,” she remarked to the count. +“He’s in hopes of repeating what he did with little Jonquier. You +remember: Jonquier was Rose’s man, but he was sweet on big Laure. Now +Mignon procured Laure for Jonquier and then came back arm in arm with +him to Rose, as if he were a husband who had been allowed a little +peccadillo. But this time the thing’s going to fail. Nana doesn’t give +up the men who are lent her.” + +“What ails Mignon that he should be looking at his wife in that severe +way?” asked Vandeuvres. + +He leaned forward and saw Rose growing exceedingly amorous toward +Fauchery. This was the explanation of his neighbor’s wrath. He resumed +laughingly: + +“The devil, are you jealous?” + +“Jealous!” said Lucy in a fury. “Good gracious, if Rose is wanting Léon +I give him up willingly—for what he’s worth! That’s to say, for a +bouquet a week and the rest to match! Look here, my dear boy, these +theatrical trollops are all made the same way. Why, Rose cried with +rage when she read Léon’s article on Nana; I know she did. So now, you +understand, she must have an article, too, and she’s gaining it. As for +me, I’m going to chuck Léon downstairs—you’ll see!” + +She paused to say “Leoville” to the waiter standing behind her with his +two bottles and then resumed in lowered tones: + +“I don’t want to shout; it isn’t my style. But she’s a cocky slut all +the same. If I were in her husband’s place I should lead her a lovely +dance. Oh, she won’t be very happy over it. She doesn’t know my +Fauchery: a dirty gent he is, too, palling up with women like that so +as to get on in the world. Oh, a nice lot they are!” + +Vandeuvres did his best to calm her down, but Bordenave, deserted by +Rose and by Lucy, grew angry and cried out that they were letting Papa +perish of hunger and thirst. This produced a fortunate diversion. Yet +the supper was flagging; no one was eating now, though platefuls of +cepes a’ l’italienne and pineapple fritters à la Pompadour were being +mangled. The champagne, however, which had been drunk ever since the +soup course, was beginning little by little to warm the guests into a +state of nervous exaltation. They ended by paying less attention to +decorum than before. The women began leaning on their elbows amid the +disordered table arrangements, while the men, in order to breathe more +easily, pushed their chairs back, and soon the black coats appeared +buried between the light-colored bodices, and bare shoulders, half +turned toward the table, began to gleam as soft as silk. It was too +hot, and the glare of the candles above the table grew ever yellower +and duller. Now and again, when a women bent forward, the back of her +neck glowed golden under a rain of curls, and the glitter of a diamond +clasp lit up a lofty chignon. There was a touch of fire in the passing +jests, in the laughing eyes, in the sudden gleam of white teeth, in the +reflection of the candelabra on the surface of a glass of champagne. +The company joked at the tops of their voices, gesticulated, asked +questions which no one answered and called to one another across the +whole length of the room. But the loudest din was made by the waiters; +they fancied themselves at home in the corridors of their parent +restaurant; they jostled one another and served the ices and the +dessert to an accompaniment of guttural exclamations. + +“My children,” shouted Bordenave, “you know we’re playing tomorrow. Be +careful! Not too much champagne!” + +“As far as I’m concerned,” said Foucarmont, “I’ve drunk every +imaginable kind of wine in all the four quarters of the globe. +Extraordinary liquors some of ’em, containing alcohol enough to kill a +corpse! Well, and what d’you think? Why, it never hurt me a bit. I +can’t make myself drunk. I’ve tried and I can’t.” + +He was very pale, very calm and collected, and he lolled back in his +chair, drinking without cessation. + +“Never mind that,” murmured Louise Violaine. “Leave off; you’ve had +enough. It would be a funny business if I had to look after you the +rest of the night.” + +Such was her state of exaltation that Lucy Stewart’s cheeks were +assuming a red, consumptive flush, while Rose Mignon with moist eyelids +was growing excessively melting. Tatan Nene, greatly astonished at the +thought that she had overeaten herself, was laughing vaguely over her +own stupidity. The others, such as Blanche, Caroline, Simonne and +Maria, were all talking at once and telling each other about their +private affairs—about a dispute with a coachman, a projected picnic and +innumerable complex stories of lovers stolen or restored. Meanwhile a +young man near Georges, having evinced a desire to kiss Léa de Horn, +received a sharp rap, accompanied by a “Look here, you, let me go!” +which was spoken in a tone of fine indignation; and Georges, who was +now very tipsy and greatly excited by the sight of Nana, hesitated +about carrying out a project which he had been gravely maturing. He had +been planning, indeed, to get under the table on all fours and to go +and crouch at Nana’s feet like a little dog. Nobody would have seen +him, and he would have stayed there in the quietest way. But when at +Léa’s urgent request Daguenet had told the young man to sit still, +Georges all at once felt grievously chagrined, as though the reproof +had just been leveled at him. Oh, it was all silly and slow, and there +was nothing worth living for! Daguenet, nevertheless, began chaffing +and obliged him to swallow a big glassful of water, asking him at the +same time what he would do if he were to find himself alone with a +woman, seeing that three glasses of champagne were able to bowl him +over. + +“Why, in Havana,” resumed Foucarmont, “they make a spirit with a +certain wild berry; you think you’re swallowing fire! Well now, one +evening I drank more than a liter of it, and it didn’t hurt me one bit. +Better than that, another time when we were on the coast of Coromandel +some savages gave us I don’t know what sort of a mixture of pepper and +vitriol, and that didn’t hurt me one bit. I can’t make myself drunk.” + +For some moments past La Faloise’s face opposite had excited his +displeasure. He began sneering and giving vent to disagreeable +witticisms. La Faloise, whose brain was in a whirl, was behaving very +restlessly and squeezing up against Gaga. But at length he became the +victim of anxiety; somebody had just taken his handkerchief, and with +drunken obstinacy he demanded it back again, asked his neighbors about +it, stooped down in order to look under the chairs and the guests’ +feet. And when Gaga did her best to quiet him: + +“It’s a nuisance,” he murmured, “my initials and my coronet are worked +in the corner. They may compromise me.” + +“I say, Monsieur Falamoise, Lamafoise, Mafaloise!” shouted Foucarmont, +who thought it exceedingly witty thus to disfigure the young man’s name +ad infinitum. + +But La Faloise grew wroth and talked with a stutter about his ancestry. +He threatened to send a water bottle at Foucarmont’s head, and Count de +Vandeuvres had to interfere in order to assure him that Foucarmont was +a great joker. Indeed, everybody was laughing. This did for the already +flurried young man, who was very glad to resume his seat and to begin +eating with childlike submissiveness when in a loud voice his cousin +ordered him to feed. Gaga had taken him back to her ample side; only +from time to time he cast sly and anxious glances at the guests, for he +ceased not to search for his handkerchief. + +Then Foucarmont, being now in his witty vein, attacked Labordette right +at the other end of the table. Louise Violaine strove to make him hold +his tongue, for, she said, “when he goes nagging at other people like +that it always ends in mischief for me.” He had discovered a witticism +which consisted in addressing Labordette as “Madame,” and it must have +amused him greatly, for he kept on repeating it while Labordette +tranquilly shrugged his shoulders and as constantly replied: + +“Pray hold your tongue, my dear fellow; it’s stupid.” + +But as Foucarmont failed to desist and even became insulting without +his neighbors knowing why, he left off answering him and appealed to +Count Vandeuvres. + +“Make your friend hold his tongue, monsieur. I don’t wish to become +angry.” + +Foucarmont had twice fought duels, and he was in consequence most +politely treated and admitted into every circle. But there was now a +general uprising against him. The table grew merry at his sallies, for +they thought him very witty, but that was no reason why the evening +should be spoiled. Vandeuvres, whose subtle countenance was darkening +visibly, insisted on his restoring Labordette his sex. The other +men—Mignon, Steiner and Bordenave—who were by this time much exalted, +also intervened with shouts which drowned his voice. Only the old +gentleman sitting forgotten next to Nana retained his stately demeanor +and, still smiling in his tired, silent way, watched with lackluster +eyes the untoward finish of the dessert. + +“What do you say to our taking coffee in here, duckie?” said Bordenave. +“We’re very comfortable.” + +Nana did not give an immediate reply. Since the beginning of supper she +had seemed no longer in her own house. All this company had overwhelmed +and bewildered her with their shouts to the waiters, the loudness of +their voices and the way in which they put themselves at their ease, +just as though they were in a restaurant. Forgetting her role of +hostess, she busied herself exclusively with bulky Steiner, who was +verging on apoplexy beside her. She was listening to his proposals and +continually refusing them with shakes of the head and that temptress’s +laughter which is peculiar to a voluptuous blonde. The champagne she +had been drinking had flushed her a rosy-red; her lips were moist; her +eyes sparkled, and the banker’s offers rose with every kittenish +movement of her shoulders, with every little voluptuous lift and fall +of her throat, which occurred when she turned her head. Close by her +ear he kept espying a sweet little satiny corner which drove him crazy. +Occasionally Nana was interrupted, and then, remembering her guests, +she would try and be as pleased as possible in order to show that she +knew how to receive. Toward the end of the supper she was very tipsy. +It made her miserable to think of it, but champagne had a way of +intoxicating her almost directly! Then an exasperating notion struck +her. In behaving thus improperly at her table, these ladies were +showing themselves anxious to do her an ugly turn. Oh yes, she could +see it all distinctly. Lucy had given Foucarmont a wink in order to egg +him on against Labordette, while Rose, Caroline and the others were +doing all they could to stir up the men. Now there was such a din you +couldn’t hear your neighbor speak, and so the story would get about +that you might allow yourself every kind of liberty when you supped at +Nana’s. Very well then! They should see! She might be tipsy, if you +like, but she was still the smartest and most ladylike woman there. + +“Do tell them to serve the coffee here, duckie,” resumed Bordenave. “I +prefer it here because of my leg.” + +But Nana had sprung savagely to her feet after whispering into the +astonished ears of Steiner and the old gentleman: + +“It’s quite right; it’ll teach me to go and invite a dirty lot like +that.” + +Then she pointed to the door of the dining room and added at the top of +her voice: + +“If you want coffee it’s there, you know.” + +The company left the table and crowded toward the dining room without +noticing Nana’s indignant outburst. And soon no one was left in the +drawing room save Bordenave, who advanced cautiously, supporting +himself against the wall and cursing away at the confounded women who +chucked Papa the moment they were chock-full. The waiters behind him +were already busy removing the plates and dishes in obedience to the +loudly voiced orders of the manager. They rushed to and fro, jostled +one another, caused the whole table to vanish, as a pantomime property +might at the sound of the chief scene-shifter’s whistle. The ladies and +gentlemen were to return to the drawing room after drinking their +coffee. + +“By gum, it’s less hot here,” said Gaga with a slight shiver as she +entered the dining room. + +The window here had remained open. Two lamps illuminated the table, +where coffee and liqueurs were set out. There were no chairs, and the +guests drank their coffee standing, while the hubbub the waiters were +making in the next room grew louder and louder. Nana had disappeared, +but nobody fretted about her absence. They did without her excellently +well, and everybody helped himself and rummaged in the drawers of the +sideboard in search of teaspoons, which were lacking. Several groups +were formed; people separated during supper rejoined each other, and +there was an interchange of glances, of meaning laughter and of phrases +which summed up recent situations. + +“Ought not Monsieur Fauchery to come and lunch with us one of these +days, Auguste?” said Rose Mignon. + +Mignon, who was toying with his watch chain, eyed the journalist for a +second or two with his severe glance. Rose was out of her senses. As +became a good manager, he would put a stop to such spendthrift courses. +In return for a notice, well and good, but afterward, decidedly not. +Nevertheless, as he was fully aware of his wife’s wrongheadedness and +as he made it a rule to wink paternally at a folly now and again, when +such was necessary, he answered amiably enough: + +“Certainly, I shall be most happy. Pray come tomorrow, Monsieur +Fauchery.” + +Lucy Stewart heard this invitation given while she was talking with +Steiner and Blanche and, raising her voice, she remarked to the banker: + +“It’s a mania they’ve all of them got. One of them even went so far as +to steal my dog. Now, dear boy, am I to blame if you chuck her?” + +Rose turned round. She was very pale and gazed fixedly at Steiner as +she sipped her coffee. And then all the concentrated anger she felt at +his abandonment of her flamed out in her eyes. She saw more clearly +than Mignon; it was stupid in him to have wished to begin the Jonquier +ruse a second time—those dodgers never succeeded twice running. Well, +so much the worse for him! She would have Fauchery! She had been +getting enamored of him since the beginning of supper, and if Mignon +was not pleased it would teach him greater wisdom! + +“You are not going to fight?” said Vandeuvres, coming over to Lucy +Stewart. + +“No, don’t be afraid of that! Only she must mind and keep quiet, or I +let the cat out of the bag!” + +Then signing imperiously to Fauchery: + +“I’ve got your slippers at home, my little man. I’ll get them taken to +your porter’s lodge for you tomorrow.” + +He wanted to joke about it, but she swept off, looking like a queen. +Clarisse, who had propped herself against a wall in order to drink a +quiet glass of kirsch, was seen to shrug her shoulders. A pleasant +business for a man! Wasn’t it true that the moment two women were +together in the presence of their lovers their first idea was to do one +another out of them? It was a law of nature! As to herself, why, in +heaven’s name, if she had wanted to she would have torn out Gaga’s eyes +on Hector’s account! But la, she despised him! Then as La Faloise +passed by, she contented herself by remarking to him: + +“Listen, my friend, you like ’em well advanced, you do! You don’t want +’em ripe; you want ’em mildewed!” + +La Faloise seemed much annoyed and not a little anxious. Seeing +Clarisse making game of him, he grew suspicious of her. + +“No humbug, I say,” he muttered. “You’ve taken my handkerchief. Well +then, give it back!” + +“He’s dreeing us with that handkerchief of his!” she cried. “Why, you +ass, why should I have taken it from you?” + +“Why should you?” he said suspiciously. “Why, that you may send it to +my people and compromise me.” + +In the meantime Foucarmont was diligently attacking the liqueurs. He +continued to gaze sneeringly at Labordette, who was drinking his coffee +in the midst of the ladies. And occasionally he gave vent to +fragmentary assertions, as thus: “He’s the son of a horse dealer; some +say the illegitimate child of a countess. Never a penny of income, yet +always got twenty-five louis in his pocket! Footboy to the ladies of +the town! A big lubber, who never goes with any of ’em! Never, never, +never!” he repeated, growing furious. “No, by Jove! I must box his +ears.” + +He drained a glass of chartreuse. The chartreuse had not the slightest +effect upon him; it didn’t affect him “even to that extent,” and he +clicked his thumbnail against the edge of his teeth. But suddenly, just +as he was advancing upon Labordette, he grew ashy white and fell down +in a heap in front of the sideboard. He was dead drunk. Louise Violaine +was beside herself. She had been quite right to prophesy that matters +would end badly, and now she would have her work cut out for the +remainder of the night. Gaga reassured her. She examined the officer +with the eye of a woman of experience and declared that there was +nothing much the matter and that the gentleman would sleep like that +for at least a dozen or fifteen hours without any serious consequences. +Foucarmont was carried off. + +“Well, where’s Nana gone to?” asked Vandeuvres. + +Yes, she had certainly flown away somewhere on leaving the table. The +company suddenly recollected her, and everybody asked for her. Steiner, +who for some seconds had been uneasy on her account, asked Vandeuvres +about the old gentleman, for he, too, had disappeared. But the count +reassured him—he had just brought the old gentleman back. He was a +stranger, whose name it was useless to mention. Suffice it to say that +he was a very rich man who was quite pleased to pay for suppers! Then +as Nana was once more being forgotten, Vandeuvres saw Daguenet looking +out of an open door and beckoning to him. And in the bedroom he found +the mistress of the house sitting up, white-lipped and rigid, while +Daguenet and Georges stood gazing at her with an alarmed expression. + +“What IS the matter with you?” he asked in some surprise. + +She neither answered nor turned her head, and he repeated his question. + +“Why, this is what’s the matter with me,” she cried out at length; “I +won’t let them make bloody sport of me!” + +Thereupon she gave vent to any expression that occurred to her. Yes, oh +yes, SHE wasn’t a ninny—she could see clearly enough. They had been +making devilish light of her during supper and saying all sorts of +frightful things to show that they thought nothing of her! A pack of +sluts who weren’t fit to black her boots! Catch her bothering herself +again just to be badgered for it after! She really didn’t know what +kept her from chucking all that dirty lot out of the house! And with +this, rage choked her and her voice broke down in sobs. + +“Come, come, my lass, you’re drunk,” said Vandeuvres, growing familiar. +“You must be reasonable.” + +No, she would give her refusal now; she would stay where she was. + +“I am drunk—it’s quite likely! But I want people to respect me!” + +For a quarter of an hour past Daguenet and Georges had been vainly +beseeching her to return to the drawing room. She was obstinate, +however; her guests might do what they liked; she despised them too +much to come back among them. + +No, she never would, never. They might tear her in pieces before she +would leave her room! + +“I ought to have had my suspicions,” she resumed. + +“It’s that cat of a Rose who’s got the plot up! I’m certain Rose’ll +have stopped that respectable woman coming whom I was expecting +tonight.” + +She referred to Mme Robert. Vandeuvres gave her his word of honor that +Mme Robert had given a spontaneous refusal. He listened and he argued +with much gravity, for he was well accustomed to similar scenes and +knew how women in such a state ought to be treated. But the moment he +tried to take hold of her hands in order to lift her up from her chair +and draw her away with him she struggled free of his clasp, and her +wrath redoubled. Now, just look at that! They would never get her to +believe that Fauchery had not put the Count Muffat off coming! A +regular snake was that Fauchery, an envious sort, a fellow capable of +growing mad against a woman and of destroying her whole happiness. For +she knew this—the count had become madly devoted to her! She could have +had him! + +“Him, my dear, never!” cried Vandeuvres, forgetting himself and +laughing loud. + +“Why not?” she asked, looking serious and slightly sobered. + +“Because he’s thoroughly in the hands of the priests, and if he were +only to touch you with the tips of his fingers he would go and confess +it the day after. Now listen to a bit of good advice. Don’t let the +other man escape you!” + +She was silent and thoughtful for a moment or two. Then she got up and +went and bathed her eyes. Yet when they wanted to take her into the +dining room she still shouted “No!” furiously. Vandeuvres left the +bedroom, smiling and without further pressing her, and the moment he +was gone she had an access of melting tenderness, threw herself into +Daguenet’s arms and cried out: + +“Ah, my sweetie, there’s only you in the world. I love you! YES, I love +you from the bottom of my heart! Oh, it would be too nice if we could +always live together. My God! How unfortunate women are!” + +Then her eye fell upon Georges, who, seeing them kiss, was growing very +red, and she kissed him too. Sweetie could not be jealous of a baby! +She wanted Paul and Georges always to agree, because it would be so +nice for them all three to stay like that, knowing all the time that +they loved one another very much. But an extraordinary noise disturbed +them: someone was snoring in the room. Whereupon after some searching +they perceived Bordenave, who, since taking his coffee, must have +comfortably installed himself there. He was sleeping on two chairs, his +head propped on the edge of the bed and his leg stretched out in front. +Nana thought him so funny with his open mouth and his nose moving with +each successive snore that she was shaken with a mad fit of laughter. +She left the room, followed by Daguenet and Georges, crossed the dining +room, entered the drawing room, her merriment increasing at every step. + +“Oh, my dear, you’ve no idea!” she cried, almost throwing herself into +Rose’s arms. “Come and see it.” + +All the women had to follow her. She took their hands coaxingly and +drew them along with her willy-nilly, accompanying her action with so +frank an outburst of mirth that they all of them began laughing on +trust. The band vanished and returned after standing breathlessly for a +second or two round Bordenave’s lordly, outstretched form. And then +there was a burst of laughter, and when one of them told the rest to be +quiet Bordenave’s distant snorings became audible. + +It was close on four o’clock. In the dining room a card table had just +been set out, at which Vandeuvres, Steiner, Mignon and Labordette had +taken their seats. Behind them Lucy and Caroline stood making bets, +while Blanche, nodding with sleep and dissatisfied about her night, +kept asking Vandeuvres at intervals of five minutes if they weren’t +going soon. In the drawing room there was an attempt at dancing. +Daguenet was at the piano or “chest of drawers,” as Nana called it. She +did not want a “thumper,” for Mimi would play as many waltzes and +polkas as the company desired. But the dance was languishing, and the +ladies were chatting drowsily together in the corners of sofas. +Suddenly, however, there was an outburst of noise. A band of eleven +young men had arrived and were laughing loudly in the anteroom and +crowding to the drawing room. They had just come from the ball at the +Ministry of the Interior and were in evening dress and wore various +unknown orders. Nana was annoyed at this riotous entry, called to the +waiters who still remained in the kitchen and ordered them to throw +these individuals out of doors. She vowed that she had never seen any +of them before. Fauchery, Labordette, Daguenet and the rest of the men +had all come forward in order to enforce respectful behavior toward +their hostess. Big words flew about; arms were outstretched, and for +some seconds a general exchange of fisticuffs was imminent. +Notwithstanding this, however, a little sickly looking light-haired man +kept insistently repeating: + +“Come, come, Nana, you saw us the other evening at Peters’ in the great +red saloon! Pray remember, you invited us.” + +The other evening at Peters’? She did not remember it all. To begin +with, what evening? + +And when the little light-haired man had mentioned the day, which was +Wednesday, she distinctly remembered having supped at Peters’ on the +Wednesday, but she had given no invitation to anyone; she was almost +sure of that. + +“However, suppose you HAVE invited them, my good girl,” murmured +Labordette, who was beginning to have his doubts. “Perhaps you were a +little elevated.” + +Then Nana fell a-laughing. It was quite possible; she really didn’t +know. So then, since these gentlemen were on the spot, they had her +leave to come in. Everything was quietly arranged; several of the +newcomers found friends in the drawing room, and the scene ended in +handshakings. The little sickly looking light-haired man bore one of +the greatest names in France. Furthermore, the eleven announced that +others were to follow them, and, in fact, the door opened every few +moments, and men in white gloves and official garb presented +themselves. They were still coming from the ball at the Ministry. +Fauchery jestingly inquired whether the minister was not coming, too, +but Nana answered in a huff that the minister went to the houses of +people she didn’t care a pin for. What she did not say was that she was +possessed with a hope of seeing Count Muffat enter her room among all +that stream of people. He might quite have reconsidered his decision, +and so while talking to Rose she kept a sharp eye on the door. + +Five o’clock struck. The dancing had ceased, and the cardplayers alone +persisted in their game. Labordette had vacated his seat, and the women +had returned into the drawing room. The air there was heavy with the +somnolence which accompanies a long vigil, and the lamps cast a +wavering light while their burned-out wicks glowed red within their +globes. The ladies had reached that vaguely melancholy hour when they +felt it necessary to tell each other their histories. Blanche de Sivry +spoke of her grandfather, the general, while Clarisse invented a +romantic story about a duke seducing her at her uncle’s house, whither +he used to come for the boar hunting. Both women, looking different +ways, kept shrugging their shoulders and asking themselves how the +deuce the other could tell such whoppers! As to Lucy Stewart, she +quietly confessed to her origin and of her own accord spoke of her +childhood and of the days when her father, the wheel greaser at the +Northern Railway Terminus, used to treat her to an apple puff on +Sundays. + +“Oh, I must tell you about it!” cried the little Maria Blond abruptly. +“Opposite to me there lives a gentleman, a Russian, an awfully rich +man! Well, just fancy, yesterday I received a basket of fruit—oh, it +just was a basket! Enormous peaches, grapes as big as that, simply +wonderful for the time of year! And in the middle of them six +thousand-franc notes! It was the Russian’s doing. Of course I sent the +whole thing back again, but I must say my heart ached a little—when I +thought of the fruit!” + +The ladies looked at one another and pursed up their lips. At her age +little Maria Blond had a pretty cheek! Besides, to think that such +things should happen to trollops like her! Infinite was their contempt +for her among themselves. It was Lucy of whom they were particularly +jealous, for they were beside themselves at the thought of her three +princes. Since Lucy had begun taking a daily morning ride in the Bois +they all had become Amazons, as though a mania possessed them. + +Day was about to dawn, and Nana turned her eyes away from the door, for +she was relinquishing all hope. The company were bored to distraction. +Rose Mignon had refused to sing the “Slipper” and sat huddled up on a +sofa, chatting in a low voice with Fauchery and waiting for Mignon, who +had by now won some fifty louis from Vandeuvres. A fat gentleman with a +decoration and a serious cast of countenance had certainly given a +recitation in Alsatian accents of “Abraham’s Sacrifice,” a piece in +which the Almighty says, “By My blasted Name” when He swears, and Isaac +always answers with a “Yes, Papa!” Nobody, however, understood what it +was all about, and the piece had been voted stupid. People were at +their wits’ end how to make merry and to finish the night with fitting +hilarity. For a moment or two Labordette conceived the idea of +denouncing different women in a whisper to La Faloise, who still went +prowling round each individual lady, looking to see if she were hiding +his handkerchief in her bosom. Soon, as there were still some bottles +of champagne on the sideboard, the young men again fell to drinking. +They shouted to one another; they stirred each other up, but a dreary +species of intoxication, which was stupid enough to drive one to +despair, began to overcome the company beyond hope of recovery. Then +the little fair-haired fellow, the man who bore one of the greatest +names in France and had reached his wit’s end and was desperate at the +thought that he could not hit upon something really funny, conceived a +brilliant notion: he snatched up his bottle of champagne and poured its +contents into the piano. His allies were convulsed with laughter. + +“La now! Why’s he putting champagne into the piano?” asked Tatan Nene +in great astonishment as she caught sight of him. + +“What, my lass, you don’t know why he’s doing that?” replied Labordette +solemnly. “There’s nothing so good as champagne for pianos. It gives +’em tone.” + +“Ah,” murmured Tatan Nene with conviction. + +And when the rest began laughing at her she grew angry. How should she +know? They were always confusing her. + +Decidedly the evening was becoming a big failure. The night threatened +to end in the unloveliest way. In a corner by themselves Maria Blond +and Léa de Horn had begun squabbling at close quarters, the former +accusing the latter of consorting with people of insufficient wealth. +They were getting vastly abusive over it, their chief stumbling block +being the good looks of the men in question. Lucy, who was plain, got +them to hold their tongues. Good looks were nothing, according to her; +good figures were what was wanted. Farther off, on a sofa, an attache +had slipped his arm round Simonne’s waist and was trying to kiss her +neck, but Simonne, sullen and thoroughly out of sorts, pushed him away +at every fresh attempt with cries of “You’re pestering me!” and sound +slaps of the fan across his face. For the matter of that, not one of +the ladies allowed herself to be touched. Did people take them for +light women? Gaga, in the meantime, had once more caught La Faloise and +had almost hoisted him upon her knees while Clarisse was disappearing +from view between two gentlemen, shaking with nervous laughter as women +will when they are tickled. Round about the piano they were still busy +with their little game, for they were suffering from a fit of stupid +imbecility, which caused each man to jostle his fellow in his frantic +desire to empty his bottle into the instrument. It was a simple process +and a charming one. + +“Now then, old boy, drink a glass! Devil take it, he’s a thirsty piano! +Hi! ’Tenshun! Here’s another bottle! You mustn’t lose a drop!” + +Nana’s back was turned, and she did not see them. Emphatically she was +now falling back on the bulky Steiner, who was seated next to her. So +much the worse! It was all on account of that Muffat, who had refused +what was offered him. Sitting there in her white foulard dress, which +was as light and full of folds as a shift, sitting there with drooped +eyelids and cheeks pale with the touch of intoxication from which she +was suffering, she offered herself to him with that quiet expression +which is peculiar to a good-natured courtesan. The roses in her hair +and at her throat had lost their leaves, and their stalks alone +remained. Presently Steiner withdrew his hand quickly from the folds of +her skirt, where he had come in contact with the pins that Georges had +stuck there. Some drops of blood appeared on his fingers, and one fell +on Nana’s dress and stained it. + +“Now the bargain’s struck,” said Nana gravely. + +The day was breaking apace. An uncertain glimmer of light, fraught with +a poignant melancholy, came stealing through the windows. And with that +the guests began to take their departure. It was a most sour and +uncomfortable retreat. Caroline Hequet, annoyed at the loss of her +night, announced that it was high time to be off unless you were +anxious to assist at some pretty scenes. Rose pouted as if her womanly +character had been compromised. It was always so with these girls; they +didn’t know how to behave and were guilty of disgusting conduct when +they made their first appearance in society! And Mignon having cleaned +Vandeuvres out completely, the family took their departure. They did +not trouble about Steiner but renewed their invitation for tomorrow to +Fauchery. Lucy thereupon refused the journalist’s escort home and sent +him back shrilly to his “strolling actress.” At this Rose turned round +immediately and hissed out a “Dirty sow” by way of answer. But Mignon, +who in feminine quarrels was always paternal, for his experience was a +long one and rendered him superior to them, had already pushed her out +of the house, telling her at the same time to have done. Lucy came +downstairs in solitary state behind them. After which Gaga had to carry +off La Faloise, ill, sobbing like a child, calling after Clarisse, who +had long since gone off with her two gentlemen. Simonne, too, had +vanished. Indeed, none remained save Tatan, Léa and Maria, whom +Labordette complaisantly took under his charge. + +“Oh, but I don’t the least bit want to go to bed!” said Nana. “One +ought to find something to do.” + +She looked at the sky through the windowpanes. It was a livid sky, and +sooty clouds were scudding across it. It was six o’clock in the +morning. Over the way, on the opposite side of the Boulevard Haussmann, +the glistening roofs of the still-slumbering houses were sharply +outlined against the twilight sky while along the deserted roadway a +gang of street sweepers passed with a clatter of wooden shoes. As she +viewed Paris thus grimly awakening, she was overcome by tender, girlish +feelings, by a yearning for the country, for idyllic scenes, for things +soft and white. + +“Now guess what you’re to do,” she said, coming back to Steiner. +“You’re going to take me to the Bois de Boulogne, and we’ll drink milk +there.” + +She clapped her hands in childish glee. Without waiting for the +banker’s reply—he naturally consented, though he was really rather +bored and inclined to think of other things—she ran off to throw a +pelisse over her shoulders. In the drawing room there was now no one +with Steiner save the band of young men. These had by this time dropped +the very dregs of their glasses into the piano and were talking of +going, when one of their number ran in triumphantly. He held in his +hands a last remaining bottle, which he had brought back with him from +the pantry. + +“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” he shouted. “Here’s a bottle of +chartreuse; that’ll pick him up! And now, my young friends, let’s hook +it. We’re blooming idiots.” + +In the dressing room Nana was compelled to wake up Zoé, who had dozed +off on a chair. The gas was still alight, and Zoé shivered as she +helped her mistress on with her hat and pelisse. + +“Well, it’s over; I’ve done what you wanted me to,” said Nana, speaking +familiarly to the maid in a sudden burst of expansive confidence and +much relieved at the thought that she had at last made her election. +“You were quite right; the banker’s as good as another.” + +The maid was cross, for she was still heavy with sleep. She grumbled +something to the effect that Madame ought to have come to a decision +the first evening. Then following her into the bedroom, she asked what +she was going to do with “those two,” meaning Bordenave, who was +snoring away as usual, and Georges, who had slipped in slyly, buried +his head in a pillow and, finally falling asleep there, was now +breathing as lightly and regularly as a cherub. Nana in reply told her +that she was to let them sleep on. But seeing Daguenet come into the +room, she again grew tender. He had been watching her from the kitchen +and was looking very wretched. + +“Come, my sweetie, be reasonable,” she said, taking him in her arms and +kissing him with all sorts of little wheedling caresses. “Nothing’s +changed; you know that it’s sweetie whom I always adore! Eh, dear? I +had to do it. Why, I swear to you we shall have even nicer times now. +Come tomorrow, and we’ll arrange about hours. Now be quick, kiss and +hug me as you love me. Oh, tighter, tighter than that!” + +And she escaped and rejoined Steiner, feeling happy and once more +possessed with the idea of drinking milk. In the empty room the Count +de Vandeuvres was left alone with the “decorated” man who had recited +“Abraham’s Sacrifice.” Both seemed glued to the card table; they had +lost count of their whereabouts and never once noticed the broad light +of day without, while Blanche had made bold to put her feet up on a +sofa in order to try and get a little sleep. + +“Oh, Blanche is with them!” cried Nana. “We are going to drink milk, +dear. Do come; you’ll find Vandeuvres here when we return.” + +Blanche got up lazily. This time the banker’s fiery face grew white +with annoyance at the idea of having to take that big wench with him +too. She was certain to bore him. But the two women had already got him +by the arms and were reiterating: + +“We want them to milk the cow before our eyes, you know.” + + + + + CHAPTER V + + +At the Variétés they were giving the thirty-fourth performance of the +Blonde Venus. The first act had just finished, and in the greenroom +Simonne, dressed as the little laundress, was standing in front of a +console table, surmounted by a looking glass and situated between the +two corner doors which opened obliquely on the end of the dressing-room +passage. No one was with her, and she was scrutinizing her face and +rubbing her finger up and down below her eyes with a view to putting +the finishing touches to her make-up. The gas jets on either side of +the mirror flooded her with warm, crude light. + +“Has he arrived?” asked Prullière, entering the room in his Alpine +admiral’s costume, which was set off by a big sword, enormous top boots +and a vast tuft of plumes. + +“Who d’you mean?” said Simonne, taking no notice of him and laughing +into the mirror in order to see how her lips looked. + +“The prince.” + +“I don’t know; I’ve just come down. Oh, he’s certainly due here +tonight; he comes every time!” + +Prullière had drawn near the hearth opposite the console table, where a +coke fire was blazing and two more gas jets were flaring brightly. He +lifted his eyes and looked at the clock and the barometer on his right +hand and on his left. They had gilded sphinxes by way of adornment in +the style of the First Empire. Then he stretched himself out in a huge +armchair with ears, the green velvet of which had been so worn by four +generations of comedians that it looked yellow in places, and there he +stayed, with moveless limbs and vacant eyes, in that weary and resigned +attitude peculiar to actors who are used to long waits before their +turn for going on the stage. + +Old Bosc, too, had just made his appearance. He came in dragging one +foot behind the other and coughing. He was wrapped in an old box coat, +part of which had slipped from his shoulder in such a way as to uncover +the gold-laced cloak of King Dagobert. He put his crown on the piano +and for a moment or two stood moodily stamping his feet. His hands were +trembling slightly with the first beginnings of alcoholism, but he +looked a sterling old fellow for all that, and a long white beard lent +that fiery tippler’s face of his a truly venerable appearance. Then in +the silence of the room, while the shower of hail was whipping the +panes of the great window that looked out on the courtyard, he shook +himself disgustedly. + +“What filthy weather!” he growled. + +Simonne and Prullière did not move. Four or five pictures—a landscape, +a portrait of the actor Vernet—hung yellowing in the hot glare of the +gas, and a bust of Potier, one of the bygone glories of the Variétés, +stood gazing vacant-eyed from its pedestal. But just then there was a +burst of voices outside. It was Fontan, dressed for the second act. He +was a young dandy, and his habiliments, even to his gloves, were +entirely yellow. + +“Now say you don’t know!” he shouted, gesticulating. “Today’s my patron +saint’s day!” + +“What?” asked Simonne, coming up smilingly, as though attracted by the +huge nose and the vast, comic mouth of the man. “D’you answer to the +name of Achille?” + +“Exactly so! And I’m going to get ’em to tell Madame Bron to send up +champagne after the second act.” + +For some seconds a bell had been ringing in the distance. The +long-drawn sound grew fainter, then louder, and when the bell ceased a +shout ran up the stair and down it till it was lost along the passages. +“All on the stage for the second act! All on the stage for the second +act!” The sound drew near, and a little pale-faced man passed by the +greenroom doors, outside each of which he yelled at the top of his +shrill voice, “On the stage for the second act!” + +“The deuce, it’s champagne!” said Prullière without appearing to hear +the din. “You’re prospering!” + +“If I were you I should have it in from the cafe,” old Bosc slowly +announced. He was sitting on a bench covered with green velvet, with +his head against the wall. + +But Simonne said that it was one’s duty to consider Mme Bron’s small +perquisites. She clapped her hands excitedly and devoured Fontan with +her gaze while his long goatlike visage kept up a continuous twitching +of eyes and nose and mouth. + +“Oh, that Fontan!” she murmured. “There’s no one like him, no one like +him!” + +The two greenroom doors stood wide open to the corridor leading to the +wings. And along the yellow wall, which was brightly lit up by a gas +lamp out of view, passed a string of rapidly moving shadows—men in +costume, women with shawls over their scant attire, in a word, the +whole of the characters in the second act, who would shortly make their +appearance as masqeuraders in the ball at the Boule Noire. And at the +end of the corridor became audible a shuffling of feet as these people +clattered down the five wooden steps which led to the stage. As the big +Clarisse went running by Simonne called to her, but she said she would +be back directly. And, indeed, she reappeared almost at once, shivering +in the thin tunic and scarf which she wore as Iris. + +“God bless me!” she said. “It isn’t warm, and I’ve left my furs in my +dressing room!” + +Then as she stood toasting her legs in their warm rose-colored tights +in front of the fireplace she resumed: + +“The prince has arrived.” + +“Oh!” cried the rest with the utmost curiosity. + +“Yes, that’s why I ran down: I wanted to see. He’s in the first stage +box to the right, the same he was in on Thursday. It’s the third time +he’s been this week, eh? That’s Nana; well, she’s in luck’s way! I was +willing to wager he wouldn’t come again.” + +Simonne opened her lips to speak, but her remarks were drowned by a +fresh shout which arose close to the greenroom. In the passage the +callboy was yelling at the top of his shrill voice, “They’ve knocked!” + +“Three times!” said Simonne when she was again able to speak. “It’s +getting exciting. You know, he won’t go to her place; he takes her to +his. And it seems that he has to pay for it too!” + +“Egad! It’s a case of when one ‘has to go out,’” muttered Prullière +wickedly, and he got up to have a last look at the mirror as became a +handsome fellow whom the boxes adored. + +“They’ve knocked! They’ve knocked!” the callboy kept repeating in tones +that died gradually away in the distance as he passed through the +various stories and corridors. + +Fontan thereupon, knowing how it had all gone off on the first occasion +the prince and Nana met, told the two women the whole story while they +in their turn crowded against him and laughed at the tops of their +voices whenever he stooped to whisper certain details in their ears. +Old Bosc had never budged an inch—he was totally indifferent. That sort +of thing no longer interested him now. He was stroking a great +tortoise-shell cat which was lying curled up on the bench. He did so +quite beautifully and ended by taking her in his arms with the tender +good nature becoming a worn-out monarch. The cat arched its back and +then, after a prolonged sniff at the big white beard, the gluey odor of +which doubtless disgusted her, she turned and, curling herself up, went +to sleep again on the bench beside him. Bosc remained grave and +absorbed. + +“That’s all right, but if I were you I should drink the champagne at +the restaurant—its better there,” he said, suddenly addressing Fontan +when he had finished his recital. + +“The curtain’s up!” cried the callboy in cracked and long-drawn accents +“The curtain’s up! The curtain’s up!” + +The shout sounded for some moments, during which there had been a noise +of rapid footsteps. Through the suddenly opened door of the passage +came a burst of music and a far-off murmur of voices, and then the door +shut to again and you could hear its dull thud as it wedged itself into +position once more. + +A heavy, peaceful, atmosphere again pervaded the greenroom, as though +the place were situated a hundred leagues from the house where crowds +were applauding. Simonne and Clarisse were still on the topic of Nana. +There was a girl who never hurried herself! Why, yesterday she had +again come on too late! But there was a silence, for a tall damsel had +just craned her head in at the door and, seeing that she had made a +mistake, had departed to the other end of the passage. It was Satin. +Wearing a hat and a small veil for the nonce she was affecting the +manner of a lady about to pay a call. + +“A pretty trollop!” muttered Prullière, who had been coming across her +for a year past at the Café des Variétés. And at this Simonne told them +how Nana had recognized in Satin an old schoolmate, had taken a vast +fancy to her and was now plaguing Bordenave to let her make a first +appearance on the stage. + +“How d’ye do?” said Fontan, shaking hands with Mignon and Fauchery, who +now came into the room. + +Old Bosc himself gave them the tips of his fingers while the two women +kissed Mignon. + +“A good house this evening?” queried Fauchery. + +“Oh, a splendid one!” replied Prullière. “You should see ’em gaping.” + +“I say, my little dears,” remarked Mignon, “it must be your turn!” + +Oh, all in good time! They were only at the fourth scene as yet, but +Bosc got up in obedience to instinct, as became a rattling old actor +who felt that his cue was coming. At that very moment the callboy was +opening the door. + +“Monsieur Bosc!” he called. “Mademoiselle Simonne!” + +Simonne flung a fur-lined pelisse briskly over her shoulders and went +out. Bosc, without hurrying at all, went and got his crown, which he +settled on his brow with a rap. Then dragging himself unsteadily along +in his greatcoat, he took his departure, grumbling and looking as +annoyed as a man who has been rudely disturbed. + +“You were very amiable in your last notice,” continued Fontan, +addressing Fauchery. “Only why do you say that comedians are vain?” + +“Yes, my little man, why d’you say that?” shouted Mignon, bringing down +his huge hands on the journalist’s slender shoulders with such force as +almost to double him up. + +Prullière and Clarisse refrained from laughing aloud. For some time +past the whole company had been deriving amusement from a comedy which +was going on in the wings. Mignon, rendered frantic by his wife’s +caprice and annoyed at the thought that this man Fauchery brought +nothing but a certain doubtful notoriety to his household, had +conceived the idea of revenging himself on the journalist by +overwhelming him with tokens of friendship. Every evening, therefore, +when he met him behind scenes he would shower friendly slaps on his +back and shoulders, as though fairly carried away by an outburst of +tenderness, and Fauchery, who was a frail, small man in comparison with +such a giant, was fain to take the raps with a strained smile in order +not to quarrel with Rose’s husband. + +“Aha, my buck, you’ve insulted Fontan,” resumed Mignon, who was doing +his best to force the joke. “Stand on guard! One—two—got him right in +the middle of his chest!” + +He lunged and struck the young man with such force that the latter grew +very pale and could not speak for some seconds. With a wink Clarisse +showed the others where Rose Mignon was standing on the threshold of +the greenroom. Rose had witnessed the scene, and she marched straight +up to the journalist, as though she had failed to notice her husband +and, standing on tiptoe, bare-armed and in baby costume, she held her +face up to him with a caressing, infantine pout. + +“Good evening, baby,” said Fauchery, kissing her familiarly. + +Thus he indemnified himself. Mignon, however, did not seem to have +observed this kiss, for everybody kissed his wife at the theater. But +he laughed and gave the journalist a keen little look. The latter would +assurely have to pay for Rose’s bravado. + +In the passage the tightly shutting door opened and closed again, and a +tempest of applause was blown as far as the greenroom. Simonne came in +after her scene. + +“Oh, Father Bosc HAS just scored!” she cried. “The prince was writhing +with laughter and applauded with the rest as though he had been paid +to. I say, do you know the big man sitting beside the prince in the +stage box? A handsome man, with a very sedate expression and splendid +whiskers!” + +“It’s Count Muffat,” replied Fauchery. “I know that the prince, when he +was at the empress’s the day before yesterday, invited him to dinner +for tonight. He’ll have corrupted him afterward!” + +“So that’s Count Muffat! We know his father-in-law, eh, Auguste?” said +Rose, addressing her remark to Mignon. “You know the Marquis de +Chouard, at whose place I went to sing? Well, he’s in the house too. I +noticed him at the back of a box. There’s an old boy for you!” + +Prullière, who had just put on his huge plume of feathers, turned round +and called her. + +“Hi, Rose! Let’s go now!” + +She ran after him, leaving her sentence unfinished. At that moment Mme +Bron, the portress of the theater, passed by the door with an immense +bouquet in her arms. Simonne asked cheerfully if it was for her, but +the porter woman did not vouchsafe an answer and only pointed her chin +toward Nana’s dressing room at the end of the passage. Oh, that Nana! +They were loading her with flowers! Then when Mme Bron returned she +handed a letter to Clarisse, who allowed a smothered oath to escape +her. That beggar La Faloise again! There was a fellow who wouldn’t let +her alone! And when she learned the gentleman in question was waiting +for her at the porter’s lodge she shrieked: + +“Tell him I’m coming down after this act. I’m going to catch him one on +the face.” + +Fontan had rushed forward, shouting: + +“Madame Bron, just listen. Please listen, Madame Bron. I want you to +send up six bottles of champagne between the acts.” + +But the callboy had again made his appearance. He was out of breath, +and in a singsong voice he called out: + +“All to go on the stage! It’s your turn, Monsieur Fontan. Make haste, +make haste!” + +“Yes, yes, I’m going, Father Barillot,” replied Fontan in a flurry. + +And he ran after Mme Bron and continued: + +“You understand, eh? Six bottles of champagne in the greenroom between +the acts. It’s my patron saint’s day, and I’m standing the racket.” + +Simonne and Clarisse had gone off with a great rustling of skirts. +Everybody was swallowed up in the distance, and when the passage door +had banged with its usual hollow sound a fresh hail shower was heard +beating against the windows in the now-silent greenroom. Barillot, a +small, pale-faced ancient, who for thirty years had been a servant in +the theater, had advanced familiarly toward Mignon and had presented +his open snuffbox to him. This proffer of a pinch and its acceptance +allowed him a minute’s rest in his interminable career up and down +stairs and along the dressing-room passage. He certainly had still to +look up Mme Nana, as he called her, but she was one of those who +followed her own sweet will and didn’t care a pin for penalties. Why, +if she chose to be too late she was too late! But he stopped short and +murmured in great surprise: + +“Well, I never! She’s ready; here she is! She must know that the prince +is here.” + +Indeed, Nana appeared in the corridor. She was dressed as a fish hag: +her arms and face were plastered with white paint, and she had a couple +of red dabs under her eyes. Without entering the greenroom she +contented herself by nodding to Mignon and Fauchery. + +“How do? You’re all right?” + +Only Mignon shook her outstretched hand, and she hied royally on her +way, followed by her dresser, who almost trod on her heels while +stooping to adjust the folds of her skirt. In the rear of the dresser +came Satin, closing the procession and trying to look quite the lady, +though she was already bored to death. + +“And Steiner?” asked Mignon sharply. + +“Monsieur Steiner has gone away to the Loiret,” said Barillot, +preparing to return to the neighborhood of the stage. “I expect he’s +gone to buy a country place in those parts.” + +“Ah yes, I know, Nana’s country place.” + +Mignon had grown suddenly serious. Oh, that Steiner! He had promised +Rose a fine house in the old days! Well, well, it wouldn’t do to grow +angry with anybody. Here was a position that would have to be won +again. From fireplace to console table Mignon paced, sunk in thought +yet still unconquered by circumstances. There was no one in the +greenroom now save Fauchery and himself. The journalist was tired and +had flung himself back into the recesses of the big armchair. There he +stayed with half-closed eyes and as quiet as quiet could be, while the +other glanced down at him as he passed. When they were alone Mignon +scorned to slap him at every turn. What good would it have done, since +nobody would have enjoyed the spectacle? He was far too disinterested +to be personally entertained by the farcical scenes in which he figured +as a bantering husband. Glad of this short-lived respite, Fauchery +stretched his feet out languidly toward the fire and let his upturned +eyes wander from the barometer to the clock. In the course of his march +Mignon planted himself in front of Potier’s bust, looked at it without +seeming to see it and then turned back to the window, outside which +yawned the darkling gulf of the courtyard. The rain had ceased, and +there was now a deep silence in the room, which the fierce heat of the +coke fire and the flare of the gas jets rendered still more oppressive. +Not a sound came from the wings: the staircase and the passages were +deadly still. + +That choking sensation of quiet, which behind the scenes immediately +precedes the end of an act, had begun to pervade the empty greenroom. +Indeed, the place seemed to be drowsing off through very breathlessness +amid that faint murmur which the stage gives forth when the whole +troupe are raising the deafening uproar of some grand finale. + +“Oh, the cows!” Bordenave suddenly shouted in his hoarse voice. + +He had only just come up, and he was already howling complaints about +two chorus girls who had nearly fallen flat on the stage because they +were playing the fool together. When his eye lit on Mignon and Fauchery +he called them; he wanted to show them something. The prince had just +notified a desire to compliment Nana in her dressing room during the +next interval. But as he was leading them into the wings the stage +manager passed. + +“Just you find those hags Fernande and Maria!” cried Bordenave +savagely. + +Then calming down and endeavoring to assume the dignified expression +worn by “heavy fathers,” he wiped his face with his pocket handkerchief +and added: + +“I am now going to receive His Highness.” + +The curtain fell amid a long-drawn salvo of applause. Then across the +twilight stage, which was no longer lit up by the footlights, there +followed a disorderly retreat. Actors and supers and chorus made haste +to get back to their dressing rooms while the sceneshifters rapidly +changed the scenery. Simonne and Clarisse, however, had remained “at +the top,” talking together in whispers. On the stage, in an interval +between their lines, they had just settled a little matter. Clarisse, +after viewing the thing in every light, found she preferred not to see +La Faloise, who could never decide to leave her for Gaga, and so +Simonne was simply to go and explain that a woman ought not to be +palled up to in that fashion! At last she agreed to undertake the +mission. + +Then Simonne, in her theatrical laundress’s attire but with furs over +her shoulders, ran down the greasy steps of the narrow, winding stairs +which led between damp walls to the porter’s lodge. This lodge, +situated between the actors’ staircase and that of the management, was +shut in to right and left by large glass partitions and resembled a +huge transparent lantern in which two gas jets were flaring. + +There was a set of pigeonholes in the place in which were piled letters +and newspapers, while on the table various bouquets lay awaiting their +recipients in close proximity to neglected heaps of dirty plates and to +an old pair of stays, the eyelets of which the portress was busy +mending. And in the middle of this untidy, ill-kept storeroom sat four +fashionable, white-gloved society men. They occupied as many ancient +straw-bottomed chairs and, with an expression at once patient and +submissive, kept sharply turning their heads in Mme Bron’s direction +every time she came down from the theater overhead, for on such +occasions she was the bearer of replies. Indeed, she had but now handed +a note to a young man who had hurried out to open it beneath the +gaslight in the vestibule, where he had grown slightly pale on reading +the classic phrase—how often had others read it in that very +place!—“Impossible tonight, my dearie! I’m booked!” La Faloise sat on +one of these chairs at the back of the room, between the table and the +stove. He seemed bent on passing the evening there, and yet he was not +quite happy. Indeed, he kept tucking up his long legs in his endeavors +to escape from a whole litter of black kittens who were gamboling +wildly round them while the mother cat sat bolt upright, staring at him +with yellow eyes. + +“Ah, it’s you, Mademoiselle Simonne! What can I do for you?” asked the +portress. + +Simonne begged her to send La Faloise out to her. But Mme Bron was +unable to comply with her wishes all at once. Under the stairs in a +sort of deep cupboard she kept a little bar, whither the supers were +wont to descend for drinks between the acts, and seeing that just at +that moment there were five or six tall lubbers there who, still +dressed as Boule Noire masqueraders, were dying of thirst and in a +great hurry, she lost her head a bit. A gas jet was flaring in the +cupboard, within which it was possible to descry a tin-covered table +and some shelves garnished with half-emptied bottles. Whenever the door +of this coalhole was opened a violent whiff of alcohol mingled with the +scent of stale cooking in the lodge, as well as with the penetrating +scent of the flowers upon the table. + +“Well now,” continued the portress when she had served the supers, “is +it the little dark chap out there you want?” + +“No, no; don’t be silly!” said Simonne. “It’s the lanky one by the side +of the stove. Your cat’s sniffing at his trouser legs!” + +And with that she carried La Faloise off into the lobby, while the +other gentlemen once more resigned themselves to their fate and to +semisuffocation and the masqueraders drank on the stairs and indulged +in rough horseplay and guttural drunken jests. + +On the stage above Bordenave was wild with the sceneshifters, who +seemed never to have done changing scenes. They appeared to be acting +of set purpose—the prince would certainly have some set piece or other +tumbling on his head. + +“Up with it! Up with it!” shouted the foreman. + +At length the canvas at the back of the stage was raised into position, +and the stage was clear. Mignon, who had kept his eye on Fauchery, +seized this opportunity in order to start his pummeling matches again. +He hugged him in his long arms and cried: + +“Oh, take care! That mast just missed crushing you!” + +And he carried him off and shook him before setting him down again. In +view of the sceneshifters’ exaggerated mirth, Fauchery grew white. His +lips trembled, and he was ready to flare up in anger while Mignon, +shamming good nature, was clapping him on the shoulder with such +affectionate violence as nearly to pulverize him. + +“I value your health, I do!” he kept repeating. “Egad! I should be in a +pretty pickle if anything serious happened to you!” + +But just then a whisper ran through their midst: “The prince! The +prince!” And everybody turned and looked at the little door which +opened out of the main body of the house. At first nothing was visible +save Bordenave’s round back and beefy neck, which bobbed down and +arched up in a series of obsequious obeisances. Then the prince made +his appearance. Largely and strongly built, light of beard and rosy of +hue, he was not lacking in the kind of distinction peculiar to a sturdy +man of pleasure, the square contours of whose limbs are clearly defined +by the irreproachable cut of a frock coat. Behind him walked Count +Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard, but this particular corner of the +theater being dark, the group were lost to view amid huge moving +shadows. + +In order fittingly to address the son of a queen, who would someday +occupy a throne, Bordenave had assumed the tone of a man exhibiting a +bear in the street. In a voice tremulous with false emotion he kept +repeating: + +“If His Highness will have the goodness to follow me—would His Highness +deign to come this way? His Highness will take care!” + +The prince did not hurry in the least. On the contrary, he was greatly +interested and kept pausing in order to look at the sceneshifters’ +maneuvers. A batten had just been lowered, and the group of gaslights +high up among its iron crossbars illuminated the stage with a wide beam +of light. Muffat, who had never yet been behind scenes at a theater, +was even more astonished than the rest. An uneasy feeling of mingled +fear and vague repugnance took possession of him. He looked up into the +heights above him, where more battens, the gas jets on which were +burning low, gleamed like galaxies of little bluish stars amid a chaos +of iron rods, connecting lines of all sizes, hanging stages and +canvases spread out in space, like huge cloths hung out to dry. + +“Lower away!” shouted the foreman unexpectedly. + +And the prince himself had to warn the count, for a canvas was +descending. They were setting the scenery for the third act, which was +the grotto on Mount Etna. Men were busy planting masts in the sockets, +while others went and took frames which were leaning against the walls +of the stage and proceeded to lash them with strong cords to the poles +already in position. At the back of the stage, with a view to producing +the bright rays thrown by Vulcan’s glowing forge, a stand had been +fixed by a limelight man, who was now lighting various burners under +red glasses. The scene was one of confusion, verging to all appearances +on absolute chaos, but every little move had been prearranged. Nay, +amid all the scurry the whistle blower even took a few turns, stepping +short as he did so, in order to rest his legs. + +“His Highness overwhelms me,” said Bordenave, still bowing low. “The +theater is not large, but we do what we can. Now if His Highness deigns +to follow me—” + +Count Muffat was already making for the dressing-room passage. The +really sharp downward slope of the stage had surprised him +disagreeably, and he owed no small part of his present anxiety to a +feeling that its boards were moving under his feet. Through the open +sockets gas was descried burning in the “dock.” Human voices and blasts +of air, as from a vault, came up thence, and, looking down into the +depths of gloom, one became aware of a whole subterranean existence. +But just as the count was going up the stage a small incident occurred +to stop him. Two little women, dressed for the third act, were chatting +by the peephole in the curtain. One of them, straining forward and +widening the hole with her fingers in order the better to observe +things, was scanning the house beyond. + +“I see him,” said she sharply. “Oh, what a mug!” + +Horrified, Bordenave had much ado not to give her a kick. But the +prince smiled and looked pleased and excited by the remark. He gazed +warmly at the little woman who did not care a button for His Highness, +and she, on her part, laughed unblushingly. Bordenave, however, +persuaded the prince to follow him. Muffat was beginning to perspire; +he had taken his hat off. What inconvenienced him most was the stuffy, +dense, overheated air of the place with its strong, haunting smell, a +smell peculiar to this part of a theater, and, as such, compact of the +reek of gas, of the glue used in the manufacture of the scenery, of +dirty dark nooks and corners and of questionably clean chorus girls. In +the passage the air was still more suffocating, and one seemed to +breathe a poisoned atmosphere, which was occasionally relieved by the +acid scents of toilet waters and the perfumes of various soaps +emanating from the dressing rooms. The count lifted his eyes as he +passed and glanced up the staircase, for he was well-nigh startled by +the keen flood of light and warmth which flowed down upon his back and +shoulders. High up above him there was a clicking of ewers and basins, +a sound of laughter and of people calling to one another, a banging of +doors, which in their continual opening and shutting allowed an odor of +womankind to escape—a musky scent of oils and essences mingling with +the natural pungency exhaled from human tresses. He did not stop. Nay, +he hastened his walk: he almost ran, his skin tingling with the breath +of that fiery approach to a world he knew nothing of. + +“A theater’s a curious sight, eh?” said the Marquis de Chouard with the +enchanted expression of a man who once more finds himself amid familiar +surroundings. + +But Bordenave had at length reached Nana’s dressing room at the end of +the passage. He quietly turned the door handle; then, cringing again: + +“If His Highness will have the goodness to enter—” + +They heard the cry of a startled woman and caught sight of Nana as, +stripped to the waist, she slipped behind a curtain while her dresser, +who had been in the act of drying her, stood, towel in air, before +them. + +“Oh, it IS silly to come in that way!” cried Nana from her hiding +place. “Don’t come in; you see you mustn’t come in!” + +Bordenave did not seem to relish this sudden flight. + +“Do stay where you were, my dear. Why, it doesn’t matter,” he said. +“It’s His Highness. Come, come, don’t be childish.” + +And when she still refused to make her appearance—for she was startled +as yet, though she had begun to laugh—he added in peevish, paternal +tones: + +“Good heavens, these gentlemen know perfectly well what a woman looks +like. They won’t eat you.” + +“I’m not so sure of that,” said the prince wittily. + +With that the whole company began laughing in an exaggerated manner in +order to pay him proper court. + +“An exquisitely witty speech—an altogether Parisian speech,” as +Bordenave remarked. + +Nana vouchsafed no further reply, but the curtain began moving. +Doubtless she was making up her mind. Then Count Muffat, with glowing +cheeks, began to take stock of the dressing room. It was a square room +with a very low ceiling, and it was entirely hung with a light-colored +Havana stuff. A curtain of the same material depended from a copper rod +and formed a sort of recess at the end of the room, while two large +windows opened on the courtyard of the theater and were faced, at a +distance of three yards at most, by a leprous-looking wall against +which the panes cast squares of yellow light amid the surrounding +darkness. A large dressing glass faced a white marble toilet table, +which was garnished with a disorderly array of flasks and glass boxes +containing oils, essences and powders. The count went up to the +dressing glass and discovered that he was looking very flushed and had +small drops of perspiration on his forehead. He dropped his eyes and +came and took up a position in front of the toilet table, where the +basin, full of soapy water, the small, scattered, ivory toilet utensils +and the damp sponges, appeared for some moments to absorb his +attention. The feeling of dizziness which he had experienced when he +first visited Nana in the Boulevard Haussmann once more overcame him. +He felt the thick carpet soften under foot, and the gasjets burning by +the dressing table and by the glass seemed to shoot whistling flames +about his temples. For one moment, being afraid of fainting away under +the influence of those feminine odors which he now re-encountered, +intensified by the heat under the low-pitched ceiling, he sat down on +the edge of a softly padded divan between the two windows. But he got +up again almost directly and, returning to the dressing table, seemed +to gaze with vacant eyes into space, for he was thinking of a bouquet +of tuberoses which had once faded in his bedroom and had nearly killed +him in their death. When tuberoses are turning brown they have a human +smell. + +“Make haste!” Bordenave whispered, putting his head in behind the +curtain. + +The prince, however, was listening complaisantly to the Marquis de +Chouard, who had taken up a hare’s-foot on the dressing table and had +begun explaining the way grease paint is put on. In a corner of the +room Satin, with her pure, virginal face, was scanning the gentlemen +keenly, while the dresser, Mme Jules by name, was getting ready Venus’ +tights and tunic. Mme Jules was a woman of no age. She had the +parchment skin and changeless features peculiar to old maids whom no +one ever knew in their younger years. She had indeed shriveled up in +the burning atmosphere of the dressing rooms and amid the most famous +thighs and bosoms in all Paris. She wore everlastingly a faded black +dress, and on her flat and sexless chest a perfect forest of pins +clustered above the spot where her heart should have been. + +“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” said Nana, drawing aside the curtain, +“but you took me by surprise.” + +They all turned round. She had not clothed herself at all, had, in +fact, only buttoned on a little pair of linen stays which half revealed +her bosom. When the gentlemen had put her to flight she had scarcely +begun undressing and was rapidly taking off her fishwife’s costume. +Through the opening in her drawers behind a corner of her shift was +even now visible. There she stood, bare-armed, bare-shouldered, +bare-breasted, in all the adorable glory of her youth and plump, fair +beauty, but she still held the curtain with one hand, as though ready +to draw it to again upon the slightest provocation. + +“Yes, you took me by surprise! I never shall dare—” she stammered in +pretty, mock confusion, while rosy blushes crossed her neck and +shoulders and smiles of embarrassment played about her lips. + +“Oh, don’t apologize,” cried Bordenave, “since these gentlemen approve +of your good looks!” + +But she still tried the hesitating, innocent, girlish game, and, +shivering as though someone were tickling her, she continued: + +“His Highness does me too great an honor. I beg His Highness will +excuse my receiving him thus—” + +“It is I who am importunate,” said the prince, “but, madame, I could +not resist the desire of complimenting you.” + +Thereupon, in order to reach her dressing table, she walked very +quietly and just as she was through the midst of the gentlemen, who +made way for her to pass. + +She had strongly marked hips, which filled her drawers out roundly, +while with swelling bosom she still continued bowing and smiling her +delicate little smile. Suddenly she seemed to recognize Count Muffat, +and she extended her hand to him as an old friend. Then she scolded him +for not having come to her supper party. His Highness deigned to chaff +Muffat about this, and the latter stammered and thrilled again at the +thought that for one second he had held in his own feverish clasp a +little fresh and perfumed hand. The count had dined excellently at the +prince’s, who, indeed, was a heroic eater and drinker. Both of them +were even a little intoxicated, but they behaved very creditably. To +hide the commotion within him Muffat could only remark about the heat. + +“Good heavens, how hot it is here!” he said. “How do you manage to live +in such a temperature, madame?” + +And conversation was about to ensue on this topic when noisy voices +were heard at the dressing-room door. Bordenave drew back the slide +over a grated peephole of the kind used in convents. Fontan was outside +with Prullière and Bosc, and all three had bottles under their arms and +their hands full of glasses. He began knocking and shouting out that it +was his patron saint’s day and that he was standing champagne round. +Nana consulted the prince with a glance. Eh! Oh dear, yes! His Highness +did not want to be in anyone’s way; he would be only too happy! But +without waiting for permission Fontan came in, repeating in baby +accents: + +“Me not a cad, me pay for champagne!” + +Then all of a sudden he became aware of the prince’s presence of which +he had been totally ignorant. He stopped short and, assuming an air of +farcical solemnity, announced: + +“King Dagobert is in the corridor and is desirous of drinking the +health of His Royal Highness.” + +The prince having made answer with a smile, Fontan’s sally was voted +charming. But the dressing room was too small to accommodate everybody, +and it became necessary to crowd up anyhow, Satin and Mme Jules +standing back against the curtain at the end and the men clustering +closely round the half-naked Nana. The three actors still had on the +costumes they had been wearing in the second act, and while Prullière +took off his Alpine admiral’s cocked hat, the huge plume of which would +have knocked the ceiling, Bosc, in his purple cloak and tinware crown, +steadied himself on his tipsy old legs and greeted the prince as became +a monarch receiving the son of a powerful neighbor. The glasses were +filled, and the company began clinking them together. + +“I drink to Your Highness!” said ancient Bosc royally. + +“To the army!” added Prullière. + +“To Venus!” cried Fontan. + +The prince complaisantly poised his glass, waited quietly, bowed thrice +and murmured: + +“Madame! Admiral! Your Majesty!” + +Then he drank it off. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had +followed his example. There was no more jesting now—the company were at +court. Actual life was prolonged in the life of the theater, and a sort +of solemn farce was enacted under the hot flare of the gas. Nana, quite +forgetting that she was in her drawers and that a corner of her shift +stuck out behind, became the great lady, the queen of love, in act to +open her most private palace chambers to state dignitaries. In every +sentence she used the words “Royal Highness” and, bowing with the +utmost conviction, treated the masqueraders, Bosc and Prullière, as if +the one were a sovereign and the other his attendant minister. And no +one dreamed of smiling at this strange contrast, this real prince, this +heir to a throne, drinking a petty actor’s champagne and taking his +ease amid a carnival of gods, a masquerade of royalty, in the society +of dressers and courtesans, shabby players and showmen of venal beauty. +Bordenave was simply ravished by the dramatic aspects of the scene and +began dreaming of the receipts which would have accrued had His +Highness only consented thus to appear in the second act of the Blonde +Venus. + +“I say, shall we have our little women down?” he cried, becoming +familiar. + +Nana would not hear of it. But notwithstanding this, she was giving way +herself. Fontan attracted her with his comic make-up. She brushed +against him and, eying him as a woman in the family way might do when +she fancies some unpleasant kind of food, she suddenly became extremely +familiar: + +“Now then, fill up again, ye great brute!” + +Fontan charged the glasses afresh, and the company drank, repeating the +same toasts. + +“To His Highness!” + +“To the army!” + +“To Venus!” + +But with that Nana made a sign and obtained silence. She raised her +glass and cried: + +“No, no! To Fontan! It’s Fontan’s day; to Fontan! To Fontan!” + +Then they clinked glasses a third time and drank Fontan with all the +honors. The prince, who had noticed the young woman devouring the actor +with her eyes, saluted him with a “Monsieur Fontan, I drink to your +success!” This he said with his customary courtesy. + +But meanwhile the tail of his highness’s frock coat was sweeping the +marble of the dressing table. The place, indeed, was like an alcove or +narrow bathroom, full as it was of the steam of hot water and sponges +and of the strong scent of essences which mingled with the tartish, +intoxicating fumes of the champagne. The prince and Count Muffat, +between whom Nana was wedged, had to lift up their hands so as not to +brush against her hips or her breast with every little movement. And +there stood Mme Jules, waiting, cool and rigid as ever, while Satin, +marveling in the depths of her vicious soul to see a prince and two +gentlemen in black coats going after a naked woman in the society of +dressed-up actors, secretly concluded that fashionable people were not +so very particular after all. + +But Father Barillot’s tinkling bell approached along the passage. At +the door of the dressing room he stood amazed when he caught sight of +the three actors still clad in the costumes which they had worn in the +second act. + +“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he stammered, “do please make haste. They’ve +just rung the bell in the public foyer.” + +“Bah, the public will have to wait!” said Bordenave placidly. + +However, as the bottles were now empty, the comedians went upstairs to +dress after yet another interchange of civilities. Bosc, having dipped +his beard in the champagne, had taken it off, and under his venerable +disguise the drunkard had suddenly reappeared. His was the haggard, +empurpled face of the old actor who has taken to drink. At the foot of +the stairs he was heard remarking to Fontan in his boozy voice: + +“I pulverized him, eh?” + +He was alluding to the prince. + +In Nana’s dressing room none now remained save His Highness, the count +and the marquis. Bordenave had withdrawn with Barillot, whom he advised +not to knock without first letting Madame know. + +“You will excuse me, gentlemen?” asked Nana, again setting to work to +make up her arms and face, of which she was now particularly careful, +owing to her nude appearance in the third act. + +The prince seated himself by the Marquis de Chouard on the divan, and +Count Muffat alone remained standing. In that suffocating heat the two +glasses of champagne they had drunk had increased their intoxication. +Satin, when she saw the gentlemen thus closeting themselves with her +friend, had deemed it discreet to vanish behind the curtain, where she +sat waiting on a trunk, much annoyed at being compelled to remain +motionless, while Mme Jules came and went quietly without word or look. + +“You sang your numbers marvelously,” said the prince. + +And with that they began a conversation, but their sentences were short +and their pauses frequent. Nana, indeed, was not always able to reply. +After rubbing cold cream over her arms and face with the palm of her +hand she laid on the grease paint with the corner of a towel. For one +second only she ceased looking in the glass and smilingly stole a +glance at the prince. + +“His Highness is spoiling me,” she murmured without putting down the +grease paint. + +Her task was a complicated one, and the Marquis de Chouard followed it +with an expression of devout enjoyment. He spoke in his turn. + +“Could not the band accompany you more softly?” he said. “It drowns +your voice, and that’s an unpardonable crime.” + +This time Nana did not turn round. She had taken up the hare’s-foot and +was lightly manipulating it. All her attention was concentrated on this +action, and she bent forward over her toilet table so very far that the +white round contour of her drawers and the little patch of chemise +stood out with the unwonted tension. But she was anxious to prove that +she appreciated the old man’s compliment and therefore made a little +swinging movement with her hips. + +Silence reigned. Mme Jules had noticed a tear in the right leg of her +drawers. She took a pin from over her heart and for a second or so +knelt on the ground, busily at work about Nana’s leg, while the young +woman, without seeming to notice her presence, applied the rice powder, +taking extreme pains as she did so, to avoid putting any on the upper +part of her cheeks. But when the prince remarked that if she were to +come and sing in London all England would want to applaud her, she +laughed amiably and turned round for a moment with her left cheek +looking very white amid a perfect cloud of powder. Then she became +suddenly serious, for she had come to the operation of rouging. And +with her face once more close to the mirror, she dipped her finger in a +jar and began applying the rouge below her eyes and gently spreading it +back toward her temples. The gentlemen maintained a respectful silence. + +Count Muffat, indeed, had not yet opened his lips. He was thinking +perforce of his own youth. The bedroom of his childish days had been +quite cold, and later, when he had reached the age of sixteen and would +give his mother a good-night kiss every evening, he used to carry the +icy feeling of the embrace into the world of dreams. One day in passing +a half-open door he had caught sight of a maidservant washing herself, +and that was the solitary recollection which had in any way troubled +his peace of mind from the days of puberty till the time of marriage. +Afterward he had found his wife strictly obedient to her conjugal +duties but had himself felt a species of religious dislike to them. He +had grown to man’s estate and was now aging, in ignorance of the flesh, +in the humble observance of rigid devotional practices and in obedience +to a rule of life full of precepts and moral laws. And now suddenly he +was dropped down in this actress’s dressing room in the presence of +this undraped courtesan. + +He, who had never seen the Countess Muffat putting on her garters, was +witnessing, amid that wild disarray of jars and basins and that strong, +sweet perfume, the intimate details of a woman’s toilet. His whole +being was in turmoil; he was terrified by the stealthy, all-pervading +influence which for some time past Nana’s presence had been exercising +over him, and he recalled to mind the pious accounts of diabolic +possession which had amused his early years. He was a believer in the +devil, and, in a confused kind of way, Nana was he, with her laughter +and her bosom and her hips, which seemed swollen with many vices. But +he promised himself that he would be strong—nay, he would know how to +defend himself. + +“Well then, it’s agreed,” said the prince, lounging quite comfortably +on the divan. “You will come to London next year, and we shall receive +you so cordially that you will never return to France again. Ah, my +dear Count, you don’t value your pretty women enough. We shall take +them all from you!” + +“That won’t make much odds to him,” murmured the Marquis de Chouard +wickedly, for he occasionally said a risky thing among friends. “The +count is virtue itself.” + +Hearing his virtue mentioned, Nana looked at him so comically that +Muffat felt a keen twinge of annoyance. But directly afterward he was +surprised and angry with himself. Why, in the presence of this +courtesan, should the idea of being virtuous embarrass him? He could +have struck her. But in attempting to take up a brush Nana had just let +it drop on the ground, and as she stooped to pick it up he rushed +forward. Their breath mingled for one moment, and the loosened tresses +of Venus flowed over his hands. But remorse mingled with his enjoyment, +a kind of enjoyment, moreover, peculiar to good Catholics, whom the +fear of hell torments in the midst of their sin. + +At this moment Father Barillot’s voice was heard outside the door. + +“May I give the knocks, madame? The house is growing impatient.” + +“All in good time,” answered Nana quietly. + +She had dipped her paint brush in a pot of kohl, and with the point of +her nose close to the glass and her left eye closed she passed it +delicately along between her eyelashes. Muffat stood behind her, +looking on. He saw her reflection in the mirror, with her rounded +shoulders and her bosom half hidden by a rosy shadow. And despite all +his endeavors he could not turn away his gaze from that face so merry +with dimples and so worn with desire, which the closed eye rendered +more seductive. When she shut her right eye and passed the brush along +it he understood that he belonged to her. + +“They are stamping their feet, madame,” the callboy once more cried. +“They’ll end by smashing the seats. May I give the knocks?” + +“Oh, bother!” said Nana impatiently. “Knock away; I don’t care! If I’m +not ready, well, they’ll have to wait for me!” + +She grew calm again and, turning to the gentlemen, added with a smile: + +“It’s true: we’ve only got a minute left for our talk.” + +Her face and arms were now finished, and with her fingers she put two +large dabs of carmine on her lips. Count Muffat felt more excited than +ever. He was ravished by the perverse transformation wrought by powders +and paints and filled by a lawless yearning for those young painted +charms, for the too-red mouth and the too-white face and the +exaggerated eyes, ringed round with black and burning and dying for +very love. Meanwhile Nana went behind the curtain for a second or two +in order to take off her drawers and slip on Venus’ tights. After +which, with tranquil immodesty, she came out and undid her little linen +stays and held out her arms to Mme Jules, who drew the short-sleeved +tunic over them. + +“Make haste; they’re growing angry!” she muttered. + +The prince with half-closed eyes marked the swelling lines of her bosom +with an air of connoisseurship, while the Marquis de Chouard wagged his +head involuntarily. Muffat gazed at the carpet in order not to see any +more. At length Venus, with only her gauze veil over her shoulders, was +ready to go on the stage. Mme Jules, with vacant, unconcerned eyes and +an expression suggestive of a little elderly wooden doll, still kept +circling round her. With brisk movements she took pins out of the +inexhaustible pincushion over her heart and pinned up Venus’ tunic, but +as she ran over all those plump nude charms with her shriveled hands, +nothing was suggested to her. She was as one whom her sex does not +concern. + +“There!” said the young woman, taking a final look at herself in the +mirror. + +Bordenave was back again. He was anxious and said the third act had +begun. + +“Very well! I’m coming,” replied Nana. “Here’s a pretty fuss! Why, it’s +usually I that waits for the others.” + +The gentlemen left the dressing room, but they did not say good-by, for +the prince had expressed a desire to assist behind the scenes at the +performance of the third act. Left alone, Nana seemed greatly surprised +and looked round her in all directions. + +“Where can she be?” she queried. + +She was searching for Satin. When she had found her again, waiting on +her trunk behind the curtain, Satin quietly replied: + +“Certainly I didn’t want to be in your way with all those men there!” + +And she added further that she was going now. But Nana held her back. +What a silly girl she was! Now that Bordenave had agreed to take her +on! Why, the bargain was to be struck after the play was over! Satin +hesitated. There were too many bothers; she was out of her element! +Nevertheless, she stayed. + +As the prince was coming down the little wooden staircase a strange +sound of smothered oaths and stamping, scuffling feet became audible on +the other side of the theater. The actors waiting for their cues were +being scared by quite a serious episode. For some seconds past Mignon +had been renewing his jokes and smothering Fauchery with caresses. He +had at last invented a little game of a novel kind and had begun +flicking the other’s nose in order, as he phrased it, to keep the flies +off him. This kind of game naturally diverted the actors to any extent. + +But success had suddenly thrown Mignon off his balance. He had launched +forth into extravagant courses and had given the journalist a box on +the ear, an actual, a vigorous, box on the ear. This time he had gone +too far: in the presence of so many spectators it was impossible for +Fauchery to pocket such a blow with laughing equanimity. Whereupon the +two men had desisted from their farce, had sprung at one another’s +throats, their faces livid with hate, and were now rolling over and +over behind a set of side lights, pounding away at each other as though +they weren’t breakable. + +“Monsieur Bordenave, Monsieur Bordenave!” said the stage manager, +coming up in a terrible flutter. + +Bordenave made his excuses to the prince and followed him. When he +recognized Fauchery and Mignon in the men on the floor he gave vent to +an expression of annoyance. They had chosen a nice time, certainly, +with His Highness on the other side of the scenery and all that +houseful of people who might have overheard the row! To make matters +worse, Rose Mignon arrived out of breath at the very moment she was due +on the stage. Vulcan, indeed, was giving her the cue, but Rose stood +rooted to the ground, marveling at sight of her husband and her lover +as they lay wallowing at her feet, strangling one another, kicking, +tearing their hair out and whitening their coats with dust. They barred +the way. A sceneshifter had even stopped Fauchery’s hat just when the +devilish thing was going to bound onto the stage in the middle of the +struggle. Meanwhile Vulcan, who had been gagging away to amuse the +audience, gave Rose her cue a second time. But she stood motionless, +still gazing at the two men. + +“Oh, don’t look at THEM!” Bordenave furiously whispered to her. “Go on +the stage; go on, do! It’s no business of yours! Why, you’re missing +your cue!” + +And with a push from the manager, Rose stepped over the prostrate +bodies and found herself in the flare of the footlights and in the +presence of the audience. She had quite failed to understand why they +were fighting on the floor behind her. Trembling from head to foot and +with a humming in her ears, she came down to the footlights, Diana’s +sweet, amorous smile on her lips, and attacked the opening lines of her +duet with so feeling a voice that the public gave her a veritable +ovation. + +Behind the scenery she could hear the dull thuds caused by the two men. +They had rolled down to the wings, but fortunately the music covered +the noise made by their feet as they kicked against them. + +“By God!” yelled Bordenave in exasperation when at last he had +succeeded in separating them. “Why couldn’t you fight at home? You know +as well as I do that I don’t like this sort of thing. You, Mignon, +you’ll do me the pleasure of staying over here on the prompt side, and +you, Fauchery, if you leave the O.P. side I’ll chuck you out of the +theater. You understand, eh? Prompt side and O.P. side or I forbid Rose +to bring you here at all.” + +When he returned to the prince’s presence the latter asked what was the +matter. + +“Oh, nothing at all,” he murmured quietly. + +Nana was standing wrapped in furs, talking to these gentlemen while +awaiting her cue. As Count Muffat was coming up in order to peep +between two of the wings at the stage, he understood from a sign made +him by the stage manager that he was to step softly. Drowsy warmth was +streaming down from the flies, and in the wings, which were lit by +vivid patches of light, only a few people remained, talking in low +voices or making off on tiptoe. The gasman was at his post amid an +intricate arrangement of cocks; a fireman, leaning against the side +lights, was craning forward, trying to catch a glimpse of things, while +on his seat, high up, the curtain man was watching with resigned +expression, careless of the play, constantly on the alert for the bell +to ring him to his duty among the ropes. And amid the close air and the +shuffling of feet and the sound of whispering, the voices of the actors +on the stage sounded strange, deadened, surprisingly discordant. +Farther off again, above the confused noises of the band, a vast +breathing sound was audible. It was the breath of the house, which +sometimes swelled up till it burst in vague rumors, in laughter, in +applause. Though invisible, the presence of the public could be felt, +even in the silences. + +“There’s something open,” said Nana sharply, and with that she +tightened the folds of her fur cloak. “Do look, Barillot. I bet they’ve +just opened a window. Why, one might catch one’s death of cold here!” + +Barillot swore that he had closed every window himself but suggested +that possibly there were broken panes about. The actors were always +complaining of drafts. Through the heavy warmth of that gaslit region +blasts of cold air were constantly passing—it was a regular influenza +trap, as Fontan phrased it. + +“I should like to see YOU in a low-cut dress,” continued Nana, growing +annoyed. + +“Hush!” murmured Bordenave. + +On the stage Rose rendered a phrase in her duet so cleverly that the +stalls burst into universal applause. Nana was silent at this, and her +face grew grave. Meanwhile the count was venturing down a passage when +Barillot stopped him and said he would make a discovery there. Indeed, +he obtained an oblique back view of the scenery and of the wings which +had been strengthened, as it were, by a thick layer of old posters. +Then he caught sight of a corner of the stage, of the Etna cave +hollowed out in a silver mine and of Vulcan’s forge in the background. +Battens, lowered from above, lit up a sparkling substance which had +been laid on with large dabs of the brush. Side lights with red glasses +and blue were so placed as to produce the appearance of a fiery +brazier, while on the floor of the stage, in the far background, long +lines of gaslight had been laid down in order to throw a wall of dark +rocks into sharp relief. Hard by on a gentle, “practicable” incline, +amid little points of light resembling the illumination lamps scattered +about in the grass on the night of a public holiday, old Mme Drouard, +who played Juno, was sitting dazed and sleepy, waiting for her cue. + +Presently there was a commotion, for Simonne, while listening to a +story Clarisse was telling her, cried out: + +“My! It’s the Tricon!” + +It was indeed the Tricon, wearing the same old curls and looking as +like a litigious great lady as ever. + +When she saw Nana she went straight up to her. + +“No,” said the latter after some rapid phrases had been exchanged, “not +now.” The old lady looked grave. Just then Prullière passed by and +shook hands with her, while two little chorus girls stood gazing at her +with looks of deep emotion. For a moment she seemed to hesitate. Then +she beckoned to Simonne, and the rapid exchange of sentences began +again. + +“Yes,” said Simonne at last. “In half an hour.” + +But as she was going upstairs again to her dressing room, Mme Bron, who +was once more going the rounds with letters, presented one to her. +Bordenave lowered his voice and furiously reproached the portress for +having allowed the Tricon to come in. That woman! And on such an +evening of all others! It made him so angry because His Highness was +there! Mme Bron, who had been thirty years in the theater, replied +quite sourly. How was she to know? she asked. The Tricon did business +with all the ladies—M. le Directeur had met her a score of times +without making remarks. And while Bordenave was muttering oaths the +Tricon stood quietly by, scrutinizing the prince as became a woman who +weighs a man at a glance. A smile lit up her yellow face. Presently she +paced slowly off through the crowd of deeply deferential little women. + +“Immediately, eh?” she queried, turning round again to Simonne. + +Simonne seemed much worried. The letter was from a young man to whom +she had engaged herself for that evening. She gave Mme Bron a scribbled +note in which were the words, “Impossible tonight, darling—I’m booked.” +But she was still apprehensive; the young man might possibly wait for +her in spite of everything. As she was not playing in the third act, +she had a mind to be off at once and accordingly begged Clarisse to go +and see if the man were there. Clarisse was only due on the stage +toward the end of the act, and so she went downstairs while Simonne ran +up for a minute to their common dressing room. + +In Mme Bron’s drinking bar downstairs a super, who was charged with the +part of Pluto, was drinking in solitude amid the folds of a great red +robe diapered with golden flames. The little business plied by the good +portress must have been progressing finely, for the cellarlike hole +under the stairs was wet with emptied heeltaps and water. Clarisse +picked up the tunic of Iris, which was dragging over the greasy steps +behind her, but she halted prudently at the turn in the stairs and was +content simply to crane forward and peer into the lodge. She certainly +had been quick to scent things out! Just fancy! That idiot La Faloise +was still there, sitting on the same old chair between the table and +the stove! He had made pretense of sneaking off in front of Simonne and +had returned after her departure. For the matter of that, the lodge was +still full of gentlemen who sat there gloved, elegant, submissive and +patient as ever. They were all waiting and viewing each other gravely +as they waited. On the table there were now only some dirty plates, Mme +Bron having recently distributed the last of the bouquets. A single +fallen rose was withering on the floor in the neighborhood of the black +cat, who had lain down and curled herself up while the kittens ran wild +races and danced fierce gallops among the gentlemen’s legs. Clarisse +was momentarily inclined to turn La Faloise out. The idiot wasn’t fond +of animals, and that put the finishing touch to him! He was busy +drawing in his legs because the cat was there, and he didn’t want to +touch her. + +“He’ll nip you; take care!” said Pluto, who was a joker, as he went +upstairs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. + +After that Clarisse gave up the idea of hauling La Faloise over the +coals. She had seen Mme Bron giving the letter to Simonne’s young man, +and he had gone out to read it under the gas light in the lobby. +“Impossible tonight, darling—I’m booked.” And with that he had +peaceably departed, as one who was doubtless used to the formula. He, +at any rate, knew how to conduct himself! Not so the others, the +fellows who sat there doggedly on Mme Bron’s battered straw-bottomed +chairs under the great glazed lantern, where the heat was enough to +roast you and there was an unpleasant odor. What a lot of men it must +have held! Clarisse went upstairs again in disgust, crossed over behind +scenes and nimbly mounted three flights of steps which led to the +dressing rooms, in order to bring Simonne her reply. + +Downstairs the prince had withdrawn from the rest and stood talking to +Nana. He never left her; he stood brooding over her through half-shut +eyelids. Nana did not look at him but, smiling, nodded yes. Suddenly, +however, Count Muffat obeyed an overmastering impulse, and leaving +Bordenave, who was explaining to him the working of the rollers and +windlasses, he came up in order to interrupt their confabulations. Nana +lifted her eyes and smiled at him as she smiled at His Highness. But +she kept her ears open notwithstanding, for she was waiting for her +cue. + +“The third act is the shortest, I believe,” the prince began saying, +for the count’s presence embarrassed him. + +She did not answer; her whole expression altered; she was suddenly +intent on her business. With a rapid movement of the shoulders she had +let her furs slip from her, and Mme Jules, standing behind, had caught +them in her arms. And then after passing her two hands to her hair as +though to make it fast, she went on the stage in all her nudity. + +“Hush, hush!” whispered Bordenave. + +The count and the prince had been taken by surprise. There was profound +silence, and then a deep sigh and the far-off murmur of a multitude +became audible. Every evening when Venus entered in her godlike +nakedness the same effect was produced. Then Muffat was seized with a +desire to see; he put his eye to the peephole. Above and beyond the +glowing arc formed by the footlights the dark body of the house seemed +full of ruddy vapor, and against this neutral-tinted background, where +row upon row of faces struck a pale, uncertain note, Nana stood forth +white and vast, so that the boxes from the balcony to the flies were +blotted from view. He saw her from behind, noted her swelling hips, her +outstretched arms, while down on the floor, on the same level as her +feet, the prompter’s head—an old man’s head with a humble, honest +face—stood on the edge of the stage, looking as though it had been +severed from the body. At certain points in her opening number an +undulating movement seemed to run from her neck to her waist and to die +out in the trailing border of her tunic. When amid a tempest of +applause she had sung her last note she bowed, and the gauze floated +forth round about her limbs, and her hair swept over her waist as she +bent sharply backward. And seeing her thus, as with bending form and +with exaggerated hips she came backing toward the count’s peephole, he +stood upright again, and his face was very white. The stage had +disappeared, and he now saw only the reverse side of the scenery with +its display of old posters pasted up in every direction. On the +practicable slope, among the lines of gas jets, the whole of Olympus +had rejoined the dozing Mme Drouard. They were waiting for the close of +the act. Bosc and Fontan sat on the floor with their knees drawn up to +their chins, and Prullière stretched himself and yawned before going +on. Everybody was worn out; their eyes were red, and they were longing +to go home to sleep. + +Just then Fauchery, who had been prowling about on the O.P. side ever +since Bordenave had forbidden him the other, came and buttonholed the +count in order to keep himself in countenance and offered at the same +time to show him the dressing rooms. An increasing sense of languor had +left Muffat without any power of resistance, and after looking round +for the Marquis de Chouard, who had disappeared, he ended by following +the journalist. He experienced a mingled feeling of relief and anxiety +as he left the wings whence he had been listening to Nana’s songs. + +Fauchery had already preceded him up the staircase, which was closed on +the first and second floors by low-paneled doors. It was one of those +stairways which you find in miserable tenements. Count Muffat had seen +many such during his rounds as member of the Benevolent Organization. +It was bare and dilapidated: there was a wash of yellow paint on its +walls; its steps had been worn by the incessant passage of feet, and +its iron balustrade had grown smooth under the friction of many hands. +On a level with the floor on every stairhead there was a low window +which resembled a deep, square venthole, while in lanterns fastened to +the walls flaring gas jets crudely illuminated the surrounding squalor +and gave out a glowing heat which, as it mounted up the narrow +stairwell, grew ever more intense. + +When he reached the foot of the stairs the count once more felt the hot +breath upon his neck and shoulders. As of old it was laden with the +odor of women, wafted amid floods of light and sound from the dressing +rooms above, and now with every upward step he took the musky scent of +powders and the tart perfume of toilet vinegars heated and bewildered +him more and more. On the first floor two corridors ran backward, +branching sharply off and presenting a set of doors to view which were +painted yellow and numbered with great white numerals in such a way as +to suggest a hotel with a bad reputation. The tiles on the floor had +been many of them unbedded, and the old house being in a state of +subsidence, they stuck up like hummocks. The count dashed recklessly +forward, glanced through a half-open door and saw a very dirty room +which resembled a barber’s shop in a poor part of the town. In was +furnished with two chairs, a mirror and a small table containing a +drawer which had been blackened by the grease from brushes and combs. A +great perspiring fellow with smoking shoulders was changing his linen +there, while in a similar room next door a woman was drawing on her +gloves preparatory to departure. Her hair was damp and out of curl, as +though she had just had a bath. But Fauchery began calling the count, +and the latter was rushing up without delay when a furious “damn!” +burst from the corridor on the right. Mathilde, a little drab of a +miss, had just broken her washhand basin, the soapy water from which +was flowing out to the stairhead. A dressing room door banged noisily. +Two women in their stays skipped across the passage, and another, with +the hem of her shift in her mouth, appeared and immediately vanished +from view. Then followed a sound of laughter, a dispute, the snatch of +a song which was suddenly broken off short. All along the passage naked +gleams, sudden visions of white skin and wan underlinen were observable +through chinks in doorways. Two girls were making very merry, showing +each other their birthmarks. One of them, a very young girl, almost a +child, had drawn her skirts up over her knees in order to sew up a rent +in her drawers, and the dressers, catching sight of the two men, drew +some curtains half to for decency’s sake. The wild stampede which +follows the end of a play had already begun, the grand removal of white +paint and rouge, the reassumption amid clouds of rice powder of +ordinary attire. The strange animal scent came in whiffs of redoubled +intensity through the lines of banging doors. On the third story Muffat +abandoned himself to the feeling of intoxication which was overpowering +him. For the chorus girls’ dressing room was there, and you saw a crowd +of twenty women and a wild display of soaps and flasks of lavender +water. The place resembled the common room in a slum lodging house. As +he passed by he heard fierce sounds of washing behind a closed door and +a perfect storm raging in a washhand basin. And as he was mounting up +to the topmost story of all, curiosity led him to risk one more little +peep through an open loophole. The room was empty, and under the flare +of the gas a solitary chamber pot stood forgotten among a heap of +petticoats trailing on the floor. This room afforded him his ultimate +impression. Upstairs on the fourth floor he was well-nigh suffocated. +All the scents, all the blasts of heat, had found their goal there. The +yellow ceiling looked as if it had been baked, and a lamp burned amid +fumes of russet-colored fog. For some seconds he leaned upon the iron +balustrade which felt warm and damp and well-nigh human to the touch. +And he shut his eyes and drew a long breath and drank in the sexual +atmosphere of the place. Hitherto he had been utterly ignorant of it, +but now it beat full in his face. + +“Do come here,” shouted Fauchery, who had vanished some moments ago. +“You’re being asked for.” + +At the end of the corridor was the dressing room belonging to Clarisse +and Simonne. It was a long, ill-built room under the roof with a garret +ceiling and sloping walls. The light penetrated to it from two deep-set +openings high up in the wall, but at that hour of the night the +dressing room was lit by flaring gas. It was papered with a paper at +seven sous a roll with a pattern of roses twining over green +trelliswork. Two boards, placed near one another and covered with +oilcloth, did duty for dressing tables. They were black with spilled +water, and underneath them was a fine medley of dinted zinc jugs, slop +pails and coarse yellow earthenware crocks. There was an array of fancy +articles in the room—a battered, soiled and well-worn array of chipped +basins, of toothless combs, of all those manifold untidy trifles which, +in their hurry and carelessness, two women will leave scattered about +when they undress and wash together amid purely temporary surroundings, +the dirty aspect of which has ceased to concern them. + +“Do come here,” Fauchery repeated with the good-humored familiarity +which men adopt among their fallen sisters. “Clarisse is wanting to +kiss you.” + +Muffat entered the room at last. But what was his surprise when he +found the Marquis de Chouard snugly enscounced on a chair between the +two dressing tables! The marquis had withdrawn thither some time ago. +He was spreading his feet apart because a pail was leaking and letting +a whitish flood spread over the floor. He was visibly much at his ease, +as became a man who knew all the snug corners, and had grown quite +merry in the close dressing room, where people might have been bathing, +and amid those quietly immodest feminine surroundings which the +uncleanness of the little place rendered at once natural and poignant. + +“D’you go with the old boy?” Simonne asked Clarisse in a whisper. + +“Rather!” replied the latter aloud. + +The dresser, a very ugly and extremely familiar young girl, who was +helping Simonne into her coat, positively writhed with laughter. The +three pushed each other and babbled little phrases which redoubled +their merriment. + +“Come, Clarisse, kiss the gentleman,” said Fauchery. “You know, he’s +got the rhino.” + +And turning to the count: + +“You’ll see, she’s very nice! She’s going to kiss you!” + +But Clarisse was disgusted by the men. She spoke in violent terms of +the dirty lot waiting at the porter’s lodge down below. Besides, she +was in a hurry to go downstairs again; they were making her miss her +last scene. Then as Fauchery blocked up the doorway, she gave Muffat a +couple of kisses on the whiskers, remarking as she did so: + +“It’s not for you, at any rate! It’s for that nuisance Fauchery!” + +And with that she darted off, and the count remained much embarrassed +in his father-in-law’s presence. The blood had rushed to his face. In +Nana’s dressing room, amid all the luxury of hangings and mirrors, he +had not experienced the sharp physical sensation which the shameful +wretchedness of that sorry garret excited within him, redolent as it +was of these two girls’ self-abandonment. Meanwhile the marquis had +hurried in the rear of Simonne, who was making off at the top of her +pace, and he kept whispering in her ear while she shook her head in +token of refusal. Fauchery followed them, laughing. And with that the +count found himself alone with the dresser, who was washing out the +basins. Accordingly he took his departure, too, his legs almost failing +under him. Once more he put up flights of half-dressed women and caused +doors to bang as he advanced. But amid the disorderly, disbanded troops +of girls to be found on each of the four stories, he was only +distinctly aware of a cat, a great tortoise-shell cat, which went +gliding upstairs through the ovenlike place where the air was poisoned +with musk, rubbing its back against the banisters and keeping its tail +exceedingly erect. + +“Yes, to be sure!” said a woman hoarsely. “I thought they’d keep us +back tonight! What a nuisance they are with their calls!” + +The end had come; the curtain had just fallen. There was a veritable +stampede on the staircase—its walls rang with exclamations, and +everyone was in a savage hurry to dress and be off. As Count Muffat +came down the last step or two he saw Nana and the prince passing +slowly along the passage. The young woman halted and lowered her voice +as she said with a smile: + +“All right then—by and by!” + +The prince returned to the stage, where Bordenave was awaiting him. And +left alone with Nana, Muffat gave way to an impulse of anger and +desire. He ran up behind her and, as she was on the point of entering +her dressing room, imprinted a rough kiss on her neck among little +golden hairs curling low down between her shoulders. It was as though +he had returned the kiss that had been given him upstairs. Nana was in +a fury; she lifted her hand, but when she recognized the count she +smiled. + +“Oh, you frightened me,” she said simply. + +And her smile was adorable in its embarrassment and submissiveness, as +though she had despaired of this kiss and were happy to have received +it. But she could do nothing for him either that evening or the day +after. It was a case of waiting. Nay, even if it had been in her power +she would still have let herself be desired. Her glance said as much. +At length she continued: + +“I’m a landowner, you know. Yes, I’m buying a country house near +Orleans, in a part of the world to which you sometimes betake yourself. +Baby told me you did—little Georges Hugon, I mean. You know him? So +come and see me down there.” + +The count was a shy man, and the thought of his roughness had +frightened him; he was ashamed of what he had done and he bowed +ceremoniously, promising at the same time to take advantage of her +invitation. Then he walked off as one who dreams. + +He was rejoining the prince when, passing in front of the foyer, he +heard Satin screaming out: + +“Oh, the dirty old thing! Just you bloody well leave me alone!” + +It was the Marquis de Chouard who was tumbling down over Satin. The +girl had decidedly had enough of the fashionable world! Nana had +certainly introduced her to Bordenave, but the necessity of standing +with sealed lips for fear of allowing some awkward phrase to escape her +had been too much for her feelings, and now she was anxious to regain +her freedom, the more so as she had run against an old flame of hers in +the wings. This was the super, to whom the task of impersonating Pluto +had been entrusted, a pastry cook, who had already treated her to a +whole week of love and flagellation. She was waiting for him, much +irritated at the things the marquis was saying to her, as though she +were one of those theatrical ladies! And so at last she assumed a +highly respectable expression and jerked out this phrase: + +“My husband’s coming! You’ll see.” + +Meanwhile the worn-looking artistes were dropping off one after the +other in their outdoor coats. Groups of men and women were coming down +the little winding staircase, and the outlines of battered hats and +worn-out shawls were visible in the shadows. They looked colorless and +unlovely, as became poor play actors who have got rid of their paint. +On the stage, where the side lights and battens were being +extinguished, the prince was listening to an anecdote Bordenave was +telling him. He was waiting for Nana, and when at length she made her +appearance the stage was dark, and the fireman on duty was finishing +his round, lantern in hand. Bordenave, in order to save His Highness +going about by the Passage des Panoramas, had made them open the +corridor which led from the porter’s lodge to the entrance hall of the +theater. Along this narrow alley little women were racing pell-mell, +for they were delighted to escape from the men who were waiting for +them in the other passage. They went jostling and elbowing along, +casting apprehensive glances behind them and only breathing freely when +they got outside. Fontan, Bosc and Prullière, on the other hand, +retired at a leisurely pace, joking at the figure cut by the serious, +paying admirers who were striding up and down the Galerie des Variétés +at a time when the little dears were escaping along the boulevard with +the men of their hearts. But Clarisse was especially sly. She had her +suspicions about La Faloise, and, as a matter of fact, he was still in +his place in the lodge among the gentlemen obstinately waiting on Mme +Bron’s chairs. They all stretched forward, and with that she passed +brazenly by in the wake of a friend. The gentlemen were blinking in +bewilderment over the wild whirl of petticoats eddying at the foot of +the narrow stairs. It made them desperate to think they had waited so +long, only to see them all flying away like this without being able to +recognize a single one. The litter of little black cats were sleeping +on the oilcloth, nestled against their mother’s belly, and the latter +was stretching her paws out in a state of beatitude while the big +tortoise-shell cat sat at the other end of the table, her tail +stretched out behind her and her yellow eyes solemnly following the +flight of the women. + +“If His Highness will be good enough to come this way,” said Bordenave +at the bottom of the stairs, and he pointed to the passage. + +Some chorus girls were still crowding along it. The prince began +following Nana while Muffat and the marquis walked behind. + +It was a long, narrow passage lying between the theater and the house +next door, a kind of contracted by-lane which had been covered with a +sloping glass roof. Damp oozed from the walls, and the footfall sounded +as hollow on the tiled floor as in an underground vault. It was crowded +with the kind of rubbish usually found in a garret. There was a +workbench on which the porter was wont to plane such parts of the +scenery as required it, besides a pile of wooden barriers which at +night were placed at the doors of the theater for the purpose of +regulating the incoming stream of people. Nana had to pick up her dress +as she passed a hydrant which, through having been carelessly turned +off, was flooding the tiles underfoot. In the entrance hall the company +bowed and said good-by. And when Bordenave was alone he summed up his +opinion of the prince in a shrug of eminently philosophic disdain. + +“He’s a bit of a duffer all the same,” he said to Fauchery without +entering on further explanations, and with that Rose Mignon carried the +journalist off with her husband in order to effect a reconciliation +between them at home. + +Muffat was left alone on the sidewalk. His Highness had handed Nana +quietly into his carriage, and the marquis had slipped off after Satin +and her super. In his excitement he was content to follow this vicious +pair in vague hopes of some stray favor being granted him. Then with +brain on fire Muffat decided to walk home. The struggle within him had +wholly ceased. The ideas and beliefs of the last forty years were being +drowned in a flood of new life. While he was passing along the +boulevards the roll of the last carriages deafened him with the name of +Nana; the gaslights set nude limbs dancing before his eyes—the nude +limbs, the lithe arms, the white shoulders, of Nana. And he felt that +he was hers utterly: he would have abjured everything, sold everything, +to possess her for a single hour that very night. Youth, a lustful +puberty of early manhood, was stirring within him at last, flaming up +suddenly in the chaste heart of the Catholic and amid the dignified +traditions of middle age. + + + + + CHAPTER VI + + +Count Muffat, accompanied by his wife and daughter, had arrived +overnight at Les Fondettes, where Mme Hugon, who was staying there with +only her son Georges, had invited them to come and spend a week. The +house, which had been built at the end of the eighteenth century, stood +in the middle of a huge square enclosure. It was perfectly unadorned, +but the garden possessed magnificent shady trees and a chain of tanks +fed by running spring water. It stood at the side of the road which +leads from Orleans to Paris and with its rich verdure and +high-embowered trees broke the monotony of that flat countryside, where +fields stretched to the horizon’s verge. + +At eleven o’clock, when the second lunch bell had called the whole +household together, Mme Hugon, smiling in her kindly maternal way, gave +Sabine two great kisses, one on each cheek, and said as she did so: + +“You know it’s my custom in the country. Oh, seeing you here makes me +feel twenty years younger. Did you sleep well in your old room?” + +Then without waiting for her reply she turned to Estelle: + +“And this little one, has she had a nap too? Give me a kiss, my child.” + +They had taken their seats in the vast dining room, the windows of +which looked out on the park. But they only occupied one end of the +long table, where they sat somewhat crowded together for company’s +sake. Sabine, in high good spirits, dwelt on various childish memories +which had been stirred up within her—memories of months passed at Les +Fondettes, of long walks, of a tumble into one of the tanks on a summer +evening, of an old romance of chivalry discovered by her on the top of +a cupboard and read during the winter before fires made of vine +branches. And Georges, who had not seen the countess for some months, +thought there was something curious about her. Her face seemed changed, +somehow, while, on the other hand, that stick of an Estelle seemed more +insignificant and dumb and awkward than ever. + +While such simple fare as cutlets and boiled eggs was being discussed +by the company, Mme Hugon, as became a good housekeeper, launched out +into complaints. The butchers, she said, were becoming impossible. She +bought everything at Orleans, and yet they never brought her the pieces +she asked for. Yet, alas, if her guests had nothing worth eating it was +their own fault: they had come too late in the season. + +“There’s no sense in it,” she said. “I’ve been expecting you since +June, and now we’re half through September. You see, it doesn’t look +pretty.” + +And with a movement she pointed to the trees on the grass outside, the +leaves of which were beginning to turn yellow. The day was covered, and +the distance was hidden by a bluish haze which was fraught with a sweet +and melancholy peacefulness. + +“Oh, I’m expecting company,” she continued. “We shall be gayer then! +The first to come will be two gentlemen whom Georges has +invited—Monsieur Fauchery and Monsieur Daguenet; you know them, do you +not? Then we shall have Monsieur de Vandeuvres, who has promised me a +visit these five years past. This time, perhaps, he’ll make up his +mind!” + +“Oh, well and good!” said the countess, laughing. “If we only can get +Monsieur de Vandeuvres! But he’s too much engaged.” + +“And Philippe?” queried Muffat. + +“Philippe has asked for a furlough,” replied the old lady, “but without +doubt you won’t be at Les Fondettes any longer when he arrives.” + +The coffee was served. Paris was now the subject of conversation, and +Steiner’s name was mentioned, at which Mme Hugon gave a little cry. + +“Let me see,” she said; “Monsieur Steiner is that stout man I met at +your house one evening. He’s a banker, is he not? Now there’s a +detestable man for you! Why, he’s gone and bought an actress an estate +about a league from here, over Gumières way, beyond the Choue. The +whole countryside’s scandalized. Did you know about that, my friend?” + +“I knew nothing about it,” replied Muffat. “Ah, then, Steiner’s bought +a country place in the neighborhood!” + +Hearing his mother broach the subject, Georges looked into his coffee +cup, but in his astonishment at the count’s answer he glanced up at him +and stared. Why was he lying so glibly? The count, on his side, noticed +the young fellow’s movement and gave him a suspicious glance. Mme Hugon +continued to go into details: the country place was called La Mignotte. +In order to get there one had to go up the bank of the Choue as far as +Gumières in order to cross the bridge; otherwise one got one’s feet wet +and ran the risk of a ducking. + +“And what is the actress’s name?” asked the countess. + +“Oh, I wasn’t told,” murmured the old lady. “Georges, you were there +the morning the gardener spoke to us about it.” + +Georges appeared to rack his brains. Muffat waited, twirling a teaspoon +between his fingers. Then the countess addressed her husband: + +“Isn’t Monsieur Steiner with that singer at the Variétés, that Nana?” + +“Nana, that’s the name! A horrible woman!” cried Mme Hugon with growing +annoyance. “And they are expecting her at La Mignotte. I’ve heard all +about it from the gardener. Didn’t the gardener say they were expecting +her this evening, Georges?” + +The count gave a little start of astonishment, but Georges replied with +much vivacity: + +“Oh, Mother, the gardener spoke without knowing anything about it. +Directly afterward the coachman said just the opposite. Nobody’s +expected at La Mignotte before the day after tomorrow.” + +He tried hard to assume a natural expression while he slyly watched the +effect of his remarks on the count. The latter was twirling his spoon +again as though reassured. The countess, her eyes fixed dreamily on the +blue distances of the park, seemed to have lost all interest in the +conversation. The shadow of a smile on her lips, she seemed to be +following up a secret thought which had been suddenly awakened within +her. Estelle, on the other hand, sitting stiffly on her chair, had +heard all that had been said about Nana, but her white, virginal face +had not betrayed a trace of emotion. + +“Dear me, dear me! I’ve got no right to grow angry,” murmured Mme Hugon +after a pause, and with a return to her old good humor she added: + +“Everybody’s got a right to live. If we meet this said lady on the road +we shall not bow to her—that’s all!” + +And as they got up from table she once more gently upbraided the +Countess Sabine for having been so long in coming to her that year. But +the countess defended herself and threw the blame of the delays upon +her husband’s shoulders. Twice on the eve of departure, when all the +trunks were locked, he counterordered their journey on the plea of +urgent business. Then he had suddenly decided to start just when the +trip seemed shelved. Thereupon the old lady told them how Georges in +the same way had twice announced his arrival without arriving and had +finally cropped up at Les Fondettes the day before yesterday, when she +was no longer expecting him. They had come down into the garden, and +the two men, walking beside the ladies, were listening to them in +consequential silence. + +“Never mind,” said Mme Hugon, kissing her son’s sunny locks, “Zizi is a +very good boy to come and bury himself in the country with his mother. +He’s a dear Zizi not to forget me!” + +In the afternoon she expressed some anxiety, for Georges, directly +after leaving the table, had complained of a heavy feeling in his head +and now seemed in for an atrocious sick headache. Toward four o’clock +he said he would go upstairs to bed: it was the only remedy. After +sleeping till tomorrow morning he would be perfectly himself again. His +mother was bent on putting him to bed herself, but as she left the room +he ran and locked the door, explaining that he was shutting himself in +so that no one should come and disturb him. Then caressingly he +shouted, “Good night till tomorrow, little Mother!” and promised to +take a nap. But he did not go to bed again and with flushed cheeks and +bright eyes noiselessly put on his clothes. Then he sat on a chair and +waited. When the dinner bell rang he listened for Count Muffat, who was +on his way to the dining room, and ten minutes later, when he was +certain that no one would see him, he slipped from the window to the +ground with the assistance of a rain pipe. His bedroom was situated on +the first floor and looked out upon the rear of the house. He threw +himself among some bushes and got out of the park and then galloped +across the fields with empty stomach and heart beating with excitement. +Night was closing in, and a small fine rain was beginning to fall. + +It was the very evening that Nana was due at La Mignotte. Ever since in +the preceding May Steiner had bought her this country place she had +from time to time been so filled with the desire of taking possession +that she had wept hot tears about, but on each of these occasions +Bordenave had refused to give her even the shortest leave and had +deferred her holiday till September on the plea that he did not intend +putting an understudy in her place, even for one evening, now that the +exhibition was on. Toward the close of August he spoke of October. Nana +was furious and declared that she would be at La Mignotte in the middle +of September. Nay, in order to dare Bordenave, she even invited a crowd +of guests in his very presence. One afternoon in her rooms, as Muffat, +whose advances she still adroitly resisted, was beseeching her with +tremulous emotion to yield to his entreaties, she at length promised to +be kind, but not in Paris, and to him, too, she named the middle of +September. Then on the twelfth she was seized by a desire to be off +forthwith with Zoé as her sole companion. It might be that Bordenave +had got wind of her intentions and was about to discover some means of +detaining her. She was delighted at the notion of putting him in a fix, +and she sent him a doctor’s certificate. When once the idea had entered +her head of being the first to get to La Mignotte and of living there +two days without anybody knowing anything about it, she rushed Zoé +through the operation of packing and finally pushed her into a cab, +where in a sudden burst of extreme contrition she kissed her and begged +her pardon. It was only when they got to the station refreshment room +that she thought of writing Steiner of her movements. She begged him to +wait till the day after tomorrow before rejoining her if he wanted to +find her quite bright and fresh. And then, suddenly conceiving another +project, she wrote a second letter, in which she besought her aunt to +bring little Louis to her at once. It would do Baby so much good! And +how happy they would be together in the shade of the trees! In the +railway carriage between Paris and Orleans she spoke of nothing else; +her eyes were full of tears; she had an unexpected attack of maternal +tenderness and mingled together flowers, birds and child in her every +sentence. + +La Mignotte was more than three leagues away from the station, and Nana +lost a good hour over the hire of a carriage, a huge, dilapidated +calash, which rumbled slowly along to an accompaniment of rattling old +iron. She had at once taken possession of the coachman, a little +taciturn old man whom she overwhelmed with questions. Had he often +passed by La Mignotte? It was behind this hill then? There ought to be +lots of trees there, eh? And the house could one see it at a distance? +The little old man answered with a succession of grunts. Down in the +calash Nana was almost dancing with impatience, while Zoé, in her +annoyance at having left Paris in such a hurry, sat stiffly sulking +beside her. The horse suddenly stopped short, and the young woman +thought they had reached their destination. She put her head out of the +carriage door and asked: + +“Are we there, eh?” + +By way of answer the driver whipped up his horse, which was in the act +of painfully climbing a hill. Nana gazed ecstatically at the vast plain +beneath the gray sky where great clouds were banked up. + +“Oh, do look, Zoé! There’s greenery! Now, is that all wheat? Good lord, +how pretty it is!” + +“One can quite see that Madame doesn’t come from the country,” was the +servant’s prim and tardy rejoinder. “As for me, I knew the country only +too well when I was with my dentist. He had a house at Bougival. No, +it’s cold, too, this evening. It’s damp in these parts.” + +They were driving under the shadow of a wood, and Nana sniffed up the +scent of the leaves as a young dog might. All of a sudden at a turn of +the road she caught sight of the corner of a house among the trees. +Perhaps it was there! And with that she began a conversation with the +driver, who continued shaking his head by way of saying no. Then as +they drove down the other side of the hill he contented himself by +holding out his whip and muttering, “’Tis down there.” + +She got up and stretched herself almost bodily out of the carriage +door. + +“Where is it? Where is it?” she cried with pale cheeks, but as yet she +saw nothing. + +At last she caught sight of a bit of wall. And then followed a +succession of little cries and jumps, the ecstatic behavior of a woman +overcome by a new and vivid sensation. + +“I see it! I see it, Zoé! Look out at the other side. Oh, there’s a +terrace with brick ornaments on the roof! And there’s a hothouse down +there! But the place is immense. Oh, how happy I am! Do look, Zoé! Now, +do look!” + +The carriage had by this time pulled up before the park gates. A side +door was opened, and the gardener, a tall, dry fellow, made his +appearance, cap in hand. Nana made an effort to regain her dignity, for +the driver seemed now to be suppressing a laugh behind his dry, +speechless lips. She refrained from setting off at a run and listened +to the gardener, who was a very talkative fellow. He begged Madame to +excuse the disorder in which she found everything, seeing that he had +only received Madame’s letter that very morning. But despite all his +efforts, she flew off at a tangent and walked so quickly that Zoé could +scarcely follow her. At the end of the avenue she paused for a moment +in order to take the house in at a glance. It was a great pavilion-like +building in the Italian manner, and it was flanked by a smaller +construction, which a rich Englishman, after two years’ residence in +Naples, had caused to be erected and had forthwith become disgusted +with. + +“I’ll take Madame over the house,” said the gardener. + +But she had outrun him entirely, and she shouted back that he was not +to put himself out and that she would go over the house by herself. She +preferred doing that, she said. And without removing her hat she dashed +into the different rooms, calling to Zoé as she did so, shouting her +impressions from one end of each corridor to the other and filling the +empty house, which for long months had been uninhabited, with +exclamations and bursts of laughter. In the first place, there was the +hall. It was a little damp, but that didn’t matter; one wasn’t going to +sleep in it. Then came the drawing room, quite the thing, the drawing +room, with its windows opening on the lawn. Only the red upholsteries +there were hideous; she would alter all that. As to the dining +room-well, it was a lovely dining room, eh? What big blowouts you might +give in Paris if you had a dining room as large as that! As she was +going upstairs to the first floor it occurred to her that she had not +seen the kitchen, and she went down again and indulged in ecstatic +exclamations. Zoé ought to admire the beautiful dimensions of the sink +and the width of the hearth, where you might have roasted a sheep! When +she had gone upstairs again her bedroom especially enchanted her. It +had been hung with delicate rose-colored Louis XVI cretonne by an +Orleans upholsterer. Dear me, yes! One ought to sleep jolly sound in +such a room as that; why, it was a real best bedroom! Then came four or +five guest chambers and then some splendid garrets, which would be +extremely convenient for trunks and boxes. Zoé looked very gruff and +cast a frigid glance into each of the rooms as she lingered in Madame’s +wake. She saw Nana disappearing up the steep garret ladder and said, +“Thanks, I haven’t the least wish to break my legs.” But the sound of a +voice reached her from far away; indeed, it seemed to come whistling +down a chimney. + +“Zoé, Zoé, where are you? Come up, do! You’ve no idea! It’s like +fairyland!” + +Zoé went up, grumbling. On the roof she found her mistress leaning +against the brickwork balustrade and gazing at the valley which spread +out into the silence. The horizon was immeasurably wide, but it was now +covered by masses of gray vapor, and a fierce wind was driving fine +rain before it. Nana had to hold her hat on with both hands to keep it +from being blown away while her petticoats streamed out behind her, +flapping like a flag. + +“Not if I know it!” said Zoé, drawing her head in at once. “Madame will +be blown away. What beastly weather!” + +Madame did not hear what she said. With her head over the balustrade +she was gazing at the grounds beneath. They consisted of seven or eight +acres of land enclosed within a wall. Then the view of the kitchen +garden entirely engrossed her attention. She darted back, jostling the +lady’s maid at the top of the stairs and bursting out: + +“It’s full of cabbages! Oh, such woppers! And lettuces and sorrel and +onions and everything! Come along, make haste!” + +The rain was falling more heavily now, and she opened her white silk +sunshade and ran down the garden walks. + +“Madame will catch cold,” cried Zoé, who had stayed quietly behind +under the awning over the garden door. + +But Madame wanted to see things, and at each new discovery there was a +burst of wonderment. + +“Zoé, here’s spinach! Do come. Oh, look at the artichokes! They are +funny. So they grow in the ground, do they? Now, what can that be? I +don’t know it. Do come, Zoé, perhaps you know.” + +The lady’s maid never budged an inch. Madame must really be raving mad. +For now the rain was coming down in torrents, and the little white silk +sunshade was already dark with it. Nor did it shelter Madame, whose +skirts were wringing wet. But that didn’t put her out in the smallest +degree, and in the pouring rain she visited the kitchen garden and the +orchard, stopping in front of every fruit tree and bending over every +bed of vegetables. Then she ran and looked down the well and lifted up +a frame to see what was underneath it and was lost in the contemplation +of a huge pumpkin. She wanted to go along every single garden walk and +to take immediate possession of all the things she had been wont to +dream of in the old days, when she was a slipshod work-girl on the +Paris pavements. The rain redoubled, but she never heeded it and was +only miserable at the thought that the daylight was fading. She could +not see clearly now and touched things with her fingers to find out +what they were. Suddenly in the twilight she caught sight of a bed of +strawberries, and all that was childish in her awoke. + +“Strawberries! Strawberries! There are some here; I can feel them. A +plate, Zoé! Come and pick strawberries.” + +And dropping her sunshade, Nana crouched down in the mire under the +full force of the downpour. With drenched hands she began gathering the +fruit among the leaves. But Zoé in the meantime brought no plate, and +when the young woman rose to her feet again she was frightened. She +thought she had seen a shadow close to her. + +“It’s some beast!” she screamed. + +But she stood rooted to the path in utter amazement. It was a man, and +she recognized him. + +“Gracious me, it’s Baby! What ARE you doing there, baby?” + +“’Gad, I’ve come—that’s all!” replied Georges. + +Her head swam. + +“You knew I’d come through the gardener telling you? Oh, that poor +child! Why, he’s soaking!” + +“Oh, I’ll explain that to you! The rain caught me on my way here, and +then, as I didn’t wish to go upstream as far as Gumières, I crossed the +Choue and fell into a blessed hole.” + +Nana forgot the strawberries forthwith. She was trembling and full of +pity. That poor dear Zizi in a hole full of water! And she drew him +with her in the direction of the house and spoke of making up a roaring +fire. + +“You know,” he murmured, stopping her among the shadows, “I was in +hiding because I was afraid of being scolded, like in Paris, when I +come and see you and you’re not expecting me.” + +She made no reply but burst out laughing and gave him a kiss on the +forehead. Up till today she had always treated him like a naughty +urchin, never taking his declarations seriously and amusing herself at +his expense as though he were a little man of no consequence whatever. +There was much ado to install him in the house. She absolutely insisted +on the fire being lit in her bedroom, as being the most comfortable +place for his reception. Georges had not surprised Zoé, who was used to +all kinds of encounters, but the gardener, who brought the wood +upstairs, was greatly nonplused at sight of this dripping gentleman to +whom he was certain he had not opened the front door. He was, however, +dismissed, as he was no longer wanted. + +A lamp lit up the room, and the fire burned with a great bright flame. + +“He’ll never get dry, and he’ll catch cold,” said Nana, seeing Georges +beginning to shiver. + +And there were no men’s trousers in her house! She was on the point of +calling the gardener back when an idea struck her. Zoé, who was +unpacking the trunks in the dressing room, brought her mistress a +change of underwear, consisting of a shift and some petticoats with a +dressing jacket. + +“Oh, that’s first rate!” cried the young woman. “Zizi can put ’em all +on. You’re not angry with me, eh? When your clothes are dry you can put +them on again, and then off with you, as fast as fast can be, so as not +to have a scolding from your mamma. Make haste! I’m going to change my +things, too, in the dressing room.” + +Ten minutes afterward, when she reappeared in a tea gown, she clasped +her hands in a perfect ecstasy. + +“Oh, the darling! How sweet he looks dressed like a little woman!” + +He had simply slipped on a long nightgown with an insertion front, a +pair of worked drawers and the dressing jacket, which was a long +cambric garment trimmed with lace. Thus attired and with his delicate +young arms showing and his bright damp hair falling almost to his +shoulders, he looked just like a girl. + +“Why, he’s as slim as I am!” said Nana, putting her arm round his +waist. “Zoé, just come here and see how it suits him. It’s made for +him, eh? All except the bodice part, which is too large. He hasn’t got +as much as I have, poor, dear Zizi!” + +“Oh, to be sure, I’m a bit wanting there,” murmured Georges with a +smile. + +All three grew very merry about it. Nana had set to work buttoning the +dressing jacket from top to bottom so as to make him quite decent. Then +she turned him round as though he were a doll, gave him little thumps, +made the skirt stand well out behind. After which she asked him +questions. Was he comfortable? Did he feel warm? Zounds, yes, he was +comfortable! Nothing fitted more closely and warmly than a woman’s +shift; had he been able, he would always have worn one. He moved round +and about therein, delighted with the fine linen and the soft touch of +that unmanly garment, in the folds of which he thought he discovered +some of Nana’s own warm life. + +Meanwhile Zoé had taken the soaked clothes down to the kitchen in order +to dry them as quickly as possible in front of a vine-branch fire. Then +Georges, as he lounged in an easy chair, ventured to make a confession. + +“I say, are you going to feed this evening? I’m dying of hunger. I +haven’t dined.” + +Nana was vexed. The great silly thing to go sloping off from Mamma’s +with an empty stomach, just to chuck himself into a hole full of water! +But she was as hungry as a hunter too. They certainly must feed! Only +they would have to eat what they could get. Whereupon a round table was +rolled up in front of the fire, and the queerest of dinners was +improvised thereon. Zoé ran down to the gardener’s, he having cooked a +mess of cabbage soup in case Madame should not dine at Orleans before +her arrival. Madame, indeed, had forgotten to tell him what he was to +get ready in the letter she had sent him. Fortunately the cellar was +well furnished. Accordingly they had cabbage soup, followed by a piece +of bacon. Then Nana rummaged in her handbag and found quite a heap of +provisions which she had taken the precaution of stuffing into it. +There was a Strasbourg paté, for instance, and a bag of sweet-meats and +some oranges. So they both ate away like ogres and, while they +satisfied their healthy young appetites, treated one another with easy +good fellowship. Nana kept calling Georges “dear old girl,” a form of +address which struck her as at once tender and familiar. At dessert, in +order not to give Zoé any more trouble, they used the same spoon turn +and turn about while demolishing a pot of preserves they had discovered +at the top of a cupboard. + +“Oh, you dear old girl!” said Nana, pushing back the round table. “I +haven’t made such a good dinner these ten years past!” + +Yet it was growing late, and she wanted to send her boy off for fear he +should be suspected of all sorts of things. But he kept declaring that +he had plenty of time to spare. For the matter of that, his clothes +were not drying well, and Zoé averred that it would take an hour longer +at least, and as she was dropping with sleep after the fatigues of the +journey, they sent her off to bed. After which they were alone in the +silent house. + +It was a very charming evening. The fire was dying out amid glowing +embers, and in the great blue room, where Zoé had made up the bed +before going upstairs, the air felt a little oppressive. Nana, overcome +by the heavy warmth, got up to open the window for a few minutes, and +as she did so she uttered a little cry. + +“Great heavens, how beautiful it is! Look, dear old girl!” + +Georges had come up, and as though the window bar had not been +sufficiently wide, he put his arm round Nana’s waist and rested his +head against her shoulder. The weather had undergone a brisk change: +the skies were clearing, and a full moon lit up the country with its +golden disk of light. A sovereign quiet reigned over the valley. It +seemed wider and larger as it opened on the immense distances of the +plain, where the trees loomed like little shadowy islands amid a +shining and waveless lake. And Nana grew tenderhearted, felt herself a +child again. Most surely she had dreamed of nights like this at an +epoch which she could not recall. Since leaving the train every object +of sensation—the wide countryside, the green things with their pungent +scents, the house, the vegetables—had stirred her to such a degree that +now it seemed to her as if she had left Paris twenty years ago. +Yesterday’s existence was far, far away, and she was full of sensations +of which she had no previous experience. Georges, meanwhile, was giving +her neck little coaxing kisses, and this again added to her sweet +unrest. With hesitating hand she pushed him from her, as though he were +a child whose affectionate advances were fatiguing, and once more she +told him that he ought to take his departure. He did not gainsay her. +All in good time—he would go all in good time! + +But a bird raised its song and again was silent. It was a robin in an +elder tree below the window. + +“Wait one moment,” whispered Georges; “the lamp’s frightening him. I’ll +put it out.” + +And when he came back and took her waist again he added: + +“We’ll relight it in a minute.” + +Then as she listened to the robin and the boy pressed against her side, +Nana remembered. Ah yes, it was in novels that she had got to know all +this! In other days she would have given her heart to have a full moon +and robins and a lad dying of love for her. Great God, she could have +cried, so good and charming did it all seem to her! Beyond a doubt she +had been born to live honestly! So she pushed Georges away again, and +he grew yet bolder. + +“No, let me be. I don’t care about it. It would be very wicked at your +age. Now listen—I’ll always be your mamma.” + +A sudden feeling of shame overcame her. She was blushing exceedingly, +and yet not a soul could see her. The room behind them was full of +black night while the country stretched before them in silence and +lifeless solitude. Never had she known such a sense of shame before. +Little by little she felt her power of resistance ebbing away, and that +despite her embarrassed efforts to the contrary. That disguise of his, +that woman’s shift and that dressing jacket set her laughing again. It +was as though a girl friend were teasing her. + +“Oh, it’s not right; it’s not right!” she stammered after a last +effort. + +And with that, in face of the lovely night, she sank like a young +virgin into the arms of this mere child. The house slept. + +Next morning at Les Fondettes, when the bell rang for lunch, the +dining-room table was no longer too big for the company. Fauchery and +Daguenet had been driven up together in one carriage, and after them +another had arrived with the Count de Vandeuvres, who had followed by +the next train. Georges was the last to come downstairs. He was looking +a little pale, and his eyes were sunken, but in answer to questions he +said that he was much better, though he was still somewhat shaken by +the violence of the attack. Mme Hugon looked into his eyes with an +anxious smile and adjusted his hair which had been carelessly combed +that morning, but he drew back as though embarrassed by this tender +little action. During the meal she chaffed Vandeuvres very pleasantly +and declared that she had expected him for five years past. + +“Well, here you are at last! How have you managed it?” + +Vandeuvres took her remarks with equal pleasantry. He told her that he +had lost a fabulous sum of money at the club yesterday and thereupon +had come away with the intention of ending up in the country. + +“’Pon my word, yes, if only you can find me an heiress in these rustic +parts! There must be delightful women hereabouts.” + +The old lady rendered equal thanks to Daguenet and Fauchery for having +been so good as to accept her son’s invitation, and then to her great +and joyful surprise she saw the Marquis de Chouard enter the room. A +third carriage had brought him. + +“Dear me, you’ve made this your trysting place today!” she cried. +“You’ve passed word round! But what’s happening? For years I’ve never +succeeded in bringing you all together, and now you all drop in at +once. Oh, I certainly don’t complain.” + +Another place was laid. Fauchery found himself next the Countess +Sabine, whose liveliness and gaiety surprised him when he remembered +her drooping, languid state in the austere Rue Miromesnil drawing room. +Daguenet, on the other hand, who was seated on Estelle’s left, seemed +slightly put out by his propinquity to that tall, silent girl. The +angularity of her elbows was disagreeable to him. Muffat and Chouard +had exchanged a sly glance while Vandeuvres continued joking about his +coming marriage. + +“Talking of ladies,” Mme Hugon ended by saying, “I have a new neighbor +whom you probably know.” + +And she mentioned Nana. Vandeuvres affected the liveliest astonishment. + +“Well, that is strange! Nana’s property near here!” + +Fauchery and Daguenet indulged in a similar demonstration while the +Marquis de Chouard discussed the breast of a chicken without appearing +to comprehend their meaning. Not one of the men had smiled. + +“Certainly,” continued the old lady, “and the person in question +arrived at La Mignotte yesterday evening, as I was saying she would. I +got my information from the gardener this morning.” + +At these words the gentlemen could not conceal their very real +surprise. They all looked up. Eh? What? Nana had come down! But they +were only expecting her next day; they were privately under the +impression that they would arrive before her! Georges alone sat looking +at his glass with drooped eyelids and a tired expression. Ever since +the beginning of lunch he had seemed to be sleeping with open eyes and +a vague smile on his lips. + +“Are you still in pain, my Zizi?” asked his mother, who had been gazing +at him throughout the meal. + +He started and blushed as he said that he was very well now, but the +worn-out insatiate expression of a girl who has danced too much did not +fade from his face. + +“What’s the matter with your neck?” resumed Mme Hugon in an alarmed +tone. “It’s all red.” + +He was embarrassed and stammered. He did not know—he had nothing the +matter with his neck. Then drawing his shirt collar up: + +“Ah yes, some insect stung me there!” + +The Marquis de Chouard had cast a sidelong glance at the little red +place. Muffat, too, looked at Georges. The company was finishing lunch +and planning various excursions. Fauchery was growing increasingly +excited with the Countess Sabine’s laughter. As he was passing her a +dish of fruit their hands touched, and for one second she looked at him +with eyes so full of dark meaning that he once more thought of the +secret which had been communicated to him one evening after an +uproarious dinner. Then, too, she was no longer the same woman. +Something was more pronounced than of old, and her gray foulard gown +which fitted loosely over her shoulders added a touch of license to her +delicate, high-strung elegance. + +When they rose from the table Daguenet remained behind with Fauchery in +order to impart to him the following crude witticism about Estelle: “A +nice broomstick that to shove into a man’s hands!” Nevertheless, he +grew serious when the journalist told him the amount she was worth in +the way of dowry. + +“Four hundred thousand francs.” + +“And the mother?” queried Fauchery. “She’s all right, eh?” + +“Oh, SHE’LL work the oracle! But it’s no go, my dear man!” + +“Bah! How are we to know? We must wait and see.” + +It was impossible to go out that day, for the rain was still falling in +heavy showers. Georges had made haste to disappear from the scene and +had double-locked his door. These gentlemen avoided mutual +explanations, though they were none of them deceived as to the reasons +which had brought them together. Vandeuvres, who had had a very bad +time at play, had really conceived the notion of lying fallow for a +season, and he was counting on Nana’s presence in the neighborhood as a +safeguard against excessive boredom. Fauchery had taken advantage of +the holidays granted him by Rose, who just then was extremely busy. He +was thinking of discussing a second notice with Nana, in case country +air should render them reciprocally affectionate. Daguenet, who had +been just a little sulky with her since Steiner had come upon the +scene, was dreaming of resuming the old connection or at least of +snatching some delightful opportunities if occasion offered. As to the +Marquis de Chouard, he was watching for times and seasons. But among +all those men who were busy following in the tracks of Venus—a Venus +with the rouge scarce washed from her cheeks—Muffat was at once the +most ardent and the most tortured by the novel sensations of desire and +fear and anger warring in his anguished members. A formal promise had +been made him; Nana was awaiting him. Why then had she taken her +departure two days sooner than was expected? + +He resolved to betake himself to La Mignotte after dinner that same +evening. At night as the count was leaving the park Georges fled forth +after him. He left him to follow the road to Gumières, crossed the +Choue, rushed into Nana’s presence, breathless, furious and with tears +in his eyes. Ah yes, he understood everything! That old fellow now on +his way to her was coming to keep an appointment! Nana was dumfounded +by this ebullition of jealousy, and, greatly moved by the way things +were turning out, she took him in her arms and comforted him to the +best of her ability. Oh no, he was quite beside the mark; she was +expecting no one. If the gentleman came it would not be her fault. What +a great ninny that Zizi was to be taking on so about nothing at all! By +her child’s soul she swore she loved nobody except her own Georges. And +with that she kissed him and wiped away his tears. + +“Now just listen! You’ll see that it’s all for your sake,” she went on +when he had grown somewhat calmer. “Steiner has arrived—he’s up above +there now. You know, duckie, I can’t turn HIM out of doors.” + +“Yes, I know; I’m not talking of HIM,” whispered the boy. + +“Very well then, I’ve stuck him into the room at the end. I said I was +out of sorts. He’s unpacking his trunk. Since nobody’s seen you, be +quick and run up and hide in my room and wait for me.” + +Georges sprang at her and threw his arms round her neck. It was true +after all! She loved him a little! So they would put the lamp out as +they did yesterday and be in the dark till daytime! Then as the +front-door bell sounded he quietly slipped away. Upstairs in the +bedroom he at once took off his shoes so as not to make any noise and +straightway crouched down behind a curtain and waited soberly. + +Nana welcomed Count Muffat, who, though still shaken with passion, was +now somewhat embarrassed. She had pledged her word to him and would +even have liked to keep it since he struck her as a serious, +practicable lover. But truly, who could have foreseen all that happened +yesterday? There was the voyage and the house she had never set eyes on +before and the arrival of the drenched little lover! How sweet it had +all seemed to her, and how delightful it would be to continue in it! So +much the worse for the gentleman! For three months past she had been +keeping him dangling after her while she affected conventionality in +order the further to inflame him. Well, well! He would have to continue +dangling, and if he didn’t like that he could go! She would sooner have +thrown up everything than have played false to Georges. + +The count had seated himself with all the ceremonious politeness +becoming a country caller. Only his hands were trembling slightly. +Lust, which Nana’s skillful tactics daily exasperated, had at last +wrought terrible havoc in that sanguine, uncontaminated nature. The +grave man, the chamberlain who was wont to tread the state apartments +at the Tuileries with slow and dignified step, was now nightly driven +to plunge his teeth into his bolster, while with sobs of exasperation +he pictured to himself a sensual shape which never changed. But this +time he was determined to make an end of the torture. Coming along the +highroad in the deep quiet of the gloaming, he had meditated a fierce +course of action. And the moment he had finished his opening remarks he +tried to take hold of Nana with both hands. + +“No, no! Take care!” she said simply. She was not vexed; nay, she even +smiled. + +He caught her again, clenching his teeth as he did so. Then as she +struggled to get free he coarsely and crudely reminded her that he had +come to stay the night. Though much embarrassed at this, Nana did not +cease to smile. She took his hands and spoke very familiarly in order +to soften her refusal. + +“Come now, darling, do be quiet! Honor bright, I can’t: Steiner’s +upstairs.” + +But he was beside himself. Never yet had she seen a man in such a +state. She grew frightened and put her hand over his mouth in order to +stifle his cries. Then in lowered tones she besought him to be quiet +and to let her alone. Steiner was coming downstairs. Things were +getting stupid, to be sure! When Steiner entered the room he heard Nana +remarking: + +“I adore the country.” + +She was lounging comfortably back in her deep easy chair, and she +turned round and interrupted herself. + +“It’s Monsieur le Comte Muffat, darling. He saw a light here while he +was strolling past, and he came in to bid us welcome.” + +The two men clasped hands. Muffat, with his face in shadow, stood +silent for a moment or two. Steiner seemed sulky. Then they chatted +about Paris: business there was at a standstill; abominable things had +been happening on ’change. When a quarter of an hour had elapsed Muffat +took his departure, and, as the young woman was seeing him to the door, +he tried without success to make an assignation for the following +night. Steiner went up to bed almost directly afterward, grumbling, as +he did so, at the everlasting little ailments that seemed to afflict +the genus courtesan. The two old boys had been packed off at last! When +she was able to rejoin him Nana found Georges still hiding exemplarily +behind the curtain. The room was dark. He pulled her down onto the +floor as she sat near him, and together they began playfully rolling on +the ground, stopping now and again and smothering their laughter with +kisses whenever they struck their bare feet against some piece of +furniture. Far away, on the road to Gumières, Count Muffat walked +slowly home and, hat in hand, bathed his burning forehead in the +freshness and silence of the night. + +During the days that followed Nana found life adorable. In the lad’s +arms she was once more a girl of fifteen, and under the caressing +influence of this renewed childhood love’s white flower once more +blossomed forth in a nature which had grown hackneyed and disgusted in +the service of the other sex. She would experience sudden fits of +shame, sudden vivid emotions, which left her trembling. She wanted to +laugh and to cry, and she was beset by nervous, maidenly feelings, +mingled with warm desires that made her blush again. Never yet had she +felt anything comparable to this. The country filled her with tender +thoughts. As a little girl she had long wished to dwell in a meadow, +tending a goat, because one day on the talus of the fortifications she +had seen a goat bleating at the end of its tether. Now this estate, +this stretch of land belonging to her, simply swelled her heart to +bursting, so utterly had her old ambition been surpassed. Once again +she tasted the novel sensations experienced by chits of girls, and at +night when she went upstairs, dizzy with her day in the open air and +intoxicated by the scent of green leaves, and rejoined her Zizi behind +the curtain, she fancied herself a schoolgirl enjoying a holiday +escapade. It was an amour, she thought, with a young cousin to whom she +was going to be married. And so she trembled at the slightest noise and +dread lest parents should hear her, while making the delicious +experiments and suffering the voluptuous terrors attendant on a girl’s +first slip from the path of virtue. + +Nana in those days was subject to the fancies a sentimental girl will +indulge in. She would gaze at the moon for hours. One night she had a +mind to go down into the garden with Georges when all the household was +asleep. When there they strolled under the trees, their arms round each +other’s waists, and finally went and laid down in the grass, where the +dew soaked them through and through. On another occasion, after a long +silence up in the bedroom, she fell sobbing on the lad’s neck, +declaring in broken accents that she was afraid of dying. She would +often croon a favorite ballad of Mme Lerat’s, which was full of flowers +and birds. The song would melt her to tears, and she would break off in +order to clasp Georges in a passionate embrace and to extract from him +vows of undying affection. In short she was extremely silly, as she +herself would admit when they both became jolly good fellows again and +sat up smoking cigarettes on the edge of the bed, dangling their bare +legs over it the while and tapping their heels against its wooden side. + +But what utterly melted the young woman’s heart was Louiset’s arrival. +She had an access of maternal affection which was as violent as a mad +fit. She would carry off her boy into the sunshine outside to watch him +kicking about; she would dress him like a little prince and roll with +him in the grass. The moment he arrived she decided that he was to +sleep near her, in the room next hers, where Mme Lerat, whom the +country greatly affected, used to begin snoring the moment her head +touched the pillow. Louiset did not hurt Zizi’s position in the least. +On the contrary, Nana said that she had now two children, and she +treated them with the same wayward tenderness. At night, more than ten +times running, she would leave Zizi to go and see if Louiset were +breathing properly, but on her return she would re-embrace her Zizi and +lavish on him the caresses that had been destined for the child. She +played at being Mamma while he wickedly enjoyed being dandled in the +arms of the great wench and allowed himself to be rocked to and fro +like a baby that is being sent to sleep. It was all so delightful, and +Nana was so charmed with her present existence, that she seriously +proposed to him never to leave the country. They would send all the +other people away, and he, she and the child would live alone. And with +that they would make a thousand plans till daybreak and never once hear +Mme Lerat as she snored vigorously after the fatigues of a day spent in +picking country flowers. + +This charming existence lasted nearly a week. Count Muffat used to come +every evening and go away again with disordered face and burning hands. +One evening he was not even received, as Steiner had been obliged to +run up to Paris. He was told that Madame was not well. Nana grew daily +more disgusted at the notion of deceiving Georges. He was such an +innocent lad, and he had such faith in her! She would have looked on +herself as the lowest of the low had she played him false. Besides, it +would have sickened her to do so! Zoé, who took her part in this affair +in mute disdain, believed that Madame was growing senseless. + +On the sixth day a band of visitors suddenly blundered into Nana’s +idyl. She had, indeed, invited a whole swarm of people under the belief +that none of them would come. And so one fine afternoon she was vastly +astonished and annoyed to see an omnibus full of people pulling up +outside the gate of La Mignotte. + +“It’s us!” cried Mignon, getting down first from the conveyance and +extracting then his sons Henri and Charles. + +Labordette thereupon appeared and began handing out an interminable +file of ladies—Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet, Tatan Nene, Maria Blond. +Nana was in hopes that they would end there, when La Faloise sprang +from the step in order to receive Gaga and her daughter Amelie in his +trembling arms. That brought the number up to eleven people. Their +installation proved a laborious undertaking. There were five spare +rooms at La Mignotte, one of which was already occupied by Mme Lerat +and Louiset. The largest was devoted to the Gaga and La Faloise +establishment, and it was decided that Amelie should sleep on a truckle +bed in the dressing room at the side. Mignon and his two sons had the +third room. Labordette the fourth. There thus remained one room which +was transformed into a dormitory with four beds in it for Lucy, +Caroline, Tatan and Maria. As to Steiner, he would sleep on the divan +in the drawing room. At the end of an hour, when everyone was duly +settled, Nana, who had begun by being furious, grew enchanted at the +thought of playing hostess on a grand scale. The ladies complimented +her on La Mignotte. “It’s a stunning property, my dear!” And then, too, +they brought her quite a whiff of Parisian air, and talking all +together with bursts of laughter and exclamation and emphatic little +gestures, they gave her all the petty gossip of the week just past. By +the by, and how about Bordenave? What had he said about her prank? Oh, +nothing much! After bawling about having her brought back by the +police, he had simply put somebody else in her place at night. Little +Violaine was the understudy, and she had even obtained a very pretty +success as the Blonde Venus. Which piece of news made Nana rather +serious. + +It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, and there was some talk of +taking a stroll around. + +“Oh, I haven’t told you,” said Nana, “I was just off to get up potatoes +when you arrived.” + +Thereupon they all wanted to go and dig potatoes without even changing +their dresses first. It was quite a party. The gardener and two helpers +were already in the potato field at the end of the grounds. The ladies +knelt down and began fumbling in the mold with their beringed fingers, +shouting gaily whenever they discovered a potato of exceptional size. +It struck them as so amusing! But Tatan Nene was in a state of triumph! +So many were the potatoes she had gathered in her youth that she forgot +herself entirely and gave the others much good advice, treating them +like geese the while. The gentlemen toiled less strenuously. Mignon +looked every inch the good citizen and father and made his stay in the +country an occasion for completing his boys’ education. Indeed, he +spoke to them of Parmentier! + +Dinner that evening was wildly hilarious. The company ate ravenously. +Nana, in a state of great elevation, had a warm disagreement with her +butler, an individual who had been in service at the bishop’s palace in +Orleans. The ladies smoked over their coffee. An earsplitting noise of +merrymaking issued from the open windows and died out far away under +the serene evening sky while peasants, belated in the lanes, turned and +looked at the flaring rooms. + +“It’s most tiresome that you’re going back the day after tomorrow,” +said Nana. “But never mind, we’ll get up an excursion all the same!” + +They decided to go on the morrow, Sunday, and visit the ruins of the +old Abbey of Chamont, which were some seven kilometers distant. Five +carriages would come out from Orleans, take up the company after lunch +and bring them back to dinner at La Mignotte at about seven. It would +be delightful. + +That evening, as his wont was, Count Muffat mounted the hill to ring at +the outer gate. But the brightly lit windows and the shouts of laughter +astonished him. When, however, he recognized Mignon’s voice, he +understood it all and went off, raging at this new obstacle, driven to +extremities, bent on some violent act. Georges passed through a little +door of which he had the key, slipped along the staircase walls and +went quietly up into Nana’s room. Only he had to wait for her till past +midnight. She appeared at last in a high state of intoxication and more +maternal even than on the previous nights. Whenever she had drunk +anything she became so amorous as to be absurd. Accordingly she now +insisted on his accompanying her to the Abbey of Chamont. But he stood +out against this; he was afraid of being seen. If he were to be seen +driving with her there would be an atrocious scandal. But she burst +into tears and evinced the noisy despair of a slighted woman. And he +thereupon consoled her and formally promised to be one of the party. + +“So you do love me very much,” she blurted out. “Say you love me very +much. Oh, my darling old bear, if I were to die would you feel it very +much? Confess!” + +At Les Fondettes the near neighborhood of Nana had utterly disorganized +the party. Every morning during lunch good Mme Hugon returned to the +subject despite herself, told her guests the news the gardener had +brought her and gave evidence of the absorbing curiosity with which +notorious courtesans are able to inspire even the worthiest old ladies. +Tolerant though she was, she was revolted and maddened by a vague +presentiment of coming ill, which frightened her in the evenings as +thoroughly as if a wild beast had escaped from a menagerie and were +known to be lurking in the countryside. + +She began trying to pick a little quarrel with her guests, whom she +each and all accused of prowling round La Mignotte. Count Vandeuvres +had been seen laughing on the highroad with a golden-haired lady, but +he defended himself against the accusation; he denied that it was Nana, +the fact being that Lucy had been with him and had told him how she had +just turned her third prince out of doors. The Marquis de Chouard used +also to go out every day, but his excuse was doctor’s orders. Toward +Daguenet and Fauchery Mme Hugon behaved unjustly too. The former +especially never left Les Fondettes, for he had given up the idea of +renewing the old connection and was busy paying the most respectful +attentions to Estelle. Fauchery also stayed with the Muffat ladies. On +one occasion only he had met Mignon with an armful of flowers, putting +his sons through a course of botanical instruction in a by-path. The +two men had shaken hands and given each other the news about Rose. She +was perfectly well and happy; they had both received a letter from her +that morning in which she besought them to profit by the fresh country +air for some days longer. Among all her guests the old lady spared only +Count Muffat and Georges. The count, who said he had serious business +in Orleans, could certainly not be running after the bad woman, and as +to Georges, the poor child was at last causing her grave anxiety, +seeing that every evening he was seized with atrocious sick headaches +which kept him to his bed in broad daylight. + +Meanwhile Fauchery had become the Countess Sabine’s faithful attendant +in the absence during each afternoon of Count Muffat. Whenever they +went to the end of the park he carried her campstool and her sunshade. +Besides, he amused her with the original witticisms peculiar to a +second-rate journalist, and in so doing he prompted her to one of those +sudden intimacies which are allowable in the country. She had +apparently consented to it from the first, for she had grown quite a +girl again in the society of a young man whose noisy humor seemed +unlikely to compromise her. But now and again, when for a second or two +they found themselves alone behind the shrubs, their eyes would meet; +they would pause amid their laughter, grow suddenly serious and view +one another darkly, as though they had fathomed and divined their +inmost hearts. + +On Friday a fresh place had to be laid at lunch time. M. Theophile +Venot, whom Mme Hugon remembered to have invited at the Muffats’ last +winter, had just arrived. He sat stooping humbly forward and behaved +with much good nature, as became a man of no account, nor did he seem +to notice the anxious deference with which he was treated. When he had +succeeded in getting the company to forget his presence he sat nibbling +small lumps of sugar during dessert, looking sharply up at Daguenet as +the latter handed Estelle strawberries and listening to Fauchery, who +was making the countess very merry over one of his anecdotes. Whenever +anyone looked at HIM he smiled in his quiet way. When the guests rose +from table he took the count’s arm and drew him into the park. He was +known to have exercised great influence over the latter ever since the +death of his mother. Indeed, singular stories were told about the kind +of dominion which the ex-lawyer enjoyed in that household. Fauchery, +whom his arrival doubtless embarrassed, began explaining to Georges and +Daguenet the origin of the man’s wealth. It was a big lawsuit with the +management of which the Jesuits had entrusted him in days gone by. In +his opinion the worthy man was a terrible fellow despite his gentle, +plump face and at this time of day had his finger in all the intrigues +of the priesthood. The two young men had begun joking at this, for they +thought the little old gentleman had an idiotic expression. The idea of +an unknown Venot, a gigantic Venot, acting for the whole body of the +clergy, struck them in the light of a comical invention. But they were +silenced when, still leaning on the old man’s arm, Count Muffat +reappeared with blanched cheeks and eyes reddened as if by recent +weeping. + +“I bet they’ve been chatting about hell,” muttered Fauchery in a +bantering tone. + +The Countess Sabine overheard the remark. She turned her head slowly, +and their eyes met in that long gaze with which they were accustomed to +sound one another prudently before venturing once for all. + +After the breakfast it was the guests’ custom to betake themselves to a +little flower garden on a terrace overlooking the plain. This Sunday +afternoon was exquisitely mild. There had been signs of rain toward ten +in the morning, but the sky, without ceasing to be covered, had, as it +were, melted into milky fog, which now hung like a cloud of luminous +dust in the golden sunlight. Soon Mme Hugon proposed that they should +step down through a little doorway below the terrace and take a walk on +foot in the direction of Gumières and as far as the Choue. She was fond +of walking and, considering her threescore years, was very active. +Besides, all her guests declared that there was no need to drive. So in +a somewhat straggling order they reached the wooden bridge over the +river. Fauchery and Daguenet headed the column with the Muffat ladies +and were followed by the count and the marquis, walking on either side +of Mme Hugon, while Vandeuvres, looking fashionable and out of his +element on the highroad, marched in the rear, smoking a cigar. M. +Venot, now slackening, now hastening his pace, passed smilingly from +group to group, as though bent on losing no scrap of conversation. + +“To think of poor dear Georges at Orleans!” said Mme Hugon. “He was +anxious to consult old Doctor Tavernier, who never goes out now, on the +subject of his sick headaches. Yes, you were not up, as he went off +before seven o’clock. But it’ll be a change for him all the same.” + +She broke off, exclaiming: + +“Why, what’s making them stop on the bridge?” + +The fact was the ladies and Fauchery and Daguenet were standing +stock-still on the crown of the bridge. They seemed to be hesitating as +though some obstacle or other rendered them uneasy and yet the way lay +clear before them. + +“Go on!” cried the count. + +They never moved and seemed to be watching the approach of something +which the rest had not yet observed. Indeed the road wound considerably +and was bordered by a thick screen of poplar trees. Nevertheless, a +dull sound began to grow momentarily louder, and soon there was a noise +of wheels, mingled with shouts of laughter and the cracking of whips. +Then suddenly five carriages came into view, driving one behind the +other. They were crowded to bursting, and bright with a galaxy of +white, blue and pink costumes. + +“What is it?” said Mme Hugon in some surprise. + +Then her instinct told her, and she felt indignant at such an untoward +invasion of her road. + +“Oh, that woman!” she murmured. “Walk on, pray walk on. Don’t appear to +notice.” + +But it was too late. The five carriages which were taking Nana and her +circle to the ruins of Chamont rolled on to the narrow wooden bridge. +Fauchery, Daguenet and the Muffat ladies were forced to step backward, +while Mme Hugon and the others had also to stop in Indian file along +the roadside. It was a superb ride past! The laughter in the carriages +had ceased, and faces were turned with an expression of curiosity. The +rival parties took stock of each other amid a silence broken only by +the measured trot of the horses. In the first carriage Maria Blond and +Tatan Nene were lolling backward like a pair of duchesses, their skirts +swelling forth over the wheels, and as they passed they cast disdainful +glances at the honest women who were walking afoot. Then came Gaga, +filling up a whole seat and half smothering La Faloise beside her so +that little but his small anxious face was visible. Next followed +Caroline Hequet with Labordette, Lucy Stewart with Mignon and his boys +and at the close of all Nana in a victoria with Steiner and on a +bracket seat in front of her that poor, darling Zizi, with his knees +jammed against her own. + +“It’s the last of them, isn’t it?” the countess placidly asked +Fauchery, pretending at the same time not to recognize Nana. + +The wheel of the victoria came near grazing her, but she did not step +back. The two women had exchanged a deeply significant glance. It was, +in fact, one of those momentary scrutinies which are at once complete +and definite. As to the men, they behaved unexceptionably. Fauchery and +Daguenet looked icy and recognized no one. The marquis, more nervous +than they and afraid of some farcical ebullition on the part of the +ladies, had plucked a blade of grass and was rolling it between his +fingers. Only Vandeuvres, who had stayed somewhat apart from the rest +of the company, winked imperceptibly at Lucy, who smiled at him as she +passed. + +“Be careful!” M. Venot had whispered as he stood behind Count Muffat. + +The latter in extreme agitation gazed after this illusive vision of +Nana while his wife turned slowly round and scrutinized him. Then he +cast his eyes on the ground as though to escape the sound of galloping +hoofs which were sweeping away both his senses and his heart. He could +have cried aloud in his agony, for, seeing Georges among Nana’s skirts, +he understood it all now. A mere child! He was brokenhearted at the +thought that she should have preferred a mere child to him! Steiner was +his equal, but that child! + +Mme Hugon, in the meantime, had not at once recognized Georges. +Crossing the bridge, he was fain to jump into the river, but Nana’s +knees restrained him. Then white as a sheet and icy cold, he sat +rigidly up in his place and looked at no one. It was just possible no +one would notice him. + +“Oh, my God!” said the old lady suddenly. “Georges is with her!” + +The carriages had passed quite through the uncomfortable crowd of +people who recognized and yet gave no sign of recognition. The short +critical encounter seemed to have been going on for ages. And now the +wheels whirled away the carriageloads of girls more gaily than ever. +Toward the fair open country they went, amid the buffetings of the +fresh air of heaven. Bright-colored fabrics fluttered in the wind, and +the merry laughter burst forth anew as the voyagers began jesting and +glancing back at the respectable folks halting with looks of annoyance +at the roadside. Turning round, Nana could see the walking party +hesitating and then returning the way they had come without crossing +the bridge. Mme Hugon was leaning silently on Count Muffat’s arm, and +so sad was her look that no one dared comfort her. + +“I say, did you see Fauchery, dear?” Nana shouted to Lucy, who was +leaning out of the carriage in front. “What a brute he was! He shall +pay out for that. And Paul, too, a fellow I’ve been so kind to! Not a +sign! They’re polite, I’m sure.” + +And with that she gave Steiner a terrible dressing, he having ventured +to suggest that the gentlemen’s attitude had been quite as it should +be. So then they weren’t even worth a bow? The first blackguard that +came by might insult them? Thanks! He was the right sort, too, he was! +It couldn’t be better! One ought always to bow to a woman. + +“Who’s the tall one?” asked Lucy at random, shouting through the noise +of the wheels. + +“It’s the Countess Muffat,” answered Steiner. + +“There now! I suspected as much,” said Nana. “Now, my dear fellow, it’s +all very well her being a countess, for she’s no better than she should +be. Yes, yes, she’s no better that she should be. You know, I’ve got an +eye for such things, I have! And now I know your countess as well as if +I had been at the making of her! I’ll bet you that she’s the mistress +of that viper Fauchery! I tell you, she’s his mistress! Between women +you guess that sort of thing at once!” + +Steiner shrugged his shoulders. Since the previous day his irritation +had been hourly increasing. He had received letters which necessitated +his leaving the following morning, added to which he did not much +appreciate coming down to the country in order to sleep on the +drawing-room divan. + +“And this poor baby boy!” Nana continued, melting suddenly at sight of +Georges’s pale face as he still sat rigid and breathless in front of +her. + +“D’you think Mamma recognized me?” he stammered at last. + +“Oh, most surely she did! Why, she cried out! But it’s my fault. He +didn’t want to come with us; I forced him to. Now listen, Zizi, would +you like me to write to your mamma? She looks such a kind, decent sort +of lady! I’ll tell her that I never saw you before and that it was +Steiner who brought you with him for the first time today.” + +“No, no, don’t write,” said Georges in great anxiety. “I’ll explain it +all myself. Besides, if they bother me about it I shan’t go home +again.” + +But he continued plunged in thought, racking his brains for excuses +against his return home in the evening. The five carriages were rolling +through a flat country along an interminable straight road bordered by +fine trees. The country was bathed in a silvery-gray atmosphere. The +ladies still continued shouting remarks from carriage to carriage +behind the backs of the drivers, who chuckled over their extraordinary +fares. Occasionally one of them would rise to her feet to look at the +landscape and, supporting herself on her neighbor’s shoulder, would +grow extremely excited till a sudden jolt brought her down to the seat +again. Caroline Hequet in the meantime was having a warm discussion +with Labordette. Both of them were agreed that Nana would be selling +her country house before three months were out, and Caroline was urging +Labordette to buy it back for her for as little as it was likely to +fetch. In front of them La Faloise, who was very amorous and could not +get at Gaga’s apoplectic neck, was imprinting kisses on her spine +through her dress, the strained fabric of which was nigh splitting, +while Amelie, perching stiffly on the bracket seat, was bidding them be +quiet, for she was horrified to be sitting idly by, watching her mother +being kissed. In the next carriage Mignon, in order to astonish Lucy, +was making his sons recite a fable by La Fontaine. Henri was prodigious +at this exercise; he could spout you one without pause or hesitation. +But Maria Blond, at the head of the procession, was beginning to feel +extremely bored. She was tired of hoaxing that blockhead of a Tatan +Nene with a story to the effect that the Parisian dairywomen were wont +to fabricate eggs with a mixture of paste and saffron. The distance was +too great: were they never going to get to their destination? And the +question was transmitted from carriage to carriage and finally reached +Nana, who, after questioning her driver, got up and shouted: + +“We’ve not got a quarter of an hour more to go. You see that church +behind the trees down there?” + +Then she continued: + +“Do you know, it appears the owner of the Château de Chamont is an old +lady of Napoleon’s time? Oh, SHE was a merry one! At least, so Joseph +told me, and he heard it from the servants at the bishop’s palace. +There’s no one like it nowadays, and for the matter of that, she’s +become goody-goody.” + +“What’s her name?” asked Lucy. + +“Madame d’Anglars.” + +“Irma d’Anglars—I knew her!” cried Gaga. + +Admiring exclamations burst from the line of carriages and were borne +down the wind as the horses quickened their trot. Heads were stretched +out in Gaga’s direction; Maria Blond and Tatan Nene turned round and +knelt on the seat while they leaned over the carriage hood, and the air +was full of questions and cutting remarks, tempered by a certain +obscure admiration. Gaga had known her! The idea filled them all with +respect for that far-off past. + +“Dear me, I was young then,” continued Gaga. “But never mind, I +remember it all. I saw her pass. They said she was disgusting in her +own house, but, driving in her carriage, she WAS just smart! And the +stunning tales about her! Dirty doings and money flung about like one +o’clock! I don’t wonder at all that she’s got a fine place. Why, she +used to clean out a man’s pockets as soon as look at him. Irma +d’Anglars still in the land of the living! Why, my little pets, she +must be near ninety.” + +At this the ladies became suddenly serious. Ninety years old! The +deuce, there wasn’t one of them, as Lucy loudly declared, who would +live to that age. They were all done for. Besides, Nana said she didn’t +want to make old bones; it wouldn’t be amusing. They were drawing near +their destination, and the conversation was interrupted by the cracking +of whips as the drivers put their horses to their best paces. Yet amid +all the noise Lucy continued talking and, suddenly changing the +subject, urged Nana to come to town with them all to-morrow. The +exhibition was soon to close, and the ladies must really return to +Paris, where the season was surpassing their expectations. But Nana was +obstinate. She loathed Paris; she wouldn’t set foot there yet! + +“Eh, darling, we’ll stay?” she said, giving Georges’s knees a squeeze, +as though Steiner were of no account. + +The carriages had pulled up abruptly, and in some surprise the company +got out on some waste ground at the bottom of a small hill. With his +whip one of the drivers had to point them out the ruins of the old +Abbey of Chamont where they lay hidden among trees. It was a great +sell! The ladies voted them silly. Why, they were only a heap of old +stones with briers growing over them and part of a tumble-down tower. +It really wasn’t worth coming a couple of leagues to see that! Then the +driver pointed out to them the countryseat, the park of which stretched +away from the abbey, and he advised them to take a little path and +follow the walls surrounding it. They would thus make the tour of the +place while the carriages would go and await them in the village +square. It was a delightful walk, and the company agreed to the +proposition. + +“Lord love me, Irma knows how to take care of herself!” said Gaga, +halting before a gate at the corner of the park wall abutting on the +highroad. + +All of them stood silently gazing at the enormous bush which stopped up +the gateway. Then following the little path, they skirted the park +wall, looking up from time to time to admire the trees, whose lofty +branches stretched out over them and formed a dense vault of greenery. +After three minutes or so they found themselves in front of a second +gate. Through this a wide lawn was visible, over which two venerable +oaks cast dark masses of shadow. Three minutes farther on yet another +gate afforded them an extensive view of a great avenue, a perfect +corridor of shadow, at the end of which a bright spot of sunlight +gleamed like a star. They stood in silent, wondering admiration, and +then little by little exclamations burst from their lips. They had been +trying hard to joke about it all with a touch of envy at heart, but +this decidedly and immeasurably impressed them. What a genius that Irma +was! A sight like this gave you a rattling notion of the woman! The +trees stretched away and away, and there were endlessly recurrent +patches of ivy along the wall with glimpses of lofty roofs and screens +of poplars interspersed with dense masses of elms and aspens. Was there +no end to it then? The ladies would have liked to catch sight of the +mansion house, for they were weary of circling on and on, weary of +seeing nothing but leafy recesses through every opening they came to. +They took the rails of the gate in their hands and pressed their faces +against the ironwork. And thus excluded and isolated, a feeling of +respect began to overcome them as they thought of the castle lost to +view in surrounding immensity. Soon, being quite unused to walking, +they grew tired. And the wall did not leave off; at every turn of the +small deserted path the same range of gray stones stretched ahead of +them. Some of them began to despair of ever getting to the end of it +and began talking of returning. But the more their long walk fatigued +them, the more respectful they became, for at each successive step they +were increasingly impressed by the tranquil, lordly dignity of the +domain. + +“It’s getting silly, this is!” said Caroline Hequet, grinding her +teeth. + +Nana silenced her with a shrug. For some moments past she had been +rather pale and extremely serious and had not spoken a single word. +Suddenly the path gave a final turn; the wall ended, and as they came +out on the village square the mansion house stood before them on the +farther side of its grand outer court. All stopped to admire the proud +sweep of the wide steps, the twenty frontage windows, the arrangement +of the three wings, which were built of brick framed by courses of +stone. Henri IV had erewhile inhabited this historic mansion, and his +room, with its great bed hung with Genoa velvet, was still preserved +there. Breathless with admiration, Nana gave a little childish sigh. + +“Great God!” she whispered very quietly to herself. + +But the party were deeply moved when Gaga suddenly announced that Irma +herself was standing yonder in front of the church. She recognized her +perfectly. She was as upright as of old, the hoary campaigner, and that +despite her age, and she still had those eyes which flashed when she +moved in that proud way of hers! Vespers were just over, and for a +second or two Madame stood in the church porch. She was dressed in a +dark brown silk and looked very simple and very tall, her venerable +face reminding one of some old marquise who had survived the horrors of +the Great Revolution. In her right hand a huge Book of Hours shone in +the sunlight, and very slowly she crossed the square, followed some +fifteen paces off by a footman in livery. The church was emptying, and +all the inhabitants of Chamont bowed before her with extreme respect. +An old man even kissed her hand, and a woman wanted to fall on her +knees. Truly this was a potent queen, full of years and honors. She +mounted her flight of steps and vanished from view. + +“That’s what one attains to when one has methodical habits!” said +Mignon with an air of conviction, looking at his sons and improving the +occasion. + +Then everybody said his say. Labordette thought her extraordinarily +well preserved. Maria Blond let slip a foul expression and vexed Lucy, +who declared that one ought to honor gray hairs. All the women, to sum +up, agreed that she was a perfect marvel. Then the company got into +their conveyances again. From Chamont all the way to La Mignotte Nana +remained silent. She had twice turned round to look back at the house, +and now, lulled by the sound of the wheels, she forgot that Steiner was +at her side and that Georges was in front of her. A vision had come up +out of the twilight, and the great lady seemed still to be sweeping by +with all the majesty of a potent queen, full of years and of honors. + +That evening Georges re-entered Les Fondettes in time for dinner. Nana, +who had grown increasingly absent-minded and singular in point of +manner, had sent him to ask his mamma’s forgiveness. It was his plain +duty, she remarked severely, growing suddenly solicitous for the +decencies of family life. She even made him swear not to return for the +night; she was tired, and in showing proper obedience he was doing no +more than his duty. Much bored by this moral discourse, Georges +appeared in his mother’s presence with heavy heart and downcast head. + +Fortunately for him his brother Philippe, a great merry devil of a +military man, had arrived during the day, a fact which greatly +curtailed the scene he was dreading. Mme Hugon was content to look at +him with eyes full of tears while Philippe, who had been put in +possession of the facts, threatened to go and drag him home by the +scruff of the neck if ever he went back into that woman’s society. +Somewhat comforted, Georges began slyly planning how to make his escape +toward two o’clock next day in order to arrange about future meetings +with Nana. + +Nevertheless, at dinnertime the house party at Les Fondettes seemed not +a little embarrassed. Vandeuvres had given notice of departure, for he +was anxious to take Lucy back to Paris with him. He was amused at the +idea of carrying off this girl whom he had known for ten years yet +never desired. The Marquis de Chouard bent over his plate and meditated +on Gaga’s young lady. He could well remember dandling Lili on his knee. +What a way children had of shooting up! This little thing was becoming +extremely plump! But Count Muffat especially was silent and absorbed. +His cheeks glowed, and he had given Georges one long look. Dinner over, +he went upstairs, intending to shut himself in his bedroom, his pretext +being a slight feverish attack. M. Venot had rushed after him, and +upstairs in the bedroom a scene ensued. The count threw himself upon +the bed and strove to stifle a fit of nervous sobbing in the folds of +the pillow while M. Venot, in a soft voice, called him brother and +advised him to implore heaven for mercy. But he heard nothing: there +was a rattle in his throat. Suddenly he sprang off the bed and +stammered: + +“I am going there. I can’t resist any longer.” + +“Very well,” said the old man, “I go with you.” + +As they left the house two shadows were vanishing into the dark depths +of a garden walk, for every evening now Fauchery and the Countess +Sabine left Daguenet to help Estelle make tea. Once on the highroad the +count walked so rapidly that his companion had to run in order to +follow him. Though utterly out of breath, the latter never ceased +showering on him the most conclusive arguments against the temptations +of the flesh. But the other never opened his mouth as he hurried away +into the night. Arrived in front of La Mignotte, he said simply: + +“I can’t resist any longer. Go!” + +“God’s will be done then!” muttered M. Venot. “He uses every method to +assure His final triumph. Your sin will become His weapon.” + +At La Mignotte there was much wrangling during the evening meal. Nana +had found a letter from Bordenave awaiting her, in which he advised +rest, just as though he were anxious to be rid of her. Little Violaine, +he said, was being encored twice nightly. But when Mignon continued +urging her to come away with them on the morrow Nana grew exasperated +and declared that she did not intend taking advice from anybody. In +other ways, too, her behavior at table was ridiculously stuck up. Mme +Lerat having made some sharp little speech or other, she loudly +announced that, God willing, she wasn’t going to let anyone—no, not +even her own aunt—make improper remarks in her presence. After which +she dreed her guests with honorable sentiments. She seemed to be +suffering from a fit of stupid right-mindedness, and she treated them +all to projects of religious education for Louiset and to a complete +scheme of regeneration for herself. When the company began laughing she +gave vent to profound opinions, nodding her head like a grocer’s wife +who knows what she is saying. Nothing but order could lead to fortune! +And so far as she was concerned, she had no wish to die like a beggar! +She set the ladies’ teeth on edge. They burst out in protest. Could +anyone have been converting Nana? No, it was impossible! But she sat +quite still and with absent looks once more plunged into dreamland, +where the vision of an extremely wealthy and greatly courted Nana rose +up before her. + +The household were going upstairs to bed when Muffat put in an +appearance. It was Labordette who caught sight of him in the garden. He +understood it all at once and did him a service, for he got Steiner out +of the way and, taking his hand, led him along the dark corridor as far +as Nana’s bedroom. In affairs of this kind Labordette was wont to +display the most perfect tact and cleverness. Indeed, he seemed +delighted to be making other people happy. Nana showed no surprise; she +was only somewhat annoyed by the excessive heat of Muffat’s pursuit. +Life was a serious affair, was it not? Love was too silly: it led to +nothing. Besides, she had her scruples in view of Zizi’s tender age. +Indeed, she had scarcely behaved quite fairly toward him. Dear me, yes, +she was choosing the proper course again in taking up with an old +fellow. + +“Zoé,” she said to the lady’s maid, who was enchanted at the thought of +leaving the country, “pack the trunks when you get up tomorrow. We are +going back to Paris.” + +And she went to bed with Muffat but experienced no pleasure. + + + + + CHAPTER VII + + +One December evening three months afterward Count Muffat was strolling +in the Passage des Panoramas. The evening was very mild, and owing to a +passing shower, the passage had just become crowded with people. There +was a perfect mob of them, and they thronged slowly and laboriously +along between the shops on either side. Under the windows, white with +reflected light, the pavement was violently illuminated. A perfect +stream of brilliancy emanated from white globes, red lanterns, blue +transparencies, lines of gas jets, gigantic watches and fans, outlined +in flame and burning in the open. And the motley displays in the shops, +the gold ornaments of the jeweler’s, the glass ornaments of the +confectioner’s, the light-colored silks of the modiste’s, seemed to +shine again in the crude light of the reflectors behind the clear +plate-glass windows, while among the bright-colored, disorderly array +of shop signs a huge purple glove loomed in the distance like a +bleeding hand which had been severed from an arm and fastened to a +yellow cuff. + +Count Muffat had slowly returned as far as the boulevard. He glanced +out at the roadway and then came sauntering back along the shopwindows. +The damp and heated atmosphere filled the narrow passage with a slight +luminous mist. Along the flagstones, which had been wet by the +drip-drop of umbrellas, the footsteps of the crowd rang continually, +but there was no sound of voices. Passers-by elbowed him at every turn +and cast inquiring looks at his silent face, which the gaslight +rendered pale. And to escape these curious manifestations the count +posted himself in front of a stationer’s, where with profound attention +contemplated an array of paperweights in the form of glass bowls +containing floating landscapes and flowers. + +He was conscious of nothing: he was thinking of Nana. Why had she lied +to him again? That morning she had written and told him not to trouble +about her in the evening, her excuse being that Louiset was ill and +that she was going to pass the night at her aunt’s in order to nurse +him. But he had felt suspicious and had called at her house, where he +learned from the porter that Madame had just gone off to her theater. +He was astonished at this, for she was not playing in the new piece. +Why then should she have told him this falsehood, and what could she be +doing at the Variétés that evening? Hustled by a passer-by, the count +unconsciously left the paperweights and found himself in front of a +glass case full of toys, where he grew absorbed over an array of +pocketbooks and cigar cases, all of which had the same blue swallow +stamped on one corner. Nana was most certainly not the same woman! In +the early days after his return from the country she used to drive him +wild with delight, as with pussycat caresses she kissed him all round +his face and whiskers and vowed that he was her own dear pet and the +only little man she adored. He was no longer afraid of Georges, whom +his mother kept down at Les Fondettes. There was only fat Steiner to +reckon with, and he believed he was really ousting him, but he did not +dare provoke an explanation on his score. He knew he was once more in +an extraordinary financial scrape and on the verge of being declared +bankrupt on ’change, so much so that he was clinging fiercely to the +shareholders in the Landes Salt Pits and striving to sweat a final +subscription out of them. Whenever he met him at Nana’s she would +explain reasonably enough that she did not wish to turn him out of +doors like a dog after all he had spent on her. Besides, for the last +three months he had been living in such a whirl of sensual excitement +that, beyond the need of possessing her, he had felt no very distinct +impressions. His was a tardy awakening of the fleshly instinct, a +childish greed of enjoyment, which left no room for either vanity or +jealousy. Only one definite feeling could affect him now, and that was +Nana’s decreasing kindness. She no longer kissed him on the beard! It +made him anxious, and as became a man quite ignorant of womankind, he +began asking himself what possible cause of offense he could have given +her. Besides, he was under the impression that he was satisfying all +her desires. And so he harked back again and again to the letter he had +received that morning with its tissue of falsehoods, invented for the +extremely simple purpose of passing an evening at her own theater. The +crowd had pushed him forward again, and he had crossed the passage and +was puzzling his brain in front of the entrance to a restaurant, his +eyes fixed on some plucked larks and on a huge salmon laid out inside +the window. + +At length he seemed to tear himself away from this spectacle. He shook +himself, looked up and noticed that it was close on nine o’clock. Nana +would soon be coming out, and he would make her tell the truth. And +with that he walked on and recalled to memory the evenings he once +passed in that region in the days when he used to meet her at the door +of the theater. + +He knew all the shops, and in the gas-laden air he recognized their +different scents, such, for instance, as the strong savor of Russia +leather, the perfume of vanilla emanating from a chocolate dealer’s +basement, the savor of musk blown in whiffs from the open doors of the +perfumers. But he did not dare linger under the gaze of the pale +shopwomen, who looked placidly at him as though they knew him by sight. +For one instant he seemed to be studying the line of little round +windows above the shops, as though he had never noticed them before +among the medley of signs. Then once again he went up to the boulevard +and stood still a minute or two. A fine rain was now falling, and the +cold feel of it on his hands calmed him. He thought of his wife who was +staying in a country house near Macon, where her friend Mme de +Chezelles had been ailing a good deal since the autumn. The carriages +in the roadway were rolling through a stream of mud. The country, he +thought, must be detestable in such vile weather. But suddenly he +became anxious and re-entered the hot, close passage down which he +strode among the strolling people. A thought struck him: if Nana were +suspicious of his presence there she would be off along the Galerie +Montmartre. + +After that the count kept a sharp lookout at the very door of the +theater, though he did not like this passage end, where he was afraid +of being recognized. It was at the corner between the Galerie des +Variétés and the Galerie Saint-Marc, an equivocal corner full of +obscure little shops. Of these last one was a shoemaker’s, where +customers never seemed to enter. Then there were two or three +upholsterers’, deep in dust, and a smoky, sleepy reading room and +library, the shaded lamps in which cast a green and slumberous light +all the evening through. There was never anyone in this corner save +well-dressed, patient gentlemen, who prowled about the wreckage +peculiar to a stage door, where drunken sceneshifters and ragged chorus +girls congregate. In front of the theater a single gas jet in a +ground-glass globe lit up the doorway. For a moment or two Muffat +thought of questioning Mme Bron; then he grew afraid lest Nana should +get wind of his presence and escape by way of the boulevard. So he went +on the march again and determined to wait till he was turned out at the +closing of the gates, an event which had happened on two previous +occasions. The thought of returning home to his solitary bed simply +wrung his heart with anguish. Every time that golden-haired girls and +men in dirty linen came out and stared at him he returned to his post +in front of the reading room, where, looking in between two +advertisements posted on a windowpane, he was always greeted by the +same sight. It was a little old man, sitting stiff and solitary at the +vast table and holding a green newspaper in his green hands under the +green light of one of the lamps. But shortly before ten o’clock another +gentleman, a tall, good-looking, fair man with well-fitting gloves, was +also walking up and down in front of the stage door. Thereupon at each +successive turn the pair treated each other to a suspicious sidelong +glance. The count walked to the corner of the two galleries, which was +adorned with a high mirror, and when he saw himself therein, looking +grave and elegant, he was both ashamed and nervous. + +Ten o’clock struck, and suddenly it occurred to Muffat that it would be +very easy to find out whether Nana were in her dressing room or not. He +went up the three steps, crossed the little yellow-painted lobby and +slipped into the court by a door which simply shut with a latch. At +that hour of the night the narrow, damp well of a court, with its +pestiferous water closets, its fountain, its back view of the kitchen +stove and the collection of plants with which the portress used to +litter the place, was drenched in dark mist; but the two walls, rising +pierced with windows on either hand, were flaming with light, since the +property room and the firemen’s office were situated on the ground +floor, with the managerial bureau on the left, and on the right and +upstairs the dressing rooms of the company. The mouths of furnaces +seemed to be opening on the outer darkness from top to bottom of this +well. The count had at once marked the light in the windows of the +dressing room on the first floor, and as a man who is comforted and +happy, he forgot where he was and stood gazing upward amid the foul mud +and faint decaying smell peculiar to the premises of this antiquated +Parisian building. Big drops were dripping from a broken waterspout, +and a ray of gaslight slipped from Mme Bron’s window and cast a yellow +glare over a patch of moss-clad pavement, over the base of a wall which +had been rotted by water from a sink, over a whole cornerful of +nameless filth amid which old pails and broken crocks lay in fine +confusion round a spindling tree growing mildewed in its pot. A window +fastening creaked, and the count fled. + +Nana was certainly going to come down. He returned to his post in front +of the reading room; among its slumbering shadows, which seemed only +broken by the glimmer of a night light, the little old man still sat +motionless, his side face sharply outlined against his newspaper. Then +Muffat walked again and this time took a more prolonged turn and, +crossing the large gallery, followed the Galerie des Variétés as far as +that of Feydeau. The last mentioned was cold and deserted and buried in +melancholy shadow. He returned from it, passed by the theater, turned +the corner of the Galerie Saint-Marc and ventured as far as the Galerie +Montmartre, where a sugar-chopping machine in front of a grocer’s +interested him awhile. But when he was taking his third turn he was +seized with such dread lest Nana should escape behind his back that he +lost all self-respect. Thereupon he stationed himself beside the fair +gentleman in front of the very theater. Both exchanged a glance of +fraternal humility with which was mingled a touch of distrust, for it +was possible they might yet turn out to be rivals. Some sceneshifters +who came out smoking their pipes between the acts brushed rudely +against them, but neither one nor the other ventured to complain. Three +big wenches with untidy hair and dirty gowns appeared on the doorstep. +They were munching apples and spitting out the cores, but the two men +bowed their heads and patiently braved their impudent looks and rough +speeches, though they were hustled and, as it were, soiled by these +trollops, who amused themselves by pushing each other down upon them. + +At that very moment Nana descended the three steps. She grew very pale +when she noticed Muffat. + +“Oh, it’s you!” she stammered. + +The sniggering extra ladies were quite frightened when they recognized +her, and they formed in line and stood up, looking as stiff and serious +as servants whom their mistress has caught behaving badly. The tall +fair gentleman had moved away; he was at once reassured and sad at +heart. + +“Well, give me your arm,” Nana continued impatiently. + +They walked quietly off. The count had been getting ready to question +her and now found nothing to say. + +It was she who in rapid tones told a story to the effect that she had +been at her aunt’s as late as eight o’clock, when, seeing Louiset very +much better, she had conceived the idea of going down to the theater +for a few minutes. + +“On some important business?” he queried. + +“Yes, a new piece,” she replied after some slight hesitation. “They +wanted my advice.” + +He knew that she was not speaking the truth, but the warm touch of her +arm as it leaned firmly on his own, left him powerless. He felt neither +anger nor rancor after his long, long wait; his one thought was to keep +her where she was now that he had got hold of her. Tomorrow, and not +before, he would try and find out what she had come to her dressing +room after. But Nana still appeared to hesitate; she was manifestly a +prey to the sort of secret anguish that besets people when they are +trying to regain lost ground and to initiate a plan of action. +Accordingly, as they turned the corner of the Galerie des Variétés, she +stopped in front of the show in a fan seller’s window. + +“I say, that’s pretty,” she whispered; “I mean that mother-of-pearl +mount with the feathers.” + +Then, indifferently: + +“So you’re seeing me home?” + +“Of course,” he said, with some surprise, “since your child’s better.” + +She was sorry she had told him that story. Perhaps Louiset was passing +through another crisis! She talked of returning to the Batignolles. But +when he offered to accompany her she did not insist on going. For a +second or two she was possessed with the kind of white-hot fury which a +woman experiences when she feels herself entrapped and must, +nevertheless, behave prettily. But in the end she grew resigned and +determined to gain time. If only she could get rid of the count toward +midnight everything would happen as she wished. + +“Yes, it’s true; you’re a bachelor tonight,” she murmured. “Your wife +doesn’t return till tomorrow, eh?” + +“Yes,” replied Muffat. It embarrassed him somewhat to hear her talking +familiarly about the countess. + +But she pressed him further, asking at what time the train was due and +wanting to know whether he were going to the station to meet her. She +had begun to walk more slowly than ever, as though the shops interested +her very much. + +“Now do look!” she said, pausing anew before a jeweler’s window, “what +a funny bracelet!” + +She adored the Passage des Panoramas. The tinsel of the ARTICLE DE +PARIS, the false jewelry, the gilded zinc, the cardboard made to look +like leather, had been the passion of her early youth. It remained, and +when she passed the shop-windows she could not tear herself away from +them. It was the same with her today as when she was a ragged, +slouching child who fell into reveries in front of the chocolate +maker’s sweet-stuff shows or stood listening to a musical box in a +neighboring shop or fell into supreme ecstasies over cheap, vulgarly +designed knickknacks, such as nutshell workboxes, ragpickers’ baskets +for holding toothpicks, Vendome columns and Luxor obelisks on which +thermometers were mounted. But that evening she was too much agitated +and looked at things without seeing them. When all was said and done, +it bored her to think she was not free. An obscure revolt raged within +her, and amid it all she felt a wild desire to do something foolish. It +was a great thing gained, forsooth, to be mistress of men of position! +She had been devouring the prince’s substance and Steiner’s, too, with +her childish caprices, and yet she had no notion where her money went. +Even at this time of day her flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was not +entirely furnished. The drawing room alone was finished, and with its +red satin upholsteries and excess of ornamentation and furniture it +struck a decidedly false note. Her creditors, moreover, would now take +to tormenting her more than ever before whenever she had no money on +hand, a fact which caused her constant surprise, seeing that she was +wont to quote her self as a model of economy. For a month past that +thief Steiner had been scarcely able to pay up his thousand francs on +the occasions when she threatened to kick him out of doors in case he +failed to bring them. As to Muffat, he was an idiot: he had no notion +as to what it was usual to give, and she could not, therefore, grow +angry with him on the score of miserliness. Oh, how gladly she would +have turned all these folks off had she not repeated to herself a score +of times daily a whole string of economical maxims! + +One ought to be sensible, Zoé kept saying every morning, and Nana +herself was constantly haunted by the queenly vision seen at Chamont. +It had now become an almost religious memory with her, and through dint +of being ceaselessly recalled it grew even more grandiose. And for +these reasons, though trembling with repressed indignation, she now +hung submissively on the count’s arm as they went from window to window +among the fast-diminishing crowd. The pavement was drying outside, and +a cool wind blew along the gallery, swept the close hot air up beneath +the glass that imprisoned it and shook the colored lanterns and the +lines of gas jets and the giant fan which was flaring away like a set +piece in an illumination. At the door of the restaurant a waiter was +putting out the gas, while the motionless attendants in the empty, +glaring shops looked as though they had dropped off to sleep with their +eyes open. + +“Oh, what a duck!” continued Nana, retracing her steps as far as the +last of the shops in order to go into ecstasies over a porcelain +greyhound standing with raised forepaw in front of a nest hidden among +roses. + +At length they quitted the passage, but she refused the offer of a cab. +It was very pleasant out she said; besides, they were in no hurry, and +it would be charming to return home on foot. When they were in front of +the Café Anglais she had a sudden longing to eat oysters. Indeed, she +said that owing to Louiset’s illness she had tasted nothing since +morning. Muffat dared not oppose her. Yet as he did not in those days +wish to be seen about with her he asked for a private supper room and +hurried to it along the corridors. She followed him with the air of a +woman familiar with the house, and they were on the point of entering a +private room, the door of which a waiter held open, when from a +neighboring saloon, whence issued a perfect tempest of shouts and +laughter, a man rapidly emerged. It was Daguenet. + +“By Jove, it’s Nana!” he cried. + +The count had briskly disappeared into the private room, leaving the +door ajar behind him. But Daguenet winked behind his round shoulders +and added in chaffing tones: + +“The deuce, but you’re doing nicely! You catch ’em in the Tuileries +nowadays!” + +Nana smiled and laid a finger on her lips to beg him to be silent. She +could see he was very much exalted, and yet she was glad to have met +him, for she still felt tenderly toward him, and that despite the nasty +way he had cut her when in the company of fashionable ladies. + +“What are you doing now?” she asked amicably. + +“Becoming respectable. Yes indeed, I’m thinking of getting married.” + +She shrugged her shoulders with a pitying air. But he jokingly +continued to the effect that to be only just gaining enough on ’change +to buy ladies bouquets could scarcely be called an income, provided you +wanted to look respectable too! His three hundred thousand francs had +only lasted him eighteen months! He wanted to be practical, and he was +going to marry a girl with a huge dowry and end off as a PREFET, like +his father before him! Nana still smiled incredulously. She nodded in +the direction of the saloon: “Who are you with in there?” + +“Oh, a whole gang,” he said, forgetting all about his projects under +the influence of returning intoxication. “Just think! Léa is telling us +about her trip in Egypt. Oh, it’s screaming! There’s a bathing story—” + +And he told the story while Nana lingered complaisantly. They had ended +by leaning up against the wall in the corridor, facing one another. Gas +jets were flaring under the low ceiling, and a vague smell of cookery +hung about the folds of the hangings. Now and again, in order to hear +each other’s voices when the din in the saloon became louder than ever, +they had to lean well forward. Every few seconds, however, a waiter +with an armful of dishes found his passage barred and disturbed them. +But they did not cease their talk for that; on the contrary, they stood +close up to the walls and, amid the uproar of the supper party and the +jostlings of the waiters, chatted as quietly as if they were by their +own firesides. + +“Just look at that,” whispered the young man, pointing to the door of +the private room through which Muffat had vanished. + +Both looked. The door was quivering slightly; a breath of air seemed to +be disturbing it, and at last, very, very slowly and without the least +sound, it was shut to. They exchanged a silent chuckle. The count must +be looking charmingly happy all alone in there! + +“By the by,” she asked, “have you read Fauchery’s article about me?” + +“Yes, ‘The Golden Fly,’” replied Daguenet; “I didn’t mention it to you +as I was afraid of paining you.” + +“Paining me—why? His article’s a very long one.” + +She was flattered to think that the Figaro should concern itself about +her person. But failing the explanations of her hairdresser Francis, +who had brought her the paper, she would not have understood that it +was she who was in question. Daguenet scrutinized her slyly, sneering +in his chaffing way. Well, well, since she was pleased, everybody else +ought to be. + +“By your leave!” shouted a waiter, holding a dish of iced cheese in +both hands as he separated them. + +Nana had stepped toward the little saloon where Muffat was waiting. + +“Well, good-by!” continued Daguenet. “Go and find your cuckold again.” + +But she halted afresh. + +“Why d’you call him cuckold?” + +“Because he is a cuckold, by Jove!” + +She came and leaned against the wall again; she was profoundly +interested. + +“Ah!” she said simply. + +“What, d’you mean to say you didn’t know that? Why, my dear girl, his +wife’s Fauchery’s mistress. It probably began in the country. Some time +ago, when I was coming here, Fauchery left me, and I suspect he’s got +an assignation with her at his place tonight. They’ve made up a story +about a journey, I fancy.” + +Overcome with surprise, Nana remained voiceless. + +“I suspected it,” she said at last, slapping her leg. “I guessed it by +merely looking at her on the highroad that day. To think of its being +possible for an honest woman to deceive her husband, and with that +blackguard Fauchery too! He’ll teach her some pretty things!” + +“Oh, it isn’t her trial trip,” muttered Daguenet wickedly. “Perhaps she +knows as much about it as he does.” + +At this Nana gave vent to an indignant exclamation. + +“Indeed she does! What a nice world! It’s too foul!” + +“By your leave!” shouted a waiter, laden with bottles, as he separated +them. + +Daguenet drew her forward again and held her hand for a second or two. +He adopted his crystalline tone of voice, the voice with notes as sweet +as those of a harmonica, which had gained him his success among the +ladies of Nana’s type. + +“Good-by, darling! You know I love you always.” + +She disengaged her hand from his, and while a thunder of shouts and +bravos, which made the door in the saloon tremble again, almost drowned +her words she smilingly remarked: + +“It’s over between us, stupid! But that doesn’t matter. Do come up one +of these days, and we’ll have a chat.” + +Then she became serious again and in the outraged tones of a +respectable woman: + +“So he’s a cuckold, is he?” she cried. “Well, that IS a nuisance, dear +boy. They’ve always sickened me, cuckolds have.” + +When at length she went into the private room she noticed that Muffat +was sitting resignedly on a narrow divan with pale face and twitching +hands. He did not reproach her at all, and she, greatly moved, was +divided between feelings of pity and of contempt. The poor man! To +think of his being so unworthily cheated by a vile wife! She had a good +mind to throw her arms round his neck and comfort him. But it was only +fair all the same! He was a fool with women, and this would teach him a +lesson! Nevertheless, pity overcame her. She did not get rid of him as +she had determined to do after the oysters had been discussed. They +scarcely stayed a quarter of an hour in the Café Anglais, and together +they went into the house in the Boulevard Haussmann. It was then +eleven. Before midnight she would have easily have discovered some +means of getting rid of him kindly. + +In the anteroom, however, she took the precaution of giving Zoé an +order. “You’ll look out for him, and you’ll tell him not to make a +noise if the other man’s still with me.” + +“But where shall I put him, madame?” + +“Keep him in the kitchen. It’s more safe.” + +In the room inside Muffat was already taking off his overcoat. A big +fire was burning on the hearth. It was the same room as of old, with +its rosewood furniture and its hangings and chair coverings of figured +damask with the large blue flowers on a gray background. On two +occasions Nana had thought of having it redone, the first in black +velvet, the second in white satin with bows, but directly Steiner +consented she demanded the money that these changes would cost simply +with a view to pillaging him. She had, indeed, only indulged in a tiger +skin rug for the hearth and a cut-glass hanging lamp. + +“I’m not sleepy; I’m not going to bed,” she said the moment they were +shut in together. + +The count obeyed her submissively, as became a man no longer afraid of +being seen. His one care now was to avoid vexing her. + +“As you will,” he murmured. + +Nevertheless, he took his boots off, too, before seating himself in +front of the fire. One of Nana’s pleasures consisted in undressing +herself in front of the mirror on her wardrobe door, which reflected +her whole height. She would let everything slip off her in turn and +then would stand perfectly naked and gaze and gaze in complete oblivion +of all around her. Passion for her own body, ecstasy over her satin +skin and the supple contours of her shape, would keep her serious, +attentive and absorbed in the love of herself. The hairdresser +frequently found her standing thus and would enter without her once +turning to look at him. Muffat used to grow angry then, but he only +succeeded in astonishing her. What was coming over the man? She was +doing it to please herself, not other people. + +That particular evening she wanted to have a better view of herself, +and she lit the six candles attached to the frame of the mirror. But +while letting her shift slip down she paused. She had been preoccupied +for some moments past, and a question was on her lips. + +“You haven’t read the Figaro article, have you? The paper’s on the +table.” Daguenet’s laugh had recurred to her recollections, and she was +harassed by a doubt. If that Fauchery had slandered her she would be +revenged. + +“They say that it’s about me,” she continued, affecting indifference. +“What’s your notion, eh, darling?” + +And letting go her shift and waiting till Muffat should have done +reading, she stood naked. Muffat was reading slowly Fauchery’s article +entitled “The Golden Fly,” describing the life of a harlot descended +from four or five generations of drunkards and tainted in her blood by +a cumulative inheritance of misery and drink, which in her case has +taken the form of a nervous exaggeration of the sexual instinct. She +has shot up to womanhood in the slums and on the pavements of Paris, +and tall, handsome and as superbly grown as a dunghill plant, she +avenges the beggars and outcasts of whom she is the ultimate product. +With her the rottenness that is allowed to ferment among the populace +is carried upward and rots the aristocracy. She becomes a blind power +of nature, a leaven of destruction, and unwittingly she corrupts and +disorganizes all Paris, churning it between her snow-white thighs as +milk is monthly churned by housewives. And it was at the end of this +article that the comparison with a fly occurred, a fly of sunny hue +which has flown up out of the dung, a fly which sucks in death on the +carrion tolerated by the roadside and then buzzing, dancing and +glittering like a precious stone enters the windows of palaces and +poisons the men within by merely settling on them in her flight. + +Muffat lifted his head; his eyes stared fixedly; he gazed at the fire. + +“Well?” asked Nana. + +But he did not answer. It seemed as though he wanted to read the +article again. A cold, shivering feeling was creeping from his scalp to +his shoulders. This article had been written anyhow. The phrases were +wildly extravagant; the unexpected epigrams and quaint collocations of +words went beyond all bounds. Yet notwithstanding this, he was struck +by what he had read, for it had rudely awakened within him much that +for months past he had not cared to think about. + +He looked up. Nana had grown absorbed in her ecstatic +self-contemplation. She was bending her neck and was looking +attentively in the mirror at a little brown mark above her right +haunch. She was touching it with the tip of her finger and by dint of +bending backward was making it stand out more clearly than ever. +Situated where it was, it doubtless struck her as both quaint and +pretty. After that she studied other parts of her body with an amused +expression and much of the vicious curiosity of a child. The sight of +herself always astonished her, and she would look as surprised and +ecstatic as a young girl who has discovered her puberty. Slowly, +slowly, she spread out her arms in order to give full value to her +figure, which suggested the torso of a plump Venus. She bent herself +this way and that and examined herself before and behind, stooping to +look at the side view of her bosom and at the sweeping contours of her +thighs. And she ended with a strange amusement which consisted of +swinging to right and left, her knees apart and her body swaying from +the waist with the perpetual jogging, twitching movements peculiar to +an oriental dancer in the danse du ventre. + +Muffat sat looking at her. She frightened him. The newspaper had +dropped from his hand. For a moment he saw her as she was, and he +despised himself. Yes, it was just that; she had corrupted his life; he +already felt himself tainted to his very marrow by impurities hitherto +undreamed of. Everything was now destined to rot within him, and in the +twinkling of an eye he understood what this evil entailed. He saw the +ruin brought about by this kind of “leaven”—himself poisoned, his +family destroyed, a bit of the social fabric cracking and crumbling. +And unable to take his eyes from the sight, he sat looking fixedly at +her, striving to inspire himself with loathing for her nakedness. + +Nana no longer moved. With an arm behind her neck, one hand clasped in +the other, and her elbows far apart, she was throwing back her head so +that he could see a foreshortened reflection of her half-closed eyes, +her parted lips, her face clothed with amorous laughter. Her masses of +yellow hair were unknotted behind, and they covered her back with the +fell of a lioness. + +Bending back thus, she displayed her solid Amazonian waist and firm +bosom, where strong muscles moved under the satin texture of the skin. +A delicate line, to which the shoulder and the thigh added their slight +undulations, ran from one of her elbows to her foot, and Muffat’s eyes +followed this tender profile and marked how the outlines of the fair +flesh vanished in golden gleams and how its rounded contours shone like +silk in the candlelight. He thought of his old dread of Woman, of the +Beast of the Scriptures, at once lewd and wild. Nana was all covered +with fine hair; a russet made her body velvety, while the Beast was +apparent in the almost equine development of her flanks, in the fleshy +exuberances and deep hollows of her body, which lent her sex the +mystery and suggestiveness lurking in their shadows. She was, indeed, +that Golden Creature, blind as brute force, whose very odor ruined the +world. Muffat gazed and gazed as a man possessed, till at last, when he +had shut his eyes in order to escape it, the Brute reappeared in the +darkness of the brain, larger, more terrible, more suggestive in its +attitude. Now, he understood, it would remain before his eyes, in his +very flesh, forever. + +But Nana was gathering herself together. A little thrill of tenderness +seemed to have traversed her members. Her eyes were moist; she tried, +as it were, to make herself small, as though she could feel herself +better thus. Then she threw her head and bosom back and, melting, as it +were, in one great bodily caress, she rubbed her cheeks coaxingly, +first against one shoulder, then against the other. Her lustful mouth +breathed desire over her limbs. She put out her lips, kissed herself +long in the neighborhood of her armpit and laughed at the other Nana +who also was kissing herself in the mirror. + +Then Muffat gave a long sigh. This solitary pleasure exasperated him. +Suddenly all his resolutions were swept away as though by a mighty +wind. In a fit of brutal passion he caught Nana to his breast and threw +her down on the carpet. + +“Leave me alone!” she cried. “You’re hurting me!” + +He was conscious of his undoing; he recognized in her stupidity, +vileness and falsehood, and he longed to possess her, poisoned though +she was. + +“Oh, you’re a fool!” she said savagely when he let her get up. + +Nevertheless, she grew calm. He would go now. She slipped on a +nightgown trimmed with lace and came and sat down on the floor in front +of the fire. It was her favorite position. When she again questioned +him about Fauchery’s article Muffat replied vaguely, for he wanted to +avoid a scene. Besides, she declared that she had found a weak spot in +Fauchery. And with that she relapsed into a long silence and reflected +on how to dismiss the count. She would have liked to do it in an +agreeable way, for she was still a good-natured wench, and it bored her +to cause others pain, especially in the present instance where the man +was a cuckold. The mere thought of his being that had ended by rousing +her sympathies! + +“So you expect your wife tomorrow morning?” she said at last. + +Muffat had stretched himself in an armchair. He looked drowsy, and his +limbs were tired. He gave a sign of assent. Nana sat gazing seriously +at him with a dull tumult in her brain. Propped on one leg, among her +slightly rumpled laces she was holding one of her bare feet between her +hands and was turning it mechanically about and about. + +“Have you been married long?” she asked. + +“Nineteen years,” replied the count + +“Ah! And is your wife amiable? Do you get on comfortably together?” + +He was silent. Then with some embarrassment: + +“You know I’ve begged you never to talk of those matters.” + +“Dear me, why’s that?” she cried, beginning to grow vexed directly. +“I’m sure I won’t eat your wife if I DO talk about her. Dear boy, why, +every woman’s worth—” + +But she stopped for fear of saying too much. She contented herself by +assuming a superior expression, since she considered herself extremely +kind. The poor fellow, he needed delicate handling! Besides, she had +been struck by a laughable notion, and she smiled as she looked him +carefully over. + +“I say,” she continued, “I haven’t told you the story about you that +Fauchery’s circulating. There’s a viper, if you like! I don’t bear him +any ill will, because his article may be all right, but he’s a regular +viper all the same.” + +And laughing more gaily than ever, she let go her foot and, crawling +along the floor, came and propped herself against the count’s knees. + +“Now just fancy, he swears you were still like a babe when you married +your wife. You were still like that, eh? Is it true, eh?” + +Her eyes pressed for an answer, and she raised her hands to his +shoulders and began shaking him in order to extract the desired +confession. + +“Without doubt,” he at last made answer gravely. + +Thereupon she again sank down at his feet. She was shaking with +uproarious laughter, and she stuttered and dealt him little slaps. + +“No, it’s too funny! There’s no one like you; you’re a marvel. But, my +poor pet, you must just have been stupid! When a man doesn’t know—oh, +it is so comical! Good heavens, I should have liked to have seen you! +And it came off well, did it? Now tell me something about it! Oh, do, +do tell me!” + +She overwhelmed him with questions, forgetting nothing and requiring +the veriest details. And she laughed such sudden merry peals which +doubled her up with mirth, and her chemise slipped and got turned down +to such an extent, and her skin looked so golden in the light of the +big fire, that little by little the count described to her his bridal +night. He no longer felt at all awkward. He himself began to be amused +at last as he spoke. Only he kept choosing his phrases, for he still +had a certain sense of modesty. The young woman, now thoroughly +interested, asked him about the countess. According to his account, she +had a marvelous figure but was a regular iceberg for all that. + +“Oh, get along with you!” he muttered indolently. “You have no cause to +be jealous.” + +Nana had ceased laughing, and she now resumed her former position and, +with her back to the fire, brought her knees up under her chin with her +clasped hands. Then in a serious tone she declared: + +“It doesn’t pay, dear boy, to look like a ninny with one’s wife the +first night.” + +“Why?” queried the astonished count. + +“Because,” she replied slowly, assuming a doctorial expression. + +And with that she looked as if she were delivering a lecture and shook +her head at him. In the end, however, she condescended to explain +herself more lucidly. + +“Well, look here! I know how it all happens. Yes, dearie, women don’t +like a man to be foolish. They don’t say anything because there’s such +a thing as modesty, you know, but you may be sure they think about it +for a jolly long time to come. And sooner or later, when a man’s been +an ignoramus, they go and make other arrangements. That’s it, my pet.” + +He did not seem to understand. Whereupon she grew more definite still. +She became maternal and taught him his lesson out of sheer goodness of +heart, as a friend might do. Since she had discovered him to be a +cuckold the information had weighed on her spirits; she was madly +anxious to discuss his position with him. + +“Good heavens! I’m talking of things that don’t concern me. I’ve said +what I have because everybody ought to be happy. We’re having a chat, +eh? Well then, you’re to answer me as straight as you can.” + +But she stopped to change her position, for she was burning herself. +“It’s jolly hot, eh? My back’s roasted. Wait a second. I’ll cook my +tummy a bit. That’s what’s good for the aches!” + +And when she had turned round with her breast to the fire and her feet +tucked under her: + +“Let me see,” she said; “you don’t sleep with your wife any longer?” + +“No, I swear to you I don’t,” said Muffat, dreading a scene. + +“And you believe she’s really a stick?” + +He bowed his head in the affirmative. + +“And that’s why you love me? Answer me! I shan’t be angry.” + +He repeated the same movement. + +“Very well then,” she concluded. “I suspected as much! Oh, the poor +pet. Do you know my aunt Lerat? When she comes get her to tell you the +story about the fruiterer who lives opposite her. Just fancy that +man—Damn it, how hot this fire is! I must turn round. I’m going to +roast my left side now.” And as she presented her side to the blaze a +droll idea struck her, and like a good-tempered thing, she made fun of +herself for she was delighted to see that she was looking so plump and +pink in the light of the coal fire. + +“I look like a goose, eh? Yes, that’s it! I’m a goose on the spit, and +I’m turning, turning and cooking in my own juice, eh?” + +And she was once more indulging in a merry fit of laughter when a sound +of voices and slamming doors became audible. Muffat was surprised, and +he questioned her with a look. She grew serious, and an anxious +expression came over her face. It must be Zoé’s cat, a cursed beast +that broke everything. It was half-past twelve o’clock. How long was +she going to bother herself in her cuckold’s behalf? Now that the other +man had come she ought to get him out of the way, and that quickly. + +“What were you saying?” asked the count complaisantly, for he was +charmed to see her so kind to him. + +But in her desire to be rid of him she suddenly changed her mood, +became brutal and did not take care what she was saying. + +“Oh yes! The fruiterer and his wife. Well, my dear fellow, they never +once touched one another! Not the least bit! She was very keen on it, +you understand, but he, the ninny, didn’t know it. He was so green that +he thought her a stick, and so he went elsewhere and took up with +streetwalkers, who treated him to all sorts of nastiness, while she, on +her part, made up for it beautifully with fellows who were a lot slyer +than her greenhorn of a husband. And things always turn out that way +through people not understanding one another. I know it, I do!” + +Muffat was growing pale. At last he was beginning to understand her +allusions, and he wanted to make her keep silence. But she was in full +swing. + +“No, hold your tongue, will you? If you weren’t brutes you would be as +nice with your wives as you are with us, and if your wives weren’t +geese they would take as much pains to keep you as we do to get you. +That’s the way to behave. Yes, my duck, you can put that in your pipe +and smoke it.” + +“Do not talk of honest women,” he said in a hard voice. “You do not +know them.” + +At that Nana rose to her knees. + +“I don’t know them! Why, they aren’t even clean, your honest women +aren’t! They aren’t even clean! I defy you to find me one who would +dare show herself as I am doing. Oh, you make me laugh with your honest +women. Don’t drive me to it; don’t oblige me to tell you things I may +regret afterward.” + +The count, by way of answer, mumbled something insulting. Nana became +quite pale in her turn. For some seconds she looked at him without +speaking. Then in her decisive way: + +“What would you do if your wife were deceiving you?” + +He made a threatening gesture. + +“Well, and if I were to?” + +“Oh, you,” he muttered with a shrug of his shoulders. + +Nana was certainly not spiteful. Since the beginning of the +conversation she had been strongly tempted to throw his cuckold’s +reputation in his teeth, but she had resisted. She would have liked to +confess him quietly on the subject, but he had begun to exasperate her +at last. The matter ought to stop now. + +“Well, then, my dearie,” she continued, “I don’t know what you’re +getting at with me. For two hours past you’ve been worrying my life +out. Now do just go and find your wife, for she’s at it with Fauchery. +Yes, it’s quite correct; they’re in the Rue Taitbout, at the corner of +the Rue de Provence. You see, I’m giving you the address.” + +Then triumphantly, as she saw Muffat stagger to his feet like an ox +under the hammer: + +“If honest women must meddle in our affairs and take our sweethearts +from us—Oh, you bet they’re a nice lot, those honest women!” + +But she was unable to proceed. With a terrible push he had cast her +full length on the floor and, lifting his heel, he seemed on the point +of crushing in her head in order to silence her. For the twinkling of +an eye she felt sickening dread. Blinded with rage, he had begun +beating about the room like a maniac. Then his choking silence and the +struggle with which he was shaken melted her to tears. She felt a +mortal regret and, rolling herself up in front of the fire so as to +roast her right side, she undertook the task of comforting him. + +“I take my oath, darling, I thought you knew it all. Otherwise I +shouldn’t have spoken; you may be sure. But perhaps it isn’t true. I +don’t say anything for certain. I’ve been told it, and people are +talking about it, but what does that prove? Oh, get along! You’re very +silly to grow riled about it. If I were a man I shouldn’t care a rush +for the women! All the women are alike, you see, high or low; they’re +all rowdy and the rest of it.” + +In a fit of self-abnegation she was severe on womankind, for she wished +thus to lessen the cruelty of her blow. But he did not listen to her or +hear what she said. With fumbling movements he had put on his boots and +his overcoat. For a moment longer he raved round, and then in a final +outburst, finding himself near the door, he rushed from the room. Nana +was very much annoyed. + +“Well, well! A prosperous trip to you!” she continued aloud, though she +was now alone. “He’s polite, too, that fellow is, when he’s spoken to! +And I had to defend myself at that! Well, I was the first to get back +my temper and I made plenty of excuses, I’m thinking! Besides, he had +been getting on my nerves!” + +Nevertheless, she was not happy and sat scratching her legs with both +hands. Then she took high ground: + +“Tut, tut, it isn’t my fault if he is a cuckold!” + +And toasted on every side and as hot as a roast bird, she went and +buried herself under the bedclothes after ringing for Zoé to usher in +the other man, who was waiting in the kitchen. + +Once outside, Muffat began walking at a furious pace. A fresh shower +had just fallen, and he kept slipping on the greasy pavement. When he +looked mechanically up into the sky he saw ragged, soot-colored clouds +scudding in front of the moon. At this hour of the night passers-by +were becoming few and far between in the Boulevard Haussmann. He +skirted the enclosures round the opera house in his search for +darkness, and as he went along he kept mumbling inconsequent phrases. +That girl had been lying. She had invented her story out of sheer +stupidity and cruelty. He ought to have crushed her head when he had it +under his heel. After all was said and done, the business was too +shameful. Never would he see her; never would he touch her again, or if +he did he would be miserably weak. And with that he breathed hard, as +though he were free once more. Oh, that naked, cruel monster, roasting +away like any goose and slavering over everything that he had respected +for forty years back. The moon had come out, and the empty street was +bathed in white light. He felt afraid, and he burst into a great fit of +sobbing, for he had grown suddenly hopeless and maddened as though he +had sunk into a fathomless void. + +“My God!” he stuttered out. “It’s finished! There’s nothing left now!” + +Along the boulevards belated people were hurrying. He tried hard to be +calm, and as the story told him by that courtesan kept recurring to his +burning consciousness, he wanted to reason the matter out. The countess +was coming up from Mme de Chezelles’s country house tomorrow morning. +Yet nothing, in fact, could have prevented her from returning to Paris +the night before and passing it with that man. He now began recalling +to mind certain details of their stay at Les Fondettes. One evening, +for instance, he had surprised Sabine in the shade of some trees, when +she was so much agitated as to be unable to answer his questions. The +man had been present; why should she not be with him now? The more he +thought about it the more possible the whole story became, and he ended +by thinking it natural and even inevitable. While he was in his shirt +sleeves in the house of a harlot his wife was undressing in her lover’s +room. Nothing could be simpler or more logical! Reasoning in this way, +he forced himself to keep cool. He felt as if there were a great +downward movement in the direction of fleshly madness, a movement +which, as it grew, was overcoming the whole world round about him. Warm +images pursued him in imagination. A naked Nana suddenly evoked a naked +Sabine. At this vision, which seemed to bring them together in +shameless relationship and under the influence of the same lusts, he +literally stumbled, and in the road a cab nearly ran over him. Some +women who had come out of a cafe jostled him amid loud laughter. Then a +fit of weeping once more overcame him, despite all his efforts to the +contrary, and, not wishing to shed tears in the presence of others, he +plunged into a dark and empty street. It was the Rue Rossini, and along +its silent length he wept like a child. + +“It’s over with us,” he said in hollow tones. “There’s nothing left us +now, nothing left us now!” + +He wept so violently that he had to lean up against a door as he buried +his face in his wet hands. A noise of footsteps drove him away. He felt +a shame and a fear which made him fly before people’s faces with the +restless step of a bird of darkness. When passers-by met him on the +pavement he did his best to look and walk in a leisurely way, for he +fancied they were reading his secret in the very swing of his +shoulders. He had followed the Rue de la Grange Bateliere as far as the +Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, where the brilliant lamplight surprised +him, and he retraced his steps. For nearly an hour he traversed the +district thus, choosing always the darkest corners. Doubtless there was +some goal whither his steps were patiently, instinctively, leading him +through a labyrinth of endless turnings. At length he lifted his eyes +up it a street corner. He had reached his destination, the point where +the Rue Taitbout and the Rue de la Provence met. He had taken an hour +amid his painful mental sufferings to arrive at a place he could have +reached in five minutes. One morning a month ago he remembered going up +to Fauchery’s rooms to thank him for a notice of a ball at the +Tuileries, in which the journalist had mentioned him. The flat was +between the ground floor and the first story and had a row of small +square windows which were half hidden by the colossal signboard +belonging to a shop. The last window on the left was bisected by a +brilliant band of lamplight coming from between the half-closed +curtains. And he remained absorbed and expectant, with his gaze fixed +on this shining streak. + +The moon had disappeared in an inky sky, whence an icy drizzle was +falling. Two o’clock struck at the Trinite. The Rue de Provence and the +Rue Taitbout lay in shadow, bestarred at intervals by bright splashes +of light from the gas lamps, which in the distance were merged in +yellow mist. Muffat did not move from where he was standing. That was +the room. He remembered it now: it had hangings of red “andrinople,” +and a Louis XIII bed stood at one end of it. The lamp must be standing +on the chimney piece to the right. Without doubt they had gone to bed, +for no shadows passed across the window, and the bright streak gleamed +as motionless as the light of a night lamp. With his eyes still +uplifted he began forming a plan; he would ring the bell, go upstairs +despite the porter’s remonstrances, break the doors in with a push of +his shoulder and fall upon them in the very bed without giving them +time to unlace their arms. For one moment the thought that he had no +weapon upon him gave him pause, but directly afterward he decided to +throttle them. He returned to the consideration of his project, and he +perfected it while waiting for some sign, some indication, which should +bring certainty with it. + +Had a woman’s shadow only shown itself at that moment he would have +rung. But the thought that perhaps he was deceiving himself froze him. +How could he be certain? Doubts began to return. His wife could not be +with that man. It was monstrous and impossible. Nevertheless, he stayed +where he was and was gradually overcome by a species of torpor which +merged into sheer feebleness while he waited long, and the fixity of +his gaze induced hallucinations. + +A shower was falling. Two policemen were approaching, and he was forced +to leave the doorway where he had taken shelter. When these were lost +to view in the Rue de Provence he returned to his post, wet and +shivering. The luminous streak still traversed the window, and this +time he was going away for good when a shadow crossed it. It moved so +quickly that he thought he had deceived himself. But first one and then +another black thing followed quickly after it, and there was a regular +commotion in the room. Riveted anew to the pavement, he experienced an +intolerable burning sensation in his inside as he waited to find out +the meaning of it all. Outlines of arms and legs flitted after one +another, and an enormous hand traveled about with the silhouette of a +water jug. He distinguished nothing clearly, but he thought he +recognized a woman’s headdress. And he disputed the point with himself; +it might well have been Sabine’s hair, only the neck did not seem +sufficiently slim. At that hour of the night he had lost the power of +recognition and of action. In this terrible agony of uncertainty his +inside caused him such acute suffering that he pressed against the door +in order to calm himself, shivering like a man in rags, as he did so. +Then seeing that despite everything he could not turn his eyes away +from the window, his anger changed into a fit of moralizing. He fancied +himself a deputy; he was haranguing an assembly, loudly denouncing +debauchery, prophesying national ruin. And he reconstructed Fauchery’s +article on the poisoned fly, and he came before the house and declared +that morals such as these, which could only be paralleled in the days +of the later Roman Empire, rendered society an impossibility; that did +him good. But the shadows had meanwhile disappeared. Doubtless they had +gone to bed again, and, still watching, he continued waiting where he +was. + +Three o’clock struck, then four, but he could not take his departure. +When showers fell he buried himself in a corner of the doorway, his +legs splashed with wet. Nobody passed by now, and occasionally his eyes +would close, as though scorched by the streak of light, which he kept +watching obstinately, fixedly, with idiotic persistence. On two +subsequent occasions the shadows flitted about, repeating the same +gestures and agitating the silhouette of the same gigantic jug, and +twice quiet was re-established, and the night lamp again glowed +discreetly out. These shadows only increased his uncertainty. Then, +too, a sudden idea soothed his brain while it postponed the decisive +moment. After all, he had only to wait for the woman when she left the +house. He could quite easily recognize Sabine. Nothing could be +simpler, and there would be no scandal, and he would be sure of things +one way or the other. It was only necessary to stay where he was. Among +all the confused feelings which had been agitating him he now merely +felt a dull need of certain knowledge. But sheer weariness and vacancy +began lulling him to sleep under his doorway, and by way of distraction +he tried to reckon up how long he would have to wait. Sabine was to be +at the station toward nine o’clock; that meant about four hours and a +half more. He was very patient; he would even have been content not to +move again, and he found a certain charm in fancying that his night +vigil would last through eternity. + +Suddenly the streak of light was gone. This extremely simple event was +to him an unforeseen catastrophe, at once troublesome and disagreeable. +Evidently they had just put the lamp out and were going to sleep. It +was reasonable enough at that hour, but he was irritated thereat, for +now the darkened window ceased to interest him. He watched it for a +quarter of an hour longer and then grew tired and, leaving the doorway, +took a turn upon the pavement. Until five o’clock he walked to and fro, +looking upward from time to time. The window seemed a dead thing, and +now and then he asked himself if he had not dreamed that shadows had +been dancing up there behind the panes. An intolerable sense of fatigue +weighed him down, a dull, heavy feeling, under the influence of which +he forgot what he was waiting for at that particular street corner. He +kept stumbling on the pavement and starting into wakefulness with the +icy shudder of a man who does not know where he is. Nothing seemed to +justify the painful anxiety he was inflicting on himself. Since those +people were asleep—well then, let them sleep! What good could it do +mixing in their affairs? It was very dark; no one would ever know +anything about this night’s doings. And with that every sentiment +within him, down to curiosity itself, took flight before the longing to +have done with it all and to find relief somewhere. The cold was +increasing, and the street was becoming insufferable. Twice he walked +away and slowly returned, dragging one foot behind the other, only to +walk farther away next time. It was all over; nothing was left him now, +and so he went down the whole length of the boulevard and did not +return. + +His was a melancholy progress through the streets. He walked slowly, +never changing his pace and simply keeping along the walls of the +houses. + +His boot heels re-echoed, and he saw nothing but his shadow moving at +his side. As he neared each successive gaslight it grew taller and +immediately afterward diminished. But this lulled him and occupied him +mechanically. He never knew afterward where he had been; it seemed as +if he had dragged himself round and round in a circle for hours. One +reminiscence only was very distinctly retained by him. Without his +being able to explain how it came about he found himself with his face +pressed close against the gate at the end of the Passage des Panoramas +and his two hands grasping the bars. He did not shake them but, his +whole heart swelling with emotion, he simply tried to look into the +passage. But he could make nothing out clearly, for shadows flooded the +whole length of the deserted gallery, and the wind, blowing hard down +the Rue Saint-Marc, puffed in his face with the damp breath of a +cellar. For a time he tried doggedly to see into the place, and then, +awakening from his dream, he was filled with astonishment and asked +himself what he could possibly be seeking for at that hour and in that +position, for he had pressed against the railings so fiercely that they +had left their mark on his face. Then he went on tramp once more. He +was hopeless, and his heart was full of infinite sorrow, for he felt, +amid all those shadows, that he was evermore betrayed and alone. + +Day broke at last. It was the murky dawn that follows winter nights and +looks so melancholy from muddy Paris pavements. Muffat had returned +into the wide streets, which were then in course of construction on +either side of the new opera house. Soaked by the rain and cut up by +cart wheels, the chalky soil had become a lake of liquid mire. But he +never looked to see where he was stepping and walked on and on, +slipping and regaining his footing as he went. The awakening of Paris, +with its gangs of sweepers and early workmen trooping to their +destinations, added to his troubles as day brightened. People stared at +him in surprise as he went by with scared look and soaked hat and muddy +clothes. For a long while he sought refuge against palings and among +scaffoldings, his desolate brain haunted by the single remaining +thought that he was very miserable. + +Then he thought of God. The sudden idea of divine help, of superhuman +consolation, surprised him, as though it were something unforeseen and +extraordinary. The image of M. Venot was evoked thereby, and he saw his +little plump face and ruined teeth. Assuredly M. Venot, whom for months +he had been avoiding and thereby rendering miserable, would be +delighted were he to go and knock at his door and fall weeping into his +arms. In the old days God had been always so merciful toward him. At +the least sorrow, the slightest obstacle on the path of life, he had +been wont to enter a church, where, kneeling down, he would humble his +littleness in the presence of Omnipotence. And he had been used to go +forth thence, fortified by prayer, fully prepared to give up the good +things of this world, possessed by the single yearning for eternal +salvation. But at present he only practiced by fits and starts, when +the terror of hell came upon him. All kinds of weak inclinations had +overcome him, and the thought of Nana disturbed his devotions. And now +the thought of God astonished him. Why had he not thought of God +before, in the hour of that terrible agony when his feeble humanity was +breaking up in ruin? + +Meanwhile with slow and painful steps he sought for a church. But he +had lost his bearings; the early hour had changed the face of the +streets. Soon, however, as he turned the corner of the Rue de la +Chaussée-d’Antin, he noticed a tower looming vaguely in the fog at the +end of the Trinite Church. The white statues overlooking the bare +garden seemed like so many chilly Venuses among the yellow foliage of a +park. Under the porch he stood and panted a little, for the ascent of +the wide steps had tired him. Then he went in. The church was very +cold, for its heating apparatus had been fireless since the previous +evening, and its lofty, vaulted aisles were full of a fine damp vapor +which had come filtering through the windows. The aisles were deep in +shadow; not a soul was in the church, and the only sound audible amid +the unlovely darkness was that made by the old shoes of some verger or +other who was dragging himself about in sulky semiwakefulness. Muffat, +however, after knocking forlornly against an untidy collection of +chairs, sank on his knees with bursting heart and propped himself +against the rails in front of a little chapel close by a font. He +clasped his hands and began searching within himself for suitable +prayers, while his whole being yearned toward a transport. But only his +lips kept stammering empty words; his heart and brain were far away, +and with them he returned to the outer world and began his long, +unresting march through the streets, as though lashed forward by +implacable necessity. And he kept repeating, “O my God, come to my +assistance! O my God, abandon not Thy creature, who delivers himself up +to Thy justice! O my God, I adore Thee: Thou wilt not leave me to +perish under the buffetings of mine enemies!” Nothing answered: the +shadows and the cold weighed upon him, and the noise of the old shoes +continued in the distance and prevented him praying. Nothing, indeed, +save that tiresome noise was audible in the deserted church, where the +matutinal sweeping was unknown before the early masses had somewhat +warmed the air of the place. After that he rose to his feet with the +help of a chair, his knees cracking under him as he did so. God was not +yet there. And why should he weep in M. Venot’s arms? The man could do +nothing. + +And then mechanically he returned to Nana’s house. Outside he slipped, +and he felt the tears welling to his eyes again, but he was not angry +with his lot—he was only feeble and ill. Yes, he was too tired; the +rain had wet him too much; he was nipped with cold, but the idea of +going back to his great dark house in the Rue Miromesnil froze his +heart. The house door at Nana’s was not open as yet, and he had to wait +till the porter made his appearance. He smiled as he went upstairs, for +he already felt penetrated by the soft warmth of that cozy retreat, +where he would be able to stretch his limbs and go to sleep. + +When Zoé opened the door to him she gave a start of most uneasy +astonishment. Madame had been taken ill with an atrocious sick +headache, and she hadn’t closed her eyes all night. Still, she could +quite go and see whether Madame had gone to sleep for good. And with +that she slipped into the bedroom while he sank back into one of the +armchairs in the drawing room. But almost at that very moment Nana +appeared. She had jumped out of bed and had scarce had time to slip on +a petticoat. Her feet were bare, her hair in wild disorder, her +nightgown all crumpled. + +“What! You here again?” she cried with a red flush on her cheeks. + +Up she rushed, stung by sudden indignation, in order herself to thrust +him out of doors. But when she saw him in such sorry plight—nay, so +utterly done for—she felt infinite pity. + +“Well, you are a pretty sight, my dear fellow!” she continued more +gently. “But what’s the matter? You’ve spotted them, eh? And it’s given +you the hump?” + +He did not answer; he looked like a broken-down animal. Nevertheless, +she came to the conclusion that he still lacked proofs, and to hearten +him up the said: + +“You see now? I was on the wrong tack. Your wife’s an honest woman, on +my word of honor! And now, my little friend, you must go home to bed. +You want it badly.” + +He did not stir. + +“Now then, be off! I can’t keep you here. But perhaps you won’t presume +to stay at such a time as this?” + +“Yes, let’s go to bed,” he stammered. + +She repressed a violent gesture, for her patience was deserting her. +Was the man going crazy? + +“Come, be off!” she repeated. + +“No.” + +But she flared up in exasperation, in utter rebellion. + +“It’s sickening! Don’t you understand I’m jolly tired of your company? +Go and find your wife, who’s making a cuckold of you. Yes, she’s making +a cuckold of you. I say so—yes, I do now. There, you’ve got the sack! +Will you leave me or will you not?” + +Muffat’s eyes filled with tears. He clasped his hands together. + +“Oh, let’s go to bed!” + +At this Nana suddenly lost all control over herself and was choked by +nervous sobs. She was being taken advantage of when all was said and +done! What had these stories to do with her? She certainly had used all +manner of delicate methods in order to teach him his lesson gently. And +now he was for making her pay the damages! No, thank you! She was +kindhearted, but not to that extent. + +“The devil, but I’ve had enough of this!” she swore, bringing her fist +down on the furniture. “Yes, yes, I wanted to be faithful—it was all I +could do to be that! Yet if I spoke the word I could be rich tomorrow, +my dear fellow!” + +He looked up in surprise. Never once had he thought of the monetary +question. If she only expressed a desire he would realize it at once; +his whole fortune was at her service. + +“No, it’s too late now,” she replied furiously. “I like men who give +without being asked. No, if you were to offer me a million for a single +interview I should say no! It’s over between us; I’ve got other fish to +fry there! So be off or I shan’t answer for the consequences. I shall +do something dreadful!” + +She advanced threateningly toward him, and while she was raving, as +became a good courtesan who, though driven to desperation, was yet +firmly convinced of her rights and her superiority over tiresome, +honest folks, the door opened suddenly and Steiner presented himself. +That proved the finishing touch. She shrieked aloud: + +“Well, I never. Here’s the other one!” + +Bewildered by her piercing outcry, Steiner stopped short. Muffat’s +unexpected presence annoyed him, for he feared an explanation and had +been doing his best to avoid it these three months past. With blinking +eyes he stood first on one leg, then on the other, looking embarrassed +the while and avoiding the count’s gaze. He was out of breath, and as +became a man who had rushed across Paris with good news, only to find +himself involved in unforeseen trouble, his face was flushed and +distorted. + +“Que veux-tu, toi?” asked Nana roughly, using the second person +singular in open mockery of the count. + +“What—what do I—” he stammered. “I’ve got it for you—you know what.” + +“Eh?” + +He hesitated. The day before yesterday she had given him to understand +that if he could not find her a thousand francs to pay a bill with she +would not receive him any more. For two days he had been loafing about +the town in quest of the money and had at last made the sum up that +very morning. + +“The thousand francs!” he ended by declaring as he drew an envelope +from his pocket. + +Nana had not remembered. + +“The thousand francs!” she cried. “D’you think I’m begging alms? Now +look here, that’s what I value your thousand francs at!” + +And snatching the envelope, she threw it full in his face. As became a +prudent Hebrew, he picked it up slowly and painfully and then looked at +the young woman with a dull expression of face. Muffat and he exchanged +a despairing glance, while she put her arms akimbo in order to shout +more loudly than before. + +“Come now, will you soon have done insulting me? I’m glad you’ve come, +too, dear boy, because now you see the clearance’ll be quite complete. +Now then, gee up! Out you go!” + +Then as they did not hurry in the least, for they were paralyzed: + +“D’you mean to say I’m acting like a fool, eh? It’s likely enough! But +you’ve bored me too much! And, hang it all, I’ve had enough of +swelldom! If I die of what I’m doing—well, it’s my fancy!” + +They sought to calm her; they begged her to listen to reason. + +“Now then, once, twice, thrice! Won’t you go? Very well! Look there! +I’ve got company.” + +And with a brisk movement she flung wide the bedroom door. Whereupon in +the middle of the tumbled bed the two men caught sight of Fontan. He +had not expected to be shown off in this situation; nevertheless, he +took things very easily, for he was used to sudden surprises on the +stage. Indeed, after the first shock he even hit upon a grimace +calculated to tide him honorably over his difficulty; he “turned +rabbit,” as he phrased it, and stuck out his lips and wrinkled up his +nose, so as completely to transform the lower half of his face. His +base, satyrlike head seemed to exude incontinence. It was this man +Fontan then whom Nana had been to fetch at the Varieties every day for +a week past, for she was smitten with that fierce sort of passion which +the grimacing ugliness of a low comedian is wont to inspire in the +genus courtesan. + +“There!” she said, pointing him out with tragic gesture. + +Muffat, who hitherto had pocketed everything, rebelled at this affront. + +“Bitch!” he stammered. + +But Nana, who was once more in the bedroom, came back in order to have +the last word. + +“How am I a bitch? What about your wife?” + +And she was off and, slamming the door with a bang, she noisily pushed +to the bolt. Left alone, the two men gazed at one another in silence. +Zoé had just come into the room, but she did not drive them out. Nay, +she spoke to them in the most sensible manner. As became a woman with a +head on her shoulders, she decided that Madame’s conduct was rather too +much of a good thing. But she defended her, nonetheless: this union +with the play actor couldn’t last; the madness must be allowed to pass +off! The two men retired without uttering a sound. On the pavement +outside they shook hands silently, as though swayed by a mutual sense +of fraternity. Then they turned their backs on one another and went +crawling off in opposite directions. + +When at last Muffat entered his town house in the Rue Miromesnil his +wife was just arriving. The two met on the great staircase, whose walls +exhaled an icy chill. They lifted up their eyes and beheld one another. +The count still wore his muddy clothes, and his pale, bewildered face +betrayed the prodigal returning from his debauch. The countess looked +as though she were utterly fagged out by a night in the train. She was +dropping with sleep, but her hair had been brushed anyhow, and her eyes +were deeply sunken. + + + + + CHAPTER VIII + + +We are in a little set of lodgings on the fourth floor in the Rue Veron +at Montmartre. Nana and Fontan have invited a few friends to cut their +Twelfth-Night cake with them. They are giving their housewarming, +though they have been only three days settled. + +They had no fixed intention of keeping house together, but the whole +thing had come about suddenly in the first glow of the honeymoon. After +her grand blowup, when she had turned the count and the banker so +vigorously out of doors, Nana felt the world crumbling about her feet. +She estimated the situation at a glance; the creditors would swoop down +on her anteroom, would mix themselves up with her love affairs and +threaten to sell her little all unless she continued to act sensibly. +Then, too, there would be no end of disputes and carking anxieties if +she attempted to save her furniture from their clutches. And so she +preferred giving up everything. Besides, the flat in the Boulevard +Haussmann was plaguing her to death. It was so stupid with its great +gilded rooms! In her access of tenderness for Fontan she began dreaming +of a pretty little bright chamber. Indeed, she returned to the old +ideals of the florist days, when her highest ambition was to have a +rosewood cupboard with a plate-glass door and a bed hung with blue +“reps.” In the course of two days she sold what she could smuggle out +of the house in the way of knickknacks and jewelry and then +disappeared, taking with her ten thousand francs and never even warning +the porter’s wife. It was a plunge into the dark, a merry spree; never +a trace was left behind. In this way she would prevent the men from +coming dangling after her. Fontain was very nice. He did not say no to +anything but just let her do as she liked. Nay, he even displayed an +admirable spirit of comradeship. He had, on his part, nearly seven +thousand francs, and despite the fact that people accused him of +stinginess, he consented to add them to the young woman’s ten thousand. +The sum struck them as a solid foundation on which to begin +housekeeping. And so they started away, drawing from their common +hoard, in order to hire and furnish the two rooms in the Rue Veron, and +sharing everything together like old friends. In the early days it was +really delicious. + +On Twelfth Night Mme Lerat and Louiset were the first to arrive. As +Fontan had not yet come home, the old lady ventured to give expression +to her fears, for she trembled to see her niece renouncing the chance +of wealth. + +“Oh, Aunt, I love him so dearly!” cried Nana, pressing her hands to her +heart with the prettiest of gestures. + +This phrase produced an extraordinary effect on Mme Lerat, and tears +came into her eyes. + +“That’s true,” she said with an air of conviction. “Love before all +things!” + +And with that she went into raptures over the prettiness of the rooms. +Nana took her to see the bedroom, the parlor and the very kitchen. +Gracious goodness, it wasn’t a vast place, but then, they had painted +it afresh and put up new wallpapers. Besides, the sun shone merrily +into it during the daytime. + +Thereupon Mme Lerat detained the young woman in the bedroom, while +Louiset installed himself behind the charwoman in the kitchen in order +to watch a chicken being roasted. If, said Mme Lerat, she permitted +herself to say what was in her mind, it was because Zoé had just been +at her house. Zoé had stayed courageously in the breach because she was +devoted to her mistress. Madame would pay her later on; she was in no +anxiety about that! And amid the breakup of the Boulevard Haussmann +establishment it was she who showed the creditors a bold front; it was +she who conducted a dignified retreat, saving what she could from the +wreck and telling everyone that her mistress was traveling. She never +once gave them her address. Nay, through fear of being followed, she +even deprived herself of the pleasure of calling on Madame. +Nevertheless, that same morning she had run round to Mme Lerat’s +because matters were taking a new turn. The evening before creditors in +the persons of the upholsterer, the charcoal merchant and the laundress +had put in an appearance and had offered to give Madame an extension of +time. Nay, they had even proposed to advance Madame a very considerable +amount if only Madame would return to her flat and conduct herself like +a sensible person. The aunt repeated Zoé’s words. Without doubt there +was a gentleman behind it all. + +“I’ll never consent!” declared Nana in great disgust. “Ah, they’re a +pretty lot those tradesmen! Do they think I’m to be sold so that they +can get their bills paid? Why, look here, I’d rather die of hunger than +deceive Fontan.” + +“That’s what I said,” averred Mme Lerat. “‘My niece,’ I said, ‘is too +noble-hearted!’” + +Nana, however, was much vexed to learn that La Mignotte was being sold +and that Labordette was buying it for Caroline Hequet at an absurdly +low price. It made her angry with that clique. Oh, they were a regular +cheap lot, in spite of their airs and graces! Yes, by Jove, she was +worth more than the whole lot of them! + +“They can have their little joke out,” she concluded, “but money will +never give them true happiness! Besides, you know, Aunt, I don’t even +know now whether all that set are alive or not. I’m much too happy.” + +At that very moment Mme Maloir entered, wearing one of those hats of +which she alone understood the shape. It was delightful meeting again. +Mme Maloir explained that magnificence frightened her and that NOW, +from time to time, she would come back for her game of bezique. A +second visit was paid to the different rooms in the lodgings, and in +the kitchen Nana talked of economy in the presence of the charwoman, +who was basting the fowl, and said that a servant would have cost too +much and that she was herself desirous of looking after things. Louiset +was gazing beatifically at the roasting process. + +But presently there was a loud outburst of voices. Fontan had come in +with Bosc and Prullière, and the company could now sit down to table. +The soup had been already served when Nana for the third time showed +off the lodgings. + +“Ah, dear children, how comfortable you are here!” Bosc kept repeating, +simply for the sake of pleasing the chums who were standing the dinner. +At bottom the subject of the “nook,” as he called it, nowise touched +him. + +In the bedroom he harped still more vigorously on the amiable note. +Ordinarily he was wont to treat women like cattle, and the idea of a +man bothering himself about one of the dirty brutes excited within him +the only angry feelings of which, in his comprehensive, drunken disdain +of the universe, he was still capable. + +“Ah, ah, the villains,” he continued with a wink, “they’ve done this on +the sly. Well, you were certainly right. It will be charming, and, by +heaven, we’ll come and see you!” + +But when Louiset arrived on the scene astride upon a broomstick, +Prullière chuckled spitefully and remarked: + +“Well, I never! You’ve got a baby already?” + +This struck everybody as very droll, and Mme Lerat and Mme Maloir shook +with laughter. Nana, far from being vexed, laughed tenderly and said +that unfortunately this was not the case. She would very much have +liked it, both for the little one’s sake and for her own, but perhaps +one would arrive all the same. Fontan, in his role of honest citizen, +took Louiset in his arms and began playing with him and lisping. + +“Never mind! It loves its daddy! Call me ‘Papa,’ you little +blackguard!” + +“Papa, Papa!” stammered the child. + +The company overwhelmed him with caresses, but Bosc was bored and +talked of sitting down to table. That was the only serious business in +life. Nana asked her guests’ permission to put Louiset’s chair next her +own. The dinner was very merry, but Bosc suffered from the near +neighborhood of the child, from whom he had to defend his plate. Mme +Lerat bored him too. She was in a melting mood and kept whispering to +him all sorts of mysterious things about gentlemen of the first fashion +who were still running after Nana. Twice he had to push away her knee, +for she was positively invading him in her gushing, tearful mood. +Prullière behaved with great incivility toward Mme Maloir and did not +once help her to anything. He was entirely taken up with Nana and +looked annoyed at seeing her with Fontan. Besides, the turtle doves +were kissing so excessively as to be becoming positive bores. Contrary +to all known rules, they had elected to sit side by side. + +“Devil take it! Why don’t you eat? You’ve got plenty of time ahead of +you!” Bosc kept repeating with his mouth full. “Wait till we are gone!” + +But Nana could not restrain herself. She was in a perfect ecstasy of +love. Her face was as full of blushes as an innocent young girl’s, and +her looks and her laughter seemed to overflow with tenderness. Gazing +on Fontan, she overwhelmed him with pet names—“my doggie, my old bear, +my kitten”—and whenever he passed her the water or the salt she bent +forward and kissed him at random on lips, eyes, nose or ear. Then if +she met with reproof she would return to the attack with the cleverest +maneuvers and with infinite submissiveness and the supple cunning of a +beaten cat would catch hold of his hand when no one was looking, in +order to kiss it again. It seemed she must be touching something +belonging to him. As to Fontan, he gave himself airs and let himself be +adored with the utmost condescension. His great nose sniffed with +entirely sensual content; his goat face, with its quaint, monstrous +ugliness, positively glowed in the sunlight of devoted adoration +lavished upon him by that superb woman who was so fair and so plump of +limb. Occasionally he gave a kiss in return, as became a man who is +having all the enjoyment and is yet willing to behave prettily. + +“Well, you’re growing maddening!” cried Prullière. “Get away from her, +you fellow there!” + +And he dismissed Fontan and changed covers, in order to take his place +at Nana’s side. The company shouted and applauded at this and gave vent +to some stiffish epigrammatic witticisms. Fontan counterfeited despair +and assumed the quaint expression of Vulcan crying for Venus. +Straightway Prullière became very gallant, but Nana, whose foot he was +groping for under the table, caught him a slap to make him keep quiet. +No, no, she was certainly not going to become his mistress. A month ago +she had begun to take a fancy to him because of his good looks, but now +she detested him. If he pinched her again under pretense of picking up +her napkin, she would throw her glass in his face! + +Nevertheless, the evening passed off well. The company had naturally +begun talking about the Variétés. Wasn’t that cad of a Bordenave going +to go off the hooks after all? His nasty diseases kept reappearing and +causing him such suffering that you couldn’t come within six yards of +him nowadays. The day before during rehearsal he had been incessantly +yelling at Simonne. There was a fellow whom the theatrical people +wouldn’t shed many tears over. Nana announced that if he were to ask +her to take another part she would jolly well send him to the +rightabout. Moreover, she began talking of leaving the stage; the +theater was not to compare with her home. Fontan, who was not in the +present piece or in that which was then being rehearsed, also talked +big about the joy of being entirely at liberty and of passing his +evenings with his feet on the fender in the society of his little pet. +And at this the rest exclaimed delightedly, treating their entertainers +as lucky people and pretending to envy their felicity. + +The Twelfth-Night cake had been cut and handed round. The bean had +fallen to the lot of Mme Lerat, who popped it into Bosc’s glass. +Whereupon there were shouts of “The king drinks! The king drinks!” Nana +took advantage of this outburst of merriment and went and put her arms +round Fontan’s neck again, kissing him and whispering in his ear. But +Prullière, laughing angrily, as became a pretty man, declared that they +were not playing the game. Louiset, meanwhile, slept soundly on two +chairs. It was nearing one o’clock when the company separated, shouting +au revoir as they went downstairs. + +For three weeks the existence of the pair of lovers was really +charming. Nana fancied she was returning to those early days when her +first silk dress had caused her infinite delight. She went out little +and affected a life of solitude and simplicity. One morning early, when +she had gone down to buy fish IN PROPRIA PERSONA in La Rouchefoucauld +Market, she was vastly surprised to meet her old hair dresser Francis +face to face. His getup was as scrupulously careful as ever: he wore +the finest linen, and his frock coat was beyond reproach; in fact, Nana +felt ashamed that he should see her in the street with a dressing +jacket and disordered hair and down-at-heel shoes. But he had the tact, +if possible, to intensify his politeness toward her. He did not permit +himself a single inquiry and affected to believe that Madame was at +present on her travels. Ah, but Madame had rendered many persons +unhappy when she decided to travel! All the world had suffered loss. +The young woman, however, ended by asking him questions, for a sudden +fit of curiosity had made her forget her previous embarrassment. Seeing +that the crowd was jostling them, she pushed him into a doorway and, +still holding her little basket in one hand, stood chatting in front of +him. What were people saying about her high jinks? Good heavens! The +ladies to whom he went said this and that and all sorts of things. In +fact, she had made a great noise and was enjoying a real boom: And +Steiner? M. Steiner was in a very bad way, would make an ugly finish if +he couldn’t hit on some new commercial operation. And Daguenet? Oh, HE +was getting on swimmingly. M. Daguenet was settling down. Nana, under +the exciting influence of various recollections, was just opening her +mouth with a view to a further examination when she felt it would be +awkward to utter Muffat’s name. Thereupon Francis smiled and spoke +instead of her. As to Monsieur le Comte, it was all a great pity, so +sad had been his sufferings since Madame’s departure. + +He had been like a soul in pain—you might have met him wherever Madame +was likely to be found. At last M. Mignon had come across him and had +taken him home to his own place. This piece of news caused Nana to +laugh a good deal. But her laughter was not of the easiest kind. + +“Ah, he’s with Rose now,” she said. “Well then, you must know, Francis, +I’ve done with him! Oh, the canting thing! It’s learned some pretty +habits—can’t even go fasting for a week now! And to think that he used +to swear he wouldn’t have any woman after me!” + +She was raging inwardly. + +“My leavings, if you please!” she continued. “A pretty Johnnie for Rose +to go and treat herself to! Oh, I understand it all now: she wanted to +have her revenge because I got that brute of a Steiner away from her. +Ain’t it sly to get a man to come to her when I’ve chucked him out of +doors?” + +“M. Mignon doesn’t tell that tale,” said the hairdresser. “According to +his account, it was Monsieur le Comte who chucked you out. Yes, and in +a pretty disgusting way too—with a kick on the bottom!” + +Nana became suddenly very pale. + +“Eh, what?” she cried. “With a kick on my bottom? He’s going too far, +he is! Look here, my little friend, it was I who threw him downstairs, +the cuckold, for he is a cuckold, I must inform you. His countess is +making him one with every man she meets—yes, even with that +good-for-nothing of a Fauchery. And that Mignon, who goes loafing about +the pavement in behalf of his harridan of a wife, whom nobody wants +because she’s so lean! What a foul lot! What a foul lot!” + +She was choking, and she paused for breath + +“Oh, that’s what they say, is it? Very well, my little Francis, I’ll go +and look ’em up, I will. Shall you and I go to them at once? Yes, I’ll +go, and we’ll see whether they will have the cheek to go telling about +kicks on the bottom. Kick’s! I never took one from anybody! And +nobody’s ever going to strike me—d’ye see?—for I’d smash the man who +laid a finger on me!” + +Nevertheless, the storm subsided at last. After all, they might jolly +well what they liked! She looked upon them as so much filth underfoot! +It would have soiled her to bother about people like that. She had a +conscience of her own, she had! And Francis, seeing her thus giving +herself away, what with her housewife’s costume and all, became +familiar and, at parting, made so bold as to give her some good advice. +It was wrong of her to be sacrificing everything for the sake of an +infatuation; such infatuations ruined existence. She listened to him +with bowed head while he spoke to her with a pained expression, as +became a connoisseur who could not bear to see so fine a girl making +such a hash of things. + +“Well, that’s my affair,” she said at last “Thanks all the same, dear +boy.” She shook his hand, which despite his perfect dress was always a +little greasy, and then went off to buy her fish. During the day that +story about the kick on the bottom occupied her thoughts. She even +spoke about it to Fontan and again posed as a sturdy woman who was not +going to stand the slightest flick from anybody. Fontan, as became a +philosophic spirit, declared that all men of fashion were beasts whom +it was one’s duty to despise. And from that moment forth Nana was full +of very real disdain. + +That same evening they went to the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre to see a +little woman of Fontan’s acquaintance make her debut in a part of some +ten lines. It was close on one o’clock when they once more trudged up +the heights of Montmartre. They had purchased a cake, a “mocha,” in the +Rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin, and they ate it in bed, seeing that the +night was not warm and it was not worth while lighting a fire. Sitting +up side by side, with the bedclothes pulled up in front and the pillows +piled up behind, they supped and talked about the little woman. Nana +thought her plain and lacking in style. Fontan, lying on his stomach, +passed up the pieces of cake which had been put between the candle and +the matches on the edge of the night table. But they ended by +quarreling. + +“Oh, just to think of it!” cried Nana. “She’s got eyes like gimlet +holes, and her hair’s the color of tow.” + +“Hold your tongue, do!” said Fontan. “She has a superb head of hair and +such fire in her looks! It’s lovely the way you women always tear each +other to pieces!” + +He looked annoyed. + +“Come now, we’ve had enough of it!” he said at last in savage tones. +“You know I don’t like being bored. Let’s go to sleep, or things’ll +take a nasty turn.” + +And he blew out the candle, but Nana was furious and went on talking. +She was not going to be spoken to in that voice; she was accustomed to +being treated with respect! As he did not vouchsafe any further answer, +she was silenced, but she could not go to sleep and lay tossing to and +fro. + +“Great God, have you done moving about?” cried he suddenly, giving a +brisk jump upward. + +“It isn’t my fault if there are crumbs in the bed,” she said curtly. + +In fact, there were crumbs in the bed. She felt them down to her +middle; she was everywhere devoured by them. One single crumb was +scorching her and making her scratch herself till she bled. Besides, +when one eats a cake isn’t it usual to shake out the bedclothes +afterward? Fontan, white with rage, had relit the candle, and they both +got up and, barefooted and in their night dresses, they turned down the +clothes and swept up the crumbs on the sheet with their hands. Fontan +went to bed again, shivering, and told her to go to the devil when she +advised him to wipe the soles of his feet carefully. And in the end she +came back to her old position, but scarce had she stretched herself out +than she danced again. There were fresh crumbs in the bed! + +“By Jove, it was sure to happen!” she cried. “You’ve brought them back +again under your feet. I can’t go on like this! No, I tell you, I can’t +go on like this!” + +And with that she was on the point of stepping over him in order to +jump out of bed again, when Fontan in his longing for sleep grew +desperate and dealt her a ringing box on the ear. The blow was so smart +that Nana suddenly found herself lying down again with her head on the +pillow. + +She lay half stunned. + +“Oh!” she ejaculated simply, sighing a child’s big sigh. + +For a second or two he threatened her with a second slap, asking her at +the same time if she meant to move again. Then he put out the light, +settled himself squarely on his back and in a trice was snoring. But +she buried her face in the pillow and began sobbing quietly to herself. +It was cowardly of him to take advantage of his superior strength! She +had experienced very real terror all the same, so terrible had that +quaint mask of Fontan’s become. And her anger began dwindling down as +though the blow had calmed her. She began to feel respect toward him +and accordingly squeezed herself against the wall in order to leave him +as much room as possible. She even ended by going to sleep, her cheek +tingling, her eyes full of tears and feeling so deliciously depressed +and wearied and submissive that she no longer noticed the crumbs. When +she woke up in the morning she was holding Fontain in her naked arms +and pressing him tightly against her breast. He would never begin it +again, eh? Never again? She loved him too dearly. Why, it was even nice +to be beaten if he struck the blow! + +After that night a new life began. For a mere trifle—a yes, a no—Fontan +would deal her a blow. She grew accustomed to it and pocketed +everything. Sometimes she shed tears and threatened him, but he would +pin her up against the wall and talk of strangling her, which had the +effect of rendering her extremely obedient. As often as not, she sank +down on a chair and sobbed for five minutes on end. But afterward she +would forget all about it, grow very merry, fill the little lodgings +with the sound of song and laughter and the rapid rustle of skirts. The +worst of it was that Fontan was now in the habit of disappearing for +the whole day and never returning home before midnight, for he was +going to cafes and meeting his old friends again. Nana bore with +everything. She was tremulous and caressing, her only fear being that +she might never see him again if she reproached him. But on certain +days, when she had neither Mme Maloir nor her aunt and Louiset with +her, she grew mortally dull. Thus one Sunday, when she was bargaining +for some pigeons at La Rochefoucauld Market, she was delighted to meet +Satin, who, in her turn, was busy purchasing a bunch of radishes. Since +the evening when the prince had drunk Fontan’s champagne they had lost +sight of one another. + +“What? It’s you! D’you live in our parts?” said Satin, astounded at +seeing her in the street at that hour of the morning and in slippers +too. “Oh, my poor, dear girl, you’re really ruined then!” + +Nana knitted her brows as a sign that she was to hold her tongue, for +they were surrounded by other women who wore dressing gowns and were +without linen, while their disheveled tresses were white with fluff. In +the morning, when the man picked up overnight had been newly dismissed, +all the courtesans of the quarter were wont to come marketing here, +their eyes heavy with sleep, their feet in old down-at-heel shoes and +themselves full of the weariness and ill humor entailed by a night of +boredom. From the four converging streets they came down into the +market, looking still rather young in some cases and very pale and +charming in their utter unconstraint; in others, hideous and old with +bloated faces and peeling skin. The latter did not the least mind being +seen thus outside working hours, and not one of them deigned to smile +when the passers-by on the sidewalk turned round to look at them. +Indeed, they were all very full of business and wore a disdainful +expression, as became good housewives for whom men had ceased to exist. +Just as Satin, for instance, was paying for her bunch of radishes a +young man, who might have been a shop-boy going late to his work, threw +her a passing greeting: + +“Good morning, duckie.” + +She straightened herself up at once and with the dignified manner +becoming an offended queen remarked: + +“What’s up with that swine there?” + +Then she fancied she recognized him. Three days ago toward midnight, as +the was coming back alone from the boulevards, she had talked to him at +the corner of the Rue Labruyère for nearly half an hour, with a view to +persuading him to come home with her. But this recollection only +angered her the more. + +“Fancy they’re brutes enough to shout things to you in broad daylight!” +she continued. “When one’s out on business one ought to be respectfully +treated, eh?” + +Nana had ended by buying her pigeons, although she certainly had her +doubts of their freshness. After which Satin wanted to show her where +she lived in the Rue Rochefoucauld close by. And the moment they were +alone Nana told her of her passion for Fontan. Arrived in front of the +house, the girl stopped with her bundle of radishes under her arm and +listened eagerly to a final detail which the other imparted to her. +Nana fibbed away and vowed that it was she who had turned Count Muffat +out of doors with a perfect hail of kicks on the posterior. + +“Oh how smart!” Satin repeated. “How very smart! Kicks, eh? And he +never said a word, did he? What a blooming coward! I wish I’d been +there to see his ugly mug! My dear girl, you were quite right. A pin +for the coin! When I’M on with a mash I starve for it! You’ll come and +see me, eh? You promise? It’s the left-hand door. Knock three knocks, +for there’s a whole heap of damned squints about.” + +After that whenever Nana grew too weary of life she went down and saw +Satin. She was always sure of finding her, for the girl never went out +before six in the evening. Satin occupied a couple of rooms which a +chemist had furnished for her in order to save her from the clutches of +the police, but in little more than a twelvemonth she had broken the +furniture, knocked in the chairs, dirtied the curtains, and that in a +manner so furiously filthy and untidy that the lodgings seemed as +though inhabited by a pack of mad cats. On the mornings when she grew +disgusted with herself and thought about cleaning up a bit, chair rails +and strips of curtain would come off in her hands during her struggle +with superincumbent dirt. On such days the place was fouler than ever, +and it was impossible to enter it, owing to the things which had fallen +down across the doorway. At length she ended by leaving her house +severely alone. When the lamp was lit the cupboard with plate-glass +doors, the clock and what remained of the curtains still served to +impose on the men. Besides, for six months past her landlord had been +threatening to evict her. Well then, for whom should she be keeping the +furniture nice? For him more than anyone else, perhaps! And so whenever +she got up in a merry mood she would shout “Gee up!” and give the sides +of the cupboard and the chest of drawers such a tremendous kick that +they cracked again. + +Nana nearly always found her in bed. Even on the days when Satin went +out to do her marketing she felt so tired on her return upstairs that +she flung herself down on the bed and went to sleep again. During the +day she dragged herself about and dozed off on chairs. Indeed, she did +not emerge from this languid condition till the evening drew on and the +gas was lit outside. Nana felt very comfortable at Satin’s, sitting +doing nothing on the untidy bed, while basins stood about on the floor +at her feet and petticoats which had been bemired last night hung over +the backs of armchairs and stained them with mud. They had long gossips +together and were endlessly confidential, while Satin lay on her +stomach in her nightgown, waving her legs above her head and smoking +cigarettes as she listened. Sometimes on such afternoons as they had +troubles to retail they treated themselves to absinthe in order, as +they termed it, “to forget.” Satin did not go downstairs or put on a +petticoat but simply went and leaned over the banisters and shouted her +order to the portress’s little girl, a chit of ten, who when she +brought up the absinthe in a glass would look furtively at the lady’s +bare legs. Every conversation led up to one subject—the beastliness of +the men. Nana was overpowering on the subject of Fontan. She could not +say a dozen words without lapsing into endless repetitions of his +sayings and his doings. But Satin, like a good-natured girl, would +listen unwearyingly to everlasting accounts of how Nana had watched for +him at the window, how they had fallen out over a burnt dish of hash +and how they had made it up in bed after hours of silent sulking. In +her desire to be always talking about these things Nana had got to tell +of every slap that he dealt her. Last week he had given her a swollen +eye; nay, the night before he had given her such a box on the ear as to +throw her across the night table, and all because he could not find his +slippers. And the other woman did not evince any astonishment but blew +out cigarette smoke and only paused a moment to remark that, for her +part, she always ducked under, which sent the gentleman pretty nearly +sprawling. Both of them settled down with a will to these anecdotes +about blows; they grew supremely happy and excited over these same +idiotic doings about which they told one another a hundred times or +more, while they gave themselves up to the soft and pleasing sense of +weariness which was sure to follow the drubbings they talked of. It was +the delight of rediscussing Fontan’s blows and of explaining his works +and his ways, down to the very manner in which he took off his boots, +which brought Nana back daily to Satin’s place. The latter, moreover, +used to end by growing sympathetic in her turn and would cite even more +violent cases, as, for instance, that of a pastry cook who had left her +for dead on the floor. Yet she loved him, in spite of it all! Then came +the days on which Nana cried and declared that things could not go on +as they were doing. Satin would escort her back to her own door and +would linger an hour out in the street to see that he did not murder +her. And the next day the two women would rejoice over the +reconciliation the whole afternoon through. Yet though they did not say +so, they preferred the days when threshings were, so to speak, in the +air, for then their comfortable indignation was all the stronger. + +They became inseparable. Yet Satin never went to Nana’s, Fontan having +announced that he would have no trollops in his house. They used to go +out together, and thus it was that Satin one day took her friend to see +another woman. This woman turned out to be that very Mme Robert who had +interested Nana and inspired her with a certain respect ever since she +had refused to come to her supper. Mme Robert lived in the Rue Mosnier, +a silent, new street in the Quartier de l’Europe, where there were no +shops, and the handsome houses with their small, limited flats were +peopled by ladies. It was five o’clock, and along the silent pavements +in the quiet, aristocratic shelter of the tall white houses were drawn +up the broughams of stock-exchange people and merchants, while men +walked hastily about, looking up at the windows, where women in +dressing jackets seemed to be awaiting them. At first Nana refused to +go up, remarking with some constraint that she had not the pleasure of +the lady’s acquaintance. But Satin would take no refusal. She was only +desirous of paying a civil call, for Mme Robert, whom she had met in a +restaurant the day before, had made herself extremely agreeable and had +got her to promise to come and see her. And at last Nana consented. At +the top of the stairs a little drowsy maid informed them that Madame +had not come home yet, but she ushered them into the drawing room +notwithstanding and left them there. + +“The deuce, it’s a smart show!” whispered Satin. It was a stiff, +middle-class room, hung with dark-colored fabrics, and suggested the +conventional taste of a Parisian shopkeeper who has retired on his +fortune. Nana was struck and did her best to make merry about it. But +Satin showed annoyance and spoke up for Mme Robert’s strict adherence +to the proprieties. She was always to be met in the society of elderly, +grave-looking men, on whose arms she leaned. At present she had a +retired chocolate seller in tow, a serious soul. Whenever he came to +see her he was so charmed by the solid, handsome way in which the house +was arranged that he had himself announced and addressed its mistress +as “dear child.” + +“Look, here she is!” continued Satin, pointing to a photograph which +stood in front of the clock. Nana scrutinized the portrait for a second +or so. It represented a very dark brunette with a longish face and lips +pursed up in a discreet smile. “A thoroughly fashionable lady,” one +might have said of the likeness, “but one who is rather more reserved +than the rest.” + +“It’s strange,” murmured Nana at length, “but I’ve certainly seen that +face somewhere. Where, I don’t remember. But it can’t have been in a +pretty place—oh no, I’m sure it wasn’t in a pretty place.” + +And turning toward her friend, she added, “So she’s made you promise to +come and see her? What does she want with you?” + +“What does she want with me? ’Gad! To talk, I expect—to be with me a +bit. It’s her politeness.” + +Nana looked steadily at Satin. “Tut, tut,” she said softly. After all, +it didn’t matter to her! Yet seeing that the lady was keeping them +waiting, she declared that she would not stay longer, and accordingly +they both took their departure. + +The next day Fontan informed Nana that he was not coming home to +dinner, and she went down early to find Satin with a view to treating +her at a restaurant. The choice of the restaurant involved infinite +debate. Satin proposed various brewery bars, which Nana thought +detestable, and at last persuaded her to dine at Laure’s. This was a +table d’hôte in the Rue des Martyrs, where the dinner cost three +francs. + +Tired of waiting for the dinner hour and not knowing what to do out in +the street, the pair went up to Laure’s twenty minutes too early. The +three dining rooms there were still empty, and they sat down at a table +in the very saloon where Laure Piedefer was enthroned on a high bench +behind a bar. This Laure was a lady of some fifty summers, whose +swelling contours were tightly laced by belts and corsets. Women kept +entering in quick procession, and each, in passing, craned upward so as +to overtop the saucers raised on the counter and kissed Laure on the +mouth with tender familiarity, while the monstrous creature tried, with +tears in her eyes, to divide her attentions among them in such a way as +to make no one jealous. On the other hand, the servant who waited on +the ladies was a tall, lean woman. She seemed wasted with disease, and +her eyes were ringed with dark lines and glowed with somber fire. Very +rapidly the three saloons filled up. There were some hundred customers, +and they had seated themselves wherever they could find vacant places. +The majority were nearing the age of forty: their flesh was puffy and +so bloated by vice as almost to hide the outlines of their flaccid +mouths. But amid all these gross bosoms and figures some slim, pretty +girls were observable. These still wore a modest expression despite +their impudent gestures, for they were only beginners in their art, who +had started life in the ballrooms of the slums and had been brought to +Laure’s by some customer or other. Here the tribe of bloated women, +excited by the sweet scent of their youth, jostled one another and, +while treating them to dainties, formed a perfect court round them, +much as old amorous bachelors might have done. As to the men, they were +not numerous. There were ten or fifteen of them at the outside, and if +we except four tall fellows who had come to see the sight and were +cracking jokes and taking things easy, they behaved humbly enough amid +this whelming flood of petticoats. + +“I say, their stew’s very good, ain’t it?” said Satin. + +Nana nodded with much satisfaction. It was the old substantial dinner +you get in a country hotel and consisted of vol-au-vent à la +financière, fowl boiled in rice, beans with a sauce and vanilla creams, +iced and flavored with burnt sugar. The ladies made an especial +onslaught on the boiled fowl and rice: their stays seemed about to +burst; they wiped their lips with slow, luxurious movements. At first +Nana had been afraid of meeting old friends who might have asked her +silly questions, but she grew calm at last, for she recognized no one +she knew among that extremely motley throng, where faded dresses and +lamentable hats contrasted strangely with handsome costumes, the +wearers of which fraternized in vice with their shabbier neighbors. She +was momentarily interested, however, at the sight of a young man with +short curly hair and insolent face who kept a whole tableful of vastly +fat women breathlessly attentive to his slightest caprice. But when the +young man began to laugh his bosom swelled. + +“Good lack, it’s a woman!” + +She let a little cry escape as she spoke, and Satin, who was stuffing +herself with boiled fowl, lifted up her head and whispered: + +“Oh yes! I know her. A smart lot, eh? They do just fight for her.” + +Nana pouted disgustingly. She could not understand the thing as yet. +Nevertheless, she remarked in her sensible tone that there was no +disputing about tastes or colors, for you never could tell what you +yourself might one day have a liking for. So she ate her cream with an +air of philosophy, though she was perfectly well aware that Satin with +her great blue virginal eyes was throwing the neighboring tables into a +state of great excitement. There was one woman in particular, a +powerful, fair-haired person who sat close to her and made herself +extremely agreeable. She seemed all aglow with affection and pushed +toward the girl so eagerly that Nana was on the point of interfering. + +But at that very moment a woman who was entering the room gave her a +shock of surprise. Indeed, she had recognized Mme Robert. The latter, +looking, as was her wont, like a pretty brown mouse, nodded familiarly +to the tall, lean serving maid and came and leaned upon Laure’s +counter. Then both women exchanged a long kiss. Nana thought such an +attention on the part of a woman so distinguished looking very amusing, +the more so because Mme Robert had quite altered her usual modest +expression. On the contrary, her eye roved about the saloon as she kept +up a whispered conversation. Laure had resumed her seat and once more +settled herself down with all the majesty of an old image of Vice, +whose face has been worn and polished by the kisses of the faithful. +Above the range of loaded plates she sat enthroned in all the opulence +which a hotelkeeper enjoys after forty years of activity, and as she +sat there she swayed her bloated following of large women, in +comparison with the biggest of whom she seemed monstrous. + +But Mme Robert had caught sight of Satin, and leaving Laure, she ran up +and behaved charmingly, telling her how much she regretted not having +been at home the day before. When Satin, however, who was ravished at +this treatment, insisted on finding room for her at the table, she +vowed she had already dined. She had simply come up to look about her. +As she stood talking behind her new friend’s chair she leaned lightly +on her shoulders and in a smiling, coaxing manner remarked: + +“Now when shall I see you? If you were free—” + +Nana unluckily failed to hear more. The conversation vexed her, and she +was dying to tell this honest lady a few home truths. But the sight of +a troop of new arrivals paralyzed her. It was composed of smart, +fashionably dressed women who were wearing their diamonds. Under the +influence of perverse impulse they had made up a party to come to +Laure’s—whom, by the by, they all treated with great familiarity—to eat +the three-franc dinner while flashing their jewels of great price in +the jealous and astonished eyes of poor, bedraggled prostitutes. The +moment they entered, talking and laughing in their shrill, clear tones +and seeming to bring sunshine with them from the outside world, Nana +turned her head rapidly away. Much to her annoyance she had recognized +Lucy Stewart and Maria Blond among them, and for nearly five minutes, +during which the ladies chatted with Laure before passing into the +saloon beyond, she kept her head down and seemed deeply occupied in +rolling bread pills on the cloth in front of her. But when at length +she was able to look round, what was her astonishment to observe the +chair next to hers vacant! Satin had vanished. + +“Gracious, where can she be?” she loudly ejaculated. + +The sturdy, fair woman who had been overwhelming Satin with civil +attentions laughed ill-temperedly, and when Nana, whom the laugh +irritated, looked threatening she remarked in a soft, drawling way: + +“It’s certainly not me that’s done you this turn; it’s the other one!” + +Thereupon Nana understood that they would most likely make game of her +and so said nothing more. She even kept her seat for some moments, as +she did not wish to show how angry she felt. She could hear Lucy +Stewart laughing at the end of the next saloon, where she was treating +a whole table of little women who had come from the public balls at +Montmartre and La Chapelle. It was very hot; the servant was carrying +away piles of dirty plates with a strong scent of boiled fowl and rice, +while the four gentlemen had ended by regaling quite half a dozen +couples with capital wine in the hope of making them tipsy and hearing +some pretty stiffish things. What at present most exasperated Nana was +the thought of paying for Satin’s dinner. There was a wench for you, +who allowed herself to be amused and then made off with never a +thank-you in company with the first petticoat that came by! Without +doubt it was only a matter of three francs, but she felt it was hard +lines all the same—her way of doing it was too disgusting. +Nevertheless, she paid up, throwing the six francs at Laure, whom at +the moment she despised more than the mud in the street. In the Rue des +Martyrs Nana felt her bitterness increasing. She was certainly not +going to run after Satin! It was a nice filthy business for one to be +poking one’s nose into! But her evening was spoiled, and she walked +slowly up again toward Montmartre, raging against Mme Robert in +particular. Gracious goodness, that woman had a fine cheek to go +playing the lady—yes, the lady in the dustbin! She now felt sure she +had met her at the Papillon, a wretched public-house ball in the Rue +des Poissonniers, where men conquered her scruples for thirty sous. And +to think a thing like that got hold of important functionaries with her +modest looks! And to think she refused suppers to which one did her the +honor of inviting her because, forsooth, she was playing the virtuous +game! Oh yes, she’d get virtued! It was always those conceited prudes +who went the most fearful lengths in low corners nobody knew anything +about. + +Revolving these matters, Nana at length reached her home in the Rue +Veron and was taken aback on observing a light in the window. Fontan +had come home in a sulk, for he, too, had been deserted by the friend +who had been dining with him. He listened coldly to her explanations +while she trembled lest he should strike her. It scared her to find him +at home, seeing that she had not expected him before one in the +morning, and she told him a fib and confessed that she had certainly +spent six francs, but in Mme Maloir’s society. He was not ruffled, +however, and he handed her a letter which, though addressed to her, he +had quietly opened. It was a letter from Georges, who was still a +prisoner at Les Fondettes and comforted himself weekly with the +composition of glowing pages. Nana loved to be written to, especially +when the letters were full of grand, loverlike expressions with a +sprinkling of vows. She used to read them to everybody. Fontan was +familiar with the style employed by Georges and appreciated it. But +that evening she was so afraid of a scene that she affected complete +indifference, skimming through the letter with a sulky expression and +flinging it aside as soon as read. Fontan had begun beating a tattoo on +a windowpane; the thought of going to bed so early bored him, and yet +he did not know how to employ his evening. He turned briskly round: + +“Suppose we answer that young vagabond at once,” he said. + +It was the custom for him to write the letters in reply. He was wont to +vie with the other in point of style. Then, too, he used to be +delighted when Nana, grown enthusiastic after the letter had been read +over aloud, would kiss him with the announcement that nobody but he +could “say things like that.” Thus their latent affections would be +stirred, and they would end with mutual adoration. + +“As you will,” she replied. “I’ll make tea, and we’ll go to bed after.” + +Thereupon Fontan installed himself at the table on which pen, ink and +paper were at the same time grandly displayed. He curved his arm; he +drew a long face. + +“My heart’s own,” he began aloud. + +And for more than an hour he applied himself to his task, polishing +here, weighing a phrase there, while he sat with his head between his +hands and laughed inwardly whenever he hit upon a peculiarly tender +expression. Nana had already consumed two cups of tea in silence, when +at last he read out the letter in the level voice and with the two or +three emphatic gestures peculiar to such performances on the stage. It +was five pages long, and he spoke therein of “the delicious hours +passed at La Mignotte, those hours of which the memory lingered like +subtle perfume.” He vowed “eternal fidelity to that springtide of love” +and ended by declaring that his sole wish was to “recommence that happy +time if, indeed, happiness can recommence.” + +“I say that out of politeness, y’know,” he explained. “The moment it +becomes laughable—eh, what! I think she’s felt it, she has!” + +He glowed with triumph. But Nana was unskillful; she still suspected an +outbreak and now was mistaken enough not to fling her arms round his +neck in a burst of admiration. She thought the letter a respectable +performance, nothing more. Thereupon he was much annoyed. If his letter +did not please her she might write another! And so instead of bursting +out in loverlike speeches and exchanging kisses, as their wont was, +they sat coldly facing one another at the table. Nevertheless, she +poured him out a cup of tea. + +“Here’s a filthy mess,” he cried after dipping his lips in the mixture. +“You’ve put salt in it, you have!” + +Nana was unlucky enough to shrug her shoulders, and at that he grew +furious. + +“Aha! Things are taking a wrong turn tonight!” + +And with that the quarrel began. It was only ten by the clock, and this +was a way of killing time. So he lashed himself into a rage and threw +in Nana’s teeth a whole string of insults and all kinds of accusations +which followed one another so closely that she had no time to defend +herself. She was dirty; she was stupid; she had knocked about in all +sorts of low places! After that he waxed frantic over the money +question. Did he spend six francs when he dined out? No, somebody was +treating him to a dinner; otherwise he would have eaten his ordinary +meal at home. And to think of spending them on that old procuress of a +Maloir, a jade he would chuck out of the house tomorrow! Yes, by jingo, +they would get into a nice mess if he and she were to go throwing six +francs out of the window every day! + +“Now to begin with, I want your accounts,” he shouted. “Let’s see; hand +over the money! Now where do we stand?” + +All his sordid avaricious instincts came to the surface. Nana was cowed +and scared, and she made haste to fetch their remaining cash out of the +desk and to bring it him. Up to that time the key had lain on this +common treasury, from which they had drawn as freely as they wished. + +“How’s this?” he said when he had counted up the money. “There are +scarcely seven thousand francs remaining out of seventeen thousand, and +we’ve only been together three months. The thing’s impossible.” + +He rushed forward, gave the desk a savage shake and brought the drawer +forward in order to ransack it in the light of the lamp. But it +actually contained only six thousand eight hundred and odd francs. +Thereupon the tempest burst forth. + +“Ten thousand francs in three months!” he yelled. “By God! What have +you done with it all? Eh? Answer! It all goes to your jade of an aunt, +eh? Or you’re keeping men; that’s plain! Will you answer?” + +“Oh well, if you must get in a rage!” said Nana. “Why, the +calculation’s easily made! You haven’t allowed for the furniture; +besides, I’ve had to buy linen. Money goes quickly when one’s settling +in a new place.” + +But while requiring explanations he refused to listen to them. + +“Yes, it goes a deal too quickly!” he rejoined more calmly. “And look +here, little girl, I’ve had enough of this mutual housekeeping. You +know those seven thousand francs are mine. Yes, and as I’ve got ’em, I +shall keep ’em! Hang it, the moment you become wasteful I get anxious +not to be ruined. To each man his own.” + +And he pocketed the money in a lordly way while Nana gazed at him, +dumfounded. He continued speaking complaisantly: + +“You must understand I’m not such a fool as to keep aunts and likewise +children who don’t belong to me. You were pleased to spend your own +money—well, that’s your affair! But my money—no, that’s sacred! When in +the future you cook a leg of mutton I’ll pay for half of it. We’ll +settle up tonight—there!” + +Straightway Nana rebelled. She could not help shouting: + +“Come, I say, it’s you who’ve run through my ten thousand francs. It’s +a dirty trick, I tell you!” + +But he did not stop to discuss matters further, for he dealt her a +random box on the ear across the table, remarking as he did so: + +“Let’s have that again!” + +She let him have it again despite his blow. Whereupon he fell upon her +and kicked and cuffed her heartily. Soon he had reduced her to such a +state that she ended, as her wont was, by undressing and going to bed +in a flood of tears. + +He was out of breath and was going to bed, in his turn, when he noticed +the letter he had written to Georges lying on the table. Whereupon he +folded it up carefully and, turning toward the bed, remarked in +threatening accents: + +“It’s very well written, and I’m going to post it myself because I +don’t like women’s fancies. Now don’t go moaning any more; it puts my +teeth on edge.” + +Nana, who was crying and gasping, thereupon held her breath. When he +was in bed she choked with emotion and threw herself upon his breast +with a wild burst of sobs. Their scuffles always ended thus, for she +trembled at the thought of losing him and, like a coward, wanted always +to feel that he belonged entirely to her, despite everything. Twice he +pushed her magnificently away, but the warm embrace of this woman who +was begging for mercy with great, tearful eyes, as some faithful brute +might do, finally aroused desire. And he became royally condescending +without, however, lowering his dignity before any of her advances. In +fact, he let himself be caressed and taken by force, as became a man +whose forgiveness is worth the trouble of winning. Then he was seized +with anxiety, fearing that Nana was playing a part with a view to +regaining possession of the treasury key. The light had been +extinguished when he felt it necessary to reaffirm his will and +pleasure. + +“You must know, my girl, that this is really very serious and that I +keep the money.” + +Nana, who was falling asleep with her arms round his neck, uttered a +sublime sentiment. + +“Yes, you need fear nothing! I’ll work for both of us!” + +But from that evening onward their life in common became more and more +difficult. From one week’s end to the other the noise of slaps filled +the air and resembled the ticking of a clock by which they regulated +their existence. Through dint of being much beaten Nana became as +pliable as fine linen; her skin grew delicate and pink and white and so +soft to the touch and clear to the view that she may be said to have +grown more good looking than ever. Prullière, moreover, began running +after her like a madman, coming in when Fontan was away and pushing her +into corners in order to snatch an embrace. But she used to struggle +out of his grasp, full of indignation and blushing with shame. It +disgusted her to think of him wanting to deceive a friend. Prullière +would thereupon begin sneering with a wrathful expression. Why, she was +growing jolly stupid nowadays! How could she take up with such an ape? +For, indeed, Fontan was a regular ape with that great swingeing nose of +his. Oh, he had an ugly mug! Besides, the man knocked her about too! + +“It’s possible I like him as he is,” she one day made answer in the +quiet voice peculiar to a woman who confesses to an abominable taste. + +Bosc contented himself by dining with them as often as possible. He +shrugged his shoulders behind Prullière’s back—a pretty fellow, to be +sure, but a frivolous! Bosc had on more than one occasion assisted at +domestic scenes, and at dessert, when Fontan slapped Nana, he went on +chewing solemnly, for the thing struck him as being quite in the course +of nature. In order to give some return for his dinner he used always +to go into ecstasies over their happiness. He declared himself a +philosopher who had given up everything, glory included. At times +Prullière and Fontan lolled back in their chairs, losing count of time +in front of the empty table, while with theatrical gestures and +intonation they discussed their former successes till two in the +morning. But he would sit by, lost in thought, finishing the brandy +bottle in silence and only occasionally emitting a little contemptuous +sniff. Where was Talma’s tradition? Nowhere. Very well, let them leave +him jolly well alone! It was too stupid to go on as they were doing! + +One evening he found Nana in tears. She took off her dressing jacket in +order to show him her back and her arms, which were black and blue. He +looked at her skin without being tempted to abuse the opportunity, as +that ass of a Prullière would have been. Then, sententiously: + +“My dear girl, where there are women there are sure to be ructions. It +was Napoleon who said that, I think. Wash yourself with salt water. +Salt water’s the very thing for those little knocks. Tut, tut, you’ll +get others as bad, but don’t complain so long as no bones are broken. +I’m inviting myself to dinner, you know; I’ve spotted a leg of mutton.” + +But Mme Lerat had less philosophy. Every time Nana showed her a fresh +bruise on the white skin she screamed aloud. They were killing her +niece; things couldn’t go on as they were doing. As a matter of fact, +Fontan had turned Mme Lerat out of doors and had declared that he would +not have her at his house in the future, and ever since that day, when +he returned home and she happened to be there, she had to make off +through the kitchen, which was a horrible humiliation to her. +Accordingly she never ceased inveighing against that brutal individual. +She especially blamed his ill breeding, pursing up her lips, as she did +so, like a highly respectable lady whom nobody could possibly +remonstrate with on the subject of good manners. + +“Oh, you notice it at once,” she used to tell Nana; “he hasn’t the +barest notion of the very smallest proprieties. His mother must have +been common! Don’t deny it—the thing’s obvious! I don’t speak on my own +account, though a person of my years has a right to respectful +treatment, but YOU—how do YOU manage to put up with his bad manners? +For though I don’t want to flatter myself, I’ve always taught you how +to behave, and among our own people you always enjoyed the best +possible advice. We were all very well bred in our family, weren’t we +now?” + +Nana used never to protest but would listen with bowed head. + +“Then, too,” continued the aunt, “you’ve only known perfect gentlemen +hitherto. We were talking of that very topic with Zoé at my place +yesterday evening. She can’t understand it any more than I can. ‘How is +it,’ she said, ‘that Madame, who used to have that perfect gentleman, +Monsieur le Comte, at her beck and call’—for between you and me, it +seems you drove him silly—‘how is it that Madame lets herself be made +into mincemeat by that clown of a fellow?’ I remarked at the time that +you might put up with the beatings but that I would never have allowed +him to be lacking in proper respect. In fact, there isn’t a word to be +said for him. I wouldn’t have his portrait in my room even! And you +ruin yourself for such a bird as that; yes, you ruin yourself, my +darling; you toil and you moil, when there are so many others and such +rich men, too, some of them even connected with the government! Ah +well, it’s not I who ought to be telling you this, of course! But all +the same, when next he tries any of his dirty tricks on I should cut +him short with a ‘Monsieur, what d’you take me for?’ You know how to +say it in that grand way of yours! It would downright cripple him.” + +Thereupon Nana burst into sobs and stammered out: + +“Oh, Aunt, I love him!” + +The fact of the matter was that Mme Lerat was beginning to feel anxious +at the painful way her niece doled out the sparse, occasional francs +destined to pay for little Louis’s board and lodging. Doubtless she was +willing to make sacrifices and to keep the child by her whatever might +happen while waiting for more prosperous times, but the thought that +Fontan was preventing her and the brat and its mother from swimming in +a sea of gold made her so savage that she was ready to deny the very +existence of true love. Accordingly she ended up with the following +severe remarks: + +“Now listen, some fine day when he’s taken the skin off your back, +you’ll come and knock at my door, and I’ll open it to you.” + +Soon money began to engross Nana’s whole attention. Fontan had caused +the seven thousand francs to vanish away. Without doubt they were quite +safe; indeed, she would never have dared ask him questions about them, +for she was wont to be blushingly diffident with that bird, as Mme +Lerat called him. She trembled lest he should think her capable of +quarreling with him about halfpence. He had certainly promised to +subscribe toward their common household expenses, and in the early days +he had given out three francs every morning. But he was as exacting as +a boarder; he wanted everything for his three francs—butter, meat, +early fruit and early vegetables—and if she ventured to make an +observation, if she hinted that you could not have everything in the +market for three francs, he flew into a temper and treated her as a +useless, wasteful woman, a confounded donkey whom the tradespeople were +robbing. Moreover, he was always ready to threaten that he would take +lodgings somewhere else. At the end of a month on certain mornings he +had forgotten to deposit the three francs on the chest of drawers, and +she had ventured to ask for them in a timid, roundabout way. Whereupon +there had been such bitter disputes and he had seized every pretext to +render her life so miserable that she had found it best no longer to +count upon him. Whenever, however, he had omitted to leave behind the +three one-franc pieces and found a dinner awaiting him all the same, he +grew as merry as a sandboy, kissed Nana gallantly and waltzed with the +chairs. And she was so charmed by this conduct that she at length got +to hope that nothing would be found on the chest of drawers, despite +the difficulty she experienced in making both ends meet. One day she +even returned him his three francs, telling him a tale to the effect +that she still had yesterday’s money. As he had given her nothing then, +he hesitated for some moments, as though he dreaded a lecture. But she +gazed at him with her loving eyes and hugged him in such utter +self-surrender that he pocketed the money again with that little +convulsive twitch or the fingers peculiar to a miser when he regains +possession of that which has been well-nigh lost. From that day forth +he never troubled himself about money again or inquired whence it came. +But when there were potatoes on the table he looked intoxicated with +delight and would laugh and smack his lips before her turkeys and legs +of mutton, though of course this did not prevent his dealing Nana +sundry sharp smacks, as though to keep his hand in amid all his +happiness. + +Nana had indeed found means to provide for all needs, and the place on +certain days overflowed with good things. Twice a week, regularly, Bosc +had indigestion. One evening as Mme Lerat was withdrawing from the +scene in high dudgeon because she had noticed a copious dinner she was +not destined to eat in process of preparation, she could not prevent +herself asking brutally who paid for it all. Nana was taken by +surprise; she grew foolish and began crying. + +“Ah, that’s a pretty business,” said the aunt, who had divined her +meaning. + +Nana had resigned herself to it for the sake of enjoying peace in her +own home. Then, too, the Tricon was to blame. She had come across her +in the Rue de Laval one fine day when Fontan had gone out raging about +a dish of cod. She had accordingly consented to the proposals made her +by the Tricon, who happened just then to be in difficulty. As Fontan +never came in before six o’clock, she made arrangements for her +afternoons and used to bring back forty francs, sixty francs, sometimes +more. She might have made it a matter of ten and fifteen louis had she +been able to maintain her former position, but as matters stood she was +very glad thus to earn enough to keep the pot boiling. At night she +used to forget all her sorrows when Bosc sat there bursting with dinner +and Fontan leaned on his elbows and with an expression of lofty +superiority becoming a man who is loved for his own sake allowed her to +kiss him on the eyelids. + +In due course Nana’s very adoration of her darling, her dear old duck, +which was all the more passionately blind, seeing that now she paid for +everything, plunged her back into the muddiest depths of her calling. +She roamed the streets and loitered on the pavement in quest of a +five-franc piece, just as when she was a slipshod baggage years ago. +One Sunday at La Rochefoucauld Market she had made her peace with Satin +after having flown at her with furious reproaches about Mme Robert. But +Satin had been content to answer that when one didn’t like a thing +there was no reason why one should want to disgust others with it. And +Nana, who was by way of being wide-minded, had accepted the philosophic +view that you never can tell where your tastes will lead you and had +forgiven her. Her curiosity was even excited, and she began questioning +her about obscure vices and was astounded to be adding to her +information at her time of life and with her knowledge. She burst out +laughing and gave vent to various expressions of surprise. It struck +her as so queer, and yet she was a little shocked by it, for she was +really quite the philistine outside the pale of her own habits. So she +went back to Laure’s and fed there when Fontan was dining out. She +derived much amusement from the stories and the amours and the +jealousies which inflamed the female customers without hindering their +appetites in the slightest degree. Nevertheless, she still was not +quite in it, as she herself phrased it. The vast Laure, meltingly +maternal as ever, used often to invite her to pass a day or two at her +Asnièries Villa, a country house containing seven spare bedrooms. But +she used to refuse; she was afraid. Satin, however, swore she was +mistaken about it, that gentlemen from Paris swung you in swings and +played tonneau with you, and so she promised to come at some future +time when it would be possible for her to leave town. + +At that time Nana was much tormented by circumstances and not at all +festively inclined. She needed money, and when the Tricon did not want +her, which too often happened, she had no notion where to bestow her +charms. Then began a series of wild descents upon the Parisian +pavement, plunges into the baser sort of vice, whose votaries prowl in +muddy bystreets under the restless flicker of gas lamps. Nana went back +to the public-house balls in the suburbs, where she had kicked up her +heels in the early ill-shod days. She revisited the dark corners on the +outer boulevards, where when she was fifteen years old men used to hug +her while her father was looking for her in order to give her a hiding. +Both the women would speed along, visiting all the ballrooms and +restaurants in a quarter and climbing innumerable staircases which were +wet with spittle and spilled beer, or they would stroll quietly about, +going up streets and planting themselves in front of carriage gates. +Satin, who had served her apprenticeship in the Quartier Latin, used to +take Nana to Bullier’s and the public houses in the Boulevard +Saint-Michel. But the vacations were drawing on, and the Quarter looked +too starved. Eventually they always returned to the principal +boulevards, for it was there they ran the best chance of getting what +they wanted. From the heights of Montmartre to the observatory plateau +they scoured the whole town in the way we have been describing. They +were out on rainy evenings, when their boots got worn down, and on hot +evenings, when their linen clung to their skins. There were long +periods of waiting and endless periods of walking; there were jostlings +and disputes and the nameless, brutal caresses of the stray passer-by +who was taken by them to some miserable furnished room and came +swearing down the greasy stairs afterward. + +The summer was drawing to a close, a stormy summer of burning nights. +The pair used to start out together after dinner, toward nine o’clock. +On the pavements of the Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette two long files of +women scudded along with tucked-up skirts and bent heads, keeping close +to the shops but never once glancing at the displays in the shopwindows +as they hurried busily down toward the boulevards. This was the hungry +exodus from the Quartier Breda which took place nightly when the street +lamps had just been lit. Nana and Satin used to skirt the church and +then march off along the Rue le Peletier. When they were some hundred +yards from the Café Riche and had fairly reached their scene of +operations they would shake out the skirts of their dresses, which up +till that moment they had been holding carefully up, and begin sweeping +the pavements, regardless of dust. With much swaying of the hips they +strolled delicately along, slackening their pace when they crossed the +bright light thrown from one of the great cafes. With shoulders thrown +back, shrill and noisy laughter and many backward glances at the men +who turned to look at them, they marched about and were completely in +their element. In the shadow of night their artificially whitened +faces, their rouged lips and their darkened eyelids became as charming +and suggestive as if the inmates of a make-believe trumpery oriental +bazaar had been sent forth into the open street. Till eleven at night +they sauntered gaily along among the rudely jostling crowds, contenting +themselves with an occasional “dirty ass!” hurled after the clumsy +people whose boot heels had torn a flounce or two from their dresses. +Little familiar salutations would pass between them and the cafe +waiters, and at times they would stop and chat in front of a small +table and accept of drinks, which they consumed with much deliberation, +as became people not sorry to sit down for a bit while waiting for the +theaters to empty. But as night advanced, if they had not made one or +two trips in the direction of the Rue la Rochefoucauld, they became +abject strumpets, and their hunt for men grew more ferocious than ever. +Beneath the trees in the darkening and fast-emptying boulevards fierce +bargainings took place, accompanied by oaths and blows. Respectable +family parties—fathers, mothers and daughters—who were used to such +scenes, would pass quietly by the while without quickening their pace. +Afterward, when they had walked from the opera to the GYMNASE some +half-score times and in the deepening night men were rapidly dropping +off homeward for good and all, Nana and Satin kept to the sidewalk in +the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre. There up till two o’clock in the +morning restaurants, bars and ham-and-beef shops were brightly lit up, +while a noisy mob of women hung obstinately round the doors of the +cafes. This suburb was the only corner of night Paris which was still +alight and still alive, the only market still open to nocturnal +bargains. These last were openly struck between group and group and +from one end of the street to the other, just as in the wide and open +corridor of a disorderly house. On such evenings as the pair came home +without having had any success they used to wrangle together. The Rue +Notre Dame de la Lorette stretched dark and deserted in front of them. +Here and there the crawling shadow of a woman was discernible, for the +Quarter was going home and going home late, and poor creatures, +exasperated at a night of fruitless loitering, were unwilling to give +up the chase and would still stand, disputing in hoarse voices with any +strayed reveler they could catch at the corner of the Rue Breda or the +Rue Fontaine. + +Nevertheless, some windfalls came in their way now and then in the +shape of louis picked up in the society of elegant gentlemen, who +slipped their decorations into their pockets as they went upstairs with +them. Satin had an especially keen scent for these. On rainy evenings, +when the dripping city exhaled an unpleasant odor suggestive of a great +untidy bed, she knew that the soft weather and the fetid reek of the +town’s holes and corners were sure to send the men mad. And so she +watched the best dressed among them, for she knew by their pale eyes +what their state was. On such nights it was as though a fit of fleshly +madness were passing over Paris. The girl was rather nervous certainly, +for the most modish gentlemen were always the most obscene. All the +varnish would crack off a man, and the brute beast would show itself, +exacting, monstrous in lust, a past master in corruption. But besides +being nervous, that trollop of a Satin was lacking in respect. She +would blurt out awful things in front of dignified gentlemen in +carriages and assure them that their coachmen were better bred than +they because they behaved respectfully toward the women and did not +half kill them with their diabolical tricks and suggestions. The way in +which smart people sprawled head over heels into all the cesspools of +vice still caused Nana some surprise, for she had a few prejudices +remaining, though Satin was rapidly destroying them. + +“Well then,” she used to say when talking seriously about the matter, +“there’s no such thing as virtue left, is there?” + +From one end of the social ladder to the other everybody was on the +loose! Good gracious! Some nice things ought to be going on in Paris +between nine o’clock in the evening and three in the morning! And with +that she began making very merry and declaring that if one could only +have looked into every room one would have seen some funny sights—the +little people going it head over ears and a good lot of swells, too, +playing the swine rather harder than the rest. Oh, she was finishing +her education! + +One evening when she came to call for Satin she recognized the Marquis +de Chouard. He was coming downstairs with quaking legs; his face was +ashen white, and he leaned heavily on the banisters. She pretended to +be blowing her nose. Upstairs she found Satin amid indescribable filth. +No household work had been done for a week; her bed was disgusting, and +ewers and basins were standing about in all directions. Nana expressed +surprise at her knowing the marquis. Oh yes, she knew him! He had jolly +well bored her confectioner and her when they were together. At present +he used to come back now and then, but he nearly bothered her life out, +going sniffing into all the dirty corners—yes, even into her slippers! + +“Yes, dear girl, my slippers! Oh, he’s the dirtiest old beast, always +wanting one to do things!” + +The sincerity of these low debauches rendered Nana especially uneasy. +Seeing the courtesans around her slowly dying of it every day, she +recalled to mind the comedy of pleasure she had taken part in when she +was in the heyday of success. Moreover, Satin inspired her with an +awful fear of the police. She was full of anecdotes about them. +Formerly she had been the mistress of a plain-clothes man, had +consented to this in order to be left in peace, and on two occasions he +had prevented her from being put “on the lists.” But at present she was +in a great fright, for if she were to be nabbed again there was a clear +case against her. You had only to listen to her! For the sake of +perquisites the police used to take up as many women as possible. They +laid hold of everybody and quieted you with a slap if you shouted, for +they were sure of being defended in their actions and rewarded, even +when they had taken a virtuous girl among the rest. In the summer they +would swoop upon the boulevard in parties of twelve or fifteen, +surround a whole long reach of sidewalk and fish up as many as thirty +women in an evening. Satin, however, knew the likely places, and the +moment she saw a plain-clothes man heaving in sight she took to her +heels, while the long lines of women on the pavements scattered in +consternation and fled through the surrounding crowd. The dread of the +law and of the magistracy was such that certain women would stand as +though paralyzed in the doorways of the cafes while the raid was +sweeping the avenue without. But Satin was even more afraid of being +denounced, for her pastry cook had proved blackguard enough to threaten +to sell her when she had left him. Yes, that was a fake by which men +lived on their mistresses! Then, too, there were the dirty women who +delivered you up out of sheer treachery if you were prettier than they! +Nana listened to these recitals and felt her terrors growing upon her. +She had always trembled before the law, that unknown power, that form +of revenge practiced by men able and willing to crush her in the +certain absence of all defenders. Saint-Lazare she pictured as a grave, +a dark hole, in which they buried live women after they had cut off +their hair. She admitted that it was only necessary to leave Fontan and +seek powerful protectors. But as matters stood it was in vain that +Satin talked to her of certain lists of women’s names, which it was the +duty of the plainclothes men to consult, and of certain photographs +accompanying the lists, the originals of which were on no account to be +touched. The reassurance did not make her tremble the less, and she +still saw herself hustled and dragged along and finally subjected to +the official medical inspection. The thought of the official armchair +filled her with shame and anguish, for had she not bade it defiance a +score of times? + +Now it so happened that one evening toward the close of September, as +she was walking with Satin in the Boulevard Poissonnière, the latter +suddenly began tearing along at a terrible pace. And when Nana asked +her what she meant thereby: + +“It’s the plain-clothes men!” whispered Satin. “Off with you! Off with +you!” A wild stampede took place amid the surging crowd. Skirts +streamed out behind and were torn. There were blows and shrieks. A +woman fell down. The crowd of bystanders stood hilariously watching +this rough police raid while the plain-clothes men rapidly narrowed +their circle. Meanwhile Nana had lost Satin. Her legs were failing her, +and she would have been taken up for a certainty had not a man caught +her by the arm and led her away in front of the angry police. It was +Prullière, and he had just recognized her. Without saying a word he +turned down the Rue Rougemont with her. It was just then quite +deserted, and she was able to regain breath there, but at first her +faintness and exhaustion were such that he had to support her. She did +not even thank him. + +“Look here,” he said, “you must recover a bit. Come up to my rooms.” + +He lodged in the Rue Bergère close by. But she straightened herself up +at once. + +“No, I don’t want to.” + +Thereupon he waxed coarse and rejoined: + +“Why don’t you want to, eh? Why, everybody visits my rooms.” + +“Because I don’t.” + +In her opinion that explained everything. She was too fond of Fontan to +betray him with one of his friends. The other people ceased to count +the moment there was no pleasure in the business, and necessity +compelled her to it. In view of her idiotic obstinacy Prullière, as +became a pretty fellow whose vanity had been wounded, did a cowardly +thing. + +“Very well, do as you like!” he cried. “Only I don’t side with you, my +dear. You must get out of the scrape by yourself.” + +And with that he left her. Terrors got hold of her again, and scurrying +past shops and turning white whenever a man drew nigh, she fetched an +immense compass before reaching Montmartre. + +On the morrow, while still suffering from the shock of last night’s +terrors, Nana went to her aunt’s and at the foot of a small empty +street in the Batignolles found herself face to face with Labordette. +At first they both appeared embarrassed, for with his usual +complaisance he was busy on a secret errand. Nevertheless, he was the +first to regain his self-possession and to announce himself fortunate +in meeting her. Yes, certainly, everybody was still wondering at Nana’s +total eclipse. People were asking for her, and old friends were pining. +And with that he grew quite paternal and ended by sermonizing. + +“Frankly speaking, between you and me, my dear, the thing’s getting +stupid. One can understand a mash, but to go to that extent, to be +trampled on like that and to get nothing but knocks! Are you playing up +for the ‘Virtue Prizes’ then?” + +She listened to him with an embarrassed expression. But when he told +her about Rose, who was triumphantly enjoying her conquest of Count +Muffat, a flame came into her eyes. + +“Oh, if I wanted to—” she muttered. + +As became an obliging friend, he at once offered to act as intercessor. +But she refused his help, and he thereupon attacked her in an opposite +quarter. + +He informed her that Bordenave was busy mounting a play of Fauchery’s +containing a splendid part for her. + +“What, a play with a part!” she cried in amazement. “But he’s in it and +he’s told me nothing about it!” + +She did not mention Fontan by name. However, she grew calm again +directly and declared that she would never go on the stage again. +Labordette doubtless remained unconvinced, for he continued with +smiling insistence. + +“You know, you need fear nothing with me. I get your Muffat ready for +you, and you go on the stage again, and I bring him to you like a +little dog!” + +“No!” she cried decisively. + +And she left him. Her heroic conduct made her tenderly pitiful toward +herself. No blackguard of a man would ever have sacrificed himself like +that without trumpeting the fact abroad. Nevertheless, she was struck +by one thing: Labordette had given her exactly the same advice as +Francis had given her. That evening when Fontan came home she +questioned him about Fauchery’s piece. The former had been back at the +Variétés for two months past. Why then had he not told her about the +part? + +“What part?” he said in his ill-humored tone. “The grand lady’s part, +maybe? The deuce, you believe you’ve got talent then! Why, such a part +would utterly do for you, my girl! You’re meant for comic +business—there’s no denying it!” + +She was dreadfully wounded. All that evening he kept chaffing her, +calling her Mlle Mars. But the harder he hit the more bravely she +suffered, for she derived a certain bitter satisfaction from this +heroic devotion of hers, which rendered her very great and very loving +in her own eyes. Ever since she had gone with other men in order to +supply his wants her love for him had increased, and the fatigues and +disgusts encountered outside only added to the flame. He was fast +becoming a sort of pet vice for which she paid, a necessity of +existence it was impossible to do without, seeing that blows only +stimulated her desires. He, on his part, seeing what a good tame thing +she had become, ended by abusing his privileges. She was getting on his +nerves, and he began to conceive so fierce a loathing for her that he +forgot to keep count of his real interests. When Bosc made his +customary remarks to him he cried out in exasperation, for which there +was no apparent cause, that he had had enough of her and of her good +dinners and that he would shortly chuck her out of doors if only for +the sake of making another woman a present of his seven thousand +francs. Indeed, that was how their liaison ended. + +One evening Nana came in toward eleven o’clock and found the door +bolted. She tapped once—there was no answer; twice—still no answer. +Meanwhile she saw light under the door, and Fontan inside did not +trouble to move. She rapped again unwearyingly; she called him and +began to get annoyed. At length Fontan’s voice became audible; he spoke +slowly and rather unctuously and uttered but this one word. + +“MERDE!” + +She beat on the door with her fists. + +“MERDE!” + +She banged hard enough to smash in the woodwork. + +“MERDE!” + +And for upward of a quarter of an hour the same foul expression +buffeted her, answering like a jeering echo to every blow wherewith she +shook the door. At length, seeing that she was not growing tired, he +opened sharply, planted himself on the threshold, folded his arms and +said in the same cold, brutal voice: + +“By God, have you done yet? What d’you want? Are you going to let us +sleep in peace, eh? You can quite see I’ve got company tonight.” + +He was certainly not alone, for Nana perceived the little woman from +the Bouffes with the untidy tow hair and the gimlet-hole eyes, standing +enjoying herself in her shift among the furniture she had paid for. But +Fontan stepped out on the landing. He looked terrible, and he spread +out and crooked his great fingers as if they were pincers. + +“Hook it or I’ll strangle you!” + +Whereupon Nana burst into a nervous fit of sobbing. She was frightened +and she made off. This time it was she that was being kicked out of +doors. And in her fury the thought of Muffat suddenly occurred to her. +Ah, to be sure, Fontan, of all men, ought never to have done her such a +turn! + +When she was out in the street her first thought was to go and sleep +with Satin, provided the girl had no one with her. She met her in front +of her house, for she, too, had been turned out of doors by her +landlord. He had just had a padlock affixed to her door—quite +illegally, of course, seeing that she had her own furniture. She swore +and talked of having him up before the commissary of police. In the +meantime, as midnight was striking, they had to begin thinking of +finding a bed. And Satin, deeming it unwise to let the plain-clothes +men into her secrets, ended by taking Nana to a woman who kept a little +hotel in the Rue de Laval. Here they were assigned a narrow room on the +first floor, the window of which opened on the courtyard. Satin +remarked: + +“I should gladly have gone to Mme Robert’s. There’s always a corner +there for me. But with you it’s out of the question. She’s getting +absurdly jealous; she beat me the other night.” + +When they had shut themselves in, Nana, who had not yet relieved her +feelings, burst into tears and again and again recounted Fontan’s dirty +behavior. Satin listened complaisantly, comforted her, grew even more +angry than she in denunciation of the male sex. + +“Oh, the pigs, the pigs! Look here, we’ll have nothing more to do with +them!” + +Then she helped Nana to undress with all the small, busy attentions, +becoming a humble little friend. She kept saying coaxingly: + +“Let’s go to bed as fast as we can, pet. We shall be better off there! +Oh, how silly you are to get crusty about things! I tell you, they’re +dirty brutes. Don’t think any more about ’em. I—I love you very much. +Don’t cry, and oblige your own little darling girl.” + +And once in bed, she forthwith took Nana in her arms and soothed and +comforted her. She refused to hear Fontan’s name mentioned again, and +each time it recurred to her friend’s lips she stopped it with a kiss. +Her lips pouted in pretty indignation; her hair lay loose about her, +and her face glowed with tenderness and childlike beauty. Little by +little her soft embrace compelled Nana to dry her tears. She was +touched and replied to Satin’s caresses. When two o’clock struck the +candle was still burning, and a sound of soft, smothered laughter and +lovers’ talk was audible in the room. + +But suddenly a loud noise came up from the lower floors of the hotel, +and Satin, with next to nothing on, got up and listened intently. + +“The police!” she said, growing very pale. + +“Oh, blast our bad luck! We’re bloody well done for!” + +Often had she told stories about the raids on hotel made by the +plainclothes men. But that particular night neither of them had +suspected anything when they took shelter in the Rue de Laval. At the +sound of the word “police” Nana lost her head. She jumped out of bed +and ran across the room with the scared look of a madwoman about to +jump out of the window. Luckily, however, the little courtyard was +roofed with glass, which was covered with an iron-wire grating at the +level of the girls’ bedroom. At sight of this she ceased to hesitate; +she stepped over the window prop, and with her chemise flying and her +legs bared to the night air she vanished in the gloom. + +“Stop! Stop!” said Satin in a great fright. “You’ll kill yourself.” + +Then as they began hammering at the door, she shut the window like a +good-natured girl and threw her friend’s clothes down into a cupboard. +She was already resigned to her fate and comforted herself with the +thought that, after all, if she were to be put on the official list she +would no longer be so “beastly frightened” as of yore. So she pretended +to be heavy with sleep. She yawned; she palavered and ended by opening +the door to a tall, burly fellow with an unkempt beard, who said to +her: + +“Show your hands! You’ve got no needle pricks on them: you don’t work. +Now then, dress!” + +“But I’m not a dressmaker; I’m a burnisher,” Satin brazenly declared. + +Nevertheless, she dressed with much docility, knowing that argument was +out of the question. Cries were ringing through the hotel; a girl was +clinging to doorposts and refusing to budge an inch. Another girl, in +bed with a lover, who was answering for her legality, was acting the +honest woman who had been grossly insulted and spoke of bringing an +action against the prefect of police. For close on an hour there was a +noise of heavy shoes on the stairs, of fists hammering on doors, of +shrill disputes terminating in sobs, of petticoats rustling along the +walls, of all the sounds, in fact, attendant on the sudden awakening +and scared departure of a flock of women as they were roughly packed +off by three plain-clothes men, headed by a little oily-mannered, +fair-haired commissary of police. After they had gone the hotel +relapsed into deep silence. + +Nobody had betrayed her; Nana was saved. Shivering and half dead with +fear, she came groping back into the room. Her bare feet were cut and +bleeding, for they had been torn by the grating. For a long while she +remained sitting on the edge of the bed, listening and listening. +Toward morning, however, she went to sleep again, and at eight o’clock, +when she woke up, she escaped from the hotel and ran to her aunt’s. +When Mme Lerat, who happened just then to be drinking her morning +coffee with Zoé, beheld her bedraggled plight and haggard face, she +took note of the hour and at once understood the state of the case. + +“It’s come to it, eh?” she cried. “I certainly told you that he would +take the skin off your back one of these days. Well, well, come in; +you’ll always find a kind welcome here.” + +Zoé had risen from her chair and was muttering with respectful +familiarity: + +“Madame is restored to us at last. I was waiting for Madame.” + +But Mme Lerat insisted on Nana’s going and kissing Louiset at once, +because, she said, the child took delight in his mother’s nice ways. +Louiset, a sickly child with poor blood, was still asleep, and when +Nana bent over his white, scrofulous face, the memory of all she had +undergone during the last few months brought a choking lump into her +throat. + +“Oh, my poor little one, my poor little one!” she gasped, bursting into +a final fit of sobbing. + + + + + CHAPTER IX + + +The Petite Duchesse was being rehearsed at the Variétés. The first act +had just been carefully gone through, and the second was about to +begin. Seated in old armchairs in front of the stage, Fauchery and +Bordenave were discussing various points while the prompter, Father +Cossard, a little humpbacked man perched on a straw-bottomed chair, was +turning over the pages of the manuscript, a pencil between his lips. + +“Well, what are they waiting for?” cried Bordenave on a sudden, tapping +the floor savagely with his heavy cane. “Barillot, why don’t they +begin?” + +“It’s Monsieur Bosc that has disappeared,” replied Barillot, who was +acting as second stage manager.’ + +Then there arose a tempest, and everybody shouted for Bosc while +Bordenave swore. + +“Always the same thing, by God! It’s all very well ringing for ’em: +they’re always where they’ve no business to be. And then they grumble +when they’re kept till after four o’clock.” + +But Bosc just then came in with supreme tranquillity. + +“Eh? What? What do they want me for? Oh, it’s my turn! You ought to +have said so. All right! Simonne gives the cue: ‘Here are the guests,’ +and I come in. Which way must I come in?” + +“Through the door, of course,” cried Fauchery in great exasperation. + +“Yes, but where is the door?” + +At this Bordenave fell upon Barillot and once more set to work swearing +and hammering the boards with his cane. + +“By God! I said a chair was to be put there to stand for the door, and +every day we have to get it done again. Barillot! Where’s Barillot? +Another of ’em! Why, they’re all going!” + +Nevertheless, Barillot came and planted the chair down in person, +mutely weathering the storm as he did so. And the rehearsal began +again. Simonne, in her hat and furs, began moving about like a +maidservant busy arranging furniture. She paused to say: + +“I’m not warm, you know, so I keep my hands in my muff.” + +Then changing her voice, she greeted Bosc with a little cry: + +“La, it’s Monsieur le Comte. You’re the first to come, Monsieur le +Comte, and Madame will be delighted.” + +Bosc had muddy trousers and a huge yellow overcoat, round the collar of +which a tremendous comforter was wound. On his head he wore an old hat, +and he kept his hands in his pockets. He did not act but dragged +himself along, remarking in a hollow voice: + +“Don’t disturb your mistress, Isabelle; I want to take her by +surprise.” + +The rehearsal took its course. Bordenave knitted his brows. He had +slipped down low in his armchair and was listening with an air of +fatigue. Fauchery was nervous and kept shifting about in his seat. +Every few minutes he itched with the desire to interrupt, but he +restrained himself. He heard a whispering in the dark and empty house +behind him. + +“Is she there?” he asked, leaning over toward Bordenave. + +The latter nodded affirmatively. Before accepting the part of +Geraldine, which he was offering her, Nana had been anxious to see the +piece, for she hesitated to play a courtesan’s part a second time. She, +in fact, aspired to an honest woman’s part. Accordingly she was hiding +in the shadows of a corner box in company with Labordette, who was +managing matters for her with Bordenave. Fauchery glanced in her +direction and then once more set himself to follow the rehearsal. + +Only the front of the stage was lit up. A flaring gas burner on a +support, which was fed by a pipe from the footlights, burned in front +of a reflector and cast its full brightness over the immediate +foreground. It looked like a big yellow eye glaring through the +surrounding semiobscurity, where it flamed in a doubtful, melancholy +way. Cossard was holding up his manuscript against the slender stem of +this arrangement. He wanted to see more clearly, and in the flood of +light his hump was sharply outlined. As to Bordenave and Fauchery, they +were already drowned in shadow. It was only in the heart of this +enormous structure, on a few square yards of stage, that a faint glow +suggested the light cast by some lantern nailed up in a railway +station. It made the actors look like eccentric phantoms and set their +shadows dancing after them. The remainder of the stage was full of mist +and suggested a house in process of being pulled down, a church nave in +utter ruin. It was littered with ladders, with set pieces and with +scenery, of which the faded painting suggested heaped-up rubbish. +Hanging high in air, the scenes had the appearance of great ragged +clouts suspended from the rafters of some vast old-clothes shop, while +above these again a ray of bright sunlight fell from a window and clove +the shadow round the flies with a bar of gold. + +Meanwhile actors were chatting at the back of the stage while awaiting +their cues. Little by little they had raised their voices. + +“Confound it, will you be silent?” howled Bordenave, raging up and down +in his chair. “I can’t hear a word. Go outside if you want to talk; WE +are at work. Barillot, if there’s any more talking I clap on fines all +round!” + +They were silent for a second or two. They were sitting in a little +group on a bench and some rustic chairs in the corner of a scenic +garden, which was standing ready to be put in position as it would be +used in the opening act the same evening. In the middle of this group +Fontan and Prullière were listening to Rose Mignon, to whom the manager +of the Folies-Dramatique Theatre had been making magnificent offers. +But a voice was heard shouting: + +“The duchess! Saint-Firmin! The duchess and Saint-Firmin are wanted!” + +Only when the call was repeated did Prullière remember that he was +Saint-Firmin! Rose, who was playing the Duchess Helene, was already +waiting to go on with him while old Bosc slowly returned to his seat, +dragging one foot after the other over the sonorous and deserted +boards. Clarisse offered him a place on the bench beside her. + +“What’s he bawling like that for?” she said in allusion to Bordenave. +“Things will be getting rosy soon! A piece can’t be put on nowadays +without its getting on his nerves.” + +Bosc shrugged his shoulders; he was above such storms. Fontan +whispered: + +“He’s afraid of a fiasco. The piece strikes me as idiotic.” + +Then he turned to Clarisse and again referred to what Rose had been +telling them: + +“D’you believe in the offers of the Folies people, eh? Three hundred +francs an evening for a hundred nights! Why not a country house into +the bargain? If his wife were to be given three hundred francs Mignon +would chuck my friend Bordenave and do it jolly sharp too!” + +Clarisse was a believer in the three hundred francs. That man Fontan +was always picking holes in his friends’ successes! Just then Simonne +interrupted her. She was shivering with cold. Indeed, they were all +buttoned up to the ears and had comforters on, and they looked up at +the ray of sunlight which shone brightly above them but did not +penetrate the cold gloom of the theater. In the streets outside there +was a frost under a November sky. + +“And there’s no fire in the greenroom!” said Simonne. “It’s disgusting; +he IS just becoming a skinflint! I want to be off; I don’t want to get +seedy.” + +“Silence, I say!” Bordenave once more thundered. + +Then for a minute or so a confused murmur alone was audible as the +actors went on repeating their parts. There was scarcely any +appropriate action, and they spoke in even tones so as not to tire +themselves. Nevertheless, when they did emphasize a particular shade of +meaning they cast a glance at the house, which lay before them like a +yawning gulf. It was suffused with vague, ambient shadow, which +resembled the fine dust floating pent in some high, windowless loft. +The deserted house, whose sole illumination was the twilight radiance +of the stage, seemed to slumber in melancholy and mysterious +effacement. Near the ceiling dense night smothered the frescoes, while +from the several tiers of stage boxes on either hand huge widths of +gray canvas stretched down to protect the neighboring hangings. In +fact, there was no end to these coverings; bands of canvas had been +thrown over the velvet-covered ledges in front of the various galleries +which they shrouded thickly. Their pale hue stained the surrounding +shadows, and of the general decorations of the house only the dark +recesses of the boxes were distinguishable. These served to outline the +framework of the several stories, where the seats were so many stains +of red velvet turned black. The chandelier had been let down as far as +it would go, and it so filled the region of the stalls with its +pendants as to suggest a flitting and to set one thinking that the +public had started on a journey from which they would never return. + +Just about then Rose, as the little duchess who has been misled into +the society of a courtesan, came to the footlights, lifted up her hands +and pouted adorably at the dark and empty theater, which was as sad as +a house of mourning. + +“Good heavens, what queer people!” she said, emphasizing the phrase and +confident that it would have its effect. + +Far back in the corner box in which she was hiding Nana sat enveloped +in a great shawl. She was listening to the play and devouring Rose with +her eyes. Turning toward Labordette, she asked him in a low tone: + +“You are sure he’ll come?” + +“Quite sure. Without doubt he’ll come with Mignon, so as to have an +excuse for coming. As soon as he makes his appearance you’ll go up into +Mathilde’s dressing room, and I’ll bring him to you there.” + +They were talking of Count Muffat. Labordette had arranged this +interview with him on neutral ground. He had had a serious talk with +Bordenave, whose affairs had been gravely damaged by two successive +failures. Accordingly Bordenave had hastened to lend him his theater +and to offer Nana a part, for he was anxious to win the count’s favor +and hoped to be able to borrow from him. + +“And this part of Geraldine, what d’you thing of it?” continued +Labordette. + +But Nana sat motionless and vouchsafed no reply. After the first act, +in which the author showed how the Duc de Beaurivage played his wife +false with the blonde Geraldine, a comic-opera celebrity, the second +act witnessed the Duchess Helene’s arrival at the house of the actress +on the occasion of a masked ball being given by the latter. The duchess +has come to find out by what magical process ladies of that sort +conquer and retain their husbands’ affections. A cousin, the handsome +Oscar de Saint-Firmin, introduces her and hopes to be able to debauch +her. And her first lesson causes her great surprise, for she hears +Geraldine swearing like a hodman at the duke, who suffers with most +ecstatic submissiveness. The episode causes her to cry out, “Dear me, +if that’s the way one ought to talk to the men!” Geraldine had scarce +any other scene in the act save this one. As to the duchess, she is +very soon punished for her curiosity, for an old buck, the Baron de +Tardiveau, takes her for a courtesan and becomes very gallant, while on +her other side Beaurivage sits on a lounging chair and makes his peace +with Geraldine by dint of kisses and caresses. As this last lady’s part +had not yet been assigned to anyone, Father Cossard had got up to read +it, and he was now figuring away in Bosc’s arms and emphasizing it +despite himself. At this point, while the rehearsal was dragging +monotonously on, Fauchery suddenly jumped from his chair. He had +restrained himself up to that moment, but now his nerves got the better +of him. + +“That’s not it!” he cried. + +The actors paused awkwardly enough while Fontan sneered and asked in +his most contemptuous voice: + +“Eh? What’s not it? Who’s not doing it right?” + +“Nobody is! You’re quite wrong, quite wrong!” continued Fauchery, and, +gesticulating wildly, he came striding over the stage and began himself +to act the scene. + +“Now look here, you Fontan, do please comprehend the way Tardiveau gets +packed off. You must lean forward like this in order to catch hold of +the duchess. And then you, Rose, must change your position like that +but not too soon—only when you hear the kiss.” + +He broke off and in the heat of explanation shouted to Cossard: + +“Geraldine, give the kiss! Loudly, so that it may be heard!” + +Father Cossard turned toward Bosc and smacked his lips vigorously. + +“Good! That’s the kiss,” said Fauchery triumphantly. “Once more; let’s +have it once more. Now you see, Rose, I’ve had time to move, and then I +give a little cry—so: ‘Oh, she’s given him a kiss.’ But before I do +that, Tardiveau must go up the stage. D’you hear, Fontan? You go up. +Come, let’s try it again, all together.” + +The actors continued the scene again, but Fontan played his part with +such an ill grace that they made no sort of progress. Twice Fauchery +had to repeat his explanation, each time acting it out with more warmth +than before. The actors listened to him with melancholy faces, gazed +momentarily at one another, as though he had asked them to walk on +their heads, and then awkwardly essayed the passage, only to pull up +short directly afterward, looking as stiff as puppets whose strings +have just been snapped. + +“No, it beats me; I can’t understand it,” said Fontan at length, +speaking in the insolent manner peculiar to him. + +Bordenave had never once opened his lips. He had slipped quite down in +his armchair, so that only the top of his hat was now visible in the +doubtful flicker of the gaslight on the stand. His cane had fallen from +his grasp and lay slantwise across his waistcoat. Indeed, he seemed to +be asleep. But suddenly he sat bolt upright. + +“It’s idiotic, my boy,” he announced quietly to Fauchery. + +“What d’you mean, idiotic?” cried the author, growing very pale. “It’s +you that are the idiot, my dear boy!” + +Bordenave began to get angry at once. He repeated the word “idiotic” +and, seeking a more forcible expression, hit upon “imbecile” and +“damned foolish.” The public would hiss, and the act would never be +finished! And when Fauchery, without, indeed, being very deeply wounded +by these big phrases, which always recurred when a new piece was being +put on, grew savage and called the other a brute, Bordenave went beyond +all bounds, brandished his cane in the air, snorted like a bull and +shouted: + +“Good God! Why the hell can’t you shut up? We’ve lost a quarter of an +hour over this folly. Yes, folly! There’s no sense in it. And it’s so +simple, after all’s said and done! You, Fontan, mustn’t move. You, +Rose, must make your little movement, just that, no more; d’ye see? And +then you come down. Now then, let’s get it done this journey. Give the +kiss, Cossard.” + +Then ensued confusion. The scene went no better than before. Bordenave, +in his turn, showed them how to act it about as gracefully as an +elephant might have done, while Fauchery sneered and shrugged +pityingly. After that Fontan put his word in, and even Bosc made so +bold as to give advice. Rose, thoroughly tired out, had ended by +sitting down on the chair which indicated the door. No one knew where +they had got to, and by way of finish to it all Simonne made a +premature entry, under the impression that her cue had been given her, +and arrived amid the confusion. This so enraged Bordenave that he +whirled his stick round in a terrific manner and caught her a sounding +thwack to the rearward. At rehearsal he used frequently to drub his +former mistress. Simonne ran away, and this furious outcry followed +her: + +“Take that, and, by God, if I’m annoyed again I shut the whole shop up +at once!” + +Fauchery pushed his hat down over his forehead and pretended to be +going to leave the theater. But he stopped at the top of the stage and +came down again when he saw Bordenave perspiringly resuming his seat. +Then he, too, took up his old position in the other armchair. For some +seconds they sat motionless side by side while oppressive silence +reigned in the shadowy house. The actors waited for nearly two minutes. +They were all heavy with exhaustion and felt as though they had +performed an overwhelming task. + +“Well, let’s go on,” said Bordenave at last. He spoke in his usual +voice and was perfectly calm. + +“Yes, let’s go on,” Fauchery repeated. “We’ll arrange the scene +tomorrow.” + +And with that they dragged on again and rehearsed their parts with as +much listlessness and as fine an indifference as ever. During the +dispute between manager and author Fontan and the rest had been taking +things very comfortably on the rustic bench and seats at the back of +the stage, where they had been chuckling, grumbling and saying fiercely +cutting things. But when Simonne came back, still smarting from her +blow and choking with sobs, they grew melodramatic and declared that +had they been in her place they would have strangled the swine. She +began wiping her eyes and nodding approval. It was all over between +them, she said. She was leaving him, especially as Steiner had offered +to give her a grand start in life only the day before. Clarisse was +much astonished at this, for the banker was quite ruined, but Prullière +began laughing and reminded them of the neat manner in which that +confounded Israelite had puffed himself alongside of Rose in order to +get his Landes saltworks afloat on ’change. Just at that time he was +airing a new project, namely, a tunnel under the Bosporus. Simonne +listened with the greatest interest to this fresh piece of information. + +As to Clarisse, she had been raging for a week past. Just fancy, that +beast La Faloise, whom she had succeeded in chucking into Gaga’s +venerable embrace, was coming into the fortune of a very rich uncle! It +was just her luck; she had always been destined to make things cozy for +other people. Then, too, that pig Bordenave had once more given her a +mere scrap of a part, a paltry fifty lines, just as if she could not +have played Geraldine! She was yearning for that role and hoping that +Nana would refuse it. + +“Well, and what about me?” said Prullière with much bitterness. “I +haven’t got more than two hundred lines. I wanted to give the part up. +It’s too bad to make me play that fellow Saint-Firmin; why, it’s a +regular failure! And then what a style it’s written in, my dears! It’ll +fall dead flat, you may be sure.” + +But just then Simonne, who had been chatting with Father Barillot, came +back breathless and announced: + +“By the by, talking of Nana, she’s in the house.” + +“Where, where?” asked Clarisse briskly, getting up to look for her. + +The news spread at once, and everyone craned forward. The rehearsal +was, as it were, momentarily interrupted. But Bordenave emerged from +his quiescent condition, shouting: + +“What’s up, eh? Finish the act, I say. And be quiet out there; it’s +unbearable!” + +Nana was still following the piece from the corner box. Twice +Labordette showed an inclination to chat, but she grew impatient and +nudged him to make him keep silent. The second act was drawing to a +close, when two shadows loomed at the back of the theater. They were +creeping softly down, avoiding all noise, and Nana recognized Mignon +and Count Muffat. They came forward and silently shook hands with +Bordenave. + +“Ah, there they are,” she murmured with a sigh of relief. + +Rose Mignon delivered the last sentences of the act. Thereupon +Bordenave said that it was necessary to go through the second again +before beginning the third. With that he left off attending to the +rehearsal and greeted the count with looks of exaggerated politeness, +while Fauchery pretended to be entirely engrossed with his actors, who +now grouped themselves round him. Mignon stood whistling carelessly, +with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed complacently on his +wife, who seemed rather nervous. + +“Well, shall we go upstairs?” Labordette asked Nana. “I’ll install you +in the dressing room and come down again and fetch him.” + +Nana forthwith left the corner box. She had to grope her way along the +passage outside the stalls, but Bordenave guessed where she was as she +passed along in the dark and caught her up at the end of the corridor +passing behind the scenes, a narrow tunnel where the gas burned day and +night. Here, in order to bluff her into a bargain, he plunged into a +discussion of the courtesan’s part. + +“What a part it is, eh? What a wicked little part! It’s made for you. +Come and rehearse tomorrow.” + +Nana was frigid. She wanted to know what the third act was like. + +“Oh, it’s superb, the third act is! The duchess plays the courtesan in +her own house and this disgusts Beaurivage and makes him amend his way. +Then there’s an awfully funny QUID PRO QUO, when Tardiveau arrives and +is under the impression that he’s at an opera dancer’s house.” + +“And what does Geraldine do in it all?” interrupted Nana. + +“Geraldine?” repeated Bordenave in some embarrassment. “She has a +scene—not a very long one, but a great success. It’s made for you, I +assure you! Will you sign?” + +She looked steadily at him and at length made answer: + +“We’ll see about that all in good time.” + +And she rejoined Labordette, who was waiting for her on the stairs. +Everybody in the theater had recognized her, and there was now much +whispering, especially between Prullière, who was scandalized at her +return, and Clarisse who was very desirous of the part. As to Fontan, +he looked coldly on, pretending unconcern, for he did not think it +becoming to round on a woman he had loved. Deep down in his heart, +though, his old love had turned to hate, and he nursed the fiercest +rancor against her in return for the constant devotion, the personal +beauty, the life in common, of which his perverse and monstrous tastes +had made him tire. + +In the meantime, when Labordette reappeared and went up to the count, +Rose Mignon, whose suspicions Nana’s presence had excited, understood +it all forthwith. Muffat was bothering her to death, but she was beside +herself at the thought of being left like this. She broke the silence +which she usually maintained on such subjects in her husband’s society +and said bluntly: + +“You see what’s going on? My word, if she tries the Steiner trick on +again I’ll tear her eyes out!” + +Tranquilly and haughtily Mignon shrugged his shoulders, as became a man +from whom nothing could be hidden. + +“Do be quiet,” he muttered. “Do me the favor of being quiet, won’t +you?” + +He knew what to rely on now. He had drained his Muffat dry, and he knew +that at a sign from Nana he was ready to lie down and be a carpet under +her feet. There is no fighting against passions such as that. +Accordingly, as he knew what men were, he thought of nothing but how to +turn the situation to the best possible account. + +It would be necessary to wait on the course of events. And he waited on +them. + +“Rose, it’s your turn!” shouted Bordenave. “The second act’s being +begun again.” + +“Off with you then,” continued Mignon, “and let me arrange matters.” + +Then he began bantering, despite all his troubles, and was pleased to +congratulate Fauchery on his piece. A very strong piece! Only why was +his great lady so chaste? It wasn’t natural! With that he sneered and +asked who had sat for the portrait of the Duke of Beaurivage, +Geraldine’s wornout roue. Fauchery smiled; he was far from annoyed. But +Bordenave glanced in Muffat’s direction and looked vexed, and Mignon +was struck at this and became serious again. + +“Let’s begin, for God’s sake!” yelled the manager. “Now then, Barillot! +Eh? What? Isn’t Bosc there? Is he bloody well making game of me now?” + +Bosc, however, made his appearance quietly enough, and the rehearsal +began again just as Labordette was taking the count away with him. The +latter was tremulous at the thought of seeing Nana once more. After the +rupture had taken place between them there had been a great void in his +life. He was idle and fancied himself about to suffer through the +sudden change his habits had undergone, and accordingly he had let them +take him to see Rose. Besides, his brain had been in such a whirl that +he had striven to forget everything and had strenuously kept from +seeking out Nana while avoiding an explanation with the countess. He +thought, indeed, that he owed his dignity such a measure of +forgetfulness. But mysterious forces were at work within, and Nana +began slowly to reconquer him. First came thoughts of her, then fleshly +cravings and finally a new set of exclusive, tender, well-nigh paternal +feelings. + +The abominable events attendant on their last interview were gradually +effacing themselves. He no longer saw Fontan; he no longer heard the +stinging taunt about his wife’s adultery with which Nana cast him out +of doors. These things were as words whose memory vanished. Yet deep +down in his heart there was a poignant smart which wrung him with such +increasing pain that it nigh choked him. Childish ideas would occur to +him; he imagined that she would never have betrayed him if he had +really loved her, and he blamed himself for this. His anguish was +becoming unbearable; he was really very wretched. His was the pain of +an old wound rather than the blind, present desire which puts up with +everything for the sake of immediate possession. He felt a jealous +passion for the woman and was haunted by longings for her and her +alone, her hair, her mouth, her body. When he remembered the sound of +her voice a shiver ran through him; he longed for her as a miser might +have done, with refinements of desire beggaring description. He was, in +fact, so dolorously possessed by his passion that when Labordette had +begun to broach the subject of an assignation he had thrown himself +into his arms in obedience to irresistible impulse. Directly afterward +he had, of course, been ashamed of an act of self-abandonment which +could not but seem very ridiculous in a man of his position; but +Labordette was one who knew when to see and when not to see things, and +he gave a further proof of his tact when he left the count at the foot +of the stairs and without effort let slip only these simple words: + +“The right-hand passage on the second floor. The door’s not shut.” + +Muffat was alone in that silent corner of the house. As he passed +before the players’ waiting room, he had peeped through the open doors +and noticed the utter dilapidation of the vast chamber, which looked +shamefully stained and worn in broad daylight. But what surprised him +most as he emerged from the darkness and confusion of the stage was the +pure, clear light and deep quiet at present pervading the lofty +staircase, which one evening when he had seen it before had been bathed +in gas fumes and loud with the footsteps of women scampering over the +different floors. He felt that the dressing rooms were empty, the +corridors deserted; not a soul was there; not a sound broke the +stillness, while through the square windows on the level of the stairs +the pale November sunlight filtered and cast yellow patches of light, +full of dancing dust, amid the dead, peaceful air which seemed to +descend from the regions above. + +He was glad of this calm and the silence, and he went slowly up, trying +to regain breath as he went, for his heart was thumping, and he was +afraid lest he might behave childishly and give way to sighs and tears. +Accordingly on the first-floor landing he leaned up against a wall—for +he was sure of not being observed—and pressed his handkerchief to his +mouth and gazed at the warped steps, the iron balustrade bright with +the friction of many hands, the scraped paint on the walls—all the +squalor, in fact, which that house of tolerance so crudely displayed at +the pale afternoon hour when courtesans are asleep. When he reached the +second floor he had to step over a big yellow cat which was lying +curled up on a step. With half-closed eyes this cat was keeping +solitary watch over the house, where the close and now frozen odors +which the women nightly left behind them had rendered him somnolent. + +In the right-hand corridor the door of the dressing room had, indeed, +not been closed entirely. Nana was waiting. That little Mathilde, a +drab of a young girl, kept her dressing room in a filthy state. Chipped +jugs stood about anyhow; the dressing table was greasy, and there was a +chair covered with red stains, which looked as if someone had bled over +the straw. The paper pasted on walls and ceiling was splashed from top +to bottom with spots of soapy water and this smelled so disagreeably of +lavender scent turned sour that Nana opened the window and for some +moments stayed leaning on the sill, breathing the fresh air and craning +forward to catch sight of Mme Bron underneath. She could hear her broom +wildly at work on the mildewed pantiles of the narrow court which was +buried in shadow. A canary, whose cage hung on a shutter, was trilling +away piercingly. The sound of carriages in the boulevard and +neighboring streets was no longer audible, and the quiet and the wide +expanse of sleeping sunlight suggested the country. Looking farther +afield, her eye fell on the small buildings and glass roofs of the +galleries in the passage and, beyond these, on the tall houses in the +Rue Vivienne, the backs of which rose silent and apparently deserted +over against her. There was a succession of terrace roofs close by, and +on one of these a photographer had perched a big cagelike construction +of blue glass. It was all very gay, and Nana was becoming absorbed in +contemplation, when it struck her someone had knocked at the door. + +She turned round and shouted: + +“Come in!” + +At sight of the count she shut the window, for it was not warm, and +there was no need for the eavesdropping Mme Bron to listen. The pair +gazed at one another gravely. Then as the count still kept standing +stiffly in front of her, looking ready to choke with emotion, she burst +out laughing and said: + +“Well! So you’re here again, you silly big beast!” + +The tumult going on within him was so great that he seemed a man frozen +to ice. He addressed Nana as “madame” and esteemed himself happy to see +her again. Thereupon she became more familiar than ever in order to +bounce matters through. + +“Don’t do it in the dignified way! You wanted to see me, didn’t you? +But you didn’t intend us to stand looking at one another like a couple +of chinaware dogs. We’ve both been in the wrong—Oh, I certainly forgive +you!” + +And herewith they agreed not to talk of that affair again, Muffat +nodding his assent as Nana spoke. He was calmer now but as yet could +find nothing to say, though a thousand things rose tumultuously to his +lips. Surprised at his apparent coldness, she began acting a part with +much vigor. + +“Come,” she continued with a faint smile, “you’re a sensible man! Now +that we’ve made our peace let’s shake hands and be good friends in +future.” + +“What? Good friends?” he murmured in sudden anxiety. + +“Yes; it’s idiotic, perhaps, but I should like you to think well of me. +We’ve had our little explanation out, and if we meet again we shan’t, +at any rate look like a pair of boobies.” + +He tried to interrupt her with a movement of the hand. + +“Let me finish! There’s not a man, you understand, able to accuse me of +doing him a blackguardly turn; well, and it struck me as horrid to +begin in your case. We all have our sense of honor, dear boy.” + +“But that’s not my meaning!” he shouted violently. “Sit down—listen to +me!” And as though he were afraid of seeing her take her departure, he +pushed her down on the solitary chair in the room. Then he paced about +in growing agitation. The little dressing room was airless and full of +sunlight, and no sound from the outside world disturbed its pleasant, +peaceful, dampish atmosphere. In the pauses of conversation the +shrillings of the canary were alone audible and suggested the distant +piping of a flute. + +“Listen,” he said, planting himself in front of her, “I’ve come to +possess myself of you again. Yes, I want to begin again. You know that +well; then why do you talk to me as you do? Answer me; tell me you +consent.” + +Her head was bent, and she was scratching the blood-red straw of the +seat underneath her. Seeing him so anxious, she did not hurry to +answer. But at last she lifted up her face. It had assumed a grave +expression, and into the beautiful eyes she had succeeded in infusing a +look of sadness. + +“Oh, it’s impossible, little man. Never, never, will I live with you +again.” + +“Why?” he stuttered, and his face seemed contracted in unspeakable +suffering. + +“Why? Hang it all, because—It’s impossible; that’s about it. I don’t +want to.” + +He looked ardently at her for some seconds longer. Then his legs curved +under him and he fell on the floor. In a bored voice she added this +simple advice: + +“Ah, don’t be a baby!” + +But he was one already. Dropping at her feet, he had put his arms round +her waist and was hugging her closely, pressing his face hard against +her knees. When he felt her thus—when he once more divined the presence +of her velvety limbs beneath the thin fabric of her dress—he was +suddenly convulsed and trembled, as it were, with fever, while madly, +savagely, he pressed his face against her knees as though he had been +anxious to force through her flesh. The old chair creaked, and beneath +the low ceiling, where the air was pungent with stale perfumes, +smothered sobs of desire were audible. + +“Well, and after?” Nana began saying, letting him do as he would. “All +this doesn’t help you a bit, seeing that the thing’s impossible. Good +God, what a child you are!” + +His energy subsided, but he still stayed on the floor, nor did he relax +his hold of her as he said in a broken voice: + +“Do at least listen to what I came to offer you. I’ve already seen a +town house close to the Parc Monceau—I would gladly realize your +smallest wish. In order to have you all to myself, I would give my +whole fortune. Yes, that would be my only condition, that I should have +you all to myself! Do you understand? And if you were to consent to be +mine only, oh, then I should want you to be the loveliest, the richest, +woman on earth. I should give you carriages and diamonds and dresses!” + +At each successive offer Nana shook her head proudly. Then seeing that +he still continued them, that he even spoke of settling money on +her—for he was at loss what to lay at her feet—she apparently lost +patience. + +“Come, come, have you done bargaining with me? I’m a good sort, and I +don’t mind giving in to you for a minute or two, as your feelings are +making you so ill, but I’ve had enough of it now, haven’t I? So let me +get up. You’re tiring me.” + +She extricated herself from his clasp, and once on her feet: + +“No, no, no!” she said. “I don’t want to!” + +With that he gathered himself up painfully and feebly dropped into a +chair, in which he leaned back with his face in his hands. Nana began +pacing up and down in her turn. For a second or two she looked at the +stained wallpaper, the greasy toilet table, the whole dirty little room +as it basked in the pale sunlight. Then she paused in front of the +count and spoke with quiet directness. + +“It’s strange how rich men fancy they can have everything for their +money. Well, and if I don’t want to consent—what then? I don’t care a +pin for your presents! You might give me Paris, and yet I should say +no! Always no! Look here, it’s scarcely clean in this room, yet I +should think it very nice if I wanted to live in it with you. But one’s +fit to kick the bucket in your palaces if one isn’t in love. Ah, as to +money, my poor pet, I can lay my hands on that if I want to, but I tell +you, I trample on it; I spit on it!” + +And with that she assumed a disgusted expression. Then she became +sentimental and added in a melancholy tone: + +“I know of something worth more than money. Oh, if only someone were to +give me what I long for!” + +He slowly lifted his head, and there was a gleam of hope in his eyes. + +“Oh, you can’t give it me,” she continued; “it doesn’t depend on you, +and that’s the reason I’m talking to you about it. Yes, we’re having a +chat, so I may as well mention to you that I should like to play the +part of the respectable woman in that show of theirs.” + +“What respectable woman?” he muttered in astonishment. + +“Why, their Duchess Helene! If they think I’m going to play Geraldine, +a part with nothing in it, a scene and nothing besides—if they think +that! Besides, that isn’t the reason. The fact is I’ve had enough of +courtesans. Why, there’s no end to ’em! They’ll be fancying I’ve got +’em on the brain; to be sure they will! Besides, when all’s said and +done, it’s annoying, for I can quite see they seem to think me +uneducated. Well, my boy, they’re jolly well in the dark about it, I +can tell you! When I want to be a perfect lady, why then I am a swell, +and no mistake! Just look at this.” + +And she withdrew as far as the window and then came swelling back with +the mincing gait and circumspect air of a portly hen that fears to +dirty her claws. As to Muffat, he followed her movements with eyes +still wet with tears. He was stupefied by this sudden transition from +anguish to comedy. She walked about for a moment or two in order the +more thoroughly to show off her paces, and as she walked she smiled +subtlely, closed her eyes demurely and managed her skirts with great +dexterity. Then she posted herself in front of him again. + +“I guess I’ve hit it, eh?” + +“Oh, thoroughly,” he stammered with a broken voice and a troubled +expression. + +“I tell you I’ve got hold of the honest woman! I’ve tried at my own +place. Nobody’s got my little knack of looking like a duchess who don’t +care a damn for the men. Did you notice it when I passed in front of +you? Why, the thing’s in my blood! Besides, I want to play the part of +an honest woman. I dream about it day and night—I’m miserable about it. +I must have the part, d’you hear?” + +And with that she grew serious, speaking in a hard voice and looking +deeply moved, for she was really tortured by her stupid, tiresome wish. +Muffat, still smarting from her late refusals, sat on without appearing +to grasp her meaning. There was a silence during which the very flies +abstained from buzzing through the quiet, empty place. + +“Now, look here,” she resumed bluntly, “you’re to get them to give me +the part.” + +He was dumfounded, and with a despairing gesture: + +“Oh, it’s impossible! You yourself were saying just now that it didn’t +depend on me.” + +She interrupted him with a shrug of the shoulders. + +“You’ll just go down, and you’ll tell Bordenave you want the part. Now +don’t be such a silly! Bordenave wants money—well, you’ll lend him +some, since you can afford to make ducks and drakes of it.” + +And as he still struggled to refuse her, she grew angry. + +“Very well, I understand; you’re afraid of making Rose angry. I didn’t +mention the woman when you were crying down on the floor—I should have +had too much to say about it all. Yes, to be sure, when one has sworn +to love a woman forever one doesn’t usually take up with the first +creature that comes by directly after. Oh, that’s where the shoe +pinches, I remember! Well, dear boy, there’s nothing very savory in the +Mignon’s leavings! Oughtn’t you to have broken it off with that dirty +lot before coming and squirming on my knees?” + +He protested vaguely and at last was able to get out a phrase. + +“Oh, I don’t care a jot for Rose; I’ll give her up at once.” + +Nana seemed satisfied on this point. She continued: + +“Well then, what’s bothering you? Bordenave’s master here. You’ll tell +me there’s Fauchery after Bordenave—” + +She had sunk her voice, for she was coming to the delicate part of the +matter. Muffat sat silent, his eyes fixed on the ground. He had +remained voluntarily ignorant of Fauchery’s assiduous attentions to the +countess, and time had lulled his suspicions and set him hoping that he +had been deceiving himself during that fearful night passed in a +doorway of the Rue Taitbout. But he still felt a dull, angry repugnance +to the man. + +“Well, what then? Fauchery isn’t the devil!” Nana repeated, feeling her +way cautiously and trying to find out how matters stood between husband +and lover. “One can get over his soft side. I promise you, he’s a good +sort at bottom! So it’s a bargain, eh? You’ll tell him that it’s for my +sake?” + +The idea of taking such a step disgusted the count. + +“No, no! Never!” he cried. + +She paused, and this sentence was on the verge of utterance: + +“Fauchery can refuse you nothing.” + +But she felt that by way of argument it was rather too much of a good +thing. So she only smiled a queer smile which spoke as plainly as +words. Muffat had raised his eyes to her and now once more lowered +them, looking pale and full of embarrassment. + +“Ah, you’re not good natured,” she muttered at last. + +“I cannot,” he said with a voice and a look of the utmost anguish. +“I’ll do whatever you like, but not that, dear love! Oh, I beg you not +to insist on that!” + +Thereupon she wasted no more time in discussion but took his head +between her small hands, pushed it back a little, bent down and glued +her mouth to his in a long, long kiss. He shivered violently; he +trembled beneath her touch; his eyes were closed, and he was beside +himself. She lifted him to his feet. + +“Go,” said she simply. + +He walked off, making toward the door. But as he passed out she took +him in her arms again, became meek and coaxing, lifted her face to his +and rubbed her cheek against his waistcoat, much as a cat might have +done. + +“Where’s the fine house?” she whispered in laughing embarrassment, like +a little girl who returns to the pleasant things she has previously +refused. + +“In the Avenue de Villiers.” + +“And there are carriages there?” + +“Yes.” + +“Lace? Diamonds?” + +“Yes.” + +“Oh, how good you are, my old pet! You know it was all jealousy just +now! And this time I solemnly promise you it won’t be like the first, +for now you understand what’s due to a woman. You give all, don’t you? +Well then, I don’t want anybody but you! Why, look here, there’s some +more for you! There and there AND there!” + +When she had pushed him from the room after firing his blood with a +rain of kisses on hands and on face, she panted awhile. Good heavens, +what an unpleasant smell there was in that slut Mathilde’s dressing +room! It was warm, if you will, with the tranquil warmth peculiar to +rooms in the south when the winter sun shines into them, but really, it +smelled far too strong of stale lavender water, not to mention other +less cleanly things! She opened the window and, again leaning on the +window sill, began watching the glass roof of the passage below in +order to kill time. + +Muffat went staggering downstairs. His head was swimming. What should +he say? How should he broach the matter which, moreover, did not +concern him? He heard sounds of quarreling as he reached the stage. The +second act was being finished, and Prullière was beside himself with +wrath, owing to an attempt on Fauchery’s part to cut short one of his +speeches. + +“Cut it all out then,” he was shouting. “I should prefer that! Just +fancy, I haven’t two hundred lines, and they’re still cutting me down. +No, by Jove, I’ve had enough of it; I give the part up.” + +He took a little crumpled manuscript book out of his pocket and +fingered its leaves feverishly, as though he were just about to throw +it on Cossard’s lap. His pale face was convulsed by outraged vanity; +his lips were drawn and thin, his eyes flamed; he was quite unable to +conceal the struggle that was going on inside him. To think that he, +Prullière, the idol of the public, should play a part of only two +hundred lines! + +“Why not make me bring in letters on a tray?” he continued bitterly. + +“Come, come, Prullière, behave decently,” said Bordenave, who was +anxious to treat him tenderly because of his influence over the boxes. +“Don’t begin making a fuss. We’ll find some points. Eh, Fauchery, +you’ll add some points? In the third act it would even be possible to +lengthen a scene out.” + +“Well then, I want the last speech of all,” the comedian declared. “I +certainly deserve to have it.” + +Fauchery’s silence seemed to give consent, and Prullière, still greatly +agitated and discontented despite everything, put his part back into +his pocket. Bosc and Fontan had appeared profoundly indifferent during +the course of this explanation. Let each man fight for his own hand, +they reflected; the present dispute had nothing to do with them; they +had no interest therein! All the actors clustered round Fauchery and +began questioning him and fishing for praise, while Mignon listened to +the last of Prullière’s complaints without, however, losing sight of +Count Muffat, whose return he had been on the watch for. + +Entering in the half-light, the count had paused at the back of the +stage, for he hesitated to interrupt the quarrel. But Bordenave caught +sight of him and ran forward. + +“Aren’t they a pretty lot?” he muttered. “You can have no idea what +I’ve got to undergo with that lot, Monsieur le Comte. Each man’s vainer +than his neighbor, and they’re wretched players all the same, a scabby +lot, always mixed up in some dirty business or other! Oh, they’d be +delighted if I were to come to smash. But I beg pardon—I’m getting +beside myself.” + +He ceased speaking, and silence reigned while Muffat sought how to +broach his announcement gently. But he failed and, in order to get out +of his difficulty the more quickly, ended by an abrupt announcement: + +“Nana wants the duchess’s part.” + +Bordenave gave a start and shouted: + +“Come now, it’s sheer madness!” + +Then looking at the count and finding him so pale and so shaken, he was +calm at once. + +“Devil take it!” he said simply. + +And with that there ensued a fresh silence. At bottom he didn’t care a +pin about it. That great thing Nana playing the duchess might possibly +prove amusing! Besides, now that this had happened he had Muffat well +in his grasp. Accordingly he was not long in coming to a decision, and +so he turned round and called out: + +“Fauchery!” + +The count had been on the point of stopping him. But Fauchery did not +hear him, for he had been pinned against the curtain by Fontan and was +being compelled to listen patiently to the comedian’s reading of the +part of Tardiveau. Fontan imagined Tardiveau to be a native of +Marseilles with a dialect, and he imitated the dialect. He was +repeating whole speeches. Was that right? Was this the thing? +Apparently he was only submitting ideas to Fauchery of which he was +himself uncertain, but as the author seemed cold and raised various +objections, he grew angry at once. + +Oh, very well, the moment the spirit of the part escaped him it would +be better for all concerned that he shouldn’t act it at all! + +“Fauchery!” shouted Bordenave once more. + +Thereupon the young man ran off, delighted to escape from the actor, +who was wounded not a little by his prompt retreat. + +“Don’t let’s stay here,” continued Bordenave. “Come this way, +gentlemen.” + +In order to escape from curious listeners he led them into the property +room behind the scenes, while Mignon watched their disappearance in +some surprise. They went down a few steps and entered a square room, +whose two windows opened upon the courtyard. A faint light stole +through the dirty panes and hung wanly under the low ceiling. In +pigeonholes and shelves, which filled the whole place up, lay a +collection of the most varied kind of bric-a-brac. Indeed, it suggested +an old-clothes shop in the Rue de Lappe in process of selling off, so +indescribable was the hotchpotch of plates, gilt pasteboard cups, old +red umbrellas, Italian jars, clocks in all styles, platters and +inkpots, firearms and squirts, which lay chipped and broken and in +unrecognizable heaps under a layer of dust an inch deep. An unendurable +odor of old iron, rags and damp cardboard emanated from the various +piles, where the débris of forgotten dramas had been collecting for +half a century. + +“Come in,” Bordenave repeated. “We shall be alone, at any rate.” + +The count was extremely embarrassed, and he contrived to let the +manager risk his proposal for him. Fauchery was astonished. + +“Eh? What?” he asked. + +“Just this,” said Bordenave finally. “An idea has occurred to us. Now +whatever you do, don’t jump! It’s most serious. What do you think of +Nana for the duchess’s part?” + +The author was bewildered; then he burst out with: + +“Ah no, no! You’re joking, aren’t you? People would laugh far too +much.” + +“Well, and it’s a point gained already if they do laugh! Just reflect, +my dear boy. The idea pleases Monsieur le Comte very much.” + +In order to keep himself in countenance Muffat had just picked out of +the dust on a neighboring shelf an object which he did not seem to +recognize. It was an eggcup, and its stem had been mended with plaster. +He kept hold of it unconsciously and came forward, muttering: + +“Yes, yes, it would be capital.” + +Fauchery turned toward him with a brisk, impatient gesture. The count +had nothing to do with his piece, and he said decisively: + +“Never! Let Nana play the courtesan as much as she likes, but a +lady—No, by Jove!” + +“You are mistaken, I assure you,” rejoined the count, growing bolder. +“This very minute she has been playing the part of a pure woman for my +benefit.” + +“Where?” queried Fauchery with growing surprise. + +“Upstairs in a dressing room. Yes, she has, indeed, and with such +distinction! She’s got a way of glancing at you as she goes by +you—something like this, you know!” + +And eggcup in hand, he endeavored to imitate Nana, quite forgetting his +dignity in his frantic desire to convince the others. Fauchery gazed at +him in a state of stupefaction. He understood it all now, and his anger +had ceased. The count felt that he was looking at him mockingly and +pityingly, and he paused with a slight blush on his face. + +“Egad, it’s quite possible!” muttered the author complaisantly. +“Perhaps she would do very well, only the part’s been assigned. We +can’t take it away from Rose.” + +“Oh, if that’s all the trouble,” said Bordenave, “I’ll undertake to +arrange matters.” + +But presently, seeing them both against him and guessing that Bordenave +had some secret interest at stake, the young man thought to avoid +aquiescence by redoubling the violence of his refusal. The consultation +was on the verge of being broken up. + +“Oh, dear! No, no! Even if the part were unassigned I should never give +it her! There, is that plain? Do let me alone; I have no wish to ruin +my play!” + +He lapsed into silent embarrassment. Bordenave, deeming himself DE +TROP, went away, but the count remained with bowed head. He raised it +with an effort and said in a breaking voice: + +“Supposing, my dear fellow, I were to ask this of you as a favor?” + +“I cannot, I cannot,” Fauchery kept repeating as he writhed to get +free. + +Muffat’s voice became harder. + +“I pray and beseech you for it! I want it!” + +And with that he fixed his eyes on him. The young man read menaces in +that darkling gaze and suddenly gave way with a splutter of confused +phrases: + +“Do what you like—I don’t care a pin about it. Yes, yes, you’re abusing +your power, but you’ll see, you’ll see!” + +At this the embarrassment of both increased. Fauchery was leaning up +against a set of shelves and was tapping nervously on the ground with +his foot. Muffat seemed busy examining the eggcup, which he was still +turning round and about. + +“It’s an eggcup,” Bordenave obligingly came and remarked. + +“Yes, to be sure! It’s an eggcup,” the count repeated. + +“Excuse me, you’re covered with dust,” continued the manager, putting +the thing back on a shelf. “If one had to dust every day there’d be no +end to it, you understand. But it’s hardly clean here—a filthy mess, +eh? Yet you may believe me or not when I tell you there’s money in it. +Now look, just look at all that!” + +He walked Muffat round in front of the pigeonholes and shelves and in +the greenish light which filtered through the courtyard, told him the +names of different properties, for he was anxious to interest him in +his marine-stores inventory, as he jocosely termed it. + +Presently, when they had returned into Fauchery’s neighborhood, he said +carelessly enough: + +“Listen, since we’re all of one mind, we’ll finish the matter at once. +Here’s Mignon, just when he’s wanted.” + +For some little time past Mignon had been prowling in the adjoining +passage, and the very moment Bordenave began talking of a modification +of their agreement he burst into wrathful protest. It was infamous—they +wanted to spoil his wife’s career—he’d go to law about it! Bordenave, +meanwhile, was extremely calm and full of reasons. He did not think the +part worthy of Rose, and he preferred to reserve her for an operetta, +which was to be put on after the Petite Duchesse. But when her husband +still continued shouting he suddenly offered to cancel their +arrangement in view of the offers which the Folies-Dramatiques had been +making the singer. At this Mignon was momentarily put out, so without +denying the truth of these offers he loudly professed a vast disdain +for money. His wife, he said, had been engaged to play the Duchess +Helene, and she would play the part even if he, Mignon, were to be +ruined over it. His dignity, his honor, were at stake! Starting from +this basis, the discussion grew interminable. The manager, however, +always returned to the following argument: since the Folies had offered +Rose three hundred francs a night during a hundred performances, and +since she only made a hundred and fifty with him, she would be the +gainer by fifteen thousand francs the moment he let her depart. The +husband, on his part, did not desert the artist’s position. What would +people say if they saw his wife deprived of her part? Why, that she was +not equal to it; that it had been deemed necessary to find a substitute +for her! And this would do great harm to Rose’s reputation as an +artist; nay, it would diminish it. Oh no, no! Glory before gain! Then +without a word of warning he pointed out a possible arrangement: Rose, +according to the terms of her agreement, was pledged to pay a forfeit +of ten thousand francs in case she gave up the part. Very well then, +let them give her ten thousand francs, and she would go to the +Folies-Dramatiques. Bordenave was utterly dumfounded while Mignon, who +had never once taken his eyes off the count, tranquilly awaited +results. + +“Then everything can be settled,” murmured Muffat in tones of relief; +“we can come to an understanding.” + +“The deuce, no! That would be too stupid!” cried Bordenave, mastered by +his commercial instincts. “Ten thousand francs to let Rose go! Why, +people would make game of me!” + +But the count, with a multiplicity of nods, bade him accept. He +hesitated, and at last with much grumbling and infinite regret over the +ten thousand francs which, by the by, were not destined to come out of +his own pocket he bluntly continued: + +“After all, I consent. At any rate, I shall have you off my hands.” + +For a quarter of an hour past Fontan had been listening in the +courtyard. Such had been his curiosity that he had come down and posted +himself there, but the moment he understood the state of the case he +went upstairs again and enjoyed the treat of telling Rose. Dear me! +They were just haggling in her behalf! He dinned his words into her +ears; she ran off to the property room. They were silent as she +entered. She looked at the four men. Muffat hung his head; Fauchery +answered her questioning glance with a despairing shrug of the +shoulders; as to Mignon, he was busy discussing the terms of the +agreement with Bordenave. + +“What’s up?” she demanded curtly. + +“Nothing,” said her husband. “Bordenave here is giving ten thousand +francs in order to get you to give up your part.” + +She grew tremulous with anger and very pale, and she clenched her +little fists. For some moments she stared at him, her whole nature in +revolt. Ordinarily in matters of business she was wont to trust +everything obediently to her husband, leaving him to sign agreements +with managers and lovers. Now she could but cry: + +“Oh, come, you’re too base for anything!” + +The words fell like a lash. Then she sped away, and Mignon, in utter +astonishment, ran after her. What next? Was she going mad? He began +explaining to her in low tones that ten thousand francs from one party +and fifteen thousand from the other came to twenty-five thousand. A +splendid deal! Muffat was getting rid of her in every sense of the +word; it was a pretty trick to have plucked him of this last feather! +But Rose in her anger vouchsafed no answer. Whereupon Mignon in disdain +left her to her feminine spite and, turning to Bordenave, who was once +more on the stage with Fauchery and Muffat, said: + +“We’ll sign tomorrow morning. Have the money in readiness.” + +At this moment Nana, to whom Labordette had brought the news, came down +to the stage in triumph. She was quite the honest woman now and wore a +most distinguished expression in order to overwhelm her friends and +prove to the idiots that when she chose she could give them all points +in the matter of smartness. But she nearly got into trouble, for at the +sight of her Rose darted forward, choking with rage and stuttering: + +“Yes, you, I’ll pay you out! Things can’t go on like this; d’you +understand?” Nana forgot herself in face of this brisk attack and was +going to put her arms akimbo and give her what for. But she controlled +herself and, looking like a marquise who is afraid of treading on an +orange peel, fluted in still more silvery tones. + +“Eh, what?” said she. “You’re mad, my dear!” + +And with that she continued in her graceful affectation while Rose took +her departure, followed by Mignon, who now refused to recognize her. +Clarisse was enraptured, having just obtained the part of Geraldine +from Bordenave. Fauchery, on the other hand, was gloomy; he shifted +from one foot to the other; he could not decide whether to leave the +theater or no. His piece was bedeviled, and he was seeking how best to +save it. But Nana came up, took him by both hands and, drawing him +toward her, asked whether he thought her so very atrocious after all. +She wasn’t going to eat his play—not she! Then she made him laugh and +gave him to understand that he would be foolish to be angry with her, +in view of his relationship to the Muffats. If, she said, her memory +failed her she would take her lines from the prompter. The house, too, +would be packed in such a way as to ensure applause. Besides, he was +mistaken about her, and he would soon see how she would rattle through +her part. By and by it was arranged that the author should make a few +changes in the role of the duchess so as to extend that of Prullière. +The last-named personage was enraptured. Indeed, amid all the joy which +Nana now quite naturally diffused, Fontan alone remained unmoved. In +the middle of the yellow lamplight, against which the sharp outline of +his goatlike profile shone out with great distinctness, he stood +showing off his figure and affecting the pose of one who has been +cruelly abandoned. Nana went quietly up and shook hands with him. + +“How are you getting on?” + +“Oh, pretty fairly. And how are you?” + +“Very well, thank you.” + +That was all. They seemed to have only parted at the doors of the +theater the day before. Meanwhile the players were waiting about, but +Bordenave said that the third act would not be rehearsed. And so it +chanced that old Bosc went grumbling away at the proper time, whereas +usually the company were needlessly detained and lost whole afternoons +in consequence. Everyone went off. Down on the pavement they were +blinded by the broad daylight and stood blinking their eyes in a dazed +sort of way, as became people who had passed three hours squabbling +with tight-strung nerves in the depths of a cellar. The count, with +racked limbs and vacant brain, got into a conveyance with Nana, while +Labordette took Fauchery off and comforted him. + +A month later the first night of the Petite Duchesse proved supremely +disastrous to Nana. She was atrociously bad and displayed such +pretentions toward high comedy that the public grew mirthful. They did +not hiss—they were too amused. From a stage box Rose Mignon kept +greeting her rival’s successive entrances with a shrill laugh, which +set the whole house off. It was the beginning of her revenge. +Accordingly, when at night Nana, greatly chagrined, found herself alone +with Muffat, she said furiously: + +“What a conspiracy, eh? It’s all owing to jealousy. Oh, if they only +knew how I despise ’em! What do I want them for nowadays? Look here! +I’ll bet a hundred louis that I’ll bring all those who made fun today +and make ’em lick the ground at my feet! Yes, I’ll fine-lady your Paris +for you, I will!” + + + + + CHAPTER X + + +Thereupon Nana became a smart woman, mistress of all that is foolish +and filthy in man, marquise in the ranks of her calling. It was a +sudden but decisive start, a plunge into the garish day of gallant +notoriety and mad expenditure and that daredevil wastefulness peculiar +to beauty. She at once became queen among the most expensive of her +kind. Her photographs were displayed in shopwindows, and she was +mentioned in the papers. When she drove in her carriage along the +boulevards the people would turn and tell one another who that was with +all the unction of a nation saluting its sovereign, while the object of +their adoration lolled easily back in her diaphanous dresses and smiled +gaily under the rain of little golden curls which ran riot above the +blue of her made-up eyes and the red of her painted lips. And the +wonder of wonders was that the great creature, who was so awkward on +the stage, so very absurd the moment she sought to act the chaste +woman, was able without effort to assume the role of an enchantress in +the outer world. Her movements were lithe as a serpent’s, and the +studied and yet seemingly involuntary carelessness with which she +dressed was really exquisite in its elegance. There was a nervous +distinction in all she did which suggested a wellborn Persian cat; she +was an aristocrat in vice and proudly and rebelliously trampled upon a +prostrate Paris like a sovereign whom none dare disobey. She set the +fashion, and great ladies imitated her. + +Nana’s fine house was situated at the corner of the Rue Cardinet, in +the Avenue de Villiers. The avenue was part of the luxurious quarter at +that time springing up in the vague district which had once been the +Plaine Monceau. The house had been built by a young painter, who was +intoxicated by a first success, and had been perforce resold almost as +soon as it was habitable. It was in the palatial Renaissance manner and +had fantastic interior arrangements which consisted of modern +conveniences framed in a setting of somewhat artificial originality. +Count Muffat had bought the house ready furnished and full of hosts of +beautiful objects—lovely Eastern hangings, old credences, huge chairs +of the Louis XIII epoch. And thus Nana had come into artistic +surroundings of the choicest kind and of the most extravagantly various +dates. But since the studio, which occupied the central portion of the +house, could not be of any use to her, she had upset existing +arrangements, establishing a small drawing room on the first floor, +next to her bedroom and dressing room, and leaving a conservatory, a +large drawing room and a dining room to look after themselves +underneath. She astonished the architect with her ideas, for, as became +a Parisian workgirl who understands the elegancies of life by instinct, +she had suddenly developed a very pretty taste for every species of +luxurious refinement. Indeed, she did not spoil her house overmuch; +nay, she even added to the richness of the furniture, save here and +there, where certain traces of tender foolishness and vulgar +magnificence betrayed the ex-flower seller who had been wont to dream +in front of shopwindows in the arcades. + +A carpet was spread on the steps beneath the great awning over the +front door in the court, and the moment you entered the hall you were +greeted by a perfume as of violets and a soft, warm atmosphere which +thick hangings helped to produce. A window, whose yellow-and +rose-colored panes suggested the warm pallor of human flesh, gave light +to the wide staircase, at the foot of which a Negro in carved wood held +out a silver tray full of visiting cards and four white marble women, +with bosoms displayed, raised lamps in their uplifted hands. Bronzes +and Chinese vases full of flowers, divans covered with old Persian +rugs, armchairs upholstered in old tapestry, furnished the entrance +hall, adorned the stairheads and gave the first-floor landing the +appearance of an anteroom. Here men’s overcoats and hats were always in +evidence, and there were thick hangings which deadened every sound. It +seemed a place apart: on entering it you might have fancied yourself in +a chapel, whose very air was thrilling with devotion, whose very +silence and seclusion were fraught with mystery. + +Nana only opened the large and somewhat too-sumptuous Louis XVI drawing +room on those gala nights when she received society from the Tuileries +or strangers of distinction. Ordinarily she only came downstairs at +mealtimes, and she would feel rather lost on such days as she lunched +by herself in the lofty dining room with its Gobelin tapestry and its +monumental sideboard, adorned with old porcelain and marvelous pieces +of ancient plate. She used to go upstairs again as quickly as possible, +for her home was on the first floor, in the three rooms, the bed, +dressing and small drawing room above described. Twice already she had +done the bedchamber up anew: on the first occasion in mauve satin, on +the second in blue silk under lace. But she had not been satisfied with +this; it had struck her as “nohowish,” and she was still unsuccessfully +seeking for new colors and designs. On the elaborately upholstered bed, +which was as low as a sofa, there were twenty thousand francs’ worth of +POINT DE VENISE lace. The furniture was lacquered blue and white under +designs in silver filigree, and everywhere lay such numbers of white +bearskins that they hid the carpet. This was a luxurious caprice on +Nana’s part, she having never been able to break herself of the habit +of sitting on the floor to take her stockings off. Next door to the +bedroom the little saloon was full of an amusing medley of exquisitely +artistic objects. Against the hangings of pale rose-colored silk—a +faded Turkish rose color, embroidered with gold thread—a whole world of +them stood sharply outlined. They were from every land and in every +possible style. There were Italian cabinets, Spanish and Portuguese +coffers, models of Chinese pagodas, a Japanese screen of precious +workmanship, besides china, bronzes, embroidered silks, hangings of the +finest needlework. Armchairs wide as beds and sofas deep as alcoves +suggested voluptuous idleness and the somnolent life of the seraglio. +The prevailing tone of the room was old gold blended with green and +red, and nothing it contained too forcibly indicated the presence of +the courtesan save the luxuriousness of the seats. Only two “biscuit” +statuettes, a woman in her shift, hunting for fleas, and another with +nothing at all on, walking on her hands and waving her feet in the air, +sufficed to sully the room with a note of stupid originality. + +Through a door, which was nearly always ajar, the dressing room was +visible. It was all in marble and glass with a white bath, silver jugs +and basins and crystal and ivory appointments. A drawn curtain filled +the place with a clear twilight which seemed to slumber in the warm +scent of violets, that suggestive perfume peculiar to Nana wherewith +the whole house, from the roof to the very courtyard, was penetrated. + +The furnishing of the house was a most important undertaking. Nana +certainly had Zoé with her, that girl so devoted to her fortunes. For +months she had been tranquilly awaiting this abrupt, new departure, as +became a woman who was certain of her powers of prescience, and now she +was triumphant; she was mistress of the house and was putting by a +round sum while serving Madame as honestly as possible. But a solitary +lady’s maid was no longer sufficient. A butler, a coachman, a porter +and a cook were wanted. Besides, it was necessary to fill the stables. +It was then that Labordette made himself most useful. He undertook to +perform all sorts of errands which bored the count; he made a +comfortable job of the purchase of horses; he visited the +coachbuilders; he guided the young woman in her choice of things. She +was to be met with at the shops, leaning on his arm. Labordette even +got in the servants—Charles, a great, tall coachman, who had been in +service with the Duc de Corbreuse; Julien, a little, smiling, +much-becurled butler, and a married couple, of whom the wife Victorine +became cook while the husband Francois was taken on as porter and +footman. The last mentioned in powder and breeches wore Nana’s livery, +which was a sky-blue one adorned with silver lace, and he received +visitors in the hall. The whole thing was princely in the correctness +of its style. + +At the end of two months the house was set going. The cost had been +more than three hundred thousand francs. There were eight horses in the +stables, and five carriages in the coach houses, and of these five one +was a landau with silver embellishments, which for the moment occupied +the attention of all Paris. And amid this great wealth Nana began +settling down and making her nest. After the third representation of +the Petite Duchesse she had quitted the theater, leaving Bordenave to +struggle on against a bankruptcy which, despite the count’s money, was +imminent. Nevertheless, she was still bitter about her failure. It +added to that other bitterness, the lesson Fontan had given her, a +shameful lesson for which she held all men responsible. Accordingly she +now declared herself very firm and quite proof against sudden +infatuations, but thoughts of vengeance took no hold of her volatile +brain. What did maintain a hold on it in the hours when she was not +indignant was an ever-wakeful lust of expenditure, added to a natural +contempt for the man who paid and to a perpetual passion for +consumption and waste, which took pride in the ruin of her lovers. + +At starting Nana put the count on a proper footing and clearly mapped +out the conditions of their relationship. The count gave twelve +thousand francs monthly, presents excepted, and demanded nothing in +return save absolute fidelity. She swore fidelity but insisted also on +being treated with the utmost consideration, on enjoying complete +liberty as mistress of the house and on having her every wish +respected. For instance, she was to receive her friends every day, and +he was to come only at stated times. In a word, he was to repose a +blind confidence in her in everything. And when he was seized with +jealous anxiety and hesitated to grant what she wanted, she stood on +her dignity and threatened to give him back all he had given or even +swore by little Louiset to perform what she promised. This was to +suffice him. There was no love where mutual esteem was wanting. At the +end of the first month Muffat respected her. + +But she desired and obtained still more. Soon she began to influence +him, as became a good-natured courtesan. When he came to her in a moody +condition she cheered him up, confessed him and then gave him good +advice. Little by little she interested herself in the annoyances of +his home life, in his wife, in his daughter, in his love affairs and +financial difficulties; she was very sensible, very fair and +right-minded. On one occasion only did she let anger get the better of +her, and that was when he confided to her that doubtless Daguenet was +going to ask for his daughter Estelle in marriage. When the count began +making himself notorious Daguenet had thought it a wise move to break +off with Nana. He had treated her like a base hussy and had sworn to +snatch his future father-in-law out of the creature’s clutches. In +return Nana abused her old Mimi in a charming fashion. He was a +renegade who had devoured his fortune in the company of vile women; he +had no moral sense. True, he did not let them pay him money, but he +profited by that of others and only repaid them at rare intervals with +a bouquet or a dinner. And when the count seemed inclined to find +excuses for these failings she bluntly informed him that Daguenet had +enjoyed her favors, and she added disgusting particulars. Muffat had +grown ashen-pale. There was no question of the young man now. This +would teach him to be lacking in gratitude! + +Meanwhile the house had not been entirely furnished, when one evening +after she had lavished the most energetic promises of fidelity on +Muffat Nana kept the Count Xavier de Vandeuvres for the night. For the +last fortnight he had been paying her assiduous court, visiting her and +sending presents of flowers, and now she gave way not so much out of +sudden infatuation as to prove that she was a free woman. The idea of +gain followed later when, the day after, Vandeuvres helped her to pay a +bill which she did not wish to mention to the other man. From +Vandeuvres she would certainly derive from eight to ten thousand francs +a month, and this would prove very useful as pocket money. In those +days he was finishing the last of his fortune in an access of burning, +feverish folly. His horses and Lucy had devoured three of his farms, +and at one gulp Nana was going to swallow his last château, near +Amiens. He seemed in a hurry to sweep everything away, down to the +ruins of the old tower built by a Vandeuvres under Philip Augustus. He +was mad for ruin and thought it a great thing to leave the last golden +bezants of his coat of arms in the grasp of this courtesan, whom the +world of Paris desired. He, too, accepted Nana’s conditions, leaving +her entire freedom of action and claiming her caresses only on certain +days. He was not even naively impassioned enough to require her to make +vows. Muffat suspected nothing. As to Vandeuvres, he knew things would +take place for a certainty, but he never made the least allusion to +them and pretended total ignorance, while his lips wore the subtle +smile of the skeptical man of pleasure who does not seek the +impossible, provided he can have his day and that Paris is aware of it. + +From that time forth Nana’s house was really properly appointed. The +staff of servants was complete in the stable, in the kitchen and in my +lady’s chamber. Zoé organized everything and passed successfully +through the most unforeseen difficulties. The household moved as easily +as the scenery in a theater and was regulated like a grand +administrative concern. Indeed, it worked with such precision that +during the early months there were no jars and no derangements. Madame, +however, pained Zoé extremely with her imprudent acts, her sudden fits +of unwisdom, her mad bravado. Still the lady’s maid grew gradually +lenient, for she had noticed that she made increased profits in seasons +of wanton waste when Madame had committed a folly which must be made up +for. It was then that the presents began raining on her, and she fished +up many a louis out of the troubled waters. + +One morning when Muffat had not yet left the bedroom Zoé ushered a +gentleman into the dressing room, where Nana was changing her +underwear. He was trembling violently. + +“Good gracious! It’s Zizi!” said the young woman in great astonishment. + +It was, indeed, Georges. But when he saw her in her shift, with her +golden hair over her bare shoulders, he threw his arms round her neck +and round her waist and kissed her in all directions. She began +struggling to get free, for she was frightened, and in smothered tones +she stammered: + +“Do leave off! He’s there! Oh, it’s silly of you! And you, Zoé, are you +out of your senses? Take him away and keep him downstairs; I’ll try and +come down.” + +Zoé had to push him in front of her. When Nana was able to rejoin them +in the drawing room downstairs she scolded them both, and Zoé pursed up +her lips and took her departure with a vexed expression, remarking that +she had only been anxious to give Madame a pleasure. Georges was so +glad to see Nana again and gazed at her with such delight that his fine +eyes began filling with tears. The miserable days were over now; his +mother believed him to have grown reasonable and had allowed him to +leave Les Fondettes. Accordingly, the moment he had reached the +terminus, he had got a conveyance in order the more quickly to come and +kiss his sweet darling. He spoke of living at her side in future, as he +used to do down in the country when he waited for her, barefooted, in +the bedroom at La Mignotte. And as he told her about himself, he let +his fingers creep forward, for he longed to touch her after that cruel +year of separation. Then he got possession of her hands, felt about the +wide sleeves of her dressing jacket, traveled up as far as her +shoulders. + +“You still love your baby?” he asked in his child voice. + +“Oh, I certainly love him!” answered Nana, briskly getting out of his +clutches. “But you come popping in without warning. You know, my little +man, I’m not my own mistress; you must be good!” + +Georges, when he got out of his cab, had been so dizzy with the feeling +that his long desire was at last about to be satisfied that he had not +even noticed what sort of house he was entering. But now he became +conscious of a change in the things around him. He examined the +sumptuous dining room with its lofty decorated ceiling, its Gobelin +hangings, its buffet blazing with plate. + +“Yes, yes!” he remarked sadly. + +And with that she made him understand that he was never to come in the +mornings but between four and six in the afternoon, if he cared to. +That was her reception time. Then as he looked at her with suppliant, +questioning eyes and craved no boon at all, she, in her turn, kissed +him on the forehead in the most amiable way. + +“Be very good,” she whispered. “I’ll do all I can.” + +But the truth was that this remark now meant nothing. She thought +Georges very nice and would have liked him as a companion, but as +nothing else. Nevertheless, when he arrived daily at four o’clock he +seemed so wretched that she was often fain to be as compliant as of old +and would hide him in cupboards and constantly allow him to pick up the +crumbs from Beauty’s table. He hardly ever left the house now and +became as much one of its inmates as the little dog Bijou. Together +they nestled among Mistress’s skirts and enjoyed a little of her at a +time, even when she was with another man, while doles of sugar and +stray caresses not seldom fell to their share in her hours of +loneliness and boredom. + +Doubtless Mme Hugon found out that the lad had again returned to that +wicked woman’s arms, for she hurried up to Paris and came and sought +aid from her other son, the Lieutenant Philippe, who was then in +garrison at Vincennes. Georges, who was hiding from his elder brother, +was seized with despairing apprehension, for he feared the latter might +adopt violent tactics, and as his tenderness for Nana was so nervously +expansive that he could not keep anything from her, he soon began +talking of nothing but his big brother, a great, strong fellow, who was +capable of all kinds of things. + +“You know,” he explained, “Mamma won’t come to you while she can send +my brother. Oh, she’ll certainly send Philippe to fetch me.” + +The first time he said this Nana was deeply wounded. She said frigidly: + +“Gracious me, I should like to see him come! For all that he’s a +lieutenant in the army, Francois will chuck him out in double-quick +time!” + +Soon, as the lad kept returning to the subject of his brother, she +ended by taking a certain interest in Philippe, and in a week’s time +she knew him from head to foot—knew him as very tall and very strong +and merry and somewhat rough. She learned intimate details, too, and +found out that he had hair on his arms and a birthmark on his shoulder. +So thoroughly did she learn her lesson that one day, when she was full +of the image of the man who was to be turned out of doors by her +orders, she cried out: + +“I say, Zizi, your brother’s not coming. He’s a base deserter!” + +The next day, when Georges and Nana were alone together, Francois came +upstairs to ask whether Madame would receive Lieutenant Philippe Hugon. +Georges grew extremely white and murmured: + +“I suspected it; Mamma was talking about it this morning.” + +And he besought the young woman to send down word that she could not +see visitors. But she was already on her feet and seemed all aflame as +she said: + +“Why should I not see him? He would think me afraid. Dear me, we’ll +have a good laugh! Just leave the gentleman in the drawing room for a +quarter of an hour, Francois; afterward bring him up to me.” + +She did not sit down again but began pacing feverishly to and fro +between the fireplace and a Venetian mirror hanging above an Italian +chest. And each time she reached the latter she glanced at the glass +and tried the effect of a smile, while Georges sat nervously on a sofa, +trembling at the thought of the coming scene. As she walked up and down +she kept jerking out such little phrases as: + +“It will calm the fellow down if he has to wait a quarter of an hour. +Besides, if he thinks he’s calling on a tottie the drawing room will +stun him! Yes, yes, have a good look at everything, my fine fellow! It +isn’t imitation, and it’ll teach you to respect the lady who owns it. +Respect’s what men need to feel! The quarter of an hour’s gone by, eh? +No? Only ten minutes? Oh, we’ve got plenty of time.” + +She did not stay where she was, however. At the end of the quarter of +an hour she sent Georges away after making him solemnly promise not to +listen at the door, as such conduct would scarcely look proper in case +the servants saw him. As he went into her bedroom Zizi ventured in a +choking sort of way to remark: + +“It’s my brother, you know—” + +“Don’t you fear,” she said with much dignity; “if he’s polite I’ll be +polite.” + +Francois ushered in Philippe Hugon, who wore morning dress. Georges +began crossing on tiptoe on the other side of the room, for he was +anxious to obey the young woman. But the sound of voices retained him, +and he hesitated in such anguish of mind that his knees gave way under +him. He began imagining that a dread catastrophe would befall, that +blows would be struck, that something abominable would happen, which +would make Nana everlastingly odious to him. And so he could not +withstand the temptation to come back and put his ear against the door. +He heard very ill, for the thick portières deadened every sound, but he +managed to catch certain words spoken by Philippe, stern phrases in +which such terms as “mere child,” “family,” “honor,” were distinctly +audible. He was so anxious about his darling’s possible answers that +his heart beat violently and filled his head with a confused, buzzing +noise. She was sure to give vent to a “Dirty blackguard!” or to a +“Leave me bloody well alone! I’m in my own house!” But nothing +happened—not a breath came from her direction. Nana seemed dead in +there! Soon even his brother’s voice grew gentler, and he could not +make it out at all, when a strange murmuring sound finally stupefied +him. Nana was sobbing! For a moment or two he was the prey of +contending feelings and knew not whether to run away or to fall upon +Philippe. But just then Zoé came into the room, and he withdrew from +the door, ashamed at being thus surprised. + +She began quietly to put some linen away in a cupboard while he stood +mute and motionless, pressing his forehead against a windowpane. He was +tortured by uncertainty. After a short silence the woman asked: + +“It’s your brother that’s with Madame?” + +“Yes,” replied the lad in a choking voice. + +There was a fresh silence. + +“And it makes you anxious, doesn’t it, Monsieur Georges?” + +“Yes,” he rejoined in the same painful, suffering tone. + +Zoé was in no hurry. She folded up some lace and said slowly: + +“You’re wrong; Madame will manage it all.” + +And then the conversation ended; they said not another word. Still she +did not leave the room. A long quarter of an hour passed, and she +turned round again without seeming to notice the look of exasperation +overspreading the lad’s face, which was already white with the effects +of uncertainty and constraint. He was casting sidelong glances in the +direction of the drawing room. + +Maybe Nana was still crying. The other must have grown savage and have +dealt her blows. Thus when Zoé finally took her departure he ran to the +door and once more pressed his ear against it. He was thunderstruck; +his head swam, for he heard a brisk outburst of gaiety, tender, +whispering voices and the smothered giggles of a woman who is being +tickled. Besides, almost directly afterward, Nana conducted Philippe to +the head of the stairs, and there was an exchange of cordial and +familiar phrases. + +When Georges again ventured into the drawing room the young woman was +standing before the mirror, looking at herself. + +“Well?” he asked in utter bewilderment. + +“Well, what?” she said without turning round. Then negligently: + +“What did you mean? He’s very nice, is your brother!” + +“So it’s all right, is it?” + +“Oh, certainly it’s all right! Goodness me, what’s come over you? One +would have thought we were going to fight!” + +Georges still failed to understand. + +“I thought I heard—that is, you didn’t cry?” he stammered out. + +“Me cry!” she exclaimed, looking fixedly at him. “Why, you’re dreaming! +What makes you think I cried?” + +Thereupon the lad was treated to a distressing scene for having +disobeyed and played Paul Pry behind the door. She sulked, and he +returned with coaxing submissiveness to the old subject, for he wished +to know all about it. + +“And my brother then?” + +“Your brother saw where he was at once. You know, I might have been a +tottie, in which case his interference would have been accounted for by +your age and the family honor! Oh yes, I understand those kinds of +feelings! But a single glance was enough for him, and he behaved like a +well-bred man at once. So don’t be anxious any longer. It’s all +over—he’s gone to quiet your mamma!” + +And she went on laughingly: + +“For that matter, you’ll see your brother here. I’ve invited him, and +he’s going to return.” + +“Oh, he’s going to return,” said the lad, growing white. He added +nothing, and they ceased talking of Philippe. She began dressing to go +out, and he watched her with his great, sad eyes. Doubtless he was very +glad that matters had got settled, for he would have preferred death to +a rupture of their connection, but deep down in his heart there was a +silent anguish, a profound sense of pain, which he had no experience of +and dared not talk about. How Philippe quieted their mother’s fears he +never knew, but three days later she returned to Les Fondettes, +apparently satisfied. On the evening of her return, at Nana’s house, he +trembled when Francois announced the lieutenant, but the latter jested +gaily and treated him like a young rascal, whose escapade he had +favored as something not likely to have any consequences. The lad’s +heart was sore within him; he scarcely dared move and blushed girlishly +at the least word that was spoken to him. He had not lived much in +Philippe’s society; he was ten years his junior, and he feared him as +he would a father, from whom stories about women are concealed. +Accordingly he experienced an uneasy sense of shame when he saw him so +free in Nana’s company and heard him laugh uproariously, as became a +man who was plunging into a life of pleasure with the gusto born of +magnificent health. Nevertheless, when his brother shortly began to +present himself every day, Georges ended by getting somewhat used to it +all. Nana was radiant. + +This, her latest installation, had been involving all the riotous waste +attendant on the life of gallantry, and now her housewarming was being +defiantly celebrated in a grand mansion positively overflowing with +males and with furniture. + +One afternoon when the Hugons were there Count Muffat arrived out of +hours. But when Zoé told him that Madame was with friends he refused to +come in and took his departure discreetly, as became a gallant +gentleman. When he made his appearance again in the evening Nana +received him with the frigid indignation of a grossly affronted woman. + +“Sir,” she said, “I have given you no cause why you should insult me. +You must understand this: when I am at home to visitors, I beg you to +make your appearance just like other people.” + +The count simply gaped in astonishment. “But, my dear—” he endeavored +to explain. + +“Perhaps it was because I had visitors! Yes, there were men here, but +what d’you suppose I was doing with those men? You only advertise a +woman’s affairs when you act the discreet lover, and I don’t want to be +advertised; I don’t!” + +He obtained his pardon with difficulty, but at bottom he was enchanted. +It was with scenes such as these that she kept him in unquestioning and +docile submission. She had long since succeeded in imposing Georges on +him as a young vagabond who, she declared, amused her. She made him +dine with Philippe, and the count behaved with great amiability. When +they rose from table he took the young man on one side and asked news +of his mother. From that time forth the young Hugons, Vandeuvres and +Muffat were openly about the house and shook hands as guests and +intimates might have done. It was a more convenient arrangement than +the previous one. Muffat alone still abstained discreetly from +too-frequent visits, thus adhering to the ceremonious policy of an +ordinary strange caller. At night when Nana was sitting on her +bearskins drawing off her stockings, he would talk amicably about the +other three gentlemen and lay especial stress on Philippe, who was +loyalty itself. + +“It’s very true; they’re nice,” Nana would say as she lingered on the +floor to change her shift. “Only, you know, they see what I am. One +word about it and I should chuck ’em all out of doors for you!” + +Nevertheless, despite her luxurious life and her group of courtiers, +Nana was nearly bored to death. She had men for every minute of the +night, and money overflowed even among the brushes and combs in the +drawers of her dressing table. But all this had ceased to satisfy her; +she felt that there was a void somewhere or other, an empty place +provocative of yawns. Her life dragged on, devoid of occupation, and +successive days only brought back the same monotonous hours. Tomorrow +had ceased to be; she lived like a bird: sure of her food and ready to +perch and roost on any branch which she came to. This certainty of food +and drink left her lolling effortless for whole days, lulled her to +sleep in conventual idleness and submission as though she were the +prisoner of her trade. Never going out except to drive, she was losing +her walking powers. She reverted to low childish tastes, would kiss +Bijou from morning to night and kill time with stupid pleasures while +waiting for the man whose caresses she tolerated with an appearance of +complaisant lassitude. Amid this species of self-abandonment she now +took no thought about anything save her personal beauty; her sole care +was to look after herself, to wash and to perfume her limbs, as became +one who was proud of being able to undress at any moment and in face of +anybody without having to blush for her imperfections. + +At ten in the morning Nana would get up. Bijou, the Scotch griffon dog, +used to lick her face and wake her, and then would ensue a game of play +lasting some five minutes, during which the dog would race about over +her arms and legs and cause Count Muffat much distress. Bijou was the +first little male he had ever been jealous of. It was not at all +proper, he thought, that an animal should go poking its nose under the +bedclothes like that! After this Nana would proceed to her dressing +room, where she took a bath. Toward eleven o’clock Francois would come +and do up her hair before beginning the elaborate manipulations of the +afternoon. + +At breakfast, as she hated feeding alone, she nearly always had Mme +Maloir at table with her. This lady would arrive from unknown regions +in the morning, wearing her extravagantly quaint hats, and would return +at night to that mysterious existence of hers, about which no one ever +troubled. But the hardest to bear were the two or three hours between +lunch and the toilet. On ordinary occasions she proposed a game of +bezique to her old friend; on others she would read the Figaro, in +which the theatrical echoes and the fashionable news interested her. +Sometimes she even opened a book, for she fancied herself in literary +matters. Her toilet kept her till close on five o’clock, and then only +she would wake from her daylong drowse and drive out or receive a whole +mob of men at her own house. She would often dine abroad and always go +to bed very late, only to rise again on the morrow with the same +languor as before and to begin another day, differing in nothing from +its predecessor. + +The great distraction was to go to the Batignolles and see her little +Louis at her aunt’s. For a fortnight at a time she forgot all about +him, and then would follow an access of maternal love, and she would +hurry off on foot with all the modesty and tenderness becoming a good +mother. On such occasions she would be the bearer of snuff for her aunt +and of oranges and biscuits for the child, the kind of presents one +takes to a hospital. Or again she would drive up in her landau on her +return from the Bois, decked in costumes, the resplendence of which +greatly excited the dwellers in the solitary street. Since her niece’s +magnificent elevation Mme Lerat had been puffed up with vanity. She +rarely presented herself in the Avenue de Villiers, for she was pleased +to remark that it wasn’t her place to do so, but she enjoyed triumphs +in her own street. She was delighted when the young woman arrived in +dresses that had cost four or five thousand francs and would be +occupied during the whole of the next day in showing off her presents +and in citing prices which quite stupefied the neighbors. As often as +not, Nana kept Sunday free for the sake of “her family,” and on such +occasions, if Muffat invited her, she would refuse with the smile of a +good little shopwoman. It was impossible, she would answer; she was +dining at her aunt’s; she was going to see Baby. Moreover, that poor +little man Louiset was always ill. He was almost three years old, +growing quite a great boy! But he had had an eczema on the back of his +neck, and now concretions were forming in his ears, which pointed, it +was feared, to decay of the bones of the skull. When she saw how pale +he looked, with his spoiled blood and his flabby flesh all out in +yellow patches, she would become serious, but her principal feeling +would be one of astonishment. What could be the matter with the little +love that he should grow so weakly? She, his mother, was so strong and +well! + +On the days when her child did not engross attention Nana would again +sink back into the noisy monotony of her existence, with its drives in +the Bois, first nights at the theater, dinners and suppers at the +Maison-d’Or or the Café Anglais, not to mention all the places of +public resort, all the spectacles to which crowds rushed—Mabille, the +reviews, the races. But whatever happened she still felt that stupid, +idle void, which caused her, as it were, to suffer internal cramps. +Despite the incessant infatuations that possessed her heart, she would +stretch out her arms with a gesture of immense weariness the moment she +was left alone. Solitude rendered her low spirited at once, for it +brought her face to face with the emptiness and boredom within her. +Extremely gay by nature and profession, she became dismal in solitude +and would sum up her life in the following ejaculation, which recurred +incessantly between her yawns: + +“Oh, how the men bother me!” + +One afternoon as she was returning home from a concert, Nana, on the +sidewalk in the Rue Montmartre, noticed a woman trotting along in +down-at-the-heel boots, dirty petticoats and a hat utterly ruined by +the rain. She recognized her suddenly. + +“Stop, Charles!” she shouted to the coachman and began calling: “Satin, +Satin!” + +Passers-by turned their heads; the whole street stared. Satin had drawn +near and was still further soiling herself against the carriage wheels. + +“Do get in, my dear girl,” said Nana tranquilly, disdaining the +onlookers. + +And with that she picked her up and carried her off, though she was in +disgusting contrast to her light blue landau and her dress of +pearl-gray silk trimmed with Chantilly, while the street smiled at the +coachman’s loftily dignified demeanor. + +From that day forth Nana had a passion to occupy her thoughts. Satin +became her vicious foible. Washed and dressed and duly installed in the +house in the Avenue de Villiers, during three days the girl talked of +Saint-Lazare and the annoyances the sisters had caused her and how +those dirty police people had put her down on the official list. Nana +grew indignant and comforted her and vowed she would get her name taken +off, even though she herself should have to go and find out the +minister of the interior. Meanwhile there was no sort of hurry: nobody +would come and search for her at Nana’s—that was certain. And thereupon +the two women began to pass tender afternoons together, making +numberless endearing little speeches and mingling their kisses with +laughter. The same little sport, which the arrival of the plainclothes +men had interrupted in the Rue de Laval, was beginning again in a +jocular sort of spirit. One fine evening, however, it became serious, +and Nana, who had been so disgusted at Laure’s, now understood what it +meant. She was upset and enraged by it, the more so because Satin +disappeared on the morning of the fourth day. No one had seen her go +out. She had, indeed, slipped away in her new dress, seized by a +longing for air, full of sentimental regret for her old street +existence. + +That day there was such a terrible storm in the house that all the +servants hung their heads in sheepish silence. Nana had come near +beating Francois for not throwing himself across the door through which +Satin escaped. She did her best, however, to control herself, and +talked of Satin as a dirty swine. Oh, it would teach her to pick filthy +things like that out of the gutter! + +When Madame shut herself up in her room in the afternoon Zoé heard her +sobbing. In the evening she suddenly asked for her carriage and had +herself driven to Laure’s. It had occurred to her that she would find +Satin at the table d’hôte in the Rue des Martyrs. She was not going +there for the sake of seeing her again but in order to catch her one in +the face! As a matter of fact Satin was dining at a little table with +Mme Robert. Seeing Nana, she began to laugh, but the former, though +wounded to the quick, did not make a scene. On the contrary, she was +very sweet and very compliant. She paid for champagne made five or six +tablefuls tipsy and then carried off Satin when Mme Robert was in the +closets. Not till they were in the carriage did she make a mordant +attack on her, threatening to kill her if she did it again. + +After that day the same little business began again continually. On +twenty different occasions Nana, tragically furious, as only a jilted +woman can be ran off in pursuit of this sluttish creature, whose +flights were prompted by the boredom she suffered amid the comforts of +her new home. Nana began to talk of boxing Mme Robert’s ears; one day +she even meditated a duel; there was one woman too many, she said. + +In these latter times, whenever she dined at Laure’s, she donned her +diamonds and occasionally brought with her Louise Violaine, Maria Blond +and Tatan Nene, all of them ablaze with finery; and while the sordid +feast was progressing in the three saloons and the yellow gaslight +flared overhead, these four resplendent ladies would demean themselves +with a vengeance, for it was their delight to dazzle the little local +courtesans and to carry them off when dinner was over. On days such as +these Laure, sleek and tight-laced as ever would kiss everyone with an +air of expanded maternity. Yet notwithstanding all these circumstances +Satin’s blue eyes and pure virginal face remained as calm as +heretofore; torn, beaten and pestered by the two women, she would +simply remark that it was a funny business, and they would have done +far better to make it up at once. It did no good to slap her; she +couldn’t cut herself in two, however much she wanted to be nice to +everybody. It was Nana who finally carried her off in triumph, so +assiduously had she loaded Satin with kindnesses and presents. In order +to be revenged, however, Mme Robert wrote abominable, anonymous letters +to her rival’s lovers. + +For some time past Count Muffat had appeared suspicious, and one +morning, with considerable show of feeling, he laid before Nana an +anonymous letter, where in the very first sentences she read that she +was accused of deceiving the count with Vandeuvres and the young +Hugons. + +“It’s false! It’s false!” she loudly exclaimed in accents of +extraordinary candor. + +“You swear?” asked Muffat, already willing to be comforted. + +“I’ll swear by whatever you like—yes, by the head of my child!” + +But the letter was long. Soon her connection with Satin was described +in the broadest and most ignoble terms. When she had done reading she +smiled. + +“Now I know who it comes from,” she remarked simply. + +And as Muffat wanted her denial to the charges therein contained, she +resumed quietly enough: + +“That’s a matter which doesn’t concern you, dear old pet. How can it +hurt you?” + +She did not deny anything. He used some horrified expressions. +Thereupon she shrugged her shoulders. Where had he been all this time? +Why, it was done everywhere! And she mentioned her friends and swore +that fashionable ladies went in for it. In fact, to hear her speak, +nothing could be commoner or more natural. But a lie was a lie, and so +a moment ago he had seen how angry she grew in the matter of Vandeuvres +and the young Hugons! Oh, if that had been true he would have been +justified in throttling her! But what was the good of lying to him +about a matter of no consequence? And with that she repeated her +previous expression: + +“Come now, how can it hurt you?” + +Then as the scene still continued, she closed it with a rough speech: + +“Besides, dear boy, if the thing doesn’t suit you it’s very simple: the +house door’s open! There now, you must take me as you find me!” + +He hung his head, for the young woman’s vows of fidelity made him happy +at bottom. She, however, now knew her power over him and ceased to +consider his feelings. And from that time forth Satin was openly +installed in the house on the same footing as the gentlemen. Vandeuvres +had not needed anonymous letters in order to understand how matters +stood, and accordingly he joked and tried to pick jealous quarrels with +Satin. Philippe and Georges, on their parts, treated her like a jolly +good fellow, shaking hands with her and cracking the riskiest jokes +imaginable. + +Nana had an adventure one evening when this slut of a girl had given +her the go-by and she had gone to dine in the Rue des Martyrs without +being able to catch her. While she was dining by herself Daguenet had +appeared on the scene, for although he had reformed, he still +occasionally dropped in under the influence of his old vicious +inclinations. He hoped of course that no one would meet him in these +black recesses, dedicated to the town’s lowest depravity. Accordingly +even Nana’s presence seemed to embarrass him at the outset. But he was +not the man to run away and, coming forward with a smile, he asked if +Madame would be so kind as to allow him to dine at her table. Noticing +his jocular tone, Nana assumed her magnificently frigid demeanor and +icily replied: + +“Sit down where you please, sir. We are in a public place.” + +Thus begun, the conversation proved amusing. But at dessert Nana, bored +and burning for a triumph, put her elbows on the table and began in the +old familiar way: + +“Well, what about your marriage, my lad? Is it getting on all right?” + +“Not much,” Daguenet averred. + +As a matter of fact, just when he was about to venture on his request +at the Muffats’, he had met with such a cold reception from the count +that he had prudently refrained. The business struck him as a failure. +Nana fixed her clear eyes on him; she was sitting, leaning her chin on +her hand, and there was an ironical curve about her lips. + +“Oh yes! I’m a baggage,” she resumed slowly. “Oh yes, the future +father-in-law will have to be dragged from between my claws! Dear me, +dear me, for a fellow with NOUS, you’re jolly stupid! What! D’you mean +to say you’re going to tell your tales to a man who adores me and tells +me everything? Now just listen: you shall marry if I wish it, my little +man!” + +For a minute or two he had felt the truth of this, and now he began +scheming out a method of submission. Nevertheless, he still talked +jokingly, not wishing the matter to grow serious, and after he had put +on his gloves he demanded the hand of Mlle Estelle de Beuville in the +strict regulation manner. Nana ended by laughing, as though she had +been tickled. Oh, that Mimi! It was impossible to bear him a grudge! +Daguenet’s great successes with ladies of her class were due to the +sweetness of his voice, a voice of such musical purity and pliancy as +to have won him among courtesans the sobriquet of “Velvet-Mouth.” Every +woman would give way to him when he lulled her with his sonorous +caresses. He knew this power and rocked Nana to sleep with endless +words, telling her all kinds of idiotic anecdotes. When they left the +table d’hôte she was blushing rosy-red; she trembled as she hung on his +arm; he had reconquered her. As it was very fine, she sent her carriage +away and walked with him as far as his own place, where she went +upstairs with him naturally enough. Two hours later, as she was +dressing again, she said: + +“So you hold to this marriage of yours, Mimi?” + +“Egad,” he muttered, “it’s the best thing I could possibly do after +all! You know I’m stony broke.” + +She summoned him to button her boots, and after a pause: + +“Good heavens! I’ve no objection. I’ll shove you on! She’s as dry as a +lath, is that little thing, but since it suits your game—oh, I’m +agreeable: I’ll run the thing through for you.” + +Then with bosom still uncovered, she began laughing: + +“Only what will you give me?” + +He had caught her in his arms and was kissing her on the shoulders in a +perfect access of gratitude while she quivered with excitement and +struggled merrily and threw herself backward in her efforts to be free. + +“Oh, I know,” she cried, excited by the contest. “Listen to what I want +in the way of commission. On your wedding day you shall make me a +present of your innocence. Before your wife, d’you understand?” + +“That’s it! That’s it!” he said, laughing even louder than Nana. + +The bargain amused them—they thought the whole business very good, +indeed. + +Now as it happened, there was a dinner at Nana’s next day. For the +matter of that, it was the customary Thursday dinner, and Muffat, +Vandeuvres, the young Hugons and Satin were present. The count arrived +early. He stood in need of eighty thousand francs wherewith to free the +young woman from two or three debts and to give her a set of sapphires +she was dying to possess. As he had already seriously lessened his +capital, he was in search of a lender, for he did not dare to sell +another property. With the advice of Nana herself he had addressed +himself to Labordette, but the latter, deeming it too heavy an +undertaking, had mentioned it to the hairdresser Francis, who willingly +busied himself in such affairs in order to oblige his lady clients. The +count put himself into the hands of these gentlemen but expressed a +formal desire not to appear in the matter, and they both undertook to +keep in hand the bill for a hundred thousand francs which he was to +sign, excusing themselves at the same time for charging a matter of +twenty thousand francs interest and loudly denouncing the blackguard +usurers to whom, they declared, it had been necessary to have recourse. +When Muffat had himself announced, Francis was putting the last touches +to Nana’s coiffure. Labordette also was sitting familiarly in the +dressing room, as became a friend of no consequence. Seeing the count, +he discreetly placed a thick bundle of bank notes among the powders and +pomades, and the bill was signed on the marble-topped dressing table. +Nana was anxious to keep Labordette to dinner, but he declined—he was +taking a rich foreigner about Paris. Muffat, however, led him aside and +begged him to go to Becker, the jeweler, and bring him back thence the +set of sapphires, which he wanted to present the young woman by way of +surprise that very evening. Labordette willingly undertook the +commission, and half an hour later Julien handed the jewel case +mysteriously to the count. + +During dinnertime Nana was nervous. The sight of the eighty thousand +francs had excited her. To think all that money was to go to +tradespeople! It was a disgusting thought. After soup had been served +she grew sentimental, and in the splendid dining room, glittering with +plate and glass, she talked of the bliss of poverty. The men were in +evening dress, Nana in a gown of white embroidered satin, while Satin +made a more modest appearance in black silk with a simple gold heart at +her throat, which was a present from her kind friend. Julien and +Francois waited behind the guests and were assisted in this by Zoé. All +three looked most dignified. + +“It’s certain I had far greater fun when I hadn’t a cent!” Nana +repeated. + +She had placed Muffat on her right hand and Vandeuvres on her left, but +she scarcely looked at them, so taken up was she with Satin, who sat in +state between Philippe and Georges on the opposite side of the table. + +“Eh, duckie?” she kept saying at every turn. “How we did use to laugh +in those days when we went to Mother Josse’s school in the Rue +Polonceau!” + +When the roast was being served the two women plunged into a world of +reminiscences. They used to have regular chattering fits of this kind +when a sudden desire to stir the muddy depths of their childhood would +possess them. These fits always occurred when men were present: it was +as though they had given way to a burning desire to treat them to the +dunghill on which they had grown to woman’s estate. The gentlemen paled +visibly and looked embarrassed. The young Hugons did their best to +laugh, while Vandeuvres nervously toyed with his beard and Muffat +redoubled his gravity. + +“You remember Victor?” said Nana. “There was a wicked little fellow for +you! Why, he used to take the little girls into cellars!” + +“I remember him perfectly,” replied Satin. “I recollect the big +courtyard at your place very well. There was a portress there with a +broom!” + +“Mother Boche—she’s dead.” + +“And I can still picture your shop. Your mother was a great fatty. One +evening when we were playing your father came in drunk. Oh, so drunk!” + +At this point Vandeuvres tried to intercept the ladies’ reminiscences +and to effect a diversion, + +“I say, my dear, I should be very glad to have some more truffles. +They’re simply perfect. Yesterday I had some at the house of the Duc de +Corbreuse, which did not come up to them at all.” + +“The truffles, Julien!” said Nana roughly. + +Then returning to the subject: + +“By Jove, yes, Dad hadn’t any sense! And then what a smash there was! +You should have seen it—down, down, down we went, starving away all the +time. I can tell you I’ve had to bear pretty well everything and it’s a +miracle I didn’t kick the bucket over it, like Daddy and Mamma.” + +This time Muffat, who was playing with his knife in a state of infinite +exasperation, made so bold as to intervene. + +“What you’re telling us isn’t very cheerful.” + +“Eh, what? Not cheerful!” she cried with a withering glance. “I believe +you; it isn’t cheerful! Somebody had to earn a living for us dear boy. +Oh yes, you know, I’m the right sort; I don’t mince matters. Mamma was +a laundress; Daddy used to get drunk, and he died of it! There! If it +doesn’t suit you—if you’re ashamed of my family—” + +They all protested. What was she after now? They had every sort of +respect for her family! But she went on: + +“If you’re ashamed of my family you’ll please leave me, because I’m not +one of those women who deny their father and mother. You must take me +and them together, d’you understand?” + +They took her as required; they accepted the dad, the mamma, the past; +in fact, whatever she chose. With their eyes fixed on the tablecloth, +the four now sat shrinking and insignificant while Nana, in a transport +of omnipotence, trampled on them in the old muddy boots worn long since +in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or. She was determined not to lay down the +cudgels just yet. It was all very fine to bring her fortunes, to build +her palaces; she would never leave off regretting the time when she +munched apples! Oh, what bosh that stupid thing money was! It was made +for the tradespeople! Finally her outburst ended in a sentimentally +expressed desire for a simple, openhearted existence, to be passed in +an atmosphere of universal benevolence. + +When she got to this point she noticed Julien waiting idly by. + +“Well, what’s the matter? Hand the champagne then!” she said. “Why +d’you stand staring at me like a goose?” + +During this scene the servants had never once smiled. They apparently +heard nothing, and the more their mistress let herself down, the more +majestic they became. Julien set to work to pour out the champagne and +did so without mishap, but Francois, who was handing round the fruit, +was so unfortunate as to tilt the fruit dish too low, and the apples, +the pears and the grapes rolled on the table. + +“You bloody clumsy lot!” cried Nana. + +The footman was mistaken enough to try and explain that the fruit had +not been firmly piled up. Zoé had disarranged it by taking out some +oranges. + +“Then it’s Zoé that’s the goose!” said Nana. + +“Madame—” murmured the lady’s maid in an injured tone. + +Straightway Madame rose to her feet, and in a sharp voice and with +royally authoritative gesture: + +“We’ve had enough of this, haven’t we? Leave the room, all of you! We +don’t want you any longer!” + +This summary procedure calmed her down, and she was forthwith all +sweetness and amiability. The dessert proved charming, and the +gentlemen grew quite merry waiting on themselves. But Satin, having +peeled a pear, came and ate it behind her darling, leaning on her +shoulder the while and whispering sundry little remarks in her ear, at +which they both laughed very loudly. By and by she wanted to share her +last piece of pear with Nana and presented it to her between her teeth. +Whereupon there was a great nibbling of lips, and the pear was finished +amid kisses. At this there was a burst of comic protest from the +gentlemen, Philippe shouting to them to take it easy and Vandeuvres +asking if one ought to leave the room. Georges, meanwhile, had come and +put his arm round Satin’s waist and had brought her back to her seat. + +“How silly of you!” said Nana. “You’re making her blush, the poor, +darling duck. Never mind, dear girl, let them chaff. It’s our own +little private affair.” + +And turning to Muffat, who was watching them with his serious +expression: + +“Isn’t it, my friend?” + +“Yes, certainly,” he murmured with a slow nod of approval. + +He no longer protested now. And so amid that company of gentlemen with +the great names and the old, upright traditions, the two women sat face +to face, exchanging tender glances, conquering, reigning, in tranquil +defiance of the laws of sex, in open contempt for the male portion of +the community. The gentlemen burst into applause. + +The company went upstairs to take coffee in the little drawing room, +where a couple of lamps cast a soft glow over the rosy hangings and the +lacquer and old gold of the knickknacks. At that hour of the evening +the light played discreetly over coffers, bronzes and china, lighting +up silver or ivory inlaid work, bringing into view the polished +contours of a carved stick and gleaming over a panel with glossy silky +reflections. The fire, which had been burning since the afternoon, was +dying out in glowing embers. It was very warm—the air behind the +curtains and hangings was languid with warmth. The room was full of +Nana’s intimate existence: a pair of gloves, a fallen handkerchief, an +open book, lay scattered about, and their owner seemed present in +careless attire with that well-known odor of violets and that species +of untidiness which became her in her character of good-natured +courtesan and had such a charming effect among all those rich +surroundings. The very armchairs, which were as wide as beds, and the +sofas, which were as deep as alcoves, invited to slumber oblivious of +the flight of time and to tender whispers in shadowy corners. + +Satin went and lolled back in the depths of a sofa near the fireplace. +She had lit a cigarette, but Vandeuvres began amusing himself by +pretending to be ferociously jealous. Nay, he even threatened to send +her his seconds if she still persisted in keeping Nana from her duty. +Philippe and Georges joined him and teased her and badgered her so +mercilessly that at last she shouted out: + +“Darling! Darling! Do make ’em keep quiet! They’re still after me!” + +“Now then, let her be,” said Nana seriously. “I won’t have her +tormented; you know that quite well. And you, my pet, why d’you always +go mixing yourself up with them when they’ve got so little sense?” + +Satin, blushing all over and putting out her tongue, went into the +dressing room, through the widely open door of which you caught a +glimpse of pale marbles gleaming in the milky light of a gas flame in a +globe of rough glass. After that Nana talked to the four men as +charmingly as hostess could. During the day she had read a novel which +was at that time making a good deal of noise. It was the history of a +courtesan, and Nana was very indignant, declaring the whole thing to be +untrue and expressing angry dislike to that kind of monstrous +literature which pretends to paint from nature. “Just as though one +could describe everything,” she said. Just as though a novel ought not +to be written so that the reader may while away an hour pleasantly! In +the matter of books and of plays Nana had very decided opinions: she +wanted tender and noble productions, things that would set her dreaming +and would elevate her soul. Then allusion being made in the course of +conversation to the troubles agitating Paris, the incendiary articles +in the papers, the incipient popular disturbances which followed the +calls to arms nightly raised at public meetings, she waxed wroth with +the Republicans. What on earth did those dirty people who never washed +really want? Were folks not happy? Had not the emperor done everything +for the people? A nice filthy lot of people! She knew ’em; she could +talk about ’em, and, quite forgetting the respect which at dinner she +had just been insisting should be paid to her humble circle in the Rue +de la Goutte-d’Or, she began blackguarding her own class with all the +terror and disgust peculiar to a woman who had risen successfully above +it. That very afternoon she had read in the Figaro an account of the +proceedings at a public meeting which had verged on the comic. Owing to +the slang words that had been used and to the piggish behavior of a +drunken man who had got himself chucked, she was laughing at those +proceedings still. + +“Oh, those drunkards!” she said with a disgusted air. “No, look you +here, their republic would be a great misfortune for everybody! Oh, may +God preserve us the emperor as long as possible!” + +“God will hear your prayer, my dear,” Muffat replied gravely. “To be +sure, the emperor stands firm.” + +He liked her to express such excellent views. Both, indeed, understood +one another in political matters. Vandeuvres and Philippe Hugon +likewise indulged in endless jokes against the “cads,” the quarrelsome +set who scuttled off the moment they clapped eyes on a bayonet. But +Georges that evening remained pale and somber. + +“What can be the matter with that baby?” asked Nana, noticing his +troubled appearance. + +“With me? Nothing—I am listening,” he muttered. + +But he was really suffering. On rising from table he had heard Philippe +joking with the young woman, and now it was Philippe, and not himself, +who sat beside her. His heart, he knew not why, swelled to bursting. He +could not bear to see them so close together; such vile thoughts +oppressed him that shame mingled with his anguish. He who laughed at +Satin, who had accepted Steiner and Muffat and all the rest, felt +outraged and murderous at the thought that Philippe might someday touch +that woman. + +“Here, take Bijou,” she said to comfort him, and she passed him the +little dog which had gone to sleep on her dress. + +And with that Georges grew happy again, for with the beast still warm +from her lap in his arms, he held, as it were, part of her. + +Allusion had been made to a considerable loss which Vandeuvres had last +night sustained at the Imperial Club. Muffat, who did not play, +expressed great astonishment, but Vandeuvres smilingly alluded to his +imminent ruin, about which Paris was already talking. The kind of death +you chose did not much matter, he averred; the great thing was to die +handsomely. For some time past Nana had noticed that he was nervous and +had a sharp downward droop of the mouth and a fitful gleam in the +depths of his clear eyes. But he retained his haughty aristocratic +manner and the delicate elegance of his impoverished race, and as yet +these strange manifestations were only, so to speak, momentary fits of +vertigo overcoming a brain already sapped by play and by debauchery. +One night as he lay beside her he had frightened her with a dreadful +story. He had told her he contemplated shutting himself up in his +stable and setting fire to himself and his horses at such time as he +should have devoured all his substance. His only hope at that period +was a horse, Lusignan by name, which he was training for the Prix de +Paris. He was living on this horse, which was the sole stay of his +shaken credit, and whenever Nana grew exacting he would put her off +till June and to the probability of Lusignan’s winning. + +“Bah! He may very likely lose,” she said merrily, “since he’s going to +clear them all out at the races.” + +By way of reply he contented himself by smiling a thin, mysterious +smile. Then carelessly: + +“By the by, I’ve taken the liberty of giving your name to my outsider, +the filly. Nana, Nana—that sounds well. You’re not vexed?” + +“Vexed, why?” she said in a state of inward ecstasy. + +The conversation continued, and same mention was made of an execution +shortly to take place. The young woman said she was burning to go to it +when Satin appeared at the dressing-room door and called her in tones +of entreaty. She got up at once and left the gentlemen lolling lazily +about, while they finished their cigars and discussed the grave +question as to how far a murderer subject to chronic alcoholism is +responsible for his act. In the dressing room Zoé sat helpless on a +chair, crying her heart out, while Satin vainly endeavored to console +her. + +“What’s the matter?” said Nana in surprise. + +“Oh, darling, do speak to her!” said Satin. “I’ve been trying to make +her listen to reason for the last twenty minutes. She’s crying because +you called her a goose.” + +“Yes, madame, it’s very hard—very hard,” stuttered Zoé, choked by a +fresh fit of sobbing. + +This sad sight melted the young woman’s heart at once. She spoke +kindly, and when the other woman still refused to grow calm she sank +down in front of her and took her round the waist with truly cordial +familiarity: + +“But, you silly, I said ‘goose’ just as I might have said anything +else. How shall I explain? I was in a passion—it was wrong of me; now +calm down.” + +“I who love Madame so,” stuttered Zoé; “after all I’ve done for +Madame.” + +Thereupon Nana kissed the lady’s maid and, wishing to show her she +wasn’t vexed, gave her a dress she had worn three times. Their quarrels +always ended up in the giving of presents! Zoé plugged her handkerchief +into her eyes. She carried the dress off over her arm and added before +leaving that they were very sad in the kitchen and that Julien and +Francois had been unable to eat, so entirely had Madame’s anger taken +away their appetites. Thereupon Madame sent them a louis as a pledge of +reconciliation. She suffered too much if people around her were +sorrowful. + +Nana was returning to the drawing room, happy in the thought that she +had patched up a disagreement which was rendering her quietly +apprehensive of the morrow, when Satin came and whispered vehemently in +her ear. She was full of complaint, threatened to be off if those men +still went on teasing her and kept insisting that her darling should +turn them all out of doors for that night, at any rate. It would be a +lesson to them. And then it would be so nice to be alone, both of them! +Nana, with a return of anxiety, declared it to be impossible. Thereupon +the other shouted at her like a violent child and tried hard to +overrule her. + +“I wish it, d’you see? Send ’em away or I’m off!” + +And she went back into the drawing room, stretched herself out in the +recesses of a divan, which stood in the background near the window, and +lay waiting, silent and deathlike, with her great eyes fixed upon Nana. + +The gentlemen were deciding against the new criminological theories. +Granted that lovely invention of irresponsibility in certain +pathological cases, and criminals ceased to exist and sick people alone +remained. The young woman, expressing approval with an occasional nod, +was busy considering how best to dismiss the count. The others would +soon be going, but he would assuredly prove obstinate. In fact, when +Philippe got up to withdraw, Georges followed him at once—he seemed +only anxious not to leave his brother behind. Vandeuvres lingered some +minutes longer, feeling his way, as it were, and waiting to find out +if, by any chance, some important business would oblige Muffat to cede +him his place. Soon, however, when he saw the count deliberately taking +up his quarters for the night, he desisted from his purpose and said +good-by, as became a man of tact. But on his way to the door, he +noticed Satin staring fixedly at Nana, as usual. Doubtless he +understood what this meant, for he seemed amused and came and shook +hands with her. + +“We’re not angry, eh?” he whispered. “Pray pardon me. You’re the nicer +attraction of the two, on my honor!” + +Satin deigned no reply. Nor did she take her eyes off Nana and the +count, who were now alone. Muffat, ceasing to be ceremonious, had come +to sit beside the young woman. He took her fingers and began kissing +them. Whereupon Nana, seeking to change the current of his thoughts, +asked him if his daughter Estelle were better. The previous night he +had been complaining of the child’s melancholy behavior—he could not +even spend a day happily at his own house, with his wife always out and +his daughter icily silent. + +In family matters of this kind Nana was always full of good advice, and +when Muffat abandoned all his usual self-control under the influence of +mental and physical relaxation and once more launched out into his +former plaints, she remembered the promise she had made. + +“Suppose you were to marry her?” she said. And with that she ventured +to talk of Daguenet. At the mere mention of the name the count was +filled with disgust. “Never,” he said after what she had told him! + +She pretended great surprise and then burst out laughing and put her +arm round his neck. + +“Oh, the jealous man! To think of it! Just argue it out a little. Why, +they slandered me to you—I was furious. At present I should be ever so +sorry if—” + +But over Muffat’s shoulder she met Satin’s gaze. And she left him +anxiously and in a grave voice continued: + +“This marriage must come off, my friend; I don’t want to prevent your +daughter’s happiness. The young man’s most charming; you could not +possibly find a better sort.” + +And she launched into extraordinary praise of Daguenet. The count had +again taken her hands; he no longer refused now; he would see about it, +he said, they would talk the matter over. By and by, when he spoke of +going to bed, she sank her voice and excused herself. It was +impossible; she was not well. If he loved her at all he would not +insist! Nevertheless, he was obstinate; he refused to go away, and she +was beginning to give in when she met Satin’s eyes once more. Then she +grew inflexible. No, the thing was out of the question! The count, +deeply moved and with a look of suffering, had risen and was going in +quest of his hat. But in the doorway he remembered the set of +sapphires; he could feel the case in his pocket. He had been wanting to +hide it at the bottom of the bed so that when she entered it before him +she should feel it against her legs. Since dinnertime he had been +meditating this little surprise like a schoolboy, and now, in trouble +and anguish of heart at being thus dismissed, he gave her the case +without further ceremony. + +“What is it?” she queried. “Sapphires? Dear me! Oh yes, it’s that set. +How sweet you are! But I say, my darling, d’you believe it’s the same +one? In the shopwindow it made a much greater show.” + +That was all the thanks he got, and she let him go away. He noticed +Satin stretched out silent and expectant, and with that he gazed at +both women and without further insistence submitted to his fate and +went downstairs. The hall door had not yet closed when Satin caught +Nana round the waist and danced and sang. Then she ran to the window. + +“Oh, just look at the figure he cuts down in the street!” The two women +leaned upon the wrought-iron window rail in the shadow of the curtains. +One o’clock struck. The Avenue de Villiers was deserted, and its double +file of gas lamps stretched away into the darkness of the damp March +night through which great gusts of wind kept sweeping, laden with rain. +There were vague stretches of land on either side of the road which +looked like gulfs of shadow, while scaffoldings round mansions in +process of construction loomed upward under the dark sky. They laughed +uncontrollably as they watched Muffat’s rounded back and glistening +shadow disappearing along the wet sidewalk into the glacial, desolate +plains of new Paris. But Nana silenced Satin. + +“Take care; there are the police!” + +Thereupon they smothered their laughter and gazed in secret fear at two +dark figures walking with measured tread on the opposite side of the +avenue. Amid all her luxurious surroundings, amid all the royal +splendors of the woman whom all must obey, Nana still stood in horror +of the police and did not like to hear them mentioned any oftener than +death. She felt distinctly unwell when a policeman looked up at her +house. One never knew what such people might do! They might easily take +them for loose women if they heard them laughing at that hour of the +night. Satin, with a little shudder, had squeezed herself up against +Nana. Nevertheless, the pair stayed where they were and were soon +interested in the approach of a lantern, the light of which danced over +the puddles in the road. It was an old ragpicker woman who was busy +raking in the gutters. Satin recognized her. + +“Dear me,” she exclaimed, “it’s Queen Pomare with her wickerwork +shawl!” + +And while a gust of wind lashed the fine rain in their faces she told +her beloved the story of Queen Pomare. Oh, she had been a splendid girl +once upon a time: all Paris had talked of her beauty. And such devilish +go and such cheek! Why, she led the men about like dogs, and great +people stood blubbering on her stairs! Now she was in the habit of +getting tipsy, and the women round about would make her drink absinthe +for the sake of a laugh, after which the street boys would throw stones +at her and chase her. In fact, it was a regular smashup; the queen had +tumbled into the mud! Nana listened, feeling cold all over. + +“You shall see,” added Satin. + +She whistled a man’s whistle, and the ragpicker, who was then below the +window, lifted her head and showed herself by the yellow flare of her +lantern. Framed among rags, a perfect bundle of them, a face looked out +from under a tattered kerchief—a blue, seamed face with a toothless, +cavernous mouth and fiery bruises where the eyes should be. And Nana, +seeing the frightful old woman, the wanton drowned in drink, had a +sudden fit of recollection and saw far back amid the shadows of +consciousness the vision of Chamont—Irma d’Anglars, the old harlot +crowned with years and honors, ascending the steps in front of her +château amid abjectly reverential villagers. Then as Satin whistled +again, making game of the old hag, who could not see her: + +“Do leave off; there are the police!” she murmured in changed tones. +“In with us, quick, my pet!” + +The measured steps were returning, and they shut the window. Turning +round again, shivering, and with the damp of night on her hair, Nana +was momentarily astounded at sight of her drawing room. It seemed as +though she had forgotten it and were entering an unknown chamber. So +warm, so full of perfume, was the air she encountered that she +experienced a sense of delighted surprise. The heaped-up wealth of the +place, the Old World furniture, the fabrics of silk and gold, the +ivory, the bronzes, were slumbering in the rosy light of the lamps, +while from the whole of the silent house a rich feeling of great luxury +ascended, the luxury of the solemn reception rooms, of the comfortable, +ample dining room, of the vast retired staircase, with their soft +carpets and seats. Her individuality, with its longing for domination +and enjoyment and its desire to possess everything that she might +destroy everything, was suddenly increased. Never before had she felt +so profoundly the puissance of her sex. She gazed slowly round and +remarked with an expression of grave philosophy: + +“Ah well, all the same, one’s jolly well right to profit by things when +one’s young!” + +But now Satin was rolling on the bearskins in the bedroom and calling +her. + +“Oh, do come! Do come!” + +Nana undressed in the dressing room, and in order to be quicker about +it she took her thick fell of blonde hair in both hands and began +shaking it above the silver wash hand basin, while a downward hail of +long hairpins rang a little chime on the shining metal. + + + + + CHAPTER XI + + +One Sunday the race for the Grand Prix de Paris was being run in the +Bois de Boulogne beneath skies rendered sultry by the first heats of +June. The sun that morning had risen amid a mist of dun-colored dust, +but toward eleven o’clock, just when the carriages were reaching the +Longchamps course, a southerly wind had swept away the clouds; long +streamers of gray vapor were disappearing across the sky, and gaps +showing an intense blue beyond were spreading from one end of the +horizon to the other. In the bright bursts of sunlight which alternated +with the clouds the whole scene shone again, from the field which was +gradually filling with a crowd of carriages, horsemen and pedestrians, +to the still-vacant course, where the judge’s box stood, together with +the posts and the masts for signaling numbers, and thence on to the +five symmetrical stands of brickwork and timber, rising gallery upon +gallery in the middle of the weighing enclosure opposite. Beyond these, +bathed in the light of noon, lay the vast level plain, bordered with +little trees and shut in to the westward by the wooded heights of +Saint-Cloud and the Suresnes, which, in their turn, were dominated by +the severe outlines of Mont-Valerien. + +Nana, as excited as if the Grand Prix were going to make her fortune, +wanted to take up a position by the railing next the winning post. She +had arrived very early—she was, in fact, one of the first to come—in a +landau adorned with silver and drawn, à la Daumont, by four splendid +white horses. This landau was a present from Count Muffat. When she had +made her appearance at the entrance to the field with two postilions +jogging blithely on the near horses and two footmen perching motionless +behind the carriage, the people had rushed to look as though a queen +were passing. She sported the blue and white colors of the Vandeuvres +stable, and her dress was remarkable. It consisted of a little blue +silk bodice and tunic, which fitted closely to the body and bulged out +enormously behind her waist, thereby bringing her lower limbs into bold +relief in such a manner as to be extremely noticeable in that epoch of +voluminous skirts. Then there was a white satin dress with white satin +sleeves and a sash worn crosswise over the shoulders, the whole +ornamented with silver guipure which shone in the sun. In addition to +this, in order to be still more like a jockey, she had stuck a blue +toque with a white feather jauntily upon her chignon, the fair tresses +from which flowed down beyond her shoulders and resembled an enormous +russet pigtail. + +Twelve struck. The public would have to wait more than three hours for +the Grand Prix to be run. When the landau had drawn up beside the +barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she were in +her own house. A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and Louiset with +her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering with cold despite +the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of ribbons and laces the +child’s poor little face looked waxen and dumb and white in the open +air. Meanwhile the young woman, without troubling about the people near +her, talked at the top of her voice with Georges and Philippe Hugon, +who were seated opposite on the front seat among such a mountain of +bouquets of white roses and blue myosotis that they were buried up to +their shoulders. + +“Well then,” she was saying, “as he bored me to death, I showed him the +door. And now it’s two days that he’s been sulking.” + +She was talking of Muffat, but she took care not to confess to the +young men the real reason for this first quarrel, which was that one +evening he had found a man’s hat in her bedroom. She had indeed brought +home a passer-by out of sheer ennui—a silly infatuation. + +“You have no idea how funny he is,” she continued, growing merry over +the particulars she was giving. “He’s a regular bigot at bottom, so he +says his prayers every evening. Yes, he does. He’s under the impression +I notice nothing because I go to bed first so as not to be in his way, +but I watch him out of the corner of my eye. Oh, he jaws away, and then +he crosses himself when he turns round to step over me and get to the +inside of the bed.” + +“Jove, it’s sly,” muttered Philippe. “That’s what happens before, but +afterward, what then?” + +She laughed merrily. + +“Yes, just so, before and after! When I’m going to sleep I hear him +jawing away again. But the biggest bore of all is that we can’t argue +about anything now without his growing ‘pi.’ I’ve always been +religious. Yes, chaff as much as you like; that won’t prevent me +believing what I do believe! Only he’s too much of a nuisance: he +blubbers; he talks about remorse. The day before yesterday, for +instance, he had a regular fit of it after our usual row, and I wasn’t +the least bit reassured when all was over.” + +But she broke off, crying out: + +“Just look at the Mignons arriving. Dear me, they’ve brought the +children! Oh, how those little chaps are dressed up!” + +The Mignons were in a landau of severe hue; there was something +substantially luxurious about their turnout, suggesting rich retired +tradespeople. Rose was in a gray silk gown trimmed with red knots and +with puffs; she was smiling happily at the joyous behavior of Henri and +Charles, who sat on the front seat, looking awkward in their +ill-fitting collegians’ tunics. But when the landau had drawn up by the +rails and she perceived Nana sitting in triumph among her bouquets, +with her four horses and her liveries, she pursed up her lips, sat bolt +upright and turned her head away. Mignon, on the other hand, looking +the picture of freshness and gaiety, waved her a salutation. He made it +a matter of principle to keep out of feminine disagreements. + +“By the by,” Nana resumed, “d’you know a little old man who’s very +clean and neat and has bad teeth—a Monsieur Venot? He came to see me +this morning.” + +“Monsieur Venot?” said Georges in great astonishment. “It’s impossible! +Why, the man’s a Jesuit!” + +“Precisely; I spotted that. Oh, you have no idea what our conversation +was like! It was just funny! He spoke to me about the count, about his +divided house, and begged me to restore a family its happiness. He was +very polite and very smiling for the matter of that. Then I answered to +the effect that I wanted nothing better, and I undertook to reconcile +the count and his wife. You know it’s not humbug. I should be delighted +to see them all happy again, the poor things! Besides, it would be a +relief to me for there are days—yes, there are days—when he bores me to +death.” + +The weariness of the last months escaped her in this heartfelt +outburst. Moreover, the count appeared to be in big money difficulties; +he was anxious and it seemed likely that the bill which Labordette had +put his name to would not be met. + +“Dear me, the countess is down yonder,” said Georges, letting his gaze +wander over the stands. + +“Where, where?” cried Nana. “What eyes that baby’s got! Hold my +sunshade, Philippe.” + +But with a quick forward dart Georges had outstripped his brother. It +enchanted him to be holding the blue silk sunshade with its silver +fringe. Nana was scanning the scene through a huge pair of field +glasses. + +“Ah yes! I see her,” she said at length. “In the right-hand stand, near +a pillar, eh? She’s in mauve, and her daughter in white by her side. +Dear me, there’s Daguenet going to bow to them.” + +Thereupon Philippe talked of Daguenet’s approaching marriage with that +lath of an Estelle. It was a settled matter—the banns were being +published. At first the countess had opposed it, but the count, they +said, had insisted. Nana smiled. + +“I know, I know,” she murmured. “So much the better for Paul. He’s a +nice boy—he deserves it.” + +And leaning toward Louiset: + +“You’re enjoying yourself, eh? What a grave face!” + +The child never smiled. With a very old expression he was gazing at all +those crowds, as though the sight of them filled him with melancholy +reflections. Bijou, chased from the skirts of the young woman who was +moving about a great deal, had come to nestle, shivering, against the +little fellow. + +Meanwhile the field was filling up. Carriages, a compact, interminable +file of them, were continually arriving through the Porte de la +Cascade. There were big omnibuses such as the Pauline, which had +started from the Boulevard des Italiens, freighted with its fifty +passengers, and was now going to draw up to the right of the stands. +Then there were dogcarts, victorias, landaus, all superbly well turned +out, mingled with lamentable cabs which jolted along behind sorry old +hacks, and four-in-hands, sending along their four horses, and mail +coaches, where the masters sat on the seats above and left the servants +to take care of the hampers of champagne inside, and “spiders,” the +immense wheels of which were a flash of glittering steel, and light +tandems, which looked as delicately formed as the works of a clock and +slipped along amid a peal of little bells. Every few seconds an +equestrian rode by, and a swarm of people on foot rushed in a scared +way among the carriages. On the green the far-off rolling sound which +issued from the avenues in the Bois died out suddenly in dull +rustlings, and now nothing was audible save the hubbub of the +ever-increasing crowds and cries and calls and the crackings of whips +in the open. When the sun, amid bursts of wind, reappeared at the edge +of a cloud, a long ray of golden light ran across the field, lit up the +harness and the varnished coach panels and touched the ladies’ dresses +with fire, while amid the dusty radiance the coachmen, high up on their +boxes, flamed beside their great whips. + +Labordette was getting out of an open carriage where Gaga, Clarisse and +Blanche de Sivry had kept a place for him. As he was hurrying to cross +the course and enter the weighing enclosure Nana got Georges to call +him. Then when he came up: + +“What’s the betting on me?” she asked laughingly. + +She referred to the filly Nana, the Nana who had let herself be +shamefully beaten in the race for the Prix de Diane and had not even +been placed in April and May last when she ran for the Prix des Cars +and the Grande Poule des Produits, both of which had been gained by +Lusignan, the other horse in the Vandeuvres stable. Lusignan had all at +once become prime favorite, and since yesterday he had been currently +taken at two to one. + +“Always fifty to one against,” replied Labordette. + +“The deuce! I’m not worth much,” rejoined Nana, amused by the jest. “I +don’t back myself then; no, by jingo! I don’t put a single louis on +myself.” + +Labordette went off again in a great hurry, but she recalled him. She +wanted some advice. Since he kept in touch with the world of trainers +and jockeys he had special information about various stables. His +prognostications had come true a score of times already, and people +called him the “King of Tipsters.” + +“Let’s see, what horses ought I to choose?” said the young woman. +“What’s the betting on the Englishman?” + +“Spirit? Three to one against. Valerio II, the same. As to the others, +they’re laying twenty-five to one against Cosinus, forty to one against +Hazard, thirty to one against Bourn, thirty-five to one against +Pichenette, ten to one against Frangipane.” + +“No, I don’t bet on the Englishman, I don’t. I’m a patriot. Perhaps +Valerio II would do, eh? The Duc de Corbreuse was beaming a little +while ago. Well, no, after all! Fifty louis on Lusignan; what do you +say to that?” + +Labordette looked at her with a singular expression. She leaned forward +and asked him questions in a low voice, for she was aware that +Vandeuvres commissioned him to arrange matters with the bookmakers so +as to be able to bet the more easily. Supposing him to have got to know +something, he might quite well tell it her. But without entering into +explanations Labordette persuaded her to trust to his sagacity. He +would put on her fifty louis for her as he might think best, and she +would not repent of his arrangement. + +“All the horses you like!” she cried gaily, letting him take his +departure, “but no Nana; she’s a jade!” + +There was a burst of uproarious laughter in the carriage. The young men +thought her sally very amusing, while Louiset in his ignorance lifted +his pale eyes to his mother’s face, for her loud exclamations surprised +him. However, there was no escape for Labordette as yet. Rose Mignon +had made a sign to him and was now giving him her commands while he +wrote figures in a notebook. Then Clarisse and Gaga called him back in +order to change their bets, for they had heard things said in the +crowd, and now they didn’t want to have anything more to do with +Valerio II and were choosing Lusignan. He wrote down their wishes with +an impassible expression and at length managed to escape. He could be +seen disappearing between two of the stands on the other side of the +course. + +Carriages were still arriving. They were by this time drawn up five +rows deep, and a dense mass of them spread along the barriers, +checkered by the light coats of white horses. Beyond them other +carriages stood about in comparative isolation, looking as though they +had stuck fast in the grass. Wheels and harness were here, there and +everywhere, according as the conveyances to which they belonged were +side by side, at an angle, across and across or head to head. Over such +spaces of turf as still remained unoccupied cavaliers kept trotting, +and black groups of pedestrians moved continually. The scene resembled +the field where a fair is being held, and above it all, amid the +confused motley of the crowd, the drinking booths raised their gray +canvas roofs which gleamed white in the sunshine. But a veritable +tumult, a mob, an eddy of hats, surged round the several bookmakers, +who stood in open carriages gesticulating like itinerant dentists while +their odds were pasted up on tall boards beside them. + +“All the same, it’s stupid not to know on what horse one’s betting,” +Nana was remarking. “I really must risk some louis in person.” + +She had stood up to select a bookmaker with a decent expression of face +but forgot what she wanted on perceiving a perfect crowd of her +acquaintance. Besides the Mignons, besides Gaga, Clarisse and Blanche, +there were present, to the right and left, behind and in the middle of +the mass of carriages now hemming in her landau, the following ladies: +Tatan Nene and Maria Blond in a victoria, Caroline Hequet with her +mother and two gentlemen in an open carriage, Louise Violaine quite +alone, driving a little basket chaise decked with orange and green +ribbons, the colors of the Mechain stables, and finally, Léa de Horn on +the lofty seat of a mail coach, where a band of young men were making a +great din. Farther off, in a HUIT RESSORTS of aristocratic appearance, +Lucy Stewart, in a very simple black silk dress, sat, looking +distinguished beside a tall young man in the uniform of a naval cadet. +But what most astounded Nana was the arrival of Simonne in a tandem +which Steiner was driving, while a footman sat motionless, with folded +arms, behind them. She looked dazzling in white satin striped with +yellow and was covered with diamonds from waist to hat. The banker, on +his part, was handling a tremendous whip and sending along his two +horses, which were harnessed tandemwise, the leader being a little +warm-colored chestnut with a mouselike trot, the shaft horse a big +brown bay, a stepper, with a fine action. + +“Deuce take it!” said Nana. “So that thief Steiner has cleared the +Bourse again, has he? I say, isn’t Simonne a swell! It’s too much of a +good thing; he’ll get into the clutches of the law!” + +Nevertheless, she exchanged greetings at a distance. Indeed, she kept +waving her hand and smiling, turning round and forgetting no one in her +desire to be seen by everybody. At the same time she continued +chatting. + +“It’s her son Lucy’s got in tow! He’s charming in his uniform. That’s +why she’s looking so grand, of course! You know she’s afraid of him and +that she passes herself off as an actress. Poor young man, I pity him +all the same! He seems quite unsuspicious.” + +“Bah,” muttered Philippe, laughing, “she’ll be able to find him an +heiress in the country when she likes.” + +Nana was silent, for she had just noticed the Tricon amid the thick of +the carriages. Having arrived in a cab, whence she could not see +anything, the Tricon had quietly mounted the coach box. And there, +straightening up her tall figure, with her noble face enshrined in its +long curls, she dominated the crowd as though enthroned amid her +feminine subjects. All the latter smiled discreetly at her while she, +in her superiority, pretended not to know them. She wasn’t there for +business purposes: she was watching the races for the love of the +thing, as became a frantic gambler with a passion for horseflesh. + +“Dear me, there’s that idiot La Faloise!” said Georges suddenly. + +It was a surprise to them all. Nana did not recognize her La Faloise, +for since he had come into his inheritance he had grown extraordinarily +up to date. He wore a low collar and was clad in a cloth of delicate +hue which fitted close to his meager shoulders. His hair was in little +bandeaux, and he affected a weary kind of swagger, a soft tone of voice +and slang words and phrases which he did not take the trouble to +finish. + +“But he’s quite the thing!” declared Nana in perfect enchantment. + +Gaga and Clarisse had called La Faloise and were throwing themselves at +him in their efforts to regain his allegiance, but he left them +immediately, rolling off in a chaffing, disdainful manner. Nana dazzled +him. He rushed up to her and stood on the carriage step, and when she +twitted him about Gaga he murmured: + +“Oh dear, no! We’ve seen the last of the old lot! Mustn’t play her off +on me any more. And then, you know, it’s you now, Juliet mine!” + +He had put his hand to his heart. Nana laughed a good deal at this +exceedingly sudden out-of-door declaration. She continued: + +“I say, that’s not what I’m after. You’re making me forget that I want +to lay wagers. Georges, you see that bookmaker down there, a great +red-faced man with curly hair? He’s got a dirty blackguard expression +which I like. You’re to go and choose—Oh, I say, what can one choose?” + +“I’m not a patriotic soul—oh dear, no!” La Faloise blurted out. “I’m +all for the Englishman. It will be ripping if the Englishman gains! The +French may go to Jericho!” + +Nana was scandalized. Presently the merits of the several horses began +to be discussed, and La Faloise, wishing to be thought very much in the +swim, spoke of them all as sorry jades. Frangipane, Baron Verdier’s +horse, was by The Truth out of Lenore. A big bay horse he was, who +would certainly have stood a chance if they hadn’t let him get +foundered during training. As to Valerio II from the Corbreuse stable, +he wasn’t ready yet; he’d had the colic in April. Oh yes, they were +keeping that dark, but he was sure of it, on his honor! In the end he +advised Nana to choose Hazard, the most defective of the lot, a horse +nobody would have anything to do with. Hazard, by jingo—such superb +lines and such an action! That horse was going to astonish the people. + +“No,” said Nana, “I’m going to put ten louis on Lusignan and five on +Boum.” + +La Faloise burst forth at once: + +“But, my dear girl, Boum’s all rot! Don’t choose him! Gasc himself is +chucking up backing his own horse. And your Lusignan—never! Why, it’s +all humbug! By Lamb and Princess—just think! By Lamb and Princess—no, +by Jove! All too short in the legs!” + +He was choking. Philippe pointed out that, notwithstanding this, +Lusignan had won the Prix des Cars and the Grande Poule des Produits. +But the other ran on again. What did that prove? Nothing at all. On the +contrary, one ought to distrust him. And besides, Gresham rode +Lusignan; well then, let them jolly well dry up! Gresham had bad luck; +he would never get to the post. + +And from one end of the field to the other the discussion raging in +Nana’s landau seemed to spread and increase. Voices were raised in a +scream; the passion for gambling filled the air, set faces glowing and +arms waving excitedly, while the bookmakers, perched on their +conveyances, shouted odds and jotted down amounts right furiously. Yet +these were only the small fry of the betting world; the big bets were +made in the weighing enclosure. Here, then, raged the keen contest of +people with light purses who risked their five-franc pieces and +displayed infinite covetousness for the sake of a possible gain of a +few louis. In a word, the battle would be between Spirit and Lusignan. +Englishmen, plainly recognizable as such, were strolling about among +the various groups. They were quite at home; their faces were fiery +with excitement; they were afready triumphant. Bramah, a horse +belonging to Lord Reading, had gained the Grand Prix the previous year, +and this had been a defeat over which hearts were still bleeding. This +year it would be terrible if France were beaten anew. Accordingly all +the ladies were wild with national pride. The Vandeuvres stable became +the rampart of their honor, and Lusignan was pushed and defended and +applauded exceedingly. Gaga, Blanche, Caroline and the rest betted on +Lusignan. Lucy Stewart abstained from this on account of her son, but +it was bruited abroad that Rose Mignon had commissioned Labordette to +risk two hundred louis for her. The Tricon, as she sat alone next her +driver, waited till the last moment. Very cool, indeed, amid all these +disputes, very far above the ever-increasing uproar in which horses’ +names kept recurring and lively Parisian phrases mingled with guttural +English exclamations, she sat listening and taking notes majestically. + +“And Nana?” said Georges. “Does no one want her?” + +Indeed, nobody was asking for the filly; she was not even being +mentioned. The outsider of the Vandeuvres’s stud was swamped by +Lusignan’s popularity. But La Faloise flung his arms up, crying: + +“I’ve an inspiration. I’ll bet a louis on Nana.” + +“Bravo! I bet a couple,” said Georges. + +“And I three,” added Philippe. + +And they mounted up and up, bidding against one another good-humoredly +and naming prices as though they had been haggling over Nana at an +auction. La Faloise said he would cover her with gold. Besides, +everybody was to be made to back her; they would go and pick up +backers. But as the three young men were darting off to propagandize, +Nana shouted after them: + +“You know I don’t want to have anything to do with her; I don’t for the +world! Georges, ten louis on Lusignan and five on Valerio II.” + +Meanwhile they had started fairly off, and she watched them gaily as +they slipped between wheels, ducked under horses’ heads and scoured the +whole field. The moment they recognized anyone in a carriage they +rushed up and urged Nana’s claims. And there were great bursts of +laughter among the crowd when sometimes they turned back, triumphantly +signaling amounts with their fingers, while the young woman stood and +waved her sunshade. Nevertheless, they made poor enough work of it. +Some men let themselves be persuaded; Steiner, for instance, ventured +three louis, for the sight of Nana stirred him. But the women refused +point-blank. “Thanks,” they said; “to lose for a certainty!” Besides, +they were in no hurry to work for the benefit of a dirty wench who was +overwhelming them all with her four white horses, her postilions and +her outrageous assumption of side. Gaga and Clarisse looked exceedingly +prim and asked La Faloise whether he was jolly well making fun of them. +When Georges boldly presented himself before the Mignons’ carriage Rose +turned her head away in the most marked manner and did not answer him. +One must be a pretty foul sort to let one’s name be given to a horse! +Mignon, on the contrary, followed the young man’s movements with a look +of amusement and declared that the women always brought luck. + +“Well?” queried Nana when the young men returned after a prolonged +visit to the bookmakers. + +“The odds are forty to one against you,” said La Faloise. + +“What’s that? Forty to one!” she cried, astounded. “They were fifty to +one against me. What’s happened?” + +Labordette had just then reappeared. The course was being cleared, and +the pealing of a bell announced the first race. Amid the expectant +murmur of the bystanders she questioned him about this sudden rise in +her value. But he replied evasively; doubtless a demand for her had +arisen. She had to content herself with this explanation. Moreover, +Labordette announced with a preoccupied expression that Vandeuvres was +coming if he could get away. + +The race was ending unnoticed; people were all waiting for the Grand +Prix to be run—when a storm burst over the Hippodrome. For some minutes +past the sun had disappeared, and a wan twilight had darkened over the +multitude. Then the wind rose, and there ensued a sudden deluge. Huge +drops, perfect sheets of water, fell. There was a momentary confusion, +and people shouted and joked and swore, while those on foot scampered +madly off to find refuge under the canvas of the drinking booths. In +the carriages the women did their best to shelter themselves, grasping +their sunshades with both hands, while the bewildered footmen ran to +the hoods. But the shower was already nearly over, and the sun began +shining brilliantly through escaping clouds of fine rain. A blue cleft +opened in the stormy mass, which was blown off over the Bois, and the +skies seemed to smile again and to set the women laughing in a +reassured manner, while amid the snorting of horses and the disarray +and agitation of the drenched multitude that was shaking itself dry a +broad flush of golden light lit up the field, still dripping and +glittering with crystal drops. + +“Oh, that poor, dear Louiset!” said Nana. “Are you very drenched, my +darling?” + +The little thing silently allowed his hands to be wiped. The young +woman had taken out her handkerchief. Then she dabbed it over Bijou, +who was trembling more violently than ever. It would not matter in the +least; there were a few drops on the white satin of her dress, but she +didn’t care a pin for them. The bouquets, refreshed by the rain, glowed +like snow, and she smelled one ecstatically, drenching her lips in it +as though it were wet with dew. + +Meanwhile the burst of rain had suddenly filled the stands. Nana looked +at them through her field glasses. At that distance you could only +distinguish a compact, confused mass of people, heaped up, as it were, +on the ascending ranges of steps, a dark background relieved by light +dots which were human faces. The sunlight filtered in through openings +near the roof at each end of the stand and detached and illumined +portions of the seated multitude, where the ladies’ dresses seemed to +lose their distinguishing colors. But Nana was especially amused by the +ladies whom the shower had driven from the rows of chairs ranged on the +sand at the base of the stands. As courtesans were absolutely forbidden +to enter the enclosure, she began making exceedingly bitter remarks +about all the fashionable women therein assembled. She thought them +fearfully dressed up, and such guys! + +There was a rumor that the empress was entering the little central +stand, a pavilion built like a chalet, with a wide balcony furnished +with red armchairs. + +“Why, there he is!” said Georges. “I didn’t think he was on duty this +week.” + +The stiff and solemn form of the Count Muffat had appeared behind the +empress. Thereupon the young men jested and were sorry that Satin +wasn’t there to go and dig him in the ribs. But Nana’s field glass +focused the head of the Prince of Scots in the imperial stand. + +“Gracious, it’s Charles!” she cried. + +She thought him stouter than formerly. In eighteen months he had +broadened, and with that she entered into particulars. Oh yes, he was a +big, solidly built fellow! + +All round her in the ladies’ carriages they were whispering that the +count had given her up. It was quite a long story. Since he had been +making himself noticeable, the Tuileries had grown scandalized at the +chamberlain’s conduct. Whereupon, in order to retain his position, he +had recently broken it off with Nana. La Faloise bluntly reported this +account of matters to the young woman and, addressing her as his +Juliet, again offered himself. But she laughed merrily and remarked: + +“It’s idiotic! You won’t know him; I’ve only to say, ‘Come here,’ for +him to chuck up everything.” + +For some seconds past she had been examining the Countess Sabine and +Estelle. Daguenet was still at their side. Fauchery had just arrived +and was disturbing the people round him in his desire to make his bow +to them. He, too, stayed smilingly beside them. After that Nana pointed +with disdainful action at the stands and continued: + +“Then, you know, those people don’t fetch me any longer now! I know ’em +too well. You should see ’em behind scenes. No more honor! It’s all up +with honor! Filth belowstairs, filth abovestairs, filth everywhere. +That’s why I won’t be bothered about ’em!” + +And with a comprehensive gesture she took in everybody, from the grooms +leading the horses on to the course to the sovereign lady busy chatting +with with Charles, a prince and a dirty fellow to boot. + +“Bravo, Nana! Awfully smart, Nana!” cried La Faloise enthusiastically. + +The tolling of a bell was lost in the wind; the races continued. The +Prix d’Ispahan had just been run for and Berlingot, a horse belonging +to the Mechain stable, had won. Nana recalled Labordette in order to +obtain news of the hundred louis, but he burst out laughing and refused +to let her know the horses he had chosen for her, so as not to disturb +the luck, as he phrased it. Her money was well placed; she would see +that all in good time. And when she confessed her bets to him and told +him how she had put ten louis on Lusignan and five on Valerio II, he +shrugged his shoulders, as who should say that women did stupid things +whatever happened. His action surprised her; she was quite at sea. + +Just then the field grew more animated than before. Open-air lunches +were arranged in the interval before the Grand Prix. There was much +eating and more drinking in all directions, on the grass, on the high +seats of the four-in-hands and mail coaches, in the victorias, the +broughams, the landaus. There was a universal spread of cold viands and +a fine disorderly display of champagne baskets which footmen kept +handing down out of the coach boots. Corks came out with feeble pops, +which the wind drowned. There was an interchange of jests, and the +sound of breaking glasses imparted a note of discord to the high-strung +gaiety of the scene. Gaga and Clarisse, together with Blanche, were +making a serious repast, for they were eating sandwiches on the +carriage rug with which they had been covering their knees. Louise +Violaine had got down from her basket carriage and had joined Caroline +Hequet. On the turf at their feet some gentlemen had instituted a +drinking bar, whither Tatan, Maria, Simonne and the rest came to +refresh themselves, while high in air and close at hand bottles were +being emptied on Léa de Horn’s mail coach, and, with infinite bravado +and gesticulation, a whole band were making themselves tipsy in the +sunshine, above the heads of the crowd. Soon, however, there was an +especially large crowd by Nana’s landau. She had risen to her feet and +had set herself to pour out glasses of champagne for the men who came +to pay her their respects. Francois, one of the footmen, was passing up +the bottles while La Faloise, trying hard to imitate a coster’s +accents, kept pattering away: + +“’Ere y’re, given away, given away! There’s some for everybody!” + +“Do be still, dear boy,” Nana ended by saying. “We look like a set of +tumblers.” + +She thought him very droll and was greatly entertained. At one moment +she conceived the idea of sending Georges with a glass of champagne to +Rose Mignon, who was affecting temperance. Henri and Charles were bored +to distraction; they would have been glad of some champagne, the poor +little fellows. But Georges drank the glassful, for he feared an +argument. Then Nana remembered Louiset, who was sitting forgotten +behind her. Maybe he was thirsty, and she forced him to take a drop or +two of wine, which made him cough dreadfully. + +“’Ere y’are, ’ere y’are, gemmen!” La Faloise reiterated. “It don’t cost +two sous; it don’t cost one. We give it away.” + +But Nana broke in with an exclamation: + +“Gracious, there’s Bordenave down there! Call him. Oh, run, please, +please do!” + +It was indeed Bordenave. He was strolling about with his hands behind +his back, wearing a hat that looked rusty in the sunlight and a greasy +frock coat that was glossy at the seams. It was Bordenave shattered by +bankruptcy, yet furious despite all reverses, a Bordenave who flaunted +his misery among all the fine folks with the hardihood becoming a man +ever ready to take Dame Fortune by storm. + +“The deuce, how smart we are!” he said when Nana extended her hand to +him like the good-natured wench she was. + +Presently, after emptying a glass of champagne, he gave vent to the +following profoundly regretful phrase: + +“Ah, if only I were a woman! But, by God, that’s nothing! Would you +like to go on the stage again? I’ve a notion: I’ll hire the Gaîté, and +we’ll gobble up Paris between us. You certainly owe it me, eh?” + +And he lingered, grumbling, beside her, though glad to see her again; +for, he said, that confounded Nana was balm to his feelings. Yes, it +was balm to them merely to exist in her presence! She was his daughter; +she was blood of his blood! + +The circle increased, for now La Faloise was filling glasses, and +Georges and Philippe were picking up friends. A stealthy impulse was +gradually bringing in the whole field. Nana would fling everyone a +laughing smile or an amusing phrase. The groups of tipplers were +drawing near, and all the champagne scattered over the place was moving +in her direction. Soon there was only one noisy crowd, and that was +round her landau, where she queened it among outstretched glasses, her +yellow hair floating on the breeze and her snowy face bathed in the +sunshine. Then by way of a finishing touch and to make the other women, +who were mad at her triumph, simply perish of envy, she lifted a +brimming glass on high and assumed her old pose as Venus Victrix. + +But somebody touched her shoulder, and she was surprised, on turning +round, to see Mignon on the seat. She vanished from view an instant and +sat herself down beside him, for he had come to communicate a matter of +importance. Mignon had everywhere declared that it was ridiculous of +his wife to bear Nana a grudge; he thought her attitude stupid and +useless. + +“Look here, my dear,” he whispered. “Be careful: don’t madden Rose too +much. You understand, I think it best to warn you. Yes, she’s got a +weapon in store, and as she’s never forgiven you the Petite Duchesse +business—” + +“A weapon,” said Nana; “what’s that blooming well got to do with me?” + +“Just listen: it’s a letter she must have found in Fauchery’s pocket, a +letter written to that screw Fauchery by the Countess Muffat. And, by +Jove, it’s clear the whole story’s in it. Well then, Rose wants to send +the letter to the count so as to be revenged on him and on you.” + +“What the deuce has that got to do with me?” Nana repeated. “It’s a +funny business. So the whole story about Fauchery’s in it! Very well, +so much the better; the woman has been exasperating me! We shall have a +good laugh!” + +“No, I don’t wish it,” Mignon briskly rejoined. “There’ll be a pretty +scandal! Besides, we’ve got nothing to gain.” + +He paused, fearing lest he should say too much, while she loudly +averred that she was most certainly not going to get a chaste woman +into trouble. + +But when he still insisted on his refusal she looked steadily at him. +Doubtless he was afraid of seeing Fauchery again introduced into his +family in case he broke with the countess. While avenging her own +wrongs, Rose was anxious for that to happen, since she still felt a +kindness toward the journalist. And Nana waxed meditative and thought +of M. Venot’s call, and a plan began to take shape in her brain, while +Mignon was doing his best to talk her over. + +“Let’s suppose that Rose sends the letter, eh? There’s food for +scandal: you’re mixed up in the business, and people say you’re the +cause of it all. Then to begin with, the count separates from his +wife.” + +“Why should he?” she said. “On the contrary—” + +She broke off, in her turn. There was no need for her to think aloud. +So in order to be rid of Mignon she looked as though she entered into +his view of the case, and when he advised her to give Rose some proof +of her submission—to pay her a short visit on the racecourse, for +instance, where everybody would see her—she replied that she would see +about it, that she would think the matter over. + +A commotion caused her to stand up again. On the course the horses were +coming in amid a sudden blast of wind. The prize given by the city of +Paris had just been run for, and Cornemuse had gained it. Now the Grand +Prix was about to be run, and the fever of the crowd increased, and +they were tortured by anxiety and stamped and swayed as though they +wanted to make the minutes fly faster. At this ultimate moment the +betting world was surprised and startled by the continued shortening of +the odds against Nana, the outsider of the Vandeuvres stables. +Gentlemen kept returning every few moments with a new quotation: the +betting was thirty to one against Nana; it was twenty-five to one +against Nana, then twenty to one, then fifteen to one. No one could +understand it. A filly beaten on all the racecourses! A filly which +that same morning no single sportsman would take at fifty to one +against! What did this sudden madness betoken? Some laughed at it and +spoke of the pretty doing awaiting the duffers who were being taken in +by the joke. Others looked serious and uneasy and sniffed out something +ugly under it all. Perhaps there was a “deal” in the offing. Allusion +was made to well-known stories about the robberies which are winked at +on racecourses, but on this occasion the great name of Vandeuvres put a +stop to all such accusations, and the skeptics in the end prevailed +when they prophesied that Nana would come in last of all. + +“Who’s riding Nana?” queried La Faloise. + +Just then the real Nana reappeared, whereat the gentlemen lent his +question an indecent meaning and burst into an uproarious fit of +laughter. Nana bowed. + +“Price is up,” she replied. + +And with that the discussion began again. Price was an English +celebrity. Why had Vandeuvres got this jockey to come over, seeing that +Gresham ordinarily rode Nana? Besides, they were astonished to see him +confiding Lusignan to this man Gresham, who, according to La Faloise, +never got a place. But all these remarks were swallowed up in jokes, +contradictions and an extraordinarily noisy confusion of opinions. In +order to kill time the company once more set themselves to drain +bottles of champagne. Presently a whisper ran round, and the different +groups opened outward. It was Vandeuvres. Nana affected vexation. + +“Dear me, you’re a nice fellow to come at this time of day! Why, I’m +burning to see the enclosure.” + +“Well, come along then,” he said; “there’s still time. You’ll take a +stroll round with me. I just happen to have a permit for a lady about +me.” + +And he led her off on his arm while she enjoyed the jealous glances +with which Lucy, Caroline and the others followed her. The young Hugons +and La Faloise remained in the landau behind her retreating figure and +continued to do the honors of her champagne. She shouted to them that +she would return immediately. + +But Vandeuvres caught sight of Labordette and called him, and there was +an interchange of brief sentences. + +“You’ve scraped everything up?” + +“Yes.” + +“To what amount?” + +“Fifteen hundred louis—pretty well all over the place.” + +As Nana was visibly listening, and that with much curiosity, they held +their tongues. Vandeuvres was very nervous, and he had those same clear +eyes, shot with little flames, which so frightened her the night he +spoke of burning himself and his horses together. As they crossed over +the course she spoke low and familiarly. + +“I say, do explain this to me. Why are the odds on your filly +changing?” + +He trembled, and this sentence escaped him: + +“Ah, they’re talking, are they? What a set those betting men are! When +I’ve got the favorite they all throw themselves upon him, and there’s +no chance for me. After that, when an outsider’s asked for, they give +tongue and yell as though they were being skinned.” + +“You ought to tell me what’s going to happen—I’ve made my bets,” she +rejoined. “Has Nana a chance?” + +A sudden, unreasonable burst of anger overpowered him. + +“Won’t you deuced well let me be, eh? Every horse has a chance. The +odds are shortening because, by Jove, people have taken the horse. Who, +I don’t know. I should prefer leaving you if you must needs badger me +with your idiotic questions.” + +Such a tone was not germane either to his temperament or his habits, +and Nana was rather surprised than wounded. Besides, he was ashamed of +himself directly afterward, and when she begged him in a dry voice to +behave politely he apologized. For some time past he had suffered from +such sudden changes of temper. No one in the Paris of pleasure or of +society was ignorant of the fact that he was playing his last trump +card today. If his horses did not win, if, moreover, they lost him the +considerable sums wagered upon them, it would mean utter disaster and +collapse for him, and the bulwark of his credit and the lofty +appearance which, though undermined, he still kept up, would come +ruining noisily down. Moreover, no one was ignorant of the fact that +Nana was the devouring siren who had finished him off, who had been the +last to attack his crumbling fortunes and to sweep up what remained of +them. Stories were told of wild whims and fancies, of gold scattered to +the four winds, of a visit to Baden-Baden, where she had not left him +enough to pay the hotel bill, of a handful of diamonds cast on the fire +during an evening of drunkenness in order to see whether they would +burn like coal. Little by little her great limbs and her coarse, +plebeian way of laughing had gained complete mastery over this elegant, +degenerate son of an ancient race. At that time he was risking his all, +for he had been so utterly overpowered by his taste for ordure and +stupidity as to have even lost the vigor of his skepticism. A week +before Nana had made him promise her a château on the Norman coast +between Havre and Trouville, and now he was staking the very +foundations of his honor on the fulfillment of his word. Only she was +getting on his nerves, and he could have beaten her, so stupid did he +feel her to be. + +The man at the gate, not daring to stop the woman hanging on the +count’s arm, had allowed them to enter the enclosure. Nana, greatly +puffed up at the thought that at last she was setting foot on the +forbidden ground, put on her best behavior and walked slowly by the +ladies seated at the foot of the stands. On ten rows of chairs the +toilets were densely massed, and in the blithe open air their bright +colors mingled harmoniously. Chairs were scattered about, and as people +met one another friendly circles were formed, just as though the +company had been sitting under the trees in a public garden. Children +had been allowed to go free and were running from group to group, while +over head the stands rose tier above crowded tier and the light-colored +dresses therein faded into the delicate shadows of the timberwork. Nana +stared at all these ladies. She stared steadily and markedly at the +Countess Sabine. After which, as she was passing in front of the +imperial stand, the sight of Muffat, looming in all his official +stiffness by the side of the empress, made her very merry. + +“Oh, how silly he looks!” she said at the top of her voice to +Vandeuvres. She was anxious to pay everything a visit. This small +parklike region, with its green lawns and groups of trees, rather +charmed her than otherwise. A vendor of ices had set up a large buffet +near the entrance gates, and beneath a rustic thatched roof a dense +throng of people were shouting and gesticulating. This was the ring. +Close by were some empty stalls, and Nana was disappointed at +discovering only a gendarme’s horse there. Then there was the paddock, +a small course some hundred meters in circumference, where a stable +help was walking about Valerio II in his horsecloths. And, oh, what a +lot of men on the graveled sidewalks, all of them with their tickets +forming an orange-colored patch in their bottonholes! And what a +continual parade of people in the open galleries of the grandstands! +The scene interested her for a moment or two, but truly, it was not +worth while getting the spleen because they didn’t admit you inside +here. + +Daguenet and Fauchery passed by and bowed to her. She made them a sign, +and they had to come up. Thereupon she made hay of the weighing-in +enclosure. But she broke off abruptly: + +“Dear me, there’s the Marquis de Chouard! How old he’s growing! That +old man’s killing himself! Is he still as mad about it as ever?” + +Thereupon Daguenet described the old man’s last brilliant stroke. The +story dated from the day before yesterday, and no one knew it as yet. +After dangling about for months he had bought her daughter Amelie from +Gaga for thirty thousand francs, they said. + +“Good gracious! That’s a nice business!” cried Nana in disgust. “Go in +for the regular thing, please! But now that I come to think of it, that +must be Lili down there on the grass with a lady in a brougham. I +recognized the face. The old boy will have brought her out.” + +Vandeuvres was not listening; he was impatient and longed to get rid of +her. But Fauchery having remarked at parting that if she had not seen +the bookmakers she had seen nothing, the count was obliged to take her +to them in spite of his obvious repugnance. And she was perfectly happy +at once; that truly was a curious sight, she said! + +Amid lawns bordered by young horse-chestnut trees there was a round +open enclosure, where, forming a vast circle under the shadow of the +tender green leaves, a dense line of bookmakers was waiting for betting +men, as though they had been hucksters at a fair. In order to overtop +and command the surrounding crowd they had taken up positions on wooden +benches, and they were advertising their prices on the trees beside +them. They had an ever-vigilant glance, and they booked wagers in +answer to a single sign, a mere wink, so rapidly that certain curious +onlookers watched them openmouthed, without being able to understand it +all. Confusion reigned; prices were shouted, and any unexpected change +in a quotation was received with something like tumult. Occasionally +scouts entered the place at a run and redoubled the uproar as they +stopped at the entrance to the rotunda and, at the tops of their +voices, announced departures and arrivals. In this place, where the +gambling fever was pulsing in the sunshine, such announcements were +sure to raise a prolonged muttering sound. + +“They ARE funny!” murmured Nana, greatly entertained. + +“Their features look as if they had been put on the wrong way. Just you +see that big fellow there; I shouldn’t care to meet him all alone in +the middle of a wood.” + +But Vandeuvres pointed her out a bookmaker, once a shopman in a fancy +repository, who had made three million francs in two years. He was +slight of build, delicate and fair, and people all round him treated +him with great respect. They smiled when they addressed him, while +others took up positions close by in order to catch a glimpse of him. + +They were at length leaving the ring when Vandeuvres nodded slightly to +another bookmaker, who thereupon ventured to call him. It was one of +his former coachmen, an enormous fellow with the shoulders of an ox and +a high color. Now that he was trying his fortunes at race meetings on +the strength of some mysteriously obtained capital, the count was doing +his utmost to push him, confiding to him his secret bets and treating +him on all occasions as a servant to whom one shows one’s true +character. Yet despite this protection, the man had in rapid succession +lost very heavy sums, and today he, too, was playing his last card. +There was blood in his eyes; he looked fit to drop with apoplexy. + +“Well, Marechal,” queried the count in the lowest of voices, “to what +amount have you laid odds?” + +“To five thousand louis, Monsieur le Comte,” replied the bookmaker, +likewise lowering his voice. “A pretty job, eh? I’ll confess to you +that I’ve increased the odds; I’ve made it three to one.” + +Vandeuvres looked very much put out. + +“No, no, I don’t want you to do that. Put it at two to one again +directly. I shan’t tell you any more, Marechal.” + +“Oh, how can it hurt, Monsieur le Comte, at this time o’ day?” rejoined +the other with the humble smile befitting an accomplice. “I had to +attract the people so as to lay your two thousand louis.” + +At this Vandeuvres silenced him. But as he was going off Marechal +remembered something and was sorry he had not questioned him about the +shortening of the odds on the filly. It would be a nice business for +him if the filly stood a chance, seeing that he had just laid fifty to +one about her in two hundreds. + +Nana, though she did not understand a word of what the count was +whispering, dared not, however, ask for new explanations. He seemed +more nervous than before and abruptly handed her over to Labordette, +whom they came upon in front of the weighing-in room. + +“You’ll take her back,” he said. “I’ve got something on hand. Au +revoir!” + +And he entered the room, which was narrow and low-pitched and half +filled with a great pair of scales. It was like a waiting room in a +suburban station, and Nana was again hugely disillusioned, for she had +been picturing to herself something on a very vast scale, a monumental +machine, in fact, for weighing horses. Dear me, they only weighed the +jockeys! Then it wasn’t worth while making such a fuss with their +weighing! In the scale a jockey with an idiotic expression was waiting, +harness on knee, till a stout man in a frock coat should have done +verifying his weight. At the door a stable help was holding a horse, +Cosinus, round which a silent and deeply interested throng was +clustering. + +The course was about to be cleared. Labordette hurried Nana but +retraced his steps in order to show her a little man talking with +Vandeuvres at some distance from the rest. + +“Dear me, there’s Price!” he said. + +“Ah yes, the man who’s mounting me,” she murmured laughingly. + +And she declared him to be exquisitely ugly. All jockeys struck her as +looking idiotic, doubtless, she said, because they were prevented from +growing bigger. This particular jockey was a man of forty, and with his +long, thin, deeply furrowed, hard, dead countenance, he looked like an +old shriveled-up child. His body was knotty and so reduced in size that +his blue jacket with its white sleeves looked as if it had been thrown +over a lay figure. + +“No,” she resumed as she walked away, “he would never make me very +happy, you know.” + +A mob of people were still crowding the course, the turf of which had +been wet and trampled on till it had grown black. In front of the two +telegraphs, which hung very high up on their cast-iron pillars, the +crowd were jostling together with upturned faces, uproariously greeting +the numbers of the different horses as an electric wire in connection +with the weighing room made them appear. Gentlemen were pointing at +programs: Pichenette had been scratched by his owner, and this caused +some noise. However, Nana did not do more than cross over the course on +Labordette’s arm. The bell hanging on the flagstaff was ringing +persistently to warn people to leave the course. + +“Ah, my little dears,” she said as she got up into her landau again, +“their enclosure’s all humbug!” + +She was welcomed with acclamation; people around her clapped their +hands. + +“Bravo, Nana! Nana’s ours again!” + +What idiots they were, to be sure! Did they think she was the sort to +cut old friends? She had come back just at the auspicious moment. Now +then, ’tenshun! The race was beginning! And the champagne was +accordingly forgotten, and everyone left off drinking. + +But Nana was astonished to find Gaga in her carriage, sitting with +Bijou and Louiset on her knees. Gaga had indeed decided on this course +of action in order to be near La Faloise, but she told Nana that she +had been anxious to kiss Baby. She adored children. + +“By the by, what about Lili?” asked Nana. “That’s certainly she over +there in that old fellow’s brougham. They’ve just told me something +very nice!” + +Gaga had adopted a lachrymose expression. + +“My dear, it’s made me ill,” she said dolorously. “Yesterday I had to +keep my bed, I cried so, and today I didn’t think I should be able to +come. You know what my opinions were, don’t you? I didn’t desire that +kind of thing at all. I had her educated in a convent with a view to a +good marriage. And then to think of the strict advice she had and the +constant watching! Well, my dear, it was she who wished it. We had such +a scene—tears—disagreeable speeches! It even got to such a point that I +caught her a box on the ear. She was too much bored by existence, she +said; she wanted to get out of it. By and by, when she began to say, +‘’Tisn’t you, after all, who’ve got the right to prevent me,’ I said to +her: ‘you’re a miserable wretch; you’re bringing dishonor upon us. +Begone!’ And it was done. I consented to arrange about it. But my last +hope’s blooming well blasted, and, oh, I used to dream about such nice +things!” + +The noise of a quarrel caused them to rise. It was Georges in the act +of defending Vandeuvres against certain vague rumors which were +circulating among the various groups. + +“Why should you say that he’s laying off his own horse?” the young man +was exclaiming. “Yesterday in the Salon des Courses he took the odds on +Lusignan for a thousand louis.” + +“Yes, I was there,” said Philippe in affirmation of this. “And he +didn’t put a single louis on Nana. If the betting’s ten to one against +Nana he’s got nothing to win there. It’s absurd to imagine people are +so calculating. Where would his interest come in?” + +Labordette was listening with a quiet expression. Shrugging his +shoulders, he said: + +“Oh, leave them alone; they must have their say. The count has again +laid at least as much as five hundred louis on Lusignan, and if he’s +wanted Nana to run to a hundred louis it’s because an owner ought +always to look as if he believes in his horses.” + +“Oh, bosh! What the deuce does that matter to us?” shouted La Faloise +with a wave of his arms. “Spirit’s going to win! Down with +France—bravo, England!” + +A long shiver ran through the crowd, while a fresh peal from the bell +announced the arrival of the horses upon the racecourse. At this Nana +got up and stood on one of the seats of her carriage so as to obtain a +better view, and in so doing she trampled the bouquets of roses and +myosotis underfoot. With a sweeping glance she took in the wide, vast +horizon. At this last feverish moment the course was empty and closed +by gray barriers, between the posts of which stood a line of policemen. +The strip of grass which lay muddy in front of her grew brighter as it +stretched away and turned into a tender green carpet in the distance. +In the middle landscape, as she lowered her eyes, she saw the field +swarming with vast numbers of people, some on tiptoe, others perched on +carriages, and all heaving and jostling in sudden passionate +excitement. + +Horses were neighing; tent canvases flapped, while equestrians urged +their hacks forward amid a crowd of pedestrians rushing to get places +along the barriers. When Nana turned in the direction of the stands on +the other side the faces seemed diminished, and the dense masses of +heads were only a confused and motley array, filling gangways, steps +and terraces and looming in deep, dark, serried lines against the sky. +And beyond these again she over looked the plain surrounding the +course. Behind the ivy-clad mill to the right, meadows, dotted over +with great patches of umbrageous wood, stretched away into the +distance, while opposite to her, as far as the Seine flowing at the +foot of a hill, the avenues of the park intersected one another, filled +at that moment with long, motionless files of waiting carriages; and in +the direction of Boulogne, on the left, the landscape widened anew and +opened out toward the blue distances of Meudon through an avenue of +paulownias, whose rosy, leafless tops were one stain of brilliant lake +color. People were still arriving, and a long procession of human ants +kept coming along the narrow ribbon of road which crossed the distance, +while very far away, on the Paris side, the nonpaying public, herding +like sheep among the wood, loomed in a moving line of little dark spots +under the trees on the skirts of the Bois. + +Suddenly a cheering influence warmed the hundred thousand souls who +covered this part of the plain like insects swarming madly under the +vast expanse of heaven. The sun, which had been hidden for about a +quarter of an hour, made his appearance again and shone out amid a +perfect sea of light. And everything flamed afresh: the women’s +sunshades turned into countless golden targets above the heads of the +crowd. The sun was applauded, saluted with bursts of laughter. And +people stretched their arms out as though to brush apart the clouds. + +Meanwhile a solitary police officer advanced down the middle of the +deserted racecourse, while higher up, on the left, a man appeared with +a red flag in his hand. + +“It’s the starter, the Baron de Mauriac,” said Labordette in reply to a +question from Nana. All round the young woman exclamations were +bursting from the men who were pressing to her very carriage step. They +kept up a disconnected conversation, jerking out phrases under the +immediate influence of passing impressions. Indeed, Philippe and +Georges, Bordenave and La Faloise, could not be quiet. + +“Don’t shove! Let me see! Ah, the judge is getting into his box. D’you +say it’s Monsieur de Souvigny? You must have good eyesight—eh?—to be +able to tell what half a head is out of a fakement like that! Do hold +your tongue—the banner’s going up. Here they are—’tenshun! Cosinus is +the first!” + +A red and yellow banner was flapping in mid-air at the top of a mast. +The horses came on the course one by one; they were led by stableboys, +and the jockeys were sitting idle-handed in the saddles, the sunlight +making them look like bright dabs of color. After Cosinus appeared +Hazard and Boum. Presently a murmur of approval greeted Spirit, a +magnificent big brown bay, the harsh citron color and black of whose +jockey were cheerlessly Britannic. Valerio II scored a success as he +came in; he was small and very lively, and his colors were soft green +bordered with pink. The two Vandeuvres horses were slow to make their +appearance, but at last, in Frangipane’s rear, the blue and white +showed themselves. But Lusignan, a very dark bay of irreproachable +shape, was almost forgotten amid the astonishment caused by Nana. +People had not seen her looking like this before, for now the sudden +sunlight was dyeing the chestnut filly the brilliant color of a girl’s +red-gold hair. She was shining in the light like a new gold coin; her +chest was deep; her head and neck tapered lightly from the delicate, +high-strung line of her long back. + +“Gracious, she’s got my hair!” cried Nana in an ecstasy. “You bet you +know I’m proud of it!” + +The men clambered up on the landau, and Bordenave narrowly escaped +putting his foot on Louiset, whom his mother had forgotten. He took him +up with an outburst of paternal grumbling and hoisted him on his +shoulder, muttering at the same time: + +“The poor little brat, he must be in it too! Wait a bit, I’ll show you +Mamma. Eh? Look at Mummy out there.” + +And as Bijou was scratching his legs, he took charge of him, too, while +Nana, rejoicing in the brute that bore her name, glanced round at the +other women to see how they took it. They were all raging madly. Just +then on the summit of her cab the Tricon, who had not moved till that +moment, began waving her hand and giving her bookmaker her orders above +the heads of the crowd. Her instinct had at last prompted her; she was +backing Nana. + +La Faloise meanwhile was making an insufferable noise. He was getting +wild over Frangipane. + +“I’ve an inspiration,” he kept shouting. “Just look at Frangipane. What +an action, eh? I back Frangipane at eight to one. Who’ll take me?” + +“Do keep quiet now,” said Labordette at last. “You’ll be sorry for it +if you do.” + +“Frangipane’s a screw,” Philippe declared. “He’s been utterly blown +upon already. You’ll see the canter.” + +The horses had gone up to the right, and they now started for the +preliminary canter, passing in loose order before the stands. Thereupon +there was a passionate fresh burst of talk, and people all spoke at +once. + +“Lusignan’s too long in the back, but he’s very fit. Not a cent, I tell +you, on Valerio II; he’s nervous—gallops with his head up—it’s a bad +sign. Jove! Burne’s riding Spirit. I tell you, he’s got no shoulders. A +well-made shoulder—that’s the whole secret. No, decidedly, Spirit’s too +quiet. Now listen, Nana, I saw her after the Grande Poule des Produits, +and she was dripping and draggled, and her sides were trembling like +one o’clock. I lay twenty louis she isn’t placed! Oh, shut up! He’s +boring us with his Frangipane. There’s no time to make a bet now; +there, they’re off!” + +Almost in tears, La Faloise was struggling to find a bookmaker. He had +to be reasoned with. Everyone craned forward, but the first go-off was +bad, the starter, who looked in the distance like a slim dash of +blackness, not having lowered his flag. The horses came back to their +places after galloping a moment or two. There were two more false +starts. At length the starter got the horses together and sent them +away with such address as to elicit shouts of applause. + +“Splendid! No, it was mere chance! Never mind—it’s done it!” + +The outcries were smothered by the anxiety which tortured every breast. +The betting stopped now, and the game was being played on the vast +course itself. Silence reigned at the outset, as though everyone were +holding his breath. White faces and trembling forms were stretched +forward in all directions. At first Hazard and Cosinus made the running +at the head of the rest; Valerio II followed close by, and the field +came on in a confused mass behind. When they passed in front of the +stands, thundering over the ground in their course like a sudden +stormwind, the mass was already some fourteen lengths in extent. +Frangipane was last, and Nana was slightly behind Lusignan and Spirit. + +“Egad!” muttered Labordette, “how the Englishman is pulling it off out +there!” + +The whole carriageload again burst out with phrases and exclamations. +Everyone rose on tiptoe and followed the bright splashes of color which +were the jockeys as they rushed through the sunlight. + +At the rise Valerio II took the lead, while Cosinus and Hazard lost +ground, and Lusignan and Spirit were running neck and neck with Nana +still behind them. + +“By jingo, the Englishman’s gained! It’s palpable!” said Bordenave. +“Lusignan’s in difficulties, and Valerio II can’t stay.” + +“Well, it will be a pretty biz if the Englishman wins!” cried Philippe +in an access of patriotic grief. + +A feeling of anguish was beginning to choke all that crowded multitude. +Another defeat! And with that a strange ardent prayer, which was almost +religious, went up for Lusignan, while people heaped abuse on Spirit +and his dismal mute of a jockey. Among the crowd scattered over the +grass the wind of excitement put up whole groups of people and set +their boot soles flashing in air as they ran. Horsemen crossed the +green at a furious gallop. And Nana, who was slowly revolving on her +own axis, saw beneath her a surging waste of beasts and men, a sea of +heads swayed and stirred all round the course by the whirlwind of the +race, which clove the horizon with the bright lightning flash of the +jockeys. She had been following their movement from behind while the +cruppers sped away and the legs seemed to grow longer as they raced and +then diminished till they looked slender as strands of hair. Now the +horses were running at the end of the course, and she caught a side +view of them looking minute and delicate of outline against the green +distances of the Bois. Then suddenly they vanished behind a great clump +of trees growing in the middle of the Hippodrome. + +“Don’t talk about it!” cried Georges, who was still full of hope. “It +isn’t over yet. The Englishman’s touched.” + +But La Faloise was again seized with contempt for his country and grew +positively outrageous in his applause of Spirit. Bravo! That was right! +France needed it! Spirit first and Frangipane second—that would be a +nasty one for his native land! He exasperated Labordette, who +threatened seriously to throw him off the carriage. + +“Let’s see how many minutes they’ll be about it,” said Bordenave +peaceably, for though holding up Louiset, he had taken out his watch. + +One after the other the horses reappeared from behind the clump of +trees. There was stupefaction; a long murmur arose among the crowd. +Valerio II was still leading, but Spirit was gaining on him, and behind +him Lusignan had slackened while another horse was taking his place. +People could not make this out all at once; they were confused about +the colors. Then there was a burst of exclamations. + +“But it’s Nana! Nana? Get along! I tell you Lusignan hasn’t budged. +Dear me, yes, it’s Nana. You can certainly recognize her by her golden +color. D’you see her now? She’s blazing away. Bravo, Nana! What a +ripper she is! Bah, it doesn’t matter a bit: she’s making the running +for Lusignan!” + +For some seconds this was everybody’s opinion. But little by little the +filly kept gaining and gaining, spurting hard all the while. Thereupon +a vast wave of feeling passed over the crowd, and the tail of horses in +the rear ceased to interest. A supreme struggle was beginning between +Spirit, Nana, Lusignan and Valerio II. They were pointed out; people +estimated what ground they had gained or lost in disconnected, gasping +phrases. And Nana, who had mounted up on the coach box, as though some +power had lifted her thither, stood white and trembling and so deeply +moved as not to be able to speak. At her side Labordette smiled as of +old. + +“The Englishman’s in trouble, eh?” said Philippe joyously. “He’s going +badly.” + +“In any case, it’s all up with Lusignan,” shouted La Faloise. “Valerio +II is coming forward. Look, there they are all four together.” + +The same phrase was in every mouth. + +“What a rush, my dears! By God, what a rush!” + +The squad of horses was now passing in front of them like a flash of +lightning. Their approach was perceptible—the breath of it was as a +distant muttering which increased at every second. The whole crowd had +thrown themselves impetuously against the barriers, and a deep clamor +issued from innumerable chests before the advance of the horses and +drew nearer and nearer like the sound of a foaming tide. It was the +last fierce outburst of colossal partisanship; a hundred thousand +spectators were possessed by a single passion, burning with the same +gambler’s lust, as they gazed after the beasts, whose galloping feet +were sweeping millions with them. The crowd pushed and crushed—fists +were clenched; people gaped, openmouthed; every man was fighting for +himself; every man with voice and gesture was madly speeding the horse +of his choice. And the cry of all this multitude, a wild beast’s cry +despite the garb of civilization, grew ever more distinct: + +“Here they come! Here they come! Here they come!” + +But Nana was still gaining ground, and now Valerio II was distanced, +and she was heading the race, with Spirit two or three necks behind. +The rolling thunder of voices had increased. They were coming in; a +storm of oaths greeted them from the landau. + +“Gee up, Lusignan, you great coward! The Englishman’s stunning! Do it +again, old boy; do it again! Oh, that Valerio! It’s sickening! Oh, the +carcass! My ten louis damned well lost! Nana’s the only one! Bravo, +Nana! Bravo!” + +And without being aware of it Nana, upon her seat, had begun jerking +her hips and waist as though she were racing herself. She kept striking +her side—she fancied it was a help to the filly. With each stroke she +sighed with fatigue and said in low, anguished tones: + +“Go it, go it!” + +Then a splendid sight was witnessed. Price, rising in his stirrups and +brandishing his whip, flogged Nana with an arm of iron. The old +shriveled-up child with his long, hard, dead face seemed to breath +flame. And in a fit of furious audacity and triumphant will he put his +heart into the filly, held her up, lifted her forward, drenched in +foam, with eyes of blood. The whole rush of horses passed with a roar +of thunder: it took away people’s breaths; it swept the air with it +while the judge sat frigidly waiting, his eye adjusted to its task. +Then there was an immense re-echoing burst of acclamation. With a +supreme effort Price had just flung Nana past the post, thus beating +Spirit by a head. + +There was an uproar as of a rising tide. “Nana! Nana! Nana!” The cry +rolled up and swelled with the violence of a tempest, till little by +little it filled the distance, the depths of the Bois as far as Mont +Valerien, the meadows of Longchamps and the Plaine de Boulogne. In all +parts of the field the wildest enthusiasm declared itself. “Vive Nana! +Vive la France! Down with England!” The women waved their sunshades; +men leaped and spun round, vociferating as they did so, while others +with shouts of nervous laughter threw their hats in the air. And from +the other side of the course the enclosure made answer; the people on +the stands were stirred, though nothing was distinctly visible save a +tremulous motion of the air, as though an invisible flame were burning +in a brazier above the living mass of gesticulating arms and little +wildly moving faces, where the eyes and gaping mouths looked like black +dots. The noise did not cease but swelled up and recommenced in the +recesses of faraway avenues and among the people encamped under the +trees, till it spread on and on and attained its climax in the imperial +stand, where the empress herself had applauded. “Nana! Nana! Nana!” The +cry rose heavenward in the glorious sunlight, whose golden rain beat +fiercely on the dizzy heads of the multitude. + +Then Nana, looming large on the seat of her landau, fancied that it was +she whom they were applauding. For a moment or two she had stood devoid +of motion, stupefied by her triumph, gazing at the course as it was +invaded by so dense a flood of people that the turf became invisible +beneath the sea of black hats. By and by, when this crowd had become +somewhat less disorderly and a lane had been formed as far as the exit +and Nana was again applauded as she went off with Price hanging +lifelessly and vacantly over her neck, she smacked her thigh +energetically, lost all self-possession, triumphed in crude phrases: + +“Oh, by God, it’s me; it’s me. Oh, by God, what luck!” + +And, scarce knowing how to give expression to her overwhelming joy, she +hugged and kissed Louiset, whom she now discovered high in the air on +Bordenave’s shoulder. + +“Three minutes and fourteen seconds,” said the latter as he put his +watch back in his pocket. + +Nana kept hearing her name; the whole plain was echoing it back to her. +Her people were applauding her while she towered above them in the +sunlight, in the splendor of her starry hair and white-and-sky-blue +dress. Labordette, as he made off, had just announced to her a gain of +two thousand louis, for he had put her fifty on Nana at forty to one. +But the money stirred her less than this unforeseen victory, the fame +of which made her queen of Paris. All the other ladies were losers. +With a raging movement Rose Mignon had snapped her sunshade, and +Caroline Hequet and Clarisse and Simonne—nay, Lucy Stewart herself, +despite the presence of her son—were swearing low in their exasperation +at that great wench’s luck, while the Tricon, who had made the sign of +the cross at both start and finish, straightened up her tall form above +them, went into an ecstasy over her intuition and damned Nana +admiringly as became an experienced matron. + +Meanwhile round the landau the crush of men increased. The band of +Nana’s immediate followers had made a fierce uproar, and now Georges, +choking with emotion, continued shouting all by himself in breaking +tones. As the champagne had given out, Philippe, taking the footmen +with him, had run to the wine bars. Nana’s court was growing and +growing, and her present triumph caused many loiterers to join her. +Indeed, that movement which had made her carriage a center of +attraction to the whole field was now ending in an apotheosis, and +Queen Venus was enthroned amid suddenly maddened subjects. Bordenave, +behind her, was muttering oaths, for he yearned to her as a father. +Steiner himself had been reconquered—he had deserted Simonne and had +hoisted himself upon one of Nana’s carriage steps. When the champagne +had arrived, when she lifted her brimming glass, such applause burst +forth, and “Nana! Nana! Nana!” was so loudly repeated that the crowd +looked round in astonishment for the filly, nor could any tell whether +it was the horse or the woman that filled all hearts. + +While this was going on Mignon came hastening up in defiance of Rose’s +terrible frown. That confounded girl simply maddened him, and he wanted +to kiss her. Then after imprinting a paternal salute on both her +cheeks: + +“What bothers me,” he said, “is that now Rose is certainly going to +send the letter. She’s raging, too, fearfully.” + +“So much the better! It’ll do my business for me!” Nana let slip. + +But noting his utter astonishment, she hastily continued: + +“No, no, what am I saying? Indeed, I don’t rightly know what I’m saying +now! I’m drunk.” + +And drunk, indeed, drunk with joy, drunk with sunshine, she still +raised her glass on high and applauded herself. + +“To Nana! To Nana!” she cried amid a redoubled uproar of laughter and +bravoes, which little by little overspread the whole Hippodrome. + +The races were ending, and the Prix Vaublanc was run for. Carriages +began driving off one by one. Meanwhile, amid much disputing, the name +of Vandeuvres was again mentioned. It was quite evident now: for two +years past Vandeuvres had been preparing his final stroke and had +accordingly told Gresham to hold Nana in, while he had only brought +Lusignan forward in order to make play for the filly. The losers were +vexed; the winners shrugged their shoulders. After all, wasn’t the +thing permissible? An owner was free to run his stud in his own way. +Many others had done as he had! In fact, the majority thought +Vandeuvres had displayed great skill in raking in all he could get +about Nana through the agency of friends, a course of action which +explained the sudden shortening of the odds. People spoke of his having +laid two thousand louis on the horse, which, supposing the odds to be +thirty to one against, gave him twelve hundred thousand francs, an +amount so vast as to inspire respect and to excuse everything. + +But other rumors of a very serious nature were being whispered about: +they issued in the first instance from the enclosure, and the men who +returned thence were full of exact particulars. Voices were raised; an +atrocious scandal began to be openly canvassed. That poor fellow +Vandeuvres was done for; he had spoiled his splendid hit with a piece +of flat stupidity, an idiotic robbery, for he had commissioned +Marechal, a shady bookmaker, to lay two thousand louis on his account +against Lusignan, in order thereby to get back his thousand and odd +openly wagered louis. It was a miserable business, and it proved to be +the last rift necessary to the utter breakup of his fortune. The +bookmaker being thus warned that the favorite would not win, had +realized some sixty thousand francs over the horse. Only Labordette, +for lack of exact and detailed instructions, had just then gone to him +to put two hundred louis on Nana, which the bookmaker, in his ignorance +of the stroke actually intended, was still quoting at fifty to one +against. Cleared of one hundred thousand francs over the filly and a +loser to the tune of forty thousand, Marechal, who felt the world +crumbling under his feet, had suddenly divined the situation when he +saw the count and Labordette talking together in front of the enclosure +just after the race was over. Furious, as became an ex-coachman of the +count’s, and brutally frank as only a cheated man can be, he had just +made a frightful scene in public, had told the whole story in atrocious +terms and had thrown everyone into angry excitement. It was further +stated that the stewards were about to meet. + +Nana, whom Philippe and Georges were whisperingly putting in possession +of the facts, gave vent to a series of reflections and yet ceased not +to laugh and drink. After all, it was quite likely; she remembered such +things, and then that Marechal had a dirty, hangdog look. Nevertheless, +she was still rather doubtful when Labordette appeared. He was very +white. + +“Well?” she asked in a low voice. + +“Bloody well smashed up!” he replied simply. + +And he shrugged his shoulders. That Vandeuvres was a mere child! She +made a bored little gesture. + +That evening at the Bal Mabille Nana obtained a colossal success. When +toward ten o’clock she made her appearance, the uproar was afready +formidable. That classic night of madness had brought together all that +was young and pleasure loving, and now this smart world was wallowing +in the coarseness and imbecility of the servants’ hall. There was a +fierce crush under the festoons of gas lamps, and men in evening coats +and women in outrageous low-necked old toilets, which they did not mind +soiling, were howling and surging to and fro under the maddening +influence of a vast drunken fit. At a distance of thirty paces the +brass instruments of the orchestra were inaudible. Nobody was dancing. +Stupid witticisms, repeated no one knew why, were going the round of +the various groups. People were straining after wit without succeeding +in being funny. Seven women, imprisoned in the cloakroom, were crying +to be set free. A shallot had been found, put up to auction and knocked +down at two louis. Just then Nana arrived, still wearing her +blue-and-white racecourse costume, and amid a thunder of applause the +shallot was presented to her. People caught hold of her in her own +despite, and three gentlemen bore her triumphantly into the garden, +across ruined grassplots and ravaged masses of greenery. As the +bandstand presented an obstacle to her advance, it was taken by storm, +and chairs and music stands were smashed. A paternal police organized +the disorder. + +It was only on Tuesday that Nana recovered from the excitements of +victory. That morning she was chatting with Mme Lerat, the old lady +having come in to bring her news of Louiset, whom the open air had +upset. A long story, which was occupying the attention of all Paris, +interested her beyond measure. Vandeuvres, after being warned off all +racecourses and posted at the Cercle Imperial on the very evening after +the disaster, had set fire to his stable on the morrow and had burned +himself and his horses to death. + +“He certainly told me he was going to,” the young woman kept saying. +“That man was a regular maniac! Oh, how they did frighten me when they +told me about it yesterday evening! You see, he might easily have +murdered me some fine night. And besides, oughtn’t he to have given me +a hint about his horse? I should at any rate have made my fortune! He +said to Labordette that if I knew about the matter I would immediately +inform my hairdresser and a whole lot of other men. How polite, eh? Oh +dear, no, I certainly can’t grieve much for him.” + +After some reflection she had grown very angry. Just then Labordette +came in; he had seen about her bets and was now the bearer of some +forty thousand francs. This only added to her bad temper, for she ought +to have gained a million. Labordette, who during the whole of this +episode had been pretending entire innocence, abandoned Vandeuvres in +decisive terms. Those old families, he opined, were worn out and apt to +make a stupid ending. + +“Oh dear no!” said Nana. “It isn’t stupid to burn oneself in one’s +stable as he did. For my part, I think he made a dashing finish; but, +oh, you know, I’m not defending that story about him and Marechal. It’s +too silly. Just to think that Blanche has had the cheek to want to lay +the blame of it on me! I said to her: ‘Did I tell him to steal?’ Don’t +you think one can ask a man for money without urging him to commit +crime? If he had said to me, ‘I’ve got nothing left,’ I should have +said to him, ‘All right, let’s part.’ And the matter wouldn’t have gone +further.” + +“Just so,” said the aunt gravely “When men are obstinate about a thing, +so much the worse for them!” + +“But as to the merry little finish up, oh, that was awfully smart!” +continued Nana. “It appears to have been terrible enough to give you +the shudders! He sent everybody away and boxed himself up in the place +with a lot of petroleum. And it blazed! You should have seen it! Just +think, a great big affair, almost all made of wood and stuffed with hay +and straw! The flames simply towered up, and the finest part of the +business was that the horses didn’t want to be roasted. They could be +heard plunging, throwing themselves against the doors, crying aloud +just like human beings. Yes, people haven’t got rid of the horror of it +yet.” + +Labordette let a low, incredulous whistle escape him. For his part, he +did not believe in the death of Vandeuvres. Somebody had sworn he had +seen him escaping through a window. He had set fire to his stable in a +fit of aberration, but when it had begun to grow too warm it must have +sobered him. A man so besotted about the women and so utterly worn out +could not possibly die so pluckily. + +Nana listened in her disillusionment and could only remark: + +“Oh, the poor wretch, it was so beautiful!” + + + + + CHAPTER XII + + +Toward one in the morning, in the great bed of the Venice point +draperies, Nana and the count lay still awake. He had returned to her +that evening after a three days sulking fit. The room, which was dimly +illumined by a lamp, seemed to slumber amid a warm, damp odor of love, +while the furniture, with its white lacquer and silver incrustations, +loomed vague and wan through the gloom. A curtain had been drawn to, so +that the bed lay flooded with shadow. A sigh became audible; then a +kiss broke the silence, and Nana, slipping off the coverlet, sat for a +moment or two, barelegged, on the edge of the bed. The count let his +head fall back on the pillow and remained in darkness. + +“Dearest, you believe in the good God, don’t you?” she queried after +some moments’ reflection. Her face was serious; she had been overcome +by pious terrors on quitting her lover’s arms. + +Since morning, indeed, she had been complaining of feeling +uncomfortable, and all her stupid notions, as she phrased it, notions +about death and hell, were secretly torturing her. From time to time +she had nights such as these, during which childish fears and atrocious +fancies would thrill her with waking nightmares. She continued: + +“I say, d’you think I shall go to heaven?” + +And with that she shivered, while the count, in his surprise at her +putting such singular questions at such a moment, felt his old +religious remorse returning upon him. Then with her chemise slipping +from her shoulders and her hair unpinned, she again threw herself upon +his breast, sobbing and clinging to him as she did so. + +“I’m afraid of dying! I’m afraid of dying!” He had all the trouble in +the world to disengage himself. Indeed, he was himself afraid of giving +in to the sudden madness of this woman clinging to his body in her +dread of the Invisible. Such dread is contagious, and he reasoned with +her. Her conduct was perfect—she had only to conduct herself well in +order one day to merit pardon. But she shook her head. Doubtless she +was doing no one any harm; nay, she was even in the constant habit of +wearing a medal of the Virgin, which she showed to him as it hung by a +red thread between her breasts. Only it had been foreordained that all +unmarried women who held conversation with men would go to hell. Scraps +of her catechism recurred to her remembrance. Ah, if one only knew for +certain, but, alas, one was sure of nothing; nobody ever brought back +any information, and then, truly, it would be stupid to bother oneself +about things if the priests were talking foolishness all the time. +Nevertheless, she religiously kissed her medal, which was still warm +from contact with her skin, as though by way of charm against death, +the idea of which filled her with icy horror. Muffat was obliged to +accompany her into the dressing room, for she shook at the idea of +being alone there for one moment, even though she had left the door +open. When he had lain down again she still roamed about the room, +visiting its several corners and starting and shivering at the +slightest noise. A mirror stopped her, and as of old she lapsed into +obvious contemplation of her nakedness. But the sight of her breast, +her waist and her thighs only doubled her terror, and she ended by +feeling with both hands very slowly over the bones of her face. + +“You’re ugly when you’re dead,” she said in deliberate tones. + +And she pressed her cheeks, enlarging her eyes and pushing down her +jaw, in order to see how she would look. Thus disfigured, she turned +toward the count. + +“Do look! My head’ll be quite small, it will!” + +At this he grew vexed. + +“You’re mad; come to bed!” + +He fancied he saw her in a grave, emaciated by a century of sleep, and +he joined his hands and stammered a prayer. It was some time ago that +the religious sense had reconquered him, and now his daily access of +faith had again assumed the apoplectic intensity which was wont to +leave him well-nigh stunned. The joints of his fingers used to crack, +and he would repeat without cease these words only: “My God, my God, my +God!” It was the cry of his impotence, the cry of that sin against +which, though his damnation was certain, he felt powerless to strive. +When Nana returned she found him hidden beneath the bedclothes; he was +haggard; he had dug his nails into his bosom, and his eyes stared +upward as though in search of heaven. And with that she started to weep +again. Then they both embraced, and their teeth chattered they knew not +why, as the same imbecile obsession over-mastered them. They had +already passed a similar night, but on this occasion the thing was +utterly idiotic, as Nana declared when she ceased to be frightened. She +suspected something, and this caused her to question the count in a +prudent sort of way. It might be that Rose Mignon had sent the famous +letter! But that was not the case; it was sheer fright, nothing more, +for he was still ignorant whether he was a cuckold or no. + +Two days later, after a fresh disappearance, Muffat presented himself +in the morning, a time of day at which he never came. He was livid; his +eyes were red and his whole man still shaken by a great internal +struggle. But Zoé, being scared herself, did not notice his troubled +state. She had run to meet him and now began crying: + +“Oh, monsieur, do come in! Madame nearly died yesterday evening!” + +And when he asked for particulars: + +“Something it’s impossible to believe has happened—a miscarriage, +monsieur.” + +Nana had been in the family way for the past three months. For long she +had simply thought herself out of sorts, and Dr Boutarel had himself +been in doubt. But when afterward he made her a decisive announcement, +she felt so bored thereby that she did all she possibly could to +disguise her condition. Her nervous terrors, her dark humors, sprang to +some extent from this unfortunate state of things, the secret of which +she kept very shamefacedly, as became a courtesan mother who is obliged +to conceal her plight. The thing struck her as a ridiculous accident, +which made her appear small in her own eyes and would, had it been +known, have led people to chaff her. + +“A poor joke, eh?” she said. “Bad luck, too, certainly.” + +She was necessarily very sharp set when she thought her last hour had +come. There was no end to her surprise, too; her sexual economy seemed +to her to have got out of order; it produced children then even when +one did not want them and when one employed it for quite other +purposes! Nature drove her to exasperation; this appearance of serious +motherhood in a career of pleasure, this gift of life amid all the +deaths she was spreading around, exasperated her. Why could one not +dispose of oneself as fancy dictated, without all this fuss? And whence +had this brat come? She could not even suggest a father. Ah, dear +heaven, the man who made him would have a splendid notion had he kept +him in his own hands, for nobody asked for him; he was in everybody’s +way, and he would certainly not have much happiness in life! + +Meanwhile Zoé described the catastrophe. + +“Madame was seized with colic toward four o’clock. When she didn’t come +back out of the dressing room I went in and found her lying stretched +on the floor in a faint. Yes, monsieur, on the floor in a pool of +blood, as though she had been murdered. Then I understood, you see. I +was furious; Madame might quite well have confided her trouble to me. +As it happened, Monsieur Georges was there, and he helped me to lift +her up, and directly a miscarriage was mentioned he felt ill in his +turn! Oh, it’s true I’ve had the hump since yesterday!” + +In fact, the house seemed utterly upset. All the servants were +galloping upstairs, downstairs and through the rooms. Georges had +passed the night on an armchair in the drawing room. It was he who had +announced the news to Madame’s friends at that hour of the evening when +Madame was in the habit of receiving. He had still been very pale, and +he had told his story very feelingly, and as though stupefied. Steiner, +La Faloise, Philippe and others, besides, had presented themselves, and +at the end of the lad’s first phrase they burst into exclamations. The +thing was impossible! It must be a farce! After which they grew serious +and gazed with an embarrassed expression at her bedroom door. They +shook their heads; it was no laughing matter. + +Till midnight a dozen gentlemen had stood talking in low voices in +front of the fireplace. All were friends; all were deeply exercised by +the same idea of paternity. They seemed to be mutually excusing +themselves, and they looked as confused as if they had done something +clumsy. Eventually, however, they put a bold face on the matter. It had +nothing to do with them: the fault was hers! What a stunner that Nana +was, eh? One would never have believed her capable of such a fake! And +with that they departed one by one, walking on tiptoe, as though in a +chamber of death where you cannot laugh. + +“Come up all the same, monsieur,” said Zoé to Muffat. “Madame is much +better and will see you. We are expecting the doctor, who promised to +come back this morning.” + +The lady’s maid had persuaded Georges to go back home to sleep, and +upstairs in the drawing room only Satin remained. She lay stretched on +a divan, smoking a cigarette and scanning the ceiling. Amid the +household scare which had followed the accident she had been white with +rage, had shrugged her shoulders violently and had made ferocious +remarks. Accordingly, when Zoé was passing in front of her and telling +Monsieur that poor, dear Madame had suffered a great deal: + +“That’s right; it’ll teach him!” said Satin curtly. + +They turned round in surprise, but she had not moved a muscle; her eyes +were still turned toward the ceiling, and her cigarette was still +wedged tightly between her lips. + +“Dear me, you’re charming, you are!” said Zoé. + +But Satin sat up, looked savagely at the count and once more hurled her +remark at him. + +“That’s right; it’ll teach him!” + +And she lay down again and blew forth a thin jet of smoke, as though +she had no interest in present events and were resolved not to meddle +in any of them. No, it was all too silly! + +Zoé, however, introduced Muffat into the bedroom, where a scent of +ether lingered amid warm, heavy silence, scarce broken by the dull roll +of occasional carriages in the Avenue de Villiers. Nana, looking very +white on her pillow, was lying awake with wide-open, meditative eyes. +She smiled when she saw the count but did not move. + +“Ah, dear pet!” she slowly murmured. “I really thought I should never +see you again.” + +Then as he leaned forward to kiss her on the hair, she grew tender +toward him and spoke frankly about the child, as though he were its +father. + +“I never dared tell you; I felt so happy about it! Oh, I used to dream +about it; I should have liked to be worthy of you! And now there’s +nothing left. Ah well, perhaps that’s best. I don’t want to bring a +stumbling block into your life.” + +Astounded by this story of paternity, he began stammering vague +phrases. He had taken a chair and had sat down by the bed, leaning one +arm on the coverlet. Then the young woman noticed his wild expression, +the blood reddening his eyes, the fever that set his lips aquiver. + +“What’s the matter then?” she asked. “You’re ill too.” + +“No,” he answered with extreme difficulty. + +She gazed at him with a profound expression. Then she signed to Zoé to +retire, for the latter was lingering round arranging the medicine +bottles. And when they were alone she drew him down to her and again +asked: + +“What’s the matter with you, darling? The tears are ready to burst from +your eyes—I can see that quite well. Well now, speak out; you’ve come +to tell me something.” + +“No, no, I swear I haven’t,” he blurted out. But he was choking with +suffering, and this sickroom, into which he had suddenly entered +unawares, so worked on his feelings that he burst out sobbing and +buried his face in the bedclothes to smother the violence of his grief. +Nana understood. Rose Mignon had most assuredly decided to send the +letter. She let him weep for some moments, and he was shaken by +convulsions so fierce that the bed trembled under her. At length in +accents of motherly compassion she queried: + +“You’ve had bothers at your home?” + +He nodded affirmatively. She paused anew, and then very low: + +“Then you know all?” + +He nodded assent. And a heavy silence fell over the chamber of +suffering. The night before, on his return from a party given by the +empress, he had received the letter Sabine had written her lover. After +an atrocious night passed in the meditation of vengeance he had gone +out in the morning in order to resist a longing which prompted him to +kill his wife. Outside, under a sudden, sweet influence of a fine June +morning, he had lost the thread of his thoughts and had come to Nana’s, +as he always came at terrible moments in his life. There only he gave +way to his misery, for he felt a cowardly joy at the thought that she +would console him. + +“Now look here, be calm!” the young woman continued, becoming at the +same time extremely kind. “I’ve known it a long time, but it was +certainly not I that would have opened your eyes. You remember you had +your doubts last year, but then things arranged themselves, owing to my +prudence. In fact, you wanted proofs. The deuce, you’ve got one today, +and I know it’s hard lines. Nevertheless, you must look at the matter +quietly: you’re not dishonored because it’s happened.” + +He had left off weeping. A sense of shame restrained him from saying +what he wanted to, although he had long ago slipped into the most +intimate confessions about his household. She had to encourage him. +Dear me, she was a woman; she could understand everything. When in a +dull voice he exclaimed: + +“You’re ill. What’s the good of tiring you? It was stupid of me to have +come. I’m going—” + +“No,” she answered briskly enough. “Stay! Perhaps I shall be able to +give you some good advice. Only don’t make me talk too much; the +medical man’s forbidden it.” + +He had ended by rising, and he was now walking up and down the room. +Then she questioned him: + +“Now what are you going to do? + +“I’m going to box the man’s ears—by heavens, yes!” + +She pursed up her lips disapprovingly. + +“That’s not very wise. And about your wife?” + +“I shall go to law; I’ve proofs.” + +“Not at all wise, my dear boy. It’s stupid even. You know I shall never +let you do that!” + +And in her feeble voice she showed him decisively how useless and +scandalous a duel and a trial would be. He would be a nine days’ +newspaper sensation; his whole existence would be at stake, his peace +of mind, his high situation at court, the honor of his name, and all +for what? That he might have the laughers against him. + +“What will it matter?” he cried. “I shall have had my revenge.” + +“My pet,” she said, “in a business of that kind one never has one’s +revenge if one doesn’t take it directly.” + +He paused and stammered. He was certainly no poltroon, but he felt that +she was right. An uneasy feeling was growing momentarily stronger +within him, a poor, shameful feeling which softened his anger now that +it was at its hottest. Moreover, in her frank desire to tell him +everything, she dealt him a fresh blow. + +“And d’you want to know what’s annoying you, dearest? Why, that you are +deceiving your wife yourself. You don’t sleep away from home for +nothing, eh? Your wife must have her suspicions. Well then, how can you +blame her? She’ll tell you that you’ve set her the example, and that’ll +shut you up. There, now, that’s why you’re stamping about here instead +of being at home murdering both of ’em.” + +Muffat had again sunk down on the chair; he was overwhelmed by these +home thrusts. She broke off and took breath, and then in a low voice: + +“Oh, I’m a wreck! Do help me sit up a bit. I keep slipping down, and my +head’s too low.” + +When he had helped her she sighed and felt more comfortable. And with +that she harked back to the subject. What a pretty sight a divorce suit +would be! Couldn’t he imagine the advocate of the countess amusing +Paris with his remarks about Nana? Everything would have come out—her +fiasco at the Variétés, her house, her manner of life. Oh dear, no! She +had no wish for all that amount of advertising. Some dirty women might, +perhaps, have driven him to it for the sake of getting a thundering big +advertisement, but she—she desired his happiness before all else. She +had drawn him down toward her and, after passing her arm around his +neck, was nursing his head close to hers on the edge of the pillow. And +with that she whispered softly: + +“Listen, my pet, you shall make it up with your wife.” + +But he rebelled at this. It could never be! His heart was nigh breaking +at the thought; it was too shameful. Nevertheless, she kept tenderly +insisting. + +“You shall make it up with your wife. Come, come, you don’t want to +hear all the world saying that I’ve tempted you away from your home? I +should have too vile a reputation! What would people think of me? Only +swear that you’ll always love me, because the moment you go with +another woman—” + +Tears choked her utterance, and he intervened with kisses and said: + +“You’re beside yourself; it’s impossible!” + +“Yes, yes,” she rejoined, “you must. But I’ll be reasonable. After all, +she’s your wife, and it isn’t as if you were to play me false with the +firstcomer.” + +And she continued in this strain, giving him the most excellent advice. +She even spoke of God, and the count thought he was listening to M. +Venot, when that old gentleman endeavored to sermonize him out of the +grasp of sin. Nana, however, did not speak of breaking it off entirely: +she preached indulgent good nature and suggested that, as became a +dear, nice old fellow, he should divide his attentions between his wife +and his mistress, so that they would all enjoy a quiet life, devoid of +any kind of annoyance, something, in fact, in the nature of a happy +slumber amid the inevitable miseries of existence. Their life would be +nowise changed: he would still be the little man of her heart. Only he +would come to her a bit less often and would give the countess the +nights not passed with her. She had got to the end of her strength and +left off, speaking under her breath: + +“After that I shall feel I’ve done a good action, and you’ll love me +all the more.” + +Silence reigned. She had closed her eyes and lay wan upon her pillow. +The count was patiently listening to her, not wishing her to tire +herself. A whole minute went by before she reopened her eyes and +murmured: + +“Besides, how about the money? Where would you get the money from if +you must grow angry and go to law? Labordette came for the bill +yesterday. As for me, I’m out of everything; I have nothing to put on +now.” + +Then she shut her eyes again and looked like one dead. A shadow of deep +anguish had passed over Muffat’s brow. Under the present stroke he had +since yesterday forgotten the money troubles from which he knew not how +to escape. Despite formal promises to the contrary, the bill for a +hundred thousand francs had been put in circulation after being once +renewed, and Labordette, pretending to be very miserable about it, +threw all the blame on Francis, declaring that he would never again mix +himself up in such a matter with an uneducated man. It was necessary to +pay, for the count would never have allowed his signature to be +protested. Then in addition to Nana’s novel demands, his home expenses +were extraordinarily confused. On their return from Les Fondettes the +countess had suddenly manifested a taste for luxury, a longing for +worldly pleasures, which was devouring their fortune. Her ruinous +caprices began to be talked about. Their whole household management was +altered, and five hundred thousand francs were squandered in utterly +transforming the old house in the Rue Miromesnil. Then there were +extravagantly magnificent gowns and large sums disappeared, squandered +or perhaps given away, without her ever dreaming of accounting for +them. Twice Muffat ventured to mention this, for he was anxious to know +how the money went, but on these occasions she had smiled and gazed at +him with so singular an expression that he dared not interrogate her +further for fear of a too-unmistakable answer. If he were taking +Daguenet as son-in-law as a gift from Nana it was chiefly with the hope +of being able to reduce Estelle’s dower to two hundred thousand francs +and of then being free to make any arrangements he chose about the +remainder with a young man who was still rejoicing in this unexpected +match. + +Nevertheless, for the last week, under the immediate necessity of +finding Labordette’s hundred thousand francs, Muffat had been able to +hit on but one expedient, from which he recoiled. This was that he +should sell the Bordes, a magnificent property valued at half a +million, which an uncle had recently left the countess. However, her +signature was necessary, and she herself, according to the terms of the +deed, could not alienate the property without the count’s +authorization. The day before he had indeed resolved to talk to his +wife about this signature. And now everything was ruined; at such a +moment he would never accept of such a compromise. This reflection +added bitterness to the frightful disgrace of the adultery. He fully +understood what Nana was asking for, since in that ever-growing +self-abandonment which prompted him to put her in possession of all his +secrets, he had complained to her of his position and had confided to +her the tiresome difficulty he was in with regard to the signature of +the countess. + +Nana, however, did not seem to insist. She did not open her eyes again, +and, seeing her so pale, he grew frightened and made her inhale a +little ether. She gave a sigh and without mentioning Daguenet asked him +some questions. + +“When is the marriage?” + +“We sign the contract on Tuesday, in five days’ time,” he replied. + +Then still keeping her eyelids closed, as though she were speaking from +the darkness and silence of her brain: + +“Well then, pet, see to what you’ve got to do. As far as I’m concerned, +I want everybody to be happy and comfortable.” + +He took her hand and soothed her. Yes, he would see about it; the +important thing now was for her to rest. And the revolt within him +ceased, for this warm and slumberous sickroom, with its all-pervading +scent of ether, had ended by lulling him into a mere longing for +happiness and peace. All his manhood, erewhile maddened by wrong, had +departed out of him in the neighborhood of that warm bed and that +suffering woman, whom he was nursing under the influence of her +feverish heat and of remembered delights. He leaned over her and +pressed her in a close embrace, while despite her unmoved features her +lips wore a delicate, victorious smile. But Dr Boutarel made his +appearance. + +“Well, and how’s this dear child?” he said familiarly to Muffat, whom +he treated as her husband. “The deuce, but we’ve made her talk!” + +The doctor was a good-looking man and still young. He had a superb +practice among the gay world, and being very merry by nature and ready +to laugh and joke in the friendliest way with the demimonde ladies with +whom, however, he never went farther, he charged very high fees and got +them paid with the greatest punctuality. Moreover, he would put himself +out to visit them on the most trivial occasions, and Nana, who was +always trembling at the fear of death, would send and fetch him two or +three times a week and would anxiously confide to him little infantile +ills which he would cure to an accompaniment of amusing gossip and +harebrained anecdotes. The ladies all adored him. But this time the +little ill was serious. + +Muffat withdrew, deeply moved. Seeing his poor Nana so very weak, his +sole feeling was now one of tenderness. As he was leaving the room she +motioned him back and gave him her forehead to kiss. In a low voice and +with a playfully threatening look she said: + +“You know what I’ve allowed you to do. Go back to your wife, or it’s +all over and I shall grow angry!” + +The Countess Sabine had been anxious that her daughter’s wedding +contract should be signed on a Tuesday in order that the renovated +house, where the paint was still scarcely dry, might be reopened with a +grand entertainment. Five hundred invitations had been issued to people +in all kinds of sets. On the morning of the great day the upholsterers +were still nailing up hangings, and toward nine at night, just when the +lusters were going to be lit, the architect, accompanied by the eager +and interested countess, was given his final orders. + +It was one of those spring festivities which have a delicate charm of +their own. Owing to the warmth of the June nights, it had become +possible to open the two doors of the great drawing room and to extend +the dancing floor to the sanded paths of the garden. When the first +guests arrived and were welcomed at the door by the count and the +countess they were positively dazzled. One had only to recall to mind +the drawing room of the past, through which flitted the icy, ghostly +presence of the Countess Muffat, that antique room full of an +atmosphere of religious austerity with its massive First Empire +mahogany furniture, its yellow velvet hangings, its moldy ceiling +through which the damp had soaked. Now from the very threshold of the +entrance hall mosaics set off with gold were glittering under the +lights of lofty candelabras, while the marble staircase unfurled, as it +were, a delicately chiseled balustrade. Then, too, the drawing room +looked splendid; it was hung with Genoa velvet, and a huge decorative +design by Boucher covered the ceiling, a design for which the architect +had paid a hundred thousand francs at the sale of the Château de +Dampierre. The lusters and the crystal ornaments lit up a luxurious +display of mirrors and precious furniture. It seemed as though Sabine’s +long chair, that solitary red silk chair, whose soft contours were so +marked in the old days, had grown and spread till it filled the whole +great house with voluptuous idleness and a sense of tense enjoyment not +less fierce and hot than a fire which has been long in burning up. + +People were already dancing. The band, which had been located in the +garden, in front of one of the open windows, was playing a waltz, the +supple rhythm of which came softly into the house through the +intervening night air. And the garden seemed to spread away and away, +bathed in transparent shadow and lit by Venetian lamps, while in a +purple tent pitched on the edge of a lawn a table for refreshments had +been established. The waltz, which was none other than the quaint, +vulgar one in the Blonde Venus, with its laughing, blackguard lilt, +penetrated the old hotel with sonorous waves of sound and sent a +feverish thrill along its walls. It was as though some fleshly wind had +come up out of the common street and were sweeping the relics of a +vanished epoch out of the proud old dwelling, bearing away the Muffats’ +past, the age of honor and religious faith which had long slumbered +beneath the lofty ceilings. + +Meanwhile near the hearth, in their accustomed places, the old friends +of the count’s mother were taking refuge. They felt out of their +element—they were dazzled and they formed a little group amid the +slowly invading mob. Mme du Joncquoy, unable to recognize the various +rooms, had come in through the dining saloon. Mme Chantereau was gazing +with a stupefied expression at the garden, which struck her as immense. +Presently there was a sound of low voices, and the corner gave vent to +all sorts of bitter reflections. + +“I declare,” murmured Mme Chantereau, “just fancy if the countess were +to return to life. Why, can you not imagine her coming in among all +these crowds of people! And then there’s all this gilding and this +uproar! It’s scandalous!” + +“Sabine’s out of her senses,” replied Mme du Joncquoy. “Did you see her +at the door? Look, you can catch sight of her here; she’s wearing all +her diamonds.” + +For a moment or two they stood up in order to take a distant view of +the count and countess. Sabine was in a white dress trimmed with +marvelous English point lace. She was triumphant in beauty; she looked +young and gay, and there was a touch of intoxication in her continual +smile. Beside her stood Muffat, looking aged and a little pale, but he, +too, was smiling in his calm and worthy fashion. + +“And just to think that he was once master,” continued Mme Chantereau, +“and that not a single rout seat would have come in without his +permission! Ah well, she’s changed all that; it’s her house now. D’you +remember when she did not want to do her drawing room up again? She’s +done up the entire house.” + +But the ladies grew silent, for Mme de Chezelles was entering the room, +followed by a band of young men. She was going into ecstasies and +marking her approval with a succession of little exclamations. + +“Oh, it’s delicious, exquisite! What taste!” And she shouted back to +her followers: + +“Didn’t I say so? There’s nothing equal to these old places when one +takes them in hand. They become dazzling! It’s quite in the grand +seventeenth-century style. Well, NOW she can receive.” + +The two old ladies had again sat down and with lowered tones began +talking about the marriage, which was causing astonishment to a good +many people. Estelle had just passed by them. She was in a pink silk +gown and was as pale, flat, silent and virginal as ever. She had +accepted Daguenet very quietly and now evinced neither joy nor sadness, +for she was still as cold and white as on those winter evenings when +she used to put logs on the fire. This whole fête given in her honor, +these lights and flowers and tunes, left her quite unmoved. + +“An adventurer,” Mme du Joncquoy was saying. “For my part, I’ve never +seen him.” + +“Take care, here he is,” whispered Mme Chantereau. + +Daguenet, who had caught sight of Mme Hugon and her sons, had eagerly +offered her his arm. He laughed and was effusively affectionate toward +her, as though she had had a hand in his sudden good fortune. + +“Thank you,” she said, sitting down near the fireplace. “You see, it’s +my old corner.” + +“You know him?” queried Mme du Joncquoy, when Daguenet had gone. +“Certainly I do—a charming young man. Georges is very fond of him. Oh, +they’re a most respected family.” + +And the good lady defended him against the mute hostility which was +apparent to her. His father, held in high esteem by Louis Philippe, had +been a PREFET up to the time of his death. The son had been a little +dissipated, perhaps; they said he was ruined, but in any case, one of +his uncles, who was a great landowner, was bound to leave him his +fortune. The ladies, however, shook their heads, while Mme Hugon, +herself somewhat embarrassed, kept harking back to the extreme +respectability of his family. She was very much fatigued and complained +of her feet. For some months she had been occupying her house in the +Rue Richelieu, having, as she said, a whole lot of things on hand. A +look of sorrow overshadowed her smiling, motherly face. + +“Never mind,” Mme Chantereau concluded. “Estelle could have aimed at +something much better.” + +There was a flourish. A quadrille was about to begin, and the crowd +flowed back to the sides of the drawing room in order to leave the +floor clear. Bright dresses flitted by and mingled together amid the +dark evening coats, while the intense light set jewels flashing and +white plumes quivering and lilacs and roses gleaming and flowering amid +the sea of many heads. It was already very warm, and a penetrating +perfume was exhaled from light tulles and crumpled silks and satins, +from which bare shoulders glimmered white, while the orchestra played +its lively airs. Through open doors ranges of seated ladies were +visible in the background of adjoining rooms; they flashed a discreet +smile; their eyes glowed, and they made pretty mouths as the breath of +their fans caressed their faces. And guests still kept arriving, and a +footman announced their names while gentlemen advanced slowly amid the +surrounding groups, striving to find places for ladies, who hung with +difficulty on their arms, and stretching forward in quest of some +far-off vacant armchair. The house kept filling, and crinolined skirts +got jammed together with a little rustling sound. There were corners +where an amalgam of laces, bunches and puffs would completely bar the +way, while all the other ladies stood waiting, politely resigned and +imperturbably graceful, as became people who were made to take part in +these dazzling crushes. Meanwhile across the garden couples, who had +been glad to escape from the close air of the great drawing room, were +wandering away under the roseate gleam of the Venetian lamps, and +shadowy dresses kept flitting along the edge of the lawn, as though in +rhythmic time to the music of the quadrille, which sounded sweet and +distant behind the trees. + +Steiner had just met with Foucarmont and La Faloise, who were drinking +a glass of champagne in front of the buffet. + +“It’s beastly smart,” said La Faloise as he took a survey of the purple +tent, which was supported by gilded lances. “You might fancy yourself +at the Gingerbread Fair. That’s it—the Gingerbread Fair!” + +In these days he continually affected a bantering tone, posing as the +young man who has abused every mortal thing and now finds nothing worth +taking seriously. + +“How surprised poor Vandeuvres would be if he were to come back,” +murmured Foucarmont. “You remember how he simply nearly died of boredom +in front of the fire in there. Egad, it was no laughing matter.” + +“Vandeuvres—oh, let him be. He’s a gone coon!” La Faloise disdainfully +rejoined. “He jolly well choused himself, he did, if he thought he +could make us sit up with his roast-meat story! Not a soul mentions it +now. Blotted out, done for, buried—that’s what’s the matter with +Vandeuvres! Here’s to the next man!” + +Then as Steiner shook hands with him: + +“You know Nana’s just arrived. Oh, my boys, it was a state entry. It +was too brilliant for anything! First of all she kissed the countess. +Then when the children came up she gave them her blessing and said to +Daguenet, ‘Listen, Paul, if you go running after the girls you’ll have +to answer for it to me.’ What, d’you mean to say you didn’t see that? +Oh, it WAS smart. A success, if you like!” + +The other two listened to him, openmouthed, and at last burst out +laughing. He was enchanted and thought himself in his best vein. + +“You thought it had really happened, eh? Confound it, since Nana’s made +the match! Anyway, she’s one of the family.” + +The young Hugons were passing, and Philippe silenced him. And with that +they chatted about the marriage from the male point of view. Georges +was vexed with La Faloise for telling an anecdote. Certainly Nana had +fubbed off on Muffat one of her old flames as son-in-law; only it was +not true that she had been to bed with Daguenet as lately as yesterday. +Foucarmont made bold to shrug his shoulders. Could anyone ever tell +when Nana was in bed with anyone? But Georges grew excited and answered +with an “I can tell, sir!” which set them all laughing. In a word, as +Steiner put it, it was all a very funny kettle of fish! + +The buffet was gradually invaded by the crowd, and, still keeping +together, they vacated their positions there. La Faloise stared +brazenly at the women as though he believed himself to be Mabille. At +the end of a garden walk the little band was surprised to find M. Venot +busily conferring with Daguenet, and with that they indulged in some +facile pleasantries which made them very merry. He was confessing him, +giving him advice about the bridal night! Presently they returned in +front of one of the drawing-room doors, within which a polka was +sending the couples whirling to and fro till they seemed to leave a +wake behind them among the crowd of men who remained standing about. In +the slight puffs of air which came from outside the tapers flared up +brilliantly, and when a dress floated by in time to the rat-tat of the +measure, a little gust of wind cooled the sparkling heat which streamed +down from the lusters. + +“Egad, they’re not cold in there!” muttered La Faloise. + +They blinked after emerging from the mysterious shadows of the garden. +Then they pointed out to one another the Marquis de Chouard where he +stood apart, his tall figure towering over the bare shoulders which +surrounded him. His face was pale and very stern, and beneath its crown +of scant white hair it wore an expression of lofty dignity. Scandalized +by Count Muffat’s conduct, he had publicly broken off all intercourse +with him and was by way of never again setting foot in the house. If he +had consented to put in an appearance that evening it was because his +granddaughter had begged him to. But he disapproved of her marriage and +had inveighed indignantly against the way in which the government +classes were being disorganized by the shameful compromises engendered +by modern debauchery. + +“Ah, it’s the end of all things,” Mme du Joncquoy whispered in Mme +Chantereau’s ear as she sat near the fireplace. “That bad woman has +bewitched the unfortunate man. And to think we once knew him such a +true believer, such a noblehearted gentleman!” + +“It appears he is ruining himself,” continued Mme Chantereau. “My +husband has had a bill of his in his hands. At present he’s living in +that house in the Avenue de Villiers; all Paris is talking about it. +Good heavens! I don’t make excuses for Sabine, but you must admit that +he gives her infinite cause of complaint, and, dear me, if she throws +money out of the window, too—” + +“She does not only throw money,” interrupted the other. “In fact, +between them, there’s no knowing where they’ll stop; they’ll end in the +mire, my dear.” + +But just then a soft voice interrupted them. It was M. Venot, and he +had come and seated himself behind them, as though anxious to disappear +from view. Bending forward, he murmured: + +“Why despair? God manifests Himself when all seems lost.” + +He was assisting peacefully at the downfall of the house which he +erewhile governed. Since his stay at Les Fondettes he had been allowing +the madness to increase, for he was very clearly aware of his own +powerlessness. He had, indeed, accepted the whole position—the count’s +wild passion for Nana, Fauchery’s presence, even Estelle’s marriage +with Daguenet. What did these things matter? He even became more supple +and mysterious, for he nursed a hope of being able to gain the same +mastery over the young as over the disunited couple, and he knew that +great disorders lead to great conversions. Providence would have its +opportunity. + +“Our friend,” he continued in a low voice, “is always animated by the +best religious sentiments. He has given me the sweetest proofs of +this.” + +“Well,” said Mme du Joncquoy, “he ought first to have made it up with +his wife.” + +“Doubtless. At this moment I have hopes that the reconciliation will be +shortly effected.” + +Whereupon the two old ladies questioned him. + +But he grew very humble again. “Heaven,” he said, “must be left to +act.” His whole desire in bringing the count and the countess together +again was to avoid a public scandal, for religion tolerated many faults +when the proprieties were respected. + +“In fact,” resumed Mme du Joncquoy, “you ought to have prevented this +union with an adventurer.” + +The little old gentleman assumed an expression of profound +astonishment. “You deceive yourself. Monsieur Daguenet is a young man +of the greatest merit. I am acquainted with his thoughts; he is anxious +to live down the errors of his youth. Estelle will bring him back to +the path of virtue, be sure of that.” + +“Oh, Estelle!” Mme Chantereau murmured disdainfully. “I believe the +dear young thing to be incapable of willing anything; she is so +insignificant!” + +This opinion caused M. Venot to smile. However, he went into no +explanations about the young bride and, shutting his eyes, as though to +avoid seeming to take any further interest in the matter, he once more +lost himself in his corner behind the petticoats. Mme Hugon, though +weary and absent-minded, had caught some phrases of the conversation, +and she now intervened and summed up in her tolerant way by remarking +to the Marquis de Chouard, who just then bowed to her: + +“These ladies are too severe. Existence is so bitter for every one of +us! Ought we not to forgive others much, my friend, if we wish to merit +forgiveness ourselves?” + +For some seconds the marquis appeared embarrassed, for he was afraid of +allusions. But the good lady wore so sad a smile that he recovered +almost at once and remarked: + +“No, there is no forgiveness for certain faults. It is by reason of +this kind of accommodating spirit that a society sinks into the abyss +of ruin.” + +The ball had grown still more animated. A fresh quadrille was imparting +a slight swaying motion to the drawing-room floor, as though the old +dwelling had been shaken by the impulse of the dance. Now and again +amid the wan confusion of heads a woman’s face with shining eyes and +parted lips stood sharply out as it was whirled away by the dance, the +light of the lusters gleaming on the white skin. Mme du Joncquoy +declared that the present proceedings were senseless. It was madness to +crowd five hundred people into a room which would scarcely contain two +hundred. In fact, why not sign the wedding contract on the Place du +Carrousel? This was the outcome of the new code of manners, said Mme +Chantereau. In old times these solemnities took place in the bosom of +the family, but today one must have a mob of people; the whole street +must be allowed to enter quite freely, and there must be a great crush, +or else the evening seems a chilly affair. People now advertised their +luxury and introduced the mere foam on the wave of Parisian society +into their houses, and accordingly it was only too natural if illicit +proceedings such as they had been discussing afterward polluted the +hearth. The ladies complained that they could not recognize more than +fifty people. Where did all this crowd spring from? Young girls with +low necks were making a great display of their shoulders. A woman had a +golden dagger stuck in her chignon, while a bodice thickly embroidered +with jet beads clothed her in what looked like a coat of mail. People’s +eyes kept following another lady smilingly, so singularly marked were +her clinging skirts. All the luxuriant splendor of the departing winter +was there—the overtolerant world of pleasure, the scratch gathering a +hostess can get together after a first introduction, the sort of +society, in fact, in which great names and great shames jostle together +in the same fierce quest of enjoyment. The heat was increasing, and +amid the overcrowded rooms the quadrille unrolled the cadenced symmetry +of its figures. + +“Very smart—the countess!” La Faloise continued at the garden door. +“She’s ten years younger than her daughter. By the by, Foucarmont, you +must decide on a point. Vandeuvres once bet that she had no thighs.” + +This affectation of cynicism bored the other gentlemen, and Foucarmont +contented himself by saying: + +“Ask your cousin, dear boy. Here he is.” + +“Jove, it’s a happy thought!” cried La Faloise. “I bet ten louis she +has thighs.” + +Fauchery did indeed come up. As became a constant inmate of the house, +he had gone round by the dining room in order to avoid the crowded +doors. Rose had taken him up again at the beginning of the winter, and +he was now dividing himself between the singer and the countess, but he +was extremely fatigued and did not know how to get rid of one of them. +Sabine flattered his vanity, but Rose amused him more than she. +Besides, the passion Rose felt was a real one: her tenderness for him +was marked by a conjugal fidelity which drove Mignon to despair. + +“Listen, we want some information,” said La Faloise as he squeezed his +cousin’s arm. “You see that lady in white silk?” + +Ever since his inheritance had given him a kind of insolent dash of +manner he had affected to chaff Fauchery, for he had an old grudge to +satisfy and wanted to be revenged for much bygone raillery, dating from +the days when he was just fresh from his native province. + +“Yes, that lady with the lace.” + +The journalist stood on tiptoe, for as yet he did not understand. + +“The countess?” he said at last. + +“Exactly, my good friend. I’ve bet ten louis—now, has she thighs?” + +And he fell a-laughing, for he was delighted to have succeeded in +snubbing a fellow who had once come heavily down on him for asking +whether the countess slept with anyone. But Fauchery, without showing +the very slightest astonishment, looked fixedly at him. + +“Get along, you idiot!” he said finally as he shrugged his shoulders. + +Then he shook hands with the other gentlemen, while La Faloise, in his +discomfiture, felt rather uncertain whether he had said something +funny. The men chatted. Since the races the banker and Foucarmont had +formed part of the set in the Avenue de Villiers. Nana was going on +much better, and every evening the count came and asked how she did. +Meanwhile Fauchery, though he listened, seemed preoccupied, for during +a quarrel that morning Rose had roundly confessed to the sending of the +letter. Oh yes, he might present himself at his great lady’s house; he +would be well received! After long hesitation he had come despite +everything—out of sheer courage. But La Faloise’s imbecile pleasantry +had upset him in spite of his apparent tranquillity. + +“What’s the matter?” asked Philippe. “You seem in trouble.” + +“I do? Not at all. I’ve been working: that’s why I came so late.” + +Then coldly, in one of those heroic moods which, although unnoticed, +are wont to solve the vulgar tragedies of existence: + +“All the same, I haven’t made my bow to our hosts. One must be civil.” + +He even ventured on a joke, for he turned to La Faloise and said: + +“Eh, you idiot?” + +And with that he pushed his way through the crowd. The valet’s full +voice was no longer shouting out names, but close to the door the count +and countess were still talking, for they were detained by ladies +coming in. At length he joined them, while the gentlemen who were still +on the garden steps stood on tiptoe so as to watch the scene. Nana, +they thought, must have been chattering. + +“The count hasn’t noticed him,” muttered Georges. “Look out! He’s +turning round; there, it’s done!” + +The band had again taken up the waltz in the Blonde Venus. Fauchery had +begun by bowing to the countess, who was still smiling in ecstatic +serenity. After which he had stood motionless a moment, waiting very +calmly behind the count’s back. That evening the count’s deportment was +one of lofty gravity: he held his head high, as became the official and +the great dignitary. And when at last he lowered his gaze in the +direction of the journalist he seemed still further to emphasize the +majesty of his attitude. For some seconds the two men looked at one +another. It was Fauchery who first stretched out his hand. Muffat gave +him his. Their hands remained clasped, and the Countess Sabine with +downcast eyes stood smiling before them, while the waltz continually +beat out its mocking, vagabond rhythm. + +“But the thing’s going on wheels!” said Steiner. + +“Are their hands glued together?” asked Foucarmont, surprised at this +prolonged clasp. A memory he could not forget brought a faint glow to +Fanchery’s pale cheeks, and in his mind’s eye he saw the property room +bathed in greenish twilight and filled with dusty bric-a-brac. And +Muffat was there, eggcup in hand, making a clever use of his +suspicions. At this moment Muffat was no longer suspicious, and the +last vestige of his dignity was crumbling in ruin. Fauchery’s fears +were assuaged, and when he saw the frank gaiety of the countess he was +seized with a desire to laugh. The thing struck him as comic. + +“Aha, here she is at last!” cried La Faloise, who did not abandon a +jest when he thought it a good one. “D’you see Nana coming in over +there?” + +“Hold your tongue, do, you idiot!” muttered Philippe. + +“But I tell you, it is Nana! They’re playing her waltz for her, by +Jove! She’s making her entry. And she takes part in the reconciliation, +the devil she does! What? You don’t see her? She’s squeezing all three +of ’em to her heart—my cousin Fauchery, my lady cousin and her husband, +and she’s calling ’em her dear kitties. Oh, those family scenes give me +a turn!” + +Estelle had come up, and Fauchery complimented her while she stood +stiffly up in her rose-colored dress, gazing at him with the astonished +look of a silent child and constantly glancing aside at her father and +mother. Daguenet, too, exchanged a hearty shake of the hand with the +journalist. Together they made up a smiling group, while M. Venot came +gliding in behind them. He gloated over them with a beatified +expression and seemed to envelop them in his pious sweetness, for he +rejoiced in these last instances of self-abandonment which were +preparing the means of grace. + +But the waltz still beat out its swinging, laughing, voluptuous +measure; it was like a shrill continuation of the life of pleasure +which was beating against the old house like a rising tide. The band +blew louder trills from their little flutes; their violins sent forth +more swooning notes. Beneath the Genoa velvet hangings, the gilding and +the paintings, the lusters exhaled a living heat and a great glow of +sunlight, while the crowd of guests, multiplied in the surrounding +mirrors, seemed to grow and increase as the murmur of many voices rose +ever louder. The couples who whirled round the drawing room, arm about +waist, amid the smiles of the seated ladies, still further accentuated +the quaking of the floors. In the garden a dull, fiery glow fell from +the Venetian lanterns and threw a distant reflection of flame over the +dark shadows moving in search of a breath of air about the walks at its +farther end. And this trembling of walls and this red glow of light +seemed to betoken a great ultimate conflagration in which the fabric of +an ancient honor was cracking and burning on every side. The shy early +beginnings of gaiety, of which Fauchery one April evening had heard the +vocal expression in the sound of breaking glass, had little by little +grown bolder, wilder, till they had burst forth in this festival. Now +the rift was growing; it was crannying the house and announcing +approaching downfall. Among drunkards in the slums it is black misery, +an empty cupboard, which put an end to ruined families; it is the +madness of drink which empties the wretched beds. Here the waltz tune +was sounding the knell of an old race amid the suddenly ignited ruins +of accumulated wealth, while Nana, although unseen, stretched her lithe +limbs above the dancers’ heads and sent corruption through their caste, +drenching the hot air with the ferment of her exhalations and the +vagabond lilt of the music. + +On the evening after the celebration of the church marriage Count +Muffat made his appearance in his wife’s bedroom, where he had not +entered for the last two years. At first, in her great surprise, the +countess drew back from him. But she was still smiling the intoxicated +smile which she now always wore. He began stammering in extreme +embarrassment; whereupon she gave him a short moral lecture. However, +neither of them risked a decisive explanation. It was religion, they +pretended, which required this process of mutual forgiveness, and they +agreed by a tacit understanding to retain their freedom. Before going +to bed, seeing that the countess still appeared to hesitate, they had a +business conversation, and the count was the first to speak of selling +the Bordes. She consented at once. They both stood in great want of +money, and they would share and share alike. This completed the +reconciliation, and Muffat, remorseful though he was, felt veritably +relieved. + +That very day, as Nana was dozing toward two in the afternoon, Zoé made +so bold as to knock at her bedroom door. The curtains were drawn to, +and a hot breath of wind kept blowing through a window into the fresh +twilight stillness within. During these last days the young woman had +been getting up and about again, but she was still somewhat weak. She +opened her eyes and asked: + +“Who is it?” + +Zoé was about to reply, but Daguenet pushed by her and announced +himself in person. Nana forthwith propped herself up on her pillow and, +dismissing the lady’s maid: + +“What! Is that you?” she cried. “On the day of your marriage? What can +be the matter?” + +Taken aback by the darkness, he stood still in the middle of the room. +However, he grew used to it and came forward at last. He was in evening +dress and wore a white cravat and gloves. + +“Yes, to be sure, it’s me!” he said. “You don’t remember?” + +No, she remembered nothing, and in his chaffing way he had to offer +himself frankly to her. + +“Come now, here’s your commission. I’ve brought you the handsel of my +innocence!” + +And with that, as he was now by the bedside, she caught him in her bare +arms and shook with merry laughter and almost cried, she thought it so +pretty of him. + +“Oh, that Mimi, how funny he is! He’s thought of it after all! And to +think I didn’t remember it any longer! So you’ve slipped off; you’re +just out of church. Yes, certainly, you’ve got a scent of incense about +you. But kiss me, kiss me! Oh, harder than that, Mimi dear! Bah! +Perhaps it’s for the last time.” + +In the dim room, where a vague odor of ether still lingered, their +tender laughter died away suddenly. The heavy, warm breeze swelled the +window curtains, and children’s voices were audible in the avenue +without. Then the lateness of the hour tore them asunder and set them +joking again. Daguenet took his departure with his wife directly after +the breakfast. + + + + + CHAPTER XIII + + +Toward the end of September Count Muffat, who was to dine at Nana’s +that evening, came at nightfall to inform her of a summons to the +Tuileries. The lamps in the house had not been lit yet, and the +servants were laughing uproariously in the kitchen regions as he softly +mounted the stairs, where the tall windows gleamed in warm shadow. The +door of the drawing room up-stairs opened noiselessly. A faint pink +glow was dying out on the ceiling of the room, and the red hangings, +the deep divans, the lacquered furniture, with their medley of +embroidered fabrics and bronzes and china, were already sleeping under +a slowly creeping flood of shadows, which drowned nooks and corners and +blotted out the gleam of ivory and the glint of gold. And there in the +darkness, on the white surface of a wide, outspread petticoat, which +alone remained clearly visible, he saw Nana lying stretched in the arms +of Georges. Denial in any shape or form was impossible. He gave a +choking cry and stood gaping at them. + +Nana had bounded up, and now she pushed him into the bedroom in order +to give the lad time to escape. + +“Come in,” she murmured with reeling senses, “I’ll explain.” + +She was exasperated at being thus surprised. Never before had she given +way like this in her own house, in her own drawing room, when the doors +were open. It was a long story: Georges and she had had a disagreement; +he had been mad with jealousy of Philippe, and he had sobbed so +bitterly on her bosom that she had yielded to him, not knowing how else +to calm him and really very full of pity for him at heart. And on this +solitary occasion, when she had been stupid enough to forget herself +thus with a little rascal who could not even now bring her bouquets of +violets, so short did his mother keep him—on this solitary occasion the +count turned up and came straight down on them. ’Gad, she had very bad +luck! That was what one got if one was a good-natured wench! + +Meanwhile in the bedroom, into which she had pushed Muffat, the +darkness was complete. Whereupon after some groping she rang furiously +and asked for a lamp. It was Julien’s fault too! If there had been a +lamp in the drawing room the whole affair would not have happened. It +was the stupid nightfall which had got the better of her heart. + +“I beseech you to be reasonable, my pet,” she said when Zoé had brought +in the lights. + +The count, with his hands on his knees, was sitting gazing at the +floor. He was stupefied by what he had just seen. He did not cry out in +anger. He only trembled, as though overtaken by some horror which was +freezing him. This dumb misery touched the young woman, and she tried +to comfort him. + +“Well, yes, I’ve done wrong. It’s very bad what I did. You see I’m +sorry for my fault. It makes me grieve very much because it annoys you. +Come now, be nice, too, and forgive me.” + +She had crouched down at his feet and was striving to catch his eye +with a look of tender submission. She was fain to know whether he was +very vexed with her. Presently, as he gave a long sigh and seemed to +recover himself, she grew more coaxing and with grave kindness of +manner added a final reason: + +“You see, dearie, you must try and understand how it is: I can’t refuse +it to my poor friends.” + +The count consented to give way and only insisted that Georges should +be dismissed once for all. But all his illusions had vanished, and he +no longer believed in her sworn fidelity. Next day Nana would deceive +him anew, and he only remained her miserable possessor in obedience to +a cowardly necessity and to terror at the thought of living without +her. + +This was the epoch in her existence when Nana flared upon Paris with +redoubled splendor. She loomed larger than heretofore on the horizon of +vice and swayed the town with her impudently flaunted splendor and that +contempt of money which made her openly squander fortunes. Her house +had become a sort of glowing smithy, where her continual desires were +the flames and the slightest breath from her lips changed gold into +fine ashes, which the wind hourly swept away. Never had eye beheld such +a rage of expenditure. The great house seemed to have been built over a +gulf in which men—their worldly possessions, their fortunes, their very +names—were swallowed up without leaving even a handful of dust behind +them. This courtesan, who had the tastes of a parrot and gobbled up +radishes and burnt almonds and pecked at the meat upon her plate, had +monthly table bills amounting to five thousand francs. The wildest +waste went on in the kitchen: the place, metaphorically speaking was +one great river which stove in cask upon cask of wine and swept great +bills with it, swollen by three or four successive manipulators. +Victorine and Francois reigned supreme in the kitchen, whither they +invited friends. In addition to these there was quite a little tribe of +cousins, who were cockered up in their homes with cold meats and strong +soup. Julien made the trades-people give him commissions, and the +glaziers never put up a pane of glass at a cost of a franc and a half +but he had a franc put down to himself. Charles devoured the horses’ +oats and doubled the amount of their provender, reselling at the back +door what came in at the carriage gate, while amid the general pillage, +the sack of the town after the storm, Zoé, by dint of cleverness, +succeeded in saving appearances and covering the thefts of all in order +the better to slur over and make good her own. But the household waste +was worse than the household dishonesty. Yesterday’s food was thrown +into the gutter, and the collection of provisions in the house was such +that the servants grew disgusted with it. The glass was all sticky with +sugar, and the gas burners flared and flared till the rooms seemed +ready to explode. Then, too, there were instances of negligence and +mischief and sheer accident—of everything, in fact, which can hasten +the ruin of a house devoured by so many mouths. Upstairs in Madame’s +quarters destruction raged more fiercely still. Dresses, which cost ten +thousand francs and had been twice worn, were sold by Zoé; jewels +vanished as though they had crumbled deep down in their drawers; stupid +purchases were made; every novelty of the day was brought and left to +lie forgotten in some corner the morning after or swept up by +ragpickers in the street. She could not see any very expensive object +without wanting to possess it, and so she constantly surrounded herself +with the wrecks of bouquets and costly knickknacks and was the happier +the more her passing fancy cost. Nothing remained intact in her hands; +she broke everything, and this object withered, and that grew dirty in +the clasp of her lithe white fingers. A perfect heap of nameless +débris, of twisted shreds and muddy rags, followed her and marked her +passage. Then amid this utter squandering of pocket money cropped up a +question about the big bills and their settlement. Twenty thousand +francs were due to the modiste, thirty thousand to the linen draper, +twelve thousand to the bootmaker. Her stable devoured fifty thousand +for her, and in six months she ran up a bill of a hundred and twenty +thousand francs at her ladies’ tailor. Though she had not enlarged her +scheme of expenditure, which Labordette reckoned at four hundred +thousand francs on an average, she ran up that same year to a million. +She was herself stupefied by the amount and was unable to tell whither +such a sum could have gone. Heaps upon heaps of men, barrowfuls of +gold, failed to stop up the hole, which, amid this ruinous luxury, +continually gaped under the floor of her house. + +Meanwhile Nana had cherished her latest caprice. Once more exercised by +the notion that her room needed redoing, she fancied she had hit on +something at last. The room should be done in velvet of the color of +tea roses, with silver buttons and golden cords, tassels and fringes, +and the hangings should be caught up to the ceiling after the manner of +a tent. This arrangement ought to be both rich and tender, she thought, +and would form a splendid background to her blonde vermeil-tinted skin. +However, the bedroom was only designed to serve as a setting to the +bed, which was to be a dazzling affair, a prodigy. Nana meditated a bed +such as had never before existed; it was to be a throne, an altar, +whither Paris was to come in order to adore her sovereign nudity. It +was to be all in gold and silver beaten work—it should suggest a great +piece of jewelry with its golden roses climbing on a trelliswork of +silver. On the headboard a band of Loves should peep forth laughing +from amid the flowers, as though they were watching the voluptuous +dalliance within the shadow of the bed curtains. Nana had applied to +Labordette who had brought two goldsmiths to see her. They were already +busy with the designs. The bed would cost fifty thousand francs, and +Muffat was to give it her as a New Year’s present. + +What most astonished the young woman was that she was endlessly short +of money amid a river of gold, the tide of which almost enveloped her. +On certain days she was at her wit’s end for want of ridiculously small +sums—sums of only a few louis. She was driven to borrow from Zoé, or +she scraped up cash as well as she could on her own account. But before +resignedly adopting extreme measures she tried her friends and in a +joking sort of way got the men to give her all they had about them, +even down to their coppers. For the last three months she had been +emptying Philippe’s pockets especially, and now on days of passionate +enjoyment he never came away but he left his purse behind him. Soon she +grew bolder and asked him for loans of two hundred francs, three +hundred francs—never more than that—wherewith to pay the interest of +bills or to stave off outrageous debts. And Philippe, who in July had +been appointed paymaster to his regiment, would bring the money the day +after, apologizing at the same time for not being rich, seeing that +good Mamma Hugon now treated her sons with singular financial severity. +At the close of three months these little oft-renewed loans mounted up +to a sum of ten thousand francs. The captain still laughed his +hearty-sounding laugh, but he was growing visibly thinner, and +sometimes he seemed absent-minded, and a shade of suffering would pass +over his face. But one look from Nana’s eyes would transfigure him in a +sort of sensual ecstasy. She had a very coaxing way with him and would +intoxicate him with furtive kisses and yield herself to him in sudden +fits of self-abandonment, which tied him to her apron strings the +moment he was able to escape from his military duties. + +One evening, Nana having announced that her name, too, was Thérèse and +that her fête day was the fifteenth of October, the gentlemen all sent +her presents. Captain Philippe brought his himself; it was an old +comfit dish in Dresden china, and it had a gold mount. He found her +alone in her dressing room. She had just emerged from the bath, had +nothing on save a great red-and-white flannel bathing wrap and was very +busy examining her presents, which were ranged on a table. She had +already broken a rock-crystal flask in her attempts to unstopper it. + +“Oh, you’re too nice!” she said. “What is it? Let’s have a peep! What a +baby you are to spend your pennies in little fakements like that!” + +She scolded him, seeing that he was not rich, but at heart she was +delighted to see him spending his whole substance for her. Indeed, this +was the only proof of love which had power to touch her. Meanwhile she +was fiddling away at the comfit dish, opening it and shutting it in her +desire to see how it was made. + +“Take care,” he murmured, “it’s brittle.” + +But she shrugged her shoulders. Did he think her as clumsy as a street +porter? And all of a sudden the hinge came off between her fingers and +the lid fell and was broken. She was stupefied and remained gazing at +the fragments as she cried: + +“Oh, it’s smashed!” + +Then she burst out laughing. The fragments lying on the floor tickled +her fancy. Her merriment was of the nervous kind, the stupid, spiteful +laughter of a child who delights in destruction. Philippe had a little +fit of disgust, for the wretched girl did not know what anguish this +curio had cost him. Seeing him thoroughly upset, she tried to contain +herself. + +“Gracious me, it isn’t my fault! It was cracked; those old things +barely hold together. Besides, it was the cover! Didn’t you see the +bound it gave?” + +And she once more burst into uproarious mirth. + +But though he made an effort to the contrary, tears appeared in the +young man’s eyes, and with that she flung her arms tenderly round his +neck. + +“How silly you are! You know I love you all the same. If one never +broke anything the tradesmen would never sell anything. All that sort +of thing’s made to be broken. Now look at this fan; it’s only held +together with glue!” + +She had snatched up a fan and was dragging at the blades so that the +silk was torn in two. This seemed to excite her, and in order to show +that she scorned the other presents, the moment she had ruined his she +treated herself to a general massacre, rapping each successive object +and proving clearly that not one was solid in that she had broken them +all. There was a lurid glow in her vacant eyes, and her lips, slightly +drawn back, displayed her white teeth. Soon, when everything was in +fragments, she laughed cheerily again and with flushed cheeks beat on +the table with the flat of her hands, lisping like a naughty little +girl: + +“All over! Got no more! Got no more!” + +Then Philippe was overcome by the same mad excitement, and, pushing her +down, he merrily kissed her bosom. She abandoned herself to him and +clung to his shoulders with such gleeful energy that she could not +remember having enjoyed herself so much for an age past. Without +letting go of him she said caressingly: + +“I say, dearie, you ought certainly to bring me ten louis tomorrow. +It’s a bore, but there’s the baker’s bill worrying me awfully.” + +He had grown pale. Then imprinting a final kiss on her forehead, he +said simply: + +“I’ll try.” + +Silence reigned. She was dressing, and he stood pressing his forehead +against the windowpanes. A minute passed, and he returned to her and +deliberately continued: + +“Nana, you ought to marry me.” + +This notion straightway so tickled the young woman that she was unable +to finish tying on her petticoats. + +“My poor pet, you’re ill! D’you offer me your hand because I ask you +for ten louis? No, never! I’m too fond of you. Good gracious, what a +silly question!” + +And as Zoé entered in order to put her boots on, they ceased talking of +the matter. The lady’s maid at once espied the presents lying broken in +pieces on the table. She asked if she should put these things away, +and, Madame having bidden her get rid of them, she carried the whole +collection off in the folds of her dress. In the kitchen a sorting-out +process began, and Madame’s débris were shared among the servants. + +That day Georges had slipped into the house despite Nana’s orders to +the contrary. Francois had certainly seen him pass, but the servants +had now got to laugh among themselves at their good lady’s embarrassing +situations. He had just slipped as far as the little drawing room when +his brother’s voice stopped him, and, as one powerless to tear himself +from the door, he overheard everything that went on within, the kisses, +the offer of marriage. A feeling of horror froze him, and he went away +in a state bordering on imbecility, feeling as though there were a +great void in his brain. It was only in his own room above his mother’s +flat in the Rue Richelieu that his heart broke in a storm of furious +sobs. This time there could be no doubt about the state of things; a +horrible picture of Nana in Philippe’s arms kept rising before his +mind’s eye. It struck him in the light of an incest. When he fancied +himself calm again the remembrance of it all would return, and in fresh +access of raging jealousy he would throw himself on the bed, biting the +coverlet, shouting infamous accusations which maddened him the more. +Thus the day passed. In order to stay shut up in his room he spoke of +having a sick headache. But the night proved more terrible still; a +murder fever shook him amid continual nightmares. Had his brother lived +in the house, he would have gone and killed him with the stab of a +knife. When day returned he tried to reason things out. It was he who +ought to die, and he determined to throw himself out of the window when +an omnibus was passing. Nevertheless, he went out toward ten o’clock +and traversed Paris, wandered up and down on the bridges and at the +last moment felt an unconquerable desire to see Nana once more. With +one word, perhaps, she would save him. And three o’clock was striking +when he entered the house in the Avenue de Villiers. + +Toward noon a frightful piece of news had simply crushed Mme Hugon. +Philippe had been in prison since the evening of the previous day, +accused of having stolen twelve thousand francs from the chest of his +regiment. For the last three months he had been withdrawing small sums +therefrom in the hope of being able to repay them, while he had covered +the deficit with false money. Thanks to the negligence of the +administrative committee, this fraud had been constantly successful. +The old lady, humbled utterly by her child’s crime, had at once cried +out in anger against Nana. She knew Philippe’s connection with her, and +her melancholy had been the result of this miserable state of things +which kept her in Paris in constant dread of some final catastrophe. +But she had never looked forward to such shame as this, and now she +blamed herself for refusing him money, as though such refusal had made +her accessory to his act. She sank down on an armchair; her legs were +seized with paralysis, and she felt herself to be useless, incapable of +action and destined to stay where she was till she died. But the sudden +thought of Georges comforted her. Georges was still left her; he would +be able to act, perhaps to save them. Thereupon, without seeking aid of +anyone else—for she wished to keep these matters shrouded in the bosom +of her family—she dragged herself up to the next story, her mind +possessed by the idea that she still had someone to love about her. But +upstairs she found an empty room. The porter told her that M. Georges +had gone out at an early hour. The room was haunted by the ghost of yet +another calamity; the bed with its gnawed bedclothes bore witness to +someone’s anguish, and a chair which lay amid a heap of clothes on the +ground looked like something dead. Georges must be at that woman’s +house, and so with dry eyes and feet that had regained their strength +Mme Hugon went downstairs. She wanted her sons; she was starting to +reclaim them. + +Since morning Nana had been much worried. First of all it was the +baker, who at nine o’clock had turned up, bill in hand. It was a +wretched story. He had supplied her with bread to the amount of a +hundred and thirty-three francs, and despite her royal housekeeping she +could not pay it. In his irritation at being put off he had presented +himself a score of times since the day he had refused further credit, +and the servants were now espousing his cause. Francois kept saying +that Madame would never pay him unless he made a fine scene; Charles +talked of going upstairs, too, in order to get an old unpaid straw bill +settled, while Victorine advised them to wait till some gentleman was +with her, when they would get the money out of her by suddenly asking +for it in the middle of conversation. The kitchen was in a savage mood: +the tradesmen were all kept posted in the course events were taking, +and there were gossiping consultations, lasting three or four hours on +a stretch, during which Madame was stripped, plucked and talked over +with the wrathful eagerness peculiar to an idle, overprosperous +servants’ hall. Julien, the house steward, alone pretended to defend +his mistress. She was quite the thing, whatever they might say! And +when the others accused him of sleeping with her he laughed fatuously, +thereby driving the cook to distraction, for she would have liked to be +a man in order to “spit on such women’s backsides,” so utterly would +they have disgusted her. Francois, without informing Madame of it, had +wickedly posted the baker in the hall, and when she came downstairs at +lunch time she found herself face to face with him. Taking the bill, +she told him to return toward three o’clock, whereupon, with many foul +expressions, he departed, vowing that he would have things properly +settled and get his money by hook or by crook. + +Nana made a very bad lunch, for the scene had annoyed her. Next time +the man would have to be definitely got rid of. A dozen times she had +put his money aside for him, but it had as constantly melted away, +sometimes in the purchase of flowers, at others in the shape of a +subscription got up for the benefit of an old gendarme. Besides, she +was counting on Philippe and was astonished not to see him make his +appearance with his two hundred francs. It was regular bad luck, seeing +that the day before yesterday she had again given Satin an outfit, a +perfect trousseau this time, some twelve hundred francs’ worth of +dresses and linen, and now she had not a louis remaining. + +Toward two o’clock, when Nana was beginning to be anxious, Labordette +presented himself. He brought with him the designs for the bed, and +this caused a diversion, a joyful interlude which made the young woman +forget all her troubles. She clapped her hands and danced about. After +which, her heart bursting wish curiosity, she leaned over a table in +the drawing room and examined the designs, which Labordette proceeded +to explain to her. + +“You see,” he said, “this is the body of the bed. In the middle here +there’s a bunch of roses in full bloom, and then comes a garland of +buds and flowers. The leaves are to be in yellow and the roses in +red-gold. And here’s the grand design for the bed’s head; Cupids +dancing in a ring on a silver trelliswork.” + +But Nana interrupted him, for she was beside herself with ecstasy. + +“Oh, how funny that little one is, that one in the corner, with his +behind in the air! Isn’t he now? And what a sly laugh! They’ve all got +such dirty, wicked eyes! You know, dear boy, I shall never dare play +any silly tricks before THEM!” + +Her pride was flattered beyond measure. The goldsmiths had declared +that no queen anywhere slept in such a bed. However, a difficulty +presented itself. Labordette showed her two designs for the footboard, +one of which reproduced the pattern on the sides, while the other, a +subject by itself, represented Night wrapped in her veil and discovered +by a faun in all her splendid nudity. He added that if she chose this +last subject the goldsmiths intended making Night in her own likeness. +This idea, the taste of which was rather risky, made her grow white +with pleasure, and she pictured herself as a silver statuette, symbolic +of the warm, voluptuous delights of darkness. + +“Of course you will only sit for the head and shoulders,” said +Labordette. + +She looked quietly at him. + +“Why? The moment a work of art’s in question I don’t mind the sculptor +that takes my likeness a blooming bit!” + +Of course it must be understood that she was choosing the subject. But +at this he interposed. + +“Wait a moment; it’s six thousand francs extra.” + +“It’s all the same to me, by Jove!” she cried, bursting into a laugh. +“Hasn’t my little rough got the rhino?” + +Nowadays among her intimates she always spoke thus of Count Muffat, and +the gentlemen had ceased to inquire after him otherwise. + +“Did you see your little rough last night?” they used to say. + +“Dear me, I expected to find the little rough here!” + +It was a simple familiarity enough, which, nevertheless, she did not as +yet venture on in his presence. + +Labordette began rolling up the designs as he gave the final +explanations. The goldsmiths, he said, were undertaking to deliver the +bed in two months’ time, toward the twenty-fifth of December, and next +week a sculptor would come to make a model for the Night. As she +accompanied him to the door Nana remembered the baker and briskly +inquired: + +“By the by, you wouldn’t be having ten louis about you?” + +Labordette made it a solemn rule, which stood him in good stead, never +to lend women money. He used always to make the same reply. + +“No, my girl, I’m short. But would you like me to go to your little +rough?” + +She refused; it was useless. Two days before she had succeeded in +getting five thousand francs out of the count. However, she soon +regretted her discreet conduct, for the moment Labordette had gone the +baker reappeared, though it was barely half-past two, and with many +loud oaths roughly settled himself on a bench in the hall. The young +woman listened to him from the first floor. She was pale, and it caused +her especial pain to hear the servants’ secret rejoicings swelling up +louder and louder till they even reached her ears. Down in the kitchen +they were dying of laughter. The coachman was staring across from the +other side of the court; Francois was crossing the hall without any +apparent reason. Then he hurried off to report progress, after sneering +knowingly at the baker. They didn’t care a damn for Madame; the walls +were echoing to their laughter, and she felt that she was deserted on +all hands and despised by the servants’ hall, the inmates of which were +watching her every movement and liberally bespattering her with the +filthiest of chaff. Thereupon she abandoned the intention of borrowing +the hundred and thirty-three francs from Zoé; she already owed the maid +money, and she was too proud to risk a refusal now. Such a burst of +feeling stirred her that she went back into her room, loudly remarking: + +“Come, come, my girl, don’t count on anyone but yourself. Your body’s +your own property, and it’s better to make use of it than to let +yourself be insulted.” + +And without even summoning Zoé she dressed herself with feverish haste +in order to run round to the Tricon’s. In hours of great embarrassment +this was her last resource. Much sought after and constantly solicited +by the old lady, she would refuse or resign herself according to her +needs, and on these increasingly frequent occasions when both ends +would not meet in her royally conducted establishment, she was sure to +find twenty-five louis awaiting her at the other’s house. She used to +betake herself to the Tricon’s with the ease born of use, just as the +poor go to the pawnshop. + +But as she left her own chamber Nana came suddenly upon Georges +standing in the middle of the drawing room. Not noticing his waxen +pallor and the somber fire in his wide eyes, she gave a sigh of relief. + +“Ah, you’ve come from your brother.” + +“No,” said the lad, growing yet paler. + +At this she gave a despairing shrug. What did he want? Why was he +barring her way? She was in a hurry—yes, she was. Then returning to +where he stood: + +“You’ve no money, have you?” + +“No.” + +“That’s true. How silly of me! Never a stiver; not even their omnibus +fares Mamma doesn’t wish it! Oh, what a set of men!” + +And she escaped. But he held her back; he wanted to speak to her. She +was fairly under way and again declared she had no time, but he stopped +her with a word. + +“Listen, I know you’re going to marry my brother.” + +Gracious! The thing was too funny! And she let herself down into a +chair in order to laugh at her ease. + +“Yes,” continued the lad, “and I don’t wish it. It’s I you’re going to +marry. That’s why I’ve come.” + +“Eh, what? You too?” she cried. “Why, it’s a family disease, is it? No, +never! What a fancy, to be sure! Have I ever asked you to do anything +so nasty? Neither one nor t’other of you! No, never!” + +The lad’s face brightened. Perhaps he had been deceiving himself! He +continued: + +“Then swear to me that you don’t go to bed with my brother.” + +“Oh, you’re beginning to bore me now!” said Nana, who had risen with +renewed impatience. “It’s amusing for a little while, but when I tell +you I’m in a hurry—I go to bed with your brother if it pleases me. Are +you keeping me—are you paymaster here that you insist on my making a +report? Yes, I go to bed with your brother.” + +He had caught hold of her arm and squeezed it hard enough to break it +as he stuttered: + +“Don’t say that! Don’t say that!” + +With a slight blow she disengaged herself from his grasp. + +“He’s maltreating me now! Here’s a young ruffian for you! My chicken, +you’ll leave this jolly sharp. I used to keep you about out of +niceness. Yes, I did! You may stare! Did you think I was going to be +your mamma till I died? I’ve got better things to do than to bring up +brats.” + +He listened to her stark with anguish, yet in utter submission. Her +every word cut him to the heart so sharply that he felt he should die. +She did not so much as notice his suffering and continued delightedly +to revenge herself on him for the annoyance of the morning. + +“It’s like your brother; he’s another pretty Johnny, he is! He promised +me two hundred francs. Oh, dear me; yes, I can wait for ’em. It isn’t +his money I care for! I’ve not got enough to pay for hair oil. Yes, +he’s leaving me in a jolly fix! Look here, d’you want to know how +matters stand? Here goes then: it’s all owing to your brother that I’m +going out to earn twenty-five louis with another man.” + +At these words his head spun, and he barred her egress. He cried; he +besought her not to go, clasping his hands together and blurting out: + +“Oh no! Oh no!” + +“I want to, I do,” she said. “Have you the money?” + +No, he had not got the money. He would have given his life to have the +money! Never before had he felt so miserable, so useless, so very +childish. All his wretched being was shaken with weeping and gave proof +of such heavy suffering that at last she noticed it and grew kind. She +pushed him away softly. + +“Come, my pet, let me pass; I must. Be reasonable. You’re a baby boy, +and it was very nice for a week, but nowadays I must look after my own +affairs. Just think it over a bit. Now your brother’s a man; what I’m +saying doesn’t apply to him. Oh, please do me a favor; it’s no good +telling him all this. He needn’t know where I’m going. I always let out +too much when I’m in a rage.” + +She began laughing. Then taking him in her arms and kissing him on the +forehead: + +“Good-by, baby,” she said; “it’s over, quite over between us; d’you +understand? And now I’m off!” + +And she left him, and he stood in the middle of the drawing room. Her +last words rang like the knell of a tocsin in his ears: “It’s over, +quite over!” And he thought the ground was opening beneath his feet. +There was a void in his brain from which the man awaiting Nana had +disappeared. Philippe alone remained there in the young woman’s bare +embrace forever and ever. She did not deny it: she loved him, since she +wanted to spare him the pain of her infidelity. It was over, quite +over. He breathed heavily and gazed round the room, suffocating beneath +a crushing weight. Memories kept recurring to him one after the +other—memories of merry nights at La Mignotte, of amorous hours during +which he had fancied himself her child, of pleasures stolen in this +very room. And now these things would never, never recur! He was too +small; he had not grown up quickly enough; Philippe was supplanting him +because he was a bearded man. So then this was the end; he could not go +on living. His vicious passion had become transformed into an infinite +tenderness, a sensual adoration, in which his whole being was merged. +Then, too, how was he to forget it all if his brother remained—his +brother, blood of his blood, a second self, whose enjoyment drove him +mad with jealousy? It was the end of all things; he wanted to die. + +All the doors remained open, as the servants noisily scattered over the +house after seeing Madame make her exit on foot. Downstairs on the +bench in the hall the baker was laughing with Charles and Francois. Zoé +came running across the drawing room and seemed surprised at sight of +Georges. She asked him if he were waiting for Madame. Yes, he was +waiting for her; he had for-gotten to give her an answer to a question. +And when he was alone he set to work and searched. Finding nothing else +to suit his purpose, he took up in the dressing room a pair of very +sharply pointed scissors with which Nana had a mania for ceaselessly +trimming herself, either by polishing her skin or cutting off little +hairs. Then for a whole hour he waited patiently, his hand in his +pocket and his fingers tightly clasped round the scissors. + +“Here’s Madame,” said Zoé, returning. She must have espied her through +the bedroom window. + +There was a sound of people racing through the house, and laughter died +away and doors were shut. Georges heard Nana paying the baker and +speaking in the curtest way. Then she came upstairs. + +“What, you’re here still!” she said as she noticed him. “Aha! We’re +going to grow angry, my good man!” + +He followed her as she walked toward her bedroom. + +“Nana, will you marry me?” + +She shrugged her shoulders. It was too stupid; she refused to answer +any more and conceived the idea of slamming the door in his face. + +“Nana, will you marry me?” + +She slammed the door. He opened it with one hand while he brought the +other and the scissors out of his pocket. And with one great stab he +simply buried them in his breast. + +Nana, meanwhile, had felt conscious that something dreadful would +happen, and she had turned round. When she saw him stab himself she was +seized with indignation. + +“Oh, what a fool he is! What a fool! And with my scissors! Will you +leave off, you naughty little rogue? Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” + +She was scared. Sinking on his knees, the boy had just given himself a +second stab, which sent him down at full length on the carpet. He +blocked the threshold of the bedroom. With that Nana lost her head +utterly and screamed with all her might, for she dared not step over +his body, which shut her in and prevented her from running to seek +assistance. + +“Zoé! Zoé! Come at once. Make him leave off. It’s getting stupid—a +child like that! He’s killing himself now! And in my place too! Did you +ever see the like of it?” + +He was frightening her. He was all white, and his eyes were shut. There +was scarcely any bleeding—only a little blood, a tiny stain which was +oozing down into his waistcoat. She was making up her mind to step over +the body when an apparition sent her starting back. An old lady was +advancing through the drawing-room door, which remained wide open +opposite. And in her terror she recognized Mme Hugon but could not +explain her presence. Still wearing her gloves and hat, Nana kept +edging backward, and her terror grew so great that she sought to defend +herself, and in a shaky voice: + +“Madame,” she cried, “it isn’t I; I swear to you it isn’t. He wanted to +marry me, and I said no, and he’s killed himself!” + +Slowly Mme Hugon drew near—she was in black, and her face showed pale +under her white hair. In the carriage, as she drove thither, the +thought of Georges had vanished and that of Philippe’s misdoing had +again taken complete possession of her. It might be that this woman +could afford explanations to the judges which would touch them, and so +she conceived the project of begging her to bear witness in her son’s +favor. Downstairs the doors of the house stood open, but as she mounted +to the first floor her sick feet failed her, and she was hesitating as +to which way to go when suddenly horror-stricken cries directed her. +Then upstairs she found a man lying on the floor with bloodstained +shirt. It was Georges—it was her other child. + +Nana, in idiotic tones, kept saying: + +“He wanted to marry me, and I said no, and he’s killed himself.” + +Uttering no cry, Mme Hugon stooped down. Yes, it was the other one; it +was Georges. The one was brought to dishonor, the other murdered! It +caused her no surprise, for her whole life was ruined. Kneeling on the +carpet, utterly forgetting where she was, noticing no one else, she +gazed fixedly at her boy’s face and listened with her hand on his +heart. Then she gave a feeble sigh—she had felt the heart beating. And +with that she lifted her head and scrutinized the room and the woman +and seemed to remember. A fire glowed forth in her vacant eyes, and she +looked so great and terrible in her silence that Nana trembled as she +continued to defend herself above the body that divided them. + +“I swear it, madame! If his brother were here he could explain it to +you.” + +“His brother has robbed—he is in prison,” said the mother in a hard +voice. + +Nana felt a choking sensation. Why, what was the reason of it all? The +other had turned thief now! They were mad in that family! She ceased +struggling in self-defense; she seemed no longer mistress in her own +house and allowed Mme Hugon to give what orders she liked. The servants +had at last hurried up, and the old lady insisted on their carrying the +fainting Georges down to her carriage. She preferred killing him rather +than letting him remain in that house. With an air of stupefaction Nana +watched the retreating servants as they supported poor, dear Zizi by +his legs and shoulders. The mother walked behind them in a state of +collapse; she supported herself against the furniture; she felt as if +all she held dear had vanished in the void. On the landing a sob +escaped her; she turned and twice ejaculated: + +“Oh, but you’ve done us infinite harm! You’ve done us infinite harm!” + +That was all. In her stupefaction Nana had sat down; she still wore her +gloves and her hat. The house once more lapsed into heavy silence; the +carriage had driven away, and she sat motionless, not knowing what to +do next, her head swimming after all she had gone through. A quarter of +an hour later Count Muffat found her thus, but at sight of him she +relieved her feelings in an overflowing current of talk. She told him +all about the sad incident, repeated the same details twenty times +over, picked up the bloodstained scissors in order to imitate Zizi’s +gesture when he stabbed himself. And above all she nursed the idea of +proving her own innocence. + +“Look you here, dearie, is it my fault? If you were the judge would you +condemn me? I certainly didn’t tell Philippe to meddle with the till +any more than I urged that wretched boy to kill himself. I’ve been most +unfortunate throughout it all. They come and do stupid things in my +place; they make me miserable; they treat me like a hussy.” + +And she burst into tears. A fit of nervous expansiveness rendered her +soft and doleful, and her immense distress melted her utterly. + +“And you, too, look as if you weren’t satisfied. Now do just ask Zoé if +I’m at all mixed up in it. Zoé, do speak: explain to Monsieur—” + +The lady’s maid, having brought a towel and a basin of water out of the +dressing room, had for some moments past been rubbing the carpet in +order to remove the bloodstains before they dried. + +“Oh, monsieur,” she declared, “Madame is utterly miserable!” + +Muffat was still stupefied; the tragedy had frozen him, and his +imagination was full of the mother weeping for her sons. He knew her +greatness of heart and pictured her in her widow’s weeds, withering +solitarily away at Les Fondettes. But Nana grew ever more despondent, +for now the memory of Zizi lying stretched on the floor, with a red +hole in his shirt, almost drove her senseless. + +“He used to be such a darling, so sweet and caressing. Oh, you know, my +pet—I’m sorry if it vexes you—I loved that baby! I can’t help saying +so; the words must out. Besides, now it ought not to hurt you at all. +He’s gone. You’ve got what you wanted; you’re quite certain never to +surprise us again.” + +And this last reflection tortured her with such regret that he ended by +turning comforter. Well, well, he said, she ought to be brave; she was +quite right; it wasn’t her fault! But she checked her lamentations of +her own accord in order to say: + +“Listen, you must run round and bring me news of him. At once! I wish +it!” + +He took his hat and went to get news of Georges. When he returned after +some three quarters of an hour he saw Nana leaning anxiously out of a +window, and he shouted up to her from the pavement that the lad was not +dead and that they even hoped to bring him through. At this she +immediately exchanged grief for excess of joy and began to sing and +dance and vote existence delightful. Zoé, meanwhile, was still +dissatisfied with her washing. She kept looking at the stain, and every +time she passed it she repeated: + +“You know it’s not gone yet, madame.” + +As a matter of fact, the pale red stain kept reappearing on one of the +white roses in the carpet pattern. It was as though, on the very +threshold of the room, a splash of blood were barring the doorway. + +“Bah!” said the joyous Nana. “That’ll be rubbed out under people’s +feet.” + +After the following day Count Muffat had likewise forgotten the +incident. For a moment or two, when in the cab which drove him to the +Rue Richelieu, he had busily sworn never to return to that woman’s +house. Heaven was warning him; the misfortunes of Philippe and Georges +were, he opined, prophetic of his proper ruin. But neither the sight of +Mme Hugon in tears nor that of the boy burning with fever had been +strong enough to make him keep his vow, and the short-lived horror of +the situation had only left behind it a sense of secret delight at the +thought that he was now well quit of a rival, the charm of whose youth +had always exasperated him. His passion had by this time grown +exclusive; it was, indeed, the passion of a man who has had no youth. +He loved Nana as one who yearned to be her sole possessor, to listen to +her, to touch her, to be breathed on by her. His was now a supersensual +tenderness, verging on pure sentiment; it was an anxious affection and +as such was jealous of the past and apt at times to dream of a day of +redemption and pardon received, when both should kneel before God the +Father. Every day religion kept regaining its influence over him. He +again became a practicing Christian; he confessed himself and +communicated, while a ceaseless struggle raged within him, and remorse +redoubled the joys of sin and of repentance. Afterward, when his +director gave him leave to spend his passion, he had made a habit of +this daily perdition and would redeem the same by ecstasies of faith, +which were full of pious humility. Very naively he offered heaven, by +way of expiatory anguish, the abominable torment from which he was +suffering. This torment grew and increased, and he would climb his +Calvary with the deep and solemn feelings of a believer, though steeped +in a harlot’s fierce sensuality. That which made his agony most +poignant was this woman’s continued faithlessness. He could not share +her with others, nor did he understand her imbecile caprices. Undying, +unchanging love was what he wished for. However, she had sworn, and he +paid her as having done so. But he felt that she was untruthful, +incapable of common fidelity, apt to yield to friends, to stray +passers-by, like a good-natured animal, born to live minus a shift. + +One morning when he saw Foucarmont emerging from her bedroom at an +unusual hour, he made a scene about it. But in her weariness of his +jealousy she grew angry directly. On several occasions ere that she had +behaved rather prettily. Thus the evening when he surprised her with +Georges she was the first to regain her temper and to confess herself +in the wrong. She had loaded him with caresses and dosed him with soft +speeches in order to make him swallow the business. But he had ended by +boring her to death with his obstinate refusals to understand the +feminine nature, and now she was brutal. + +“Very well, yes! I’ve slept with Foucarmont. What then? That’s +flattened you out a bit, my little rough, hasn’t it?” + +It was the first time she had thrown “my little rough” in his teeth. +The frank directness of her avowal took his breath away, and when he +began clenching his fists she marched up to him and looked him full in +the face. + +“We’ve had enough of this, eh? If it doesn’t suit you you’ll do me the +pleasure of leaving the house. I don’t want you to go yelling in my +place. Just you get it into your noodle that I mean to be quite free. +When a man pleases me I go to bed with him. Yes, I do—that’s my way! +And you must make up your mind directly. Yes or no! If it’s no, out you +may walk!” + +She had gone and opened the door, but he did not leave. That was her +way now of binding him more closely to her. For no reason whatever, at +the slightest approach to a quarrel she would tell him he might stop or +go as he liked, and she would accompany her permission with a flood of +odious reflections. She said she could always find better than he; she +had only too many from whom to choose; men in any quantity could be +picked up in the street, and men a good deal smarter, too, whose blood +boiled in their veins. At this he would hang his head and wait for +those gentler moods when she wanted money. She would then become +affectionate, and he would forget it all, one night of tender dalliance +making up for the tortures of a whole week. His reconciliation with his +wife had rendered his home unbearable. Fauchery, having again fallen +under Rose’s dominion, the countess was running madly after other +loves. She was entering on the forties, that restless, feverish time in +the life of women, and ever hysterically nervous, she now filled her +mansion with the maddening whirl of her fashionable life. Estelle, +since her marriage, had seen nothing of her father; the undeveloped, +insignificant girl had suddenly become a woman of iron will, so +imperious withal that Daguenet trembled in her presence. In these days +he accompanied her to mass: he was converted, and he raged against his +father-in-law for ruining them with a courtesan. M. Venot alone still +remained kindly inclined toward the count, for he was biding his time. +He had even succeeded in getting into Nana’s immediate circle. In fact, +he frequented both houses, where you encountered his continual smile +behind doors. So Muffat, wretched at home, driven out by ennui and +shame, still preferred to live in the Avenue de Villiers, even though +he was abused there. + +Soon there was but one question between Nana and the count, and that +was “money.” One day after having formally promised her ten thousand +francs he had dared keep his appointment empty handed. For two days +past she had been surfeiting him with love, and such a breach of faith, +such a waste of caresses, made her ragingly abusive. She was white with +fury. + +“So you’ve not got the money, eh? Then go back where you came from, my +little rough, and look sharp about it! There’s a bloody fool for you! +He wanted to kiss me again! Mark my words—no money, no nothing!” + +He explained matters; he would be sure to have the money the day after +tomorrow. But she interrupted him violently: + +“And my bills! They’ll sell me up while Monsieur’s playing the fool. +Now then, look at yourself. D’ye think I love you for your figure? A +man with a mug like yours has to pay the women who are kind enough to +put up with him. By God, if you don’t bring me that ten thousand francs +tonight you shan’t even have the tip of my little finger to suck. I +mean it! I shall send you back to your wife!” + +At night he brought the ten thousand francs. Nana put up her lips, and +he took a long kiss which consoled him for the whole day of anguish. +What annoyed the young woman was to have him continually tied to her +apron strings. She complained to M. Venot, begging him to take her +little rough off to the countess. Was their reconciliation good for +nothing then? She was sorry she had mixed herself up in it, since +despite everything he was always at her heels. On the days when, out of +anger, she forgot her own interest, she swore to play him such a dirty +trick that he would never again be able to set foot in her place. But +when she slapped her leg and yelled at him she might quite as well have +spat in his face too: he would still have stayed and even thanked her. +Then the rows about money matters kept continually recurring. She +demanded money savagely; she rowed him over wretched little amounts; +she was odiously stingy with every minute of her time; she kept +fiercely informing him that she slept with him for his money, not for +any other reasons, and that she did not enjoy it a bit, that, in fact, +she loved another and was awfully unfortunate in needing an idiot of +his sort! They did not even want him at court now, and there was some +talk of requiring him to send in his resignation. The empress had said, +“He is too disgusting.” It was true enough. So Nana repeated the phrase +by way of closure to all their quarrels. + +“Look here! You disgust me!” + +Nowadays she no longer minded her p’s and q’s; she had regained the +most perfect freedom. + +Every day she did her round of the lake, beginning acquaintanceships +which ended elsewhere. Here was the happy hunting ground par +excellence, where courtesans of the first water spread their nets in +open daylight and flaunted themselves amid the tolerating smiles and +brilliant luxury of Paris. Duchesses pointed her out to one another +with a passing look—rich shopkeepers’ wives copied the fashion of her +hats. Sometimes her landau, in its haste to get by, stopped a file of +puissant turnouts, wherein sat plutocrats able to buy up all Europe or +Cabinet ministers with plump fingers tight-pressed to the throat of +France. She belonged to this Bois society, occupied a prominent place +in it, was known in every capital and asked about by every foreigner. +The splendors of this crowd were enhanced by the madness of her +profligacy as though it were the very crown, the darling passion, of +the nation. Then there were unions of a night, continual passages of +desire, which she lost count of the morning after, and these sent her +touring through the grand restaurants and on fine days, as often as +not, to “Madrid.” The staffs of all the embassies visited her, and she, +Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet and Maria Blond would dine in the society +of gentlemen who murdered the French language and paid to be amused, +engaging them by the evening with orders to be funny and yet proving so +blase and so worn out that they never even touched them. This the +ladies called “going on a spree,” and they would return home happy at +having been despised and would finish the night in the arms of the +lovers of their choice. + +When she did not actually throw the men at his head Count Muffat +pretended not to know about all this. However, he suffered not a little +from the lesser indignities of their daily life. The mansion in the +Avenue de Villiers was becoming a hell, a house full of mad people, in +which every hour of the day wild disorders led to hateful +complications. Nana even fought with her servants. One moment she would +be very nice with Charles, the coachman. When she stopped at a +restaurant she would send him out beer by the waiter and would talk +with him from the inside of her carriage when he slanged the cabbies at +a block in the traffic, for then he struck her as funny and cheered her +up. Then the next moment she called him a fool for no earthly reason. +She was always squabbling over the straw, the bran or the oats; in +spite of her love for animals she thought her horses ate too much. +Accordingly one day when she was settling up she accused the man of +robbing her. At this Charles got in a rage and called her a whore right +out; his horses, he said, were distinctly better than she was, for they +did not sleep with everybody. She answered him in the same strain, and +the count had to separate them and give the coachman the sack. This was +the beginning of a rebellion among the servants. When her diamonds had +been stolen Victorine and Francois left. Julien himself disappeared, +and the tale ran that the master had given him a big bribe and had +begged him to go, because he slept with the mistress. Every week there +were new faces in the servants’ hall. Never was there such a mess; the +house was like a passage down which the scum of the registry offices +galloped, destroying everything in their path. Zoé alone kept her +place; she always looked clean, and her only anxiety was how to +organize this riot until she had got enough together to set up on her +own account in fulfillment of a plan she had been hatching for some +time past. + +These, again, were only the anxieties he could own to. The count put up +with the stupidity of Mme Maloir, playing bezique with her in spite of +her musty smell. He put up with Mme Lerat and her encumbrances, with +Louiset and the mournful complaints peculiar to a child who is being +eaten up with the rottenness inherited from some unknown father. But he +spent hours worse than these. One evening he had heard Nana angrily +telling her maid that a man pretending to be rich had just swindled +her—a handsome man calling himself an American and owning gold mines in +his own country, a beast who had gone off while she was asleep without +giving her a copper and had even taken a packet of cigarette papers +with him. The count had turned very pale and had gone downstairs again +on tiptoe so as not to hear more. But later he had to hear all. Nana, +having been smitten with a baritone in a music hall and having been +thrown over by him, wanted to commit suicide during a fit of +sentimental melancholia. She swallowed a glass of water in which she +had soaked a box of matches. This made her terribly sick but did not +kill her. The count had to nurse her and to listen to the whole story +of her passion, her tearful protests and her oaths never to take to any +man again. In her contempt for those swine, as she called them, she +could not, however, keep her heart free, for she always had some +sweetheart round her, and her exhausted body inclined to +incomprehensible fancies and perverse tastes. As Zoé designedly relaxed +her efforts the service of the house had got to such a pitch that +Muffat did not dare to push open a door, to pull a curtain or to +unclose a cupboard. The bells did not ring; men lounged about +everywhere and at every moment knocked up against one another. He had +now to cough before entering a room, having almost caught the girl +hanging round Francis’ neck one evening that he had just gone out of +the dressing room for two minutes to tell the coachman to put the +horses to, while her hairdresser was finishing her hair. She gave +herself up suddenly behind his back; she took her pleasure in every +corner, quickly, with the first man she met. Whether she was in her +chemise or in full dress did not matter. She would come back to the +count red all over, happy at having cheated him. As for him, he was +plagued to death; it was an abominable infliction! + +In his jealous anguish the unhappy man was comparatively at peace when +he left Nana and Satin alone together. He would have willingly urged +her on to this vice, to keep the men off her. But all was spoiled in +this direction too. Nana deceived Satin as she deceived the count, +going mad over some monstrous fancy or other and picking up girls at +the street corners. Coming back in her carriage, she would suddenly be +taken with a little slut that she saw on the pavement; her senses would +be captivated, her imagination excited. She would take the little slut +in with her, pay her and send her away again. Then, disguised as a man, +she would go to infamous houses and look on at scenes of debauch to +while away hours of boredom. And Satin, angry at being thrown over +every moment, would turn the house topsy-turvy with the most awful +scenes. She had at last acquired a complete ascendancy over Nana, who +now respected her. Muffat even thought of an alliance between them. +When he dared not say anything he let Satin loose. Twice she had +compelled her darling to take up with him again, while he showed +himself obliging and effaced himself in her favor at the least sign. +But this good understanding lasted no time, for Satin, too, was a +little cracked. On certain days she would very nearly go mad and would +smash everything, wearing herself out in tempest of love and anger, but +pretty all the time. Zoé must have excited her, for the maid took her +into corners as if she wanted to tell her about her great design of +which she as yet spoke to no one. + +At times, however, Count Muffat was still singularly revolted. He who +had tolerated Satin for months, who had at last shut his eyes to the +unknown herd of men that scampered so quickly through Nana’s bedroom, +became terribly enraged at being deceived by one of his own set or even +by an acquaintance. When she confessed her relations with Foucarmont he +suffered so acutely, he thought the treachery of the young man so base, +that he wished to insult him and fight a duel. As he did not know where +to find seconds for such an affair, he went to Labordette. The latter, +astonished, could not help laughing. + +“A duel about Nana? But, my dear sir, all Paris would be laughing at +you. Men do not fight for Nana; it would be ridiculous.” + +The count grew very pale and made a violent gesture. + +“Then I shall slap his face in the open street.” + +For an hour Labordette had to argue with him. A blow would make the +affair odious; that evening everyone would know the real reason of the +meeting; it would be in all the papers. And Labordette always finished +with the same expression: + +“It is impossible; it would be ridiculous.” + +Each time Muffat heard these words they seemed sharp and keen as a +stab. He could not even fight for the woman he loved; people would have +burst out laughing. Never before had he felt more bitterly the misery +of his love, the contrast between his heavy heart and the absurdity of +this life of pleasure in which it was now lost. This was his last +rebellion; he allowed Labordette to convince him, and he was present +afterward at the procession of his friends, who lived there as if at +home. + +Nana in a few months finished them up greedily, one after the other. +The growing needs entailed by her luxurious way of life only added fuel +to her desires, and she finished a man up at one mouthful. First she +had Foucarmont, who did not last a fortnight. He was thinking of +leaving the navy, having saved about thirty thousand francs in his ten +years of service, which he wished to invest in the United States. His +instincts, which were prudential, even miserly, were conquered; he gave +her everything, even his signature to notes of hand, which pledged his +future. When Nana had done with him he was penniless. But then she +proved very kind; she advised him to return to his ship. What was the +good of getting angry? Since he had no money their relations were no +longer possible. He ought to understand that and to be reasonable. A +ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to rot on the ground +by himself. + +Then Nana took up with Steiner without disgust but without love. She +called him a dirty Jew; she seemed to be paying back an old grudge, of +which she had no distinct recollection. He was fat; he was stupid, and +she got him down and took two bites at a time in order the quicker to +do for this Prussian. As for him, he had thrown Simonne over. His +Bosphorous scheme was getting shaky, and Nana hastened the downfall by +wild expenses. For a month he struggled on, doing miracles of finance. +He filled Europe with posters, advertisements and prospectuses of a +colossal scheme and obtained money from the most distant climes. All +these savings, the pounds of speculators and the pence of the poor, +were swallowed up in the Avenue de Villiers. Again he was partner in an +ironworks in Alsace, where in a small provincial town workmen, +blackened with coal dust and soaked with sweat, day and night strained +their sinews and heard their bones crack to satisfy Nana’s pleasures. +Like a huge fire she devoured all the fruits of stock-exchange +swindling and the profits of labor. This time she did for Steiner; she +brought him to the ground, sucked him dry to the core, left him so +cleaned out that he was unable to invent a new roguery. When his bank +failed he stammered and trembled at the idea of prosecution. His +bankruptcy had just been published, and the simple mention of money +flurried him and threw him into a childish embarrassment. And this was +he who had played with millions. One evening at Nana’s he began to cry +and asked her for a loan of a hundred francs wherewith to pay his +maidservant. And Nana, much affected and amused at the end of this +terrible old man who had squeezed Paris for twenty years, brought it to +him and said: + +“I say, I’m giving it you because it seems so funny! But listen to me, +my boy, you are too old for me to keep. You must find something else to +do.” + +Then Nana started on La Faloise at once. He had for some time been +longing for the honor of being ruined by her in order to put the +finishing stroke on his smartness. He needed a woman to launch him +properly; it was the one thing still lacking. In two months all Paris +would be talking of him, and he would see his name in the papers. Six +weeks were enough. His inheritance was in landed estate, houses, +fields, woods and farms. He had to sell all, one after the other, as +quickly as he could. At every mouthful Nana swallowed an acre. The +foliage trembling in the sunshine, the wide fields of ripe grain, the +vineyards so golden in September, the tall grass in which the cows +stood knee-deep, all passed through her hands as if engulfed by an +abyss. Even fishing rights, a stone quarry and three mills disappeared. +Nana passed over them like an invading army or one of those swarms of +locusts whose flight scours a whole province. The ground was burned up +where her little foot had rested. Farm by farm, field by field, she ate +up the man’s patrimony very prettily and quite inattentively, just as +she would have eaten a box of sweet-meats flung into her lap between +mealtimes. There was no harm in it all; they were only sweets! But at +last one evening there only remained a single little wood. She +swallowed it up disdainfully, as it was hardly worth the trouble +opening one’s mouth for. La Faloise laughed idiotically and sucked the +top of his stick. His debts were crushing him; he was not worth a +hundred francs a year, and he saw that he would be compelled to go back +into the country and live with his maniacal uncle. But that did not +matter; he had achieved smartness; the Figaro had printed his name +twice. And with his meager neck sticking up between the turndown points +of his collar and his figure squeezed into all too short a coat, he +would swagger about, uttering his parrotlike exclamations and affecting +a solemn listlessness suggestive of an emotionless marionette. He so +annoyed Nana that she ended by beating him. + +Meanwhile Fauchery had returned, his cousin having brought him. Poor +Fauchery had now set up housekeeping. After having thrown over the +countess he had fallen into Rose’s hands, and she treated him as a +lawful wife would have done. Mignon was simply Madame’s major-domo. +Installed as master of the house, the journalist lied to Rose and took +all sorts of precautions when he deceived her. He was as scrupulous as +a good husband, for he really wanted to settle down at last. Nana’s +triumph consisted in possessing and in ruining a newspaper that he had +started with a friend’s capital. She did not proclaim her triumph; on +the contrary, she delighted in treating him as a man who had to be +circumspect, and when she spoke of Rose it was as “poor Rose.” The +newspaper kept her in flowers for two months. She took all the +provincial subscriptions; in fact, she took everything, from the column +of news and gossip down to the dramatic notes. Then the editorial staff +having been turned topsy-turvy and the management completely +disorganized, she satisfied a fanciful caprice and had a winter garden +constructed in a corner of her house: that carried off all the type. +But then it was no joke after all! When in his delight at the whole +business Mignon came to see if he could not saddle Fauchery on her +altogether, she asked him if he took her for a fool. A penniless fellow +living by his articles and his plays—not if she knew it! That sort of +foolishness might be all very well for a clever woman like her poor, +dear Rose! She grew distrustful: she feared some treachery on Mignon’s +part, for he was quite capable of preaching to his wife, and so she +gave Fauchery his CONGÉ as he now only paid her in fame. + +But she always recollected him kindly. They had both enjoyed themselves +so much at the expense of that fool of à La Faloise! They would never +have thought of seeing each other again if the delight of fooling such +a perfect idiot had not egged them on! It seemed an awfully good joke +to kiss each other under his very nose. They cut a regular dash with +his coin; they would send him off full speed to the other end of Paris +in order to be alone and then when he came back, they would crack jokes +and make allusions he could not understand. One day, urged by the +journalist, she bet that she would smack his face, and that she did the +very same evening and went on to harder blows, for she thought it a +good joke and was glad of the opportunity of showing how cowardly men +were. She called him her “slapjack” and would tell him to come and have +his smack! The smacks made her hands red, for as yet she was not up to +the trick. La Faloise laughed in his idiotic, languid way, though his +eyes were full of tears. He was delighted at such familiarity; he +thought it simply stunning. + +One night when he had received sundry cuffs and was greatly excited: + +“Now, d’you know,” he said, “you ought to marry me. We should be as +jolly as grigs together, eh?” + +This was no empty suggestion. Seized with a desire to astonish Paris, +he had been slyly projecting this marriage. “Nana’s husband! Wouldn’t +that sound smart, eh?” Rather a stunning apotheosis that! But Nana gave +him a fine snubbing. + +“Me marry you! Lovely! If such an idea had been tormenting me I should +have found a husband a long time ago! And he’d have been a man worth +twenty of you, my pippin! I’ve had a heap of proposals. Why, look here, +just reckon ’em up with me: Philippe, Georges, Foucarmont, Steiner—that +makes four, without counting the others you don’t know. It’s a chorus +they all sing. I can’t be nice, but they forthwith begin yelling, ‘Will +you marry me? Will you marry me?’” + +She lashed herself up and then burst out in fine indignation: + +“Oh dear, no! I don’t want to! D’you think I’m built that way? Just +look at me a bit! Why, I shouldn’t be Nana any longer if I fastened a +man on behind! And, besides, it’s too foul!” + +And she spat and hiccuped with disgust, as though she had seen all the +dirt in the world spread out beneath her. + +One evening La Faloise vanished, and a week later it became known that +he was in the country with an uncle whose mania was botany. He was +pasting his specimens for him and stood a chance of marrying a very +plain, pious cousin. Nana shed no tears for him. She simply said to the +count: + +“Eh, little rough, another rival less! You’re chortling today. But he +was becoming serious! He wanted to marry me.” + +He waxed pale, and she flung her arms round his neck and hung there, +laughing, while she emphasized every little cruel speech with a caress. + +“You can’t marry Nana! Isn’t that what’s fetching you, eh? When they’re +all bothering me with their marriages you’re raging in your corner. It +isn’t possible; you must wait till your wife kicks the bucket. Oh, if +she were only to do that, how you’d come rushing round! How you’d fling +yourself on the ground and make your offer with all the grand +accompaniments—sighs and tears and vows! Wouldn’t it be nice, darling, +eh?” + +Her voice had become soft, and she was chaffing him in a ferociously +wheedling manner. He was deeply moved and began blushing as he paid her +back her kisses. Then she cried: + +“By God, to think I should have guessed! He’s thought about it; he’s +waiting for his wife to go off the hooks! Well, well, that’s the +finishing touch! Why, he’s even a bigger rascal than the others!” + +Muffat had resigned himself to “the others.” Nowadays he was trusting +to the last relics of his personal dignity in order to remain +“Monsieur” among the servants and intimates of the house, the man, in +fact, who because he gave most was the official lover. And his passion +grew fiercer. He kept his position because he paid for it, buying even +smiles at a high price. He was even robbed and he never got his money’s +worth, but a disease seemed to be gnawing his vitals from which he +could not prevent himself suffering. Whenever he entered Nana’s bedroom +he was simply content to open the windows for a second or two in order +to get rid of the odors the others left behind them, the essential +smells of fair-haired men and dark, the smoke of cigars, of which the +pungency choked him. This bedroom was becoming a veritable +thoroughfare, so continually were boots wiped on its threshold. Yet +never a man among them was stopped by the bloodstain barring the door. +Zoé was still preoccupied by this stain; it was a simple mania with +her, for she was a clean girl, and it horrified her to see it always +there. Despite everything her eyes would wander in its direction, and +she now never entered Madame’s room without remarking: + +“It’s strange that don’t go. All the same, plenty of folk come in this +way.” + +Nana kept receiving the best news from Georges, who was by that time +already convalescent in his mother’s keeping at Les Fondettes, and she +used always to make the same reply. + +“Oh, hang it, time’s all that’s wanted. It’s apt to grow paler as feet +cross it.” + +As a matter of fact, each of the gentlemen, whether Foucarmont, +Steiner, La Faloise or Fauchery, had borne away some of it on their +bootsoles. And Muffat, whom the bloodstain preoccupied as much as it +did Zoé, kept studying it in his own despite, as though in its gradual +rosy disappearance he would read the number of men that passed. He +secretly dreaded it and always stepped over it out of a vivid fear of +crushing some live thing, some naked limb lying on the floor. + +But in the bedroom within he would grow dizzy and intoxicated and would +forget everything—the mob of men which constantly crossed it, the sign +of mourning which barred its door. Outside, in the open air of the +street, he would weep occasionally out of sheer shame and disgust and +would vow never to enter the room again. And the moment the portière +had closed behind him he was under the old influence once more and felt +his whole being melting in the damp warm air of the place, felt his +flesh penetrated by a perfume, felt himself overborne by a voluptuous +yearning for self-annihilation. Pious and habituated to ecstatic +experiences in sumptuous chapels, he there re-encountered precisely the +same mystical sensations as when he knelt under some painted window and +gave way to the intoxication of organ music and incense. Woman swayed +him as jealously and despotically as the God of wrath, terrifying him, +granting him moments of delight, which were like spasms in their +keenness, in return for hours filled with frightful, tormenting visions +of hell and eternal tortures. In Nana’s presence, as in church, the +same stammering accents were his, the same prayers and the same fits of +despair—nay, the same paroxysms of humility peculiar to an accursed +creature who is crushed down in the mire from whence he has sprung. His +fleshly desires, his spiritual needs, were confounded together and +seemed to spring from the obscure depths of his being and to bear but +one blossom on the tree of his existence. He abandoned himself to the +power of love and of faith, those twin levers which move the world. And +despite all the struggles of his reason this bedroom of Nana’s always +filled him with madness, and he would sink shuddering under the +almighty dominion of sex, just as he would swoon before the vast +unknown of heaven. + +Then when she felt how humble he was Nana grew tyrannously triumphant. +The rage for debasing things was inborn in her. It did not suffice her +to destroy them; she must soil them too. Her delicate hands left +abominable traces and themselves decomposed whatever they had broken. +And he in his imbecile condition lent himself to this sort of sport, +for he was possessed by vaguely remembered stories of saints who were +devoured by vermin and in turn devoured their own excrements. When once +she had him fast in her room and the doors were shut, she treated +herself to a man’s infamy. At first they joked together, and she would +deal him light blows and impose quaint tasks on him, making him lisp +like a child and repeat tags of sentences. + +“Say as I do: ’tonfound it! Ickle man damn vell don’t tare about it!” + +He would prove so docile as to reproduce her very accent. + +“’Tonfound it! Ickle man damn vell don’t tare about it!” + +Or again she would play bear, walking on all fours on her rugs when she +had only her chemise on and turning round with a growl as though she +wanted to eat him. She would even nibble his calves for the fun of the +thing. Then, getting up again: + +“It’s your turn now; try it a bit. I bet you don’t play bear like me.” + +It was still charming enough. As bear she amused him with her white +skin and her fell of ruddy hair. He used to laugh and go down on all +fours, too, and growl and bite her calves, while she ran from him with +an affectation of terror. + +“Are we beasts, eh?” she would end by saying. “You’ve no notion how +ugly you are, my pet! Just think if they were to see you like that at +the Tuileries!” + +But ere long these little games were spoiled. It was not cruelty in her +case, for she was still a good-natured girl; it was as though a passing +wind of madness were blowing ever more strongly in the shut-up bedroom. +A storm of lust disordered their brains, plunged them into the +delirious imaginations of the flesh. The old pious terrors of their +sleepless nights were now transforming themselves into a thirst for +bestiality, a furious longing to walk on all fours, to growl and to +bite. One day when he was playing bear she pushed him so roughly that +he fell against a piece of furniture, and when she saw the lump on his +forehead she burst into involuntary laughter. After that her +experiments on La Faloise having whetted her appetite, she treated him +like an animal, threshing him and chasing him to an accompaniment of +kicks. + +“Gee up! Gee up! You’re a horse. Hoi! Gee up! Won’t you hurry up, you +dirty screw?” + +At other times he was a dog. She would throw her scented handkerchief +to the far end of the room, and he had to run and pick it up with his +teeth, dragging himself along on hands and knees. + +“Fetch it, Caesar! Look here, I’ll give you what for if you don’t look +sharp! Well done, Caesar! Good dog! Nice old fellow! Now behave +pretty!” + +And he loved his abasement and delighted in being a brute beast. He +longed to sink still further and would cry: + +“Hit harder. On, on! I’m wild! Hit away!” + +She was seized with a whim and insisted on his coming to her one night +clad in his magnificent chamberlain’s costume. Then how she did laugh +and make fun of him when she had him there in all his glory, with the +sword and the cocked hat and the white breeches and the full-bottomed +coat of red cloth laced with gold and the symbolic key hanging on its +left-hand skirt. This key made her especially merry and urged her to a +wildly fanciful and extremely filthy discussion of it. Laughing without +cease and carried away by her irreverence for pomp and by the joy of +debasing him in the official dignity of his costume, she shook him, +pinched him, shouted, “Oh, get along with ye, Chamberlain!” and ended +by an accompaniment of swinging kicks behind. Oh, those kicks! How +heartily she rained them on the Tuileries and the majesty of the +imperial court, throning on high above an abject and trembling people. +That’s what she thought of society! That was her revenge! It was an +affair of unconscious hereditary spite; it had come to her in her +blood. Then when once the chamberlain was undressed and his coat lay +spread on the ground she shrieked, “Jump!” And he jumped. She shrieked, +“Spit!” And he spat. With a shriek she bade him walk on the gold, on +the eagles, on the decorations, and he walked on them. Hi tiddly hi ti! +Nothing was left; everything was going to pieces. She smashed a +chamberlain just as she smashed a flask or a comfit box, and she made +filth of him, reduced him to a heap of mud at a street corner. + +Meanwhile the goldsmiths had failed to keep their promise, and the bed +was not delivered till one day about the middle of January. Muffat was +just then in Normandy, whither he had gone to sell a last stray shred +of property, but Nana demanded four thousand francs forthwith. He was +not due in Paris till the day after tomorrow, but when his business was +once finished he hastened his return and without even paying a flying +visit in the Rue Miromesnil came direct to the Avenue de Villiers. Ten +o’clock was striking. As he had a key of a little door opening on the +Rue Cardinet, he went up unhindered. In the drawing room upstairs Zoé, +who was polishing the bronzes, stood dumfounded at sight of him, and +not knowing how to stop him, she began with much circumlocution, +informing him that M. Venot, looking utterly beside himself, had been +searching for him since yesterday and that he had already come twice to +beg her to send Monsieur to his house if Monsieur arrived at Madame’s +before going home. Muffat listened to her without in the least +understanding the meaning of her recital; then he noticed her agitation +and was seized by a sudden fit of jealousy of which he no longer +believed himself capable. He threw himself against the bedroom door, +for he heard the sound of laughter within. The door gave; its two flaps +flew asunder, while Zoé withdrew, shrugging her shoulders. So much the +worse for Madame! As Madame was bidding good-by to her wits, she might +arrange matters for herself. + +And on the threshold Muffat uttered a cry at the sight that was +presented to his view. + +“My God! My God!” + +The renovated bedroom was resplendent in all its royal luxury. Silver +buttons gleamed like bright stars on the tea-rose velvet of the +hangings. These last were of that pink flesh tint which the skies +assume on fine evenings, when Venus lights her fires on the horizon +against the clear background of fading daylight. The golden cords and +tassels hanging in corners and the gold lace-work surrounding the +panels were like little flames of ruddy strands of loosened hair, and +they half covered the wide nakedness of the room while they emphasized +its pale, voluptuous tone. Then over against him there was the gold and +silver bed, which shone in all the fresh splendor of its chiseled +workmanship, a throne this of sufficient extent for Nana to display the +outstretched glory of her naked limbs, an altar of Byzantine +sumptuousness, worthy of the almighty puissance of Nana’s sex, which at +this very hour lay nudely displayed there in the religious immodesty +befitting an idol of all men’s worship. And close by, beneath the snowy +reflections of her bosom and amid the triumph of the goddess, lay +wallowing a shameful, decrepit thing, a comic and lamentable ruin, the +Marquis de Chouard in his nightshirt. + +The count had clasped his hands together and, shaken by a paroxysmal +shuddering, he kept crying: + +“My God! My God!” + +It was for the Marquis de Chouard, then, that the golden roses +flourished on the side panels, those bunches of golden roses blooming +among the golden leaves; it was for him that the Cupids leaned forth +with amorous, roguish laughter from their tumbling ring on the silver +trelliswork. And it was for him that the faun at his feet discovered +the nymph sleeping, tired with dalliance, the figure of Night copied +down to the exaggerated thighs—which caused her to be recognizable of +all—from Nana’s renowned nudity. Cast there like the rag of something +human which has been spoiled and dissolved by sixty years of +debauchery, he suggested the charnelhouse amid the glory of the woman’s +dazzling contours. Seeing the door open, he had risen up, smitten with +sudden terror as became an infirm old man. This last night of passion +had rendered him imbecile; he was entering on his second childhood; +and, his speech failing him, he remained in an attitude of flight, +half-paralyzed, stammering, shivering, his nightshirt half up his +skeleton shape, and one leg outside the clothes, a livid leg, covered +with gray hair. Despite her vexation Nana could not keep from laughing. + +“Do lie down! Stuff yourself into the bed,” she said, pulling him back +and burying him under the coverlet, as though he were some filthy thing +she could not show anyone. + +Then she sprang up to shut the door again. She was decidedly never +lucky with her little rough. He was always coming when least wanted. +And why had he gone to fetch money in Normandy? The old man had brought +her the four thousand francs, and she had let him have his will of her. +She pushed back the two flaps of the door and shouted: + +“So much the worse for you! It’s your fault. Is that the way to come +into a room? I’ve had enough of this sort of thing. Ta ta!” + +Muffat remained standing before the closed door, thunderstruck by what +he had just seen. His shuddering fit increased. It mounted from his +feet to his heart and brain. Then like a tree shaken by a mighty wind, +he swayed to and fro and dropped on his knees, all his muscles giving +way under him. And with hands despairingly outstretched he stammered: + +“This is more than I can bear, my God! More than I can bear!” + +He had accepted every situation but he could do so no longer. He had +come to the end of his strength and was plunged in the dark void where +man and his reason are together overthrown. In an extravagant access of +faith he raised his hands ever higher and higher, searching for heaven, +calling on God. + +“Oh no, I do not desire it! Oh, come to me, my God! Succor me; nay, let +me die sooner! Oh no, not that man, my God! It is over; take me, carry +me away, that I may not see, that I may not feel any longer! Oh, I +belong to you, my God! Our Father which art in heaven—” + +And burning with faith, he continued his supplication, and an ardent +prayer escaped from his lips. But someone touched him on the shoulder. +He lifted his eyes; it was M. Venot. He was surprised to find him +praying before that closed door. Then as though God Himself had +responded to his appeal, the count flung his arms round the little old +gentleman’s neck. At last he could weep, and he burst out sobbing and +repeated: + +“My brother, my brother.” + +All his suffering humanity found comfort in that cry. He drenched M. +Venot’s face with tears; he kissed him, uttering fragmentary +ejaculations. + +“Oh, my brother, how I am suffering! You only are left me, my brother. +Take me away forever—oh, for mercy’s sake, take me away!” + +Then M. Venot pressed him to his bosom and called him “brother” also. +But he had a fresh blow in store for him. Since yesterday he had been +searching for him in order to inform him that the Countess Sabine, in a +supreme fit of moral aberration, had but now taken flight with the +manager of one of the departments in a large, fancy emporium. It was a +fearful scandal, and all Paris was already talking about it. Seeing him +under the influence of such religious exaltation, Venot felt the +opportunity to be favorable and at once told him of the meanly tragic +shipwreck of his house. The count was not touched thereby. His wife had +gone? That meant nothing to him; they would see what would happen later +on. And again he was seized with anguish, and gazing with a look of +terror at the door, the walls, the ceiling, he continued pouring forth +his single supplication: + +“Take me away! I cannot bear it any longer! Take me away!” + +M. Venot took him away as though he had been a child. From that day +forth Muffat belonged to him entirely; he again became strictly +attentive to the duties of religion; his life was utterly blasted. He +had resigned his position as chamberlain out of respect for the +outraged modesty of the Tuileries, and soon Estelle, his daughter, +brought an action against him for the recovery of a sum of sixty +thousand francs, a legacy left her by an aunt to which she ought to +have succeeded at the time of her marriage. Ruined and living narrowly +on the remains of his great fortune, he let himself be gradually +devoured by the countess, who ate up the husks Nana had rejected. +Sabine was indeed ruined by the example of promiscuity set her by her +husband’s intercourse with the wanton. She was prone to every excess +and proved the ultimate ruin and destruction of his very hearth. After +sundry adventures she had returned home, and he had taken her back in a +spirit of Christian resignation and forgiveness. She haunted him as his +living disgrace, but he grew more and more indifferent and at last +ceased suffering from these distresses. Heaven took him out of his +wife’s hands in order to restore him to the arms of God, and so the +voluptuous pleasures he had enjoyed with Nana were prolonged in +religious ecstasies, accompanied by the old stammering utterances, the +old prayers and despairs, the old fits of humility which befit an +accursed creature who is crushed beneath the mire whence he sprang. In +the recesses of churches, his knees chilled by the pavement, he would +once more experience the delights of the past, and his muscles would +twitch, and his brain would whirl deliciously, and the satisfaction of +the obscure necessities of his existence would be the same as of old. + +On the evening of the final rupture Mignon presented himself at the +house in the Avenue de Villiers. He was growing accustomed to Fauchery +and was beginning at last to find the presence of his wife’s husband +infinitely advantageous to him. He would leave all the little household +cares to the journalist and would trust him in the active +superintendence of all their affairs. Nay, he devoted the money gained +by his dramatic successes to the daily expenditure of the family, and +as, on his part, Fauchery behaved sensibly, avoiding ridiculous +jealousy and proving not less pliant than Mignon himself whenever Rose +found her opportunity, the mutual understanding between the two men +constantly improved. In fact, they were happy in a partnership which +was so fertile in all kinds of amenities, and they settled down side by +side and adopted a family arrangement which no longer proved a +stumbling block. The whole thing was conducted according to rule; it +suited admirably, and each man vied with the other in his efforts for +the common happiness. That very evening Mignon had come by Fauchery’s +advice to see if he could not steal Nana’s lady’s maid from her, the +journalist having formed a high opinion of the woman’s extraordinary +intelligence. Rose was in despair; for a month past she had been +falling into the hands of inexperienced girls who were causing her +continual embarrassment. When Zoé received him at the door he forthwith +pushed her into the dining room. But at his opening sentence she +smiled. The thing was impossible, she said, for she was leaving Madame +and establishing herself on her own account. And she added with an +expression of discreet vanity that she was daily receiving offers, that +the ladies were fighting for her and that Mme Blanche would give a pile +of gold to have her back. + +Zoé was taking the Tricon’s establishment. It was an old project and +had been long brooded over. It was her ambition to make her fortune +thereby, and she was investing all her savings in it. She was full of +great ideas and meditated increasing the business and hiring a house +and combining all the delights within its walls. It was with this in +view that she had tried to entice Satin, a little pig at that moment +dying in hospital, so terribly had she done for herself. + +Mignon still insisted with his offer and spoke of the risks run in the +commercial life, but Zoé, without entering into explanations about the +exact nature of her establishment, smiled a pinched smile, as though +she had just put a sweetmeat in her mouth, and was content to remark: + +“Oh, luxuries always pay. You see, I’ve been with others quite long +enough, and now I want others to be with me.” + +And a fierce look set her lip curling. At last she would be “Madame,” +and for the sake of earning a few louis all those women whose slops she +had emptied during the last fifteen years would prostrate themselves +before her. + +Mignon wished to be announced, and Zoé left him for a moment after +remarking that Madame had passed a miserable day. He had only been at +the house once before, and he did not know it at all. The dining room +with its Gobelin tapestry, its sideboard and its plate filled him with +astonishment. He opened the doors familiarly and visited the drawing +room and the winter garden, returning thence into the hall. This +overwhelming luxury, this gilded furniture, these silks and velvets, +gradually filled him with such a feeling of admiration that it set his +heart beating. When Zoé came down to fetch him she offered to show him +the other rooms, the dressing room, that is to say, and the bedroom. In +the latter Mignon’s feelings overcame him; he was carried away by them; +they filled him with tender enthusiasm. + +That damned Nana was simply stupefying him, and yet he thought he knew +a thing or two. Amid the downfall of the house and the servants’ wild, +wasteful race to destruction, massed-up riches still filled every +gaping hole and overtopped every ruined wall. And Mignon, as he viewed +this lordly monument of wealth, began recalling to mind the various +great works he had seen. Near Marseilles they had shown him an +aqueduct, the stone arches of which bestrode an abyss, a Cyclopean work +which cost millions of money and ten years of intense labor. At +Cherbourg he had seen the new harbor with its enormous works, where +hundreds of men sweated in the sun while cranes filled the sea with +huge squares of rock and built up a wall where a workman now and again +remained crushed into bloody pulp. But all that now struck him as +insignificant. Nana excited him far more. Viewing the fruit of her +labors, he once more experienced the feelings of respect that had +overcome him one festal evening in a sugar refiner’s château. This +château had been erected for the refiner, and its palatial proportions +and royal splendor had been paid for by a single material—sugar. It was +with something quite different, with a little laughable folly, a little +delicate nudity—it was with this shameful trifle, which is so powerful +as to move the universe, that she alone, without workmen, without the +inventions of engineers, had shaken Paris to its foundations and had +built up a fortune on the bodies of dead men. + +“Oh, by God, what an implement!” + +Mignon let the words escape him in his ecstasy, for he felt a return of +personal gratitude. + +Nana had gradually lapsed into a most mournful condition. To begin +with, the meeting of the marquis and the count had given her a severe +fit of feverish nervousness, which verged at times on laughter. Then +the thought of this old man going away half dead in a cab and of her +poor rough, whom she would never set eyes on again now that she had +driven him so wild, brought on what looked like the beginnings of +melancholia. After that she grew vexed to hear about Satin’s illness. +The girl had disappeared about a fortnight ago and was now ready to die +at Lariboisière, to such a damnable state had Mme Robert reduced her. +When she ordered the horses to be put to in order that she might have a +last sight of this vile little wretch Zoé had just quietly given her a +week’s notice. The announcement drove her to desperation at once! It +seemed to her she was losing a member of her own family. Great heavens! +What was to become of her when left alone? And she besought Zoé to +stay, and the latter, much flattered by Madame’s despair, ended by +kissing her to show that she was not going away in anger. No, she had +positively to go: the heart could have no voice in matters of business. + +But that day was one of annoyances. Nana was thoroughly disgusted and +gave up the idea of going out. She was dragging herself wearily about +the little drawing room when Labordette came up to tell her of a +splendid chance of buying magnificent lace and in the course of his +remarks casually let slip the information that Georges was dead. The +announcement froze her. + +“Zizi dead!” she cried. + +And involuntarily her eyes sought the pink stain on the carpet, but it +had vanished at last; passing footsteps had worn it away. Meanwhile +Labordette entered into particulars. It was not exactly known how he +died. Some spoke of a wound reopening, others of suicide. The lad had +plunged, they said, into a tank at Les Fondettes. Nana kept repeating: + +“Dead! Dead!” + +She had been choking with grief since morning, and now she burst out +sobbing and thus sought relief. Hers was an infinite sorrow: it +overwhelmed her with its depth and immensity. Labordette wanted to +comfort her as touching Georges, but she silenced him with a gesture +and blurted out: + +“It isn’t only he; it’s everything, everything. I’m very wretched. Oh +yes, I know! They’ll again be saying I’m a hussy. To think of the +mother mourning down there and of the poor man who was groaning in +front of my door this morning and of all the other people that are now +ruined after running through all they had with me! That’s it; punish +Nana; punish the beastly thing! Oh, I’ve got a broad back! I can hear +them as if I were actually there! ‘That dirty wench who lies with +everybody and cleans out some and drives others to death and causes a +whole heap of people pain!’” + +She was obliged to pause, for tears choked her utterance, and in her +anguish she flung herself athwart a divan and buried her face in a +cushion. The miseries she felt to be around her, miseries of which she +was the cause, overwhelmed her with a warm, continuous stream of +self-pitying tears, and her voice failed as she uttered a little girl’s +broken plaint: + +“Oh, I’m wretched! Oh, I’m wretched! I can’t go on like this: it’s +choking me. It’s too hard to be misunderstood and to see them all +siding against you because they’re stronger. However, when you’ve got +nothing to reproach yourself with and your conscious is clear, why, +then I say, ‘I won’t have it! I won’t have it!’” + +In her anger she began rebeling against circumstances, and getting up, +she dried her eyes, and walked about in much agitation. + +“I won’t have it! They can say what they like, but it’s not my fault! +Am I a bad lot, eh? I give away all I’ve got; I wouldn’t crush a fly! +It’s they who are bad! Yes, it’s they! I never wanted to be horrid to +them. And they came dangling after me, and today they’re kicking the +bucket and begging and going to ruin on purpose.” + +Then she paused in front of Labordette and tapped his shoulders. + +“Look here,” she said, “you were there all along; now speak the truth: +did I urge them on? Weren’t there always a dozen of ’em squabbling who +could invent the dirtiest trick? They used to disgust me, they did! I +did all I knew not to copy them: I was afraid to. Look here, I’ll give +you a single instance: they all wanted to marry me! A pretty notion, +eh? Yes, dear boy, I could have been countess or baroness a dozen times +over and more, if I’d consented. Well now, I refused because I was +reasonable. Oh yes, I saved ’em some crimes and other foul acts! They’d +have stolen, murdered, killed father and mother. I had only to say one +word, and I didn’t say it. You see what I’ve got for it today. There’s +Daguenet, for instance; I married that chap off! I made a position for +the beggarly fellow after keeping him gratis for weeks! And I met him +yesterday, and he looks the other way! Oh, get along, you swine! I’m +less dirty than you!” + +She had begun pacing about again, and now she brought her fist +violently down on a round table. + +“By God it isn’t fair! Society’s all wrong. They come down on the women +when it’s the men who want you to do things. Yes, I can tell you this +now: when I used to go with them—see? I didn’t enjoy it; no, I didn’t +enjoy it one bit. It bored me, on my honor. Well then, I ask you +whether I’ve got anything to do with it! Yes, they bored me to death! +If it hadn’t been for them and what they made of me, dear boy, I should +be in a convent saying my prayers to the good God, for I’ve always had +my share of religion. Dash it, after all, if they have dropped their +money and their lives over it, what do I care? It’s their fault. I’ve +had nothing to do with it!” + +“Certainly not,” said Labordette with conviction. + +Zoé ushered in Mignon, and Nana received him smilingly. She had cried a +good deal, but it was all over now. Still glowing with enthusiasm, he +complimented her on her installation, but she let him see that she had +had enough of her mansion and that now she had other projects and would +sell everything up one of these days. Then as he excused himself for +calling on the ground that he had come about a benefit performance in +aid of old Bose, who was tied to his armchair by paralysis, she +expressed extreme pity and took two boxes. Meanwhile Zoé announced that +the carriage was waiting for Madame, and she asked for her hat and as +she tied the strings told them about poor, dear Satin’s mishap, adding: + +“I’m going to the hospital. Nobody ever loved me as she did. Oh, +they’re quite right when they accuse the men of heartlessness! Who +knows? Perhaps I shan’t see her alive. Never mind, I shall ask to see +her: I want to give her a kiss.” + +Labordette and Mignon smiled, and as Nana was no longer melancholy she +smiled too. Those two fellows didn’t count; they could enter into her +feelings. And they both stood and admired her in silent abstraction +while she finished buttoning her gloves. She alone kept her feet amid +the heaped-up riches of her mansion, while a whole generation of men +lay stricken down before her. Like those antique monsters whose +redoubtable domains were covered with skeletons, she rested her feet on +human skulls. She was ringed round with catastrophes. There was the +furious immolation of Vandeuvres; the melancholy state of Foucarmont, +who was lost in the China seas; the smashup of Steiner, who now had to +live like an honest man; the satisfied idiocy of La Faloise, and the +tragic shipwreck of the Muffats. Finally there was the white corpse of +Georges, over which Philippe was now watching, for he had come out of +prison but yesterday. She had finished her labor of ruin and death. The +fly that had flown up from the ordure of the slums, bringing with it +the leaven of social rottenness, had poisoned all these men by merely +alighting on them. It was well done—it was just. She had avenged the +beggars and the wastrels from whose caste she issued. And while, +metaphorically speaking, her sex rose in a halo of glory and beamed +over prostrate victims like a mounting sun shining brightly over a +field of carnage, the actual woman remained as unconscious as a +splendid animal, and in her ignorance of her mission was the +good-natured courtesan to the last. She was still big; she was still +plump; her health was excellent, her spirits capital. But this went for +nothing now, for her house struck her as ridiculous. It was too small; +it was full of furniture which got in her way. It was a wretched +business, and the long and the short of the matter was she would have +to make a fresh start. In fact, she was meditating something much +better, and so she went off to kiss Satin for the last time. She was in +all her finery and looked clean and solid and as brand new as if she +had never seen service before. + + + + + CHAPTER XIV + + +Nana suddenly disappeared. It was a fresh plunge, an escapade, a flight +into barbarous regions. Before her departure she had treated herself to +a new sensation: she had held a sale and had made a clean sweep of +everything—house, furniture, jewelry, nay, even dresses and linen. +Prices were cited—the five days’ sale produced more than six hundred +thousand francs. For the last time Paris had seen her in a fairy piece. +It was called Melusine, and it played at the Theatre de la Gaîté, which +the penniless Bordenave had taken out of sheer audacity. Here she again +found herself in company with Prullière and Fontan. Her part was simply +spectacular, but it was the great attraction of the piece, consisting, +as it did, of three POSES PLASTIQUES, each of which represented the +same dumb and puissant fairy. Then one fine morning amid his grand +success, when Bordenave, who was mad after advertisement, kept firing +the Parisian imagination with colossal posters, it became known that +she must have started for Cairo the previous day. She had simply had a +few words with her manager. Something had been said which did not +please her; the whole thing was the caprice of a woman who is too rich +to let herself be annoyed. Besides, she had indulged an old +infatuation, for she had long meditated visiting the Turks. + +Months passed—she began to be forgotten. When her name was mentioned +among the ladies and gentlemen, the strangest stories were told, and +everybody gave the most contradictory and at the same time prodigious +information. She had made a conquest of the viceroy; she was reigning, +in the recesses of a palace, over two hundred slaves whose heads she +now and then cut off for the sake of a little amusement. No, not at +all! She had ruined herself with a great big nigger! A filthy passion +this, which had left her wallowing without a chemise to her back in the +crapulous debauchery of Cairo. A fortnight later much astonishment was +produced when someone swore to having met her in Russia. A legend began +to be formed: she was the mistress of a prince, and her diamonds were +mentioned. All the women were soon acquainted with them from the +current descriptions, but nobody could cite the precise source of all +this information. There were finger rings, earrings, bracelets, a +REVIERE of phenomenal width, a queenly diadem surmounted by a central +brilliant the size of one’s thumb. In the retirement of those faraway +countries she began to gleam forth as mysteriously as a gem-laden idol. +People now mentioned her without laughing, for they were full of +meditative respect for this fortune acquired among the barbarians. + +One evening in July toward eight o’clock, Lucy, while getting out of +her carriage in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, noticed Caroline +Hequet, who had come out on foot to order something at a neighboring +tradesman’s. Lucy called her and at once burst out with: + +“Have you dined? Are you disengaged? Oh, then come with me, my dear. +Nana’s back.” + +The other got in at once, and Lucy continued: + +“And you know, my dear, she may be dead while we’re gossiping.” + +“Dead! What an idea!” cried Caroline in stupefaction. “And where is +she? And what’s it of?” + +“At the Grand Hotel, of smallpox. Oh, it’s a long story!” + +Lucy had bidden her coachman drive fast, and while the horses trotted +rapidly along the Rue Royale and the boulevards, she told what had +happened to Nana in jerky, breathless sentences. + +“You can’t imagine it. Nana plumps down out of Russia. I don’t know +why—some dispute with her prince. She leaves her traps at the station; +she lands at her aunt’s—you remember the old thing. Well, and then she +finds her baby dying of smallpox. The baby dies next day, and she has a +row with the aunt about some money she ought to have sent, of which the +other one has never seen a sou. Seems the child died of that: in fact, +it was neglected and badly cared for. Very well; Nana slopes, goes to a +hotel, then meets Mignon just as she was thinking of her traps. She has +all sorts of queer feelings, shivers, wants to be sick, and Mignon +takes her back to her place and promises to look after her affairs. +Isn’t it odd, eh? Doesn’t it all happen pat? But this is the best part +of the story: Rose finds out about Nana’s illness and gets indignant at +the idea of her being alone in furnished apartments. So she rushes off, +crying, to look after her. You remember how they used to detest one +another—like regular furies! Well then, my dear, Rose has had Nana +transported to the Grand Hotel, so that she should, at any rate, die in +a smart place, and now she’s already passed three nights there and is +free to die of it after. It’s Labordette who told me all about it. +Accordingly I wanted to see for myself—” + +“Yes, yes,” interrupted Caroline in great excitement “We’ll go up to +her.” + +They had arrived at their destination. On the boulevard the coachman +had had to rein in his horses amid a block of carriages and people on +foot. During the day the Corps Legislatif had voted for war, and now a +crowd was streaming down all the streets, flowing along all the +pavements, invading the middle of the roadway. Beyond the Madeleine the +sun had set behind a blood-red cloud, which cast a reflection as of a +great fire and set the lofty windows flaming. Twilight was falling, and +the hour was oppressively melancholy, for now the avenues were +darkening away into the distance but were not as yet dotted over by the +bright sparks of the gas lamps. And among the marching crowds distant +voices swelled and grew ever louder, and eyes gleamed from pale faces, +while a great spreading wind of anguish and stupor set every head +whirling. + +“Here’s Mignon,” said Lucy. “He’ll give us news.” + +Mignon was standing under the vast porch of the Grand Hotel. He looked +nervous and was gazing at the crowd. After Lucy’s first few questions +he grew impatient and cried out: + +“How should I know? These last two days I haven’t been able to tear +Rose away from up there. It’s getting stupid, when all’s said, for her +to be risking her life like that! She’ll be charming if she gets over +it, with holes in her face! It’ll suit us to a tee!” + +The idea that Rose might lose her beauty was exasperating him. He was +giving up Nana in the most downright fashion, and he could not in the +least understand these stupid feminine devotions. But Fauchery was +crossing the boulevard, and he, too, came up anxiously and asked for +news. The two men egged each other on. They addressed one another +familiarly in these days. + +“Always the same business, my sonny,” declared Mignon. “You ought to go +upstairs; you would force her to follow you.” + +“Come now, you’re kind, you are!” said the journalist. “Why don’t you +go upstairs yourself?” + +Then as Lucy began asking for Nana’s number, they besought her to make +Rose come down; otherwise they would end by getting angry. + +Nevertheless, Lucy and Caroline did not go up at once. They had caught +sight of Fontan strolling about with his hands in his pockets and +greatly amused by the quaint expressions of the mob. When he became +aware that Nana was lying ill upstairs he affected sentiment and +remarked: + +“The poor girl! I’ll go and shake her by the hand. What’s the matter +with her, eh?” + +“Smallpox,” replied Mignon. + +The actor had already taken a step or two in the direction of the +court, but he came back and simply murmured with a shiver: + +“Oh, damn it!” + +The smallpox was no joke. Fontan had been near having it when he was +five years old, while Mignon gave them an account of one of his nieces +who had died of it. As to Fauchery, he could speak of it from personal +experience, for he still bore marks of it in the shape of three little +lumps at the base of his nose, which he showed them. And when Mignon +again egged him on to the ascent, on the pretext that you never had it +twice, he violently combated this theory and with infinite abuse of the +doctors instanced various cases. But Lucy and Caroline interrupted +them, for the growing multitude filled them with astonishment. + +“Just look! Just look what a lot of people!” The night was deepening, +and in the distance the gas lamps were being lit one by one. Meanwhile +interested spectators became visible at windows, while under the trees +the human flood grew every minute more dense, till it ran in one +enormous stream from the Madeleine to the Bastille. Carriages rolled +slowly along. A roaring sound went up from this compact and as yet +inarticulate mass. Each member of it had come out, impelled by the +desire to form a crowd, and was now trampling along, steeping himself +in the pervading fever. But a great movement caused the mob to flow +asunder. Among the jostling, scattering groups a band of men in +workmen’s caps and white blouses had come in sight, uttering a +rhythmical cry which suggested the beat of hammers upon an anvil. + +“To Ber-lin! To Ber-lin! To Ber-lin!” And the crowd stared in gloomy +distrust yet felt themselves already possessed and inspired by heroic +imaginings, as though a military band were passing. + +“Oh yes, go and get your throats cut!” muttered Mignon, overcome by an +access of philosophy. + +But Fontan thought it very fine, indeed, and spoke of enlisting. When +the enemy was on the frontier all citizens ought to rise up in defense +of the fatherland! And with that he assumed an attitude suggestive of +Bonaparte at Austerlitz. + +“Look here, are you coming up with us?” Lucy asked him. + +“Oh dear, no! To catch something horrid?” he said. + +On a bench in front of the Grand Hotel a man sat hiding his face in a +handkerchief. On arriving Fauchery had indicated him to Mignon with a +wink of the eye. Well, he was still there; yes, he was always there. +And the journalist detained the two women also in order to point him +out to them. When the man lifted his head they recognized him; an +exclamation escaped them. It was the Count Muffat, and he was giving an +upward glance at one of the windows. + +“You know, he’s been waiting there since this morning,” Mignon informed +them. “I saw him at six o’clock, and he hasn’t moved since. Directly +Labordette spoke about it he came there with his handkerchief up to his +face. Every half-hour he comes dragging himself to where we’re standing +to ask if the person upstairs is doing better, and then he goes back +and sits down. Hang it, that room isn’t healthy! It’s all very well +being fond of people, but one doesn’t want to kick the bucket.” + +The count sat with uplifted eyes and did not seem conscious of what was +going on around him. Doubtless he was ignorant of the declaration of +war, and he neither felt nor saw the crowd. + +“Look, here he comes!” said Fauchery. “Now you’ll see.” + +The count had, in fact, quitted his bench and was entering the lofty +porch. But the porter, who was getting to know his face at last, did +not give him time to put his question. He said sharply: + +“She’s dead, monsieur, this very minute.” + +Nana dead! It was a blow to them all. Without a word Muffat had gone +back to the bench, his face still buried in his handkerchief. The +others burst into exclamations, but they were cut short, for a fresh +band passed by, howling, “À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À BERLIN!” Nana dead! +Hang it, and such a fine girl too! Mignon sighed and looked relieved, +for at last Rose would come down. A chill fell on the company. Fontan, +meditating a tragic role, had assumed a look of woe and was drawing +down the corners of his mouth and rolling his eyes askance, while +Fauchery chewed his cigar nervously, for despite his cheap journalistic +chaff he was really touched. Nevertheless, the two women continued to +give vent to their feelings of surprise. The last time Lucy had seen +her was at the Gaîté; Blanche, too, had seen her in Melusine. Oh, how +stunning it was, my dear, when she appeared in the depths of the +crystal grot! The gentlemen remembered the occasion perfectly. Fontan +had played the Prince Cocorico. And their memories once stirred up, +they launched into interminable particulars. How ripping she looked +with that rich coloring of hers in the crystal grot! Didn’t she, now? +She didn’t say a word: the authors had even deprived her of a line or +two, because it was superfluous. No, never a word! It was grander that +way, and she drove her public wild by simply showing herself. You +wouldn’t find another body like hers! Such shoulders as she had, and +such legs and such a figure! Strange that she should be dead! You know, +above her tights she had nothing on but a golden girdle which hardly +concealed her behind and in front. All round her the grotto, which was +entirely of glass, shone like day. Cascades of diamonds were flowing +down; strings of brilliant pearls glistened among the stalactites in +the vault overhead, and amid the transparent atmosphere and flowing +fountain water, which was crossed by a wide ray of electric light, she +gleamed like the sun with that flamelike skin and hair of hers. Paris +would always picture her thus—would see her shining high up among +crystal glass like the good God Himself. No, it was too stupid to let +herself die under such conditions! She must be looking pretty by this +time in that room up there! + +“And what a lot of pleasures bloody well wasted!” said Mignon in +melancholy tones, as became a man who did not like to see good and +useful things lost. + +He sounded Lucy and Caroline in order to find out if they were going up +after all. Of course they were going up; their curiosity had increased. +Just then Blanche arrived, out of breath and much exasperated at the +way the crowds were blocking the pavement, and when she heard the news +there was a fresh outburst of exclamations, and with a great rustling +of skirts the ladies moved toward the staircase. Mignon followed them, +crying out: + +“Tell Rose that I’m waiting for her. She’ll come at once, eh?” + +“They do not exactly know whether the contagion is to be feared at the +beginning or near the end,” Fontan was explaining to Fauchery. “A +medical I know was assuring me that the hours immediately following +death are particularly dangerous. There are miasmatic exhalations then. +Ah, but I do regret this sudden ending; I should have been so glad to +shake hands with her for the last time. + +“What good would it do you now?” said the journalist. + +“Yes, what good?” the two others repeated. + +The crowd was still on the increase. In the bright light thrown from +shop-windows and beneath the wavering glare of the gas two living +streams were distinguishable as they flowed along the pavement, +innumerable hats apparently drifting on their surface. At that hour the +popular fever was gaining ground rapidly, and people were flinging +themselves in the wake of the bands of men in blouses. A constant +forward movement seemed to sweep the roadway, and the cry kept +recurring; obstinately, abruptly, there rang from thousands of throats: + +“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À BERLIN!” + +The room on the fourth floor upstairs cost twelve francs a day, since +Rose had wanted something decent and yet not luxurious, for +sumptuousness is not necessary when one is suffering. Hung with Louis +XIII cretonne, which was adorned with a pattern of large flowers, the +room was furnished with the mahogany commonly found in hotels. On the +floor there was a red carpet variegated with black foliage. Heavy +silence reigned save for an occasional whispering sound caused by +voices in the corridor. + +“I assure you we’re lost. The waiter told us to turn to the right. What +a barrack of a house!” + +“Wait a bit; we must have a look. Room number 401; room number 401!” + +“Oh, it’s this way: 405, 403. We ought to be there. Ah, at last, 401! +This way! Hush now, hush!” + +The voices were silent. Then there was a slight coughing and a moment +or so of mental preparation. Then the door opened slowly, and Lucy +entered, followed by Caroline and Blanche. But they stopped directly; +there were already five women in the room; Gaga was lying back in the +solitary armchair, which was a red velvet Voltaire. In front of the +fireplace Simonne and Clarisse were now standing talking to Léa de +Horn, who was seated, while by the bed, to the left of the door, Rose +Mignon, perched on the edge of a chest, sat gazing fixedly at the body +where it lay hidden in the shadow of the curtains. All the others had +their hats and gloves on and looked as if they were paying a call: she +alone sat there with bare hands and untidy hair and cheeks rendered +pale by three nights of watching. She felt stupid in the face of this +sudden death, and her eyes were swollen with weeping. A shaded lamp +standing on the corner of the chest of drawers threw a bright flood of +light over Gaga. + +“What a sad misfortune, is it not?” whispered Lucy as she shook hands +with Rose. “We wanted to bid her good-by.” + +And she turned round and tried to catch sight of her, but the lamp was +too far off, and she did not dare bring it nearer. On the bed lay +stretched a gray mass, but only the ruddy chignon was distinguishable +and a pale blotch which might be the face. Lucy added: + +“I never saw her since that time at the Gaîté, when she was at the end +of the grotto.” + +At this Rose awoke from her stupor and smiled as she said: + +“Ah, she’s changed; she’s changed.” + +Then she once more lapsed into contemplation and neither moved nor +spoke. Perhaps they would be able to look at her presently! And with +that the three women joined the others in front of the fireplace. +Simonne and Clarisse were discussing the dead woman’s diamonds in low +tones. Well, did they really exist—those diamonds? Nobody had seen +them; it must be a bit of humbug. But Léa de Horn knew someone who knew +all about them. Oh, they were monster stones! Besides, they weren’t +all; she had brought back lots of other precious property from +Russia—embroidered stuffs, for instance, valuable knickknacks, a gold +dinner service, nay, even furniture. “Yes, my dear, fifty-two boxes, +enormous cases some of them, three truckloads of them!” They were all +lying at the station. “Wasn’t it hard lines, eh?—to die without even +having time to unpack one’s traps?” Then she had a lot of tin, +besides—something like a million! Lucy asked who was going to inherit +it all. Oh, distant relations—the aunt, without doubt! It would be a +pretty surprise for that old body. She knew nothing about it yet, for +the sick woman had obstinately refused to let them warn her, for she +still owed her a grudge over her little boy’s death. Thereupon they +were all moved to pity about the little boy, and they remembered seeing +him at the races. Oh, it was a wretchedly sickly baby; it looked so old +and so sad. In fact, it was one of those poor brats who never asked to +be born! + +“He’s happier under the ground,” said Blanche. + +“Bah, and so’s she!” added Caroline. “Life isn’t so funny!” + +In that gloomy room melancholy ideas began to take possession of their +imaginations. They felt frightened. It was silly to stand talking so +long, but a longing to see her kept them rooted to the spot. It was +very hot—the lamp glass threw a round, moonlike patch of light upon the +ceiling, but the rest of the room was drowned in steamy darkness. Under +the bed a deep plate full of phenol exhaled an insipid smell. And every +few moments tiny gusts of wind swelled the window curtains. The window +opened on the boulevard, whence rose a dull roaring sound. + +“Did she suffer much?” asked Lucy, who was absorbed in contemplation of +the clock, the design of which represented the three Graces as nude +young women, smiling like opera dancers. + +Gaga seemed to wake up. + +“My word, yes! I was present when she died. I promise you it was not at +all pleasant to see. Why, she was taken with a shuddering fit—” + +But she was unable to proceed with her explanation, for a cry arose +outside: + +“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À BERLIN!” + +And Lucy, who felt suffocated, flung wide the window and leaned upon +the sill. It was pleasant there; the air came fresh from the starry +sky. Opposite her the windows were all aglow with light, and the gas +sent dancing reflections over the gilt lettering of the shop signs. + +Beneath these, again, a most amusing scene presented itself. The +streams of people were discernible rolling torrentwise along the +sidewalks and in the roadway, where there was a confused procession of +carriages. Everywhere there were vast moving shadows in which lanterns +and lampposts gleamed like sparks. But the band which now came roaring +by carried torches, and a red glow streamed down from the direction of +the Madeleine, crossed the mob like a trail of fire and spread out over +the heads in the distance like a vivid reflection of a burning house. +Lucy called Blanche and Caroline, forgetting where she was and +shouting: + +“Do come! You get a capital view from this window!” + +They all three leaned out, greatly interested. The trees got in their +way, and occasionally the torches disappeared under the foliage. They +tried to catch a glimpse of the men of their own party below, but a +protruding balcony hid the door, and they could only make out Count +Muffat, who looked like a dark parcel thrown down on the bench where he +sat. He was still burying his face in his handkerchief. A carriage had +stopped in front, and yet another woman hurried up, in whom Lucy +recognized Maria Blond. She was not alone; a stout man got down after +her. + +“It’s that thief of a Steiner,” said Caroline. “How is it they haven’t +sent him back to Cologne yet? I want to see how he looks when he comes +in.” + +They turned round, but when after the lapse of ten minutes Maria Blond +appeared, she was alone. She had twice mistaken the staircase. And when +Lucy, in some astonishment, questioned her: + +“What, he?” she said. “My dear, don’t you go fancying that he’ll come +upstairs! It’s a great wonder he’s escorted me as far as the door. +There are nearly a dozen of them smoking cigars.” + +As a matter of fact, all the gentlemen were meeting downstairs. They +had come strolling thither in order to have a look at the boulevards, +and they hailed one another and commented loudly on that poor girl’s +death. Then they began discussing politics and strategy. Bordenave, +Daguenet, Labordette, Prullière and others, besides, had swollen the +group, and now they were all listening to Fontan, who was explaining +his plan for taking Berlin within a week. + +Meanwhile Maria Blond was touched as she stood by the bedside and +murmured, as the others had done before her: + +“Poor pet! The last time I saw her was in the grotto at the Gaîté.” + +“Ah, she’s changed; she’s changed!” Rose Mignon repeated with a smile +of gloomiest dejection. + +Two more women arrived. These were Tatan Nene and Louise Violaine. They +had been wandering about the Grand Hotel for twenty minutes past, +bandied from waiter to waiter, and had ascended and descended more than +thirty flights of stairs amid a perfect stampede of travelers who were +hurrying to leave Paris amid the panic caused by the war and the +excitement on the boulevards. Accordingly they just dropped down on +chairs when they came in, for they were too tired to think about the +dead. At that moment a loud noise came from the room next door, where +people were pushing trunks about and striking against furniture to an +accompaniment of strident, outlandish syllables. It was a young +Austrian couple, and Gaga told how during her agony the neighbors had +played a game of catch as catch can and how, as only an unused door +divided the two rooms, they had heard them laughing and kissing when +one or the other was caught. + +“Come, it’s time we were off,” said Clarisse. “We shan’t bring her to +life again. Are you coming, Simonne?” + +They all looked at the bed out of the corners of their eyes, but they +did not budge an inch. Nevertheless, they began getting ready and gave +their skirts various little pats. Lucy was again leaning out of window. +She was alone now, and a sorrowful feeling began little by little to +overpower her, as though an intense wave of melancholy had mounted up +from the howling mob. Torches still kept passing, shaking out clouds of +sparks, and far away in the distance the various bands stretched into +the shadows, surging unquietly to and fro like flocks being driven to +the slaughterhouse at night. A dizzy feeling emanated from these +confused masses as the human flood rolled them along—a dizzy feeling, a +sense of terror and all the pity of the massacres to come. The people +were going wild; their voices broke; they were drunk with a fever of +excitement which sent them rushing toward the unknown “out there” +beyond the dark wall of the horizon. + +“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À BERLIN!” + +Lucy turned round. She leaned her back against the window, and her face +was very pale. + +“Good God! What’s to become of us?” + +The ladies shook their heads. They were serious and very anxious about +the turn events were taking. + +“For my part,” said Caroline Hequet in her decisive way, “I start for +London the day after tomorrow. Mamma’s already over there getting a +house ready for me. I’m certainly not going to let myself be massacred +in Paris.” + +Her mother, as became a prudent woman, had invested all her daughters’ +money in foreign lands. One never knows how a war may end! But Maria +Blond grew vexed at this. She was a patriot and spoke of following the +army. + +“There’s a coward for you! Yes, if they wanted me I should put on man’s +clothes just to have a good shot at those pigs of Prussians! And if we +all die after? What of that? Our wretched skins aren’t so valuable!” + +Blanche de Sivry was exasperated. + +“Please don’t speak ill of the Prussians! They are just like other men, +and they’re not always running after the women, like your Frenchmen. +They’ve just expelled the little Prussian who was with me. He was an +awfully rich fellow and so gentle: he couldn’t have hurt a soul. It’s +disgraceful; I’m ruined by it. And, you know, you mustn’t say a word or +I go and find him out in Germany!” + +After that, while the two were at loggerheads, Gaga began murmuring in +dolorous tones: + +“It’s all over with me; my luck’s always bad. It’s only a week ago that +I finished paying for my little house at Juvisy. Ah, God knows what +trouble it cost me! I had to go to Lili for help! And now here’s the +war declared, and the Prussians’ll come and they’ll burn everything. +How am I to begin again at my time of life, I should like to know?” + +“Bah!” said Clarisse. “I don’t care a damn about it. I shall always +find what I want.” + +“Certainly you will,” added Simonne. “It’ll be a joke. Perhaps, after +all, it’ll be good biz.” + +And her smile hinted what she thought. Tatan Nene and Louise Violaine +were of her opinion. The former told them that she had enjoyed the most +roaring jolly good times with soldiers. Oh, they were good fellows and +would have done any mortal thing for the girls. But as the ladies had +raised their voices unduly Rose Mignon, still sitting on the chest by +the bed, silenced them with a softly whispered “Hush!” They stood quite +still at this and glanced obliquely toward the dead woman, as though +this request for silence had emanated from the very shadows of the +curtains. In the heavy, peaceful stillness which ensued, a void, +deathly stillness which made them conscious of the stiff dead body +lying stretched close by them, the cries of the mob burst forth: + +“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À BERLIN!” + +But soon they forgot. Léa de Horn, who had a political salon where +former ministers of Louis Philippe were wont to indulge in delicate +epigrams, shrugged her shoulders and continued the conversation in a +low tone: + +“What a mistake this war is! What a bloodthirsty piece of stupidity!” + +At this Lucy forthwith took up the cudgels for the empire. She had been +the mistress of a prince of the imperial house, and its defense became +a point of family honor with her. + +“Do leave them alone, my dear. We couldn’t let ourselves be further +insulted! Why, this war concerns the honor of France. Oh, you know I +don’t say that because of the prince. He WAS just mean! Just imagine, +at night when he was going to bed he hid his gold in his boots, and +when we played at bezique he used beans, because one day I pounced down +on the stakes for fun. But that doesn’t prevent my being fair. The +emperor was right.” + +Léa shook her head with an air of superiority, as became a woman who +was repeating the opinions of important personages. Then raising her +voice: + +“This is the end of all things. They’re out of their minds at the +Tuileries. France ought to have driven them out yesterday. Don’t you +see?” + +They all violently interrupted her. What was up with her? Was she mad +about the emperor? Were people not happy? Was business doing badly? +Paris would never enjoy itself so thoroughly again. + +Gaga was beside herself; she woke up and was very indignant. + +“Be quiet! It’s idiotic! You don’t know what you’re saying. I—I’ve seen +Louis Philippe’s reign: it was full of beggars and misers, my dear. And +then came ’48! Oh, it was a pretty disgusting business was their +republic! After February I was simply dying of starvation—yes, I, Gaga. +Oh, if only you’d been through it all you would go down on your knees +before the emperor, for he’s been a father to us; yes, a father to us.” + +She had to be soothed but continued with pious fervor: + +“O my God, do Thy best to give the emperor the victory. Preserve the +empire to us!” + +They all repeated this aspiration, and Blanche confessed that she +burned candles for the emperor. Caroline had been smitten by him and +for two whole months had walked where he was likely to pass but had +failed to attract his attention. And with that the others burst forth +into furious denunciations of the Republicans and talked of +exterminating them on the frontiers so that Napoleon III, after having +beaten the enemy, might reign peacefully amid universal enjoyment. + +“That dirty Bismarck—there’s another cad for you!” Maria Blond +remarked. + +“To think that I should have known him!” cried Simonne. “If only I +could have foreseen, I’m the one that would have put some poison in his +glass.” + +But Blanche, on whose heart the expulsion of her Prussian still +weighed, ventured to defend Bismarck. Perhaps he wasn’t such a bad +sort. To every man his trade! + +“You know,” she added, “he adores women.” + +“What the hell has that got to do with us?” said Clarisse. “We don’t +want to cuddle him, eh?” + +“There’s always too many men of that sort!” declared Louise Violaine +gravely. “It’s better to do without ’em than to mix oneself up with +such monsters!” + +And the discussion continued, and they stripped Bismarck, and, in her +Bonapartist zeal, each of them gave him a sounding kick, while Tatan +Nene kept saying: + +“Bismarck! Why, they’ve simply driven me crazy with the chap! Oh, I +hate him! I didn’t know that there Bismarck! One can’t know everybody.” + +“Never mind,” said Léa de Horn by way of conclusion, “that Bismarck +will give us a jolly good threshing.” + +But she could not continue. The ladies were all down on her at once. +Eh, what? A threshing? It was Bismarck they were going to escort home +with blows from the butt ends of their muskets. What was this bad +Frenchwoman going to say next? + +“Hush,” whispered Rose, for so much noise hurt her. + +The cold influence of the corpse once more overcame them, and they all +paused together. They were embarrassed; the dead woman was before them +again; a dull thread of coming ill possessed them. On the boulevard the +cry was passing, hoarse and wild: + +“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À BERLIN!” + +Presently, when they were making up their minds to go, a voice was +heard calling from the passage: + +“Rose! Rose!” + +Gaga opened the door in astonishment and disappeared for a moment. When +she returned: + +“My dear,” she said, “it’s Fauchery. He’s out there at the end of the +corridor. He won’t come any further, and he’s beside himself because +you still stay near that body.” + +Mignon had at last succeeded in urging the journalist upstairs. Lucy, +who was still at the window, leaned out and caught sight of the +gentlemen out on the pavement. They were looking up, making energetic +signals to her. Mignon was shaking his fists in exasperation, and +Steiner, Fontan, Bordenave and the rest were stretching out their arms +with looks of anxious reproach, while Daguenet simply stood smoking a +cigar with his hands behind his back, so as not to compromise himself. + +“It’s true, dear,” said Lucy, leaving the window open; “I promised to +make you come down. They’re all calling us now.” + +Rose slowly and painfully left the chest. + +“I’m coming down; I’m coming down,” she whispered. “It’s very certain +she no longer needs me. They’re going to send in a Sister of Mercy.” + +And she turned round, searching for her hat and shawl. Mechanically she +filled a basin of water on the toilet table and while washing her hands +and face continued: + +“I don’t know! It’s been a great blow to me. We used scarcely to be +nice to one another. Ah well! You see I’m quite silly over it now. Oh! +I’ve got all sorts of strange ideas—I want to die myself—I feel the end +of the world’s coming. Yes, I need air.” + +The corpse was beginning to poison the atmosphere of the room. And +after long heedlessness there ensued a panic. + +“Let’s be off; let’s be off, my little pets!” Gaga kept saying. “It +isn’t wholesome here.” + +They went briskly out, casting a last glance at the bed as they passed +it. But while Lucy, Blanche and Caroline still remained behind, Rose +gave a final look round, for she wanted to leave the room in order. She +drew a curtain across the window, and then it occurred to her that the +lamp was not the proper thing and that a taper should take its place. +So she lit one of the copper candelabra on the chimney piece and placed +it on the night table beside the corpse. A brilliant light suddenly +illumined the dead woman’s face. The women were horror-struck. They +shuddered and escaped. + +“Ah, she’s changed; she’s changed!” murmured Rose Mignon, who was the +last to remain. + +She went away; she shut the door. Nana was left alone with upturned +face in the light cast by the candle. She was fruit of the charnel +house, a heap of matter and blood, a shovelful of corrupted flesh +thrown down on the pillow. The pustules had invaded the whole of the +face, so that each touched its neighbor. Fading and sunken, they had +assumed the grayish hue of mud; and on that formless pulp, where the +features had ceased to be traceable, they already resembled some +decaying damp from the grave. One eye, the left eye, had completely +foundered among bubbling purulence, and the other, which remained half +open, looked like a deep, black, ruinous hole. The nose was still +suppurating. Quite a reddish crush was peeling from one of the cheeks +and invading the mouth, which it distorted into a horrible grin. And +over this loathsome and grotesque mask of death the hair, the beautiful +hair, still blazed like sunlight and flowed downward in rippling gold. +Venus was rotting. It seemed as though the poison she had assimilated +in the gutters and on the carrion tolerated by the roadside, the leaven +with which she had poisoned a whole people, had but now remounted to +her face and turned it to corruption. + +The room was empty. A great despairing breath came up from the +boulevard and swelled the curtain. + +“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À BERLIN!” + + + + + THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER + + + + + CHAPTER I + THE BETROTHAL + + +Père Merlier’s mill, one beautiful summer evening, was arranged for a +grand fête. In the courtyard were three tables, placed end to end, +which awaited the guests. Everyone knew that Francoise, Merlier’s +daughter, was that night to be betrothed to Dominique, a young man who +was accused of idleness but whom the fair sex for three leagues around +gazed at with sparkling eyes, such a fine appearance had he. + +Père Merlier’s mill was pleasing to look upon. It stood exactly in the +center of Rocreuse, where the highway made an elbow. The village had +but one street, with two rows of huts, a row on each side of the road; +but at the elbow meadows spread out, and huge trees which lined the +banks of the Morelle covered the extremity of the valley with lordly +shade. There was not, in all Lorraine, a corner of nature more +adorable. To the right and to the left thick woods, centenarian +forests, towered up from gentle slopes, filling the horizon with a sea +of verdure, while toward the south the plain stretched away, of +marvelous fertility, displaying as far as the eye could reach patches +of ground divided by green hedges. But what constituted the special +charm of Rocreuse was the coolness of that cut of verdure in the most +sultry days of July and August. The Morelle descended from the forests +of Gagny and seemed to have gathered the cold from the foliage beneath +which it flowed for leagues; it brought with it the murmuring sounds, +the icy and concentrated shade of the woods. And it was not the sole +source of coolness: all sorts of flowing streams gurgled through the +forest; at each step springs bubbled up; one felt, on following the +narrow pathways, that there must exist subterranean lakes which pierced +through beneath the moss and availed themselves of the smallest +crevices at the feet of trees or between the rocks to burst forth in +crystalline fountains. The whispering voices of these brooks were so +numerous and so loud that they drowned the song of the bullfinches. It +was like some enchanted park with cascades falling from every portion. + +Below the meadows were damp. Gigantic chestnut trees cast dark shadows. +On the borders of the meadows long hedges of poplars exhibited in lines +their rustling branches. Two avenues of enormous plane trees stretched +across the fields toward the ancient Château de Gagny, then a mass of +ruins. In this constantly watered district the grass grew to an +extraordinary height. It resembled a garden between two wooded hills, a +natural garden, of which the meadows were the lawns, the giant trees +marking the colossal flower beds. When the sun’s rays at noon poured +straight downward the shadows assumed a bluish tint; scorched grass +slept in the heat, while an icy shiver passed beneath the foliage. + +And there it was that Père Merlier’s mill enlivened with its ticktack a +corner of wild verdure. The structure, built of plaster and planks, +seemed as old as the world. It dipped partially in the Morelle, which +rounded at that point into a transparent basin. A sluice had been made, +and the water fell from a height of several meters upon the mill wheel, +which cracked as it turned, with the asthmatic cough of a faithful +servant grown old in the house. When Père Merlier was advised to change +it he shook his head, saying that a new wheel would be lazier and would +not so well understand the work, and he mended the old one with +whatever he could put his hands on: cask staves, rusty iron, zinc and +lead. The wheel appeared gayer than ever for it, with its profile grown +odd, all plumed with grass and moss. When the water beat upon it with +its silvery flood it was covered with pearls; its strange carcass wore +a sparkling attire of necklaces of mother-of-pearl. + +The part of the mill which dipped in the Morelle had the air of a +barbaric arch stranded there. A full half of the structure was built on +piles. The water flowed beneath the floor, and deep places were there, +renowned throughout the district for the enormous eels and crayfish +caught in them. Below the fall the basin was as clear as a mirror, and +when the wheel did not cover it with foam schools of huge fish could be +seen swimming with the slowness of a squadron. Broken steps led down to +the river near a stake to which a boat was moored. A wooden gallery +passed above the wheel. Windows opened, pierced irregularly. It was a +pell-mell of corners, of little walls, of constructions added too late, +of beams and of roofs, which gave the mill the aspect of an old, +dismantled citadel. But ivy had grown; all sorts of clinging plants +stopped the too-wide chinks and threw a green cloak over the ancient +building. The young ladies who passed by sketched Père Merlier’s mill +in their albums. + +On the side facing the highway the structure was more solid. A stone +gateway opened upon the wide courtyard, which was bordered to the right +and to the left by sheds and stables. Beside a well an immense elm +covered half the courtyard with its shadow. In the background the +building displayed the four windows of its second story, surmounted by +a pigeon house. Père Merlier’s sole vanity was to have this front +plastered every ten years. It had just received a new coating and +dazzled the village when the sun shone on it at noon. + +For twenty years Père Merlier had been mayor of Rocreuse. He was +esteemed for the fortune he had acquired. His wealth was estimated at +something like eighty thousand francs, amassed sou by sou. When he +married Madeleine Guillard, who brought him the mill as her dowry, he +possessed only his two arms. But Madeleine never repented of her +choice, so briskly did he manage the business. Now his wife was dead, +and he remained a widower with his daughter Francoise. Certainly he +might have rested, allowed the mill wheel to slumber in the moss, but +that would have been too dull for him, and in his eyes the building +would have seemed dead. He toiled on for pleasure. + +Père Merlier was a tall old man with a long, still face, who never +laughed but who possessed, notwithstanding, a very gay heart. He had +been chosen mayor because of his money and also on account of the +imposing air he could assume during a marriage ceremony. + +Francoise Merlier was just eighteen. She did not pass for one of the +handsome girls of the district, as she was not robust. Up to her +fifteenth year she had been even ugly. + +The Rocreuse people had not been able to understand why the daughter of +Père and Mere Merlier, both of whom had always enjoyed excellent +health, grew ill and with an air of regret. But at fifteen, though yet +delicate, her little face became one of the prettiest in the world. She +had black hair, black eyes, and was as rosy as a peach; her lips +constantly wore a smile; there were dimples in her cheeks, and her fair +forehead seemed crowned with sunlight. Although not considered robust +in the district, she was far from thin; the idea was simply that she +could not lift a sack of grain, but she would become plump as she grew +older—she would eventually be as round and dainty as a quail. Her +father’s long periods of silence had made her thoughtful very young. If +she smiled constantly it was to please others. By nature she was +serious. + +Of course all the young men of the district paid court to her, more on +account of her ecus than her pretty ways. At last she made a choice +which scandalized the community. + +On the opposite bank of the Morelle lived a tall youth named Dominique +Penquer. He did not belong to Rocreuse. Ten years before he had arrived +from Belgium as the heir of his uncle, who had left him a small +property upon the very border of the forest of Gagny, just opposite the +mill, a few gunshots distant. He had come to sell this property, he +said, and return home. But the district charmed him, it appeared, for +he did not quit it. He was seen cultivating his little field, gathering +a few vegetables upon which he subsisted. He fished and hunted; many +times the forest guards nearly caught him and were on the point of +drawing up procès-verbaux against him. This free existence, the +resources of which the peasants could not clearly discover, at length +gave him a bad reputation. He was vaguely styled a poacher. At any +rate, he was lazy, for he was often found asleep on the grass when he +should have been at work. The hut he inhabited beneath the last trees +on the edge of the forest did not seem at all like the dwelling of an +honest young fellow. If he had had dealings with the wolves of the +ruins of Gagny the old women would not have been the least bit +surprised. Nevertheless, the young girls sometimes risked defending +him, for this doubtful man was superb; supple and tall as a poplar, he +had a very white skin, with flaxen hair and beard which gleamed like +gold in the sun. + +One fine morning Francoise declared to Père Merlier that she loved +Dominique and would never wed any other man. + +It may well be imagined what a blow this was to Père Merlier. He said +nothing, according to his custom, but his face grew thoughtful and his +internal gaiety no longer sparkled in his eyes. He looked gruff for a +week. Francoise also was exceedingly grave. What tormented Père Merlier +was to find out how this rogue of a poacher had managed to fascinate +his daughter. Dominique had never visited the mill. The miller watched +and saw the gallant on the other side of the Morelle, stretched out +upon the grass and feigning to be asleep. Francoise could see him from +her chamber window. Everything was plain: they had fallen in love by +casting sheep’s eyes at each other over the mill wheel. + +Another week went by. Francoise became more and more grave. Père +Merlier still said nothing. Then one evening he himself silently +brought in Dominique. Francoise at that moment was setting the table. +She did not seem astonished; she contented herself with putting on an +additional plate, knife and fork, but the little dimples were again +seen in her cheeks, and her smile reappeared. That morning Père Merlier +had sought out Dominique in his hut on the border of the wood. + +There the two men had talked for three hours with doors and windows +closed. What was the purport of their conversation no one ever knew. +Certain it was, however, that Père Merlier, on taking his departure, +already called Dominique his son-in-law. Without doubt the old man had +found the youth he had gone to seek a worthy youth in the lazy fellow +who stretched himself out upon the grass to make the girls fall in love +with him. + +All Rocreuse clamored. The women at the doors had plenty to say on the +subject of the folly of Père Merlier, who had thus introduced a +reprobate into his house. The miller let people talk on. Perhaps he +remembered his own marriage. He was without a sou when he wedded +Madeleine and her mill; this, however, had not prevented him from +making a good husband. Besides, Dominique cut short the gossip by going +so vigorously to work that all the district was amazed. The miller’s +assistant had just been drawn to serve as a soldier, and Dominique +would not suffer another to be engaged. He carried the sacks, drove the +cart, fought with the old mill wheel when it refused to turn, and all +this with such good will that people came to see him out of curiosity. +Père Merlier had his silent laugh. He was excessively proud of having +formed a correct estimate of this youth. There is nothing like love to +give courage to young folks. Amid all these heavy labors Francoise and +Dominique adored each other. They did not indulge in lovers’ talks, but +there was a smiling gentleness in their glances. + +Up to that time Père Merlier had not spoken a single word on the +subject of marriage, and they respected this silence, awaiting the old +man’s will. Finally one day toward the middle of July he caused three +tables to be placed in the courtyard, beneath the great elm, and +invited his friends of Rocreuse to come in the evening and drink a +glass of wine with him. + +When the courtyard was full and all had their glasses in their hands, +Père Merlier raised his very high and said: + +“I have the pleasure to announce to you that Francoise will wed this +young fellow here in a month, on Saint Louis’s Day.” + +Then they drank noisily. Everybody smiled. But Père Merlier, again +lifting his voice, exclaimed: + +“Dominique, embrace your fiancee. It is your right.” + +They embraced, blushing to the tips of their ears, while all the guests +laughed joyously. It was a genuine fête. They emptied a small cask of +wine. Then when all were gone but intimate friends the conversation was +carried on without noise. The night had fallen, a starry and cloudless +night. Dominique and Francoise, seated side by side on a bench, said +nothing. + +An old peasant spoke of the war the emperor had declared against +Prussia. All the village lads had already departed. On the preceding +day troops had again passed through the place. There was going to be +hard fighting. + +“Bah!” said Père Merlier with the selfishness of a happy man. +“Dominique is a foreigner; he will not go to the war. And if the +Prussians come here he will be on hand to defend his wife!” + +The idea that the Prussians might come there seemed a good joke. They +were going to receive a sound whipping, and the affair would soon be +over. + +“I have afready seen them; I have already seen them,” repeated the old +peasant in a hollow voice. + +There was silence. Then they drank again. Francoise and Dominique had +heard nothing; they had gently taken each other by the hand behind the +bench, so that nobody could see them, and it seemed so delightful that +they remained where they were, their eyes plunged into the depths of +the shadows. + +What a warm and superb night it was! The village slumbered on both +edges of the white highway in infantile quietude. From time to time was +heard the crowing of some chanticleer aroused too soon. From the huge +wood near by came long breaths, which passed over the roofs like +caresses. The meadows, with their dark shadows, assumed a mysterious +and dreamy majesty, while all the springs, all the flowing waters which +gurgled in the darkness, seemed to be the cool and rhythmical +respiration of the sleeping country. Occasionally the ancient mill +wheel, lost in a doze, appeared to dream like those old watchdogs that +bark while snoring; it cracked; it talked to itself, rocked by the fall +of the Morelle, the surface of which gave forth the musical and +continuous sound of an organ pipe. Never had more profound peace +descended upon a happier corner of nature. + + + + + CHAPTER II + THE ATTACK ON THE MILL + + +A month later, on the day preceding that of Saint Louis, Rocreuse was +in a state of terror. The Prussians had beaten the emperor and were +advancing by forced marches toward the village. For a week past people +who hurried along the highway had been announcing them thus: “They are +at Lormiere—they are at Novelles!” And on hearing that they were +drawing near so rapidly, Rocreuse every morning expected to see them +descend from the wood of Gagny. They did not come, however, and that +increased the fright. They would surely fall upon the village during +the night and slaughter everybody. + +That morning, a little before sunrise, there was an alarm. The +inhabitants were awakened by the loud tramp of men on the highway. The +women were already on their knees, making the sign of the cross, when +some of the people, peering cautiously through the partially opened +windows, recognized the red pantaloons. It was a French detachment. The +captain immediately asked for the mayor of the district and remained at +the mill after having talked with Père Merlier. + +The sun rose gaily that morning. It would be hot at noon. Over the wood +floated a golden brightness, while in the distance white vapors arose +from the meadows. The neat and pretty village awoke amid the fresh air, +and the country, with its river and its springs, had the moist +sweetness of a bouquet. But that beautiful day caused nobody to smile. +The captain was seen to take a turn around the mill, examine the +neighboring houses, pass to the other side of the Morelle and from +there study the district with a field glass; Père Merlier, who +accompanied him, seemed to be giving him explanations. Then the captain +posted soldiers behind the walls, behind the trees and in the ditches. +The main body of the detachment encamped in the courtyard of the mill. +Was there going to be a battle? When Père Merlier returned he was +questioned. He nodded his head without speaking. Yes, there was going +to be a battle! + +Francoise and Dominique were in the courtyard; they looked at him. At +last he took his pipe from his mouth and said: + +“Ah, my poor young ones, you cannot get married tomorrow!” + +Dominique, his lips pressed together, with an angry frown on his +forehead, at times raised himself on tiptoe and fixed his eyes upon the +wood of Gagny, as if he wished to see the Prussians arrive. Francoise, +very pale and serious, came and went, furnishing the soldiers with what +they needed. The troops were making soup in a corner of the courtyard; +they joked while waiting for it to get ready. + +The captain was delighted. He had visited the chambers and the huge +hall of the mill which looked out upon the river. Now, seated beside +the well, he was conversing with Père Merlier. + +“Your mill is a real fortress,” he said. “We can hold it without +difficulty until evening. The bandits are late. They ought to be here.” + +The miller was grave. He saw his mill burning like a torch, but he +uttered no complaint, thinking such a course useless. He merely said: + +“You had better hide the boat behind the wheel; there is a place there +just fit for that purpose. Perhaps it will be useful to have the boat.” + +The captain gave the requisite order. This officer was a handsome man +of forty; he was tall and had an amiable countenance. The sight of +Francoise and Dominique seemed to please him. He contemplated them as +if he had forgotten the coming struggle. He followed Francoise with his +eyes, and his look told plainly that he thought her charming. Then +turning toward Dominique, he asked suddenly: + +“Why are you not in the army, my good fellow?” + +“I am a foreigner,” answered the young man. + +The captain evidently did not attach much weight to this reason. He +winked his eye and smiled. Francoise was more agreeable company than a +cannon. On seeing him smile, Dominique added: + +“I am a foreigner, but I can put a ball in an apple at five hundred +meters. There is my hunting gun behind you.” + +“You may have use for it,” responded the captain dryly. + +Francoise had approached, somewhat agitated. Without heeding the +strangers present Dominique took and grasped in his the two hands she +extended to him, as if to put herself under his protection. The captain +smiled again but said not a word. He remained seated, his sword across +his knees and his eyes plunged into space, lost in a reverie. + +It was already ten o’clock. The heat had become very great. A heavy +silence prevailed. In the courtyard, in the shadows of the sheds, the +soldiers had begun to eat their soup. Not a sound came from the +village; all its inhabitants had barricaded the doors and windows of +their houses. A dog, alone upon the highway, howled. From the +neighboring forests and meadows, swooning in the heat, came a prolonged +and distant voice made up of all the scattered breaths. A cuckoo sang. +Then the silence grew more intense. + +Suddenly in that slumbering air a shot was heard. The captain leaped +briskly to his feet; the soldiers left their plates of soup, yet half +full. In a few seconds everybody was at the post of duty; from bottom +to top the mill was occupied. Meanwhile the captain, who had gone out +upon the road, had discovered nothing; to the right and to the left the +highway stretched out, empty and white. A second shot was heard, and +still nothing visible, not even a shadow. But as he was returning the +captain perceived in the direction of Gagny, between two trees, a light +puff of smoke whirling away like thistledown. The wood was calm and +peaceful. + +“The bandits have thrown themselves into the forest,” he muttered. +“They know we are here.” + +Then the firing continued, growing more and more vigorous, between the +French soldiers posted around the mill and the Prussians hidden behind +the trees. The balls whistled above the Morelle without damaging either +side. The fusillade was irregular, the shots coming from every bush, +and still only the little puffs of smoke, tossed gently by the breeze, +were seen. This lasted nearly two hours. The officer hummed a tune with +an air of indifference. Francoise and Dominique, who had remained in +the courtyard, raised themselves on tiptoe and looked over a low wall. +They were particularly interested in a little soldier posted on the +shore of the Morelle, behind the remains of an old bateau; he stretched +himself out flat on the ground, watched, fired and then glided into a +ditch a trifle farther back to reload his gun; and his movements were +so droll, so tricky and so supple, that they smiled as they looked at +him. He must have perceived the head of a Prussian, for he arose +quickly and brought his weapon to his shoulder, but before he could +fire he uttered a cry, fell and rolled into the ditch, where for an +instant his legs twitched convulsively like the claws of a chicken just +killed. The little soldier had received a ball full in the breast. He +was the first man slain. Instinctively Francoise seized Dominique’s +hand and clasped it with a nervous contraction. + +“Move away,” said the captain. “You are within range of the balls.” + +At that moment a sharp little thud was heard in the old elm, and a +fragment of a branch came whirling down. But the two young folks did +not stir; they were nailed to the spot by anxiety to see what was going +on. On the edge of the wood a Prussian had suddenly come out from +behind a tree as from a theater stage entrance, beating the air with +his hands and falling backward. Nothing further moved; the two corpses +seemed asleep in the broad sunlight; not a living soul was seen in the +scorching country. Even the crack of the fusillade had ceased. The +Morelle alone whispered in its clear tones. + +Père Merlier looked at the captain with an air of surprise, as if to +ask him if the struggle was over. + +“They are getting ready for something worse,” muttered the officer. +“Don’t trust appearances. Move away from there.” + +He had not finished speaking when there was a terrible discharge of +musketry. The great elm was riddled, and a host of leaves shot into the +air. The Prussians had happily fired too high. Dominique dragged, +almost carried, Francoise away, while Père Merlier followed them, +shouting: + +“Go down into the cellar; the walls are solid!” + +But they did not heed him; they entered the huge hall where ten +soldiers were waiting in silence, watching through the chinks in the +closed window shutters. The captain was alone in the courtyard, +crouching behind the little wall, while the furious discharges +continued. Without, the soldiers he had posted gave ground only foot by +foot. However, they re-entered one by one, crawling, when the enemy had +dislodged them from their hiding places. Their orders were to gain time +and not show themselves, that the Prussians might remain in ignorance +as to what force was before them. Another hour went by. As a sergeant +arrived, saying that but two or three more men remained without, the +captain glanced at his watch, muttering: + +“Half-past two o’clock. We must hold the position four hours longer.” + +He caused the great gate of the courtyard to be closed, and every +preparation was made for an energetic resistance. As the Prussians were +on the opposite side of the Morelle, an immediate assault was not to be +feared. There was a bridge two kilometers away, but they evidently were +not aware of its existence, and it was hardly likely that they would +attempt to ford the river. The officer, therefore, simply ordered the +highway to be watched. Every effort would be made in the direction of +the country. + +Again the fusillade had ceased. The mill seemed dead beneath the +glowing sun. Not a shutter was open; no sound came from the interior. +At length, little by little, the Prussians showed themselves at the +edge of the forest of Gagny. They stretched their necks and grew bold. +In the mill several soldiers had already raised their guns to their +shoulders, but the captain cried: + +“No, no; wait. Let them come nearer.” + +They were exceedingly prudent, gazing at the mill with a suspicious +air. The silent and somber old structure with its curtains of ivy +filled them with uneasiness. Nevertheless, they advanced. When fifty of +them were in the opposite meadow the officer uttered the single word: + +“Fire!” + +A crash was heard; isolated shots followed. Francoise, all of a +tremble, had mechanically put her hands to her ears. Dominique, behind +the soldiers, looked on; when the smoke had somewhat lifted he saw +three Prussians stretched upon their backs in the center of the meadow. +The others had thrown themselves behind the willows and poplars. Then +the siege began. + +For more than an hour the mill was riddled with balls. They dashed +against the old walls like hail. When they struck the stones they were +heard to flatten and fall into the water. They buried themselves in the +wood with a hollow sound. Occasionally a sharp crack announced that the +mill wheel had been hit. The soldiers in the interior were careful of +their shots; they fired only when they could take aim. From time to +time the captain consulted his watch. As a ball broke a shutter and +plowed into the ceiling he said to himself: + +“Four o’clock. We shall never be able to hold out!” + +Little by little the terrible fusillade weakened the old mill. A +shutter fell into the water, pierced like a bit of lace, and it was +necessary to replace it with a mattress. Père Merlier constantly +exposed himself to ascertain the extent of the damage done to his poor +wheel, the cracking of which made his heart ache. All would be over +with it this time; never could he repair it. Dominique had implored +Francoise to withdraw, but she refused to leave him; she was seated +behind a huge oaken clothespress, which protected her. A ball, however, +struck the clothespress, the sides of which gave forth a hollow sound. +Then Dominique placed himself in front of Francoise. He had not yet +fired a shot; he held his gun in his hand but was unable to approach +the windows, which were altogether occupied by the soldiers. At each +discharge the floor shook. + +“Attention! Attention!” suddenly cried the captain. + +He had just seen a great dark mass emerge from the wood. Immediately a +formidable platoon fire opened. It was like a waterspout passing over +the mill. Another shutter was shattered, and through the gaping opening +of the window the balls entered. Two soldiers rolled upon the floor. +One of them lay like a stone; they pushed the body against the wall +because it was in the way. The other twisted in agony, begging his +comrades to finish him, but they paid no attention to him. The balls +entered in a constant stream; each man took care of himself and strove +to find a loophole through which to return the fire. A third soldier +was hit; he uttered not a word; he fell on the edge of a table, with +eyes fixed and haggard. Opposite these dead men Francoise, stricken +with horror, had mechanically pushed away her chair to sit on the floor +against the wall; she thought she would take up less room there and not +be in so much danger. Meanwhile the soldiers had collected all the +mattresses of the household and partially stopped up the windows with +them. The hall was filled with wrecks, with broken weapons and +demolished furniture. + +“Five o’clock,” said the captain. “Keep up your courage! They are about +to try to cross the river!” + +At that moment Francoise uttered a cry. A ball which had ricocheted had +grazed her forehead. Several drops of blood appeared. Dominique stared +at her; then, approaching the window, he fired his first shot. Once +started, he did not stop. He loaded and fired without heeding what was +passing around him, but from time to time he glanced at Francoise. He +was very deliberate and aimed with care. The Prussians, keeping beside +the poplars, attempted the passage of the Morelle, as the captain had +predicted, but as soon as a man strove to cross he fell, shot in the +head by Dominique. The captain, who had his eyes on the young man, was +amazed. He complimented him, saying that he should be glad to have many +such skillful marksmen. Dominique did not hear him. A ball cut his +shoulder; another wounded his arm, but he continued to fire. + +There were two more dead men. The mangled mattresses no longer stopped +the windows. The last discharge seemed as if it would have carried away +the mill. The position had ceased to be tenable. Nevertheless, the +captain said firmly: + +“Hold your ground for half an hour more!” + +Now he counted the minutes. He had promised his chiefs to hold the +enemy in check there until evening, and he would not give an inch +before the hour he had fixed on for the retreat. He preserved his +amiable air and smiled upon Francoise to reassure her. He had picked up +the gun of a dead soldier and himself was firing. + +Only four soldiers remained in the hall. The Prussians appeared in a +body on the other side of the Morelle, and it was clear that they +intended speedily to cross the river. A few minutes more elapsed. The +stubborn captain would not order the retreat. Just then a sergeant +hastened to him and said: + +“They are upon the highway; they will take us in the rear!” + +The Prussians must have found the bridge. The captain pulled out his +watch and looked at it. + +“Five minutes longer,” he said. “They cannot get here before that +time!” + +Then at six o’clock exactly he at last consented to lead his men out +through a little door which opened into a lane. From there they threw +themselves into a ditch; they gained the forest of Sauval. Before +taking his departure the captain bowed very politely to Père Merlier +and made his excuses, adding: + +“Amuse them! We will return!” + +Dominique was now alone in the hall. He was still firing, hearing +nothing, understanding nothing. He felt only the need of defending +Francoise. He had not the least suspicion in the world that the +soldiers had retreated. He aimed and killed his man at every shot. +Suddenly there was a loud noise. The Prussians had entered the +courtyard from behind. Dominique fired a last; shot, and they fell upon +him while his gun was yet smoking. + +Four men held him. Others vociferated around him in a frightful +language. They were ready to slaughter him on the spot. Francoise, with +a supplicating look, had cast herself before him. But an officer +entered and ordered the prisoner to be delivered up to him. After +exchanging a few words in German with the soldiers he turned toward +Dominique and said to him roughly in very good French: + +“You will be shot in two hours!” + + + + + CHAPTER III + THE FLIGHT + + +It was a settled rule of the German staff that every Frenchman, not +belonging to the regular army, taken with arms in his hands should be +shot. The militia companies themselves were not recognized as +belligerents. By thus making terrible examples of the peasants who +defended their homes, the Germans hoped to prevent the levy en masse, +which they feared. + +The officer, a tall, lean man of fifty, briefly questioned Dominique. +Although he spoke remarkably pure French he had a stiffness altogether +Prussian. + +“Do you belong to this district?” he asked. + +“No; I am a Belgian,” answered the young man. + +“Why then did you take up arms? The fighting did not concern you!” + +Dominique made no reply. At that moment the officer saw Francoise who +was standing by, very pale, listening; upon her white forehead her +slight wound had put a red bar. He looked at the young folks, one after +the other, seemed to understand matters and contented himself with +adding: + +“You do not deny having fired, do you?” + +“I fired as often as I could!” responded Dominique tranquilly. + +This confession was useless, for he was black with powder, covered with +sweat and stained with a few drops of blood which had flowed from the +scratch on his shoulder. + +“Very well,” said the officer. “You will be shot in two hours!” + +Francoise did not cry out. She clasped her hands and raised them with a +gesture of mute despair. The officer noticed this gesture. Two soldiers +had taken Dominique to a neighboring apartment, where they were to keep +watch over him. The young girl had fallen upon a chair, totally +overcome; she could not weep; she was suffocating. The officer had +continued to examine her. At last he spoke to her. + +“Is that young man your brother?” he demanded. + +She shook her head negatively. The German stood stiffly on his feet +with out a smile. Then after a short silence he again asked: + +“Has he lived long in the district?” + +She nodded affirmatively. + +“In that case, he ought to be thoroughly acquainted with the +neighboring forests.” + +This time she spoke. + +“He is thoroughly acquainted with them, monsieur,” she said, looking at +him with considerable surprise. + +He said nothing further to her but turned upon his heel, demanding that +the mayor of the village should be brought to him. But Francoise had +arisen with a slight blush on her countenance; thinking that she had +seized the aim of the officer’s questions, she had recovered hope. She +herself ran to find her father. + +Père Merlier, as soon as the firing had ceased, had quickly descended +to the wooden gallery to examine his wheel. He adored his daughter; he +had a solid friendship for Dominique, his future son-in-law, but his +wheel also held a large place in his heart. Since the two young ones, +as he called them, had come safe and sound out of the fight, he thought +of his other tenderness, which had suffered greatly. Bent over the huge +wooden carcass, he was studying its wounds with a sad air. Five buckets +were shattered to pieces; the central framework was riddled. He thrust +his fingers in the bullet holes to measure their depth; he thought how +he could repair all these injuries. Francoise found him already +stopping up the clefts with rubbish and moss. + +“Father,” she said, “you are wanted.” + +And she wept at last as she told him what she had just heard. Père +Merlier tossed his head. People were not shot in such a summary +fashion. The matter must be looked after. He re-entered the mill with +his silent and tranquil air. When the officer demanded of him +provisions for his men he replied that the inhabitants of Rocreuse were +not accustomed to be treated roughly and that nothing would be obtained +from them if violence were employed. He would see to everything but on +condition that he was not interfered with. The officer at first seemed +irritated by his calm tone; then he gave way before the old man’s short +and clear words. He even called him back and asked him: + +“What is the name of that wood opposite?” + +“The forest of Sauval.” + +“What is its extent?” + +The miller looked at him fixedly. + +“I do not know,” he answered. + +And he went away. An hour later the contribution of war in provisions +and money, demanded by the officer, was in the courtyard of the mill. +Night came on. Francoise watched with anxiety the movements of the +soldiers. She hung about the room in which Dominique was imprisoned. +Toward seven o’clock she experienced a poignant emotion. She saw the +officer enter the prisoner’s apartment and for a quarter of an hour +heard their voices in loud conversation. For an instant the officer +reappeared upon the threshold to give an order in German, which she did +not understand, but when twelve men ranged themselves in the courtyard, +their guns on their shoulders, she trembled and felt as if about to +faint. All then was over: the execution was going to take place. The +twelve men stood there ten minutes, Dominique’s voice continuing to be +raised in a tone of violent refusal. Finally the officer came out, +saying, as he roughly shut the door: + +“Very well; reflect. I give you until tomorrow morning.” + +And with a gesture he ordered the twelve men to break ranks. Francoise +was stupefied. Père Merlier, who had been smoking his pipe and looking +at the platoon simply with an air of curiosity, took her by the arm +with paternal gentleness. He led her to her chamber. + +“Be calm,” he said, “and try to sleep. Tomorrow, when it is light, we +will see what can be done.” + +As he withdrew he prudently locked her in. It was his opinion that +women were good for nothing and that they spoiled everything when they +took a hand in a serious affair. But Francoise did not retire. She sat +for a long while upon the side of her bed, listening to the noises of +the house. The German soldiers encamped in the courtyard sang and +laughed; they must have been eating and drinking until eleven o’clock, +for the racket did not cease an instant. In the mill itself heavy +footsteps resounded from time to time, without doubt those of the +sentinels who were being relieved. But she was interested most by the +sounds she could distinguish in the apartment beneath her chamber. Many +times she stretched herself out at full length and put her ear to the +floor. That apartment was the one in which Dominique was confined. He +must have been walking back and forth from the window to the wall, for +she long heard the regular cadence of his steps. Then deep silence +ensued; he had doubtless seated himself. Finally every noise ceased and +all was as if asleep. When slumber appeared to her to have settled on +the house she opened her window as gently as possible and leaned her +elbows on the sill. + +Without, the night had a warm serenity. The slender crescent of the +moon, which was sinking behind the forest of Sauval, lit up the country +with the glimmer of a night lamp. The lengthened shadows of the tall +trees barred the meadows with black, while the grass in uncovered spots +assumed the softness of greenish velvet. But Francoise did not pause to +admire the mysterious charms of the night. She examined the country, +searching for the sentinels whom the Germans had posted obliquely. She +clearly saw their shadows extending like the rounds of a ladder along +the Morelle. Only one was before the mill, on the other shore of the +river, beside a willow, the branches of which dipped in the water. +Francoise saw him plainly. He was a tall man and was standing +motionless, his face turned toward the sky with the dreamy air of a +shepherd. + +When she had carefully inspected the locality she again seated herself +on her bed. She remained there an hour, deeply absorbed. Then she +listened once more: there was not a sound in the mill. She returned to +the window and glanced out, but doubtless one of the horns of the moon, +which was still visible behind the trees, made her uneasy, for she +resumed her waiting attitude. At last she thought the proper time had +come. The night was as black as jet; she could no longer see the +sentinel opposite; the country spread out like a pool of ink. She +strained her ear for an instant and made her decision. Passing near the +window was an iron ladder, the bars fastened to the wall, which mounted +from the wheel to the garret and formerly enabled the millers to reach +certain machinery; afterward the mechanism had been altered, and for a +long while the ladder had been hidden under the thick ivy which covered +that side of the mill. + +Francoise bravely climbed out of her window and grasped one of the bars +of the ladder. She began to descend. Her skirts embarrassed her +greatly. Suddenly a stone was detached from the wall and fell into the +Morelle with a loud splash. She stopped with an icy shiver of fear. +Then she realized that the waterfall with its continuous roar would +drown every noise she might make, and she descended more courageously, +feeling the ivy with her foot, assuring herself that the rounds were +firm. When she was at the height of the chamber which served as +Dominique’s prison she paused. An unforeseen difficulty nearly caused +her to lose all her courage: the window of the chamber was not directly +below that of her apartment. She hung off from the ladder, but when she +stretched out her arm her hand encountered only the wall. Must she, +then, ascend without pushing her plan to completion? Her arms were +fatigued; the murmur of the Morelle beneath her commenced to make her +dizzy. Then she tore from the wall little fragments of plaster and +threw them against Dominique’s window. He did not hear; he was +doubtless asleep. She crumbled more plaster from the wall, scraping the +skin off her fingers. She was utterly exhausted; she felt herself +falling backward, when Dominique at last softly opened the window. + +“It is I!” she murmured. “Catch me quickly; I’m falling!” + +It was the first time that she had addressed him familiarly. Leaning +out, he seized her and drew her into the chamber. There she gave vent +to a flood of tears, stifling her sobs that she might not be heard. +Then by a supreme effort she calmed herself. + +“Are you guarded?” she asked in a low voice. + +Dominique, still stupefied at seeing her thus, nodded his head +affirmatively, pointing to the door. On the other side they heard +someone snoring; the sentinel, yielding to sleep, had thrown himself on +the floor against the door, arguing that by disposing himself thus the +prisoner could not escape. + +“You must fly,” resumed Francoise excitedly. “I have come to beg you to +do so and to bid you farewell.” + +But he did not seem to hear her. He repeated: + +“What? Is it you; is it you? Oh, what fear you caused me! You might +have killed yourself!” + +He seized her hands; he kissed them. + +“How I love you, Francoise!” he murmured. “You are as courageous as +good. I had only one dread: that I should die without seeing you again. +But you are here, and now they can shoot me. When I have passed a +quarter of an hour with you I shall be ready.” + +Little by little he had drawn her to him, and she leaned her head upon +his shoulder. The danger made them dearer to each other. They forgot +everything in that warm clasp. + +“Ah, Francoise,” resumed Dominique in a caressing voice, “this is Saint +Louis’s Day, the day, so long awaited, of our marriage. Nothing has +been able to separate us, since we are both here alone, faithful to the +appointment. Is not this our wedding morning?” + +“Yes, yes,” she repeated, “it is our wedding morning.” + +They tremblingly exchanged a kiss. But all at once she disengaged +herself from Dominique’s arms; she remembered the terrible reality. + +“You must fly; you must fly,” she whispered. “There is not a minute to +be lost!” + +And as he stretched out his arms in the darkness to clasp her again, +she said tenderly: + +“Oh, I implore you to listen to me! If you die I shall die also! In an +hour it will be light. I want you to go at once.” + +Then rapidly she explained her plan. The iron ladder descended to the +mill wheel; there he could climb down the buckets and get into the boat +which was hidden away in a nook. Afterward it would be easy for him to +reach the other bank of the river and escape. + +“But what of the sentinels?” he asked. + +“There is only one, opposite, at the foot of the first willow.” + +“What if he should see me and attempt to give an alarm?” + +Francoise shivered. She placed in his hand a knife she had brought with +her. There was a brief silence. + +“What is to become of your father and yourself?” resumed Dominique. +“No, I cannot fly! When I am gone those soldiers will, perhaps, +massacre you both! You do not know them. They offered me my life if I +would consent to guide them through the forest of Sauval. When they +discover my escape they will be capable of anything!” + +The young girl did not stop to argue. She said simply in reply to all +the reasons he advanced: + +“Out of love for me, fly! If you love me, Dominique, do not remain here +another moment!” + +Then she promised to climb back to her chamber. No one would know that +she had helped him. She finally threw her arms around him to convince +him with an embrace, with a burst of extraordinary love. He was +vanquished. He asked but one more question: + +“Can you swear to me that your father knows what you have done and that +he advises me to fly?” + +“My father sent me!” answered Francoise boldly. + +She told a falsehood. At that moment she had only one immense need: to +know that he was safe, to escape from the abominable thought that the +sun would be the signal for his death. When he was far away every +misfortune might fall upon her; that would seem delightful to her from +the moment he was secure. The selfishness of her tenderness desired +that he should live before everything. + +“Very well,” said Dominique; “I will do what you wish.” + +They said nothing more. Dominique reopened the window. But suddenly a +sound froze them. The door was shaken, and they thought that it was +about to be opened. Evidently a patrol had heard their voices. Standing +locked in each other’s arms, they waited in unspeakable anguish. The +door was shaken a second time, but it did not open. They uttered low +sighs of relief; they comprehended that the soldier who was asleep +against the door must have turned over. In fact, silence succeeded; the +snoring was resumed. + +Dominique exacted that Francoise should ascend to her chamber before he +departed. He clasped her in his arms and bade her a mute adieu. Then he +aided her to seize the ladder and clung to it in his turn. But he +refused to descend a single round until convinced that she was in her +apartment. When Francoise had entered her window she let fall in a +voice as light as a breath: + +“Au revoir, my love!” + +She leaned her elbows on the sill and strove to follow Dominique with +her eyes. The night was yet very dark. She searched for the sentinel +but could not see him; the willow alone made a pale stain in the midst +of the gloom. For an instant she heard the sound produced by +Dominique’s body in passing along the ivy. Then the wheel cracked, and +there was a slight agitation in the water which told her that the young +man had found the boat. A moment afterward she distinguished the somber +silhouette of the bateau on the gray surface of the Morelle. Terrible +anguish seized upon her. Each instant she thought she heard the +sentinel’s cry of alarm; the smallest sounds scattered through the +gloom seemed to her the hurried tread of soldiers, the clatter of +weapons, the charging of guns. Nevertheless, the seconds elapsed and +the country maintained its profound peace. Dominique must have reached +the other side of the river. Francoise saw nothing more. The silence +was majestic. She heard a shuffling of feet, a hoarse cry and the +hollow fall of a body. Afterward the silence grew deeper. Then as if +she had felt Death pass by, she stood, chilled through and through, +staring into the thick night. + + + + + CHAPTER IV + A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE + + +At dawn a clamor of voices shook the mill. Père Merlier opened the door +of Francoise’s chamber. She went down into the courtyard, pale and very +calm. But there she could not repress a shiver as she saw the corpse of +a Prussian soldier stretched out on a cloak beside the well. + +Around the body troops gesticulated, uttering cries of fury. Many of +them shook their fists at the village. Meanwhile the officer had +summoned Père Merlier as the mayor of the commune. + +“Look!” he said to him in a voice almost choking with anger. “There +lies one of our men who was found assassinated upon the bank of the +river. We must make a terrible example, and I count on you to aid us in +discovering the murderer.” + +“As you choose,” answered the miller with his usual stoicism, “but you +will find it no easy task.” + +The officer stooped and drew aside a part of the cloak which hid the +face of the dead man. Then appeared a horrible wound. The sentinel had +been struck in the throat, and the weapon had remained in the cut. It +was a kitchen knife with a black handle. + +“Examine that knife,” said the officer to Père Merlier; “perhaps it +will help us in our search.” + +The old man gave a start but recovered control of himself immediately. +He replied without moving a muscle of his face: + +“Everybody in the district has similar knives. Doubtless your man was +weary of fighting and put an end to his own life. It looks like it!” + +“Mind what you say!” cried the officer furiously. “I do not know what +prevents me from setting fire to the four corners of the village!” + +Happily in his rage he did not notice the deep trouble pictured on +Francoise’s countenance. She had been forced to sit down on a stone +bench near the well. Despite herself her eyes were fixed upon the +corpse stretched our on the ground almost at her feet. It was that of a +tall and handsome man who resembled Dominique, with flaxen hair and +blue eyes. This resemblance made her heart ache. She thought that +perhaps the dead soldier had left behind him in Germany a sweetheart +who would weep her eyes out for him. She recognized her knife in the +throat of the murdered man. She had killed him. + +The officer was talking of striking Rocreuse with terrible measures, +when soldiers came running to him. Dominique’s escape had just been +discovered. It caused an extreme agitation. The officer went to the +apartment in which the prisoner had been confined, looked out of the +window which had remained open, understood everything and returned, +exasperated. + +Père Merlier seemed greatly vexed by Dominique’s flight. + +“The imbecile!” he muttered. “He has ruined all!” + +Francoise heard him and was overcome with anguish. But the miller did +not suspect her of complicity in the affair. He tossed his head, saying +to her in an undertone: + +“We are in a nice scrape!” + +“It was that wretch who assassinated the soldier! I am sure of it!” +cried the officer. “He has undoubtedly reached the forest. But he must +be found for us or the village shall pay for him!” + +Turning to the miller, he said: + +“See here, you ought to know where he is hidden!” + +Père Merlier laughed silently, pointing to the wide stretch of wooden +hills. + +“Do you expect to find a man in there?” he said. + +“Oh, there must be nooks there with which you are acquainted. I will +give you ten men. You must guide them.” + +“As you please. But it will take a week to search all the wood in the +vicinity.” + +The old man’s tranquillity enraged the officer. In fact, the latter +comprehended the asburdity of this search. At that moment he saw +Francoise, pale and trembling, on the bench. The anxious attitude of +the young girl struck him. He was silent for an instant, during which +he in turn examined the miller and his daughter. + +At length he demanded roughly of the old man: + +“Is not that fellow your child’s lover?” + +Père Merlier grew livid and seemed about to hurl himself upon the +officer to strangle him. He stiffened himself but made no answer. +Francoise buried her face in her hands. + +“Yes, that’s it!” continued the Prussian. “And you or your daughter +helped him to escape! One of you is his accomplice! For the last time, +will you give him up to us?” + +The miller uttered not a word. He turned away and looked into space +with an air of indifference, as if the officer had not addressed him. +This brought the latter’s rage to a head. + +“Very well!” he shouted. “You shall be shot in his place!” + +And he again ordered out the platoon of execution. Père Merlier +remained as stoical as ever. He hardly even shrugged his shoulders; all +this drama appeared to him in bad taste. Without doubt he did not +believe that they would shoot a man so lightly. But when the platoon +drew up before him he said gravely: + +“So it is serious, is it? Go on with your bloody work then! If you must +have a victim I will do as well as another!” + +But Francoise started up, terrified, stammering: + +“In pity, monsieur, do no harm to my father! Kill me in his stead! I +aided Dominique to fly! I alone am guilty!” + +“Hush, my child!” cried Père Merlier. “Why do you tell an untruth? She +passed the night locked in her chamber, monsieur. She tells a +falsehood, I assure you!” + +“No, I do not tell a falsehood!” resumed the young girl ardently. “I +climbed out of my window and went down the iron ladder; I urged +Dominique to fly. This is the truth, the whole truth!” + +The old man became very pale. He saw clearly in her eyes that she did +not lie, and her story terrified him. Ah, these children with their +hearts, how they spoil everything! Then he grew angry and exclaimed: + +“She is mad; do not heed her. She tells you stupid tales. Come, finish +your work!” + +She still protested. She knelt, clasping her hands. The officer +tranquilly watched this dolorous struggle. + +“MON DIEU!” he said at last. “I take your father because I have not the +other. Find the fugitive and the old man shall be set at liberty!” + +She gazed at him with staring eyes, astonished at the atrocity of the +proposition. + +“How horrible!” she murmured. “Where do you think I can find Dominique +at this hour? He has departed; I know no more about him.” + +“Come, make your choice—him or your father.” + +“Oh, MON DIEU! How can I choose? If I knew where Dominique was I could +not choose! You are cutting my heart. I would rather die at once. Yes, +it would be the sooner over. Kill me, I implore you, kill me!” + +This scene of despair and tears finally made the officer impatient. He +cried out: + +“Enough! I will be merciful. I consent to give you two hours. If in +that time your lover is not here your father will be shot in his +place!” + +He caused Père Merlier to be taken to the chamber which had served as +Dominique’s prison. The old man demanded tobacco and began to smoke. +Upon his impassible face not the slightest emotion was visible. But +when alone, as he smoked, he shed two big tears which ran slowly down +his cheeks. His poor, dear child, how she was suffering! + +Francoise remained in the middle of the courtyard. Prussian soldiers +passed, laughing. Some of them spoke to her, uttered jokes she could +not understand. She stared at the door through which her father had +disappeared. With a slow movement she put her hand to her forehead, as +if to prevent it from bursting. + +The officer turned upon his heel, saying: + +“You have two hours. Try to utilize them.” + +She had two hours. This phrase buzzed in her ears. Then mechanically +she quitted the courtyard; she walked straight ahead. Where should she +go?—what should she do? She did not even try to make a decision because +she well understood the inutility of her efforts. However, she wished +to see Dominique. They could have an understanding together; they +might, perhaps, find an expedient. And amid the confusion of her +thoughts she went down to the shore of the Morelle, which she crossed +below the sluice at a spot where there were huge stones. Her feet led +her beneath the first willow, in the corner of the meadow. As she +stooped she saw a pool of blood which made her turn pale. It was there +the murder had been committed. She followed the track of Dominique in +the trodden grass; he must have run, for she perceived a line of long +footprints stretching across the meadow. Then farther on she lost these +traces. But in a neighboring field she thought she found them again. +The new trail conducted her to the edge of the forest, where every +indication was effaced. + +Francoise, nevertheless, plunged beneath the trees. It solaced her to +be alone. She sat down for an instant, but at the thought that time was +passing she leaped to her feet. How long had it been since she left the +mill? Five minutes?—half an hour? She had lost all conception of time. +Perhaps Dominique had concealed himself in a copse she knew of, where +they had one afternoon eaten filberts together. She hastened to the +copse, searched it. Only a blackbird flew away, uttering its soft, sad +note. Then she thought he might have taken refuge in a hollow of the +rocks, where it had sometimes been his custom to lie in wait for game, +but the hollow of the rocks was empty. What good was it to hunt for +him? She would never find him, but little by little the desire to +discover him took entire possession of her, and she hastened her steps. +The idea that he might have climbed a tree suddenly occurred to her. +She advanced with uplifted eyes, and that he might be made aware of her +presence she called him every fifteen or twenty steps. Cuckoos +answered; a breath of wind which passed through the branches made her +believe that he was there and was descending. Once she even imagined +she saw him; she stopped, almost choked, and wished to fly. What was +she to say to him? Had she come to take him back to be shot? Oh no, she +would not tell him what had happened. She would cry out to him to +escape, not to remain in the neighborhood. Then the thought that her +father was waiting for her gave her a sharp pain. She fell upon the +turf, weeping, crying aloud: + +“MON DIEU! MON DIEU! Why am I here?” + +She was mad to have come. And as if seized with fear, she ran; she +sought to leave the forest. Three times she deceived herself; she +thought she never again would find the mill, when she entered a meadow +just opposite Rocreuse. As soon as she saw the village she paused. Was +she going to return alone? She was still hesitating when a voice softly +called: + +“Francoise! Francoise!” + +And she saw Dominique, who had raised his head above the edge of a +ditch. Just God! She had found him! Did heaven wish his death? She +restrained a cry; she let herself glide into the ditch. + +“Are you searching for me?” asked the young man. + +“Yes,” she answered, her brain in a whirl, not knowing what she said. + +“What has happened?” + +She lowered her eyes, stammered: + +“Nothing. I was uneasy; I wanted to see you.” + +Then, reassured, he explained to her that he had resolved not to go +away. He was doubtful about the safety of herself and her father. Those +Prussian wretches were fully capable of taking vengeance upon women and +old men. But everything was getting on well. He added with a laugh: + +“Our wedding will take place in a week—I am sure of it.” + +Then as she remained overwhelmed, he grew grave again and said: + +“But what ails you? You are concealing something from me!” + +“No; I swear it to you. I am out of breath from running.” + +He embraced her, saying that it was imprudent for them to be talking, +and he wished to climb out of the ditch to return to the forest. She +restrained him. She trembled. + +“Listen,” she said: “it would, perhaps, be wise for you to remain where +you are. No one is searching for you; you have nothing to fear.” + +“Francoise, you are concealing something from me,” he repeated. + +Again she swore that she was hiding nothing. She had simply wished to +know that he was near her. And she stammered forth still further +reasons. She seemed so strange to him that he now could not be induced +to flee. Besides, he had faith in the return of the French. Troops had +been seen in the direction of Sauval. + +“Ah, let them hurry; let them get here as soon as possible,” she +murmured fervently. + +At that moment eleven o’clock sounded from the belfry of Rocreuse. The +strokes were clear and distinct. She arose with a terrified look; two +hours had passed since she quitted the mill. + +“Hear me,” she said rapidly: “if we have need of you I will wave my +handkerchief from my chamber window.” + +And she departed on a run, while Dominique, very uneasy, stretched +himself out upon the edge of the ditch to watch the mill. As she was +about to enter Rocreuse, Francoise met an old beggar, Père Bontemps, +who knew everybody in the district. He bowed to her; he had just seen +the miller in the midst of the Prussians; then, making the sign of the +cross and muttering broken words, he went on his way. + +“The two hours have passed,” said the officer when Francoise appeared. + +Père Merlier was there, seated upon the bench beside the well. He was +smoking. The young girl again begged, wept, sank on her knees. She +wished to gain time. The hope of seeing the French return had increased +in her, and while lamenting she thought she heard in the distance, the +measured tramp of an army. Oh, if they would come, if they would +deliver them all? + +“Listen, monsieur,” she said: “an hour, another hour; you can grant us +another hour!” + +But the officer remained inflexible. He even ordered two men to seize +her and take her away, that they might quietly proceed with the +execution of the old man. Then a frightful struggle took place in +Francoise’s heart. She could not allow her father to be thus +assassinated. No, no; she would die rather with Dominique. She was +running toward her chamber when Dominique himself entered the +courtyard. + +The officer and the soldiers uttered a shout of triumph. But the young +man, calmly, with a somewhat severe look, went up to Francoise, as if +she had been the only person present. + +“You did wrong,” he said. “Why did you not bring me back? It remained +for Père Bontemps to tell me everything. But I am here!” + + + + + CHAPTER V + THE RETURN OF THE FRENCH + + +It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Great black clouds, the trail of +some neighboring storm, had slowly filled the sky. The yellow heavens, +the brass covered uniforms, had changed the valley of Rocreuse, so gay +in the sunlight, into a den of cutthroats full of sinister gloom. The +Prussian officer had contented himself with causing Dominique to be +imprisoned without announcing what fate he reserved for him. Since noon +Francoise had been torn by terrible anguish. Despite her father’s +entreaties she would not quit the courtyard. She was awaiting the +French. But the hours sped on; night was approaching, and she suffered +the more as all the time gained did not seem to be likely to change the +frightful denouement. + +About three o’clock the Prussians made their preparations for +departure. For an instant past the officer had, as on the previous day, +shut himself up with Dominique. Francoise realized that the young man’s +life was in balance. She clasped her hands; she prayed. Père Merlier, +beside her, maintained silence and the rigid attitude of an old peasant +who does not struggle against fate. + +“Oh, MON DIEU! Oh, MON DIEU!” murmured Francoise. “They are going to +kill him!” + +The miller drew her to him and took her on his knees as if she had been +a child. + +At that moment the officer came out, while behind him two men brought +Dominique. + +“Never! Never!” cried the latter. “I am ready to die!” + +“Think well,” resumed the officer. “The service you refuse me another +will render us. I am generous: I offer you your life. I want you simply +to guide us through the forest to Montredon. There must be pathways +leading there.” + +Dominique was silent. + +“So you persist in your infatuation, do you?” + +“Kill me and end all this!” replied the young man. + +Francoise, her hands clasped, supplicated him from afar. She had +forgotten everything; she would have advised him to commit an act of +cowardice. But Père Merlier seized her hands that the Prussians might +not see her wild gestures. + +“He is right,” he whispered: “it is better to die!” + +The platoon of execution was there. The officer awaited a sign of +weakness on Dominique’s part. He still expected to conquer him. No one +spoke. In the distance violent crashes of thunder were heard. +Oppressive heat weighed upon the country. But suddenly, amid the +silence, a cry broke forth: + +“The French! The French!” + +Yes, the French were at hand. Upon the Sauval highway, at the edge of +the wood, the line of red pantaloons could be distinguished. In the +mill there was an extraordinary agitation. The Prussian soldiers ran +hither and thither with guttural exclamations. Not a shot had yet been +fired. + +“The French! The French!” cried Francoise, clapping her hands. + +She was wild with joy. She escaped from her father’s grasp; she laughed +and tossed her arms in the air. At last they had come and come in time, +since Dominique was still alive! + +A terrible platoon fire, which burst upon her ears like a clap of +thunder, caused her to turn. The officer muttered between his teeth: + +“Before everything, let us settle this affair!” + +And with his own hand pushing Dominique against the wall of a shed he +ordered his men to fire. When Francoise looked Dominique lay upon the +ground with blood streaming from his neck and shoulders. + +She did not weep; she stood stupefied. Her eyes grew fixed, and she sat +down under the shed, a few paces from the body. She stared at it, +wringing her hands. The Prussians had seized Père Merlier as a hostage. + +It was a stirring combat. The officer had rapidly posted his men, +comprehending that he could not beat a retreat without being cut to +pieces. Hence he would fight to the last. Now the Prussians defended +the mill, and the French attacked it. The fusillade began with unusual +violence. For half an hour it did not cease. Then a hollow sound was +heard, and a ball broke a main branch of the old elm. The French had +cannon. A battery, stationed just above the ditch in which Dominique +had hidden himself, swept the wide street of Rocreuse. The struggle +could not last long. + +Ah, the poor mill! Balls pierced it in every part. Half of the roof was +carried away. Two walls were battered down. But it was on the side of +the Morelle that the destruction was most lamentable. The ivy, torn +from the tottering edifice, hung like rags; the river was encumbered +with wrecks of all kinds, and through a breach was visible Francoise’s +chamber with its bed, the white curtains of which were carefully +closed. Shot followed shot; the old wheel received two balls and gave +vent to an agonizing groan; the buckets were borne off by the current; +the framework was crushed. The soul of the gay mill had left it! + +Then the French began the assault. There was a furious fight with +swords and bayonets. Beneath the rust-colored sky the valley was choked +with the dead. The broad meadows had a wild look with their tall, +isolated trees and their hedges of poplars which stained them with +shade. To the right and to the left the forests were like the walls of +an ancient ampitheater which enclosed the fighting gladiators, while +the springs, the fountains and the flowing brooks seemed to sob amid +the panic of the country. + +Beneath the shed Francoise still sat near Dominique’s body; she had not +moved. Père Merlier had received a slight wound. The Prussians were +exterminated, but the ruined mill was on fire in a dozen places. The +French rushed into the courtyard, headed by their captain. It was his +first success of the war. His face beamed with triumph. He waved his +sword, shouting: + +“Victory! Victory!” + +On seeing the wounded miller, who was endeavoring to comfort Francoise, +and noticing the body of Dominique, his joyous look changed to one of +sadness. Then he knelt beside the young man and, tearing open his +blouse, put his hand to his heart. + +“Thank God!” he cried. “It is yet beating! Send for the surgeon!” + +At the captain’s words Francoise leaped to her feet. + +“There is hope!” she cried. “Oh, tell me there is hope!” + +At that moment the surgeon appeared. He made a hasty examination and +said: + +“The young man is severely hurt, but life is not extinct; he can be +saved!” By the surgeon’s orders Dominique was transported to a +neighboring cottage, where he was placed in bed. His wounds were +dressed; restoratives were administered, and he soon recovered +consciousness. When he opened his eyes he saw Francoise sitting beside +him and through the open window caught sight of Père Merlier talking +with the French captain. He passed his hand over his forehead with a +bewildered air and said: + +“They did not kill me after all!” + +“No,” replied Francoise. “The French came, and their surgeon saved +you.” + +Père Merlier turned and said through the window: + +“No talking yet, my young ones!” + +In due time Dominique was entirely restored, and when peace again +blessed the land he wedded his beloved Francoise. + +The mill was rebuilt, and Père Merlier had a new wheel upon which to +bestow whatever tenderness was not engrossed by his daughter and her +husband. + + + + + CAPTAIN BURLE + + + + + CHAPTER I + THE SWINDLE + + +It was nine o’clock. The little town of Vauchamp, dark and silent, had +just retired to bed amid a chilly November rain. In the Rue des +Recollets, one of the narrowest and most deserted streets of the +district of Saint-Jean, a single window was still alight on the third +floor of an old house, from whose damaged gutters torrents of water +were falling into the street. Mme Burle was sitting up before a meager +fire of vine stocks, while her little grandson Charles pored over his +lessons by the pale light of a lamp. + +The apartment, rented at one hundred and sixty francs per annum, +consisted of four large rooms which it was absolutely impossible to +keep warm during the winter. Mme Burle slept in the largest chamber, +her son Captain and Quartermaster Burle occupying a somewhat smaller +one overlooking the street, while little Charles had his iron cot at +the farther end of a spacious drawing room with mildewed hangings, +which was never used. The few pieces of furniture belonging to the +captain and his mother, furniture of the massive style of the First +Empire, dented and worn by continuous transit from one garrison town to +another, almost disappeared from view beneath the lofty ceilings whence +darkness fell. The flooring of red-colored tiles was cold and hard to +the feet; before the chairs there were merely a few threadbare little +rugs of poverty-stricken aspect, and athwart this desert all the winds +of heaven blew through the disjointed doors and windows. + +Near the fireplace sat Mme Burle, leaning back in her old yellow velvet +armchair and watching the last vine branch smoke, with that stolid, +blank stare of the aged who live within themselves. She would sit thus +for whole days together, with her tall figure, her long stern face and +her thin lips that never smiled. The widow of a colonel who had died +just as he was on the point of becoming a general, the mother of a +captain whom she had followed even in his campaigns, she had acquired a +military stiffness of bearing and formed for herself a code of honor, +duty and patriotism which kept her rigid, desiccated, as it were, by +the stern application of discipline. She seldom, if ever, complained. +When her son had become a widower after five years of married life she +had undertaken the education of little Charles as a matter of course, +performing her duties with the severity of a sergeant drilling +recruits. She watched over the child, never tolerating the slightest +waywardness or irregularity, but compelling him to sit up till midnight +when his exercises were not finished, and sitting up herself until he +had completed them. Under such implacable despotism Charles, whose +constitution was delicate, grew up pale and thin, with beautiful eyes, +inordinately large and clear, shining in his white, pinched face. + +During the long hours of silence Mme Burle dwelt continuously upon one +and the same idea: she had been disappointed in her son. This thought +sufficed to occupy her mind, and under its influence she would live her +whole life over again, from the birth of her son, whom she had pictured +rising amid glory to the highest rank, till she came down to mean and +narrow garrison life, the dull, monotonous existence of nowadays, that +stranding in the post of a quartermaster, from which Burle would never +rise and in which he seemed to sink more and more heavily. And yet his +first efforts had filled her with pride, and she had hoped to see her +dreams realized. Burle had only just left Saint-Cyr when he +distinguished himself at the battle of Solferino, where he had captured +a whole battery of the enemy’s artillery with merely a handful of men. +For this feat he had won the cross; the papers had recorded his +heroism, and he had become known as one of the bravest soldiers in the +army. But gradually the hero had grown stout, embedded in flesh, +timorous, lazy and satisfied. In 1870, still a captain, he had been +made a prisoner in the first encounter, and he returned from Germany +quite furious, swearing that he would never be caught fighting again, +for it was too absurd. Being prevented from leaving the army, as he was +incapable of embracing any other profession, he applied for and +obtained the position of captain quartermaster, “a kennel,” as he +called it, “in which he would be left to kick the bucket in peace.” +That day Mme Burle experienced a great internal disruption. She felt +that it was all over, and she ever afterward preserved a rigid attitude +with tightened lips. + +A blast of wind shook the Rue des Recollets and drove the rain angrily +against the windowpanes. The old lady lifted her eyes from the smoking +vine roots now dying out, to make sure that Charles was not falling +asleep over his Latin exercise. This lad, twelve years of age, had +become the old lady’s supreme hope, the one human being in whom she +centered her obstinate yearning for glory. At first she had hated him +with all the loathing she had felt for his mother, a weak and pretty +young lacemaker whom the captain had been foolish enough to marry when +he found out that she would not listen to his passionate addresses on +any other condition. Later on, when the mother had died and the father +had begun to wallow in vice, Mme Burle dreamed again in presence of +that little ailing child whom she found it so hard to rear. She wanted +to see him robust, so that he might grow into the hero that Burle had +declined to be, and for all her cold ruggedness she watched him +anxiously, feeling his limbs and instilling courage into his soul. By +degrees, blinded by her passionate desires, she imagined that she had +at last found the man of the family. The boy, whose temperament was of +a gentle, dreamy character, had a physical horror of soldiering, but as +he lived in mortal dread of his grandmother and was extremely shy and +submissive, he would echo all she said and resignedly express his +intention of entering the army when he grew up. + +Mme Burle observed that the exercise was not progressing. In fact, +little Charles, overcome by the deafening noise of the storm, was +dozing, albeit his pen was between his fingers and his eyes were +staring at the paper. The old lady at once struck the edge of the table +with her bony hand; whereupon the lad started, opened his dictionary +and hurriedly began to turn over the leaves. Then, still preserving +silence, his grandmother drew the vine roots together on the hearth and +unsuccessfully attempted to rekindle the fire. + +At the time when she had still believed in her son she had sacrificed +her small income, which he had squandered in pursuits she dared not +investigate. Even now he drained the household; all its resources went +to the streets, and it was through him that she lived in penury, with +empty rooms and cold kitchen. She never spoke to him of all those +things, for with her sense of discipline he remained the master. Only +at times she shuddered at the sudden fear that Burle might someday +commit some foolish misdeed which would prevent Charles from entering +the army. + +She was rising up to fetch a fresh piece of wood in the kitchen when a +fearful hurricane fell upon the house, making the doors rattle, tearing +off a shutter and whirling the water in the broken gutters like a spout +against the window. In the midst of the uproar a ring at the bell +startled the old lady. Who could it be at such an hour and in such +weather? Burle never returned till after midnight, if he came home at +all. However, she went to the door. An officer stood before her, +dripping with rain and swearing savagely. + +“Hell and thunder!” he growled. “What cursed weather!” + +It was Major Laguitte, a brave old soldier who had served under Colonel +Burle during Mme Burle’s palmy days. He had started in life as a +drummer boy and, thanks to his courage rather than his intellect, had +attained to the command of a battalion, when a painful infirmity—the +contraction of the muscles of one of his thighs, due to a wound—obliged +him to accept the post of major. He was slightly lame, but it would +have been imprudent to tell him so, as he refused to own it. + +“What, you, Major?” said Mme Burle with growing astonishment. + +“Yes, thunder,” grumbled Laguitte, “and I must be confoundedly fond of +you to roam the streets on such a night as this. One would think twice +before sending even a parson out.” + +He shook himself, and little rivulets fell from his huge boots onto the +floor. Then he looked round him. + +“I particularly want to see Burle. Is the lazy beggar already in bed?” + +“No, he is not in yet,” said the old woman in her harsh voice. + +The major looked furious, and, raising his voice, he shouted: “What, +not at home? But in that case they hoaxed me at the cafe, Melanie’s +establishment, you know. I went there, and a maid grinned at me, saying +that the captain had gone home to bed. Curse the girl! I suspected as +much and felt like pulling her ears!” + +After this outburst he became somewhat calmer, stamping about the room +in an undecided way, withal seeming greatly disturbed. Mme Burle looked +at him attentively. + +“Is it the captain personally whom you want to see?” she said at last. + +“Yes,” he answered. + +“Can I not tell him what you have to say?” + +“No.” + +She did not insist but remained standing without taking her eyes off +the major, who did not seem able to make up his mind to leave. Finally +in a fresh burst of rage he exclaimed with an oath: “It can’t be +helped. As I am here you may as well know—after all, it is, perhaps, +best.” + +He sat down before the chimney piece, stretching out his muddy boots as +if a bright fire had been burning. Mme Burle was about to resume her +own seat when she remarked that Charles, overcome by fatigue, had +dropped his head between the open pages of his dictionary. The arrival +of the major had at first interested him, but, seeing that he remained +unnoticed, he had been unable to struggle against his sleepiness. His +grandmother turned toward the table to slap his frail little hands, +whitening in the lamplight, when Laguitte stopped her. + +“No—no!” he said. “Let the poor little man sleep. I haven’t got +anything funny to say. There’s no need for him to hear me.” + +The old lady sat down in her armchair; deep silence reigned, and they +looked at one another. + +“Well, yes,” said the major at last, punctuating his words with an +angry motion of his chin, “he has been and done it; that hound Burle +has been and done it!” + +Not a muscle of Mme Burle’s face moved, but she became livid, and her +figure stiffened. Then the major continued: “I had my doubts. I had +intended mentioning the subject to you. Burle was spending too much +money, and he had an idiotic look which I did not fancy. Thunder and +lightning! What a fool a man must be to behave so filthily!” + +Then he thumped his knee furiously with his clenched fist and seemed to +choke with indignation. The old woman put the straightforward question: + +“He has stolen?” + +“You can’t have an idea of it. You see, I never examined his accounts; +I approved and signed them. You know how those things are managed. +However, just before the inspection—as the colonel is a crotchety old +maniac—I said to Burle: ‘I say, old man, look to your accounts; I am +answerable, you know,’ and then I felt perfectly secure. Well, about a +month ago, as he seemed queer and some nasty stories were circulating, +I peered a little closer into the books and pottered over the entries. +I thought everything looked straight and very well kept—” + +At this point he stopped, convulsed by such a fit of rage that he had +to relieve himself by a volley of appalling oaths. Finally he resumed: +“It isn’t the swindle that angers me; it is his disgusting behavior to +me. He has gammoned me, Madame Burle. By God! Does he take me for an +old fool?” + +“So he stole?” the mother again questioned. + +“This evening,” continued the major more quietly, “I had just finished +my dinner when Gagneux came in—you know Gagneux, the butcher at the +corner of the Place aux Herbes? Another dirty beast who got the meat +contract and makes our men eat all the diseased cow flesh in the +neighborhood! Well, I received him like a dog, and then he let it all +out—blurted out the whole thing, and a pretty mess it is! It appears +that Burle only paid him in driblets and had got himself into a +muddle—a confusion of figures which the devil himself couldn’t +disentangle. In short, Burle owes the butcher two thousand francs, and +Gagneux threatens that he’ll inform the colonel if he is not paid. To +make matters worse, Burle, just to blind me, handed me every week a +forged receipt which he had squarely signed with Gagneux’s name. To +think he did that to me, his old friend! Ah, curse him!” + +With increasing profanity the major rose to his feet, shook his fist at +the ceiling and then fell back in his chair. Mme Burle again repeated: +“He has stolen. It was inevitable.” + +Then without a word of judgment or condemnation she added simply: “Two +thousand francs—we have not got them. There are barely thirty francs in +the house.” + +“I expected as much,” said Laguitte. “And do you know where all the +money goes? Why, Melanie gets it—yes, Melanie, a creature who has +turned Burle into a perfect fool. Ah, those women! Those fiendish +women! I always said they would do for him! I cannot conceive what he +is made of! He is only five years younger than I am, and yet he is as +mad as ever. What a woman hunter he is!” + +Another long silence followed. Outside the rain was increasing in +violence, and throughout the sleepy little town one could hear the +crashing of slates and chimney pots as they were dashed by the blast +onto the pavements of the streets. + +“Come,” suddenly said the major, rising, “my stopping here won’t mend +matters. I have warned you—and now I’m off.” + +“What is to be done? To whom can we apply?” muttered the old woman +drearily. + +“Don’t give way—we must consider. If I only had the two thousand +francs—but you know that I am not rich.” + +The major stopped short in confusion. This old bachelor, wifeless and +childless, spent his pay in drink and gambled away at ecarte whatever +money his cognac and absinthe left in his pocket. Despite that, +however, he was scrupulously honest from a sense of discipline. + +“Never mind,” he added as he reached the threshold. “I’ll begin by +stirring him up. I shall move heaven and earth! What! Burle, Colonel +Burle’s son, condemned for theft! That cannot be! I would sooner burn +down the town. Now, thunder and lightning, don’t worry; it is far more +annoying for me than for you.” + +He shook the old lady’s hand roughly and vanished into the shadows of +the staircase, while she held the lamp aloft to light the way. When she +returned and replaced the lamp on the table she stood for a moment +motionless in front of Charles, who was still asleep with his face +lying on the dictionary. His pale cheeks and long fair hair made him +look like a girl, and she gazed at him dreamily, a shade of tenderness +passing over her harsh countenance. But it was only a passing emotion; +her features regained their look of cold, obstinate determination, and, +giving the youngster a sharp rap on his little hand, she said: + +“Charles—your lessons.” + +The boy awoke, dazed and shivering, and again rapidly turned over the +leaves. At the same moment Major Laguitte, slamming the house door +behind him, received on his head a quantity of water falling from the +gutters above, whereupon he began to swear in so loud a voice that he +could be heard above the storm. And after that no sound broke upon the +pelting downpour save the slight rustle of the boy’s pen traveling over +the paper. Mme Burle had resumed her seat near the chimney piece, still +rigid, with her eyes fixed on the dead embers, preserving, indeed, her +habitual attitude and absorbed in her one idea. + + + + + CHAPTER II + THE CAFE + + +The Café de Paris, kept by Melanie Cartier, a widow, was situated on +the Place du Palais, a large irregular square planted with meager, +dusty elm trees. The place was so well known in Vauchamp that it was +customary to say, “Are you coming to Melanie’s?” At the farther end of +the first room, which was a spacious one, there was another called “the +divan,” a narrow apartment having sham leather benches placed against +the walls, while at each corner there stood a marble-topped table. The +widow, deserting her seat in the front room, where she left her little +servant Phrosine, spent her evenings in the inner apartment, +ministering to a few customers, the usual frequenters of the place, +those who were currently styled “the gentlemen of the divan.” When a +man belonged to that set it was as if he had a label on his back; he +was spoken of with smiles of mingled contempt and envy. + +Mme Cartier had become a widow when she was five and twenty. Her +husband, a wheelwright, who on the death of an uncle had amazed +Vauchamp by taking the Café de Paris, had one fine day brought her back +with him from Montpellier, where he was wont to repair twice a year to +purchase liqueurs. As he was stocking his establishment he selected, +together with divers beverages, a woman of the sort he wanted—of an +engaging aspect and apt to stimulate the trade of the house. It was +never known where he had picked her up, but he married her after trying +her in the cafe during six months or so. Opinions were divided in +Vauchamp as to her merits, some folks declaring that she was superb, +while others asserted that she looked like a drum-major. She was a tall +woman with large features and coarse hair falling low over her +forehead. However, everyone agreed that she knew very well how to fool +the sterner sex. She had fine eyes and was wont to fix them with a bold +stare on the gentlemen of the divan, who colored and became like wax in +her hands. She also had the reputation of possessing a wonderfully fine +figure, and southerners appreciate a statuesque style of beauty. + +Cartier had died in a singular way. Rumor hinted at a conjugal quarrel, +a kick, producing some internal tumor. Whatever may have been the +truth, Melanie found herself encumbered with the cafe, which was far +from doing a prosperous business. Her husband had wasted his uncle’s +inheritance in drinking his own absinthe and wearing out the cloth of +his own billiard table. For a while it was believed that the widow +would have to sell out, but she liked the life and the establishment +just as it was. If she could secure a few customers the bigger room +might remain deserted. So she limited herself to repapering the divan +in white and gold and recovering the benches. She began by entertaining +a chemist. Then a vermicelli maker, a lawyer and a retired magistrate +put in an appearance; and thus it was that the cafe remained open, +although the waiter did not receive twenty orders a day. No objections +were raised by the authorities, as appearances were kept up; and, +indeed, it was not deemed advisable to interfere, for some respectable +folks might have been worried. + +Of an evening five or six well-to-do citizens would enter the front +room and play at dominoes there. Although Cartier was dead and the Café +de Paris had got a queer name, they saw nothing and kept up their old +habits. In course of time, the waiter having nothing to do, Melanie +dismissed him and made Phrosine light the solitary gas burner in the +corner where the domino players congregated. Occasionally a party of +young men, attracted by the gossip that circulated through the town, +would come in, wildly excited and laughing loudly and awkwardly. But +they were received there with icy dignity. As a rule they did not even +see the widow, and even if she happened to be present she treated them +with withering disdain, so that they withdrew, stammering and confused. +Melanie was too astute to indulge in any compromising whims. While the +front room remained obscure, save in the corner where the few townsfolk +rattled their dominoes, she personally waited on the gentlemen of the +divan, showing herself amiable without being free, merely venturing in +moments of familiarity to lean on the shoulder of one or another of +them, the better to watch a skillfully played game of ecarte. + +One evening the gentlemen of the divan, who had ended by tolerating +each other’s presence, experienced a disagreeable surprise on finding +Captain Burle at home there. He had casually entered the cafe that same +morning to get a glass of vermouth, so it seemed, and he had found +Melanie there. They had conversed, and in the evening when he returned +Phrosine immediately showed him to the inner room. + +Two days later Burle reigned there supreme; still he had not frightened +the chemist, the vermicelli maker, the lawyer or the retired magistrate +away. The captain, who was short and dumpy, worshiped tall, plump +women. In his regiment he had been nicknamed “Petticoat Burle” on +account of his constant philandering. Whenever the officers, and even +the privates, met some monstrous-looking creature, some giantess puffed +out with fat, whether she were in velvet or in rags, they would +invariably exclaim, “There goes one to Petticoat Burle’s taste!” Thus +Melanie, with her opulent presence, quite conquered him. He was +lost—quite wrecked. In less than a fortnight he had fallen to vacuous +imbecility. With much the expression of a whipped hound in the tiny +sunken eyes which lighted up his bloated face, he was incessantly +watching the widow in mute adoration before her masculine features and +stubby hair. For fear that he might be dismissed, he put up with the +presence of the other gentlemen of the divan and spent his pay in the +place down to the last copper. A sergeant reviewed the situation in one +sentence: “Petticoat Burle is done for; he’s a buried man!” + +It was nearly ten o’clock when Major Laguitte furiously flung the door +of the cafe open. For a moment those inside could see the deluged +square transformed into a dark sea of liquid mud, bubbling under the +terrible downpour. The major, now soaked to the skin and leaving a +stream behind him, strode up to the small counter where Phrosine was +reading a novel. + +“You little wretch,” he yelled, “you have dared to gammon an officer; +you deserve—” + +And then he lifted his hand as if to deal a blow such as would have +felled an ox. The little maid shrank back, terrified, while the amazed +domino players looked, openmouthed. However, the major did not linger +there—he pushed the divan door open and appeared before Melanie and +Burle just as the widow was playfully making the captain sip his grog +in small spoonfuls, as if she were feeding a pet canary. Only the +ex-magistrate and the chemist had come that evening, and they had +retired early in a melancholy frame of mind. Then Melanie, being in +want of three hundred francs for the morrow, had taken advantage of the +opportunity to cajole the captain. + +“Come.” she said, “open your mouth; ain’t it nice, you greedy +piggy-wiggy?” + +Burle, flushing scarlet, with glazed eyes and sunken figure, was +sucking the spoon with an air of intense enjoyment. + +“Good heavens!” roared the major from the threshold. “You now play +tricks on me, do you? I’m sent to the roundabout and told that you +never came here, and yet all the while here you are, addling your silly +brains.” + +Burle shuddered, pushing the grog away, while Melanie stepped angrily +in front of him as if to shield him with her portly figure, but +Laguitte looked at her with that quiet, resolute expression well known +to women who are familiar with bodily chastisement. + +“Leave us,” he said curtly. + +She hesitated for the space of a second. She almost felt the gust of +the expected blow, and then, white with rage, she joined Phrosine in +the outer room. + +When the two men were alone Major Laguitte walked up to Burle, looked +at him and, slightly stooping, yelled into his face these two words: +“You pig!” + +The captain, quite dazed, endeavored to retort, but he had not time to +do so. + +“Silence!” resumed the major. “You have bamboozled a friend. You palmed +off on me a lot of forged receipts which might have sent both of us to +the gallows. Do you call that proper behavior? Is that the sort of +trick to play a friend of thirty years’ standing?” + +Burle, who had fallen back in his chair, was livid; his limbs shook as +if with ague. Meanwhile the major, striding up and down and striking +the tables wildly with his fists, continued: “So you have become a +thief like the veriest scribbling cur of a clerk, and all for the sake +of that creature here! If at least you had stolen for your mother’s +sake it would have been honorable! But, curse it, to play tricks and +bring the money into this shanty is what I cannot understand! Tell +me—what are you made of at your age to go to the dogs as you are going +all for the sake of a creature like a grenadier!” + +“YOU gamble—” stammered the captain. + +“Yes, I do—curse it!” thundered the major, lashed into still greater +fury by this remark. “And I am a pitiful rogue to do so, because it +swallows up all my pay and doesn’t redound to the honor of the French +army. However, I don’t steal. Kill yourself, if it pleases you; starve +your mother and the boy, but respect the regimental cashbox and don’t +drag your friends down with you.” + +He stopped. Burle was sitting there with fixed eyes and a stupid air. +Nothing was heard for a moment save the clatter of the major’s heels. + +“And not a single copper,” he continued aggressively. “Can you picture +yourself between two gendarmes, eh?” + +He then grew a little calmer, caught hold of Burle’s wrists and forced +him to rise. + +“Come!” he said gruffly. “Something must be done at once, for I cannot +go to bed with this affair on my mind—I have an idea.” + +In the front room Melanie and Phrosine were talking eagerly in low +voices. When the widow saw the two men leaving the divan she moved +toward Burle and said coaxingly: “What, are you going already, +Captain?” + +“Yes, he’s going,” brutally answered Laguitte, “and I don’t intend to +let him set foot here again.” + +The little maid felt frightened and pulled her mistress back by the +skirt of her dress; in doing so she imprudently murmured the word +“drunkard” and thereby brought down the slap which the major’s hand had +been itching to deal for some time past. Both women having stooped, +however, the blow only fell on Phrosine’s back hair, flattening her cap +and breaking her comb. The domino players were indignant. + +“Let’s cut it,” shouted Laguitte, and he pushed Burle on the pavement. +“If I remained I should smash everyone in the place.” + +To cross the square they had to wade up to their ankles in mud. The +rain, driven by the wind, poured off their faces. The captain walked on +in silence, while the major kept on reproaching him with his cowardice +and its disastrous consequences. Wasn’t it sweet weather for tramping +the streets? If he hadn’t been such an idiot they would both be warmly +tucked in bed instead of paddling about in the mud. Then he spoke of +Gagneux—a scoundrel whose diseased meat had on three separate occasions +made the whole regiment ill. In a week, however, the contract would +come to an end, and the fiend himself would not get it renewed. + +“It rests with me,” the major grumbled. “I can select whomsoever I +choose, and I’d rather cut off my right arm than put that poisoner in +the way of earning another copper.” + +Just then he slipped into a gutter and, half choked by a string of +oaths, he gasped: + +“You understand—I am going to rout up Gagneux. You must stop outside +while I go in. I must know what the rascal is up to and if he’ll dare +to carry out his threat of informing the colonel tomorrow. A +butcher—curse him! The idea of compromising oneself with a butcher! Ah, +you aren’t over-proud, and I shall never forgive you for all this.” + +They had now reached the Place aux Herbes. Gagneux’s house was quite +dark, but Laguitte knocked so loudly that he was eventually admitted. +Burle remained alone in the dense obscurity and did not even attempt to +seek any shelter. He stood at a corner of the market under the pelting +rain, his head filled with a loud buzzing noise which prevented him +from thinking. He did not feel impatient, for he was unconscious of the +flight of time. He stood there looking at the house, which, with its +closed door and windows, seemed quite lifeless. When at the end of an +hour the major came out again it appeared to the captain as if he had +only just gone in. + +Laguitte was so grimly mute that Burle did not venture to question him. +For a moment they sought each other, groping about in the dark; then +they resumed their walk through the somber streets, where the water +rolled as in the bed of a torrent. They moved on in silence side by +side, the major being so abstracted that he even forgot to swear. +However, as they again crossed the Place du Palais, at the sight of the +Café de Paris, which was still lit up, he dropped his hand on Burle’s +shoulder and said, “If you ever re-enter that hole I—” + +“No fear!” answered the captain without letting his friend finish his +sentence. + +Then he stretched out his hand. + +“No, no,” said Laguitte, “I’ll see you home; I’ll at least make sure +that you’ll sleep in your bed tonight.” + +They went on, and as they ascended the Rue des Recollets they slackened +their pace. When the captain’s door was reached and Burle had taken out +his latchkey he ventured to ask: + +“Well?” + +“Well,” answered the major gruffly, “I am as dirty a rogue as you are. +Yes! I have done a scurrilous thing. The fiend take you! Our soldiers +will eat carrion for three months longer.” + +Then he explained that Gagneux, the disgusting Gagneux, had a horribly +level head and that he had persuaded him—the major—to strike a bargain. +He would refrain from informing the colonel, and he would even make a +present of the two thousand francs and replace the forged receipts by +genuine ones, on condition that the major bound himself to renew the +meat contract. It was a settled thing. + +“Ah,” continued Laguitte, “calculate what profits the brute must make +out of the meat to part with such a sum as two thousand francs.” + +Burle, choking with emotion, grasped his old friend’s hands, stammering +confused words of thanks. The vileness of the action committed for his +sake brought tears into his eyes. + +“I never did such a thing before,” growled Laguitte, “but I was driven +to it. Curse it, to think that I haven’t those two thousand francs in +my drawer! It is enough to make one hate cards. It is my own fault. I +am not worth much; only, mark my words, don’t begin again, for, curse +it—I shan’t.” + +The captain embraced him, and when he had entered the house the major +stood a moment before the closed door to make certain that he had gone +upstairs to bed. Then as midnight was striking and the rain was still +belaboring the dark town, he slowly turned homeward. The thought of his +men almost broke his heart, and, stopping short, he said aloud in a +voice full of compassion: + +“Poor devils! what a lot of cow beef they’ll have to swallow for those +two thousand francs!” + + + + + CHAPTER III + AGAIN? + + +The regiment was altogether nonplused: Petticoat Burle had quarreled +with Melanie. When a week had elapsed it became a proved and undeniable +fact; the captain no longer set foot inside the Café de Paris, where +the chemist, it was averred, once more reigned in his stead, to the +profound sorrow of the retired magistrate. An even more incredible +statement was that Captain Burle led the life of a recluse in the Rue +des Recollets. He was becoming a reformed character; he spent his +evenings at his own fireside, hearing little Charles repeat his +lessons. His mother, who had never breathed a word to him of his +manipulations with Gagneux, maintained her old severity of demeanor as +she sat opposite to him in her armchair, but her looks seemed to imply +that she believed him reclaimed. + +A fortnight later Major Laguitte came one evening to invite himself to +dinner. He felt some awkwardness at the prospect of meeting Burle +again, not on his own account but because he dreaded awakening painful +memories. However, as the captain was mending his ways he wished to +shake hands and break a crust with him. He thought this would please +his old friend. + +When Laguitte arrived Burle was in his room, so it was the old lady who +received the major. The latter, after announcing that he had come to +have a plate of soup with them, added, lowering his voice: + +“Well, how goes it?” + +“It is all right,” answered the old lady. + +“Nothing queer?” + +“Absolutely nothing. Never away—in bed at nine—and looking quite +happy.” + +“Ah, confound it,” replied the major, “I knew very well he only wanted +a shaking. He has some heart left, the dog!” + +When Burle appeared he almost crushed the major’s hands in his grasp, +and standing before the fire, waiting for the dinner, they conversed +peacefully, honestly, together, extolling the charms of home life. The +captain vowed he wouldn’t exchange his home for a kingdom and declared +that when he had removed his braces, put on his slippers and settled +himself in his armchair, no king was fit to hold a candle to him. The +major assented and examined him. At all events his virtuous conduct had +not made him any thinner; he still looked bloated; his eyes were +bleared, and his mouth was heavy. He seemed to be half asleep as he +repeated mechanically: “Home life! There’s nothing like home life, +nothing in the world!” + +“No doubt,” said the major; “still, one mustn’t exaggerate—take a +little exercise and come to the cafe now and then.” + +“To the cafe, why?” asked Burle. “Do I lack anything here? No, no, I +remain at home.” + +When Charles had laid his books aside Laguitte was surprised to see a +maid come in to lay the cloth. + +“So you keep a servant now,” he remarked to Mme Burle. + +“I had to get one,” she answered with a sigh. “My legs are not what +they used to be, and the household was going to rack and ruin. +Fortunately Cabrol let me have his daughter. You know old Cabrol, who +sweeps the market? He did not know what to do with Rose—I am teaching +her how to work.” + +Just then the girl left the room. + +“How old is she?” asked the major. + +“Barely seventeen. She is stupid and dirty, but I only give her ten +francs a month, and she eats nothing but soup.” + +When Rose returned with an armful of plates Laguitte, though he did not +care about women, began to scrutinize her and was amazed at seeing so +ugly a creature. She was very short, very dark and slightly deformed, +with a face like an ape’s: a flat nose, a huge mouth and narrow +greenish eyes. Her broad back and long arms gave her an appearance of +great strength. + +“What a snout!” said Laguitte, laughing, when the maid had again left +the room to fetch the cruets. + +“Never mind,” said Burle carelessly, “she is very obliging and does all +one asks her. She suits us well enough as a scullion.” + +The dinner was very pleasant. It consisted of boiled beef and mutton +hash. Charles was encouraged to relate some stories of his school, and +Mme Burle repeatedly asked him the same question: “Don’t you want to be +a soldier?” A faint smile hovered over the child’s wan lips as he +answered with the frightened obedience of a trained dog, “Oh yes, +Grandmother.” Captain Burle, with his elbows on the table, was +masticating slowly with an absent-minded expression. The big room was +getting warmer; the single lamp placed on the table left the corners in +vague gloom. There was a certain amount of heavy comfort, the familiar +intimacy of penurious people who do not change their plates at every +course but become joyously excited at the unexpected appearance of a +bowl of whipped egg cream at the close of the meal. + +Rose, whose heavy tread shook the floor as she paced round the table, +had not yet opened her mouth. At last she stopped behind the captain’s +chair and asked in a gruff voice: “Cheese, sir?” + +Burle started. “What, eh? Oh yes—cheese. Hold the plate tight.” + +He cut a piece of Gruyere, the girl watching him the while with her +narrow eyes. Laguitte laughed; Rose’s unparalleled ugliness amused him +immensely. He whispered in the captain’s ear, “She is ripping! There +never was such a nose and such a mouth! You ought to send her to the +colonel’s someday as a curiosity. It would amuse him to see her.” + +More and more struck by this phenomenal ugliness, the major felt a +paternal desire to examine the girl more closely. + +“Come here,” he said, “I want some cheese too.” + +She brought the plate, and Laguitte, sticking the knife in the Gruyere, +stared at her, grinning the while because he discovered that she had +one nostril broader than the other. Rose gravely allowed herself to be +looked at, waiting till the gentleman had done laughing. + +She removed the cloth and disappeared. Burle immediately went to sleep +in the chimney corner while the major and Mme Burle began to chat. +Charles had returned to his exercises. Quietude fell from the loft +ceiling; the quietude of a middle-class household gathered in concord +around their fireside. At nine o’clock Burle woke up, yawned and +announced that he was going off to bed; he apologized but declared that +he could not keep his eyes open. Half an hour later, when the major +took his leave, Mme Burle vainly called for Rose to light him +downstairs; the girl must have gone up to her room; she was, indeed, a +regular hen, snoring the round of the clock without waking. + +“No need to disturb anybody,” said Laguitte on the landing; “my legs +are not much better than yours, but if I get hold of the banisters I +shan’t break any bones. Now, my dear lady, I leave you happy; your +troubles are ended at last. I watched Burle closely, and I’ll take my +oath that he’s guileless as a child. Dash it—after all, it was high +time for Petticoat Burle to reform; he was going downhill fast.” + +The major went away fully satisfied with the house and its inmates; the +walls were of glass and could harbor no equivocal conduct. What +particularly delighted him in his friend’s return to virtue was that it +absolved him from the obligation of verifying the accounts. Nothing was +more distasteful to him than the inspection of a number of ledgers, and +as long as Burle kept steady, he—Laguitte—could smoke his pipe in peace +and sign the books in all confidence. However, he continued to keep one +eye open for a little while longer and found the receipts genuine, the +entries correct, the columns admirably balanced. A month later he +contented himself with glancing at the receipts and running his eye +over the totals. Then one morning, without the slightest suspicion of +there being anything wrong, simply because he had lit a second pipe and +had nothing to do, he carelessly added up a row of figures and fancied +that he detected an error of thirteen francs. The balance seemed +perfectly correct, and yet he was not mistaken; the total outlay was +thirteen francs more than the various sums for which receipts were +furnished. It looked queer, but he said nothing to Burle, just making +up his mind to examine the next accounts closely. On the following week +he detected a fresh error of nineteen francs, and then, suddenly +becoming alarmed, he shut himself up with the books and spent a +wretched morning poring over them, perspiring, swearing and feeling as +if his very skull were bursting with the figures. At every page he +discovered thefts of a few francs—the most miserable petty thefts—ten, +eight, eleven francs, latterly, three and four; and, indeed, there was +one column showing that Burle had pilfered just one franc and a half. +For two months, however, he had been steadily robbing the cashbox, and +by comparing dates the major found to his disgust that the famous +lesson respecting Gagneux had only kept him straight for one week! This +last discovery infuriated Laguitte, who struck the books with his +clenched fists, yelling through a shower of oaths: + +“This is more abominable still! At least there was some pluck about +those forged receipts of Gagneux. But this time he is as contemptible +as a cook charging twopence extra for her cabbages. Powers of hell! To +pilfer a franc and a half and clap it in his pocket! Hasn’t the brute +got any pride then? Couldn’t he run away with the safe or play the fool +with actresses?” + +The pitiful meanness of these pilferings revolted the major, and, +moreover, he was enraged at having been duped a second time, deceived +by the simple, stupid dodge of falsified additions. He rose at last and +paced his office for a whole hour, growling aloud. + +“This gives me his measure. Even if I were to thresh him to a jelly +every morning he would still drop a couple of coins into his pocket +every afternoon. But where can he spend it all? He is never seen +abroad; he goes to bed at nine, and everything looks so clean and +proper over there. Can the brute have vices that nobody knows of?” + +He returned to the desk, added up the subtracted money and found a +total of five hundred and forty-five francs. Where was this deficiency +to come from? The inspection was close at hand, and if the crotchety +colonel should take it into his head to examine a single page, the +murder would be out and Burle would be done for. + +This idea froze the major, who left off cursing, picturing Mme Burle +erect and despairing, and at the same time he felt his heart swell with +personal grief and shame. + +“Well,” he muttered, “I must first of all look into the rogue’s +business; I will act afterward.” + +As he walked over to Burle’s office he caught sight of a skirt +vanishing through the doorway. Fancying that he had a clue to the +mystery, he slipped up quietly and listened and speedily recognized +Melanie’s shrill voice. She was complaining of the gentlemen of the +divan. She had signed a promissory note which she was unable to meet; +the bailiffs were in the house, and all her goods would be sold. The +captain, however, barely replied to her. He alleged that he had no +money, whereupon she burst into tears and began to coax him. But her +blandishments were apparently ineffectual, for Burle’s husky voice +could be heard repeating, “Impossible! Impossible!” And finally the +widow withdrew in a towering passion. The major, amazed at the turn +affairs were taking, waited a few moments longer before entering the +office, where Burle had remained alone. He found him very calm, and +despite his furious inclination to call him names he also remained +calm, determined to begin by finding out the exact truth. + +The office certainly did not look like a swindler’s den. A cane-seated +chair, covered with an honest leather cushion, stood before the +captain’s desk, and in a corner there was the locked safe. Summer was +coming on, and the song of a canary sounded through the open window. +The apartment was very neat and tidy, redolent of old papers, and +altogether its appearance inspired one with confidence. + +“Wasn’t it Melanie who was leaving here as I came along?” asked +Laguitte. + +Burle shrugged his shoulders. + +“Yes,” he mumbled. “She has been dunning me for two hundred francs, but +she can’t screw ten out of me—not even tenpence.” + +“Indeed!” said the major, just to try him. “I heard that you had made +up with her.” + +“I? Certainly not. I have done with the likes of her for good.” + +Laguitte went away, feeling greatly perplexed. Where had the five +hundred and forty-five francs gone? Had the idiot taken to drinking or +gambling? He decided to pay Burle a surprise visit that very evening at +his own house, and maybe by questioning his mother he might learn +something. However, during the afternoon his leg became very painful; +latterly he had been feeling in ill-health, and he had to use a stick +so as not to limp too outrageously. This stick grieved him sorely, and +he declared with angry despair that he was now no better than a +pensioner. However, toward the evening, making a strong effort, he +pulled himself out of his armchair and, leaning heavily on his stick, +dragged himself through the darkness to the Rue des Recollets, which he +reached about nine o’clock. The street door was still unlocked, and on +going up he stood panting on the third landing, when he heard voices on +the upper floor. One of these voices was Burle’s, so he fancied, and +out of curiosity he ascended another flight of stairs. Then at the end +of a passage on the left he saw a ray of light coming from a door which +stood ajar. As the creaking of his boots resounded, this door was +sharply closed, and he found himself in the dark. + +“Some cook going to bed!” he muttered angrily. “I’m a fool.” + +All the same he groped his way as gently as possible to the door and +listened. Two people were talking in the room, and he stood aghast, for +it was Burle and that fright Rose! Then he listened, and the +conversation he heard left him no doubt of the awful truth. For a +moment he lifted his stick as if to beat down the door. Then he +shuddered and, staggering back, leaned against the wall. His legs were +trembling under him, while in the darkness of the staircase he +brandished his stick as if it had been a saber. + +What was to be done? After his first moment of passion there had come +thoughts of the poor old lady below. And these made him hesitate. It +was all over with the captain now; when a man sank as low as that he +was hardly worth the few shovelfuls of earth that are thrown over +carrion to prevent them from polluting the atmosphere. Whatever might +be said of Burle, however much one might try to shame him, he would +assuredly begin the next day. Ah, heavens, to think of it! The money! +The honor of the army! The name of Burle, that respected name, dragged +through the mire! By all that was holy this could and should not be! + +Presently the major softened. If he had only possessed five hundred and +forty-five francs! But he had not got such an amount. On the previous +day he had drunk too much cognac, just like a mere sub, and had lost +shockingly at cards. It served him right—he ought to have known better! +And if he was so lame he richly deserved it too; by rights, in fact, +his leg ought to be much worse. + +At last he crept downstairs and rang at the bell of Mme Burle’s flat. +Five minutes elapsed, and then the old lady appeared. + +“I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting,” she said; “I thought that +dormouse Rose was still about. I must go and shake her.” + +But the major detained her. + +“Where is Burle?” he asked. + +“Oh, he has been snoring since nine o’clock. Would you like to knock at +his door?” + +“No, no, I only wanted to have a chat with you.” + +In the parlor Charles sat at his usual place, having just finished his +exercises. He looked terrified, and his poor little white hands were +tremulous. In point of fact, his grandmother, before sending him to +bed, was wont to read some martial stories aloud so as to develop the +latent family heroism in his bosom. That night she had selected the +episode of the Vengeur, the man-of-war freighted with dying heroes and +sinking into the sea. The child, while listening, had become almost +hysterical, and his head was racked as with some ghastly nightmare. + +Mme Burle asked the major to let her finish the perusal. “Long live the +republic!” She solemnly closed the volume. Charles was as white as a +sheet. + +“You see,” said the old lady, “the duty of every French soldier is to +die for his country.” + +“Yes, Grandmother.” + +Then the lad kissed her on the forehead and, shivering with fear, went +to bed in his big room, where the faintest creak of the paneling threw +him into a cold sweat. + +The major had listened with a grave face. Yes, by heavens! Honor was +honor, and he would never permit that wretched Burle to disgrace the +old woman and the boy! As the lad was so devoted to the military +profession, it was necessary that he should be able to enter Saint-Cyr +with his head erect. + +When Mme Burle took up the lamp to show the major out, she passed the +door of the captain’s room, and stopped short, surprised to see the key +outside, which was a most unusual occurrence. + +“Do go in,” she said to Laguitte; “it is bad for him to sleep so much.” + +And before he could interpose she had opened the door and stood +transfixed on finding the room empty. Laguitte turned crimson and +looked so foolish that she suddenly understood everything, enlightened +by the sudden recollection of several little incidents to which she had +previously attached no importance. + +“You knew it—you knew it!” she stammered. “Why was I not told? Oh, my +God, to think of it! Ah, he has been stealing again—I feel it!” + +She remained erect, white and rigid. Then she added in a harsh voice: + +“Look you—I wish he were dead!” + +Laguitte caught hold of both her hands, which for a moment he kept +tightly clasped in his own. Then he left her hurriedly, for he felt a +lump rising in his throat and tears coming to his eyes. Ah, by all the +powers, this time his mind was quite made up. + + + + + CHAPTER IV + INSPECTION + + +The regimental inspection was to take place at the end of the month. +The major had ten days before him. On the very next morning, however, +he crawled, limping, as far as the Café de Paris, where he ordered some +beer. Melanie grew pale when she saw him enter, and it was with a +lively recollection of a certain slap that Phrosine hastened to serve +him. The major seemed very calm, however; he called for a second chair +to rest his bad leg upon and drank his beer quietly like any other +thirsty man. He had sat there for about an hour when he saw two +officers crossing the Place du Palais—Morandot, who commanded one of +the battalions of the regiment, and Captain Doucet. Thereupon he +excitedly waved his cane and shouted: “Come in and have a glass of beer +with me!” + +The officers dared not refuse, but when the maid had brought the beer +Morandot said to the major: “So you patronize this place now?” + +“Yes—the beer is good.” + +Captain Doucet winked and asked archly: “Do you belong to the divan, +Major?” + +Laguitte chuckled but did not answer. Then the others began to chaff +him about Melanie, and he took their remarks good-naturedly, simply +shrugging his shoulders. The widow was undoubtedly a fine woman, +however much people might talk. Some of those who disparaged her would, +in reality, be only too pleased to win her good graces. Then turning to +the little counter and assuming an engaging air, he shouted: + +“Three more glasses, madame.” + +Melanie was so taken aback that she rose and brought the beer herself. +The major detained her at the table and forgot himself so far as to +softly pat the hand which she had carelessly placed on the back of a +chair. Used as she was to alternate brutality and flattery, she +immediately became confident, believing in a sudden whim of gallantry +on the part of the “old wreck,” as she was wont to style the major when +talking with Phrosine. Doucet and Morandot looked at each other in +surprise. Was the major actually stepping into Petticoat Burle’s shoes? +The regiment would be convulsed if that were the case. + +Suddenly, however, Laguitte, who kept his eye on the square, gave a +start. + +“Hallo, there’s Burle!” he exclaimed. + +“Yes, it is his time,” explained Phrosine. “The captain passes every +afternoon on his way from the office.” + +In spite of his lameness the major had risen to his feet, pushing aside +the chairs as he called out: “Burle! I say—come along and have a +glass.” + +The captain, quite aghast and unable to understand why Laguitte was at +the widow’s, advanced mechanically. He was so perplexed that he again +hesitated at the door. + +“Another glass of beer,” ordered the major, and then turning to Burle, +he added, “What’s the matter with you? Come in. Are you afraid of being +eaten alive?” + +The captain took a seat, and an awkward pause followed. Melanie, who +brought the beer with trembling hands, dreaded some scene which might +result in the closing of her establishment. The major’s gallantry made +her uneasy, and she endeavored to slip away, but he invited her to +drink with them, and before she could refuse he had ordered Phrosine to +bring a liqueur glass of anisette, doing so with as much coolness as if +he had been master of the house. Melanie was thus compelled to sit down +between the captain and Laguitte, who exclaimed aggressively: “I WILL +have ladies respected. We are French officers! Let us drink Madame’s +health!” + +Burle, with his eyes fixed on his glass, smiled in an embarrassed way. +The two officers, shocked at the proceedings, had already tried to get +off. Fortunately the cafe was deserted, save that the domino players +were having their afternoon game. At every fresh oath which came from +the major they glanced around, scandalized by such an unusual accession +of customers and ready to threaten Melanie that they would leave her +for the Café de la Gare if the soldiery was going to invade her place +like flies that buzzed about, attracted by the stickiness of the tables +which Phrosine scoured only on Saturdays. She was now reclining behind +the counter, already reading a novel again. + +“How’s this—you are not drinking with Madame?” roughly said the major +to Burle. “Be civil at least!” + +Then as Doucet and Morandot were again preparing to leave, he stopped +them. + +“Why can’t you wait? We’ll go together. It is only this brute who never +knows how to behave himself.” + +The two officers looked surprised at the major’s sudden bad temper. +Melanie attempted to restore peace and with a light laugh placed her +hands on the arms of both men. However, Laguitte disengaged himself. + +“No,” he roared, “leave me alone. Why does he refuse to chink glasses +with you? I shall not allow you to be insulted—do you hear? I am quite +sick of him.” + +Burle, paling under the insult, turned slightly and said to Morandot, +“What does this mean? He calls me in here to insult me. Is he drunk?” + +With a wild oath the major rose on his trembling legs and struck the +captain’s cheek with his open hand. Melanie dived and thus escaped one +half of the smack. An appalling uproar ensued. Phrosine screamed behind +the counter as if she herself had received the blow; the domino players +also entrenched themselves behind their table in fear lest the soldiers +should draw their swords and massacre them. However, Doucet and +Morandot pinioned the captain to prevent him from springing at the +major’s throat and forcibly let him to the door. When they got him +outside they succeeded in quieting him a little by repeating that +Laguitte was quite in the wrong. They would lay the affair before the +colonel, having witnessed it, and the colonel would give his decision. +As soon as they had got Burle away they returned to the cafe where they +found Laguitte in reality greatly disturbed, with tears in his eyes but +affecting stolid indifference and slowly finishing his beer. + +“Listen, Major,” began Morandot, “that was very wrong on your part. The +captain is your inferior in rank, and you know that he won’t be allowed +to fight you.” + +“That remains to be seen,” answered the major. + +“But how has he offended you? He never uttered a word. Two old comrades +too; it is absurd.” + +The major made a vague gesture. “No matter. He annoyed me.” + +He could never be made to say anything else. Nothing more as to his +motive was ever known. All the same, the scandal was a terrible one. +The regiment was inclined to believe that Melanie, incensed by the +captain’s defection, had contrived to entrap the major, telling him +some abominable stories and prevailing upon him to insult and strike +Burle publicly. Who would have thought it of that old fogy Laguitte, +who professed to be a woman hater? they said. So he, too, had been +caught at last. Despite the general indignation against Melanie, this +adventure made her very conspicuous, and her establishment soon drove a +flourishing business. + +On the following day the colonel summoned the major and the captain +into his presence. He censured them sternly, accusing them of +disgracing their uniform by frequenting unseemly haunts. What +resolution had they come to, he asked, as he could not authorize them +to fight? This same question had occupied the whole regiment for the +last twenty-four hours. Apologies were unacceptable on account of the +blow, but as Laguitte was almost unable to stand, it was hoped that, +should the colonel insist upon it, some reconciliation might be patched +up. + +“Come,” said the colonel, “will you accept me as arbitrator?” + +“I beg your pardon, Colonel,” interrupted the major; “I have brought +you my resignation. Here it is. That settles everything. Please name +the day for the duel.” + +Burle looked at Laguitte in amazement, and the colonel thought it his +duty to protest. + +“This is a most serious step, Major,” he began. “Two years more and you +would be entitled to your full pension.” + +But again did Laguitte cut him short, saying gruffly, “That is my own +affair.” + +“Oh, certainly! Well, I will send in your resignation, and as soon as +it is accepted I will fix a day for the duel.” + +The unexpected turn that events had taken startled the regiment. What +possessed that lunatic major to persist in cutting the throat of his +old comrade Burle? The officers again discussed Melanie; they even +began to dream of her. There must surely be something wonderful about +her since she had completely fascinated two such tough old veterans and +brought them to a deadly feud. Morandot, having met Laguitte, did not +disguise his concern. If he—the major—was not killed, what would he +live upon? He had no fortune, and the pension to which his cross of the +Legion of Honor entitled him, with the half of a full regimental +pension which he would obtain on resigning, would barely find him in +bread. While Morandot was thus speaking Laguitte simply stared before +him with his round eyes, persevering in the dumb obstinacy born of his +narrow mind; and when his companion tried to question him regarding his +hatred for Burle, he simply made the same vague gesture as before and +once again repeated: + +“He annoyed me; so much the worse.” + +Every morning at mess and at the canteen the first words were: “Has the +acceptance of the major’s resignation arrived?” The duel was +impatiently expected and ardently discussed. The majority believed that +Laguitte would be run through the body in three seconds, for it was +madness for a man to fight with a paralyzed leg which did not even +allow him to stand upright. A few, however, shook their heads. Laguitte +had never been a marvel of intellect, that was true; for the last +twenty years, indeed, he had been held up as an example of stupidity, +but there had been a time when he was known as the best fencer of the +regiment, and although he had begun as a drummer he had won his +epaulets as the commander of a battalion by the sanguine bravery of a +man who is quite unconscious of danger. On the other hand, Burle fenced +indifferently and passed for a poltroon. However, they would soon know +what to think. + +Meanwhile the excitement became more and more intense as the acceptance +of Laguitte’s resignation was so long in coming. The major was +unmistakably the most anxious and upset of everybody. A week had passed +by, and the general inspection would commence two days later. Nothing, +however, had come as yet. He shuddered at the thought that he had, +perhaps, struck his old friend and sent in his resignation all in vain, +without delaying the exposure for a single minute. He had in reality +reasoned thus: If he himself were killed he would not have the worry of +witnessing the scandal, and if he killed Burle, as he expected to do, +the affair would undoubtedly be hushed up. Thus he would save the honor +of the army, and the little chap would be able to get in at Saint-Cyr. +Ah, why wouldn’t those wretched scribblers at the War Office hurry up a +bit? The major could not keep still but was forever wandering about +before the post office, stopping the estafettes and questioning the +colonel’s orderly to find out if the acceptance had arrived. He lost +his sleep and, careless as to people’s remarks, he leaned more and more +heavily on his stick, hobbling about with no attempt to steady his +gait. + +On the day before that fixed for the inspection he was, as usual, on +his way to the colonel’s quarters when he paused, startled, to see Mme +Burle (who was taking Charles to school) a few paces ahead of him. He +had not met her since the scene at the Café de Paris, for she had +remained in seclusion at home. Unmanned at thus meeting her, he stepped +down to leave the whole sidewalk free. Neither he nor the old lady +bowed, and the little boy lifted his large inquisitive eyes in mute +surprise. Mme Burle, cold and erect, brushed past the major without the +least sign of emotion or recognition. When she had passed he looked +after her with an expression of stupefied compassion. + +“Confound it, I am no longer a man,” he growled, dashing away a tear. + +When he arrived at the colonel’s quarters a captain in attendance +greeted him with the words: “It’s all right at last. The papers have +come.” + +“Ah!” murmured Laguitte, growing very pale. + +And again he beheld the old lady walking on, relentlessly rigid and +holding the little boy’s hand. What! He had longed so eagerly for those +papers for eight days past, and now when the scraps had come he felt +his brain on fire and his heart lacerated. + +The duel took place on the morrow, in the barrack yard behind a low +wall. The air was keen, the sun shining brightly. Laguitte had almost +to be carried to the ground; one of his seconds supported him on one +side, while on the other he leaned heavily, on his stick. Burle looked +half asleep; his face was puffy with unhealthy fat, as if he had spent +a night of debauchery. Not a word was spoken. They were all anxious to +have it over. + +Captain Doucet crossed the swords of the two adversaries and then drew +back, saying: “Set to, gentlemen.” + +Burle was the first to attack; he wanted to test Laguitte’s strength +and ascertain what he had to expect. For the last ten days the +encounter had seemed to him a ghastly nightmare which he could not +fathom. At times a hideous suspicion assailed him, but he put it aside +with terror, for it meant death, and he refused to believe that a +friend could play him such a trick, even to set things right. Besides, +Laguitte’s leg reasssured him; he would prick the major on the +shoulder, and then all would be over. + +During well-nigh a couple of minutes the swords clashed, and then the +captain lunged, but the major, recovering his old suppleness of wrist, +parried in a masterly style, and if he had returned the attack Burle +would have been pierced through. The captain now fell back; he was +livid, for he felt that he was at the mercy of the man who had just +spared him. At last he understood that this was an execution. + +Laguitte, squarely poised on his infirm legs and seemingly turned to +stone, stood waiting. The two men looked at each other fixedly. In +Burle’s blurred eyes there arose a supplication—a prayer for pardon. He +knew why he was going to die, and like a child he promised not to +transgress again. But the major’s eyes remained implacable; honor had +spoken, and he silenced his emotion and his pity. + +“Let it end,” he muttered between his teeth. + +Then it was he who attacked. Like a flash of lightning his sword +flamed, flying from right to left, and then with a resistless thrust it +pierced the breast of the captain, who fell like a log without even a +groan. + +Laguitte had released his hold upon his sword and stood gazing at that +poor old rascal Burle, who was stretched upon his back with his fat +stomach bulging out. + +“Oh, my God! My God!” repeated the major furiously and despairingly, +and then he began to swear. + +They led him away, and, both his legs failing him, he had to be +supported on either side, for he could not even use his stick. + +Two months later the ex-major was crawling slowly along in the sunlight +down a lonely street of Vauchamp, when he again found himself face to +face with Mme Burle and little Charles. They were both in deep +mourning. He tried to avoid them, but he now only walked with +difficulty, and they advanced straight upon him without hurrying or +slackening their steps. Charles still had the same gentle, girlish, +frightened face, and Mme Burle retained her stern, rigid demeanor, +looking even harsher than ever. + +As Laguitte shrank into the corner of a doorway to leave the whole +street to them, she abruptly stopped in front of him and stretched out +her hand. He hesitated and then took it and pressed it, but he trembled +so violently that he made the old lady’s arm shake. They exchanged +glances in silence. + +“Charles,” said the boy’s grandmother at last, “shake hands with the +major.” The boy obeyed without understanding. The major, who was very +pale, barely ventured to touch the child’s frail fingers; then, feeling +that he ought to speak, he stammered out: “You still intend to send him +to Saint-Cyr?” + +“Of course, when he is old enough,” answered Mme Burle. + +But during the following week Charles was carried off by typhoid fever. +One evening his grandmother had again read him the story of the Vengeur +to make him bold, and in the night he had become delirious. The poor +little fellow died of fright. + + + + + THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BECAILLE + + + + + CHAPTER I + MY PASSING + + +It was on a Saturday, at six in the morning, that I died after a three +days’ illness. My wife was searching a trunk for some linen, and when +she rose and turned she saw me rigid, with open eyes and silent pulses. +She ran to me, fancying that I had fainted, touched my hands and bent +over me. Then she suddenly grew alarmed, burst into tears and +stammered: + +“My God, my God! He is dead!” + +I heard everything, but the sounds seemed to come from a great +distance. My left eye still detected a faint glimmer, a whitish light +in which all objects melted, but my right eye was quite bereft of +sight. It was the coma of my whole being, as if a thunderbolt had +struck me. My will was annihilated; not a fiber of flesh obeyed my +bidding. And yet amid the impotency of my inert limbs my thoughts +subsisted, sluggish and lazy, still perfectly clear. + +My poor Marguerite was crying; she had dropped on her knees beside the +bed, repeating in heart-rending tones: + +“He is dead! My God, he is dead!” + +Was this strange state of torpor, this immobility of the flesh, really +death, although the functions of the intellect were not arrested? Was +my soul only lingering for a brief space before it soared away forever? +From my childhood upward I had been subject to hysterical attacks, and +twice in early youth I had nearly succumbed to nervous fevers. By +degrees all those who surrounded me had got accustomed to consider me +an invalid and to see me sickly. So much so that I myself had forbidden +my wife to call in a doctor when I had taken to my bed on the day of +our arrival at the cheap lodginghouse of the Rue Dauphine in Paris. A +little rest would soon set me right again; it was only the fatigue of +the journey which had caused my intolerable weariness. And yet I was +conscious of having felt singularly uneasy. We had left our province +somewhat abruptly; we were very poor and had barely enough money to +support ourselves till I drew my first month’s salary in the office +where I had obtained a situation. And now a sudden seizure was carrying +me off! + +Was it really death? I had pictured to myself a darker night, a deeper +silence. As a little child I had already felt afraid to die. Being weak +and compassionately petted by everyone, I had concluded that I had not +long to live, that I should soon be buried, and the thought of the cold +earth filled me with a dread I could not master—a dread which haunted +me day and night. As I grew older the same terror pursued me. +Sometimes, after long hours spent in reasoning with myself, I thought +that I had conquered my fear. I reflected, “After all, what does it +matter? One dies and all is over. It is the common fate; nothing could +be better or easier.” + +I then prided myself on being able to look death boldly in the face, +but suddenly a shiver froze my blood, and my dizzy anguish returned, as +if a giant hand had swung me over a dark abyss. It was some vision of +the earth returning and setting reason at naught. How often at night +did I start up in bed, not knowing what cold breath had swept over my +slumbers but clasping my despairing hands and moaning, “Must I die?” In +those moments an icy horror would stop my pulses while an appalling +vision of dissolution rose before me. It was with difficulty that I +could get to sleep again. Indeed, sleep alarmed me; it so closely +resembled death. If I closed my eyes they might never open again—I +might slumber on forever. + +I cannot tell if others have endured the same torture; I only know that +my own life was made a torment by it. Death ever rose between me and +all I loved; I can remember how the thought of it poisoned the happiest +moments I spent with Marguerite. During the first months of our married +life, when she lay sleeping by my side and I dreamed of a fair future +for her and with her, the foreboding of some fatal separation dashed my +hopes aside and embittered my delights. Perhaps we should be parted on +the morrow—nay, perhaps in an hour’s time. Then utter discouragement +assailed me; I wondered what the bliss of being united availed me if it +were to end in so cruel a disruption. + +My morbid imagination reveled in scenes of mourning. I speculated as to +who would be the first to depart, Marguerite or I. Either alternative +caused me harrowing grief, and tears rose to my eyes at the thought of +our shattered lives. At the happiest periods of my existence I often +became a prey to grim dejection such as nobody could understand but +which was caused by the thought of impending nihility. When I was most +successful I was to general wonder most depressed. The fatal question, +“What avails it?” rang like a knell in my ears. But the sharpest sting +of this torment was that it came with a secret sense of shame, which +rendered me unable to confide my thoughts to another. Husband and wife +lying side by side in the darkened room may quiver with the same +shudder and yet remain mute, for people do not mention death any more +than they pronounce certain obscene words. Fear makes it nameless. + +I was musing thus while my dear Marguerite knelt sobbing at my feet. It +grieved me sorely to be unable to comfort her by telling her that I +suffered no pain. If death were merely the annihilation of the flesh it +had been foolish of me to harbor so much dread. I experienced a selfish +kind of restfulness in which all my cares were forgotten. My memory had +become extraordinarily vivid. My whole life passed before me rapidly +like a play in which I no longer acted a part; it was a curious and +enjoyable sensation—I seemed to hear a far-off voice relating my own +history. + +I saw in particular a certain spot in the country near Guerande, on the +way to Piriac. The road turns sharply, and some scattered pine trees +carelessly dot a rocky slope. When I was seven years old I used to pass +through those pines with my father as far as a crumbling old house, +where Marguerite’s parents gave me pancakes. They were salt gatherers +and earned a scanty livelihood by working the adjacent salt marshes. +Then I remembered the school at Nantes, where I had grown up, leading a +monotonous life within its ancient walls and yearning for the broad +horizon of Guerande and the salt marshes stretching to the limitless +sea widening under the sky. + +Next came a blank—my father was dead. I entered the hospital as clerk +to the managing board and led a dreary life with one solitary +diversion: my Sunday visits to the old house on Piriac road. The +saltworks were doing badly; poverty reigned in the land, and +Marguerite’s parents were nearly penniless. Marguerite, when merely a +child, had been fond of me because I trundled her about in a +wheelbarrow, but on the morning when I asked her in marriage she shrank +from me with a frightened gesture, and I realized that she thought me +hideous. Her parents, however, consented at once; they looked upon my +offer as a godsend, and the daughter submissively acquiesced. When she +became accustomed to the idea of marrying me she did not seem to +dislike it so much. On our wedding day at Guerande the rain fell in +torrents, and when we got home my bride had to take off her dress, +which was soaked through, and sit in her petticoats. + +That was all the youth I ever had. We did not remain long in our +province. One day I found my wife in tears. She was miserable; life was +so dull; she wanted to get away. Six months later I had saved a little +money by taking in extra work after office hours, and through the +influence of a friend of my father’s I obtained a petty appointment in +Paris. I started off to settle there with the dear little woman so that +she might cry no more. During the night, which we spent in the +third-class railway carriage, the seats being very hard, I took her in +my arms in order that she might sleep. + +That was the past, and now I had just died on the narrow couch of a +Paris lodginghouse, and my wife was crouching on the floor, crying +bitterly. The white light before my left eye was growing dim, but I +remembered the room perfectly. On the left there was a chest of +drawers, on the right a mantelpiece surmounted by a damaged clock +without a pendulum, the hands of which marked ten minutes past ten. The +window overlooked the Rue Dauphine, a long, dark street. All Paris +seemed to pass below, and the noise was so great that the window shook. + +We knew nobody in the city; we had hurried our departure, but I was not +expected at the office till the following Monday. Since I had taken to +my bed I had wondered at my imprisonment in this narrow room into which +we had tumbled after a railway journey of fifteen hours, followed by a +hurried, confusing transit through the noisy streets. My wife had +nursed me with smiling tenderness, but I knew that she was anxious. She +would walk to the window, glance out and return to the bedside, looking +very pale and startled by the sight of the busy thoroughfare, the +aspect of the vast city of which she did not know a single stone and +which deafened her with its continuous roar. What would happen to her +if I never woke up again—alone, friendless and unknowing as she was? + +Marguerite had caught hold of one of my hands which lay passive on the +coverlet, and, covering it with kisses, she repeated wildly: “Olivier, +answer me. Oh, my God, he is dead, dead!” + +So death was not complete annihilation. I could hear and think. I had +been uselessly alarmed all those years. I had not dropped into utter +vacancy as I had anticipated. I could not picture the disappearance of +my being, the suppression of all that I had been, without the +possibility of renewed existence. I had been wont to shudder whenever +in any book or newspaper I came across a date of a hundred years hence. +A date at which I should no longer be alive, a future which I should +never see, filled me with unspeakable uneasiness. Was I not the whole +world, and would not the universe crumble away when I was no more? + +To dream of life had been a cherished vision, but this could not +possibly be death. I should assuredly awake presently. Yes, in a few +moments I would lean over, take Marguerite in my arms and dry her +tears. I would rest a little while longer before going to my office, +and then a new life would begin, brighter than the last. However, I did +not feel impatient; the commotion had been too strong. It was wrong of +Marguerite to give way like that when I had not even the strength to +turn my head on the pillow and smile at her. The next time that she +moaned out, “He is dead! Dead!” I would embrace her and murmur softly +so as not to startle her: “No, my darling, I was only asleep. You see, +I am alive, and I love you.” + + + + + CHAPTER II + FUNERAL PREPARATIONS + + +Marguerite’s cries had attracted attention, for all at once the door +was opened and a voice exclaimed: “What is the matter, neighbor? Is he +worse?” + +I recognized the voice; it was that of an elderly woman, Mme Gabin, who +occupied a room on the same floor. She had been most obliging since our +arrival and had evidently become interested in our concerns. On her own +side she had lost no time in telling us her history. A stern landlord +had sold her furniture during the previous winter to pay himself his +rent, and since then she had resided at the lodginghouse in the Rue +Dauphine with her daughter Dede, a child of ten. They both cut and +pinked lamp shades, and between them they earned at the utmost only two +francs a day. + +“Heavens! Is it all over?” cried Mme Gabin, looking at me. + +I realized that she was drawing nearer. She examined me, touched me +and, turning to Marguerite, murmured compassionately: “Poor girl! Poor +girl!” + +My wife, wearied out, was sobbing like a child. Mme Gabin lifted her, +placed her in a dilapidated armchair near the fireplace and proceeded +to comfort her. + +“Indeed, you’ll do yourself harm if you go on like this, my dear. It’s +no reason because your husband is gone that you should kill yourself +with weeping. Sure enough, when I lost Gabin I was just like you. I +remained three days without swallowing a morsel of food. But that +didn’t help me—on the contrary, it pulled me down. Come, for the Lord’s +sake, be sensible!” + +By degrees Marguerite grew calmer; she was exhausted, and it was only +at intervals that she gave way to a fresh flow of tears. Meanwhile the +old woman had taken possession of the room with a sort of rough +authority. + +“Don’t worry yourself,” she said as she bustled about. “Neighbors must +help each other. Luckily Dede has just gone to take the work home. Ah, +I see your trunks are not yet all unpacked, but I suppose there is some +linen in the chest of drawers, isn’t there?” + +I heard her pull a drawer open; she must have taken out a napkin which +she spread on the little table at the bedside. She then struck a match, +which made me think that she was lighting one of the candles on the +mantelpiece and placing it near me as a religious rite. I could follow +her movements in the room and divine all her actions. + +“Poor gentleman,” she muttered. “Luckily I heard you sobbing, poor +dear!” Suddenly the vague light which my left eye had detected +vanished. Mme Gabin had just closed my eyelids, but I had not felt her +finger on my face. When I understood this I felt chilled. + +The door had opened again, and Dede, the child of ten, now rushed in, +calling out in her shrill voice: “Mother, Mother! Ah, I knew you would +be here! Look here, there’s the money—three francs and four sous. I +took back three dozen lamp shades.” + +“Hush, hush! Hold your tongue,” vainly repeated the mother, who, as the +little girl chattered on, must have pointed to the bed, for I guessed +that the child felt perplexed and was backing toward the door. + +“Is the gentleman asleep?” she whispered. + +“Yes, yes—go and play,” said Mme Gabin. + +But the child did not go. She was, no doubt, staring at me with widely +opened eyes, startled and vaguely comprehending. Suddenly she seemed +convulsed with terror and ran out, upsetting a chair. + +“He is dead, Mother; he is dead!” she gasped. + +Profound silence followed. Marguerite, lying back in the armchair, had +left off crying. Mme Gabin was still rummaging about the room and +talking under her breath. + +“Children know everything nowadays. Look at that girl. Heaven knows how +carefully she’s brought up! When I send her on an errand or take the +shades back I calculate the time to a minute so that she can’t loiter +about, but for all that she learns everything. She saw at a glance what +had happened here—and yet I never showed her but one corpse, that of +her uncle Francois, and she was then only four years old. Ah well, +there are no children left—it can’t be helped.” + +She paused and without any transition passed to another subject. + +“I say, dearie, we must think of the formalities—there’s the +declaration at the municipal offices to be made and the seeing about +the funeral. You are not in a fit state to attend to business. What do +you say if I look in at Monsieur Simoneau’s to find out if he’s at +home?” + +Marguerite did not reply. It seemed to me that I watched her from afar +and at times changed into a subtle flame hovering above the room, while +a stranger lay heavy and unconscious on my bed. I wished that +Marguerite had declined the assistance of Simoneau. I had seen him +three or four times during my brief illness, for he occupied a room +close to ours and had been civil and neighborly. Mme Gabin had told us +that he was merely making a short stay in Paris, having come to collect +some old debts due to his father, who had settled in the country and +recently died. He was a tall, strong, handsome young man, and I hated +him, perhaps on account of his healthy appearance. On the previous +evening he had come in to make inquiries, and I had much disliked +seeing him at Marguerite’s side; she had looked so fair and pretty, and +he had gazed so intently into her face when she smilingly thanked him +for his kindness. + +“Ah, here is Monsieur Simoneau,” said Mme Gabin, introducing him. + +He gently pushed the door ajar, and as soon as Marguerite saw him enter +she burst into a flood of tears. The presence of a friend, of the only +person she knew in Paris besides the old woman, recalled her +bereavement. I could not see the young man, but in the darkness that +encompassed me I conjured up his appearance. I pictured him distinctly, +grave and sad at finding poor Marguerite in such distress. How lovely +she must have looked with her golden hair unbound, her pale face and +her dear little baby hands burning with fever! + +“I am at your disposal, madame,” he said softly. “Pray allow me to +manage everything.” + +She only answered him with broken words, but as the young man was +leaving, accompanied by Mme Gabin, I heard the latter mention money. +These things were always expensive, she said, and she feared that the +poor little body hadn’t a farthing—anyhow, he might ask her. But +Simoneau silenced the old woman; he did not want to have the widow +worried; he was going to the municipal office and to the undertaker’s. + +When silence reigned once more I wondered if my nightmare would last +much longer. I was certainly alive, for I was conscious of passing +incidents, and I began to realize my condition. I must have fallen into +one of those cataleptic states that I had read of. As a child I had +suffered from syncopes which had lasted several hours, but surely my +heart would beat anew, my blood circulate and my muscles relax. Yes, I +should wake up and comfort Marguerite, and, reasoning thus, I tried to +be patient. + +Time passed. Mme Gabin had brought in some breakfast, but Marguerite +refused to taste any food. Later on the afternoon waned. Through the +open window I heard the rising clamor of the Rue Dauphine. By and by a +slight ringing of the brass candlestick on the marble-topped table made +me think that a fresh candle had been lighted. At last Simoneau +returned. + +“Well?” whispered the old woman. + +“It is all settled,” he answered; “the funeral is ordered for tomorrow +at eleven. There is nothing for you to do, and you needn’t talk of +these things before the poor lady.” + +Nevertheless, Mme Gabin remarked: “The doctor of the dead hasn’t come +yet.” + +Simoneau took a seat beside Marguerite and after a few words of +encouragement remained silent. The funeral was to take place at eleven! +Those words rang in my brain like a passing bell. And the doctor +coming—the doctor of the dead, as Mme Gabin had called him. HE could +not possibly fail to find out that I was only in a state of lethargy; +he would do whatever might be necessary to rouse me, so I longed for +his arrival with feverish anxiety. + +The day was drawing to a close. Mme Gabin, anxious to waste no time, +had brought in her lamp shades and summoned Dede without asking +Marguerite’s permission. “To tell the truth,” she observed, “I do not +like to leave children too long alone.” + +“Come in, I say,” she whispered to the little girl; “come in, and don’t +be frightened. Only don’t look toward the bed or you’ll catch it.” + +She thought it decorous to forbid Dede to look at me, but I was +convinced that the child was furtively glancing at the corner where I +lay, for every now and then I heard her mother rap her knuckles and +repeat angrily: “Get on with your work or you shall leave the room, and +the gentleman will come during the night and pull you by the feet.” + +The mother and daughter had sat down at our table. I could plainly hear +the click of their scissors as they clipped the lamp shades, which no +doubt required very delicate manipulation, for they did not work +rapidly. I counted the shades one by one as they were laid aside, while +my anxiety grew more and more intense. + +The clicking of the scissors was the only noise in the room, so I +concluded that Marguerite had been overcome by fatigue and was dozing. +Twice Simoneau rose, and the torturing thought flashed through me that +he might be taking advantage of her slumbers to touch her hair with his +lips. I hardly knew the man and yet felt sure that he loved my wife. At +last little Dede began to giggle, and her laugh exasperated me. + +“Why are you sniggering, you idiot?” asked her mother. “Do you want to +be turned out on the landing? Come, out with it; what makes you laugh +so?” + +The child stammered: she had not laughed; she had only coughed, but I +felt certain she had seen Simoneau bending over Marguerite and had felt +amused. + +The lamp had been lit when a knock was heard at the door. + +“It must be the doctor at last,” said the old woman. + +It was the doctor; he did not apologize for coming so late, for he had +no doubt ascended many flights of stairs during the day. The room being +but imperfectly lighted by the lamp, he inquired: “Is the body here?” + +“Yes, it is,” answered Simoneau. + +Marguerite had risen, trembling violently. Mme Gabin dismissed Dede, +saying it was useless that a child should be present, and then she +tried to lead my wife to the window, to spare her the sight of what was +about to take place. + +The doctor quickly approached the bed. I guessed that he was bored, +tired and impatient. Had he touched my wrist? Had he placed his hand on +my heart? I could not tell, but I fancied that he had only carelessly +bent over me. + +“Shall I bring the lamp so that you may see better?” asked Simoneau +obligingly. + +“No it is not necessary,” quietly answered the doctor. + +Not necessary! That man held my life in his hands, and he did not think +it worth while to proceed to a careful examination! I was not dead! I +wanted to cry out that I was not dead! + +“At what o’clock did he die?” asked the doctor. + +“At six this morning,” volunteered Simoneau. + +A feeling of frenzy and rebellion rose within me, bound as I was in +seemingly iron chains. Oh, for the power of uttering one word, of +moving a single limb! + +“This close weather is unhealthy,” resumed the doctor; “nothing is more +trying than these early spring days.” + +And then he moved away. It was like my life departing. Screams, sobs +and insults were choking me, struggling in my convulsed throat, in +which even my breath was arrested. The wretch! Turned into a mere +machine by professional habits, he only came to a deathbed to +accomplish a perfunctory formality; he knew nothing; his science was a +lie, since he could not at a glance distinguish life from death—and now +he was going—going! + +“Good night, sir,” said Simoneau. + +There came a moment’s silence; the doctor was probably bowing to +Marguerite, who had turned while Mme Gabin was fastening the window. He +left the room, and I heard his footsteps descending the stairs. + +It was all over; I was condemned. My last hope had vanished with that +man. If I did not wake before eleven on the morrow I should be buried +alive. The horror of that thought was so great that I lost all +consciousness of my surroundings—’twas something like a fainting fit in +death. The last sound I heard was the clicking of the scissors handled +by Mme Gabin and Dede. The funeral vigil had begun; nobody spoke. + +Marguerite had refused to retire to rest in the neighbor’s room. She +remained reclining in her armchair, with her beautiful face pale, her +eyes closed and her long lashes wet with tears, while before her in the +gloom Simoneau sat silently watching her. + + + + + CHAPTER III + THE PROCESSION + + +I cannot describe my agony during the morning of the following day. I +remember it as a hideous dream in which my impressions were so ghastly +and so confused that I could not formulate them. The persistent +yearning for a sudden awakening increased my torture, and as the hour +for the funeral drew nearer my anguish became more poignant still. + +It was only at daybreak that I had recovered a fuller consciousness of +what was going on around me. The creaking of hinges startled me out of +my stupor. Mme Gabin had just opened the window. It must have been +about seven o’clock, for I heard the cries of hawkers in the street, +the shrill voice of a girl offering groundsel and the hoarse voice of a +man shouting “Carrots!” The clamorous awakening of Paris pacified me at +first. I could not believe that I should be laid under the sod in the +midst of so much life; and, besides, a sudden thought helped to calm +me. It had just occurred to me that I had witnessed a case similar to +my own when I was employed at the hospital of Guerande. A man had been +sleeping twenty-eight hours, the doctors hesitating in presence of his +apparent lifelessness, when suddenly he had sat up in bed and was +almost at once able to rise. I myself had already been asleep for some +twenty-five hours; if I awoke at ten I should still be in time. + +I endeavored to ascertain who was in the room and what was going on +there. Dede must have been playing on the landing, for once when the +door opened I heard her shrill childish laughter outside. Simoneau must +have retired, for nothing indicated his presence. Mme Gabin’s slipshod +tread was still audible over the floor. At last she spoke. + +“Come, my dear,” she said. “It is wrong of you not to take it while it +is hot. It would cheer you up.” + +She was addressing Marguerite, and a slow trickling sound as of +something filtering indicated that she had been making some coffee. + +“I don’t mind owning,” she continued, “that I needed it. At my age +sitting up IS trying. The night seems so dreary when there is a +misfortune in the house. DO have a cup of coffee, my dear—just a drop.” + +She persuaded Marguerite to taste it. + +“Isn’t it nice and hot?” she continued, “and doesn’t it set one up? Ah, +you’ll be wanting all your strength presently for what you’ve got to go +through today. Now if you were sensible you’d step into my room and +just wait there.” + +“No, I want to stay here,” said Marguerite resolutely. + +Her voice, which I had not heard since the previous evening, touched me +strangely. It was changed, broken as by tears. To feel my dear wife +near me was a last consolation. I knew that her eyes were fastened on +me and that she was weeping with all the anguish of her heart. + +The minutes flew by. An inexplicable noise sounded from beyond the +door. It seemed as if some people were bringing a bulky piece of +furniture upstairs and knocking against the walls as they did so. +Suddenly I understood, as I heard Marguerite begin to sob; it was the +coffin. + +“You are too early,” said Mme Gabin crossly. “Put it behind the bed.” + +What o’clock was it? Nine, perhaps. So the coffin had come. Amid the +opaque night around me I could see it plainly, quite new, with roughly +planed boards. Heavens! Was this the end then? Was I to be borne off in +that box which I realized was lying at my feet? + +However, I had one supreme joy. Marguerite, in spite of her weakness, +insisted upon discharging all the last offices. Assisted by the old +woman, she dressed me with all the tenderness of a wife and a sister. +Once more I felt myself in her arms as she clothed me in various +garments. She paused at times, overcome by grief; she clasped me +convulsively, and her tears rained on my face. Oh, how I longed to +return her embrace and cry, “I live!” And yet I was lying there +powerless, motionless, inert! + +“You are foolish,” suddenly said Mme Gabin; “it is all wasted.” + +“Never mind,” answered Marguerite, sobbing. “I want him to wear his +very best things.” + +I understood that she was dressing me in the clothes I had worn on my +wedding day. I had kept them carefully for great occasions. When she +had finished she fell back exhausted in the armchair. + +Simoneau now spoke; he had probably just entered the room. + +“They are below,” he whispered. + +“Well, it ain’t any too soon,” answered Mme Gabin, also lowering her +voice. “Tell them to come up and get it over.” + +“But I dread the despair of the poor little wife.” + +The old woman seemed to reflect and presently resumed: “Listen to me, +Monsieur Simoneau. You must take her off to my room. I wouldn’t have +her stop here. It is for her own good. When she is out of the way we’ll +get it done in a jiffy.” + +These words pierced my heart, and my anguish was intense when I +realized that a struggle was actually taking place. Simoneau had walked +up to Marguerite, imploring her to leave the room. + +“Do, for pity’s sake, come with me!” he pleaded. “Spare yourself +useless pain.” + +“No, no!” she cried. “I will remain till the last minute. Remember that +I have only him in the world, and when he is gone I shall be all +alone!” + +From the bedside Mme Gabin was prompting the young man. + +“Don’t parley—take hold of her, carry her off in your arms.” + +Was Simoneau about to lay his hands on Marguerite and bear her away? +She screamed. I wildly endeavored to rise, but the springs of my limbs +were broken. I remained rigid, unable to lift my eyelids to see what +was going on. The struggle continued, and my wife clung to the +furniture, repeating, “Oh, don’t, don’t! Have mercy! Let me go! I will +not—” + +He must have lifted her in his stalwart arms, for I heard her moaning +like a child. He bore her away; her sobs were lost in the distance, and +I fancied I saw them both—he, tall and strong, pressing her to his +breast; she, fainting, powerless and conquered, following him wherever +he listed. + +“Drat it all! What a to-do!” muttered Mme Gabin. “Now for the tug of +war, as the coast is clear at last.” + +In my jealous madness I looked upon this incident as a monstrous +outrage. I had not been able to see Marguerite for twenty-four hours, +but at least I had still heard her voice. Now even this was denied me; +she had been torn away; a man had eloped with her even before I was +laid under the sod. He was alone with her on the other side of the +wall, comforting her—embracing her, perhaps! + +But the door opened once more, and heavy footsteps shook the floor. + +“Quick, make haste,” repeated Mme Gabin. “Get it done before the lady +comes back.” + +She was speaking to some strangers, who merely answered her with +uncouth grunts. + +“You understand,” she went on, “I am not a relation; I’m only a +neighbor. I have no interest in the matter. It is out of pure good +nature that I have mixed myself up in their affairs. And I ain’t +overcheerful, I can tell you. Yes, yes, I sat up the whole blessed +night—it was pretty cold, too, about four o’clock. That’s a fact. Well, +I have always been a fool—I’m too soft-hearted.” + +The coffin had been dragged into the center of the room. As I had not +awakened I was condemned. All clearness departed from my ideas; +everything seemed to revolve in a black haze, and I experienced such +utter lassitude that it seemed almost a relief to leave off hoping. + +“They haven’t spared the material,” said one of the undertaker’s men in +a gruff voice. “The box is too long.” + +“He’ll have all the more room,” said the other, laughing. + +I was not heavy, and they chuckled over it since they had three flights +of stairs to descend. As they were seizing me by the shoulders and feet +I heard Mme Gabin fly into a violent passion. + +“You cursed little brat,” she screamed, “what do you mean by poking +your nose where you’re not wanted? Look here, I’ll teach you to spy and +pry.” + +Dede had slipped her tousled head through the doorway to see how the +gentleman was being put into the box. Two ringing slaps resounded, +however, by an explosion of sobs. And as soon as the mother returned +she began to gossip about her daughter for the benefit of the two men +who were settling me in the coffin. + +“She is only ten, you know. She is not a bad girl, but she is +frightfully inquisitive. I do not beat her often; only I WILL be +obeyed.” + +“Oh,” said one of the men, “all kids are alike. Whenever there is a +corpse lying about they always want to see it.” + +I was commodiously stretched out, and I might have thought myself still +in bed, had it not been that my left arm felt a trifle cramped from +being squeezed against a board. The men had been right. I was pretty +comfortable inside on account of my diminutive stature. + +“Stop!” suddenly exclaimed Mme Gabin. “I promised his wife to put a +pillow under his head.” + +The men, who were in a hurry, stuffed in the pillow roughly. One of +them, who had mislaid his hammer, began to swear. He had left the tool +below and went to fetch it, dropping the lid, and when two sharp blows +of the hammer drove in the first nail, a shock ran through my being—I +had ceased to live. The nails then entered in rapid succession with a +rhythmical cadence. It was as if some packers had been closing a case +of dried fruit with easy dexterity. After that such sounds as reached +me were deadened and strangely prolonged, as if the deal coffin had +been changed into a huge musical box. The last words spoken in the room +of the Rue Dauphine—at least the last ones that I heard distinctly—were +uttered by Mme Gabin. + +“Mind the staircase,” she said; “the banister of the second flight +isn’t safe, so be careful.” + +While I was being carried down I experienced a sensation similar to +that of pitching as when one is on board a ship in a rough sea. +However, from that moment my impressions became more and more vague. I +remember that the only distinct thought that still possessed me was an +imbecile, impulsive curiosity as to the road by which I should be taken +to the cemetery. I was not acquainted with a single street of Paris, +and I was ignorant of the position of the large burial grounds (though +of course I had occasionally heard their names), and yet every effort +of my mind was directed toward ascertaining whether we were turning to +the right or to the left. Meanwhile the jolting of the hearse over the +paving stones, the rumbling of passing vehicles, the steps of the foot +passengers, all created a confused clamor, intensified by the +acoustical properties of the coffin. + +At first I followed our course pretty closely; then came a halt. I was +again lifted and carried about, and I concluded that we were in church, +but when the funeral procession once more moved onward I lost all +consciousness of the road we took. A ringing of bells informed me that +we were passing another church, and then the softer and easier progress +of the wheels indicated that we were skirting a garden or park. I was +like a victim being taken to the gallows, awaiting in stupor a +deathblow that never came. + +At last they stopped and pulled me out of the hearse. The business +proceeded rapidly. The noises had ceased; I knew that I was in a +deserted space amid avenues of trees and with the broad sky over my +head. No doubt a few persons followed the bier, some of the inhabitants +of the lodginghouse, perhaps—Simoneau and others, for instance—for +faint whisperings reached my ear. Then I heard a psalm chanted and some +Latin words mumbled by a priest, and afterward I suddenly felt myself +sinking, while the ropes rubbing against the edges of the coffin +elicited lugubrious sounds, as if a bow were being drawn across the +strings of a cracked violoncello. It was the end. On the left side of +my head I felt a violent shock like that produced by the bursting of a +bomb, with another under my feet and a third more violent still on my +chest. So forcible, indeed, was this last one that I thought the lid +was cleft atwain. I fainted from it. + + + + + CHAPTER IV + THE NAIL + + +It is impossible for me to say how long my swoon lasted. Eternity is +not of longer duration than one second spent in nihility. I was no +more. It was slowly and confusedly that I regained some degree of +consciousness. I was still asleep, but I began to dream; a nightmare +started into shape amid the blackness of my horizon, a nightmare +compounded of a strange fancy which in other days had haunted my morbid +imagination whenever with my propensity for dwelling upon hideous +thoughts I had conjured up catastrophes. + +Thus I dreamed that my wife was expecting me somewhere—at Guerande, I +believe—and that I was going to join her by rail. As we passed through +a tunnel a deafening roll thundered over our head, and a sudden +subsidence blocked up both issues of the tunnel, leaving our train +intact in the center. We were walled up by blocks of rock in the heart +of a mountain. Then a long and fearful agony commenced. No assistance +could possibly reach us; even with powerful engines and incessant labor +it would take a month to clear the tunnel. We were prisoners there with +no outlet, and so our death was only a question of time. + +My fancy had often dwelt on that hideous drama and had constantly +varied the details and touches. My actors were men, women and children; +their number increased to hundreds, and they were ever furnishing me +with new incidents. There were some provisions in the train, but these +were soon exhausted, and the hungry passengers, if they did not +actually devour human flesh, at least fought furiously over the last +piece of bread. Sometimes an aged man was driven back with blows and +slowly perished; a mother struggled like a she-wolf to keep three or +four mouthfuls for her child. In my own compartment a bride and +bridegroom were dying, clasped in each other’s arms in mute despair. + +The line was free along the whole length of the train, and people came +and went, prowling round the carriages like beasts of prey in search of +carrion. All classes were mingled together. A millionaire, a high +functionary, it was said, wept on a workman’s shoulder. The lamps had +been extinguished from the first, and the engine fire was nearly out. +To pass from one carriage to another it was necessary to grope about, +and thus, too, one slowly reached the engine, recognizable by its +enormous barrel, its cold, motionless flanks, its useless strength, its +grim silence, in the overwhelming night. Nothing could be more +appalling than this train entombed alive with its passengers perishing +one by one. + +I gloated over the ghastliness of each detail; howls resounded through +the vault; somebody whom one could not see, whose vicinity was not even +suspected, would suddenly drop upon another’s shoulder. But what +affected me most of all was the cold and the want of air. I have never +felt so chilled; a mantle of snow seemed to enwrap me; heavy moisture +rained upon my skull; I was gasping; the rocky vault seemed to crush my +chest; the whole mountain was seemingly weighing upon me. + +Suddenly a cry of deliverance sounded. For some time past we fancied +that we could hear a dull sound, and we tried to hope that men were at +work and that help was coming, but it came not thus. One of the +passengers, however, had discovered an air shaft in the tunnel, and, +crowding round, we all saw this shaft, above which we could discern a +blue patch about the size of a wafer. That blue patch filled us with +rapture, for it was the sky. We stretched ourselves and stood on +tiptoes to breathe more freely. Then we distinguished some black specks +moving about, specks that must surely be workmen about to deliver us. A +furious clamor arose. The cry “Saved! Saved!” burst from every mouth, +while trembling arms were uplifted toward the tiny azure patch above. + +That roar of voices aroused me. Where was I? In the tunnel, of course. +I was lying at full length; hard walls were pressing against my ribs. +Then I attempted to rise and struck my head roughly. Was it the rock +closing in on all sides? The blue speck had vanished—aye, the sky had +disappeared and I was still suffocating, shivering, with chattering +teeth. + +All at once I remembered. Intense horror raised my hair on end. I felt +the hideous truth freeze me from head to foot like ice. I had shaken +off the long coma which for many hours had stricken me with corpselike +rigidity. Yes, I could move; my hands could feel the boards of my +coffin; my lips parted; words came to me, and instinctively I called +out Marguerite’s name. It was a scream I raised. In that deal box my +voice took so hoarse and weird a sound that it terrified me. Oh, my +God, was this thing true? I was able to walk, speak, cry out that I was +living, and yet my voice could not be heard; I was entombed under the +earth. + +I made a desperate effort to remain calm and reflect. Was there no +means of getting out? Then my dream began afresh in my troubled brain. +The fanciful air shaft with the blue bit of sky overhead was mingled +with the real grave in which I was lying. I stared at the darkness with +widely opened eyes; perhaps I might discover a hole, a slit, a glimmer +of light, but only sparks of fire flitted through that night, with rays +that broadened and then faded away. I was in a somber abyss again. With +returning lucidity I struggled against these fatal visions. Indeed, I +should need all my reason if I meant to try to save myself. + +The most immediate peril lay in an increasing sense of suffocation. If +I had been able to live so long without air it was owing to suspended +animation, which had changed all the normal conditions of my existence, +but now that my heart beat and my lungs breathed I should die, +asphyxiated, if I did not promptly liberate myself. I also suffered +from cold and dreaded lest I should succumb to the mortal numbness of +those who fall asleep in the snow, never to wake again. Still, while +unceasingly realizing the necessity of remaining calm, I felt maddening +blasts sweep through my brain, and to quiet my senses I exhorted myself +to patience, trying to remember the circumstances of my burial. +Probably the ground had been bought for five years, and this would be +against my chances of self-deliverance, for I remembered having noticed +at Nantes that in the trenches of the common graves one end of the last +lowered coffins protruded into the next open cavity, in which case I +should only have had to break through one plank. But if I were in a +separate hole, filled up above me with earth, the obstacles would prove +too great. Had I not been told that the dead were buried six feet deep +in Paris? How was I to get through the enormous mass of soil above me? +Even if I succeeded in slitting the lid of my bier open the mold would +drift in like fine sand and fill my mouth and eyes. That would be death +again, a ghastly death, like drowning in mud. + +However, I began to feel the planks carefully. The coffin was roomy, +and I found that I was able to move my arms with tolerable ease. On +both sides the roughly planed boards were stout and resistive. I +slipped my arm onto my chest to raise it over my head. There I +discovered in the top plank a knot in the wood which yielded slightly +at my pressure. Working laboriously, I finally succeeded in driving out +this knot, and on passing my finger through the hole I found that the +earth was wet and clayey. But that availed me little. I even regretted +having removed the knot, vaguely dreading the irruption of the mold. A +second experiment occupied me for a while. I tapped all over the coffin +to ascertain if perhaps there were any vacuum outside. But the sound +was everywhere the same. At last, as I was slightly kicking the foot of +the coffin, I fancied that it gave out a clearer echoing noise, but +that might merely be produced by the sonority of the wood. + +At any rate, I began to press against the boards with my arms and my +closed fists. In the same way, too, I used my knees, my back and my +feet without eliciting even a creak from the wood. I strained with all +my strength, indeed, with so desperate an effort of my whole frame, +that my bruised bones seemed breaking. But nothing moved, and I became +insane. + +Until that moment I had held delirium at bay. I had mastered the +intoxicating rage which was mounting to my head like the fumes of +alcohol; I had silenced my screams, for I feared that if I again cried +out aloud I should be undone. But now I yelled; I shouted; unearthly +howls which I could not repress came from my relaxed throat. I called +for help in a voice that I did not recognize, growing wilder with each +fresh appeal and crying out that I would not die. I also tore at the +wood with my nails; I writhed with the contortions of a caged wolf. I +do not know how long this fit of madness lasted, but I can still feel +the relentless hardness of the box that imprisoned me; I can still hear +the storm of shrieks and sobs with which I filled it; a remaining +glimmer of reason made me try to stop, but I could not do so. + +Great exhaustion followed. I lay waiting for death in a state of +somnolent pain. The coffin was like stone, which no effort could break, +and the conviction that I was powerless left me unnerved, without +courage to make any fresh attempts. Another suffering—hunger—was +presently added to cold and want of air. The torture soon became +intolerable. With my finger I tried to pull small pinches of earth +through the hole of the dislodged knot, and I swallowed them eagerly, +only increasing my torment. Tempted by my flesh, I bit my arms and +sucked my skin with a fiendish desire to drive my teeth in, but I was +afraid of drawing blood. + +Then I ardently longed for death. All my life long I had trembled at +the thought of dissolution, but I had come to yearn for it, to crave +for an everlasting night that could never be dark enough. How childish +it had been of me to dread the long, dreamless sleep, the eternity of +silence and gloom! Death was kind, for in suppressing life it put an +end to suffering. Oh, to sleep like the stones, to be no more! + +With groping hands I still continued feeling the wood, and suddenly I +pricked my left thumb. That slight pain roused me from my growing +numbness. I felt again and found a nail—a nail which the undertaker’s +men had driven in crookedly and which had not caught in the lower wood. +It was long and very sharp; the head was secured to the lid, but it +moved. Henceforth I had but one idea—to possess myself of that nail—and +I slipped my right hand across my body and began to shake it. I made +but little progress, however; it was a difficult job, for my hands soon +tired, and I had to use them alternately. The left one, too, was of +little use on account of the nail’s awkward position. + +While I was obstinately persevering a plan dawned on my mind. That nail +meant salvation, and I must have it. But should I get it in time? +Hunger was torturing me; my brain was swimming; my limbs were losing +their strength; my mind was becoming confused. I had sucked the drops +that trickled from my punctured finger, and suddenly I bit my arm and +drank my own blood! Thereupon, spurred on by pain, revived by the +tepid, acrid liquor that moistened my lips, I tore desperately at the +nail and at last I wrenched it off! + +I then believed in success. My plan was a simple one; I pushed the +point of the nail into the lid, dragging it along as far as I could in +a straight line and working it so as to make a slit in the wood. My +fingers stiffened, but I doggedly persevered, and when I fancied that I +had sufficiently cut into the board I turned on my stomach and, lifting +myself on my knees and elbows thrust the whole strength of my back +against the lid. But although it creaked it did not yield; the notched +line was not deep enough. I had to resume my old position—which I only +managed to do with infinite trouble—and work afresh. At last after +another supreme effort the lid was cleft from end to end. + +I was not saved as yet, but my heart beat with renewed hope. I had +ceased pushing and remained motionless, lest a sudden fall of earth +should bury me. I intended to use the lid as a screen and, thus +protected, to open a sort of shaft in the clayey soil. Unfortunately I +was assailed by unexpected difficulties. Some heavy clods of earth +weighed upon the boards and made them unmanageable; I foresaw that I +should never reach the surface in that way, for the mass of soil was +already bending my spine and crushing my face. + +Once more I stopped, affrighted; then suddenly, while I was stretching +my legs, trying to find something firm against which I might rest my +feet, I felt the end board of the coffin yielding. I at once gave a +desperate kick with my heels in the faint hope that there might be a +freshly dug grave in that direction. + +It was so. My feet abruptly forced their way into space. An open grave +was there; I had only a slight partition of earth to displace, and soon +I rolled into the cavity. I was saved! + +I remained for a time lying on my back in the open grave, with my eyes +raised to heaven. It was dark; the stars were shining in a sky of +velvety blueness. Now and then the rising breeze wafted a springlike +freshness, a perfume of foliage, upon me. I was saved! I could breathe; +I felt warm, and I wept and I stammered, with my arms prayerfully +extended toward the starry sky. O God, how sweet seemed life! + + + + + CHAPTER V + MY RESURRECTION + + +My first impulse was to find the custodian of the cemetery and ask him +to have me conducted home, but various thoughts that came to me +restrained me from following that course. My return would create +general alarm; why should I hurry now that I was master of the +situation? I felt my limbs; I had only an insignificant wound on my +left arm, where I had bitten myself, and a slight feverishness lent me +unhoped-for strength. I should no doubt be able to walk unaided. + +Still I lingered; all sorts of dim visions confused my mind. I had felt +beside me in the open grave some sextons’ tools which had been left +there, and I conceived a sudden desire to repair the damage I had done, +to close up the hole through which I had crept, so as to conceal all +traces of my resurrection. I do not believe that I had any positive +motive in doing so. I only deemed it useless to proclaim my adventure +aloud, feeling ashamed to find myself alive when the whole world +thought me dead. In half an hour every trace of my escape was +obliterated, and then I climbed out of the hole. + +The night was splendid, and deep silence reigned in the cemetery; the +black trees threw motionless shadows over the white tombs. When I +endeavored to ascertain my bearings I noticed that one half of the sky +was ruddy, as if lit by a huge conflagration; Paris lay in that +direction, and I moved toward it, following a long avenue amid the +darkness of the branches. + +However, after I had gone some fifty yards I was compelled to stop, +feeling faint and weary. I then sat down on a stone bench and for the +first time looked at myself. I was fully attired with the exception +that I had no hat. I blessed my beloved Marguerite for the pious +thought which had prompted her to dress me in my best clothes—those +which I had worn at our wedding. That remembrance of my wife brought me +to my feet again. I longed to see her without delay. + +At the farther end of the avenue I had taken a wall arrested my +progress. However, I climbed to the top of a monument, reached the +summit of the wall and then dropped over the other side. Although +roughly shaken by the fall, I managed to walk for a few minutes along a +broad deserted street skirting the cemetery. I had no notion as to +where I might be, but with the reiteration of monomania I kept saying +to myself that I was going toward Paris and that I should find the Rue +Dauphine somehow or other. Several people passed me but, seized with +sudden distrust, I would not stop them and ask my way. I have since +realized that I was then in a burning fever and already nearly +delirious. Finally, just as I reached a large thoroughfare, I became +giddy and fell heavily upon the pavement. + +Here there is a blank in my life. For three whole weeks I remained +unconscious. When I awoke at last I found myself in a strange room. A +man who was nursing me told me quietly that he had picked me up one +morning on the Boulevard Montparnasse and had brought me to his house. +He was an old doctor who had given up practicing. + +When I attempted to thank him he sharply answered that my case had +seemed a curious one and that he had wished to study it. Moreover, +during the first days of my convalescence he would not allow me to ask +a single question, and later on he never put one to me. For eight days +longer I remained in bed, feeling very weak and not even trying to +remember, for memory was a weariness and a pain. I felt half ashamed +and half afraid. As soon as I could leave the house I would go and find +out whatever I wanted to know. Possibly in the delirium of fever a name +had escaped me; however, the doctor never alluded to anything I may +have said. His charity was not only generous; it was discreet. + +The summer had come at last, and one warm June morning I was permitted +to take a short walk. The sun was shining with that joyous brightness +which imparts renewed youth to the streets of old Paris. I went along +slowly, questioning the passers-by at every crossing I came to and +asking the way to Rue Dauphine. When I reached the street I had some +difficulty in recognizing the lodginghouse where we had alighted on our +arrival in the capital. A childish terror made me hesitate. If I +appeared suddenly before Marguerite the shock might kill her. It might +be wiser to begin by revealing myself to our neighbor Mme Gabin; still +I shrank from taking a third party into confidence. I seemed unable to +arrive at a resolution, and yet in my innermost heart I felt a great +void, like that left by some sacrifice long since consummated. + +The building looked quite yellow in the sunshine. I had just recognized +it by a shabby eating house on the ground floor, where we had ordered +our meals, having them sent up to us. Then I raised my eyes to the last +window of the third floor on the left-hand side, and as I looked at it +a young woman with tumbled hair, wearing a loose dressing gown, +appeared and leaned her elbows on the sill. A young man followed and +printed a kiss upon her neck. It was not Marguerite. Still I felt no +surprise. It seemed to me that I had dreamed all this with other +things, too, which I was to learn presently. + +For a moment I remained in the street, uncertain whether I had better +go upstairs and question the lovers, who were still laughing in the +sunshine. However, I decided to enter the little restaurant below. When +I started on my walk the old doctor had placed a five-franc piece in my +hand. No doubt I was changed beyond recognition, for my beard had grown +during the brain fever, and my face was wrinkled and haggard. As I took +a seat at a small table I saw Mme Gabin come in carrying a cup; she +wished to buy a penny-worth of coffee. Standing in front of the +counter, she began to gossip with the landlady of the establishment. + +“Well,” asked the latter, “so the poor little woman of the third floor +has made up her mind at last, eh?” + +“How could she help herself?” answered Mme Gabin. “It was the very best +thing for her to do. Monsieur Simoneau showed her so much kindness. You +see, he had finished his business in Paris to his satisfaction, for he +has inherited a pot of money. Well, he offered to take her away with +him to his own part of the country and place her with an aunt of his, +who wants a housekeeper and companion.” + +The landlady laughed archly. I buried my face in a newspaper which I +picked off the table. My lips were white and my hands shook. + +“It will end in a marriage, of course,” resumed Mme Gabin. “The little +widow mourned for her husband very properly, and the young man was +extremely well behaved. Well, they left last night—and, after all, they +were free to please themselves.” + +Just then the side door of the restaurant, communicating with the +passage of the house, opened, and Dede appeared. + +“Mother, ain’t you coming?” she cried. “I’m waiting, you know; do be +quick.” + +“Presently,” said the mother testily. “Don’t bother.” + +The girl stood listening to the two women with the precocious +shrewdness of a child born and reared amid the streets of Paris. + +“When all is said and done,” explained Mme Gabin, “the dear departed +did not come up to Monsieur Simoneau. I didn’t fancy him overmuch; he +was a puny sort of a man, a poor, fretful fellow, and he hadn’t a penny +to bless himself with. No, candidly, he wasn’t the kind of husband for +a young and healthy wife, whereas Monsieur Simoneau is rich, you know, +and as strong as a Turk.” + +“Oh yes!” interrupted Dede. “I saw him once when he was washing—his +door was open. His arms are so hairy!” + +“Get along with you,” screamed the old woman, shoving the girl out of +the restaurant. “You are always poking your nose where it has no +business to be.” + +Then she concluded with these words: “Look here, to my mind the other +one did quite right to take himself off. It was fine luck for the +little woman!” + +When I found myself in the street again I walked along slowly with +trembling limbs. And yet I was not suffering much; I think I smiled +once at my shadow in the sun. It was quite true. I WAS very puny. It +had been a queer notion of mine to marry Marguerite. I recalled her +weariness at Guerande, her impatience, her dull, monotonous life. The +dear creature had been very good to me, but I had never been a real +lover; she had mourned for me as a sister for her brother, not +otherwise. Why should I again disturb her life? A dead man is not +jealous. + +When I lifted my eyelids I saw the garden of the Luxembourg before me. +I entered it and took a seat in the sun, dreaming with a sense of +infinite restfulness. The thought of Marguerite stirred me softly. I +pictured her in the provinces, beloved, petted and very happy. She had +grown handsomer, and she was the mother of three boys and two girls. It +was all right. I had behaved like an honest man in dying, and I would +not commit the cruel folly of coming to life again. + +Since then I have traveled a good deal. I have been a little +everywhere. I am an ordinary man who has toiled and eaten like anybody +else. Death no longer frightens me, but it does not seem to care for me +now that I have no motive in living, and I sometimes fear that I have +been forgotten upon earth. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1069 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1070-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1070-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..63574b26 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1070-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ + + +403 Forbidden + +

Forbidden

+

You don't have permission to access this resource.

+
+
Apache Server at www.gutenberg.org Port 80
+ diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1071-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1071-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..63574b26 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1071-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ + + +403 Forbidden + +

Forbidden

+

You don't have permission to access this resource.

+
+
Apache Server at www.gutenberg.org Port 80
+ diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1072-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1072-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..63574b26 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1072-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ + + +403 Forbidden + +

Forbidden

+

You don't have permission to access this resource.

+
+
Apache Server at www.gutenberg.org Port 80
+ diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1073-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1073-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..63574b26 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1073-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ + + +403 Forbidden + +

Forbidden

+

You don't have permission to access this resource.

+
+
Apache Server at www.gutenberg.org Port 80
+ diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1074-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1074-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6ddeaa3f --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1074-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11501 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1074 *** + + THE SEA-WOLF + + + BY + JACK LONDON + + AUTHOR OF + “THE CALL OF THE WILD,” “THE FAITH OF MEN,” + ETC. + + * * * * * + + _POPULAR EDITION_. + + * * * * * + + LONDON + WILLIAM HEINEMANN + 1917 + + * * * * * + +_First published_, _November_ 1904. + +_New Impression_, _December_ 1904, _April_ 1908. + +_Popular Edition_, _July_ 1910; _New Impressions_, _March_ 1912, +_September_ 1912, _November_ 1913, _May_ 1915, _May_ 1916, _July_ 1917. + + * * * * * + + _Copyright_, _London_, _William Heinemann_, 1904 + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the +cause of it all to Charley Furuseth’s credit. He kept a summer cottage +in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied +it except when he loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and +Schopenhauer to rest his brain. When summer came on, he elected to sweat +out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly. Had +it not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and +to stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning +would not have found me afloat on San Francisco Bay. + +Not but that I was afloat in a safe craft, for the _Martinez_ was a new +ferry-steamer, making her fourth or fifth trip on the run between +Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lay in the heavy fog which +blanketed the bay, and of which, as a landsman, I had little +apprehension. In fact, I remember the placid exaltation with which I +took up my position on the forward upper deck, directly beneath the +pilot-house, and allowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my +imagination. A fresh breeze was blowing, and for a time I was alone in +the moist obscurity—yet not alone, for I was dimly conscious of the +presence of the pilot, and of what I took to be the captain, in the glass +house above my head. + +I remember thinking how comfortable it was, this division of labour which +made it unnecessary for me to study fogs, winds, tides, and navigation, +in order to visit my friend who lived across an arm of the sea. It was +good that men should be specialists, I mused. The peculiar knowledge of +the pilot and captain sufficed for many thousands of people who knew no +more of the sea and navigation than I knew. On the other hand, instead +of having to devote my energy to the learning of a multitude of things, I +concentrated it upon a few particular things, such as, for instance, the +analysis of Poe’s place in American literature—an essay of mine, by the +way, in the current _Atlantic_. Coming aboard, as I passed through the +cabin, I had noticed with greedy eyes a stout gentleman reading the +_Atlantic_, which was open at my very essay. And there it was again, the +division of labour, the special knowledge of the pilot and captain which +permitted the stout gentleman to read my special knowledge on Poe while +they carried him safely from Sausalito to San Francisco. + +A red-faced man, slamming the cabin door behind him and stumping out on +the deck, interrupted my reflections, though I made a mental note of the +topic for use in a projected essay which I had thought of calling “The +Necessity for Freedom: A Plea for the Artist.” The red-faced man shot a +glance up at the pilot-house, gazed around at the fog, stumped across the +deck and back (he evidently had artificial legs), and stood still by my +side, legs wide apart, and with an expression of keen enjoyment on his +face. I was not wrong when I decided that his days had been spent on the +sea. + +“It’s nasty weather like this here that turns heads grey before their +time,” he said, with a nod toward the pilot-house. + +“I had not thought there was any particular strain,” I answered. “It +seems as simple as A, B, C. They know the direction by compass, the +distance, and the speed. I should not call it anything more than +mathematical certainty.” + +“Strain!” he snorted. “Simple as A, B, C! Mathematical certainty!” + +He seemed to brace himself up and lean backward against the air as he +stared at me. “How about this here tide that’s rushin’ out through the +Golden Gate?” he demanded, or bellowed, rather. “How fast is she ebbin’? +What’s the drift, eh? Listen to that, will you? A bell-buoy, and we’re +a-top of it! See ’em alterin’ the course!” + +From out of the fog came the mournful tolling of a bell, and I could see +the pilot turning the wheel with great rapidity. The bell, which had +seemed straight ahead, was now sounding from the side. Our own whistle +was blowing hoarsely, and from time to time the sound of other whistles +came to us from out of the fog. + +“That’s a ferry-boat of some sort,” the new-comer said, indicating a +whistle off to the right. “And there! D’ye hear that? Blown by mouth. +Some scow schooner, most likely. Better watch out, Mr. Schooner-man. +Ah, I thought so. Now hell’s a poppin’ for somebody!” + +The unseen ferry-boat was blowing blast after blast, and the mouth-blown +horn was tooting in terror-stricken fashion. + +“And now they’re payin’ their respects to each other and tryin’ to get +clear,” the red-faced man went on, as the hurried whistling ceased. + +His face was shining, his eyes flashing with excitement as he translated +into articulate language the speech of the horns and sirens. “That’s a +steam-siren a-goin’ it over there to the left. And you hear that fellow +with a frog in his throat—a steam schooner as near as I can judge, +crawlin’ in from the Heads against the tide.” + +A shrill little whistle, piping as if gone mad, came from directly ahead +and from very near at hand. Gongs sounded on the _Martinez_. Our +paddle-wheels stopped, their pulsing beat died away, and then they +started again. The shrill little whistle, like the chirping of a cricket +amid the cries of great beasts, shot through the fog from more to the +side and swiftly grew faint and fainter. I looked to my companion for +enlightenment. + +“One of them dare-devil launches,” he said. “I almost wish we’d sunk +him, the little rip! They’re the cause of more trouble. And what good +are they? Any jackass gets aboard one and runs it from hell to +breakfast, blowin’ his whistle to beat the band and tellin’ the rest of +the world to look out for him, because he’s comin’ and can’t look out for +himself! Because he’s comin’! And you’ve got to look out, too! Right +of way! Common decency! They don’t know the meanin’ of it!” + +I felt quite amused at his unwarranted choler, and while he stumped +indignantly up and down I fell to dwelling upon the romance of the fog. +And romantic it certainly was—the fog, like the grey shadow of infinite +mystery, brooding over the whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes +of light and sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their +steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery, groping their +way blindly through the Unseen, and clamouring and clanging in confident +speech the while their hearts are heavy with incertitude and fear. + +The voice of my companion brought me back to myself with a laugh. I too +had been groping and floundering, the while I thought I rode clear-eyed +through the mystery. + +“Hello! somebody comin’ our way,” he was saying. “And d’ye hear that? +He’s comin’ fast. Walking right along. Guess he don’t hear us yet. +Wind’s in wrong direction.” + +The fresh breeze was blowing right down upon us, and I could hear the +whistle plainly, off to one side and a little ahead. + +“Ferry-boat?” I asked. + +He nodded, then added, “Or he wouldn’t be keepin’ up such a clip.” He +gave a short chuckle. “They’re gettin’ anxious up there.” + +I glanced up. The captain had thrust his head and shoulders out of the +pilot-house, and was staring intently into the fog as though by sheer +force of will he could penetrate it. His face was anxious, as was the +face of my companion, who had stumped over to the rail and was gazing +with a like intentness in the direction of the invisible danger. + +Then everything happened, and with inconceivable rapidity. The fog +seemed to break away as though split by a wedge, and the bow of a +steamboat emerged, trailing fog-wreaths on either side like seaweed on +the snout of Leviathan. I could see the pilot-house and a white-bearded +man leaning partly out of it, on his elbows. He was clad in a blue +uniform, and I remember noting how trim and quiet he was. His quietness, +under the circumstances, was terrible. He accepted Destiny, marched hand +in hand with it, and coolly measured the stroke. As he leaned there, he +ran a calm and speculative eye over us, as though to determine the +precise point of the collision, and took no notice whatever when our +pilot, white with rage, shouted, “Now you’ve done it!” + +On looking back, I realize that the remark was too obvious to make +rejoinder necessary. + +“Grab hold of something and hang on,” the red-faced man said to me. All +his bluster had gone, and he seemed to have caught the contagion of +preternatural calm. “And listen to the women scream,” he said +grimly—almost bitterly, I thought, as though he had been through the +experience before. + +The vessels came together before I could follow his advice. We must have +been struck squarely amidships, for I saw nothing, the strange steamboat +having passed beyond my line of vision. The _Martinez_ heeled over, +sharply, and there was a crashing and rending of timber. I was thrown +flat on the wet deck, and before I could scramble to my feet I heard the +scream of the women. This it was, I am certain,—the most indescribable +of blood-curdling sounds,—that threw me into a panic. I remembered the +life-preservers stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept +backward by a wild rush of men and women. What happened in the next few +minutes I do not recollect, though I have a clear remembrance of pulling +down life-preservers from the overhead racks, while the red-faced man +fastened them about the bodies of an hysterical group of women. This +memory is as distinct and sharp as that of any picture I have seen. It +is a picture, and I can see it now,—the jagged edges of the hole in the +side of the cabin, through which the grey fog swirled and eddied; the +empty upholstered seats, littered with all the evidences of sudden +flight, such as packages, hand satchels, umbrellas, and wraps; the stout +gentleman who had been reading my essay, encased in cork and canvas, the +magazine still in his hand, and asking me with monotonous insistence if I +thought there was any danger; the red-faced man, stumping gallantly +around on his artificial legs and buckling life-preservers on all comers; +and finally, the screaming bedlam of women. + +This it was, the screaming of the women, that most tried my nerves. It +must have tried, too, the nerves of the red-faced man, for I have another +picture which will never fade from my mind. The stout gentleman is +stuffing the magazine into his overcoat pocket and looking on curiously. +A tangled mass of women, with drawn, white faces and open mouths, is +shrieking like a chorus of lost souls; and the red-faced man, his face +now purplish with wrath, and with arms extended overhead as in the act of +hurling thunderbolts, is shouting, “Shut up! Oh, shut up!” + +I remember the scene impelled me to sudden laughter, and in the next +instant I realized I was becoming hysterical myself; for these were women +of my own kind, like my mother and sisters, with the fear of death upon +them and unwilling to die. And I remember that the sounds they made +reminded me of the squealing of pigs under the knife of the butcher, and +I was struck with horror at the vividness of the analogy. These women, +capable of the most sublime emotions, of the tenderest sympathies, were +open-mouthed and screaming. They wanted to live, they were helpless, +like rats in a trap, and they screamed. + +The horror of it drove me out on deck. I was feeling sick and squeamish, +and sat down on a bench. In a hazy way I saw and heard men rushing and +shouting as they strove to lower the boats. It was just as I had read +descriptions of such scenes in books. The tackles jammed. Nothing +worked. One boat lowered away with the plugs out, filled with women and +children and then with water, and capsized. Another boat had been +lowered by one end, and still hung in the tackle by the other end, where +it had been abandoned. Nothing was to be seen of the strange steamboat +which had caused the disaster, though I heard men saying that she would +undoubtedly send boats to our assistance. + +I descended to the lower deck. The _Martinez_ was sinking fast, for the +water was very near. Numbers of the passengers were leaping overboard. +Others, in the water, were clamouring to be taken aboard again. No one +heeded them. A cry arose that we were sinking. I was seized by the +consequent panic, and went over the side in a surge of bodies. How I +went over I do not know, though I did know, and instantly, why those in +the water were so desirous of getting back on the steamer. The water was +cold—so cold that it was painful. The pang, as I plunged into it, was as +quick and sharp as that of fire. It bit to the marrow. It was like the +grip of death. I gasped with the anguish and shock of it, filling my +lungs before the life-preserver popped me to the surface. The taste of +the salt was strong in my mouth, and I was strangling with the acrid +stuff in my throat and lungs. + +But it was the cold that was most distressing. I felt that I could +survive but a few minutes. People were struggling and floundering in the +water about me. I could hear them crying out to one another. And I +heard, also, the sound of oars. Evidently the strange steamboat had +lowered its boats. As the time went by I marvelled that I was still +alive. I had no sensation whatever in my lower limbs, while a chilling +numbness was wrapping about my heart and creeping into it. Small waves, +with spiteful foaming crests, continually broke over me and into my +mouth, sending me off into more strangling paroxysms. + +The noises grew indistinct, though I heard a final and despairing chorus +of screams in the distance, and knew that the _Martinez_ had gone down. +Later,—how much later I have no knowledge,—I came to myself with a start +of fear. I was alone. I could hear no calls or cries—only the sound of +the waves, made weirdly hollow and reverberant by the fog. A panic in a +crowd, which partakes of a sort of community of interest, is not so +terrible as a panic when one is by oneself; and such a panic I now +suffered. Whither was I drifting? The red-faced man had said that the +tide was ebbing through the Golden Gate. Was I, then, being carried out +to sea? And the life-preserver in which I floated? Was it not liable to +go to pieces at any moment? I had heard of such things being made of +paper and hollow rushes which quickly became saturated and lost all +buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And I was alone, floating, +apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial vastness. I confess that a +madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and +beat the water with my numb hands. + +How long this lasted I have no conception, for a blankness intervened, of +which I remember no more than one remembers of troubled and painful +sleep. When I aroused, it was as after centuries of time; and I saw, +almost above me and emerging from the fog, the bow of a vessel, and three +triangular sails, each shrewdly lapping the other and filled with wind. +Where the bow cut the water there was a great foaming and gurgling, and I +seemed directly in its path. I tried to cry out, but was too exhausted. +The bow plunged down, just missing me and sending a swash of water clear +over my head. Then the long, black side of the vessel began slipping +past, so near that I could have touched it with my hands. I tried to +reach it, in a mad resolve to claw into the wood with my nails, but my +arms were heavy and lifeless. Again I strove to call out, but made no +sound. + +The stern of the vessel shot by, dropping, as it did so, into a hollow +between the waves; and I caught a glimpse of a man standing at the wheel, +and of another man who seemed to be doing little else than smoke a cigar. +I saw the smoke issuing from his lips as he slowly turned his head and +glanced out over the water in my direction. It was a careless, +unpremeditated glance, one of those haphazard things men do when they +have no immediate call to do anything in particular, but act because they +are alive and must do something. + +But life and death were in that glance. I could see the vessel being +swallowed up in the fog; I saw the back of the man at the wheel, and the +head of the other man turning, slowly turning, as his gaze struck the +water and casually lifted along it toward me. His face wore an absent +expression, as of deep thought, and I became afraid that if his eyes did +light upon me he would nevertheless not see me. But his eyes did light +upon me, and looked squarely into mine; and he did see me, for he sprang +to the wheel, thrusting the other man aside, and whirled it round and +round, hand over hand, at the same time shouting orders of some sort. +The vessel seemed to go off at a tangent to its former course and leapt +almost instantly from view into the fog. + +I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness, and tried with all the power +of my will to fight above the suffocating blankness and darkness that was +rising around me. A little later I heard the stroke of oars, growing +nearer and nearer, and the calls of a man. When he was very near I heard +him crying, in vexed fashion, “Why in hell don’t you sing out?” This +meant me, I thought, and then the blankness and darkness rose over me. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +I seemed swinging in a mighty rhythm through orbit vastness. Sparkling +points of light spluttered and shot past me. They were stars, I knew, +and flaring comets, that peopled my flight among the suns. As I reached +the limit of my swing and prepared to rush back on the counter swing, a +great gong struck and thundered. For an immeasurable period, lapped in +the rippling of placid centuries, I enjoyed and pondered my tremendous +flight. + +But a change came over the face of the dream, for a dream I told myself +it must be. My rhythm grew shorter and shorter. I was jerked from swing +to counter swing with irritating haste. I could scarcely catch my +breath, so fiercely was I impelled through the heavens. The gong +thundered more frequently and more furiously. I grew to await it with a +nameless dread. Then it seemed as though I were being dragged over +rasping sands, white and hot in the sun. This gave place to a sense of +intolerable anguish. My skin was scorching in the torment of fire. The +gong clanged and knelled. The sparkling points of light flashed past me +in an interminable stream, as though the whole sidereal system were +dropping into the void. I gasped, caught my breath painfully, and opened +my eyes. Two men were kneeling beside me, working over me. My mighty +rhythm was the lift and forward plunge of a ship on the sea. The +terrific gong was a frying-pan, hanging on the wall, that rattled and +clattered with each leap of the ship. The rasping, scorching sands were +a man’s hard hands chafing my naked chest. I squirmed under the pain of +it, and half lifted my head. My chest was raw and red, and I could see +tiny blood globules starting through the torn and inflamed cuticle. + +“That’ll do, Yonson,” one of the men said. “Carn’t yer see you’ve +bloomin’ well rubbed all the gent’s skin orf?” + +The man addressed as Yonson, a man of the heavy Scandinavian type, ceased +chafing me, and arose awkwardly to his feet. The man who had spoken to +him was clearly a Cockney, with the clean lines and weakly pretty, almost +effeminate, face of the man who has absorbed the sound of Bow Bells with +his mother’s milk. A draggled muslin cap on his head and a dirty +gunny-sack about his slim hips proclaimed him cook of the decidedly dirty +ship’s galley in which I found myself. + +“An’ ’ow yer feelin’ now, sir?” he asked, with the subservient smirk +which comes only of generations of tip-seeking ancestors. + +For reply, I twisted weakly into a sitting posture, and was helped by +Yonson to my feet. The rattle and bang of the frying-pan was grating +horribly on my nerves. I could not collect my thoughts. Clutching the +woodwork of the galley for support,—and I confess the grease with which +it was scummed put my teeth on edge,—I reached across a hot cooking-range +to the offending utensil, unhooked it, and wedged it securely into the +coal-box. + +The cook grinned at my exhibition of nerves, and thrust into my hand a +steaming mug with an “’Ere, this’ll do yer good.” It was a nauseous +mess,—ship’s coffee,—but the heat of it was revivifying. Between gulps +of the molten stuff I glanced down at my raw and bleeding chest and +turned to the Scandinavian. + +“Thank you, Mr. Yonson,” I said; “but don’t you think your measures were +rather heroic?” + +It was because he understood the reproof of my action, rather than of my +words, that he held up his palm for inspection. It was remarkably +calloused. I passed my hand over the horny projections, and my teeth +went on edge once more from the horrible rasping sensation produced. + +“My name is Johnson, not Yonson,” he said, in very good, though slow, +English, with no more than a shade of accent to it. + +There was mild protest in his pale blue eyes, and withal a timid +frankness and manliness that quite won me to him. + +“Thank you, Mr. Johnson,” I corrected, and reached out my hand for his. + +He hesitated, awkward and bashful, shifted his weight from one leg to the +other, then blunderingly gripped my hand in a hearty shake. + +“Have you any dry clothes I may put on?” I asked the cook. + +“Yes, sir,” he answered, with cheerful alacrity. “I’ll run down an’ tyke +a look over my kit, if you’ve no objections, sir, to wearin’ my things.” + +He dived out of the galley door, or glided rather, with a swiftness and +smoothness of gait that struck me as being not so much cat-like as oily. +In fact, this oiliness, or greasiness, as I was later to learn, was +probably the most salient expression of his personality. + +“And where am I?” I asked Johnson, whom I took, and rightly, to be one of +the sailors. “What vessel is this, and where is she bound?” + +“Off the Farallones, heading about sou-west,” he answered, slowly and +methodically, as though groping for his best English, and rigidly +observing the order of my queries. “The schooner _Ghost_, bound +seal-hunting to Japan.” + +“And who is the captain? I must see him as soon as I am dressed.” + +Johnson looked puzzled and embarrassed. He hesitated while he groped in +his vocabulary and framed a complete answer. “The cap’n is Wolf Larsen, +or so men call him. I never heard his other name. But you better speak +soft with him. He is mad this morning. The mate—” + +But he did not finish. The cook had glided in. + +“Better sling yer ’ook out of ’ere, Yonson,” he said. “The old man’ll be +wantin’ yer on deck, an’ this ayn’t no d’y to fall foul of ’im.” + +Johnson turned obediently to the door, at the same time, over the cook’s +shoulder, favouring me with an amazingly solemn and portentous wink as +though to emphasize his interrupted remark and the need for me to be +soft-spoken with the captain. + +Hanging over the cook’s arm was a loose and crumpled array of +evil-looking and sour-smelling garments. + +“They was put aw’y wet, sir,” he vouchsafed explanation. “But you’ll +’ave to make them do till I dry yours out by the fire.” + +Clinging to the woodwork, staggering with the roll of the ship, and aided +by the cook, I managed to slip into a rough woollen undershirt. On the +instant my flesh was creeping and crawling from the harsh contact. He +noticed my involuntary twitching and grimacing, and smirked: + +“I only ’ope yer don’t ever ’ave to get used to such as that in this +life, ’cos you’ve got a bloomin’ soft skin, that you ’ave, more like a +lydy’s than any I know of. I was bloomin’ well sure you was a gentleman +as soon as I set eyes on yer.” + +I had taken a dislike to him at first, and as he helped to dress me this +dislike increased. There was something repulsive about his touch. I +shrank from his hand; my flesh revolted. And between this and the smells +arising from various pots boiling and bubbling on the galley fire, I was +in haste to get out into the fresh air. Further, there was the need of +seeing the captain about what arrangements could be made for getting me +ashore. + +A cheap cotton shirt, with frayed collar and a bosom discoloured with +what I took to be ancient blood-stains, was put on me amid a running and +apologetic fire of comment. A pair of workman’s brogans encased my feet, +and for trousers I was furnished with a pair of pale blue, washed-out +overalls, one leg of which was fully ten inches shorter than the other. +The abbreviated leg looked as though the devil had there clutched for the +Cockney’s soul and missed the shadow for the substance. + +“And whom have I to thank for this kindness?” I asked, when I stood +completely arrayed, a tiny boy’s cap on my head, and for coat a dirty, +striped cotton jacket which ended at the small of my back and the sleeves +of which reached just below my elbows. + +The cook drew himself up in a smugly humble fashion, a deprecating smirk +on his face. Out of my experience with stewards on the Atlantic liners +at the end of the voyage, I could have sworn he was waiting for his tip. +From my fuller knowledge of the creature I now know that the posture was +unconscious. An hereditary servility, no doubt, was responsible. + +“Mugridge, sir,” he fawned, his effeminate features running into a greasy +smile. “Thomas Mugridge, sir, an’ at yer service.” + +“All right, Thomas,” I said. “I shall not forget you—when my clothes are +dry.” + +A soft light suffused his face and his eyes glistened, as though +somewhere in the deeps of his being his ancestors had quickened and +stirred with dim memories of tips received in former lives. + +“Thank you, sir,” he said, very gratefully and very humbly indeed. + +Precisely in the way that the door slid back, he slid aside, and I +stepped out on deck. I was still weak from my prolonged immersion. A +puff of wind caught me,—and I staggered across the moving deck to a +corner of the cabin, to which I clung for support. The schooner, heeled +over far out from the perpendicular, was bowing and plunging into the +long Pacific roll. If she were heading south-west as Johnson had said, +the wind, then, I calculated, was blowing nearly from the south. The fog +was gone, and in its place the sun sparkled crisply on the surface of the +water. I turned to the east, where I knew California must lie, but could +see nothing save low-lying fog-banks—the same fog, doubtless, that had +brought about the disaster to the _Martinez_ and placed me in my present +situation. To the north, and not far away, a group of naked rocks thrust +above the sea, on one of which I could distinguish a lighthouse. In the +south-west, and almost in our course, I saw the pyramidal loom of some +vessel’s sails. + +Having completed my survey of the horizon, I turned to my more immediate +surroundings. My first thought was that a man who had come through a +collision and rubbed shoulders with death merited more attention than I +received. Beyond a sailor at the wheel who stared curiously across the +top of the cabin, I attracted no notice whatever. + +Everybody seemed interested in what was going on amid ships. There, on a +hatch, a large man was lying on his back. He was fully clothed, though +his shirt was ripped open in front. Nothing was to be seen of his chest, +however, for it was covered with a mass of black hair, in appearance like +the furry coat of a dog. His face and neck were hidden beneath a black +beard, intershot with grey, which would have been stiff and bushy had it +not been limp and draggled and dripping with water. His eyes were +closed, and he was apparently unconscious; but his mouth was wide open, +his breast, heaving as though from suffocation as he laboured noisily for +breath. A sailor, from time to time and quite methodically, as a matter +of routine, dropped a canvas bucket into the ocean at the end of a rope, +hauled it in hand under hand, and sluiced its contents over the prostrate +man. + +Pacing back and forth the length of the hatchways and savagely chewing +the end of a cigar, was the man whose casual glance had rescued me from +the sea. His height was probably five feet ten inches, or ten and a +half; but my first impression, or feel of the man, was not of this, but +of his strength. And yet, while he was of massive build, with broad +shoulders and deep chest, I could not characterize his strength as +massive. It was what might be termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the +kind we ascribe to lean and wiry men, but which, in him, because of his +heavy build, partook more of the enlarged gorilla order. Not that in +appearance he seemed in the least gorilla-like. What I am striving to +express is this strength itself, more as a thing apart from his physical +semblance. It was a strength we are wont to associate with things +primitive, with wild animals, and the creatures we imagine our +tree-dwelling prototypes to have been—a strength savage, ferocious, alive +in itself, the essence of life in that it is the potency of motion, the +elemental stuff itself out of which the many forms of life have been +moulded; in short, that which writhes in the body of a snake when the +head is cut off, and the snake, as a snake, is dead, or which lingers in +the shapeless lump of turtle-meat and recoils and quivers from the prod +of a finger. + +Such was the impression of strength I gathered from this man who paced up +and down. He was firmly planted on his legs; his feet struck the deck +squarely and with surety; every movement of a muscle, from the heave of +the shoulders to the tightening of the lips about the cigar, was +decisive, and seemed to come out of a strength that was excessive and +overwhelming. In fact, though this strength pervaded every action of +his, it seemed but the advertisement of a greater strength that lurked +within, that lay dormant and no more than stirred from time to time, but +which might arouse, at any moment, terrible and compelling, like the rage +of a lion or the wrath of a storm. + +The cook stuck his head out of the galley door and grinned encouragingly +at me, at the same time jerking his thumb in the direction of the man who +paced up and down by the hatchway. Thus I was given to understand that +he was the captain, the “Old Man,” in the cook’s vernacular, the +individual whom I must interview and put to the trouble of somehow +getting me ashore. I had half started forward, to get over with what I +was certain would be a stormy five minutes, when a more violent +suffocating paroxysm seized the unfortunate person who was lying on his +back. He wrenched and writhed about convulsively. The chin, with the +damp black beard, pointed higher in the air as the back muscles stiffened +and the chest swelled in an unconscious and instinctive effort to get +more air. Under the whiskers, and all unseen, I knew that the skin was +taking on a purplish hue. + +The captain, or Wolf Larsen, as men called him, ceased pacing and gazed +down at the dying man. So fierce had this final struggle become that the +sailor paused in the act of flinging more water over him and stared +curiously, the canvas bucket partly tilted and dripping its contents to +the deck. The dying man beat a tattoo on the hatch with his heels, +straightened out his legs, and stiffened in one great tense effort, and +rolled his head from side to side. Then the muscles relaxed, the head +stopped rolling, and a sigh, as of profound relief, floated upward from +his lips. The jaw dropped, the upper lip lifted, and two rows of +tobacco-discoloured teeth appeared. It seemed as though his features had +frozen into a diabolical grin at the world he had left and outwitted. + +Then a most surprising thing occurred. The captain broke loose upon the +dead man like a thunderclap. Oaths rolled from his lips in a continuous +stream. And they were not namby-pamby oaths, or mere expressions of +indecency. Each word was a blasphemy, and there were many words. They +crisped and crackled like electric sparks. I had never heard anything +like it in my life, nor could I have conceived it possible. With a turn +for literary expression myself, and a penchant for forcible figures and +phrases, I appreciated, as no other listener, I dare say, the peculiar +vividness and strength and absolute blasphemy of his metaphors. The +cause of it all, as near as I could make out, was that the man, who was +mate, had gone on a debauch before leaving San Francisco, and then had +the poor taste to die at the beginning of the voyage and leave Wolf +Larsen short-handed. + +It should be unnecessary to state, at least to my friends, that I was +shocked. Oaths and vile language of any sort had always been repellent +to me. I felt a wilting sensation, a sinking at the heart, and, I might +just as well say, a giddiness. To me, death had always been invested +with solemnity and dignity. It had been peaceful in its occurrence, +sacred in its ceremonial. But death in its more sordid and terrible +aspects was a thing with which I had been unacquainted till now. As I +say, while I appreciated the power of the terrific denunciation that +swept out of Wolf Larsen’s mouth, I was inexpressibly shocked. The +scorching torrent was enough to wither the face of the corpse. I should +not have been surprised if the wet black beard had frizzled and curled +and flared up in smoke and flame. But the dead man was unconcerned. He +continued to grin with a sardonic humour, with a cynical mockery and +defiance. He was master of the situation. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Wolf Larsen ceased swearing as suddenly as he had begun. He relighted +his cigar and glanced around. His eyes chanced upon the cook. + +“Well, Cooky?” he began, with a suaveness that was cold and of the temper +of steel. + +“Yes, sir,” the cook eagerly interpolated, with appeasing and apologetic +servility. + +“Don’t you think you’ve stretched that neck of yours just about enough? +It’s unhealthy, you know. The mate’s gone, so I can’t afford to lose you +too. You must be very, very careful of your health, Cooky. Understand?” + +His last word, in striking contrast with the smoothness of his previous +utterance, snapped like the lash of a whip. The cook quailed under it. + +“Yes, sir,” was the meek reply, as the offending head disappeared into +the galley. + +At this sweeping rebuke, which the cook had only pointed, the rest of the +crew became uninterested and fell to work at one task or another. A +number of men, however, who were lounging about a companion-way between +the galley and hatch, and who did not seem to be sailors, continued +talking in low tones with one another. These, I afterward learned, were +the hunters, the men who shot the seals, and a very superior breed to +common sailor-folk. + +“Johansen!” Wolf Larsen called out. A sailor stepped forward obediently. +“Get your palm and needle and sew the beggar up. You’ll find some old +canvas in the sail-locker. Make it do.” + +“What’ll I put on his feet, sir?” the man asked, after the customary “Ay, +ay, sir.” + +“We’ll see to that,” Wolf Larsen answered, and elevated his voice in a +call of “Cooky!” + +Thomas Mugridge popped out of his galley like a jack-in-the-box. + +“Go below and fill a sack with coal.” + +“Any of you fellows got a Bible or Prayer-book?” was the captain’s next +demand, this time of the hunters lounging about the companion-way. + +They shook their heads, and some one made a jocular remark which I did +not catch, but which raised a general laugh. + +Wolf Larsen made the same demand of the sailors. Bibles and Prayer-books +seemed scarce articles, but one of the men volunteered to pursue the +quest amongst the watch below, returning in a minute with the information +that there was none. + +The captain shrugged his shoulders. “Then we’ll drop him over without +any palavering, unless our clerical-looking castaway has the burial +service at sea by heart.” + +By this time he had swung fully around and was facing me. “You’re a +preacher, aren’t you?” he asked. + +The hunters,—there were six of them,—to a man, turned and regarded me. I +was painfully aware of my likeness to a scarecrow. A laugh went up at my +appearance,—a laugh that was not lessened or softened by the dead man +stretched and grinning on the deck before us; a laugh that was as rough +and harsh and frank as the sea itself; that arose out of coarse feelings +and blunted sensibilities, from natures that knew neither courtesy nor +gentleness. + +Wolf Larsen did not laugh, though his grey eyes lighted with a slight +glint of amusement; and in that moment, having stepped forward quite +close to him, I received my first impression of the man himself, of the +man as apart from his body, and from the torrent of blasphemy I had heard +him spew forth. The face, with large features and strong lines, of the +square order, yet well filled out, was apparently massive at first sight; +but again, as with the body, the massiveness seemed to vanish, and a +conviction to grow of a tremendous and excessive mental or spiritual +strength that lay behind, sleeping in the deeps of his being. The jaw, +the chin, the brow rising to a goodly height and swelling heavily above +the eyes,—these, while strong in themselves, unusually strong, seemed to +speak an immense vigour or virility of spirit that lay behind and beyond +and out of sight. There was no sounding such a spirit, no measuring, no +determining of metes and bounds, nor neatly classifying in some +pigeon-hole with others of similar type. + +The eyes—and it was my destiny to know them well—were large and handsome, +wide apart as the true artist’s are wide, sheltering under a heavy brow +and arched over by thick black eyebrows. The eyes themselves were of +that baffling protean grey which is never twice the same; which runs +through many shades and colourings like intershot silk in sunshine; which +is grey, dark and light, and greenish-grey, and sometimes of the clear +azure of the deep sea. They were eyes that masked the soul with a +thousand guises, and that sometimes opened, at rare moments, and allowed +it to rush up as though it were about to fare forth nakedly into the +world on some wonderful adventure,—eyes that could brood with the +hopeless sombreness of leaden skies; that could snap and crackle points +of fire like those which sparkle from a whirling sword; that could grow +chill as an arctic landscape, and yet again, that could warm and soften +and be all a-dance with love-lights, intense and masculine, luring and +compelling, which at the same time fascinate and dominate women till they +surrender in a gladness of joy and of relief and sacrifice. + +But to return. I told him that, unhappily for the burial service, I was +not a preacher, when he sharply demanded: + +“What do you do for a living?” + +I confess I had never had such a question asked me before, nor had I ever +canvassed it. I was quite taken aback, and before I could find myself +had sillily stammered, “I—I am a gentleman.” + +His lip curled in a swift sneer. + +“I have worked, I do work,” I cried impetuously, as though he were my +judge and I required vindication, and at the same time very much aware of +my arrant idiocy in discussing the subject at all. + +“For your living?” + +There was something so imperative and masterful about him that I was +quite beside myself—“rattled,” as Furuseth would have termed it, like a +quaking child before a stern school-master. + +“Who feeds you?” was his next question. + +“I have an income,” I answered stoutly, and could have bitten my tongue +the next instant. “All of which, you will pardon my observing, has +nothing whatsoever to do with what I wish to see you about.” + +But he disregarded my protest. + +“Who earned it? Eh? I thought so. Your father. You stand on dead +men’s legs. You’ve never had any of your own. You couldn’t walk alone +between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly for three meals. +Let me see your hand.” + +His tremendous, dormant strength must have stirred, swiftly and +accurately, or I must have slept a moment, for before I knew it he had +stepped two paces forward, gripped my right hand in his, and held it up +for inspection. I tried to withdraw it, but his fingers tightened, +without visible effort, till I thought mine would be crushed. It is hard +to maintain one’s dignity under such circumstances. I could not squirm +or struggle like a schoolboy. Nor could I attack such a creature who had +but to twist my arm to break it. Nothing remained but to stand still and +accept the indignity. I had time to notice that the pockets of the dead +man had been emptied on the deck, and that his body and his grin had been +wrapped from view in canvas, the folds of which the sailor, Johansen, was +sewing together with coarse white twine, shoving the needle through with +a leather contrivance fitted on the palm of his hand. + +Wolf Larsen dropped my hand with a flirt of disdain. + +“Dead men’s hands have kept it soft. Good for little else than +dish-washing and scullion work.” + +“I wish to be put ashore,” I said firmly, for I now had myself in +control. “I shall pay you whatever you judge your delay and trouble to +be worth.” + +He looked at me curiously. Mockery shone in his eyes. + +“I have a counter proposition to make, and for the good of your soul. My +mate’s gone, and there’ll be a lot of promotion. A sailor comes aft to +take mate’s place, cabin-boy goes for’ard to take sailor’s place, and you +take the cabin-boy’s place, sign the articles for the cruise, twenty +dollars per month and found. Now what do you say? And mind you, it’s +for your own soul’s sake. It will be the making of you. You might learn +in time to stand on your own legs, and perhaps to toddle along a bit.” + +But I took no notice. The sails of the vessel I had seen off to the +south-west had grown larger and plainer. They were of the same +schooner-rig as the _Ghost_, though the hull itself, I could see, was +smaller. She was a pretty sight, leaping and flying toward us, and +evidently bound to pass at close range. The wind had been momentarily +increasing, and the sun, after a few angry gleams, had disappeared. The +sea had turned a dull leaden grey and grown rougher, and was now tossing +foaming whitecaps to the sky. We were travelling faster, and heeled +farther over. Once, in a gust, the rail dipped under the sea, and the +decks on that side were for the moment awash with water that made a +couple of the hunters hastily lift their feet. + +“That vessel will soon be passing us,” I said, after a moment’s pause. +“As she is going in the opposite direction, she is very probably bound +for San Francisco.” + +“Very probably,” was Wolf Larsen’s answer, as he turned partly away from +me and cried out, “Cooky! Oh, Cooky!” + +The Cockney popped out of the galley. + +“Where’s that boy? Tell him I want him.” + +“Yes, sir;” and Thomas Mugridge fled swiftly aft and disappeared down +another companion-way near the wheel. A moment later he emerged, a +heavy-set young fellow of eighteen or nineteen, with a glowering, +villainous countenance, trailing at his heels. + +“’Ere ’e is, sir,” the cook said. + +But Wolf Larsen ignored that worthy, turning at once to the cabin-boy. + +“What’s your name, boy?” + +“George Leach, sir,” came the sullen answer, and the boy’s bearing showed +clearly that he divined the reason for which he had been summoned. + +“Not an Irish name,” the captain snapped sharply. “O’Toole or McCarthy +would suit your mug a damn sight better. Unless, very likely, there’s an +Irishman in your mother’s woodpile.” + +I saw the young fellow’s hands clench at the insult, and the blood crawl +scarlet up his neck. + +“But let that go,” Wolf Larsen continued. “You may have very good +reasons for forgetting your name, and I’ll like you none the worse for it +as long as you toe the mark. Telegraph Hill, of course, is your port of +entry. It sticks out all over your mug. Tough as they make them and +twice as nasty. I know the kind. Well, you can make up your mind to +have it taken out of you on this craft. Understand? Who shipped you, +anyway?” + +“McCready and Swanson.” + +“Sir!” Wolf Larsen thundered. + +“McCready and Swanson, sir,” the boy corrected, his eyes burning with a +bitter light. + +“Who got the advance money?” + +“They did, sir.” + +“I thought as much. And damned glad you were to let them have it. +Couldn’t make yourself scarce too quick, with several gentlemen you may +have heard of looking for you.” + +The boy metamorphosed into a savage on the instant. His body bunched +together as though for a spring, and his face became as an infuriated +beast’s as he snarled, “It’s a—” + +“A what?” Wolf Larsen asked, a peculiar softness in his voice, as though +he were overwhelmingly curious to hear the unspoken word. + +The boy hesitated, then mastered his temper. “Nothin’, sir. I take it +back.” + +“And you have shown me I was right.” This with a gratified smile. “How +old are you?” + +“Just turned sixteen, sir.” + +“A lie. You’ll never see eighteen again. Big for your age at that, with +muscles like a horse. Pack up your kit and go for’ard into the fo’c’sle. +You’re a boat-puller now. You’re promoted; see?” + +Without waiting for the boy’s acceptance, the captain turned to the +sailor who had just finished the gruesome task of sewing up the corpse. +“Johansen, do you know anything about navigation?” + +“No, sir.” + +“Well, never mind; you’re mate just the same. Get your traps aft into +the mate’s berth.” + +“Ay, ay, sir,” was the cheery response, as Johansen started forward. + +In the meantime the erstwhile cabin-boy had not moved. “What are you +waiting for?” Wolf Larsen demanded. + +“I didn’t sign for boat-puller, sir,” was the reply. “I signed for +cabin-boy. An’ I don’t want no boat-pullin’ in mine.” + +“Pack up and go for’ard.” + +This time Wolf Larsen’s command was thrillingly imperative. The boy +glowered sullenly, but refused to move. + +Then came another stirring of Wolf Larsen’s tremendous strength. It was +utterly unexpected, and it was over and done with between the ticks of +two seconds. He had sprung fully six feet across the deck and driven his +fist into the other’s stomach. At the same moment, as though I had been +struck myself, I felt a sickening shock in the pit of my stomach. I +instance this to show the sensitiveness of my nervous organization at the +time, and how unused I was to spectacles of brutality. The cabin-boy—and +he weighed one hundred and sixty-five at the very least—crumpled up. His +body wrapped limply about the fist like a wet rag about a stick. He +lifted into the air, described a short curve, and struck the deck +alongside the corpse on his head and shoulders, where he lay and writhed +about in agony. + +“Well?” Larsen asked of me. “Have you made up your mind?” + +I had glanced occasionally at the approaching schooner, and it was now +almost abreast of us and not more than a couple of hundred yards away. +It was a very trim and neat little craft. I could see a large, black +number on one of its sails, and I had seen pictures of pilot-boats. + +“What vessel is that?” I asked. + +“The pilot-boat _Lady Mine_,” Wolf Larsen answered grimly. “Got rid of +her pilots and running into San Francisco. She’ll be there in five or +six hours with this wind.” + +“Will you please signal it, then, so that I may be put ashore.” + +“Sorry, but I’ve lost the signal book overboard,” he remarked, and the +group of hunters grinned. + +I debated a moment, looking him squarely in the eyes. I had seen the +frightful treatment of the cabin-boy, and knew that I should very +probably receive the same, if not worse. As I say, I debated with +myself, and then I did what I consider the bravest act of my life. I ran +to the side, waving my arms and shouting: + +“_Lady Mine_ ahoy! Take me ashore! A thousand dollars if you take me +ashore!” + +I waited, watching two men who stood by the wheel, one of them steering. +The other was lifting a megaphone to his lips. I did not turn my head, +though I expected every moment a killing blow from the human brute behind +me. At last, after what seemed centuries, unable longer to stand the +strain, I looked around. He had not moved. He was standing in the same +position, swaying easily to the roll of the ship and lighting a fresh +cigar. + +“What is the matter? Anything wrong?” + +This was the cry from the _Lady Mine_. + +“Yes!” I shouted, at the top of my lungs. “Life or death! One thousand +dollars if you take me ashore!” + +“Too much ’Frisco tanglefoot for the health of my crew!” Wolf Larsen +shouted after. “This one”—indicating me with his thumb—“fancies +sea-serpents and monkeys just now!” + +The man on the _Lady Mine_ laughed back through the megaphone. The +pilot-boat plunged past. + +“Give him hell for me!” came a final cry, and the two men waved their +arms in farewell. + +I leaned despairingly over the rail, watching the trim little schooner +swiftly increasing the bleak sweep of ocean between us. And she would +probably be in San Francisco in five or six hours! My head seemed +bursting. There was an ache in my throat as though my heart were up in +it. A curling wave struck the side and splashed salt spray on my lips. +The wind puffed strongly, and the _Ghost_ heeled far over, burying her +lee rail. I could hear the water rushing down upon the deck. + +When I turned around, a moment later, I saw the cabin-boy staggering to +his feet. His face was ghastly white, twitching with suppressed pain. +He looked very sick. + +“Well, Leach, are you going for’ard?” Wolf Larsen asked. + +“Yes, sir,” came the answer of a spirit cowed. + +“And you?” I was asked. + +“I’ll give you a thousand—” I began, but was interrupted. + +“Stow that! Are you going to take up your duties as cabin-boy? Or do I +have to take you in hand?” + +What was I to do? To be brutally beaten, to be killed perhaps, would not +help my case. I looked steadily into the cruel grey eyes. They might +have been granite for all the light and warmth of a human soul they +contained. One may see the soul stir in some men’s eyes, but his were +bleak, and cold, and grey as the sea itself. + +“Well?” + +“Yes,” I said. + +“Say ‘yes, sir.’” + +“Yes, sir,” I corrected. + +“What is your name?” + +“Van Weyden, sir.” + +“First name?” + +“Humphrey, sir; Humphrey Van Weyden.” + +“Age?” + +“Thirty-five, sir.” + +“That’ll do. Go to the cook and learn your duties.” + +And thus it was that I passed into a state of involuntary servitude to +Wolf Larsen. He was stronger than I, that was all. But it was very +unreal at the time. It is no less unreal now that I look back upon it. +It will always be to me a monstrous, inconceivable thing, a horrible +nightmare. + +“Hold on, don’t go yet.” + +I stopped obediently in my walk toward the galley. + +“Johansen, call all hands. Now that we’ve everything cleaned up, we’ll +have the funeral and get the decks cleared of useless lumber.” + +While Johansen was summoning the watch below, a couple of sailors, under +the captain’s direction, laid the canvas-swathed corpse upon a +hatch-cover. On either side the deck, against the rail and bottoms up, +were lashed a number of small boats. Several men picked up the +hatch-cover with its ghastly freight, carried it to the lee side, and +rested it on the boats, the feet pointing overboard. To the feet was +attached the sack of coal which the cook had fetched. + +I had always conceived a burial at sea to be a very solemn and +awe-inspiring event, but I was quickly disillusioned, by this burial at +any rate. One of the hunters, a little dark-eyed man whom his mates +called “Smoke,” was telling stories, liberally intersprinkled with oaths +and obscenities; and every minute or so the group of hunters gave mouth +to a laughter that sounded to me like a wolf-chorus or the barking of +hell-hounds. The sailors trooped noisily aft, some of the watch below +rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and talked in low tones together. +There was an ominous and worried expression on their faces. It was +evident that they did not like the outlook of a voyage under such a +captain and begun so inauspiciously. From time to time they stole +glances at Wolf Larsen, and I could see that they were apprehensive of +the man. + +He stepped up to the hatch-cover, and all caps came off. I ran my eyes +over them—twenty men all told; twenty-two including the man at the wheel +and myself. I was pardonably curious in my survey, for it appeared my +fate to be pent up with them on this miniature floating world for I knew +not how many weeks or months. The sailors, in the main, were English and +Scandinavian, and their faces seemed of the heavy, stolid order. The +hunters, on the other hand, had stronger and more diversified faces, with +hard lines and the marks of the free play of passions. Strange to say, +and I noted it at once, Wolf Larsen’s features showed no such evil +stamp. There seemed nothing vicious in them. True, there were lines, +but they were the lines of decision and firmness. It seemed, rather, a +frank and open countenance, which frankness or openness was enhanced by +the fact that he was smooth-shaven. I could hardly believe—until the +next incident occurred—that it was the face of a man who could behave as +he had behaved to the cabin-boy. + +At this moment, as he opened his mouth to speak, puff after puff struck +the schooner and pressed her side under. The wind shrieked a wild song +through the rigging. Some of the hunters glanced anxiously aloft. The +lee rail, where the dead man lay, was buried in the sea, and as the +schooner lifted and righted the water swept across the deck wetting us +above our shoe-tops. A shower of rain drove down upon us, each drop +stinging like a hailstone. As it passed, Wolf Larsen began to speak, the +bare-headed men swaying in unison, to the heave and lunge of the deck. + +“I only remember one part of the service,” he said, “and that is, ‘And +the body shall be cast into the sea.’ So cast it in.” + +He ceased speaking. The men holding the hatch-cover seemed perplexed, +puzzled no doubt by the briefness of the ceremony. He burst upon them in +a fury. + +“Lift up that end there, damn you! What the hell’s the matter with you?” + +They elevated the end of the hatch-cover with pitiful haste, and, like a +dog flung overside, the dead man slid feet first into the sea. The coal +at his feet dragged him down. He was gone. + +“Johansen,” Wolf Larsen said briskly to the new mate, “keep all hands on +deck now they’re here. Get in the topsails and jibs and make a good job +of it. We’re in for a sou’-easter. Better reef the jib and mainsail +too, while you’re about it.” + +In a moment the decks were in commotion, Johansen bellowing orders and +the men pulling or letting go ropes of various sorts—all naturally +confusing to a landsman such as myself. But it was the heartlessness of +it that especially struck me. The dead man was an episode that was past, +an incident that was dropped, in a canvas covering with a sack of coal, +while the ship sped along and her work went on. Nobody had been +affected. The hunters were laughing at a fresh story of Smoke’s; the men +pulling and hauling, and two of them climbing aloft; Wolf Larsen was +studying the clouding sky to windward; and the dead man, dying obscenely, +buried sordidly, and sinking down, down— + +Then it was that the cruelty of the sea, its relentlessness and +awfulness, rushed upon me. Life had become cheap and tawdry, a beastly +and inarticulate thing, a soulless stirring of the ooze and slime. I +held on to the weather rail, close by the shrouds, and gazed out across +the desolate foaming waves to the low-lying fog-banks that hid San +Francisco and the California coast. Rain-squalls were driving in +between, and I could scarcely see the fog. And this strange vessel, with +its terrible men, pressed under by wind and sea and ever leaping up and +out, was heading away into the south-west, into the great and lonely +Pacific expanse. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +What happened to me next on the sealing-schooner _Ghost_, as I strove to +fit into my new environment, are matters of humiliation and pain. The +cook, who was called “the doctor” by the crew, “Tommy” by the hunters, +and “Cooky” by Wolf Larsen, was a changed person. The difference worked +in my status brought about a corresponding difference in treatment from +him. Servile and fawning as he had been before, he was now as +domineering and bellicose. In truth, I was no longer the fine gentleman +with a skin soft as a “lydy’s,” but only an ordinary and very worthless +cabin-boy. + +He absurdly insisted upon my addressing him as Mr. Mugridge, and his +behaviour and carriage were insufferable as he showed me my duties. +Besides my work in the cabin, with its four small state-rooms, I was +supposed to be his assistant in the galley, and my colossal ignorance +concerning such things as peeling potatoes or washing greasy pots was a +source of unending and sarcastic wonder to him. He refused to take into +consideration what I was, or, rather, what my life and the things I was +accustomed to had been. This was part of the attitude he chose to adopt +toward me; and I confess, ere the day was done, that I hated him with +more lively feelings than I had ever hated any one in my life before. + +This first day was made more difficult for me from the fact that the +_Ghost_, under close reefs (terms such as these I did not learn till +later), was plunging through what Mr. Mugridge called an “’owlin’ +sou’-easter.” At half-past five, under his directions, I set the table +in the cabin, with rough-weather trays in place, and then carried the tea +and cooked food down from the galley. In this connection I cannot +forbear relating my first experience with a boarding sea. + +“Look sharp or you’ll get doused,” was Mr. Mugridge’s parting injunction, +as I left the galley with a big tea-pot in one hand, and in the hollow of +the other arm several loaves of fresh-baked bread. One of the hunters, a +tall, loose-jointed chap named Henderson, was going aft at the time from +the steerage (the name the hunters facetiously gave their midships +sleeping quarters) to the cabin. Wolf Larsen was on the poop, smoking +his everlasting cigar. + +“’Ere she comes. Sling yer ’ook!” the cook cried. + +I stopped, for I did not know what was coming, and saw the galley door +slide shut with a bang. Then I saw Henderson leaping like a madman for +the main rigging, up which he shot, on the inside, till he was many feet +higher than my head. Also I saw a great wave, curling and foaming, +poised far above the rail. I was directly under it. My mind did not +work quickly, everything was so new and strange. I grasped that I was in +danger, but that was all. I stood still, in trepidation. Then Wolf +Larsen shouted from the poop: + +“Grab hold something, you—you Hump!” + +But it was too late. I sprang toward the rigging, to which I might have +clung, and was met by the descending wall of water. What happened after +that was very confusing. I was beneath the water, suffocating and +drowning. My feet were out from under me, and I was turning over and +over and being swept along I knew not where. Several times I collided +against hard objects, once striking my right knee a terrible blow. Then +the flood seemed suddenly to subside and I was breathing the good air +again. I had been swept against the galley and around the steerage +companion-way from the weather side into the lee scuppers. The pain from +my hurt knee was agonizing. I could not put my weight on it, or, at +least, I thought I could not put my weight on it; and I felt sure the leg +was broken. But the cook was after me, shouting through the lee galley +door: + +“’Ere, you! Don’t tyke all night about it! Where’s the pot? Lost +overboard? Serve you bloody well right if yer neck was broke!” + +I managed to struggle to my feet. The great tea-pot was still in my +hand. I limped to the galley and handed it to him. But he was consumed +with indignation, real or feigned. + +“Gawd blime me if you ayn’t a slob. Wot ’re you good for anyw’y, I’d +like to know? Eh? Wot ’re you good for any’wy? Cawn’t even carry a bit +of tea aft without losin’ it. Now I’ll ’ave to boil some more. + +“An’ wot ’re you snifflin’ about?” he burst out at me, with renewed rage. +“’Cos you’ve ’urt yer pore little leg, pore little mamma’s darlin’.” + +I was not sniffling, though my face might well have been drawn and +twitching from the pain. But I called up all my resolution, set my +teeth, and hobbled back and forth from galley to cabin and cabin to +galley without further mishap. Two things I had acquired by my accident: +an injured knee-cap that went undressed and from which I suffered for +weary months, and the name of “Hump,” which Wolf Larsen had called me +from the poop. Thereafter, fore and aft, I was known by no other name, +until the term became a part of my thought-processes and I identified it +with myself, thought of myself as Hump, as though Hump were I and had +always been I. + +It was no easy task, waiting on the cabin table, where sat Wolf Larsen, +Johansen, and the six hunters. The cabin was small, to begin with, and +to move around, as I was compelled to, was not made easier by the +schooner’s violent pitching and wallowing. But what struck me most +forcibly was the total lack of sympathy on the part of the men whom I +served. I could feel my knee through my clothes, swelling, and swelling, +and I was sick and faint from the pain of it. I could catch glimpses of +my face, white and ghastly, distorted with pain, in the cabin mirror. +All the men must have seen my condition, but not one spoke or took notice +of me, till I was almost grateful to Wolf Larsen, later on (I was washing +the dishes), when he said: + +“Don’t let a little thing like that bother you. You’ll get used to such +things in time. It may cripple you some, but all the same you’ll be +learning to walk. + +“That’s what you call a paradox, isn’t it?” he added. + +He seemed pleased when I nodded my head with the customary “Yes, sir.” + +“I suppose you know a bit about literary things? Eh? Good. I’ll have +some talks with you some time.” + +And then, taking no further account of me, he turned his back and went up +on deck. + +That night, when I had finished an endless amount of work, I was sent to +sleep in the steerage, where I made up a spare bunk. I was glad to get +out of the detestable presence of the cook and to be off my feet. To my +surprise, my clothes had dried on me and there seemed no indications of +catching cold, either from the last soaking or from the prolonged soaking +from the foundering of the _Martinez_. Under ordinary circumstances, +after all that I had undergone, I should have been fit for bed and a +trained nurse. + +But my knee was bothering me terribly. As well as I could make out, the +kneecap seemed turned up on edge in the midst of the swelling. As I sat +in my bunk examining it (the six hunters were all in the steerage, +smoking and talking in loud voices), Henderson took a passing glance at +it. + +“Looks nasty,” he commented. “Tie a rag around it, and it’ll be all +right.” + +That was all; and on the land I would have been lying on the broad of my +back, with a surgeon attending on me, and with strict injunctions to do +nothing but rest. But I must do these men justice. Callous as they were +to my suffering, they were equally callous to their own when anything +befell them. And this was due, I believe, first, to habit; and second, +to the fact that they were less sensitively organized. I really believe +that a finely-organized, high-strung man would suffer twice and thrice as +much as they from a like injury. + +Tired as I was,—exhausted, in fact,—I was prevented from sleeping by the +pain in my knee. It was all I could do to keep from groaning aloud. At +home I should undoubtedly have given vent to my anguish; but this new and +elemental environment seemed to call for a savage repression. Like the +savage, the attitude of these men was stoical in great things, childish +in little things. I remember, later in the voyage, seeing Kerfoot, +another of the hunters, lose a finger by having it smashed to a jelly; +and he did not even murmur or change the expression on his face. Yet I +have seen the same man, time and again, fly into the most outrageous +passion over a trifle. + +He was doing it now, vociferating, bellowing, waving his arms, and +cursing like a fiend, and all because of a disagreement with another +hunter as to whether a seal pup knew instinctively how to swim. He held +that it did, that it could swim the moment it was born. The other +hunter, Latimer, a lean, Yankee-looking fellow with shrewd, +narrow-slitted eyes, held otherwise, held that the seal pup was born on +the land for no other reason than that it could not swim, that its mother +was compelled to teach it to swim as birds were compelled to teach their +nestlings how to fly. + +For the most part, the remaining four hunters leaned on the table or lay +in their bunks and left the discussion to the two antagonists. But they +were supremely interested, for every little while they ardently took +sides, and sometimes all were talking at once, till their voices surged +back and forth in waves of sound like mimic thunder-rolls in the confined +space. Childish and immaterial as the topic was, the quality of their +reasoning was still more childish and immaterial. In truth, there was +very little reasoning or none at all. Their method was one of assertion, +assumption, and denunciation. They proved that a seal pup could swim or +not swim at birth by stating the proposition very bellicosely and then +following it up with an attack on the opposing man’s judgment, common +sense, nationality, or past history. Rebuttal was precisely similar. I +have related this in order to show the mental calibre of the men with +whom I was thrown in contact. Intellectually they were children, +inhabiting the physical forms of men. + +And they smoked, incessantly smoked, using a coarse, cheap, and +offensive-smelling tobacco. The air was thick and murky with the smoke +of it; and this, combined with the violent movement of the ship as she +struggled through the storm, would surely have made me sea-sick had I +been a victim to that malady. As it was, it made me quite squeamish, +though this nausea might have been due to the pain of my leg and +exhaustion. + +As I lay there thinking, I naturally dwelt upon myself and my situation. +It was unparalleled, undreamed-of, that I, Humphrey Van Weyden, a scholar +and a dilettante, if you please, in things artistic and literary, should +be lying here on a Bering Sea seal-hunting schooner. Cabin-boy! I had +never done any hard manual labour, or scullion labour, in my life. I had +lived a placid, uneventful, sedentary existence all my days—the life of a +scholar and a recluse on an assured and comfortable income. Violent life +and athletic sports had never appealed to me. I had always been a +book-worm; so my sisters and father had called me during my childhood. I +had gone camping but once in my life, and then I left the party almost at +its start and returned to the comforts and conveniences of a roof. And +here I was, with dreary and endless vistas before me of table-setting, +potato-peeling, and dish-washing. And I was not strong. The doctors had +always said that I had a remarkable constitution, but I had never +developed it or my body through exercise. My muscles were small and +soft, like a woman’s, or so the doctors had said time and again in the +course of their attempts to persuade me to go in for physical-culture +fads. But I had preferred to use my head rather than my body; and here I +was, in no fit condition for the rough life in prospect. + +These are merely a few of the things that went through my mind, and are +related for the sake of vindicating myself in advance in the weak and +helpless _rôle_ I was destined to play. But I thought, also, of my +mother and sisters, and pictured their grief. I was among the missing +dead of the _Martinez_ disaster, an unrecovered body. I could see the +head-lines in the papers; the fellows at the University Club and the +Bibelot shaking their heads and saying, “Poor chap!” And I could see +Charley Furuseth, as I had said good-bye to him that morning, lounging in +a dressing-gown on the be-pillowed window couch and delivering himself of +oracular and pessimistic epigrams. + +And all the while, rolling, plunging, climbing the moving mountains and +falling and wallowing in the foaming valleys, the schooner _Ghost_ was +fighting her way farther and farther into the heart of the Pacific—and I +was on her. I could hear the wind above. It came to my ears as a +muffled roar. Now and again feet stamped overhead. An endless creaking +was going on all about me, the woodwork and the fittings groaning and +squeaking and complaining in a thousand keys. The hunters were still +arguing and roaring like some semi-human amphibious breed. The air was +filled with oaths and indecent expressions. I could see their faces, +flushed and angry, the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sickly +yellow of the sea-lamps which rocked back and forth with the ship. +Through the dim smoke-haze the bunks looked like the sleeping dens of +animals in a menagerie. Oilskins and sea-boots were hanging from the +walls, and here and there rifles and shotguns rested securely in the +racks. It was a sea-fitting for the buccaneers and pirates of by-gone +years. My imagination ran riot, and still I could not sleep. And it was +a long, long night, weary and dreary and long. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +But my first night in the hunters’ steerage was also my last. Next day +Johansen, the new mate, was routed from the cabin by Wolf Larsen, and +sent into the steerage to sleep thereafter, while I took possession of +the tiny cabin state-room, which, on the first day of the voyage, had +already had two occupants. The reason for this change was quickly +learned by the hunters, and became the cause of a deal of grumbling on +their part. It seemed that Johansen, in his sleep, lived over each night +the events of the day. His incessant talking and shouting and bellowing +of orders had been too much for Wolf Larsen, who had accordingly foisted +the nuisance upon his hunters. + +After a sleepless night, I arose weak and in agony, to hobble through my +second day on the _Ghost_. Thomas Mugridge routed me out at half-past +five, much in the fashion that Bill Sykes must have routed out his dog; +but Mr. Mugridge’s brutality to me was paid back in kind and with +interest. The unnecessary noise he made (I had lain wide-eyed the whole +night) must have awakened one of the hunters; for a heavy shoe whizzed +through the semi-darkness, and Mr. Mugridge, with a sharp howl of pain, +humbly begged everybody’s pardon. Later on, in the galley, I noticed +that his ear was bruised and swollen. It never went entirely back to its +normal shape, and was called a “cauliflower ear” by the sailors. + +The day was filled with miserable variety. I had taken my dried clothes +down from the galley the night before, and the first thing I did was to +exchange the cook’s garments for them. I looked for my purse. In +addition to some small change (and I have a good memory for such things), +it had contained one hundred and eighty-five dollars in gold and paper. +The purse I found, but its contents, with the exception of the small +silver, had been abstracted. I spoke to the cook about it, when I went +on deck to take up my duties in the galley, and though I had looked +forward to a surly answer, I had not expected the belligerent harangue +that I received. + +“Look ’ere, ’Ump,” he began, a malicious light in his eyes and a snarl in +his throat; “d’ye want yer nose punched? If you think I’m a thief, just +keep it to yerself, or you’ll find ’ow bloody well mistyken you are. +Strike me blind if this ayn’t gratitude for yer! ’Ere you come, a pore +mis’rable specimen of ’uman scum, an’ I tykes yer into my galley an’ +treats yer ’ansom, an’ this is wot I get for it. Nex’ time you can go to +’ell, say I, an’ I’ve a good mind to give you what-for anyw’y.” + +So saying, he put up his fists and started for me. To my shame be it, I +cowered away from the blow and ran out the galley door. What else was I +to do? Force, nothing but force, obtained on this brute-ship. Moral +suasion was a thing unknown. Picture it to yourself: a man of ordinary +stature, slender of build, and with weak, undeveloped muscles, who has +lived a peaceful, placid life, and is unused to violence of any sort—what +could such a man possibly do? There was no more reason that I should +stand and face these human beasts than that I should stand and face an +infuriated bull. + +So I thought it out at the time, feeling the need for vindication and +desiring to be at peace with my conscience. But this vindication did not +satisfy. Nor, to this day can I permit my manhood to look back upon +those events and feel entirely exonerated. The situation was something +that really exceeded rational formulas for conduct and demanded more than +the cold conclusions of reason. When viewed in the light of formal +logic, there is not one thing of which to be ashamed; but nevertheless a +shame rises within me at the recollection, and in the pride of my manhood +I feel that my manhood has in unaccountable ways been smirched and +sullied. + +All of which is neither here nor there. The speed with which I ran from +the galley caused excruciating pain in my knee, and I sank down +helplessly at the break of the poop. But the Cockney had not pursued me. + +“Look at ’im run! Look at ’im run!” I could hear him crying. “An’ with +a gyme leg at that! Come on back, you pore little mamma’s darling. I +won’t ’it yer; no, I won’t.” + +I came back and went on with my work; and here the episode ended for the +time, though further developments were yet to take place. I set the +breakfast-table in the cabin, and at seven o’clock waited on the hunters +and officers. The storm had evidently broken during the night, though a +huge sea was still running and a stiff wind blowing. Sail had been made +in the early watches, so that the _Ghost_ was racing along under +everything except the two topsails and the flying jib. These three +sails, I gathered from the conversation, were to be set immediately after +breakfast. I learned, also, that Wolf Larsen was anxious to make the +most of the storm, which was driving him to the south-west into that +portion of the sea where he expected to pick up with the north-east +trades. It was before this steady wind that he hoped to make the major +portion of the run to Japan, curving south into the tropics and north +again as he approached the coast of Asia. + +After breakfast I had another unenviable experience. When I had finished +washing the dishes, I cleaned the cabin stove and carried the ashes up on +deck to empty them. Wolf Larsen and Henderson were standing near the +wheel, deep in conversation. The sailor, Johnson, was steering. As I +started toward the weather side I saw him make a sudden motion with his +head, which I mistook for a token of recognition and good-morning. In +reality, he was attempting to warn me to throw my ashes over the lee +side. Unconscious of my blunder, I passed by Wolf Larsen and the hunter +and flung the ashes over the side to windward. The wind drove them back, +and not only over me, but over Henderson and Wolf Larsen. The next +instant the latter kicked me, violently, as a cur is kicked. I had not +realized there could be so much pain in a kick. I reeled away from him +and leaned against the cabin in a half-fainting condition. Everything +was swimming before my eyes, and I turned sick. The nausea overpowered +me, and I managed to crawl to the side of the vessel. But Wolf Larsen +did not follow me up. Brushing the ashes from his clothes, he had +resumed his conversation with Henderson. Johansen, who had seen the +affair from the break of the poop, sent a couple of sailors aft to clean +up the mess. + +Later in the morning I received a surprise of a totally different sort. +Following the cook’s instructions, I had gone into Wolf Larsen’s +state-room to put it to rights and make the bed. Against the wall, near +the head of the bunk, was a rack filled with books. I glanced over them, +noting with astonishment such names as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe, and De +Quincey. There were scientific works, too, among which were represented +men such as Tyndall, Proctor, and Darwin. Astronomy and physics were +represented, and I remarked Bulfinch’s _Age of Fable_, Shaw’s _History of +English and American Literature_, and Johnson’s _Natural History_ in two +large volumes. Then there were a number of grammars, such as Metcalf’s, +and Reed and Kellogg’s; and I smiled as I saw a copy of _The Dean’s +English_. + +I could not reconcile these books with the man from what I had seen of +him, and I wondered if he could possibly read them. But when I came to +make the bed I found, between the blankets, dropped apparently as he had +sunk off to sleep, a complete Browning, the Cambridge Edition. It was +open at “In a Balcony,” and I noticed, here and there, passages +underlined in pencil. Further, letting drop the volume during a lurch of +the ship, a sheet of paper fell out. It was scrawled over with +geometrical diagrams and calculations of some sort. + +It was patent that this terrible man was no ignorant clod, such as one +would inevitably suppose him to be from his exhibitions of brutality. At +once he became an enigma. One side or the other of his nature was +perfectly comprehensible; but both sides together were bewildering. I +had already remarked that his language was excellent, marred with an +occasional slight inaccuracy. Of course, in common speech with the +sailors and hunters, it sometimes fairly bristled with errors, which was +due to the vernacular itself; but in the few words he had held with me it +had been clear and correct. + +This glimpse I had caught of his other side must have emboldened me, for +I resolved to speak to him about the money I had lost. + +“I have been robbed,” I said to him, a little later, when I found him +pacing up and down the poop alone. + +“Sir,” he corrected, not harshly, but sternly. + +“I have been robbed, sir,” I amended. + +“How did it happen?” he asked. + +Then I told him the whole circumstance, how my clothes had been left to +dry in the galley, and how, later, I was nearly beaten by the cook when I +mentioned the matter. + +He smiled at my recital. “Pickings,” he concluded; “Cooky’s pickings. +And don’t you think your miserable life worth the price? Besides, +consider it a lesson. You’ll learn in time how to take care of your +money for yourself. I suppose, up to now, your lawyer has done it for +you, or your business agent.” + +I could feel the quiet sneer through his words, but demanded, “How can I +get it back again?” + +“That’s your look-out. You haven’t any lawyer or business agent now, so +you’ll have to depend on yourself. When you get a dollar, hang on to it. +A man who leaves his money lying around, the way you did, deserves to +lose it. Besides, you have sinned. You have no right to put temptation +in the way of your fellow-creatures. You tempted Cooky, and he fell. +You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy. By the way, do you +believe in the immortal soul?” + +His lids lifted lazily as he asked the question, and it seemed that the +deeps were opening to me and that I was gazing into his soul. But it was +an illusion. Far as it might have seemed, no man has ever seen very far +into Wolf Larsen’s soul, or seen it at all,—of this I am convinced. It +was a very lonely soul, I was to learn, that never unmasked, though at +rare moments it played at doing so. + +“I read immortality in your eyes,” I answered, dropping the “sir,”—an +experiment, for I thought the intimacy of the conversation warranted it. + +He took no notice. “By that, I take it, you see something that is alive, +but that necessarily does not have to live for ever.” + +“I read more than that,” I continued boldly. + +“Then you read consciousness. You read the consciousness of life that it +is alive; but still no further away, no endlessness of life.” + +How clearly he thought, and how well he expressed what he thought! From +regarding me curiously, he turned his head and glanced out over the +leaden sea to windward. A bleakness came into his eyes, and the lines of +his mouth grew severe and harsh. He was evidently in a pessimistic mood. + +“Then to what end?” he demanded abruptly, turning back to me. “If I am +immortal—why?” + +I halted. How could I explain my idealism to this man? How could I put +into speech a something felt, a something like the strains of music heard +in sleep, a something that convinced yet transcended utterance? + +“What do you believe, then?” I countered. + +“I believe that life is a mess,” he answered promptly. “It is like +yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, +a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. The +big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the +weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most and +move the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?” + +He swept his arm in an impatient gesture toward a number of the sailors +who were working on some kind of rope stuff amidships. + +“They move, so does the jelly-fish move. They move in order to eat in +order that they may keep moving. There you have it. They live for their +belly’s sake, and the belly is for their sake. It’s a circle; you get +nowhere. Neither do they. In the end they come to a standstill. They +move no more. They are dead.” + +“They have dreams,” I interrupted, “radiant, flashing dreams—” + +“Of grub,” he concluded sententiously. + +“And of more—” + +“Grub. Of a larger appetite and more luck in satisfying it.” His voice +sounded harsh. There was no levity in it. “For, look you, they dream of +making lucky voyages which will bring them more money, of becoming the +mates of ships, of finding fortunes—in short, of being in a better +position for preying on their fellows, of having all night in, good grub +and somebody else to do the dirty work. You and I are just like them. +There is no difference, except that we have eaten more and better. I am +eating them now, and you too. But in the past you have eaten more than I +have. You have slept in soft beds, and worn fine clothes, and eaten good +meals. Who made those beds? and those clothes? and those meals? Not +you. You never made anything in your own sweat. You live on an income +which your father earned. You are like a frigate bird swooping down upon +the boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught. You are one +with a crowd of men who have made what they call a government, who are +masters of all the other men, and who eat the food the other men get and +would like to eat themselves. You wear the warm clothes. They made the +clothes, but they shiver in rags and ask you, the lawyer, or business +agent who handles your money, for a job.” + +“But that is beside the matter,” I cried. + +“Not at all.” He was speaking rapidly now, and his eyes were flashing. +“It is piggishness, and it is life. Of what use or sense is an +immortality of piggishness? What is the end? What is it all about? You +have made no food. Yet the food you have eaten or wasted might have +saved the lives of a score of wretches who made the food but did not eat +it. What immortal end did you serve? or did they? Consider yourself and +me. What does your boasted immortality amount to when your life runs +foul of mine? You would like to go back to the land, which is a +favourable place for your kind of piggishness. It is a whim of mine to +keep you aboard this ship, where my piggishness flourishes. And keep you +I will. I may make or break you. You may die to-day, this week, or next +month. I could kill you now, with a blow of my fist, for you are a +miserable weakling. But if we are immortal, what is the reason for this? +To be piggish as you and I have been all our lives does not seem to be +just the thing for immortals to be doing. Again, what’s it all about? +Why have I kept you here?—” + +“Because you are stronger,” I managed to blurt out. + +“But why stronger?” he went on at once with his perpetual queries. +“Because I am a bigger bit of the ferment than you? Don’t you see? +Don’t you see?” + +“But the hopelessness of it,” I protested. + +“I agree with you,” he answered. “Then why move at all, since moving is +living? Without moving and being part of the yeast there would be no +hopelessness. But,—and there it is,—we want to live and move, though we +have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to +live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, life +would be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dream +of your immortality. The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on +being alive for ever. Bah! An eternity of piggishness!” + +He abruptly turned on his heel and started forward. He stopped at the +break of the poop and called me to him. + +“By the way, how much was it that Cooky got away with?” he asked. + +“One hundred and eighty-five dollars, sir,” I answered. + +He nodded his head. A moment later, as I started down the companion +stairs to lay the table for dinner, I heard him loudly cursing some men +amidships. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +By the following morning the storm had blown itself quite out and the +_Ghost_ was rolling slightly on a calm sea without a breath of wind. +Occasional light airs were felt, however, and Wolf Larsen patrolled the +poop constantly, his eyes ever searching the sea to the north-eastward, +from which direction the great trade-wind must blow. + +The men were all on deck and busy preparing their various boats for the +season’s hunting. There are seven boats aboard, the captain’s dingey, +and the six which the hunters will use. Three, a hunter, a boat-puller, +and a boat-steerer, compose a boat’s crew. On board the schooner the +boat-pullers and steerers are the crew. The hunters, too, are supposed +to be in command of the watches, subject, always, to the orders of Wolf +Larsen. + +All this, and more, I have learned. The _Ghost_ is considered the +fastest schooner in both the San Francisco and Victoria fleets. In fact, +she was once a private yacht, and was built for speed. Her lines and +fittings—though I know nothing about such things—speak for themselves. +Johnson was telling me about her in a short chat I had with him during +yesterday’s second dog-watch. He spoke enthusiastically, with the love +for a fine craft such as some men feel for horses. He is greatly +disgusted with the outlook, and I am given to understand that Wolf Larsen +bears a very unsavoury reputation among the sealing captains. It was the +_Ghost_ herself that lured Johnson into signing for the voyage, but he is +already beginning to repent. + +As he told me, the _Ghost_ is an eighty-ton schooner of a remarkably fine +model. Her beam, or width, is twenty-three feet, and her length a little +over ninety feet. A lead keel of fabulous but unknown weight makes her +very stable, while she carries an immense spread of canvas. From the +deck to the truck of the maintopmast is something over a hundred feet, +while the foremast with its topmast is eight or ten feet shorter. I am +giving these details so that the size of this little floating world which +holds twenty-two men may be appreciated. It is a very little world, a +mote, a speck, and I marvel that men should dare to venture the sea on a +contrivance so small and fragile. + +Wolf Larsen has, also, a reputation for reckless carrying on of sail. I +overheard Henderson and another of the hunters, Standish, a Californian, +talking about it. Two years ago he dismasted the _Ghost_ in a gale on +Bering Sea, whereupon the present masts were put in, which are stronger +and heavier in every way. He is said to have remarked, when he put them +in, that he preferred turning her over to losing the sticks. + +Every man aboard, with the exception of Johansen, who is rather overcome +by his promotion, seems to have an excuse for having sailed on the +_Ghost_. Half the men forward are deep-water sailors, and their excuse +is that they did not know anything about her or her captain. And those +who do know, whisper that the hunters, while excellent shots, were so +notorious for their quarrelsome and rascally proclivities that they could +not sign on any decent schooner. + +I have made the acquaintance of another one of the crew,—Louis he is +called, a rotund and jovial-faced Nova Scotia Irishman, and a very +sociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a listener. In the +afternoon, while the cook was below asleep and I was peeling the +everlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley for a “yarn.” His +excuse for being aboard was that he was drunk when he signed. He assured +me again and again that it was the last thing in the world he would dream +of doing in a sober moment. It seems that he has been seal-hunting +regularly each season for a dozen years, and is accounted one of the two +or three very best boat-steerers in both fleets. + +“Ah, my boy,” he shook his head ominously at me, “’tis the worst schooner +ye could iv selected, nor were ye drunk at the time as was I. ’Tis +sealin’ is the sailor’s paradise—on other ships than this. The mate was +the first, but mark me words, there’ll be more dead men before the trip +is done with. Hist, now, between you an’ meself and the stanchion there, +this Wolf Larsen is a regular devil, an’ the _Ghost’ll_ be a hell-ship +like she’s always ben since he had hold iv her. Don’t I know? Don’t I +know? Don’t I remember him in Hakodate two years gone, when he had a row +an’ shot four iv his men? Wasn’t I a-layin’ on the _Emma L._, not three +hundred yards away? An’ there was a man the same year he killed with a +blow iv his fist. Yes, sir, killed ’im dead-oh. His head must iv +smashed like an eggshell. An’ wasn’t there the Governor of Kura Island, +an’ the Chief iv Police, Japanese gentlemen, sir, an’ didn’t they come +aboard the _Ghost_ as his guests, a-bringin’ their wives along—wee an’ +pretty little bits of things like you see ’em painted on fans. An’ as he +was a-gettin’ under way, didn’t the fond husbands get left astern-like in +their sampan, as it might be by accident? An’ wasn’t it a week later +that the poor little ladies was put ashore on the other side of the +island, with nothin’ before ’em but to walk home acrost the mountains on +their weeny-teeny little straw sandals which wouldn’t hang together a +mile? Don’t I know? ’Tis the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen—the great +big beast mentioned iv in Revelation; an’ no good end will he ever come +to. But I’ve said nothin’ to ye, mind ye. I’ve whispered never a word; +for old fat Louis’ll live the voyage out if the last mother’s son of yez +go to the fishes.” + +“Wolf Larsen!” he snorted a moment later. “Listen to the word, will ye! +Wolf—’tis what he is. He’s not black-hearted like some men. ’Tis no +heart he has at all. Wolf, just wolf, ’tis what he is. D’ye wonder he’s +well named?” + +“But if he is so well-known for what he is,” I queried, “how is it that +he can get men to ship with him?” + +“An’ how is it ye can get men to do anything on God’s earth an’ sea?” +Louis demanded with Celtic fire. “How d’ye find me aboard if ’twasn’t +that I was drunk as a pig when I put me name down? There’s them that +can’t sail with better men, like the hunters, and them that don’t know, +like the poor devils of wind-jammers for’ard there. But they’ll come to +it, they’ll come to it, an’ be sorry the day they was born. I could weep +for the poor creatures, did I but forget poor old fat Louis and the +troubles before him. But ’tis not a whisper I’ve dropped, mind ye, not a +whisper.” + +“Them hunters is the wicked boys,” he broke forth again, for he suffered +from a constitutional plethora of speech. “But wait till they get to +cutting up iv jinks and rowin’ ’round. He’s the boy’ll fix ’em. ’Tis +him that’ll put the fear of God in their rotten black hearts. Look at +that hunter iv mine, Horner. ‘Jock’ Horner they call him, so quiet-like +an’ easy-goin’, soft-spoken as a girl, till ye’d think butter wouldn’t +melt in the mouth iv him. Didn’t he kill his boat-steerer last year? +’Twas called a sad accident, but I met the boat-puller in Yokohama an’ +the straight iv it was given me. An’ there’s Smoke, the black little +devil—didn’t the Roosians have him for three years in the salt mines of +Siberia, for poachin’ on Copper Island, which is a Roosian preserve? +Shackled he was, hand an’ foot, with his mate. An’ didn’t they have +words or a ruction of some kind?—for ’twas the other fellow Smoke sent up +in the buckets to the top of the mine; an’ a piece at a time he went up, +a leg to-day, an’ to-morrow an arm, the next day the head, an’ so on.” + +“But you can’t mean it!” I cried out, overcome with the horror of it. + +“Mean what!” he demanded, quick as a flash. “’Tis nothin’ I’ve said. +Deef I am, and dumb, as ye should be for the sake iv your mother; an’ +never once have I opened me lips but to say fine things iv them an’ him, +God curse his soul, an’ may he rot in purgatory ten thousand years, and +then go down to the last an’ deepest hell iv all!” + +Johnson, the man who had chafed me raw when I first came aboard, seemed +the least equivocal of the men forward or aft. In fact, there was +nothing equivocal about him. One was struck at once by his +straightforwardness and manliness, which, in turn, were tempered by a +modesty which might be mistaken for timidity. But timid he was not. He +seemed, rather, to have the courage of his convictions, the certainty of +his manhood. It was this that made him protest, at the commencement of +our acquaintance, against being called Yonson. And upon this, and him, +Louis passed judgment and prophecy. + +“’Tis a fine chap, that squarehead Johnson we’ve for’ard with us,” he +said. “The best sailorman in the fo’c’sle. He’s my boat-puller. But +it’s to trouble he’ll come with Wolf Larsen, as the sparks fly upward. +It’s meself that knows. I can see it brewin’ an’ comin’ up like a storm +in the sky. I’ve talked to him like a brother, but it’s little he sees +in takin’ in his lights or flyin’ false signals. He grumbles out when +things don’t go to suit him, and there’ll be always some tell-tale +carryin’ word iv it aft to the Wolf. The Wolf is strong, and it’s the +way of a wolf to hate strength, an’ strength it is he’ll see in +Johnson—no knucklin’ under, and a ‘Yes, sir, thank ye kindly, sir,’ for a +curse or a blow. Oh, she’s a-comin’! She’s a-comin’! An’ God knows +where I’ll get another boat-puller! What does the fool up an’ say, when +the old man calls him Yonson, but ‘Me name is Johnson, sir,’ an’ then +spells it out, letter for letter. Ye should iv seen the old man’s face! +I thought he’d let drive at him on the spot. He didn’t, but he will, an’ +he’ll break that squarehead’s heart, or it’s little I know iv the ways iv +men on the ships iv the sea.” + +Thomas Mugridge is becoming unendurable. I am compelled to Mister him +and to Sir him with every speech. One reason for this is that Wolf +Larsen seems to have taken a fancy to him. It is an unprecedented thing, +I take it, for a captain to be chummy with the cook; but this is +certainly what Wolf Larsen is doing. Two or three times he put his head +into the galley and chaffed Mugridge good-naturedly, and once, this +afternoon, he stood by the break of the poop and chatted with him for +fully fifteen minutes. When it was over, and Mugridge was back in the +galley, he became greasily radiant, and went about his work, humming +coster songs in a nerve-racking and discordant falsetto. + +“I always get along with the officers,” he remarked to me in a +confidential tone. “I know the w’y, I do, to myke myself uppreci-yted. +There was my last skipper—w’y I thought nothin’ of droppin’ down in the +cabin for a little chat and a friendly glass. ‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e to me, +‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e, ‘you’ve missed yer vokytion.’ ‘An’ ’ow’s that?’ sez +I. ‘Yer should ’a been born a gentleman, an’ never ’ad to work for yer +livin’.’ God strike me dead, ’Ump, if that ayn’t wot ’e sez, an’ me +a-sittin’ there in ’is own cabin, jolly-like an’ comfortable, a-smokin’ +’is cigars an’ drinkin’ ’is rum.” + +This chitter-chatter drove me to distraction. I never heard a voice I +hated so. His oily, insinuating tones, his greasy smile and his +monstrous self-conceit grated on my nerves till sometimes I was all in a +tremble. Positively, he was the most disgusting and loathsome person I +have ever met. The filth of his cooking was indescribable; and, as he +cooked everything that was eaten aboard, I was compelled to select what I +ate with great circumspection, choosing from the least dirty of his +concoctions. + +My hands bothered me a great deal, unused as they were to work. The +nails were discoloured and black, while the skin was already grained with +dirt which even a scrubbing-brush could not remove. Then blisters came, +in a painful and never-ending procession, and I had a great burn on my +forearm, acquired by losing my balance in a roll of the ship and pitching +against the galley stove. Nor was my knee any better. The swelling had +not gone down, and the cap was still up on edge. Hobbling about on it +from morning till night was not helping it any. What I needed was rest, +if it were ever to get well. + +Rest! I never before knew the meaning of the word. I had been resting +all my life and did not know it. But now, could I sit still for one +half-hour and do nothing, not even think, it would be the most +pleasurable thing in the world. But it is a revelation, on the other +hand. I shall be able to appreciate the lives of the working people +hereafter. I did not dream that work was so terrible a thing. From +half-past five in the morning till ten o’clock at night I am everybody’s +slave, with not one moment to myself, except such as I can steal near the +end of the second dog-watch. Let me pause for a minute to look out over +the sea sparkling in the sun, or to gaze at a sailor going aloft to the +gaff-topsails, or running out the bowsprit, and I am sure to hear the +hateful voice, “’Ere, you, ’Ump, no sodgerin’. I’ve got my peepers on +yer.” + +There are signs of rampant bad temper in the steerage, and the gossip is +going around that Smoke and Henderson have had a fight. Henderson seems +the best of the hunters, a slow-going fellow, and hard to rouse; but +roused he must have been, for Smoke had a bruised and discoloured eye, +and looked particularly vicious when he came into the cabin for supper. + +A cruel thing happened just before supper, indicative of the callousness +and brutishness of these men. There is one green hand in the crew, +Harrison by name, a clumsy-looking country boy, mastered, I imagine, by +the spirit of adventure, and making his first voyage. In the light +baffling airs the schooner had been tacking about a great deal, at which +times the sails pass from one side to the other and a man is sent aloft +to shift over the fore-gaff-topsail. In some way, when Harrison was +aloft, the sheet jammed in the block through which it runs at the end of +the gaff. As I understood it, there were two ways of getting it +cleared,—first, by lowering the foresail, which was comparatively easy +and without danger; and second, by climbing out the peak-halyards to the +end of the gaff itself, an exceedingly hazardous performance. + +Johansen called out to Harrison to go out the halyards. It was patent to +everybody that the boy was afraid. And well he might be, eighty feet +above the deck, to trust himself on those thin and jerking ropes. Had +there been a steady breeze it would not have been so bad, but the _Ghost_ +was rolling emptily in a long sea, and with each roll the canvas flapped +and boomed and the halyards slacked and jerked taut. They were capable +of snapping a man off like a fly from a whip-lash. + +Harrison heard the order and understood what was demanded of him, but +hesitated. It was probably the first time he had been aloft in his life. +Johansen, who had caught the contagion of Wolf Larsen’s masterfulness, +burst out with a volley of abuse and curses. + +“That’ll do, Johansen,” Wolf Larsen said brusquely. “I’ll have you know +that I do the swearing on this ship. If I need your assistance, I’ll +call you in.” + +“Yes, sir,” the mate acknowledged submissively. + +In the meantime Harrison had started out on the halyards. I was looking +up from the galley door, and I could see him trembling, as if with ague, +in every limb. He proceeded very slowly and cautiously, an inch at a +time. Outlined against the clear blue of the sky, he had the appearance +of an enormous spider crawling along the tracery of its web. + +It was a slight uphill climb, for the foresail peaked high; and the +halyards, running through various blocks on the gaff and mast, gave him +separate holds for hands and feet. But the trouble lay in that the wind +was not strong enough nor steady enough to keep the sail full. When he +was half-way out, the _Ghost_ took a long roll to windward and back again +into the hollow between two seas. Harrison ceased his progress and held +on tightly. Eighty feet beneath, I could see the agonized strain of his +muscles as he gripped for very life. The sail emptied and the gaff swung +amid-ships. The halyards slackened, and, though it all happened very +quickly, I could see them sag beneath the weight of his body. Then the +gaff swung to the side with an abrupt swiftness, the great sail boomed +like a cannon, and the three rows of reef-points slatted against the +canvas like a volley of rifles. Harrison, clinging on, made the giddy +rush through the air. This rush ceased abruptly. The halyards became +instantly taut. It was the snap of the whip. His clutch was broken. +One hand was torn loose from its hold. The other lingered desperately +for a moment, and followed. His body pitched out and down, but in some +way he managed to save himself with his legs. He was hanging by them, +head downward. A quick effort brought his hands up to the halyards +again; but he was a long time regaining his former position, where he +hung, a pitiable object. + +“I’ll bet he has no appetite for supper,” I heard Wolf Larsen’s voice, +which came to me from around the corner of the galley. “Stand from +under, you, Johansen! Watch out! Here she comes!” + +In truth, Harrison was very sick, as a person is sea-sick; and for a long +time he clung to his precarious perch without attempting to move. +Johansen, however, continued violently to urge him on to the completion +of his task. + +“It is a shame,” I heard Johnson growling in painfully slow and correct +English. He was standing by the main rigging, a few feet away from me. +“The boy is willing enough. He will learn if he has a chance. But this +is—” He paused awhile, for the word “murder” was his final judgment. + +“Hist, will ye!” Louis whispered to him, “For the love iv your mother +hold your mouth!” + +But Johnson, looking on, still continued his grumbling. + +“Look here,” the hunter Standish spoke to Wolf Larsen, “that’s my +boat-puller, and I don’t want to lose him.” + +“That’s all right, Standish,” was the reply. “He’s your boat-puller when +you’ve got him in the boat; but he’s my sailor when I have him aboard, +and I’ll do what I damn well please with him.” + +“But that’s no reason—” Standish began in a torrent of speech. + +“That’ll do, easy as she goes,” Wolf Larsen counselled back. “I’ve told +you what’s what, and let it stop at that. The man’s mine, and I’ll make +soup of him and eat it if I want to.” + +There was an angry gleam in the hunter’s eye, but he turned on his heel +and entered the steerage companion-way, where he remained, looking +upward. All hands were on deck now, and all eyes were aloft, where a +human life was at grapples with death. The callousness of these men, to +whom industrial organization gave control of the lives of other men, was +appalling. I, who had lived out of the whirl of the world, had never +dreamed that its work was carried on in such fashion. Life had always +seemed a peculiarly sacred thing, but here it counted for nothing, was a +cipher in the arithmetic of commerce. I must say, however, that the +sailors themselves were sympathetic, as instance the case of Johnson; but +the masters (the hunters and the captain) were heartlessly indifferent. +Even the protest of Standish arose out of the fact that he did not wish +to lose his boat-puller. Had it been some other hunter’s boat-puller, +he, like them, would have been no more than amused. + +But to return to Harrison. It took Johansen, insulting and reviling the +poor wretch, fully ten minutes to get him started again. A little later +he made the end of the gaff, where, astride the spar itself, he had a +better chance for holding on. He cleared the sheet, and was free to +return, slightly downhill now, along the halyards to the mast. But he +had lost his nerve. Unsafe as was his present position, he was loath to +forsake it for the more unsafe position on the halyards. + +He looked along the airy path he must traverse, and then down to the +deck. His eyes were wide and staring, and he was trembling violently. I +had never seen fear so strongly stamped upon a human face. Johansen +called vainly for him to come down. At any moment he was liable to be +snapped off the gaff, but he was helpless with fright. Wolf Larsen, +walking up and down with Smoke and in conversation, took no more notice +of him, though he cried sharply, once, to the man at the wheel: + +“You’re off your course, my man! Be careful, unless you’re looking for +trouble!” + +“Ay, ay, sir,” the helmsman responded, putting a couple of spokes down. + +He had been guilty of running the _Ghost_ several points off her course +in order that what little wind there was should fill the foresail and +hold it steady. He had striven to help the unfortunate Harrison at the +risk of incurring Wolf Larsen’s anger. + +The time went by, and the suspense, to me, was terrible. Thomas +Mugridge, on the other hand, considered it a laughable affair, and was +continually bobbing his head out the galley door to make jocose remarks. +How I hated him! And how my hatred for him grew and grew, during that +fearful time, to cyclopean dimensions. For the first time in my life I +experienced the desire to murder—“saw red,” as some of our picturesque +writers phrase it. Life in general might still be sacred, but life in +the particular case of Thomas Mugridge had become very profane indeed. I +was frightened when I became conscious that I was seeing red, and the +thought flashed through my mind: was I, too, becoming tainted by the +brutality of my environment?—I, who even in the most flagrant crimes had +denied the justice and righteousness of capital punishment? + +Fully half-an-hour went by, and then I saw Johnson and Louis in some sort +of altercation. It ended with Johnson flinging off Louis’s detaining arm +and starting forward. He crossed the deck, sprang into the fore rigging, +and began to climb. But the quick eye of Wolf Larsen caught him. + +“Here, you, what are you up to?” he cried. + +Johnson’s ascent was arrested. He looked his captain in the eyes and +replied slowly: + +“I am going to get that boy down.” + +“You’ll get down out of that rigging, and damn lively about it! D’ye +hear? Get down!” + +Johnson hesitated, but the long years of obedience to the masters of +ships overpowered him, and he dropped sullenly to the deck and went on +forward. + +At half after five I went below to set the cabin table, but I hardly knew +what I did, for my eyes and my brain were filled with the vision of a +man, white-faced and trembling, comically like a bug, clinging to the +thrashing gaff. At six o’clock, when I served supper, going on deck to +get the food from the galley, I saw Harrison, still in the same position. +The conversation at the table was of other things. Nobody seemed +interested in the wantonly imperilled life. But making an extra trip to +the galley a little later, I was gladdened by the sight of Harrison +staggering weakly from the rigging to the forecastle scuttle. He had +finally summoned the courage to descend. + +Before closing this incident, I must give a scrap of conversation I had +with Wolf Larsen in the cabin, while I was washing the dishes. + +“You were looking squeamish this afternoon,” he began. “What was the +matter?” + +I could see that he knew what had made me possibly as sick as Harrison, +that he was trying to draw me, and I answered, “It was because of the +brutal treatment of that boy.” + +He gave a short laugh. “Like sea-sickness, I suppose. Some men are +subject to it, and others are not.” + +“Not so,” I objected. + +“Just so,” he went on. “The earth is as full of brutality as the sea is +full of motion. And some men are made sick by the one, and some by the +other. That’s the only reason.” + +“But you, who make a mock of human life, don’t you place any value upon +it whatever?” I demanded. + +“Value? What value?” He looked at me, and though his eyes were steady +and motionless, there seemed a cynical smile in them. “What kind of +value? How do you measure it? Who values it?” + +“I do,” I made answer. + +“Then what is it worth to you? Another man’s life, I mean. Come now, +what is it worth?” + +The value of life? How could I put a tangible value upon it? Somehow, +I, who have always had expression, lacked expression when with Wolf +Larsen. I have since determined that a part of it was due to the man’s +personality, but that the greater part was due to his totally different +outlook. Unlike other materialists I had met and with whom I had +something in common to start on, I had nothing in common with him. +Perhaps, also, it was the elemental simplicity of his mind that baffled +me. He drove so directly to the core of the matter, divesting a question +always of all superfluous details, and with such an air of finality, that +I seemed to find myself struggling in deep water, with no footing under +me. Value of life? How could I answer the question on the spur of the +moment? The sacredness of life I had accepted as axiomatic. That it was +intrinsically valuable was a truism I had never questioned. But when he +challenged the truism I was speechless. + +“We were talking about this yesterday,” he said. “I held that life was a +ferment, a yeasty something which devoured life that it might live, and +that living was merely successful piggishness. Why, if there is anything +in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There is +only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is +demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the +fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. +In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but +find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the +unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and +populate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it +is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with +a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand +lives, and it’s life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life +is left.” + +“You have read Darwin,” I said. “But you read him misunderstandingly +when you conclude that the struggle for existence sanctions your wanton +destruction of life.” + +He shrugged his shoulders. “You know you only mean that in relation to +human life, for of the flesh and the fowl and the fish you destroy as +much as I or any other man. And human life is in no wise different, +though you feel it is and think that you reason why it is. Why should I +be parsimonious with this life which is cheap and without value? There +are more sailors than there are ships on the sea for them, more workers +than there are factories or machines for them. Why, you who live on the +land know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities and +loose famine and pestilence upon them, and that there still remain more +poor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a bit of meat (which +is life destroyed), than you know what to do with. Have you ever seen +the London dockers fighting like wild beasts for a chance to work?” + +He started for the companion stairs, but turned his head for a final +word. “Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon +itself? And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity +prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as +if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies. To +you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept +his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life +demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck +like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. He +was worth nothing to the world. The supply is too large. To himself +only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, +being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself. He alone rated +himself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread +out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he does +not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He does not lose +anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss. +Don’t you see? And what have you to say?” + +“That you are at least consistent,” was all I could say, and I went on +washing the dishes. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +At last, after three days of variable winds, we have caught the +north-east trades. I came on deck, after a good night’s rest in spite of +my poor knee, to find the _Ghost_ foaming along, wing-and-wing, and every +sail drawing except the jibs, with a fresh breeze astern. Oh, the wonder +of the great trade-wind! All day we sailed, and all night, and the next +day, and the next, day after day, the wind always astern and blowing +steadily and strong. The schooner sailed herself. There was no pulling +and hauling on sheets and tackles, no shifting of topsails, no work at +all for the sailors to do except to steer. At night when the sun went +down, the sheets were slackened; in the morning, when they yielded up the +damp of the dew and relaxed, they were pulled tight again—and that was +all. + +Ten knots, twelve knots, eleven knots, varying from time to time, is the +speed we are making. And ever out of the north-east the brave wind +blows, driving us on our course two hundred and fifty miles between the +dawns. It saddens me and gladdens me, the gait with which we are leaving +San Francisco behind and with which we are foaming down upon the tropics. +Each day grows perceptibly warmer. In the second dog-watch the sailors +come on deck, stripped, and heave buckets of water upon one another from +overside. Flying-fish are beginning to be seen, and during the night the +watch above scrambles over the deck in pursuit of those that fall aboard. +In the morning, Thomas Mugridge being duly bribed, the galley is +pleasantly areek with the odour of their frying; while dolphin meat is +served fore and aft on such occasions as Johnson catches the blazing +beauties from the bowsprit end. + +Johnson seems to spend all his spare time there or aloft at the +crosstrees, watching the _Ghost_ cleaving the water under press of sail. +There is passion, adoration, in his eyes, and he goes about in a sort of +trance, gazing in ecstasy at the swelling sails, the foaming wake, and +the heave and the run of her over the liquid mountains that are moving +with us in stately procession. + +The days and nights are “all a wonder and a wild delight,” and though I +have little time from my dreary work, I steal odd moments to gaze and +gaze at the unending glory of what I never dreamed the world possessed. +Above, the sky is stainless blue—blue as the sea itself, which under the +forefoot is of the colour and sheen of azure satin. All around the +horizon are pale, fleecy clouds, never changing, never moving, like a +silver setting for the flawless turquoise sky. + +I do not forget one night, when I should have been asleep, of lying on +the forecastle-head and gazing down at the spectral ripple of foam thrust +aside by the _Ghost’s_ forefoot. It sounded like the gurgling of a brook +over mossy stones in some quiet dell, and the crooning song of it lured +me away and out of myself till I was no longer Hump the cabin-boy, nor +Van Weyden, the man who had dreamed away thirty-five years among books. +But a voice behind me, the unmistakable voice of Wolf Larsen, strong with +the invincible certitude of the man and mellow with appreciation of the +words he was quoting, aroused me. + + “‘O the blazing tropic night, when the wake’s a welt of light + That holds the hot sky tame, + And the steady forefoot snores through the planet-powdered floors + Where the scared whale flukes in flame. + Her plates are scarred by the sun, dear lass, + And her ropes are taut with the dew, + For we’re booming down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, + We’re sagging south on the Long Trail—the trail that is always + new.’” + +“Eh, Hump? How’s it strike you?” he asked, after the due pause which +words and setting demanded. + +I looked into his face. It was aglow with light, as the sea itself, and +the eyes were flashing in the starshine. + +“It strikes me as remarkable, to say the least, that you should show +enthusiasm,” I answered coldly. + +“Why, man, it’s living! it’s life!” he cried. + +“Which is a cheap thing and without value.” I flung his words at him. + +He laughed, and it was the first time I had heard honest mirth in his +voice. + +“Ah, I cannot get you to understand, cannot drive it into your head, what +a thing this life is. Of course life is valueless, except to itself. +And I can tell you that my life is pretty valuable just now—to myself. +It is beyond price, which you will acknowledge is a terrific overrating, +but which I cannot help, for it is the life that is in me that makes the +rating.” + +He appeared waiting for the words with which to express the thought that +was in him, and finally went on. + +“Do you know, I am filled with a strange uplift; I feel as if all time +were echoing through me, as though all powers were mine. I know truth, +divine good from evil, right from wrong. My vision is clear and far. I +could almost believe in God. But,” and his voice changed and the light +went out of his face,—“what is this condition in which I find myself? +this joy of living? this exultation of life? this inspiration, I may well +call it? It is what comes when there is nothing wrong with one’s +digestion, when his stomach is in trim and his appetite has an edge, and +all goes well. It is the bribe for living, the champagne of the blood, +the effervescence of the ferment—that makes some men think holy thoughts, +and other men to see God or to create him when they cannot see him. That +is all, the drunkenness of life, the stirring and crawling of the yeast, +the babbling of the life that is insane with consciousness that it is +alive. And—bah! To-morrow I shall pay for it as the drunkard pays. And +I shall know that I must die, at sea most likely, cease crawling of +myself to be all a-crawl with the corruption of the sea; to be fed upon, +to be carrion, to yield up all the strength and movement of my muscles +that it may become strength and movement in fin and scale and the guts of +fishes. Bah! And bah! again. The champagne is already flat. The +sparkle and bubble has gone out and it is a tasteless drink.” + +He left me as suddenly as he had come, springing to the deck with the +weight and softness of a tiger. The _Ghost_ ploughed on her way. I +noted the gurgling forefoot was very like a snore, and as I listened to +it the effect of Wolf Larsen’s swift rush from sublime exultation to +despair slowly left me. Then some deep-water sailor, from the waist of +the ship, lifted a rich tenor voice in the “Song of the Trade Wind”: + + “Oh, I am the wind the seamen love— + I am steady, and strong, and true; + They follow my track by the clouds above, + O’er the fathomless tropic blue. + + * * * * * + + Through daylight and dark I follow the bark + I keep like a hound on her trail; + I’m strongest at noon, yet under the moon, + I stiffen the bunt of her sail.” + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Sometimes I think Wolf Larsen mad, or half-mad at least, what of his +strange moods and vagaries. At other times I take him for a great man, a +genius who has never arrived. And, finally, I am convinced that he is +the perfect type of the primitive man, born a thousand years or +generations too late and an anachronism in this culminating century of +civilization. He is certainly an individualist of the most pronounced +type. Not only that, but he is very lonely. There is no congeniality +between him and the rest of the men aboard ship. His tremendous virility +and mental strength wall him apart. They are more like children to him, +even the hunters, and as children he treats them, descending perforce to +their level and playing with them as a man plays with puppies. Or else +he probes them with the cruel hand of a vivisectionist, groping about in +their mental processes and examining their souls as though to see of what +soul-stuff is made. + +I have seen him a score of times, at table, insulting this hunter or +that, with cool and level eyes and, withal, a certain air of interest, +pondering their actions or replies or petty rages with a curiosity almost +laughable to me who stood onlooker and who understood. Concerning his +own rages, I am convinced that they are not real, that they are sometimes +experiments, but that in the main they are the habits of a pose or +attitude he has seen fit to take toward his fellow-men. I know, with the +possible exception of the incident of the dead mate, that I have not seen +him really angry; nor do I wish ever to see him in a genuine rage, when +all the force of him is called into play. + +While on the question of vagaries, I shall tell what befell Thomas +Mugridge in the cabin, and at the same time complete an incident upon +which I have already touched once or twice. The twelve o’clock dinner +was over, one day, and I had just finished putting the cabin in order, +when Wolf Larsen and Thomas Mugridge descended the companion stairs. +Though the cook had a cubby-hole of a state-room opening off from the +cabin, in the cabin itself he had never dared to linger or to be seen, +and he flitted to and fro, once or twice a day, a timid spectre. + +“So you know how to play ‘Nap,’” Wolf Larsen was saying in a pleased sort +of voice. “I might have guessed an Englishman would know. I learned it +myself in English ships.” + +Thomas Mugridge was beside himself, a blithering imbecile, so pleased was +he at chumming thus with the captain. The little airs he put on and the +painful striving to assume the easy carriage of a man born to a dignified +place in life would have been sickening had they not been ludicrous. He +quite ignored my presence, though I credited him with being simply unable +to see me. His pale, wishy-washy eyes were swimming like lazy summer +seas, though what blissful visions they beheld were beyond my +imagination. + +“Get the cards, Hump,” Wolf Larsen ordered, as they took seats at the +table. “And bring out the cigars and the whisky you’ll find in my +berth.” + +I returned with the articles in time to hear the Cockney hinting broadly +that there was a mystery about him, that he might be a gentleman’s son +gone wrong or something or other; also, that he was a remittance man and +was paid to keep away from England—“p’yed ’ansomely, sir,” was the way he +put it; “p’yed ’ansomely to sling my ’ook an’ keep slingin’ it.” + +I had brought the customary liquor glasses, but Wolf Larsen frowned, +shook his head, and signalled with his hands for me to bring the +tumblers. These he filled two-thirds full with undiluted whisky—“a +gentleman’s drink?” quoth Thomas Mugridge,—and they clinked their glasses +to the glorious game of “Nap,” lighted cigars, and fell to shuffling and +dealing the cards. + +They played for money. They increased the amounts of the bets. They +drank whisky, they drank it neat, and I fetched more. I do not know +whether Wolf Larsen cheated or not,—a thing he was thoroughly capable of +doing,—but he won steadily. The cook made repeated journeys to his bunk +for money. Each time he performed the journey with greater swagger, but +he never brought more than a few dollars at a time. He grew maudlin, +familiar, could hardly see the cards or sit upright. As a preliminary to +another journey to his bunk, he hooked Wolf Larsen’s buttonhole with a +greasy forefinger and vacuously proclaimed and reiterated, “I got money, +I got money, I tell yer, an’ I’m a gentleman’s son.” + +Wolf Larsen was unaffected by the drink, yet he drank glass for glass, +and if anything his glasses were fuller. There was no change in him. He +did not appear even amused at the other’s antics. + +In the end, with loud protestations that he could lose like a gentleman, +the cook’s last money was staked on the game—and lost. Whereupon he +leaned his head on his hands and wept. Wolf Larsen looked curiously at +him, as though about to probe and vivisect him, then changed his mind, as +from the foregone conclusion that there was nothing there to probe. + +“Hump,” he said to me, elaborately polite, “kindly take Mr. Mugridge’s +arm and help him up on deck. He is not feeling very well.” + +“And tell Johnson to douse him with a few buckets of salt water,” he +added, in a lower tone for my ear alone. + +I left Mr. Mugridge on deck, in the hands of a couple of grinning sailors +who had been told off for the purpose. Mr. Mugridge was sleepily +spluttering that he was a gentleman’s son. But as I descended the +companion stairs to clear the table I heard him shriek as the first +bucket of water struck him. + +Wolf Larsen was counting his winnings. + +“One hundred and eighty-five dollars even,” he said aloud. “Just as I +thought. The beggar came aboard without a cent.” + +“And what you have won is mine, sir,” I said boldly. + +He favoured me with a quizzical smile. “Hump, I have studied some +grammar in my time, and I think your tenses are tangled. ‘Was mine,’ you +should have said, not ’is mine.’” + +“It is a question, not of grammar, but of ethics,” I answered. + +It was possibly a minute before he spoke. + +“D’ye know, Hump,” he said, with a slow seriousness which had in it an +indefinable strain of sadness, “that this is the first time I have heard +the word ‘ethics’ in the mouth of a man. You and I are the only men on +this ship who know its meaning.” + +“At one time in my life,” he continued, after another pause, “I dreamed +that I might some day talk with men who used such language, that I might +lift myself out of the place in life in which I had been born, and hold +conversation and mingle with men who talked about just such things as +ethics. And this is the first time I have ever heard the word +pronounced. Which is all by the way, for you are wrong. It is a +question neither of grammar nor ethics, but of fact.” + +“I understand,” I said. “The fact is that you have the money.” + +His face brightened. He seemed pleased at my perspicacity. “But it is +avoiding the real question,” I continued, “which is one of right.” + +“Ah,” he remarked, with a wry pucker of his mouth, “I see you still +believe in such things as right and wrong.” + +“But don’t you?—at all?” I demanded. + +“Not the least bit. Might is right, and that is all there is to it. +Weakness is wrong. Which is a very poor way of saying that it is good +for oneself to be strong, and evil for oneself to be weak—or better yet, +it is pleasurable to be strong, because of the profits; painful to be +weak, because of the penalties. Just now the possession of this money is +a pleasurable thing. It is good for one to possess it. Being able to +possess it, I wrong myself and the life that is in me if I give it to you +and forego the pleasure of possessing it.” + +“But you wrong me by withholding it,” I objected. + +“Not at all. One man cannot wrong another man. He can only wrong +himself. As I see it, I do wrong always when I consider the interests of +others. Don’t you see? How can two particles of the yeast wrong each +other by striving to devour each other? It is their inborn heritage to +strive to devour, and to strive not to be devoured. When they depart +from this they sin.” + +“Then you don’t believe in altruism?” I asked. + +He received the word as if it had a familiar ring, though he pondered it +thoughtfully. “Let me see, it means something about coöperation, doesn’t +it?” + +“Well, in a way there has come to be a sort of connection,” I answered +unsurprised by this time at such gaps in his vocabulary, which, like his +knowledge, was the acquirement of a self-read, self-educated man, whom no +one had directed in his studies, and who had thought much and talked +little or not at all. “An altruistic act is an act performed for the +welfare of others. It is unselfish, as opposed to an act performed for +self, which is selfish.” + +He nodded his head. “Oh, yes, I remember it now. I ran across it in +Spencer.” + +“Spencer!” I cried. “Have you read him?” + +“Not very much,” was his confession. “I understood quite a good deal of +_First Principles_, but his _Biology_ took the wind out of my sails, and +his _Psychology_ left me butting around in the doldrums for many a day. +I honestly could not understand what he was driving at. I put it down to +mental deficiency on my part, but since then I have decided that it was +for want of preparation. I had no proper basis. Only Spencer and myself +know how hard I hammered. But I did get something out of his _Data of +Ethics_. There’s where I ran across ‘altruism,’ and I remember now how +it was used.” + +I wondered what this man could have got from such a work. Spencer I +remembered enough to know that altruism was imperative to his ideal of +highest conduct. Wolf Larsen, evidently, had sifted the great +philosopher’s teachings, rejecting and selecting according to his needs +and desires. + +“What else did you run across?” I asked. + +His brows drew in slightly with the mental effort of suitably phrasing +thoughts which he had never before put into speech. I felt an elation of +spirit. I was groping into his soul-stuff as he made a practice of +groping in the soul-stuff of others. I was exploring virgin territory. +A strange, a terribly strange, region was unrolling itself before my +eyes. + +“In as few words as possible,” he began, “Spencer puts it something like +this: First, a man must act for his own benefit—to do this is to be moral +and good. Next, he must act for the benefit of his children. And third, +he must act for the benefit of his race.” + +“And the highest, finest, right conduct,” I interjected, “is that act +which benefits at the same time the man, his children, and his race.” + +“I wouldn’t stand for that,” he replied. “Couldn’t see the necessity for +it, nor the common sense. I cut out the race and the children. I would +sacrifice nothing for them. It’s just so much slush and sentiment, and +you must see it yourself, at least for one who does not believe in +eternal life. With immortality before me, altruism would be a paying +business proposition. I might elevate my soul to all kinds of altitudes. +But with nothing eternal before me but death, given for a brief spell +this yeasty crawling and squirming which is called life, why, it would be +immoral for me to perform any act that was a sacrifice. Any sacrifice +that makes me lose one crawl or squirm is foolish,—and not only foolish, +for it is a wrong against myself and a wicked thing. I must not lose one +crawl or squirm if I am to get the most out of the ferment. Nor will the +eternal movelessness that is coming to me be made easier or harder by the +sacrifices or selfishnesses of the time when I was yeasty and acrawl.” + +“Then you are an individualist, a materialist, and, logically, a +hedonist.” + +“Big words,” he smiled. “But what is a hedonist?” + +He nodded agreement when I had given the definition. “And you are also,” +I continued, “a man one could not trust in the least thing where it was +possible for a selfish interest to intervene?” + +“Now you’re beginning to understand,” he said, brightening. + +“You are a man utterly without what the world calls morals?” + +“That’s it.” + +“A man of whom to be always afraid—” + +“That’s the way to put it.” + +“As one is afraid of a snake, or a tiger, or a shark?” + +“Now you know me,” he said. “And you know me as I am generally known. +Other men call me ‘Wolf.’” + +“You are a sort of monster,” I added audaciously, “a Caliban who has +pondered Setebos, and who acts as you act, in idle moments, by whim and +fancy.” + +His brow clouded at the allusion. He did not understand, and I quickly +learned that he did not know the poem. + +“I’m just reading Browning,” he confessed, “and it’s pretty tough. I +haven’t got very far along, and as it is I’ve about lost my bearings.” + +Not to be tiresome, I shall say that I fetched the book from his +state-room and read “Caliban” aloud. He was delighted. It was a +primitive mode of reasoning and of looking at things that he understood +thoroughly. He interrupted again and again with comment and criticism. +When I finished, he had me read it over a second time, and a third. We +fell into discussion—philosophy, science, evolution, religion. He +betrayed the inaccuracies of the self-read man, and, it must be granted, +the sureness and directness of the primitive mind. The very simplicity +of his reasoning was its strength, and his materialism was far more +compelling than the subtly complex materialism of Charley Furuseth. Not +that I—a confirmed and, as Furuseth phrased it, a temperamental +idealist—was to be compelled; but that Wolf Larsen stormed the last +strongholds of my faith with a vigour that received respect, while not +accorded conviction. + +Time passed. Supper was at hand and the table not laid. I became +restless and anxious, and when Thomas Mugridge glared down the +companion-way, sick and angry of countenance, I prepared to go about my +duties. But Wolf Larsen cried out to him: + +“Cooky, you’ve got to hustle to-night. I’m busy with Hump, and you’ll do +the best you can without him.” + +And again the unprecedented was established. That night I sat at table +with the captain and the hunters, while Thomas Mugridge waited on us and +washed the dishes afterward—a whim, a Caliban-mood of Wolf Larsen’s, and +one I foresaw would bring me trouble. In the meantime we talked and +talked, much to the disgust of the hunters, who could not understand a +word. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Three days of rest, three blessed days of rest, are what I had with Wolf +Larsen, eating at the cabin table and doing nothing but discuss life, +literature, and the universe, the while Thomas Mugridge fumed and raged +and did my work as well as his own. + +“Watch out for squalls, is all I can say to you,” was Louis’s warning, +given during a spare half-hour on deck while Wolf Larsen was engaged in +straightening out a row among the hunters. + +“Ye can’t tell what’ll be happenin’,” Louis went on, in response to my +query for more definite information. “The man’s as contrary as air +currents or water currents. You can never guess the ways iv him. ’Tis +just as you’re thinkin’ you know him and are makin’ a favourable slant +along him, that he whirls around, dead ahead and comes howlin’ down upon +you and a-rippin’ all iv your fine-weather sails to rags.” + +So I was not altogether surprised when the squall foretold by Louis smote +me. We had been having a heated discussion,—upon life, of course,—and, +grown over-bold, I was passing stiff strictures upon Wolf Larsen and the +life of Wolf Larsen. In fact, I was vivisecting him and turning over his +soul-stuff as keenly and thoroughly as it was his custom to do it to +others. It may be a weakness of mine that I have an incisive way of +speech; but I threw all restraint to the winds and cut and slashed until +the whole man of him was snarling. The dark sun-bronze of his face went +black with wrath, his eyes were ablaze. There was no clearness or sanity +in them—nothing but the terrific rage of a madman. It was the wolf in +him that I saw, and a mad wolf at that. + +He sprang for me with a half-roar, gripping my arm. I had steeled myself +to brazen it out, though I was trembling inwardly; but the enormous +strength of the man was too much for my fortitude. He had gripped me by +the biceps with his single hand, and when that grip tightened I wilted +and shrieked aloud. My feet went out from under me. I simply could not +stand upright and endure the agony. The muscles refused their duty. The +pain was too great. My biceps was being crushed to a pulp. + +He seemed to recover himself, for a lucid gleam came into his eyes, and +he relaxed his hold with a short laugh that was more like a growl. I +fell to the floor, feeling very faint, while he sat down, lighted a +cigar, and watched me as a cat watches a mouse. As I writhed about I +could see in his eyes that curiosity I had so often noted, that wonder +and perplexity, that questing, that everlasting query of his as to what +it was all about. + +I finally crawled to my feet and ascended the companion stairs. Fair +weather was over, and there was nothing left but to return to the galley. +My left arm was numb, as though paralysed, and days passed before I could +use it, while weeks went by before the last stiffness and pain went out +of it. And he had done nothing but put his hand upon my arm and squeeze. +There had been no wrenching or jerking. He had just closed his hand with +a steady pressure. What he might have done I did not fully realize till +next day, when he put his head into the galley, and, as a sign of renewed +friendliness, asked me how my arm was getting on. + +“It might have been worse,” he smiled. + +I was peeling potatoes. He picked one up from the pan. It was +fair-sized, firm, and unpeeled. He closed his hand upon it, squeezed, +and the potato squirted out between his fingers in mushy streams. The +pulpy remnant he dropped back into the pan and turned away, and I had a +sharp vision of how it might have fared with me had the monster put his +real strength upon me. + +But the three days’ rest was good in spite of it all, for it had given my +knee the very chance it needed. It felt much better, the swelling had +materially decreased, and the cap seemed descending into its proper +place. Also, the three days’ rest brought the trouble I had foreseen. +It was plainly Thomas Mugridge’s intention to make me pay for those three +days. He treated me vilely, cursed me continually, and heaped his own +work upon me. He even ventured to raise his fist to me, but I was +becoming animal-like myself, and I snarled in his face so terribly that +it must have frightened him back. It is no pleasant picture I can +conjure up of myself, Humphrey Van Weyden, in that noisome ship’s galley, +crouched in a corner over my task, my face raised to the face of the +creature about to strike me, my lips lifted and snarling like a dog’s, my +eyes gleaming with fear and helplessness and the courage that comes of +fear and helplessness. I do not like the picture. It reminds me too +strongly of a rat in a trap. I do not care to think of it; but it was +effective, for the threatened blow did not descend. + +Thomas Mugridge backed away, glaring as hatefully and viciously as I +glared. A pair of beasts is what we were, penned together and showing +our teeth. He was a coward, afraid to strike me because I had not +quailed sufficiently in advance; so he chose a new way to intimidate me. +There was only one galley knife that, as a knife, amounted to anything. +This, through many years of service and wear, had acquired a long, lean +blade. It was unusually cruel-looking, and at first I had shuddered +every time I used it. The cook borrowed a stone from Johansen and +proceeded to sharpen the knife. He did it with great ostentation, +glancing significantly at me the while. He whetted it up and down all +day long. Every odd moment he could find he had the knife and stone out +and was whetting away. The steel acquired a razor edge. He tried it +with the ball of his thumb or across the nail. He shaved hairs from the +back of his hand, glanced along the edge with microscopic acuteness, and +found, or feigned that he found, always, a slight inequality in its edge +somewhere. Then he would put it on the stone again and whet, whet, whet, +till I could have laughed aloud, it was so very ludicrous. + +It was also serious, for I learned that he was capable of using it, that +under all his cowardice there was a courage of cowardice, like mine, that +would impel him to do the very thing his whole nature protested against +doing and was afraid of doing. “Cooky’s sharpening his knife for Hump,” +was being whispered about among the sailors, and some of them twitted him +about it. This he took in good part, and was really pleased, nodding his +head with direful foreknowledge and mystery, until George Leach, the +erstwhile cabin-boy, ventured some rough pleasantry on the subject. + +Now it happened that Leach was one of the sailors told off to douse +Mugridge after his game of cards with the captain. Leach had evidently +done his task with a thoroughness that Mugridge had not forgiven, for +words followed and evil names involving smirched ancestries. Mugridge +menaced with the knife he was sharpening for me. Leach laughed and +hurled more of his Telegraph Hill Billingsgate, and before either he or I +knew what had happened, his right arm had been ripped open from elbow to +wrist by a quick slash of the knife. The cook backed away, a fiendish +expression on his face, the knife held before him in a position of +defence. But Leach took it quite calmly, though blood was spouting upon +the deck as generously as water from a fountain. + +“I’m goin’ to get you, Cooky,” he said, “and I’ll get you hard. And I +won’t be in no hurry about it. You’ll be without that knife when I come +for you.” + +So saying, he turned and walked quietly forward. Mugridge’s face was +livid with fear at what he had done and at what he might expect sooner or +later from the man he had stabbed. But his demeanour toward me was more +ferocious than ever. In spite of his fear at the reckoning he must +expect to pay for what he had done, he could see that it had been an +object-lesson to me, and he became more domineering and exultant. Also +there was a lust in him, akin to madness, which had come with sight of +the blood he had drawn. He was beginning to see red in whatever +direction he looked. The psychology of it is sadly tangled, and yet I +could read the workings of his mind as clearly as though it were a +printed book. + +Several days went by, the _Ghost_ still foaming down the trades, and I +could swear I saw madness growing in Thomas Mugridge’s eyes. And I +confess that I became afraid, very much afraid. Whet, whet, whet, it +went all day long. The look in his eyes as he felt the keen edge and +glared at me was positively carnivorous. I was afraid to turn my +shoulder to him, and when I left the galley I went out backwards—to the +amusement of the sailors and hunters, who made a point of gathering in +groups to witness my exit. The strain was too great. I sometimes +thought my mind would give way under it—a meet thing on this ship of +madmen and brutes. Every hour, every minute of my existence was in +jeopardy. I was a human soul in distress, and yet no soul, fore or aft, +betrayed sufficient sympathy to come to my aid. At times I thought of +throwing myself on the mercy of Wolf Larsen, but the vision of the +mocking devil in his eyes that questioned life and sneered at it would +come strong upon me and compel me to refrain. At other times I seriously +contemplated suicide, and the whole force of my hopeful philosophy was +required to keep me from going over the side in the darkness of night. + +Several times Wolf Larsen tried to inveigle me into discussion, but I +gave him short answers and eluded him. Finally, he commanded me to +resume my seat at the cabin table for a time and let the cook do my work. +Then I spoke frankly, telling him what I was enduring from Thomas +Mugridge because of the three days of favouritism which had been shown +me. Wolf Larsen regarded me with smiling eyes. + +“So you’re afraid, eh?” he sneered. + +“Yes,” I said defiantly and honestly, “I am afraid.” + +“That’s the way with you fellows,” he cried, half angrily, +“sentimentalizing about your immortal souls and afraid to die. At sight +of a sharp knife and a cowardly Cockney the clinging of life to life +overcomes all your fond foolishness. Why, my dear fellow, you will live +for ever. You are a god, and God cannot be killed. Cooky cannot hurt +you. You are sure of your resurrection. What’s there to be afraid of? + +“You have eternal life before you. You are a millionaire in immortality, +and a millionaire whose fortune cannot be lost, whose fortune is less +perishable than the stars and as lasting as space or time. It is +impossible for you to diminish your principal. Immortality is a thing +without beginning or end. Eternity is eternity, and though you die here +and now you will go on living somewhere else and hereafter. And it is +all very beautiful, this shaking off of the flesh and soaring of the +imprisoned spirit. Cooky cannot hurt you. He can only give you a boost +on the path you eternally must tread. + +“Or, if you do not wish to be boosted just yet, why not boost Cooky? +According to your ideas, he, too, must be an immortal millionaire. You +cannot bankrupt him. His paper will always circulate at par. You cannot +diminish the length of his living by killing him, for he is without +beginning or end. He’s bound to go on living, somewhere, somehow. Then +boost him. Stick a knife in him and let his spirit free. As it is, it’s +in a nasty prison, and you’ll do him only a kindness by breaking down the +door. And who knows?—it may be a very beautiful spirit that will go +soaring up into the blue from that ugly carcass. Boost him along, and +I’ll promote you to his place, and he’s getting forty-five dollars a +month.” + +It was plain that I could look for no help or mercy from Wolf Larsen. +Whatever was to be done I must do for myself; and out of the courage of +fear I evolved the plan of fighting Thomas Mugridge with his own weapons. +I borrowed a whetstone from Johansen. Louis, the boat-steerer, had +already begged me for condensed milk and sugar. The lazarette, where +such delicacies were stored, was situated beneath the cabin floor. +Watching my chance, I stole five cans of the milk, and that night, when +it was Louis’s watch on deck, I traded them with him for a dirk as lean +and cruel-looking as Thomas Mugridge’s vegetable knife. It was rusty and +dull, but I turned the grindstone while Louis gave it an edge. I slept +more soundly than usual that night. + +Next morning, after breakfast, Thomas Mugridge began his whet, whet, +whet. I glanced warily at him, for I was on my knees taking the ashes +from the stove. When I returned from throwing them overside, he was +talking to Harrison, whose honest yokel’s face was filled with +fascination and wonder. + +“Yes,” Mugridge was saying, “an’ wot does ’is worship do but give me two +years in Reading. But blimey if I cared. The other mug was fixed +plenty. Should ’a seen ’im. Knife just like this. I stuck it in, like +into soft butter, an’ the w’y ’e squealed was better’n a tu-penny gaff.” +He shot a glance in my direction to see if I was taking it in, and went +on. “‘I didn’t mean it Tommy,’ ’e was snifflin’; ‘so ’elp me Gawd, I +didn’t mean it!’ ‘I’ll fix yer bloody well right,’ I sez, an’ kept right +after ’im. I cut ’im in ribbons, that’s wot I did, an’ ’e a-squealin’ +all the time. Once ’e got ’is ’and on the knife an’ tried to ’old it. +‘Ad ’is fingers around it, but I pulled it through, cuttin’ to the bone. +O, ’e was a sight, I can tell yer.” + +A call from the mate interrupted the gory narrative, and Harrison went +aft. Mugridge sat down on the raised threshold to the galley and went on +with his knife-sharpening. I put the shovel away and calmly sat down on +the coal-box facing him. He favoured me with a vicious stare. Still +calmly, though my heart was going pitapat, I pulled out Louis’s dirk and +began to whet it on the stone. I had looked for almost any sort of +explosion on the Cockney’s part, but to my surprise he did not appear +aware of what I was doing. He went on whetting his knife. So did I. +And for two hours we sat there, face to face, whet, whet, whet, till the +news of it spread abroad and half the ship’s company was crowding the +galley doors to see the sight. + +Encouragement and advice were freely tendered, and Jock Horner, the +quiet, self-spoken hunter who looked as though he would not harm a mouse, +advised me to leave the ribs alone and to thrust upward for the abdomen, +at the same time giving what he called the “Spanish twist” to the blade. +Leach, his bandaged arm prominently to the fore, begged me to leave a few +remnants of the cook for him; and Wolf Larsen paused once or twice at the +break of the poop to glance curiously at what must have been to him a +stirring and crawling of the yeasty thing he knew as life. + +And I make free to say that for the time being life assumed the same +sordid values to me. There was nothing pretty about it, nothing +divine—only two cowardly moving things that sat whetting steel upon +stone, and a group of other moving things, cowardly and otherwise, that +looked on. Half of them, I am sure, were anxious to see us shedding each +other’s blood. It would have been entertainment. And I do not think +there was one who would have interfered had we closed in a +death-struggle. + +On the other hand, the whole thing was laughable and childish. Whet, +whet, whet,—Humphrey Van Weyden sharpening his knife in a ship’s galley +and trying its edge with his thumb! Of all situations this was the most +inconceivable. I know that my own kind could not have believed it +possible. I had not been called “Sissy” Van Weyden all my days without +reason, and that “Sissy” Van Weyden should be capable of doing this thing +was a revelation to Humphrey Van Weyden, who knew not whether to be +exultant or ashamed. + +But nothing happened. At the end of two hours Thomas Mugridge put away +knife and stone and held out his hand. + +“Wot’s the good of mykin’ a ’oly show of ourselves for them mugs?” he +demanded. “They don’t love us, an’ bloody well glad they’d be a-seein’ +us cuttin’ our throats. Yer not ’arf bad, ’Ump! You’ve got spunk, as +you Yanks s’y, an’ I like yer in a w’y. So come on an’ shyke.” + +Coward that I might be, I was less a coward than he. It was a distinct +victory I had gained, and I refused to forego any of it by shaking his +detestable hand. + +“All right,” he said pridelessly, “tyke it or leave it, I’ll like yer +none the less for it.” And to save his face he turned fiercely upon the +onlookers. “Get outa my galley-doors, you bloomin’ swabs!” + +This command was reinforced by a steaming kettle of water, and at sight +of it the sailors scrambled out of the way. This was a sort of victory +for Thomas Mugridge, and enabled him to accept more gracefully the defeat +I had given him, though, of course, he was too discreet to attempt to +drive the hunters away. + +“I see Cooky’s finish,” I heard Smoke say to Horner. + +“You bet,” was the reply. “Hump runs the galley from now on, and Cooky +pulls in his horns.” + +Mugridge heard and shot a swift glance at me, but I gave no sign that the +conversation had reached me. I had not thought my victory was so +far-reaching and complete, but I resolved to let go nothing I had gained. +As the days went by, Smoke’s prophecy was verified. The Cockney became +more humble and slavish to me than even to Wolf Larsen. I mistered him +and sirred him no longer, washed no more greasy pots, and peeled no more +potatoes. I did my own work, and my own work only, and when and in what +fashion I saw fit. Also I carried the dirk in a sheath at my hip, +sailor-fashion, and maintained toward Thomas Mugridge a constant attitude +which was composed of equal parts of domineering, insult, and contempt. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +My intimacy with Wolf Larsen increases—if by intimacy may be denoted +those relations which exist between master and man, or, better yet, +between king and jester. I am to him no more than a toy, and he values +me no more than a child values a toy. My function is to amuse, and so +long as I amuse all goes well; but let him become bored, or let him have +one of his black moods come upon him, and at once I am relegated from +cabin table to galley, while, at the same time, I am fortunate to escape +with my life and a whole body. + +The loneliness of the man is slowly being borne in upon me. There is not +a man aboard but hates or fears him, nor is there a man whom he does not +despise. He seems consuming with the tremendous power that is in him and +that seems never to have found adequate expression in works. He is as +Lucifer would be, were that proud spirit banished to a society of +soulless, Tomlinsonian ghosts. + +This loneliness is bad enough in itself, but, to make it worse, he is +oppressed by the primal melancholy of the race. Knowing him, I review +the old Scandinavian myths with clearer understanding. The +white-skinned, fair-haired savages who created that terrible pantheon +were of the same fibre as he. The frivolity of the laughter-loving +Latins is no part of him. When he laughs it is from a humour that is +nothing else than ferocious. But he laughs rarely; he is too often sad. +And it is a sadness as deep-reaching as the roots of the race. It is the +race heritage, the sadness which has made the race sober-minded, +clean-lived and fanatically moral, and which, in this latter connection, +has culminated among the English in the Reformed Church and Mrs. Grundy. + +In point of fact, the chief vent to this primal melancholy has been +religion in its more agonizing forms. But the compensations of such +religion are denied Wolf Larsen. His brutal materialism will not permit +it. So, when his blue moods come on, nothing remains for him, but to be +devilish. Were he not so terrible a man, I could sometimes feel sorry +for him, as instance three mornings ago, when I went into his stateroom +to fill his water-bottle and came unexpectedly upon him. He did not see +me. His head was buried in his hands, and his shoulders were heaving +convulsively as with sobs. He seemed torn by some mighty grief. As I +softly withdrew I could hear him groaning, “God! God! God!” Not that +he was calling upon God; it was a mere expletive, but it came from his +soul. + +At dinner he asked the hunters for a remedy for headache, and by evening, +strong man that he was, he was half-blind and reeling about the cabin. + +“I’ve never been sick in my life, Hump,” he said, as I guided him to his +room. “Nor did I ever have a headache except the time my head was +healing after having been laid open for six inches by a capstan-bar.” + +For three days this blinding headache lasted, and he suffered as wild +animals suffer, as it seemed the way on ship to suffer, without plaint, +without sympathy, utterly alone. + +This morning, however, on entering his state-room to make the bed and put +things in order, I found him well and hard at work. Table and bunk were +littered with designs and calculations. On a large transparent sheet, +compass and square in hand, he was copying what appeared to be a scale of +some sort or other. + +“Hello, Hump,” he greeted me genially. “I’m just finishing the finishing +touches. Want to see it work?” + +“But what is it?” I asked. + +“A labour-saving device for mariners, navigation reduced to kindergarten +simplicity,” he answered gaily. “From to-day a child will be able to +navigate a ship. No more long-winded calculations. All you need is one +star in the sky on a dirty night to know instantly where you are. Look. +I place the transparent scale on this star-map, revolving the scale on +the North Pole. On the scale I’ve worked out the circles of altitude and +the lines of bearing. All I do is to put it on a star, revolve the scale +till it is opposite those figures on the map underneath, and presto! +there you are, the ship’s precise location!” + +There was a ring of triumph in his voice, and his eyes, clear blue this +morning as the sea, were sparkling with light. + +“You must be well up in mathematics,” I said. “Where did you go to +school?” + +“Never saw the inside of one, worse luck,” was the answer. “I had to dig +it out for myself.” + +“And why do you think I have made this thing?” he demanded, abruptly. +“Dreaming to leave footprints on the sands of time?” He laughed one of +his horrible mocking laughs. “Not at all. To get it patented, to make +money from it, to revel in piggishness with all night in while other men +do the work. That’s my purpose. Also, I have enjoyed working it out.” + +“The creative joy,” I murmured. + +“I guess that’s what it ought to be called. Which is another way of +expressing the joy of life in that it is alive, the triumph of movement +over matter, of the quick over the dead, the pride of the yeast because +it is yeast and crawls.” + +I threw up my hands with helpless disapproval of his inveterate +materialism and went about making the bed. He continued copying lines +and figures upon the transparent scale. It was a task requiring the +utmost nicety and precision, and I could not but admire the way he +tempered his strength to the fineness and delicacy of the need. + +When I had finished the bed, I caught myself looking at him in a +fascinated sort of way. He was certainly a handsome man—beautiful in the +masculine sense. And again, with never-failing wonder, I remarked the +total lack of viciousness, or wickedness, or sinfulness in his face. It +was the face, I am convinced, of a man who did no wrong. And by this I +do not wish to be misunderstood. What I mean is that it was the face of +a man who either did nothing contrary to the dictates of his conscience, +or who had no conscience. I am inclined to the latter way of accounting +for it. He was a magnificent atavism, a man so purely primitive that he +was of the type that came into the world before the development of the +moral nature. He was not immoral, but merely unmoral. + +As I have said, in the masculine sense his was a beautiful face. +Smooth-shaven, every line was distinct, and it was cut as clear and sharp +as a cameo; while sea and sun had tanned the naturally fair skin to a +dark bronze which bespoke struggle and battle and added both to his +savagery and his beauty. The lips were full, yet possessed of the +firmness, almost harshness, which is characteristic of thin lips. The +set of his mouth, his chin, his jaw, was likewise firm or harsh, with all +the fierceness and indomitableness of the male—the nose also. It was the +nose of a being born to conquer and command. It just hinted of the eagle +beak. It might have been Grecian, it might have been Roman, only it was +a shade too massive for the one, a shade too delicate for the other. And +while the whole face was the incarnation of fierceness and strength, the +primal melancholy from which he suffered seemed to greaten the lines of +mouth and eye and brow, seemed to give a largeness and completeness which +otherwise the face would have lacked. + +And so I caught myself standing idly and studying him. I cannot say how +greatly the man had come to interest me. Who was he? What was he? How +had he happened to be? All powers seemed his, all potentialities—why, +then, was he no more than the obscure master of a seal-hunting schooner +with a reputation for frightful brutality amongst the men who hunted +seals? + +My curiosity burst from me in a flood of speech. + +“Why is it that you have not done great things in this world? With the +power that is yours you might have risen to any height. Unpossessed of +conscience or moral instinct, you might have mastered the world, broken +it to your hand. And yet here you are, at the top of your life, where +diminishing and dying begin, living an obscure and sordid existence, +hunting sea animals for the satisfaction of woman’s vanity and love of +decoration, revelling in a piggishness, to use your own words, which is +anything and everything except splendid. Why, with all that wonderful +strength, have you not done something? There was nothing to stop you, +nothing that could stop you. What was wrong? Did you lack ambition? +Did you fall under temptation? What was the matter? What was the +matter?” + +He had lifted his eyes to me at the commencement of my outburst, and +followed me complacently until I had done and stood before him breathless +and dismayed. He waited a moment, as though seeking where to begin, and +then said: + +“Hump, do you know the parable of the sower who went forth to sow? If +you will remember, some of the seed fell upon stony places, where there +was not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up because they had no +deepness of earth. And when the sun was up they were scorched, and +because they had no root they withered away. And some fell among thorns, +and the thorns sprung up and choked them.” + +“Well?” I said. + +“Well?” he queried, half petulantly. “It was not well. I was one of +those seeds.” + +He dropped his head to the scale and resumed the copying. I finished my +work and had opened the door to leave, when he spoke to me. + +“Hump, if you will look on the west coast of the map of Norway you will +see an indentation called Romsdal Fiord. I was born within a hundred +miles of that stretch of water. But I was not born Norwegian. I am a +Dane. My father and mother were Danes, and how they ever came to that +bleak bight of land on the west coast I do not know. I never heard. +Outside of that there is nothing mysterious. They were poor people and +unlettered. They came of generations of poor unlettered people—peasants +of the sea who sowed their sons on the waves as has been their custom +since time began. There is no more to tell.” + +“But there is,” I objected. “It is still obscure to me.” + +“What can I tell you?” he demanded, with a recrudescence of fierceness. +“Of the meagreness of a child’s life? of fish diet and coarse living? of +going out with the boats from the time I could crawl? of my brothers, who +went away one by one to the deep-sea farming and never came back? of +myself, unable to read or write, cabin-boy at the mature age of ten on +the coastwise, old-country ships? of the rough fare and rougher usage, +where kicks and blows were bed and breakfast and took the place of +speech, and fear and hatred and pain were my only soul-experiences? I do +not care to remember. A madness comes up in my brain even now as I think +of it. But there were coastwise skippers I would have returned and +killed when a man’s strength came to me, only the lines of my life were +cast at the time in other places. I did return, not long ago, but +unfortunately the skippers were dead, all but one, a mate in the old +days, a skipper when I met him, and when I left him a cripple who would +never walk again.” + +“But you who read Spencer and Darwin and have never seen the inside of a +school, how did you learn to read and write?” I queried. + +“In the English merchant service. Cabin-boy at twelve, ship’s boy at +fourteen, ordinary seaman at sixteen, able seaman at seventeen, and cock +of the fo’c’sle, infinite ambition and infinite loneliness, receiving +neither help nor sympathy, I did it all for myself—navigation, +mathematics, science, literature, and what not. And of what use has it +been? Master and owner of a ship at the top of my life, as you say, when +I am beginning to diminish and die. Paltry, isn’t it? And when the sun +was up I was scorched, and because I had no root I withered away.” + +“But history tells of slaves who rose to the purple,” I chided. + +“And history tells of opportunities that came to the slaves who rose to +the purple,” he answered grimly. “No man makes opportunity. All the +great men ever did was to know it when it came to them. The Corsican +knew. I have dreamed as greatly as the Corsican. I should have known +the opportunity, but it never came. The thorns sprung up and choked me. +And, Hump, I can tell you that you know more about me than any living +man, except my own brother.” + +“And what is he? And where is he?” + +“Master of the steamship _Macedonia_, seal-hunter,” was the answer. “We +will meet him most probably on the Japan coast. Men call him ‘Death’ +Larsen.” + +“Death Larsen!” I involuntarily cried. “Is he like you?” + +“Hardly. He is a lump of an animal without any head. He has all my—my—” + +“Brutishness,” I suggested. + +“Yes,—thank you for the word,—all my brutishness, but he can scarcely +read or write.” + +“And he has never philosophized on life,” I added. + +“No,” Wolf Larsen answered, with an indescribable air of sadness. “And +he is all the happier for leaving life alone. He is too busy living it +to think about it. My mistake was in ever opening the books.” + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +The _Ghost_ has attained the southernmost point of the arc she is +describing across the Pacific, and is already beginning to edge away to +the west and north toward some lone island, it is rumoured, where she +will fill her water-casks before proceeding to the season’s hunt along +the coast of Japan. The hunters have experimented and practised with +their rifles and shotguns till they are satisfied, and the boat-pullers +and steerers have made their spritsails, bound the oars and rowlocks in +leather and sennit so that they will make no noise when creeping on the +seals, and put their boats in apple-pie order—to use Leach’s homely +phrase. + +His arm, by the way, has healed nicely, though the scar will remain all +his life. Thomas Mugridge lives in mortal fear of him, and is afraid to +venture on deck after dark. There are two or three standing quarrels in +the forecastle. Louis tells me that the gossip of the sailors finds its +way aft, and that two of the telltales have been badly beaten by their +mates. He shakes his head dubiously over the outlook for the man +Johnson, who is boat-puller in the same boat with him. Johnson has been +guilty of speaking his mind too freely, and has collided two or three +times with Wolf Larsen over the pronunciation of his name. Johansen he +thrashed on the amidships deck the other night, since which time the mate +has called him by his proper name. But of course it is out of the +question that Johnson should thrash Wolf Larsen. + +Louis has also given me additional information about Death Larsen, which +tallies with the captain’s brief description. We may expect to meet +Death Larsen on the Japan coast. “And look out for squalls,” is Louis’s +prophecy, “for they hate one another like the wolf whelps they are.” +Death Larsen is in command of the only sealing steamer in the fleet, the +_Macedonia_, which carries fourteen boats, whereas the rest of the +schooners carry only six. There is wild talk of cannon aboard, and of +strange raids and expeditions she may make, ranging from opium smuggling +into the States and arms smuggling into China, to blackbirding and open +piracy. Yet I cannot but believe for I have never yet caught him in a +lie, while he has a cyclopædic knowledge of sealing and the men of the +sealing fleets. + +As it is forward and in the galley, so it is in the steerage and aft, on +this veritable hell-ship. Men fight and struggle ferociously for one +another’s lives. The hunters are looking for a shooting scrape at any +moment between Smoke and Henderson, whose old quarrel has not healed, +while Wolf Larsen says positively that he will kill the survivor of the +affair, if such affair comes off. He frankly states that the position he +takes is based on no moral grounds, that all the hunters could kill and +eat one another so far as he is concerned, were it not that he needs them +alive for the hunting. If they will only hold their hands until the +season is over, he promises them a royal carnival, when all grudges can +be settled and the survivors may toss the non-survivors overboard and +arrange a story as to how the missing men were lost at sea. I think even +the hunters are appalled at his cold-bloodedness. Wicked men though they +be, they are certainly very much afraid of him. + +Thomas Mugridge is cur-like in his subjection to me, while I go about in +secret dread of him. His is the courage of fear,—a strange thing I know +well of myself,—and at any moment it may master the fear and impel him to +the taking of my life. My knee is much better, though it often aches for +long periods, and the stiffness is gradually leaving the arm which Wolf +Larsen squeezed. Otherwise I am in splendid condition, feel that I am in +splendid condition. My muscles are growing harder and increasing in +size. My hands, however, are a spectacle for grief. They have a +parboiled appearance, are afflicted with hang-nails, while the nails are +broken and discoloured, and the edges of the quick seem to be assuming a +fungoid sort of growth. Also, I am suffering from boils, due to the +diet, most likely, for I was never afflicted in this manner before. + +I was amused, a couple of evenings back, by seeing Wolf Larsen reading +the Bible, a copy of which, after the futile search for one at the +beginning of the voyage, had been found in the dead mate’s sea-chest. I +wondered what Wolf Larsen could get from it, and he read aloud to me from +Ecclesiastes. I could imagine he was speaking the thoughts of his own +mind as he read to me, and his voice, reverberating deeply and mournfully +in the confined cabin, charmed and held me. He may be uneducated, but he +certainly knows how to express the significance of the written word. I +can hear him now, as I shall always hear him, the primal melancholy +vibrant in his voice as he read: + + “I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of + kings and of the provinces; I gat me men singers and women singers, + and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that + of all sorts. + + “So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in + Jerusalem; also my wisdom returned with me. + + “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought and on the + labour that I had laboured to do; and behold, all was vanity and + vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. + + “All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous + and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; + to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the + good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an + oath. + + “This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that + there is one event unto all; yea, also the heart of the sons of men + is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and + after that they go to the dead. + + “For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope; for a + living dog is better than a dead lion. + + “For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not + anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them + is forgotten. + + “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; + neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything that is + done under the sun.” + +“There you have it, Hump,” he said, closing the book upon his finger and +looking up at me. “The Preacher who was king over Israel in Jerusalem +thought as I think. You call me a pessimist. Is not this pessimism of +the blackest?—‘All is vanity and vexation of spirit,’ ‘There is no profit +under the sun,’ ‘There is one event unto all,’ to the fool and the wise, +the clean and the unclean, the sinner and the saint, and that event is +death, and an evil thing, he says. For the Preacher loved life, and did +not want to die, saying, ‘For a living dog is better than a dead lion.’ +He preferred the vanity and vexation to the silence and unmovableness of +the grave. And so I. To crawl is piggish; but to not crawl, to be as +the clod and rock, is loathsome to contemplate. It is loathsome to the +life that is in me, the very essence of which is movement, the power of +movement, and the consciousness of the power of movement. Life itself is +unsatisfaction, but to look ahead to death is greater unsatisfaction.” + +“You are worse off than Omar,” I said. “He, at least, after the +customary agonizing of youth, found content and made of his materialism a +joyous thing.” + +“Who was Omar?” Wolf Larsen asked, and I did no more work that day, nor +the next, nor the next. + +In his random reading he had never chanced upon the Rubáiyát, and it was +to him like a great find of treasure. Much I remembered, possibly +two-thirds of the quatrains, and I managed to piece out the remainder +without difficulty. We talked for hours over single stanzas, and I found +him reading into them a wail of regret and a rebellion which, for the +life of me, I could not discover myself. Possibly I recited with a +certain joyous lilt which was my own, for—his memory was good, and at a +second rendering, very often the first, he made a quatrain his own—he +recited the same lines and invested them with an unrest and passionate +revolt that was well-nigh convincing. + +I was interested as to which quatrain he would like best, and was not +surprised when he hit upon the one born of an instant’s irritability, and +quite at variance with the Persian’s complacent philosophy and genial +code of life: + + “What, without asking, hither hurried _Whence_? + And, without asking, _Whither_ hurried hence! + Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine + Must drown the memory of that insolence!” + +“Great!” Wolf Larsen cried. “Great! That’s the keynote. Insolence! He +could not have used a better word.” + +In vain I objected and denied. He deluged me, overwhelmed me with +argument. + +“It’s not the nature of life to be otherwise. Life, when it knows that +it must cease living, will always rebel. It cannot help itself. The +Preacher found life and the works of life all a vanity and vexation, an +evil thing; but death, the ceasing to be able to be vain and vexed, he +found an eviler thing. Through chapter after chapter he is worried by +the one event that cometh to all alike. So Omar, so I, so you, even you, +for you rebelled against dying when Cooky sharpened a knife for you. You +were afraid to die; the life that was in you, that composes you, that is +greater than you, did not want to die. You have talked of the instinct +of immortality. I talk of the instinct of life, which is to live, and +which, when death looms near and large, masters the instinct, so called, +of immortality. It mastered it in you (you cannot deny it), because a +crazy Cockney cook sharpened a knife. + +“You are afraid of him now. You are afraid of me. You cannot deny it. +If I should catch you by the throat, thus,”—his hand was about my throat +and my breath was shut off,—“and began to press the life out of you thus, +and thus, your instinct of immortality will go glimmering, and your +instinct of life, which is longing for life, will flutter up, and you +will struggle to save yourself. Eh? I see the fear of death in your +eyes. You beat the air with your arms. You exert all your puny strength +to struggle to live. Your hand is clutching my arm, lightly it feels as +a butterfly resting there. Your chest is heaving, your tongue +protruding, your skin turning dark, your eyes swimming. ‘To live! To +live! To live!’ you are crying; and you are crying to live here and now, +not hereafter. You doubt your immortality, eh? Ha! ha! You are not +sure of it. You won’t chance it. This life only you are certain is +real. Ah, it is growing dark and darker. It is the darkness of death, +the ceasing to be, the ceasing to feel, the ceasing to move, that is +gathering about you, descending upon you, rising around you. Your eyes +are becoming set. They are glazing. My voice sounds faint and far. You +cannot see my face. And still you struggle in my grip. You kick with +your legs. Your body draws itself up in knots like a snake’s. Your +chest heaves and strains. To live! To live! To live—” + +I heard no more. Consciousness was blotted out by the darkness he had so +graphically described, and when I came to myself I was lying on the floor +and he was smoking a cigar and regarding me thoughtfully with that old +familiar light of curiosity in his eyes. + +“Well, have I convinced you?” he demanded. “Here take a drink of this. +I want to ask you some questions.” + +I rolled my head negatively on the floor. “Your arguments are +too—er—forcible,” I managed to articulate, at cost of great pain to my +aching throat. + +“You’ll be all right in half-an-hour,” he assured me. “And I promise I +won’t use any more physical demonstrations. Get up now. You can sit on +a chair.” + +And, toy that I was of this monster, the discussion of Omar and the +Preacher was resumed. And half the night we sat up over it. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +The last twenty-four hours have witnessed a carnival of brutality. From +cabin to forecastle it seems to have broken out like a contagion. I +scarcely know where to begin. Wolf Larsen was really the cause of it. +The relations among the men, strained and made tense by feuds, quarrels +and grudges, were in a state of unstable equilibrium, and evil passions +flared up in flame like prairie-grass. + +Thomas Mugridge is a sneak, a spy, an informer. He has been attempting +to curry favour and reinstate himself in the good graces of the captain +by carrying tales of the men forward. He it was, I know, that carried +some of Johnson’s hasty talk to Wolf Larsen. Johnson, it seems, bought a +suit of oilskins from the slop-chest and found them to be of greatly +inferior quality. Nor was he slow in advertising the fact. The +slop-chest is a sort of miniature dry-goods store which is carried by all +sealing schooners and which is stocked with articles peculiar to the +needs of the sailors. Whatever a sailor purchases is taken from his +subsequent earnings on the sealing grounds; for, as it is with the +hunters so it is with the boat-pullers and steerers—in the place of wages +they receive a “lay,” a rate of so much per skin for every skin captured +in their particular boat. + +But of Johnson’s grumbling at the slop-chest I knew nothing, so that what +I witnessed came with a shock of sudden surprise. I had just finished +sweeping the cabin, and had been inveigled by Wolf Larsen into a +discussion of Hamlet, his favourite Shakespearian character, when +Johansen descended the companion stairs followed by Johnson. The +latter’s cap came off after the custom of the sea, and he stood +respectfully in the centre of the cabin, swaying heavily and uneasily to +the roll of the schooner and facing the captain. + +“Shut the doors and draw the slide,” Wolf Larsen said to me. + +As I obeyed I noticed an anxious light come into Johnson’s eyes, but I +did not dream of its cause. I did not dream of what was to occur until +it did occur, but he knew from the very first what was coming and awaited +it bravely. And in his action I found complete refutation of all Wolf +Larsen’s materialism. The sailor Johnson was swayed by idea, by +principle, and truth, and sincerity. He was right, he knew he was right, +and he was unafraid. He would die for the right if needs be, he would be +true to himself, sincere with his soul. And in this was portrayed the +victory of the spirit over the flesh, the indomitability and moral +grandeur of the soul that knows no restriction and rises above time and +space and matter with a surety and invincibleness born of nothing else +than eternity and immortality. + +But to return. I noticed the anxious light in Johnson’s eyes, but +mistook it for the native shyness and embarrassment of the man. The +mate, Johansen, stood away several feet to the side of him, and fully +three yards in front of him sat Wolf Larsen on one of the pivotal cabin +chairs. An appreciable pause fell after I had closed the doors and drawn +the slide, a pause that must have lasted fully a minute. It was broken +by Wolf Larsen. + +“Yonson,” he began. + +“My name is Johnson, sir,” the sailor boldly corrected. + +“Well, Johnson, then, damn you! Can you guess why I have sent for you?” + +“Yes, and no, sir,” was the slow reply. “My work is done well. The mate +knows that, and you know it, sir. So there cannot be any complaint.” + +“And is that all?” Wolf Larsen queried, his voice soft, and low, and +purring. + +“I know you have it in for me,” Johnson continued with his unalterable +and ponderous slowness. “You do not like me. You—you—” + +“Go on,” Wolf Larsen prompted. “Don’t be afraid of my feelings.” + +“I am not afraid,” the sailor retorted, a slight angry flush rising +through his sunburn. “If I speak not fast, it is because I have not been +from the old country as long as you. You do not like me because I am too +much of a man; that is why, sir.” + +“You are too much of a man for ship discipline, if that is what you mean, +and if you know what I mean,” was Wolf Larsen’s retort. + +“I know English, and I know what you mean, sir,” Johnson answered, his +flush deepening at the slur on his knowledge of the English language. + +“Johnson,” Wolf Larsen said, with an air of dismissing all that had gone +before as introductory to the main business in hand, “I understand you’re +not quite satisfied with those oilskins?” + +“No, I am not. They are no good, sir.” + +“And you’ve been shooting off your mouth about them.” + +“I say what I think, sir,” the sailor answered courageously, not failing +at the same time in ship courtesy, which demanded that “sir” be appended +to each speech he made. + +It was at this moment that I chanced to glance at Johansen. His big +fists were clenching and unclenching, and his face was positively +fiendish, so malignantly did he look at Johnson. I noticed a black +discoloration, still faintly visible, under Johansen’s eye, a mark of the +thrashing he had received a few nights before from the sailor. For the +first time I began to divine that something terrible was about to be +enacted,—what, I could not imagine. + +“Do you know what happens to men who say what you’ve said about my +slop-chest and me?” Wolf Larsen was demanding. + +“I know, sir,” was the answer. + +“What?” Wolf Larsen demanded, sharply and imperatively. + +“What you and the mate there are going to do to me, sir.” + +“Look at him, Hump,” Wolf Larsen said to me, “look at this bit of +animated dust, this aggregation of matter that moves and breathes and +defies me and thoroughly believes itself to be compounded of something +good; that is impressed with certain human fictions such as righteousness +and honesty, and that will live up to them in spite of all personal +discomforts and menaces. What do you think of him, Hump? What do you +think of him?” + +“I think that he is a better man than you are,” I answered, impelled, +somehow, with a desire to draw upon myself a portion of the wrath I felt +was about to break upon his head. “His human fictions, as you choose to +call them, make for nobility and manhood. You have no fictions, no +dreams, no ideals. You are a pauper.” + +He nodded his head with a savage pleasantness. “Quite true, Hump, quite +true. I have no fictions that make for nobility and manhood. A living +dog is better than a dead lion, say I with the Preacher. My only +doctrine is the doctrine of expediency, and it makes for surviving. This +bit of the ferment we call ‘Johnson,’ when he is no longer a bit of the +ferment, only dust and ashes, will have no more nobility than any dust +and ashes, while I shall still be alive and roaring.” + +“Do you know what I am going to do?” he questioned. + +I shook my head. + +“Well, I am going to exercise my prerogative of roaring and show you how +fares nobility. Watch me.” + +Three yards away from Johnson he was, and sitting down. Nine feet! And +yet he left the chair in full leap, without first gaining a standing +position. He left the chair, just as he sat in it, squarely, springing +from the sitting posture like a wild animal, a tiger, and like a tiger +covered the intervening space. It was an avalanche of fury that Johnson +strove vainly to fend off. He threw one arm down to protect the stomach, +the other arm up to protect the head; but Wolf Larsen’s fist drove midway +between, on the chest, with a crushing, resounding impact. Johnson’s +breath, suddenly expelled, shot from his mouth and as suddenly checked, +with the forced, audible expiration of a man wielding an axe. He almost +fell backward, and swayed from side to side in an effort to recover his +balance. + +I cannot give the further particulars of the horrible scene that +followed. It was too revolting. It turns me sick even now when I think +of it. Johnson fought bravely enough, but he was no match for Wolf +Larsen, much less for Wolf Larsen and the mate. It was frightful. I had +not imagined a human being could endure so much and still live and +struggle on. And struggle on Johnson did. Of course there was no hope +for him, not the slightest, and he knew it as well as I, but by the +manhood that was in him he could not cease from fighting for that +manhood. + +It was too much for me to witness. I felt that I should lose my mind, +and I ran up the companion stairs to open the doors and escape on deck. +But Wolf Larsen, leaving his victim for the moment, and with one of his +tremendous springs, gained my side and flung me into the far corner of +the cabin. + +“The phenomena of life, Hump,” he girded at me. “Stay and watch it. You +may gather data on the immortality of the soul. Besides, you know, we +can’t hurt Johnson’s soul. It’s only the fleeting form we may demolish.” + +It seemed centuries—possibly it was no more than ten minutes that the +beating continued. Wolf Larsen and Johansen were all about the poor +fellow. They struck him with their fists, kicked him with their heavy +shoes, knocked him down, and dragged him to his feet to knock him down +again. His eyes were blinded so that he could not see, and the blood +running from ears and nose and mouth turned the cabin into a shambles. +And when he could no longer rise they still continued to beat and kick +him where he lay. + +“Easy, Johansen; easy as she goes,” Wolf Larsen finally said. + +But the beast in the mate was up and rampant, and Wolf Larsen was +compelled to brush him away with a back-handed sweep of the arm, gentle +enough, apparently, but which hurled Johansen back like a cork, driving +his head against the wall with a crash. He fell to the floor, half +stunned for the moment, breathing heavily and blinking his eyes in a +stupid sort of way. + +“Jerk open the doors, Hump,” I was commanded. + +I obeyed, and the two brutes picked up the senseless man like a sack of +rubbish and hove him clear up the companion stairs, through the narrow +doorway, and out on deck. The blood from his nose gushed in a scarlet +stream over the feet of the helmsman, who was none other than Louis, his +boat-mate. But Louis took and gave a spoke and gazed imperturbably into +the binnacle. + +Not so was the conduct of George Leach, the erstwhile cabin-boy. Fore +and aft there was nothing that could have surprised us more than his +consequent behaviour. He it was that came up on the poop without orders +and dragged Johnson forward, where he set about dressing his wounds as +well as he could and making him comfortable. Johnson, as Johnson, was +unrecognizable; and not only that, for his features, as human features at +all, were unrecognizable, so discoloured and swollen had they become in +the few minutes which had elapsed between the beginning of the beating +and the dragging forward of the body. + +But of Leach’s behaviour—By the time I had finished cleansing the cabin +he had taken care of Johnson. I had come up on deck for a breath of +fresh air and to try to get some repose for my overwrought nerves. Wolf +Larsen was smoking a cigar and examining the patent log which the _Ghost_ +usually towed astern, but which had been hauled in for some purpose. +Suddenly Leach’s voice came to my ears. It was tense and hoarse with an +overmastering rage. I turned and saw him standing just beneath the break +of the poop on the port side of the galley. His face was convulsed and +white, his eyes were flashing, his clenched fists raised overhead. + +“May God damn your soul to hell, Wolf Larsen, only hell’s too good for +you, you coward, you murderer, you pig!” was his opening salutation. + +I was thunderstruck. I looked for his instant annihilation. But it was +not Wolf Larsen’s whim to annihilate him. He sauntered slowly forward to +the break of the poop, and, leaning his elbow on the corner of the cabin, +gazed down thoughtfully and curiously at the excited boy. + +And the boy indicted Wolf Larsen as he had never been indicted before. +The sailors assembled in a fearful group just outside the forecastle +scuttle and watched and listened. The hunters piled pell-mell out of the +steerage, but as Leach’s tirade continued I saw that there was no levity +in their faces. Even they were frightened, not at the boy’s terrible +words, but at his terrible audacity. It did not seem possible that any +living creature could thus beard Wolf Larsen in his teeth. I know for +myself that I was shocked into admiration of the boy, and I saw in him +the splendid invincibleness of immortality rising above the flesh and the +fears of the flesh, as in the prophets of old, to condemn +unrighteousness. + +And such condemnation! He haled forth Wolf Larsen’s soul naked to the +scorn of men. He rained upon it curses from God and High Heaven, and +withered it with a heat of invective that savoured of a mediæval +excommunication of the Catholic Church. He ran the gamut of +denunciation, rising to heights of wrath that were sublime and almost +Godlike, and from sheer exhaustion sinking to the vilest and most +indecent abuse. + +His rage was a madness. His lips were flecked with a soapy froth, and +sometimes he choked and gurgled and became inarticulate. And through it +all, calm and impassive, leaning on his elbow and gazing down, Wolf +Larsen seemed lost in a great curiosity. This wild stirring of yeasty +life, this terrific revolt and defiance of matter that moved, perplexed +and interested him. + +Each moment I looked, and everybody looked, for him to leap upon the boy +and destroy him. But it was not his whim. His cigar went out, and he +continued to gaze silently and curiously. + +Leach had worked himself into an ecstasy of impotent rage. + +“Pig! Pig! Pig!” he was reiterating at the top of his lungs. “Why +don’t you come down and kill me, you murderer? You can do it! I ain’t +afraid! There’s no one to stop you! Damn sight better dead and outa +your reach than alive and in your clutches! Come on, you coward! Kill +me! Kill me! Kill me!” + +It was at this stage that Thomas Mugridge’s erratic soul brought him into +the scene. He had been listening at the galley door, but he now came +out, ostensibly to fling some scraps over the side, but obviously to see +the killing he was certain would take place. He smirked greasily up into +the face of Wolf Larsen, who seemed not to see him. But the Cockney was +unabashed, though mad, stark mad. He turned to Leach, saying: + +“Such langwidge! Shockin’!” + +Leach’s rage was no longer impotent. Here at last was something ready to +hand. And for the first time since the stabbing the Cockney had appeared +outside the galley without his knife. The words had barely left his +mouth when he was knocked down by Leach. Three times he struggled to his +feet, striving to gain the galley, and each time was knocked down. + +“Oh, Lord!” he cried. “’Elp! ’Elp! Tyke ’im aw’y, carn’t yer? Tyke +’im aw’y!” + +The hunters laughed from sheer relief. Tragedy had dwindled, the farce +had begun. The sailors now crowded boldly aft, grinning and shuffling, +to watch the pummelling of the hated Cockney. And even I felt a great +joy surge up within me. I confess that I delighted in this beating Leach +was giving to Thomas Mugridge, though it was as terrible, almost, as the +one Mugridge had caused to be given to Johnson. But the expression of +Wolf Larsen’s face never changed. He did not change his position either, +but continued to gaze down with a great curiosity. For all his pragmatic +certitude, it seemed as if he watched the play and movement of life in +the hope of discovering something more about it, of discerning in its +maddest writhings a something which had hitherto escaped him,—the key to +its mystery, as it were, which would make all clear and plain. + +But the beating! It was quite similar to the one I had witnessed in the +cabin. The Cockney strove in vain to protect himself from the infuriated +boy. And in vain he strove to gain the shelter of the cabin. He rolled +toward it, grovelled toward it, fell toward it when he was knocked down. +But blow followed blow with bewildering rapidity. He was knocked about +like a shuttlecock, until, finally, like Johnson, he was beaten and +kicked as he lay helpless on the deck. And no one interfered. Leach +could have killed him, but, having evidently filled the measure of his +vengeance, he drew away from his prostrate foe, who was whimpering and +wailing in a puppyish sort of way, and walked forward. + +But these two affairs were only the opening events of the day’s +programme. In the afternoon Smoke and Henderson fell foul of each other, +and a fusillade of shots came up from the steerage, followed by a +stampede of the other four hunters for the deck. A column of thick, +acrid smoke—the kind always made by black powder—was arising through the +open companion-way, and down through it leaped Wolf Larsen. The sound of +blows and scuffling came to our ears. Both men were wounded, and he was +thrashing them both for having disobeyed his orders and crippled +themselves in advance of the hunting season. In fact, they were badly +wounded, and, having thrashed them, he proceeded to operate upon them in +a rough surgical fashion and to dress their wounds. I served as +assistant while he probed and cleansed the passages made by the bullets, +and I saw the two men endure his crude surgery without anæsthetics and +with no more to uphold them than a stiff tumbler of whisky. + +Then, in the first dog-watch, trouble came to a head in the forecastle. +It took its rise out of the tittle-tattle and tale-bearing which had been +the cause of Johnson’s beating, and from the noise we heard, and from the +sight of the bruised men next day, it was patent that half the forecastle +had soundly drubbed the other half. + +The second dog-watch and the day were wound up by a fight between +Johansen and the lean, Yankee-looking hunter, Latimer. It was caused by +remarks of Latimer’s concerning the noises made by the mate in his sleep, +and though Johansen was whipped, he kept the steerage awake for the rest +of the night while he blissfully slumbered and fought the fight over and +over again. + +As for myself, I was oppressed with nightmare. The day had been like +some horrible dream. Brutality had followed brutality, and flaming +passions and cold-blooded cruelty had driven men to seek one another’s +lives, and to strive to hurt, and maim, and destroy. My nerves were +shocked. My mind itself was shocked. All my days had been passed in +comparative ignorance of the animality of man. In fact, I had known life +only in its intellectual phases. Brutality I had experienced, but it was +the brutality of the intellect—the cutting sarcasm of Charley Furuseth, +the cruel epigrams and occasional harsh witticisms of the fellows at the +Bibelot, and the nasty remarks of some of the professors during my +undergraduate days. + +That was all. But that men should wreak their anger on others by the +bruising of the flesh and the letting of blood was something strangely +and fearfully new to me. Not for nothing had I been called “Sissy” Van +Weyden, I thought, as I tossed restlessly on my bunk between one +nightmare and another. And it seemed to me that my innocence of the +realities of life had been complete indeed. I laughed bitterly to +myself, and seemed to find in Wolf Larsen’s forbidding philosophy a more +adequate explanation of life than I found in my own. + +And I was frightened when I became conscious of the trend of my thought. +The continual brutality around me was degenerative in its effect. It bid +fair to destroy for me all that was best and brightest in life. My +reason dictated that the beating Thomas Mugridge had received was an ill +thing, and yet for the life of me I could not prevent my soul joying in +it. And even while I was oppressed by the enormity of my sin,—for sin it +was,—I chuckled with an insane delight. I was no longer Humphrey Van +Weyden. I was Hump, cabin-boy on the schooner _Ghost_. Wolf Larsen was +my captain, Thomas Mugridge and the rest were my companions, and I was +receiving repeated impresses from the die which had stamped them all. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +For three days I did my own work and Thomas Mugridge’s too; and I flatter +myself that I did his work well. I know that it won Wolf Larsen’s +approval, while the sailors beamed with satisfaction during the brief +time my _régime_ lasted. + +“The first clean bite since I come aboard,” Harrison said to me at the +galley door, as he returned the dinner pots and pans from the forecastle. +“Somehow Tommy’s grub always tastes of grease, stale grease, and I reckon +he ain’t changed his shirt since he left ’Frisco.” + +“I know he hasn’t,” I answered. + +“And I’ll bet he sleeps in it,” Harrison added. + +“And you won’t lose,” I agreed. “The same shirt, and he hasn’t had it +off once in all this time.” + +But three days was all Wolf Larsen allowed him in which to recover from +the effects of the beating. On the fourth day, lame and sore, scarcely +able to see, so closed were his eyes, he was haled from his bunk by the +nape of the neck and set to his duty. He sniffled and wept, but Wolf +Larsen was pitiless. + +“And see that you serve no more slops,” was his parting injunction. “No +more grease and dirt, mind, and a clean shirt occasionally, or you’ll get +a tow over the side. Understand?” + +Thomas Mugridge crawled weakly across the galley floor, and a short lurch +of the _Ghost_ sent him staggering. In attempting to recover himself, he +reached for the iron railing which surrounded the stove and kept the pots +from sliding off; but he missed the railing, and his hand, with his +weight behind it, landed squarely on the hot surface. There was a sizzle +and odour of burning flesh, and a sharp cry of pain. + +“Oh, Gawd, Gawd, wot ’ave I done?” he wailed; sitting down in the +coal-box and nursing his new hurt by rocking back and forth. “W’y ’as +all this come on me? It mykes me fair sick, it does, an’ I try so ’ard +to go through life ’armless an’ ’urtin’ nobody.” + +The tears were running down his puffed and discoloured cheeks, and his +face was drawn with pain. A savage expression flitted across it. + +“Oh, ’ow I ’ate ’im! ’Ow I ’ate ’im!” he gritted out. + +“Whom?” I asked; but the poor wretch was weeping again over his +misfortunes. Less difficult it was to guess whom he hated than whom he +did not hate. For I had come to see a malignant devil in him which +impelled him to hate all the world. I sometimes thought that he hated +even himself, so grotesquely had life dealt with him, and so monstrously. +At such moments a great sympathy welled up within me, and I felt shame +that I had ever joyed in his discomfiture or pain. Life had been unfair +to him. It had played him a scurvy trick when it fashioned him into the +thing he was, and it had played him scurvy tricks ever since. What +chance had he to be anything else than he was? And as though answering +my unspoken thought, he wailed: + +“I never ’ad no chance, not ’arf a chance! ’Oo was there to send me to +school, or put tommy in my ’ungry belly, or wipe my bloody nose for me, +w’en I was a kiddy? ’Oo ever did anything for me, heh? ’Oo, I s’y?” + +“Never mind, Tommy,” I said, placing a soothing hand on his shoulder. +“Cheer up. It’ll all come right in the end. You’ve long years before +you, and you can make anything you please of yourself.” + +“It’s a lie! a bloody lie!” he shouted in my face, flinging off the hand. +“It’s a lie, and you know it. I’m already myde, an’ myde out of leavin’s +an’ scraps. It’s all right for you, ’Ump. You was born a gentleman. +You never knew wot it was to go ’ungry, to cry yerself asleep with yer +little belly gnawin’ an’ gnawin’, like a rat inside yer. It carn’t come +right. If I was President of the United Stytes to-morrer, ’ow would it +fill my belly for one time w’en I was a kiddy and it went empty? + +“’Ow could it, I s’y? I was born to sufferin’ and sorrer. I’ve had more +cruel sufferin’ than any ten men, I ’ave. I’ve been in orspital arf my +bleedin’ life. I’ve ’ad the fever in Aspinwall, in ’Avana, in New +Orleans. I near died of the scurvy and was rotten with it six months in +Barbadoes. Smallpox in ’Onolulu, two broken legs in Shanghai, pnuemonia +in Unalaska, three busted ribs an’ my insides all twisted in ’Frisco. +An’ ’ere I am now. Look at me! Look at me! My ribs kicked loose from +my back again. I’ll be coughin’ blood before eyght bells. ’Ow can it be +myde up to me, I arsk? ’Oo’s goin’ to do it? Gawd? ’Ow Gawd must ’ave +’ated me w’en ’e signed me on for a voyage in this bloomin’ world of +’is!” + +This tirade against destiny went on for an hour or more, and then he +buckled to his work, limping and groaning, and in his eyes a great hatred +for all created things. His diagnosis was correct, however, for he was +seized with occasional sicknesses, during which he vomited blood and +suffered great pain. And as he said, it seemed God hated him too much to +let him die, for he ultimately grew better and waxed more malignant than +ever. + +Several days more passed before Johnson crawled on deck and went about +his work in a half-hearted way. He was still a sick man, and I more than +once observed him creeping painfully aloft to a topsail, or drooping +wearily as he stood at the wheel. But, still worse, it seemed that his +spirit was broken. He was abject before Wolf Larsen and almost grovelled +to Johansen. Not so was the conduct of Leach. He went about the deck +like a tiger cub, glaring his hatred openly at Wolf Larsen and Johansen. + +“I’ll do for you yet, you slab-footed Swede,” I heard him say to Johansen +one night on deck. + +The mate cursed him in the darkness, and the next moment some missile +struck the galley a sharp rap. There was more cursing, and a mocking +laugh, and when all was quiet I stole outside and found a heavy knife +imbedded over an inch in the solid wood. A few minutes later the mate +came fumbling about in search of it, but I returned it privily to Leach +next day. He grinned when I handed it over, yet it was a grin that +contained more sincere thanks than a multitude of the verbosities of +speech common to the members of my own class. + +Unlike any one else in the ship’s company, I now found myself with no +quarrels on my hands and in the good graces of all. The hunters possibly +no more than tolerated me, though none of them disliked me; while Smoke +and Henderson, convalescent under a deck awning and swinging day and +night in their hammocks, assured me that I was better than any hospital +nurse, and that they would not forget me at the end of the voyage when +they were paid off. (As though I stood in need of their money! I, who +could have bought them out, bag and baggage, and the schooner and its +equipment, a score of times over!) But upon me had devolved the task of +tending their wounds, and pulling them through, and I did my best by +them. + +Wolf Larsen underwent another bad attack of headache which lasted two +days. He must have suffered severely, for he called me in and obeyed my +commands like a sick child. But nothing I could do seemed to relieve +him. At my suggestion, however, he gave up smoking and drinking; though +why such a magnificent animal as he should have headaches at all puzzles +me. + +“’Tis the hand of God, I’m tellin’ you,” is the way Louis sees it. “’Tis +a visitation for his black-hearted deeds, and there’s more behind and +comin’, or else—” + +“Or else,” I prompted. + +“God is noddin’ and not doin’ his duty, though it’s me as shouldn’t say +it.” + +I was mistaken when I said that I was in the good graces of all. Not +only does Thomas Mugridge continue to hate me, but he has discovered a +new reason for hating me. It took me no little while to puzzle it out, +but I finally discovered that it was because I was more luckily born than +he—“gentleman born,” he put it. + +“And still no more dead men,” I twitted Louis, when Smoke and Henderson, +side by side, in friendly conversation, took their first exercise on +deck. + +Louis surveyed me with his shrewd grey eyes, and shook his head +portentously. “She’s a-comin’, I tell you, and it’ll be sheets and +halyards, stand by all hands, when she begins to howl. I’ve had the feel +iv it this long time, and I can feel it now as plainly as I feel the +rigging iv a dark night. She’s close, she’s close.” + +“Who goes first?” I queried. + +“Not fat old Louis, I promise you,” he laughed. “For ’tis in the bones +iv me I know that come this time next year I’ll be gazin’ in the old +mother’s eyes, weary with watchin’ iv the sea for the five sons she gave +to it.” + +“Wot’s ’e been s’yin’ to yer?” Thomas Mugridge demanded a moment later. + +“That he’s going home some day to see his mother,” I answered +diplomatically. + +“I never ’ad none,” was the Cockney’s comment, as he gazed with +lustreless, hopeless eyes into mine. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +It has dawned upon me that I have never placed a proper valuation upon +womankind. For that matter, though not amative to any considerable +degree so far as I have discovered, I was never outside the atmosphere of +women until now. My mother and sisters were always about me, and I was +always trying to escape them; for they worried me to distraction with +their solicitude for my health and with their periodic inroads on my den, +when my orderly confusion, upon which I prided myself, was turned into +worse confusion and less order, though it looked neat enough to the eye. +I never could find anything when they had departed. But now, alas, how +welcome would have been the feel of their presence, the frou-frou and +swish-swish of their skirts which I had so cordially detested! I am +sure, if I ever get home, that I shall never be irritable with them +again. They may dose me and doctor me morning, noon, and night, and dust +and sweep and put my den to rights every minute of the day, and I shall +only lean back and survey it all and be thankful in that I am possessed +of a mother and some several sisters. + +All of which has set me wondering. Where are the mothers of these twenty +and odd men on the _Ghost_? It strikes me as unnatural and unhealthful +that men should be totally separated from women and herd through the +world by themselves. Coarseness and savagery are the inevitable results. +These men about me should have wives, and sisters, and daughters; then +would they be capable of softness, and tenderness, and sympathy. As it +is, not one of them is married. In years and years not one of them has +been in contact with a good woman, or within the influence, or +redemption, which irresistibly radiates from such a creature. There is +no balance in their lives. Their masculinity, which in itself is of the +brute, has been over-developed. The other and spiritual side of their +natures has been dwarfed—atrophied, in fact. + +They are a company of celibates, grinding harshly against one another and +growing daily more calloused from the grinding. It seems to me +impossible sometimes that they ever had mothers. It would appear that +they are a half-brute, half-human species, a race apart, wherein there is +no such thing as sex; that they are hatched out by the sun like turtle +eggs, or receive life in some similar and sordid fashion; and that all +their days they fester in brutality and viciousness, and in the end die +as unlovely as they have lived. + +Rendered curious by this new direction of ideas, I talked with Johansen +last night—the first superfluous words with which he has favoured me +since the voyage began. He left Sweden when he was eighteen, is now +thirty-eight, and in all the intervening time has not been home once. He +had met a townsman, a couple of years before, in some sailor +boarding-house in Chile, so that he knew his mother to be still alive. + +“She must be a pretty old woman now,” he said, staring meditatively into +the binnacle and then jerking a sharp glance at Harrison, who was +steering a point off the course. + +“When did you last write to her?” + +He performed his mental arithmetic aloud. “Eighty-one; no—eighty-two, +eh? no—eighty-three? Yes, eighty-three. Ten years ago. From some +little port in Madagascar. I was trading. + +“You see,” he went on, as though addressing his neglected mother across +half the girth of the earth, “each year I was going home. So what was +the good to write? It was only a year. And each year something +happened, and I did not go. But I am mate, now, and when I pay off at +’Frisco, maybe with five hundred dollars, I will ship myself on a +windjammer round the Horn to Liverpool, which will give me more money; +and then I will pay my passage from there home. Then she will not do any +more work.” + +“But does she work? now? How old is she?” + +“About seventy,” he answered. And then, boastingly, “We work from the +time we are born until we die, in my country. That’s why we live so +long. I will live to a hundred.” + +I shall never forget this conversation. The words were the last I ever +heard him utter. Perhaps they were the last he did utter, too. For, +going down into the cabin to turn in, I decided that it was too stuffy to +sleep below. It was a calm night. We were out of the Trades, and the +_Ghost_ was forging ahead barely a knot an hour. So I tucked a blanket +and pillow under my arm and went up on deck. + +As I passed between Harrison and the binnacle, which was built into the +top of the cabin, I noticed that he was this time fully three points off. +Thinking that he was asleep, and wishing him to escape reprimand or +worse, I spoke to him. But he was not asleep. His eyes were wide and +staring. He seemed greatly perturbed, unable to reply to me. + +“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you sick?” + +He shook his head, and with a deep sign as of awakening, caught his +breath. + +“You’d better get on your course, then,” I chided. + +He put a few spokes over, and I watched the compass-card swing slowly to +N.N.W. and steady itself with slight oscillations. + +I took a fresh hold on my bedclothes and was preparing to start on, when +some movement caught my eye and I looked astern to the rail. A sinewy +hand, dripping with water, was clutching the rail. A second hand took +form in the darkness beside it. I watched, fascinated. What visitant +from the gloom of the deep was I to behold? Whatever it was, I knew that +it was climbing aboard by the log-line. I saw a head, the hair wet and +straight, shape itself, and then the unmistakable eyes and face of Wolf +Larsen. His right cheek was red with blood, which flowed from some wound +in the head. + +He drew himself inboard with a quick effort, and arose to his feet, +glancing swiftly, as he did so, at the man at the wheel, as though to +assure himself of his identity and that there was nothing to fear from +him. The sea-water was streaming from him. It made little audible +gurgles which distracted me. As he stepped toward me I shrank back +instinctively, for I saw that in his eyes which spelled death. + +“All right, Hump,” he said in a low voice. “Where’s the mate?” + +I shook my head. + +“Johansen!” he called softly. “Johansen!” + +“Where is he?” he demanded of Harrison. + +The young fellow seemed to have recovered his composure, for he answered +steadily enough, “I don’t know, sir. I saw him go for’ard a little while +ago.” + +“So did I go for’ard. But you will observe that I didn’t come back the +way I went. Can you explain it?” + +“You must have been overboard, sir.” + +“Shall I look for him in the steerage, sir?” I asked. + +Wolf Larsen shook his head. “You wouldn’t find him, Hump. But you’ll +do. Come on. Never mind your bedding. Leave it where it is.” + +I followed at his heels. There was nothing stirring amidships. + +“Those cursed hunters,” was his comment. “Too damned fat and lazy to +stand a four-hour watch.” + +But on the forecastle-head we found three sailors asleep. He turned them +over and looked at their faces. They composed the watch on deck, and it +was the ship’s custom, in good weather, to let the watch sleep with the +exception of the officer, the helmsman, and the look-out. + +“Who’s look-out?” he demanded. + +“Me, sir,” answered Holyoak, one of the deep-water sailors, a slight +tremor in his voice. “I winked off just this very minute, sir. I’m +sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.” + +“Did you hear or see anything on deck?” + +“No, sir, I—” + +But Wolf Larsen had turned away with a snort of disgust, leaving the +sailor rubbing his eyes with surprise at having been let off so easily. + +“Softly, now,” Wolf Larsen warned me in a whisper, as he doubled his body +into the forecastle scuttle and prepared to descend. + +I followed with a quaking heart. What was to happen I knew no more than +did I know what had happened. But blood had been shed, and it was +through no whim of Wolf Larsen that he had gone over the side with his +scalp laid open. Besides, Johansen was missing. + +It was my first descent into the forecastle, and I shall not soon forget +my impression of it, caught as I stood on my feet at the bottom of the +ladder. Built directly in the eyes of the schooner, it was of the shape +of a triangle, along the three sides of which stood the bunks, in +double-tier, twelve of them. It was no larger than a hall bedroom in +Grub Street, and yet twelve men were herded into it to eat and sleep and +carry on all the functions of living. My bedroom at home was not large, +yet it could have contained a dozen similar forecastles, and taking into +consideration the height of the ceiling, a score at least. + +It smelled sour and musty, and by the dim light of the swinging sea-lamp +I saw every bit of available wall-space hung deep with sea-boots, +oilskins, and garments, clean and dirty, of various sorts. These swung +back and forth with every roll of the vessel, giving rise to a brushing +sound, as of trees against a roof or wall. Somewhere a boot thumped +loudly and at irregular intervals against the wall; and, though it was a +mild night on the sea, there was a continual chorus of the creaking +timbers and bulkheads and of abysmal noises beneath the flooring. + +The sleepers did not mind. There were eight of them,—the two watches +below,—and the air was thick with the warmth and odour of their +breathing, and the ear was filled with the noise of their snoring and of +their sighs and half-groans, tokens plain of the rest of the animal-man. +But were they sleeping? all of them? Or had they been sleeping? This +was evidently Wolf Larsen’s quest—to find the men who appeared to be +asleep and who were not asleep or who had not been asleep very recently. +And he went about it in a way that reminded me of a story out of +Boccaccio. + +He took the sea-lamp from its swinging frame and handed it to me. He +began at the first bunks forward on the star-board side. In the top one +lay Oofty-Oofty, a Kanaka and splendid seaman, so named by his mates. He +was asleep on his back and breathing as placidly as a woman. One arm was +under his head, the other lay on top of the blankets. Wolf Larsen put +thumb and forefinger to the wrist and counted the pulse. In the midst of +it the Kanaka roused. He awoke as gently as he slept. There was no +movement of the body whatever. The eyes, only, moved. They flashed wide +open, big and black, and stared, unblinking, into our faces. Wolf Larsen +put his finger to his lips as a sign for silence, and the eyes closed +again. + +In the lower bunk lay Louis, grossly fat and warm and sweaty, asleep +unfeignedly and sleeping laboriously. While Wolf Larsen held his wrist +he stirred uneasily, bowing his body so that for a moment it rested on +shoulders and heels. His lips moved, and he gave voice to this enigmatic +utterance: + +“A shilling’s worth a quarter; but keep your lamps out for +thruppenny-bits, or the publicans ’ll shove ’em on you for sixpence.” + +Then he rolled over on his side with a heavy, sobbing sigh, saying: + +“A sixpence is a tanner, and a shilling a bob; but what a pony is I don’t +know.” + +Satisfied with the honesty of his and the Kanaka’s sleep, Wolf Larsen +passed on to the next two bunks on the starboard side, occupied top and +bottom, as we saw in the light of the sea-lamp, by Leach and Johnson. + +As Wolf Larsen bent down to the lower bunk to take Johnson’s pulse, I, +standing erect and holding the lamp, saw Leach’s head rise stealthily as +he peered over the side of his bunk to see what was going on. He must +have divined Wolf Larsen’s trick and the sureness of detection, for the +light was at once dashed from my hand and the forecastle was left in +darkness. He must have leaped, also, at the same instant, straight down +on Wolf Larsen. + +The first sounds were those of a conflict between a bull and a wolf. I +heard a great infuriated bellow go up from Wolf Larsen, and from Leach a +snarling that was desperate and blood-curdling. Johnson must have joined +him immediately, so that his abject and grovelling conduct on deck for +the past few days had been no more than planned deception. + +I was so terror-stricken by this fight in the dark that I leaned against +the ladder, trembling and unable to ascend. And upon me was that old +sickness at the pit of the stomach, caused always by the spectacle of +physical violence. In this instance I could not see, but I could hear +the impact of the blows—the soft crushing sound made by flesh striking +forcibly against flesh. Then there was the crashing about of the +entwined bodies, the laboured breathing, the short quick gasps of sudden +pain. + +There must have been more men in the conspiracy to murder the captain and +mate, for by the sounds I knew that Leach and Johnson had been quickly +reinforced by some of their mates. + +“Get a knife somebody!” Leach was shouting. + +“Pound him on the head! Mash his brains out!” was Johnson’s cry. + +But after his first bellow, Wolf Larsen made no noise. He was fighting +grimly and silently for life. He was sore beset. Down at the very +first, he had been unable to gain his feet, and for all of his tremendous +strength I felt that there was no hope for him. + +The force with which they struggled was vividly impressed on me; for I +was knocked down by their surging bodies and badly bruised. But in the +confusion I managed to crawl into an empty lower bunk out of the way. + +“All hands! We’ve got him! We’ve got him!” I could hear Leach crying. + +“Who?” demanded those who had been really asleep, and who had wakened to +they knew not what. + +“It’s the bloody mate!” was Leach’s crafty answer, strained from him in a +smothered sort of way. + +This was greeted with whoops of joy, and from then on Wolf Larsen had +seven strong men on top of him, Louis, I believe, taking no part in it. +The forecastle was like an angry hive of bees aroused by some marauder. + +“What ho! below there!” I heard Latimer shout down the scuttle, too +cautious to descend into the inferno of passion he could hear raging +beneath him in the darkness. + +“Won’t somebody get a knife? Oh, won’t somebody get a knife?” Leach +pleaded in the first interval of comparative silence. + +The number of the assailants was a cause of confusion. They blocked +their own efforts, while Wolf Larsen, with but a single purpose, achieved +his. This was to fight his way across the floor to the ladder. Though +in total darkness, I followed his progress by its sound. No man less +than a giant could have done what he did, once he had gained the foot of +the ladder. Step by step, by the might of his arms, the whole pack of +men striving to drag him back and down, he drew his body up from the +floor till he stood erect. And then, step by step, hand and foot, he +slowly struggled up the ladder. + +The very last of all, I saw. For Latimer, having finally gone for a +lantern, held it so that its light shone down the scuttle. Wolf Larsen +was nearly to the top, though I could not see him. All that was visible +was the mass of men fastened upon him. It squirmed about, like some huge +many-legged spider, and swayed back and forth to the regular roll of the +vessel. And still, step by step with long intervals between, the mass +ascended. Once it tottered, about to fall back, but the broken hold was +regained and it still went up. + +“Who is it?” Latimer cried. + +In the rays of the lantern I could see his perplexed face peering down. + +“Larsen,” I heard a muffled voice from within the mass. + +Latimer reached down with his free hand. I saw a hand shoot up to clasp +his. Latimer pulled, and the next couple of steps were made with a rush. +Then Wolf Larsen’s other hand reached up and clutched the edge of the +scuttle. The mass swung clear of the ladder, the men still clinging to +their escaping foe. They began to drop off, to be brushed off against +the sharp edge of the scuttle, to be knocked off by the legs which were +now kicking powerfully. Leach was the last to go, falling sheer back +from the top of the scuttle and striking on head and shoulders upon his +sprawling mates beneath. Wolf Larsen and the lantern disappeared, and we +were left in darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +There was a deal of cursing and groaning as the men at the bottom of the +ladder crawled to their feet. + +“Somebody strike a light, my thumb’s out of joint,” said one of the men, +Parsons, a swarthy, saturnine man, boat-steerer in Standish’s boat, in +which Harrison was puller. + +“You’ll find it knockin’ about by the bitts,” Leach said, sitting down on +the edge of the bunk in which I was concealed. + +There was a fumbling and a scratching of matches, and the sea-lamp flared +up, dim and smoky, and in its weird light bare-legged men moved about +nursing their bruises and caring for their hurts. Oofty-Oofty laid hold +of Parsons’s thumb, pulling it out stoutly and snapping it back into +place. I noticed at the same time that the Kanaka’s knuckles were laid +open clear across and to the bone. He exhibited them, exposing beautiful +white teeth in a grin as he did so, and explaining that the wounds had +come from striking Wolf Larsen in the mouth. + +“So it was you, was it, you black beggar?” belligerently demanded one +Kelly, an Irish-American and a longshoreman, making his first trip to +sea, and boat-puller for Kerfoot. + +As he made the demand he spat out a mouthful of blood and teeth and +shoved his pugnacious face close to Oofty-Oofty. The Kanaka leaped +backward to his bunk, to return with a second leap, flourishing a long +knife. + +“Aw, go lay down, you make me tired,” Leach interfered. He was +evidently, for all of his youth and inexperience, cock of the forecastle. +“G’wan, you Kelly. You leave Oofty alone. How in hell did he know it +was you in the dark?” + +Kelly subsided with some muttering, and the Kanaka flashed his white +teeth in a grateful smile. He was a beautiful creature, almost feminine +in the pleasing lines of his figure, and there was a softness and +dreaminess in his large eyes which seemed to contradict his well-earned +reputation for strife and action. + +“How did he get away?” Johnson asked. + +He was sitting on the side of his bunk, the whole pose of his figure +indicating utter dejection and hopelessness. He was still breathing +heavily from the exertion he had made. His shirt had been ripped +entirely from him in the struggle, and blood from a gash in the cheek was +flowing down his naked chest, marking a red path across his white thigh +and dripping to the floor. + +“Because he is the devil, as I told you before,” was Leach’s answer; and +thereat he was on his feet and raging his disappointment with tears in +his eyes. + +“And not one of you to get a knife!” was his unceasing lament. + +But the rest of the hands had a lively fear of consequences to come and +gave no heed to him. + +“How’ll he know which was which?” Kelly asked, and as he went on he +looked murderously about him—“unless one of us peaches.” + +“He’ll know as soon as ever he claps eyes on us,” Parsons replied. “One +look at you’d be enough.” + +“Tell him the deck flopped up and gouged yer teeth out iv yer jaw,” Louis +grinned. He was the only man who was not out of his bunk, and he was +jubilant in that he possessed no bruises to advertise that he had had a +hand in the night’s work. “Just wait till he gets a glimpse iv yer mugs +to-morrow, the gang iv ye,” he chuckled. + +“We’ll say we thought it was the mate,” said one. And another, “I know +what I’ll say—that I heered a row, jumped out of my bunk, got a jolly +good crack on the jaw for my pains, and sailed in myself. Couldn’t tell +who or what it was in the dark and just hit out.” + +“An’ ’twas me you hit, of course,” Kelly seconded, his face brightening +for the moment. + +Leach and Johnson took no part in the discussion, and it was plain to see +that their mates looked upon them as men for whom the worst was +inevitable, who were beyond hope and already dead. Leach stood their +fears and reproaches for some time. Then he broke out: + +“You make me tired! A nice lot of gazabas you are! If you talked less +with yer mouth and did something with yer hands, he’d a-ben done with by +now. Why couldn’t one of you, just one of you, get me a knife when I +sung out? You make me sick! A-beefin’ and bellerin’ ’round, as though +he’d kill you when he gets you! You know damn well he wont. Can’t +afford to. No shipping masters or beach-combers over here, and he wants +yer in his business, and he wants yer bad. Who’s to pull or steer or +sail ship if he loses yer? It’s me and Johnson have to face the music. +Get into yer bunks, now, and shut yer faces; I want to get some sleep.” + +“That’s all right all right,” Parsons spoke up. “Mebbe he won’t do for +us, but mark my words, hell ’ll be an ice-box to this ship from now on.” + +All the while I had been apprehensive concerning my own predicament. +What would happen to me when these men discovered my presence? I could +never fight my way out as Wolf Larsen had done. And at this moment +Latimer called down the scuttles: + +“Hump! The old man wants you!” + +“He ain’t down here!” Parsons called back. + +“Yes, he is,” I said, sliding out of the bunk and striving my hardest to +keep my voice steady and bold. + +The sailors looked at me in consternation. Fear was strong in their +faces, and the devilishness which comes of fear. + +“I’m coming!” I shouted up to Latimer. + +“No you don’t!” Kelly cried, stepping between me and the ladder, his +right hand shaped into a veritable strangler’s clutch. “You damn little +sneak! I’ll shut yer mouth!” + +“Let him go,” Leach commanded. + +“Not on yer life,” was the angry retort. + +Leach never changed his position on the edge of the bunk. “Let him go, I +say,” he repeated; but this time his voice was gritty and metallic. + +The Irishman wavered. I made to step by him, and he stood aside. When I +had gained the ladder, I turned to the circle of brutal and malignant +faces peering at me through the semi-darkness. A sudden and deep +sympathy welled up in me. I remembered the Cockney’s way of putting it. +How God must have hated them that they should be tortured so! + +“I have seen and heard nothing, believe me,” I said quietly. + +“I tell yer, he’s all right,” I could hear Leach saying as I went up the +ladder. “He don’t like the old man no more nor you or me.” + +I found Wolf Larsen in the cabin, stripped and bloody, waiting for me. +He greeted me with one of his whimsical smiles. + +“Come, get to work, Doctor. The signs are favourable for an extensive +practice this voyage. I don’t know what the _Ghost_ would have been +without you, and if I could only cherish such noble sentiments I would +tell you her master is deeply grateful.” + +I knew the run of the simple medicine-chest the _Ghost_ carried, and +while I was heating water on the cabin stove and getting the things ready +for dressing his wounds, he moved about, laughing and chatting, and +examining his hurts with a calculating eye. I had never before seen him +stripped, and the sight of his body quite took my breath away. It has +never been my weakness to exalt the flesh—far from it; but there is +enough of the artist in me to appreciate its wonder. + +I must say that I was fascinated by the perfect lines of Wolf Larsen’s +figure, and by what I may term the terrible beauty of it. I had noted +the men in the forecastle. Powerfully muscled though some of them were, +there had been something wrong with all of them, an insufficient +development here, an undue development there, a twist or a crook that +destroyed symmetry, legs too short or too long, or too much sinew or bone +exposed, or too little. Oofty-Oofty had been the only one whose lines +were at all pleasing, while, in so far as they pleased, that far had they +been what I should call feminine. + +But Wolf Larsen was the man-type, the masculine, and almost a god in his +perfectness. As he moved about or raised his arms the great muscles +leapt and moved under the satiny skin. I have forgotten to say that the +bronze ended with his face. His body, thanks to his Scandinavian stock, +was fair as the fairest woman’s. I remember his putting his hand up to +feel of the wound on his head, and my watching the biceps move like a +living thing under its white sheath. It was the biceps that had nearly +crushed out my life once, that I had seen strike so many killing blows. +I could not take my eyes from him. I stood motionless, a roll of +antiseptic cotton in my hand unwinding and spilling itself down to the +floor. + +He noticed me, and I became conscious that I was staring at him. + +“God made you well,” I said. + +“Did he?” he answered. “I have often thought so myself, and wondered +why.” + +“Purpose—” I began. + +“Utility,” he interrupted. “This body was made for use. These muscles +were made to grip, and tear, and destroy living things that get between +me and life. But have you thought of the other living things? They, +too, have muscles, of one kind and another, made to grip, and tear, and +destroy; and when they come between me and life, I out-grip them, +out-tear them, out-destroy them. Purpose does not explain that. Utility +does.” + +“It is not beautiful,” I protested. + +“Life isn’t, you mean,” he smiled. “Yet you say I was made well. Do you +see this?” + +He braced his legs and feet, pressing the cabin floor with his toes in a +clutching sort of way. Knots and ridges and mounds of muscles writhed +and bunched under the skin. + +“Feel them,” he commanded. + +They were hard as iron. And I observed, also, that his whole body had +unconsciously drawn itself together, tense and alert; that muscles were +softly crawling and shaping about the hips, along the back, and across +the shoulders; that the arms were slightly lifted, their muscles +contracting, the fingers crooking till the hands were like talons; and +that even the eyes had changed expression and into them were coming +watchfulness and measurement and a light none other than of battle. + +“Stability, equilibrium,” he said, relaxing on the instant and sinking +his body back into repose. “Feet with which to clutch the ground, legs +to stand on and to help withstand, while with arms and hands, teeth and +nails, I struggle to kill and to be not killed. Purpose? Utility is the +better word.” + +I did not argue. I had seen the mechanism of the primitive fighting +beast, and I was as strongly impressed as if I had seen the engines of a +great battleship or Atlantic liner. + +I was surprised, considering the fierce struggle in the forecastle, at +the superficiality of his hurts, and I pride myself that I dressed them +dexterously. With the exception of several bad wounds, the rest were +merely severe bruises and lacerations. The blow which he had received +before going overboard had laid his scalp open several inches. This, +under his direction, I cleansed and sewed together, having first shaved +the edges of the wound. Then the calf of his leg was badly lacerated and +looked as though it had been mangled by a bulldog. Some sailor, he told +me, had laid hold of it by his teeth, at the beginning of the fight, and +hung on and been dragged to the top of the forecastle ladder, when he was +kicked loose. + +“By the way, Hump, as I have remarked, you are a handy man,” Wolf Larsen +began, when my work was done. “As you know, we’re short a mate. +Hereafter you shall stand watches, receive seventy-five dollars per +month, and be addressed fore and aft as Mr. Van Weyden.” + +“I—I don’t understand navigation, you know,” I gasped. + +“Not necessary at all.” + +“I really do not care to sit in the high places,” I objected. “I find +life precarious enough in my present humble situation. I have no +experience. Mediocrity, you see, has its compensations.” + +He smiled as though it were all settled. + +“I won’t be mate on this hell-ship!” I cried defiantly. + +I saw his face grow hard and the merciless glitter come into his eyes. +He walked to the door of his room, saying: + +“And now, Mr. Van Weyden, good-night.” + +“Good-night, Mr. Larsen,” I answered weakly. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +I cannot say that the position of mate carried with it anything more +joyful than that there were no more dishes to wash. I was ignorant of +the simplest duties of mate, and would have fared badly indeed, had the +sailors not sympathized with me. I knew nothing of the minutiæ of ropes +and rigging, of the trimming and setting of sails; but the sailors took +pains to put me to rights,—Louis proving an especially good teacher,—and +I had little trouble with those under me. + +With the hunters it was otherwise. Familiar in varying degree with the +sea, they took me as a sort of joke. In truth, it was a joke to me, that +I, the veriest landsman, should be filling the office of mate; but to be +taken as a joke by others was a different matter. I made no complaint, +but Wolf Larsen demanded the most punctilious sea etiquette in my +case,—far more than poor Johansen had ever received; and at the expense +of several rows, threats, and much grumbling, he brought the hunters to +time. I was “Mr. Van Weyden” fore and aft, and it was only unofficially +that Wolf Larsen himself ever addressed me as “Hump.” + +It was amusing. Perhaps the wind would haul a few points while we were +at dinner, and as I left the table he would say, “Mr. Van Weyden, will +you kindly put about on the port tack.” And I would go on deck, beckon +Louis to me, and learn from him what was to be done. Then, a few minutes +later, having digested his instructions and thoroughly mastered the +manœuvre, I would proceed to issue my orders. I remember an early +instance of this kind, when Wolf Larsen appeared on the scene just as I +had begun to give orders. He smoked his cigar and looked on quietly till +the thing was accomplished, and then paced aft by my side along the +weather poop. + +“Hump,” he said, “I beg pardon, Mr. Van Weyden, I congratulate you. I +think you can now fire your father’s legs back into the grave to him. +You’ve discovered your own and learned to stand on them. A little +rope-work, sail-making, and experience with storms and such things, and +by the end of the voyage you could ship on any coasting schooner.” + +It was during this period, between the death of Johansen and the arrival +on the sealing grounds, that I passed my pleasantest hours on the +_Ghost_. Wolf Larsen was quite considerate, the sailors helped me, and I +was no longer in irritating contact with Thomas Mugridge. And I make +free to say, as the days went by, that I found I was taking a certain +secret pride in myself. Fantastic as the situation was,—a land-lubber +second in command,—I was, nevertheless, carrying it off well; and during +that brief time I was proud of myself, and I grew to love the heave and +roll of the _Ghost_ under my feet as she wallowed north and west through +the tropic sea to the islet where we filled our water-casks. + +But my happiness was not unalloyed. It was comparative, a period of less +misery slipped in between a past of great miseries and a future of great +miseries. For the _Ghost_, so far as the seamen were concerned, was a +hell-ship of the worst description. They never had a moment’s rest or +peace. Wolf Larsen treasured against them the attempt on his life and +the drubbing he had received in the forecastle; and morning, noon, and +night, and all night as well, he devoted himself to making life unlivable +for them. + +He knew well the psychology of the little thing, and it was the little +things by which he kept the crew worked up to the verge of madness. I +have seen Harrison called from his bunk to put properly away a misplaced +paintbrush, and the two watches below haled from their tired sleep to +accompany him and see him do it. A little thing, truly, but when +multiplied by the thousand ingenious devices of such a mind, the mental +state of the men in the forecastle may be slightly comprehended. + +Of course much grumbling went on, and little outbursts were continually +occurring. Blows were struck, and there were always two or three men +nursing injuries at the hands of the human beast who was their master. +Concerted action was impossible in face of the heavy arsenal of weapons +carried in the steerage and cabin. Leach and Johnson were the two +particular victims of Wolf Larsen’s diabolic temper, and the look of +profound melancholy which had settled on Johnson’s face and in his eyes +made my heart bleed. + +With Leach it was different. There was too much of the fighting beast in +him. He seemed possessed by an insatiable fury which gave no time for +grief. His lips had become distorted into a permanent snarl, which at +mere sight of Wolf Larsen broke out in sound, horrible and menacing and, +I do believe, unconsciously. I have seen him follow Wolf Larsen about +with his eyes, like an animal its keeper, the while the animal-like snarl +sounded deep in his throat and vibrated forth between his teeth. + +I remember once, on deck, in bright day, touching him on the shoulder as +preliminary to giving an order. His back was toward me, and at the first +feel of my hand he leaped upright in the air and away from me, snarling +and turning his head as he leaped. He had for the moment mistaken me for +the man he hated. + +Both he and Johnson would have killed Wolf Larsen at the slightest +opportunity, but the opportunity never came. Wolf Larsen was too wise +for that, and, besides, they had no adequate weapons. With their fists +alone they had no chance whatever. Time and again he fought it out with +Leach who fought back always, like a wildcat, tooth and nail and fist, +until stretched, exhausted or unconscious, on the deck. And he was never +averse to another encounter. All the devil that was in him challenged +the devil in Wolf Larsen. They had but to appear on deck at the same +time, when they would be at it, cursing, snarling, striking; and I have +seen Leach fling himself upon Wolf Larsen without warning or provocation. +Once he threw his heavy sheath-knife, missing Wolf Larsen’s throat by an +inch. Another time he dropped a steel marlinspike from the mizzen +crosstree. It was a difficult cast to make on a rolling ship, but the +sharp point of the spike, whistling seventy-five feet through the air, +barely missed Wolf Larsen’s head as he emerged from the cabin +companion-way and drove its length two inches and over into the solid +deck-planking. Still another time, he stole into the steerage, possessed +himself of a loaded shot-gun, and was making a rush for the deck with it +when caught by Kerfoot and disarmed. + +I often wondered why Wolf Larsen did not kill him and make an end of it. +But he only laughed and seemed to enjoy it. There seemed a certain spice +about it, such as men must feel who take delight in making pets of +ferocious animals. + +“It gives a thrill to life,” he explained to me, “when life is carried in +one’s hand. Man is a natural gambler, and life is the biggest stake he +can lay. The greater the odds, the greater the thrill. Why should I +deny myself the joy of exciting Leach’s soul to fever-pitch? For that +matter, I do him a kindness. The greatness of sensation is mutual. He +is living more royally than any man for’ard, though he does not know it. +For he has what they have not—purpose, something to do and be done, an +all-absorbing end to strive to attain, the desire to kill me, the hope +that he may kill me. Really, Hump, he is living deep and high. I doubt +that he has ever lived so swiftly and keenly before, and I honestly envy +him, sometimes, when I see him raging at the summit of passion and +sensibility.” + +“Ah, but it is cowardly, cowardly!” I cried. “You have all the +advantage.” + +“Of the two of us, you and I, who is the greater coward?” he asked +seriously. “If the situation is unpleasing, you compromise with your +conscience when you make yourself a party to it. If you were really +great, really true to yourself, you would join forces with Leach and +Johnson. But you are afraid, you are afraid. You want to live. The +life that is in you cries out that it must live, no matter what the cost; +so you live ignominiously, untrue to the best you dream of, sinning +against your whole pitiful little code, and, if there were a hell, +heading your soul straight for it. Bah! I play the braver part. I do +no sin, for I am true to the promptings of the life that is in me. I am +sincere with my soul at least, and that is what you are not.” + +There was a sting in what he said. Perhaps, after all, I was playing a +cowardly part. And the more I thought about it the more it appeared that +my duty to myself lay in doing what he had advised, lay in joining forces +with Johnson and Leach and working for his death. Right here, I think, +entered the austere conscience of my Puritan ancestry, impelling me +toward lurid deeds and sanctioning even murder as right conduct. I dwelt +upon the idea. It would be a most moral act to rid the world of such a +monster. Humanity would be better and happier for it, life fairer and +sweeter. + +I pondered it long, lying sleepless in my bunk and reviewing in endless +procession the facts of the situation. I talked with Johnson and Leach, +during the night watches when Wolf Larsen was below. Both men had lost +hope—Johnson, because of temperamental despondency; Leach, because he had +beaten himself out in the vain struggle and was exhausted. But he caught +my hand in a passionate grip one night, saying: + +“I think yer square, Mr. Van Weyden. But stay where you are and keep yer +mouth shut. Say nothin’ but saw wood. We’re dead men, I know it; but +all the same you might be able to do us a favour some time when we need +it damn bad.” + +It was only next day, when Wainwright Island loomed to windward, close +abeam, that Wolf Larsen opened his mouth in prophecy. He had attacked +Johnson, been attacked by Leach, and had just finished whipping the pair +of them. + +“Leach,” he said, “you know I’m going to kill you some time or other, +don’t you?” + +A snarl was the answer. + +“And as for you, Johnson, you’ll get so tired of life before I’m through +with you that you’ll fling yourself over the side. See if you don’t.” + +“That’s a suggestion,” he added, in an aside to me. “I’ll bet you a +month’s pay he acts upon it.” + +I had cherished a hope that his victims would find an opportunity to +escape while filling our water-barrels, but Wolf Larsen had selected his +spot well. The _Ghost_ lay half-a-mile beyond the surf-line of a lonely +beach. Here debouched a deep gorge, with precipitous, volcanic walls +which no man could scale. And here, under his direct supervision—for he +went ashore himself—Leach and Johnson filled the small casks and rolled +them down to the beach. They had no chance to make a break for liberty +in one of the boats. + +Harrison and Kelly, however, made such an attempt. They composed one of +the boats’ crews, and their task was to ply between the schooner and the +shore, carrying a single cask each trip. Just before dinner, starting +for the beach with an empty barrel, they altered their course and bore +away to the left to round the promontory which jutted into the sea +between them and liberty. Beyond its foaming base lay the pretty +villages of the Japanese colonists and smiling valleys which penetrated +deep into the interior. Once in the fastnesses they promised, and the +two men could defy Wolf Larsen. + +I had observed Henderson and Smoke loitering about the deck all morning, +and I now learned why they were there. Procuring their rifles, they +opened fire in a leisurely manner, upon the deserters. It was a +cold-blooded exhibition of marksmanship. At first their bullets zipped +harmlessly along the surface of the water on either side the boat; but, +as the men continued to pull lustily, they struck closer and closer. + +“Now, watch me take Kelly’s right oar,” Smoke said, drawing a more +careful aim. + +I was looking through the glasses, and I saw the oar-blade shatter as he +shot. Henderson duplicated it, selecting Harrison’s right oar. The boat +slewed around. The two remaining oars were quickly broken. The men +tried to row with the splinters, and had them shot out of their hands. +Kelly ripped up a bottom board and began paddling, but dropped it with a +cry of pain as its splinters drove into his hands. Then they gave up, +letting the boat drift till a second boat, sent from the shore by Wolf +Larsen, took them in tow and brought them aboard. + +Late that afternoon we hove up anchor and got away. Nothing was before +us but the three or four months’ hunting on the sealing grounds. The +outlook was black indeed, and I went about my work with a heavy heart. +An almost funereal gloom seemed to have descended upon the _Ghost_. Wolf +Larsen had taken to his bunk with one of his strange, splitting +headaches. Harrison stood listlessly at the wheel, half supporting +himself by it, as though wearied by the weight of his flesh. The rest of +the men were morose and silent. I came upon Kelly crouching to the lee +of the forecastle scuttle, his head on his knees, his arms about his +head, in an attitude of unutterable despondency. + +Johnson I found lying full length on the forecastle head, staring at the +troubled churn of the forefoot, and I remembered with horror the +suggestion Wolf Larsen had made. It seemed likely to bear fruit. I +tried to break in on the man’s morbid thoughts by calling him away, but +he smiled sadly at me and refused to obey. + +Leach approached me as I returned aft. + +“I want to ask a favour, Mr. Van Weyden,” he said. “If it’s yer luck to +ever make ’Frisco once more, will you hunt up Matt McCarthy? He’s my old +man. He lives on the Hill, back of the Mayfair bakery, runnin’ a +cobbler’s shop that everybody knows, and you’ll have no trouble. Tell +him I lived to be sorry for the trouble I brought him and the things I +done, and—and just tell him ‘God bless him,’ for me.” + +I nodded my head, but said, “We’ll all win back to San Francisco, Leach, +and you’ll be with me when I go to see Matt McCarthy.” + +“I’d like to believe you,” he answered, shaking my hand, “but I can’t. +Wolf Larsen ’ll do for me, I know it; and all I can hope is, he’ll do it +quick.” + +And as he left me I was aware of the same desire at my heart. Since it +was to be done, let it be done with despatch. The general gloom had +gathered me into its folds. The worst appeared inevitable; and as I +paced the deck, hour after hour, I found myself afflicted with Wolf +Larsen’s repulsive ideas. What was it all about? Where was the grandeur +of life that it should permit such wanton destruction of human souls? It +was a cheap and sordid thing after all, this life, and the sooner over +the better. Over and done with! I, too, leaned upon the rail and gazed +longingly into the sea, with the certainty that sooner or later I should +be sinking down, down, through the cool green depths of its oblivion. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Strange to say, in spite of the general foreboding, nothing of especial +moment happened on the _Ghost_. We ran on to the north and west till we +raised the coast of Japan and picked up with the great seal herd. Coming +from no man knew where in the illimitable Pacific, it was travelling +north on its annual migration to the rookeries of Bering Sea. And north +we travelled with it, ravaging and destroying, flinging the naked +carcasses to the shark and salting down the skins so that they might +later adorn the fair shoulders of the women of the cities. + +It was wanton slaughter, and all for woman’s sake. No man ate of the +seal meat or the oil. After a good day’s killing I have seen our decks +covered with hides and bodies, slippery with fat and blood, the scuppers +running red; masts, ropes, and rails spattered with the sanguinary +colour; and the men, like butchers plying their trade, naked and red of +arm and hand, hard at work with ripping and flensing-knives, removing the +skins from the pretty sea-creatures they had killed. + +It was my task to tally the pelts as they came aboard from the boats, to +oversee the skinning and afterward the cleansing of the decks and +bringing things ship-shape again. It was not pleasant work. My soul and +my stomach revolted at it; and yet, in a way, this handling and directing +of many men was good for me. It developed what little executive ability +I possessed, and I was aware of a toughening or hardening which I was +undergoing and which could not be anything but wholesome for “Sissy” Van +Weyden. + +One thing I was beginning to feel, and that was that I could never again +be quite the same man I had been. While my hope and faith in human life +still survived Wolf Larsen’s destructive criticism, he had nevertheless +been a cause of change in minor matters. He had opened up for me the +world of the real, of which I had known practically nothing and from +which I had always shrunk. I had learned to look more closely at life as +it was lived, to recognize that there were such things as facts in the +world, to emerge from the realm of mind and idea and to place certain +values on the concrete and objective phases of existence. + +I saw more of Wolf Larsen than ever when we had gained the grounds. For +when the weather was fair and we were in the midst of the herd, all hands +were away in the boats, and left on board were only he and I, and Thomas +Mugridge, who did not count. But there was no play about it. The six +boats, spreading out fan-wise from the schooner until the first weather +boat and the last lee boat were anywhere from ten to twenty miles apart, +cruised along a straight course over the sea till nightfall or bad +weather drove them in. It was our duty to sail the _Ghost_ well to +leeward of the last lee boat, so that all the boats should have fair wind +to run for us in case of squalls or threatening weather. + +It is no slight matter for two men, particularly when a stiff wind has +sprung up, to handle a vessel like the _Ghost_, steering, keeping +look-out for the boats, and setting or taking in sail; so it devolved +upon me to learn, and learn quickly. Steering I picked up easily, but +running aloft to the crosstrees and swinging my whole weight by my arms +when I left the ratlines and climbed still higher, was more difficult. +This, too, I learned, and quickly, for I felt somehow a wild desire to +vindicate myself in Wolf Larsen’s eyes, to prove my right to live in ways +other than of the mind. Nay, the time came when I took joy in the run of +the masthead and in the clinging on by my legs at that precarious height +while I swept the sea with glasses in search of the boats. + +I remember one beautiful day, when the boats left early and the reports +of the hunters’ guns grew dim and distant and died away as they scattered +far and wide over the sea. There was just the faintest wind from the +westward; but it breathed its last by the time we managed to get to +leeward of the last lee boat. One by one—I was at the masthead and +saw—the six boats disappeared over the bulge of the earth as they +followed the seal into the west. We lay, scarcely rolling on the placid +sea, unable to follow. Wolf Larsen was apprehensive. The barometer was +down, and the sky to the east did not please him. He studied it with +unceasing vigilance. + +“If she comes out of there,” he said, “hard and snappy, putting us to +windward of the boats, it’s likely there’ll be empty bunks in steerage +and fo’c’sle.” + +By eleven o’clock the sea had become glass. By midday, though we were +well up in the northerly latitudes, the heat was sickening. There was no +freshness in the air. It was sultry and oppressive, reminding me of what +the old Californians term “earthquake weather.” There was something +ominous about it, and in intangible ways one was made to feel that the +worst was about to come. Slowly the whole eastern sky filled with clouds +that over-towered us like some black sierra of the infernal regions. So +clearly could one see cañon, gorge, and precipice, and the shadows that +lie therein, that one looked unconsciously for the white surf-line and +bellowing caverns where the sea charges on the land. And still we rocked +gently, and there was no wind. + +“It’s no squall,” Wolf Larsen said. “Old Mother Nature’s going to get +up on her hind legs and howl for all that’s in her, and it’ll keep us +jumping, Hump, to pull through with half our boats. You’d better run up +and loosen the topsails.” + +“But if it is going to howl, and there are only two of us?” I asked, a +note of protest in my voice. + +“Why we’ve got to make the best of the first of it and run down to our +boats before our canvas is ripped out of us. After that I don’t give a +rap what happens. The sticks ’ll stand it, and you and I will have to, +though we’ve plenty cut out for us.” + +Still the calm continued. We ate dinner, a hurried and anxious meal for +me with eighteen men abroad on the sea and beyond the bulge of the earth, +and with that heaven-rolling mountain range of clouds moving slowly down +upon us. Wolf Larsen did not seem affected, however; though I noticed, +when we returned to the deck, a slight twitching of the nostrils, a +perceptible quickness of movement. His face was stern, the lines of it +had grown hard, and yet in his eyes—blue, clear blue this day—there was a +strange brilliancy, a bright scintillating light. It struck me that he +was joyous, in a ferocious sort of way; that he was glad there was an +impending struggle; that he was thrilled and upborne with knowledge that +one of the great moments of living, when the tide of life surges up in +flood, was upon him. + +Once, and unwitting that he did so or that I saw, he laughed aloud, +mockingly and defiantly, at the advancing storm. I see him yet standing +there like a pigmy out of the _Arabian Nights_ before the huge front of +some malignant genie. He was daring destiny, and he was unafraid. + +He walked to the galley. “Cooky, by the time you’ve finished pots and +pans you’ll be wanted on deck. Stand ready for a call.” + +“Hump,” he said, becoming cognizant of the fascinated gaze I bent upon +him, “this beats whisky and is where your Omar misses. I think he only +half lived after all.” + +The western half of the sky had by now grown murky. The sun had dimmed +and faded out of sight. It was two in the afternoon, and a ghostly +twilight, shot through by wandering purplish lights, had descended upon +us. In this purplish light Wolf Larsen’s face glowed and glowed, and to +my excited fancy he appeared encircled by a halo. We lay in the midst of +an unearthly quiet, while all about us were signs and omens of oncoming +sound and movement. The sultry heat had become unendurable. The sweat +was standing on my forehead, and I could feel it trickling down my nose. +I felt as though I should faint, and reached out to the rail for support. + +And then, just then, the faintest possible whisper of air passed by. It +was from the east, and like a whisper it came and went. The drooping +canvas was not stirred, and yet my face had felt the air and been cooled. + +“Cooky,” Wolf Larsen called in a low voice. Thomas Mugridge turned a +pitiable scared face. “Let go that foreboom tackle and pass it across, +and when she’s willing let go the sheet and come in snug with the tackle. +And if you make a mess of it, it will be the last you ever make. +Understand?” + +“Mr. Van Weyden, stand by to pass the head-sails over. Then jump for the +topsails and spread them quick as God’ll let you—the quicker you do it +the easier you’ll find it. As for Cooky, if he isn’t lively bat him +between the eyes.” + +I was aware of the compliment and pleased, in that no threat had +accompanied my instructions. We were lying head to north-west, and it +was his intention to jibe over all with the first puff. + +“We’ll have the breeze on our quarter,” he explained to me. “By the last +guns the boats were bearing away slightly to the south’ard.” + +He turned and walked aft to the wheel. I went forward and took my +station at the jibs. Another whisper of wind, and another, passed by. +The canvas flapped lazily. + +“Thank Gawd she’s not comin’ all of a bunch, Mr. Van Weyden,” was the +Cockney’s fervent ejaculation. + +And I was indeed thankful, for I had by this time learned enough to know, +with all our canvas spread, what disaster in such event awaited us. The +whispers of wind became puffs, the sails filled, the _Ghost_ moved. Wolf +Larsen put the wheel hard up, to port, and we began to pay off. The wind +was now dead astern, muttering and puffing stronger and stronger, and my +head-sails were pounding lustily. I did not see what went on elsewhere, +though I felt the sudden surge and heel of the schooner as the +wind-pressures changed to the jibing of the fore- and main-sails. My +hands were full with the flying-jib, jib, and staysail; and by the time +this part of my task was accomplished the _Ghost_ was leaping into the +south-west, the wind on her quarter and all her sheets to starboard. +Without pausing for breath, though my heart was beating like a +trip-hammer from my exertions, I sprang to the topsails, and before the +wind had become too strong we had them fairly set and were coiling down. +Then I went aft for orders. + +Wolf Larsen nodded approval and relinquished the wheel to me. The wind +was strengthening steadily and the sea rising. For an hour I steered, +each moment becoming more difficult. I had not the experience to steer +at the gait we were going on a quartering course. + +“Now take a run up with the glasses and raise some of the boats. We’ve +made at least ten knots, and we’re going twelve or thirteen now. The old +girl knows how to walk.” + +I contested myself with the fore crosstrees, some seventy feet above the +deck. As I searched the vacant stretch of water before me, I +comprehended thoroughly the need for haste if we were to recover any of +our men. Indeed, as I gazed at the heavy sea through which we were +running, I doubted that there was a boat afloat. It did not seem +possible that such frail craft could survive such stress of wind and +water. + +I could not feel the full force of the wind, for we were running with it; +but from my lofty perch I looked down as though outside the _Ghost_ and +apart from her, and saw the shape of her outlined sharply against the +foaming sea as she tore along instinct with life. Sometimes she would +lift and send across some great wave, burying her starboard-rail from +view, and covering her deck to the hatches with the boiling ocean. At +such moments, starting from a windward roll, I would go flying through +the air with dizzying swiftness, as though I clung to the end of a huge, +inverted pendulum, the arc of which, between the greater rolls, must have +been seventy feet or more. Once, the terror of this giddy sweep +overpowered me, and for a while I clung on, hand and foot, weak and +trembling, unable to search the sea for the missing boats or to behold +aught of the sea but that which roared beneath and strove to overwhelm +the _Ghost_. + +But the thought of the men in the midst of it steadied me, and in my +quest for them I forgot myself. For an hour I saw nothing but the naked, +desolate sea. And then, where a vagrant shaft of sunlight struck the +ocean and turned its surface to wrathful silver, I caught a small black +speck thrust skyward for an instant and swallowed up. I waited +patiently. Again the tiny point of black projected itself through the +wrathful blaze a couple of points off our port-bow. I did not attempt to +shout, but communicated the news to Wolf Larsen by waving my arm. He +changed the course, and I signalled affirmation when the speck showed +dead ahead. + +It grew larger, and so swiftly that for the first time I fully +appreciated the speed of our flight. Wolf Larsen motioned for me to come +down, and when I stood beside him at the wheel gave me instructions for +heaving to. + +“Expect all hell to break loose,” he cautioned me, “but don’t mind it. +Yours is to do your own work and to have Cooky stand by the fore-sheet.” + +I managed to make my way forward, but there was little choice of sides, +for the weather-rail seemed buried as often as the lee. Having +instructed Thomas Mugridge as to what he was to do, I clambered into the +fore-rigging a few feet. The boat was now very close, and I could make +out plainly that it was lying head to wind and sea and dragging on its +mast and sail, which had been thrown overboard and made to serve as a +sea-anchor. The three men were bailing. Each rolling mountain whelmed +them from view, and I would wait with sickening anxiety, fearing that +they would never appear again. Then, and with black suddenness, the boat +would shoot clear through the foaming crest, bow pointed to the sky, and +the whole length of her bottom showing, wet and dark, till she seemed on +end. There would be a fleeting glimpse of the three men flinging water +in frantic haste, when she would topple over and fall into the yawning +valley, bow down and showing her full inside length to the stern upreared +almost directly above the bow. Each time that she reappeared was a +miracle. + +The _Ghost_ suddenly changed her course, keeping away, and it came to me +with a shock that Wolf Larsen was giving up the rescue as impossible. +Then I realized that he was preparing to heave to, and dropped to the +deck to be in readiness. We were now dead before the wind, the boat far +away and abreast of us. I felt an abrupt easing of the schooner, a loss +for the moment of all strain and pressure, coupled with a swift +acceleration of speed. She was rushing around on her heel into the wind. + +As she arrived at right angles to the sea, the full force of the wind +(from which we had hitherto run away) caught us. I was unfortunately and +ignorantly facing it. It stood up against me like a wall, filling my +lungs with air which I could not expel. And as I choked and strangled, +and as the _Ghost_ wallowed for an instant, broadside on and rolling +straight over and far into the wind, I beheld a huge sea rise far above +my head. I turned aside, caught my breath, and looked again. The wave +over-topped the _Ghost_, and I gazed sheer up and into it. A shaft of +sunlight smote the over-curl, and I caught a glimpse of translucent, +rushing green, backed by a milky smother of foam. + +Then it descended, pandemonium broke loose, everything happened at once. +I was struck a crushing, stunning blow, nowhere in particular and yet +everywhere. My hold had been broken loose, I was under water, and the +thought passed through my mind that this was the terrible thing of which +I had heard, the being swept in the trough of the sea. My body struck +and pounded as it was dashed helplessly along and turned over and over, +and when I could hold my breath no longer, I breathed the stinging salt +water into my lungs. But through it all I clung to the one idea—_I must +get the jib backed over to windward_. I had no fear of death. I had no +doubt but that I should come through somehow. And as this idea of +fulfilling Wolf Larsen’s order persisted in my dazed consciousness, I +seemed to see him standing at the wheel in the midst of the wild welter, +pitting his will against the will of the storm and defying it. + +I brought up violently against what I took to be the rail, breathed, and +breathed the sweet air again. I tried to rise, but struck my head and +was knocked back on hands and knees. By some freak of the waters I had +been swept clear under the forecastle-head and into the eyes. As I +scrambled out on all fours, I passed over the body of Thomas Mugridge, +who lay in a groaning heap. There was no time to investigate. I must +get the jib backed over. + +When I emerged on deck it seemed that the end of everything had come. On +all sides there was a rending and crashing of wood and steel and canvas. +The _Ghost_ was being wrenched and torn to fragments. The foresail and +fore-topsail, emptied of the wind by the manœuvre, and with no one to +bring in the sheet in time, were thundering into ribbons, the heavy boom +threshing and splintering from rail to rail. The air was thick with +flying wreckage, detached ropes and stays were hissing and coiling like +snakes, and down through it all crashed the gaff of the foresail. + +The spar could not have missed me by many inches, while it spurred me to +action. Perhaps the situation was not hopeless. I remembered Wolf +Larsen’s caution. He had expected all hell to break loose, and here it +was. And where was he? I caught sight of him toiling at the main-sheet, +heaving it in and flat with his tremendous muscles, the stern of the +schooner lifted high in the air and his body outlined against a white +surge of sea sweeping past. All this, and more,—a whole world of chaos +and wreck,—in possibly fifteen seconds I had seen and heard and grasped. + +I did not stop to see what had become of the small boat, but sprang to +the jib-sheet. The jib itself was beginning to slap, partially filling +and emptying with sharp reports; but with a turn of the sheet and the +application of my whole strength each time it slapped, I slowly backed +it. This I know: I did my best. I pulled till I burst open the ends of +all my fingers; and while I pulled, the flying-jib and staysail split +their cloths apart and thundered into nothingness. + +Still I pulled, holding what I gained each time with a double turn until +the next slap gave me more. Then the sheet gave with greater ease, and +Wolf Larsen was beside me, heaving in alone while I was busied taking up +the slack. + +“Make fast!” he shouted. “And come on!” + +As I followed him, I noted that in spite of rack and ruin a rough order +obtained. The _Ghost_ was hove to. She was still in working order, and +she was still working. Though the rest of her sails were gone, the jib, +backed to windward, and the mainsail hauled down flat, were themselves +holding, and holding her bow to the furious sea as well. + +I looked for the boat, and, while Wolf Larsen cleared the boat-tackles, +saw it lift to leeward on a big sea and not a score of feet away. And, so +nicely had he made his calculation, we drifted fairly down upon it, so +that nothing remained to do but hook the tackles to either end and hoist +it aboard. But this was not done so easily as it is written. + +In the bow was Kerfoot, Oofty-Oofty in the stern, and Kelly amidships. +As we drifted closer the boat would rise on a wave while we sank in the +trough, till almost straight above me I could see the heads of the three +men craned overside and looking down. Then, the next moment, we would +lift and soar upward while they sank far down beneath us. It seemed +incredible that the next surge should not crush the _Ghost_ down upon the +tiny eggshell. + +But, at the right moment, I passed the tackle to the Kanaka, while Wolf +Larsen did the same thing forward to Kerfoot. Both tackles were hooked +in a trice, and the three men, deftly timing the roll, made a +simultaneous leap aboard the schooner. As the _Ghost_ rolled her side +out of water, the boat was lifted snugly against her, and before the +return roll came, we had heaved it in over the side and turned it bottom +up on the deck. I noticed blood spouting from Kerfoot’s left hand. In +some way the third finger had been crushed to a pulp. But he gave no +sign of pain, and with his single right hand helped us lash the boat in +its place. + +“Stand by to let that jib over, you Oofty!” Wolf Larsen commanded, the +very second we had finished with the boat. “Kelly, come aft and slack +off the main-sheet! You, Kerfoot, go for’ard and see what’s become of +Cooky! Mr. Van Weyden, run aloft again, and cut away any stray stuff on +your way!” + +And having commanded, he went aft with his peculiar tigerish leaps to the +wheel. While I toiled up the fore-shrouds the _Ghost_ slowly paid off. +This time, as we went into the trough of the sea and were swept, there +were no sails to carry away. And, halfway to the crosstrees and +flattened against the rigging by the full force of the wind so that it +would have been impossible for me to have fallen, the _Ghost_ almost on +her beam-ends and the masts parallel with the water, I looked, not down, +but at almost right angles from the perpendicular, to the deck of the +_Ghost_. But I saw, not the deck, but where the deck should have been, +for it was buried beneath a wild tumbling of water. Out of this water I +could see the two masts rising, and that was all. The _Ghost_, for the +moment, was buried beneath the sea. As she squared off more and more, +escaping from the side pressure, she righted herself and broke her deck, +like a whale’s back, through the ocean surface. + +Then we raced, and wildly, across the wild sea, the while I hung like a +fly in the crosstrees and searched for the other boats. In half-an-hour +I sighted the second one, swamped and bottom up, to which were +desperately clinging Jock Horner, fat Louis, and Johnson. This time I +remained aloft, and Wolf Larsen succeeded in heaving to without being +swept. As before, we drifted down upon it. Tackles were made fast and +lines flung to the men, who scrambled aboard like monkeys. The boat +itself was crushed and splintered against the schooner’s side as it came +inboard; but the wreck was securely lashed, for it could be patched and +made whole again. + +Once more the _Ghost_ bore away before the storm, this time so submerging +herself that for some seconds I thought she would never reappear. Even +the wheel, quite a deal higher than the waist, was covered and swept +again and again. At such moments I felt strangely alone with God, alone +with him and watching the chaos of his wrath. And then the wheel would +reappear, and Wolf Larsen’s broad shoulders, his hands gripping the +spokes and holding the schooner to the course of his will, himself an +earth-god, dominating the storm, flinging its descending waters from him +and riding it to his own ends. And oh, the marvel of it! the marvel of +it! That tiny men should live and breathe and work, and drive so frail a +contrivance of wood and cloth through so tremendous an elemental strife. + +As before, the _Ghost_ swung out of the trough, lifting her deck again +out of the sea, and dashed before the howling blast. It was now +half-past five, and half-an-hour later, when the last of the day lost +itself in a dim and furious twilight, I sighted a third boat. It was +bottom up, and there was no sign of its crew. Wolf Larsen repeated his +manœuvre, holding off and then rounding up to windward and drifting down +upon it. But this time he missed by forty feet, the boat passing astern. + +“Number four boat!” Oofty-Oofty cried, his keen eyes reading its number +in the one second when it lifted clear of the foam, and upside down. + +It was Henderson’s boat and with him had been lost Holyoak and Williams, +another of the deep-water crowd. Lost they indubitably were; but the +boat remained, and Wolf Larsen made one more reckless effort to recover +it. I had come down to the deck, and I saw Horner and Kerfoot vainly +protest against the attempt. + +“By God, I’ll not be robbed of my boat by any storm that ever blew out of +hell!” he shouted, and though we four stood with our heads together that +we might hear, his voice seemed faint and far, as though removed from us +an immense distance. + +“Mr. Van Weyden!” he cried, and I heard through the tumult as one might +hear a whisper. “Stand by that jib with Johnson and Oofty! The rest of +you tail aft to the mainsheet! Lively now! or I’ll sail you all into +Kingdom Come! Understand?” + +And when he put the wheel hard over and the _Ghost’s_ bow swung off, +there was nothing for the hunters to do but obey and make the best of a +risky chance. How great the risk I realized when I was once more buried +beneath the pounding seas and clinging for life to the pinrail at the +foot of the foremast. My fingers were torn loose, and I swept across to +the side and over the side into the sea. I could not swim, but before I +could sink I was swept back again. A strong hand gripped me, and when +the _Ghost_ finally emerged, I found that I owed my life to Johnson. I +saw him looking anxiously about him, and noted that Kelly, who had come +forward at the last moment, was missing. + +This time, having missed the boat, and not being in the same position as +in the previous instances, Wolf Larsen was compelled to resort to a +different manœuvre. Running off before the wind with everything to +starboard, he came about, and returned close-hauled on the port tack. + +“Grand!” Johnson shouted in my ear, as we successfully came through the +attendant deluge, and I knew he referred, not to Wolf Larsen’s +seamanship, but to the performance of the _Ghost_ herself. + +It was now so dark that there was no sign of the boat; but Wolf Larsen +held back through the frightful turmoil as if guided by unerring +instinct. This time, though we were continually half-buried, there was +no trough in which to be swept, and we drifted squarely down upon the +upturned boat, badly smashing it as it was heaved inboard. + +Two hours of terrible work followed, in which all hands of us—two +hunters, three sailors, Wolf Larsen and I—reefed, first one and then the +other, the jib and mainsail. Hove to under this short canvas, our decks +were comparatively free of water, while the _Ghost_ bobbed and ducked +amongst the combers like a cork. + +I had burst open the ends of my fingers at the very first, and during the +reefing I had worked with tears of pain running down my cheeks. And when +all was done, I gave up like a woman and rolled upon the deck in the +agony of exhaustion. + +In the meantime Thomas Mugridge, like a drowned rat, was being dragged +out from under the forecastle head where he had cravenly ensconced +himself. I saw him pulled aft to the cabin, and noted with a shock of +surprise that the galley had disappeared. A clean space of deck showed +where it had stood. + +In the cabin I found all hands assembled, sailors as well, and while +coffee was being cooked over the small stove we drank whisky and crunched +hard-tack. Never in my life had food been so welcome. And never had hot +coffee tasted so good. So violently did the _Ghost_ pitch and toss and +tumble that it was impossible for even the sailors to move about without +holding on, and several times, after a cry of “Now she takes it!” we were +heaped upon the wall of the port cabins as though it had been the deck. + +“To hell with a look-out,” I heard Wolf Larsen say when we had eaten and +drunk our fill. “There’s nothing can be done on deck. If anything’s +going to run us down we couldn’t get out of its way. Turn in, all hands, +and get some sleep.” + +The sailors slipped forward, setting the side-lights as they went, while +the two hunters remained to sleep in the cabin, it not being deemed +advisable to open the slide to the steerage companion-way. Wolf Larsen +and I, between us, cut off Kerfoot’s crushed finger and sewed up the +stump. Mugridge, who, during all the time he had been compelled to cook +and serve coffee and keep the fire going, had complained of internal +pains, now swore that he had a broken rib or two. On examination we +found that he had three. But his case was deferred to next day, +principally for the reason that I did not know anything about broken ribs +and would first have to read it up. + +“I don’t think it was worth it,” I said to Wolf Larsen, “a broken boat +for Kelly’s life.” + +“But Kelly didn’t amount to much,” was the reply. “Good-night.” + +After all that had passed, suffering intolerable anguish in my +finger-ends, and with three boats missing, to say nothing of the wild +capers the _Ghost_ was cutting, I should have thought it impossible to +sleep. But my eyes must have closed the instant my head touched the +pillow, and in utter exhaustion I slept throughout the night, the while +the _Ghost_, lonely and undirected, fought her way through the storm. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +The next day, while the storm was blowing itself out, Wolf Larsen and I +crammed anatomy and surgery and set Mugridge’s ribs. Then, when the +storm broke, Wolf Larsen cruised back and forth over that portion of the +ocean where we had encountered it, and somewhat more to the westward, +while the boats were being repaired and new sails made and bent. Sealing +schooner after sealing schooner we sighted and boarded, most of which +were in search of lost boats, and most of which were carrying boats and +crews they had picked up and which did not belong to them. For the thick +of the fleet had been to the westward of us, and the boats, scattered far +and wide, had headed in mad flight for the nearest refuge. + +Two of our boats, with men all safe, we took off the _Cisco_, and, to +Wolf Larsen’s huge delight and my own grief, he culled Smoke, with Nilson +and Leach, from the _San Diego_. So that, at the end of five days, we +found ourselves short but four men—Henderson, Holyoak, Williams, and +Kelly,—and were once more hunting on the flanks of the herd. + +As we followed it north we began to encounter the dreaded sea-fogs. Day +after day the boats lowered and were swallowed up almost ere they touched +the water, while we on board pumped the horn at regular intervals and +every fifteen minutes fired the bomb gun. Boats were continually being +lost and found, it being the custom for a boat to hunt, on lay, with +whatever schooner picked it up, until such time it was recovered by its +own schooner. But Wolf Larsen, as was to be expected, being a boat +short, took possession of the first stray one and compelled its men to +hunt with the _Ghost_, not permitting them to return to their own +schooner when we sighted it. I remember how he forced the hunter and his +two men below, a rifle at their breasts, when their captain passed by at +biscuit-toss and hailed us for information. + +Thomas Mugridge, so strangely and pertinaciously clinging to life, was +soon limping about again and performing his double duties of cook and +cabin-boy. Johnson and Leach were bullied and beaten as much as ever, +and they looked for their lives to end with the end of the hunting +season; while the rest of the crew lived the lives of dogs and were +worked like dogs by their pitiless master. As for Wolf Larsen and +myself, we got along fairly well; though I could not quite rid myself of +the idea that right conduct, for me, lay in killing him. He fascinated +me immeasurably, and I feared him immeasurably. And yet, I could not +imagine him lying prone in death. There was an endurance, as of +perpetual youth, about him, which rose up and forbade the picture. I +could see him only as living always, and dominating always, fighting and +destroying, himself surviving. + +One diversion of his, when we were in the midst of the herd and the sea +was too rough to lower the boats, was to lower with two boat-pullers and +a steerer and go out himself. He was a good shot, too, and brought many +a skin aboard under what the hunters termed impossible hunting +conditions. It seemed the breath of his nostrils, this carrying his life +in his hands and struggling for it against tremendous odds. + +I was learning more and more seamanship; and one clear day—a thing we +rarely encountered now—I had the satisfaction of running and handling the +_Ghost_ and picking up the boats myself. Wolf Larsen had been smitten +with one of his headaches, and I stood at the wheel from morning until +evening, sailing across the ocean after the last lee boat, and heaving to +and picking it and the other five up without command or suggestion from +him. + +Gales we encountered now and again, for it was a raw and stormy region, +and, in the middle of June, a typhoon most memorable to me and most +important because of the changes wrought through it upon my future. We +must have been caught nearly at the centre of this circular storm, and +Wolf Larsen ran out of it and to the southward, first under a +double-reefed jib, and finally under bare poles. Never had I imagined so +great a sea. The seas previously encountered were as ripples compared +with these, which ran a half-mile from crest to crest and which upreared, +I am confident, above our masthead. So great was it that Wolf Larsen +himself did not dare heave to, though he was being driven far to the +southward and out of the seal herd. + +We must have been well in the path of the trans-Pacific steamships when +the typhoon moderated, and here, to the surprise of the hunters, we found +ourselves in the midst of seals—a second herd, or sort of rear-guard, +they declared, and a most unusual thing. But it was “Boats over!” the +boom-boom of guns, and the pitiful slaughter through the long day. + +It was at this time that I was approached by Leach. I had just finished +tallying the skins of the last boat aboard, when he came to my side, in +the darkness, and said in a low tone: + +“Can you tell me, Mr. Van Weyden, how far we are off the coast, and what +the bearings of Yokohama are?” + +My heart leaped with gladness, for I knew what he had in mind, and I gave +him the bearings—west-north-west, and five hundred miles away. + +“Thank you, sir,” was all he said as he slipped back into the darkness. + +Next morning No. 3 boat and Johnson and Leach were missing. The +water-breakers and grub-boxes from all the other boats were likewise +missing, as were the beds and sea bags of the two men. Wolf Larsen was +furious. He set sail and bore away into the west-north-west, two hunters +constantly at the mastheads and sweeping the sea with glasses, himself +pacing the deck like an angry lion. He knew too well my sympathy for the +runaways to send me aloft as look-out. + +The wind was fair but fitful, and it was like looking for a needle in a +haystack to raise that tiny boat out of the blue immensity. But he put +the _Ghost_ through her best paces so as to get between the deserters and +the land. This accomplished, he cruised back and forth across what he +knew must be their course. + +On the morning of the third day, shortly after eight bells, a cry that +the boat was sighted came down from Smoke at the masthead. All hands +lined the rail. A snappy breeze was blowing from the west with the +promise of more wind behind it; and there, to leeward, in the troubled +silver of the rising sun, appeared and disappeared a black speck. + +We squared away and ran for it. My heart was as lead. I felt myself +turning sick in anticipation; and as I looked at the gleam of triumph in +Wolf Larsen’s eyes, his form swam before me, and I felt almost +irresistibly impelled to fling myself upon him. So unnerved was I by the +thought of impending violence to Leach and Johnson that my reason must +have left me. I know that I slipped down into the steerage in a daze, +and that I was just beginning the ascent to the deck, a loaded shot-gun +in my hands, when I heard the startled cry: + +“There’s five men in that boat!” + +I supported myself in the companion-way, weak and trembling, while the +observation was being verified by the remarks of the rest of the men. +Then my knees gave from under me and I sank down, myself again, but +overcome by shock at knowledge of what I had so nearly done. Also, I was +very thankful as I put the gun away and slipped back on deck. + +No one had remarked my absence. The boat was near enough for us to make +out that it was larger than any sealing boat and built on different +lines. As we drew closer, the sail was taken in and the mast unstepped. +Oars were shipped, and its occupants waited for us to heave to and take +them aboard. + +Smoke, who had descended to the deck and was now standing by my side, +began to chuckle in a significant way. I looked at him inquiringly. + +“Talk of a mess!” he giggled. + +“What’s wrong?” I demanded. + +Again he chuckled. “Don’t you see there, in the stern-sheets, on the +bottom? May I never shoot a seal again if that ain’t a woman!” + +I looked closely, but was not sure until exclamations broke out on all +sides. The boat contained four men, and its fifth occupant was certainly +a woman. We were agog with excitement, all except Wolf Larsen, who was +too evidently disappointed in that it was not his own boat with the two +victims of his malice. + +We ran down the flying jib, hauled the jib-sheets to wind-ward and the +main-sheet flat, and came up into the wind. The oars struck the water, +and with a few strokes the boat was alongside. I now caught my first +fair glimpse of the woman. She was wrapped in a long ulster, for the +morning was raw; and I could see nothing but her face and a mass of light +brown hair escaping from under the seaman’s cap on her head. The eyes +were large and brown and lustrous, the mouth sweet and sensitive, and the +face itself a delicate oval, though sun and exposure to briny wind had +burnt the face scarlet. + +She seemed to me like a being from another world. I was aware of a +hungry out-reaching for her, as of a starving man for bread. But then, I +had not seen a woman for a very long time. I know that I was lost in a +great wonder, almost a stupor,—this, then, was a woman?—so that I forgot +myself and my mate’s duties, and took no part in helping the new-comers +aboard. For when one of the sailors lifted her into Wolf Larsen’s +downstretched arms, she looked up into our curious faces and smiled +amusedly and sweetly, as only a woman can smile, and as I had seen no one +smile for so long that I had forgotten such smiles existed. + +“Mr. Van Weyden!” + +Wolf Larsen’s voice brought me sharply back to myself. + +“Will you take the lady below and see to her comfort? Make up that spare +port cabin. Put Cooky to work on it. And see what you can do for that +face. It’s burned badly.” + +He turned brusquely away from us and began to question the new men. The +boat was cast adrift, though one of them called it a “bloody shame” with +Yokohama so near. + +I found myself strangely afraid of this woman I was escorting aft. Also +I was awkward. It seemed to me that I was realizing for the first time +what a delicate, fragile creature a woman is; and as I caught her arm to +help her down the companion stairs, I was startled by its smallness and +softness. Indeed, she was a slender, delicate woman as women go, but to +me she was so ethereally slender and delicate that I was quite prepared +for her arm to crumble in my grasp. All this, in frankness, to show my +first impression, after long denial of women in general and of Maud +Brewster in particular. + +“No need to go to any great trouble for me,” she protested, when I had +seated her in Wolf Larsen’s arm-chair, which I had dragged hastily from +his cabin. “The men were looking for land at any moment this morning, +and the vessel should be in by night; don’t you think so?” + +Her simple faith in the immediate future took me aback. How could I +explain to her the situation, the strange man who stalked the sea like +Destiny, all that it had taken me months to learn? But I answered +honestly: + +“If it were any other captain except ours, I should say you would be +ashore in Yokohama to-morrow. But our captain is a strange man, and I +beg of you to be prepared for anything—understand?—for anything.” + +“I—I confess I hardly do understand,” she hesitated, a perturbed but not +frightened expression in her eyes. “Or is it a misconception of mine +that shipwrecked people are always shown every consideration? This is +such a little thing, you know. We are so close to land.” + +“Candidly, I do not know,” I strove to reassure her. “I wished merely to +prepare you for the worst, if the worst is to come. This man, this +captain, is a brute, a demon, and one can never tell what will be his +next fantastic act.” + +I was growing excited, but she interrupted me with an “Oh, I see,” and +her voice sounded weary. To think was patently an effort. She was +clearly on the verge of physical collapse. + +She asked no further questions, and I vouchsafed no remark, devoting +myself to Wolf Larsen’s command, which was to make her comfortable. I +bustled about in quite housewifely fashion, procuring soothing lotions +for her sunburn, raiding Wolf Larsen’s private stores for a bottle of +port I knew to be there, and directing Thomas Mugridge in the preparation +of the spare state-room. + +The wind was freshening rapidly, the _Ghost_ heeling over more and more, +and by the time the state-room was ready she was dashing through the +water at a lively clip. I had quite forgotten the existence of Leach and +Johnson, when suddenly, like a thunderclap, “Boat ho!” came down the open +companion-way. It was Smoke’s unmistakable voice, crying from the +masthead. I shot a glance at the woman, but she was leaning back in the +arm-chair, her eyes closed, unutterably tired. I doubted that she had +heard, and I resolved to prevent her seeing the brutality I knew would +follow the capture of the deserters. She was tired. Very good. She +should sleep. + +There were swift commands on deck, a stamping of feet and a slapping of +reef-points as the _Ghost_ shot into the wind and about on the other +tack. As she filled away and heeled, the arm-chair began to slide across +the cabin floor, and I sprang for it just in time to prevent the rescued +woman from being spilled out. + +Her eyes were too heavy to suggest more than a hint of the sleepy +surprise that perplexed her as she looked up at me, and she half +stumbled, half tottered, as I led her to her cabin. Mugridge grinned +insinuatingly in my face as I shoved him out and ordered him back to his +galley work; and he won his revenge by spreading glowing reports among +the hunters as to what an excellent “lydy’s-myde” I was proving myself to +be. + +She leaned heavily against me, and I do believe that she had fallen +asleep again between the arm-chair and the state-room. This I discovered +when she nearly fell into the bunk during a sudden lurch of the schooner. +She aroused, smiled drowsily, and was off to sleep again; and asleep I +left her, under a heavy pair of sailor’s blankets, her head resting on a +pillow I had appropriated from Wolf Larsen’s bunk. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +I came on deck to find the _Ghost_ heading up close on the port tack and +cutting in to windward of a familiar spritsail close-hauled on the same +tack ahead of us. All hands were on deck, for they knew that something +was to happen when Leach and Johnson were dragged aboard. + +It was four bells. Louis came aft to relieve the wheel. There was a +dampness in the air, and I noticed he had on his oilskins. + +“What are we going to have?” I asked him. + +“A healthy young slip of a gale from the breath iv it, sir,” he answered, +“with a splatter iv rain just to wet our gills an’ no more.” + +“Too bad we sighted them,” I said, as the _Ghost’s_ bow was flung off a +point by a large sea and the boat leaped for a moment past the jibs and +into our line of vision. + +Louis gave a spoke and temporized. “They’d never iv made the land, sir, +I’m thinkin’.” + +“Think not?” I queried. + +“No, sir. Did you feel that?” (A puff had caught the schooner, and he +was forced to put the wheel up rapidly to keep her out of the wind.) +“’Tis no egg-shell’ll float on this sea an hour come, an’ it’s a stroke +iv luck for them we’re here to pick ’em up.” + +Wolf Larsen strode aft from amidships, where he had been talking with the +rescued men. The cat-like springiness in his tread was a little more +pronounced than usual, and his eyes were bright and snappy. + +“Three oilers and a fourth engineer,” was his greeting. “But we’ll make +sailors out of them, or boat-pullers at any rate. Now, what of the +lady?” + +I know not why, but I was aware of a twinge or pang like the cut of a +knife when he mentioned her. I thought it a certain silly fastidiousness +on my part, but it persisted in spite of me, and I merely shrugged my +shoulders in answer. + +Wolf Larsen pursed his lips in a long, quizzical whistle. + +“What’s her name, then?” he demanded. + +“I don’t know,” I replied. “She is asleep. She was very tired. In +fact, I am waiting to hear the news from you. What vessel was it?” + +“Mail steamer,” he answered shortly. “_The City of Tokio_, from ’Frisco, +bound for Yokohama. Disabled in that typhoon. Old tub. Opened up top +and bottom like a sieve. They were adrift four days. And you don’t know +who or what she is, eh?—maid, wife, or widow? Well, well.” + +He shook his head in a bantering way, and regarded me with laughing eyes. + +“Are you—” I began. It was on the verge of my tongue to ask if he were +going to take the castaways into Yokohama. + +“Am I what?” he asked. + +“What do you intend doing with Leach and Johnson?” + +He shook his head. “Really, Hump, I don’t know. You see, with these +additions I’ve about all the crew I want.” + +“And they’ve about all the escaping they want,” I said. “Why not give +them a change of treatment? Take them aboard, and deal gently with them. +Whatever they have done they have been hounded into doing.” + +“By me?” + +“By you,” I answered steadily. “And I give you warning, Wolf Larsen, +that I may forget love of my own life in the desire to kill you if you go +too far in maltreating those poor wretches.” + +“Bravo!” he cried. “You do me proud, Hump! You’ve found your legs with +a vengeance. You’re quite an individual. You were unfortunate in having +your life cast in easy places, but you’re developing, and I like you the +better for it.” + +His voice and expression changed. His face was serious. “Do you believe +in promises?” he asked. “Are they sacred things?” + +“Of course,” I answered. + +“Then here’s a compact,” he went on, consummate actor. “If I promise not +to lay my hands upon Leach will you promise, in turn, not to attempt to +kill me?” + +“Oh, not that I’m afraid of you, not that I’m afraid of you,” he hastened +to add. + +I could hardly believe my ears. What was coming over the man? + +“Is it a go?” he asked impatiently. + +“A go,” I answered. + +His hand went out to mine, and as I shook it heartily I could have sworn +I saw the mocking devil shine up for a moment in his eyes. + +We strolled across the poop to the lee side. The boat was close at hand +now, and in desperate plight. Johnson was steering, Leach bailing. We +overhauled them about two feet to their one. Wolf Larsen motioned Louis +to keep off slightly, and we dashed abreast of the boat, not a score of +feet to windward. The _Ghost_ blanketed it. The spritsail flapped +emptily and the boat righted to an even keel, causing the two men swiftly +to change position. The boat lost headway, and, as we lifted on a huge +surge, toppled and fell into the trough. + +It was at this moment that Leach and Johnson looked up into the faces of +their shipmates, who lined the rail amidships. There was no greeting. +They were as dead men in their comrades’ eyes, and between them was the +gulf that parts the living and the dead. + +The next instant they were opposite the poop, where stood Wolf Larsen and +I. We were falling in the trough, they were rising on the surge. +Johnson looked at me, and I could see that his face was worn and haggard. +I waved my hand to him, and he answered the greeting, but with a wave +that was hopeless and despairing. It was as if he were saying farewell. +I did not see into the eyes of Leach, for he was looking at Wolf Larsen, +the old and implacable snarl of hatred strong as ever on his face. + +Then they were gone astern. The spritsail filled with the wind, +suddenly, careening the frail open craft till it seemed it would surely +capsize. A whitecap foamed above it and broke across in a snow-white +smother. Then the boat emerged, half swamped, Leach flinging the water +out and Johnson clinging to the steering-oar, his face white and anxious. + +Wolf Larsen barked a short laugh in my ear and strode away to the weather +side of the poop. I expected him to give orders for the _Ghost_ to heave +to, but she kept on her course and he made no sign. Louis stood +imperturbably at the wheel, but I noticed the grouped sailors forward +turning troubled faces in our direction. Still the _Ghost_ tore along, +till the boat dwindled to a speck, when Wolf Larsen’s voice rang out in +command and he went about on the starboard tack. + +Back we held, two miles and more to windward of the struggling +cockle-shell, when the flying jib was run down and the schooner hove to. +The sealing boats are not made for windward work. Their hope lies in +keeping a weather position so that they may run before the wind for the +schooner when it breezes up. But in all that wild waste there was no +refuge for Leach and Johnson save on the _Ghost_, and they resolutely +began the windward beat. It was slow work in the heavy sea that was +running. At any moment they were liable to be overwhelmed by the hissing +combers. Time and again and countless times we watched the boat luff +into the big whitecaps, lose headway, and be flung back like a cork. + +Johnson was a splendid seaman, and he knew as much about small boats as +he did about ships. At the end of an hour and a half he was nearly +alongside, standing past our stern on the last leg out, aiming to fetch +us on the next leg back. + +“So you’ve changed your mind?” I heard Wolf Larsen mutter, half to +himself, half to them as though they could hear. “You want to come +aboard, eh? Well, then, just keep a-coming.” + +“Hard up with that helm!” he commanded Oofty-Oofty, the Kanaka, who had +in the meantime relieved Louis at the wheel. + +Command followed command. As the schooner paid off, the fore- and +main-sheets were slacked away for fair wind. And before the wind we +were, and leaping, when Johnson, easing his sheet at imminent peril, cut +across our wake a hundred feet away. Again Wolf Larsen laughed, at the +same time beckoning them with his arm to follow. It was evidently his +intention to play with them,—a lesson, I took it, in lieu of a beating, +though a dangerous lesson, for the frail craft stood in momentary danger +of being overwhelmed. + +Johnson squared away promptly and ran after us. There was nothing else +for him to do. Death stalked everywhere, and it was only a matter of +time when some one of those many huge seas would fall upon the boat, roll +over it, and pass on. + +“’Tis the fear iv death at the hearts iv them,” Louis muttered in my ear, +as I passed forward to see to taking in the flying jib and staysail. + +“Oh, he’ll heave to in a little while and pick them up,” I answered +cheerfully. “He’s bent upon giving them a lesson, that’s all.” + +Louis looked at me shrewdly. “Think so?” he asked. + +“Surely,” I answered. “Don’t you?” + +“I think nothing but iv my own skin, these days,” was his answer. “An’ +’tis with wonder I’m filled as to the workin’ out iv things. A pretty +mess that ’Frisco whisky got me into, an’ a prettier mess that woman’s +got you into aft there. Ah, it’s myself that knows ye for a blitherin’ +fool.” + +“What do you mean?” I demanded; for, having sped his shaft, he was +turning away. + +“What do I mean?” he cried. “And it’s you that asks me! ’Tis not what I +mean, but what the Wolf ’ll mean. The Wolf, I said, the Wolf!” + +“If trouble comes, will you stand by?” I asked impulsively, for he had +voiced my own fear. + +“Stand by? ’Tis old fat Louis I stand by, an’ trouble enough it’ll be. +We’re at the beginnin’ iv things, I’m tellin’ ye, the bare beginnin’ iv +things.” + +“I had not thought you so great a coward,” I sneered. + +He favoured me with a contemptuous stare. “If I raised never a hand for +that poor fool,”—pointing astern to the tiny sail,—“d’ye think I’m +hungerin’ for a broken head for a woman I never laid me eyes upon before +this day?” + +I turned scornfully away and went aft. + +“Better get in those topsails, Mr. Van Weyden,” Wolf Larsen said, as I +came on the poop. + +I felt relief, at least as far as the two men were concerned. It was +clear he did not wish to run too far away from them. I picked up hope at +the thought and put the order swiftly into execution. I had scarcely +opened my mouth to issue the necessary commands, when eager men were +springing to halyards and downhauls, and others were racing aloft. This +eagerness on their part was noted by Wolf Larsen with a grim smile. + +Still we increased our lead, and when the boat had dropped astern several +miles we hove to and waited. All eyes watched it coming, even Wolf +Larsen’s; but he was the only unperturbed man aboard. Louis, gazing +fixedly, betrayed a trouble in his face he was not quite able to hide. + +The boat drew closer and closer, hurling along through the seething green +like a thing alive, lifting and sending and uptossing across the +huge-backed breakers, or disappearing behind them only to rush into sight +again and shoot skyward. It seemed impossible that it could continue to +live, yet with each dizzying sweep it did achieve the impossible. A +rain-squall drove past, and out of the flying wet the boat emerged, +almost upon us. + +“Hard up, there!” Wolf Larsen shouted, himself springing to the wheel and +whirling it over. + +Again the _Ghost_ sprang away and raced before the wind, and for two +hours Johnson and Leach pursued us. We hove to and ran away, hove to and +ran away, and ever astern the struggling patch of sail tossed skyward and +fell into the rushing valleys. It was a quarter of a mile away when a +thick squall of rain veiled it from view. It never emerged. The wind +blew the air clear again, but no patch of sail broke the troubled +surface. I thought I saw, for an instant, the boat’s bottom show black +in a breaking crest. At the best, that was all. For Johnson and Leach +the travail of existence had ceased. + +The men remained grouped amidships. No one had gone below, and no one +was speaking. Nor were any looks being exchanged. Each man seemed +stunned—deeply contemplative, as it were, and, not quite sure, trying to +realize just what had taken place. Wolf Larsen gave them little time for +thought. He at once put the _Ghost_ upon her course—a course which meant +the seal herd and not Yokohama harbour. But the men were no longer eager +as they pulled and hauled, and I heard curses amongst them, which left +their lips smothered and as heavy and lifeless as were they. Not so was +it with the hunters. Smoke the irrepressible related a story, and they +descended into the steerage, bellowing with laughter. + +As I passed to leeward of the galley on my way aft I was approached by +the engineer we had rescued. His face was white, his lips were +trembling. + +“Good God! sir, what kind of a craft is this?” he cried. + +“You have eyes, you have seen,” I answered, almost brutally, what of the +pain and fear at my own heart. + +“Your promise?” I said to Wolf Larsen. + +“I was not thinking of taking them aboard when I made that promise,” he +answered. “And anyway, you’ll agree I’ve not laid my hands upon them.” + +“Far from it, far from it,” he laughed a moment later. + +I made no reply. I was incapable of speaking, my mind was too confused. +I must have time to think, I knew. This woman, sleeping even now in the +spare cabin, was a responsibility, which I must consider, and the only +rational thought that flickered through my mind was that I must do +nothing hastily if I were to be any help to her at all. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +The remainder of the day passed uneventfully. The young slip of a gale, +having wetted our gills, proceeded to moderate. The fourth engineer and +the three oilers, after a warm interview with Wolf Larsen, were furnished +with outfits from the slop-chests, assigned places under the hunters in +the various boats and watches on the vessel, and bundled forward into the +forecastle. They went protestingly, but their voices were not loud. +They were awed by what they had already seen of Wolf Larsen’s character, +while the tale of woe they speedily heard in the forecastle took the last +bit of rebellion out of them. + +Miss Brewster—we had learned her name from the engineer—slept on and on. +At supper I requested the hunters to lower their voices, so she was not +disturbed; and it was not till next morning that she made her appearance. +It had been my intention to have her meals served apart, but Wolf Larsen +put down his foot. Who was she that she should be too good for cabin +table and cabin society? had been his demand. + +But her coming to the table had something amusing in it. The hunters +fell silent as clams. Jock Horner and Smoke alone were unabashed, +stealing stealthy glances at her now and again, and even taking part in +the conversation. The other four men glued their eyes on their plates +and chewed steadily and with thoughtful precision, their ears moving and +wobbling, in time with their jaws, like the ears of so many animals. + +Wolf Larsen had little to say at first, doing no more than reply when he +was addressed. Not that he was abashed. Far from it. This woman was a +new type to him, a different breed from any he had ever known, and he was +curious. He studied her, his eyes rarely leaving her face unless to +follow the movements of her hands or shoulders. I studied her myself, +and though it was I who maintained the conversation, I know that I was a +bit shy, not quite self-possessed. His was the perfect poise, the +supreme confidence in self, which nothing could shake; and he was no more +timid of a woman than he was of storm and battle. + +“And when shall we arrive at Yokohama?” she asked, turning to him and +looking him squarely in the eyes. + +There it was, the question flat. The jaws stopped working, the ears +ceased wobbling, and though eyes remained glued on plates, each man +listened greedily for the answer. + +“In four months, possibly three if the season closes early,” Wolf Larsen +said. + +She caught her breath and stammered, “I—I thought—I was given to +understand that Yokohama was only a day’s sail away. It—” Here she +paused and looked about the table at the circle of unsympathetic faces +staring hard at the plates. “It is not right,” she concluded. + +“That is a question you must settle with Mr. Van Weyden there,” he +replied, nodding to me with a mischievous twinkle. “Mr. Van Weyden is +what you may call an authority on such things as rights. Now I, who am +only a sailor, would look upon the situation somewhat differently. It +may possibly be your misfortune that you have to remain with us, but it +is certainly our good fortune.” + +He regarded her smilingly. Her eyes fell before his gaze, but she lifted +them again, and defiantly, to mine. I read the unspoken question there: +was it right? But I had decided that the part I was to play must be a +neutral one, so I did not answer. + +“What do you think?” she demanded. + +“That it is unfortunate, especially if you have any engagements falling +due in the course of the next several months. But, since you say that +you were voyaging to Japan for your health, I can assure you that it will +improve no better anywhere than aboard the _Ghost_.” + +I saw her eyes flash with indignation, and this time it was I who dropped +mine, while I felt my face flushing under her gaze. It was cowardly, but +what else could I do? + +“Mr. Van Weyden speaks with the voice of authority,” Wolf Larsen laughed. + +I nodded my head, and she, having recovered herself, waited expectantly. + +“Not that he is much to speak of now,” Wolf Larsen went on, “but he has +improved wonderfully. You should have seen him when he came on board. A +more scrawny, pitiful specimen of humanity one could hardly conceive. +Isn’t that so, Kerfoot?” + +Kerfoot, thus directly addressed, was startled into dropping his knife on +the floor, though he managed to grunt affirmation. + +“Developed himself by peeling potatoes and washing dishes. Eh, Kerfoot?” + +Again that worthy grunted. + +“Look at him now. True, he is not what you would term muscular, but +still he has muscles, which is more than he had when he came aboard. +Also, he has legs to stand on. You would not think so to look at him, +but he was quite unable to stand alone at first.” + +The hunters were snickering, but she looked at me with a sympathy in her +eyes which more than compensated for Wolf Larsen’s nastiness. In truth, +it had been so long since I had received sympathy that I was softened, +and I became then, and gladly, her willing slave. But I was angry with +Wolf Larsen. He was challenging my manhood with his slurs, challenging +the very legs he claimed to be instrumental in getting for me. + +“I may have learned to stand on my own legs,” I retorted. “But I have +yet to stamp upon others with them.” + +He looked at me insolently. “Your education is only half completed, +then,” he said dryly, and turned to her. + +“We are very hospitable upon the _Ghost_. Mr. Van Weyden has discovered +that. We do everything to make our guests feel at home, eh, Mr. Van +Weyden?” + +“Even to the peeling of potatoes and the washing of dishes,” I answered, +“to say nothing to wringing their necks out of very fellowship.” + +“I beg of you not to receive false impressions of us from Mr. Van +Weyden,” he interposed with mock anxiety. “You will observe, Miss +Brewster, that he carries a dirk in his belt, a—ahem—a most unusual thing +for a ship’s officer to do. While really very estimable, Mr. Van Weyden +is sometimes—how shall I say?—er—quarrelsome, and harsh measures are +necessary. He is quite reasonable and fair in his calm moments, and as +he is calm now he will not deny that only yesterday he threatened my +life.” + +I was well-nigh choking, and my eyes were certainly fiery. He drew +attention to me. + +“Look at him now. He can scarcely control himself in your presence. He +is not accustomed to the presence of ladies anyway. I shall have to arm +myself before I dare go on deck with him.” + +He shook his head sadly, murmuring, “Too bad, too bad,” while the hunters +burst into guffaws of laughter. + +The deep-sea voices of these men, rumbling and bellowing in the confined +space, produced a wild effect. The whole setting was wild, and for the +first time, regarding this strange woman and realizing how incongruous +she was in it, I was aware of how much a part of it I was myself. I knew +these men and their mental processes, was one of them myself, living the +seal-hunting life, eating the seal-hunting fare, thinking, largely, the +seal-hunting thoughts. There was for me no strangeness to it, to the +rough clothes, the coarse faces, the wild laughter, and the lurching +cabin walls and swaying sea-lamps. + +As I buttered a piece of bread my eyes chanced to rest upon my hand. The +knuckles were skinned and inflamed clear across, the fingers swollen, the +nails rimmed with black. I felt the mattress-like growth of beard on my +neck, knew that the sleeve of my coat was ripped, that a button was +missing from the throat of the blue shirt I wore. The dirk mentioned by +Wolf Larsen rested in its sheath on my hip. It was very natural that it +should be there,—how natural I had not imagined until now, when I looked +upon it with her eyes and knew how strange it and all that went with it +must appear to her. + +But she divined the mockery in Wolf Larsen’s words, and again favoured me +with a sympathetic glance. But there was a look of bewilderment also in +her eyes. That it was mockery made the situation more puzzling to her. + +“I may be taken off by some passing vessel, perhaps,” she suggested. + +“There will be no passing vessels, except other sealing-schooners,” Wolf +Larsen made answer. + +“I have no clothes, nothing,” she objected. “You hardly realize, sir, +that I am not a man, or that I am unaccustomed to the vagrant, careless +life which you and your men seem to lead.” + +“The sooner you get accustomed to it, the better,” he said. + +“I’ll furnish you with cloth, needles, and thread,” he added. “I hope it +will not be too dreadful a hardship for you to make yourself a dress or +two.” + +She made a wry pucker with her mouth, as though to advertise her +ignorance of dressmaking. That she was frightened and bewildered, and +that she was bravely striving to hide it, was quite plain to me. + +“I suppose you’re like Mr. Van Weyden there, accustomed to having things +done for you. Well, I think doing a few things for yourself will hardly +dislocate any joints. By the way, what do you do for a living?” + +She regarded him with amazement unconcealed. + +“I mean no offence, believe me. People eat, therefore they must procure +the wherewithal. These men here shoot seals in order to live; for the +same reason I sail this schooner; and Mr. Van Weyden, for the present at +any rate, earns his salty grub by assisting me. Now what do you do?” + +She shrugged her shoulders. + +“Do you feed yourself? Or does some one else feed you?” + +“I’m afraid some one else has fed me most of my life,” she laughed, +trying bravely to enter into the spirit of his quizzing, though I could +see a terror dawning and growing in her eyes as she watched Wolf Larsen. + +“And I suppose some one else makes your bed for you?” + +“I _have_ made beds,” she replied. + +“Very often?” + +She shook her head with mock ruefulness. + +“Do you know what they do to poor men in the States, who, like you, do +not work for their living?” + +“I am very ignorant,” she pleaded. “What do they do to the poor men who +are like me?” + +“They send them to jail. The crime of not earning a living, in their +case, is called vagrancy. If I were Mr. Van Weyden, who harps eternally +on questions of right and wrong, I’d ask, by what right do you live when +you do nothing to deserve living?” + +“But as you are not Mr. Van Weyden, I don’t have to answer, do I?” + +She beamed upon him through her terror-filled eyes, and the pathos of it +cut me to the heart. I must in some way break in and lead the +conversation into other channels. + +“Have you ever earned a dollar by your own labour?” he demanded, certain +of her answer, a triumphant vindictiveness in his voice. + +“Yes, I have,” she answered slowly, and I could have laughed aloud at his +crestfallen visage. “I remember my father giving me a dollar once, when +I was a little girl, for remaining absolutely quiet for five minutes.” + +He smiled indulgently. + +“But that was long ago,” she continued. “And you would scarcely demand a +little girl of nine to earn her own living.” + +“At present, however,” she said, after another slight pause, “I earn +about eighteen hundred dollars a year.” + +With one accord, all eyes left the plates and settled on her. A woman +who earned eighteen hundred dollars a year was worth looking at. Wolf +Larsen was undisguised in his admiration. + +“Salary, or piece-work?” he asked. + +“Piece-work,” she answered promptly. + +“Eighteen hundred,” he calculated. “That’s a hundred and fifty dollars a +month. Well, Miss Brewster, there is nothing small about the _Ghost_. +Consider yourself on salary during the time you remain with us.” + +She made no acknowledgment. She was too unused as yet to the whims of +the man to accept them with equanimity. + +“I forgot to inquire,” he went on suavely, “as to the nature of your +occupation. What commodities do you turn out? What tools and materials +do you require?” + +“Paper and ink,” she laughed. “And, oh! also a typewriter.” + +“You are Maud Brewster,” I said slowly and with certainty, almost as +though I were charging her with a crime. + +Her eyes lifted curiously to mine. “How do you know?” + +“Aren’t you?” I demanded. + +She acknowledged her identity with a nod. It was Wolf Larsen’s turn to +be puzzled. The name and its magic signified nothing to him. I was +proud that it did mean something to me, and for the first time in a weary +while I was convincingly conscious of a superiority over him. + +“I remember writing a review of a thin little volume—” I had begun +carelessly, when she interrupted me. + +“You!” she cried. “You are—” + +She was now staring at me in wide-eyed wonder. + +I nodded my identity, in turn. + +“Humphrey Van Weyden,” she concluded; then added with a sigh of relief, +and unaware that she had glanced that relief at Wolf Larsen, “I am so +glad.” + +“I remember the review,” she went on hastily, becoming aware of the +awkwardness of her remark; “that too, too flattering review.” + +“Not at all,” I denied valiantly. “You impeach my sober judgment and +make my canons of little worth. Besides, all my brother critics were +with me. Didn’t Lang include your ‘Kiss Endured’ among the four supreme +sonnets by women in the English language?” + +“But you called me the American Mrs. Meynell!” + +“Was it not true?” I demanded. + +“No, not that,” she answered. “I was hurt.” + +“We can measure the unknown only by the known,” I replied, in my finest +academic manner. “As a critic I was compelled to place you. You have +now become a yardstick yourself. Seven of your thin little volumes are +on my shelves; and there are two thicker volumes, the essays, which, you +will pardon my saying, and I know not which is flattered more, fully +equal your verse. The time is not far distant when some unknown will +arise in England and the critics will name her the English Maud +Brewster.” + +“You are very kind, I am sure,” she murmured; and the very +conventionality of her tones and words, with the host of associations it +aroused of the old life on the other side of the world, gave me a quick +thrill—rich with remembrance but stinging sharp with home-sickness. + +“And you are Maud Brewster,” I said solemnly, gazing across at her. + +“And you are Humphrey Van Weyden,” she said, gazing back at me with equal +solemnity and awe. “How unusual! I don’t understand. We surely are not +to expect some wildly romantic sea-story from your sober pen.” + +“No, I am not gathering material, I assure you,” was my answer. “I have +neither aptitude nor inclination for fiction.” + +“Tell me, why have you always buried yourself in California?” she next +asked. “It has not been kind of you. We of the East have seen so very +little of you—too little, indeed, of the Dean of American Letters, the +Second.” + +I bowed to, and disclaimed, the compliment. “I nearly met you, once, in +Philadelphia, some Browning affair or other—you were to lecture, you +know. My train was four hours late.” + +And then we quite forgot where we were, leaving Wolf Larsen stranded and +silent in the midst of our flood of gossip. The hunters left the table +and went on deck, and still we talked. Wolf Larsen alone remained. +Suddenly I became aware of him, leaning back from the table and listening +curiously to our alien speech of a world he did not know. + +I broke short off in the middle of a sentence. The present, with all its +perils and anxieties, rushed upon me with stunning force. It smote Miss +Brewster likewise, a vague and nameless terror rushing into her eyes as +she regarded Wolf Larsen. + +He rose to his feet and laughed awkwardly. The sound of it was metallic. + +“Oh, don’t mind me,” he said, with a self-depreciatory wave of his hand. +“I don’t count. Go on, go on, I pray you.” + +But the gates of speech were closed, and we, too, rose from the table and +laughed awkwardly. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +The chagrin Wolf Larsen felt from being ignored by Maud Brewster and me +in the conversation at table had to express itself in some fashion, and +it fell to Thomas Mugridge to be the victim. He had not mended his ways +nor his shirt, though the latter he contended he had changed. The +garment itself did not bear out the assertion, nor did the accumulations +of grease on stove and pot and pan attest a general cleanliness. + +“I’ve given you warning, Cooky,” Wolf Larsen said, “and now you’ve got to +take your medicine.” + +Mugridge’s face turned white under its sooty veneer, and when Wolf Larsen +called for a rope and a couple of men, the miserable Cockney fled wildly +out of the galley and dodged and ducked about the deck with the grinning +crew in pursuit. Few things could have been more to their liking than to +give him a tow over the side, for to the forecastle he had sent messes +and concoctions of the vilest order. Conditions favoured the +undertaking. The _Ghost_ was slipping through the water at no more than +three miles an hour, and the sea was fairly calm. But Mugridge had +little stomach for a dip in it. Possibly he had seen men towed before. +Besides, the water was frightfully cold, and his was anything but a +rugged constitution. + +As usual, the watches below and the hunters turned out for what promised +sport. Mugridge seemed to be in rabid fear of the water, and he +exhibited a nimbleness and speed we did not dream he possessed. Cornered +in the right-angle of the poop and galley, he sprang like a cat to the +top of the cabin and ran aft. But his pursuers forestalling him, he +doubled back across the cabin, passed over the galley, and gained the +deck by means of the steerage-scuttle. Straight forward he raced, the +boat-puller Harrison at his heels and gaining on him. But Mugridge, +leaping suddenly, caught the jib-boom-lift. It happened in an instant. +Holding his weight by his arms, and in mid-air doubling his body at the +hips, he let fly with both feet. The oncoming Harrison caught the kick +squarely in the pit of the stomach, groaned involuntarily, and doubled up +and sank backward to the deck. + +Hand-clapping and roars of laughter from the hunters greeted the exploit, +while Mugridge, eluding half of his pursuers at the foremast, ran aft and +through the remainder like a runner on the football field. Straight aft +he held, to the poop and along the poop to the stern. So great was his +speed that as he curved past the corner of the cabin he slipped and fell. +Nilson was standing at the wheel, and the Cockney’s hurtling body struck +his legs. Both went down together, but Mugridge alone arose. By some +freak of pressures, his frail body had snapped the strong man’s leg like +a pipe-stem. + +Parsons took the wheel, and the pursuit continued. Round and round the +decks they went, Mugridge sick with fear, the sailors hallooing and +shouting directions to one another, and the hunters bellowing +encouragement and laughter. Mugridge went down on the fore-hatch under +three men; but he emerged from the mass like an eel, bleeding at the +mouth, the offending shirt ripped into tatters, and sprang for the +main-rigging. Up he went, clear up, beyond the ratlines, to the very +masthead. + +Half-a-dozen sailors swarmed to the crosstrees after him, where they +clustered and waited while two of their number, Oofty-Oofty and Black +(who was Latimer’s boat-steerer), continued up the thin steel stays, +lifting their bodies higher and higher by means of their arms. + +It was a perilous undertaking, for, at a height of over a hundred feet +from the deck, holding on by their hands, they were not in the best of +positions to protect themselves from Mugridge’s feet. And Mugridge +kicked savagely, till the Kanaka, hanging on with one hand, seized the +Cockney’s foot with the other. Black duplicated the performance a moment +later with the other foot. Then the three writhed together in a swaying +tangle, struggling, sliding, and falling into the arms of their mates on +the crosstrees. + +The aërial battle was over, and Thomas Mugridge, whining and gibbering, +his mouth flecked with bloody foam, was brought down to deck. Wolf +Larsen rove a bowline in a piece of rope and slipped it under his +shoulders. Then he was carried aft and flung into the sea. +Forty,—fifty,—sixty feet of line ran out, when Wolf Larsen cried “Belay!” +Oofty-Oofty took a turn on a bitt, the rope tautened, and the _Ghost_, +lunging onward, jerked the cook to the surface. + +It was a pitiful spectacle. Though he could not drown, and was +nine-lived in addition, he was suffering all the agonies of +half-drowning. The _Ghost_ was going very slowly, and when her stern +lifted on a wave and she slipped forward she pulled the wretch to the +surface and gave him a moment in which to breathe; but between each lift +the stern fell, and while the bow lazily climbed the next wave the line +slacked and he sank beneath. + +I had forgotten the existence of Maud Brewster, and I remembered her with +a start as she stepped lightly beside me. It was her first time on deck +since she had come aboard. A dead silence greeted her appearance. + +“What is the cause of the merriment?” she asked. + +“Ask Captain Larsen,” I answered composedly and coldly, though inwardly +my blood was boiling at the thought that she should be witness to such +brutality. + +She took my advice and was turning to put it into execution, when her +eyes lighted on Oofty-Oofty, immediately before her, his body instinct +with alertness and grace as he held the turn of the rope. + +“Are you fishing?” she asked him. + +He made no reply. His eyes, fixed intently on the sea astern, suddenly +flashed. + +“Shark ho, sir!” he cried. + +“Heave in! Lively! All hands tail on!” Wolf Larsen shouted, springing +himself to the rope in advance of the quickest. + +Mugridge had heard the Kanaka’s warning cry and was screaming madly. I +could see a black fin cutting the water and making for him with greater +swiftness than he was being pulled aboard. It was an even toss whether +the shark or we would get him, and it was a matter of moments. When +Mugridge was directly beneath us, the stern descended the slope of a +passing wave, thus giving the advantage to the shark. The fin +disappeared. The belly flashed white in swift upward rush. Almost +equally swift, but not quite, was Wolf Larsen. He threw his strength +into one tremendous jerk. The Cockney’s body left the water; so did part +of the shark’s. He drew up his legs, and the man-eater seemed no more +than barely to touch one foot, sinking back into the water with a splash. +But at the moment of contact Thomas Mugridge cried out. Then he came in +like a fresh-caught fish on a line, clearing the rail generously and +striking the deck in a heap, on hands and knees, and rolling over. + +But a fountain of blood was gushing forth. The right foot was missing, +amputated neatly at the ankle. I looked instantly to Maud Brewster. Her +face was white, her eyes dilated with horror. She was gazing, not at +Thomas Mugridge, but at Wolf Larsen. And he was aware of it, for he +said, with one of his short laughs: + +“Man-play, Miss Brewster. Somewhat rougher, I warrant, than what you +have been used to, but still-man-play. The shark was not in the +reckoning. It—” + +But at this juncture, Mugridge, who had lifted his head and ascertained +the extent of his loss, floundered over on the deck and buried his teeth +in Wolf Larsen’s leg. Wolf Larsen stooped, coolly, to the Cockney, and +pressed with thumb and finger at the rear of the jaws and below the ears. +The jaws opened with reluctance, and Wolf Larsen stepped free. + +“As I was saying,” he went on, as though nothing unwonted had happened, +“the shark was not in the reckoning. It was—ahem—shall we say +Providence?” + +She gave no sign that she had heard, though the expression of her eyes +changed to one of inexpressible loathing as she started to turn away. +She no more than started, for she swayed and tottered, and reached her +hand weakly out to mine. I caught her in time to save her from falling, +and helped her to a seat on the cabin. I thought she might faint +outright, but she controlled herself. + +“Will you get a tourniquet, Mr. Van Weyden,” Wolf Larsen called to me. + +I hesitated. Her lips moved, and though they formed no words, she +commanded me with her eyes, plainly as speech, to go to the help of the +unfortunate man. “Please,” she managed to whisper, and I could but obey. + +By now I had developed such skill at surgery that Wolf Larsen, with a few +words of advice, left me to my task with a couple of sailors for +assistants. For his task he elected a vengeance on the shark. A heavy +swivel-hook, baited with fat salt-pork, was dropped overside; and by the +time I had compressed the severed veins and arteries, the sailors were +singing and heaving in the offending monster. I did not see it myself, +but my assistants, first one and then the other, deserted me for a few +moments to run amidships and look at what was going on. The shark, a +sixteen-footer, was hoisted up against the main-rigging. Its jaws were +pried apart to their greatest extension, and a stout stake, sharpened at +both ends, was so inserted that when the pries were removed the spread +jaws were fixed upon it. This accomplished, the hook was cut out. The +shark dropped back into the sea, helpless, yet with its full strength, +doomed—to lingering starvation—a living death less meet for it than for +the man who devised the punishment. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +I knew what it was as she came toward me. For ten minutes I had watched +her talking earnestly with the engineer, and now, with a sign for +silence, I drew her out of earshot of the helmsman. Her face was white +and set; her large eyes, larger than usual what of the purpose in them, +looked penetratingly into mine. I felt rather timid and apprehensive, +for she had come to search Humphrey Van Weyden’s soul, and Humphrey Van +Weyden had nothing of which to be particularly proud since his advent on +the _Ghost_. + +We walked to the break of the poop, where she turned and faced me. I +glanced around to see that no one was within hearing distance. + +“What is it?” I asked gently; but the expression of determination on her +face did not relax. + +“I can readily understand,” she began, “that this morning’s affair was +largely an accident; but I have been talking with Mr. Haskins. He tells +me that the day we were rescued, even while I was in the cabin, two men +were drowned, deliberately drowned—murdered.” + +There was a query in her voice, and she faced me accusingly, as though I +were guilty of the deed, or at least a party to it. + +“The information is quite correct,” I answered. “The two men were +murdered.” + +“And you permitted it!” she cried. + +“I was unable to prevent it, is a better way of phrasing it,” I replied, +still gently. + +“But you tried to prevent it?” There was an emphasis on the “tried,” and +a pleading little note in her voice. + +“Oh, but you didn’t,” she hurried on, divining my answer. “But why +didn’t you?” + +I shrugged my shoulders. “You must remember, Miss Brewster, that you are +a new inhabitant of this little world, and that you do not yet understand +the laws which operate within it. You bring with you certain fine +conceptions of humanity, manhood, conduct, and such things; but here you +will find them misconceptions. I have found it so,” I added, with an +involuntary sigh. + +She shook her head incredulously. + +“What would you advise, then?” I asked. “That I should take a knife, or +a gun, or an axe, and kill this man?” + +She half started back. + +“No, not that!” + +“Then what should I do? Kill myself?” + +“You speak in purely materialistic terms,” she objected. “There is such +a thing as moral courage, and moral courage is never without effect.” + +“Ah,” I smiled, “you advise me to kill neither him nor myself, but to let +him kill me.” I held up my hand as she was about to speak. “For moral +courage is a worthless asset on this little floating world. Leach, one +of the men who were murdered, had moral courage to an unusual degree. So +had the other man, Johnson. Not only did it not stand them in good +stead, but it destroyed them. And so with me if I should exercise what +little moral courage I may possess. + +“You must understand, Miss Brewster, and understand clearly, that this +man is a monster. He is without conscience. Nothing is sacred to him, +nothing is too terrible for him to do. It was due to his whim that I was +detained aboard in the first place. It is due to his whim that I am +still alive. I do nothing, can do nothing, because I am a slave to this +monster, as you are now a slave to him; because I desire to live, as you +will desire to live; because I cannot fight and overcome him, just as you +will not be able to fight and overcome him.” + +She waited for me to go on. + +“What remains? Mine is the role of the weak. I remain silent and suffer +ignominy, as you will remain silent and suffer ignominy. And it is well. +It is the best we can do if we wish to live. The battle is not always to +the strong. We have not the strength with which to fight this man; we +must dissimulate, and win, if win we can, by craft. If you will be +advised by me, this is what you will do. I know my position is perilous, +and I may say frankly that yours is even more perilous. We must stand +together, without appearing to do so, in secret alliance. I shall not be +able to side with you openly, and, no matter what indignities may be put +upon me, you are to remain likewise silent. We must provoke no scenes +with this man, nor cross his will. And we must keep smiling faces and be +friendly with him no matter how repulsive it may be.” + +She brushed her hand across her forehead in a puzzled way, saying, “Still +I do not understand.” + +“You must do as I say,” I interrupted authoritatively, for I saw Wolf +Larsen’s gaze wandering toward us from where he paced up and down with +Latimer amidships. “Do as I say, and ere long you will find I am right.” + +“What shall I do, then?” she asked, detecting the anxious glance I had +shot at the object of our conversation, and impressed, I flatter myself, +with the earnestness of my manner. + +“Dispense with all the moral courage you can,” I said briskly. “Don’t +arouse this man’s animosity. Be quite friendly with him, talk with him, +discuss literature and art with him—he is fond of such things. You will +find him an interested listener and no fool. And for your own sake try +to avoid witnessing, as much as you can, the brutalities of the ship. It +will make it easier for you to act your part.” + +“I am to lie,” she said in steady, rebellious tones, “by speech and +action to lie.” + +Wolf Larsen had separated from Latimer and was coming toward us. I was +desperate. + +“Please, please understand me,” I said hurriedly, lowering my voice. +“All your experience of men and things is worthless here. You must begin +over again. I know,—I can see it—you have, among other ways, been used +to managing people with your eyes, letting your moral courage speak out +through them, as it were. You have already managed me with your eyes, +commanded me with them. But don’t try it on Wolf Larsen. You could as +easily control a lion, while he would make a mock of you. He would—I +have always been proud of the fact that I discovered him,” I said, +turning the conversation as Wolf Larsen stepped on the poop and joined +us. “The editors were afraid of him and the publishers would have none +of him. But I knew, and his genius and my judgment were vindicated when +he made that magnificent hit with his ‘Forge.’” + +“And it was a newspaper poem,” she said glibly. + +“It did happen to see the light in a newspaper,” I replied, “but not +because the magazine editors had been denied a glimpse at it.” + +“We were talking of Harris,” I said to Wolf Larsen. + +“Oh, yes,” he acknowledged. “I remember the ‘Forge.’ Filled with pretty +sentiments and an almighty faith in human illusions. By the way, Mr. Van +Weyden, you’d better look in on Cooky. He’s complaining and restless.” + +Thus was I bluntly dismissed from the poop, only to find Mugridge +sleeping soundly from the morphine I had given him. I made no haste to +return on deck, and when I did I was gratified to see Miss Brewster in +animated conversation with Wolf Larsen. As I say, the sight gratified +me. She was following my advice. And yet I was conscious of a slight +shock or hurt in that she was able to do the thing I had begged her to do +and which she had notably disliked. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Brave winds, blowing fair, swiftly drove the _Ghost_ northward into the +seal herd. We encountered it well up to the forty-fourth parallel, in a +raw and stormy sea across which the wind harried the fog-banks in eternal +flight. For days at a time we could never see the sun nor take an +observation; then the wind would sweep the face of the ocean clean, the +waves would ripple and flash, and we would learn where we were. A day of +clear weather might follow, or three days or four, and then the fog would +settle down upon us, seemingly thicker than ever. + +The hunting was perilous; yet the boats, lowered day after day, were +swallowed up in the grey obscurity, and were seen no more till nightfall, +and often not till long after, when they would creep in like sea-wraiths, +one by one, out of the grey. Wainwright—the hunter whom Wolf Larsen had +stolen with boat and men—took advantage of the veiled sea and escaped. +He disappeared one morning in the encircling fog with his two men, and we +never saw them again, though it was not many days when we learned that +they had passed from schooner to schooner until they finally regained +their own. + +This was the thing I had set my mind upon doing, but the opportunity +never offered. It was not in the mate’s province to go out in the boats, +and though I manœuvred cunningly for it, Wolf Larsen never granted me the +privilege. Had he done so, I should have managed somehow to carry Miss +Brewster away with me. As it was, the situation was approaching a stage +which I was afraid to consider. I involuntarily shunned the thought of +it, and yet the thought continually arose in my mind like a haunting +spectre. + +I had read sea-romances in my time, wherein figured, as a matter of +course, the lone woman in the midst of a shipload of men; but I learned, +now, that I had never comprehended the deeper significance of such a +situation—the thing the writers harped upon and exploited so thoroughly. +And here it was, now, and I was face to face with it. That it should be +as vital as possible, it required no more than that the woman should be +Maud Brewster, who now charmed me in person as she had long charmed me +through her work. + +No one more out of environment could be imagined. She was a delicate, +ethereal creature, swaying and willowy, light and graceful of movement. +It never seemed to me that she walked, or, at least, walked after the +ordinary manner of mortals. Hers was an extreme lithesomeness, and she +moved with a certain indefinable airiness, approaching one as down might +float or as a bird on noiseless wings. + +She was like a bit of Dresden china, and I was continually impressed with +what I may call her fragility. As at the time I caught her arm when +helping her below, so at any time I was quite prepared, should stress or +rough handling befall her, to see her crumble away. I have never seen +body and spirit in such perfect accord. Describe her verse, as the +critics have described it, as sublimated and spiritual, and you have +described her body. It seemed to partake of her soul, to have analogous +attributes, and to link it to life with the slenderest of chains. +Indeed, she trod the earth lightly, and in her constitution there was +little of the robust clay. + +She was in striking contrast to Wolf Larsen. Each was nothing that the +other was, everything that the other was not. I noted them walking the +deck together one morning, and I likened them to the extreme ends of the +human ladder of evolution—the one the culmination of all savagery, the +other the finished product of the finest civilization. True, Wolf Larsen +possessed intellect to an unusual degree, but it was directed solely to +the exercise of his savage instincts and made him but the more formidable +a savage. He was splendidly muscled, a heavy man, and though he strode +with the certitude and directness of the physical man, there was nothing +heavy about his stride. The jungle and the wilderness lurked in the +uplift and downput of his feet. He was cat-footed, and lithe, and +strong, always strong. I likened him to some great tiger, a beast of +prowess and prey. He looked it, and the piercing glitter that arose at +times in his eyes was the same piercing glitter I had observed in the +eyes of caged leopards and other preying creatures of the wild. + +But this day, as I noted them pacing up and down, I saw that it was she +who terminated the walk. They came up to where I was standing by the +entrance to the companion-way. Though she betrayed it by no outward +sign, I felt, somehow, that she was greatly perturbed. She made some +idle remark, looking at me, and laughed lightly enough; but I saw her +eyes return to his, involuntarily, as though fascinated; then they fell, +but not swiftly enough to veil the rush of terror that filled them. + +It was in his eyes that I saw the cause of her perturbation. Ordinarily +grey and cold and harsh, they were now warm and soft and golden, and all +a-dance with tiny lights that dimmed and faded, or welled up till the +full orbs were flooded with a glowing radiance. Perhaps it was to this +that the golden colour was due; but golden his eyes were, enticing and +masterful, at the same time luring and compelling, and speaking a demand +and clamour of the blood which no woman, much less Maud Brewster, could +misunderstand. + +Her own terror rushed upon me, and in that moment of fear—the most +terrible fear a man can experience—I knew that in inexpressible ways she +was dear to me. The knowledge that I loved her rushed upon me with the +terror, and with both emotions gripping at my heart and causing my blood +at the same time to chill and to leap riotously, I felt myself drawn by a +power without me and beyond me, and found my eyes returning against my +will to gaze into the eyes of Wolf Larsen. But he had recovered himself. +The golden colour and the dancing lights were gone. Cold and grey and +glittering they were as he bowed brusquely and turned away. + +“I am afraid,” she whispered, with a shiver. “I am so afraid.” + +I, too, was afraid, and what of my discovery of how much she meant to me +my mind was in a turmoil; but, I succeeded in answering quite calmly: + +“All will come right, Miss Brewster. Trust me, it will come right.” + +She answered with a grateful little smile that sent my heart pounding, +and started to descend the companion-stairs. + +For a long while I remained standing where she had left me. There was +imperative need to adjust myself, to consider the significance of the +changed aspect of things. It had come, at last, love had come, when I +least expected it and under the most forbidding conditions. Of course, +my philosophy had always recognized the inevitableness of the love-call +sooner or later; but long years of bookish silence had made me +inattentive and unprepared. + +And now it had come! Maud Brewster! My memory flashed back to that +first thin little volume on my desk, and I saw before me, as though in +the concrete, the row of thin little volumes on my library shelf. How I +had welcomed each of them! Each year one had come from the press, and to +me each was the advent of the year. They had voiced a kindred intellect +and spirit, and as such I had received them into a camaraderie of the +mind; but now their place was in my heart. + +My heart? A revulsion of feeling came over me. I seemed to stand +outside myself and to look at myself incredulously. Maud Brewster! +Humphrey Van Weyden, “the cold-blooded fish,” the “emotionless monster,” +the “analytical demon,” of Charley Furuseth’s christening, in love! And +then, without rhyme or reason, all sceptical, my mind flew back to a +small biographical note in the red-bound _Who’s Who_, and I said to +myself, “She was born in Cambridge, and she is twenty-seven years old.” +And then I said, “Twenty-seven years old and still free and fancy free?” +But how did I know she was fancy free? And the pang of new-born jealousy +put all incredulity to flight. There was no doubt about it. I was +jealous; therefore I loved. And the woman I loved was Maud Brewster. + +I, Humphrey Van Weyden, was in love! And again the doubt assailed me. +Not that I was afraid of it, however, or reluctant to meet it. On the +contrary, idealist that I was to the most pronounced degree, my +philosophy had always recognized and guerdoned love as the greatest thing +in the world, the aim and the summit of being, the most exquisite pitch +of joy and happiness to which life could thrill, the thing of all things +to be hailed and welcomed and taken into the heart. But now that it had +come I could not believe. I could not be so fortunate. It was too good, +too good to be true. Symons’s lines came into my head: + + “I wandered all these years among + A world of women, seeking you.” + +And then I had ceased seeking. It was not for me, this greatest thing in +the world, I had decided. Furuseth was right; I was abnormal, an +“emotionless monster,” a strange bookish creature, capable of pleasuring +in sensations only of the mind. And though I had been surrounded by +women all my days, my appreciation of them had been æsthetic and nothing +more. I had actually, at times, considered myself outside the pale, a +monkish fellow denied the eternal or the passing passions I saw and +understood so well in others. And now it had come! Undreamed of and +unheralded, it had come. In what could have been no less than an +ecstasy, I left my post at the head of the companion-way and started +along the deck, murmuring to myself those beautiful lines of Mrs. +Browning: + + “I lived with visions for my company + Instead of men and women years ago, + And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know + A sweeter music than they played to me.” + +But the sweeter music was playing in my ears, and I was blind and +oblivious to all about me. The sharp voice of Wolf Larsen aroused me. + +“What the hell are you up to?” he was demanding. + +I had strayed forward where the sailors were painting, and I came to +myself to find my advancing foot on the verge of overturning a paint-pot. + +“Sleep-walking, sunstroke,—what?” he barked. + +“No; indigestion,” I retorted, and continued my walk as if nothing +untoward had occurred. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +Among the most vivid memories of my life are those of the events on the +_Ghost_ which occurred during the forty hours succeeding the discovery of +my love for Maud Brewster. I, who had lived my life in quiet places, +only to enter at the age of thirty-five upon a course of the most +irrational adventure I could have imagined, never had more incident and +excitement crammed into any forty hours of my experience. Nor can I +quite close my ears to a small voice of pride which tells me I did not do +so badly, all things considered. + +To begin with, at the midday dinner, Wolf Larsen informed the hunters +that they were to eat thenceforth in the steerage. It was an +unprecedented thing on sealing-schooners, where it is the custom for the +hunters to rank, unofficially as officers. He gave no reason, but his +motive was obvious enough. Horner and Smoke had been displaying a +gallantry toward Maud Brewster, ludicrous in itself and inoffensive to +her, but to him evidently distasteful. + +The announcement was received with black silence, though the other four +hunters glanced significantly at the two who had been the cause of their +banishment. Jock Horner, quiet as was his way, gave no sign; but the +blood surged darkly across Smoke’s forehead, and he half opened his mouth +to speak. Wolf Larsen was watching him, waiting for him, the steely +glitter in his eyes; but Smoke closed his mouth again without having said +anything. + +“Anything to say?” the other demanded aggressively. + +It was a challenge, but Smoke refused to accept it. + +“About what?” he asked, so innocently that Wolf Larsen was disconcerted, +while the others smiled. + +“Oh, nothing,” Wolf Larsen said lamely. “I just thought you might want +to register a kick.” + +“About what?” asked the imperturbable Smoke. + +Smoke’s mates were now smiling broadly. His captain could have killed +him, and I doubt not that blood would have flowed had not Maud Brewster +been present. For that matter, it was her presence which enabled Smoke +to act as he did. He was too discreet and cautious a man to incur Wolf +Larsen’s anger at a time when that anger could be expressed in terms +stronger than words. I was in fear that a struggle might take place, but +a cry from the helmsman made it easy for the situation to save itself. + +“Smoke ho!” the cry came down the open companion-way. + +“How’s it bear?” Wolf Larsen called up. + +“Dead astern, sir.” + +“Maybe it’s a Russian,” suggested Latimer. + +His words brought anxiety into the faces of the other hunters. A Russian +could mean but one thing—a cruiser. The hunters, never more than roughly +aware of the position of the ship, nevertheless knew that we were close +to the boundaries of the forbidden sea, while Wolf Larsen’s record as a +poacher was notorious. All eyes centred upon him. + +“We’re dead safe,” he assured them with a laugh. “No salt mines this +time, Smoke. But I’ll tell you what—I’ll lay odds of five to one it’s +the _Macedonia_.” + +No one accepted his offer, and he went on: “In which event, I’ll lay ten +to one there’s trouble breezing up.” + +“No, thank you,” Latimer spoke up. “I don’t object to losing my money, +but I like to get a run for it anyway. There never was a time when there +wasn’t trouble when you and that brother of yours got together, and I’ll +lay twenty to one on that.” + +A general smile followed, in which Wolf Larsen joined, and the dinner +went on smoothly, thanks to me, for he treated me abominably the rest of +the meal, sneering at me and patronizing me till I was all a-tremble with +suppressed rage. Yet I knew I must control myself for Maud Brewster’s +sake, and I received my reward when her eyes caught mine for a fleeting +second, and they said, as distinctly as if she spoke, “Be brave, be +brave.” + +We left the table to go on deck, for a steamer was a welcome break in the +monotony of the sea on which we floated, while the conviction that it was +Death Larsen and the _Macedonia_ added to the excitement. The stiff +breeze and heavy sea which had sprung up the previous afternoon had been +moderating all morning, so that it was now possible to lower the boats +for an afternoon’s hunt. The hunting promised to be profitable. We had +sailed since daylight across a sea barren of seals, and were now running +into the herd. + +The smoke was still miles astern, but overhauling us rapidly, when we +lowered our boats. They spread out and struck a northerly course across +the ocean. Now and again we saw a sail lower, heard the reports of the +shot-guns, and saw the sail go up again. The seals were thick, the wind +was dying away; everything favoured a big catch. As we ran off to get +our leeward position of the last lee boat, we found the ocean fairly +carpeted with sleeping seals. They were all about us, thicker than I had +ever seen them before, in twos and threes and bunches, stretched full +length on the surface and sleeping for all the world like so many lazy +young dogs. + +Under the approaching smoke the hull and upper-works of a steamer were +growing larger. It was the _Macedonia_. I read her name through the +glasses as she passed by scarcely a mile to starboard. Wolf Larsen +looked savagely at the vessel, while Maud Brewster was curious. + +“Where is the trouble you were so sure was breezing up, Captain Larsen?” +she asked gaily. + +He glanced at her, a moment’s amusement softening his features. + +“What did you expect? That they’d come aboard and cut our throats?” + +“Something like that,” she confessed. “You understand, seal-hunters are +so new and strange to me that I am quite ready to expect anything.” + +He nodded his head. “Quite right, quite right. Your error is that you +failed to expect the worst.” + +“Why, what can be worse than cutting our throats?” she asked, with pretty +naïve surprise. + +“Cutting our purses,” he answered. “Man is so made these days that his +capacity for living is determined by the money he possesses.” + +“’Who steals my purse steals trash,’” she quoted. + +“Who steals my purse steals my right to live,” was the reply, “old saws +to the contrary. For he steals my bread and meat and bed, and in so +doing imperils my life. There are not enough soup-kitchens and +bread-lines to go around, you know, and when men have nothing in their +purses they usually die, and die miserably—unless they are able to fill +their purses pretty speedily.” + +“But I fail to see that this steamer has any designs on your purse.” + +“Wait and you will see,” he answered grimly. + +We did not have long to wait. Having passed several miles beyond our +line of boats, the _Macedonia_ proceeded to lower her own. We knew she +carried fourteen boats to our five (we were one short through the +desertion of Wainwright), and she began dropping them far to leeward of +our last boat, continued dropping them athwart our course, and finished +dropping them far to windward of our first weather boat. The hunting, +for us, was spoiled. There were no seals behind us, and ahead of us the +line of fourteen boats, like a huge broom, swept the herd before it. + +Our boats hunted across the two or three miles of water between them and +the point where the _Macedonia’s_ had been dropped, and then headed for +home. The wind had fallen to a whisper, the ocean was growing calmer and +calmer, and this, coupled with the presence of the great herd, made a +perfect hunting day—one of the two or three days to be encountered in the +whole of a lucky season. An angry lot of men, boat-pullers and steerers +as well as hunters, swarmed over our side. Each man felt that he had +been robbed; and the boats were hoisted in amid curses, which, if curses +had power, would have settled Death Larsen for all eternity—“Dead and +damned for a dozen iv eternities,” commented Louis, his eyes twinkling up +at me as he rested from hauling taut the lashings of his boat. + +“Listen to them, and find if it is hard to discover the most vital thing +in their souls,” said Wolf Larsen. “Faith? and love? and high ideals? +The good? the beautiful? the true?” + +“Their innate sense of right has been violated,” Maud Brewster said, +joining the conversation. + +She was standing a dozen feet away, one hand resting on the main-shrouds +and her body swaying gently to the slight roll of the ship. She had not +raised her voice, and yet I was struck by its clear and bell-like tone. +Ah, it was sweet in my ears! I scarcely dared look at her just then, for +the fear of betraying myself. A boy’s cap was perched on her head, and +her hair, light brown and arranged in a loose and fluffy order that +caught the sun, seemed an aureole about the delicate oval of her face. +She was positively bewitching, and, withal, sweetly spirituelle, if not +saintly. All my old-time marvel at life returned to me at sight of this +splendid incarnation of it, and Wolf Larsen’s cold explanation of life +and its meaning was truly ridiculous and laughable. + +“A sentimentalist,” he sneered, “like Mr. Van Weyden. Those men are +cursing because their desires have been outraged. That is all. What +desires? The desires for the good grub and soft beds ashore which a +handsome pay-day brings them—the women and the drink, the gorging and the +beastliness which so truly expresses them, the best that is in them, +their highest aspirations, their ideals, if you please. The exhibition +they make of their feelings is not a touching sight, yet it shows how +deeply they have been touched, how deeply their purses have been touched, +for to lay hands on their purses is to lay hands on their souls.” + +“’You hardly behave as if your purse had been touched,” she said, +smilingly. + +“Then it so happens that I am behaving differently, for my purse and my +soul have both been touched. At the current price of skins in the London +market, and based on a fair estimate of what the afternoon’s catch would +have been had not the _Macedonia_ hogged it, the _Ghost_ has lost about +fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of skins.” + +“You speak so calmly—” she began. + +“But I do not feel calm; I could kill the man who robbed me,” he +interrupted. “Yes, yes, I know, and that man my brother—more sentiment! +Bah!” + +His face underwent a sudden change. His voice was less harsh and wholly +sincere as he said: + +“You must be happy, you sentimentalists, really and truly happy at +dreaming and finding things good, and, because you find some of them +good, feeling good yourself. Now, tell me, you two, do you find me +good?” + +“You are good to look upon—in a way,” I qualified. + +“There are in you all powers for good,” was Maud Brewster’s answer. + +“There you are!” he cried at her, half angrily. “Your words are empty to +me. There is nothing clear and sharp and definite about the thought you +have expressed. You cannot pick it up in your two hands and look at it. +In point of fact, it is not a thought. It is a feeling, a sentiment, a +something based upon illusion and not a product of the intellect at all.” + +As he went on his voice again grew soft, and a confiding note came into +it. “Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I, too, were +blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions. +They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the +face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and +live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage +for living. Without delight, living is a worthless act. To labour at +living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most +lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to +you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.” + +He shook his head slowly, pondering. + +“I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason. Dreams must +be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling +and lasting than intellectual delight; and, besides, you pay for your +moments of intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight +is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate. I +envy you, I envy you.” + +He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips formed one of his strange +quizzical smiles, as he added: + +“It’s from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart. My +reason dictates it. The envy is an intellectual product. I am like a +sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too, +were drunk.” + +“Or like a wise man looking upon fools and wishing he, too, were a fool,” +I laughed. + +“Quite so,” he said. “You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools. You +have no facts in your pocketbook.” + +“Yet we spend as freely as you,” was Maud Brewster’s contribution. + +“More freely, because it costs you nothing.” + +“And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted. + +“Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing. You spend what you +haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you +haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have +sweated to get.” + +“Why don’t you change the basis of your coinage, then?” she queried +teasingly. + +He looked at her quickly, half-hopefully, and then said, all regretfully: +“Too late. I’d like to, perhaps, but I can’t. My pocketbook is stuffed +with the old coinage, and it’s a stubborn thing. I can never bring +myself to recognize anything else as valid.” + +He ceased speaking, and his gaze wandered absently past her and became +lost in the placid sea. The old primal melancholy was strong upon him. +He was quivering to it. He had reasoned himself into a spell of the +blues, and within few hours one could look for the devil within him to be +up and stirring. I remembered Charley Furuseth, and knew this man’s +sadness as the penalty which the materialist ever pays for his +materialism. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +“You’ve been on deck, Mr. Van Weyden,” Wolf Larsen said, the following +morning at the breakfast-table, “How do things look?” + +“Clear enough,” I answered, glancing at the sunshine which streamed down +the open companion-way. “Fair westerly breeze, with a promise of +stiffening, if Louis predicts correctly.” + +He nodded his head in a pleased way. “Any signs of fog?” + +“Thick banks in the north and north-west.” + +He nodded his head again, evincing even greater satisfaction than before. + +“What of the _Macedonia_?” + +“Not sighted,” I answered. + +I could have sworn his face fell at the intelligence, but why he should +be disappointed I could not conceive. + +I was soon to learn. “Smoke ho!” came the hail from on deck, and his +face brightened. + +“Good!” he exclaimed, and left the table at once to go on deck and into +the steerage, where the hunters were taking the first breakfast of their +exile. + +Maud Brewster and I scarcely touched the food before us, gazing, instead, +in silent anxiety at each other, and listening to Wolf Larsen’s voice, +which easily penetrated the cabin through the intervening bulkhead. He +spoke at length, and his conclusion was greeted with a wild roar of +cheers. The bulkhead was too thick for us to hear what he said; but +whatever it was it affected the hunters strongly, for the cheering was +followed by loud exclamations and shouts of joy. + +From the sounds on deck I knew that the sailors had been routed out and +were preparing to lower the boats. Maud Brewster accompanied me on deck, +but I left her at the break of the poop, where she might watch the scene +and not be in it. The sailors must have learned whatever project was on +hand, and the vim and snap they put into their work attested their +enthusiasm. The hunters came trooping on deck with shot-guns and +ammunition-boxes, and, most unusual, their rifles. The latter were +rarely taken in the boats, for a seal shot at long range with a rifle +invariably sank before a boat could reach it. But each hunter this day +had his rifle and a large supply of cartridges. I noticed they grinned +with satisfaction whenever they looked at the _Macedonia’s_ smoke, which +was rising higher and higher as she approached from the west. + +The five boats went over the side with a rush, spread out like the ribs +of a fan, and set a northerly course, as on the preceding afternoon, for +us to follow. I watched for some time, curiously, but there seemed +nothing extraordinary about their behaviour. They lowered sails, shot +seals, and hoisted sails again, and continued on their way as I had +always seen them do. The _Macedonia_ repeated her performance of +yesterday, “hogging” the sea by dropping her line of boats in advance of +ours and across our course. Fourteen boats require a considerable spread +of ocean for comfortable hunting, and when she had completely lapped our +line she continued steaming into the north-east, dropping more boats as +she went. + +“What’s up?” I asked Wolf Larsen, unable longer to keep my curiosity in +check. + +“Never mind what’s up,” he answered gruffly. “You won’t be a thousand +years in finding out, and in the meantime just pray for plenty of wind.” + +“Oh, well, I don’t mind telling you,” he said the next moment. “I’m +going to give that brother of mine a taste of his own medicine. In +short, I’m going to play the hog myself, and not for one day, but for the +rest of the season,—if we’re in luck.” + +“And if we’re not?” I queried. + +“Not to be considered,” he laughed. “We simply must be in luck, or it’s +all up with us.” + +He had the wheel at the time, and I went forward to my hospital in the +forecastle, where lay the two crippled men, Nilson and Thomas Mugridge. +Nilson was as cheerful as could be expected, for his broken leg was +knitting nicely; but the Cockney was desperately melancholy, and I was +aware of a great sympathy for the unfortunate creature. And the marvel +of it was that still he lived and clung to life. The brutal years had +reduced his meagre body to splintered wreckage, and yet the spark of life +within burned brightly as ever. + +“With an artificial foot—and they make excellent ones—you will be +stumping ships’ galleys to the end of time,” I assured him jovially. + +But his answer was serious, nay, solemn. “I don’t know about wot you +s’y, Mr. Van W’yden, but I do know I’ll never rest ’appy till I see that +’ell-’ound bloody well dead. ’E cawn’t live as long as me. ’E’s got no +right to live, an’ as the Good Word puts it, ‘’E shall shorely die,’ an’ +I s’y, ‘Amen, an’ damn soon at that.’” + +When I returned on deck I found Wolf Larsen steering mainly with one +hand, while with the other hand he held the marine glasses and studied +the situation of the boats, paying particular attention to the position +of the _Macedonia_. The only change noticeable in our boats was that +they had hauled close on the wind and were heading several points west of +north. Still, I could not see the expediency of the manœuvre, for the +free sea was still intercepted by the _Macedonia’s_ five weather boats, +which, in turn, had hauled close on the wind. Thus they slowly diverged +toward the west, drawing farther away from the remainder of the boats in +their line. Our boats were rowing as well as sailing. Even the hunters +were pulling, and with three pairs of oars in the water they rapidly +overhauled what I may appropriately term the enemy. + +The smoke of the _Macedonia_ had dwindled to a dim blot on the +north-eastern horizon. Of the steamer herself nothing was to be seen. +We had been loafing along, till now, our sails shaking half the time and +spilling the wind; and twice, for short periods, we had been hove to. +But there was no more loafing. Sheets were trimmed, and Wolf Larsen +proceeded to put the _Ghost_ through her paces. We ran past our line of +boats and bore down upon the first weather boat of the other line. + +“Down that flying jib, Mr. Van Weyden,” Wolf Larsen commanded. “And +stand by to back over the jibs.” + +I ran forward and had the downhaul of the flying jib all in and fast as +we slipped by the boat a hundred feet to leeward. The three men in it +gazed at us suspiciously. They had been hogging the sea, and they knew +Wolf Larsen, by reputation at any rate. I noted that the hunter, a huge +Scandinavian sitting in the bow, held his rifle, ready to hand, across +his knees. It should have been in its proper place in the rack. When +they came opposite our stern, Wolf Larsen greeted them with a wave of the +hand, and cried: + +“Come on board and have a ’gam’!” + +“To gam,” among the sealing-schooners, is a substitute for the verbs “to +visit,” “to gossip.” It expresses the garrulity of the sea, and is a +pleasant break in the monotony of the life. + +The _Ghost_ swung around into the wind, and I finished my work forward in +time to run aft and lend a hand with the mainsheet. + +“You will please stay on deck, Miss Brewster,” Wolf Larsen said, as he +started forward to meet his guest. “And you too, Mr. Van Weyden.” + +The boat had lowered its sail and run alongside. The hunter, golden +bearded like a sea-king, came over the rail and dropped on deck. But his +hugeness could not quite overcome his apprehensiveness. Doubt and +distrust showed strongly in his face. It was a transparent face, for all +of its hairy shield, and advertised instant relief when he glanced from +Wolf Larsen to me, noted that there was only the pair of us, and then +glanced over his own two men who had joined him. Surely he had little +reason to be afraid. He towered like a Goliath above Wolf Larsen. He +must have measured six feet eight or nine inches in stature, and I +subsequently learned his weight—240 pounds. And there was no fat about +him. It was all bone and muscle. + +A return of apprehension was apparent when, at the top of the +companion-way, Wolf Larsen invited him below. But he reassured himself +with a glance down at his host—a big man himself but dwarfed by the +propinquity of the giant. So all hesitancy vanished, and the pair +descended into the cabin. In the meantime, his two men, as was the wont +of visiting sailors, had gone forward into the forecastle to do some +visiting themselves. + +Suddenly, from the cabin came a great, choking bellow, followed by all +the sounds of a furious struggle. It was the leopard and the lion, and +the lion made all the noise. Wolf Larsen was the leopard. + +“You see the sacredness of our hospitality,” I said bitterly to Maud +Brewster. + +She nodded her head that she heard, and I noted in her face the signs of +the same sickness at sight or sound of violent struggle from which I had +suffered so severely during my first weeks on the _Ghost_. + +“Wouldn’t it be better if you went forward, say by the steerage +companion-way, until it is over?” I suggested. + +She shook her head and gazed at me pitifully. She was not frightened, +but appalled, rather, at the human animality of it. + +“You will understand,” I took advantage of the opportunity to say, +“whatever part I take in what is going on and what is to come, that I am +compelled to take it—if you and I are ever to get out of this scrape with +our lives.” + +“It is not nice—for me,” I added. + +“I understand,” she said, in a weak, far-away voice, and her eyes showed +me that she did understand. + +The sounds from below soon died away. Then Wolf Larsen came alone on +deck. There was a slight flush under his bronze, but otherwise he bore +no signs of the battle. + +“Send those two men aft, Mr. Van Weyden,” he said. + +I obeyed, and a minute or two later they stood before him. “Hoist in +your boat,” he said to them. “Your hunter’s decided to stay aboard +awhile and doesn’t want it pounding alongside.” + +“Hoist in your boat, I said,” he repeated, this time in sharper tones as +they hesitated to do his bidding. + +“Who knows? you may have to sail with me for a time,” he said, quite +softly, with a silken threat that belied the softness, as they moved +slowly to comply, “and we might as well start with a friendly +understanding. Lively now! Death Larsen makes you jump better than +that, and you know it!” + +Their movements perceptibly quickened under his coaching, and as the boat +swung inboard I was sent forward to let go the jibs. Wolf Larsen, at the +wheel, directed the _Ghost_ after the _Macedonia’s_ second weather boat. + +Under way, and with nothing for the time being to do, I turned my +attention to the situation of the boats. The _Macedonia’s_ third weather +boat was being attacked by two of ours, the fourth by our remaining +three; and the fifth, turn about, was taking a hand in the defence of its +nearest mate. The fight had opened at long distance, and the rifles were +cracking steadily. A quick, snappy sea was being kicked up by the wind, +a condition which prevented fine shooting; and now and again, as we drew +closer, we could see the bullets zip-zipping from wave to wave. + +The boat we were pursuing had squared away and was running before the +wind to escape us, and, in the course of its flight, to take part in +repulsing our general boat attack. + +Attending to sheets and tacks now left me little time to see what was +taking place, but I happened to be on the poop when Wolf Larsen ordered +the two strange sailors forward and into the forecastle. They went +sullenly, but they went. He next ordered Miss Brewster below, and smiled +at the instant horror that leapt into her eyes. + +“You’ll find nothing gruesome down there,” he said, “only an unhurt man +securely made fast to the ring-bolts. Bullets are liable to come aboard, +and I don’t want you killed, you know.” + +Even as he spoke, a bullet was deflected by a brass-capped spoke of the +wheel between his hands and screeched off through the air to windward. + +“You see,” he said to her; and then to me, “Mr. Van Weyden, will you take +the wheel?” + +Maud Brewster had stepped inside the companion-way so that only her head +was exposed. Wolf Larsen had procured a rifle and was throwing a +cartridge into the barrel. I begged her with my eyes to go below, but +she smiled and said: + +“We may be feeble land-creatures without legs, but we can show Captain +Larsen that we are at least as brave as he.” + +He gave her a quick look of admiration. + +“I like you a hundred per cent. better for that,” he said. “Books, and +brains, and bravery. You are well-rounded, a blue-stocking fit to be the +wife of a pirate chief. Ahem, we’ll discuss that later,” he smiled, as a +bullet struck solidly into the cabin wall. + +I saw his eyes flash golden as he spoke, and I saw the terror mount in +her own. + +“We are braver,” I hastened to say. “At least, speaking for myself, I +know I am braver than Captain Larsen.” + +It was I who was now favoured by a quick look. He was wondering if I +were making fun of him. I put three or four spokes over to counteract a +sheer toward the wind on the part of the _Ghost_, and then steadied her. +Wolf Larsen was still waiting an explanation, and I pointed down to my +knees. + +“You will observe there,” I said, “a slight trembling. It is because I +am afraid, the flesh is afraid; and I am afraid in my mind because I do +not wish to die. But my spirit masters the trembling flesh and the +qualms of the mind. I am more than brave. I am courageous. Your flesh +is not afraid. You are not afraid. On the one hand, it costs you +nothing to encounter danger; on the other hand, it even gives you +delight. You enjoy it. You may be unafraid, Mr. Larsen, but you must +grant that the bravery is mine.” + +“You’re right,” he acknowledged at once. “I never thought of it in that +way before. But is the opposite true? If you are braver than I, am I +more cowardly than you?” + +We both laughed at the absurdity, and he dropped down to the deck and +rested his rifle across the rail. The bullets we had received had +travelled nearly a mile, but by now we had cut that distance in half. He +fired three careful shots. The first struck fifty feet to windward of +the boat, the second alongside; and at the third the boat-steerer let +loose his steering-oar and crumpled up in the bottom of the boat. + +“I guess that’ll fix them,” Wolf Larsen said, rising to his feet. “I +couldn’t afford to let the hunter have it, and there is a chance the +boat-puller doesn’t know how to steer. In which case, the hunter cannot +steer and shoot at the same time.” + +His reasoning was justified, for the boat rushed at once into the wind +and the hunter sprang aft to take the boat-steerer’s place. There was no +more shooting, though the rifles were still cracking merrily from the +other boats. + +The hunter had managed to get the boat before the wind again, but we ran +down upon it, going at least two feet to its one. A hundred yards away, +I saw the boat-puller pass a rifle to the hunter. Wolf Larsen went +amidships and took the coil of the throat-halyards from its pin. Then he +peered over the rail with levelled rifle. Twice I saw the hunter let go +the steering-oar with one hand, reach for his rifle, and hesitate. We +were now alongside and foaming past. + +“Here, you!” Wolf Larsen cried suddenly to the boat-puller. “Take a +turn!” + +At the same time he flung the coil of rope. It struck fairly, nearly +knocking the man over, but he did not obey. Instead, he looked to his +hunter for orders. The hunter, in turn, was in a quandary. His rifle +was between his knees, but if he let go the steering-oar in order to +shoot, the boat would sweep around and collide with the schooner. Also +he saw Wolf Larsen’s rifle bearing upon him and knew he would be shot ere +he could get his rifle into play. + +“Take a turn,” he said quietly to the man. + +The boat-puller obeyed, taking a turn around the little forward thwart +and paying the line as it jerked taut. The boat sheered out with a rush, +and the hunter steadied it to a parallel course some twenty feet from the +side of the _Ghost_. + +“Now, get that sail down and come alongside!” Wolf Larsen ordered. + +He never let go his rifle, even passing down the tackles with one hand. +When they were fast, bow and stern, and the two uninjured men prepared to +come aboard, the hunter picked up his rifle as if to place it in a secure +position. + +“Drop it!” Wolf Larsen cried, and the hunter dropped it as though it were +hot and had burned him. + +Once aboard, the two prisoners hoisted in the boat and under Wolf +Larsen’s direction carried the wounded boat-steerer down into the +forecastle. + +“If our five boats do as well as you and I have done, we’ll have a pretty +full crew,” Wolf Larsen said to me. + +“The man you shot—he is—I hope?” Maud Brewster quavered. + +“In the shoulder,” he answered. “Nothing serious, Mr. Van Weyden will +pull him around as good as ever in three or four weeks.” + +“But he won’t pull those chaps around, from the look of it,” he added, +pointing at the _Macedonia’s_ third boat, for which I had been steering +and which was now nearly abreast of us. “That’s Horner’s and Smoke’s +work. I told them we wanted live men, not carcasses. But the joy of +shooting to hit is a most compelling thing, when once you’ve learned how +to shoot. Ever experienced it, Mr. Van Weyden?” + +I shook my head and regarded their work. It had indeed been bloody, for +they had drawn off and joined our other three boats in the attack on the +remaining two of the enemy. The deserted boat was in the trough of the +sea, rolling drunkenly across each comber, its loose spritsail out at +right angles to it and fluttering and flapping in the wind. The hunter +and boat-puller were both lying awkwardly in the bottom, but the +boat-steerer lay across the gunwale, half in and half out, his arms +trailing in the water and his head rolling from side to side. + +“Don’t look, Miss Brewster, please don’t look,” I had begged of her, and +I was glad that she had minded me and been spared the sight. + +“Head right into the bunch, Mr. Van Weyden,” was Wolf Larsen’s command. + +As we drew nearer, the firing ceased, and we saw that the fight was over. +The remaining two boats had been captured by our five, and the seven were +grouped together, waiting to be picked up. + +“Look at that!” I cried involuntarily, pointing to the north-east. + +The blot of smoke which indicated the _Macedonia’s_ position had +reappeared. + +“Yes, I’ve been watching it,” was Wolf Larsen’s calm reply. He measured +the distance away to the fog-bank, and for an instant paused to feel the +weight of the wind on his cheek. “We’ll make it, I think; but you can +depend upon it that blessed brother of mine has twigged our little game +and is just a-humping for us. Ah, look at that!” + +The blot of smoke had suddenly grown larger, and it was very black. + +“I’ll beat you out, though, brother mine,” he chuckled. “I’ll beat you +out, and I hope you no worse than that you rack your old engines into +scrap.” + +When we hove to, a hasty though orderly confusion reigned. The boats +came aboard from every side at once. As fast as the prisoners came over +the rail they were marshalled forward to the forecastle by our hunters, +while our sailors hoisted in the boats, pell-mell, dropping them anywhere +upon the deck and not stopping to lash them. We were already under way, +all sails set and drawing, and the sheets being slacked off for a wind +abeam, as the last boat lifted clear of the water and swung in the +tackles. + +There was need for haste. The _Macedonia_, belching the blackest of +smoke from her funnel, was charging down upon us from out of the +north-east. Neglecting the boats that remained to her, she had altered +her course so as to anticipate ours. She was not running straight for +us, but ahead of us. Our courses were converging like the sides of an +angle, the vertex of which was at the edge of the fog-bank. It was +there, or not at all, that the _Macedonia_ could hope to catch us. The +hope for the _Ghost_ lay in that she should pass that point before the +_Macedonia_ arrived at it. + +Wolf Larsen was steering, his eyes glistening and snapping as they dwelt +upon and leaped from detail to detail of the chase. Now he studied the +sea to windward for signs of the wind slackening or freshening, now the +_Macedonia_; and again, his eyes roved over every sail, and he gave +commands to slack a sheet here a trifle, to come in on one there a +trifle, till he was drawing out of the _Ghost_ the last bit of speed she +possessed. All feuds and grudges were forgotten, and I was surprised at +the alacrity with which the men who had so long endured his brutality +sprang to execute his orders. Strange to say, the unfortunate Johnson +came into my mind as we lifted and surged and heeled along, and I was +aware of a regret that he was not alive and present; he had so loved the +_Ghost_ and delighted in her sailing powers. + +“Better get your rifles, you fellows,” Wolf Larsen called to our hunters; +and the five men lined the lee rail, guns in hand, and waited. + +The _Macedonia_ was now but a mile away, the black smoke pouring from her +funnel at a right angle, so madly she raced, pounding through the sea at +a seventeen-knot gait—“’Sky-hooting through the brine,” as Wolf Larsen +quoted while gazing at her. We were not making more than nine knots, but +the fog-bank was very near. + +A puff of smoke broke from the _Macedonia’s_ deck, we heard a heavy +report, and a round hole took form in the stretched canvas of our +mainsail. They were shooting at us with one of the small cannon which +rumour had said they carried on board. Our men, clustering amidships, +waved their hats and raised a derisive cheer. Again there was a puff of +smoke and a loud report, this time the cannon-ball striking not more than +twenty feet astern and glancing twice from sea to sea to windward ere it +sank. + +But there was no rifle-firing for the reason that all their hunters were +out in the boats or our prisoners. When the two vessels were half-a-mile +apart, a third shot made another hole in our mainsail. Then we entered +the fog. It was about us, veiling and hiding us in its dense wet gauze. + +The sudden transition was startling. The moment before we had been +leaping through the sunshine, the clear sky above us, the sea breaking +and rolling wide to the horizon, and a ship, vomiting smoke and fire and +iron missiles, rushing madly upon us. And at once, as in an instant’s +leap, the sun was blotted out, there was no sky, even our mastheads were +lost to view, and our horizon was such as tear-blinded eyes may see. The +grey mist drove by us like a rain. Every woollen filament of our +garments, every hair of our heads and faces, was jewelled with a crystal +globule. The shrouds were wet with moisture; it dripped from our rigging +overhead; and on the underside of our booms drops of water took shape in +long swaying lines, which were detached and flung to the deck in mimic +showers at each surge of the schooner. I was aware of a pent, stifled +feeling. As the sounds of the ship thrusting herself through the waves +were hurled back upon us by the fog, so were one’s thoughts. The mind +recoiled from contemplation of a world beyond this wet veil which wrapped +us around. This was the world, the universe itself, its bounds so near +one felt impelled to reach out both arms and push them back. It was +impossible, that the rest could be beyond these walls of grey. The rest +was a dream, no more than the memory of a dream. + +It was weird, strangely weird. I looked at Maud Brewster and knew that +she was similarly affected. Then I looked at Wolf Larsen, but there was +nothing subjective about his state of consciousness. His whole concern +was with the immediate, objective present. He still held the wheel, and +I felt that he was timing Time, reckoning the passage of the minutes with +each forward lunge and leeward roll of the _Ghost_. + +“Go for’ard and hard alee without any noise,” he said to me in a low +voice. “Clew up the topsails first. Set men at all the sheets. Let +there be no rattling of blocks, no sound of voices. No noise, +understand, no noise.” + +When all was ready, the word “hard-a-lee” was passed forward to me from +man to man; and the _Ghost_ heeled about on the port tack with +practically no noise at all. And what little there was,—the slapping of +a few reef-points and the creaking of a sheave in a block or two,—was +ghostly under the hollow echoing pall in which we were swathed. + +We had scarcely filled away, it seemed, when the fog thinned abruptly and +we were again in the sunshine, the wide-stretching sea breaking before us +to the sky-line. But the ocean was bare. No wrathful _Macedonia_ broke +its surface nor blackened the sky with her smoke. + +Wolf Larsen at once squared away and ran down along the rim of the +fog-bank. His trick was obvious. He had entered the fog to windward of +the steamer, and while the steamer had blindly driven on into the fog in +the chance of catching him, he had come about and out of his shelter and +was now running down to re-enter to leeward. Successful in this, the old +simile of the needle in the haystack would be mild indeed compared with +his brother’s chance of finding him. He did not run long. Jibing the +fore- and main-sails and setting the topsails again, we headed back into +the bank. As we entered I could have sworn I saw a vague bulk emerging +to windward. I looked quickly at Wolf Larsen. Already we were ourselves +buried in the fog, but he nodded his head. He, too, had seen it—the +_Macedonia_, guessing his manœuvre and failing by a moment in +anticipating it. There was no doubt that we had escaped unseen. + +“He can’t keep this up,” Wolf Larsen said. “He’ll have to go back for +the rest of his boats. Send a man to the wheel, Mr. Van Weyden, keep +this course for the present, and you might as well set the watches, for +we won’t do any lingering to-night.” + +“I’d give five hundred dollars, though,” he added, “just to be aboard the +_Macedonia_ for five minutes, listening to my brother curse.” + +“And now, Mr. Van Weyden,” he said to me when he had been relieved from +the wheel, “we must make these new-comers welcome. Serve out plenty of +whisky to the hunters and see that a few bottles slip for’ard. I’ll +wager every man Jack of them is over the side to-morrow, hunting for Wolf +Larsen as contentedly as ever they hunted for Death Larsen.” + +“But won’t they escape as Wainwright did?” I asked. + +He laughed shrewdly. “Not as long as our old hunters have anything to +say about it. I’m dividing amongst them a dollar a skin for all the +skins shot by our new hunters. At least half of their enthusiasm to-day +was due to that. Oh, no, there won’t be any escaping if they have +anything to say about it. And now you’d better get for’ard to your +hospital duties. There must be a full ward waiting for you.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +Wolf Larsen took the distribution of the whisky off my hands, and the +bottles began to make their appearance while I worked over the fresh +batch of wounded men in the forecastle. I had seen whisky drunk, such as +whisky-and-soda by the men of the clubs, but never as these men drank it, +from pannikins and mugs, and from the bottles—great brimming drinks, each +one of which was in itself a debauch. But they did not stop at one or +two. They drank and drank, and ever the bottles slipped forward and they +drank more. + +Everybody drank; the wounded drank; Oofty-Oofty, who helped me, drank. +Only Louis refrained, no more than cautiously wetting his lips with the +liquor, though he joined in the revels with an abandon equal to that of +most of them. It was a saturnalia. In loud voices they shouted over the +day’s fighting, wrangled about details, or waxed affectionate and made +friends with the men whom they had fought. Prisoners and captors +hiccoughed on one another’s shoulders, and swore mighty oaths of respect +and esteem. They wept over the miseries of the past and over the +miseries yet to come under the iron rule of Wolf Larsen. And all cursed +him and told terrible tales of his brutality. + +It was a strange and frightful spectacle—the small, bunk-lined space, the +floor and walls leaping and lurching, the dim light, the swaying shadows +lengthening and fore-shortening monstrously, the thick air heavy with +smoke and the smell of bodies and iodoform, and the inflamed faces of the +men—half-men, I should call them. I noted Oofty-Oofty, holding the end +of a bandage and looking upon the scene, his velvety and luminous eyes +glistening in the light like a deer’s eyes, and yet I knew the barbaric +devil that lurked in his breast and belied all the softness and +tenderness, almost womanly, of his face and form. And I noticed the +boyish face of Harrison,—a good face once, but now a demon’s,—convulsed +with passion as he told the new-comers of the hell-ship they were in and +shrieked curses upon the head of Wolf Larsen. + +Wolf Larsen it was, always Wolf Larsen, enslaver and tormentor of men, a +male Circe and these his swine, suffering brutes that grovelled before +him and revolted only in drunkenness and in secrecy. And was I, too, one +of his swine? I thought. And Maud Brewster? No! I ground my teeth in +my anger and determination till the man I was attending winced under my +hand and Oofty-Oofty looked at me with curiosity. I felt endowed with a +sudden strength. What of my new-found love, I was a giant. I feared +nothing. I would work my will through it all, in spite of Wolf Larsen +and of my own thirty-five bookish years. All would be well. I would +make it well. And so, exalted, upborne by a sense of power, I turned my +back on the howling inferno and climbed to the deck, where the fog +drifted ghostly through the night and the air was sweet and pure and +quiet. + +The steerage, where were two wounded hunters, was a repetition of the +forecastle, except that Wolf Larsen was not being cursed; and it was with +a great relief that I again emerged on deck and went aft to the cabin. +Supper was ready, and Wolf Larsen and Maud were waiting for me. + +While all his ship was getting drunk as fast as it could, he remained +sober. Not a drop of liquor passed his lips. He did not dare it under +the circumstances, for he had only Louis and me to depend upon, and Louis +was even now at the wheel. We were sailing on through the fog without a +look-out and without lights. That Wolf Larsen had turned the liquor +loose among his men surprised me, but he evidently knew their psychology +and the best method of cementing in cordiality, what had begun in +bloodshed. + +His victory over Death Larsen seemed to have had a remarkable effect upon +him. The previous evening he had reasoned himself into the blues, and I +had been waiting momentarily for one of his characteristic outbursts. +Yet nothing had occurred, and he was now in splendid trim. Possibly his +success in capturing so many hunters and boats had counteracted the +customary reaction. At any rate, the blues were gone, and the blue +devils had not put in an appearance. So I thought at the time; but, ah +me, little I knew him or knew that even then, perhaps, he was meditating +an outbreak more terrible than any I had seen. + +As I say, he discovered himself in splendid trim when I entered the +cabin. He had had no headaches for weeks, his eyes were clear blue as +the sky, his bronze was beautiful with perfect health; life swelled +through his veins in full and magnificent flood. While waiting for me he +had engaged Maud in animated discussion. Temptation was the topic they +had hit upon, and from the few words I heard I made out that he was +contending that temptation was temptation only when a man was seduced by +it and fell. + +“For look you,” he was saying, “as I see it, a man does things because of +desire. He has many desires. He may desire to escape pain, or to enjoy +pleasure. But whatever he does, he does because he desires to do it.” + +“But suppose he desires to do two opposite things, neither of which will +permit him to do the other?” Maud interrupted. + +“The very thing I was coming to,” he said. + +“And between these two desires is just where the soul of the man is +manifest,” she went on. “If it is a good soul, it will desire and do the +good action, and the contrary if it is a bad soul. It is the soul that +decides.” + +“Bosh and nonsense!” he exclaimed impatiently. “It is the desire that +decides. Here is a man who wants to, say, get drunk. Also, he doesn’t +want to get drunk. What does he do? How does he do it? He is a puppet. +He is the creature of his desires, and of the two desires he obeys the +strongest one, that is all. His soul hasn’t anything to do with it. How +can he be tempted to get drunk and refuse to get drunk? If the desire to +remain sober prevails, it is because it is the strongest desire. +Temptation plays no part, unless—” he paused while grasping the new +thought which had come into his mind—“unless he is tempted to remain +sober. + +“Ha! ha!” he laughed. “What do you think of that, Mr. Van Weyden?” + +“That both of you are hair-splitting,” I said. “The man’s soul is his +desires. Or, if you will, the sum of his desires is his soul. Therein +you are both wrong. You lay the stress upon the desire apart from the +soul, Miss Brewster lays the stress on the soul apart from the desire, +and in point of fact soul and desire are the same thing. + +“However,” I continued, “Miss Brewster is right in contending that +temptation is temptation whether the man yield or overcome. Fire is +fanned by the wind until it leaps up fiercely. So is desire like fire. +It is fanned, as by a wind, by sight of the thing desired, or by a new +and luring description or comprehension of the thing desired. There lies +the temptation. It is the wind that fans the desire until it leaps up to +mastery. That’s temptation. It may not fan sufficiently to make the +desire overmastering, but in so far as it fans at all, that far is it +temptation. And, as you say, it may tempt for good as well as for evil.” + +I felt proud of myself as we sat down to the table. My words had been +decisive. At least they had put an end to the discussion. + +But Wolf Larsen seemed voluble, prone to speech as I had never seen him +before. It was as though he were bursting with pent energy which must +find an outlet somehow. Almost immediately he launched into a discussion +on love. As usual, his was the sheer materialistic side, and Maud’s was +the idealistic. For myself, beyond a word or so of suggestion or +correction now and again, I took no part. + +He was brilliant, but so was Maud, and for some time I lost the thread of +the conversation through studying her face as she talked. It was a face +that rarely displayed colour, but to-night it was flushed and vivacious. +Her wit was playing keenly, and she was enjoying the tilt as much as Wolf +Larsen, and he was enjoying it hugely. For some reason, though I know +not why in the argument, so utterly had I lost it in the contemplation of +one stray brown lock of Maud’s hair, he quoted from Iseult at Tintagel, +where she says: + + “Blessed am I beyond women even herein, + That beyond all born women is my sin, + And perfect my transgression.” + +As he had read pessimism into Omar, so now he read triumph, stinging +triumph and exultation, into Swinburne’s lines. And he read rightly, and +he read well. He had hardly ceased reading when Louis put his head into +the companion-way and whispered down: + +“Be easy, will ye? The fog’s lifted, an’ ’tis the port light iv a +steamer that’s crossin’ our bow this blessed minute.” + +Wolf Larsen sprang on deck, and so swiftly that by the time we followed +him he had pulled the steerage-slide over the drunken clamour and was on +his way forward to close the forecastle-scuttle. The fog, though it +remained, had lifted high, where it obscured the stars and made the night +quite black. Directly ahead of us I could see a bright red light and a +white light, and I could hear the pulsing of a steamer’s engines. Beyond +a doubt it was the _Macedonia_. + +Wolf Larsen had returned to the poop, and we stood in a silent group, +watching the lights rapidly cross our bow. + +“Lucky for me he doesn’t carry a searchlight,” Wolf Larsen said. + +“What if I should cry out loudly?” I queried in a whisper. + +“It would be all up,” he answered. “But have you thought upon what would +immediately happen?” + +Before I had time to express any desire to know, he had me by the throat +with his gorilla grip, and by a faint quiver of the muscles—a hint, as it +were—he suggested to me the twist that would surely have broken my neck. +The next moment he had released me and we were gazing at the +_Macedonia’s_ lights. + +“What if I should cry out?” Maud asked. + +“I like you too well to hurt you,” he said softly—nay, there was a +tenderness and a caress in his voice that made me wince. + +“But don’t do it, just the same, for I’d promptly break Mr. Van Weyden’s +neck.” + +“Then she has my permission to cry out,” I said defiantly. + +“I hardly think you’ll care to sacrifice the Dean of American Letters the +Second,” he sneered. + +We spoke no more, though we had become too used to one another for the +silence to be awkward; and when the red light and the white had +disappeared we returned to the cabin to finish the interrupted supper. + +Again they fell to quoting, and Maud gave Dowson’s “Impenitentia Ultima.” +She rendered it beautifully, but I watched not her, but Wolf Larsen. I +was fascinated by the fascinated look he bent upon Maud. He was quite +out of himself, and I noticed the unconscious movement of his lips as he +shaped word for word as fast as she uttered them. He interrupted her +when she gave the lines: + + “And her eyes should be my light while the sun went out behind me, + And the viols in her voice be the last sound in my ear.” + +“There are viols in your voice,” he said bluntly, and his eyes flashed +their golden light. + +I could have shouted with joy at her control. She finished the +concluding stanza without faltering and then slowly guided the +conversation into less perilous channels. And all the while I sat in a +half-daze, the drunken riot of the steerage breaking through the +bulkhead, the man I feared and the woman I loved talking on and on. The +table was not cleared. The man who had taken Mugridge’s place had +evidently joined his comrades in the forecastle. + +If ever Wolf Larsen attained the summit of living, he attained it then. +From time to time I forsook my own thoughts to follow him, and I followed +in amaze, mastered for the moment by his remarkable intellect, under the +spell of his passion, for he was preaching the passion of revolt. It was +inevitable that Milton’s Lucifer should be instanced, and the keenness +with which Wolf Larsen analysed and depicted the character was a +revelation of his stifled genius. It reminded me of Taine, yet I knew +the man had never heard of that brilliant though dangerous thinker. + +“He led a lost cause, and he was not afraid of God’s thunderbolts,” Wolf +Larsen was saying. “Hurled into hell, he was unbeaten. A third of God’s +angels he had led with him, and straightway he incited man to rebel +against God, and gained for himself and hell the major portion of all the +generations of man. Why was he beaten out of heaven? Because he was +less brave than God? less proud? less aspiring? No! A thousand times +no! God was more powerful, as he said, Whom thunder hath made greater. +But Lucifer was a free spirit. To serve was to suffocate. He preferred +suffering in freedom to all the happiness of a comfortable servility. He +did not care to serve God. He cared to serve nothing. He was no +figure-head. He stood on his own legs. He was an individual.” + +“The first Anarchist,” Maud laughed, rising and preparing to withdraw to +her state-room. + +“Then it is good to be an anarchist!” he cried. He, too, had risen, and +he stood facing her, where she had paused at the door of her room, as he +went on: + + “‘Here at least + We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built + Here for his envy; will not drive us hence; + Here we may reign secure; and in my choice + To reign is worth ambition, though in hell: + Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” + +It was the defiant cry of a mighty spirit. The cabin still rang with his +voice, as he stood there, swaying, his bronzed face shining, his head up +and dominant, and his eyes, golden and masculine, intensely masculine and +insistently soft, flashing upon Maud at the door. + +Again that unnamable and unmistakable terror was in her eyes, and she +said, almost in a whisper, “You are Lucifer.” + +The door closed and she was gone. He stood staring after her for a +minute, then returned to himself and to me. + +“I’ll relieve Louis at the wheel,” he said shortly, “and call upon you to +relieve at midnight. Better turn in now and get some sleep.” + +He pulled on a pair of mittens, put on his cap, and ascended the +companion-stairs, while I followed his suggestion by going to bed. For +some unknown reason, prompted mysteriously, I did not undress, but lay +down fully clothed. For a time I listened to the clamour in the steerage +and marvelled upon the love which had come to me; but my sleep on the +_Ghost_ had become most healthful and natural, and soon the songs and +cries died away, my eyes closed, and my consciousness sank down into the +half-death of slumber. + + * * * * * + +I knew not what had aroused me, but I found myself out of my bunk, on my +feet, wide awake, my soul vibrating to the warning of danger as it might +have thrilled to a trumpet call. I threw open the door. The cabin light +was burning low. I saw Maud, my Maud, straining and struggling and +crushed in the embrace of Wolf Larsen’s arms. I could see the vain beat +and flutter of her as she strove, pressing her face against his breast, +to escape from him. All this I saw on the very instant of seeing and as +I sprang forward. + +I struck him with my fist, on the face, as he raised his head, but it was +a puny blow. He roared in a ferocious, animal-like way, and gave me a +shove with his hand. It was only a shove, a flirt of the wrist, yet so +tremendous was his strength that I was hurled backward as from a +catapult. I struck the door of the state-room which had formerly been +Mugridge’s, splintering and smashing the panels with the impact of my +body. I struggled to my feet, with difficulty dragging myself clear of +the wrecked door, unaware of any hurt whatever. I was conscious only of +an overmastering rage. I think I, too, cried aloud, as I drew the knife +at my hip and sprang forward a second time. + +But something had happened. They were reeling apart. I was close upon +him, my knife uplifted, but I withheld the blow. I was puzzled by the +strangeness of it. Maud was leaning against the wall, one hand out for +support; but he was staggering, his left hand pressed against his +forehead and covering his eyes, and with the right he was groping about +him in a dazed sort of way. It struck against the wall, and his body +seemed to express a muscular and physical relief at the contact, as +though he had found his bearings, his location in space as well as +something against which to lean. + +Then I saw red again. All my wrongs and humiliations flashed upon me +with a dazzling brightness, all that I had suffered and others had +suffered at his hands, all the enormity of the man’s very existence. I +sprang upon him, blindly, insanely, and drove the knife into his +shoulder. I knew, then, that it was no more than a flesh wound,—I had +felt the steel grate on his shoulder-blade,—and I raised the knife to +strike at a more vital part. + +But Maud had seen my first blow, and she cried, “Don’t! Please don’t!” + +I dropped my arm for a moment, and a moment only. Again the knife was +raised, and Wolf Larsen would have surely died had she not stepped +between. Her arms were around me, her hair was brushing my face. My +pulse rushed up in an unwonted manner, yet my rage mounted with it. She +looked me bravely in the eyes. + +“For my sake,” she begged. + +“I would kill him for your sake!” I cried, trying to free my arm without +hurting her. + +“Hush!” she said, and laid her fingers lightly on my lips. I could have +kissed them, had I dared, even then, in my rage, the touch of them was so +sweet, so very sweet. “Please, please,” she pleaded, and she disarmed me +by the words, as I was to discover they would ever disarm me. + +I stepped back, separating from her, and replaced the knife in its +sheath. I looked at Wolf Larsen. He still pressed his left hand against +his forehead. It covered his eyes. His head was bowed. He seemed to +have grown limp. His body was sagging at the hips, his great shoulders +were drooping and shrinking forward. + +“Van Weyden!” he called hoarsely, and with a note of fright in his +voice. “Oh, Van Weyden! where are you?” + +I looked at Maud. She did not speak, but nodded her head. + +“Here I am,” I answered, stepping to his side. “What is the matter?” + +“Help me to a seat,” he said, in the same hoarse, frightened voice. + +“I am a sick man; a very sick man, Hump,” he said, as he left my +sustaining grip and sank into a chair. + +His head dropped forward on the table and was buried in his hands. From +time to time it rocked back and forward as with pain. Once, when he half +raised it, I saw the sweat standing in heavy drops on his forehead about +the roots of his hair. + +“I am a sick man, a very sick man,” he repeated again, and yet once +again. + +“What is the matter?” I asked, resting my hand on his shoulder. “What +can I do for you?” + +But he shook my hand off with an irritated movement, and for a long time +I stood by his side in silence. Maud was looking on, her face awed and +frightened. What had happened to him we could not imagine. + +“Hump,” he said at last, “I must get into my bunk. Lend me a hand. I’ll +be all right in a little while. It’s those damn headaches, I believe. I +was afraid of them. I had a feeling—no, I don’t know what I’m talking +about. Help me into my bunk.” + +But when I got him into his bunk he again buried his face in his hands, +covering his eyes, and as I turned to go I could hear him murmuring, “I +am a sick man, a very sick man.” + +Maud looked at me inquiringly as I emerged. I shook my head, saying: + +“Something has happened to him. What, I don’t know. He is helpless, and +frightened, I imagine, for the first time in his life. It must have +occurred before he received the knife-thrust, which made only a +superficial wound. You must have seen what happened.” + +She shook her head. “I saw nothing. It is just as mysterious to me. He +suddenly released me and staggered away. But what shall we do? What +shall I do?” + +“If you will wait, please, until I come back,” I answered. + +I went on deck. Louis was at the wheel. + +“You may go for’ard and turn in,” I said, taking it from him. + +He was quick to obey, and I found myself alone on the deck of the +_Ghost_. As quietly as was possible, I clewed up the topsails, lowered +the flying jib and staysail, backed the jib over, and flattened the +mainsail. Then I went below to Maud. I placed my finger on my lips for +silence, and entered Wolf Larsen’s room. He was in the same position in +which I had left him, and his head was rocking—almost writhing—from side +to side. + +“Anything I can do for you?” I asked. + +He made no reply at first, but on my repeating the question he answered, +“No, no; I’m all right. Leave me alone till morning.” + +But as I turned to go I noted that his head had resumed its rocking +motion. Maud was waiting patiently for me, and I took notice, with a +thrill of joy, of the queenly poise of her head and her glorious, calm +eyes. Calm and sure they were as her spirit itself. + +“Will you trust yourself to me for a journey of six hundred miles or so?” +I asked. + +“You mean—?” she asked, and I knew she had guessed aright. + +“Yes, I mean just that,” I replied. “There is nothing left for us but +the open boat.” + +“For me, you mean,” she said. “You are certainly as safe here as you +have been.” + +“No, there is nothing left for us but the open boat,” I iterated stoutly. +“Will you please dress as warmly as you can, at once, and make into a +bundle whatever you wish to bring with you.” + +“And make all haste,” I added, as she turned toward her state-room. + +The lazarette was directly beneath the cabin, and, opening the trap-door +in the floor and carrying a candle with me, I dropped down and began +overhauling the ship’s stores. I selected mainly from the canned goods, +and by the time I was ready, willing hands were extended from above to +receive what I passed up. + +We worked in silence. I helped myself also to blankets, mittens, +oilskins, caps, and such things, from the slop-chest. It was no light +adventure, this trusting ourselves in a small boat to so raw and stormy a +sea, and it was imperative that we should guard ourselves against the +cold and wet. + +We worked feverishly at carrying our plunder on deck and depositing it +amidships, so feverishly that Maud, whose strength was hardly a positive +quantity, had to give over, exhausted, and sit on the steps at the break +of the poop. This did not serve to recover her, and she lay on her back, +on the hard deck, arms stretched out, and whole body relaxed. It was a +trick I remembered of my sister, and I knew she would soon be herself +again. I knew, also, that weapons would not come in amiss, and I +re-entered Wolf Larsen’s state-room to get his rifle and shot-gun. I +spoke to him, but he made no answer, though his head was still rocking +from side to side and he was not asleep. + +“Good-bye, Lucifer,” I whispered to myself as I softly closed the door. + +Next to obtain was a stock of ammunition,—an easy matter, though I had to +enter the steerage companion-way to do it. Here the hunters stored the +ammunition-boxes they carried in the boats, and here, but a few feet from +their noisy revels, I took possession of two boxes. + +Next, to lower a boat. Not so simple a task for one man. Having cast +off the lashings, I hoisted first on the forward tackle, then on the aft, +till the boat cleared the rail, when I lowered away, one tackle and then +the other, for a couple of feet, till it hung snugly, above the water, +against the schooner’s side. I made certain that it contained the proper +equipment of oars, rowlocks, and sail. Water was a consideration, and I +robbed every boat aboard of its breaker. As there were nine boats all +told, it meant that we should have plenty of water, and ballast as well, +though there was the chance that the boat would be overloaded, what of +the generous supply of other things I was taking. + +While Maud was passing me the provisions and I was storing them in the +boat, a sailor came on deck from the forecastle. He stood by the weather +rail for a time (we were lowering over the lee rail), and then sauntered +slowly amidships, where he again paused and stood facing the wind, with +his back toward us. I could hear my heart beating as I crouched low in +the boat. Maud had sunk down upon the deck and was, I knew, lying +motionless, her body in the shadow of the bulwark. But the man never +turned, and, after stretching his arms above his head and yawning +audibly, he retraced his steps to the forecastle scuttle and disappeared. + +A few minutes sufficed to finish the loading, and I lowered the boat into +the water. As I helped Maud over the rail and felt her form close to +mine, it was all I could do to keep from crying out, “I love you! I love +you!” Truly Humphrey Van Weyden was at last in love, I thought, as her +fingers clung to mine while I lowered her down to the boat. I held on to +the rail with one hand and supported her weight with the other, and I was +proud at the moment of the feat. It was a strength I had not possessed a +few months before, on the day I said good-bye to Charley Furuseth and +started for San Francisco on the ill-fated _Martinez_. + +As the boat ascended on a sea, her feet touched and I released her hands. +I cast off the tackles and leaped after her. I had never rowed in my +life, but I put out the oars and at the expense of much effort got the +boat clear of the _Ghost_. Then I experimented with the sail. I had +seen the boat-steerers and hunters set their spritsails many times, yet +this was my first attempt. What took them possibly two minutes took me +twenty, but in the end I succeeded in setting and trimming it, and with +the steering-oar in my hands hauled on the wind. + +“There lies Japan,” I remarked, “straight before us.” + +“Humphrey Van Weyden,” she said, “you are a brave man.” + +“Nay,” I answered, “it is you who are a brave woman.” + +We turned our heads, swayed by a common impulse to see the last of the +_Ghost_. Her low hull lifted and rolled to windward on a sea; her canvas +loomed darkly in the night; her lashed wheel creaked as the rudder +kicked; then sight and sound of her faded away, and we were alone on the +dark sea. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +Day broke, grey and chill. The boat was close-hauled on a fresh breeze +and the compass indicated that we were just making the course which would +bring us to Japan. Though stoutly mittened, my fingers were cold, and +they pained from the grip on the steering-oar. My feet were stinging +from the bite of the frost, and I hoped fervently that the sun would +shine. + +Before me, in the bottom of the boat, lay Maud. She, at least, was warm, +for under her and over her were thick blankets. The top one I had drawn +over her face to shelter it from the night, so I could see nothing but +the vague shape of her, and her light-brown hair, escaped from the +covering and jewelled with moisture from the air. + +Long I looked at her, dwelling upon that one visible bit of her as only a +man would who deemed it the most precious thing in the world. So +insistent was my gaze that at last she stirred under the blankets, the +top fold was thrown back and she smiled out on me, her eyes yet heavy +with sleep. + +“Good-morning, Mr. Van Weyden,” she said. “Have you sighted land yet?” + +“No,” I answered, “but we are approaching it at a rate of six miles an +hour.” + +She made a _moue_ of disappointment. + +“But that is equivalent to one hundred and forty-four miles in +twenty-four hours,” I added reassuringly. + +Her face brightened. “And how far have we to go?” + +“Siberia lies off there,” I said, pointing to the west. “But to the +south-west, some six hundred miles, is Japan. If this wind should hold, +we’ll make it in five days.” + +“And if it storms? The boat could not live?” + +She had a way of looking one in the eyes and demanding the truth, and +thus she looked at me as she asked the question. + +“It would have to storm very hard,” I temporized. + +“And if it storms very hard?” + +I nodded my head. “But we may be picked up any moment by a +sealing-schooner. They are plentifully distributed over this part of the +ocean.” + +“Why, you are chilled through!” she cried. “Look! You are shivering. +Don’t deny it; you are. And here I have been lying warm as toast.” + +“I don’t see that it would help matters if you, too, sat up and were +chilled,” I laughed. + +“It will, though, when I learn to steer, which I certainly shall.” + +She sat up and began making her simple toilet. She shook down her hair, +and it fell about her in a brown cloud, hiding her face and shoulders. +Dear, damp brown hair! I wanted to kiss it, to ripple it through my +fingers, to bury my face in it. I gazed entranced, till the boat ran +into the wind and the flapping sail warned me I was not attending to my +duties. Idealist and romanticist that I was and always had been in spite +of my analytical nature, yet I had failed till now in grasping much of +the physical characteristics of love. The love of man and woman, I had +always held, was a sublimated something related to spirit, a spiritual +bond that linked and drew their souls together. The bonds of the flesh +had little part in my cosmos of love. But I was learning the sweet +lesson for myself that the soul transmuted itself, expressed itself, +through the flesh; that the sight and sense and touch of the loved one’s +hair was as much breath and voice and essence of the spirit as the light +that shone from the eyes and the thoughts that fell from the lips. After +all, pure spirit was unknowable, a thing to be sensed and divined only; +nor could it express itself in terms of itself. Jehovah was +anthropomorphic because he could address himself to the Jews only in +terms of their understanding; so he was conceived as in their own image, +as a cloud, a pillar of fire, a tangible, physical something which the +mind of the Israelites could grasp. + +And so I gazed upon Maud’s light-brown hair, and loved it, and learned +more of love than all the poets and singers had taught me with all their +songs and sonnets. She flung it back with a sudden adroit movement, and +her face emerged, smiling. + +“Why don’t women wear their hair down always?” I asked. “It is so much +more beautiful.” + +“If it didn’t tangle so dreadfully,” she laughed. “There! I’ve lost one +of my precious hair-pins!” + +I neglected the boat and had the sail spilling the wind again and again, +such was my delight in following her every movement as she searched +through the blankets for the pin. I was surprised, and joyfully, that +she was so much the woman, and the display of each trait and mannerism +that was characteristically feminine gave me keener joy. For I had been +elevating her too highly in my concepts of her, removing her too far from +the plane of the human, and too far from me. I had been making of her a +creature goddess-like and unapproachable. So I hailed with delight the +little traits that proclaimed her only woman after all, such as the toss +of the head which flung back the cloud of hair, and the search for the +pin. She was woman, my kind, on my plane, and the delightful intimacy of +kind, of man and woman, was possible, as well as the reverence and awe in +which I knew I should always hold her. + +She found the pin with an adorable little cry, and I turned my attention +more fully to my steering. I proceeded to experiment, lashing and +wedging the steering-oar until the boat held on fairly well by the wind +without my assistance. Occasionally it came up too close, or fell off +too freely; but it always recovered itself and in the main behaved +satisfactorily. + +“And now we shall have breakfast,” I said. “But first you must be more +warmly clad.” + +I got out a heavy shirt, new from the slop-chest and made from blanket +goods. I knew the kind, so thick and so close of texture that it could +resist the rain and not be soaked through after hours of wetting. When +she had slipped this on over her head, I exchanged the boy’s cap she wore +for a man’s cap, large enough to cover her hair, and, when the flap was +turned down, to completely cover her neck and ears. The effect was +charming. Her face was of the sort that cannot but look well under all +circumstances. Nothing could destroy its exquisite oval, its well-nigh +classic lines, its delicately stencilled brows, its large brown eyes, +clear-seeing and calm, gloriously calm. + +A puff, slightly stronger than usual, struck us just then. The boat was +caught as it obliquely crossed the crest of a wave. It went over +suddenly, burying its gunwale level with the sea and shipping a bucketful +or so of water. I was opening a can of tongue at the moment, and I +sprang to the sheet and cast it off just in time. The sail flapped and +fluttered, and the boat paid off. A few minutes of regulating sufficed +to put it on its course again, when I returned to the preparation of +breakfast. + +“It does very well, it seems, though I am not versed in things nautical,” +she said, nodding her head with grave approval at my steering +contrivance. + +“But it will serve only when we are sailing by the wind,” I explained. +“When running more freely, with the wind astern abeam, or on the quarter, +it will be necessary for me to steer.” + +“I must say I don’t understand your technicalities,” she said, “but I do +your conclusion, and I don’t like it. You cannot steer night and day and +for ever. So I shall expect, after breakfast, to receive my first +lesson. And then you shall lie down and sleep. We’ll stand watches just +as they do on ships.” + +“I don’t see how I am to teach you,” I made protest. “I am just learning +for myself. You little thought when you trusted yourself to me that I +had had no experience whatever with small boats. This is the first time +I have ever been in one.” + +“Then we’ll learn together, sir. And since you’ve had a night’s start +you shall teach me what you have learned. And now, breakfast. My! this +air does give one an appetite!” + +“No coffee,” I said regretfully, passing her buttered sea-biscuits and a +slice of canned tongue. “And there will be no tea, no soups, nothing +hot, till we have made land somewhere, somehow.” + +After the simple breakfast, capped with a cup of cold water, Maud took +her lesson in steering. In teaching her I learned quite a deal myself, +though I was applying the knowledge already acquired by sailing the +_Ghost_ and by watching the boat-steerers sail the small boats. She was +an apt pupil, and soon learned to keep the course, to luff in the puffs +and to cast off the sheet in an emergency. + +Having grown tired, apparently, of the task, she relinquished the oar to +me. I had folded up the blankets, but she now proceeded to spread them +out on the bottom. When all was arranged snugly, she said: + +“Now, sir, to bed. And you shall sleep until luncheon. Till +dinner-time,” she corrected, remembering the arrangement on the _Ghost_. + +What could I do? She insisted, and said, “Please, please,” whereupon I +turned the oar over to her and obeyed. I experienced a positive sensuous +delight as I crawled into the bed she had made with her hands. The calm +and control which were so much a part of her seemed to have been +communicated to the blankets, so that I was aware of a soft dreaminess +and content, and of an oval face and brown eyes framed in a fisherman’s +cap and tossing against a background now of grey cloud, now of grey sea, +and then I was aware that I had been asleep. + +I looked at my watch. It was one o’clock. I had slept seven hours! And +she had been steering seven hours! When I took the steering-oar I had +first to unbend her cramped fingers. Her modicum of strength had been +exhausted, and she was unable even to move from her position. I was +compelled to let go the sheet while I helped her to the nest of blankets +and chafed her hands and arms. + +“I am so tired,” she said, with a quick intake of the breath and a sigh, +drooping her head wearily. + +But she straightened it the next moment. “Now don’t scold, don’t you +dare scold,” she cried with mock defiance. + +“I hope my face does not appear angry,” I answered seriously; “for I +assure you I am not in the least angry.” + +“N-no,” she considered. “It looks only reproachful.” + +“Then it is an honest face, for it looks what I feel. You were not fair +to yourself, nor to me. How can I ever trust you again?” + +She looked penitent. “I’ll be good,” she said, as a naughty child might +say it. “I promise—” + +“To obey as a sailor would obey his captain?” + +“Yes,” she answered. “It was stupid of me, I know.” + +“Then you must promise something else,” I ventured. + +“Readily.” + +“That you will not say, ‘Please, please,’ too often; for when you do you +are sure to override my authority.” + +She laughed with amused appreciation. She, too, had noticed the power of +the repeated “please.” + +“It is a good word—” I began. + +“But I must not overwork it,” she broke in. + +But she laughed weakly, and her head drooped again. I left the oar long +enough to tuck the blankets about her feet and to pull a single fold +across her face. Alas! she was not strong. I looked with misgiving +toward the south-west and thought of the six hundred miles of hardship +before us—ay, if it were no worse than hardship. On this sea a storm +might blow up at any moment and destroy us. And yet I was unafraid. I +was without confidence in the future, extremely doubtful, and yet I felt +no underlying fear. It must come right, it must come right, I repeated +to myself, over and over again. + +The wind freshened in the afternoon, raising a stiffer sea and trying the +boat and me severely. But the supply of food and the nine breakers of +water enabled the boat to stand up to the sea and wind, and I held on as +long as I dared. Then I removed the sprit, tightly hauling down the peak +of the sail, and we raced along under what sailors call a leg-of-mutton. + +Late in the afternoon I sighted a steamer’s smoke on the horizon to +leeward, and I knew it either for a Russian cruiser, or, more likely, the +_Macedonia_ still seeking the _Ghost_. The sun had not shone all day, +and it had been bitter cold. As night drew on, the clouds darkened and +the wind freshened, so that when Maud and I ate supper it was with our +mittens on and with me still steering and eating morsels between puffs. + +By the time it was dark, wind and sea had become too strong for the boat, +and I reluctantly took in the sail and set about making a drag or +sea-anchor. I had learned of the device from the talk of the hunters, +and it was a simple thing to manufacture. Furling the sail and lashing +it securely about the mast, boom, sprit, and two pairs of spare oars, I +threw it overboard. A line connected it with the bow, and as it floated +low in the water, practically unexposed to the wind, it drifted less +rapidly than the boat. In consequence it held the boat bow on to the sea +and wind—the safest position in which to escape being swamped when the +sea is breaking into whitecaps. + +“And now?” Maud asked cheerfully, when the task was accomplished and I +pulled on my mittens. + +“And now we are no longer travelling toward Japan,” I answered. “Our +drift is to the south-east, or south-south-east, at the rate of at least +two miles an hour.” + +“That will be only twenty-four miles,” she urged, “if the wind remains +high all night.” + +“Yes, and only one hundred and forty miles if it continues for three days +and nights.” + +“But it won’t continue,” she said with easy confidence. “It will turn +around and blow fair.” + +“The sea is the great faithless one.” + +“But the wind!” she retorted. “I have heard you grow eloquent over the +brave trade-wind.” + +“I wish I had thought to bring Wolf Larsen’s chronometer and sextant,” I +said, still gloomily. “Sailing one direction, drifting another +direction, to say nothing of the set of the current in some third +direction, makes a resultant which dead reckoning can never calculate. +Before long we won’t know where we are by five hundred miles.” + +Then I begged her pardon and promised I should not be disheartened any +more. At her solicitation I let her take the watch till midnight,—it was +then nine o’clock, but I wrapped her in blankets and put an oilskin about +her before I lay down. I slept only cat-naps. The boat was leaping and +pounding as it fell over the crests, I could hear the seas rushing past, +and spray was continually being thrown aboard. And still, it was not a +bad night, I mused—nothing to the nights I had been through on the +_Ghost_; nothing, perhaps, to the nights we should go through in this +cockle-shell. Its planking was three-quarters of an inch thick. Between +us and the bottom of the sea was less than an inch of wood. + +And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid. The death which +Wolf Larsen and even Thomas Mugridge had made me fear, I no longer +feared. The coming of Maud Brewster into my life seemed to have +transformed me. After all, I thought, it is better and finer to love +than to be loved, if it makes something in life so worth while that one +is not loath to die for it. I forget my own life in the love of another +life; and yet, such is the paradox, I never wanted so much to live as +right now when I place the least value upon my own life. I never had so +much reason for living, was my concluding thought; and after that, until +I dozed, I contented myself with trying to pierce the darkness to where I +knew Maud crouched low in the stern-sheets, watchful of the foaming sea +and ready to call me on an instant’s notice. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +There is no need of going into an extended recital of our suffering in +the small boat during the many days we were driven and drifted, here and +there, willy-nilly, across the ocean. The high wind blew from the +north-west for twenty-four hours, when it fell calm, and in the night +sprang up from the south-west. This was dead in our teeth, but I took in +the sea-anchor and set sail, hauling a course on the wind which took us +in a south-south-easterly direction. It was an even choice between this +and the west-north-westerly course which the wind permitted; but the warm +airs of the south fanned my desire for a warmer sea and swayed my +decision. + +In three hours—it was midnight, I well remember, and as dark as I had +ever seen it on the sea—the wind, still blowing out of the south-west, +rose furiously, and once again I was compelled to set the sea-anchor. + +Day broke and found me wan-eyed and the ocean lashed white, the boat +pitching, almost on end, to its drag. We were in imminent danger of +being swamped by the whitecaps. As it was, spray and spume came aboard +in such quantities that I bailed without cessation. The blankets were +soaking. Everything was wet except Maud, and she, in oilskins, rubber +boots, and sou’wester, was dry, all but her face and hands and a stray +wisp of hair. She relieved me at the bailing-hole from time to time, and +bravely she threw out the water and faced the storm. All things are +relative. It was no more than a stiff blow, but to us, fighting for life +in our frail craft, it was indeed a storm. + +Cold and cheerless, the wind beating on our faces, the white seas roaring +by, we struggled through the day. Night came, but neither of us slept. +Day came, and still the wind beat on our faces and the white seas roared +past. By the second night Maud was falling asleep from exhaustion. I +covered her with oilskins and a tarpaulin. She was comparatively dry, +but she was numb with the cold. I feared greatly that she might die in +the night; but day broke, cold and cheerless, with the same clouded sky +and beating wind and roaring seas. + +I had had no sleep for forty-eight hours. I was wet and chilled to the +marrow, till I felt more dead than alive. My body was stiff from +exertion as well as from cold, and my aching muscles gave me the severest +torture whenever I used them, and I used them continually. And all the +time we were being driven off into the north-east, directly away from +Japan and toward bleak Bering Sea. + +And still we lived, and the boat lived, and the wind blew unabated. In +fact, toward nightfall of the third day it increased a trifle and +something more. The boat’s bow plunged under a crest, and we came +through quarter-full of water. I bailed like a madman. The liability of +shipping another such sea was enormously increased by the water that +weighed the boat down and robbed it of its buoyancy. And another such +sea meant the end. When I had the boat empty again I was forced to take +away the tarpaulin which covered Maud, in order that I might lash it down +across the bow. It was well I did, for it covered the boat fully a third +of the way aft, and three times, in the next several hours, it flung off +the bulk of the down-rushing water when the bow shoved under the seas. + +Maud’s condition was pitiable. She sat crouched in the bottom of the +boat, her lips blue, her face grey and plainly showing the pain she +suffered. But ever her eyes looked bravely at me, and ever her lips +uttered brave words. + +The worst of the storm must have blown that night, though little I +noticed it. I had succumbed and slept where I sat in the stern-sheets. +The morning of the fourth day found the wind diminished to a gentle +whisper, the sea dying down and the sun shining upon us. Oh, the blessed +sun! How we bathed our poor bodies in its delicious warmth, reviving +like bugs and crawling things after a storm. We smiled again, said +amusing things, and waxed optimistic over our situation. Yet it was, if +anything, worse than ever. We were farther from Japan than the night we +left the _Ghost_. Nor could I more than roughly guess our latitude and +longitude. At a calculation of a two-mile drift per hour, during the +seventy and odd hours of the storm, we had been driven at least one +hundred and fifty miles to the north-east. But was such calculated drift +correct? For all I knew, it might have been four miles per hour instead +of two. In which case we were another hundred and fifty miles to the +bad. + +Where we were I did not know, though there was quite a likelihood that we +were in the vicinity of the _Ghost_. There were seals about us, and I +was prepared to sight a sealing-schooner at any time. We did sight one, +in the afternoon, when the north-west breeze had sprung up freshly once +more. But the strange schooner lost itself on the sky-line and we alone +occupied the circle of the sea. + +Came days of fog, when even Maud’s spirit drooped and there were no merry +words upon her lips; days of calm, when we floated on the lonely +immensity of sea, oppressed by its greatness and yet marvelling at the +miracle of tiny life, for we still lived and struggled to live; days of +sleet and wind and snow-squalls, when nothing could keep us warm; or days +of drizzling rain, when we filled our water-breakers from the drip of the +wet sail. + +And ever I loved Maud with an increasing love. She was so many-sided, so +many-mooded—“protean-mooded” I called her. But I called her this, and +other and dearer things, in my thoughts only. Though the declaration of +my love urged and trembled on my tongue a thousand times, I knew that it +was no time for such a declaration. If for no other reason, it was no +time, when one was protecting and trying to save a woman, to ask that +woman for her love. Delicate as was the situation, not alone in this but +in other ways, I flattered myself that I was able to deal delicately with +it; and also I flattered myself that by look or sign I gave no +advertisement of the love I felt for her. We were like good comrades, +and we grew better comrades as the days went by. + +One thing about her which surprised me was her lack of timidity and fear. +The terrible sea, the frail boat, the storms, the suffering, the +strangeness and isolation of the situation,—all that should have +frightened a robust woman,—seemed to make no impression upon her who had +known life only in its most sheltered and consummately artificial +aspects, and who was herself all fire and dew and mist, sublimated +spirit, all that was soft and tender and clinging in woman. And yet I am +wrong. She _was_ timid and afraid, but she possessed courage. The flesh +and the qualms of the flesh she was heir to, but the flesh bore heavily +only on the flesh. And she was spirit, first and always spirit, +etherealized essence of life, calm as her calm eyes, and sure of +permanence in the changing order of the universe. + +Came days of storm, days and nights of storm, when the ocean menaced us +with its roaring whiteness, and the wind smote our struggling boat with a +Titan’s buffets. And ever we were flung off, farther and farther, to the +north-east. It was in such a storm, and the worst that we had +experienced, that I cast a weary glance to leeward, not in quest of +anything, but more from the weariness of facing the elemental strife, and +in mute appeal, almost, to the wrathful powers to cease and let us be. +What I saw I could not at first believe. Days and nights of +sleeplessness and anxiety had doubtless turned my head. I looked back at +Maud, to identify myself, as it were, in time and space. The sight of +her dear wet cheeks, her flying hair, and her brave brown eyes convinced +me that my vision was still healthy. Again I turned my face to leeward, +and again I saw the jutting promontory, black and high and naked, the +raging surf that broke about its base and beat its front high up with +spouting fountains, the black and forbidding coast-line running toward the +south-east and fringed with a tremendous scarf of white. + +“Maud,” I said. “Maud.” + +She turned her head and beheld the sight. + +“It cannot be Alaska!” she cried. + +“Alas, no,” I answered, and asked, “Can you swim?” + +She shook her head. + +“Neither can I,” I said. “So we must get ashore without swimming, in +some opening between the rocks through which we can drive the boat and +clamber out. But we must be quick, most quick—and sure.” + +I spoke with a confidence she knew I did not feel, for she looked at me +with that unfaltering gaze of hers and said: + +“I have not thanked you yet for all you have done for me but—” + +She hesitated, as if in doubt how best to word her gratitude. + +“Well?” I said, brutally, for I was not quite pleased with her thanking +me. + +“You might help me,” she smiled. + +“To acknowledge your obligations before you die? Not at all. We are not +going to die. We shall land on that island, and we shall be snug and +sheltered before the day is done.” + +I spoke stoutly, but I did not believe a word. Nor was I prompted to lie +through fear. I felt no fear, though I was sure of death in that boiling +surge amongst the rocks which was rapidly growing nearer. It was +impossible to hoist sail and claw off that shore. The wind would +instantly capsize the boat; the seas would swamp it the moment it fell +into the trough; and, besides, the sail, lashed to the spare oars, +dragged in the sea ahead of us. + +As I say, I was not afraid to meet my own death, there, a few hundred +yards to leeward; but I was appalled at the thought that Maud must die. +My cursed imagination saw her beaten and mangled against the rocks, and +it was too terrible. I strove to compel myself to think we would make +the landing safely, and so I spoke, not what I believed, but what I +preferred to believe. + +I recoiled before contemplation of that frightful death, and for a moment +I entertained the wild idea of seizing Maud in my arms and leaping +overboard. Then I resolved to wait, and at the last moment, when we +entered on the final stretch, to take her in my arms and proclaim my +love, and, with her in my embrace, to make the desperate struggle and +die. + +Instinctively we drew closer together in the bottom of the boat. I felt +her mittened hand come out to mine. And thus, without speech, we waited +the end. We were not far off the line the wind made with the western +edge of the promontory, and I watched in the hope that some set of the +current or send of the sea would drift us past before we reached the +surf. + +“We shall go clear,” I said, with a confidence which I knew deceived +neither of us. + +“By God, we _will_ go clear!” I cried, five minutes later. + +The oath left my lips in my excitement—the first, I do believe, in my +life, unless “trouble it,” an expletive of my youth, be accounted an +oath. + +“I beg your pardon,” I said. + +“You have convinced me of your sincerity,” she said, with a faint smile. +“I do know, now, that we shall go clear.” + +I had seen a distant headland past the extreme edge of the promontory, +and as we looked we could see grow the intervening coastline of what was +evidently a deep cove. At the same time there broke upon our ears a +continuous and mighty bellowing. It partook of the magnitude and volume +of distant thunder, and it came to us directly from leeward, rising above +the crash of the surf and travelling directly in the teeth of the storm. +As we passed the point the whole cove burst upon our view, a half-moon of +white sandy beach upon which broke a huge surf, and which was covered +with myriads of seals. It was from them that the great bellowing went +up. + +“A rookery!” I cried. “Now are we indeed saved. There must be men and +cruisers to protect them from the seal-hunters. Possibly there is a +station ashore.” + +But as I studied the surf which beat upon the beach, I said, “Still bad, +but not so bad. And now, if the gods be truly kind, we shall drift by +that next headland and come upon a perfectly sheltered beach, where we +may land without wetting our feet.” + +And the gods were kind. The first and second headlands were directly in +line with the south-west wind; but once around the second,—and we went +perilously near,—we picked up the third headland, still in line with the +wind and with the other two. But the cove that intervened! It +penetrated deep into the land, and the tide, setting in, drifted us under +the shelter of the point. Here the sea was calm, save for a heavy but +smooth ground-swell, and I took in the sea-anchor and began to row. From +the point the shore curved away, more and more to the south and west, +until at last it disclosed a cove within the cove, a little land-locked +harbour, the water level as a pond, broken only by tiny ripples where +vagrant breaths and wisps of the storm hurtled down from over the +frowning wall of rock that backed the beach a hundred feet inshore. + +Here were no seals whatever. The boat’s stern touched the hard shingle. +I sprang out, extending my hand to Maud. The next moment she was beside +me. As my fingers released hers, she clutched for my arm hastily. At +the same moment I swayed, as about to fall to the sand. This was the +startling effect of the cessation of motion. We had been so long upon +the moving, rocking sea that the stable land was a shock to us. We +expected the beach to lift up this way and that, and the rocky walls to +swing back and forth like the sides of a ship; and when we braced +ourselves, automatically, for these various expected movements, their +non-occurrence quite overcame our equilibrium. + +“I really must sit down,” Maud said, with a nervous laugh and a dizzy +gesture, and forthwith she sat down on the sand. + +I attended to making the boat secure and joined her. Thus we landed on +Endeavour Island, as we came to it, land-sick from long custom of the +sea. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +“Fool!” I cried aloud in my vexation. + +I had unloaded the boat and carried its contents high up on the beach, +where I had set about making a camp. There was driftwood, though not +much, on the beach, and the sight of a coffee tin I had taken from the +_Ghost’s_ larder had given me the idea of a fire. + +“Blithering idiot!” I was continuing. + +But Maud said, “Tut, tut,” in gentle reproval, and then asked why I was a +blithering idiot. + +“No matches,” I groaned. “Not a match did I bring. And now we shall +have no hot coffee, soup, tea, or anything!” + +“Wasn’t it—er—Crusoe who rubbed sticks together?” she drawled. + +“But I have read the personal narratives of a score of shipwrecked men +who tried, and tried in vain,” I answered. “I remember Winters, a +newspaper fellow with an Alaskan and Siberian reputation. Met him at the +Bibelot once, and he was telling us how he attempted to make a fire with +a couple of sticks. It was most amusing. He told it inimitably, but it +was the story of a failure. I remember his conclusion, his black eyes +flashing as he said, ‘Gentlemen, the South Sea Islander may do it, the +Malay may do it, but take my word it’s beyond the white man.’” + +“Oh, well, we’ve managed so far without it,” she said cheerfully. “And +there’s no reason why we cannot still manage without it.” + +“But think of the coffee!” I cried. “It’s good coffee, too, I know. I +took it from Larsen’s private stores. And look at that good wood.” + +I confess, I wanted the coffee badly; and I learned, not long afterward, +that the berry was likewise a little weakness of Maud’s. Besides, we had +been so long on a cold diet that we were numb inside as well as out. +Anything warm would have been most gratifying. But I complained no more +and set about making a tent of the sail for Maud. + +I had looked upon it as a simple task, what of the oars, mast, boom, and +sprit, to say nothing of plenty of lines. But as I was without +experience, and as every detail was an experiment and every successful +detail an invention, the day was well gone before her shelter was an +accomplished fact. And then, that night, it rained, and she was flooded +out and driven back into the boat. + +The next morning I dug a shallow ditch around the tent, and, an hour +later, a sudden gust of wind, whipping over the rocky wall behind us, +picked up the tent and smashed it down on the sand thirty yards away. + +Maud laughed at my crestfallen expression, and I said, “As soon as the +wind abates I intend going in the boat to explore the island. There must +be a station somewhere, and men. And ships must visit the station. Some +Government must protect all these seals. But I wish to have you +comfortable before I start.” + +“I should like to go with you,” was all she said. + +“It would be better if you remained. You have had enough of hardship. +It is a miracle that you have survived. And it won’t be comfortable in +the boat rowing and sailing in this rainy weather. What you need is +rest, and I should like you to remain and get it.” + +Something suspiciously akin to moistness dimmed her beautiful eyes before +she dropped them and partly turned away her head. + +“I should prefer going with you,” she said in a low voice, in which there +was just a hint of appeal. + +“I might be able to help you a—” her voice broke,—“a little. And if +anything should happen to you, think of me left here alone.” + +“Oh, I intend being very careful,” I answered. “And I shall not go so +far but what I can get back before night. Yes, all said and done, I +think it vastly better for you to remain, and sleep, and rest and do +nothing.” + +She turned and looked me in the eyes. Her gaze was unfaltering, but +soft. + +“Please, please,” she said, oh, so softly. + +I stiffened myself to refuse, and shook my head. Still she waited and +looked at me. I tried to word my refusal, but wavered. I saw the glad +light spring into her eyes and knew that I had lost. It was impossible +to say no after that. + +The wind died down in the afternoon, and we were prepared to start the +following morning. There was no way of penetrating the island from our +cove, for the walls rose perpendicularly from the beach, and, on either +side of the cove, rose from the deep water. + +Morning broke dull and grey, but calm, and I was awake early and had the +boat in readiness. + +“Fool! Imbecile! Yahoo!” I shouted, when I thought it was meet to +arouse Maud; but this time I shouted in merriment as I danced about the +beach, bareheaded, in mock despair. + +Her head appeared under the flap of the sail. + +“What now?” she asked sleepily, and, withal, curiously. + +“Coffee!” I cried. “What do you say to a cup of coffee? hot coffee? +piping hot?” + +“My!” she murmured, “you startled me, and you are cruel. Here I have +been composing my soul to do without it, and here you are vexing me with +your vain suggestions.” + +“Watch me,” I said. + +From under clefts among the rocks I gathered a few dry sticks and chips. +These I whittled into shavings or split into kindling. From my note-book +I tore out a page, and from the ammunition box took a shot-gun shell. +Removing the wads from the latter with my knife, I emptied the powder on +a flat rock. Next I pried the primer, or cap, from the shell, and laid +it on the rock, in the midst of the scattered powder. All was ready. +Maud still watched from the tent. Holding the paper in my left hand, I +smashed down upon the cap with a rock held in my right. There was a puff +of white smoke, a burst of flame, and the rough edge of the paper was +alight. + +Maud clapped her hands gleefully. “Prometheus!” she cried. + +But I was too occupied to acknowledge her delight. The feeble flame must +be cherished tenderly if it were to gather strength and live. I fed it, +shaving by shaving, and sliver by sliver, till at last it was snapping +and crackling as it laid hold of the smaller chips and sticks. To be +cast away on an island had not entered into my calculations, so we were +without a kettle or cooking utensils of any sort; but I made shift with +the tin used for bailing the boat, and later, as we consumed our supply +of canned goods, we accumulated quite an imposing array of cooking +vessels. + +I boiled the water, but it was Maud who made the coffee. And how good it +was! My contribution was canned beef fried with crumbled sea-biscuit and +water. The breakfast was a success, and we sat about the fire much +longer than enterprising explorers should have done, sipping the hot +black coffee and talking over our situation. + +I was confident that we should find a station in some one of the coves, +for I knew that the rookeries of Bering Sea were thus guarded; but Maud +advanced the theory—to prepare me for disappointment, I do believe, if +disappointment were to come—that we had discovered an unknown rookery. +She was in very good spirits, however, and made quite merry in accepting +our plight as a grave one. + +“If you are right,” I said, “then we must prepare to winter here. Our +food will not last, but there are the seals. They go away in the fall, +so I must soon begin to lay in a supply of meat. Then there will be huts +to build and driftwood to gather. Also we shall try out seal fat for +lighting purposes. Altogether, we’ll have our hands full if we find the +island uninhabited. Which we shall not, I know.” + +But she was right. We sailed with a beam wind along the shore, searching +the coves with our glasses and landing occasionally, without finding a +sign of human life. Yet we learned that we were not the first who had +landed on Endeavour Island. High up on the beach of the second cove from +ours, we discovered the splintered wreck of a boat—a sealer’s boat, for +the rowlocks were bound in sennit, a gun-rack was on the starboard side +of the bow, and in white letters was faintly visible _Gazelle_ No. 2. +The boat had lain there for a long time, for it was half filled with +sand, and the splintered wood had that weather-worn appearance due to +long exposure to the elements. In the stern-sheets I found a rusty +ten-gauge shot-gun and a sailor’s sheath-knife broken short across and so +rusted as to be almost unrecognizable. + +“They got away,” I said cheerfully; but I felt a sinking at the heart and +seemed to divine the presence of bleached bones somewhere on that beach. + +I did not wish Maud’s spirits to be dampened by such a find, so I turned +seaward again with our boat and skirted the north-eastern point of the +island. There were no beaches on the southern shore, and by early +afternoon we rounded the black promontory and completed the +circumnavigation of the island. I estimated its circumference at +twenty-five miles, its width as varying from two to five miles; while my +most conservative calculation placed on its beaches two hundred thousand +seals. The island was highest at its extreme south-western point, the +headlands and backbone diminishing regularly until the north-eastern +portion was only a few feet above the sea. With the exception of our +little cove, the other beaches sloped gently back for a distance of +half-a-mile or so, into what I might call rocky meadows, with here and +there patches of moss and tundra grass. Here the seals hauled out, and +the old bulls guarded their harems, while the young bulls hauled out by +themselves. + +This brief description is all that Endeavour Island merits. Damp and +soggy where it was not sharp and rocky, buffeted by storm winds and +lashed by the sea, with the air continually a-tremble with the bellowing +of two hundred thousand amphibians, it was a melancholy and miserable +sojourning-place. Maud, who had prepared me for disappointment, and who +had been sprightly and vivacious all day, broke down as we landed in our +own little cove. She strove bravely to hide it from me, but while I was +kindling another fire I knew she was stifling her sobs in the blankets +under the sail-tent. + +It was my turn to be cheerful, and I played the part to the best of my +ability, and with such success that I brought the laughter back into her +dear eyes and song on her lips; for she sang to me before she went to an +early bed. It was the first time I had heard her sing, and I lay by the +fire, listening and transported, for she was nothing if not an artist in +everything she did, and her voice, though not strong, was wonderfully +sweet and expressive. + +I still slept in the boat, and I lay awake long that night, gazing up at +the first stars I had seen in many nights and pondering the situation. +Responsibility of this sort was a new thing to me. Wolf Larsen had been +quite right. I had stood on my father’s legs. My lawyers and agents had +taken care of my money for me. I had had no responsibilities at all. +Then, on the _Ghost_ I had learned to be responsible for myself. And +now, for the first time in my life, I found myself responsible for some +one else. And it was required of me that this should be the gravest of +responsibilities, for she was the one woman in the world—the one small +woman, as I loved to think of her. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +No wonder we called it Endeavour Island. For two weeks we toiled at +building a hut. Maud insisted on helping, and I could have wept over her +bruised and bleeding hands. And still, I was proud of her because of it. +There was something heroic about this gently-bred woman enduring our +terrible hardship and with her pittance of strength bending to the tasks +of a peasant woman. She gathered many of the stones which I built into +the walls of the hut; also, she turned a deaf ear to my entreaties when I +begged her to desist. She compromised, however, by taking upon herself +the lighter labours of cooking and gathering driftwood and moss for our +winter’s supply. + +The hut’s walls rose without difficulty, and everything went smoothly +until the problem of the roof confronted me. Of what use the four walls +without a roof? And of what could a roof be made? There were the spare +oars, very true. They would serve as roof-beams; but with what was I to +cover them? Moss would never do. Tundra grass was impracticable. We +needed the sail for the boat, and the tarpaulin had begun to leak. + +“Winters used walrus skins on his hut,” I said. + +“There are the seals,” she suggested. + +So next day the hunting began. I did not know how to shoot, but I +proceeded to learn. And when I had expended some thirty shells for three +seals, I decided that the ammunition would be exhausted before I acquired +the necessary knowledge. I had used eight shells for lighting fires +before I hit upon the device of banking the embers with wet moss, and +there remained not over a hundred shells in the box. + +“We must club the seals,” I announced, when convinced of my poor +marksmanship. “I have heard the sealers talk about clubbing them.” + +“They are so pretty,” she objected. “I cannot bear to think of it being +done. It is so directly brutal, you know; so different from shooting +them.” + +“That roof must go on,” I answered grimly. “Winter is almost here. It +is our lives against theirs. It is unfortunate we haven’t plenty of +ammunition, but I think, anyway, that they suffer less from being clubbed +than from being all shot up. Besides, I shall do the clubbing.” + +“That’s just it,” she began eagerly, and broke off in sudden confusion. + +“Of course,” I began, “if you prefer—” + +“But what shall I be doing?” she interrupted, with that softness I knew +full well to be insistence. + +“Gathering firewood and cooking dinner,” I answered lightly. + +She shook her head. “It is too dangerous for you to attempt alone.” + +“I know, I know,” she waived my protest. “I am only a weak woman, but +just my small assistance may enable you to escape disaster.” + +“But the clubbing?” I suggested. + +“Of course, you will do that. I shall probably scream. I’ll look away +when—” + +“The danger is most serious,” I laughed. + +“I shall use my judgment when to look and when not to look,” she replied +with a grand air. + +The upshot of the affair was that she accompanied me next morning. I +rowed into the adjoining cove and up to the edge of the beach. There +were seals all about us in the water, and the bellowing thousands on the +beach compelled us to shout at each other to make ourselves heard. + +“I know men club them,” I said, trying to reassure myself, and gazing +doubtfully at a large bull, not thirty feet away, upreared on his +fore-flippers and regarding me intently. “But the question is, How do +they club them?” + +“Let us gather tundra grass and thatch the roof,” Maud said. + +She was as frightened as I at the prospect, and we had reason to be +gazing at close range at the gleaming teeth and dog-like mouths. + +“I always thought they were afraid of men,” I said. + +“How do I know they are not afraid?” I queried a moment later, after +having rowed a few more strokes along the beach. “Perhaps, if I were to +step boldly ashore, they would cut for it, and I could not catch up with +one.” And still I hesitated. + +“I heard of a man, once, who invaded the nesting grounds of wild geese,” +Maud said. “They killed him.” + +“The geese?” + +“Yes, the geese. My brother told me about it when I was a little girl.” + +“But I know men club them,” I persisted. + +“I think the tundra grass will make just as good a roof,” she said. + +Far from her intention, her words were maddening me, driving me on. I +could not play the coward before her eyes. “Here goes,” I said, backing +water with one oar and running the bow ashore. + +I stepped out and advanced valiantly upon a long-maned bull in the midst +of his wives. I was armed with the regular club with which the +boat-pullers killed the wounded seals gaffed aboard by the hunters. It +was only a foot and a half long, and in my superb ignorance I never +dreamed that the club used ashore when raiding the rookeries measured +four to five feet. The cows lumbered out of my way, and the distance +between me and the bull decreased. He raised himself on his flippers +with an angry movement. We were a dozen feet apart. Still I advanced +steadily, looking for him to turn tail at any moment and run. + +At six feet the panicky thought rushed into my mind, What if he will not +run? Why, then I shall club him, came the answer. In my fear I had +forgotten that I was there to get the bull instead of to make him run. +And just then he gave a snort and a snarl and rushed at me. His eyes +were blazing, his mouth was wide open; the teeth gleamed cruelly white. +Without shame, I confess that it was I who turned and footed it. He ran +awkwardly, but he ran well. He was but two paces behind when I tumbled +into the boat, and as I shoved off with an oar his teeth crunched down +upon the blade. The stout wood was crushed like an egg-shell. Maud and +I were astounded. A moment later he had dived under the boat, seized the +keel in his mouth, and was shaking the boat violently. + +“My!” said Maud. “Let’s go back.” + +I shook my head. “I can do what other men have done, and I know that +other men have clubbed seals. But I think I’ll leave the bulls alone +next time.” + +“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said. + +“Now don’t say, ‘Please, please,’” I cried, half angrily, I do believe. + +She made no reply, and I knew my tone must have hurt her. + +“I beg your pardon,” I said, or shouted, rather, in order to make myself +heard above the roar of the rookery. “If you say so, I’ll turn and go +back; but honestly, I’d rather stay.” + +“Now don’t say that this is what you get for bringing a woman along,” she +said. She smiled at me whimsically, gloriously, and I knew there was no +need for forgiveness. + +I rowed a couple of hundred feet along the beach so as to recover my +nerves, and then stepped ashore again. + +“Do be cautious,” she called after me. + +I nodded my head and proceeded to make a flank attack on the nearest +harem. All went well until I aimed a blow at an outlying cow's head and +fell short. She snorted and tried to scramble away. I ran in close and +struck another blow, hitting the shoulder instead of the head. + +“Watch out!” I heard Maud scream. + +In my excitement I had not been taking notice of other things, and I +looked up to see the lord of the harem charging down upon me. Again I +fled to the boat, hotly pursued; but this time Maud made no suggestion of +turning back. + +“It would be better, I imagine, if you let harems alone and devoted your +attention to lonely and inoffensive-looking seals,” was what she said. +“I think I have read something about them. Dr. Jordan’s book, I believe. +They are the young bulls, not old enough to have harems of their own. He +called them the holluschickie, or something like that. It seems to me if +we find where they haul out—” + +“It seems to me that your fighting instinct is aroused,” I laughed. + +She flushed quickly and prettily. “I’ll admit I don’t like defeat any +more than you do, or any more than I like the idea of killing such +pretty, inoffensive creatures.” + +“Pretty!” I sniffed. “I failed to mark anything pre-eminently pretty +about those foamy-mouthed beasts that raced me.” + +“Your point of view,” she laughed. “You lacked perspective. Now if you +did not have to get so close to the subject—” + +“The very thing!” I cried. “What I need is a longer club. And there’s +that broken oar ready to hand.” + +“It just comes to me,” she said, “that Captain Larsen was telling me how +the men raided the rookeries. They drive the seals, in small herds, a +short distance inland before they kill them.” + +“I don’t care to undertake the herding of one of those harems,” I +objected. + +“But there are the holluschickie,” she said. “The holluschickie haul out +by themselves, and Dr. Jordan says that paths are left between the +harems, and that as long as the holluschickie keep strictly to the path +they are unmolested by the masters of the harem.” + +“There’s one now,” I said, pointing to a young bull in the water. “Let’s +watch him, and follow him if he hauls out.” + +He swam directly to the beach and clambered out into a small opening +between two harems, the masters of which made warning noises but did not +attack him. We watched him travel slowly inward, threading about among +the harems along what must have been the path. + +“Here goes,” I said, stepping out; but I confess my heart was in my mouth +as I thought of going through the heart of that monstrous herd. + +“It would be wise to make the boat fast,” Maud said. + +She had stepped out beside me, and I regarded her with wonderment. + +She nodded her head determinedly. “Yes, I’m going with you, so you may +as well secure the boat and arm me with a club.” + +“Let’s go back,” I said dejectedly. “I think tundra grass, will do, +after all.” + +“You know it won’t,” was her reply. “Shall I lead?” + +With a shrug of the shoulders, but with the warmest admiration and pride +at heart for this woman, I equipped her with the broken oar and took +another for myself. It was with nervous trepidation that we made the +first few rods of the journey. Once Maud screamed in terror as a cow +thrust an inquisitive nose toward her foot, and several times I quickened +my pace for the same reason. But, beyond warning coughs from either +side, there were no signs of hostility. It was a rookery which had never +been raided by the hunters, and in consequence the seals were +mild-tempered and at the same time unafraid. + +In the very heart of the herd the din was terrific. It was almost +dizzying in its effect. I paused and smiled reassuringly at Maud, for I +had recovered my equanimity sooner than she. I could see that she was +still badly frightened. She came close to me and shouted: + +“I’m dreadfully afraid!” + +And I was not. Though the novelty had not yet worn off, the peaceful +comportment of the seals had quieted my alarm. Maud was trembling. + +“I’m afraid, and I’m not afraid,” she chattered with shaking jaws. “It’s +my miserable body, not I.” + +“It’s all right, it’s all right,” I reassured her, my arm passing +instinctively and protectingly around her. + +I shall never forget, in that moment, how instantly conscious I became of +my manhood. The primitive deeps of my nature stirred. I felt myself +masculine, the protector of the weak, the fighting male. And, best of +all, I felt myself the protector of my loved one. She leaned against me, +so light and lily-frail, and as her trembling eased away it seemed as +though I became aware of prodigious strength. I felt myself a match for +the most ferocious bull in the herd, and I know, had such a bull charged +upon me, that I should have met it unflinchingly and quite coolly, and I +know that I should have killed it. + +“I am all right now,” she said, looking up at me gratefully. “Let us go +on.” + +And that the strength in me had quieted her and given her confidence, +filled me with an exultant joy. The youth of the race seemed burgeoning +in me, over-civilized man that I was, and I lived for myself the old +hunting days and forest nights of my remote and forgotten ancestry. I +had much for which to thank Wolf Larsen, was my thought as we went along +the path between the jostling harems. + +A quarter of a mile inland we came upon the holluschickie—sleek young +bulls, living out the loneliness of their bachelorhood and gathering +strength against the day when they would fight their way into the ranks +of the Benedicts. + +Everything now went smoothly. I seemed to know just what to do and how +to do it. Shouting, making threatening gestures with my club, and even +prodding the lazy ones, I quickly cut out a score of the young bachelors +from their companions. Whenever one made an attempt to break back toward +the water, I headed it off. Maud took an active part in the drive, and +with her cries and flourishings of the broken oar was of considerable +assistance. I noticed, though, that whenever one looked tired and +lagged, she let it slip past. But I noticed, also, whenever one, with a +show of fight, tried to break past, that her eyes glinted and showed +bright, and she rapped it smartly with her club. + +“My, it’s exciting!” she cried, pausing from sheer weakness. “I think +I’ll sit down.” + +I drove the little herd (a dozen strong, now, what of the escapes she had +permitted) a hundred yards farther on; and by the time she joined me I +had finished the slaughter and was beginning to skin. An hour later we +went proudly back along the path between the harems. And twice again we +came down the path burdened with skins, till I thought we had enough to +roof the hut. I set the sail, laid one tack out of the cove, and on the +other tack made our own little inner cove. + +“It’s just like home-coming,” Maud said, as I ran the boat ashore. + +I heard her words with a responsive thrill, it was all so dearly intimate +and natural, and I said: + +“It seems as though I have lived this life always. The world of books +and bookish folk is very vague, more like a dream memory than an +actuality. I surely have hunted and forayed and fought all the days of +my life. And you, too, seem a part of it. You are—” I was on the verge +of saying, “my woman, my mate,” but glibly changed it to—“standing the +hardship well.” + +But her ear had caught the flaw. She recognized a flight that midmost +broke. She gave me a quick look. + +“Not that. You were saying—?” + +“That the American Mrs. Meynell was living the life of a savage and +living it quite successfully,” I said easily. + +“Oh,” was all she replied; but I could have sworn there was a note of +disappointment in her voice. + +But “my woman, my mate” kept ringing in my head for the rest of the day +and for many days. Yet never did it ring more loudly than that night, as +I watched her draw back the blanket of moss from the coals, blow up the +fire, and cook the evening meal. It must have been latent savagery +stirring in me, for the old words, so bound up with the roots of the +race, to grip me and thrill me. And grip and thrill they did, till I +fell asleep, murmuring them to myself over and over again. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +“It will smell,” I said, “but it will keep in the heat and keep out the +rain and snow.” + +We were surveying the completed seal-skin roof. + +“It is clumsy, but it will serve the purpose, and that is the main +thing,” I went on, yearning for her praise. + +And she clapped her hands and declared that she was hugely pleased. + +“But it is dark in here,” she said the next moment, her shoulders +shrinking with a little involuntary shiver. + +“You might have suggested a window when the walls were going up,” I said. +“It was for you, and you should have seen the need of a window.” + +“But I never do see the obvious, you know,” she laughed back. “And +besides, you can knock a hole in the wall at any time.” + +“Quite true; I had not thought of it,” I replied, wagging my head sagely. +“But have you thought of ordering the window-glass? Just call up the +firm,—Red, 4451, I think it is,—and tell them what size and kind of glass +you wish.” + +“That means—” she began. + +“No window.” + +It was a dark and evil-appearing thing, that hut, not fit for aught +better than swine in a civilized land; but for us, who had known the +misery of the open boat, it was a snug little habitation. Following the +housewarming, which was accomplished by means of seal-oil and a wick made +from cotton calking, came the hunting for our winter’s meat and the +building of the second hut. It was a simple affair, now, to go forth in +the morning and return by noon with a boatload of seals. And then, while +I worked at building the hut, Maud tried out the oil from the blubber and +kept a slow fire under the frames of meat. I had heard of jerking beef +on the plains, and our seal-meat, cut in thin strips and hung in the +smoke, cured excellently. + +The second hut was easier to erect, for I built it against the first, and +only three walls were required. But it was work, hard work, all of it. +Maud and I worked from dawn till dark, to the limit of our strength, so +that when night came we crawled stiffly to bed and slept the animal-like +sleep of exhaustion. And yet Maud declared that she had never felt better +or stronger in her life. I knew this was true of myself, but hers was +such a lily strength that I feared she would break down. Often and +often, her last-reserve force gone, I have seen her stretched flat on her +back on the sand in the way she had of resting and recuperating. And +then she would be up on her feet and toiling hard as ever. Where she +obtained this strength was the marvel to me. + +“Think of the long rest this winter,” was her reply to my remonstrances. +“Why, we’ll be clamorous for something to do.” + +We held a housewarming in my hut the night it was roofed. It was the end +of the third day of a fierce storm which had swung around the compass +from the south-east to the north-west, and which was then blowing +directly in upon us. The beaches of the outer cove were thundering with +the surf, and even in our land-locked inner cove a respectable sea was +breaking. No high backbone of island sheltered us from the wind, and it +whistled and bellowed about the hut till at times I feared for the +strength of the walls. The skin roof, stretched tightly as a drumhead, I +had thought, sagged and bellied with every gust; and innumerable +interstices in the walls, not so tightly stuffed with moss as Maud had +supposed, disclosed themselves. Yet the seal-oil burned brightly and we +were warm and comfortable. + +It was a pleasant evening indeed, and we voted that as a social function +on Endeavour Island it had not yet been eclipsed. Our minds were at +ease. Not only had we resigned ourselves to the bitter winter, but we +were prepared for it. The seals could depart on their mysterious journey +into the south at any time, now, for all we cared; and the storms held no +terror for us. Not only were we sure of being dry and warm and sheltered +from the wind, but we had the softest and most luxurious mattresses that +could be made from moss. This had been Maud’s idea, and she had herself +jealously gathered all the moss. This was to be my first night on the +mattress, and I knew I should sleep the sweeter because she had made it. + +As she rose to go she turned to me with the whimsical way she had, and +said: + +“Something is going to happen—is happening, for that matter. I feel it. +Something is coming here, to us. It is coming now. I don’t know what, +but it is coming.” + +“Good or bad?” I asked. + +She shook her head. “I don’t know, but it is there, somewhere.” + +She pointed in the direction of the sea and wind. + +“It’s a lee shore,” I laughed, “and I am sure I’d rather be here than +arriving, a night like this.” + +“You are not frightened?” I asked, as I stepped to open the door for her. + +Her eyes looked bravely into mine. + +“And you feel well? perfectly well?” + +“Never better,” was her answer. + +We talked a little longer before she went. + +“Good-night, Maud,” I said. + +“Good-night, Humphrey,” she said. + +This use of our given names had come about quite as a matter of course, +and was as unpremeditated as it was natural. In that moment I could have +put my arms around her and drawn her to me. I should certainly have done +so out in that world to which we belonged. As it was, the situation +stopped there in the only way it could; but I was left alone in my little +hut, glowing warmly through and through with a pleasant satisfaction; and +I knew that a tie, or a tacit something, existed between us which had not +existed before. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +I awoke, oppressed by a mysterious sensation. There seemed something +missing in my environment. But the mystery and oppressiveness vanished +after the first few seconds of waking, when I identified the missing +something as the wind. I had fallen asleep in that state of nerve +tension with which one meets the continuous shock of sound or movement, +and I had awakened, still tense, bracing myself to meet the pressure of +something which no longer bore upon me. + +It was the first night I had spent under cover in several months, and I +lay luxuriously for some minutes under my blankets (for once not wet with +fog or spray), analysing, first, the effect produced upon me by the +cessation of the wind, and next, the joy which was mine from resting on +the mattress made by Maud’s hands. When I had dressed and opened the +door, I heard the waves still lapping on the beach, garrulously attesting +the fury of the night. It was a clear day, and the sun was shining. I +had slept late, and I stepped outside with sudden energy, bent upon +making up lost time as befitted a dweller on Endeavour Island. + +And when outside, I stopped short. I believed my eyes without question, +and yet I was for the moment stunned by what they disclosed to me. +There, on the beach, not fifty feet away, bow on, dismasted, was a +black-hulled vessel. Masts and booms, tangled with shrouds, sheets, and +rent canvas, were rubbing gently alongside. I could have rubbed my eyes +as I looked. There was the home-made galley we had built, the familiar +break of the poop, the low yacht-cabin scarcely rising above the rail. +It was the _Ghost_. + +What freak of fortune had brought it here—here of all spots? what chance +of chances? I looked at the bleak, inaccessible wall at my back and knew +the profundity of despair. Escape was hopeless, out of the question. I +thought of Maud, asleep there in the hut we had reared; I remembered her +“Good-night, Humphrey”; “my woman, my mate,” went ringing through my +brain, but now, alas, it was a knell that sounded. Then everything went +black before my eyes. + +Possibly it was the fraction of a second, but I had no knowledge of how +long an interval had lapsed before I was myself again. There lay the +_Ghost_, bow on to the beach, her splintered bowsprit projecting over the +sand, her tangled spars rubbing against her side to the lift of the +crooning waves. Something must be done, must be done. + +It came upon me suddenly, as strange, that nothing moved aboard. Wearied +from the night of struggle and wreck, all hands were yet asleep, I +thought. My next thought was that Maud and I might yet escape. If we +could take to the boat and make round the point before any one awoke? I +would call her and start. My hand was lifted at her door to knock, when +I recollected the smallness of the island. We could never hide ourselves +upon it. There was nothing for us but the wide raw ocean. I thought of +our snug little huts, our supplies of meat and oil and moss and firewood, +and I knew that we could never survive the wintry sea and the great +storms which were to come. + +So I stood, with hesitant knuckle, without her door. It was impossible, +impossible. A wild thought of rushing in and killing her as she slept +rose in my mind. And then, in a flash, the better solution came to me. +All hands were asleep. Why not creep aboard the _Ghost_,—well I knew the +way to Wolf Larsen’s bunk,—and kill him in his sleep? After that—well, +we would see. But with him dead there was time and space in which to +prepare to do other things; and besides, whatever new situation arose, it +could not possibly be worse than the present one. + +My knife was at my hip. I returned to my hut for the shot-gun, made sure +it was loaded, and went down to the _Ghost_. With some difficulty, and +at the expense of a wetting to the waist, I climbed aboard. The +forecastle scuttle was open. I paused to listen for the breathing of the +men, but there was no breathing. I almost gasped as the thought came to +me: What if the _Ghost_ is deserted? I listened more closely. There was +no sound. I cautiously descended the ladder. The place had the empty +and musty feel and smell usual to a dwelling no longer inhabited. +Everywhere was a thick litter of discarded and ragged garments, old +sea-boots, leaky oilskins—all the worthless forecastle dunnage of a long +voyage. + +Abandoned hastily, was my conclusion, as I ascended to the deck. Hope +was alive again in my breast, and I looked about me with greater +coolness. I noted that the boats were missing. The steerage told the +same tale as the forecastle. The hunters had packed their belongings +with similar haste. The _Ghost_ was deserted. It was Maud’s and mine. +I thought of the ship’s stores and the lazarette beneath the cabin, and +the idea came to me of surprising Maud with something nice for breakfast. + +The reaction from my fear, and the knowledge that the terrible deed I had +come to do was no longer necessary, made me boyish and eager. I went up +the steerage companion-way two steps at a time, with nothing distinct in +my mind except joy and the hope that Maud would sleep on until the +surprise breakfast was quite ready for her. As I rounded the galley, a +new satisfaction was mine at thought of all the splendid cooking utensils +inside. I sprang up the break of the poop, and saw—Wolf Larsen. What of +my impetus and the stunning surprise, I clattered three or four steps +along the deck before I could stop myself. He was standing in the +companion-way, only his head and shoulders visible, staring straight at +me. His arms were resting on the half-open slide. He made no movement +whatever—simply stood there, staring at me. + +I began to tremble. The old stomach sickness clutched me. I put one +hand on the edge of the house to steady myself. My lips seemed suddenly +dry and I moistened them against the need of speech. Nor did I for an +instant take my eyes off him. Neither of us spoke. There was something +ominous in his silence, his immobility. All my old fear of him returned +and by my new fear was increased an hundred-fold. And still we stood, the +pair of us, staring at each other. + +I was aware of the demand for action, and, my old helplessness strong +upon me, I was waiting for him to take the initiative. Then, as the +moments went by, it came to me that the situation was analogous to the +one in which I had approached the long-maned bull, my intention of +clubbing obscured by fear until it became a desire to make him run. So +it was at last impressed upon me that I was there, not to have Wolf +Larsen take the initiative, but to take it myself. + +I cocked both barrels and levelled the shot-gun at him. Had he moved, +attempted to drop down the companion-way, I know I would have shot him. +But he stood motionless and staring as before. And as I faced him, with +levelled gun shaking in my hands, I had time to note the worn and haggard +appearance of his face. It was as if some strong anxiety had wasted it. +The cheeks were sunken, and there was a wearied, puckered expression on +the brow. And it seemed to me that his eyes were strange, not only the +expression, but the physical seeming, as though the optic nerves and +supporting muscles had suffered strain and slightly twisted the eyeballs. + +All this I saw, and my brain now working rapidly, I thought a thousand +thoughts; and yet I could not pull the triggers. I lowered the gun and +stepped to the corner of the cabin, primarily to relieve the tension on +my nerves and to make a new start, and incidentally to be closer. Again +I raised the gun. He was almost at arm’s length. There was no hope for +him. I was resolved. There was no possible chance of missing him, no +matter how poor my marksmanship. And yet I wrestled with myself and +could not pull the triggers. + +“Well?” he demanded impatiently. + +I strove vainly to force my fingers down on the triggers, and vainly I +strove to say something. + +“Why don’t you shoot?” he asked. + +I cleared my throat of a huskiness which prevented speech. “Hump,” he +said slowly, “you can’t do it. You are not exactly afraid. You are +impotent. Your conventional morality is stronger than you. You are the +slave to the opinions which have credence among the people you have known +and have read about. Their code has been drummed into your head from the +time you lisped, and in spite of your philosophy, and of what I have +taught you, it won’t let you kill an unarmed, unresisting man.” + +“I know it,” I said hoarsely. + +“And you know that I would kill an unarmed man as readily as I would +smoke a cigar,” he went on. “You know me for what I am,—my worth in the +world by your standard. You have called me snake, tiger, shark, monster, +and Caliban. And yet, you little rag puppet, you little echoing +mechanism, you are unable to kill me as you would a snake or a shark, +because I have hands, feet, and a body shaped somewhat like yours. Bah! +I had hoped better things of you, Hump.” + +He stepped out of the companion-way and came up to me. + +“Put down that gun. I want to ask you some questions. I haven’t had a +chance to look around yet. What place is this? How is the _Ghost_ +lying? How did you get wet? Where’s Maud?—I beg your pardon, Miss +Brewster—or should I say, ‘Mrs. Van Weyden’?” + +I had backed away from him, almost weeping at my inability to shoot him, +but not fool enough to put down the gun. I hoped, desperately, that he +might commit some hostile act, attempt to strike me or choke me; for in +such way only I knew I could be stirred to shoot. + +“This is Endeavour Island,” I said. + +“Never heard of it,” he broke in. + +“At least, that’s our name for it,” I amended. + +“Our?” he queried. “Who’s our?” + +“Miss Brewster and myself. And the _Ghost_ is lying, as you can see for +yourself, bow on to the beach.” + +“There are seals here,” he said. “They woke me up with their barking, or +I’d be sleeping yet. I heard them when I drove in last night. They were +the first warning that I was on a lee shore. It’s a rookery, the kind of +a thing I’ve hunted for years. Thanks to my brother Death, I’ve lighted +on a fortune. It’s a mint. What’s its bearings?” + +“Haven’t the least idea,” I said. “But you ought to know quite closely. +What were your last observations?” + +He smiled inscrutably, but did not answer. + +“Well, where’s all hands?” I asked. “How does it come that you are +alone?” + +I was prepared for him again to set aside my question, and was surprised +at the readiness of his reply. + +“My brother got me inside forty-eight hours, and through no fault of +mine. Boarded me in the night with only the watch on deck. Hunters went +back on me. He gave them a bigger lay. Heard him offering it. Did it +right before me. Of course the crew gave me the go-by. That was to be +expected. All hands went over the side, and there I was, marooned on my +own vessel. It was Death’s turn, and it’s all in the family anyway.” + +“But how did you lose the masts?” I asked. + +“Walk over and examine those lanyards,” he said, pointing to where the +mizzen-rigging should have been. + +“They have been cut with a knife!” I exclaimed. + +“Not quite,” he laughed. “It was a neater job. Look again.” + +I looked. The lanyards had been almost severed, with just enough left to +hold the shrouds till some severe strain should be put upon them. + +“Cooky did that,” he laughed again. “I know, though I didn’t spot him at +it. Kind of evened up the score a bit.” + +“Good for Mugridge!” I cried. + +“Yes, that’s what I thought when everything went over the side. Only I +said it on the other side of my mouth.” + +“But what were you doing while all this was going on?” I asked. + +“My best, you may be sure, which wasn’t much under the circumstances.” + +I turned to re-examine Thomas Mugridge’s work. + +“I guess I’ll sit down and take the sunshine,” I heard Wolf Larsen +saying. + +There was a hint, just a slight hint, of physical feebleness in his +voice, and it was so strange that I looked quickly at him. His hand was +sweeping nervously across his face, as though he were brushing away +cobwebs. I was puzzled. The whole thing was so unlike the Wolf Larsen I +had known. + +“How are your headaches?” I asked. + +“They still trouble me,” was his answer. “I think I have one coming on +now.” + +He slipped down from his sitting posture till he lay on the deck. Then +he rolled over on his side, his head resting on the biceps of the under +arm, the forearm shielding his eyes from the sun. I stood regarding him +wonderingly. + +“Now’s your chance, Hump,” he said. + +“I don’t understand,” I lied, for I thoroughly understood. + +“Oh, nothing,” he added softly, as if he were drowsing; “only you’ve got +me where you want me.” + +“No, I haven’t,” I retorted; “for I want you a few thousand miles away +from here.” + +He chuckled, and thereafter spoke no more. He did not stir as I passed +by him and went down into the cabin. I lifted the trap in the floor, but +for some moments gazed dubiously into the darkness of the lazarette +beneath. I hesitated to descend. What if his lying down were a ruse? +Pretty, indeed, to be caught there like a rat. I crept softly up the +companion-way and peeped at him. He was lying as I had left him. Again +I went below; but before I dropped into the lazarette I took the +precaution of casting down the door in advance. At least there would be +no lid to the trap. But it was all needless. I regained the cabin with +a store of jams, sea-biscuits, canned meats, and such things,—all I could +carry,—and replaced the trap-door. + +A peep at Wolf Larsen showed me that he had not moved. A bright thought +struck me. I stole into his state-room and possessed myself of his +revolvers. There were no other weapons, though I thoroughly ransacked +the three remaining state-rooms. To make sure, I returned and went +through the steerage and forecastle, and in the galley gathered up all +the sharp meat and vegetable knives. Then I bethought me of the great +yachtsman’s knife he always carried, and I came to him and spoke to him, +first softly, then loudly. He did not move. I bent over and took it +from his pocket. I breathed more freely. He had no arms with which to +attack me from a distance; while I, armed, could always forestall him +should he attempt to grapple me with his terrible gorilla arms. + +Filling a coffee-pot and frying-pan with part of my plunder, and taking +some chinaware from the cabin pantry, I left Wolf Larsen lying in the sun +and went ashore. + +Maud was still asleep. I blew up the embers (we had not yet arranged a +winter kitchen), and quite feverishly cooked the breakfast. Toward the +end, I heard her moving about within the hut, making her toilet. Just as +all was ready and the coffee poured, the door opened and she came forth. + +“It’s not fair of you,” was her greeting. “You are usurping one of my +prerogatives. You know you agreed that the cooking should be mine, +and—” + +“But just this once,” I pleaded. + +“If you promise not to do it again,” she smiled. “Unless, of course, you +have grown tired of my poor efforts.” + +To my delight she never once looked toward the beach, and I maintained +the banter with such success all unconsciously she sipped coffee from the +china cup, ate fried evaporated potatoes, and spread marmalade on her +biscuit. But it could not last. I saw the surprise that came over her. +She had discovered the china plate from which she was eating. She looked +over the breakfast, noting detail after detail. Then she looked at me, +and her face turned slowly toward the beach. + +“Humphrey!” she said. + +The old unnamable terror mounted into her eyes. + +“Is—he?” she quavered. + +I nodded my head. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + +We waited all day for Wolf Larsen to come ashore. It was an intolerable +period of anxiety. Each moment one or the other of us cast expectant +glances toward the _Ghost_. But he did not come. He did not even appear +on deck. + +“Perhaps it is his headache,” I said. “I left him lying on the poop. He +may lie there all night. I think I’ll go and see.” + +Maud looked entreaty at me. + +“It is all right,” I assured her. “I shall take the revolvers. You know +I collected every weapon on board.” + +“But there are his arms, his hands, his terrible, terrible hands!” she +objected. And then she cried, “Oh, Humphrey, I am afraid of him! Don’t +go—please don’t go!” + +She rested her hand appealingly on mine, and sent my pulse fluttering. +My heart was surely in my eyes for a moment. The dear and lovely woman! +And she was so much the woman, clinging and appealing, sunshine and dew +to my manhood, rooting it deeper and sending through it the sap of a new +strength. I was for putting my arm around her, as when in the midst of +the seal herd; but I considered, and refrained. + +“I shall not take any risks,” I said. “I’ll merely peep over the bow and +see.” + +She pressed my hand earnestly and let me go. But the space on deck where +I had left him lying was vacant. He had evidently gone below. That +night we stood alternate watches, one of us sleeping at a time; for there +was no telling what Wolf Larsen might do. He was certainly capable of +anything. + +The next day we waited, and the next, and still he made no sign. + +“These headaches of his, these attacks,” Maud said, on the afternoon of +the fourth day; “Perhaps he is ill, very ill. He may be dead.” + +“Or dying,” was her afterthought when she had waited some time for me to +speak. + +“Better so,” I answered. + +“But think, Humphrey, a fellow-creature in his last lonely hour.” + +“Perhaps,” I suggested. + +“Yes, even perhaps,” she acknowledged. “But we do not know. It would be +terrible if he were. I could never forgive myself. We must do +something.” + +“Perhaps,” I suggested again. + +I waited, smiling inwardly at the woman of her which compelled a +solicitude for Wolf Larsen, of all creatures. Where was her solicitude +for me, I thought,—for me whom she had been afraid to have merely peep +aboard? + +She was too subtle not to follow the trend of my silence. And she was as +direct as she was subtle. + +“You must go aboard, Humphrey, and find out,” she said. “And if you want +to laugh at me, you have my consent and forgiveness.” + +I arose obediently and went down the beach. + +“Do be careful,” she called after me. + +I waved my arm from the forecastle head and dropped down to the deck. +Aft I walked to the cabin companion, where I contented myself with +hailing below. Wolf Larsen answered, and as he started to ascend the +stairs I cocked my revolver. I displayed it openly during our +conversation, but he took no notice of it. He appeared the same, +physically, as when last I saw him, but he was gloomy and silent. In +fact, the few words we spoke could hardly be called a conversation. I +did not inquire why he had not been ashore, nor did he ask why I had not +come aboard. His head was all right again, he said, and so, without +further parley, I left him. + +Maud received my report with obvious relief, and the sight of smoke which +later rose in the galley put her in a more cheerful mood. The next day, +and the next, we saw the galley smoke rising, and sometimes we caught +glimpses of him on the poop. But that was all. He made no attempt to +come ashore. This we knew, for we still maintained our night-watches. +We were waiting for him to do something, to show his hand, so to say, and +his inaction puzzled and worried us. + +A week of this passed by. We had no other interest than Wolf Larsen, and +his presence weighed us down with an apprehension which prevented us from +doing any of the little things we had planned. + +But at the end of the week the smoke ceased rising from the galley, and +he no longer showed himself on the poop. I could see Maud’s solicitude +again growing, though she timidly—and even proudly, I think—forbore a +repetition of her request. After all, what censure could be put upon +her? She was divinely altruistic, and she was a woman. Besides, I was +myself aware of hurt at thought of this man whom I had tried to kill, +dying alone with his fellow-creatures so near. He was right. The code +of my group was stronger than I. The fact that he had hands, feet, and a +body shaped somewhat like mine, constituted a claim which I could not +ignore. + +So I did not wait a second time for Maud to send me. I discovered that +we stood in need of condensed milk and marmalade, and announced that I +was going aboard. I could see that she wavered. She even went so far as +to murmur that they were non-essentials and that my trip after them might +be inexpedient. And as she had followed the trend of my silence, she now +followed the trend of my speech, and she knew that I was going aboard, +not because of condensed milk and marmalade, but because of her and of +her anxiety, which she knew she had failed to hide. + +I took off my shoes when I gained the forecastle head, and went +noiselessly aft in my stocking feet. Nor did I call this time from the +top of the companion-way. Cautiously descending, I found the cabin +deserted. The door to his state-room was closed. At first I thought of +knocking, then I remembered my ostensible errand and resolved to carry it +out. Carefully avoiding noise, I lifted the trap-door in the floor and +set it to one side. The slop-chest, as well as the provisions, was +stored in the lazarette, and I took advantage of the opportunity to lay +in a stock of underclothing. + +As I emerged from the lazarette I heard sounds in Wolf Larsen’s +state-room. I crouched and listened. The door-knob rattled. Furtively, +instinctively, I slunk back behind the table and drew and cocked my +revolver. The door swung open and he came forth. Never had I seen so +profound a despair as that which I saw on his face,—the face of Wolf +Larsen the fighter, the strong man, the indomitable one. For all the +world like a woman wringing her hands, he raised his clenched fists and +groaned. One fist unclosed, and the open palm swept across his eyes as +though brushing away cobwebs. + +“God! God!” he groaned, and the clenched fists were raised again to the +infinite despair with which his throat vibrated. + +It was horrible. I was trembling all over, and I could feel the shivers +running up and down my spine and the sweat standing out on my forehead. +Surely there can be little in this world more awful than the spectacle of +a strong man in the moment when he is utterly weak and broken. + +But Wolf Larsen regained control of himself by an exertion of his +remarkable will. And it was exertion. His whole frame shook with the +struggle. He resembled a man on the verge of a fit. His face strove to +compose itself, writhing and twisting in the effort till he broke down +again. Once more the clenched fists went upward and he groaned. He +caught his breath once or twice and sobbed. Then he was successful. I +could have thought him the old Wolf Larsen, and yet there was in his +movements a vague suggestion of weakness and indecision. He started for +the companion-way, and stepped forward quite as I had been accustomed to +see him do; and yet again, in his very walk, there seemed that suggestion +of weakness and indecision. + +I was now concerned with fear for myself. The open trap lay directly in +his path, and his discovery of it would lead instantly to his discovery +of me. I was angry with myself for being caught in so cowardly a +position, crouching on the floor. There was yet time. I rose swiftly to +my feet, and, I know, quite unconsciously assumed a defiant attitude. He +took no notice of me. Nor did he notice the open trap. Before I could +grasp the situation, or act, he had walked right into the trap. One foot +was descending into the opening, while the other foot was just on the +verge of beginning the uplift. But when the descending foot missed the +solid flooring and felt vacancy beneath, it was the old Wolf Larsen and +the tiger muscles that made the falling body spring across the opening, +even as it fell, so that he struck on his chest and stomach, with arms +outstretched, on the floor of the opposite side. The next instant he had +drawn up his legs and rolled clear. But he rolled into my marmalade and +underclothes and against the trap-door. + +The expression on his face was one of complete comprehension. But before +I could guess what he had comprehended, he had dropped the trap-door into +place, closing the lazarette. Then I understood. He thought he had me +inside. Also, he was blind, blind as a bat. I watched him, breathing +carefully so that he should not hear me. He stepped quickly to his +state-room. I saw his hand miss the door-knob by an inch, quickly fumble +for it, and find it. This was my chance. I tiptoed across the cabin and +to the top of the stairs. He came back, dragging a heavy sea-chest, +which he deposited on top of the trap. Not content with this he fetched +a second chest and placed it on top of the first. Then he gathered up +the marmalade and underclothes and put them on the table. When he +started up the companion-way, I retreated, silently rolling over on top +of the cabin. + +He shoved the slide part way back and rested his arms on it, his body +still in the companion-way. His attitude was of one looking forward the +length of the schooner, or staring, rather, for his eyes were fixed and +unblinking. I was only five feet away and directly in what should have +been his line of vision. It was uncanny. I felt myself a ghost, what of +my invisibility. I waved my hand back and forth, of course without +effect; but when the moving shadow fell across his face I saw at once +that he was susceptible to the impression. His face became more +expectant and tense as he tried to analyze and identify the impression. +He knew that he had responded to something from without, that his +sensibility had been touched by a changing something in his environment; +but what it was he could not discover. I ceased waving my hand, so that +the shadow remained stationary. He slowly moved his head back and forth +under it and turned from side to side, now in the sunshine, now in the +shade, feeling the shadow, as it were, testing it by sensation. + +I, too, was busy, trying to reason out how he was aware of the existence +of so intangible a thing as a shadow. If it were his eyeballs only that +were affected, or if his optic nerve were not wholly destroyed, the +explanation was simple. If otherwise, then the only conclusion I could +reach was that the sensitive skin recognized the difference of +temperature between shade and sunshine. Or, perhaps,—who can tell?—it +was that fabled sixth sense which conveyed to him the loom and feel of an +object close at hand. + +Giving over his attempt to determine the shadow, he stepped on deck and +started forward, walking with a swiftness and confidence which surprised +me. And still there was that hint of the feebleness of the blind in his +walk. I knew it now for what it was. + +To my amused chagrin, he discovered my shoes on the forecastle head and +brought them back with him into the galley. I watched him build the fire +and set about cooking food for himself; then I stole into the cabin for +my marmalade and underclothes, slipped back past the galley, and climbed +down to the beach to deliver my barefoot report. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + +“It’s too bad the _Ghost_ has lost her masts. Why we could sail away in +her. Don’t you think we could, Humphrey?” + +I sprang excitedly to my feet. + +“I wonder, I wonder,” I repeated, pacing up and down. + +Maud’s eyes were shining with anticipation as they followed me. She had +such faith in me! And the thought of it was so much added power. I +remembered Michelet’s “To man, woman is as the earth was to her legendary +son; he has but to fall down and kiss her breast and he is strong again.” +For the first time I knew the wonderful truth of his words. Why, I was +living them. Maud was all this to me, an unfailing source of strength +and courage. I had but to look at her, or think of her, and be strong +again. + +“It can be done, it can be done,” I was thinking and asserting aloud. +“What men have done, I can do; and if they have never done this before, +still I can do it.” + +“What? for goodness’ sake,” Maud demanded. “Do be merciful. What is it +you can do?” + +“We can do it,” I amended. “Why, nothing else than put the masts back +into the _Ghost_ and sail away.” + +“Humphrey!” she exclaimed. + +And I felt as proud of my conception as if it were already a fact +accomplished. + +“But how is it possible to be done?” she asked. + +“I don’t know,” was my answer. “I know only that I am capable of doing +anything these days.” + +I smiled proudly at her—too proudly, for she dropped her eyes and was for +the moment silent. + +“But there is Captain Larsen,” she objected. + +“Blind and helpless,” I answered promptly, waving him aside as a straw. + +“But those terrible hands of his! You know how he leaped across the +opening of the lazarette.” + +“And you know also how I crept about and avoided him,” I contended gaily. + +“And lost your shoes.” + +“You’d hardly expect them to avoid Wolf Larsen without my feet inside of +them.” + +We both laughed, and then went seriously to work constructing the plan +whereby we were to step the masts of the _Ghost_ and return to the world. +I remembered hazily the physics of my school days, while the last few +months had given me practical experience with mechanical purchases. I +must say, though, when we walked down to the _Ghost_ to inspect more +closely the task before us, that the sight of the great masts lying in +the water almost disheartened me. Where were we to begin? If there had +been one mast standing, something high up to which to fasten blocks and +tackles! But there was nothing. It reminded me of the problem of +lifting oneself by one’s boot-straps. I understood the mechanics of +levers; but where was I to get a fulcrum? + +There was the mainmast, fifteen inches in diameter at what was now the +butt, still sixty-five feet in length, and weighing, I roughly +calculated, at least three thousand pounds. And then came the foremast, +larger in diameter, and weighing surely thirty-five hundred pounds. +Where was I to begin? Maud stood silently by my side, while I evolved in +my mind the contrivance known among sailors as “shears.” But, though +known to sailors, I invented it there on Endeavour Island. By crossing +and lashing the ends of two spars, and then elevating them in the air +like an inverted “V,” I could get a point above the deck to which to make +fast my hoisting tackle. To this hoisting tackle I could, if necessary, +attach a second hoisting tackle. And then there was the windlass! + +Maud saw that I had achieved a solution, and her eyes warmed +sympathetically. + +“What are you going to do?” she asked. + +“Clear that raffle,” I answered, pointing to the tangled wreckage +overside. + +Ah, the decisiveness, the very sound of the words, was good in my ears. +“Clear that raffle!” Imagine so salty a phrase on the lips of the +Humphrey Van Weyden of a few months gone! + +There must have been a touch of the melodramatic in my pose and voice, +for Maud smiled. Her appreciation of the ridiculous was keen, and in all +things she unerringly saw and felt, where it existed, the touch of sham, +the overshading, the overtone. It was this which had given poise and +penetration to her own work and made her of worth to the world. The +serious critic, with the sense of humour and the power of expression, +must inevitably command the world’s ear. And so it was that she had +commanded. Her sense of humour was really the artist’s instinct for +proportion. + +“I’m sure I’ve heard it before, somewhere, in books,” she murmured +gleefully. + +I had an instinct for proportion myself, and I collapsed forthwith, +descending from the dominant pose of a master of matter to a state of +humble confusion which was, to say the least, very miserable. + +Her hand leapt out at once to mine. + +“I’m so sorry,” she said. + +“No need to be,” I gulped. “It does me good. There’s too much of the +schoolboy in me. All of which is neither here nor there. What we’ve got +to do is actually and literally to clear that raffle. If you’ll come +with me in the boat, we’ll get to work and straighten things out.” + +“‘When the topmen clear the raffle with their clasp-knives in their +teeth,’” she quoted at me; and for the rest of the afternoon we made +merry over our labour. + +Her task was to hold the boat in position while I worked at the tangle. +And such a tangle—halyards, sheets, guys, down-hauls, shrouds, stays, all +washed about and back and forth and through, and twined and knotted by +the sea. I cut no more than was necessary, and what with passing the +long ropes under and around the booms and masts, of unreeving the +halyards and sheets, of coiling down in the boat and uncoiling in order +to pass through another knot in the bight, I was soon wet to the skin. + +The sails did require some cutting, and the canvas, heavy with water, +tried my strength severely; but I succeeded before nightfall in getting +it all spread out on the beach to dry. We were both very tired when we +knocked off for supper, and we had done good work, too, though to the eye +it appeared insignificant. + +Next morning, with Maud as able assistant, I went into the hold of the +_Ghost_ to clear the steps of the mast-butts. We had no more than begun +work when the sound of my knocking and hammering brought Wolf Larsen. + +“Hello below!” he cried down the open hatch. + +The sound of his voice made Maud quickly draw close to me, as for +protection, and she rested one hand on my arm while we parleyed. + +“Hello on deck,” I replied. “Good-morning to you.” + +“What are you doing down there?” he demanded. “Trying to scuttle my ship +for me?” + +“Quite the opposite; I’m repairing her,” was my answer. + +“But what in thunder are you repairing?” There was puzzlement in his +voice. + +“Why, I’m getting everything ready for re-stepping the masts,” I replied +easily, as though it were the simplest project imaginable. + +“It seems as though you’re standing on your own legs at last, Hump,” we +heard him say; and then for some time he was silent. + +“But I say, Hump,” he called down. “You can’t do it.” + +“Oh, yes, I can,” I retorted. “I’m doing it now.” + +“But this is my vessel, my particular property. What if I forbid you?” + +“You forget,” I replied. “You are no longer the biggest bit of the +ferment. You were, once, and able to eat me, as you were pleased to +phrase it; but there has been a diminishing, and I am now able to eat +you. The yeast has grown stale.” + +He gave a short, disagreeable laugh. “I see you’re working my philosophy +back on me for all it is worth. But don’t make the mistake of +under-estimating me. For your own good I warn you.” + +“Since when have you become a philanthropist?” I queried. “Confess, now, +in warning me for my own good, that you are very consistent.” + +He ignored my sarcasm, saying, “Suppose I clap the hatch on, now? You +won’t fool me as you did in the lazarette.” + +“Wolf Larsen,” I said sternly, for the first time addressing him by this +his most familiar name, “I am unable to shoot a helpless, unresisting +man. You have proved that to my satisfaction as well as yours. But I +warn you now, and not so much for your own good as for mine, that I shall +shoot you the moment you attempt a hostile act. I can shoot you now, as +I stand here; and if you are so minded, just go ahead and try to clap on +the hatch.” + +“Nevertheless, I forbid you, I distinctly forbid your tampering with my +ship.” + +“But, man!” I expostulated, “you advance the fact that it is your ship as +though it were a moral right. You have never considered moral rights in +your dealings with others. You surely do not dream that I’ll consider +them in dealing with you?” + +I had stepped underneath the open hatchway so that I could see him. The +lack of expression on his face, so different from when I had watched him +unseen, was enhanced by the unblinking, staring eyes. It was not a +pleasant face to look upon. + +“And none so poor, not even Hump, to do him reverence,” he sneered. + +The sneer was wholly in his voice. His face remained expressionless as +ever. + +“How do you do, Miss Brewster,” he said suddenly, after a pause. + +I started. She had made no noise whatever, had not even moved. Could it +be that some glimmer of vision remained to him? or that his vision was +coming back? + +“How do you do, Captain Larsen,” she answered. “Pray, how did you know I +was here?” + +“Heard you breathing, of course. I say, Hump’s improving, don’t you +think so?” + +“I don’t know,” she answered, smiling at me. “I have never seen him +otherwise.” + +“You should have seen him before, then.” + +“Wolf Larsen, in large doses,” I murmured, “before and after taking.” + +“I want to tell you again, Hump,” he said threateningly, “that you’d +better leave things alone.” + +“But don’t you care to escape as well as we?” I asked incredulously. + +“No,” was his answer. “I intend dying here.” + +“Well, we don’t,” I concluded defiantly, beginning again my knocking and +hammering. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + +Next day, the mast-steps clear and everything in readiness, we started to +get the two topmasts aboard. The maintopmast was over thirty feet in +length, the foretopmast nearly thirty, and it was of these that I +intended making the shears. It was puzzling work. Fastening one end of +a heavy tackle to the windlass, and with the other end fast to the butt +of the foretopmast, I began to heave. Maud held the turn on the windlass +and coiled down the slack. + +We were astonished at the ease with which the spar was lifted. It was an +improved crank windlass, and the purchase it gave was enormous. Of +course, what it gave us in power we paid for in distance; as many times +as it doubled my strength, that many times was doubled the length of rope +I heaved in. The tackle dragged heavily across the rail, increasing its +drag as the spar arose more and more out of the water, and the exertion +on the windlass grew severe. + +But when the butt of the topmast was level with the rail, everything came +to a standstill. + +“I might have known it,” I said impatiently. “Now we have to do it all +over again.” + +“Why not fasten the tackle part way down the mast?” Maud suggested. + +“It’s what I should have done at first,” I answered, hugely disgusted +with myself. + +Slipping off a turn, I lowered the mast back into the water and fastened +the tackle a third of the way down from the butt. In an hour, what of +this and of rests between the heaving, I had hoisted it to the point +where I could hoist no more. Eight feet of the butt was above the rail, +and I was as far away as ever from getting the spar on board. I sat down +and pondered the problem. It did not take long. I sprang jubilantly to +my feet. + +“Now I have it!” I cried. “I ought to make the tackle fast at the point +of balance. And what we learn of this will serve us with everything else +we have to hoist aboard.” + +Once again I undid all my work by lowering the mast into the water. But +I miscalculated the point of balance, so that when I heaved the top of +the mast came up instead of the butt. Maud looked despair, but I laughed +and said it would do just as well. + +Instructing her how to hold the turn and be ready to slack away at +command, I laid hold of the mast with my hands and tried to balance it +inboard across the rail. When I thought I had it I cried to her to slack +away; but the spar righted, despite my efforts, and dropped back toward +the water. Again I heaved it up to its old position, for I had now +another idea. I remembered the watch-tackle—a small double and single +block affair—and fetched it. + +While I was rigging it between the top of the spar and the opposite rail, +Wolf Larsen came on the scene. We exchanged nothing more than +good-mornings, and, though he could not see, he sat on the rail out of +the way and followed by the sound all that I did. + +Again instructing Maud to slack away at the windlass when I gave the +word, I proceeded to heave on the watch-tackle. Slowly the mast swung in +until it balanced at right angles across the rail; and then I discovered +to my amazement that there was no need for Maud to slack away. In fact, +the very opposite was necessary. Making the watch-tackle fast, I hove on +the windlass and brought in the mast, inch by inch, till its top tilted +down to the deck and finally its whole length lay on the deck. + +I looked at my watch. It was twelve o’clock. My back was aching sorely, +and I felt extremely tired and hungry. And there on the deck was a +single stick of timber to show for a whole morning’s work. For the first +time I thoroughly realized the extent of the task before us. But I was +learning, I was learning. The afternoon would show far more +accomplished. And it did; for we returned at one o’clock, rested and +strengthened by a hearty dinner. + +In less than an hour I had the maintopmast on deck and was constructing +the shears. Lashing the two topmasts together, and making allowance for +their unequal length, at the point of intersection I attached the double +block of the main throat-halyards. This, with the single block and the +throat-halyards themselves, gave me a hoisting tackle. To prevent the +butts of the masts from slipping on the deck, I nailed down thick cleats. +Everything in readiness, I made a line fast to the apex of the shears and +carried it directly to the windlass. I was growing to have faith in that +windlass, for it gave me power beyond all expectation. As usual, Maud +held the turn while I heaved. The shears rose in the air. + +Then I discovered I had forgotten guy-ropes. This necessitated my +climbing the shears, which I did twice, before I finished guying it fore +and aft and to either side. Twilight had set in by the time this was +accomplished. Wolf Larsen, who had sat about and listened all afternoon +and never opened his mouth, had taken himself off to the galley and +started his supper. I felt quite stiff across the small of the back, so +much so that I straightened up with an effort and with pain. I looked +proudly at my work. It was beginning to show. I was wild with desire, +like a child with a new toy, to hoist something with my shears. + +“I wish it weren’t so late,” I said. “I’d like to see how it works.” + +“Don’t be a glutton, Humphrey,” Maud chided me. “Remember, to-morrow is +coming, and you’re so tired now that you can hardly stand.” + +“And you?” I said, with sudden solicitude. “You must be very tired. You +have worked hard and nobly. I am proud of you, Maud.” + +“Not half so proud as I am of you, nor with half the reason,” she +answered, looking me straight in the eyes for a moment with an expression +in her own and a dancing, tremulous light which I had not seen before and +which gave me a pang of quick delight, I know not why, for I did not +understand it. Then she dropped her eyes, to lift them again, laughing. + +“If our friends could see us now,” she said. “Look at us. Have you ever +paused for a moment to consider our appearance?” + +“Yes, I have considered yours, frequently,” I answered, puzzling over +what I had seen in her eyes and puzzled by her sudden change of subject. + +“Mercy!” she cried. “And what do I look like, pray?” + +“A scarecrow, I’m afraid,” I replied. “Just glance at your draggled +skirts, for instance. Look at those three-cornered tears. And such a +waist! It would not require a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that you have +been cooking over a camp-fire, to say nothing of trying out seal-blubber. +And to cap it all, that cap! And all that is the woman who wrote ‘A Kiss +Endured.’” + +She made me an elaborate and stately courtesy, and said, “As for you, +sir—” + +And yet, through the five minutes of banter which followed, there was a +serious something underneath the fun which I could not but relate to the +strange and fleeting expression I had caught in her eyes. What was it? +Could it be that our eyes were speaking beyond the will of our speech? +My eyes had spoken, I knew, until I had found the culprits out and +silenced them. This had occurred several times. But had she seen the +clamour in them and understood? And had her eyes so spoken to me? What +else could that expression have meant—that dancing, tremulous light, and +a something more which words could not describe. And yet it could not +be. It was impossible. Besides, I was not skilled in the speech of +eyes. I was only Humphrey Van Weyden, a bookish fellow who loved. And +to love, and to wait and win love, that surely was glorious enough for +me. And thus I thought, even as we chaffed each other’s appearance, +until we arrived ashore and there were other things to think about. + +“It’s a shame, after working hard all day, that we cannot have an +uninterrupted night’s sleep,” I complained, after supper. + +“But there can be no danger now? from a blind man?” she queried. + +“I shall never be able to trust him,” I averred, “and far less now that +he is blind. The liability is that his part helplessness will make him +more malignant than ever. I know what I shall do to-morrow, the first +thing—run out a light anchor and kedge the schooner off the beach. And +each night when we come ashore in the boat, Mr. Wolf Larsen will be left +a prisoner on board. So this will be the last night we have to stand +watch, and because of that it will go the easier.” + +We were awake early and just finishing breakfast as daylight came. + +“Oh, Humphrey!” I heard Maud cry in dismay and suddenly stop. + +I looked at her. She was gazing at the _Ghost_. I followed her gaze, +but could see nothing unusual. She looked at me, and I looked inquiry +back. + +“The shears,” she said, and her voice trembled. + +I had forgotten their existence. I looked again, but could not see them. + +“If he has—” I muttered savagely. + +She put her hand sympathetically on mine, and said, “You will have to +begin over again.” + +“Oh, believe me, my anger means nothing; I could not hurt a fly,” I +smiled back bitterly. “And the worst of it is, he knows it. You are +right. If he has destroyed the shears, I shall do nothing except begin +over again.” + +“But I’ll stand my watch on board hereafter,” I blurted out a moment +later. “And if he interferes—” + +“But I dare not stay ashore all night alone,” Maud was saying when I came +back to myself. “It would be so much nicer if he would be friendly with +us and help us. We could all live comfortably aboard.” + +“We will,” I asserted, still savagely, for the destruction of my beloved +shears had hit me hard. “That is, you and I will live aboard, friendly +or not with Wolf Larsen.” + +“It’s childish,” I laughed later, “for him to do such things, and for me +to grow angry over them, for that matter.” + +But my heart smote me when we climbed aboard and looked at the havoc he +had done. The shears were gone altogether. The guys had been slashed +right and left. The throat-halyards which I had rigged were cut across +through every part. And he knew I could not splice. A thought struck +me. I ran to the windlass. It would not work. He had broken it. We +looked at each other in consternation. Then I ran to the side. The +masts, booms, and gaffs I had cleared were gone. He had found the lines +which held them, and cast them adrift. + +Tears were in Maud’s eyes, and I do believe they were for me. I could +have wept myself. Where now was our project of remasting the _Ghost_? +He had done his work well. I sat down on the hatch-combing and rested my +chin on my hands in black despair. + +“He deserves to die,” I cried out; “and God forgive me, I am not man +enough to be his executioner.” + +But Maud was by my side, passing her hand soothingly through my hair as +though I were a child, and saying, “There, there; it will all come right. +We are in the right, and it must come right.” + +I remembered Michelet and leaned my head against her; and truly I became +strong again. The blessed woman was an unfailing fount of power to me. +What did it matter? Only a set-back, a delay. The tide could not have +carried the masts far to seaward, and there had been no wind. It meant +merely more work to find them and tow them back. And besides, it was a +lesson. I knew what to expect. He might have waited and destroyed our +work more effectually when we had more accomplished. + +“Here he comes now,” she whispered. + +I glanced up. He was strolling leisurely along the poop on the port +side. + +“Take no notice of him,” I whispered. “He’s coming to see how we take +it. Don’t let him know that we know. We can deny him that satisfaction. +Take off your shoes—that’s right—and carry them in your hand.” + +And then we played hide-and-seek with the blind man. As he came up the +port side we slipped past on the starboard; and from the poop we watched +him turn and start aft on our track. + +He must have known, somehow, that we were on board, for he said +“Good-morning” very confidently, and waited for the greeting to be +returned. Then he strolled aft, and we slipped forward. + +“Oh, I know you’re aboard,” he called out, and I could see him listen +intently after he had spoken. + +It reminded me of the great hoot-owl, listening, after its booming cry, +for the stir of its frightened prey. But we did not stir, and we moved +only when he moved. And so we dodged about the deck, hand in hand, like +a couple of children chased by a wicked ogre, till Wolf Larsen, evidently +in disgust, left the deck for the cabin. There was glee in our eyes, and +suppressed titters in our mouths, as we put on our shoes and clambered +over the side into the boat. And as I looked into Maud’s clear brown +eyes I forgot the evil he had done, and I knew only that I loved her, and +that because of her the strength was mine to win our way back to the +world. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + +For two days Maud and I ranged the sea and explored the beaches in search +of the missing masts. But it was not till the third day that we found +them, all of them, the shears included, and, of all perilous places, in +the pounding surf of the grim south-western promontory. And how we +worked! At the dark end of the first day we returned, exhausted, to our +little cove, towing the mainmast behind us. And we had been compelled to +row, in a dead calm, practically every inch of the way. + +Another day of heart-breaking and dangerous toil saw us in camp with the +two topmasts to the good. The day following I was desperate, and I +rafted together the foremast, the fore and main booms, and the fore and +main gaffs. The wind was favourable, and I had thought to tow them back +under sail, but the wind baffled, then died away, and our progress with +the oars was a snail’s pace. And it was such dispiriting effort. To +throw one’s whole strength and weight on the oars and to feel the boat +checked in its forward lunge by the heavy drag behind, was not exactly +exhilarating. + +Night began to fall, and to make matters worse, the wind sprang up ahead. +Not only did all forward motion cease, but we began to drift back and out +to sea. I struggled at the oars till I was played out. Poor Maud, whom +I could never prevent from working to the limit of her strength, lay +weakly back in the stern-sheets. I could row no more. My bruised and +swollen hands could no longer close on the oar handles. My wrists and +arms ached intolerably, and though I had eaten heartily of a +twelve-o’clock lunch, I had worked so hard that I was faint from hunger. + +I pulled in the oars and bent forward to the line which held the tow. +But Maud’s hand leaped out restrainingly to mine. + +“What are you going to do?” she asked in a strained, tense voice. + +“Cast it off,” I answered, slipping a turn of the rope. + +But her fingers closed on mine. + +“Please don’t,” she begged. + +“It is useless,” I answered. “Here is night and the wind blowing us off +the land.” + +“But think, Humphrey. If we cannot sail away on the _Ghost_, we may +remain for years on the island—for life even. If it has never been +discovered all these years, it may never be discovered.” + +“You forget the boat we found on the beach,” I reminded her. + +“It was a seal-hunting boat,” she replied, “and you know perfectly well +that if the men had escaped they would have been back to make their +fortunes from the rookery. You know they never escaped.” + +I remained silent, undecided. + +“Besides,” she added haltingly, “it’s your idea, and I want to see you +succeed.” + +Now I could harden my heart. As soon as she put it on a flattering +personal basis, generosity compelled me to deny her. + +“Better years on the island than to die to-night, or to-morrow, or the +next day, in the open boat. We are not prepared to brave the sea. We +have no food, no water, no blankets, nothing. Why, you’d not survive the +night without blankets: I know how strong you are. You are shivering +now.” + +“It is only nervousness,” she answered. “I am afraid you will cast off +the masts in spite of me.” + +“Oh, please, please, Humphrey, don’t!” she burst out, a moment later. + +And so it ended, with the phrase she knew had all power over me. We +shivered miserably throughout the night. Now and again I fitfully slept, +but the pain of the cold always aroused me. How Maud could stand it was +beyond me. I was too tired to thrash my arms about and warm myself, but +I found strength time and again to chafe her hands and feet to restore +the circulation. And still she pleaded with me not to cast off the +masts. About three in the morning she was caught by a cold cramp, and +after I had rubbed her out of that she became quite numb. I was +frightened. I got out the oars and made her row, though she was so weak +I thought she would faint at every stroke. + +Morning broke, and we looked long in the growing light for our island. +At last it showed, small and black, on the horizon, fully fifteen miles +away. I scanned the sea with my glasses. Far away in the south-west I +could see a dark line on the water, which grew even as I looked at it. + +“Fair wind!” I cried in a husky voice I did not recognize as my own. + +Maud tried to reply, but could not speak. Her lips were blue with cold, +and she was hollow-eyed—but oh, how bravely her brown eyes looked at me! +How piteously brave! + +Again I fell to chafing her hands and to moving her arms up and down and +about until she could thrash them herself. Then I compelled her to stand +up, and though she would have fallen had I not supported her, I forced +her to walk back and forth the several steps between the thwart and the +stern-sheets, and finally to spring up and down. + +“Oh, you brave, brave woman,” I said, when I saw the life coming back +into her face. “Did you know that you were brave?” + +“I never used to be,” she answered. “I was never brave till I knew you. +It is you who have made me brave.” + +“Nor I, until I knew you,” I answered. + +She gave me a quick look, and again I caught that dancing, tremulous +light and something more in her eyes. But it was only for the moment. +Then she smiled. + +“It must have been the conditions,” she said; but I knew she was wrong, +and I wondered if she likewise knew. Then the wind came, fair and fresh, +and the boat was soon labouring through a heavy sea toward the island. +At half-past three in the afternoon we passed the south-western +promontory. Not only were we hungry, but we were now suffering from +thirst. Our lips were dry and cracked, nor could we longer moisten them +with our tongues. Then the wind slowly died down. By night it was dead +calm and I was toiling once more at the oars—but weakly, most weakly. At +two in the morning the boat’s bow touched the beach of our own inner cove +and I staggered out to make the painter fast. Maud could not stand, nor +had I strength to carry her. I fell in the sand with her, and, when I +had recovered, contented myself with putting my hands under her shoulders +and dragging her up the beach to the hut. + +The next day we did no work. In fact, we slept till three in the +afternoon, or at least I did, for I awoke to find Maud cooking dinner. +Her power of recuperation was wonderful. There was something tenacious +about that lily-frail body of hers, a clutch on existence which one could +not reconcile with its patent weakness. + +“You know I was travelling to Japan for my health,” she said, as we +lingered at the fire after dinner and delighted in the movelessness of +loafing. “I was not very strong. I never was. The doctors recommended +a sea voyage, and I chose the longest.” + +“You little knew what you were choosing,” I laughed. + +“But I shall be a different women for the experience, as well as a +stronger woman,” she answered; “and, I hope a better woman. At least I +shall understand a great deal more of life.” + +Then, as the short day waned, we fell to discussing Wolf Larsen’s +blindness. It was inexplicable. And that it was grave, I instanced his +statement that he intended to stay and die on Endeavour Island. When he, +strong man that he was, loving life as he did, accepted his death, it was +plain that he was troubled by something more than mere blindness. There +had been his terrific headaches, and we were agreed that it was some sort +of brain break-down, and that in his attacks he endured pain beyond our +comprehension. + +I noticed as we talked over his condition, that Maud’s sympathy went out +to him more and more; yet I could not but love her for it, so sweetly +womanly was it. Besides, there was no false sentiment about her feeling. +She was agreed that the most rigorous treatment was necessary if we were +to escape, though she recoiled at the suggestion that I might some time +be compelled to take his life to save my own—“our own,” she put it. + +In the morning we had breakfast and were at work by daylight. I found a +light kedge anchor in the fore-hold, where such things were kept; and +with a deal of exertion got it on deck and into the boat. With a long +running-line coiled down in the stem, I rowed well out into our little +cove and dropped the anchor into the water. There was no wind, the tide +was high, and the schooner floated. Casting off the shore-lines, I +kedged her out by main strength (the windlass being broken), till she +rode nearly up and down to the small anchor—too small to hold her in any +breeze. So I lowered the big starboard anchor, giving plenty of slack; +and by afternoon I was at work on the windlass. + +Three days I worked on that windlass. Least of all things was I a +mechanic, and in that time I accomplished what an ordinary machinist +would have done in as many hours. I had to learn my tools to begin with, +and every simple mechanical principle which such a man would have at his +finger ends I had likewise to learn. And at the end of three days I had +a windlass which worked clumsily. It never gave the satisfaction the old +windlass had given, but it worked and made my work possible. + +In half a day I got the two topmasts aboard and the shears rigged and +guyed as before. And that night I slept on board and on deck beside my +work. Maud, who refused to stay alone ashore, slept in the forecastle. +Wolf Larsen had sat about, listening to my repairing the windlass and +talking with Maud and me upon indifferent subjects. No reference was +made on either side to the destruction of the shears; nor did he say +anything further about my leaving his ship alone. But still I had feared +him, blind and helpless and listening, always listening, and I never let +his strong arms get within reach of me while I worked. + +On this night, sleeping under my beloved shears, I was aroused by his +footsteps on the deck. It was a starlight night, and I could see the +bulk of him dimly as he moved about. I rolled out of my blankets and +crept noiselessly after him in my stocking feet. He had armed himself +with a draw-knife from the tool-locker, and with this he prepared to cut +across the throat-halyards I had again rigged to the shears. He felt the +halyards with his hands and discovered that I had not made them fast. +This would not do for a draw-knife, so he laid hold of the running part, +hove taut, and made fast. Then he prepared to saw across with the +draw-knife. + +“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” I said quietly. + +He heard the click of my pistol and laughed. + +“Hello, Hump,” he said. “I knew you were here all the time. You can’t +fool my ears.” + +“That’s a lie, Wolf Larsen,” I said, just as quietly as before. +“However, I am aching for a chance to kill you, so go ahead and cut.” + +“You have the chance always,” he sneered. + +“Go ahead and cut,” I threatened ominously. + +“I’d rather disappoint you,” he laughed, and turned on his heel and went +aft. + +“Something must be done, Humphrey,” Maud said, next morning, when I had +told her of the night’s occurrence. “If he has liberty, he may do +anything. He may sink the vessel, or set fire to it. There is no +telling what he may do. We must make him a prisoner.” + +“But how?” I asked, with a helpless shrug. “I dare not come within reach +of his arms, and he knows that so long as his resistance is passive I +cannot shoot him.” + +“There must be some way,” she contended. “Let me think.” + +“There is one way,” I said grimly. + +She waited. + +I picked up a seal-club. + +“It won’t kill him,” I said. “And before he could recover I’d have him +bound hard and fast.” + +She shook her head with a shudder. “No, not that. There must be some +less brutal way. Let us wait.” + +But we did not have to wait long, and the problem solved itself. In the +morning, after several trials, I found the point of balance in the +foremast and attached my hoisting tackle a few feet above it. Maud held +the turn on the windlass and coiled down while I heaved. Had the +windlass been in order it would not have been so difficult; as it was, I +was compelled to apply all my weight and strength to every inch of the +heaving. I had to rest frequently. In truth, my spells of resting were +longer than those of working. Maud even contrived, at times when all my +efforts could not budge the windlass, to hold the turn with one hand and +with the other to throw the weight of her slim body to my assistance. + +At the end of an hour the single and double blocks came together at the +top of the shears. I could hoist no more. And yet the mast was not +swung entirely inboard. The butt rested against the outside of the port +rail, while the top of the mast overhung the water far beyond the +starboard rail. My shears were too short. All my work had been for +nothing. But I no longer despaired in the old way. I was acquiring more +confidence in myself and more confidence in the possibilities of +windlasses, shears, and hoisting tackles. There was a way in which it +could be done, and it remained for me to find that way. + +While I was considering the problem, Wolf Larsen came on deck. We +noticed something strange about him at once. The indecisiveness, or +feebleness, of his movements was more pronounced. His walk was actually +tottery as he came down the port side of the cabin. At the break of the +poop he reeled, raised one hand to his eyes with the familiar brushing +gesture, and fell down the steps—still on his feet—to the main deck, +across which he staggered, falling and flinging out his arms for support. +He regained his balance by the steerage companion-way and stood there +dizzily for a space, when he suddenly crumpled up and collapsed, his legs +bending under him as he sank to the deck. + +“One of his attacks,” I whispered to Maud. + +She nodded her head; and I could see sympathy warm in her eyes. + +We went up to him, but he seemed unconscious, breathing spasmodically. +She took charge of him, lifting his head to keep the blood out of it and +despatching me to the cabin for a pillow. I also brought blankets, and +we made him comfortable. I took his pulse. It beat steadily and strong, +and was quite normal. This puzzled me. I became suspicious. + +“What if he should be feigning this?” I asked, still holding his wrist. + +Maud shook her head, and there was reproof in her eyes. But just then +the wrist I held leaped from my hand, and the hand clasped like a steel +trap about my wrist. I cried aloud in awful fear, a wild inarticulate +cry; and I caught one glimpse of his face, malignant and triumphant, as +his other hand compassed my body and I was drawn down to him in a +terrible grip. + +My wrist was released, but his other arm, passed around my back, held +both my arms so that I could not move. His free hand went to my throat, +and in that moment I knew the bitterest foretaste of death earned by +one’s own idiocy. Why had I trusted myself within reach of those +terrible arms? I could feel other hands at my throat. They were Maud’s +hands, striving vainly to tear loose the hand that was throttling me. +She gave it up, and I heard her scream in a way that cut me to the soul, +for it was a woman’s scream of fear and heart-breaking despair. I had +heard it before, during the sinking of the _Martinez_. + +My face was against his chest and I could not see, but I heard Maud turn +and run swiftly away along the deck. Everything was happening quickly. +I had not yet had a glimmering of unconsciousness, and it seemed that an +interminable period of time was lapsing before I heard her feet flying +back. And just then I felt the whole man sink under me. The breath was +leaving his lungs and his chest was collapsing under my weight. Whether +it was merely the expelled breath, or his consciousness of his growing +impotence, I know not, but his throat vibrated with a deep groan. The +hand at my throat relaxed. I breathed. It fluttered and tightened +again. But even his tremendous will could not overcome the dissolution +that assailed it. That will of his was breaking down. He was fainting. + +Maud’s footsteps were very near as his hand fluttered for the last time +and my throat was released. I rolled off and over to the deck on my +back, gasping and blinking in the sunshine. Maud was pale but +composed,—my eyes had gone instantly to her face,—and she was looking at +me with mingled alarm and relief. A heavy seal-club in her hand caught +my eyes, and at that moment she followed my gaze down to it. The club +dropped from her hand as though it had suddenly stung her, and at the +same moment my heart surged with a great joy. Truly she was my woman, my +mate-woman, fighting with me and for me as the mate of a caveman would +have fought, all the primitive in her aroused, forgetful of her culture, +hard under the softening civilization of the only life she had ever +known. + +“Dear woman!” I cried, scrambling to my feet. + +The next moment she was in my arms, weeping convulsively on my shoulder +while I clasped her close. I looked down at the brown glory of her hair, +glinting gems in the sunshine far more precious to me than those in the +treasure-chests of kings. And I bent my head and kissed her hair softly, +so softly that she did not know. + +Then sober thought came to me. After all, she was only a woman, crying +her relief, now that the danger was past, in the arms of her protector or +of the one who had been endangered. Had I been father or brother, the +situation would have been in nowise different. Besides, time and place +were not meet, and I wished to earn a better right to declare my love. +So once again I softly kissed her hair as I felt her receding from my +clasp. + +“It was a real attack this time,” I said: “another shock like the one +that made him blind. He feigned at first, and in doing so brought it +on.” + +Maud was already rearranging his pillow. + +“No,” I said, “not yet. Now that I have him helpless, helpless he shall +remain. From this day we live in the cabin. Wolf Larsen shall live in +the steerage.” + +I caught him under the shoulders and dragged him to the companion-way. +At my direction Maud fetched a rope. Placing this under his shoulders, I +balanced him across the threshold and lowered him down the steps to the +floor. I could not lift him directly into a bunk, but with Maud’s help I +lifted first his shoulders and head, then his body, balanced him across +the edge, and rolled him into a lower bunk. + +But this was not to be all. I recollected the handcuffs in his +state-room, which he preferred to use on sailors instead of the ancient +and clumsy ship irons. So, when we left him, he lay handcuffed hand and +foot. For the first time in many days I breathed freely. I felt +strangely light as I came on deck, as though a weight had been lifted off +my shoulders. I felt, also, that Maud and I had drawn more closely +together. And I wondered if she, too, felt it, as we walked along the +deck side by side to where the stalled foremast hung in the shears. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + +At once we moved aboard the _Ghost_, occupying our old state-rooms and +cooking in the galley. The imprisonment of Wolf Larsen had happened most +opportunely, for what must have been the Indian summer of this high +latitude was gone and drizzling stormy weather had set in. We were very +comfortable, and the inadequate shears, with the foremast suspended from +them, gave a business-like air to the schooner and a promise of +departure. + +And now that we had Wolf Larsen in irons, how little did we need it! +Like his first attack, his second had been accompanied by serious +disablement. Maud made the discovery in the afternoon while trying to +give him nourishment. He had shown signs of consciousness, and she had +spoken to him, eliciting no response. He was lying on his left side at +the time, and in evident pain. With a restless movement he rolled his +head around, clearing his left ear from the pillow against which it had +been pressed. At once he heard and answered her, and at once she came to +me. + +Pressing the pillow against his left ear, I asked him if he heard me, but +he gave no sign. Removing the pillow and, repeating the question he +answered promptly that he did. + +“Do you know you are deaf in the right ear?” I asked. + +“Yes,” he answered in a low, strong voice, “and worse than that. My +whole right side is affected. It seems asleep. I cannot move arm or +leg.” + +“Feigning again?” I demanded angrily. + +He shook his head, his stern mouth shaping the strangest, twisted smile. +It was indeed a twisted smile, for it was on the left side only, the +facial muscles of the right side moving not at all. + +“That was the last play of the Wolf,” he said. “I am paralysed. I shall +never walk again. Oh, only on the other side,” he added, as though +divining the suspicious glance I flung at his left leg, the knee of which +had just then drawn up, and elevated the blankets. + +“It’s unfortunate,” he continued. “I’d liked to have done for you first, +Hump. And I thought I had that much left in me.” + +“But why?” I asked; partly in horror, partly out of curiosity. + +Again his stern mouth framed the twisted smile, as he said: + +“Oh, just to be alive, to be living and doing, to be the biggest bit of +the ferment to the end, to eat you. But to die this way.” + +He shrugged his shoulders, or attempted to shrug them, rather, for the +left shoulder alone moved. Like the smile, the shrug was twisted. + +“But how can you account for it?” I asked. “Where is the seat of your +trouble?” + +“The brain,” he said at once. “It was those cursed headaches brought it +on.” + +“Symptoms,” I said. + +He nodded his head. “There is no accounting for it. I was never sick in +my life. Something’s gone wrong with my brain. A cancer, a tumour, or +something of that nature,—a thing that devours and destroys. It’s +attacking my nerve-centres, eating them up, bit by bit, cell by cell—from +the pain.” + +“The motor-centres, too,” I suggested. + +“So it would seem; and the curse of it is that I must lie here, +conscious, mentally unimpaired, knowing that the lines are going down, +breaking bit by bit communication with the world. I cannot see, hearing +and feeling are leaving me, at this rate I shall soon cease to speak; yet +all the time I shall be here, alive, active, and powerless.” + +“When you say _you_ are here, I’d suggest the likelihood of the soul,” I +said. + +“Bosh!” was his retort. “It simply means that in the attack on my brain +the higher psychical centres are untouched. I can remember, I can think +and reason. When that goes, I go. I am not. The soul?” + +He broke out in mocking laughter, then turned his left ear to the pillow +as a sign that he wished no further conversation. + +Maud and I went about our work oppressed by the fearful fate which had +overtaken him,—how fearful we were yet fully to realize. There was the +awfulness of retribution about it. Our thoughts were deep and solemn, +and we spoke to each other scarcely above whispers. + +“You might remove the handcuffs,” he said that night, as we stood in +consultation over him. “It’s dead safe. I’m a paralytic now. The next +thing to watch out for is bed sores.” + +He smiled his twisted smile, and Maud, her eyes wide with horror, was +compelled to turn away her head. + +“Do you know that your smile is crooked?” I asked him; for I knew that +she must attend him, and I wished to save her as much as possible. + +“Then I shall smile no more,” he said calmly. “I thought something was +wrong. My right cheek has been numb all day. Yes, and I’ve had warnings +of this for the last three days; by spells, my right side seemed going to +sleep, sometimes arm or hand, sometimes leg or foot.” + +“So my smile is crooked?” he queried a short while after. “Well, +consider henceforth that I smile internally, with my soul, if you please, +my soul. Consider that I am smiling now.” + +And for the space of several minutes he lay there, quiet, indulging his +grotesque fancy. + +The man of him was not changed. It was the old, indomitable, terrible +Wolf Larsen, imprisoned somewhere within that flesh which had once been +so invincible and splendid. Now it bound him with insentient fetters, +walling his soul in darkness and silence, blocking it from the world +which to him had been a riot of action. No more would he conjugate the +verb “to do in every mood and tense.” “To be” was all that remained to +him—to be, as he had defined death, without movement; to will, but not to +execute; to think and reason and in the spirit of him to be as alive as +ever, but in the flesh to be dead, quite dead. + +And yet, though I even removed the handcuffs, we could not adjust +ourselves to his condition. Our minds revolted. To us he was full of +potentiality. We knew not what to expect of him next, what fearful +thing, rising above the flesh, he might break out and do. Our experience +warranted this state of mind, and we went about our work with anxiety +always upon us. + +I had solved the problem which had arisen through the shortness of the +shears. By means of the watch-tackle (I had made a new one), I heaved +the butt of the foremast across the rail and then lowered it to the deck. +Next, by means of the shears, I hoisted the main boom on board. Its +forty feet of length would supply the height necessary properly to swing +the mast. By means of a secondary tackle I had attached to the shears, I +swung the boom to a nearly perpendicular position, then lowered the butt +to the deck, where, to prevent slipping, I spiked great cleats around it. +The single block of my original shears-tackle I had attached to the end +of the boom. Thus, by carrying this tackle to the windlass, I could +raise and lower the end of the boom at will, the butt always remaining +stationary, and, by means of guys, I could swing the boom from side to +side. To the end of the boom I had likewise rigged a hoisting tackle; +and when the whole arrangement was completed I could not but be startled +by the power and latitude it gave me. + +Of course, two days’ work was required for the accomplishment of this +part of my task, and it was not till the morning of the third day that I +swung the foremast from the deck and proceeded to square its butt to fit +the step. Here I was especially awkward. I sawed and chopped and +chiselled the weathered wood till it had the appearance of having been +gnawed by some gigantic mouse. But it fitted. + +“It will work, I know it will work,” I cried. + +“Do you know Dr. Jordan’s final test of truth?” Maud asked. + +I shook my head and paused in the act of dislodging the shavings which +had drifted down my neck. + +“Can we make it work? Can we trust our lives to it? is the test.” + +“He is a favourite of yours,” I said. + +“When I dismantled my old Pantheon and cast out Napoleon and Cæsar and +their fellows, I straightway erected a new Pantheon,” she answered +gravely, “and the first I installed was Dr. Jordan.” + +“A modern hero.” + +“And a greater because modern,” she added. “How can the Old World heroes +compare with ours?” + +I shook my head. We were too much alike in many things for argument. +Our points of view and outlook on life at least were very alike. + +“For a pair of critics we agree famously,” I laughed. + +“And as shipwright and able assistant,” she laughed back. + +But there was little time for laughter in those days, what of our heavy +work and of the awfulness of Wolf Larsen’s living death. + +He had received another stroke. He had lost his voice, or he was losing +it. He had only intermittent use of it. As he phrased it, the wires +were like the stock market, now up, now down. Occasionally the wires +were up and he spoke as well as ever, though slowly and heavily. Then +speech would suddenly desert him, in the middle of a sentence perhaps, +and for hours, sometimes, we would wait for the connection to be +re-established. He complained of great pain in his head, and it was +during this period that he arranged a system of communication against the +time when speech should leave him altogether—one pressure of the hand for +“yes,” two for “no.” It was well that it was arranged, for by evening +his voice had gone from him. By hand pressures, after that, he answered +our questions, and when he wished to speak he scrawled his thoughts with +his left hand, quite legibly, on a sheet of paper. + +The fierce winter had now descended upon us. Gale followed gale, with +snow and sleet and rain. The seals had started on their great southern +migration, and the rookery was practically deserted. I worked +feverishly. In spite of the bad weather, and of the wind which +especially hindered me, I was on deck from daylight till dark and making +substantial progress. + +I profited by my lesson learned through raising the shears and then +climbing them to attach the guys. To the top of the foremast, which was +just lifted conveniently from the deck, I attached the rigging, stays and +throat and peak halyards. As usual, I had underrated the amount of work +involved in this portion of the task, and two long days were necessary to +complete it. And there was so much yet to be done—the sails, for +instance, which practically had to be made over. + +While I toiled at rigging the foremast, Maud sewed on canvas, ready +always to drop everything and come to my assistance when more hands than +two were required. The canvas was heavy and hard, and she sewed with the +regular sailor’s palm and three-cornered sail-needle. Her hands were +soon sadly blistered, but she struggled bravely on, and in addition doing +the cooking and taking care of the sick man. + +“A fig for superstition,” I said on Friday morning. “That mast goes in +to-day.” + +Everything was ready for the attempt. Carrying the boom-tackle to the +windlass, I hoisted the mast nearly clear of the deck. Making this +tackle fast, I took to the windlass the shears-tackle (which was +connected with the end of the boom), and with a few turns had the mast +perpendicular and clear. + +Maud clapped her hands the instant she was relieved from holding the +turn, crying: + +“It works! It works! We’ll trust our lives to it!” + +Then she assumed a rueful expression. + +“It’s not over the hole,” she add. “Will you have to begin all over?” + +I smiled in superior fashion, and, slacking off on one of the boom-guys +and taking in on the other, swung the mast perfectly in the centre of the +deck. Still it was not over the hole. Again the rueful expression came +on her face, and again I smiled in a superior way. Slacking away on the +boom-tackle and hoisting an equivalent amount on the shears-tackle, I +brought the butt of the mast into position directly over the hole in the +deck. Then I gave Maud careful instructions for lowering away and went +into the hold to the step on the schooner’s bottom. + +I called to her, and the mast moved easily and accurately. Straight +toward the square hole of the step the square butt descended; but as it +descended it slowly twisted so that square would not fit into square. +But I had not even a moment’s indecision. Calling to Maud to cease +lowering, I went on deck and made the watch-tackle fast to the mast with +a rolling hitch. I left Maud to pull on it while I went below. By the +light of the lantern I saw the butt twist slowly around till its sides +coincided with the sides of the step. Maud made fast and returned to the +windlass. Slowly the butt descended the several intervening inches, at +the same time slightly twisting again. Again Maud rectified the twist +with the watch-tackle, and again she lowered away from the windlass. +Square fitted into square. The mast was stepped. + +I raised a shout, and she ran down to see. In the yellow lantern light +we peered at what we had accomplished. We looked at each other, and our +hands felt their way and clasped. The eyes of both of us, I think, were +moist with the joy of success. + +“It was done so easily after all,” I remarked. “All the work was in the +preparation.” + +“And all the wonder in the completion,” Maud added. “I can scarcely +bring myself to realize that that great mast is really up and in; that +you have lifted it from the water, swung it through the air, and +deposited it here where it belongs. It is a Titan’s task.” + +“And they made themselves many inventions,” I began merrily, then paused +to sniff the air. + +I looked hastily at the lantern. It was not smoking. Again I sniffed. + +“Something is burning,” Maud said, with sudden conviction. + +We sprang together for the ladder, but I raced past her to the deck. A +dense volume of smoke was pouring out of the steerage companion-way. + +“The Wolf is not yet dead,” I muttered to myself as I sprang down through +the smoke. + +It was so thick in the confined space that I was compelled to feel my +way; and so potent was the spell of Wolf Larsen on my imagination, I was +quite prepared for the helpless giant to grip my neck in a strangle hold. +I hesitated, the desire to race back and up the steps to the deck almost +overpowering me. Then I recollected Maud. The vision of her, as I had +last seen her, in the lantern light of the schooner’s hold, her brown +eyes warm and moist with joy, flashed before me, and I knew that I could +not go back. + +I was choking and suffocating by the time I reached Wolf Larsen’s bunk. +I reached my hand and felt for his. He was lying motionless, but moved +slightly at the touch of my hand. I felt over and under his blankets. +There was no warmth, no sign of fire. Yet that smoke which blinded me +and made me cough and gasp must have a source. I lost my head +temporarily and dashed frantically about the steerage. A collision with +the table partially knocked the wind from my body and brought me to +myself. I reasoned that a helpless man could start a fire only near to +where he lay. + +I returned to Wolf Larsen’s bunk. There I encountered Maud. How long +she had been there in that suffocating atmosphere I could not guess. + +“Go up on deck!” I commanded peremptorily. + +“But, Humphrey—” she began to protest in a queer, husky voice. + +“Please! please!” I shouted at her harshly. + +She drew away obediently, and then I thought, What if she cannot find the +steps? I started after her, to stop at the foot of the companion-way. +Perhaps she had gone up. As I stood there, hesitant, I heard her cry +softly: + +“Oh, Humphrey, I am lost.” + +I found her fumbling at the wall of the after bulkhead, and, half leading +her, half carrying her, I took her up the companion-way. The pure air +was like nectar. Maud was only faint and dizzy, and I left her lying on +the deck when I took my second plunge below. + +The source of the smoke must be very close to Wolf Larsen—my mind was +made up to this, and I went straight to his bunk. As I felt about among +his blankets, something hot fell on the back of my hand. It burned me, +and I jerked my hand away. Then I understood. Through the cracks in the +bottom of the upper bunk he had set fire to the mattress. He still +retained sufficient use of his left arm to do this. The damp straw of +the mattress, fired from beneath and denied air, had been smouldering all +the while. + +As I dragged the mattress out of the bunk it seemed to disintegrate in +mid-air, at the same time bursting into flames. I beat out the burning +remnants of straw in the bunk, then made a dash for the deck for fresh +air. + +Several buckets of water sufficed to put out the burning mattress in the +middle of the steerage floor; and ten minutes later, when the smoke had +fairly cleared, I allowed Maud to come below. Wolf Larsen was +unconscious, but it was a matter of minutes for the fresh air to restore +him. We were working over him, however, when he signed for paper and +pencil. + +“Pray do not interrupt me,” he wrote. “I am smiling.” + +“I am still a bit of the ferment, you see,” he wrote a little later. + +“I am glad you are as small a bit as you are,” I said. + +“Thank you,” he wrote. “But just think of how much smaller I shall be +before I die.” + +“And yet I am all here, Hump,” he wrote with a final flourish. “I can +think more clearly than ever in my life before. Nothing to disturb me. +Concentration is perfect. I am all here and more than here.” + +It was like a message from the night of the grave; for this man’s body +had become his mausoleum. And there, in so strange sepulchre, his spirit +fluttered and lived. It would flutter and live till the last line of +communication was broken, and after that who was to say how much longer +it might continue to flutter and live? + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + +“I think my left side is going,” Wolf Larsen wrote, the morning after his +attempt to fire the ship. “The numbness is growing. I can hardly move +my hand. You will have to speak louder. The last lines are going down.” + +“Are you in pain?” I asked. + +I was compelled to repeat my question loudly before he answered: + +“Not all the time.” + +The left hand stumbled slowly and painfully across the paper, and it was +with extreme difficulty that we deciphered the scrawl. It was like a +“spirit message,” such as are delivered at séances of spiritualists for a +dollar admission. + +“But I am still here, all here,” the hand scrawled more slowly and +painfully than ever. + +The pencil dropped, and we had to replace it in the hand. + +“When there is no pain I have perfect peace and quiet. I have never +thought so clearly. I can ponder life and death like a Hindoo sage.” + +“And immortality?” Maud queried loudly in the ear. + +Three times the hand essayed to write but fumbled hopelessly. The pencil +fell. In vain we tried to replace it. The fingers could not close on +it. Then Maud pressed and held the fingers about the pencil with her own +hand and the hand wrote, in large letters, and so slowly that the minutes +ticked off to each letter: + +“B-O-S-H.” + +It was Wolf Larsen’s last word, “bosh,” sceptical and invincible to the +end. The arm and hand relaxed. The trunk of the body moved slightly. +Then there was no movement. Maud released the hand. The fingers spread +slightly, falling apart of their own weight, and the pencil rolled away. + +“Do you still hear?” I shouted, holding the fingers and waiting for the +single pressure which would signify “Yes.” There was no response. The +hand was dead. + +“I noticed the lips slightly move,” Maud said. + +I repeated the question. The lips moved. She placed the tips of her +fingers on them. Again I repeated the question. “Yes,” Maud announced. +We looked at each other expectantly. + +“What good is it?” I asked. “What can we say now?” + +“Oh, ask him—” + +She hesitated. + +“Ask him something that requires no for an answer,” I suggested. “Then +we will know for certainty.” + +“Are you hungry?” she cried. + +The lips moved under her fingers, and she answered, “Yes.” + +“Will you have some beef?” was her next query. + +“No,” she announced. + +“Beef-tea?” + +“Yes, he will have some beef-tea,” she said, quietly, looking up at me. +“Until his hearing goes we shall be able to communicate with him. And +after that—” + +She looked at me queerly. I saw her lips trembling and the tears +swimming up in her eyes. She swayed toward me and I caught her in my +arms. + +“Oh, Humphrey,” she sobbed, “when will it all end? I am so tired, so +tired.” + +She buried her head on my shoulder, her frail form shaken with a storm of +weeping. She was like a feather in my arms, so slender, so ethereal. +“She has broken down at last,” I thought. “What can I do without her +help?” + +But I soothed and comforted her, till she pulled herself bravely together +and recuperated mentally as quickly as she was wont to do physically. + +“I ought to be ashamed of myself,” she said. Then added, with the +whimsical smile I adored, “but I am only one, small woman.” + +That phrase, the “one small woman,” startled me like an electric shock. +It was my own phrase, my pet, secret phrase, my love phrase for her. + +“Where did you get that phrase?” I demanded, with an abruptness that in +turn startled her. + +“What phrase?” she asked. + +“One small woman.” + +“Is it yours?” she asked. + +“Yes,” I answered. “Mine. I made it.” + +“Then you must have talked in your sleep,” she smiled. + +The dancing, tremulous light was in her eyes. Mine, I knew, were +speaking beyond the will of my speech. I leaned toward her. Without +volition I leaned toward her, as a tree is swayed by the wind. Ah, we +were very close together in that moment. But she shook her head, as one +might shake off sleep or a dream, saying: + +“I have known it all my life. It was my father’s name for my mother.” + +“It is my phrase too,” I said stubbornly. + +“For your mother?” + +“No,” I answered, and she questioned no further, though I could have +sworn her eyes retained for some time a mocking, teasing expression. + +With the foremast in, the work now went on apace. Almost before I knew +it, and without one serious hitch, I had the mainmast stepped. A +derrick-boom, rigged to the foremast, had accomplished this; and several +days more found all stays and shrouds in place, and everything set up +taut. Topsails would be a nuisance and a danger for a crew of two, so I +heaved the topmasts on deck and lashed them fast. + +Several more days were consumed in finishing the sails and putting them +on. There were only three—the jib, foresail, and mainsail; and, patched, +shortened, and distorted, they were a ridiculously ill-fitting suit for +so trim a craft as the _Ghost_. + +“But they’ll work!” Maud cried jubilantly. “We’ll make them work, and +trust our lives to them!” + +Certainly, among my many new trades, I shone least as a sail-maker. I +could sail them better than make them, and I had no doubt of my power to +bring the schooner to some northern port of Japan. In fact, I had +crammed navigation from text-books aboard; and besides, there was Wolf +Larsen’s star-scale, so simple a device that a child could work it. + +As for its inventor, beyond an increasing deafness and the movement of +the lips growing fainter and fainter, there had been little change in his +condition for a week. But on the day we finished bending the schooner’s +sails, he heard his last, and the last movement of his lips died away—but +not before I had asked him, “Are you all there?” and the lips had +answered, “Yes.” + +The last line was down. Somewhere within that tomb of the flesh still +dwelt the soul of the man. Walled by the living clay, that fierce +intelligence we had known burned on; but it burned on in silence and +darkness. And it was disembodied. To that intelligence there could be +no objective knowledge of a body. It knew no body. The very world was +not. It knew only itself and the vastness and profundity of the quiet +and the dark. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + + +The day came for our departure. There was no longer anything to detain +us on Endeavour Island. The _Ghost’s_ stumpy masts were in place, her +crazy sails bent. All my handiwork was strong, none of it beautiful; but +I knew that it would work, and I felt myself a man of power as I looked +at it. + +“I did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it!” I wanted to cry +aloud. + +But Maud and I had a way of voicing each other’s thoughts, and she said, +as we prepared to hoist the mainsail: + +“To think, Humphrey, you did it all with your own hands?” + +“But there were two other hands,” I answered. “Two small hands, and +don’t say that was a phrase, also, of your father.” + +She laughed and shook her head, and held her hands up for inspection. + +“I can never get them clean again,” she wailed, “nor soften the +weather-beat.” + +“Then dirt and weather-beat shall be your guerdon of honour,” I said, +holding them in mine; and, spite of my resolutions, I would have kissed +the two dear hands had she not swiftly withdrawn them. + +Our comradeship was becoming tremulous, I had mastered my love long and +well, but now it was mastering me. Wilfully had it disobeyed and won my +eyes to speech, and now it was winning my tongue—ay, and my lips, for +they were mad this moment to kiss the two small hands which had toiled so +faithfully and hard. And I, too, was mad. There was a cry in my being +like bugles calling me to her. And there was a wind blowing upon me +which I could not resist, swaying the very body of me till I leaned +toward her, all unconscious that I leaned. And she knew it. She could +not but know it as she swiftly drew away her hands, and yet, could not +forbear one quick searching look before she turned away her eyes. + +By means of deck-tackles I had arranged to carry the halyards forward to +the windlass; and now I hoisted the mainsail, peak and throat, at the +same time. It was a clumsy way, but it did not take long, and soon the +foresail as well was up and fluttering. + +“We can never get that anchor up in this narrow place, once it has left +the bottom,” I said. “We should be on the rocks first.” + +“What can you do?” she asked. + +“Slip it,” was my answer. “And when I do, you must do your first work on +the windlass. I shall have to run at once to the wheel, and at the same +time you must be hoisting the jib.” + +This manœuvre of getting under way I had studied and worked out a score +of times; and, with the jib-halyard to the windlass, I knew Maud was +capable of hoisting that most necessary sail. A brisk wind was blowing +into the cove, and though the water was calm, rapid work was required to +get us safely out. + +When I knocked the shackle-bolt loose, the chain roared out through the +hawse-hole and into the sea. I raced aft, putting the wheel up. The +_Ghost_ seemed to start into life as she heeled to the first fill of her +sails. The jib was rising. As it filled, the _Ghost’s_ bow swung off +and I had to put the wheel down a few spokes and steady her. + +I had devised an automatic jib-sheet which passed the jib across of +itself, so there was no need for Maud to attend to that; but she was +still hoisting the jib when I put the wheel hard down. It was a moment +of anxiety, for the _Ghost_ was rushing directly upon the beach, a +stone’s throw distant. But she swung obediently on her heel into the +wind. There was a great fluttering and flapping of canvas and +reef-points, most welcome to my ears, then she filled away on the other +tack. + +Maud had finished her task and come aft, where she stood beside me, a +small cap perched on her wind-blown hair, her cheeks flushed from +exertion, her eyes wide and bright with the excitement, her nostrils +quivering to the rush and bite of the fresh salt air. Her brown eyes +were like a startled deer’s. There was a wild, keen look in them I had +never seen before, and her lips parted and her breath suspended as the +_Ghost_, charging upon the wall of rock at the entrance to the inner +cove, swept into the wind and filled away into safe water. + +My first mate’s berth on the sealing grounds stood me in good stead, and +I cleared the inner cove and laid a long tack along the shore of the +outer cove. Once again about, and the _Ghost_ headed out to open sea. +She had now caught the bosom-breathing of the ocean, and was herself +a-breath with the rhythm of it as she smoothly mounted and slipped down +each broad-backed wave. The day had been dull and overcast, but the sun +now burst through the clouds, a welcome omen, and shone upon the curving +beach where together we had dared the lords of the harem and slain the +holluschickie. All Endeavour Island brightened under the sun. Even the +grim south-western promontory showed less grim, and here and there, where +the sea-spray wet its surface, high lights flashed and dazzled in the +sun. + +“I shall always think of it with pride,” I said to Maud. + +She threw her head back in a queenly way but said, “Dear, dear Endeavour +Island! I shall always love it.” + +“And I,” I said quickly. + +It seemed our eyes must meet in a great understanding, and yet, loath, +they struggled away and did not meet. + +There was a silence I might almost call awkward, till I broke it, saying: + +“See those black clouds to windward. You remember, I told you last night +the barometer was falling.” + +“And the sun is gone,” she said, her eyes still fixed upon our island, +where we had proved our mastery over matter and attained to the truest +comradeship that may fall to man and woman. + +“And it’s slack off the sheets for Japan!” I cried gaily. “A fair wind +and a flowing sheet, you know, or however it goes.” + +Lashing the wheel I ran forward, eased the fore and mainsheets, took in +on the boom-tackles and trimmed everything for the quartering breeze +which was ours. It was a fresh breeze, very fresh, but I resolved to run +as long as I dared. Unfortunately, when running free, it is impossible +to lash the wheel, so I faced an all-night watch. Maud insisted on +relieving me, but proved that she had not the strength to steer in a +heavy sea, even if she could have gained the wisdom on such short notice. +She appeared quite heart-broken over the discovery, but recovered her +spirits by coiling down tackles and halyards and all stray ropes. Then +there were meals to be cooked in the galley, beds to make, Wolf Larsen to +be attended upon, and she finished the day with a grand house-cleaning +attack upon the cabin and steerage. + +All night I steered, without relief, the wind slowly and steadily +increasing and the sea rising. At five in the morning Maud brought me +hot coffee and biscuits she had baked, and at seven a substantial and +piping hot breakfast put new life into me. + +Throughout the day, and as slowly and steadily as ever, the wind +increased. It impressed one with its sullen determination to blow, and +blow harder, and keep on blowing. And still the _Ghost_ foamed along, +racing off the miles till I was certain she was making at least eleven +knots. It was too good to lose, but by nightfall I was exhausted. +Though in splendid physical trim, a thirty-six-hour trick at the wheel +was the limit of my endurance. Besides, Maud begged me to heave to, and +I knew, if the wind and sea increased at the same rate during the night, +that it would soon be impossible to heave to. So, as twilight deepened, +gladly and at the same time reluctantly, I brought the _Ghost_ up on the +wind. + +But I had not reckoned upon the colossal task the reefing of three sails +meant for one man. While running away from the wind I had not +appreciated its force, but when we ceased to run I learned to my sorrow, +and well-nigh to my despair, how fiercely it was really blowing. The +wind balked my every effort, ripping the canvas out of my hands and in an +instant undoing what I had gained by ten minutes of severest struggle. +At eight o’clock I had succeeded only in putting the second reef into the +foresail. At eleven o’clock I was no farther along. Blood dripped from +every finger-end, while the nails were broken to the quick. From pain +and sheer exhaustion I wept in the darkness, secretly, so that Maud +should not know. + +Then, in desperation, I abandoned the attempt to reef the mainsail and +resolved to try the experiment of heaving to under the close-reefed +foresail. Three hours more were required to gasket the mainsail and jib, +and at two in the morning, nearly dead, the life almost buffeted and +worked out of me, I had barely sufficient consciousness to know the +experiment was a success. The close-reefed foresail worked. The _Ghost_ +clung on close to the wind and betrayed no inclination to fall off +broadside to the trough. + +I was famished, but Maud tried vainly to get me to eat. I dozed with my +mouth full of food. I would fall asleep in the act of carrying food to +my mouth and waken in torment to find the act yet uncompleted. So +sleepily helpless was I that she was compelled to hold me in my chair to +prevent my being flung to the floor by the violent pitching of the +schooner. + +Of the passage from the galley to the cabin I knew nothing. It was a +sleep-walker Maud guided and supported. In fact, I was aware of nothing +till I awoke, how long after I could not imagine, in my bunk with my +boots off. It was dark. I was stiff and lame, and cried out with pain +when the bed-clothes touched my poor finger-ends. + +Morning had evidently not come, so I closed my eyes and went to sleep +again. I did not know it, but I had slept the clock around and it was +night again. + +Once more I woke, troubled because I could sleep no better. I struck a +match and looked at my watch. It marked midnight. And I had not left +the deck until three! I should have been puzzled had I not guessed the +solution. No wonder I was sleeping brokenly. I had slept twenty-one +hours. I listened for a while to the behaviour of the _Ghost_, to the +pounding of the seas and the muffled roar of the wind on deck, and then +turned over on my side and slept peacefully until morning. + +When I arose at seven I saw no sign of Maud and concluded she was in the +galley preparing breakfast. On deck I found the _Ghost_ doing splendidly +under her patch of canvas. But in the galley, though a fire was burning +and water boiling, I found no Maud. + +I discovered her in the steerage, by Wolf Larsen’s bunk. I looked at +him, the man who had been hurled down from the topmost pitch of life to +be buried alive and be worse than dead. There seemed a relaxation of his +expressionless face which was new. Maud looked at me and I understood. + +“His life flickered out in the storm,” I said. + +“But he still lives,” she answered, infinite faith in her voice. + +“He had too great strength.” + +“Yes,” she said, “but now it no longer shackles him. He is a free +spirit.” + +“He is a free spirit surely,” I answered; and, taking her hand, I led her +on deck. + +The storm broke that night, which is to say that it diminished as slowly +as it had arisen. After breakfast next morning, when I had hoisted Wolf +Larsen’s body on deck ready for burial, it was still blowing heavily and +a large sea was running. The deck was continually awash with the sea +which came inboard over the rail and through the scuppers. The wind +smote the schooner with a sudden gust, and she heeled over till her lee +rail was buried, the roar in her rigging rising in pitch to a shriek. We +stood in the water to our knees as I bared my head. + +“I remember only one part of the service,” I said, “and that is, ‘And the +body shall be cast into the sea.’” + +Maud looked at me, surprised and shocked; but the spirit of something I +had seen before was strong upon me, impelling me to give service to Wolf +Larsen as Wolf Larsen had once given service to another man. I lifted +the end of the hatch cover and the canvas-shrouded body slipped feet +first into the sea. The weight of iron dragged it down. It was gone. + +“Good-bye, Lucifer, proud spirit,” Maud whispered, so low that it was +drowned by the shouting of the wind; but I saw the movement of her lips +and knew. + +As we clung to the lee rail and worked our way aft, I happened to glance +to leeward. The _Ghost_, at the moment, was uptossed on a sea, and I +caught a clear view of a small steamship two or three miles away, rolling +and pitching, head on to the sea, as it steamed toward us. It was +painted black, and from the talk of the hunters of their poaching +exploits I recognized it as a United States revenue cutter. I pointed it +out to Maud and hurriedly led her aft to the safety of the poop. + +I started to rush below to the flag-locker, then remembered that in +rigging the _Ghost_ I had forgotten to make provision for a +flag-halyard. + +“We need no distress signal,” Maud said. “They have only to see us.” + +“We are saved,” I said, soberly and solemnly. And then, in an exuberance +of joy, “I hardly know whether to be glad or not.” + +I looked at her. Our eyes were not loath to meet. We leaned toward each +other, and before I knew it my arms were about her. + +“Need I?” I asked. + +And she answered, “There is no need, though the telling of it would be +sweet, so sweet.” + +Her lips met the press of mine, and, by what strange trick of the +imagination I know not, the scene in the cabin of the _Ghost_ flashed +upon me, when she had pressed her fingers lightly on my lips and said, +“Hush, hush.” + +“My woman, my one small woman,” I said, my free hand petting her shoulder +in the way all lovers know though never learn in school. + +“My man,” she said, looking at me for an instant with tremulous lids +which fluttered down and veiled her eyes as she snuggled her head against +my breast with a happy little sigh. + +I looked toward the cutter. It was very close. A boat was being +lowered. + +“One kiss, dear love,” I whispered. “One kiss more before they come.” + +“And rescue us from ourselves,” she completed, with a most adorable +smile, whimsical as I had never seen it, for it was whimsical with love. + + * * * * * + + THE END + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, + BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1074 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1075-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1075-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e83c96d6 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1075-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4953 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Strength of the Strong, by Jack London + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Strength of the Strong + + +Author: Jack London + + + +Release Date: February 21, 2013 [eBook #1075] +[This file was first posted on October 17, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG*** + + +Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + THE STRENGTH + OF THE STRONG + + + * * * * * + + BY + JACK LONDON + + AUTHOR OF “THE VALLEY OF THE MOON” + “JERRY OF THE ISLANDS,” ETC. + + * * * * * + + MILLS & BOON, LIMITED + 49 RUPERT STREET + LONDON, W.1 + + * * * * * + + _Published 1919_ + + * * * * * + + _Copyright in the United States of America by_ + THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG 11 +SOUTH OF THE SLOT 34 +THE UNPARALLELED INVASION 60 +THE ENEMY OF ALL THE WORLD 81 +THE DREAM OF DEBS 104 +THE SEA-FARMER 134 +SAMUEL 161 + + + + +THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG + + + _Parables don’t lie_, _but liars will parable_. + + —_Lip-King_. + +OLD Long-Beard paused in his narrative, licked his greasy fingers, and +wiped them on his naked sides where his one piece of ragged bearskin +failed to cover him. Crouched around him, on their hams, were three +young men, his grandsons, Deer-Runner, Yellow-Head, and +Afraid-of-the-Dark. In appearance they were much the same. Skins of +wild animals partly covered them. They were lean and meagre of build, +narrow-hipped and crooked-legged, and at the same time deep-chested, with +heavy arms and enormous hands. There was much hair on their chests and +shoulders, and on the outsides of their arms and legs. Their heads were +matted with uncut hair, long locks of which often strayed before their +eyes, beady and black and glittering like the eyes of birds. They were +narrow between the eyes and broad between the cheeks, while their lower +jaws were projecting and massive. + +It was a night of clear starlight, and below them, stretching away +remotely, lay range on range of forest-covered hills. In the distance +the heavens were red from the glow of a volcano. At their backs yawned +the black mouth of a cave, out of which, from time to time, blew draughty +gusts of wind. Immediately in front of them blazed a fire. At one side, +partly devoured, lay the carcass of a bear, with about it, at a +respectable distance, several large dogs, shaggy and wolf-like. Beside +each man lay his bow and arrows and a huge club. In the cave-mouth a +number of rude spears leaned against the rock. + +“So that was how we moved from the cave to the tree,” old Long-Beard +spoke up. + +They laughed boisterously, like big children, at recollection of a +previous story his words called up. Long-Beard laughed, too, the +five-inch bodkin of bone, thrust midway through the cartilage of his +nose, leaping and dancing and adding to his ferocious appearance. He did +not exactly say the words recorded, but he made animal-like sounds with +his mouth that meant the same thing. + +“And that is the first I remember of the Sea Valley,” Long-Beard went on. +“We were a very foolish crowd. We did not know the secret of strength. +For, behold, each family lived by itself, and took care of itself. There +were thirty families, but we got no strength from one another. We were +in fear of each other all the time. No one ever paid visits. In the top +of our tree we built a grass house, and on the platform outside was a +pile of rocks, which were for the heads of any that might chance to try +to visit us. Also, we had our spears and arrows. We never walked under +the trees of the other families, either. My brother did, once, under old +Boo-oogh’s tree, and he got his head broken and that was the end of him. + +“Old Boo-oogh was very strong. It was said he could pull a grown man’s +head right off. I never heard of him doing it, because no man would give +him a chance. Father wouldn’t. One day, when father was down on the +beach, Boo-oogh took after mother. She couldn’t run fast, for the day +before she had got her leg clawed by a bear when she was up on the +mountain gathering berries. So Boo-oogh caught her and carried her up +into his tree. Father never got her back. He was afraid. Old Boo-oogh +made faces at him. + +“But father did not mind. Strong-Arm was another strong man. He was one +of the best fishermen. But one day, climbing after sea-gull eggs, he had +a fall from the cliff. He was never strong after that. He coughed a +great deal, and his shoulders drew near to each other. So father took +Strong-Arm’s wife. When he came around and coughed under our tree, +father laughed at him and threw rocks at him. It was our way in those +days. We did not know how to add strength together and become strong.” + +“Would a brother take a brother’s wife?” Deer-Runner demanded. + +“Yes, if he had gone to live in another tree by himself.” + +“But we do not do such things now,” Afraid-of-the-Dark objected. + +“It is because I have taught your fathers better.” Long-Beard thrust his +hairy paw into the bear meat and drew out a handful of suet, which he +sucked with a meditative air. Again he wiped his hands on his naked +sides and went on. “What I am telling you happened in the long ago, +before we knew any better.” + +“You must have been fools not to know better,” was Deer-Runner’s comment, +Yellow-Head grunting approval. + +“So we were, but we became bigger fools, as you shall see. Still, we did +learn better, and this was the way of it. We Fish-Eaters had not learned +to add our strength until our strength was the strength of all of us. +But the Meat-Eaters, who lived across the divide in the Big Valley, stood +together, hunted together, fished together, and fought together. One day +they came into our valley. Each family of us got into its own cave and +tree. There were only ten Meat-Eaters, but they fought together, and we +fought, each family by itself.” + +Long-Beard counted long and perplexedly on his fingers. + +“There were sixty men of us,” was what he managed to say with fingers and +lips combined. “And we were very strong, only we did not know it. So we +watched the ten men attack Boo-oogh’s tree. He made a good fight, but he +had no chance. We looked on. When some of the Meat-Eaters tried to +climb the tree, Boo-oogh had to show himself in order to drop stones on +their heads, whereupon the other Meat-Eaters, who were waiting for that +very thing, shot him full of arrows. And that was the end of Boo-oogh. + +“Next, the Meat-Eaters got One-Eye and his family in his cave. They +built a fire in the mouth and smoked him out, like we smoked out the bear +there to-day. Then they went after Six-Fingers, up his tree, and, while +they were killing him and his grown son, the rest of us ran away. They +caught some of our women, and killed two old men who could not run fast +and several children. The women they carried away with them to the Big +Valley. + +“After that the rest of us crept back, and, somehow, perhaps because we +were in fear and felt the need for one another, we talked the thing over. +It was our first council—our first real council. And in that council we +formed our first tribe. For we had learned the lesson. Of the ten +Meat-Eaters, each man had had the strength of ten, for the ten had fought +as one man. They had added their strength together. But of the thirty +families and the sixty men of us, we had had the strength of but one man, +for each had fought alone. + +“It was a great talk we had, and it was hard talk, for we did not have +the words then as now with which to talk. The Bug made some of the words +long afterward, and so did others of us make words from time to time. +But in the end we agreed to add our strength together and to be as one +man when the Meat-Eaters came over the divide to steal our women. And +that was the tribe. + +“We set two men on the divide, one for the day and one for the night, to +watch if the Meat-Eaters came. These were the eyes of the tribe. Then, +also, day and night, there were to be ten men awake with their clubs and +spears and arrows in their hands, ready to fight. Before, when a man +went after fish, or clams, or gull-eggs, he carried his weapons with him, +and half the time he was getting food and half the time watching for fear +some other man would get him. Now that was all changed. The men went +out without their weapons and spent all their time getting food. +Likewise, when the women went into the mountains after roots and berries, +five of the ten men went with them to guard them. While all the time, +day and night, the eyes of the tribe watched from the top of the divide. + +“But troubles came. As usual, it was about the women. Men without wives +wanted other men’s wives, and there was much fighting between men, and +now and again one got his head smashed or a spear through his body. +While one of the watchers was on top of the divide, another man stole his +wife, and he came down to fight. Then the other watcher was in fear that +some one would take his wife, and he came down likewise. Also, there was +trouble among the ten men who carried always their weapons, and they +fought five against five, till some ran away down the coast and the +others ran after them. + +“So it was that the tribe was left without eyes or guards. We had not +the strength of sixty. We had no strength at all. So we held a council +and made our first laws. I was but a cub at the time, but I remember. +We said that, in order to be strong, we must not fight one another, and +we made a law that when a man killed another him would the tribe kill. +We made another law that whoso stole another man’s wife him would the +tribe kill. We said that whatever man had too great strength, and by +that strength hurt his brothers in the tribe, him would we kill that his +strength might hurt no more. For, if we let his strength hurt, the +brothers would become afraid and the tribe would fall apart, and we would +be as weak as when the Meat-Eaters first came upon us and killed +Boo-oogh. + +“Knuckle-Bone was a strong man, a very strong man, and he knew not law. +He knew only his own strength, and in the fullness thereof he went forth +and took the wife of Three-Clams. Three-Clams tried to fight, but +Knuckle-Bone clubbed out his brains. Yet had Knuckle-Bone forgotten that +all the men of us had added our strength to keep the law among us, and +him we killed, at the foot of his tree, and hung his body on a branch as +a warning that the law was stronger than any man. For we were the law, +all of us, and no man was greater than the law. + +“Then there were other troubles, for know, O Deer-Runner, and +Yellow-Head, and Afraid-of-the-Dark, that it is not easy to make a tribe. +There were many things, little things, that it was a great trouble to +call all the men together to have a council about. We were having +councils morning, noon, and night, and in the middle of the night. We +could find little time to go out and get food, because of the councils, +for there was always some little thing to be settled, such as naming two +new watchers to take the place of the old ones on the hill, or naming how +much food should fall to the share of the men who kept their weapons +always in their hands and got no food for themselves. + +“We stood in need of a chief man to do these things, who would be the +voice of the council, and who would account to the council for the things +he did. So we named Fith-Fith the chief man. He was a strong man, too, +and very cunning, and when he was angry he made noises just like that, +_fith-fith_, like a wild-cat. + +“The ten men who guarded the tribe were set to work making a wall of +stones across the narrow part of the valley. The women and large +children helped, as did other men, until the wall was strong. After +that, all the families came down out of their caves and trees and built +grass houses behind the shelter of the wall. These houses were large and +much better than the caves and trees, and everybody had a better time of +it because the men had added their strength together and become a tribe. +Because of the wall and the guards and the watchers, there was more time +to hunt and fish and pick roots and berries; there was more food, and +better food, and no one went hungry. And Three-Legs, so named because +his legs had been smashed when a boy and who walked with a +stick—Three-Legs got the seed of the wild corn and planted it in the +ground in the valley near his house. Also, he tried planting fat roots +and other things he found in the mountain valleys. + +“Because of the safety in the Sea Valley, which was because of the wall +and the watchers and the guards, and because there was food in plenty for +all without having to fight for it, many families came in from the coast +valleys on both sides and from the high back mountains where they had +lived more like wild animals than men. And it was not long before the +Sea Valley filled up, and in it were countless families. But, before +this happened, the land, which had been free to all and belonged to all, +was divided up. Three-Legs began it when he planted corn. But most of +us did not care about the land. We thought the marking of the boundaries +with fences of stone was a foolishness. We had plenty to eat, and what +more did we want? I remember that my father and I built stone fences for +Three-Legs and were given corn in return. + +“So only a few got all the land, and Three-Legs got most of it. Also, +others that had taken land gave it to the few that held on, being paid in +return with corn and fat roots, and bear-skins, and fishes which the +farmers got from the fishermen in exchange for corn. And, the first +thing we knew, all the land was gone. + +“It was about this time that Fith-Fith died and Dog-Tooth, his son, was +made chief. He demanded to be made chief anyway, because his father had +been chief before him. Also, he looked upon himself as a greater chief +than his father. He was a good chief at first, and worked hard, so that +the council had less and less to do. Then arose a new voice in the Sea +Valley. It was Twisted-Lip. We had never thought much of him, until he +began to talk with the spirits of the dead. Later we called him Big-Fat, +because he ate over-much, and did no work, and grew round and large. One +day Big-Fat told us that the secrets of the dead were his, and that he +was the voice of God. He became great friends with Dog-Tooth, who +commanded that we should build Big-Fat a grass house. And Big-Fat put +taboos all around this house and kept God inside. + +“More and more Dog-Tooth became greater than the council, and when the +council grumbled and said it would name a new chief, Big-Fat spoke with +the voice of God and said no. Also, Three-Legs and the others who held +the land stood behind Dog-Tooth. Moreover, the strongest man in the +council was Sea-Lion, and him the land-owners gave land to secretly, +along with many bearskins and baskets of corn. So Sea-Lion said that +Big-Fat’s voice was truly the voice of God and must be obeyed. And soon +afterward Sea-Lion was named the voice of Dog-Tooth and did most of his +talking for him. + +“Then there was Little-Belly, a little man, so thin in the middle that he +looked as if he had never had enough to eat. Inside the mouth of the +river, after the sand-bar had combed the strength of the breakers, he +built a big fish-trap. No man had ever seen or dreamed a fish-trap +before. He worked weeks on it, with his son and his wife, while the rest +of us laughed at their labours. But, when it was done, the first day he +caught more fish in it than could the whole tribe in a week, whereat +there was great rejoicing. There was only one other place in the river +for a fish-trap, but, when my father and I and a dozen other men started +to make a very large trap, the guards came from the big grass-house we +had built for Dog-Tooth. And the guards poked us with their spears and +told us begone, because Little-Belly was going to build a trap there +himself on the word of Sea-Lion, who was the voice of Dog-Tooth. + +“There was much grumbling, and my father called a council. But, when he +rose to speak, him the Sea-Lion thrust through the throat with a spear +and he died. And Dog-Tooth and Little-Belly, and Three-Legs and all that +held land said it was good. And Big-Fat said it was the will of God. +And after that all men were afraid to stand up in the council, and there +was no more council. + +“Another man, Pig-Jaw, began to keep goats. He had heard about it as +among the Meat-Eaters, and it was not long before he had many flocks. +Other men, who had no land and no fish-traps, and who else would have +gone hungry, were glad to work for Pig-Jaw, caring for his goats, +guarding them from wild dogs and tigers, and driving them to the feeding +pastures in the mountains. In return, Pig-Jaw gave them goat-meat to eat +and goat-skins to wear, and sometimes they traded the goat-meat for fish +and corn and fat roots. + +“It was this time that money came to be. Sea-Lion was the man who first +thought of it, and he talked it over with Dog-Tooth and Big-Fat. You +see, these three were the ones that got a share of everything in the Sea +Valley. One basket out of every three of corn was theirs, one fish out +of every three, one goat out of every three. In return, they fed the +guards and the watchers, and kept the rest for themselves. Sometimes, +when a big haul of fish was made they did not know what to do with all +their share. So Sea-Lion set the women to making money out of +shell—little round pieces, with a hole in each one, and all made smooth +and fine. These were strung on strings, and the strings were called +money. + +“Each string was of the value of thirty fish, or forty fish, but the +women, who made a string a day, were given two fish each. The fish came +out of the shares of Dog-Tooth, Big-Fat, and Sea-Lion, which they three +did not eat. So all the money belonged to them. Then they told +Three-Legs and the other land-owners that they would take their share of +corn and roots in money, Little-Belly that they would take their share of +fish in money, Pig-Jaw that they would take their share of goats and +cheese in money. Thus, a man who had nothing, worked for one who had, +and was paid in money. With this money he bought corn, and fish, and +meat, and cheese. And Three-Legs and all owners of things paid Dog-Tooth +and Sea-Lion and Big-Fat their share in money. And they paid the guards +and watchers in money, and the guards and watchers bought their food with +the money. And, because money was cheap, Dog-Tooth made many more men +into guards. And, because money was cheap to make, a number of men began +to make money out of shell themselves. But the guards stuck spears in +them and shot them full of arrows, because they were trying to break up +the tribe. It was bad to break up the tribe, for then the Meat-Eaters +would come over the divide and kill them all. + +“Big-Fat was the voice of God, but he took Broken-Rib and made him into a +priest, so that he became the voice of Big-Fat and did most of his +talking for him. And both had other men to be servants to them. So, +also, did Little-Belly and Three-Legs and Pig-Jaw have other men to lie +in the sun about their grass houses and carry messages for them and give +commands. And more and more were men taken away from work, so that those +that were left worked harder than ever before. It seemed that men +desired to do no work and strove to seek out other ways whereby men +should work for them. Crooked-Eyes found such a way. He made the first +fire-brew out of corn. And thereafter he worked no more, for he talked +secretly with Dog-Tooth and Big-Fat and the other masters, and it was +agreed that he should be the only one to make fire-brew. But +Crooked-Eyes did no work himself. Men made the brew for him, and he paid +them in money. Then he sold the fire-brew for money, and all men bought. +And many strings of money did he give Dog-Tooth and Sea-Lion and all of +them. + +“Big-Fat and Broken-Rib stood by Dog-Tooth when he took his second wife, +and his third wife. They said Dog-Tooth was different from other men and +second only to God that Big-Fat kept in his taboo house, and Dog-Tooth +said so, too, and wanted to know who were they to grumble about how many +wives he took. Dog-Tooth had a big canoe made, and, many more men he +took from work, who did nothing and lay in the sun, save only when +Dog-Tooth went in the canoe, when they paddled for him. And he made +Tiger-Face head man over all the guards, so that Tiger-Face became his +right arm, and when he did not like a man Tiger-Face killed that man for +him. And Tiger-Face, also, made another man to be his right arm, and to +give commands, and to kill for him. + +“But this was the strange thing: as the days went by we who were left +worked harder and harder, and yet did we get less and less to eat.” + +“But what of the goats and the corn and the fat roots and the fish-trap?” +spoke up Afraid-of-the-Dark, “what of all this? Was there not more food +to be gained by man’s work?” + +“It is so,” Long-Beard agreed. “Three men on the fish-trap got more fish +than the whole tribe before there was a fish-trap. But have I not said +we were fools? The more food we were able to get, the less food did we +have to eat.” + +“But was it not plain that the many men who did not work ate it all up?” +Yellow-Head demanded. + +Long-Beard nodded his head sadly. + +“Dog-Tooth’s dogs were stuffed with meat, and the men who lay in the sun +and did no work were rolling in fat, and, at the same time, there were +little children crying themselves to sleep with hunger biting them with +every wail.” + +Deer-Runner was spurred by the recital of famine to tear out a chunk of +bear-meat and broil it on a stick over the coals. This he devoured with +smacking lips, while Long-Beard went on: + +“When we grumbled Big-Fat arose, and with the voice of God said that God +had chosen the wise men to own the land and the goats and the fish-trap, +and the fire-brew, and that without these wise men we would all be +animals, as in the days when we lived in trees. + +“And there arose one who became a singer of songs for the king. Him they +called the Bug, because he was small and ungainly of face and limb and +excelled not in work or deed. He loved the fattest marrow bones, the +choicest fish, the milk warm from the goats, the first corn that was +ripe, and the snug place by the fire. And thus, becoming singer of songs +to the king, he found a way to do nothing and be fat. And when the +people grumbled more and more, and some threw stones at the king’s grass +house, the Bug sang a song of how good it was to be a Fish-Eater. In his +song he told that the Fish-Eaters were the chosen of God and the finest +men God had made. He sang of the Meat-Eaters as pigs and crows, and sang +how fine and good it was for the Fish-Eaters to fight and die doing God’s +work, which was the killing of Meat-Eaters. The words of his song were +like fire in us, and we clamoured to be led against the Meat-Eaters. And +we forgot that we were hungry, and why we had grumbled, and were glad to +be led by Tiger-Face over the divide, where we killed many Meat-Eaters +and were content. + +“But things were no better in the Sea Valley. The only way to get food +was to work for Three-Legs or Little-Belly or Pig-Jaw; for there was no +land that a man might plant with corn for himself. And often there were +more men than Three-Legs and the others had work for. So these men went +hungry, and so did their wives and children and their old mothers. +Tiger-Face said they could become guards if they wanted to, and many of +them did, and thereafter they did no work except to poke spears in the +men who did work and who grumbled at feeding so many idlers. + +“And when we grumbled, ever the Bug sang new songs. He said that +Three-Legs and Pig-Jaw and the rest were strong men, and that that was +why they had so much. He said that we should be glad to have strong men +with us, else would we perish of our own worthlessness and the +Meat-Eaters. Therefore, we should be glad to let such strong men have +all they could lay hands on. And Big-Fat and Pig-Jaw and Tiger-Face and +all the rest said it was true. + +“‘All right,’ said Long-Fang, ‘then will I, too, be a strong man.’ And +he got himself corn, and began to make fire-brew and sell it for strings +of money. And, when Crooked-Eyes complained, Long-Fang said that he was +himself a strong man, and that if Crooked-Eyes made any more noise he +would bash his brains out for him. Whereat Crooked-Eyes was afraid and +went and talked with Three-Legs and Pig-Jaw. And all three went and +talked to Dog-Tooth. And Dog-Tooth spoke to Sea-Lion, and Sea-Lion sent +a runner with a message to Tiger-Face. And Tiger-Face sent his guards, +who burned Long-Fang’s house along with the fire-brew he had made. Also, +they killed him and all his family. And Big-Fat said it was good, and +the Bug sang another song about how good it was to observe the law, and +what a fine land the Sea Valley was, and how every man who loved the Sea +Valley should go forth and kill the bad Meat-Eaters. And again his song +was as fire to us, and we forgot to grumble. + +“It was very strange. When Little-Belly caught too many fish, so that it +took a great many to sell for a little money, he threw many of the fish +back into the sea, so that more money would be paid for what was left. +And Three-Legs often let many large fields lie idle so as to get more +money for his corn. And the women, making so much money out of shell +that much money was needed to buy with, Dog-Tooth stopped the making of +money. And the women had no work, so they took the places of the men. I +worked on the fish-trap, getting a string of money every five days. But +my sister now did my work, getting a string of money for every ten days. +The women worked cheaper, and there was less food, and Tiger-Face said we +should become guards. Only I could not become a guard because I was lame +of one leg and Tiger-Face would not have me. And there were many like +me. We were broken men and only fit to beg for work or to take care of +the babies while the women worked.” + +Yellow-Head, too, was made hungry by the recital and broiled a piece of +bear-meat on the coals. + +“But why didn’t you rise up, all of you, and kill Three-Legs and Pig-Jaw +and Big-Fat and the rest and get enough to eat?” Afraid-in-the-Dark +demanded. + +“Because we could not understand,” Long-Beard answered. “There was too +much to think about, and, also, there were the guards sticking spears +into us, and Big-Fat talking about God, and the Bug singing new songs. +And when any man did think right, and said so, Tiger-Face and the guards +got him, and he was tied out to the rocks at low tide so that the rising +waters drowned him. + +“It was a strange thing—the money. It was like the Bug’s songs. It +seemed all right, but it wasn’t, and we were slow to understand. +Dog-Tooth began to gather the money in. He put it in a big pile, in a +grass house, with guards to watch it day and night. And the more money +he piled in the house the dearer money became, so that a man worked a +longer time for a string of money than before. Then, too, there was +always talk of war with the Meat-Eaters, and Dog-Tooth and Tiger-Face +filled many houses with corn, and dried fish, and smoked goat-meat, and +cheese. And with the food, piled there in mountains the people had not +enough to eat. But what did it matter? Whenever the people grumbled too +loudly the Bug sang a new song, and Big-Fat said it was God’s word that +we should kill Meat-Eaters, and Tiger-Face led us over the divide to kill +and be killed. I was not good enough to be a guard and lie fat in the +sun, but, when we made war, Tiger-Face was glad to take me along. And +when we had eaten, all the food stored in the houses we stopped fighting +and went back to work to pile up more food.” + +“Then were you all crazy,” commented Deer-Runner. + +“Then were we indeed all crazy,” Long-Beard agreed. “It was strange, all +of it. There was Split-Nose. He said everything was wrong. He said it +was true that we grew strong by adding our strength together. And he +said that, when we first formed the tribe, it was right that the men +whose strength hurt the tribe should be shorn of their strength—men who +bashed their brothers’ heads and stole their brothers’ wives. And now, +he said, the tribe was not getting stronger, but was getting weaker, +because there were men with another kind of strength that were hurting +the tribe—men who had the strength of the land, like Three-Legs; who had +the strength of the fish-trap, like Little-Belly; who had the strength of +all the goat-meat, like Pig-Jaw. The thing to do, Split-Nose said, was +to shear these men of their evil strength; to make them go to work, all +of them, and to let no man eat who did not work. + +“And the Bug sang another song about men like Split-Nose, who wanted to +go back, and live in trees. + +“Yet Split-Nose said no; that he did not want to go back, but ahead; that +they grew strong only as they added their strength together; and that, if +the Fish-Eaters would add their strength to the Meat-Eaters, there would +be no more fighting and no more watchers and no more guards, and that, +with all men working, there would be so much food that each man would +have to work not more than two hours a day. + +“Then the Bug sang again, and he sang that Split-Nose was lazy, and he +sang also the ‘Song of the Bees.’ It was a strange song, and those who +listened were made mad, as from the drinking of strong fire-brew. The +song was of a swarm of bees, and of a robber wasp who had come in to live +with the bees and who was stealing all their honey. The wasp was lazy +and told them there was no need to work; also, he told them to make +friends with the bears, who were not honey-stealers but only very good +friends. And the Bug sang in crooked words, so that those who listened +knew that the swarm was the Sea Valley tribe, that the bears were the +Meat-Eaters, and that the lazy wasp was Split-Nose. And when the Bug +sang that the bees listened to the wasp till the swarm was near to +perishing, the people growled and snarled, and when the Bug sang that at +last the good bees arose and stung the wasp to death, the people picked +up stones from the ground and stoned Split-Nose to death till there was +naught to be seen of him but the heap of stones they had flung on top of +him. And there were many poor people who worked long and hard and had +not enough to eat that helped throw the stones on Split-Nose. + +“And, after the death of Split-Nose, there was but one other man that +dared rise up and speak his mind, and that man was Hair-Face. ‘Where is +the strength of the strong?’ he asked. ‘We are the strong, all of us, +and we are stronger than Dog-Tooth and Tiger-Face and Three-Legs and +Pig-Jaw and all the rest who do nothing and eat much and weaken us by the +hurt of their strength which is bad strength. Men who are slaves are not +strong. If the man who first found the virtue and use of fire had used +his strength we would have been his slaves, as we are the slaves to-day +of Little-Belly, who found the virtue and use of the fish-trap; and of +the men who found the virtue and use of the land, and the goats, and the +fire-brew. Before, we lived in trees, my brothers, and no man was safe. +But we fight no more with one another. We have added our strength +together. Then let us fight no more with the Meat-Eaters. Let us add +our strength and their strength together. Then will we be indeed strong. +And then we will go out together, the Fish-Eaters and the Meat-Eaters, +and we will kill the tigers and the lions and the wolves and the wild +dogs, and we will pasture our goats on all the hill-sides and plant our +corn and fat roots in all the high mountain valleys. In that day we will +be so strong that all the wild animals will flee before us and perish. +And nothing will withstand us, for the strength of each man will be the +strength of all men in the world.’ + +“So said Hair-Face, and they killed him, because, they said, he was a +wild man and wanted to go back and live in a tree. It was very strange. +Whenever a man arose and wanted to go forward all those that stood still +said he went backward and should be killed. And the poor people helped +stone him, and were fools. We were all fools, except those who were fat +and did no work. The fools were called wise, and the wise were stoned. +Men who worked did not get enough to eat, and the men who did not work +ate too much. + +“And the tribe went on losing strength. The children were weak and +sickly. And, because we ate not enough, strange sicknesses came among us +and we died like flies. And then the Meat-Eaters came upon us. We had +followed Tiger-Face too often over the divide and killed them. And now +they came to repay in blood. We were too weak and sick to man the big +wall. And they killed us, all of us, except some of the women, which +they took away with them. The Bug and I escaped, and I hid in the +wildest places, and became a hunter of meat and went hungry no more. I +stole a wife from the Meat-Eaters, and went to live in the caves of the +high mountains where they could not find me. And we had three sons, and +each son stole a wife from the Meat-Eaters. And the rest you know, for +are you not the sons of my sons?” + +“But the Bug?” queried Deer-Runner. “What became of him?” + +“He went to live with the Meat-Eaters and to be a singer of songs to the +king. He is an old man now, but he sings the same old songs; and, when a +man rises up to go forward, he sings that that man is walking backward to +live in a tree.” + +Long-Beard dipped into the bear-carcass and sucked with toothless gums at +a fist of suet. + +“Some day,” he said, wiping his hands on his sides, “all the fools will +be dead and then all live men will go forward. The strength of the +strong will be theirs, and they will add their strength together, so +that, of all the men in the world, not one will fight with another. +There will be no guards nor watchers on the walls. And all the hunting +animals will be killed, and, as Hair-Face said, all the hill-sides will +be pastured with goats and all the high mountain valleys will be planted +with corn and fat roots. And all men will be brothers, and no man will +lie idle in the sun and be fed by his fellows. And all that will come to +pass in the time when the fools are dead, and when there will be no more +singers to stand still and sing the ‘Song of the Bees.’ Bees are not +men.” + + + + +SOUTH OF THE SLOT + + +OLD San Francisco, which is the San Francisco of only the other day, the +day before the Earthquake, was divided midway by the Slot. The Slot was +an iron crack that ran along the centre of Market Street, and from the +Slot arose the burr of the ceaseless, endless cable that was hitched at +will to the cars it dragged up and down. In truth, there were two slots, +but in the quick grammar of the West time was saved by calling them, and +much more that they stood for, “The Slot.” North of the Slot were the +theatres, hotels, and shopping district, the banks and the staid, +respectable business houses. South of the Slot were the factories, +slums, laundries, machine-shops, boiler works, and the abodes of the +working class. + +The Slot was the metaphor that expressed the class cleavage of Society, +and no man crossed this metaphor, back and forth, more successfully than +Freddie Drummond. He made a practice of living in both worlds, and in +both worlds he lived signally well. Freddie Drummond was a professor in +the Sociology Department of the University of California, and it was as a +professor of sociology that he first crossed over the Slot, lived for six +mouths in the great labour-ghetto, and wrote _The Unskilled Labourer_—a +book that was hailed everywhere as an able contribution to the literature +of progress, and as a splendid reply to the literature of discontent. +Politically and economically it was nothing if not orthodox. Presidents +of great railway systems bought whole editions of it to give to their +employees. The Manufacturers’ Association alone distributed fifty +thousand copies of it. In a way, it was almost as immoral as the +far-famed and notorious _Message to Garcia_, while in its pernicious +preachment of thrift and content it ran _Mr. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch_ +a close second. + +At first, Freddie Drummond found it monstrously difficult to get along +among the working people. He was not used to their ways, and they +certainly were not used to his. They were suspicious. He had no +antecedents. He could talk of no previous jobs. His hands were soft. +His extraordinary politeness was ominous. His first idea of the rôle he +would play was that of a free and independent American who chose to work +with his hands and no explanations given. But it wouldn’t do, as he +quickly discovered. At the beginning they accepted him, very +provisionally, as a freak. A little later, as he began to know his way +about better, he insensibly drifted into the rôle that would work—namely, +he was a man who had seen better days, very much better days, but who was +down on his luck, though, to be sure, only temporarily. + +He learned many things, and generalized much and often erroneously, all +of which can be found in the pages of _The Unskilled Labourer_. He saved +himself, however, after the sane and conservative manner of his kind, by +labelling his generalizations as “tentative.” One of his first +experiences was in the great Wilmax Cannery, where he was put on +piece-work making small packing cases. A box factory supplied the parts, +and all Freddie Drummond had to do was to fit the parts into a form and +drive in the wire nails with a light hammer. + +It was not skilled labour, but it was piece-work. The ordinary labourers +in the cannery got a dollar and a half per day. Freddie Drummond found +the other men on the same job with him jogging along and earning a dollar +and seventy-five cents a day. By the third day he was able to earn the +same. But he was ambitious. He did not care to jog along and, being +unusually able and fit, on the fourth day earned two dollars. + +The next day, having keyed himself up to an exhausting high-tension, he +earned two dollars and a half. His fellow workers favoured him with +scowls and black looks, and made remarks, slangily witty and which he did +not understand, about sucking up to the boss and pace-making and holding +her down, when the rains set in. He was astonished at their malingering +on piece-work, generalized about the inherent laziness of the unskilled +labourer, and proceeded next day to hammer out three dollars’ worth of +boxes. + +And that night, coming out of the cannery, he was interviewed by his +fellow workmen, who were very angry and incoherently slangy. He failed +to comprehend the motive behind their action. The action itself was +strenuous. When he refused to ease down his pace and bleated about +freedom of contract, independent Americanism, and the dignity of toil, +they proceeded to spoil his pace-making ability. It was a fierce battle, +for Drummond was a large man and an athlete, but the crowd finally jumped +on his ribs, walked on his face, and stamped on his fingers, so that it +was only after lying in bed for a week that he was able to get up and +look for another job. All of which is duly narrated in that first book +of his, in the chapter entitled “The Tyranny of Labour.” + +A little later, in another department of the Wilmax Cannery, lumping as a +fruit-distributor among the women, he essayed to carry two boxes of fruit +at a time, and was promptly reproached by the other fruit-lumpers. It +was palpable malingering; but he was there, he decided, not to change +conditions, but to observe. So he lumped one box thereafter, and so well +did he study the art of shirking that he wrote a special chapter on it, +with the last several paragraphs devoted to tentative generalizations. + +In those six months he worked at many jobs and developed into a very good +imitation of a genuine worker. He was a natural linguist, and he kept +notebooks, making a scientific study of the workers’ slang or argot, +until he could talk quite intelligibly. This language also enabled him +more intimately to follow their mental processes, and thereby to gather +much data for a projected chapter in some future book which he planned to +entitle _Synthesis of Working-Class Psychology_. + +Before he arose to the surface from that first plunge into the underworld +he discovered that he was a good actor and demonstrated the plasticity of +his nature. He was himself astonished at his own fluidity. Once having +mastered the language and conquered numerous fastidious qualms, he found +that he could flow into any nook of working-class life and fit it so +snugly as to feel comfortably at home. As he said, in the preface to his +second book, _The Toiler_, he endeavoured really to know the working +people, and the only possible way to achieve this was to work beside +them, eat their food, sleep in their beds, be amused with their +amusements, think their thoughts, and feel their feeling. + +He was not a deep thinker. He had no faith in new theories. All his +norms and criteria were conventional. His Thesis on the French +Revolution was noteworthy in college annals, not merely for its +painstaking and voluminous accuracy, but for the fact that it was the +dryest, deadest, most formal, and most orthodox screed ever written on +the subject. He was a very reserved man, and his natural inhibition was +large in quantity and steel-like in quality. He had but few friends. He +was too undemonstrative, too frigid. He had no vices, nor had any one +ever discovered any temptations. Tobacco he detested, beer he abhorred, +and he was never known to drink anything stronger than an occasional +light wine at dinner. + +When a freshman he had been baptized “Ice-Box” by his warmer-blooded +fellows. As a member of the faculty he was known as “Cold-Storage.” He +had but one grief, and that was “Freddie.” He had earned it when he +played full-back in the ‘Varsity eleven, and his formal soul had never +succeeded in living it down. “Freddie” he would ever be, except +officially, and through nightmare vistas he looked into a future when his +world would speak of him as “Old Freddie.” + +For he was very young to be a doctor of sociology, only twenty-seven, and +he looked younger. In appearance and atmosphere he was a strapping big +college man, smooth-faced and easy-mannered, clean and simple and +wholesome, with a known record of being a splendid athlete and an implied +vast possession of cold culture of the inhibited sort. He never talked +shop out of class and committee rooms, except later on, when his books +showered him with distasteful public notice and he yielded to the extent +of reading occasional papers before certain literary and economic +societies. + +He did everything right—too right; and in dress and comportment was +inevitably correct. Not that he was a dandy. Far from it. He was a +college man, in dress and carriage as like as a pea to the type that of +late years is being so generously turned out of our institutions of +higher learning. His handshake was satisfyingly strong and stiff. His +blue eyes were coldly blue and convincingly sincere. His voice, firm and +masculine, clean and crisp of enunciation, was pleasant to the ear. The +one drawback to Freddie Drummond was his inhibition. He never unbent. +In his football days, the higher the tension of the game, the cooler he +grew. He was noted as a boxer, but he was regarded as an automaton, with +the inhuman precision of a machine judging distance and timing blows, +guarding, blocking, and stalling. He was rarely punished himself, while +he rarely punished an opponent. He was too clever and too controlled to +permit himself to put a pound more weight into a punch than he intended. +With him it was a matter of exercise. It kept him fit. + +As time went by, Freddie Drummond found himself more frequently crossing +the Slot and losing himself in South of Market. His summer and winter +holidays were spent there, and, whether it was a week or a week-end, he +found the time spent there to be valuable and enjoyable. And there was +so much material to be gathered. His third book, _Mass and Master_, +became a text-book in the American universities; and almost before he +knew it, he was at work on a fourth one, _The Fallacy of the +Inefficient_. + +Somewhere in his make-up there was a strange twist or quirk. Perhaps it +was a recoil from his environment and training, or from the tempered seed +of his ancestors, who had been book-men generation preceding generation; +but at any rate, he found enjoyment in being down in the working-class +world. In his own world he was “Cold-Storage,” but down below he was +“Big” Bill Totts, who could drink and smoke, and slang and fight, and be +an all-round favourite. Everybody liked Bill, and more than one working +girl made love to him. At first he had been merely a good actor, but as +time went on, simulation became second nature. He no longer played a +part, and he loved sausages, sausages and bacon, than which, in his own +proper sphere, there was nothing more loathsome in the way of food. + +From doing the thing for the need’s sake, he came to doing the thing for +the thing’s sake. He found himself regretting as the time drew near for +him to go back to his lecture-room and his inhibition. And he often +found himself waiting with anticipation for the dreamy time to pass when +he could cross the Slot and cut loose and play the devil. He was not +wicked, but as “Big” Bill Totts he did a myriad things that Freddie +Drummond would never have been permitted to do. Moreover, Freddie +Drummond never would have wanted to do them. That was the strangest part +of his discovery. Freddie Drummond and Bill Totts were two totally +different creatures. The desires and tastes and impulses of each ran +counter to the other’s. Bill Totts could shirk at a job with clear +conscience, while Freddie Drummond condemned shirking as vicious, +criminal, and un-American, and devoted whole chapters to condemnation of +the vice. Freddie Drummond did not care for dancing, but Bill Totts +never missed the nights at the various dancing clubs, such as The +Magnolia, The Western Star, and The Elite; while he won a massive silver +cup, standing thirty inches high, for being the best-sustained character +at the Butchers and Meat Workers’ annual grand masked ball. And Bill +Totts liked the girls and the girls liked him, while Freddie Drummond +enjoyed playing the ascetic in this particular, was open in his +opposition to equal suffrage, and cynically bitter in his secret +condemnation of coeducation. + +Freddie Drummond changed his manners with his dress, and without effort. +When he entered the obscure little room used for his transformation +scenes, he carried himself just a bit too stiffly. He was too erect, his +shoulders were an inch too far back, while his face was grave, almost +harsh, and practically expressionless. But when he emerged in Bill +Totts’ clothes he was another creature. Bill Totts did not slouch, but +somehow his whole form limbered up and became graceful. The very sound +of the voice was changed, and the laugh was loud and hearty, while loose +speech and an occasional oath were as a matter of course on his lips. +Also, Bill Totts was a trifle inclined to late hours, and at times, in +saloons, to be good-naturedly bellicose with other workmen. Then, too, +at Sunday picnics or when coming home from the show, either arm betrayed +a practised familiarity in stealing around girls’ waists, while he +displayed a wit keen and delightful in the flirtatious badinage that was +expected of a good fellow in his class. + +So thoroughly was Bill Totts himself, so thoroughly a workman, a genuine +denizen of South of the Slot, that he was as class-conscious as the +average of his kind, and his hatred for a scab even exceeded that of the +average loyal union man. During the Water Front Strike, Freddie Drummond +was somehow able to stand apart from the unique combination, and, coldly +critical, watch Bill Totts hilariously slug scab longshoremen. For Bill +Totts was a dues-paying member of the Longshoremen Union and had a right +to be indignant with the usurpers of his job. “Big” Bill Totts was so +very big, and so very able, that it was “Big” Bill to the front when +trouble was brewing. From acting outraged feelings, Freddie Drummond, in +the rôle of his other self, came to experience genuine outrage, and it +was only when he returned to the classic atmosphere of the university +that he was able, sanely and conservatively, to generalize upon his +underworld experiences and put them down on paper as a trained +sociologist should. That Bill Totts lacked the perspective to raise him +above class-consciousness Freddie Drummond clearly saw. But Bill Totts +could not see it. When he saw a scab taking his job away, he saw red at +the same time, and little else did he see. It was Freddie Drummond, +irreproachably clothed and comported, seated at his study desk or facing +his class in _Sociology_ 17, who saw Bill Totts, and all around Bill +Totts, and all around the whole scab and union-labour problem and its +relation to the economic welfare of the United States in the struggle for +the world market. Bill Totts really wasn’t able to see beyond the next +meal and the prize-fight the following night at the Gaiety Athletic Club. + +It was while gathering material for _Women and Work_ that Freddie +received his first warning of the danger he was in. He was too +successful at living in both worlds. This strange dualism he had +developed was after all very unstable, and, as he sat in his study and +meditated, he saw that it could not endure. It was really a transition +stage, and if he persisted he saw that he would inevitably have to drop +one world or the other. He could not continue in both. And as he looked +at the row of volumes that graced the upper shelf of his revolving +book-case, his volumes, beginning with his Thesis and ending with _Women +and Work_, he decided that that was the world he would hold to and stick +by. Bill Totts had served his purpose, but he had become a too dangerous +accomplice. Bill Totts would have to cease. + +Freddie Drummond’s fright was due to Mary Condon, President of the +International Glove Workers’ Union No. 974. He had seen her, first, from +the spectators’ gallery, at the annual convention of the Northwest +Federation of Labour, and he had seen her through Bill Totts’ eyes, and +that individual had been most favourably impressed by her. She was not +Freddie Drummond’s sort at all. What if she were a royal-bodied woman, +graceful and sinewy as a panther, with amazing black eyes that could fill +with fire or laughter-love, as the mood might dictate? He detested women +with a too exuberant vitality and a lack of . . . well, of inhibition. +Freddie Drummond accepted the doctrine of evolution because it was quite +universally accepted by college men, and he flatly believed that man had +climbed up the ladder of life out of the weltering muck and mess of lower +and monstrous organic things. But he was a trifle ashamed of this +genealogy, and preferred not to think of it. Wherefore, probably, he +practised his iron inhibition and preached it to others, and preferred +women of his own type, who could shake free of this bestial and +regrettable ancestral line and by discipline and control emphasize the +wideness of the gulf that separated them from what their dim forbears had +been. + +Bill Totts had none of these considerations. He had liked Mary Condon +from the moment his eyes first rested on her in the convention hall, and +he had made it a point, then and there, to find out who she was. The +next time he met her, and quite by accident, was when he was driving an +express waggon for Pat Morrissey. It was in a lodging-house in Mission +Street, where he had been called to take a trunk into storage. The +landlady’s daughter had called him and led him to the little bedroom, the +occupant of which, a glove-maker, had just been removed to hospital. But +Bill did not know this. He stooped, up-ended the trunk, which was a +large one, got it on his shoulder, and struggled to his feet with his +back toward the open door. At that moment he heard a woman’s voice. + +“Belong to the union?” was the question asked. + +“Aw, what’s it to you?” he retorted. “Run along now, an’ git outa my +way. I wanta turn round.” + +The next he know, big as he was, he was whirled half around and sent +reeling backward, the trunk overbalancing him, till he fetched up with a +crash against the wall. He started to swear, but at the same instant +found himself looking into Mary Condon’s flashing, angry eyes. + +“Of course I b’long to the union,” he said. “I was only kiddin’ you.” + +“Where’s your card?” she demanded in businesslike tones. + +“In my pocket. But I can’t git it out now. This trunk’s too damn heavy. +Come on down to the waggon an’ I’ll show it to you.” + +“Put that trunk down,” was the command. + +“What for? I got a card, I’m tellin’ you.” + +“Put it down, that’s all. No scab’s going to handle that trunk. You +ought to be ashamed of yourself, you big coward, scabbing on honest men. +Why don’t you join the union and be a man?” + +Mary Condon’s colour had left her face, and it was apparent that she was +in a rage. + +“To think of a big man like you turning traitor to his class. I suppose +you’re aching to join the militia for a chance to shoot down union +drivers the next strike. You may belong to the militia already, for that +matter. You’re the sort—” + +“Hold on, now, that’s too much!” Bill dropped the trunk to the floor +with a bang, straightened up, and thrust his hand into his inside coat +pocket. “I told you I was only kiddin’. There, look at that.” + +It was a union card properly enough. + +“All right, take it along,” Mary Condon said. “And the next time don’t +kid.” + +Her face relaxed as she noticed the ease with which he got the big trunk +to his shoulder, and her eyes glowed as they glanced over the graceful +massiveness of the man. But Bill did not see that. He was too busy with +the trunk. + +The next time he saw Mary Condon was during the Laundry Strike. The +Laundry Workers, but recently organized, were green at the business, and +had petitioned Mary Condon to engineer the strike. Freddie Drummond had +had an inkling of what was coming, and had sent Bill Totts to join the +union and investigate. Bill’s job was in the wash-room, and the men had +been called out first, that morning, in order to stiffen the courage of +the girls; and Bill chanced to be near the door to the mangle-room when +Mary Condon started to enter. The superintendent, who was both large and +stout, barred her way. He wasn’t going to have his girls called out, and +he’d teach her a lesson to mind her own business. And as Mary tried to +squeeze past him he thrust her back with a fat hand on her shoulder. She +glanced around and saw Bill. + +“Here you, Mr. Totts,” she called. “Lend a hand. I want to get in.” + +Bill experienced a startle of warm surprise. She had remembered his name +from his union card. The next moment the superintendent had been plucked +from the doorway raving about rights under the law, and the girls were +deserting their machines. During the rest of that short and successful +strike, Bill constituted himself Mary Condon’s henchman and messenger, +and when it was over returned to the University to be Freddie Drummond +and to wonder what Bill Totts could see in such a woman. + +Freddie Drummond was entirely safe, but Bill had fallen in love. There +was no getting away from the fact of it, and it was this fact that had +given Freddie Drummond his warning. Well, he had done his work, and his +adventures could cease. There was no need for him to cross the Slot +again. All but the last three chapters of his latest, _Labour Tactics +and Strategy_, was finished, and he had sufficient material on hand +adequately to supply those chapters. + +Another conclusion he arrived at, was that in order to sheet-anchor +himself as Freddie Drummond, closer ties and relations in his own social +nook were necessary. It was time that he was married, anyway, and he was +fully aware that if Freddie Drummond didn’t get married, Bill Totts +assuredly would, and the complications were too awful to contemplate. +And so, enters Catherine Van Vorst. She was a college woman herself, and +her father, the one wealthy member of the faculty, was the head of the +Philosophy Department as well. It would be a wise marriage from every +standpoint, Freddie Drummond concluded when the engagement was +consummated and announced. In appearance cold and reserved, aristocratic +and wholesomely conservative, Catherine Van Vorst, though warm in her +way, possessed an inhibition equal to Drummond’s. + +All seemed well with him, but Freddie Drummond could not quite shake off +the call of the underworld, the lure of the free and open, of the +unhampered, irresponsible life South of the Slot. As the time of his +marriage approached, he felt that he had indeed sowed wild oats, and he +felt, moreover, what a good thing it would be if he could have but one +wild fling more, play the good fellow and the wastrel one last time, ere +he settled down to grey lecture-rooms and sober matrimony. And, further +to tempt him, the very last chapter of _Labour Tactics and Strategy_ +remained unwritten for lack of a trifle more of essential data which he +had neglected to gather. + +So Freddie Drummond went down for the last time as Bill Totts, got his +data, and, unfortunately, encountered Mary Condon. Once more installed +in his study, it was not a pleasant thing to look back upon. It made his +warning doubly imperative. Bill Totts had behaved abominably. Not only +had he met Mary Condon at the Central Labour Council, but he had stopped +at a chop-house with her, on the way home, and treated her to oysters. +And before they parted at her door, his arms had been about her, and he +had kissed her on the lips and kissed her repeatedly. And her last words +in his ear, words uttered softly with a catchy sob in the throat that was +nothing more nor less than a love cry, were “Bill . . . dear, dear Bill.” + +Freddie Drummond shuddered at the recollection. He saw the pit yawning +for him. He was not by nature a polygamist, and he was appalled at the +possibilities of the situation. It would have to be put an end to, and +it would end in one only of two ways: either he must become wholly Bill +Totts and be married to Mary Condon, or he must remain wholly Freddie +Drummond and be married to Catherine Van Vorst. Otherwise, his conduct +would be beneath contempt and horrible. + +In the several months that followed, San Francisco was torn with labour +strife. The unions and the employers’ associations had locked horns with +a determination that looked as if they intended to settle the matter, one +way or the other, for all time. But Freddie Drummond corrected proofs, +lectured classes, and did not budge. He devoted himself to Catherine Van +Vorst, and day by day found more to respect and admire in her—nay, even +to love in her. The Street Car Strike tempted him, but not so severely +as he would have expected; and the great Meat Strike came on and left him +cold. The ghost of Bill Totts had been successfully laid, and Freddie +Drummond with rejuvenescent zeal tackled a brochure, long-planned, on the +topic of “diminishing returns.” + +The wedding was two weeks off, when, one afternoon, in San Francisco, +Catherine Van Vorst picked him up and whisked him away to see a Boys’ +Club, recently instituted by the settlement workers in whom she was +interested. It was her brother’s machine, but they were alone with the +exception of the chauffeur. At the junction with Kearny Street, Market +and Geary Streets intersect like the sides of a sharp-angled letter “V.” +They, in the auto, were coming down Market with the intention of +negotiating the sharp apex and going up Geary. But they did not know +what was coming down Geary, timed by fate to meet them at the apex. +While aware from the papers that the Meat Strike was on and that it was +an exceedingly bitter one, all thought of it at that moment was farthest +from Freddie Drummond’s mind. Was he not seated beside Catherine? And +besides, he was carefully expositing to her his views on settlement +work—views that Bill Totts’ adventures had played a part in formulating. + +Coming down Geary Street were six meat waggons. Beside each scab driver +sat a policeman. Front and rear, and along each side of this procession, +marched a protecting escort of one hundred police. Behind the police +rearguard, at a respectful distance, was an orderly but vociferous mob, +several blocks in length, that congested the street from sidewalk to +sidewalk. The Beef Trust was making an effort to supply the hotels, and, +incidentally, to begin the breaking of the strike. The St. Francis had +already been supplied, at a cost of many broken windows and broken heads, +and the expedition was marching to the relief of the Palace Hotel. + +All unwitting, Drummond sat beside Catherine, talking settlement work, as +the auto, honking methodically and dodging traffic, swung in a wide curve +to get around the apex. A big coal waggon, loaded with lump coal and +drawn by four huge horses, just debouching from Kearny Street as though +to turn down Market, blocked their way. The driver of the waggon seemed +undecided, and the chauffeur, running slow but disregarding some shouted +warning from the crossing policemen, swerved the auto to the left, +violating the traffic rules, in order to pass in front of the waggon. + +At that moment Freddie Drummond discontinued his conversation. Nor did +he resume it again, for the situation was developing with the rapidity of +a transformation scene. He heard the roar of the mob at the rear, and +caught a glimpse of the helmeted police and the lurching meat waggons. +At the same moment, laying on his whip, and standing up to his task, the +coal driver rushed horses and waggon squarely in front of the advancing +procession, pulled the horses up sharply, and put on the big brake. Then +he made his lines fast to the brake-handle and sat down with the air of +one who had stopped to stay. The auto had been brought to a stop, too, +by his big panting leaders which had jammed against it. + +Before the chauffeur could back clear, an old Irishman, driving a rickety +express waggon and lashing his one horse to a gallop, had locked wheels +with the auto. Drummond recognized both horse and waggon, for he had +driven them often himself. The Irishman was Pat Morrissey. On the other +side a brewery waggon was locking with the coal waggon, and an east-bound +Kearny Street car, wildly clanging its gong, the motorman shouting +defiance at the crossing policeman, was dashing forward to complete the +blockade. And waggon after waggon was locking and blocking and adding to +the confusion. The meat waggons halted. The police were trapped. The +roar at the rear increased as the mob came on to the attack, while the +vanguard of the police charged the obstructing waggons. + +“We’re in for it,” Drummond remarked coolly to Catherine. + +“Yes,” she nodded, with equal coolness. “What savages they are.” + +His admiration for her doubled on itself. She was indeed his sort. He +would have been satisfied with her even if she had screamed, and clung to +him, but this—this was magnificent. She sat in that storm centre as +calmly as if it had been no more than a block of carriages at the opera. + +The police were struggling to clear a passage. The driver of the coal +waggon, a big man in shirt sleeves, lighted a pipe and sat smoking. He +glanced down complacently at a captain of police who was raving and +cursing at him, and his only acknowledgment was a shrug of the shoulders. +From the rear arose the rat-rat-tat of clubs on heads and a pandemonium +of cursing, yelling, and shouting. A violent accession of noise +proclaimed that the mob had broken through and was dragging a scab from a +waggon. The police captain reinforced from his vanguard, and the mob at +the rear was repelled. Meanwhile, window after window in the high office +building on the right had been opened, and the class-conscious clerks +were raining a shower of office furniture down on the heads of police and +scabs. Waste-baskets, ink-bottles, paper-weights, type-writers—anything +and everything that came to hand was filling the air. + +A policeman, under orders from his captain, clambered to the lofty seat +of the coal waggon to arrest the driver. And the driver, rising +leisurely and peacefully to meet him, suddenly crumpled him in his arms +and threw him down on top of the captain. The driver was a young giant, +and when he climbed on his load and poised a lump of coal in both hands, +a policeman, who was just scaling the waggon from the side, let go and +dropped back to earth. The captain ordered half-a-dozen of his men to +take the waggon. The teamster, scrambling over the load from side to +side, beat them down with huge lumps of coal. + +The crowd on the sidewalks and the teamsters on the locked waggons roared +encouragement and their own delight. The motorman, smashing helmets with +his controller bar, was beaten into insensibility and dragged from his +platform. The captain of police, beside himself at the repulse of his +men, led the next assault on the coal waggon. A score of police were +swarming up the tall-sided fortress. But the teamster multiplied +himself. At times there were six or eight policemen rolling on the +pavement and under the waggon. Engaged in repulsing an attack on the +rear end of his fortress, the teamster turned about to see the captain +just in the act of stepping on to the seat from the front end. He was +still in the air and in most unstable equilibrium, when the teamster +hurled a thirty-pound lump of coal. It caught the captain fairly on the +chest, and he went over backward, striking on a wheeler’s back, tumbling +on to the ground, and jamming against the rear wheel of the auto. + +Catherine thought he was dead, but he picked himself up and charged back. +She reached out her gloved hand and patted the flank of the snorting, +quivering horse. But Drummond did not notice the action. He had eyes +for nothing save the battle of the coal waggon, while somewhere in his +complicated psychology, one Bill Totts was heaving and straining in an +effort to come to life. Drummond believed in law and order and the +maintenance of the established, but this riotous savage within him would +have none of it. Then, if ever, did Freddie Drummond call upon his iron +inhibition to save him. But it is written that the house divided against +itself must fall. And Freddie Drummond found that he had divided all the +will and force of him with Bill Totts, and between them the entity that +constituted the pair of them was being wrenched in twain. + +Freddie Drummond sat in the auto, quite composed, alongside Catherine Van +Vorst; but looking out of Freddie Drummond’s eyes was Bill Totts, and +somewhere behind those eyes, battling for the control of their mutual +body, were Freddie Drummond the sane and conservative sociologist, and +Bill Totts, the class-conscious and bellicose union working man. It was +Bill Totts, looking out of those eyes, who saw the inevitable end of the +battle on the coal waggon. He saw a policeman gain the top of the load, +a second, and a third. They lurched clumsily on the loose footing, but +their long riot-clubs were out and swinging. One blow caught the +teamster on the head. A second he dodged, receiving it on the shoulder. +For him the game was plainly up. He dashed in suddenly, clutched two +policemen in his arms, and hurled himself a prisoner to the pavement, his +hold never relaxing on his two captors. + +Catherine Van Vorst was sick and faint at sight of the blood and brutal +fighting. But her qualms were vanquished by the sensational and most +unexpected happening that followed. The man beside her emitted an +unearthly and uncultured yell and rose to his feet. She saw him spring +over the front seat, leap to the broad rump of the wheeler, and from +there gain the waggon. His onslaught was like a whirlwind. Before the +bewildered officer on the load could guess the errand of this +conventionally clad but excited-seeming gentleman, he was the recipient +of a punch that arched him back through the air to the pavement. A kick +in the face led an ascending policeman to follow his example. A rush of +three more gained the top and locked with Bill Totts in a gigantic +clinch, during which his scalp was opened up by a club, and coat, vest, +and half his starched shirt were torn from him. But the three policemen +were flung far and wide, and Bill Totts, raining down lumps of coal, held +the fort. + +The captain led gallantly to the attack, but was bowled over by a chunk +of coal that burst on his head in black baptism. The need of the police +was to break the blockade in front before the mob could break in at the +rear, and Bill Totts’ need was to hold the waggon till the mob did break +through. So the battle of the coal went on. + +The crowd had recognized its champion. “Big” Bill, as usual, had come to +the front, and Catherine Van Vorst was bewildered by the cries of “Bill! +O you Bill!” that arose on every hand. Pat Morrissey, on his waggon +seat, was jumping and screaming in an ecstasy, “Eat ’em, Bill! Eat ’em! +Eat ’em alive!” From the sidewalk she heard a woman’s voice cry out, +“Look out, Bill—front end!” Bill took the warning and with well-directed +coal cleared the front end of the waggon of assailants. Catherine Van +Vorst turned her head and saw on the curb of the sidewalk a woman with +vivid colouring and flashing black eyes who was staring with all her soul +at the man who had been Freddie Drummond a few minutes before. + +The windows of the office building became vociferous with applause. A +fresh shower of office chairs and filing cabinets descended. The mob had +broken through on one side the line of waggons, and was advancing, each +segregated policeman the centre of a fighting group. The scabs were torn +from their seats, the traces of the horses cut, and the frightened +animals put in flight. Many policemen crawled under the coal waggon for +safety, while the loose horses, with here and there a policeman on their +backs or struggling at their heads to hold them, surged across the +sidewalk opposite the jam and broke into Market Street. + +Catherine Van Vorst heard the woman’s voice calling in warning. She was +back on the curb again, and crying out— + +“Beat it, Bill! Now’s your time! Beat it!” + +The police for the moment had been swept away. Bill Totts leaped to the +pavement and made his way to the woman on the sidewalk. Catherine Van +Vorst saw her throw her arms around him and kiss him on the lips; and +Catherine Van Vorst watched him curiously as he went on down the +sidewalk, one arm around the woman, both talking and laughing, and he +with a volubility and abandon she could never have dreamed possible. + +The police were back again and clearing the jam while waiting for +reinforcements and new drivers and horses. The mob had done its work and +was scattering, and Catherine Van Vorst, still watching, could see the +man she had known as Freddie Drummond. He towered a head above the +crowd. His arm was still about the woman. And she in the motor-car, +watching, saw the pair cross Market Street, cross the Slot, and disappear +down Third Street into the labour ghetto. + + * * * * * + +In the years that followed no more lectures were given in the University +of California by one Freddie Drummond, and no more books on economics and +the labour question appeared over the name of Frederick A. Drummond. On +the other hand there arose a new labour leader, William Totts by name. +He it was who married Mary Condon, President of the International Glove +Workers’ Union No. 974; and he it was who called the notorious Cooks and +Waiters’ Strike, which, before its successful termination, brought out +with it scores of other unions, among which, of the more remotely allied, +were the Chicken Pickers and the Undertakers. + + + + +THE UNPARALLELED INVASION + + +IT was in the year 1976 that the trouble between the world and China +reached its culmination. It was because of this that the celebration of +the Second Centennial of American Liberty was deferred. Many other plans +of the nations of the earth were twisted and tangled and postponed for +the same reason. The world awoke rather abruptly to its danger; but for +over seventy years, unperceived, affairs had been shaping toward this +very end. + +The year 1904 logically marks the beginning of the development that, +seventy years later, was to bring consternation to the whole world. The +Japanese-Russian War took place in 1904, and the historians of the time +gravely noted it down that that event marked the entrance of Japan into +the comity of nations. What it really did mark was the awakening of +China. This awakening, long expected, had finally been given up. The +Western nations had tried to arouse China, and they had failed. Out of +their native optimism and race-egotism they had therefore concluded that +the task was impossible, that China would never awaken. + +What they had failed to take into account was this: _that between them +and China was no common psychological speech_. Their thought-processes +were radically dissimilar. There was no intimate vocabulary. The +Western mind penetrated the Chinese mind but a short distance when it +found itself in a fathomless maze. The Chinese mind penetrated the +Western mind an equally short distance when it fetched up against a +blank, incomprehensible wall. It was all a matter of language. There +was no way to communicate Western ideas to the Chinese mind. China +remained asleep. The material achievement and progress of the West was a +closed book to her; nor could the West open the book. Back and deep down +on the tie-ribs of consciousness, in the mind, say, of the +English-speaking race, was a capacity to thrill to short, Saxon words; +back and deep down on the tie-ribs of consciousness of the Chinese mind +was a capacity to thrill to its own hieroglyphics; but the Chinese mind +could not thrill to short, Saxon words; nor could the English-speaking +mind thrill to hieroglyphics. The fabrics of their minds were woven from +totally different stuffs. They were mental aliens. And so it was that +Western material achievement and progress made no dent on the rounded +sleep of China. + +Came Japan and her victory over Russia in 1904. Now the Japanese race +was the freak and paradox among Eastern peoples. In some strange way +Japan was receptive to all the West had to offer. Japan swiftly +assimilated the Western ideas, and digested them, and so capably applied +them that she suddenly burst forth, full-panoplied, a world-power. There +is no explaining this peculiar openness of Japan to the alien culture of +the West. As well might be explained any biological sport in the animal +kingdom. + +Having decisively thrashed the great Russian Empire, Japan promptly set +about dreaming a colossal dream of empire for herself. Korea she had +made into a granary and a colony; treaty privileges and vulpine diplomacy +gave her the monopoly of Manchuria. But Japan was not satisfied. She +turned her eyes upon China. There lay a vast territory, and in that +territory were the hugest deposits in the world of iron and coal—the +backbone of industrial civilization. Given natural resources, the other +great factor in industry is labour. In that territory was a population +of 400,000,000 souls—one quarter of the then total population of the +earth. Furthermore, the Chinese were excellent workers, while their +fatalistic philosophy (or religion) and their stolid nervous organization +constituted them splendid soldiers—if they were properly managed. +Needless to say, Japan was prepared to furnish that management. + +But best of all, from the standpoint of Japan, the Chinese was a kindred +race. The baffling enigma of the Chinese character to the West was no +baffling enigma to the Japanese. The Japanese understood as we could +never school ourselves or hope to understand. Their mental processes +were the same. The Japanese thought with the same thought-symbols as did +the Chinese, and they thought in the same peculiar grooves. Into the +Chinese mind the Japanese went on where we were balked by the obstacle of +incomprehension. They took the turning which we could not perceive, +twisted around the obstacle, and were out of sight in the ramifications +of the Chinese mind where we could not follow. They were brothers. Long +ago one had borrowed the other’s written language, and, untold +generations before that, they had diverged from the common Mongol stock. +There had been changes, differentiations brought about by diverse +conditions and infusions of other blood; but down at the bottom of their +beings, twisted into the fibres of them, was a heritage in common, a +sameness in kind that time had not obliterated. + +And so Japan took upon herself the management of China. In the years +immediately following the war with Russia, her agents swarmed over the +Chinese Empire. A thousand miles beyond the last mission station toiled +her engineers and spies, clad as coolies, under the guise of itinerant +merchants or proselytizing Buddhist priests, noting down the horse-power +of every waterfall, the likely sites for factories, the heights of +mountains and passes, the strategic advantages and weaknesses, the wealth +of the farming valleys, the number of bullocks in a district or the +number of labourers that could be collected by forced levies. Never was +there such a census, and it could have been taken by no other people than +the dogged, patient, patriotic Japanese. + +But in a short time secrecy was thrown to the winds. Japan’s officers +reorganized the Chinese army; her drill sergeants made the mediæval +warriors over into twentieth century soldiers, accustomed to all the +modern machinery of war and with a higher average of marksmanship than +the soldiers of any Western nation. The engineers of Japan deepened and +widened the intricate system of canals, built factories and foundries, +netted the empire with telegraphs and telephones, and inaugurated the era +of railroad-building. It was these same protagonists of +machine-civilization that discovered the great oil deposits of Chunsan, +the iron mountains of Whang-Sing, the copper ranges of Chinchi, and they +sank the gas wells of Wow-Wee, that most marvellous reservoir of natural +gas in all the world. + +In China’s councils of empire were the Japanese emissaries. In the ears +of the statesmen whispered the Japanese statesmen. The political +reconstruction of the Empire was due to them. They evicted the scholar +class, which was violently reactionary, and put into office progressive +officials. And in every town and city of the Empire newspapers were +started. Of course, Japanese editors ran the policy of these papers, +which policy they got direct from Tokio. It was these papers that +educated and made progressive the great mass of the population. + +China was at last awake. Where the West had failed, Japan succeeded. +She had transmuted Western culture and achievement into terms that were +intelligible to the Chinese understanding. Japan herself, when she so +suddenly awakened, had astounded the world. But at the time she was only +forty millions strong. China’s awakening, with her four hundred millions +and the scientific advance of the world, was frightfully astounding. She +was the colossus of the nations, and swiftly her voice was heard in no +uncertain tones in the affairs and councils of the nations. Japan egged +her on, and the proud Western peoples listened with respectful ears. + +China’s swift and remarkable rise was due, perhaps more than to anything +else, to the superlative quality of her labour. The Chinese was the +perfect type of industry. He had always been that. For sheer ability to +work no worker in the world could compare with him. Work was the breath +of his nostrils. It was to him what wandering and fighting in far lands +and spiritual adventure had been to other peoples. Liberty, to him, +epitomized itself in access to the means of toil. To till the soil and +labour interminably was all he asked of life and the powers that be. And +the awakening of China had given its vast population not merely free and +unlimited access to the means of toil, but access to the highest and most +scientific machine-means of toil. + +China rejuvenescent! It was but a step to China rampant. She discovered +a new pride in herself and a will of her own. She began to chafe under +the guidance of Japan, but she did not chafe long. On Japan’s advice, in +the beginning, she had expelled from the Empire all Western missionaries, +engineers, drill sergeants, merchants, and teachers. She now began to +expel the similar representatives of Japan. The latter’s advisory +statesmen were showered with honours and decorations, and sent home. The +West had awakened Japan, and, as Japan had then requited the West, Japan +was not requited by China. Japan was thanked for her kindly aid and +flung out bag and baggage by her gigantic protégé. The Western nations +chuckled. Japan’s rainbow dream had gone glimmering. She grew angry. +China laughed at her. The blood and the swords of the Samurai would out, +and Japan rashly went to war. This occurred in 1922, and in seven bloody +months Manchuria, Korea, and Formosa were taken away from her and she was +hurled back, bankrupt, to stifle in her tiny, crowded islands. Exit +Japan from the world drama. Thereafter she devoted herself to art, and +her task became to please the world greatly with her creations of wonder +and beauty. + +Contrary to expectation, China did not prove warlike. She had no +Napoleonic dream, and was content to devote herself to the arts of peace. +After a time of disquiet, the idea was accepted that China was to be +feared, not in war, but in commerce. It will be seen that the real +danger was not apprehended. China went on consummating her +machine-civilization. Instead of a large standing army, she developed an +immensely larger and splendidly efficient militia. Her navy was so small +that it was the laughing stock of the world; nor did she attempt to +strengthen her navy. The treaty ports of the world were never entered by +her visiting battleships. + +The real danger lay in the fecundity of her loins, and it was in 1970 +that the first cry of alarm was raised. For some time all territories +adjacent to China had been grumbling at Chinese immigration; but now it +suddenly came home to the world that China’s population was 500,000,000. +She had increased by a hundred millions since her awakening. Burchaldter +called attention to the fact that there were more Chinese in existence +than white-skinned people. He performed a simple sum in arithmetic. He +added together the populations of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, +Australia, South Africa, England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, +European Russia, and all Scandinavia. The result was 495,000,000. And +the population of China overtopped this tremendous total by 5,000,000. +Burchaldter’s figures went round the world, and the world shivered. + +For many centuries China’s population had been constant. Her territory +had been saturated with population; that is to say, her territory, with +the primitive method of production, had supported the maximum limit of +population. But when she awoke and inaugurated the machine-civilization, +her productive power had been enormously increased. Thus, on the same +territory, she was able to support a far larger population. At once the +birth rate began to rise and the death rate to fall. Before, when +population pressed against the means of subsistence, the excess +population had been swept away by famine. But now, thanks to the +machine-civilization, China’s means of subsistence had been enormously +extended, and there were no famines; her population followed on the heels +of the increase in the means of subsistence. + +During this time of transition and development of power, China had +entertained no dreams of conquest. The Chinese was not an imperial race. +It was industrious, thrifty, and peace-loving. War was looked upon as an +unpleasant but necessary task that at times must be performed. And so, +while the Western races had squabbled and fought, and world-adventured +against one another, China had calmly gone on working at her machines and +growing. Now she was spilling over the boundaries of her Empire—that was +all, just spilling over into the adjacent territories with all the +certainty and terrifying slow momentum of a glacier. + +Following upon the alarm raised by Burchaldter’s figures, in 1970 France +made a long-threatened stand. French Indo-China had been overrun, filled +up, by Chinese immigrants. France called a halt. The Chinese wave +flowed on. France assembled a force of a hundred thousand on the +boundary between her unfortunate colony and China, and China sent down an +army of militia-soldiers a million strong. Behind came the wives and +sons and daughters and relatives, with their personal household luggage, +in a second army. The French force was brushed aside like a fly. The +Chinese militia-soldiers, along with their families, over five millions +all told, coolly took possession of French Indo-China and settled down to +stay for a few thousand years. + +Outraged France was in arms. She hurled fleet after fleet against the +coast of China, and nearly bankrupted herself by the effort. China had +no navy. She withdrew like a turtle into her shell. For a year the +French fleets blockaded the coast and bombarded exposed towns and +villages. China did not mind. She did not depend upon the rest of the +world for anything. She calmly kept out of range of the French guns and +went on working. France wept and wailed, wrung her impotent hands and +appealed to the dumfounded nations. Then she landed a punitive +expedition to march to Peking. It was two hundred and fifty thousand +strong, and it was the flower of France. It landed without opposition +and marched into the interior. And that was the last ever seen of it. +The line of communication was snapped on the second day. Not a survivor +came back to tell what had happened. It had been swallowed up in China’s +cavernous maw, that was all. + +In the five years that followed, China’s expansion, in all land +directions, went on apace. Siam was made part of the Empire, and, in +spite of all that England could do, Burma and the Malay Peninsula were +overrun; while all along the long south boundary of Siberia, Russia was +pressed severely by China’s advancing hordes. The process was simple. +First came the Chinese immigration (or, rather, it was already there, +having come there slowly and insidiously during the previous years). +Next came the clash of arms and the brushing away of all opposition by a +monster army of militia-soldiers, followed by their families and +household baggage. And finally came their settling down as colonists in +the conquered territory. Never was there so strange and effective a +method of world conquest. + +Napal and Bhutan were overrun, and the whole northern boundary of India +pressed against by this fearful tide of life. To the west, Bokhara, and, +even to the south and west, Afghanistan, were swallowed up. Persia, +Turkestan, and all Central Asia felt the pressure of the flood. It was +at this time that Burchaldter revised his figures. He had been mistaken. +China’s population must be seven hundred millions, eight hundred +millions, nobody knew how many millions, but at any rate it would soon be +a billion. There were two Chinese for every white-skinned human in the +world, Burchaldter announced, and the world trembled. China’s increase +must have begun immediately, in 1904. It was remembered that since that +date there had not been a single famine. At 5,000,000 a year increase, +her total increase in the intervening seventy years must be 350,000,000. +But who was to know? It might be more. Who was to know anything of this +strange new menace of the twentieth century—China, old China, +rejuvenescent, fruitful, and militant! + +The Convention of 1975 was called at Philadelphia. All the Western +nations, and some few of the Eastern, were represented. Nothing was +accomplished. There was talk of all countries putting bounties on +children to increase the birth rate, but it was laughed to scorn by the +arithmeticians, who pointed out that China was too far in the lead in +that direction. No feasible way of coping with China was suggested. +China was appealed to and threatened by the United Powers, and that was +all the Convention of Philadelphia came to; and the Convention and the +Powers were laughed at by China. Li Tang Fwung, the power behind the +Dragon Throne, deigned to reply. + +“What does China care for the comity of nations?” said Li Tang Fwung. +“We are the most ancient, honourable, and royal of races. We have our +own destiny to accomplish. It is unpleasant that our destiny does not +tally with the destiny of the rest of the world, but what would you? You +have talked windily about the royal races and the heritage of the earth, +and we can only reply that that remains to be seen. You cannot invade +us. Never mind about your navies. Don’t shout. We know our navy is +small. You see we use it for police purposes. We do not care for the +sea. Our strength is in our population, which will soon be a billion. +Thanks to you, we are equipped with all modern war-machinery. Send your +navies. We will not notice them. Send your punitive expeditions, but +first remember France. To land half a million soldiers on our shores +would strain the resources of any of you. And our thousand millions +would swallow them down in a mouthful. Send a million; send five +millions, and we will swallow them down just as readily. Pouf! A mere +nothing, a meagre morsel. Destroy, as you have threatened, you United +States, the ten million coolies we have forced upon your shores—why, the +amount scarcely equals half of our excess birth rate for a year.” + +So spoke Li Tang Fwung. The world was nonplussed, helpless, terrified. +Truly had he spoken. There was no combating China’s amazing birth rate. +If her population was a billion, and was increasing twenty millions a +year, in twenty-five years it would be a billion and a half—equal to the +total population of the world in 1904. And nothing could be done. There +was no way to dam up the over-spilling monstrous flood of life. War was +futile. China laughed at a blockade of her coasts. She welcomed +invasion. In her capacious maw was room for all the hosts of earth that +could be hurled at her. And in the meantime her flood of yellow life +poured out and on over Asia. China laughed and read in their magazines +the learned lucubrations of the distracted Western scholars. + +But there was one scholar China failed to reckon on—Jacobus Laningdale. +Not that he was a scholar, except in the widest sense. Primarily, +Jacobus Laningdale was a scientist, and, up to that time, a very obscure +scientist, a professor employed in the laboratories of the Health Office +of New York City. Jacobus Laningdale’s head was very like any other +head, but in that head was evolved an idea. Also, in that head was the +wisdom to keep that idea secret. He did not write an article for the +magazines. Instead, he asked for a vacation. On September 19, 1975, he +arrived in Washington. It was evening, but he proceeded straight to the +White House, for he had already arranged an audience with the President. +He was closeted with President Moyer for three hours. What passed +between them was not learned by the rest of the world until long after; +in fact, at that time the world was not interested in Jacobus Laningdale. +Next day the President called in his Cabinet. Jacobus Laningdale was +present. The proceedings were kept secret. But that very afternoon +Rufus Cowdery, Secretary of State, left Washington, and early the +following morning sailed for England. The secret that he carried began +to spread, but it spread only among the heads of Governments. Possibly +half-a-dozen men in a nation were entrusted with the idea that had formed +in Jacobus Laningdale’s head. Following the spread of the secret, sprang +up great activity in all the dockyards, arsenals, and navy-yards. The +people of France and Austria became suspicious, but so sincere were their +Governments’ calls for confidence that they acquiesced in the unknown +project that was afoot. + +This was the time of the Great Truce. All countries pledged themselves +solemnly not to go to war with any other country. The first definite +action was the gradual mobilization of the armies of Russia, Germany, +Austria, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Then began the eastward movement. +All railroads into Asia were glutted with troop trains. China was the +objective, that was all that was known. A little later began the great +sea movement. Expeditions of warships were launched from all countries. +Fleet followed fleet, and all proceeded to the coast of China. The +nations cleaned out their navy-yards. They sent their revenue cutters +and dispatch boats and lighthouse tenders, and they sent their last +antiquated cruisers and battleships. Not content with this, they +impressed the merchant marine. The statistics show that 58,640 merchant +steamers, equipped with searchlights and rapid-fire guns, were despatched +by the various nations to China. + +And China smiled and waited. On her land side, along her boundaries, +were millions of the warriors of Europe. She mobilized five times as +many millions of her militia and awaited the invasion. On her sea coasts +she did the same. But China was puzzled. After all this enormous +preparation, there was no invasion. She could not understand. Along the +great Siberian frontier all was quiet. Along her coasts the towns and +villages were not even shelled. Never, in the history of the world, had +there been so mighty a gathering of war fleets. The fleets of all the +world were there, and day and night millions of tons of battleships +ploughed the brine of her coasts, and nothing happened. Nothing was +attempted. Did they think to make her emerge from her shell? China +smiled. Did they think to tire her out, or starve her out? China smiled +again. + +But on May 1, 1976, had the reader been in the imperial city of Peking, +with its then population of eleven millions, he would have witnessed a +curious sight. He would have seen the streets filled with the chattering +yellow populace, every queued head tilted back, every slant eye turned +skyward. And high up in the blue he would have beheld a tiny dot of +black, which, because of its orderly evolutions, he would have identified +as an airship. From this airship, as it curved its flight back and forth +over the city, fell missiles—strange, harmless missiles, tubes of fragile +glass that shattered into thousands of fragments on the streets and +house-tops. But there was nothing deadly about these tubes of glass. +Nothing happened. There were no explosions. It is true, three Chinese +were killed by the tubes dropping on their heads from so enormous a +height; but what were three Chinese against an excess birth rate of +twenty millions? One tube struck perpendicularly in a fish-pond in a +garden and was not broken. It was dragged ashore by the master of the +house. He did not dare to open it, but, accompanied by his friends, and +surrounded by an ever-increasing crowd, he carried the mysterious tube to +the magistrate of the district. The latter was a brave man. With all +eyes upon him, he shattered the tube with a blow from his brass-bowled +pipe. Nothing happened. Of those who were very near, one or two thought +they saw some mosquitoes fly out. That was all. The crowd set up a +great laugh and dispersed. + +As Peking was bombarded by glass tubes, so was all China. The tiny +airships, dispatched from the warships, contained but two men each, and +over all cities, towns, and villages they wheeled and curved, one man +directing the ship, the other man throwing over the glass tubes. + +Had the reader again been in Peking, six weeks later, he would have +looked in vain for the eleven million inhabitants. Some few of them he +would have found, a few hundred thousand, perhaps, their carcasses +festering in the houses and in the deserted streets, and piled high on +the abandoned death-waggons. But for the rest he would have had to seek +along the highways and byways of the Empire. And not all would he have +found fleeing from plague-stricken Peking, for behind them, by hundreds +of thousands of unburied corpses by the wayside, he could have marked +their flight. And as it was with Peking, so it was with all the cities, +towns, and villages of the Empire. The plague smote them all. Nor was +it one plague, nor two plagues; it was a score of plagues. Every +virulent form of infectious death stalked through the land. Too late the +Chinese government apprehended the meaning of the colossal preparations, +the marshalling of the world-hosts, the flights of the tin airships, and +the rain of the tubes of glass. The proclamations of the government were +vain. They could not stop the eleven million plague-stricken wretches, +fleeing from the one city of Peking to spread disease through all the +land. The physicians and health officers died at their posts; and death, +the all-conqueror, rode over the decrees of the Emperor and Li Tang +Fwung. It rode over them as well, for Li Tang Fwung died in the second +week, and the Emperor, hidden away in the Summer Palace, died in the +fourth week. + +Had there been one plague, China might have coped with it. But from a +score of plagues no creature was immune. The man who escaped smallpox +went down before scarlet fever. The man who was immune to yellow fever +was carried away by cholera; and if he were immune to that, too, the +Black Death, which was the bubonic plague, swept him away. For it was +these bacteria, and germs, and microbes, and bacilli, cultured in the +laboratories of the West, that had come down upon China in the rain of +glass. + +All organization vanished. The government crumbled away. Decrees and +proclamations were useless when the men who made them and signed them one +moment were dead the next. Nor could the maddened millions, spurred on +to flight by death, pause to heed anything. They fled from the cities to +infect the country, and wherever they fled they carried the plagues with +them. The hot summer was on—Jacobus Laningdale had selected the time +shrewdly—and the plague festered everywhere. Much is conjectured of what +occurred, and much has been learned from the stories of the few +survivors. The wretched creatures stormed across the Empire in +many-millioned flight. The vast armies China had collected on her +frontiers melted away. The farms were ravaged for food, and no more +crops were planted, while the crops already in were left unattended and +never came to harvest. The most remarkable thing, perhaps, was the +flights. Many millions engaged in them, charging to the bounds of the +Empire to be met and turned back by the gigantic armies of the West. The +slaughter of the mad hosts on the boundaries was stupendous. Time and +again the guarding line was drawn back twenty or thirty miles to escape +the contagion of the multitudinous dead. + +Once the plague broke through and seized upon the German and Austrian +soldiers who were guarding the borders of Turkestan. Preparations had +been made for such a happening, and though sixty thousand soldiers of +Europe were carried off, the international corps of physicians isolated +the contagion and dammed it back. It was during this struggle that it +was suggested that a new plague-germ had originated, that in some way or +other a sort of hybridization between plague-germs had taken place, +producing a new and frightfully virulent germ. First suspected by +Vomberg, who became infected with it and died, it was later isolated and +studied by Stevens, Hazenfelt, Norman, and Landers. + +Such was the unparalleled invasion of China. For that billion of people +there was no hope. Pent in their vast and festering charnel-house, all +organization and cohesion lost, they could do naught but die. They could +not escape. As they were flung back from their land frontiers, so were +they flung back from the sea. Seventy-five thousand vessels patrolled +the coasts. By day their smoking funnels dimmed the sea-rim, and by +night their flashing searchlights ploughed the dark and harrowed it for +the tiniest escaping junk. The attempts of the immense fleets of junks +were pitiful. Not one ever got by the guarding sea-hounds. Modern +war-machinery held back the disorganized mass of China, while the plagues +did the work. + +But old War was made a thing of laughter. Naught remained to him but +patrol duty. China had laughed at war, and war she was getting, but it +was ultra-modern war, twentieth century war, the war of the scientist and +the laboratory, the war of Jacobus Laningdale. Hundred-ton guns were +toys compared with the micro-organic projectiles hurled from the +laboratories, the messengers of death, the destroying angels that stalked +through the empire of a billion souls. + +During all the summer and fall of 1976 China was an inferno. There was +no eluding the microscopic projectiles that sought out the remotest +hiding-places. The hundreds of millions of dead remained unburied and +the germs multiplied themselves, and, toward the last, millions died +daily of starvation. Besides, starvation weakened the victims and +destroyed their natural defences against the plagues. Cannibalism, +murder, and madness reigned. And so perished China. + +Not until the following February, in the coldest weather, were the first +expeditions made. These expeditions were small, composed of scientists +and bodies of troops; but they entered China from every side. In spite +of the most elaborate precautions against infection, numbers of soldiers +and a few of the physicians were stricken. But the exploration went +bravely on. They found China devastated, a howling wilderness through +which wandered bands of wild dogs and desperate bandits who had survived. +All survivors were put to death wherever found. And then began the great +task, the sanitation of China. Five years and hundreds of millions of +treasure were consumed, and then the world moved in—not in zones, as was +the idea of Baron Albrecht, but heterogeneously, according to the +democratic American programme. It was a vast and happy intermingling of +nationalities that settled down in China in 1982 and the years that +followed—a tremendous and successful experiment in cross-fertilization. +We know to-day the splendid mechanical, intellectual, and art output that +followed. + +It was in 1987, the Great Truce having been dissolved, that the ancient +quarrel between France and Germany over Alsace-Lorraine recrudesced. The +war-cloud grew dark and threatening in April, and on April 17 the +Convention of Copenhagen was called. The representatives of the nations +of the world, being present, all nations solemnly pledged themselves +never to use against one another the laboratory methods of warfare they +had employed in the invasion of China. + +—Excerpt from Walt Mervin’s “_Certain Essays in History_.” + + + + +THE ENEMY OF ALL THE WORLD + + +IT was Silas Bannerman who finally ran down that scientific wizard and +arch-enemy of mankind, Emil Gluck. Gluck’s confession, before he went to +the electric chair, threw much light upon the series of mysterious +events, many apparently unrelated, that so perturbed the world between +the years 1933 and 1941. It was not until that remarkable document was +made public that the world dreamed of there being any connection between +the assassination of the King and Queen of Portugal and the murders of +the New York City police officers. While the deeds of Emil Gluck were +all that was abominable, we cannot but feel, to a certain extent, pity +for the unfortunate, malformed, and maltreated genius. This side of his +story has never been told before, and from his confession and from the +great mass of evidence and the documents and records of the time we are +able to construct a fairly accurate portrait of him, and to discern the +factors and pressures that moulded him into the human monster he became +and that drove him onward and downward along the fearful path he trod. + +Emil Gluck was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1895. His father, Josephus +Gluck, was a special policeman and night watchman, who, in the year 1900, +died suddenly of pneumonia. The mother, a pretty, fragile creature, who, +before her marriage, had been a milliner, grieved herself to death over +the loss of her husband. This sensitiveness of the mother was the +heritage that in the boy became morbid and horrible. + +In 1901, the boy, Emil, then six years of age, went to live with his +aunt, Mrs. Ann Bartell. She was his mother’s sister, but in her breast +was no kindly feeling for the sensitive, shrinking boy. Ann Bartell was +a vain, shallow, and heartless woman. Also, she was cursed with poverty +and burdened with a husband who was a lazy, erratic ne’er-do-well. Young +Emil Gluck was not wanted, and Ann Bartell could be trusted to impress +this fact sufficiently upon him. As an illustration of the treatment he +received in that early, formative period, the following instance is +given. + +When he had been living in the Bartell home a little more than a year, he +broke his leg. He sustained the injury through playing on the forbidden +roof—as all boys have done and will continue to do to the end of time. +The leg was broken in two places between the knee and thigh. Emil, +helped by his frightened playmates, managed to drag himself to the front +sidewalk, where he fainted. The children of the neighbourhood were +afraid of the hard-featured shrew who presided over the Bartell house; +but, summoning their resolution, they rang the bell and told Ann Bartell +of the accident. She did not even look at the little lad who lay +stricken on the sidewalk, but slammed the door and went back to her +wash-tub. The time passed. A drizzle came on, and Emil Gluck, out of +his faint, lay sobbing in the rain. The leg should have been set +immediately. As it was, the inflammation rose rapidly and made a nasty +case of it. At the end of two hours, the indignant women of the +neighbourhood protested to Ann Bartell. This time she came out and +looked at the lad. Also she kicked him in the side as he lay helpless at +her feet, and she hysterically disowned him. He was not her child, she +said, and recommended that the ambulance be called to take him to the +city receiving hospital. Then she went back into the house. + +It was a woman, Elizabeth Shepstone, who came along, learned the +situation, and had the boy placed on a shutter. It was she who called +the doctor, and who, brushing aside Ann Bartell, had the boy carried into +the house. When the doctor arrived, Ann Bartell promptly warned him that +she would not pay him for his services. For two months the little Emil +lay in bed, the first month on his back without once being turned over; +and he lay neglected and alone, save for the occasional visits of the +unremunerated and over-worked physician. He had no toys, nothing with +which to beguile the long and tedious hours. No kind word was spoken to +him, no soothing hand laid upon his brow, no single touch or act of +loving tenderness—naught but the reproaches and harshness of Ann Bartell, +and the continually reiterated information that he was not wanted. And +it can well be understood, in such environment, how there was generated +in the lonely, neglected boy much of the bitterness and hostility for his +kind that later was to express itself in deeds so frightful as to terrify +the world. + +It would seem strange that, from the hands of Ann Bartell, Emil Gluck +should have received a college education; but the explanation is simple. +Her ne’er-do-well husband, deserting her, made a strike in the Nevada +goldfields, and returned to her a many-times millionaire. Ann Bartell +hated the boy, and immediately she sent him to the Farristown Academy, a +hundred miles away. Shy and sensitive, a lonely and misunderstood little +soul, he was more lonely than ever at Farristown. He never came home, at +vacation, and holidays, as the other boys did. Instead, he wandered +about the deserted buildings and grounds, befriended and misunderstood by +the servants and gardeners, reading much, it is remembered, spending his +days in the fields or before the fire-place with his nose poked always in +the pages of some book. It was at this time that he over-used his eyes +and was compelled to take up the wearing of glasses, which same were so +prominent in the photographs of him published in the newspapers in 1941. + +He was a remarkable student. Application such as his would have taken +him far; but he did not need application. A glance at a text meant +mastery for him. The result was that he did an immense amount of +collateral reading and acquired more in half a year than did the average +student in half-a-dozen years. In 1909, barely fourteen years of age, he +was ready—“more than ready” the headmaster of the academy said—to enter +Yale or Harvard. His juvenility prevented him from entering those +universities, and so, in 1909, we find him a freshman at historic Bowdoin +College. In 1913 he graduated with highest honours, and immediately +afterward followed Professor Bradlough to Berkeley, California. The one +friend that Emil Gluck discovered in all his life was Professor +Bradlough. The latter’s weak lungs had led him to exchange Maine for +California, the removal being facilitated by the offer of a professorship +in the State University. Throughout the year 1914, Emil Gluck resided in +Berkeley and took special scientific courses. Toward the end of that +year two deaths changed his prospects and his relations with life. The +death of Professor Bradlough took from him the one friend he was ever to +know, and the death of Ann Bartell left him penniless. Hating the +unfortunate lad to the last, she cut him off with one hundred dollars. + +The following year, at twenty years of age, Emil Gluck was enrolled as an +instructor of chemistry in the University of California. Here the years +passed quietly; he faithfully performed the drudgery that brought him his +salary, and, a student always, he took half-a-dozen degrees. He was, +among other things, a Doctor of Sociology, of Philosophy, and of Science, +though he was known to the world, in later days, only as Professor Gluck. + +He was twenty-seven years old when he first sprang into prominence in the +newspapers through the publication of his book, _Sex and Progress_. The +book remains to-day a milestone in the history and philosophy of +marriage. It is a heavy tome of over seven hundred pages, painfully +careful and accurate, and startlingly original. It was a book for +scientists, and not one calculated to make a stir. But Gluck, in the +last chapter, using barely three lines for it, mentioned the hypothetical +desirability of trial marriages. At once the newspapers seized these +three lines, “played them up yellow,” as the slang was in those days, and +set the whole world laughing at Emil Gluck, the bespectacled young +professor of twenty-seven. Photographers snapped him, he was besieged by +reporters, women’s clubs throughout the land passed resolutions +condemning him and his immoral theories; and on the floor of the +California Assembly, while discussing the state appropriation to the +University, a motion demanding the expulsion of Gluck was made under +threat of withholding the appropriation—of course, none of his +persecutors had read the book; the twisted newspaper version of only +three lines of it was enough for them. Here began Emil Gluck’s hatred +for newspaper men. By them his serious and intrinsically valuable work +of six years had been made a laughing-stock and a notoriety. To his +dying day, and to their everlasting regret, he never forgave them. + +It was the newspapers that were responsible for the next disaster that +befell him. For the five years following the publication of his book he +had remained silent, and silence for a lonely man is not good. One can +conjecture sympathetically the awful solitude of Emil Gluck in that +populous University; for he was without friends and without sympathy. +His only recourse was books, and he went on reading and studying +enormously. But in 1927 he accepted an invitation to appear before the +Human Interest Society of Emeryville. He did not trust himself to speak, +and as we write we have before us a copy of his learned paper. It is +sober, scholarly, and scientific, and, it must also be added, +conservative. But in one place he dealt with, and I quote his words, +“the industrial and social revolution that is taking place in society.” +A reporter present seized upon the word “revolution,” divorced it from +the text, and wrote a garbled account that made Emil Gluck appear an +anarchist. At once, “Professor Gluck, anarchist,” flamed over the wires +and was appropriately “featured” in all the newspapers in the land. + +He had attempted to reply to the previous newspaper attack, but now he +remained silent. Bitterness had already corroded his soul. The +University faculty appealed to him to defend himself, but he sullenly +declined, even refusing to enter in defence a copy of his paper to save +himself from expulsion. He refused to resign, and was discharged from +the University faculty. It must be added that political pressure had +been put upon the University Regents and the President. + +Persecuted, maligned, and misunderstood, the forlorn and lonely man made +no attempt at retaliation. All his life he had been sinned against, and +all his life he had sinned against no one. But his cup of bitterness was +not yet full to overflowing. Having lost his position, and being without +any income, he had to find work. His first place was at the Union Iron +Works, in San Francisco, where he proved a most able draughtsman. It was +here that he obtained his firsthand knowledge of battleships and their +construction. But the reporters discovered him and featured him in his +new vocation. He immediately resigned and found another place; but after +the reporters had driven him away from half-a-dozen positions, he steeled +himself to brazen out the newspaper persecution. This occurred when he +started his electroplating establishment—in Oakland, on Telegraph Avenue. +It was a small shop, employing three men and two boys. Gluck himself +worked long hours. Night after night, as Policeman Carew testified on +the stand, he did not leave the shop till one and two in the morning. It +was during this period that he perfected the improved ignition device for +gas-engines, the royalties from which ultimately made him wealthy. + +He started his electroplating establishment early in the spring of 1928, +and it was in the same year that he formed the disastrous love attachment +for Irene Tackley. Now it is not to be imagined that an extraordinary +creature such as Emil Gluck could be any other than an extraordinary +lover. In addition to his genius, his loneliness, and his morbidness, it +must be taken into consideration that he knew nothing about women. +Whatever tides of desire flooded his being, he was unschooled in the +conventional expression of them; while his excessive timidity was bound +to make his love-making unusual. Irene Tackley was a rather pretty young +woman, but shallow and light-headed. At the time she worked in a small +candy store across the street from Gluck’s shop. He used to come in and +drink ice-cream sodas and lemon-squashes, and stare at her. It seems the +girl did not care for him, and merely played with him. He was “queer,” +she said; and at another time she called him a crank when describing how +he sat at the counter and peered at her through his spectacles, blushing +and stammering when she took notice of him, and often leaving the shop in +precipitate confusion. + +Gluck made her the most amazing presents—a silver tea-service, a diamond +ring, a set of furs, opera-glasses, a ponderous _History of the World_ in +many volumes, and a motor-cycle all silver-plated in his own shop. +Enters now the girl’s lover, putting his foot down, showing great anger, +compelling her to return Gluck’s strange assortment of presents. This +man, William Sherbourne, was a gross and stolid creature, a heavy-jawed +man of the working class who had become a successful building-contractor +in a small way. Gluck did not understand. He tried to get an +explanation, attempting to speak with the girl when she went home from +work in the evening. She complained to Sherbourne, and one night he gave +Gluck a beating. It was a very severe beating, for it is on the records +of the Red Cross Emergency Hospital that Gluck was treated there that +night and was unable to leave the hospital for a week. + +Still Gluck did not understand. He continued to seek an explanation from +the girl. In fear of Sherbourne, he applied to the Chief of Police for +permission to carry a revolver, which permission was refused, the +newspapers as usual playing it up sensationally. Then came the murder of +Irene Tackley, six days before her contemplated marriage with Sherbourne. +It was on a Saturday night. She had worked late in the candy store, +departing after eleven o’clock with her week’s wages in her purse. She +rode on a San Pablo Avenue surface car to Thirty-fourth Street, where she +alighted and started to walk the three blocks to her home. That was the +last seen of her alive. Next morning she was found, strangled, in a +vacant lot. + +Emil Gluck was immediately arrested. Nothing that he could do could save +him. He was convicted, not merely on circumstantial evidence, but on +evidence “cooked up” by the Oakland police. There is no discussion but +that a large portion of the evidence was manufactured. The testimony of +Captain Shehan was the sheerest perjury, it being proved long afterward +that on the night in question he had not only not been in the vicinity of +the murder, but that he had been out of the city in a resort on the San +Leandro Road. The unfortunate Gluck received life imprisonment in San +Quentin, while the newspapers and the public held that it was a +miscarriage of justice—that the death penalty should have been visited +upon him. + +Gluck entered San Quentin prison on April 17, 1929. He was then +thirty-four years of age. And for three years and a half, much of the +time in solitary confinement, he was left to meditate upon the injustice +of man. It was during that period that his bitterness corroded home and +he became a hater of all his kind. Three other things he did during the +same period: he wrote his famous treatise, _Human Morals_, his remarkable +brochure, _The Criminal Sane_, and he worked out his awful and monstrous +scheme of revenge. It was an episode that had occurred in his +electroplating establishment that suggested to him his unique weapon of +revenge. As stated in his confession, he worked every detail out +theoretically during his imprisonment, and was able, on his release, +immediately to embark on his career of vengeance. + +His release was sensational. Also it was miserably and criminally +delayed by the soulless legal red tape then in vogue. On the night of +February 1, 1932, Tim Haswell, a hold-up man, was shot during an +attempted robbery by a citizen of Piedmont Heights. Tim Haswell lingered +three days, during which time he not only confessed to the murder of +Irene Tackley, but furnished conclusive proofs of the same. Bert +Danniker, a convict dying of consumption in Folsom Prison, was implicated +as accessory, and his confession followed. It is inconceivable to us of +to-day—the bungling, dilatory processes of justice a generation ago. +Emil Gluck was proved in February to be an innocent man, yet he was not +released until the following October. For eight months, a greatly +wronged man, he was compelled to undergo his unmerited punishment. This +was not conducive to sweetness and light, and we can well imagine how he +ate his soul with bitterness during those dreary eight months. + +He came back to the world in the fall of 1932, as usual a “feature” topic +in all the newspapers. The papers, instead of expressing heartfelt +regret, continued their old sensational persecution. One paper did +more—the _San Francisco Intelligencer_. John Hartwell, its editor, +elaborated an ingenious theory that got around the confessions of the two +criminals and went to show that Gluck was responsible, after all, for the +murder of Irene Tackley. Hartwell died. And Sherbourne died too, while +Policeman Phillipps was shot in the leg and discharged from the Oakland +police force. + +The murder of Hartwell was long a mystery. He was alone in his editorial +office at the time. The reports of the revolver were heard by the office +boy, who rushed in to find Hartwell expiring in his chair. What puzzled +the police was the fact, not merely that he had been shot with his own +revolver, but that the revolver had been exploded in the drawer of his +desk. The bullets had torn through the front of the drawer and entered +his body. The police scouted the theory of suicide, murder was dismissed +as absurd, and the blame was thrown upon the Eureka Smokeless Cartridge +Company. Spontaneous explosion was the police explanation, and the +chemists of the cartridge company were well bullied at the inquest. But +what the police did not know was that across the street, in the Mercer +Building, Room 633, rented by Emil Gluck, had been occupied by Emil Gluck +at the very moment Hartwell’s revolver so mysteriously exploded. + +At the time, no connection was made between Hartwell’s death and the +death of William Sherbourne. Sherbourne had continued to live in the +home he had built for Irene Tackley, and one morning in January, 1933, he +was found dead. Suicide was the verdict of the coroner’s inquest, for he +had been shot by his own revolver. The curious thing that happened that +night was the shooting of Policeman Phillipps on the sidewalk in front of +Sherbourne’s house. The policeman crawled to a police telephone on the +corner and rang up for an ambulance. He claimed that some one had shot +him from behind in the leg. The leg in question was so badly shattered +by three ’38 calibre bullets that amputation was necessary. But when the +police discovered that the damage had been done by his own revolver, a +great laugh went up, and he was charged with having been drunk. In spite +of his denial of having touched a drop, and of his persistent assertion +that the revolver had been in his hip pocket and that he had not laid a +finger to it, he was discharged from the force. Emil Gluck’s confession, +six years later, cleared the unfortunate policeman of disgrace, and he is +alive to-day and in good health, the recipient of a handsome pension from +the city. + +Emil Gluck, having disposed of his immediate enemies, now sought a wider +field, though his enmity for newspaper men and for the police remained +always active. The royalties on his ignition device for gasolene-engines +had mounted up while he lay in prison, and year by year the earning power +of his invention increased. He was independent, able to travel wherever +he willed over the earth and to glut his monstrous appetite for revenge. +He had become a monomaniac and an anarchist—not a philosophic anarchist, +merely, but a violent anarchist. Perhaps the word is misused, and he is +better described as a nihilist, or an annihilist. It is known that he +affiliated with none of the groups of terrorists. He operated wholly +alone, but he created a thousandfold more terror and achieved a +thousandfold more destruction than all the terrorist groups added +together. + +He signalized his departure from California by blowing up Fort Mason. In +his confession he spoke of it as a little experiment—he was merely trying +his hand. For eight years he wandered over the earth, a mysterious +terror, destroying property to the tune of hundreds of millions of +dollars, and destroying countless lives. One good result of his awful +deeds was the destruction he wrought among the terrorists themselves. +Every time he did anything the terrorists in the vicinity were gathered +in by the police dragnet, and many of them were executed. Seventeen were +executed at Rome alone, following the assassination of the Italian King. + +Perhaps the most world-amazing achievement of his was the assassination +of the King and Queen of Portugal. It was their wedding day. All +possible precautions had been taken against the terrorists, and the way +from the cathedral, through Lisbon’s streets, was double-banked with +troops, while a squad of two hundred mounted troopers surrounded the +carriage. Suddenly the amazing thing happened. The automatic rifles of +the troopers began to go off, as well as the rifles, in the immediate +vicinity, of the double-banked infantry. In the excitement the muzzles +of the exploding rifles were turned in all directions. The slaughter was +terrible—horses, troops, spectators, and the King and Queen, were riddled +with bullets. To complicate the affair, in different parts of the crowd +behind the foot-soldiers, two terrorists had bombs explode on their +persons. These bombs they had intended to throw if they got the +opportunity. But who was to know this? The frightful havoc wrought by +the bursting bombs but added to the confusion; it was considered part of +the general attack. + +One puzzling thing that could not be explained away was the conduct of +the troopers with their exploding rifles. It seemed impossible that they +should be in the plot, yet there were the hundreds their flying bullets +had slain, including the King and Queen. On the other hand, more +baffling than ever was the fact that seventy per cent. of the troopers +themselves had been killed or wounded. Some explained this on the ground +that the loyal foot-soldiers, witnessing the attack on the royal +carriage, had opened fire on the traitors. Yet not one bit of evidence +to verify this could be drawn from the survivors, though many were put to +the torture. They contended stubbornly that they had not discharged +their rifles at all, but that their rifles had discharged themselves. +They were laughed at by the chemists, who held that, while it was just +barely probable that a single cartridge, charged with the new smokeless +powder, might spontaneously explode, it was beyond all probability and +possibility for all the cartridges in a given area, so charged, +spontaneously to explode. And so, in the end, no explanation of the +amazing occurrence was reached. The general opinion of the rest of the +world was that the whole affair was a blind panic of the feverish Latins, +precipitated, it was true, by the bursting of two terrorist bombs; and in +this connection was recalled the laughable encounter of long years before +between the Russian fleet and the English fishing boats. + +And Emil Gluck chuckled and went his way. He knew. But how was the +world to know? He had stumbled upon the secret in his old electroplating +shop on Telegraph Avenue in the city of Oakland. It happened, at that +time, that a wireless telegraph station was established by the Thurston +Power Company close to his shop. In a short time his electroplating vat +was put out of order. The vat-wiring had many bad joints, and, on +investigation, Gluck discovered minute welds at the joints in the wiring. +These, by lowering the resistance, had caused an excessive current to +pass through the solution, “boiling” it and spoiling the work. But what +had caused the welds? was the question in Gluck’s mind. His reasoning +was simple. Before the establishment of the wireless station, the vat +had worked well. Not until after the establishment of the wireless +station had the vat been ruined. Therefore the wireless station had been +the cause. But how? He quickly answered the question. If an electric +discharge was capable of operating a coherer across three thousand miles +of ocean, then, certainly, the electric discharges from the wireless +station four hundred feet away could produce coherer effects on the bad +joints in the vat-wiring. + +Gluck thought no more about it at the time. He merely re-wired his vat +and went on electroplating. But afterwards, in prison, he remembered the +incident, and like a flash there came into his mind the full significance +of it. He saw in it the silent, secret weapon with which to revenge +himself on the world. His great discovery, which died with him, was +control over the direction and scope of the electric discharge. At the +time, this was the unsolved problem of wireless telegraphy—as it still is +to-day—but Emil Gluck, in his prison cell, mastered it. And, when he was +released, he applied it. It was fairly simple, given the directing power +that was his, to introduce a spark into the powder-magazines of a fort, a +battleship, or a revolver. And not alone could he thus explode powder at +a distance, but he could ignite conflagrations. The great Boston fire +was started by him—quite by accident, however, as he stated in his +confession, adding that it was a pleasing accident and that he had never +had any reason to regret it. + +It was Emil Gluck that caused the terrible German-American War, with the +loss of 800,000 lives and the consumption of almost incalculable +treasure. It will be remembered that in 1939, because of the Pickard +incident, strained relations existed between the two countries. Germany, +though aggrieved, was not anxious for war, and, as a peace token, sent +the Crown Prince and seven battleships on a friendly visit to the United +States. On the night of February 15, the seven warships lay at anchor in +the Hudson opposite New York City. And on that night Emil Gluck, alone, +with all his apparatus on board, was out in a launch. This launch, it +was afterwards proved, was bought by him from the Ross Turner Company, +while much of the apparatus he used that night had been purchased from +the Columbia Electric Works. But this was not known at the time. All +that was known was that the seven battleships blew up, one after another, +at regular four-minute intervals. Ninety per cent. of the crews and +officers, along with the Crown Prince, perished. Many years before, the +American battleship _Maine_ had been blown up in the harbour of Havana, +and war with Spain had immediately followed—though there has always +existed a reasonable doubt as to whether the explosion was due to +conspiracy or accident. But accident could not explain the blowing up of +the seven battleships on the Hudson at four-minute intervals. Germany +believed that it had been done by a submarine, and immediately declared +war. It was six months after Gluck’s confession that she returned the +Philippines and Hawaii to the United States. + +In the meanwhile Emil Gluck, the malevolent wizard and arch-hater, +travelled his whirlwind path of destruction. He left no traces. +Scientifically thorough, he always cleaned up after himself. His method +was to rent a room or a house, and secretly to install his +apparatus—which apparatus, by the way, he so perfected and simplified +that it occupied little space. After he had accomplished his purpose he +carefully removed the apparatus. He bade fair to live out a long life of +horrible crime. + +The epidemic of shooting of New York City policemen was a remarkable +affair. It became one of the horror mysteries of the time. In two short +weeks over a hundred policemen were shot in the legs by their own +revolvers. Inspector Jones did not solve the mystery, but it was his +idea that finally outwitted Gluck. On his recommendation the policemen +ceased carrying revolvers, and no more accidental shootings occurred. + +It was in the early spring of 1940 that Gluck destroyed the Mare Island +navy-yard. From a room in Vallejo he sent his electric discharges across +the Vallejo Straits to Mare Island. He first played his flashes on the +battleship _Maryland_. She lay at the dock of one of the mine-magazines. +On her forward deck, on a huge temporary platform of timbers, were +disposed over a hundred mines. These mines were for the defence of the +Golden Gate. Any one of these mines was capable of destroying a dozen +battleships, and there were over a hundred mines. The destruction was +terrific, but it was only Gluck’s overture. He played his flashes down +the Mare Island shore, blowing up five torpedo boats, the torpedo +station, and the great magazine at the eastern end of the island. +Returning westward again, and scooping in occasional isolated magazines +on the high ground back from the shore, he blew up three cruisers and the +battleships _Oregon_, _Delaware_, _New Hampshire_, and _Florida_—the +latter had just gone into dry-dock, and the magnificent dry-dock was +destroyed along with her. + +It was a frightful catastrophe, and a shiver of horror passed through the +land. But it was nothing to what was to follow. In the late fall of +that year Emil Gluck made a clean sweep of the Atlantic seaboard from +Maine to Florida. Nothing escaped. Forts, mines, coast defences of all +sorts, torpedo stations, magazines—everything went up. Three months +afterward, in midwinter, he smote the north shore of the Mediterranean +from Gibraltar to Greece in the same stupefying manner. A wail went up +from the nations. It was clear that human agency was behind all this +destruction, and it was equally clear, through Emil Gluck’s impartiality, +that the destruction was not the work of any particular nation. One +thing was patent, namely, that whoever was the human behind it all, that +human was a menace to the world. No nation was safe. There was no +defence against this unknown and all-powerful foe. Warfare was +futile—nay, not merely futile but itself the very essence of the peril. +For a twelve-month the manufacture of powder ceased, and all soldiers and +sailors were withdrawn from all fortifications and war vessels. And even +a world-disarmament was seriously considered at the Convention of the +Powers, held at The Hague at that time. + +And then Silas Bannerman, a secret service agent of the United States, +leaped into world-fame by arresting Emil Gluck. At first Bannerman was +laughed at, but he had prepared his case well, and in a few weeks the +most sceptical were convinced of Emil Gluck’s guilt. The one thing, +however, that Silas Bannerman never succeeded in explaining, even to his +own satisfaction, was how first he came to connect Gluck with the +atrocious crimes. It is true, Bannerman was in Vallejo, on secret +government business, at the time of the destruction of Mare Island; and +it is true that on the streets of Vallejo Emil Gluck was pointed out to +him as a queer crank; but no impression was made at the time. It was not +until afterward, when on a vacation in the Rocky Mountains and when +reading the first published reports of the destruction along the Atlantic +Coast, that suddenly Bannerman thought of Emil Gluck. And on the instant +there flashed into his mind the connection between Gluck and the +destruction. It was only an hypothesis, but it was sufficient. The +great thing was the conception of the hypothesis, in itself an act of +unconscious cerebration—a thing as unaccountable as the flashing, for +instance, into Newton’s mind of the principle of gravitation. + +The rest was easy. Where was Gluck at the time of the destruction along +the Atlantic sea-board? was the question that formed in Bannerman’s mind. +By his own request he was put upon the case. In no time he ascertained +that Gluck had himself been up and down the Atlantic Coast in the late +fall of 1940. Also he ascertained that Gluck had been in New York City +during the epidemic of the shooting of police officers. Where was Gluck +now? was Bannerman’s next query. And, as if in answer, came the +wholesale destruction along the Mediterranean. Gluck had sailed for +Europe a month before—Bannerman knew that. It was not necessary for +Bannerman to go to Europe. By means of cable messages and the +co-operation of the European secret services, he traced Gluck’s course +along the Mediterranean and found that in every instance it coincided +with the blowing up of coast defences and ships. Also, he learned that +Gluck had just sailed on the Green Star liner _Plutonic_ for the United +States. + +The case was complete in Bannerman’s mind, though in the interval of +waiting he worked up the details. In this he was ably assisted by George +Brown, an operator employed by the Wood’s System of Wireless Telegraphy. +When the _Plutonic_ arrived off Sandy Hook she was boarded by Bannerman +from a Government tug, and Emil Gluck was made a prisoner. The trial and +the confession followed. In the confession Gluck professed regret only +for one thing, namely, that he had taken his time. As he said, had he +dreamed that he was ever to be discovered he would have worked more +rapidly and accomplished a thousand times the destruction he did. His +secret died with him, though it is now known that the French Government +managed to get access to him and offered him a billion francs for his +invention wherewith he was able to direct and closely to confine electric +discharges. “What!” was Gluck’s reply—“to sell to you that which would +enable you to enslave and maltreat suffering Humanity?” And though the +war departments of the nations have continued to experiment in their +secret laboratories, they have so far failed to light upon the slightest +trace of the secret. Emil Gluck was executed on December 4, 1941, and so +died, at the age of forty-six, one of the world’s most unfortunate +geniuses, a man of tremendous intellect, but whose mighty powers, instead +of making toward good, were so twisted and warped that he became the most +amazing of criminals. + +—Culled from Mr. A. G. Burnside’s “Eccentricitics of Crime,” by kind +permission of the publishers, Messrs. Holiday and Whitsund. + + + + +THE DREAM OF DEBS + + +I AWOKE fully an hour before my customary time. This in itself was +remarkable, and I lay very wide awake, pondering over it. Something was +the matter, something was wrong—I knew not what. I was oppressed by a +premonition of something terrible that had happened or was about to +happen. But what was it? I strove to orient myself. I remembered that +at the time of the Great Earthquake of 1906 many claimed they awakened +some moments before the first shock and that during these moments they +experienced strange feelings of dread. Was San Francisco again to be +visited by earthquake? + +I lay for a full minute, numbly expectant, but there occurred no reeling +of walls nor shock and grind of falling masonry. All was quiet. That +was it! The silence! No wonder I had been perturbed. The hum of the +great live city was strangely absent. The surface cars passed along my +street, at that time of day, on an average of one every three minutes; +but in the ten succeeding minutes not a car passed. Perhaps it was a +street-railway strike, was my thought; or perhaps there had been an +accident and the power was shut off. But no, the silence was too +profound. I heard no jar and rattle of waggon wheels, nor stamp of +iron-shod hoofs straining up the steep cobble-stones. + +Pressing the push-button beside my bed, I strove to hear the sound of the +bell, though I well knew it was impossible for the sound to rise three +stories to me even if the bell did ring. It rang all right, for a few +minutes later Brown entered with the tray and morning paper. Though his +features were impassive as ever, I noted a startled, apprehensive light +in his eyes. I noted, also, that there was no cream on the tray. + +“The Creamery did not deliver this morning,” he explained; “nor did the +bakery.” + +I glanced again at the tray. There were no fresh French rolls—only +slices of stale graham bread from yesterday, the most detestable of bread +so far as I was concerned. + +“Nothing was delivered this morning, sir,” Brown started to explain +apologetically; but I interrupted him. + +“The paper?” + +“Yes, sir, it was delivered, but it was the only thing, and it is the +last time, too. There won’t be any paper to-morrow. The paper says so. +Can I send out and get you some condensed milk?” + +I shook my head, accepted the coffee black, and spread open the paper. +The headlines explained everything—explained too much, in fact, for the +lengths of pessimism to which the journal went were ridiculous. A +general strike, it said, had been called all over the United States; and +most foreboding anxieties were expressed concerning the provisioning of +the great cities. + +I read on hastily, skimming much and remembering much of labour troubles +in the past. For a generation the general strike had been the dream of +organized labour, which dream had arisen originally in the mind of Debs, +one of the great labour leaders of thirty years before. I recollected +that in my young college-settlement days I had even written an article on +the subject for one of the magazines and that I had entitled it “The +Dream of Debs.” And I must confess that I had treated the idea very +cavalierly and academically as a dream and nothing more. Time and the +world had rolled on, Gompers was gone, the American Federation of Labour +was gone, and gone was Debs with all his wild revolutionary ideas; but +the dream had persisted, and here it was at last realized in fact. But I +laughed, as I read, at the journal’s gloomy outlook. I knew better. I +had seen organized labour worsted in too many conflicts. It would be a +matter only of days when the thing would be settled. This was a national +strike, and it wouldn’t take the Government long to break it. + +I threw the paper down and proceeded to dress. It would certainly be +interesting to be out in the streets of San Francisco when not a wheel +was turning and the whole city was taking an enforced vacation. + +“I beg your pardon, sir,” Brown said, as he handed me my cigar-case, “but +Mr. Harmmed has asked to see you before you go out.” + +“Send him in right away,” I answered. + +Harmmed was the butler. When he entered I could see he was labouring +under controlled excitement. He came at once to the point. + +“What shall I do, sir? There will be needed provisions, and the delivery +drivers are on strike. And the electricity is shut off—I guess they’re +on strike, too.” + +“Are the shops open?” I asked. + +“Only the small ones, sir. The retail clerks are out, and the big ones +can’t open; but the owners and their families are running the little ones +themselves.” + +“Then take the machine,” I said, “and go the rounds and make your +purchases. Buy plenty of everything you need or may need. Get a box of +candles—no, get half-a-dozen boxes. And, when you’re done, tell Harrison +to bring the machine around to the club for me—not later than eleven.” + +Harmmed shook his head gravely. “Mr. Harrison has struck along with the +Chauffeurs’ Union, and I don’t know how to run the machine myself.” + +“Oh, ho, he has, has he?” said I. “Well, when next Mister Harrison happens +around you tell him that he can look elsewhere for a position.” + +“Yes, sir.” + +“You don’t happen to belong to a Butlers’ Union, do you, Harmmed?” + +“No, sir,” was the answer. “And even if I did I’d not desert my employer +in a crisis like this. No, sir, I would—” + +“All right, thank you,” I said. “Now you get ready to accompany me. +I’ll run the machine myself, and we’ll lay in a stock of provisions to +stand a siege.” + +It was a beautiful first of May, even as May days go. The sky was +cloudless, there was no wind, and the air was warm—almost balmy. Many +autos were out, but the owners were driving them themselves. The streets +were crowded but quiet. The working class, dressed in its Sunday best, +was out taking the air and observing the effects of the strike. It was +all so unusual, and withal so peaceful, that I found myself enjoying it. +My nerves were tingling with mild excitement. It was a sort of placid +adventure. I passed Miss Chickering. She was at the helm of her little +runabout. She swung around and came after me, catching me at the corner. + +“Oh, Mr. Corf!”’ she hailed. “Do you know where I can buy candles? I’ve +been to a dozen shops, and they’re all sold out. It’s dreadfully awful, +isn’t it?” + +But her sparkling eyes gave the lie to her words. Like the rest of us, +she was enjoying it hugely. Quite an adventure it was, getting those +candles. It was not until we went across the city and down into the +working-class quarter south of Market Street that we found small corner +groceries that had not yet sold out. Miss Chickering thought one box was +sufficient, but I persuaded her into taking four. My car was large, and +I laid in a dozen boxes. There was no telling what delays might arise in +the settlement of the strike. Also, I filled the car with sacks of +flour, baking-powder, tinned goods, and all the ordinary necessaries of +life suggested by Harmmed, who fussed around and clucked over the +purchases like an anxious old hen. + +The remarkable thing, that first day of the strike, was that no one +really apprehended anything serious. The announcement of organized +labour in the morning papers that it was prepared to stay out a month or +three months was laughed at. And yet that very first day we might have +guessed as much from the fact that the working class took practically no +part in the great rush to buy provisions. Of course not. For weeks and +months, craftily and secretly, the whole working class had been laying in +private stocks of provisions. That was why we were permitted to go down +and buy out the little groceries in the working-class neighbourhoods. + +It was not until I arrived at the club that afternoon that I began to +feel the first alarm. Everything was in confusion. There were no olives +for the cocktails, and the service was by hitches and jerks. Most of the +men were angry, and all were worried. A babel of voices greeted me as I +entered. General Folsom, nursing his capacious paunch in a window-seat +in the smoking-room was defending himself against half-a-dozen excited +gentlemen who were demanding that he should do something. + +“What can I do more than I have done?” he was saying. “There are no +orders from Washington. If you gentlemen will get a wire through I’ll do +anything I am commanded to do. But I don’t see what can be done. The +first thing I did this morning, as soon as I learned of the strike, was +to order in the troops from the Presidio—three thousand of them. They’re +guarding the banks, the Mint, the post office, and all the public +buildings. There is no disorder whatever. The strikers are keeping the +peace perfectly. You can’t expect me to shoot them down as they walk +along the streets with wives and children all in their best bib and +tucker.” + +“I’d like to know what’s happening on Wall Street,” I heard Jimmy Wombold +say as I passed along. I could imagine his anxiety, for I knew that he +was deep in the big Consolidated-Western deal. + +“Say, Corf,” Atkinson bustled up to me, “is your machine running?” + +“Yes,” I answered, “but what’s the matter with your own?” + +“Broken down, and the garages are all closed. And my wife’s somewhere +around Truckee, I think, stalled on the overland. Can’t get a wire to +her for love or money. She should have arrived this evening. She may be +starving. Lend me your machine.” + +“Can’t get it across the bay,” Halstead spoke up. “The ferries aren’t +running. But I tell you what you can do. There’s Rollinson—oh, +Rollinson, come here a moment. Atkinson wants to get a machine across +the bay. His wife is stuck on the overland at Truckee. Can’t you bring +the _Lurlette_ across from Tiburon and carry the machine over for him?” + +The _Lurlette_ was a two-hundred-ton, ocean-going schooner-yacht. + +Rollinson shook his head. “You couldn’t get a longshoreman to land the +machine on board, even if I could get the _Lurlette_ over, which I can’t, +for the crew are members of the Coast Seamen’s Union, and they’re on +strike along with the rest.” + +“But my wife may be starving,” I could hear Atkinson wailing as I moved +on. + +At the other end of the smoking-room I ran into a group of men bunched +excitedly and angrily around Bertie Messener. And Bertie was stirring +them up and prodding them in his cool, cynical way. Bertie didn’t care +about the strike. He didn’t care much about anything. He was blasé—at +least in all the clean things of life; the nasty things had no attraction +for him. He was worth twenty millions, all of it in safe investments, +and he had never done a tap of productive work in his life—inherited it +all from his father and two uncles. He had been everywhere, seen +everything, and done everything but get married, and this last in the +face of the grim and determined attack of a few hundred ambitious mammas. +For years he had been the greatest catch, and as yet he had avoided being +caught. He was disgracefully eligible. On top of his wealth he was +young, handsome, and, as I said before, clean. He was a great athlete, a +young blond god that did everything perfectly and admirably with the +solitary exception of matrimony. And he didn’t care about anything, had +no ambitions, no passions, no desire to do the very things he did so much +better than other men. + +“This is sedition!” one man in the group was crying. Another called it +revolt and revolution, and another called it anarchy. + +“I can’t see it,” Bertie said. “I have been out in the streets all +morning. Perfect order reigns. I never saw a more law-abiding populace. +There’s no use calling it names. It’s not any of those things. It’s +just what it claims to be, a general strike, and it’s your turn to play, +gentlemen.” + +“And we’ll play all right!” cried Garfield, one of the traction +millionaires. “We’ll show this dirt where its place is—the beasts! Wait +till the Government takes a hand.” + +“But where is the Government?” Bertie interposed. “It might as well be +at the bottom of the sea so far as you’re concerned. You don’t know +what’s happening at Washington. You don’t know whether you’ve got a +Government or not.” + +“Don’t you worry about that,” Garfield blurted out. + +“I assure you I’m not worrying,” Bertie smiled languidly. “But it seems +to me it’s what you fellows are doing. Look in the glass, Garfield.” + +Garfield did not look, but had he looked he would have seen a very +excited gentleman with rumpled, iron-grey hair, a flushed face, mouth +sullen and vindictive, and eyes wildly gleaming. + +“It’s not right, I tell you,” little Hanover said; and from his tone I +was sure that he had already said it a number of times. + +“Now that’s going too far, Hanover,” Bertie replied. “You fellows make +me tired. You’re all open-shop men. You’ve eroded my eardrums with your +endless gabble for the open shop and the right of a man to work. You’ve +harangued along those lines for years. Labour is doing nothing wrong in +going out on this general strike. It is violating no law of God nor man. +Don’t you talk, Hanover. You’ve been ringing the changes too long on the +God-given right to work . . . or not to work; you can’t escape the +corollary. It’s a dirty little sordid scrap, that’s all the whole thing +is. You’ve got labour down and gouged it, and now labour’s got you down +and is gouging you, that’s all, and you’re squealing.” + +Every man in the group broke out in indignant denials that labour had +ever been gouged. + +“No, sir!” Garfield was shouting. “We’ve done the best for labour. +Instead of gouging it, we’ve given it a chance to live. We’ve made work +for it. Where would labour be if it hadn’t been for us?” + +“A whole lot better off,” Bertie sneered. “You’ve got labour down and +gouged it every time you got a chance, and you went out of your way to +make chances.” + +“No! No!” were the cries. + +“There was the teamsters’ strike, right here in San Francisco,” Bertie +went on imperturbably. “The Employers’ Association precipitated that +strike. You know that. And you know I know it, too, for I’ve sat in +these very rooms and heard the inside talk and news of the fight. First +you precipitated the strike, then you bought the Mayor and the Chief of +Police and broke the strike. A pretty spectacle, you philanthropists +getting the teamsters down and gouging them. + +“Hold on, I’m not through with you. It’s only last year that the labour +ticket of Colorado elected a governor. He was never seated. You know +why. You know how your brother philanthropists and capitalists of +Colorado worked it. It was a case of getting labour down and gouging it. +You kept the president of the South-western Amalgamated Association of +Miners in jail for three years on trumped-up murder charges, and with him +out of the way you broke up the association. That was gouging labour, +you’ll admit. The third time the graduated income tax was declared +unconstitutional was a gouge. So was the eight-hour Bill you killed in +the last Congress. + +“And of all unmitigated immoral gouges, your destruction of the +closed-shop principle was the limit. You know how it was done. You +bought out Farburg, the last president of the old American Federation of +Labour. He was your creature—or the creature of all the trusts and +employers’ associations, which is the same thing. You precipitated the +big closed-shop strike. Farburg betrayed that strike. You won, and the +old American Federation of Labour crumbled to pieces. You fellows +destroyed it, and by so doing undid yourselves; for right on top of it +began the organization of the I.L.W.—the biggest and solidest +organization of labour the United States has ever seen, and you are +responsible for its existence and for the present general strike. You +smashed all the old federations and drove labour into the I.L.W., and the +I.L.W. called the general strike—still fighting for the closed shop. And +then you have the effrontery to stand here face to face and tell me that +you never got labour down and gouged it. Bah!” + +This time there were no denials. Garfield broke out in self-defence— + +“We’ve done nothing we were not compelled to do, if we were to win.” + +“I’m not saying anything about that,” Bertie answered. “What I am +complaining about is your squealing now that you’re getting a taste of +your own medicine. How many strikes have you won by starving labour into +submission? Well, labour’s worked out a scheme whereby to starve you +into submission. It wants the closed shop, and, if it can get it by +starving you, why, starve you shall.” + +“I notice that you have profited in the past by those very labour gouges +you mention,” insinuated Brentwood, one of the wiliest and most astute of +our corporation lawyers. “The receiver is as bad as the thief,” he +sneered. “You had no hand in the gouging, but you took your whack out of +the gouge.” + +“That is quite beside the question, Brentwood,” Bertie drawled. “You’re +as bad as Hanover, intruding the moral element. I haven’t said that +anything is right or wrong. It’s all a rotten game, I know; and my sole +kick is that you fellows are squealing now that you’re down and labour’s +taking a gouge out of you. Of course I’ve taken the profits from the +gouging and, thanks to you, gentlemen, without having personally to do +the dirty work. You did that for me—oh, believe me, not because I am +more virtuous than you, but because my good father and his various +brothers left me a lot of money with which to pay for the dirty work.” + +“If you mean to insinuate—” Brentwood began hotly. + +“Hold on, don’t get all-ruffled up,” Bertie interposed insolently. +“There’s no use in playing hypocrites in this thieves’ den. The high and +lofty is all right for the newspapers, boys’ clubs, and Sunday +schools—that’s part of the game; but for heaven’s sake don’t let’s play +it on one another. You know, and you know that I know just what jobbery +was done in the building trades’ strike last fall, who put up the money, +who did the work, and who profited by it.” (Brentwood flushed darkly.) +“But we are all tarred with the same brush, and the best thing for us to +do is to leave morality out of it. Again I repeat, play the game, play +it to the last finish, but for goodness’ sake don’t squeal when you get +hurt.” + +When I left the group Bertie was off on a new tack tormenting them with +the more serious aspects of the situation, pointing out the shortage of +supplies that was already making itself felt, and asking them what they +were going to do about it. A little later I met him in the cloak-room, +leaving, and gave him a lift home in my machine. + +“It’s a great stroke, this general strike,” he said, as we bowled along +through the crowded but orderly streets. “It’s a smashing body-blow. +Labour caught us napping and struck at our weakest place, the stomach. +I’m going to get out of San Francisco, Corf. Take my advice and get out, +too. Head for the country, anywhere. You’ll have more chance. Buy up a +stock of supplies and get into a tent or a cabin somewhere. Soon +there’ll be nothing but starvation in this city for such as we.” + +How correct Bertie Messener was I never dreamed. I decided that he was +an alarmist. As for myself, I was content to remain and watch the fun. +After I dropped him, instead of going directly home, I went on in a hunt +for more food. To my surprise, I learned that the small groceries where +I had bought in the morning were sold out. I extended my search to the +Potrero, and by good luck managed to pick up another box of candles, two +sacks of wheat flour, ten pounds of graham flour (which would do for the +servants), a case of tinned corn, and two cases of tinned tomatoes. It +did look as though there was going to be at least a temporary food +shortage, and I hugged myself over the goodly stock of provisions I had +laid in. + +The next morning I had my coffee in bed as usual, and, more than the +cream, I missed the daily paper. It was this absence of knowledge of +what was going on in the world that I found the chief hardship. Down at +the club there was little news. Rider had crossed from Oakland in his +launch, and Halstead had been down to San Jose and back in his machine. +They reported the same conditions in those places as in San Francisco. +Everything was tied up by the strike. All grocery stocks had been bought +out by the upper classes. And perfect order reigned. But what was +happening over the rest of the country—in Chicago? New York? +Washington? Most probably the same things that were happening with us, +we concluded; but the fact that we did not know with absolute surety was +irritating. + +General Folsom had a bit of news. An attempt had been made to place army +telegraphers in the telegraph offices, but the wires had been cut in +every direction. This was, so far, the one unlawful act committed by +labour, and that it was a concerted act he was fully convinced. He had +communicated by wireless with the army post at Benicia, the telegraph +lines were even then being patrolled by soldiers all the way to +Sacramento. Once, for one short instant, they had got the Sacramento +call, then the wires, somewhere, were cut again. General Folsom reasoned +that similar attempts to open communication were being made by the +authorities all the way across the continent, but he was non-committal as +to whether or not he thought the attempt would succeed. What worried him +was the wire-cutting; he could not but believe that it was an important +part of the deep-laid labour conspiracy. Also, he regretted that the +Government had not long since established its projected chain of wireless +stations. + +The days came and went, and for a while it was a humdrum time. Nothing +happened. The edge of excitement had become blunted. The streets were +not so crowded. The working class did not come uptown any more to see +how we were taking the strike. And there were not so many automobiles +running around. The repair-shops and garages were closed, and whenever a +machine broke down it went out of commission. The clutch on mine broke, +and neither love nor money could get it repaired. Like the rest, I was +now walking. San Francisco lay dead, and we did not know what was +happening over the rest of the country. But from the very fact that we +did not know we could conclude only that the rest of the country lay as +dead as San Francisco. From time to time the city was placarded with the +proclamations of organized labour—these had been printed months before, +and evidenced how thoroughly the I.L.W. had prepared for the strike. +Every detail had been worked out long in advance. No violence had +occurred as yet, with the exception of the shooting of a few wire-cutters +by the soldiers, but the people of the slums were starving and growing +ominously restless. + +The business men, the millionaires, and the professional class held +meetings and passed resolutions, but there was no way of making the +proclamations public. They could not even get them printed. One result +of these meetings, however, was that General Folsom was persuaded into +taking military possession of the wholesale houses and of all the flour, +grain, and food warehouses. It was high time, for suffering was becoming +acute in the homes of the rich, and bread-lines were necessary. I knew +that my servants were beginning to draw long faces, and it was +amazing—the hole they made in my stock of provisions. In fact, as I +afterward surmised, each servant was stealing from me and secreting a +private stock of provisions for himself. + +But with the formation of the bread-lines came new troubles. There was +only so much of a food reserve in San Francisco, and at the best it could +not last long. Organized labour, we knew, had its private supplies; +nevertheless, the whole working class joined the bread-lines. As a +result, the provisions General Folsom had taken possession of diminished +with perilous rapidity. How were the soldiers to distinguish between a +shabby middle-class man, a member of the I.L.W., or a slum dweller? The +first and the last had to be fed, but the soldiers did not know all the +I.L.W. men in the city, much less the wives and sons and daughters of the +I.L.W. men. The employers helping, a few of the known union men were +flung out of the bread-lines; but that amounted to nothing. To make +matters worse, the Government tugs that had been hauling food from the +army depots on Mare Island to Angel Island found no more food to haul. +The soldiers now received their rations from the confiscated provisions, +and they received them first. + +The beginning of the end was in sight. Violence was beginning to show +its face. Law and order were passing away, and passing away, I must +confess, among the slum people and the upper classes. Organized labour +still maintained perfect order. It could well afford to—it had plenty to +eat. I remember the afternoon at the club when I caught Halstead and +Brentwood whispering in a corner. They took me in on the venture. +Brentwood’s machine was still in running order, and they were going out +cow-stealing. Halstead had a long butcher knife and a cleaver. We went +out to the outskirts of the city. Here and there were cows grazing, but +always they were guarded by their owners. We pursued our quest, +following along the fringe of the city to the east, and on the hills near +Hunter’s Point we came upon a cow guarded by a little girl. There was +also a young calf with the cow. We wasted no time on preliminaries. The +little girl ran away screaming, while we slaughtered the cow. I omit the +details, for they are not nice—we were unaccustomed to such work, and we +bungled it. + +But in the midst of it, working with the haste of fear, we heard cries, +and we saw a number of men running toward us. We abandoned the spoils +and took to our heels. To our surprise we were not pursued. Looking +back, we saw the men hurriedly cutting up the cow. They had been on the +same lay as ourselves. We argued that there was plenty for all, and ran +back. The scene that followed beggars description. We fought and +squabbled over the division like savages. Brentwood, I remember, was a +perfect brute, snarling and snapping and threatening that murder would be +done if we did not get our proper share. + +And we were getting our share when there occurred a new irruption on the +scene. This time it was the dreaded peace officers of the I.L.W. The +little girl had brought them. They were armed with whips and clubs, and +there were a score of them. The little girl danced up and down in anger, +the tears streaming down her cheeks, crying: “Give it to ’em! Give it to +’em! That guy with the specs—he did it! Mash his face for him! Mash +his face!” That guy with the specs was I, and I got my face mashed, too, +though I had the presence of mind to take off my glasses at the first. +My! but we did receive a trouncing as we scattered in all directions. +Brentwood, Halstead, and I fled away for the machine. Brentwood’s nose +was bleeding, while Halstead’s cheek was cut across with the scarlet +slash of a black-snake whip. + +And, lo, when the pursuit ceased and we had gained the machine, there, +hiding behind it, was the frightened calf. Brentwood warned us to be +cautious, and crept up on it like a wolf or tiger. Knife and cleaver had +been left behind, but Brentwood still had his hands, and over and over on +the ground he rolled with the poor little calf as he throttled it. We +threw the carcass into the machine, covered it over with a robe, and +started for home. But our misfortunes had only begun. We blew out a +tyre. There was no way of fixing it, and twilight was coming on. We +abandoned the machine, Brentwood pulling and staggering along in advance, +the calf, covered by the robe, slung across his shoulders. We took turn +about carrying that calf, and it nearly killed us. Also, we lost our +way. And then, after hours of wandering and toil, we encountered a gang +of hoodlums. They were not I.L.W. men, and I guess they were as hungry +as we. At any rate, they got the calf and we got the thrashing. +Brentwood raged like a madman the rest of the way home, and he looked +like one, with his torn clothes, swollen nose, and blackened eyes. + +There wasn’t any more cow-stealing after that. General Folsom sent his +troopers out and confiscated all the cows, and his troopers, aided by the +militia, ate most of the meat. General Folsom was not to be blamed; it +was his duty to maintain law and order, and he maintained it by means of +the soldiers, wherefore he was compelled to feed them first of all. + +It was about this time that the great panic occurred. The wealthy +classes precipitated the flight, and then the slum people caught the +contagion and stampeded wildly out of the city. General Folsom was +pleased. It was estimated that at least 200,000 had deserted San +Francisco, and by that much was his food problem solved. Well do I +remember that day. In the morning I had eaten a crust of bread. Half of +the afternoon I had stood in the bread-line; and after dark I returned +home, tired and miserable, carrying a quart of rice and a slice of bacon. +Brown met me at the door. His face was worn and terrified. All the +servants had fled, he informed me. He alone remained. I was touched by +his faithfulness and, when I learned that he had eaten nothing all day, I +divided my food with him. We cooked half the rice and half the bacon, +sharing it equally and reserving the other half for morning. I went to +bed with my hunger, and tossed restlessly all night. In the morning I +found Brown had deserted me, and, greater misfortune still, he had stolen +what remained of the rice and bacon. + +It was a gloomy handful of men that came together at the club that +morning. There was no service at all. The last servant was gone. I +noticed, too, that the silver was gone, and I learned where it had gone. +The servants had not taken it, for the reason, I presume, that the club +members got to it first. Their method of disposing of it was simple. +Down south of Market Street, in the dwellings of the I.L.W., the +housewives had given square meals in exchange for it. I went back to my +house. Yes, my silver was gone—all but a massive pitcher. This I +wrapped up and carried down south of Market Street. + +I felt better after the meal, and returned to the club to learn if there +was anything new in the situation. Hanover, Collins, and Dakon were just +leaving. There was no one inside, they told me, and they invited me to +come along with them. They were leaving the city, they said, on Dakon’s +horses, and there was a spare one for me. Dakon had four magnificent +carriage horses that he wanted to save, and General Folsom had given him +the tip that next morning all the horses that remained in the city were +to be confiscated for food. There were not many horses left, for tens of +thousands of them had been turned loose into the country when the hay and +grain gave out during the first days. Birdall, I remember, who had great +draying interests, had turned loose three hundred dray horses. At an +average value of five hundred dollars, this had amounted to $150,000. He +had hoped, at first, to recover most of the horses after the strike was +over, but in the end he never recovered one of them. They were all eaten +by the people that fled from San Francisco. For that matter, the killing +of the army mules and horses for food had already begun. + +Fortunately for Dakon, he had had a plentiful supply of hay and grain +stored in his stable. We managed to raise four saddles, and we found the +animals in good condition and spirited, withal unused to being ridden. I +remembered the San Francisco of the great earthquake as we rode through +the streets, but this San Francisco was vastly more pitiable. No +cataclysm of nature had caused this, but, rather, the tyranny of the +labour unions. We rode down past Union Square and through the theatre, +hotel, and shopping districts. The streets were deserted. Here and +there stood automobiles, abandoned where they had broken down or when the +gasolene had given out. There was no sign of life, save for the +occasional policemen and the soldiers guarding the banks and public +buildings. Once we came upon an I.L.W. man pasting up the latest +proclamation. We stopped to read. “We have maintained an orderly +strike,” it ran; “and we shall maintain order to the end. The end will +come when our demands are satisfied, and our demands will be satisfied +when we have starved our employers into submission, as we ourselves in +the past have often been starved into submission.” + +“Messener’s very words,” Collins said. “And I, for one, am ready to +submit, only they won’t give me a chance to submit. I haven’t had a full +meal in an age. I wonder what horse-meat tastes like?” + +We stopped to read another proclamation: “When we think our employers are +ready to submit we shall open up the telegraphs and place the employers’ +associations of the United States in communication. But only messages +relating to peace terms shall be permitted over the wires.” + +We rode on, crossed Market Street, and a little later were passing +through the working-class district. Here the streets were not deserted. +Leaning over the gates or standing in groups were the I.L.W. men. Happy, +well-fed children were playing games, and stout housewives sat on the +front steps gossiping. One and all cast amused glances at us. Little +children ran after us, crying: “Hey, mister, ain’t you hungry?” And one +woman, nursing a child at her breast, called to Dakon: “Say, Fatty, I’ll +give you a meal for your skate—ham and potatoes, currant jelly, white +bread, canned butter, and two cups of coffee.” + +“Have you noticed, the last few days,” Hanover remarked to me, “that +there’s not been a stray dog in the streets?” + +I had noticed, but I had not thought about it before. It was high time +to leave the unfortunate city. We at last managed to connect with the +San Bruno Road, along which we headed south. I had a country place near +Menlo, and it was our objective. But soon we began to discover that the +country was worse off and far more dangerous than the city. There the +soldiers and the I.L.W. kept order; but the country had been turned over +to anarchy. Two hundred thousand people had fled from San Francisco, and +we had countless evidences that their flight had been like that of an +army of locusts. + +They had swept everything clean. There had been robbery and fighting. +Here and there we passed bodies by the roadside and saw the blackened +ruins of farm-houses. The fences were down, and the crops had been +trampled by the feet of a multitude. All the vegetable patches had been +rooted up by the famished hordes. All the chickens and farm animals had +been slaughtered. This was true of all the main roads that led out of +San Francisco. Here and there, away from the roads, farmers had held +their own with shotguns and revolvers, and were still holding their own. +They warned us away and refused to parley with us. And all the +destruction and violence had been done by the slum-dwellers and the upper +classes. The I.L.W. men, with plentiful food supplies, remained quietly +in their homes in the cities. + +Early in the ride we received concrete proof of how desperate was the +situation. To the right of us we heard cries and rifle-shots. Bullets +whistled dangerously near. There was a crashing in the underbrush; then +a magnificent black truck-horse broke across the road in front of us and +was gone. We had barely time to notice that he was bleeding and lame. +He was followed by three soldiers. The chase went on among the trees on +the left. We could hear the soldiers calling to one another. A fourth +soldier limped out upon the road from the right, sat down on a boulder, +and mopped the sweat from his face. + +“Militia,” Dakon whispered. “Deserters.” + +The man grinned up at us and asked for a match. In reply to Dakon’s +“What’s the word?” he informed us that the militiamen were deserting. +“No grub,” he explained. “They’re feedin’ it all to the regulars.” We +also learned from him that the military prisoners had been released from +Alcatraz Island because they could no longer be fed. + +I shall never forget the next sight we encountered. We came upon it +abruptly around a turn of the road. Overhead arched the trees. The +sunshine was filtering down through the branches. Butterflies were +fluttering by, and from the fields came the song of larks. And there it +stood, a powerful touring car. About it and in it lay a number of +corpses. It told its own tale. Its occupants, fleeing from the city, +had been attacked and dragged down by a gang of slum dwellers—hoodlums. +The thing had occurred within twenty-four hours. Freshly opened meat and +fruit tins explained the reason for the attack. Dakon examined the +bodies. + +“I thought so,” he reported. “I’ve ridden in that car. It was +Perriton—the whole family. We’ve got to watch out for ourselves from now +on.” + +“But we have no food with which to invite attack,” I objected. + +Dakon pointed to the horse I rode, and I understood. + +Early in the day Dakon’s horse had cast a shoe. The delicate hoof had +split, and by noon the animal was limping. Dakon refused to ride it +farther, and refused to desert it. So, on his solicitation, we went on. +He would lead the horse and join us at my place. That was the last we +saw of him; nor did we ever learn his end. + +By one o’clock we arrived at the town of Menlo, or, rather, at the site +of Menlo, for it was in ruins. Corpses lay everywhere. The business +part of the town, as well as part of the residences, had been gutted by +fire. Here and there a residence still held out; but there was no +getting near them. When we approached too closely we were fired upon. +We met a woman who was poking about in the smoking ruins of her cottage. +The first attack, she told us had been on the stores, and as she talked +we could picture that raging, roaring, hungry mob flinging itself on the +handful of townspeople. Millionaires and paupers had fought side by side +for the food, and then fought with one another after they got it. The +town of Palo Alto and Stanford University had been sacked in similar +fashion, we learned. Ahead of us lay a desolate, wasted land; and we +thought we were wise in turning off to my place. It lay three miles to +the west, snuggling among the first rolling swells of the foothills. + +But as we rode along we saw that the devastation was not confined to the +main roads. The van of the flight had kept to the roads, sacking the +small towns as it went; while those that followed had scattered out and +swept the whole countryside like a great broom. My place was built of +concrete, masonry, and tiles, and so had escaped being burned, but it was +gutted clean. We found the gardener’s body in the windmill, littered +around with empty shot-gun shells. He had put up a good fight. But no +trace could we find of the two Italian labourers, nor of the house-keeper +and her husband. Not a live thing remained. The calves, the colts, all +the fancy poultry and thoroughbred stock, everything, was gone. The +kitchen and the fireplaces, where the mob had cooked, were a mess, while +many camp-fires outside bore witness to the large number that had fed and +spent the night. What they had not eaten they had carried away. There +was not a bite for us. + +We spent the rest of the night vainly waiting for Dakon, and in the +morning, with our revolvers, fought off half-a-dozen marauders. Then we +killed one of Dakon’s horses, hiding for the future what meat we did not +immediately eat. In the afternoon Collins went out for a walk, but +failed to return. This was the last straw to Hanover. He was for flight +there and then, and I had great difficulty in persuading him to wait for +daylight. As for myself, I was convinced that the end of the general +strike was near, and I was resolved to return to San Francisco. So, in +the morning, we parted company, Hanover heading south, fifty pounds of +horse-meat strapped to his saddle, while I, similarly loaded, headed +north. Little Hanover pulled through all right, and to the end of his +life he will persist, I know, in boring everybody with the narrative of +his subsequent adventures. + +I got as far as Belmont, on the main road back, when I was robbed of my +horse-meat by three militiamen. There was no change in the situation, +they said, except that it was going from bad to worse. The I.L.W. had +plenty of provisions hidden away and could last out for months. I +managed to get as far as Baden, when my horse was taken away from me by a +dozen men. Two of them were San Francisco policemen, and the remainder +were regular soldiers. This was ominous. The situation was certainly +extreme when the regulars were beginning to desert. When I continued my +way on foot, they already had the fire started, and the last of Dakon’s +horses lay slaughtered on the ground. + +As luck would have it, I sprained my ankle, and succeeded in getting no +farther than South San Francisco. I lay there that night in an +out-house, shivering with the cold and at the same time burning with +fever. Two days I lay there, too sick to move, and on the third, reeling +and giddy, supporting myself on an extemporized crutch, I tottered on +toward San Francisco. I was weak as well, for it was the third day since +food had passed my lips. It was a day of nightmare and torment. As in a +dream I passed hundreds of regular soldiers drifting along in the +opposite direction, and many policemen, with their families, organized in +large groups for mutual protection. + +As I entered the city I remembered the workman’s house at which I had +traded the silver pitcher, and in that direction my hunger drove me. +Twilight was falling when I came to the place. I passed around by the +alleyway and crawled up the black steps, on which I collapsed. I managed +to reach out with the crutch and knock on the door. Then I must have +fainted, for I came to in the kitchen, my face wet with water, and whisky +being poured down my throat. I choked and spluttered and tried to talk. +I began saying something about not having any more silver pitchers, but +that I would make it up to them afterward if they would only give me +something to eat. But the housewife interrupted me. + +“Why, you poor man,” she said, “haven’t you heard? The strike was called +off this afternoon. Of course we’ll give you something to eat.” + +She bustled around, opening a tin of breakfast bacon and preparing to fry +it. + +“Let me have some now, please,” I begged; and I ate the raw bacon on a +slice of bread, while her husband explained that the demands of the +I.L.W. had been granted. The wires had been opened up in the early +afternoon, and everywhere the employers’ associations had given in. +There hadn’t been any employers left in San Francisco, but General Folsom +had spoken for them. The trains and steamers would start running in the +morning, and so would everything else just as soon as system could be +established. + +And that was the end of the general strike. I never want to see another +one. It was worse than a war. A general strike is a cruel and immoral +thing, and the brain of man should be capable of running industry in a +more rational way. Harrison is still my chauffeur. It was part of the +conditions of the I.L.W. that all of its members should be reinstated in +their old positions. Brown never came back, but the rest of the servants +are with me. I hadn’t the heart to discharge them—poor creatures, they +were pretty hard-pressed when they deserted with the food and silver. +And now I can’t discharge them. They have all been unionized by the +I.L.W. The tyranny of organized labour is getting beyond human +endurance. Something must be done. + + + + +THE SEA-FARMER + + +“THAT wull be the doctor’s launch,” said Captain MacElrath. + +The pilot grunted, while the skipper swept on with his glass from the +launch to the strip of beach and to Kingston beyond, and then slowly +across the entrance to Howth Head on the northern side. + +“The tide’s right, and we’ll have you docked in two hours,” the pilot +vouchsafed, with an effort at cheeriness. “Ring’s End Basin, is it?” + +This time the skipper grunted. + +“A dirty Dublin day.” + +Again the skipper grunted. He was weary with the night of wind in the +Irish Channel behind him, the unbroken hours of which he had spent on the +bridge. And he was weary with all the voyage behind him—two years and +four months between home port and home port, eight hundred and fifty days +by his log. + +“Proper wunter weather,” he answered, after a silence. “The town is +undistinct. Ut wull be rainun’ guid an’ hearty for the day.” + +Captain MacElrath was a small man, just comfortably able to peep over the +canvas dodger of the bridge. The pilot and third officer loomed above +him, as did the man at the wheel, a bulky German, deserted from a +warship, whom he had signed on in Rangoon. But his lack of inches made +Captain MacElrath a no less able man. At least so the Company reckoned, +and so would he have reckoned could he have had access to the carefully +and minutely compiled record of him filed away in the office archives. +But the Company had never given him a hint of its faith in him. It was +not the way of the Company, for the Company went on the principle of +never allowing an employee to think himself indispensable or even +exceedingly useful; wherefore, while quick to censure, it never praised. +What was Captain MacElrath, anyway, save a skipper, one skipper of the +eighty-odd skippers that commanded the Company’s eighty-odd freighters on +all the highways and byways of the sea? + +Beneath them, on the main deck, two Chinese stokers were carrying +breakfast for’ard across the rusty iron plates that told their own grim +story of weight and wash of sea. A sailor was taking down the life-line +that stretched from the forecastle, past the hatches and cargo-winches, +to the bridge-deck ladder. + +“A rough voyage,” suggested the pilot. + +“Aye, she was fair smokin’ ot times, but not thot I minded thot so much +as the lossin’ of time. I hate like onythun’ tull loss time.” + +So saying, Captain MacElrath turned and glanced aft, aloft and alow, and +the pilot, following his gaze, saw the mute but convincing explanation of +that loss of time. The smoke-stack, buff-coloured underneath, was white +with salt, while the whistle-pipe glittered crystalline in the random +sunlight that broke for the instant through a cloud-rift. The port +lifeboat was missing, its iron davits, twisted and wrenched, testifying +to the mightiness of the blow that had been struck the old _Tryapsic_. +The starboard davits were also empty. The shattered wreck of the +lifeboat they had held lay on the fiddley beside the smashed engine-room +skylight, which was covered by a tarpaulin. Below, to star-board, on the +bridge deck, the pilot saw the crushed mess-room door, roughly bulkheaded +against the pounding seas. Abreast of it, on the smokestack guys, and +being taken down by the bos’n and a sailor, hung the huge square of rope +netting which had failed to break those seas of their force. + +“Twice afore I mentioned thot door tull the owners,” said Captain +MacElrath. “But they said ut would do. There was bug seas thot time. +They was uncreditable bug. And thot buggest one dud the domage. Ut fair +carried away the door an’ laid ut flat on the mess table an’ smashed out +the chief’s room. He was a but sore about ut.” + +“It must ’a’ been a big un,” the pilot remarked sympathetically. + +“Aye, ut was thot. Thungs was lively for a but. Ut finished the mate. +He was on the brudge wuth me, an’ I told hum tull take a look tull the +wedges o’ number one hatch. She was takin’ watter freely an’ I was no +sure o’ number one. I dudna like the look o’ ut, an’ I was fuggerin’ +maybe tull heave to tull the marn, when she took ut over abaft the +brudge. My word, she was a bug one. We got a but of ut ourselves on the +brudge. I dudna miss the mate ot the first, what o’ routin’ out Chips +an’ bulkheadun’ thot door an’ stretchun’ the tarpaulin over the +sky-light. Then he was nowhere to be found. The men ot the wheel said +as he seen hum goin’ down the lodder just afore she hut us. We looked +for’ard, we looked tull hus room, aye looked tull the engine-room, an’ we +looked along aft on the lower deck, and there he was, on both sides the +cover to the steam-pipe runnun’ tull the after-wunches.” + +The pilot ejaculated an oath of amazement and horror. + +“Aye,” the skipper went on wearily, “an’ on both sides the steam-pipe uz +well. I tell ye he was in two pieces, splut clean uz a herrin’. The sea +must a-caught hum on the upper brudge deck, carried hum clean across the +fiddley, an’ banged hum head-on tull the pipe cover. It sheered through +hum like so much butter, down atween the eyes, an’ along the middle of +hum, so that one leg an’ arm was fast tull the one piece of hum, an’ one +leg an’ arm fast tull the other piece of hum. I tull ye ut was fair +grewsome. We putt hum together an’ rolled hum in canvas uz we pulled hum +out.” + +The pilot swore again. + +“Oh, ut wasna onythun’ tull greet about,” Captain MacElrath assured him. +“’Twas a guid ruddance. He was no a sailor, thot mate-fellow. He was +only fut for a pugsty, an’ a dom puir apology for thot same.” + +It is said that there are three kinds of Irish—Catholic, Protestant, and +North-of-Ireland—and that the North-of-Ireland Irishman is a transplanted +Scotchman. Captain MacElrath was a North-of-Ireland man, and, talking +for much of the world like a Scotchman, nothing aroused his ire quicker +than being mistaken for a Scotchman. Irish he stoutly was, and Irish he +stoutly abided, though it was with a faint lip-lift of scorn that he +mentioned mere South-of-Ireland men, or even Orange-men. Himself he was +Presbyterian, while in his own community five men were all that ever +mustered at a meeting in the Orange Men’s Hall. His community was the +Island McGill, where seven thousand of his kind lived in such amity and +sobriety that in the whole island there was but one policeman and never a +public-house at all. + +Captain MacElrath did not like the sea, and had never liked it. He wrung +his livelihood from it, and that was all the sea was, the place where he +worked, as the mill, the shop, and the counting-house were the places +where other men worked. Romance never sang to him her siren song, and +Adventure had never shouted in his sluggish blood. He lacked +imagination. The wonders of the deep were without significance to him. +Tornadoes, hurricanes, waterspouts, and tidal waves were so many +obstacles to the way of a ship on the sea and of a master on the +bridge—they were that to him, and nothing more. He had seen, and yet not +seen, the many marvels and wonders of far lands. Under his eyelids +burned the brazen glories of the tropic seas, or ached the bitter gales +of the North Atlantic or far South Pacific; but his memory of them was of +mess-room doors stove in, of decks awash and hatches threatened, of undue +coal consumption, of long passages, and of fresh paint-work spoiled by +unexpected squalls of rain. + +“I know my buzz’ness,” was the way he often put it, and beyond his +business was all that he did not know, all that he had seen with the +mortal eyes of him and yet that he never dreamed existed. That he knew +his business his owners were convinced, or at forty he would not have +held command of the _Tryapsic_, three thousand tons net register, with a +cargo capacity of nine thousand tons and valued at fifty-thousand pounds. + +He had taken up seafaring through no love of it, but because it had been +his destiny, because he had been the second son of his father instead of +the first. Island McGill was only so large, and the land could support +but a certain definite proportion of those that dwelt upon it. The +balance, and a large balance it was, was driven to the sea to seek its +bread. It had been so for generations. The eldest sons took the farms +from their fathers; to the other sons remained the sea and its +salt-ploughing. So it was that Donald MacElrath, farmer’s son and +farm-boy himself, had shifted from the soil he loved to the sea he hated +and which it was his destiny to farm. And farmed it he had, for twenty +years, shrewd, cool-headed, sober, industrious, and thrifty, rising from +ship’s boy and forecastle hand to mate and master of sailing-ships and +thence into steam, second officer, first, and master, from small command +to larger, and at last to the bridge of the old _Tryapsic_—old, to be +sure, but worth her fifty thousand pounds and still able to bear up in +all seas, and weather her nine thousand tons of freight. + +From the bridge of the _Tryapsic_, the high place he had gained in the +competition of men, he stared at Dublin harbour opening out, at the town +obscured by the dark sky of the dreary wind-driven day, and at the +tangled tracery of spars and rigging of the harbour shipping. Back from +twice around the world he was, and from interminable junketings up and +down on far stretches, home-coming to the wife he had not seen in +eight-and-twenty months, and to the child he had never seen and that was +already walking and talking. He saw the watch below of stokers and +trimmers bobbing out of the forecastle doors like rabbits from a warren +and making their way aft over the rusty deck to the mustering of the port +doctor. They were Chinese, with expressionless, Sphinx-like faces, and +they walked in peculiar shambling fashion, dragging their feet as if the +clumsy brogans were too heavy for their lean shanks. + +He saw them and he did not see them, as he passed his hand beneath his +visored cap and scratched reflectively his mop of sandy hair. For the +scene before him was but the background in his brain for the vision of +peace that was his—a vision that was his often during long nights on the +bridge when the old _Tryapsic_ wallowed on the vexed ocean floor, her +decks awash, her rigging thrumming in the gale gusts or snow squalls or +driving tropic rain. And the vision he saw was of farm and farm-house +and straw-thatched outbuildings, of children playing in the sun, and the +good wife at the door, of lowing kine, and clucking fowls, and the stamp +of horses in the stable, of his father’s farm next to him, with, beyond, +the woodless, rolling land and the hedged fields, neat and orderly, +extending to the crest of the smooth, soft hills. It was his vision and +his dream, his Romance and Adventure, the goal of all his effort, the +high reward for the salt-ploughing and the long, long furrows he ran up +and down the whole world around in his farming of the sea. + +In simple taste and homely inclination this much-travelled man was more +simple and homely than the veriest yokel. Seventy-one years his father +was, and had never slept a night out of his own bed in his own house on +Island McGill. That was the life ideal, so Captain MacElrath considered, +and he was prone to marvel that any man, not under compulsion, should +leave a farm to go to sea. To this much-travelled man the whole world +was as familiar as the village to the cobbler sitting in his shop. To +Captain MacElrath the world was a village. In his mind’s eye he saw its +streets a thousand leagues long, aye, and longer; turnings that doubled +earth’s stormiest headlands or were the way to quiet inland ponds; +cross-roads, taken one way, that led to flower-lands and summer seas, and +that led the other way to bitter, ceaseless gales and the perilous bergs +of the great west wind drift. And the cities, bright with lights, were +as shops on these long streets—shops where business was transacted, where +bunkers were replenished, cargoes taken or shifted, and orders received +from the owners in London town to go elsewhere and beyond, ever along the +long sea-lanes, seeking new cargoes here, carrying new cargoes there, +running freights wherever shillings and pence beckoned and underwriters +did not forbid. But it was all a weariness to contemplate, and, save +that he wrung from it his bread, it was without profit under the sun. + +The last good-bye to the wife had been at Cardiff, twenty-eight months +before, when he sailed for Valparaiso with coals—nine thousand tons and +down to his marks. From Valparaiso he had gone to Australia, light, a +matter of six thousand miles on end with a stormy passage and running +short of bunker coal. Coals again to Oregon, seven thousand miles, and +nigh as many more with general cargo for Japan and China. Thence to +Java, loading sugar for Marseilles, and back along the Mediterranean to +the Black Sea, and on to Baltimore, down to her marks with crome ore, +buffeted by hurricanes, short again of bunker coal and calling at Bermuda +to replenish. Then a time charter, Norfolk, Virginia, loading mysterious +contraband coal and sailing for South Africa under orders of the +mysterious German supercargo put on board by the charterers. On to +Madagascar, steaming four knots by the supercargo’s orders, and the +suspicion forming that the Russian fleet might want the coal. Confusion +and delays, long waits at sea, international complications, the whole +world excited over the old _Tryapsic_ and her cargo of contraband, and +then on to Japan and the naval port of Sassebo. Back to Australia, +another time charter and general merchandise picked up at Sydney, +Melbourne, and Adelaide, and carried on to Mauritius, Lourenço Marques, +Durban, Algoa Bay, and Cape Town. To Ceylon for orders, and from Ceylon +to Rangoon to load rice for Rio Janeiro. Thence to Buenos Aires and +loading maize for the United Kingdom or the Continent, stopping at St. +Vincent, to receive orders to proceed to Dublin. Two years and four +months, eight hundred and fifty days by the log, steaming up and down the +thousand-league-long sea-lanes and back again to Dublin town. And he was +well aweary. + +A little tug had laid hold of the _Tryapsic_, and with clang and clatter +and shouted command, with engines half-ahead, slow-speed, or half-astern, +the battered old sea-tramp was nudged and nosed and shouldered through +the dock-gates into Ring’s End Basin. Lines were flung ashore, fore and +aft, and a ’midship spring got out. Already a small group of the happy +shore-staying folk had clustered on the dock. + +“Ring off,” Captain MacElrath commanded in his slow thick voice; and the +third officer worked the lever of the engine-room telegraph. + +“Gangway out!” called the second officer; and when this was accomplished, +“That will do.” + +It was the last task of all, gangway out. “That will do” was the +dismissal. The voyage was ended, and the crew shambled eagerly forward +across the rusty decks to where their sea-bags were packed and ready for +the shore. The taste of the land was strong in the men’s mouths, and +strong it was in the skipper’s mouth as he muttered a gruff good day to +the departing pilot, and himself went down to his cabin. Up the gangway +were trooping the customs officers, the surveyor, the agent’s clerk, and +the stevedores. Quick work disposed of these and cleared his cabin, the +agent waiting to take him to the office. + +“Dud ye send word tull the wife?” had been his greeting to the clerk. + +“Yes, a telegram, as soon as you were reported.” + +“She’ll likely be comin’ down on the marnin’ train,” the skipper had +soliloquized, and gone inside to change his clothes and wash. + +He took a last glance about the room and at two photographs on the wall, +one of the wife the other of an infant—the child he had never seen. He +stepped out into the cabin, with its panelled walls of cedar and maple, +and with its long table that seated ten, and at which he had eaten by +himself through all the weary time. No laughter and clatter and wordy +argument of the mess-room had been his. He had eaten silently, almost +morosely, his silence emulated by the noiseless Asiatic who had served +him. It came to him suddenly, the overwhelming realization of the +loneliness of those two years and more. All his vexations and anxieties +had been his own. He had shared them with no one. His two young +officers were too young and flighty, the mate too stupid. There was no +consulting with them. One tenant had shared the cabin with him, that +tenant his responsibility. They had dined and supped together, walked +the bridge together, and together they had bedded. + +“Och!” he muttered to that grim companion, “I’m quit of you, an’ wull +quit . . . for a wee.” + +Ashore he passed the last of the seamen with their bags, and, at the +agent’s, with the usual delays, put through his ship business. When +asked out by them to drink he took milk and soda. + +“I am no teetotaler,” he explained; “but for the life o’ me I canna bide +beer or whusky.” + +In the early afternoon, when he finished paying off his crew, he hurried +to the private office where he had been told his wife was waiting. + +His eyes were for her first, though the temptation was great to have more +than a hurried glimpse of the child in the chair beside her. He held her +off from him after the long embrace, and looked into her face long and +steadily, drinking in every feature of it and wondering that he could +mark no changes of time. A warm man, his wife thought him, though had +the opinion of his officers been asked it would have been: a harsh man +and a bitter one. + +“Wull, Annie, how is ut wi’ ye?” he queried, and drew her to him again. + +And again he held her away from him, this wife of ten years and of whom +he knew so little. She was almost a stranger—more a stranger than his +Chinese steward, and certainly far more a stranger than his own officers +whom he had seen every day, day and day, for eight hundred and fifty +days. Married ten years, and in that time he had been with her nine +weeks—scarcely a honeymoon. Each time home had been a getting acquainted +again with her. It was the fate of the men who went out to the +salt-ploughing. Little they knew of their wives and less of their +children. There was his chief engineer—old, near-sighted MacPherson—who +told the story of returning home to be locked out of his house by his +four-year kiddie that never had laid eyes on him before. + +“An’ thus ’ull be the loddie,” the skipper said, reaching out a hesitant +hand to the child’s cheek. + +But the boy drew away from him, sheltering against the mother’s side. + +“Och!” she cried, “and he doesna know his own father.” + +“Nor I hum. Heaven knows I could no a-picked hum out of a crowd, though +he’ll be havin’ your nose I’m thunkun’.” + +“An’ your own eyes, Donald. Look ut them. He’s your own father, laddie. +Kiss hum like the little mon ye are.” + +But the child drew closer to her, his expression of fear and distrust +growing stronger, and when the father attempted to take him in his arms +he threatened to cry. + +The skipper straightened up, and to conceal the pang at his heart he drew +out his watch and looked at it. + +“Ut’s time to go, Annie,” he said. “Thot train ’ull be startun’.” + +He was silent on the train at first, divided between watching the wife +with the child going to sleep in her arms and looking out of the window +at the tilled fields and green unforested hills vague and indistinct in +the driving drizzle that had set in. They had the compartment to +themselves. When the boy slept she laid him out on the seat and wrapped +him warmly. And when the health of relatives and friends had been +inquired after, and the gossip of Island McGill narrated, along with the +weather and the price of land and crops, there was little left to talk +about save themselves, and Captain MacElrath took up the tale brought +home for the good wife from all his world’s-end wandering. But it was +not a tale of marvels he told, nor of beautiful flower-lands nor +mysterious Eastern cities. + +“What like is Java?” she asked once. + +“Full o’ fever. Half the crew down wuth ut an’ luttle work. Ut was +quinine an’ quinine the whole blessed time. Each marnun’ ’twas quinine +an’ gin for all hands on an empty stomach. An’ they who was no sick made +ut out to be hovun’ ut bad uz the rest.” + +Another time she asked about Newcastle. + +“Coals an’ coal-dust—thot’s all. No a nice sutty. I lost two Chinks +there, stokers the both of them. An’ the owners paid a fine tull the +Government of a hundred pounds each for them. ‘We regret tull note,’ +they wrut me—I got the letter tull Oregon—‘We regret tull note the loss +o’ two Chinese members o’ yer crew ot Newcastle, an’ we recommend greater +carefulness un the future.’ Greater carefulness! And I could no a-been +more careful. The Chinks hod forty-five pounds each comun’ tull them in +wages, an’ I was no a-thunkun’ they ’ud run. + +“But thot’s their way—‘we regret tull note,’ ‘we beg tull advise,’ ‘we +recommend,’ ‘we canna understand’—an’ the like o’ thot. Domned cargo +tank! An’ they would thunk I could drive her like a _Lucania_, an’ +wi’out burnun’ coals. There was thot propeller. I was after them a guid +while for ut. The old one was iron, thuck on the edges, an’ we couldna +make our speed. An’ the new one was bronze—nine hundred pounds ut cost, +an’ then wantun’ their returns out o’ ut, an’ me wuth a bod passage an’ +lossin’ time every day. ‘We regret tull note your long passage from +Voloparaiso tull Sydney wuth an average daily run o’ only one hundred an’ +suxty-seven. We hod expected better results wuth the new propeller. You +should a-made an average daily run o’ two hundred and suxteen.’ + +“An’ me on a wunter passage, blowin’ a luvin’ gale half the time, wuth +hurricane force in atweenwhiles, an’ hove to sux days, wuth engines +stopped an’ bunker coal runnun’ short, an’ me wuth a mate thot stupid he +could no pass a shup’s light ot night wi’out callun’ me tull the brudge. +I wrut an’ told ’em so. An’ then: ‘Our nautical adviser suggests you +kept too far south,’ an’ ‘We are lookun’ for better results from thot +propeller.’ Nautical adviser!—shore pilot! Ut was the regular latitude +for a wunter passage from Voloparaiso tull Sydney. + +“An’ when I come un tull Auckland short o’ coal, after lettun’ her druft +sux days wuth the fires out tull save the coal, an’ wuth only twenty tons +in my bunkers, I was thunkun’ o’ the lossin’ o’ time an’ the expense, an’ +tull save the owners I took her un an’ out wi’out pilotage. Pilotage was +no compulsory. An’ un Yokohama, who should I meet but Captun Robinson o’ +the _Dyapsic_. We got a-talkun’ about ports an’ places down +Australia-way, an’ first thing he says: ‘Speakun’ o’ Auckland—of course, +Captun, you was never un Auckland?’ ‘Yus,’ I says, ‘I was un there very +recent.’ ‘Oh, ho,’ he says, very angry-like, ‘so you was the smart Aleck +thot fetched me thot letter from the owners: “We note item of fufteen +pounds for pilotage ot Auckland. A shup o’ ours was un tull Auckland +recently an’ uncurred no such charge. We beg tull advise you thot we +conseeder thus pilotage an onnecessary expense which should no be +uncurred un the future.”’ + +“But dud they say a word tull me for the fufteen pounds I saved tull +them? No a word. They send a letter tull Captun Robinson for no savun’ +them the fufteen pounds, an’ tull me: ‘We note item of two guineas +doctor’s fee at Auckland for crew. Please explain thus onusual +expunditure.’ Ut was two o’ the Chinks. I was thunkun’ they hod +beri-beri, an’ thot was the why o’ sendun’ for the doctor. I buried the +two of them ot sea not a week after. But ut was: ‘Please explain thus +onusual expunditure,’ an’ tull Captun Robinson, ‘We beg tull advise you +thot we conseeder thus pilotage an onnecessary expense.’ + +“Dudna I cable them from Newcastle, tellun’ them the old tank was thot +foul she needed dry-dock? Seven months out o’ dry-dock, an’ the West +Coast the quickest place for foulun’ un the world. But freights was up, +an’ they hod a charter o’ coals for Portland. The _Arrata_, one o’ the +Woor Line, left port the same day uz us, bound for Portland, an’ the old +_Tryapsic_ makun’ sux knots, seven ot the best. An’ ut was ot Comox, +takun’ un bunker coal, I got the letter from the owners. The boss +humself hod signed ut, an’ ot the bottom he wrut un hus own hond: ‘The +_Arrata_ beat you by four an’ a half days. Am dusappointed.’ +Dusappointed! When I had cabled them from Newcastle. When she drydocked +ot Portland, there was whuskers on her a foot long, barnacles the size o’ +me fust, oysters like young sauce plates. Ut took them two days +afterward tull clean the dock o’ shells an’ muck. + +“An’ there was the motter o’ them fire-bars ot Newcastle. The firm +ashore made them heavier than the engineer’s speecifications, an’ then +forgot tull charge for the dufference. Ot the last moment, wuth me +ashore gettun’ me clearance, they come wuth the bill: ‘Tull error on +fire-bars, sux pounds.’ They’d been tull the shup an’ MacPherson hod +O.K.’d ut. I said ut was strange an’ would no pay. ‘Then you are +dootun’ the chief engineer,’ says they. ‘I’m no dootun’,’ says I, ‘but I +canna see my way tull sign. Come wuth me tull the shup. The launch wull +cost ye naught an’ ut ’ull brung ye back. An’ we wull see what +MacPherson says.’ + +“But they would no come. Ot Portland I got the bill un a letter. I took +no notice. Ot Hong-Kong I got a letter from the owners. The bill hod +been sent tull them. I wrut them from Java explainun’. At Marseilles +the owners wrut me: ‘Tull extra work un engine-room, sux pounds. The +engineer has O.K.’d ut, an’ you have no O.K.’d ut. Are you dootun’ the +engineer’s honesty?’ I wrut an’ told them I was no dootun’ his honesty; +thot the bill was for extra weight o’ fire-bars; an’ thot ut was O.K. +Dud they pay ut? They no dud. They must unvestigate. An’ some clerk un +the office took sick, an’ the bill was lost. An’ there was more letters. +I got letters from the owners an’ the firm—‘Tull error on fire-bars, sux +pounds’—ot Baltimore, ot Delagoa Bay, ot Moji, ot Rangoon, ot Rio, an’ ot +Montevuddio. Ut uz no settled yut. I tell ye, Annie, the owners are +hard tull please.” + +He communed with himself for a moment, and then muttered indignantly: +“Tull error on fire-bars, sux pounds.” + +“Hov ye heard of Jamie?” his wife asked in the pause. + +Captain MacElrath shook his head. + +“He was washed off the poop wuth three seamen.” + +“Whereabouts?” + +“Off the Horn. ’Twas on the _Thornsby_.” + +“They would be runnun’ homeward bound?” + +“Aye,” she nodded. “We only got the word three days gone. His wife is +greetin’ like tull die.” + +“A good lod, Jamie,” he commented, “but a stiff one ot carryun’ on. I +mind me when we was mates together un the _Albion_. An’ so Jamie’s gone.” + +Again a pause fell, to be broken by the wife. + +“An’ ye will no a-heard o’ the _Bankshire_? MacDougall lost her in +Magellan Straits. ’Twas only yesterday ut was in the paper.” + +“A cruel place, them Magellan Straits,” he said. “Dudna thot domned +mate-fellow nigh putt me ashore twice on the one passage through? He was +a eediot, a lunatuc. I wouldna have hum on the brudge a munut. Comun’ +tull Narrow Reach, thuck weather, wuth snow squalls, me un the +chart-room, dudna I guv hum the changed course? ‘South-east-by-east,’ I +told hum. ‘South-east-by-east, sir,’ says he. Fufteen munuts after I +comes on tull the brudge. ‘Funny,’ says thot mate-fellow, ‘I’m no +rememberun’ ony islands un the mouth o’ Narrow Reach. I took one look ot +the islands an’ yells, ‘Putt your wheel hard a-starboard,’ tull the mon +ot the wheel. An’ ye should a-seen the old _Tryapsic_ turnun’ the +sharpest circle she ever turned. I waited for the snow tull clear, an’ +there was Narrow Reach, nice uz ye please, tull the east’ard an’ the +islands un the mouth o’ False Bay tull the south’ard. ‘What course was +ye steerun’?’ I says tull the mon ot the wheel. ‘South-by-east, sir,’ +says he. I looked tull the mate-fellow. What could I say? I was thot +wroth I could a-kult hum. Four points dufference. Five munuts more an’ +the old _Tryapsic_ would a-been funushed. + +“An’ was ut no the same when we cleared the Straits tull the east’ard? +Four hours would a-seen us guid an’ clear. I was forty hours then on the +brudge. I guv the mate his course, an’ the bearun’ o’ the Askthar Light +astern. ‘Don’t let her bear more tull the north’ard than west-by-north,’ +I said tull hum, ’an’ ye wull be all right.’ An’ I went below an’ turned +un. But I couldna sleep for worryun’. After forty hours on the brudge, +what was four hours more? I thought. An’ for them four hours wull ye be +lettun’ the mate loss her on ye? ‘No,’ I says to myself. An’ wuth thot +I got up, hod a wash an’ a cup o’ coffee, an’ went tull the brudge. I +took one look ot the bearun’ o’ Askthar Light. ’Twas nor’west-by-west, +and the old _Tryapsic_ down on the shoals. He was a eediot, thot +mate-fellow. Ye could look overside an’ see the duscoloration of the +watter. ’Twas a close call for the old _Tryapsic_ I’m tellun’ ye. Twice +un thirty hours he’d a-hod her ashore uf ut hod no been for me.” + +Captain MacElrath fell to gazing at the sleeping child with mild wonder +in his small blue eyes, and his wife sought to divert him from his woes. + +“Ye remember Jummy MacCaul?” she asked. “Ye went tull school wuth hus +two boys. Old Jummy MacCaul thot hoz the farm beyond Doctor Haythorn’s +place.” + +“Oh, aye, an’ what o’ hum? Uz he dead?” + +“No, but he was after askun’ your father, when he sailed last time for +Voloparaiso, uf ye’d been there afore. An’ when your father says no, +then Jummy says, ‘An’ how wull he be knowun a’ tull find hus way?’ An’ +with thot your father says: ‘Verry sumple ut uz, Jummy. Supposun’ you +was goin’ tull the mainland tull a mon who luved un Belfast. Belfast uz +a bug sutty, Jummy, an’ how would ye be findun’ your way?’ ‘By way o’ me +tongue,’ says Jummy; ‘I’d be askun’ the folk I met.’ ‘I told ye ut was +sumple,’ says your father. ‘Ut’s the very same way my Donald finds the +road tull Voloparaiso. He asks every shup he meets upon the sea tull ot +last he meets wuth a shup thot’s been tull Voloparaiso, an’ the captun o’ +thot shup tells hum the way.’ An’ Jummy scratches hus head an’ says he +understands an’ thot ut’s a very sumple motter after all.” + +The skipper chuckled at the joke, and his tired blue eyes were merry for +the moment. + +“He was a thun chap, thot mate-fellow, oz thun oz you an’ me putt +together,” he remarked after a time, a slight twinkle in his eye of +appreciation of the bull. But the twinkle quickly disappeared and the +blue eyes took on a bleak and wintry look. “What dud he do ot +Voloparaiso but land sux hundred fathom o’ chain cable an’ take never a +receipt from the lighter-mon. I was gettun’ my clearance ot the time. +When we got tull sea, I found he hod no receipt for the cable. + +“‘An’ ye no took a receipt for ut?’ says I. + +“‘No,’ says he. ‘Wasna ut goin’ direct tull the agents?’ + +“‘How long ha’ ye been goin’ tull sea,’ says I, ‘not tull be knowin’ the +mate’s duty uz tull deluver no cargo wuthout receipt for same? An’ on +the West Coast ot thot. What’s tull stop the lighter-mon from stealun’ a +few lengths o’ ut?’ + +“An’ ut come out uz I said. Sux hundred went over the side, but +four hundred an’ ninety-five was all the agents received. The +lighter-mon swore ut was all he received from the mate—four hundred an’ +ninety-five fathom. I got a letter from the owners ot Portland. They no +blamed the mate for ut, but me, an’ me ashore ot the time on shup’s +buzz’ness. I could no be in the two places ot the one time. An’ the +letters from the owners an’ the agents uz still comun’ tull me. + +“Thot mate-fellow was no a proper sailor, an’ no a mon tull work for +owners. Dudna he want tull break me wuth the Board of Trade for bein’ +below my marks? He said as much tull the bos’n. An’ he told me tull my +face homeward bound thot I’d been half an inch under my marks. ’Twas at +Portland, loadun’ cargo un fresh watter an’ goin’ tull Comox tull load +bunker coal un salt watter. I tell ye, Annie, ut takes close fuggerin’, +an’ I _was_ half an inch under the load-line when the bunker coal was un. +But I’m no tellun’ any other body but you. An’ thot mate-fellow +untendun’ tull report me tull the Board o’ Trade, only for thot he saw +fut tull be sliced un two pieces on the steam-pipe cover. + +“He was a fool. After loadun’ ot Portland I hod tull take on suxty tons +o’ coal tull last me tull Comox. The charges for lighterun’ was heavy, +an’ no room ot the coal dock. A French barque was lyin’ alongside the +dock an’ I spoke tull the captun, askun’ hum what he would charge when +work for the day was done, tull haul clear for a couple o’ hours an’ let +me un. ‘Twenty dollars,’ said he. Ut was savun’ money on lighters tull +the owner, an’ I gave ut tull hum. An’ thot night, after dark, I hauled +un an’ took on the coal. Then I started tull go out un the stream an’ +drop anchor—under me own steam, of course. + +“We hod tull go out stern first, an’ somethun’ went wrong wuth the +reversun’ gear. Old MacPherson said he could work ut by hond, but very +slow ot thot. An’ I said ‘All right.’ We started. The pilot was on +board. The tide was ebbun’ stuffly, an’ right abreast an’ a but below +was a shup lyin’ wuth a lighter on each side. I saw the shup’s ridun’ +lights, but never a light on the lighters. Ut was close quarters to +shuft a bug vessel onder steam, wuth MacPherson workun’ the reversun’ +gear by hond. We hod to come close down upon the shup afore I could go +ahead an’ clear o’ the shups on the dock-ends. An’ we struck the lighter +stern-on, just uz I rung tull MacPherson half ahead. + +“‘What was thot?’ says the pilot, when we struck the lighter. + +“‘I dunna know,’ says I, ‘an’ I’m wonderun’.’ + +“The pilot was no keen, ye see, tull hus job. I went on tull a guid +place an’ dropped anchor, an’ ut would all a-been well but for thot +domned eediot mate. + +“‘We smashed thot lighter,’ says he, comun’ up the lodder tull the +brudge—an’ the pilot stondun’ there wuth his ears cocked tull hear. + +“‘What lighter?’ says I. + +“‘Thot lighter alongside the shup,’ says the mate. + +“‘I dudna see no lighter,’ says I, and wuth thot I steps on hus fut guid +an’ hard. + +“After the pilot was gone I says tull the mate: ‘Uf you dunna know +onythun’, old mon, for Heaven’s sake keep your mouth shut.’ + +“‘But ye dud smash thot lighter, dudn’t ye?’ says he. + +“‘Uf we dud,’ says I, ‘ut’s no your buzz’ness tull be tellun’ the +pilot—though, mind ye, I’m no admuttun’ there was ony lighter.’ + +“An’ next marnun’, just uz I’m after dressun’, the steward says, ‘A mon +tull see ye, sir.’ ‘Fetch hum un,’ says I. An’ un he come. ‘Sut down,’ +says I. An’ he sot down. + +“He was the owner of the lighter, an’ when he hod told hus story, I says, +‘I dudna see ony lighter.’ + +“‘What, mon?’ says he. ‘No see a two-hundred-ton lighter, bug oz a +house, alongside thot shup?’ + +“‘I was goin’ by the shup’s lights,’ says I, ‘an’ I dudna touch the shup, +thot I know.’ + +“‘But ye dud touch the lighter,’ says he. ‘Ye smashed her. There’s a +thousand dollars’ domage done, an’ I’ll see ye pay for ut.’ + +“‘Look here, muster,’ says I, ‘when I’m shuftun’ a shup ot night I follow +the law, an’ the law dustunctly says I must regulate me actions by the +lights o’ the shuppun’. Your lighter never hod no ridun’ light, nor dud +I look for ony lighter wuthout lights tull show ut.’ + +“‘The mate says—’ he beguns. + +“‘Domn the mate,’ says I. ‘Dud your lighter hov a ridun’ light?’ + +“‘No, ut dud not,’ says he, ‘but ut was a clear night wuth the moon +a-showun’.’ + +“‘Ye seem tull know your buzz’ness,’ says I. ‘But let me tell ye thot I +know my buzz’ness uz well, an’ thot I’m no a-lookun’ for lighters wuthout +lights. Uf ye thunk ye hov a case, go ahead. The steward will show ye +out. Guid day.’ + +“An’ thot was the end o’ ut. But ut wull show ye what a puir fellow thot +mate was. I call ut a blessun’ for all masters thot he was sliced un two +on thot steam-pipe cover. He had a pull un the office an’ thot was the +why he was kept on.” + +“The Wekley farm wull soon be for sale, so the agents be tellun’ me,” his +wife remarked, slyly watching what effect her announcement would have +upon him. + +His eyes flashed eagerly on the instant, and he straightened up as might +a man about to engage in some agreeable task. It was the farm of his +vision, adjoining his father’s, and her own people farmed not a mile +away. + +“We wull be buyun’ ut,” he said, “though we wull be no tellun’ a soul of +ut ontul ut’s bought an’ the money paid down. I’ve savun’ consuderable +these days, though pickun’s uz no what they used to be, an’ we hov a tidy +nest-egg laid by. I wull see the father an’ hove the money ready tull +hus hond, so uf I’m ot sea he can buy whenever the land offers.” + +He rubbed the frosted moisture from the inside of the window and peered +out at the pouring rain, through which he could discern nothing. + +“When I was a young men I used tull be afeard thot the owners would guv +me the sack. Stull afeard I am of the sack. But once thot farm is mine +I wull no be afeard ony longer. Ut’s a puir job thus sea-farmun’. Me +managin’ un all seas an’ weather an’ perils o’ the deep a shup worth +fufty thousand pounds, wuth cargoes ot times worth fufty thousand more—a +hundred thousand pounds, half a million dollars uz the Yankees say, an’ +me wuth all the responsubility gettun’ a screw o’ twenty pounds a month. +What mon ashore, managin’ a buz’ness worth a hundred thousand pounds wull +be gettun’ uz small a screw uz twenty pounds? An’ wuth such masters uz a +captun serves—the owners, the underwriters, an’ the Board o’ Trade, all +pullun’ an wantun’ dufferent thungs—the owners wantun’ quick passages an’ +domn the rusk, the underwriters wantun’ safe passages an’ domn the delay, +an’ the Board o’ Trade wantun’ cautious passages an’ caution always +meanun’ delay. Three dufferent masters, an’ all three able an’ wullun’ +to break ye uf ye don’t serve their dufferent wushes.” + +He felt the train slackening speed, and peered again through the misty +window. He stood up, buttoned his overcoat, turned up the collar, and +awkwardly gathered the child, still asleep, in his arms. + +“I wull see the father,” he said, “an’ hov the money ready tull hus hond +so uf I’m ot sea when the land offers he wull no muss the chance tull +buy. An’ then the owners can guv me the sack uz soon uz they like. Ut +will be all night un, an’ I wull be wuth you, Annie, an’ the sea can go +tull hell.” + +Happiness was in both their faces at the prospect, and for a moment both +saw the same vision of peace. Annie leaned toward him, and as the train +stopped they kissed each other across the sleeping child. + + + + +SAMUEL + + +MARGARET HENAN would have been a striking figure under any circumstances, +but never more so than when I first chanced upon her, a sack of grain of +fully a hundredweight on her shoulder, as she walked with sure though +tottering stride from the cart-tail to the stable, pausing for an instant +to gather strength at the foot of the steep steps that led to the +grain-bin. There were four of these steps, and she went up them, a step +at a time, slowly, unwaveringly, and with so dogged certitude that it +never entered my mind that her strength could fail her and let that +hundred-weight sack fall from the lean and withered frame that wellnigh +doubled under it. For she was patently an old woman, and it was her age +that made me linger by the cart and watch. + +Six times she went between the cart and the stable, each time with a full +sack on her back, and beyond passing the time of day with me she took no +notice of my presence. Then, the cart empty, she fumbled for matches and +lighted a short clay pipe, pressing down the burning surface of the +tobacco with a calloused and apparently nerveless thumb. The hands were +noteworthy. They were large-knuckled, sinewy and malformed by labour, +rimed with callouses, the nails blunt and broken, and with here and there +cuts and bruises, healed and healing, such as are common to the hands of +hard-working men. On the back were huge, upstanding veins, eloquent of +age and toil. Looking at them, it was hard to believe that they were the +hands of the woman who had once been the belle of Island McGill. This +last, of course, I learned later. At the time I knew neither her history +nor her identity. + +She wore heavy man’s brogans. Her legs were stockingless, and I had +noticed when she walked that her bare feet were thrust into the crinkly, +iron-like shoes that sloshed about her lean ankles at every step. Her +figure, shapeless and waistless, was garbed in a rough man’s shirt and in +a ragged flannel petticoat that had once been red. But it was her face, +wrinkled, withered and weather-beaten, surrounded by an aureole of +unkempt and straggling wisps of greyish hair, that caught and held me. +Neither drifted hair nor serried wrinkles could hide the splendid dome of +a forehead, high and broad without verging in the slightest on the +abnormal. + +The sunken cheeks and pinched nose told little of the quality of the life +that flickered behind those clear blue eyes of hers. Despite the minutiæ +of wrinkle-work that somehow failed to weazen them, her eyes were clear +as a girl’s—clear, out-looking, and far-seeing, and with an open and +unblinking steadfastness of gaze that was disconcerting. The remarkable +thing was the distance between them. It is a lucky man or woman who has +the width of an eye between, but with Margaret Henan the width between +her eyes was fully that of an eye and a half. Yet so symmetrically +moulded was her face that this remarkable feature produced no uncanny +effect, and, for that matter, would have escaped the casual observer’s +notice. The mouth, shapeless and toothless, with down-turned corners and +lips dry and parchment-like, nevertheless lacked the muscular slackness +so usual with age. The lips might have been those of a mummy, save for +that impression of rigid firmness they gave. Not that they were +atrophied. On the contrary, they seemed tense and set with a muscular +and spiritual determination. There, and in the eyes, was the secret of +the certitude with which she carried the heavy sacks up the steep steps, +with never a false step or overbalance, and emptied them in the +grain-bin. + +“You are an old woman to be working like this,” I ventured. + +She looked at me with that strange, unblinking gaze, and she thought and +spoke with the slow deliberateness that characterized everything about +her, as if well aware of an eternity that was hers and in which there was +no need for haste. Again I was impressed by the enormous certitude of +her. In this eternity that seemed so indubitably hers, there was time +and to spare for safe-footing and stable equilibrium—for certitude, in +short. No more in her spiritual life than in carrying the hundredweights +of grain was there a possibility of a misstep or an overbalancing. The +feeling produced in me was uncanny. Here was a human soul that, save for +the most glimmering of contacts, was beyond the humanness of me. And the +more I learned of Margaret Henan in the weeks that followed the more +mysteriously remote she became. She was as alien as a far-journeyer from +some other star, and no hint could she nor all the countryside give me of +what forms of living, what heats of feeling, or rules of philosophic +contemplation actuated her in all that she had been and was. + +“I wull be suvunty-two come Guid Friday a fortnight,” she said in reply +to my question. + +“But you are an old woman to be doing this man’s work, and a strong man’s +work at that,” I insisted. + +Again she seemed to immerse herself in that atmosphere of contemplative +eternity, and so strangely did it affect me that I should not have been +surprised to have awaked a century or so later and found her just +beginning to enunciate her reply— + +“The work hoz tull be done, an’ I am beholden tull no one.” + +“But have you no children, no family, relations?” + +“Oh, aye, a-plenty o’ them, but they no see fut tull be helpun’ me.” + +She drew out her pipe for a moment, then added, with a nod of her head +toward the house, “I luv’ wuth meself.” + +I glanced at the house, straw-thatched and commodious, at the large +stable, and at the large array of fields I knew must belong with the +place. + +“It is a big bit of land for you to farm by yourself.” + +“Oh, aye, a bug but, suvunty acres. Ut kept me old mon buzzy, along wuth +a son an’ a hired mon, tull say naught o’ extra honds un the harvest an’ +a maid-servant un the house.” + +She clambered into the cart, gathered the reins in her hands, and quizzed +me with her keen, shrewd eyes. + +“Belike ye hail from over the watter—Ameruky, I’m meanun’?” + +“Yes, I’m a Yankee,” I answered. + +“Ye wull no be findun’ mony Island McGill folk stoppun’ un Ameruky?” + +“No; I don’t remember ever meeting one, in the States.” + +She nodded her head. + +“They are home-luvun’ bodies, though I wull no be sayin’ they are no +fair-travelled. Yet they come home ot the last, them oz are no lost ot +sea or kult by fevers an’ such-like un foreign parts.” + +“Then your sons will have gone to sea and come home again?” I queried. + +“Oh, aye, all savun’ Samuel oz was drownded.” + +At the mention of Samuel I could have sworn to a strange light in her +eyes, and it seemed to me, as by some telepathic flash, that I divined in +her a tremendous wistfulness, an immense yearning. It seemed to me that +here was the key to her inscrutableness, the clue that if followed +properly would make all her strangeness plain. It came to me that here +was a contact and that for the moment I was glimpsing into the soul of +her. The question was tickling on my tongue, but she forestalled me. + +She _tchk’d_ to the horse, and with a “Guid day tull you, sir,” drove +off. + + * * * * * + +A simple, homely people are the folk of Island McGill, and I doubt if a +more sober, thrifty, and industrious folk is to be found in all the +world. Meeting them abroad—and to meet them abroad one must meet them on +the sea, for a hybrid seafaring and farmer breed are they—one would never +take them to be Irish. Irish they claim to be, speaking of the North of +Ireland with pride and sneering at their Scottish brothers; yet Scotch +they undoubtedly are, transplanted Scotch of long ago, it is true, but +none the less Scotch, with a thousand traits, to say nothing of their +tricks of speech and woolly utterance, which nothing less than their +Scotch clannishness could have preserved to this late day. + +A narrow loch, scarcely half a mile wide, separates Island McGill from +the mainland of Ireland; and, once across this loch, one finds himself in +an entirely different country. The Scotch impression is strong, and the +people, to commence with, are Presbyterians. When it is considered that +there is no public-house in all the island and that seven thousand souls +dwell therein, some idea may be gained of the temperateness of the +community. Wedded to old ways, public opinion and the ministers are +powerful influences, while fathers and mothers are revered and obeyed as +in few other places in this modern world. Courting lasts never later +than ten at night, and no girl walks out with her young man without her +parents’ knowledge and consent. + +The young men go down to the sea and sow their wild oats in the wicked +ports, returning periodically, between voyages, to live the old intensive +morality, to court till ten o’clock, to sit under the minister each +Sunday, and to listen at home to the same stern precepts that the elders +preached to them from the time they were laddies. Much they learned of +women in the ends of the earth, these seafaring sons, yet a canny wisdom +was theirs and they never brought wives home with them. The one solitary +exception to this had been the schoolmaster, who had been guilty of +bringing a wife from half a mile the other side of the loch. For this he +had never been forgiven, and he rested under a cloud for the remainder of +his days. At his death the wife went back across the loch to her own +people, and the blot on the escutcheon of Island McGill was erased. In +the end the sailor-men married girls of their own homeland and settled +down to become exemplars of all the virtues for which the island was +noted. + +Island McGill was without a history. She boasted none of the events that +go to make history. There had never been any wearing of the green, any +Fenian conspiracies, any land disturbances. There had been but one +eviction, and that purely technical—a test case, and on advice of the +tenant’s lawyer. So Island McGill was without annals. History had +passed her by. She paid her taxes, acknowledged her crowned rulers, and +left the world alone; all she asked in return was that the world should +leave her alone. The world was composed of two parts—Island McGill and +the rest of it. And whatever was not Island McGill was outlandish and +barbarian; and well she knew, for did not her seafaring sons bring home +report of that world and its ungodly ways? + + * * * * * + +It was from the skipper of a Glasgow tramp, as passenger from Colombo to +Rangoon, that I had first learned of the existence of Island McGill; and +it was from him that I had carried the letter that gave me entrance to +the house of Mrs. Ross, widow of a master mariner, with a daughter living +with her and with two sons, master mariners themselves and out upon the +sea. Mrs. Ross did not take in boarders, and it was Captain Ross’s +letter alone that had enabled me to get from her bed and board. In the +evening, after my encounter with Margaret Henan, I questioned Mrs. Ross, +and I knew on the instant that I had in truth stumbled upon mystery. + +Like all Island McGill folk, as I was soon to discover, Mrs. Ross was at +first averse to discussing Margaret Henan at all. Yet it was from her I +learned that evening that Margaret Henan had once been one of the island +belles. Herself the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, she had married +Thomas Henan, equally well-to-do. Beyond the usual housewife’s tasks she +had never been accustomed to work. Unlike many of the island women, she +had never lent a hand in the fields. + +“But what of her children?” I asked. + +“Two o’ the sons, Jamie an’ Timothy uz married an’ be goun’ tull sea. +Thot bug house close tull the post office uz Jamie’s. The daughters thot +ha’ no married be luvun’ wuth them as dud marry. An’ the rest be dead.” + +“The Samuels,” Clara interpolated, with what I suspected was a giggle. + +She was Mrs. Ross’s daughter, a strapping young woman with handsome +features and remarkably handsome black eyes. + +“’Tuz naught to be smuckerun’ ot,” her mother reproved her. + +“The Samuels?” I intervened. “I don’t understand.” + +“Her four sons thot died.” + +“And were they all named Samuel?” + +“Aye.” + +“Strange,” I commented in the lagging silence. + +“Very strange,” Mrs. Ross affirmed, proceeding stolidly with the knitting +of the woollen singlet on her knees—one of the countless under-garments +that she interminably knitted for her skipper sons. + +“And it was only the Samuels that died?” I queried, in further attempt. + +“The others luved,” was the answer. “A fine fomuly—no finer on the +island. No better lods ever sailed out of Island McGill. The munuster +held them up oz models tull pottern after. Nor was ever a whusper +breathed again’ the girls.” + +“But why is she left alone now in her old age?” I persisted. “Why don’t +her own flesh and blood look after her? Why does she live alone? Don’t +they ever go to see her or care for her?” + +“Never a one un twenty years an’ more now. She fetched ut on tull +herself. She drove them from the house just oz she drove old Tom Henan, +thot was her husband, tull hus death.” + +“Drink?” I ventured. + +Mrs. Ross shook her head scornfully, as if drink was a weakness beneath +the weakest of Island McGill. + +A long pause followed, during which Mrs. Ross knitted stolidly on, only +nodding permission when Clara’s young man, mate on one of the Shire Line +sailing ships, came to walk out with her. I studied the half-dozen +ostrich eggs, hanging in the corner against the wall like a cluster of +some monstrous fruit. On each shell were painted precipitous and +impossible seas through which full-rigged ships foamed with a lack of +perspective only equalled by their sharp technical perfection. On the +mantelpiece stood two large pearl shells, obviously a pair, intricately +carved by the patient hands of New Caledonian convicts. In the centre of +the mantel was a stuffed bird-of-paradise, while about the room were +scattered gorgeous shells from the southern seas, delicate sprays of +coral sprouting from barnacled _pi-pi_ shells and cased in glass, +assegais from South Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskan +tobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerang from +Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal _kai-kai_ bowl from +the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and the Indies and inlaid +with mother-of-pearl and precious woods. + +I gazed at this varied trove brought home by sailor sons, and pondered +the mystery of Margaret Henan, who had driven her husband to his death +and been forsaken by all her kin. It was not the drink. Then what was +it?—some shocking cruelty? some amazing infidelity? or some fearful, +old-world peasant-crime? + +I broached my theories, but to all Mrs. Ross shook her head. + +“Ut was no thot,” she said. “Margaret was a guid wife an’ a guid mother, +an’ I doubt she would harm a fly. She brought up her fomuly God-fearin’ +an’ decent-minded. Her trouble was thot she took lunatic—turned eediot.” + +Mrs. Ross tapped significantly on her forehead to indicate a state of +addlement. + +“But I talked with her this afternoon,” I objected, “and I found her a +sensible woman—remarkably bright for one of her years.” + +“Aye, an’ I’m grantun’ all thot you say,” she went on calmly. “But I am +no referrun’ tull thot. I am referrun’ tull her wucked-headed an’ +vucious stubbornness. No more stubborn woman ever luv’d than Margaret +Henan. Ut was all on account o’ Samuel, which was the name o’ her +youngest an’ they do say her favourut brother—hum oz died by hus own hond +all through the munuster’s mustake un no registerun’ the new church ot +Dublin. Ut was a lesson thot the name was musfortunate, but she would no +take ut, an’ there was talk when she called her first child Samuel—hum +thot died o’ the croup. An’ wuth thot what does she do but call the next +one Samuel, an’ hum only three when he fell un tull the tub o’ hot watter +an’ was plain cooked tull death. Ut all come, I tell you, o’ her +wucked-headed an’ foolush stubbornness. For a Samuel she must hov; an’ +ut was the death of the four of her sons. After the first, dudna her own +mother go down un the dirt tull her feet, a-beggun’ an’ pleadun’ wuth her +no tull name her next one Samuel? But she was no tull be turned from her +purpose. Margaret Henan was always set on her ways, an’ never more so +thon on thot name Samuel. + +“She was fair lunatuc on Samuel. Dudna her neighbours’ an’ all kuth an’ +kun savun’ them thot luv’d un the house wuth her, get up an’ walk out ot +the christenun’ of the second—hum thot was cooked? Thot they dud, an’ ot +the very moment the munuster asked what would the bairn’s name be. +‘Samuel,’ says she; an’ wuth thot they got up an’ walked out an’ left the +house. An’ ot the door dudna her Aunt Fannie, her mother’s suster, turn +an’ say loud for all tull hear: ‘What for wull she be wantun’ tull murder +the wee thing?’ The munuster heard fine, an’ dudna like ut, but, oz he +told my Larry afterward, what could he do? Ut was the woman’s wush, an’ +there was no law again’ a mother callun’ her child accordun’ tull her +wush. + +“An’ then was there no the third Samuel? An’ when he was lost ot sea off +the Cape, dudna she break all laws o’ nature tull hov a fourth? She was +forty-seven, I’m tellun’ ye, an’ she hod a child ot forty-seven. Thunk +on ut! Ot forty-seven! Ut was fair scand’lous.” + + * * * * * + +From Clara, next morning, I got the tale of Margaret Henan’s favourite +brother; and from here and there, in the week that followed, I pieced +together the tragedy of Margaret Henan. Samuel Dundee had been the +youngest of Margaret’s four brothers, and, as Clara told me, she had +well-nigh worshipped him. He was going to sea at the time, skipper of +one of the sailing ships of the Bank Line, when he married Agnes Hewitt. +She was described as a slender wisp of a girl, delicately featured and +with a nervous organization of the supersensitive order. Theirs had been +the first marriage in the “new” church, and after a two-weeks’ honeymoon +Samuel had kissed his bride good-bye and sailed in command of the +_Loughbank_, a big four-masted barque. + +And it was because of the “new” church that the minister’s blunder +occurred. Nor was it the blunder of the minister alone, as one of the +elders later explained; for it was equally the blunder of the whole +Presbytery of Coughleen, which included fifteen churches on Island McGill +and the mainland. The old church, beyond repair, had been torn down and +the new one built on the original foundation. Looking upon the +foundation-stones as similar to a ship’s keel, it never entered the +minister’s nor the Presbytery’s head that the new church was legally any +other than the old church. + +“An’ three couples was married the first week un the new church,” Clara +said. “First of all, Samuel Dundee an’ Agnes Hewitt; the next day Albert +Mahan an’ Minnie Duncan; an’ by the week-end Eddie Troy and Flo +Mackintosh—all sailor-men, an’ un sux weeks’ time the last of them back +tull their ships an’ awa’, an’ no one o’ them dreamin’ of the wuckedness +they’d been ot.” + +The Imp of the Perverse must have chuckled at the situation. All things +favoured. The marriages had taken place in the first week of May, and it +was not till three months later that the minister, as required by law, +made his quarterly report to the civil authorities in Dublin. Promptly +came back the announcement that his church had no legal existence, not +being registered according to the law’s demands. This was overcome by +prompt registration; but the marriages were not to be so easily remedied. +The three sailor husbands were away, and their wives, in short, were not +their wives. + +“But the munuster was no for alarmin’ the bodies,” said Clara. “He kept +hus council an’ bided hus time, waitun’ for the lods tull be back from +sea. Oz luck would have ut, he was away across the island tull a +christenun’ when Albert Mahan arrives home onexpected, hus shup just +docked ot Dublin. Ut’s nine o’clock ot night when the munuster, un hus +sluppers an’ dressun’-gown, gets the news. Up he jumps an’ calls for +horse an’ saddle, an’ awa’ he goes like the wund for Albert Mahan’s. +Albert uz just goun’ tull bed an’ hoz one shoe off when the munuster +arrives. + +“‘Come wuth me, the pair o’ ye,’ says he, breathless-like. ‘What for, +an’ me dead weary an’ goun’ tull bed?’ says Albert. ‘Yull be lawful +married,’ says the munuster. Albert looks black an’ says, ‘Now, +munuster, ye wull be jokun’,’ but tull humself, oz I’ve heard hum tell +mony a time, he uz wonderun’ thot the munuster should a-took tull whusky +ot hus time o’ life. + +“’We be no married?’ says Minnie. He shook his head. ‘An’ I om no +Mussus Mahan?’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘ye are no Mussus Mahan. Ye are plain +Muss Duncan.’ ‘But ye married ’us yoursel’,’ says she. ‘I dud an’ I +dudna,’ says he. An’ wuth thot he tells them the whole upshot, an’ +Albert puts on hus shoe, an’ they go wuth the munuster an’ are married +proper an’ lawful, an’ oz Albert Mahan says afterward mony’s the time, +‘’Tus no every mon thot hoz two weddun’ nights on Island McGill.’” + +Six months later Eddie Troy came home and was promptly remarried. But +Samuel Dundee was away on a three-years’ voyage and his ship fell +overdue. Further to complicate the situation, a baby boy, past two years +old, was waiting for him in the arms of his wife. The months passed, and +the wife grew thin with worrying. “Ut’s no meself I’m thunkun’ on,” she +is reported to have said many times, “but ut’s the puir fatherless bairn. +Uf aught happened tull Samuel where wull the bairn stond?” + +Lloyd’s posted the _Loughbank_ as missing, and the owners ceased the +monthly remittance of Samuel’s half-pay to his wife. It was the question +of the child’s legitimacy that preyed on her mind, and, when all hope of +Samuel’s return was abandoned, she drowned herself and the child in the +loch. And here enters the greater tragedy. The _Loughbank_ was not +lost. By a series of sea disasters and delays too interminable to +relate, she had made one of those long, unsighted passages such as occur +once or twice in half a century. How the Imp must have held both his +sides! Back from the sea came Samuel, and when they broke the news to +him something else broke somewhere in his heart or head. Next morning +they found him where he had tried to kill himself across the grave of his +wife and child. Never in the history of Island McGill was there so +fearful a death-bed. He spat in the minister’s face and reviled him, and +died blaspheming so terribly that those that tended on him did so with +averted gaze and trembling hands. + +And, in the face of all this, Margaret Henan named her first child +Samuel. + + * * * * * + +How account for the woman’s stubbornness? Or was it a morbid obsession +that demanded a child of hers should be named Samuel? Her third child +was a girl, named after herself, and the fourth was a boy again. Despite +the strokes of fate that had already bereft her, and despite the loss of +friends and relatives, she persisted in her resolve to name the child +after her brother. She was shunned at church by those who had grown up +with her. Her mother, after a final appeal, left her house with the +warning that if the child were so named she would never speak to her +again. And though the old lady lived thirty-odd years longer she kept +her word. The minister agreed to christen the child any name but Samuel, +and every other minister on Island McGill refused to christen it by the +name she had chosen. There was talk on the part of Margaret Henan of +going to law at the time, but in the end she carried the child to Belfast +and there had it christened Samuel. + +And then nothing happened. The whole island was confuted. The boy grew +and prospered. The schoolmaster never ceased averring that it was the +brightest lad he had ever seen. Samuel had a splendid constitution, a +tremendous grip on life. To everybody’s amazement he escaped the usual +run of childish afflictions. Measles, whooping-cough and mumps knew him +not. He was armour-clad against germs, immune to all disease. Headaches +and earaches were things unknown. “Never so much oz a boil or a pumple,” +as one of the old bodies told me, ever marred his healthy skin. He broke +school records in scholarship and athletics, and whipped every boy of his +size or years on Island McGill. + +It was a triumph for Margaret Henan. This paragon was hers, and it bore +the cherished name. With the one exception of her mother, friends and +relatives drifted back and acknowledged that they had been mistaken; +though there were old crones who still abided by their opinion and who +shook their heads ominously over their cups of tea. The boy was too +wonderful to last. There was no escaping the curse of the name his +mother had wickedly laid upon him. The young generation joined Margaret +Henan in laughing at them, but the old crones continued to shake their +heads. + +Other children followed. Margaret Henan’s fifth was a boy, whom she +called Jamie, and in rapid succession followed three girls, Alice, Sara, +and Nora, the boy Timothy, and two more girls, Florence and Katie. Katie +was the last and eleventh, and Margaret Henan, at thirty-five, ceased +from her exertions. She had done well by Island McGill and the Queen. +Nine healthy children were hers. All prospered. It seemed her ill-luck +had shot its bolt with the deaths of her first two. Nine lived, and one +of them was named Samuel. + +Jamie elected to follow the sea, though it was not so much a matter of +election as compulsion, for the eldest sons on Island McGill remained on +the land, while all other sons went to the salt-ploughing. Timothy +followed Jamie, and by the time the latter had got his first command, a +steamer in the Bay trade out of Cardiff, Timothy was mate of a big +sailing ship. Samuel, however, did not take kindly to the soil. The +farmer’s life had no attraction for him. His brothers went to sea, not +out of desire, but because it was the only way for them to gain their +bread; and he, who had no need to go, envied them when, returned from far +voyages, they sat by the kitchen fire, and told their bold tales of the +wonderlands beyond the sea-rim. + +Samuel became a teacher, much to his father’s disgust, and even took +extra certificates, going to Belfast for his examinations. When the old +master retired, Samuel took over his school. Secretly, however, he +studied navigation, and it was Margaret’s delight when he sat by the +kitchen fire, and, despite their master’s tickets, tangled up his +brothers in the theoretics of their profession. Tom Henan alone was +outraged when Samuel, school teacher, gentleman, and heir to the Henan +farm, shipped to sea before the mast. Margaret had an abiding faith in +her son’s star, and whatever he did she was sure was for the best. Like +everything else connected with his glorious personality, there had never +been known so swift a rise as in the case of Samuel. Barely with two +years’ sea experience before the mast, he was taken from the forecastle +and made a provisional second mate. This occurred in a fever port on the +West Coast, and the committee of skippers that examined him agreed that +he knew more of the science of navigation than they had remembered or +forgotten. Two years later he sailed from Liverpool, mate of the _Starry +Grace_, with both master’s and extra-master’s tickets in his possession. +And then it happened—the thing the old crones had been shaking their +heads over for years. + +It was told me by Gavin McNab, bos’n of the _Starry Grace_ at the time, +himself an Island McGill man. + +“Wull do I remember ut,” he said. “We was runnin’ our Eastun’ down, an’ +makun’ heavy weather of ut. Oz fine a sailor-mon oz ever walked was +Samuel Henan. I remember the look of hum wull thot last marnun’, +a-watch-un’ them bug seas curlun’ up astern, an’ a-watchun’ the old girl +an’ seeun’ how she took them—the skupper down below an’ drunkun’ for +days. Ut was ot seven thot Henan brought her up on tull the wund, not +darun’ tull run longer on thot fearful sea. Ot eight, after havun’ +breakfast, he turns un, an’ a half hour after up comes the skupper, +bleary-eyed an’ shaky an’ holdun’ on tull the companion. Ut was fair +smokun’, I om tellun’ ye, an’ there he stood, blunkun’ an’ noddun’ an’ +talkun’ tull humsel’. ‘Keep off,’ says he ot last tull the mon ot the +wheel. ‘My God!’ says the second mate, standun’ beside hum. The skupper +never looks tull hum ot all, but keeps on mutterun” an’ jabberun’ tull +humsel’. All of a suddent-like he straightens up an’ throws hus head +back, an’ says: ‘Put your wheel over, me mon—now domn ye! Are ye deef +thot ye’ll no be hearun’ me?’ + +“Ut was a drunken mon’s luck, for the _Starry Grace_ wore off afore thot +God-Almighty gale wuthout shuppun’ a bucket o’ watter, the second mate +shoutun’ orders an’ the crew jumpun’ like mod. An’ wuth thot the skupper +nods contented-like tull humself an’ goes below after more whusky. Ut +was plain murder o’ the lives o’ all of us, for ut was no the time for +the buggest shup afloat tull be runnun’. Run? Never hov I seen the +like! Ut was beyond all thunkun’, an’ me goun’ tull sea, boy an’ men, +for forty year. I tell you ut was fair awesome. + +“The face o’ the second mate was white oz death, an’ he stood ut alone +for half an hour, when ut was too much for hum an’ he went below an’ +called Samuel an’ the third. Aye, a fine sailor-mon thot Samuel, but ut +was too much for hum. He looked an’ studied, and looked an’ studied, but +he could no see hus way. He durst na heave tull. She would ha’ been +sweeput o’ all honds an’ stucks an’ everythung afore she could a-fetched +up. There was naught tull do but keep on runnun’. An’ uf ut worsened we +were lost ony way, for soon or late that overtakun’ sea was sure tull +sweep us clear over poop an’ all. + +“Dud I say ut was a God-Almighty gale? Ut was worse nor thot. The devil +himself must ha’ hod a hond un the brewun’ o’ ut, ut was thot fearsome. +I ha’ looked on some sights, but I om no carun’ tull look on the like o’ +thot again. No mon dared tull be un hus bunk. No, nor no mon on the +decks. All honds of us stood on top the house an’ held on an’ watched. +The three mates was on the poop, with two men ot the wheel, an’ the only +mon below was thot whusky-blighted captain snorun’ drunk. + +“An’ then I see ut comun’, a mile away, risun’ above all the waves like +an island un the sea—the buggest wave ever I looked upon. The three +mates stood tulgether an’ watched ut comun’, a-prayun’ like we thot she +would no break un passun’ us. But ut was no tull be. Ot the last, when +she rose up like a mountain, curlun’ above the stern an’ blottun’ out the +sky, the mates scattered, the second an’ third runnun’ for the +mizzen-shrouds an’ climbun’ up, but the first runnun’ tull the wheel tull +lend a hond. He was a brave men, thot Samuel Henan. He run straight un +tull the face o’ thot father o’ all waves, no thunkun’ on humself but +thunkun’ only o’ the shup. The two men was lashed tull the wheel, but he +would be ready tull hond un the case they was kult. An’ then she took +ut. We on the house could no see the poop for the thousand tons o’ +watter thot hod hut ut. Thot wave cleaned them out, took everythung +along wuth ut—the two mates, climbun’ up the mizzen-ruggun’, Samuel Henan +runnun’ tull the wheel, the two men ot the wheel, aye, an’ the wheel +utself. We never saw aught o’ them, for she broached tull what o’ the +wheel goun’, an’ two men o’ us was drownded off the house, no tull +mention the carpenter thot we pucked up ot the break o’ the poop wuth +every bone o’ hus body broke tull he was like so much jelly.” + +And here enters the marvel of it, the miraculous wonder of that woman’s +heroic spirit. Margaret Henan was forty-seven when the news came home of +the loss of Samuel; and it was not long after that the unbelievable +rumour went around Island McGill. I say unbelievable. Island McGill +would not believe. Doctor Hall pooh-pooh’d it. Everybody laughed at it +as a good joke. They traced back the gossip to Sara Dack, servant to the +Henans’, and who alone lived with Margaret and her husband. But Sara +Dack persisted in her assertion and was called a low-mouthed liar. One +or two dared question Tom Henan himself, but beyond black looks and +curses for their presumption they elicited nothing from him. + +The rumour died down, and the island fell to discussing in all its +ramifications the loss of the _Grenoble_ in the China seas, with all her +officers and half her crew born and married on Island McGill. But the +rumour would not stay down. Sara Dack was louder in her assertions, the +looks Tom Henan cast about him were blacker than ever, and Dr. Hall, +after a visit to the Henan house, no longer pooh-pooh’d. Then Island +McGill sat up, and there was a tremendous wagging of tongues. It was +unnatural and ungodly. The like had never been heard. And when, as time +passed, the truth of Sara Dack’s utterances was manifest, the island folk +decided, like the bos’n of the _Starry Grace_, that only the devil could +have had a hand in so untoward a happening. And the infatuated woman, so +Sara Dack reported, insisted that it would be a boy. “Eleven bairns ha’ +I borne,” she said; “sux o’ them lossies an’ five o’ them loddies. An’ +sunce there be balance un all thungs, so wull there be balance wuth me. +Sux o’ one an’ half a dozen o’ the other—there uz the balance, an’ oz +sure oz the sun rises un the marnun’, thot sure wull ut be a boy.” + +And boy it was, and a prodigy. Dr. Hall raved about its unblemished +perfection and massive strength, and wrote a brochure on it for the +Dublin Medical Society as the most interesting case of the sort in his +long career. When Sara Dack gave the babe’s unbelievable weight, Island +McGill refused to believe and once again called her liar. But when +Doctor Hall attested that he had himself weighed it and seen it tip that +very notch, Island McGill held its breath and accepted whatever report +Sara Dack made of the infant’s progress or appetite. And once again +Margaret Henan carried a babe to Belfast and had it christened Samuel. + + * * * * * + +“Oz good oz gold ut was,” said Sara Dack to me. + +Sara, at the time I met her, was a buxom, phlegmatic spinster of sixty, +equipped with an experience so tragic and unusual that though her tongue +ran on for decades its output would still be of imperishable interest to +her cronies. + +“Oz good oz good,” said Sara Dack. “Ut never fretted. Sut ut down un +the sun by the hour an’ never a sound ut would make oz long oz ut was no +hungered! An’ thot strong! The grup o’ uts honds was like a mon’s. I +mind me, when ut was but hours old, ut grupped me so mighty thot I +fetched a scream I was thot frightened. Ut was the punk o’ health. Ut +slept an’ ate, an’ grew. Ut never bothered. Never a night’s sleep ut +lost tull no one, nor ever a munut’s, an’ thot wuth cuttin’ uts teeth an’ +all. An’ Margaret would dandle ut on her knee an’ ask was there ever so +fine a loddie un the three Kungdoms. + +“The way ut grew! Ut was un keepun’ wuth the way ut ate. Ot a year ut +was the size o’ a bairn of two. Ut was slow tull walk an’ talk. +Exceptun’ for gurgly noises un uts throat an’ for creepun’ on all fours, +ut dudna monage much un the walkun’ an’ talkun’ line. But thot was tull +be expected from the way ut grew. Ut all went tull growun’ strong an’ +healthy. An’ even old Tom Henan cheered up ot the might of ut an’ said +was there ever the like o’ ut un the three Kungdoms. Ut was Doctor Hall +thot first suspicioned, I mind me well, though ut was luttle I dreamt +what he was up tull ot the time. I seehum holdun’ thungs’ un fronto’ +luttle Sammy’s eyes, an’ a-makun’ noises, loud an’ soft, an’ far an’ +near, un luttle Sammy’s ears. An’ then I see Doctor Hall go away, +wrunklun’ hus eyebrows an’ shakun’ hus head like the bairn was ailun’. +But he was no ailun’, oz I could swear tull, me a-seeun’ hum eat an’ +grow. But Doctor Hall no said a word tull Margaret an’ I was no for +guessun’ the why he was sore puzzled. + +“I mind me when luttle Sammy first spoke. He was two years old an’ the +size of a child o five, though he could no monage the walkun’ yet but +went around on all fours, happy an’ contented-like an’ makun’ no trouble +oz long oz he was fed promptly, which was onusual often. I was hangun’ +the wash on the line ot the time when out he comes, on all fours, hus bug +head waggun’ tull an’ fro an’ blunkun’ un the sun. An’ then, suddent, he +talked. I was thot took a-back I near died o’ fright, an’ fine I knew ut +then, the shakun’ o’ Doctor Hall’s head. Talked? Never a bairn on +Island McGill talked so loud an’ tull such purpose. There was no +mustakun’ ut. I stood there all tremblun’ an’ shakun’. Little Sammy was +brayun’. I tell you, sir, he was brayun’ like an ass—just like +thot,—loud an’ long an’ cheerful tull ut seemed hus lungs ud crack. + +“He was a eediot—a great, awful, monster eediot. Ut was after he talked +thot Doctor Hall told Margaret, but she would no believe. Ut would all +come right, she said. Ut was growun’ too fast for aught else. Guv ut +time, said she, an’ we would see. But old Tom Henan knew, an’ he never +held up hus head again. He could no abide the thung, an’ would no brung +humsel’ tull touch ut, though I om no denyun’ he was fair fascinated by +ut. Mony the time, I see hum watchun’ of ut around a corner, lookun’ ot +ut tull hus eyes fair bulged wuth the horror; an’ when ut brayed old Tom +ud stuck hus fungers tull hus ears an’ look thot miserable I could +a-puttied hum. + +“An’ bray ut could! Ut was the only thung ut could do besides eat an’ +grow. Whenever ut was hungry ut brayed, an’ there was no stoppun’ ut +save wuth food. An’ always of a marnun’, when first ut crawled tull the +kutchen-door an’ blunked out ot the sun, ut brayed. An’ ut was brayun’ +that brought about uts end. + +“I mind me well. Ut was three years old an’ oz bug oz a led o’ ten. Old +Tom hed been goun’ from bed tull worse, ploughun’ up an’ down the fields +an’ talkun’ an’ mutterun’ tull humself. On the marnun’ o’ the day I mind +me, he was suttun’ on the bench outside the kutchen, a-futtun’ the handle +tull a puck-axe. Unbeknown, the monster eediot crawled tull the door an’ +brayed after hus fashion ot the sun. I see old Tom start up an’ look. +An’ there was the monster eediot, waggun’ uts bug head an’ blunkun’ an’ +brayun’ like the great bug ass ut was. Ut was too much for Tom. +Somethun’ went wrong wuth hum suddent-like. He jumped tull hus feet an’ +fetched the puck-handle down on the monster eediot’s head. An’ he hut ut +again an’ again like ut was a mod dog an’ hum afeard o’ ut. An’ he went +straight tull the stable an’ hung humsel’ tull a rafter. An’ I was no +for stoppun’ on after such-like, an’ I went tull stay along wuth me +suster thot was married tull John Martin an’ comfortable-off.” + + * * * * * + +I sat on the bench by the kitchen door and regarded Margaret Henan, while +with her callous thumb she pressed down the live fire of her pipe and +gazed out across the twilight-sombred fields. It was the very bench Tom +Henan had sat upon that last sanguinary day of life. And Margaret sat in +the doorway where the monster, blinking at the sun, had so often wagged +its head and brayed. We had been talking for an hour, she with that slow +certitude of eternity that so befitted her; and, for the life of me, I +could lay no finger on the motives that ran through the tangled warp and +woof of her. Was she a martyr to Truth? Did she have it in her to +worship at so abstract a shrine? Had she conceived Abstract Truth to be +the one high goal of human endeavour on that day of long ago when she +named her first-born Samuel? Or was hers the stubborn obstinacy of the +ox? the fixity of purpose of the balky horse? the stolidity of the +self-willed peasant-mind? Was it whim or fancy?—the one streak of lunacy +in what was otherwise an eminently rational mind? Or, reverting, was +hers the spirit of a Bruno? Was she convinced of the intellectual +rightness of the stand she had taken? Was hers a steady, enlightened +opposition to superstition? or—and a subtler thought—was she mastered by +some vaster, profounder superstition, a fetish-worship of which the Alpha +and the Omega was the cryptic _Samuel_? + +“Wull ye be tellun’ me,” she said, “thot uf the second Samuel hod been +named Larry thot he would no hov fell un the hot watter an’ drownded? +Atween you an’ me, sir, an’ ye are untellugent-lookun’ tull the eye, +would the name hov made ut onyways dufferent? Would the washun’ no be +done thot day uf he hod been Larry or Michael? Would hot watter no be +hot, an’ would hot watter no burn uf he hod hod ony other name but +Samuel?” + +I acknowledged the justice of her contention, and she went on. + +“Do a wee but of a name change the plans o’ God? Do the world run by hut +or muss, an’ be God a weak, shully-shallyun’ creature thot ud alter the +fate an’ destiny o’ thungs because the worm Margaret Henan seen fut tull +name her bairn Samuel? There be my son Jamie. He wull no sign a +Rooshan-Funn un hus crew because o’ believun’ thot Rooshan-Funns do be +monajun’ the wunds an’ hov the makun’ o’ bod weather. Wull you be +thunkun’ so? Wull you be thunkun’ thot God thot makes the wunds tull +blow wull bend Hus head from on high tull lussen tull the word o’ a +greasy Rooshan-Funn un some dirty shup’s fo’c’sle?” + +I said no, certainly not; but she was not to be set aside from pressing +home the point of her argument. + +“Then wull you be thunkun’ thot God thot directs the stars un their +courses, an’ tull whose mighty foot the world uz but a footstool, wull +you be thunkun’ thot He wull take a spite again’ Margaret Henan an’ send +a bug wave off the Cape tull wash her son un tull eternity, all because +she was for namun’ hum Samuel?” + +“But why Samuel?” I asked. + +“An’ thot I dinna know. I wantud ut so.” + +“But _why_ did you want it so?” + +“An’ uz ut me thot would be answerun’ a such-like question? Be there ony +mon luvun’ or dead thot can answer? Who can tell the _why_ o’ like? My +Jamie was fair daft on buttermilk, he would drunk ut tull, oz he said +humself, hus back teeth was awash. But my Tumothy could no abide +buttermilk. I like tull lussen tull the thunder growlun’ an’ roarun’, +an’ rampajun’. My Katie could no abide the noise of ut, but must scream +an’ flutter an’ go runnun’ for the mudmost o’ a feather-bed. Never yet +hov I heard the answer tull the _why_ o’ like, God alone hoz thot answer. +You an’ me be mortal an’ we canna know. Enough for us tull know what we +like an’ what we duslike. I _like_—thot uz the first word an’ the last. +An’ behind thot like no men can go an’ find the _why_ o’ ut. I _like_ +Samuel, an’ I like ut well. Ut uz a sweet name, an’ there be a rollun’ +wonder un the sound o’ ut thot passes onderstandun’.” + +The twilight deepened, and in the silence I gazed upon that splendid dome +of a forehead which time could not mar, at the width between the eyes, +and at the eyes themselves—clear, out-looking, and wide-seeing. She rose +to her feet with an air of dismissing me, saying— + +“Ut wull be a dark walk home, an’ there wull be more thon a sprunkle o’ +wet un the sky.” + +“Have you any regrets, Margaret Henan?” I asked, suddenly and without +forethought. + +She studied me a moment. + +“Aye, thot I no ha’ borne another son.” + +“And you would . . .?” I faltered. + +“Aye, thot I would,” she answered. “Ut would ha’ been hus name.” + +I went down the dark road between the hawthorn hedges puzzling over the +why of like, repeating _Samuel_ to myself and aloud and listening to the +rolling wonder in its sound that had charmed her soul and led her life in +tragic places. _Samuel_! There was a rolling wonder in the sound. Aye, +there was! + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG*** + + +******* This file should be named 1075-0.txt or 1075-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/7/1075 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1076-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1076-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..27249de4 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1076-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7950 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1076 *** + +THE WALLET OF KAI LUNG + +By Ernest Bramah + + + + “Ho, illustrious passers-by!” says Kai Lung as he spreads out his + embroidered mat under the mulberry-tree. “It is indeed unlikely + that you could condescend to stop and listen to the foolish words + of such an insignificant and altogether deformed person as myself. + Nevertheless, if you will but retard your elegant footsteps for a + few moments, this exceedingly unprepossessing individual will + endeavour to entertain you.” This is a collection of Kai Lung’s + entertaining tales, told professionally in the market places as he + travelled about; told sometimes to occupy and divert the minds of + his enemies when they were intent on torturing him. + + + + +I. +THE TRANSMUTATION OF LING + + +CHAPTER I +INTRODUCTION + + +The sun had dipped behind the western mountains before Kai Lung, with +twenty li or more still between him and the city of Knei Yang, entered +the camphor-laurel forest which stretched almost to his destination. +No person of consequence ever made the journey unattended; but Kai Lung +professed to have no fear, remarking with extempore wisdom, when warned +at the previous village, that a worthless garment covered one with +better protection than that afforded by an army of bowmen. Nevertheless, +when within the gloomy aisles, Kai Lung more than once wished himself +back at the village, or safely behind the mud walls of Knei Yang; and, +making many vows concerning the amount of prayer-paper which he would +assuredly burn when he was actually through the gates, he stepped +out more quickly, until suddenly, at a turn in the glade, he stopped +altogether, while the watchful expression into which he had unguardedly +dropped at once changed into a mask of impassiveness and extreme +unconcern. From behind the next tree projected a long straight rod, not +unlike a slender bamboo at a distance, but, to Kai Lung’s all-seeing +eye, in reality the barrel of a matchlock, which would come into line +with his breast if he took another step. Being a prudent man, more +accustomed to guile and subservience to destiny than to force, he +therefore waited, spreading out his hands in proof of his peaceful +acquiescence, and smiling cheerfully until it should please the owner +of the weapon to step forth. This the unseen did a moment later, still +keeping his gun in an easy and convenient attitude, revealing a stout +body and a scarred face, which in conjunction made it plain to Kai Lung +that he was in the power of Lin Yi, a noted brigand of whom he had heard +much in the villages. + +“O illustrious person,” said Kai Lung very earnestly, “this is evidently +an unfortunate mistake. Doubtless you were expecting some exalted +Mandarin to come and render you homage, and were preparing to overwhelm +him with gratified confusion by escorting him yourself to your +well-appointed abode. Indeed, I passed such a one on the road, very +richly apparelled, who inquired of me the way to the mansion of the +dignified and upright Lin Yi. By this time he is perhaps two or three li +towards the east.” + +“However distinguished a Mandarin may be, it is fitting that I should +first attend to one whose manners and accomplishments betray him to be +of the Royal House,” replied Lin Yi, with extreme affability. “Precede +me, therefore, to my mean and uninviting hovel, while I gain more +honour than I can reasonably bear by following closely in your elegant +footsteps, and guarding your Imperial person with this inadequate but +heavily-loaded weapon.” + +Seeing no chance of immediate escape, Kai Lung led the way, instructed +by the brigand, along a very difficult and bewildering path, until they +reached a cave hidden among the crags. Here Lin Yi called out some words +in the Miaotze tongue, whereupon a follower appeared, and opened a gate +in the stockade of prickly mimosa which guarded the mouth of the den. +Within the enclosure a fire burned, and food was being prepared. At a +word from the chief, the unfortunate Kai Lung found his hands seized and +tied behind his back, while a second later a rough hemp rope was fixed +round his neck, and the other end tied to an overhanging tree. + +Lin Yi smiled pleasantly and critically upon these preparations, and +when they were complete dismissed his follower. + +“Now we can converse at our ease and without restraint,” he remarked to +Kai Lung. “It will be a distinguished privilege for a person occupying +the important public position which you undoubtedly do; for myself, +my instincts are so degraded and low-minded that nothing gives me more +gratification than to dispense with ceremony.” + +To this Kai Lung made no reply, chiefly because at that moment the wind +swayed the tree, and compelled him to stand on his toes in order to +escape suffocation. + +“It would be useless to try to conceal from a person of your inspired +intelligence that I am indeed Lin Yi,” continued the robber. “It is a +dignified position to occupy, and one for which I am quite incompetent. +In the sixth month of the third year ago, it chanced that this unworthy +person, at that time engaged in commercial affairs at Knei Yang, became +inextricably immersed in the insidious delights of quail-fighting. +Having been entrusted with a large number of taels with which to +purchase elephants’ teeth, it suddenly occurred to him that if he +doubled the number of taels by staking them upon an exceedingly powerful +and agile quail, he would be able to purchase twice the number of teeth, +and so benefit his patron to a large extent. This matter was clearly +forced upon his notice by a dream, in which he perceived one whom he +then understood to be the benevolent spirit of an ancestor in the act +of stroking a particular quail, upon whose chances he accordingly +placed all he possessed. Doubtless evil spirits had been employed in the +matter; for, to this person’s great astonishment, the quail in question +failed in a very discreditable manner at the encounter. Unfortunately, +this person had risked not only the money which had been entrusted to +him, but all that he had himself become possessed of by some years of +honourable toil and assiduous courtesy as a professional witness in +law cases. Not doubting that his patron would see that he was himself +greatly to blame in confiding so large a sum of money to a comparatively +young man of whom he knew little, this person placed the matter before +him, at the same time showing him that he would suffer in the eyes of +the virtuous if he did not restore this person’s savings, which but for +the presence of the larger sum, and a generous desire to benefit his +patron, he would never have risked in so uncertain a venture as that of +quail-fighting. Although the facts were laid in the form of a dignified +request instead of a demand by legal means, and the reasoning carefully +drawn up in columns of fine parchment by a very illustrious writer, the +reply which this person received showed him plainly that a wrong view +had been taken of the matter, and that the time had arrived when it +became necessary for him to make a suitable rejoinder by leaving the +city without delay.” + +“It was a high-minded and disinterested course to take,” said Kai +Lung with great conviction, as Lin Yi paused. “Without doubt evil will +shortly overtake the avaricious-souled person at Knei Yang.” + +“It has already done so,” replied Lin Yi. “While passing through this +forest in the season of Many White Vapours, the spirits of his bad deeds +appeared to him in misleading and symmetrical shapes, and drew him out +of the path and away from his bowmen. After suffering many torments, he +found his way here, where, in spite of our continual care, he perished +miserably and in great bodily pain.... But I cannot conceal from +myself, in spite of your distinguished politeness, that I am becoming +intolerably tiresome with my commonplace talk.” + +“On the contrary,” replied Kai Lung, “while listening to your voice I +seemed to hear the beating of many gongs of the finest and most polished +brass. I floated in the Middle Air, and for the time I even became +unconscious of the fact that this honourable appendage, though +fashioned, as I perceive, out of the most delicate silk, makes it +exceedingly difficult for me to breathe.” + +“Such a thing cannot be permitted,” exclaimed Lin Yi, with some +indignation, as with his own hands he slackened the rope and, taking it +from Kai Lung’s neck, fastened it around his ankle. “Now, in return for +my uninviting confidences, shall not my senses be gladdened by a recital +of the titles and honours borne by your distinguished family? Doubtless, +at this moment many Mandarins of the highest degree are anxiously +awaiting your arrival at Knei Yang, perhaps passing the time by outdoing +one another in protesting the number of taels each would give rather +than permit you to be tormented by fire-brands, or even to lose a single +ear.” + +“Alas!” replied Kai Lung, “never was there a truer proverb than that +which says, ‘It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s +time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops.’ +Do Mandarins or the friends of Mandarins travel in mean garments and +unattended? Indeed, the person who is now before you is none other than +the outcast Kai Lung, the story-teller, one of degraded habits and no +very distinguished or reputable ancestors. His friends are few, and +mostly of the criminal class; his wealth is not more than some six or +eight cash, concealed in his left sandal; and his entire stock-in-trade +consists of a few unendurable and badly told stories, to which, however, +it is his presumptuous intention shortly to add a dignified narrative +of the high-born Lin Yi, setting out his domestic virtues and the +honour which he has reflected upon his house, his valour in war, the +destruction of his enemies, and, above all, his great benevolence and +the protection which he extends to the poor and those engaged in the +distinguished arts.” + +“The absence of friends is unfortunate,” said Lin Yi thoughtfully, after +he had possessed himself of the coins indicated by Kai Lung, and also +of a much larger amount concealed elsewhere among the story-teller’s +clothing. “My followers are mostly outlawed Miaotze, who have been +driven from their own tribes in Yun Nan for man-eating and disregarding +the sacred laws of hospitality. They are somewhat rapacious, and in this +way it has become a custom that they should have as their own, for +the purpose of exchanging for money, persons such as yourself, whose +insatiable curiosity has led them to this place.” + +“The wise and all-knowing Emperor Fohy instituted three degrees of +attainment: Being poor, to obtain justice; being rich, to escape +flattery; and being human, to avoid the passions,” replied Kai Lung. +“To these the practical and enlightened Kang added yet another, the +greatest: Being lean, to yield fatness.” + +“In such cases,” observed the brigand, “the Miaotze keep an honoured and +very venerable rite, which chiefly consists in suspending the offender +by a pigtail from a low tree, and placing burning twigs of hemp-palm +between his toes. To this person it seems a foolish and meaningless +habit; but it would not be well to interfere with their religious +observances, however trivial they may appear.” + +“Such a course must inevitably end in great loss,” suggested Kai Lung; +“for undoubtedly there are many poor yet honourable persons who would +leave with them a bond for a large number of taels and save the money +with which to redeem it, rather than take part in a ceremony which is +not according to one’s own Book of Rites.” + +“They have already suffered in that way on one or two occasions,” + replied Lin Yi; “so that such a proposal, no matter how nobly intended, +would not gladden their faces. Yet they are simple and docile persons, +and would, without doubt, be moved to any feeling you should desire by +the recital of one of your illustrious stories.” + +“An intelligent and discriminating assemblage is more to a story-teller +than much reward of cash from hands that conceal open mouths,” replied +Kai Lung with great feeling. “Nothing would confer more pleasurable +agitation upon this unworthy person than an opportunity of narrating +his entire stock to them. If also the accomplished Lin Yi would bestow +renown upon the occasion by his presence, no omen of good would be +wanting.” + +“The pleasures of the city lie far behind me,” said Lin Yi, after +some thought, “and I would cheerfully submit myself to an intellectual +accomplishment such as you are undoubtedly capable of. But as we have +necessity to leave this spot before the hour when the oak-leaves change +into night-moths, one of your amiable stories will be the utmost we can +strengthen our intellects with. Select which you will. In the meantime, +food will be brought to refresh you after your benevolent exertions +in conversing with a person of my vapid understanding. When you have +partaken, or thrown it away as utterly unendurable, the time will have +arrived, and this person, together with all his accomplices, will put +themselves in a position to be subjected to all the most dignified +emotions.” + + + +CHAPTER II + +“The story which I have selected for this gratifying occasion,” said Kai +Lung, when, an hour or so later, still pinioned, but released from the +halter, he sat surrounded by the brigands, “is entitled ‘Good and +Evil,’ and it is concerned with the adventures of one Ling, who bore the +honourable name of Ho. The first, and indeed the greater, part of +the narrative, as related by the venerable and accomplished writer +of history Chow-Tan, is taken up by showing how Ling was assuredly +descended from an enlightened Emperor of the race of Tsin; but as the +no less omniscient Ta-lin-hi proves beyond doubt that the person in +question was in no way connected with any but a line of hereditary +ape-worshippers, who entered China from an unknown country many +centuries ago, it would ill become this illiterate person to express +an opinion on either side, and he will in consequence omit the first +seventeen books of the story, and only deal with the three which refer +to the illustrious Ling himself.” + + +THE STORY OF LING + +Narrated by Kai Lung when a prisoner in the camp of Lin Yi. + +Ling was the youngest of three sons, and from his youth upwards proved +to be of a mild and studious disposition. Most of his time was spent in +reading the sacred books, and at an early age he found the worship of +apes to be repulsive to his gentle nature, and resolved to break through +the venerable traditions of his family by devoting his time to literary +pursuits, and presenting himself for the public examinations at Canton. +In this his resolution was strengthened by a rumour that an army of +bowmen was shortly to be raised from the Province in which he lived, +so that if he remained he would inevitably be forced into an occupation +which was even more distasteful to him than the one he was leaving. + +Having arrived at Canton, Ling’s first care was to obtain particulars of +the examinations, which he clearly perceived, from the unusual +activity displayed on all sides, to be near at hand. On inquiring from +passers-by, he received very conflicting information; for the persons to +whom he spoke were themselves entered for the competition, and therefore +naturally misled him in order to increase their own chances of success. +Perceiving this, Ling determined to apply at once, although the light +was past, to a Mandarin who was concerned in the examinations, lest by +delay he should lose his chance for the year. + +“It is an unfortunate event that so distinguished a person should have +selected this day and hour on which to overwhelm us with his affable +politeness!” exclaimed the porter at the gate of the Yamen, when Ling +had explained his reason for going. “On such a day, in the reign of the +virtuous Emperor Hoo Chow, a very benevolent and unassuming ancestor of +my good lord the Mandarin was destroyed by treachery, and ever since his +family has observed the occasion by fasting and no music. This person +would certainly be punished with death if he entered the inner room from +any cause.” + +At these words, Ling, who had been simply brought up, and chiefly in the +society of apes, was going away with many expressions of self-reproach +at selecting such a time, when the gate-keeper called him back. + +“I am overwhelmed with confusion at the position in which I find +myself,” he remarked, after he had examined his mind for a short time. +“I may meet with an ungraceful and objectionable death if I carry out +your estimable instructions, but I shall certainly merit and receive +a similar fate if I permit so renowned and versatile a person to leave +without a fitting reception. In such matters a person can only trust to +the intervention of good spirits; if, therefore, you will permit this +unworthy individual to wear, while making the venture, the ring which he +perceives upon your finger, and which he recognizes as a very powerful +charm against evil, misunderstandings, and extortion, he will go without +fear.” + +Overjoyed at the amiable porter’s efforts on his behalf, Ling did as he +was desired, and the other retired. Presently the door of the Yamen was +opened by an attendant of the house, and Ling bidden to enter. He +was covered with astonishment to find that this person was entirely +unacquainted with his name or purpose. + +“Alas!” said the attendant, when Ling had explained his object, “well +said the renowned and inspired Ting Fo, ‘When struck by a thunderbolt it +is unnecessary to consult the Book of Dates as to the precise meaning +of the omen.’ At this moment my noble-minded master is engaged in +conversation with all the most honourable and refined persons in Canton, +while singers and dancers of a very expert and nimble order have been +sent for. The entertainment will undoubtedly last far into the night, +and to present myself even with the excuse of your graceful and delicate +inquiry would certainly result in very objectionable consequences to +this person.” + +“It is indeed a day of unprepossessing circumstances,” replied Ling, +and after many honourable remarks concerning his own intellect and +appearance, and those of the person to whom he was speaking, he had +turned to leave when the other continued: + +“Ever since your dignified presence illumined this very ordinary +chamber, this person has been endeavouring to bring to his mind an +incident which occurred to him last night while he slept. Now it has +come back to him with a diamond clearness, and he is satisfied that it +was as follows: While he floated in the Middle Air a benevolent spirit +in the form of an elderly and toothless vampire appeared, leading by +the hand a young man, of elegant personality. Smiling encouragingly upon +this person, the spirit said, ‘O Fou, recipient of many favours from +Mandarins and of innumerable taels from gratified persons whom you have +obliged, I am, even at this moment, guiding this exceptional young man +towards your presence; when he arrives do not hesitate, but do as he +desires, no matter how great the danger seems or how inadequately you +may appear to be rewarded on earth.’ The vision then melted, but I now +clearly perceive that with the exception of the embroidered cloak which +you wear, you are the person thus indicated to me. Remove your cloak, +therefore, in order to give the amiable spirit no opportunity of denying +the fact, and I will advance your wishes; for, as the Book of Verses +indicates, ‘The person who patiently awaits a sign from the clouds +for many years, and yet fails to notice the earthquake at his feet, is +devoid of intellect.’” + +Convinced that he was assuredly under the especial protection of the +Deities, and that the end of his search was in view, Ling gave his rich +cloak to the attendant, and was immediately shown into another room, +where he was left alone. + +After a considerable space of time the door opened and there entered a +person whom Ling at first supposed to be the Mandarin. Indeed, he was +addressing him by his titles when the other interrupted him. “Do not +distress your incomparable mind by searching for honourable names +to apply to so inferior a person as myself,” he said agreeably. “The +mistake is, nevertheless, very natural; for, however miraculous it may +appear, this unseemly individual, who is in reality merely a writer of +spoken words, is admitted to be exceedingly like the dignified Mandarin +himself, though somewhat stouter, clad in better garments, and, it is +said, less obtuse of intellect. This last matter he very much doubts, +for he now finds himself unable to recognize by name one who is +undoubtedly entitled to wear the Royal Yellow.” + +With this encouragement Ling once more explained his position, narrating +the events which had enabled him to reach the second chamber of the +Yamen. When he had finished the secretary was overpowered with a +high-minded indignation. + +“Assuredly those depraved and rapacious persons who have both misled and +robbed you shall suffer bow-stringing when the whole matter is brought +to light,” he exclaimed. “The noble Mandarin neither fasts nor receives +guests, for, indeed, he has slept since the sun went down. This person +would unhesitatingly break his slumber for so commendable a purpose were +it not for a circumstance of intolerable unavoidableness. It must not +even be told in a low breath beyond the walls of the Yamen, but my +benevolent and high-born lord is in reality a person of very miserly +instinct, and nothing will call him from his natural sleep but the sound +of taels shaken beside his bed. In an unexpected manner it comes about +that this person is quite unsupplied with anything but thin printed +papers of a thousand taels each, and these are quite useless for the +purpose.” + +“It is unendurable that so obliging a person should be put to such +inconvenience on behalf of one who will certainly become a public +laughing-stock at the examinations,” said Ling, with deep feeling; and +taking from a concealed spot in his garments a few taels, he placed them +before the secretary for the use he had indicated. + +Ling was again left alone for upwards of two strokes of the gong, and +was on the point of sleep when the secretary returned with an expression +of dignified satisfaction upon his countenance. Concluding that he +had been successful in the manner of awakening the Mandarin, Ling was +opening his mouth for a polite speech, which should contain a delicate +allusion to the taels, when the secretary warned him, by affecting a +sudden look of terror, that silence was exceedingly desirable, and at +the same time opened another door and indicated to Ling that he should +pass through. + +In the next room Ling was overjoyed to find himself in the presence +of the Mandarin, who received him graciously, and paid many estimable +compliments to the name he bore and the country from which he came. +When at length Ling tore himself from this enchanting conversation, and +explained the reason of his presence, the Mandarin at once became a prey +to the whitest and most melancholy emotions, even plucking two hairs +from his pigtail to prove the extent and conscientiousness of his grief. + +“Behold,” he cried at length, “I am resolved that the extortionate and +many-handed persons at Peking who have control of the examination rites +and customs shall no longer grow round-bodied without remark. This +person will unhesitatingly proclaim the true facts of the case without +regarding the danger that the versatile Chancellor or even the sublime +Emperor himself may, while he speaks, be concealed in some part of this +unassuming room to hear his words; for, as it is wisely said, ‘When +marked out by destiny, a person will assuredly be drowned, even though +he passes the whole of his existence among the highest branches of a +date tree.’” + +“I am overwhelmed that I should be the cause of such an engaging display +of polished agitation,” said Ling, as the Mandarin paused. “If it would +make your own stomach less heavy, this person will willingly follow your +estimable example, either with or without knowing the reason.” + +“The matter is altogether on your account, O most unobtrusive young +man,” replied the Mandarin, when a voice without passion was restored +to him. “It tears me internally with hooks to reflect that you, whose +refined ancestors I might reasonably have known had I passed my youth +in another Province, should be victim to the cupidity of the ones in +authority at Peking. A very short time before you arrived there came a +messenger in haste from those persons, clearly indicating that a legal +toll of sixteen taels was to be made on each printed paper setting forth +the time and manner of the examinations, although, as you may see, the +paper is undoubtedly marked, ‘Persons are given notice that they are +defrauded of any sum which they may be induced to exchange for this +matter.’ Furthermore, there is a legal toll of nine taels on all persons +who have previously been examined--” + +“I am happily escaped from that,” exclaimed Ling with some satisfaction +as the Mandarin paused. + +“--and twelve taels on all who present themselves for the first time. +This is to be delivered over when the paper is purchased, so that you, +by reason of this unworthy proceeding at Peking, are required to forward +to that place, through this person, no less than thirty-two taels.” + +“It is a circumstance of considerable regret,” replied Ling; “for had +I only reached Canton a day earlier, I should, it appears, have avoided +this evil.” + +“Undoubtedly it would have been so,” replied the Mandarin, who had +become engrossed in exalted meditation. “However,” he continued a +moment later, as he bowed to Ling with an accomplished smile, “it +would certainly be a more pleasant thought for a person of your refined +intelligence that had you delayed until to-morrow the insatiable persons +at Peking might be demanding twice the amount.” + +Pondering the deep wisdom of this remark, Ling took his departure; but +in spite of the most assiduous watchfulness he was unable to discern any +of the three obliging persons to whose efforts his success had been due. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +It was very late when Ling again reached the small room which he had +selected as soon as he reached Canton, but without waiting for food or +sleep he made himself fully acquainted with the times of the forthcoming +examinations and the details of the circumstances connected with them. +With much satisfaction he found that he had still a week in which to +revive his intellect on the most difficult subjects. Having become +relieved on these points, Ling retired for a few hours’ sleep, but rose +again very early, and gave the whole day with great steadfastness to +contemplation of the sacred classics Y-King, with the exception of a +short period spent in purchasing ink, brushes and writing-leaves. The +following day, having become mentally depressed through witnessing +unaccountable hordes of candidates thronging the streets of Canton, +Ling put aside his books, and passed the time in visiting all the most +celebrated tombs in the neighbourhood of the city. Lightened in mind +by this charitable and agreeable occupation, he returned to his studies +with a fixed resolution, nor did he again falter in his purpose. On the +evening of the examination, when he was sitting alone, reading by the +aid of a single light, as his custom was, a person arrived to see him, +at the same time manifesting a considerable appearance of secrecy +and reserve. Inwardly sighing at the interruption, Ling nevertheless +received him with distinguished consideration and respect, setting tea +before him, and performing towards it many honourable actions with his +own hands. Not until some hours had sped in conversation relating to +the health of the Emperor, the unexpected appearance of a fiery dragon +outside the city, and the insupportable price of opium, did the visitor +allude to the object of his presence. + +“It has been observed,” he remarked, “that the accomplished Ling, who +aspires to a satisfactory rank at the examinations, has never before +made the attempt. Doubtless in this case a preternatural wisdom will +avail much, and its fortunate possessor will not go unrewarded. Yet +it is as precious stones among ashes for one to triumph in such +circumstances.” + +“The fact is known to this person,” replied Ling sadly, “and the thought +of the years he may have to wait before he shall have passed even the +first degree weighs down his soul with bitterness from time to time.” + +“It is no infrequent thing for men of accomplished perseverance, but +merely ordinary intellects, to grow venerable within the four walls +of the examination cell,” continued the other. “Some, again, become +afflicted with various malignant evils, while not a few, chiefly those +who are presenting themselves for the first time, are so overcome on +perceiving the examination paper, and understanding the inadequate +nature of their own accomplishments, that they become an easy prey to +the malicious spirits which are ever on the watch in those places; and, +after covering their leaves with unpresentable remarks and drawings +of men and women of distinguished rank, have at length to be forcibly +carried away by the attendants and secured with heavy chains.” + +“Such things undoubtedly exist,” agreed Ling; “yet by a due regard paid +to spirits, both good and bad, a proper esteem for one’s ancestors, and +a sufficiency of charms about the head and body, it is possible to be +closeted with all manner of demons and yet to suffer no evil.” + +“It is undoubtedly possible to do so, according to the Immortal +Principles,” admitted the stranger; “but it is not an undertaking in +which a refined person would take intelligent pleasure; as the proverb +says, ‘He is a wise and enlightened suppliant who seeks to discover +an honourable Mandarin, but he is a fool who cries out, “I have found +one.”’ However, it is obvious that the reason of my visit is understood, +and that your distinguished confidence in yourself is merely a graceful +endeavour to obtain my services for a less amount of taels than I should +otherwise have demanded. For half the usual sum, therefore, this person +will take your place in the examination cell, and enable your versatile +name to appear in the winning lists, while you pass your moments in +irreproachable pleasures elsewhere.” + +Such a course had never presented itself to Ling. As the person who +narrates this story has already marked, he had passed his life beyond +the influence of the ways and manners of towns, and at the same time +he had naturally been endowed with an unobtrusive highmindedness. It +appeared to him, in consequence, that by accepting this engaging offer +he would be placing those who were competing with him at a disadvantage. +This person clearly sees that it is a difficult matter for him to +explain how this could be, as Ling would undoubtedly reward the services +of the one who took his place, nor would the number of the competitors +be in any way increased; yet in such a way the thing took shape before +his eyes. Knowing, however, that few persons would be able to understand +this action, and being desirous of not injuring the estimable emotions +of the obliging person who had come to him, Ling made a number of +polished excuses in declining, hiding the true reason within himself. In +this way he earned the powerful malignity of the person in question, +who would not depart until he had effected a number of very disagreeable +prophecies connected with unpropitious omens and internal torments, all +of which undoubtedly had a great influence on Ling’s life beyond that +time. + +Each day of the examination found Ling alternately elated or depressed, +according to the length and style of the essay which he had written +while enclosed in his solitary examination cell. The trials each lasted +a complete day, and long before the fifteen days which composed the full +examination were passed, Ling found himself half regretting that he had +not accepted his visitor’s offer, or even reviling the day on which he +had abandoned the hereditary calling of his ancestors. However, when, +after all was over, he came to deliberate with himself on his chances of +attaining a degree, he could not disguise from his own mind that he had +well-formed hopes; he was not conscious of any undignified errors, and, +in reply to several questions, he had been able to introduce +curious knowledge which he possessed by means of his exceptional +circumstances--knowledge which it was unlikely that any other candidate +would have been able to make himself master of. + +At length the day arrived on which the results were to be made public; +and Ling, together with all the other competitors and many distinguished +persons, attended at the great Hall of Intellectual Coloured Lights +to hear the reading of the lists. Eight thousand candidates had been +examined, and from this number less than two hundred were to be selected +for appointments. Amid a most distinguished silence the winning names +were read out. Waves of most undignified but inevitable emotion passed +over those assembled as the list neared its end, and the chances of +success became less at each spoken word; and then, finding that his +was not among them, together with the greater part of those present, he +became a prey to very inelegant thoughts, which were not lessened by the +refined cries of triumph of the successful persons. Among this confusion +the one who had read the lists was observed to be endeavouring to make +his voice known, whereupon, in the expectation that he had omitted a +name, the tumult was quickly subdued by those who again had pleasurable +visions. + +“There was among the candidates one of the name of Ling,” said he, when +no-noise had been obtained. “The written leaves produced by this person +are of a most versatile and conflicting order, so that, indeed, the +accomplished examiners themselves are unable to decide whether they +are very good or very bad. In this matter, therefore, it is clearly +impossible to place the expert and inimitable Ling among the foremost, +as his very uncertain success may have been brought about with the +assistance of evil spirits; nor would it be safe to pass over his +efforts without reward, as he may be under the protection of powerful +but exceedingly ill-advised deities. The estimable Ling is told to +appear again at this place after the gong has been struck three times, +when the matter will have been looked at from all round.” + +At this announcement there arose another great tumult, several crying +out that assuredly their written leaves were either very good or very +bad; but no further proclamation was made, and very soon the hall was +cleared by force. + +At the time stated Ling again presented himself at the Hall, and was +honourably received. + +“The unusual circumstances of the matter have already been put forth,” + said an elderly Mandarin of engaging appearance, “so that nothing +remains to be made known except the end of our despicable efforts to +come to an agreeable conclusion. In this we have been made successful, +and now desire to notify the result. A very desirable and not +unremunerative office, rarely bestowed in this manner, is lately vacant, +and taking into our minds the circumstances of the event, and the fact +that Ling comes from a Province very esteemed for the warlike instincts +of its inhabitants, we have decided to appoint him commander of the +valiant and blood-thirsty band of archers now stationed at Si-chow, in +the Province of Hu-Nan. We have spoken. Let three guns go off in honour +of the noble and invincible Ling, now and henceforth a commander in +the ever-victorious Army of the Sublime Emperor, brother of the Sun and +Moon, and Upholder of the Four Corners of the World.” + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Many hours passed before Ling, now more downcast in mind than the most +unsuccessful student in Canton, returned to his room and sought his +couch of dried rushes. All his efforts to have his distinguished +appointment set aside had been without avail, and he had been ordered to +reach Si-chow within a week. As he passed through the streets, elegant +processions in honour of the winners met him at every corner, and drove +him into the outskirts for the object of quietness. There he remained +until the beating of paper drums and the sound of exulting voices could +be heard no more; but even when he returned lanterns shone in many +dwellings, for two hundred persons were composing verses, setting forth +their renown and undoubted accomplishments, ready to affix to their +doors and send to friends on the next day. Not giving any portion of +his mind to this desirable act of behaviour, Ling flung himself upon the +floor, and, finding sleep unattainable, plunged himself into profound +meditation of a very uninviting order. “Without doubt,” he exclaimed, +“evil can only arise from evil, and as this person has always +endeavoured to lead a life in which his devotions have been equally +divided between the sacred Emperor, his illustrious parents, and his +venerable ancestors, the fault cannot lie with him. Of the excellence of +his parents he has full knowledge; regarding the Emperor, it might +not be safe to conjecture. It is therefore probable that some of his +ancestors were persons of abandoned manner and inelegant habits, to +worship whom results in evil rather than good. Otherwise, how could it +be that one whose chief delight lies in the passive contemplation of the +Four Books and the Five Classics, should be selected by destiny to fill +a position calling for great personal courage and an aggressive nature? +Assuredly it can only end in a mean and insignificant death, perhaps not +even followed by burial.” + +In this manner of thought he fell asleep, and after certain very base +and impressive dreams, from which good omens were altogether absent, he +awoke, and rose to begin his preparations for leaving the city. After +two days spent chiefly in obtaining certain safeguards against treachery +and the bullets of foemen, purchasing opium and other gifts with +which to propitiate the soldiers under his charge, and in consulting +well-disposed witches and readers of the future, he set out, and by +travelling in extreme discomfort, reached Si-chow within five days. +During his journey he learned that the entire Province was engaged in +secret rebellion, several towns, indeed, having declared against +the Imperial army without reserve. Those persons to whom Ling spoke +described the rebels, with respectful admiration, as fierce and +unnaturally skilful in all methods of fighting, revengeful and merciless +towards their enemies, very numerous and above the ordinary height of +human beings, and endowed with qualities which made their skin capable +of turning aside every kind of weapon. Furthermore, he was assured that +a large band of the most abandoned and best trained was at that moment +in the immediate neighbourhood of Si-chow. + +Ling was not destined long to remain in any doubt concerning the truth +of these matters, for as he made his way through a dark cypress wood, +a few li from the houses of Si-chow, the sounds of a confused outcry +reached his ears, and on stepping aside to a hidden glade some distance +from the path, he beheld a young and elegant maiden of incomparable +beauty being carried away by two persons of most repulsive and +undignified appearance, whose dress and manner clearly betrayed them to +be rebels of the lowest and worst-paid type. At this sight Ling became +possessed of feelings of a savage yet agreeable order, which until +that time he had not conjectured to have any place within his mind, and +without even pausing to consider whether the planets were in favourable +positions for the enterprise to be undertaken at that time, he drew his +sword, and ran forward with loud cries. Unsettled in their intentions +at this unexpected action, the two persons turned and advanced upon Ling +with whirling daggers, discussing among themselves whether it would be +better to kill him at the first blow or to take him alive, and, when +the day had become sufficiently cool for the full enjoyment of the +spectacle, submit him to various objectionable tortures of so degraded a +nature that they were rarely used in the army of the Emperor except upon +the persons of barbarians. Observing that the maiden was not bound, Ling +cried out to her to escape and seek protection within the town, adding, +with a magnanimous absence of vanity: + +“Should this person chance to fall, the repose which the presence of +so lovely and graceful a being would undoubtedly bring to his departing +spirit would be out-balanced by the unendurable thought that his +commonplace efforts had not been sufficient to save her from the two +evilly-disposed individuals who are, as he perceives, at this moment, +neglecting no means within their power to accomplish his destruction.” + Accepting the discernment of these words, the maiden fled, first +bestowing a look upon Ling which clearly indicated an honourable regard +for himself, a high-minded desire that the affair might end profitably +on his account, and an amiable hope that they should meet again, when +these subjects could be expressed more clearly between them. + +In the meantime Ling had become at a disadvantage, for the time occupied +in speaking and in making the necessary number of bows in reply to +her entrancing glance had given the other persons an opportunity +of arranging their charms and sacred written sentences to greater +advantage, and of occupying the most favourable ground for the +encounter. Nevertheless, so great was the force of the new emotion which +had entered into Ling’s nature that, without waiting to consider the +dangers or the best method of attack, he rushed upon them, waving his +sword with such force that he appeared as though surrounded by a circle +of very brilliant fire. In this way he reached the rebels, who both fell +unexpectedly at one blow, they, indeed, being under the impression that +the encounter had not commenced in reality, and that Ling was merely +menacing them in order to inspire their minds with terror and raise his +own spirits. However much he regretted this act of the incident which +he had been compelled to take, Ling could not avoid being filled with +intellectual joy at finding that his own charms and omens were more +distinguished than those possessed by the rebels, none of whom, as he +now plainly understood, he need fear. + +Examining these things within his mind, and reflecting on the events +of the past few days, by which he had been thrown into a class of +circumstances greatly differing from anything which he had ever sought, +Ling continued his journey, and soon found himself before the southern +gate of Si-chow. Entering the town, he at once formed the resolution of +going before the Mandarin for Warlike Deeds and Arrangements, so that he +might present, without delay, the papers and seals which he had brought +with him from Canton. + +“The noble Mandarin Li Keen?” replied the first person to whom Ling +addressed himself. “It would indeed be a difficult and hazardous +conjecture to make concerning his sacred person. By chance he is in the +strongest and best-concealed cellar in Si-chow, unless the sumptuous +attractions of the deepest dry well have induced him to make a short +journey”; and, with a look of great unfriendliness at Ling’s dress and +weapons, this person passed on. + +“Doubtless he is fighting single-handed against the armed men by whom +the place is surrounded,” said another; “or perhaps he is constructing +an underground road from the Yamen to Peking, so that we may all escape +when the town is taken. All that can be said with certainty is that the +Heaven-sent and valorous Mandarin has not been seen outside the walls of +his well-fortified residence since the trouble arose; but, as you carry +a sword of conspicuous excellence, you will doubtless be welcome.” + +Upon making a third attempt Ling was more successful, for he inquired +of an aged woman, who had neither a reputation for keen and polished +sentences to maintain, nor any interest in the acts of the Mandarin +or of the rebels. From her he learned how to reach the Yamen, and +accordingly turned his footsteps in that direction. When at length +he arrived at the gate, Ling desired his tablets to be carried to the +Mandarin with many expressions of an impressive and engaging nature, +nor did he neglect to reward the porter. It was therefore with the +expression of a misunderstanding mind that he received a reply setting +forth that Li Keen was unable to receive him. In great doubt he +prevailed upon the porter, by means of a still larger reward, again to +carry in his message, and on this occasion an answer in this detail was +placed before him. + +“Li Keen,” he was informed, “is indeed awaiting the arrival of one Ling, +a noble and valiant Commander of Bowmen. He is given to understand, +it is true, that a certain person claiming the same honoured name is +standing in somewhat undignified attitudes at the gate, but he is unable +in any way to make these two individuals meet within his intellect. He +would further remind all persons that the refined observances laid down +by the wise and exalted Board of Rites and Ceremonies have a marked and +irreproachable significance when the country is in a state of disorder, +the town surrounded by rebels, and every breathing-space of time of more +than ordinary value.” + +Overpowered with becoming shame at having been connected with so +unseemly a breach of civility, for which his great haste had in reality +been accountable, Ling hastened back into the town, and spent many hours +endeavouring to obtain a chair of the requisite colour in which to +visit the Mandarin. In this he was unsuccessful, until it was at length +suggested to him that an ordinary chair, such as stood for hire in the +streets of Si-chow, would be acceptable if covered with blue paper. +Still in some doubt as to what the nature of his reception would be, +Ling had no choice but to take this course, and accordingly he again +reached the Yamen in such a manner, carried by two persons whom he had +obtained for the purpose. While yet hardly at the residence a salute was +suddenly fired; all the gates and doors were, without delay, thrown open +with embarrassing and hospitable profusion, and the Mandarin himself +passed out, and would have assisted Ling to step down from his chair +had not that person, clearly perceiving that such a course would be +too great an honour, evaded him by an unobtrusive display of versatile +dexterity. So numerous and profound were the graceful remarks which each +made concerning the habits and accomplishments of the other that more +than the space of an hour was passed in traversing the small enclosed +ground which led up to the principal door of the Yamen. There an almost +greater time was agreeably spent, both Ling and the Mandarin having +determined that the other should enter first. Undoubtedly Ling, who +was the more powerful of the two, would have conferred this courteous +distinction upon Li Keen had not that person summoned to his side +certain attendants who succeeded in frustrating Ling in his high-minded +intentions, and in forcing him through the doorway in spite of his +conscientious protests against the unsurmountable obligation under which +the circumstance placed him. + +Conversing in this intellectual and dignified manner, the strokes of +the gong passed unheeded; tea had been brought into their presence many +times, and night had fallen before the Mandarin allowed Ling to refer +to the matter which had brought him to the place, and to present his +written papers and seals. + +“It is a valuable privilege to have so intelligent a person as the +illustrious Ling occupying this position,” remarked the Mandarin, as he +returned the papers; “and not less so on account of the one who +preceded him proving himself to be a person of feeble attainments and an +unendurable deficiency of resource.” + +“To one with the all-knowing Li Keen’s mental acquisitions, such a +person must indeed have become excessively offensive,” replied Ling +delicately; “for, as it is truly said, ‘Although there exist many +thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot +meet a cripple without talking about feet.’” + +“He to whom I have referred was such a one,” said Li Keen, appreciating +with an expression of countenance the fitness of Ling’s proverb. “He was +totally inadequate to the requirements of his position; for he possessed +no military knowledge, and was placed in command by those at Peking as +a result of his taking a high place at one of the examinations. But more +than this, although his three years of service were almost completed, +I was quite unsuccessful in convincing him that an unseemly degradation +probably awaited him unless he could furnish me with the means with +which to propitiate the persons in authority at Peking. This he +neglected to do with obstinate pertinacity, which compelled this person +to inquire within himself whether one of so little discernment could be +trusted with an important and arduous office. After much deliberation, +this person came to the decision that the Commander in question was not +a fit person, and he therefore reported him to the Imperial Board +of Punishment at Peking as one subject to frequent and periodical +eccentricities, and possessed of less than ordinary intellect. In +consequence of this act of justice, the Commander was degraded to the +rank of common bowman, and compelled to pay a heavy fine in addition.” + +“It was a just and enlightened conclusion of the affair,” said Ling, in +spite of a deep feeling of no enthusiasm, “and one which surprisingly +bore out your own prophecy in the matter.” + +“It was an inspired warning to persons who should chance to be in a like +position at any time,” replied Li Keen. “So grasping and corrupt are +those who control affairs in Peking that I have no doubt they would +scarcely hesitate in debasing even one so immaculate as the exceptional +Ling, and placing him in some laborious and ill-paid civil department +should he not accede to their extortionate demands.” + +This suggestion did not carry with it the unpleasurable emotions which +the Mandarin anticipated it would. The fierce instincts which had been +aroused within Ling by the incident in the cypress wood had died out, +while his lamentable ignorance of military affairs was ever before his +mind. These circumstances, together with his naturally gentle habits, +made him regard such a degradation rather favourably than otherwise. +He was meditating within himself whether he could arrange such a course +without delay when the Mandarin continued: + +“That, however, is a possibility which is remote to the extent of at +least two or three years; do not, therefore, let so unpleasing a thought +cast darkness upon your brows or remove the unparalleled splendour of +so refined an occasion... Doubtless the accomplished Ling is a master of +the art of chess-play, for many of our most thoughtful philosophers have +declared war to be nothing but such a game; let this slow-witted and +cumbersome person have an opportunity, therefore, of polishing his +declining facilities by a pleasant and dignified encounter.” + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +On the next day, having completed his business at the Yamen, Ling left +the town, and without desiring any ceremony quietly betook himself to +his new residence within the camp, which was situated among the millet +fields some distance from Si-chow. As soon as his presence became known +all those who occupied positions of command, and whose years of service +would shortly come to an end, hastened to present themselves before +him, bringing with them offerings according to the rank they held, they +themselves requiring a similar service from those beneath them. First +among these, and next in command to Ling himself, was the Chief of +Bowmen, a person whom Ling observed with extreme satisfaction to be very +powerful in body and possessing a strong and dignified countenance +which showed unquestionable resolution and shone with a tiger-like +tenaciousness of purpose. + +“Undoubtedly,” thought Ling, as he observed this noble and prepossessing +person, “here is one who will be able to assist me in whatever +perplexities may arise. Never was there an individual who seemed more +worthy to command and lead; assuredly to him the most intricate and +prolonged military positions will be an enjoyment; the most crafty +stratagems of the enemy as the full moon rising from behind a screen +of rushes. Without making any pretence of knowledge, this person will +explain the facts of the case to him and place himself without limit in +his hands.” + +For this purpose he therefore detained the Chief of Bowmen when the +others departed, and complimented him, with many expressive phrases, on +the excellence of his appearance, as the thought occurred to him that +by this means, without disclosing the full measure of his ignorance, the +person in question might be encouraged to speak unrestrainedly of the +nature of his exploits, and perchance thereby explain the use of the +appliances employed and the meaning of the various words of order, +in all of which details the Commander was as yet most disagreeably +imperfect. In this, however, he was disappointed, for the Chief of +Bowmen, greatly to Ling’s surprise, received all his polished sentences +with somewhat foolish smiles of great self-satisfaction, merely replying +from time to time as he displayed his pigtail to greater advantage or +rearranged his gold-embroidered cloak: + +“This person must really pray you to desist; the honour is indeed too +great.” + +Disappointed in his hope, and not desiring after this circumstance to +expose his shortcomings to one who was obviously not of a highly-refined +understanding, no matter how great his valour in war or his knowledge of +military affairs might be, Ling endeavoured to lead him to converse of +the bowmen under his charge. In this matter he was more successful, for +the Chief spoke at great length and with evilly-inspired contempt of +their inelegance, their undiscriminating and excessive appetites, and +the frequent use which they made of low words and gestures. Desiring to +become acquainted rather with their methods of warfare than with their +domestic details, Ling inquired of him what formation they relied upon +when receiving the foemen. + +“It is a matter which has not engaged the attention of this one,” + replied the Chief, with an excessive absence of interest. “There are so +many affairs of intelligent dignity which cannot be put aside, and +which occupy one from beginning to end. As an example, this person may +describe how the accomplished Li-Lu, generally depicted as the Blue-eyed +Dove of Virtuous and Serpent-like Attitudes, has been scattering glory +upon the Si-chow Hall of Celestial Harmony for many days past. It is +an enlightened display which the high-souled Ling should certainly +endeavour to dignify with his presence, especially at the portion +where the amiable Li-Lu becomes revealed in the appearance of a Peking +sedan-chair bearer and describes the manner and likenesses of certain +persons--chiefly high-priests of Buddha, excessively round-bodied +merchants who feign to be detained within Peking on affairs of commerce, +maidens who attend at the tables of tea-houses, and those of both sexes +who are within the city for the first time to behold its temples and +open spaces--who are conveyed from place to place in the chair.” + +“And the bowmen?” suggested Ling, with difficulty restraining an +undignified emotion. + +“Really, the elegant Ling will discover them to be persons of deficient +manners, and quite unworthy of occupying his well-bred conversation,” + replied the Chief. “As regards their methods--if the renowned Ling +insists--they fight by means of their bows, with which they discharge +arrows at the foemen, they themselves hiding behind trees and rocks. +Should the enemy be undisconcerted by the cloud of arrows, and advance, +the bowmen are instructed to make a last endeavour to frighten them back +by uttering loud shouts and feigning the voices of savage beasts of the +forest and deadly snakes.” + +“And beyond that?” inquired Ling. + +“Beyond that there are no instructions,” replied the Chief. “The +bowmen would then naturally take to flight, or, if such a course became +impossible, run to meet the enemy, protesting that they were convinced +of the justice of their cause, and were determined to fight on their +side in the future.” + +“Would it not be of advantage to arm them with cutting weapons also?” + inquired Ling; “so that when all their arrows were discharged they would +still be able to take part in the fight, and not be lost to us?” + +“They would not be lost to us, of course,” replied the Chief, “as we +would still be with them. But such a course as the one you suggest could +not fail to end in dismay. Being as well armed as ourselves, they +would then turn upon us, and, having destroyed us, proceed to establish +leaders of their own.” + +As Ling and the Chief of Bowmen conversed in this enlightened manner, +there arose a great outcry from among the tents, and presently there +entered to them a spy who had discovered a strong force of the enemy not +more than ten or twelve li away, who showed every indication of marching +shortly in the direction of Si-chow. In numbers alone, he continued, +they were greatly superior to the bowmen, and all were well armed. The +spreading of this news threw the entire camp into great confusion, many +protesting that the day was not a favourable one on which to fight, +others crying that it was their duty to fall back on Si-chow and protect +the women and children. In the midst of this tumult the Chief of Bowmen +returned to Ling, bearing in his hand a written paper which he regarded +in uncontrollable anguish. + +“Oh, illustrious Ling,” he cried, restraining his grief with difficulty, +and leaning for support upon the shoulders of two bowmen, “how +prosperous indeed are you! What greater misfortune can engulf a person +who is both an ambitious soldier and an affectionate son, than to lose +such a chance of glory and promotion as only occurs once within the +lifetime, and an affectionate and venerable father upon the same day? +Behold this mandate to attend, without a moment’s delay, at the funeral +obsequies of one whom I left, only last week, in the fullness of health +and power. The occasion being an unsuitable one, I will not call upon +the courteous Ling to join me in sorrow; but his own devout filial piety +is so well known that I can conscientiously rely upon an application for +absence to be only a matter of official ceremony.” + +“The application will certainly be regarded as merely official +ceremony,” replied Ling, without resorting to any delicate pretence of +meaning, “and the refined scruples of the person who is addressing me +will be fully met by the official date of his venerated father’s +death being fixed for a more convenient season. In the meantime, the +unobtrusive Chief of Bowmen may take the opportunity of requesting that +the family tomb be kept unsealed until he is heard from again.” + +Ling turned away, as he finished this remark, with a dignified feeling +of not inelegant resentment. In this way he chanced to observe a large +body of soldiers which was leaving the camp accompanied by their lesser +captains, all crowned with garlands of flowers and creeping plants. In +spite of his very inadequate attainments regarding words of order, the +Commander made it understood by means of an exceedingly short sentence +that he was desirous of the men returning without delay. + +“Doubtless the accomplished Commander, being but newly arrived in this +neighbourhood, is unacquainted with the significance of this display,” + said one of the lesser captains pleasantly. “Know then, O wise and +custom-respecting Ling, that on a similar day many years ago this +valiant band of bowmen was engaged in a very honourable affair with +certain of the enemy. Since then it has been the practice to commemorate +the matter with music and other forms of delight within the large square +at Si-chow.” + +“Such customs are excellent,” said Ling affably. “On this occasion, +however, the public square will be so insufferably thronged with the +number of timorous and credulous villagers who have pressed into the +town that insufficient justice would be paid to your entrancing display. +In consequence of this, we will select for the purpose some convenient +spot in the neighbourhood. The proceedings will be commenced by a +display of arrow-shooting at moving objects, followed by racing and +dancing, in which this person will lead. I have spoken.” + +At these words many of the more courageous among the bowmen became +destructively inspired, and raised shouts of defiance against the enemy, +enumerating at great length the indignities which they would heap upon +their prisoners. Cries of distinction were also given on behalf of Ling, +even the more terrified exclaiming: + +“The noble Commander Ling will lead us! He has promised, and assuredly +he will not depart from his word. Shielded by his broad and sacred body, +from which the bullets glance aside harmlessly, we will advance upon the +enemy in the stealthy manner affected by ducks when crossing the swamp. +How altogether superior a person our Commander is when likened unto the +leaders of the foemen--they who go into battle completely surrounded by +their archers!” + +Upon this, perceiving the clear direction in which matters were turning, +the Chief of Bowmen again approached Ling. + +“Doubtless the highly-favoured person whom I am now addressing has been +endowed with exceptional authority direct from Peking,” he remarked with +insidious politeness. “Otherwise this narrow-minded individual would +suggest that such a decision does not come within the judgment of a +Commander.” + +In his ignorance of military matters it had not entered the mind of +Ling that his authority did not give him the power to commence an +attack without consulting other and more distinguished persons. At the +suggestion, which he accepted as being composed of truth, he paused, the +enlightened zeal with which he had been inspired dying out as he plainly +understood the difficulties by which he was enclosed. There seemed a +single expedient path for him in the matter; so, directing a person +of exceptional trustworthiness to prepare himself for a journey, he +inscribed a communication to the Mandarin Li Keen, in which he narrated +the facts and asked for speedy directions, and then despatched it with +great urgency to Si-chow. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +When these matters were arranged, Ling returned to his tent, a victim +to feelings of a deep and confused doubt, for all courses seemed to +be surrounded by extreme danger, with the strong possibility of final +disaster. While he was considering these things attentively, the spy who +had brought word of the presence of the enemy again sought him. As he +entered, Ling perceived that his face was the colour of a bleached linen +garment, while there came with him the odour of sickness. + +“There are certain matters which this person has not made known,” he +said, having first expressed a request that he might not be compelled to +stand while he conversed. “The bowmen are as an inferior kind of jackal, +and they who lead them are pigs, but this person has observed that the +Heaven-sent Commander has internal organs like steel hardened in a white +fire and polished by running water. For this reason he will narrate +to him the things he has seen--things at which the lesser ones would +undoubtedly perish in terror without offering to strike a blow.” + +“Speak,” said Ling, “without fear and without concealment.” + +“In numbers the rebels are as three to one with the bowmen, and are, +in addition, armed with matchlocks and other weapons; this much I have +already told,” said the spy. “Yesterday they entered the village of Ki +without resistance, as the dwellers there were all peaceable persons, +who gain a living from the fields, and who neither understood nor +troubled about the matters between the rebels and the army. Relying on +the promises made by the rebel chiefs, the villagers even welcomed them, +as they had been assured that they came as buyers of their corn and +rice. To-day not a house stands in the street of Ki, not a person lives. +The men they slew quickly, or held for torture, as they desired at the +moment; the boys they hung from the trees as marks for their arrows. +Of the women and children this person, who has since been subject to +several attacks of fainting and vomiting, desires not to speak. The +wells of Ki are filled with the bodies of such as had the good fortune +to be warned in time to slay themselves. The cattle drag themselves from +place to place on their forefeet; the fish in the Heng-Kiang are dying, +for they cannot live on water thickened into blood. All these things +this person has seen.” + +When he had finished speaking, Ling remained in deep and funereal +thought for some time. In spite of his mild nature, the words which +he had heard filled him with an inextinguishable desire to slay in +hand-to-hand fighting. He regretted that he had placed the decision of +the matter before Li Keen. + +“If only this person had a mere handful of brave and expert warriors, he +would not hesitate to fall upon those savage and barbarous characters, +and either destroy them to the last one, or let his band suffer a like +fate,” he murmured to himself. + +The return of the messenger found him engaged in reviewing the bowmen, +and still in this mood, so that it was with a commendable feeling of +satisfaction, no less than virtuous contempt, that he learned of the +Mandarin’s journey to Peking as soon as he understood that the rebels +were certainly in the neighbourhood. + +“The wise and ornamental Li Keen is undoubtedly consistent in all +matters,” said Ling, with some refined bitterness. “The only +information regarding his duties which this person obtained from him +chanced to be a likening of war to skilful chess-play, and to this end +the accomplished person in question has merely availed himself of a +common expedient which places him at the remote side of the divine +Emperor. Yet this act is not unwelcome, for the responsibility of +deciding what course is to be adopted now clearly rests with this +person. He is, as those who are standing by may perceive, of under the +usual height, and of no particular mental or bodily attainments. But he +has eaten the rice of the Emperor, and wears the Imperial sign +embroidered upon his arm. Before him are encamped the enemies of his +master and of his land, and in no way will he turn his back upon them. +Against brave and skilful men, such as those whom this person commands, +rebels of a low and degraded order are powerless, and are, moreover, +openly forbidden to succeed by the Forty-second Mandate in the Sacred +Book of Arguments. Should it have happened that into this assembly any +person of a perfidious or uncourageous nature has gained entrance by +guile, and has not been detected and driven forth by his outraged +companions (as would certainly occur if such a person were discovered), +I, Ling, Commander of Bowmen, make an especial and well-considered +request that he shall be struck by a molten thunderbolt if he turns to +flight or holds thoughts of treachery.” + +Having thus addressed and encouraged the soldiers, Ling instructed them +that each one should cut and fashion for himself a graceful but weighty +club from among the branches of the trees around, and then return to the +tents for the purpose of receiving food and rice spirit. + +When noon was passed, allowing such time as would enable him to reach +the camp of the enemy an hour before darkness, Ling arranged the bowmen +in companies of convenient numbers, and commenced the march, sending +forward spies, who were to work silently and bring back tidings from +every point. In this way he penetrated to within a single li of the +ruins of Ki, being informed by the spies that no outposts of the enemy +were between him and that place. Here the first rest was made to +enable the more accurate and bold spies to reach them with trustworthy +information regarding the position and movements of the camp. With +little delay there returned the one who had brought the earliest +tidings, bruised and torn with his successful haste through the forest, +but wearing a complacent and well-satisfied expression of countenance. +Without hesitation or waiting to demand money before he would reveal his +knowledge, he at once disclosed that the greater part of the enemy were +rejoicing among the ruins of Ki, they having discovered there a quantity +of opium and a variety of liquids, while only a small guard remained in +the camp with their weapons ready. At these words Ling sprang from +the ground in gladness, so great was his certainty of destroying the +invaders utterly. It was, however, with less pleasurable emotions that +he considered how he should effect the matter, for it was in no way +advisable to divide his numbers into two bands. Without any feeling of +unendurable conceit, he understood that no one but himself could hold +the bowmen before an assault, however weak. In a similar manner, he +determined that it would be more advisable to attack those in the +village first. These he might have reasonable hopes of cutting down +without warning the camp, or, in any event, before those from the camp +arrived. To assail the camp first would assuredly, by the firing, draw +upon them those from the village, and in whatever evil state these might +arrive, they would, by their numbers, terrify the bowmen, who without +doubt would have suffered some loss from the matchlocks. + +Waiting for the last light of day, Ling led on the men again, and +sending forward some of the most reliable, surrounded the place of the +village silently and without detection. In the open space, among broken +casks and other inconsiderable matters, plainly shown by the large fires +at which burned the last remains of the houses of Ki, many men moved +or lay, some already dull or in heavy sleep. As the darkness dropped +suddenly, the signal of a peacock’s shriek, three times uttered, rang +forth, and immediately a cloud of arrows, directed from all sides, +poured in among those who feasted. Seeing their foemen defenceless +before them, the archers neglected the orders they had received, and +throwing away their bows they rushed in with uplifted clubs, uttering +loud shouts of triumph. The next moment a shot was fired in the wood, +drums beat, and in an unbelievably short space of time a small but +well-armed band of the enemy was among them. Now that all need of +caution was at an end, Ling rushed forward with raised sword, calling +to his men that victory was certainly theirs, and dealing discriminating +and inspiriting blows whenever he met a foeman. Three times he formed +the bowmen into a figure emblematic of triumph, and led them against the +line of matchlocks. Twice they fell back, leaving mingled dead under +the feet of the enemy. The third time they stood firm, and Ling threw +himself against the waving rank in a noble and inspired endeavour to +lead the way through. At that moment, when a very distinguished victory +seemed within his hand, his elegant and well-constructed sword broke +upon an iron shield, leaving him defenceless and surrounded by the +enemy. + +“Chief among the sublime virtues enjoined by the divine Confucius,” + began Ling, folding his arms and speaking in an unmoved voice, “is an +intelligent submission--” but at that word he fell beneath a rain of +heavy and unquestionably well-aimed blows. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Between Si-chow and the village of Ki, in a house completely hidden from +travellers by the tall and black trees which surrounded it, lived an +aged and very wise person whose ways and manner of living had become so +distasteful to his neighbours that they at length agreed to regard him +as a powerful and ill-disposed magician. In this way it became a custom +that all very unseemly deeds committed by those who, in the ordinary +course, would not be guilty of such behaviour, should be attributed +to his influence, so that justice might be effected without persons of +assured respectability being put to any inconvenience. Apart from the +feeling which resulted from this just decision, the uncongenial person +in question had become exceedingly unpopular on account of certain +definite actions of his own, as that of causing the greater part of +Si-chow to be burned down by secretly breathing upon the seven sacred +water-jugs to which the town owed its prosperity and freedom from fire. +Furthermore, although possessed of many taels, and able to afford such +food as is to be found upon the tables of Mandarins, he selected from +choice dishes of an objectionable nature; he had been observed to eat +eggs of unbecoming freshness, and the Si-chow Official Printed Leaf made +it public that he had, on an excessively hot occasion, openly partaken +of cow’s milk. It is not a matter for wonder, therefore, that when +unnaturally loud thunder was heard in the neighbourhood of Si-chow +the more ignorant and credulous persons refused to continue in any +description of work until certain ceremonies connected with rice spirit, +and the adherence to a reclining position for some hours, had been +conscientiously observed as a protection against evil. + +Not even the most venerable person in Si-chow could remember the time +when the magician had not lived there, and as there existed no written +record narrating the incident, it was with well-founded probability +that he was said to be incapable of death. Contrary to the most general +practice, although quite unmarried, he had adopted no son to found a +line which would worship his memory in future years, but had instead +brought up and caused to be educated in the most difficult varieties +of embroidery a young girl, to whom he referred, for want of a more +suitable description, as the daughter of his sister, although he would +admit without hesitation, when closely questioned, that he had never +possessed a sister, at the same time, however, alluding with some +pride to many illustrious brothers, who had all obtained distinction in +various employments. + +Few persons of any high position penetrated into the house of the +magician, and most of these retired with inelegant haste on perceiving +that no domestic altar embellished the great hall. Indeed, not to make +concealment of the fact, the magician was a person who had entirely +neglected the higher virtues in an avaricious pursuit of wealth. In that +way all his time and a very large number of taels had been expended, +testing results by means of the four elements, and putting together +things which had been inadequately arrived at by others. It was +confidently asserted in Si-chow that he possessed every manner of +printed leaf which had been composed in whatsoever language, and all the +most precious charms, including many snake-skins of more than ordinary +rarity, and the fang of a black wolf which had been stung by seven +scorpions. + +On the death of his father the magician had become possessed of great +wealth, yet he contributed little to the funeral obsequies nor did any +suggestion of a durable and expensive nature conveying his enlightened +name and virtues down to future times cause his face to become +gladdened. In order to preserve greater secrecy about the enchantments +which he certainly performed, he employed only two persons within the +house, one of whom was blind and the other deaf. In this ingenious +manner he hoped to receive attention and yet be unobserved, the +blind one being unable to see the nature of the incantations which he +undertook, and the deaf one being unable to hear the words. In this, +however, he was unsuccessful, as the two persons always contrived to +be present together, and to explain to one another the nature of the +various matters afterwards; but as they were of somewhat deficient +understanding, the circumstance was unimportant. + +It was with more uneasiness that the magician perceived one day that the +maiden whom he had adopted was no longer a child. As he desired secrecy +above all things until he should have completed the one important +matter for which he had laboured all his life, he decided with extreme +unwillingness to put into operation a powerful charm towards her, which +would have the effect of diminishing all her attributes until such time +as he might release her again. Owing to his reluctance in the matter, +however, the magic did not act fully, but only in such a way that her +feet became naturally and without binding the most perfect and beautiful +in the entire province of Hu Nan, so that ever afterwards she was called +Pan Fei Mian, in delicate reference to that Empress whose feet were so +symmetrical that a golden lily sprang up wherever she trod. Afterwards +the magician made no further essay in the matter, chiefly because he +was ever convinced that the accomplishment of his desire was within his +grasp. + +The rumours of armed men in the neighbourhood of Si-chow threw the +magician into an unendurable condition of despair. To lose all, as would +most assuredly happen if he had to leave his arranged rooms and secret +preparations and take to flight, was the more bitter because he felt +surer than ever that success was even standing by his side. The very +subtle liquid, which would mix itself into the component parts of the +living creature which drank it, and by an insidious and harmless process +so work that, when the spirit departed, the flesh would become resolved +into a figure of pure and solid gold of the finest quality, had engaged +the refined minds of many of the most expert individuals of remote +ages. With most of these inspired persons, however, the search had +been undertaken in pure-minded benevolence, their chief aim being an +honourable desire to discover a method by which one’s ancestors might +be permanently and effectively preserved in a fit and becoming manner to +receive the worship and veneration of posterity. Yet, in spite of these +amiable motives, and of the fact that the magician merely desired the +possession of the secret to enable him to become excessively wealthy, +the affair had been so arranged that it should come into his possession. + +The matter which concerned Mian in the dark wood, when she was only +saved by the appearance of the person who is already known as Ling, +entirely removed all pleasurable emotions from the magician’s mind, and +on many occasions he stated in a definite and systematic manner that he +would shortly end an ignoble career which seemed to be destined only +to gloom and disappointment. In this way an important misunderstanding +arose, for when, two days later, during the sound of matchlock +firing, the magician suddenly approached the presence of Mian with an +uncontrollable haste and an entire absence of dignified demeanour, +and fell dead at her feet without expressing himself on any subject +whatever, she deliberately judged that in this manner he had carried his +remark into effect, nor did the closed vessel of yellow liquid which he +held in his hand seem to lead away from this decision. In reality, the +magician had fallen owing to the heavy and conflicting emotions which +success had engendered in an intellect already greatly weakened by +his continual disregard of the higher virtues; for the bottle, indeed, +contained the perfection of his entire life’s study, the very expensive +and three-times purified gold liquid. + +On perceiving the magician’s condition, Mian at once called for the two +attendants, and directed them to bring from an inner chamber all the +most effective curing substances, whether in the form of powder or +liquid. When these proved useless, no matter in what way they were +applied, it became evident that there could be very little hope of +restoring the magician, yet so courageous and grateful for the benefits +which she had received from the person in question was Mian, that, in +spite of the uninviting dangers of the enterprise, she determined to +journey to Ki to invoke the assistance of a certain person who was known +to be very successful in casting out malicious demons from the bodies +of animals, and from casks and barrels, in which they frequently took +refuge, to the great detriment of the quality of the liquid placed +therein. + +Not without many hidden fears, Mian set out on her journey, greatly +desiring not to be subjected to an encounter of a nature similar to the +one already recorded; for in such a case she could hardly again hope for +the inspired arrival of the one whom she now often thought of in secret +as the well-formed and symmetrical young sword-user. Nevertheless, an +event of equal significance was destined to prove the wisdom of +the well-known remark concerning thoughts which are occupying one’s +intellect and the unexpected appearance of a very formidable evil +spirit; for as she passed along, quickly yet with so dignified a motion +that the moss received no impression beneath her footsteps, she became +aware of a circumstance which caused her to stop by imparting to her +mind two definite and greatly dissimilar emotions. + +In a grassy and open space, on the verge of which she stood, lay +the dead bodies of seventeen rebels, all disposed in very degraded +attitudes, which contrasted strongly with the easy and becoming position +adopted by the eighteenth--one who bore the unmistakable emblems of the +Imperial army. In this brave and noble-looking personage Mian at once +saw her preserver, and not doubting that an inopportune and treacherous +death had overtaken him, she ran forward and raised him in her arms, +being well assured that however indiscreet such an action might appear +in the case of an ordinary person, the most select maiden need not +hesitate to perform so honourable a service in regard to one whose +virtues had by that time undoubtedly placed him among the Three Thousand +Pure Ones. Being disturbed in this providential manner, Ling opened his +eyes, and faintly murmuring, “Oh, sainted and adorable Koon Yam, Goddess +of Charity, intercede for me with Buddha!” he again lost possession of +himself in the Middle Air. At this remark, which plainly proved Ling to +be still alive, in spite of the fact that both the maiden and the person +himself had thoughts to the contrary, Mian found herself surrounded by +a variety of embarrassing circumstances, among which occurred a +remembrance of the dead magician and the wise person at Ki whom she had +set out to summon; but on considering the various natural and sublime +laws which bore directly on the alternative before her, she discovered +that her plain destiny was to endeavour to restore the breath in the +person who was still alive rather than engage on the very unsatisfactory +chance of attempting to call it back to the body from which it had so +long been absent. + +Having been inspired to this conclusion--which, when she later examined +her mind, she found not to be repulsive to her own inner feelings--Mian +returned to the house with dexterous speed, and calling together the two +attendants, she endeavoured by means of signs and drawings to explain to +them what she desired to accomplish. Succeeding in this after some delay +(for the persons in question, being very illiterate and narrow-minded, +were unable at first to understand the existence of any recumbent male +person other than the dead magician, whom they thereupon commenced to +bury in the garden with expressions of great satisfaction at their +own intelligence in comprehending Mian’s meaning so readily) they all +journeyed to the wood, and bearing Ling between them, they carried him +to the house without further adventure. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +It was in the month of Hot Dragon Breaths, many weeks after the fight in +the woods of Ki, that Ling again opened his eyes to find himself in an +unknown chamber, and to recognize in the one who visited him from time +to time the incomparable maiden whose life he had saved in the cypress +glade. Not a day had passed in the meanwhile on which Mian had neglected +to offer sacrifices to Chang-Chung, the deity interested in drugs and +healing substances, nor had she wavered in her firm resolve to bring +Ling back to an ordinary existence even when the attendants had +protested that the person in question might without impropriety be sent +to the Restoring Establishment of the Last Chance, so little did his +hope of recovering rest upon the efforts of living beings. + +After he had beheld Mian’s face and understood the circumstances of his +escape and recovery, Ling quickly shook off the evil vapours which had +held him down so long, and presently he was able to walk slowly in the +courtyard and in the shady paths of the wood beyond, leaning upon Mian +for the support he still required. + +“Oh, graceful one,” he said on such an occasion, when little stood +between him and the full powers which he had known before the battle, +“there is a matter which has been pressing upon this person’s mind for +some time past. It is as dark after light to let the thoughts dwell +around it, yet the thing itself must inevitably soon be regarded, for in +this life one’s actions are for ever regulated by conditions which are +neither of one’s own seeking nor within one’s power of controlling.” + +At these words all brightness left Mian’s manner, for she at once +understood that Ling referred to his departure, of which she herself had +lately come to think with unrestrained agitation. + +“Oh, Ling,” she exclaimed at length, “most expert of sword-users and +most noble of men, surely never was a maiden more inelegantly placed +than the one who is now by your side. To you she owes her life, yet it +is unseemly for her even to speak of the incident; to you she must +look for protection, yet she cannot ask you to stay by her side. She is +indeed alone. The magician is dead, Ki has fallen, Ling is going, and +Mian is undoubtedly the most unhappy and solitary person between the +Wall and the Nan Hai.” + +“Beloved Mian,” exclaimed Ling, with inspiring vehemence, “and is not +the utterly unworthy person before you indebted to you in a double +measure that life is still within him? Is not the strength which now +promotes him to such exceptional audacity as to aspire to your +lovely hand, of your own creating? Only encourage Ling to entertain a +well-founded hope that on his return he shall not find you partaking +of the wedding feast of some wealthy and exceptionally round-bodied +Mandarin, and this person will accomplish the journey to Canton and back +as it were in four strides.” + +“Oh, Ling, reflexion of my ideal, holder of my soul, it would indeed +be very disagreeable to my own feelings to make any reply save one,” + replied Mian, scarcely above a breath-voice. “Gratitude alone would +direct me, were it not that the great love which fills me leaves no +resting-place for any other emotion than itself. Go if you must, +but return quickly, for your absence will weigh upon Mian like a +dragon-dream.” + +“Violet light of my eyes,” exclaimed Ling, “even in surroundings which +with the exception of the matter before us are uninspiring in the +extreme, your virtuous and retiring encouragement yet raises me to such +a commanding eminence of demonstrative happiness that I fear I +shall become intolerably self-opinionated towards my fellow-men in +consequence.” + +“Such a thing is impossible with my Ling,” said Mian, with conviction. +“But must you indeed journey to Canton?” + +“Alas!” replied Ling, “gladly would this person decide against such +a course did the matter rest with him, for as the Verses say, ‘It +is needless to apply the ram’s head to the unlocked door.’ But Ki is +demolished, the unassuming Mandarin Li Keen has retired to Peking, and +of the fortunes of his bowmen this person is entirely ignorant.” + +“Such as survived returned to their homes,” replied Mian, “and Si-chow +is safe, for the scattered and broken rebels fled to the mountains +again; so much this person has learned.” + +“In that case Si-chow is undoubtedly safe for the time, and can be left +with prudence,” said Ling. “It is an unfortunate circumstance that there +is no Mandarin of authority between here and Canton who can receive from +this person a statement of past facts and give him instructions for the +future.” + +“And what will be the nature of such instructions as will be given at +Canton?” demanded Mian. + +“By chance they may take the form of raising another company of bowmen,” + said Ling, with a sigh, “but, indeed, if this person can obtain any +weight by means of his past service, they will tend towards a pleasant +and unambitious civil appointment.” + +“Oh, my artless and noble-minded lover!” exclaimed Mian, “assuredly a +veil has been before your eyes during your residence in Canton, and your +naturally benevolent mind has turned all things into good, or you would +not thus hopefully refer to your brilliant exploits in the past. Of what +commercial benefit have they been to the sordid and miserly persons +in authority, or in what way have they diverted a stream of taels into +their insatiable pockets? Far greater is the chance that had Si-chow +fallen many of its household goods would have found their way into the +Yamens of Canton. Assuredly in Li Keen you will have a friend who will +make many delicate allusions to your ancestors when you meet, and yet +one who will float many barbed whispers to follow you when you have +passed; for you have planted shame before him in the eyes of those who +would otherwise neither have eyes to see nor tongues to discuss the +matter. It is for such a reason that this person distrusts all things +connected with the journey, except your constancy, oh, my true and +strong one.” + +“Such faithfulness would alone be sufficient to assure my safe return if +the matter were properly represented to the supreme Deities,” said Ling. +“Let not the thin curtain of bitter water stand before your lustrous +eyes any longer, then, the events which have followed one another in the +past few days in a fashion that can only be likened to thunder following +lightning are indeed sufficient to distress one with so refined and +swan-like an organization, but they are now assuredly at an end.” + +“It is a hope of daily recurrence to this person,” replied Mian, +honourably endeavouring to restrain the emotion which openly exhibited +itself in her eyes; “for what maiden would not rather make successful +offerings to the Great Mother Kum-Fa than have the most imposing and +verbose Triumphal Arch erected to commemorate an empty and unsatisfying +constancy?” + +In this amiable manner the matter was arranged between Ling and Mian, as +they sat together in the magician’s garden drinking peach-tea, which the +two attendants--not without discriminating and significant expressions +between themselves--brought to them from time to time. Here Ling made +clear the whole manner of his life from his earliest memory to the +time when he fell in dignified combat, nor did Mian withhold anything, +explaining in particular such charms and spells of the magician as she +had knowledge of, and in this graceful manner materially assisting her +lover in the many disagreeable encounters and conflicts which he was +shortly to experience. + +It was with even more objectionable feelings than before that Ling now +contemplated his journey to Canton, involving as it did the separation +from one who had become as the shadow of his existence, and by whose +side he had an undoubted claim to stand. Yet the necessity of the +undertaking was no less than before, and the full possession of all his +natural powers took away his only excuse for delaying in the matter. +Without any pleasurable anticipations, therefore, he consulted the +Sacred Flat and Round Sticks, and learning that the following day would +be propitious for the journey, he arranged to set out in accordance with +the omen. + +When the final moment arrived at which the invisible threads of +constantly passing emotions from one to the other must be broken, and +when Mian perceived that her lover’s horse was restrained at the door by +the two attendants, who with unsuspected delicacy of feeling had taken +this opportunity of withdrawing, the noble endurance which had hitherto +upheld her melted away, and she became involved in very melancholy +and obscure meditations until she observed that Ling also was quickly +becoming affected by a similar gloom. + +“Alas!” she exclaimed, “how unworthy a person I am thus to impose upon +my lord a greater burden than that which already weighs him down! Rather +ought this one to dwell upon the happiness of that day, when, after +successfully evading or overthrowing the numerous bands of assassins +which infest the road from here to Canton, and after escaping or +recovering from the many deadly pestilences which invariably reduce that +city at this season of the year, he shall triumphantly return. Assuredly +there is a highly-polished surface united to every action in life, +no matter how funereal it may at first appear. Indeed, there are many +incidents compared with which death itself is welcome, and to this end +Mian has reserved a farewell gift.” + +Speaking in this manner the devoted and magnanimous maiden placed in +Ling’s hands the transparent vessel of liquid which the magician had +grasped when he fell. “This person,” she continued, speaking with +difficulty, “places her lover’s welfare incomparably before her own +happiness, and should he ever find himself in a situation which is +unendurably oppressive, and from which death is the only escape--such +as inevitable tortures, the infliction of violent madness, or the +subjection by magic to the will of some designing woman--she begs him +to accept this means of freeing himself without regarding her anguish +beyond expressing a clearly defined last wish that the two persons in +question may be in the end happily reunited in another existence.” + +Assured by this last evidence of affection, Ling felt that he had no +longer any reason for internal heaviness; his spirits were immeasurably +raised by the fragrant incense of Mian’s great devotion, and under its +influence he was even able to breathe towards her a few words of similar +comfort as he left the spot and began his journey. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +On entering Canton, which he successfully accomplished without any +unpleasant adventure, the marked absence of any dignified ostentation +which had been accountable for many of Ling’s misfortunes in the past, +impelled him again to reside in the same insignificant apartment that +he had occupied when he first visited the city as an unknown +and unimportant candidate. In consequence of this, when Ling was +communicating to any person the signs by which messengers might +find him, he was compelled to add, “the neighbourhood in which this +contemptible person resides is that officially known as ‘the mean +quarter favoured by the lower class of those who murder by treachery,’” + and for this reason he was not always treated with the regard to which +his attainments entitled him, or which he would have unquestionably +received had he been able to describe himself as of “the partly-drained +and uninfected area reserved to Mandarins and their friends.” + +It was with an ignoble feeling of mental distress that Ling exhibited +himself at the Chief Office of Warlike Deeds and Arrangements on the +following day; for the many disadvantageous incidents of his past life +had repeated themselves before his eyes while he slept, and the not +unhopeful emotions which he had felt when in the inspiring presence of +Mian were now altogether absent. In spite of the fact that he reached +the office during the early gong strokes of the morning, it was not +until the withdrawal of light that he reached any person who was in a +position to speak with him on the matter, so numerous were the lesser +ones through whose chambers he had to pass in the process. At length he +found himself in the presence of an upper one who had the appearance +of being acquainted with the circumstances, and who received him with +dignity, though not with any embarrassing exhibition of respect or +servility. + +“‘The hero of the illustrious encounter beyond the walls of Si-chow,’” + exclaimed that official, reading the words from the tablet of +introduction which Ling had caused to be carried into him, and at the +same time examining the person in question closely. “Indeed, no such one +is known to those within this office, unless the words chance to point +to the courteous and unassuming Mandarin Li Keen, who, however, is at +this moment recovering his health at Peking, as set forth in the amiable +and impartial report which we have lately received from him.” + +At these words Ling plainly understood that there was little hope of the +last events becoming profitable on his account. + +“Did not the report to which allusion has been made bear reference to +one Ling, Commander of the Archers, who thrice led on the fighting men, +and who was finally successful in causing the rebels to disperse towards +the mountains?” he asked, in a voice which somewhat trembled. + +“There is certainly reference to one of the name you mention,” said +the other; “but regarding the terms--perhaps this person would better +protect his own estimable time by displaying the report within your +sight.” + +With these words the upper one struck a gong several times, and after +receiving from an inner chamber the parchment in question, he placed +it before Ling, at the same time directing a lesser one to interpose +between it and the one who read it a large sheet of transparent +substance, so that destruction might not come to it, no matter in +what way its contents affected the reader. Thereon Ling perceived the +following facts, very skilfully inscribed with the evident purpose of +inducing persons to believe, without question, that words so elegantly +traced must of necessity be truthful also. + + A Benevolent Example of the Intelligent Arrangement by which the + most Worthy Persons outlive those who are Incapable. + + The circumstances connected with the office of the valuable and + accomplished Mandarin of Warlike Deeds and Arrangements at Si-chow + have, in recent times, been of anything but a prepossessing order. + Owing to the very inadequate methods adopted by those who earn a + livelihood by conveying necessities from the more enlightened + portions of the Empire to that place, it so came about that for a + period of five days the Yamen was entirely unsupplied with the + fins of sharks or even with goats’ eyes. To add to the polished + Mandarin’s distress of mind the barbarous and slow-witted rebels + who infest those parts took this opportunity to destroy the town + and most of its inhabitants, the matter coming about as follows: + + The feeble and commonplace person named Ling who commands the + bowmen had but recently been elevated to that distinguished + position from a menial and degraded occupation (for which, indeed, + his stunted intellect more aptly fitted him); and being in + consequence very greatly puffed out in self-gratification, he + became an easy prey to the cunning of the rebels, and allowed + himself to be beguiled into a trap, paying for this contemptible + stupidity with his life. The town of Si-chow was then attacked, + and being in this manner left defenceless through the weakness--or + treachery--of the person Ling, who had contrived to encompass the + entire destruction of his unyielding company, it fell after a + determined and irreproachable resistance; the Mandarin Li Keen + being told, as, covered with the blood of the foemen, he was + dragged away from the thickest part of the unequal conflict by his + followers, that he was the last person to leave the town. On his + way to Peking with news of this valiant defence, the Mandarin was + joined by the Chief of Bowmen, who had understood and avoided the + very obvious snare into which the stagnant-minded Commander had + led his followers, in spite of disinterested advice to the + contrary. For this intelligent perception, and for general + nobility of conduct when in battle, the versatile Chief of Bowmen + is by this written paper strongly recommended to the dignity of + receiving the small metal Embellishment of Valour. + + It has been suggested to the Mandarin Li Keen that the bestowal of + the Crystal Button would only be a fit and graceful reward for his + indefatigable efforts to uphold the dignity of the sublime + Emperor; but to all such persons the Mandarin has sternly replied + that such a proposal would more fitly originate from the renowned + and valuable Office of Warlike Deeds and Arrangements, he well + knowing that the wise and engaging persons who conduct that + indispensable and well-regulated department are gracefully + voracious in their efforts to reward merit, even when it is + displayed, as in the case in question, by one who from his + position will inevitably soon be urgently petitioning in a like + manner on their behalf. + +When Ling had finished reading this elegantly arranged but exceedingly +misleading parchment, he looked up with eyes from which he vainly +endeavoured to restrain the signs of undignified emotion, and said to +the upper one: + +“It is difficult employment for a person to refrain from unendurable +thoughts when his unassuming and really conscientious efforts are +represented in a spirit of no satisfaction, yet in this matter the very +expert Li Keen appears to have gone beyond himself; the Commander Ling, +who is herein represented as being slain by the enemy, is, indeed, the +person who is standing before you, and all the other statements are in a +like exactness.” + +“The short-sighted individual who for some hidden desire of his own is +endeavouring to present himself as the corrupt and degraded creature +Ling, has overlooked one important circumstance,” said the upper one, +smiling in a very intolerable manner, at the same time causing his head +to move slightly from side to side in the fashion of one who rebukes +with assumed geniality; and, turning over the written paper, he +displayed upon the under side the Imperial vermilion Sign. “Perhaps,” + he continued, “the omniscient person will still continue in his remarks, +even with the evidence of the Emperor’s unerring pencil to refute him.” + +At these words and the undoubted testimony of the red mark, which +plainly declared the whole of the written matter to be composed of +truth, no matter what might afterwards transpire, Ling understood that +very little prosperity remained with him. + +“But the town of Si-chow,” he suggested, after examining his mind; “if +any person in authority visited the place, he would inevitably find it +standing and its inhabitants in agreeable health.” + +“The persistent person who is so assiduously occupying my intellectual +moments with empty words seems to be unaccountably deficient in his +knowledge of the customs of refined society and of the meaning of the +Imperial Signet,” said the other, with an entire absence of benevolent +consideration. “That Si-chow has fallen and that Ling is dead are two +utterly uncontroversial matters truthfully recorded. If a person visited +Si-chow, he might find it rebuilt or even inhabited by those from the +neighbouring villages or by evil spirits taking the forms of the ones +who formerly lived there; as in a like manner, Ling might be restored +to existence by magic, or his body might be found and possessed by +an outcast demon who desired to revisit the earth for a period. Such +circumstances do not in any way disturb the announcement that Si-chow +has without question fallen, and that Ling has officially ceased to +live, of which events notifications have been sent to all who are +concerned in the matters.” + +As the upper one ceased speaking, four strokes sounded upon the gong, +and Ling immediately found himself carried into the street by the +current of both lesser and upper ones who poured forth at the signal. +The termination of this conversation left Ling in a more unenviable +state of dejection than any of the many preceding misfortunes had +done, for with enlarged inducements to possess himself of a competent +appointment he seemed to be even further removed from this attainment +than he had been at any time in his life. He might, indeed, present +himself again for the public examinations; but in order to do even that +it would be necessary for him to wait almost a year, nor could he assure +himself that his efforts would again be likely to result in an equal +success. Doubts also arose within his mind of the course which he should +follow in such a case; whether to adopt a new name, involving as it +would certain humiliation and perhaps disgrace if detection overtook +his footsteps, or still to possess the title of one who was in a measure +dead, and hazard the likelihood of having any prosperity which he might +obtain reduced to nothing if the fact should become public. + +As Ling reflected upon such details he found himself without intention +before the house of a wise person who had become very wealthy by +advising others on all matters, but chiefly on those connected with +strange occurrences and such events as could not be settled definitely +either one way or the other until a remote period had been reached. +Becoming assailed by a curious desire to know what manner of evils +particularly attached themselves to such as were officially dead but who +nevertheless had an ordinary existence, Ling placed himself before this +person, and after arranging the manner of reward related to him so many +of the circumstances as were necessary to enable a full understanding to +be reached, but at the same time in no way betraying his own interest in +the matter. + +“Such inflictions are to no degree frequent,” said the wise person after +he had consulted a polished sphere of the finest red jade for some +time; “and this is in a measure to be regretted, as the hair of these +persons--provided they die a violent death, which is invariably the +case--constitutes a certain protection against being struck by falling +stars, or becoming involved in unsuccessful law cases. The persons in +question can be recognized with certainty in the public ways by the +unnatural pallor of their faces and by the general repulsiveness of +their appearance, but as they soon take refuge in suicide, unless +they have the fortune to be removed previously by accident, it is an +infrequent matter that one is gratified by the sight. During their +existence they are subject to many disorders from which the generality +of human beings are benevolently preserved; they possess no rights +of any kind, and if by any chance they are detected in an act of a +seemingly depraved nature, they are liable to judgment at the hands of +the passers-by without any form whatever, and to punishment of a more +severe order than that administered to commonplace criminals. There +are many other disadvantages affecting such persons when they reach the +Middle Air, of which the chief--” + +“This person is immeasurably indebted for such a clear explanation of +the position,” interrupted Ling, who had a feeling of not desiring +to penetrate further into the detail; “but as he perceives a line +of anxious ones eagerly waiting at the door to obtain advice and +consolation from so expert and amiable a wizard, he will not make +himself uncongenial any longer with his very feeble topics of +conversation.” + +By this time Ling plainly comprehended that he had been marked out +from the beginning--perhaps for all the knowledge which he had to the +opposite effect, from a period in the life of a far-removed ancestor--to +be an object of marked derision and the victim of all manner of +malevolent demons in whatever actions he undertook. In this condition +of understanding his mind turned gratefully to the parting gift of Mian +whom he had now no hope of possessing; for the intolerable thought +of uniting her to so objectionable a being as himself would have been +dismissed as utterly inelegant even had he been in a manner of living +to provide for her adequately, which itself seemed clearly impossible. +Disregarding all similar emotions, therefore, he walked without pausing +to his abode, and stretching his body upon the rushes, drank the entire +liquid unhesitatingly, and prepared to pass beyond with a tranquil mind +entirely given up to thoughts and images of Mian. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Upon a certain occasion, the particulars of which have already been +recorded, Ling had judged himself to have passed into the form of a +spirit on beholding the ethereal form of Mian bending over him. After +swallowing the entire liquid, which had cost the dead magician so much +to distil and make perfect, it was with a well-assured determination of +never again awakening that he lost the outward senses and floated in the +Middle Air, so that when his eyes next opened upon what seemed to be +the bare walls of his own chamber, his first thought was a natural +conviction that the matter had been so arranged either out of a +charitable desire that he should not be overcome by a too sudden +transition to unparalleled splendour, or that such a reception was the +outcome of some dignified jest on the part of certain lesser and more +cheerful spirits. After waiting in one position for several hours, +however, and receiving no summons or manifestation of a celestial +nature, he began to doubt the qualities of the liquid, and applying +certain tests, he soon ascertained that he was still in the lower world +and unharmed. Nevertheless, this circumstance did not tend in any way +to depress his mind, for, doubtless owing to some hidden virtue of +the fluid, he felt an enjoyable emotion that he still lived; all his +attributes appeared to be purified, and he experienced an inspired +certainty of feeling that an illustrious and highly-remunerative future +lay before one who still had an ordinary existence after being both +officially killed and self-poisoned. + +In this intelligent disposition thoughts of Mian recurred to him with +unreproved persistence, and in order to convey to her an account of the +various matters which had engaged him since his arrival at the city, and +a well-considered declaration of the unchanged state of his own feelings +towards her, he composed and despatched with impetuous haste the +following delicate verses: + + + +CONSTANCY + + About the walls and gates of Canton + Are many pleasing and entertaining maidens; + Indeed, in the eyes of their friends and of the passers-by + Some of them are exceptionally adorable. + The person who is inscribing these lines, however, + Sees before him, as it were, an assemblage of deformed and un-prepossessing hags, + Venerable in age and inconsiderable in appearance; + For the dignified and majestic image of Mian is ever before him, + Making all others very inferior. + + Within the houses and streets of Canton + Hang many bright lanterns. + The ordinary person who has occasion to walk by night + Professes to find them highly lustrous. + But there is one who thinks contrary facts, + And when he goes forth he carries two long curved poles + To prevent him from stumbling among the dark and hidden places; + For he has gazed into the brilliant and pellucid orbs of Mian, + And all other lights are dull and practically opaque. + + In various parts of the literary quarter of Canton + Reside such as spend their time in inward contemplation. + In spite of their generally uninviting exteriors + Their reflexions are often of a very profound order. + Yet the unpopular and persistently-abused Ling + Would unhesitatingly prefer his own thoughts to theirs, + For what makes this person’s thoughts far more pleasing + Is that they are invariably connected with the virtuous and ornamental Mian. + +Becoming very amiably disposed after this agreeable occupation, Ling +surveyed himself at the disc of polished metal, and observed with +surprise and shame the rough and uninviting condition of his person. He +had, indeed, although it was not until some time later that he became +aware of the circumstance, slept for five days without interruption, and +it need not therefore be a matter of wonder or of reproach to him that +his smooth surfaces had become covered with short hair. Reviling himself +bitterly for the appearance which he conceived he must have exhibited +when he conducted his business, and to which he now in part attributed +his ill-success, Ling went forth without delay, and quickly discovering +one of those who remove hair publicly for a very small sum, he placed +himself in the chair, and directed that his face, arms, and legs should +be denuded after the manner affected by the ones who make a practice of +observing the most recent customs. + +“Did the illustrious individual who is now conferring distinction on +this really worn-out chair by occupying it express himself in favour of +having the face entirely denuded?” demanded the one who conducted the +operation; for these persons have become famous for their elegant and +persistent ability to discourse, and frequently assume ignorance in +order that they themselves may make reply, and not for the purpose +of gaining knowledge. “Now, in the objectionable opinion of this +unintelligent person, who has a presumptuous habit of offering his +very undesirable advice, a slight covering on the upper lip, delicately +arranged and somewhat fiercely pointed at the extremities, would +bestow an appearance of--how shall this illiterate person explain +himself?--dignity?--matured reflexion?--doubtless the accomplished +nobleman before me will understand what is intended with a more +knife-like accuracy than this person can describe it--but confer that +highly desirable effect upon the face of which at present it is entirely +destitute... ‘Entirely denuded?’ Then without fail it shall certainly be +so, O incomparable personage... Does the versatile Mandarin now present +profess any concern as to the condition of the rice plants?... Indeed, +the remark is an inspired one; the subject is totally devoid of interest +to a person of intelligence ... A remarkable and gravity-removing event +transpired within the notice of this unassuming person recently. A +discriminating individual had purchased from him a portion of his justly +renowned Thrice-extracted Essence of Celestial Herb Oil--a preparation +which in this experienced person’s opinion, indeed, would greatly +relieve the undoubted afflictions from which the one before him is +evidently suffering--when after once anointing himself--” + +A lengthy period containing no words caused Ling, who had in the +meantime closed his eyes and lost Canton and all else in delicate +thoughts of Mian, to look up. That which met his attention on doing so +filled him with an intelligent wonder, for the person before him held in +his hand what had the appearance of a tuft of bright yellow hair, which +shone in the light of the sun with a most engaging splendour, but which +he nevertheless regarded with a most undignified expression of confusion +and awe. + +“Illustrious demon,” he cried at length, kow-towing very respectfully, +“have the extreme amiableness to be of a benevolent disposition, and do +not take an unworthy and entirely unremunerative revenge upon this +very unimportant person for failing to detect and honour you from the +beginning.” + +“Such words indicate nothing beyond an excess of hemp spirit,” answered +Ling, with signs of displeasure. “To gain my explicit esteem, make me +smooth without delay, and do not exhibit before me the lock of hair +which, from its colour and appearance, has evidently adorned the head of +one of those maidens whose duty it is to quench the thirst of travellers +in the long narrow rooms of this city.” + +“Majestic and anonymous spirit,” said the other, with extreme reverence, +and an entire absence of the appearance of one who had gazed into +too many vessels, “if such be your plainly-expressed desire, this +superficial person will at once proceed to make smooth your peach-like +skin, and with a carefulness inspired by the certainty that the most +unimportant wound would give forth liquid fire, in which he would +undoubtedly perish. Nevertheless, he desires to make it evident that +this hair is from the head of no maiden, being, indeed, the uneven +termination of your own sacred pigtail, which this excessively +self-confident slave took the inexcusable liberty of removing, and which +changed in this manner within his hand in order to administer a fit +reproof for his intolerable presumption.” + +Impressed by the mien and unquestionable earnestness of the remover of +hair, Ling took the matter which had occasioned these various emotions +in his hand and examined it. His amazement was still greater when he +perceived that--in spite of the fact that it presented every appearance +of having been cut from his own person--none of the qualities of hair +remained in it; it was hard and wire-like, possessing, indeed, both the +nature and the appearance of a metal. + +As he gazed fixedly and with astonishment, there came back into +the remembrance of Ling certain obscure and little-understood facts +connected with the limitless wealth possessed by the Yellow Emperor--of +which the great gold life-like image in the Temple of Internal Symmetry +at Peking alone bears witness now--and of his lost secret. Many very +forcible prophecies and omens in his own earlier life, of which +the rendering and accomplishment had hitherto seemed to be dark and +incomplete, passed before him, and various matters which Mian had +related to him concerning the habits and speech of the magician took +definite form within his mind. Deeply impressed by the exact manner in +which all these circumstances fitted together, one into another, Ling +rewarded the person before him greatly beyond his expectation, and +hurried without delay to his own chamber. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +For many hours Ling remained in his room, examining in his mind all +passages, either in his own life or in the lives of others, which might +by any chance have influence on the event before him. In this thorough +way he became assured that the competition and its results, his journey +to Si-chow with the encounter in the cypress wood, the flight of the +incapable and treacherous Mandarin, and the battle of Ki, were all, +down to the matter of the smallest detail, parts of a symmetrical and +complete scheme, tending to his present condition. Cheered and upheld +by this proof of the fact that very able deities were at work on +his behalf, he turned his intellect from the entrancing subject to a +contemplation of the manner in which his condition would enable him to +frustrate the uninventive villainies of the obstinate person Li Keen, +and to provide a suitable house and mode of living to which he would be +justified in introducing Mian, after adequate marriage ceremonies had +been observed between them. In this endeavour he was less successful +than he had imagined would be the case, for when he had first fully +understood that his body was of such a substance that nothing was +wanting to transmute it into fine gold but the absence of the living +spirit, he had naturally, and without deeply examining the detail, +assumed that so much gold might be considered to be in his possession. +Now, however, a very definite thought arose within him that his own +wishes and interests would have been better secured had the benevolent +spirits who undertook the matter placed the secret within his knowledge +in such a way as to enable him to administer the fluid to some very +heavy and inexpensive animal, so that the issue which seemed inevitable +before the enjoyment of the riches could be entered upon should not +have touched his own comfort so closely. To a person of Ling’s refined +imagination it could not fail to be a subject of internal reproach that +while he would become the most precious dead body in the world, his +value in life might not be very honourably placed even by the most +complimentary one who should require his services. Then came the +thought, which, however degraded, he found himself unable to put quite +beyond him, that if in the meantime he were able to gain a sufficiency +for Mian and himself, even her pure and delicate love might not be able +to bear so offensive a test as that of seeing him grow old and remain +intolerably healthy--perhaps with advancing years actually becoming +lighter day by day, and thereby lessening in value before her eyes--when +the natural infirmities of age and the presence of an ever-increasing +posterity would make even a moderate amount of taels of inestimable +value. + +No doubt remained in Ling’s mind that the process of frequently making +smooth his surfaces would yield an amount of gold enough to suffice for +his own needs, but a brief consideration of the matter convinced him +that this source would be inadequate to maintain an entire household +even if he continually denuded himself to an almost ignominious extent. +As he fully weighed these varying chances the certainty became more +clear to him with every thought that for the virtuous enjoyment of +Mian’s society one great sacrifice was required of him. This act, it +seemed to be intimated, would without delay provide for an affluent +and lengthy future, and at the same time would influence all the +spirits--even those who had been hitherto evilly-disposed towards +him--in such a manner that his enemies would be removed from his path +by a process which would expose them to public ridicule, and he would be +assured in founding an illustrious and enduring line. To accomplish this +successfully necessitated the loss of at least the greater part of one +entire member, and for some time the disadvantages of going through an +existence with only a single leg or arm seemed more than a sufficient +price to pay even for the definite advantages which would be made +over to him in return. This unworthy thought, however, could not long +withstand the memory of Mian’s steadfast and high-minded affection, +and the certainty of her enlightened gladness at his return even in the +imperfect condition which he anticipated. Nor was there absent from his +mind a dimly-understood hope that the matter did not finally rest with +him, but that everything which he might be inspired to do was in reality +only a portion of the complete and arranged system into which he had +been drawn, and in which his part had been assigned to him from the +beginning without power for him to deviate, no matter how much to the +contrary the thing should appear. + +As no advantage would be gained by making any delay, Ling at once sought +the most favourable means of putting his resolution into practice, and +after many skilful and insidious inquiries he learnt of an accomplished +person who made a consistent habit of cutting off limbs which had become +troublesome to their possessors either through accident or disease. +Furthermore, he was said to be of a sincere and charitable disposition, +and many persons declared that on no occasion had he been known to +make use of the helpless condition of those who visited him in order to +extort money from them. + +Coming to the ill-considered conclusion that he would be able to conceal +within his own breast the true reason for the operation, Ling placed +himself before the person in question, and exhibited the matter to +him so that it would appear as though his desires were promoted by the +presence of a small but persistent sprite which had taken its abode +within his left thigh, and there resisted every effort of the most +experienced wise persons to induce it to come forth again. Satisfied +with this explanation of the necessity of the deed, the one who +undertook the matter proceeded, with Ling’s assistance, to sharpen his +cutting instruments and to heat the hardening irons; but no sooner had +he made a shallow mark to indicate the lines which his knife should +take, than his subtle observation at once showed him that the facts had +been represented to him in a wrong sense, and that his visitor, indeed, +was composed of no common substance. Being of a gentle and forbearing +disposition, he did not manifest any indication of rage at the +discovery, but amiably and unassumingly pointed out that such a course +was not respectful towards himself, and that, moreover, Ling might incur +certain well-defined and highly undesirable maladies as a punishment for +the deception. + +Overcome with remorse at deceiving so courteous and noble-minded +a person, Ling fully explained the circumstances to him, not even +concealing from him certain facts which related to the actions of remote +ancestors, but which, nevertheless, appeared to have influenced the +succession of events. When he had made an end of the narrative, the +other said: + +“Behold now, it is truly remarked that every Mandarin has three hands +and every soldier a like number of feet, yet it is a saying which is +rather to be regarded as manifesting the deep wisdom and discrimination +of the speaker than as an actual fact which can be taken advantage of +when one is so minded--least of all by so valiant a Commander as the one +before me, who has clearly proved that in time of battle he has exactly +reversed the position.” + +“The loss would undoubtedly be of considerable inconvenience +occasionally,” admitted Ling, “yet none the less the sage remark of Huai +Mei-shan, ‘When actually in the embrace of a voracious and powerful +wild animal, the desirability of leaving a limb is not a matter to be +subjected to lengthy consideration,’ is undoubtedly a valuable guide for +general conduct. This person has endured many misfortunes and suffered +many injustices; he has known the wolf-gnawings of great hopes, which +have withered and daily grown less when the difficulties of maintaining +an honourable and illustrious career have unfolded themselves within his +sight. Before him still lie the attractions of a moderate competency to +be shared with the one whose absence would make even the Upper Region +unendurable, and after having this entrancing future once shattered +by the tiger-like cupidity of a depraved and incapable Mandarin, he is +determined to welcome even the sacrifice which you condemn rather than +let the opportunity vanish through indecision.” + +“It is not an unworthy or abandoned decision,” said the one whose aid +Ling had invoked, “nor a matter in which this person would refrain from +taking part, were there no other and more agreeable means by which the +same results may be attained. A circumstance has occurred within +this superficial person’s mind, however: A brother of the one who +is addressing you is by profession one of those who purchase large +undertakings for which they have not the money to pay, and who thereupon +by various expedients gain the ear of the thrifty, enticing them by fair +offers of return to entrust their savings for the purpose of paying off +the debt. These persons are ever on the watch for transactions by which +they inevitably prosper without incurring any obligation, and doubtless +my brother will be able to gather a just share of the value of your +highly-remunerative body without submitting you to the insufferable +annoyance of losing a great part of it prematurely.” + +Without clearly understanding how so inviting an arrangement could be +effected, the manner of speaking was exceedingly alluring to Ling’s +mind, perplexed as he had become through weighing and considering +the various attitudes of the entire matter. To receive a certain and +sufficient sum of money without his person being in any way mutilated +would be a satisfactory, but as far as he had been able to observe an +unapproachable, solution to the difficulty. In the mind of the amiable +person with whom he was conversing, however, the accomplishment did not +appear to be surrounded by unnatural obstacles, so that Ling was content +to leave the entire design in his hands, after stating that he would +again present himself on a certain occasion when it was asserted that +the brother in question would be present. + +So internally lightened did Ling feel after this inspiring conversation, +and so confident of a speedy success had the obliging person’s words +made him become, that for the first time since his return to Canton he +was able to take an intellectual interest in the pleasures of the city. +Becoming aware that the celebrated play entitled “The Precious Lamp +of Spotted Butterfly Temple” was in process of being shown at the Tea +Garden of Rainbow Lights and Voices, he purchased an entrance, and after +passing several hours in this conscientious enjoyment, returned to +his chamber, and passed a night untroubled by any manifestations of an +unpleasant nature. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Chang-ch’un, the brother of the one to whom Ling had applied in his +determination, was confidently stated to be one of the richest persons +in Canton. So great was the number of enterprises in which he had +possessions, that he himself was unable to keep an account of them, +and it was asserted that upon occasions he had run through the streets, +crying aloud that such an undertaking had been the subject of most +inferior and uninviting dreams and omens (a custom observed by those who +wish a venture ill), whereas upon returning and consulting his written +parchments, it became plain to him that he had indulged in a very +objectionable exhibition, as he himself was the person most interested +in the success of the matter. Far from discouraging him, however, such +incidents tended to his advantage, as he could consistently point to +them in proof of his unquestionable commercial honourableness, and in +this way many persons of all classes, not only in Canton, or in the +Province, but all over the Empire, would unhesitatingly entrust money +to be placed in undertakings which he had purchased and was willing to +describe as “of much good.” A certain class of printed leaves--those in +which Chang-ch’un did not insert purchased mentions of his forthcoming +ventures or verses recording his virtues (in return for buying many +examples of the printed leaf containing them)--took frequent occasion of +reminding persons that Chang-ch’un owed the beginning of his prosperity +to finding a written parchment connected with a Mandarin of exalted rank +and a low caste attendant at the Ti-i tea-house among the paper +heaps, which it was at that time his occupation to assort into various +departments according to their quality and commercial value. Such +printed leaves freely and unhesitatingly predicted that the day on which +he would publicly lose face was incomparably nearer than that on which +the Imperial army would receive its back pay, and in a quaint and +gravity-removing manner advised him to protect himself against an +obscure but inevitable poverty by learning the accomplishment of +chair-carrying--an occupation for which his talents and achievements +fitted him in a high degree, they remarked. + +In spite of these evilly intentioned remarks, and of illustrations +representing him as being bowstrung for treacherous killing, being +seized in the action of secretly conveying money from passers-by to +himself and other similar annoying references to his private life, +Chang-ch’un did not fail to prosper, and his undertakings succeeded to +such an extent that without inquiry into the detail many persons were +content to describe as “gold-lined” anything to which he affixed his +sign, and to hazard their savings for staking upon the ventures. In all +other departments of life Chang was equally successful; his chief wife +was the daughter of one who stood high in the Emperor’s favour; his +repast table was never unsupplied with sea-snails, rats’ tongues, +or delicacies of an equally expensive nature, and it was confidently +maintained that there was no official in Canton, not even putting aside +the Taotai, who dare neglect to fondle Chang’s hand if he publicly +offered it to him for that purpose. + +It was at the most illustrious point of his existence--at the time, +indeed, when after purchasing without money the renowned and proficient +charm-water Ho-Ko for a million taels, he had sold it again for +ten--that Chang was informed by his brother of the circumstances +connected with Ling. After becoming specially assured that the matter +was indeed such as it was represented to be, Chang at once discerned +that the venture was of too certain and profitable a nature to be put +before those who entrusted their money to him in ordinary and doubtful +cases. He accordingly called together certain persons whom he was +desirous of obliging, and informing them privately and apart +from business terms that the opportunity was one of exceptional +attractiveness, he placed the facts before them. After displaying a +number of diagrams bearing upon the matter, he proposed that they should +form an enterprise to be called “The Ling (After Death) Without Much +Risk Assembly.” The manner of conducting this undertaking he explained +to be as follows: The body of Ling, whenever the spirit left it, should +become as theirs to be used for profit. For this benefit they would pay +Ling fifty thousand taels when the understanding was definitely arrived +at, five thousand taels each year until the matter ended, and when that +period arrived another fifty thousand taels to persons depending upon +him during his life. Having stated the figure business, Chang-ch’un +put down his written papers, and causing his face to assume the look of +irrepressible but dignified satisfaction which it was his custom to wear +on most occasions, and especially when he had what appeared at first +sight to be evil news to communicate to public assemblages of those +who had entrusted money to his ventures, he proceeded to disclose the +advantages of such a system. At the extreme, he said, the amount which +they would be required to pay would be two hundred and fifty +thousand taels; but this was in reality a very misleading view of the +circumstance, as he would endeavour to show them. For one detail, he had +allotted to Ling thirty years of existence, which was the extreme amount +according to the calculations of those skilled in such prophecies; but, +as they were all undoubtedly aware, persons of very expert intellects +were known to enjoy a much shorter period of life than the gross and +ordinary, and as Ling was clearly one of the former, by the fact of his +contriving so ingenious a method of enriching himself, they might with +reasonable foresight rely upon his departing when half the period had +been attained; in that way seventy-five thousand taels would be restored +to them, for every year represented a saving of five thousand. Another +agreeable contemplation was that of the last sum, for by such a time +they would have arrived at the most pleasurable part of the enterprise: +a million taels’ worth of pure gold would be displayed before them, and +the question of the final fifty thousand could be disposed of by cutting +off an arm or half a leg. Whether they adopted that course, or decided +to increase their fortunes by exposing so exceptional and symmetrical a +wonder to the public gaze in all the principal cities of the Empire, was +a circumstance which would have to be examined within their minds when +the time approached. In such a way the detail of purchase stood +revealed as only fifty thousand taels in reality, a sum so despicably +insignificant that he had internal pains at mentioning it to so wealthy +a group of Mandarins, and he had not yet made clear to them that each +year they would receive gold to the amount of almost a thousand taels. +This would be the result of Ling making smooth his surfaces, and it +would enable them to know that the person in question actually existed, +and to keep the circumstances before their intellects. + +When Chang-Ch’un had made the various facts clear to this extent, those +who were assembled expressed their feelings as favourably turned towards +the project, provided the tests to which Ling was to be put should prove +encouraging, and a secure and intelligent understanding of things to be +done and not to be done could be arrived at between them. To this end +Ling was brought into the chamber, and fixing his thoughts steadfastly +upon Mian, he permitted portions to be cut from various parts of his +body without betraying any signs of ignoble agitation. No sooner had +the pieces been separated and the virtue of Ling’s existence passed from +them than they changed colour and hardened, nor could the most delicate +and searching trials to which they were exposed by a skilful worker +in metals, who was obtained for the purpose, disclose any particular, +however minute, in which they differed from the finest gold. The hair, +the nails, and the teeth were similarly affected, and even Ling’s +blood dried into a fine gold powder. This detail of the trial being +successfully completed, Ling subjected himself to intricate questioning +on all matters connected with his religion and manner of conducting +himself, both in public and privately, the history and behaviour of his +ancestors, the various omens and remarkable sayings which had reference +to his life and destiny, and the intentions which he then possessed +regarding his future movements and habits of living. All the wise +sayings and written and printed leaves which made any allusion to the +existence of and possibility of discovery of the wonderful gold fluid +were closely examined, and found to be in agreement, whereupon those +present made no further delay in admitting that the facts were indeed +as they had been described, and indulged in a dignified stroking of +each other’s faces as an expression of pleasure and in proof of their +satisfaction at taking part in so entrancing and remunerative an affair. +At Chang’s command many rare and expensive wines were then brought +in, and partaken of without restraint by all persons, the repast being +lightened by numerous well-considered and gravity-removing jests having +reference to Ling and the unusual composition of his person. So amiably +were the hours occupied that it was past the time of no light when Chang +rose and read at full length the statement of things to be done and +things not to be done, which was to be sealed by Ling for his part and +the other persons who were present for theirs. It so happened, however, +that at that period Ling’s mind was filled with brilliant and versatile +thoughts and images of Mian, and many-hued visions of the manner in +which they would spend the entrancing future which was now before them, +and in this way it chanced that he did not give any portion of his +intellect to the reading, mistaking it, indeed, for a delicate and very +ably-composed set of verses which Chang-ch’un was reciting as a formal +blessing on parting. Nor was it until he was desired to affix his +sign that Ling discovered his mistake, and being of too respectful and +unobtrusive a disposition to require the matter to be repeated then, he +carried out the obligation without in any particular understanding the +written words to which he was agreeing. + +As Ling walked through the streets to his chamber after leaving the +house and company of Chang-Ch’un, holding firmly among his garments the +thin printed papers to the amount of fifty thousand taels which he had +received, and repeatedly speaking to himself in terms of general and +specific encouragement at the fortunate events of the past few days, he +became aware that a person of mean and rapacious appearance, whom he +had some memory of having observed within the residence he had but +just left, was continually by his side. Not at first doubting that +the circumstance resulted from a benevolent desire on the part of +Chang-ch’un that he should be protected on his passage through the city, +Ling affected not to observe the incident; but upon reaching his own +door the person in question persistently endeavoured to pass in also. +Forming a fresh judgment about the matter, Ling, who was very powerfully +constructed, and whose natural instincts were enhanced in every degree +by the potent fluid of which he had lately partaken, repeatedly threw +him across the street until he became weary of the diversion. At +length, however, the thought arose that one who patiently submitted +to continually striking the opposite houses with his head must have +something of importance to communicate, whereupon he courteously invited +him to enter the apartment and unweigh his mind. + +“The facts of the case appear to have been somewhat inadequately +represented,” said the stranger, bowing obsequiously, “for this +unornamental person was assured by the benignant Chang-ch’un that the +one whose shadow he was to become was of a mild and forbearing nature.” + +“Such words are as the conversation of birds to me,” replied Ling, not +conjecturing how the matter had fallen about. “This person has just left +the presence of the elegant and successful Chang-ch’un, and no word that +he spoke gave indication of such a follower or such a service.” + +“Then it is indeed certain that the various transactions have not been +fully understood,” exclaimed the other, “for the exact communication to +this unseemly one was, ‘The valuable and enlightened Ling has heard and +agreed to the different things to be done and not to be done, one +phrase of which arranges for your continual presence, so that he will +anticipate your attentions.’” + +At these words the truth became as daylight before Ling’s eyes, and +he perceived that the written paper to which he had affixed his sign +contained the detail of such an office as that of the person before him. +When too late, more than ever did he regret that he had not formed some +pretext for causing the document to be read a second time, as in view of +his immediate intentions such an arrangement as the one to which he had +agreed had every appearance of becoming of an irksome and perplexing +nature. Desiring to know the length of the attendant’s commands, Ling +asked him for a clear statement of his duties, feigning that he had +missed that portion of the reading through a momentary attack of the +giddy sickness. To this request the stranger, who explained that his +name was Wang, instantly replied that his written and spoken orders +were: never to permit more than an arm’s length of space to separate +them; to prevent, by whatever force was necessary for the purpose, all +attempts at evading the things to be done and not to be done, and to +ignore as of no interest all other circumstances. It seemed to Ling, +in consequence, that little seclusion would be enjoyed unless an +arrangement could be effected between Wang and himself; so to this end, +after noticing the evident poverty and covetousness of the person in +question, he made him an honourable offer of frequent rewards, provided +a greater distance was allowed to come between them as soon as Si-chow +was reached. On his side, Ling undertook not to break through the +wording of the things to be done and not to be done, and to notify to +Wang any movements upon which he meditated. In this reputable manner +the obstacle was ingeniously removed, and the intelligent nature of the +device was clearly proved by the fact that not only Ling but Wang also +had in the future a much greater liberty of action than would have +been possible if it had been necessary to observe the short-sighted and +evidently hastily-thought-of condition which Chang-ch’un had endeavoured +to impose. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +In spite of his natural desire to return to Mian as quickly as possible, +Ling judged it expedient to give several days to the occupation of +purchasing apparel of the richest kinds, weapons and armour in large +quantities, jewels and ornaments of worked metals and other objects to +indicate his changed position. Nor did he neglect actions of a pious +and charitable nature, for almost his first care was to arrange with the +chief ones at the Temple of Benevolent Intentions that each year, on the +day corresponding to that on which he drank the gold fluid, a sumptuous +and well-constructed coffin should be presented to the most deserving +poor and aged person within that quarter of the city in which he had +resided. When these preparations were completed, Ling set out with an +extensive train of attendants; but riding on before, accompanied only by +Wang, he quickly reached Si-chow without adventure. + +The meeting between Ling and Mian was affecting to such an extent +that the blind and deaf attendants wept openly without reproach, +notwithstanding the fact that neither could become possessed of more +than a half of the occurrence. Eagerly the two reunited ones examined +each other’s features to discover whether the separation had brought +about any change in the beloved and well-remembered lines. Ling +discovered upon Mian the shadow of an anxious care at his absence, while +the disappointments and trials which Ling had experienced in Canton had +left traces which were plainly visible to Mian’s penetrating gaze. In +such an entrancing occupation the time was to them without hours until +a feeling of hunger recalled them to lesser matters, when a variety +of very select foods and liquids was placed before them without delay. +After this elegant repast had been partaken of, Mian, supporting herself +upon Ling’s shoulder, made a request that he would disclose to her all +the matters which had come under his observation both within the city +and during his journey to and from that place. Upon this encouragement, +Ling proceeded to unfold his mind, not withholding anything which +appeared to be of interest, no matter how slight. When he had reached +Canton without any perilous adventure, Mian breathed more freely; as he +recorded the interview at the Office of Warlike Deeds and Arrangements, +she trembled at the insidious malignity of the evil person Li Keen. The +conversation with the wise reader of the future concerning the various +states of such as be officially dead almost threw her into the rigid +sickness, from which, however, the wonderful circumstance of the +discovered properties of the gold fluid quickly recalled her. But to +Ling’s great astonishment no sooner had he made plain the exceptional +advantages which he had derived from the circumstances, and the nature +of the undertaking at which he had arrived with Chang-ch’un, than she +became a prey to the most intolerable and unrestrained anguish. + +“Oh, my devoted but excessively ill-advised lover,” she exclaimed +wildly, and in tones which clearly indicated that she was inspired by +every variety of affectionate emotion, “has the unendurable position +in which you and all your household will be placed by the degrading +commercial schemes and instincts of the mercenary-souled person +Chang-ch’un occupied no place in your generally well-regulated +intellect? Inevitably will those who drink our almond tea, in order +to have an opportunity of judging the value of the appointments of the +house, pass the jesting remark that while the Lings assuredly have ‘a +dead person’s bones in the secret chamber,’ at the present they will not +have one in the family graveyard by reason of the death of Ling himself. +Better to lose a thousand limbs during life than the entire person after +death; nor would your adoring Mian hesitate to clasp proudly to her +organ of affection the veriest trunk that had parted with all its +attributes in a noble and sacrificing endeavour to preserve at least +some dignified proportions to embellish the Ancestral Temple and to +receive the worship of posterity.” + +“Alas!” replied Ling, with extravagant humiliation, “it is indeed true; +and this person is degraded beyond the common lot of those who break +images and commit thefts from sacred places. The side of the transaction +which is at present engaging our attention never occurred to this +superficial individual until now.” + +“Wise and incomparable one,” said Mian, in no degree able to restrain +the fountains of bitter water which clouded her delicate and expressive +eyes, “in spite of this person’s biting and ungracious words do not, she +makes a formal petition, doubt the deathless strength of her affection. +Cheerfully, in order to avert the matter in question, or even to save +her lover the anguish of unavailing and soul-eating remorse, would she +consign herself to a badly-constructed and slow-consuming fire or expose +her body to various undignified tortures. Happy are those even to whom +is left a little ash to be placed in a precious urn and diligently +guarded, for it, in any event, truly represents all that is left of the +once living person, whereas after an honourable and spotless existence +my illustrious but unthinking lord will be blended with a variety of +baser substances and passed from hand to hand, his immaculate organs +serving to reward murderers for their deeds and to tempt the weak and +vicious to all manner of unmentionable crimes.” + +So overcome was Ling by the distressing nature of the oversight he had +permitted that he could find no words with which to comfort Mian, who, +after some moments, continued: + +“There are even worse visions of degradation which occur to this person. +By chance, that which was once the noble-minded Ling may be disposed of, +not to the Imperial Treasury for converting into pieces of exchange, but +to some undiscriminating worker in metals who will fashion out of his +beautiful and symmetrical stomach an elegant food-dish, so that from the +ultimate developments of the circumstance may arise the fact that his +own descendants, instead of worshipping him, use his internal organs +for this doubtful if not absolutely unclean purpose, and thereby suffer +numerous well-merited afflictions, to the end that the finally-despised +Ling and this discredited person, instead of founding a vigorous and +prolific generation, become the parents of a line of feeble-minded and +physically-depressed lepers.” + +“Oh, my peacock-eyed one!” exclaimed Ling, in immeasurable distress, “so +proficient an exhibition of virtuous grief crushes this misguided person +completely to the ground. Rather would he uncomplainingly lose his +pigtail than--” + +“Such a course,” said a discordant voice, as the unpresentable person +Wang stepped forth from behind a hanging curtain, where, indeed, he had +stood concealed during the entire conversation, “is especially forbidden +by the twenty-third detail of the things to be done and not to be done.” + +“What new adversity is this?” cried Mian, pressing to Ling with a still +closer embrace. “Having disposed of your incomparable body after death, +surely an adequate amount of liberty and seclusion remains to us during +life.” + +“Nevertheless,” interposed the dog-like Wang, “the refined person in +question must not attempt to lose or to dispose of his striking and +invaluable pigtail; for by such an action he would be breaking through +his spoken and written word whereby he undertook to be ruled by the +things to be done and not to be done; and he would also be robbing the +ingenious-minded Chang-ch’un.” + +“Alas!” lamented the unhappy Ling, “that which appeared to be the end of +all this person’s troubles is obviously simply the commencement of a new +and more extensive variety. Understand, O conscientious but exceedingly +inopportune Wang, that the words which passed from this person’s mouth +did not indicate a fixed determination, but merely served to show the +unfeigned depth of his emotion. Be content that he has no intention of +evading the definite principles of the things to be done and not to +be done, and in the meantime honour this commonplace establishment by +retiring to the hot and ill-ventilated chamber, and there partaking of a +suitable repast which shall be prepared without delay.” + +When Wang had departed, which he did with somewhat unseemly haste, +Ling made an end of recording his narrative, which Mian’s grief had +interrupted. In this way he explained to her the reason of Wang’s +presence, and assured her that by reason of the arrangement he had made +with that person, his near existence would not be so unsupportable to +them as might at first appear to be the case. + +While they were still conversing together, and endeavouring to divert +their minds from the objectionable facts which had recently come within +their notice, an attendant entered and disclosed that the train of +servants and merchandise which Ling had preceded on the journey was +arriving. At this fresh example of her lover’s consistent thought +for her, Mian almost forgot her recent agitation, and eagerly lending +herself to the entrancing occupation of unfolding and displaying the +various objects, her brow finally lost the last trace of sadness. +Greatly beyond the imaginings of anticipation were the expensive +articles with which Ling proudly surrounded her; and in examining and +learning the cost of the set jewels and worked metals, the ornamental +garments for both persons, the wood and paper appointments for the +house--even incenses, perfumes, spices and rare viands had not been +forgotten--the day was quickly and profitably spent. + +When the hour of sunset arrived, Ling, having learned that certain +preparations which he had commanded were fully carried out, took Mian by +the hand and led her into the chief apartment of the house, where were +assembled all the followers and attendants, even down to the illiterate +and superfluous Wang. In the centre of the room upon a table of the +finest ebony stood a vessel of burning incense, some dishes of the most +highly-esteemed fruit, and an abundance of old and very sweet wine. +Before these emblems Ling and Mian placed themselves in an attitude of +deep humiliation, and formally expressed their gratitude to the Chief +Deity for having called them into existence, to the cultivated earth +for supplying them with the means of sustaining life, to the Emperor for +providing the numerous safeguards by which their persons were protected +at all times, and to their parents for educating them. This adequate +ceremony being completed, Ling explicitly desired all those present to +observe the fact that the two persons in question were, by that fact and +from that time, made as one being, and the bond between them, incapable +of severance. + +When the ruling night-lantern came out from among the clouds, Ling and +Mian became possessed of a great desire to go forth with pressed hands +and look again on the forest paths and glades in which they had spent +many hours of exceptional happiness before Ling’s journey to Canton. +Leaving the attendants to continue the feasting and drum-beating in a +completely unrestrained manner, they therefore passed out unperceived, +and wandering among the trees, presently stood on the banks of the +Heng-Kiang. + +“Oh, my beloved!” exclaimed Mian, gazing at the brilliant and unruffled +water, “greatly would this person esteem a short river journey, such as +we often enjoyed together in the days when you were recovering.” + +Ling, to whom the expressed desires of Mian were as the word of the +Emperor, instantly prepared the small and ornamental junk which was +fastened near for this purpose, and was about to step in, when a +presumptuous and highly objectionable hand restrained him. + +“Behold,” remarked a voice which Ling had some difficulty in ascribing +to any known person, so greatly had it changed from its usual tone, +“behold how the immature and altogether too-inferior Ling observes his +spoken and written assertions!” + +At this low-conditioned speech, Ling drew his well-tempered sword +without further thought, in spite of the restraining arms of Mian, +but at the sight of the utterly incapable person Wang, who stood near +smiling meaninglessly and waving his arms with a continuous and backward +motion, he again replaced it. + +“Such remarks can be left to fall unheeded from the lips of one who +bears every indication of being steeped in rice spirit,” he said with +unprovoked dignity. + +“It will be the plain duty of this expert and uncorruptible person +to furnish the unnecessary, but, nevertheless, very severe and +self-opinionated Chang-ch’un with a written account of how the +traitorous and deceptive Ling has endeavoured to break through the +thirty-fourth vessel of the liquids to be consumed and not to be +consumed,” continued Wang with increased deliberation and an entire +absence of attention to Ling’s action and speech, “and how by this +refined person’s unfailing civility and resourceful strategy he has been +frustrated.” + +“Perchance,” said Ling, after examining his thoughts for a short space, +and reflecting that the list of things to be done and not to be done was +to him as a blank leaf, “there may even be some small portion of that +which is accurate in his statement. In what manner,” he continued, +addressing the really unendurable person, who was by this time preparing +to pass the night in the cool swamp by the river’s edge, “does this +one endanger any detail of the written and sealed parchment by such an +action?” + +“Inasmuch,” replied Wang, pausing in the process of removing his +outer garments, “as the seventy-ninth--the intricate name given +to it escapes this person’s tongue at the moment--but the +ninety-seventh--experLingknowswhamean--provides that any person, with or +without, attempting or not avoiding to travel by sea, lake, or river, +or to place himself in such a position as he may reasonably and +intelligently be drowned in salt water, fresh water, or--or honourable +rice spirit, shall be guilty of, and suffer--complete loss of memory.” + With these words the immoderate and contemptible person sank down in a +very profound slumber. + +“Alas!” said Ling, turning to Mian, who stood near, unable to retire +even had she desired, by reason of the extreme agitation into which +the incident had thrown her delicate mind and body, “how intensely +aggravating a circumstance that we are compelled to entertain so +dissolute a one by reason of this person’s preoccupation when the matter +was read. Nevertheless, it is not unlikely that the detail he spoke of +was such as he insisted, to the extent of making it a thing not to be +done to journey in any manner by water. It shall be an early endeavour +of this person to get these restraining details equitably amended; but +in the meantime we will retrace our footsteps through the wood, and +the enraptured Ling will make a well-thought-out attempt to lighten the +passage by a recital of his recently-composed verses on the subject of +‘Exile from the Loved One; or, Farewell and Return.’” + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +“My beloved lord!” said Mian sadly, on a morning after many days had +passed since the return of Ling, “have you not every possession for +which the heart of a wise person searches? Yet the dark mark is scarcely +ever absent from your symmetrical brow. If she who stands before you, +and is henceforth an integral part of your organization, has failed you +in any particular, no matter how unimportant, explain the matter to her, +and the amendment will be a speedy and a joyful task.” + +It was indeed true that Ling’s mind was troubled, but the fault did not +lie with Mian, as the person in question was fully aware, for before +her eyes as before those of Ling the unevadable compact which had been +entered into with Chang-ch’un was ever present, insidiously planting +bitterness within even the most select and accomplished delights. Nor +with increasing time did the obstinate and intrusive person Wang become +more dignified in his behaviour; on the contrary, he freely made use of +his position to indulge in every variety of abandonment, and almost each +day he prevented, by reason of his knowledge of the things to be done +and not to be done, some refined and permissible entertainment +upon which Ling and Mian had determined. Ling had despatched many +communications upon this subject to Chang-ch’un, praying also that +some expert way out of the annoyance of the lesser and more unimportant +things not to be done should be arrived at, but the time when he might +reasonably expect an answer to these written papers had not yet arrived. + +It was about this period that intelligence was brought to Ling from the +villages on the road to Peking, how Li Keen, having secretly ascertained +that his Yamen was standing and his goods uninjured, had determined +to return, and was indeed at that hour within a hundred li of Si-chow. +Furthermore, he had repeatedly been understood to pronounce clearly +that he considered Ling to be the head and beginning of all his +inconveniences, and to declare that the first act of justice which +he should accomplish on his return would be to submit the person in +question to the most unbearable tortures, and then cause him to lose his +head publicly as an outrager of the settled state of things and an +enemy of those who loved tranquillity. Not doubting that Li Keen would +endeavour to gain an advantage by treachery if the chance presented +itself, Ling determined to go forth to meet him, and without delay +settle the entire disturbance in one well-chosen and fatally-destructive +encounter. To this end, rather than disturb the placid mind of Mian, +to whom the thought of the engagement would be weighted with many +disquieting fears, he gave out that he was going upon an expedition +to surprise and capture certain fish of a very delicate flavour, and +attended by only two persons, he set forth in the early part of the day. + +Some hours later, owing to an ill-considered remark on the part of the +deaf attendant, to whom the matter had been explained in an imperfect +light, Mian became possessed of the true facts of the case, and +immediately all the pleasure of existence went from her. She despaired +of ever again beholding Ling in an ordinary state, and mournfully +reproached herself for the bitter words which had risen to her lips when +the circumstance of his condition and the arrangement with Chang-ch’un +first became known to her. After spending an interval in a polished +lament at the manner in which things were inevitably tending, the +thought occurred to Mian whether by any means in her power she could +influence the course and settled method of affairs. In this situation +the memory of the person Wang, and the fact that on several occasions he +had made himself objectionable when Ling had proposed to place himself +in such a position that he incurred some very remote chance of death +by drowning or by fire, recurred to her. Subduing the natural and +pure-minded repulsion which she invariably experienced at the mere +thought of so debased an individual, she sought for him, and discovering +him in the act of constructing cardboard figures of men and animals, +which it was his custom to dispose skilfully in little-frequented paths +for the purpose of enjoying the sudden terror of those who passed by, +she quickly put the matter before him, urging him, by some means, to +prevent the encounter, which must assuredly cost the life of the one +whom he had so often previously obstructed from incurring the slightest +risk. + +“By no means,” exclaimed Wang, when he at length understood the full +meaning of the project; “it would be a most unpresentable action for +this commonplace person to interfere in so honourable an undertaking. +Had the priceless body of the intrepid Ling been in any danger of +disappearing, as, for example, by drowning or being consumed in fire, +the nature of the circumstance would have been different. As the +matter exists, however, there is every appearance that the far-seeing +Chang-ch’un will soon reap the deserved reward of his somewhat +speculative enterprise, and to that end this person will immediately +procure a wooden barrier and the services of four robust carriers, and +proceed to the scene of the conflict.” + +Deprived of even this hope of preventing the encounter, Mian betook +herself in extreme dejection to the secret room of the magician, which +had been unopened since the day when the two attendants had searched for +substances to apply to their master, and there she diligently examined +every object in the remote chance of discovering something which might +prove of value in averting the matter in question. + +Not anticipating that the true reason of his journey would become known +to Mian, Ling continued on his way without haste, and passing through +Si-chow before the sun had risen, entered upon the great road to Peking. +At a convenient distance from the town he came to a favourable piece of +ground where he decided to await the arrival of Li Keen, spending the +time profitably in polishing his already brilliant sword, and making +observations upon the nature of the spot and the condition of the +surrounding omens, on which the success of his expedition would largely +depend. + +As the sun reached the highest point in the open sky the sound of an +approaching company could be plainly heard; but at the moment when the +chair of the Mandarin appeared within the sight of those who waited, the +great luminary, upon which all portents depend directly or indirectly, +changed to the colour of new-drawn blood and began to sink towards +the earth. Without any misgivings, therefore, Ling disposed his two +attendants in the wood, with instructions to step forth and aid him if +he should be attacked by overwhelming numbers, while he himself remained +in the way. As the chair approached, the Mandarin observed a person +standing alone, and thinking that it was one who, hearing of his return, +had come out of the town to honour him, he commanded the bearers to +pause. Thereupon, stepping up to the opening, Ling struck the deceptive +and incapable Li Keen on the cheek, at the same time crying in a full +voice, “Come forth, O traitorous and two-stomached Mandarin! for this +person is very desirous of assisting you in the fulfilment of your +boastful words. Here is a most irreproachable sword which will serve +excellently to cut off this person’s undignified head; here is a +waistcord which can be tightened around his breast, thereby producing +excruciating pains over the entire body.” + +At the knowledge of who the one before him was, and when he heard the +words which unhesitatingly announced Ling’s fixed purpose, Li Keen first +urged the carriers to fall upon Ling and slay him, and then, perceiving +that such a course was exceedingly distasteful to their natural +tendencies, to take up the chair and save him by flight. But Ling in +the meantime engaged their attention, and fully explained to them the +treacherous and unworthy conduct of Li Keen, showing them how his death +would be a just retribution for his ill-spent life, and promising them +each a considerable reward in addition to their arranged payment when +the matter in question had been accomplished. Becoming convinced of the +justice of Ling’s cause, they turned upon Li Keen, insisting that he +should at once attempt to carry out the ill-judged threats against Ling, +of which they were consistent witnesses, and announcing that, if he +failed to do so, they would certainly bear him themselves to a not far +distant well of stagnant water, and there gain the approbation of the +good spirits by freeing the land of so unnatural a monster. + +Seeing only a dishonourable death on either side, Li Keen drew his +sword, and made use of every artifice of which he had knowledge in +order to disarm Ling or to take him at a disadvantage. In this he was +unsuccessful, for Ling, who was by nature a very expert sword-user, +struck him repeatedly, until he at length fell in an expiring condition, +remarking with his last words that he had indeed been a narrow-minded +and extortionate person during his life, and that his death was an +enlightened act of celestial accuracy. + +Directing Wang and his four hired persons, who had in the meantime +arrived, to give the body of the Mandarin an honourable burial in the +deep of the wood, Ling rewarded and dismissed the chairbearers, and +without delay proceeded to Si-chow, where he charitably distributed the +goods and possessions of Li Keen among the poor of the town. Having +in this able and conscientious manner completely proved the misleading +nature of the disgraceful statements which the Mandarin had spread +abroad concerning him, Ling turned his footsteps towards Mian, whose +entrancing joy at his safe return was judged by both persons to be a +sufficient reward for the mental distress with which their separation +had been accompanied. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +After the departure of Ling from Canton, the commercial affairs of +Chang-ch’un began, from a secret and undetectable cause, to assume an +ill-regulated condition. No venture which he undertook maintained a +profitable attitude, so that many persons who in former times had been +content to display the printed papers setting forth his name and +virtues in an easily-seen position in their receiving-rooms, now placed +themselves daily before his house in order to accuse him of using their +taels in ways which they themselves had not sufficiently understood, and +for the purpose of warning passers-by against his inducements. It was +in vain that Chang proposed new undertakings, each of an infallibly +more prosperous nature than those before; the persons who had hitherto +supported him were all entrusting their money to one named Pung Soo, who +required millions where Chang had been content with thousands, and who +persistently insisted on greeting the sacred Emperor as an equal. + +In this unenviable state Chang’s mind continually returned to thoughts +of Ling, whose lifeless body would so opportunely serve to dispel the +embarrassing perplexities of existence which were settling thickly about +him. Urged forward by a variety of circumstances which placed him in +an entirely different spirit from the honourable bearing which he had +formerly maintained, he now closely examined all the papers connected +with the matter, to discover whether he might not be able to effect his +purpose with an outward exhibition of law forms. While engaged in this +degrading occupation, a detail came to his notice which caused him to +become very amiably disposed and confident of success. Proceeding with +the matter, he caused a well-supported report to be spread about that +Ling was suffering from a wasting sickness, which, without in any +measure shortening his life, would cause him to return to the size and +weight of a newly-born child, and being by these means enabled to secure +the entire matter of “The Ling (After Death) Without Much Risk Assembly” + at a very small outlay, he did so, and then, calling together a company +of those who hire themselves out for purposes of violence, journeyed to +Si-chow. + +Ling and Mian were seated together at a table in the great room, +examining a vessel of some clear liquid, when Chang-ch’un entered with +his armed ones, in direct opposition to the general laws of ordinary +conduct and the rulings of hospitality. At the sight, which plainly +indicated a threatened display of violence, Ling seized his renowned +sword, which was never far distant from him, and prepared to carry out +his spoken vow, that any person overstepping a certain mark on the floor +would assuredly fall. + +“Put away your undoubtedly competent weapon, O Ling,” said Chang, who +was desirous that the matter should be arranged if possible without any +loss to himself, “for such a course can be honourably adopted when it +is taken into consideration that we are as twenty to one, and have, +moreover, the appearance of being inspired by law forms.” + +“There are certain matters of allowed justice which over-rule all +other law forms,” replied Ling, taking a surer hold of his sword-grasp. +“Explain, for your part, O obviously double-dealing Chang-ch’un, from +whom this person only recently parted on terms of equality and courtesy, +why you come not with an agreeable face and a peaceful following, +but with a countenance which indicates both violence and terror, and +accompanied by many whom this person recognizes as the most outcast and +degraded from the narrow and evil-smelling ways of Canton?” + +“In spite of your blustering words,” said Chang, with some attempt at an +exhibition of dignity, “this person is endowed by every right, and +comes only for the obtaining, by the help of this expert and proficient +gathering, should such a length become necessary, of his just claims. +Understand that in the time since the venture was arranged this person +has become possessed of all the property of ‘The Ling (After Death) +Without Much Risk Assembly,’ and thereby he is competent to act fully +in the matter. It has now come within his attention that the one Ling +to whom the particulars refer is officially dead, and as the written +and sealed document clearly undertook that the person’s body was to be +delivered up for whatever use the Assembly decided whenever death should +possess it, this person has now come for the honourable carrying out of +the undertaking.” + +At these words the true nature of the hidden contrivance into which he +had fallen descended upon Ling like a heavy and unavoidable thunderbolt. +Nevertheless, being by nature and by reason of his late exploits +fearless of death, except for the sake of the loved one by his side, he +betrayed no sign of discreditable emotion at the discovery. + +“In such a case,” he replied, with an appearance of entirely +disregarding the danger of the position, “the complete parchment must be +of necessity overthrown; for if this person is now officially dead, he +was equally so at the time of sealing, and arrangements entered into by +dead persons have no actual existence.” + +“That is a matter which has never been efficiently decided,” admitted +Chang-ch’un, with no appearance of being thrown into a state of +confusion at the suggestion, “and doubtless the case in question can by +various means be brought in the end before the Court of Final Settlement +at Peking, where it may indeed be judged in the manner you assert. But +as such a process must infallibly consume the wealth of a province and +the years of an ordinary lifetime, and as it is this person’s unmoved +intention to carry out his own view of the undertaking without delay, +such speculations are not matters of profound interest.” + +Upon this Chang gave certain instructions to his followers, who +thereupon prepared to advance. Perceiving that the last detail of the +affair had been arrived at, Ling threw back his hanging garment, and +was on the point of rushing forward to meet them, when Mian, who had +maintained a possessed and reliant attitude throughout, pushed towards +him the vessel of pure and sparkling liquid with which they had been +engaged when so presumptuously broken in upon, at the same time speaking +to him certain words in an outside language. A new and Heaven-sent +confidence immediately took possession of Ling, and striking his sword +against the wall with such irresistible force that the entire chamber +trembled and the feeble-minded assassins shrank back in unrestrained +terror, he leapt upon the table, grasping in one hand the open vessel. + +“Behold the end, O most uninventive and slow-witted Chang-ch’un!” he +cried in a dreadful and awe-compelling voice. “As a reward for your +faithless and traitorous behaviour, learn how such avaricious-minded +incompetence turns and fastens itself upon the vitals of those who beget +it. In spite of many things which were not of a graceful nature +towards him, this person has unassumingly maintained his part of the +undertaking, and would have followed such a course conscientiously to +the last. As it is, when he has made an end of speaking, the body +which you are already covetously estimating in taels will in no way +be distinguishable from that of the meanest and most ordinary maker of +commercial ventures in Canton. For, behold! the fluid which he holds in +his hand, and which it is his fixed intention to drain to the last drop, +is in truth nothing but a secret and exceedingly powerful counteractor +against the virtues of the gold drug; and though but a single particle +passed his lips, and the swords of your brilliant and versatile +murderers met the next moment in his breast, the body which fell at your +feet would be meet for worms rather than for the melting-pot.” + +It was indeed such a substance as Ling represented it to be, Mian +having discovered it during her very systematic examination of the dead +magician’s inner room. Its composition and distillation had involved +that self-opinionated person in many years of arduous toil, for with a +somewhat unintelligent lack of foresight he had obstinately determined +to perfect the antidote before he turned his attention to the drug +itself. Had the matter been more ingeniously arranged, he would +undoubtedly have enjoyed an earlier triumph and an affluent and +respected old age. + +At Ling’s earnest words and prepared attitude an instant conviction of +the truth of his assertions took possession of Chang. Therefore, seeing +nothing but immediate and unevadable ruin at the next step, he called +out in a loud and imploring voice that he should desist, and no harm +would come upon him. To this Ling consented, first insisting that the +followers should be dismissed without delay, and Chang alone remain to +have conversation on the matter. By this just act the lower parts of +Canton were greatly purified, for the persons in question being driven +forth into the woods, mostly perished by encounters with wild animals, +or at the hands of the enraged villagers, to whom Ling had by this time +become greatly endeared. + +When the usual state had been restored, Ling made clear to Chang the +altered nature of the conditions to which he would alone agree. “It is +a noble-minded and magnanimous proposal on your part, and one to which +this misguided person had no claim,” admitted Chang, as he affixed his +seal to the written undertaking and committed the former parchment to +be consumed by fire. By this arrangement it was agreed that Ling should +receive only one-half of the yearly payment which had formerly been +promised, and that no sum of taels should become due to those depending +on him at his death. In return for these valuable allowances, there were +to exist no details of things to be done and not to be done, Ling merely +giving an honourable promise to observe the matter in a just spirit, +while--most esteemed of all--only a portion of his body was to pass to +Chang when the end arrived, the upper part remaining to embellish the +family altar and receive the veneration of posterity. + + * * * * * + +As the great sky-lantern rose above the trees and the time of no-noise +fell upon the woods, a flower-laden pleasure-junk moved away from its +restraining cords, and, without any sense of motion, gently bore Ling +and Mian between the sweet-smelling banks of the Heng-Kiang. Presently +Mian drew from beneath her flowing garment an instrument of stringed +wood, and touching it with a quick but delicate stroke, like the flight +and pausing of a butterfly, told in well-balanced words a refined +narrative of two illustrious and noble-looking persons, and how, after +many disagreeable evils and unendurable separations, they entered upon a +destined state of earthly prosperity and celestial favour. When she made +an end of the verses, Ling turned the junk’s head by one well-directed +stroke of the paddle, and prepared by using similar means to return to +the place of mooring. + +“Indeed,” he remarked, ceasing for a moment to continue this skilful +occupation, “the words which you have just spoken might, without +injustice, be applied to the two persons who are now conversing +together. For after suffering misfortunes and wrongs beyond an +appropriate portion, they have now reached that period of existence when +a tranquil and contemplative future is assured to them. In this manner +is the sage and matured utterance of the inspired philosopher Nien-tsu +again proved: that the life of every person is largely composed of two +varieties of circumstances which together build up his existence--the +Good and the Evil.” + + THE END OF THE STORY OF LING + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +When Kai Lung, the story-teller, made an end of speaking, he was +immediately greeted with a variety of delicate and pleasing remarks, all +persons who had witnessed the matter, down even to the lowest type of +Miaotze, who by reason of their obscure circumstances had been unable to +understand the meaning of a word that had been spoken, maintaining +that Kai Lung’s accomplishment of continuing for upwards of three hours +without a pause had afforded an entertainment of a very high and refined +order. While these polished sayings were being composed, together with +many others of a similar nature, Lin Yi suddenly leapt to his feet with +a variety of highly objectionable remarks concerning the ancestors of +all those who were present, and declaring that the story of Ling +was merely a well-considered stratagem to cause them to forget the +expedition which they had determined upon, for by that time it should +have been completely carried out. It was undoubtedly a fact that the +hour spoken of for the undertaking had long passed, Lin Yi having +completely overlooked the speed of time in his benevolent anxiety that +the polite and valorous Ling should in the end attain to a high and +remunerative destiny. + +In spite of Kai Lung’s consistent denials of any treachery, he could not +but be aware that the incident tended greatly to his disadvantage in +the eyes of those whom he had fixed a desire to conciliate, nor did +his well-intentioned offer that he would without hesitation repeat the +display for a like number of hours effect his amiable purpose. How the +complication would finally have been determined without interruption is +a matter merely of imagination, for at that moment an outpost, who had +been engaged in guarding the secrecy of the expedition, threw himself +into the enclosure in a torn and breathless condition, having run +through the forest many li in a winding direction for the explicit +purpose of warning Lin Yi that his intentions had become known, and that +he and his followers would undoubtedly be surprised and overcome if they +left the camp. + +At this intimation of the eminent service which Kai Lung had rendered +them, the nature of their faces towards him at once changed completely, +those who only a moment before had been demanding his death particularly +hailing him as their inspired and unobtrusive protector, and in all +probability, indeed, a virtuous and benignant spirit in disguise. + +Bending under the weight of offerings which Lin Yi and his followers +pressed upon him, together with many clearly set out desires for his +future prosperity, and assured of their unalterable protection on all +future occasions, Kai Lung again turned his face towards the lanterns +of Knei Yang. Far down the side of the mountain they followed his +footsteps, now by a rolling stone, now by a snapping branch of yellow +pine. Once again they heard his voice, cheerfully repeating to himself; +“Among the highest virtues of a pure existence--” But beyond that point +the gentle forest breath bore him away. + + + + +II. +THE STORY OF YUNG CHANG + + + Narrated by Kai Lung, in the open space of the tea-shop of The + Celestial Principles, at Wu-whei. + +“Ho, illustrious passers-by!” said Kai Lung, the story-teller, as he +spread out his embroidered mat under the mulberry-tree. “It is indeed +unlikely that you would condescend to stop and listen to the foolish +words of such an insignificant and altogether deformed person as myself. +Nevertheless, if you will but retard your elegant footsteps for a few +moments, this exceedingly unprepossessing individual will endeavour +to entertain you with the recital of the adventures of the noble Yung +Chang, as recorded by the celebrated Pe-ku-hi.” + +Thus adjured, the more leisurely-minded drew near to hear the history +of Yung Chang. There was Sing You the fruit-seller, and Li Ton-ti the +wood-carver; Hi Seng left his clients to cry in vain for water; and Wang +Yu, the idle pipe-maker, closed his shop of “The Fountain of Beauty,” + and hung on the shutter the gilt dragon to keep away customers in his +absence. These, together with a few more shopkeepers and a dozen or so +loafers, constituted a respectable audience by the time Kai Lung was +ready. + +“It would be more seemly if this ill-conditioned person who is now +addressing such a distinguished assembly were to reward his fine and +noble-looking hearers for their trouble,” apologized the story-teller. +“But, as the Book of Verses says, ‘The meaner the slave, the greater the +lord’; and it is, therefore, not unlikely that this majestic concourse +will reward the despicable efforts of their servant by handfuls of coins +till the air appears as though filled with swarms of locusts in the +season of much heat. In particular, there is among this august crowd +of Mandarins one Wang Yu, who has departed on three previous occasions +without bestowing the reward of a single cash. If the feeble and +covetous-minded Wang Yu will place within this very ordinary bowl the +price of one of his exceedingly ill-made pipes, this unworthy person +will proceed.” + +“Vast chasms can be filled, but the heart of man never,” quoted the +pipe-maker in retort. “Oh, most incapable of story-tellers, have you +not on two separate occasions slept beneath my utterly inadequate roof +without payment?” + +But he, nevertheless, deposited three cash in the bowl, and drew nearer +among the front row of the listeners. + +“It was during the reign of the enlightened Emperor Tsing Nung,” began +Kai Lung, without further introduction, “that there lived at a village +near Honan a wealthy and avaricious maker of idols, named Ti Hung. So +skilful had he become in the making of clay idols that his fame had +spread for many li round, and idol-sellers from all the neighbouring +villages, and even from the towns, came to him for their stock. No other +idol-maker between Honan and Nanking employed so many clay-gatherers or +so many modellers; yet, with all his riches, his avarice increased till +at length he employed men whom he called ‘agents’ and ‘travellers,’ who +went from house to house selling his idols and extolling his virtues in +verses composed by the most illustrious poets of the day. He did this +in order that he might turn into his own pocket the full price of the +idols, grudging those who would otherwise have sold them the few cash +which they would make. Owing to this he had many enemies, and his army +of travellers made him still more; for they were more rapacious than +the scorpion, and more obstinate than the ox. Indeed, there is still the +proverb, ‘With honey it is possible to soften the heart of the he-goat; +but a blow from an iron cleaver is taken as a mark of welcome by an +agent of Ti Hung.’ So that people barred the doors at their approach, +and even hung out signs of death and mourning. + +“Now, among all his travellers there was none more successful, more +abandoned, and more valuable to Ti Hung than Li Ting. So depraved was +Li Ting that he was never known to visit the tombs of his ancestors; +indeed, it was said that he had been heard to mock their venerable +memories, and that he had jestingly offered to sell them to anyone who +should chance to be without ancestors of his own. This objectionable +person would call at the houses of the most illustrious Mandarins, and +would command the slaves to carry to their masters his tablets, on which +were inscribed his name and his virtues. Reaching their presence, he +would salute them with the greeting of an equal, ‘How is your stomach?’ +and then proceed to exhibit samples of his wares, greatly overrating +their value. ‘Behold!’ he would exclaim, ‘is not this elegantly-moulded +idol worthy of the place of honour in this sumptuous mansion which my +presence defiles to such an extent that twelve basins of rose-water +will not remove the stain? Are not its eyes more delicate than the most +select of almonds? and is not its stomach rounder than the cupolas upon +the high temple at Peking? Yet, in spite of its perfections, it is not +worthy of the acceptance of so distinguished a Mandarin, and therefore +I will accept in return the quarter-tael, which, indeed, is less than my +illustrious master gives for the clay alone.’ + +“In this manner Li Ting disposed of many idols at high rates, and +thereby endeared himself so much to the avaricious heart of Ti Hung that +he promised him his beautiful daughter Ning in marriage. + +“Ning was indeed very lovely. Her eyelashes were like the finest willow +twigs that grow in the marshes by the Yang-tse-Kiang; her cheeks were +fairer than poppies; and when she bathed in the Hoang Ho, her body +seemed transparent. Her brow was finer than the most polished jade; +while she seemed to walk, like a winged bird, without weight, her hair +floating in a cloud. Indeed, she was the most beautiful creature that +has ever existed.” + +“Now may you grow thin and shrivel up like a fallen lemon; but it is +false!” cried Wang Yu, starting up suddenly and unexpectedly. “At +Chee Chou, at the shop of ‘The Heaven-sent Sugar-cane,’ there lives a +beautiful and virtuous girl who is more than all that. Her eyes are like +the inside circles on the peacock’s feathers; her teeth are finer than +the scales on the Sacred Dragon; her--” + +“If it is the wish of this illustriously-endowed gathering that this +exceedingly illiterate paper tiger should occupy their august moments +with a description of the deformities of the very ordinary young person +at Chee Chou,” said Kai Lung imperturbably, “then the remainder of the +history of the noble-minded Yung Chang can remain until an evil fate has +overtaken Wang Yu, as it assuredly will shortly.” + +“A fair wind raises no storm,” said Wang Yu sulkily; and Kai Lung +continued: + +“Such loveliness could not escape the evil eye of Li Ting, and +accordingly, as he grew in favour with Ti Hung, he obtained his consent +to the drawing up of the marriage contracts. More than this, he had +already sent to Ning two bracelets of the finest gold, tied together +with a scarlet thread, as a betrothal present. But, as the proverb +says, ‘The good bee will not touch the faded flower,’ and Ning, although +compelled by the second of the Five Great Principles to respect her +father, was unable to regard the marriage with anything but abhorrence. +Perhaps this was not altogether the fault of Li Ting, for on the evening +of the day on which she had received his present, she walked in the +rice fields, and sitting down at the foot of a funereal cypress, whose +highest branches pierced the Middle Air, she cried aloud: + +“‘I cannot control my bitterness. Of what use is it that I should be +called the “White Pigeon among Golden Lilies,” if my beauty is but for +the hog-like eyes of the exceedingly objectionable Li Ting? Ah, Yung +Chang, my unfortunate lover! what evil spirit pursues you that you +cannot pass your examination for the second degree? My noble-minded but +ambitious boy, why were you not content with an agricultural or even a +manufacturing career and happiness? By aspiring to a literary degree, +you have placed a barrier wider than the Whang Hai between us.’ + +“‘As the earth seems small to the soaring swallow, so shall insuperable +obstacles be overcome by the heart worn smooth with a fixed purpose,’ +said a voice beside her, and Yung Chang stepped from behind the cypress +tree, where he had been waiting for Ning. ‘O one more symmetrical than +the chrysanthemum,’ he continued, ‘I shall yet, with the aid of my +ancestors, pass the second degree, and even obtain a position of high +trust in the public office at Peking.’ + +“‘And in the meantime,’ pouted Ning, ‘I shall have partaken of the +wedding-cake of the utterly unpresentable Li Ting.’ And she exhibited +the bracelets which she had that day received. + +“‘Alas!’ said Yung Chang, ‘there are times when one is tempted to doubt +even the most efficacious and violent means. I had hoped that by this +time Li Ting would have come to a sudden and most unseemly end; for I +have drawn up and affixed in the most conspicuous places notifications +of his character, similar to the one here.’ + +“Ning turned, and beheld fastened to the trunk of the cypress an +exceedingly elegantly written and composed notice, which Yung read to +her as follows: + + “‘BEWARE OF INCURRING DEATH FROM STARVATION + + “‘Let the distinguished inhabitants of this district observe the + exceedingly ungraceful walk and bearing of the low person who + calls himself Li Ting. Truthfully, it is that of a dog in the act + of being dragged to the river because his sores and diseases + render him objectionable in the house of his master. So will this + hunchbacked person be dragged to the place of execution, and be + bowstrung, to the great relief of all who respect the five senses; + A Respectful Physiognomy, Passionless Reflexion, Soft Speech, + Acute Hearing, Piercing Sight. + + “‘He hopes to attain to the Red Button and the Peacock’s Feather; + but the right hand of the Deity itches, and Li Ting will assuredly + be removed suddenly.’ + +“‘Li Ting must certainly be in league with the evil forces if he can +withstand so powerful a weapon,’ said Ning admiringly, when her lover +had finished reading. ‘Even now he is starting on a journey, nor will he +return till the first day of the month when the sparrows go to the sea +and are changed into oysters. Perhaps the fate will overtake him while +he is away. If not--’ + +“‘If not,’ said Yung, taking up her words as she paused, ‘then I have +yet another hope. A moment ago you were regretting my choice of a +literary career. Learn, then, the value of knowledge. By its aid +(assisted, indeed, by the spirits of my ancestors) I have discovered a +new and strange thing, for which I can find no word. By using this new +system of reckoning, your illustrious but exceedingly narrow-minded and +miserly father would be able to make five taels where he now makes one. +Would he not, in consideration for this, consent to receive me as a +son-in-law, and dismiss the inelegant and unworthy Li Ting?’ + +“‘In the unlikely event of your being able to convince my illustrious +parent of what you say, it would assuredly be so,’ replied Ning. ‘But +in what way could you do so? My sublime and charitable father already +employs all the means in his power to reap the full reward of his sacred +industry. His “solid house-hold gods” are in reality mere shells of +clay; higher-priced images are correspondingly constructed, and his clay +gatherers and modellers are all paid on a “profit-sharing system.” + Nay, further, it is beyond likelihood that he should wish for more +purchasers, for so great is his fame that those who come to buy have +sometimes to wait for days in consequence of those before them; for my +exceedingly methodical sire entrusts none with the receiving of money, +and the exchanges are therefore made slowly. Frequently an unnaturally +devout person will require as many as a hundred idols, and so the +greater part of the day will be passed.’ + +“‘In what way?’ inquired Yung tremulously. + +“‘Why, in order that the countings may not get mixed, of course; it is +necessary that when he has paid for one idol he should carry it to a +place aside, and then return and pay for the second, carrying it to the +first, and in such a manner to the end. In this way the sun sinks behind +the mountains.’ + +“‘But,’ said Yung, his voice thick with his great discovery, ‘if he +could pay for the entire quantity at once, then it would take but a +hundredth part of the time, and so more idols could be sold.’ + +“‘How could this be done?’ inquired Ning wonderingly. ‘Surely it is +impossible to conjecture the value of so many idols.’ + +“‘To the unlearned it would indeed be impossible,’ replied Yung proudly, +‘but by the aid of my literary researches I have been enabled to +discover a process by which such results would be not a matter of +conjecture, but of certainty. These figures I have committed to tablets, +which I am prepared to give to your mercenary and slow-witted father +in return for your incomparable hand, a share of the profits, and the +dismissal of the uninventive and morally threadbare Li Ting.’ + +“‘When the earth-worm boasts of his elegant wings, the eagle can afford +to be silent,’ said a harsh voice behind them; and turning hastily they +beheld Li Ting, who had come upon them unawares. ‘Oh, most insignificant +of table-spoilers,’ he continued, ‘it is very evident that much +over-study has softened your usually well-educated brains. Were it +not that you are obviously mentally afflicted, I should unhesitatingly +persuade my beautiful and refined sword to introduce you to the spirits +of your ignoble ancestors. As it is, I will merely cut off your nose and +your left ear, so that people may not say that the Dragon of the Earth +sleeps and wickedness goes unpunished.’ + +“Both had already drawn their swords, and very soon the blows were so +hard and swift that, in the dusk of the evening, it seemed as though the +air were filled with innumerable and many-coloured fireworks. Each was +a practised swordsman, and there was no advantage gained on either side, +when Ning, who had fled on the appearance of Li Ting, reappeared, urging +on her father, whose usually leisurely footsteps were quickened by +the dread that the duel must surely result in certain loss to himself, +either of a valuable servant, or of the discovery which Ning had briefly +explained to him, and of which he at once saw the value. + +“‘Oh, most distinguished and expert persons,’ he exclaimed breathlessly, +as soon as he was within hearing distance, ‘do not trouble to give so +marvellous an exhibition for the benefit of this unworthy individual, +who is the only observer of your illustrious dexterity! Indeed, your +honourable condescension so fills this illiterate person with shame that +his hearing is thereby preternaturally sharpened, and he can plainly +distinguish many voices from beyond the Hoang Ho, crying for the +Heaven-sent representative of the degraded Ti Hung to bring them more +idols. Bend, therefore, your refined footsteps in the direction of +Poo Chow, O Li Ting, and leave me to make myself objectionable to this +exceptional young man with my intolerable commonplaces.’ + +“‘The shadow falls in such a direction as the sun wills,’ said Li Ting, +as he replaced his sword and departed. + +“‘Yung Chang,’ said the merchant, ‘I am informed that you have made a +discovery that would be of great value to me, as it undoubtedly would if +it is all that you say. Let us discuss the matter without ceremony. Can +you prove to me that your system possesses the merit you claim for it? +If so, then the matter of arrangement will be easy.’ + +“‘I am convinced of the absolute certainty and accuracy of the +discovery,’ replied Yung Chang. ‘It is not as though it were an ordinary +matter of human intelligence, for this was discovered to me as I was +worshipping at the tomb of my ancestors. The method is regulated by +a system of squares, triangles, and cubes. But as the practical proof +might be long, and as I hesitate to keep your adorable daughter out in +the damp night air, may I not call at your inimitable dwelling in the +morning, when we can go into the matter thoroughly?’ + +“I will not weary this intelligent gathering, each member of which +doubtless knows all the books on mathematics off by heart, with a +recital of the means by which Yung Chang proved to Ti Hung the accuracy +of his tables and the value of his discovery of the multiplication +table, which till then had been undreamt of,” continued the +story-teller. “It is sufficient to know that he did so, and that Ti Hung +agreed to his terms, only stipulating that Li Ting should not be made +aware of his dismissal until he had returned and given in his accounts. +The share of the profits that Yung was to receive was cut down very low +by Ti Hung, but the young man did not mind that, as he would live with +his father-in-law for the future. + +“With the introduction of this new system, the business increased like +a river at flood-time. All rivals were left far behind, and Ti Hung put +out this sign: + + “NO WAITING HERE! + + “Good-morning! Have you worshipped one of Ti Hung’s refined + ninety-nine cash idols? + + “Let the purchasers of ill-constructed idols at other + establishments, where they have grown old and venerable while + waiting for the all-thumb proprietors to count up to ten, come to + the shop of Ti Hung and regain their lost youth. Our ninety-nine + cash idols are worth a tael a set. We do not, however, claim that + they will do everything. The ninety-nine cash idols of Ti Hung + will not, for example, purify linen, but even the most contented + and frozen-brained person cannot be happy until he possesses one. + What is happiness? The exceedingly well-educated Philosopher + defines it as the accomplishment of all our desires. Everyone + desires one of the Ti Hung’s ninety-nine cash idols, therefore get + one; but be sure that it is Ti Hung’s. + + “Have you a bad idol? If so, dismiss it, and get one of Ti Hung’s + ninety-nine cash specimens. + + “Why does your idol look old sooner than your neighbours? Because + yours is not one of Ti Hung’s ninety-nine cash marvels. + + “They bring all delights to the old and the young, + The elegant idols supplied by Ti Hung. + + “N.B.--The ‘Great Sacrifice’ idol, forty-five cash; delivered, + carriage free, in quantities of not less than twelve, at any + temple, on the evening before the sacrifice. + +“It was about this time that Li Ting returned. His journey had been more +than usually successful, and he was well satisfied in consequence. It +was not until he had made out his accounts and handed in his money that +Ti Hung informed him of his agreement with Yung Chang. + +“‘Oh, most treacherous and excessively unpopular Ti Hung,’ exclaimed +Li Ting, in a terrible voice, ‘this is the return you make for all my +entrancing efforts in your services, then? It is in this way that you +reward my exceedingly unconscientious recommendations of your very +inferior and unendurable clay idols, with their goggle eyes and concave +stomachs! Before I go, however, I request to be inspired to make the +following remark--that I confidently predict your ruin. And now this +low and undignified person will finally shake the elegant dust of your +distinguished house from his thoroughly inadequate feet, and proceed to +offer his incapable services to the rival establishment over the way.’ + +“‘The machinations of such an evilly-disposed person as Li Ting will +certainly be exceedingly subtle,’ said Ti Hung to his son-in-law when +the traveller had departed. ‘I must counteract his omens. Herewith I +wish to prophecy that henceforth I shall enjoy an unbroken run of good +fortune. I have spoken, and assuredly I shall not eat my words.’ + +“As the time went on, it seemed as though Ti Hung had indeed spoken +truly. The ease and celerity with which he transacted his business +brought him customers and dealers from more remote regions than ever, +for they could spend days on the journey and still save time. The +army of clay-gatherers and modellers grew larger and larger, and the +work-sheds stretched almost down to the river’s edge. Only one thing +troubled Ti Hung, and that was the uncongenial disposition of his +son-in-law, for Yung took no further interest in the industry to which +his discovery had given so great an impetus, but resolutely set to work +again to pass his examination for the second degree. + +“‘It is an exceedingly distinguished and honourable thing to have failed +thirty-five times, and still to be undiscouraged,’ admitted Ti Hung; +‘but I cannot cleanse my throat from bitterness when I consider that +my noble and lucrative business must pass into the hands of strangers, +perhaps even into the possession of the unendurable Li Ting.’ + +“But it had been appointed that this degrading thing should not happen, +however, and it was indeed fortunate that Yung did not abandon his +literary pursuits; for after some time it became very apparent to Ti +Hung that there was something radically wrong with his business. It was +not that his custom was falling off in any way; indeed, it had lately +increased in a manner that was phenomenal, and when the merchant came to +look into the matter, he found to his astonishment that the least order +he had received in the past week had been for a hundred idols. All the +sales had been large, and yet Ti Hung found himself most unaccountably +deficient in taels. He was puzzled and alarmed, and for the next few +days he looked into the business closely. Then it was that the reason +was revealed, both for the falling off in the receipts and for the +increase in the orders. The calculations of the unfortunate Yung Chang +were correct up to a hundred, but at that number he had made a gigantic +error--which, however, he was never able to detect and rectify--with +the result that all transactions above that point worked out at a +considerable loss to the seller. It was in vain that the panic-stricken +Ti Hung goaded his miserable son-in-law to correct the mistake; it +was equally in vain that he tried to stem the current of his enormous +commercial popularity. He had competed for public favour, and he had won +it, and every day his business increased till ruin grasped him by the +pigtail. Then came an order from one firm at Peking for five millions of +the ninety-nine cash idols, and at that Ti Hung put up his shutters, and +sat down in the dust. + +“‘Behold!’ he exclaimed, ‘in the course of a lifetime there are many +very disagreeable evils that may overtake a person. He may offend the +Sacred Dragon, and be in consequence reduced to a fine dry powder; or he +may incur the displeasure of the benevolent and pure-minded Emperor, and +be condemned to death by roasting; he may also be troubled by demons or +by the disturbed spirits of his ancestors, or be struck by thunderbolts. +Indeed, there are numerous annoyances, but they become as Heaven-sent +blessings in comparison to a self-opinionated and more than ordinarily +weak-minded son-in-law. Of what avail is it that I have habitually +sold one idol for the value of a hundred? The very objectionable man in +possession sits in my delectable summer-house, and the unavoidable +legal documents settle around me like a flock of pigeons. It is indeed +necessary that I should declare myself to be in voluntary liquidation, +and make an assignment of my book debts for the benefit of my creditors. +Having accomplished this, I will proceed to the well-constructed tomb +of my illustrious ancestors, and having kow-towed at their incomparable +shrines, I will put an end to my distinguished troubles with this +exceedingly well-polished sword.’ + +“‘The wise man can adapt himself to circumstances as water takes the +shape of the vase that contains it,’ said the well-known voice of +Li Ting. ‘Let not the lion and the tiger fight at the bidding of the +jackal. By combining our forces all may be well with you yet. Assist +me to dispose of the entirely superfluous Yung Chang and to marry +the elegant and symmetrical Ning, and in return I will allot to you a +portion of my not inconsiderable income.’ + +“‘However high the tree, the leaves fall to the ground, and your hour +has come at last, O detestable Li Ting!’ said Yung, who had heard the +speakers and crept upon them unperceived. ‘As for my distinguished +and immaculate father-in-law, doubtless the heat has affected his +indefatigable brains, or he would not have listened to your contemptible +suggestion. For yourself, draw!’ + +“Both swords flashed, but before a blow could be struck the spirits +of his ancestors hurled Li Ting lifeless to the ground, to avenge the +memories that their unworthy descendant had so often reviled. + +“‘So perish all the enemies of Yung Chang,’ said the victor. ‘And now, +my venerated but exceedingly short-sighted father-in-law, learn how +narrowly you have escaped making yourself exceedingly objectionable +to yourself. I have just received intelligence from Peking that I have +passed the second degree, and have in consequence been appointed to a +remunerative position under the Government. This will enable us to live +in comfort, if not in affluence, and the rest of your engaging days can +be peacefully spent in flying kites.’” + + + + +III. +THE PROBATION OF SEN HENG + + + Related by Kai Lung, at Wu-whei, as a rebuke to Wang Yu and + certain others who had questioned the practical value of his + stories. + +“It is an undoubted fact that this person has not realized the direct +remunerative advantage which he confidently anticipated,” remarked the +idle and discontented pipe-maker Wang Yu, as, with a few other persons +of similar inclination, he sat in the shade of the great mulberry tree +at Wu-whei, waiting for the evil influence of certain very mysterious +sounds, which had lately been heard, to pass away before he resumed +his occupation. “When the seemingly proficient and trustworthy Kai Lung +first made it his practice to journey to Wu-whei, and narrate to us the +doings of persons of all classes of life,” he continued, “it seemed to +this one that by closely following the recital of how Mandarins obtained +their high position, and exceptionally rich persons their wealth, he +must, in the end, inevitably be rendered competent to follow in their +illustrious footsteps. Yet in how entirely contrary a direction has +the whole course of events tended! In spite of the honourable intention +which involved a frequent absence from his place of commerce, those +who journeyed thither with the set purpose of possessing one of his +justly-famed opium pipes so perversely regarded the matter that, after +two or three fruitless visits, they deliberately turned their footsteps +towards the workshop of the inelegant Ming-yo, whose pipes are +confessedly greatly inferior to those produced by the person who is now +speaking. Nevertheless, the rapacious Kai Lung, to whose influence +the falling off in custom was thus directly attributable, persistently +declined to bear any share whatever in the loss which his profession +caused, and, indeed, regarded the circumstance from so grasping and +narrow-minded a point of observation that he would not even go to the +length of suffering this much-persecuted one to join the circle of his +hearers without on every occasion making the customary offering. In this +manner a well-intentioned pursuit of riches has insidiously led this +person within measurable distance of the bolted dungeon for those who do +not meet their just debts, while the only distinction likely to result +from his assiduous study of the customs and methods of those high +in power is that of being publicly bowstrung as a warning to others. +Manifestedly the pointed finger of the unreliable Kai Lung is a very +treacherous guide.” + +“It is related,” said a dispassionate voice behind them, “that a person +of limited intelligence, on being assured that he would certainly one +day enjoy an adequate competence if he closely followed the industrious +habits of the thrifty bee, spent the greater part of his life in +anointing his thighs with the yellow powder which he laboriously +collected from the flowers of the field. It is not so recorded; but +doubtless the nameless one in question was by profession a maker of +opium pipes, for this person has observed from time to time how that +occupation, above all others, tends to degrade the mental faculties, and +to debase its followers to a lower position than that of the beasts of +labour. Learn therefrom, O superficial Wang Yu, that wisdom lies in +an intelligent perception of great principles, and not in a slavish +imitation of details which are, for the most part, beyond your simple +and insufficient understanding.” + +“Such may, indeed, be the case, Kai Lung,” replied Wang Yu sullenly--for +it was the story-teller in question who had approached unperceived, and +who now stood before them--“but it is none the less a fact that, on the +last occasion when this misguided person joined the attending circle +at your uplifted voice, a Mandarin of the third degree chanced to +pass through Wu-whei, and halted at the door-step of ‘The Fountain of +Beauty,’ fully intending to entrust this one with the designing and +fashioning of a pipe of exceptional elaborateness. This matter, by his +absence, has now passed from him, and to-day, through listening to the +narrative of how the accomplished Yuin-Pel doubled his fortune, he is +the poorer by many taels.” + +“Yet to-morrow, when the name of the Mandarin of the third degree +appears in the list of persons who have transferred their entire +property to those who are nearly related to them in order to avoid it +being seized to satisfy the just claims made against them,” replied Kai +Lung, “you will be able to regard yourself the richer by so many taels.” + +At these words, which recalled to the minds of all who were present the +not uncommon manner of behaving observed by those of exalted rank, who +freely engaged persons to supply them with costly articles without in +any way regarding the price to be paid, Wang Yu was silent. + +“Nevertheless,” exclaimed a thin voice from the edge of the group which +surrounded Kai Lung, “it in nowise follows that the stories are in +themselves excellent, or of such a nature that the hearing of their +recital will profit a person. Wang Yu may be satisfied with empty words, +but there are others present who were studying deep matters when Wang +Yu was learning the art of walking. If Kai Lung’s stories are of such +remunerative benefit as the person in question claims, how does it +chance that Kai Lung himself who is assuredly the best acquainted with +them, stands before us in mean apparel, and on all occasions confessing +an unassuming poverty?” + +“It is Yan-hi Pung,” went from mouth to mouth among the +bystanders--“Yan-hi Pung, who traces on paper the words of chants and +historical tales, and sells them to such as can afford to buy. And +although his motive in exposing the emptiness of Kai Lung’s stories may +not be Heaven-sent--inasmuch as Kai Lung provides us with such matter +as he himself purveys, only at a much more moderate price--yet his words +are well considered, and must therefore be regarded.” + +“O Yan-hi Pung,” replied Kai Lung, hearing the name from those who +stood about him, and moving towards the aged person, who stood meanwhile +leaning upon his staff, and looking from side to side with quickly +moving eyelids in a manner very offensive towards the story-teller, +“your just remark shows you to be a person of exceptional wisdom, even +as your well-bowed legs prove you to be one of great bodily strength; +for justice is ever obvious and wisdom hidden, and they who build +structures for endurance discard the straight and upright and insist +upon such an arch as you so symmetrically exemplify.” + +Speaking in this conciliatory manner, Kai Lung came up to Yan-hi Pung, +and taking between his fingers a disc of thick polished crystal, +which the aged and short-sighted chant-writer used for the purpose of +magnifying and bringing nearer the letters upon which he was engaged, +and which hung around his neck by an embroidered cord, the story-teller +held it aloft, crying aloud: + +“Observe closely, and presently it will be revealed and made clear how +the apparently very conflicting words of the wise Yan-hi Pung, and those +of this unassuming but nevertheless conscientious person who is now +addressing you, are, in reality, as one great truth.” + +With this assurance Kai Lung moved the crystal somewhat, so that it +engaged the sun’s rays, and concentrated them upon the uncovered crown +of the unsuspecting and still objectionably-engaged person before +him. Without a moment’s pause, Yan-hi Pung leapt high into the air, +repeatedly pressing his hand to the spot thus selected and crying aloud: + +“Evil dragons and thunderbolts! but the touch was as hot as a scar left +by the uncut nail of the sublime Buddha!” + +“Yet the crystal--” remarked Kai Lung composedly, passing it into the +hands of those who stood near. + +“Is as cool as the innermost leaves of the riverside sycamore,” they +declared. + +Kai Lung said nothing further, but raised both his hands above his head, +as if demanding their judgment. Thereupon a loud shout went up on his +behalf, for the greater part of them loved to see the manner in which +he brushed aside those who would oppose him; and the sight of the aged +person Yan-hi Pung leaping far into the air had caused them to become +exceptionally amused, and, in consequence, very amiably disposed towards +the one who had afforded them the entertainment. + +“The story of Sen Heng,” began Kai Lung, when the discussion had +terminated in the manner already recorded, “concerns itself with one who +possessed an unsuspecting and ingenious nature, which ill-fitted him +to take an ordinary part in the everyday affairs of life, no matter how +engaging such a character rendered him among his friends and relations. +Having at an early age been entrusted with a burden of rice and other +produce from his father’s fields to dispose of in the best possible +manner at a neighbouring mart, and having completed the transaction in a +manner extremely advantageous to those with whom he trafficked but very +intolerable to the one who had sent him, it at once became apparent that +some other means of gaining a livelihood must be discovered for him. + +“‘Beyond all doubt,’ said his father, after considering the matter for a +period, ‘it is a case in which one should be governed by the wise advice +and example of the Mandarin Poo-chow.’ + +“‘Illustrious sire,’ exclaimed Sen Heng, who chanced to be present, ‘the +illiterate person who stands before you is entirely unacquainted +with the one to whom you have referred; nevertheless, he will, as you +suggest, at once set forth, and journeying with all speed to the abode +of the estimable Poo-chow, solicit his experience and advice.’ + +“‘Unless a more serious loss should be occasioned,’ replied the father +coldly, ‘there is no necessity to adopt so extreme a course. The +benevolent Mandarin in question existed at a remote period of the Thang +dynasty, and the incident to which an allusion has been made arose in +the following way: To the public court of the enlightened Poo-chow there +came one day a youth of very inferior appearance and hesitating +manner, who besought his explicit advice, saying: “The degraded and +unprepossessing being before you, O select and venerable Mandarin, is by +nature and attainments a person of the utmost timidity and fearfulness. +From this cause life itself has become a detestable observance in his +eyes, for those who should be his companions of both sexes hold him in +undisguised contempt, making various unendurable allusions to the colour +and nature of his internal organs whenever he would endeavour to join +them. Instruct him, therefore, the manner in which this cowardice may be +removed, and no service in return will be esteemed too great.” “There +is a remedy,” replied the benevolent Mandarin, without any hesitation +whatever, “which if properly carried out is efficacious beyond the +possibility of failure. Certain component parts of your body are +lacking, and before the desired result can be obtained these must be +supplied from without. Of all courageous things the tiger is the most +fearless, and in consequence it combines all those ingredients which you +require; furthermore, as the teeth of the tiger are the instruments with +which it accomplishes its vengeful purpose, there reside the essential +principles of its inimitable courage. Let the person who seeks +instruction in the matter, therefore, do as follows: taking the teeth of +a full-grown tiger as soon as it is slain, and before the essences +have time to return into the body, he shall grind them to a powder, and +mixing the powder with a portion of rice, consume it. After seven days +he must repeat the observance, and yet again a third time, after another +similar lapse. Let him, then, return for further guidance; for the +present the matter interests this person no further.” At these words the +youth departed, filled with a new and inspired hope; for the wisdom of +the sagacious Poo-chow was a matter which did not admit of any doubt +whatever, and he had spoken with well-defined certainty of the success +of the experiment. Nevertheless, after several days industriously spent +in endeavouring to obtain by purchase the teeth of a newly-slain tiger, +the details of the undertaking began to assume a new and entirely +unforeseen aspect; for those whom he approached as being the most +likely to possess what he required either became very immoderately and +disagreeably amused at the nature of the request, or regarded it as a +new and ill-judged form of ridicule, which they prepared to avenge by +blows and by base remarks of the most personal variety. At length it +became unavoidably obvious to the youth that if he was to obtain the +articles in question it would first be necessary that he should become +adept in the art of slaying tigers, for in no other way were the +required conditions likely to be present. Although the prospect was one +which did not greatly tend to allure him, yet he did not regard it +with the utterly incapable emotions which would have been present on an +earlier occasion; for the habit of continually guarding himself from +the onslaughts of those who received his inquiry in an attitude of +narrow-minded distrust had inspired him with a new-found valour, while +his amiable and unrestrained manner of life increased his bodily vigour +in every degree. First perfecting himself in the use of the bow and +arrow, therefore, he betook himself to a wild and very extensive forest, +and there concealed himself among the upper foliage of a tall tree +standing by the side of a pool of water. On the second night of his +watch, the youth perceived a large but somewhat ill-conditioned tiger +approaching the pool for the purpose of quenching its thirst, whereupon +he tremblingly fitted an arrow to his bowstring, and profiting by the +instruction he had received, succeeded in piercing the creature to +the heart. After fulfilling the observance laid upon him by the +discriminating Poo-chow, the youth determined to remain in the forest, +and sustain himself upon such food as fell to his weapons, until the +time arrived when he should carry out the rite for the last time. At the +end of seven days, so subtle had he become in all kinds of hunting, and +so strengthened by the meat and herbs upon which he existed, that he +disdained to avail himself of the shelter of a tree, but standing openly +by the side of the water, he engaged the attention of the first tiger +which came to drink, and discharged arrow after arrow into its body with +unfailing power and precision. So entrancing, indeed, had the pursuit +become that the next seven days lengthened out into the apparent period +of as many moons, in such a leisurely manner did they rise and fall. On +the appointed day, without waiting for the evening to arrive, the youth +set out with the first appearance of light, and penetrated into the most +inaccessible jungles, crying aloud words of taunt-laden challenge to all +the beasts therein, and accusing the ancestors of their race of every +imaginable variety of evil behaviour. Yet so great had become the renown +of the one who stood forth, and so widely had the warning voice been +passed from tree to tree, preparing all who dwelt in the forest against +his anger, that not even the fiercest replied openly, though low growls +and mutterings proceeded from every cave within a bow-shot’s distance +around. Wearying quickly of such feeble and timorous demonstrations, the +youth rushed into the cave from which the loudest murmurs proceeded, and +there discovered a tiger of unnatural size, surrounded by the bones of +innumerable ones whom it had devoured; for from time to time its +ravages became so great and unbearable, that armies were raised in +the neighbouring villages and sent to destroy it, but more than a +few stragglers never returned. Plainly recognizing that a just and +inevitable vengeance had overtaken it, the tiger made only a very +inferior exhibition of resistance, and the youth, having first stunned +it with a blow of his closed hand, seized it by the middle, and +repeatedly dashed its head against the rocky sides of its retreat. He +then performed for the third time the ceremony enjoined by the Mandarin, +and having cast upon the cringing and despicable forms concealed in the +surrounding woods and caves a look of dignified and ineffable contempt, +set out upon his homeward journey, and in the space of three days’ time +reached the town of the versatile Poo-chow. “Behold,” exclaimed that +person, when, lifting up his eyes, he saw the youth approaching laden +with the skins of the tigers and other spoils, “now at least the youths +and maidens of your native village will no longer withdraw themselves +from the company of so undoubtedly heroic a person.” “Illustrious +Mandarin,” replied the other, casting both his weapons and his trophies +before his inspired adviser’s feet, “what has this person to do with the +little ones of either sex? Give him rather the foremost place in your +ever-victorious company of bowmen, so that he may repay in part the +undoubted debt under which he henceforth exists.” This proposal found +favour with the pure-minded Poo-chow, so that in course of time the +unassuming youth who had come supplicating his advice became the +valiant commander of his army, and the one eventually chosen to present +plighting gifts to his only daughter.’ + +“When the father had completed the narrative of how the faint-hearted +youth became in the end a courageous and resourceful leader of bowmen, +Sen looked up, and not in any degree understanding the purpose of the +story, or why it had been set forth before him, exclaimed: + +“‘Undoubtedly the counsel of the graceful and intelligent Mandarin +Poo-chow was of inestimable service in the case recorded, and this +person would gladly adopt it as his guide for the future, on the chance +of it leading to a similar honourable career; but alas! there are no +tigers to be found throughout this Province.’ + +“‘It is a loss which those who are engaged in commerce in the city of +Hankow strive to supply adequately,’ replied his father, who had an +assured feeling that it would be of no avail to endeavour to show +Sen that the story which he had just related was one setting forth a +definite precept rather than fixing an exact manner of behaviour. ‘For +that reason,’ he continued, ‘this person has concluded an arrangement by +which you will journey to that place, and there enter into the house of +commerce of an expert and conscientious vendor of moving contrivances. +Among so rapacious and keen-witted a class of persons as they of Hankow, +it is exceedingly unlikely that your amiable disposition will involve +any individual one in an unavoidably serious loss, and even should +such an unforeseen event come to pass, there will, at least, be the +undeniable satisfaction of the thought that the unfortunate occurrence +will in no way affect the prosperity of those to whom you are bound by +the natural ties of affection.’ + +“‘Benevolent and virtuous-minded father,’ replied Sen gently, but +speaking with an inspired conviction; ‘from his earliest infancy this +unassuming one has been instructed in an inviolable regard for the Five +General Principles of Fidelity to the Emperor, Respect for Parents, +Harmony between Husband and Wife, Agreement among Brothers, and +Constancy in Friendship. It will be entirely unnecessary to inform so +pious-minded a person as the one now being addressed that no evil can +attend the footsteps of an individual who courteously observes these +enactments.’ + +“‘Without doubt it is so arranged by the protecting Deities,’ replied +the father; ‘yet it is an exceedingly desirable thing for those who are +responsible in the matter that the footsteps to which reference has been +made should not linger in the neighbourhood of the village, but should, +with all possible speed, turn in the direction of Hankow.’ + +“In this manner it came to pass that Sen Heng set forth on the following +day, and coming without delay to the great and powerful city of Hankow, +sought out the house of commerce known as ‘The Pure Gilt Dragon of +Exceptional Symmetry,’ where the versatile King-y-Yang engaged in the +entrancing occupation of contriving moving figures, and other devices of +an ingenious and mirth-provoking character, which he entrusted into the +hands of numerous persons to sell throughout the Province. From this +cause, although enjoying a very agreeable recompense from the sale +of the objects, the greatly perturbed King-y-Yang suffered continual +internal misgivings; for the habit of behaving of those whom he +appointed to go forth in the manner described was such that he could not +entirely dismiss from his mind an assured conviction that the details +were not invariably as they were represented to be. Frequently would +one return in a very deficient and unpresentable condition of garment, +asserting that on his return, while passing through a lonely and +unprotected district, he had been assailed by an armed band of robbers, +and despoiled of all he possessed. Another would claim to have been made +the sport of evil spirits, who led him astray by means of false signs +in the forest, and finally destroyed his entire burden of commodities, +accompanying the unworthy act by loud cries of triumph and remarks of +an insulting nature concerning King-y-Yang; for the honourable character +and charitable actions of the person in question had made him very +objectionable to that class of beings. Others continually accounted +for the absence of the required number of taels by declaring that at +a certain point of their journey they were made the object of marks +of amiable condescension on the part of a high and dignified public +official, who, on learning in whose service they were, immediately +professed an intimate personal friendship with the estimable +King-y-Yang, and, out of a feeling of gratified respect for him, took +away all such contrivances as remained undisposed of, promising to +arrange the payment with the refined King-y-Yang himself when they +should next meet. For these reasons King-y-Yang was especially desirous +of obtaining one whose spoken word could be received, upon all points, +as an assured fact, and it was, therefore, with an emotion of internal +lightness that he confidently heard from those who were acquainted +with the person that Sen Heng was, by nature and endowments, utterly +incapable of representing matters of even the most insignificant degree +to be otherwise than what they really were. + +Filled with an acute anxiety to discover what amount of success would +be accorded to his latest contrivance, King-y-Yang led Sen Heng to a +secluded chamber, and there instructed him in the method of selling +certain apparently very ingeniously constructed ducks, which would have +the appearance of swimming about on the surface of an open vessel of +water, at the same time uttering loud and ever-increasing cries, after +the manner of their kind. With ill-restrained admiration at the skilful +nature of the deception, King-y-Yang pointed out that the ducks which +were to be disposed of, and upon which a seemingly very low price was +fixed, did not, in reality, possess any of these accomplishments, but +would, on the contrary, if placed in water, at once sink to the bottom +in a most incapable manner; it being part of Sen’s duty to exhibit only +a specially prepared creature which was restrained upon the surface by +means of hidden cords, and, while bending over it, to simulate the cries +as agreed upon. After satisfying himself that Sen could perform these +movements competently, King-y-Yang sent him forth, particularly charging +him that he should not return without a sum of money which fully +represented the entire number of ducks entrusted to him, or an adequate +number of unsold ducks to compensate for the deficiency. + +“At the end of seven days Sen returned to King-y-Yang, and although +entirely without money, even to the extent of being unable to provide +himself with the merest necessities of a frugal existence, he honourably +returned the full number of ducks with which he had set out. It then +became evident that although Sen had diligently perfected himself in the +sounds and movements which King-y-Yang had contrived, he had not +fully understood that they were to be executed stealthily, but had, +in consequence, manifested the accomplishment openly, not unreasonably +supposing that such an exhibition would be an additional inducement to +those who appeared to be well-disposed towards the purchase. From this +cause it came about that although large crowds were attracted by Sen’s +manner of conducting the enterprise, none actually engaged to purchase +even the least expensively-valued of the ducks, although several +publicly complimented Sen on his exceptional proficiency, and repeatedly +urged him to louder and more frequent cries, suggesting that by such +means possible buyers might be attracted to the spot from remote and +inaccessible villages in the neighbourhood. + +“When King-y-Yang learned how the venture had been carried out, he +became most intolerably self-opinionated in his expressions towards +Sen’s mental attainments and the manner of his bringing up. It was +entirely in vain that the one referred to pointed out in a tone of +persuasive and courteous restraint that he had not, down to the most +minute particulars, transgressed either the general or the specific +obligations of the Five General Principles, and that, therefore, he was +blameless, and even worthy of commendation for the manner in which he +had acted. With an inelegant absence of all refined feeling, King-y-Yang +most incapably declined to discuss the various aspects of the +controversy in an amiable manner, asserting, indeed, that for the +consideration of as many brass cash as Sen had mentioned principles +he would cause him to be thrown into prison as a person of unnatural +ineptitude. Then, without rewarding Sen for the time spent in his +service, or even inviting him to partake of food and wine, the +insufferable deviser of very indifferent animated contrivances again +sent him out, this time into the streets of Hankow with a number of +delicately inlaid boxes, remarking in a tone of voice which plainly +indicated an exactly contrary desire that he would be filled with an +overwhelming satisfaction if Sen could discover any excuse for returning +a second time without disposing of anything. This remark Sen’s ingenuous +nature led him to regard as a definite fact, so that when a passer-by, +who tarried to examine the boxes chanced to remark that the colours +might have been arranged to greater advantage, in which case he would +certainly have purchased at least one of the articles, Sen hastened +back, although in a distant part of the city, to inform King-y-Yang of +the suggestion, adding that he himself had been favourably impressed +with the improvement which could be effected by such an alteration. + +“The nature of King-y-Yang’s emotion when Sen again presented himself +before him--and when by repeatedly applied tests on various parts of his +body he understood that he was neither the victim of malicious demons, +nor wandering in an insensible condition in the Middle Air, but that the +cause of the return was such as had been plainly stated--was of so mixed +and benumbing a variety, that for a considerable space of time he was +quite unable to express himself in any way, either by words or by signs. +By the time these attributes returned there had formed itself within +King-y-Yang’s mind a design of most contemptible malignity, which seemed +to present to his enfeebled intellect a scheme by which Sen would be +adequately punished, and finally disposed of, without causing him any +further trouble in the matter. For this purpose he concealed the real +condition of his sentiments towards Sen, and warmly expressed himself in +terms of delicate flattery regarding that one’s sumptuous and unfailing +taste in the matter of the blending of the colours. Without doubt, he +continued, such an alteration as the one proposed would greatly increase +the attractiveness of the inlaid boxes, and the matter should be engaged +upon without delay. In the meantime, however, not to waste the immediate +services of so discriminating and persevering a servant, he would +entrust Sen with a mission of exceptional importance, which would +certainly tend greatly to his remunerative benefit. In the district +of Yun, in the north-western part of the Province, said the crafty +and treacherous King-y-Yang, a particular kind of insect was greatly +esteemed on account of the beneficent influence which it exercised over +the rice plants, causing them to mature earlier, and to attain a greater +size than ever happened in its absence. In recent years this creature +had rarely been seen in the neighbourhood of Yun, and, in consequence, +the earth-tillers throughout that country had been brought into a most +disconcerting state of poverty, and would, inevitably, be prepared to +exchange whatever they still possessed for even a few of the insects, in +order that they might liberate them to increase, and so entirely reverse +the objectionable state of things. Speaking in this manner, King-y-Yang +entrusted to Sen a carefully prepared box containing a score of the +insects, obtained at a great cost from a country beyond the Bitter +Water, and after giving him further directions concerning the journey, +and enjoining the utmost secrecy about the valuable contents of the box, +he sent him forth. + +“The discreet and sagacious will already have understood the nature of +King-y-Yang’s intolerable artifice; but, for the benefit of the amiable +and unsuspecting, it is necessary to make it clear that the words which +he had spoken bore no sort of resemblance to affairs as they really +existed. The district around Yun was indeed involved in a most +unprepossessing destitution, but this had been caused, not by the +absence of any rare and auspicious insect, but by the presence of vast +hordes of locusts, which had overwhelmed and devoured the entire face +the country. It so chanced that among the recently constructed devices +at ‘The Pure Gilt Dragon of Exceptional Symmetry’ were a number of +elegant representations of rice fields and fruit gardens so skilfully +fashioned that they deceived even the creatures, and attracted, among +other living things, all the locusts in Hankow into that place of +commerce. It was a number of these insects that King-y-Yang vindictively +placed in the box which he instructed Sen to carry to Yun, well knowing +that the reception which would be accorded to anyone who appeared there +on such a mission would be of so fatally destructive a kind that the +consideration of his return need not engage a single conjecture. + +“Entirely tranquil in intellect--for the possibility of King-y-Yang’s +intention being in any way other than what he had represented it to +be did not arise within Sen’s ingenuous mind--the person in question +cheerfully set forth on his long but unavoidable march towards the +region of Yun. As he journeyed along the way, the nature of his +meditation brought up before him the events which had taken place since +his arrival at Hankow; and, for the first time, it was brought within +his understanding that the story of the youth and the three tigers, +which his father had related to him, was in the likeness of a proverb, +by which counsel and warning is conveyed in a graceful and inoffensive +manner. Readily applying the fable to his own condition, he could not +doubt but that the first two animals to be overthrown were represented +by the two undertakings which he had already conscientiously performed +in the matter of the mechanical ducks and the inlaid boxes, and the +conviction that he was even then engaged on the third and last trial +filled him with an intelligent gladness so unobtrusive and refined that +he could express his entrancing emotions in no other way than by lifting +up his voice and uttering the far-reaching cries which he had used on +the first of the occasions just referred to. + +“In this manner the first part of the journey passed away with engaging +celerity. Anxious as Sen undoubtedly was to complete the third task, and +approach the details which, in his own case, would correspond with the +command of the bowmen and the marriage with the Mandarin’s daughter of +the person in the story, the noontide heat compelled him to rest in the +shade by the wayside for a lengthy period each day. During one of +these pauses it occurred to his versatile mind that the time which was +otherwise uselessly expended might be well disposed of in endeavouring +to increase the value and condition of the creatures under his care by +instructing them in the performance of some simple accomplishments, +such as might not be too laborious for their feeble and immature +understanding. In this he was more successful than he had imagined could +possibly be the case, for the discriminating insects, from the first, +had every appearance of recognizing that Sen was inspired by a sincere +regard for their ultimate benefit, and was not merely using them for +his own advancement. So assiduously did they devote themselves to their +allotted tasks, that in a very short space of time there was no detail +in connexion with their own simple domestic arrangements that was not +understood and daily carried out by an appointed band. Entranced at this +intelligent manner of conducting themselves, Sen industriously applied +his time to the more congenial task of instructing them in the refined +arts, and presently he had the enchanting satisfaction of witnessing a +number of the most cultivated faultlessly and unhesitatingly perform a +portion of the well-known gravity-removing play entitled “The Benevolent +Omen of White Dragon Tea Garden; or, Three Times a Mandarin.” Not even +content with this elevating display, Sen ingeniously contrived, from +various objects which he discovered at different points by the wayside, +an effective and life-like representation of a war-junk, for which he +trained a crew, who, at an agreed signal, would take up their appointed +places and go through the required movements, both of sailing, and of +discharging the guns, in a reliable and efficient manner. + +“As Sen was one day educating the least competent of the insects in the +simpler parts of banner-carriers, gong-beaters, and the like, to their +more graceful and versatile companions, he lifted up his eyes and +beheld, standing by his side, a person of very elaborately embroidered +apparel and commanding personality, who had all the appearance of one +who had been observing his movements for some space of time. Calling +up within his remembrance the warning which he had received from +King-y-Yang, Sen was preparing to restore the creatures to their closed +box, when the stranger, in a loud and dignified voice, commanded him to +refrain, adding: + +“‘There is, resting at a spot within the immediate neighbourhood, +a person of illustrious name and ancestry, who would doubtless be +gratified to witness the diverting actions of which this one has +recently been a spectator. As the reward of a tael cannot be unwelcome +to a person of your inferior appearance and unpresentable garments, take +up your box without delay, and follow the one who is now before you.’ + +“With these words the richly-clad stranger led the way through a narrow +woodland path, closely followed by Sen, to whom the attraction of the +promised reward--a larger sum, indeed, than he had ever possessed--was +sufficiently alluring to make him determined that the other should not, +for the briefest possible moment, pass beyond his sight. + +“Not to withhold that which Sen was entirely ignorant of until a later +period, it is now revealed that the person in question was the official +Provider of Diversions and Pleasurable Occupations to the sacred +and illimitable Emperor, who was then engaged in making an unusually +extensive march through the eight Provinces surrounding his Capital--for +the acute and well-educated will not need to be reminded that Nanking +occupied that position at the time now engaged with. Until his +providential discovery of Sen, the distinguished Provider had been +immersed in a most unenviable condition of despair, for his enlightened +but exceedingly perverse-minded master had, of late, declined to be +in any way amused, or even interested, by the simple and unpretentious +entertainment which could be obtained in so inaccessible a region. The +well-intentioned efforts of the followers of the Court, who engagingly +endeavoured to divert the Imperial mind by performing certain feats +which they remembered to have witnessed on previous occasions, but +which, until the necessity arose, they had never essayed, were entirely +without result of a beneficial order. Even the accomplished Provider’s +one attainment--that of striking together both the hands and the feet +thrice simultaneously, while leaping into the air, and at the same time +producing a sound not unlike that emitted by a large and vigorous bee +when held captive in the fold of a robe, an action which never failed +to throw the illustrious Emperor into a most uncontrollable state of +amusement when performed within the Imperial Palace--now only drew +from him the unsympathetic, if not actually offensive, remark that the +attitude and the noise bore a marked resemblance to those produced by a +person when being bowstrung, adding, with unprepossessing significance, +that of the two entertainments he had an unevadable conviction that the +bowstringing would be the more acceptable and gravity-removing. + +“When Sen beheld the size and the silk-hung magnificence of the camp +into which his guide led him, he was filled with astonishment, and at +the same time recognized that he had acted in an injudicious and hasty +manner by so readily accepting the offer of a tael; whereas, if he had +been in possession of the true facts of the case, as they now appeared, +he would certainly have endeavoured to obtain double that amount before +consenting. As he was hesitating within himself whether the matter might +not even yet be arranged in a more advantageous manner, he was suddenly +led forward into the most striking and ornamental of the tents, and +commanded to engage the attention of the one in whose presence he found +himself, without delay. + +“From the first moment when the inimitable creatures began, at Sen’s +spoken word, to go through the ordinary details of their domestic +affairs, there was no sort of doubt as to the nature of the success with +which their well-trained exertions would be received. The dark shadows +instantly forsook the enraptured Emperor’s select brow, and from time +to time he expressed himself in words of most unrestrained and intimate +encouragement. So exuberant became the overjoyed Provider’s emotion at +having at length succeeded in obtaining the services of one who was +able to recall his Imperial master’s unclouded countenance, that he came +forward in a most unpresentable state of haste, and rose into the air +uncommanded, for the display of his usually not unwelcome acquirement. +This he would doubtless have executed competently had not Sen, who stood +immediately behind him, suddenly and unexpectedly raised his voice in +a very vigorous and proficient duck cry, thereby causing the one before +him to endeavour to turn around in alarm, while yet in the air--an +intermingled state of movements of both the body and the mind that +caused him to abandon his original intention in a manner which removed +the gravity of the Emperor to an even more pronounced degree than had +been effected by the diverting attitudes of the insects. + +“When the gratified Emperor had beheld every portion of the tasks +which Sen had instilled into the minds of the insects, down even to the +minutest detail, he called the well-satisfied Provider before him, +and addressing him in a voice which might be designed to betray either +sternness or an amiable indulgence, said: + +“‘You, O Shan-se, are reported to be a person of no particular intellect +or discernment, and, for this reason, these ones who are speaking have a +desire to know how the matter will present itself in your eyes. Which +is it the more commendable and honourable for a person to train to +a condition of unfailing excellence, human beings of confessed +intelligence or insects of a low and degraded standard?’ + +“To this remark the discriminating Shan-se made no reply, being, indeed, +undecided in his mind whether such a course was expected of him. On +several previous occasions the somewhat introspective Emperor had +addressed himself to persons in what they judged to be the form of a +question, as one might say, ‘How blue is the unapproachable air canopy, +and how delicately imagined the colour of the clouds!’ yet when they had +expressed their deliberate opinion on the subjects referred to, +stating the exact degree of blueness, and the like, the nature of +their reception ever afterwards was such that, for the future, persons +endeavoured to determine exactly the intention of the Emperor’s mind +before declaring themselves in words. Being exceedingly doubtful on this +occasion, therefore, the very cautious Shan-se adopted the more prudent +and uncompromising attitude, and smiling acquiescently, he raised both +his hands with a self-deprecatory movement. + +“‘Alas!’ exclaimed the Emperor, in a tone which plainly indicated that +the evasive Shan-se had adopted a course which did not commend itself, +‘how unendurable a condition of affairs is it for a person of acute +mental perception to be annoyed by the inopportune behaviour of one +who is only fit to mix on terms of equality with beggars, and low-caste +street cleaners--’ + +“‘Such a condition of affairs is indeed most offensively unbearable, +illustrious Being,’ remarked Shan-se, who clearly perceived that his +former silence had not been productive of a delicate state of feeling +towards himself. + +“‘It has frequently been said,’ continued the courteous and pure-minded +Emperor, only signifying his refined displeasure at Shan-se’s really +ill-considered observation by so arranging his position that the person +in question on longer enjoyed the sublime distinction of gazing upon his +benevolent face, ‘that titles and offices have been accorded, from time +to time, without any regard for the fitting qualifications of those to +whom they were presented. The truth that such a state of things does +occasionally exist has been brought before our eyes during the past +few days by the abandoned and inefficient behaviour of one who will +henceforth be a marked official; yet it has always been our endeavour +to reward expert and unassuming merit, whenever it is discovered. As +we were setting forth, when we were interrupted in a most obstinate and +superfluous manner, the one who can guide and cultivate the minds of +unthinking, and not infrequently obstinate and rapacious, insects would +certainly enjoy an even greater measure of success if entrusted with the +discriminating intellects of human beings. For this reason it appears +that no more fitting person could be found to occupy the important and +well-rewarded position of Chief Arranger of the Competitive Examinations +than the one before us--provided his opinions and manner of expressing +himself are such as commend themselves to us. To satisfy us on this +point let Sen Heng now stand forth and declare his beliefs.’ + +“On this invitation Sen advanced the requisite number of paces, and not +in any degree understanding what was required of him, determined that +the occasion was one when he might fittingly declare the Five General +Principles which were ever present in his mind. ‘Unquestioning Fidelity +to the Sacred Emperor--’ he began, when the person in question signified +that the trial was over. + +“‘After so competent and inspired an expression as that which has just +been uttered, which, if rightly considered, includes all lesser things, +it is unnecessary to say more,’ he declared affably. ‘The appointment +which has already been specified is now declared to be legally +conferred. The evening will be devoted to a repetition of the entrancing +manoeuvres performed by the insects, to be followed by a feast and music +in honour of the recognized worth and position of the accomplished Sen +Heng. There is really no necessity for the apparently over-fatigued +Shan-se to attend the festival.’ + +“In such a manner was the foundation of Sen’s ultimate prosperity +established, by which he came in the process of time to occupy a very +high place in public esteem. Yet, being a person of honourably-minded +conscientiousness, he did not hesitate, when questioned by those who +made pilgrimages to him for the purpose of learning by what means he +had risen to so remunerative a position, to ascribe his success, not +entirely to his own intelligent perception of persons and events, but, +in part, also to a never-failing regard for the dictates of the Five +General Principles, and a discriminating subservience to the inspired +wisdom of the venerable Poo-chow, as conveyed to him in the story of +the faint-hearted youth and the three tigers. This story Sen furthermore +caused to be inscribed in letters of gold, and displayed in a prominent +position in his native village, where it has since doubtless been the +means of instructing and advancing countless observant ones who have not +been too insufferable to be guided by the experience of those who have +gone before.” + + + + +IV. +THE EXPERIMENT OF THE MANDARIN CHAN HUNG + + + Related by Kai Lung at Shan Tzu, on the occasion of his receiving + a very unexpected reward. + +“There are certainly many occasions when the principles of the Mandarin +Chan Hung appear to find practical favour in the eyes of those who form +this usually uncomplaining person’s audiences at Shan Tzu,” remarked Kai +Lung, with patient resignation, as he took up his collecting-bowl and +transferred the few brass coins which it held to a concealed place among +his garments. “Has the village lately suffered from a visit of one +of those persons who come armed with authority to remove by force or +stratagem such goods as bear names other than those possessed by their +holders? or is it, indeed--as they of Wu-whei confidently assert--that +when the Day of Vows arrives the people of Shan Tzu, with one accord, +undertake to deny themselves in the matter of gifts and free offerings, +in spite of every conflicting impulse?” + +“They of Wu-whei!” exclaimed a self-opinionated bystander, who had +by some means obtained an inferior public office, and who was, in +consequence, enabled to be present on all occasions without contributing +any offering. “Well is that village named ‘The Refuge of Unworthiness,’ +for its dwellers do little but rob and illtreat strangers, and spread +evil and lying reports concerning better endowed ones than themselves.” + +“Such a condition of affairs may exist,” replied Kai Lung, without +any indication of concern either one way or the other; “yet it is an +undeniable fact that they reward this commonplace story-teller’s too +often underestimated efforts in a manner which betrays them either to +be of noble birth, or very desirous of putting to shame their less +prosperous neighbouring places.” + +“Such exhibitions of uncalled-for lavishness are merely the signs of an +ill-regulated and inordinate vanity,” remarked a Mandarin of the eighth +grade, who chanced to be passing, and who stopped to listen to Kai +Lung’s words. “Nevertheless, it is not fitting that a collection of +decaying hovels, which Wu-whei assuredly is, should, in however small +a detail, appear to rise above Shan Tzu, so that if the versatile and +unassuming Kai Lung will again honour this assembly by allowing his +well-constructed bowl to pass freely to and fro, this obscure and +otherwise entirely superfluous individual will make it his especial care +that the brass of Wu-whei shall be answered with solid copper, and its +debased pewter with doubly refined silver.” + +With these encouraging words the very opportune Mandarin of the eighth +grade himself followed the story-teller’s collecting-bowl, observing +closely what each person contributed, so that, although he gave nothing +from his own store, Kai Lung had never before received so honourable an +amount. + +“O illustrious Kai Lung,” exclaimed a very industrious and ill-clad +herb-gatherer, who, in spite of his poverty, could not refrain from +mingling with listeners whenever the story-teller appeared in Shan Tzu, +“a single piece of brass money is to this person more than a block +of solid gold to many of Wu-whei; yet he has twice made the customary +offering, once freely, once because a courteous and pure-minded +individual who possesses certain written papers of his connected with +the repayment of some few taels walked behind the bowl and engaged +his eyes with an unmistakable and very significant glance. This fact +emboldens him to make the following petition: that in place of the not +altogether unknown story of Yung Chang which had been announced the +proficient and nimble-minded Kai Lung will entice our attention with the +history of the Mandarin Chan Hung, to which reference has already been +made.” + +“The occasion is undoubtedly one which calls for recognition to an +unusual degree,” replied Kai Lung with extreme affability. “To that end +this person will accordingly narrate the story which has been suggested, +notwithstanding the fact that it has been specially prepared for +the ears of the sublime Emperor, who is at this moment awaiting this +unseemly one’s arrival in Peking with every mark of ill-restrained +impatience, tempered only by his expectation of being the first to hear +the story of the well-meaning but somewhat premature Chan Hung. + +“The Mandarin in question lived during the reign of the accomplished +Emperor Tsint-Sin, his Yamen being at Fow Hou, in the Province of +Shan-Tung, of which place he was consequently the chief official. In his +conscientious desire to administer a pure and beneficent rule, he not +infrequently made himself a very prominent object for public disregard, +especially by his attempts to introduce untried things, when from +time to time such matters arose within his mind and seemed to promise +agreeable and remunerative results. In this manner it came about that +the streets of Fow Hou were covered with large flat stones, to the great +inconvenience of those persons who had, from a very remote period, been +in the habit of passing the night on the soft clay which at all +seasons of the year afforded a pleasant and efficient resting-place. +Nevertheless, in certain matters his engaging efforts were attended by +an obvious success. Having noticed that misfortunes and losses are much +less keenly felt when they immediately follow in the steps of an earlier +evil, the benevolent and humane-minded Chan Hung devised an ingenious +method of lightening the burden of a necessary taxation by arranging +that those persons who were the most heavily involved should be made the +victims of an attack and robbery on the night before the matter became +due. By this thoughtful expedient the unpleasant duty of parting from so +many taels was almost imperceptibly led up to, and when, after the lapse +of some slight period, the first sums of money were secretly returned, +with a written proverb appropriate to the occasion, the public rejoicing +of those who, had the matter been left to its natural course, +would still have been filling the air with bitter and unendurable +lamentations, plainly testified to the inspired wisdom of the +enlightened Mandarin. + +“The well-merited success of this amiable expedient caused the Mandarin +Chan Hung every variety of intelligent emotion, and no day passed +without him devoting a portion of his time to the labour of discovering +other advantages of a similar nature. Engrossed in deep and very sublime +thought of this order, he chanced upon a certain day to be journeying +through Fow Hou, when he met a person of irregular intellect, who +made an uncertain livelihood by following the unassuming and +charitably-disposed from place to place, chanting in a loud voice set +verses recording their virtues, which he composed in their honour. On +account of his undoubted infirmities this person was permitted a greater +freedom of speech with those above him than would have been the case had +his condition been merely ordinary; so that when Chan Hung observed him +becoming very grossly amused on his approach, to such an extent indeed, +that he neglected to perform any of the fitting acts of obeisance, +the wise and noble-minded Mandarin did not in any degree suffer his +complacency to be affected, but, drawing near, addressed him in a calm +and dignified manner. + +“‘Why, O Ming-hi,’ he said, ‘do you permit your gravity to be removed +to such an exaggerated degree at the sight of this in no way striking +or exceptional person? and why, indeed, do you stand in so unbecoming +an attitude in the presence of one who, in spite of his depraved +inferiority, is unquestionably your official superior, and could, +without any hesitation, condemn you to the tortures or even to +bowstringing on the spot?’ + +“‘Mandarin,’ exclaimed Ming-hi, stepping up to Chan Hung, and, without +any hesitation, pressing the gilt button which adorned the official’s +body garment, accompanying the action by a continuous muffled noise +which suggested the repeated striking of a hidden bell, ‘you wonder that +this person stands erect on your approach, neither rolling his lowered +head repeatedly from side to side, nor tracing circles in the dust +of Fow Hou with his submissive stomach? Know then, the meaning of the +proverb, “Distrust an inordinate appearance of servility. The estimable +person who retires from your presence walking backwards may adopt that +deferential manner in order to keep concealed the long double-edged +knife with which he had hoped to slay you.” The excessive amusement that +seized this offensive person when he beheld your well-defined figure in +the distance arose from his perception of your internal satisfaction, +which is, indeed, unmistakably reflected in your symmetrical +countenance. For, O Mandarin, in spite of your honourable endeavours +to turn things which are devious into a straight line, the matters upon +which you engage your versatile intellect--little as you suspect the +fact--are as grains of the finest Foo-chow sand in comparison with that +which escapes your attention.’ + +“‘Strange are your words, O Ming-hi, and dark to this person your +meaning,’ replied Chan Hung, whose feelings were evenly balanced between +a desire to know what thing he had neglected and a fear that his dignity +might suffer if he were observed to remain long conversing with a person +of Ming-hi’s low mental attainments. ‘Without delay, and with an entire +absence of lengthy and ornamental forms of speech, express the omission +to which you have made reference; for this person has an uneasy inside +emotion that you are merely endeavouring to engage his attention to +the end that you may make an unseemly and irrelevant reply, and thereby +involve him in an undeserved ridicule.’ + +“‘Such a device would be the pastime of one of immature years, and could +have no place in this person’s habit of conduct,’ replied Ming-hi, with +every appearance of a fixed sincerity. ‘Moreover, the matter is one +which touches his own welfare closely, and, expressed in the fashion +which the proficient Mandarin has commanded, may be set forth as +follows: By a wise and all-knowing divine system, it is arranged that +certain honourable occupations, which by their nature cannot become +remunerative to any marked degree, shall be singled out for special +marks of reverence, so that those who engage therein may be compensated +in dignity for what they must inevitably lack in taels. By this +refined dispensation the literary occupations, which are in general the +highroads to the Establishment of Public Support and Uniform Apparel, +are held in the highest veneration. Agriculture, from which it is +possible to wrest a competency, follows in esteem; while the various +branches of commerce, leading as they do to vast possessions and the +attendant luxury, are very justly deprived of all the attributes +of dignity and respect. Yet observe, O justice-loving Mandarin, how +unbecomingly this ingenious system of universal compensation has been +debased at the instance of grasping and avaricious ones. Dignity, riches +and ease now go hand in hand, and the highest rewarded in all matters +are also the most esteemed, whereas, if the discriminating provision of +those who have gone before and so arranged it was observed, the direct +contrary would be the case.’ + +“‘It is a state of things which is somewhat difficult to imagine in +general matters of life, in spite of the fair-seemingness of your +words,’ said the Mandarin thoughtfully; ‘nor can this rather obtuse and +slow-witted person fully grasp the practical application of the system +on the edge of the moment. In what manner would it operate in the case +of ordinary persons, for example?’ + +“‘There should be a fixed and settled arrangement that the low-minded +and degrading occupations--such as that of following charitable persons +from place to place, chanting verses composed in their honour, that of +misleading travellers who inquire the way, so that they fall into the +hands of robbers, and the like callings--should be the most highly +rewarded to the end that those who are engaged therein may obtain +some solace for the loss of dignity they experience, and the mean +intellectual position which they are compelled to maintain. By this +device they would be enabled to possess certain advantages and degrees +of comfort which at present are utterly beyond their grasp, so that in +the end they would escape being entirely debased. To turn to the other +foot, those who are now high in position, and engaged in professions +which enjoy the confidence of all persons, have that which in itself is +sufficient to insure contentment. Furthermore, the most proficient +and engaging in every department, mean or high-minded, have certain +attributes of respect among those beneath them, so that they might +justly be content with the lowest reward in whatever calling they +professed, the least skilful and most left-handed being compensated for +the mental anguish which they must undoubtedly suffer by receiving the +greatest number of taels.’ + +“‘Such a scheme would, as far as the matter has been expressed, appear +to possess all the claims of respect, and to be, indeed, what was +originally intended by those who framed the essentials of existence,’ +said Chan Hung, when he had for some space of time considered the +details. ‘In one point, however, this person fails to perceive how +the arrangement could be amiably conducted in Fow Hou. The one who +is addressing you maintains, as a matter of right, a position of +exceptional respect, nor, if he must express himself upon such a detail, +are his excessively fatiguing duties entirely unremunerative...’ + +“‘In the case of the distinguished and unalterable Mandarin,’ exclaimed +Ming-hi, with no appearance of hesitation, ‘the matter would of +necessity be arranged otherwise. Being from that time, as it were, the +controller of the destinies and remunerations of all those in Fow Hou, +he would, manifestly, be outside the working of the scheme; standing +apart and regulating, like the person who turns the handle of the +corn-mill, but does not suffer himself to be drawn between the +stones, he could still maintain both his respect and his remuneration +unaltered.’ + +“‘If the detail could honourably be regarded in such a light,’ said Chan +Hung, ‘this person would, without delay, so rearrange matters in Fow +Hou, and thereby create universal justice and an unceasing contentment +within the minds of all.’ + +“‘Undoubtedly such a course could be justly followed,’ assented Ming-hi, +‘for in precisely that manner of working was the complete scheme +revealed to this highly-favoured person.’ + +“Entirely wrapped up in thoughts concerning the inception and manner of +operation of this project Chan Hung began to retrace his steps towards +the Yamen, failing to observe in his benevolent abstraction of mind, +that the unaffectedly depraved person Ming-hi was stretching out his +feet towards him and indulging in every other form of low-minded and +undignified contempt. + +“Before he reached the door of his residence the Mandarin overtook +one who occupied a high position of confidence and remuneration in the +Department of Public Fireworks and Coloured Lights. Fully assured of +this versatile person’s enthusiasm on behalf of so humane and charitable +a device, Chan Hung explained the entire matter to him without delay, +and expressly desired that if there were any details which appeared +capable of improvement, he would declare himself clearly regarding them. + +“‘Alas!’ exclaimed the person with whom the Mandarin was conversing, +speaking in so unfeignedly disturbed and terrified a voice that several +who were passing by stopped in order to learn the full circumstance, +‘have this person’s ears been made the object of some unnaturally +light-minded demon’s ill-disposed pastime, or does the usually +well-balanced Chan Hung in reality contemplate so violent and un-Chinese +an action? What but evil could arise from a single word of the change +which he proposes to the extent of a full written book? The entire fixed +nature of events would become reversed; persons would no longer be fully +accountable to one another; and Fow Hou being thus thrown into a most +unendurable state of confusion, the protecting Deities would doubtless +withdraw their influence, and the entire region would soon be given over +to the malicious guardianship of rapacious and evilly-disposed spirits. +Let this person entreat the almost invariably clear-sighted Chan Hung +to return at once to his adequately equipped and sumptuous Yamen, and +barring well the door of his inner chamber, so that it can only be +opened from the outside, partake of several sleeping essences of unusual +strength, after which he will awake in an undoubtedly refreshed state +of mind, and in a condition to observe matters with his accustomed +diamond-like penetration.’ + +“‘By no means!’ cried one of those who had stopped to learn the occasion +of the incident--a very inferior maker of unserviceable imitation +pigtails--‘the devout and conscientious-minded Mandarin Chan Hung speaks +as the inspired mouth-piece of the omnipotent Buddha, and must, for +that reason, be obeyed in every detail. This person would unhesitatingly +counsel the now invaluable Mandarin to proceed to his well-constructed +residence without delay, and there calling together his entire staff of +those who set down his spoken words, put the complete Heaven-sent +plan into operation, and beyond recall, before he retires to his inner +chamber.’ + +“Upon this there arose a most inelegant display of undignified emotions +on the part of the assembly which had by this time gathered together. +While those who occupied honourable and remunerative positions very +earnestly entreated the Mandarin to act in the manner which had been +suggested by the first speaker, others--who had, in the meantime, made +use of imagined figures, and thereby discovered that the proposed change +would be greatly to their advantage--raised shouts of encouragement +towards the proposal of the pigtail-maker, urging the noble Mandarin not +to become small in the face towards the insignificant few who were ever +opposed to enlightened reform, but to maintain an unflaccid upper lip, +and carry the entire matter through to its destined end. In the course +of this very unseemly tumult, which soon involved all persons present +in hostile demonstrations towards each other, both the Mandarin and +the official from the Fireworks and Coloured Lights Department found +an opportunity to pass away secretly, the former to consider well the +various sides of the matter, towards which he became better disposed +with every thought, the latter to find a purchaser of his appointment +and leave Fow Hou before the likelihood of Chan Hung’s scheme became +generally known. + +“At this point an earlier circumstance, which affected the future +unrolling of events to no insignificant degree, must be made known, +concerning as it does Lila, the fair and very accomplished daughter +of Chan Hung. Possessing no son or heir to succeed him, the Mandarin +exhibited towards Lila a very unusual depth of affection, so marked, +indeed, that when certain evil-minded ones endeavoured to encompass +his degradation, on the plea of eccentricity of character, the written +papers which they dispatched to the high ones at Peking contained no +other accusation in support of the contention than that the individual +in question regarded his daughter with an obvious pride and pleasure +which no person of well-balanced intellect lavished on any but a son. + +“It was his really conscientious desire to establish Lila’s welfare +above all things that had caused Chan Hung to become in some degree +undecided when conversing with Ming-hi on the detail of the scheme; for, +unaffected as the Mandarin himself would have been at the prospect of +an honourable poverty, it was no part of his intention that the adorable +and exceptionally-refined Lila should be drawn into such an existence. +That, indeed, had been the essential of his reply on a certain and not +far removed occasion, when two persons of widely differing positions +had each made a formal request that he might be allowed to present +marriage-pledging gifts to the very desirable Lila. Maintaining an +enlightened openness of mind upon the subject, the Mandarin had replied +that nothing but the merit of undoubted suitableness of a person would +affect him in such a decision. As it was ordained by the wise and +unchanging Deities that merit should always be fittingly rewarded, +he went on to express himself, and as the most suitable person was +obviously the one who could the most agreeably provide for her, the +two circumstances inevitably tended to the decision that the one chosen +should be the person who could amass the greatest number of taels. To +this end he instructed them both to present themselves at the end of +a year, bringing with them the entire profits of their undertakings +between the two periods. + +“This deliberate pronouncement affected the two persons in question in +an entirely opposite manner, for one of them was little removed from a +condition of incessant and most uninviting poverty, while the other was +the very highly-rewarded picture-maker Pe-tsing. Both to this latter +person, and to the other one, Lee Sing, the ultimate conclusion of the +matter did not seem to be a question of any conjecture therefore, and, +in consequence, the one became most offensively self-confident, and +the other leaden-minded to an equal degree, neither remembering the +unswerving wisdom of the proverb, ‘Wait! all men are but as the black, +horn-cased beetles which overrun the inferior cooking-rooms of the city, +and even at this moment the heavily-shod and unerring foot of Buddha may +be lifted.’ + +“Lee Sing was, by profession, one of those who hunt and ensnare the +brilliantly-coloured winged insects which are to be found in various +parts of the Empire in great variety and abundance, it being his duty +to send a certain number every year to Peking to contribute to the +amusement of the dignified Emperor. In spite of the not too intelligent +nature of the occupation, Lee Sing took an honourable pride in all +matters connected with it. He disdained, with well-expressed contempt, +to avail himself of the stealthy and somewhat deceptive methods employed +by others engaged in a similar manner of life. In this way he had, from +necessity, acquired agility to an exceptional degree, so that he could +leap far into the air, and while in that position select from a passing +band of insects any which he might desire. This useful accomplishment +was, in a measure, the direct means of bringing together the person in +question and the engaging Lila; for, on a certain occasion, when Lee +Sing was passing through the streets of Fow Hou, he heard a great +outcry, and beheld persons of all ranks running towards him, pointing +at the same time in an upward direction. Turning his gaze in the manner +indicated, Lee beheld, with every variety of astonishment, a powerful +and unnaturally large bird of prey, carrying in its talons the +lovely and now insensible Lila, to whom it had been attracted by the +magnificence of her raiment. The rapacious and evilly-inspired creature +was already above the highest dwelling-houses when Lee first beheld it, +and was plainly directing its course towards the inaccessible mountain +crags beyond the city walls. Nevertheless, Lee resolved upon an +inspired effort, and without any hesitation bounded towards it with such +well-directed proficiency, that if he had not stretched forth his hand +on passing he would inevitably have been carried far above the desired +object. In this manner he succeeded in dragging the repulsive and +completely disconcerted monster to the ground, where its graceful and +unassuming prisoner was released, and the presumptuous bird itself +torn to pieces amid continuous shouts of a most respectful and engaging +description in honour of Lee and of his versatile attainment. + +“In consequence of this incident the grateful Lila would often +deliberately leave the society of the rich and well-endowed in order +to accompany Lee on his journeys in pursuit of exceptionally-precious +winged insects. Regarding his unusual ability as the undoubted cause of +her existence at that moment, she took an all-absorbing pride in such +displays, and would utter loud and frequent exclamations of triumph when +Lee leaped out from behind some rock, where he had lain concealed, and +with unfailing regularity secured the object of his adroit movement. In +this manner a state of feeling which was by no means favourable to +the aspiring picture-maker Pe-tsing had long existed between the two +persons; but when Lee Sing put the matter in the form of an explicit +petition before Chan Hung (to which adequate reference has already been +made), the nature of the decision then arrived at seemed to clothe +the realization of their virtuous and estimable desires with an air of +extreme improbability. + +“‘Oh, Lee,’ exclaimed the greatly-disappointed maiden when her lover had +explained to her the nature of the arrangement--for in her unassuming +admiration of the noble qualities of Lee she had anticipated that Chan +Hung would at once have received him with ceremonious embraces and +assurances of his permanent affection--‘how unendurable a state of +things is this in which we have become involved! Far removed from this +one’s anticipations was the thought of becoming inalienably associated +with that outrageous person Pe-tsing, or of entering upon an existence +which will necessitate a feigned admiration of his really unpresentable +efforts. Yet in such a manner must the entire circumstance complete its +course unless some ingenious method of evading it can be discovered in +the meantime. Alas, my beloved one! the occupation of ensnaring winged +insects is indeed an alluring one, but as far as this person has +observed, it is also exceedingly unproductive of taels. Could not some +more expeditious means of enriching yourself be discovered? Frequently +has the unnoticed but nevertheless very attentive Lila heard her father +and the round-bodied ones who visit him speak of exploits which seem +to consist of assuming the shapes of certain wild animals, and in that +guise appearing from time to time at the place of exchange within +the city walls. As this form of entertainment is undoubtedly very +remunerative in its results, could not the versatile and ready-witted +Lee conceal himself within the skin of a bear, or some other untamed +beast, and in this garb, joining them unperceived, play an appointed +part and receive a just share of the reward?’ + +“‘The result of such an enterprise might, if the matter chanced to take +an unforeseen development, prove of a very doubtful nature,’ replied +Lee Sing, to whom, indeed, the proposed venture appeared in a somewhat +undignified light, although, with refined consideration, he withheld +such a thought from Lila, who had proposed it for him, and also +confessed that her usually immaculate father had taken part in such an +exhibition. ‘Nevertheless, do not permit the dark shadow of an inward +cloud to reflect itself upon your almost invariably amiable countenance, +for this person has become possessed of a valuable internal suggestion +which, although he has hitherto neglected, being content with a small +but assured competency, would doubtless bring together a serviceable +number of taels if rightly utilized.’ + +“‘Greatly does this person fear that the valuable internal suggestion +of Lee Sing will weigh but lightly in the commercial balance against +the very rapidly executed pictures of Pe-tsing,’ said Lila, who had not +fully recalled from her mind a disturbing emotion that Lee would +have been well advised to have availed himself of her ingenious and +well-thought-out suggestion. ‘But of what does the matter consist?’ + +“‘It is the best explained by a recital of the circumstances leading up +to it,’ said Lee. ‘Upon an occasion when this person was passing through +the streets of Fow Hou, there gathered around him a company of those who +had, on previous occasions, beheld his exceptional powers of hurtling +himself through the air in an upward direction, praying that he would +again delight their senses by a similar spectacle. Not being unwilling +to afford those estimable persons of the amusement they desired, this +one, without any elaborate show of affected hesitancy, put himself +into the necessary position, and would without doubt have risen +uninterruptedly almost into the Middle Air, had he not, in making the +preparatory movements, placed his left foot upon an over-ripe wampee +which lay unperceived on the ground. In consequence of this really +blameworthy want of caution the entire manner and direction of this +short-sighted individual’s movements underwent a sudden and complete +change, so that to those who stood around it appeared as though he were +making a well-directed endeavour to penetrate through the upper surface +of the earth. This unexpected display had the effect of removing the +gravity of even the most aged and severe-minded persons present, and for +the space of some moments the behaviour and positions of those who stood +around were such that they were quite unable to render any assistance, +greatly as they doubtless wished to do so. Being in this manner allowed +a period for inward reflexion of a very concentrated order, it arose +within this one’s mind that at every similar occurrence which he had +witnessed, those who observed the event had been seized in a like +fashion, being very excessively amused. The fact was made even more +undoubted by the manner of behaving of an exceedingly stout and +round-faced person, who had not been present from the beginning, but who +was affected to a most incredible extent when the details, as they had +occurred, were made plain to him, he declaring, with many references to +the Sacred Dragon and the Seven Walled Temple at Peking, that he would +willingly have contributed a specified number of taels rather than +have missed the diversion. When at length this person reached his own +chamber, he diligently applied himself to the task of carrying into +practical effect the suggestion which had arisen in his mind. By an +arrangement of transparent glasses and reflecting surfaces--which, were +it not for a well-defined natural modesty, he would certainly be tempted +to describe as highly ingenious--he ultimately succeeded in bringing +about the effect he desired.’ + +“With these words Lee put into Lila’s hands an object which closely +resembled the contrivances by which those who are not sufficiently +powerful to obtain positions near the raised platform, in the Halls of +Celestial Harmony, are nevertheless enabled to observe the complexions +and attire of all around them. Regulating it by means of a hidden +spring, he requested her to follow closely the actions of a +heavily-burdened passerby who was at that moment some little distance +beyond them. Scarcely had Lila raised the glass to her eyes than she +became irresistibly amused to a most infectious degree, greatly to the +satisfaction of Lee, who therein beheld the realization of his hopes. +Not for the briefest space of time would she permit the object to pass +from her, but directed it at every person who came within her sight, +with frequent and unfeigned exclamations of wonder and delight. + +“‘How pleasant and fascinating a device is this!’ exclaimed Lila at +length. ‘By what means is so diverting and gravity-removing a result +obtained?’ + +“‘Further than that it is the concentration of much labour of +continually trying with glasses and reflecting surfaces, this person is +totally unable to explain it,’ replied Lee. ‘The chief thing, however, +is that at whatever moving object it is directed--no matter whether a +person so observed is being carried in a chair, riding upon an animal, +or merely walking--at a certain point he has every appearance of being +unexpectedly hurled to the ground in a most violent and mirth-provoking +manner. Would not the stout and round-faced one, who would cheerfully +have contributed a certain number of taels to see this person manifest a +similar exhibition, unhesitatingly lay out that sum to secure the means +of so gratifying his emotions whenever he felt the desire, even with +the revered persons of the most dignified ones in the Empire? Is there, +indeed, a single person between the Wall and the Bitter Waters on the +South who is so devoid of ambition that he would miss the opportunity of +subjecting, as it were, perhaps even the sacred Emperor himself to the +exceptional feat?’ + +“‘The temptation to possess one would inevitably prove overwhelming to +any person of ordinary intelligence,’ admitted Lila. ‘Yet, in spite of +this one’s unassumed admiration for the contrivance, internal doubts +regarding the ultimate happiness of the two persons who are now +discussing the matter again attack her. She recollects, somewhat dimly, +an almost forgotten, but nevertheless, very unassailable proverb, which +declares that more contentment of mind can assuredly be obtained from +the unexpected discovery of a tael among the folds of a discarded +garment than could, in the most favourable circumstances, ensue from +the well-thought-out construction of a new and hitherto unknown +device. Furthermore, although the span of a year may seem unaccountably +protracted when persons who reciprocate engaging sentiments are +parted, yet when the acceptance or refusal of Pe-tsing’s undesirable +pledging-gifts hangs upon the accomplishment of a remote and not very +probable object within that period, it becomes as a breath of wind +passing through an autumn forest.’ + +“Since the day when Lila and Lee had sat together side by side, and +conversed in this unrestrained and irreproachable manner, the great +sky-lantern had many times been obscured for a period. Only an +insignificant portion of the year remained, yet the affairs of Lee Sing +were in no more prosperous a condition than before, nor had he found an +opportunity to set aside any store of taels. Each day the unsupportable +Pe-tsing became more and more obtrusive and self-conceited, even to +the extent of throwing far into the air coins of insignificant value +whenever he chanced to pass Lee in the street, at the same time urging +him to leap after them and thereby secure at least one or two pieces of +money against the day of calculating. In a similar but entirely opposite +fashion, Lila and Lee experienced the acutest pangs of an ever-growing +despair, until their only form of greeting consisted in gazing into each +other’s eyes with a soul-benumbing expression of self-reproach. + +“Yet at this very time, when even the natural and unalterable powers +seemed to be conspiring against the success of Lee’s modest and +inoffensive hopes, an event was taking place which was shortly to +reverse the entire settled arrangement of persons and affairs, and +involved Fow Hou in a very inextricable state of uncertainty. For, not +to make a pretence of concealing a matter which has been already in part +revealed, the Mandarin Chan Hung had by this time determined to act in +the manner which Ming-hi had suggested; so that on a certain morning +Lee Sing was visited by two persons, bearing between them a very weighty +sack of taels, who also conveyed to him the fact that a like amount +would be deposited within his door at the end of each succeeding seven +days. Although Lee’s occupation had in the past been very meagrely +rewarded, either by taels or by honour, the circumstance which resulted +in his now receiving so excessively large a sum is not made clear until +the detail of Ming-hi’s scheme is closely examined. The matter then +becomes plain, for it had been suggested by that person that the most +proficient in any occupation should be rewarded to a certain extent, +and the least proficient to another stated extent, the original amounts +being reversed. When those engaged by Chang Hung to draw up the various +rates came to the profession of ensnaring winged insects, however, they +discovered that Lee Sing was the only one of that description in Fow +Hou, so that it became necessary in consequence to allot him a double +portion, one amount as the most proficient, and a much larger amount as +the least proficient. + +“It is unnecessary now to follow the not altogether satisfactory +condition of affairs which began to exist in Fow Hou as soon as the +scheme was put into operation. The full written papers dealing with the +matter are in the Hall of Public Reference at Peking, and can be seen by +any person on the payment of a few taels to everyone connected with +the establishment. Those who found their possessions reduced thereby +completely overlooked the obvious justice of the arrangement, and +immediately began to take most severe measures to have the order put +aside; while those who suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves +raised to positions of affluence tended to the same end by conducting +themselves in a most incapable and undiscriminating manner. And during +the entire period that this state of things existed in Fow Hou the +really contemptible Ming-hi continually followed Chan Hung about from +place to place, spreading out his feet towards him, and allowing himself +to become openly amused to a most unseemly extent. + +“Chief among those who sought to have the original manner of rewarding +persons again established was the picture-maker, Pe-tsing, who now found +himself in a condition of most abject poverty, so unbearable, indeed, +that he frequently went by night, carrying a lantern, in the hope that +he might discover some of the small pieces of money which he had been +accustomed to throw into the air on meeting Lee Sing. To his pangs of +hunger was added the fear that he would certainly lose Lila, so that +from day to day he redoubled his efforts, and in the end, by using false +statements and other artifices of a questionable nature, the party which +he led was successful in obtaining the degradation of Chan Hung and his +dismissal from office, together with an entire reversal of all his plans +and enactments. + +“On the last day of the year which Chan Hung had appointed as the period +of test for his daughter’s suitors, the person in question was seated +in a chamber of his new abode--a residence of unassuming appearance but +undoubted comfort--surrounded by Lila and Lee, when the hanging curtains +were suddenly flung aside, and Pe-tsing, followed by two persons of low +rank bearing sacks of money, appeared among them. + +“‘Chan Hung,’ he said at length, ‘in the past events arose which +compelled this person to place himself against you in your official +position. Nevertheless, he has always maintained towards you personally +an unchanging affection, and understanding full well that you are one of +those who maintain their spoken word in spite of all happenings, he has +now come to exhibit the taels which he has collected together, and to +claim the fulfilment of your deliberate promise.’ + +“With these words the commonplace picture-maker poured forth the +contents of the sacks, and stood looking at Lila in a most confident and +unprepossessing manner. + +“‘Pe-tsing,’ replied Chan Hung, rising from his couch and speaking in so +severe and impressive a voice that the two servants of Pe-tsing at once +fled in great apprehension, ‘this person has also found it necessary, in +his official position, to oppose you; but here the similarity ends, +for, on his part, he has never felt towards you the remotest degree of +affection. Nevertheless, he is always desirous, as you say, that persons +should regard their spoken word, and as you seem to hold a promise +from the Chief Mandarin of Fow Hou regarding marriage-gifts towards +his daughter, he would advise you to go at once to that person. +A misunderstanding has evidently arisen, for the one whom you are +addressing is merely Chan Hung, and the words spoken by the Mandarin +have no sort of interest for him--indeed, he understands that all that +person’s acts have been reversed, so that he fails to see how anyone +at all can regard you and your claim in other than a gravity-removing +light. Furthermore, the maiden in question is now definitely and +irretrievably pledged to this faithful and successful one by my side, +who, as you will doubtless be gracefully overjoyed to learn, has +recently disposed of a most ingenious and diverting contrivance for an +enormous number of taels, so many, indeed, that both the immediate and +the far-distant future of all the persons who are here before you are +now in no sort of doubt whatever.’ + +“At these words the three persons whom he had interrupted again turned +their attention to the matter before them; but as Pe-tsing walked away, +he observed, though he failed to understand the meaning, that they all +raised certain objects to their eyes, and at once became amused to a +most striking and uncontrollable degree.” + + + + +V. +THE CONFESSION OF KAI LUNG + + + Related by himself at Wu-whei when other matter failed him. + +As Kai Lung, the story-teller, unrolled his mat and selected, with grave +deliberation, the spot under the mulberry-tree which would the longest +remain sheltered from the sun’s rays, his impassive eye wandered round +the thin circle of listeners who had been drawn together by his uplifted +voice, with a glance which, had it expressed his actual thoughts, would +have betrayed a keen desire that the assembly should be composed of +strangers rather than of his most consistent patrons, to whom his stock +of tales was indeed becoming embarrassingly familiar. Nevertheless, when +he began there was nothing in his voice but a trace of insufficiently +restrained triumph, such as might be fitly assumed by one who has +discovered and makes known for the first time a story by the renowned +historian Lo Cha. + +“The adventures of the enlightened and nobly-born Yuin-Pel--” + +“Have already thrice been narrated within Wu-whei by the versatile but +exceedingly uninventive Kai Lung,” remarked Wang Yu placidly. “Indeed, +has there not come to be a saying by which an exceptionally frugal +host’s rice, having undoubtedly seen the inside of the pot many times, +is now known in this town as Kai-Pel?” + +“Alas!” exclaimed Kai Lung, “well was this person warned of Wu-whei +in the previous village, as a place of desolation and excessively +bad taste, whose inhabitants, led by an evil-minded maker of very +commonplace pipes, named Wang Yu, are unable to discriminate in all +matters not connected with the cooking of food and the evasion of just +debts. They at Shan Tzu hung on to my cloak as I strove to leave them, +praying that I would again entrance their ears with what they termed the +melodious word-music of this person’s inimitable version of the inspired +story of Yuin-Pel.” + +“Truly the story of Yuin-Pel is in itself excellent,” interposed the +conciliatory Hi Seng; “and Kai Lung’s accomplishment of having three +times repeated it here without deviating in the particular of a single +word from the first recital stamps him as a story-teller of no ordinary +degree. Yet the saying ‘Although it is desirable to lose persistently +when playing at squares and circles with the broad-minded and sagacious +Emperor, it is none the less a fact that the observance of this +etiquette deprives the intellectual diversion of much of its interest +for both players,’ is no less true today than when the all knowing H’sou +uttered it.” + +“They well said--they of Shan Tzu--that the people of Wu-whei were +intolerably ignorant and of low descent,” continued Kai Lung, without +heeding the interruption; “that although invariably of a timorous +nature, even to the extent of retiring to the woods on the approach of +those who select bowmen for the Imperial army, all they require in a +story is that it shall be garnished with deeds of bloodshed and violence +to the exclusion of the higher qualities of well-imagined metaphors and +literary style which alone constitute true excellence.” + +“Yet it has been said,” suggested Hi Seng, “that the inimitable Kai +Lung can so mould a narrative in the telling that all the emotions +are conveyed therein without unduly disturbing the intellects of the +hearers.” + +“O amiable Hi Seng,” replied Kai Lung with extreme affability, +“doubtless you are the most expert of water-carriers, and on a hot +and dusty day, when the insatiable desire of all persons is towards a +draught of unusual length without much regard to its composition, the +sight of your goat-skins is indeed a welcome omen; yet when in the +season of Cold White Rains you chance to meet the belated chair-carrier +who has been reluctantly persuaded into conveying persons beyond the +limit of the city, the solitary official watchman who knows that his +chief is not at hand, or a returning band of those who make a practise +of remaining in the long narrow rooms until they are driven forth at a +certain gong-stroke, can you supply them with the smallest portion of +that invigorating rice spirit for which alone they crave? From this +simple and homely illustration, specially conceived to meet the +requirements of your stunted and meagre understanding, learn not to +expect both grace and thorns from the willow-tree. Nevertheless, your +very immature remarks on the art of story-telling are in no degree more +foolish than those frequently uttered by persons who make a living by +such a practice; in proof of which this person will relate to the select +and discriminating company now assembled an entirely new and unrecorded +story--that, indeed, of the unworthy, but frequently highly-rewarded Kai +Lung himself.” + +“The story of Kai Lung!” exclaimed Wang Yu. “Why not the story of Ting, +the sightless beggar, who has sat all his life outside the Temple of +Miraculous Cures? Who is Kai Lung, that he should have a story? Is he +not known to us all here? Is not his speech that of this Province, his +food mean, his arms and legs unshaven? Does he carry a sword or wear +silk raiment? Frequently have we seen him fatigued with journeying; many +times has he arrived destitute of money; nor, on those occasions when a +newly-appointed and unnecessarily officious Mandarin has commanded +him to betake himself elsewhere and struck him with a rod has Kai Lung +caused the stick to turn into a deadly serpent and destroy its master, +as did the just and dignified Lu Fei. How, then, can Kai Lung have a +story that is not also the story of Wang Yu and Hi Seng, and all others +here?” + +“Indeed, if the refined and enlightened Wang Yu so decides, it must +assuredly be true,” said Kai Lung patiently; “yet (since even trifles +serve to dispel the darker thoughts of existence) would not the +history of so small a matter as an opium pipe chain his intelligent +consideration? such a pipe, for example, as this person beheld only +today exposed for sale, the bowl composed of the finest red clay, +delicately baked and fashioned, the long bamboo stem smoother than the +sacred tooth of the divine Buddha, the spreading support patiently and +cunningly carved with scenes representing the Seven Joys, and the Tenth +Hell of unbelievers.” + +“Ah!” exclaimed Wang Yu eagerly, “it is indeed as you say, a Mandarin +among masterpieces. That pipe, O most unobserving Kai Lung, is the work +of this retiring and superficial person who is now addressing you, and, +though the fact evidently escaped your all-seeing glance, the place +where it is exposed is none other than his shop of ‘The Fountain of +Beauty,’ which you have on many occasions endowed with your honourable +presence.” + +“Doubtless the carving is the work of the accomplished Wang Yu, and the +fitting together,” replied Kai Lung; “but the materials for so refined +and ornamental a production must of necessity have been brought many +thousand li; the clay perhaps from the renowned beds of Honan, the wood +from Peking, and the bamboo from one of the great forests of the North.” + +“For what reason?” said Wang Yu proudly. “At this person’s very door +is a pit of red clay, purer and infinitely more regular than any to +be found at Honan; the hard wood of Wu-whei is extolled among carvers +throughout the Empire, while no bamboo is straighter or more smooth than +that which grows in the neighbouring woods.” + +“O most inconsistent Wang Yu!” cried the story-teller, “assuredly a very +commendable local pride has dimmed your usually penetrating eyesight. +Is not the clay pit of which you speak that in which you fashioned +exceedingly unsymmetrical imitations of rat-pies in your childhood? How, +then, can it be equal to those of Honan, which you have never seen? +In the dark glades of these woods have you not chased the gorgeous +butterfly, and, in later years, the no less gaily attired maidens of +Wu-whei in the entrancing game of Kiss in the Circle? Have not the +bamboo-trees to which you have referred provided you with the ideal +material wherewith to roof over those cunningly-constructed pits into +which it has ever been the chief delight of the young and audacious to +lure dignified and unnaturally stout Mandarins? All these things you +have seen and used ever since your mother made a successful offering to +the Goddess Kum-Fa. How, then, can they be even equal to the products of +remote Honan and fabulous Peking? Assuredly the generally veracious Wang +Yu speaks this time with closed eyes and will, upon mature reflexion, +eat his words.” + +The silence was broken by a very aged man who arose from among the +bystanders. + +“Behold the length of this person’s pigtail,” he exclaimed, “the +whiteness of his moustaches and the venerable appearance of his beard! +There is no more aged person present--if, indeed, there be such a one +in all the Province. It accordingly devolves upon him to speak in this +matter, which shall be as follows: The noble-minded and proficient Kai +Lung shall relate the story as he has proposed, and the garrulous Wang +Yu shall twice contribute to Kai Lung’s bowl when it is passed round, +once for himself and once for this person, in order that he may learn +either to be more discreet or more proficient in the art of aptly +replying.” + +“The events which it is this person’s presumptuous intention to describe +to this large-hearted and providentially indulgent gathering,” began +Kai Lung, when his audience had become settled, and the wooden bowl had +passed to and fro among them, “did not occupy many years, although they +were of a nature which made them of far more importance than all the +remainder of his existence, thereby supporting the sage discernment of +the philosopher Wen-weng, who first made the observation that man is +greatly inferior to the meanest fly, inasmuch as that creature, although +granted only a day’s span of life, contrives during that period to +fulfil all the allotted functions of existence. + +“Unutterably to the astonishment and dismay of this person and all those +connected with him (for several of the most expensive readers of the +future to be found in the Empire had declared that his life would be +marked by great events, his career a source of continual wonder, and his +death a misfortune to those who had dealings with him) his efforts to +take a degree at the public literary competitions were not attended with +any adequate success. In view of the plainly expressed advice of his +father it therefore became desirable that this person should turn his +attention to some other method of regaining the esteem of those upon +whom he was dependent for all the necessaries of existence. Not having +the means wherewith to engage in any form of commerce, and being +entirely ignorant of all matters save the now useless details of +attempting to pass public examinations, he reluctantly decided that he +was destined to become one of those who imagine and write out stories +and similar devices for printed leaves and books. + +“This determination was favourably received, and upon learning it, this +person’s dignified father took him aside, and with many assurances of +regard presented to him a written sentence, which, he said, would be of +incomparable value to one engaged in a literary career, and should +in fact, without any particular qualifications, insure an honourable +competency. He himself, he added, with what at the time appeared to +this one as an unnecessary regard for detail, having taken a very +high degree, and being in consequence appointed to a distinguished and +remunerative position under the Board of Fines and Tortures, had never +made any use of it. + +“The written sentence, indeed, was all that it had been pronounced. It +had been composed by a remote ancestor, who had spent his entire life in +crystallizing all his knowledge and experience into a few written lines, +which as a result became correspondingly precious. It defined in a very +original and profound manner several undisputable principles, and was so +engagingly subtle in its manner of expression that the most superficial +person was irresistibly thrown into a deep inward contemplation upon +reading it. When it was complete, the person who had contrived this +ingenious masterpiece, discovering by means of omens that he still had +ten years to live, devoted each remaining year to the task of reducing +the sentence by one word without in any way altering its meaning. This +unapproachable example of conciseness found such favour in the eyes +of those who issue printed leaves that as fast as this person could +inscribe stories containing it they were eagerly purchased; and had it +not been for a very incapable want of foresight on this narrow-minded +individual’s part, doubtless it would still be affording him an +agreeable and permanent means of living. + +“Unquestionably the enlightened Wen-weng was well acquainted with the +subject when he exclaimed, ‘Better a frugal dish of olives flavoured +with honey than the most sumptuously devised puppy-pie of which the +greater portion is sent forth in silver-lined boxes and partaken of +by others.’ At that time, however, this versatile saying--which so +gracefully conveys the truth of the undeniable fact that what a person +possesses is sufficient if he restrain his mind from desiring +aught else--would have been lightly treated by this self-conceited +story-teller even if his immature faculties had enabled him fully to +understand the import of so profound and well-digested a remark. + +“At that time Tiao Ts’un was undoubtedly the most beautiful maiden in +all Peking. So frequently were the verses describing her habits and +appearances affixed in the most prominent places of the city, that many +persons obtained an honourable livelihood by frequenting those spots +and disposing of the sacks of written papers which they collected to +merchants who engaged in that commerce. Owing to the fame attained by +his written sentence, this really very much inferior being had many +opportunities of meeting the incomparable maiden Tiao at flower-feasts, +melon-seed assemblies, and those gatherings where persons of both sexes +exhibit themselves in revolving attitudes, and are permitted to embrace +openly without reproach; whereupon he became so subservient to her +charms and virtues that he lost no opportunity of making himself utterly +unendurable to any who might chance to speak to, or even gaze upon, this +Heaven-sent creature. + +“So successful was this person in his endeavour to meet the sublime +Tiao and to gain her conscientious esteem that all emotions of prudence +forsook him, or it would soon have become apparent even to his enfeebled +understanding that such consistent good fortune could only be the work +of unforgiving and malignant spirits whose ill-will he had in some way +earned, and who were luring him on in order that they might accomplish +his destruction. That object was achieved on a certain evening when this +person stood alone with Tiao upon an eminence overlooking the city and +watched the great sky-lantern rise from behind the hills. Under these +delicate and ennobling influences he gave speech to many very ornamental +and refined thoughts which arose within his mind concerning the graceful +brilliance of the light which was cast all around, yet notwithstanding +which a still more exceptional and brilliant light was shining in his +own internal organs by reason of the nearness of an even purer and more +engaging orb. There was no need, this person felt, to hide even his most +inside thoughts from the dignified and sympathetic being at his side, so +without hesitation he spoke--in what he believes even now must have been +a very decorative manner--of the many thousand persons who were then +wrapped in sleep, of the constantly changing lights which appeared in +the city beneath, and of the vastness which everywhere lay around. + +“‘O Kai Lung,’ exclaimed the lovely Tiao, when this person had made an +end of speaking, ‘how expertly and in what a proficient manner do you +express yourself, uttering even the sentiments which this person has +felt inwardly, but for which she has no words. Why, indeed, do you not +inscribe them in a book?’ + +“Under her elevating influence it had already occurred to this +illiterate individual that it would be a more dignified and, perhaps, +even a more profitable course for him to write out and dispose of, to +those who print such matters, the versatile and high-minded expressions +which now continually formed his thoughts, rather than be dependent upon +the concise sentence for which, indeed, he was indebted to the wisdom of +a remote ancestor. Tiao’s spoken word fully settled his determination, +so that without delay he set himself to the task of composing a story +which should omit the usual sentence, but should contain instead a large +number of his most graceful and diamond-like thoughts. So engrossed did +this near-sighted and superficial person become in the task (which daily +seemed to increase rather than lessen as new and still more sublime +images arose within his mind) that many months passed before the +matter was complete. In the end, instead of a story, it had assumed the +proportions of an important and many-volumed book; while Tiao had in the +meantime accepted the wedding gifts of an objectionable and excessively +round-bodied individual, who had amassed an inconceivable number of +taels by inducing persons to take part in what at first sight appeared +to be an ingenious but very easy competition connected with the order in +which certain horses should arrive at a given and clearly defined spot. +By that time, however, this unduly sanguine story-teller had become +completely entranced in his work, and merely regarded Tiao-Ts’un as a +Heaven-sent but no longer necessary incentive to his success. With +every hope, therefore, he went forth to dispose of his written leaves, +confident of finding some very wealthy person who would be in a +condition to pay him the correct value of the work. + +“At the end of two years this somewhat disillusionized but still +undaunted person chanced to hear of a benevolent and unassuming body of +men who made a habit of issuing works in which they discerned merit, +but which, nevertheless, others were unanimous in describing as ‘of no +good.’ Here this person was received with gracious effusion, and +being in a position to impress those with whom he was dealing with his +undoubted knowledge of the subject, he finally succeeded in making a +very advantageous arrangement by which he was to pay one-half of the +number of taels expended in producing the work, and to receive in return +all the profits which should result from the undertaking. Those who +were concerned in the matter were so engagingly impressed with the +incomparable literary merit displayed in the production that they +counselled a great number of copies being made ready in order, as they +said, that this person should not lose by there being any delay +when once the accomplishment became the one topic of conversation in +tea-houses and yamens. From this cause it came about that the matter of +taels to be expended was much greater than had been anticipated at the +beginning, so that when the day arrived on which the volumes were to +be sent forth this person found that almost his last piece of money had +disappeared. + +“Alas! how small a share has a person in the work of controlling his own +destiny. Had only the necessarily penurious and now almost degraded Kai +Lung been born a brief span before the great writer Lo Kuan Chang, his +name would have been received with every mark of esteem from one end of +the Empire to the other, while taels and honourable decorations would +have been showered upon him. For the truth, which could no longer be +concealed, revealed the fact that this inopportune individual possessed +a mind framed in such a manner that his thoughts had already been the +thoughts of the inspired Lo Kuan, who, as this person would not be so +presumptuous as to inform this ornamental and well-informed gathering, +was the most ingenious and versatile-minded composer of written words +that this Empire--and therefore the entire world--has seen, as, indeed, +his honourable title of ‘The Many-hued Mandarin Duck of the Yang-tse’ +plainly indicates. + +“Although this self-opinionated person had frequently been greatly +surprised himself during the writing of his long work by the brilliance +and manysidedness of the thoughts and metaphors which arose in his mind +without conscious effort, it was not until the appearance of the printed +leaves which make a custom of warning persons against being persuaded +into buying certain books that he definitely understood how all these +things had been fully expressed many dynasties ago by the all-knowing +Lo Kuan Chang, and formed, indeed, the great national standard of +unapproachable excellence. Unfortunately, this person had been so deeply +engrossed all his life in literary pursuits that he had never found an +opportunity to glance at the works in question, or he would have escaped +the embarrassing position in which he now found himself. + +“It was with a hopeless sense of illness of ease that this unhappy one +reached the day on which the printed leaves already alluded to would +make known their deliberate opinion of his writing, the extremity of his +hope being that some would at least credit him with honourable motives, +and perhaps a knowledge that if the inspired Lo Kuan Chan had never +been born the entire matter might have been brought to a very different +conclusion. Alas! only one among the many printed leaves which +made reference to the venture contained any words of friendship or +encouragement. This benevolent exception was sent forth from a city +in the extreme Northern Province of the Empire, and contained many +inspiring though delicately guarded messages of hope for the one to whom +they gracefully alluded as ‘this undoubtedly youthful, but nevertheless, +distinctly promising writer of books.’ While admitting that altogether +they found the production undeniably tedious, they claimed to have +discovered indications of an obvious talent, and therefore they +unhesitatingly counselled the person in question to take courage at the +prospect of a moderate competency which was certainly within his grasp +if he restrained his somewhat over-ambitious impulses and closely +observed the simple subjects and manner of expression of their own Chang +Chow, whose ‘Lines to a Wayside Chrysanthemum,’ ‘Mongolians who Have,’ +and several other composed pieces, they then set forth. Although it +became plain that the writer of this amiably devised notice was, like +this incapable person, entirely unacquainted with the masterpieces of +Lo Kuan Chang, yet the indisputable fact remained that, entirely on +its merit, the work had been greeted with undoubted enthusiasm, so that +after purchasing many examples of the refined printed leaf containing +it, this person sat far into the night continually reading over the one +unprejudiced and discriminating expression. + +“All the other printed leaves displayed a complete absence of good +taste in dealing with the matter. One boldly asserted that the entire +circumstance was the outcome of a foolish jest or wager on the part of +a person who possessed a million taels; another predicted that it was a +cunning and elaborately thought-out method of obtaining the attention of +the people on the part of certain persons who claimed to vend a reliable +and fragrantly-scented cleansing substance. The _Valley of Hoang Rose +Leaves and Sweetness_ hoped, in a spirit of no sincerity, that the +ingenious Kai Lung would not rest on his tea-leaves, but would soon +send forth an equally entertaining amended example of the _Sayings of +Confucious_ and other sacred works, while the _Pure Essence of the Seven +Days’ Happenings_ merely printed side by side portions from the two +books under the large inscription, ‘IS THERE REALLY ANY NEED FOR US TO +EXPRESS OURSELVES MORE CLEARLY?’ + +“The disappointment both as regards public esteem and taels--for, after +the manner in which the work had been received by those who advise +on such productions, not a single example was purchased--threw this +ill-destined individual into a condition of most unendurable depression, +from which he was only aroused by a remarkable example of the unfailing +wisdom of the proverb which says ‘Before hastening to secure a possible +reward of five taels by dragging an unobservant person away from a +falling building, examine well his features lest you find, when too +late, that it is one to whom you are indebted for double that amount.’ +Disappointed in the hope of securing large gains from the sale of his +great work, this person now turned his attention again to his former +means of living, only to find, however, that the discredit in which he +had become involved even attached itself to his concise sentence; for in +place of the remunerative and honourable manner in which it was formerly +received, it was now regarded on all hands with open suspicion. Instead +of meekly kow-towing to an evidently pre-arranged doom, the last +misfortune aroused this usually resigned story-teller to an ungovernable +frenzy. Regarding the accomplished but at the same time exceedingly +over-productive Lo Kuan Chang as the beginning of all his evils, he took +a solemn oath as a mark of disapproval that he had not been content to +inscribe on paper only half of his brilliant thoughts, leaving the other +half for the benefit of this hard-striving and equally well-endowed +individual, in which case there would have been a sufficiency of taels +and of fame for both. + +“For a very considerable space of time this person could conceive no +method by which he might attain his object. At length, however, as +a result of very keen and subtle intellectual searching, and many +well-selected sacrifices, it was conveyed by means of a dream that +one very ingenious yet simple way was possible. The renowned and +universally-admired writings of the distinguished Lo Kuan for the most +part take their action within a few dynasties of their creator’s +own time: all that remained for this inventive person to accomplish, +therefore, was to trace out the entire matter, making the words and +speeches to proceed from the mouths of those who existed in still +earlier periods. By this crafty method it would at once appear as though +the not-too-original Lo Kuan had been indebted to one who came before +him for all his most subtle thoughts, and, in consequence, his tomb +would become dishonoured and his memory execrated. Without any delay +this person cheerfully set himself to the somewhat laborious task +before him. Lo Kuan’s well-known exclamation of the Emperor Tsing on the +battlefield of Shih-ho, ‘A sedan-chair! a sedan-chair! This person will +unhesitatingly exchange his entire and well-regulated Empire for such an +article,’ was attributed to an Emperor who lived several thousand years +before the treacherous and unpopular Tsing. The new matter of a no less +frequently quoted portion ran: ‘O nobly intentioned but nevertheless +exceedingly morose Tung-shin, the object before you is your +distinguished and evilly-disposed-of father’s honourably-inspired +demon,’ the change of a name effecting whatever alteration was +necessary; while the delicately-imagined speech beginning ‘The person +who becomes amused at matters resulting from double-edged knives has +assuredly never felt the effect of a well-directed blow himself’ was +taken from the mouth of one person and placed in that of one of his +remote ancestors. In such a manner, without in any great degree altering +the matter of Lo Kuan’s works, all the scenes and persons introduced +were transferred to much earlier dynasties than those affected by the +incomparable writer himself, the final effect being to give an air of +extreme unoriginality to his really undoubtedly genuine conceptions. + +“Satisfied with his accomplishment, and followed by a hired person +of low class bearing the writings, which, by nature of the research +necessary in fixing the various dates and places so that even the wary +should be deceived, had occupied the greater part of a year, this now +fully confident story-teller--unmindful of the well-tried excellence of +the inspired saying, ‘Money is hundred-footed; upon perceiving a +tael lying apparently unobserved upon the floor, do not lose the time +necessary in stooping, but quickly place your foot upon it, for one +fails nothing in dignity thereby; but should it be a gold piece, +distrust all things, and valuing dignity but as an empty name, cast your +entire body upon it’--went forth to complete his great task of finally +erasing from the mind and records of the Empire the hitherto venerated +name of Lo Kuan Chang. Entering the place of commerce of the one who +seemed the most favourable for the purpose, he placed the facts as they +would in future be represented before him, explained the undoubtedly +remunerative fame that would ensue to all concerned in the enterprise +of sending forth the printed books in their new form, and, opening at a +venture the written leaves which he had brought with him, read out the +following words as an indication of the similarity of the entire work: + + “‘_Whai-Keng_. Friends, Chinamen, labourers who are engaged in + agricultural pursuits, entrust to this person your acute and + well-educated ears; + + “‘He has merely come to assist in depositing the body of Ko’ung in + the Family Temple, not for the purpose of making remarks about him + of a graceful and highly complimentary nature; + + “‘The unremunerative actions of which persons may have been guilty + possess an exceedingly undesirable amount of endurance; + + “‘The successful and well-considered almost invariably are + involved in a directly contrary course; + + “‘This person desires nothing more than a like fate to await + Ko’ung.’ + +“When this one had read so far, he paused in order to give the other +an opportunity of breaking in and offering half his possessions to +be allowed to share in the undertaking. As he remained unaccountably +silent, however, an inelegant pause occurred which this person at length +broke by desiring an expressed opinion on the matter. + +“‘O exceedingly painstaking, but nevertheless highly inopportune Kai +Lung,’ he replied at length, while in his countenance this person +read an expression of no-encouragement towards his venture, ‘all your +entrancing efforts do undoubtedly appear to attract the undesirable +attention of some spiteful and tyrannical demon. This closely-written +and elaborately devised work is in reality not worth the labour of a +single stroke, nor is there in all Peking a sender forth of printed +leaves who would encourage any project connected with its issue.’ + +“‘But the importance of such a fact as that which would clearly show the +hitherto venerated Lo Kuan Chang to be a person who passed off as his +own the work of an earlier one!’ cried this person in despair, well +knowing that the deliberately expressed opinion of the one before him +was a matter that would rule all others. ‘Consider the interest of the +discovery.’ + +“‘The interest would not demand more than a few lines in the ordinary +printed leaves,’ replied the other calmly. ‘Indeed, in a manner of +speaking, it is entirely a detail of no consequence whether or not the +sublime Lo Kuan ever existed. In reality his very commonplace name may +have been simply Lung; his inspired work may have been written a score +of dynasties before him by some other person, or they may have been +composed by the enlightened Emperor of the period, who desired to +conceal the fact, yet these matters would not for a moment engage the +interest of any ordinary passer-by. Lo Kuan Chang is not a person in the +ordinary expression; he is an embodiment of a distinguished and utterly +unassailable national institution. The Heaven-sent works with which +he is, by general consent, connected form the necessary unchangeable +standard of literary excellence, and remain for ever above rivalry and +above mistrust. For this reason the matter is plainly one which does not +interest this person.’ + +“In the course of a not uneventful existence this self-deprecatory +person has suffered many reverses and disappointments. During his youth +the high-minded Empress on one occasion stopped and openly complimented +him on the dignified outline presented by his body in profile, and when +he was relying upon this incident to secure him a very remunerative +public office, a jealous and powerful Mandarin substituted a somewhat +similar, though really very much inferior, person for him at the +interview which the Empress had commanded. Frequently in matters of +commerce which have appeared to promise very satisfactorily at the +beginning this person has been induced to entrust sums of money to +others, when he had hoped from the indications and the manner of +speaking that the exact contrary would be the case; and in one +instance he was released at a vast price from the torture dungeon in +Canton--where he had been thrown by the subtle and unconscientious +plots of one who could not relate stories in so accurate and unvarying +a manner as himself--on the day before that on which all persons were +freely set at liberty on account of exceptional public rejoicing. Yet in +spite of these and many other very unendurable incidents, this impetuous +and ill-starred being never felt so great a desire to retire to a +solitary place and there disfigure himself permanently as a mark of +his unfeigned internal displeasure, as on the occasion when he endured +extreme poverty and great personal inconvenience for an entire year in +order that he might take away face from the memory of a person who was +so placed that no one expressed any interest in the matter. + +“Since then this very ill-clad and really necessitous person has +devoted himself to the honourable but exceedingly arduous and in general +unremunerative occupation of story-telling. To this he would add nothing +save that not infrequently a nobly-born and highly-cultured audience +is so entranced with his commonplace efforts to hold the attention, +especially when a story not hitherto known has been related, that in +order to afford it an opportunity of expressing its gratification, he +has been requested to allow another offering to be made by all persons +present at the conclusion of the entertainment.” + + + + +VI. +THE VENGEANCE OF TUNG FEL + + +For a period not to be measured by days or weeks the air of Ching-fow +had been as unrestful as that of the locust plains beyond the Great +Wall, for every speech which passed bore two faces, one fair to hear, +as a greeting, but the other insidiously speaking behind a screen, of +rebellion, violence, and the hope of overturning the fixed order of +events. With those whom they did not mistrust of treachery persons spoke +in low voices of definite plans, while at all times there might appear +in prominent places of the city skilfully composed notices setting +forth great wrongs and injustices towards which resignation and a lowly +bearing were outwardly counselled, yet with the same words cunningly +inflaming the minds, even of the patient, as no pouring out of +passionate thoughts and undignified threatenings could have done. Among +the people, unknown, unseen, and unsuspected, except to the proved ones +to whom they desired to reveal themselves, moved the agents of the Three +Societies. While to the many of Ching-fow nothing was desired or even +thought of behind the downfall of their own officials, and, chief of +all, the execution of the evil-minded and depraved Mandarin Ping Siang, +whose cruelties and extortions had made his name an object of wide and +deserved loathing, the agents only regarded the city as a bright spot in +the line of blood and fire which they were fanning into life from Peking +to Canton, and which would presumably burst forth and involve the entire +Empire. + +Although it had of late become a plain fact, by reason of the manner +of behaving of the people, that events of a sudden and turbulent nature +could not long be restrained, yet outwardly there was no exhibition of +violence, not even to the length of resisting those whom Ping Siang sent +to enforce his unjust demands, chiefly because a well-founded whisper +had been sent round that nothing was to be done until Tung Fel should +arrive, which would not be until the seventh day in the month of Winged +Dragons. To this all persons agreed, for the more aged among them, +who, by virtue of their years, were also the formers of opinion in all +matters, called up within their memories certain events connected with +the two persons in question which appeared to give to Tung Fel the +privilege of expressing himself clearly when the matter of finally +dealing with the malicious and self-willed Mandarin should be engaged +upon. + +Among the mountains which enclose Ching-fow on the southern side dwelt +a jade-seeker, who also kept goats. Although a young man and entirely +without relations, he had, by patient industry, contrived to collect +together a large flock of the best-formed and most prolific goats to be +found in the neighbourhood, all the money which he received in exchange +for jade being quickly bartered again for the finest animals which he +could obtain. He was dauntless in penetrating to the most inaccessible +parts of the mountains in search of the stone, unfailing in his skilful +care of the flock, in which he took much honourable pride, and on all +occasions discreet and unassumingly restrained in his discourse and +manner of life. Knowing this to be his invariable practice, it was with +emotions of an agreeable curiosity that on the seventh day of the month +of Winged Dragons those persons who were passing from place to place in +the city beheld this young man, Yang Hu, descending the mountain path +with unmistakable signs of profound agitation, and an entire absence of +prudent care. Following him closely to the inner square of the city, on +the continually expressed plea that they themselves had business in +that quarter, these persons observed Yang Hu take up a position of +unendurable dejection as he gazed reproachfully at the figure of the +all-knowing Buddha which surmounted the Temple where it was his custom +to sacrifice. + +“Alas!” he exclaimed, lifting up his voice, when it became plain that +a large number of people was assembled awaiting his words, “to what end +does a person strive in this excessively evilly-regulated district? Or +is it that this obscure and ill-destined one alone is marked out as with +a deep white cross for humiliation and ruin? Father, and Sacred Temple +of Ancestral Virtues, wherein the meanest can repose their trust, he has +none; while now, being more destitute than the beggar at the gate, the +hope of honourable marriage and a robust family of sons is more remote +than the chance of finding the miracle-working Crystal Image which marks +the last footstep of the Pure One. Yesterday this person possessed no +secret store of silver or gold, nor had he knowledge of any special +amount of jade hidden among the mountains, but to his call there +responded four score goats, the most select and majestic to be found in +all the Province, of which, nevertheless, it was his yearly custom to +sacrifice one, as those here can testify, and to offer another as a duty +to the Yamen of Ping Siang, in neither case opening his eyes widely when +the hour for selecting arrived. Yet in what an unseemly manner is his +respectful piety and courteous loyalty rewarded! To-day, before this +person went forth on his usual quest, there came those bearing written +papers by which they claimed, on the authority of Ping Siang, the +whole of this person’s flock, as a punishment and fine for his not +contributing without warning to the Celebration of Kissing the Emperor’s +Face--the very obligation of such a matter being entirely unknown to +him. Nevertheless, those who came drove off this person’s entire +wealth, the desperately won increase of a life full of great toil and +uncomplainingly endured hardship, leaving him only his cave in the +rocks, which even the most grasping of many-handed Mandarins cannot +remove, his cloak of skins, which no beggar would gratefully receive, +and a bright and increasing light of deep hate scorching within his mind +which nothing but the blood of the obdurate extortioner can efficiently +quench. No protection of charms or heavily-mailed bowmen shall +avail him, for in his craving for just revenge this person will meet +witchcraft with a Heaven-sent cause and oppose an unsleeping subtlety +against strength. Therefore let not the innocent suffer through an +insufficient understanding, O Divine One, but direct the hand of your +faithful worshipper towards the heart that is proud in tyranny, and +holds as empty words the clearly defined promise of an all-seeing +justice.” + +Scarcely had Yang Hu made an end of speaking before there happened an +event which could be regarded in no other light than as a direct answer +to his plainly expressed request for a definite sign. Upon the clear +air, which had become unnaturally still at Yang Hu’s words, as though +to remove any chance of doubt that this indeed was the requested answer, +came the loud beating of many very powerful brass gongs, indicating the +approach of some person of undoubted importance. In a very brief period +the procession reached the square, the gong-beaters being followed +by persons carrying banners, bowmen in armour, others bearing various +weapons and instruments of torture, slaves displaying innumerable +changes of raiment to prove the rank and consequence of their master, +umbrella carriers and fan wavers, and finally, preceded by incense +burners and surrounded by servants who cleared away all obstructions by +means of their formidable and heavily knotted lashes, the unworthy and +deceitful Mandarin Ping Siang, who sat in a silk-hung and elaborately +wrought chair, looking from side to side with gestures and expressions +of contempt and ill-restrained cupidity. + +At the sign of this powerful but unscrupulous person all those who were +present fell upon their faces, leaving a broad space in their midst, +except Yang Hu, who stepped back into the shadow of a doorway, being +resolved that he would not prostrate himself before one whom Heaven had +pointed out as the proper object of his just vengeance. + +When the chair of Ping Siang could no longer be observed in the +distance, and the sound of his many gongs had died away, all the persons +who had knelt at his approach rose to their feet, meeting each other’s +eyes with glances of assured and profound significance. At length there +stepped forth an exceedingly aged man, who was generally believed to +have the power of reading omens and forecasting futures, so that at his +upraised hand all persons became silent. + +“Behold!” he exclaimed, “none can turn aside in doubt from the +deliberately pointed finger of Buddha. Henceforth, in spite of the +well-intentioned suggestions of those who would shield him under the +plea of exacting orders from high ones at Peking or extortions practised +by slaves under him of which he is ignorant, there can no longer be any +two voices concerning the guilty one. Yet what does the knowledge of +the cormorant’s cry avail the golden carp in the shallow waters of the +Yuen-Kiang? A prickly mormosa is an adequate protection against a naked +man armed only with a just cause, and a company of bowmen has been known +to quench an entire city’s Heaven-felt desire for retribution. This +person, and doubtless others also, would have experienced a more +heartfelt enthusiasm in the matter if the sublime and omnipotent +Buddha had gone a step further, and pointed out not only the one to +be punished, but also the instrument by which the destiny could be +prudently and effectively accomplished.” + +From the mountain path which led to Yang Hu’s cave came a voice, like +an expressly devised reply to this speech. It was that of some person +uttering the “Chant of Rewards and Penalties”: + + “How strong is the mountain sycamore! + “Its branches reach the Middle Air, and the eye of none can pierce + its foliage; + “It draws power and nourishment from all around, so that weeds + alone may flourish under its shadow. + “Robbers find safety within the hollow of its trunk; its branches + hide vampires and all manner of evil things which prey upon + the innocent; + “The wild boar of the forest sharpen their tusks against the bark, + for it is harder than flint, and the axe of the woodsman turns + back upon the striker. + “Then cries the sycamore, ‘Hail and rain have no power against me, + nor can the fiercest sun penetrate beyond my outside fringe; + “‘The man who impiously raises his hand against me falls by his + own stroke and weapon. + “‘Can there be a greater or a more powerful than this one? + Assuredly, _I_ am Buddha; let all things obey me.’ + “Whereupon the weeds bow their heads, whispering among themselves, + ‘The voice of the Tall One we hear, but not that of Buddha. + Indeed, it is doubtless as he says.’ + “In his musk-scented Heaven Buddha laughs, and not deigning to + raise his head from the lap of the Phœnix Goddess, he thrusts + forth a stone which lies by his foot. + “Saying, ‘A god’s present for a god. Take it carefully, O + presumptuous Little One, for it is hot to the touch.’ + “The thunderbolt falls and the mighty tree is rent in twain. ‘They + asked for my messenger,’ said the Pure One, turning again to + repose. + “_Lo, he comes_!” + +With the last spoken word there came into the sight of those who were +collected together a person of stern yet engaging appearance. His hands +and face were the colour of mulberry stain by long exposure to the sun, +while his eyes looked forth like two watch-fires outside a wolf-haunted +camp. His long pigtail was tangled with the binding tendrils of the +forest, and damp with the dew of an open couch. His apparel was in no +way striking or brilliant, yet he strode with the dignity and air of a +high official, pushing before him a covered box upon wheels. + +“It is Tung Fel!” cried many who stood there watching his approach, +in tones which showed those who spoke to be inspired by a variety of +impressive emotions. “Undoubtedly this is the seventh day of the month +of Winged Dragons, and, as he specifically stated would be the case, lo! +he has come.” + +Few were the words of greeting which Tung Fel accorded even to the most +venerable of those who awaited him. + +“This person has slept, partaken of fruit and herbs, and devoted an +allotted time to inward contemplation,” he said briefly. “Other and +more weighty matters than the exchange of dignified compliments and the +admiration of each other’s profiles remain to be accomplished. What, for +example, is the significance of the written parchment which is displayed +in so obtrusive a manner before our eyes? Bring it to this person +without delay.” + +At these words all those present followed Tung Fel’s gaze with +astonishment, for conspicuously displayed upon the wall of the Temple +was a written notice which all joined in asserting had not been there +the moment before, though no man had approached the spot. Nevertheless +it was quickly brought to Tung Fel, who took it without any fear or +hesitation and read aloud the words which it contained. + + “TO THE CUSTOM-RESPECTING PERSONS OF CHING-FOW. + + “Truly the span of existence of any upon this earth is brief and + not to be considered; therefore, O unfortunate dwellers of + Ching-fow, let it not affect your digestion that your bodies are + in peril of sudden and most excruciating tortures and your Family + Temples in danger of humiliating disregard. + + “Why do your thoughts follow the actions of the noble Mandarin + Ping Siang so insidiously, and why after each unjust exaction do + your eyes look redly towards the Yamen? + + “Is he not the little finger of those at Peking, obeying their + commands and only carrying out the taxation which others have + devised? Indeed, he himself has stated such to be the fact. If, + therefore, a terrible and unforeseen fate overtook the usually + cautious and well-armed Ping Siang, doubtless--perhaps after the + lapse of some considerable time--another would be sent from Peking + for a like purpose, and in this way, after a too-brief period of + heaven-sent rest and prosperity, affairs would regulate themselves + into almost as unendurable a condition as before. + + “Therefore ponder these things well, O passer-by. Yesterday the + only man-child of Huang the wood-carver was taken away to be sold + into slavery by the emissaries of the most just Ping Siang (who + would not have acted thus, we are assured, were it not for the + insatiable ones at Peking), as it had become plain that the very + necessitous Huang had no other possession to contribute to the + amount to be expended in coloured lights as a mark of public + rejoicing on the occasion of the moonday of the sublime Emperor. + The illiterate and prosaic-minded Huang, having in a most unseemly + manner reviled and even assailed those who acted in the matter, + has been effectively disposed of, and his wife now alternately + laughs and shrieks in the Establishment of Irregular Intellects. + + “For this reason, gazer, and because the matter touches you more + closely than, in your self-imagined security, you are prone to + think, deal expediently with the time at your disposal. Look twice + and lingeringly to-night upon the face of your first-born, and + clasp the form of your favourite one in a closer embrace, for he + by whose hand the blow is directed may already have cast devouring + eyes upon their fairness, and to-morrow he may say to his armed + men: ‘The time is come; bring her to me.’” + +“From the last sentence of the well-intentioned and undoubtedly +moderately-framed notice this person will take two phrases,” remarked +Tung Fel, folding the written paper and placing it among his +garments, “which shall serve him as the title of the lifelike and +accurately-represented play which it is his self-conceited intention +now to disclose to this select and unprejudiced gathering. The scene +represents an enlightened and well-merited justice overtaking an +arrogant and intolerable being who--need this person add?--existed many +dynasties ago, and the title is: + + “THE TIME IS COME! + BY WHOSE HAND?” + +Delivering himself in this manner, Tung Fel drew back the hanging +drapery which concealed the front of his large box, and disclosed to +those who were gathered round, not, as they had expected, a passage +from the Record of the Three Kingdoms, or some other dramatic work of +undoubted merit, but an ingeniously constructed representation of a +scene outside the walls of their own Ching-fow. On one side was a small +but minutely accurate copy of a wood-burner’s hut, which was known to +all present, while behind stood out the distant but nevertheless +unmistakable walls of the city. But it was the nearest part of the +spectacle that first held the attention of the entranced beholders, for +there disported themselves, in every variety of guileless and +attractive attitude, a number of young and entirely unconcerned doves. +Scarcely had the delighted onlookers fully observed the pleasing and +effective scene, or uttered their expressions of polished satisfaction +at the graceful and unassuming behaviour of the pretty creatures before +them, than the view entirely changed, and, as if by magic, the massive +and inelegant building of Ping Siang’s Yamen was presented before them. +As all gazed, astonished, the great door of the Yamen opened +stealthily, and without a moment’s pause a lean and ill-conditioned +rat, of unnatural size and rapacity, dashed out and seized the most +select and engaging of the unsuspecting prey in its hungry jaws. With +the expiring cry of the innocent victim the entire box was immediately, +and in the most unexpected manner, involved in a profound darkness, +which cleared away as suddenly and revealed the forms of the despoiler +and the victim lying dead by each other’s side. + +Tung Fel came forward to receive the well-selected compliments of all +who had witnessed the entertainment. + +“It may be objected,” he remarked, “that the play is, in a manner of +expressing one’s self, incomplete; for it is unrevealed by whose hand +the act of justice was accomplished. Yet in this detail is the accuracy +of the representation justified, for though the time has come, the hand +by which retribution is accorded shall never be observed.” + +In such a manner did Tung Fel come to Ching-fow on the seventh day of +the month of Winged Dragons, throwing aside all restraint, and no longer +urging prudence or delay. Of all the throng which stood before him +scarcely one was without a deep offence against Ping Siang, while those +who had not as yet suffered feared what the morrow might display. + +A wandering monk from the Island of Irredeemable Plagues was the first +to step forth in response to Tung Fel’s plainly understood suggestion. + +“There is no necessity for this person to undertake further acts of +benevolence,” he remarked, dropping the cloak from his shoulder and +displaying the hundred and eight scars of extreme virtue; “nor,” he +continued, holding up his left hand, from which three fingers were burnt +away, “have greater endurances been neglected. Yet the matter before +this distinguished gathering is one which merits the favourable +consideration of all persons, and this one will in no manner turn away, +recounting former actions, while he allows others to press forward +towards the accomplishment of the just and divinely-inspired act.” + +With these words the devout and unassuming person in question inscribed +his name upon a square piece of rice-paper, attesting his sincerity to +the fixed purpose for which it was designed by dipping his thumb into +the mixed blood of the slain animals and impressing this unalterable +seal upon the paper also. He was followed by a seller of drugs and +subtle medicines, whose entire stock had been seized and destroyed by +order of Ping Siang, so that no one in Ching-fow might obtain poison +for his destruction. Then came an overwhelming stream of persons, all of +whom had received some severe and well-remembered injury at the hands +of the malicious and vindictive Mandarin. All these followed a similar +observance, inscribing their names and binding themselves by the Blood +Oath. Last of all Yang Hu stepped up, partly from a natural modesty +which restrained him from offering himself when so many more versatile +persons of proved excellence were willing to engage in the matter, and +partly because an ill-advised conflict was taking place within his mind +as to whether the extreme course which was contemplated was the most +expedient to pursue. At last, however, he plainly perceived that he +could not honourably withhold himself from an affair that was in a +measure the direct outcome of his own unendurable loss, so that without +further hesitation he added his obscure name to the many illustrious +ones already in Tung Fel’s keeping. + +When at length dark fell upon the city and the cries of the watchmen, +warning all prudent ones to bar well their doors against robbers, +as they themselves were withdrawing until the morrow, no longer rang +through the narrow ways of Ching-fow, all those persons who had pledged +themselves by name and seal went forth silently, and came together at +the place whereof Tung Fel had secretly conveyed them knowledge. There +Tung Fel, standing somewhat apart, placed all the folded papers in the +form of a circle, and having performed over them certain observances +designed to insure a just decision and to keep away evil influences, +submitted the selection to the discriminating choice of the Sacred +Flat and Round Sticks. Having in this manner secured the name of +the appointed person who should carry out the act of justice and +retribution, Tung Fel unfolded the paper, inscribed certain words upon +it, and replaced it among the others. + +“The moment before great deeds,” began Tung Fel, stepping forward and +addressing himself to the expectant ones who were gathered round, “is +not the time for light speech, nor, indeed, for sentences of dignified +length, no matter how pleasantly turned to the ear they may be. Before +this person stand many who are undoubtedly illustrious in various +arts and virtues, yet one among them is pre-eminently marked out for +distinction in that his name shall be handed down in imperishable +history as that of a patriot of a pure-minded and uncompromising degree. +With him there is no need of further speech, and to this end I have +inscribed certain words upon his namepaper. To everyone this person will +now return the paper which has been entrusted to him, folded so that +the nature of its contents shall be an unwritten leaf to all others. Nor +shall the papers be unfolded by any until he is within his own chamber, +with barred doors, where all, save the one who shall find the message, +shall remain, not venturing forth until daybreak. I, Tung Fel, have +spoken, and assuredly I shall not eat my word, which is that a certain +and most degrading death awaits any who transgress these commands.” + +It was with the short and sudden breath of the cowering antelope when +the stealthy tread of the pitiless tiger approaches its lair, that Yang +Hu opened his paper in the seclusion of his own cave; for his mind was +darkened with an inspired inside emotion that he, the one doubting among +the eagerly proffering and destructively inclined multitude, would +be chosen to accomplish the high aim for which, indeed, he felt +exceptionally unworthy. The written sentence which he perceived +immediately upon unfolding the paper, instructing him to appear again +before Tung Fel at the hour of midnight, was, therefore, nothing but +the echo and fulfilment of his own thoughts, and served in reality to +impress his mind with calmer feelings of dignified unconcern than would +have been the case had he not been chosen. Having neither possessions +nor relations, the occupation of disposing of his goods and making +ceremonious and affectionate leavetakings of his family, against the +occurrence of any unforeseen disaster, engrossed no portion of Yang Hu’s +time. Yet there was one matter to which no reference has yet been made, +but which now forces itself obtrusively upon the attention, which was +in a large measure responsible for many of the most prominent actions +of Yang Hu’s life, and, indeed, in no small degree influenced his +hesitation in offering himself before Tung Fel. + +Not a bowshot distance from the place where the mountain path entered +the outskirts of the city lived Hiya-ai-Shao with her parents, who +were persons of assured position, though of no particular wealth. For a +period not confined to a single year it had been the custom of Yang Hu +to offer to this elegant and refined maiden all the rarest pieces +of jade which he could discover, while the most symmetrical and +remunerative she-goat in his flock enjoyed the honourable distinction of +bearing her incomparable name. Towards the almond garden of Hiya’s abode +Yang Hu turned his footsteps upon leaving his cave, and standing there, +concealed from all sides by the white and abundant flower-laden foliage, +he uttered a sound which had long been an agreed signal between them. +Presently a faint perfume of choo-lan spoke of her near approach, and +without delay Hiya herself stood by his side. + +“Well-endowed one,” said Yang Hu, when at length they had gazed upon +each other’s features and made renewals of their protestations of mutual +regard, “the fixed intentions of a person have often been fitly likened +to the seed of the tree-peony, so ineffectual are their efforts among +the winds of constantly changing circumstance. The definite hope of +this person had long pointed towards a small but adequate habitation, +surrounded by sweet-smelling olive-trees and not far distant from the +jade cliffs and pastures which would afford a sufficient remuneration +and a means of living. This entrancing picture has been blotted out for +the time, and in its place this person finds himself face to face with +an arduous and dangerous undertaking, followed, perhaps, by hasty and +immediate flight. Yet if the adorable Hiya will prove the unchanging +depths of her constantly expressed intention by accompanying him as +far as the village of Hing where suitable marriage ceremonies can be +observed without delay, the exile will in reality be in the nature of +a triumphal procession, and the emotions with which this person has +hitherto regarded the entire circumstance will undergo a complete and +highly accomplished change.” + +“Oh, Yang!” exclaimed the maiden, whose feelings at hearing these words +were in no way different from those of her lover when he was on the +point of opening the folded paper upon which Tung Fel had written; “what +is the nature of the mission upon which you are so impetuously resolved? +and why will it be followed by flight?” + +“The nature of the undertaking cannot be revealed by reason of a +deliberately taken oath,” replied Yang Hu; “and the reason of its +possible consequence is a less important question to the two persons who +are here conversing together than of whether the amiable and graceful +Hiya is willing to carry out her often-expressed desire for an +opportunity of displaying the true depths of her emotions towards this +one.” + +“Alas!” said Hiya, “the sentiments which this person expressed with +irreproachable honourableness when the sun was high in the heavens and +the probability of secretly leaving an undoubtedly well-appointed home +was engagingly remote, seem to have an entirely different significance +when recalled by night in a damp orchard, and on the eve of their +fulfilment. To deceive one’s parents is an ignoble prospect; +furthermore, it is often an exceedingly difficult undertaking. Let the +matter be arranged in this way: that Yang leaves the ultimate details +of the scheme to Hiya’s expedient care, he proceeding without delay +to Hing, or, even more desirable, to the further town of Liyunnan, +and there awaiting her coming. By such means the risk of discovery and +pursuit will be lessened, Yang will be able to set forth on his journey +with greater speed, and this one will have an opportunity of getting +together certain articles without which, indeed, she would be very +inadequately equipped.” + +In spite of his conscientious desire that Hiya should be by his side +on the journey, together with an unendurable certainty that evil would +arise from the course she proposed, Yang was compelled by an innate +feeling of respect to agree to her wishes, and in this manner the +arrangement was definitely concluded. Thereupon Hiya, without delay, +returned to the dwelling, remarking that otherwise her absence might be +detected and the entire circumstance thereby discovered, leaving Yang Hu +to continue his journey and again present himself before Tung Fel, as he +had been instructed. + +Tung Fel was engaged with brush and ink when Yang Hu entered. Round him +were many written parchments, some venerable with age, and a variety +of other matters, among which might be clearly perceived weapons, and +devices for reading the future. He greeted Yang with many tokens of +dignified respect, and with an evidently restrained emotion led him +towards the light of a hanging lantern, where he gazed into his face for +a considerable period with every indication of exceptional concern. + +“Yang Hu,” he said at length, “at such a moment many dark and searching +thoughts may naturally arise in the mind concerning objects and reasons, +omens, and the moving cycle of events. Yet in all these, out of a wisdom +gained by deep endurance and a hardly-won experience beyond the common +lot, this person would say, Be content. The hand of destiny, though it +may at times appear to move in a devious manner, is ever approaching its +appointed aim. To this end were you chosen.” + +“The choice was openly made by wise and proficient omens,” replied Yang +Hu, without any display of uncertainty of purpose, “and this person is +content.” + +Tung Fel then administered to Yang the Oath of Buddha’s Face and the One +called the Unutterable (which may not be further described in written +words) thereby binding his body and soul, and the souls and repose of +all who had gone before him in direct line and all who should in a like +manner follow after, to the accomplishment of the design. All spoken +matter being thus complete between them, he gave him a mask with which +he should pass unknown through the streets and into the presence of Ping +Siang, a variety of weapons to use as the occasion arose, and a sign +by which the attendants at the Yamen would admit him without further +questioning. + +As Yang Hu passed through the streets of Ching-fow, which were in a +great measure deserted owing to the command of Tung Fel, he was aware of +many mournful and foreboding sounds which accompanied him on all sides, +while shadowy faces, bearing signs of intolerable anguish and despair, +continually formed themselves out of the wind. By the time he reached +the Yamen a tempest of exceptional violence was in progress, nor were +other omens absent which tended to indicate that matters of a very +unpropitious nature were about to take place. + +At each successive door of the Yamen the attendant stepped back and +covered his face, so that he should by no chance perceive who had come +upon so destructive a mission, the instant Yang Hu uttered the sign with +which Tung Fel had provided him. In this manner Yang quickly reached the +door of the inner chamber upon which was inscribed: “Let the person who +comes with a doubtful countenance, unbidden, or meditating treachery, +remember the curse and manner of death which attended Lai Kuen, who +slew the one over him; so shall he turn and go forth in safety.” This +unworthy safeguard at the hands of a person who passed his entire life +in altering the fixed nature of justice, and who never went beyond his +outer gate without an armed company of bowmen, inspired Yang Hu with +so incautious a contempt, that without any hesitation he drew forth his +brush and ink, and in a spirit of bitter signification added the words, +“‘Come, let us eat together,’ said the wolf to the she-goat.” + +Being now within a step of Ping Siang and the completion of his +undertaking, Yang Hu drew tighter the cords of his mask, tested and +proved his weapons, and then, without further delay, threw open the door +before him and stepped into the chamber, barring the door quickly so +that no person might leave or enter without his consent. + +At this interruption and manner of behaving, which clearly indicated +the nature of the errand upon which the person before him had come, +Ping Siang rose from his couch and stretched out his hand towards a gong +which lay beside him. + +“All summonses for aid are now unavailing, Ping Siang,” exclaimed Yang, +without in any measure using delicate or set phrases of speech; “for, +as you have doubtless informed yourself, the slaves of tyrants are the +first to welcome the downfall of their lord.” + +“The matter of your speech is as emptiness to this person,” replied the +Mandarin, affecting with extreme difficulty an appearance of no-concern. +“In what manner has he fallen? And how will the depraved and self-willed +person before him avoid the well-deserved tortures which certainly await +him in the public square on the morrow, as the reward of his intolerable +presumptions?” + +“O Mandarin,” cried Yang Hu, “the fitness and occasion for such speeches +as the one to which you have just given utterance lie as far behind you +as the smoke of yesterday’s sacrifice. With what manner of eyes have you +frequently journeyed through Ching-fow of late, if the signs and +omens there have not already warned you to prepare a coffin adequately +designed to receive your well-proportioned body? Has not the pungent +vapour of burning houses assailed your senses at every turn, or the salt +tears from the eyes of forlorn ones dashed your peach-tea and spiced +foods with bitterness?” + +“Alas!” exclaimed Ping Siang, “this person now certainly begins to +perceive that many things which he has unthinkingly allowed would +present a very unendurable face to others.” + +“In such a manner has it appeared to all Ching-fow,” said Yang Hu; “and +the justice of your death has been universally admitted. Even should +this one fail there would be an innumerable company eager to take his +place. Therefore, O Ping Siang, as the only favour which it is within +this person’s power to accord, select that which in your opinion is the +most agreeable manner and weapon for your end.” + +“It is truly said that at the Final Gate of the Two Ways the necessity +for elegant and well-chosen sentences ends,” remarked Ping Siang with a +sigh, “otherwise the manner of your address would be open to reproach. +By your side this person perceives a long and apparently highly-tempered +sword, which, in his opinion, will serve the purpose efficiently. Having +no remarks of an improving but nevertheless exceedingly tedious nature +with which to imprint the occasion for the benefit of those who come +after, his only request is that the blow shall be an unhesitating and +sufficiently well-directed one.” + +At these words Yang Hu threw back his cloak to grasp the sword-handle, +when the Mandarin, with his eyes fixed on the naked arm, and evidently +inspired by every manner of conflicting emotions, uttered a cry of +unspeakable wonder and incomparable surprise. + +“The Serpent!” he cried, in a voice from which all evenness and control +were absent. “The Sacred Serpent of our Race! O mysterious one, who and +whence are you?” + +Engulfed in an all-absorbing doubt at the nature of events, Yang could +only gaze at the form of the serpent which had been clearly impressed +upon his arm from the earliest time of his remembrance, while Ping +Siang, tearing the silk garment from his own arm and displaying thereon +a similar form, continued: + +“Behold the inevitable and unvarying birthmark of our race! So it was +with this person’s father and the ones before him; so it was with his +treacherously-stolen son; so it will be to the end of all time.” + +Trembling beyond all power of restraint, Yang removed the mask which had +hitherto concealed his face. + +“Father or race has this person none,” he said, looking into Ping +Siang’s features with an all-engaging hope, tempered in a measure by a +soul-benumbing dread; “nor memory or tradition of an earlier state than +when he herded goats and sought for jade in the southern mountains.” + +“Nevertheless,” exclaimed the Mandarin, whose countenance was lightened +with an interest and a benevolent emotion which had never been seen +there before, “beyond all possibility of doubting, you are this +person’s lost and greatly-desired son, stolen away many years ago by +the treacherous conduct of an unworthy woman, yet now happily and +miraculously restored to cherish his declining years and perpetuate an +honourable name and race.” + +“Happily!” exclaimed Yang, with fervent indications of uncontrollable +bitterness. “Oh, my illustrious sire, at whose venerated feet this +unworthy person now prostrates himself with well-merited marks of +reverence and self-abasement, has the errand upon which an ignoble son +entered--the every memory of which now causes him the acutest agony +of the lost, but which nevertheless he is pledged to Tung Fel by the +Unutterable Oath to perform--has this unnatural and eternally cursed +thing escaped your versatile mind?” + +“Tung Fel!” cried Ping Siang. “Is, then, this blow also by the hand of +that malicious and vindictive person? Oh, what a cycle of events and +interchanging lines of destiny do your words disclose!” + +“Who, then, is Tung Fel, my revered Father?” demanded Yang. + +“It is a matter which must be made clear from the beginning,” replied +Ping Siang. “At one time this person and Tung Fel were, by nature +and endowments, united in the most amiable bonds of an inseparable +friendship. Presently Tung Fel signed the preliminary contract of +a marriage with one who seemed to be endowed with every variety of +enchanting and virtuous grace, but who was, nevertheless, as the +unrolling of future events irresistibly discovered, a person of +irregular character and undignified habits. On the eve of the marriage +ceremony this person was made known to her by the undoubtedly enraptured +Tung Fel, whereupon he too fell into the snare of her engaging +personality, and putting aside all thoughts of prudent restraint, made +her more remunerative offers of marriage than Tung Fel could by any +possible chance overbid. In such a manner--for after the nature of +her kind riches were exceptionally attractive to her degraded +imagination--she became this person’s wife, and the mother of his only +son. In spite of these great honours, however, the undoubted perversity +of her nature made her an easy accomplice to the duplicity of Tung +Fel, who, by means of various disguises, found frequent opportunity of +uttering in her presence numerous well-thought-out suggestions specially +designed to lead her imagination towards an existence in which this +person had no adequate representation. Becoming at length terrified at +the possibility of these unworthy emotions, obtruding themselves upon +this person’s notice, the two in question fled together, taking with +them the one who without any doubt is now before me. Despite the most +assiduous search and very tempting and profitable offers of reward, no +information of a reliable nature could be obtained, and at length +this dispirited and completely changed person gave up the pursuit as +unavailing. With his son and heir, upon whose future he had greatly +hoped, all emotions of a generous and high-minded nature left him, and +in a very short space of time he became the avaricious and deservedly +unpopular individual against whose extortions the amiable and +long-suffering ones of Ching-fow have for so many years protested +mildly. The sudden and not altogether unexpected fate which is now +on the point of reaching him is altogether too lenient to be entirely +adequate.” + +“Oh, my distinguished and really immaculate sire!” cried Yang Hu, in a +voice which expressed the deepest feelings of contrition. “No oaths or +vows, however sacred, can induce this person to stretch forth his hand +against the one who stands before him.” + +“Nevertheless,” replied Ping Siang, speaking of the matter as though it +were one which did not closely concern his own existence, “to neglect +the Unutterable Oath would inevitably involve not only the two persons +who are now conversing together, but also those before and those who are +to come after in direct line, in a much worse condition of affairs. That +is a fate which this person would by no means permit to exist, for one +of his chief desires has ever been to establish a strong and vigorous +line, to which end, indeed, he was even now concluding a marriage +arrangement with the beautiful and refined Hiya-ai-Shao, whom he had +at length persuaded into accepting his betrothal tokens without +reluctance.” + +“Hiya-ai-Shao!” exclaimed Yang; “she has accepted your silk-bound +gifts?” + +“The matter need not concern us now,” replied the Mandarin, not +observing in his complicated emotions the manner in which the name of +Hiya had affected Yang, revealing as it undoubtedly did the treachery of +his beloved one. “There only appears to be one honourable way in which +the full circumstances can be arranged, and this person will in no +measure endeavour to avoid it.” + +“Such an end is neither ignoble nor painful,” he said, in an unchanging +voice; “nor will this one in any way shrink from so easy and honourable +a solution.” + +“The affairs of the future do not exhibit themselves in delicately +coloured hues to this person,” said Yang Hu; “and he would, if the thing +could be so arranged, cheerfully submit to a similar fate in order that +a longer period of existence should be assured to one who has every +variety of claim upon his affection.” + +“The proposal is a graceful and conscientious one,” said Ping Siang, +“and is, moreover, a gratifying omen of the future of our race, which +must of necessity be left in your hands. But, for that reason itself, +such a course cannot be pursued. Nevertheless, the events of the past +few hours have been of so exceedingly prosperous and agreeable a nature +that this short-sighted and frequently desponding person can now +pass beyond with a tranquil countenance and every assurance of divine +favour.” + +With these words Ping Siang indicated that he was desirous of setting +forth the Final Expression, and arranging the necessary matters upon the +table beside him, he stretched forth his hands over Yang Hu, who placed +himself in a suitable attitude of reverence and abasement. + +“Yang Hu,” began the Mandarin, “undoubted son, and, after the +accomplishment of the intention which it is our fixed purpose to carry +out, fitting representative of the person who is here before you, +engrave well within your mind the various details upon which he now +gives utterance. Regard the virtues; endeavour to pass an amiable and +at the same time not unremunerative existence; and on all occasions +sacrifice freely, to the end that the torments of those who have gone +before may be made lighter, and that others may be induced in turn to +perform a like benevolent charity for yourself. Having expressed +himself upon these general subjects, this person now makes a last and +respectfully-considered desire, which it is his deliberate wish should +be carried to the proper deities as his final expression of opinion: +That Yang Hu may grow as supple as the dried juice of the bending-palm, +and as straight as the most vigorous bamboo from the forests of the +North. That he may increase beyond the prolificness of the white-necked +crow and cover the ground after the fashion of the binding grass. +That in battle his sword may be as a vividly-coloured and many-forked +lightning flash, accompanied by thunderbolts as irresistible as Buddha’s +divine wrath; in peace his voice as resounding as the rolling of many +powerful drums among the Khingan Mountains. That when the kindled fire +of his existence returns to the great Mountain of Pure Flame the earth +shall accept again its component parts, and in no way restrain the +divine essence from journeying to its destined happiness. These words +are Ping Siang’s last expression of opinion before he passes beyond, +given in the unvarying assurance that so sacred and important a petition +will in no way be neglected.” + +Having in this manner completed all the affairs which seemed to be of +a necessary and urgent nature, and fixing his last glance upon Yang Hu +with every variety of affectionate and estimable emotion, the Mandarin +drank a sufficient quantity of the liquid, and placing himself upon a +couch in an attitude of repose, passed in this dignified and unassuming +manner into the Upper Air. + +After the space of a few moments spent in arranging certain objects and +in inward contemplation, Yang Hu crossed the chamber, still holding +the half-filled vessel of gold-leaf in his hand, and drawing back the +hanging silk, gazed over the silent streets of Ching-fow and towards the +great sky-lantern above. + +“Hiya is faithless,” he said at length in an unspeaking voice; “this +person’s mother a bitter-tasting memory, his father a swiftly passing +shadow that is now for ever lost.” His eyes rested upon the closed +vessel in his hand. “Gladly would--” his thoughts began, but with +this unworthy image a new impression formed itself within his mind. “A +clearly-expressed wish was uttered,” he concluded, “and Tung Fel still +remains.” With this resolution he stepped back into the chamber and +struck the gong loudly. + + + + +VII. +THE CAREER OF THE CHARITABLE QUEN-KI-TONG + + + FIRST PERIOD + THE PUBLIC OFFICIAL + +“The motives which inspired the actions of the devout Quen-Ki-Tong have +long been ill-reported,” said Kai Lung the story-teller, upon a certain +occasion at Wu-whei, “and, as a consequence, his illustrious memory has +suffered somewhat. Even as the insignificant earth-worm may bring +the precious and many coloured jewel to the surface, so has it been +permitted to this obscure and superficially educated one to discover +the truth of the entire matter among the badly-arranged and frequently +really illegible documents preserved at the Hall of Public Reference at +Peking. Without fear of contradiction, therefore, he now sets forth the +credible version. + +“Quen-Ki-Tong was one who throughout his life had been compelled by +the opposing force of circumstances to be content with what was offered +rather than attain to that which he desired. Having been allowed to +wander over the edge of an exceedingly steep crag, while still a child, +by the aged and untrustworthy person who had the care of him, and yet +suffering little hurt, he was carried back to the city in triumph, +by the one in question, who, to cover her neglect, declared amid +many chants of exultation that as he slept a majestic winged form had +snatched him from her arms and traced magical figures with his body on +the ground in token of the distinguished sacred existence for which he +was undoubtedly set apart. In such a manner he became famed at a very +early age for an unassuming mildness of character and an almost inspired +piety of life, so that on every side frequent opportunity was given him +for the display of these amiable qualities. Should it chance that an +insufficient quantity of puppy-pie had been prepared for the family +repast, the undesirable but necessary portion of cold dried rat would +inevitably be allotted to the uncomplaining Quen, doubtless accompanied +by the engaging but unnecessary remark that he alone had a Heaven-sent +intellect which was fixed upon more sublime images than even the +best constructed puppy-pie. Should the number of sedan-chairs not be +sufficient to bear to the Exhibition of Kites all who were desirous of +becoming entertained in such a fashion, inevitably would Quen be the one +left behind, in order that he might have adequate leisure for dignified +and pure-minded internal reflexion. + +“In this manner it came about that when a very wealthy but unnaturally +avaricious and evil-tempered person who was connected with Quen’s father +in matters of commerce expressed his fixed determination that the most +deserving and enlightened of his friend’s sons should enter into a +marriage agreement with his daughter, there was no manner of hesitation +among those concerned, who admitted without any questioning between +themselves that Quen was undeniably the one referred to. + +“Though naturally not possessing an insignificant intellect, a +continuous habit, together with a most irreproachable sense of filial +duty, subdued within Quen’s internal organs whatever reluctance he might +have otherwise displayed in the matter, so that as courteously as was +necessary he presented to the undoubtedly very ordinary and slow-witted +maiden in question the gifts of irretrievable intention, and honourably +carried out his spoken and written words towards her. + +“For a period of years the circumstances of the various persons did not +in any degree change, Quen in the meantime becoming more pure-souled +and inward-seeing with each moon-change, after the manner of the sublime +Lien-ti, who studied to maintain an unmoved endurance in all varieties +of events by placing his body to a greater extent each day in a vessel +of boiling liquid. Nevertheless, the good and charitable deities to +whom Quen unceasingly sacrificed were not altogether unmindful of his +virtues; for a son was born, and an evil disease which arose from a most +undignified display of uncontrollable emotion on her part ended in his +wife being deposited with becoming ceremony in the Family Temple. + +“Upon a certain evening, when Quen sat in his inner chamber deliberating +upon the really beneficent yet somewhat inexplicable arrangement of the +all-seeing ones to whom he was very amiably disposed in consequence of +the unwonted tranquillity which he now enjoyed, yet who, it appeared to +him, could have set out the entire matter in a much more satisfactory +way from the beginning, he was made aware by the unexpected beating of +many gongs, and by other signs of refined and deferential welcome, that +a person of exalted rank was approaching his residence. While he was +still hesitating in his uncertainty regarding the most courteous and +delicate form of self-abasement with which to honour so important a +visitor--whether to rush forth and allow the chair-carriers to pass over +his prostrate form, to make a pretence of being a low-caste slave, and +in that guise doing menial service, or to conceal himself beneath +a massive and overhanging table until his guest should have availed +himself of the opportunity to examine at his leisure whatever the room +contained--the person in question stood before him. In every detail of +dress and appointment he had the undoubted appearance of being one to +whom no door might be safely closed. + +“‘Alas!’ exclaimed Quen, ‘how inferior and ill-contrived is the mind +of a person of my feeble intellectual attainments. Even at this moment, +when the near approach of one who obviously commands every engaging +accomplishment might reasonably be expected to call up within it an +adequate amount of commonplace resource, its ill-destined possessor +finds himself entirely incapable of conducting himself with the fitting +outward marks of his great internal respect. This residence is certainly +unprepossessing in the extreme, yet it contains many objects of some +value and of great rarity; illiterate as this person is, he would not +be so presumptuous as to offer any for your acceptance, but if you will +confer upon him the favour of selecting that which appears to be the +most priceless and unreplaceable, he will immediately, and with every +manifestation of extreme delight, break it irredeemably in your honour, +to prove the unaffected depth of his gratified emotions.’ + +“‘Quen-Ki-Tong,’ replied the person before him, speaking with an evident +sincerity of purpose, ‘pleasant to this one’s ears are your words, +breathing as they do an obvious hospitality and a due regard for the +forms of etiquette. But if, indeed, you are desirous of gaining this +person’s explicit regard, break no articles of fine porcelain or rare +inlaid wood in proof of it, but immediately dismiss to a very distant +spot the three-score gong-beaters who have enclosed him within two solid +rings, and who are now carrying out their duties in so diligent a manner +that he greatly doubts if the unimpaired faculties of hearing will ever +be fully restored. Furthermore, if your exceedingly amiable intentions +desire fuller expression, cause an unstinted number of vessels of some +uninflammable liquid to be conveyed into your chrysanthemum garden and +there poured over the numerous fireworks and coloured lights which still +appear to be in progress. Doubtless they are well-intentioned marks of +respect, but they caused this person considerable apprehension as he +passed among them, and, indeed, give to this unusually pleasant and +unassuming spot the by no means inviting atmosphere of a low-class +tea-house garden during the festivities attending the birthday of the +sacred Emperor.’ + +“‘This person is overwhelmed with a most unendurable confusion that the +matters referred to should have been regarded in such a light,’ replied +Quen humbly. ‘Although he himself had no knowledge of them until this +moment, he is confident that they in no wise differ from the usual +honourable manifestations with which it is customary in this Province to +welcome strangers of exceptional rank and titles.’ + +“‘The welcome was of a most dignified and impressive nature,’ replied +the stranger, with every appearance of not desiring to cause Quen any +uneasy internal doubts; ‘yet the fact is none the less true that at the +moment this person’s head seems to contain an exceedingly powerful and +well-equipped band; and also, that as he passed through the courtyard +an ingeniously constructed but somewhat unmanageable figure of gigantic +size, composed entirely of jets of many-coloured flame, leaped out +suddenly from behind a dark wall and made an almost successful attempt +to embrace him in its ever-revolving arms. Lo Yuen greatly fears that +the time when he would have rejoiced in the necessary display of agility +to which the incident gave rise has for ever passed away.’ + +“‘Lo Yuen!’ exclaimed Quen, with an unaffected mingling of the emotions +of reverential awe and pleasureable anticipation. ‘Can it indeed be +an uncontroversial fact that so learned and ornamental a person as the +renowned Controller of Unsolicited Degrees stands beneath this inelegant +person’s utterly unpresentable roof! Now, indeed, he plainly understands +why this ill-conditioned chamber has the appearance of being filled with +a Heaven-sent brilliance, and why at the first spoken words of the one +before him a melodious sound, like the rushing waters of the sacred +Tien-Kiang, seemed to fill his ears.’ + +“‘Undoubtedly the chamber is pervaded by a very exceptional splendour,’ +replied Lo Yuen, who, in spite of his high position, regarded graceful +talk and well-imagined compliments in a spirit of no-satisfaction; ‘yet +this commonplace-minded one has a fixed conviction that it is caused +by the crimson-eyed and pink-fire-breathing dragon which, despite your +slave’s most assiduous efforts, is now endeavouring to climb through +the aperture behind you. The noise which still fills his ears, also, +resembles rather the despairing cries of the Ten Thousand Lost Ones at +the first sight of the Pit of Liquid and Red-hot Malachite, yet +without question both proceed from the same cause. Laying aside further +ceremony, therefore, permit this greatly over-estimated person to +disclose the object of his inopportune visit. Long have your amiable +virtues been observed and appreciated by the high ones at Peking, O +Quen-Ki-Tong. Too long have they been unrewarded and passed over in +silence. Nevertheless, the moment of acknowledgement and advancement has +at length arrived; for, as the Book of Verses clearly says, “Even the +three-legged mule may contrive to reach the agreed spot in advance of +the others, provided a circular running space has been selected and +the number of rounds be sufficiently ample.” It is this otherwise +uninteresting and obtrusive person’s graceful duty to convey to you the +agreeable intelligence that the honourable and not ill-rewarded office +of Guarder of the Imperial Silkworms has been conferred upon you, and +to require you to proceed without delay to Peking, so that fitting +ceremonies of admittance may be performed before the fifteenth day of +the month of Feathered Insects.’ + +“Alas! how frequently does the purchaser of seemingly vigorous and +exceptionally low-priced flower-seeds discover, when too late, that they +are, in reality, fashioned from the root of the prolific and valueless +tzu-ka, skilfully covered with a disguising varnish! Instead of +presenting himself at the place of commerce frequented by those who +entrust money to others on the promise of an increased repayment when +certain very probable events have come to pass (so that if all +else failed he would still possess a serviceable number of taels), +Quen-Ki-Tong entirely neglected the demands of a most ordinary prudence, +nor could he be induced to set out on his journey until he had passed +seven days in public feasting to mark his good fortune, and then devoted +fourteen more days to fasting and various acts of penance, in order to +make known the regret with which he acknowledged his entire unworthiness +for the honour before him. Owing to this very conscientious, but +nevertheless somewhat short-sighted manner of behaving, Quen found +himself unable to reach Peking before the day preceding that to which Lo +Yuen had made special reference. From this cause it came about that only +sufficient time remained to perform the various ceremonies of admission, +without in any degree counselling Quen as to his duties and procedure in +the fulfilment of his really important office. + +“Among the many necessary and venerable ceremonies observed during the +changing periods of the year, none occupy a more important place than +those for which the fifteenth day of the month of Feathered Insects is +reserved, conveying as they do a respectful and delicately-fashioned +petition that the various affairs upon which persons in every +condition of life are engaged may arrive at a pleasant and remunerative +conclusion. At the earliest stroke of the gong the versatile Emperor, +accompanied by many persons of irreproachable ancestry and certain +others, very elaborately attired, proceeds to an open space set apart +for the occasion. With unassuming dexterity the benevolent Emperor for +a brief span of time engages in the menial occupation of a person of +low class, and with his own hands ploughs an assigned portion of land in +order that the enlightened spirits under whose direct guardianship the +earth is placed may not become lax in their disinterested efforts to +promote its fruitfulness. In this charitable exertion he is followed +by various other persons of recognized position, the first being, by +custom, the Guarder of the Imperial Silkworms, while at the same time +the amiably-disposed Empress plants an allotted number of mulberry +trees, and deposits upon their leaves the carefully reared insects +which she receives from the hands of their Guarder. In the case of the +accomplished Emperor an ingenious contrivance is resorted to by which +the soil is drawn aside by means of hidden strings as the plough passes +by, the implement in question being itself constructed from paper of the +highest quality, while the oxen which draw it are, in reality, +ordinary persons cunningly concealed within masks of cardboard. In this +thoughtful manner the actual labours of the sublime Emperor are greatly +lessened, while no chance is afforded for an inauspicious omen to be +created by the rebellious behaviour of a maliciously-inclined ox, or by +any other event of an unforeseen nature. All the other persons, however, +are required to make themselves proficient in the art of ploughing, +before the ceremony, so that the chances of the attendant spirits +discovering the deception which has been practised upon them in the case +of the Emperor may not be increased by its needless repetition. It was +chiefly for this reason that Lo Yuen had urged Quen to journey to Peking +as speedily as possible, but owing to the very short time which remained +between his arrival and the ceremony of ploughing, not only had the +person in question neglected to profit by instruction, but he was not +even aware of the obligation which awaited him. When, therefore, in +spite of every respectful protest on his part, he was led up to a +massively-constructed implement drawn by two powerful and undeniably +evilly-intentioned-looking animals, it was with every sign of great +internal misgivings, and an entire absence of enthusiasm in the +entertainment, that he commenced his not too well understood task. In +this matter he was by no means mistaken, for it soon became plain to all +observers--of whom an immense concourse was assembled--that the usually +self-possessed Guarder of the Imperial Silkworms was conducting +himself in a most undignified manner; for though he still clung to the +plough-handles with an inspired tenacity, his body assumed every variety +of base and uninviting attitude. Encouraged by this inelegant state +of affairs, the evil spirits which are ever on the watch to turn into +derision the charitable intentions of the pure-minded entered into +the bodies of the oxen and provoked within their minds a sudden and +malignant confidence that the time had arrived when they might with +safety break into revolt and throw off the outward signs of their +dependent condition. From these various causes it came about that Quen +was, without warning, borne with irresistible certainty against the +majestic person of the sacred Emperor, the inlaid box of Imperial +silkworms, which up to that time had remained safely among the folds +of his silk garment, alone serving to avert an even more violent and +ill-destined blow. + +“Well said the wise and deep-thinking Ye-te, in his book entitled +_Proverbs of Everyday Happenings_, ‘Should a person on returning from +the city discover his house to be in flames, let him examine well the +change which he has received from the chair-carrier before it is too +late; for evil never travels alone.’ Scarcely had the unfortunate Quen +recovered his natural attributes from the effect of the disgraceful +occurrence which has been recorded (which, indeed, furnished the matter +of a song and many unpresentable jests among the low-class persons +of the city), than the magnanimous Empress reached that detail of the +tree-planting ceremony when it was requisite that she should deposit the +living emblems of the desired increase and prosperity upon the leaves. +Stretching forth her delicately-proportioned hand to Quen for this +purpose, she received from the still greatly confused person in question +the Imperial silkworms in so unseemly a condition that her eyes had +scarcely rested upon them before she was seized with the rigid +sickness, and in that state fell to the ground. At this new and entirely +unforeseen calamity a very disagreeable certainty of approaching evil +began to take possession of all those who stood around, many crying +aloud that every omen of good was wanting, and declaring that unless +something of a markedly propitiatory nature was quickly accomplished, +the agriculture of the entire Empire would cease to flourish, and the +various departments of the commerce in silk would undoubtedly be thrown +into a state of most inextricable confusion. Indeed, in spite of all +things designed to have a contrary effect, the matter came about in the +way predicted, for the Hoang-Ho seven times overcame its restraining +barriers, and poured its waters over the surrounding country, thereby +gaining for the first time its well-deserved title of ‘The Sorrow of +China,’ by which dishonourable but exceedingly appropriate designation +it is known to this day. + +“The manner of greeting which would have been accorded to Quen had +he returned to the official quarter of the city, or the nature of his +treatment by the baser class of the ordinary people if they succeeded +in enticing him to come among them, formed a topic of such uninviting +conjecture that the humane-minded Lo Yuen, who had observed the +entire course of events from an elevated spot, determined to make +a well-directed effort towards his safety. To this end he quickly +purchased the esteem of several of those who make a profession of their +strength, holding out the hope of still further reward if they conducted +the venture to a successful termination. Uttering loud cries of an +impending vengeance, as Lo Yuen had instructed them in the matter, +and displaying their exceptional proportions to the astonishment and +misgivings of all beholders, these persons tore open the opium-tent in +which Quen had concealed himself, and, thrusting aside all opposition, +quickly dragged him forth. Holding him high upon their shoulders, in +spite of his frequent and ill-advised endeavours to cast himself to +the ground, some surrounded those who bore him--after the manner of +disposing his troops affected by a skilful leader when the enemy begin +to waver--and crying aloud that it was their unchanging purpose to +submit him to the test of burning splinters and afterwards to torture +him, they succeeded by this stratagem in bringing him through the +crowd; and hurling back or outstripping those who endeavoured to follow, +conveyed him secretly and unperceived to a deserted and appointed +spot. Here Quen was obliged to remain until other events caused the +recollection of the many to become clouded and unconcerned towards him, +suffering frequent inconveniences in spite of the powerful protection +of Lo Yuen, and not at all times being able to regard the most necessary +repast as an appointment of undoubted certainty. At length, in the guise +of a wandering conjurer who was unable to display his accomplishments +owing to an entire loss of the power of movement in his arms, Quen +passed undetected from the city, and safely reaching the distant and +unimportant town of Lu-Kwo, gave himself up to a protracted period of +lamentation and self-reproach at the unprepossessing manner in which he +had conducted his otherwise very inviting affairs. + + + SECOND PERIOD + THE TEMPLE BUILDER + +Two hand-counts of years passed away and Quen still remained at Lu-kwo, +all desire of returning either to Peking or to the place of his birth +having by this time faded into nothingness. Accepting the inevitable +fact that he was not destined ever to become a person with whom taels +were plentiful, and yet being unwilling to forego the charitable manner +of life which he had always been accustomed to observe, it came about +that he spent the greater part of his time in collecting together such +sums of money as he could procure from the amiable and well-disposed, +and with them building temples and engaging in other benevolent works. +From this cause it arose the Quen obtained around Lu-kwo a reputation +for high-minded piety, in no degree less than that which had been +conferred upon him in earlier times, so that pilgrims from far distant +places would purposely contrive their journey so as to pass through the +town containing so unassuming and virtuous a person. + +“During this entire period Quen had been accompanied by his only son, a +youth of respectful personality, in whose entertaining society he took +an intelligent interest. Even when deeply engaged in what he justly +regarded as the crowning work of his existence--the planning and +erecting of an exceptionally well-endowed marble temple, which was to +be entirely covered on the outside with silver paper, and on the inside +with gold-leaf--he did not fail to observe the various conditions of +Liao’s existence, and the changing emotions which from time to +time possessed him. Therefore, when the person in question, without +displaying any signs of internal sickness, and likewise persistently +denying that he had lost any considerable sum of money, disclosed a +continuous habit of turning aside with an unaffected expression of +distaste from all manner of food, and passed the entire night in +observing the course of the great sky-lantern rather than in sleep, the +sage and discriminating Quen took him one day aside, and asked him, as +one who might aid him in the matter, who the maiden was, and what class +and position her father occupied. + +“‘Alas!’ exclaimed Liao, with many unfeigned manifestations of an +unbearable fate, ‘to what degree do the class and position of her +entirely unnecessary parents affect the question? or how little hope +can this sacrilegious one reasonably have of ever progressing as far as +earthly details of a pecuniary character in the case of so adorable and +far-removed a Being? The uttermost extent of this wildly-hoping person’s +ambition is that when the incomparably symmetrical Ts’ain learns of +the steadfast light of his devotion, she may be inspired to deposit an +emblematic chrysanthemum upon his tomb in the Family Temple. For such a +reward he will cheerfully devote the unswerving fidelity of a lifetime +to her service, not distressing her gentle and retiring nature by the +expression of what must inevitably be a hopeless passion, but patiently +and uncomplainingly guarding her footsteps as from a distance.’ + +“Being in this manner made aware of the reason of Liao’s frequent and +unrestrained exclamations of intolerable despair, and of his fixed +determination with regard to the maiden Ts’ain (which seemed, above +all else, to indicate a resolution to shun her presence) Quen could not +regard the immediately-following actions of his son with anything but an +emotion of confusion. For when his eyes next rested upon the exceedingly +contradictory Liao, he was seated in the open space before the house in +which Ts’ain dwelt, playing upon an instrument of stringed woods, and +chanting verses into which the names of the two persons in question +had been skilfully introduced without restraint, his whole manner of +behaving being with the evident purpose of attracting the maiden’s +favourable attention. After an absence of many days, spent in this +graceful and complimentary manner, Liao returned suddenly to the house +of his father, and, prostrating his body before him, made a specific +request for his assistance. + +“‘As regards Ts’ain and myself,’ he continued, ‘all things are arranged, +and but for the unfortunate coincidence of this person’s poverty and +of her father’s cupidity, the details of the wedding ceremony would +undoubtedly now be in a very advanced condition. Upon these entrancing +and well-discussed plans, however, the shadow of the grasping and +commonplace Ah-Ping has fallen like the inopportune opium-pipe from the +mouth of a person examining substances of an explosive nature; for the +one referred to demands a large and utterly unobtainable amount of taels +before he will suffer his greatly-sought-after daughter to accept the +gifts of irretrievable intention.’ + +“‘Grievous indeed is your plight,’ replied Quen, when he thus understood +the manner of obstacle which impeded his son’s hopes; ‘for in the nature +of taels the most diverse men are to be measured through the same mesh. +As the proverb says, “‘All money is evil,’ exclaimed the philosopher +with extreme weariness, as he gathered up the gold pieces in exchange, +but presently discovering that one among them was such indeed as he had +described, he rushed forth without tarrying to take up a street garment; +and with an entire absence of dignity traversed all the ways of the city +in the hope of finding the one who had defrauded him.” Well does this +person know the mercenary Ah-Ping, and the unyielding nature of his +closed hand; for often, but always fruitlessly, he has entered his +presence on affairs connected with the erecting of certain temples. +Nevertheless, the matter is one which does not admit of any incapable +faltering, to which end this one will seek out the obdurate Ah-Ping +without delay, and endeavour to entrap him by some means in the course +of argument.’ + +“From the time of his earliest youth Ah-Ping had unceasingly devoted +himself to the object of getting together an overwhelming number of +taels, using for this purpose various means which, without being really +degrading or contrary to the written law, were not such as might have +been cheerfully engaged in by a person of high-minded honourableness. In +consequence of this, as he grew more feeble in body, and more venerable +in appearance, he began to express frequent and bitter doubts as to +whether his manner of life had been really well arranged; for, in spite +of his great wealth, he had grown to adopt a most inexpensive habit +on all occasions, having no desire to spend; and an ever-increasing +apprehension began to possess him that after he had passed beyond, his +sons would be very disinclined to sacrifice and burn money sufficient to +keep him in an affluent condition in the Upper Air. In such a state of +mind was Ah-Ping when Quen-Ki-Tong appeared before him, for it had just +been revealed to him that his eldest and favourite son had, by flattery +and by openly praising the dexterity with which he used his brush +and ink, entrapped him into inscribing his entire name upon certain +unwritten sheets of parchment, which the one in question immediately +sold to such as were heavily indebted to Ah-Ping. + +“‘If a person can be guilty of this really unfilial behaviour during the +lifetime of his father,’ exclaimed Ah-Ping, in a tone of unrestrained +vexation, ‘can it be prudently relied upon that he will carry out his +wishes after death, when they involve the remitting to him of several +thousand taels each year? O estimable Quen-Ki-Tong, how immeasurably +superior is the celestial outlook upon which you may safely rely as your +portion! When you are enjoying every variety of sumptuous profusion, +as the reward of your untiring charitable exertions here on earth, the +spirit of this short-sighted person will be engaged in doing menial +servitude for the inferior deities, and perhaps scarcely able, even by +those means, to clothe himself according to the changing nature of the +seasons.’ + +“‘Yet,’ replied Quen, ‘the necessity for so laborious and unremunerative +an existence may even now be averted by taking efficient precautions +before you pass to the Upper Air.’ + +“‘In what way?’ demanded Ah-Ping, with an awakening hope that the matter +might not be entirely destitute of cheerfulness, yet at the same time +preparing to examine with even unbecoming intrusiveness any expedient +which Quen might lay before him. ‘Is it not explicitly stated that +sacrifices and acts of a like nature, when performed at the end of one’s +existence by a person who to that time has professed no sort of interest +in such matters, shall in no degree be entered as to his good, but +rather regarded as examples of deliberate presumptuousness, and made the +excuse for subjecting him to more severe tortures and acts of penance +than would be his portion if he neglected the custom altogether?’ + +“‘Undoubtedly such is the case,’ replied Quen; ‘and on that account it +would indicate a most regrettable want of foresight for you to conduct +your affairs in the manner indicated. The only undeniably safe course +is for you to entrust the amount you will require to a person of +exceptional piety, receiving in return his written word to repay the +full sum whenever you shall claim it from him in the Upper Air. By this +crafty method the amount will be placed at the disposal of the person +in question as soon as he has passed beyond, and he will be held by his +written word to return it to you whenever you shall demand it.’ + +“So amiably impressed with this ingenious scheme was Ah-Ping that he +would at once have entered more fully into the detail had the thought +not arisen in his mind that the person before him was the father of +Liao, who urgently required a certain large sum, and that for this +reason he might with prudence inquire more fully into the matter +elsewhere, in case Quen himself should have been imperceptibly led +aside, even though he possessed intentions of a most unswerving +honourableness. To this end, therefore, he desired to converse again +with Quen on the matter, pleading that at that moment a gathering +of those who direct enterprises of a commercial nature required his +presence. Nevertheless, he would not permit the person referred to to +depart until he had complimented him, in both general and specific +terms, on the high character of his life and actions, and the +intelligent nature of his understanding, which had enabled him with so +little mental exertion to discover an efficient plan. + +“Without delay Ah-Ping sought out those most skilled in all varieties +of law-forms, in extorting money by devices capable of very different +meanings, and in expedients for evading just debts; but all agreed that +such an arrangement as the one he put before them would be unavoidably +binding, provided the person who received the money alluded to spent it +in the exercise of his charitable desires, and provided also that the +written agreement bore the duty seal of the high ones at Peking, and was +deposited in the coffin of the lender. Fully satisfied, and rejoicing +greatly that he could in this way adequately provide for his future and +entrap the avaricious ones of his house, Ah-Ping collected together the +greater part of his possessions, and converting it into pieces of gold, +entrusted them to Quen on the exact understanding that has already been +described, he receiving in turn Quen’s written and thumb-signed paper +of repayment, and his assurance that the whole amount should be expended +upon the silver-paper and gold-leaf Temple with which he was still +engaged. + +“It is owing to this circumstance that Quen-Ki-Tong’s irreproachable +name has come to be lightly regarded by many who may be fitly likened to +the latter person in the subtle and experienced proverb, ‘The wise man’s +eyes fell before the gaze of the fool, fearing that if he looked he +must cry aloud, “Thou hopeless one!” “There,” said the fool to himself, +“behold this person’s power!”’ These badly educated and undiscriminating +persons, being entirely unable to explain the ensuing train of events, +unhesitatingly declare that Quen-Ki-Tong applied a portion of the money +which he had received from Ah-Ping in the manner described to the object +of acquiring Ts’ain for his son Liao. In this feeble and incapable +fashion they endeavour to stigmatize the pure-minded Quen as one who +acted directly contrary to his deliberately spoken word, whereas the +desired result was brought about in a much more artful manner; they +describe the commercially successful Ah-Ping as a person of very +inferior prudence, and one easily imposed upon; while they entirely pass +over, as a detail outside the true facts, the written paper preserved +among the sacred relics in the Temple, which announces, among other +gifts of a small and uninviting character, ‘Thirty thousand taels from +an elderly ginseng merchant of Lu-kwo, who desires to remain nameless, +through the hand of Quen-Ki-Tong.’ The full happening in its real and +harmless face is now set forth for the first time. + +“Some weeks after the recorded arrangement had been arrived at by +Ah-Ping and Quen, when the taels in question had been expended upon the +Temple and were, therefore, infallibly beyond recall, the former person +chanced to be passing through the public garden in Lu-kwo when he heard +a voice lifted up in the expression of every unendurable feeling of +dejection to which one can give utterance. Stepping aside to learn the +cause of so unprepossessing a display of unrestrained agitation, and +in the hope that perhaps he might be able to use the incident in a +remunerative manner, Ah-Ping quickly discovered the unhappy being who, +entirely regardless of the embroidered silk robe which he wore, reclined +upon a raised bank of uninviting earth, and waved his hands from side to +side as his internal emotions urged him. + +“‘Quen-Ki-Tong!’ exclaimed Ah-Ping, not fully convinced that the fact +was as he stated it in spite of the image clearly impressed upon his +imagination; ‘to what unpropitious occurrence is so unlooked-for an +exhibition due? Are those who traffic in gold-leaf demanding a high and +prohibitive price for that commodity, or has some evil and vindicative +spirit taken up its abode within the completed portion of the Temple, +and by its offensive but nevertheless diverting remarks and actions +removed all semblance of gravity from the countenances of those who +daily come to admire the construction?’ + +“‘O thrice unfortunate Ah-Ping,’ replied Quen when he observed the +distinguishing marks of the person before him, ‘scarcely can this +greatly overwhelmed one raise his eyes to your open and intelligent +countenance; for through him you are on the point of experiencing a very +severe financial blow, and it is, indeed, on your account more than on +his own that he is now indulging in these outward signs of a grief too +far down to be expressed in spoken words.’ And at the memory of his +former occupation, Quen again waved his arms from side to side with +untiring assiduousness. + +“‘Strange indeed to this person’s ears are your words,’ said Ah-Ping, +outwardly unmoved, but with an apprehensive internal pain that he would +have regarded Quen’s display of emotion with an easier stomach if his +own taels were safely concealed under the floor of his inner chamber. +‘The sum which this one entrusted to you has, without any pretence +been expended upon the Temple, while the written paper concerning the +repayment bears the duty seal of the high ones at Peking. How, then, can +Ah-Ping suffer a loss at the hands of Quen-Ki-Tong?’ + +“‘Ah-Ping,’ said Quen, with every appearance of desiring that both +persons should regard the matter in a conciliatory spirit, ‘do not +permit the awaiting demons, which are ever on the alert to enter into +a person’s mind when he becomes distressed out of the common order of +events, to take possession of your usually discriminating faculties +until you have fully understood how this affair has come about. It is no +unknown thing for a person of even exceptional intelligence to reverse +his entire manner of living towards the end of a long and consistent +existence; the far-seeing and not lightly-moved Ah-Ping himself has +already done so. In a similar, but entirely contrary manner, the person +who is now before you finds himself impelled towards that which will +certainly bear a very unpresentable face when the circumstances +become known; yet by no other means is he capable of attaining his +greatly-desired object.’ + +“‘And to what end does that trend?’ demanded Ah-Ping, in no degree +understanding how the matter affected him. + +“‘While occupied with enterprises which those of an engaging and +complimentary nature are accustomed to refer to as charitable, +this person has almost entirely neglected a duty of scarcely less +importance--that of establishing an unending line, through which his +name and actions shall be kept alive to all time,’ replied Quen. ‘Having +now inquired into the matter, he finds that his only son, through whom +alone the desired result can be obtained, has become unbearably attached +to a maiden for whom a very large sum is demanded in exchange. The +thought of obtaining no advantage from an entire life of self-denial +is certainly unprepossessing in the extreme, but so, even to a more +advanced degree, is the certainty that otherwise the family monuments +will be untended, and the temple of domestic virtues become an early +ruin. This person has submitted the dilemma to the test of omens, and +after considering well the reply, he has decided to obtain the price of +the maiden in a not very honourable manner, which now presents itself, +so that Liao may send out his silk-bound gifts without delay.’ + +“‘It is an unalluring alternative,’ said Ah-Ping, whose only inside +thought was one of gratification that the exchange money for Ts’ain +would so soon be in his possession, ‘yet this person fails to perceive +how you could act otherwise after the decision of the omens. He now +understands, moreover, that the loss you referred to on his part was in +the nature of a figure of speech, as one makes use of thunderbolts +and delicately-scented flowers to convey ideas of harsh and amiable +passions, and alluded in reality to the forthcoming departure of his +daughter, who is, as you so versatilely suggested, the comfort and +riches of his old age.’ + +“‘O venerable, but at this moment somewhat obtuse, Ah-Ping,’ cried +Quen, with a recurrence to his former method of expressing his unfeigned +agitation, ‘is your evenly-balanced mind unable to grasp the essential +fact of how this person’s contemplated action will affect your own +celestial condition? It is a distressing but entirely unavoidable fact, +that if this person acts in the manner which he has determined upon, he +will be condemned to the lowest place of torment reserved for those +who fail at the end of an otherwise pure existence, and in this he +will never have an opportunity of meeting the very much higher placed +Ah-Ping, and of restoring to him the thirty-thousand taels as agreed +upon.’ + +“At these ill-destined words, all power of rigidness departed from +Ah-Ping’s limbs, and he sank down upon the forbidding earth by Quen’s +side. + +“‘O most unfortunate one who is now speaking,’ he exclaimed, when at +length his guarding spirit deemed it prudent to restore his power of +expressing himself in words, ‘happy indeed would have been your lot had +you been content to traffic in ginseng and other commodities of which +you have actual knowledge. O amiable Quen, this matter must be in some +way arranged without causing you to deviate from the entrancing paths of +your habitual virtue. Could not the very reasonable Liao be induced to +look favourably upon the attractions of some low-priced maiden, in which +case this not really hard-stomached person would be willing to advance +the necessary amount, until such time as it could be restored, at a very +low and unremunerative rate of interest?’ + +“‘This person has observed every variety of practical humility in the +course of his life,’ replied Quen with commendable dignity, ‘yet he now +finds himself totally unable to overcome an inward repugnance to the +thought of perpetuating his honoured name and race through the medium of +any low-priced maiden. To this end has he decided.’ + +“Those who were well acquainted with Ah-Ping in matters of commerce did +not hesitate to declare that his great wealth had been acquired by his +consistent habit of forming an opinion quickly while others hesitated. +On the occasion in question he only engaged his mind with the opposing +circumstances for a few moments before he definitely fixed upon the +course which he should pursue. + +“‘Quen-Ki-Tong,’ he said, with an evident intermingling of many very +conflicting emotions, ‘retain to the end this well-merited reputation +for unaffected honourableness which you have so fittingly earned. Few +in the entire Empire, with powers so versatilely pointing to an eminent +position in any chosen direction, would have been content to pass their +lives in an unremunerative existence devoted to actions of charity. Had +you selected an entirely different manner of living, this person has +every confidence that he, and many others in Lu-kwo, would by this time +be experiencing a very ignoble poverty. For this reason he will make +it his most prominent ambition to hasten the realization of the amiable +hopes expressed both by Liao and by Ts’ain, concerning their +future relationship. In this, indeed, he himself will be more than +exceptionally fortunate should the former one prove to possess even a +portion of the clear-sighted sagaciousness exhibited by his engaging +father.’ + + “VERSES COMPOSED BY A MUSICIAN OF LU-KWO, ON THE + OCCASION OF THE WEDDING CEREMONY OF + LIAO AND TS’AIN + + “Bright hued is the morning, the dark clouds have fallen; + At the mere waving of Quen’s virtuous hands they melted away. + Happy is Liao in the possession of so accomplished a parent, + Happy also is Quen to have so discriminating a son. + + “The two persons in question sit, side by side, upon an + embroidered couch, + Listening to the well-expressed compliments of those who pass to + and fro. + From time to time their eyes meet, and glances of a very + significant amusement pass between them; + Can it be that on so ceremonious an occasion they are recalling + events of a gravity-removing nature? + + “The gentle and rainbow-like Ts’ain has already arrived, + With the graceful motion of a silver carp gliding through a screen + of rushes, she moves among those who are assembled. + On the brow of her somewhat contentious father there rests the + shadow of an ill-repressed sorrow; + Doubtless the frequently-misjudged Ah-Ping is thinking of his + lonely hearth, now that he is for ever parted from that which + he holds most precious. + + “In the most commodious chamber of the house the elegant + wedding-gifts are conspicuously displayed; let us stand beside + the one which we have contributed, and point out its + excellence to those who pass by. + Surely the time cannot be far distant when the sound of many gongs + will announce that the very desirable repast is at length to + be partaken of.” + + + + +VIII. +THE VISION OF YIN, THE SON OF YAT HUANG + + +When Yin, the son of Yat Huang, had passed beyond the years assigned +to the pursuit of boyhood, he was placed in the care of the hunchback +Quang, so that he might be fully instructed in the management of the +various weapons used in warfare, and also in the art of stratagem, by +which a skilful leader is often enabled to conquer when opposed to an +otherwise overwhelming multitude. In all these accomplishments Quang +excelled to an exceptional degree; for although unprepossessing in +appearance he united matchless strength to an untiring subtlety. No +other person in the entire Province of Kiang-si could hurl a javelin so +unerringly while uttering sounds of terrifying menace, or could cause +his sword to revolve around him so rapidly, while his face looked +out from the glittering circles with an expression of ill-intentioned +malignity that never failed to inspire his adversary with irrepressible +emotions of alarm. No other person could so successfully feign to +be devoid of life for almost any length of time, or by his manner of +behaving create the fixed impression that he was one of insufficient +understanding, and therefore harmless. It was for these reasons that +Quang was chosen as the instructor of Yin by Yat Huang, who, without +possessing any official degree, was a person to whom marks of obeisance +were paid not only within his own town, but for a distance of many li +around it. + +At length the time arrived when Yin would in the ordinary course of +events pass from the instructorship of Quang in order to devote himself +to the commerce in which his father was engaged, and from time to time +the unavoidable thought arose persistently within his mind that although +Yat Huang doubtless knew better than he did what the circumstances of +the future required, yet his manner of life for the past years was not +such that he could contemplate engaging in the occupation of buying and +selling porcelain clay with feelings of an overwhelming interest. Quang, +however, maintained with every manifestation of inspired assurance that +Yat Huang was to be commended down to the smallest detail, inasmuch +as proficiency in the use of both blunt and sharp-edged weapons, and a +faculty for passing undetected through the midst of an encamped body +of foemen, fitted a person for the every-day affairs of life above all +other accomplishments. + +“Without doubt the very accomplished Yat Huan is well advised on this +point,” continued Quang, “for even this mentally short-sighted person +can call up within his understanding numerous specific incidents in the +ordinary career of one engaged in the commerce of porcelain clay when +such attainments would be of great remunerative benefit. Does the +well-endowed Yin think, for example, that even the most depraved person +would endeavour to gain an advantage over him in the matter of buying or +selling porcelain clay if he fully understood the fact that the one with +whom he was trafficking could unhesitatingly transfix four persons with +one arrow at the distance of a hundred paces? Or to what advantage would +it be that a body of unscrupulous outcasts who owned a field of inferior +clay should surround it with drawn swords by day and night, endeavouring +meanwhile to dispose of it as material of the finest quality, if the one +whom they endeavoured to ensnare in this manner possessed the power of +being able to pass through their ranks unseen and examine the clay at +his leisure?” + +“In the cases to which reference has been made, the possession of those +qualities would undoubtedly be of considerable use,” admitted Yin; +“yet, in spite of his entire ignorance of commercial matters, this one +has a confident feeling that it would be more profitable to avoid such +very doubtful forms of barter altogether rather than spend eight years +in acquiring the arts by which to defeat them. That, however, is a +question which concerns this person’s virtuous and engaging father more +than his unworthy self, and his only regret is that no opportunity has +offered by which he might prove that he has applied himself diligently +to your instruction and example, O amiable Quang.” + +It had long been a regret to Quang also that no incident of a disturbing +nature had arisen whereby Yin could have shown himself proficient in the +methods of defence and attack which he had taught him. This deficiency +he had endeavoured to overcome, as far as possible, by constructing +life-like models of all the most powerful and ferocious types of +warriors and the fiercest and most relentless animals of the forest, +so that Yin might become familiar with their appearance and discover in +what manner each could be the most expeditiously engaged. + +“Nevertheless,” remarked Quang, on an occasion when Yin appeared to be +covered with honourable pride at having approached an unusually large +and repulsive-looking tiger so stealthily that had the animal been +really alive it would certainly have failed to perceive him, “such +accomplishments are by no means to be regarded as conclusive in +themselves. To steal insidiously upon a destructively-included wild +beast and transfix it with one well-directed blow of a spear is attended +by difficulties and emotions which are entirely absent in the case of a +wickerwork animal covered with canvas-cloth, no matter how deceptive in +appearance the latter may be.” + +To afford Yin a more trustworthy example of how he should engage with +an adversary of formidable proportions, Quang resolved upon an ingenious +plan. Procuring the skin of a grey wolf, he concealed himself within it, +and in the early morning, while the mist-damp was still upon the ground, +he set forth to meet Yin, who had on a previous occasion spoken to +him of his intention to be at a certain spot at such an hour. In this +conscientious enterprise, the painstaking Quang would doubtless have +been successful, and Yin gained an assured proficiency and experience, +had it not chanced that on the journey Quang encountered a labourer of +low caste who was crossing the enclosed ground on his way to the rice +field in which he worked. This contemptible and inopportune person, +not having at any period of his existence perfected himself in the +recognized and elegant methods of attack and defence, did not act in +the manner which would assuredly have been adopted by Yin in similar +circumstances, and for which Quang would have been fully prepared. On +the contrary, without the least indication of what his intention was, +he suddenly struck Quang, who was hesitating for a moment what action to +take, a most intolerable blow with a formidable staff which he carried. +The stroke in question inflicted itself upon Quang upon that part of the +body where the head becomes connected with the neck, and would certainly +have been followed by others of equal force and precision had not Quang +in the meantime decided that the most dignified course for him to adopt +would be to disclose his name and titles without delay. Upon learning +these facts, the one who stood before him became very grossly and +offensively amused, and having taken from Quang everything of value +which he carried among his garments, went on his way, leaving Yin’s +instructor to retrace his steps in unendurable dejection, as he then +found that he possessed no further interest whatever in the undertaking. + +When Yat Huang was satisfied that his son was sufficiently skilled in +the various arts of warfare, he called him to his inner chamber, and +having barred the door securely, he placed Yin under a very binding oath +not to reveal, until an appointed period, the matter which he was going +to put before him. + +“From father to son, in unbroken line for ten generations, has such a +custom been observed,” he said, “for the course of events is not to be +lightly entered upon. At the commencement of that cycle, which period is +now fully fifteen score years ago, a very wise person chanced to incur +the displeasure of the Emperor of that time, and being in consequence +driven out of the capital, he fled to the mountains. There his subtle +discernment and the pure and solitary existence which he led resulted in +his becoming endowed with faculties beyond those possessed by ordinary +beings. When he felt the end of his earthly career to be at hand he +descended into the plain, where, in a state of great destitution and +bodily anguish, he was discovered by the one whom this person has +referred to as the first of the line of ancestors. In return for the +care and hospitality with which he was unhesitatingly received, +the admittedly inspired hermit spent the remainder of his days in +determining the destinies of his rescuer’s family and posterity. It +is an undoubted fact that he predicted how one would, by well-directed +enterprise and adventure, rise to a position of such eminence in the +land that he counselled the details to be kept secret, lest the envy +and hostility of the ambitious and unworthy should be raised. From this +cause it has been customary to reveal the matter fully from father +to son, at stated periods, and the setting out of the particulars in +written words has been severely discouraged. Wise as this precaution +certainly was, it has resulted in a very inconvenient state of things; +for a remote ancestor--the fifth in line from the beginning--experienced +such vicissitudes that he returned from his travels in a state of most +abandoned idiocy, and when the time arrived that he should, in turn, +communicate to his son, he was only able to repeat over and over again +the name of the pious hermit to whom the family was so greatly indebted, +coupling it each time with a new and markedly offensive epithet. The +essential details of the undertaking having in this manner passed beyond +recall, succeeding generations, which were merely acquainted with the +fact that a very prosperous future awaited the one who fulfilled the +conditions, have in vain attempted to conform to them. It is not an +alluring undertaking, inasmuch as nothing of the method to be pursued +can be learned, except that it was the custom of the early ones, who +held the full knowledge, to set out from home and return after a period +of years. Yet so clearly expressed was the prophecy, and so great the +reward of the successful, that all have eagerly journeyed forth when +the time came, knowing nothing beyond that which this person has now +unfolded to you.” + +When Yat Huang reached the end of the matter which it was his duty to +disclose, Yin for some time pondered the circumstances before replying. +In spite of a most engaging reverence for everything of a sacred nature, +he could not consider the inspired remark of the well-intentioned hermit +without feelings of a most persistent doubt, for it occurred to him that +if the person in question had really been as wise as he was represented +to be, he might reasonably have been expected to avoid the unaccountable +error of offending the enlightened and powerful Emperor under whom he +lived. Nevertheless, the prospect of engaging in the trade of porcelain +clay was less attractive in his eyes than that of setting forth upon a +journey of adventure, so that at length he expressed his willingness to +act after the manner of those who had gone before him. + +This decision was received by Yat Huang with an equal intermingling of +the feelings of delight and concern, for although he would have by no +means pleasurably contemplated Yin breaking through a venerable and +esteemed custom, he was unable to put entirely from him the thought of +the degrading fate which had overtaken the fifth in line who made the +venture. It was, indeed, to guard Yin as much as possible against +the dangers to which he would become exposed, if he determined on the +expedition, that the entire course of his training had been selected. In +order that no precaution of a propitious nature should be neglected, Yat +Huang at once despatched written words of welcome to all with whom he +was acquainted, bidding them partake of a great banquet which he was +preparing to mark the occasion of his son’s leave-taking. Every variety +of sacrifice was offered up to the controlling deities, both good and +bad; the ten ancestors were continuously exhorted to take Yin under +their special protection, and sets of verses recording his virtues and +ambitions were freely distributed among the necessitous and low-caste +who could not be received at the feast. + +The dinner itself exceeded in magnificence any similar event that +had ever taken place in Ching-toi. So great was the polished ceremony +observed on the occasion, that each guest had half a score of cups of +the finest apricot-tea successively placed before him and taken away +untasted, while Yat Huang went to each in turn protesting vehemently +that the honour of covering such pure-minded and distinguished persons +was more than his badly designed roof could reasonably bear, and +wittingly giving an entrancing air of reality to the spoken compliment +by begging them to move somewhat to one side so that they might escape +the heavy central beam if the event which he alluded to chanced to take +place. After several hours had been spent in this congenial occupation, +Yat Huang proceeded to read aloud several of the sixteen discourses on +education which, taken together, form the discriminating and infallible +example of conduct known as the Holy Edict. As each detail was dwelt +upon Yin arose from his couch and gave his deliberate testimony that +all the required tests and rites had been observed in his own case. +The first part of the repast was then partaken of, the nature of the +ingredients and the manner of preparing them being fully explained, +and in a like manner through each succeeding one of the four-and-forty +courses. At the conclusion Yin again arose, being encouraged by the +repeated uttering of his name by those present, and with extreme modesty +and brilliance set forth his manner of thinking concerning all subjects +with which he was acquainted. + +Early on the morning of the following day Yin set out on his travels, +entirely unaccompanied, and carrying with him nothing beyond a sum of +money, a silk robe, and a well-tried and reliable spear. For many days +he journeyed in a northerly direction, without encountering anything +sufficiently unusual to engage his attention. This, however, was +doubtless part of a pre-arranged scheme so that he should not be drawn +from a destined path, for at a small village lying on the southern shore +of a large lake, called by those around Silent Water, he heard of the +existence of a certain sacred island, distant a full day’s sailing, +which was barren of all forms of living things, and contained only a +single gigantic rock of divine origin and majestic appearance. Many +persons, the villagers asserted, had sailed to the island in the hope +of learning the portent of the rock, but none ever returned, and they +themselves avoided coming even within sight of it; for the sacred stone, +they declared, exercised an evil influence over their ships, and would, +if permitted, draw them out of their course and towards itself. For this +reason Yin could find no guide, whatever reward he offered, who would +accompany him; but having with difficulty succeeded in hiring a small +boat of inconsiderable value, he embarked with food, incense, and +materials for building fires, and after rowing consistently for nearly +the whole of the day, came within sight of the island at evening. +Thereafter the necessity of further exertion ceased, for, as they of the +village had declared would be the case, the vessel moved gently forward, +in an unswerving line, without being in any way propelled, and reaching +its destination in a marvellously short space of time, passed behind a +protecting spur of land and came to rest. It then being night, Yin did +no more than carry his stores to a place of safety, and after lighting +a sacrificial fire and prostrating himself before the rock, passed into +the Middle Air. + +In the morning Yin’s spirit came back to the earth amid the sound of +music of a celestial origin, which ceased immediately he recovered full +consciousness. Accepting this manifestation as an omen of Divine favour, +Yin journeyed towards the centre of the island where the rock stood, +at every step passing the bones of innumerable ones who had come on a +similar quest to his, and perished. Many of these had left behind them +inscriptions on wood or bone testifying their deliberate opinion of the +sacred rock, the island, their protecting deities, and the entire train +of circumstances, which had resulted in their being in such a condition. +These were for the most part of a maledictory and unencouraging nature, +so that after reading a few, Yin endeavoured to pass without being in +any degree influenced by such ill-judged outbursts. + +“Accursed be the ancestors of this tormented one to four generations +back!” was prominently traced upon an unusually large shoulder-blade. +“May they at this moment be simmering in a vat of unrefined dragon’s +blood, as a reward for having so undiscriminatingly reared the person +who inscribes these words only to attain this end!” “Be warned, O later +one, by the signs around!” Another and more practical-minded person had +written: “Retreat with all haste to your vessel, and escape while +there is yet time. Should you, by chance, again reach land through this +warning, do not neglect, out of an emotion of gratitude, to burn an +appropriate amount of sacrifice paper for the lessening of the torments +of the spirit of Li-Kao,” to which an unscrupulous one, who was plainly +desirous of sharing in the benefit of the requested sacrifice, without +suffering the exertion of inscribing a warning after the amiable manner +of Li-Kao, had added the words, “and that of Huan Sin.” + +Halting at a convenient distance from one side of the rock which, +without being carved by any person’s hand, naturally resembled the +symmetrical countenance of a recumbent dragon (which he therefore +conjectured to be the chief point of the entire mass), Yin built +his fire and began an unremitting course of sacrifice and respectful +ceremony. This manner of conduct he observed conscientiously for +the space of seven days. Towards the end of that period a feeling of +unendurable dejection began to possess him, for his stores of all kinds +were beginning to fail, and he could not entirely put behind him the +memory of the various well-intentioned warnings which he had received, +or the sight of the fleshless ones who had lined his path. On the eighth +day, being weak with hunger and, by reason of an intolerable thirst, +unable to restrain his body any longer in the spot where he had hitherto +continuously prostrated himself nine-and-ninety times each hour without +ceasing, he rose to his feet and retraced his steps to the boat in order +that he might fill his water-skins and procure a further supply of food. + +With a complicated emotion, in which was present every abandoned and +disagreeable thought to which a person becomes a prey in moments of +exceptional mental and bodily anguish, he perceived as soon as +he reached the edge of the water that the boat, upon which he was +confidently relying to carry him back when all else failed, had +disappeared as entirely as the smoke from an extinguished opium pipe. +At this sight Yin clearly understood the meaning of Li-Kao’s unregarded +warning, and recognized that nothing could now save him from adding his +incorruptible parts to those of the unfortunate ones whose unhappy +fate had, seven days ago, engaged his refined pity. Unaccountably +strengthened in body by the indignation which possessed him, and +inspired with a virtuous repulsion at the treacherous manner of behaving +on the part of those who guided his destinies, he hastened back to +his place of obeisance, and perceiving that the habitually placid and +introspective expression on the dragon face had imperceptibly changed +into one of offensive cunning and unconcealed contempt, he snatched up +his spear and, without the consideration of a moment, hurled it at +a score of paces distance full into the sacred but nevertheless very +unprepossessing face before him. + +At the instant when the presumptuous weapon touched the holy stone the +entire intervening space between the earth and the sky was filled with +innumerable flashes of forked and many-tongued lightning, so that the +island had the appearance of being the scene of a very extensive but +somewhat badly-arranged display of costly fireworks. At the same +time the thunder rolled among the clouds and beneath the sea in an +exceedingly disconcerting manner. At the first indication of these +celestial movements a sudden blindness came upon Yin, and all power of +thought or movement forsook him; nevertheless, he experienced an emotion +of flight through the air, as though borne upwards upon the back of a +winged creature. When this emotion ceased, the blindness went from him +as suddenly and entirely as if a cloth had been pulled away from his +eyes, and he perceived that he was held in the midst of a boundless +space, with no other object in view than the sacred rock, which had +opened, as it were, revealing a mighty throng within, at the sight of +whom Yin’s internal organs trembled as they would never have moved at +ordinary danger, for it was put into his spirit that these in whose +presence he stood were the sacred Emperors of his country from the +earliest time until the usurpation of the Chinese throne by the +devouring Tartar hordes from the North. + +As Yin gazed in fear-stricken amazement, a knowledge of the various Pure +Ones who composed the assembly came upon him. He understood that the +three unclad and commanding figures which stood together were the +Emperors of the Heaven, Earth, and Man, whose reigns covered a space of +more than eighty thousand years, commencing from the time when the world +began its span of existence. Next to them stood one wearing a robe of +leopard-skin, his hand resting upon a staff of a massive club, while on +his face the expression of tranquillity which marked his predecessors +had changed into one of alert wakefulness; it was the Emperor of Houses, +whose reign marked the opening of the never-ending strife between man +and all other creatures. By his side stood his successor, the Emperor of +Fire, holding in his right hand the emblem of the knotted cord, by which +he taught man to cultivate his mental faculties, while from his mouth +issued smoke and flame, signifying that by the introduction of fire he +had raised his subjects to a state of civilized life. + +On the other side of the boundless chamber which seemed to be contained +within the rocks were Fou-Hy, Tchang-Ki, Tcheng-Nung, and Huang, +standing or reclining together. The first of these framed the calendar, +organized property, thought out the eight Essential Diagrams, encouraged +the various branches of hunting, and the rearing of domestic animals, +and instituted marriage. From his couch floated melodious sounds +in remembrance of his discovery of the property of stringed woods. +Tchang-Ki, who manifested the property of herbs and growing plants, wore +a robe signifying his attainments by means of embroidered symbols. +His hand rested on the head of the dragon, while at his feet flowed a +bottomless canal of the purest water. The discovery of written letters +by Tcheng-Nung, and his ingenious plan of grouping them after the manner +of the constellations of stars, was emblemized in a similar manner, +while Huang, or the Yellow Emperor, was surrounded by ores of the +useful and precious metals, weapons of warfare, written books, silks +and articles of attire, coined money, and a variety of objects, all +testifying to his ingenuity and inspired energy. + +These illustrious ones, being the greatest, were the first to take +Yin’s attention, but beyond them he beheld an innumerable concourse of +Emperors who not infrequently outshone their majestic predecessors in +the richness of their apparel and the magnificence of the jewels which +they wore. There Yin perceived Hung-Hoang, who first caused the chants +to be collected, and other rulers of the Tcheon dynasty; Yong-Tching, +who compiled the Holy Edict; Thang rulers whose line is rightly called +“the golden,” from the unsurpassed excellence of the composed verses +which it produced; renowned Emperors of the versatile Han dynasty; and, +standing apart, and shunned by all, the malignant and narrow-minded +Tsing-Su-Hoang, who caused the Sacred Books to be burned. + +Even while Yin looked and wondered, in great fear, a rolling voice, +coming from one who sat in the midst of all, holding in his right hand +the sun, and in his left the moon, sounded forth, like the music of many +brass instruments playing in unison. It was the First Man who spoke. + +“Yin, son of Yat Huang, and creature of the Lower Part,” he said, +“listen well to the words I speak, for brief is the span of your +tarrying in the Upper Air, nor will the utterance I now give forth ever +come unto your ears again, either on the earth, or when, blindly groping +in the Middle Distance, your spirit takes its nightly flight. They who +are gathered around, and whose voices I speak, bid me say this: Although +immeasurably above you in all matters, both of knowledge and of power, +yet we greet you as one who is well-intentioned, and inspired with +honourable ambition. Had you been content to entreat and despair, as did +all the feeble and incapable ones whose white bones formed your pathway, +your ultimate fate would have in no wise differed from theirs. But +inasmuch as you held yourself valiantly, and, being taken, raised an +instinctive hand in return, you have been chosen; for the day to mute +submission has, for the time or for ever, passed away, and the hour is +when China shall be saved, not by supplication, but by the spear.” + +“A state of things which would have been highly unnecessary if I had +been permitted to carry out my intention fully, and restore man to his +prehistoric simplicity,” interrupted Tsin-Su-Hoang. “For that reason, +when the voice of the assemblage expresses itself, it must be understood +that it represents in no measure the views of Tsin-Su-Hoang.” + +“In the matter of what has gone before, and that which will follow +hereafter,” continued the Voice dispassionately, “Yin, the son +of Yat-Huang, must concede that it is in no part the utterance of +Tsin-Su-Hoang--Tsin-Su-Hoang who burned the Sacred Books.” + +At the mention of the name and offence of this degraded being a great +sound went up from the entire multitude--a universal cry of execration, +not greatly dissimilar from that which may be frequently heard in the +crowded Temple of Impartiality when the one whose duty it is to take up, +at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, +or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold +the winning number in the Annual State Lottery. So vengeance-laden and +mournful was the combined and evidently preconcerted wail, that Yin +was compelled to shield his ears against it; yet the inconsiderable +Tsin-Su-Hoang, on whose account it was raised, seemed in no degree to +be affected by it, he, doubtless, having become hardened by hearing +a similar outburst, at fixed hours, throughout interminable cycles of +time. + +When the last echo of the cry had passed away the Voice continued to +speak. + +“Soon the earth will again receive you, Yin,” it said, “for it is not +respectful that a lower one should be long permitted to gaze upon our +exalted faces. Yet when you go forth and stand once more among men this +is laid on you: that henceforth you are as a being devoted to a fixed +and unchanging end, and whatever moves towards the restoring of the +throne of the Central Empire the outcast but unalterably sacred line of +its true sovereigns shall have your arm and mind. By what combination +of force and stratagem this can be accomplished may not be honourably +revealed by us, the all-knowing. Nevertheless, omens and guidance shall +not be lacking from time to time, and from the beginning the weapon by +which you have attained to this distinction shall be as a sign of our +favour and protection over you.” + +When the Voice made an end of speaking the sudden blindness came upon +Yin, as it had done before, and from the sense of motion which he +experienced, he conjectured that he was being conveyed back to the +island. Undoubtedly this was the case, for presently there came upon him +the feeling that he was awakening from a deep and refreshing sleep, +and opening his eyes, which he now found himself able to do without +any difficulty, he immediately discovered that he was reclining at full +length on the ground, and at a distance of about a score of paces from +the dragon head. His first thought was to engage in a lengthy course +of self-abasement before it, but remembering the words which had been +spoken to him while in the Upper Air, he refrained, and even ventured to +go forward with a confident but somewhat self-deprecatory air, to +regain the spear, which he perceived lying at the foot of the rock. With +feelings of a reassuring nature he then saw that the very undesirable +expression which he had last beheld upon the dragon face had melted into +one of encouraging urbanity and benignant esteem. + +Close by the place where he had landed he discovered his boat, newly +furnished with wine and food of a much more attractive profusion than +that which he had purchased in the village. Embarking in it, he made as +though he would have returned to the south, but the spear which he held +turned within his grasp, and pointed in an exactly opposite direction. +Regarding this fact as an express command on the part of the Deities, +Yin turned his boat to the north, and in the space of two days’ +time--being continually guided by the fixed indication of the spear--he +reached the shore and prepared to continue his travels in the same +direction, upheld and inspired by the knowledge that henceforth he moved +under the direct influence of very powerful spirits. + + + + +IX. +THE ILL-REGULATED DESTINY OF KIN YEN, THE PICTURE-MAKER + + + As recorded by himself before his sudden departure from Peking, + owing to circumstances which are made plain in the following + narrative. + +There are moments in the life of a person when the saying of the wise +Ni-Hyu that “Misfortune comes to all men and to most women” is endowed +with double force. At such times the faithful child of the Sun is a prey +to the whitest and most funereal thoughts, and even the inspired +wisdom of his illustrious ancestors seems more than doubtful, while the +continued inactivity of the Sacred Dragon appears for the time to give +colour to the scoffs of the Western barbarian. A little while ago these +misgivings would have found no resting-place in the bosom of the writer. +Now, however--but the matter must be made clear from the beginning. + +The name of the despicable person who here sets forth his immature story +is Kin Yen, and he is a native of Kia-Lu in the Province of Che-Kiang. +Having purchased from a very aged man the position of Hereditary +Instructor in the Art of Drawing Birds and Flowers, he gave lessons in +these accomplishments until he had saved sufficient money to journey +to Peking. Here it was his presumptuous intention to learn the art of +drawing figures in order that he might illustrate printed leaves of +a more distinguished class than those which would accept what true +politeness compels him to call his exceedingly unsymmetrical pictures +of birds and flowers. Accordingly, when the time arrived, he disposed of +his Hereditary Instructorship, having first ascertained in the interests +of his pupils that his successor was a person of refined morals and +great filial piety. + +Alas! it is well written, “The road to eminence lies through the cheap +and exceedingly uninviting eating-houses.” In spite of this person’s +great economy, and of his having begged his way from Kia-Lu to Peking in +the guise of a pilgrim, journeying to burn incense in the sacred Temple +of Truth near that city, when once within the latter place his taels +melted away like the smile of a person of low class when he discovers +that the mandarin’s stern words were not intended as a jest. Moreover, +he found that the story-makers of Peking, receiving higher rewards +than those at Kia-Lu, considered themselves bound to introduce living +characters into all their tales, and in consequence the very ornamental +drawings of birds and flowers which he had entwined into a legend +entitled “The Last Fight of the Heaven-sent Tcheng”--a story which +had been entrusted to him for illustration as a test of his skill--was +returned to him with a communication in which the writer revealed his +real meaning by stating contrary facts. It therefore became necessary +that he should become competent in the art of drawing figures without +delay, and with this object he called at the picture-room of Tieng Lin, +a person whose experience was so great that he could, without discomfort +to himself, draw men and women of all classes, both good and bad. When +the person who is setting forth this narrative revealed to Tieng Lin the +utmost amount of money he could afford to give for instruction in the +art of drawing living figures, Tieng Lin’s face became as overcast as +the sky immediately before the Great Rains, for in his ignorance of +this incapable person’s poverty he had treated him with equality and +courtesy, nor had he kept him waiting in the mean room on the plea that +he was at that moment closeted with the Sacred Emperor. However, upon +receiving an assurance that a rumour would be spread in which the number +of taels should be multiplied by ten, and that the sum itself should be +brought in advance, Tieng Lin promised to instruct this person in the +art of drawing five characters, which, he said, would be sufficient +to illustrate all stories except those by the most expensive and +highly-rewarded story-tellers--men who have become so proficient that +they not infrequently introduce a score or more of living persons into +their tales without confusion. + +After considerable deliberation, this unassuming person selected the +following characters, judging them to be the most useful, and the most +readily applicable to all phases and situations of life: + +1. A bad person, wearing a long dark pigtail and smoking an opium pipe. +His arms to be folded, and his clothes new and very expensive. + +2. A woman of low class. One who removes dust and useless things from +the rooms of the over-fastidious and of those who have long nails; she +to be carrying her trade-signs. + +3. A person from Pe-ling, endowed with qualities which cause the +beholder to be amused. This character to be especially designed to go +with the short sayings which remove gravity. + +4. One who, having incurred the displeasure of the sublime Emperor, has +been decapitated in consequence. + +5. An ordinary person of no striking or distinguished appearance. One +who can be safely introduced in all places and circumstances without +great fear of detection. + +After many months spent in constant practice and in taking measurements, +this unenviable person attained a very high degree of proficiency, and +could draw any of the five characters without hesitation. With renewed +hope, therefore, he again approached those who sit in easy-chairs, and +concealing his identity (for they are stiff at bending, and when once +a picture-maker is classed as “of no good” he remains so to the end, in +spite of change), he succeeded in getting entrusted with a story by +the elegant and refined Kyen Tal. This writer, as he remembered with +distrust, confines his distinguished efforts entirely to the doings of +sailors and of those connected with the sea, and this tale, indeed, he +found upon reading to be the narrative of how a Hang-Chow junk and its +crew, consisting mostly of aged persons, were beguiled out of their +course by an exceedingly ill-disposed dragon, and wrecked upon an island +of naked barbarians. It was, therefore, with a somewhat heavy stomach +that this person set himself the task of arranging his five characters +as so to illustrate the words of the story. + +The sayings of the ancient philosopher Tai Loo are indeed very subtle, +and the truth of his remark, “After being disturbed in one’s dignity by +a mandarin’s foot it is no unusual occurrence to fall flat on the +face in crossing a muddy street,” was now apparent. Great as was the +disadvantage owing to the nature of the five characters, this became as +nothing when it presently appeared that the avaricious and clay-souled +Tieng Lin, taking advantage of the blindness of this person’s +enthusiasm, had taught him the figures so that they all gazed in the +same direction. In consequence of this it would have been impossible +that two should be placed as in the act of conversing together had not +the noble Kyen Tal been inspired to write that “his companions turned +from him in horror.” This incident the ingenious person who is recording +these facts made the subject of three separate drawings, and having +in one or two other places effected skilful changes in the writing, so +similar in style to the strokes of the illustrious Kyen Tal as to +be undetectable, he found little difficulty in making use of all his +characters. The risks of the future, however, were too great to be run +with impunity; therefore it was arranged, by means of money--for this +person was fast becoming acquainted with the ways of Peking--that an +emissary from one who sat in an easy-chair should call upon him for a +conference, the narrative of which appeared in this form in the _Peking +Printed Leaves of Thrice-distilled Truth:_ + + The brilliant and amiable young picture-maker Kin Yen, in spite of + the immediate and universal success of his accomplished efforts, + is still quite rotund in intellect, nor is he, if we may use a + form of speaking affected by our friends across the Hoang Hai, + “suffering from swollen feet.” A person with no recognized + position, but one who occasionally does inferior work of this + nature for us, recently surprised Kin Yen without warning, and + found him in his sumptuously appointed picture-room, busy with + compasses and tracing-paper. About the place were scattered in + elegant confusion several of his recent masterpieces. From the + subsequent conversation we are in a position to make it known that + in future this refined and versatile person will confine himself + entirely to illustrations of processions, funerals, armies on the + march, persons pursued by others, and kindred subjects which + appeal strongly to his imagination. Kin Yen has severe emotions on + the subject of individuality in art, and does not hesitate to + express himself forcibly with reference to those who are content + to degrade the names of their ancestors by turning out what he + wittily describes as “so much of varied mediocrity.” + +The prominence obtained by this pleasantly-composed notice--for it was +copied by others who were unaware of the circumstance of its origin--had +the desired effect. In future, when one of those who sit in easy-chairs +wished for a picture after the kind mentioned, he would say to his +lesser one: “Oh, send to the graceful and versatile Kin Yen; he becomes +inspired on the subject of funerals,” or persons escaping from prison, +or families walking to the temple, or whatever it might be. In that way +this narrow-minded and illiterate person was soon both looked at and +rich, so that it was his daily practice to be carried, in silk garments, +past the houses of those who had known him in poverty, and on these +occasions he would puff out his cheeks and pull his moustaches, looking +fiercely from side to side. + +True are the words written in the elegant and distinguished Book of +Verses: “Beware lest when being kissed by the all-seeing Emperor, you +step upon the elusive banana-peel.” It was at the height of eminence in +this altogether degraded person’s career that he encountered the being +who led him on to his present altogether too lamentable condition. + +Tien Nung is the earthly name by which is known she who combines all the +most illustrious attributes which have been possessed of women since the +days of the divine Fou-Hy. Her father is a person of very gross habits, +and lives by selling inferior merchandise covered with some of good +quality. Upon past occasions, when under the direct influence of Tien, +and in the hope of gaining some money benefit, this person may have +spoken of him in terms of praise, and may even have recommended friends +to entrust articles of value to him, or to procure goods on his advice. +Now, however, he records it as his unalterable decision that the father +of Tien Nung is by profession a person who obtains goods by stratagem, +and that, moreover, it is impossible to gain an advantage over him on +matters of exchange. + +The events that have happened prove the deep wisdom of Li Pen when +he exclaimed “The whitest of pigeons, no matter how excellent in the +silk-hung chamber, is not to be followed on the field of battle.” Tien +herself was all that the most exacting of persons could demand, but +her opinions on the subject of picture-making were not formed by heavy +thought, and it would have been well if this had been borne in mind by +this person. One morning he chanced to meet her while carrying open in +his hands four sets of printed leaves containing his pictures. + +“I have observed,” said Tien, after the usual personal inquiries had +been exchanged, “that the renowned Kin Yen, who is the object of the +keenest envy among his brother picture-makers, so little regards the +sacredness of his accomplished art that never by any chance does he +depict persons of the very highest excellence. Let not the words of an +impetuous maiden disarrange his digestive organs if they should seem +too bold to the high-souled Kin Yen, but this matter has, since she has +known him, troubled the eyelids of Tien. Here,” she continued, taking +from this person’s hand one of the printed leaves which he was carrying, +“in this illustration of persons returning from extinguishing a fire, +is there one who appears to possess those qualities which appeal to +all that is intellectual and competitive within one? Can it be that the +immaculate Kin Yen is unacquainted with the subtle distinction between +the really select and the vastly ordinary? Ah, undiscriminating Kin Yen! +are not the eyelashes of the person who is addressing you as threads +of fine gold to junk’s cables when compared with those of the extremely +commonplace female who is here pictured in the art of carrying a bucket? +Can the most refined lack of vanity hide from you the fact that your own +person is infinitely rounder than this of the evilly-intentioned-looking +individual with the opium pipe? O blind Kin Yen!” + +Here she fled in honourable confusion, leaving this person standing in +the street, astounded, and a prey to the most distinguished emotions of +a complicated nature. + +“Oh, Tien,” he cried at length, “inspired by those bright eyes, narrower +than the most select of the three thousand and one possessed by the +sublime Buddha, the almost fallen Kin Yen will yet prove himself worthy +of your esteemed consideration. He will, without delay, learn to draw +two new living persons, and will incorporate in them the likenesses +which you have suggested.” + +Returning swiftly to his abode, he therefore inscribed and despatched +this letter, in proof of his resolve: + +“To the Heaven-sent human chrysanthemum, in whose body reside the +Celestial Principles and the imprisoned colours of the rainbow. + +“From the very offensive and self-opinionated picture-maker. + +“Henceforth this person will take no rest, nor eat any but the commonest +food, until he shall have carried out the wishes of his one Jade Star, +she whose teeth he is not worthy to blacken. + +“When Kin Yen has been entrusted with a story which contains a being in +some degree reflecting the character of Tien, he will embellish it with +her irreproachable profile and come to hear her words. Till then he bids +her farewell.” + +From that moment most of this person’s time was necessarily spent in +learning to draw the two new characters, and in consequence of this he +lost much work, and, indeed, the greater part of the connexion which +he had been at such pains to form gradually slipped away from him. Many +months passed before he was competent to reproduce persons resembling +Tien and himself, for in this he was unassisted by Tieng Lin, and his +progress was slow. + +At length, being satisfied, he called upon the least fierce of those +who sit in easy-chairs, and requested that he might be entrusted with a +story for picture-making. + +“We should have been covered with honourable joy to set in operation +the brush of the inspired Kin Yen,” replied the other with agreeable +condescension; “only at the moment, it does not chance that we have +before us any stories in which funerals, or beggars being driven from +the city, form the chief incidents. Perhaps if the polished Kin Yen +should happen to be passing this ill-constructed office in about six +months’ time--” + +“The brush of Kin Yen will never again depict funerals, or labourers +arranging themselves to receive pay or similar subjects,” exclaimed this +person impetuously, “for, as it is well said, ‘The lightning discovers +objects which the paper-lantern fails to reveal.’ In future none +but tales dealing with the most distinguished persons shall have his +attention.” + +“If this be the true word of the dignified Kin Yen, it is possible that +we may be able to animate his inspired faculties,” was the response. +“But in that case, as a new style must be in the nature of an +experiment, and as our public has come to regard Kin Yen as the +great exponent of Art Facing in One Direction, we cannot continue the +exceedingly liberal payment with which we have been accustomed to reward +his elegant exertions.” + +“Provided the story be suitable, that is a matter of less importance,” + replied this person. + +“The story,” said the one in the easy-chair, “is by the refined +Tong-king, and it treats of the high-minded and conscientious doubts +of one who would become a priest of Fo. When preparing for this +distinguished office he discovers within himself leanings towards +the religion of Lao-Tse. His illustrious scruples are enhanced by his +affection for Wu Ping, who now appears in the story.” + +“And the ending?” inquired this person, for it was desirable that the +two should marry happily. + +“The inimitable stories of Tong-king never have any real ending, and +this one, being in his most elevated style, has even less end than +most of them. But the whole narrative is permeated with the odour of +joss-sticks and honourable high-mindedness, and the two characters are +both of noble birth.” + +As it might be some time before another story so suitable should be +offered, or one which would afford so good an opportunity of wafting +incense to Tien, and of displaying her incomparable outline in dignified +and magnanimous attitudes, this was eagerly accepted, and for the next +week this obscure person spent all his days and nights in picturing the +lovely Tien and his debased self in the characters of the nobly-born +young priest of Fo and Wu Ping. The pictures finished, he caused them to +be carefully conveyed to the office, and then, sitting down, spent +many hours in composing the following letter, to be sent to Tien, +accompanying a copy of the printed leaves wherein the story and his +drawing should appear: + +“When the light has for a period been hidden from a person, it is +no uncommon thing for him to be struck blind on gazing at the sun; +therefore, if the sublime Tien values the eyes of Kin Yen, let her hide +herself behind a gauze screen on his approach. + +“The trembling words of Tien have sunk deep into the inside of Kin Yen +and become part of his being. Never again can he depict persons of the +quality and in the position he was wont to do. + +“With this he sends his latest efforts. In each case he conceives his +drawings to be the pictures of the written words; in the noble Tien’s +case it is undoubtedly so, in his own he aspires to it. Doubtless the +unobtrusive Tien would make no claim to the character and manner of +behaving of the one in the story, yet Kin Yen confidently asserts that +she is to the other as the glove is to the hand, and he is filled with +the most intelligent delight at being able to exhibit her in her true +robes, by which she will be known to all who see her, in spite of her +dignified protests. Kin Yen hopes; he will come this evening after +sunset.” + +The week which passed between the finishing of the pictures and the +appearance of the eminent printed leaves containing them was the longest +in this near-sighted person’s ill-spent life. But at length the day +arrived, and going with exceedingly mean haste to the place of sale, he +purchased a copy and sent it, together with the letter of his honourable +intention, on which he had bestowed so much care, to Tien. + +Not till then did it occur to this inconsiderable one that the +impetuousness of his action was ill-judged; for might it not be that the +pictures were evilly-printed, or that the delicate and fragrant words +painting the character of the one who now bore the features of Tien had +undergone some change? + +To satisfy himself, scarce as taels had become with him, he purchased +another copy. + +There are many exalted sayings of the wise and venerable Confucious +constructed so as to be of service and consolation in moments of strong +mental distress. These for the greater part recommend tranquillity +of mind, a complete abnegation of the human passions and the +like behaviour. The person who is here endeavouring to bring this +badly-constructed account of his dishonourable career to a close +pondered these for some moments after twice glancing through the matter +in the printed leaves, and then, finding the faculties of speech and +movement restored to him, procured a two-edged knife of distinguished +brilliance and went forth to call upon the one who sits in an +easy-chair. + +“Behold,” said the lesser one, insidiously stepping in between this +person an the inner door, “my intellectual and all-knowing chief is not +here to-day. May his entirely insufficient substitute offer words of +congratulation to the inspired Kin Yen on his effective and striking +pictures in this week’s issue?” + +“His altogether insufficient substitute,” answered this person, with +difficulty mastering his great rage, “may and shall offer words of +explanation to the inspired Kin Yen, setting forth the reason of his +pictures being used, not with the high-minded story of the elegant +Tong-king for which they were executed, but accompanying exceedingly +base, foolish, and ungrammatical words written by Klan-hi, the Peking +remover of gravity--words which will evermore brand the dew-like Tien +as a person of light speech and no refinement”; and in his agony this +person struck the lacquered table several times with his elegant knife. + +“O Kin Yen,” exclaimed the lesser one, “this matter rests not here. It +is a thing beyond the sphere of the individual who is addressing you. +All he can tell is that the graceful Tong-king withdrew his exceedingly +tedious story for some reason at the final moment, and as your eminent +drawings had been paid for, my chief of the inner office decided to use +them with this story of Klan-hi. But surely it cannot be that there is +aught in the story to displease your illustrious personality?” + +“Judge for yourself,” this person said, “first understanding that the +two immaculate characters figuring as the personages of the narrative +are exact copies of this dishonoured person himself and of the willowy +Tien, daughter of the vastly rich Pe-li-Chen, whom he was hopeful of +marrying.” + +Selecting one of the least offensive of the passages in the work, this +unhappy person read the following immature and inelegant words: + +“This well-satisfied writer of printed leaves had a highly-distinguished +time last night. After Chow had departed to see about food, and the junk +had been fastened up at the lock of Kilung, on the Yang-tse-Kiang, he +and the round-bodied Shang were journeying along the narrow path by the +river-side when the right leg of the graceful and popular person who +is narrating these events disappeared into the river. Suffering no +apprehension in the dark, but that the vanishing limb was the left leg +of Shang, this intelligent writer allowed his impassiveness to melt away +to an exaggerated degree; but at that moment the circumstance became +plain to the round-bodied Shang, who was in consequence very grossly +amused at the mishap and misapprehension of your good lord, the writer, +at the same time pointing out the matter as it really was. Then it +chanced that there came by one of the maidens who carry tea and jest for +small sums of money to the sitters at the little tables with round white +tops, at which this remarkable person, the confidant of many mandarins, +ever desirous of displaying his priceless power of removing gravity, +said to her: + +“‘How much of gladness, Ning-Ning? By the Sacred Serpent this is plainly +your night out.’ + +“Perceiving the true facts of the predicament of this commendable +writer, she replied: + +“‘Suffer not your illustrious pigtail to be removed, venerable Wang; for +in this maiden’s estimation it is indeed your night in.’ + +“There are times when this valued person wonders whether his method +of removing gravity be in reality very antique or quite new. On such +occasions the world, with all its schools, and those who interfere in +the concerns of others, continues to revolve around him. The wondrous +sky-lanterns come out silently two by two like to the crystallized music +of stringed woods. Then, in the mystery of no-noise, his head becomes +greatly enlarged with celestial and highly-profound thoughts; his +groping hand seems to touch matter which may be written out in his +impressive style and sold to those who print leaves, and he goes home to +write out such.” + +When this person looked up after reading, with tears of shame in his +eyes, he perceived that the lesser one had cautiously disappeared. +Therefore, being unable to gain admittance to the inner office, he +returned to his home. + +Here the remark of the omniscient Tai Loo again fixes itself upon the +attention. No sooner had this incapable person reached his house than he +became aware that a parcel had arrived for him from the still adorable +Tien. Retiring to a distance from it, he opened the accompanying letter +and read: + +“When a virtuous maiden has been made the victim of a heartless jest or +a piece of coarse stupidity at a person’s hands, it is no uncommon thing +for him to be struck blind on meeting her father. Therefore, if the +degraded and evil-minded Kin Yen values his eyes, ears, nose, pigtail, +even his dishonourable breath, let him hide himself behind a fortified +wall at Pe-li-Chen’s approach. + +“With this Tien returns everything she has ever accepted from Kin Yen. +She even includes the brace of puppies which she received anonymously +about a month ago, and which she did not eat, but kept for reasons of +her own--reasons entirely unconnected with the vapid and exceedingly +conceited Kin Yen.” + +As though this letter, and the puppies of which this person now heard +for the first time, making him aware of the existence of a rival lover, +were not enough, there almost immediately arrived a letter from Tien’s +father: + +“This person has taken the advice of those skilled in extorting money by +means of law forms, and he finds that Kin Yen has been guilty of a grave +and highly expensive act. This is increased by the fact that Tien had +conveyed his seemingly distinguished intentions to all her friends, +before whom she now stands in an exceedingly ungraceful attitude. The +machinery for depriving Kin Yen of all the necessaries of existence +shall be put into operation at once.” + +At this point, the person who is now concluding his obscure and +commonplace history, having spent his last piece of money on joss-sticks +and incense-paper, and being convinced of the presence of the spirits of +his ancestors, is inspired to make the following prophecies: That Tieng +Lin, who imposed upon him in the matter of picture-making, shall come +to a sudden end, accompanied by great internal pains, after suffering +extreme poverty; that the one who sits in an easy-chair, together with +his lesser one and all who make stories for them, shall, while sailing +to a rice feast during the Festival of Flowers, be precipitated into the +water and slowly devoured by sea monsters, Klan-hi in particular being +tortured in the process; that Pel-li-Chen, the father of Tien, shall +be seized with the dancing sickness when in the presence of the august +Emperor, and being in consequence suspected of treachery, shall, to +prove the truth of his denials, be submitted to the tests of boiling +tar, red-hot swords, and of being dropped from a great height on to the +Sacred Stone of Goodness and Badness, in each of which he shall fail to +convince his judges or to establish his innocence, to the amusement of +all beholders. + +These are the true words of Kin Yen, the picture-maker, who, having +unweighed his mind and exposed the avaricious villainy of certain +persons, is now retiring by night to a very select and hidden spot in +the Khingan Mountains. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1076 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1077-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1077-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7b758cac --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1077-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5291 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1077 *** + +THE MIRROR OF KONG HO + +By Ernest Bramah + + + + A lively and amusing collection of letters on western living + written by Kong Ho, a Chinese gentleman. These addressed to + his homeland, refer to the Westerners in London as + barbarians and many of the aids to life in our society give + Kong Ho endless food for thought. These are things such as + the motor car and the piano; unknown in China at this time. + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +Estimable barbarian,--Your opportune suggestion that I should permit the +letters, wherein I have described with undeviating fidelity the customs +and manner of behaving of your accomplished race, to be set forth in +the form of printed leaves for all to behold, is doubtless +gracefully-intentioned, and this person will raise no barrier of dissent +against it. + +In this he is inspired by the benevolent hope that his immature +compositions may to one extent become a model and a by-word to those who +in turn visit his own land of Fragrant Purity; for with exacting care +he has set down no detail that has not come under his direct observation +(although it is not to be denied that here or there he may, perchance, +have misunderstood an involved allusion or failed to grasp the inner +significance of an act), so that Impartiality necessarily sways his +brush, and Truth lurks within his inkpot. + +In an entirely contrary manner some, who of recent years have gratified +us with their magnanimous presence, have returned to their own countries +not only with the internal fittings of many of our palaces (which, +being for the most part of a replaceable nature, need be only trivially +referred to, the incident, indeed, being generally regarded as a most +cordial and pressing variety of foreign politeness), but also--in +the lack of highly-spiced actuality--with subtly-imagined and truly +objectionable instances. These calumnies they have not hesitated to +commit to the form of printed books, which, falling into the hands +of the ignorant and undiscriminating, may even suggest to their +ill-balanced minds a doubt whether we of the Celestial Empire really are +the wisest, bravest, purest, and most enlightened people in existence. + +As a parting, it only remains to be said that, in order to maintain +unimpaired the quaint-sounding brevity and archaic construction of your +prepossessing language, I have engraved most of the remarks upon the +receptive tablets of my mind as they were uttered. To one who can repeat +the Five Classics without stumbling this is a contemptible achievement. +Let it be an imposed obligation, therefore, that you retain these +portions unchanged as a test and a proof to all who may read. Of my +own deficient words, I can only in truest courtesy maintain that any +alteration must of necessity make them less offensively commonplace than +at present they are. + +The Sign and immutable Thumb-mark of, + + KONG HO + +By a sure hand to the House of one Ernest Bramah. + + + + +THE MIRROR OF KONG HO + + + + +LETTER I + + + Concerning the journey. The unlawful demons invoked by + certain of the barbarians; their power and the manner of + their suppression. Suppression. The incredible obtuseness of + those who attend within tea-houses. The harmonious attitude + of a person of commerce. + + +Venerated Sire (at whose virtuous and well-established feet an unworthy +son now prostrates himself in spirit repeatedly),-- + +Having at length reached the summit of my journey, that London of which +the merchants from Canton spoke so many strange and incredible things, I +now send you filial salutations three times increased, and in accordance +with your explicit command I shall write all things to you with an +unvarnished brush, well assured that your versatile object in committing +me to so questionable an enterprise was, above all, to learn the +truth of these matters in an undeviating and yet open-headed spirit of +accuracy and toleration. + +Of the perils incurred while travelling in the awe-inspiring devices by +which I was transferred from shore to shore and yet further inland, +of the utter absence of all leisurely dignity on the part of +those controlling their movements, and of the almost unnatural +self-opinionatedness which led them to persist in starting at a stated +and prearranged time, even when this person had courteously pointed +out to them by irrefutable omens that neither the day nor the hour was +suitable for the venture, I have already written. It is enough to assert +that a similar want of prudence was maintained on every occasion, and, +as a result, when actually within sight of the walls of this city, we +were involved for upwards of an hour in a very evilly-arranged yellow +darkness, which, had we but delayed for a day, as I strenuously advised +those in authority after consulting the Sacred Flat and Round Sticks, we +should certainly have avoided. + +Concerning the real nature of the devices by which the ships are +propelled at sea and the carriages on land, I must still unroll a blank +mind until I can secretly, and without undue hazard, examine them more +closely. If, as you maintain, it is the work of captive demons hidden +away among their most inside parts, it must be admitted that these +usually intractable beings are admirably trained and controlled, and +I am wide-headed enough to think that in this respect we +might--not-withstanding our nine thousand years of civilised +refinement--learn something of the methods of these barbarians. The +secret, however, is jealously guarded, and they deny the existence of +any supernatural forces; but their protests may be ignored, for there +is undoubtedly a powerful demon used in a similar way by some of the +boldest of them, although its employment is unlawful. A certain kind of +chariot is used for the occupation of this demon, and those who wish +to invoke it conceal their faces within masks of terrifying design, and +cover their hands and bodies with specially prepared garments, without +which it would be fatal to encounter these very powerful spirits. +While yet among the habitations of men, and in crowded places, they are +constrained to use less powerful demons, which are lawful, but when +they reach the unfrequented paths they throw aside all restraint, and, +calling to their aid the forbidden spirit (which they do by secret +movements of the hands), they are carried forward by its agency at a +speed unattainable by merely human means. By day the demon looks forth +from three white eyes, which at night have a penetrating brilliance +equal to the fiercest glances of the Sacred Dragon in anger. If any +person incautiously stands in its way it utters a warning cry of +intolerable rage, and should the presumptuous one neglect to escape to +the roadside and there prostrate himself reverentially before it, it +seizes him by the body part and contemptuously hurls him bruised and +unrecognisable into the boundless space of the around. Frequently +the demon causes the chariot to rise into the air, and it is credibly +asserted by discriminating witnesses (although this person only sets +down as incapable of denial that which he has actually beheld) that +some have maintained an unceasing flight through the middle air for a +distance of many li. Occasionally the captive demon escapes from the +bondage of those who have invoked it, through some incautious gesture +or heretical remark on their part, and then it never fails to use them +grievously, casting them to the ground wounded, consuming the chariot +with fire, and passing away in the midst of an exceedingly debased +odour, by which it is always accompanied after the manner of our own +earth spirits. + +This being, as this person has already set forth, an unlawful demon on +account of its power when once called up, and the admitted uncertainty +of its movements, those in authority maintain a stern and inexorable +face towards the practice. To entrap the unwary certain persons (chosen +on account of their massive outlines, and further protected from evil +influences by their pure and consistent habits) keep an unceasing watch. +When one of them, himself lying concealed, detects the approach of such +a being, he closely observes the position of the sun, and signals to +the other a message of warning. Then the second one, shielded by the +sanctity of his life and rendered inviolable by the nature of his +garments--his sandals alone being capable of overturning any demon from +his path should it encounter them--boldly steps forth into the road and +holds out before him certain sacred emblems. So powerful are these +that at the sight the unlawful demon confesses itself vanquished, and +although its whole body trembles with ill-contained rage, and the air +around is poisoned by its discreditable exhalation, it is devoid of +further resistance. Those in the chariot are thereupon commanded to +dismiss it, and being bound in chains they are led into the presence of +certain lesser mandarins who administer justice from a raised dais. + +“Behold!” exclaims the chief of the captors, when the prisoners have +been placed in obsequious attitudes before the lesser mandarins, “thus +the matter chanced: The honourable Wang, although disguised under the +semblance of an applewoman, had discreetly concealed himself by the +roadside, all but his head being underneath a stream of stagnant water, +when, at the eighth hour of the morning, he beheld these repulsive +outcasts approaching in their chariot, carried forward by the diabolical +vigour of the unlawful demon. Although I had stationed myself several li +distant from the accomplished Wang, the chariot reached me in less than +a breathing space of time, those inside assuming their fiercest and most +aggressive attitudes, and as they came repeatedly urging the demon to +increased exertions. Their speed exceeded that of the swallow in +his hymeneal flight, all shrubs and flowers by the wayside withered +incapably at the demon’s contaminating glance, running water ceased +to flow, and the road itself was scorched at their passage, the earth +emitting a dull bluish flame. These facts, and the times and the +distances, this person has further inscribed in a book which thus +disposes of all possible defence. Therefore, O lesser mandarins, let +justice be accomplished heavily and without delay; for, as the proverb +truly says, ‘The fiercer the flame the more useless the struggles of the +victim.’” + +At this point the prisoners frequently endeavour to make themselves +heard, protesting that in the distance between the concealed Wang and +the one who stands accusing them they had thrice stopped to repair their +innermost details, had leisurely partaken of food and wine, and had +also been overtaken, struck, and delayed by a funeral procession. But so +great is the execration in which these persons are held, that although +murderers by stealth, outlaws, snatchers from the body, and companies of +men who by strategy make a smaller sum of money appear to be larger, can +all freely testify their innocence, raisers of this unlawful demon +must not do so, and they are beaten on the head with chains until they +desist. + +Then the lesser mandarins, raising their voices in unison, exclaim, +“The amiable Tsay-hi has reported the matter in a discreet and impartial +spirit. Hear our pronouncement: These raisers of illegal spirits +shall each contribute ten taels of gold, which shall be expended in +joss-sticks, in purifying the road which they have scorched, and in +alleviating the distress of the poor and virtuous of both sexes. The +praiseworthy Tsay-hi, moreover, shall embroider upon his sleeve an +honourable sign in remembrance of the event. Let drums now be beat, and +our verdict loudly proclaimed throughout the province.” + +These things, O my illustrious father (although on account of my +contemptible deficiencies of style much may seem improbable to your +all-knowing mind), these things I write with an unbending brush; for +I set down only that which I have myself seen, or read in their own +printed records. Doubtless it will occur to one of your preternatural +intelligence that our own system of administering justice, whereby the +person who can hire the greater number of witnesses is reasonably held +to be in the right, although perhaps not absolutely infallible, is in +every way more convenient; but, as it is well said, “To the blind, night +is as acceptable as day.” + +Henceforth you will have no hesitation in letting it be known throughout +Yuen-ping that these foreign barbarians do possess secret demons, in +spite of their denials. Doubtless I shall presently discover others no +less powerful. + +With honourable distinction this person has at length grasped the +essential details of the spoken language here--not sufficiently well, +indeed, to make himself understood on most occasions, or even to +understand others, but enough to perceive clearly when he fails to +become intelligible or when they experience a like difficulty with him. +Upon an earlier occasion, before he had made so much progress, being one +day left to his own resources, and feeling an internal lack, he entered +what appeared to be a tea-shop of reputable demeanour, and, seating +himself at one of the little marble tables, he freely pronounced the +carefully-learned word “rice” to the attending nymph. To put aside all +details of preparation (into which, indeed, this person could not +enter) he waved his hand gracefully, at the same time smiling with an +expression of tolerant acquiescence, as of one who would say that what +was good enough to be cooked and offered by so entrancing a maiden +was good enough to be eaten by him. After remaining in unruffled +tranquillity for the full portion of an hour, and observing that no +other person around had to wait above half that period, this one began +to perceive that the enterprise was not likely to terminate in a +manner satisfactory to himself; so that, leaving this place with a few +well-chosen phrases of intolerable regret in his own tongue, he entered +another, and conducted himself in a like fashion.... Towards evening, +with an unperturbed exterior, but materially afflicted elsewhere, this +person seated himself within the eleventh tea-shop, and, pointing first +towards his own constituents of digestion, then at the fire, and +lastly in an upward direction, thereby signified to any not of stunted +intellect that he had reached such a condition of mind and body that he +was ready to consume whatever the ruling deities were willing to allot, +whether boiled, baked, roast, or suspended from a skewer. In this +resolve nothing would move him, until--after many maidens had approached +with outstretched hands and gestures of despair--there presently entered +a person wearing the helmet of a warrior and the manner of a high +official, who spoke strongly, yet persuasively, of the virtues of +immediate movement and a quiet and reposeful bearing. + +Assuredly a people who devote so little attention to the study of food, +and all matters connected with it, must inevitably remain barbaric, +however skilfully they may feign a superficial refinement. It is said, +although I do not commit this matter to my own brush, that among them +are more books composed on subjects which have no actual existence +than on cooking, and, incredible as it may appear, to be exceptionally +round-bodied confers no public honour upon the individual. Should a +favourable occasion present itself, there are many who do not scruple to +jest upon the subject of food, or, what is incalculably more depraved, +upon the scarcity of it. + +Nevertheless, there are exceptions of a highly distinguished radiance. +Among these must be accounted one into whose presence this person was +recently led by our polished and harmonious friend Quang-Tsun, the +merchant in tea and spices. This versatile person, whose business-name +is spoken of as Jones Bob-Jones, is worthy of all benignant respect, +and in a really enlightened country would doubtless be raised to a +more exalted position than that of a breaker of outsides (an occupation +difficult to express adequately in the written language of a country +where it is unknown), for his face is like the sun setting in the time +of harvest, his waist garment excessive, and the undoubted symmetry of +his middle portions honourable in the extreme. So welcome in my eyes, +after witnessing an unending stream of concave and attenuated barbarian +ghosts, was the sight of these perfections of Jones Bob-Jones, that +instead of the formal greeting of this Island--the unmeaning “How do +you do it?”--I shook hands cordially with myself, and exclaimed +affectionately in our own language, “Illimitable felicities! How is your +stomach?” + +“Well,” replied Jones Bob-Jones, after Quang-Tsun had interpreted this +polite salutation to his understanding, “since you mention it, that’s +just the trouble; but I’m going on pretty well, thanks. I’ve tried most +of the advertised things, and now my doctor has put me practically on a +bread-and-water course--clear soup, boiled fish, plain joint, no sweets, +a crumb of cheese, and a bare three glasses of Hermitage.” + +During this amiable remark (of which, as it is somewhat of a technical +nature, I was unable to grasp the contained significance until the +agreeable Quang-Tsun had subsequently repeated it several times for my +retention), I maintained a consistent expression of harmonious agreement +and gratified esteem (suitable, I find, for all like occasions), and +then, judging from the sympathetic animation of Jones Bob-Jones’s +countenance, that it had not improbably been connected with food, +I discreetly introduced the subject of sea-snails, preserved in the +essence of crushed peaches, by courteously inquiring whether he had ever +partaken of such a delicacy. + +“No,” replied the liberal-minded person, when--encouraged by the +protruding eagerness of his eyes at the mention of the viand--I had +further spoken of the refined flavour of the dish, and explained the +manner of its preparation. “I can’t say that I have, but it sounds +uncommonly good--something like turtle, I should imagine. I’ll see if +they can get it for me at Pimm’s.” + +This filial tribute goes by a trusty hand, in the person of one Ki Nihy, +who is shortly committing himself to the protection of his ancestors +and the voracity of the unbounded Bitter Waters; and with brightness +and gold it will doubtless reach you in the course of twelve or eighteen +moons. The superstitious here, this person may describe, when they wish +to send messages from one to another, inscribe upon the outer cover a +written representation of the one whose habitation they require, and +after affixing a small paper talisman, drop it into a hole in the +nearest wall, in the hope that it may be ultimately conveyed to the +appointed spot, either by the services of the charitably-disposed +passer-by, or by the intervention of the beneficent deities. + +With a multiplicity of greetings and many abject expressions of a +conscious inferiority, and attested by an unvarying thumb-mark. + + KONG HO. + (Effete branch of a pure and magnanimous trunk.) + + +To Kong Ah-Paik, reclining beneath the sign of the Lead Tortoise, in a +northerly direction beyond the Lotus Beds outside the city of Yuen-ping. +The Middle Flowery Kingdom. + + + + +LETTER II + + + Concerning the ill-destined manner of existence of the hound + Hercules. The thoughtlessly-expressed desire of the + entrancing maiden and its effect upon a person of + susceptible refinement. The opportune (as it may yet be + described) visit of one Herbert. The behaviour of those + around. Reflections. + + +Venerated Sire (whose large right hand is continuously floating in +spirit over the image of this person’s dutiful submission),-- + +Doubtless to your all-consuming prescience, it will at once become plain +that I have abandoned the place of residence from which I directed my +former badly-written and offensively-constructed letter, the house of +the sympathetic and resourceful Maidens Blank, where in return for an +utterly inadequate sum of money, produced at stated intervals, this very +much inferior person was allowed to partake of a delicately-balanced and +somewhat unvarying fare in the company of the engaging of both sexes, +and afterwards to associate on terms of honourable equality with them in +the chief apartment. The reason and manner of this one’s departure +are in no degree formidable to his refined manner of conducting any +enterprise, but arose partly from an insufficient grasp of the more +elaborate outlines of a confessedly involved language, and still more +from a too excessive impetuousness in carrying out what at the time he +believed to be the ambition of one who had come to exercise a melodious +influence over his most internal emotions. Well remarked the Sage, “A +piece of gold may be tried between the teeth; a written promise to pay +may be disposed of at a sacrifice to one more credulous; but what shall +be said of the wind, the Hoang Ho, and the way of a woman?” + +To contrive a pitfall for this short-sighted person’s immature feet, +certain malicious spirits had so willed it that the chief and more +autumnal of the Maidens Blank (who, nevertheless, wore an excessively +flower-like name), had long lavished herself upon the possession of an +obtuse and self-assertive hound, which was in the habit of gratifying +this inconsiderable person and those who sat around by continually +depositing upon their unworthy garments details of its outer surface, +and when the weather was more than usually cold, by stretching its +graceful and refined body before the fire in such a way as to ensure +that no one should suffer from a too acute exposure to the heat. From +these causes, and because it was by nature a hound which even on the +darkest night could be detected at a more than reasonable distance away, +while at all times it did not hesitate to shake itself freely into +the various prepared viands, this person (and doubtless others also) +regarded it with an emotion very unfavourable towards its prolonged +existence; but observing from the first that those who permitted +themselves to be deposited upon, and their hands and even their faces to +be hound-tongue-defiled with the most externally cheerful spirit of +word suppression, invariably received the most desirable of the allotted +portions of food, he judged it prudent and conducive to a settled +digestion to greet it with favourable terms and actions, and to refer +frequently to its well-displayed proportions, and to the agile dexterity +which it certainly maintained in breathing into the contents of every +dish. Thus the matter may be regarded as being positioned for a space of +time. + +One evening I returned at the appointed gong-stroke of dinner, and was +beginning, according to my custom, to greet the hound with ingratiating +politeness, when the one of chief authority held up a reproving hand, at +the same time exclaiming: + +“No, Mr. Kong, you must not encourage Hercules with your amiable +condescension, for just now he is in very bad odour with us all.” + +“Undoubtedly,” replied this person, somewhat puzzled, nevertheless, that +the imperfection should thus be referred to openly by one who hitherto +had not hesitated to caress the hound with most intimate details, +“undoubtedly the surrounding has a highly concentrated acuteness +to-night, but the ever-present characteristic of the hound Hercules is +by no means new, for whenever he is in the room--” + +At this point it is necessary to explain that the ceremonial etiquette +of these barbarian outcasts is both conflicting and involved. Upon +most of the ordinary occasions of life to obtrude oneself within the +conversation of another is a thing not to be done, yet repeatedly when +this unpretentious person has been relating his experience or inquiring +into the nature and meaning of certain matters which he has witnessed, +he has become aware that his words have been obliterated, as it were, +and his remarks diverted from their original intention by the sudden and +unanticipated desire of those present to express themselves loudly on +some topic of not really engrossing interest. Not infrequently on such +occasions every one present has spoken at once with concentrated anxiety +upon the condition of the weather, the atmosphere of the room, the hour +of the day, or some like detail of contemptible inferiority. At other +times maidens of unquestionable politeness have sounded instruments of +brass or stringed woods with unceasing vigour, have cast down ornaments +of china, or even stood upon each other’s--or this person’s--feet with +assumed inelegance. When, therefore, in the midst of my agreeable remark +on the asserted no fragrance of the hound Hercules, a gentleman of +habitual refinement struck me somewhat heavily on the back of the head +with a reclining seat which he was conveying across the room for the +acceptance of a lady, and immediately overwhelmed me with apologies +of almost unnecessary profusion, my mind at once leapt to an inspired +conclusion, and smiling acquiescently I bowed several times to each +person to convey to them an admission of the undoubted fact that to the +wise a timely omen before the storm is as effective as a thunderbolt +afterwards. + +It chanced that there was present the exceptionally prepossessing maiden +to whom this person has already referred. So varied and ornate were her +attractions that it would be incompetent in one of my less than average +ability to attempt an adequate portrayal. She had a light-coloured name +with the letters so harmoniously convoluted as to be quite beyond my +inferior power of pronunciation, so that if I wished to refer to her +in her absence I had to indicate the one I meant by likening her to +a full-blown chrysanthemum, a piece of rare jade, an ivory pagoda of +unapproachable antiquity, or some other object of admitted grace. Even +this description may scarcely convey to you the real extent of her +elegant personality; but in her presence my internal organs never failed +to vibrate with a most entrancing uncertainty, and even now, at the +recollection of her virtuous demeanour, I am by no means settled within +myself. + +“Well,” exclaimed this melodious vision, with sympathetic tact, “if +every one is going to disown poor Hercules because he has eaten all our +dinners, I shall be quite willing to have him, for he is a dzear ole +loveykins, wasn’t ums?” (This, O my immaculate and dignified sire, which +I transcribe with faithful undeviation, appears to be the dialect of +a remote province, spoken only by maidens--both young and of autumnal +solitude--under occasional mental stress; as of a native of Shan-si +relapsing without consciousness into his uncouth tongue after passing a +lifetime in the Capital.) “Don’t you think so too, Mr. Kong?” + +“When the sun shines the shadow falls, for truly it is said, ‘To the +faithful one even the voice of the corncrake at evening speaks of his +absent love,’” replied this person, so engagingly disconcerted at +being thus openly addressed by the maiden that he retained no delicate +impression of what she said, or even of what he was replying, beyond +an unassuming hope that the nature of his feelings might perchance be +inoffensively revealed to her in the semblance of a discreet allegory. + +“Perhaps,” interposed a person of neglected refinement, turning towards +the maiden, “you would like to have a corncrake also, to remind you of +Mr. Kong?” + +“I do not know what a corncrake is like,” replied the maiden with +commendable dignity. “I do not think so, however, for I once had a pair +of canaries, and I found them very unsatisfying, insipid creatures. But +I should love to have a little dog I am sure, only Miss Blank won’t hear +of it.” + +“Kong Ho,” thought this person inwardly, “not in vain have you burnt +joss sticks unceasingly, for the enchanting one has said into your +eyes that she would love to partake of a little dog. Assuredly we have +recently consumed the cold portion of sheep on more occasions than a +strict honourableness could require of those who pay a stated sum at +regular intervals, and the change would be a welcome one. As she truly +says, the flavour even of canaries is trivial and insignificant by +comparison.” During the period of dinner--which consisted of eggs and +green herbs of the field--this person allowed the contemplation to grow +within him, and inspired by a most pleasant and disinterested ambition +to carry out the expressed wishes of the one who had spoken, he +determined that the matter should be unobtrusively arranged despite the +mercenary opposition of the Maidens Blank. + +This person had already learned by experience that dogs are rarely if +ever exposed for sale in the stalls of the meat venders, the reason +doubtless being that they are articles of excessive luxury and reserved +by law for the rich and powerful. Those kept by private persons are +generally closely guarded when they approach a desirable condition of +body, and the hound Hercules would not prove an attractive dish to those +who had known him in life. Nevertheless, it is well said, “The Great +Wall is unsurmountable, but there are many gaps through,” and that +same evening I was able to carry the first part of my well-intentioned +surprise into effect. + +The matter now involves one named Herbert, who having exchanged gifts +of betrothal with a maiden staying at the house, was in the habit of +presenting himself openly, when he was permitted to see her, after the +manner of these barbarians. (Yet even of them the more discriminating +acknowledge that our customs are immeasurably superior; for when I +explained to the aged father of the Maidens Blank that among us the +marriage rites are irrevocably performed before the bride is seen +unveiled by man, he sighed heavily and exclaimed that the parents of +this country had much to learn.) + +The genial-minded Herbert had already acquired for himself the +reputation of being one who ceaselessly removes the gravity of others, +both by word and action, and from the first he selected this obscure +person for his charitable purpose to a most flattering extent. Not only +did he--on the pretext that his memory was rebellious--invariably greet +me as “Mr. Hong Kong,” but on more than one occasion he insisted, with +mirth-provoking reference to certain details of my unbecoming garments, +that I must surely have become confused and sent a Mrs. Hong Kong +instead of myself, and frequently he undermined the gravity of all most +successfully by pulling me backwards suddenly by the pigtail, with the +plea that he imagined he was picking up his riding-whip. This attractive +person was always accompanied by a formidable dog--of convex limbs, +shrunken lip, and suspicious demeanour--which he called Influenza, to +the excessive amusement of those to whom he related its characteristics. +For some inexplicable reason from the first it regarded my lower apparel +as being unsuitable for the ordinary occasions of life, and in spite +of the low hissing call by which its master endeavoured to attract +its attention to himself, it devoted its energies unceasingly to the +self-imposed task of removing them fragment by fragment. Nevertheless it +was a dog of favourable size and condition, and it need not therefore be +a matter for surprise that when the intellectual person Herbert took +his departure on the day in question it had to be assumed that it had +already preceded him. Having accomplished so much, this person found +little difficulty in preparing it tastefully in his own apartment, and +making the substitution on the following day. + +Although his mind was confessedly enlarged at the success of his +venture, and his hopes most ornamentally coloured at the thought of the +adorable one’s gratified esteem when she discovered how expertly her +wishes had been carried out, this person could not fail to notice that +the Maiden Blank was also materially agitated when she distributed the +contents of the dish before her. + +“Will you, of your enlightened courtesy, accept, and overlook the +deficiencies of, a portion of rabbit-pie, O high-souled Mr. Kong?” she +inquired gracefully when this insignificant person was reached, and, +concealing my many-hued emotion beneath an impassive face, I bowed +agreeably as I replied, “To the beggar, black bread is a royal course.” + +“WHAT pie did you say, dear?” whispered another autumnal maiden, when +all had partaken somewhat, and at her words a most consistently acute +silence involved the table. + +“I--I don’t quite know,” replied the one of the upper end, becoming +excessively devoid of complexion; and restraining her voice she +forthwith sent down an attending slave to inquire closely. + +At this point a person of degraded ancestry endeavoured to remove the +undoubted cloud of depression by feigning the nocturnal cry of the +domestic cat; but in this he was not successful, and a maiden opposite, +after fixedly regarding a bone on her plate, withdrew suddenly, +embracing herself as she went. A moment later the slave returned, +proclaiming aloud that the dish which had been prepared for the occasion +had now been accidentally discovered by the round-bodied cook beneath +the cushions of an arm-chair (a spot by no means satisfactory to this +person’s imagination had the opportunities at his disposal been more +diffuse). + +“What, then, is this of which we have freely partaken?” cried they +around, and, in the really impressive silence which followed, an +inopportune person discovered a small silver tablet among the fragments +upon his plate, and, taking it up, read aloud the single word, +“Influenza.” + +During the day, and even far into the uncounted gong-strokes of the +time of darkness, this person had frequently remained in a fascinated +contemplation of the moment when he should reveal himself and stand up +to receive the benevolently-expressed congratulations of all who paid +an agreed sum at fixed intervals, and, particularly, the dazzling though +confessedly unsettling glance-thanks of the celestially-formed maiden +who had explicitly stated that she was desirous of having a little +dog. Now, however, when this part of the enterprise ought to have taken +place, I found myself unable to evade the conclusion that some important +detail of the entire scheme had failed to agree harmoniously with the +rest, and, had it been possible, I would have retired with unobtrusive +tact and permitted another to wear my honourable acquirements. But, for +some reason, as I looked around I perceived that every eye was fixed +upon me with what at another time would have been a most engaging +unanimity, and, although I bowed with undeterred profusion, and +endeavoured to walk out behind an expression of all-comprehensive +urbanity that had never hitherto failed me, a person of unsympathetic +outline placed himself before the door, and two others, standing one +on each side of me, gave me to understand that a recital of the full +happening was required before I left the room. + +It is hopeless to expect a display of refined intelligence at the hands +of a people sunk in barbarism and unacquainted with the requirements of +true dignity and the essentials of food preparation. On the manner +of behaving of the male portion of those present this person has +no inducement whatever to linger. Even the maiden for whom he had +accomplished so much, after the nature of the misunderstanding had been +made plain to her, uttered only a single word of approval, which, on +subsequently consulting a book of interpretations, this person found to +indicate: “A person of weak intellect; one without an adequate sense of +the proportion and fitness of things; a buffoon; a jester; a compound of +gooseberries scalded and crushed with cream”; but although each of these +definitions may in a way be regarded as applicable, he is still unable +to decide which was the precise one intended. + +With salutations of filial regard, and in a spirit seven times refined +by affliction and purified by vain regrets. + + KONG HO. + +(Upon whose tablet posterity will perchance inscribe the titles, +“Ill-destined but Misjudged.”) + + + + +LETTER III + + + Concerning the virtuous amusements of both old and young. + The sit-round games. The masterpiece of the divine Li Tang, + and its reception by all, including that same Herbert. + + +Venerated Sire (whose breadth of mind is so well developed as to take +for granted boundless filial professions, which, indeed, become vapid by +a too frequent reiteration),-- + +Your amiable inquiry as to how the barbarians pass their time, when not +employed in affairs of commerce or in worshipping their ancestors, has +inspired me to examine the matter more fully. At the same time your +pleasantly-composed aphorism that the interior nature of persons does +not vary with the colour of their eyes, and that if I searched I should +find the old flying kites and the younger kicking feather balls or +working embroidery, according to their sex, does not appear to be +accurately sustained. + +The lesser ones, it is true, engage in a variety of sumptuous +handicrafts, such as the scorching of wooden tablets with the semblance +of a pattern, and gouging others with sharpened implements into a crude +relief; depicting birds and flowers upon the surface of plates, rending +leather into shreds, and entwining beaten iron, brass, and copper into a +diversity of most ingenious complications; but when I asked a maiden of +affectionate and domesticated appearance whether she had yet worked her +age-stricken father’s coffin-cloth, she said that the subject was one +upon which she declined to jest, and rapidly involving herself in a +profuse display of emotion, she withdrew, leaving this one aghast. + +To enable my mind to retranquillise, I approached a youth +of highly-gilded appearance, and, with many predictions of +self-inferiority, I suggested that we should engage in the stimulating +rivalry of feather ball. When he learned, however, that the diversion +consisted in propelling upwards a feather-trimmed chip by striking it +against the side of the foot, he candidly replied that he was afraid +he had grown out of shuttle-cock, but did not mind, if I was vigorously +inclined, “taking me on for a set of yang-pong.” + +Old men here, it is said, do not fly kites, and they affect to despise +catching flies for amusement, although they frequently go fishing. +Struck by this peculiarity, I put it in the form of an inquiry to one +of venerable appearance, why, when at least five score flies were +undeniably before his eyes, he preferred to recline for lengthy periods +by the side of a stream endeavouring to snare creatures of whose +existence he himself had never as yet received any adequate proof. +Doubtless in my contemptible ignorance, however, I used some word +inaccurately, for those who stood around suffered themselves to become +amused, and the one in question replied with no pretence of amiable +condescension that the jest had already been better expressed a hundred +times, and that I would find the behind parts of a printed leaf +called “Punch” in the bookcase. Not being desirous of carrying on +a conversation of which I felt that I had misplaced the most highly +rectified ingredient, I bowed repeatedly, and replied affably that +wisdom ruled his left side and truth his right. + +It was upon this same occasion that a young man of unprejudiced +wide-mindedness, taking me aside, asserted that the matter had not been +properly set forth when I was inquiring about kites. Both old and young +men, he continued, frequently endeavoured to fly kites, even in the +involved heart of the city. He had tried once or twice himself, but +never with encouraging success, chiefly, he was told, because his paper +was not good enough. Many people, he added, would not scruple to mislead +me with evasive ambiguity on this one subject owing to an ill-balanced +conception of what constituted true dignity, but he was unwilling +that his countrymen should be thought by mine to be sunk into a deeper +barbarism than actually existed. + +His warning was not inopportune. Seated next to this person at a later +period was a maiden from whose agreeably-poised lips had hitherto +proceeded nothing but sincerity and fact. Watching her closely I asked +her, as one who only had a languid interest either one way or the +other, whether her revered father or her talented and richly-apparelled +brothers ever spent their time flying kites about the city. In spite of +a most efficient self-control her colour changed at my words, and her +features trembled for a moment, but quickly reverting to herself she +replied that she thought not; then--as though to subdue my suspicions +more completely--that she was sure they did not, as the kites would +certainly frighten the horses and the appointed watchmen of the street +would not allow it. She confessed, however, with unassumed candour, that +the immediate descendants of her sister were gracefully proficient in +the art. + +From this, great and enlightened one, you will readily perceive +how misleading an impression might be carried away by a person +scrupulously-intentioned but not continually looking both ways, when +placed among a people endowed with the uneasy suspicion of the barbarian +and struggling to assert a doubtful refinement. Apart from this, there +has to be taken into consideration their involved process of reasoning, +and the unexpectedly different standards which they apply to every +subject. + +At the house of the Maidens Blank, when the evening was not spent in +listening to melodious voices and the harmony of stringed woods, it was +usual to take part in sit-round games of various kinds. (And while it +is on his brush this person would say with commendable pride that a +well-trained musician among us can extort more sound from a hollow +wooden pig, costing only a few cash, than the most skilful here ever +attain on their largest instrument--a highly-lacquered coffin on legs, +filled with bells and hidden springs, and frequently sold for a thousand +taels.) + +Upon a certain evening, at the conclusion of one sit-round game which +involved abrupt music, a barrier of chairs, and the exhilarating +possibility of being sat upon by the young and vivacious in their zeal, +a person of the company turned suddenly to the one who is communicating +with you and said enticingly, “Why did Birdcage Walk?” + +Not judging from his expression that this was other than a polite +inquiry on a matter which disturbed his repose, I was replying that the +manifestation was undoubtedly the work of a vexatious demon which had +taken up its abode in the article referred to, when another, by my side, +cried aloud, “Because it envied Queen Anne’s Gate”; and without a pause +cast back the question, “Who carved The Poultry?” + +In spite of the apparent simplicity of the demand it was received by +all in an attitude of complicated doubt, and this person was considering +whether he might not acquire distinction by replying that such an office +fell by custom to the lot of the more austere Maiden Blank, when the +very inadequate reply, “Mark Lane with St. Mary’s Axe,” was received +with applause and some observations in a half-tone regarding the +identity of the fowl. + +By the laws of the sit-round games the one who had last spoken now +proclaimed himself, demanding to know, “Why did Battersea Rise?” but the +involvement was evidently superficial, for the maiden at whose memory +this one’s organs still vibrate ignobly at once replied, “Because it +thought Clapham Common,” in turn inquiring, “What made the Marble Arch?” + +Although I would have willingly sacrificed to an indefinite extent to be +furnished with the preconcerted watchword, so that I might have enlarged +myself in the eyes of this consecrated being’s unapproachable esteem, +I had already decided that the competition was too intangible for +one whose thoughts lay in well-defined parallel lines, and it fell to +another to reply, “To hear Salisbury Court.” + +This, O my broad-minded ancestor of the first degree--an aimless +challenge coupled with the name of one recognisable spot, replied to by +the haphazard retort of another place, frequently in no way joined to +it, was regarded as an exceptionally fascinating sit-round game by a +company of elderly barbarians! + +“What couldn’t Walbrook?” it might be, and “Such Cheapside,” would be +deemed a praiseworthy solution. “When did King’s Bench Walk?” would +be asked, and to reply, “When Gray’s Inn Road,” covered the one with +overpowering acclamation. “Bevis Marks only an Inner Circle at The +Butts; why?” was a demand of such elaborate complexity that (although +this person was lured out of his self-imposed restraint by the silence +of all round, and submerging his intelligence to an acquired level, +unobtrusively suggested, “Because Aylesbury ducks, perchance”) it fell +to the one propounding to announce, “Because St. John’s Wood Shoot-up +Hill.” + +Admittedly it is written, “When the shutter is fastened the girdle is +loosened,” but it is as truly said, “Not in the head, nor yet in the +feet, but in the organs of digestion does wisdom reside,” and even in +jesting the middle course of neither an excessive pride nor an absolute +weak-mindedness is to be observed. With what concrete pangs of acute +mental distress would this person ever behold his immaculate progenitor +taking part in a similar sit-round game with an assembly of worthy +mandarins, the one asking questions of meaningless import, as “Why +did they Hangkow?” and another replying in an equal strain of no +consecutiveness, “In order to T’in Tung!” + +At length a person who is spoken of as having formerly been the captain +of a band of warriors turned to me with an unsuspected absence of +ferocity and said, “Your countrymen are very proficient in the art +of epigram, are they not, Mr. Kong? Will you not, in turn, therefore, +favour us with an example?” Whereupon several maidens exclaimed with +engaging high temper, “Oh yes; do ask us some funny Chinese riddles, Mr. +Kong!” + +“Assuredly there are among us many classical instances of the light +sayings which require matching,” I replied, gratified that I should have +the opportunity of showing their superiority. “One, harmonious +beyond the blend of challenge and retort, is as follows--‘The Phoenix +embroidered upon the side of the shoe: When the shoe advances the +Phoenix leaps forward.’” + +“Oh!” cried several of the maidens, and from the nature of their glances +it might reasonably be gathered that already they began to recognise the +inferiority of their own sayings. + +“Is that the question, or the answer, or both?” asked a youth of +unfledged maturity, and to hide their conscious humiliation several +persons allowed their faces to melt away. + +“That which has been expressed,” replied this person with an ungrudging +toleration, “is the first or question portion of the contrast. The +answer is that which will be supplied by your honourable condescension.” + +“But,” interposed one of the maidens, “it isn’t really a question, you +know, Mr. Kong.” + +“In a way of regarding it, it may be said to be question, inasmuch as it +requires an answer to establish the comparison. The most pleasing answer +is that which shall be dissimilar in idea, and yet at the same time +maintain the most perfect harmony of parallel thought,” I replied. “Now +permit your exceptional minds to wander in a forest of similitudes: ‘The +Phoenix embroidered upon the side of the shoe: When the shoe advances +the Phoenix leaps forward.’” + +“Oh, if that’s all you want,” said the one Herbert, who by an ill +destiny chanced to be present, “‘The red-hot poker held before the Cat’s +nose: When the poker advances the Cat leaps backwards.’” + +“Oh, very good!” cried several of those around, “of course it naturally +would. Is that right, Mr. Kong?” + +“If the high-souled company is satisfied, then it must be, for there is +no conclusive right or wrong--only an unending search for that which +is most gem-set and resourceful,” replied this person, with an +ever-deepening conviction of no enthusiasm towards the sit-round game. +“But,” he added, resolved to raise for a moment the canopy of a mind +swan-like in its crystal many-sidedness, and then leave them to their +own ineptitude, “for five centuries nothing has been judged equal to +the solution offered by Li Tang. At the time he was presented with +a three-sided banner of silk with the names of his eleven immediate +ancestors embroidered upon it in seven colours, and his own name is +still handed down in imperishable memory.” + +“Oh, do tell us what it was,” cried many. “It must have been clever.” + +“‘The Dragon painted upon the face of the fan: When the fan is shaken +the Dragon flies upwards,’” replied this person. + +It cannot be denied that this was received with an attitude of +respectful melancholy strikingly complimentary to the wisdom of the +gifted Li Tang. But whether it may be that the time was too short to +assimilate the more subtle delicacies of the saying, or whether the +barbarian mind is inherently devoid of true balance, this person was +panged most internally to hear one say to another as he went out, “Do +you know, I really think that Herbert’s was much the better answer of +the two--more realistic, and what you might expect at the pantomime.” + + +A like inability to grasp with a clear and uninvolved vision, permeates +not only the triviality of a sit-round game but even the most important +transactions of existence. + +Shortly after his arrival in the Island, this person was initiated +by the widely-esteemed Quang-Tsun into the private life of one whose +occupation was that of a Law-giver, where he frequently drank tea +on terms of mutual cordiality. Upon such an occasion he was one day +present, conversing with the lesser ones of the household--the head +thereof being absent, setting forth the Law in the Temple--when one of +the maidens cried out with amiable vivacity, “Why, Mr. Kong, you say +such consistently graceful things of the ladies you have met over here, +that we shall expect you to take back an English wife with you. But +perhaps you are already married in China?” + +“The conclusion is undeviating in its accuracy,” replied this person, +unable to evade the allusion. “To Ning, Hia-Fa and T’ain Yen, as the +matter stands.” + +“Ning Hia-Fa An T’ain Yen!” exclaimed the wife of the Law-giver +pleasantly. “What an important name. Can you pardon our curiosity and +tell us what she is like?” + +“Ning, Hia-Fa AND T’ain Yen,” repeated this person, not submitting to +be deprived of the consequence of two wives without due protest. “Three +names, three wives. Three very widely separated likes.” + +At this in no way boastfully uttered statement the agreeably outlined +surface of the faces around variated suddenly, the effect being one +which I have frequently observed in the midst of my politest expressions +of felicity. For a moment, indeed, I could not disguise from myself that +the one who had made the inquiry stretched forth her lotus-like hand +towards the secret spring by which it is customary to summon the +attending slaves from the underneath parts, but restraining herself +with the manner of one who would desire to make less of a thing that it +otherwise might seem, she turned to me again. + +“How nice!” she murmured. “What a pity you did not bring them all with +you, Mr. Kong. They would have been a great acquisition.” + +“Yet it must be well weighed,” I replied, not to be out-complimented +touching one another, “that here they would have met so many fine and +superior gentlemen that they might have become dissatisfied with my less +than average prepossessions.” + +“I wonder if they did not think of that in your case, and refuse to let +you come,” said one of the maidens. + +“The various persons must not be regarded as being on their all fours,” + I replied, anxious that there should be no misunderstanding on this +point. “They, of course, reside within one inner chamber, but there +would be no duplicity in this one adding indefinitely to the number.” + +“Of course not; how silly of me!” exclaimed the maiden. “What splendid +musical evenings you can have. But tell me, Mr. Kong (ought it not to be +Messrs. Kong, mamma?), if a girl married you here would she be legally +married to you in China?” + +“Oh yes,” replied this person positively. + +“But could you not, by your own laws, have the marriage set aside +whenever you wished?” + +“Assuredly,” I admitted. “It is so appointed.” + +“Then how could she be legally married?” she persisted, with really +unbecoming suspicion. + +“Legally married, legally unmarried,” replied this person, quite +distressed within himself at not being able to understand the difficulty +besetting her. “All perfectly legal and honourably observed.” + +“I think, Gwendoline--” said the one of authority, and although the +matter was no further expressed, by an instinct which he was powerless +to avert, this person at once found himself rising with ceremonious +partings. + +Not desiring that the obstacle should remain so inadequately swept +away, I have turned my presumptuous footsteps in the direction of the +Law-giver’s house on several later occasions, but each time the word of +the slave guarding the door has been that they of the household, +down even to those of the most insignificant degree of kinship, have +withdrawn to a distant and secluded spot. + +With renewed assurances that the enterprise is being gracefully +conducted, however ill-digested and misleading these immature +compositions may appear. + + KONG HO. + + + + +LETTER IV + + + Concerning a desire to expatiate upon subjects of + philosophical importance and its no accomplishment. Three + examples of the mental concavity sunk into by these + barbarians. An involved episode which had the outward + appearance of being otherwise than what it was. + + +Venerated Sire (whose genial liberality on all necessary occasions +is well remembered by this person in his sacrifices, with the titles +“Benevolent” and “Open-sleeved”),-- + +I had it in my head at one time to tell you somewhat of the Classics +most reverenced in this country, of the philosophical opinions which +prevail, and to enlighten you generally upon certain other subjects of +distinguished eminence. As the deities arranged, however, it chanced +that upon my way to a reputable quarter of the city where the actuality +of these matters can be learnt with the least evasion, my footsteps were +drawn aside by an incident which now permeates my truth-laden brush to +the exclusion of all else. + +But in the first place, if it be permitted for a thoroughly +untrustworthy son to take so presumptuous a liberty with an unvaryingly +sagacious father, let this one entreat you to regard everything he +writes in a very wide-headed spirit of looking at the matter from all +round. My former letters will have readily convinced you that much that +takes place here, even among those who can afford long finger-nails, +would not be tolerated in Yuen-ping, and in order to avoid the suspicion +that I am suffering from a serious injury to the head, or have become +a prey to a conflicting demon, it will be necessary to continue an +even more highly-sustained tolerant alertness. This person himself has +frequently suffered the ill effects of rashly assuming that because he +is conducting the adventure in a prepossessing spirit his efforts will +be honourably received, as when he courteously inquired the ages of a +company of maidens into whose presence he was led, and complimented the +one whom he was desirous of especially gratifying by assuring her that +she had every appearance of being at least twice the nine-and-twenty +years to which she modestly laid claim. + +Upon another occasion I entered a barber’s stall, and finding it +oppressively hot within, I commanded the attendant to carry a reclining +stool into the street and there shave my lower limbs and anoint my head. +As he hesitated to obey--doubtless on account of the trivial labour +involved--I repeated my words in a tone of fuller authority, holding out +the inducement of a just payment when he complied, and assuring him that +he would certainly be dragged before the nearest mandarin and tortured +if he held his joints stiffly. At this he evidently understood his +danger, for obsequiously protesting that he was only a barber of very +mean attainments, and that his deformed utensils were quite inadequate +for the case, he very courteously directed me in inquire for a public +chariot bound for a quarter called Colney Hatch (the place of commerce, +it is reasonable to infer, of the higher class barbers), and, seating +myself in it, instruct the attendant to put me down at the large gates, +where they possessed every requisite appliance, and also would, if +desirable, shave my head also. Here the incident assumes a more doubtful +guise, for, notwithstanding the admitted politeness of the one who +spoke, each of those to whom I subsequently addressed myself on the +subject, presented to me a face quite devoid of encouragement. While +none actually pointed out the vehicle I sought, many passed on in a +state of inward contemplation without replying, and some--chiefly the +attendants of other chariots of a similar kind--replied in what I deemed +to be a spirit of elusive metaphor, as he who asserted that such a +conveyance must be sought for at a point known intimately as the Aldgate +Pump, whence it started daily at half-past the thirteenth gong-stroke; +and another, who maintained that I had no prospect of reaching the +desired spot until I secured the services of one of a class of female +attendants who wear flowing blue robes in order to indicate that they +are prepared to encounter and vanquish any emergency in life. To make no +elaborate pretence in the matter this person may definitely admit that +he never did reach the place in question, nor--in spite of a diligent +search in which he has encountered much obloquy--has he yet found any +barber sufficiently well equipped to undertake the detail. + +Even more recently I suffered the unmerited rebuke of the superficial +through performing an act of deferential politeness. Learning that the +enlightened and magnanimous sovereign of this country was setting out on +a journey I stationed myself in the forefront of those who stood before +his palace, intending to watch such parts of the procession as might be +fitly witnessed by one of my condition. When these had passed, and the +chariot of the greatest approached, I respectfully turned my back to +the road with a propitiatory gesture, as of one who did not deem himself +worthy even to look upon a being of such majestic rank and acknowledged +excellence. This delicate action, by some incredible process of mental +obliquity, was held by those around to be a deliberate insult, if not +even a preconcerted signal, of open treachery, and had not a heaven-sent +breeze at that moment carried the hat of a very dignified bystander into +the upper branches of an opportune tree, and successfully turned aside +the attention of the assembly into a most immoderate exhibition of utter +loss of gravity, I should undoubtedly have been publicly tortured, if +not actually torn to pieces. + +But the incident first alluded to was of an even more +elaborately-contrived density than these, and some of the details are +still unrolled before the keenest edge of this one’s inner perception. +Nevertheless, all is now set down in unbroken exactness for your +impartial judgment. + +At the time of this exploit I had only ventured out on a few occasions, +and then, save those recorded, to no considerable extent; for it had +already become obvious that the enterprises in which I persistently +became involved never contributed to my material prosperity, and the +disappointment of finding that even when I could remember nine words +of a sentence in their language none of the barbarians could understand +even so much as a tenth of my own, further cast down my enthusiasm. + +On the day which has been the object of this person’s narration from +the first, he set out to become more fully instructed in the subjects +already indicated, and proceeding in a direction of which he had no +actual knowledge, he soon found himself in a populous and degraded +quarter of the city. Presently, to his reasonable astonishment, he saw +before him at a point where two ill-constructed thoroughfares met, a +spacious and important building, many-storied in height, ornamented +with a profusion of gold and crystal, marble and precious stones, +and displaying from a tall pole the three-hued emblem of undeniable +authority. A never-ending stream of people passed in and out by the +numerous doors; the strains of expertly wielded instruments could be +distinctly heard inside, and the warm odour of a most prepossessing +spiced incense permeated the surroundings. “Assuredly,” thought the +person who is now recording the incident, “this is one of the Temples +of barbarian worship”; and to set all further doubt at rest he saw in +letters of gilt splendour a variety of praiseworthy and appropriate +inscriptions, among which he read and understood, “Excellent,” “Fine +Old,” “Well Matured,” “Spirits only of the choicest quality within,” + together with many other invocations from which he could not wrest the +hidden significance, as “Old Vatted,” “Barclay’s Entire,” “An Ordinary +at One,” and the like. + +By this time an impressive gathering had drawn around, and from its +manner of behaving conveyed the suspicion that an entertainment or +manifestation of some kind was confidently awaited. To disperse so +outrageous a misconception this person was on the point of withdrawing +himself when he chanced to see, over the principal door of the Temple, +a solid gold figure of colossal magnitude, represented as crowned with +leaves and tendrils, and holding in his outstretched hands a gigantic, +and doubtless symbolic, bunch of grapes. “This,” I said to myself, “is +evidently the tutelary deity of the place, so displayed to receive the +worship of the passer-by.” With the discovery a thought of the most +irreproachable benevolence possessed me. “Why should not this person,” I +reflected, “gain the unstinted approbation of those barbarians” (who by +this time completely encircled me in) “by doing obeisance towards their +deity, and by the same act delicately and inoffensively rebuke them for +their own too-frequent intolerable attitude towards the susceptibilities +of others? As an unprejudiced follower, in his own land, of the systems +of Confucius, Lao-tse, and Buddha, this person already recognises the +claims of seventeen thousand nine hundred and thirty-three deities of +various grades, so that the addition of one more to that number can be +a heresy of very trivial expiation.” Inspired by these honourable +sentiments, therefore, I at once prostrated myself on the ground, and, +amid a silence of really illimitable expectation, I began to kow-tow +repeatedly with ceremonious precision. + +At this display of charitable broadmindedness an approving shout went +up on all sides. Thus encouraged I proceeded to kow-tow with even more +unceasing assiduousness, and presently words of definite encouragement +mingled with the shout. “Do not flag in your amiable disinterestedness, +Kong Ho,” I whispered in my ear, “and out of your well-sustained +endurance may perchance arise a cordial understanding, and ultimately +a remunerative alliance between two distinguished nations.” Filled with +this patriotic hope I did not suffer my neck to stiffen, and doubtless I +would have continued the undertaking as long as the sympathetic persons +who hemmed me in signified their refined approval, when suddenly the cry +was raised, “Look out, here comes the coppers!” + +This, O my venerable-headed father, I at once guessed to be the +announcement heralding the collecting-bowl which some over-zealous +bystander was preparing to pass round on my behalf, doubtless under the +impression--so obtuse in grasping the true relationship of events are +many of the barbarians--that I was a wandering monk, displaying my +reverence for the purpose of mendicancy. Not wishing to profit by this +offensive misapprehension, I was preparing to rise, when a hand was +unceremoniously laid upon my shoulder, and turning round I saw behind me +one of the official watch--a class of men so powerful that at a gesture +from their uplifted hands even the fiercest untamed horse will not +infrequently stand upon its hind legs in mute submission. + +“Early morning salutations,” I said pleasantly, though somewhat involved +in speech by my exertion (for these persons are ever to be treated +with discriminating courtesy). “Prosperity to your house, O energetic +street-watcher, and a thousand grandsons to worship their illustrious +ancestor.” + +“Thanks,” he replied concisely. “I’m a single man. As yet. Now then, +will you make a way there? Can you stand?” + +“Stand?” repeated this person, at once recognising one of the important +words of inner meaning concerning which he had been initiated by the +versatile Quang-Tsun. “Certainly this person will not hesitate to +establish his footing if the exaction is thought to be desirable. +Let us, therefore, bend our steps in the direction of a tea-house of +unquestionable propriety.” + +“You’ve bent your steps into quite enough tea-houses, as you call them, +for one day,” replied the official with evasive meaning, at the same +time assisting me to rise (for it need not be denied that the restrained +position had made me for the moment incapable of a self-sustaining +effort). “Look what you’ve done.” + +At the direction of his glance I cast my eyes along the street, east and +west, and for the first time I became aware that what I had last seen as +a reasonable gathering had now taken the proportions of an innumerable +multitude which filled the entire space of the thoroughfare, while +others covered the roofs above and protruded themselves from every +available window. In our own land the interspersal of umbrellas, musical +instruments, and banners, with an occasional firework, would have given +a greater animation to the scene; but with this exception I have never +taken part in a more impressive and well-extended procession. Even +while I looked, the helmets of other official watchers appeared in the +distance, as immature junks upon the storm-tossed Whang-Hai, apparently +striving fruitlessly to reach us. + +As I was by no means sure what attitude was expected of me, I smiled +with an all-embracing approval, and signified to the one at my side, by +way of passing the time pleasurably together, that the likelihood of his +nimble-witted friends reaching us with unruffled garments was remote in +the extreme. + +“Don’t you let that worry you, Li Hung Chang,” he said, in a tone that +had the appearance of being outside itself around a deeper and more +bitter significance; “if we get out again with any garments at all it +won’t be your fault. Why, you--well, YOU ought to have been put on the +Black List long ago, by rights.” + +This, exalted one, although I have not yet been able to learn the exact +dignity of it from any of the books of civil honours, is undoubtedly +a mark of signal attainment, conferred upon the few for distinguishing +themselves by some particular capacity; as our Double Dragon, for +instance. Anxious to learn something of the privileges of the rank from +one who evidently was not without influence in the bestowal, and not +unwilling to show him that I was by no means of low-caste descent, I +said to the official, “In his own country one of this person’s ancestors +wore the Decoration of the Yellow Scabbard, which entitled him to be +carried in his chair up to the gate of the Forbidden Palace before +descending to touch the ground. Is this Order of the Black List of a +like purport?” + +“You’re right,” he said, “it is. In this country it entitles you to be +carried right inside the door at Bow Street without ever touching the +ground. Look out! Now we shall not--” + +At that moment what this person at first assumed to be a floral tribute, +until he saw that not only the entire plant, but the earthenware jar +also were attached, struck the official upon the helmet, whereupon, +drawing a concealed club, he ceased speaking. + +How the entertainment was conducted to such a development this person is +totally inadequate to express; but in an incredibly short space of time +the scene became one of most entrancing variety. From every visible +point around the air became filled with commodities which--though +doubtless without set intention--fittingly represented the arts, +manufactures, and natural history of this resourceful country, all cast +in prolific abundance at the feet of the official and myself, although +the greater part inevitably struck our heads and bodies before reaching +them. Beyond our immediate circle, as it may be expressed, the crowd +never ceased to press forward with resistless activity, and among +it could be seen occasionally the official watchmen advancing +self-reliantly, though frequently without helmets, and, not less often, +the helmets advancing without the official watchmen. To add to the +acknowledged interest, every person present was proclaiming his views +freely on a diversity of subjects, and above all could be heard the +clear notes of the musical instruments by which the officials sought +to encourage one another in their extremity, and to deaden the cries of +those whom they outclubbed. + +Despite this person’s repeated protests that the distinction was too +excessive, he was plucked from hand to hand irresistibly among those +around, losing a portion of his ill-made attire at each step, so +agreeably anxious were all to detain him. Just when the exploit seemed +likely to have a disagreeable ending, however, he was thrust heavily +against a door which yielded, and at once barring it behind him, he +passed across the open space into which it led, along a passage between +two walls, and thence through an involved labyrinth and beneath the +waters of a canal into a wood of attractive seclusion. Here this person +remained, spending the time in a profitable meditation, until the light +withdrew and the great sky lantern had ascended. Then he cautiously +crept forth, and after some further trivial episodes which chiefly +concern the obstinate-headed slave guarding the outer door of a +tea-house, an unintelligent maiden in the employment of one vending +silk-embroidered raiment, the mercenary controller of a two-wheeled +chariot and the sympathetic and opportune arrival of a person seated +upon a funeral car, he succeeded in reaching the place of his abode. + +With unalterable affection and a material request that an unstinted +adequacy of new garments may be sent by a sure and speedy hand. + + KONG HO. + + + + +LETTER V + + + Concerning the neglect of ancestors and its discreditable + consequences. Two who state the matter definitely. + Concerning the otherside way of looking at things and the + self-contradictory bearing of the maiden Florence. + + +Venerated Sire,--A discovery of overwhelming malignity oppresses me. In +spite of much baffling ambiguity and the frequent evasion of conscious +guilt, there can be no longer any reasonable doubt that these barbarians +_do not worship their ancestors!_ + +Hitherto the matter had rested in my mind as an uneasy breath of +suspicion, agitated from time to time by countless indications that +such a possibility might, indeed, exist in a condensed form, but too +inauspiciously profane to be contemplated in the altogether. Thus, when +in the company of the young this person has walked about the streets +of the city, he may at length have said, “Truly, out of your amiable +condescension, you have shown me a variety of entrancing scenes. Let +us now in turn visit the tombs of your ancestors, to the end that I may +transmit fitting gifts to their spirits and discharge a few propitious +fireworks as a greeting.” Yet in no case has this well-intentioned +offer been agilely received, one asserting that he did not know +the resting-place of the tombs in question, a second that he had no +ancestors, a third that Kensal Green was not an entrancing spot for +a wet afternoon, a fourth that he would see them removed to a greater +distance first, another that he drew the line at mafficking in a +cemetery, and the like. These things, it may occur to your omniscience, +might in themselves have been conclusive, yet the next reference to the +matter would perhaps be tending to a more alluring hope. + +“To-morrow,” a person has remarked in the hearing of this one, “I go +to the Stratford which is upon the Avon, and without a pause I shall +prostrate myself intellectually before the immortal Shakespeare’s tomb +and worship his unequalled memory.” + +“The intention is benevolently conceived,” I remarked. “Yet has he no +descendants, this same Shakespeare, that the conciliation of his spirit +must be left to chance?” + +When he assured me that this calamity had come about, I would have added +a richly-gilded brick from my store for transmission also, in the hope +that the neglected and capricious shadow would grant me an immunity from +its resentful attention, but the one in question raised a barrier of +dissent. If I wished to adorn a tomb, he added (evading the deeper +significance of the act), there was that of Goldsmith within its Temple, +upon which many impressionable maidens from across the Bitter Waters of +the West make it a custom to deposit chaplets of verses, in the hope +of seeing the offering chronicled in the papers; and in the Open Space +called Trafalgar there were the images of a great captain who led many +junks to victory and the Emperor of a former dynasty, where doubtless +the matter could be arranged; but the surrounding had by this time +become too involved, and this person had no alternative but to smile +symmetrically and reply that his words were indeed opals falling from a +topaz basin. + +Later in the day, being desirous of becoming instructed more definitely, +I addressed myself to a venerable person who makes clean the passage of +the way at a point not far distant. + +“If you have no sons to extend your industrious line,” I said, when he +had revealed this fact to me, “why do you not adopt one to that end?” + +With narrow-minded covetousness, he replied that nowadays he had enough +to do to keep himself, and that it would be more reasonable to get some +one to adopt HIM. + +“But,” I exclaimed, ignoring this ill-timed levity, “who, when you +have Passed Beyond, will worship you and transmit to your spirit the +necessities of life?” + +“Governor,” he replied, using the term of familiar dignity, “I’ve made +shift without being worshipped for five and sixty years, and it worries +me a sight more to know who will transmit to my body the necessities of +life until I HAVE Passed Beyond.” + +“The final consequences of your self-opinionated carelessness,” this +person continued, “will be that your neglected and unprovided shadow, +finding itself no longer acceptable to the society of the better +class demons, will wander forth, and allying itself in despair to the +companionship of a band of outcasts like itself, will be driven to dwell +in unclean habitations and to subsist on the uncertain bounty of the +charitable.” + +“Very likely,” replied the irredeemable person before me. “I can’t help +its troubles. I have to do all that myself as it is.” + +Doubtless this fanaticism contains the secret of the ease with which +these barbarians have possessed themselves of the greater part of the +earth, and have even planted their assertive emblems on one or two spots +in our own Flowery Kingdom. What, O my esteemed parent, what can a brave +but devout and demon-fearing nation do when opposed to a people who are +quite prepared to die without first leaving an adequate posterity to +tend their shrines and offer incense? Assuredly, as a neighbouring +philosopher once had occasion to remark, using for his purpose a +metaphor so technically-involved that I must leave the interpretation +until we meet, “It may be war, but it isn’t cricket.” + +The inevitable outcome, naturally, is that the Island must be the +wandering-place of myriads of spirits possessing no recognised standing, +and driven by want--having none to transmit them offerings--to the most +degraded subterfuges. It is freely admitted that there is scarcely an +ancient building not the abode of one or more of these abandoned demons, +doubtless well-disposed in the first instance, and capable of becoming +really beneficent Forces until they were driven to despair by obstinate +neglect. A society of very honourable persons (to which this one has +unobtrusively contributed a gift), exists for the purpose of searching +out the most distressing and meritorious cases among them, and removing +them, where possible, to a more congenial spot. The remarkable fact, +to this person’s mind, is, that with the air and every available +space around absolutely packed with demons (as certainly must be the +prevailing state of things), the manifestations of their malignity and +vice are, if anything, rather less evident here than in our own favoured +country, where we do all in our power to satisfy their wants. + +That same evening I found myself seated next to a maiden of +prepossessing vivacity, who was spoken of as being one of a kindred +but not identical race. Filled with the incredible profanity of those +around, and hoping to find among a nation so alluringly high-spirited +a more congenial elevation of mind, I at length turned to her and said, +“Do not regard the question as one of unworthy curiosity, for this +person’s inside is white and funereal with his fears; but do you, of +your allied race, worship your ancestors?” + +The maiden spent a moment in conscientious thought. “No, Mr. Kong,” she +replied, with a most commendable sigh of unfeigned regret, “I can’t say +that we do. I guess it’s because we’re too new. Mine, now, only go back +two generations, and they were mostly in lard. If they were old and +baronial it might be different, but I can’t imagine myself worshipping +an ancestor in lard.” (This doubtless refers to some barbaric method of +embalming.) + +“And your wide and enlightened countrymen?” I asked, unable to restrain +a passion of pure-bred despair. “Do they also so regard the obligation?” + +“I am afraid so,” replied the maiden, with an honourable indication +towards my emotion. “But of course when a girl marries into the European +aristocracy, she and all her folk worship her husband’s ancestors, until +every one about is fairly dizzy with the subject.” + +It is largely owing to the graceful and virtuous conversation of these +lesser ones that this person’s knowledge of the exact position which +the ceremonial etiquette of the country demands on various occasions is +becoming so proficiently enlarged. It is true that they of my own sex do +not hesitate to inquire with penetrating assiduousness into certain of +the manners and customs of our land, but these for the most part do +not lead to a conversation in any way profitable to my discreeter +understanding. Those of the inner chamber, on the other hand, while +not scrupling to question me on the details of dress, the braiding and +gumming of the hair, the style and variety of the stalls of merchants, +the wearing of jade, gold, and crystal ornaments and flowers about +the head, smoking, and other matters affecting our lesser ones, very +magnanimously lead my contemplation back to a more custom-established +topic if by any hap in my ambitious ignorance I outstep it. + +In such a manner it chanced on a former occasion that I sat side by side +with a certain maiden awaiting the return of others who had withdrawn +for a period. The season was that of white rains, and the fire being +lavishly extended about the grate we had harmoniously arranged ourselves +before it, while this person, at the repeated and explicit encouragement +of the maiden, spoke openly of such details of the inner chamber as he +has already indicated. + +“Is it true, Mr. Ho” (thus the maiden, being unacquainted with the +actual facts, consistently addressed me), “that ladies’ feet are +relentlessly compressed until they finally assume the proportions and +appearance of two bulbs?” and as she spoke she absent-mindedly regarded +her own slippers, which were out-thrust somewhat to receive the action +of the fire. + +“It is a matter which cannot reasonably be denied,” I replied; “and +it is doubtless owing to this effect that they are designated ‘Golden +Lilies.’ Yet when this observance has been slowly and painfully +accomplished, the extremities in question are not less small but +infinitely less graceful than the select and naturally-formed pair which +this person sees before him.” And at the ingeniously-devised compliment +(which, not to become large-headed in self-imagination, it must be +admitted was revealed to me as available for practically all occasions +by the really invaluable Quang-Tsun), I bowed unremittingly. + +“O, Mr. Ho!” exclaimed the maiden, and paused abruptly at the sound of +her words, as though they were inept. + +“In many other ways a comparison equally irreproachable to the exalted +being at my side might be sought out,” I continued, suddenly forming +the ill-destined judgment that I was no less competent than the more +experienced Quang-Tsun to contrive delicate offerings of speech. “Their +hair is rope like in its lack of spontaneous curve, their eyes as +deficient in lustre as a half-shuttered window; their hands are +exceedingly inferior in colour, and both on the left side, as it may be +expressed; their legs--” but at this point the maiden drew herself so +hastily into herself that I had no alternative but to conclude that +unless I reverted in some way the enterprise was in peril of being +inharmoniously conducted. + +“Mr. Ho,” said the maiden, after contemplating her inward thoughts for +a moment, “you are a foreigner, and you cannot be expected to know by +instinct what may and what may not be openly expressed in this country. +Therefore, although the obligation is not alluring, I think it kinder +to tell you that the matters which formed the subject of your last words +are never to be referred to.” + +At this rebuke I again bowed persistently, for it did not appear +reasonable to me that I could in any other way declare myself without +violating the imposed command. + +“Not only are they never openly referred to,” continued the maiden, +who in spite of the declared no allurement of the subject did not seem +disposed to abandon it at once, “but among the most select they are, +by unspoken agreement, regarded as ‘having no actual existence,’ as you +yourself would say.” + +“Yet,” protested this person, somewhat puzzled, “to one who has +witnessed the highly-achieved attitudes of those within your Halls of +Harmony, and in an unyielding search for knowledge has addressed himself +even to the advertisement pages of the ladies’ papers--” + +The maiden waved her hand magnanimously. “In your land, as you have told +me, there are many things, not really existing, which for politeness you +assume to be. In a like but converse manner this is to be so regarded.” + +I thanked her voluminously. “The etiquette of this country is as +involved as the spoken tongue,” I said, “for both are composed chiefly +of exceptions to a given rule. It was formerly impressed upon this +person, as a guiding principle, that that which is unseen is not to be +discussed; yet it is not held in disrepute to allude to so intimate and +secluded an organ as the heart, for no further removed than yesterday he +heard the deservedly popular sea-lieutenant in the act of declaring to +you, upon his knees, that you were utterly devoid of such a possession.” + +At this inoffensively-conveyed suggestion, the fire opposite had all the +appearance of suddenly reflecting itself into the maiden’s face with a +most engaging concentration, while at the same time she stamped her foot +in ill-concealed rage. + +“You’ve been listening at the door!” she cried impetuously, “and I shall +never forgive you.” + +“To no extent,” I declared hastily (for although I had indeed been +listening at the door, it appeared, after the weight which she set +upon the incident, more honourable that I should deny it in order to +conciliate her mind). “It so chanced that for the moment this person +had forgotten whether the handle he was grasping was of the push-out or +turn-in variety, and in the involvement a few words of no particular or +enduring significance settled lightly upon his perception. + +“In that case,” she replied in high-souled liberality, while her eyes +scintillated towards me with a really all-overpowering radiance, “I will +forgive you.” + +“We have an old but very appropriate saying, ‘To every man the voice of +one maiden carries further than the rolling of thunder,’” I remarked +in a significantly restrained tone; for, although conscious that the +circumstance was becoming more menace-laden than I had any previous +intention, I found myself to be incapable of extrication. “Florence--” + +“Oh,” she exclaimed quickly, raising her polished hand with an +undeniable gesture of reproof, “you must not call me by my christian +name, Mr. Ho.” + +“Yet,” replied this person, with a confessedly stubborn inelegance, “you +call me by the name of Ho.” + +Her eyes became ox-like in an utter absence of almond outline. “Yes,” + she said gazing, “but that--that is not your christian name, is it?” + +“In a position of speaking--this one being as a matter of fact a +discreditable follower of the sublime Confucius--it may be so regarded,” + I answered, “inasmuch as it is the milk-name of childhood.” + +“But you always put it last,” she urged. + +“Assuredly,” I replied. “Being irrevocably born with the family name of +Kong, it is thought more reasonable that that should stand first. After +that, others are attached as the various contingencies demand it, as Ho +upon participating in the month-age feast, the book-name of Tsin at a +later period, Paik upon taking a degree, and so forth.” + +“I am very sorry, Mr. Kong,” said the maiden, adding, with what at +the time certainly struck this person as shallow-witted prejudice. “Of +course it is really quite your own fault for being so tospy-turvily +arranged in every way. But, to return to the subject, why should not one +speak of one’s heart?” + +“Because,” replied this person, colouring deeply, and scarcely able to +control his unbearable offence that so irreproachably-moulded a creature +should openly refer to the detail, “because it is a gross and unrefined +particular, much more internal and much less pleasantly-outlined +than those extremities whose spoken equivalent shall henceforth be an +abandoned word from my lips.” + +“But, in any case, it is not the actual organ that one infers,” + protested the maiden. “As the seat of the affections, passions, virtues, +and will, it is the conventional emblem of every thought and emotion.” + +“By no means,” I cried, forgetting in the face of so heterodox an +assertion that it would be well to walk warily at every point. “That is +the stomach.” + +“Ah!” exclaimed the maiden, burying her face in a gracefully-perfumed +remnant of lace, to so overwhelming a degree that for the moment I +feared she might become involved in the dizzy falling. “Never, by any +mischance, use that word again in the society of the presentable, Mr. +Kong.” + +“The ceremonial usage of my own land of the Heavenly Dynasty is +proverbially elaborate,” I said, with a gesture of self-abasement, “but +in comparison with yours it may be regarded as an undeviating walk when +opposed to a stately and many-figured dance. Among the company of the +really excessively select (in which must ever be included the one whom +I am now addressing), it becomes difficult for an outcast of my +illimitable obtuseness to move to one side or the other without putting +his foot into that.” + +“Oh no,” exclaimed the maiden, in fragrant encouragement, “I think you +are getting on very nicely, Mr. Kong, and one does not look for absolute +conformance from a foreigner--especially one who is so extremely +foreign. If I can help you with anything--of course I could not even +speak as I have done to an ordinary stranger, but with one of a distant +race it seems different--if I can tell you anything that will save +you--” + +“You are all-exalted,” I replied, with seemly humility, “and virtue and +wisdom press out your temples on either side. Certainly, since I have +learned that the heart is so poetically regarded, I have been assailed +by a fear lest other organs which I have hitherto despised might be used +in a similar way. Now, as regards liver--” + +“It is only used with bacon,” replied the maiden, rising abruptly. + +“Kidneys?” suggested this person diffidently, really anxious to detain +her footsteps, although from her expression it did not rest assured that +the incident was taking an actually auspicious movement. + +“I don’t think you need speak of those except at breakfast,” she said; +“but I hear the others returning, and I must really go to dress for +dinner.” + +Among the barbarians many keep books wherein to inscribe their deep and +beautiful thoughts. This person had therefore provided himself with +one also, and, drawing it forth, he now added to a page of many other +interesting compositions: “Maidens of immaculate refinement do not +hesitate to admit before a person of a different sex that they are on +the point of changing their robes. The liver is in some intricate way +an emblem representing bacon, or together with it the two stand for +a widely differing analogy. Among those of the highest exclusiveness +kidneys are never alluded to after the tenth gong-stroke of the +morning.” + +With a sincerely ingrained trust that the scenes of dignity, opulence, +and wisdom, set forth in these superficial letters, are not unsettling +your intellect and causing you to yearn for a fuller existence. + + KONG HO. + + + + +LETTER VI + + + Concerning this person’s well-sustained efforts to discover + further demons. The behaviour of those invoked on two + occasions. + + +Venerated Sire,--In an early letter I made some reference to a variety +of demon invoked by certain of the barbarians. As this matter aroused +your congenial interest, I have since privately bent my mind incessantly +to the discovery of others; but this has been by no means easy, for, +touching the more intimate details of the subject, the barbarians +frequently maintain a narrow-minded suspicion. Many whom I have +approached feign to become amused or have evaded a deliberate answer +under the subterfuge of a jest; yet, whenever I would have lurked by +night in their temples or among the enclosed spaces of their tombs to +learn more, at a given signal one in authority has approached me with +anxiety and mistrust engraved upon his features, and, disregarding my +unassuming protest that I would remain alone in a contemplative reverie, +has signified that so devout an exercise is contrary to their written +law. + +On one occasion only did this person seem to hold himself poised on the +very edge of a fuller enlightenment. This was when, in the venerable +company of several benevolent persons, he was being taken from place to +place to see the more important buildings, and to observe the societies +of artificers labouring at their crafts. The greater part of the day had +already been spent in visiting temples, open spaces reserved to children +and those whose speech, appearance, and general manner of behaving +make it desirable that they should be set apart from the contact of the +impressionable, halls containing relics and emblems of the past, +places of no particular size or attraction but described as being of +unparalleled historic interest, and the stalls of the more reputable +venders of merchandise. + +Doubtless, with observing so many details of a conflicting nature, +this person’s discriminating faculties had become obscured, but towards +evening he certainly understood that we sought the company of an +assembly of those who had been selected from all the Empire to pronounce +definitely upon matters of supreme import. The building before which our +chariot stopped had every appearance of being worthy of so exceptional a +gathering, and with a most affluent joy that I should at last be able to +glean a decisive pronouncement, I evaded those who had accompanied +me, and, mingling self-reliantly with the throng inside, I quickly +surrounded myself with many of the wisest-looking, and begged that they +would open their heads freely and express their innermost opinions upon +the subject of demons of all kinds. + +Although I had admittedly hoped that these persons would not conceal +themselves behind the wings of epigram or intangible prevarication, I +was far from being prepared for the candour with which they greeted me, +and although by long usage I am reasonably unconcerned at the proximity +of any of our own recognised genii, it is not to be denied that my +organs of ferocity grew small and unstable at the revelations. + +From their words it appeared that the spot on which we stood had +long been the recognised centre and meeting-place for every class of +abandoned and objectionable spirit of the universe. Not only this, but +several of the persons who had gathered around were confidently pointed +out as the earthly embodiment of various diabolical Forces, while others +cheerfully admitted that they themselves were the shadows of certain +illustrious ones who had long Passed Above, and all united in declaring +that those who moved among them wearing the distinction of a dark blue +uniform were Evil Beings of a most ghoulish and repulsive type. Indeed, +as I looked more closely, I could see that not only those pointed out, +but all standing around, had expressions immeasurably more in +keeping with a band of outcast spirits than suggestive of an assembly +representing wisdom and dignified ease. At that moment, however, a most +inelegant movement was caused by one suddenly declaring that he +had recognised this one who is inscribing his experiences to be the +apparition of a certain great reformer who during the period of his +ordinary existence had received the name of Guy Fawkes, and amid a +tumult of overwhelming acclamation a proposal was raised that I +should be carried around in triumph and afterwards initiated into +the observance of a time-honoured custom. Although it had now become +doubtful to what end the adventure was really tending, this person +would have submitted himself agreeably to the participation had not the +blue-apparelled band cleft their way into the throng just as I was about +to be borne off in triumph, and forming themselves into a ringed +barrier around me they presently succeeded in rearranging the contending +elements and in restoring me to the society of my friends. To these +persons they complained with somewhat unreasoning acrimony that I +had been exciting the inmates into a state of rebellion with wild +imaginings, and for the first time I then began to understand that an +important error had been perpetrated by some one, and that instead of +being a meeting-place for those upholding the wisdom and authority +of the country, the building was in reality an establishment for the +mentally defective and those of treacherous instincts. + +For some time after this occurrence I failed to regard the subject of +demons and allied Forces in any but a spirit of complete no enthusiasm, +but more recently my interest and research have been enlarged by the +zeal and supernatural conversation of a liberal-minded person who +sought my prosaic society with indefatigable persistence. When we had +progressed to such a length that the one might speak of affairs without +the other at once interposing that he himself had also unfortunately +come out quite destitute of money, this stranger, who revealed to me +that his name was Glidder, but that in the company of a certain chosen +few he was known intimately as the Keeper of the Salograma, approached +me confidentially, and inquired whether we of our Central Kingdom were +in the habit of receiving manifestations from the spirits of those who +had Passed Beyond. + +At the unassumed ingenuousness of this remark I suffered my +impassiveness to relax, as I replied with well-established pride that +although a country which neglected its ancestors might doubtless be +able to produce more of the ordinary or graveyard spectres, we were +unapproachable for the diverse forms and malignant enmity of our +apparitions. Of invisible beings alone, I continued tolerantly, we +had the distinction of being harassed by upwards of seven hundred +clearly-defined varieties, while the commoner inflictions of demons, +shades, visions, warlocks, phantoms, sprites, imps, phenomena, ghosts, +and reflections passed almost without comment; and touching our admitted +national speciality of dragons, the honour of supremacy had never been +questioned. + +At this, the agreeable person said that the pleasure he derived from +meeting me was all-excelling, and that I must certainly accompany him to +a meeting-place of this same chosen few the following evening, when, +by the means of sacred expedients, they hoped to invoke the presence +of some departed spirits, and perchance successfully raise a tangible +vision or two. To so fair-minded a proposal I held myself acquiescently, +and then inquired where the meeting-place in question was destined +to be--whether in a ruined and abandoned sanctuary, or upon some +precipitous spot of desolation. + +The inquiry was gracefully intended, but a passing cloud of unworthy +annoyance revealed itself upon the upper part of the other’s expression +as he replied, “We, the true seekers, despise theatrical accessories, +and, as a matter of fact, I couldn’t well get away from the office in +time to go anywhere far. To-morrow we meet at my place in the Camden +Road. It’s only a three-half-penny tram stage from the Euston and +Tottenham Court corner, so it couldn’t be much more convenient for you.” + He thereupon gave me an inscribed fragment of paper and mentioned the +appointed hour. + +“I’ll tell you why I am particularly anxious for you to come to-morrow,” + he said as we were each departing from one another. “Pash--he’s the +Reader of the Veda among us--and his people have got hold of a Greek +woman (they SAY she is a princess, of course), who can do a lot of +things with flowers and plate glass. They are bringing her for the first +time to-morrow, and it struck me that if I have YOU there already when +they arrive--you’ll come in your national costume by the way?--it will +be a considerable set-off. Since his daughter was presented to the +duchess at the opening of a bazaar, there has been no holding Pash; why +he was ever elected Reader of the Books, I don’t know. Er--we have had +scoffers sometimes, but I trust I may rely upon you not to laugh at +anything you may not happen to agree with?” + +With conscientious dignity I replied that I had only really laughed +seven times in my life, and therefore the entertainment was one which +I was not likely to embark upon hastily or with inadequate cause. He +immediately expressed a seemly regret that the detail had been spoken, +and again assuring him that at the stated hour I would present myself +at the house bearing the symbol engraved upon the card, we definitely +parted. + +That, as a matter of fact, I did not so present myself at the exact +hour, chiefly concerns the uncouth and arbitrary-minded charioteer who +controlled the movements of the vehicle to which the one whom I was +seeking had explicitly referred; for at an angle in the road he suffered +the horses to draw us aside into a path which did not correspond to the +engraved signs upon the card, nor by any word of persuasion could he be +prevailed upon to return. + +Thus, without any possible reproach upon the manner in which I was +conducting the enterprise, it came about that by the time I reached the +spot indicated, all those persons who had been spoken of as constituting +a chosen band were assembled, and with them the barbarian princess. +Nevertheless, this person was irreproachably greeted, and the maiden +indicated even spoke a few words to him in an outside tongue. Being +necessarily unacquainted with the import of the remark I spread out my +hands with a sign of harmonious sympathy and smiled agreeably, whereat +she appeared to receive an added esteem from the faces of those around +(excluding those directly of the House of Glidder), and was thereby +encouraged to speak similarly at intervals, this person each time +replying in a like fashion. + +“Is he then a Guide of the Way, also, princess?” said the one Pash, who +had noted the occurrence; to which the maiden replied, “To a degree, yet +lacking the Innermost Mysteries.” + +Presently it was announced that all things were fittingly prepared in +another chamber. Here, upon a table of polished wood, stood on the one +side a round stone with certain markings, a group of inscribed books, +and various other emblems; and on the other side a bowl of water, a +sphere of crystal, pieces of unwritten parchment, and behind all, and at +a distance away, a sheet of transparent glass, greater in height than +an ordinary person and as wide. When all were seated--the one who had +enticed me among them placing himself before the stone, the person +Pash guarding the books, the barbarian princess being surrounded by her +symbols and alone in a self-imposed solitude, and the others at various +points--the lights were subdued and the appearances awaited. + +It would scarcely be respectful, O my enlightened father, to take up +your well-spent leisure by a too prolific account of the matters which +followed, they being in no way dissimilar from the manifestations +by which the uninitiated little ones of Yuen-ping are wont to amuse +themselves and pass the winter evenings. From time to time harmonious +sounds could be plainly detected, flowers and branches of wood were +scattered sparsely here and there, persons claimed that passing objects +had touched their faces, and misshapen forms of smoke-like density +(which some confidently recognised as the outlines of departed ones whom +they had known), revealed themselves against the glass. When this had +been accomplished, the lights were recalled, and the barbarian maiden, +sinking into a condition of languor, announced and foretold events and +happenings upon which she was consulted, sometimes replying by spoken +words, at others suffering her hand to trace them lightly upon the +parchment sheets. Thus, to an inquirer it was announced that one, Aunt +Mary, in the Upper Air, was well and happy, though undeniably pained at +the action of Cousin William in the matter of the freehold houses, and +more than sceptical how his marriage would turn out. Another was advised +that although the interest on Consols was admittedly lower than that +anticipated by those controlling the destines of a new venture entitled, +The Great Rosy Dawn Gold Mine Development Syndicate, and the name +certainly less poetically inspiring, the advising spirits were of the +opinion that the former enterprise would prove the more stable of the +two, and, in any case, they recommended the person in question to begin +by placing not more than half of her life’s savings into the mine. +The family of the House of Pash was assured that beneficent spirits +surrounded them at every turn, and that their good deeds were not +suffered to fall unfruitfully to the ground; while many bearing the name +of Glidder, on the other hand, were reproved by one who had known them +in infancy for the offences of jealousy, ostentation, vain thoughts, +shallowness of character, and the like. + +At length, revered, as there seemed to be no reasonable indication of +any barbarian phantom of weight or authority appearing--nothing, +indeed, beyond what a person in our country, of no admitted skill, would +accomplish in the penetrating light of day with two others holding his +hands, and a third reposing upon his head, I formed the perhaps immature +judgment that the one to whom I was indebted for the entertainment would +be suffering a grievous frustration of his hopes and a diminution of his +outward authority. Therefore, without sufficient consideration of the +restricted surroundings, as it afterwards appeared, I threw myself +into a retrospective vision, and floating unencumbered through space, +I sought for Kwan Kiang-ti, the Demon of the Waters, upon whom I might +fittingly call, as I was given into his keeping by the ceremony of +spirit-adoption at an early age. Meeting an influence which I recognised +to be an indication of his presence, in the vicinity of the Eighth +Region, I obsequiously entreated that he would reveal himself without +delay, and then, convinced of his sympathetic intervention, I suffered +my spirit to recall itself, and revived into the condition of an +ordinary existence. + +“We have among us this evening, my friends,” the one Pash was saying, +“a very remarkable lady--if I may use so democratic a term in the +connection--to whom the limits of Time and Space are empty words, and +before whose supreme Will the most portentous Forces of Occult Nature +mutely confess themselves her attending slaves--” But at that moment +the rolling drums of Kiang-ti’s thunder drowned his words, although he +subsequently raised his voice above it to entreat that any knives or +other articles of a bright and attractive kind should at once be removed +to a place of safety. + +Heralded by these continuous sounds, and accompanied by innumerable +flashes of lightning, the genius presently manifested himself, leisurely +developing out of the air around. He appeared in his favourite guise of +an upright dragon, his scales being arranged in rows of nine each way, +a pearl showing within his throat, and upon his head the wooden bar. The +lights were extinguished incapably by the rain which fell continually in +his presence, but from his body there proceeded a luminous breath which +sufficiently revealed the various incidents. + +“Kong Ho,” said this opportune vision, speaking with a voice like the +beating of a brass gong, “the course you have adopted is an unusual one, +but the weight and regularity of your offerings have merit in my eyes. +Nevertheless, if your invocation is only the outcome of a shallow vanity +or a profane love of display, nothing can save you from a painful death. +Speak now, fully and without evasion, and fear nothing.” + +“Amiable Being,” said this person, kow-towing profoundly, “the matter +was designed to the end only that your incomparable versatility might +be fittingly displayed. These barbarians sought vainly to raise phantoms +capable of any useful purpose, whereupon I, jealous of your superior +omnipotence, judged it would be an unseemly neglect not to inform you of +the opportunity.” + +“It is well,” said the demon affably. “All doubt in the matter shall +now be set at rest. Could any more convincing act be found than that +I should breath upon these barbarians and reduce them instantly to a +scattering of thin white ashes?” + +“Assuredly it would be a conclusive testimony,” I replied; “yet in +that case consider how inadequate a witness could be borne to your +enlightened condescension, when none would be left but one to whom the +spoken language of this Island is more in the nature of a trap than a +comfortable vehicle.” + +“Your reasoning is profound, Kong Ho,” he replied, “yet abundant +proof shall not be wanting.” With these words he raised his hand, and +immediately the air became filled with an overwhelming shower of +those productions with which Kwan Kiang-ti’s name is chiefly +associated--shells and pebbles of all kinds, lotus and other roots from +the river banks, weeds from seas of greater depths, fish of interminable +variety from both fresh and bitter waters, all falling in really +embarrassing abundance, and mingled with an incessant rain of sand and +water. In the midst of this the demon suddenly passed away, striking the +table as he went, so that it was scarred with the brand of a five-clawed +hand, shattering all the objects upon it (excepting the stone and +the books, which he doubtless regarded as sacred to some extent), and +leaving the room involved in a profound darkness. + +“For the love av the saints--for the love av the saints, save us from +the yellow devils!” exclaimed a voice from the spot where last the +barbarian princess had reclined, and upon this person going to her +assistance with lights it was presently revealed that she alone had +remained seated, the others having all assembled themselves beneath the +table in spite of the incapability of the space at their disposal. Most +of the weightier evidences of Kwan Kiang-ti’s majestic presence had +faded away, though the table retained the print of his impressive hand, +many objects remained irretrievably torn apart, and in a distant corner +of the room an insignificant heap of shells and seaweed still lingered. +From the floor covering a sprinkling of the purest Fuh-chow sand rose +at every step, the salt dew of the Tung-Hai still dropped from +the surroundings, and, at a later period, a shore crab was found +endeavouring to make its escape undetected. + +Convinced that the success of the manifestation would have enlarged +the one Glidder’s esteem towards me to an inexpressible degree, I now +approached him with words of self-deprecation ready on my tongue, but +before he spoke I became aware, from the nature of his glance, that +the provision had been unnecessary, for already his face had begun to +assume, to a most distended amount, the expression which I had long +recognised as a synonym that some detail had been regarded at a +different angle from that anticipated. + +“May I ask,” he began in a somewhat heavily-laden voice, after he had +assured himself that the person who was speaking was himself, and his +external attributes unchanged, “May I ask, sir” (and at this title, +which is untranslatable in its many-sided significance when technically +employed, I recognised that all complimentary intercourse might be +regarded as having closed), “whether you accept the responsibility of +these proceedings?” + +“Touching the appearance which has so essentially contributed to the +success of the occasion, it is undeniably due to this one’s foresight,” + I replied modestly. + +“Then let me tell you, sir, that I consider it an outrage--a dastardly +outrage.” + +“Yet,” protested this person with retiring assertiveness, “the expressed +object of the ceremony, as it stood before my intelligence, was for the +set purpose of invoking spirits and raising certain visions.” + +“Spirits!” exclaimed the one before me with an accent of concentrated +aversion; “yes, spirits; impalpable, civilised, genuine spirits, who +manifest themselves through recognised media, and are conformable to the +usages of the best drawing-room society--yes. But not demons, sir; not +Chinese devils in the Camden Road--no. Truth and Light at any cost, not +paganism. It’s perfectly scandalous. Look at the mahogany table--ruined; +look at the wall-paper--conventional mackerels with a fishing-net +background, new this spring--soused; look at the Brussels carpet, +seventeen six by twenty-five--saturated!” + +“I quite agree with you, Mr. Glidder,” here interposed the individual +Pash. “I was watching you, sir, closely the whole time, and I have my +suspicions about how it was done. I don’t know whether Mr. Glidder +has any legal redress, but I should certainly advise him to see his +solicitors to-morrow, and in the meantime--” + +“He is my guest,” exclaimed the one whose hospitality I was enjoying, +“and while he is beneath my roof he is sacred.” + +“But I do not think that it would be kind to detain him any longer in +his wet things,” said another of the household, with pointed malignity, +and accepting this as an omen of departure, I withdrew myself, bowing +repeatedly, but offering no closer cordiality. + +“Through a torn sleeve one drops a purse of gold,” it is well said; and +as if to prove to a deeper end that misfortune is ever double-handed, +this incapable being, involved in thoughts of funereal density, bent +his footsteps to an inaccurate turning, and after much wandering was +compelled to pass the night upon a desolate heath--but that would be the +matter of another narrative. + +With an insidious doubt whether, after all, the far-seeing Kwan +Kiang-ti’s first impulse would not have been the most satisfactory +conclusion to the enterprise. + + KONG HO. + + + + +LETTER VII + + + Concerning warfare, both as waged by ourselves and by a + nation devoid of true civilisation. The aged man and the + meeting and the parting of our ways. The instance of the one + who expressed emotion by leaping. + + +Venerated Sire,--You are omniscient, but I cannot regard the fear which +you express in your beautifully-written letter, bearing the sign of the +eleventh day of the seventh moon, as anything more than the imaginings +prompted by a too-lavish supper of your favourite shark’s fin and peanut +oil. Unless the dexterously-elusive attributes of the genial-spoken +persons high in office at Pekin have deteriorated contemptibly +since this one’s departure, it is quite impossible for our great +and enlightened Empire to be drawn into a conflict with the northern +barbarians whom you indicate, against our will. When the matter becomes +urgent, doubtless a prince of the Imperial line will loyally suffer +himself to Pass Above, and during the period of ceremonial mourning +for so pure and exalted an official it would indeed be an unseemly +desecration to engage in any public business. If this failed, and an +ultimatum were pressed with truly savage contempt for all that is sacred +and refined, it might be well next to consider the health even of the +sublime Emperor himself (or, perhaps better, that of the select and +ever-present Dowager Empress); but should the barbarians still advance, +and, setting the usages of civilised warfare at defiance, threaten an +engagement in the midst of this unparalleled calamity, there will be no +alternative but to have a formidable rebellion in the Capital. All +the barbarian powers will then assemble as usual, and in the general +involvement none dare move alone, and everything will have to be +regarded as being put back to where it was before. It is well said, “The +broken vessel can never be made whole, but it may be delicately arranged +so that another shall displace it.” + +These barbarians, less resourceful in device, have only recently emerged +from a conflict into which they do not hesitate to admit they were drawn +despite their protests. Such incompetence is characteristic of their +methods throughout. Not in any way disguising their purpose, they +at once sent out an army of those whom could be the readiest seized, +certainly furnishing them with weapons, charms to use in case of +emergency, and three-coloured standards (their adversaries adopting +a white banner to symbolise the conciliation of their attitude, and +displaying both freely in every extremity), but utterly neglecting to +teach them the arts of painting their bodies with awe-inspiring forms, +of imitating the cries of wild animals as they attacked, of clashing +their weapons together with menacing vigour, or any of the recognised +artifices by which terror may be struck into the ranks of an awaiting +foeman. The result was that which the prudent must have foreseen. The +more accomplished enemy, without exposing themselves to any unnecessary +inconvenience, gained many advantages by their intrepid power of +dissimulation--arranging their garments and positions in such a way that +they had the appearance of attacking when in reality they were effecting +a prudent retreat; rapidly concealing themselves among the earth on the +approach of an overwhelming force; becoming openly possessed with the +prophetic vision of an assured final victory whenever it could be no +longer concealed that matters were becoming very desperate indeed; and +gaining an effective respite when all other ways of extrication were +barred against them by the stratagem of feigning that they were other +than those whom they had at first appeared to be. + +In the meantime the adventure was not progressing pleasantly for those +chiefly concerned at home. With the earliest tidings of repulse it was +discovered that in the haste of embarkation the wrong persons had been +sent, all those who were really the fittest to command remaining behind, +and many of these did not hesitate to write to the printed papers, +resolutely admitting that they themselves were in every way better +qualified to bring the expedition to a successful end, at the same time +skilfully pointing out how the disasters which those in the field +had incurred could easily have been avoided by acting in a precisely +contrary manner. + +In the emergency the most far-seeing recommended a more unbending policy +of extermination. Among these, one in particular, a statesman bearing +an illustrious name of two-edged import, distinguished himself by the +liberal broad-mindedness of his opinions, and for the time he even did +not flinch from making himself excessively unpopular by the wide +and sweeping variety of his censure. “We are confessedly a barbarian +nation,” fearlessly declared this unprejudiced person (who, although +entitled by hereditary right to carry a banner on the field of battle, +with patriotic self-effacement preferred to remain at home and encourage +those who were fighting by pointing out their inadequacy to the task and +the extreme unlikelihood of their ever accomplishing it), “and in order +to achieve our purpose speedily it is necessary to resort to the methods +of barbarism.” The most effective measure, as he proceeded to explain +with well-thought-out detail, would be to capture all those least +capable of resistance, concentrate them into a given camp, and then +at an agreed signal reduce the entire assembly to what he termed, in +a passage of high-minded eloquence, “a smoking hecatomb of women and +children.” + +His advice was pointed with a crafty insight, for not only would such a +course have brought the stubborn enemy to a realisation of the weakness +of their position and thus paved the way to a dignified peace, but by +the act itself few would have been left to hand down the tradition of +a relentless antagonism. Yet with incredible obtuseness his advice was +ignored and he himself was referred to at the time by those who regarded +the matter from a different angle, with a scarcely-veiled dislike, which +towards many of his followers took the form of building materials and +other dissentient messages whenever they attempted to raise their voices +publicly. As an inevitable result the conquest of the country took +years, where it would have been moons had the more truly humane policy +been adopted, commerce and the arts languished, and in the end so little +spoil was taken that it was more common to meet six mendicants wearing +the honourable embellishment of the campaign than to see one captured +slave maiden offered for sale in the market places--indeed, even to this +day the deficiency is clearly admitted and openly referred to as The +Great “Domestic” Problem. + + +At various times during my residence here I have been filled with a +most acute gratification when the words of those around have seemed to +indicate that they recognised the undoubted superiority of the laws and +institutions of our enlightened country. Sometimes, it is true, upon a +more detailed investigation of the incident, it has presently appeared +that either I had misunderstood the exact nature of their sentiments +or they had slow-wittedly failed to grasp the precise operation of the +enactment I had described; but these exceptions are clearly the outcome +of their superficial training, and do not affect the fact my feeble and +frequently even eccentric arguments are at length certainly moving the +more intelligent into an admission of what constitutes true justice +and refinement. It is not to be denied that here and there exists a +prejudice against our customs even in the minds of the studious; but as +this is invariably the shadow of misconception, it has frequently been +my sympathetic privilege to promote harmony by means of the inexorable +logic of fact and reason. “But are not your officials uncompromisingly +opposed to the freedom of the Press?” said one who conversed with me on +the varying phases of the two countries, and knowing that in his eyes +this would constitute an unendurable offence, I at once appeased his +mind. “By no means,” I replied; “if anything, the exact contrary is +the case. As a matter of reality, of course, there is no Press now, the +all-seeing Board of Censors having wisely determined that it was not +stimulating to the public welfare; but if such an institution was +permitted to exist you may rest genially assured that nothing could +exceed the lenient toleration which all in office would extend towards +it.” A similar instance of malicious inaccuracy is widely spoken of +regarding our lesser ones. “Is it really a fact, Mr. Kong,” exclaimed a +maiden of magnanimous condescension, to this person recently, “that +we poor women are despised in your country, and that among the +working-classes female children are even systematically abandoned as +soon as they are born?” Suffering my features to express amusement at +this unending calumny, I indicated my violent contempt towards the one +who had first uttered it. “So far from despising them,” I continued, +with ingratiating gallantry, “we recognise that they are quite necessary +for the purposes of preparing our food, carrying weighty burdens, +and the like; and how grotesque an action would it be for poor but +affectionate parents to abandon one who in a few years’ time could be +sold at a really remunerative profit, this, indeed, being the principal +means of sustenance in many frugal families.” + +On another occasion I had seated myself upon a wooden couch in one +of the open spaces about the outskirts of the city, when an aged man +chanced to pass by. Him I saluted with ceremonious politeness, on +account of his years and the venerable dignity of his beard. Thereupon +he approached near, and remarking affably that the afternoon was good +(though, to use no subtle evasion, it was very evil), he congenially sat +by my side and entered into familiar discourse. + +“They say that in your part of the world we old grandfathers are +worshipped,” he said, after recounting to my ears all the most intimate +details of his existence from his youth upwards; “now, might that be +right?” + +“Truly,” I replied. “It is the unchanging foundation of our system of +morality.” + +“Ay, ay,” he admitted pleasantly. “We are a long way behind them +foreigners in everything. At the rate we’re going there won’t be any +trade nor work nor religion left in this country in another twenty +years. I often wish I had gone abroad when I was younger. And if I +had chanced upon your parts I should be worshipped, eh?” and at the +agreeable thought the aged man laughed in his throat with simple humour. + +“Assuredly,” I replied; “--after you were dead.” + +“Eh?” exclaimed the venerable person, checking the fountain of his mirth +abruptly at the word. “Dead! not before? Doesn’t--doesn’t that seem a +bit of a waste?” + +“Such has been the observance from the time of unrecorded antiquity,” I +replied. “‘Obey parents, respect the old, loyally uphold the sovereign, +and worship ancestors.’” + +“Well, well,” remarked the one beside me, “obedience and respect--that’s +something nowadays. And you make them do it?” + +“Our laws are unflinching in their application,” I said. “No crime is +held to be more detestable than disrespect of those to whom we owe our +existence.” + +“Quite right,” he agreed, “it’s a pleasure to hear it. It must be a +great country, yours; a country with a future, I should say. Now, about +that youngest lad of my son Henry’s--the one that drops pet lizards down +my neck, and threatened to put rat poison into his mother’s tea when she +wouldn’t take him to the Military Turneyment; what would they do to him +by your laws?” + +“If the assertion were well sustained by competent witnesses,” I +replied, “it would probably be judged so execrable an offence, that +a new punishment would have to be contrived. Failing that, he would +certainly be wrapped round from head to foot in red-hot chains, and thus +exposed to public derision.” + +“Ah, red-hot chains!” said the aged person, as though the words formed a +pleasurable taste upon his palate. “The young beggar! Well, he’d deserve +it.” + +“Furthermore,” I continued, gratified at having found one who so +intelligently appreciated the deficiencies of his own country and the +unblemished perfection of ours, “his parents and immediate descendants, +if any should exist, would be submitted to a fate as inevitable but +slightly less contemptuous--slow compression, perchance; his parents +once removed (thus enclosing your venerable personality), and remoter +offsprings would be merely put to the sword without further ignominy, +and those of less kinship to about the fourth degree would doubtless +escape with branding and a reprimand.” + +“Lordelpus!” exclaimed the patriarchal one, hastily leaping to the +extreme limit of the wooden couch, and grasping his staff into a +significant attitude of defence; “what’s that for?” + +“Our system of justice is all-embracing,” I explained. “It is reasonably +held that in such a case either that there is an inherent strain of +criminality which must be eradicated at all hazard, or else that those +who are responsible for the virtuous instruction of the young have been +grossly neglectful of their duty. Whichever is the true cause, by this +unfailing method we reach the desired end, for, as our proverb aptly +says, ‘Do the wise pluck the weed and leave the roots to spread?’” + +“It’s butchery, nothing short of Smithfield,” said the ancient person +definitely, rising and moving to a more remote distance as he spoke the +words, yet never for a moment relaxing the aggressive angle at which +he thrust out his staff before him. “You’re a bloodthirsty race in my +opinion, and when they get this door open in China that there’s so much +talk about, out you go through it, my lad, or old England will know +why.” With this narrow-minded imprecation on his lips he left me, not +even permitting me to continue expounding what would be the most likely +sentences meted out to the witnesses in the case, the dwellers of the +same street, and the members of the household with whom the youth in +question had contemplated forming an alliance. + +Among the many contradictions which really almost seem purposely +arranged to entrap the unwary in this strangely under-side-up country, +is the fact that while the ennobled and those of high official rank are +courteous in their attitude and urbane--frequently even to the extent +of refusing money from those whom they have obliged, no matter how +privately pressed upon them--the low-caste and slavish are not only +deficient in obsequiousness, but are permitted to retort openly to those +who address them with fitting dignity. Here such a state of things +is too general to excite remark, but as instances are well called the +flowers of the tree of assertion, this person will set forth the manner +in which he was contumaciously opposed by an oblique-eyed outcast who +attended within the stall of one selling wrought gold, jewels, and +merchandise of the finer sort. + +Being desirous of procuring a gift wherewith to propitiate a certain +maiden’s esteem, and seeing above a shop of varied attraction a +suspended sign emblematic of three times repeated gild abundance I drew +near, not doubting to find beneath so auspicious a token the fulfilment +of an honourable accommodation. Inside the window was displayed one +of the implements by which the various details of a garment are joined +together upon turning a wheel, hung about with an inscription setting +forth that it was esteemed at the price of two units of gold, nineteen +pieces of silver, and eleven and three-quarters of the brass cash of the +land, and judging that no more suitable object could be procured for the +purpose, I entered the shop, and desired the attending slave to submit +it to my closer scrutiny. + +“Behold,” I exclaimed, when I had made a feint of setting the device +into motion (for it need not be concealed from you, O discreet one, that +I was really inadequate to the attempt, and, indeed, narrowly escaped +impaling myself upon its sudden and unexpected protrusions), “the +highly-burnished surface of your dexterously arranged window gave to +this engine a rich attractiveness which is altogether lacking at a +closer examination. Nevertheless, this person will not recede from a +perhaps too impulsive offer of one unit of gold, three pieces of silver, +and four and a half brass cash,” my object, of course, being that after +the mutual recrimination of disparagement and over-praise we should in +the length of an hour or two reach a becoming compromise in the middle +distance. + +“Well,” responded the menial one, regarding me with an expression in +which he did not even attempt to subdue the baser emotions, “you HAVE +come a long way for nothing”; and he made a pretence of wishing to +replace the object. + +“Yet,” I continued, “observe with calm impartiality how insidiously the +rust has assailed the outer polish of the lacquer; perceive here upon +the beneath part of wood the ineffaceable depression of a deeply-pointed +blow; note well the--” + +“It was good enough for you to want me to muck up out of the window, +wasn’t it?” demanded the obstinate barbarian, becoming passionate in his +bearing rather than reluctantly, but with courteous grace, lessening the +price to a trifling degree, as we regard the proper way of carrying on +the enterprise. + +“It is well said,” I admitted, hoping that he might yet learn wisdom +from my attitude of unruffled urbanity, though I feared that his angle +of negotiating was unconquerably opposed to mine, “but now its many +imperfections are revealed. The inelegance of its outline, the grossness +of the applied colours, the unlucky combination of numbers engraved upon +this plate, the--” + +“Damme!” cried the utterly perverse rebel standing opposite, “why don’t +you keep on your Compound, you Yellow Peril? Who asked you to come into +my shop to blackguard the things? Come now, who did?” + +“Assuredly it is your place of commerce,” I replied cheerfully, +preparing to bring forward an argument, which in our country never fails +to shake the most stubborn, “yet bend your eyes to the fact that at no +great distance away there stands another and a more alluring stall of +merchandise where--” + +“Go to it then!” screamed the abandoned outcast, leaping over his +counter and shouting aloud in a frenzy of uncontrollable rage. “Clear +out, or I’ll bend my feet--” but concluding at this point that some +private calumny from which he was doubtless suffering was disturbing +his mind to so great an extent that there was little likelihood of +our bringing the transaction to a profitable end, I left the shop +immediately but with befitting dignity. + +With a fell-founded assurance that you will now be acquiring a really +precise and bird’s-eye-like insight into practically all phases of this +country. + + KONG HO. + + + + +LETTER VIII + + + Concerning the wisdom of the sublime Wei Chung and its + application to the ordinary problems of existence. The + meeting of three, hitherto unknown to each other, about a + wayside inn, and their various manners of conducting the + enterprise. + + +Venerated Sire,--You will doubtless remember the behaviour of the aged +philosopher Wei Chung, when commanded by the broad-minded emperor of his +time to reveal the hidden sources of his illimitable knowledge, so +that all might freely acquire, and the race thereby become raised to a +position of unparalleled excellence. Taking the well-disposed sovereign +familiarly by the arm, Wei Chung led him to the mouth of his cave in the +forest, and, standing by his side, bade him reflect with open eyes for +a short space of time, and then express aloud what he had seen. “Nothing +of grave import,” declared the emperor when the period was accomplished; +“only the trees shaken by the breeze.” “It is enough,” replied Wei +Chung. “What, to the adroitly-balanced mind, does such a sight +reveal?” “That it is certainly a windy day,” exclaimed the omnipotent +triumphantly, for although admittedly divine, he yet lacked the +philosopher’s discrimination. “On the contrary,” replied the sage +coldly, “that is the natural pronouncement of the rankly superficial. To +the highly-trained intellect it conveys the more subtle truth that the +wind affects the trees, and not the trees affect the wind. For upwards +of seventy years this one has daily stood at the door of his cave for +a brief period, and regularly garnering a single detail of like +brilliance, has made it the well-spring for a day’s reflection. As the +result he now has by heart upwards of twenty-five thousand useful facts, +all serviceable for original proverbs, and an encyclopaedic mind +which would enable him to take a high place in a popular competition +unassisted by a single work of reference.” Much impressed by the +adventure the charitably-inclined emperor presented Wei Chung with an +onyx crown (which the philosopher at once threw into an adjacent well), +and returning to his capital published a decree that each day at +sunrise every person should stand at the door of his dwelling, and after +observing for a period, compare among themselves the details of their +thoughts. By this means he hoped to achieve his imperial purpose, but +although the literal part of the enactment is scrupulously maintained, +especially by the slothful and defamatory, who may be seen standing +at their doors and conversing together even to this day, from some +unforeseen imperfection the intellectual capacity of the race has +remained exactly as it was before. + +Nevertheless it is not to be questioned that the system of the versatile +Wei Chung was, in itself, grounded upon a far-seeing accuracy, and +as the need of such a rational observation is deepened among the +inconsistencies and fantastic customs of a barbarian race, I have made +it a useful habit to accept as a guide for the day’s behaviour the +reflections engendered by the first noteworthy incident of the morning. + +Upon the day with which this letter concerns itself I had set forth, in +accordance with an ever-present desire, to explore some of the hidden +places of the city. At the time a tempest of great ferocity was raging, +and bending my head before it I had the distinction of coming into +contact with a person of ill-endowed exterior at an angle where two +roads met. This amiable wayfarer exchanged civilities with me after the +politeness characteristic of the labouring classes towards those who +differ from them in speech, dress, or colour: that is to say, he filled +his pipe from my proffered store, and after lighting it threw the match +into my face, and passed on with an appropriate remark. + +Doubtless this insignificant occurrence would have faded without +internal comment if the penetrating Wei Chung had never existed, but +now, guided by his sublime precedent, I arranged the incident for the +day’s conduct under three reflective heads. + +It was while I was meditating on the second of these that an exclamation +caused me to turn, when I observed a prosperously-outlined person in +the act of picking up a scrip which had the appearance of being lavishly +distended with pieces of gold. + +“If I had not seen you pass it, I should have opined that this hyer +wallet belonged to you,” remarked the justice-loving stranger (for +the incident had irresistibly retarded my own footsteps), speaking +the language of this land, but with an accent of penetrating harmony +hitherto unknown to my ears. With these auspicious words he turned over +the object upon his hand doubtfully. + +“So entrancing a possibility is, as you gracefully suggest, of +unavoidable denial,” I replied. “Nevertheless, this person will not +hesitate to join his acclamation with yours; for, as the Book of Verses +wisely says, ‘Even the blind, if truly polite, will extol the prospect +from your house-top.’” + +“That’s so,” admitted the one by my side. “But I don’t know that there +is any call for a special thanksgiving. As I happen to have more +money of my own than I can reasonably spend I shall drop this in at a +convenient police station. I dare say some poor critter is pining away +for it now.” + +Pleasantly impressed by the resolute benevolence of the one who had +a greater store of wealth than he could, by his own unaided efforts, +dispose of, I arranged myself unobtrusively at his side, and maintaining +an exhibition of my most polished and genial conversation, I sought to +penetrate deeply into his esteem. + +“Gaze in this direction, Kong,” he said at length, calling me by name +with auspicious familiarity; “I am a benighted stranger in this hyer +city, and so are you, I rek’n. Suppose we liquor up, and then take a few +of the side shows together.” + +“The suggestion is one against which I will erect no ill-disposed +barrier,” I at once replied, so inflexibly determined not to lose sight +of a person possessing such engaging attributes as to be cheerfully +prepared even to consume my rice spirit in the inverted position which +his words implied if the display was persisted in. “Nevertheless,” + I added, with a resourceful prudence, “although by no means +undistinguished among the highest literary and competitive circles of +his native Yuen-ping, the one before you is incapable of walking in the +footsteps of a person whose accumulations are greater than he himself +can appreciably diminish.” + +“That’s all right, Kong,” exclaimed the one whom my last words fittingly +described, striking the recess of his lower garment with a gesture of +graceful significance. “When I take a fancy to any one it isn’t a matter +of dollars. I usually carry a trifle of five hundred or a thousand +pounds in my pocket-book, and if we can get through that--why, there’s +plenty more waiting at the bank. Say, though, I hope you don’t keep much +about you; it isn’t really safe.” + +“The temptation to do so is one which this person has hitherto +successfully evaded,” I replied. “The contents of this reptile-skin +case”--and not to be outshone in mutual confidence I here displayed it +openly--“do not exceed nine or ten pieces of gold and a like number of +printed obligations promising to pay five pieces each.” + +“Put it away, Kong,” he said resolutely. “You won’t need that so long as +you’re with me. Well, now, what sort of a saloon have we here?” + +As far as the opinion might be superficially expressed it had every +indication of being one of noteworthy antiquity, and to the innately +modest mind its unassuming diffidence might have lent an added charm. +Nevertheless, on most occasions this person would have maintained +an unshaken dexterity in avoiding its open door, but as the choice +admittedly lay in the hands of one who carried five hundred or a +thousand pieces of gold we went in together and passed through to a +compartment of retiring seclusion. + +In our own land, O my orthodox-minded father, where the unfailing +resources of innumerable bands of dragons, spirits, vampires, ghouls, +shadows, omens, and thunderstorms are daily enlisted to carry into +effect the pronouncements of an appointed destiny, we have many +historical examples of the inexorably converging legs of coincidence, +but none, I think, more impressively arranged than the one now +descending this person’s brush. + +We had scarcely reposed ourselves, and taken from the hands of an +awaiting slave the vessels of thrice-potent liquid which in this Island +is regarded as the indispensable accompaniment to every movement of +existence, when a third person entered the room, and seating himself +at a table some slightly removed distance away, lowered his head and +abandoned himself to a display of most lavish dejection. + +“That poor cuss doesn’t appear to be holiday-making,” remarked the +sincerely-compassionate person at my side, after closely observing the +other for a period; and then, moved by the overpowering munificence of +his inward nature, he called aloud, “Say, stranger, you seem to have +got it thickly in the neck. Is it family affliction or the whisky of the +establishment?” + +At these affably-intentioned words the stranger raised his eyes quickly, +with an indication of not having up to that time been aware of our +presence. + +“Sir,” he exclaimed, approaching to a spot where he could converse +with a more enhanced facility, “when I loosened the restraint of an +overpowering if unmanly grief, I imagined that I was alone, for I +would have shunned even the most flattering sympathy, but your +charitably-modulated voice invites confidence. The one before you is the +most contemptible, left-handed, and disqualified outcast in creation, +and he is now making his way towards the river, while his widow will be +left to take in washing, his infant son to vend evening printed leaves, +and his graceful and hitherto highly secluded daughters to go upon the +stage.” + +“Say, stranger,” interposed this person, by no means unwilling to +engrave upon his memory this newly-acquired form of greeting, “the +emotion is doubtless all-pressing, but in my ornate and flower-laden +tongue we have a salutation, ‘Slowly, slowly; walk slowly,’ which seems +to be of far-seeing application.” + +“That’s so,” remarked the one by my side. “Separate it with the teeth, +inch by inch.” + +“I will be calm, then,” continued the other (who, to avoid the +complication of the intermingling circumstances, may be described as +the more stranger of the two), and he took of his neckcloth. “I am a +merchant in tea, yellow fat, and mixed spices, in a small but hitherto +satisfactory way.” Thus revealing himself, he continued to set forth +how at an earlier hour he had started on a journey to deposit his wealth +(doubtless as a propitiation of outraged deities) upon a certain bank, +and how, upon reaching the specified point, he discovered that what +he carried had eluded his vigilance. “All gone: notes, gold, and +pocket-book--the savings of a lifetime,” concluded the ill-omened one, +and at the recollection a sudden and even more highly-sustained frenzy +of self-unpopularity involving him, without a pause he addressed himself +by seven and twenty insulting expressions, many of which were quite new +to my understanding. + +At the earliest mention of the details affecting the loss, the elbow of +the person who had made himself responsible for the financial obligation +of the day propelled itself against my middle part, and unseen by the +other he indicated to me by means of his features that the entertainment +was becoming one of agreeable prepossession. + +“Now, touching this hyer wallet,” he said presently. “How might you +describe it?” + +“In colour it was red, and within were two compartments, the one +containing three score notes each of ten pounds, the other fifty pounds +of gold. But what’s the use of describing it? Some lucky demon will pick +it up and pocket the lot, and I shall never see a cent of it again.” + +“Then you’d better consult one who reburnishes the eyes,” declared the +magnanimous one with a laugh, and drawing forth the article referred to +he cast it towards the merchant in a small way. + +At this point of the narrative my thoroughly incompetent brush confesses +the proportions of the requirement to be beyond its most extended +limit, and many very honourable details are necessarily left without +expression. + +“I’ve known men of all sorts, good, bad, and bothwise,” exclaimed the +one who had recovered his possessions; “but I never thought to meet +a gent as would hand over six hundred and fifty pounds as if it was a +toothpick. Sir, it overbalances me; it does, indeed.” + +“Say no more about it,” urged the first person, and to suggest +gracefully that the incident had reached its furthest extremity, he +began to set out the melody of an unspoken verse. + +“I will say no more, then,” he replied; “but you cannot reasonably +prevent my doing something to express my gratitude. If you are not too +proud you will come and partake of food and wine with me beneath the +sign of the Funereal Male Cow, and to show my confidence in you I shall +insist upon you carrying my pocket-book.” + +The person whom I had first encountered suffered his face to become +excessively amused. “Say, stranger, do you take me for a pack-mule?” + he replied good-naturedly. “I already have about as much as I want to +handle. Never mind; we’ll come along with you, and Mr. Kong shall carry +your bullion.” + +At this delicate and high-minded proposal a rapid change, in no way +complimentary to my explicit habit of adequately conducting any venture +upon which I may be engaged, came over the face of the second person. + +“Sir,” he exclaimed, “I have nothing to say against this gentleman, but +I am under no obligation to him, and I don’t see why I should trust him +with everything I possess.” + +“Stranger,” exclaimed the other rising to his feet (and from this point +it must be understood that the various details succeeded one another +with a really agile dexterity), “let me tell you that Mr. Kong is my +friend, and that ought to be enough.” + +“It is. If you say this gentleman is your friend, and that you have +known him long and intimately enough to be able to answer for him, +that’s good enough for me.” + +“Well,” admitted the first person, and I could not conceal from myself +that his tone was inauspiciously reluctant, “I can’t exactly say that +I’ve known him long; in fact I only met him half an hour ago. But I have +the fullest confidence in his integrity.” + +“It’s just as I expected. Well, sir, you’re good-natured enough for +anything, but if you’ll excuse me, I must say that you’re a small piece +of an earthenware vessel after all”--the veiled allusion doubtlessly +being that the vessel of necessity being broken, the contents inevitably +escape--“and I hope you’re not being had.” + +“I’m not, and I’ll prove it before we go out together,” retorted the +engaging one, who had in the meantime become so actively impetuous on my +account, that he did not remain content with the spoken words, but threw +the various belongings about as he mentioned them in a really profuse +display of inimitable vehemence. “Here, Kong, take this hyer pocket-book +whatever he says. Now on the top of that take everything I’ve got, and +you know what THAT figures up to. Now give this gentleman your little +lot to keep him quiet; I don’t ask for anything. Now, stranger, I’m +ready. You and I will take a stroll round the block and back again, and +if Mr. Kong isn’t waiting here for us when we return with everything +intact and O.K., I’ll double your deposit and never trust a durned soul +again.” + +Nodding genially over his shoulder with a harmonious understanding, +expressive of the fact that we were embarking upon an undeniably +diverting episode, the benevolent-souled person who had accumulated more +riches than he was competent to melt away himself, passed out, urging +the doubtful and still protesting one before him. + +Thus abandoned to my own reflections, I pondered for a short time +profitably on the third head of the day’s meditation (Touching the match +and this person’s unattractively-lined face. The revealed truth: the +inexperienced sheep cannot pass through the hedge without leaving +portions of his wool), and then finding the philosophy of Wei Chung very +good, I determined to remove the superfluous apprehensions of the vender +of food-stuffs with less delay by setting out and meeting them on their +return. + +A few paces distant from the door, one of the ever-present watchers of +the street was standing, watching the street with unremitting vigilance, +while from the well-guarded expression of his face it might nevertheless +be gathered that he stood as though in expectation. + +“Prosperity,” I said, with seasonable greeting. (For no excess of +consideration is too great to be lavished upon these, who unite +within themselves the courage of a high warrior, the expertness of a +three-handed magician, and the courtesy of a genial mandarin.) “I +seek two, apparelled thus and thus. Did you, by any chance, mark the +direction of their footsteps?” + +“Oh,” he said, regarding this person with a most flattering application, +“YOU seek them, do you? Well, they’ve just gone off in a hansom, and +they’ll want a lot of seeking for the next week or two. You let them +carry your purse, perhaps?” + +“Assuredly,” I replied. “As a mark of confidence; this person, for his +part, receiving a like token at their hands.” + +“That’s it,” said the official watcher, conveying into his voice a +subtle indication that he had become excessively fatigued. “It’s like +a nursery tale--never too old to take with the kids. Well, come along, +poor lamb, the station isn’t far.” + +So great had become the reliance which by this time I habitually reposed +in these men, that I never sought to oppose their pronouncements (such +a course being not only useless but undignified), and we therefore +together reached the place which the one by my side had described as a +station. + +From the outside the building was in no way imposing, but upon reaching +an inner dungeon it at once became plain that no matter with what crime +a person might be charged, even the most stubborn resistance would be +unavailing. Before a fiercely-burning fire were arranged metal pincers, +massive skewers, ornamental branding irons, and the usual accessories of +the grill, one tool being already thrust into the heart of the flame +to indicate the nature of its use, and its immediate readiness for the +purpose. Pegs from which the accused could be hung by the thumbs +with weights attached to the feet, covered an entire wall; chains, +shackling-irons, fetters, steel rings for compressing the throat, and +belts for tightening the chest, all had their appointed places, while +the Chair, the Boot, the Heavy Hat, and many other appliances quite +unknown to our system of administering justice were scattered about. + +Without pausing to select any of these, the one who led me approached +a raised desk at which was seated a less warlike official, whose +sympathetic appearance inspired confidence. “Kong Ho,” exclaimed to +himself the person who is inscribing these words, “here is an individual +into whose discriminating ear it would be well to pour the exact +happening without evasion. Then even if the accusation against you be +that of resembling another or trafficking with unlawful Forces, he will +doubtless arrange the matter so that the expiation shall be as light and +inexpensive as possible.” + +By this time certain other officials had drawn near. “What is it?” I +heard one demand, and another replied, “Brooklyn Ben and Jimmie the +Butterman again. Ah, they aren’t artful, are they!” but at this moment +the two into whose power I had chiefly fallen having conversed together, +I was commanded to advance towards them and reveal my name. + +“Kong,” I replied freely; and I had formed a design to explain somewhat +of the many illustrious ancestors of the House, when the one at the +desk, pausing to inscribe my answer in a book, spoke out. + +“Kong?” he said. “Is that the christian or surname?” + +“Sir-name?” replied this person between two thoughts. “Undoubtedly +the one before you is entitled by public examination to the degree +‘Recognised Talent,’ which may, as a meritorious distinction, be held +equal to your title of a warrior clad in armour. Yet, if it is so held, +that would rightly be this person’s official name of Paik.” + +“Oh, it would, would it?” said the one seated upon the high chair. +“That’s quite clear. Are there any other names as well?” + +“Assuredly,” I explained, pained inwardly that one of official rank +should so slightly esteem my appearance as to judge that I was so +meagrely endowed. “The milk name of Ho; Tsin upon entering the Classes; +as a Great Name Cheng; another style in Quank; the official title +already expressed, and T’chun, Li, Yuen and Nung as the various +emergencies of life arise.” + +“Thank you,” said the high-chair official courteously. “Now, just the +name in full, please, without any velvet trimmings.” + +“Kong,” began this person, desirous above all things of putting +the matter competently, yet secretly perturbed as to what might be +considered superfluous and what deemed a perfidious suppression, “Ho +Tsin Cheng Quank--” + +“Hold hard,” cried this same one, restraining me with an uplifted pen. +“Did you say ‘Quack’?” + +“Quack?” repeated this person, beginning to become involved within +himself, and not grasping the detail in the right position. “In a manner +of setting the expression forth--” + +“Put him down, ‘Quack Duck,’ sir,” exclaimed one of dog-like dejection +who stood by. “Most of these Lascars haven’t got any real names--they +just go by what any one happens to call them at the time, like ‘Burmese +Ike’ down at the Mint,” and this person unfortunately chancing to smile +and bow acquiescently at that moment (not with any set intention, but +as a general principle of courteous urbanity), in place of his really +distinguished titles he will henceforth appear among the historical +records of this dynasty under what he cannot disguise from his inner +misgivings to be the low-caste appellation of Quack Duck. + +“Now the address, please,” continued the high one, again preparing to +inscribe the word, and being determined that by no mischance should this +particular be offensively reported, I unhesitatingly replied, “Beneath +the Sign of the Lead Tortoise, on the northern course from the Lotus +Pools outside the walls of Yuen-ping.” + +This answer the one with the book did not immediately record. “I +don’t say it isn’t all right when you know the parts,” he remarked +broad-mindedly, “but it does sound a trifle irregular. Can’t you give it +a number and a street?” + +“I fancy it must be a pub, sir,” observed another. “He said that it had +a sign--the Red Tortoise.” + +“Well, haven’t you got a London address?” said the high one, and this +person being able to supply a street and a number as desired, this part +of the undertaking was disposed of, to his cordial satisfaction. + +“Now let me see the articles which these men left with you,” commanded +the chieftain of the band, and without any misleading discrepancies I at +once drew forth from an inner sleeve the two scrips, of which adequate +mention has already been made, another hitherto undescribed, two +instruments for measuring the passing hours of the day, together with a +chain of fine gold ingeniously wrought into the semblance of a cable, +an ornament for the breast, set about with a jewel, two neck-cloths of +a kind usually carried in the pocket, a book for recording happenings of +any moment, pieces of money to the value of about eleven taels, a silver +flagon, a sheathed weapon and a few lesser objects of insignificant +value. These various details I laid obsequiously before the one who had +commanded it, while the others stood around either in explicit silence +or speaking softly beneath their breath. + +“Do I understand that the two persons left all these things with you, +while they took your purse in exchange?” said the high official, after +examining certain obscure signs upon the metals, the contents of the +third scrip, and the like. + +“It cannot reasonably be denied,” I replied; “inasmuch as they departed +without them.” + +“Spontaneously?” he demanded, and in spite of the unevadible severity of +his voice the expression of his nearer eye deviated somewhat. + +“The spoken and conclusive word of the first was that it was his +intention to commit to this one’s keeping everything which he had; the +assertion of the second being that with this scrip I received all that +he possessed.” + +“While of yours, what did they get, Mr. Quack?” and the tone of the one +who spoke had a much more gratifying modulation than before, while the +attitudes of those who stood around had favourably changed, until they +now conveyed a message of deliberate esteem. + +“A serpent-skin case of two enclosures,” I replied. “On the one side +was a handcount of the small copper-pieces of this Island, which I had +caused to be burnished and gilt for the purpose of taking back to amuse +those of Yuen-ping. On the other side were two or three pages from a +gravity-removing printed leaf entitled ‘Bits of Tits,’ with which +this person weekly instructs himself in the simpler rudiments of the +language. For the rest the case was controlled by a hidden spring, and +inscribed about with a charm against loss, consumption by fire, or being +secretly acquired by the unworthy.” + +“I don’t think you stand in much need of that charm, Mr. Quack,” + remarked another of more than ordinary rank, who was also present. “Then +they really got practically no money from you?” + +“By no means,” I admitted. “It was never literally stipulated, and +whatever of wealth he possesses this person carries in a concealed spot +beneath his waistbelt.” (For even to these, virtuous sire, I did not +deem it expedient to reveal the fact that in reality it is hidden within +the sole of my left sandal.) + +“I congratulate you,” he said with lavish refinement. “Ben and the +Butterman can be very bland and persuasive. Could you tell me, as a +matter of professional curiosity, what first put you on your guard?” + +“In this person’s country,” I replied, “there is an apt saying, ‘The +sagacious bird does not build his nest twice in the empty soup-toureen,’ +and by observing closely what has gone before one may accurately +conjecture much that will follow after.” It may be, that out of my +insufferable shortcomings of style and expression, this answer did not +convey to his mind the logical sequence of the warning; yet it would +have been more difficult to show him how everything arose from the +faultlessly-balanced system of the heroic Wei Chung, or the exact +parallel lying between the ill-clad outcast who demanded a portion of +tobacco and the cheerfully unassuming stranger who had in his possession +a larger accumulation of money than he could conveniently disperse. + +In such a manner I took leave of the station and those connected with +it, after directing that the share of the spoil which fell by the law +of this Island to my lot should be sold and the money of exchange +faithfully divided among the virtuous and necessitous of both sexes. The +higher officials each waved me pleasantly by the hand, according to the +striking and picturesque custom of the land, while the lesser ones stood +around and spoke flattering words as I departed, as “honourable,” “a +small piece of all-right,” “astute ancient male fowl,” “ah!” and the +like. + +With repeated assurances that however ineptly the adventure may at the +time appear to be tending, as regards the essentials of true dignity +and an undeviating grasp upon articles of negotiable value, nothing of a +regrettable incident need be feared. + + KONG HO. + + + + +LETTER IX + + + Concerning the proverb of the highly-accomplished horse. The + various perils to be encountered in the Beneath Parts. The + inexplicable journey performed by this one, and concerning + the obscurity of the witchcraft employed. + + +Venerated Sire,--Among these islanders there is a proverb, “Do not place +the carte” (or card, the two words having an identical purport, and +both signifying the inscribed tablet of viands prepared for a banquet,) +“before the horse.” Doubtless the saying first arose as a timely rebuke +to a certain barbarian emperor who announced his contempt for the +intelligence of his subjects by conferring high mandarin rank upon a +favourite steed and ceremoniously appointing it to be his chancellor; +but from the narrower moral that an unreasoning animal is out of place, +and even unseemly, in the entertaining hall or council chamber, the +expression has in the course of time taken a wider application and is +now freely used as an insidious thrust at one who may be suspected of +contrariness of character, of confusing issues, or of acting in a vain +or illogical manner. I had already preserved the saying among other +instances of foreign thought and expression which I am collecting for +your dignified amusement, as it is very characteristic of the wisdom and +humour of these Outer Lands. The imagination is essentially barbaric. A +horse--doubtless well-groomed, richly-caparisoned, and as intellectual +as the circumstances will permit, but inevitably an animal of degraded +attributes and untraceable ancestry--a horse reclining before a lavishly +set-out table and considering well of what dish it shall next partake! +Could anything, it appears, be more diverting! Truly to our more refined +outlook the analogy is lacking both in delicacy of wit and in exactitude +of balance, but to the grosser barbarian conception of what is +gravity-removing it is irresistible. + +I am, however, reminded of the saying by perceiving that I was on the +point of recording certain details of recent occurrence without first +unrolling to your mind the incidents from which it has arisen that the +person who is now communicating with you is no longer reposing in the +Capital, but spending a period profitably in observing the habits of +those who dwell in the more secluded recesses on the outskirts of the +Island. This reversal of the proper sequence of affairs would doubtless +strike those around as an instance of setting the banquet before the +horse. Without delay, then, to pursue the allusion to its appropriate +end, I will return, as it may be said, to my nosebag. + +At various points about the streets of the Capital there are certain +caverns artificially let into the bowels of the earth, to which any +person may betake himself upon purchasing a printed sign which he must +display to the guardian of the gate. Once within the underneathmost +parts he is free to be carried from place to place by means of the +trains of carriages which I have already described to you, until he +would return to the outer surface, when he must again display his +talisman before he is permitted to pass forth. Nor is this an empty +form, for upon an occasion this person himself witnessed a very bitter +contention between a keeper of the barrier and one whose token had +through some cause lost its potency. + +In the company of the experienced I had previously gone through the +trial without mischance, so that recently when I expressed a wish to +visit a certain Palace, and was informed that the most convenient manner +would be to descend into the nearest cavern, I had no reasonable device +for avoiding the encounter. Nevertheless, enlightened sire, I will +not attempt to conceal from your omniscience that I was by no means +impetuous towards the adventure. Owing to the pugnacious and unworthy +suspicions of those who direct their destinies, I have not yet been +able to penetrate the exact connection between the movements of these +hot-smoke chariots and the Unseen Forces. To a person whose chief object +in life is to avoid giving offence to any of the innumerable demons +which are ever on the watch to revenge themselves upon our slightest +indiscretion, this uncertainty opens an unending vista of intolerable +possibilities. As if to emphasise the perils of this overhanging doubt +the surroundings are ingeniously arranged so as to represent as nearly +as practicable the terrors of the Beneath World. Both by day and night a +funereal gloom envelops the caverns, the pathways and resting-places are +meagre and so constructed as to be devoid of attraction or repose, and +by a skilful contrivance the natural atmosphere is secretly withdrawn +and a very acrimonious sulphurous haze driven in to replace it. +In sudden and unforeseen places eyes of fire open and close with +disconcerting rapidity, and even change colour in vindictive +significance; wooden hands are outstretched as in unrelenting rigidity +against supplication, or, divining the unexpressed thoughts, inexorably +point, as one gazes, still deeper into the recesses of the earth; while +the air is never free from the sounds of groans, shrieks, the rattling +of chains, dull, hopeless noises beneath one’s feet or overhead, and the +hoarse wordless cries of despair with which the attending slaves of the +caverns greet the distant clamour of every approaching fire-chariot. +Admittedly the intention of the device is benevolently conceived, and +it is strenuously asserted that many persons of corrupt habits and +ill-balanced lives, upon waking unexpectedly while passing through +these Beneath Parts, have abandoned the remainder of their journey, and, +escaping hastily to the outer air, have from that time onwards led a +pure and consistent existence; but, on the other foot, those who are +compelled to use the caverns daily, freely confess that the surroundings +do not in any material degree purify their lives or tranquillise the +nature of their inner thoughts. + +In this emergency I did not neglect to write out a diversity of charms +against every possible variety of evil influence, and concealing them +lavishly about my head and body, I presented myself with the outer +confidence of a person who is inured to the exploit. Doubtless thereby +being mistaken for one of themselves in the obscurity, I received the +inscribed safeguard without opposition, and even an added sum in copper +pieces, which I discreetly returned to the one behind the shutter, with +the request that he would honourably burn a few joss sticks or sacrifice +to a trivial amount, to the success of my journey. In such a manner +I reached an awaiting train, and, taking up within it a position of +retiring modesty, I definitely committed myself to the undertaking. + +At the next tarrying place there entered a barbarian of high-class +appearance, and being by this time less assured of my competence in the +matter unaided, both on account of the multiplicity of evil omens on +every side, and the perverse impulses of the guiding demon, whereby +at sudden angles certain of my organs had the emotion of being left +irrevocably behind and others of being snatched relentlessly forward, I +approached him courteously. + +“Behold,” I said, “many thousand li of water, both fresh and bitter, +flow between the one who is addressing you and his native town of +Yuen-ping, where the tablets at the street corners are as familiar to +him as the lines of his own unshapely hands; for, as it is truly said, +‘Does the starling know the lotus roots, or the pomfret read its way by +the signs among the upper branches of the pines?’ Out of the necessities +of his ignorance and your own overwhelming condescension enlighten him, +therefore, whether the destination of this fire-chariot by any chance +corresponds with the inscribed name upon his talisman?” + +Thus adjured, the stranger benevolently turned himself to the detail, +and upon consulting a book of symbols he expressed himself to this wise: +that after a sufficient interval I should come into a certain station, +called in part after the title of the enlightened ruler of this Island, +and there abandoning the train which was carrying us, I should enter +another which would bring me out of the Beneath Parts and presently into +the midst of that Palace which I sought. This advice seemed good, for +a reasonable connection might be supposed to exist between a station +so auspiciously called and a Palace bearing the harmonious name of +the gracious and universally-revered sovereign-consort. Accordingly I +thanked him ceremoniously, not only on my own part, but also on behalf +of eleven generations of immediate ancestors, and in the name of seven +generations who should come after, and he on his side agreeably replied +that he was sure his grandmother would have done as much for mine, and +he sincerely hoped that none of his great-great-grandchildren would +prove less obliging. In this intellectual manner, varied with the +entertainment of profuse bows, the time passed cordially between us +until the barbarian reached his own alighting stage, when he again +repeated the various details of the strategy for my observance. + +At this point let it be set forth deliberately that there existed no +treachery in the advice, still less that this person is incapable of +competently achieving the destined end of any hazard upon which he +may embark when once the guiding signs have been made clear to his +understanding. Whatever entanglement arose was due merely to the +conflicting manners of expression used by two widely-varying races, even +as our own proverb says, “What is only sauce for the cod is serious for +the oyster.” + +At the station indicated as bearing the sign of the ruler of the country +(which even a person of little discernment could have recognised by +the highly-illuminated representation bearing the elusively-worded +inscription, “In packets only”), I left this fire-chariot, and at once +perceiving another in an attitude of departure, I entered it, as the +casual barbarian had definitely instructed, and began to assure myself +that I had already become expertly proficient in the art of journeying +among these Beneath Regions and to foresee the time, not far distant, +when others would confidently address themselves to me in their +extremities. So entrancing did this contemplation grow, that this +outrageous person began to compose the actual words with which he would +instruct them as the occasion arose, as thus, “Undoubtedly, O virtuous +and not unattractive maiden, this fire-engine will ultimately lead your +refined footsteps into the street called Those who Bake Food. Do not +hesitate, therefore, to occupy the vacant place by this insignificant +one’s side”; or, “By no means, honourable sir; the Cross of Charing +is in the precisely opposite direction to that selected by this +self-opinionated machine for its inopportune destination. Do not rebuke +this person for his immoderate loss of mental gravity, for your mistake, +though pardonable in a stranger, is really excessively diverting. Your +most prudent course now will assuredly be to cast yourself from the +carriage without delay and rely upon the benevolent intervention of a +fire-chariot proceeding backwards.” + +Alas, it is truly said, “None but sword-swallowers should endeavour to +swallow swords,” thereby signifying the vast chasm that lies between +those who are really adroit in an undertaking and those who only think +that they may easily become so. Presently it began to become deeply +impressed upon my discrimination that the journey was taking a more +lengthy duration than I had been given to understand would be the case, +while at the same time a permanent deliverance from the terrors of the +Beneath Parts seemed to be insidiously lengthening out into a funereal +unattainableness. The point of this person’s destination, he had been +assured on all hands, was a spot beyond which even the most aggressively +assertive engine could not proceed, so that he had no fears of being +incapably drawn into more remote places, yet when hour after hour passed +and the ill-destined machine never failed in its malicious endeavours to +leave each successive tarrying station, it is not to be denied that +my imagination dwelt regretfully upon the true civilisation of our +own enlightened country, where, by the considerate intervention of an +all-wise government, the possibilities of so distressing an experience +are sympathetically removed from one’s path. Thus the greater part of +the day had faded, and I was conjecturing that by this time we must +inevitably be approaching the barren and inhospitable country which +forms the northern limit of the Island, when the door suddenly opened +and the barbarian stranger whom I had left many hundred li behind +entered the carriage. + +At this manifestation all uncertainty departed, and I now understood +that to some obscure end witchcraft of a very powerful and high-caste +kind was being employed around me; for in no other way was it credible +to one’s intelligence that a person could propel himself through the +air with a speed greater than that of one of these fire-chariots, and +overtake it. Doubtless it was a part of this same scheme which made it +seem expedient to the stranger that he should feign a part, for he +at once greeted me as though the occasion were a matter of everyday +happening, exclaiming genially-- + +“Well, Mr. Kong, returning? And what do you think of the Palace?” + +“It is fitly observed, ‘To the earthworm the rice stalk is as high as +the pagoda,’” I replied with adroit evasion, clearly understanding from +his manner that for some reason, not yet revealed to me, a course of +dissimulation was expedient in order to mislead the surrounding +demons concerning my movements, and by a subtle indication of the face +conveying to the stranger an assurance that I had tactfully grasped +the requirement, and would endeavour to walk well upon his heels, +“and therefore it would be unseemly for a person of my insignificant +attainments to engage in the doubtful flattery of comparing it with +the many other residences of the pure and exalted which embellish your +Capital.” + +“Oh,” said the one whom I may now suitably describe by the name of Sir +Philip, “that’s rather a useful proverb sometimes. Many people there?” + +At this inquiry I could not disguise from myself an emotion that +the person seated opposite was not diplomatically inspired in so +persistently clinging to the one subject upon which he must assuredly +know that I experienced an all-pervading deficiency. Nevertheless, +being by this more fully convinced that the disguise was one of critical +necessity, and not deeming that the essential ceremonies of one Palace +would differ from those of another, no matter in what land they stood +(while through all I read a clear design on Sir Philip’s part that +the opportunity was craftily arranged so that I might impress upon any +vindictively-intentioned spirits within hearing an assumption of high +protection), I replied that the gathering had been one of unparalleled +splendour, both by reason of the multitude of exalted nobles present +and also owing to the jewelled magnificence lavished on every detail. +Furthermore, I continued, now definitely abandoning all the promptings +of a wise reserve, and reflecting, as we say, that one may as well be +drowned in the ocean as in a wooden bucket, not only did the sublime and +unapproachable sovereign graciously permit me to kow-tow respectfully +before him, but subsequently calling me to his side beneath a canopy of +golden radiance, he conversed genially with me and benevolently assured +me of his sympathetic favour on all occasions (this, I conjectured, +would certainly overawe any Evil Force not among the very highest +circles), while the no less magnanimous Prince of the Imperial Line +questioned me with flattering assiduousness concerning a method of +communicating with persons at a distance by means of blows or stamps +upon a post (as far as the outer meaning conveyed itself to me), the +houses which we build, and whether they contained an adequate provision +of enclosed spaces in the walls. + +Doubtless I could have continued in this praiseworthy spirit of delicate +cordiality to an indefinite amount had I not chanced to observe at this +point that the expression of Sir Philip’s urbanity had become entangled +in a variety of other emotions, not all propitious to the scheme, +so that in order to retire imperceptibly within myself I smiled +broad-mindedly, remarking that it was well said that the moon was only +bright while the sun was hid, and that I had lately been dazzled with +the sight of so much brilliance and virtuous condescension that +there were occasions when I questioned inwardly how much I had really +witnessed, and how much had been conveyed to me in the nature of an +introspective vision. + +It will already have been made plain to you, O my courtly-mannered +father, that these barbarians are totally deficient in the polite +art whereby two persons may carry on a flattering and highly-attuned +conversation, mutually advantageous to the esteem of each, without it +being necessary in any way that their statements should have more than +an ornamental actuality. So wanting in this, the most concentrated form +of truly well-bred entertainment, are even their high officials, +that after a few more remarks, to which I made answer in a spirit of +skilfully-sustained elusiveness, the utterly obtuse Sir Philip said at +length, “Excuse my asking, Mr. Kong, but have you really been to the +Alexandra Palace at all?” + +Admittedly there are few occasions in life on which it is not possible +to fail to see the inopportune or low-class by a dignified impassiveness +of features, an adroitly-directed jest, or a remark of baffling +inconsequence, but in the face of so distressingly straightforward a +demand what can be advanced by a person of susceptible refinement when +opposed to one of incomparably larger dimensions, imprisoned by his side +in the recess of a fire-chariot which is leaping forward with uncurbed +velocity, and surrounded by demons with whose habits and partialities he +is unfamiliar? + +“In a manner of expressing the circumstance,” I replied, “it is not to +be denied that this person’s actual footsteps may have imperceptibly +been drawn somewhat aside from the path of his former design. Yet +inasmuch as it is truly said that the body is in all things subservient +to the mind, and is led withersoever it is willed, and as your engaging +directions were scrupulously observed with undeviating fidelity, it +would be impertinently self-opinionated on this person’s part to +imply that they failed to guide him to his destination. Thus, for all +ceremonial purposes, it is permissible conscientiously to assume that he +HAS been there.” + +“I am afraid that I must not have been sufficiently clear,” said Sir +Philip. “Did you miss the train at King’s Cross?” + +“By no means,” I replied firmly, pained inwardly that he should cast the +shadow of such narrow incompetence upon me. “Seeing this machine on the +point of setting forth on a journey, even as your overwhelming +sagacity had enabled you to predict would be the case, I embarked with +self-reliant confidence.” + +“Good lord!” murmured the person opposite, beginning to manifest an +excess of emotion for which I was quite unable to account. “Then you +have been in this train--your actual footsteps I mean, Mr. Kong; not +your ceremonial abstract subliminal ego--ever since?” + +To this I replied that his words shone like the moon at midnight with +scintillating points of truth; adding, however, as the courtesies of +the occasion required, that I had been so impressed with the many-sided +brilliance of his conversation earlier in the day as to render the +flight of time practically unnoticed by me. + +“But did it never occur to you to ask at one of the stations?” he +demanded, still continuing to wave his hands incapably from side to +side. “Any of the porters would have told you.” + +“Kong Li Heng, the founder of our line, who was really great, has been +dead eleven centuries, and no single fact or incident connected with his +life has been preserved to influence mankind,” I replied. “How much less +will it matter, then, even in so limited a space of time as a hundred +years, in what fashion so insignificant a person as the one before you +acted on any occasion, and why, therefore, should he distress himself +unnecessarily to any precise end?” In this manner I sought to place +before him the dignified example of an imperturbability which can be +maintained in every emergency, and at the same time to administer a +plain yet scrupulously-sheathed rebuke; for the inauspicious manner in +which he had first drawn me on to speak confidently of the ceremonies of +the Royal Palace and then held up my inadequacy to undeserved contempt +had not rejoiced my imagination, and I was still uncertain how much to +claim, and whether, perchance, even yet a more subtle craft lay under +all. + +“Well, in any case, when you go back you can claim the distinction of +having been taken seven times round London, although you can’t really +have seen much of it,” said Sir Philip. “This is a Circle train.” + +At this assertion I looked up. Though admittedly curved a little about +the roof the chariot was in every essential degree what we should +pronounce to be a square one; whereupon, feeling at length that the +involvement had definitely passed to a point beyond my contemptible +discernment, I spread out my hands acquiescently and affably remarked +that the days were lengthening out pleasantly. + +In such a manner I became acquainted with the one Sir Philip, and +thereby, in a somewhat circuitous line, the original purpose which +possessed my brush when I began this inept and commonplace letter +is reached; for the person in question not only lay upon himself the +obligation of leading me “by the strings of his apron-garment”--in the +characteristic and fanciful turn of the barbarian language--to that same +Palace on the following day, but thenceforth gracefully affecting to +discern certain agreeable virtues in my conversation and custom of habit +he frequently sought me out. More recently, on the double plea that they +of his household had a desire to meet me, and that if I spent all my +time within the Capital my impressions of the Island would necessarily +be ill-balanced and deformed, he advanced a project that I should +accompany him to a spot where, as far as I was competent to grasp +the idiom, he was in the habit of sitting (doubtless in an abstruse +reverie), in the country; and having assured myself by means of discreet +innuendo that the seat referred to would be adequate for this person +also, and that the occasion did not in any way involve a payment of +money, I at once expressed my willingness towards the adventure. + +With numerous expressions of unfeigned regret (from a filial point of +view) that the voice of one of the maidens of the household, lifted +in the nature of a defiance against this one to engage with her in a +two-handed conflict of hong pong, obliges him to bring this immature +composition to a hasty close. + + KONG HO. + + + + +LETTER X + + + Concerning the authority of this high official, Sir Philip. + The side-slipperyness of barbarian etiquette. The hurl- + headlong sportiveness and that achieving its end by means of + curved mallets. + + +Venerated Sire,--If this person’s memory is accurately poised on the +detail, he was compelled to abandon his former letter (when on the point +of describing the customs of these outer places), in order to take part +in a philosophical discussion with some of the venerable sages of the +neighbourhood. + +Resuming the narration where it had reached this remote province of +the Empire, it is a suitable opportunity to explain that this same +Sir Philip is here greeted on every side with marks of deferential +submission, and is undoubtedly an official of high button, for whenever +the inclination seizes him he causes prisoners to be sought out, and +then proceeds to administer justice impartially upon them. In the case +of the wealthy and those who have face to lose, the matter is generally +arranged, to his profit and to the satisfaction of all, by the payment +of an adequate sum of money, after the invariable custom of our own +mandarincy. When this incentive to leniency is absent it is usual to +condemn the captive to imprisonment in a cell (it is denied officially, +but there is no reason to doubt that a large earthenware vessel is +occasionally used for this purpose,) for varying periods, though it is +notorious that in the case of the very necessitous they are sometimes +set freely at liberty, and those who took them publicly reprimanded for +accusing persons from whose condition no possible profit could arise. +This confinement is seldom inflicted for a longer period than seven, +fourteen, or twenty-one days (these being lucky numbers,) except in the +case of those who have been held guilty of ensnaring certain birds and +beasts which appear to be regarded as sacred, for they have their duly +appointed attendants who wear a garb and are trained in the dexterous +use of arms, lurking with loaded weapons in secret places to catch the +unwary, both by night and day. Upheld by the high nature of their office +these persons shrink from no encounter and even suffer themselves to be +killed with resolute unconcern; but when successful they are not denied +an efficient triumph, for it is admitted that those whom they capture +are marked men from that time (doubtless being branded upon the body +with the name of their captor), and no future defence is availing. The +third punishment, that of torture, is reserved for a class of solitary +mendicants who travel from place to place, doubtless spreading the germs +of an inflammatory doctrine of rebellion, for, owing to my own degraded +obtuseness, the actual nature of their crimes could never be made clear +to me. Of the tortures employed that known in their language as the +“bath” (for which we have no real equivalent,) is the most dreaded, and +this person has himself beheld men of gigantic proportions, whose bodies +bore the stain of a voluntary endurance to every privation, abandon +themselves to a most ignoble despair upon hearing the ill-destined word. +Unquestionably the infliction is closely connected with our own ordeal +of boiling water, but from other indications it is only reasonable to +admit that there is an added ingredient, of which we probably have no +knowledge, whereby the effect is enhanced in every degree, and the outer +surface of the victim rendered more vulnerable. There is also another +and milder form of torture, known as the “task”, consisting either of +sharp-edged stones being broken upon the body, or else the body broken +upon sharp-edged stones, but precisely which is the official etiquette +of the case this person’s insatiable passion for accuracy and his +short-sighted limitations among the more technical outlines of the +language, prevent him from stating definitely. + +Let it here be openly confessed that the intricately-arranged titles +used among these islanders, and the widely-varying dignities which they +convey, have never ceased to embarrass my greetings on all occasions, +and even yet, when a more crystal insight into their strangely illogical +manners enables me not only to understand them clearly myself, but +also to expound their significance to others, a necessary reticence is +blended with my most profuse cordiality, and my salutations to one whom +I am for the first time encountering are now so irreproachably balanced, +that I can imperceptibly develop them into an engaging effusion, or, +without actual offence, draw back into a condition of unapproachable +exclusiveness as the necessity may arise. With us, O my immaculate sire, +a yellow silk umbrella has for three thousand years denoted a fixed and +recognisable title. A mandarin of the sixth degree need not hesitate to +mingle on terms of assured equality with other mandarins of the sixth +degree, and without any guide beyond a seemly instinct he perceives +the reasonableness of assuming a deferential obsequiousness before a +mandarin of the fifth rank, and a counterbalancing arrogance when in the +society of an official who has only risen to the seventh degree, thus +conforming to that essential principle of harmonious intercourse, +“Remember that Chang Chow’s ceiling is Tong Wi’s floor”; but who shall +walk with even footsteps in a land where the most degraded may legally +bear the same distinguished name as that of the enlightened sovereign +himself, where the admittedly difficult but even more purposeless +achievement of causing a gold mine to float is held to be more +praiseworthy than to pass a competitive examination or to compose a +poem of inimitable brilliance, and where one wearing gilt buttons and an +emblem in his hat proves upon ingratiating approach not to be a powerful +official but a covetous and illiterate slave of inferior rank? +Thus, through their own narrow-minded inconsistencies, even the most +ceremoniously-proficient may at times present an ill-balanced attitude. +This, without reproach to himself, concerns the inward cause whereby +the one who is placed to you in the relation of an affectionate and +ever-resourceful son found unexpectedly that he had lost the benignant +full face of a lady of exalted title. + +At that time I had formed the acquaintance, in an obscure quarter of the +city, of one who wore a uniform, and was addressed on all sides as the +commander of a band, while the gold letters upon the neck part of his +outer garment inevitably suggested that he had borne an honourable share +in the recent campaign in a distant land. As I had frequently met many +of similar rank drinking tea at the house of the engaging countess to +whom I have alluded, I did not hesitate to prevail upon this Captain +Miggs to accompany me there upon an occasion also, assuring him of +equality and a sympathetic reception; but from the moment of our +arrival the attitudes of those around pointed to the existence of some +unpropitious barrier invisible to me, and when the one with whom I was +associated took up an unassailable position upon the central table, +and began to speak authoritatively upon the subject of The Virtues, +the unenviable condition of the proud and affluent, and the myriads of +fire-demons certainly laying in wait for those who partook of spiced tea +and rich foods in the afternoon, and did not wear a uniform similar to +his own, I began to recognise that the selection had been inauspiciously +arranged. Upon taxing some around with the discrepancy (as there seemed +to be no more dignified way of evading the responsibility), they were +unable to contend against me that there were, indeed, two, if not more, +distinct varieties of those bearing the rank of captain, and that they +themselves belonged to an entirely different camp, wearing another +dress, and possessing no authority to display the symbol of the letters +S.A. upon their necks. With this admission I was content to leave the +matter, in no way accusing them of actual duplicity, yet so withdrawing +that any of unprejudiced standing could not fail to carry away the +impression that I had been the victim of an unworthy artifice, and had +been lured into their society by the pretext that they were other than +what they really were. + +With the bitter-flavoured memory of this, and other in no way dissimilar +episodes, lingering in my throat, it need not be a matter of conjecture +that for a time I greeted warily all who bore a title, a mark of rank, +or any similar appendage; who wore a uniform, weapon, brass helmet, +jewelled crown, coat of distinctive colour, or any excessive superfluity +of pearl or metal buttons; who went forth surrounded by a retinue, sat +publicly in a chair or allegorical chariot, spoke loudly in the highways +and places in a tone of official pronouncement, displayed any feather, +emblem, inscribed badge, or printed announcement upon a pole, or in any +way conducted themselves in what we should esteem to be fitting to +a position of high dignity. From this arose the absence of outward +enthusiasm with which I at first received Sir Philip’s extended +favour; for although I had come to distrust all the reasonable signs of +established power, I distrusted, to a much more enhanced degree, their +complete absence; and when I observed that the one in question was never +accompanied by a band of musicians or flower-strewers, that he mingled +as though on terms of familiar intercourse with the ordinary passers-by +in the streets, and never struck aside those who chanced to impede +his progress, and that he actually preferred those of low condition to +approach him on their feet, rather than in the more becoming attitude +of unconditional prostration, I reasoned with myself whether indeed he +could consistently be a person of well-established authority, or whether +I was not being again led away from my self-satisfaction by another +obliquity of barbarian logic. It was for this reason that I now welcomed +the admitted power which he has of incriminating persons in a variety +of punishable offences, and I perceived with an added satisfaction +that here, where this privilege is more fully understood, few meet him +without raising their hands to the upper part of their heads in token of +unquestioning submission; or, as one would interpret the symbolism into +actual words, meaning, “Thus, from this point to the underneath part of +our sandals, all between lies in the hollow of your comprehensive hand.” + + +There is a written jest among another barbarian nation that these among +whom I am tarrying, being by nature a people who take their pleasures +tragically, when they rise in the morning say, one to another, “Come, +behold; it is raining again as usual; let us go out and kill somebody.” + Undoubtedly the pointed end of this adroit-witted saying may be found +in the circumstance that it is, indeed, as the proverb aptly claims, +raining on practically every occasion in life; while, to complete the +comparison, for many dynasties past this nation has been successfully +engaged in killing people (in order to promote their ultimate benefit +through a momentary inconvenience,) in every part of the world. Thus +the lines of parallel thought maintain a harmonious balance beyond the +general analogy of their sayings; but beneath this may be found an even +subtler edge, for in order to inure themselves to the requirement of a +high destiny their various games and manners of disportment are, with a +set purpose, so rigorously contested that in their progress most of the +weak and inefficient are opportunely exterminated. + +There is a favourite and well-attended display wherein two opposing +bands, each clad in robes of a distinctive colour, stand in extended +lines of mutual defiance, and at a signal impetuously engage. The +design of each is by force or guile to draw their opponents into an +unfavourable position before an arch of upright posts, and then surging +irresistibly forward, to carry them beyond the limit and hurl them to +the ground. Those who successfully inflict this humiliation upon their +adversaries until they are incapable of further resistance are hailed +victorious, and sinking into a graceful attitude receive each a golden +cup from the magnanimous hands of a maiden chose to the service, either +on account of her peerless outline, the dignified position of her House, +or (should these incentives be obviously wanting,) because the chief +ones of her family are in the habit of contributing unstintingly to the +equipment of the triumphal band. There is also another kind of strife, +differing in its essentials only so far that all who engage therein are +provided with a curved staff, with which they may dexterously draw their +antagonists beyond the limits, or, should they fail to defend themselves +adequately, break the smaller bones of their ankles. But this form of +encounter, despite the use of these weapons, is really less fatal +than the other, for it is not a permissible act to club an antagonist +resentfully about the head with the staff, nor yet even to thrust +it rigidly against his middle body. From this moderation the public +countenance extended to the curved-pole game is contemptibly meagre when +viewed by the side of the overwhelming multitudes which pour along every +channel in order to witness a more than usually desperate trial of the +hurl-headlong variety (the sight, indeed, being as attractive to these +pale, blood-thirsty foreigners as an unusually large execution is +with us), and as a consequence the former is little reputed save among +maidens, the feeble, and those of timorous instincts. + +Thus positioned, regarding a knowledge of their outside amusements, it +has always been one of the most prominent ambitions of this person’s +strategy to avoid being drawn into any encounter. At the same time, +the thought that the maidens of the household here (of whom there are +several, all so attractively proportioned that to compare them in a +spirit of definite preference would be distastefully presumptuous to +this person,) should regard me as one lacking in a sufficient display +of violence was not fragrant to my sense of refinement; so that when +Sir Philip, a little time after our arrival, related to me that on the +following day he and a chosen band were to be engaged in the match of a +cricket game against adversaries from the village, and asked whether I +cared to bear a part in the strife, I grasped the muscles of the upper +part of my left arm with my right hand--as I had frequently seen the +hardy and virile do when the subject of their powers had been raised +questioningly--and replied that I had long concealed an insatiable wish +to take such a part at a point where the conflict would be the most +revengefully contested. + +Being thus inflexibly committed it became very necessary to arrange a +well-timed intervention (whether in the nature of bodily disorder, fire, +or demoniacal upheaval, a warning omen, or the death of some of our +chief antagonists), but before doing so I was desirous of understanding +how this contest, which had hitherto remained outside my experience, was +waged. + +There is here one of benevolent rotundity in whose authority lie the +cavernous stores beneath the house and the vessels of gold and silver; +of menial rank admittedly, yet exacting a seemly deference from all +by the rich urbanity of his voice and the dignity of his massive +proportions. In the affable condescension of his tone, and the +discriminating encouragement of his attitude towards me on all +occasions, I have read a sympathetic concern over my welfare. Him I now +approached, and taking him aside, I first questioned him flatteringly +about his age and the extent of his yearly recompense, and then casually +inquired what in his language he would describe the nature of a cricket +to be. + +“A cricket?” repeated the obliging person readily; “a cricket, sir, is a +hinsect. Something, I take it, after the manner of a grass-’opper.” + +“Truly,” I agreed. “It is aptly likened. And, to continue the simile, a +game cricket--?” + +“A game cricket?” he replied; “well, sir, naturally a game one would be +more gamier than the others, wouldn’t it?” + +“The inference is unflinching,” I admitted, and after successfully +luring away his mind from any significance in the inquiry by asking him +whether the gift of a lacquered coffin or an embroidered shroud would be +the more regarded on parting, I left him. + +His words, esteemed, for a definite reason were as the jade-clappered +melody of a silver bell. This trial of sportiveness, it became +clear,--less of a massacre than most of their amusements--is really +a rivalry of leapings and dexterity of the feet: a conflict of game +crickets or grass-hoppers, in the somewhat wide-angled obscurity of +their language, or, as we would more appropriately call it doubtless, +a festive competition in the similitude of high-spirited locusts. To +whatever degree the surrounding conditions might vary, there could no +longer be a doubt that the power of leaping high into the air was +the essential constituent of success in this barbarian match of +crickets--and in such an accomplishment this person excelled from the +time of his youth with a truly incredible proficiency. Can it be a +reproach, then, that when I considered this, and saw in a vision the +contempt of inferiority which I should certainly be able to inflict +upon these native crickets before the eyes of their maidens, even +the accumulated impassiveness of thirty-seven generations of Kong +fore-fathers broke down for the moment, and unable to restrain every +vestige of emotion I crept unperceived to the ancestral hall of Sir +Philip and there shook hands affectionately with myself before each of +the nine ironclad warriors about its walls before I could revert to +a becoming state of trustworthy unconcern. That night in my own upper +chamber I spent many hours in testing my powers and studying more +remarkable attitudes of locust flight, and I even found to be within +myself some new attainments of life-like agility, such as feigning the +continuous note of defiance with which the insect meets his adversary, +as remaining poised in the air for an appreciable moment at the summit +of each leap, and of conveying to the body a sudden and disconcerting +sideway movement in the course of its ascent. So immersed did I become +in the achievement of a high perfection that, to my never-ending +self-reproach, I failed to notice a supernatural visitation of undoubted +authenticity; for the next morning it was widely admitted that a certain +familiar demon of the house, which only manifests its presence on +occasions of tragic omen, had been heard throughout the night in +warning, not only beating its head and body against the walls and +doors in despair, but raising from time to time a wailing cry of +soul-benumbing bitterness. + +With every assurance that the next letter, though equally distorted +in style and immature in expression, will contain the record of a +deteriorated but ever upward-striving son’s ultimate triumph. + + KONG HO. + + + + +LETTER XI + + + Concerning the game which we should call “Locusts,” and the + deeper significance of its acts. The solicitous warning of + one passing inwards and the complication occasioned by his + ill-chosen words. Concerning that victory already dimly + foreshadowed. + + +Venerated Sire,--This barbarian game of agile grass-hoppers is not +conducted in the best spirit of a really well-balanced display, and +although the one now inscribing his emotions certainly achieved a wide +popularity, and wore his fig leaves with becoming modesty, he has never +since been quite free from an overhanging doubt that the compliments and +genial remarks with which he was assailed owed their modulation to an +unsubstantial atmosphere of two-edged significance which for a period +enveloped all whom he approached; as in the faces of maidens concealed +behind fans when he passed, the down-drawn lips and up-raised eyes +of those of fuller maturity, the practice in most of his own kind +of turning aside, pressing their hands about their middle parts, and +bending forward into a swollen attitude devoid of grace, on the spur of +a sudden remembrance, and in the auspicious but undeniably embarrassing +manner in which all the unfledged ones of the village clustered about +his retiring footsteps, saluting him continually as one “James,” upon +whom had been conferred the gratifying title of “Sunny.” Thus may the +outline of the combat be recounted. + +From each opposing group eleven were chosen as a band, and we of our +company putting on a robe of distinctive green (while they elected to +be regarded as an assemblage of brown crickets), we presently came to a +suitable spot where the trial was to be decided. So far this person +had reasonably assumed that at a preconcerted signal the contest would +begin, all rising into the air together, uttering cries of menace, +bounding unceasingly and in every way displaying the dexterity of our +proportions. Indeed, in the reasonableness of this expectation it cannot +be a matter for reproach to one of the green grass-hoppers--who need not +be further indicated--that he had already begun a well-simulated note +of challenge to those around clad in brown, and to leap upwards in +a preparatory essay, when the ever-alert Sir Philip took him +affectionately by the arm, on the plea that the seclusion of a +neighbouring pavilion afforded a desirable shade. + +Beyond that point it is difficult to convey an accurately grouped and +fully spread-out design of the encounter. In itself the scheme and +intention of counterfeiting the domestic life and rivalries of two +opposing bands of insects was pleasantly conceived, and might have been +carried out with harmonious precision, but, after the manner of these +remote tribes, the original project had been overshadowed and the purity +of the imagination lost beneath a mass of inconsistent detail. To +this imperfection must it be laid that when at length this person was +recalled from the obscurity of the pagoda and the alluring society of +a maiden of the village, to whom he was endeavouring to expound the +strategy of the game, and called upon to engage actively in it, he +courteously admitted to those who led him forth that he had not the most +shadowy-outlined idea of what was required of him. + +Nevertheless they bound about his legs a frilled armour, ingeniously +fashioned to represent the ribbed leanness of the insect’s shank, +encased his hands and feet in covers to a like purpose, and pressing +upon him a wooden club indicated that the time had come for him to +prove his merit by venturing alone into the midst of the eleven brown +adversaries who stood at a distance in poised and expectant attitudes. + +Assuredly, benignant one, this sport of contending locusts began, as one +approached nearer to it, to wear no more pacific a face than if it had +been a carnage of the hurl-headlong or the curved-hook varieties. In +such a competition, it occurred to him, how little deference would be +paid to this one’s title of “Established Genius,” or how inadequately +would he be protected by his undoubted capacity of leaping upwards, +and even in a sideway direction, for no matter how vigorously he +might propel himself, or how successfully he might endeavour to remain +self-sustained in the air, the ill-destined moment could not be long +deferred when he must come down again into the midst of the eleven--all +doubtless concealing weapons as massive and fatally-destructive as his +own. This prospect, to a person of quiescent taste, whose chief +delight lay in contemplating the philosophical subtleties of the higher +Classics, was in itself devoid of glamour, but with what funereal +pigments shall he describe his sinking emotions when one of his own +band, approaching him as he went, whispered in his ear, “Look out at +this end; they kick up like the very devil. And their man behind the +wicket is really smart; if you give him half a chance he’ll have +your stumps down before you can say ‘knife.’” Shorn of its uncouth +familiarity, this was a charitable warning that they into whose +stronghold I was turning my footsteps--perhaps first deceiving my +alertness with a proffered friendship--would kick with the ferocity of +untamed demons, and that one in particular, whose description, to my +added despair, I was unable to retain, was known to possess a formidable +knife, with which it was his intention to cut off this person’s legs at +the first opportunity, before he could be accused of the act. Truly, “To +one whom he would utterly destroy Buddha sends a lucky dream.” + +Behind lay the pagoda (though the fact that this one did admittedly turn +round for a period need not be too critically dwelt upon), with three +tiers of maidens, some already waving their hands as an encouraging +token; on each side a barrier of prickly growth inopportunely presented +itself, while in front the eleven kicking crickets stood waiting, and +among them lurked the one grasping a doubly-edged blade of a highly +proficient keenness. + +There are occasional moments in the life of a person when he has the +inward perception of retiring for a few paces and looking back in order +to consider his general appearance and to judge how he is situated +with regard to himself, to review his past life in a spirit of judicial +severity, to arrange definitely upon a future composed entirely of acts +of benevolence, and to examine the working of destiny at large. In such +a scrutiny I now began to understand that it would perhaps have been +more harmonious to my love of contemplative repose if I had considered +the disadvantages closer before venturing into this barbarian region, +or, at least, if I had used the occasion profitably to advance an +argument tending towards a somewhat fuller allowance of taels from your +benevolent sleeve. Our own virtuous and flower-strewn land, it is true, +does not possess an immunity from every trifling drawback. The Hoang +Ho--to concede specifically the existence of some of these--frequently +bursts through its restraining barriers and indiscriminately sweeps +away all those who are so ill-advised as to dwell within reach of its +malignant influence. From time to time wars and insurrections are found +to be necessary, and no matter how morally-intentioned and humanely +conducted, they necessarily result in the violation, dismemberment or +extirpation of many thousand polite and dispassionate persons who have +no concern with either side. Towns are repeatedly consumed by fire, +districts scourged by leprosy, and provinces swept by famine. The storms +are admittedly more fatal than elsewhere, the thunderbolts larger, more +numerous, and all unerringly directed, while the extremities of heat and +cold render life really uncongenial for the greater part of each year. +The poor, having no money to secure justice, are evilly used, whereas +the wealthy, having too much, are assailed legally by the gross +and powerful for the purpose of extorting their riches. Robbers and +assassins lurk in every cave; vast hoards of pirates blacken the surface +of every river; and mandarins of the nine degrees must make a livelihood +by some means or other. By day, therefore, it is inadvisable to go forth +and encounter human beings, while none but the shallow-headed would risk +a meeting with the countless demons and vampires which move by night. To +one who has spent many moons among these foreign apparitions the absence +of drains, roads, illustrated message-parchments, maidens whose voices +may be heard protesting upon ringing a wire, loaves of conflicting +dimensions, persons who strive to put their faces upon every +advertisement, pens which emit fountains when carried in the pocket, +a profusion of make-strong foods, and an Encyclopaedia Mongolia, may +undoubtedly be mentioned as constituting a material deficiency. Affairs +are not being altogether reputably conducted during the crisis; it can +never be quite definitely asserted what the next action of the versatile +and high-spirited Dowager Empress will be; and here it is freely +contended that the Pure and Immortal Empire is incapable of remaining +in one piece for much longer. These, and other inconveniences of a like +nature, which the fastidious might distort into actual hardships, have +never been denied, yet at no period of the nine thousand years of our +civilisation has it been the custom to lure out the unwary, on the plea +of an agreeable entertainment, and then to abandon him into the society +of eleven club-bearing adversaries, one of whom may be depicted as in +the act of imparting an unnecessary polish to the edge of his already +preternaturally acute weapon, while those of his own band offer no +protection, and three tiers of very richly-dressed maidens encourage him +to his fate by refined gestures of approval. + +Doubtless this person had unconsciously allowed his inner meditations +to carry him away, as it may be expressed, for when he emerged from this +strain of reverie it was to discover himself in the chariot-road and--so +incongruously may be the actions when the controlling intelligence is +withdrawn--even proceeding at a somewhat undignified pace in a direction +immediately opposed to an encounter with the brown locusts. From +this mortifying position he was happily saved by emerging from these +thought-dreams before it was too late to return, and, also, if the +detail is not too insignificant to be related, by the fact that certain +chosen runners from his own company had reached a point in the road +before him, and now stood joining their outstretched arms across the +passage and raising gravity-dispelling cries. Smiling acquiescently, +therefore, this person returned in their midst, and receiving a new +weapon, his own club having been absent-mindedly mislaid, he again set +forth warily to the encounter. + +Yet in this he did not altogether neglect a discreet prudence. The +sympathetic person to whom he was indebted for the pointed allusion had +specifically declared that they who used their feet with the desperate +savagery of baffled spectres guarded the nearer limits of their +position, the intention of his timely hint assuredly being that I should +seek to approach from the opposite end, where, doubtless, the more +humane and conciliatory grass-hoppers were assembled. Thus guided I now +set forth in a widely-circuitous direction, having the point where I +meant to open an attack clearly before my eyes, yet seeking to deliver +a more effective onslaught by reaching it to some extent unperceived and +to this end creeping forward in the protecting shadow of the long grass +and untrimmed herbage. + +Whether the one already referred to had incapably failed to express his +real meaning, or whether he was tremulous by nature and inordinately +self-deficient, concerns the narration less than the fact that he had +admittedly produced a state of things largely in excess of the actual. +There is no longer any serviceable pretext for maintaining that +those guarding any point of their position were other than mild and +benevolent, while the only edged weapon displayed was one courteously +produced to aid this person’s ineffectual struggles to extricate himself +when, by some obscure movement, he had most ignobly entangled his +pigtail about the claws of his sandal. + +Ignorant of this, the true state of things, I was still advancing subtly +when one wearing the emblems of our band appeared from among the brown +insects and came towards me. “Courage!” I exclaimed in a guarded tone, +raising my head cautiously and rejoiced to find that I should not be +alone. “Here is one clad in green bearing succour, who will, moreover, +obstinately defend his stumps to the last extremity.” + +“That’s right,” replied the opportune person agreeably; “we need a few +like that. But do get up on your hind legs and come along, there’s a +good fellow. You can play at bears in the nursery when we get back, if +you want.” + +Certainly one can simulate the movements of wild animals in a +market-garden if the impersonation is thought to be desirable, yet +the reasonable analogy of the saying is elusive in the extreme, and +I followed the ally who had thus betrayed my presence with a deep-set +misgiving although in the absence of a more trustworthy guide, and in +the suspicion that some point of my every ordinary strategy had been +inept, I was compelled to mould myself identically into his advice. + +Scarcely had he left me, and I was endeavouring to dispel any idea of +treachery towards those about by actions of graceful courtesy, when +one--unworthy of burial--standing a score of paces distant, (to whom, +indeed, this person was at the moment bowing with almost passionate +vehemence, inspired by the conviction that he, for his part, was +engaged in a like attention,) suddenly cast a missile--which, somewhat +double-facedly, he had hitherto held concealed in his closed hand--with +undeviating force and accuracy. So unexpected was the movement, +so painfully-impressed the vindictive contact, that I should have +instinctively seized the offensively-directed object and contemptuously +hurled it back again, if the consequence of the blow had not deprived +my mind of all retaliatory ambitions. In this emergency was manifested +a magnanimous act worthy of the incense of a poem, for a person standing +immediately by, seeing how this one was balanced in his emotions, picked +up the missile, and although one of the foremost of the opposing band, +very obligingly flung it back at the assailant. Even an outcast would +not have passed this without a suitable tribute, and turning to him, +I was remarking appreciatively that men were not divided by seas and +wooden barriers, but by the unchecked and conflicting lusts of the mind, +when the unclean and weed-nurtured traitor twenty paces distant, taking +a degraded advantage from this person’s attitude, again propelled his +weapon with an even more concentrated perfidy than before. At this new +outrage every brown cricket shrank from the attitude of alert vigour +which hitherto he had maintained, and as though to disassociate +themselves from the stain of complicity all crossed over and took up new +positions. + +Up to this point, majestic head, in order to represent the adventure +in its proper sequence, it has been advisable to present the details as +they arose before the eyes of a reliable and dispassionate gazer. Now, +however, it is no less seemly to declare that this barbarian sport +of leaping insects is not so discreditably shallow as it had at first +appeared, while in every action there may be found an apt but hidden +symbol. Thus the presence of the two green locusts in the midst of +others of a dissimilar nature represents the unending strife by which +even the most pacific are ever surrounded. The fragile erection of +sticks (behind which this person at first sought to defend himself +until led into a more exposed position by one garbed in white,) may be +regarded as the home and altar, and adequately depicts the hollowness +of the protection it affords and the necessity of reliantly emerging to +defy an invader rather than lurking discreditably among its recesses. +The missile is the equivalent of a precise and immediate danger, the +wooden club the natural instinct for defence with which all living +creatures are endowed, so that when the peril is for the time driven +away the opportunity is at hand for the display of virtuous amusements, +the exchanging of hospitality, and the beating of professional drums as +we would say. Thus, at the next attack the one sharing the enterprise +with me struck the missile so proficiently that its recovery engaged the +attention of all our adversaries, and then began to exhibit his powers +by running and leaping towards me. Recognising that the actual moment of +the display had arrived, this person at once emitted a penetrating cry +of concentrated challenge, and also began to leap upwards and about, +and with so much energy that the highly achieved limits of his flight +surprised even himself. + +As for the bystanders, esteemed, those who opposed us, and the members +of our own band, although this leaping sportiveness is a competition +more regarded and practised among all orders than the pursuit of +commercial eminence, or even than the allurements of the sublimest +Classics, it may be truly imagined that never before had they witnessed +so remarkable a game cricket. From the pagoda a loud cry of wonder +acclaimed the dexterity of this person’s efforts; the three tiers of +maidens climbed one upon another in their anxiety to lose no detail of +the adventure, and outstanders from distant points began to assemble. +The brown enemy at once abandoned themselves to a panic, and for the +most part cast themselves incapably to the ground, rolling from side to +side in an access of emotion; the two arbiters clad in white conferred +together, doubtless on the uselessness of further contest, while the +ally who had summoned me to take a part instead of being encouraged to +display his agility in a like manner continued to run slavishly from +point to point, while I overcame the distances in a series of inspired +bounds. + +In the meanwhile the sounds of encouragement from the ever-increasing +multitude grew like the falling of a sudden coast storm among the ripe +leaves of a tea-plantation, and with them the voices of many calling +upon my name and inciting me to further and even higher achievements +reached my ears. Not to grow small in the eyes of these estimable +persons I continued in my flight, and abandoning all set movements and +limits, I began to traverse the field in every direction, becoming more +proficient with each effort, imparting to myself a sideway and even +backward motion while yet in the upper spaces, remaining poised for an +appreciable period, and lightly, yet with graceful ease, avoiding the +embraces of those who would have detained me. Undoubtedly I could have +maintained this supremacy until our band might justly have claimed the +reward, had not the flattering cries of approval caused an indiscreet +mistake, for the alarm being spread in the village that a conflagration +of imposing ferocity was raging, an ornamental chariot conveying a band +of warriors clad in brass armour presently entered into the strife, and +discovering no fire to occupy their charitable energies they misguidedly +honoured this offensive person by propelling a solid column of the +purest and most refreshing water against his ignoble body when at the +point of his highest flight. This introduction of a thunderbolt into the +everyday life of an insect must be of questionable authenticity, yet +not feeling sufficiently instructed in the lesser details of the +sportiveness to challenge the device, I suffered myself to be led +towards the pavilion with no more struggling than enough to remove the +ignominy of an unresisting surrender, pleasantly remarking to those +who bore me along that to a person of philosophical poise the written +destiny was as apparent in the falling leaf as in the rising sun, +pointing the saying thus: “Although the Desert of Shan-tz is boundless, +and mankind number a million million, yet in it Li-hing encountered his +mother-in-law.” Changing to meet another of our company setting forth +with a club to make the venture, I was permitted for a moment to +engage him; whereupon thrusting into his hand a leather charm against +ill-directed efforts, and instructing him to bind it about his head, I +encouraged him with the imperishable watch-word of the Emperor Tsin Su, +“The stars are indeed small, but their light carries as far as that of +the full moon.” + +At the steps of the pagoda so great was the throng of those who would +have overwhelmed me with their gracious attention, that had not this +person’s neck become practically automatic by ceaseless use of late, he +would have been utterly unequal to the emergency. As it was, he could +only bestow a superficial hand-wave upon a company of gold-embroidered +musicians who greeted his return with appropriate melody, and a glance +of well-indicated regret that he had no fuller means of conveying his +complicated emotions, in the direction of the uppermost tier of maidens. +Then the awaiting Sir Philip took him firmly towards the inner part of +the pavilion, and announced, so adroitly and with such high-spirited +vigour had this one maintained the conflict, that it had been resolutely +agreed on all sides not to make a test of his competence any further. + +Thereupon a band of very sumptuously arrayed nymphs drew near with +offerings of liquid fat and a variety of crimson fruit, which it is +customary to grind together on the platter--unapproachable in the +result, certainly, yet incredibly elusive to the unwary in the manner of +bruising, and practically ineradicable upon the more delicate shades +of silk garment. In such a situation the one who is now relating the +various incidents of the day may be imagined by a broad-minded and +affectionate sire: partaking of this native fruit and oil, and from time +to time expressing his insatiable anguish that he continually fails +to become more proficient in controlling the oblique movements of the +viands, while the less successful crickets are constrained to persevere +in the combat, and the ever-present note of evasive purport is raised +by a voice from behind a screen exclaiming, “Out afore? That he may have +been, but do he think we was a-going to give he out afore? No, maaster, +us doant a-have a circus every day hereabouts.” + +Thus may this imagination of competitive locusts be set forth to +the end. If a fuller proof of what an unostentatious self-effacement +hesitates to enlarge upon were required, it might be found in the +barbarian printed leaf, for the next day this person saw a public record +of the strife, in which his own name was followed by a numerical emblem +signifying that he had not stumbled or proved incompetent in any one +particular. Sir Philip, I beheld with pained surprise, had obtusely +suffered himself to be caught out in the committal of fifty-nine set +offences. + +With a not unnatural anticipation that, as a result of this painstaking +description, this person will find two well-equipped camps of contending +locusts in Yuen-ping on his return. + + KONG HO. + + + + +LETTER XII + + + Concerning the obvious misunderstanding which has entwined + itself about a revered parent’s faculties of passionless + discrimination. The all-water disportment and the two, of + different sexes, who after regarding me conflictingly from + the beginning, ended in a like but inverted manner. + + +Venerated Sire,--Your gem-adorned letter containing a thousand burnished +words of profuse reproach has entered my diminished soul in the form +of an equal number of rusty barbs. Can it be that the incapable +person whom, as you truly say, you sent, “to observe the philosophical +subtleties of the barbarians, to study their dynastical records and to +associate liberally with the venerable and dignified,” has, in your +own unapproachable felicity of ceremonial expression, “according to +a discreet whisper from many sources, chiefly affected the society of +tea-house maidens, the immature of both sexes, doubtful characters of +all classes, and criminals awaiting trial; has evinced an unswerving +affinity towards light amusement and entertainments of a no-class kind; +and in place of a wise aloofness, befitting a wearer of the third Gold +Button and the Horn Belt-clasp, in situations of critical perplexity, +seems by his own ingenuous showing to have maintained an unparalleled +aptitude for behaving either with the crystalline simplicity of a +Kan-su earth-tiller, or the misplaced buffoonery of a seventh-grade +body-writher taking the least significant part in an ill-equipped Swatow +one-cash Hall of Varied Melodies.” Assuredly, if your striking and +well-chosen metaphors were not more unbalanced than the ungainly +attitude of a one-legged hunchback crossing a raging torrent by means +of a slippery plank on a stormy night, they would cause the very acutest +bitterness to the throat of a dutiful and always high-stepping son. +There is an apt saying, however, “A quarrel between two soldiers in the +market-place becomes a rebellion in the outskirts,” and when this person +remembers that many thousand li of mixed elements flow between him and +his usually correct and dispassionate sire, he is impelled to take a +mild and tolerant attitude towards the momentary injustice brought about +by the weakness of approaching old age, the vile-intentioned mendacity +of outcasts envious of the House of Kong, and, perchance, the irritation +brought on by a too lavish indulgence in your favourite dish of stewed +mouse. + +Having thus re-established himself in the clear-sighted affection of an +ever mild and perfect father, and cleansed the ground of all possible +misunderstandings in the future, this person will concede the fact that, +not to stand beneath the faintest shadow of an implied blemish in your +sympathetic eyes, he had no sooner understood the attitude in which he +had been presented than he at once plunged into the virtuous society of +a band of the sombre and benevolent. + +These, so far as his intelligence enables him to grasp the position, +may be reasonably accepted as the barbarian equivalent of those very +high-minded persons who in our land devote their whole lives secretly +to killing others whom they consider the chief deities do not really +approve of; for although they are not permitted here, either by written +law or by accepted custom, to perform these meritorious actions, they +are so intimately initiated into the minds and councils of the Upper +Ones that they are able to pronounce very severe judgments of torture--a +much heavier penalty than merely being assassinated--upon all who remain +outside their league. As some of the most objurgatory of these alliances +do not number more than a score of persons, it is inevitable that the +ultimate condition of the whole barbarian people must be hazardous in +the extreme. + +Having associated myself with this class sufficiently to escape their +vindictive pronouncements, and freely professed an unswerving adherence +to their rites, I next sought out the priests of other altars, intending +by a seemly avowal to each in turn to safeguard my future existence +effectually. This I soon discovered to be beyond the capacity of an +ordinary lifetime, for whereas we, with four hundred million subjects +find three religions to be sufficient to meet every emergency, these +irresolute island children, although numbering us only as one to ten, +vacillate among three hundred; and even amid this profusion it is +asserted that most of the barbarians are unable to find any temple +exactly conforming to their requirements, and after writing to the paper +to announce the fact, abandon the search in despair. + +It was while I was becoming proficient in the inner subtleties of one +of these orders--they who drink water on all occasions and wear a +badge--that a maiden of some authority among them besought my aid for +the purpose of amusing a band which she was desirous of propitiating +into the adoption of this badge. It is possible that in the immature +confidence of former letters this person may already have alluded to +certain maidens with words of courteous esteem, but it is now necessary +to admit finally that in the presence of this same Helena they would +all appear as an uninviting growth of stunted and deformed poppies +surrounding a luxuriant chrysanthemum. At the presumptuous thought of +describing her illimitable excellences my fingers become claw-like in +their confessed inadequacy to hold a sufficiently upright brush; yet +without undue confidence it may be set down that her hands resembled the +two wings of a mandarin drake in their symmetrical and changing motion, +her hair as light and radiant-pointed as the translucent incense cloud +floating before the golden Buddha of Shan-Si, thin white satin stretched +tightly upon polished agate only faintly comparable to her jade cheeks, +while her eyes were more unfathomable than the crystal waters of the +Keng-kiang, and within their depths her pure and magnanimous thoughts +could be dimly seen to glide like the gold and silver carp beneath the +sacred river. + +When this insurpassable being approached me with the flattering +petition already alluded to, my gratified emotions clashed together +uncontrollably with the internal feeling of many volcanoes in movement, +and my organs of expression became so entangled at the condescension of +her melodious voice being directly addressed to one so degraded, that +for several minutes I was incapable of further acquiescence than that +conveyed by an adoring silence and an unchanging smile. No formality +appeared worthy to greet her by, no expression of self-contempt +sufficiently offensive to convey to her enlightenment my own sense of +a manifold inferiority, and doubtless I should have remained in a +transfixed attitude until she had at length turned aside, had not your +seasonable reference to a Swatow limb-contorter struck me heavily and +abruptly turned off the source of my agreement. Might not this all-water +entertainment, it occurred to this one, consist in enticing him to drink +a potion made unsuspectedly hot, in projecting him backwards into a vat +of the same liquid, or some similar device for the pleasurable amusement +of those around, which would come within the boundaries of your refined +disapproval? As one by himself there was no indignity that this person +would not cheerfully have submitted to, but the inexorable cords of an +ingrained filial regard suddenly pulled him sideways and into another +direction. + +“But, Mr. Kong,” exclaimed the bee-lipped maiden, when I had explained +(as being less involved to her imagination,) that I was under a vow, +“we have been relying upon you. Could you not”--and here she dropped her +eyes and picked them up again with a fluttering motion which our lesser +ones are, to an all-wise end, quite unacquainted with--“could you not +unvow yourself for one night, just to please ME?” + +At these words, the illuminated proficiency of her glance, and her +honourable resolution to implicate me in the display by head or feet, +the ever-revered image of a just and obedience-loving father ceased to +have any further tangible influence. Let it be remembered that there +is a deep saying, “A virtuous woman will cause more evil than ten river +pirates.” As for the person who is recording his incompetence, the room +and all those about began to engulf him in an ever-increasing circular +motion, his knees vibrated together with unrestrained pliancy, and +concentrating his voice to indicate by the allegory some faint measure +of his emotion, he replied passionately, “Let the amusement referred to +take the form of sitting in a boiling cauldron exposed to the derision +of all beholders, this one will now enter it wearing yellow silk +trousers.” + + +It is characteristic of these illogical out-countries that the all-water +diversion did not, as a matter to record, concern itself with that +liquid in any detail, beyond the contents of a glass vessel from which a +venerable person, who occupied a raised chair, continually partook. This +discriminating individual spoke so confidently of the beneficial action +of the fluid, and so unswervingly described my own feelings at the +moment--as of head giddiness, an inexactitude of speech, and no clear +definition of where the next step would be arrived at--as the common +lot of all who did not consume regularly, that when that same Helena +had passed on to speak to another, I left the hall unobserved and drank +successive portions, in each case, as the night was cold, prudently +adding a measure of the native rice spirit. His advice had been +well-directed, for with the fourth portion I suddenly found all +doubtful and oppressive visions withdrawn, and a new and exhilarating +self-confidence raised in their place. In this agreeable temper I +returned to the place of meeting to find a priest of one of the lesser +orders relating a circumstance whereby he had encountered a wild maiden +in the woods, who had steadfastly persisted that she was one of a +band of seven (this being the luckiest protective number among the +superstitious). Though unable to cause their appearance, she had gone +through a most precise examination at his hands without deviating in the +slightest particular, whereupon distrusting the outcome of the strife, +the person who was relating the adventure had withdrawn breathless. + +When this versatile lesser priest had finished the narration, and +the applause, which clearly showed that those present approved of the +solitary maiden’s discreet stratagem, had ceased, the one who occupied +the central platform, rising, exclaimed loudly, “Mr. Kong will next +favour us with a contribution, which will consist, I am informed, of a +Chinese tale.” + +Now there chanced to be present a certain one who had already become +offensive to me by the systematic dexterity with which he had planted +his inopportune shadow between the sublime-souled Helena and any other +who made a movement to approach her heaven-dowered outline. When this +presumptuous and ill-nurtured outcast, who was, indeed, then seated +by the side of the enchanting maiden last referred to, heard the +announcement he said in a voice feigned to reach her peach-skin ear +alone, yet intentionally so modulated as to penetrate the furthest limit +of the room, “A Chinese tale! Why, assuredly, that must be a pig-tail.” + At this unseemly shaft many of those present allowed themselves to +become immoderately amused, and even the goat-like sage who had +called upon my name concealed his face behind an open hand, but the +amiably-disposed Helena, after looking at the undiscriminating youth +coldly for a moment, deliberately rose and moved to a vacant spot at a +distance. Encouraged by this fragrant act of sympathy I replied with a +polite bow to indicate the position, “On the contrary, the story which +it is now my presumptuous intention to relate will contain no reference +whatever to the carefully-got-up one occupying two empty seats in the +front row,” and without further introduction began the history of Kao +and his three brothers, to which I had added the title, “The Three +Gifts.” + +At the conclusion of this classical example of the snares ever lying +around the footsteps of the impious, I perceived that the jocular +stripling, whom I had so delicately reproved, was no longer present. +Doubtless he had been unable to remain in the same room with the +commanding Helena’s high-spirited indignation, and anticipating that in +consequence there would now be no obstacle to her full-faced benignity, +I drew near with an appropriate smile. + +It is somewhere officially recorded, “There is only one man who knew +with accurate certainty what a maiden’s next attitude would be, and he +died young of surprise.” As I approached I had the sensation of passing +into so severe an atmosphere of rigid disfavour, that the ingratiating +lines upon my face became frozen in its intensity, despite the ineptness +of their expression. Unable to penetrate the cause of my offence, I +made a variety of agreeable remarks, until finding that nothing tended +towards a becoming reconciliation, I gradually withdrew in despair, and +again turned my face in the direction of that same accommodation which I +had already found beneath the sign of an Encompassed Goat. Here, by the +sarcasm of destiny, I encountered the person who had drawn the slighting +analogy between this one’s pig-tail and his ability as a story-teller. +For a brief space of time the ultimate development of the venture +was doubtfully poised, but recognising in each other’s features the +overhanging cloud of an allied pang, the one before me expressed a +becoming contrition for the jest, together with a proffered cup. Not to +appear out-classed I replied in a suitable vein, involving the supply +of more vessels; whereupon there succeeded many more vessels, called for +both singly and in harmonious unison, and the reappearance of numerous +bright images, accompanied by a universal scintillation of meteor-like +iridescence. In this genial and greatly-enlarged spirit we returned +affably together to the hall, and entered unperceived at the moment when +the one who made the announcements was crying aloud, “According to the +programme the next item should have been a Chinese poem, but as Mr. Kong +Ho appears to have left the building, we shall pass him over--” + +“What Ho?” exclaimed the somewhat impetuous one by my side, stepping +forward indignantly and mounting the platform in his affectionate zeal. +“No one shall pass over my old and valued friend--this Ho--while I have +a paw to raise. Step forward, Mandarin, and let them behold the inventor +and sole user of the justly far-famed G. R. Ko-Ho hair restorer--sent in +five guinea bottles to any address on receipt of four penny stamps--as +he appeared in his celebrated impersonation of the human-faced Swan at +Doll and Edgar’s. Come on, oh, Ho!” + +“Assuredly,” I replied, striving to follow him, “yet with the wary +greeting, ‘Slowly, slowly; walk slowly,’ engraved upon my mind, for the +barrier of these convoluted stairs--” but at this word a band of maidens +passed out hastily, and in the tumult I reached the dais and began +Weng Chi’s immortal verses, entitled “The Meandering Flight,” which had +occupied me three complete days and nights in the detail of rendering +the allusions into well-balanced similitudes and at the same time +preserving the skilful evasion of all conventional rules which raises +the original to so sublime a height. + + The voice of one singing at the dawn; + The seven harmonious colours in the sky; + The meeting by the fountain; + The exchange of gifts, and the sound of the processional drum; + The emotion of satisfaction in each created being; + This is the all-prominent indication of the Spring. + + The general disinclination to engage in laborious tasks; + The general readiness to consume voluminous potions on any pretext. + The deserted appearance of the city and the absence of the come-in motion at every door; + The sportiveness of maidens, and even those of maturer age, ethereally clad, upon the shore. + The avowed willingness of merchants to dispose of their wares for half the original sum. + This undoubtedly is the Summer. + + The yellow tea leaf circling as it falls; + The futile wheeling of the storm-tossed swan; + The note of the marble lute at evening by the pool; + The immobile cypress seen against the sun. + The unnecessarily difficult examination paper. + All these things are suggestive of the Autumn. + + The growing attraction of a well-lined couch. + The obsequious demeanour of message-bearers, charioteers, and the club-armed keepers of peace. + The explosion of innumerable fire-crackers round the convivial shrines, + The gathering together of relations who at all other times shun each other markedly. + The obtrusive recollection of a great many things contrary to a spoken vow, and the inflexible purpose to be more resolute in future. + These in turn invariably attend each Winter. + +It certainly had not presented itself to me before that the words +“invariably attend” are ill-chosen, but as I would have uttered them +their inelegance became plain, and this person made eight conscientious +attempts to soften down their harsh modulation by various interchanges. +He was still persevering hopefully when he of chief authority approached +and requested that the one who was thus employed and that same other +would leave the hall tranquilly, as the all-water entertainment was +at an end, and an attending slave was in readiness to extinguish the +lanterns. + +“Yet,” I protested unassumingly, “that which has so far been expressed +is only in the semblance of an introductory ode. There follow--” + +“You must not argue with the Chair,” exclaimed another interposing his +voice. “Whatever the Chair rules must be accepted.” + +“The innuendo is flat-witted,” I replied with imperturbable dignity, but +still retaining my hold upon the rail. “When this person so far loses +his sense of proportion as to contend with an irrational object, devoid +of faculties, let the barb be cast. After that introduction dealing with +the four seasons, the twelve gong-strokes of the day are reviewed in a +like fashion. These in turn give place to the days of the month, then +the moons of the year, and finally the years of the cycle.” + +“That’s fair,” exclaimed the perverse though well-meaning youth, whom I +was beginning to recognise as the cause of some misunderstanding among +us. “If you don’t want any more of his poem--and I don’t blame you--my +pal Ho, who is one of the popular Flip-Flap Troupe, offers to do some +trick cycle-riding on his ears. What more can you expect?” + +“We expect a policeman very soon,” replied another severely. “He has +already been sent for.” + +“In that case,” said the one who had so persistently claimed me as +an ally, “perhaps I can do you a service by directing him here”; and +leaving this person to extricate himself by means of a reassuring +silence and some of the larger silver pieces of the Island, he vanished +hastily. + +With some doubt whether or not this deviation into the society of the +professedly virtuous, ending as it admittedly does in an involvement, +may not be deemed ill-starred; yet hopeful. + + KONG HO. + + + + + THE THREE GIFTS + + + Related by Kong Ho on the occasion of the all-water + disportment, under the circumstances previously set forth. + +BEYOND the limits of the township of Yang-chow there dwelt a rich +astrologer named Wei. Reading by his skilful interpretation of the +planets that he would shortly Pass Above, he called his sons Chu, Shan, +and Hing to his side and distributed his wealth impartially among them. +To Chu he gave his house containing a gold couch; to Shan a river with +a boat; to Hing a field in which grew a prolific orange-tree. “Thus +provided for,” he continued, “you will be able to live together in +comfort, the resources of each supplying the wants of the others in +addition to his own requirements. Therefore when I have departed let it +be your first care to sacrifice everything else I leave, so that I also, +in the Upper Air, may not be left destitute.” + +Now in addition to these three sons Wei also had another, the youngest, +but one of so docile, respectful, and self-effacing a disposition that +he was frequently overlooked to the advantage of his subtle, ambitious, +and ingratiating brothers. This youth, Kao, thinking that the occasion +certainly called for a momentary relaxation of his usual diffidence, +now approached his father modestly, and begged that he also might be +included to some trivial degree in his bounty. + +This reasonable petition involved Wei in an embarrassing perplexity. +Although he had forgotten Kao completely in the division, he had now +definitely concluded the arrangement; nor, to his failing powers, did it +appear possible to make a just allotment on any other lines. “How can a +person profitably cut up an orange-tree, a boat, an inlaid couch, or +a house?” he demanded. “Who can divide a flowing river, or what but +unending strife can arise from regarding an open field in anything +but its entirety? Assuredly six cohesive objects cannot be apportioned +between four persons.” Yet he could not evade the justice of Kao’s +implied rebuke, so drawing to his side a jade cabinet he opened it, and +from among the contents he selected an ebony staff, a paper umbrella, +and a fan inscribed with a mystical sentence. These three objects he +placed in Kao’s hands, and with his last breath signified that he should +use them discreetly as the necessity arose. + +When the funeral ceremonies were over, Chu, Shan, and Hing came +together, and soon moulded their covetous thoughts into an agreed +conspiracy. “Of what avail would be a boat or a river if this person +sacrificed the nets and appliances by which the fish are ensnared?” + asked Shan. “How little profit would lie in an orange-tree and a field +without cattle and the implements of husbandry!” cried Hing. “One cannot +occupy a gold couch in an empty house both by day and night,” remarked +Chu stubbornly. “How inadequate, therefore, would such a provision be +for three.” + +When Kao understood that his three brothers had resolved to act in this +outrageous manner he did not hesitate to reproach them; but not being +able to contend against him honourably, they met him with ridicule. +“Do not attempt to rule us with your wooden staff,” they cried +contemptuously. “Sacrifice IT if your inside is really sincere. And, +in the meanwhile, go and sit under your paper umbrella and wield +your inscribed fan, while we attend to our couch, our boat, and our +orange-tree.” + +“Truly,” thought Kao to himself when they had departed, “their words +were irrationally offensive, but among them there may stand out a +pointed edge. Our magnanimous father is now bereft of both comforts +and necessities, and although an ebony rod is certainly not much in the +circumstances, if this person is really humanely-intentioned he will not +withhold it.” With this charitable design Kao build a fire before the +couch (being desirous, out of his forgiving nature, to associate his +eldest brother in the offering), and without hesitation sacrificed the +most substantial of his three possessions. + +It here becomes necessary to explain that in addition to being an expert +astrologer, Wei was a far-seeing magician. The rod of unimpressionable +solidity was in reality a charm against decay, and its hidden virtues +being thus destroyed, a contrary state of things naturally arose, so +that the next morning it was found that during the night the gold couch +had crumbled away into a worthless dust. + +Even this manifestation did not move the three brothers, although the +geniality of Shan and Hing’s countenances froze somewhat towards Chu. +Nevertheless Chu still possessed a house, and by pointing out that they +could live as luxuriantly as before on the resources of the river and +the field and the tree, he succeeded in maintaining his position among +them. + +After seven days Kao reflected again. “This avaricious person still has +two objects, both of which he owes to his revered father’s imperishable +influence,” he admitted conscience-stricken, “while the being in +question has only one.” Without delay he took the paper umbrella and +ceremoniously burned it, scattering the ashes this time upon Shan’s +river. Like the rod the umbrella also possessed secret virtues, its +particular excellence being a curse against clouds, wind demons, +thunderbolts and the like, so that during the night a great storm raged, +and by the morning Shan’s boat had been washed away. + +This new calamity found the three brothers more obstinately perverse +than ever. It cannot be denied that Hing would have withdrawn from the +guilty confederacy, but they were as two to one, and prevailed, pointing +out that the house still afforded shelter, the river yielded some of the +simpler and inferior fish which could be captured from the banks, and +the fruitfulness of the orange-tree was undiminished. + +At the end of seven more days Kao became afflicted with doubt. “There is +no such thing as a fixed proportion or a set reckoning between a dutiful +son and an embarrassed sire,” he confessed penitently. “How incredibly +profane has been this person’s behaviour in not seeing the obligation in +its unswerving necessity before.” With this scrupulous resolve Kao took +his last possession, and carrying it into the field he consumed it +with fire beneath Hing’s orange-tree. The fan, in turn, also had hidden +properties, its written sentence being a spell against drought, hot +winds, and the demons which suck the nourishment from all crops. In +consequence of the act these forces were called into action, and before +another day Hing’s tree had withered away. + +It is said with reason, “During the earthquake men speak the truth.” At +this last disaster the impious fortitude of the three brothers suddenly +gave way, and cheerfully admitting their mistake, each committed +suicide, Chu disembowelling himself among the ashes of his couch, Shan +sinking beneath the waters of his river, and Hing hanging by a rope +among the branches of his own effete orange-tree. + +When they had thus fittingly atoned for their faults the imprecation was +lifted from off their possessions. The couch was restored by magic +art to its former condition, the boat was returned by a justice-loving +person into whose hands it had fallen lower down the river, and +the orange-tree put out new branches. Kao therefore passed into an +undiminished inheritance. He married three wives, to commemorate the +number of his brothers, and had three sons, whom he called Chu, Shan, +and Hing, for a like purpose. These three all attained to high office in +the State, and by their enlightened morals succeeded in wiping all the +discreditable references to others bearing the same names from off the +domestic tablets. + +From this story it will be seen that by acting virtuously, yet with an +observing discretion, on all occasions, it is generally possible not +only to rise to an assured position, but at the same time unsuspectedly +to involve those who stand in our way in a just destruction. + + + + +LETTER XIII + + + Concerning a state of necessity; the arisings engendered + thereby, and the turned-away face of those ruling the + literary quarter of the city towards one possessing a style. + This foreign manner of feigning representations, and + concerning my dignified portrayal of two. + + +Venerated Sire,--It is now more than three thousand years ago that the +sublime moralist Tcheng How, on being condemned by a resentful official +to a lengthy imprisonment in a very inadequate oil jar, imperturbably +replied, “As the snail fits his impliant shell, so can the wise adapt +themselves to any necessity,” and at once coiled himself up in the +restricted space with unsuspected agility. In times of adversity this +incomparable reply has often shone as a steadfast lantern before my +feet, but recently it struck my senses with a heavier force, for +upon presenting myself on the last occasion at the place of exchange +frequented by those who hitherto have carried out your spoken promise +with obliging exactitude, and at certain stated intervals freely granted +to this person a sufficiency of pieces of gold, merely requiring +in return an inscribed and signet-bearing record of the fact, I was +received with no diminution of sympathetic urbanity, indeed, but with +hands quite devoid of outstretched fulness. + +In a small inner chamber, to which I was led upon uttering courteous +protests, one of solitary authority explained how the deficiency had +arisen, but owing to the skill with which he entwined the most intricate +terms in unbroken fluency, the only impression left upon my superficial +mind was, that the person before me was imputing the scheme for +my despoilment less to any mercenary instinct on the part of his +confederates, than to a want of timely precision maintained by one who +seemed to bear an agreeable-sounding name somewhat similar to your own, +and who, from the difficulty of reaching his immediate ear, might be +regarded as dwelling in a distant land. Encouraged by this conciliatory +profession (and seeing no likelihood of gaining my end otherwise), I +thereupon declared my willingness that the difference lying between us +should be submitted to the pronouncement of dispassionate omens, either +passing birds, flat and round sticks, the seeds of two oranges, wood and +fire, water poured out upon the ground or any equally reliable sign as +he himself might decide. However, in spite of his honourable assurances, +he was doubtless more deeply implicated in the adventure than he +would admit, for at this scrupulous proposal the benignant mask of his +expression receded abruptly, and, striking a hidden bell, he waved his +hands and stood up to signify that further justice was denied me. + +In this manner a state of destitution calling for the fullest acceptance +of Tcheng How’s impassive philosophy was created, nor had many +hours faded before the first insidious temptation to depart from his +uncompromising acquiescence presented itself. + +At that time there was no one in whom I reposed a larger-sized piece +of confidence (in no way involving sums of money,) than one officially +styled William Beveledge Greyson, although, profiting by our own custom, +it is unusual for those really intimate with his society to address him +fully, unless the occasion should be one of marked ceremony. Forming a +resolution, I now approached this obliging person, and revealing to him +the cause of the emergency, I prayed that he would advise me, as one +abandoned on a strange Island, by what handicraft or exercise of skill I +might the readiest secure for the time a frugal competence. + +“Why, look here, aged man,” at once replied the lavish William Greyson, +“don’t worry yourself about that. I can easily let you have a few pounds +to tide you over. You will probably hear from the bank in the course +of a few days or weeks, and it’s hardly worth while doing anything +eccentric in the meantime.” + +At this delicately-worded proposal I was about to shake hands with +myself in agreement, when the memory of Tcheng How’s resolute submission +again possessed me, and seeing that this would be an unworthy betrayal +of destiny I turned aside the action, and replying evasively that the +world was too small to hold himself and another equally magnanimous, I +again sought his advice. + +“Now what silly upside-down idea is it that you’ve got into that Chinese +puzzle you call your head, Kong?” he replied; for this same William was +one who habitually gilded unpalatable truths into the semblance of +a flattering jest. “Whenever you turn off what you are saying into +a willow-pattern compliment and bow seventeen times like an animated +mandarin, I know that you are keeping something back. Be a man and +a brother, and out with it,” and he struck me heavily upon the left +shoulder, which among the barbarians is a proof of cordiality to be +esteemed much above the mere wagging of each other’s hands. + +“In the matter of guidance,” I replied, “this person is ready to sit +unreservedly on your well-polished feet. But touching the borrowing of +money, obligations to restore with an added sum after a certain period, +initial-bearing papers of doubtful import, and the like, I have read too +deeply the pointed records of your own printed sheets not to prefer +an existence devoted to the scraping together of dust at the street +corners, rather than a momentary affluence which in the end would betray +me into the tiger-like voracity of a native money-lender.” + +“Well, you do me proud, Kong,” said William Beveledge, after regarding +me fixedly for a moment. “If I didn’t remember that you are a +flat-faced, slant-eyed, top-side-under, pig-tailed old heathen, I should +be really annoyed at your unwarrantable personalities. Do you take ME +for what you call a ‘native money-lender’?” + +“The pronouncements of destiny are written in iron,” I replied +inoffensively, “and it is as truly said that one fated to end his life +in a cave cannot live for ever on the top of a pagoda. Undoubtedly as +one born and residing here you are native, and as inexorably it succeeds +that if you lend me pieces of gold you become a money-lender. Therefore, +though honourably inspired at the first, you would equally be drawn into +the entanglement of circumstance, and the unevadible end must inevitably +be that against which your printed papers consistently warn one.” + +“And what is that?” asked Beveledge Greyson, still regarding me closely, +as though I were a creature of another part. + +“At first,” I replied, “there would be an alluring snare of graceful +words, tea, and the consuming of paper-rolled herbs, and the matter +would be lightly spoken of as capable of an easy adjustment; which, +indeed, it cannot be denied, is how the detail stands at present. The +next position would be that this person, finding himself unable to +gather together the equivalent of return within the stated time, would +greet you with a very supple neck and pray for a further extension, +which would be permitted on the understanding that in the event of +failure his garments and personal charms should be held in bondage. To +escape so humiliating a necessity, as the time drew near I would address +myself to another, one calling himself William, perchance, and dwelling +in a northern province, to whom I would be compelled to assign my +peach-orchard at Yuen-ping. Then by varying degrees of infamy I would +in turn be driven to visit a certain Bevel of the Middle Lands, a person +Edge carrying on his insatiable traffic on the southern coast, one Grey +elsewhere, and a Mr. Son, of the west, who might make an honourable +profession of lending money without any security whatever, but who in +the end would possess himself of my ancestral tablets, wives, and inlaid +coffin, and probably also obtain a lien upon my services and prosperity +in the Upper Air. Then, when I had parted from all comfort in this +life, and every hope of affluence in the Beyond, it would presently +be disclosed that all these were in reality as one person who had +unceasingly plotted to my destruction, and William Beveledge Greyson +would stand revealed in the guise of a malevolent vampire. Truly that +development has at this moment an appearance of unreality, and worthy +even of pooh-pooh, but thus is the warning spread by your own printed +papers and the records of your Halls of Justice, and it would be an +unseemly presumption for one of my immature experience to ignore the +outstretched and warning finger of authority.” + +“Well, Kong,” he said at length, after considering my words attentively, +“I always thought that your mental outlook was a hash of Black Art, +paper lanterns, blank verse, twilight, and delirium tremens, but hang me +if you aren’t sound on finance, and I only wish that you’d get some of +my friends to look at the matter of borrowing in your own reasonable, +broad-minded light. The question is, what next?” + +I replied that I leaned heavily against his sagacious insight, adding, +however, that even among a nation of barbarians one who could repeat +the three hundred and eleven poems comprising the Book of Odes from +beginning to end, and claim the degree “Assured Genius” would ever be +certain of a place. + +“Yes,” replied William Greyson,--“in the workhouse. Put your degree in +your inside pocket, Kong, and don’t mention it. You’ll have far more +chance as a distressed mariner. The casual wards are full of B.A.’s, +but the navy can’t get enough A.B.’s at any price. What do you say to +an organ, by the way? Mysterious musicians generally go down well, and +I dare say there’s room for a change from veiled ladies, persecuted +captains and indigent earls. You ought to make a sensation.” + +“Is it in the nature of melodious sounds upon winding a handle?” I +asked, not at the moment grasping with certainty to what organ he +referred. + +“Well, some call them that,” he admitted, “others don’t. I suppose, now, +you wouldn’t care to walk to Brighton with your feet tied together, +or your hair in curl papers, and then get on at a music hall? Or would +there be any chance of your Legation kidnapping you if it was properly +worked? ‘Kong Ho, the great Chinese Reformer, tells the Story of his +Life,’--there ought to be money in it. Are you a reformer or the leader +of a secret society, Kong?” + +“On the contrary,” I replied, “we of our Line have ever been unflinching +in our loyalty to the dynasty of Tsing.” + +“You ought to have known better, then. It’s a poor business being that +in your country nowadays. Pity there are no bye-elections on the African +Labour Question, or you’d be snapped up for a procession.” + +To this I replied that although the idea of moving in a processional +triumph would readily ensnare the minds of the light and fantastic, I +should prefer some more literary occupation, submissively adding that in +such a case I would not stiffen my joints against the most menial lot, +even that of blending my voice in a laudatory chorus, or of carrying +official pronouncements about the walls of the city, for it is said with +justice, “The starving man does not peel his melon, nor do the parched +first wipe round the edges of the proffered cup.” + +“If you’ve set your mind on something literary,” said Beveledge +confidently, “you have every chance of finishing up in a chorus or +carrying printed placards about the streets, certainly. When it comes +to that, look me up in Eastcheap.” With this encouraging assurance of +my ultimate success he left me, and rejoicing that I had not fallen into +the snare of opposing a written destiny, I sought the literary quarters +of the city. + + +When this person has been able to write of any custom or facet of +existence here in a strain of conscientious esteem, he has not hesitated +to dip his brush deeply into the inkpot. Reverting backwards, this +barbarian enactment of not permitting those who from any cause have +decided upon spending the night in a philosophical abstraction to repose +upon the public seats about the swards and open spaces is not conceived +in a mood of affable toleration. Nevertheless there are deserted places +beyond the furthest limits of the city where a more amiable full-face +is shown. On the eleventh day of this one’s determination to sustain +himself by the exercise of his literary style, he was journeying about +sunset towards one of these spots, subduing the grosser instincts of +mankind by reviewing the wisdom of the sublime Lao Ch’un, who decided +that heat and cold, pain and fatigue, and mental distress, have no real +existence, and are therefore amenable to logical disproof, while the +cravings of hunger and thirst are merely the superfluous attributes of +a former and lower state of existence, when a passer-by, who for some +distance had been alternately advancing before and remaining behind, +matched his footsteps into mine. + +“Whichee way walk-go, John, eh?” said this unfortunate being, who +appeared to be suffering from a laborious deformity of speech. “Allee +samee load me. Chin-chin.” + +Filled with compassion for one who evidently found himself alone in a +strange land, in the absence of his more highly-accomplished companion, +unable to indicate his wants and requirements to those about him, I +regretfully admitted that I had not chanced to encounter that John +whose wandering footsteps he sought; and to indicate, by not leaving him +abruptly, that I maintained a sympathetic concern over his welfare, I +pointed out to him the exceptional brilliance of the approaching night, +adding that I myself was then directing a course towards a certain +spacious Heath, a few li distant in the north. + +“Sing-dance tomollow, then?” he said, with a condensed air of general +disappointment. “Chop-chop in a pay look-see show on Ham--Hamstl--oh +damme! on ‘Ampstead ‘Eath? Booked up, eh, John?” + +Gradually convinced that it was becoming necessary to readjust the +significance of the incident, I replied that I had no intention of +partaking of chops or food of any variety in an erected tent, but merely +of passing the night in an intellectual seclusion. + +“Oh,” said the one who was walking by my side, regarding my garments +with engaging attention, and at the same time appearing to regain an +unruffled speech as though the other had been an assumed device, “I +understand--the Blue Sky Hotel. Well, I’ve stayed there once or twice +myself. A bit down on your uppers, eh?” + +“Assuredly this person may perchance lay his upper parts down for a +short space of time,” I admitted, when I had traced out the symbolism of +the words. “As it is humanely written in The Books, ‘Sleep and suicide +are the free refuges equally of the innocent and the guilty.’” + +“Oh, come now, don’t,” exclaimed the energetic person, striking himself +together by means of his two hands. “It’s sinful to talk about suicide +the day before bank holiday. Why, my only Somali warrior has vamoosed +with his full make-up, and the Magnetic Girl too, and I never thought of +suicide--only whether to turn my old woman into a Veiled Beauty of the +Harem or a Hairy Lama from Tibet.” + +Not absolutely grasping the emergency, yet in a spirit of inoffensive +cordiality I remarked that the alternative was insufferably perplexing, +while he continued. + +“Then I spotted you, and in a flash I got an idea that ought to take and +turn out really great if you’ll come in. Now follow this: Missionary’s +tent in the wilds of Pekin. Domestic interior by lamp-light. Missionary +(me) reading evening paper; missionary’s wife (the missus) making tea, +and between times singing to keep the small pet goat quiet (small goat, +a pillow, horsecloth, and pocket-handkerchief). Breaks down singing, +sobs, and says she feels a strange all-over presentiment. Missionary +admits being a bit fluffed himself, and lets out about a notice signed +in blood that he’s seen in the city.” + +“Carried upon a pole?” this person demanded, feeling that something of a +literary nature might yet be wrested into the incident. + +“On a flagstaff if you like,” conceded the other one magnanimously. “A +notice to the effect that it is the duty of every jack mother’s son of +them to douse the foreign devils, man, woman, and child, and especially +the talk-book pass-hat-round men. Also that he has had several +brick-ends heaved at him on his way back. Then stops suddenly, hits +his upper crust, and says that it’s like his blamed fat-headedness +to frighten her; while she clutches at herself three times and faints +away.” + +“Amid the voluminous burning of blue lights?” suggested this person +resourcefully. + +“By rights there should be,” admitted the one who was devising the +representation; “but it will hardly run to it. Anyway, it costs nothing +to turn the lamp down--saves a bit in fact, and gives an effect. Then +outside, in the distance at first you understand, you begin to work up +the sound of the advancing mob--rattles, shouts, tum-tums, groans, tin +plates and all that one mortal man can do with hands, feet and mouth.” + +“With the interspersal of an occasional cracker and the stirring notes +produced by striking a hollow wooden fish repeatedly?” I cried; for let +it be confessed that amid the portrayal of the scene my imagination had +taken an allotted part. + +“If you like to provide them, and don’t set the bally show on fire,” he +replied. “Anyhow, these two aren’t supposed to notice anything even when +the row gets louder. Then it drops and you are heard outside talking in +whispers to the others--words of command and telling them to keep back +half-a-mo, and so on. See?” + +“Doubtless introducing a spoken charm and repeating the words of an +incantation against omens, treachery, and other matters.” + +“Next a flap of the tent down on the floor is raised, and you +reconnoitre, looking your very worst and holding a knife between your +teeth and another in each hand. Wave a hand to your followers to keep +back--or come on: it makes no difference. Then you crawl in on your +stomach, give a terrific howl, and stab me in the back. That rolls +me under the curtain, and so lets me out. The missus ups with the +wood-chopper and stands before the cradle, while you yell and dance +round with the knives. That ought to be made ‘the moment’ of the whole +piece. The great thing is to make enough noise. If you can yell louder +than the talking-machine outfit on the next pitch we ought to turn money +away. While you are at it I start a fresh row outside--shouts, cheers, +groans, words of command and a paper bag or two. Seeing that the game +is up you make a rush at the old woman; she downs you with the chopper, +turns the lamp up full, shakes out a Union Jack over the sleeping +infant, and finally stands in her finest attitude with one hand pointing +impressively upwards and the other contemptuously downwards just as Rule +Britannia is played on the cornet outside and I appear at the door in a +general’s full uniform and let down the curtain.” + +For acting in the manner designated--as touching the noises both inside +and out, the set dance with upraised knives, the casting to earth of +himself, and being myself in turn vanquished by the aged female, with +an added compact that from time to time I should be led by a chain +and shown to the people from a raised platform--we agreed upon a daily +reward of two pieces of silver, an adequacy of food, and a certain +ambiguously-referred-to share of the gain. It need not be denied that +with so favourable an opportunity of introducing passages from the +Classics a much less sum would have been accepted, but having obtained +this without a struggle, the one now recounting the facts raised the +opportune suggestion of an inscribed placard, in order to fulfil the +portent foreshadowed by William Greyson. + +“Oh, we’ll star you, never fear,” assented the accommodating personage, +and having by this time reached that spot upon the Heath where his +Domestic Altar had been raised, we entered. + +“All the most distinguished actors in this country take another +name,” he said reflectively, when he had drawn forth a parchment of +praiseworthy dimensions and ink of three colours, “and though I have +nothing to say against Kong Ho Tsin Cheng Quank Paik T’chun Li Yuen +Nung for quiet unostentatious dignity, it doesn’t have just the grip +and shudder that we want. Now how does ‘Fang’ strike you?” and upon my +courteous acquiescence that this indeed united within it those qualities +which he required, he traced its characters in red ink upon a lavish +scale. + +“‘Fang Hung Sin’ about fits the idea of snap and bloodthirstiness, I +should say,” he continued, and using the brush and all the colours +with an expert proficiency which would infallibly gain him an early +recognition at any of our competitive examinations, he presently laid +before me the following gracefully-composed notice, which was suspended +from a conspicuous pole about the door of the tent on the following day. + + FANG HUNG SIN + The Captured Boxer Chieftain. + + Under a strong guard, and by arrangement with the British and + Chinese authorities concerned, + + FANG HUNG SIN + + Will positively reënact the GORY SCENES of CARNAGE in which + he took a LEADING and SANGUINARY PART during the LATE RISING. + + ALONE IN PEKIN + Or, What a Woman can do. + + PANEL I. PEACE: The Missionary’s Tent by Night--All’s Well-- + The Dread Warning--“I am by your side, Beloved.” + + PANEL II. ALARM: The Signal--The Spy--The Mob Outside-- + Treachery--“Save Yourself, my Darling”--“And Leave + You? Never!” + + PANEL III. REVENGE: The Attack--The Blow Falls--Who Can Save + Her Now?--“Back, Renegade Viper!”--The English Guns + --“Rule Britannia!” + + FANG HUNG SIN, The Desperado. + There is only one FANG, and he must be seen. + FANG! FANG!! FANG!!! + +I will not upon this occasion, esteemed one, delay myself with an +account of this barbarian Festival of Lanterns; or, as their language +would convey it, Feast of Cocoa-nuts, beyond admitting that with +the possible exception of an important provincial capital during the +triennial examinations I doubt whether our own unapproachable Empire +could show a more impressively-extended gathering, either in the diverse +and ornamental efflorescence of head garb, in the affectionate display +openly lavished by persons of one sex towards those of the other, or +even one more successful in our own pre-eminent art of producing the +multitudinous harmony of conflicting sounds. + +At the appointed hour this person submitted himself to be heavily +shackled, and being led out before the assembled crowd, endeavoured by +a smiling benignity of manner and by reassuring signs of welcome, to +produce a favourable impression upon their sympathies and to allure +them within. This pacific face was undoubtedly successful, however +offensively the ill-conditioned one who stood by was inspired to express +himself behind his teeth, for the space of the tent was very quickly +occupied and the actions of simulation were to begin. + +Without doubt it might have been better if this person had first made +himself more fully acquainted with the barbarian manner of acting. The +fact that this imagined play, which even in one of our inferior theatres +would have filled the time pleasantly for two or three months, was to +be compressed into the narrow limits of seven minutes and a half, should +reasonably have warned him that amid the ensuing rapidity of word and +action, most of the leisurely courtesies and all the subtle range of +concealed emotion which embellish our own wood pavement must be ignored. +But it is well and suggestively written, “The person who deliberates +sufficiently before taking every step will spend his life standing +upon one leg.” In the past this one had not found himself to be grossly +inadequate on any arising emergency, and he now drew aside the hanging +drapery and prepared to carry out a preconcerted part with intrepid +self-reliance. + +It has already been expressed, that the reason and incentive urging me +to a ready agreement lay in the opportunities by which suitable passages +from the high Classics could be discreetly woven into the fabric of the +plot, and the occupation thereby permeated with an honourable literary +flavour. In accordance with this resolve I blended together many +imperishable sayings of the wisest philosophers to present the cries and +turmoil of the approaching mob, but it was not until I protruded my +head beneath the hanging canopy in the guise of one observing that an +opportunity arose of a really well-sustained effort. In this position I +recited Yung Ki’s stimulating address to his troops when in sight of an +overwhelming foe, and, in spite of the continually back-thrust foot +of the undiscriminating one before me, I successfully accomplished the +seventy-five lines of the poem without a stumble. Then entering fully, +with many deprecatory bows and expressions of self-abasement at taking +part in so seemingly detestable an action, I treacherously, yet with +inoffensive tact, struck the one wearing an all-round collar delicately +upon the back. Not recognising the movement, or being in some other way +obtuse, the person in question instead of sinking to the ground turned +hastily to me in the form of an inquiry, leaving me no other reasonable +course than to display the knife openly to him, and to assure him that +the fatal blow had already been inflicted. Undoubtedly his immoderate +retorts were inept at such a moment, nor was his ensuing strategy of +turning completely round three times, striking himself about the head +and body, and uttering ceremonious curses before he fell devoid of +life--as though the earlier remarks had been part of the ordained +scheme--to any degree convincing, and the cries of disapproval from the +onlookers proved that they also regarded this one as the victim of an +unworthy rebuke. + +“Not if the benches were filled at half a guinea a head would I take +on another performance like that,” exclaimed the one with whom I was +associated, when it was over. “Besides the dead loss of lasting three +quarters of an hour it’s tempting providence when the seats are movable. +I suppose it isn’t your fault, Kong, you poor creature, but you haven’t +got no glare and glitter. There’s only one thing for it: you must be the +Rev. Mr. Walker and I’ll take Fang.” He then robed himself in my attire, +guided me among the intricacies of the all-round collar and outer +garments in exchange, hung a slender rope about his back, and after +completing the artifice by a skilful device of massing coloured inks +upon our faces, he commanded me to lead him out by a chain and observe +intelligently how a captive Boxer chief should disport himself. + +No sooner had we reached the platform than the one whom I controlled +leapt high into the air, dragged me to the edge of the erection, showed +his teeth towards the assembly and waved his arms menacingly at them; +then turning upon this person, he inflamed his face with passion, +rattled his chain furiously, and uttered such vengeance-laden cries +that, unable to subdue the emotion of fear, I abandoned all pretence, +and dropping the chain, fled to the furthest recess of the tent, +followed by the still threatening Fang. + +There is an expression among us, “Cheng-hu was too considerate: he tried +to drive nails with a cucumber.” Cheng-hu would certainly have quickly +found the necessity of a weapon of three-times hardened steel if he had +lived among these barbarians, who are insensible to the higher forms of +politeness, in addition to acting in a contrary and illogical manner +on all occasions. Instead of being repelled and discouraged by Fang’s +outrageous behaviour, they clamoured to be admitted into the tent more +vehemently than before, and so successfully established the venture that +the one to whom I must now allude throughout as Fang signified to me his +covetous intention of reducing the performance by a further two and a +half minutes in order to reap an added profit and to garner all his rice +before the Hoang Ho rose. + +As for myself, revered, it would be immature to hold the gauze screen of +prevarication between your all-discerning mind and my own trepidation. +From the moment when I first saw the expression of utterly depraved +malignity and deep-seared hate which he had cunningly engraved upon his +face by means of the coloured inks, I was far from being comfortably +settled within myself. Even the society of the not inelegant being of +the inner chamber, whom it was now my part to console with alluring +words and movements, could not for some time retain my face from a +back-way instinct at every sound; but when the detail was reached that +she sank into my grasp bereft of all energy, and for the first time I +was just succeeding in forgetting the unpropitious surroundings, the +one Fang, who had entered with unseemly stealth, suddenly hurled his +soul-freezing battle-cry upon my ear and leapt forward with uplifted +knife. Perceiving the action from an angle of my eye even as he +propelled himself through the air, I could not restrain an ignoble wail +of despair, and not scrupling to forsake the maiden, I would have taken +refuge beneath a couch had he not seized my outer robe and hurled me +to the ground. From this point to the close of the entertainment +the vigorous person in question did not cease from raising cries and +challenges in an unfaltering and many-fathomed stream, while at the same +time he continued to spring from one extremity of the stage to the other +surrounded by every external attribute of an insatiable tiger-like rage. +It is circumstantially related that the one near at hand, who has been +referred to as possessing a voiced machine, became demented, and bearing +the contrivance to a certain tent erected by the charitable, entreated +them to remove the impediment from its speech so that it might be heard +again and his livelihood restored. When the action of brandishing +a profusion of knives before the lesser one’s eyes was reached, so +nerve-shattering was the impression which Fang created that the back of +the tent had to be removed in order to let out those who no longer had +possession of themselves, and to let in those--to a ten-fold +degree--who strove for admission on the rumour spreading that something +exceptionally repellent was progressing within. + +With what attenuated organs of repose this person would have reached +the end of so strenuous an occupation had he been compelled to twelve +enactments each hour throughout the gong-strokes of the day without any +literary relief, it is not enticing to dwell upon. This evil was averted +by a timely intervention, for upon proceeding to the outer air for the +third time I at once perceived among the foremost throng the engaging +full-face of William Beveledge Greyson. This really painstaking +individual had learned, as he afterwards explained, that the chiefs of +exchange (those who in the first case had opposed me resolutely,) had +received a written omen, and now in contrition were expressing their +willingness to hold out a full restitution. With this assurance he +had set forth in an unremitting search, and guided by street-watchers, +removers of superfluous earth, families propelling themselves forward +upon one foot, astrologers, two-wheeled charioteers, and others who move +early and secretly by night, he had traced my description to this same +Heath. Here he had been attracted by the displayed placard (remembering +my honourable boast), and approaching nearer, he had plainly recognised +my voice within. But in spite of this the successful disentanglement was +by no means yet accomplished. + +Not expecting so involved a reversal of things, and being short-eyed by +nature, William Greyson did not wait for a fuller assurance than to +be satisfied that the one before him wore my robes and conformed in a +general outline, before he addressed him. + +“Kong Ho,” he said pleasantly, “what the Chief Evil Spirit are you doing +up there?” adding persuasively, “Come down, there’s a good fellow. I +have something important to tell you.” + +Thus appealed to, the one Fang hesitated in doubt, seeing on the one +hand a certain loss of face if he declined the conversation, and on the +other hand having no clear perception of what was required from him. +Therefore he entered upon a course of evasion and somewhat incapably +replied, “Chow Chop Wei Hai Wei Lung Tung Togo Kuroki Jim Jam Beri +Beri.” + +“Don’t act the horned sheep,” said Beveledge, who was both resolute and +one easily set into violent motion by an opposing stream. “Come down, +or I’ll come up and fetch you.” And not being satisfied with Fang’s +ill-advised attempt to express himself equivocally, those around took up +the apt similitude of a self-opinionated animal, and began to suggest a +comparison to other creatures no less degraded. + +“Rats yourselves!” exclaimed the easily-inflamed person at my side, +losing the inefficient cords of his prudence beneath the sting. “Who’s +a rabbit? For two guinea-pigs I’d mow all the grass between here and +the Spaniards with your own left ears,” and not permitting me sufficient +preparation to withhold the chain more firmly, he abruptly cast himself +down among them, amid a scene of the most untamed confusion. + +“Oh, affectionately-disposed brethren,” I exclaimed, moving forward and +raising my hand in refined disapproval, “the sublime Confucius, in the +twenty-third chapter of the book called ‘The Great Learning,’ warns us +against--” but before I could formulate the allusion Beveledge +Greyson, who at the sound of my conciliatory words had gazed first in +astonishment and then in a self-convulsed position, drew himself up to +my side, and taking a firm grasp upon the all-round collar, projected me +without a pause through the tent, and only halting for a moment to point +significantly back to the varied and animated scene behind, where, amid +a very profuse display of contending passions, the erected stage was +already being dragged to the ground, and a band of the official watch +was in the act of converging from every side, he led me through more +deserted paths to the scene of a final extrication. + +With a well-gratified sense of having held an unswerving course along +the convoluted outline of Destiny’s decree, to whatever tending. + + KONG HO. + + + + +LETTER XIV + + + Concerning a pressing invitation from an ever benevolently- + disposed father to a prosaic but dutifully-inclined son. The + recording of certain matters of no particular moment. + Concerning that ultimate end which is symbolic of the + inexorable wheels of a larger Destiny. + + +Venerated Sire,--It is not for the earthworm to say when and in what +exact position the iron-shod boot shall descend, and this person, being +an even inferior creature for the purpose of the comparison, bows an +acquiescent neck to your very explicit command that he shall return to +Yuen-ping without delay. He cannot put away from his mind a clinging +suspicion that this arising is the result of some imperfection in +his deplorable style of correspondence, whereby you have formed an +impression quite opposed to that which it had been the intention to +convey, and that, perchance, you even have a secret doubt whether upon +some specified occasion he may not have conducted the enterprise to an +ignoble, or at least not markedly successful, end. However, the saying +runs, “The stone-cutter always has the last word,” and you equally, by +intimating with your usual unanswerable and clear-sighted gift of +logic that no further allowance of taels will be sent for this one’s +dispersal, diplomatically impose upon an ever-yearning son the most +feverish anxiety once more to behold your large and open-handed face. + +Standing thus poised, as it may be said, for a returning flight across +the elements of separation, it is not inopportune for this person to let +himself dwell gracefully upon those lighter points of recollection which +have engraved themselves from time to time upon his mind without leading +to any more substantial adventure worthy to record. Many of the things +which seemed strange and incomprehensible when he first came among +this powerful though admittedly barbarian people, are now revealed at +a proper angle; others, to which he formerly imagined he had found the +disclosing key, are, on the other hand, plunged into a distorting haze; +while between these lie a multitude of details in every possible stage +of disentanglement and doubt. As a final and painstaking pronouncement, +this person has no hesitation in declaring that this country is +not--as practically all our former travellers have declared--completely +down-side-up as compared with our own manners and customs, but at the +same time it is very materially sideways. + +Thus, instead of white, black robes are the indication of mourning; but +as, for the generality, the same colour is also used for occasions of +commerce, ceremony, religion, and the ordinary affairs of life, the +matter remains exactly as it was before. Yet with obtuse inconsistency +the garments usually white--in which a change would be really +noticeable--remain white throughout the most poignant grief. How much +more markedly expressed would be the symbolism if during such a period +they wore white outer robes and black body garments. Nevertheless it +cannot be said that they are unmindful of the emblematic influence of +colour, for, unlike the reasonable conviction that red is red and blue +is blue, which has satisfied our great nation from the days of the +legendary Shun, these pale-eyed foreigners have diverged into countless +trifling imaginings, so that when the one who is now expressing his +contempt for the development required a robe of a certain hue, he had to +bend his mouth, before he could be exactly understood, to the degrading +necessity of asking for “Drowned-rat brown,” “Sunstroke magenta,” + “Billingsgate purple,” “London milk azure,” “Settling-day green,” or the +like. In the other signs of mourning they do not come within measurable +distance of our pure and uncomfortable standard. “If you are really +sincere in your regret for the one who has Passed Beyond, why do you not +sit upon the floor for seven days and nights, take up all food with your +fingers, and allow your nails to grow untrimmed for three years?” was +a question which I at first instinctively put to lesser ones in their +affliction. In every case save one I received answers of evasive +purport, and even the one stated reason, “Because although I am a poor +widder I ain’t a pig,” I deemed shallow. + +I have already dipped a revealing brush into the subject of names. +Were the practice of applying names in a wrong and illogical sequence +maintained throughout it might indeed raise a dignified smile, but +it would not appear contemptible; but what can be urged when upon an +occasion one name appears first, upon another occasion last? A dignity +is conferred in old age, and it is placed before the family designation +borne by an honoured father and a direct line of seventeen revered +ancestors. Another title is bestowed, and eats up the former like a +revengeful dragon. New distinctions follow, some at one end, others at +another, until a very successful person may be suitably compared to +the ringed oleander snake, which has the power of growing equally +from either the head or the tail. To express the matter by a definite +allusion, how much more graceful and orchideous, even in a condensed +fashion, would appear the designation of this selected one, if instead +of the usual form of the country it was habitually set forth in the +following logical and thoroughly Chinese style:--Chamberlain Joseph, +Master, Mr., Thrice Wearer of the Robes and Golden Collar, One of the +Just Peacemakers, Esquire, Member of the House of Law-givers, Leader +in the Council of Commerce, Presider over the Tables of Provincial +Government, Uprightly Honourable Secretary of the Outlying Parts. + +Among the notes which at various times I have inscribed in a book +for future guidance I find it written on an early page, “They do not +hesitate to express their fathers’ names openly,” but to this assertion +there stands a warning sign which was added after the following +incident. “Is it true, Mr. Kong,” asked a lesser one, who is spoken of +as vastly rich but discontented with her previous lot, of this person +upon an occasion, “is it really true that your countrymen to not +consider it right to speak of their fathers’ names, even in this +enlightened age?” To this I replied that the matter was as she had +eloquently expressed it, and, encouraged by her amiable condescension, +I asked after the memory of her paternal grandsire, whose name I had +frequently heard whispered in connection with her own. To my inelegant +confusion she regarded me for a period as though I had the virtue of +having become transparent, and then passed on in a most overwhelming +excess of disconcertingly-arranged silence. + +“You’ve done it now, Kong,” said one who stood by (or, as we would +express the same thought, “You have succeeded in accomplishing the +undesirable”); “don’t you know that the old man was in the tripe and +trotter line?” + +“To no degree,” I replied truly. “Yet,” I continued, matching his idiom +with another equally facile, “wherein was this person’s screw loose? Are +they not openly referred to--those of the Line of Tripe and Trotter--by +their descendants?” + +“Not in most cases,” he said, with a concentration that indicated +a lurking sting among his words. “Generally speaking, they aren’t +mentioned or taken into any account whatever. While they are alive they +are kept in the background and invited to treat themselves to the Tower +when nice people are expected; when dead they are fastened up in the +family back cupboard by a score of ten-inch nails and three-trick Yale +locks, so to speak. And in the meantime all the splash is being made on +their muddy oof. See?” + +I nodded agreeably, though, had the opportunity been more favourable, I +would have made the feint to learn somewhat more of this secret practice +of burying in the enclosed space beneath the stairs. Thus is it set +forth why, after the statement, “They do not hesitate to express their +fathers’ names openly,” it is further written, “Walk slowly! Engrave +well upon your discreet remembrance the unmentionable Line of Tripe and +Trotter.” + +Another point of comparison which the superficial have failed to record +is to be found in the frequent encouragements to regard The Virtues +which are to be seen, like our own Confucian extracts, freely inscribed +on every wall and suitable place about the city. These for the most part +counsel moderation in taking false oaths, in stepping heedlessly upon +the unknown ground, in following paths which lead to doubtful ends, and +other timely warnings. “Beware a smoke-breathing demon,” is frequently +cast across one’s path upon a barrier, and this person has never failed +to accept the omen and to retrace his steps hastily without looking to +the right or the left. Even our own national caution is not forgotten, +although to conform to barbarian indolence it is written, “Slowly, +slowly; drive slowly.” “Keep to the Right” (or, “Abandon that which is +evil,” as the analogy holds,) is perhaps the most frequently displayed +of all, and doubtless many charitable persons obtain an ever-accruing +merit by hanging the sign bearing these words upon every available post. +Others are of a stern and threatening nature, designed to make the most +hardened ill-doer pause, as--in their own tongue--“Rubbish may be shot +here”; which we should render, “At any moment, and in such a place +as this, a just doom and extinction may overtake the worthless.” This +inscription is never to be seen except in waste expanses, where it +points its significance with a multiplied force. There is another +definite threat which is lavishly set out, and so thoroughly that it may +be encountered in the least frequented and almost inaccessible spots. +This, as it may be translated, reads, “Trespass not the forbidden. The +profligate may flourish like the gourd for a season, but in the +end assuredly they will be detected, and justice meted out with the +relentless fury of the written law.” + +In a converse position, the wide difference in the ceremonial forms of +retaliatory invective has practically disarmed this usually eloquent +person, and he long since abandoned every hope of expressing himself +with any satisfaction in encounters of however acrimonious a trend. +At first, with an urbane smile and gestures of dignified contempt, he +impugned the authenticity of the Ancestral Tablets of those with whom +he strove, in an unbroken stream of most bitter contumely. Finding them +silent under this reproach, he next lightly traced their origin back +through generations of afflicted lepers, deformed ape-beings, and +Nameless Things, to a race of primitive ghouls, and then went on in +relentless fluency to predict an early return in their descendants to +the condition of a similar state. For some time he had a well-gratified +assurance that those whom he assailed were so overwhelmed as to be +incapable of retort, and in this belief he never failed to call upon +passers-by to witness his triumph; but on the fourth occasion a young +man whom I had thus publicly denounced for a sufficient though forgotten +reason, after listening courteously to my venomous accusations, bestowed +a two-cash piece upon me and passed on, remarking that it was hard, +and those around, also, would have added from their stores had it +been permitted. From this time onward I did not attempt to make myself +disagreeable either in public or to those whom I esteemed privately. On +the other hand, the barbarian manner of retort did not find me endowed +by nature to parry it successfully. Quite lacking in measured periods, +it aims, by an extreme rapidity of thrust and an insincerity of +sequence, to entangle the one who is assailed in a complication of +arising doubts and emotions. “Who are you,--no one but yourself,” + exclaimed a hireling of hung-dog expression who claimed to have +exchanged pledging gifts with a certain maiden who stood, as it were, +between us, and falling into the snare, I protested warmly against the +insult, and strove to disprove the inference before the paralogism lay +revealed. Throughout the whole range of the Odes, the Histories, the +Analects, and the Rites what recognised formula of rejoinder is there to +the taunt, “Oh, go and put your feet in mustard and cress”; or how +can one, however skilled in the highest Classics, parry the subtle +inconsistencies of the reproach, “You’re a nice bit of orl right, aren’t +you? Not arf, I don’t think.” + +Among the arts of this country that of painting upon canvas is held in +repute, but to a person associated with the masterpieces of the Ma epoch +these native attempts would be gravity-dispelling if they were not too +reminiscent of the torture chamber. It is rarely, indeed, that even the +most highly-esteemed picture-makers succeed in depicting every portion +of a human body submitted to their brush, and not infrequently half +of the face is left out. Once, when asked by a paint-applier who was +entitled to append two signs of exceptional distinction behind his name, +to express an opinion upon a finished work, I diffidently called his +attention to the fact that he had forgotten to introduce a certain +exalted one’s left ear. “Not at all, Mr. Kong,” he replied, with an +expression of ill-merited self-satisfaction, “but it is hidden by the +face.” “Yet it exists,” I contended; “why not, therefore, press it to +the front at all hazard, rather than send so great a statesman down +into the annals of posterity as deformed to that extent?” “It certainly +exists,” he admitted, “and one takes that for granted; but in my picture +it cannot be seen.” I bowed complaisantly, content to let so damaging +an admission point its own despair. A moment later I continued, “In the +great Circular Hall of the Palace of Envoys there is a picture of +two camels, foot-tethered, as it fortunately chanced, to iron rings. +Formerly there were a drove of eight--the others being free--so +exquisitely outlined in all their parts that one night, when the door +had been left incautiously open, they stepped down from the wall and +escaped to the woods. How deplorable would have been the plight of these +unfortunate beings, if upon passing into the state of a living existence +they had found that as a result of the limited vision of their creator +they only possessed twelve legs and three whole bodies among them.” + +Perchance this tactfully-related story, so applicable to his own +deficiencies, may sink into the imagination of the one for whom it was +inoffensively unfolded. Yet doubt remains. Our own picture-judgers +take up a position at the side of work when they with to examine its +qualities, retiring to an ever-diminishing angle in order to bring out +the more delicate effects, until a very expert and conscientious critic +will not infrequently stand really behind the picture he is considering +before he delivers a final pronouncement. Not until these native artists +are able to regard their crude attempts from the other side of the +canvas can they hope to become equally proficient. To this fatal +shortcoming must be added that of insatiable ambition, which prompts +the young to the portrayal of widely differing subjects. Into the +picture-room of one who might thus be described this person was recently +conducted, to pass an opinion upon a scene in which were depicted +seven men of varying nationalities and appropriately garbed, one of the +opposing sex carrying a lighted torch, an elephant reclining beneath a +fruitful vine, and the President of a Republic. For a period this person +resisted the efforts of those who would have questioned him, withdrawing +their attention to the harmonious lights upon the river mist floating +far below, but presently, being definitely called upon, he replied as +follows: “Mih Ying, who was perhaps the greatest of his time, spent his +whole life in painting green and yellow beetles in the act of concealing +themselves beneath dead maple leaves upon the approach of day. At the +age of seventy-five he burst into tears, and upon being approached for +a cause he exclaimed, ‘Alas, if only this person had resisted the +temptation to be diffuse, and had confined himself to green beetles +alone, he might now, instead of contemplating a misspent career, have +been really great.’ How much less,” I continued, “can a person of +immature moustaches hope to depict two such conflicting objects as a +recumbent elephant and the President of a Republic standing beneath a +banner?” + +Upon the temptation to deal critically with the religious instincts of +the islanders this person draws an obliterating brush. As practically +every traveller who has honoured our unattractive land with his +effusive presence has subsequently left it in a printed record that +our ceremonies are grotesque, our priesthood ignorant and depraved, +our monasteries and sacred places spots of plague upon an otherwise +flower-adorned landscape, and our beliefs and sacrifices only worthy to +exist for the purpose of being made into jest-origins by more refined +communities, the omission on this one’s part may appear uncivil and +perhaps even intentionally discourteous. To this, as a burner of +joss-sticks and an irregular person, he can only reply by a deprecatory +waving of both hands and a reassuring smile. + +With the two-sided memories of many other details hanging thickly around +his brush, it would not be an achievement to continue to a practically +inexhaustible amount. As of the set days when certain things are +observed, among which fall the first of the fourth month (but that would +disclose another involvement), another when flat cakes are partaken +of without due caution, another when rounder cakes are even more +incautiously consumed, and that most brightly-illuminated of all when it +is permissible to embrace maidens openly, and if discreetly accomplished +with no overhanging fear of ensuing forms of law, beneath the emblem of +a suspended branch, in memory of the wisdom of certain venerable sages +who were doubtless expert in the practice. As of the inconvenient +custom when two persons are walking together that they should arrange +themselves side by side, to the obvious discomfort of others, the +sweeping away of all opportunities for agreeable politeness, and +the utter disregard of the time-honoured example of the sagacious +water-fowl. As of the inconsistency of refusing, even with contempt, to +receive our most intimate form of regard and use this person’s lip-cloth +after a feast, yet the mulish eagerness in that same youth to drink from +a cup previously used by a lesser one. As of the precision (which still +remains a cloud of doubt,) with which creatures so intractable as the +bull are successfully trained to roar aloud at certain gong-strokes of +the day as an agreed signal. As of the streets in movement, the lights +at evening, and the voices of those unseen. As of these and as of other +matters, so multitudinous that they crowd about this person’s mind +like the assembling swallows, circling above the deserted millet +fields before they turn their beaks to the sea, and dropping his brush +(perchance with an acquiescent sigh), he, also, kow-tows submissively +to a blind but appointed destiny, and prepares to seek a passage from an +alien land of sojourning. + +With the impetuous craving of an affectionate son to behold a revered +sire, intensified by the fact that he has reached the innermost lining +of his sleeve; with affectionate greetings towards Ning, Hia-Fa, and +T’ian Yen, and an assurance that they have never been really absent from +his thoughts. + + KONG HO. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1077 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1078-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1078-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8e0f0247 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1078-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11282 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1078 *** + +THE SCOUTS OF THE VALLEY + +by Joseph A. Altsheler + + + + +CHAPTER I. THE LONE CANOE + + +A light canoe of bark, containing a single human figure, moved swiftly +up one of the twin streams that form the Ohio. The water, clear and +deep, coming through rocky soil, babbled gently at the edges, where it +lapped the land, but in the center the full current flowed steadily and +without noise. + +The thin shadows of early dusk were falling, casting a pallid tint over +the world, a tint touched here and there with living fire from the sun, +which was gone, though leaving burning embers behind. One glowing shaft, +piercing straight through the heavy forest that clothed either bank, +fell directly upon the figure in the boat, as a hidden light illuminates +a great picture, while the rest is left in shadow. It was no common +forest runner who sat in the middle of the red beam. Yet a boy, in +nothing but years, he swung the great paddle with an ease and vigor that +the strongest man in the West might have envied. His rifle, with the +stock carved beautifully, and the long, slender blue barrel of the +border, lay by his side. He could bring the paddle into the boat, +grasp the rifle, and carry it to his shoulder with a single, continuous +movement. + +His most remarkable aspect, one that the casual observer even would have +noticed, was an extraordinary vitality. He created in the minds of those +who saw him a feeling that he lived intensely every moment of his life. +Born and-bred in the forest, he was essentially its child, a perfect +physical being, trained by the utmost hardship and danger, and with +every faculty, mental and physical, in complete coordination. It is only +by a singular combination of time and place, and only once in millions +of chances, that Nature produces such a being. + +The canoe remained a few moments in the center of the red light, and its +occupant, with a slight swaying motion of the paddle, held it steady in +the current, while he listened. Every feature stood out in the glow, the +firm chin, the straight strong nose, the blue eyes, and the thick yellow +hair. The red blue, and yellow beads on his dress of beautifully tanned +deerskin flashed in the brilliant rays. He was the great picture of +fact, not of fancy, a human being animated by a living, dauntless soul. + +He gave the paddle a single sweep and shot from the light into the +shadow. His canoe did not stop until it grazed the northern shore, where +bushes and overhanging boughs made a deep shadow. It would have taken +a keen eye now to have seen either the canoe or its occupant, and +Henry Ware paddled slowly and without noise in the darkest heart of the +shadow. + +The sunlight lingered a little longer in the center of the stream. Then +the red changed to pink. The pink, in its turn, faded, and the whole +surface of the river was somber gray, flowing between two lines of black +forest. + +The coming of the darkness did not stop the boy. He swung a little +farther out into the stream, where the bushes and hanging boughs would +not get in his way, and continued his course with some increase of +speed. + +The great paddle swung swiftly through the water, and the length of +stroke was amazing, but the boy's breath did not come faster, and the +muscles on his arms and shoulders rippled as if it were the play of +a child. Henry was in waters unknown to him. He had nothing more than +hearsay upon which to rely, and he used all the wilderness caution that +he had acquired through nature and training. He called into use every +faculty of his perfect physical being. His trained eyes continually +pierced the darkness. At times, he stopped and listened with ears that +could hear the footfall of the rabbit, but neither eye nor ear brought +report of anything unusual. The river flowed with a soft, sighing sound. +Now and then a wild creature stirred in the forest, and once a deer +came down to the margin to drink, but this was the ordinary life of the +woods, and he passed it by. + +He went on, hour after hour. The river narrowed. The banks grew higher +and rockier, and the water, deep and silvery under the moon, flowed in +a somewhat swifter current. Henry gave a little stronger sweep to the +paddle, and the speed of the canoe was maintained. He still kept within +the shadow of the northern bank. + +He noticed after a while that fleecy vapor was floating before the moon. +The night seemed to be darkening, and a rising wind came out of the +southwest. The touch of the air on, his face was damp. It was the token +of rain, and he felt that it would not be delayed long. + +It was no part of his plan to be caught in a storm on the Monongahela. +Besides the discomfort, heavy rain and wind might sink his frail canoe, +and he looked for a refuge. The river was widening again, and the banks +sank down until they were but little above the water. Presently he saw +a place that he knew would be suitable, a stretch of thick bushes and +weeds growing into the very edge of the water, and extending a hundred +yards or more along the shore. + +He pushed his canoe far into the undergrowth, and then stopped it in +shelter so close that, keen as his own eyes were, he could scarcely see +the main stream of the river. The water where he came to rest was not +more than a foot deep, but he remained in the canoe, half reclining and +wrapping closely around himself and his rifle a beautiful blanket woven +of the tightest fiber. + +His position, with his head resting on the edge of the canoe and his +shoulder pressed against the side, was full of comfort to him, and he +awaited calmly whatever might come. Here and there were little spaces +among the leaves overhead, and through them he saw a moon, now almost +hidden by thick and rolling vapors, and a sky that had grown dark and +somber. The last timid star had ceased to twinkle, and the rising wind +was wet and cold. He was glad of the blanket, and, skilled forest runner +that he was, he never traveled without it. Henry remained perfectly +still. The light canoe did not move beneath his weight the fraction +of an inch. His upturned eyes saw the little cubes of sky that showed +through the leaves grow darker and darker. The bushes about him were +now bending before the wind, which blew steadily from the south, and +presently drops of rain began to fall lightly on the water. + +The boy, alone in the midst of all that vast wilderness, surrounded by +danger in its most cruel forms, and with a black midnight sky above him, +felt neither fear nor awe. Being what nature and circumstance had made +him, he was conscious, instead, of a deep sense of peace and comfort. +He was at ease, in a nest for the night, and there was only the remotest +possibility that the prying eye of an enemy would see him. The leaves +directly over his head were so thick that they formed a canopy, and, as +he heard the drops fall upon them, it was like the rain on a roof, that +soothes the one beneath its shelter. + +Distant lightning flared once or twice, and low thunder rolled along the +southern horizon, but both soon ceased, and then a rain, not hard, but +cold and persistent, began to fall, coming straight down. Henry saw that +it might last all night, but he merely eased himself a little in the +canoe, drew the edges of the blanket around his chin, and let his +eyelids droop. + +The rain was now seeping through the leafy canopy of green, but he did +not care. It could not penetrate the close fiber of the blanket, and the +fur cap drawn far down on his head met the blanket. Only his face was +uncovered, and when a cold drop fell upon it, it was to him, hardened by +forest life, cool and pleasant to the touch. + +Although the eyelids still drooped, he did not yet feel the tendency to +sleep. It was merely a deep, luxurious rest, with the body completely +relaxed, but with the senses alert. The wind ceased to blow, and the +rain came down straight with an even beat that was not unmusical. No +other sound was heard in the forest, as the ripple of the river at the +edges was merged into it. Henry began to feel the desire for sleep by +and by, and, laying the paddle across the boat in such a way that it +sheltered his face, he closed his eyes. In five minutes he would have +been sleeping as soundly as a man in a warm bed under a roof, but with +a quick motion he suddenly put the paddle aside and raised himself a +little in the canoe, while one hand slipped down under the folds of the +blanket to the hammer of his rifle. + +His ear had told him in time that there was a new sound on the river. He +heard it faintly above the even beat of the rain, a soft sound, long and +sighing, but regular. He listened, and then he knew it. It was made by +oars, many of them swung in unison, keeping admirable time. + +Henry did not yet feel fear, although it must be a long boat full of +Indian warriors, as it was not likely, that anybody else would be abroad +upon these waters at such a time. He made no attempt to move. Where he +lay it was black as the darkest cave, and his cool judgment told him +that there was no need of flight. + +The regular rhythmic beat of the oars came nearer, and presently as he +looked through the covert of leaves the dusky outline of a great war +canoe came into view. It contained at least twenty warriors, of what +tribe he could not tell, but they were wet, and they looked cold and +miserable. Soon they were opposite him, and he saw the outline of every +figure. Scalp locks drooped in the rain, and he knew that the warriors, +hardy as they might be, were suffering. + +Henry expected to see the long boat pass on, but it was turned toward +a shelving bank fifty or sixty yards below, and they beached it there. +Then all sprang out, drew it up on the land, and, after turning it over, +propped it up at an angle. When this was done they sat under it in a +close group, sheltered from the rain. They were using their great canoe +as a roof, after the habit of Shawnees and Wyandots. + +The boy watched them for a long time through one of the little openings +in the bushes, and he believed that they would remain as they were all +night, but presently he saw a movement among them, and a little flash +of light. He understood it. They were trying to kindle a fire-with flint +and steel, under the shelter of the boat. He continued to watch them +'lazily and without alarm. + +Their fire, if they succeeded in making it, would cast no light upon him +in the dense covert, but they would be outlined against the flame, and +he could see them better, well enough, perhaps, to tell to what tribe +they belonged. + +He watched under his lowered eyelids while the warriors, gathered in +a close group to make a shelter from stray puffs of wind, strove with +flint and steel. Sparks sprang up and went out, but Henry at last saw a +little blaze rise and cling to life. Then, fed with tinder and bark, it +grew under the roof made by the boat until it was ruddy and strong. The +boat was tilted farther back, and the fire, continuing to grow, crackled +cheerfully, while the flames leaped higher. + +By a curious transfer of the senses, Henry, as he lay in the thick +blackness felt the influence of the fire, also. Its warmth was upon his +face, and it was pleasing to see the red and yellow light victorious +against the sodden background of the rain and dripping forest. The +figures of the warriors passed and repassed before the fire, and the boy +in the boat moved suddenly. His body was not shifted more than an inch, +but his surprise was great. + +A warrior stood between him and the fire, outlined perfectly against +the red light. It was a splendid figure, young, much beyond the average +height, the erect and noble head crowned with the defiant scalplock, the +strong, slightly curved nose and the massive chin cut as clearly as if +they had been carved in copper. The man who had laid aside a wet blanket +was bare now to the waist, and Henry could see the powerful muscles play +on chest and shoulders as he moved. + +The boy knew him. It was Timmendiquas, the great White Lightning of the +Wyandots, the youngest, but the boldest and ablest of all the Western +chiefs. Henry's pulses leaped a little at the sight of his old foe and +almost friend. As always, he felt admiration at the sight of the +young chief. It was not likely that he would ever behold such another +magnificent specimen of savage manhood. + +The presence of Timmendiquas so far east was also full of significance. +The great fleet under Adam Colfax, and with Henry and his comrades in +the van, had reached Pittsburgh at last. Thence the arms, ammunition, +and other supplies were started on the overland journey for the American +army, but the five lingered before beginning the return to Kentucky. +A rumor came that the Indian alliance was spreading along the entire +frontier, both west and north. It was said that Timmendiquas, stung to +fiery energy by his defeats, was coming east to form a league with the +Iroquois, the famous Six Nations. These warlike tribes were friendly +with the Wyandots, and the league would be a formidable danger to the +Colonies, the full strength of which was absorbed already in the great +war. + +But the report was a new call of battle to Henry, Shif'less Sol, and the +others. The return to Kentucky was postponed. They could be of greater +service here, and they plunged into the great woods to the north and, +east to see what might be stirring among the warriors. + +Now Henry, as he looked at Timmendiquas, knew that report had told +the truth. The great chief would not be on the fringe of the Iroquois +country, if he did not have such a plan, and he had the energy and +ability to carry it through. Henry shuddered at the thought of the +tomahawk flashing along every mile of a frontier so vast, and defended +so thinly. He was glad in every fiber that he and his comrades had +remained to hang upon the Indian hordes, and be heralds of their +marches. In the forest a warning usually meant the saving of life. + +The rain ceased after a while, although water dripped from the trees +everywhere. But the big fire made an area of dry earth about it, and the +warriors replaced the long boat in the water. Then all but four or five +of them lay beside the coals and went to sleep. Timmendiquas was one of +those who remained awake, and Henry saw that he was in deep thought. He +walked back and forth much like a white man, and now and then he folded +his hands behind his back, looking toward the earth, but not seeing it. +Henry could guess what was in his mind. He would draw forth the full +power of the Six Nations, league them with the Indians of the great +valley, and hurl them all in one mass upon the frontier. He was planning +now the means to the end. + +The chief, in his little walks back and forth, came close to the edge of +the bushes in which Henry lay, It was not at all probable that he +would conclude to search among them, but some accident, a chance, might +happen, and Henry began to feel a little alarm. Certainly, the coming +of the day would make his refuge insecure, and he resolved to slip away +while it was yet light. + +The boy rose a little in the boat, slowly and with the utmost caution, +because the slightest sound out of the common might arouse Timmendiquas +to the knowledge of a hostile presence. The canoe must make no plash in +the water. Gradually he unwrapped the blanket and tied it in a folded +square at his back. Then he took thought a few moments. The forest was +so silent now that he did not believe he could push the canoe through +the bushes without being heard. He would leave it there for use another +day and go on foot through the woods to his comrades. + +Slowly he put one foot down the side until it rested on the bottom, and +then he remained still. The chief had paused in his restless walk back +and forth. Could it be possible that he had heard so slight a sound as +that of a human foot sinking softly into the water? Henry waited with +his rifle ready. If necessary he would fire, and then dart away among +the bushes. + +Five or six intense moments passed, and the chief resumed his restless +pacing. If he had heard, he had passed it by as nothing, and Henry +raised the other foot out of the canoe. He was as delicate in his +movement as a surgeon mending the human eye, and he had full cause, as +not eye alone, but life as well, depended upon his success. Both feet +now rested upon the muddy bottom, and he stood there clear of the boat. + +The chief did not stop again, and as the fire had burned higher, his +features were disclosed more plainly in his restless walk back and +forth before the flames. Henry took a final look at the lofty features, +contracted now into a frown, then began to wade among the bushes, +pushing his way softly. This was the most delicate and difficult task of +all. The water must not be allowed to plash around him nor the bushes +to rustle as he passed. Forward he went a yard, then two, five, ten, and +his feet were about to rest upon solid earth, when a stick submerged +in the mud broke under his moccasin with a snap singularly loud in the +silence of the night. + +Henry sprang at once upon dry land, whence he cast back a single swift +glance. He saw the chief standing rigid and gazing in the direction from +which the sound had come. Other warriors were just behind him, following +his look, aware that there was an unexpected presence in the forest, and +resolved to know its nature. + +Henry ran northward. So confident was he in his powers and the +protecting darkness of the night that he sent back a sharp cry, piercing +and defiant, a cry of a quality that could come only from a white +throat. The warriors would know it, and he intended for them to know it. +Then, holding his rifle almost parallel with his body, he darted swiftly +away through the black spaces of the forest. But an answering cry came +to his, the Indian yell taking up his challenge, and saying that the +night would not check pursuit. + +Henry maintained his swift pace for a long time, choosing the more open +places that he might make no noise among the bushes and leaves. Now and +then water dripped in his face, and his moccasins were wet from the long +grass, but his body was warm and dry, and he felt little weariness. The +clouds were now all gone, and the stars sprang out, dancing in a sky of +dusky blue. Trained eyes could see far in the forest despite the night, +and Henry felt that he must be wary. He recalled the skill and tenacity +of Timmendiquas. A fugitive could scarcely be trailed in the darkness, +but the great chief would spread out his forces like a fan and follow. + +He had been running perhaps three hours when he concluded to stop in a +thicket, where he lay down on the damp grass, and rested with his head +under his arm. + +His breath had been coming a little faster, but his heart now resumed +its regular beat. Then he heard a soft sound, that of footsteps. He +thought at first that some wild animal was prowling near, but second +thought convinced him that human beings had come. Gazing through the +thicket, he saw an Indian warrior walking among the trees, looking +searchingly about him as if he were a scout. Another, coming from a +different direction, approached him, and Henry felt sure that they were +of the party of Timmendiquas. They had followed him in some manner, +perhaps by chance, and it behooved Mm now to lie close. + +A third warrior joined them and they began to examine the ground. Henry +realized that it was much lighter. Keen eyes under such a starry sky +could see much, and they might strike his trail. The fear quickly became +fact. One of the warriors, uttering a short cry, raised his head and +beckoned to the others. He had seen broken twigs or trampled grass, and +Henry, knowing that it was no time to hesitate, sprang from his covert. +Two of the warriors caught a glimpse of his dusky figure and fired, the +bullets cutting the leaves close to his head, but Henry ran so fast that +he was lost to view in an instant. + +The boy was conscious that his position contained many elements of +danger. He was about to have another example of the tenacity and +resource of the great young chief of the Wyandots, and he felt a certain +anger. He, did not wish to be disturbed in his plans, he wished to +rejoin his comrades and move farther east toward the chosen lands of +the Six Nations; instead, he must spend precious moments running for his +life. + +Henry did not now flee toward the camp of his friends. He was too wise, +too unselfish, to bring a horde down upon them, and he curved away in a +course that would take him to the south of them. He glanced up and saw +that the heavens were lightening yet more. A thin gray color like a mist +was appearing in the east. It was the herald of day, and now the Indians +would be able to find his trail. But Henry was not afraid. His anger +over the loss of time quickly passed, and he ran swiftly on, the fall of +his moccasins making scarcely any noise as he passed. + +It was no unusual incident. Thousands of such pursuits occurred in +the border life of our country, and were lost to the chronicler. For +generations they were almost a part of the daily life of the frontier, +but the present, while not out of the common in itself, had, uncommon +phases. It was the most splendid type of white life in all the +wilderness that fled, and the finest type of red life that followed. + +It was impossible for Henry to feel anger or hate toward Timmendiquas. +In his place he would have done what he was doing. It was hard to give +up these great woods and beautiful lakes and rivers, and the wild life +that wild men lived and loved. There was so much chivalry in the boy's +nature that he could think of all these things while he fled to escape +the tomahawk or the stake. + +Up came the sun. The gray light turned to silver, and then to red and +blazing gold. A long, swelling note, the triumphant cry of the pursuing +warriors, rose behind him. Henry turned his head for one look. He saw +a group of them poised for a moment on the crest of a low hill and +outlined against the broad flame in the east. He saw their scalp locks, +the rifles in their hands, and their bare chests shining bronze in the +glow. Once more he sent back his defiant cry, now in answer to theirs, +and then, calling upon his reserves of strength and endurance, fled with +a speed that none of the warriors had ever seen surpassed. + +Henry's flight lasted all that day, and he used every device to evade +the pursuit, swinging by vines, walking along fallen logs, and wading in +brooks. He did not see the warriors again, but instinct warned him that +they were yet following. At long intervals he would rest for a quarter +of an hour or so among the bushes, and at noon he ate a little of the +venison that he always carried. Three hours later he came to the river +again, and swimming it he turned on his course, but kept to the southern +side. When the twilight was falling once more he sat still in dense +covert for a long time. He neither saw nor heard a sign of human +presence, and he was sure now that the pursuit had failed. Without an +effort he dismissed it from his mind, ate a little more of the venison, +and made his bed for the night. + +The whole day had been bright, with a light wind blowing, and the forest +was dry once more. As far as Henry could see it circled away on every +side, a solid dark green, the leaves of oak and beech, maple and elm +making a soft, sighing sound as they waved gently in the wind. It told +Henry of nothing but peace. He had eluded the pursuit, hence it was no +more. This was a great, friendly forest, ready to shelter him, to soothe +him, and to receive him into its arms for peaceful sleep. + +He found a place among thick trees where the leaves of last year lay +deep upon the ground. He drew up enough of them for a soft bed, because +now and for the moment he was a forest sybarite. He was wise enough to +take his ease when he found it, knowing that it would pay his body to +relax. + +He lay down upon the leaves, placed the rifle by his side, and spread +the blanket over himself and the weapon. The twilight was gone, and the +night, dark and without stars, as he wished to see it, rolled up, fold +after fold, covering and hiding everything. He looked a little while at +a breadth of inky sky showing through the leaves, and then, free from +trouble or fear, he fell asleep. + + + + + +CHAPTER II. THE MYSTERIOUS HAND + + +Henry slept until a rosy light, filtering through the leaves, fell upon +his face. Then he sprang up, folded the blanket once more upon his back, +and looked about him. Nothing had come in the night to disturb him, +no enemy was near, and the morning sun was bright and beautiful. The +venison was exhausted, but he bathed his face in the brook and resumed +his journey, traveling with a long, swift stride that carried him at +great speed. + +The boy was making for a definite point, one that he knew well, although +nearly all the rest of this wilderness was strange to him. The country +here was rougher than it usually is in the great valley to the west, and +as he advanced it became yet more broken, range after range of steep, +stony hills, with fertile but narrow little valleys between. He went +on without hesitation for at least two hours, and then stopping under a +great oak he uttered a long, whining cry, much like the howl of a wolf. + +It was not a loud note, but it was singularly penetrating, carrying far +through the forest. A sound like an echo came back, but Henry knew that +instead of an echo it was a reply to his own signal. Then he advanced +boldly and swiftly and came to the edge of a snug little valley set deep +among rocks and trees like a bowl. He stopped behind the great trunk of +a beech, and looked into the valley with a smile of approval. + +Four human figures were seated around a fire of smoldering coals that +gave forth no smoke. They appeared to be absorbed in some very pleasant +task, and a faint odor that came to Henry's nostrils filled him with +agreeable anticipations. He stepped forward boldly and called: + +“Jim, save that piece for me!” + +Long Jim Hart halted in mid-air the large slice of venison that he had +toasted on a stick. Paul Cotter sprang joyfully to his feet, Silent Tom +Ross merely looked up, but Shif'less Sol said: + +“Thought Henry would be here in time for breakfast.” + +Henry walked down in the valley, and the shiftless one regarded him +keenly. + +“I should judge, Henry Ware, that you've been hevin' a foot race,” he +drawled. + +“And why do you think that?” asked Henry. + +“I kin see where the briars hev been rakin' across your leggins. Reckon +that wouldn't happen, 'less you was in a pow'ful hurry.” + +“You're right,” said Henry. “Now, Jim, you've been holding that venison +in the air long enough. Give it to me, and after I've eaten it I'll tell +you all that I've been doing, and all that's been done to me.” + +Long Jim handed him the slice. Henry took a comfortable seat in the +circle before the coals, and ate with all the appetite of a powerful +human creature whose food had been more than scanty for at least two +days. + +“Take another piece,” said Long Jim, observing him with approval. “Take +two pieces, take three, take the whole deer. I always like to see a +hungry man eat. It gives him sech satisfaction that I git a kind uv +taste uv it myself.” + +Henry did not offer a word 'of explanation until his breakfast was over. +Then lie leaned back, sighing twice with deep content, and said: + +“Boys, I've got a lot to tell.” + +Shif'less Sol moved into an easier position on the leaves. + +“I guess it has somethin' to do with them scratches on your leggins.” + +“It has,” continued Henry with emphasis, “and I want to say to you boys +that I've seen Timmendiquas, the great White Lightning of the Wyandots.” + +“Timmendiquas!” exclaimed the others together. + +“No less a man than he,” resumed Henry. “I've looked upon his very face, +I've seen him in camp with warriors, and I've had the honor of being +pursued by him and his men more hours than I can tell. That's why you +see those briar scratches on my leggins, Sol.” + +“Then we cannot doubt that he is here to stir the Six Nations to +continued war,” said Paul Cotter, “and he will succeed. He is a mighty +chief, and his fire and eloquence will make them take up the hatchet. +I'm glad that we've come. We delayed a league once between the Shawnees +and the Miamis; I don't think we can stop this one, but we may get some +people out of the way before the blow falls.” + +“Who are these Six Nations, whose name sounds so pow'ful big up here?” + asked Long Jim. + +“Their name is as big as it sounds,” replied Henry. “They are the +Onondagas, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas, and Tuscaroras. They +used to be the Five Nations, but the Tuscaroras came up from the south +and fought against them so bravely that they were adopted into the +league, as a new and friendly tribe. The Onondagas, so I've heard, +formed the league a long, long time ago, and their head chief is the +grand sachem or high priest of them all, but the head chief of the +Mohawks is the leading war chief.” + +“I've heard,” said Paul, “that the Wyandots are kinsmen of all +these tribes, and on that account they will listen with all the more +friendliness to Timmendiquas.” + +“Seems to me,” said Tom Ross, “that we've got a most tre-men-je-ous big +job ahead.” + +“Then,” said Henry, “we must make a most tremendous big effort.” + +“That's so,” agreed all. + +After that they spoke little. The last coals were covered up, and the +remainder of the food was put in their pouches. Then they sat on +the leaves, and every one meditated until such time as he might have +something worth saying. Henry's thoughts traveled on a wide course, but +they always came back to one point. They had heard much at Pittsburgh of +a famous Mohawk chief called Thayendanegea, but most often known to +the Americans as Brant. He was young, able, and filled with intense +animosity against the white people, who encroached, every year, more and +more upon the Indian hunting grounds. His was a soul full kin to that of +Timmendiquas, and if the two met it meant a great council and a greater +endeavor for the undoing of the white man. What more likely than that +they intended to meet? + +“All of you have heard of Thayendanegea, the Mohawk?” said Henry. + +They nodded. + +“It's my opinion that Timmendiquas is on the way to meet him. I remember +hearing a hunter say at Pittsburgh that about a hundred miles to the +east of this point was a Long House or Council House of the Six Nations. +Timmendiquas is sure to go there, and we must go, too. We must find out +where they intend to strike. What do you say?” + +“We go there!” exclaimed four voices together. + +Seldom has a council of war been followed by action so promptly. + +As Henry spoke the last word he rose, and the others rose with him. +Saying no more, he led toward the east, and the others followed him, +also saying no more. Separately every one of them was strong, brave, and +resourceful, but when the five were together they felt that they had the +skill and strength of twenty. The long rest at Pittsburgh had restored +them after the dangers and hardship of their great voyage from New +Orleans. + +They carried in horn and pouch ample supplies of powder and bullet, and +they did not fear any task. + +Their journey continued through hilly country, clothed in heavy forest, +but often without undergrowth. They avoided the open spaces, preferring +to be seen of men, who were sure to be red men, as little as possible. +Their caution was well taken. They saw Indian signs, once a feather that +had fallen from a scalp lock, once footprints, and once the bone of a +deer recently thrown away by him who had eaten the meat from it. The +country seemed to be as wild as that of Kentucky. Small settlements, so +they had heard, were scattered at great distances through the forest, +but they saw none. There was no cabin smoke, no trail of the plow, just +the woods and the hills and the clear streams. Buffalo had never reached +this region, but deer were abundant, and they risked a shot to replenish +their supplies. + +They camped the second night of their march on a little peninsula at the +confluence of two creeks, with the deep woods everywhere. Henry judged +that they were well within the western range of the Six Nations, and +they cooked their deer meat over a smothered fire, nothing more than +a few coals among the leaves. When supper was over they arranged soft +places for themselves and their blankets, all except Long Jim, whose +turn it was to scout among the woods for a possible foe. + +“Don't be gone long, Jim,” said Henry as he composed himself in a +comfortable position. “A circle of a half mile about us will do.” + +“I'll not be gone more'n an hour,” said Long Jim, picking up his rifle +confidently, and flitting away among the woods. + +“Not likely he'll see anything,” said Shif'less Sol, “but I'd shorely +like to know what White Lightning is about. He must be terrible stirred +up by them beatin's he got down on the Ohio, an' they say that Mohawk, +Thayendanegea is a whoppin' big chief, too. They'll shorely make a heap +of trouble.” + +“But both of them are far from here just now,” said Henry, “and we won't +bother about either.” + +He was lying on some leaves at the foot of a tree with his arm under +his head and his blanket over his body. He had a remarkable capacity for +dismissing trouble or apprehension, and just then he was enjoying great +physical and mental peace. He looked through half closed eyes at his +comrades, who also were enjoying repose, and his fancy could reproduce +Long Jim in the forest, slipping from tree to tree and bush to bush, and +finding no menace. + +“Feels good, doesn't it, Henry?” said the shiftless one. “I like a +clean, bold country like this. No more plowin' around in swamps for me.” + +“Yes,” said Henry sleepily, “it's a good country.” + +The hour slipped smoothly by, and Paul said: + +“Time for Long Jim to be back.” + +“Jim don't do things by halves,” said the shiftless one. “Guess he's +beatin' up every squar' inch o' the bushes. He'll be here soon.” + +A quarter of an hour passed, and Long Jim did not return; a half hour, +and no sign of him. Henry cast off the blanket and stood up. The night +was not very dark and he could see some distance, but he did not see +their comrade. + +“I wonder why he's so slow,” he said with a faint trace of anxiety. + +“He'll be 'long directly,” said Tom Ross with confidence. + +Another quarter of an hour, and no Long Jim. Henry sent forth the low +penetrating cry of the wolf that they used so often as a signal. + +“He cannot fail to hear that,” he said, “and he'll answer.” + +No answer came. The four looked at one another in alarm. Long Jim had +been gone nearly two hours, and he was long overdue. His failure to +reply to the signal indicated either that something ominous had happened +or that--he had gone much farther than they meant for him to go. + +The others had risen to their feet, also, and they stood a little while +in silence. + +“What do you think it means?” asked Paul. + +“It must be all right,” said Shif'less Sol. “Mebbe Jim has lost the +camp.” + +Henry shook his head. + +“It isn't that,” he said. “Jim is too good a woodsman for such a +mistake. I don't want to look on the black side, boys, but I think +something has happened to Jim.” + +“Suppose you an' me go an' look for him,” said Shif'less Sol, “while +Paul and Tom stay here an' keep house.” + +“We'd better do it,” said Henry. “Come, Sol.” + +The two, rifles in the hollows of their arms, disappeared in the +darkness, while Tom and Paul withdrew into the deepest shadow of the +trees and waited. + +Henry and the shiftless one pursued an anxious quest, going about the +camp in a great circle and then in another yet greater. They did not +find Jim, and the dusk was so great that they saw no evidences of his +trail. Long Jim had disappeared as completely as if he had left the +earth for another planet. When they felt that they must abandon the +search for the time, Henry and Shif'less Sol looked at each other in a +dismay that the dusk could not hide. + +“Mebbe be saw some kind uv a sign, an' has followed it,” said the +shiftless one hopefully. “If anything looked mysterious an' troublesome, +Jim would want to hunt it down.” + +“I hope so,” said Henry, “but we've got to go back to the camp now and +report failure. Perhaps he'll show up to-morrow, but I don't like it, +Sol, I don't like it!” + +“No more do I,” said Shif'less Sol. “'Tain't like Jim not to come back, +ef he could. Mebbe he'll drop in afore day, anyhow.” + +They returned to the camp, and two inquiring figures rose up out of the +darkness. + +“You ain't seen him?” said Tom, noting that but two figures had +returned. + +“Not a trace,” replied Henry. “It's a singular thing.” + +The four talked together a little while, and they were far from +cheerful. Then three sought sleep, while Henry stayed on watch, sitting +with his back against a tree and his rifle on his knees. All the peace +and content that he had felt earlier in the evening were gone. He was +oppressed by a sense of danger, mysterious and powerful. It did not seem +possible that Long Jim could have gone away in such a noiseless manner, +leaving no trace behind. But it was true. + +He watched with both ear and eye as much for Long Jim as for an enemy. +He was still hopeful that he would see the long, thin figure coming +among the bushes, and then hear the old pleasant drawl. But he did not +see the figure, nor did he hear the drawl. + +Time passed with the usual slow step when one watches. Paul, Sol, and +Tom were asleep, but Henry was never wider awake in his life. He tried +to put away the feeling of mystery and danger. He assured himself that +Long Jim would soon come, delayed by some trail that he had sought to +solve. Nothing could have happened to a man so brave and skillful. His +nerves must be growing weak when he allowed himself to be troubled so +much by a delayed return. + +But the new hours came, one by one, and Long Jim came with none of them. +The night remained fairly light, with a good moon, but the light that it +threw over the forest was gray and uncanny. Henry's feeling of mystery +and danger deepened. Once he thought he heard a rustling in the thicket +and, finger on the trigger of his rifle, he stole among the bushes to +discover what caused it. He found nothing and, returning to his lonely +watch, saw that Paul, Sol, and Tom were still sleeping soundly. But +Henry was annoyed greatly by the noise, and yet more by his failure to +trace its origin. After an hour's watching he looked a second time. The +result was once more in vain, and he resumed his seat upon the leaves, +with his back reclining against an oak. Here, despite the fact that the +night was growing darker, nothing within range of a rifle shot could +escape his eyes. + +Nothing stirred. The noise did not come a second time from the thicket. +The very silence was oppressive. There was no wind, not even a stray +puff, and the bushes never rustled. Henry longed for a noise of some +kind to break that terrible, oppressive silence. What he really wished +to hear was the soft crunch of Long Jim's moccasins on the grass and +leaves. + +The night passed, the day came, and Henry awakened his comrades. Long +Jim was still missing and their alarm was justified. Whatever trail lie +might have struck, he would have returned in the night unless something +had happened to him. Henry had vague theories, but nothing definite, and +he kept them to himself. Yet they must make a change in their plans. To +go on and leave Long Jim to whatever fate might be his was unthinkable. +No task could interfere with the duty of the five to one another. + +“We are in one of the most dangerous of all the Indian countries,” said +Henry. “We are on the fringe of the region over which the Six Nations +roam, and we know that Timmendiquas and a band of the Wyandots are here +also. Perhaps Miamis and Shawnees have come, too.” + +“We've got to find Long Jim,” said Silent Tom briefly. + +They went about their task in five minutes. Breakfast consisted of cold +venison and a drink from a brook. Then they began to search the forest. +They felt sure that such woodsmen as they, with the daylight to help +them, would find some trace of Long Jim, but they saw none at all, +although they constantly widened their circle, and again tried all their +signals. Half the forenoon passed in the vain search, and then they held +a council. + +“I think we'd better scatter,” said Shif'less Sol, “an' meet here again +when the sun marks noon.” + +It was agreed, and they took careful note of the place, a little hill +crowned with a thick cluster of black oaks, a landmark easy to remember. +Henry turned toward the south, and the forest was so dense that in two +minutes all his comrades were lost to sight. He went several miles, +and his search was most rigid. He was amazed to find that the sense of +mystery and danger that he attributed to the darkness of the night did +not disappear wholly in the bright daylight. His spirit, usually so +optimistic, was oppressed by it, and he had no belief that they would +find Long Jim. + +At the set time he returned to the little hill crowned with the black +oaks, and as he approached it from one side he saw Shif'less Sol coming +from another. The shiftless one walked despondently. His gait was loose +and shambling-a rare thing with him, and Henry knew that he, too, +had failed. He realized now that he had not expected anything else. +Shif'less Sol shook his head, sat down on a root and said nothing. Henry +sat down, also, and the two exchanged a look of discouragement. + +“The others will be here directly,” said Henry, “and perhaps Long Jim +will be with one of them.” + +But in his heart he knew that it would not be so, and the shiftless one +knew that he had no confidence in his own words. + +“If not,” said Henry, resolved to see the better side, “we'll stay +anyhow until we find him. We can't spare good old Long Jim.” + +Shif'less Sol did not reply, nor did Henry speak again, until lie saw +the bushes moving slightly three or four hundred yards away. + +“There comes Tom,” he said, after a single comprehensive glance, “and +he's alone.” + +Tom Ross was also a dejected figure. He looked at the two on the hill, +and, seeing that the man for whom they were searching was not with them, +became more dejected than before. + +“Paul's our last chance,” he said, as he joined them. “He's gen'rally a +lucky boy, an' mebbe it will be so with him to-day.” + +“I hope so,” said Henry fervently. “He ought to be along in a few +minutes.” + +They waited patiently, although they really had no belief that Paul +would bring in the missing man, but Paul was late. The noon hour was +well past. Henry took a glance at the sun. Noon was gone at least a half +hour, and he stirred uneasily. + +“Paul couldn't get lost in broad daylight,” he said. + +“No,” said Shif'less Sol, “he couldn't get lost!” + +Henry noticed his emphasis on the word “lost,” and a sudden fear sprang +up in his heart. Some power had taken away Long Jim; could the same +power have seized Paul? It was a premonition, and he paled under his +brown, turning away lest the others see his face. All three now examined +the whole circle of the horizon for a sight of moving bushes that would +tell of the boy's coming. + +The forest told nothing. The sun blazed brightly over everything, and +Paul, like Long Jim, did not come. He was an hour past due, and the +three, oppressed already by Long jim's disappearance, were convinced +that he would not return. But they gave him a half hour longer. Then +Henry said: + +“We must hunt for him, but we must not separate. Whatever happens we +three must stay together.” + +“I'm not hankerin' to roam 'roun jest now all by myself,” said the +shiftless one, with an uneasy laugh. + +The three hunted all that afternoon for Paul. Once they saw trace of +footsteps, apparently his, in some soft earth, but they were quickly, +lost on hard ground, and after that there was nothing. They stopped +shortly before sunset at the edge of a narrow but deep creek. + +“What do you think of it, Henry?” asked Shif'less Sol. + +“I don't know what to think,” replied the youth, “but it seems to me +that whatever took away Jim has taken away Paul, also.” + +“Looks like it,” said Sol, “an' I guess it follers that we're in the +same kind o' danger.” + +“We three of us could put up a good fight,” said Henry, “and I propose +that we don't go back to that camp, but spend the night here.” + +“Yes, an' watch good,” said Tom Ross. + +Their new camp was made quickly in silence, merely the grass under the +low boughs of a tree. Their supper was a little venison, and then they +watched the coming of the darkness. It was a heavy hour for the three. +Long Jim was gone, and then Paul-Paul, the youngest, and, in a way, the +pet of the little band. + +“Ef we could only know how it happened,” whispered Shif'less Sol, “then +we might rise up an' fight the danger an' git Paul an' Jim back. But you +can't shoot at somethin' you don't see or hear. In all them fights o' +ours, on the Ohio an' Mississippi we knowed what wuz ag'inst us, but +here we don't know nothin'.” + +“It is true, Sol,” sighed Henry. “We were making such big plans, too, +and before we can even start our force is cut nearly in half. To-morrow +we'll begin the hunt again. We'll never desert Paul and Jim, so long as +we don't know they're dead.” + +“It's my watch,” said Tom. “You two sleep. We've got to keep our +strength.” + +Henry and the shiftless one acquiesced, and seeking the softest spots +under the tree sat down. Tom Ross took his place about ten feet in front +of them, sitting on the ground, with his hands clasped around his knees, +and his rifle resting on his arm. Henry watched him idly for a little +while, thinking all the time of his lost comrades. The night promised to +be dark, a good thing for them, as the need of hiding was too evident. + +Shif'less Sol soon fell asleep, as Henry, only three feet away, knew by +his soft and regular breathing, but the boy himself was still wide-eyed. + +The darkness seemed to sink down like a great blanket dropping slowly, +and the area of Henry's vision narrowed to a small circle. Within this +area the distinctive object was the figure of Tom Ross, sitting with +his rifle across his knees. Tom had an infinite capacity for immobility. +Henry had never seen another man, not even an Indian, who could remain +so long in one position contented and happy. He believed that the silent +one could sit as he was all night. + +His surmise about Tom began to have a kind of fascination for him. Would +he remain absolutely still? He would certainly shift an arm or a leg. +Henry's interest in the question kept him awake. He turned silently +on the other side, but, no matter how intently he studied the sitting +figure of his comrade, he could not see it stir. He did not know how +long he had been awake, trying thus to decide a question that should be +of no importance at such a time. Although unable to sleep, he fell into +a dreamy condition, and continued vaguely to watch the rigid and silent +sentinel. + +He suddenly saw Tom stir, and he came from his state of languor. The +exciting question was solved at last. The man would not sit all night +absolutely immovable. There could be no doubt of the fact that he had +raised an arm, and that his figure had straightened. Then he stood +up, full height, remained motionless for perhaps ten seconds, and then +suddenly glided away among the bushes. + +Henry knew what this meant. Tom had heard something moving in the +thickets, and, like a good sentinel, he had gone to investigate. A +rabbit, doubtless, or perhaps a sneaking raccoon. Henry rose to a +sitting position, and drew his own rifle across his knees. He would +watch while Tom was gone, and then lie would sink quietly back, not +letting his comrade know that lie had taken his place. + +The faintest of winds began to stir among the thickets. Light clouds +drifted before the moon. Henry, sitting with his rifle across his knees, +and Shif'less Sol, asleep in the shadows, were invisible, but Henry saw +beyond the circle of darkness that enveloped them into the grayish light +that fell over the bushes. He marked the particular point at which he +expected Tom Ross to appear, a slight opening that held out invitation +for the passage of a man. + +He waited a long time, ten minutes, twenty, a half hour, and the +sentinel did not return. Henry came abruptly out of his dreamy state. +He felt with all the terrible thrill of certainty that what happened to +Long Jim and Paul had happened also to Silent Tom Ross. He stood erect, +a tense, tall figure, alarmed, but not afraid. His eyes searched the +thickets, but saw nothing. The slight movement of the bushes was made by +the wind, and no other sound reached his ears. + +But he might be mistaken after all! The most convincing premonitions +were sometimes wrong! He would give Tom ten minutes more, and he sank +down in a crouching position, where he would offer the least target for +the eye. + +The appointed time passed, and neither sight nor sound revealed any sign +of Tom Ross. Then Henry awakened Shif'less Sol, and whispered to him all +that he had seen. + +“Whatever took Jim and Paul has took him,” whispered the shiftless one +at once. + +Henry nodded. + +“An' we're bound to look for him right now,” continued Shif'less Sol. + +“Yes,” said Henry, “but we must stay together. If we follow the others, +Sol, we must follow 'em together.” + +“It would be safer,” said Sol. “I've an idee that we won't find Tom, an' +I want to tell you, Henry, this thing is gittin' on my nerves.” + +It was certainly on Henry's, also, but without reply he led the way into +the bushes, and they sought long and well for Silent Tom, keeping at the +same time a thorough watch for any danger that might molest themselves. +But no danger showed, nor did they find Tom or his trail. He, too, +had vanished into nothingness, and Henry and Sol, despite their mental +strength, felt cold shivers. They came back at last, far toward morning, +to the bank of the creek. It was here as elsewhere a narrow but deep +stream flowing between banks so densely wooded that they were almost +like walls. + +“It will be daylight soon,” said Shif'less Sol, “an' I think we'd better +lay low in thicket an' watch. It looks ez ef we couldn't find anything, +so we'd better wait an' see what will find us.” + +“It looks like the best plan to me,” said Henry, “but I think we might +first hunt a while on the other side of the creek. We haven't looked any +over there.” + +“That's so,” replied Shif'less Sol, “but the water is at least seven +feet deep here, an' we don't want to make any splash swimmin'. Suppose +you go up stream, an' I go down, an' the one that finds a ford first kin +give a signal. One uv us ought to strike shallow water in three or four +hundred yards.” + +Henry followed the current toward the south, while Sol moved up the +stream. The boy went cautiously through the dense foliage, and the creek +soon grew wider and shallower. At a distance of about three hundred +yards lie came to a point where it could be waded easily. Then he +uttered the low cry that was their signal, and went back to meet +Shif'less Sol. He reached the exact point at which they had parted, and +waited. The shiftless one did not come. The last of his comrades was +gone, and he was alone in the forest. + + + + +CHAPTER III. THE HUT ON THE ISLET + + +Henry Ware waited at least a quarter of an hour by the creek on the +exact spot at which he and Solomon Hyde, called the shiftless one, had +parted, but he knew all the while that his last comrade was not coming. +The same powerful and mysterious hand that swept the others away had +taken him, the wary and cunning Shif'less Sol, master of forest lore and +with all the five senses developed to the highest pitch. Yet his powers +had availed him nothing, and the boy again felt that cold chill running +down his spine. + +Henry expected the omnipotent force to come against him, also, but his +instinctive caution made him turn and creep into the thickest of the +forest, continuing until he found a place in the bushes so thoroughly +hidden that no one could see him ten feet away. There he lay down +and rapidly ran over in his mind the events connected with the four +disappearances. They were few, and he had little on which to go, but his +duty to seek his four comrades, since he alone must do it, was all the +greater. Such a thought as deserting them and fleeing for his own +life never entered his mind. He would not only seek them, but he would +penetrate the mystery of the power that had taken them. + +It was like him now to go about his work with calmness and method. To +approach an arduous task right one must possess freshness and vigor, and +one could have neither without sleep. His present place of hiding seemed +to be as secure as any that could be found. So composing himself he took +all chances and sought slumber. Yet it needed a great effort of the will +to calm his nerves, and it was a half hour before he began to feel any +of the soothing effect that precedes sleep. But fall asleep he did at +last, and, despite everything, he slept soundly until the morning. + +Henry did not awake to a bright day. The sun had risen, but it was +obscured by gray clouds, and the whole heavens were somber. A cold wind +began to blow, and with it came drops of rain. He shivered despite the +enfolding blanket. The coming of the morning had invariably brought +cheerfulness and increase of spirits, but now he felt depression. He +foresaw heavy rain again, and it would destroy any but the deepest +trail. Moreover, his supplies of food were exhausted and he must +replenish them in some manner before proceeding further. + +A spirit even as bold and strong as Henry's might well have despaired. +He had found his comrades, only to lose them again, and the danger that +had threatened them, and the elements as well, now threatened him, too. +An acute judge of sky and air, he knew that the rain, cold, insistent, +penetrating, would fall all day, and that he must seek shelter if he +would keep his strength. The Indians themselves always took to cover at +such times. + +He wrapped the blanket around himself, covering his body well from neck +to ankle, putting his rifle just inside the fold, but with his hand +upon it, ready for instant use if it should be needed. Then he started, +walking straight ahead until he came to the crown of a little hill. +The clouds meanwhile thickened, and the rain, of the kind that he had +foreseen and as cold as ice, was blown against him. The grass and bushes +were reeking, and his moccasins became sodden. Despite the vigorous +walking, lie felt the wet cold entering his system. There come times +when the hardiest must yield, and he saw the increasing need of refuge. + +He surveyed the country attentively from the low hill. All around was a +dull gray horizon from which the icy rain dripped everywhere. There was +no open country. All was forest, and the heavy rolling masses of foliage +dripped with icy water, too. + +Toward the south the land seemed to dip down, and Henry surmised that in +a valley he would be more likely to find the shelter that he craved. He +needed it badly. As he stood there he shivered again and again from +head to foot, despite the folds of the blanket. So he started at once, +walking fast, and feeling little fear of a foe. It was not likely that +any would be seeking him at such a time. The rain struck him squarely +in the face now. Water came from his moccasins every time his foot was +pressed against the earth, and, no matter how closely he drew the folds +of the blanket, little streams of it, like ice to the touch, flowed down +his neck and made their way under his clothing. He could not remember a +time when he had felt more miserable. + +He came in about an hour to the dip which, as he had surmised, was the +edge of a considerable valley. He ran down the slope, and looked all +about for some place of shelter, a thick windbreak in the lee of a hill, +or an outcropping of stone, but he saw neither, and, as he continued +the search, he came to marshy ground. He saw ahead among the weeds and +bushes the gleam of standing pools, and he was about to turn back, when +he noticed three or four stones, in a row and about a yard from one +another, projecting slightly above the black muck. It struck him that +the stones would not naturally be in the soft mud, and, his curiosity +aroused, he stepped lightly from one stone to another. When he came to +the last stone that he had seen from the hard ground he beheld several +more that had been hidden from him by the bushes. Sure now that he had +happened upon something not created by nature alone, he followed these +stones, leading like steps into the very depths of the swamp, which was +now deep and dark with ooze all about him. He no longer doubted that the +stones, the artificial presence of which might have escaped the keenest +eye and most logical mind, were placed there for a purpose, and he was +resolved to know its nature. + +The stepping stones led him about sixty yards into the swamp, and the +last thirty yards were at an angle from the first thirty. Then he came +to a bit of hard ground, a tiny islet in the mire, upon which he could +stand without sinking at all. He looked back from there, and he could +not see his point of departure. Bushes, weeds, and saplings grew out of +the swamp to a height of a dozen or fifteen feet, and he was inclosed +completely. All the vegetation dripped with cold water, and the place +was one of the most dismal that he had ever seen. But he had no thought +of turning back. + +Henry made a shrewd guess as to whither the path led, but he inferred +from the appearance of the stepping stones-chiefly from the fact that +an odd one here and there had sunk completely out of sight-that they had +not been used in a long time, perhaps for years. He found on the other +side of the islet a second line of stones, and they led across a marsh, +that was almost like a black liquid, to another and larger island. + +Here the ground was quite firm, supporting a thick growth of large +trees. It seemed to Henry that this island might be seventy or eighty +yards across, and he began at once to explore it. In the center, +surrounded so closely by swamp oaks that they almost formed a living +wall, he found what he had hoped to find, and his relief was so great +that, despite his natural and trained stoicism, he gave a little cry of +pleasure when he saw it. + +A small lodge, made chiefly of poles and bark after the Iroquois +fashion, stood within the circle of the trees, occupying almost the +whole of the space. It was apparently abandoned long ago, and time +and weather had done it much damage. But the bark walls, although they +leaned in places at dangerous angles, still stood. The bark roof was +pierced by holes on one side, but on the other it was still solid, and +shed all the rain from its slope. + +The door was open, but a shutter made of heavy pieces of bark cunningly +joined together leaned against the wall, and Henry saw that he could +make use of it. He stepped inside. The hut had a bark floor which was +dry on one side, where the roof was solid, but dripping on the other. +Several old articles of Indian use lay about. In one corner was a basket +woven of split willow and still fit for service. There were pieces of +thread made of Indian hemp and the inner bark of the elm. There were +also a piece of pottery and a large, beautifully carved wooden spoon +such as every Iroquois carried. In the corner farthest from the door +was a rude fireplace made of large flat stones, although there was no +opening for the smoke. + +Henry surveyed it all thoughtfully, and he came to the conclusion that +it was a hut for hunting, built by some warrior of an inquiring mind who +had found this secret place, and who had recognized its possibilities. +Here after an expedition for game he could lie hidden from enemies and +take his comfort without fear. Doubtless he had sat in this hut on rainy +days like the present one and smoked his pipe in the long, patient calm +of which the Indian is capable. + +Yes, there was the pipe, unnoticed before, trumpet shaped and carved +beautifully, lying on a small bark shelf. Henry picked it tip and +examined the bowl. It was as dry as a bone, and not a particle of +tobacco was left there. He believed that it had not been used for at +least a year. Doubtless the Indian who had built this hunting lodge had +fallen in some foray, and the secret of it had been lost until Henry +Ware, seeking through the cold and rain, had stumbled upon it. + +It was nothing but a dilapidated little lodge of poles and bark, all +a-leak, but the materials of a house were there, and Henry was strong +and skillful. He covered the holes in the roof with fallen pieces of +bark, laying heavy pieces of wood across them to hold them in place. +Then he lifted the bark shutter into position and closed the door. Some +drops of rain still came in through the roof, but they were not many, +and he would not mind them for the present. Then he opened the door and +began his hardest task. + +He intended to build a fire on the flat stones, and, securing fallen +wood, he stripped off the bark and cut splinters from the inside. It was +slow work and he was very cold, his wet feet sending chills through +him, but he persevered, and the little heap of dry splinters grew to +a respectable size. Then he cut larger pieces, laying them on one side +while he worked with his flint and steel on the splinters. + +Flint and steel are not easily handled even by the most skillful, and +Henry saw the spark leap up and die out many times before it finally +took hold of the end of the tiniest splinter and grew. He watched it +as it ran along the little piece of wood and ignited another and then +another, the beautiful little red and yellow flames leaping up half a +foot in height. Already he felt the grateful warmth and glow, but he +would not let himself indulge in premature joy. He fed it with larger +and larger pieces until the flames, a deeper and more beautiful red and +yellow, rose at least two feet, and big coals began to form. He left +the door open a while in order that the smoke might go out, but when the +fire had become mostly coals he closed it again, all except a crack of +about six inches, which would serve at once to let any stray smoke out, +and to let plenty of fresh air in. + +Now Henry, all his preparations made, no detail neglected, proceeded to +luxuriate. He spread the soaked blanket out on the bark floor, took off +the sodden moccasins and placed them at one angle of the fire, while +he sat with his bare feet in front. What a glorious warmth it was! It +seemed to enter at his toes and proceed upward through his body, seeking +out every little nook and cranny, to dry and warm it, and fill it full +of new glow and life. + +He sat there a long time, his being radiating with physical comfort. The +moccasins dried on one side, and he turned the other. Finally they dried +all over and all through, and he put them on again. Then he hung the +blanket on the bark wall near the fire, and it, too, would be dry in +another hour or so. He foresaw a warm and dry place for the night, and +sleep. Now if one only had food! But he must do without that for the +present. + +He rose and tested all his bones and muscles. No stiffness or soreness +had come from the rain and cold, and he was satisfied. He was fit for +any physical emergency. He looked out through the crevice. Night was +coming, and on the little island in the swamp it looked inexpressibly +black and gloomy. His stomach complained, but he shrugged his shoulders, +acknowledging primitive necessity, and resumed his seat by the fire. +There he sat until the blanket had dried, and deep night had fully come. + +In the last hour or two Henry did not move. He remained before the fire, +crouched slightly forward, while the generous heat fed the flame of life +in him. A glowing bar, penetrating the crevice at the door, fell on the +earth outside, but it did not pass beyond the close group of circling +trees. The rain still fell with uncommon steadiness and persistence, +but at times hail was mingled with it. Henry could not remember in his +experience a more desolate night. It seemed that the whole world dwelt +in perpetual darkness, and that he was the only living being on it. +Yet within the four or five feet square of the hut it was warm +and bright, and he was not unhappy. + +He would forget the pangs of hunger, and, wrapping himself in the dry +blanket, he lay down before the bed of coals, having first raked ashes +over them, and he slept one of the soundest sleeps of his life. All +night long, the dull cold rain fell, and with it, at intervals, came +gusts of hail that rattled like bird shot on the bark walls of the hut. +Some of the white pellets blew in at the door, and lay for a moment or +two on the floor, then melted in the glow of the fire, and were gone. + +But neither wind, rain nor hail awoke Henry. He was as safe, for the +time, in the hut on the islet, as if he were in the fort at Pittsburgh +or behind the palisades at Wareville. Dawn came, the sky still heavy and +dark with clouds, and the rain still falling. + +Henry, after his first sense of refreshment and pleasure, became +conscious of a fierce hunger that no amount of the will could now keep +quiet. His was a powerful system, needing much nourishment, and he must +eat. That hunger became so great that it was acute physical pain. He +was assailed by it at all points, and it could be repelled by only one +thing, food. He must go forth, taking all risks, and seek it. + +He put on fresh wood, covering it with ashes in order that it might not +blaze too high, and left the islet. The stepping stones were slippery +with water, and his moccasins soon became soaked again, but he forgot +the cold and wet in that ferocious hunger, the attacks of which became +more violent every minute. He was hopeful that he might see a deer, or +even a squirrel, but the animals themselves were likely to keep under +cover in such a rain. He expected a hard hunt, and it would be attended +also by much danger--these woods must be full of Indians--but he thought +little of the risk. His hunger was taking complete possession of his +mind. He was realizing now that one might want a thing so much that it +would drive away all other thoughts. + +Rifle in hand, ready for any quick shot, he searched hour after hour +through the woods and thickets. He was wet, bedraggled, and as fierce +as a famishing panther, but neither skill nor instinct guided him to +anything. The rabbit hid in his burrow, the squirrel remained in his +hollow tree, and the deer did not leave his covert. + +Henry could not well calculate the passage of time, it seemed so +fearfully long, and there was no one to tell him, but he judged that +it must be about noon, and his temper was becoming that of the famished +panther to which he likened himself. He paused and looked around the +circle of the dripping woods. He had retained his idea of direction and +he knew that he could go straight back to the hut in the swamp. But he +had no idea of returning now. A power that neither he nor anyone else +could resist was pushing him on his search. + +Searching the gloomy horizon again, he saw against the dark sky a +thin and darker line that he knew to be smoke. He inferred, also, with +certainty, that it came from an Indian camp, and, without hesitation, +turned his course toward it. Indian camp though it might be, and +containing the deadliest of foes, he was glad to know something lived +beside himself in this wilderness. + +He approached with great caution, and found his surmise to be correct. +Lying full length in a wet thicket he saw a party of about twenty +warriors-Mohawks he took them to be-in an oak opening. They had erected +bark shelters, they had good fires, and they were cooking. He saw them +roasting the strips over the coals-bear meat, venison, squirrel, rabbit, +bird-and the odor, so pleasant at other times, assailed his nostrils. +But it was now only a taunt and a torment. It aroused every possible +pang of hunger, and every one of them stabbed like a knife. + +The warriors, so secure in their forest isolation, kept no sentinels, +and they were enjoying themselves like men who had everything they +wanted. Henry could hear them laughing and talking, and he watched them +as they ate strip after strip of the delicate, tender meat with the +wonderful appetite that the Indian has after long fasting. A fierce, +unreasoning anger and jealousy laid hold of him. He was starving, and +they rejoiced in plenty only fifty yards away. He began to form plans +for a piratical incursion upon them. Half the body of a deer lay near +the edge of the opening, he would rush upon it, seize it, and dart away. +It might be possible to escape with such spoil. + +Then he recalled his prudence. Such a thing was impossible. The whole +band of warriors would be upon him in an instant. The best thing that he +could do was to shut out the sight of so much luxury in which he could +not share, and he crept away among the bushes wondering what he could +do to drive away those terrible pains. His vigorous system was crying +louder than ever for the food that would sustain it. His eyes were +burning a little too brightly, and his face was touched with fever. + +Henry stopped once to catch a last glimpse of the fires and the feasting +Indians under the bark shelters. He saw a warrior raise a bone, grasping +it in both hands, and bite deep into the tender flesh that clothed it. +The sight inflamed him into an anger almost uncontrollable. He clenched +his fist and shook it at the warrior, who little suspected the proximity +of a hatred so intense. Then he bent his head down and rushed away among +the wet bushes which in rebuke at his lack of caution raked him across +the face. + +Henry walked despondently back toward the islet in the swamp. The aspect +of air and sky had not changed. The heavens still dripped icy water, +and there was no ray of cheerfulness anywhere. The game remained well +hidden. + +It was a long journey back, and as he felt that he was growing weak he +made no haste. He came to dense clumps of bushes, and plowing his way +through them, he saw a dark opening under some trees thrown down by an +old hurricane. Having some vague idea that it might be the lair of a +wild animal, he thrust the muzzle of his rifle into the darkness. It +touched a soft substance. There was a growl, and a black form shot out +almost into his face. Henry sprang aside, and in an instant all his +powers and faculties returned. He had stirred up a black bear, and +before the animal, frightened as much as he was enraged, could run far +the boy, careless how many Indians might hear, threw up his rifle and +fired. + +His aim was good. The bear, shot through the head, fell, and was dead. +Henry, transformed, ran up to him. Bear life had been given up to +sustain man's. Here was food for many days, and he rejoiced with a great +joy. He did not now envy those warriors back there. + +The bear, although small, was very fat. Evidently he had fed well on +acorns and wild honey, and he would yield up steaks which, to one with +Henry's appetite, would be beyond compare. He calculated that it was +more than a mile to the swamp, and, after a few preliminaries, he flung +the body of the bear over his shoulder. Through some power of the mind +over the body his full strength had returned to him miraculously, and +when he reached the stepping stones he crossed from one to another +lightly and firmly, despite the weight that he carried. + +He came to the little bark hut which he now considered his own. The +night had fallen again, but some coals still glowed under the ashes, and +there was plenty of dry wood. He did everything decently and in order. +He took the pelt from the bear, carved the body properly, and then, just +as the Indians had done, he broiled strips over the coals. He ate them +one after another, slowly, and tasting all the savor, and, intense as +was the mere physical pleasure, it was mingled with a deep thankfulness. +Not only was the life nourished anew in him, but he would now regain the +strength to seek his comrades. + +When he had eaten enough he fastened the body of the bear, now in +several portions, on hooks high upon the walls, hooks which evidently +had been placed there by the former owner of the hut for this very +purpose. Then, sure that the savor of the food would draw other wild +animals, he brought one of the stepping stones and placed it on the +inside of the door. The door could not be pushed aside without arousing +him, and, secure in the knowledge, he went to sleep before the coals. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. THE RED CHIEFS + + +Henry awoke only once, and that was about half way between midnight and +morning, when his senses, never still entirely, even in sleep, warned +him that something was at the door. He rose cautiously upon his arm, saw +a dark muzzle at the crevice, and behind it a pair of yellow, gleaming +eyes. He knew at once that it was a panther, probably living in the +swamp and drawn by the food. It must be very hungry to dare thus the +smell of man. Henry's hand moved slowly to the end of a stick, the +other end of which was a glowing coal. Then he seized it and hurled it +directly at the inquisitive head. + +The hot end of the stick struck squarely between the yellow eyes. There +was a yelp of pain, and the boy heard the rapid pad of the big cat's +feet as it fled into the swamp. Then he turned over on his side, and +laughed in genuine pleasure at what was to him a true forest joke. He +knew the panther would not come, at least not while he was in the hut, +and he calmly closed his eyes once more. The old Henry was himself +again. + +He awoke in the morning to find that the cold rain was still falling. It +seemed to him that it had prepared to rain forever, but he was resolved, +nevertheless, now that he had food and the strength that food brings, to +begin the search for his comrades. The islet in the swamp would serve as +his base-nothing could be better-and he would never cease until he found +them or discovered what had become of them. + +A little spring of cold water flowed from the edge of the islet to lose +itself quickly in the swamp. Henry drank there after his breakfast, and +then felt as strong and active as ever. As he knew, the mind may triumph +over the body, but the mind cannot save the body without food. Then +he made his precious bear meat secure against the prowling panther or +others of his kind, tying it on hanging boughs too high for a jump and +too slender to support the weight of a large animal. This task finished +quickly, he left the swamp and returned toward the spot where lie had +seen the Mohawks. + +The falling rain and the somber clouds helped Henry, in a way, as the +whole forest was enveloped in a sort of gloom, and he was less likely to +be seen. But when he had gone about half the distance he heard Indians +signaling to one another, and, burying himself as usual in the wet +bushes, he saw two small groups of warriors meet and talk. Presently +they separated, one party going toward the east and the other toward the +west. Henry thought they were out hunting, as the Indians usually took +little care of the morrow, eating all their food in a few days, no +matter how great the supply might be. + +When he drew near the place he saw three more Indians, and these were +traveling directly south. He was quite sure now that his theory was +correct. They were sending out hunters in every direction, in order that +they might beat up the woods thoroughly for game, and his own position +anywhere except on the islet was becoming exceedingly precarious. +Nevertheless, using all his wonderful skill, he continued the hunt. He +had an abiding faith that his four comrades were yet alive, and he meant +to prove it. + +In the afternoon the clouds moved away a little, and the rain decreased, +though it did not cease. The Indian signs multiplied, and Henry felt +sure that the forest within a radius of twenty miles of his islet +contained more than one camp. Some great gathering must be in progress +and the hunters were out to supply it with food. Four times he heard +the sound of shots, and thrice more he saw warriors passing through +the forest. Once a wounded deer darted past him, and, lying down in the +bushes, he saw the Indians following the fleeing animal. As the day grew +older the trails multiplied. Certainly a formidable gathering of bands +was in progress, and, feeling that he might at any time be caught in a +net, he returned to the islet, which had now become a veritable fort for +him. + +It was not quite dark when he arrived, and he found all as it had been +except the tracks of two panthers under the boughs to which he +had fastened the big pieces of bear meat. Henry felt a malicious +satisfaction at the disappointment of the panthers. + +“Come again, and have the same bad luck,” he murmured. + +At dusk the rain ceased entirely, and he prepared for a journey in the +night. He examined his powder carefully to see that no particle of it +was wet, counted the bullets in his pouch, and then examined the skies. +There was a little moon, not too much, enough to show him the way, but +not enough to disclose him to an enemy unless very near. Then he left +the islet and went swiftly through the forest, laying his course a third +time toward the Indian camp. He was sure now that all the hunters had +returned, and he did not expect the necessity of making any stops for +the purpose of hiding. His hopes were justified, and as he drew near the +camp he became aware that its population had increased greatly. It was +proved by many signs. New trails converged upon it, and some of them +were very broad, indicating that many warriors had passed. They +had passed, too, in perfect confidence, as there was no effort at +concealment, and Henry surmised that no white force of any size could +be within many days' march of this place. But the very security of the +Indians helped his own design. They would not dream that any one of the +hated race was daring to come almost within the light of their fires. + +Henry had but one fear just now, and that was dogs. If the Indians had +any of their mongrel curs with them, they would quickly scent him +out and give the alarm with their barking. But he believed that the +probabilities were against it. This, so he thought then, was a war or +hunting camp, and it was likely that the Indians would leave the dogs +at their permanent villages. At any rate he would take the risk, and +he drew slowly toward the oak opening, where some Indians stood about. +Beyond them, in another dip of the valley, was a wider opening which +he had not seen on his first trip, and this contained not only bark +shelters, but buildings that indicated a permanent village. The second +and larger opening was filled with a great concourse of warriors. + +Fortunately the foliage around the opening was very dense, many trees +and thickets everywhere. Henry crept to the very rim, where, lying in +the blackest of the shadows, and well hidden himself, he could yet see +nearly everything in the camp. The men were not eating now, although it +was obvious that the hunters had done well. The dressed bodies of deer +and bear hung in the bark shelters. Most of the Indians sat about the +fires, and it seemed to Henry that they had an air of expectancy. At +least two hundred were present, and all of them were in war paint, +although there were several styles of paint. There was a difference +in appearance, too, in the warriors, and Henry surmised that +representatives of all the tribes of the Iroquois were there, coming to +the extreme western boundary or fringe of their country. + +While Henry watched them a half dozen who seemed by their bearing and +manner to be chiefs drew together at a point not far from him and talked +together earnestly. Now and then they looked toward the forest, and +he was quite sure that they were expecting somebody, a person of +importance. He became deeply interested. He was lying in a dense clump +of hazel bushes, flat upon his stomach, his face raised but little above +the ground. He would have been hidden from the keenest eye only ten feet +away, but the faces of the chiefs outlined against the blazing firelight +were so clearly visible to him that he could see every change of +expression. They were fine-looking men, all of middle age, tall, lean, +their noses hooked, features cut clean and strong, and their heads +shaved, all except the defiant scalp lock, into which the feather of +an eagle was twisted. Their bodies were draped in fine red or blue +blankets, and they wore leggins and moccasins of beautifully tanned +deerskin. + +They ceased talking presently, and Henry heard a distant wailing note +from the west. Some one in the camp replied with a cry in kind, and then +a silence fell upon them all. The chiefs stood erect, looking toward the +west. Henry knew that he whom they expected was at hand. + +The cry was repeated, but much nearer, and a warrior leaped into the +opening, in the full blaze of the firelight. He was entirely naked save +for a breech cloth and moccasins, and he was a wild and savage figure. +He stood for a moment or two, then faced the chiefs, and, bowing before +them, spoke a few words in the Wyandot tongue-Henry knew already by his +paint that he was a Wyandot. + +The chiefs inclined their heads gravely, and the herald, turning, leaped +back into the forest. In two or three minutes six men, including the +herald, emerged from the woods, and Henry moved a little when he saw the +first of the six, all of whom were Wyandots. It was Timmendiquas, head +chief of the Wyandots, and Henry had never seen him more splendid in +manner and bearing than he was as he thus met the representatives of the +famous Six Nations. Small though the Wyandot tribe might be, mighty was +its valor and fame, and White Lightning met the great Iroquois only as +an equal, in his heart a superior. + +It was an extraordinary thing, but Henry, at this very moment, burrowing +in the earth that he might not lose his life at the hands of either, was +an ardent partisan of Timmendiquas. It was the young Wyandot chief +whom he wished to be first, to make the greatest impression, and he was +pleased when he heard the low hum of admiration go round the circle of +two hundred savage warriors. It was seldom, indeed, perhaps never, that +the Iroquois had looked upon such a man as Timmendiquas. + +Timmendiquas and his companions advanced slowly toward the chiefs, and +the Wyandot overtopped all the Iroquois. Henry could tell by the manner +of the chiefs that the reputation of the famous White Lightning had +preceded him, and that they had already found fact equal to report. + +The chiefs, Timmendiquas among them, sat down on logs before the fire, +and all the warriors withdrew to a respectful distance, where they stood +and watched in silence. The oldest chief took his long pipe, beautifully +carved and shaped like a trumpet, and filled it with tobacco which he +lighted with a coal from the fire. Then he took two or three whiffs and +passed the pipe to Timmendiquas, who did the same. Every chief smoked +the pipe, and then they sat still, waiting in silence. + +Henry was so much absorbed in this scene, which was at once a spectacle +and a drama, that he almost forgot where he was, and that he was an +enemy. He wondered now at their silence. If this was a council surely +they would discuss whatever question had brought them there! But he was +soon enlightened. That low far cry came again, but from the east. It +was answered, as before, from the camp, and in three or four minutes a +warrior sprang from the forest into the opening. Like the first, he was +naked except for the breech cloth and moccasins. The chiefs rose at his +coming, received his salute gravely, and returned it as gravely. Then +he returned to the forest, and all waited in the splendid calm of the +Indian. + +Curiosity pricked Henry like a nettle. Who was coming now? It must be +some man of great importance, or they would not wait so silently. +There was the same air of expectancy that had preceded the arrival of +Timmendiquas. All the warriors looked toward the eastern wall of the +forest, and Henry looked the same way. Presently the black foliage +parted, and a man stepped forth, followed at a little distance by seven +or eight others. The stranger, although tall, was not equal in height to +Timmendiquas, but he, too, had a lofty and splendid presence, and it +was evident to anyone versed at all in forest lore that here was a great +chief. He was lean but sinewy, and he moved with great ease and grace. +He reminded Henry of a powerful panther. He was dressed, after the +manner of famous chiefs, with the utmost care. His short military coat +of fine blue cloth bore a silver epaulet on either shoulder. His +head was not bare, disclosing the scalp lock, like those of the other +Indians; it was covered instead with a small hat of felt, round and +laced. Hanging carelessly over one shoulder was a blanket of blue cloth +with a red border. At his side, from a belt of blue leather swung a +silver-mounted small sword. His leggins were of superfine blue cloth and +his moccasins of deerskin. Both were trimmed with small beads of many +colors. + +The new chief advanced into the opening amid the dead silence that still +held all, and Timmendiquas stepped forward to meet him. These two held +the gaze of everyone, and what they and they alone did had become of +surpassing interest. Each was haughty, fully aware of his own dignity +and importance, but they met half way, looked intently for a moment or +two into the eyes of each other, and then saluted gravely. + +All at once Henry knew the stranger. He had never seen him before, but +his impressive reception, and the mixture of military and savage attire +revealed him. This could be none other than the great Mohawk war chief, +Thayendanegea, the Brant of the white men, terrible name on the border. +Henry gazed at him eagerly from his covert, etching his features forever +on his memory. His face, lean and strong, was molded much like that of +Timmendiquas, and like the Wyandot he was young, under thirty. + +Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea-it was truly he-returned to the fire, +and once again the trumpet-shaped pipe was smoked by all. The two young +chiefs received the seats of favor, and others sat about them. But they +were not the only great chiefs present, though all yielded first place +to them because of their character and exploits. + +Henry was not mistaken in his guess that this was an important council, +although its extent exceeded even his surmise. Delegates and head chiefs +of all the Six Nations were present to confer with the warlike Wyandots +of the west who had come so far east to meet them. Thayendanegea was the +great war chief of the Mohawks, but not their titular chief. The latter +was an older man, Te-kie-ho-ke (Two Voices), who sat beside the younger. +The other chiefs were the Onondaga, Tahtoo-ta-hoo (The Entangled); the +Oneida, O-tat-sheh-te (Bearing a Quiver); the Cayuga, Te-ka-ha-hoonk (He +Who Looks Both Ways); the Seneca, Kan-ya-tai-jo (Beautiful Lake); and +the Tuscarora, Ta-ha-en-te-yahwak-hon (Encircling and Holding Up a +Tree). The names were hereditary, and because in a dim past they had +formed the great confederacy, the Onondagas were first in the council, +and were also the high priests and titular head of the Six Nations. But +the Mohawks were first on-the war path. + +All the Six Nations were divided into clans, and every clan, camping in +its proper place, was represented at this meeting. + +Henry had heard much at Pittsburgh of the Six Nations, their wonderful +league, and their wonderful history. He knew that according to the +legend the league had been formed by Hiawatha, an Onondaga. He was +opposed in this plan by Tododaho, then head chief of the Onondagas, +but he went to the Mohawks and gained the support of their great +chief, Dekanawidah. With his aid the league was formed, and the solemn +agreement, never broken, was made at the Onondaga Lake. Now they were a +perfect little state, with fifty chiefs, or, including the head chiefs, +fifty-six. + +Some of these details Henry was to learn later. He was also to learn +many of the words that the chiefs said through a source of which he +little dreamed at the present. Yet he divined much of it from the +meeting of the fiery Wyandots with the highly developed and warlike +power of the Six Nations. + +Thayendanegea was talking now, and Timmendiquas, silent and grave, was +listening. The Mohawk approached his subject indirectly through the +trope, allegory, and simile that the Indian loved. He talked of the +unseen deities that ruled the life of the Iroquois through mystic +dreams. He spoke of the trees, the rocks, and the animals, all of which +to the Iroquois had souls. He called on the name of the Great Spirit, +which was Aieroski before it became Manitou, the Great Spirit who, in +the Iroquois belief, had only the size of a dwarf because his soul was +so mighty that he did not need body. + +“This land is ours, the land of your people and mine, oh, chief of the +brave Wyandots,” he said to Timmendiquas. “Once there was no land, only +the waters, but Aieroski raised the land of Konspioni above the foam. +Then he sowed five handfuls of red seed in it, and from those handfuls +grew the Five Nations. Later grew up the Tuscaroras, who have joined +us and other tribes of our race, like yours, great chief of the brave +Wyandots.” + +Timmendiquas still said nothing. He did not allow an eyelid to flicker +at this assumption of superiority for the Six Nations over all other +tribes. A great warrior he was, a great politician also, and he wished +to unite the Iroquois in a firm league with the tribes of the Ohio +valley. The coals from the great fire glowed and threw out an intense +heat. Thayendanegea unbuttoned his military coat and threw it back, +revealing a bare bronze chest, upon which was painted the device of +the Mohawks, a flint and steel. The chests of the Onondaga, Cayuga, and +Seneca head chiefs were also bared to the glow. The device on the chest +of the Onondaga was a cabin on top of a hill, the Caytiga's was a great +pipe, and the figure of a mountain adorned the Seneca bronze. + +“We have had the messages that you have sent to us, Timmendiquas,” + said Thayendanegea, “and they are good in the eyes of our people, the +Rotinonsionni (the Mohawks). They please, too, the ancient tribe, the +Kannoseone (the Onondagas), the valiant Hotinonsionni (the Senecas), and +all our brethren of the Six Nations. All the land from the salt water to +the setting sun was given to the red men by Aieroski, but if we do not +defend it we cannot keep it.” + +“It is so,” said Timmendiquas, speaking for the first time. “We have +fought them on the Ohio and in Kaintuck-ee, where they come with their +rifles and axes. The whole might of the Wyandots, the Shawnees, the +Miamis, the Illinois, the Delawares, and the Ottawas has gone forth +against them. We have slain many of them, but we have failed to drive +them back. Now we have come to ask the Six Nations to press down upon +them in the east with all your power, while we do the same in the west. +Surely then your Aieroski and our Manitou, who are the same, will not +refuse us success.” + +The eyes of Thayendanegea glistened. + +“You speak well, Timmendiquas,” he said. “All the red men must unite to +fight for the land of Konspioni which Aieroski raised above the sea, and +we be two, you and I, Timmendiquas, fit to lead them to battle.” + +“It is so,” said Timmendiquas gravely. + + + + +CHAPTER V. THE IROQUOIS TOWN + + +Henry lay fully an hour in the bushes. He had forgotten about the dogs +that he dreaded, but evidently he was right in his surmise that the +camp contained none. Nothing disturbed him while he stared at what was +passing by the firelight. There could be no doubt that the meeting of +Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea portended great things, but he would not +be stirred from his task of rescuing his comrades or discovering their +fate. + +They two, great chiefs, sat long in close converse. Others-older men, +chiefs, also-came at times and talked with them. But these two, proud, +dominating, both singularly handsome men of the Indian type, were always +there. Henry was almost ready to steal away when he saw a new figure +approaching the two chiefs. The walk and bearing of the stranger were +familiar, and HENRY knew him even before his face was lighted tip by +the fire. It was Braxton Wyatt, the renegade, who had escaped the great +battles on both the Ohio and the Mississippi, and who was here with the +Iroquois, ready to do to his own race all the evil that he could. Henry +felt a shudder of repulsion, deeper than any Indian could inspire in +him. They fought for their own land and their own people, but Braxton +Wyatt had violated everything that an honest man should hold sacred. + +Henry, on the whole, was not surprised to see him. Such a chance was +sure to draw Braxton Wyatt. Moreover, the war, so far as it pertained to +the border, seemed to be sweeping toward the northeast, and it bore many +stormy petrels upon its crest. + +He watched Wyatt as he walked toward one of the fires. There the +renegade sat down and talked with the warriors, apparently on the best +of terms. He was presently joined by two more renegades, whom Henry +recognized as Blackstaffe and Quarles. Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea +rose after a while, and walked toward the center of the camp, where +several of the bark shelters had been enclosed entirely. Henry judged +that one had been set apart for each, but they were lost from his view +when they passed within the circling ring of warriors. + +Henry believed that the Iroquois and Wyandots would form a fortified +camp here, a place from which they would make sudden and terrible forays +upon the settlements. He based his opinion upon the good location and +the great number of saplings that had been cut down already. They would +build strong lodges and then a palisade around them with the saplings. +He was speedily confirmed in this opinion when he saw warriors come to +the forest with hatchets and begin to cut down more saplings. He knew +then that it was time to go, as a wood chopper might blunder upon him at +any time. + +He slipped from his covert and was quickly gone in the forest. His limbs +were somewhat stiff from lying so long in one position, but that soon +wore away, and he was comparatively fresh when he came once more to the +islet in the swamp. A good moon was now shining, tipping the forest with +a fine silvery gray, and Henry purveyed with the greatest satisfaction +the simple little shelter that he had found so opportunely. It was a +good house, too, good to such a son of the deepest forest as was Henry. +It was made of nothing but bark and poles, but it had kept out all +that long, penetrating rain of the last three or four days, and when he +lifted the big stone aside and opened the door it seemed as snug a place +as he could have wished. + +He left the door open a little, lighted a small fire on the flat stones, +having no fear that it would be seen through the dense curtain that shut +him in, and broiled big bear steaks on the coals. When he had eaten +and the fire had died he went out and sat beside the hut. He was well +satisfied with the day's work, and he wished now to think with all +the concentration that one must put upon a great task if he expects to +achieve it. He intended to invade the Indian camp, and he knew full well +that it was the most perilous enterprise that he had ever attempted. +Yet scouts and hunters had done such things and had escaped with their +lives. He must not shrink from the path that others had trodden. + +He made up his mind firmly, and partly thought out his plan of +operations. Then he rested, and so sanguine was his temperament that he +began to regard the deed itself as almost achieved. Decision is always +soothing after doubt, and he fell into a pleasant dreamy state. A gentle +wind was blowing, the forest was dry and the leaves rustled with the low +note that is like the softest chord of a violin. It became penetrating, +thrillingly sweet, and hark! it spoke to him in a voice that he knew. +It was the same voice that he had heard on the Ohio, mystic, but telling +him to be of heart and courage. He would triumph over hardships and +dangers, and he would see his friends again. + +Henry started up from his vision. The song was gone, and he heard only +the wind softly moving the leaves. It had been vague and shadowy as +gossamer, light as the substance of a dream, but it was real to him, +nevertheless, and the deep glow of certain triumph permeated his being, +body and mind. It was not strange that he had in his nature something +of the Indian mysticism that personified the winds and the trees +and everything about him. The Manitou of the red man and the ancient +Aieroski of the Iroquois were the same as his own God. He could not +doubt that he had a message. Down on the Ohio he had had the same +message more than once, and it had always come true. + +He heard a slight rustling among the bushes, and, sitting perfectly +still, he saw a black bear emerge into the open. It had gained the islet +in some manner, probably floundering through the black mire, and the +thought occurred to him that it was the mate of the one he had slain, +drawn perhaps by instinct on the trail of a lost comrade. He could +have shot the bear as he sat-and he would need fresh supplies of food +soon-but he did not have the heart to do it. + +The bear sniffed a little at the wind, which was blowing the human odor +away from him, and sat back on his haunches. Henry did not believe that +the animal had seen him or was yet aware of his presence, although he +might suspect. There was something humorous and also pathetic in the +visitor, who cocked his head on one side and looked about him. He made +a distinct appeal to Henry, who sat absolutely still, so still that +the little bear could not be sure at first that he was a human being. +A minute passed, and the red eye of the bear rested upon the boy. Henry +felt pleasant and sociable, but he knew that he could retain friendly +relations only by remaining quiet. + +“If I have eaten your comrade, my friend,” he said to himself, “it is +only because of hard necessity.” The bear, little, comic, and yet with +that touch of pathos about him, cocked his head a little further over on +one side, and as a silver shaft of moonlight fell upon him Henry could +see one red eye gleaming. It was a singular fact, but the boy, alone +in the wilderness, and the loser of his comrades, felt for the moment a +sense of comradeship with the bear, which was also alone, and doubtless +the loser of a comrade, also. He uttered a soft growling sound like the +satisfied purr of a bear eating its food. + +The comical bear rose a little higher on his hind paws, and looked in +astonishment at the motionless figure that uttered sounds so familiar. +Yet the figure was not familiar. He had never seen a human being before, +and the shape and outline were very strange to him. It might be some new +kind of animal, and he was disposed to be inquiring, because there was +nothing in these forests which the black bear was afraid of until man +came. + +He advanced a step or two and growled gently. Then he reared up again +on his hind paws, and cocked his held to one side in his amusing manner. +Henry, still motionless, smiled at him. Here, for an instant at least, +was a cheery visitor and companionship. He at least would not break the +spell. + +“You look almost as if you could talk, old fellow,” he said to himself, +“and if I knew your language I'd ask you a lot of questions.” + +The bear, too, was motionless now, torn by doubt and curiosity. It +certainly was a singular figure that sat there, fifteen or twenty yards +before him, and he had the most intense curiosity to solve the mystery +of this creature. But caution held him back. + +There was a sudden flaw in the light breeze. It shifted about and +brought the dreadful man odor to the nostrils of the honest black bear. +It was something entirely new to him, but it contained the quality of +fear. That still strange figure was his deadliest foe. Dropping down +upon his four paws, he fled among the trees, and then scrambled somehow +through the swamp to the mainland. + +Henry sighed. Despite his own friendly feeling, the bear, warned by +instinct, was afraid of him, and, as he was bound to acknowledge to +himself, the bear's instinct was doubtless right. He rose, went into +the hut, and slept heavily through the night. In the morning he left +the islet once more to scout in the direction of the Indian camp, but he +found it a most dangerous task. The woods were full of warriors hunting. +As he had judged, the game was abundant, and he heard rifles cracking +in several directions. He loitered, therefore, in the thickest of the +thickets, willing to wait until night came for his enterprise. It was +advisable, moreover, to wait, because he did not see yet just how he was +going to succeed. He spent nearly the whole day shifting here and there +through the forest, but late in the afternoon, as the Indians yet seemed +so numerous in the woods, he concluded to go back toward the islet. + +He was about two miles from the swamp when he heard a cry, sharp but +distant. It was that of the savages, and Henry instinctively divined the +cause. A party of the warriors had come somehow upon his trail, and they +would surely follow it. It was a mischance that he had not expected. +He waited a minute or two, and then heard the cry again, but nearer. +He knew that it would come no more, but it confirmed him in his first +opinion. + +Henry had little fear of being caught, as the islet was so securely +hidden, but he did not wish to take even a remote chance of its +discovery. Hence he ran to the eastward of it, intending as the darkness +came, hiding his trail, to double back and regain the hut. + +He proceeded at a long, easy gait, his mind not troubled by the pursuit. +It was to him merely an incident that should be ended as soon as +possible, annoying perhaps, but easily cured. So he swung lightly along, +stopping at intervals among the bushes to see if any of the warriors had +drawn near, but he detected nothing. Now and then he looked up to the +sky, willing that night should end this matter quickly and peacefully. + +His wish seemed near fulfillment. An uncommonly brilliant sun was +setting. The whole west was a sea of red and yellow fire, but in the +east the forest was already sinking into the dark. He turned now, and +went back toward the west on a line parallel with the pursuit, but much +closer to the swamp. The dusk thickened rapidly. The sun dropped over +the curve of the world, and the vast complex maze of trunks and boughs +melted into a solid black wall. The incident of the pursuit was over and +with it its petty annoyances. He directed his course boldly now for the +stepping stones, and traveled fast. Soon the first of them would be less +than a hundred yards away. + +But the incident was not over. Wary and skillful though the young forest +runner might be, he had made one miscalculation, and it led to great +consequences. As he skirted the edge of the swamp in the darkness, now +fully come, a dusky figure suddenly appeared. It was a stray warrior +from some small band, wandering about at will. The meeting was probably +as little expected by him as it was by Henry, and they were so close +together when they saw each other that neither had time to raise his +rifle. The warrior, a tall, powerful man, dropping his gun and snatching +out a knife, sprang at once upon his enemy. + +Henry was borne back by the weight and impact, but, making an immense +effort, he recovered himself and, seizing the wrist of the Indian's +knife hand, exerted all his great strength. The warrior wished to change +the weapon from his right band, but he dared not let go with the other +lest he be thrown down at once, and with great violence. His first +rush having failed, he was now at a disadvantage, as the Indian is not +generally a wrestler. Henry pushed him back, and his hand closed tighter +and tighter around the red wrist. He wished to tear the knife from it, +but he, too, was afraid to let go with the other hand, and so the two +remained locked fast. Neither uttered a cry after the first contact, and +the only sounds in the dark were their hard breathing, which turned to a +gasp now and then, and the shuffle of their feet over the earth. + +Henry felt that it must end soon. One or the other must give way. Their +sinews were already strained to the cracking point, and making a supreme +effort he bore all his weight upon the warrior, who, unable to sustain +himself, went down with the youth upon him. The Indian uttered a groan, +and Henry, leaping instantly to his feet, looked down upon his fallen +antagonist, who did not stir. He knew the cause. As they fell the point +of the knife bad been turned upward, and it had entered the Indian's +heart. + +Although he had been in peril at his hands, Henry looked at the slain +man in a sort of pity. He had not wished to take anyone's life, and, in +reality, he had not been the direct cause of it. But it was a stern time +and the feeling soon passed. The Wyandot, for such he was by his paint, +would never have felt a particle of remorse had the victory been his. + +The moon was now coming out, and Henry looked down thoughtfully at the +still face. Then the idea came to him, in fact leaped up in his brain, +with such an impulse that it carried conviction. He would take this +warrior's place and go to the Indian camp. So eager was he, and so +full of his plan, that he did not feel any repulsion as he opened the +warrior's deerskin shirt and took his totem from a place near his heart. +It was a little deerskin bag containing a bunch of red feathers. This +was his charm, his magic spell, his bringer of good luck, which had +failed him so woefully this time. Henry, not without a touch of the +forest belief, put it inside his own hunting shirt, wishing, although +he laughed at himself, that if the red man's medicine had any potency it +should be on his own side. + +Then he found also the little bag in which the Indian carried his war +paint and the feather brush with which he put it on. The next hour +witnessed a singular transformation. A white youth was turned into a red +warrior. He cut his own hair closely, all except a tuft in the center, +with his sharp hunting knife. The tuft and the close crop he stained +black with the Indian's paint. It was a poor black, but he hoped that +it would pass in the night. He drew the tuft into a scalplock, and +intertwined it with a feather from the Indian's own tuft. Then he +stained his face, neck, hands, and arms with the red paint, and stood +forth a powerful young warrior of a western nation. + +He hid the Indian's weapons and his own raccoon-skin cap in the brush. +Then he took the body of the fallen warrior to the edge of the swamp and +dropped it in. His object was not alone concealment, but burial as well. +He still felt sorry for the unfortunate Wyandot, and he watched him +until he sank completely from sight in the mire. Then he turned away and +traveled a straight course toward the great Indian camp. + +He stopped once on the way at a clear pool irradiated by the bright +moonlight, and looked attentively at his reflection. By night, at least, +it was certainly that of an Indian, and, summoning all his confidence, +he continued upon his chosen and desperate task. + +Henry knew that the chances were against him, even with his disguise, +but he was bound to enter the Indian camp, and he was prepared to incur +all risks and to endure all penalties. He even felt a certain lightness +of heart as he hurried on his way, and at length saw through the forest +the flare of light from the Indian camp. + +He approached cautiously at first in order that he might take a good +look into the camp, and he was surprised at what he saw. In a single +day the village had been enlarged much more. It seemed to him that it +contained at least twice as many warriors. Women and children, too, had +come, and he heard a stray dog barking here and there. Many more fires +than usual were burning, and there was a great murmur of voices. + +Henry was much taken aback at first. It seemed that he was about to +plunge into the midst of the whole Iroquois nation, and at a time, +too, when something of extreme importance was going on, but a little +reflection showed that he was fortunate. Amid so many people, and so +much ferment it was not at all likely that he would be noticed closely. +It was his intention, if the necessity came, to pass himself off as a +warrior of the Shawnee tribe who had wandered far eastward, but he meant +to avoid sedulously the eye of Timmendiquas, who might, through his size +and stature, divine his identity. + +As Henry lingered at the edge of the camp, in indecision whether to wait +a little or plunge boldly into the light of the fires, he became aware +that all sounds in the village-for such it was instead of a camp-had +ceased suddenly, except the light tread of feet and the sound of many +people talking low. He saw through the bushes that all the Iroquois, and +with them the detachment of Wyandots under White Lightning, were going +toward a large structure in the center, which he surmised to be the +Council House. He knew from his experience with the Indians farther west +that the Iroquois built such structures. + +He could no longer doubt that some ceremony of the greatest importance +was about to begin, and, dismissing indecision, he left the bushes +and entered the village, going with the crowd toward the great pole +building, which was, indeed, the Council House. + +But little attention was paid to Henry. He would have drawn none at all, +had it not been for his height, and when a warrior or two glanced at him +he uttered some words in Shawnee, saying that he had wandered far, +and was glad to come to the hospitable Iroquois. One who could speak +a little Shawnee bade him welcome, and they went on, satisfied, their +minds more intent upon the ceremony than upon a visitor. + +The Council House, built of light poles and covered with poles and +thatch, was at least sixty feet long and about thirty feet wide, with a +large door on the eastern side, and one or two smaller ones on the other +sides. As Henry arrived, the great chiefs and sub-chiefs of the Iroquois +were entering the building, and about it were grouped many warriors and +women, and even children. But all preserved a decorous solemnity, and, +knowing the customs of the forest people so well, he was sure that the +ceremony, whatever it might be, must be of a highly sacred nature. He +himself drew to one side, keeping as much as possible in the shadow, +but he was using to its utmost power every faculty of observation that +Nature had given him. + +Many of the fires were still burning, but the moon had come out with +great brightness, throwing a silver light over the whole village, and +investing with attributes that savored of the mystic and impressive +this ceremony, held by a savage but great race here in the depths of the +primeval forest. Henry was about to witness a Condoling Council, which +was at once a mourning for chiefs who had fallen in battle farther east +with his own people and the election and welcome of their successors. + +The chiefs presently came forth from the Council House or, as it was +more generally called, the Long House, and, despite the greatness of +Thayendanegea, those of the Onondaga tribe, in virtue of their ancient +and undisputed place as the political leaders and high priests of +the Six Nations, led the way. Among the stately Onondaga chiefs were: +Atotarho (The Entangled), Skanawati (Beyond the River), Tehatkahtons +(Looking Both Ways), Tehayatkwarayen (Red Wings), and Hahiron (The +Scattered). They were men of stature and fine countenance, proud of +the titular primacy that belonged to them because it was the Onondaga, +Hiawatha, who had formed the great confederacy more than four hundred +years before our day, or just about the time Columbus was landing on the +shores of the New World. + +Next to the Onondagas came the fierce and warlike Mohawks, who lived +nearest to Albany, who were called Keepers of the Eastern Gate, and who +were fully worthy of their trust. They were content that the Onondagas +should lead in council, so long as they were first in battle, and there +was no jealousy between them. Among their chiefs were Koswensiroutha +(Broad Shoulders) and Satekariwate (Two Things Equal). + +Third in rank were the Senecas, and among their chiefs were Kanokarih +(The Threatened) and Kanyadariyo (Beautiful Lake). + +These three, the Onondagas, Mohawks, and Senecas, were esteemed the +three senior nations. After them, in order of precedence, came +the chiefs of the three junior nations, the Oneidas, Cayugas, and +Tuscaroras. All of the great chiefs had assistant chiefs, usually +relatives, who, in case of death, often succeeded to their places. But +these assistants now remained in the crowd with other minor chiefs and +the mass of the warriors. A little apart stood Timmendiquas and his +Wyandots. He, too, was absorbed in the ceremony so sacred to him, an +Indian, and he did not notice the tall figure of the strange Shawnee +lingering in the deepest of the shadows. + +The head chiefs, walking solemnly and never speaking, marched across the +clearing, and then through the woods to a glen, where two young warriors +had kindled a little fire of sticks as a signal of welcome. The chiefs +gathered around the fire and spoke together in low tones. This was +Deyuhnyon Kwarakda, which means “The Reception at the Edge of the Wood.” + +Henry and some others followed, as it was not forbidden to see, and his +interest increased. He shared the spiritual feeling which was impressed +upon the red faces about him. The bright moonlight, too, added to the +effect, giving it the tinge of an old Druidical ceremony. + +The chiefs relapsed into silence and sat thus about ten minutes. Then +rose the sound of a chant, distant and measured, and a procession of +young and inferior chiefs, led by Oneidas, appeared, slowly approaching +the fire. Behind them were warriors, and behind the warriors were many +women and children. All the women were in their brightest attire, gay +with feather headdresses and red, blue, or green blankets from the +British posts. + +The procession stopped at a distance of about a dozen yards from the +chiefs about the council fire, and the Oneida, Kathlahon, formed the men +in a line facing the head chiefs, with the women and children grouped +in an irregular mass behind them. The singing meanwhile had stopped. The +two groups stood facing each other, attentive and listening. + +Then Hahiron, the oldest of the Onondagas, walked back and forth in the +space between the two groups, chanting a welcome. Like all Indian songs +it was monotonous. Every line he uttered with emphasis and a rising +inflection, the phrase “Haih-haih” which may be translated “Hail to +thee!” or better, “All hail!” Nevertheless, under the moonlight in the +wilderness and with rapt faces about him, it was deeply impressive. +Henry found it so. + +Hahiron finished his round and went back to his place by the fire. +Atotarho, head chief of the Onondagas, holding in his hands beautifully +beaded strings of Iroquois wampum, came forward and made a speech of +condolence, to which Kathlahon responded. Then the head chiefs and +the minor chiefs smoked pipes together, after which the head chiefs, +followed by the minor chiefs, and these in turn by the crowd, led the +way back to the village. + +Many hundreds of persons were in this procession, which was still very +grave and solemn, every one in it impressed by the sacred nature of +this ancient rite. The chief entered the great door of the Long House, +and all who could find places not reserved followed. Henry went in with +the others, and sat in a corner, making himself as small as possible. +Many women, the place of whom was high among the Iroquois, were also in +the Long House. + +The head chiefs sat on raised seats at the north end of the great room. +In front of them, on lower seats, were the minor chiefs of the three +older nations on the left, and of the three younger nations on the +right. In front of these, but sitting on the bark floor, was a group of +warriors. At the east end, on both high and low seats, were warriors, +and facing them on the western side were women, also on both high +and low seats. The southern side facing the chiefs was divided into +sections, each with high and low seats. The one on the left was occupied +by men, and the one on the right by women. Two small fires burned in the +center of the Long House about fifteen feet apart. + +It was the most singular and one of the most impressive scenes that +Henry had ever beheld. When all had found their seats there was a deep +silence. Henry could hear the slight crackling made by the two fires as +they burned, and the light fell faintly across the multitude of dark, +eager faces. Not less than five hundred people were in the Long House, +and here was the red man at his best, the first of the wild, not the +second or third of the civilized, a drop of whose blood in his veins +brings to the white man now a sense of pride, and not of shame, as it +does when that blood belongs to some other races. + +The effect upon Henry was singular. He almost forgot that he was a foe +among them on a mission. For the moment he shared in their feelings, and +he waited with eagerness for whatever might come. + +Thayendanegea, the Mohawk, stood up in his place among the great chiefs. +The role he was about to assume belonged to Atotarho, the Onondaga, +but the old Onondaga assigned it for the occasion to Thayendanegea, and +there was no objection. Thayendanegea was an educated man, he had been +in England, he was a member of a Christian church, and he had translated +a part of the Bible from English into his own tongue, but now he was all +a Mohawk, a son of the forest. + +He spoke to the listening crowd of the glories of the Six Nations, how +Hah-gweh-di-yu (The Spirit of Good) had inspired Hiawatha to form the +Great Confederacy of the Five Nations, afterwards the Six; how they had +held their hunting grounds for nearly two centuries against both English +and French; and how they would hold them against the Americans. He +stopped at moments, and deep murmurs of approval went through the Long +House. The eyes of both men and women flashed as the orator spoke of +their glory and greatness. Timmendiquas, in a place of honor, nodded +approval. If he could he would form such another league in the west. + +The air in the Long House, breathed by so many, became heated. It seemed +to have in it a touch of fire. The orator's words burned. Swift and deep +impressions were left upon the excited brain. The tall figure of the +Mohawk towered, gigantic, in the half light, and the spell that he threw +over all was complete. + +He spoke about half an hour, but when he stopped he did not sit down. +Henry knew by the deep breath that ran through the Long House that +something more was coming from Thayendanegea. Suddenly the red chief +began to sing in a deep, vibrant voice, and this was the song that he +sung: + + + This was the roll of you, + All hail! All hail! All hail! + + You that joined in the work, + All hail! All hail! All hail! + + You that finished the task, + All hail! All hail! All hail! + + The Great League, + All hail! All hail! All hail! + + +There was the same incessant repetition of “Haih haih!” that Henry had +noticed in the chant at the edge of the woods, but it seemed to give a +cumulative effect, like the roll of thunder, and at every slight pause +that deep breath of approval ran through the crowd in the Long House. +The effect of the song was indescribable. Fire ran in the veins of all, +men, women, and children. The great pulses in their throats leaped up. +They were the mighty nation, the ever-victorious, the League of the +Ho-de-no-sau-nee, that had held at bay both the French and the English +since first a white man was seen in the land, and that would keep back +the Americans now. + +Henry glanced at Timmendiquas. The nostrils of the great White Lightning +were twitching. The song reached to the very roots of his being, and +aroused all his powers. Like Thayendanegea, he was a statesman, and he +saw that the Americans were far more formidable to his race than +English or French had ever been. The Americans were upon the ground, and +incessantly pressed upon the red man, eye to eye. Only powerful leagues +like those of the Iroquois could withstand them. + +Thayendanegea sat down, and then there was another silence, a period +lasting about two minutes. These silences seemed to be a necessary part +of all Iroquois rites. When it closed two young warriors stretched an +elm bark rope across the room from east to west and near the ceiling, +but between the high chiefs and the minor chiefs. Then they hung dressed +skins all along it, until the two grades of chiefs were hidden from the +view of each other. This was the sign of mourning, and was followed by a +silence. The fires in the Long House had died down somewhat, and little +was to be seen but the eyes and general outline of the people. Then a +slender man of middle years, the best singer in all the Iroquois nation, +arose and sang: + + + To the great chiefs bring we greeting, + All hail! All hail! All hail! + + To the dead chiefs, kindred greeting, + All hail! All hail! All hail! + + To the strong men 'round him greeting, + All hail! All hail! All hail! + + To the mourning women greeting, + All hail! All hail! All hail! + + There our grandsires' words repeating, + All hail! All hail! All hail! + + Graciously, Oh, grandsires, hear, + All hail! All hail! All hail! + + +The singing voice was sweet, penetrating, and thrilling, and the song +was sad. At the pauses deep murmurs of sorrow ran through the crowd +in the Long House. Grief for the dead held them all. When he finished, +Satekariwate, the Mohawk, holding in his hands three belts of wampum, +uttered a long historical chant telling of their glorious deeds, to +which they listened patiently. The chant over, he handed the belts to +an attendant, who took them to Thayendanegea, who held them for a few +moments and looked at them gravely. + +One of the wampum belts was black, the sign of mourning; another was +purple, the sign of war; and the third was white, the sign of peace. +They were beautiful pieces of workmanship, very old. + +When Hiawatha left the Onondagas and fled to the Mohawks he crossed a +lake supposed to be the Oneida. While paddling along he noticed that man +tiny black, purple, and white shells clung to his paddle. Reaching the +shore he found such shells in long rows upon the beach, and it occurred +to him to use them for the depiction of thought according to color. He +strung them on threads of elm bark, and afterward, when the great league +was formed, the shells were made to represent five clasped hands. For +four hundred years the wampum belts have been sacred among the Iroquois. + +Now Thayendanegea gave the wampum belts back to the attendant, who +returned them to Satekariwate, the Mohawk. There was a silence once +more, and then the chosen singer began the Consoling Song again, but now +he did not sing it alone. Two hundred male voices joined him, and +the time became faster. Its tone changed from mourning and sorrow +to exultation and menace. Everyone thought of war, the tomahawk, and +victory. The song sung as it was now became a genuine battle song, +rousing and thrilling. The Long House trembled with the mighty chorus, +and its volume poured forth into the encircling dark woods. + +All the time the song was going on, Satekariwate, the Mohawk, stood +holding the belts in his hand, but when it was over he gave them to an +attendant, who carried them to another head chief. Thayendanegea now +went to the center of the room and, standing between the two fires, +asked who were the candidates for the places of the dead chiefs. + +The dead chiefs were three, and three tall men, already chosen among +their own tribes, came forward to succeed them. Then a fourth came, and +Henry was startled. It was Timmendiquas, who, as the bravest chief of +the brave Wyandots, was about to become, as a signal tribute, and as +a great sign of friendship, an adopted son and honorary chief of the +Mohawks, Keepers of the Western Gate, and most warlike of all the +Iroquois tribes. + +As Timmendiquas stood before Thayendanegea, a murmur of approval deeper +than any that had gone before ran through all the crowd in the Long +House, and it was deepest on the women's benches, where sat many matrons +of the Iroquois, some of whom were chiefs-a woman could be a chief among +the Iroquois. + +The candidates were adjudged acceptable by the other chiefs, and +Thayendanegea addressed them on their duties, while they listened +in grave silence. With his address the sacred part of the rite was +concluded. Nothing remained now but the great banquet outside--although +that was much--and they poured forth to it joyously, Thayendanegea, the +Mohawk, and Timmendiquas, the Wyandot, walking side by side, the finest +two red chiefs on all the American continent. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. THE EVIL SPIRIT'S WORK + + +Henry slipped forth with the crowd from the Long House, stooping +somewhat and shrinking into the smallest possible dimensions. But there +was little danger now that any one would notice him, as long as he +behaved with prudence, because all grief and solemnity were thrown +aside, and a thousand red souls intended to rejoice. A vast banquet was +arranged. Great fires leaped up all through the village. At every fire +the Indian women, both young and old, were already far forward with the +cooking. Deer, bear, squirrel, rabbit, fish, and every other variety +of game with which the woods and rivers of western New York and +Pennsylvania swarmed were frying or roasting over the coals, and the air +was permeated with savory odors. There was a great hum of voices and +an incessant chattering. Here in the forest, among themselves, and in +complete security, the Indian stoicism was relaxed. According to their +customs everybody fell to eating at a prodigious rate, as if they had +not tasted anything for a month, and as if they intended to eat enough +now to last another month. + +It was far into the night, because the ceremonies had lasted a long +time, but a brilliant moon shone down upon the feasting crowd, and the +flames of the great fires, yellow and blue, leaped and danced. This was +an oasis of light and life. Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea sat together +before the largest fire, and they ate with more restraint than the +others. Even at the banquet they would not relax their dignity as +great chiefs. Old Skanawati, the Onondaga, old Atotarho, Onondaga, too, +Satekariwate, the Mohawk, Kanokarih, the Seneca, and others, head chiefs +though they were of the three senior tribes, did not hesitate to eat as +the rich Romans of the Empire ate, swallowing immense quantities of all +kinds of meat, and drinking a sort of cider that the women made. Several +warriors ate and drank until they fell down in a stupor by the fires. +The same warriors on the hunt or the war path would go for days without +food, enduring every manner of hardship. Now and then a warrior would +leap up and begin a chant telling of some glorious deed of his. Those at +his own fire would listen, but elsewhere they took no notice. + +In the largest open space a middle-aged Onondaga with a fine face +suddenly uttered a sharp cry: “Hehmio!” which he rapidly repeated twice. +Two score voices instantly replied, “Heh!” and a rush was made for him. +At least a hundred gathered around him, but they stood in a respectful +circle, no one nearer than ten feet. He waved his hand, and all sat down +on the ground. Then, he, too, sat down, all gazing at him intently and +with expectancy. + +He was a professional story-teller, an institution great and honored +among the tribes of the Iroquois farther back even than Hiawatha. He +began at once the story of the warrior who learned to talk with the +deer and the bear, carrying it on through many chapters. Now and then a +delighted listener would cry “Hah!” but if anyone became bored and fell +asleep it was considered an omen of misfortune to the sleeper, and he +was chased ignominiously to his tepee. The Iroquois romancer was better +protected than the white one is. He could finish some of his stories in +one evening, but others were serials. When he arrived at the end of the +night's installment he would cry, “Si-ga!” which was equivalent to our +“To be continued in our next.” Then all would rise, and if tired would +seek sleep, but if not they would catch the closing part of some other +story-teller's romance. + +At three fires Senecas were playing a peculiar little wooden flute of +their own invention, that emitted wailing sounds not without a certain +sweetness. In a corner a half dozen warriors hurt in battle were bathing +their wounds with a soothing lotion made from the sap of the bass wood. + +Henry lingered a while in the darkest corners, witnessing the feasting, +hearing the flutes and the chants, listening for a space to the +story-tellers and the enthusiastic “Hahs!” They were so full of feasting +and merrymaking now that one could almost do as he pleased, and he stole +toward the southern end of the village, where he had noticed several +huts, much more strongly built than the others. Despite all his natural +skill and experience his heart beat very fast when he came to the first. +He was about to achieve the great exploration upon which he had ventured +so much. Whether he would find anything at the end of the risk he ran, +he was soon to see. + +The hut, about seven feet square and as many feet in height, was built +strongly of poles, with a small entrance closed by a clapboard door +fastened stoutly on the outside with withes. The hut was well in the +shadow of tepees, and all were still at the feasting and merrymaking. +He cut the withes with two sweeps of his sharp hunting knife, opened the +door, bent his head, stepped in and then closed the door behind him, in +order that no Iroquois might see what had happened. + +It was not wholly dark in the hut, as there were cracks between the +poles, and bars of moonlight entered, falling upon a floor of bark. They +revealed also a figure lying full length on one side of the hut. A great +pulse of joy leaped up in Henry's throat, and with it was a deep pity, +also. The figure was that of Shif'less Sol, but he was pale and thin, +and his arms and legs were securely bound with thongs of deerskin. + +Leaning over, Henry cut the thongs of the shiftless one, but he did not +stir. Great forester that Shif'less Sol was, and usually so sensitive to +the lightest movement, he perceived nothing now, and, had he not found +him bound, Henry would have been afraid that he was looking upon his +dead comrade. The hands of the shiftless one, when the hands were cut, +had fallen limply by his side, and his face looked all the more pallid +by contrast with the yellow hair which fell in length about it. But it +was his old-time friend, the dauntless Shif'less Sol, the last of the +five to vanish so mysteriously. + +Henry bent down and pulled him by the shoulder. The captive yawned, +stretched himself a little, and lay still again with closed eyes. +Henry shook him a second time and more violently. Shif'less Sol sat up +quickly, and Henry knew that indignation prompted the movement. Sol held +his arms and legs stiffly and seemed to be totally unconscious that they +were unbound. He cast one glance upward, and in the dim light saw the +tall warrior bending over him. + +“I'll never do it, Timmendiquas or White Lightning, whichever name you +like better!” he exclaimed. “I won't show you how to surprise the white +settlements. You can burn me at the stake or tear me in pieces first. +Now go away and let me sleep.” + +He sank back on the bark, and started to close his eyes again. It was +then that he noticed for the first time that his hands were unbound. +He held them up before his face, as if they were strange objects wholly +unattached to himself, and gazed at them in amazement. He moved his legs +and saw that they, too, were unbound. Then he turned his startled gaze +upward at the face of the tall warrior who was looking down at him. +Shif'less Sol was wholly awake now. Every faculty in him was alive, and +he pierced through the Shawnee disguise. He knew who it was. He knew +who had come to save him, and he sprang to his feet, exclaiming the one +word: + +“Henry!” + +The hands of the comrades met in the clasp of friendship which only many +dangers endured together can give. + +“How did you get here?” asked the shiftless one in a whisper. + +“I met an Indian in the forest,” replied Henry, “and well I am now he.” + +Shif'less Sol laughed under his breath. + +“I see,” said he, “but how did you get through the camp? It's a big +one, and the Iroquois are watchful. Timmendiquas is here, too, with his +Wyandots.” + +“They are having a great feast,” replied Henry, “and I could go about +almost unnoticed. Where are the others, Sol?” + +“In the cabins close by.” + +“Then we'll get out of this place. Quick! Tie up your hair! In the +darkness you can easily pass for an Indian.” + +The shiftless one drew his hair into a scalp lock, and the two slipped +from the cabin, closing the door behind them and deftly retying the +thongs, in order that the discovery of the escape might occur as late +as possible. Then they stood a few moments in the shadow of the hut and +listened to the sounds of revelry, the monotone of the story-tellers, +and the chant of the singers. + +“You don't know which huts they are in, do you?” asked Henry, anxiously. + +“No, I don't,” replied the shiftless one. + +“Get back!” exclaimed Henry softly. “Don't you see who's passing out +there?” + +“Braxton Wyatt,” said Sol. “I'd like to get my hands on that scoundrel. +I've had to stand a lot from him.” + +“The score must wait. But first we'll provide you with weapons. See, +the Iroquois have stacked some of their rifles here while they're at the +feast.” + +A dozen good rifles had been left leaning against a hut near by, and +Henry, still watching lest he be observed, chose the best, with its +ammunition, for his comrade, who, owing to his semi-civilized attire, +still remained in the shadow of the other hut. + +“Why not take four?” whispered the shiftless one. “We'll need them for +the other boys.” + +Henry took four, giving two to his comrade, and then they hastily +slipped back to the other side of the hut. A Wyandot and a Mohawk were +passing, and they had eyes of hawks. Henry and Sol waited until the +formidable pair were gone, and then began to examine the huts, trying to +surmise in which their comrades lay. + +“I haven't seen 'em a-tall, a-tall,” said Sol, “but I reckon from the +talk that they are here. I was s'prised in the woods, Henry. A half +dozen reds jumped on me so quick I didn't have time to draw a weepin. +Timmendiquas was at the head uv 'em an' he just grinned. Well, he is a +great chief, if he did truss me up like a fowl. I reckon the same thing +happened to the others.” + +“Come closer, Sol! Come closer!” whispered Henry. “More warriors are +walking this way. The feast is breaking up, and they'll spread all +through the camp.” + +A terrible problem was presented to the two. They could no longer search +among the strong huts, for their comrades. The opportunity to save had +lasted long enough for one only. But border training is stern, and these +two had uncommon courage and decision. + +“We must go now, Sol,” said Henry, “but we'll come back.” + +“Yes,” said the shiftless one, “we'll come back.” + +Darting between the huts, they gained the southern edge of the forest +before the satiated banqueters could suspect the presence of an enemy. +Here they felt themselves safe, but they did not pause. Henry led the +way, and Shif'less Sol followed at a fair degree of speed. + +“You'll have to be patient with me for a little while, Henry,” said +Sol in a tone of humility. “When I wuz layin' thar in the lodge with my +hands an' feet tied I wuz about eighty years old, jest ez stiff ez could +be from the long tyin'. When I reached the edge o' the woods the blood +wuz flowin' lively enough to make me 'bout sixty. Now I reckon I'm +fifty, an' ef things go well I'll be back to my own nateral age in two +or three hours.” + +“You shall have rest before morning,” said Henry, “and it will be in a +good place, too. I can promise that.” + +Shif'less Sol looked at him inquiringly, but he did not say anything. +Like the rest of the five, Sol had acquired the most implicit confidence +in their bold young leader. He had every reason to feel good. That +painful soreness was disappearing from his ankles. As they advanced +through the woods, weeks dropped from him one by one. Then the months +began to roll away, and at last time fell year by year. As they +approached the deeps of the forest where the swamp lay, Solomon Hyde, +the so called shiftless one, and wholly undeserving of the name, was +young again. + +“I've got a fine little home for us, Sol,” said Henry. “Best we've had +since that time we spent a winter on the island in the lake. This is +littler, but it's harder to find. It'll be a fine thing to know you're +sleeping safe and sound with five hundred Iroquois warriors only a few +miles away.” + +“Then it'll suit me mighty well,” said Shif'less Sol, grinning broadly. +“That's jest the place fur a lazy man like your humble servant, which is +me.” + +They reached the stepping stones, and Henry paused a moment. + +“Do you feel steady enough, Sol, to jump from stone to stone?” he asked. + +“I'm feelin' so good I could fly ef I had to,” he replied. “Jest you +jump on, Henry, an' fur every jump you take you'll find me only one jump +behind you!” + +Henry, without further ado, sprang from one stone to another, and behind +him, stone for stone, came the shiftless one. It was now past midnight, +and the moon was obscured. The keenest eyes twenty yards away could +not have seen the two dusky figures as they went by leaps into the very +heart of the great, black swamp. They reached the solid ground, and then +the hut. + +“Here, Sol,” said Henry, “is my house, and yours, also, and soon, I +hope, to be that of Paul, Tom, and Jim, too.” + +“Henry,” said Shif'less Sol, “I'm shorely glad to come.” + +They went inside, stacked their captured rifles against the wall, and +soon were sound asleep. + +Meanwhile sleep was laying hold of the Iroquois village, also. They had +eaten mightily and they had drunk mightily. Many times had they told the +glories of Hode-no-sau-nee, the Great League, and many times had they +gladly acknowledged the valor and worth of Timmendiquas and the brave +little Wyandot nation. Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea had sat side +by side throughout the feast, but often other great chiefs were with +them-Skanawati, Atotarho, and Hahiron, the Onondagas; Satekariwate, the +Mohawk; Kanokarih and Kanyadoriyo, the Senecas; and many others. + +Toward midnight the women and the children left for the lodges, and soon +the warriors began to go also, or fell asleep on the ground, wrapped +in their blankets. The fires were allowed to sink low, and at last the +older chiefs withdrew, leaving only Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea. + +“You have seen the power and spirit of the Iroquois,” said +Thayendanegea. “We can bring many more warriors than are here into the +field, and we will strike the white settlements with you.” + +“The Wyandots are not so many as the warriors of the Great League,” said +Timmendiquas proudly, “but no one has ever been before them in battle.” + +“You speak truth, as I have often heard it,” said Thayendanegea +thoughtfully. Then he showed Timmendiquas to a lodge of honor, the +finest in the village, and retired to his own. + +The great feast was over, but the chiefs had come to a momentous +decision. Still chafing over their defeat at Oriskany, they would make +a new and formidable attack upon the white settlements, and Timmendiquas +and his fierce Wyandots would help them. All of them, from the oldest +to the youngest, rejoiced in the decision, and, not least, the famous +Thayendanegea. He hated the Americans most because they were upon +the soil, and were always pressing forward against the Indian. The +Englishmen were far away, and if they prevailed in the great war, the +march of the American would be less rapid. He would strike once more +with the Englishmen, and the Iroquois could deliver mighty blows on the +American rearguard. He and his Mohawks, proud Keepers of the Western +Gate, would lead in the onset. Thayendanegea considered it a good +night's work, and he slept peacefully. + +The great camp relapsed into silence. The warriors on the ground +breathed perhaps a little heavily after so much feasting, and the fires +were permitted to smolder down to coals. Wolves and panthers drawn by +the scent of food crept through the thickets toward the faint firelight, +but they were afraid to draw near. Morning came, and food and drink +were taken to the lodges in which four prisoners were held, prisoners +of great value, taken by Timmendiquas and the Wyandots, and held at his +urgent insistence as hostages. + +Three were found as they had been left, and when their bonds were +loosened they ate and drank, but the fourth hut was empty. The one who +spoke in a slow, drawling way, and the one who seemed to be the most +dangerous of them all, was gone. Henry and Sol had taken the severed +thongs with them, and there was nothing to show how the prisoner had +disappeared, except that the withes fastening the door had been cut. + +The news spread through the village, and there was much excitement. +Thayendanegea and Timmendiquas came and looked at the empty hut. +Timmendiquas may have suspected how Shif'less Sol had gone, but he said +nothing. Others believed that it was the work of Hahgweh-da-et-gah (The +Spirit of Evil), or perhaps Ga-oh (The Spirit of the Winds) had taken +him away. + +“It is well to keep a good watch on the others,” said Timmendiquas, and +Thayendanegea nodded. + +That day the chiefs entered the Long House again, and held a great war +council. A string of white wampum about a foot in length was passed +to every chief, who held it a moment or two before handing it to his +neighbors. It was then laid on a table in the center of the room, the +ends touching. This signified harmony among the Six Nations. All the +chiefs had been summoned to this place by belts of wampum sent to the +different tribes by runners appointed by the Onondagas, to whom this +honor belonged. All treaties had to be ratified by the exchange of +belts, and now this was done by the assembled chiefs. + +Timmendiquas, as an honorary chief of the Mohawks, and as the real head +of a brave and allied nation, was present throughout the council. His +advice was asked often, and when he gave it the others listened with +gravity and deference. The next day the village played a great game of +lacrosse, which was invented by the Indians, and which had been played +by them for centuries before the arrival of the white man. In this case +the match was on a grand scale, Mohawks and Cayugas against Onondagas +and Senecas. + +The game began about nine o'clock in the morning in a great natural +meadow surrounded by forest. The rival sides assembled opposite each +other and bet heavily. All the stakes, under the law of the game, were +laid upon the ground in heaps here, and they consisted of the articles +most precious to the Iroquois. In these heaps were rifles, tomahawks, +scalping knives, wampum, strips of colored beads, blankets, swords, +belts, moccasins, leggins, and a great many things taken as spoil in +forays on the white settlements, such is small mirrors, brushes of +various kinds, boots, shoes, and other things, the whole making a vast +assortment. + +These heaps represented great wealth to the Iroquois, and the older +chiefs sat beside them in the capacity of stakeholders and judges. + +The combatants, ranged in two long rows, numbered at least five hundred +on each side, and already they began to show an excitement approaching +that which animated them when they would go into battle. Their eyes +glowed, and the muscles on their naked backs and chests were tense for +the spring. In order to leave their limbs perfectly free for effort they +wore no clothing at all, except a little apron reaching from the waist +to the knee. + +The extent of the playground was marked off by two pair of “byes” like +those used in cricket, planted about thirty rods apart. But the goals of +each side were only about thirty feet apart. + +At a signal from the oldest of the chiefs the contestants arranged +themselves in two parallel lines facing each other, inside the area and +about ten rods apart. Every man was armed with a strong stick three and +a half to four feet in length, and curving toward the end. Upon +this curved end was tightly fastened a network of thongs of untanned +deerskin, drawn until they were rigid and taut. The ball with which they +were to play was made of closely wrapped elastic skins, and was about +the size of an ordinary apple. + +At the end of the lines, but about midway between them, sat the chiefs, +who, besides being judges and stakeholders, were also score keepers. +They kept tally of the game by cutting notches upon sticks. Every time +one side put the ball through the other's goal it counted one, but there +was an unusual power exercised by the chiefs, practically unknown to +the games of white men. If one side got too far ahead, its score was +cut down at the discretion of the chiefs in order to keep the game more +even, and also to protract it sometimes over three or four days. The +warriors of the leading side might grumble among one another at the +amount of cutting the chiefs did, but they would not dare to make any +protest. However, the chiefs would never cut the leading side down to an +absolute parity with the other. It was always allowed to retain a margin +of the superiority it had won. + +The game was now about to begin, and the excitement became intense. Even +the old judges leaned forward in their eagerness, while the brown bodies +of the warriors shone in the sun, and the taut muscles leaped up under +the skin. Fifty players on each side, sticks in hand, advanced to the +center of the ground, and arranged themselves somewhat after the fashion +of football players, to intercept the passage of the ball toward their +goals. Now they awaited the coming of the ball. + +There were several young girls, the daughters of chiefs. The most +beautiful of these appeared. She was not more than sixteen or seventeen +years of age, as slender and graceful as a young deer, and she was +dressed in the finest and most richly embroidered deerskin. Her head was +crowned with a red coronet, crested with plumes, made of the feathers of +the eagle and heron. She wore silver bracelets and a silver necklace. + +The girl, bearing in her hand the ball, sprang into the very center of +the arena, where, amid shouts from all the warriors, she placed it upon +the ground. Then she sprang back and joined the throng of spectators. +Two of the players, one from each side, chosen for strength and +dexterity, advanced. They hooked the ball together in their united bats +and thus raised it aloft, until the bats were absolutely perpendicular. +Then with a quick, jerking motion they shot it upward. Much might +be gained by this first shot or stroke, but on this occasion the two +players were equal, and it shot almost absolutely straight into the air. +The nearest groups made a rush for it, and the fray began. + +Not all played at once, as the crowd was so great, but usually twenty or +thirty on each side struck for the ball, and when they became exhausted +or disabled were relieved by similar groups. All eventually came into +action. + +The game was played with the greatest fire and intensity, assuming +sometimes the aspect of a battle. Blows with the formidable sticks were +given and received. Brown skins were streaked with blood, heads were +cracked, and a Cayuga was killed. Such killings were not unusual in +these games, and it was always considered the fault of the man who fell, +due to his own awkwardness or unwariness. The body of the dead Cayuga +was taken away in disgrace. + +All day long the contest was waged with undiminished courage and zeal, +party relieving party. The meadow and the surrounding forest resounded +with the shouts and yells of combatants and spectators. The old squaws +were in a perfect frenzy of excitement, and their shrill screams of +applause or condemnation rose above every other sound. + +On this occasion, as the contest did not last longer than one day, the +chiefs never cut down the score of the leading side. The game closed +at sunset, with the Senecas and Onondagas triumphant, and richer by far +than they were in the morning. The Mohawks and Cayugas retired, stripped +of their goods and crestfallen. + +Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea, acting as umpires watched the game +closely to its finish, but not so the renegades Braxton Wyatt and +Blackstaffe. They and Quarles had wandered eastward with some Delawares, +and had afterward joined the band of Wyandots, though Timmendiquas gave +them no very warm welcome. Quarles had left on some errand a few days +before. They had rejoiced greatly at the trapping of the four, one by +one, in the deep bush. But they had felt anger and disappointment when +the fifth was not taken, also. Now both were concerned and alarmed over +the escape of Shif'less Sol in the night, and they drew apart from the +Indians to discuss it. + +“I think,” said Wyatt, “that Hyde did not manage it himself, all alone. +How could he? He was bound both hand and foot; and I've learned, too, +Blackstaffe, that four of the best Iroquois rifles have been taken. That +means one apiece for Hyde and the three prisoners that are left.” + +The two exchanged looks of meaning and understanding. + +“It must have been the boy Ware who helped Hyde to get away,” said +Blackstaffe, “and their taking of the rifles means that he and Hyde +expect to rescue the other three in the same way. You think so, too?” + +“Of course,” replied Wyatt. “What makes the Indians, who are so +wonderfully alert and watchful most of the time, become so careless when +they have a great feast?” + +Blackstaffe shrugged his shoulders. + +“It is their way,” he replied. “You cannot change it. Ware must have +noticed what they were about, and he took advantage of it. But I don't +think any of the others will go that way.” + +“The boy Cotter is in here,” said Braxton Wyatt, tapping the side of a +small hut. “Let's go in and see him.” + + +“Good enough,” said Blackstaffe. “But we mustn't let him know that Hyde +has escaped.” + +Paul, also bound hand and foot, was lying on an old wolfskin. He, too, +was pale and thin-the strict confinement had told upon him heavily-but +Paul's spirit could never be daunted. He looked at the two renegades +with hatred and contempt. + +“Well, you're in a fine fix,” said Wyatt sneeringly. “We just came in to +tell you that we took Henry Ware last night.” + +Paul looked him straight and long in the eye, and he knew that the +renegade was lying. + +“I know better,” he said. + +“Then we will get him,” said Wyatt, abandoning the lie, “and all of you +will die at the stake.” + +“You, will not get him,” said Paul defiantly, “and as for the rest of +us dying at the stake, that's to be seen. I know this: Timmendiquas +considers us of value, to be traded or exchanged, and he's too smart +a man to destroy what he regards as his own property. Besides, we may +escape. I don't want to boast, Braxton Wyatt, but you know that we're +hard to hold.” + +Then Paul managed to turn over with his face to the wall, as if he were +through with them. They went out, and Braxton Wyatt said sulkily: + +“Nothing to be got out of him.” + +“No,” said Blackstaffe, “but we must urge that the strictest kind of +guard be kept over the others.” + +The Iroquois were to remain some time at the village, because all their +forces were not yet gathered for the great foray they had in mind. The +Onondaga runners were still carrying the wampum belts of purple shells, +sign of war, to distant villages of the tribes, and parties of warriors +were still coming in. A band of Cayugas arrived that night, and with +them they brought a half starved and sick, Lenni-Lenape, whom they had +picked up near the camp. The Lenni-Lenape, who looked as if he might +have been when in health a strong and agile warrior, said that news had +reached him through the Wyandots of the great war to be waged by the +Iroquois on the white settlements, and the spirits would not let him +rest unless he bore his part in it. He prayed therefore to be accepted +among them. + +Much food was given to the brave Lenni-Lenape, and he was sent to a +lodge to rest. To-morrow he would be well, and he would be welcomed to +the ranks of the Cayugas, a Younger nation. But when the morning came, +the lodge was empty. The sick Lenni-Lenape was gone, and with him the +boy, Paul, the youngest of the prisoners. Guards bad been posted all +around the camp, but evidently the two had slipped between. Brave +and advanced as were the Iroquois, superstition seized upon them. +Hah-gweli-da-et-gah was at work among them, coming in the form of the +famished Lenni-Lenape. He had steeped them in a deep sleep, and then +he had vanished with the prisoner in Se-oh (The Night). Perhaps lie had +taken away the boy, who was one of a hated race, for some sacrifice or +mystery of his own. The fears of the Iroquois rose. If the Spirit of +Evil was among them, greater harm could be expected. + +But the two renegades, Blackstaffe and Wyatt, raged. They did not +believe in the interference of either good spirits or bad spirits, and +just now their special hatred was a famished Lenni-Lenape warrior. + +“Why on earth didn't I think of it?” exclaimed Wyatt. “I'm sure now by +his size that it was the fellow Hyde. Of Course he slipped to the lodge, +let Cotter out, and they dodged about in the darkness until they escaped +in the forest. I'll complain to Timmendiquas.” + +He was as good as his word, speaking of the laxness of both Iroquois and +Wyandots. The great White Lightning regarded him with an icy stare. + +“You say that the boy, Cotter, escaped through carelessness?” he asked. + +“I do,” exclaimed Wyatt. + +“Then why did you not prevent it?” + +Wyatt trembled a little before the stern gaze of the chief. + +“Since when,” continued Timmendiquas, “have you, a deserter front your +own people, had the right to hold to account the head chief of the +Wyandots?” Braxton Wyatt, brave though he undoubtedly was, trembled yet +more. He knew that Timmendiquas did not like him, and that the Wyandot +chieftain could make his position among the Indians precarious. + +“I did not mean to say that it was the fault of anybody in particular,” + he exclaimed hastily, “but I've been hearing so much talk about the +Spirit of Evil having a hand in this that I couldn't keep front saying +something. Of course, it was Henry Ware and Hyde who did it!” + +“It may be,” said Timmendiquas icily, “but neither the Manitou of the +Wyandots, nor the Aieroski of the Iroquois has given to me the eyes to +see everything that happens in the dark.” + +Wyatt withdrew still in a rage, but afraid to say more. He and +Blackstaffe held many conferences through the day, and they longed for +the presence of Simon Girty, who was farther west. + +That night an Onondaga runner arrived from one of the farthest villages +of the Mohawks, far east toward Albany. He had been sent from a farther +village, and was not known personally to the warriors in the great camp, +but he bore a wampum belt of purple shells, the sign of war, and he +reported directly to Thayendanegea, to whom he brought stirring and +satisfactory words. After ample feasting, as became one who had come +so far, he lay upon soft deerskins in one of the bark huts and sought +sleep. + +But Braxton Wyatt, the renegade, could not sleep. His evil spirit warned +him to rise and go to the huts, where the two remaining prisoners were +kept. It was then about one o'clock in the morning, and as he passed he +saw the Onondaga runner at the door of one of the prison lodges. He was +about to cry out, but the Onondaga turned and struck him such a violent +blow with the butt of a pistol, snatched from under his deerskin tunic, +that he fell senseless. When a Mohawk sentinel found and revived him +an hour later, the door of the hut was open, and the oldest of the +prisoners, the one called Ross, was gone. + +Now, indeed, were the Iroquois certain that the Spirit of Evil was +among them. When great chiefs like Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea +were deceived, how could a common warrior hope to escape its wicked +influence! + +But Braxton Wyatt, with a sore and aching head, lay all day on a bed of +skins, and his friend, Moses Blackstaffe, could give him no comfort. + +The following night the camp was swept by a sudden and tremendous storm +of thunder and lightning, wind and rain. Many of the lodges were thrown +down, and when the storm finally whirled itself away, it was found that +the last of the prisoners, he of the long arms and long legs, had gone +on the edge of the blast. + +Truly the Evil Spirit had been hovering over the Iroquois village. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. CATHARINE MONTOUR + + +The five lay deep in the swamp, reunited once more, and full of content. +The great storm in which Long Jim, with the aid of his comrades, had +disappeared, was whirling off to the eastward. The lightning was flaring +its last on the distant horizon, but the rain still pattered in the +great woods. + +It was a small hut, but the five could squeeze in it. They were +dry, warm, and well armed, and they had no fear of the storm and the +wilderness. The four after their imprisonment and privations were +recovering their weight and color. Paul, who had suffered the most, +had, on the other hand, made the quickest recovery, and their present +situation, so fortunate in contrast with their threatened fate a few +days before, made a great appeal to his imagination. The door was +allowed to stand open six inches, and through the crevice he watched the +rain pattering on the dark earth. He felt an immense sense of security +and comfort. Paul was hopeful by nature and full of courage, but when he +lay bound and alone in a hut in the Iroquois camp it seemed to him that +no chance was left. The comrades had been kept separate, and he had +supposed the others to be dead. But here he was snatched from the very +pit of death, and all the others had been saved from a like fate. + +“If I'd known that you were alive and uncaptured, Henry,” he said, “I'd +never have given up hope. It was a wonderful thing you did to start the +chain that drew us all away.” + +“It's no more than Sol or Tom or any of you would have done,” said +Henry. + +“We might have tried it,” said Long Jim Hart, “but I ain't sure that +we'd have done it. Likely ez not, ef it had been left to me my scalp +would be dryin' somewhat in the breeze that fans a Mohawk village. Say, +Sol, how wuz it that you talked Onondaga when you played the part uv +that Onondaga runner. Didn't know you knowed that kind uv Injun lingo.” + +Shif'less Sol drew himself up proudly, and then passed a thoughtful hand +once or twice across his forehead. + +“Jim,” he said, “I've told you often that Paul an' me hez the instincts +uv the eddicated. Learnin' always takes a mighty strong hold on me. +Ef I'd had the chance, I might be a purfessor, or mebbe I'd be writin' +poetry. I ain't told you about it, but when I wuz a young boy, afore I +moved with the settlers, I wuz up in these parts an' I learned to talk +Iroquois a heap. I never thought it would be the use to me it hez been +now. Ain't it funny that sometimes when you put a thing away an' it gits +all covered with rust and mold, the time comes when that same forgot +little thing is the most vallyble article in the world to you.” + +“Weren't you scared, Sol,” persisted Paul, “to face a man like Brant, +an' pass yourself off as an Onondaga?” + +“No, I wuzn't,” replied the shiftless one thoughtfully, “I've been wuss +scared over little things. I guess that when your life depends on jest +a motion o' your hand or the turnin' o' a word, Natur' somehow comes to +your help an' holds you up. I didn't get good an' skeered till it wuz +all over, an' then I had one fit right after another.” + +“I've been skeered fur a week without stoppin',” said Tom Ross; “jest +beginnin' to git over it. I tell you, Henry, it wuz pow'ful lucky fur +us you found them steppin' stones, an' this solid little place in the +middle uv all that black mud.” + +“Makes me think uv the time we spent the winter on that island in +the lake,” said Long Jim. “That waz shorely a nice place an' pow'ful +comf'table we wuz thar. But we're a long way from it now. That island uv +ours must be seven or eight hundred miles from here, an' I reckon it's +nigh to fifteen hundred to New Orleans, whar we wuz once.” + +“Shet up,” said Tom Ross suddenly. “Time fur all uv you to go to sleep, +an' I'm goin' to watch.” + +“I'll watch,” said Henry. + +“I'm the oldest, an' I'm goin' to have my way this time,” said Tom. + +“Needn't quarrel with me about it,” said Shif'less Sol. “A lazy man like +me is always willin' to go to sleep. You kin hev my watch, Tom, every +night fur the next five years.” + +He ranged himself against the wall, and in three minutes was sound +asleep. Henry and Paul found room in the line, and they, too, soon +slept. Tom sat at the door, one of the captured rifles across his knees, +and watched the forest and the swamp. He saw the last flare of the +distant lightning, and he listened to the falling of the rain drops +until they vanished with the vanishing wind, leaving the forest still +and without noise. + +Tom was several years older than any of the others, and, although +powerful in action, he was singularly chary of speech. Henry was the +leader, but somehow Tom looked upon himself as a watcher over the other +four, a sort of elder brother. As the moon came out a little in the wake +of the retreating clouds, he regarded them affectionately. + +“One, two, three, four, five,” he murmured to himself. “We're all here, +an' Henry come fur us. That is shorely the greatest boy the world hez +ever seed. Them fellers Alexander an' Hannibal that Paul talks about +couldn't hev been knee high to Henry. Besides, ef them old Greeks an' +Romans hed hed to fight Wyandots an' Shawnees an' Iroquois ez we've +done, whar'd they hev been?” + +Tom Ross uttered a contemptuous little sniff, and on the edge of that +sniff Alexander and Hannibal were wafted into oblivion. Then he went +outside and walked about the islet, appreciating for the tenth time what +a wonderful little refuge it was. He was about to return to the hut when +he saw a dozen dark blots along the high bough of a tree. He knew them. +They were welcome blots. They were wild turkeys that had found what had +seemed to be a secure roosting place in the swamp. + +Tom knew that the meat of the little bear was nearly exhausted, and here +was more food come to their hand. “We're five pow'ful feeders, an' we'll +need you,” he murmured, looking up at the turkeys, “but you kin rest +thar till nearly mornin'.” + +He knew that the turkeys would not stir, and he went back to the hut to +resume his watch. Just before the first dawn he awoke Henry. + +“Henry,” he said, “a lot uv foolish wild turkeys hev gone to rest on the +limb of a tree not twenty yards from this grand manshun uv ourn. 'Pears +to me that wild turkeys wuz made fur hungry fellers like us to eat. Kin +we risk a shot or two at 'em, or is it too dangerous?” + +“I think we can risk the shots,” said Henry, rising and taking his +rifle. “We're bound to risk something, and it's not likely that Indians +are anywhere near.” + +They slipped from the cabin, leaving the other three still sound asleep, +and stepped noiselessly among the trees. The first pale gray bar that +heralded the dawn was just showing in the cast. + +“Thar they are,” said Tom Ross, pointing at the dozen dark blots on the +high bough. + +“We'll take good aim, and when I say 'fire!' we'll both pull trigger,” + said Henry. + +He picked out a huge bird near the end of the line, but he noticed when +he drew the bead that a second turkey just behind the first was directly +in his line of fire. The fact aroused his ambition to kill both with +one bullet. It was not a mere desire to slaughter or to display +marksmanship, but they needed the extra turkey for food. + +“Are you ready, Tom?” he asked. “Then fire.” + +They pulled triggers, there were two sharp reports terribly loud to both +under the circumstances, and three of the biggest and fattest of the +turkeys fell heavily to the ground, while the rest flapped their wings, +and with frightened gobbles flew away. + +Henry was about to rush forward, but Silent Tom held him back. + +“Don't show yourself, Henry! Don't show yourself!” he cried in tense +tones. + +“Why, what's the matter?” asked the boy in surprise. + +“Don't you see that three turkeys fell, and we are only two to shoot? +An Injun is layin' 'roun' here some whar, an' he drawed a bead on one uv +them turkeys at the same time we did.” + +Henry laughed and put away Tom's detaining hand. + +“There's no Indian about,” he said. “I killed two turkeys with one shot, +and I'm mighty proud of it, too. I saw that they were directly in the +line of the bullet, and it went through both.” + +Silent Tom heaved a mighty sigh of relief, drawn up from great depths. + +“I'm tre-men-jeous-ly glad uv that, Henry,” he said. “Now when I saw +that third turkey come tumblin' down I wuz shore that one Injun or mebbe +more had got on this snug little place uv ourn in the swamp, an' that +we'd hev to go to fightin' ag'in. Thar come times, Henry, when my mind +just natchally rises up an' rebels ag'in fightin', 'specially when I +want to eat or sleep. Ain't thar anythin' else but fight, fight, fight, +'though I 'low a feller hez got to expect a lot uv it out here in the +woods?” + +They picked up the three turkeys, two gobblers and a hen, and found +them large and fat as butter. More than once the wild turkey had come to +their relief, and, in fact, this bird played a great part in the life +of the frontier, wherever that frontier might be, as it shifted steadily +westward. As they walked back toward the hut they faced three figures, +all three with leveled rifles. + +“All right, boys,” sang out Henry. “It's nobody but Tom and myself, +bringing in our breakfast.” + +The three dropped their rifles. + +“That's good,” said Shif'less Sol. “When them shots roused us out o' +our beauty sleep we thought the whole Iroquois nation, horse, foot, +artillery an' baggage wagons, wuz comin' down upon us. So we reckoned +we'd better go out an' lick 'em afore it wuz too late. + +“But it's you, an' you've got turkeys, nothin' but turkeys. Sho' I +reckoned from the peart way Long Jim spoke up that you wuz loaded down +with hummin' birds' tongues, ortylans, an' all them other Roman and +Rooshian delicacies Paul talks about in a way to make your mouth water. +But turkeys! jest turkeys! Nothin' but turkeys!” + +“You jest wait till you see me cookin' 'em, Sol Hyde,” said Long Jim. +“Then your mouth'll water, an' it'll take Henry and Tom both to hold you +back.” + +But Shif'less Sol's mouth was watering already, and his eyes were glued +on the turkeys. + +“I'm a pow'ful lazy man, ez you know, Saplin',” he said, “but I'm goin' +to help you pick them turkeys an' get 'em ready for the coals. The +quicker they are cooked the better it'll suit me.” + +While they were cooking the turkeys, Henry, a little anxious lest the +sound of the shots had been heard, crossed on the stepping stones and +scouted a bit in the woods. But there was no sign of Indian presence, +and, relieved, he returned to the islet just as breakfast was ready. + +Long Jim had exerted all his surpassing skill, and it was a contented +five that worked on one of the turkeys--the other two being saved for +further needs. + +“What's goin' to be the next thing in the line of our duty, Henry?” + asked Long Jim as they ate. + +“We'll have plenty to do, from all that Sol tells us,” replied the boy. +“It seems that they felt so sure of you, while you were prisoners, that +they often talked about their plans where you could hear them. Sol has +told me of two or three talks between Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea, +and from the last one he gathered that they're intending a raid with a +big army against a place called Wyoming, in the valley of a river named +the Susquehanna. It's a big settlement, scattered all along the river, +and they expect to take a lot of scalps. They're going to be helped by +British from Canada and Tories. Boys, we're a long way from home, but +shall we go and tell them in Wyoming what's coming?” + +“Of course,” said the four together. + +“Our bein' a long way from home don't make any difference,” said +Shif'less Sol. “We're generally a long way from home, an' you know we +sent word back from Pittsburgh to Wareville that we wuz stayin' a while +here in the east on mighty important business.” + +“Then we go to the Wyoming Valley as straight and as fast as we can,” + said Henry. “That's settled. What else did you bear about their plans, +Sol?” + +“They're to break up the village here soon and then they'll march to +a place called Tioga. The white men an' I hear that's to be a lot uv +'em-will join 'em thar or sooner. They've sent chiefs all the way to our +Congress at Philydelphy, pretendin' peace, an' then, when they git our +people to thinkin' peace, they'll jump on our settlements, the whole +ragin' army uv 'em, with tomahawk an' knife. A white man named John +Butler is to command 'em.” + +Paul shuddered. + +“I've heard of him,” he said. “They called him 'Indian' Butler at +Pittsburgh. He helped lead the Indians in that terrible battle of the +Oriskany last year. And they say he's got a son, Walter Butler, who is +as bad as he is, and there are other white leaders of the Indians, the +Johnsons and Claus.” + +“'Pears ez ef we would be needed,” said Tom Ross. + +“I don't think we ought to hurry,” said Henry. “The more we know about +the Indian plans the better it will be for the Wyoming people. We've a +safe and comfortable hiding place here, and we can stay and watch the +Indian movements.” + +“Suits me,” drawled Shif'less Sol. “My legs an' arms are still stiff +from them deerskin thongs an' ez Long Jim is here now to wait on me I +guess I'll take a rest from travelin.” + +“You'll do all your own waitin' on yourself,” rejoined Long Jim; “an' I'm +afraid you won't be waited on so Pow'ful well, either, but a good deal +better than you deserve.” + +They lay on the islet several days, meanwhile keeping a close watch +on the Indian camp. They really had little to fear except from hunting +parties, as the region was far from any settled portion of the country, +and the Indians were not likely to suspect their continued presence. +But the hunters were numerous, and all the squaws in the camp were busy +jerking meat. It was obvious that the Indians were preparing for a great +campaign, but that they would take their own time. Most of the scouting +was done by Henry and Sol, and several times they lay in the thick +brushwood and watched, by the light of the fires, what was passing in +the Indian camp. + +On the fifth night after the rescue of Long Jim, Henry and Shif'less Sol +lay in the covert. It was nearly midnight, but the fires still burned +in the Indian camp, warriors were polishing their weapons, and the women +were cutting up or jerking meat. While they were watching they heard +from a point to the north the sound of a voice rising and failing in a +kind of chant. + +“Another war party comin',” whispered Shif'less Sol, “an' singin' about +the victories that they're goin' to win.” + +“But did you notice that voice?” Henry whispered back. “It's not a +man's, it's a woman's.” + +“Now that you speak of it, you're right,” said Shif'less Sol. “It's +funny to hear an Injun woman chantin' about battles as she comes into +camp. That's the business o' warriors.” + +“Then this is no ordinary woman,” said Henry. + +“They'll pass along that trail there within twenty yards of us, Sol, and +we want to see her.” + +“So we do,” said Sol, “but I ain't breathin' while they pass.” + +They flattened themselves against the earth until the keenest eye could +not see them in the darkness. All the time the singing was growing +louder, and both remained, quite sure that it was the voice of a woman. +The trail was but a short distance away, and the moon was bright. The +fierce Indian chant swelled, and presently the most singular figure that +either had ever seen came into view. + +The figure was that of an Indian woman, but lighter in color than most +of her kind. She was middle-aged, tall, heavily built, and arrayed in a +strange mixture of civilized and barbaric finery, deerskin leggins and +moccasins gorgeously ornamented with heads, a red dress of European +cloth with a red shawl over it, and her head bare except for bright +feathers, thrust in her long black hair, which hung loosely down her +back. She held in one hand a large sharp tomahawk, which she swung +fiercely in time to her song. Her face had the rapt, terrible expression +of one who had taken some fiery and powerful drug, and she looked +neither to right nor to left as she strode on, chanting a song of blood, +and swinging the keen blade. + +Henry and Shif'less Sol shuddered. They had looked upon terrible human +figures, but nothing so frightful as this, a woman with the strength +of a man and twice his rage and cruelty. There was something weird and +awful in the look of that set, savage face, and the tone of that Indian +chant. Brave as they were, Henry and the shiftless one felt fear, as +perhaps they had never felt it before in their lives. Well they might! +They were destined to behold this woman again, under conditions the +most awful of which the human mind can conceive, and to witness savagery +almost unbelievable in either man or woman. The two did not yet know +it, but they were looking upon Catharine Montour, daughter of a French +Governor General of Canada and an Indian woman, a chieftainess of the +Iroquois, and of a memory infamous forever on the border, where she was +known as “Queen Esther.” + +Shif'less Sol shuddered again, and whispered to Henry: + +“I didn't think such women ever lived, even among the Indians.” + +A dozen warriors followed Queen Esther, stepping in single file, and +their manner showed that they acknowledged her their leader in every +sense. She was truly an extraordinary woman. Not even the great +Thayendanegea himself wielded a stronger influence among the Iroquois. +In her youth she had been treated as a white woman, educated and dressed +as a white woman, and she had played a part in colonial society at +Albany, New York, and Philadelphia. But of her own accord she had turned +toward the savage half of herself, had become wholly a savage, had +married a savage chief, bad been the mother of savage children, and here +she was, at midnight, striding into an Iroquois camp in the wilderness, +her head aflame with visions of blood, death, and scalps. + +The procession passed with the terrifying female figure still leading, +still singing her chant, and the curiosity of Henry and Shif'less Sol +was so intense that, taking all risks, they slipped along in the rear to +see her entry. + +Queen Esther strode into the lighted area of the camp, ceased her chant, +and looked around, as if a queen had truly come and was waiting to be +welcomed by her subjects. Thayendanegea, who evidently expected her, +stepped forward and gave her the Indian salute. It may be that he +received her with mild enthusiasm. Timmendiquas, a Wyandot and a guest, +though an ally, would not dispute with him his place as real head of the +Six Nations, but this terrible woman was his match, and could inflame +the Iroquois to almost anything that she wished. + +After the arrival of Queen Esther the lights in the Iroquois village +died down. It was evident to both Henry and the shiftless one that they +had been kept burning solely in the expectation of the coming of this +formidable woman and her escort. It was obvious that nothing more was to +be seen that night, and they withdrew swiftly through the forest toward +their islet. They stopped once in an oak opening, and Shif'less Sol +shivered slightly. + +“Henry,” he said, “I feel all through me that somethin' terrible is +comin'. That woman back thar has clean give me the shivers. I'm more +afraid of her than I am of Timmendiquas or Thayendanegea. Do you think +she is a witch?” + +“There are no such things as witches, but she was uncanny. I'm afraid, +Sol, that your feeling about something terrible going to happen is +right.” + +It was about two o'clock in the morning when they reached the islet. Tom +Ross was awake, but the other two slumbered peacefully on. They told Tom +what they had seen, and he told them the identity of the terrible woman. + +“I heard about her at Pittsburgh, an' I've heard tell, too, about her +afore I went to Kentucky to live. She's got a tre-men-jeous power over +the Iroquois. They think she ken throw spells, an' all that sort of +thing-an' mebbe she kin.” + +Two nights later it was Henry and Tom who lay in the thickets, and then +they saw other formidable arrivals in the Indian camp. Now they were +white men, an entire company in green uniforms, Sir John Johnson's Royal +Greens, as Henry afterward learned; and with them was the infamous John +Butler, or “Indian” Butler, as he was generally known on the New York +and Pennsylvania frontier, middle-aged, short and fat, and insignificant +of appearance, but energetic, savage and cruel in nature. He was a +descendant of the Duke of Ormond, and had commanded the Indians at the +terrible battle of the Oriskany, preceding Burgoyne's capture the year +before. + +Henry and Tom were distant spectators at an extraordinary council around +one of the fires. In this group were Timmendiquas, Thayendanegea, Queen +Esther, high chiefs of the distant nations, and the white men, John +Butler, Moses Blackstaffe, and the boy, Braxton Wyatt. It seemed to +Henry that Timmendiquas, King of the Wyandots, was superior to all the +other chiefs present, even to Thayendanegea. His expression was nobler +than that of the great Mohawk, and it had less of the Indian cruelty. + +Henry and Tom could not hear 'anything that was said, but they felt sure +the Iroquois were about to break up their village and march on the great +campaign they had planned. The two and their comrades could render no +greater service than to watch their march, and then warn those upon whom +the blow was to fall. + +The five left their hut on the islet early the next morning, well +equipped with provisions, and that day they saw the Iroquois dismantle +their village, all except the Long House and two or three other of the +more solid structures, and begin the march. Henry and his comrades went +parallel with them, watching their movements as closely as possible. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. A CHANGE OF TENANTS + + +The five were engaged upon one of their most dangerous tasks, to keep +with the Indian army, and yet to keep out of its hands, to observe what +was going on, and to divine what was intended from what they observed. +Fortunately it, was early summer, and the weather being very beautiful +they could sleep without shelter. Hence they found it convenient to +sleep sometimes by daylight, posting a watch always, and to spy upon the +Indian camp at night. They saw other reinforcements come for the Indian +army, particularly a strong division of Senecas, under two great war +chiefs of theirs, Sangerachte and Hiokatoo, and also a body of Tories. + +Then they saw them go into their last great camp at Tioga, preparatory +to their swift descent upon the Wyoming Valley. About four hundred +white men, English Canadians and Tories, were present, and eight hundred +picked warriors of the Six Nations under Thayendanegea, besides the +little band of Wyandots led by the resolute Timmendiquas. “Indian” + Butler was in general command of the whole, and Queen Esther was the +high priestess of the Indians, continually making fiery speeches and +chanting songs that made the warriors see red. Upon the rear of this +extraordinary army hung a band of fierce old squaws, from whom every +remnant of mercy and Gentleness had departed. + +From a high rock overlooking a valley the five saw “Indian” Butler's +force start for its final march upon Wyoming. It was composed of many +diverse elements, and perhaps none more bloodthirsty ever trod the soil +of America. In some preliminary skirmish a son of Queen Esther had been +slain, and now her fury knew no limits. She took her place at the +very head of the army, whirling her great tomahawk about her head, and +neither “Indian” Butler nor Thayendanegea dared to interfere with her in +anything great or small. + +Henry and his comrades, as they left their rock and hastened toward the +valley of Wyoming, felt that now they were coming into contact with the +great war itself. They had looked upon a uniformed enemy for the first +time, and they might soon see the colonial buff and blue of the eastern +army. Their hearts thrilled high at new scenes and new dangers. + +They had gathered at Pittsburgh, and, through the captivity of the four +in the Iroquois camp, they had some general idea of the Wyoming Valley +and the direction in which it lay, and, taking one last look at the +savage army, they sped toward it. The time was the close, of June, and +the foliage was still dark green. It was a land of low mountain, hill, +rich valley, and clear stream, and it was beautiful to every one of the +five. Much of their course lay along the Susquehanna, and soon they +saw signs of a more extended cultivation than any that was yet to be +witnessed in Kentucky. From the brow of a little hill they beheld a +field of green, and in another field a man plowing. + +“That's wheat,” said Tom Ross. + +“But we can't leave the man to plow,” said Henry, “or he'll never +harvest that wheat. We'll warn him.” + +The man uttered a cry of alarm as five wild figures burst into his +field. He stopped abruptly, and snatched up a rifle that lay across +the plow handles. Neither Henry nor his companions realized that their +forest garb and long life in the wilderness made them look more like +Indians than white men. But Henry threw up a hand as a sign of peace. + +“We're white like yourselves,” he cried, “and we've come to warn you! +The Iroquois and the Tories are marching into the valley!” + +The man's face blanched, and he cast a hasty look toward a little wood, +where stood a cabin from which smoke was rising. He could not doubt on a +near view that these were white like himself, and the words rang true. + +“My house is strong,” he said, “and I can beat them off. Maybe you will +help me.” + +“We'd help you willingly enough,” said Henry, “if this were any ordinary +raiding band, but 'Indian' Butler, Brant, and Queen Esther are coming at +the head of twelve or fifteen hundred men. How could we hold a house, no +matter how thick its walls, against such an army as that? Don't hesitate +a moment! Get up what you can and gallop.” + +The man, a Connecticut settler-Jennings was his name-left his plow in +the furrow, galloped on his horse to his house, mounted his wife and +children on other horses, and, taking only food and clothing, fled to +Stroudsburg, where there was a strong fort. At a later day he gave Henry +heartfelt thanks for his warning, as six hours afterward the vanguard +of the horde burned his home and raged because its owner and his family +were gone with their scalps on their own heads. + +The five were now well into the Wyoming Valley, where the Lenni-Lenape, +until they were pushed westward by other tribes, had had their village +Wy-wa-mieh, which means in their language Wyoming. It was a beautiful +valley running twenty miles or more along the Susquehanna, and about +three miles broad. On either side rose mountain walls a thousand feet in +height, and further away were peaks with mists and vapors around their +crests. The valley itself blazed in the summer sunshine, and the river +sparkled, now in gold, now in silver, as the light changed and fell. + +More cultivated fields, more houses, generally of stout logs, appeared, +and to all that they saw the five bore the fiery beacon. Simon Jennings +was not the only man who lived to thank them for the warning. Others +were incredulous, and soon paid the terrible price of unbelief. + +The five hastened on, and as they went they looked about them with +wondering eyes-there were so many houses, so many cultivated fields, and +so many signs of a numerous population. They had emerged almost for the +first time from the wilderness, excepting their memorable visit to New +Orleans, although this was a very different region. Long Jim spoke of +it. + +“I think I like it better here than at New Or-leeyuns,” he said. “We +found some nice Frenchmen an' Spaniards down thar, but the ground feels +firmer under my feet here.” + +“The ground feels firmer,” said Paul, who had some of the prescience of +the seer, “but the skies are no brighter. They look red to me sometimes, +Jim.” + +Tom Ross glanced at Paul and shook his head ominously. A woodsman, he +had his superstitions, and Paul's words weighed upon his mind. He began +to fear a great disaster, and his experienced eye perceived at once the +defenseless state of the valley. He remembered the council of the great +Indian force in the deep woods, and the terrible face of Queen Esther +was again before him. + +“These people ought to be in blockhouses, every one uv 'em,” he said. +“It ain't no time to be plowin' land.” + +Yet peace seemed to brood still over the valley. It was a fine river, +beautiful with changing colors. The soil on either side was as deep and +fertile as that of Kentucky, and the line of the mountains cut the sky +sharp and clear. Hills and slopes were dark green with foliage. + +“It must have been a gran' huntin' ground once,” said Shif'less Sol. + +The alarm that the five gave spread fast, and other hunters and scouts +came in, confirming it. Panic seized the settlers, and they began to +crowd toward Forty Fort on the west side of the river. Henry and his +comrades themselves arrived there toward the close of evening, just as +the sun had set, blood red, behind the mountains. Some report of them +had preceded their coming, and as soon as they had eaten they were +summoned to the presence of Colonel Zebulon Butler, who commanded the +military force in the valley. Singularly enough, he was a cousin of +“Indian” Butler, who led the invading army. + +The five, dressed in deerskin hunting shirts, leggins, and moccasins, +and everyone carrying a rifle, hatchet, and knife, entered a large low +room, dimly lighted by some wicks burning in tallow. A man of middle +years, with a keen New England face, sat at a little table, and several +others of varying ages stood near. + +The five knew instinctively that the man at the table was Colonel +Butler, and they bowed, but they did not show the faintest trace of +subservience. They had caught suspicious glances from some of the +officers who stood about the commander, and they stiffened at once. +Colonel Butler looked involuntarily at Henry-everybody always took him, +without the telling, for leader of the group. + +“We have had report of you,” he said in cool noncommittal tones, “and +you have been telling of great Indian councils that you have seen in the +woods. May I ask your name and where you belong?” + +“My name,” replied Henry with dignity, “is Henry Ware, and I come from +Kentucky. My friends here are Paul Cotter, Solomon Hyde, Tom Ross, and +Jim Hart. They, too, come from Kentucky.” + +Several of the men gave the five suspicious glances. Certainly they +were wild enough in appearance, and Kentucky was far away. It would +seem strange that new settlers in that far land should be here in +Pennsylvania. Henry saw clearly that his story was doubted. + +“Kentucky, you tell me?” said Colonel Butler. “Do you mean to say +you have come all that tremendous distance to warn us of an attack by +Indians and Tories?” + +Several of the others murmured approval, and Henry flushed a little, but +he saw that the commander was not unreasonable. It was a time when +men might well question the words of strangers. Remembering this, he +replied: + +“No, we did not come from Kentucky just to warn you. In fact, we +came from a point much farther than that. We came from New Orleans to +Pittsburgh with a fleet loaded with supplies for the Continental armies, +and commanded by Adam Colfax of New Hampshire.” + +The face of Colonel Butler brightened. + +“What!” he exclaimed, “you were on that expedition? It seems to me that +I recall hearing of great services rendered to it by some independent +scouts.” + +“When we reached Pittsburgh,” continued Henry, “it was our first +intention to go back to Kentucky, but we heard that a great war movement +was in progress to the eastward, and we thought that we would see what +was going on. Four of us have been captives among the Iroquois. We know +much of their plans, and we know, too, that Timmendiquas, the great +chief of the Wyandots, whom we fought along the Ohio, has joined them +with a hand of his best warriors. We have also seen Thayendanegea, every +one of us.” + +“You have seen Brant?” exclaimed Colonel Butler, calling the great +Mohawk by his white name. + +“Yes,” replied Henry. “We have seen him, and we have also seen the woman +they call Queen Esther. She is continually urging the Indians on.” + +Colonel Butler seemed convinced, and invited them to sit down. He also +introduced the officers who were with him, Colonel John Durkee, Colonel +Nathan Dennison, Lieutenant Colonel George Dorrance, Major John Garrett, +Captain Samuel Ransom, Captain Dethrie Hewitt, and some others. + +“Now, gentlemen, tell us all that you saw,” continued Colonel Butler +courteously. “You will pardon so many questions, but we must be careful. +You will see that yourselves. But I am a New England man myself, from +Connecticut, and I have met Adam Colfax. I recall now that we have heard +of you, also, and we are grateful for your coming. Will you and your +comrades tell us all that you have seen and heard?” + +The five felt a decided change in the atmosphere. They were no longer +possible Tories or renegades, bringing an alarm at one point when it +should be dreaded at another. The men drew closely around them, and +listened as the tallow wicks sputtered in the dim room. Henry spoke +first, and the others in their turn. Every one of them spoke tersely but +vividly in the language of the forest. They felt deeply what they had +seen, and they drew the same picture for their listeners. Gradually the +faces of the Wyoming men became shadowed. This was a formidable tale +that they were hearing, and they could not doubt its truth. + +“It is worse than I thought it could be,” said Colonel Butler at last. +“How many men do you say they have, Mr. Ware?” + +“Close to fifteen hundred.” + +“All trained warriors and soldiers. And at the best we cannot raise more +than three hundreds including old men and boys, and our men, too, are +farmers.” + +“But we can beat them. Only give us a chance, Colonel!” exclaimed +Captain Ransom. + +“I'm afraid the chance will come too soon,” said Colonel Butler, and +then turning to the five: “Help us all you can. We need scouts and +riflemen. Come to the fort for any food and ammunition you may need.” + +The five gave their most earnest assurances that they would stay, and +do all in their power. In fact, they had come for that very purpose. +Satisfied now that Colonel Butler and his officers had implicit faith in +them they went forth to find that, despite the night and the darkness, +fugitives were already crossing the river to seek refuge in Forty Fort, +bringing with them tales of death and devastation, some of which were +exaggerated, but too many true in all their hideous details. Men had +been shot and scalped in the fields, houses were burning, women and +children were captives for a fate that no one could foretell. Red ruin +was already stalking down the valley. + +The farmers were bringing their wives and children in canoes and dugouts +across the river. Here and there a torch light flickered on the surface +of the stream, showing the pale faces of the women and children, too +frightened to cry. They had fled in haste, bringing with them only the +clothes they wore and maybe a blanket or two. The borderers knew too +well what Indian war was, with all its accompaniments of fire and the +stake. + +Henry and his comrades helped nearly all that night. They secured a +large boat and crossed the river again and again, guarding the fugitives +with their rifles, and bringing comfort to many a timid heart. Indian +bands had penetrated far into the Wyoming Valley, but they felt sure +that none were yet in the neighborhood of Forty Fort. + +It was about three o'clock in the morning when the last of the fugitives +who had yet come was inside Forty Fort, and the labors of the five, had +they so chosen, were over for the time. But their nerves were tuned to +so high a pitch, and they felt so powerfully the presence of danger, +that they could not rest, nor did they have any desire for sleep. + + +The boat in which they sat was a good one, with two pairs of oars. It +had been detailed for their service, and they decided to pull up the +river. They thought it possible that they might see the advance of the +enemy and bring news worth the telling. Long Jim and Tom Ross took the +oars, and their powerful arms sent the boat swiftly along in the shadow +of the western bank. Henry and Paul looked back and saw dim lights at +the fort and a few on either shore. The valley, the high mountain wall, +and everything else were merged in obscurity. + +Both the youths were oppressed heavily by the sense of danger, not for +themselves, but for others. In that Kentucky of theirs, yet so new, +few people lived beyond the palisades, but here were rich and scattered +settlements; and men, even in the face of great peril, are always loth +to abandon the homes that they have built with so much toil. + +Tom Ross and Long Jim continued to pull steadily with the long strokes +that did not tire them, and the lights of the fort and houses sank out +of sight. Before them lay the somber surface of the rippling river, the +shadowy hills, and silence. The world seemed given over to the night +save for themselves, but they knew too well to trust to such apparent +desertion. At such hours the Indian scouts come, and Henry did not doubt +that they were already near, gathering news of their victims for the +Indian and Tory horde. Therefore, it was the part of his comrades and +himself to use the utmost caution as they passed up the river. + +They bugged the western shore, where they were shadowed by banks and +bushes, and now they went slowly, Long Jim and Tom Ross drawing their +oars so carefully through the water that there was never a plash to +tell of their passing. Henry was in the prow of the boat, bent forward +a little, eyes searching the surface of the river, and ears intent upon +any sound that might pass on the bank. Suddenly he gave a little signal +to the rowers and they let their oars rest. + +“Bring the boat in closer to the bank,” he whispered. “Push it gently +among those bushes where we cannot be seen from above.” + +Tom and Jim obeyed. The boat slid softly among tall bushes that shadowed +the water, and was hidden completely. Then Henry stepped out, crept +cautiously nearly up the bank, which was here very low, and lay pressed +closely against the earth, but supported by the exposed root of a tree. +He had heard voices, those of Indians, he believed, and he wished to +see. Peering through a fringe of bushes that lined the bank he saw seven +warriors and one white face sitting under the boughs of a great oak. +The face was that of Braxton Wyatt, who was now in his element, with a +better prospect of success than any that he had ever known before. Henry +shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had spared Wyatt's life +when he might have taken it. + + +But Henry was lying against the bank to hear what these men might be +saying, not to slay. Two of the warriors, as he saw by their paint, were +Wyandots, and he understood the Wyandot tongue. Moreover, his slight +knowledge of Iroquois came into service, and gradually he gathered the +drift of their talk. Two miles nearer Forty Fort was a farmhouse one of +the Wyandots had seen it-not yet abandoned by its owner, who believed +that his proximity to Forty Fort assured his safety. He lived there with +his wife and five children, and Wyatt and the Indians planned to raid +the place before daylight and kill them all. Henry had heard enough. He +slid back from the bank to the water and crept into the boat. + +“Pull back down the river as gently as you can,” he whispered, “and then +I'll tell you.” + +The skilled oarsmen carried the boat without a splash several hundred +yards down the stream, and then Henry told the others of the fiendish +plan that he had heard. + +“I know that man,” said Shif'less Sol. “His name is Standish. I was +there nine or ten hours ago, an' I told him it wuz time to take his +family an' run. But he knowed more'n I did. Said he'd stay, he wuzn't +afraid, an' now he's got to pay the price.” + +“No, he mustn't do that,” said Henry. “It's too much to pay for just +being foolish, when everybody is foolish sometimes. Boys, we can yet +save that man an' his wife and children. Aren't you willing to do it?” + +“Why, course,” said Long Jim. “Like ez not Standish will shoot at us +when we knock on his door, but let's try it.” + +The others nodded assent. + +“How far back from the river is the Standish house, Sol?” asked Henry. + +“'Bout three hundred yards, I reckon, and' it ain't more'n a mile down.” + +“Then if we pull with all our might, we won't be too late. Tom, you and +Jim give Sol and me the oars now.” + +Henry and the shiftless one were fresh, and they sent the boat shooting +down stream, until they stopped at a point indicated by Sol. They leaped +ashore, drew the boat down the bank, and hastened toward a log house +that they saw standing in a clump of trees. The enemy had not yet come, +but as they swiftly approached the house a dog ran barking at them. The +shiftless one swung his rifle butt, and the dog fell unconscious. + +“I hated to do it, but I had to,” he murmured. The next moment Henry was +knocking at the door. + +“Up! Up!” he cried, “the Indians are at hand, and you must run for your +lives!” + +How many a time has that terrible cry been heard on the American border! + +The sound of a man's voice, startled and angry, came to their ears, and +then they heard him at the door. + +“Who are you?” he cried. “Why are you beating on my door at such a +time?” + +“We are friends, Mr. Standish,” cried Henry, “and if you would save your +wife and children you must go at once! Open the door! Open, I say!” + +The man inside was in a terrible quandary. It was thus that renegades +or Indians, speaking the white man's tongue, sometimes bade a door to be +opened, in order that they might find an easy path to slaughter. But the +voice outside was powerfully insistent, it had the note of truth; his +wife and children, roused, too, were crying out, in alarm. Henry knocked +again on the door and shouted to him in a voice, always increasing in +earnestness, to open and flee. Standish could resist no longer. He took +down the bar and flung open the door, springing back, startled at the +five figures that stood before him. In the dusk he did not remember +Shif'less Sol. + +“Mr. Standish,” Henry said, speaking rapidly, “we are, as you can see, +white. You will be attacked here by Indians and renegades within half +an hour. We know that, because we heard them talking from the bushes. +We have a boat in the river; you can reach it in five minutes. Take your +wife and children, and pull for Forty Fort.” + +Standish was bewildered. + +“How do I know that you are not enemies, renegades, yourselves?” he +asked. + +“If we had been that you'd be a dead man already,” said Shif'less Sol. + +It was a grim reply, but it was unanswerable, and Standish recognized +the fact. His wife had felt the truth in the tones of the strangers, +and was begging him to go. Their children were crying at visions of the +tomahawk and scalping knife now so near. + +“We'll go,” said Standish. “At any rate, it can't do any harm. We'll get +a few things together.” + +“Do not wait for anything!” exclaimed Henry. “You haven't a minute to +spare! Here are more blankets! Take them and run for the boat! Sol and +Jim, see them on board, and then come back!” + +Carried away by such fire and earnestness, Standish and his family ran +for the boat. Jim and the shiftless one almost threw them on board, +thrust a pair of oars into the bands of Standish, another into the hands +of his wife, and then told them to pull with all their might for the +fort. + +“And you,” cried Standish, “what becomes of you?” + +Then a singular expression passed over his face-he had guessed Henry's +plan. + +“Don't you trouble about us,” said the shiftless one. “We will come +later. Now pull! pull!” + +Standish and his wife swung on the oars, and in two minutes the boat and +its occupants were lost in the darkness. Tom Ross and Sol did not pause +to watch them, but ran swiftly back to the house. Henry was at the door. + +“Come in,” he said briefly, and they entered. Then he closed the door +and dropped the bar into place. Shif'less Sol and Paul were already +inside, one sitting on the chair and the other on the edge of the bed. +Some coals, almost hidden under ashes, smoldered and cast a faint light +in the room, the only one that the house had, although it was divided +into two parts by a rough homespun curtain. Henry opened one of the +window shutters a little and looked out. The dawn had not yet come, but +it was not a dark night, and he looked over across the little clearing +to the trees beyond. On that side was a tiny garden, and near the wall +of the house some roses were blooming. He could see the glow of pink and +red. But no enemy bad yet approached. Searching the clearing carefully +with those eyes of his, almost preternaturally keen, he was confident +that the Indians were still in the woods. He felt an intense thrill of +satisfaction at the success of his plan so far. + +He was not cruel, he never rejoiced in bloodshed, but the borderer alone +knew what the border suffered, and only those who never saw or felt the +torture could turn the other cheek to be smitten. The Standish house had +made a sudden and ominous change of tenants. + +“It will soon be day,” said Henry, “and farmers are early risers. Kindle +up that fire a little, will you, Sol? I want some smoke to come out of +the chimney.” + +The shiftless one raked away the ashes, and put on two or three pieces +of wood that lay on the hearth. Little flames and smoke arose. Henry +looked curiously about the house. It was the usual cabin of the +frontier, although somewhat larger. The bed on which Shif'less Sol sat +was evidently that of the father and mother, while two large ones behind +the curtain were used by the children. On the shelf stood a pail half +full of drinking water, and by the side of it a tin cup. Dried herbs +hung over the fireplace, and two or three chests stood in the corners. +The clothing of the children was scattered about. Unprepared food for +breakfast stood on a table. Everything told of a hasty flight and its +terrible need. Henry was already resolved, but his heart hardened within +him as he saw. + +He took the hatchet from his belt and cut one of the hooks for the +door bar nearly in two. The others said not a word. They had no need +to speak. They understood everything that he did. He opened the window +again and looked out. Nothing yet appeared. “The dawn will come in three +quarters of an hour,” he said, “and we shall not have to wait long for +what we want to do.” + +He sat down facing the door. All the others were sitting, and they, too, +faced the door. Everyone had his rifle across his knees, with one hand +upon the hammer. The wood on the hearth sputtered as the fire spread, +and the flames grew. Beyond a doubt a thin spire of smoke was rising +from the chimney, and a watching eye would see this sign of a peaceful +and unsuspecting mind. + +“I hope Braxton Wyatt will be the first to knock at our door,” said +Shif'less Sol. + +“I wouldn't be sorry,” said Henry. + +Paul was sitting in a chair near the fire, and he said nothing. He hoped +the waiting would be very short. The light was sufficient for him to see +the faces of his comrades, and he noticed that they were all very tense. +This was no common watch that they kept. Shif'less Sol remained on the +bed, Henry sat on another of the chairs, Tom Ross was on one of the +chests with his back to the wall. Long Jim was near the curtain. Close +by Paul was a home-made cradle. He put down his hand and touched it. He +was glad that it was empty now, but the sight of it steeled his heart +anew for the task that lay before them. + +Ten silent minutes passed, and Henry went to the window again. He did +not open it, but there was a crack through which he could see. The +others said nothing, but watched his face. When he turned away they knew +that the moment was at hand. + +“They've just come from the woods,” he said, “and in a minute they'll be +at the door. Now, boys, take one last look at your rifles.” + +A minute later there was a sudden sharp knock at the door, but no answer +came from within. The knock was repeated, sharper and louder, and Henry, +altering his voice as much as possible, exclaimed like one suddenly +awakened from sleep: + +“Who is it? What do you want?” + +Back came a voice which Henry knew to be that of Braxton Wyatt: + +“We've come from farther up the valley. We're scouts, we've been up to +the Indian country. We're half starved. Open and give us food!” + +“I don't believe you,” replied Henry. “Honest people don't come to my +door at this time in the morning.” + +Then ensued a few moments of silence, although Paul, with his vivid +fancy, thought he heard whispering on the other side of the door. + +“Open!” cried Wyatt, “or we'll break your door down!” Henry said +nothing, nor did any of the others. They did not stir. The fire crackled +a little, but there was no other sound in the Standish house. Presently +they heard a slight noise outside, that of light feet. + +“They are going for a log with which to break the door in,” whispered +Henry. “They won't have to look far. The wood pile isn't fifty feet +away.” + +“An' then,” said Shif'less Sol, “they won't have much left to do but to +take the scalps of women an' little children.” + +Every figure in the Standish house stiffened at the shiftless one's +significant words, and the light in the eyes grew sterner. Henry went +to the door, put his ear to the line where it joined the wall, and +listened. + +“They've got their log,” he said, “and in half a minute they'll rush it +against the door.” + +He came back to his old position. Paul's heart began to thump, and his +thumb fitted itself over the trigger of his cocked rifle. Then they +heard rapid feet, a smash, a crash, and the door flew open. A half dozen +Iroquois and a log that they held between them were hurled into the +middle of the room. The door had given away so easily and unexpectedly +that the warriors could not check themselves, and two or three fell +with the log. But they sprang like cats to their feet, and with their +comrades uttered a cry that filled the whole cabin with its terrible +sound and import. + +The Iroquois, keen of eyes and quick of mind, saw the trap at once. +The five grim figures, rifle in hand and finger on trigger, all waiting +silent and motionless were far different from what they expected. Here +could be no scalps, with the long, silky hair of women and children. + +There was a moment's pause, and then the Indians rushed at their foes. +Five fingers pulled triggers, flame leaped from five muzzles, and in an +instant the cabin was filled with smoke and war shouts, but the warriors +never had a chance. They could only strike blindly with their tomahawks, +and in a half minute three of them, two wounded, rushed through the door +and fled to the woods. They had been preceded already by Braxton Wyatt, +who had hung back craftily while the Iroquois broke down the door. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. WYOMING + + +The five made no attempt to pursue. In fact, they did not leave the +cabin, but stood there a while, looking down at the fallen, hideous with +war paint, but now at the end of their last trail. Their tomahawks lay +upon the floor, and glittered when the light from the fire fell upon +them. Smoke, heavy with the odor of burned gunpowder, drifted about the +room. + +Henry threw open the two shuttered windows, and fresh currents of air +poured into the room. Over the mountains in the east came the first +shaft of day. The surface of the river was lightening. + +“What shall we do with them?” asked Paul, pointing to the silent forms +on the floor. + +“Leave them,” said Henry. “Butler's army is burning everything before +it, and this house and all in it is bound to go. You notice, however, +that Braxton Wyatt is not here.” + +“Trust him to escape every time,” said Shif'less Sol. “Of course he +stood back while the Indians rushed the house. But ez shore ez we live +somebody will get him some day. People like that can't escape always.” + +They slipped from the house, turning toward the river bank, and not long +after it was full daylight they were at Forty Fort again, where they +found Standish and his family. Henry replied briefly to the man's +questions, but two hours later a scout came in and reported the grim +sight that he had seen in the Standish home. No one could ask for +further proof of the fealty of the five, who sought a little sleep, but +before noon were off again. + +They met more fugitives, and it was now too dangerous to go farther up +the valley. But not willing to turn back, they ascended the mountains +that hem it in, and from the loftiest point that they could find sought +a sight of the enemy. + +It was an absolutely brilliant day in summer. The blue of the heavens +showed no break but the shifting bits of white cloud, and the hills and +mountains rolled away, solid masses of rich, dark green. The river, a +beautiful river at any time, seemed from this height a great current of +quicksilver. Henry pointed to a place far up the stream where black dots +appeared on its surface. These dots were moving, and they came on in +four lines. + +“Boys,” he said, “you know what those lines of black dots are?” + +“Yes,” replied Shif'less Sol, “it's Butler's army of Indians, Tories, +Canadians, an' English. They've come from Tioga Point on the river, an' +our Colonel Butler kin expect 'em soon.” + +The sunlight became dazzling, and showed the boats, despite the +distance, with startling clearness. The five, watching from their peak, +saw them turn in toward the land, where they poured forth a motley +stream of red men and white, a stream that was quickly swallowed up in +the forest. + +“They are coming down through the woods on the fort, said Tom Ross. + +“And they're coming fast,” said Henry. “It's for us to carry the +warning.” + +They sped back to the Wyoming fort, spreading the alarm as they passed, +and once more they were in the council room with Colonel Zebulon Butler +and his officers around him. + +“So they are at hand, and you have seen them?” said the colonel. + +“Yes,” replied Henry, the spokesman, “they came down from Tioga Point +in boats, but have disembarked and are advancing through the woods. They +will be here today.” + +There was a little silence in the room. The older men understood the +danger perhaps better than the younger, who were eager for battle. + +“Why should we stay here and wait for them?” exclaimed one of the +younger captains at length-some of these captains were mere boys. “Why +not go out, meet them, and beat them?” + +“They outnumber us about five to one,” said Henry. “Brant, if he is +still with them, though he may have gone to some other place from Tioga +Point, is a great captain. So is Timmendiquas, the Wyandot, and they say +that the Tory leader is energetic and capable.” + +“It is all true!” exclaimed Colonel Butler. “We must stay in the fort! +We must not go out to meet them! We are not strong enough!” + +A murmur of protest and indignation came from the younger officers. + +“And leave the valley to be ravaged! Women and children to be scalped, +while we stay behind log walls!” said one of them boldly. + +The men in the Wyoming fort were not regular troops, merely militia, +farmers gathered hastily for their own defense. + +Colonel Butler flushed. + +“We have induced as many as we could to seek refuge,” he said. “It hurts +me as much as you to have the valley ravaged while we sit quiet here. +But I know that we have no chance against so large a force, and if we +fall what is to become of the hundreds whom we now protect?” + +But the murmur of protest grew. All the younger men were indignant. They +would not seek shelter for themselves while others were suffering. A +young lieutenant saw from a window two fires spring up and burn like +torch lights against the sky. They were houses blazing before the Indian +brand. + +“Look at that!” he cried, pointing with an accusing finger, “and we are +here, under cover, doing nothing!” + +A deep angry mutter went about the room, but Colonel Butler, although +the flush remained on his face, still shook his head. He glanced at Tom +Ross, the oldest of the five. + +“You know about the Indian force,” he exclaimed. “What should we do?” + +The face of Tom Ross was very grave, and he spoke slowly, as was his +wont. + +“It's a hard thing to set here,” he exclaimed, “but it will be harder to +go out an' meet 'em on their own ground, an' them four or five to one.” + +“We must not go out,” repeated the Colonel, glad of such backing. + +The door was thrust open, and an officer entered. + +“A rumor has just arrived, saying that the entire Davidson family has +been killed and scalped,” he said. + +A deep, angry cry went up. Colonel Butler and the few who stood with +him were overborne. Such things as these could not be endured, and +reluctantly the commander gave his consent. They would go out and +fight. The fort and its enclosures were soon filled with the sounds of +preparation, and the little army was formed rapidly. + +“We will fight by your side, of course,” said Henry, “but we wish to +serve on the flank as an independent band. We can be of more service in +that manner.” + +The colonel thanked them gratefully. + +“Act as you think best,” he said. + +The five stood near one of the gates, while the little force formed +in ranks. Almost for the first time they were gloomy upon going into +battle. They had seen the strength of that army of Indians, renegades, +Tories, Canadians, and English advancing under the banner of England, +and they knew the power and fanaticism of the Indian leaders. They +believed that the terrible Queen Esther, tomahawk in hand, had +continually chanted to them her songs of blood as they came down the +river. It was now the third of July, and valley and river were beautiful +in the golden sunlight. The foliage showed vivid and deep green on +either line of high hills. The summer sun had never shown more kindly +over the lovely valley. + +The time was now three o'clock. The gates of the fort were thrown open, +and the little army marched out, only three hundred, of whom seventy +were old men, or boys so young that in our day they would be called +children. Yet they marched bravely against the picked warriors of the +Iroquois, trained from infancy to the forest and war, and a formidable +body of white rovers who wished to destroy the little colony of +“rebels,” as they called them. + +Small though it might be, it was a gallant army. Young and old held +their heads high. A banner was flying, and a boy beat a steady insistent +roll upon a drum. Henry and his comrades were on the left flank, the +river was on the right. The great gates had closed behind them, shutting +in the women and the children. The sun blazed down, throwing everything +into relief with its intense, vivid light playing upon the brown faces +of the borderers, their rifles and their homespun clothes. Colonel +Butler and two or three of his officers were on horseback, leading the +van. Now that the decision was to fight, the older officers, who had +opposed it, were in the very front. Forward they went, and spread out +a little, but with the right flank still resting on the river, and the +left extended on the plain. + +The five were on the edge of the plain, a little detached from the +others, searching the forest for a sign of the enemy, who was already so +near. Their gloom did not decrease. Neither the rolling of the drum nor +the flaunting of the banner had any effect. Brave though the men might +be, this was not the way in which they should meet an Indian foe who +outnumbered them four or five to one. + +“I don't like it,” muttered Tom Ross. + +“Nor do I,” said Henry, “but remember that whatever happens we all stand +together.” + +“We remember!” said the others. + +On-they went, and the five moving faster were now ahead of the main +force some hundred yards. They swung in a little toward the river. The +banks here were highland off to the left was a large swamp. The five now +checked speed and moved with great wariness. They saw nothing, and they +heard nothing, either, until they went forty or fifty yards farther. +Then a low droning sound came to their ears. It was the voice of one yet +far away, but they knew it. It was the terrible chant of Queen Esther, +in this moment the most ruthless of all the savages, and inflaming them +continuously for the combat. + +The five threw themselves flat on their faces, and waited a little. The +chant grew louder, and then through the foliage they saw the ominous +figure approaching. She was much as she had been on that night when they +first beheld her. She wore the same dress of barbaric colors, she swung +the same great tomahawk about her head, and sang all the time of fire +and blood and death. + +They saw behind her the figures of chiefs, naked to the breech cloth for +battle, their bronze bodies glistening with the war paint, and bright +feathers gleaming in their hair. Henry recognized the tall form of +Timmendiquas, notable by his height, and around him his little band of +Wyandots, ready to prove themselves mighty warriors to their eastern +friends the Iroquois. Back of these was a long line of Indians and their +white allies, Sir John Johnson's Royal Greens and Butler's Rangers +in the center, bearing the flag of England. The warriors, of whom the +Senecas were most numerous, were gathered in greatest numbers on their +right flank, facing the left flank of the Americans. Sangerachte and +Hiokatoo, who had taken two English prisoners at Braddock's defeat, and +who had afterwards burned them both alive with his own hand, were the +principal leaders of the Senecas. Henry caught a glimpse of “Indian” + Butler in the center, with a great blood-red handkerchief tied around +his head, and, despite the forest, he noticed with a great sinking of +the heart how far the hostile line extended. It could wrap itself like a +python around the defense. + +“It's a tale that will soon be told,” said Paul. + +They went back swiftly, and warned Colonel Butler that the enemy was +at band. Even as they spoke they heard the loud wailing chant of Queen +Esther, and then came the war whoop, pouring from a thousand throats, +swelling defiant and fierce like the cry of a wounded beast. The +farmers, the boys, and the old men, most of whom had never been in +battle, might well tremble at this ominous sound, so great in volume +and extending so far into the forest. But they stood firm, drawing +themselves into a somewhat more compact body, and still advancing with +their banners flying, and the boy beating out that steady roll on the +drum. + +The enemy now came into full sight, and Colonel Butler deployed his +force in line of battle, his right resting on the high bank of the river +and his left against the swamp. Forward pressed the motley army of the +other Butler, he of sanguinary and cruel fame, and the bulk of his +force came into view, the sun shining down on the green uniforms of the +English and the naked brown bodies of the Iroquois. + +The American commander gave the order to fire. Eager fingers were +already on the trigger, and a blaze of light ran along the entire rank. +The Royal Greens and Rangers, although replying with their own fire, +gave back before the storm of bullets, and the Wyoming men, with a shout +of triumph, sprang forward. It was always a characteristic of the border +settler, despite many disasters and a knowledge of Indian craft and +cunning, to rush straight at his foe whenever he saw him. His, unless +a trained forest warrior himself, was a headlong bravery, and now this +gallant little force asked for nothing but to come to close grips with +the enemy. + +The men in the center with “Indian” Butler gave back still more. With +cries of victory the Wyoming men pressed forward, firing rapidly, and +continuing to drive the mongrel white force. The rifles were cracking +rapidly, and smoke arose over the two lines. The wind caught wisps of it +and carried them off down the river. + +“It goes better than I thought,” said Paul as he reloaded his rifle. + +“Not yet,” said Henry, “we are fighting the white men only. Where are +all the Indians, who alone outnumber our men more than two to one?” + +“Here they come,” said Shif'less Sol, pointing to the depths of the +swamp, which was supposed to protect the left flank of the Wyoming +force. + +The five saw in the spaces, amid the briars and vines, scores of dark +figures leaping over the mud, naked to the breech cloth, armed with +rifle and tomahawk, and rushing down upon the unprotected side of their +foe. The swamp had been but little obstacle to them. + +Henry and his comrades gave the alarm at once. As many as possible were +called off immediately from the main body, but they were not numerous +enough to have any effect. The Indians came through the swamp in +hundreds and hundreds, and, as they uttered their triumphant yell, +poured a terrible fire into the Wyoming left flank. The defenders were +forced to give ground, and the English and Tories came on again. + +The fire was now deadly and of great volume. The air was filled with +the flashing of the rifles. The cloud of smoke grew heavier, and faces, +either from heat or excitement, showed red through it. The air was +filled with bullets, and the Wyoming force was being cut down fast, as +the fire of more than a thousand rifles converged upon it. + +The five at the fringe of the swamp loaded and fired as fast as they +could at the Indian horde, but they saw that it was creeping closer and +closer, and that the hail of bullets it sent in was cutting away +the whole left flank of the defenders. They saw the tall figure of +Timmendiquas, a very god of war, leading on the Indians, with his +fearless Wyandots in a close cluster around him. Colonel John Durkee, +gathering up a force of fifty or sixty, charged straight at the +warriors, but he was killed by a withering volley, which drove his men +back. + +Now occurred a fatal thing, one of those misconceptions which often +decide the fate of a battle. The company of Captain Whittlesey, on the +extreme left, which was suffering most severely, was ordered to fall +back. The entire little army, which was being pressed hard now, seeing +the movement of Whittlesey, began to retreat. Even without the mistake +it is likely they would have lost in the face of such numbers. + +The entire horde of Indians, Tories, Canadians, English, and renegades, +uttering a tremendous yell, rushed forward. Colonel Zebulon Butler, +seeing the crisis, rode up and down in front of his men, shouting: +“Don't leave me, my children! the victory is ours!” Bravely his officers +strove to stop the retreat. Every captain who led a company into action +was killed. Some of these captains were but boys. The men were falling +by dozens. + +All the Indians, by far the most formidable part of the invading force, +were through the swamp now, and, dashing down their unloaded rifles, +threw themselves, tomahawk in hand, upon the defense. Not more than two +hundred of the Wyoming men were left standing, and the impact of seven +or eight hundred savage warriors was so great that they were hurled back +in confusion. A wail of grief and terror came from the other side of +the river, where a great body of women and children were watching the +fighting. + +“The battle's lost,” said Shif'less Sol. + +“Beyond hope of saving it,” said Henry, “but, boys, we five are alive +yet, and we'll do our best to help the others protect the retreat.” + +They kept under cover, fighting as calmly as they could amid such a +terrible scene, picking off warrior after warrior, saving more than one +soldier ere the tomahawk fell. Shif'less Sol took a shot at “Indian” + Butler, but he was too far away, and the bullet missed him. + +“I'd give five years of my life if he were fifty yards nearer,” + exclaimed the shiftless one. + +But the invading force came in between and he did not get another shot. +There was now a terrible medley, a continuous uproar, the crashing fire +of hundreds of rifles, the shouts of the Indians, and the cries of the +wounded. Over them all hovered smoke and dust, and the air was heavy, +too, with the odor of burnt gunpowder. The division of old men and very +young boys stood next, and the Indians were upon them, tomahawk in hand, +but in the face of terrible odds all bore themselves with a valor worthy +of the best of soldiers. Three fourths of them died that day, before +they were driven back on the fort. + +The Wyoming force was pushed away from the edge of the swamp, which had +been some protection to the left, and they were now assailed from all +sides except that of the river. “Indian” Butler raged at the head of his +men, who had been driven back at first, and who had been saved by the +Indians. Timmendiquas, in the absence of Brant, who was not seen upon +this field, became by valor and power of intellect the leader of all the +Indians for this moment. The Iroquois, although their own fierce chiefs, +I-Tiokatoo, Sangerachte, and the others fought with them, unconsciously +obeyed him. Nor did the fierce woman, Queen Esther, shirk the battle. +Waving her great tomahawk, she was continually among the warriors, +singing her song of war and death. + +They were driven steadily back toward the fort, and the little band +crumbled away beneath the deadly fire. Soon none would be left unless +they ran for their lives. The five drew away toward the forest. They +saw that the fort itself could not hold out against such a numerous and +victorious foe, and they had no mind to be trapped. But their retreat +was slow, and as they went they sent bullet after bullet into the Indian +flank. Only a small percentage of the Wyoming force was left, and it now +broke. Colonel Butler and Colonel Dennison, who were mounted, reached +the fort. Some of the men jumped into the river, swam to the other shore +and escaped. Some swam to a little island called Monocacy, and hid, but +the Tories and Indians hunted them out and slew them. One Tory found his +brother there, and killed him with his own hand, a deed of unspeakable +horror that is yet mentioned by the people of that region. A few fled +into the forest and entered the fort at night. + + + + +CHAPTER X. THE BLOODY ROCK + + +Seeing that all was lost, the five drew farther away into the woods. +They were not wounded, yet their faces were white despite the tan. They +had never before looked upon so terrible a scene. The Indians, wild with +the excitement of a great triumph and thirsting for blood, were running +over the field scalping the dead, killing some of the wounded, and +saving others for the worst of tortures. Nor were their white allies one +whit behind them. They bore a full part in the merciless war upon the +conquered. Timmendiquas, the great Wyandot, was the only one to show +nobility. Several of the wounded he saved from immediate death, and he +tried to hold back the frenzied swarm of old squaws who rushed forward +and began to practice cruelties at which even the most veteran warrior +might shudder. But Queen Esther urged them on, and “Indian” Butler +himself and the chiefs were afraid of her. + +Henry, despite himself, despite all his experience and powers of +self-control, shuddered from head to foot at the cries that came from +the lost field, and he was sure that the others were doing the same. The +sun was setting, but its dying light, brilliant and intense, tinged the +field as if with blood, showing all the yelling horde as the warriors +rushed about for scalps, or danced in triumph, whirling their hideous +trophies about their heads. Others were firing at men who were escaping +to the far bank of the Susquehanna, and others were already seeking the +fugitives in their vain hiding places on the little islet. + +The five moved farther into the forest, retreating slowly, and sending +in a shot now and then to protect the retreat of some fugitive who was +seeking the shelter of the woods. The retreat had become a rout and then +a massacre. The savages raged up and down in the greatest killing they +had known since Braddock's defeat. The lodges of the Iroquois would be +full of the scalps of white men. + +All the five felt the full horror of the scene, but it made its deepest +impress, perhaps, upon Paul. He had taken part in border battles before, +but this was the first great defeat. He was not blind to the valor and +good qualities of the Indian and his claim upon the wilderness, but he +saw the incredible cruelties that he could commit, and he felt a horror +of those who used him as an ally, a horror that he could never dismiss +from his mind as long as he lived. + +“Look!” he exclaimed, “look at that!” + +A man of seventy and a boy of fourteen were running for the forest. They +might have been grandfather and grandson. Undoubtedly they had fought +in the Battalion of the Very Old and the Very Young, and now, when +everything else was lost, they were seeking to save their lives in the +friendly shelter of the woods. But they were pursued by two groups of +Iroquois, four warriors in one, and three in the other, and the Indians +were gaining fast. + +“I reckon we ought to save them,” said Shif'less Sol. + +“No doubt of it,” said Henry. “Paul, you and Sol move off to the right +a little, and take the three, while the rest of us will look out for the +four.” + +The little band separated according to the directions, Paul and Sol +having the lighter task, as the others were to meet the group of four +Indians at closer range. Paul and Sol were behind some trees, and, +turning at an angle, they ran forward to intercept the three Indians. It +would have seemed to anyone who was not aware of the presence of friends +in the forest that the old man and the boy would surely be overtaken and +be tomahawked, but three rifles suddenly flashed among the foliage. Two +of the warriors in the group of four fell, and a third uttered a yell +of pain. Paul and Shif'less Sol fired at the same time at the group of +three. One fell before the deadly rifle of Shif'less Sol, but Paul only +grazed his man. Nevertheless, the whole pursuit stopped, and the boy +and the old man escaped to the forest, and subsequently to safety at the +Moravian towns. + +Paul, watching the happy effect of the shots, was about to say something +to Shif'less Sol, when an immense force was hurled upon him, and he was +thrown to the ground. His comrade was served in the same way, but the +shiftless one was uncommonly strong and agile. He managed to writhe half +way to his knees, and he shouted in a tremendous voice: + +“Run, Henry, run! You can't do anything for us now!” + +Braxton Wyatt struck him fiercely across the mouth. The blood came, +but the shiftless one merely spat it out, and looked curiously at the +renegade. + +“I've often wondered about you, Braxton,” he said calmly. “I used to +think that anybody, no matter how bad, had some good in him, but I +reckon you ain't got none.” + +Wyatt did not answer, but rushed forward in search of the others. +But Henry, Silent Tom, and Long Jim had vanished. A powerful party +of warriors had stolen upon Shif'less Sol and Paul, while they were +absorbed in the chase of the old man and the boy, and now they were +prisoners, bound securely. Braxton Wyatt came back from the fruitless +search for the three, but his face was full of savage joy as he looked +down at the captured two. + +“We could have killed you just as easily,” he said, “but we didn't +want to do that. Our friends here are going to have their fun with you +first.” + +Paul's cheeks whitened a little at the horrible suggestion, but +Shif'less Sol faced them boldly. Several white men in uniform had come +up, and among them was an elderly one, short and squat, and with a great +flame colored handkerchief tied around his bead. + +“You may burn us alive, or you may do other things jest ez bad to us, +all under the English flag,” said Shif'less Sol, “but I'm thinkin' that +a lot o' people in England will be ashamed uv it when they hear the +news.” + +“Indian” Butler and his uniformed soldiers turned away, leaving +Shif'less Sol and Paul in the hands of the renegade and the Iroquois. +The two prisoners were jerked to their feet and told to march. + + +“Come on, Paul,” said Shif'less Sol. “'Tain't wuth while fur us to +resist. But don't you quit hopin', Paul. We've escaped from many a tight +corner, an' mebbe we're goin' to do it ag'in.” + +“Shut up!” said Braxton Wyatt savagely. “If you say another word I'll +gag you in a way that will make you squirm.” + +Shif'less Sol looked him squarely in the eye. Solomon Hyde, who was not +shiftless at all, had a dauntless soul, and he was not afraid now in the +face of death preceded by long torture. + +“I had a dog once, Braxton Wyatt,” he said, “an' I reckon he wuz the +meanest, ornierest cur that ever lived. He liked to live on dirt, the +dirtier the place he could find the better; he'd rather steal his food +than get it honestly; he wuz sech a coward that he wuz afeard o' a +rabbit, but ef your back wuz turned to him he'd nip you in the ankle. +But bad ez that dog wuz, Braxton, he wuz a gentleman 'longside o' you.” + +Some of the Indians understood English, and Wyatt knew it. He snatched +a pistol from his belt, and was about to strike Sol with the butt of it, +but a tall figure suddenly appeared before him, and made a commanding +gesture. The gesture said plainly: “Do not strike; put that pistol +back!” Braxton Wyatt, whose soul was afraid within him, did not strike, +and he put the pistol back. + +It was Timmendiquas, the great White Lightning of the Wyandots, who +with his little detachment had proved that day how mighty the Wyandot +warriors were, full equals of Thayendanegea's Mohawks, the Keepers of +the Western Gate. He was bare to the waist. One shoulder was streaked +with blood from a slight wound, but his countenance was not on fire with +passion for torture and slaughter like those of the others. + +“There is no need to strike prisoners,” he said in English. “Their fate +will be decided later.” + +Paul thought that he caught a look of pity from the eyes of the great +Wyandot, and Shif'less Sol said: + +“I'm sorry, Timmendiquas, since I had to be captured, that you didn't +capture me yourself. I'm glad to say that you're a great warrior.” + +Wyatt growled under his breath, but he was still afraid to speak out, +although he knew that Timmendiquas was merely a distant and casual ally, +and had little authority in that army. Yet he was overawed, and so were +the Indians with him. + +“We were merely taking the prisoners to Colonel Butler,” he said. “That +is all.” + +Timmendiquas stared at him, and the renegade's face fell. But he and the +Indians went on with the prisoners, and Timmendiquas looked after them +until they were out of sight. + +“I believe White Lightning was sorry that we'd been captured,” whispered +Shif'less Sol. + +“I think so, too,” Paul whispered back. + +They had no chance for further conversation, as they were driven rapidly +now to that point of the battlefield which lay nearest to the fort, +and here they were thrust into the midst of a gloomy company, fellow +captives, all bound tightly, and many wounded. No help, no treatment of +any kind was offered for hurts. The Indians and renegades stood about +and yelled with delight when the agony of some man's wound wrung from +him a groan. The scene was hideous in every respect. The setting sun +shone blood red over forest, field, and river. Far off burning houses +still smoked like torches. But the mountain wall in the east, was +growing dusky with the coming twilight. From the island, where they were +massacring the fugitives in their vain hiding places, came the sound +of shots and cries, but elsewhere the firing had ceased. All who could +escape had done so already, and of the others, those who were dead were +fortunate. + +The sun sank like a red ball behind the mountains, and darkness swept +down over the earth. Fires began to blaze up here and there, some for +terrible purpose. The victorious Iroquois; stripped to the waist and +painted in glaring colors, joined in a savage dance that would remain +forever photographed on the eye of Paul Cotter. As they jumped to and +fro, hundreds of them, waving aloft tomahawks and scalping knives, both +of which dripped red, they sang their wild chant of war and triumph. +White men, too, as savage as they, joined them. Paul shuddered again +and again from head to foot at this sight of an orgy such as the mass of +mankind escapes, even in dreams. + +The darkness thickened, the dance grew wilder. It was like a carnival +of demons, but it was to be incited to a yet wilder pitch. A singular +figure, one of extraordinary ferocity, was suddenly projected into the +midst of the whirling crowd, and a chant, shriller and fiercer, rose +above all the others. The figure was that of Queen Esther, like some +monstrous creature out of a dim past, her great tomahawk stained with +blood, her eyes bloodshot, and stains upon her shoulders. Paul would +have covered his eyes had his hands not been tied instead, he turned his +head away. He could not bear to see more. But the horrible chant came to +his ears, nevertheless, and it was reinforced presently by other sounds +still more terrible. Fires sprang up in the forest, and cries came from +these fires. The victorious army of “Indian” Butler was beginning to +burn the prisoners alive. But at this point we must stop. The details +of what happened around those fires that night are not for the ordinary +reader. It suffices to say that the darkest deed ever done on the soil +of what is now the United States was being enacted. + +Shif'less Sol himself, iron of body and soul, was shaken. He could not +close his ears, if he would, to the cries that came from the fires, but +he shut his eyes to keep out the demon dance. Nevertheless, he opened +them again in a moment. The horrible fascination was too great. He saw +Queen Esther still shaking her tomahawk, but as he looked she suddenly +darted through the circle, warriors willingly giving way before her, and +disappeared in the darkness. The scalp dance went on, but it had lost +some of its fire and vigor. + +Shif'less Sol felt relieved. + +“She's gone,” he whispered to Paul, and the boy, too, then opened his +eyes. The rest of it, the mad whirlings and jumpings of the warriors, +was becoming a blur before him, confused and without meaning. + +Neither he nor Shif'less Sol knew how long they had been sitting there +on the ground, although it had grown yet darker, when Braxton Wyatt +thrust a violent foot against the shiftless one and cried: + +“Get up! You're wanted!” + +A half dozen Seneca warriors were with him, and there was no chance of +resistance. The two rose slowly to their feet, and walked where Braxton +Wyatt led. The Senecas came on either side, and close behind them, +tomahawks in their hands. Paul, the sensitive, who so often felt the +impression of coming events from the conditions around him, was sure +that they were marching to their fate. Death he did not fear so greatly, +although he did not want to die, but when a shriek came to him from one +of the fires that convulsive shudder shook him again from head to foot. +Unconsciously he strained at his bound arms, not for freedom, but that +he might thrust his fingers in his ears and shut out the awful sounds. +Shif'less Sol, because he could not use his hands, touched his shoulder +gently against Paul's. + +“Paul,” he whispered, “I ain't sure that we're goin' to die, leastways, +I still have hope; but ef we do, remember that we don't have to die but +oncet.” + +“I'll remember, Sol,” Paul whispered back. + +“Silence, there!” exclaimed Braxton Wyatt. But the two had said all they +wanted to say, and fortunately their senses were somewhat dulled. They +had passed through so much that they were like those who are under the +influence of opiates. The path was now dark, although both torches and +fires burned in the distance. Presently they heard that chant with which +they had become familiar, the dreadful notes of the hyena woman, and +they knew that they were being taken into her presence, for what purpose +they could not tell, although they were sure that it was a bitter one. +As they approached, the woman's chant rose to an uncommon pitch of +frenzy, and Paul felt the blood slowly chilling within him. + +“Get up there!” exclaimed Braxton Wyatt, and the Senecas gave them both +a push. Other warriors who were standing at the edge of an open space +seized them and threw them forward with much violence. When they +struggled into a sitting position, they saw Queen Esther standing upon a +broad flat rock and whirling in a ghastly dance that had in it something +Oriental. She still swung the great war hatchet that seemed always to be +in her hand. Her long black hair flew wildly about her head, and her red +dress gleamed in the dusk. Surely no more terrible image ever appeared +in the American wilderness! In front of her, lying upon the ground, were +twenty bound Americans, and back of them were Iroquois in dozens, with a +sprinkling of their white allies. + +What it all meant, what was about to come to pass, nether Paul nor +Shif'less Sol could guess, but Queen Esther sang: + + We have found them, the Yengees + Who built their houses in the valley, + They came forth to meet us in battle, + Our rifles and tomahawks cut them down, + As the Yengees lay low the forest. + Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children, + The Mighty Six Nations, greatest of men. + + There will be feasting in the lodges of the Iroquois, + And scalps will hang on the high ridge pole, + But wolves will roam where the Yengees dwelt + And will gnaw the bones of them all, + Of the man, the woman, and the child. + Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children, + The Mighty Six Nations, greatest of men. + +Such it sounded to Shif'less Sol, who knew the tongue of the Iroquois, +and so it went on, verse after verse, and at the end of each verse came +the refrain, in which the warriors joined: + +“Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children. The mighty Six +Nations, greatest of men.” + +“What under the sun is she about?” whispered Shif'less Sol. + +“It is a fearful face,” was Paul's only reply. + +Suddenly the woman, without stopping her chant, made a gesture to +the warriors. Two powerful Senecas seized one of the bound prisoners, +dragged him to his feet, and held him up before her. She uttered a +shout, whirled the great tomahawk about her head, its blade glittering +in the moonlight, and struck with all her might. The skull of the +prisoner was cleft to the chin, and without a cry he fell at the feet of +the woman who had killed him. Paul uttered a shout of horror, but it +was lost in the joyful yells of the Iroquois, who, at the command of the +woman, offered a second victim. Again the tomahawk descended, and again +a man fell dead without a sound. + +Shif'less Sol and Paul wrenched at their thongs, but they could not move +them. Braxton Wyatt laughed aloud. It was strange to see how fast one +with a bad nature could fall when the opportunities were spread before +him. Now he was as cruel as the Indians themselves. Wilder and shriller +grew the chant of the savage queen. She was intoxicated with blood. She +saw it everywhere. Her tomahawk clove a third skull, a fourth, a fifth, +a sixth, a seventh, and eighth. As fast as they fell the warriors at her +command brought up new victims for her weapon. Paul shut his eyes, but +he knew by the sounds what was passing. Suddenly a stern voice cried: + +“Hold, woman! Enough of this! Will your tomahawk never be satisfied?” + +Paul understood it, the meaning, but not the words. He opened his eyes +and saw the great figure of Timmendiquas striding forward, his hand +upraised in protest. + +The woman turned her fierce gaze upon the young chief. “Timmendiquas,” + she said, “we are the Iroquois, and we are the masters. You are far from +your own land, a guest in our lodges, and you cannot tell those who have +won the victory how they shall use it. Stand back!” + +A loud laugh came from the Iroquois. The fierce old chiefs, Hiokatoo and +Sangerachte, and a dozen warriors thrust themselves before Timmendiquas. +The woman resumed her chant, and a hundred throats pealed out with her +the chorus: + +Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children The mighty Six Nations, +greatest of men. + +She gave the signal anew. The ninth victim stood before her, and then +fell, cloven to the chin; then the tenth, and the eleventh, and the +twelfth, and the thirteenth, and the fourteenth, and the fifteenth, and +the sixteenth-sixteen bound men killed by one woman in less than fifteen +minutes. The four in that group who were left had all the while been +straining fearfully at their bonds. Now they had slipped or broken +them, and, springing to their feet, driven on by the mightiest of human +impulses, they dashed through the ring of Iroquois and into the forest. +Two were hunted down by the warriors and killed, but the other two, +Joseph Elliott and Lebbeus Hammond, escaped and lived to be old men, +feeling that life could never again hold for them anything so dreadful +as that scene at “The Bloody Rock.” + +A great turmoil and confusion arose as the prisoners fled and the +Indians pursued. Paul and Shif'less Sol; full of sympathy and pity for +the fugitives and having felt all the time that their turn, too, would +come under that dreadful tomahawk, struggled to their feet. They did +not see a form slip noiselessly behind them, but a sharp knife descended +once, then twice, and the bands of both fell free. + +“Run! run!” exclaimed the voice of Timmendiquas, low but penetrating. “I +would save you from this!” + +Amid the darkness and confusion the act of the great Wyandot was not +seen by the other Indians and the renegades. Paul flashed him one look +of gratitude, and then he and Shif'less Sol darted away, choosing a +course that led them from the crowd in pursuit of the other flying +fugitives. + +At such a time they might have secured a long lead without being +noticed, had it not been for the fierce swarm of old squaws who were +first in cruelty that night. A shrill wild howl arose, and the pointing +fingers of the old women showed to the warriors the two in flight. At +the same time several of the squaws darted forward to intercept the +fugitives. + +“I hate to hit a woman,” breathed Shif'less Sol to Paul, “but I'm goin' +to do it now.” + +A hideous figure sprang before them. Sol struck her face with his open +hand, and with a shriek she went down. He leaped over her, although +she clawed at his feet as he passed, and ran on, with Paul at his side. +Shots were now fired at him, but they went wild, but Paul, casting a +look backward out of the corner of his eye, saw that a real pursuit, +silent and deadly, had begun. Five Mohawk warriors, running swiftly, +were only a few hundred yards away. They carried rifle, tomahawk, and +knife, and Paul and Shif'less Sol were unarmed. Moreover, they were +coming fast, spreading out slightly, and the shiftless one, able even +at such a time to weigh the case coolly, saw that the odds were against +them. Yet he would not despair. Anything might happen. It was night. +There was little organization in the army of the Indians and of their +white allies, which was giving itself up to the enjoyment of scalps and +torture. Moreover, he and Paul were, animated by the love of life, which +is always stronger than the desire to give death. + +Their flight led them in a diagonal line toward the mountains. Only once +did the pursuers give tongue. Paul tripped over a root, and a triumphant +yell came from the Mohawks. But it merely gave him new life. He +recovered himself in an instant and ran faster. But it was terribly hard +work. He could hear Shif'less Sol's sobbing breath by his side, and he +was sure that his own must have the same sound for his comrade. + +“At any rate one uv 'em is beat,” gasped Shif'less Sol. “Only four are +ban-in' on now.” + +The ground rose a little and became rougher. The lights from the Indian +fires had sunk almost out of sight behind them, and a dense thicket lay +before them. Something stirred in the thicket, and the eyes of Shif'less +Sol caught a glimpse of a human shoulder. His heart sank like a plummet +in a pool. The Indians were ahead of them. They would be caught, and +would be carried back to become the victims of the terrible tomahawk. + +The figure in the bushes rose a little higher, the muzzle of a rifle was +projected, and flame leaped from the steel tube. + +But it was neither Shif'less Sol nor Paul who fell. They heard a cry +behind them, and when Shif'less Sol took a hasty glance backward he saw +one of the Mohawks fall. The three who were left hesitated and stopped. +When a second shot was fired from the bushes and another Mohawk went +down, the remaining two fled. + +Shif'less Sol understood now, and he rushed into the bushes, dragging +Paul after him. Henry, Tom, and Long Jim rose up to receive them. + +“So you wuz watchin' over us!” exclaimed the shiftless one joyously. “It +wuz you that clipped off the first Mohawk, an' we didn't even notice the +shot.” + +“Thank God, you were here!” exclaimed Paul. “You don't know what Sol and +I have seen!” + +Overwrought, he fell forward, but his comrades caught him. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. THE MELANCHOLY FLIGHT + + +Paul revived in a few minutes. They were still lying in the bushes, +and when he was able to stand up again, they moved at an angle several +hundred yards before they stopped. One pistol was thrust into Paul's +hand and another into that of Shif'less Sol. + +“Keep those until we can get rifles for you,” said Henry. “You may need +'em to-night.” + +They crouched down in the thicket and looked back toward the Indian +camp. The warriors whom they had repulsed were not returning with help, +and, for the moment, they seemed to have no enemy to fear, yet they +could still see through the woods the faint lights of the Indian camps, +and to Paul, at least, came the echoes of distant cries that told of +things not to be written. + +“We saw you captured, and we heard Sol's warning cry,” said Henry. +“There was nothing to do but run. Then we hid and waited a chance for +rescue.” + +“It would never have come if it had not been for Timmendiquas,” said +Paul. + +“Timmendiquas!” exclaimed Henry. + +“Yes, Timmendiquas,” said Paul, and then he told the story of “The +Bloody Rock,” and how, in the turmoil and excitement attending the +flight of the last four, Timmendiquas had cut the bonds of Shif'less Sol +and himself. + +“I think the mind o' White Lightnin', Injun ez he is,” said Shif'less +Sol, “jest naterally turned aginst so much slaughter an' torture o' +prisoners.” + +“I'm sure you're right,” said Henry. + +“'Pears strange to me,” said Long Jim Hart, “that Timmendiquas was made +an Injun. He's jest the kind uv man who ought to be white, an' he'd be +pow'ful useful, too. I don't jest eggzactly understan' it.” + +“He has certainly saved the lives of at least three of us,” said Henry. +“I hope we will get a chance to pay him back in full.” + +“But he's the only one,” said Shif'less Sol, thinking of all that he had +seen that night. “The Iroquois an' the white men that's allied with 'em +won't ever get any mercy from me, ef any uv 'em happen to come under +my thumb. I don't think the like o' this day an' night wuz ever done on +this continent afore. I'm for revenge, I am, like that place where the +Bible says, 'an eye for an eye, an' a tooth for a tooth,' an' I'm goin' +to stay in this part o' the country till we git it!” + +It was seldom that Shif'less Sol spoke with so much passion and energy. + +“We're all going to stay with you, Sol,” said Henry. “We're needed here. +I think we ought to circle about the fort, slip in if we can, and fight +with the defense.” + +“Yes, we'll do that,” said Shif'less Sol, “but the Wyoming fort can't +ever hold out. Thar ain't a hundred men left in it fit to fight, an' +thar are more than than a thousand howlin' devils outside ready to +attack it. Thar may be worse to come than anything we've yet seen.” + +“Still, we'll go in an' help,” said Henry. “Sol, when you an' Paul have +rested a little longer we'll make a big loop around in the woods, and +come up to the fort on the other side.” + +They were in full accord, and after an hour in the bushes, where they +lay completely hidden, recovering their vitality and energy, they +undertook to reach the fort and cabins inclosed by the palisades. +Paul was still weak from shock, but Shif'less Sol had fully recovered. +Neither bad weapons, but they were sure that the want could be supplied +soon. They curved around toward the west, intending to approach the fort +from the other side, but they did not wholly lose sight of the fires, +and they heard now and then the triumphant war whoop. The victors were +still engaged in the pleasant task of burning the prisoners to death. +Little did the five, seeing and feeling only their part of it there in +the dark woods, dream that the deeds of this day and night would soon +shock the whole civilized world, and remain, for generations, a crowning +act of infamy. But they certainly felt it deeply enough, and in each +heart burned a fierce desire for revenge upon the Iroquois. + +It was almost midnight when they secured entrance into the fort, which +was filled with grief and wailing. That afternoon more than one hundred +and fifty women within those walls had been made widows, and six hundred +children had been made orphans. But few men fit to bear arms were left +for its defense, and it was certain that the allied British and Indian +army would easily take it on the morrow. A demand for its surrender +in the name of King George III of England had already been made, and, +sitting at a little rough table in the cabin of Thomas Bennett, the +room lighted only by a single tallow wick, Colonel Butler and Colonel +Dennison were writing an agreement that the fort be surrendered the next +day, with what it should contain. But Colonel Butler put his wife on a +horse and escaped with her over the mountains. + +Stragglers, evading the tomahawk in the darkness, were coming in, only +to be surrendered the next day; others were pouring forth in a stream, +seeking the shelter of the mountains and the forest, preferring any +dangers that might be found there to the mercies of the victors. + +When Shif'less Sol learned that the fort was to be given up, he said: + +“It looks ez ef we had escaped from the Iroquois jest in time to beg 'em +to take us back.” + +“I reckon I ain't goin' to stay 'roun' here while things are bein' +surrendered,” said Long Jim Hart. + +“I'll do my surrenderin' to Iroquois when they've got my hands an' feet +tied, an' six or seven uv 'em are settin' on my back,” said Tom Ross. + +“We'll leave as soon as we can get arms for Sol and Paul,” said Henry. +“Of course it would be foolish of us to stay here and be captured again. +Besides, we'll be needed badly enough by the women and children that are +going.” + +Good weapons were easily obtained in the fort. It was far better to let +Sol and Paul have them than to leave them for the Indians. They were +able to select two fine rifles of the Kentucky pattern, long and +slender barreled, a tomahawk and knife for each, and also excellent +double-barreled pistols. The other three now had double-barreled +pistols, too. In addition they resupplied themselves with as much +ammunition as scouts and hunters could conveniently carry, and toward +morning left the fort. + +Sunrise found them some distance from the palisades, and upon the flank +of a frightened crowd of fugitives. It was composed of one hundred women +and children and a single man, James Carpenter, who was doing his best +to guide and protect them. They were intending to flee through the +wilderness to the Delaware and Lehigh settlements, chiefly Fort Penn, +built by Jacob Stroud, where Stroudsburg now is. + +When the five, darkened by weather and looking almost like Indians +themselves, approached, Carpenter stepped forward and raised his rifle. +A cry of dismay rose from the melancholy line, a cry so intensely bitter +that it cut Henry to the very heart. He threw up his hand, and exclaimed +in a loud voice: + +“We are friends, not Indians or Tories! We fought with you yesterday, +and we are ready to fight for you now!” + +Carpenter dropped the muzzle of the rifle. He had fought in the battle, +too, and he recognized the great youth and his comrades who had been +there with him. + +“What do you want of us?” asked he. + +“Nothing,” replied Henry, “except to help you.” + +Carpenter looked at them with a kind of sad pathos. + +“You don't belong here in Wyoming,” he said, “and there's nothing to +make you stick to us. What are you meaning to do?” + +“We will go with you wherever you intend to go,” replied Henry; “do +fighting for you if you need it, and hunt game for you, which you are +certain to need.” + +The weather-beaten face of the farmer worked. + +“I thought God had clean deserted us,” he said, “but I'm ready to take +it back. I reckon that he has sent you five to help me with all these +women and little ones.” + +It occurred to Henry that perhaps God, indeed, had sent them for this +very purpose, but he replied simply: + +“You lead on, and we'll stay in the rear and on the sides to watch for +the Indians. Draw into the woods, where we'll be hidden.” + +Carpenter, obscure hero, shouldered his rifle again, and led on toward +the woods. The long line of women and children followed. Some of the +women carried in their arms children too small to walk. Yet they were +more hopeful now when they saw that the five were friends. These lithe, +active frontiersmen, so quick, so skillful, and so helpful, raised their +courage. Yet it was a most doleful flight. Most of these women had +been made widows the day before, some of them had been made widows and +childless at the same time, and wondered why they should seek to live +longer. But the very mental stupor of many of them was an aid. They +ceased to cry out, and some even ceased to be afraid. + +Henry, Shif'less Sol, and Tom dropped to the rear. Paul and Long +Jim were on either flank, while Carpenter led slowly on toward the +mountains. + +“'Pears to me,” said Tom, “that the thing fur us to do is to hurry 'em +up ez much ez possible.” + +“So the Indians won't see 'em crossing the plain,” said Henry. “We +couldn't defend them against a large force, and it would merely be a +massacre. We must persuade them to walk faster.” + +Shif'less Sol was invaluable in this crisis. He could talk forever in +his-placid way, and, with his gentle encouragement, mild sarcasm, and +anecdotes of great feminine walkers that he had known, he soon had them +moving faster. + +Henry and Tom dropped farther to the rear. They could see ahead of them +the long dark line, coiling farther into the woods, but they could +also see to right and left towers of smoke rising in the clear morning +sunlight. These, they knew, came from burning houses, and they knew, +also, that the valley would be ravaged from end to end and from side +to side. After the surrender of the fort the Indians would divide into +small bands, going everywhere, and nothing could escape them. + +The sun rose higher, gilding the earth with glowing light, as if the +black tragedy had never happened, but the frontiersmen recognized their +greatest danger in this brilliant morning. Objects could be seen at a +great distance, and they could be seen vividly. + +Keen of sight and trained to know what it was they saw, Henry, Sol, and +Tom searched the country with their eyes, on all sides. They caught a +distant glimpse of the Susquehanna, a silver spot among some trees, and +they saw the sunlight glancing off the opposite mountains, but for the +present they saw nothing that seemed hostile. + +They allowed the distance between them and the retreating file to grow +until it was five or six hundred yards, and they might have let it grow +farther, but Henry made a signal, and the three lay down in the grass. + + +“You see 'em, don't you!” the youth whispered to his comrade. + +“Yes, down thar at the foot o' that hillock,” replied Shif'less Sol; +“two o' em, an' Senecas, I take it.” + +“They've seen that crowd of women and children,” said Henry. + +It was obvious that the flying column was discovered. The two Indians +stepped upon the hillock and gazed under their hands. It was too far +away for the three to see their faces, but they knew the joy that would +be shown there. The two could return with a few warriors and massacre +them all. + +“They must never get back to the other Indians with their news,” + whispered Henry. “I hate to shoot men from ambush, but it's got to be +done. Wait, they're coming a little closer.” + +The two Senecas advanced about thirty yards, and stopped again. + +“S'pose you fire at the one on the right, Henry,” said Tom, “an' me an' +Sol will take the one to the left.” + +“All right,” said Henry. “Fire!” + +They wasted no time, but pulled trigger. The one at whom Henry had aimed +fell, but the other, uttering a cry, made off, wounded, but evidently +with plenty of strength left. + +“We mustn't let him escape! We mustn't let him carry a warning!” cried +Henry. + +But Shif'less Sol and Tom Ross were already in pursuit, covering the +ground with long strides, and reloading as they ran. Under ordinary +circumstances no one of the three would have fired at a man running for +his life, but here the necessity was vital. If he lived, carrying the +tale that he had to tell, a hundred innocent ones might perish. Henry +followed his comrades, reloading his own rifle, also, but he stayed +behind. The Indian had a good lead, and he was gaining, as the others +were compelled to check speed somewhat as they put the powder and +bullets in their rifles. But Henry was near enough to Shif'less Sol and +Silent Tom to hear them exchange a few words. + +“How far away is that savage?” asked Shif'less Sol. + +“Hundred and eighty yards,” said Tom Ross. + +“Well, you take him in the head, and I'll take him in the body.” + +Henry saw the two rifle barrels go up and two flashes of flame leap from +the muzzles. The Indian fell forward and lay still. They went up to him, +and found that he was shot through the head and also through the body. + +“We may miss once, but we don't twice,” said Tom Ross. + +The human mind can be influenced so powerfully by events that the three +felt no compunction at all at the shooting of this fleeing Indian. It +was but a trifle compared with what they had seen the day and night +before. + +“We'd better take the weapons an' ammunition o' both uv 'em,” said Sol. +“They may be needed, an' some o' the women in that crowd kin shoot.” + +They gathered up the arms, powder, and ball, and waited a little to see +whether the shots had been heard by any other Indians, but there was +no indication of the presence of more warriors, and the rejoined the +fugitives. Long Jim had dropped back to the end of the line, and when he +saw that his comrades carried two extra rifles, he understood. + +“They didn't give no alarm, did they?” he asked in a tone so low that +none of the fugitives could hear. + +“They didn't have any chance,” replied Henry. “We've brought away all +their weapons and ammunition, but just say to the women that we found +them in an abandoned house.” + +The rifles and the other arms were given to the boldest and most +stalwart of the women, and they promised to use them if the need came. +Meanwhile the flight went on, and the farther it went the sadder it +became. Children became exhausted, and had to be carried by people so +tired that they could scarcely walk themselves. There was nobody in the +line who had not lost some beloved one on that fatal river bank, killed +in battle, or tortured to death. As they slowly ascended the green slope +of the mountain that inclosed a side of the valley, they looked back +upon ruin and desolation. The whole black tragedy was being consummated. +They could see the houses in flames, and they knew that the Indian war +parties were killing and scalping everywhere. They knew, too, that other +bodies of fugitives, as stricken as their own, were fleeing into the +mountains, they scarcely knew whither. + +As they paused a few moments and looked back, a great cry burst from +the weakest of the women and children. Then it became a sad and terrible +wail, and it was a long time before it ceased. It was an awful sound, so +compounded of despair and woe and of longing for what they had lost that +Henry choked, and the tears stood in Paul's eyes. But neither the five +nor Carpenter made any attempt to check the wailing. They thought it +best for them to weep it out, but they hurried the column as much as +they could, often carrying some of the smaller children themselves. Paul +and Long Jim were the best as comforters. The two knew how, each in his +own way, to soothe and encourage. Carpenter, who knew the way to Fort +Penn, led doggedly on, scarcely saying a word. Henry, Shif'less Sol, and +Tom were the rear guard, which was, in this case, the one of greatest +danger and responsibility. + +Henry was thankful that it was only early summer the Fourth of July, +the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence-and that the +foliage was heavy and green on the slopes of the mountain. In this +mass of greenery the desolate column was now completely hidden from any +observer in the valley, and he believed that other crowds of fugitives +would be hidden in the same manner. He felt sure that no living human +being would be left in the valley, that it would be ravaged from end to +end and then left to desolation, until new people, protected by American +bayonets, should come in and settle it again. + +At last they passed the crest of the ridge, and the fires in the valley, +those emblems of destruction, were hidden. Between them and Fort Penn, +sixty miles away, stretched a wilderness of mountain, forest, and swamp. +But the five welcomed the forest. A foe might lie there in ambush, but +they could not see the fugitives at a distance. What the latter needed +now was obscurity, the green blanket of the forest to hide them. +Carpenter led on over a narrow trail; the others followed almost in +single file now, while the five scouted in the woods on either flank and +at the rear. Henry and Shif'less Sol generally kept together, and they +fully realized the overwhelming danger should an Indian band, even as +small as ten or a dozen warriors, appear. Should the latter scatter, +it would be impossible to protect all the women and children from their +tomahawks. + +The day was warm, but the forest gave them coolness as well as shelter. +Henry and Sol were seldom so far back that they could not see the end +of the melancholy line, now moving slowly, overborne by weariness. The +shiftless one shook his head sadly. + +“No matter what happens, some uv 'em will never get out o' these woods.” + +His words came true all too soon. Before the afternoon closed, two +women, ill before the flight, died of terror and exhaustion, and were +buried in shallow graves under the trees. Before dark a halt was made at +the suggestion of Henry, and all except Carpenter and the scouts sat in +a close, drooping group. Many of the children cried, though the women +had all ceased to weep. They had some food with them, taken in the +hurried flight, and now the men asked them to eat. Few could do it, and +others insisted on saving what little they had for the children. Long +Jim found a spring near by, and all drank at it. + +The six men decided that, although night had not yet come, it would be +best to remain there until the morning. Evidently the fugitives were in +no condition, either mental or physical, to go farther that day, and the +rest was worth more than the risk. + +When this decision was announced to them, most of the women took it +apathetically. Soon they lay down upon a blanket, if one was to be had; +otherwise, on leaves and branches. Again Henry thanked God that it was +summer, and that these were people of the frontier, who could sleep in +the open. No fire was needed, and, outside of human enemies, only rain +was to be dreaded. + +And yet this band, desperate though its case, was more fortunate than +some of the others that fled from the Wyoming Valley. It had now to +protect it six men Henry and Paul, though boys in years, were men in +strength and ability--five of whom were the equals of any frontiersmen +on the whole border. Another crowd of women was escorted by a single man +throughout its entire flight. + +Henry and his comrades distributed themselves in a circle about the +group. At times they helped gather whortleberries as food for the +others, but they looked for Indians or game, intending to shoot in +either case. When Paul and Henry were together they once heard a light +sound in a thicket, which at first they were afraid was made by an +Indian scout, but it was a deer, and it bounded away too soon for either +to get a shot. They could not find other game of any kind, and they came +back toward the camp-if a mere stop in the woods, without shelter of any +kind, could be called a camp. + +The sun was now setting, blood red. It tinged the forest with a fiery +mist, reminding the unhappy group of all that they had seen. But the +mist was gone in a few moments, and then the blackness of night came +with a weird moaning wind that told of desolation. Most of the children, +having passed through every phase of exhaustion and terror, had fallen +asleep. Some of the women slept, also, and others wept. But the terrible +wailing note, which the nerves of no man could stand, was heard no +longer. + +The five gathered again at a point near by, and Carpenter came to them. + +“Men,” he said simply, “don't know much about you, though I know you +fought well in the battle that we lost, but for what you're doin' now +nobody can ever repay you. I knew that I never could get across the +mountains with all these weak ones.” + +The five merely said that any man who was a man would help at such a +time. Then they resumed their march in a perpetual circle about the +camp. + +Some women did not sleep at all that night. It is not easy to conceive +what the frontier women of America endured so many thousands of times. +They had seen their husbands, brothers, and sons killed in the battle, +and they knew that the worst of torture had been practiced in the Indian +camp. Many of them really did not want to live any longer. They merely +struggled automatically for life. The darkness settled down thicker and +thicker; the blackness in the forest was intense, and they could see the +faces of one another only at a little distance. The desolate moan of the +wind came through the leaves, and, although it was July, the night grew +cold. The women crept closer together, trying to cover up and protect +the children. The wind, with its inexpressibly mournful note, was +exactly fitted to their feelings. Many of them wondered why a Supreme +Being had permitted such things. But they ceased to talk. No sound at +all came from the group, and any one fifty yards away, not forewarned, +could not have told that they were there. + +Henry and Paul met again about midnight, and sat a long time on a +little hillock. Theirs had been the most dangerous of lives on the most +dangerous of frontiers, but they had never been stirred as they were +tonight. Even Paul, the mildest of the five, felt something burning +within him, a fire that only one thing could quench. + +“Henry,” said he, “we're trying to get these people to Fort Penn, and +we may get some of them there, but I don't think our work will be ended +them. I don't think I could ever be happy again if we went straight from +Fort Penn to Kentucky.” + +Henry understood him perfectly. + +“No, Paul,” he said, “I don't want to go, either, and I know the others +don't. Maybe you are not willing to tell why we want to stay, but it is +vengeance. I know it's Christian to forgive your enemies, but I can't +see what I have seen, and hear what I have heard, and do it.” + +“When the news of these things spreads,” said Paul, “they'll send an +army from the east. Sooner or later they'll just have to do it to punish +the Iroquois and their white allies, and we've got to be here to join +that army.” + +“I feel that way, too, Paul,” said Henry. + +They were joined later by the other three, who stayed a little while, +and they were in accord with Henry and Paul. + +Then they began their circles about the camp again, always looking and +always listening. About two o'clock in the morning they heard a scream, +but it was only the cry of a panther. Before day there were clouds, a +low rumble of distant thunder, and faint far flashes of lightning. Henry +was in dread of rain, but the lightning and thunder ceased, and the +clouds went away. Then dawn came, rosy and bright, and all but three +rose from the earth. The three-one woman and two children-had died in +silence in the night, and they were buried, like the others, in shallow +graves in the woods. But there was little weeping or external mourning +over them. All were now heavy and apathetic, capable of but little more +emotion. + +Carpenter resumed his position at the head of the column, which now +moved slowly over the mountain through a thick forest matted with +vines and bushes and without a path. The march was now so painful +and difficult that they did not make more than two miles an hour. The +stronger of them helped the men to gather more whortleberries, as it was +easy to see that the food they had with them would never last until they +reached Fort Penn, should they ever reach it. + +The condition of the country into which they had entered steadily grew +worse. They were well into the mountains, a region exceedingly wild and +rough, but little known to the settlers, who had gone around it to build +homes in the fertile and beautiful valley of Wyoming. The heavy forest +was made all the more difficult by the presence everywhere of almost +impassable undergrowth. Now and then a woman lay down under the bushes, +and in two cases they died there because the power to live was no longer +in them. They grew weaker and weaker. The food that they had brought +from the Wyoming fort was almost exhausted, and the wild whortleberries +were far from sustaining. Fortunately there was plenty of water +flowing tinder the dark woods and along the mountainside. But they were +compelled to stop at intervals of an hour or two to rest, and the more +timid continually expected Indian ambush. + +The five met shortly after noon and took another reckoning of the +situation. They still realized to the full the dangers of Indian +pursuit, which in this case might be a mere matter of accident. Anybody +could follow the broad trail left by the fugitives, but the Iroquois, +busy with destruction in the valley, might not follow, even if they +saw it. No one could tell. The danger of starvation or of death from +exhaustion was more imminent, more pressing, and the five resolved to +let scouting alone for the rest of the day and seek game. + +“There's bound to be a lot of it in these woods,” said Shif'less Sol, +“though it's frightened out of the path by our big crowd, but we ought +to find it.” + +Henry and Shif'less Sol went in one direction, and Paul, Tom, and Long +Jim in another. But with all their hunting they succeeded in finding +only one little deer, which fell to the rifle of Silent Tom. It made +small enough portions for the supper and breakfast of nearly a hundred +people, but it helped wonderfully, and so did the fires which Henry and +his comrades would now have built, even had they not been needed for the +cooking. They saw that light and warmth, the light and warmth of glowing +coals, would alone rouse life in this desolate band. + +They slept the second night on the ground among the trees, and the next +morning they entered that gloomy region of terrible memory, the Great +Dismal Swamp of the North, known sometimes, to this day, as “The Shades +of Death.” + + + + +CHAPTER XII. THE SHADES OF DEATH + + +“The Shades of Death” is a marsh on a mountain top, the great, wet, and +soggy plain of the Pocono and Broad mountains. When the fugitives from +Wyoming entered it, it was covered with a dense growth of pines, growing +mostly out of dark, murky water, which in its turn was thick with a +growth of moss and aquatic plants. Snakes and all kinds of creeping +things swarmed in the ooze. Bear and panther were numerous. + +Carpenter did not know any way around this terrible region, and they +were compelled to enter it. Henry was again devoutly thankful that +it was summer. In such a situation with winter on top of it only the +hardiest of men could survive. + +But they entered the swamp, Carpenter silent and dogged, still leading. +Henry and his comrades kept close to the crowd. One could not scout in +such a morass, and it proved to be worse than they had feared. The day +turned gray, and it was dark among the trees. The whole place was filled +with gloomy shadows. It was often impossible to judge whether fairly +solid soil or oozy murk lay before them. Often they went down to their +waists. Sometimes the children fell and were dragged up again by the +stronger. Now and then rattle snakes coiled and hissed, and the women +killed them with sticks. Other serpents slipped away in the slime. +Everybody was plastered with mud, and they became mere images of human +beings. + +In the afternoon they reached a sort of oasis in the terrible swamp, +and there they buried two more of their number who had perished from +exhaustion. The rest, save a few, lay upon the ground as if dead. On all +sides of them stretched the pines and the soft black earth. It looked to +the fugitives like a region into which no human beings had ever come, +or ever would come again, and, alas! to most of them like a region from +which no human being would ever emerge. + +Henry sat upon a piece of fallen brushwood near the edge of the morass, +and looked at the fugitives, and his heart sank within him. They were +hardly in the likeness of his own kind, and they seemed practically +lifeless now. Everything was dull, heavy, and dead. The note of the wind +among the leaves was somber. A long black snake slipped from the marshy +grass near his feet and disappeared soundlessly in the water. He was +sick, sick to death at the sight of so much suffering, and the desire +for vengeance, slow, cold, and far more lasting than any hot outburst, +grew within him. A slight noise, and Shif'less Sol stood beside him. + +“Did you hear?” asked the shiftless one, in a significant tone. + +“Hear what?” asked Henry, who had been deep in thought. + +“The wolf howl, just a very little cry, very far away an' under the +horizon, but thar all the same. Listen, thar she goes ag'in!” + +Henry bent his ear and distinctly heard the faint, whining note, and +then it came a third time. + +He looked tip at Shif'less Sol, and his face grew white--but not for +himself. + +“Yes,” said Shif'less Sol. He understood the look. “We are pursued. Them +wolves howlin' are the Iroquois. What do you reckon we're goin' to do, +Henry?” + +“Fight!” replied the youth, with fierce energy. “Beat 'em off!” + +“How?” + +Henry circled the little oasis with the eye of a general, and his plan +came. + +“You'll stand here, where the earth gives a footing,” he said, “you, +Solomon Hyde, as brave a man as I ever saw, and with you will be Paul +Cotter, Tom Ross, Jim Hart, and Henry Ware, old friends of yours. +Carpenter will at once lead the women and children on ahead, and perhaps +they will not hear the battle that is going to be fought here.” + +A smile of approval, slow, but deep and comprehensive, stole over the +face of Solomon Hyde, surnamed, wholly without fitness, the shiftless +one. “It seems to me,” he said, “that I've heard o' them four fellers +you're talkin' about, an' ef I wuz to hunt all over this planet an' them +other planets that Paul tells of, I couldn't find four other fellers +that I'd ez soon have with me.” + +“We've got to stand here to the death,” said Henry. + +“You're shorely right,” said Shif'less Sol. + +The hands of the two comrades met in a grip of steel. + +The other three were called and were told of the plan, which met with +their full approval. Then the news was carried to Carpenter, who quickly +agreed that their course was the wisest. He urged all the fugitives to +their feet, telling them that they must reach another dry place +before night, but they were past asking questions now, and, heavy and +apathetic, they passed on into the swamp. + +Paul watched the last of them disappear among the black bushes and +weeds, and turned back to his friends on the oasis. The five lay down +behind a big fallen pine, and gave their weapons a last look. They +had never been armed better. Their rifles were good, and the fine +double-barreled pistols, formidable weapons, would be a great aid, +especially at close quarters. + +“I take it,” said Tom Ross, “that the Iroquois can't get through at all +unless they come along this way, an' it's the same ez ef we wuz settin' +on solid earth, poppin' em over, while they come sloshin' up to us.” + +“That's exactly it,” said Henry. “We've a natural defense which we can +hold against much greater numbers, and the longer we hold 'em off, the +nearer our people will be to Fort Penn.” + +“I never felt more like fightin' in my life,” said Tom Ross. + +It was a grim utterance, true of them all, although not one among them +was bloodthirsty. + +“Can any of you hear anything?” asked Henry. “Nothin',” replied +Shif'less Sol, after a little wait, “nothin' from the women goin', an' +nothin' from the Iroquois comin'.” + +“We'll just lie close,” said Henry. “This hard spot of ground isn't more +than thirty or forty feet each way, and nobody can get on it without our +knowing it.” + +The others did not reply. All lay motionless upon their sides, with +their shoulders raised a little, in order that they might take instant +aim when the time came. Some rays of the sun penetrated the canopy of +pines, and fell across the brown, determined faces and the lean brown +hands that grasped the long, slender-barreled Kentucky rifles. Another +snake slipped from the ground into the black water and swam away. Some +water animal made a light splash as he, too, swam from the presence of +these strange intruders. Then they beard a sighing sound, as of a +foot drawn from mud, and they knew that the Iroquois were approaching, +savages in war, whatever they might be otherwise, and expecting an easy +prey. Five brown thumbs cocked their rifles, and five brown forefingers +rested upon the triggers. The eyes of woodsmen who seldom missed looked +down the sights. + +The sound of feet in the mud came many times. The enemy was evidently +drawing near. + +“How many do you think are out thar?” whispered Shif'less Sol to Henry. + +“Twenty, at least, it seems to me by the sounds.” “I s'pose the best +thing for us to do is to shoot at the first head we see.” + +“Yes, but we mustn't all fire at the same man.” + +It was suggested that Henry call off the turns of the marksmen, and he +agreed to do so. Shif'less Sol was to fire first. The sounds now ceased. +The Iroquois evidently had some feeling or instinct that they were +approaching an enemy who was to be feared, not weak and unarmed women +and children. + +The five were absolutely motionless, finger on trigger. The American +wilderness had heroes without number. It was Horatius Cocles five times +over, ready to defend the bridge with life. Over the marsh rose the +weird cry of an owl, and some water birds called in lonely fashion. + +Henry judged that the fugitives were now three quarters of a mile away, +out of the sound of rifle shot. He had urged Carpenter to marshal them +on as far as he could. But the silence endured yet a while longer. In +the dull gray light of the somber day and the waning afternoon the marsh +was increasingly dreary and mournful. It seemed that it must always be +the abode of dead or dying things. + +The wet grass, forty yards away, moved a little, and between the boughs +appeared the segment of a hideous dark face, the painted brow, the +savage black eyes, and the hooked nose of the Mohawk. Only Henry saw +it, but with fierce joy-the tortures at Wyoming leaped up before him-he +fired at the painted brow. The Mohawk uttered his death cry and fell +back with a splash into the mud and water of the swamp. A half dozen +bullets were instantly fired at the base of the smoke that came from +Henry's rifle, but the youth and his comrades lay close and were +unharmed. Shif'less Sol and Tom were quick enough to catch glimpses of +brown forms, at which they fired, and the cries coming back told that +they had hit. + +“That's something,” said Henry. “One or two Iroquois at least will not +wear the scalp of white woman or child at their belts.” + +“Wish they'd try to rush us,” said Shif'less Sol. “I never felt so full +of fight in my life before.” + +“They may try it,” said Henry. “I understand that at the big battle of +the Oriskany, farther up in the North, the Iroquois would wait until a +white man behind a tree would fire, then they would rush up and tomahawk +him before he could reload.” + +“They don't know how fast we kin reload,” said Long Jim, “an' they don't +know that we've got these double-barreled pistols, either.” + +“No, they don't,” said Henry, “and it's a great thing for us to have +them. Suppose we spread out a little. So long as we keep them +from getting a lodging on the solid earth we hold them at a great +disadvantage.” + +Henry and Paul moved off a little toward the right, and the others +toward the left. They still had good cover, as fallen timber was +scattered all over the oasis, and they were quite sure that another +attack would be made soon. It came in about fifteen minutes. The +Iroquois suddenly fired a volley at the logs and brush, and when the +five returned the fire, but with more deadly effect, they leaped forward +in the mud and attempted to rush the oasis, tomahawk in hand. + +But the five reloaded so quickly that they were able to send in a second +volley before the foremost of the Iroquois could touch foot on solid +earth. Then the double barreled pistols came into play. The bullets +sent from short range drove back the savages, who were amazed at such +a deadly and continued fire. Henry caught sight of a white face among +these assailants, and he knew it to be that of Braxton Wyatt. Singularly +enough he was not amazed to see it there. Wyatt, sinking deeper and +deeper into savagery and cruelty, was just the one to lead the Iroquois +in such a pursuit. He was a fit match for Walter Butler, the infamous +son of the Indian leader, who was soon to prove himself worse than the +worst of the savages, as Thayendanegea himself has written. + +Henry drew a bead once on Braxton Wyatt-he had no scruples now about +shooting him-but just as he was about to pull the trigger Wyatt darted +behind a bush, and a Seneca instead received the bullet. He also saw +the renegade, Blackstaffe, but he was not able to secure a shot at him, +either. Nevertheless, the Iroquois attack was beaten back. It was a +foregone conclusion that the result would be so, unless the force was +in great numbers. It is likely, also, that the Iroquois at first had +thought only a single man was with the fugitives, not knowing that the +five had joined them later. + +Two of the Iroquois were slain at the very edge of the solid ground, but +their bodies fell back in the slime, and the others, retreating fast for +their lives, could not carry them off. Paul, with a kind of fascinated +horror, watched the dead painted bodies sink deeper. Then one was +entirely gone. The hand of the other alone was left, and then it, too, +was gone. But the five had held the island, and Carpenter was leading +the fugitives on toward Fort Penn. They had not only held it, but they +believed that they could continue to hold it against anything, and their +hearts became exultant. Something, too, to balance against the long +score, lay out there in the swamp, and all the five, bitter over +Wyoming, were sorry that Braxton Wyatt was not among them. + +The stillness came again. The sun did not break through the heavy gray +sky, and the somber shadows brooded over “The Shades of Death.” They +heard again the splash of water animals, and a swimming snake passed on +the murky surface. Then they heard the wolf's long cry, and the long cry +of wolf replying. + +“More Iroquois coming,” said Shif'less Sol. “Well, we gave them a pretty +warm how d'ye do, an' with our rifles and double-barreled pistols I'm +thinkin' that we kin do it ag'in.” + +“We can, except in one case,” said Henry, “if the new party brings their +numbers up to fifty or sixty, and they wait for night, they can surround +us in the darkness. Perhaps it would be better for us to slip away when +twilight comes. Carpenter and the train have a long lead now.” + +“Yes,” said Shif'less Sol, “Now, what in tarnation is that?” + +“A white flag,” said Paul. A piece of cloth that had once been white had +been hoisted on the barrel of a rifle at a point about sixty yards away. + +“They want a talk with us,” said Henry. + +“If it's Braxton Wyatt,” said Long Jim, “I'd like to take a shot at him, +talk or no talk, an' ef I missed, then take another.” + +“We'll see what they have to say,” said Henry, and he called aloud: +“What do you want with us?” + +“To talk with you,” replied a clear, full voice, not that of Braxton +Wyatt. + +“Very well,” replied Henry, “show yourself and we will not fire upon +you.” + +A tall figure was upraised upon a grassy hummock, and the hands were +held aloft in sign of peace. It was a splendid figure, at least six feet +four inches in height. At that moment some rays of the setting sun broke +through the gray clouds and shone full upon it, lighting up the defiant +scalp lock interwoven with the brilliant red feather, the eagle face +with the curved Roman beak, and the mighty shoulders and chest of red +bronze. It was a genuine king of the wilderness, none other than the +mighty Timmendiquas himself, the great White Lightning of the Wyandots. + +“Ware,” he said, “I would speak with you. Let us talk as one chief to +another.” + +The five were amazed. Timmendiquas there! They were quite sure that he +had come up with the second force, and he was certain to prove a far +more formidable leader than either Braxton Wyatt or Moses Blackstaffe. +But his demand to speak with Henry Ware might mean something. + +“Are you going to answer him?” said Shif'less Sol. + +“Of course,” replied Henry. + +“The others, especially Wyatt and Blackstaffe, might shoot.” + +“Not while Timmendiquas holds the flag of truce; they would not dare.” + +Henry stood up, raising himself to his full height. The same ruddy +sunlight piercing the somber gray of the clouds fell upon another +splendid figure, a boy only in years, but far beyond the average height +of man, his hair yellow, his eyes a deep, clear blue, his body clothed +in buckskin, and his whole attitude that of one without fear. The two, +the white and the red, kings of their kind, confronted each other across +the marsh. + +“What do you wish with me, Timmendiquas?” asked Henry. In the presence +of the great Wyandot chief the feeling of hate and revenge that had held +his heart vanished. He knew that Paul and Shif'less Sol would have sunk +under the ruthless tomahawk of Queen Esther, if it had not been for +White Lightning. He himself had owed him his life on another and more +distant occasion, and he was not ungrateful. So there was warmth in his +tone when he spoke. + +“Let us meet at the edge of the solid ground,” said Timmendiquas, “I +have things to say that are important and that you will be glad to +hear.” + +Henry walked without hesitation to the edge of the swamp, and the +young chief, coming forward, met him. Henry held out his hand in white +fashion, and the young chief took it. There was no sound either from the +swamp or from those who lay behind the logs on the island, but some of +the eyes of those hidden in the swamps watched both with burning hatred. + +“I wish to tell you, Ware,” said Timmendiquas, speaking with the dignity +becoming a great chief, “that it was not I who led the pursuit of the +white men's women and children. I, and the Wyandots who came with me, +fought as best we could in the great battle, and I will slay my enemies +when I can. We are warriors, and we are ready to face each other in +battle, but we do not seek to kill the squaw in the tepee or the papoose +in its birch-bark cradle.” + +The face of the great chief seemed stirred by some deep emotion, which +impressed Henry all the more because the countenance of Timmendiquas was +usually a mask. + +“I believe that you tell the truth,” said Henry gravely. + +“I and my Wyandots,” continued the chief, “followed a trail through +the woods. We found that others, Senecas and Mohawks, led by Wyatt and +Blackstaffe, who are of your race, had gone before, and when we came up +there had just been a battle. The Mohawks and Senecas had been driven +back. It was then we learned that the trail was made by women and little +children, save you and your comrades who stayed to fight and protect +them.” + +“You speak true words, Timmendiquas,” said Henry. + +“The Wyandots have remained in the East to fight men, not to kill squaws +and papooses,” continued Timmendiquas. “So I say to you, go on with +those who flee across the mountains. Our warriors shall not pursue you +any longer. We will turn back to the valley from which we come, and +those of your race, Blackstaffe and Wyatt, shall go with us.” + +The great chief spoke quietly, but there was an edge to his tone that +told that every word was meant. Henry felt a glow of admiration. The +true greatness of Timmendiquas spoke. + +“And the Iroquois?” he said, “will they go back with you?” + +“They will. They have killed too much. Today all the white people in the +valley are killed or driven away. Many scalps have been taken, those +of women and children, too, and men have died at the stake. I have +felt shame for their deeds, Ware, and it will bring punishment upon my +brethren, the Iroquois. It will make so great a noise in the world that +many soldiers will come, and the villages of the Iroquois will cease to +be.” + +“I think it is so, Timmendiquas,” said Henry. “But you will be far away +then in your own land.” + +The chief drew himself up a little. + +“I shall remain with the Iroquois,” he said. “I have promised to help +them, and I must do so.” + +“I can't blame you for that,” said Henry, “but I am glad that you do +not seek the scalps of women and children. We are at once enemies and +friends, Timmendiquas.” + +White Lightning bowed gravely. He and Henry touched hands again, and +each withdrew, the chief into the morass, while Henry walked back toward +his comrades, holding himself erect, as if no enemy were near. + +The four rose up to greet him. They had heard part of what was said, and +Henry quickly told them the rest. + +“He's shorely a great chief,” said Shif'less Sol. “He'll keep his word, +too. Them people on ahead ain't got anything more to fear from pursuit.” + +“He's a statesman, too,” said Henry. “He sees what damage the deeds of +Wyoming Valley will do to those who have done them. He thinks our people +will now send a great army against the Iroquois, and I think so, too.” + +“No nation can stand a thing like that,” said Paul, “and I didn't dream +it could happen.” + +They now left the oasis, and went swiftly along the trail left by the +fugitives. All of them had confidence in the word of Timmendiquas. There +was a remote chance that some other band had entered the swamp at a +different point, but it was remote, indeed, and it did not trouble them +much. + +Night was now over the great swamp. The sun no longer came through the +gray clouds, but here and there were little flashes of flame made by +fireflies. Had not the trail been so broad and deep it could easily have +been lost, but, being what it was, the skilled eyes of the frontiersmen +followed it without trouble. + +“Some uv 'em are gittin' pow'ful tired,” said Tom Ross, looking at +the tracks in the mud. Then he suddenly added: “Here's whar one's quit +forever.” + +A shallow grave, not an hour old, had been made under some bushes, +and its length indicated that a woman lay there. They passed it by +in silence. Henry now appreciated more fully than ever the mercy of +Timmendiquas. The five and Carpenter could not possibly have protected +the miserable fugitives against the great chief, with fifty Wyandots and +Iroquois at his back. Timmendiquas knew this, and he had done what none +of the Indians or white allies around him would have done. + +In another hour they saw a man standing among some vines, but watchful, +and with his rifle in the hollow of his arm. It was Carpenter, a man +whose task was not less than that of the five. They were in the thick +of it and could see what was done, but he had to lead on and wait. He +counted the dusk figures as they approached him, one, two, three, four, +five, and perhaps no man ever felt greater relief. He advanced toward +them and said huskily: + +“There was no fight! They did not attack!” + +“There was a fight,” said Henry, “and we beat them back; then a second +and a larger force came up, but it was composed chiefly of Wyandots, led +by their great chief, Timmendiquas. He came forward and said that they +would not pursue women and children, and that we could go in safety.” + +Carpenter looked incredulous. + +“It is true,” said Henry, “every word of it.” + +“It is more than Brant would have done,” said Carpenter, “and it saves +us, with your help.” + +“You were first, and the first credit is yours, Mr. Carpenter,” said +Henry sincerely. + +They did not tell the women and children of the fight at the oasis, +but they spread the news that there would be no more pursuit, and many +drooping spirits revived. They spent another day in the Great Dismal +Swamp, where more lives were lost. On the day after their emergence +from the marsh, Henry and his comrades killed two deer, which furnished +greatly needed food, and on the day after that, excepting those who had +died by the way, they reached Fort Penn, where they were received into +shelter and safety. + +The night before the fugitives reached Fort Penn, the Iroquois began the +celebration of the Thanksgiving Dance for their great victory and the +many scalps taken at Wyoming. They could not recall another time when +they had secured so many of these hideous trophies, and they were drunk +with the joy of victory. Many of the Tories, some in their own clothes, +and some painted and dressed like Indians, took part in it. + +According to their ancient and honored custom they held a grand council +to prepare for it. All the leading chiefs were present, Sangerachte, +Hiokatoo, and the others. Braxton Wyatt, Blackstaffe, and other white +men were admitted. After their deliberations a great fire was built in +the center of the camp, the squaws who had followed the army feeding +it with brushwood until it leaped and roared and formed a great red +pyramid. Then the chiefs sat down in a solemn circle at some distance, +and waited. + +Presently the sound of a loud chant was heard, and from the farthest +point of the camp emerged a long line of warriors, hundreds and hundreds +of them, all painted in red and black with horrible designs. They were +naked except the breechcloth and moccasins, and everyone waved aloft a +tomahawk as he sang. + +Still singing and brandishing the tomahawks, which gleamed in the +red light, the long procession entered the open space, and danced and +wheeled about the great fire, the flames casting a lurid light upon +faces hideous with paint or the intoxication of triumph. The glare of +their black eyes was like those of Eastern eaters of hasheesh or opium, +and they bounded to and fro as if their muscles were springs of steel. +They sang: + + We have met the Bostonians [*] in battle, + We slew them with our rifles and tomahawks. + Few there are who escaped our warriors. + Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee. + + [* Note: All the Americans were often called Bostonians by + the Indians as late as the Revolutionary War.] + + Mighty has been our taking of scalps, + They will fill all the lodges of the Iroquois. + We have burned the houses of the Bostonians. + Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee. + + The wolf will prowl in their corn-fields, + The grass will grow where their blood has soaked; + Their bones will lie for the buzzard to pick. + Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee. + + We came upon them by river and forest; + As we smote Wyoming we will smite the others, + We will drive the Bostonians back to the sea. + Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee. + + +The monotonous chant with the refrain, “Ever-victorious is the League of +the Ho-de-no-sau-nee,” went on for many verses. Meanwhile the old squaws +never ceased to feed the bonfire, and the flames roared, casting a +deeper and more vivid light over the distorted faces of the dancers and +those of the chiefs, who sat gravely beyond. + +Higher and higher leaped the warriors. They seemed unconscious of +fatigue, and the glare in their eyes became that of maniacs. Their whole +souls were possessed by the orgy. Beads of sweat, not of exhaustion, but +of emotional excitement, appeared upon their faces and naked bodies, and +the red and black paint streaked together horribly. + +For a long time this went on, and then the warriors ceased suddenly to +sing, although they continued their dance. A moment later a cry which +thrilled every nerve came from a far point in the dark background. +It was the scalp yell, the most terrible of all Indian cries, long, +high-pitched, and quavering, having in it something of the barking howl +of the wolf and the fiendish shriek of a murderous maniac. The warriors +instantly took it up, and gave it back in a gigantic chorus. + +A ghastly figure bounded into the circle of the firelight. It was that +of a woman, middle-aged, tall and powerful, naked to the waist, her body +covered with red and black paint, her long black hair hanging in a loose +cloud down her back. She held a fresh scalp, taken from a white head, +aloft in either band. It was Catharine Montour, and it was she who had +first emitted the scalp yell. After her came more warriors, all bearing +scalps. The scalp yell was supposed to be uttered for every scalp taken, +and, as they had taken more than three hundred, it did not cease for +hours, penetrating every part of the forest. All the time Catharine +Montour led the dance. None bounded higher than she. None grimaced more +horribly. + +While they danced, six men, with their hands tied behind them and black +caps on their heads, were brought forth and paraded around amid hoots +and yells and brandishing of tomahawks in their faces. They were the +surviving prisoners, and the black caps meant that they were to be +killed and scalped on the morrow. Stupefied by all through which they +had gone, they were scarcely conscious now. + +Midnight came. The Iroquois still danced and sang, and the calm stars +looked down upon the savage and awful scene. Now the dancers began to +weary. Many dropped unconscious, and the others danced about them where +they lay. After a while all ceased. Then the chiefs brought forth a +white dog, which Hiokatoo killed and threw on the embers of the fire. +When it was thoroughly roasted, the chiefs cut it in pieces and ate it. +Thus closed the Festival of Thanksgiving for the victory of Wyoming. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. A FOREST PAGE + + +When the survivors of the band of Wyoming fugitives that the five had +helped were behind the walls of Fort Penn, securing the food and rest +they needed so greatly, Henry Ware and his comrades felt themselves +relieved of a great responsibility. They were also aware how much they +owed to Timmendiquas, because few of the Indians and renegades would +have been so forbearing. Thayendanegea seemed to them inferior to +the great Wyandot. Often when Brant could prevent the torture of the +prisoners and the slaughter of women and children, he did not do it. +The five could never forget these things in after life, when Brant was +glorified as a great warrior and leader. Their minds always turned to +Timmendiquas as the highest and finest of Indian types. + +While they were at Fort Penn two other parties came, in a fearful state +of exhaustion, and also having paid the usual toll of death on the way. +Other groups reached the Moravian towns, where they were received with +all kindness by the German settlers. The five were able to give some +help to several of these parties, but the beautiful Wyoming Valley lay +utterly in ruins. The ruthless fury of the savages and of many of the +Tories, Canadians, and Englishmen, can scarcely be told. Everything was +slaughtered or burned. As a habitation of human beings or of anything +pertaining to human beings, the valley for a time ceased to be. An +entire population was either annihilated or driven out, and finally +Butler's army, finding that nothing more was left to be destroyed, +gathered in its war parties and marched northward with a vast store +of spoils, in which scalps were conspicuous. When they repassed Tioga +Point, Timmendiquas and his Wyandots were still with them. Thayendanegea +was also with them here, and so was Walter Butler, who was destined +shortly to make a reputation equaling that of his father, “Indian” + Butler. Nor had the terrible Queen Esther ever left them. She marched +at the head of the army, singing, horrid chants of victory, and swinging +the great war tomahawk, which did not often leave her hand. + +The whole force was re-embarked upon the Susquehanna, and it was still +full of the impulse of savage triumph. Wild Indian songs floated along +the stream or through the meadows, which were quiet now. They advanced +at their ease, knowing that there was nobody to attack them, but they +were watched by five woodsmen, two of whom were boys. Meanwhile the +story of Wyoming, to an extent that neither Indians nor woodsmen +themselves suspected, was spreading from town to town in the East, to +invade thence the whole civilized world, and to stir up an indignation +and horror that would make the name Wyoming long memorable. Wyoming +had been a victory for the flag under which the invaders fought, but it +sadly tarnished the cause of that flag, and the consequences were to be +seen soon. + +Henry Ware, Paul Cotter, Sol Hyde, Tom Ross, and Jim Hart were thinking +little of distant consequences, but they were eager for the present +punishment of these men who had committed so much cruelty. From the +bushes they could easily follow the canoes, and could recognize some of +their occupants. In one of the rear boats sat Braxton Wyatt and a young +man whom they knew to be Walter Butler, a pallid young man, animated by +the most savage ferocity against the patriots. He and Wyatt seemed to +be on the best of terms, and faint echoes of their laughter came to the +five who were watching among the bushes on the river bank. Certainly +Braxton Wyatt and he were a pair well met. + +“Henry,” said Shif'less Sol longingly, “I think I could jest about reach +Braxton Wyatt with a bullet from here. I ain't over fond o' shootin' +from ambush, but I done got over all scruples so fur ez he's concerned. +Jest one bullet, one little bullet, Henry, an' ef I miss I won't ask fur +a second chance.” + +“No, Sol, it won't do,” said Henry. “They'd get off to hunt us. The +whole fleet would be stopped, and we want 'em to go on as fast as +possible.” + +“I s'pose you're right, Henry,” said the shiftless one sadly, “but +I'd jest like to try it once. I'd give a month's good huntin' for that +single trial.” + +After watching the British-Indian fleet passing up the river, they +turned back to the site of the Wyoming fort and the houses near it. Here +everything had been destroyed. It was about dusk when they approached +the battlefield, and they heard a dreadful howling, chiefly that of +wolves. + +“I think we'd better turn away,” said Henry. “We couldn't do anything +with so many.” + +They agreed with him, and, going back, followed the Indians up the +Susquehanna. A light rain fell that night, but they slept under a little +shed, once attached to a house which had been destroyed by fire. In some +way the shed had escaped the flames, and it now came into timely use. +The five, cunning in forest practice, drew up brush on the sides, and +half-burned timber also, and, spreading their blankets on ashes which +had not long been cold, lay well sheltered from the drizzling rain, +although they did not sleep for a long time. + +It was the hottest period of the year in America, but the night had come +on cool, and the rain made it cooler. The five, profiting by experience, +often carried with them two light blankets instead of one heavy one. +With one blanket beneath the body they could keep warmer in case the +weather was cold. + +Now they lay in a row against the standing wall of the old outhouse, +protected by a six- or seven-foot slant of board roof. They had eaten +of a deer that they had shot in the morning, and they had a sense +of comfort and rest that none of them had known before in many days. +Henry's feelings were much like those that he had experienced when he +lay in the bushes in the little canoe, wrapped up from the storm and +hidden from the Iroquois. But here there was an important increase +of pleasure, the pattering of the rain on the board roof, a pleasant, +soothing sound to which millions of boys, many of them afterwards great +men, have listened in America. + +It grew very dark about them, and the pleasant patter, almost musical +in its rhythm, kept up. Not much wind was blowing, and it, too, was +melodious. Henry lay with his head on a little heap of ashes, which +was covered by his under blanket, and, for the first time since he had +brought the warning to Wyoming, he was free from all feeling of danger. +The picture itself of the battle, the defeat, the massacre, the torture, +and of the savage Queen Esther cleaving the heads of the captives, was +at times as vivid as ever, and perhaps would always return now and then +in its original true colors, but the periods between, when youth, hope, +and strength had their way, grew longer and longer. + +Now Henry's eyelids sank lower and lower. Physical comfort and the +presence of his comrades caused a deep satisfaction that permeated his +whole being. The light wind mingled pleasantly with the soft summer +rain. The sound of the two grew strangely melodious, almost piercingly +sweet, and then it seemed to be human. They sang together, the wind and +rain, among the leaves, and the note that reached his heart, rather than +his ear, thrilled him with courage and hope. Once more the invisible +voice that had upborne him in the great valley of the Ohio told him, +even here in the ruined valley of Wyoming, that what was lost would be +regained. The chords ended, and the echoes, amazingly clear, floated far +away in the darkness and rain. Henry roused himself, and came from the +imaginative borderland. He stirred a little, and said in a quiet voice +to Shif'less Sol: + +“Did you hear anything, Sol?” + +“Nothin' but the wind an' the rain.” + +Henry knew that such would be the answer. + +“I guess you didn't hear anything either, Henry,” continued the +shiftless one, “'cause it looked to me that you wuz 'bout ez near sleep +ez a feller could be without bein' ackshooally so.” + +“I was drifting away,” said Henry. + +He was beginning to realize that he had a great power, or rather gift. +Paul was the sensitive, imaginative boy, seeing everything in brilliant +colors, a great builder of castles, not all of air, but Henry's gift +went deeper. It was the power to evoke the actual living picture of +the event that bad not yet occurred, something akin in its nature +to prophecy, based perhaps upon the wonderful power of observation, +inherited doubtless, from countless primitive ancestors. The finest +product of the wilderness, he saw in that wilderness many things that +others did not see, and unconsciously he drew his conclusions from +superior knowledge. + +The song had ceased a full ten minutes, and then came another note, a +howl almost plaintive, but, nevertheless, weird and full of ferocity. +All knew it at once. They had heard the cry of wolves too often in their +lives, but this had an uncommon note like the yell of the Indian in +victory. Again the cry arose, nearer, haunting, and powerful. The five, +used to the darkness, could see one another's faces, and the look that +all gave was the same, full of understanding and repulsion. + +“It has been a great day for the wolf in this valley,” whispered Paul, +“and striking our trail they think they are going to find what they have +been finding in such plenty before.” + +“Yes,” nodded Henry, “but do you remember that time when in the house +we took the place of the man, his wife and children, just before the +Indians came?” + +“Yes,” said Paul. + +“We'll treat them wolves the same way,” said Shif'less Sol. + +“I'm glad of the chance,” said Long Jim. + +“Me, too,” said Tom Ross. + +The five rose up to sitting positions against the board wall, and +everyone held across his knees a long, slender barreled rifle, with the +muzzle pointing toward the forest. All accomplished marksmen, it would +only be a matter of a moment for the stock to leap to the shoulder, the +eye to glance down the barrel, the finger to pull the trigger, and the +unerring bullet to leap forth. + +“Henry, you give the word as usual,” said Shif'less Sol. + +Henry nodded. + +Presently in the darkness they heard the pattering of light feet, and +they saw many gleaming eyes draw near. There must have been at least +thirty of the wolves, and the five figures that they saw reclining, +silent and motionless, against the unburned portion of the house might +well have been those of the dead and scalped, whom they had found in +such numbers everywhere. They drew near in a semicircular group, its +concave front extended toward the fire, the greatest wolves at the +center. Despite many feastings, the wolves were hungry again. Nothing +had opposed them before, but caution was instinctive. The big gray +leaders did not mind the night or the wind or the rain, which they +had known all their lives, and which they counted as nothing, but they +always had involuntary suspicion of human figures, whether living or +not, and they approached slowly, wrinkling back their noses and sniffing +the wind which blew from them instead of the five figures. But their +confidence increased as they advanced. They had found many such burned +houses as this, but they had found nothing among the ruins except what +they wished. + +The big leaders advanced more boldly, glaring straight at the human +figures, a slight froth on their lips, the lips themselves curling +back farther from the strong white teeth. The outer ends of the concave +semicircle also drew in. The whole pack was about to spring upon its +unresisting prey, and it is, no doubt, true that many a wolfish pulse +beat a little higher in anticipation. With a suddenness as startling + figures raised themselves, five long, dark tubes leaped to their +shoulders, and with a suddenness that was yet more terrifying, a gush +of flame shot from five muzzles. Five of the wolves-and they were the +biggest and the boldest, the leaders-fell dead upon the ashes of the +charred timbers, and the others, howling their terror to the dark, +skies, fled deep into the forest. + +Henry strode over and pushed the body of the largest wolf with his foot. + +“I suppose we only gratified a kind of sentiment in shooting those +wolves,” he said, “but I for one am glad we did it.” + +“So am I,” said Paul. + +“Me, too,” said the other three together. + +They went back to their positions near the wall, and one by one fell +asleep. No more wolves howled that night anywhere near them. + +When the five awakened the next morning the rain had ceased, and a +splendid sun was tinting a blue sky with gold. Jim Hart built a fire +among the blackened logs, and cooked venison. They had also brought from +Fort Penn a little coffee, which Long Jim carried with a small coffee +pot in his camp kit, and everyone had a small tin cup. He made coffee +for them, an uncommon wilderness luxury, in which they could rarely +indulge, and they were heartened and strengthened by it. + +Then they went again up the valley, as beautiful as ever, with its +silver river in the center, and its green mountain walls on either side. +But the beauty was for the eye only. It did not reach the hearts of +those who had seen it before. All of the five loved the wilderness, but +they felt now how tragic silence and desolation could be where human +life and all the daily ways of human life had been. + +It was mid-summer, but the wilderness was already reclaiming its own. +The game knew that man was gone, and it had come back into the valley. +Deer ate what had grown in the fields and gardens, and the wolves were +everywhere. The whole black tragedy was written for miles. They were +never out of sight of some trace of it, and their anger grew again as +they advanced in the blackened path of the victorious Indians. + +It was their purpose now to hang on the Indian flank as scouts and +skirmishers, until an American army was formed for a campaign against +the Iroquois, which they were sure must be conducted sooner or later. +Meanwhile they could be of great aid, gathering news of the Indian +plans, and, when that army of which they dreamed should finally march, +they could help it most of all by warning it of ambush, the Indian's +deadliest weapon. + +Everyone of the five had already perceived a fact which was manifest in +all wars with the Indians along the whole border from North to South, +as it steadily shifted farther West. The practical hunter and scout was +always more than a match for the Indian, man for man, but, when the raw +levies of settlers were hastily gathered to stem invasion, they were +invariably at a great disadvantage. They were likely to be caught in +ambush by overwhelming numbers, and to be cut down, as had just happened +at Wyoming. The same fate might attend an invasion of the Iroquois +country, even by a large army of regular troops, and Henry and his +comrades resolved upon doing their utmost to prevent it. An army needed +eyes, and it could have none better than those five pairs. So they went +swiftly up the valley and northward and eastward, into the country of +the Iroquois. They had a plan of approaching the upper Mohawk village +of Canajoharie, where one account says that Thayendanegea was born, +although another credits his birthplace to the upper banks of the Ohio. + +They turned now from the valley to the deep woods. The trail showed +that the great Indian force, after disembarking again, split into large +parties, everyone loaded with spoil and bound for its home village. The +five noted several of the trails, but one of them consumed the whole +attention of Silent Tom Ross. + +He saw in the soft soil near a creek bank the footsteps of about eight +Indians, and, mingled with them, other footsteps, which he took to be +those of a white woman and of several children, captives, as even a +tyro would infer. The soul of Tom, the good, honest, and inarticulate +frontiersman, stirred within him. A white woman and her children being +carried off to savagery, to be lost forevermore to their kind! Tom, +still inarticulate, felt his heart pierced with sadness at the tale that +the tracks in the soft mud told so plainly. But despair was not the only +emotion in his heart. The silent and brave man meant to act. + +“Henry,” he said, “see these tracks here in the soft spot by the creek.” + +The young leader read the forest page, and it told him exactly the same +tale that it had told Tom Ross. + +“About a day old, I think,” he said. + +“Just about,” said Tom; “an' I reckon, Henry, you know what's in my +mind.” + +“I think I do,” said Henry, “and we ought to overtake them by to-morrow +night. You tell the others, Tom.” + +Tom informed Shif'less Sol, Paul, and Long Jim in a few words, receiving +from everyone a glad assent, and then the five followed fast on the +trail. They knew that the Indians could not go very fast, as their speed +must be that of the slowest, namely, that of the children, and it seemed +likely that Henry's prediction of overtaking them on the following night +would come true. + +It was an easy trail. Here and there were tiny fragments of cloth, +caught by a bush from the dress of a captive. In one place they saw a +fragment of a child's shoe that had been dropped off and abandoned. Paul +picked up the worn piece of leather and examined it. + +“I think it was worn by a girl,” he said, “and, judging from its size, +she could not have been more than eight years old. Think of a child like +that being made to walk five or six hundred miles through these woods!” + +“Younger ones still have had to do it,” said Shif'less Sol gravely, “an' +them that couldn't-well, the tomahawk.” + +The trail was leading them toward the Seneca country, and they had no +doubt that the Indians were Senecas, who had been more numerous than +any others of the Six Nations at the Wyoming battle. They came that +afternoon to a camp fire beside which the warriors and captives had +slept the night before. + +“They ate bar meat an' wild turkey,” said Long Jim, looking at some +bones on the ground. + +“An' here,” said Tom Ross, “on this pile uv bushes is whar the women an' +children slept, an' on the other side uv the fire is whar the warriors +lay anywhars. You can still see how the bodies uv some uv 'cm crushed +down the grass an' little bushes.” + +“An' I'm thinkin',” said Shif'less Sol, as he looked at the trail that +led away from the camp fire, “that some o' them little ones wuz gittin' +pow'ful tired. Look how these here little trails are wobblin' about.” + +“Hope we kin come up afore the Injuns begin to draw thar tomahawks,” + said Tom Ross. + +The others were silent, but they knew the dreadful significance of Tom's +remark, and Henry glanced at them all, one by one. + +“It's the greatest danger to be feared,” he said, “and we must overtake +them in the night when they are not suspecting. If we attack by day they +will tomahawk the captives the very first thing.” + +“Shorely,', said the shiftless one. + +“Then,” said Henry, “we don't need to hurry. We'll go on until about +midnight, and then sleep until sunrise.” + +They continued at a fair pace along a trail that frontiersmen far less +skillful than they could have followed. But a silent dread was in the +heart of every one of them. As they saw the path of the small feet +staggering more and more they feared to behold some terrible object +beside the path. + +“The trail of the littlest child is gone,” suddenly announced Paul. + +“Yes,” said Henry, “but the mother has picked it up and is carrying it. +See how her trail has suddenly grown more uneven.” + +“Poor woman,” said Paul. “Henry, we're just bound to overtake that +band.” + +“We'll do it,” said Henry. + +At the appointed time they sank down among the thickest bushes that they +could find, and slept until the first upshot of dawn. Then they resumed +the trail, haunted always by that fear of finding something terrible +beside it. But it was a trail that continually grew slower. The Indians +themselves were tired, or, feeling safe from pursuit, saw no need of +hurry. By and by the trail of the smallest child reappeared. + +“It feels a lot better now,” said Tom Ross. “So do I.” + +They came to another camp fire, at which the ashes were not yet cold. +Feathers were scattered about, indicating that the Indians had taken +time for a little side hunt, and had shot some birds. + +“They can't be more than two or three hours ahead,” said Henry, “and +we'll have to go on now very cautiously.” + +They were in a country of high hills, well covered with forests, a +region suited to an ambush, which they feared but little on their own +account; but, for the sake of extreme caution, they now advanced slowly. +The afternoon was long and warm, but an hour before sunset they looked +over a hill into a glade, and saw the warriors making camp for the +night. + +The sight they beheld made the pulses of the five throb heavily. The +Indians had already built their fire, and two of them were cooking +venison upon it. Others were lying on the grass, apparently resting, +but a little to one side sat a woman, still young and of large, strong +figure, though now apparently in the last stages of exhaustion, with her +feet showing through the fragments of shoes that she wore. Her head was +bare, and her dress was in strips. Four children lay beside her' the +youngest two with their heads in her lap. The other two, who might be +eleven and thirteen each, had pillowed their heads on their arms, and +lay in the dull apathy that comes from the finish of both strength +and hope. The woman's face was pitiful. She had more to fear than the +children, and she knew it. She was so worn that the skin hung loosely on +her face, and her eyes showed despair only. The sad spectacle was almost +more than Paul could stand. + +“I don't like to shoot from ambush,” he said, “but we could cut down +half of those warriors at our firs fire and rush in on the rest.” + +“And those we didn't cut down at our first volley would tomahawk the +woman and children in an instant,” replied Henry. “We agreed, you know, +that it would be sure to happen. We can't do anything until night comes, +and then we've got to be mighty cautious.” + +Paul could not dispute the truth of his words, and they withdrew +carefully to the crest of a hill, where they lay in the undergrowth, +watching the Indians complete their fire and their preparations for the +night. It was evident to Henry that they considered themselves perfectly +safe. Certainly they had every reason for thinking so. It was not likely +that white enemies were within a hundred miles of them, and, if so, it +could only be a wandering hunter or two, who would flee from this fierce +band of Senecas who bad taken revenge for the great losses that they' +had suffered the year before at the Oriskany. + +They kept very little watch and built only a small fire, just enough +for broiling deer meat which they carried. They drank at a little spring +which ran from under a ledge near them, and gave portions of the meat to +the woman and children. After the woman had eaten, they bound her hands, +and she lay back on the grass, about twenty feet from the camp fire. Two +children lay on either side of her, and they were soon sound asleep. The +warriors, as Indians will do when they are free from danger and care, +talked a good deal, and showed all the signs of having what was to them +a luxurious time. They ate plentifully, lolled on the grass, and looked +at some hideous trophies, the scalps that they carried at their belts. +The woman could not keep from seeing these, too, but her face did not +change from its stony aspect of despair. Then the light of the fire went +out, the sun sank behind the mountains, and the five could no longer see +the little group of captives and captors. + +They still waited, although eagerness and impatience were tugging at the +hearts of every one of them. But they must give the Indians time to +fall asleep if they would secure rescue, and not merely revenge. They +remained in the bushes, saying but little and eating of venison that +they carried in their knapsacks. + +They let a full three hours pass, and the night remained dark, but +with a faint moon showing. Then they descended slowly into the valley, +approaching by cautious degrees the spot where they knew the Indian camp +lay. This work required at least three quarters of an hour, and they +reached a point where they could see the embers of the fire and the dark +figures lying about it. The Indians, their suspicions lulled, had put +out no sentinels, and all were asleep. But the five knew that, at the +first shot, they would be as wide awake as if they had never slept, and +as formidable as tigers. Their problem seemed as great as ever. So they +lay in the bushes and held a whispered conference. + +“It's this,” said Henry. “We want to save the woman and the children +from the tomahawks, and to do so we must get them out of range of the +blade before the battle begins.” “How?” said Tom Ross. + +“I've got to slip up, release the woman, arm her, tell her to run for +the woods with the children, and then you four must do the most of the +rest.” + +“Do you think you can do it, Henry?” asked Shif'less Sol. + +“I can, as I will soon show you. I'm going to steal forward to the woman, +but the moment you four hear an alarm open with your rifles and pistols. +You can come a little nearer without being heard.” + +All of them moved up close to the Indian camp, and lay hidden in the +last fringe of bushes except Henry. He lay almost flat upon the ground, +carrying his rifle parallel with his side, and in his right hand. He +was undertaking one of the severest and most dangerous tests known to +a frontiersman. He meant to crawl into the very midst of a camp of the +Iroquois, composed of the most alert woodsmen in the world, men who +would spring up at the slightest crackle in the brush. Woodmen who, +warned by some sixth sense, would awaken at the mere fact of a strange +presence. + +The four who remained behind in the bushes could not keep their hearts +from beating louder and faster. They knew the tremendous risk undertaken +by their comrade, but there was not one of them who would have shirked +it, had not all yielded it to the one whom they knew to be the best +fitted for the task. + +Henry crept forward silently, bringing to his aid all the years of skill +that he had acquired in his life in the wilds. His body was like that +of a serpent, going forward, coil by coil. He was near enough now to see +the embers of the fire not yet quite dead, the dark figures scattered +about it, sleeping upon the grass with the long ease of custom, and then +the outline of the woman apart from the others with the children about +her. Henry now lay entirely flat, and his motions were genuinely those +of a serpent. It was by a sort of contraction and relaxation of the body +that he moved himself, and his progress was absolutely soundless. + +The object of his advance was the woman. He saw by the faint light of +the moon that she was not yet asleep. Her face, worn and weather beaten, +was upturned to the skies, and the stony look of despair seemed to have +settled there forever. She lay upon some pine boughs, and her hands were +tied behind her for the night with deerskin. + +Henry contorted himself on, inch by inch, for all the world like a great +snake. Now he passed the sleeping Senecas, hideous with war paint, and +came closer to the woman. She was not paying attention to anything about +her, but was merely looking up at the pale, cold stars, as if everything +in the world had ceased for her. + +Henry crept a little nearer. He made a slight noise, as of a lizard +running through the grass, but the woman took no notice. He crept +closer, and there he lay flat upon the grass within six feet of her, +his figure merely a slightly darker blur against the dark blur of the +earth. Then, trusting to the woman's courage and strength of mind, he +emitted a hiss very soft and low, like the warning of a serpent, half in +fear and half in anger. + +The woman moved a little, and looked toward the point from which the +sound had come. It might have been the formidable hiss of a coiling +rattlesnake that she heard, but she felt no fear. She was too much +stunned, too near exhaustion to be alarmed by anything, and she did +not look a second time. She merely settled back on the pine boughs, and +again looked dully up at the pale, cold stars that cared so little for +her or hers. + +Henry crept another yard nearer, and then he uttered that low noise, +sibilant and warning, which the woman, the product of the border, knew +to be made by a human being. She raised herself a little, although it +was difficult with her bound hands to sit upright, and saw a dark shadow +approaching her. That dark shadow she knew to be the figure of a man. An +Indian would not be approaching in such a manner, and she looked again, +startled into a sudden acute attention, and into a belief that the +incredible, the impossible, was about to happen. A voice came from the +figure, and its quality was that of the white voice, not the red. + +“Do not move,” said that incredible voice out of the unknown. “I have +come for your rescue, and others who have come for the same purpose are +near. Turn on one side, and I will cut the bonds that hold your arms.” + +The voice, the white voice, was like the touch of fire to Mary Newton. +A sudden fierce desire for life and for the lives of her four children +awoke within her just when hope had gone the call to life came. She +had never heard before a voice so full of cheer and encouragement. It +penetrated her whole being. Exhaustion and despair fled away. + +“Turn a little on your side,” said the voice. + +She turned obediently, and then felt the sharp edge of cold steel as it +swept between her wrists and cut the thongs that held them together. Her +arms fell apart, and strength permeated every vein of her being. + +“We shall attack in a few moments,” said the voice, “but at the first +shots the Senecas will try to tomahawk you and your children. Hold out +your hands.” + +She held out both hands obediently. The handle of a tomahawk was pressed +into one, and the muzzle of a double-barreled pistol into the other. +Strength flowed down each hand into her body. + +“If the time comes, use them; you are strong, and you know how,” said +the voice. Then she saw the dark figure creeping away. + + + +CHAPTER XIV. THE PURSUIT ON THE RIVER + + +The story of the frontier is filled with heroines, from the far days +of Hannah Dustin down to the present, and Mary Newton, whom the unknown +figure in the dark had just aroused, is one of them. It had seemed to +her that God himself had deserted her, but at the last moment he had +sent some one. She did not doubt, she could not doubt, because the bonds +had been severed, and there she lay with a deadly weapon in either hand. +The friendly stranger who had come so silently was gone as he had come, +but she was not helpless now. Like many another frontier woman, she +was naturally lithe and powerful, and, stirred by a great hope, all her +strength had returned for the present. + +Nobody who lives in the wilderness can wholly escape superstition, +and Mary Newton began to believe that some supernatural creature had +intervened in her behalf. She raised herself just a little on one elbow +and surveyed the surrounding thicket. She saw only the dead embers of +the fire, and the dark forms of the Indians lying upon the bare ground. +Had it not been for the knife and pistol in her hand, she could have +believed that the voice was only a dream. + +There was a slight rustling in the thicket, and a Seneca rose quickly +to his knees, grasping his rifle in both hands. The woman's fingers +clutched the knife and pistol more tightly, and her whole gaunt figure +trembled. The Seneca listened only a moment. Then he gave a sharp cry, +and all the other warriors sprang up. But three of them rose only +to fall again, as the rifles cracked in the bushes, while two others +staggered from wounds. + +The triumphant shout of the frontiersmen came from the thicket, and then +they rushed upon the camp. Quick as a flash two of the Senecas started +toward the woman and children with their tomahawks, but Mary Newton was +ready. Her heart had leaped at the shots when the Senecas fell, and +she kept her courage. Now she sprang to her full height, and, with the +children screaming at her feet, fired one barrel of the pistol directly +into the face of the first warrior, and served the second in the same +way with the other barrel when he was less than four feet away. Then, +tomahawk in hand, she rushed forward. In judging Mary Newton, one must +consider time and place. + +But happily there was no need for her to use her tomahawk. As the five +rushed in, four of them emptied their double-barreled pistols, while +Henry swung his clubbed rifle with terrible effect. It was too much +for the Senecas. The apparition of the armed woman, whom they had left +bound, and the deadly fire from the five figures that sprang upon them, +was like a blow from the hand of Aieroski. The unhurt and wounded fled +deep into the forest, leaving their dead behind. Mary Newton, her great +deed done, collapsed from emotion and weakness. The screams of the +children sank in a few moments to frightened whimpers. But the oldest, +when they saw the white faces, knew that rescue had come. + +Paul brought water from the brook in his cap, and Mary Newton was +revived; Jim was reassuring the children, and the other three were in +the thickets, watching lest the surviving Senecas return for attack. + +“I don't know who you are, but I think the good God himself must have +sent you to our rescue,” said Mary Newton reverently. + +“We don't know,” said Paul, “but we are doing the best we can. Do you +think you can walk now?” + +“Away from the savages? Yes!” she said passionately. She looked down at +the dead figures of the Senecas, and she did not feel a single trace of +pity for them. Again it is necessary to consider time and place. + +“Some of my strength came back while I was lying here,” she said, “and +much more of it when you drove away the Indians.” + +“Very well,” said Henry, who had returned to the dead camp fire with +his comrades, “we must start on the back trail at once. The surviving +Senecas, joined by other Iroquois, will certainly pursue, and we need +all the start that we can get.” + +Long Jim picked up one of the two younger children and flung him over +his shoulder; Tom Ross did as much for the other, but the older two +scorned help. They were full of admiration for the great woodsmen, +mighty heroes who had suddenly appeared out of the air, as it were, +and who had swept like a tornado over the Seneca band. It did not seem +possible now that they, could be retaken. + +But Mary Newton, with her strength and courage, had also recovered her +forethought. + +“Maybe it will not be better to go on the back trail,” she said. “One +of the Senecas told me to-day that six or seven miles farther on was a +river flowing into the Susquehanna, and that they would cross this river +on a boat now concealed among bushes on the bank. The crossing was at a +sudden drop between high banks. Might not we go on, find the boat, and +come back in it down the river and into the Susquehanna?” + +“That sounds mighty close to wisdom to me,” said Shif'less Sol. +“Besides, it's likely to have the advantage o' throwin' the Iroquois off +our track. They'll think, o' course, that we've gone straight back, an' +we'll pass 'em ez we're going forward.” + +“It's certainly the best plan,” said Henry, “and it's worth our while +to try for that hidden boat of the Iroquois. Do you know the general +direction?” + +“Almost due north.” + +“Then we'll make a curve to the right, in order to avoid any Iroquois +who may be returning to this camp, and push for it.” + +Henry led the way over hilly, rough ground, and the others followed in a +silent file, Long Jim and Tom still carrying the two smallest children, +who soon fell asleep on their shoulders. Henry did not believe that the +returning Iroquois could follow their trail on such a dark night, and +the others agreed with him. + +After a while they saw the gleam of water. Henry knew that it must be +very near, or it would have been wholly invisible on such a dark night. + +“I think, Mrs. Newton,” he said, “that this is the river of which you +spoke, and the cliffs seem to drop down just as you said they would.” + +The woman smiled. + +“Yes,” she said, “you've done well with my poor guess, and the boat must +be hidden somewhere near here.” + +Then she sank down with exhaustion, and the two older children, unable +to walk farther, sank down beside her. But the two who slept soundly on +the shoulders of Long Jim and Tom Ross did not awaken. Henry motioned +to Jim and Tom to remain there, and Shif'less Sol bent upon them a +quizzical and approving look. + +“Didn't think it was in you, Jim Hart, you old horny-handed galoot,” he +said, “carryin' a baby that tender. Knew Jim could sling a little black +bar 'roun' by the tail, but I didn't think you'd take to nussin' so +easy.” + +“I'd luv you to know, Sol Hyde,” said Jim Hart in a tone of high +condescension, “that Tom Ross an' me are civilized human bein's. In face +uv danger we are ez brave ez forty thousand lions, but with the little +an' the weak we're as easy an' kind an' soft ez human bein's are ever +made to be.” + +“You're right, old hoss,” said Tom Ross. + +“Well,” said the shiftless one, “I can't argify with you now, ez the +general hez called on his colonel, which is me, an' his major, which is +Paul, to find him a nice new boat like one o' them barges o' Clepatry +that Paul tells about, all solid silver, with red silk sails an' gold +oars, an' we're meanin' to do it.” + +Fortune was with them, and in a quarter of an hour they discovered, deep +among bushes growing in the shallow water, a large, well-made boat with +two pairs of oars and with small supplies of parched corn and venison +hidden in it. + +“Good luck an' bad luck come mixed,” said the shift-less one, “an' this +is shorely one o' our pieces o' good luck. The woman an' the children +are clean tuckered out, an' without this boat we could never hev got +them back. Now it's jest a question o' rowin' an' fightin'.” + +“Paul and I will pull her out to the edge of the clear water,” said +Henry, “while you can go back and tell the others, Sol.” + +“That just suits a lazy man,” said Sol, and he walked away jauntily. +Under his apparent frivolity he concealed his joy at the find, which he +knew to be of such vast importance. He approached the dusky group, and +his really tender heart was stirred with pity for the rescued captives. +Long Jim and Silent Tom held the smaller two on their shoulders, but +the older ones and the woman, also, had fallen asleep. Sol, in order to +conceal his emotion, strode up rather roughly. Mary Newton awoke. + +“Did you find anything?” she asked. + +“Find anything?” repeated Shif'less Sol. “Well, Long Jim an' Tom +here might never hev found anything, but Henry an' Paul an' me, three +eddicated men, scholars, I might say, wuz jest natcherally bound to find +it whether it wuz thar or not. Yes, we've unearthed what Paul would call +an argosy, the grandest craft that ever floated on this here creek, +that I never saw before, an' that I don't know the name uv. She's bein' +floated out now, an' I, the Gran' Hidalgo an' Majordomo, hev come to +tell the princes and princesses, an' the dukes and dukesses, an' all the +other gran' an' mighty passengers, that the barge o' the Dog o' Venice +is in the stream, an' the Dog, which is Henry Ware, is waitin', settin' +on the Pup to welcome ye.” + +“Sol,” said Long Jim, “you do talk a power uv foolishness, with your +Dogs an' Pups.” + +“It ain't foolishness,” rejoined the shiftless one. “I heard Paul read +it out o' a book oncet, plain ez day. They've been ruled by Dogs at +Venice for more than a thousand years, an' on big 'casions the Dog comes +down a canal in a golden barge, settin' on the Pup. I'll admit it 'pears +strange to me, too, but who are you an' me, Jim Hart, to question the +ways of foreign countries, thousands o' miles on the other side o' the +sea?” + +“They've found the boat,” said Tom Ross, “an' that's enough!” + +“Is it really true?” asked Mrs. Newton. + +“It is,” replied Shif'less Sol, “an' Henry an' Paul are in it, waitin' +fur us. We're thinkin', Mrs. Newton, that the roughest part of your trip +is over.” + +In another five minutes all were in the boat, which was a really fine +one, and they were delighted. Mary Newton for the first time broke down +and wept, and no one disturbed her. The five spread the blankets on the +bottom of the boat, where the children soon went to sleep once more, and +Tom Ross and Shif'less Sol took the oars. + +“Back in a boat ag'in,” said the shiftless one exultantly. “Makes me +feel like old times. My fav'rite mode o' travelin' when Jim Hart, 'stead +o' me, is at the oars.” + +“Which is most o' the time,” said Long Jim. + +It was indeed a wonderful change to these people worn by the wilderness. +They lay at ease now, while two pairs of powerful arms, with scarcely an +effort, propelled the boat along the stream. The woman herself lay down +on the blankets and fell asleep with the children. Henry at the prow, +Tom Ross at the stern, and Paul amidships watched in silence, but with +their rifles across their knees. They knew that the danger was far from +over. Other Indians were likely to use this stream, unknown to them, as +a highway, and those who survived of their original captors could pick +up their trail by daylight. And the Senecas, being mad for revenge, +would surely get help and follow. Henry believed that the theory of +returning toward the Wyoming Valley was sound. That region had been so +thoroughly ravaged now that all the Indians would be going northward. +If they could float down a day or so without molestation, they would +probably be safe. The creek, or, rather, little river, broadened, +flowing with a smooth, fairly swift current. The forest on either side +was dense with oak, hickory, maple, and other splendid trees, often +with a growth of underbrush. The three riflemen never ceased to watch +intently. Henry always looked ahead. It would have been difficult for +any ambushed marksman to have escaped his notice. But nothing occurred +to disturb them. Once a deer came down to drink, and fled away at sight +of the phantom boat gliding almost without noise on the still waters. +Once the far scream of a panther came from the woods, but Mary Newton +and her children, sleeping soundly, did not hear it. The five themselves +knew the nature of the sound, and paid no attention. The boat went +steadily on, the three riflemen never changing their position, and soon +the day began to come. Little arrows of golden light pierced through the +foliage of the trees, and sparkled on the surface of the water. In the +cast the red sun was coming from his nightly trip. Henry looked down at +the sleepers. They were overpowered by exhaustion, and would not awake +of their own accord for a long time. + +Shif'less Sol caught his look. + +“Why not let 'em sleep on?” he said. + +Then he and Jim Hart took the oars, and the shiftless one and Tom Ross +resumed their rifles. The day was coming fast, and the whole forest was +soon transfused with light. + +No one of the five had slept during the night. They did not feel the +need of sleep, and they were upborne, too, by a great exaltation. They +had saved the prisoners thus far from a horrible fate, and they were +firmly resolved to reach, with them, some strong settlement and safety. +They felt, too, a sense of exultation over Brant, Sangerachte, Hiokatoo, +the Butlers, the Johnsons, Wyatt, and all the crew that had committed +such terrible devastation in the Wyoming Valley and elsewhere. + +The full day clothed the earth in a light that turned from silver to +gold, and the woman and the children still slept. The five chewed some +strips of venison, and looked rather lugubriously at the pieces they +were saving for Mary Newton and the children. + +“We ought to hev more'n that,” said Shif'less Sol. “Ef the worst comes to +the worst, we've got to land somewhar an' shoot a deer.” + +“But not yet,” said Henry in a whisper, lest he wake the sleepers. “I +think we'll come into the Susquehanna pretty soon, and its width will be +a good thing for us. I wish we were there now. I don't like this narrow +stream. Its narrowness affords too good an ambush.” + +“Anyway, the creek is broadenin' out fast,” said the shiftless one, +“an' that is a good sign. What's that you see ahead, Henry--ain't it a +river?” + +“It surely is,” replied Henry, who caught sight of a broad expanse of +water, “and it's the Susquehanna. Pull hard, Sol! In five more minutes +we'll be in the river.” + +It was less than five when they turned into the current of the +Susquehanna, and less than five more when they heard a shout behind +them, and saw at least a dozen canoes following. The canoes were filled +with Indians and Tories, and they had spied the fugitives. + +“Keep the women and the children down, Paul,” cried Henry. + +All knew that Henry and Shif'less Sol were the best shots, and, without +a word, Long Jim and Tom, both powerful and skilled watermen, swung +heavily on the oars, while Henry and Shif'less Sol sat in the rear with +their rifles ready. Mary Newton awoke with a cry at the sound of the +shots, and started to rise, but Paul pushed her down. + +“We're on the Susquehanna now, Mrs. Newton,” he said, “and we are +pursued. The Indians and Tories have just seen us, but don't be afraid. +The two who are watching there are the best shots in the world.” + +He looked significantly at Henry and Shif'less Sol, crouching in the +stern of the boat like great warriors from some mighty past, kings of +the forest whom no one could overcome, and her courage came back. The +children, too, had awakened with frightened cries, but she and Paul +quickly soothed them, and, obedient to commands, the four, and Mary +Newton with them, lay flat upon the bottom of the boat, which was now +being sent forward rapidly by Jim Hart and Tom. Paul took up his rifle +and sat in a waiting attitude, either to relieve one of the men at the +oars or to shoot if necessary. + +The clear sun made forest and river vivid in its light. The Indians, +after their first cry, made no sound, but so powerful were Long Jim +and Tom that they were gaining but little, although some of the boats +contained six or eight rowers. + +As the light grew more intense Henry made out the two white faces in the +first boat. One was that of Braxton Wyatt, and the other, he was quite +sure, belonged to the infamous Walter Butler. Hot anger swept through +all his veins, and the little pulses in his temples began to beat like +trip hammers. Now the picture of Wyoming, the battle, the massacre, +the torture, and Queen Esther wielding her great tomahawk on the bound +captives, grew astonishingly vivid, and it was printed blood red on his +brain. The spirit of anger and defiance, of a desire to taunt those who +had done such things, leaped up in his heart. + +“Are you there, Braxton Wyatt?” he called clearly across the intervening +water. “Yes, I see that it is you, murderer of women and children, +champion of the fire and stake, as savage as any of the savages. And +it is you, too, Walter Butler, wickeder son of a wicked father. Come a +little closer, won't you? We've messengers here for both of you!” + +He tapped lightly the barrel of his own rifle and that of Shif'less Sol, +and repeated his request that they come a little closer. + +They understood his words, and they understood, also, the significant +gesture when he patted the barrel of the rifles. The hearts of both +Butler and Wyatt were for the moment afraid, and their boat dropped back +to third place. Henry laughed aloud when he saw. The Viking rage was +still upon him. This was the primeval wilderness, and these were no +common foes. + +“I see that you don't want to receive our little messengers,” he cried. +“Why have you dropped back to third place in the line, Braxton Wyatt and +Walter Butler, when you were first only a moment ago? Are you cowards as +well as murderers of women and children?” + +“That's pow'ful good talk,” said Shif'less Sol admiringly. “Henry, +you're a real orator. Give it to 'em, an' mebbe I'll get a chance at one +o' them renegades.” + +It seemed that Henry's words had an effect, because the boat of the +renegades pulled up somewhat, although it did not regain first place. +Thus the chase proceeded down the Susquehanna. + +The Indian fleet was gaining a little, and Shif'less Sol called Henry's +attention to it. + +“Don't you think I'd better take a shot at one o' them rowers in the +first boat?” he said to Henry. “Wyatt an' Butler are a leetle too fur +away.” + +“I think it would give them a good hint, Sol!” said Henry. “Take that +fellow on the right who is pulling so hard.” + +The shiftless one raised his rifle, lingered but a little over his aim, +and pulled the trigger. The rower whom Henry had pointed out fell back +in the boat, his hands slipping from the handles of his oars. The boat +was thrown into confusion, and dropped back in the race. Scattering +shots were fired in return, but all fell short, the water spurting up in +little jets where they struck. + +Henry, who had caught something of the Indian nature in his long stay +among them in the northwest, laughed in loud irony. + +“That was one of our little messengers, and it found a listener!” + he shouted. “And I see that you are afraid, Braxton Wyatt and Walter +Butler, murderers of women and children! Why don't you keep your proper +places in the front?” + +“That's the way to talk to 'em,” whispered Shif'less Sol, as he +reloaded. “Keep it up, an' mebbe we kin git a chance at Braxton Wyatt +hisself. Since Wyoming I'd never think o' missin' sech a chance.” + +“Nor I, either,” said Henry, and he resumed in his powerful tones: “The +place of a leader is in front, isn't it? Then why don't you come up?” + +Braxton Wyatt and Walter Butler did not come up. They were not lacking +in courage, but Wyatt knew what deadly marksmen the fugitive boat +contained, and he had also told Butler. So they still hung back, +although they raged at Henry Ware's taunts, and permitted the Mohawks +and Senecas to take the lead in the chase. + +“They're not going to give us a chance,” said Henry. “I'm satisfied +of that. They'll let redskins receive our bullets, though just now +I'd rather it were the two white ones. What do you think, Sol, of that +leading boat? Shouldn't we give another hint?” + +“I agree with you, Henry,” said the shiftless one. “They're comin' +much too close fur people that ain't properly interduced to us. This +promiskus way o' meetin' up with strangers an' lettin' 'em talk to you +jest ez ef they'd knowed you all their lives hez got to be stopped. It's +your time, Henry, to give 'em a polite hint, an' I jest suggest that you +take the big fellow in the front o' the boat who looks like a Mohawk.” + +Henry raised his rifle, fired, and the Mohawk would row no more. Again +confusion prevailed in the pursuing fleet, and there was a decline of +enthusiasm. Braxton Wyatt and Walter Butler raged and swore, but, as +they showed no great zeal for the lead themselves, the Iroquois did not +gain on the fugitive boat. They, too, were fast learning that the two +who crouched there with their rifles ready were among the deadliest +marksmen in existence. They fired a dozen shots, perhaps, but their +rifles did not have the long range of the Kentucky weapons, and again +the bullets fell short, causing little jets of water to spring up. + +“They won't come any nearer, at least not for the present,” said Henry, +“but will hang back just out of rifle range, waiting for some chance to +help them.” + +Shif'less Sol looked the other way, down the Susquehanna, and announced +that he could see no danger. There was probably no Indian fleet farther +down the river than the one now pursuing them, and the danger was behind +them, not before. + +Throughout the firing, Silent Tom Ross and Long Jim Hart had not said a +word, but they rowed with a steadiness and power that would have carried +oarsmen of our day to many a victory. Moreover, they had the inducement +not merely of a prize, but of life itself, to row and to row hard. They +had rolled up their sleeves, and the mighty muscles on those arms of +woven steel rose and fell as they sent the boat swiftly with the silver +current of the Susquehanna. + +Mary Newton still lay on the bottom of the boat. The children had cried +out in fright once or twice at the sound of the firing, but she and +Paul bad soothed them and kept them down. Somehow Mary Newton had become +possessed of a great faith. She noticed the skill, speed, and success +with which the five always worked, and, so long given up to despair, +she now went to the other extreme. With such friends as these coming +suddenly out of the void, everything must succeed. She had no doubt of +it, but lay peacefully on the bottom of the boat, not at all disturbed +by the sound of the shots. + +Paul and Sol after a while relieved Long Jim and Tom at the oars. The +Iroquois thought it a chance to creep up again, but they were driven +back by a third bullet, and once more kept their distance. Shif'less +Sol, while he pulled as powerfully as Tom Ross, whose place he had +taken, nevertheless was not silent. + +“I'd like to know the feelin's o' Braxton Wyatt an' that feller Butler,” + he said. “Must be powerful tantalizin' to them to see us here, almost +where they could stretch out their hands an' put 'em on us. Like reachn' +fur ripe, rich fruit, an' failin' to git it by half a finger's length.” + +“They are certainly not pleased,” said Henry, “but this must end some +way or other, you know.” + +“I say so, too, now that I'm a-rowin',” rejoined the shiftless one, +“but when my turn at the oars is finished I wouldn't care. Ez I've said +more'n once before, floatin' down a river with somebody else pullin' at +the oars is the life jest suited to me.” + +Henry looked up. “A summer thunderstorm is coming,” he said, “and from +the look of things it's going to be pretty black. Then's when we must +dodge 'em.” + +He was a good weather prophet. In a half hour the sky began to darken +rapidly. There was a great deal of thunder and lightning, but when +the rain came the air was almost as dark as night. Mary Newton and her +children were covered as much as possible with the blankets, and then +they swung the boat rapidly toward the eastern shore. They had already +lost sight of their pursuers in the darkness, and as they coasted along +the shore they found a large creek flowing into the river from the east. + +They ran up the creek, and were a full mile from its mouth when the +rain ceased. Then the sun came out bright and warm, quickly drying +everything. + +They pulled about ten miles farther, until the creek grew too shallow +for them, when they hid the boat among bushes and took to the land. +Two days later they arrived at a strong fort and settlement, where Mary +Newton and her four children, safe and well, were welcomed by relatives +who had mourned them as dead. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. “THE ALCOVE” + + +They arrived at the fort as evening was coming on, and as soon as food +was served to them the five sought sleep. The frontiersmen usually slept +soundly and for a long time after prodigious exertions, and Henry and +his comrades were too wise to make an exception. They secured a single +room inside the fort, one given to them gladly, because Mary Newton +had already spread the fame of their exploits, and, laying aside their +hunting shirts and leggins, prepared for rest. + +“Jim,” said Shif'less Sol, pointing to a low piece of furniture, flat +and broad, in one corner of the room, “that's a bed. Mebbe you don't +think it, but people lay on top o' that an' sleep thar.” + +Long Jim grinned. + +“Mebbe you're right, Sol,” he said. “I hev seen sech things ez that, an' +mebbe I've slep' on 'em, but in all them gran' old tales Paul tells +us about I never heard uv no big heroes sleepin' in beds. I guess the +ground wuz good 'nough for A-killus, Hector, Richard-Kur-de-Leong, +an' all the rest uv that fightin' crowd, an' ez I'm that sort uv a man +myself I'll jest roll down here on the floor. Bein' as you're tender, +Sol Hyde, an' not used to hard life in the woods, you kin take that bed +yourself, an' in the mornin' your wally will be here with hot water in +a silver mug an' a razor to shave you, an' he'll dress you in a ruffled +red silk shirt an' a blue satin waistcoat, an' green satin breeches jest +comin' to the knee, where they meet yellow silk stockin's risin' out +uv purple satin slippers, an' then he'll clap on your head a big wig +uv snow-white hair, fallin' all about your shoulders an' he'll buckle a +silver sword to your side, an' he'll say: 'Gentlemen, him that hez long +been known ez Shif'less Sol, an' desarvin' the name, but who in reality +is the King o' France, is now before you. Down on your knees an' say +your prayers!'” + +Shif'less Sol stared in astonishment. + +“You say a wally will do all that fur me, Jim? Now, what under the sun +is a wally?” + +“I heard all about 'em from Paul,” replied Long Jim in a tone of intense +satisfaction. “A wally is a man what does fur you what you ought to do +fur yourself.” + +“Then I want one,” said Shif'less Sol emphatically. “He'd jest suit a +lazy man like me. An' ez fur your makin' me the King o' France, mebbe +you're more'n half right about that without knowin' it. I hev all the +instincts uv a king. I like to be waited on, I like to eat when I'm +hungry, I like to drink when I'm thirsty, I like to rest when I'm tired, +an' I like to sleep when I'm sleepy. You've heard o' children changed at +birth by fairies an' sech like. Mebbe I'm the real King o' France, +after all, an' my instincts are handed down to me from a thousand royal +ancestors.” + +“Mebbe it's so,” rejoined Long Jim. “I've heard that thar hev been a +pow'ful lot uv foolish kings.” + +With that he put his two blankets upon the floor, lay down upon them, +and was sound asleep in five minutes. But Shif'less Sol beat him to +slumberland by at least a minute, and the others were not more than two +minutes behind Sol. + +Henry was the first up the next morning. A strong voice shouted in +his ear: “Henry Ware, by all that's glorious,” and a hand pressed his +fingers together in an iron grasp. Henry beheld the tall, thin figure +and smiling brown face of Adam Colfax, with whom he had made that +adventurous journey up the Mississippi and Ohio. + +“And the others?” was the first question of Adam Colfax. + +“They're all here asleep inside. We've been through a lot of things, but +we're as sound as ever.” + +“That's always a safe prediction to make,” said Adam Colfax, smiling. “I +never saw five other human beings with such a capacity for getting out +of danger.” + +“We were all at Wyoming, and we all still live.” + +The face of the New Englander darkened. + +“Wyoming!” he exclaimed. “I cannot hear of it without every vein growing +hot within me.” + +“We saw things done there,” said Henry gravely, “the telling of which few +men can bear to hear.” + +“I know! I know!” exclaimed Adam Colfax. “The news of it has spread +everywhere!” + +“What we want,” said Henry, “is revenge. It is a case in which we must +strike back, and strike hard. If this thing goes on, not a white +life will be safe on the whole border from the St. Lawrence to the +Mississippi.” + +“It is true,” said Adam Colfax, “and we would send an army now against +the Iroquois and their allies, but, Henry, my lad, our fortunes are at +their lowest there in the East, where the big armies are fighting. That +is the reason why nobody has been sent to protect our rear guard, which +has suffered so terribly. You may be sure, too, that the Iroquois will +strike in this region again as often and as hard as they can. I make +more than half a guess that you and your comrades are here because you +know this.” + +He looked shrewdly at the boy. + +“Yes,” said Henry, “that is so. Somehow we were drawn into it, but being +here we are glad to stay. Timmendiquas, the great chief who fought us +so fiercely on the Ohio, is with the Iroquois, with a detachment of his +Wyandots, and while he, as I know, frowns on the Wyoming massacre, he +means to help Thayendanegea to the end.” + +Adam Colfax looked graver than ever. + +“That is bad,” he said. “Timmendiquas is a mighty warrior and leader, +but there is also another way of looking at it. His presence here will +relieve somewhat the pressure on Kentucky. I ought to tell you, Henry, +that we got through safely with our supplies to the Continental army, +and they could not possibly have been more welcome. They arrived just in +time.” + +The others came forth presently and were greeted with the same warmth by +Adam Colfax. + +“It is shore mighty good for the eyes to see you, Mr. Colfax,” said +Shif'less Sol, “an' it's a good sign. Our people won when you were on +the Mississippi an' the Ohio'--an' now that you're here, they're goin' +to win again.” + +“I think we are going to win here and everywhere,” said Adam Colfax, +“but it is not because there is any omen in my presence. It is because +our people will not give up, and because our quarrel is just.” + +The stanch New Englander left on the following day for points farther +east, planning and carrying out some new scheme to aid the patriot +cause, and the five, on the day after that, received a message written +on a piece of paper which was found fastened to a tree on the outskirts +of the settlement. It was addressed to “Henry Ware and Those with Him,” + and it read: + + + “You need not think because you escaped us at Wyoming and on + the Susquehanna that you will ever get back to Kentucky. + There is amighty league now on the whole border between the + Indians and the soldiers of the king. You have seen at + Wyoming what we can do, and you will see at other places and + on a greater scale what we will do. + + “I find my own position perfect. It is true that + Timmendiquas does not like me, but he is not king here. I + am the friend of the great Brant; and Hiokatoo, Sangerachte, + Hahiron, and the other chiefs esteem me. I am thick with + Colonel John Butler, the victor of Wyoming; his son, the + valiant and worthy Walter Butler; Sir John Johnson, Colonel + Guy Johnson, Colonel Daniel Claus, and many other eminent + men and brave soldiers. + + “I write these words, Henry Ware, both to you and your + comrades, to tell you that our cause will prevail over + yours. I do not doubt that when you read this you will try + to escape to Kentucky, but when we have destroyed everything + along the eastern border, as we have at Wyoming, we shall + come to Kentucky, and not a rebel face will be left there. + + “I am sending this to tell you that there is no hole in + which you can hide where we cannot reach you. With my + respects, BRAXTON WYATT.” + +Henry regarded the letter with contempt. + +“A renegade catches something of the Indian nature,” he said, “and +always likes to threaten and boast.” + +But Shif'less Sol was highly indignant. + +“Sometimes I think,” he said, “that the invention o' writin' wuz a +mistake. You kin send a man a letter an' call him names an' talk mighty +big when he's a hundred miles away, but when you've got to stan' up +to him face to face an' say it, wa'al, you change your tune an' sing a +pow'ful sight milder. You ain't gen'ally any roarin' lion then.” + +“I think I'll keep this letter,” said Henry, “an' we five will give an +answer to it later on.” + +He tapped the muzzle of his rifle, and every one of the four gravely +tapped the muzzle of his own rifle after him. It was a significant +action. Nothing more was needed. + +The next morning they bade farewell to the grateful Mary Newton and +her children, and with fresh supplies of food and ammunition, chiefly +ammunition, left the fort, plunging once more into the deep forest. It +was their intention to do as much damage as they could to the Iroquois, +until some great force, capable of dealing with the whole Six Nations, +was assembled. Meanwhile, five redoubtable and determined borderers +could achieve something. + +It was about the first of August, and they were in the midst of the +great heats. But it was a period favoring Indian activity, which was now +at its highest pitch. Since Wyoming, loaded with scalps, flushed with +victory, and aided by the king's men, they felt equal to anything. +Only the strongest of the border settlements could hold them back. The +colonists here were so much reduced, and so little help could be +sent them from the East, that the Iroquois were able to divide into +innumerable small parties and rake the country as with a fine tooth +comb. They never missed a lone farmhouse, and rarely was any fugitive +in the woods able to evade them. And they were constantly fed from the +North with arms, ammunition, rewards for scalps, bounties, and great +promises. + +But toward the close of August the Iroquois began to hear of a silent +and invisible foe, an evil spirit that struck them, and that struck +hard. There were battles of small forces in which sometimes not a single +Iroquois escaped. Captives were retaken in a half-dozen instances, and +the warriors who escaped reported that their assailants were of uncommon +size and power. They had all the cunning of the Indian and more, and +they carried rifles that slew at a range double that of those served to +them at the British posts. It was a certainty that they were guided by +the evil spirit, because every attempt to capture them failed miserably. +No one could find where they slept, unless it was those who never came +back again. + +The Iroquois raged, and so did the Butlers and the Johnsons and Braxton +Wyatt. This was a flaw in their triumph, and the British and Tories saw, +also, that it was beginning to affect the superstitions of their red +allies. Braxton Wyatt made a shrewd guess as to the identity of the +raiders, but he kept quiet. It is likely, also, that Timmendiquas knew, +but be, too, said nothing. So the influence of the raiders grew. While +their acts were great, superstition exaggerated them and their powers +manifold. And it is true that their deeds were extraordinary. They were +heard of on the Susquehanna, then on the Delaware and its branches, on +the Chemung and the Chenango, as far south as Lackawaxen Creek, and as +far north as Oneida Lake. It is likely that nobody ever accomplished +more for a defense than did those five in the waning months of the +summer. Late in September the most significant of all these events +occurred. A party of eight Tories, who had borne a terrible part in +the Wyoming affair, was attacked on the shores of Otsego Lake with such +deadly fierceness that only two escaped alive to the camp of Sir John +Johnson. Brant sent out six war parties, composed of not less than +twenty warriors apiece, to seek revenge, but they found nothing. + +Henry and his comrades had found a remarkable camp at the edge of one of +the beautiful small lakes in which the region abounds. The cliff at that +point was high, but a creek entered into it through a ravine. At the +entrance of the creek into the river they found a deep alcove, or, +rather, cave in the rock. It ran so far back that it afforded ample +shelter from the rain, and that was all they wanted. It was about +halfway between the top and bottom of the cliff, and was difficult of +approach both from below and above. Unless completely surprised-a very +unlikely thing with them-the five could hold it against any force as +long as their provisions lasted. They also built a boat large enough for +five, which they hid among the bushes at the lake's edge. They were thus +provided with a possible means of escape across the water in case of the +last emergency. + +Jim and Paul, who, as usual, filled the role of housekeepers, took great +delight in fitting up this forest home, which the fittingly called “The +Alcove.” The floor of solid stone was almost smooth, and with the aid of +other heavy stones they broke off all projections, until one could walk +over it in the dark in perfect comfort. They hung the walls with +skins of deer which they killed in the adjacent woods, and these walls +furnished many nooks and crannies for the storing of necessities. They +also, with much hard effort, brought many loads of firewood, which Long +Jim was to use for his cooking. He built his little fireplace of stones +so near the mouth of “The Alcove” that the smoke would pass out and be +lost in the thick forest all about. If the wind happened to be blowing +toward the inside of the cave, the smoke, of course, would come in on +them all, but Jim would not be cooking then. + +Nor did their operations cease until they had supplied “The Alcove” + plentifully with food, chiefly jerked deer meat, although there was no +way in which they could store water, and for that they had to take +their chances. But their success, the product of skill and everlasting +caution, was really remarkable. Three times they were trapped within a +few miles of “The Alcove,” but the pursuers invariably went astray on +the hard, rocky ground, and the pursued would also take the precaution +to swim down the creek before climbing up to “The Alcove.” Nobody could +follow a trail in the face of such difficulties. + +It was Henry and Shif'less Sol who were followed the second time, but +they easily shook off their pursuers as the twilight was coming, half +waded, half swam down the creek, and climbed up to “The Alcove,” where +the others were waiting for them with cooked food and clear cold water. +When they had eaten and were refreshed, Shif'less Sol sat at the mouth +of “The Alcove,” where a pleasant breeze entered, despite the foliage +that hid the entrance. The shiftless one was in an especially happy +mood. + +“It's a pow'ful comf'table feelin',” he said, “to set up in a nice safe +place like this, an' feel that the woods is full o' ragin' heathen, +seekin' to devour you, and wonderin' whar you've gone to. Thar's a heap +in knowin' how to pick your home. I've thought more than once 'bout that +old town, Troy, that Paul tells us 'bout, an' I've 'bout made up my mind +that it wuzn't destroyed 'cause Helen eat too many golden apples, but +'cause old King Prime, or whoever built the place, put it down in a +plain. That wuz shore a pow'ful foolish thing. Now, ef he'd built it on +a mountain, with a steep fall-off on every side, thar wouldn't hev been +enough Greeks in all the earth to take it, considerin' the miserable +weepins they used in them times. Why, Hector could hev set tight on the +walls, laughin' at 'em, 'stead o' goin' out in the plain an' gittin' +killed by A-killus, fur which I've always been sorry.” + +“It's 'cause people nowadays have more sense than they did in them +ancient times that Paul tells about,” said Long Jim. “Now, thar wuz +'Lyssus, ten or twelve years gittin' home from Troy. Allus runnin' +his ship on the rocks, hoppin' into trouble with four-legged giants, +one-eyed women, an' sech like. Why didn't he walk home through the +woods, killin' game on the way, an' hevin' the best time he ever knowed? +Then thar wuz the keerlessness of A-killus' ma, dippin' him in that +river so no arrow could enter him, but holdin' him by the heel an' +keepin' it out o' the water, which caused his death the very first time +Paris shot it off with his little bow an' arrer. Why didn't she hev +sense enough to let the heel go under, too. She could hev dragged it out +in two seconds an' no harm done 'ceptin', perhaps, a little more yellin' +on the part of A-killus.” + +“I've always thought Paul hez got mixed 'bout that Paris story,” said +Tom Ross. “I used to think Paris was the name uv a town, not a man, an' +I'm beginnin' to think so ag'in, sence I've been in the East, 'cause I +know now that's whar the French come from.” + +“But Paris was the name of a man,” persisted Paul. “Maybe the French +named their capital after the Paris of the Trojan wars.” + +“Then they showed mighty poor jedgment,” said Shif'less Sol. “Ef I'd +named my capital after any them old fellers, I'd have called it Hector.” + +“You can have danger enough when you're on the tops of hills,” said +Henry, who was sitting near the mouth of the cave. “Come here, you +fellows, and see what's passing down the lake.” + +They looked out, and in the moonlight saw six large war canoes being +rowed slowly down the lake, which, though narrow, was quite long. Each +canoe held about a dozen warriors, and Henry believed that one of them +contained two white faces, evidently those of Braxton Wyatt and Walter +Butler. + +“Like ez not they've been lookin' fur us,” said Tom Ross. + +“Quite likely,” said Henry, “and at the same time they may be engaged in +some general movement. See, they will pass within fifty feet of the base +of the cliff.” + +The five lay on the cave floor, looking through the vines and foliage, +and they felt quite sure that they were in absolute security. The six +long war canoes moved slowly. The moonlight came out more brightly, and +flooded all the bronze faces of the Iroquois. Henry now saw that he was +not mistaken, and that Braxton Wyatt and Walter Butler were really in +the first boat. From the cover of the cliff he could have picked off +either with a rifle bullet, and the temptation was powerful. But he +knew that it would lead to an immediate siege, from which they might not +escape, and which at least would check their activities and plans for a +long time. Similar impulses flitted through the minds of the other four, +but all kept still, although fingers flitted noiselessly along rifle +stocks until they touched triggers. + +The Iroquois war fleet moved slowly on, the two renegades never dreaming +of the danger that had threatened them. An unusually bright ray of +moonshine fell full upon Braxton Wyatt's face as he paused, and Henry's +finger played with the trigger of his rifle. It was hard, very hard, to +let such an opportunity go by, but it must be done. + +The fleet moved steadily down the lake, the canoes keeping close +together. They turned into mere dots upon the water, became smaller and +smaller still, until they vanished in the darkness. + +“I'm thinkin',” said Shif'less Sol, “that thar's some kind uv a movement +on foot. While they may hev been lookin' fur us, it ain't likely that +they'd send sixty warriors or so fur sech a purpose. I heard something +three or four days ago from a hunter about an attack upon the Iroquois +town of Oghwaga.” + +“It's most likely true,” said Henry, “and it seems to me that it's our +business to join that expedition. What do you fellows think?” + +“Just as you do,” they replied with unanimity. + +“Then we leave this place and start in the morning,” said Henry. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. THE FIRST BLOW + + +Summer was now waning, the foliage was taking on its autumn hues, and +Indian war parties still surged over the hills and mountains, but the +five avoided them all. On one or two occasions they would have been +willing to stop and fight, but they had bigger work on hand. They had +received from others confirmation of the report that Long Jim had heard +from the hunters, and they were quite sure that a strong force was +advancing to strike the first blow in revenge for Wyoming. Curiously +enough, this body was commanded by a fourth Butler, Colonel William +Butler, and according to report it was large and its leaders capable. + +When the avenging force lay at the Johnstown settlement on the Delaware, +it was joined by the five. They were introduced to the colonel by the +celebrated scout and hunter, Tini Murphy, whom they had met several +times in the woods, and they were received warmly. + +“I've heard of you,” said Colonel Butler with much warmth, “both from +hunters and scouts, and also from Adam Colfax. Two of you were to have +been tomahawked by Queen Esther at Wyoming.” + +Henry indicated the two. + +“What you saw at Wyoming is not likely to decrease your zeal against the +Indians and their white allies,” continued Colonel Butler. + +“Anyone who was there,” said Henry, “would feel all his life, the desire +to punish those who did it.” + +“I think so, too, from all that I have heard,” continued Colonel Butler. +“It is the business of you young men to keep ahead of our column and +warn us of what lies before us. I believe you have volunteered for that +duty.” + +The five looked over Colonel Butler's little army, which numbered only +two hundred and fifty men, but they were all strong and brave, and it +was the best force that could yet be sent to the harassed border. +It might, after all, strike a blow for Wyoming if it marched into no +ambush, and Henry and his comrades were resolved to guard it from that +greatest of all dangers. + +When the little column moved from the Johnstown settlement, the five +were far ahead, passing through the woods, up the Susquehanna, toward +the Indian villages that lay on its banks, though a great distance above +Wyoming. The chief of these was Oghwaga, and, knowing that it was the +destination of the little army, they were resolved to visit it, or at +least come so near it that they could see what manner of place it was. + +“If it's a big village,” said Colonel Butler, “it will be too strong +to attack, but it may be that most of the warriors are absent on +expeditions.” + +They had obtained before starting very careful descriptions of the +approaches to the village, and toward the close of an October evening +they knew that they were near Oghwaga, the great base of the Iroquois +supplies. They considered it very risky and unwise to approach in the +daytime, and accordingly they lay in the woods until the dark should +come. + +The appearance of the wilderness had changed greatly in the three +months since Wyoming. All the green was now gone, and it was tinted +red and yellow and brown. The skies were a mellow blue, and there was a +slight haze over the forest, but the air had the wonderful crispness and +freshness of the American autumn. It inspired every one of the five with +fresh zeal and energy, because they believed the first blow was about to +be struck. + +About ten o'clock at night they approached Oghwaga, and the reports +of its importance were confirmed. They had not before seen an Indian +village with so many signs of permanence. They passed two or three +orchards of apple and peach trees, and they saw other indications of +cultivation like that of the white farmer. + +“It ain't a bad-lookin' town,” said Long Jim Hart. “But it'll look +wuss,” said Shif'less Sol, “onless they've laid an ambush somewhar. +I don't like to see houses an' sech like go up in fire an' smoke, but +after what wuz done at Wyomin' an' all through that valley, burnin' is a +light thing.” + +“We're bound to strike back with all our might,” said Paul, who had the +softest heart of them all. + +“Now, I wonder who's in this here town,” said Tom Ross. “Mebbe +Timmendiquas an' Brant an' all them renegades.” + +“It may be so,” said Henry. “This is their base and store of supplies. +Oh, if Colonel Butler were only here with all his men, what a rush we +could make!” + +So great was their eagerness that they crept closer to the village, +passing among some thick clusters of grapevines. Henry was in the lead, +and he heard a sudden snarl. A large cur of the kind that infest Indian +villages leaped straight at him. + +The very suddenness of the attack saved Henry and his comrades from the +consequences of an alarm. He dropped his rifle instinctively, and seized +the dog by the throat with both hands. A bark following the snarl had +risen to the animal's throat, but it was cut short there. The hands of +the great youth pressed tighter and tighter, and the dog was lifted from +the earth. The four stood quietly beside their comrade, knowing that no +alarm would be made now. + +The dog kicked convulsively, then hung without motion or noise. Henry +cast the dead body aside, picked up his rifle, and then all five of them +sank softly down in the shelter of the grapevines. About fifteen yards +away an Indian warrior was walking cautiously along and looking among +the vines. Evidently he had heard the snarl of the dog, and was seeking +the cause. But it had been only a single sound, and he would not look +far. Yet the hearts of the five beat a little faster as he prowled among +the vines, and their nerves were tense for action should the need for it +come. + +The Indian, a Mohawk, came within ten yards of them, but he did not see +the five figures among the vines, blending darkly with the dark +growth, and presently, satisfied that the sound he had heard was of no +importance, he walked in another direction, and passed out of sight. + +The five, not daunted at all by this living proof of risk, crept to the +very edge of the clusters of grapevines, and looked upon an open space, +beyond which stood some houses made of wood; but their attention was +centered upon a figure that stood in the open. + +Although the distance was too great and the light too poor to disclose +the features, every one of the scouts recognized the figure. It could be +none other than that of Timmendiquas, the great White Lightning of the +Wyandots. He was pacing back and forth, somewhat in the fashion of the +white man, and his manner implied thought. + +“I could bring him down from here with a bullet,” said Shif'less Sol, +“but I ain't ever goin' to shoot at the chief, Henry.” + +“No,” said Henry, “nor will I. But look, there's another.” + +A second figure came out of the dark and joined the first. It was also +that of a chief, powerful and tall, though not as tall as Timmendiquas. +It was Thayendanegea. Then three white figures appeared. One was that of +Braxton Wyatt, and the others they took to be those of “Indian” Butler +and his son, Walter Butler. After a talk of a minute or two they entered +one of the wooden houses. + +“It's to be a conference of some kind,” whispered Henry. “I wish I could +look in on it.” + +“And I,” said the others together. + +“Well, we know this much,” continued Henry. “No great force of the +Iroquois is present, and if Colonel Butler's men come up quickly, we can +take the town.” + +“It's a chance not to be lost,” said Paul. + +They crept slowly away from the village, not stopping until they reached +the crest of a hill, from which they could see the roofs of two or three +of the Indian houses. + +“I've a feeling in me,” said Paul, “that the place is doomed. We'll +strike the first blow for Wyoming.” + +They neither slept nor rested that night, but retraced their trail with +the utmost speed toward the marching American force, going in Indian +file through the wilderness. Henry, as usual, led; Shif'less Sol +followed, then came Paul, and then Long Jim, while Silent Tom was the +rear guard. They traveled at great speed, and, some time after daylight, +met the advance of the colonial force under Captain William Gray. + +William Gray was a gallant young officer, but he was startled a little +when five figures as silent as phantoms appeared. But he uttered an +exclamation of delight when he recognized the leader, Henry. + +“What have you found?” he asked eagerly. + +“We've been to Oghwaga,” replied the youth, “and we went all about the +town. They do not suspect our coming. At least, they did not know when +we left. We saw Brant, Timmendiquas, the Butlers, and Wyatt enter the +house for a conference.” + +“And now is our chance,” said eager young William Gray. “What if we +should take the town, and with it these men, at one blow.” + +“We can scarcely hope for as much as that,” said Henry, who knew +that men like Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea were not likely to allow +themselves to be seized by so small a force, “but we can hope for a good +victory.” + +The young captain rode quickly back to his comrades with the news, and, +led by the five, the whole force pushed forward with all possible haste. +William Gray was still sanguine of a surprise, but the young riflemen +did not expect it. Indian sentinels were sure to be in the forest +between them and Oghwaga. Yet they said nothing to dash this hope. Henry +had already seen enough to know the immense value of enthusiasm, and +the little army full of zeal would accomplish much if the chance came. +Besides the young captain, William Gray, there was a lieutenant named +Taylor, who had been in the battle at Wyoming, but who had escaped the +massacre. The five had not met him there, but the common share in so +great a tragedy proved a tie between them. Taylor's name was Robert, +but all the other officers, and some of the men for that matter, who +had known him in childhood called him Bob. He was but little older than +Henry, and his earlier youth, before removal to Wyoming, had been passed +in Connecticut, a country that was to the colonials thickly populated +and containing great towns, such as Hartford and New Haven. + +A third close friend whom they soon found was a man unlike any other +that they had ever seen. His name was Cornelius Heemskerk. Holland was +his birthplace, but America was his nation. He was short and extremely +fat, but he had an agility that amazed the five when they first saw it +displayed. He talked much, and his words sounded like grumbles, but +the unctuous tone and the smile that accompanied them indicated to the +contrary. He formed for Shif'less Sol an inexhaustible and entertaining +study in character. + + +“I ain't quite seen his like afore,” said the shiftless one to Paul. +“First time I run acrost him I thought he would tumble down among the +first bushes he met. 'Stead o' that, he sailed right through 'em, makin' +never a trip an' no noise at all, same ez Long Jim's teeth sinkin' into +a juicy venison steak.” + +“I've heard tell,” said Long Jim, who also contemplated the prodigy, +“that big, chunky, awkward-lookin' things are sometimes ez spry ez you. +They say that the Hipperpotamus kin outrun the giraffe across the sands +uv Afriky, an' I know from pussonal experience that the bigger an' +clumsier a b'ar is the faster he kin make you scoot fur your life. But +he's the real Dutch, ain't he, Paul, one uv them fellers that licked the +Spanish under the Duke uv Alivy an' Belisarry?” + +“Undoubtedly,” replied Paul, who did not consider it necessary to +correct Long Jim's history, “and I'm willing to predict to you, Jim +Hart, that Heemskerk will be a mighty good man in any fight that we may +have.” + +Heemskerk rolled up to them. He seemed to have a sort of circular +motion like that of a revolving tube, but he kept pace with the others, +nevertheless, and he showed no signs of exertion. + +“Don't you think it a funny thing that I, Cornelius Heemskerk, am here?” + he said to Paul. + +“Why so, Mr. Heemskerk?” replied Paul politely. “Because I am a +Dutchman. I have the soul of an artist and the gentleness of a baby. I, +Cornelius Heemskerk, should be in the goot leetle country of Holland +in a goot leetle house, by the side of a goot leetle canal, painting +beautiful blue china, dishes, plates, cups, saucers, all most beautiful, +and here I am running through the woods of this vast America, carrying +on my shoulder a rifle that is longer than I am, hunting the red Indian +and hunted by him. Is it not most rediculous, Mynheer Paul?” + +“I think you are here because you are a brave man, Mr. Heemskerk,” + replied Paul, “and wish to see punishment inflicted upon those who have +committed great crimes.” + +“Not so! Not so!” replied the Dutchman with energy. “It is because I am +one big fool. I am not really a big enough man to be as big a fool as I +am, but so it is! so it is!” Shif'less Sol regarded him critically, and +then spoke gravely and with deliberation: “It ain't that, Mr. Heemskerk, +an' Paul ain't told quite all the truth, either. I've heard that the +Dutch was the most powerfullest fightin' leetle nation on the globe; +that all you had to do wuz to step on the toe uv a Dutchman's wooden +shoe, an' all the men, women, an' children in Holland would jump right +on top o' you all at once. Lookin' you up an' lookin' you down, an' +sizin' you up, an' sizin you down, all purty careful, an' examinin' the +corners O' your eyes oncommon close, an' also lookin' at the way you set +your feet when you walk, I'm concludin' that you just natcherally love a +fight, an' that you are lookin' fur one.” + +But Cornelius Heemskerk sighed, and shook his head. + +“It is flattery that you give me, and you are trying to make me brave +when I am not,” he said. “I only say once more that I ought to be in +Holland painting blue plates, and not here in the great woods holding on +to my scalp, first with one hand and then with the other.” + +He sighed deeply, but Solomon Hyde, reader of the hearts of men, only +laughed. + +Colonel Butler's force stopped about three o'clock for food and a little +rest, and the five, who had not slept since the night before, caught +a few winks. But in less than an hour they were up and away again. The +five riflemen were once more well in advance, and with them were Taylor +and Heemskerk, the Dutchman, grumbling over their speed, but revolving +along, nevertheless, with astonishing ease and without any sign of +fatigue. They discovered no indications of Indian scouts or trails, and +as the village now was not many miles away, it confirmed Henry in his +belief that the Iroquois, with their friends, the Wyandots, would not +stay to give battle. If Thayendanegea and Timmendiquas were prepared +for a strong resistance, the bullets of the skirmishers would already be +whistling through the woods. + +The waning evening grew colder, twilight came, and the autumn leaves +fell fast before the rising wind. The promise of the night was dark, +which was not bad for their design, and once more the five-now the seven +approached Oghwaga. From the crest of the very same hill they looked +down once more upon the Indian houses. + +“It is a great base for the Iroquois,” said Henry to Heemskerk, “and +whether the Indians have laid an ambush or not, Colonel Butler must +attack.” + +“Ah,” said Heemskerk, silently moving his round body to a little higher +point for a better view, “now I feel in all its fullness the truth that +I should be back in Holland, painting blue plates.” + +Nevertheless, Cornelius Heemskerk made a very accurate survey of the +Iroquois village, considering the distance and the brevity of the time, +and when the party went back to Colonel Butler to tell him the way was +open, he revolved along as swiftly as any of them. There were also many +serious thoughts in the back of his head. + +At nine o'clock the little colonial force was within half a mile of +Oghwaga, and nothing had yet occurred to disclose whether the Iroquois +knew of their advance. Henry and his comrades, well in front, looked +down upon the town, but saw nothing. No light came from an Indian +chimney, nor did any dog howl. Just behind them were the troops in loose +order, Colonel Butler impatiently striking his booted leg with a switch, +and William Gray seeking to restrain his ardor, that he might set a good +example to the men. + +“What do you think, Mr. Ware?” asked Colonel Butler. + +“I think we ought to rush the town at once.” + +“It is so!” exclaimed Heemskerk, forgetting all about painting blue +plates. + +“The signal is the trumpet; you blow it, Captain Gray, and then we'll +charge.” + +William Gray took the trumpet from one of the men and blew a long, +thrilling note. Before its last echo was ended, the little army rushed +upon the town. Three or four shots came from the houses, and the +soldiers fired a few at random in return, but that was all. Indian +scouts had brought warning of the white advance, and the great chiefs, +gathering up all the people who were in the village, had fled. A +retreating warrior or two had fired the shots, but when the white men +entered this important Iroquois stronghold they did not find a single +human being. Timmendiquas, the White Lightning of the Wyandots, was +gone; Thayendanegea, the real head of the Six Nations, had slipped away; +and with them had vanished the renegades. But they had gone in haste. +All around them were the evidences. The houses, built of wood, were +scores in number, and many of them contained furniture such as a +prosperous white man of the border would buy for himself. There were +gardens and shade trees about these, and back of them, barns, many of +them filled with Indian corn. Farther on were clusters of bark lodges, +which had been inhabited by the less progressive of the Iroquois. + +Henry stood in the center of the town and looked at the houses misty +in the moonlight. The army had not yet made much noise, but he was +beginning to hear behind him the ominous word, “Wyoming,” repeated more +than once. Cornelius Heemskerk had stopped revolving, and, standing +beside Henry, wiped his perspiring, red face. + +“Now that I am here, I think again of the blue plates of Holland, +Mr. Ware,” he said. “It is a dark and sanguinary time. The men whose +brethren were scalped or burned alive at Wyoming will not now spare the +town of those who did it. In this wilderness they give blow for blow, or +perish.” + +Henry knew that it was true, but he felt a certain sadness. His heart +had been inflamed against the Iroquois, he could never forget Wyoming or +its horrors; but in the destruction of an ancient town the long labor +of man perished, and it seemed waste. Doubtless a dozen generations of +Iroquois children had played here on the grass. He walked toward the +northern end of the village, and saw fields there from which recent corn +had been taken, but behind him the cry, “Wyoming!” was repeated louder +and oftener now. Then he saw men running here and there with torches, +and presently smoke and flame burst from the houses. He examined the +fields and forest for a little distance to see if any ambushed foe might +still lie among them, but all the while the flame and smoke behind him +were rising higher. + +Henry turned back and joined his comrades. Oghwaga was perishing. The +flames leaped from house to house, and then from lodge to lodge. There +was no need to use torches any more. The whole village was wrapped in +a mass of fire that grew and swelled until the flames rose above the +forest, and were visible in the clear night miles away. + +So great was the heat that Colonel Butler and the soldiers and scouts +were compelled to withdraw to the edge of the forest. The wind rose and +the flames soared. Sparks flew in myriads, and ashes fell dustily on the +dry leaves of the trees. Bob Taylor, with his hands clenched tightly, +muttered under his breath, “Wyoming! Wyoming!” + +“It is the Iroquois who suffer now,” said Heemskerk, as he revolved +slowly away from a heated point. + +Crashes came presently as the houses fell in, and then the sparks would +leap higher and the flames roar louder. The barns, too, were falling +down, and the grain was destroyed. The grapevines were trampled under +foot, and the gardens were ruined. Oghwaga, a great central base of the +Six Nations, was vanishing forever. For four hundred years, ever since +the days of Hiawatha, the Iroquois had waxed in power. They had ruled +over lands larger than great empires. They had built up political and +social systems that are the wonder of students. They were invincible in +war, because every man had been trained from birth to be a warrior, and +now they were receiving their first great blow. + +From a point far in the forest, miles away, Thayendanegea, Timmendiquas, +Hiokatoo, Sangerachte, “Indian” Butler, Walter Butler, Braxton Wyatt, +a low, heavybrowed Tory named Coleman, with whom Wyatt had become very +friendly, and about sixty Iroquois and twenty Tories were watching a +tower of light to the south that had just appeared above the trees. It +was of an intense, fiery color, and every Indian in that gloomy band +knew that it was Oghwaga, the great, the inviolate, the sacred, that was +burning, and that the men who were doing it were the white frontiersmen, +who, his red-coated allies had told him, would soon be swept forever +from these woods. And they were forced to stand and see it, not daring +to attack so strong and alert a force. + +They sat there in the darkness among the trees, and watched the column +of fire grow and grow until it seemed to pierce the skies. Timmendiquas +never said a word. In his heart, Indian though he was, he felt that +the Iroquois had gone too far. In him was the spirit of the farseeing +Hiawatha. He could perceive that great cruelty always brought +retaliation; but it was not for him, almost an alien, to say these +things to Thayendanegea, the mighty war chief of the Mohawks and the +living spirit of the Iroquois nation. + +Thayendanegea sat on the stump of a tree blown down by winter storms. +His arms were folded across his breast, and he looked steadily toward +that red threatening light off there in the south. Some such idea as +that in the mind of Timmendiquas may have been passing in his own. He +was an uncommon Indian, and he had had uncommon advantages. He had not +believed that the colonists could make head against so great a kingdom +as England, aided by the allied tribes, the Canadians, and the large +body of Tories among their own people. But he saw with his own eyes the +famous Oghwaga of the Iroquois going down under their torch. + +“Tell me, Colonel John Butler,” he said bitterly, “where is your great +king now? Is his arm long enough to reach from London to save our town +of Oghwaga, which is perhaps as much to us as his great city of London +is to him?” + +The thickset figure of “Indian” Butler moved, and his swart face flushed +as much as it could. + +“You know as much about the king as I do, Joe Brant,” he replied. “We +are fighting here for your country as well as his, and you cannot say +that Johnson's Greens and Butler's Rangers and the British and Canadians +have not done their part.” + +“It is true,” said Thayendanegea, “but it is true, also, that one must +fight with wisdom. Perhaps there was too much burning of living men at +Wyoming. The pain of the wounded bear makes him fight the harder, and +it, is because of Wyoming that Oghwaga yonder burns. Say, is it not so, +Colonel John Butler?” + +“Indian” Butler made no reply, but sat, sullen and lowering. The Tory, +Coleman, whispered to Braxton Wyatt, but Timmendiquas was the only one +who spoke aloud. + +“Thayendanegea,” he said, “I, and the Wyandots who are with me, have +come far. We expected to return long ago to the lands on the Ohio, but +we were with you in your village, and now, when Manitou has turned his +face from you for the time, we will not leave you. We stay and fight by +your side.” + +Thayendanegea stood up, and Timmendiquas stood up, also. + +“You are a great chief, White Lightning of the Wyandots,” he said, “and +you and I are brothers. I shall be proud and happy to have such a mighty +leader fighting with me. We will have vengeance for this. The power of +the Iroquois is as great as ever.” + +He raised himself to his full height, pointing to the fire, and the +flames of hate and resolve burned in his eyes. Old Hiokatoo, the most +savage of all the chiefs, shook his tomahawk, and a murmur passed +through the group of Indians. + +Braxton Wyatt still talked in whispers to his new friend, Coleman, +the Tory, who was more to his liking than the morose and savage Walter +Butler, whom he somewhat feared. Wyatt was perhaps the least troubled +of all those present. Caring for himself only, the burning of Oghwaga +caused him no grief. He suffered neither from the misfortune of friend +nor foe. He was able to contemplate the glowing tower of light with +curiosity only. Braxton Wyatt knew that the Iroquois and their allies +would attempt revenge for the burning of Oghwaga, and he saw profit for +himself in such adventures. His horizon had broadened somewhat of late. +The renegade, Blackstaffe, had returned to rejoin Simon Girty, but he +had found a new friend in Coleman. He was coming now more into touch +with the larger forces in the East, nearer to the seat of the great war, +and he hoped to profit by it. + +“This is a terrible blow to Brant,” Coleman whispered to him. “The +Iroquois have been able to ravage the whole frontier, while the rebels, +occupied with the king's troops, have not been able to send help to +their own. But they have managed to strike at last, as you see.” + +“I do see,” said Wyatt, “and on the whole, Coleman, I'm not sorry. +Perhaps these chiefs won't be so haughty now, and they'll soon realize +that they need likely chaps such as you and me, eh, Coleman.” + +“You're not far from the truth,” said Coleman, laughing a little, and +pleased at the penetration of his new friend. They did not talk further, +although the agreement between them was well established. Neither did +the Indian chiefs or the Tory leaders say any more. They watched the +tower of fire a long time, past midnight, until it reached its zenith +and then began to sink. They saw its crest go down behind the trees, +and they saw the luminous cloud in the south fade and go out entirely, +leaving there only the darkness that reined everywhere else. + +Then the Indian and Tory leaders rose and silently marched northward. It +was nearly dawn when Henry and his comrades lay down for the rest that +they needed badly. They spread their blankets at the edge of the open, +but well back from the burned area, which was now one great mass of +coals and charred timbers, sending up little flame but much smoke. Many +of the troops were already asleep, but Henry, before lying down, begged +William Gray to keep a strict watch lest the Iroquois attack from +ambush. He knew that the rashness and confidence of the borderers, +especially when drawn together in masses, had often caused them great +losses, and he was resolved to prevent a recurrence at the present +time if he could. He had made these urgent requests of Gray, instead of +Colonel Butler, because of the latter's youth and willingness to take +advice. + +“I'll have the forest beat up continually all about the town,” he said. +“We must not have our triumph spoiled by any afterclap.” + +Henry and his comrades, wrapped in their blankets, lay in a row almost +at the edge of the forest. The heat from the fire was still great, but +it would die down after a while, and the October air was nipping. Henry +usually fell asleep in a very few minutes, but this time, despite his +long exertions and lack of rest, he remained awake when his comrades +were sound asleep. Then he fell into a drowsy state, in which he saw +the fire rising in great black coils that united far above. It seemed to +Henry, half dreaming and forecasting the future, that the Indian spirit +was passing in the smoke. + +When he fell asleep it was nearly daylight, and in three or four hours +he was up again, as the little army intended to march at once upon +another Indian town. The hours while he slept had passed in silence, and +no Indians had come near. William Gray had seen to that, and his best +scout had been one Cornelius Heemskerk, a short, stout man of Dutch +birth. + +“It was one long, long tramp for me, Mynheer Henry,” said Heemskerk, +as he revolved slowly up to the camp fire where Henry was eating his +breakfast, “and I am now very tired. It was like walking four or five +times around Holland, which is such a fine little country, with the +canals and the flowers along them, and no great, dark woods filled with +the fierce Iroquois.” + +“Still, I've a notion, Mynheer Heemskerk, that you'd rather be here, and +perhaps before the day is over you will get some fighting hot enough to +please even you.” + +Mynheer Heemskerk threw up his hands in dismay, but a half hour later +he was eagerly discussing with Henry the possibility of overtaking some +large band of retreating Iroquois. + +Urged on by all the scouts and by those who had suffered at Wyoming, +Colonel Butler gathered his forces and marched swiftly that very morning +up the river against another Indian town, Cunahunta. Fortunately for +him, a band of riflemen and scouts unsurpassed in skill led the way, and +saw to it that the road was safe. In this band were the five, of course, +and after them Heemskerk, young Taylor, and several others. + +“If the Iroquois do not get in our way, we'll strike Cunahunta before +night,” said Heemskerk, who knew the way. + +“It seems to me that they will certainly try to save their towns,” said +Henry. “Surely Brant and the Tories will not let us strike so great a +blow without a fight.” + +“Most of their warriors are elsewhere, Mynheer Henry,” said Heemskerk, +“or they would certainly give us a big battle. We've been lucky in the +time of our advance. As it is, I think we'll have something to do.” + +It was now about noon, the noon of a beautiful October day of the North, +the air like life itself, the foliage burning red on the hills, the +leaves falling softly from the trees as the wind blew, but bringing with +them no hint of decay. None of the vanguard felt fatigue, but when they +crossed a low range of hills and saw before them a creek flowing down +to the Susquehanna, Henry, who was in the lead, stopped suddenly and +dropped down in the grass. The others, knowing without question the +significance of the action, also sank down. + +“What is it, Henry?” asked Shif'less Sol. + +“You see how thick the trees are on the other side of that bank. Look +a little to the left of a big oak, and you will see the feathers in the +headdress of an Iroquois. Farther on I think I can catch a glimpse of +a green coat, and if I am right that coat is worn by one of Johnson's +Royal Greens. It's an ambush, Sol, an ambush meant for us.” + +“But it's not an ambush intended for our main force, Mynheer Henry,” + said Heemskerk, whose red face began to grow redder with the desire for +action. “I, too, see the feather of the Iroquois.” + +“As good scouts and skirmishers it's our duty, then, to clear this force +out of the way, and not wait for the main body to come up, is it not?” + asked Henry, with a suggestive look at the Dutchman. + +“What a goot head you have, Mynheer Henry!” exclaimed Heemskerk. “Of +course we will fight, and fight now!” + +“How about them blue plates?” said Shif'less Sol softly. But Heemskerk +did not hear him. + +They swiftly developed their plan of action. There could be no earthly +doubt of the fact that the Iroquois and some Tories were ambushed on +the far side of the creek. Possibly Thayendanegea himself, stung by the +burning of Oghwaga and the advance on Cunahunta, was there. But they +were sure that it was not a large band. + +The party of Henry and Heemskerk numbered fourteen, but every one was a +veteran, full of courage, tenacity, and all the skill of the woods. +They had supreme confidence in their ability to beat the best of the +Iroquois, man for man, and they carried the very finest arms known to +the time. + +It was decided that four of the men should remain on the hill. The +others, including the five, Heemskerk, and Taylor, would make a circuit, +cross the creek a full mile above, and come down on the flank of the +ambushing party. Theirs would be the main attack, but it would be +preceded by sharpshooting from the four, intended to absorb the +attention of the Iroquois. The chosen ten slipped back down the hill, +and as soon as they were sheltered from any possible glimpse by the +warriors, they rose and ran rapidly westward. Before they had gone far +they heard the crack of a rifle shot, then another, then several from +another point, as if in reply. + +“It's our sharpshooters,” said Henry. “They've begun to disturb the +Iroquois, and they'll keep them busy.” + +“Until we break in on their sport and keep them still busier,” exclaimed +Heemskerk, revolving swiftly through the bushes, his face blazing red. + +It did not take long for such as they to go the mile or so that they +intended, and then they crossed the creek, wading in the water breast +high, but careful to keep their ammunition dry. Then they turned and +rapidly descended the stream on its northern bank. In a few minutes they +heard the sound of a rifle shot, and then of another as if replying. + +“The Iroquois have been fooled,” exclaimed Heemskerk. “Our four good +riflemen have made them think that a great force is there, and they have +not dared to cross the creek themselves and make an attack.” + +In a few minutes more, as they ran noiselessly through the forest, they +saw a little drifting smoke, and now and then the faint flash of rifles. +They were coming somewhere near to the Iroquois band, and they practiced +exceeding caution. Presently they caught sight of Indian faces, and now +and then one of Johnson's Greens or Butler's Rangers. They stopped and +held a council that lasted scarcely more than half a minute. They all +agreed there was but one thing to do, and that was to attack in the +Indian's own way-that is, by ambush and sharpshooting. + +Henry fired the first shot, and an Iroquois, aiming at a foe on the +other side of the creek, fell. Heemskerk quickly followed with a shot as +good, and the surprised Iroquois turned to face this new foe. But they +and the Tories were a strong band, and they retreated only a little. +Then they stood firm, and the forest battle began. The Indians numbered +not less than thirty, and both Braxton Wyatt and Coleman were with them, +but the value of skill was here shown by the smaller party, the one +that attacked. The frontiersmen, trained to every trick and wile of +the forest, and marksmen such as the Indians were never able to become, +continually pressed in and drove the Iroquois from tree to tree. Once or +twice the warriors started a rush, but they were quickly driven back by +sharpshooting such as they had never faced before. They soon realized +that this was no band of border farmers, armed hastily for an emergency, +but a foe who knew everything that they knew, and more. + +Braxton Wyatt and his friend Coleman fought with the Iroquois, and Wyatt +in particular was hot with rage. He suspected that the five who had +defeated him so often were among these marksmen, and there might be a +chance now to destroy them all. He crept to the side of the fierce old +Seneca chief, Hiokatoo, and suggested that a part of their band slip +around and enfold the enemy. + +Old Hiokatoo, in the thick of battle now, presented his most terrifying +aspect. He was naked save the waist cloth, his great body was covered +with scars, and, as he bent a little forward, he held cocked and ready +in his hands a fine rifle that had been presented to him by his good +friend, the king. The Senecas, it may be repeated, had suffered terribly +at the Battle of the Oriskany in the preceding year, and throughout +these years of border were the most cruel of all the Iroquois. In this +respect Hiokatoo led all the Senecas, and now Braxton Wyatt used as he +was to savage scenes, was compelled to admit to himself that this was +the most terrifying human being whom he had ever beheld. He was old, but +age in him seemed merely to add to his strength and ferocity. The path +of a deep cut, healed long since, but which the paint even did not hide, +lay across his forehead. Others almost as deep adorned his right cheek, +his chin, and his neck. He was crouched much like a panther, with his +rifle in his hands and the ready tomahawk at his belt. But it was the +extraordinary expression of his eyes that made Braxton Wyatt shudder. He +read there no mercy for anything, not even for himself, Braxton Wyatt, +if he should stand in the way, and it was this last fact that brought +the shudder. + +Hiokatoo thought it a good plan. Twenty warriors, mostly Senecas and +Cayugas, were detailed to execute it at once, and they stole off toward +the right. Henry had suspected some such diversion, and, as he had been +joined now by the four men from the other side of the creek, he disposed +his little force to meet it. Both Shif'less Sol and Heemskerk had caught +sight of figures slipping away among the trees, and Henry craftily drew +back a little. While two or three men maintained the sharpshooting +in the front, he waited for the attack. It came in half an hour, the +flanking force making a savage and open rush, but the fire of the white +riflemen was so swift and deadly that they were driven back again. But +they had come very near, and a Tory rushed directly at young Taylor. +The Tory, like Taylor, had come from Wyoming, and he had been one of +the most ruthless on that terrible day. When they were less than a dozen +feet apart they recognized each other. Henry saw the look that passed +between them, and, although he held a loaded rifle in his hand, for some +reason he did not use it. The Tory fired a pistol at Taylor, but the +bullet missed, and the Wyoming youth, leaping forth, swung his unloaded +rifle and brought the stock down with all his force upon the head of his +enemy. The man, uttering a single sound, a sort of gasp, fell dead, and +Taylor stood over him, still trembling with rage. In an instant Henry +seized him and dragged him down, and then a Seneca bullet whistled where +he had been. + +“He was one of the worst at Wyoming-I saw him!” exclaimed young Taylor, +still trembling all over with passion. + +“He'll never massacre anybody else. You've seen to that,” said Henry, +and in a minute or two Taylor was quiet. The sharpshooting continued, +but here as elsewhere, the Iroquois had the worst of it. Despite their +numbers, they could not pass nor flank that line of deadly marksmen who +lay behind trees almost in security, and who never missed. Another Tory +and a chief, also, were killed, and Braxton Wyatt was daunted. Nor did +he feel any better when old Hiokatoo crept to his side. + +“We have failed here,” he said. “They shoot too well for us to rush +them. We have lost good men.” Hiokatoo frowned, and the scars on his +face stood out in livid red lines. + +“It is so,” he said. “These who fight us now are of their best, and +while we fight, the army that destroyed Oghwaga is coming up. Come, we +will go.” + +The little white band soon saw that the Indians were gone from their +front. They scouted some distance, and, finding no enemy, hurried back +to Colonel Butler. The troops were pushed forward, and before night they +reached Cunahunta, which they burned also. Some farther advance was +made into the Indian country, and more destruction was done, but now the +winter was approaching, and many of the men insisted upon returning home +to protect their families. Others were to rejoin the main Revolutionary +army, and the Iroquois campaign was to stop for the time. The first blow +had been struck, and it was a hard one, but the second blow and third +and fourth and more, which the five knew were so badly needed, must +wait. + +Henry and his comrades were deeply disappointed. They had hoped to go +far into the Iroquois country, to break the power of the Six Nations, to +hunt down the Butlers and the Johnsons and Brant himself, but they could +not wholly blame their commander. The rear guard, or, rather, the forest +guard of the Revolution, was a slender and small force indeed. + +Henry and his comrades said farewell to Colonel Butler with much +personal regret, and also to the gallant troops, some of whom were +Morgan's riflemen from Virginia. The farewells to William Gray, Bob +Taylor, and Cornelius Heemskerk were more intimate. + +“I think we'll see more of one another in other campaigns,” said Gray. + +“We'll be on the battle line, side by side, once more,” said Taylor, +“and we'll strike another blow for Wyoming.” + +“I foresee,” said Cornelius Heemskerk, “that I, a peaceful man, who +ought to be painting blue plates in Holland, will be drawn into danger +in the great, dark wilderness again, and that you will be there with +me, Mynheer Henry, Mynheer Paul, Mynheer the Wise Solomon, Mynheer the +Silent Tom, and Mynheer the Very Long James. I see it clearly. I, a man +of peace, am always being pushed in to war.” + +“We hope it will come true,” said the five together. + +“Do you go back to Kentucky?” asked William Gray. + +“No,” replied Henry, speaking for them all, “we have entered upon this +task here, and we are going to stay in it until it is finished.” + +“It is dangerous, the most dangerous thing in the world,” said +Heemskerk. “I still have my foreknowledge that I shall stand by your +side in some great battle to come, but the first thing I shall do when +I see you again, my friends, is to look around at you, one, two, three, +four, five, and see if you have upon your heads the hair which is now so +rich, thick, and flowing.” + +“Never fear, my friend,” said Henry, “we have fought with the warriors +all the way from the Susquehanna to New Orleans and not one of us has +lost a single lock of hair.” + +“It is one Dutchman's hope that it will always be so,” said Heemskerk, +and then he revolved rapidly away lest they see his face express +emotion. + +The five received great supplies of powder and bullets from Colonel +Butler, and then they parted in the forest. Many of the soldiers looked +back and saw the five tall figures in a line, leaning upon the muzzles +of their long-barreled Kentucky rifles, and regarding them in silence. +It seemed to the soldiers that they had left behind them the true sons +of the wilderness, who, in spite of all dangers, would be there to +welcome them when they returned. + + + +CHAPTER XVII. THE DESERTED CABIN + + +When the last soldier had disappeared among the trees, Henry turned to +the others. “Well, boys,” he asked, “what are you thinking about?” + +“I?” asked Paul. “I'm thinking about a certain place I know, a sort of +alcove or hole in a cliff above a lake.” + +“An' me?” said Shif'less Sol. “I'm thinkin' how fur that alcove runs +back, an' how it could be fitted up with furs an' made warm fur the +winter.” + +“Me?” said Tom Ross. “I'm thinkin' what a snug place that alcove would +be when the snow an' hail were drivin' down the creek in front of you.” + +“An' ez fur me,” said Long Jim Hart, “I wuz thinkin' I could run a sort +uv flue from the back part uv that alcove out through the front an' let +the smoke pass out. I could cook all right. It wouldn't be ez good a +place fur cookin' ez the one we hed that time we spent the winter on the +island in the lake, but 'twould serve.” + +“It's strange,” said Henry, “but I've been thinking of all the things +that all four of you have been thinking about, and, since we are agreed, +we are bound to go straight to 'The Alcove' and pass the winter there.” + +Without another word he led the way, and the others followed. It was +apparent to everyone that they must soon find a winter base, because +the cold had increased greatly in the last few days. The last leaves +had fallen from the trees, and a searching wind howled among the bare +branches. Better shelter than blankets would soon be needed. + +On their way they passed Oghwaga, a mass of blackened ruins, among which +wolves howled, the same spectacle that Wyoming now afforded, although +Oghwaga had not been stained by blood. + +It was a long journey to “The Alcove,” but they did not hurry, seeing no +need of it, although they were warned of the wisdom of their decision by +the fact that the cold was increasing. The country in which the lake was +situated lay high, and, as all of them were quite sure that the cold +was going to be great there, they thought it wise to make preparations +against it, which they discussed as they walked in, leisurely fashion +through the woods. They spoke, also, of greater things. All felt that +they had been drawn into a mightier current than any in which they had +swam before. They fully appreciated the importance to the Revolution +of this great rearguard struggle, and at present they did not have the +remotest idea of returning to Kentucky under any circumstances. + +“We've got to fight it out with Braxton Wyatt and the Iroquois,” said +Henry. “I've heard that Braxton is organizing a band of Tories of his +own, and that he is likely to be as dangerous as either of the Butlers.” + +“Some day we'll end him for good an' all,” said Shif'less Sol. + +It was four or five days before they reached their alcove, and now all +the forest was bare and apparently lifeless. They came down the creek, +and found their boat unharmed and untouched still among the foliage at +the base of the cliff. + +“That's one thing safe,” said Long Jim, “an' I guess we'll find 'The +Alcove' all right, too.” + +“Unless a wild animal has taken up its abode there,” said Paul. + +“'Tain't likely,” replied Long Jim. “We've left the human smell thar, +an' even after all this time it's likely to drive away any prowlin' bear +or panther that pokes his nose in.” + +Long Jim was quite right. Their snug nest, like that of a squirrel in +the side of a tree, had not been disturbed. The skins which they +had rolled up tightly and placed on the higher shelves of stone were +untouched, and several days' hunting increased the supply. The hunting +was singularly easy, and, although the five did not know it, the +quantity of game was much greater in that region than it had been +for years. It had been swept of human beings by the Iroquois and Tory +hordes, and deer, bear, and panther seemed to know instinctively that +the woods were once more safe for them. + +In their hunting they came upon the ruins of charred houses, and more +than once they saw something among the coals that caused them to turn +away with a shudder. At every place where man had made a little opening +the wilderness was quickly reclaiming its own again. Next year the grass +and the foliage would cover up the coals and the hideous relics that lay +among them. + +They jerked great quantities of venison on the trees on the cliff side, +and stored it in “The Alcove.” They also cured some bear meat, and, +having added a further lining of skins, they felt prepared for winter. +They had also added to the comfort of the place. They had taken the +precaution of bringing with them two axes, and with the heads of these +they smoothed out more of the rough places on the floor and sides of +“The Alcove.” They thought it likely, too, that they would need the axes +in other ways later on. + +Only once during these arrangements did they pass the trail of Indians, +and that was made by a party of about twenty, at least ten miles from +“The Alcove.” They seemed to be traveling north, and the five made no +investigations. Somewhat later they met a white runner in the forest, +and he told them of the terrible massacre of Cherry Valley. Walter +Butler, emulating his father's exploit at Wyoming, had come down with a +mixed horde of Iroquois, Tories, British, and Canadians. He had not +been wholly successful, but he had slaughtered half a hundred women and +children, and was now returning northward with prisoners. Some said, +according to the runner, that Thayendanegea had led the Indians on this +occasion, but, as the five learned later, he had not come up until the +massacre was over. The runner added another piece of information that +interested them deeply. Butler had been accompanied to Cherry Valley by +a young Tory or renegade named Wyatt, who had distinguished himself by +cunning and cruelty. It was said that Wyatt had built up for himself a +semi-independent command, and was becoming a great scourge. + +“That's our Braxton,” said Henry. “He is rising to his opportunities. He +is likely to become fully the equal of Walter Butler.” + +But they could do nothing at present to find Wyatt, and they went +somewhat sadly back to “The Alcove.” They had learned also from the +runner that Wyatt had a lieutenant, a Tory named Coleman, and this fact +increased their belief that Wyatt was undertaking to operate on a large +scale. + +“We may get a chance at him anyhow,” said Henry. “He and his band may go +too far away from the main body of the Indians and Tories, and in that +case we can strike a blow if we are watchful.” + +Every one of the five, although none of them knew it, received an +additional impulse from this news about Braxton Wyatt. He had grown up +with them. Loyalty to the king had nothing to do with his becoming a +renegade or a Tory; he could not plead lost lands or exile for taking +part in such massacres as Wyoming or Cherry Valley, but, long since an +ally of the Indians, he was now at the head of a Tory band that murdered +and burned from sheer pleasure. + +“Some day we'll get him, as shore as the sun rises an' sets,” said +Shif'less Sol, repeating Henry's prediction. + +But for the present they “holed up,” and now their foresight was +justified. To such as they, used to the hardships of forest life, “The +Alcove” was a cheery nest. From its door they watched the wild fowl +streaming south, pigeons, ducks, and others outlined against the dark, +wintry skies. So numerous were these flocks that there was scarcely a +time when they did not see one passing toward the warm South. + +Shif'less Sol and Paul sat together watching a great flock of wild +geese, arrow shaped, and flying at almost incredible speed. A few +faint honks came to them, and then the geese grew misty on the horizon. +Shif'less Sol followed them with serious eyes. + +“Do you ever think, Paul,” he said, “that we human bein's ain't so +mighty pow'ful ez we think we are. We kin walk on the groun', an' by +hard learnin' an' hard work we kin paddle through the water a little. +But jest look at them geese flyin' a mile high, right over everything, +rivers, forests any mountains, makin' a hundred miles an hour, almost +without flappin' a wing. Then they kin come down on the water an' float +fur hours without bein' tired, an' they kin waddle along on the groun', +too. Did you ever hear of any men who had so many 'complishments? Why, +Paul, s'pose you an' me could grow wings all at once, an' go through the +air a mile a minute fur a month an' never git tired.” + +“We'd certainly see some great sights,” said Paul, “but do you know, +Sol, what would be the first thing I'd do if I had the gift of tireless +wings?” + +“Fly off to them other continents I've heard you tell about.” + +“No, I'd swoop along over the forests up here until I picked out all the +camps of the Indians and Tories. I'd pick out the Butlers and Braxton +Wyatt and Coleman, and see what mischief they were planning. Then I'd +fly away to the East and look down at all the armies, ours in buff and +blue, and the British redcoats. I'd look into the face of our great +commander-in-chief. Then I'd fly away back into the West and South, and +I'd hover over Wareville. I'd see our own people, every last little one +of them. They might take a shot at me, not knowing who I was, but I'd +be so high up in the air no bullet could reach me. Then I'd come soaring +back here to you fellows.” + +“That would shorely be a grand trip, Paul,” said Shif'less Sol, “an' I +wouldn't mind takin' it in myself. But fur the present we'd better busy +our minds with the warnin's the wild fowl are givin' us, though we're +well fixed fur a house already. It's cu'rus what good homes a handy man +kin find in the wilderness.” + +The predictions of the wild fowl were true. A few days later heavy +clouds rolled up in the southwest, and the five watched them, knowing +what they would bring them. They spread to the zenith and then to the +other horizon, clothing the whole circle of the earth. The great flakes +began to drop down, slowly at first, then faster. Soon all the trees +were covered with white, and everything else, too, except the dark +surface of the lake, which received the flakes into its bosom as they +fell. + +It snowed all that day and most of the next, until it lay about two feet +on the ground. After that it turned intensely cold, the surface of the +snow froze, and ice, nearly a foot thick, covered the lake. It was not +possible to travel under such circumstances without artificial help, and +now Tom Ross, who had once hunted in the far North, came to their help. +He showed them how to make snowshoes, and, although all learned to use +them, Henry, with his great strength and peculiar skill, became by far +the most expert. + +As the snow with its frozen surface lay on the ground for weeks, Henry +took many long journeys on the snowshoes. Sometimes be hunted, but +oftener his role was that of scout. He cautioned his friends that he +might be out-three or four days at a time, and that they need take no +alarm about him unless his absence became extremely long. The winter +deepened, the snow melted, and another and greater storm came, freezing +the surface, again making the snowshoes necessary. Henry decided now to +take a scout alone to the northward, and, as the others bad long since +grown into the habit of accepting his decisions almost without question, +he started at once. He was well equipped with his rifle, double barreled +pistol, hatchet, and knife, and he carried in addition a heavy blanket +and some jerked venison. He put on his snowshoes at the foot of the +cliff, waved a farewell to the four heads thrust from “The Alcove” + above, and struck out on the smooth, icy surface of the creek. From this +he presently passed into the woods, and for a long time pursued a course +almost due north. + +It was no vague theory that had drawn Henry forth. In one of his +journeyings be had met a hunter who told him of a band of Tories and +Indians encamped toward the north, and he had an idea that it was the +party led by Braxton Wyatt. Now he meant to see. + +His information was very indefinite, and he began to discover signs much +earlier than he had expected. Before the end of the first day he saw the +traces of other snowshoe runners on the icy snow, and once he came to a +place where a deer had been slain and dressed. Then he came to another +where the snow had been hollowed out under some pines to make a sleeping +place for several men. Clearly he was in the land of the enemy again, +and a large and hostile camp might be somewhere near. + +Henry felt a thrill of joy when he saw these indications. All the +primitive instincts leaped up within him. A child of the forest and of +elemental conditions, the warlike instinct was strong within him. He +was tired of hunting wild animals, and now there was promise of a' more +dangerous foe. For the purposes that he had in view he was glad that +he was alone. The wintry forest, with its two feet of snow covered with +ice, contained no terrors for him. He moved on his snowshoes almost like +a skater, and with all the dexterity of an Indian of the far North, who +is practically born on such shoes. + +As he stood upon the brow of a little hill, elevated upon his snowshoes, +he was, indeed, a wonderful figure. The added height and the white glare +from the ice made him tower like a great giant. He was clad completely +in soft, warm deerskin, his hands were gloved in the same material, +and the fur cap was drawn tightly about his head and ears. The +slender-barreled rifle lay across his shoulder, and the blanket and deer +meat made a light package on his back. Only his face was uncovered, and +that was rosy with the sharp but bracing cold. But the resolute blue +eyes seemed to have grown more resolute in the last six months, and the +firm jaw was firmer than ever. + +It was a steely blue sky, clear, hard, and cold, fitted to the earth +of snow and ice that it inclosed. His eyes traveled the circle of the +horizon three times, and at the end of the third circle he made out a +dim, dark thread against that sheet of blue steel. It was the light of a +camp fire, and that camp fire must belong to an enemy. It was not likely +that anybody else would be sending forth such a signal in this wintry +wilderness. + +Henry judged that the fire was several miles away, and apparently in a +small valley hemmed in by hills of moderate height. He made up his mind +that the band of Braxton Wyatt was there, and he intended to make a +thorough scout about it. He advanced until the smoke line became much +thicker and broader, and then he stopped in the densest clump of bushes +that he could find. He meant to remain there until darkness came, +because, with all foliage gone from the forest, it would be impossible +to examine the hostile camp by day. The bushes, despite the lack of +leaves, were so dense that they hid him well, and, breaking through the +crust of ice, he dug a hole. Then, having taken off his snowshoes and +wrapped his blanket about his body, he thrust himself into the hole +exactly like a rabbit in its burrow. He laid his shoes on the crust of +ice beside him. Of course, if found there by a large party of warriors +on snowshoes he would have no chance to flee, but he was willing to take +what seemed to him a small risk. The dark would not be long in coming, +and it was snug and warm in the hole. As he sat, his head rose just +above the surrounding ice, but his rifle barrel rose much higher. He ate +a little venison for supper, and the weariness in the ankles that comes +from long traveling on snowshoes disappeared. + +He could not see outside the bushes, but he listened with those +uncommonly keen ears of his. No sound at all came. There was not even +a wind to rustle the bare boughs. The sun hung a huge red globe in the +west, and all that side of the earth was tinged with a red glare, wintry +and cold despite its redness. Then, as the earth turned, the sun was +lost behind it, and the cold dark came. + +Henry found it so comfortable in his burrow that all his muscles were +soothed, and he grew sleepy. It would have been very pleasant to doze +there, but he brought himself round with an effort of the will, and +became as wide awake as ever. He was eager to be off on his expedition, +but he knew how much depended on waiting, and he waited. One hour, two +hours, three hours, four hours, still and dark, passed in the forest +before he roused himself from his covert. Then, warm, strong, and +tempered like steel for his purpose, he put on his snowshoes, and +advanced toward the point from which the column of smoke had risen. + +He had never been more cautious and wary than he was now. He was a +formidable figure in the darkness, crouched forward, and moving like +some spirit of the wilderness, half walking, half gliding. + +Although the night had come out rather clear, with many cold stars +twinkling in the blue, the line of smoke was no longer visible. But +Henry did not expect it to be, nor did he need it. He had marked its +base too clearly in his mind to make any mistake, and he advanced with +certainty. He came presently into an open space, and he stopped with +amazement. Around him were the stumps of a clearing made recently, and +near him were some yards of rough rail fence. + +He crouched against the fence, and saw on the far side of the clearing +the dim outlines of several buildings, from the chimneys of two of +which smoke was rising. It was his first thought that he had come upon +a little settlement still held by daring borderers, but second thought +told him that it was impossible. Another and more comprehensive look +showed many signs of ruin. He saw remains of several burned houses, but +clothing all was the atmosphere of desolation and decay that tells +when a place is abandoned. The two threads of smoke did not alter this +impression. + +Henry divined it all. The builders of this tiny village in the +wilderness bad been massacred or driven away. A part of the houses had +been destroyed, some were left standing, and now there were visitors. He +advanced without noise, keeping behind the rail fence, and approaching +one of the houses from the chimneys of which the smoke came. Here be +crouched a long time, looking and listening attentively; but it seemed +that the visitors had no fears. Why should they, when there was nothing +that they need fear in this frozen wilderness? + +Henry stole a little nearer. It had been a snug, trim little settlement. +Perhaps twenty-five or thirty people had lived there, literally hewing +a home out of the forest. His heart throbbed with a fierce hatred and, +anger against those who had spoiled all this, and his gloved finger +crept to the hammer of his rifle. + +The night was intensely cold. The mercury was far below zero, and a wind +that had begun to rise cut like the edge of a knife. Even the wariest of +Indians in such desolate weather might fail to keep a watch. But Henry +did not suffer. The fur cap was drawn farther over chin and ears, and +the buckskin gloves kept his fingers warm and flexible. Besides, his +blood was uncommonly hot in his veins. + +His comprehensive eye told him that, while some of the buildings had not +been destroyed, they were so ravaged and damaged that they could never +be used again, save as a passing shelter, just as they were being used +now. He slid cautiously about the desolate place. He crossed a brook, +frozen almost solidly in its bed, and he saw two or three large mounds +that had been haystacks, now covered with snow. + +Then he slid without noise back to the nearest of the houses from which +the smoke came. It was rather more pretentious than the others, built of +planks instead of logs, and with shingles for a roof. The remains of a +small portico formed the approach to the front door. Henry supposed that +the house had been set on fire and that perhaps a heavy rain had saved a +part of it. + +A bar of light falling across the snow attracted his attention. He knew +that it was the glow of a fire within coming through a window. A faint +sound of voices reached his ears, and he moved forward slowly to the +window. It was an oaken shutter originally fastened with a leather +strap, but the strap was gone, and now some one had tied it, though not +tightly, with a deer tendon. The crack between shutter and wall was at +least three inches, and Henry could see within very well. + +He pressed his side tightly to the wall and put his eyes to the crevice. +What he saw within did not still any of those primitive feelings that +had risen so strongly in his breast. + +A great fire had been built in the log fireplace, but it was burning +somewhat low now, having reached that mellow period of least crackling +and greatest heat. The huge bed of coals threw a mass of varied and +glowing colors across the floor. Large holes had been burned in the side +of the room by the original fire, but Indian blankets had been fastened +tightly over them. + +In front of the fire sat Braxton Wyatt in a Loyalist uniform, a +three-cornered hat cocked proudly on his head, and a small sword by his +side. He had grown heavier, and Henry saw that the face had increased +much in coarseness and cruelty. It had also increased in satisfaction. +He was a great man now, as he saw great men, and both face and figure +radiated gratification and pride as he lolled before the fire. At the +other corner, sitting upon the floor and also in a Loyalist uniform, +was his lieutenant, Levi Coleman, older, heavier, and with a short, +uncommonly muscular figure. His face was dark and cruel, with small eyes +set close together. A half dozen other white men and more than a dozen +Indians were in the room. All these lay upon their blankets on the +floor, because all the furniture had been destroyed. Yet they had +eaten, and they lay there content in the soothing glow of the fire, like +animals that had fed well. Henry was so near that he could hear every +word anyone spoke. + +“It was well that the Indians led us to this place, eh, Levi?” said +Wyatt. + +“I'm glad the fire spared a part of it,” said Coleman. “Looks as if it +was done just for us, to give us a shelter some cold winter night when +we come along. I guess the Iroquois Aieroski is watching over us.” + +Wyatt laughed. + +“You're a man that I like, Levi,” he said. “You can see to the inside of +things. It would be a good idea to use this place as a base and shelter, +and make a raid on some of the settlements east of the hills, eh, Levi?” + +“It could be done,” said Coleman. “But just listen to that wind, will +you! On a night like this it must cut like a saber's edge. Even our +Iroquois are glad to be under a roof.” + +Henry still gazed in at the crack with eyes that were lighted up by an +angry fire. So here was more talk of destruction and slaughter! His gaze +alighted upon an Indian who sat in a corner engaged upon a task. Henry +looked more closely, and saw that he was stretching a blonde-haired +scalp over a small hoop. A shudder shook his whole frame. Only those who +lived amid such scenes could understand the intensity of his feelings. +He felt, too, a bitter sense of injustice. The doers of these deeds were +here in warmth and comfort, while the innocent were dead or fugitives. +He turned away from the window, stepping gently upon the snowshoes. He +inferred that the remainder of Wyatt's band were quartered in the other +house from which he had seen the smoke rising. It was about twenty rods +away, but he did not examine it, because a great idea had been born +suddenly in his brain. The attempt to fulfill the idea would be +accompanied by extreme danger, but he did not hesitate a moment. He +stole gently to one of the half-fallen outhouses and went inside. Here +he found what he wanted, a large pine shelf that had been sheltered from +rain and that was perfectly dry. He scraped off a large quantity of the +dry pine until it formed almost a dust, and he did not cease until he +had filled his cap with it. Then he cut off large splinters, until +he had accumulated a great number, and after that he gathered smaller +pieces of half-burned pine. + +He was fully two hours doing this work, and the night advanced far, but +he never faltered. His head was bare, but he was protected from the +wind by a fragment of the outhouse wall. Every two or three minutes he +stopped and listened for the sound of a creaking, sliding footstep on +the snow, but, never hearing any, he always resumed his work with the +same concentration. All the while the wind rose and moaned through the +ruins of the little village. When Henry chanced to raise his head above +the sheltering wall, it was like the slash of a knife across his cheek. + +Finally he took half of the pine dust in his cap and a lot of the +splinters under his arm, and stole back to the house from which the +light had shone. He looked again through the crevice at the window. The +light had died down much more, and both Wyatt and Coleman were asleep on +the floor. But several of the Iroquois were awake, although they sat as +silent and motionless as stones against the wall. + +Henry moved from the window and selected a sheltered spot beside the +plank wall. There he put the pine dust in a little heap on the snow +and covered it over with pine splinters, on top of which he put larger +pieces of pine. Then he went back for the remainder of the pine dust, +and built a similar pyramid against a sheltered side of the second +house. + +The most delicate part of his task had now come, one that good fortune +only could aid him in achieving, but the brave youth, his heart aflame +with righteous anger against those inside, still pursued the work. His +heart throbbed, but hand and eye were steady. + +Now came the kindly stroke of fortune for which he had hoped. The wind +rose much higher and roared harder against the house. It would prevent +the Iroquois within, keen of ear as they were, from hearing a light +sound without. Then he drew forth his flint and steel and struck them +together with a hand so strong and swift that sparks quickly leaped +forth and set fire to the pine tinder. Henry paused only long enough to +see the flame spread to the splinters, and then he ran rapidly to the +other house, where the task was repeated-he intended that his job should +be thorough. + +Pursuing this resolve to make his task complete, he came back to the +first house and looked at his fire. It had already spread to the larger +pieces of pine, and it could not go out now. The sound made by the +flames blended exactly with the roaring of the wind, and another minute +or two might pass before the Iroquois detected it. + +Now his heart throbbed again, and exultation was mingled with his anger. +By the time the Iroquois were aroused to the danger the flames would be +so high that the wind would reach them. Then no one could put them out. + +It might have been safer for him to flee deep into the forest at once, +but that lingering desire to make his task complete and, also, the wish +to see the result kept him from doing it. He merely walked across the +open space and stood behind a tree at the edge of the forest. + +Braxton Wyatt and his Tories and Iroquois were very warm, very snug, in +the shelter of the old house with the great bed of coals before them. +They may even have been dreaming peaceful and beautiful dreams, when +suddenly an Iroquois sprang to his feet and uttered a cry that awoke all +the rest. + +“I smell smoke!” he exclaimed in his tongue, “and there is fire, too! I +hear it crackle outside!” + +Braxton Wyatt ran to the window and jerked it open. Flame and smoke blew +in his face. He uttered an angry cry, and snatched at the pistol in his +belt. + +“The whole side of the house is on fire!” he exclaimed. “Whose neglect +has done this?” + +Coleman, shrewd and observing, was at his elbow. + +“The fire was set on the outside,” he said. “It was no carelessness of +our men. Some enemy has done this!” + +“It is true!” exclaimed Wyatt furiously. “Out, everybody! The house +burns fast!” + +There was a rush for the door. Already ashes and cinders were falling +about their heads. Flames leaped high, were caught by the roaring winds, +and roared with them. The shell of the house would soon be gone, and +when Tories and Iroquois were outside they saw the remainder of their +band pouring forth from the other house, which was also in flames. + +No means of theirs could stop so great a fire, and they stood in a sort +of stupefaction, watching it as it was fanned to greatest heights by the +wind. + +All the remaining outbuildings caught, also, and in a few moments +nothing whatever would be left of the tiny village. Braxton Wyatt and +his band must lie in the icy wilderness, and they could never use this +place as a basis for attack upon settlements. + +“How under the sun could it have happened?” exclaimed Wyatt. + +“It didn't happen. It was done,” said Coleman. “Somebody set these +houses on fire while we slept within. Hark to that!” + +An Iroquois some distance from the houses was bending over the snow +where it was not yet melted by the heat. He saw there the track of +snowshoes, and suddenly, looking toward the forest, whither they led, he +saw a dark figure flit away among the trees. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. HENRY'S SLIDE + + +Henry Ware, lingering at the edge of the clearing, his body hidden +behind one of the great tree trunks, had been watching the scene with +a fascinated interest that would not let him go. He knew that his work +there was done already. Everything would be utterly destroyed by the +flames which, driven by the wind, leaped from one half-ruined building +to another. Braxton Wyatt and his band would have enough to do +sheltering themselves from the fierce winter, and the settlements could +rest for a while at least. Undeniably he felt exultation as he witnessed +the destructive work of his hand. The border, with its constant struggle +for-life and terrible deeds, bred fierce passions. + +In truth, although he did not know it himself, he stayed there to please +his eye and heart. A new pulse beat triumphantly every time a timber, +burned through, fell in, or a crash came from a falling roof. He laughed +inwardly as the flames disclosed the dismay on the faces of the Iroquois +and Tories, and it gave him deep satisfaction to see Braxton Wyatt, his +gaudy little sword at his thigh, stalking about helpless. It was while +he was looking, absorbed in such feelings, that the warrior of the alert +eye saw him and gave the warning shout. + +Henry turned in an instant, and darted away among the trees, half +running, half sliding over the smooth, icy covering of the snow. +After him came warriors and some Tories who had put on their snowshoes +preparatory to the search through the forest for shelter. Several +bullets were fired, but he was too far away for a good aim. He heard one +go zip against a tree, and another cut the surface of the ice near him, +but none touched him, and he sped easily on his snowshoes through the +frozen forest. But Henry was fully aware of one thing that constituted +his greatest danger. Many of these Iroquois had been trained all +their lives to snowshoes, while he, however powerful and agile, was +comparatively a beginner. He glanced back again and saw their dusky +figures running among the trees, but they did not seem to be gaining. If +one should draw too near, there was his rifle, and no man, white or red, +in the northern or southern forests, could use it better. But for the +present it was not needed. He pressed it closely, almost lovingly, to +his side, this best friend of the scout and frontiersman. + +He had chosen his course at the first leap. It was southward, toward +the lake, and he did not make the mistake of diverging from his line, +knowing that some part of the wide half circle of his pursuers would +profit by it. + +Henry felt a great upward surge. He had been the victor in what he +meant to achieve, and he was sure that he would escape. The cold wind, +whistling by, whipped his blood and added new strength to his great +muscles. His ankles were not chafed or sore, and he sped forward on the +snowshoes, straight and true. Whenever he came to a hill the pursuers +would gain as he went up it, but when he went down the other side it +was he who gained. He passed brooks, creeks, and once a small river, +but they were frozen over, many inches deep, and he did not notice them. +Again it was a lake a mile wide, but the smooth surface there merely +increased his speed. Always he kept a wary look ahead for thickets +through which he could not pass easily, and once he sent back a shout of +defiance, which the Iroquois answered with a yell of anger. + +He was fully aware that any accident to his snowshoes would prove fatal, +the slipping of the thongs on his ankles or the breaking of a runner +would end his flight, and in a long chase such an accident might happen. +It might happen, too, to one or more of the Iroquois, but plenty of them +would be left. Yet Henry had supreme confidence in his snowshoes. He had +made them himself, he had seen that every part was good, and every thong +had been fastened with care. + +The wind which bad been roaring so loudly at the time of the fire sank +to nothing. The leafless trees stood up, the branches unmoving. The +forest was bare and deserted. All the animals, big and little, had gone +into their lairs. Nobody witnessed the great pursuit save pursuers and +pursued. Henry kept his direction clear in his mind, and allowed the +Iroquois to take no advantage of a curve save once. Then he came to a +thicket so large that he was compelled to make a considerable circle to +pass it. He turned to the right, hence the Indians on the right gained, +and they sent up a yell of delight. He replied defiantly and increased +his speed. + +But one of the Indians, a flying Mohawk, had come dangerously near-near +enough, in fact, to fire a bullet that did not miss the fugitive much. +It aroused Henry's anger. He took it as an indignity rather than a +danger, and he resolved to avenge it. So far as firing was concerned, he +was at a disadvantage. He must stop and turn around for his shot, while +the Iroquois, without even checking speed, could fire straight at the +flying target, ahead. + +Nevertheless, he took the chance. He turned deftly on the snowshoes, +fired as quick as lightning at the swift Mohawk, saw him fall, then +Whirled and resumed his flight. He had lost ground, but he had inspired +respect. A single man could not afford to come too near to a marksman so +deadly, and the three or four who led dropped back with the main body. + +Now Henry made his greatest effort. He wished to leave the foe far +behind, to shake off his pursuit entirely. He bounded over the ice +and snow with great leaps, and began to gain. Yet he felt at last the +effects of so strenuous a flight. His breath became shorter; despite +the intense cold, perspiration stood upon his face, and the straps that +fastened the snowshoes were chafing his ankles. An end must come even to +such strength as his. Another backward look, and he saw that the foe was +sinking into the darkness. If he could only increase his speed again, he +might leave the Iroquois now. He made a new call upon the will, and +the body responded. For a few minutes his speed became greater. A +disappointed shout arose behind him, and several shots were fired. But +the bullets fell a hundred yards short, and then, as he passed over a +little hill and into a wood beyond, he was hidden from the sight of his +pursuers. + +Henry knew that the Iroquois could trail him over the snow, but they +could not do it at full speed, and he turned sharply off at an angle. +Pausing a second or two for fresh breath, he continued on his new +course, although not so fast as before. He knew that the Iroquois would +rush straight ahead, and would not discover for two or three minutes +that they were off the trail. It would take them another two or three +minutes to recover, and he would make a gain of at least five minutes. +Five minutes had saved the life of many a man on the border. + +How precious those five minutes were! He would take them all. He ran +forward some distance, stopped where the trees grew thick, and then +enjoyed the golden five, minute by minute. He had felt that he +was pumping the very lifeblood from his heart. His breath had come +painfully, and the thongs of the snowshoes were chafing his ankles +terribly. But those minutes were worth a year. Fresh air poured into his +lungs, and the muscles became elastic once more. In so brief a space he +had recreated himself. + +Resuming his flight, he went at a steady pace, resolved not to do his +utmost unless the enemy came in sight. About ten minutes later he heard +a cry far behind him, and he believed it to be a signal from some Indian +to the others that the trail was found again. But with so much advantage +he felt sure that he was now quite safe. He ran, although at decreased +speed, for about two hours more, and then he sat down on the upthrust +root of a great oak. Here he depended most upon his ears. The forest was +so silent that he could hear any noise at a great distance, but there +was none. Trusting to his ears to warn him, he would remain there a long +time for a thorough rest. He even dared to take off his snowshoes that +he might rub his sore ankles, but he wrapped his heavy blanket about his +body, lest he take deep cold in cooling off in such a temperature after +so long a flight. + +He sat enjoying a half hour, golden like the five minutes, and then he +saw, outlined against the bright, moonlit sky, something that told him +he must be on the alert again. It was a single ring of smoke, like that +from a cigar, only far greater. It rose steadily, untroubled by wind +until it was dissipated. It meant “attention!” and presently it was +followed by a column of such rings, one following another beautifully. +The column said: “The foe is near.” Henry read the Indian signs +perfectly. The rings were made by covering a little fire with a blanket +for a moment and then allowing the smoke to ascend. On clear days such +signals could be seen a distance of thirty miles or more, and he knew +that they were full of significance. + +Evidently the Iroquois party had divided into two or more bands. One had +found his trail, and was signaling to the other. The party sending up +the smoke might be a half mile away, but the others, although his trail +was yet hidden from them, might be nearer. It was again time for flight. + +He swiftly put on the snowshoes, neglecting no thong or lace, folded the +blanket on his back again, and, leaving the friendly root, started +once more. He ran forward at moderate speed for perhaps a mile, when he +suddenly heard triumphant yells on both right and left. A strong party +of Iroquois were coming up on either side, and luck had enabled them to +catch him in a trap. + +They were so near that they fired upon him, and one bullet nicked his +glove, but he was hopeful that after his long rest he might again stave +them off. He sent back no defiant cry, but, settling into determined +silence, ran at his utmost speed. The forest here was of large trees, +with no undergrowth, and he noticed that the two parties did not join, +but kept on as they had come, one on the right and the other on the +left. This fact must have some significance, but he could not fathom +it. Neither could he guess whether the Indians were fresh or tired, but +apparently they made no effort to come within range of his rifle. + +Presently he made a fresh spurt of speed, the forest opened out, and +then both bands uttered a yell full of ferocity and joy, the kind that +savages utter only when they see their triumph complete. + +Before, and far below Henry, stretched a vast, white expanse. He had +come to the lake, but at a point where the cliff rose high like a +mountain, and steep like a wall. The surface of the lake was so far down +that it was misty white like a cloud. Now he understood the policy of +the Indian bands in not uniting. They knew that they would soon reach +the lofty cliffs of the lake, and if he turned to either right or left +there was a band ready to seize him. + +Henry's heart leaped up and then sank lower than ever before in his +life. It seemed that he could not escape from so complete a trap, and +Braxton Wyatt was not one who would spare a prisoner. That was perhaps +the bitterest thing of all, to be taken and tortured by Braxton Wyatt. +He was there. He could hear his voice in one of the bands, and then the +courage that never failed him burst into fire again. + +The Iroquois were coming toward him, shutting him out from retreat +to either right or left, but not yet closing in because of his deadly +rifle. He gave them a single look, put forth his voice in one great cry +of defiance, and, rushing toward the edge of the mighty cliff, sprang +boldly over. + +As Henry plunged downward he heard behind him a shout of amazement and +chagrin poured forth from many Iroquois throats, and, taking a single +glance backward, he caught a glimpse of dusky faces stamped with awe. +But the bold youth had not made a leap to destruction. In the passage +of a second he had calculated rapidly and well. While the cliff at +first glance seemed perpendicular, it could not be so. There was a slope +coated with two feet of snow, and swinging far back on the heels of +his snowshoes, he shot downward like one taking a tremendous slide on +a toboggan. Faster and faster he went, but deeper and deeper he dug his +shoes into the snow, until he lay back almost flat against its surface. +This checked his speed somewhat, but it was still very great, and, +preserving his self-control perfectly, he prayed aloud to kindly +Providence to save him from some great boulder or abrupt drop. + +The snow from his runners flew in a continuous shower behind him as he +descended. Yet he drew himself compactly together, and held his rifle +parallel with his body. Once or twice, as he went over a little ridge, +he shot clear of the snow, but he held his body rigid, and the snow +beyond saved him from a severe bruise. Then his speed was increased +again, and all the time the white surface of the lake below, seen dimly +through the night and his flight, seemed miles away. + +He might never reach that surface alive, but of one thing lie was sure. +None of the Iroquois or Tories had dared to follow. Braxton Wyatt could +have no triumph over him. He was alone in his great flight. Once a +projection caused him to turn a little to one side. He was in momentary +danger of turning entirely, and then of rolling head over heels like +a huge snowball, but with a mighty effort he righted himself, and +continued the descent on the runners, with the heels plowing into the +ice and the snow. + +Now that white expanse which had seemed so far away came miles nearer. +Presently he would be there. The impossible had become possible, the +unattainable was about to be attained. He gave another mighty dig with +his shoes, the last reach of the slope passed behind him, and he shot +out on the frozen surface of the lake, bruised and breathless, but +without a single broken bone. + +The lake was covered with ice a foot thick, and over this lay frozen +snow, which stopped Henry forty or fifty yards from the cliff. There he +lost his balance at last, and fell on his side, where he lay for a few +moments, weak, panting, but triumphant. + +When he stood upright again he felt his body, but he had suffered +nothing save some bruises, that would heal in their own good time. His +deerskin clothing was much torn, particularly on the back, where he had +leaned upon the ice and snow, but the folded blanket had saved him to a +considerable extent. One of his shoes was pulled loose, and presently he +discovered that his left ankle was smarting and burning at a great rate. +But he did not mind these things at all, so complete was his sense of +victory. He looked up at the mighty white wall that stretched above him +fifteen hundred feet, and he wondered at his own tremendous exploit. +The wall ran away for miles, and the Iroquois could not reach him by any +easier path. He tried to make out figures on the brink looking down at +him, but it was too far away, and he saw only a black line. + +He tightened the loose shoe and struck out across the lake. He was far +away from “The Alcove,” and he did not intend to go there, lest the +Iroquois, by chance, come upon his trail and follow it to the refuge. +But as it was no more than two miles across the lake at that point, and +the Iroquois would have to make a great curve to reach the other side, +he felt perfectly safe. He walked slowly across, conscious all the +time of an increasing pain in his left ankle, which must now be badly +swollen, and he did not stop until he penetrated some distance among low +bills. Here, under an overhanging cliff with thick bushes in front, he +found a partial shelter, which he cleared out yet further. Then with +infinite patience he built a fire with splinters that he cut from dead +boughs, hung his blanket in front of it on two sticks that the flame +might not be seen, took off his snowshoes, leggins, and socks, and bared +his ankles. Both were swollen, but the left much more badly than the +other. He doubted whether he would be able to walk on the following day, +but he rubbed them a long time, both with the palms of his hands and +with snow, until they felt better. Then he replaced his clothing, leaned +back against the faithful snowshoes which had saved his life, however +much they had hurt his ankles, and gave himself up to the warmth of the +fire. + +It was very luxurious, this warmth and this rest, after so long and +terrible a flight, and he was conscious of a great relaxation, one +which, if he yielded to it completely, would make his muscles so stiff +and painful that he could not use them. Hence he stretched his arms and +legs many times, rubbed his ankles again, and then, remembering that he +had venison, ate several strips. + +He knew that he had taken a little risk with the fire, but a fire he was +bound to have, and he fed it again until he had a great mass of glowing +coals, although there was no blaze. Then he took down the blanket, +wrapped himself in it, and was soon asleep before the fire. He slept +long and deeply, and although, when he awoke, the day had fully come, +the coals were not yet out entirely. He arose, but such a violent pain +from his left ankle shot through him that he abruptly sat down again. As +he bad feared, it had swollen badly during the night, and he could not +walk. + +In this emergency Henry displayed no petulance, no striving against +unchangeable circumstance. He drew up more wood, which he had stacked +against the cliff, and put it on the coals. He hung up the blanket once +more in order that it might hide the fire, stretched out his lame leg, +and calmly made a breakfast off the last of his venison. He knew he was +in a plight that might appall the bravest, but he kept himself in +hand. It was likely that the Iroquois thought him dead, crushed into a +shapeless mass by his frightful slide of fifteen hundred feet, and he +had little fear of them, but to be unable to walk and alone in an icy +wilderness without food was sufficient in itself. He calculated that +it was at least a dozen miles to “The Alcove,” and the chances were a +hundred to one against any of his comrades wandering his way. He looked +once more at his swollen left ankle, and he made a close calculation. +It would be three days, more likely four, before he could walk upon it. +Could he endure hunger that long? He could. He would! Crouched in his +nest with his back to the cliff, he had defense against any enemy in +his rifle and pistol. By faithful watching he might catch sight of some +wandering animal, a target for his rifle and then food for his stomach. +His wilderness wisdom warned him that there was nothing to do but sit +quiet and wait. + +He scarcely moved for hours. As long as he was still his ankle troubled +him but little. The sun came out, silver bright, but it had no warmth. +The surface of the lake was shown only by the smoothness of its expanse; +the icy covering was the same everywhere over hills and valleys. Across +the lake he saw the steep down which he had slid, looming white and +lofty. In the distance it looked perpendicular, and, whatever its +terrors, it had, beyond a doubt, saved his life. He glanced down at his +swollen ankle, and, despite his helpless situation, he was thankful that +he had escaped so well. + +About noon he moved enough to throw up the snowbanks higher all around +himself in the fashion of an Eskimos house. Then he let the fire die +except some coals that gave forth no smoke, stretched the blanket over +his head in the manner of a roof, and once more resumed his quiet and +stillness. He was now like a crippled animal in its lair, but he was +warm, and his wound did not hurt him. But hunger began to trouble him. +He was young and so powerful that his frame demanded much sustenance. +Now it cried aloud its need! He ate two or three handfuls of snow, and +for a few moments it seemed to help him a little, but his hunger soon +came back as strong as ever. Then he tightened his belt and sat in grim +silence, trying to forget that there was any such thing as food. + +The effort of the will was almost a success throughout the afternoon, +but before night it failed. He began to have roseate visions of Long Jim +trying venison, wild duck, bear, and buffalo steaks over the coals. He +could sniff the aroma, so powerful had his imagination become, and, +in fancy, his month watered, while its roof was really dry. They were +daylight visions, and he knew it well, but they taunted him and made his +pain fiercer. He slid forward a little to the mouth of his shelter, and +thrust out his rifle in the hope that he would see some wild creature, +no matter what; he felt that he could shoot it at any distance, and then +he would feast! + +He saw nothing living, either on earth or in the air, only motionless +white, and beyond, showing but faintly now through the coming twilight, +the lofty cliff that had saved him. + +He drew back into his lair, and the darkness came down. Despite his +hunger, he slept fairly well. In the night a little snow fell at times, +but his blanket roof protected him, and he remained dry and warm. The +new snow was, in a way, a satisfaction, as it completely hid his trail +from the glance of any wandering Indian. He awoke the next morning to +a gray, somber day, with piercing winds from the northwest. He did not +feel the pangs of hunger until he had been awake about a half hour, and +then they came with redoubled force. Moreover, he had become weaker in +the night, and, added to the loss of muscular strength, was a decrease +in the power of the will. Hunger was eating away his mental as well as +his physical fiber. He did not face the situation with quite the same +confidence that he felt the day before. The wilderness looked a little +more threatening. + +His lips felt as if he were suffering from fever, and his shoulders and +back were stiff. But he drew his belt tighter again, and then uncovered +his left ankle. The swelling had gone down a little, and he could move +it with more freedom than on the day before, but he could not yet walk. +Once more he made his grim calculation. In two days he could certainly +walk and hunt game or make a try for “The Alcove,” so far as his ankle +was concerned, but would hunger overpower him before that time? Gaining +strength in one direction, he was losing it in another. + +Now he began to grow angry with himself. The light inroad that famine +made upon his will was telling. It seemed incredible that he, so +powerful, so skillful, so self reliant, so long used to the wilderness +and to every manner of hardship, should be held there in a snowbank by +a bruised ankle to die like a crippled rabbit. His comrades could not be +more than ten miles away. He could walk. He would walk! He stood upright +and stepped out into the snow, but pain, so agonizing that he could +scarcely keep from crying out, shot through his whole body, and he sank +back into the shelter, sure not to make such an experiment again for +another full day. + +The day passed much like its predecessor, except that he took down the +blanket cover of his snow hut and kindled up his fire again, more for +the sake of cheerfulness than for warmth, because he was not suffering +from cold. There was a certain life and light about the coals and the +bright flame, but the relief did not last long, and by and by he let it +go out. Then be devoted himself to watching the heavens and the surface +of the snow. Some winter bird, duck or goose, might be flying by, or a +wandering deer might be passing. He must not lose any such chance. He +was more than ever a fierce creature of prey, sitting at the mouth of +his den, the rifle across his knee, his tanned face so thin that the +cheek bones showed high and sharp, his eyes bright with fever and the +fierce desire for prey, and the long, lean body drawn forward as if it +were about to leap. + +He thought often of dragging himself down to the lake, breaking a hole +in the ice, and trying to fish, but the idea invariably came only to be +abandoned. He had neither hook nor bait. In the afternoon he chewed the +edge of his buckskin hunting shirt, but it was too thoroughly tanned +and dry. It gave back no sustenance. He abandoned the experiment and lay +still for a long time. + +That night he had a slight touch of frenzy, and began to laugh at +himself. It was a huge joke! What would Timmendiquas or Thayendanegea +think of him if they knew how he came to his end? They would put him +with old squaws or little children. And how Braxton Wyatt and his +lieutenant, the squat Tory, would laugh! That was the bitterest thought +of all. But the frenzy passed, and he fell into a sleep which was only +a succession of bad dreams. He was running the gauntlet again among +the Shawnees. Again, kneeling to drink at the clear pool, he saw in the +water the shadow of the triumphant warrior holding the tomahawk above +him. One after another the most critical periods of his life were lived +over again, and then he sank into a deep torpor, from which he did not +rouse himself until far into the next day. + +Henry was conscious that he was very weak, but he seemed to have +regained much of his lost will. He looked once more at the fatal left +ankle. It had improved greatly. He could even stand upon it, but when he +rose to his feet he felt a singular dizziness. Again, what he had gained +in one way he had lost in another. The earth wavered. The smooth surface +of the lake seemed to rise swiftly, and then to sink as swiftly. The far +slope down which he had shot rose to the height of miles. There was a +pale tinge, too, over the world. He sank down, not because of his ankle, +but because he was afraid his dizzy head would make him fall. + +The power of will slipped away again for a minute or two. He was ashamed +of such extraordinary weakness. He looked at one of his hands. It was +thin, like the band of a man wasted with fever, and the blue veins stood +out on the back of it. He could scarcely believe that the hand was his +own. But after the first spasm of weakness was over, the precious will +returned. He could walk. Strength enough to permit him to hobble along +had returned to the ankle at last, and mind must control the rest of his +nervous system, however weakened it might be. He must seek food. + +He withdrew into the farthest recess of his covert, wrapped the blanket +tightly about his body, and lay still for a long time. He was preparing +both mind and body for the supreme effort. He knew that everything hung +now on the surviving remnants of his skill and courage. + +Weakened by shock and several days of fasting, he had no great reserve +now except the mental, and he used that to the utmost. It was proof of +his youthful greatness that it stood the last test. As he lay there, +the final ounce of will and courage came. Strength which was of the mind +rather than of the body flowed back into his veins; he felt able to dare +and to do; the pale aspect of the world went away, and once more he was +Henry Ware, alert, skillful, and always triumphant. + +Then he rose again, folded the blanket, and fastened it on his +shoulders. He looked at the snowshoes, but decided that his left ankle, +despite its great improvement, would not stand the strain. He must +break his way through the snow, which was a full three feet in depth. +Fortunately the crust had softened somewhat in the last two or three +days, and he did not have a covering of ice to meet. + +He pushed his way for the first time from the lair under the cliff, his +rifle held in his ready hands, in order that he might miss no chance at +game. To an ordinary observer there would have been no such chance at +all. It was merely a grim white wilderness that might have been without +anything living from the beginning. But Henry, the forest runner, knew +better. Somewhere in the snow were lairs much like the one that he had +left, and in these lairs were wild animals. To any such wild animal, +whether panther or bear, the hunter would now have been a fearsome +object, with his hollow cheeks, his sunken fiery eyes, and his thin lips +opening now and then, and disclosing the two rows of strong white teeth. + +Henry advanced about a rod, and then he stopped, breathing hard, because +it was desperate work for one in his condition to break his way through +snow so deep. But his ankle stood the strain well, and his courage +increased rather than diminished. He was no longer a cripple confined +to one spot. While he stood resting, he noticed a clump of bushes about +half a rod to his left, and a hopeful idea came to him. + +He broke his way slowly to the bushes, and then he searched carefully +among them. The snow was not nearly so thick there, and under the +thickest clump, where the shelter was best, he saw a small round +opening. In an instant all his old vigorous life, all the abounding hope +which was such a strong characteristic of his nature, came back to him. +Already he had triumphed over Indians, Tories, the mighty slope, snow, +ice, crippling, and starvation. + +He laid the rifle on the snow and took the ramrod in his right hand. He +thrust his left hand into the hole, and when the rabbit leaped for life +from his warm nest a smart blow of the ramrod stretched him dead at the +feet of the hunter. Henry picked up the rabbit. It was large and yet +fat. Here was food for two meals. In the race between the ankle and +starvation, the ankle had won. + +He did not give way to any unseemly elation. He even felt a momentary +sorrow that a life must perish to save his own, because all these wild +things were his kindred now. He returned by the path that he had broken, +kindled his fire anew, dexterously skinned and cleaned his rabbit, +then cooked it and ate half, although he ate slowly and with intervals +between each piece. How delicious it tasted, and how his physical being +longed to leap upon it and devour it, but the power of the mind was +still supreme. He knew what was good for himself, and he did it. +Everything was done in order and with sobriety. Then he put the rest of +the rabbit carefully in his food pouch, wrapped the blanket about his +body, leaned back, and stretched his feet to the coals. + +What an extraordinary change had come over the world in an hour! He had +not noticed before the great beauty of the lake, the lofty cliffs on the +farther shore, and the forest clothed in white and hanging with icicles. + +The winter sunshine was molten silver, pouring down in a flood. + +It was not will now, but actuality, that made him feel the strength +returning to his frame. He knew that the blood in his veins had begun +to sparkle, and that his vitality was rising fast. He could have gone +to sleep peacefully, but instead he went forth and hunted again. He +knew that where the rabbit had been, others were likely to be near, and +before he returned he had secured two more. Both of these he cleaned and +cooked at once. When this was done night had come, but he ate again, +and then, securing all his treasures about him, fell into the best sleep +that he had enjoyed since his flight. + +He felt very strong the next morning, and he might have started then, +but he was prudent. There was still a chance of meeting the Iroquois, +and the ankle might not stand so severe a test. He would rest in his +nest for another day, and then he would be equal to anything. Few could +lie a whole day in one place with but little to do and with nothing +passing before the eyes, but it was a part of Henry's wilderness +training, and he showed all the patience of the forester. He knew, +too, as the hours went by, that his strength was rising all the while. +To-morrow almost the last soreness would be gone from his ankle and +then he could glide swiftly over the snow, back to his comrades. He +was content. He had, in fact, a sense of great triumph because he had +overcome so much, and here was new food in this example for future +efforts of the mind, for future victories of the will over the body. The +wintry sun came to the zenith, then passed slowly down the curve, but +all the time the boy scarcely stirred. Once there was a flight of small +birds across the heavens, and he watched them vaguely, but apparently he +took no interest. Toward night he stood up in his recess and flexed and +tuned his muscles for a long time, driving out any stiffness that might +come through long lack of motion. Then he ate and lay down, but he did +not yet sleep. + +The night was clear, and he looked away toward the point where he knew +“The Alcove” lay. A good moon was now shining, and stars by the score +were springing out. Suddenly at a point on that far shore a spark of red +light appeared and twinkled. Most persons would have taken it for some +low star, but Henry knew better. It was fire put there by human hand for +a purpose, doubtless a signal, and as he looked a second spark appeared +by the first, then a third, then a fourth. He uttered a great sigh of +pleasure. It was his four friends signaling to him somewhere in the vast +unknown that they were alive and well, and beckoning him to come. The +lights burned for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then all went out +together. Henry turned over on his side and fell sound asleep. In the +morning he put on his snowshoes and started. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. THE SAFE RETURN + + +The surface of the snow had frozen again in the night, and Henry found +good footing for his shoes. For a while he leaned most on the right +ankle, but, as his left developed no signs of soreness, he used them +equally, and sped forward, his spirits rising at every step. The air was +cold, and there was but little breeze, but his own motion made a wind +that whipped his face. The hollows were mostly gone from his cheeks, and +his eyes no longer had the fierce, questing look of the famishing wild +animal in search of prey. A fine red color was suffused through the +brown of his face. He had chosen his course with due precaution. The +broad surface, smooth, white, and glittering, tempted, but he put the +temptation away. He did not wish to run any chance whatever of another +Iroquois pursuit, and he kept in the forest that ran down close to the +water's edge. It was tougher traveling there, but he persisted. + +But all thought of weariness and trouble was lost in his glorious +freedom. With his crippled ankle he had been really like a prisoner in +his cell, with a ball and chain to his foot. Now he flew along, while +the cold wind whipped his blood, and felt what a delight it was merely +to live. He went on thus for hours, skirting down toward the cliffs that +contained “The Alcove.” He rested a while in the afternoon and ate the +last of his rabbit, but before twilight he reached the creek, and stood +at the hidden path that led up to their home. + +Henry sat down behind thick bushes and took off his snowshoes. To one +who had never come before, the whole place would have seemed absolutely +desolate, and even to one not a stranger no sign of life would have been +visible had he not possessed uncommonly keen eyes. But Henry had such +eyes. He saw the faintest wisp of smoke stealing away against the +surface of the cliff, and he felt confident that all four were there. He +resolved to surprise them. + +Laying the shoes aside, he crept so carefully up the path that he +dislodged no snow and made no noise of any kind. As he gradually +approached “The Alcove” he beard the murmur of voices, and presently, as +he turned an angle in the path, he saw a beam of glorious mellow light +falling on the snow. + +But the murmur of the voices sent a great thrill of delight through him. +Low and indistinct as they were, they had a familiar sound. He knew all +those tones. They were the voices of his faithful comrades, the four who +had gone with him through so many perils and hardships, the little band +who with himself were ready to die at any time, one for another. + +He crept a little closer, and then a little closer still. Lying almost +flat on the steep path, and drawing himself forward, he looked into “The +Alcove.” A fire of deep, red coals glowed in one corner, and disposed +about it were the four. Paul lay on his elbow on a deerskin, and was +gazing into the coals. Tom Ross was working on a pair of moccasins, Long +Jim was making some kind of kitchen implement, and Shif'less Sol was +talking. Henry could hear the words distinctly, and they were about +himself. + +“Henry will turn up all right,” he was saying. “Hasn't he always done it +afore? Then ef he's always done it afore he's shorely not goin' to break +his rule now. I tell you, boys, thar ain't enough Injuns an' Tories +between Canady an' New Orleans, an' the Mississippi an' the Atlantic, to +ketch Henry. I bet I could guess what he's doin' right at this moment.” + +“What is he doing, Sol?” asked Paul. + +“When I shet my eyes ez I'm doin' now I kin see him,” said the shiftless +one. “He's away off thar toward the north, skirtin' around an Injun +village, Mohawk most likely, lookin' an' listenin' an' gatherin' talk +about their plans.” + +“He ain't doin' any sech thing,” broke in Long Jim. + +“I've sleet my eyes, too, Sol Hyde, jest ez tight ez you've shet yours, +an' I see him, too, but he ain't doin' any uv the things that you're +talkin' about.” + +“What is he doing, Jim?” asked Paul. + +“Henry's away off to the south, not to the north,” replied the long one, +“an' he's in the Iroquois village that we burned. One house has been +left standin', an' he's been occupyin' it while the big snow's on the +groun'. A whole deer is hangin' from the wall, an' he's been settin' +thar fur days, eatin' so much an' hevin' such a good time that the fat's +hangin' down over his cheeks, an' his whole body is threatenin' to bust +right out uv his huntin' shirt.” + +Paul moved a little on his elbow and turned the other side of his face +to the fire. Then he glanced at the silent worker with the moccasins. + +“Sol and Jim don't seem to agree much in their second sight,” he said. +“Can you have any vision, too, Tom?” + +“Yes,” replied Tom Ross, “I kin. I shet my eyes, but I don't see like +either Sol or Jim, 'cause both uv 'em see wrong. I see Henry, an' I see +him plain. He's had a pow'ful tough time. He ain't threatenin' to bust +with fat out uv no huntin' shirt, his cheeks ain't so full that they are +fallin' down over his jaws. It's t'other way roun'; them cheeks are sunk +a mite, he don't fill out his clothes, an' when he crawls along he drags +his left leg a leetle, though he hides it from hisself. He ain't spyin' +on no Injun village, an' he ain't in no snug camp with a dressed deer +hangin' by the side uv him. It's t'other way 'roan'. He's layin' almost +flat on his face not twenty feet from us, lookin' right in at us, an' I +wuz the first to see him.” + +All the others sprang to their feet in astonishment, and Henry likewise +sprang to his feet. Three leaps, and he was in the mellow glow. + + +“And so you saw me, Tom,” he exclaimed, as he joyously grasped one hand +after another. “I might have known that, while I could stalk some of +you, I could not stalk all of you.” + +“I caught the glimpse uv you,” said Silent Tom, “while Sol an' Jim wuz +talkin' the foolish talk that they most always talk, an' when Paul +called on me, I thought I would give 'em a dream that 'wuz true, an' +worth tellin'.” + +“You're right,” said Henry. “I've not been having any easy time, and for +a while, boys, it looked as if I never would come back. Sit down, and I +will tell you all about it.” + +They gave him the warmest place by the fire, brought him the tenderest +food, and he told the long and thrilling tale. + +“I don't believe anybody else but you would have tried it, Henry,” said +Paul, when they heard of the fearful slide. + +“Any one of you would have done it,” said Henry, modestly. + +“I'm pow'ful glad that you done it for two reasons,” said Shif'less +Sol. “One, 'cause it helped you to git away, an' the other, 'cause +that scoundrel, Braxton Wyatt, didn't take you. 'Twould hurt my pride +tre-men-jeous for any uv us to be took by Braxton Wyatt.” + +“You speak for us all there, Sol,” said Paul. + +“What have all of you been doing?” asked Henry. + +“Not much of anything,” replied Shif'less Sol. “We've been scoutin' +several times, lookin' fur you, though we knowed you'd come in some time +or other, but mostly we've been workin' 'roun' the place here, fixin' it +up warmer an' storin' away food.” + +“We'll have to continue at that for some time, I'm afraid,” said Henry, +“unless this snow breaks up. Have any of you heard if any movement is +yet on foot against the Iroquois?” + +“Tom ran across some scouts from the militia,” replied Paul, “and they +said nothing could be done until warm weather came. Then a real army +would march.” + +“I hope so,” said Henry earnestly. + +But for the present the five could achieve little. The snow lasted a +long time, but it was finally swept away by big rains. It poured for +two days and nights, and even when the rain ceased the snow continued to +melt under the warmer air. The water rushed in great torrents down +the cliffs, and would have entered “The Alcove” had not the five made +provision to turn it away. As it was, they sat snug and dry, listening +to the gush of the water, the sign of falling snow, and the talk of one +another. Yet the time dragged. + +“Man wuz never made to be a caged animile,” said Shif'less Sol. “The +longer I stay shet up in one place, the weaker I become. My temper don't +improve, neither, an' I ain't happy.” + +“Guess it's the same with all uv us,” said Tom Ross. + +But when the earth came from beneath the snow, although it was still +cold weather, they began again to range the forest far in every +direction, and they found that the Indians, and the Tories also, were +becoming active. There were more burnings, more slaughters, and more +scalpings. The whole border was still appalled at the massacres of +Wyoming and Cherry Valley, and the savages were continually spreading +over a wider area. Braxton Wyatt at the head of his band, and with the +aid of his Tory lieutenant, Levi Coleman, had made for himself a name +equal to that of Walter Butler. As for “Indian” Butler and his men, no +men were hated more thoroughly than they. + +The five continued to do the best they could, which was much, carrying +many a warning, and saving some who would otherwise have been victims. +While they devoted themselves to their strenuous task, great events in +which they were to take a part were preparing. The rear guard of the +Revolution was about to become for the time the main guard. A great eye +had been turned upon the ravaged and bleeding border, and a great +mind, which could bear misfortune-even disaster-without complaint, +was preparing to send help to those farther away. So mighty a cry of +distress had risen, that the power of the Iroquois must be destroyed. As +the warm weather came, the soldiers began to march. + +Rumors that a formidable foe was about to advance reached the Iroquois +and their allies, the Tories, the English, and the Canadians. There +was a great stirring among the leaders, Thayendanegea, Hiokatoo, +Sangerachte, the Johnsons, the Butlers, Claus, and the rest. Haldimand, +the king's representative in Canada, sent forth an urgent call to all +the Iroquois to meet the enemy. The Tories were' extremely active. +Promises were made to the tribes that they should have other victories +even greater than those of Wyoming and Cherry Valley, and again the +terrible Queen Esther went among them, swinging her great war tomahawk +over her head and chanting her song of death. She, more than any other, +inflamed the Iroquois, and they were eager for the coming contest. + +Timmendiquas had gone back to the Ohio country in the winter, but, +faithful to his promise to give Thayendanegea help to the last, he +returned in the spring with a hundred chosen warriors of the Wyandot +nation, a reenforcement the value of which could not be estimated too +highly. + +Henry and his comrades felt the stir as they roamed through the forest, +and they thrilled at the thought that the crisis was approaching. Then +they set out for Lake Otsego, where the army was gathering for the great +campaign. They were equipped thoroughly, and they were now so well known +in the region that they knew they would be welcome. + +They traveled several days, and were preparing to encamp for the last +night within about fifteen miles of the lake when Henry, scouting as +usual to see if an enemy were near, heard a footstep in the forest. He +wheeled instantly to cover behind the body of a great beech tree, and +the stranger sought to do likewise, only he had no convenient tree +that was so large. It was about the twelfth hour, but Henry could see a +portion of a body protruding beyond a slim oak, and he believed that he +recognized it. As he held the advantage he would, at any rate, hail the +stranger. + +“Ho, Cornelius Heemskerk, Dutchman, fat man, great scout and woodsman, +what are you doing in my wilderness? Stand forth at once and give an +account of yourself, or I will shoot off the part of your body that +sticks beyond that oak tree!” + +The answer was instantaneous. A round, plump body revolved from the +partial shelter of the tree and stood upright in the open, rifle in hand +and cap thrown back from a broad ruddy brow. + +“Ho, Mynheer Henry Ware,” replied Cornelius Heemskerk in a loud, clear +tone, “I am in your woods on perhaps the same errand that you are. Come +from behind that beech and let us see which has the stronger grip.” + +Henry stood forth, and the two clasped hands in a grip so powerful that +both winced. Then they released hands simultaneously, and Heemskerk +asked: + +“And the other four mynheers? Am I wrong to say that they are near, +somewhere?” + +“You are not wrong,” replied Henry. “They are alive, well and hungry, +not a mile from here. There is one man whom they would be very glad to +see, and his name is Cornelius Heemskerk, who is roaming in our woods +without a permit.” + +The round, ruddy face of the Dutchman glowed. It was obvious that he +felt as much delight in seeing Henry as Henry felt in seeing him. + +“My heart swells,” he said. “I feared that you might have been killed or +scalped, or, at the best, have gone back to that far land of Kentucky.” + +“We have wintered well,” said Henry, “in a place of which I shall not +tell you now, and we are here to see the campaign through.” + +“I come, too, for the same purpose,” said Heemskerk. “We shall be +together. It is goot.” “Meanwhile,” said Henry, “our camp fire is +lighted. Jim Hart, whom you have known of old, is cooking strips of meat +over the coals, and, although it is a mile away, the odor of them is +very pleasant in my nostrils. I wish to go back there, and it will be +all the more delightful to me, and to those who wait, if I can bring +with me such a welcome guest.” + +“Lead on, mynheer,” said Cornelius Heemskerk sententiously. + +He received an equally emphatic welcome from the others, and then they +ate and talked. Heemskerk was sanguine. + +“Something will be done this time,” he said. “Word has come from the +great commander that the Iroquois must be crushed. The thousands who +have fallen must be avenged, and this great fire along our border must +be stopped. If it cannot be done, then we perish. We have old tales in +my own country of the cruel deeds that the Spaniards did long, long ago, +but they were not worse than have been done here.” + +The five made no response, but the mind of every one of them traveled +back to Wyoming and all that they had seen there, and the scars and +traces of many more tragedies. + +They reached the camp on Lake Otsego the next day, and Henry saw that +all they had heard was true. The most formidable force that they had +ever seen was gathering. There were many companies in the Continental +buff and blue, epauletted officers, bayonets and cannon. The camp was +full of life, energy, and hope, and the five at once felt the influence +of it. They found here old friends whom they had known in the march on +Oghwaga, William Gray, young Taylor, and others, and they were made very +welcome. They were presented to General James Clinton, then in charge, +received roving commissions as scouts and hunters, and with Heemskerk +and the two celebrated borderers, Timothy Murphy and David Elerson, +they roamed the forest in a great circle about the lake, bringing much +valuable information about the movements of the enemy, who in their turn +were gathering in force, while the royal authorities were dispatching +both Indians and white men from Canada to help them. + +These great scouting expeditions saved the five from much impatience. It +takes a long time for an army to gather and then to equip itself for the +march, and they were so used to swift motion that it was now a part of +their nature. At last the army was ready, and it left the lake. Then it +proceeded in boats down the Tioga flooded to a sufficient depth by an +artificial dam built with immense labor, to its confluence with the +larger river. Here were more men, and the five saw a new commander, +General James Sullivan, take charge of the united force. Then the army, +late in August, began its march upon the Iroquois. + +The five were now in the van, miles ahead of the main guard. They knew +that no important movement of so large a force could escape the notice +of the enemy, but they, with other scouts, made it their duty to see +that the Americans marched into no trap. + +It was now the waning summer. The leaves were lightly touched with +brown, and the grass had begun to wither. Berries were ripening on +the vines, and the quantity of game had increased, the wild animals +returning to the land from which civilized man had disappeared. The +desolation seemed even more complete than in the autumn before. In the +winter and spring the Iroquois and Tories had destroyed the few +remnants of houses that were left. Braxton Wyatt and his band had been +particularly active in this work, and many tales had come of his cruelty +and that of his swart Tory lieutenant, Coleman. Henry was sure, too, +that Wyatt's band, which numbered perhaps fifty Indians and Tories, was +now in front of them. + +He, his comrades, Heemskerk, Elerson, Murphy, and four others, twelve +brave forest runners all told, went into camp one night about ten miles +ahead of the army. They lighted no fire, and, even had it been cold, +they would not have done so, as the region was far too dangerous for any +light. Yet the little band felt no fear. They were only twelve, it is +true, but such a twelve! No chance would either Indians or Tories have +to surprise them. + +They merely lay down in the thick brushwood, three intending to keep +watch while the others slept. Henry, Shif'less Sol, and Heemskerk were +the sentinels. It was very late, nearly midnight; the sky was clear, and +presently they saw smoke rings ascending from high hills to their right, +to be answered soon by other rings of smoke to their left. The three +watched them with but little comment, and read every signal in turn. +They said: “The enemy is still advancing,” “He is too strong for +us...... We must retreat and await our brethren.” + +“It means that there will be no battle to-morrow, at least,” whispered +Heemskerk. “Brant is probably ahead of us in command, and he will avoid +us until he receives the fresh forces from Canada.” + +“I take it that you're right,” Henry whispered back. “Timmendiquas also +is with him, and the two great chiefs are too cunning to fight until +they can bring their last man into action.” + +“An' then,” said the shiftless one, “we'll see what happens.” + +“Yes,” said Henry very gravely, “we'll see what happens. The Iroquois +are a powerful confederacy. They've ruled in these woods for hundreds +of years. They're led by great chiefs, and they're helped by our white +enemies. You can't tell what would happen even to an army like ours in +an ambush.” + +Shif'less Sol nodded, and they said no more until an hour later, when +they heard footsteps. They awakened the others, and the twelve, crawling +to the edge of the brushwood, lay almost flat upon their faces, with +their hands upon the triggers of their rifles. + +Braxton Wyatt and his band of nearly threescore, Indians and Tories in +about equal numbers, were passing. Wyatt walked at the head. Despite his +youth, he had acquired an air of command, and he seemed a fit leader +for such a crew. He wore a faded royal uniform, and, while a small sword +hung at his side, he also carried a rifle on his shoulder. Close behind +him was the swart and squat Tory, Coleman, and then came Indians and +Tories together. + +The watchful eyes of Henry saw three fresh scalps hanging from as many +belts, and the finger that lay upon the trigger of his rifle fairly +ached to press it. What an opportunity this would be if the twelve were +only forty, or even thirty! With the advantage of surprise they might +hope to annihilate this band which had won such hate for itself on the +border. But twelve were not enough and twelve such lives could not be +spared at a time when the army needed them most. + +Henry pressed his teeth firmly together in order to keep down his +disappointment by a mere physical act if possible. He happened to look +at Shif'less Sol, and saw that his teeth were pressed together in the +same manner. It is probable that like feelings swayed every one of the +twelve, but they were so still in the brushwood that no Iroquois heard +grass or leaf rustle. Thus the twelve watched the sixty pass, and +after they were gone, Henry, Shif'less Sol, and Tim Murphy followed for +several miles. They saw Wyatt proceed toward the Chemung River, and as +they approached the stream they beheld signs of fortifications. It was +now nearly daylight, and, as Indians were everywhere, they turned back. +But they were convinced that the enemy meant to fight on the Chemung. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. A GLOOMY COUNCIL + + +The next night after Henry Ware and his comrades lay in the brushwood +and saw Braxton Wyatt and his band pass, a number of men, famous or +infamous in their day, were gathered around a low camp fire on the crest +of a small hill. The most distinguished of them all in looks was a young +Indian chief of great height and magnificent build, with a noble and +impressive countenance. He wore nothing of civilized attire, the +nearest approach to it being the rich dark-blue blanket that was flung +gracefully over his right shoulder. It was none other than the great +Wyandot chief, Timmendiquas, saying little, and listening without +expression to the words of the others. + +Near Timmendiquas sat Thayendanegea, dressed as usual in his mixture +of savage and civilized costume, and about him were other famous Indian +chiefs, The Corn Planter, Red jacket, Hiokatoo, Sangerachte, Little +Beard, a young Seneca renowned for ferocity, and others. + +On the other side of the fire sat the white men: the young Sir John +Johnson, who, a prisoner to the Colonials, had broken his oath of +neutrality, the condition of his release, and then, fleeing to Canada, +had returned to wage bloody war on the settlements; his brother-in-law, +Colonel Guy Johnson; the swart and squat John Butler of Wyoming infamy; +his son, Walter Butler, of the pallid face, thin lips, and cruel heart; +the Canadian Captain MacDonald; Braxton Wyatt; his lieutenant, the dark +Tory, Coleman; and some others who had helped to ravage their former +land. + +Sir John Johnson, a tall man with blue eyes set close together, wore the +handsome uniform of his Royal Greens; he had committed many dark deeds +or permitted them to be done by men under his command, and he had +secured the opportunity only through his broken oath, but he had lost +greatly. The vast estates of his father, Sir William Johnson, were being +torn from him, and perhaps he saw, even then, that in return for what he +had done he would lose all and become an exile from the country in which +he was born. + +It was not a cheerful council. There was no exultation as after Wyoming +and Cherry Valley and the Minisink and other places. Sir John bit his +lip uneasily, and his brother-in-law, resting his hand on his knee, +stared gloomily at the fire. The two Butlers were silent, and the dark +face of Thayendanegea was overcast. + +A little distance before these men was a breastwork about half a mile +long, connecting with a bend of the river in such a manner that an enemy +could attack only in front and on one flank, that flank itself being +approached only by the ascent of a steep ridge which ran parallel to the +river. The ground about the camp was covered with pine and scrub oaks. +Many others had been cut down and added to the breastwork. A deep brook +ran at the foot of the hill on which the leaders sat. About the slopes +of this hill and another, a little distance away, sat hundreds of Indian +warriors, all in their war paint, and other hundreds of their white +allies, conspicuous among them Johnson's Royal Greens and Butler's +Rangers. These men made but little noise now. They were resting and +waiting. + +Thayendanegea was the first to break the silence in the group at the +fire. He turned his dark face to Sir John Johnson and said in his +excellent English: “The king promised us that if we would take up arms +for him against the Yankees, he would send a great army, many thousands, +to help us. We believed him, and we took up the hatchet for him. We +fought in the dark and the storm with Herkimer at the Oriskany, and many +of our warriors fell. But we did not sulk in our lodges. We have ravaged +and driven in the whole American border along a line of hundreds of +miles. Now the Congress sends an army to attack us, to avenge what we +have done, and the great forces of the king are not here. I have been +across the sea; I have seen the mighty city of London and its people as +numerous as the blades of grass. Why has not the king kept his promise +and sent men enough to save the Iroquois?” + +Sir John Johnson and Thayendanegea were good friends, but the soul of +the great Mohawk chief was deeply stirred. His penetrating mind saw the +uplifted hand about to strike-and the target was his own people. His +tone became bitterly sarcastic as he spoke, and when he ceased he looked +directly at the baronet in a manner that showed a reply must be given. +Sir John moved uneasily, but he spoke at last. + +“Much that you say is true, Thayendanegea,” he admitted, “but the king +has many things to do. The war is spread over a vast area, and he must +keep his largest armies in the East. But the Royal Greens, the Rangers, +and all others whom we can raise, even in Canada, are here to help you. +In the coming battle your fortunes are our fortunes.” + +Thayendanegea nodded, but he was not yet appeased. His glance fell upon +the two Butlers, father and son, and he frowned. + +“There are many in England itself,” he said, “who wish us harm, and who +perhaps have kept us from receiving some of the help that we ought to +have. They speak of Wyoming and Cherry Valley, of the torture and of +the slaughter of women and children, and they say that war must not +be carried on in such a way. But there are some among us who are more +savage than the savages themselves, as they call us. It was you, John +Butler, who led at Wyoming, and it was you, Walter Butler, who allowed +the women and children to be killed at Cherry Valley, and more would +have been slain there had I not, come up in time.” + +The dark face of “Indian” Butler grew darker, and the pallid face of +his son grew more pallid. Both were angry, and at the same time a little +afraid. + +“We won at Wyoming in fair battle,” said the elder Butler. + +“But afterwards?” said Thayendanegea. + +The man was silent. + +“It is these two places that have so aroused the Bostonians against us,” + continued Thayendanegea. “It is because of them that the commander of +the Bostonians has sent a great army, and the Long House is threatened +with destruction.” + +“My son and I have fought for our common cause,” said “Indian” Butler, +the blood flushing through his swarthy face. + +Sir John Johnson interfered. + +“We have admitted, Joseph, the danger to the Iroquois,” he said, calling +the chieftain familiarly by his first Christian name, “but I and my +brother-in-law and Colonel Butler and Captain Butler have already lost +though we may regain. And with this strong position and the aid of +ambush it is likely that we can defeat the rebels.” + +The eyes of Thayendanegea brightened as he looked at the long +embankment, the trees, and the dark forms of the warriors scattered +numerously here and there. + +“You may be right, Sir John,” he said; “yes, I think you are right, +and by all the gods, red and white, we shall see. I wish to fight here, +because this is the best place in which to meet the Bostonians. What say +you, Timmendiquas, sworn brother of mine, great warrior and great chief +of the Wyandots, the bravest of all the western nations?” + +The eye of Timmendiquas expressed little, but his voice was sonorous, +and his words were such as Thayendanegea wished to hear. + +“If we fight--and we must fight--this is the place in which to meet the +white army,” he said. “The Wyandots are here to help the Iroquois, as +the Iroquois would go to help them. The Manitou of the Wyandots, the +Aieroski of the Iroquois, alone knows the end.” + +He spoke with the utmost gravity, and after his brief reply he said no +more. All regarded him with respect and admiration. Even Braxton Wyatt +felt that it was a noble deed to remain and face destruction for the +sake of tribes not his own. + +Sir John Johnson turned to Braxton Wyatt, who had sat all the while in +silence. + +“You have examined the evening's advance, Wyatt,” he said. “What further +information can you give us?” + +“We shall certainly be attacked to-morrow,” replied Wyatt, “and the +American army is advancing cautiously. It has out strong flanking +parties, and it is preceded by the scouts, those Kentuckians whom I know +and have met often, Murphy, Elerson, Heemskerk, and the others.” + +“If we could only lead them into an ambush,” said Sir John. “Any kind +of troops, even the best of regulars, will give way before an unseen foe +pouring a deadly fire upon them from the deep woods. Then they magnify +the enemy tenfold.” + +“It is so,” said the fierce old Seneca chief, Hiokatoo. “When we killed +Braddock and all his men, they thought that ten warriors stood in the +moccasins of only one.” + +Sir John frowned. He did not like this allusion to the time when the +Iroquois fought against the English, and inflicted on them a great +defeat. But he feared to rebuke the old chief. Hiokatoo and the Senecas +were too important. + +“There ought to be a chance yet for an ambuscade,” he said. “The foliage +is still thick and heavy, and Sullivan, their general, is not used to +forest warfare. What say you to this, Wyatt?” + +Wyatt shook his head. He knew the caliber of the five from Kentucky, and +he had little hope of such good fortune. + +“They have learned from many lessons,” he replied, “and their scouts are +the best. Moreover, they will attempt anything.” + +They relapsed into silence again, and the sharp eyes of the renegade +roved about the dark circle of trees and warriors that inclosed them. +Presently he saw something that caused him to rise and walk a little +distance from the fire. Although his eye suspected and his mind +confirmed, Braxton Wyatt could not believe that it was true. It was +incredible. No one, be he ever so daring, would dare such a thing. But +the figure down there among the trees, passing about among the warriors, +many of whom did not know one another, certainly looked familiar, +despite the Indian paint and garb. Only that of Timmendiquas could rival +it in height and nobility. These were facts that could not be hidden by +any disguise. + +“What is it, Wyatt?” asked Sir John. “What do you see? Why do you look +so startled?” + +Wyatt sought to reply calmly. + +“There is a warrior among those trees over there whom I have not +seen here before,” he replied, “he is as tall and as powerful as +Timmendiquas, and there is only one such. There is a spy among us, and +it is Henry Ware.” + +He snatched a pistol from his belt, ran forward, and fired at the +flitting figure, which was gone in an instant among the trees and the +warriors. + +“What do you say?” exclaimed Thayendanegea, as he ran forward, “a spy, +and you know him to be such!” + +“Yes, he is the worst of them all,” replied Wyatt. “I know him. I could +not mistake him. But he has dared too much. He cannot get away.” + +The great camp was now in an uproar. The tall figure was seen here and +there, always to vanish quickly. Twenty shots were fired at it. None +hit. Many more would have been fired, but the camp was too much crowded +to take such a risk. Every moment the tumult and confusion increased, +but Thayendanegea quickly posted warriors on the embankment and +the flanks, to prevent the escape of the fugitive in any of those +directions. + +But the tall figure did not appear at either embankment or flank. It was +next seen near the river, when a young warrior, striving to strike with +a tomahawk, was dashed to the earth with great force. The next instant +the figure leaped far out into the stream. The moonlight glimmered an +instant on the bare head, while bullets the next moment pattered on the +water where it had been. Then, with a few powerful strokes, the stranger +reclaimed the land, sprang upon the shore, and darted into the woods +with more vain bullets flying about him. But he sent back a shout of +irony and triumph that made the chiefs and Tories standing on the bank +bite their lips in anger. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. BATTLE OF THE CHEMUNG + + +Paul had been sleeping heavily, and the sharp, pealing notes of a +trumpet awoke him at the sunburst of a brilliant morning. Henry was +standing beside him, showing no fatigue from the night's excitement, +danger, and escape, but his face was flushed and his eyes sparkled. + +“Up, Paul! Up!” he cried. “We know the enemy's position, and we will be +in battle before another sun sets.” + +Paul was awake in an instant, and the second instant he was on his feet, +rifle in hand, and heart thrilling for the great attack. He, like all +the others, had slept on such a night fully dressed. Shif'less Sol, Long +Jim, Silent Tom, Heemskerk, and the rest were by the side of him, and +all about them rose the sounds of an army going into battle, commands +sharp and short, the rolling of cannon wheels, the metallic rattle of +bayonets, the clink of bullets poured into the pouches, and the hum of +men talking in half-finished sentences. + +It was to all the five a vast and stirring scene. It was the first time +that they had ever beheld a large and regular army going into action, +and they were a part of it, a part by no means unimportant. It was +Henry, with his consummate skill and daring, who had uncovered the +position of the enemy, and now, without snatching a moment's sleep, he +was ready to lead where the fray might be thickest. + +The brief breakfast finished, the trumpet pealed forth again, and the +army began to move through the thick forest. A light wind, crisp with +the air of early autumn, blew, and the leaves rustled. The sun, swinging +upward in the east, poured down a flood of brilliant rays that lighted +up everything, the buff and blue uniforms, the cannon, the rifles, the +bayonets, and the forest, still heavy with foliage. + +“Now! now!” thought every one of the five, “we begin the vengeance for +Wyoming!” + +The scouts were well in front, searching everywhere among the thickets +for the Indian sharpshooters, who could scorch so terribly. As Braxton +Wyatt had truly said, these scouts were the best in the world. Nothing +could escape the trained eyes of Henry Ware and his comrades, and those +of Murphy, Ellerson, and the others, while off on either flank of the +army heavy detachments guarded against any surprise or turning movement. +They saw no Indian sign in the woods. There was yet a deep silence in +front of them, and the sun, rising higher, poured its golden light down +upon the army in such an intense, vivid flood that rifle barrels and +bayonets gave back a metallic gleam. All around them the deep woods +swayed and rustled before the light breeze, and now and then they caught +glimpses of the river, its surface now gold, then silver, under the +shining sun. + +Henry's heart swelled as he advanced. He was not revengeful, but he had +seen so much of savage atrocity in the last year that he could not keep +down the desire to see punishment. It is only those in sheltered homes +who can forgive the tomahawk and the stake. Now he was the very first of +the scouts, although his comrades and a dozen others were close behind +him. + +The scouts went so far forward that the army was hidden from them by the +forest, although they could yet hear the clank of arms and the sound of +commands. + +Henry knew the ground thoroughly. He knew where the embankment ran, and +he knew, too, that the Iroquois had dug pits, marked by timber. They +were not far ahead, and the scouts now proceeded very slowly, examining +every tree and clump of bushes to see whether a lurking enemy was hidden +there. The silence endured longer than he had thought. Nothing could be +seen in front save the waving forest. + +Henry stopped suddenly. He caught a glimpse of a brown shoulder's edge +showing from behind a tree, and at his signal all the scouts sank to the +ground. + +The savage fired, but the bullet, the first of the battle, whistled over +their heads. The sharp crack, sounding triply loud at such a time, came +back from the forest in many echoes, and a light puff of smoke arose. +Quick as a flash, before the brown shoulder and body exposed to take aim +could be withdrawn, Tom Ross fired, and the Mohawk fell, uttering his +death yell. The Iroquois in the woods took up the cry, pouring forth a +war whoop, fierce, long drawn, the most terrible of human sounds, and +before it died, their brethren behind the embankment repeated it in +tremendous volume from hundreds of throats. It was a shout that had +often appalled the bravest, but the little band of scouts were not +afraid. When its last echo died they sent forth a fierce, defiant note +of their own, and, crawling forward, began to send in their bullets. + +The woods in front of them swarmed with the Indian skirmishers, who +replied to the scouts, and the fire ran along a long line through the +undergrowth. Flashes of flames appeared, puffs of smoke arose and, +uniting, hung over the trees. Bullets hissed. Twigs and bark fell, and +now and then a man, as they fought from tree to tree. Henry caught one +glimpse of a face that was white, that of Braxton Wyatt, and he sought +a shot at the renegade leader, but he could not get it. But the scouts +pushed on, and the Indian and Tory skirmishers dropped back. Then on +the flanks they began to hear the rattle of rifle fire. The wings of the +army were in action, but the main body still advanced without firing a +shot. + +The scouts could now see through the trees the embankments and rifle +pits, and they could also see the last of the Iroquois and Tory +skirmishers leaping over the earthworks and taking refuge with their +army. Then they turned back and saw the long line of their own army +steadily advancing, while the sounds of heavy firing still continued on +both flanks. Henry looked proudly at the unbroken array, the front of +steel, and the cannon. He felt prouder still when the general turned to +him and said: + +“You have done well, Mr. Ware; you have shown us exactly where the enemy +lies, and that will save us many men. Now bigger voices than those of +the rifles shall talk.” + +The army stopped. The Indian position could be plainly seen. The crest +of the earthwork was lined with fierce, dark faces, and here and there +among the brown Iroquois were the green uniforms of the Royalists. + +Henry saw both Thayendanegea and Timmendiquas, the plumes in their hair +waving aloft, and he felt sure that wherever they stood the battle would +be thickest. + +The Americans were now pushing forward their cannon, six three-pounders +and two howitzers, the howitzers, firing five-and-a-half-inch shells, +new and terrifying missiles to the Indians. The guns were wheeled into +position, and the first howitzer was fired. It sent its great shell in +a curving line at and over the embankment, where it burst with a crash, +followed by a shout of mingled pain and awe. Then the second howitzer, +aimed well like the first, sent a shell almost to the same point, and a +like cry came back. + + +Shif'less Sol, watching the shots, jumped up and down in delight. + +“That's the medicine!” he cried. “I wonder how you like that, you +Butlers an' Johnsons an' Wyatts an' Mohawks an' all the rest o' your +scalp-taking crew! Ah, thar goes another! This ain't any Wyomin'!” + +The three-pounders also opened fire, and sent their balls squarely into +the rifle pits and the Indian camp. The Iroquois replied with a shower +of rifle bullets and a defiant war whoop, but the bullets fell short, +and the whoop hurt no one. + +The artillery, eight pieces, was served with rapidity and precision, +while the riflemen, except on their flanks, where they were more closely +engaged, were ordered to hold their fire. The spectacle was to Henry and +his comrades panoramic in its effect. They watched the flashes of fire +from the mouths of the cannon, the flight of the great shells, and the +bank of smoke which soon began to lower like a cloud over the field. +They could picture to themselves what was going on beyond the earthwork, +the dead falling, the wounded limping away, earth and trees torn by +shell and shot. They even fancied that they could hear the voices of the +great chiefs, Thayendanegea and Timmendiquas, encouraging their men, +and striving to keep them in line against a fire not as deadly as rifle +bullets at close quarters, but more terrifying. + +Presently a cloud of skirmishers issued once more from the Indian camp, +creeping among the trees and bushes, and seeking a chance to shoot down +the men at the guns. But sharp eyes were watching them. + +“Come, boys,” exclaimed Henry. “Here's work for us now.” + +He led the scouts and the best of the riflemen against the skirmishers, +who were soon driven in again. The artillery fire had never ceased for a +moment, the shells and balls passing over their heads. Their work done, +the sharpshooters fell back again, the gunners worked faster for a +while, and then at a command they ceased suddenly. Henry, Paul, and all +the others knew instinctively what was going to happen. They felt it in +every bone of them. The silence so sudden was full of meaning. + +“Now!” Henry found himself exclaiming. Even at that moment the order was +given, and the whole army rushed forward, the smoke floating away for +the moment and the sun flashing off the bayonets. The five sprang up +and rushed on ahead. A sheet of flame burst from the embankment, and the +rifle pits sprang into fire. The five beard the bullets whizzing past +them, and the sudden cries of the wounded behind them, but they never +ceased to rush straight for the embankment. + +It seemed to Henry that he ran forward through living fire. There was +one continuous flash from the earthwork, and a continuous flash replied. +The rifles were at work now, thousands of them, and they kept up an +incessant crash, while above them rose the unbroken thunder of the +cannon. The volume of smoke deepened, and it was shot through with the +sharp, pungent odor of burned gunpowder. + +Henry fired his rifle and pistol, almost unconsciously reloaded, and +fired again, as he ran, and then noticed that the advance had never +ceased. It had not been checked even for a moment, and the bayonets of +one of the regiments glittered in the sun a straight line of steel. + +Henry kept his gaze fixed upon a point where the earthwork was lowest. +He saw there the plumed head of Thayendanegea, and he intended to strike +if he could. He saw the Mohawk gesticulating and shouting to his men to +stand fast and drive back the charge. He believed even then, and he knew +later, that Thayendanegea and Timmendiquas were showing courage superior +to that of the Johnsons and Butters or any of their British and Canadian +allies. The two great chiefs still held their men in line, and the +Iroquois did not cease to send a stream of bullets from the earthwork. + +Henry saw the brown faces and the embankment coming closer and closer. +He saw the face of Braxton Wyatt appear a moment, and he snapped his +empty pistol at it. But it was hidden the next instant behind others, +and then they were at the embankment. He saw the glowing faces of +his comrades at his side, the singular figure of Heemskerk revolving +swiftly, and behind them the line of bayonets closing in with the +grimness of fate. + +Henry leaped upon the earthwork. An Indian fired at him point blank, and +he swung heavily with his clubbed rifle. Then his comrades were by his +side, and they leaped down into the Indian camp. After them came the +riflemen, and then the line of bayonets. Even then the great Mohawk and +the great Wyandot shouted to their men to stand fast, although the Royal +Greens and the Rangers had begun to run, and the Johnsons, the Butlers, +McDonald, Wyatt, and the other white men were running with them. + +Henry, with the memory of Wyoming and all the other dreadful things that +had come before his eyes, saw red. He was conscious of a terrible melee, +of striking again and again with his clubbed rifle, of fierce brown +faces before him, and of Timmendiquas and Thayedanegea rushing here and +there, shouting to their warriors, encouraging them, and exclaiming that +the battle was not lost. Beyond he saw the vanishing forms of the Royal +Greens and the Rangers in full flight. But the Wyandots and the best +of the Iroquois still stood fast until the pressure upon them became +overwhelming. When the line of bayonets approached their breasts they +fell back. Skilled in every detail of ambush, and a wonderful forest +fighter, the Indian could never stand the bayonet. Reluctantly +Timmendiquas, Thayendanegea and the Mohawks, Senecas, and Wyandots, who +were most strenuous in the conflict, gave ground. Yet the battlefield, +with its numerous trees, stumps, and inequalities, still favored them. +They retreated slowly, firing from every covert, sending a shower of +bullets, and now and then tittering the war whoop. + +Henry heard a panting breath by his side. He looked around and saw the +face of Heemskerk, glowing red with zeal and exertion. + +“The victory is won already!” said he. “Now to drive it home!” + +“Come on,” cried Henry in return, “and we'll lead!” + +A single glance showed him that none of his comrades had fallen. Long +Jim and Tom Ross had suffered slight wounds that they scarcely noticed, +and they and the whole group of scouts were just behind Henry. But they +now took breath, reloaded their rifles, and, throwing themselves down +in Indian fashion, opened a deadly fire upon their antagonists. Their +bullets searched all the thickets, drove out the Iroquois, and compelled +them to retreat anew. + +The attack was now pressed with fresh vigor. In truth, with so much that +the bravest of the Indians at last yielded to panic. Thayendanegea and +Timmendiquas were carried away in the rush, and the white leaders of +their allies were already out of sight. On all sides the allied red and +white force was dissolving. Precipitate flight was saving the fugitives +from a greater loss in killed and wounded-it was usually Indian tactics +to flee with great speed when the battle began to go against them-but +the people of the Long House had suffered the greatest overthrow in +their history, and bitterness and despair were in the hearts of the +Iroquois chiefs as they fled. + +The American army not only carried the center of the Indian camp, but +the heavy flanking parties closed in also, and the whole Indian army +was driven in at every point. The retreat was becoming a rout. A great, +confused conflict was going on. The rapid crackle of rifles mingled with +the shouts and war whoops of the combatants. Smoke floated everywhere. +The victorious army, animated by the memory of the countless cruelties +that had been practiced on the border, pushed harder and harder. The +Iroquois were driven back along the Chemung. It seemed that they might +be hemmed in against the river, but in their flight they came to a ford. +Uttering their cry of despair, “Oonali! Oonali!” a wail for a battle +lost, they sprang into the stream, many of them throwing away their +rifles, tomahawks, and blankets, and rushed for the other shore. But the +Scouts and a body of riflemen were after them. + +Braxton Wyatt and his band appeared in the woods on the far shore, and +opened fire on the pursuers now in the stream. He alone among the white +men had the courage, or the desperation, to throw himself and his men +in the path of the pursuit. The riflemen in the water felt the bullets +pattering around them, and some were struck, but they did not stop. They +kept on for the bank, and their own men behind them opened a covering +fire over their heads. + +Henry felt a great pulse leap in his throat at the sight of Braxton +Wyatt again. Nothing could have turned him back now. Shouting to the +riflemen, he led the charge through the water, and the bank's defenders +were driven back. Yet Wyatt, with his usual dexterity and prudence, +escaped among the thickets. + +The battle now became only a series of detached combats. Little +groups seeking to make a stand here and there were soon swept away. +Thayendanegea and Timmendiquas raged and sought to gather together +enough men for an ambush, for anything that would sting the victors, but +they were pushed too hard and fast. A rally was always destroyed in the +beginning, and the chiefs themselves at last ran for their lives. The +pursuit was continued for a long time, not only by the vanguard, but the +army itself moved forward over the battlefield and deep into the forest +on the trail of the flying Iroquois. + +The scouts continued the pursuit the longest, keeping a close watch, +nevertheless, against an ambush. Now and then they exchanged shots with +a band, but the Indians always fled quickly, and at last they stopped +because they could no longer find any resistance. They had been in +action or pursuit for many hours, and they were black with smoke, dust, +and sweat, but they were not yet conscious of any weariness. Heemskerk +drew a great red silk handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped his +glowing face, which was as red as the handkerchief. + +“It's the best job that's been done in these parts for many a year,” he +said. “The Iroquois have always thought they were invincible, and now +the spell's been broke. If we only follow it up.” + +“That's sure to be done,” said Henry. “I heard General Sullivan himself +say that his orders were to root up the whole Iroquois power.” + +They returned slowly toward the main force, retracing their steps over +the path of battle. It was easy enough to follow it. They beheld a dead +warrior at every step, and at intervals were rifles, tomahawks, scalping +knives, blankets, and an occasional shot pouch or powder horn. Presently +they reached the main army, which was going into camp for the night. +Many camp fires were built, and the soldiers, happy in their victory, +were getting ready for supper. But there was no disorder. They had been +told already that they were to march again in the morning. + +Henry, Paul, Tom, Jim, and Shif'less Sol went back over the field of +battle, where many of the dead still lay. Twilight was now coming, and +it was a somber sight. The earthwork, the thickets, and the trees were +torn by cannon balls. Some tents raised by the Tories lay in ruins, and +the earth was stained with many dark splotches. But the army had passed +on, and it was silent and desolate where so many men had fought. The +twilight drew swiftly on to night, and out of the forest came grewsome +sounds. The wolves, thick now in a region which the Iroquois had done +so much to turn into a wilderness, were learning welcome news, and they +were telling it to one another. By and by, as the night deepened, the +five saw fiery eyes in the thickets, and the long howls came again. + +“It sounds like the dirge of the people of the Long House,” said Paul, +upon whose sensitive mind the scene made a deep impression. + +The others nodded. At that moment they did not feel the flush of victory +in its full force. It was not in their nature to rejoice over a fallen +foe. Yet they knew the full value of the victory, and none of them could +wish any part of it undone. They returned slowly to the camp, and once +more they heard behind them the howl of the wolves as they invaded the +battlefield. + +They were glad when they saw the cheerful lights of the camp fires +twinkling through the forest, and heard the voices of many men talking. +Heemskerk welcomed them there. + +“Come, lads,” he said. “You must eat-you won't find out until you begin, +how hungry you are-and then you must sleep, because we march early +to-morrow, and we march fast.” + +The Dutchman's words were true. They had not tasted food since morning; +they had never thought of it, but now, with the relaxation from battle, +they found themselves voraciously hungry. + +“It's mighty good,” said Shif'less Sol, as they sat by a fire and ate +bread and meat and drank coffee, “but I'll say this for you, you old +ornery, long-legged Jim Hart, it ain't any better than the venison an' +bulffaler steaks that you've cooked fur us many a time.” + +“An' that I'm likely to cook fur you many a time more,” said Long Jim +complacently. + +“But it will be months before you have any chance at buffalo again, +Jim,” said Henry. “We are going on a long campaign through the Iroquois +country.” + +“An' it's shore to be a dangerous one,” said Shif'less Sol. “Men like +warriors o' the Iroquois ain't goin' to give up with one fight. They'll +be hangin' on our flanks like wasps.” + +“That's true,” said Henry, “but in my opinion the Iroquois are +overthrown forever. One defeat means more to them than a half dozen to +us.” + + +They said little more, but by and by lay down to sleep before the fires. +They had toiled so long and so faithfully that the work of watching and +scouting that night could be intrusted to others. Yet Henry could +not sleep for a long time. The noises of the night interested him. He +watched the men going about, and the sentinels pacing back and forth +around the camp. The sounds died gradually as the men lay down and sank +to sleep. The fires which had formed a great core of light also sank, +and the shadows crept toward the camp. The figures of the pacing +sentinels, rifle on shoulder, gradually grew dusky. Henry's nerves, +attuned so long to great effort, slowly relaxed. Deep peace came over +him, and his eyelids drooped, the sounds in the camp sank to the +lowest murmur, but just as he was falling asleep there came from the +battlefield behind then the far, faint howl of a wolf, the dirge of the +Iroquois. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. LITTLE BEARD'S TOWN + + +The trumpets called early the next morning, and the five rose, +refreshed, ready for new labors. The fires were already lighted, and +breakfast was cooking. Savory odors permeated the forest. But as soon as +all had eaten, the army marched, going northward and westward, intending +to cut through the very center of the Iroquois country. Orders had come +from the great commander that the power of the Six Nations, which had +been so long such a terrible scourge on the American frontier, must be +annihilated. They must be made strangers in their own country. Women and +children were not to be molested, but their towns must perish. + +As Thayendanegea had said the night before the Battle of the Chemung, +the power beyond the seas that had urged the Iroquois to war on the +border did not save them. It could not. British and Tories alike had +promised them certain victory, and for a while it had seemed that the +promises would come true. But the tide had turned, and the Iroquois were +fugitives in their own country. + +The army continued its march through the wilderness, the scouts in front +and heavy parties of riflemen on either flank. There was no chance for +a surprise. Henry and his comrades were aware that Indian bands still +lurked in the forest, and they had several narrow escapes from the +bullets of ambushed foes, but the progress of the army was irresistible. +Nothing could check it for a moment, however much the Indian and Tory +chiefs might plan. + +They camped again that night in the forest, with a thorough ring of +sentinels posted against surprise, although there was little danger of +the latter, as the enemy could not, for the present at least, bring a +sufficient force into the field. But after the moon had risen, the five, +with Heemskerk, went ahead through the forest. The Iroquois town of +Kanawaholla lay just ahead, and the army would reach it on the morrow. +It was the intention of the scouts to see if it was still occupied. + +It was near midnight when the little party drew near to Kanawaholla +and watched it from the shelter of the forest. Like most other Iroquois +towns, it contained wooden houses, and cultivated fields were about it. +No smoke rose from any of the chimneys, but the sharp eyes of the scouts +saw loaded figures departing through a great field of ripe and waving +corn. It was the last of the inhabitants, fleeing with what they could +carry. Two or three warriors might have been in that group of fugitives, +but the scouts made no attempt to pursue. They could not restrain a +little feeling of sympathy and pity, although a just retribution was +coming. + +“If the Iroquois had only stood neutral at the beginning of the war, as +we asked them,” said Heemskerk, “how much might have been spared to both +sides! Look! Those people are stopping for a moment.” + +The burdened figures, perhaps a dozen, halted at the far edge of the +corn field. Henry and Paul readily imagined that they were taking a +last look at their town, and the feeling of pity and sympathy deepened, +despite Wyoming, Cherry Valley, and all the rest. But that feeling +never extended to the white allies of the Iroquois, whom Thayendanegea +characterized in word and in writing as “more savage than the savages +themselves.” + +The scouts waited an hour, and then entered the town. Not a soul was in +Kanawaholla. Some of the lighter things had been taken away, but that +was all. Most of the houses were in disorder, showing the signs of hasty +flight, but the town lay wholly at the mercy of the advancing army. +Henry and his comrades withdrew with the news, and the next day, when +the troops advanced, Kanawaholla was put to the torch. In an hour it was +smoking ruins, and then the crops and fruit trees were destroyed. + +Leaving ruin behind, the army continued its march, treading the Iroquois +power under foot and laying waste the country. One after another +the Indian towns were destroyed, Catherinetown, Kendaia, +Kanadesaga, Shenanwaga, Skoiyase, Kanandaigua, Honeyoye, Kanaghsawa, +Gathtsewarohare, and others, forming a long roll, bearing the sounding +Iroquois names. Villages around Cayuga and other lakes were burned +by detachments. The smoke of perishing towns arose everywhere in +the Iroquois country, while the Iroquois themselves fled before the +advancing army. They sent appeal after appeal for help from those to +whom they had given so much help, but none came. + +It was now deep autumn, and the nights grew cold. The forests blazed +with brilliant colors. The winds blew, leaves rustled and fell. The +winter would soon be at hand, and the Iroquois, so proud of what they +had achieved, would have to find what shelter they could in the forests +or at the British posts on the Canadian frontier. Thayendanegea was +destined to come again with bands of red men and white and inflict great +loss, but the power of the Six Nations was overthrown forever, after +four centuries of victory and glory. Henry, Paul, and the rest were all +the time in the thick of it. The army, as the autumn advanced, marched +into the Genesee Valley, destroying everything. Henry and Paul, as +they lay on their blankets one night, counted fires in three different +directions, and every one of the three marked a perishing Indian +village. It was not a work in which they took any delight; on the +contrary, it often saddened them, but they felt that it had to be done, +and they could not shirk the task. + +In October, Henry, despite his youth, took command of a body of scouts +and riflemen which beat up the ways, and skirmished in advance of the +army. It was a democratic little band, everyone saying what he pleased, +but yielding in the end to the authority of the leader. They were now +far up the Genesee toward the Great Lakes, and Henry formed the plan of +advancing ahead of the army on the great Seneca village known variously +as the Seneca Castle and Little Beard's Town, after its chief, a full +match in cruelty for the older Seneca chief, Hiokatoo. Several causes +led to this decision. It was reported that Thayendanegea, Timmendiquas, +all the Butlers and Johnsons, and Braxton Wyatt were there. While not +likely to be true about all, it was probably true about some of them, +and a bold stroke might effect much. + +It is probable that Henry had Braxton Wyatt most in mind. The renegade +was in his element among the Indians and Tories, and he had developed +great abilities as a partisan, being skillfully seconded by the squat +Tory, Coleman. His reputation now was equal at least to that of Walter +Butler, and he had skirmished more than once with the vanguard of the +army. Growing in Henry's heart was a strong desire to match forces with +him, and it was quite probable that a swift advance might find him at +the Seneca Castle. + +The riflemen took up their march on a brisk morning in late autumn. The +night had been clear and cold, with a touch of winter in it, and +the brilliant colors of the foliage had now turned to a solid brown. +Whenever the wind blew, the leaves fell in showers. The sky was a fleecy +blue, but over hills, valley, and forest hung a fine misty veil that is +the mark of Indian summer. The land was nowhere inhabited. They saw +the cabin of neither white man nor Indian. A desolation and a silence, +brought by the great struggle, hung over everything. Many discerning +eyes among the riflemen noted the beauty and fertility of the country, +with its noble forests and rich meadows. At times they caught glimpses +of the river, a clear stream sparkling under the sun. + +“Makes me think o' some o' the country 'way down thar in Kentucky,” said +Shif'less Sol, “an' it seems to me I like one about ez well ez t'other. +Say, Henry, do you think we'll ever go back home? 'Pears to me that +we're always goin' farther an' farther away.” + +Henry laughed. + +“It's because circumstances have taken us by the hand and led us away, +Sol,” he replied. + +“Then,” said the shiftless one with a resigned air, “I hope them same +circumstances will take me by both hands, an' lead me gently, but +strongly, back to a place whar thar is peace an' rest fur a lazy an' +tired man like me.” + +“I think you'll have to endure a lot, until next spring at least,” said +Henry. + +The shiftless one heaved a deep sigh, but his next words were wholly +irrelevant. + +“S'pose we'll light on that thar Seneca Castle by tomorrow night?” he +asked. + +“It seems to me that for a lazy and tired man you're extremely anxious +for a fight,” Henry replied. + +“I try to be resigned,” said Shif'less Sol. But his eyes were sparkling +with the light of battle. + +They went into camp that night in a dense forest, with the Seneca Castle +about ten miles ahead. Henry was quite sure that the Senecas to whom it +belonged had not yet abandoned it, and with the aid of the other tribes +might make a stand there. It was more than likely, too, that the Senecas +had sharpshooters and sentinels well to the south of their town, and +it behooved the riflemen to be extremely careful lest they run into a +hornet's nest. Hence they lighted no fires, despite a cold night wind +that searched them through until they wrapped themselves in their +blankets. + +The night settled down thick and dark, and the band lay close in the +thickets. Shif'less Sol was within a yard of Henry. He had observed +his young leader's face closely that day, and he had a mind of uncommon +penetration. + +“Henry,” he whispered, “you're hopin' that you'll find Braxton Wyatt an' +his band at Little Beard's town?” + +“That among other things,” replied Henry in a similar whisper. + +“That first, and the others afterwards,” persisted the shiftless one. + +“It may be so,” admitted Henry. + +“I feel the same way you do,” said Shif'less Sol. “You see, we've knowed +Braxton Wyatt a long time, an' it seems strange that one who started out +a boy with you an' Paul could turn so black. An' think uv all the cruel +things that he's done an' helped to do. I ain't hidin' my feelin's. I'm +jest itchin' to git at him.” + +“Yes,” said Henry, “I'd like for our band to have it out with his.” + +Henry and Shif'less Sol, and in fact all of the five, slept that night, +because Henry wished to be strong and vigorous for the following +night, in view of an enterprise that he had in mind. The rosy Dutchman, +Heemskerk, was in command of the guard, and he revolved continually +about the camp with amazing ease, and with a footstep so light that it +made no sound whatever. Now and then he came back in the thicket and +looked down at the faces of the sleeping five from Kentucky. “Goot +boys,” he murmured to himself. “Brave boys, to stay here and help. May +they go through all our battles and take no harm. The goot and great God +often watches over the brave.” + +Mynheer Cornelius Heemskerk, native of Holland, but devoted to the new +nation of which he had made himself a part, was a devout man, despite a +life of danger and hardship. The people of the woods do not lose faith, +and he looked up at the dark skies as if he found encouragement there. +Then he resumed his circle about the camp. He heard various noises-the +hoot of an owl, the long whine of a wolf, and twice the footsteps of +deer going down to the river to drink. But the sounds were all natural, +made by the animals to which they belonged, and Heemskerk knew it. +Once or twice he went farther into the forest, but he found nothing to +indicate the presence of a foe, and while he watched thus, and beat up +the woods, the night passed, eventless, away. + +They went the next day much nearer to the Seneca Castle, and saw sure +indications that it was still inhabited, as the Iroquois evidently were +not aware of the swift advance of the riflemen. Henry had learned that +this was one of the largest and strongest of all the Iroquois towns, +containing between a hundred and two hundred wooden houses, and with a +population likely to be swollen greatly by fugitives from the Iroquois +towns already destroyed. The need of caution--great caution--was borne +in upon him, and he paid good heed. + +The riflemen sought another covert in the deep forest, now about three +miles from Little Beard's Town, and lay there, while Henry, according +to his plan, went forth at night with Shif'less Sol and Tom Ross. He was +resolved to find out more about this important town, and his enterprise +was in full accord with his duties, chief among which was to save the +vanguard of the army from ambush. + +When the complete darkness of night had come, the three left the covert, +and, after traveling a short distance through the forest, turned in +toward the river. As the town lay on or near the river, Henry thought +they might see some signs of Indian life on the stream, and from this +they could proceed to discoveries. + +But when they first saw the river it was desolate. Not a canoe was +moving on its surface, and the three, keeping well in the undergrowth, +followed the bank toward the town. But the forest soon ceased, and they +came upon a great field, where the Senecas had raised corn, and where +stalks, stripped of their ears and browned by the autumn cold, were +still standing. But all the work of planting, tending, and reaping this +great field, like all the other work in all the Iroquois fields, had +been done by the Iroquois women, not by the warriors. + +Beyond the field they saw fruit trees, and beyond these, faint lines +of smoke, indicating the position of the great Seneca Castle. The dry +cornstalks rustled mournfully as the wind blew across the field. + +“The stalks will make a little shelter,” said Henry, “and we must cross +the field. We want to keep near the river.” + +“Lead on,” said Shif'less Sol. + +They took a diagonal course, walking swiftly among the stalks and +bearing back toward the river. They crossed the field without being +observed, and came into a thick fringe of trees and undergrowth along +the river. They moved cautiously in this shelter for a rod or two, +and then the three, without word from any one of them, stopped +simultaneously. They heard in the water the unmistakable ripple made by +a paddle, and then the sound of several more. They crept to the edge of +the bank and crouched down among the bushes. Then they saw a singular +procession. + +A half-dozen Iroquois canoes were moving slowly up the stream. They were +in single file, and the first canoe was the largest. But the aspect of +the little fleet was wholly different from that of an ordinary group +of Iroquois war canoes. It was dark, somber, and funereal, and in +every canoe, between the feet of the paddlers, lay a figure, stiff +and impassive, the body of a chief slain in battle. It had all the +appearance of a funeral procession, but the eyes of the three, as they +roved over it, fastened on a figure in the first canoe, and, used as +they were to the strange and curious, every one of them gave a start. + +The figure was that of a woman, a wild and terrible creature, who half +sat, half crouched in the canoe, looking steadily downward. Her long +black hair fell in disordered masses from her uncovered head. She wore a +brilliant red dress with savage adornments, but it was stained and torn. +The woman's whole attitude expressed grief, anger, and despair. + +“Queen Esther!” whispered Henry. The other two nodded. + +So horrifying had been the impression made upon him by this woman at +Wyoming that he could not feel any pity for her now. The picture of the +great war tomahawk cleaving the heads of bound prisoners was still too +vivid. She had several sons, one or two of whom were slain in battle +with the colonists, and the body that lay in the boat may have been one +of them. Henry always believed that it was-but he still felt no pity. + +As the file came nearer they heard her chanting a low song, and now she +raised her face and tore at her black hair. + +“They're goin' to land,” whispered Shif'less Sol. + +The head of the file was turned toward the shore, and, as it approached, +a group of warriors, led by Little Beard, the Seneca chief, appeared +among the trees, coming forward to meet them. The three in their covert +crouched closer, interested so intensely that they were prepared to +brave the danger in order to remain. But the absorption of the Iroquois +in what they were about to do favored the three scouts. + +As the canoes touched the bank, Catharine Montour rose from her +crouching position and uttered a long, piercing wail, so full of grief, +rage, and despair that the three in the bushes shuddered. It was +fiercer than the cry of a wolf, and it came back from the dark forest in +terrifying echoes. + +“It's not a woman, but a fiend,” whispered Henry; and, as before, his +comrades nodded in assent. + +The woman stood erect, a tall and stalwart figure, but the beauty that +had once caused her to be received in colonial capitals was long since +gone. Her white half of blood had been submerged years ago in her Indian +half, and there was nothing now about her to remind one of civilization +or of the French Governor General of Canada who was said to have been +her father. + +The Iroquois stood respectfully before her. It was evident that she had +lost none of her power among the Six Nations, a power proceeding partly +from her force and partly from superstition. As the bodies were brought +ashore, one by one, and laid upon the ground, she uttered the long +wailing cry again and again, and the others repeated it in a sort of +chorus. + +When the bodies-and Henry was sure that they must all be those of +chiefs-were laid out, she tore her hair, sank down upon the ground, and +began a chant, which Tom Ross was afterwards able to interpret roughly +to the others. She sang: + + The white men have come with the cannon and bayonet, + Numerous as forest leaves the army has come. + Our warriors are driven like deer by the hunter, + Fallen is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee! + + Our towns are burned and our fields uprooted, + Our people flee through the forest for their lives, + The king who promised to help us comes not. + Fallen is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee! + + The great chiefs are slain and their bodies lie here. + No longer will they lead the warriors in battle; + No more will they drive the foe from the thicket. + Fallen is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee! + + Scalps we have taken from all who hated us; + None, but feared us in the days of our glory. + But the cannon and bayonet have taken our country; + Fallen is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee! + +She chanted many verses, but these were all that Tom Ross could ever +remember or translate. But every verse ended with the melancholy +refrain: “Fallen is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee!” which the +others also repeated in chorus. Then the warriors lifted up the bodies, +and they moved in procession toward the town. The three watched them, +but they did not rise until the funeral train had reached the fruit +trees. Then they stood up, looked at one another, and breathed sighs of +relief. + +“I don't care ef I never see that woman ag'in,” said Shif'less Sol. “She +gives me the creeps. She must be a witch huntin' for blood. She is shore +to stir up the Iroquois in this town.” + +“That's true,” said Henry, “but I mean to go nearer.” + +“Wa'al,” said Tom Ross, “I reckon that if you mean it we mean it, too.” + +“There are certainly Tories in the town,” said Henry, “and if we are seen +we can probably pass for them. I'm bound to find out what's here.” + +“Still huntin' fur Braxton Wyatt,” said Shif'less Sol. + +“I mean to know if he's here,” said Henry. + +“Lead on,” said the shiftless one. + +They followed in the path of the procession, which was now out of sight, +and entered the orchard. From that point they saw the houses and great +numbers of Indians, including squaws and children, gathered in the open +spaces, where the funeral train was passing. Queen Esther still stalked +at its head, but her chant was now taken up by many scores of voices, +and the volume of sound penetrated far in the night. Henry yet relied +upon the absorption of the Iroquois in this ceremonial to give him +a chance for a good look through the town, and he and his comrades +advanced with boldness. + +They passed by many of the houses, all empty, as their occupants had +gone to join in the funeral lament, but they soon saw white men-a few +of the Royal Greens, and some of the Rangers, and other Tories, who were +dressed much like Henry and his comrades. One of them spoke to Shif'less +Sol, who nodded carelessly and passed by. The Tory seemed satisfied and +went his way. + +“Takes us fur some o' the crowd that's come runnin' in here ahead o' the +army,” said the shiftless one. + +Henry was noting with a careful eye the condition of the town. He +saw that no preparations for defense had been made, and there was no +evidence that any would be made. All was confusion and despair. Already +some of the squaws were fleeing, carrying heavy burdens. The three +coupled caution with boldness. If they met a Tory they merely exchanged +a word or two, and passed swiftly on. Henry, although he had seen enough +to know that the army could advance without hesitation, still pursued +the quest. Shif'less Sol was right. At the bottom of Henry's heart was +a desire to know whether Braxton Wyatt was in Little Beard's Town, a +desire soon satisfied, as they reached the great Council House, turned a +corner of it, and met the renegade face to face. + +Wyatt was with his lieutenant, the squat Tory, Coleman, and he uttered +a cry when he saw the tall figure of the great youth. There was no light +but that of the moon, but he knew his foe in an instant. + +“Henry Ware!” he cried, and snatched his pistol from his belt. + +They were so close together that Henry did not have time to use a +weapon. Instinctively he struck out with his fist, catching Wyatt on the +jaw, and sending him down as if he had been shot. Shif'less Sol and Tom +Ross ran bodily over Coleman, hurling him down, and leaping across his +prostrate figure. Then they ran their utmost, knowing that their lives +depended on speed and skill. + +They quickly put the Council House between them and their pursuers, and +darted away among the houses. Braxton Wyatt was stunned, but he speedily +regained his wits and his feet. + +“It was the fellow Ware, spying among us again!” he cried to his +lieutenant, who, half dazed, was also struggling up. “Come, men! After +them! After them!” + +A dozen men came at his call, and, led by the renegade, they began a +search among the houses. But it was hard to find the fugitives. The +light was not good, many flitting figures were about, and the frantic +search developed confusion. Other Tories were often mistaken for the +three scouts, and were overhauled, much to their disgust and that of the +overhaulers. Iroquois, drawn from the funeral ceremony, began to join +in the hunt, but Wyatt could give them little information. He had merely +seen an enemy, and then the enemy had gone. It was quite certain that +this enemy, or, rather, three of them, was still in the town. + +Henry and his comrades were crafty. Trained by ambush and escape, flight +and pursuit, they practiced many wiles to deceive their pursuers. When +Wyatt and Coleman were hurled down they ran around the Council House, a +large and solid structure, and, finding a door on the opposite side and +no one there or in sight from that point, they entered it, closing the +door behind them. + +They stood in almost complete darkness, although at length they made +out the log wall of the great, single room which constituted the Council +House. After that, with more accustomed eyes, they saw on the wall arms, +pipes, wampum, and hideous trophies, some with long hair and some with +short. The hair was usually blonde, and most of the scalps had been +stretched tight over little hoops. Henry clenched his fist in the +darkness. + +“Mebbe we're walkin' into a trap here,” said Shif'less Sol. + +“I don't think so,” said Henry. “At any rate they'd find us if we were +rushing about the village. Here we at least have a chance.” + +At the far end of the Council House hung mats, woven of rushes, and the +three sat down behind them in the very heart of the Iroquois sanctuary. +Should anyone casually enter the Council House they would still be +hidden. They sat in Turkish fashion on the floor, close together and +with their rifles lying across their knees. A thin light filtered +through a window and threw pallid streaks on the floor, which they could +see when they peeped around the edge of the mats. But outside they +heard very clearly the clamor of the hunt as it swung to and fro in the +village. Shif'less Sol chuckled. It was very low, but it was a chuckle, +nevertheless, and the others heard. + +“It's sorter takin' an advantage uv 'em,” said the shiftless one, +“layin' here in thar own church, so to speak, while they're ragin' an' +tearin' up the earth everywhar else lookin' fur us. Gives me a mighty +snug feelin', though, like the one you have when you're safe in a big +log house, an' the wind an' the hail an' the snow are beatin' outside.” + +“You're shorely right, Sol,” said Tom Ross. + +“Seems to me,” continued the irrepressible Sol, “that you did git in a +good lick at Braxton Wyatt, after all. Ain't he unhappy now, bitin' his +fingers an' pawin' the earth an' findin' nothin'? I feel real sorry, +I do, fur Braxton. It's hard fur a nice young feller to have to suffer +sech disappointments.” + +Shif'less Sol chuckled again, and Henry was forced to smile in the +darkness. Shif'less Sol was not wholly wrong. It would be a bitter blow +to Braxton Wyatt. Moreover, it was pleasant where they sat. A hard floor +was soft to them, and as they leaned against the wall they could relax +and rest. + +“What will our fellows out thar in the woods think?” asked Tom Ross. + +“They won't have to think,” replied Henry. “They'll sit quiet as we're +doing and wait.” + +The noise of the hunt went on for a long time outside. War whoops came +from different points of the village. There were shrill cries of women +and children, and the sound of many running feet. After a while it began +to sink, and soon after that they heard no more noises than those of +people preparing for flight. Henry felt sure that the town would be +abandoned on the morrow, but his desire to come to close quarters with +Braxton Wyatt was as strong as ever. It was certain that the army could +not overtake Wyatt's band, but he might match his own against it. He was +thinking of making the attempt to steal from the place when, to their +great amazement, they heard the door of the Council House open and shut, +and then footsteps inside. + +Henry looked under the edge of the hanging mat and saw two dusky figures +near the window. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. THE FINAL FIGHT + + +Shif'less Sol and Tom Ross were also looking under the mats, and the +three would have recognized those figures anywhere. The taller was +Timmendiquas, the other Thayendanegea. The thin light from the window +fell upon their faces, and Henry saw that both were sad. Haughty and +proud they were still, but each bore the look that comes only from +continued defeat and great disappointment. It is truth to say that +the concealed three watched them with a curiosity so intense that +all thought of their own risk was forgotten. To Henry, as well as his +comrades, these two were the greatest of all Indian chiefs. + +The White Lightning of the Wyandots and the Joseph Brant of the Mohawks +stood for a space side by side, gazing out of the window, taking a last +look at the great Seneca Castle. It was Thayendanegea who spoke first, +using Wyandot, which Henry understood. + +“Farewell, my brother, great chief of the Wyandots,” he said. “You have +come far with your warriors, and you have been by our side in battle. +The Six Nations owe you much. You have helped us in victory, and you +have not deserted us in defeat. You are the greatest of warriors, the +boldest in battle, and the most skillful.” + +Timmendiquas made a deprecatory gesture, but Thayendanegea went on: + +“I speak but the truth, great chief of the Wyandots. We owe you much, +and some day we may repay. Here the Bostonians crowd us hard, and the +Mohawks may yet fight by your side to save your own hunting grounds.” + +“It is true,” said Timmendiquas. “There, too, we' must fight the +Americans.” + +“Victory was long with us here,” said Thayendanegea, “but the rebels +have at last brought an army against us, and the king who persuaded +us to make war upon the Americans adds nothing to the help that he has +given us already. Our white allies were the first to run at the Chemung, +and now the Iroquois country, so large and so beautiful, is at the mercy +of the invader. We perish. In all the valleys our towns lie in ashes. +The American army will come to-morrow, and this, the great Seneca +Castle, the last of our strongholds, will also sink under the flames. +I know not how our people will live through the Winter that is yet to +come. Aieroski has turned his face from us.” + +But Timmendiquas spoke words of courage and hope. + +“The Six Nations will regain their country,” he said. “The great +League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, which has been victorious for so many +generations, cannot be destroyed. All the tribes from here to the +Mississippi will help, and will press down upon the settlements. I will +return to stir them anew, and the British posts will give us arms and +ammunition.” + +The light of defiance shone once more in the eyes of Thayendanegea. + +“You raise my spirits again,” he said. “We flee now, but we shall come +back again. The Ho-de-no-saunee can never submit. We will ravage all +their settlements, and burn and destroy. We will make a wilderness where +they have been. The king and his men will yet give us more help.” + +Part of his words came true, and the name of the raiding Thayendanegea +was long a terror, but the Iroquois, who had refused the requested +neutrality, had lost their Country forever, save such portions as the +victor in the end chose to offer to them. + +“And now, as you and your Wyandots depart within the half hour, I give +you a last farewell,” said Thayendanegea. + +The hands of the two great chiefs met in a clasp like that of the white +man, and then Timmendiquas abruptly left the Council House, shutting the +door behind him. Thayendanegea lingered a while at the window, and +the look of sadness returned to his face. Henry could read many of the +thoughts that were passing through the Mohawk's proud mind. + +Thayendanegea was thinking of his great journey to London, of the +power and magnificence that he had seen, of the pride and glory of +the Iroquois, of the strong and numerous Tory faction led by Sir +John Johnson, the half brother of the children of Molly Brant, +Thayendanegea's own sister, of the Butlers and all the others who had +said that the rebels would be easy to conquer. He knew better now, +he had long known better, ever since that dreadful battle in the dark +defile of the Oriskany, when the Palatine Germans, with old Herkimer at +their head, beat the Tories, the English, and the Iroquois, and made the +taking of Burgoyne possible. The Indian chieftain was a statesman, +and it may be that from this moment he saw that the cause of both the +Iroquois and their white allies was doomed. Presently Thayendanegea left +the window, walking slowly toward the door. He paused there a moment or +two, and then went out, closing it behind him, as Timmendiquas had done. +The three did not speak until several minutes after he had gone. + +“I don't believe,” said Henry, “that either of them thinks, despite +their brave words, that the Iroquois can ever win back again.” + +“Serves 'em right,” said Tom Ross. “I remember what I saw at Wyoming.” + +“Whether they kin do it or not,” said the practical Sol, “it's time for +us to git out o' here, an' go back to our men.” + +“True words, Sol,” said Henry, “and we'll go.” + +Examining first at the window and then through the door, opened +slightly, they saw that the Iroquois village bad become quiet. The +preparations for departure had probably ceased until morning. Forth +stole the three, passing swiftly among the houses, going, with silent +foot toward the orchard. An old squaw, carrying a bundle from a house, +saw them, looked sharply into their faces, and knew them to be white. +She threw down her bundle with a fierce, shrill scream, and ran, +repeating the scream as she ran. + +Indians rushed out, and with them Braxton Wyatt and his band. Wyatt +caught a glimpse of a tall figure, with two others, one on each side, +running toward the orchard, and he knew it. Hate and the hope to capture +or kill swelled afresh. He put a whistle to his lip and blew shrilly. +It was a signal to his band, and they came from every point, leading the +pursuit. + +Henry heard the whistle, and he was quite sure that it was Wyatt who had +made the sound. A single glance backward confirmed him. He knew Wyatt's +figure as well as Wyatt knew his, and the dark mass with him was +certainly composed of his own men. The other Indians and Tories, in +all likelihood, would turn back soon, and that fact would give him the +chance he wished. + +They were clear of the town now, running lightly through the orchard, +and Shif'less Sol suggested that they enter the woods at once. + +“We can soon dodge 'em thar in the dark,” he said. + +“We don't want to dodge 'em,” said Henry. + +The shiftless one was surprised, but when he glanced at Henry's face he +understood. + +“You want to lead 'em on an' to a fight?” he said. + +Henry nodded. + +“Glad you thought uv it,” said Shif'less Sol. + +They crossed the very corn field through which they had come, Braxton +Wyatt and his band in full cry after them. Several shots were fired, but +the three kept too far ahead for any sort of marksmanship, and they were +not touched. When they finally entered the woods they curved a little, +and then, keeping just far enough ahead to be within sight, but not +close enough for the bullets, Henry led them straight toward the camp of +the riflemen. As he approached, he fired his own rifle, and uttered +the long shout of the forest runner. He shouted a second time, and +now Shif'less Sol and Tom Ross joined in the chorus, their great cry +penetrating far through the woods. + +Whether Braxton Wyatt or any of his mixed band of Indians and Tories +suspected the meaning of those great shouts Henry never knew, but the +pursuit came on with undiminished speed. There was a good silver moon +now, shedding much light, and he saw Wyatt still in the van, with +his Tory lieutenant close behind, and after them red men and white, +spreading out like a fan to inclose the fugitives in a trap. The blood +leaped in his veins. It was a tide of fierce joy. He had achieved both +of the purposes for which he had come. He had thoroughly scouted the +Seneca Castle, and he was about to come to close quarters with Braxton +Wyatt and the band which he had made such a terror through the valleys. + +Shif'less Sol saw the face of his young comrade, and he was startled. +He had never before beheld it so stern, so resolute, and so pitiless. He +seemed to remember as one single, fearful picture all the ruthless and +terrible scenes of the last year. Henry uttered again that cry which was +at once a defiance and a signal, and from the forest ahead of him it was +answered, signal for signal. The riflemen were coming, Paul, Long Jim, +and Heemskerk at their head. They uttered a mighty cheer as they saw the +flying three, and their ranks opened to receive them. From the Indians +and Tories came the long whoop of challenge, and every one in either +band knew that the issue was now about to be settled by battle, and +by battle alone. They used all the tactics of the forest. Both sides +instantly dropped down among the trees and undergrowth, three or four +hundred yards apart, and for a few moments there was no sound save heavy +breathing, heard only by those who lay close by. Not a single human +being would have been visible to an ordinary eye there in the moonlight, +which tipped boughs and bushes with ghostly silver. Yet no area so small +ever held a greater store of resolution and deadly animosity. On one +side were the riflemen, nearly every one of whom had slaughtered kin to +mourn, often wives and little children, and on the other the Tories and +Iroquois, about to lose their country, and swayed by the utmost passions +of hate and revenge. + +“Spread out,” whispered Henry. “Don't give them a chance to flank us. +You, Sol, take ten men and go to the right, and you, Heemskerk, take ten +and go to the left.” + +“It is well,” whispered Heemskerk. “You have a great head, Mynheer +Henry.” + +Each promptly obeyed, but the larger number of the riflemen remained +in the center, where Henry knelt, with Paul and Long Jim on one side of +him, and Silent Tom on the other. When he thought that the two flanking +parties had reached the right position, he uttered a low whistle, and +back came two low whistles, signals that all was ready. Then the line +began its slow advance, creeping forward from tree to tree and from +bush to bush. Henry raised himself up a little, but he could not yet see +anything where the hostile force lay hidden. They went a little farther, +and then all lay down again to look. + +Tom Ross had not spoken a word, but none was more eager than he. He was +almost flat upon the ground, and he had been pulling himself along by a +sort of muscular action of his whole body. Now he was so still that +he did not seem to breathe. Yet his eyes, uncommonly eager now, were +searching the thickets ahead. They rested at last on a spot of brown +showing through some bushes, and, raising his rifle, he fired with sure +aim. The Iroquois uttered his death cry, sprang up convulsively, and +then fell back prone. Shots were fired in return, and a dozen riflemen +replied to them. The battle was joined. + +They heard Braxton Wyatt's whistle, the challenging war cry of the +Iroquois, and then they fought in silence, save for the crack of the +rifles. The riflemen continued to advance in slow, creeping fashion, +always pressing the enemy. Every time they caught sight of a hostile +face or body they sent a bullet at it, and Wyatt's men did the same. The +two lines came closer, and all along each there were many sharp little +jets of fire and smoke. Some of the riflemen were wounded, and two +were slain, dying quietly and without interrupting their comrades, who +continued to press the combat, Henry always leading in the center, and +Shif'less Sol and Heemskerk on the flanks. + +This battle so strange, in which faces were seen only for a moment, and +which was now without the sound of voices, continued without a moment's +cessation in the dark forest. The fury of the combatants increased as +the time went on, and neither side was yet victorious. Closer and closer +came the lines. Meanwhile dark clouds were piling in a bank in the +southwest. Slow thunder rumbled far away, and the sky was cut at +intervals by lightning. But the combatants did not notice the heralds of +storm. Their attention was only for each other. + +It seemed to Henry that emotions and impulses in him had culminated. +Before him were the worst of all their foes, and his pitiless resolve +was not relaxed a particle. The thunder and the lightning, although he +did not notice them, seemed to act upon him as an incitement, and with +low words he continually urged those about him to push the battle. + +Drops of rain fell, showing in the moonshine like beads of silver on +boughs and twigs, but by and by the smoke from the rifle fire, pressed +down by the heavy atmosphere, gathered among the trees, and the moon was +partly hidden. But file combat did not relax because of the obscurity. +Wandering Indians, hearing the firing, came to Wyatt's relief, but, +despite their aid, he was compelled to give ground. His were the most +desperate and hardened men, red and white, in all the allied forces, but +they were faced by sharpshooters better than themselves. Many of them +were already killed, others were wounded, and, although Wyatt and +Coleman raged and strove to hold them, they began to give back, and so +hard pressed were they that the Iroquois could not perform the sacred +duty of carrying off their dead. No one sought to carry away the Tories, +who lay with the rain, that had now begun to fall, beating upon them. + +So much had the riflemen advanced that they came to the point where +bodies of their enemies lay. Again that fierce joy surged up in Henry's +heart. His friends and he were winning. But he wished to do more than +win. This band, if left alone, would merely flee from the Seneca Castle +before the advance of the army, and would still exist to ravage and slay +elsewhere. + +“Keep on, Tom! Keep on!” he cried to Ross and the others. “Never let +them rest!” + +“We won't! We ain't dreamin' o' doin' sech a thing,” replied the +redoubtable one as he loaded and fired. “Thar, I got another!” + +The Iroquois, yielding slowly at first, began now to give way faster. +Some sought to dart away to right or left, and bury themselves in the +forest, but they were caught by the flanking parties of Shif'less Sol +and Heemskerk, and driven back on the center. They could not retreat +except straight on the town, and the riflemen followed them step for +step. The moan of the distant thunder went on, and the soft rain fell, +but the deadly crackle of the rifles formed a sharper, insistent note +that claimed the whole attention of both combatants. + +It was now the turn of the riflemen to receive help. Twenty or more +scouts and others abroad in the forest were called by the rifle fire, +and went at once into the battle. Then Wyatt was helped a second time by +a band of Senecas and Mohawks, but, despite all the aid, they could not +withstand the riflemen. Wyatt, black with fury and despair, shouted to +them and sometimes cursed or even struck at them, but the retreat +could not be stopped. Men fell fast. Every one of the riflemen was a +sharpshooter, and few bullets missed. + +Wyatt was driven out of the forest and into the very corn field through +which Henry had passed. Here the retreat became faster, and, with shouts +of triumph, the riflemen followed after. Wyatt lost some men in the +flight through the field, but when he came to the orchard, having the +advantage of cover, he made another desperate stand. + +But Shif'less Sol and Heemskerk took the band on the flanks, pouring in +a destructive fire, and Wyatt, Coleman, and a fourth of his band, all +that survived, broke into a run for the town. + +The riflemen uttered shout after shout of triumph, and it was impossible +to restrain their pursuit. Henry would have stopped here, knowing the +danger of following into the town, especially when the army was near at +band with an irresistible force, but he could not stay them. He decided +then that if they would charge it must be done with the utmost fire and +spirit. + +“On, men! On!” he cried. “Give them no chance to take cover.” + +Shif'less Sol and Heemskerk wheeled in with the flanking parties, and +the riflemen, a solid mass now, increased the speed of pursuit. Wyatt +and his men had no chance to turn and fire, or even to reload. Bullets +beat upon them as they fled, and here perished nearly all of that savage +band. Wyatt, Coleman, and only a half dozen made good the town, where +a portion of the Iroquois who had not yet fled received them. But the +exultant riflemen did not stop even there. They were hot on the heels of +Wyatt and the fugitives, and attacked at once the Iroquois who came to +their relief. So fierce was their rush that these new forces were driven +back at once. Braxton Wyatt, Coleman, and a dozen more, seeing no other +escape, fled to a large log house used as a granary, threw themselves +into it, barred the doors heavily, and began to fire from the upper +windows, small openings usually closed with boards. Other Indians from +the covert of house, tepee, or tree, fired upon the assailants, and a +fresh battle began in the town. + +The riflemen, directed by their leaders, met the new situation promptly. +Fired upon from all sides, at least twenty rushed into a house some +forty yards from that of Braxton Wyatt. Others seized another house, +while the rest remained outside, sheltered by little outhouses, trees, +or inequalities of the earth, and maintained rapid sharpshooting in +reply to the Iroquois in the town or to Braxton Wyatt's men in the +house. Now the combat became fiercer than ever. The warriors uttered +yells, and Wyatt's men in the house sent forth defiant shouts. From +another part of the town came shrill cries of old squaws, urging on +their fighting men. + +It was now about four o'clock in the morning. The thunder and lightning +had ceased, but the soft rain was still falling. The Indians had lighted +fires some distance away. Several carried torches. Helped by these, and, +used so long to the night, the combatants saw distinctly. The five lay +behind a low embankment, and they paid their whole attention to the big +house that sheltered Wyatt and his men. On the sides and behind they +were protected by Heemskerk and others, who faced a coming swarm. + +“Keep low, Paul,” said Henry, restraining his eager comrade. “Those +fellows in the house can shoot, and we don't want to lose you. There, +didn't I tell you!” + +A bullet fired from the window passed through the top of Paul's cap, but +clipped only his hair. Before the flash from the window passed, Long Jim +fired in return, and something fell back inside. Bullets came from other +windows. Shif'less Sol fired, and a Seneca fell forward banging half out +of the window, his naked body a glistening brown in the firelight. But +he hung only a few seconds. Then he fell to the ground and lay still. +The five crouched low again, waiting a new opportunity. Behind them, and +on either side, they heard the crash of the new battle and challenging +cries. + +Braxton Wyatt, Coleman, four more Tories, and six Indians were still +alive in the strong log house. Two or three were wounded, but they +scarcely noticed it in the passion of conflict. The house was a +veritable fortress, and the renegade's hopes rose high as he heard +the rifle fire from different parts of the town. His own band had been +annihilated by the riflemen, led by Henry Ware, but he had a sanguine +hope now that his enemies had rushed into a trap. The Iroquois would +turn back and destroy them. + +Wyatt and his comrades presented a repellent sight as they crouched in +the room and fired from the two little windows. His clothes and those +of the white men had been torn by bushes and briars in their flight, and +their faces had been raked, too, until they bled, but they had paid +no attention to such wounds, and the blood was mingled with sweat and +powder smoke. The Indians, naked to the waist, daubed with vermilion, +and streaked, too, with blood, crouched upon the floor, with the +muz'zles of their rifles at the windows, seeking something human to +kill. One and all, red and white, they were now raging savages, There +was not one among them who did not have some foul murder of woman or +child to his credit. + +Wyatt himself was mad for revenge. Every evil passion in him was up and +leaping. His eyes, more like those of a wild animal than a human being, +blazed out of a face, a mottled red and black. By the side of him the +dark Tory, Coleman, was driven by impulses fully as fierce. + +“To think of it!” exclaimed Wyatt. “He led us directly into a trap, that +Ware! And here our band is destroyed! All the good men that we gathered +together, except these few, are killed!” + +“But we may pay them back,” said Coleman. “We were in their trap, but +now they are in ours! Listen to that firing and the war whoop! There are +enough Iroquois yet in the town to kill every one of those rebels!” + +“I hope so! I believe so!” exclaimed Wyatt. “Look out, Coleman! Ah, he's +pinked you! That's the one they call Shif'less Sol, and he's the best +sharpshooter of them all except Ware!” + +Coleman had leaned forward a little in his anxiety to secure a good +aim at something. He had disclosed only a little of his face, but in an +instant a bullet had seared his forehead like the flaming stroke of a +sword, passing on and burying itself in the wall. Fresh blood dripped +down over his face. He tore a strip from the inside of his coat, bound +it about his head, and went on with the defense. + +A Mohawk, frightfully painted, fired from the other window. Like a flash +came the return shot, and the Indian fell back in the room, stone dead, +with a bullet through his bead. + +“That was Ware himself,” said Wyatt. “I told you he was the best shot of +them all. I give him that credit. But they're all good. Look out! +There goes another of our men! It was Ross who did that! I tell you, be +careful! Be careful!” + +It was an Onondaga who fell this time, and he lay with his head on the +window sill until another Indian pulled him inside. A minute later a +Tory, who peeped guardedly for a shot, received a bullet through his +head, and sank down on the floor. A sort of terror spread among the +others. What could they do in the face of such terrible sharpshooting? +It was uncanny, almost superhuman, and they looked stupidly at one +another. Smoke from their own firing had gathered in the room, and it +formed a ghastly veil about their faces. They heard the crash of the +rifles outside from every point, but no help came to them. + +“We're bound to do something!” exclaimed Wyatt. “Here you, Jones, stick +up the edge of your cap, and when they fire at it I'll put a bullet in +the man who pulls the trigger.” + +Jones thrust up his cap, but they knew too much out there to be taken +in by an old trick. The cap remained unhurt, but when Jones in his +eagerness thrust it higher until he exposed his arm, his wrist was +smashed in an instant by a bullet, and he fell back with a howl of pain. +Wyatt swore and bit his lips savagely. He and all of them began to fear +that they were in another and tighter trap, one from which there was no +escape unless the Iroquois outside drove off the riflemen, and of that +they could as yet see no sign. The sharpshooters held their place behind +the embankment and the little outhouse, and so little as a finger, even, +at the windows became a sure mark for their terrible bullets. A Seneca, +seeking a new trial for a shot, received a bullet through the shoulder, +and a Tory who followed him in the effort was slain outright. + +The light hitherto had been from the fires, but now the dawn was coming. +Pale gray beams fell over the town, and then deepened into red and +yellow. The beams reached the room where the beleaguered remains of +Wyatt's band fought, but, mingling with the smoke, they gave a new and +more ghastly tint to the desperate faces. + +“We've got to fight!” exclaimed Wyatt. “We can't sit here and be taken +like beasts in a trap! Suppose we unbar the doors below and make a rush +for it?” + +Coleman shook his head. “Every one of us would be killed within twenty +yards,” he said. + +“Then the Iroquois must come back,” cried Wyatt. “Where is Joe Brant? +Where is Timmendiquas, and where is that coward, Sir John Johnson? Will +they come?” + +“They won't come,” said Coleman. + +They lay still awhile, listening to the firing in the town, which swayed +hither and thither. The smoke in the room thinned somewhat, and the +daylight broadened and deepened. As a desperate resort they resumed fire +from the windows, but three more of their number were slain, and, bitter +with chagrin, they crouched once more on the floor out of range. Wyatt +looked at the figures of the living and the dead. Savage despair tore at +his heart again, and his hatred of those who bad done this increased. +It was being served out to him and his band as they had served it out +to many a defenseless family in the beautiful valleys of the border. +Despite the sharpshooters, he took another look at the window, but kept +so far back that there was no chance for a shot. + +“Two of them are slipping away,” he exclaimed. “They are Ross and the +one they call Long Jim! I wish I dared a shot! Now they're gone!” + +They lay again in silence for a time. There was still firing in +the town, and now and then they heard shouts. Wyatt looked at his +lieutenant, and his lieutenant looked at him. + +“Yours is the ugliest face I ever saw,” said Wyatt. + +“I can say the same of yours-as I can't see mine,” said Coleman. + +The two gazed once more at the hideous, streaked, and grimed faces of +each other, and then laughed wildly. A wounded Seneca sitting with his +back against the wall began to chant a low, wailing death song. + +“Shut up! Stop that infernal noise!” exclaimed Wyatt savagely. + +The Seneca stared at him with fixed, glassy eyes and continued his +chant. Wyatt turned away, but that song was upon his nerves. He knew +that everything was lost. The main force of the Iroquois would not +come back to his help, and Henry Ware would triumph. He sat down on the +floor, and muttered fierce words under his breath. + +“Hark!” suddenly exclaimed Coleman. “What is that?” + +A low crackling sound came to their ears, and both recognized it +instantly. It was the sound of flames eating rapidly into wood, and of +that wood was built the house they now held. Even as they listened they +could hear the flames leap and roar into new and larger life. + +“This is, what those two, Ross and Hart, were up to!” exclaimed Wyatt. +“We're not only trapped, but we're to be burned alive in our trap!” + +“Not I,” said Coleman, “I'm goin' to make a rush for it.” + +“It's the only thing to be done,” said Wyatt. “Come, all of you that are +left!” + +The scanty survivors gathered around him, all but the wounded Seneca, +who sat unmoved against the wall and continued to chant his death chant. +Wyatt glanced at him, but said nothing. Then he and the others rushed +down the stairs. + +The lower room was filled with smoke, and outside the flames were +roaring. They unbarred the door and sprang into the open air. A shower +of bullets met them. The Tory, Coleman, uttered a choking cry, threw up +his arms, and fell back in the doorway. Braxton Wyatt seized one of the +smaller men, and, holding him a moment or two before him to receive the +fire of his foe, dashed for the corner of the blazing building. The man +whom he held was slain, and his own shoulder was grazed twice, but he +made the corner. In an instant he put the burning building between him +and his pursuers, and ran as he had never run before in all his life, +deadly fear putting wings on his heels. As he ran he heard the dull boom +of a cannon, and he knew that the American army was entering the Seneca +Castle. Ahead of him he saw the last of the Indians fleeing for the +woods, and behind him the burning house crashed and fell in amid leaping +flames and sparks in myriads. He alone had escaped from the house. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. DOWN THE OHIO + + +“We didn't get Wyatt,” said Henry, “but we did pretty well, +nevertheless.” + +“That's so,” said Shif'less Sol. “Thar's nothin' left o' his band but +hisself, an' I ain't feelin' any sorrow 'cause I helped to do it. I +guess we've saved the lives of a good many innocent people with this +morning's work.” + +“Never a doubt of it,” said Henry, “and here's the army now finishing up +the task.” + +The soldiers were setting fire to the town in many places, and in two +hours the great Seneca Castle was wholly destroyed. The five took no +part in this, but rested after their battles and labors. One or two had +been grazed by bullets, but the wounds were too trifling to be noticed. +As they rested, they watched the fire, which was an immense one, fed by +so much material. The blaze could be seen for many miles, and the ashes +drifted over all the forest beyond the fields. + +All the while the Iroquois were fleeing through the wilderness to the +British posts and the country beyond the lakes, whence their allies had +already preceded them. The coals of Little Beard's Town smoldered for +two or three days, and then the army turned back, retracing its steps +down the Genesee. + +Henry and his comrades felt that their work in the East was finished. +Kentucky was calling to them. They had no doubt that Braxton Wyatt, now +that his band was destroyed, would return there, and he would surely +be plotting more danger. It was their part to meet and defeat him. They +wished, too, to see again the valley, the river, and the village in +which their people had made their home, and they wished yet more to look +upon the faces of these people. + +They left the army, went southward with Heemskerk and some others of the +riflemen, but at the Susquehanna parted with the gallant Dutchman and +his comrades. + +“It is good to me to have known you, my brave friends,” said Heemskerk, +“and I say good-by with sorrow to you, Mynheer Henry; to you, Mynheer +Paul; to you, Mynheer Sol; to you, Mynheer Tom; and to you, Mynheer +Jim.” + +He wrung their hands one by one, and then revolved swiftly away to hide +his emotion. + +The five, rifles on their shoulders, started through the forest. When +they looked back they saw Cornelius Heemskerk waving his hand to them. +They waved in return, and then disappeared in the forest. It was a long +journey to Pittsburgh, but they found it a pleasant one. It was yet +deep autumn on the Pennsylvania hills, and the forest was glowing with +scarlet and gold. The air was the very wine of life, and when they +needed game it was there to be shot. As the cold weather hung off, they +did not hurry, and they enjoyed the peace of the forest. They realized +now that after their vast labors, hardships, and dangers, they needed +a great rest, and they took it. It was singular, and perhaps not so +singular, how their minds turned from battle, pursuit, and escape, to +gentle things. A little brook or fountain pleased them. They admired the +magnificent colors of the foliage, and lingered over the views from the +low mountains. Doe and fawn fled from them, but without cause. At night +they built splendid fires, and sat before them, while everyone in his +turn told tales according to his nature or experience. + +They bought at Pittsburgh a strong boat partly covered, and at the point +where the Allegheny and the Monongahela unite they set sail down the +Ohio. It was winter now, but in their stout caravel they did not care. +They had ample supplies of all kinds, including ammunition, and their +hearts were light when they swung into the middle of the Ohio and moved +with its current. + +“Now for a great voyage,” said Paul, looking at the clear stream with +sparkling eyes. + +“I wonder what it will bring to us,” said Shif'less Sol. + +“We shall see,” said Henry. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Scouts of the Valley, by Joseph A. Altsheler + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1078 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1079-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1079-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..16fbf260 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1079-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19918 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1079 *** + +THE +LIFE AND OPINIONS +OF +TRISTRAM SHANDY, +GENTLEMAN + +by Laurence Sterne + +Contents + + Volume I. + Volume II. + Volume III. + Volume IV. + +Laurence Sterne + +Ταράσσει τοὺς Ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ Πράγματα, +Ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν Πραγμάτων Δόγματα. + + + +TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE +M r. P I T T. + +S I R, + +NEVER poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication, +than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner of the +kingdom, and in a retir’d thatch’d house, where I live in a constant +endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other +evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man +smiles,——but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to this +Fragment of Life. + +I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this book, by taking it—(not +under your Protection,—it must protect itself, but)—into the country +with you; where, if I am ever told, it has made you smile; or can +conceive it has beguiled you of one moment’s pain—I shall think myself +as happy as a minister of state;——perhaps much happier than any one +(one only excepted) that I have read or heard of. + +_I am, GREAT SIR, +(and, what is more to your Honour) +I am, GOOD SIR, +Your Well-wisher, and +most humble Fellow-subject_, + +T H E A U T H O R. + + + + +THE +LIFE and OPINIONS +OF +TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent. + +C H A P. I + +I WISH either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they +were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about +when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon +what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational +Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and +temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his +mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of +his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions +which were then uppermost;—Had they duly weighed and considered all +this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have +made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the +reader is likely to see me.—Believe me, good folks, this is not so +inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;—you have all, I +dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from +father to son, &c. &c.—and a great deal to that purpose:—Well, you may +take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man’s sense or his nonsense, +his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions +and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so +that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, ’tis not a +half-penny matter,—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by +treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road +of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are +once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive +them off it. + +_Pray my Dear_, quoth my mother, _have you not forgot to wind up the +clock?—Good G—!_ cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking +care to moderate his voice at the same time,——_Did ever woman, since +the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?_ +Pray, what was your father saying?————Nothing. + +C H A P. II + +———Then, positively, there is nothing in the question that I can see, +either good or bad.——Then, let me tell you, Sir, it was a very +unseasonable question at least,—because it scattered and dispersed the +animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand in +hand with the _HOMUNCULUS_, and conducted him safe to the place +destined for his reception. + +The HOMUNCULUS, Sir, in however low and ludicrous a light he may +appear, in this age of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice;—to the +eye of reason in scientific research, he stands confess’d—a BEING +guarded and circumscribed with rights.——The minutest philosophers, who +by the bye, have the most enlarged understandings, (their souls being +inversely as their enquiries) shew us incontestably, that the +HOMUNCULUS is created by the same hand,—engender’d in the same course +of nature,—endow’d with the same loco-motive powers and faculties with +us:—That he consists as we do, of skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins, +arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages, bones, marrow, brains, glands, +genitals, humours, and articulations;—is a Being of as much +activity,—and in all senses of the word, as much and as truly our +fellow-creature as my Lord Chancellor of _England._—He may be +benefitted,—he may be injured,—he may obtain redress; in a word, he has +all the claims and rights of humanity, which _Tully, Puffendorf_, or +the best ethick writers allow to arise out of that state and relation. + +Now, dear Sir, what if any accident had befallen him in his way +alone!—or that through terror of it, natural to so young a traveller, +my little Gentleman had got to his journey’s end miserably spent;—his +muscular strength and virility worn down to a thread;—his own animal +spirits ruffled beyond description,—and that in this sad disorder’d +state of nerves, he had lain down a prey to sudden starts, or a series +of melancholy dreams and fancies, for nine long, long months +together.—I tremble to think what a foundation had been laid for a +thousand weaknesses both of body and mind, which no skill of the +physician or the philosopher could ever afterwards have set thoroughly +to rights. + +C H A P. III + +TO my uncle Mr. _Toby Shandy_ do I stand indebted for the preceding +anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher, +and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, +and heavily complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my +uncle _Toby_ well remember’d, upon his observing a most unaccountable +obliquity, (as he call’d it) in my manner of setting up my top, and +justifying the principles upon which I had done it,—the old gentleman +shook his head, and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than +reproach,—he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified +in this, and from a thousand other observations he had made upon me, +That I should neither think nor act like any other man’s child:—_But +alas!_ continued he, shaking his head a second time, and wiping away a +tear which was trickling down his cheeks, _My Tristram’s misfortunes +began nine months before ever he came into the world._ + +—My mother, who was sitting by, look’d up, but she knew no more than +her backside what my father meant,—but my uncle, Mr. _Toby Shandy_, who +had been often informed of the affair,—understood him very well. + +C H A P. IV + +I KNOW there are readers in the world, as well as many other good +people in it, who are no readers at all,—who find themselves ill at +ease, unless they are let into the whole secret from first to last, of +every thing which concerns you. + +It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a +backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I +have been so very particular already. As my life and opinions are +likely to make some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right, +will take in all ranks, professions, and denominations of men +whatever,—be no less read than the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ itself—and in +the end, prove the very thing which _Montaigne_ dreaded his Essays +should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window;—I find it +necessary to consult every one a little in his turn; and therefore must +beg pardon for going on a little farther in the same way: For which +cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the +way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing every thing in +it, as _Horace_ says, _ab Ovo._ + +_Horace_, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that +gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy;—(I forget +which,) besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. _Horace’s_ +pardon;—for in writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself +neither to his rules, nor to any man’s rules that ever lived. + +To such however as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I +can give no better advice than that they skip over the remaining part +of this chapter; for I declare before-hand, ’tis wrote only for the +curious and inquisitive. + +——————Shut the door.—————— I was begot in the night betwixt the first +_Sunday_ and the first _Monday_ in the month of _March_, in the year of +our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. I am positive I +was.—But how I came to be so very particular in my account of a thing +which happened before I was born, is owing to another small anecdote +known only in our own family, but now made publick for the better +clearing up this point. + +My father, you must know, who was originally a _Turkey_ merchant, but +had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die +upon, his paternal estate in the county of ——, was, I believe, one of +the most regular men in every thing he did, whether ’twas matter of +business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen +of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he +had made it a rule for many years of his life,—on the first +_Sunday-night_ of every month throughout the whole year,—as certain as +ever the _Sunday-night_ came,—to wind up a large house-clock, which we +had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands:—And being +somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been +speaking of,—he had likewise gradually brought some other little family +concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my +uncle _Toby_, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no +more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month. + +It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, +fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me +to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which +have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor +mother could never hear the said clock wound up,——but the thoughts of +some other things unavoidably popped into her head—_& vice +versa:_——Which strange combination of ideas, the sagacious _Locke_, who +certainly understood the nature of these things better than most men, +affirms to have produced more wry actions than all other sources of +prejudice whatsoever. + +But this by the bye. + +Now it appears by a memorandum in my father’s pocket-book, which now +lies upon the table, “That on _Lady-day_, which was on the 25th of the +same month in which I date my geniture,——my father set upon his journey +to _London_, with my eldest brother _Bobby_, to fix him at +_Westminster_ school;” and, as it appears from the same authority, +“That he did not get down to his wife and family till the _second week_ +in _May_ following,”—it brings the thing almost to a certainty. +However, what follows in the beginning of the next chapter, puts it +beyond all possibility of a doubt. + +———But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all _December, January_, +and _February?_——Why, Madam,—he was all that time afflicted with a +Sciatica. + +C H A P. V + +ON the fifth day of _November_, 1718, which to the æra fixed on, was as +near nine kalendar months as any husband could in reason have +expected,—was I _Tristram Shandy_, Gentleman, brought forth into this +scurvy and disastrous world of ours.—I wish I had been born in the +Moon, or in any of the planets, (except _Jupiter_ or _Saturn_, because +I never could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse +with me in any of them (though I will not answer for _Venus_) than it +has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,—which, o’ my conscience, with +reverence be it spoken, I take to be made up of the shreds and +clippings of the rest;——not but the planet is well enough, provided a +man could be born in it to a great title or to a great estate; or could +any how contrive to be called up to public charges, and employments of +dignity or power;——but that is not my case;——and therefore every man +will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it;———for which +cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever +was made;—for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew my +breath in it, to this, that I can now scarce draw it at all, for an +asthma I got in scating against the wind in _Flanders;_—I have been the +continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not +wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of any great +or signal evil;——yet with all the good temper in the world I affirm it +of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner +where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me +with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever +small HERO sustained. + +C H A P. VI + +IN the beginning of the last chapter, I informed you exactly _when_ I +was born; but I did not inform you _how. No_, that particular was +reserved entirely for a chapter by itself;—besides, Sir, as you and I +are in a manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been +proper to have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself +all at once. + +—You must have a little patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write +not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your +knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the +one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed +farther with me, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning +betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that unless one of us is in +fault, will terminate in friendship.—_O diem praeclarum!_—then nothing +which has touched me will be thought trifling in its nature, or tedious +in its telling. Therefore, my dear friend and companion, if you should +think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out—bear +with me,—and let me go on, and tell my story my own way:—Or, if I +should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,—or should sometimes +put on a fool’s cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass +along,—don’t fly off,—but rather courteously give me credit for a +little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;—and as we jog on, +either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do any thing,—only keep +your temper. + +C H A P. VII + +IN the same village where my father and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a +thin, upright, motherly, notable, good old body of a midwife, who with +the help of a little plain good sense, and some years full employment +in her business, in which she had all along trusted little to her own +efforts, and a great deal to those of dame Nature,—had acquired, in her +way, no small degree of reputation in the world:—by which word _world_, +need I in this place inform your worship, that I would be understood to +mean no more of it, than a small circle described upon the circle of +the great world, of four _English_ miles diameter, or thereabouts, of +which the cottage where the good old woman lived is supposed to be the +centre?—She had been left it seems a widow in great distress, with +three or four small children, in her forty-seventh year; and as she was +at that time a person of decent carriage,—grave deportment,—a woman +moreover of few words and withal an object of compassion, whose +distress, and silence under it, called out the louder for a friendly +lift: the wife of the parson of the parish was touched with pity; and +having often lamented an inconvenience to which her husband’s flock had +for many years been exposed, inasmuch as there was no such thing as a +midwife, of any kind or degree, to be got at, let the case have been +never so urgent, within less than six or seven long miles riding; which +said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal roads, the country +thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was almost equal to +fourteen; and that in effect was sometimes next to having no midwife at +all; it came into her head, that it would be doing as seasonable a +kindness to the whole parish, as to the poor creature herself, to get +her a little instructed in some of the plain principles of the +business, in order to set her up in it. As no woman thereabouts was +better qualified to execute the plan she had formed than herself, the +gentlewoman very charitably undertook it; and having great influence +over the female part of the parish, she found no difficulty in +effecting it to the utmost of her wishes. In truth, the parson join’d +his interest with his wife’s in the whole affair, and in order to do +things as they should be, and give the poor soul as good a title by law +to practise, as his wife had given by institution,—he cheerfully paid +the fees for the ordinary’s licence himself, amounting in the whole, to +the sum of eighteen shillings and four pence; so that betwixt them +both, the good woman was fully invested in the real and corporal +possession of her office, together with all its _rights, members, and +appurtenances whatsoever._ + +These last words, you must know, were not according to the old form in +which such licences, faculties, and powers usually ran, which in like +cases had heretofore been granted to the sisterhood. But it was +according to a neat _Formula_ of _Didius_ his own devising, who having +a particular turn for taking to pieces, and new framing over again all +kind of instruments in that way, not only hit upon this dainty +amendment, but coaxed many of the old licensed matrons in the +neighbourhood, to open their faculties afresh, in order to have this +wham-wham of his inserted. + +I own I never could envy _Didius_ in these kinds of fancies of his:—But +every man to his own taste.—Did not Dr. _Kunastrokius_, that great man, +at his leisure hours, take the greatest delight imaginable in combing +of asses tails, and plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though +he had tweezers always in his pocket? Nay, if you come to that, Sir, +have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting _Solomon_ +himself,—have they not had their HOBBY-HORSES;—their running +horses,—their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their +trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets,—their maggots and their +butterflies?—and so long as a man rides his HOBBY-HORSE peaceably and +quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get +up behind him,—pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it? + +C H A P. VIII + +—_De gustibus non est disputandum;_—that is, there is no disputing +against HOBBY-HORSES; and for my part, I seldom do; nor could I with +any sort of grace, had I been an enemy to them at the bottom; for +happening, at certain intervals and changes of the moon, to be both +fiddler and painter, according as the fly stings:—Be it known to you, +that I keep a couple of pads myself, upon which, in their turns, (nor +do I care who knows it) I frequently ride out and take the air;—though +sometimes, to my shame be it spoken, I take somewhat longer journies +than what a wise man would think altogether right.—But the truth is,—I +am not a wise man;—and besides am a mortal of so little consequence in +the world, it is not much matter what I do: so I seldom fret or fume at +all about it: Nor does it much disturb my rest, when I see such great +Lords and tall Personages as hereafter follow;—such, for instance, as +my Lord A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, and so on, all +of a row, mounted upon their several horses,—some with large stirrups, +getting on in a more grave and sober pace;——others on the contrary, +tucked up to their very chins, with whips across their mouths, scouring +and scampering it away like so many little party-coloured devils +astride a mortgage,—and as if some of them were resolved to break their +necks.——So much the better—say I to myself;—for in case the worst +should happen, the world will make a shift to do excellently well +without them; and for the rest,——why——God speed them——e’en let them +ride on without opposition from me; for were their lordships unhorsed +this very night—’tis ten to one but that many of them would be worse +mounted by one half before tomorrow morning. + +Not one of these instances therefore can be said to break in upon my +rest.——But there is an instance, which I own puts me off my guard, and +that is, when I see one born for great actions, and what is still more +for his honour, whose nature ever inclines him to good ones;—when I +behold such a one, my Lord, like yourself, whose principles and conduct +are as generous and noble as his blood, and whom, for that reason, a +corrupt world cannot spare one moment;—when I see such a one, my Lord, +mounted, though it is but for a minute beyond the time which my love to +my country has prescribed to him, and my zeal for his glory +wishes,—then, my Lord, I cease to be a philosopher, and in the first +transport of an honest impatience, I wish the HOBBY-HORSE, with all his +fraternity, at the Devil. + + “My Lord, +I MAINTAIN this to be a dedication, notwithstanding its singularity in +the three great essentials of matter, form and place: I beg, therefore, +you will accept it as such, and that you will permit me to lay it, with +the most respectful humility, at your Lordship’s feet—when you are upon +them,—which you can be when you please;—and that is, my Lord, whenever +there is occasion for it, and I will add, to the best purposes too. I +have the honour to be, + +_My Lord, +Your Lordship’s most obedient, +and most devoted_, +_and most humble servant_, +TRISTRAM SHANDY.” + +C H A P. IX + +I SOLEMNLY declare to all mankind, that the above dedication was made +for no one Prince, Prelate, Pope, or Potentate,—Duke, Marquis, Earl, +Viscount, or Baron, of this, or any other Realm in Christendom;——nor +has it yet been hawked about, or offered publicly or privately, +directly or indirectly, to any one person or personage, great or small; +but is honestly a true Virgin-Dedication untried on, upon any soul +living. + +I labour this point so particularly, merely to remove any offence or +objection which might arise against it from the manner in which I +propose to make the most of it;—which is the putting it up fairly to +public sale; which I now do. + +——Every author has a way of his own in bringing his points to bear;—for +my own part, as I hate chaffering and higgling for a few guineas in a +dark entry;—I resolved within myself, from the very beginning, to deal +squarely and openly with your Great Folks in this affair, and try +whether I should not come off the better by it. + +If therefore there is any one Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, or Baron, +in these his Majesty’s dominions, who stands in need of a tight, +genteel dedication, and whom the above will suit, (for by the bye, +unless it suits in some degree, I will not part with it)——it is much at +his service for fifty guineas;——which I am positive is twenty guineas +less than it ought to be afforded for, by any man of genius. + +My Lord, if you examine it over again, it is far from being a gross +piece of daubing, as some dedications are. The design, your Lordship +sees, is good,—the colouring transparent,—the drawing not amiss;—or to +speak more like a man of science,—and measure my piece in the painter’s +scale, divided into 20,—I believe, my Lord, the outlines will turn out +as 12,—the composition as 9,—the colouring as 6,—the expression 13 and +a half,—and the design,—if I may be allowed, my Lord, to understand my +own _design_, and supposing absolute perfection in designing, to be as +20,—I think it cannot well fall short of 19. Besides all this,—there is +keeping in it, and the dark strokes in the HOBBY-HORSE, (which is a +secondary figure, and a kind of back-ground to the whole) give great +force to the principal lights in your own figure, and make it come off +wonderfully;—and besides, there is an air of originality in the _tout +ensemble._ + +Be pleased, my good Lord, to order the sum to be paid into the hands of +Mr. _Dodsley_, for the benefit of the author; and in the next edition +care shall be taken that this chapter be expunged, and your Lordship’s +titles, distinctions, arms, and good actions, be placed at the front of +the preceding chapter: All which, from the words, _De gustibus non est +disputandum_, and whatever else in this book relates to HOBBY-HORSES, +but no more, shall stand dedicated to your Lordship.—The rest I +dedicate to the Moon, who, by the bye, of all the PATRONS or MATRONS I +can think of, has most power to set my book a-going, and make the world +run mad after it. + +_Bright Goddess_, +If thou art not too busy with CANDID and Miss CUNEGUND’S affairs,—take +_Tristram Shandy’s_ under thy protection also. + +C H A P. X + +WHATEVER degree of small merit the act of benignity in favour of the +midwife might justly claim, or in whom that claim truly rested,—at +first sight seems not very material to this history;——certain however +it was, that the gentlewoman, the parson’s wife, did run away at that +time with the whole of it: And yet, for my life, I cannot help thinking +but that the parson himself, though he had not the good fortune to hit +upon the design first,—yet, as he heartily concurred in it the moment +it was laid before him, and as heartily parted with his money to carry +it into execution, had a claim to some share of it,—if not to a full +half of whatever honour was due to it. + +The world at that time was pleased to determine the matter otherwise. + +Lay down the book, and I will allow you half a day to give a probable +guess at the grounds of this procedure. + +Be it known then, that, for about five years before the date of the +midwife’s licence, of which you have had so circumstantial an +account,—the parson we have to do with had made himself a country-talk +by a breach of all decorum, which he had committed against himself, his +station, and his office;—and that was in never appearing better, or +otherwise mounted, than upon a lean, sorry, jackass of a horse, value +about one pound fifteen shillings; who, to shorten all description of +him, was full brother to _Rosinante_, as far as similitude congenial +could make him; for he answered his description to a hair-breadth in +every thing,—except that I do not remember ’tis any where said, that +_Rosinante_ was broken-winded; and that, moreover, _Rosinante_, as is +the happiness of most _Spanish_ horses, fat or lean,—was undoubtedly a +horse at all points. + +I know very well that the HERO’S horse was a horse of chaste +deportment, which may have given grounds for the contrary opinion: But +it is as certain at the same time that _Rosinante’_s continency (as may +be demonstrated from the adventure of the _Yanguesian_ carriers) +proceeded from no bodily defect or cause whatsoever, but from the +temperance and orderly current of his blood.—And let me tell you, +Madam, there is a great deal of very good chastity in the world, in +behalf of which you could not say more for your life. + +Let that be as it may, as my purpose is to do exact justice to every +creature brought upon the stage of this dramatic work,—I could not +stifle this distinction in favour of Don _Quixote’_s horse;——in all +other points, the parson’s horse, I say, was just such another, for he +was as lean, and as lank, and as sorry a jade, as HUMILITY herself +could have bestrided. + +In the estimation of here and there a man of weak judgment, it was +greatly in the parson’s power to have helped the figure of this horse +of his,—for he was master of a very handsome demi-peaked saddle, +quilted on the seat with green plush, garnished with a double row of +silver-headed studs, and a noble pair of shining brass stirrups, with a +housing altogether suitable, of grey superfine cloth, with an edging of +black lace, terminating in a deep, black, silk fringe, _poudré +d’or_,—all which he had purchased in the pride and prime of his life, +together with a grand embossed bridle, ornamented at all points as it +should be.——But not caring to banter his beast, he had hung all these +up behind his study door: and, in lieu of them, had seriously befitted +him with just such a bridle and such a saddle, as the figure and value +of such a steed might well and truly deserve. + +In the several sallies about his parish, and in the neighbouring visits +to the gentry who lived around him,—you will easily comprehend, that +the parson, so appointed, would both hear and see enough to keep his +philosophy from rusting. To speak the truth, he never could enter a +village, but he caught the attention of both old and young.——Labour +stood still as he pass’d——the bucket hung suspended in the middle of +the well,—the spinning-wheel forgot its round,——even chuck-farthing and +shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he had got out of sight; and +as his movement was not of the quickest, he had generally time enough +upon his hands to make his observations,—to hear the groans of the +serious,—and the laughter of the light-hearted; all which he bore with +excellent tranquillity.—His character was,—he loved a jest in his +heart—and as he saw himself in the true point of ridicule, he would say +he could not be angry with others for seeing him in a light, in which +he so strongly saw himself: So that to his friends, who knew his foible +was not the love of money, and who therefore made the less scruple in +bantering the extravagance of his humour,—instead of giving the true +cause,—he chose rather to join in the laugh against himself; and as he +never carried one single ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being +altogether as spare a figure as his beast,—he would sometimes insist +upon it, that the horse was as good as the rider deserved;—that they +were, centaur-like,—both of a piece. At other times, and in other +moods, when his spirits were above the temptation of false wit,—he +would say, he found himself going off fast in a consumption; and, with +great gravity, would pretend, he could not bear the sight of a fat +horse, without a dejection of heart, and a sensible alteration in his +pulse; and that he had made choice of the lean one he rode upon, not +only to keep himself in countenance, but in spirits. + +At different times he would give fifty humorous and apposite reasons +for riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-winded horse, preferably to +one of mettle;—for on such a one he could sit mechanically, and +meditate as delightfully _de vanitate mundi et fugâ sæculi_, as with +the advantage of a death’s-head before him;—that, in all other +exercitations, he could spend his time, as he rode slowly along,—to as +much account as in his study;—that he could draw up an argument in his +sermon,—or a hole in his breeches, as steadily on the one as in the +other;—that brisk trotting and slow argumentation, like wit and +judgment, were two incompatible movements.—But that upon his steed—he +could unite and reconcile every thing,—he could compose his sermon—he +could compose his cough,——and, in case nature gave a call that way, he +could likewise compose himself to sleep.—In short, the parson upon such +encounters would assign any cause but the true cause,—and he with-held +the true one, only out of a nicety of temper, because he thought it did +honour to him. + +But the truth of the story was as follows: In the first years of this +gentleman’s life, and about the time when the superb saddle and bridle +were purchased by him, it had been his manner, or vanity, or call it +what you will,—to run into the opposite extreme.—In the language of the +county where he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and +generally had one of the best in the whole parish standing in his +stable always ready for saddling: and as the nearest midwife, as I told +you, did not live nearer to the village than seven miles, and in a vile +country,—it so fell out that the poor gentleman was scarce a whole week +together without some piteous application for his beast; and as he was +not an unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and more +distressful than the last;—as much as he loved his beast, he had never +a heart to refuse him; the upshot of which was generally this; that his +horse was either clapp’d, or spavin’d, or greaz’d;—or he was +twitter-bon’d, or broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had +befallen him, which would let him carry no flesh;—so that he had every +nine or ten months a bad horse to get rid of,—and a good horse to +purchase in his stead. + +What the loss in such a balance might amount to, _communibus annis_, I +would leave to a special jury of sufferers in the same traffick, to +determine;—but let it be what it would, the honest gentleman bore it +for many years without a murmur, till at length, by repeated ill +accidents of the kind, he found it necessary to take the thing under +consideration; and upon weighing the whole, and summing it up in his +mind, he found it not only disproportioned to his other expences, but +withal so heavy an article in itself, as to disable him from any other +act of generosity in his parish: Besides this, he considered that with +half the sum thus galloped away, he could do ten times as much +good;—and what still weighed more with him than all other +considerations put together, was this, that it confined all his charity +into one particular channel, and where, as he fancied, it was the least +wanted, namely, to the child-bearing and child-getting part of his +parish; reserving nothing for the impotent,—nothing for the +aged,—nothing for the many comfortless scenes he was hourly called +forth to visit, where poverty, and sickness and affliction dwelt +together. + +For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expence; and there +appeared but two possible ways to extricate him clearly out of it;—and +these were, either to make it an irrevocable law never more to lend his +steed upon any application whatever,—or else be content to ride the +last poor devil, such as they had made him, with all his aches and +infirmities, to the very end of the chapter. + +As he dreaded his own constancy in the first—he very chearfully betook +himself to the second; and though he could very well have explained it, +as I said, to his honour,—yet, for that very reason, he had a spirit +above it; choosing rather to bear the contempt of his enemies, and the +laughter of his friends, than undergo the pain of telling a story, +which might seem a panegyrick upon himself. + +I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined sentiments of this +reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in his character, which I +think comes up to any of the honest refinements of the peerless knight +of _La Mancha_, whom, by the bye, with all his follies, I love more, +and would actually have gone farther to have paid a visit to, than the +greatest hero of antiquity. + +But this is not the moral of my story: The thing I had in view was to +shew the temper of the world in the whole of this affair.—For you must +know, that so long as this explanation would have done the parson +credit,—the devil a soul could find it out,—I suppose his enemies would +not, and that his friends could not.——But no sooner did he bestir +himself in behalf of the midwife, and pay the expences of the +ordinary’s licence to set her up,—but the whole secret came out; every +horse he had lost, and two horses more than ever he had lost, with all +the circumstances of their destruction, were known and distinctly +remembered.—The story ran like wild-fire.—“The parson had a returning +fit of pride which had just seized him; and he was going to be well +mounted once again in his life; and if it was so, ’twas plain as the +sun at noon-day, he would pocket the expence of the licence ten times +told, the very first year:—So that every body was left to judge what +were his views in this act of charity.” + +What were his views in this, and in every other action of his life,—or +rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other +people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, +and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound +asleep. + +About ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune to be made +entirely easy upon that score,—it being just so long since he left his +parish,—and the whole world at the same time behind him,—and stands +accountable to a Judge of whom he will have no cause to complain. + +But there is a fatality attends the actions of some men: Order them as +they will, they pass thro’ a certain medium, which so twists and +refracts them from their true directions——that, with all the titles to +praise which a rectitude of heart can give, the doers of them are +nevertheless forced to live and die without it. + +Of the truth of which, this gentleman was a painful example.——But to +know by what means this came to pass,—and to make that knowledge of use +to you, I insist upon it that you read the two following chapters, +which contain such a sketch of his life and conversation, as will carry +its moral along with it.—When this is done, if nothing stops us in our +way, we will go on with the midwife. + +C H A P. XI + +Yorick was this parson’s name, and, what is very remarkable in it, (as +appears from a most ancient account of the family, wrote upon strong +vellum, and now in perfect preservation) it had been exactly so spelt +for near,—I was within an ace of saying nine hundred years;——but I +would not shake my credit in telling an improbable truth, however +indisputable in itself,——and therefore I shall content myself with only +saying——It had been exactly so spelt, without the least variation or +transposition of a single letter, for I do not know how long; which is +more than I would venture to say of one half of the best surnames in +the kingdom; which, in a course of years, have generally undergone as +many chops and changes as their owners.—Has this been owing to the +pride, or to the shame of the respective proprietors?—In honest truth, +I think sometimes to the one, and sometimes to the other, just as the +temptation has wrought. But a villainous affair it is, and will one day +so blend and confound us all together, that no one shall be able to +stand up and swear, “That his own great grandfather was the man who did +either this or that.” + +This evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent care of +the _Yorick’_s family, and their religious preservation of these +records I quote, which do farther inform us, That the family was +originally of _Danish_ extraction, and had been transplanted into +England as early as in the reign of _Horwendillus_, king of _Denmark_, +in whose court, it seems, an ancestor of this Mr. _Yorick_’s, and from +whom he was lineally descended, held a considerable post to the day of +his death. Of what nature this considerable post was, this record saith +not;—it only adds, That, for near two centuries, it had been totally +abolished, as altogether unnecessary, not only in that court, but in +every other court of the Christian world. + +It has often come into my head, that this post could be no other than +that of the king’s chief Jester;—and that _Hamlet_’s _Yorick_, in our +_Shakespeare_, many of whose plays, you know, are founded upon +authenticated facts, was certainly the very man. + +I have not the time to look into _Saxo-Grammaticus_’s _Danish_ history, +to know the certainty of this;—but if you have leisure, and can easily +get at the book, you may do it full as well yourself. + +I had just time, in my travels through _Denmark_ with Mr. _Noddy_’s +eldest son, whom, in the year 1741, I accompanied as governor, riding +along with him at a prodigious rate thro’ most parts of Europe, and of +which original journey performed by us two, a most delectable narrative +will be given in the progress of this work. I had just time, I say, and +that was all, to prove the truth of an observation made by a long +sojourner in that country;——namely, “That nature was neither very +lavish, nor was she very stingy in her gifts of genius and capacity to +its inhabitants;—but, like a discreet parent, was moderately kind to +them all; observing such an equal tenor in the distribution of her +favours, as to bring them, in those points, pretty near to a level with +each other; so that you will meet with few instances in that kingdom of +refined parts; but a great deal of good plain houshold understanding +amongst all ranks of people, of which every body has a share;” which +is, I think, very right. + +With us, you see, the case is quite different:—we are all ups and downs +in this matter;—you are a great genius;—or ’tis fifty to one, Sir, you +are a great dunce and a blockhead;—not that there is a total want of +intermediate steps,—no,—we are not so irregular as that comes to;—but +the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this +unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this +kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune herself not being more +so in the bequest of her goods and chattels than she. + +This is all that ever staggered my faith in regard to _Yorick_’s +extraction, who, by what I can remember of him, and by all the accounts +I could ever get of him, seemed not to have had one single drop of +_Danish_ blood in his whole crasis; in nine hundred years, it might +possibly have all run out:——I will not philosophize one moment with you +about it; for happen how it would, the fact was this:—That instead of +that cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense and humours, you would +have looked for, in one so extracted;—he was, on the contrary, as +mercurial and sublimated a composition,—as heteroclite a creature in +all his declensions;—with as much life and whim, and _gaité de cœur_ +about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put +together. With all this sail, poor _Yorick_ carried not one ounce of +ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and at the age of +twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his course in it, as a +romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen: So that upon his first setting +out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul +ten times in a day of somebody’s tackling; and as the grave and more +slow-paced were oftenest in his way,——you may likewise imagine, ’twas +with such he had generally the ill luck to get the most entangled. For +aught I know there might be some mixture of unlucky wit at the bottom +of such _Fracas:_——For, to speak the truth, _Yorick_ had an invincible +dislike and opposition in his nature to gravity;—not to gravity as +such;—for where gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave or +serious of mortal men for days and weeks together;—but he was an enemy +to the affectation of it, and declared open war against it, only as it +appeared a cloak for ignorance, or for folly: and then, whenever it +fell in his way, however sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it +much quarter. + +Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that Gravity was +an errant scoundrel, and he would add,—of the most dangerous kind +too,—because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest, +well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in +one twelve-month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. In +the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say there was +no danger,—but to itself:—whereas the very essence of gravity was +design, and consequently deceit;—’twas a taught trick to gain credit of +the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that, +with all its pretensions,—it was no better, but often worse, than what +a _French_ wit had long ago defined it,—_viz. A mysterious carriage of +the body to cover the defects of the mind;_—which definition of +gravity, _Yorick_, with great imprudence, would say, deserved to be +wrote in letters of gold. + +But, in plain truth, he was a man unhackneyed and unpractised in the +world, and was altogether as indiscreet and foolish on every other +subject of discourse where policy is wont to impress restraint. +_Yorick_ had no impression but one, and that was what arose from the +nature of the deed spoken of; which impression he would usually +translate into plain _English_ without any periphrasis;—and too oft +without much distinction of either person, time, or place;—so that when +mention was made of a pitiful or an ungenerous proceeding——he never +gave himself a moment’s time to reflect who was the hero of the +piece,——what his station,——or how far he had power to hurt him +hereafter;—but if it was a dirty action,—without more ado,—The man was +a dirty fellow,—and so on.—And as his comments had usually the ill fate +to be terminated either in a _bon mot_, or to be enlivened throughout +with some drollery or humour of expression, it gave wings to _Yorick_’s +indiscretion. In a word, tho’ he never sought, yet, at the same time, +as he seldom shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and +without much ceremony;——he had but too many temptations in life, of +scattering his wit and his humour,—his gibes and his jests about +him.——They were not lost for want of gathering. + +What were the consequences, and what was _Yorick_’s catastrophe +thereupon, you will read in the next chapter. + +C H A P. XII + +THE _Mortgager_ and _Mortgagee_ differ the one from the other, not more +in length of purse, than the _Jester_ and _Jestee_ do, in that of +memory. But in this the comparison between them runs, as the scholiasts +call it, upon all-four; which, by the bye, is upon one or two legs more +than some of the best of _Homer_’s can pretend to;—namely, That the one +raises a sum, and the other a laugh at your expence, and thinks no more +about it. Interest, however, still runs on in both cases;—the +periodical or accidental payments of it, just serving to keep the +memory of the affair alive; till, at length, in some evil hour, pop +comes the creditor upon each, and by demanding principal upon the spot, +together with full interest to the very day, makes them both feel the +full extent of their obligations. + +As the reader (for I hate your _ifs_) has a thorough knowledge of human +nature, I need not say more to satisfy him, that my HERO could not go +on at this rate without some slight experience of these incidental +mementos. To speak the truth, he had wantonly involved himself in a +multitude of small book-debts of this stamp, which, notwithstanding +_Eugenius_’s frequent advice, he too much disregarded; thinking, that +as not one of them was contracted thro’ any malignancy;—but, on the +contrary, from an honesty of mind, and a mere jocundity of humour, they +would all of them be cross’d out in course. + +_Eugenius_ would never admit this; and would often tell him, that one +day or other he would certainly be reckoned with; and he would often +add, in an accent of sorrowful apprehension,—to the uttermost mite. To +which _Yorick_, with his usual carelessness of heart, would as often +answer with a pshaw!—and if the subject was started in the fields,—with +a hop, skip, and a jump at the end of it; but if close pent up in the +social chimney-corner, where the culprit was barricado’d in, with a +table and a couple of arm-chairs, and could not so readily fly off in a +tangent,—_Eugenius_ would then go on with his lecture upon discretion +in words to this purpose, though somewhat better put together. + +Trust me, dear _Yorick_, this unwary pleasantry of thine will sooner or +later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties, which no after-wit can +extricate thee out of.——In these sallies, too oft, I see, it happens, +that a person laughed at, considers himself in the light of a person +injured, with all the rights of such a situation belonging to him; and +when thou viewest him in that light too, and reckons up his friends, +his family, his kindred and allies,——and musters up with them the many +recruits which will list under him from a sense of common danger;—’tis +no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes,—thou hast +got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm +of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou +wilt never be convinced it is so. + +I cannot suspect it in the man whom I esteem, that there is the least +spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in these sallies—I believe +and know them to be truly honest and sportive:—But consider, my dear +lad, that fools cannot distinguish this,—and that knaves will not: and +thou knowest not what it is, either to provoke the one, or to make +merry with the other:——whenever they associate for mutual defence, +depend upon it, they will carry on the war in such a manner against +thee, my dear friend, as to make thee heartily sick of it, and of thy +life too. + +Revenge from some baneful corner shall level a tale of dishonour at +thee, which no innocence of heart or integrity of conduct shall set +right.——The fortunes of thy house shall totter,—thy character, which +led the way to them, shall bleed on every side of it,—thy faith +questioned,—thy works belied,—thy wit forgotten,—thy learning trampled +on. To wind up the last scene of thy tragedy, CRUELTY and COWARDICE, +twin ruffians, hired and set on by MALICE in the dark, shall strike +together at all thy infirmities and mistakes:——The best of us, my dear +lad, lie open there,——and trust me,——trust me, _Yorick, when to gratify +a private appetite, it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an +helpless creature shall be sacrificed, ’tis an easy matter to pick up +sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to +offer it up with._ + +_Yorick_ scarce ever heard this sad vaticination of his destiny read +over to him, but with a tear stealing from his eye, and a promissory +look attending it, that he was resolved, for the time to come, to ride +his tit with more sobriety.—But, alas, too late!—a grand confederacy +with ***** and ***** at the head of it, was formed before the first +prediction of it.—The whole plan of the attack, just as _Eugenius_ had +foreboded, was put in execution all at once,—with so little mercy on +the side of the allies,—and so little suspicion in _Yorick_, of what +was carrying on against him,—that when he thought, good easy man! full +surely preferment was o’ripening,—they had smote his root, and then he +fell, as many a worthy man had fallen before him. + +_Yorick_, however, fought it out with all imaginable gallantry for some +time; till, overpowered by numbers, and worn out at length by the +calamities of the war,—but more so, by the ungenerous manner in which +it was carried on,—he threw down the sword; and though he kept up his +spirits in appearance to the last, he died, nevertheless, as was +generally thought, quite broken-hearted. + +What inclined _Eugenius_ to the same opinion was as follows: + +A few hours before _Yorick_ breathed his last, _Eugenius_ stept in with +an intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. Upon his +drawing _Yorick_’s curtain, and asking how he felt himself, _Yorick_ +looking up in his face took hold of his hand,—and after thanking him +for the many tokens of his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it +was their fate to meet hereafter,—he would thank him again and +again,—he told him, he was within a few hours of giving his enemies the +slip for ever.—I hope not, answered _Eugenius_, with tears trickling +down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that ever man spoke.—I +hope not, _Yorick_, said he.——_Yorick_ replied, with a look up, and a +gentle squeeze of _Eugenius_’s hand, and that was all,—but it cut +_Eugenius_ to his heart.—Come,—come, _Yorick_, quoth _Eugenius_, wiping +his eyes, and summoning up the man within him,—my dear lad, be +comforted,—let not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee at this +crisis when thou most wants them;——who knows what resources are in +store, and what the power of God may yet do for thee!——_Yorick_ laid +his hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head;—For my part, +continued _Eugenius_, crying bitterly as he uttered the words,—I +declare I know not, _Yorick_, how to part with thee, and would gladly +flatter my hopes, added _Eugenius_, chearing up his voice, that there +is still enough left of thee to make a bishop, and that I may live to +see it.—I beseech thee, _Eugenius_, quoth _Yorick_, taking off his +night-cap as well as he could with his left hand,—his right being still +grasped close in that of _Eugenius_,—I beseech thee to take a view of +my head.—I see nothing that ails it, replied _Eugenius._ Then, alas! my +friend, said _Yorick_, let me tell you, that ’tis so bruised and +mis-shapened with the blows which ***** and *****, and some others have +so unhandsomely given me in the dark, that I might say with _Sancho +Pança_, that should I recover, and “Mitres thereupon be suffered to +rain down from heaven as thick as hail, not one of them would fit +it.”——_Yorick_’s last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips ready +to depart as he uttered this:——yet still it was uttered with something +of a _Cervantick_ tone;——and as he spoke it, _Eugenius_ could perceive +a stream of lambent fire lighted up for a moment in his eyes;——faint +picture of those flashes of his spirit, which (as _Shakespeare_ said of +his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar! + +_Eugenius_ was convinced from this, that the heart of his friend was +broke: he squeezed his hand,——and then walked softly out of the room, +weeping as he walked. _Yorick_ followed _Eugenius_ with his eyes to the +door,—he then closed them, and never opened them more. + +tombstone + +He lies buried in the corner of his church-yard, in the parish of ———, +under a plain marble slab, which his friend _Eugenius_, by leave of his +executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of +inscription, serving both for his epitaph and elegy. + +Alas, poor YORICK! + +Ten times a day has _Yorick_’s ghost the consolation to hear his +monumental inscription read over with such a variety of plaintive +tones, as denote a general pity and esteem for him;——a foot-way +crossing the church-yard close by the side of his grave,—not a +passenger goes by without stopping to cast a look upon it,—and sighing +as he walks on, + +Alas, poor YORICK! + +C H A P. XIII + +IT is so long since the reader of this rhapsodical work has been parted +from the midwife, that it is high time to mention her again to him, +merely to put him in mind that there is such a body still in the world, +and whom, upon the best judgment I can form upon my own plan at +present, I am going to introduce to him for good and all: But as fresh +matter may be started, and much unexpected business fall out betwixt +the reader and myself, which may require immediate dispatch;——’twas +right to take care that the poor woman should not be lost in the mean +time;—because when she is wanted, we can no way do without her. + +I think I told you that this good woman was a person of no small note +and consequence throughout our whole village and township;—that her +fame had spread itself to the very out-edge and circumference of that +circle of importance, of which kind every soul living, whether he has a +shirt to his back or no,——has one surrounding him;—which said circle, +by the way, whenever ’tis said that such a one is of great weight and +importance in the _world_,——I desire may be enlarged or contracted in +your worship’s fancy, in a compound ratio of the station, profession, +knowledge, abilities, height and depth (measuring both ways) of the +personage brought before you. + +In the present case, if I remember, I fixed it about four or five +miles, which not only comprehended the whole parish, but extended +itself to two or three of the adjacent hamlets in the skirts of the +next parish; which made a considerable thing of it. I must add, That +she was, moreover, very well looked on at one large grange-house, and +some other odd houses and farms within two or three miles, as I said, +from the smoke of her own chimney:——But I must here, once for all, +inform you, that all this will be more exactly delineated and explain’d +in a map, now in the hands of the engraver, which, with many other +pieces and developements of this work, will be added to the end of the +twentieth volume,—not to swell the work,—I detest the thought of such a +thing;—but by way of commentary, scholium, illustration, and key to +such passages, incidents, or innuendos as shall be thought to be either +of private interpretation, or of dark or doubtful meaning, after my +life and my opinions shall have been read over (now don’t forget the +meaning of the word) by all the _world_;——which, betwixt you and me, +and in spite of all the gentlemen-reviewers in _Great Britain_, and of +all that their worships shall undertake to write or say to the +contrary,—I am determined shall be the case.—I need not tell your +worship, that all this is spoke in confidence. + +C H A P. XIV + +UPON looking into my mother’s marriage settlement, in order to satisfy +myself and reader in a point necessary to be cleared up, before we +could proceed any farther in this history;—I had the good fortune to +pop upon the very thing I wanted before I had read a day and a half +straight forwards,—it might have taken me up a month;—which shews +plainly, that when a man sits down to write a history,—tho’ it be but +the history of _Jack Hickathrift_ or _Tom Thumb_, he knows no more than +his heels what lets and confounded hindrances he is to meet with in his +way,—or what a dance he may be led, by one excursion or another, before +all is over. Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a +muleteer drives on his mule,—straight forward;——for instance, from +_Rome_ all the way to _Loretto_, without ever once turning his head +aside, either to the right hand or to the left,——he might venture to +foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey’s end;——but +the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he is a man of the +least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to +make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways +avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually +soliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at +than he can fly; he will moreover have various + Accounts to reconcile: + Anecdotes to pick up: + Inscriptions to make out: + Stories to weave in: + Traditions to sift: + Personages to call upon: + Panegyricks to paste up at this door; + +Pasquinades at that:——All which both the man and his mule are quite +exempt from. To sum up all; there are archives at every stage to be +look’d into, and rolls, records, documents, and endless genealogies, +which justice ever and anon calls him back to stay the reading of:——In +short there is no end of it;——for my own part, I declare I have been at +it these six weeks, making all the speed I possibly could,—and am not +yet born:—I have just been able, and that’s all, to tell you _when_ it +happen’d, but not _how_;—so that you see the thing is yet far from +being accomplished. + +These unforeseen stoppages, which I own I had no conception of when I +first set out;—but which, I am convinced now, will rather increase than +diminish as I advance,—have struck out a hint which I am resolved to +follow;——and that is,—not to be in a hurry;—but to go on leisurely, +writing and publishing two volumes of my life every year;——which, if I +am suffered to go on quietly, and can make a tolerable bargain with my +bookseller, I shall continue to do as long as I live. + +C H A P. XV + +THE article in my mother’s marriage-settlement, which I told the reader +I was at the pains to search for, and which, now that I have found it, +I think proper to lay before him,—is so much more fully express’d in +the deed itself, than ever I can pretend to do it, that it would be +barbarity to take it out of the lawyer’s hand:—It is as follows. + +“And this Indenture further witnesseth, That the said _Walter Shandy_, +merchant, in consideration of the said intended marriage to be had, +and, by God’s blessing, to be well and truly solemnized and consummated +between the said _Walter Shandy_ and _Elizabeth Mollineux_ aforesaid, +and divers other good and valuable causes and considerations him +thereunto specially moving,—doth grant, covenant, condescend, consent, +conclude, bargain, and fully agree to and with _John Dixon_, and _James +Turner_, Esqrs. the above-named Trustees, &c. &c.—to wit,—That in case +it should hereafter so fall out, chance, happen, or otherwise come to +pass,—That the said _Walter Shandy_, merchant, shall have left off +business before the time or times, that the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_ +shall, according to the course of nature, or otherwise, have left off +bearing and bringing forth children;—and that, in consequence of the +said _Walter Shandy_ having so left off business, he shall in despight, +and against the free-will, consent, and good-liking of the said +_Elizabeth Mollineux_,—make a departure from the city of _London_, in +order to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at _Shandy Hall_, in the +county of ——, or at any other country-seat, castle, hall, +mansion-house, messuage or grainge-house, now purchased, or hereafter +to be purchased, or upon any part or parcel thereof:—That then, and as +often as the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_ shall happen to be enceint with +child or children severally and lawfully begot, or to be begotten, upon +the body of the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_, during her said +coverture,—he the said _Walter Shandy_ shall, at his own proper cost +and charges, and out of his own proper monies, upon good and reasonable +notice, which is hereby agreed to be within six weeks of her the said +_Elizabeth Mollineux_’s full reckoning, or time of supposed and +computed delivery,—pay, or cause to be paid, the sum of one hundred and +twenty pounds of good and lawful money, to _John Dixon_, and _James +Turner_, Esqrs. or assigns,—upon TRUST and confidence, and for and unto +the use and uses, intent, end, and purpose following:—That is to +say,—That the said sum of one hundred and twenty pounds shall be paid +into the hands of the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_, or to be otherwise +applied by them the said Trustees, for the well and truly hiring of one +coach, with able and sufficient horses, to carry and convey the body of +the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_, and the child or children which she +shall be then and there enceint and pregnant with,—unto the city of +_London_; and for the further paying and defraying of all other +incidental costs, charges, and expences whatsoever,—in and about, and +for, and relating to, her said intended delivery and lying-in, in the +said city or suburbs thereof. And that the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_ +shall and may, from time to time, and at all such time and times as are +here covenanted and agreed upon,—peaceably and quietly hire the said +coach and horses, and have free ingress, egress, and regress throughout +her journey, in and from the said coach, according to the tenor, true +intent, and meaning of these presents, without any let, suit, trouble, +disturbance, molestation, discharge, hinderance, forfeiture, eviction, +vexation, interruption, or incumbrance whatsoever.—And that it shall +moreover be lawful to and for the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_, from time +to time, and as oft or often as she shall well and truly be advanced in +her said pregnancy, to the time heretofore stipulated and agreed +upon,—to live and reside in such place or places, and in such family or +families, and with such relations, friends, and other persons within +the said city of _London_, as she at her own will and pleasure, +notwithstanding her present coverture, and as if she was a _femme sole_ +and unmarried,—shall think fit.—And this Indenture further witnesseth, +That for the more effectually carrying of the said covenant into +execution, the said _Walter Shandy_, merchant, doth hereby grant, +bargain, sell, release, and confirm unto the said _John Dixon_, and +_James Turner_, Esqrs. their heirs, executors, and assigns, in their +actual possession now being, by virtue of an indenture of bargain and +sale for a year to them the said _John Dixon_, and _James Turner_, +Esqrs. by him the said _Walter Shandy_, merchant, thereof made; which +said bargain and sale for a year, bears date the day next before the +date of these presents, and by force and virtue of the statute for +transferring of uses into possession,—All that the manor and lordship +of _Shandy_, in the county of ——, with all the rights, members, and +appurtenances thereof; and all and every the messuages, houses, +buildings, barns, stables, orchards, gardens, backsides, tofts, crofts, +garths, cottages, lands, meadows, feedings, pastures, marshes, commons, +woods, underwoods, drains, fisheries, waters, and +water-courses;—together with all rents, reversions, services, +annuities, fee-farms, knights fees, views of frankpledge, escheats, +reliefs, mines, quarries, goods and chattels of felons and fugitives, +felons of themselves, and put in exigent, deodands, free warrens, and +all other royalties and seigniories, rights and jurisdictions, +privileges and hereditaments whatsoever.—And also the advowson, +donation, presentation, and free disposition of the rectory or +parsonage of _Shandy_ aforesaid, and all and every the tenths, tythes, +glebe-lands.”——In three words,——“My mother was to lay in, (if she chose +it) in _London._” + +But in order to put a stop to the practice of any unfair play on the +part of my mother, which a marriage-article of this nature too +manifestly opened a door to, and which indeed had never been thought of +at all, but for my uncle _Toby Shandy_;—a clause was added in security +of my father which was this:—“That in case my mother hereafter should, +at any time, put my father to the trouble and expence of a _London_ +journey, upon false cries and tokens;——that for every such instance, +she should forfeit all the right and title which the covenant gave her +to the next turn;——but to no more,—and so on, _toties quoties_, in as +effectual a manner, as if such a covenant betwixt them had not been +made.”—This, by the way, was no more than what was reasonable;—and yet, +as reasonable as it was, I have ever thought it hard that the whole +weight of the article should have fallen entirely, as it did, upon +myself. + +But I was begot and born to misfortunes;—for my poor mother, whether it +was wind or water—or a compound of both,—or neither;—or whether it was +simply the mere swell of imagination and fancy in her;—or how far a +strong wish and desire to have it so, might mislead her judgment;—in +short, whether she was deceived or deceiving in this matter, it no way +becomes me to decide. The fact was this, That in the latter end of +September 1717, which was the year before I was born, my mother having +carried my father up to town much against the grain,—he peremptorily +insisted upon the clause;—so that I was doom’d, by marriage-articles, +to have my nose squeez’d as flat to my face, as if the destinies had +actually spun me without one. + +How this event came about,—and what a train of vexatious +disappointments, in one stage or other of my life, have pursued me from +the mere loss, or rather compression, of this one single member,—shall +be laid before the reader all in due time. + +C H A P. XVI + +MY father, as any body may naturally imagine, came down with my mother +into the country, in but a pettish kind of a humour. The first twenty +or five-and-twenty miles he did nothing in the world but fret and teaze +himself, and indeed my mother too, about the cursed expence, which he +said might every shilling of it have been saved;—then what vexed him +more than every thing else was, the provoking time of the year,—which, +as I told you, was towards the end of _September_, when his wall-fruit +and green gages especially, in which he was very curious, were just +ready for pulling:——“Had he been whistled up to _London_, upon a _Tom +Fool_’s errand, in any other month of the whole year, he should not +have said three words about it.” + +For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down, but the heavy +blow he had sustain’d from the loss of a son, whom it seems he had +fully reckon’d upon in his mind, and register’d down in his +pocket-book, as a second staff for his old age, in case _Bobby_ should +fail him. “The disappointment of this, he said, was ten times more to a +wise man, than all the money which the journey, &c. had cost him, put +together,—rot the hundred and twenty pounds,——he did not mind it a +rush.” + +From _Stilton_, all the way to _Grantham_, nothing in the whole affair +provoked him so much as the condolences of his friends, and the foolish +figure they should both make at church, the first _Sunday_;——of which, +in the satirical vehemence of his wit, now sharpen’d a little by +vexation, he would give so many humorous and provoking +descriptions,—and place his rib and self in so many tormenting lights +and attitudes in the face of the whole congregation;—that my mother +declared, these two stages were so truly tragi-comical, that she did +nothing but laugh and cry in a breath, from one end to the other of +them all the way. + +From _Grantham_, till they had cross’d the _Trent_, my father was out +of all kind of patience at the vile trick and imposition which he +fancied my mother had put upon him in this affair—“Certainly,” he would +say to himself, over and over again, “the woman could not be deceived +herself——if she could,——“what weakness!”—tormenting word!—which led his +imagination a thorny dance, and, before all was over, play’d the duce +and all with him;——for sure as ever the word _weakness_ was uttered, +and struck full upon his brain—so sure it set him upon running +divisions upon how many kinds of weaknesses there were;——that there was +such a thing as weakness of the body,——as well as weakness of the +mind,—and then he would do nothing but syllogize within himself for a +stage or two together, How far the cause of all these vexations might, +or might not, have arisen out of himself. + +In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude springing out +of this one affair, all fretting successively in his mind as they rose +up in it, that my mother, whatever was her journey up, had but an +uneasy journey of it down.——In a word, as she complained to my uncle +_Toby_, he would have tired out the patience of any flesh alive. + +C H A P. XVII + +THOUGH my father travelled homewards, as I told you, in none of the +best of moods,—pshawing and pishing all the way down,—yet he had the +complaisance to keep the worst part of the story still to +himself;—which was the resolution he had taken of doing himself the +justice, which my uncle _Toby_’s clause in the marriage-settlement +empowered him; nor was it till the very night in which I was begot, +which was thirteen months after, that she had the least intimation of +his design: when my father, happening, as you remember, to be a little +chagrin’d and out of temper,——took occasion as they lay chatting +gravely in bed afterwards, talking over what was to come,——to let her +know that she must accommodate herself as well as she could to the +bargain made between them in their marriage-deeds; which was to lye-in +of her next child in the country, to balance the last year’s journey. + +My father was a gentleman of many virtues,—but he had a strong spice of +that in his temper, which might, or might not, add to the number.—’Tis +known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,—and of obstinacy in +a bad one: Of this my mother had so much knowledge, that she knew ’twas +to no purpose to make any remonstrance,—so she e’en resolved to sit +down quietly, and make the most of it. + +C H A P. XVIII + +AS the point was that night agreed, or rather determined, that my +mother should lye-in of me in the country, she took her measures +accordingly; for which purpose, when she was three days, or +thereabouts, gone with child, she began to cast her eyes upon the +midwife, whom you have so often heard me mention; and before the week +was well got round, as the famous Dr. _Manningham_ was not to be had, +she had come to a final determination in her mind,——notwithstanding +there was a scientific operator within so near a call as eight miles of +us, and who, moreover, had expressly wrote a five shillings book upon +the subject of midwifery, in which he had exposed, not only the +blunders of the sisterhood itself,——but had likewise super-added many +curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the fœtus in cross +births, and some other cases of danger, which belay us in getting into +the world; notwithstanding all this, my mother, I say, was absolutely +determined to trust her life, and mine with it, into no soul’s hand but +this old woman’s only.—Now this I like;——when we cannot get at the very +thing we wish——never to take up with the next best in degree to it:—no; +that’s pitiful beyond description;—it is no more than a week from this +very day, in which I am now writing this book for the edification of +the world;—which is _March_ 9, 1759,——that my dear, dear _Jenny_, +observing I looked a little grave, as she stood cheapening a silk of +five-and-twenty shillings a yard,—told the mercer, she was sorry she +had given him so much trouble;—and immediately went and bought herself +a yard-wide stuff of ten-pence a yard.—’Tis the duplication of one and +the same greatness of soul; only what lessened the honour of it, +somewhat, in my mother’s case, was, that she could not heroine it into +so violent and hazardous an extreme, as one in her situation might have +wished, because the old midwife had really some little claim to be +depended upon,—as much, at least, as success could give her; having, in +the course of her practice of near twenty years in the parish, brought +every mother’s son of them into the world without any one slip or +accident which could fairly be laid to her account. + +These facts, tho’ they had their weight, yet did not altogether satisfy +some few scruples and uneasinesses which hung upon my father’s spirits +in relation to this choice.—To say nothing of the natural workings of +humanity and justice—or of the yearnings of parental and connubial +love, all which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as possible +in a case of this kind;——he felt himself concerned in a particular +manner, that all should go right in the present case;—from the +accumulated sorrow he lay open to, should any evil betide his wife and +child in lying-in at _Shandy-Hall_.——He knew the world judged by +events, and would add to his afflictions in such a misfortune, by +loading him with the whole blame of it.——“Alas o’day;—had Mrs. +_Shandy_, poor gentlewoman! had but her wish in going up to town just +to lye-in and come down again;—which they say, she begged and prayed +for upon her bare knees,——and which, in my opinion, considering the +fortune which Mr. _Shandy_ got with her,—was no such mighty matter to +have complied with, the lady and her babe might both of them have been +alive at this hour.” + +This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;—and yet, it was not +merely to shelter himself,—nor was it altogether for the care of his +offspring and wife that he seemed so extremely anxious about this +point;—my father had extensive views of things,——and stood moreover, as +he thought, deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from the dread +he entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might be put to. + +He was very sensible that all political writers upon the subject had +unanimously agreed and lamented, from the beginning of Queen +_Elizabeth_’s reign down to his own time, that the current of men and +money towards the metropolis, upon one frivolous errand or another,—set +in so strong,—as to become dangerous to our civil rights,—though, by +the bye,——a _current_ was not the image he took most delight in,—a +_distemper_ was here his favourite metaphor, and he would run it down +into a perfect allegory, by maintaining it was identically the same in +the body national as in the body natural, where the blood and spirits +were driven up into the head faster than they could find their ways +down;——a stoppage of circulation must ensue, which was death in both +cases. + +There was little danger, he would say, of losing our liberties by +_French_ politicks or _French_ invasions;——nor was he so much in pain +of a consumption from the mass of corrupted matter and ulcerated +humours in our constitution, which he hoped was not so bad as it was +imagined;—but he verily feared, that in some violent push, we should go +off, all at once, in a state-apoplexy;—and then he would say, _The Lord +have mercy upon us all._ + +My father was never able to give the history of this distemper,—without +the remedy along with it. + +“Was I an absolute prince,” he would say, pulling up his breeches with +both his hands, as he rose from his arm-chair, “I would appoint able +judges, at every avenue of my metropolis, who should take cognizance of +every fool’s business who came there;—and if, upon a fair and candid +hearing, it appeared not of weight sufficient to leave his own home, +and come up, bag and baggage, with his wife and children, farmer’s +sons, &c. &c. at his backside, they should be all sent back, from +constable to constable, like vagrants as they were, to the place of +their legal settlements. By this means I shall take care, that my +metropolis totter’d not thro’ its own weight;—that the head be no +longer too big for the body;—that the extremes, now wasted and pinn’d +in, be restored to their due share of nourishment, and regain with it +their natural strength and beauty:—I would effectually provide, That +the meadows and corn fields of my dominions, should laugh and +sing;—that good chear and hospitality flourish once more;—and that such +weight and influence be put thereby into the hands of the Squirality of +my kingdom, as should counterpoise what I perceive my Nobility are now +taking from them.” + +“Why are there so few palaces and gentlemen’s seats,” he would ask, +with some emotion, as he walked across the room, “throughout so many +delicious provinces in _France_? Whence is it that the few remaining +_Chateaus_ amongst them are so dismantled,—so unfurnished, and in so +ruinous and desolate a condition?——Because, Sir” (he would say) “in +that kingdom no man has any country-interest to support;—the little +interest of any kind which any man has any where in it, is concentrated +in the court, and the looks of the Grand Monarch: by the sunshine of +whose countenance, or the clouds which pass across it, every _French_ +man lives or dies.” + +Another political reason which prompted my father so strongly to guard +against the least evil accident in my mother’s lying-in in the +country,——was, That any such instance would infallibly throw a balance +of power, too great already, into the weaker vessels of the gentry, in +his own, or higher stations;——which, with the many other usurped rights +which that part of the constitution was hourly establishing,—would, in +the end, prove fatal to the monarchical system of domestick government +established in the first creation of things by God. + +In this point he was entirely of Sir _Robert Filmer_’s opinion, That +the plans and institutions of the greatest monarchies in the eastern +parts of the world, were, originally, all stolen from that admirable +pattern and prototype of this houshold and paternal power;—which, for a +century, he said, and more, had gradually been degenerating away into a +mix’d government;——the form of which, however desirable in great +combinations of the species,——was very troublesome in small ones,—and +seldom produced any thing, that he saw, but sorrow and confusion. + +For all these reasons, private and publick, put together,—my father was +for having the man-midwife by all means,—my mother, by no means. My +father begg’d and intreated, she would for once recede from her +prerogative in this matter, and suffer him to choose for her;—my +mother, on the contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this matter, to +choose for herself,—and have no mortal’s help but the old woman’s.—What +could my father do? He was almost at his wit’s end;——talked it over +with her in all moods;—placed his arguments in all lights;—argued the +matter with her like a christian,—like a heathen,—like a husband,—like +a father,—like a patriot,—like a man:—My mother answered every thing +only like a woman; which was a little hard upon her;—for as she could +not assume and fight it out behind such a variety of characters,—’twas +no fair match:—’twas seven to one.—What could my mother do?—She had the +advantage (otherwise she had been certainly overpowered) of a small +reinforcement of chagrin personal at the bottom, which bore her up, and +enabled her to dispute the affair with my father with so equal an +advantage,——that both sides sung _Te Deum._ In a word, my mother was to +have the old woman,—and the operator was to have licence to drink a +bottle of wine with my father and my uncle _Toby Shandy_ in the back +parlour,—for which he was to be paid five guineas. + +I must beg leave, before I finish this chapter, to enter a caveat in +the breast of my fair reader;—and it is this,——Not to take it +absolutely for granted, from an unguarded word or two which I have +dropp’d in it,——“That I am a married man.”—I own, the tender +appellation of my dear, dear _Jenny_,—with some other strokes of +conjugal knowledge, interspersed here and there, might, naturally +enough, have misled the most candid judge in the world into such a +determination against me.—All I plead for, in this case, Madam, is +strict justice, and that you do so much of it, to me as well as to +yourself,—as not to prejudge, or receive such an impression of me, till +you have better evidence, than, I am positive, at present can be +produced against me.—Not that I can be so vain or unreasonable, Madam, +as to desire you should therefore think, that my dear, dear _Jenny_ is +my kept mistress;—no,—that would be flattering my character in the +other extreme, and giving it an air of freedom, which, perhaps, it has +no kind of right to. All I contend for, is the utter impossibility, for +some volumes, that you, or the most penetrating spirit upon earth, +should know how this matter really stands.—It is not impossible, but +that my dear, dear _Jenny!_ tender as the appellation is, may be my +child.—Consider,—I was born in the year eighteen.—Nor is there any +thing unnatural or extravagant in the supposition, that my dear _Jenny_ +may be my friend.—Friend!—My friend.—Surely, Madam, a friendship +between the two sexes may subsist, and be supported without———Fy! Mr. +_Shandy:_—Without any thing, Madam, but that tender and delicious +sentiment which ever mixes in friendship, where there is a difference +of sex. Let me intreat you to study the pure and sentimental parts of +the best _French_ Romances;—it will really, Madam, astonish you to see +with what a variety of chaste expressions this delicious sentiment, +which I have the honour to speak of, is dress’d out. + +C H A P. XIX + +I WOULD sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in geometry, +than pretend to account for it, that a gentleman of my father’s great +good sense,——knowing, as the reader must have observed him, and curious +too in philosophy,—wise also in political reasoning,—and in polemical +(as he will find) no way ignorant,—could be capable of entertaining a +notion in his head, so out of the common track,—that I fear the reader, +when I come to mention it to him, if he is the least of a cholerick +temper, will immediatly throw the book by; if mercurial, he will laugh +most heartily at it;—and if he is of a grave and saturnine cast, he +will, at first sight, absolutely condemn as fanciful and extravagant; +and that was in respect to the choice and imposition of christian +names, on which he thought a great deal more depended than what +superficial minds were capable of conceiving. + +His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange kind of +magick bias, which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly +impressed upon our characters and conduct. + +The hero of _Cervantes_ argued not the point with more +seriousness,——nor had he more faith,——or more to say on the powers of +necromancy in dishonouring his deeds,—or on DULCINEA’s name, in +shedding lustre upon them, than my father had on those of TRISMEGISTUS +or ARCHIMEDES, on the one hand—or of NYKY and SIMKIN on the other. How +many CÆSARS and POMPEYS, he would say, by mere inspiration of the +names, have been rendered worthy of them? And how many, he would add, +are there, who might have done exceeding well in the world, had not +their characters and spirits been totally depressed and NICODEMUS’D +into nothing? + +I see plainly, Sir, by your looks, (or as the case happened) my father +would say—that you do not heartily subscribe to this opinion of +mine,—which, to those, he would add, who have not carefully sifted it +to the bottom,—I own has an air more of fancy than of solid reasoning +in it;——and yet, my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, +I am morally assured, I should hazard little in stating a case to you, +not as a party in the dispute,—but as a judge, and trusting my appeal +upon it to your own good sense and candid disquisition in this +matter;——you are a person free from as many narrow prejudices of +education as most men;—and, if I may presume to penetrate farther into +you,—of a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely +because it wants friends. Your son,—your dear son,—from whose sweet and +open temper you have so much to expect.—Your BILLY, Sir!—would you, for +the world, have called him JUDAS?—Would you, my dear Sir, he would say, +laying his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest address,—and in +that soft and irresistible _piano_ of voice, which the nature of the +_argumentum ad hominem_ absolutely requires,—Would you, Sir, if a _Jew_ +of a godfather had proposed the name for your child, and offered you +his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration +of him?——O my God! he would say, looking up, if I know your temper +right, Sir,—you are incapable of it;——you would have trampled upon the +offer;—you would have thrown the temptation at the tempter’s head with +abhorrence. + +Your greatness of mind in this action, which I admire, with that +generous contempt of money, which you shew me in the whole transaction, +is really noble;—and what renders it more so, is the principle of +it;—the workings of a parent’s love upon the truth and conviction of +this very hypothesis, namely, That was your son called JUDAS,—the +forbid and treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have +accompanied him through life like his shadow, and, in the end, made a +miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of your example. + +I never knew a man able to answer this argument.—But, indeed, to speak +of my father as he was;—he was certainly irresistible;—both in his +orations and disputations;—he was born an +orator;—Θεοδίδακτος.—Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the elements of +Logick and Rhetorick were so blended up in him,—and, withal, he had so +shrewd a guess at the weaknesses and passions of his respondent,——that +NATURE might have stood up and said,—“This man is eloquent.”—In short, +whether he was on the weak or the strong side of the question, ’twas +hazardous in either case to attack him.—And yet, ’tis strange, he had +never read _Cicero_, nor _Quintilian de Oratore_, nor _Isocrates_, nor +_Aristotle_, nor _Longinus_, amongst the antients;—nor _Vossius_, nor +_Skioppius_, nor _Ramus_, nor _Farnaby_, amongst the moderns;—and what +is more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least light or +spark of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon +_Crackenthorp_ or _Burgersdicius_ or any _Dutch_ logician or +commentator;—he knew not so much as in what the difference of an +argument _ad ignorantiam_, and an argument _ad hominem_ consisted; so +that I well remember, when he went up along with me to enter my name at +_Jesus College_ in ****,—it was a matter of just wonder with my worthy +tutor, and two or three fellows of that learned society,—that a man who +knew not so much as the names of his tools, should be able to work +after that fashion with them. + +To work with them in the best manner he could, was what my father was, +however, perpetually forced upon;——for he had a thousand little +sceptical notions of the comick kind to defend——most of which notions, +I verily believe, at first entered upon the footing of mere whims, and +of a _vive la Bagatelle_; and as such he would make merry with them for +half an hour or so, and having sharpened his wit upon them, dismiss +them till another day. + +I mention this, not only as matter of hypothesis or conjecture upon the +progress and establishment of my father’s many odd opinions,—but as a +warning to the learned reader against the indiscreet reception of such +guests, who, after a free and undisturbed entrance, for some years, +into our brains,—at length claim a kind of settlement there,——working +sometimes like yeast;—but more generally after the manner of the gentle +passion, beginning in jest,—but ending in downright earnest. + +Whether this was the case of the singularity of my father’s notions—or +that his judgment, at length, became the dupe of his wit;—or how far, +in many of his notions, he might, though odd, be absolutely right;—the +reader, as he comes at them, shall decide. All that I maintain here, +is, that in this one, of the influence of christian names, however it +gained footing, he was serious;—he was all uniformity;—he was +systematical, and, like all systematic reasoners, he would move both +heaven and earth, and twist and torture every thing in nature to +support his hypothesis. In a word I repeat it over again;—he was +serious;—and, in consequence of it, he would lose all kind of patience +whenever he saw people, especially of condition, who should have known +better,——as careless and as indifferent about the name they imposed +upon their child,—or more so, than in the choice of _Ponto_ or _Cupid_ +for their puppy-dog. + +This, he would say, look’d ill;—and had, moreover, this particular +aggravation in it, viz. That when once a vile name was wrongfully or +injudiciously given, ’twas not like the case of a man’s character, +which, when wrong’d, might hereafter be cleared;——and, possibly, some +time or other, if not in the man’s life, at least after his death,—be, +somehow or other, set to rights with the world: But the injury of this, +he would say, could never be undone;—nay, he doubted even whether an +act of parliament could reach it:——He knew as well as you, that the +legislature assumed a power over surnames;—but for very strong reasons, +which he could give, it had never yet adventured, he would say, to go a +step farther. + +It was observable, that tho’ my father, in consequence of this opinion, +had, as I have told you, the strongest likings and dislikings towards +certain names;—that there were still numbers of names which hung so +equally in the balance before him, that they were absolutely +indifferent to him. _Jack, Dick_, and _Tom_ were of this class: These +my father called neutral names;—affirming of them, without a satire, +That there had been as many knaves and fools, at least, as wise and +good men, since the world began, who had indifferently borne them;—so +that, like equal forces acting against each other in contrary +directions, he thought they mutually destroyed each other’s effects; +for which reason, he would often declare, He would not give a +cherry-stone to choose amongst them. _Bob_, which was my brother’s +name, was another of these neutral kinds of christian names, which +operated very little either way; and as my father happen’d to be at +_Epsom_, when it was given him,—he would oft-times thank Heaven it was +no worse. _Andrew_ was something like a negative quantity in Algebra +with him;—’twas worse, he said, than nothing.—_William_ stood pretty +high:——_Numps_ again was low with him:—and _Nick_, he said, was the +DEVIL. + +But of all names in the universe he had the most unconquerable aversion +for TRISTRAM;—he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of +any thing in the world,—thinking it could possibly produce nothing in +_rerum natura_, but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So that in the +midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the bye, he was +frequently involved,——he would sometimes break off in a sudden and +spirited EPIPHONEMA, or rather EROTESIS, raised a third, and sometimes +a full fifth above the key of the discourse,——and demand it +categorically of his antagonist, Whether he would take upon him to say, +he had ever remembered,——whether he had ever read,—or even whether he +had ever heard tell of a man, called _Tristram_, performing any thing +great or worth recording?—No,—he would say,—TRISTRAM!—The thing is +impossible. + +What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to publish +this notion of his to the world? Little boots it to the subtle +speculatist to stand single in his opinions,—unless he gives them +proper vent:—It was the identical thing which my father did:—for in the +year sixteen, which was two years before I was born, he was at the +pains of writing an express DISSERTATION simply upon the word +_Tristram_,—shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the +grounds of his great abhorrence to the name. + +When this story is compared with the title-page,—Will not the gentle +reader pity my father from his soul?—to see an orderly and +well-disposed gentleman, who tho’ singular,—yet inoffensive in his +notions,—so played upon in them by cross purposes;——to look down upon +the stage, and see him baffled and overthrown in all his little systems +and wishes; to behold a train of events perpetually falling out against +him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if they had purposedly been +plann’d and pointed against him, merely to insult his speculations.——In +a word, to behold such a one, in his old age, ill-fitted for troubles, +ten times in a day suffering sorrow;—ten times in a day calling the +child of his prayers TRISTRAM!—Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which, +to his ears, was unison to _Nincompoop_, and every name vituperative +under heaven.——By his ashes! I swear it,—if ever malignant spirit took +pleasure, or busied itself in traversing the purposes of mortal man,—it +must have been here;—and if it was not necessary I should be born +before I was christened, I would this moment give the reader an account +of it. + +C H A P. XX + +——How could you, Madam, be so inattentive in reading the last chapter? +I told you in it, _That my mother was not a papist._——Papist! You told +me no such thing, Sir.—Madam, I beg leave to repeat it over again, that +I told you as plain, at least, as words, by direct inference, could +tell you such a thing.—Then, Sir, I must have miss’d a page.—No, Madam, +you have not miss’d a word.—Then I was asleep, Sir.—My pride, Madam, +cannot allow you that refuge.—Then, I declare, I know nothing at all +about the matter.—That, Madam, is the very fault I lay to your charge; +and as a punishment for it, I do insist upon it, that you immediately +turn back, that is as soon as you get to the next full stop, and read +the whole chapter over again. I have imposed this penance upon the +lady, neither out of wantonness nor cruelty; but from the best of +motives; and therefore shall make her no apology for it when she +returns back:—’Tis to rebuke a vicious taste, which has crept into +thousands besides herself,—of reading straight forwards, more in quest +of the adventures, than of the deep erudition and knowledge which a +book of this cast, if read over as it should be, would infallibly +impart with them——The mind should be accustomed to make wise +reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the +habitude of which made _Pliny_ the younger affirm, “That he never read +a book so bad, but he drew some profit from it.” The stories of +_Greece_ and _Rome_, run over without this turn and application,—do +less service, I affirm it, than the history of _Parismus_ and +_Parismenus_, or of the Seven Champions of _England_, read with it. + +———But here comes my fair lady. Have you read over again the chapter, +Madam, as I desired you?—You have: And did you not observe the passage, +upon the second reading, which admits the inference?—Not a word like +it! Then, Madam, be pleased to ponder well the last line but one of the +chapter, where I take upon me to say, “It was _necessary_ I should be +born before I was christen’d.” Had my mother, Madam, been a Papist, +that consequence did not follow.[1] + +It is a terrible misfortune for this same book of mine, but more so to +the Republick of letters;—so that my own is quite swallowed up in the +consideration of it,—that this self-same vile pruriency for fresh +adventures in all things, has got so strongly into our habit and +humour,—and so wholly intent are we upon satisfying the impatience of +our concupiscence that way,—that nothing but the gross and more carnal +parts of a composition will go down:—The subtle hints and sly +communications of science fly off, like spirits upwards,—the heavy +moral escapes downwards; and both the one and the other are as much +lost to the world, as if they were still left in the bottom of the +ink-horn. + +I wish the male-reader has not pass’d by many a one, as quaint and +curious as this one, in which the female-reader has been detected. I +wish it may have its effects;—and that all good people, both male and +female, from example, may be taught to think as well as read. + +MEMOIRE presenté à Messieurs les +Docteurs de SORBONNE[2] + +_UN Chirurgien Accoucheur, represente à Messieurs les Docteurs de_ +SORBONNE, _qu’il y a des cas, quoique très rares, où une mere ne +sçauroit accoucher, & même où l’enfant est tellement renfermé dans le +sein de sa mere, qu’il ne fait parôitre aucune partie de son corps, ce +qui seroit un cas, suivant les Rituels, de lui conférer, du moins sous +condition, le baptême. Le Chirurgien, qui consulte, prétend, par le +moyen d’une_ petite canulle, _de pouvoir baptiser immediatement +l’enfant, sans faire aucun tort à la mere.——Il demand si ce moyen, +qu’il vient de proposer, est permis & légitime, & s’il peut s’en servir +dans les cas qu’il vient d’exposer._ + +R E P O N S E + +_LE Conseil estime, que la question proposée souffre de grandes +difficultés. Les Théologiens posent d’un côté pour principe, que le +baptême, qui est une naissance spirituelle, suppose une premiere +naissance; il faut être né dans le monde, pour renaître en_ Jesus +Christ, _comme ils l’enseignent. S._ Thomas, 3 part. quæst. 88 artic. +11. _suit cette doctrine comme une verité constante; l’on ne peut, dit +ce S. Docteur, baptiser les enfans qui sont renférmes dans le sein de +leurs meres, & S._ Thomas _est fondé sur ce, que les enfans ne sont +point nés, & ne peuvent être comptés parmi les autres hommes; d’où il +conclud, qu’ils ne peuvent être l’objet d’une action extérieure, pour +reçevoir par leur ministére, les sacremens nécessaires au salut:_ Pueri +in maternis uteris existentes nondum prodierunt in lucem ut cum aliis +hominibus vitam ducant; unde non possunt subjici actioni humanæ, ut per +eorum ministerium sacramenta recipiant ad salutem. _Les rituels +ordonnent dans la pratique ce que les théologiens ont établi sur les +mêmes matiéres, & ils deffendent tous d’une maniére uniforme, de +baptiser les enfans qui sont renfermés dans le sein de leurs meres, +s’ils ne sont paroître quelque partie de leurs corps. Le concours des +théologiens, & des rituels, qui sont les régles des diocéses, paroit +former une autorité qui termine la question presente; cependant le +conseil de conscience considerant d’un côté, que le raisonnement des +théologiens est uniquement fondé sur une raison de convenance, & que la +deffense des rituels suppose que l’on ne peut baptiser immediatement +les enfans ainsi renfermés dans le sein de leurs meres, ce qui est +contre la supposition presente; & d’un autre côté, considerant que lés +mêmes théologiens enseignent, que l’on peut risquer les sacremens que_ +Jesus Christ _a établis comme des moyens faciles, mais nécessaires pour +sanctifier les hommes; & d’ailleurs estimant, que les enfans renfermés +dans le sein de leurs meres, pourroient être capables de salut, +parcequ’ils sont capables de damnation;—pour ces considerations, & en +egard à l’expose, suivant lequel on assure avoir trouvé un moyen +certain de baptiser ces enfans ainsi renfermés, sans faire aucun tort à +la mere, le Conseil estime que l’on pourroit se servir du moyen +proposé, dans la confiance qu’il a, que Dieu n’a point laissé ces +sortes d’enfans sans aucuns secours, & supposant, comme il est exposé, +que le moyen dont il s’agit est propre à leur procurer le baptême; +cependant comme il s’agiroit, en autorisant la pratique proposée, de +changer une regle universellement établie, le Conseil croit que celui +qui consulte doit s’addresser à son evêque, & à qui il appartient de +juger de l’utilité, & du danger du moyen proposé, & comme, sous le bon +plaisir de l’evêque, le Conseil estime qu’il faudroit recourir au Pape, +qui a le droit d’expliquer les régles de l’eglise, & d’y déroger dans +le cas, ou la loi ne sçauroit obliger, quelque sage & quelque utile que +paroisse la maniére de baptiser dont il s’agit, le Conseil ne pourroit +l’approver sans le concours de ces deux autorités. On conseile au moins +à celui qui consulte, de s’addresser à son evêque, & de lui faire part +de la presente décision, afin que, si le prelat entre dans les raisons +sur lesquelles les docteurs soussignés s’appuyent, il puisse être +autorisé dans le cas de nécessité, ou il risqueroit trop d’attendre que +la permission fût demandée & accordée d’employer le moyen qu’il propose +si avantageux au salut de l’enfant. Au reste, le Conseil, en estimant +que l’on pourroit s’en servir, croit cependant, que si les enfans dont +il s’agit, venoient au monde, contre l’esperance de ceux qui se +seroient servis du méme moyen, il seroit nécessaire de les baptiser_ +sous condition; _& en cela le Conseil se conforme à tous les rituels, +qui en autorisant le baptême d’un enfant qui fait paroître quelque +partie de son corps, enjoignent néantmoins, & ordonnent de le baptiser_ +sous condition, _s’il vient heureusement au monde._ + +Déliberé en _Sorbonne_, le 10 _Avril_, 1733. + +A. LE MOYNE. +L. DE ROMIGNY. +DE MARCILLY. + +Mr. _Tristram Shandy_’s compliments to Messrs. _Le Moyne, De Romigny_, +and _De Marcilly_; hopes they all rested well the night after so +tiresome a consultation.—He begs to know, whether after the ceremony of +marriage, and before that of consummation, the baptizing all the +HOMUNCULI at once, slapdash, by _injection_, would not be a shorter and +safer cut still; on condition, as above, That if the HOMUNCULI do well, +and come safe into the world after this, that each and every of them +shall be baptized again (_sous condition_)——And provided, in the second +place, That the thing can be done, which Mr. _Shandy_ apprehends it +may, _par le moyen d’une_ petite canulle, and _sans faire aucune tort +au pere._ + + [1] The _Romish_ Rituals direct the baptizing of the child, in cases + of danger, _before_ it is born;—but upon this proviso, That some part + or other of the child’s body be seen by the baptizer:——But the Doctors + of the _Sorbonne_, by a deliberation held amongst them, _April_ 10, + 1733,—have enlarged the powers of the midwives, by determining, That + though no part of the child’s body should appear,—that baptism shall, + nevertheless, be administered to it by injection,—_par le moyen d’une + petite canulle_,—Anglicè _a squirt._—’Tis very strange that St. + _Thomas Aquinas_, who had so good a mechanical head, both for tying + and untying the knots of school-divinity,—should, after so much pains + bestowed upon this,—give up the point at last, as a second _La chose + impossible_,—“Infantes in maternis uteris existentes (quoth St. + _Thomas!_) baptizari possunt _nullo modo._”—O _Thomas! Thomas!_ + + If the reader has the curiosity to see the question upon baptism + _by injection_, as presented to the Doctors of the _Sorbonne_, with + their consultation thereupon, it is as follows. + + [2] Vide Deventer. Paris Edit. 4to, 1734, p. 366. + +C H A P. XXI + +——I WONDER what’s all that noise, and running backwards and forwards +for, above stairs, quoth my father, addressing himself, after an hour +and a half’s silence, to my uncle _Toby_,——who, you must know, was +sitting on the opposite side of the fire, smoaking his social pipe all +the time, in mute contemplation of a new pair of black plush-breeches +which he had got on:—What can they be doing, brother?—quoth my +father,—we can scarce hear ourselves talk. + +I think, replied my uncle _Toby_, taking his pipe from his mouth, and +striking the head of it two or three times upon the nail of his left +thumb, as he began his sentence,——I think, says he:——But to enter +rightly into my uncle _Toby_’s sentiments upon this matter, you must be +made to enter first a little into his character, the out-lines of which +I shall just give you, and then the dialogue between him and my father +will go on as well again. + +Pray what was that man’s name,—for I write in such a hurry, I have no +time to recollect or look for it,——who first made the observation, +“That there was great inconstancy in our air and climate?” Whoever he +was, ’twas a just and good observation in him.—But the corollary drawn +from it, namely, “That it is this which has furnished us with such a +variety of odd and whimsical characters;”—that was not his;—it was +found out by another man, at least a century and a half after him: Then +again,—that this copious store-house of original materials, is the true +and natural cause that our Comedies are so much better than those of +_France_, or any others that either have, or can be wrote upon the +Continent:——that discovery was not fully made till about the middle of +King _William_’s reign,—when the great _Dryden_, in writing one of his +long prefaces, (if I mistake not) most fortunately hit upon it. Indeed +toward the latter end of queen _Anne_, the great _Addison_ began to +patronize the notion, and more fully explained it to the world in one +or two of his Spectators;—but the discovery was not his.—Then, fourthly +and lastly, that this strange irregularity in our climate, producing so +strange an irregularity in our characters,——doth thereby, in some sort, +make us amends, by giving us somewhat to make us merry with when the +weather will not suffer us to go out of doors,—that observation is my +own;—and was struck out by me this very rainy day, _March_ 26, 1759, +and betwixt the hours of nine and ten in the morning. + +Thus—thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this great harvest of +our learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it is, by slow steps +of casual increase, that our knowledge physical, metaphysical, +physiological, polemical, nautical, mathematical, ænigmatical, +technical, biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with +fifty other branches of it, (most of ’em ending as these do, in _ical_) +have for these two last centuries and more, gradually been creeping +upwards towards that Ἀκμὴ of their perfections, from which, if we may +form a conjecture from the advances of these last seven years, we +cannot possibly be far off. + +When that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an end to all kind of +writings whatsoever;—the want of all kind of writing will put an end to +all kind of reading;—and that in time, _As war begets poverty; poverty +peace_,——must, in course, put an end to all kind of knowledge,—and +then——we shall have all to begin over again; or, in other words, be +exactly where we started. + +———Happy! Thrice happy times! I only wish that the æra of my begetting, +as well as the mode and manner of it, had been a little alter’d,—or +that it could have been put off, with any convenience to my father or +mother, for some twenty or five-and-twenty years longer, when a man in +the literary world might have stood some chance.—— + +But I forget my uncle _Toby_, whom all this while we have left knocking +the ashes out of his tobacco-pipe. + +His humour was of that particular species, which does honour to our +atmosphere; and I should have made no scruple of ranking him amongst +one of the first-rate productions of it, had not there appeared too +many strong lines in it of a family-likeness, which shewed that he +derived the singularity of his temper more from blood, than either wind +or water, or any modifications or combinations of them whatever: And I +have, therefore, oft-times wondered, that my father, tho’ I believe he +had his reasons for it, upon his observing some tokens of eccentricity, +in my course, when I was a boy,—should never once endeavour to account +for them in this way: for all the SHANDY FAMILY were of an original +character throughout:——I mean the males,—the females had no character +at all,—except, indeed, my great aunt DINAH, who, about sixty years +ago, was married and got with child by the coachman, for which my +father, according to his hypothesis of christian names, would often +say, She might thank her godfathers and godmothers. + +It will seem strange,——and I would as soon think of dropping a riddle +in the reader’s way, which is not my interest to do, as set him upon +guessing how it could come to pass, that an event of this kind, so many +years after it had happened, should be reserved for the interruption of +the peace and unity, which otherwise so cordially subsisted, between my +father and my uncle _Toby._ One would have thought, that the whole +force of the misfortune should have spent and wasted itself in the +family at first,—as is generally the case.—But nothing ever wrought +with our family after the ordinary way. Possibly at the very time this +happened, it might have something else to afflict it; and as +afflictions are sent down for our good, and that as this had never done +the SHANDY FAMILY any good at all, it might lie waiting till apt times +and circumstances should give it an opportunity to discharge its +office.——Observe, I determine nothing upon this.——My way is ever to +point out to the curious, different tracts of investigation, to come at +the first springs of the events I tell;—not with a pedantic +_Fescue_,—or in the decisive manner or _Tacitus_, who outwits himself +and his reader;—but with the officious humility of a heart devoted to +the assistance merely of the inquisitive;—to them I write,——and by them +I shall be read,——if any such reading as this could be supposed to hold +out so long,—to the very end of the world. + +Why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was thus reserved for my father +and uncle, is undetermined by me. But how and in what direction it +exerted itself so as to become the cause of dissatisfaction between +them, after it began to operate, is what I am able to explain with +great exactness, and is as follows: + +My uncle TOBY SHANDY, Madam, was a gentleman, who, with the virtues +which usually constitute the character of a man of honour and +rectitude,—possessed one in a very eminent degree, which is seldom or +never put into the catalogue; and that was a most extreme and +unparallel’d modesty of nature;——though I correct the word nature, for +this reason, that I may not prejudge a point which must shortly come to +a hearing, and that is, Whether this modesty of his was natural or +acquir’d.——Whichever way my uncle _Toby_ came by it, ’twas nevertheless +modesty in the truest sense of it; and that is, Madam, not in regard to +words, for he was so unhappy as to have very little choice in them,—but +to things;——and this kind of modesty so possessed him, and it arose to +such a height in him, as almost to equal, if such a thing could be, +even the modesty of a woman: That female nicety, Madam, and inward +cleanliness of mind and fancy, in your sex, which makes you so much the +awe of ours. + +You will imagine, Madam, that my uncle _Toby_ had contracted all this +from this very source;—that he had spent a great part of his time in +converse with your sex, and that from a thorough knowledge of you, and +the force of imitation which such fair examples render irresistible, he +had acquired this amiable turn of mind. + +I wish I could say so,—for unless it was with his sister-in-law, my +father’s wife and my mother——my uncle _Toby_ scarce exchanged three +words with the sex in as many years;——no, he got it, Madam, by a +blow.——A blow!—Yes, Madam, it was owing to a blow from a stone, broke +off by a ball from the parapet of a horn-work at the siege of Namur, +which struck full upon my uncle _Toby_’s groin.—Which way could that +effect it? The story of that, Madam, is long and interesting;—but it +would be running my history all upon heaps to give it you here.——’Tis +for an episode hereafter; and every circumstance relating to it, in its +proper place, shall be faithfully laid before you:—’Till then, it is +not in my power to give farther light into this matter, or say more +than what I have said already,——That my uncle _Toby_ was a gentleman of +unparallel’d modesty, which happening to be somewhat subtilized and +rarified by the constant heat of a little family pride,——they both so +wrought together within him, that he could never bear to hear the +affair of my aunt DINAH touch’d upon, but with the greatest +emotion.——The least hint of it was enough to make the blood fly into +his face;—but when my father enlarged upon the story in mixed +companies, which the illustration of his hypothesis frequently obliged +him to do,—the unfortunate blight of one of the fairest branches of the +family, would set my uncle _Toby_’s honour and modesty o’bleeding; and +he would often take my father aside, in the greatest concern +imaginable, to expostulate and tell him, he would give him any thing in +the world, only to let the story rest. + +My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness for my uncle +_Toby_, that ever one brother bore towards another, and would have done +any thing in nature, which one brother in reason could have desir’d of +another, to have made my uncle _Toby_’s heart easy in this, or any +other point. But this lay out of his power. + +——My father, as I told you was a philosopher in +grain,—speculative,—systematical;—and my aunt _Dinah_’s affair was a +matter of as much consequence to him, as the retrogradation of the +planets to _Copernicus_:—The backslidings of _Venus_ in her orbit +fortified the _Copernican_ system, called so after his name; and the +backslidings of my aunt _Dinah_ in her orbit, did the same service in +establishing my father’s system, which, I trust, will for ever +hereafter be called the _Shandean System_, after his. + +In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had as nice a +sense of shame as any man whatever;——and neither he, nor, I dare say, +_Copernicus_, would have divulged the affair in either case, or have +taken the least notice of it to the world, but for the obligations they +owed, as they thought, to truth.—_Amicus Plato_, my father would say, +construing the words to my uncle _Toby_, as he went along, _Amicus +Plato_; that is, DINAH was my aunt;—_sed magis amica veritas_—but TRUTH +is my sister. + +This contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my uncle, was the +source of many a fraternal squabble. The one could not bear to hear the +tale of family disgrace recorded,——and the other would scarce ever let +a day pass to an end without some hint at it. + +For God’s sake, my uncle _Toby_ would cry,——and for my sake, and for +all our sakes, my dear brother _Shandy_,—do let this story of our +aunt’s and her ashes sleep in peace;——how can you,——how can you have so +little feeling and compassion for the character of our family?——What is +the character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would +reply.——Nay, if you come to that—what is the life of a family?——The +life of a family!—my uncle _Toby_ would say, throwing himself back in +his arm chair, and lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one leg——Yes, +the life,——my father would say, maintaining his point. How many +thousands of ’em are there every year that come cast away, (in all +civilized countries at least)——and considered as nothing but common +air, in competition of an hypothesis. In my plain sense of things, my +uncle _Toby_ would answer,—every such instance is downright MURDER, let +who will commit it.——There lies your mistake, my father would +reply;——for, in _Foro Scientiæ_ there is no such thing as MURDER,——’tis +only DEATH, brother. + +My uncle _Toby_ would never offer to answer this by any other kind of +argument, than that of whistling half a dozen bars of +_Lillebullero._——You must know it was the usual channel thro’ which his +passions got vent, when any thing shocked or surprized him:——but +especially when any thing, which he deem’d very absurd, was offered. + +As not one of our logical writers, nor any of the commentators upon +them, that I remember, have thought proper to give a name to this +particular species of argument.—I here take the liberty to do it +myself, for two reasons. First, That, in order to prevent all confusion +in disputes, it may stand as much distinguished for ever, from every +other species of argument———as the _Argumentum ad Verecundiam, ex +Absurdo, ex Fortiori_, or any other argument whatsoever:——And, +secondly, That it may be said by my children’s children, when my head +is laid to rest,——that their learn’d grandfather’s head had been busied +to as much purpose once, as other people’s;—That he had invented a +name, and generously thrown it into the TREASURY of the _Ars Logica_, +for one of the most unanswerable arguments in the whole science. And, +if the end of disputation is more to silence than convince,—they may +add, if they please, to one of the best arguments too. + +I do, therefore, by these presents, strictly order and command, That it +be known and distinguished by the name and title of the _Argumentum +Fistulatorium_, and no other;—and that it rank hereafter with the +_Argumentum Baculinum_ and the _Argumentum ad Crumenam_, and for ever +hereafter be treated of in the same chapter. + +As for the _Argumentum Tripodium_, which is never used but by the woman +against the man;—and the _Argumentum ad Rem_, which, contrarywise, is +made use of by the man only against the woman;—As these two are enough +in conscience for one lecture;——and, moreover, as the one is the best +answer to the other,—let them likewise be kept apart, and be treated of +in a place by themselves. + +C H A P. XXII + +THE learned Bishop _Hall_, I mean the famous Dr. _Joseph Hall_, who was +Bishop of _Exeter_ in King _James_ the First’s reign, tells us in one +of _Decads_, at the end of his divine art of meditation, imprinted at +_London_, in the year 1610, by _John Beal_, dwelling in +_Aldersgate-street_, “That it is an abominable thing for a man to +commend himself;”——and I really think it is so. + +And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind +of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be found out;—I think it is +full as abominable, that a man should lose the honour of it, and go out +of the world with the conceit of it rotting in his head. + +This is precisely my situation. + +For in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, as in +all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of +digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been +over-looked by my reader,—not for want of penetration in him,—but +because ’tis an excellence seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a +digression;—and it is this: That tho’ my digressions are all fair, as +you observe,—and that I fly off from what I am about, as far, and as +often too, as any writer in _Great Britain_; yet I constantly take care +to order affairs so that my main business does not stand still in my +absence. + +I was just going, for example, to have given you the great out-lines of +my uncle _Toby_’s most whimsical character;—when my aunt _Dinah_ and +the coachman came across us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles +into the very heart of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this, +you perceive that the drawing of my uncle _Toby_’s character went on +gently all the time;—not the great contours of it,—that was +impossible,—but some familiar strokes and faint designations of it, +were here and there touch’d on, as we went along, so that you are much +better acquainted with my uncle Toby now than you was before. + +By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; +two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were +thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is +digressive, and it is progressive too,—and at the same time. + +This, Sir, is a very different story from that of the earth’s moving +round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with her progress in her +elliptick orbit which brings about the year, and constitutes that +variety and vicissitude of seasons we enjoy;—though I own it suggested +the thought,—as I believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and +discoveries have come from such trifling hints. + +Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;——they are the life, the +soul of reading!—take them out of this book, for instance,—you might as +well take the book along with them;—one cold eternal winter would reign +in every page of it; restore them to the writer;—he steps forth like a +bridegroom,—bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite +to fail. + +All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, so as +to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, +whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a +digression,—from that moment, I observe, his whole work stands stock +still;—and if he goes on with his main work,—then there is an end of +his digression. + +——This is vile work.—For which reason, from the beginning of this, you +see, I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it +with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the +digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that +the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;—and, what’s more, +it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain +of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits. + +C H A P. XXIII + +I HAVE a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very +nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy.—Accordingly I set off +thus: + +If the fixture of _Momus_’s glass in the human breast, according to the +proposed emendation of that arch-critick, had taken place,——first, This +foolish consequence would certainly have followed,—That the very wisest +and very gravest of us all, in one coin or other, must have paid +window-money every day of our lives. + +And, secondly, that had the said glass been there set up, nothing more +would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man’s character, but +to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical +bee-hive, and look’d in,—view’d the soul stark naked;—observed all her +motions,—her machinations;—traced all her maggots from their first +engendering to their crawling forth;—watched her loose in her frisks, +her gambols, her capricios; and after some notice of her more solemn +deportment, consequent upon such frisks, &c.——then taken your pen and +ink and set down nothing but what you had seen, and could have sworn +to:—But this is an advantage not to be had by the biographer in this +planet;—in the planet _Mercury_ (belike) it may be so, if not better +still for him;——for there the intense heat of the country, which is +proved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than +equal to that of red-hot iron,—must, I think, long ago have vitrified +the bodies of the inhabitants, (as the efficient cause) to suit them +for the climate (which is the final cause;) so that betwixt them both, +all the tenements of their souls, from top to bottom, may be nothing +else, for aught the soundest philosophy can shew to the contrary, but +one fine transparent body of clear glass (bating the umbilical knot)—so +that, till the inhabitants grow old and tolerably wrinkled, whereby the +rays of light, in passing through them, become so monstrously +refracted,——or return reflected from their surfaces in such transverse +lines to the eye, that a man cannot be seen through;—his soul might as +well, unless for mere ceremony, or the trifling advantage which the +umbilical point gave her,—might, upon all other accounts, I say, as +well play the fool out o’doors as in her own house. + +But this, as I said above, is not the case of the inhabitants of this +earth;—our minds shine not through the body, but are wrapt up here in a +dark covering of uncrystalized flesh and blood; so that, if we would +come to the specific characters of them, we must go some other way to +work. + +Many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit has been forced to +take, to do this thing with exactness. + +Some, for instance, draw all their characters with +wind-instruments.—_Virgil_ takes notice of that way in the affair of +_Dido_ and _Æneas_;—but it is as fallacious as the breath of fame;—and, +moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the +_Italians_ pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of +one particular sort of character among them, from the _forte_ or +_piano_ of a certain wind-instrument they use,—which they say is +infallible.—I dare not mention the name of the instrument in this +place;—’tis sufficient we have it amongst us,—but never think of making +a drawing by it;—this is ænigmatical, and intended to be so, at least +_ad populum_:—And therefore, I beg, Madam, when you come here, that you +read on as fast as you can, and never stop to make any inquiry about +it. + +There are others again, who will draw a man’s character from no other +helps in the world, but merely from his evacuations;—but this often +gives a very incorrect outline,—unless, indeed, you take a sketch of +his repletions too; and by correcting one drawing from the other, +compound one good figure out of them both. + +I should have no objection to this method, but that I think it must +smell too strong of the lamp,—and be render’d still more operose, by +forcing you to have an eye to the rest of his _Non-naturals._—Why the +most natural actions of a man’s life should be called his +Non-naturals,—is another question. + +There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these +expedients;—not from any fertility of their own, but from the various +ways of doing it, which they have borrowed from the honourable devices +which the Pentagraphic Brethren[3] of the brush have shewn in taking +copies.—These, you must know, are your great historians. + +One of these you will see drawing a full length character _against the +light_;—that’s illiberal,—dishonest,—and hard upon the character of the +man who sits. + +Others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you in the +_Camera_;—that is most unfair of all, because, _there_ you are sure to +be represented in some of your most ridiculous attitudes. + +To avoid all and every one of these errors in giving you my uncle +_Toby_’s character, I am determined to draw it by no mechanical help +whatever;—nor shall my pencil be guided by any one wind-instrument +which ever was blown upon, either on this, or on the other side of the +_Alps_;—nor will I consider either his repletions or his discharges,—or +touch upon his Non-naturals; but, in a word, I will draw my uncle +_Toby_’s character from his HOBBY-HORSE. + + [3] Pentagraph, an instrument to copy Prints and Pictures + mechanically, and in any proportion. + +C H A P. XXIV + +IF I was not morally sure that the reader must be out of all patience +for my uncle _Toby_’s character,——I would here previously have +convinced him that there is no instrument so fit to draw such a thing +with, as that which I have pitch’d upon. + +A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho’ I cannot say that they act and re-act +exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each +other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some +kind; and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of +the manner of electrified bodies,—and that, by means of the heated +parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back +of the HOBBY-HORSE,—by long journies and much friction, it so happens, +that the body of the rider is at length fill’d as full of +HOBBY-HORSICAL matter as it can hold;—so that if you are able to give +but a clear description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty +exact notion of the genius and character of the other. + +Now the HOBBY-HORSE which my uncle _Toby_ always rode upon, was in my +opinion an HOBBY-HORSE well worth giving a description of, if it was +only upon the score of his great singularity;—for you might have +travelled from _York_ to _Dover_,—from _Dover_ to _Penzance_ in +_Cornwall_, and from _Penzance_ to _York_ back again, and not have seen +such another upon the road; or if you had seen such a one, whatever +haste you had been in, you must infallibly have stopp’d to have taken a +view of him. Indeed, the gait and figure of him was so strange, and so +utterly unlike was he, from his head to his tail, to any one of the +whole species, that it was now and then made a matter of +dispute,——whether he was really a HOBBY-HORSE or no: But as the +Philosopher would use no other argument to the Sceptic, who disputed +with him against the reality of motion, save that of rising up upon his +legs, and walking across the room;—so would my uncle _Toby_ use no +other argument to prove his HOBBY-HORSE was a HOBBY-HORSE indeed, but +by getting upon his back and riding him about;—leaving the world, after +that, to determine the point as it thought fit. + +In good truth, my uncle _Toby_ mounted him with so much pleasure, and +he carried my uncle _Toby_ so well,——that he troubled his head very +little with what the world either said or thought about it. + +It is now high time, however, that I give you a description of him:—But +to go on regularly, I only beg you will give me leave to acquaint you +first, how my uncle _Toby_ came by him. + +C H A P. XXV + +THE wound in my uncle _Toby_’s groin, which he received at the siege of +_Namur_, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient +he should return to _England_, in order, if possible, to be set to +rights. + +He was four years totally confined,—part of it to his bed, and all of +it to his room: and in the course of his cure, which was all that time +in hand, suffer’d unspeakable miseries,—owing to a succession of +exfoliations from the _os pubis_, and the outward edge of that part of +the _coxendix_ called the _os illium_,——both which bones were dismally +crush’d, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I told you was +broke off the parapet,—as by its size,—(tho’ it was pretty large) which +inclined the surgeon all along to think, that the great injury which it +had done my uncle _Toby_’s groin, was more owing to the gravity of the +stone itself, than to the projectile force of it,—which he would often +tell him was a great happiness. + +My father at that time was just beginning business in _London_, and had +taken a house;—and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted +between the two brothers,—and that my father thought my uncle _Toby_ +could no where be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own +house,——he assign’d him the very best apartment in it.—And what was a +much more sincere mark of his affection still, he would never suffer a +friend or an acquaintance to step into the house on any occasion, but +he would take him by the hand, and lead him up stairs to see his +brother _Toby_, and chat an hour by his bed-side. + +The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it;—my uncle’s +visitors at least thought so, and in their daily calls upon him, from +the courtesy arising out of that belief, they would frequently turn the +discourse to that subject,—and from that subject the discourse would +generally roll on to the siege itself. + +These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle _Toby_ received +great relief from them, and would have received much more, but that +they brought him into some unforeseen perplexities, which, for three +months together, retarded his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon +an expedient to extricate himself out of them, I verily believe they +would have laid him in his grave. + +What these perplexities of my uncle _Toby_ were,——’tis impossible for +you to guess;—if you could,—I should blush; not as a relation,—not as a +man,—nor even as a woman,—but I should blush as an author; inasmuch as +I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader +has never yet been able to guess at any thing. And in this, Sir, I am +of so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was able to +form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was +to come in the next page,—I would tear it out of my book. + +C H A P. XXVI + +I HAVE begun a new book, on purpose that I might have room enough to +explain the nature of the perplexities in which my uncle _Toby_ was +involved, from the many discourses and interrogations about the siege +of _Namur_, where he received his wound. + +I must remind the reader, in case he has read the history of King +_William_’s wars,—but if he has not,—I then inform him, that one of the +most memorable attacks in that siege, was that which was made by the +_English_ and _Dutch_ upon the point of the advanced counterscarp, +between the gate of _St. Nicolas_, which inclosed the great sluice or +water-stop, where the _English_ were terribly exposed to the shot of +the counter-guard and demi-bastion of _St. Roch_: The issue of which +hot dispute, in three words, was this; That the _Dutch_ lodged +themselves upon the counter-guard,—and that the _English_ made +themselves masters of the covered-way before _St. Nicolas_-gate, +notwithstanding the gallantry of the _French_ officers, who exposed +themselves upon the glacis sword in hand. + +As this was the principal attack of which my uncle _Toby_ was an +eye-witness at _Namur_,——the army of the besiegers being cut off, by +the confluence of the _Maes_ and _Sambre_, from seeing much of each +other’s operations,——my uncle _Toby_ was generally more eloquent and +particular in his account of it; and the many perplexities he was in, +arose out of the almost insurmountable difficulties he found in telling +his story intelligibly, and giving such clear ideas of the differences +and distinctions between the scarp and counterscarp,—the glacis and +covered-way,—the half-moon and ravelin,—as to make his company fully +comprehend where and what he was about. + +Writers themselves are too apt to confound these terms; so that you +will the less wonder, if in his endeavours to explain them, and in +opposition to many misconceptions, that my uncle _Toby_ did oft-times +puzzle his visitors, and sometimes himself too. + +To speak the truth, unless the company my father led up stairs were +tolerably clear-headed, or my uncle _Toby_ was in one of his +explanatory moods, ’twas a difficult thing, do what he could, to keep +the discourse free from obscurity. + +What rendered the account of this affair the more intricate to my uncle +_Toby_, was this,—that in the attack of the counterscarp, before the +gate of _St. Nicolas_, extending itself from the bank of the _Maes_, +quite up to the great water-stop,—the ground was cut and cross cut with +such a multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all +sides,—and he would get so sadly bewildered, and set fast amongst them, +that frequently he could neither get backwards or forwards to save his +life; and was oft-times obliged to give up the attack upon that very +account only. + +These perplexing rebuffs gave my uncle _Toby Shandy_ more perturbations +than you would imagine; and as my father’s kindness to him was +continually dragging up fresh friends and fresh enquirers,——he had but +a very uneasy task of it. + +No doubt my uncle _Toby_ had great command of himself,—and could guard +appearances, I believe, as well as most men;—yet any one may imagine, +that when he could not retreat out of the ravelin without getting into +the half-moon, or get out of the covered-way without falling down the +counterscarp, nor cross the dyke without danger of slipping into the +ditch, but that he must have fretted and fumed inwardly:—He did so;—and +the little and hourly vexations, which may seem trifling and of no +account to the man who has not read _Hippocrates_, yet, whoever has +read _Hippocrates_, or Dr. _James Mackenzie_, and has considered well +the effects which the passions and affections of the mind have upon the +digestion—(Why not of a wound as well as of a dinner?)—may easily +conceive what sharp paroxysms and exacerbations of his wound my uncle +_Toby_ must have undergone upon that score only. + +—My uncle _Toby_ could not philosophize upon it;—’twas enough he felt +it was so,—and having sustained the pain and sorrows of it for three +months together, he was resolved some way or other to extricate +himself. + +He was one morning lying upon his back in his bed, the anguish and +nature of the wound upon his groin suffering him to lie in no other +position, when a thought came into his head, that if he could purchase +such a thing, and have it pasted down upon a board, as a large map of +the fortification of the town and citadel of _Namur_, with its +environs, it might be a means of giving him ease.—I take notice of his +desire to have the environs along with the town and citadel, for this +reason,—because my uncle _Toby_’s wound was got in one of the +traverses, about thirty toises from the returning angle of the trench, +opposite to the salient angle of the demi-bastion of _St. Roch_:——so +that he was pretty confident he could stick a pin upon the identical +spot of ground where he was standing on when the stone struck him. + +All this succeeded to his wishes, and not only freed him from a world +of sad explanations, but, in the end, it proved the happy means, as you +will read, of procuring my uncle _Toby_ his HOBBY-HORSE. + +C H A P. XXVII + +THERE is nothing so foolish, when you are at the expence of making an +entertainment of this kind, as to order things so badly, as to let your +criticks and gentry of refined taste run it down: Nor is there any +thing so likely to make them do it, as that of leaving them out of the +party, or, what is full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon +the rest of your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no such +thing as a critick (by occupation) at table. + +——I guard against both; for, in the first place, I have left half a +dozen places purposely open for them;—and in the next place, I pay them +all court.—Gentlemen, I kiss your hands, I protest no company could +give me half the pleasure,—by my soul I am glad to see you———I beg only +you will make no strangers of yourselves, but sit down without any +ceremony, and fall on heartily. + +I said I had left six places, and I was upon the point of carrying my +complaisance so far, as to have left a seventh open for them,—and in +this very spot I stand on; but being told by a Critick (tho’ not by +occupation,—but by nature) that I had acquitted myself well enough, I +shall fill it up directly, hoping, in the mean time, that I shall be +able to make a great deal of more room next year. + +———How, in the name of wonder! could your uncle _Toby_, who, it seems, +was a military man, and whom you have represented as no fool,—be at the +same time such a confused, pudding-headed, muddle-headed, fellow, as—Go +look. + +So, Sir Critick, I could have replied; but I scorn it.—’Tis language +unurbane,—and only befitting the man who cannot give clear and +satisfactory accounts of things, or dive deep enough into the first +causes of human ignorance and confusion. It is moreover the reply +valiant—and therefore I reject it; for tho’ it might have suited my +uncle _Toby_’s character as a soldier excellently well,—and had he not +accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle the _Lillabullero_, as +he wanted no courage, ’tis the very answer he would have given; yet it +would by no means have done for me. You see as plain as can be, that I +write as a man of erudition;—that even my similies, my allusions, my +illustrations, my metaphors, are erudite,—and that I must sustain my +character properly, and contrast it properly too,—else what would +become of me? Why, Sir, I should be undone;—at this very moment that I +am going here to fill up one place against a critick,—I should have +made an opening for a couple. + +——Therefore I answer thus: + +Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you ever +read such a book as _Locke_’s Essay upon the Human +Understanding?——Don’t answer me rashly—because many, I know, quote the +book, who have not read it—and many have read it who understand it +not:—If either of these is your case, as I write to instruct, I will +tell you in three words what the book is.—It is a history.—A history! +of who? what? where? when? Don’t hurry yourself—It is a history-book, +Sir, (which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what passes in a +man’s own mind; and if you will say so much of the book, and no more, +believe me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysick +circle. + +But this by the way. + +Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look down into the +bottom of this matter, it will be found that the cause of obscurity and +confusion, in the mind of a man, is threefold. + +Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight and +transient impressions made by the objects, when the said organs are not +dull. And thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what +it has received.—Call down _Dolly_ your chamber-maid, and I will give +you my cap and bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain +that _Dolly_ herself should understand it as well as _Malbranch._——When +_Dolly_ has indited her epistle to _Robin_, and has thrust her arm into +the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right side;—take that +opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception +can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by +that one thing which _Dolly_’s hand is in search of.—Your organs are +not so dull that I should inform you—’tis an inch, Sir, of red +seal-wax. + +When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if _Dolly_ fumbles too +long for her thimble, till the wax is over hardened, it will not +receive the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse which was wont +to imprint it. Very well. If _Dolly_’s wax, for want of better, is +bees-wax, or of a temper too soft,—tho’ it may receive,—it will not +hold the impression, how hard soever _Dolly_ thrusts against it; and +last of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble, but applied +thereto in careless haste, as her Mistress rings the bell;——in any one +of these three cases the print left by the thimble will be as unlike +the prototype as a brass-jack. + +Now you must understand that not one of these was the true cause of the +confusion in my uncle _Toby_’s discourse; and it is for that very +reason I enlarge upon them so long, after the manner of great +physiologists—to shew the world, what it did _not_ arise from. + +What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a fertile source of +obscurity it is,—and ever will be,—and that is the unsteady uses of +words, which have perplexed the clearest and most exalted +understandings. + +It is ten to one (at _Arthur_’s) whether you have ever read the +literary histories of past ages;—if you have, what terrible battles, +’yclept logomachies, have they occasioned and perpetuated with so much +gall and ink-shed,—that a good-natured man cannot read the accounts of +them without tears in his eyes. + +Gentle critick! when thou hast weighed all this, and considered within +thyself how much of thy own knowledge, discourse, and conversation has +been pestered and disordered, at one time or other, by this, and this +only:—What a pudder and racket in COUNCILS about χδια and υωοςασις; and +in the SCHOOLS of the learned about power and about spirit;—about +essences, and about quintessences;——about substances, and about +space.——What confusion in greater THEATRES from words of little +meaning, and as indeterminate a sense! when thou considerest this, thou +wilt not wonder at my uncle _Toby_’s perplexities,—thou wilt drop a +tear of pity upon his scarp and his counterscarp;—his glacis and his +covered way;—his ravelin and his half- moon: ’Twas not by ideas,—by +Heaven; his life was put in jeopardy by words. + +C H A P. XXVIII + +WHEN my uncle _Toby_ got his map of _Namur_ to his mind, he began +immediately to apply himself, and with the utmost diligence, to the +study of it; for nothing being of more importance to him than his +recovery, and his recovery depending, as you have read, upon the +passions and affections of his mind, it behoved him to take the nicest +care to make himself so far master of his subject, as to be able to +talk upon it without emotion. + +In a fortnight’s close and painful application, which, by the bye, did +my uncle _Toby_’s wound, upon his groin, no good,—he was enabled, by +the help of some marginal documents at the feet of the elephant, +together with _Gobesius_’s military architecture and pyroballogy, +translated from the _Flemish_, to form his discourse with passable +perspicuity; and before he was two full months gone,—he was right +eloquent upon it, and could make not only the attack of the advanced +counterscarp with great order;—but having, by that time, gone much +deeper into the art, than what his first motive made necessary, my +uncle _Toby_ was able to cross the _Maes_ and _Sambre_; make diversions +as far as _Vauban_’s line, the abbey of _Salsines_, &c. and give his +visitors as distinct a history of each of their attacks, as of that of +the gate of _St. Nicolas_, where he had the honour to receive his +wound. + +But desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with +the acquisition of it. The more my uncle _Toby_ pored over his map, the +more he took a liking to it!—by the same process and electrical +assimilation, as I told you, through which I ween the souls of +connoisseurs themselves, by long friction and incumbition, have the +happiness, at length, to get all +be-virtu’d—be-pictured,—be-butterflied, and be-fiddled. + +The more my uncle _Toby_ drank of this sweet fountain of science, the +greater was the heat and impatience of his thirst, so that before the +first year of his confinement had well gone round, there was scarce a +fortified town in _Italy_ or _Flanders_, of which, by one means or +other, he had not procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and +carefully collating therewith the histories of their sieges, their +demolitions, their improvements, and new works, all which he would read +with that intense application and delight, that he would forget +himself, his wound, his confinement, his dinner. + +In the second year my uncle _Toby_ purchased _Ramelli_ and _Cataneo_, +translated from the _Italian_;—likewise _Stevinus, Moralis_, the +Chevalier _de Ville, Lorini, Cochorn, Sheeter_, the Count _de Pagan_, +the Marshal _Vauban_, Mons. _Blondel_, with almost as many more books +of military architecture, as Don _Quixote_ was found to have of +chivalry, when the curate and barber invaded his library. + +Towards the beginning of the third year, which was in _August_, +ninety-nine, my uncle _Toby_ found it necessary to understand a little +of projectiles:—and having judged it best to draw his knowledge from +the fountain-head, he began with _N. Tartaglia_, who it seems was the +first man who detected the imposition of a cannon-ball’s doing all that +mischief under the notion of a right line—This _N. Tartaglia_ proved to +my uncle _Toby_ to be an impossible thing. + +——Endless is the search of Truth. + +No sooner was my uncle _Toby_ satisfied which road the cannon-ball did +not go, but he was insensibly led on, and resolved in his mind to +enquire and find out which road the ball did go: For which purpose he +was obliged to set off afresh with old _Maltus_, and studied him +devoutly.—He proceeded next to _Galileo_ and _Torricellius_, wherein, +by certain Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the +precise path to be a PARABOLA—or else an HYPERBOLA,—and that the +parameter, or _latus rectum_, of the conic section of the said path, +was to the quantity and amplitude in a direct _ratio_, as the whole +line to the sine of double the angle of incidence, formed by the breech +upon an horizontal plane;—and that the semiparameter,——stop! my dear +uncle _Toby_——stop!—go not one foot farther into this thorny and +bewildered track,—intricate are the steps! intricate are the mazes of +this labyrinth! intricate are the troubles which the pursuit of this +bewitching phantom KNOWLEDGE will bring upon thee.—O my +uncle;—fly—fly,—fly from it as from a serpent.——Is it fit——goodnatured +man! thou should’st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights +baking thy blood with hectic watchings?——Alas! ’twill exasperate thy +symptoms,—check thy perspirations—evaporate thy spirits—waste thy +animal strength, dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive +habit of body,——impair thy health,——and hasten all the infirmities of +thy old age.—O my uncle! my uncle _Toby._ + +C H A P. XXIX + +I WOULD not give a groat for that man’s knowledge in pen-craft, who +does not understand this,——That the best plain narrative in the world, +tacked very close to the last spirited apostrophe to my uncle +_Toby_——would have felt both cold and vapid upon the reader’s +palate;—therefore I forthwith put an end to the chapter, though I was +in the middle of my story. + +——Writers of my stamp have one principle in common with painters. Where +an exact copying makes our pictures less striking, we choose the less +evil; deeming it even more pardonable to trespass against truth, than +beauty. This is to be understood _cum grano salis_; but be it as it +will,—as the parallel is made more for the sake of letting the +apostrophe cool, than any thing else,—’tis not very material whether +upon any other score the reader approves of it or not. + +In the latter end of the third year, my uncle _Toby_ perceiving that +the parameter and semi-parameter of the conic section angered his +wound, he left off the study of projectiles in a kind of a huff, and +betook himself to the practical part of fortification only; the +pleasure of which, like a spring held back, returned upon him with +redoubled force. + +It was in this year that my uncle began to break in upon the daily +regularity of a clean shirt,——to dismiss his barber unshaven,——and to +allow his surgeon scarce time sufficient to dress his wound, concerning +himself so little about it, as not to ask him once in seven times +dressing, how it went on: when, lo!—all of a sudden, for the change was +quick as lightning, he began to sigh heavily for his +recovery,——complained to my father, grew impatient with the +surgeon:——and one morning, as he heard his foot coming up stairs, he +shut up his books, and thrust aside his instruments, in order to +expostulate with him upon the protraction of the cure, which, he told +him, might surely have been accomplished at least by that time:—He +dwelt long upon the miseries he had undergone, and the sorrows of his +four years melancholy imprisonment;——adding, that had it not been for +the kind looks and fraternal chearings of the best of brothers,—he had +long since sunk under his misfortunes.——My father was by. My uncle +_Toby_’s eloquence brought tears into his eyes;——’twas unexpected:——My +uncle _Toby_, by nature was not eloquent;—it had the greater +effect:——The surgeon was confounded;——not that there wanted grounds for +such, or greater marks of impatience,—but ’twas unexpected too; in the +four years he had attended him, he had never seen any thing like it in +my uncle _Toby_’s carriage; he had never once dropped one fretful or +discontented word;——he had been all patience,—all submission. + +—We lose the right of complaining sometimes by forbearing it;—but we +often treble the force:—The surgeon was astonished; but much more so, +when he heard my uncle Toby go on, and peremptorily insist upon his +healing up the wound directly,—or sending for Monsieur _Ronjat_, the +king’s serjeant-surgeon, to do it for him. + +The desire of life and health is implanted in man’s nature;——the love +of liberty and enlargement is a sister-passion to it: These my uncle +_Toby_ had in common with his species—and either of them had been +sufficient to account for his earnest desire to get well and out of +doors;——but I have told you before, that nothing wrought with our +family after the common way;——and from the time and manner in which +this eager desire shewed itself in the present case, the penetrating +reader will suspect there was some other cause or crotchet for it in my +uncle _Toby_’s head:——There was so, and ’tis the subject of the next +chapter to set forth what that cause and crotchet was. I own, when +that’s done, ’twill be time to return back to the parlour fire-side, +where we left my uncle _Toby_ in the middle of his sentence. + +C H A P. XXX + +WHEN a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,—or, +in other words, when his HOBBY-HORSE grows headstrong,——farewell cool +reason and fair discretion! + +My uncle _Toby_’s wound was near well, and as soon as the surgeon +recovered his surprize, and could get leave to say as much——he told +him, ’twas just beginning to incarnate; and that if no fresh +exfoliation happened, which there was no sign of,—it would be dried up +in five or six weeks. The sound of as many Olympiads, twelve hours +before, would have conveyed an idea of shorter duration to my uncle +_Toby_’s mind.——The succession of his ideas was now rapid,—he broiled +with impatience to put his design in execution;——and so, without +consulting farther with any soul living,—which, by the bye, I think is +right, when you are predetermined to take no one soul’s advice,——he +privately ordered _Trim_, his man, to pack up a bundle of lint and +dressings, and hire a chariot-and-four to be at the door exactly by +twelve o’clock that day, when he knew my father would be upon +’Change.——So leaving a bank-note upon the table for the surgeon’s care +of him, and a letter of tender thanks for his brother’s—he packed up +his maps, his books of fortification, his instruments, &c. and by the +help of a crutch on one side, and _Trim_ on the other,——my uncle _Toby_ +embarked for _Shandy-Hall._ + +The reason, or rather the rise of this sudden demigration was as +follows: + +The table in my uncle _Toby_’s room, and at which, the night before +this change happened, he was sitting with his maps, &c. about him—being +somewhat of the smallest, for that infinity of great and small +instruments of knowledge which usually lay crowded upon it—he had the +accident, in reaching over for his tobacco-box, to throw down his +compasses, and in stooping to take the compasses up, with his sleeve he +threw down his case of instruments and snuffers;—and as the dice took a +run against him, in his endeavouring to catch the snuffers in +falling,——he thrust Monsieur _Blondel_ off the table, and Count _de +Pagon_ o’top of him. + +’Twas to no purpose for a man, lame as my uncle _Toby_ was, to think of +redressing these evils by himself,—he rung his bell for his man +_Trim_;——_Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, prithee see what confusion I +have here been making—I must have some better contrivance, +_Trim._—Can’st not thou take my rule, and measure the length and +breadth of this table, and then go and bespeak me one as big +again?——Yes, an’ please your Honour, replied _Trim_, making a bow; but +I hope your Honour will be soon well enough to get down to your +country-seat, where,—as your Honour takes so much pleasure in +fortification, we could manage this matter to a T. + +I must here inform you, that this servant of my uncle _Toby_’s, who +went by the name of _Trim_, had been a corporal in my uncle’s own +company,—his real name was _James Butler_,—but having got the nick-name +of _Trim_, in the regiment, my uncle _Toby_, unless when he happened to +be very angry with him, would never call him by any other name. + +The poor fellow had been disabled for the service, by a wound on his +left knee by a musket-bullet, at the battle of _Landen_, which was two +years before the affair of _Namur_;—and as the fellow was well-beloved +in the regiment, and a handy fellow into the bargain, my uncle _Toby_ +took him for his servant; and of an excellent use was he, attending my +uncle _Toby_ in the camp and in his quarters as a valet, groom, barber, +cook, sempster, and nurse; and indeed, from first to last, waited upon +him and served him with great fidelity and affection. + +My uncle _Toby_ loved the man in return, and what attached him more to +him still, was the similitude of their knowledge.——For Corporal _Trim_, +(for so, for the future, I shall call him) by four years occasional +attention to his Master’s discourse upon fortified towns, and the +advantage of prying and peeping continually into his Master’s plans, +&c. exclusive and besides what he gained HOBBY-HORSICALLY, as a +body-servant, _Non Hobby Horsical per se_;——had become no mean +proficient in the science; and was thought, by the cook and +chamber-maid, to know as much of the nature of strong-holds as my uncle +_Toby_ himself. + +I have but one more stroke to give to finish Corporal _Trim_’s +character,——and it is the only dark line in it.—The fellow loved to +advise,—or rather to hear himself talk; his carriage, however, was so +perfectly respectful, ’twas easy to keep him silent when you had him +so; but set his tongue a-going,—you had no hold of him—he was +voluble;—the eternal interlardings of _your Honour_, with the +respectfulness of Corporal _Trim_’s manner, interceding so strong in +behalf of his elocution,—that though you might have been +incommoded,——you could not well be angry. My uncle _Toby_ was seldom +either the one or the other with him,—or, at least, this fault, in +_Trim_, broke no squares with them. My uncle _Toby_, as I said, loved +the man;——and besides, as he ever looked upon a faithful servant,—but +as an humble friend,—he could not bear to stop his mouth.——Such was +Corporal _Trim._ + +If I durst presume, continued _Trim_, to give your Honour my advice, +and speak my opinion in this matter.—Thou art welcome, _Trim_, quoth my +uncle _Toby_—speak,——speak what thou thinkest upon the subject, man, +without fear.—Why then, replied _Trim_, (not hanging his ears and +scratching his head like a country-lout, but) stroking his hair back +from his forehead, and standing erect as before his division,—I think, +quoth _Trim_, advancing his left, which was his lame leg, a little +forwards,—and pointing with his right hand open towards a map of +_Dunkirk_, which was pinned against the hangings,——I think, quoth +Corporal _Trim_, with humble submission to your Honour’s better +judgment,——that these ravelins, bastions, curtins, and hornworks, make +but a poor, contemptible, fiddle-faddle piece of work of it here upon +paper, compared to what your Honour and I could make of it were we in +the country by ourselves, and had but a rood, or a rood and a half of +ground to do what we pleased with: As summer is coming on, continued +_Trim_, your Honour might sit out of doors, and give me the +nography—(Call it ichnography, quoth my uncle,)——of the town or +citadel, your Honour was pleased to sit down before,—and I will be shot +by your Honour upon the glacis of it, if I did not fortify it to your +Honour’s mind.——I dare say thou would’st, _Trim_, quoth my uncle.—For +if your Honour, continued the Corporal, could but mark me the polygon, +with its exact lines and angles—That I could do very well, quoth my +uncle.—I would begin with the fossé, and if your Honour could tell me +the proper depth and breadth—I can to a hair’s breadth, _Trim_, replied +my uncle.—I would throw out the earth upon this hand towards the town +for the scarp,—and on that hand towards the campaign for the +counterscarp.—Very right, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_:—And when I had +sloped them to your mind,——an’ please your Honour, I would face the +glacis, as the finest fortifications are done in _Flanders_, with +sods,——and as your Honour knows they should be,—and I would make the +walls and parapets with sods too.—The best engineers call them gazons, +_Trim_, said my uncle _Toby._—Whether they are gazons or sods, is not +much matter, replied _Trim_; your Honour knows they are ten times +beyond a facing either of brick or stone.——I know they are, _Trim_ in +some respects,——quoth my uncle _Toby_, nodding his head;—for a +cannon-ball enters into the gazon right onwards, without bringing any +rubbish down with it, which might fill the fossé, (as was the case at +_St. Nicolas_’s gate) and facilitate the passage over it. + +Your Honour understands these matters, replied Corporal _Trim_, better +than any officer in his Majesty’s service;——but would your Honour +please to let the bespeaking of the table alone, and let us but go into +the country, I would work under your Honour’s directions like a horse, +and make fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their +batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it should be worth all +the world’s riding twenty miles to go and see it. + +My uncle _Toby_ blushed as red as scarlet as _Trim_ went on;—but it was +not a blush of guilt,—of modesty,—or of anger,—it was a blush of +joy;—he was fired with Corporal _Trim_’s project and +description.—_Trim!_ said my uncle _Toby_, thou hast said enough.—We +might begin the campaign, continued _Trim_, on the very day that his +Majesty and the Allies take the field, and demolish them town by town +as fast as—_Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, say no more. Your Honour, +continued _Trim_, might sit in your arm-chair (pointing to it) this +fine weather, giving me your orders, and I would——Say no more, _Trim_, +quoth my uncle _Toby_——Besides, your Honour would get not only pleasure +and good pastime—but good air, and good exercise, and good health,—and +your Honour’s wound would be well in a month. Thou hast said enough, +_Trim_,—quoth my uncle _Toby_ (putting his hand into his +breeches-pocket)——I like thy project mightily.—And if your Honour +pleases, I’ll this moment go and buy a pioneer’s spade to take down +with us, and I’ll bespeak a shovel and a pick-axe, and a couple of——Say +no more, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, leaping up upon one leg, quite +overcome with rapture,—and thrusting a guinea into _Trim_’s +hand,—_Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, say no more;—but go down, _Trim_, +this moment, my lad, and bring up my supper this instant. + +_Trim_ ran down and brought up his master’s supper,—to no +purpose:—_Trim_’s plan of operation ran so in my uncle _Toby_’s head, +he could not taste it.—_Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, get me to +bed.—’Twas all one.—Corporal _Trim_’s description had fired his +imagination,—my uncle _Toby_ could not shut his eyes.—The more he +considered it, the more bewitching the scene appeared to him;—so that, +two full hours before day-light, he had come to a final determination +and had concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal _Trim_’s +decampment. + +My uncle _Toby_ had a little neat country-house of his own, in the +village where my father’s estate lay at _Shandy_, which had been left +him by an old uncle, with a small estate of about one hundred pounds +a-year. Behind this house, and contiguous to it, was a kitchen-garden +of about half an acre, and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off +from it by a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just about +as much ground as Corporal _Trim_ wished for;—so that as _Trim_ uttered +the words, “A rood and a half of ground to do what they would +with,”—this identical bowling-green instantly presented itself, and +became curiously painted all at once, upon the retina of my uncle +_Toby_’s fancy;—which was the physical cause of making him change +colour, or at least of heightening his blush, to that immoderate degree +I spoke of. + +Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and +expectation, than my uncle _Toby_ did, to enjoy this self-same thing in +private;—I say in private;—for it was sheltered from the house, as I +told you, by a tall yew hedge, and was covered on the other three +sides, from mortal sight, by rough holly and thick-set flowering +shrubs:—so that the idea of not being seen, did not a little contribute +to the idea of pleasure pre-conceived in my uncle _Toby_’s mind.—Vain +thought! however thick it was planted about,——or private soever it +might seem,—to think, dear uncle _Toby_, of enjoying a thing which took +up a whole rood and a half of ground,—and not have it known! + +How my uncle _Toby_ and Corporal _Trim_ managed this matter,—with the +history of their campaigns, which were no way barren of events,——may +make no uninteresting under-plot in the epitasis and working-up of this +drama.—At present the scene must drop,—and change for the parlour +fire-side. + +C H A P. XXXI + +——WHAT can they be doing? brother, said my father.—I think, replied my +uncle _Toby_,—taking, as I told you, his pipe from his mouth, and +striking the ashes out of it as he began his sentence;——I think, +replied he,—it would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell. + +Pray, what’s all that racket over our heads, _Obadiah?_——quoth my +father;——my brother and I can scarce hear ourselves speak. + +Sir, answered _Obadiah_, making a bow towards his left shoulder,—my +Mistress is taken very badly.—And where’s _Susannah_ running down the +garden there, as if they were going to ravish her?——Sir, she is running +the shortest cut into the town, replied _Obadiah_, to fetch the old +midwife.—Then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and do you go directly +for Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife, with all our services,——and let him +know your mistress is fallen into labour——and that I desire he will +return with you with all speed. + +It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle +_Toby_, as _Obadiah_ shut the door,——as there is so expert an operator +as Dr. _Slop_ so near,—that my wife should persist to the very last in +this obstinate humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who +has had one misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;——and +not only the life of my child, brother,——but her own life, and with it +the lives of all the children I might, peradventure, have begot out of +her hereafter. + +Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle _Toby_, my sister does it to save the +expence:—A pudding’s end,—replied my father,——the Doctor must be paid +the same for inaction as action,—if not better,—to keep him in temper. + +——Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle +_Toby_, in the simplicity of his heart,—but MODESTY.—My sister, I dare +say, added he, does not care to let a man come so near her ****. I will +not say whether my uncle _Toby_ had completed the sentence or not;—’tis +for his advantage to suppose he had,——as, I think, he could have added +no ONE WORD which would have improved it. + +If, on the contrary, my uncle _Toby_ had not fully arrived at the +period’s end—then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of +my father’s tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that +ornamental figure in oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the +_Aposiopesis._——Just Heaven! how does the _Poco piu_ and the _Poco +meno_ of the _Italian_ artists;—the insensible MORE OR LESS, determine +the precise line of beauty in the sentence, as well as in the statue! +How do the slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the pen, the +fiddle-stick, _et cætera_,—give the true swell, which gives the true +pleasure!—O my countrymen:—be nice; be cautious of your language; and +never, O! never let it be forgotten upon what small particles your +eloquence and your fame depend. + +——“My sister, mayhap,” quoth my uncle _Toby_, “does not choose to let a +man come so near her ****” Make this dash,—’tis an Aposiopesis,—Take +the dash away, and write _Backside_,—’tis Bawdy.—Scratch Backside out, +and put _Cover’d way_ in, ’tis a Metaphor;—and, I dare say, as +fortification ran so much in my uncle _Toby_’s head, that if he had +been left to have added one word to the sentence,——that word was it. + +But whether that was the case or not the case;—or whether the snapping +of my father’s tobacco-pipe, so critically, happened through accident +or anger, will be seen in due time. + +C H A P. XXXII + +THO’ my father was a good natural philosopher,—yet he was something of +a moral philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe +snapp’d short in the middle,—he had nothing to do, as such, but to have +taken hold of the two pieces, and thrown them gently upon the back of +the fire.——He did no such thing;——he threw them with all the violence +in the world;—and, to give the action still more emphasis,—he started +upon both his legs to do it. + +This looked something like heat;—and the manner of his reply to what my +uncle _Toby_ was saying, proved it was so. + +—“Not choose,” quoth my father, (repeating my uncle _Toby_’s words) “to +let a man come so near her!”——By Heaven, brother _Toby!_ you would try +the patience of _Job_;—and I think I have the plagues of one already +without it.——Why?——Where?——Wherein?——Wherefore?——Upon what account? +replied my uncle _Toby_: in the utmost astonishment.—To think, said my +father, of a man living to your age, brother, and knowing so little +about women!——I know nothing at all about them,—replied my uncle +_Toby_: And I think, continued he, that the shock I received the year +after the demolition of _Dunkirk_, in my affair with widow +_Wadman_;—which shock you know I should not have received, but from my +total ignorance of the sex,—has given me just cause to say, That I +neither know nor do pretend to know any thing about ’em or their +concerns either.—Methinks, brother, replied my father, you might, at +least, know so much as the right end of a woman from the wrong. + +It is said in _Aristotle’s Master Piece_, “That when a man doth think +of any thing which is past,—he looketh down upon the ground;——but that +when he thinketh of something that is to come, he looketh up towards +the heavens.” + +My uncle _Toby_, I suppose, thought of neither, for he look’d +horizontally.—Right end! quoth my uncle _Toby_, muttering the two words +low to himself, and fixing his two eyes insensibly as he muttered them, +upon a small crevice, formed by a bad joint in the chimney-piece——Right +end of a woman!——I declare, quoth my uncle, I know no more which it is +than the man in the moon;——and if I was to think, continued my uncle +_Toby_ (keeping his eyes still fixed upon the bad joint) this month +together, I am sure I should not be able to find it out. + +Then, brother _Toby_, replied my father, I will tell you. + +Every thing in this world, continued my father (filling a fresh +pipe)—every thing in this world, my dear brother _Toby_, has two +handles.——Not always, quoth my uncle _Toby._——At least, replied my +father, every one has two hands,——which comes to the same thing.——Now, +if a man was to sit down coolly, and consider within himself the make, +the shape, the construction, come-at-ability, and convenience of all +the parts which constitute the whole of that animal, called Woman, and +compare them analogically—I never understood rightly the meaning of +that word,—quoth my uncle _Toby._— + +ANALOGY, replied my father, is the certain relation and agreement which +different——Here a devil of a rap at the door snapped my father’s +definition (like his tobacco-pipe) in two,—and, at the same time, +crushed the head of as notable and curious a dissertation as ever was +engendered in the womb of speculation;—it was some months before my +father could get an opportunity to be safely delivered of it:—And, at +this hour, it is a thing full as problematical as the subject of the +dissertation itself,—(considering the confusion and distresses of our +domestick misadventures, which are now coming thick one upon the back +of another) whether I shall be able to find a place for it in the third +volume or not. + +C H A P. XXXIII + +IT is about an hour and a half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle +_Toby_ rung the bell, when _Obadiah_ was ordered to saddle a horse, and +go for Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife;—so that no one can say, with +reason, that I have not allowed _Obadiah_ time enough, poetically +speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and +come;——though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce +had time to get on his boots. + +If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to +take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of +the bell, and the rap at the door;—and, after finding it to be no more +than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,—should take upon +him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather +probability of time;—I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and +of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our +ideas——and is the true scholastic pendulum,——and by which, as a +scholar, I will be tried in this matter,—abjuring and detesting the +jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever. + +I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight +miles from _Shandy-Hall_ to Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife’s house:—and +that whilst _Obadiah_ has been going those said miles and back, I have +brought my uncle _Toby_ from _Namur_, quite across all _Flanders_, into +_England_:—That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years;—and +have since travelled him and Corporal _Trim_ in a chariot-and-four, a +journey of near two hundred miles down into _Yorkshire._—all which put +together, must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance +of Dr. _Slop_ upon the stage,—as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a +song, or a concerto between the acts. + +If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and +thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen +seconds,—when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea, +though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, +rendering my book from this very moment, a professed ROMANCE, which, +before, was a book apocryphal:——If I am thus pressed—I then put an end +to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,——by +acquainting him, that _Obadiah_ had not got above threescore yards from +the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. _Slop_;—and indeed he gave a +dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a +tragical one too. + +Imagine to yourself;—but this had better begin a new chapter. + +C H A P. XXXIV + +IMAGINE to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor +_Slop_, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a +breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done +honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards. + +Such were the out-lines of Dr. _Slop_’s figure, which—if you have read +_Hogarth_’s analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you +would;——you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to +the mind by three strokes as three hundred. + +Imagine such a one,—for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. _Slop_’s +figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro’ the dirt upon +the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour——but of +strength,——alack!——scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such +a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.——They were +not.——Imagine to yourself, _Obadiah_ mounted upon a strong monster of a +coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable +speed the adverse way. + +Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description. + +Had Dr. _Slop_ beheld _Obadiah_ a mile off, posting in a narrow lane +directly towards him, at that monstrous rate,—splashing and plunging +like a devil thro’ thick and thin, as he approached, would not such a +phænomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, +round its axis,—have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr. +_Slop_ in his situation, than the _worst_ of _Whiston_’s comets?—To say +nothing of the NUCLEUS; that is, of _Obadiah_ and the coach-horse.—In +my idea, the vortex alone of ’em was enough to have involved and +carried, if not the doctor, at least the doctor’s pony, quite away with +it. What then do you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr. +_Slop_ have been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that +he was advancing thus warily along towards _Shandy-Hall_, and had +approached to within sixty yards of it, and within five yards of a +sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the garden-wall,—and in the +dirtiest part of a dirty lane,—when _Obadiah_ and his coach-horse +turned the corner, rapid, furious,—pop,—full upon him!—Nothing, I +think, in nature, can be supposed more terrible than such a +rencounter,—so imprompt! so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as +Dr. _Slop_ was. + +What could Dr. _Slop_ do?——he crossed himself +—Pugh!—but the doctor, +Sir, was a Papist.—No matter; he had better have kept hold of the +pummel.—He had so;—nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing +at all; for in crossing himself he let go his whip,——and in attempting +to save his whip betwixt his knee and his saddle’s skirt, as it +slipped, he lost his stirrup,——in losing which he lost his seat;——and +in the multitude of all these losses (which, by the bye, shews what +little advantage there is in crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his +presence of mind. So that without waiting for _Obadiah_’s onset, he +left his pony to its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in +the stile and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other +consequence from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have +been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches deep in +the mire. + +_Obadiah_ pull’d off his cap twice to Dr. _Slop_;—once as he was +falling,—and then again when he saw him seated.——Ill-timed +complaisance;—had not the fellow better have stopped his horse, and got +off and help’d him?—Sir, he did all that his situation would allow;—but +the MOMENTUM of the coach-horse was so great, that _Obadiah_ could not +do it all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr. _Slop_, +before he could fully accomplish it any how;—and at the last, when he +did stop his beast, ’twas done with such an explosion of mud, that +_Obadiah_ had better have been a league off. In short, never was a Dr. +_Slop_ so beluted, and so transubstantiated, since that affair came +into fashion. + +C H A P. XXXV + +WHEN Dr. _Slop_ entered the back parlour, where my father and my uncle +_Toby_ were discoursing upon the nature of women,——it was hard to +determine whether Dr. _Slop_’s figure, or Dr. _Slop_’s presence, +occasioned more surprize to them; for as the accident happened so near +the house, as not to make it worth while for _Obadiah_ to remount +him,——_Obadiah_ had led him in as he was, _unwiped, unappointed, +unannealed_, with all his stains and blotches on him.—He stood like +_Hamlet_’s ghost, motionless and speechless, for a full minute and a +half at the parlour-door (_Obadiah_ still holding his hand) with all +the majesty of mud. His hinder parts, upon which he had received his +fall, totally besmeared,——and in every other part of him, blotched over +in such a manner with _Obadiah_’s explosion, that you would have sworn +(without mental reservation) that every grain of it had taken effect. + +Here was a fair opportunity for my uncle _Toby_ to have triumphed over +my father in his turn;—for no mortal, who had beheld Dr. _Slop_ in that +pickle, could have dissented from so much, at least, of my uncle +_Toby_’s opinion, “That mayhap his sister might not care to let such a +Dr. _Slop_ come so near her ****” But it was the _Argumentum ad +hominem_; and if my uncle _Toby_ was not very expert at it, you may +think, he might not care to use it.——No; the reason was,—’twas not his +nature to insult. + +Dr. _Slop_’s presence at that time, was no less problematical than the +mode of it; tho’ it is certain, one moment’s reflexion in my father +might have solved it; for he had apprized Dr. _Slop_ but the week +before, that my mother was at her full reckoning; and as the doctor had +heard nothing since, ’twas natural and very political too in him, to +have taken a ride to _Shandy-Hall_, as he did, merely to see how +matters went on. + +But my father’s mind took unfortunately a wrong turn in the +investigation; running, like the hypercritick’s, altogether upon the +ringing of the bell and the rap upon the door,—measuring their +distance, and keeping his mind so intent upon the operation, as to have +power to think of nothing else,——common-place infirmity of the greatest +mathematicians! working with might and main at the demonstration, and +so wasting all their strength upon it, that they have none left in them +to draw the corollary, to do good with. + +The ringing of the bell, and the rap upon the door, struck likewise +strong upon the sensorium of my uncle _Toby_,—but it excited a very +different train of thoughts;—the two irreconcileable pulsations +instantly brought _Stevinus_, the great engineer, along with them, into +my uncle _Toby_’s mind. What business _Stevinus_ had in this affair,—is +the greatest problem of all:——It shall be solved,—but not in the next +chapter. + +C H A P. XXXVI + +WRITING, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is +but a different name for conversation. As no one, who knows what he is +about in good company, would venture to talk all;——so no author, who +understands the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would +presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the +reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him +something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself. + +For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, +and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my +own. + +’Tis his turn now;—I have given an ample description of Dr. _Slop_’s +sad overthrow, and of his sad appearance in the back-parlour;—his +imagination must now go on with it for a while. + +Let the reader imagine then, that Dr. _Slop_ has told his tale—and in +what words, and with what aggravations, his fancy chooses;—Let him +suppose, that _Obadiah_ has told his tale also, and with such rueful +looks of affected concern, as he thinks best will contrast the two +figures as they stand by each other.—Let him imagine, that my father +has stepped up stairs to see my mother.—And, to conclude this work of +imagination,—let him imagine the doctor washed,—rubbed down, and +condoled,—felicitated,—got into a pair of _Obadiah_’s pumps, stepping +forwards towards the door, upon the very point of entering upon action. + +Truce!—truce, good Dr. _Slop!_—stay thy obstetrick hand;——return it +safe into thy bosom to keep it warm;——little dost thou know what +obstacles,——little dost thou think what hidden causes, retard its +operation!——Hast thou, Dr. _Slop_,—hast thou been entrusted with the +secret articles of the solemn treaty which has brought thee into this +place?—Art thou aware that at this instant, a daughter of _Lucina_ is +put obstetrically over thy head? Alas!—’tis too true.—Besides, great +son of _Pilumnus!_ what canst thou do? Thou hast come forth +unarm’d;—thou hast left thy _tire-téte_,—thy new-invented +_forceps_,—thy _crotchet_,—thy _squirt_, and all thy instruments of +salvation and deliverance, behind thee,—By Heaven! at this moment they +are hanging up in a green bays bag, betwixt thy two pistols, at the +bed’s head!—Ring;—call;—send _Obadiah_ back upon the coach-horse to +bring them with all speed. + +——Make great haste, _Obadiah_, quoth my father, and I’ll give thee a +crown! and quoth my uncle _Toby_, I’ll give him another. + +C H A P. XXXVII + +YOUR sudden and unexpected arrival, quoth my uncle _Toby_, addressing +himself to Dr. _Slop_, (all three of them sitting down to the fire +together, as my uncle _Toby_ began to speak)—instantly brought the +great _Stevinus_ into my head, who, you must know, is a favourite +author with me.—Then, added my father, making use of the argument _Ad +Crumenam_,—I will lay twenty guineas to a single crown-piece (which +will serve to give away to _Obadiah_ when he gets back) that this same +_Stevinus_ was some engineer or other—or has wrote something or other, +either directly or indirectly, upon the science of fortification. + +He has so,—replied my uncle _Toby._—I knew it, said my father, though, +for the soul of me, I cannot see what kind of connection there can be +betwixt Dr. _Slop_’s sudden coming, and a discourse upon +fortification;—yet I fear’d it.—Talk of what we will, brother,——or let +the occasion be never so foreign or unfit for the subject,—you are sure +to bring it in. I would not, brother _Toby_, continued my father,——I +declare I would not have my head so full of curtins and +horn-works.—That I dare say you would not, quoth Dr. _Slop_, +interrupting him, and laughing most immoderately at his pun. + +_Dennis_ the critic could not detest and abhor a pun, or the +insinuation of a pun, more cordially than my father;—he would grow +testy upon it at any time;—but to be broke in upon by one, in a serious +discourse, was as bad, he would say, as a fillip upon the nose;——he saw +no difference. + +Sir, quoth my uncle _Toby_, addressing himself to Dr. _Slop_,—the +curtins my brother _Shandy_ mentions here, have nothing to do with +beadsteads;—tho’, I know _Du Cange_ says, “That bed-curtains, in all +probability, have taken their name from them;”—nor have the horn-works +he speaks of, any thing in the world to do with the horn-works of +cuckoldom: But the _Curtin_, Sir, is the word we use in fortification, +for that part of the wall or rampart which lies between the two +bastions and joins them—Besiegers seldom offer to carry on their +attacks directly against the curtin, for this reason, because they are +so well _flanked._ ( ’Tis the case of other curtains, quoth Dr. _Slop_, +laughing.) However, continued my uncle _Toby_, to make them sure, we +generally choose to place ravelins before them, taking care only to +extend them beyond the fossé or ditch:——The common men, who know very +little of fortification, confound the ravelin and the half-moon +together,—tho’ they are very different things;—not in their figure or +construction, for we make them exactly alike, in all points; for they +always consist of two faces, making a salient angle, with the gorges, +not straight, but in form of a crescent;——Where then lies the +difference? (quoth my father, a little testily.)—In their situations, +answered my uncle _Toby:_—For when a ravelin, brother, stands before +the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when a ravelin stands before a +bastion, then the ravelin is not a ravelin;—it is a half-moon;—a +half-moon likewise is a half-moon, and no more, so long as it stands +before its bastion;——but was it to change place, and get before the +curtin,—’twould be no longer a half-moon; a half-moon, in that case, is +not a half-moon;—’tis no more than a ravelin.——I think, quoth my +father, that the noble science of defence has its weak sides——as well +as others. + +—As for the horn-work (high! ho! sigh’d my father) which, continued my +uncle _Toby_, my brother was speaking of, they are a very considerable +part of an outwork;——they are called by the _French_ engineers, +_Ouvrage à corne_, and we generally make them to cover such places as +we suspect to be weaker than the rest;—’tis formed by two epaulments or +demi-bastions—they are very pretty,—and if you will take a walk, I’ll +engage to shew you one well worth your trouble.—I own, continued my +uncle _Toby_, when we crown them,—they are much stronger, but then they +are very expensive, and take up a great deal of ground, so that, in my +opinion, they are most of use to cover or defend the head of a camp; +otherwise the double tenaille—By the mother who bore us!——brother +_Toby_, quoth my father, not able to hold out any longer,——you would +provoke a saint;——here have you got us, I know not how, not only souse +into the middle of the old subject again:—But so full is your head of +these confounded works, that though my wife is this moment in the pains +of labour, and you hear her cry out, yet nothing will serve you but to +carry off the man-midwife.——_Accoucheur_,—if you please, quoth Dr. +_Slop._—With all my heart, replied my father, I don’t care what they +call you,—but I wish the whole science of fortification, with all its +inventors, at the devil;—it has been the death of thousands,—and it +will be mine in the end.—I would not, I would not, brother _Toby_, have +my brains so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes, +ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery, to be proprietor of _Namur_, +and of all the towns in _Flanders_ with it. + +My uncle _Toby_ was a man patient of injuries;—not from want of +courage,—I have told you in a former chapter, “that he was a man of +courage:”—And will add here, that where just occasions presented, or +called it forth,—I know no man under whose arm I would have sooner +taken shelter;——nor did this arise from any insensibility or obtuseness +of his intellectual parts;—for he felt this insult of my father’s as +feelingly as a man could do;—but he was of a peaceful, placid +nature,—no jarring element in it,—all was mixed up so kindly within +him; my uncle _Toby_ had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly. + +—Go—says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzzed +about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time,—and which +after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him;—I’ll +not hurt thee, says my uncle _Toby_, rising from his chair, and going +across the room, with the fly in his hand,—I’ll not hurt a hair of thy +head:—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he +spoke, to let it escape;—go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I +hurt thee?——This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me. + +I was but ten years old when this happened: but whether it was, that +the action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age of pity, +which instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most +pleasurable sensation;—or how far the manner and expression of it might +go towards it;—or in what degree, or by what secret magick,—a tone of +voice and harmony of movement, attuned by mercy, might find a passage +to my heart, I know not;—this I know, that the lesson of universal +good-will then taught and imprinted by my uncle _Toby_, has never since +been worn out of my mind: And tho’ I would not depreciate what the +study of the _Literæ humaniores_, at the university, have done for me +in that respect, or discredit the other helps of an expensive education +bestowed upon me, both at home and abroad since;—yet I often think that +I owe one half of my philanthropy to that one accidental impression. + +This is to serve for parents and governors instead of a whole volume +upon the subject. + +I could not give the reader this stroke in my uncle _Toby_’s picture, +by the instrument with which I drew the other parts of it,—that taking +in no more than the mere HOBBY-HORSICAL likeness:—this is a part of his +moral character. My father, in this patient endurance of wrongs, which +I mention, was very different, as the reader must long ago have noted; +he had a much more acute and quick sensibility of nature, attended with +a little soreness of temper; tho’ this never transported him to any +thing which looked like malignancy:—yet in the little rubs and +vexations of life, ’twas apt to shew itself in a drollish and witty +kind of peevishness:——He was, however, frank and generous in his +nature;——at all times open to conviction; and in the little ebullitions +of this subacid humour towards others, but particularly towards my +uncle _Toby_, whom he truly loved:——he would feel more pain, ten times +told (except in the affair of my aunt _Dinah_, or where an hypothesis +was concerned) than what he ever gave. + +The characters of the two brothers, in this view of them, reflected +light upon each other, and appeared with great advantage in this affair +which arose about _Stevinus._ + +I need not tell the reader, if he keeps a HOBBY-HORSE,—that a man’s +HOBBY-HORSE is as tender a part as he has about him; and that these +unprovoked strokes at my uncle _Toby_’s could not be unfelt by +him.——No:——as I said above, my uncle _Toby_ did feel them, and very +sensibly too. + +Pray, Sir, what said he?—How did he behave?—O, Sir!—it was great: For +as soon as my father had done insulting his HOBBY-HORSE,——he turned his +head without the least emotion, from Dr. _Slop_, to whom he was +addressing his discourse, and looking up into my father’s face, with a +countenance spread over with so much good-nature;——so placid;——so +fraternal;——so inexpressibly tender towards him:—it penetrated my +father to his heart: He rose up hastily from his chair, and seizing +hold of both my uncle _Toby_’s hands as he spoke:—Brother _Toby_, said +he:—I beg thy pardon;——forgive, I pray thee, this rash humour which my +mother gave me.——My dear, dear brother, answered my uncle _Toby_, +rising up by my father’s help, say no more about it;—you are heartily +welcome, had it been ten times as much, brother. But ’tis ungenerous, +replied my father, to hurt any man;——a brother worse;——but to hurt a +brother of such gentle manners,—so unprovoking,—and so +unresenting;——’tis base:——By Heaven, ’tis cowardly.—You are heartily +welcome, brother, quoth my uncle _Toby_,——had it been fifty times as +much.——Besides, what have I to do, my dear _Toby_, cried my father, +either with your amusements or your pleasures, unless it was in my +power (which it is not) to increase their measure? + +——Brother _Shandy_, answered my uncle _Toby_, looking wistfully in his +face,——you are much mistaken in this point:—for you do increase my +pleasure very much, in begetting children for the _Shandy_ family at +your time of life.—But, by that, Sir, quoth Dr. _Slop_, Mr. _Shandy_ +increases his own.—Not a jot, quoth my father. + +C H A P. XXXVIII + +MY brother does it, quoth my uncle _Toby_, out of _principle._——In a +family way, I suppose, quoth Dr. _Slop._——Pshaw!—said my father,—’tis +not worth talking of. + +C H A P. XXXIX + +AT the end of the last chapter, my father and my uncle _Toby_ were left +both standing, like _Brutus_ and _Cassius_, at the close of the scene, +making up their accounts. + +As my father spoke the three last words,——he sat down;—my uncle _Toby_ +exactly followed his example, only, that before he took his chair, he +rung the bell, to order Corporal _Trim_, who was in waiting, to step +home for _Stevinus_:—my uncle _Toby_’s house being no farther off than +the opposite side of the way. + +Some men would have dropped the subject of _Stevinus_;—but my uncle +_Toby_ had no resentment in his heart, and he went on with the subject, +to shew my father that he had none. + +Your sudden appearance, Dr. _Slop_, quoth my uncle, resuming the +discourse, instantly brought _Stevinus_ into my head. (My father, you +may be sure, did not offer to lay any more wagers upon _Stevinus_’s +head.)——Because, continued my uncle _Toby_, the celebrated sailing +chariot, which belonged to Prince _Maurice_, and was of such wonderful +contrivance and velocity, as to carry half a dozen people thirty +_German_ miles, in I don’t know how few minutes,——was invented by +_Stevinus_, that great mathematician and engineer. + +You might have spared your servant the trouble, quoth Dr. _Slop_ (as +the fellow is lame) of going for _Stevinus_’s account of it, because in +my return from _Leyden_ thro’ the _Hague_, I walked as far as +_Schevling_, which is two long miles, on purpose to take a view of it. + +That’s nothing, replied my uncle _Toby_, to what the learned +_Peireskius_ did, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning +from _Paris_ to _Schevling_, and from _Schevling_ to _Paris_ back +again, in order to see it,—and nothing else. + +Some men cannot bear to be out-gone. + +The more fool _Peireskius_, replied Dr. _Slop._ But mark, ’twas out of +no contempt of _Peireskius_ at all;——but that _Peireskius_’s +indefatigable labour in trudging so far on foot, out of love for the +sciences, reduced the exploit of Dr. _Slop_, in that affair, to +nothing:—the more fool _Peireskius_, said he again.—Why so?—replied my +father, taking his brother’s part, not only to make reparation as fast +as he could for the insult he had given him, which sat still upon my +father’s mind;——but partly, that my father began really to interest +himself in the discourse.——Why so?——said he. Why is _Peireskius_, or +any man else, to be abused for an appetite for that, or any other +morsel of sound knowledge: For notwithstanding I know nothing of the +chariot in question, continued he, the inventor of it must have had a +very mechanical head; and tho’ I cannot guess upon what principles of +philosophy he has atchieved it;—yet certainly his machine has been +constructed upon solid ones, be they what they will, or it could not +have answered at the rate my brother mentions. + +It answered, replied my uncle _Toby_, as well, if not better; for, as +_Peireskius_ elegantly expresses it, speaking of the velocity of its +motion, _Tam citus erat, quam erat ventus_; which, unless I have forgot +my Latin, is, _that it was as swift as the wind itself._ + +But pray, Dr. _Slop_, quoth my father, interrupting my uncle (tho’ not +without begging pardon for it at the same time) upon what principles +was this self-same chariot set a-going?—Upon very pretty principles to +be sure, replied Dr. _Slop_:—And I have often wondered, continued he, +evading the question, why none of our gentry, who live upon large +plains like this of ours,—(especially they whose wives are not past +child-bearing) attempt nothing of this kind; for it would not only be +infinitely expeditious upon sudden calls, to which the sex is +subject,—if the wind only served,—but would be excellent good husbandry +to make use of the winds, which cost nothing, and which eat nothing, +rather than horses, which (the devil take ’em) both cost and eat a +great deal. + +For that very reason, replied my father, “Because they cost nothing, +and because they eat nothing,”—the scheme is bad;—it is the consumption +of our products, as well as the manufactures of them, which gives bread +to the hungry, circulates trade,—brings in money, and supports the +value of our lands;—and tho’, I own, if I was a Prince, I would +generously recompense the scientifick head which brought forth such +contrivances;—yet I would as peremptorily suppress the use of them. + +My father here had got into his element,—and was going on as +prosperously with his dissertation upon trade, as my uncle _Toby_ had +before, upon his of fortification;—but to the loss of much sound +knowledge, the destinies in the morning had decreed that no +dissertation of any kind should be spun by my father that day,——for as +he opened his mouth to begin the next sentence, + +C H A P. XL + +IN popped Corporal _Trim_ with _Stevinus_:—But ’twas too late,—all the +discourse had been exhausted without him, and was running into a new +channel. + +—You may take the book home again, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, +nodding to him. + +But prithee, Corporal, quoth my father, drolling,—look first into it, +and see if thou canst spy aught of a sailing chariot in it. + +Corporal _Trim_, by being in the service, had learned to obey,—and not +to remonstrate,—so taking the book to a side-table, and running over +the leaves; An’ please your Honour, said _Trim_, I can see no such +thing;—however, continued the Corporal, drolling a little in his turn, +I’ll make sure work of it, an’ please your Honour;—so taking hold of +the two covers of the book, one in each hand, and letting the leaves +fall down as he bent the covers back, he gave the book a good sound +shake. + +There is something falling out, however, said _Trim_, an’ please your +Honour;—but it is not a chariot, or any thing like one:—Prithee, +Corporal, said my father, smiling, what is it then?—I think, answered +_Trim_, stooping to take it up,——’tis more like a sermon,——for it +begins with a text of scripture, and the chapter and verse;—and then +goes on, not as a chariot, but like a sermon directly. + +The company smiled. + +I cannot conceive how it is possible, quoth my uncle _Toby_, for such a +thing as a sermon to have got into my _Stevinus._ + +I think ’tis a sermon, replied _Trim_:—but if it please your Honours, +as it is a fair hand, I will read you a page;—for _Trim_, you must +know, loved to hear himself read almost as well as talk. + +I have ever a strong propensity, said my father, to look into things +which cross my way, by such strange fatalities as these;—and as we have +nothing better to do, at least till _Obadiah_ gets back, I shall be +obliged to you, brother, if Dr. _Slop_ has no objection to it, to order +the Corporal to give us a page or two of it,—if he is as able to do it, +as he seems willing. An’ please your honour, quoth _Trim_, I officiated +two whole campaigns, in _Flanders_, as clerk to the chaplain of the +regiment.——He can read it, quoth my uncle _Toby_, as well as I +can.——_Trim_, I assure you, was the best scholar in my company, and +should have had the next halberd, but for the poor fellow’s misfortune. +Corporal _Trim_ laid his hand upon his heart, and made an humble bow to +his master; then laying down his hat upon the floor, and taking up the +sermon in his left hand, in order to have his right at liberty,—he +advanced, nothing doubting, into the middle of the room, where he could +best see, and be best seen by his audience. + +C H A P. XLI + +—IF you have any objection,—said my father, addressing himself to Dr. +_Slop._ Not in the least, replied Dr. _Slop_;—for it does not appear on +which side of the question it is wrote,—it may be a composition of a +divine of our church, as well as yours,—so that we run equal +risques.——’Tis wrote upon neither side, quoth _Trim_, for ’tis only +upon _Conscience_, an’ please your Honours. + +_Trim_’s reason put his audience into good humour,—all but Dr. _Slop_, +who turning his head about towards _Trim_, looked a little angry. + +Begin, _Trim_,—and read distinctly, quoth my father.—I will, an’ please +your Honour, replied the Corporal, making a bow, and bespeaking +attention with a slight movement of his right hand. + +C H A P. XLII + +——BUT before the Corporal begins, I must first give you a description +of his attitude;——otherwise he will naturally stand represented, by +your imagination, in an uneasy posture,—stiff,—perpendicular,—dividing +the weight of his body equally upon both legs;——his eye fixed, as if on +duty;—his look determined,—clenching the sermon in his left hand, like +his firelock.——In a word, you would be apt to paint _Trim_, as if he +was standing in his platoon ready for action,—His attitude was as +unlike all this as you can conceive. + +He stood before them with his body swayed, and bent forwards just so +far, as to make an angle of 85 degrees and a half upon the plain of the +horizon;—which sound orators, to whom I address this, know very well to +be the true persuasive angle of incidence;—in any other angle you may +talk and preach;—’tis certain;—and it is done every day;—but with what +effect,—I leave the world to judge! + +The necessity of this precise angle of 85 degrees and a half to a +mathematical exactness,——does it not shew us, by the way, how the arts +and sciences mutually befriend each other? + +How the duce Corporal _Trim_, who knew not so much as an acute angle +from an obtuse one, came to hit it so exactly;——or whether it was +chance or nature, or good sense or imitation, &c. shall be commented +upon in that part of the cyclopædia of arts and sciences, where the +instrumental parts of the eloquence of the senate, the pulpit, and the +bar, the coffee-house, the bed-chamber, and fire-side, fall under +consideration. + +He stood,——for I repeat it, to take the picture of him in at one view, +with his body swayed, and somewhat bent forwards,—his right leg from +under him, sustaining seven-eighths of his whole weight,——the foot of +his left leg, the defect of which was no disadvantage to his attitude, +advanced a little,—not laterally, nor forwards, but in a line betwixt +them;—his knee bent, but that not violently,—but so as to fall within +the limits of the line of beauty;—and I add, of the line of science +too;—for consider, it had one eighth part of his body to bear up;—so +that in this case the position of the leg is determined,—because the +foot could be no farther advanced, or the knee more bent, than what +would allow him, mechanically to receive an eighth part of his whole +weight under it, and to carry it too. + +=> This I recommend to painters;—need I add,—to orators!—I think not; +for unless they practise it,——they must fall upon their noses. + +So much for Corporal _Trim_’s body and legs.——He held the sermon +loosely, not carelessly, in his left hand, raised something above his +stomach, and detached a little from his breast;——his right arm falling +negligently by his side, as nature and the laws of gravity ordered +it,——but with the palm of it open and turned towards his audience, +ready to aid the sentiment in case it stood in need. + +Corporal _Trim_’s eyes and the muscles of his face were in full harmony +with the other parts of him;—he looked frank,—unconstrained,—something +assured,—but not bordering upon assurance. + +Let not the critic ask how Corporal _Trim_ could come by all +this.——I’ve told him it should be explained;—but so he stood before my +father, my uncle _Toby_, and Dr. _Slop_,—so swayed his body, so +contrasted his limbs, and with such an oratorical sweep throughout the +whole figure,——a statuary might have modelled from it;——nay, I doubt +whether the oldest Fellow of a College,—or the _Hebrew_ Professor +himself, could have much mended it. + +_Trim_ made a bow, and read as follows: + +The S E R M O N. + +HEBREWS xiii. 18. + +———_For we_ trust _we have a +good Conscience._ + +“TRUST!——Trust we have a good conscience!” + +[Certainly, _Trim_, quoth my father, interrupting him, you give that +sentence a very improper accent; for you curl up your nose, man, and +read it with such a sneering tone, as if the Parson was going to abuse +the Apostle. + +He is, an’ please your Honour, replied _Trim._ Pugh! said my father, +smiling. + +Sir, quoth Dr. _Slop, Trim_ is certainly in the right; for the writer +(who I perceive is a Protestant) by the snappish manner in which he +takes up the apostle, is certainly going to abuse him;—if this +treatment of him has not done it already. But from whence, replied my +father, have you concluded so soon, Dr. _Slop_, that the writer is of +our church?—for aught I can see yet,—he may be of any church.——Because, +answered Dr. _Slop_, if he was of ours,—he durst no more take such a +licence,—than a bear by his beard:—If, in our communion, Sir, a man was +to insult an apostle,——a saint,——or even the paring of a saint’s +nail,—he would have his eyes scratched out.—What, by the saint? quoth +my uncle _Toby._ No, replied Dr. _Slop_, he would have an old house +over his head. Pray is the Inquisition an ancient building, answered my +uncle _Toby_, or is it a modern one?—I know nothing of architecture, +replied Dr. _Slop._—An’ please your Honours, quoth _Trim_, the +Inquisition is the vilest——Prithee spare thy description, _Trim_, I +hate the very name of it, said my father.—No matter for that, answered +Dr. _Slop_,—it has its uses; for tho’ I’m no great advocate for it, +yet, in such a case as this, he would soon be taught better manners; +and I can tell him, if he went on at that rate, would be flung into the +Inquisition for his pains. God help him then, quoth my uncle _Toby._ +Amen, added _Trim_; for Heaven above knows, I have a poor brother who +has been fourteen years a captive in it.—I never heard one word of it +before, said my uncle _Toby_, hastily:—How came he there, _Trim_?——O, +Sir, the story will make your heart bleed,—as it has made mine a +thousand times;—but it is too long to be told now;—your Honour shall +hear it from first to last some day when I am working beside you in our +fortifications;—but the short of the story is this;—That my brother +_Tom_ went over a servant to _Lisbon_,—and then married a Jew’s widow, +who kept a small shop, and sold sausages, which somehow or other, was +the cause of his being taken in the middle of the night out of his bed, +where he was lying with his wife and two small children, and carried +directly to the Inquisition, where, God help him, continued _Trim_, +fetching a sigh from the bottom of his heart,—the poor honest lad lies +confined at this hour; he was as honest a soul, added _Trim_, (pulling +out his handkerchief) as ever blood warmed.—— + +—The tears trickled down _Trim_’s cheeks faster than he could well wipe +them away.—A dead silence in the room ensued for some minutes.—Certain +proof of pity! + +Come _Trim_, quoth my father, after he saw the poor fellow’s grief had +got a little vent,—read on,—and put this melancholy story out of thy +head:—I grieve that I interrupted thee; but prithee begin the sermon +again;—for if the first sentence in it is matter of abuse, as thou +sayest, I have a great desire to know what kind of provocation the +apostle has given. + +Corporal _Trim_ wiped his face, and returned his handkerchief into his +pocket, and, making a bow as he did it,—he began again.] + +The S E R M O N. + +HEBREWS xiii. 18. + +——_For we_ trust _we have a good +Conscience.—_ + +“TRUST! trust we have a good conscience! Surely if there is any thing +in this life which a man may depend upon, and to the knowledge of which +he is capable of arriving upon the most indisputable evidence, it must +be this very thing,—whether he has a good conscience or no.” + +[I am positive I am right, quoth Dr. _Slop._] + +“If a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a stranger to the true state +of this account:——he must be privy to his own thoughts and desires;—he +must remember his past pursuits, and know “certainly the true springs +and motives, which, in general, have governed the actions of his life.” + +[I defy him, without an assistant, quoth Dr. _Slop._] + +“In other matters we may be deceived by false appearances; and, as the +wise man complains, _hardly do we guess aright at the things that are +upon the earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before +us._ But here the mind has all the evidence and facts within +herself;——is conscious of the web she has wove;——knows its texture and +fineness, and the exact share which every passion has had in working +upon the several designs which virtue or vice has planned before her.” + +[The language is good, and I declare _Trim_ reads very well, quoth my +father.] + +“Now,—as conscience is nothing else but the knowledge which the mind +has within herself of this; and the judgment, either of approbation or +censure, which it unavoidably makes upon the successive actions of our +lives; ’tis plain you will say, from the very terms of the +proposition,—whenever this inward testimony goes against a man, and he +stands self-accused, that he must necessarily be a guilty man.—And, on +the contrary, when the report is favourable on his side, and his heart +condemns him not:—that it is not a matter of trust, as the apostle +intimates, but a matter of certainty and fact, that the conscience is +good, and that the man must be good also.” + +[Then the apostle is altogether in the wrong, I suppose, quoth Dr. +_Slop_, and the Protestant divine is in the right. Sir, have patience, +replied my father, for I think it will presently appear that St. _Paul_ +and the Protestant divine are both of an opinion.—As nearly so, quoth +Dr. _Slop_, as east is to west;—but this, continued he, lifting both +hands, comes from the liberty of the press. + +It is no more at the worst, replied my uncle _Toby_, than the liberty +of the pulpit; for it does not appear that the sermon is printed, or +ever likely to be. + +Go on, _Trim_, quoth my father.] + +“At first sight this may seem to be a true state of the case: and I +make no doubt but the knowledge of right and wrong is so truly +impressed upon the mind of man,—that did no such thing ever happen, as +that the conscience of a man, by long habits of sin, might (as the +scripture assures it may) insensibly become hard;—and, like some tender +parts of his body, by much stress and continual hard usage, lose by +degrees that nice sense and perception with which God and nature +endowed it:—Did this never happen;—or was it certain that self-love +could never hang the least bias upon the judgment;—or that the little +interests below could rise up and perplex the faculties of our upper +regions, and encompass them about with clouds and thick +darkness:——Could no such thing as favour and affection enter this +sacred Court—Did WIT disdain “to take a bribe in it;—or was ashamed to +shew its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable enjoyment: Or, +lastly, were we assured that INTEREST stood always unconcerned whilst +the cause was hearing—and that Passion never got into the +judgment-seat, and pronounced sentence in the stead of Reason, which is +supposed always to preside and determine upon the case:—Was this truly +so, as the objection must suppose;—no doubt then the religious and +moral state of a man would be exactly what he himself esteemed it:—and +the guilt or innocence of every man’s life could be known, in general, +by no better measure, than the degrees of his own approbation and +censure. + +“I own, in one case, whenever a man’s conscience does accuse him (as it +seldom errs on that side) that he is guilty;—and unless in melancholy +and hypocondriac cases, we may safely pronounce upon it, that there is +always sufficient grounds for the accusation. + +“But the converse of the proposition will not hold true;—namely, that +whenever there is guilt, the conscience must accuse; and if it does +not, that a man is therefore innocent.——This is not fact——So that the +common consolation which some good christian or other is hourly +administering to himself,—that he thanks God his mind does not misgive +him; and that, consequently, he has a good conscience, because he hath +a quiet one,—is fallacious;—and as current as the inference is, and as +infallible as the rule appears at first sight, yet when you look nearer +to it, and try the truth of this rule upon plain facts,——you see it +liable to so much error from a false application;——the principle upon +which it goes so often perverted;——the whole force of it lost, and +sometimes so vilely cast away, that it is painful to produce the common +examples from human life, which confirm the account. + +“A man shall be vicious and utterly “debauched in his +principles;—exceptionable in his conduct to the world; shall live +shameless, in the open commission of a sin which no reason or pretence +can justify,——a sin by which, contrary to all the workings of humanity, +he shall ruin for ever the deluded partner of his guilt;—rob her of her +best dowry; and not only cover her own head with dishonour;—but involve +a whole virtuous family in shame and sorrow for her sake. Surely, you +will think conscience must lead such a man a troublesome life; he can +have no rest night and day from its reproaches. + +“Alas! Conscience had something else to do all this time, than break in +upon him; as _Elijah_ reproached the god _Baal_,——this domestic god +_was either talking, or pursuing, or was in a journey, or peradventure +he slept and could not be awoke._ + +“Perhaps HE was gone out in company with HONOUR to fight a duel: to pay +off some debt at play;——or “dirty annuity, the bargain of his lust; +Perhaps CONSCIENCE all this time was engaged at home, talking aloud +against petty larceny, and executing vengeance upon some such puny +crimes as his fortune and rank of life secured him against all +temptation of committing; so that he lives as merrily;”——[If he was of +our church, tho’, quoth Dr. _Slop_, he could not]—“sleeps as soundly in +his bed;—and at last meets death unconcernedly;—perhaps much more so, +than a much better man.” + +[All this is impossible with us, quoth Dr. _Slop_, turning to my +father,—the case could not happen in our church.—It happens in ours, +however, replied my father, but too often.——I own, quoth Dr. _Slop_, +(struck a little with my father’s frank acknowledgment)—that a man in +the _Romish_ church may live as badly;—but then he cannot easily die +so.——’Tis little matter, replied my father, with an air of +indifference,—how a rascal dies.—I mean, answered Dr. _Slop_, he would +be denied the benefits of the last sacraments.—Pray how many have you +in all, said my uncle _Toby_,——for I always forget?——Seven, answered +Dr. _Slop._——Humph!—said my uncle _Toby_; tho’ not accented as a note +of acquiescence,—but as an interjection of that particular species of +surprize, when a man in looking into a drawer, finds more of a thing +than he expected.——Humph! replied my uncle _Toby._ Dr. _Slop_, who had +an ear, understood my uncle _Toby_ as well as if he had wrote a whole +volume against the seven sacraments.——Humph! replied Dr. _Slop_, +(stating my uncle _Toby_’s argument over again to him)——Why, Sir, are +there not seven cardinal virtues?——Seven mortal sins?——Seven golden +candlesticks?——Seven heavens?—’Tis more than I know, replied my uncle +_Toby._——Are there not seven wonders of the world?——Seven days of the +creation?——Seven planets?——Seven plagues?——That there are, quoth my +father with a most affected gravity. But prithee, continued he, go on +with the rest of thy characters, _Trim._] + +“Another is sordid, unmerciful,” (here _Trim_ waved his right hand) “a +strait-hearted, selfish wretch, incapable either of private friendship +or public spirit. Take notice how he passes by the widow and orphan in +their distress, and sees all the miseries incident to human life +without a sigh or a prayer.” [An’ please your honours, cried _Trim_, I +think this a viler man than the other.] + +“Shall not conscience rise up and sting him on such occasions?——No; +thank God there is no occasion, _I pay every man his own;—I have no +fornication to answer to my conscience;—no faithless vows or promises +to make up;—I have debauched no man’s wife or child; thank God, I am +not as other men, adulterers, unjust, or even as this libertine, who +stands before me._ + +“A third is crafty and designing in his nature. View his whole +life;—’tis nothing but a cunning contexture “of dark arts and +unequitable subterfuges, basely to defeat the true intent of all +laws,——plain dealing and the safe enjoyment of our several +properties.——You will see such a one working out a frame of little +designs upon the ignorance and perplexities of the poor and needy +man;—shall raise a fortune upon the inexperience of a youth, or the +unsuspecting temper of his friend, who would have trusted him with his +life. + +“When old age comes on, and repentance calls him to look back upon this +black account, and state it over again with his conscience—CONSCIENCE +looks into the STATUTES AT LARGE;—finds no express law broken by what +he has done;—perceives no penalty or forfeiture of goods and chattels +incurred;—sees no scourge waving over his head, or prison opening his +gates upon him:—What is there to affright his conscience?—Conscience +has got safely entrenched behind the Letter of the Law; sits “there +invulnerable, fortified with Cases and Reports so strongly on all +sides;—that it is not preaching can dispossess it of its hold.” + +[Here Corporal _Trim_ and my uncle _Toby_ exchanged looks with each +other.—Aye, Aye, _Trim!_ quoth my uncle _Toby_, shaking his +head,——these are but sorry fortifications, _Trim._———O! very poor work, +answered _Trim_, to what your Honour and I make of it.——The character +of this last man, said Dr. _Slop_, interrupting _Trim_, is more +detestable than all the rest; and seems to have been taken from some +pettifogging Lawyer amongst you:—Amongst us, a man’s conscience could +not possibly continue so long _blinded_,——three times in a year, at +least, he must go to confession. Will that restore it to sight? quoth +my uncle _Toby_,——Go on, _Trim_, quoth my father, or _Obadiah_ will +have got back before thou has got to the end of thy sermon.——’Tis a +very short one, replied _Trim._—I wish it was longer, quoth my uncle +_Toby_, for I like it hugely.—_Trim_ went on.] + +“A fourth man shall want even this refuge;—shall break through all +their ceremony of slow chicane;—scorns the doubtful workings of secret +plots and cautious trains to bring about his purpose:——See the +bare-faced villain, how he cheats, lies, perjures, robs, +murders!—Horrid!—But indeed much better was not to be expected, in the +present case—the poor man was in the dark!——his priest had got the +keeping of his conscience;——and all he would let him know of it, was, +That he must believe in the Pope;—go to Mass;—cross himself;—tell his +beads;—be a good Catholic, and that this, in all conscience, was enough +to carry him to heaven. What;—if he perjures?—Why;—he had a mental +reservation in it.—But if he is so wicked and abandoned a wretch as you +represent him;—if he robs,—if he stabs, will not conscience, “on every +such act, receive a wound itself?—Aye,—but the man has carried it to +confession;—the wound digests there, and will do well enough, and in a +short time be quite healed up by absolution. O Popery! what hast thou +to answer for!——when not content with the too many natural and fatal +ways, thro’ which the heart of man is every day thus treacherous to +itself above all things;—thou hast wilfully set open the wide gate of +deceit before the face of this unwary traveller, too apt, God knows, to +go astray of himself, and confidently speak peace to himself, when +there is no peace. + +“Of this the common instances which I have drawn out of life, are too +notorious to require much evidence. If any man doubts the reality of +them, or thinks it impossible for a man to be such a bubble to +himself,—I must refer him a moment to his own reflections, and will +then venture to trust my appeal with his own heart. + +“Let him consider in how different a degree of detestation, numbers of +wicked actions stand _there_, tho’ equally bad and vicious in their own +natures;—he will soon find, that such of them as strong inclination and +custom have prompted him to commit, are generally dressed out and +painted with all the false beauties which a soft and a flattering hand +can give them;—and that the others, to which he feels no propensity, +appear, at once, naked and deformed, surrounded with all the true +circumstances of folly and dishonour. + +“When _David_ surprized _Saul_ sleeping in the cave, and cut off the +skirt of his robe—we read his heart smote him for what he had +done:——But in the matter of _Uriah_, where a faithful and gallant +servant, whom he ought to have loved and honoured, fell to make way for +his lust,—where conscience had so much greater reason to take the +alarm, his heart smote him not. A whole year had almost passed “from +first commission of that crime, to the time _Nathan_ was sent to +reprove him; and we read not once of the least sorrow or compunction of +heart which he testified, during all that time, for what he had done. + +“Thus conscience, this once able monitor,——placed on high as a judge +within us, and intended by our maker as a just and equitable one +too,—by an unhappy train of causes and impediments, takes often such +imperfect cognizance of what passes,——does its office so +negligently,——sometimes so corruptly,—that it is not to be trusted +alone; and therefore we find there is a necessity, an absolute +necessity, of joining another principle with it, to aid, if not govern, +its determinations. + +“So that if you would form a just judgment of what is of infinite +importance to you not to be misled in,—namely, in what degree of real +merit you stand either as an honest man, an useful citizen, a faithful +subject to your king, “or a good servant to your God,——call in religion +and morality.—Look, What is written in the law of God?——How readest +thou?—Consult calm reason and the unchangeable obligations of justice +and truth;——what say they? + +“Let CONSCIENCE determine the matter upon these reports;——and then if +thy heart condemns thee not, which is the case the apostle +supposes,——the rule will be infallible;”—[Here Dr. _Slop_ fell +asleep]—“_thou wilt have confidence towards God_;——that is, have just +grounds to believe the judgment thou hast past upon thyself, is the +judgment of God; and nothing else but an anticipation of that righteous +sentence which will be pronounced upon thee hereafter by that Being, to +whom thou art finally to give an account of thy actions. + +“_Blessed is the man_, indeed, then, as the author of the book of +_Ecclesiasticus_ expresses it, _who is not pricked with the multitude +of his sins: Blessed is the man_ “_whose heart hath not condemned him; +whether he be rich, or whether he be poor, if he have a good heart_ (a +heart thus guided and informed) _he shall at all times rejoice in a +chearful countenance; his mind shall tell him more than seven watch-men +that sit above upon a tower on high.”_—[A tower has no strength, quoth +my uncle _Toby_, unless ’tis flank’d.]—“in the darkest doubts it shall +conduct him safer than a thousand casuists, and give the state he lives +in, a better security for his behaviour than all the causes and +restrictions put together, which law-makers are forced to +multiply:—_Forced_, I say, as things stand; human laws not being a +matter of original choice, but of pure necessity, brought in to fence +against the mischievous effects of those consciences which are no law +unto themselves; well intending, by the many provisions made,—that in +all such corrupt and misguided cases, where principles and the checks +of conscience will not make us upright,—to supply their “force, and, by +the terrors of gaols and halters, oblige us to it.” + +[I see plainly, said my father, that this sermon has been composed to +be preached at the Temple,——or at some Assize.—I like the +reasoning,—and am sorry that Dr. _Slop_ has fallen asleep before the +time of his conviction:—for it is now clear, that the Parson, as I +thought at first, never insulted St. _Paul_ in the least;—nor has there +been, brother, the least difference between them.——A great matter, if +they had differed, replied my uncle _Toby_,—the best friends in the +world may differ sometimes.——True,—brother _Toby_ quoth my father, +shaking hands with him,—we’ll fill our pipes, brother, and then _Trim_ +shall go on. + +Well,——what dost thou think of it? said my father, speaking to Corporal +_Trim_, as he reached his tobacco-box. + +I think, answered the Corporal, that the seven watch-men upon the +tower, who, I suppose, are all centinels there,—are more, an’ please +your Honour, than were necessary;—and, to go on at that rate, would +harrass a regiment all to pieces, which a commanding officer, who loves +his men, will never do, if he can help it, because two centinels, added +the Corporal, are as good as twenty.—I have been a commanding officer +myself in the _Corps de Garde_ a hundred times, continued _Trim_, +rising an inch higher in his figure, as he spoke,—and all the time I +had the honour to serve his Majesty King _William_, in relieving the +most considerable posts, I never left more than two in my life.——Very +right, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_,—but you do not consider, _Trim_, +that the towers, in _Solomon_’s days, were not such things as our +bastions, flanked and defended by other works;—this, _Trim_, was an +invention since _Solomon_’s death; nor had they horn-works, or ravelins +before the curtin, in his time;——or such a fossé as we make with a +cuvette in the middle of it, and with covered ways and counterscarps +pallisadoed along it, to guard against a _Coup de main_:—So that the +seven men upon the tower were a party, I dare say, from the _Corps de +Garde_, set there, not only to look out, but to defend it.—They could +be no more, an’ please your Honour, than a Corporal’s Guard.—My father +smiled inwardly, but not outwardly—the subject being rather too +serious, considering what had happened, to make a jest of.—So putting +his pipe into his mouth, which he had just lighted,—he contented +himself with ordering _Trim_ to read on. He read on as follows: + +“To have the fear of God before our eyes, and, in our mutual dealings +with each other, to govern our actions by the eternal measures of right +and wrong:——The first of these will comprehend the duties of +religion;—the second, those of morality, which are so inseparably +connected together, that you cannot divide these two _tables_, even in +imagination, (tho’ the attempt is often made in practice) without +breaking and mutually destroying them both. + +“I said the attempt is often made; and so it is;——there being nothing +“more common than to see a man who has no sense at all of religion, and +indeed has so much honesty as to pretend to none, who would take it as +the bitterest affront, should you but hint at a suspicion of his moral +character,——or imagine he was not conscientiously just and scrupulous +to the uttermost mite. + +“When there is some appearance that it is so,—tho’ one is unwilling +even to suspect the appearance of so amiable a virtue as moral honesty, +yet were we to look into the grounds of it, in the present case, I am +persuaded we should find little reason to envy such a one the honour of +his motive. + +“Let him declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the subject, it will +be found to rest upon no better foundation than either his interest, +his pride, his ease, or some such little and changeable passion as will +give us but small dependence upon his actions in matters of great +distress. + +“I will illustrate this by an example. + +“I know the banker I deal with, or the physician I usually call +in,”—[There is no need, cried Dr. _Slop_, (waking) to call in any +physician in this case]—“to be neither of them men of much religion: I +hear them make a jest of it every day, and treat all its sanctions with +so much scorn, as to put the matter past doubt. Well;—notwithstanding +this, I put my fortune into the hands of the one:—and what is dearer +still to me, I trust my life to the honest skill of the other. + +“Now let me examine what is my reason for this great confidence. Why, +in the first place, I believe there is no probability that either of +them will employ the power I put into their hands to my disadvantage;—I +consider that honesty serves the purposes of this life:—I know their +success in the world depends upon the fairness of their characters.—In +a word, I’m persuaded that they cannot hurt me without hurting +themselves more. + +“But put it otherwise, namely, “that interest lay, for once, on the +other side; that a case should happen, wherein the one, without stain +to his reputation, could secrete my fortune, and leave me naked in the +world;—or that the other could send me out of it, and enjoy an estate +by my death, without dishonour to himself or his art:—In this case, +what hold have I of either of them?—Religion, the strongest of all +motives, is out of the question;—Interest, the next most powerful +motive in the world, is strongly against me:——What have I left to cast +into the opposite scale to balance this temptation?——Alas! I have +nothing,——nothing but what is lighter than a bubble——I must lie at the +mercy of HONOUR, or some such capricious principle—Strait security for +two of the most valuable blessings!—my property and myself. + +“As, therefore, we can have no dependence upon morality without +religion;—so, on the other hand, there is nothing better to be expected +from “religion without morality; nevertheless, ’tis no prodigy to see a +man whose real moral character stands very low, who yet entertains the +highest notion of himself in the light of a religious man. + +“He shall not only be covetous, revengeful, implacable,—but even +wanting in points of common honesty; yet inasmuch as he talks aloud +against the infidelity of the age,——is zealous for some points of +religion,——goes twice a day to church,—attends the sacraments,—and +amuses himself with a few instrumental parts of religion,—shall cheat +his conscience into a judgment, that, for this, he is a religious man, +and has discharged truly his duty to God: And you will find that such a +man, through force of this delusion, generally looks down with +spiritual pride upon every other man who has less affectation of +piety,—though, perhaps, ten times more real honesty than himself. + +“_This likewise is a sore evil under the sun_; and I believe, there +is no one mistaken principle, which, for its time, has wrought more +serious mischiefs.——For a general proof of this,—examine the history of +the _Romish_ church;”—[Well what can you make of that? cried Dr. +_Slop_]—“see what scenes of cruelty, murder, rapine, bloodshed,”——[They +may thank their own obstinacy, cried Dr. _Slop_]——have all been +sanctified by a religion not strictly governed by morality. + +“In how many kingdoms of the world”—[Here _Trim_ kept waving his +right-hand from the sermon to the extent of his arm, returning it +backwards and forwards to the conclusion of the paragraph.] + +“In how many kingdoms of the world has the crusading sword of this +misguided saint-errant, spared neither age or merit, or sex, or +condition?—and, as he fought under the banners of a religion which set +him loose from justice and humanity, he shewed none; mercilessly +trampled upon both,—“heard neither the cries of the unfortunate, nor +pitied their distresses.” + +[I have been in many a battle, an’ please your Honour, quoth _Trim_, +sighing, but never in so melancholy a one as this,—I would not have +drawn a tricker in it against these poor souls,——to have been made a +general officer.——Why? what do you understand of the affair? said Dr. +_Slop_, looking towards _Trim_, with something more of contempt than +the Corporal’s honest heart deserved.——What do you know, friend, about +this battle you talk of?—I know, replied _Trim_, that I never refused +quarter in my life to any man who cried out for it;——but to a woman or +a child, continued _Trim_, before I would level my musket at them, I +would lose my life a thousand times.——Here’s a crown for thee, _Trim_, +to drink with _Obadiah_ to-night, quoth my uncle _Toby_, and I’ll give +_Obadiah_ another too.—God bless your Honour, replied _Trim_,——I had +rather these poor women and children had it.——thou art an honest +fellow, quoth my uncle _Toby._——My father nodded his head, as much as +to say—and so he is.—— + +But prithee, _Trim_, said my father, make an end,—for I see thou hast +but a leaf or two left. + +Corporal _Trim_ read on.] + +“If the testimony of past centuries in this matter is not +sufficient,—consider at this instant, how the votaries of that religion +are every day thinking to do service and honour to God, by actions +which are a dishonour and scandal to themselves. + +“To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons of +the Inquisition.”—[God help my poor brother _Tom._]—“Behold _Religion_, +with _Mercy_ and _Justice_ chained down under her feet,——there sitting +ghastly upon a black tribunal, propped up with racks and instruments of +torment. Hark!—hark! what a piteous groan!”—[Here _Trim_’s face turned +as pale as ashes.]——“See the melancholy wretch who uttered it”—[Here +the tears began to trickle down]——“just brought forth to undergo the +anguish of a mock trial, and endure the utmost pains that a studied +system of cruelty has been able to invent.”—[D—n them all, quoth +_Trim_, his colour returning into his face as red as blood.]—“Behold +this helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors,—his body so wasted +with sorrow and confinement.”—[Oh! ’tis my brother, cried poor _Trim_ +in a most passionate exclamation, dropping the sermon upon the ground, +and clapping his hands together—I fear ’tis poor _Tom._ My father’s and +my uncle _Toby_’s heart yearned with sympathy for the poor fellow’s +distress; even _Slop_ himself acknowledged pity for him.——Why, _Trim_, +said my father, this is not a history,——’tis a sermon thou art reading; +prithee begin the sentence again.]——“Behold this helpless victim +delivered up to his tormentors,—his body so wasted with sorrow and +confinement, you will see every nerve and muscle as it suffers. + +“Observe the last movement of that horrid engine!”—[I would rather face +a cannon, quoth _Trim_, stamping.)—“See what convulsions it has thrown +him into!——Consider the nature of the posture in which he how lies +stretched,—what exquisite tortures he endures by it!”—[I hope ’tis not +in _Portugal._]—“’Tis all nature can bear! Good God! see how it keeps +his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips!” [I would not read +another line of it, quoth _Trim_ for all this _world_;—I fear, an’ +please your Honours, all this is in _Portugal_, where my poor brother +_Tom_ is. I tell thee, _Trim_, again, quoth my father, ’tis not an +historical account,—’tis a description.—’Tis only a description, honest +man, quoth _Slop_, there’s not a word of truth in it.——That’s another +story, replied my father.—However, as _Trim_ reads it with so much +concern,—’tis cruelty to force him to go on with it.—Give me hold of +the sermon, _Trim_,—I’ll finish it for thee, and thou may’st go. I must +stay and hear it too, replied _Trim_, if your Honour will allow +me;—tho’ I would not read it myself for a Colonel’s pay.——Poor Trim! +quoth my uncle _Toby._ My father went on.] + +“——Consider the nature of the posture in which he now lies +stretched,—what exquisite torture he endures by it!—’Tis all nature can +bear! Good God! See how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his +trembling lips,—willing to take its leave,——but not suffered to +depart!—Behold the unhappy wretch led back to his cell!”——[Then, thank +God, however, quoth _Trim_, they have not killed him.]—“See him dragged +out of it again to meet the flames, and the insults in his last +agonies, which this principle,—this principle, that there can be +religion without mercy, has prepared for him.”——[Then, thank God,——he +is dead, quoth _Trim_,—he is out of his pain,—and they have done their +worst at him.—O Sirs!—Hold your peace, _Trim_, said my father, going on +with the sermon, lest _Trim_ should incense Dr. _Slop_,—we shall never +have done at this rate.] + +“The surest way to try the merit of “any disputed notion is, to trace +down the consequences such a notion has produced, and compare them with +the spirit of Christianity;——’tis the short and decisive rule which our +Saviour hath left us, for these and such like cases, and it is worth a +thousand arguments——_By their fruits ye shall know them._ + +“I will add no farther to the length of this sermon, than by two or +three short and independent rules deducible from it. + +“_First_, Whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect +that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better +of his CREED. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and +troublesome neighbours, and where they separate, depend upon it, ’tis +for no other cause but quietness sake. + +“_Secondly_, When a man, thus represented, tells you in any particular +instance,——That such a thing goes “against his conscience,——always +believe he means exactly the same thing, as when he tells you such a +thing goes _against_ his stomach;—a present want of appetite being +generally the true cause of both. + +“In a word,—trust that man in nothing, who has not a CONSCIENCE in +every thing. + +“And, in your own case, remember this plain distinction, a mistake in +which has ruined thousands,—that your conscience is not a law;—No, God +and reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to +determine;——not, like an _Asiatic_ Cadi, according to the ebbs and +flows of his own passions,—but like a _British_ judge in this land of +liberty and good sense, who makes no new law, but faithfully declares +that law which he knows already written.” + +_F I N I S._ + +Thou hast read the sermon extremely well, _Trim_, quoth my father.—If +he had spared his comments, replied Dr. _Slop_,——he would have read it +much better. + +I should have read it ten times better, Sir, answered _Trim_, but that +my heart was so full.—That was the very reason, _Trim_, replied my +father, which has made thee read the sermon as well as thou hast done; +and if the clergy of our church, continued my father, addressing +himself to Dr. _Slop_, would take part in what they deliver as deeply +as this poor fellow has done,—as their compositions are fine;—[I deny +it, quoth Dr. _Slop_]—I maintain it,—that the eloquence of our pulpits, +with such subjects to enflame it, would be a model for the whole +world:——But alas! continued my father, and I own it, Sir, with sorrow, +that, like _French_ politicians in this respect, what they gain in the +cabinet they lose in the field.——’Twere a pity, quoth my uncle, that +this should be lost. I like the sermon well, replied my father,——’tis +dramatick,—and there is something in that way of writing, when +skilfully managed, which catches the attention.——We preach much in that +way with us, said Dr. _Slop._—I know that very well, said my +father,—but in a tone and manner which disgusted Dr. _Slop_, full as +much as his assent, simply, could have pleased him.——But in this, added +Dr. _Slop_, a little piqued,—our sermons have greatly the advantage, +that we never introduce any character into them below a patriarch or a +patriarch’s wife, or a martyr or a saint.—There are some very bad +characters in this, however, said my father, and I do not think the +sermon a jot the worse for ’em.——But pray, quoth my uncle _Toby_,—who’s +can this be?—How could it get into my _Stevinus_? A man must be as +great a conjurer as _Stevinus_, said my father, to resolve the second +question:—The first, I think, is not so difficult;—for unless my +judgment greatly deceives me,——I know the author, for ’tis wrote, +certainly, by the parson of the parish. + +The similitude of the stile and manner of it, with those my father +constantly had heard preached in his parish-church, was the ground of +his conjecture,—proving it as strongly, as an argument _à priori_ could +prove such a thing to a philosophic mind, That it was _Yorick_’s and no +one’s else:—It was proved to be so, _à posteriori_, the day after, when +_Yorick_ sent a servant to my uncle _Toby_’s house to enquire after it. + +It seems that _Yorick_, who was inquisitive after all kinds of +knowledge, had borrowed _Stevinus_ of my uncle _Toby_, and had +carelesly popped his sermon, as soon as he had made it, into the middle +of _Stevinus_; and by an act of forgetfulness, to which he was ever +subject, he had sent _Stevinus_ home, and his sermon to keep him +company. + +Ill-fated sermon! Thou wast lost, after this recovery of thee, a second +time, dropped thru’ an unsuspected fissure in thy master’s pocket, down +into a treacherous and a tattered lining,—trod deep into the dirt by +the left hind-foot of his Rosinante inhumanly stepping upon thee as +thou falledst;—buried ten days in the mire,——raised up out of it by a +beggar,—sold for a halfpenny to a parish-clerk,——transferred to his +parson,——lost for ever to thy own, the remainder of his days,—nor +restored to his restless MANES till this very moment, that I tell the +world the story. + +Can the reader believe, that this sermon of _Yorick_’s was preached at +an assize, in the cathedral of _York_, before a thousand witnesses, +ready to give oath of it, by a certain prebendary of that church, and +actually printed by him when he had done,——and within so short a space +as two years and three months after _Yorick_’s death?—_Yorick_ indeed, +was never better served in his life;——but it was a little hard to +maltreat him after, and plunder him after he was laid in his grave. + +However, as the gentleman who did it was in perfect charity with +_Yorick_,—and, in conscious justice, printed but a few copies to give +away;—and that I am told he could moreover have made as good a one +himself, had he thought fit,—I declare I would not have published this +anecdote to the world;——nor do I publish it with an intent to hurt his +character and advancement in the church;—I leave that to others;——but I +find myself impelled by two reasons, which I cannot withstand. + +The first is, That in doing justice, I may give rest to _Yorick_’s +ghost;——which—as the country-people, and some others believe,——_still +walks._ + +The second reason is, That, by laying open this story to the world, I +gain an opportunity of informing it,—That in case the character of +parson _Yorick_, and this sample of his sermons, is liked,——there are +now in the possession of the _Shandy_ family, as many as will make a +handsome volume, at the world’s service,——and much good may they do it. + +C H A P. XLIII + +OBADIAH gained the two crowns without dispute;—for he came in jingling, +with all the instruments in the green baize bag we spoke of, flung +across his body, just as Corporal _Trim_ went out of the room. + +It is now proper, I think, quoth Dr. _Slop_, (clearing up his looks) as +we are in a condition to be of some service to Mrs. _Shandy_, to send +up stairs to know how she goes on. + +I have ordered, answered my father, the old midwife to come down to us +upon the least difficulty;—for you must know, Dr. _Slop_, continued my +father, with a perplexed kind of a smile upon his countenance, that by +express treaty, solemnly ratified between me and my wife, you are no +more than an auxiliary in this affair,—and not so much as that,—unless +the lean old mother of a midwife above stairs cannot do without +you.—Women have their particular fancies, and in points of this nature, +continued my father, where they bear the whole burden, and suffer so +much acute pain for the advantage of our families, and the good of the +species,—they claim a right of deciding, _en Souveraines_, in whose +hands, and in what fashion, they choose to undergo it. + +They are in the right of it,——quoth my uncle _Toby._ But Sir, replied +Dr. _Slop_, not taking notice of my uncle _Toby_’s opinion, but turning +to my father,—they had better govern in other points;——and a father of +a family, who wishes its perpetuity, in my opinion, had better exchange +this prerogative with them, and give up some other rights in lieu of +it.——I know not, quoth my father, answering a letter too testily, to be +quite dispassionate in what he said,—I know not, quoth he, what we have +left to give up, in lieu of who shall bring our children into the +world, unless that,—of who shall beget them.——One would almost give up +any thing, replied Dr. _Slop._—I beg your pardon,——answered my uncle +_Toby._—Sir, replied Dr. _Slop_, it would astonish you to know what +improvements we have made of late years in all branches of obstetrical +knowledge, but particularly in that one single point of the safe and +expeditious extraction of the _fœtus_,——which has received such lights, +that, for my part (holding up his hand) I declare I wonder how the +world has——I wish, quoth my uncle _Toby_, you had seen what prodigious +armies we had in _Flanders._ + +C H A P. XLIV + +I HAVE dropped the curtain over this scene for a minute,——to remind you +of one thing,——and to inform you of another. + +What I have to inform you, comes, I own, a little out of its due +course;——for it should have been told a hundred and fifty pages ago, +but that I foresaw then ’twould come in pat hereafter, and be of more +advantage here than elsewhere.——Writers had need look before them, to +keep up the spirit and connection of what they have in hand. + +When these two things are done,—the curtain shall be drawn up again, +and my uncle _Toby_, my father, and Dr. _Slop_, shall go on with their +discourse, without any more interruption. + +First, then, the matter which I have to remind you of, is this;——that +from the specimens of singularity in my father’s notions in the point +of Christian-names, and that other previous point thereto,—you was led, +I think, into an opinion,—(and I am sure I said as much) that my father +was a gentleman altogether as odd and whimsical in fifty other +opinions. In truth, there was not a stage in the life of man, from the +very first act of his begetting,——down to the lean and slippered +pantaloon in his second childishness, but he had some favourite notion +to himself, springing out of it, as sceptical, and as far out of the +high-way of thinking, as these two which have been explained. + +—Mr. _Shandy_, my father, Sir, would see nothing in the light in which +others placed it;—he placed things in his own light;—he would weigh +nothing in common scales;—no, he was too refined a researcher to lie +open to so gross an imposition.—To come at the exact weight of things +in the scientific steel-yard, the fulcrum, he would say, should be +almost invisible, to avoid all friction from popular tenets;—without +this the minutiæ of philosophy, which would always turn the balance, +will have no weight at all. Knowledge, like matter, he would affirm, +was divisible _in infinitum_;——that the grains and scruples were as +much a part of it, as the gravitation of the whole world.—In a word, he +would say, error was error,—no matter where it fell,——whether in a +fraction,——or a pound,—’twas alike fatal to truth, and she was kept +down at the bottom of her well, as inevitably by a mistake in the dust +of a butterfly’s wing,——as in the disk of the sun, the moon, and all +the stars of heaven put together. + +He would often lament that it was for want of considering this +properly, and of applying it skilfully to civil matters, as well as to +speculative truths, that so many things in this world were out of +joint;——that the political arch was giving way;——and that the very +foundations of our excellent constitution in church and state, were so +sapped as estimators had reported. + +You cry out, he would say, we are a ruined, undone people. Why? he +would ask, making use of the sorites or syllogism of _Zeno_ and +_Chrysippus_, without knowing it belonged to them.—Why? why are we a +ruined people?—Because we are corrupted.—Whence is it, dear Sir, that +we are corrupted?——Because we are needy;——our poverty, and not our +wills, consent.——And wherefore, he would add, are we needy?—From the +neglect, he would answer, of our pence and our halfpence:—Our bank +notes, Sir, our guineas,—nay our shillings take care of themselves. + +’Tis the same, he would say, throughout the whole circle of the +sciences;—the great, the established points of them, are not to be +broke in upon.—The laws of nature will defend themselves;—but +error——(he would add, looking earnestly at my mother)——error, Sir, +creeps in thro’ the minute holes and small crevices which human nature +leaves unguarded. + +This turn of thinking in my father, is what I had to remind you of:—The +point you are to be informed of, and which I have reserved for this +place, is as follows. + +Amongst the many and excellent reasons, with which my father had urged +my mother to accept of Dr. _Slop_’s assistance preferably to that of +the old woman,——there was one of a very singular nature; which, when he +had done arguing the matter with her as a Christian, and came to argue +it over again with her as a philosopher, he had put his whole strength +to, depending indeed upon it as his sheet-anchor.——It failed him, tho’ +from no defect in the argument itself; but that, do what he could, he +was not able for his soul to make her comprehend the drift of +it.——Cursed luck!——said he to himself, one afternoon, as he walked out +of the room, after he had been stating it for an hour and a half to +her, to no manner of purpose;—cursed luck! said he, biting his lip as +he shut the door,——for a man to be master of one of the finest chains +of reasoning in nature,——and have a wife at the same time with such a +head-piece, that he cannot hang up a single inference within side of +it, to save his soul from destruction. + +This argument, though it was entirely lost upon my mother,——had more +weight with him, than all his other arguments joined together:—I will +therefore endeavour to do it justice,—and set it forth with all the +perspicuity I am master of. + +My father set out upon the strength of these two following axioms: + +_First_, That an ounce of a man’s own wit, was worth a ton of other +people’s; and, + +_Secondly_, (Which by the bye, was the ground-work of the first +axiom,——tho’ it comes last) That every man’s wit must come from every +man’s own soul,——and no other body’s. + +Now, as it was plain to my father, that all souls were by nature +equal,——and that the great difference between the most acute and the +most obtuse understanding——was from no original sharpness or bluntness +of one thinking substance above or below another,——but arose merely +from the lucky or unlucky organization of the body, in that part where +the soul principally took up her residence,——he had made it the subject +of his enquiry to find out the identical place. + +Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of this matter, he +was satisfied it could not be where _Des Cartes_ had fixed it, upon the +top of the _pineal_ gland of the brain; which, as he philosophized, +formed a cushion for her about the size of a marrow pea; tho’ to speak +the truth, as so many nerves did terminate all in that one place,—’twas +no bad conjecture;——and my father had certainly fallen with that great +philosopher plumb into the centre of the mistake, had it not been for +my uncle _Toby_, who rescued him out of it, by a story he told him of a +_Walloon_ officer at the battle of _Landen_, who had one part of his +brain shot away by a musket-ball,—and another part of it taken out +after by a _French_ surgeon; and after all, recovered, and did his duty +very well without it. + +If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the +separation of the soul from the body;—and if it is true that people can +walk about and do their business without brains,—then certes the soul +does not inhabit there. Q.E.D. + +As for that certain, very thin, subtle and very fragrant juice which +_Coglionissimo Borri_, the great _Milaneze_ physician affirms, in a +letter to _Bartholine_, to have discovered in the cellulæ of the +occipital parts of the cerebellum, and which he likewise affirms to be +the principal seat of the reasonable soul, (for, you must know, in +these latter and more enlightened ages, there are two souls in every +man living,—the one, according to the great _Metheglingius_, being +called the _Animus_, the other, the _Anima_;)—as for the opinion, I say +of _Borri_,—my father could never subscribe to it by any means; the +very idea of so noble, so refined, so immaterial, and so exalted a +being as the _Anima_, or even the _Animus_, taking up her residence, +and sitting dabbling, like a tad-pole all day long, both summer and +winter, in a puddle,——or in a liquid of any kind, how thick or thin +soever, he would say, shocked his imagination; he would scarce give the +doctrine a hearing. + +What, therefore, seemed the least liable to objections of any, was that +the chief sensorium, or head-quarters of the soul, and to which place +all intelligences were referred, and from whence all her mandates were +issued,—was in, or near, the cerebellum,—or rather somewhere about the +_medulla oblongata_, wherein it was generally agreed by _Dutch_ +anatomists, that all the minute nerves from all the organs of the seven +senses concentered, like streets and winding alleys, into a square. + +So far there was nothing singular in my father’s opinion,—he had the +best of philosophers, of all ages and climates, to go along with +him.——But here he took a road of his own, setting up another _Shandean_ +hypothesis upon these corner-stones they had laid for him;——and which +said hypothesis equally stood its ground; whether the subtilty and +fineness of the soul depended upon the temperature and clearness of the +said liquor, or of the finer net-work and texture in the cerebellum +itself; which opinion he favoured. + +He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in the act of +propagation of each individual, which required all the thought in the +world, as it laid the foundation of this incomprehensible contexture, +in which wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by +the name of good natural parts, do consist;—that next to this and his +Christian-name, which were the two original and most efficacious causes +of all;——that the third cause, or rather what logicians call the _Causa +sina qua non_, and without which all that was done was of no manner of +significance,——was the preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, +from the havock which was generally made in it by the violent +compression and crush which the head was made to undergo, by the +nonsensical method of bringing us into the world by that foremost. + +——This requires explanation. + +My father, who dipped into all kinds of books, upon looking into +_Lithopædus Senonesis de Portu difficili_,[4] published by _Adrianus +Smelvgot_, had found out, that the lax and pliable state of a child’s +head in parturition, the bones of the cranium having no sutures at that +time, was such,——that by force of the woman’s efforts, which, in strong +labour-pains, was equal, upon an average, to the weight of 470 pounds +avoirdupois acting perpendicularly upon it;—it so happened, that in 49 +instances out of 50, the said head was compressed and moulded into the +shape of an oblong conical piece of dough, such as a pastry-cook +generally rolls up in order to make a pye of.—Good God! cried my +father, what havock and destruction must this make in the infinitely +fine and tender texture of the cerebellum!—Or if there is such a juice +as _Borri_ pretends—is it not enough to make the clearest liquid in the +world both seculent and mothery? + +But how great was his apprehension, when he farther understood, that +this force acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only injured +the brain itself, or cerebrum,—but that it necessarily squeezed and +propelled the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate +seat of the understanding!——Angels and ministers of grace defend us! +cried my father,——can any soul withstand this shock?—No wonder the +intellectual web is so rent and tattered as we see it; and that so many +of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,——all +perplexity,——all confusion within-side. + +But when my father read on, and was let into the secret, that when a +child was turned topsy-turvy, which was easy for an operator to do, and +was extracted by the feet;—that instead of the cerebrum being propelled +towards the cerebellum, the cerebellum, on the contrary, was propelled +simply towards the cerebrum, where it could do no manner of hurt:——By +heavens! cried he, the world is in conspiracy to drive out what little +wit God has given us,——and the professors of the obstetric art are +listed into the same conspiracy.—What is it to me which end of my son +comes foremost into the world, provided all goes right after, and his +cerebellum escapes uncrushed? + +It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, +that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, +from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the +stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of +great use. + +When my father was gone with this about a month, there was scarce a +phænomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve +by it;—it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in +the family.——Poor devil, he would say,—he made way for the capacity of +his younger brothers.——It unriddled the observations of drivellers and +monstrous heads,——shewing _à priori_, it could not be +otherwise,——unless **** I don’t know what. It wonderfully explained and +accounted for the acumen of the _Asiatic_ genius, and that sprightlier +turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; +not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a +more perpetual sunshine, &c.—which for aught he knew, might as well +rarefy and dilute the faculties of the soul into nothing, by one +extreme,—as they are condensed in colder climates by the other;——but he +traced the affair up to its spring-head;—shewed that, in warmer +climates, nature had laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the +creation;—their pleasures more;—the necessity of their pains less, +insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so +slight, that the whole organization of the cerebellum was +preserved;——nay, he did not believe, in natural births, that so much as +a single thread of the network was broke or displaced,——so that the +soul might just act as she liked. + +When my father had got so far,——what a blaze of light did the accounts +of the _Caesarian_ section, and of the towering geniuses who had come +safe into the world by it, cast upon this hypothesis? Here you see, he +would say, there was no injury done to the sensorium;—no pressure of +the head against the pelvis;——no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the +cerebellum, either by the _os pubis_ on this side, or _os coxygis_ on +that;——and pray, what were the happy consequences? Why, Sir, your +_Julius Caesar_, who gave the operation a name;—and your _Hermes +Trismegistus_, who was born so before ever the operation had a +name;——your _Scipio Africanus_; your _Manlius Torquatus_; our _Edward_ +the Sixth,—who, had he lived, would have done the same honour to the +hypothesis:——These, and many more who figured high in the annals of +fame,—all came _side-way_, Sir, into the world. + +The incision of the _abdomen_ and _uterus_ ran for six weeks together +in my father’s head;——he had read, and was satisfied, that wounds in +the _epigastrium_, and those in the _matrix_, were not mortal;—so that +the belly of the mother might be opened extremely well to give a +passage to the child.—He mentioned the thing one afternoon to my +mother,——merely as a matter of fact; but seeing her turn as pale as +ashes at the very mention of it, as much as the operation flattered his +hopes,—he thought it as well to say no more of it,——contenting himself +with admiring,—what he thought was to no purpose to propose. + +This was my father Mr. _Shandy_’s hypothesis; concerning which I have +only to add, that my brother _Bobby_ did as great honour to it +(whatever he did to the family) as any one of the great heroes we spoke +of: For happening not only to be christened, as I told you, but to be +born too, when my father was at _Epsom_,——being moreover my mother’s +first child,—coming into the world with his head _foremost_,—and +turning out afterwards a lad of wonderful slow parts,——my father spelt +all these together into his opinion: and as he had failed at one +end,—he was determined to try the other. + +This was not to be expected from one of the sisterhood, who are not +easily to be put out of their way,——and was therefore one of my +father’s great reasons in favour of a man of science, whom he could +better deal with. + +Of all men in the world, Dr. _Slop_ was the fittest for my father’s +purpose;——for though this new-invented forceps was the armour he had +proved, and what he maintained to be the safest instrument of +deliverance, yet, it seems, he had scattered a word or two in his book, +in favour of the very thing which ran in my father’s fancy;——tho’ not +with a view to the soul’s good in extracting by the feet, as was my +father’s system,—but for reasons merely obstetrical. + +This will account for the coalition betwixt my father and Dr. _Slop_, +in the ensuing discourse, which went a little hard against my uncle +_Toby._——In what manner a plain man, with nothing but common sense, +could bear up against two such allies in science,—is hard to +conceive.—You may conjecture upon it, if you please,——and whilst your +imagination is in motion, you may encourage it to go on, and discover +by what causes and effects in nature it could come to pass, that my +uncle _Toby_ got his modesty by the wound he received upon his +groin.—You may raise a system to account for the loss of my nose by +marriage-articles,—and shew the world how it could happen, that I +should have the misfortune to be called TRISTRAM, in opposition to my +father’s hypothesis, and the wish of the whole family, Godfathers and +Godmothers not excepted.—These, with fifty other points left yet +unravelled, you may endeavour to solve if you have time;——but I tell +you beforehand it will be in vain, for not the sage _Alquise_, the +magician in Don _Belianis_ of _Greece_, nor the no less famous +_Urganda_, the sorceress his wife, (were they alive) could pretend to +come within a league of the truth. + +The reader will be content to wait for a full explanation of these +matters till the next year,——when a series of things will be laid open +which he little expects. + + [4] The author is here twice mistaken; for _Lithopædus_ should be + wrote thus, _Lithopædii Senonensis Icon._ The second mistake is, that + this _Lithopædus_ is not an author, but a drawing of a petrified + child. The account of this, published by _Athosius_ 1580, may be seen + at the end of _Cordæus_’s works in _Spachius._ Mr. _Tristram Shandy_ + has been led into this error, either from seeing _Lithopædus_’s name + of late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr. ——, or by mistaking + _Lithopædus_ for _Trinecavellius_,—from the too great similitude of + the names. + +C H A P. XLV + +——“I _WISH_, Dr. _Slop_,” quoth my uncle _Toby_, (repeating his wish +for Dr. _Slop_ a second time, and with a degree of more zeal and +earnestness in his manner of wishing, than he had wished at +first[5])——“_I wish, Dr. Slop,”_ quoth my uncle _Toby_, “_you had seen +what prodigious armies we had in_ Flanders.” + +My uncle _Toby_’s wish did Dr. _Slop_ a disservice which his heart +never intended any man,—Sir, it confounded him——and thereby putting his +ideas first into confusion, and then to flight, he could not rally them +again for the soul of him. + +In all disputes,——male or female, —whether for honour, for profit, or +for love,—it makes no difference in the case;—nothing is more +dangerous, Madam, than a wish coming sideways in this unexpected manner +upon a man: the safest way in general to take off the force of the +wish, is for the party wish’d at, instantly to get upon his legs—and +wish the _wisher_ something in return, of pretty near the same +value,——so balancing the account upon the spot, you stand as you +were—nay sometimes gain the advantage of the attack by it. + +This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of wishes.— + +Dr. _Slop_ did not understand the nature of this defence;—he was +puzzled with it, and it put an entire stop to the dispute for four +minutes and a half;—five had been fatal to it:—my father saw the +danger—the dispute was one of the most interesting disputes in the +world, “Whether the child of his prayers and endeavours should be born +without a head or with one:”—he waited to the last moment, to allow Dr. +_Slop_, in whose behalf the wish was made, his right of returning it; +but perceiving, I say, that he was confounded, and continued looking +with that perplexed vacuity of eye which puzzled souls generally stare +with—first in my uncle _Toby_’s face—then in his—then up—then down—then +east—east and by east, and so on,——coasting it along by the plinth of +the wainscot till he had got to the opposite point of the compass,——and +that he had actually begun to count the brass nails upon the arm of his +chair,—my father thought there was no time to be lost with my uncle +_Toby_, so took up the discourse as follows. + + [5] Vide page 260. + +C H A P. XLVI + +“—WHAT prodigious armies you had in _Flanders!_”— + +Brother _Toby_, replied my father, taking his wig from off his head +with his right hand, and with his _left_ pulling out a striped _India_ +handkerchief from his right coat pocket, in order to rub his head, as +he argued the point with my uncle _Toby._—— + +——Now, in this I think my father was much to blame; and I will give you +my reasons for it. + +Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, “_Whether my +father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his +left_,”—have divided the greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns of the +monarchs who governed them, to totter upon their heads.——But need I +tell you, Sir, that the circumstances with which every thing in this +world is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape!—and +by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to +be, what it is—great—little—good—bad—indifferent or not indifferent, +just as the case happens? + +As my father’s _India_ handkerchief was in his right coat pocket, he +should by no means have suffered his right hand to have got engaged: on +the contrary, instead of taking off his wig with it, as he did, he +ought to have committed that entirely to the left; and then, when the +natural exigency my father was under of rubbing his head, called out +for his handkerchief, he would have had nothing in the world to have +done, but to have put his right hand into his right coat pocket and +taken it out;——which he might have done without any violence, or the +least ungraceful twist in any one tendon or muscle of his whole body. + +In this case, (unless, indeed, my father had been resolved to make a +fool of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left hand——or by making +some nonsensical angle or other at his elbow-joint, or armpit)—his +whole attitude had been easy—natural—unforced: _Reynolds_ himself, as +great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat. + +Now as my father managed this matter,—consider what a devil of a figure +my father made of himself. + +In the latter end of Queen _Anne_’s reign, and in the beginning of the +reign of King _George_ the first—“_Coat pockets were cut very low down +in the skirt._”—I need say no more—the father of mischief, had he been +hammering at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for +one in my father’s situation. + +C H A P. XLVII + +IT was not an easy matter in any king’s reign (unless you were as lean +a subject as myself) to have forced your hand diagonally, quite across +your whole body, so as to gain the bottom of your opposite coat +pocket.——In the year one thousand seven hundred and eighteen, when this +happened, it was extremely difficult; so that when my uncle _Toby_ +discovered the transverse zig-zaggery of my father’s approaches towards +it, it instantly brought into his mind those he had done duty in, +before the gate of _St. Nicolas_;—the idea of which drew off his +attention so intirely from the subject in debate, that he had got his +right hand to the bell to ring up _Trim_ to go and fetch his map of +_Namur_, and his compasses and sector along with it, to measure the +returning angles of the traverses of that attack,—but particularly of +that one, where he received his wound upon his groin. + +My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in his +body seemed to rush up into his face——my uncle _Toby_ dismounted +immediately. + +——I did not apprehend your uncle _Toby_ was o’horseback.—— + +C H A P. XLVIII + +A MAN’s body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak +it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin’s lining;—rumple the +one,—you rumple the other. There is one certain exception however in +this case, and that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have +had your jerkin made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a +sarcenet, or thin persian. + +_Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dionysius, Heracleotes, +Antipater, Panætius_, and _Possidonius_ amongst the _Greeks_;——_Cato_ +and _Varro_ and _Seneca_ amongst the _Romans_;——_Pantenus_ and _Clemens +Alexandrinus_ and _Montaigne_ amongst the Christians; and a score and a +half of good, honest, unthinking _Shandean_ people as ever lived, whose +names I can’t recollect,—all pretended that their jerkins were made +after this fashion,—you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled +and creased, and fretted and fridged the outside of them all to +pieces;——in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and +at the same time, not one of the insides of them would have been one +button the worse, for all you had done to them. + +I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this +sort:——for never poor jerkin has been tickled off at such a rate as it +has been these last nine months together,——and yet I declare, the +lining to it,——as far as I am a judge of the matter,——is not a +three-penny piece the worse;—pell-mell, helter-skelter, ding-dong, cut +and thrust, back stroke and fore stroke, side way and long-way, have +they been trimming it for me:—had there been the least gumminess in my +lining,—by heaven! it had all of it long ago been frayed and fretted to +a thread. + +——You Messrs. the Monthly Reviewers!——how could you cut and slash my +jerkin as you did?——how did you know but you would cut my lining too? + +Heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that Being who will +injure none of us, do I recommend you and your affairs,—so God bless +you;—only next month, if any one of you should gnash his teeth, and +storm and rage at me, as some of you did last MAY (in which I remember +the weather was very hot)—don’t be exasperated, if I pass it by again +with good temper,—being determined as long as I live or write) which in +my case means the same thing) never to give the honest gentleman a +worse word or a worse wish than my uncle _Toby_ gave the fly which +buzz’d about his nose all _dinner-time_,——“Go,—go, poor devil,” quoth +he,—“get thee gone,—why should I hurt thee! This world is surely wide +enough to hold both thee and me.” + +C H A P. XLIX + +ANY man, Madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the prodigious +suffusion of blood in my father’s countenance,—by means of which (as +all the blood in his body seemed to rush into his face, as I told you) +he must have reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six +whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural +colour:—any man, Madam, but my uncle _Toby_, who had observed this, +together with the violent knitting of my father’s brows, and the +extravagant contortion of his body during the whole affair,—would have +concluded my father in a rage; and taking that for granted,—had he been +a lover of such kind of concord as arises from two such instruments +being put in exact tune,—he would instantly have skrew’d up his, to the +same pitch;—and then the devil and all had broke loose—the whole piece, +Madam, must have been played off like the sixth of Avison +Scarlatti—_con furia_,—like mad.—Grant me patience!——What has _con +furia_,——_con strepito_,——or any other hurly burly whatever to do with +harmony? + +Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle _Toby_, the benignity of whose +heart interpreted every motion of the body in the kindest sense the +motion would admit of, would have concluded my father angry, and blamed +him too. My uncle _Toby_ blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the +pocket-hole;——so sitting still till my father had got his handkerchief +out of it, and looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible +good-will——my father, at length, went on as follows. + +C H A P. L + +“WHAT prodigious armies you had in _Flanders!_” + +——Brother _Toby_, quoth my father, I do believe thee to be as honest a +man, and with as good and as upright a heart as ever God created;—nor +is it thy fault, if all the children which have been, may, can, shall, +will, or ought to be begotten, come with their heads foremost into the +world:——but believe me, dear _Toby_, the accidents which unavoidably +way-lay them, not only in the article of our begetting ’em——though +these, in my opinion, are well worth considering,——but the dangers and +difficulties our children are beset with, after they are got forth into +the world, are enow—little need is there to expose them to unnecessary +ones in their passage to it.——Are these dangers, quoth my uncle _Toby_, +laying his hand upon my father’s knee, and looking up seriously in his +face for an answer,——are these dangers greater now o’days, brother, +than in times past? Brother _Toby_, answered my father, if a child was +but fairly begot, and born alive, and healthy, and the mother did well +after it,—our forefathers never looked farther.——My uncle _Toby_ +instantly withdrew his hand from off my father’s knee, reclined his +body gently back in his chair, raised his head till he could just see +the cornice of the room, and then directing the buccinatory muscles +along his cheeks, and the orbicular muscles around his lips to do their +duty—he whistled _Lillabullero._ + +C H A P. LI + +WHILST my uncle _Toby_ was whistling _Lillabullero_ to my father,—Dr. +_Slop_ was stamping, and cursing and damning at _Obadiah_ at a most +dreadful rate,——it would have done your heart good, and cured you, Sir, +for ever of the vile sin of swearing, to have heard him, I am +determined therefore to relate the whole affair to you. + +When Dr. _Slop_’s maid delivered the green baize bag with her master’s +instruments in it, to _Obadiah_, she very sensibly exhorted him to put +his head and one arm through the strings, and ride with it slung across +his body: so undoing the bow-knot, to lengthen the strings for him, +without any more ado, she helped him on with it. However, as this, in +some measure, unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest any thing should +bolt out in galloping back, at the speed _Obadiah_ threatened, they +consulted to take it off again: and in the great care and caution of +their hearts, they had taken the two strings and tied them close +(pursing up the mouth of the bag first) with half a dozen hard knots, +each of which _Obadiah_, to make all safe, had twitched and drawn +together with all the strength of his body. + +This answered all that _Obadiah_ and the maid intended; but was no +remedy against some evils which neither he or she foresaw. The +instruments, it seems, as tight as the bag was tied above, had so much +room to play in it, towards the bottom (the shape of the bag being +conical) that _Obadiah_ could not make a trot of it, but with such a +terrible jingle, what with the _tire téte, forceps_, and _squirt_, as +would have been enough, had _Hymen_ been taking a jaunt that way, to +have frightened him out of the country; but when _Obadiah_ accelerated +his motion, and from a plain trot assayed to prick his coach-horse into +a full gallop——by Heaven! Sir, the jingle was incredible. + +As _Obadiah_ had a wife and three children——the turpitude of +fornication, and the many other political ill consequences of this +jingling, never once entered his brain,——he had however his objection, +which came home to himself, and weighed with him, as it has oft-times +done with the greatest patriots.——“_The poor fellow, Sir, was not able +to hear himself whistle._” + +C H A P. LII + +AS _Obadiah_ loved wind-music preferably to all the instrumental music +he carried with him,—he very considerately set his imagination to work, +to contrive and to invent by what means he should put himself in a +condition of enjoying it. + +In all distresses (except musical) where small cords are wanted, +nothing is so apt to enter a man’s head as his hat-band:——the +philosophy of this is so near the surface——I scorn to enter into it. + +As _Obadiah_’s was a mixed case——mark, Sirs,——I say, a mixed case; for +it was obstetrical,——_scrip_-tical, squirtical, papistical——and as far +as the coach-horse was concerned in it,——caballistical——and only partly +musical;—_Obadiah_ made no scruple of availing himself of the first +expedient which offered; so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and +griping them hard together with one hand, and with the finger and thumb +of the other putting the end of the hat-band betwixt his teeth, and +then slipping his hand down to the middle of it,—he tied and cross-tied +them all fast together from one end to the other (as you would cord a +trunk) with such a multiplicity of round-abouts and intricate cross +turns, with a hard knot at every intersection or point where the +strings met,—that Dr. _Slop_ must have had three fifths of _Job_’s +patience at least to have unloosed them.—I think in my conscience, that +had NATURE been in one of her nimble moods, and in humour for such a +contest——and she and Dr. _Slop_ both fairly started together——there is +no man living which had seen the bag with all that _Obadiah_ had done +to it,——and known likewise the great speed the Goddess can make when +she thinks proper, who would have had the least doubt remaining in his +mind—which of the two would have carried off the prize. My mother, +Madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly——at +least by twenty _knots._——Sport of small accidents, _Tristram Shandy!_ +that thou art, and ever will be! had that trial been for thee, and it +was fifty to one but it had,——thy affairs had not been so depress’d—(at +least by the depression of thy nose) as they have been; nor had the +fortunes of thy house and the occasions of making them, which have so +often presented themselves in the course of thy life, to thee, been so +often, so vexatiously, so tamely, so irrecoverably abandoned—as thou +hast been forced to leave them;——but ’tis over,——all but the account of +’em, which cannot be given to the curious till I am got out into the +world. + +END OF THE FIRST VOLUME + +Tristram Shandy + +_Tristram Shandy_ + + + + +THE +LIFE AND OPINIONS +OF +TRISTRAM SHANDY, +GENTLEMAN + +Volume the Second + +Multitudinis imperitæ non formido judicia, meis tamen, rogo, parcant +opusculis——in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, in seriis +vicissim ad jocos transire. + +JOAN. SARESBERIENSIS, +_Episcopus Lugdun._ + +C H A P. I + +GREAT wits jump: for the moment Dr. _Slop_ cast his eyes upon his bag +(which he had not done till the dispute with my uncle _Toby_ about +mid-wifery put him in mind of it)—the very same thought occurred.—’Tis +God’s mercy, quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. _Shandy_ has had so bad a +time of it,——else she might have been brought to bed seven times told, +before one half of these knots could have got untied.——But here you +must distinguish—the thought floated only in Dr. _Slop_’s mind, without +sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as +your worship knows, are every day swimming quietly in the middle of the +thin juice of a man’s understanding, without being carried backwards or +forwards, till some little gusts of passion or interest drive them to +one side. + +A sudden trampling in the room above, near my mother’s bed, did the +proposition the very service I am speaking of. By all that’s +unfortunate, quoth Dr. _Slop_, unless I make haste, the thing will +actually befall me as it is. + +C H A P. II + +IN the case of _knots_,—by which, in the first place, I would not be +understood to mean slip-knots—because in the course of my life and +opinions—my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when I +mention the catastrophe of my great uncle Mr. _Hammond Shandy_,—a +little man,—but of high fancy:—he rushed into the duke of _Monmouth_’s +affair:——nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that particular +species of knots called bow-knots;—there is so little address, or +skill, or patience required in the unloosing them, that they are below +my giving any opinion at all about them.—But by the knots I am speaking +of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, +devilish tight, hard knots, made _bona fide_, as _Obadiah_ made +his;——in which there is no quibbling provision made by the duplication +and return of the two ends of the strings thro’ the annulus or noose +made by the second _implication_ of them—to get them slipp’d and undone +by.——I hope you apprehend me. + +In the case of these _knots_ then, and of the several obstructions, +which, may it please your reverences, such knots cast in our way in +getting through life——every hasty man can whip out his pen-knife and +cut through them.——’Tis wrong. Believe me, Sirs, the most virtuous way, +and which both reason and conscience dictate——is to take our teeth or +our fingers to them.——Dr. _Slop_ had lost his teeth—his favourite +instrument, by extracting in a wrong direction, or by some +misapplication of it, unfortunately slipping, he had formerly, in a +hard labour, knock’d out three of the best of them with the handle of +it:——he tried his fingers—alas; the nails of his fingers and thumbs +were cut close.—The duce take it! I can make nothing of it either way, +cried Dr. _Slop._——The trampling over head near my mother’s bed-side +increased.—Pox take the fellow! I shall never get the knots untied as +long as I live.——My mother gave a groan.——Lend me your penknife—I must +e’en cut the knots at last——pugh!——psha!—Lord! I have cut my thumb +quite across to the very bone——curse the fellow—if there was not +another man-midwife within fifty miles——I am undone for this bout—I +wish the scoundrel hang’d—I wish he was shot——I wish all the devils in +hell had him for a blockhead!—— + +My father had a great respect for _Obadiah_, and could not bear to hear +him disposed of in such a manner—he had moreover some little respect +for himself—and could as ill bear with the indignity offered to himself +in it. + +Had Dr. _Slop_ cut any part about him, but his thumb——my father had +pass’d it by—his prudence had triumphed: as it was, he was determined +to have his revenge. + +Small curses, Dr. _Slop_, upon great occasions, quoth my father +(condoling with him first upon the accident) are but so much waste of +our strength and soul’s health to no manner of purpose.—I own it, +replied Dr. _Slop._—They are like sparrow-shot, quoth my uncle _Toby_ +(suspending his whistling) fired against a bastion.——They serve, +continued my father, to stir the humours——but carry off none of their +acrimony:—for my own part, I seldom swear or curse at all—I hold it +bad——but if I fall into it by surprize, I generally retain so much +presence of mind (right, quoth my uncle _Toby_) as to make it answer my +purpose——that is, I swear on till I find myself easy. A wife and a just +man however would always endeavour to proportion the vent given to +these humours, not only to the degree of them stirring within +himself—but to the size and ill intent of the offence upon which they +are to fall.—“_Injuries come only from the heart_,”—quoth my uncle +_Toby._ For this reason, continued my father, with the most +_Cervantick_ gravity, I have the greatest veneration in the world for +that gentleman, who, in distrust of his own discretion in this point, +sat down and composed (that is at his leisure) fit forms of swearing +suitable to all cases, from the lowest to the highest provocation which +could possibly happen to him——which forms being well considered by him, +and such moreover as he could stand to, he kept them ever by him on the +chimney-piece, within his reach, ready for use.—I never apprehended, +replied Dr. _Slop_, that such a thing was ever thought of——much less +executed. I beg your pardon, answered my father; I was reading, though +not using, one of them to my brother _Toby_ this morning, whilst he +pour’d out the tea—’tis here upon the shelf over my head;—but if I +remember right, ’tis too violent for a cut of the thumb.—Not at all, +quoth Dr. _Slop_—the devil take the fellow.——Then, answered my father, +’Tis much at your service, Dr. _Slop_—on condition you will read it +aloud;——so rising up and reaching down a form of excommunication of the +church of _Rome_, a copy of which, my father (who was curious in his +collections) had procured out of the leger-book of the church of +_Rochester_, writ by ERNULPHUS the bishop——with a most affected +seriousness of look and voice, which might have cajoled ERNULPHUS +himself—he put it into Dr. _Slop_’s hands.——Dr. _Slop_ wrapt his thumb +up in the corner of his handkerchief, and with a wry face, though +without any suspicion, read aloud, as follows——my uncle _Toby_ +whistling _Lillabullero_ as loud as he could all the time. + +Textus de Ecclesiâ Roffensi, per Ernulfum Episcopum. + +C A P. III +EXCOMMUNICATIO.[6] + +EX auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus Sancti, +et sanctorum canonum, sanctæque et entemeratæ Virginis Dei genetricis +Mariae,— + +——Atque omnium cœlestium virtutum, angelorum, archangelorum, thronorum, +dominationum, potestatuum, cherubin ac seraphin, & sanctorum +patriarchum, prophetarum, & omnium apolstolorum & evangelistarum, & +sanctorum innocentum, qui in conspectu Agni soli digni inventi sunt +canticum cantare novum, et sanctorum martyrum et sanctorum confessorum, +et sanctarum virginum, atque omnium simul sanctorum et electorum +Dei,——Excommunicamus, et +       _vel_  os    s  _vel_ os +anathematizamus hunc furem, vel hunc +      s +malefactorem, N.N. et a liminibus sanctæ Dei ecclesiæ sequestramus, et +æternis +    _vel_ i     n +suppliciis excruciandus, mancipetur, cum Dathan et Abiram, et cum his +qui dixerunt Domino Deo, Recede à nobis, scientiam viarum tuarum +nolumus: et ficut aquâ ignis extinguatur lu- +  _vel_ eorum +cerna ejus in secula seculorum nisi resque- + n                  n +rit, et ad satisfactionem venerit. Amen. +      os +Maledicat illum Deus Pater qui homi- +            os + +nem creavit. Maledicat illum Dei Filius qui pro homine passus est. +Maledicat + os +illum Spiritus Sanctus qui in baptismo ef- +            os + +fusus est. Maledicat illum sancta crux, quam Christus pro nostrâ salute +hostem triumphans ascendit. +        os + +Maledicat illum sancta Dei genetrix et +                     os +perpetua Virgo Maria. Maledicat illum sanctus Michael, animarum +susceptor sa- +            os + +crarum. Maledicant illum omnes angeli et archangeli, principatus et +potestates, omnisque militia cœlestis. + +       os + +Maledicat illum patriarcharum et prophetarum laudabilis numerus. +Maledicat +  os +illum sanctus Johannes Præcursor et Baptista Christi, et sanctus +Petrus, et sanctus Paulus, atque sanctus Andreas, omnesque Christi +apostoli, simul et cæteri discipuli, quatuor quoque evangelistæ, qui +sua prædicatione mundum universum converte- +           os + +runt. Maledicat illum cuneus martyrum et confessorum mirificus, qui Deo +bonis operibus placitus inventus est. + +      os + +Maledicant illum sacrarum virginum chori, quæ mundi vana causa honoris +Christi respuenda contempserunt. Male- +     os +dicant illum omnes sancti qui ab initio mundi usque in finem seculi Deo +dilecti inveniuntur. + +        os + +Maledicant illum cœli et terra, et omnia sancta in eis manentia. + +     i  n          n + +Maledictus sit ubicunque, fuerit, sive in domo, sive in agro, sive in +viâ, sive in semitâ, sive in silvâ, sive in aquâ, sive in ecclesiâ. + +     i  n + +Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo,—— +———      ———      ——— +———      ———      ——— +———      ———      ——— +———      ———      ——— +———      ———      ——— +———      ———      ——— +———      ———      ——— +manducando, bibendo, esuriendo, sitiendo, jejunando, dormitando, +dormiendo, vigilando, ambulando, stando, sedendo, jacendo, operando, +quiescendo, mingendo, cacando, flebotomando. + +      i  n + +Maledictus sit in totis viribus corporis. +      i  n + +Maledictus sit intus et exterius. +      i  n           i + +Maledictus sit in capillis; maledictus +n              i  n +sit in cerebro. Maledictus sit in vertice, in temporibus, in fronte, in +auriculis, in superciliis, in oculis, in genis, in maxillis, in +naribus, in dentibus, mordacibus, in labris sive molibus, in labiis, in +guttere, in humeris, in harnis, in brachiis, in manubus, in digitis, in +pectore, in corde, et in omnibus interioribus stomacho tenus, in +renibus, in inguinibus, in femore, in genitalibus, in coxis, in +genubus, in cruribus, in pedibus, et in unguibus. + +Maledictus sit in totis compagibus membrorum, a vertice capitis, usque +ad plantam pedis—non sit in eo sanitas. + +Maledicat illum Christus Filius Dei vivi toto suæ majestatis imperio—— + +—et insurgat adversus illum cœlum cum omnibus virtutibus quæ in eo +moventur ad _damnandum_ eum, nisi penituerit et ad satisfactionem +venerit.  Amen. + +Fiat, fiat.  Amen. + + [6] As the geniuneness of the consultation of the Sorbonne upon the + question of baptism, was doubted by some, and denied by others——’twas + thought proper to print the original of this excommunication; for the + copy of which Mr. _Shandy_ returns thanks to the chapter clerk of the + dean and chapter of _Rochester._ + +C H A P. IV + +“BY the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and +of the holy canons, and of the undefiled Virgin _Mary_, mother and +patroness of our Saviour.” I think there is no necessity, quoth Dr. +_Slop_, dropping the paper down to his knee, and addressing himself to +my father——as you have read it over, Sir, so lately, to read it +aloud——and as Captain _Shandy_ seems to have no great inclination to +hear it——I may as well read it to myself. That’s contrary to treaty, +replied my father:——besides, there is something so whimsical, +especially in the latter part of it, I should grieve to lose the +pleasure of a second reading. Dr. _Slop_ did not altogether like +it,——but my uncle _Toby_ offering at that instant to give over +whistling, and read it himself to them;——Dr. _Slop_ thought he might as +well read it under the cover of my uncle _Toby_’s whistling——as suffer +my uncle _Toby_ to read it alone;——so raising up the paper to his face, +and holding it quite parallel to it, in order to hide his chagrin——he +read it aloud as follows——my uncle _Toby_ whistling _Lillabullero_, +though not quite so loud as before. + +“By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and +of the undefiled Virgin _Mary_, mother and patroness of our Saviour, +and of all the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, +dominions, powers, cherubins and seraphins, and of all the holy +patriarchs, prophets, and of all the apostles and evangelists, and of +the holy innocents, who in the sight of the Holy Lamb, are found worthy +to sing the new song of the holy martyrs and holy confessors, and of +the holy virgins, and of all the saints together, with the holy and +elect of God,—May he” (_Obadiah_) “be damn’d” (for tying these +knots)——“We excommunicate, and anathematize him, and from the +thresholds of the holy “church of God Almighty we sequester him, that +he may be tormented, disposed, and delivered over with _Dathan_ and +_Abiram_, and with those who say unto the Lord God, Depart from us, we +desire none of thy ways. And as fire is quenched with water, so let the +light of him be put out for evermore, unless it shall repent him” +(_Obadiah_, of the knots which he has tied) “and make satisfaction” +(for them) “Amen.” + +“May the Father who created man, curse him.——May the Son who suffered +for us curse him.——May the Holy Ghost, who was given to us in baptism, +curse him” (_Obadiah_)——“May the holy cross which Christ, for our +salvation triumphing over his enemies, ascended, curse him. + +“May the holy and eternal Virgin _Mary_, mother of God, curse him.——May +St. _Michael_, the advocate of holy souls, curse him.——May all the +angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly +armies, curse him.” [Our armies swore terribly in _Flanders_, cried my +uncle _Toby_,——but nothing to this.——For my own part I could not have a +heart to curse my dog so.] + +“May St. John, the Præcursor, and St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter +and St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all other Christ’s apostles, together +curse him. And may the rest of his disciples and four evangelists, who +by their preaching converted the universal world, and may the holy and +wonderful company of martyrs and confessors who by their holy works are +found pleasing to God Almighty, curse him’ (_Obadiah_.) + +“May the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the honour of Christ +have despised the things of the world, damn him——May all the saints, +who from the beginning of the world to everlasting ages are found to be +beloved of God, damn him— + +“May the heavens and earth, and all the holy things remaining therein, +damn him,” (_Obadiah_) “or her,” (or whoever else had a hand in tying +these knots.) + +“May he (_Obadiah_) be damn’d wherever he be——whether in the house or +the stables, the garden or the field, or the highway, or in the path, +or in the wood, or in the water, or in the church.——May he be cursed in +living, in dying.” [Here my uncle _Toby_, taking the advantage of a +_minim_ in the second bar of his tune, kept whistling one continued +note to the end of the sentence.——Dr. _Slop_, with his division of +curses moving under him, like a running bass all the way.] “May he be +cursed in eating and drinking, in being hungry, in being thirsty, in +fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, in walking, in standing, in +sitting, in lying, in working, in resting, in pissing, in shitting, and +in blood-letting! + +“May he” (_Obadiah_) “be cursed in all the faculties of his body! + +“May he be cursed inwardly and outwardly!——May he be cursed in the hair +of his head!——May he be cursed in his brains, and in his vertex,” (that +is a sad curse, quoth my father) “in his temples, in his forehead, in +his ears, in his eye-brows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his +nostrils, in his fore-teeth and grinders, in his lips, in his throat, +in his shoulders, in his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in his +fingers! + +“May he be damn’d in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and +purtenance, down to the very stomach! + +“May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin,” (God in heaven +forbid! quoth my uncle _Toby_) “in his thighs, in his genitals,” (my +father shook his head) “and in his hips, and in his knees, his legs, +and feet, and toe- nails! + +“May he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of the members, +from the top of his head to the sole of his foot! May there be no +soundness in him! + +“May the son of the living God, with all the glory of his +Majesty”——(Here my uncle _Toby_, throwing back his head, gave a +monstrous, long, loud Whew—w—w———something betwixt the interjectional +whistle of _Hay-day!_ and the word itself.—— + +——By the golden beard of _Jupiter_—and of _Juno_ (if her majesty wore +one) and by the beards of the rest of your heathen worships, which by +the bye was no small number, since what with the beards of your +celestial gods, and gods aerial and aquatick—to say nothing of the +beards of town-gods and country-gods, or of the celestial goddesses +your wives, or of the infernal goddesses your whores and concubines +(that is in case they wore them)——all which beards, as _Varro_ tells +me, upon his word and honour, when mustered up together, made no less +than thirty thousand effective beards upon the Pagan +establishment;——every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges +of being stroken and sworn by—by all these beards together then——I vow +and protest, that of the two bad cassocks I am worth in the world, I +would have given the better of them, as freely as ever _Cid Hamet_ +offered his——to have stood by, and heard my uncle _Toby_’s +accompanyment. + +——“curse him!”—continued Dr. _Slop_,—“and may heaven, with all the +powers which move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him” +(_Obadiah_) “unless he repent and make satisfaction! Amen. So be it,—so +be it. Amen.” + +I declare, quoth my uncle _Toby_, my heart would not let me curse the +devil himself with so much bitterness.—He is the father of curses, +replied Dr. _Slop_.——So am not I, replied my uncle.——But he is cursed, +and damn’d already, to all eternity, replied Dr. _Slop_. + +I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle _Toby_. + +Dr. _Slop_ drew up his mouth, and wasjust beginning to return my uncle +_Toby_ the compliment of his Whu—u—u—or interjectional whistle——when +the door hastily opening in the next chapter but one——put an end to the +affair. + +C H A P. V + +NOW don’t let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the +oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; +and because we have the spirit to swear them,——imagine that we have had +the wit to invent them too. + +I’ll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the world, except +to a connoisseur:——though I declare I object only to a connoisseur in +swearing,——as I would do to a connoisseur in painting, &c. &c. the +whole set of ’em are so hung round and _befetish’d_ with the bobs and +trinkets of criticism,——or to drop my metaphor, which by the bye is a +pity——for I have fetch’d it as far as from the coast of _Guiney_;—their +heads, Sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that +eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a work of +genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand to be prick’d and +tortured to death by ’em. + +—And how did _Garrick_ speak the soliloquy last night?—Oh, against all +rule, my lord,—most ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the +adjective, which should agree together in _number, case_, and _gender_, +he made a breach thus,—stopping, as if the point wanted settling;—and +betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern +the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times three +seconds and three fifths by a stop watch, my lord, each time.—Admirable +grammarian!——But in suspending his voice——was the sense suspended +likewise? Did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the +chasm?——Was the eye silent? Did you narrowly look?——I look’d only at +the stop-watch, my lord.—Excellent observer! + +And what of this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?——Oh! +’tis out of all plumb, my lord,——quite an irregular thing!—not one of +the angles at the four corners was a right angle.—I had my rule and +compasses, &c. my lord, in my pocket.—Excellent critick! + +——And for the epick poem your lordship bid me look at——upon taking the +length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon +an exact scale of _Bossu_’s——’tis out, my lord, in every one of its +dimensions.—Admirable connoisseur! + +——And did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture in your way +back?—’Tis a melancholy daub! my lord; not one principle of the pyramid +in any one group!——and what a price!——for there is nothing of the +colouring of _Titian_—the expression of _Rubens_—the grace of +_Raphael_—the purity of _Dominichino_—the _corregiescity_ of +_Corregio_—the learning of _Poussin_—the airs of _Guido_—the taste of +the _Carrachis_—or the grand contour of _Angelo._—Grant me patience, +just Heaven!—Of all the cants which are canted in this canting +world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst——the cant of +criticism is the most tormenting! + +I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, +to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the +reins of his imagination into his author’s hands——be pleased he knows +not why, and cares not wherefore. + +Great _Apollo!_ if thou art in a giving humour—give me—I ask no more, +but one stroke of native humour, with a single spark of thy own fire +along with it——and send _Mercury_, with the _rules and compasses_, if +he can be spared, with my compliments to—no matter. + +Now to any one else I will undertake to prove, that all the oaths and +imprecations which we have been puffing off upon the world for these +two hundred and fifty years last past as originals——except _St. Paul’s +thumb_——_God’s flesh and God’s fish_, which were oaths monarchical, +and, considering who made them, not much amiss; and as kings oaths, +’tis not much matter whether they were fish or flesh;—else I say, there +is not an oath, or at least a curse amongst them, which has not been +copied over and over again out of _Ernulphus_ a thousand times: but, +like all other copies, how infinitely short of the force and spirit of +the original!—it is thought to be no bad oath——and by itself passes +very well—“_G—d damn you._”—Set it beside _Ernulphus_’s——“God almighty +the Father damn you—God the Son damn you—God the Holy Ghost damn +you”—you see ’tis nothing.—There is an orientality in his, we cannot +rise up to: besides, he is more copious in his invention—possess’d more +of the excellencies of a swearer——had such a thorough knowledge of the +human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings of the joints, +and articulations,—that when _Ernulphus_ cursed—no part escaped +him.—’Tis true there is something of a _hardness_ in his manner——and, +as in _Michael Angelo_, a want of grace——but then there is such a +greatness of _gusto!_ + +My father, who generally look’d upon every thing in a light very +different from all mankind, would, after all, never allow this to be an +original.——He considered rather _Ernulphus_’s anathema, as an institute +of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of _swearing_ +in some milder pontificate, _Ernulphus_, by order of the succeeding +pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the +laws of it;—for the same reason that _Justinian_, in the decline of the +empire, had ordered his chancellor _Tribonian_ to collect the _Roman_ +or civil laws all together into one code or digest——lest, through the +rust of time——and the fatality of all things committed to oral +tradition—they should be lost to the world for ever. + +For this reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not an oath +from the great and tremendous oath of _William_ the conqueror (_By the +splendour of God_) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger (_Damn your +eyes_) which was not to be found in _Ernulphus._—In short, he would +add—I defy a man to swear _out_ of it. + +The hypothesis is, like most of my father’s, singular and ingenious +too;——nor have I any objection to it, but that it overturns my own. + +C H A P. VI + +——BLESS my soul!—my poor mistress is ready to faint——and her pains are +gone—and the drops are done—and the bottle of julap is broke——and the +nurse has cut her arm—(and I, my thumb, cried Dr. _Slop_,) and the +child is where it was, continued _Susannah_,—and the midwife has fallen +backwards upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her hip as black as +your hat.—I’ll look at it, quoth Dr _Slop_.—There is no need of that, +replied _Susannah_,—you had better look at my mistress—but the midwife +would gladly first give you an account how things are, so desires you +would go up stairs and speak to her this moment. + +Human nature is the same in all professions. + +The midwife had just before been put over Dr. _Slop_’s head—He had not +digested it.—No, replied Dr. _Slop_, ’twould be full as proper if the +midwife came down to me.—I like subordination, quoth my uncle +_Toby_,—and but for it, after the reduction of _Lisle_, I know not what +might have become of the garrison of _Ghent_, in the mutiny for bread, +in the year Ten.—Nor, replied Dr. _Slop_, (parodying my uncle _Toby_’s +hobby-horsical reflection; though full as hobby-horsical himself)——do I +know, Captain _Shandy_, what might have become of the garrison above +stairs, in the mutiny and confusion I find all things are in at +present, but for the subordination of fingers and thumbs to ******——the +application of which, Sir, under this accident of mine, comes in so _à +propos_, that without it, the cut upon my thumb might have been felt by +the _Shandy_ family, as long as the _Shandy_ family had a name. + +C H A P. VII + +LET us go back to the ******——in the last chapter. + +It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when +eloquence flourished at _Athens_ and _Rome_, and would be so now, did +orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had +the thing about you _in petto_, ready to produce, pop, in the place you +want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a pink’d doublet, a rusty helmet, a +pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle +pot—but above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.—Tho’ if it was +too young, and the oration as long as _Tully_’s second _Philippick_—it +must certainly have beshit the orator’s mantle.—And then again, if too +old,—it must have been unwieldly and incommodious to his action—so as +to make him lose by his child almost as much as he could gain by +it.—Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the precise age to a +minute——hid his BAMBINO in his mantle so cunningly that no mortal could +smell it——and produced it so critically, that no soul could say, it +came in by head and shoulders—Oh Sirs! it has done wonders—It has +open’d the sluices, and turn’d the brains, and shook the principles, +and unhinged the politicks of half a nation. + +These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and +times, I say, where orators wore mantles——and pretty large ones too, my +brethren, with some twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good purple, +superfine, marketable cloth in them—with large flowing folds and +doubles, and in a great style of design.—All which plainly shews, may +it please your worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little +good service it does at present, both within and without doors, is +owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of +_trunk-hose._—We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing. + +C H A P. VIII + +DR. _Slop_ was within an ace of being an exception to all this +argumentation: for happening to have his green baize bag upon his +knees, when he began to parody my uncle _Toby_—’twas as good as the +best mantle in the world to him: for which purpose, when he foresaw the +sentence would end in his new-invented forceps, he thrust his hand into +the bag in order to have them ready to clap in, when your reverences +took so much notice of the ***, which had he managed——my uncle _Toby_ +had certainly been overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that +case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the +salient angle of a ravelin,——Dr. _Slop_ would never have given them +up;—and my uncle _Toby_ would as soon have thought of flying, as taking +them by force: but Dr. _Slop_ fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it +took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for +they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his _forceps_, his +_forceps_ unfortunately drew out the _squirt_ along with it. + +When a proposition can be taken in two senses—’tis a law in +disputation, That the respondent may reply to which of the two he +pleases, or finds most convenient for him.——This threw the advantage of +the argument quite on my uncle _Toby_’s side.—“Good God!” cried my +uncle _Toby_, “_are children brought into the world with a squirt?_” + +C H A P. IX + +—UPON my honour, Sir, you have tore every bit of skin quite off the +back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle _Toby_—and you +have crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a jelly. +’Tis your own fault, said Dr. _Slop_——you should have clinch’d your two +fists together into the form of a child’s head as I told you, and sat +firm.—I did so, answered my uncle _Toby_.——Then the points of my +forceps have not been sufficiently arm’d, or the rivet wants closing—or +else the cut on my thumb has made me a little aukward—or possibly—’Tis +well, quoth my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities—that +the experiment was not first made upon my child’s head-piece.——It would +not have been a cherry-stone the worse, answered Dr. _Slop_.—I maintain +it, said my uncle _Toby_, it would have broke the cerebellum (unless +indeed the skull had been as hard as a granado) and turn’d it all into +a perfect posset.——Pshaw! replied Dr. _Slop_, a child’s head is +naturally as soft as the pap of an apple;—the sutures give way—and +besides, I could have extracted by the feet after.—Not you, said +she.——I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father. + +Pray do, added my uncle _Toby_. + +C H A P. X + +——AND pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it +may not be the child’s hip, as well as the child’s head?——’Tis most +certainly the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. _Slop_ +(turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally +are—’tis a point very difficult to know—and yet of the greatest +consequence to be known;——because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the +head—there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * + +——What the possibility was, Dr. _Slop_ whispered very low to my father, +and then to my uncle _Toby_.——There is no such danger, continued he, +with the head.—No, in truth quoth my father—but when your possibility +has taken place at the hip—you may as well take off the head too. + +——It is morally impossible the reader should understand this——’tis +enough Dr. _Slop_ understood it;——so taking the green baize bag in his +hand, with the help of _Obadiah_’s pumps, he tripp’d pretty nimbly, for +a man of his size, across the room to the door——and from the door was +shewn the way, by the good old midwife, to my mother’s apartments. + +C H A P. XI + +IT is two hours, and ten minutes—and no more—cried my father, looking +at his watch, since Dr. _Slop_ and _Obadiah_ arrived—and I know not how +it happens, Brother _Toby_—but to my imagination it seems almost an +age. + +——Here—pray, Sir, take hold of my cap—nay, take the bell along with it, +and my pantoufles too. + +Now, Sir, they are all at your service; and I freely make you a present +of ’em, on condition you give me all your attention to this chapter. + +Though my father said, “_he knew not how it happen’d_,”—yet he knew +very well how it happen’d;——and at the instant he spoke it, was +pre-determined in his mind to give my uncle _Toby_ a clear account of +the matter by a metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of _duration +and its simple modes_, in order to shew my uncle _Toby_ by what +mechanism and mensurations in the brain it came to pass, that the rapid +succession of their ideas, and the eternal scampering of the discourse +from one thing to another, since Dr. _Slop_ had come into the room, had +lengthened out so short a period to so inconceivable an extent.——“I +know not how it happens—cried my father,—but it seems an age.” + +——’Tis owing entirely, quoth my uncle _Toby_, to the succession of our +ideas. + +My father, who had an itch, in common with all philosophers, of +reasoning upon every thing which happened, and accounting for it +too—proposed infinite pleasure to himself in this, of the succession of +ideas, and had not the least apprehension of having it snatch’d out of +his hands by my uncle _Toby_, who (honest man!) generally took every +thing as it happened;——and who, of all things in the world, troubled +his brain the least with abstruse thinking;—the ideas of time and +space—or how we came by those ideas—or of what stuff they were made——or +whether they were born with us—or we picked them up afterwards as we +went along—or whether we did it in frocks——or not till we had got into +breeches—with a thousand other inquiries and disputes about INFINITY +PRESCIENCE, LIBERTY, NECESSITY, and so forth, upon whose desperate and +unconquerable theories so many fine heads have been turned and +cracked——never did my uncle _Toby_’s the least injury at all; my father +knew it—and was no less surprized than he was disappointed, with my +uncle’s fortuitous solution. + +Do you understand the theory of that affair? replied my father. + +Not I, quoth my uncle. + +—But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about? + +No more than my horse, replied my uncle _Toby_. + +Gracious heaven! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping his two +hands together——there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother +_Toby_——’twere almost a pity to exchange it for a knowledge.—But I’ll +tell thee.—— + +To understand what time is aright, without which we never can +comprehend _infinity_, insomuch as one is a portion of the other——we +ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea it is we have of +_duration_, so as to give a satisfactory account how we came by +it.——What is that to any body? quoth my uncle _Toby_.[7] _For if you +will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind_, continued my father, _and +observe attentively, you will perceive, brother, that whilst you and I +are talking together, and thinking, and smoking our pipes, or whilst we +receive successively ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist, and +so we estimate the existence, or the continuation of the existence of +ourselves, or any thing else, commensurate to the succession of any +ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing +co-existing with our thinking——and so according to that +preconceived_——You puzzle me to death, cried my uncle _Toby_. + +——’Tis owing to this, replied my father, that in our computations of +time, we are so used to minutes, hours, weeks, and months——and of +clocks (I wish there was not a clock in the kingdom) to measure out +their several portions to us, and to those who belong to us——that +’twill be well, if in time to come, the _succession of our ideas_ be of +any use or service to us at all. + +Now, whether we observe it or no, continued my father, in every sound +man’s head, there is a regular succession of ideas of one sort or +other, which follow each other in train just like——A train of +artillery? said my uncle _Toby_——A train of a fiddle-stick!—quoth my +father—which follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain +distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned +round by the heat of a candle.—I declare, quoth my uncle _Toby_, mine +are more like a smoke-jack.——Then, brother _Toby_, I have nothing more +to say to you upon that subject, said my father. + + [7] Vide Locke. + +C H A P. XII + +——WHAT a conjuncture was here lost!——My father in one of his best +explanatory moods—in eager pursuit of a metaphysical point into the +very regions, where clouds and thick darkness would soon have +encompassed it about;—my uncle _Toby_ in one of the finest dispositions +for it in the world;—his head like a smoke-jack;——the funnel unswept, +and the ideas whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and +darkened over with fuliginous matter!—By the tomb-stone of _Lucian_——if +it is in being——if not, why then by his ashes! by the ashes of my dear +_Rabelais_, and dearer _Cervantes!_——my father and my uncle _Toby_’s +discourse upon TIME and ETERNITY——was a discourse devoutly to be wished +for! and the petulancy of my father’s humour, in putting a stop to it +as he did, was a robbery of the _Ontologic Treasury_ of such a jewel, +as no coalition of great occasions and great men are ever likely to +restore to it again. + +C H A P. XIII + +THO’ my father persisted in not going on with the discourse—yet he +could not get my uncle _Toby_’s smoke-jack out of his head—piqued as he +was at first with it;—there was something in the comparison at the +bottom, which hit his fancy; for which purpose, resting his elbow upon +the table, and reclining the right side of his head upon the palm of +his hand——but looking first stedfastly in the fire——he began to commune +with himself, and philosophize about it: but his spirits being wore out +with the fatigues of investigating new tracts, and the constant +exertion of his faculties upon that variety of subjects which had taken +their turn in the discourse——the idea of the smoke jack soon turned all +his ideas upside down—so that he fell asleep almost before he knew what +he was about. + +As for my uncle _Toby_, his smoke-jack had not made a dozen +revolutions, before he fell asleep also.——Peace be with them both!——Dr. +_Slop_ is engaged with the midwife and my mother above stairs.——_Trim_ +is busy in turning an old pair of jack-boots into a couple of mortars, +to be employed in the siege of _Messina_ next summer—and is this +instant boring the touch-holes with the point of a hot poker.——All my +heroes are off my hands;—’tis the first time I have had a moment to +spare—and I’ll make use of it, and write my preface. + +The A U T H O R ’s P R E F A C E + +NO, I’ll not say a word about it——here it is;—in publishing it—I have +appealed to the world——and to the world I leave it;—it must speak for +itself. + +All I know of the matter is—when I sat down, my intent was to write a +good book; and as far as the tenuity of my understanding would hold +out—a wise, aye, and a discreet—taking care only, as I went along, to +put into it all the wit and the judgment (be it more or less) which the +great Author and Bestower of them had thought fit originally to give +me——so that, as your worships see—’tis just as God pleases. + +Now, _Agalastes_ (speaking dispraisingly) sayeth, That there may be +some wit in it, for aught he knows——but no judgment at all. And +_Triptolemus_ and _Phutatorius_ agreeing thereto, ask, How is it +possible there should? for that wit and judgment in this world never go +together; inasmuch as they are two operations differing from each other +as wide as east from west——So, says _Locke_——so are farting and +hickuping, say I. But in answer to this, _Didius_ the great church +lawyer, in his code _de fartendi et illustrandi fallaciis_, doth +maintain and make fully appear, That an illustration is no +argument——nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean to be a +syllogism;—but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for +it——so that the main good these things do is only to clarify the +understanding, previous to the application of the argument itself, in +order to free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, +which, if left swimming therein, might hinder a conception and spoil +all. + +Now, my dear anti-Shandeans, and thrice able criticks, and +fellow-labourers (for to you I write this Preface)——and to you, most +subtle statesmen and discreet doctors (do—pull off your beards) +renowned for gravity and wisdom;——_Monopolus_, my politician—_Didius_, +my counsel; _Kysarcius_, my friend;—_Phutatorius_, my +guide;——_Gastripheres_, the preserver of my life; _Somnolentius_, the +balm and repose of it——not forgetting all others, as well sleeping as +waking, ecclesiastical as civil, whom for brevity, but out of no +resentment to you, I lump all together.——Believe me, right worthy, + +My most zealous wish and fervent prayer in your behalf, and in my own +too, in case the thing is not done already for us——is, that the great +gifts and endowments both of wit and judgment, with every thing which +usually goes along with them——such as memory, fancy, genius, eloquence, +quick parts, and what not, may this precious moment, without stint or +measure, let or hindrance, be poured down warm as each of us could bear +it—scum and sediment and all (for I would not have a drop lost) into +the several receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, +refectories, and spare places of our brains——in such sort, that they +might continue to be injected and tunn’d into, according to the true +intent and meaning of my wish, until every vessel of them, both great +and small, be so replenish’d, saturated, and filled up therewith, that +no more, would it save a man’s life, could possibly be got either in or +out. + +Bless us!—what noble work we should make!——how should I tickle it +off!——and what spirits should I find myself in, to be writing away for +such readers!——and you—just heaven!——with what raptures would you sit +and read—but oh!—’tis too much——I am sick——I faint away deliciously at +the thoughts of it—’tis more than nature can bear!—lay hold of me——I am +giddy—I am stone blind—I’m dying—I am gone.—Help! Help! Help!—But +hold—I grow something better again, for I am beginning to foresee, when +this is over, that as we shall all of us continue to be great wits—we +should never agree amongst ourselves, one day to an end:——there would +be so much satire and sarcasm——scoffing and flouting, with raillying +and reparteeing of it—thrusting and parrying in one corner or +another——there would be nothing but mischief among us——Chaste stars! +what biting and scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should +make, what with breaking of heads, rapping of knuckles, and hitting of +sore places—there would be no such thing as living for us. + +But then again, as we should all of us be men of great judgment, we +should make up matters as fast as ever they went wrong; and though we +should abominate each other ten times worse than so many devils or +devilesses, we should nevertheless, my dear creatures, be all courtesy +and kindness, milk and honey—’twould be a second land of promise—a +paradise upon earth, if there was such a thing to be had—so that upon +the whole we should have done well enough. + +All I fret and fume at, and what most distresses my invention at +present, is how to bring the point itself to bear; for as your worships +well know, that of these heavenly emanations of _wit_ and _judgment_, +which I have so bountifully wished both for your worships and +myself—there is but a certain _quantum_ stored up for us all, for the +use and behoof of the whole race of mankind; and such small modicums of +’em are only sent forth into this wide world, circulating here and +there in one bye corner or another—and in such narrow streams, and at +such prodigious intervals from each other, that one would wonder how it +holds out, or could be sufficient for the wants and emergencies of so +many great estates, and populous empires. + +Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in _Nova Zembla, North +Lapland_, and in all those cold and dreary tracks of the globe, which +lie more directly under the arctick and antartick circles, where the +whole province of a man’s concernments lies for near nine months +together within the narrow compass of his cave—where the spirits are +compressed almost to nothing—and where the passions of a man, with +every thing which belongs to them, are as frigid as the zone +itself—there the least quantity of _judgment_ imaginable does the +business——and of _wit_——there is a total and an absolute saving—for as +not one spark is wanted—so not one spark is given. Angels and ministers +of grace defend us! what a dismal thing would it have been to have +governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or made a treaty, or run a +match, or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a provincial chapter +there, with so _plentiful a lack_ of wit and judgment about us! For +mercy’s sake, let us think no more about it, but travel on as fast as +we can southwards into _Norway_—crossing over _Swedeland_, if you +please, through the small triangular province of _Angermania_ to the +lake of _Bothmia_; coasting along it through east and west _Bothnia_, +down to _Carelia_, and so on, through all those states and provinces +which border upon the far side of the _Gulf_ of _Finland_, and the +north-east of the _Baltick_, up to _Petersbourg_, and just stepping +into _Ingria_;—then stretching over directly from thence through the +north parts of the _Russian_ empire—leaving _Siberia_ a little upon the +left hand, till we got into the very heart of _Russian_ and _Asiatick +Tartary._ + +Now through this long tour which I have led you, you observe the good +people are better off by far, than in the polar countries which we have +just left:—for if you hold your hand over your eyes, and look very +attentively, you may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of +wit, with a comfortable provision of good plain houshold judgment, +which, taking the quality and quantity of it together, they make a very +good shift with——and had they more of either the one or the other, it +would destroy the proper balance betwixt them, and I am satisfied +moreover they would want occasions to put them to use. + +Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more +luxuriant island, where you perceive the spring-tide of our blood and +humours runs high——where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, +and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and +subject to reason——the _height_ of our wit, and the _depth_ of our +judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to the _length_ and +_breadth_ of our necessities——and accordingly we have them sent down +amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and creditable plenty, that +no one thinks he has any cause to complain. + +It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot +and cold—wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular +and settled way;—so that sometimes for near half a century together, +there shall be very little wit or judgment either to be seen or heard +of amongst us:——the small channels of them shall seem quite dried +up——then all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of +running again like fury——you would think they would never stop:——and +then it is, that in writing, and fighting, and twenty other gallant +things, we drive all the world before us. + +It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that +kind of argumentative process, which _Suidas_ calls _dialectick +induction_——that I draw and set up this position as most true and +veritable; + +That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are suffered +from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose infinite wisdom +which dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will +just serve to light us on our way in this night of our obscurity; so +that your reverences and worships now find out, nor is it a moment +longer in my power to conceal it from you, That the fervent wish in +your behalf with which I set out, was no more than the first +insinuating _How d’ye_ of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as +a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into silence. For alas! could +this effusion of light have been as easily procured, as the exordium +wished it—I tremble to think how many thousands for it, of benighted +travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and +blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives——running their +heads against posts, and knocking out their brains without ever getting +to their journies end;——some falling with their noses perpendicularly +into sinks——others horizontally with their tails into kennels. Here one +half of a learned profession tilting full but against the other half of +it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in the dirt like +hogs.—Here the brethren of another profession, who should have run in +opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild +geese, all in a row the same way.—What confusion!—what +mistakes!——fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and +ears—admirable!—trusting to the passions excited—in an air sung, or a +story painted to the heart——instead of measuring them by a quadrant. + +In the fore-ground of this picture, a _statesman_ turning the political +wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round——_against_ the stream of +corruption—by Heaven!——instead of _with_ it. + +In this corner, a son of the divine _Esculapius_, writing a book +against predestination; perhaps worse—feeling his patient’s pulse, +instead of his apothecary’s——a brother of the Faculty in the +back-ground upon his knees in tears—drawing the curtains of a mangled +victim to beg his forgiveness;—offering a fee—instead of taking one. + +In that spacious HALL, a coalition of the gown, from all the bars of +it, driving a damn’d, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with all +their might and main, the wrong way!——kicking it _out_ of the great +doors, instead of, _in_——and with such fury in their looks, and such a +degree of inveteracy in their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had +been originally made for the peace and preservation of +mankind:——perhaps a more enormous mistake committed by them still——a +litigated point fairly hung up;——for instance, Whether _John o’Nokes_ +his nose could stand in _Tom o’Stiles_ his face, without a trespass, or +not—rashly determined by them in five-and-twenty minutes, which, with +the cautious pros and cons required in so intricate a proceeding, might +have taken up as many months——and if carried on upon a military plan, +as your honours know an ACTION should be, with all the stratagems +practicable therein,——such as feints,—forced +marches,—surprizes—ambuscades—mask-batteries, and a thousand other +strokes of generalship, which consist in catching at all advantages on +both sides——might reasonably have lasted them as many years, finding +food and raiment all that term for a centumvirate of the profession. + +As for the Clergy——No——if I say a word against them, I’ll be shot.——I +have no desire; and besides, if I had—I durst not for my soul touch +upon the subject——with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the +condition I am in at present, ’twould be as much as my life was worth, +to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account—and +therefore ’tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as +fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to +clear up——and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least +_wit_ are reported to be men of most _judgment._——But mark—I say, +_reported to be_—for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and +which, like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain to +be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain. + +This by the help of the observation already premised, and I hope +already weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall +forthwith make appear. + +I hate set dissertations——and above all things in the world, ’tis one +of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by +placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right +line, betwixt your own and your reader’s conception—when in all +likelihood, if you had looked about, you might have seen something +standing, or hanging up, which would have cleared the point at +once—“for what hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the laudable desire of +knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, +a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of a goldsmith’s +crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?”—I am this +moment sitting upon one. Will you give me leave to illustrate this +affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of +it?—they are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly into +two gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say in so clear a +light, as to let you see through the drift and meaning of my whole +preface, as plainly as if every point and particle of it was made up of +sun-beams. + +I enter now directly upon the point. + +—Here stands _wit_—and there stands _judgment_, close beside it, just +like the two knobs I’m speaking of, upon the back of this self-same +chair on which I am sitting. + +—You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its +_frame_—as wit and judgment are of _ours_—and like them too, +indubitably both made and fitted to go together, in order, as we say in +all such cases of duplicated embellishments——_to answer one another._ + +Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating +this matter—let us for a moment take off one of these two curious +ornaments (I care not which) from the point or pinnacle of the chair it +now stands on—nay, don’t laugh at it,—but did you ever see, in the +whole course of your lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made +of it?—Why, ’tis as miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and there +is just as much sense and symmetry in the one as in the +other:——do——pray, get off your seats only to take a view of it,——Now +would any man who valued his character a straw, have turned a piece of +work out of his hand in such a condition?——nay, lay your hands upon +your hearts, and answer this plain question, Whether this one single +knob, which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can serve any +purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the +other?—and let me farther ask, in case the chair was your own, if you +would not in your consciences think, rather than be as it is, that it +would be ten times better without any knob at all? + +Now these two knobs——or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown +the whole entablature——being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all +others, as I have proved it, are the most needful——the most priz’d—the +most calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come +at—for all these reasons put together, there is not a mortal among us, +so destitute of a love of good fame or feeding——or so ignorant of what +will do him good therein—who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in +his own mind, to be, or to be thought at least, master of the one or +the other, and indeed of both of them, if the thing seems any way +feasible, or likely to be brought to pass. + +Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at +the one—unless they laid hold of the other,——pray what do you think +would become of them?——Why, Sirs, in spite of all their _gravities_, +they must e’en have been contented to have gone with their insides +naked——this was not to be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to +be supposed in the case we are upon——so that no one could well have +been angry with them, had they been satisfied with what little they +could have snatched up and secreted under their cloaks and great +perriwigs, had they not raised a _hue_ and _cry_ at the same time +against the lawful owners. + +I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning +and artifice——that the great _Locke_, who was seldom outwitted by false +sounds——was nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it seems, was so deep +and solemn a one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, +and other implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against +the _poor wits_ in this matter, that the philosopher himself was +deceived by it—it was his glory to free the world from the lumber of a +thousand vulgar errors;——but this was not of the number; so that +instead of sitting down coolly, as such a philosopher should have done, +to have examined the matter of fact before he philosophised upon it—on +the contrary he took the fact for granted, and so joined in with the +cry, and halloo’d it as boisterously as the rest. + +This has been made the _Magna Charta_ of stupidity ever since——but your +reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the +title to it is not worth a groat:——which by-the-bye is one of the many +and vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for +hereafter. + +As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my mind +too freely——I beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly said +to their dispraise or prejudice, by one general declaration —That I +have no abhorrence whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great +wigs or long beards, any farther than when I see they are bespoke and +let grow on purpose to carry on this self-same imposture—for any +purpose——peace be with them!— =>mark only——I write not for them. + +C H A P. XIV + +EVERY day for at least ten years together did my father resolve to have +it mended—’tis not mended yet;—no family but ours would have borne with +it an hour——and what is most astonishing, there was not a subject in +the world upon which my father was so eloquent, as upon that of +door-hinges.——And yet at the same time, he was certainly one of the +greatest bubbles to them, I think, that history can produce: his +rhetorick and conduct were at perpetual handy-cuffs.—Never did the +parlour-door open—but his philosophy or his principles fell a victim to +it;——three drops of oil with a feather, and a smart stroke of a hammer, +had saved his honour for ever. + +——Inconsistent soul that man is!——languishing under wounds, which he +has the power to heal!—his whole life a contradiction to his +knowledge!—his reason, that precious gift of God to him—(instead of +pouring in oil) serving but to sharpen his sensibilities—to multiply +his pains, and render him more melancholy and uneasy under them!—Poor +unhappy creature, that he should do so!——Are not the necessary causes +of misery in this life enow, but he must add voluntary ones to his +stock of sorrow;—struggle against evils which cannot be avoided, and +submit to others, which a tenth part of the trouble they create him +would remove from his heart for ever? + +By all that is good and virtuous, if there are three drops of oil to be +got, and a hammer to be found within ten miles of _Shandy Hall_——the +parlour door hinge shall be mended this reign. + +C H A P. XV + +WHEN Corporal _Trim_ had brought his two mortars to bear, he was +delighted with his handy-work above measure; and knowing what a +pleasure it would be to his master to see them, he was not able to +resist the desire he had of carrying them directly into his parlour. + +Now next to the moral lesson I had in view in mentioning the affair of +_hinges_, I had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it +is this. + +Had the parlour door opened and turn’d upon its hinges, as a door +should do— + +Or for example, as cleverly as our government has been turning upon its +hinges——(that is, in case things have all along gone well with your +worship,—otherwise I give up my simile)—in this case, I say, there had +been no danger either to master or man, in corporal _Trim_’s peeping +in: the moment he had beheld my father and my uncle _Toby_ fast +asleep—the respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would have +retired as silent as death, and left them both in their arm-chairs, +dreaming as happy as he had found them: but the thing was, morally +speaking, so very impracticable, that for the many years in which this +hinge was suffered to be out of order, and amongst the hourly +grievances my father submitted to upon its account—this was one; that +he never folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but the thoughts +of being unavoidably awakened by the first person who should open the +door, was always uppermost in his imagination, and so incessantly +stepp’d in betwixt him and the first balmy presage of his repose, as to +rob him, as he often declared, of the whole sweets of it. + +“_When things move upon bad hinges_, an’ please your lordships, _how +can it be otherwise?”_ + +Pray what’s the matter? Who is there? cried my father, waking, the +moment the door began to creak.——I wish the smith would give a peep at +that confounded hinge.——’Tis nothing, an please your honour, said +_Trim_, but two mortars I am bringing in.—They shan’t make a clatter +with them here, cried my father hastily.—If Dr. _Slop_ has any drugs to +pound, let him do it in the kitchen.—May it please your honour, cried +_Trim_, they are two mortar-pieces for a siege next summer, which I +have been making out of a pair of jack-boots, which _Obadiah_ told me +your honour had left off wearing.—By Heaven! cried my father, springing +out of his chair, as he swore——I have not one appointment belonging to +me, which I set so much store by as I do by these jack-boots——they were +our great grandfather’s brother _Toby_—they were _hereditary._ Then I +fear, quoth my uncle _Toby, Trim_ has cut off the entail.—I have only +cut off the tops, an’ please your honour, cried _Trim_——I hate +perpetuities as much as any man alive, cried my father——but these +jack-boots, continued he (smiling, though very angry at the same time) +have been in the family, brother, ever since the civil wars;——Sir +_Roger Shandy_ wore them at the battle of _Marston-Moor._—I declare I +would not have taken ten pounds for them.——I’ll pay you the money, +brother _Shandy_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, looking at the two mortars +with infinite pleasure, and putting his hand into his breeches pocket +as he viewed them——I’ll pay you the ten pounds this moment with all my +heart and soul.—— + +Brother _Toby_, replied my father, altering his tone, you care not what +money you dissipate and throw away, provided, continued he, ’tis but +upon a SIEGE.——Have I not one hundred and twenty pounds a year, besides +my half pay? cried my uncle _Toby_.—What is that—replied my father +hastily—to ten pounds for a pair of jack-boots?—twelve guineas for your +_pontoons_?—half as much for your _Dutch_ draw-bridge?—to say nothing +of the train of little brass artillery you bespoke last week, with +twenty other preparations for the siege of _Messina_: believe me, dear +brother _Toby_, continued my father, taking him kindly by the +hand—these military operations of yours are above your strength;—you +mean well brother——but they carry you into greater expences than you +were first aware of;—and take my word, dear _Toby_, they will in the +end quite ruin your fortune, and make a beggar of you.—What signifies +it if they do, brother, replied my uncle _Toby_, so long as we know +’tis for the good of the nation?—— + +My father could not help smiling for his soul—his anger at the worst +was never more than a spark;—and the zeal and simplicity of _Trim_—and +the generous (though hobby-horsical) gallantry of my uncle _Toby_, +brought him into perfect good humour with them in an instant. + +Generous souls!—God prosper you both, and your mortar-pieces too! quoth +my father to himself. + +C H A P. XVI + +ALL is quiet and hush, cried my father, at least above stairs—I hear +not one foot stirring.—Prithee _Trim_, who’s in the kitchen? There is +no one soul in the kitchen, answered _Trim_, making a low bow as he +spoke, except Dr. _Slop_.—Confusion! cried my father (getting upon his +legs a second time)—not one single thing has gone right this day! had I +faith in astrology, brother, (which, by the bye, my father had) I would +have sworn some retrograde planet was hanging over this unfortunate +house of mine, and turning every individual thing in it out of its +place.——Why, I thought Dr. _Slop_ had been above stairs with my wife, +and so said you.——What can the fellow be puzzling about in the +kitchen!—He is busy, an’ please your honour, replied _Trim_, in making +a bridge.——’Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle _Toby_:——pray, +give my humble service to Dr. _Slop, Trim_, and tell him I thank him +heartily. + +You must know, my uncle _Toby_ mistook the bridge—as widely as my +father mistook the mortars:——but to understand how my uncle _Toby_ +could mistake the bridge—I fear I must give you an exact account of the +road which led to it;—or to drop my metaphor (for there is nothing more +dishonest in an historian than the use of one)——in order to conceive +the probability of this error in my uncle _Toby_ aright, I must give +you some account of an adventure of _Trim_’s, though much against my +will, I say much against my will, only because the story, in one sense, +is certainly out of its place here; for by right it should come in, +either amongst the anecdotes of my uncle _Toby_’s amours with widow +_Wadman_, in which corporal _Trim_ was no mean actor—or else in the +middle of his and my uncle _Toby_’s campaigns on the bowling-green—for +it will do very well in either place;—but then if I reserve it for +either of those parts of my story——I ruin the story I’m upon;——and if I +tell it here——I anticipate matters, and ruin it there. + +—What would your worship have me to do in this case? + +—Tell it, Mr. _Shandy_, by all means.—You are a fool, _Tristram_, if +you do. + +O ye powers! (for powers ye are, and great ones too)—which enable +mortal man to tell a story worth the hearing——that kindly shew him, +where he is to begin it—and where he is to end it——what he is to put +into it——and what he is to leave out—how much of it he is to cast into +a shade—and whereabouts he is to throw his light!—Ye, who preside over +this vast empire of biographical freebooters, and see how many scrapes +and plunges your subjects hourly fall into;——will you do one thing? + +I beg and beseech you (in case you will do nothing better for us) that +wherever in any part of your dominions it so falls out, that three +several roads meet in one point, as they have done just here——that at +least you set up a guide-post in the centre of them, in mere charity, +to direct an uncertain devil which of the three he is to take. + +C H A P. XVII + +THO’ the shock my uncle _Toby_ received the year after the demolition +of _Dunkirk_, in his affair with widow _Wadman_, had fixed him in a +resolution never more to think of the sex—or of aught which belonged to +it;—yet corporal _Trim_ had made no such bargain with himself. Indeed +in my uncle _Toby_’s case there was a strange and unaccountable +concurrence of circumstances, which insensibly drew him in, to lay +siege to that fair and strong citadel.——In _Trim_’s case there was a +concurrence of nothing in the world, but of him and _Bridget_ in the +kitchen;—though in truth, the love and veneration he bore his master +was such, and so fond was he of imitating him in all he did, that had +my uncle _Toby_ employed his time and genius in tagging of points——I am +persuaded the honest corporal would have laid down his arms, and +followed his example with pleasure. When therefore my uncle _Toby_ sat +down before the mistress—corporal _Trim_ incontinently took ground +before the maid. + +Now, my dear friend _Garrick_, whom I have so much cause to esteem and +honour—(why, or wherefore, ’tis no matter)—can it escape your +penetration—I defy it—that so many play-wrights, and opificers of +chit-chat have ever since been working upon _Trim_’s and my uncle +_Toby_’s pattern.——I care not what _Aristotle_, or _Pacuvius_, or +_Bossu_, or _Ricaboni_ say—(though I never read one of them)——there is +not a greater difference between a single-horse chair and madam +_Pompadour_’s _vis-a-vis;_ than betwixt a single amour, and an amour +thus nobly doubled, and going upon all four, prancing throughout a +grand drama——Sir, a simple, single, silly affair of that kind—is quite +lost in five acts—but that is neither here nor there. + +After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine months on my +uncle _Toby_’s quarter, a most minute account of every particular of +which shall be given in its proper place, my uncle _Toby_, honest man! +found it necessary to draw off his forces and raise the siege somewhat +indignantly. + +Corporal _Trim_, as I said, had made no such bargain either with +himself——or with any one else——the fidelity however of his heart not +suffering him to go into a house which his master had forsaken with +disgust——he contented himself with turning his part of the siege into a +blockade;—that is, he kept others off;—for though he never after went +to the house, yet he never met _Bridget_ in the village, but he would +either nod or wink, or smile, or look kindly at her—or (as +circumstances directed) he would shake her by the hand—or ask her +lovingly how she did—or would give her a ribbon—and now-and-then, +though never but when it could be done with decorum, would give +_Bridget_ a— + +Precisely in this situation, did these things stand for five years; +that is from the demolition of _Dunkirk_ in the year 13, to the latter +end of my uncle _Toby_’s campaign in the year 18, which was about six +or seven weeks before the time I’m speaking of.——When _Trim_, as his +custom was, after he had put my uncle _Toby_ to bed, going down one +moon-shiny night to see that every thing was right at his +fortifications——in the lane separated from the bowling-green with +flowering shrubs and holly—he espied his _Bridget._ + +As the corporal thought there was nothing in the world so well worth +shewing as the glorious works which he and my uncle _Toby_ had made, +_Trim_ courteously and gallantly took her by the hand, and led her in: +this was not done so privately, but that the foul-mouth’d trumpet of +Fame carried it from ear to ear, till at length it reach’d my father’s, +with this untoward circumstance along with it, that my uncle _Toby_’s +curious draw-bridge, constructed and painted after the _Dutch_ fashion, +and which went quite across the ditch—was broke down, and somehow or +other crushed all to pieces that very night. + +My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle +_Toby_’s hobby-horse; he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever +gentleman mounted; and indeed unless my uncle _Toby_ vexed him about +it, could never think of it once, without smiling at it——so that it +could never get lame or happen any mischance, but it tickled my +father’s imagination beyond measure; but this being an accident much +more to his humour than any one which had yet befall’n it, it proved an +inexhaustible fund of entertainment to him——Well——but dear _Toby!_ my +father would say, do tell me seriously how this affair of the bridge +happened.——How can you teaze me so much about it? my uncle _Toby_ would +reply—I have told it you twenty times, word for word as _Trim_ told it +me.—Prithee, how was it then, corporal? my father would cry, turning to +_Trim._—It was a mere misfortune, an’ please your honour;——I was +shewing Mrs. _Bridget_ our fortifications, and in going too near the +edge of the fosse, I unfortunately slipp’d in——Very well, _Trim!_ my +father would cry——(smiling mysteriously, and giving a nod—but without +interrupting him)——and being link’d fast, an’ please your honour, arm +in arm with Mrs. _Bridget_, I dragg’d her after me, by means of which +she fell backwards soss against the bridge——and _Trim_’s foot (my uncle +_Toby_ would cry, taking the story out of his mouth) getting into the +cuvette, he tumbled full against the bridge too.—It was a thousand to +one, my uncle _Toby_ would add, that the poor fellow did not break his +leg.——Ay truly, my father would say——a limb is soon broke, brother +_Toby_, in such encounters.——And so, an’ please your honour, the +bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was broke down +betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces. + +At other times, but especially when my uncle _Toby_ was so unfortunate +as to say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or petards—my father would +exhaust all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great) +in a panegyric upon the BATTERING-RAMS of the ancients—the VINEA which +_Alexander_ made use of at the siege of Troy.—He would tell my uncle +_Toby_ of the CATAPULTÆ of the _Syrians_, which threw such monstrous +stones so many hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from +their very foundation:—he would go on and describe the wonderful +mechanism of the BALLISTA which _Marcellinus_ makes so much rout +about!—the terrible effects of the PYRABOLI, which cast fire;—the +danger of the TEREBRA and SCORPIO, which cast javelins.——But what are +these, would he say, to the destructive machinery of corporal +_Trim_?—Believe me, brother _Toby_, no bridge, or bastion, or +sally-port, that ever was constructed in this world, can hold out +against such artillery. + +My uncle _Toby_ would never attempt any defence against the force of +this ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of smoaking his +pipe; in doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after +supper, that it set my father, who was a little phthisical, into a +suffocating fit of violent coughing: my uncle _Toby_ leap’d up without +feeling the pain upon his groin—and, with infinite pity, stood beside +his brother’s chair, tapping his back with one hand, and holding his +head with the other, and from time to time wiping his eyes with a clean +cambrick handkerchief, which he pulled out of his pocket.——The +affectionate and endearing manner in which my uncle _Toby_ did these +little offices—cut my father thro’ his reins, for the pain he had just +been giving him.——May my brains be knock’d out with a battering-ram or +a catapulta, I care not which, quoth my father to himself—if ever I +insult this worthy soul more! + +C H A P. XVIII + +THE draw-bridge being held irreparable, _Trim_ was ordered directly to +set about another——but not upon the same model: for cardinal +_Alberoni_’s intrigues at that time being discovered, and my uncle +_Toby_ rightly foreseeing that a flame would inevitably break out +betwixt _Spain_ and the Empire, and that the operations of the ensuing +campaign must in all likelihood be either in _Naples_ or _Sicily_——he +determined upon an _Italian_ bridge—(my uncle _Toby_, by-the-bye, was +not far out of his conjectures)——but my father, who was infinitely the +better politician, and took the lead as far of my uncle _Toby_ in the +cabinet, as my uncle _Toby_ took it of him in the field——convinced him, +that if the king of _Spain_ and the Emperor went together by the ears, +_England_ and _France_ and _Holland_ must, by force of their +pre-engagements, all enter the lists too;——and if so, he would say, the +combatants, brother _Toby_, as sure as we are alive, will fall to it +again, pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of _Flanders;_—then +what will you do with your _Italian_ bridge? + +—We will go on with it then upon the old model, cried my uncle _Toby_. + +When corporal _Trim_ had about half finished it in that style——my uncle +_Toby_ found out a capital defect in it, which he had never thoroughly +considered before. It turned, it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it, +opening in the middle, one half of which turning to one side of the +fosse, and the other to the other; the advantage of which was this, +that by dividing the weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it +impowered my uncle _Toby_ to raise it up or let it down with the end of +his crutch, and with one hand, which, as his garrison was weak, was as +much as he could well spare—but the disadvantages of such a +construction were insurmountable;——for by this means, he would say, I +leave one half of my bridge in my enemy’s possession——and pray of what +use is the other? + +The natural remedy for this was, no doubt, to have his bridge fast only +at one end with hinges, so that the whole might be lifted up together, +and stand bolt upright——but that was rejected for the reason given +above. + +For a whole week after he was determined in his mind to have one of +that particular construction which is made to draw back horizontally, +to hinder a passage; and to thrust forwards again to gain a passage—of +which sorts your worship might have seen three famous ones at _Spires_ +before its destruction—and one now at _Brisac_, if I mistake not;—but +my father advising my uncle _Toby_, with great earnestness, to have +nothing more to do with thrusting bridges—and my uncle foreseeing +moreover that it would but perpetuate the memory of the Corporal’s +misfortune—he changed his mind for that of the marquis _d’Hôpital_ ’s +invention, which the younger _Bernouilli_ has so well and learnedly +described, as your worships may see——_Act. Erud. Lips._ an. 1695—to +these a lead weight is an eternal balance, and keeps watch as well as a +couple of centinels, inasmuch as the construction of them was a curve +line approximating to a cycloid——if not a cycloid itself. + +My uncle _Toby_ understood the nature of a parabola as well as any man +in _England_—but was not quite such a master of the cycloid;——he talked +however about it every day——the bridge went not forwards.——We’ll ask +somebody about it, cried my uncle _Toby_ to _Trim._ + +C H A P. XIX + +WHEN _Trim_ came in and told my father, that Dr. _Slop_ was in the +kitchen, and busy in making a bridge—my uncle _Toby_——the affair of the +jack-boots having just then raised a train of military ideas in his +brain——took it instantly for granted that Dr. _Slop_ was making a model +of the marquis _d’Hôpital_ ’s bridge.——’tis very obliging in him, quoth +my uncle _Toby_;—pray give my humble service to Dr. _Slop_, _Trim_, and +tell him I thank him heartily. + +Had my uncle _Toby_’s head been a _Savoyard_ ’s box, and my father +peeping in all the time at one end of it——it could not have given him a +more distinct conception of the operations of my uncle _Toby_’s +imagination, than what he had; so, notwithstanding the catapulta and +battering-ram, and his bitter imprecation about them, he was just +beginning to triumph—— + +When _Trim_’s answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows, +and twisted it to pieces. + +C H A P. XX + +——THIS unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father——God bless +your honour, cried _Trim_, ’tis a bridge for master’s nose.——In +bringing him into the world with his vile instruments, he has crushed +his nose, _Susannah_ says, as flat as a pancake to his face, and he is +making a false bridge with a piece of cotton and a thin piece of +whalebone out of _Susannah_ ’s stays, to raise it up. + +——Lead me, brother _Toby_, cried my father, to my room this instant. + +C H A P. XXI + +FROM the first moment I sat down to write my life for the amusement of +the world, and my opinions for its instruction, has a cloud insensibly +been gathering over my father.——A tide of little evils and distresses +has been setting in against him.—Not one thing, as he observed himself, +has gone right: and now is the storm thicken’d and going to break, and +pour down full upon his head. + +I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy +frame of mind that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.——My nerves +relax as I tell it.——Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the +quickness of my pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which +every day of my life prompts me to say and write a thousand things I +should not——And this moment that I last dipp’d my pen into my ink, I +could not help taking notice what a cautious air of sad composure and +solemnity there appear’d in my manner of doing it.——Lord! how different +from the rash jerks and hair-brain’d squirts thou art wont, _Tristram_, +to transact it with in other humours—dropping thy pen——spurting thy ink +about thy table and thy books—as if thy pen and thy ink, thy books and +furniture cost thee nothing! + +C H A P. XXII + +——I WON’T go about to argue the point with you—’tis so——and I am +persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, “That both man and woman +bear pain or sorrow (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a +horizontal position.” + +The moment my father got up into his chamber, he threw himself +prostrate across his bed in the wildest disorder imaginable, but at the +same time in the most lamentable attitude of a man borne down with +sorrows, that ever the eye of pity dropp’d a tear for.——The palm of his +right hand, as he fell upon the bed, receiving his forehead, and +covering the greatest part of both his eyes, gently sunk down with his +head (his elbow giving way backwards) till his nose touch’d the +quilt;——his left arm hung insensible over the side of the bed, his +knuckles reclining upon the handle of the chamber-pot, which peep’d out +beyond the valance—his right leg (his left being drawn up towards his +body) hung half over the side of the bed, the edge of it pressing upon +his shin bone—He felt it not. A fix’d, inflexible sorrow took +possession of every line of his face.—He sigh’d once——heaved his breast +often—but uttered not a word. + +An old set-stitch’d chair, valanced and fringed around with party +coloured worsted bobs, stood at the bed’s head, opposite to the side +where my father’s head reclined.—My uncle _Toby_ sat him down in it. + +Before an affliction is digested—consolation ever comes too soon;—and +after it is digested—it comes too late: so that you see, madam, there +is but a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a +comforter to take aim at:—my uncle _Toby_ was always either on this +side, or on that of it, and would often say, he believed in his heart +he could as soon hit the longitude; for this reason, when he sat down +in the chair, he drew the curtain a little forwards, and having a tear +at every one’s service——he pull’d out a cambrick handkerchief——gave a +low sigh——but held his peace. + +C H A P. XXIII + +——“_ALL is not gain that is got into the purse._”—So that +notwithstanding my father had the happiness of reading the oddest books +in the universe, and had moreover, in himself, the oddest way of +thinking that ever man in it was bless’d with, yet it had this drawback +upon him after all——that it laid him open to some of the oddest and +most whimsical distresses; of which this particular one, which he sunk +under at present, is as strong an example as can be given. + +No doubt, the breaking down of the bridge of a child’s nose, by the +edge of a pair of forceps—however scientifically applied—would vex any +man in the world, who was at so much pains in begetting a child, as my +father was—yet it will not account for the extravagance of his +affliction, nor will it justify the un-christian manner he abandoned +and surrendered himself up to. + +To explain this, I must leave him upon the bed for half an hour—and my +uncle _Toby_ in his old fringed chair sitting beside him. + +C H A P. XXIV + +——I THINK it a very unreasonable demand—cried my great-grandfather, +twisting up the paper, and throwing it upon the table.——By this +account, madam, you have but two thousand pounds fortune, and not a +shilling more—and you insist upon having three hundred pounds a year +jointure for it.— + +—“Because,” replied my great-grandmother, “you have little or no nose, +Sir.”— + +Now before I venture to make use of the word _Nose_ a second time—to +avoid all confusion in what will be said upon it, in this interesting +part of my story, it may not be amiss to explain my own meaning, and +define, with all possible exactness and precision, what I would +willingly be understood to mean by the term: being of opinion, that +’tis owing to the negligence and perverseness of writers in despising +this precaution, and to nothing else——that all the polemical writings +in divinity are not as clear and demonstrative as those upon _a Will o’ +the Wisp_, or any other sound part of philosophy, and natural pursuit; +in order to which, what have you to do, before you set out, unless you +intend to go puzzling on to the day of judgment——but to give the world +a good definition, and stand to it, of the main word you have most +occasion for——changing it, Sir, as you would a guinea, into small +coin?—which done—let the father of confusion puzzle you, if he can; or +put a different idea either into your head, or your reader’s head, if +he knows how. + +In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as I am engaged +in—the neglect is inexcusable; and Heaven is witness, how the world has +revenged itself upon me for leaving so many openings to equivocal +strictures—and for depending so much as I have done, all along, upon +the cleanliness of my readers imaginations. + +——Here are two senses, cried _Eugenius_, as we walk’d along, pointing +with the fore finger of his right hand to the word _Crevice_, in the +one hundred and seventy-eighth page of the first volume of this book of +books,——here are two senses—quoth he.—And here are two roads, replied +I, turning short upon him——a dirty and a clean one——which shall we +take?—The clean, by all means, replied _Eugenius. Eugenius_, said I, +stepping before him, and laying my hand upon his breast——to define—is +to distrust.——Thus I triumph’d over _Eugenius;_ but I triumph’d over +him as I always do, like a fool.——’Tis my comfort, however, I am not an +obstinate one: therefore + +I define a nose as follows—intreating only beforehand, and beseeching +my readers, both male and female, of what age, complexion, and +condition soever, for the love of God and their own souls, to guard +against the temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him by +no art or wile to put any other ideas into their minds, than what I put +into my definition—For by the word _Nose_, throughout all this long +chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word +_Nose_ occurs—I declare, by that word I mean a nose, and nothing more, +or less. + +C H A P. XXV + +——“BECAUSE,” quoth my great grandmother, repeating the words again—“you +have little or no nose, Sir.”—— + +S’death! cried my great-grandfather, clapping his hand upon his +nose,—’tis not so small as that comes to;——’tis a full inch longer than +my father’s.—Now, my great-grandfather’s nose was for all the world +like unto the noses of all the men, women, and children, whom +_Pantagruel_ found dwelling upon the island of ENNASIN.——By the way, if +you would know the strange way of getting a-kin amongst so flat-nosed a +people——you must read the book;——find it out yourself, you never can.—— + +—’Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs. + +—’Tis a full inch, continued my grandfather, pressing up the ridge of +his nose with his finger and thumb; and repeating his assertion——’tis a +full inch longer, madam, than my father’s——You must mean your uncle’s, +replied my great-grandmother. + +——My great-grandfather was convinced.—He untwisted the paper, and +signed the article. + +C H A P. XXVI + +——WHAT an unconscionable jointure, my dear, do we pay out of this small +estate of ours, quoth my grandmother to my grandfather. + +My father, replied my grandfather, had no more nose, my dear, saving +the mark, than there is upon the back of my hand. + +—Now, you must know, that my great-grandmother outlived my grandfather +twelve years; so that my father had the jointure to pay, a hundred and +fifty pounds half-yearly—(on _Michaelmas_ and _Lady-day_,)—during all +that time. + +No man discharged pecuniary obligations with a better grace than my +father.——And as far as a hundred pounds went, he would fling it upon +the table, guinea by guinea, with that spirited jerk of an honest +welcome, which generous souls, and generous souls only, are able to +fling down money: but as soon as ever he enter’d upon the odd fifty—he +generally gave a loud _Hem!_ rubb’d the side of his nose leisurely with +the flat part of his fore finger——inserted his hand cautiously betwixt +his head and the cawl of his wig—look’d at both sides of every guinea +as he parted with it——and seldom could get to the end of the fifty +pounds, without pulling out his handkerchief, and wiping his temples. + +Defend me, gracious Heaven! from those persecuting spirits who make no +allowances for these workings within us.—Never—O never may I lay down +in their tents, who cannot relax the engine, and feel pity for the +force of education, and the prevalence of opinions long derived from +ancestors! + +For three generations at least this tenet in favour of long noses had +gradually been taking root in our family.——TRADITION was all along on +its side, and INTEREST was every half-year stepping in to strengthen +it; so that the whimsicality of my father’s brain was far from having +the whole honour of this, as it had of almost all his other strange +notions.—For in a great measure he might be said to have suck’d this in +with his mother’s milk. He did his part however.——If education planted +the mistake (in case it was one) my father watered it, and ripened it +to perfection. + +He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that +he did not conceive how the greatest family in _England_ could stand it +out against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short +noses.—And for the contrary reason, he would generally add, That it +must be one of the greatest problems in civil life, where the same +number of long and jolly noses, following one another in a direct line, +did not raise and hoist it up into the best vacancies in the +kingdom.——He would often boast that the _Shandy_ family rank’d very +high in king _Harry_ the VIIIth’s time, but owed its rise to no state +engine—he would say—but to that only;——but that, like other families, +he would add——it had felt the turn of the wheel, and had never +recovered the blow of my great-grandfather’s nose.——It was an ace of +clubs indeed, he would cry, shaking his head—and as vile a one for an +unfortunate family as ever turn’d up trumps. + +——Fair and softly, gentle reader!——where is thy fancy carrying +thee!——If there is truth in man, by my great-grandfather’s nose, I mean +the external organ of smelling, or that part of man which stands +prominent in his face——and which painters say, in good jolly noses and +well-proportioned faces, should comprehend a full third——that is, +measured downwards from the setting on of the hair. + +——What a life of it has an author, at this pass! + +C H A P. XXVII + +IT is a singular blessing, that nature has form’d the mind of man with +the same happy backwardness and renitency against conviction, which is +observed in old dogs—“of not learning new tricks.” + +What a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philosopher that ever +existed be whisk’d into at once, did he read such books, and observe +such facts, and think such thoughts, as would eternally be making him +change sides! + +Now, my father, as I told you last year, detested all this—He pick’d up +an opinion, Sir, as a man in a state of nature picks up an apple.—It +becomes his own—and if he is a man of spirit, he would lose his life +rather than give it up. + +I am aware that _Didius_, the great civilian, will contest this point; +and cry out against me, Whence comes this man’s right to this apple? +_ex confesso_, he will say—things were in a state of nature—The apple, +is as much _Frank_’s apple as _John_’s. Pray, Mr. _Shandy_, what patent +has he to shew for it? and how did it begin to be his? was it, when he +set his heart upon it? or when he gathered it? or when he chew’d it? or +when he roasted it? or when he peel’d, or when he brought it home? or +when he digested?——or when he——?——For ’tis plain, Sir, if the first +picking up of the apple, made it not his—that no subsequent act could. + +Brother _Didius_, _Tribonius_ will answer—(now _Tribonius_ the civilian +and church lawyer’s beard being three inches and a half and three +eighths longer than _Didius_ his beard—I’m glad he takes up the cudgels +for me, so I give myself no farther trouble about the answer.)—Brother +_Didius, Tribonius_ will say, it is a decreed case, as you may find it +in the fragments of _Gregorius_ and _Hermogines_’s codes, and in all +the codes from _Justinian_’s down to the codes of _Louis_ and _Des +Eaux_—That the sweat of a man’s brows, and the exsudations of a man’s +brains, are as much a man’s own property as the breeches upon his +backside;—which said exsudations, &c. being dropp’d upon the said apple +by the labour of finding it, and picking it up; and being moreover +indissolubly wasted, and as indissolubly annex’d, by the picker up, to +the thing pick’d up, carried home, roasted, peel’d, eaten, digested, +and so on;——’tis evident that the gatherer of the apple, in so doing, +has mix’d up something which was his own, with the apple which was not +his own, by which means he has acquired a property;—or, in other words, +the apple is _John_’s apple. + +By the same learned chain of reasoning my father stood up for all his +opinions; he had spared no pains in picking them up, and the more they +lay out of the common way, the better still was his title.——No mortal +claimed them; they had cost him moreover as much labour in cooking and +digesting as in the case above, so that they might well and truly be +said to be of his own goods and chattels.—Accordingly he held fast by +’em, both by teeth and claws—would fly to whatever he could lay his +hands on—and, in a word, would intrench and fortify them round with as +many circumvallations and breast-works, as my uncle _Toby_ would a +citadel. + +There was one plaguy rub in the way of this——the scarcity of materials +to make any thing of a defence with, in case of a smart attack; +inasmuch as few men of great genius had exercised their parts in +writing books upon the subject of great noses: by the trotting of my +lean horse, the thing is incredible! and I am quite lost in my +understanding, when I am considering what a treasure of precious time +and talents together has been wasted upon worse subjects—and how many +millions of books in all languages and in all possible types and +bindings, have been fabricated upon points not half so much tending to +the unity and peace-making of the world. What was to be had, however, +he set the greater store by; and though my father would oft-times sport +with my uncle _Toby_’s library—which, by-the-bye, was ridiculous +enough—yet at the very same time he did it, he collected every book and +treatise which had been systematically wrote upon noses, with as much +care as my honest uncle _Toby_ had done those upon military +architecture.——’Tis true, a much less table would have held them—but +that was not thy transgression, my dear uncle.—— + +Here——but why here——rather than in any other part of my story——I am not +able to tell:——but here it is——my heart stops me to pay to thee, my +dear uncle _Toby_, once for all, the tribute I owe thy goodness.—Here +let me thrust my chair aside, and kneel down upon the ground, whilst I +am pouring forth the warmest sentiment of love for thee, and veneration +for the excellency of thy character, that ever virtue and nature +kindled in a nephew’s bosom.——Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon +thy head!—Thou enviedst no man’s comforts——insultedst no man’s +opinions——Thou blackenedst no man’s character—devouredst no man’s +bread: gently, with faithful _Trim_ behind thee, didst thou amble round +the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy +way:—for each one’s sorrows, thou hadst a tear,—for each man’s need, +thou hadst a shilling. + +Whilst I am worth one, to pay a weeder—thy path from thy door to thy +bowling-green shall never be grown up.——Whilst there is a rood and a +half of land in the _Shandy_ family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle +_Toby_, shall never be demolish’d. + +C H A P. XXVIII + +MY father’s collection was not great, but to make amends, it was +curious; and consequently he was some time in making it; he had the +great good fortune hewever, to set off well, in getting +_Bruscambille_’s prologue upon long noses, almost for nothing—for he +gave no more for _Bruscambille_ than three half-crowns; owing indeed to +the strong fancy which the stall-man saw my father had for the book the +moment he laid his hands upon it.——There are not three _Bruscambilles_ +in _Christendom_—said the stall-man, except what are chain’d up in the +libraries of the curious. My father flung down the money as quick as +lightning——took _Bruscambille_ into his bosom——hied home from +_Piccadilly_ to _Coleman_-street with it, as he would have hied home +with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from _Bruscambille_ +all the way. + +To those who do not yet know of which gender _Bruscambille_ +is——inasmuch as a prologue upon long noses might easily be done by +either——’twill be no objection against the simile—to say, That when my +father got home, he solaced himself with _Bruscambille_ after the +manner in which, ’tis ten to one, your worship solaced yourself with +your first mistress——that is, from morning even unto night: which, +by-the-bye, how delightful soever it may prove to the inamorato—is of +little or no entertainment at all to by-standers.——Take notice, I go no +farther with the simile—my father’s eye was greater than his +appetite—his zeal greater than his knowledge—he cool’d—his affections +became divided——he got hold of _Prignitz_—purchased _Scroderus, Andrea +Paraeus, Bouchet_’s Evening Conferences, and above all, the great and +learned _Hafen Slawkenbergius_; of which, as I shall have much to say +by-and-bye—I will say nothing now. + +C H A P. XXIX + +OF all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in +support of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more +cruel disappointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue between +_Pamphagus_ and _Cocles_, written by the chaste pen of the great and +venerable _Erasmus_, upon the various uses and seasonable applications +of long noses.——Now don’t let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, +take advantage of any one spot of rising ground to get astride of your +imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to +slip on—let me beg of you, like an unback’d filly, _to frisk it, to +squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it—and to kick it, with +long kicks and short kicks_, till like _Tickletoby_’s mare, you break a +strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt.—You need not +kill him.— + +—And pray who was _Tickletoby_’s mare?—’tis just as discreditable and +unscholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (_ab. urb. +con._) the second Punic war broke out.—Who was _Tickletoby_’s +mare!—Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read—or by the +knowledge of the great saint _Paraleipomenon_—I tell you before-hand, +you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading, +by which your reverence knows I mean much knowledge, you will no more +be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem +of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to +unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie +mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one. + + +Marble image + + +Marble image + +C H A P. XXX + +“_NIHIL me paenitet hujus nasi_,” quoth _Pamphagus_;——that is—“My nose +has been the making of me.”——“_Nec est cur poeniteat_,” replies +_Cocles_; that is, “How the duce should such a nose fail?” + +The doctrine, you see, was laid down by _Erasmus_, as my father wished +it, with the utmost plainness; but my father’s disappointment was, in +finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; +without any of that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of +argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestow’d upon man on purpose to +investigate truth, and fight for her on all sides.——My father pish’d +and pugh’d at first most terribly——’tis worth something to have a good +name. As the dialogue was of _Erasmus_, my father soon came to himself, +and read it over and over again with great application, studying every +word and every syllable of it thro’ and thro’ in its most strict and +literal interpretation—he could still make nothing of it, that way. +Mayhap there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my +father.——Learned men, brother _Toby_, don’t write dialogues upon long +noses for nothing.——I’ll study the mystick and the allegorick +sense——here is some room to turn a man’s self in, brother. + +My father read on.—— + +Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that +besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by _Erasmus_, +the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic +conveniences also; for that in a case of distress—and for want of a +pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, _ad ixcitandum focum_ (to +stir up the fire.) + +Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and +had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had +done the seeds of all other knowledge——so that he had got out his +penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he +could not scratch some better sense into it.——I’ve got within a single +letter, brother _Toby_, cried my father, of _Erasmus_ his mystic +meaning.—You are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all +conscience.——Pshaw! cried my father, scratching on——I might as well be +seven miles off.—I’ve done it—said my father, snapping his fingers—See, +my dear brother _Toby_, how I have mended the sense.——But you have +marr’d a word, replied my uncle _Toby_.—My father put on his +spectacles——bit his lip——and tore out the leaf in a passion. + +C H A P. XXXI + +O _SLAWKENBERGIUS!_ thou faithful analyzer of my _Disgrazias_—thou sad +foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns which on one stage +or other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my +nose, and no other cause, that I am conscious of.—Tell me, +_Slawkenbergius!_ what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice? +whence came it? how did it sound in thy ears?——art thou sure thou +heard’st it?——which first cried out to thee——go——go, _Slawkenbergius!_ +dedicate the labours of thy life—neglect thy pastimes——call forth all +the powers and faculties of thy nature——macerate thyself in the service +of mankind, and write a grand FOLIO for them, upon the subject of their +noses. + +How the communication was conveyed into _Slawkenbergius_’s +sensorium——so that _Slawkenbergius_ should know whose finger touch’d +the key—and whose hand it was that blew the bellows—as _Hafen +Slawkenbergius_ has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and +ten years——we can only raise conjectures. + +_Slawkenbergius_ was play’d upon, for aught I know, like one of +_Whitefield_’s disciples——that is, with such a distinct intelligence, +Sir, of which of the two masters it was that had been practising upon +his _instrument_——as to make all reasoning upon it needless. + +——For in the account which _Hafen Slawkenbergius_ gives the world of +his motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of +his life upon this one work—towards the end of his prolegomena, which +by-the-bye should have come first——but the bookbinder has most +injudiciously placed it betwixt the analytical contents of the book, +and the book itself—he informs his reader, that ever since he had +arrived at the age of discernment, and was able to sit down cooly, and +consider within himself the true state and condition of man, and +distinguish the main end and design of his being;——or—to shorten my +translation, for _Slawkenbergius_’s book is in _Latin_, and not a +little prolix in this passage—ever since I understood, quoth +_Slawkenbergius_, any thing—or rather _what was what_——and could +perceive that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by +all who had gone before;——have I _Slawkenbergius_, felt a strong +impulse, with a mighty and unresistible call within me, to gird up +myself to this undertaking. + +And to do justice to _Slawkenbergius_, he has entered the list with a +stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it than any one man +who had ever entered it before him——and indeed, in many respects, +deserves to be _en-nich’d_ as a prototype for all writers, of +voluminous works at least, to model their books by——for he has taken +in, Sir, the whole subject—examined every part of it +_dialectically_——then brought it into full day; dilucidating it with +all the light which either the collision of his own natural parts could +strike—or the profoundest knowledge of the sciences had impowered him +to cast upon it—collating, collecting, and compiling——begging, +borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, all that had been wrote or +wrangled thereupon in the schools and porticos of the learned: so that +_Slawkenbergius_ his book may properly be considered, not only as a +model—but as a thorough-stitched DIGEST and regular institute of +_noses_, comprehending in it all that is or can be needful to be known +about them. + +For this cause it is that I forbear to speak of so many (otherwise) +valuable books and treatises of my father’s collecting, wrote either, +plump upon noses——or collaterally touching them;——such for instance as +_Prignitz_, now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite +learning, and from the most candid and scholar-like examination of +above four thousand different skulls, in upwards of twenty +charnel-houses in _Silesia_, which he had rummaged——has informed us, +that the mensuration and configuration of the osseous or bony parts of +human noses, in any _given_ tract of country, except _Crim Tartary_, +where they are all crush’d down by the thumb, so that no judgment can +be formed upon them—are much nearer alike, than the world imagines;—the +difference amongst them being, he says, a mere trifle, not worth taking +notice of;——but that the size and jollity of every individual nose, and +by which one nose ranks above another, and bears a higher price, is +owing to the cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts +and sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impell’d and driven by +the warmth and force of the imagination, which is but a step from it +(bating the case of idiots, whom _Prignitz_, who had lived many years +in _Turky_, supposes under the more immediate tutelage of Heaven)—it so +happens, and ever must, says _Prignitz_, that the excellency of the +nose is in a direct arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the +wearer’s fancy. + +It is for the same reason, that is, because ’tis all comprehended in +_Slawkenbergius_, that I say nothing likewise of _Scroderus (Andrea)_ +who, all the world knows, set himself to oppugn _Prignitz_ with great +violence—proving it in his own way, first _logically_, and then by a +series of stubborn facts, “That so far was _Prignitz_ from the truth, +in affirming that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary—the +nose begat the fancy.” + +—The learned suspected _Scroderus_ of an indecent sophism in this—and +_Prignitz_ cried out aloud in the dispute, that _Scroderus_ had shifted +the idea upon him——but _Scroderus_ went on, maintaining his thesis. + +My father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he +should take in this affair; when _Ambrose Paræus_ decided it in a +moment, and by overthrowing the systems, both of _Prignitz_ and +_Scroderus_, drove my father out of both sides of the controversy at +once. + +Be witness—— + +I don’t acquaint the learned reader—in saying it, I mention it only to +shew the learned, I know the fact myself—— + +That this _Ambrose Paræus_ was chief surgeon and nose-mender to +_Francis_ the ninth of _France_, and in high credit with him and the +two preceding, or succeeding kings (I know not which)—and that, except +in the slip he made in his story of _Taliacotius_’s noses, and his +manner of setting them on—he was esteemed by the whole college of +physicians at that time, as more knowing in matters of noses, than any +one who had ever taken them in hand. + +Now _Ambrose Paræus_ convinced my father, that the true and efficient +cause of what had engaged so much the attention of the world, and upon +which _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_ had wasted so much learning and fine +parts——was neither this nor that——but that the length and goodness of +the nose was owing simply to the softness and flaccidity in the nurse’s +breast——as the flatness and shortness of _puisne_ noses was to the +firmness and elastic repulsion of the same organ of nutrition in the +hale and lively—which, tho’ happy for the woman, was the undoing of the +child, inasmuch as his nose was so snubb’d, so rebuff’d, so rebated, +and so refrigerated thereby, as never to arrive _ad mensuram suam +legitimam_;——but that in case of the flaccidity and softness of the +nurse or mother’s breast—by sinking into it, quoth _Paraeus_, as into +so much butter, the nose was comforted, nourish’d, plump’d up, +refresh’d, refocillated, and set a growing for ever. + +I have but two things to observe of _Paraeus_; first, That he proves +and explains all this with the utmost chastity and decorum of +expression:—for which may his soul for ever rest in peace! + +And, secondly, that besides the systems of _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_, +which _Ambrose Paræus_ his hypothesis effectually overthrew—it +overthrew at the same time the system of peace and harmony of our +family; and for three days together, not only embroiled matters between +my father and my mother, but turn’d likewise the whole house and every +thing in it, except my uncle _Toby_, quite upside down. + +Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute between a man and his wife, never +surely in any age or country got vent through the key-hole of a +street-door. + +My mother, you must know———but I have fifty things more necessary to +let you know first—I have a hundred difficulties which I have promised +to clear up, and a thousand distresses and domestick misadventures +crowding in upon me thick and threefold, one upon the neck of another. +A cow broke in (tomorrow morning) to my uncle _Toby_’s fortifications, +and eat up two rations and a half of dried grass, tearing up the sods +with it, which faced his horn-work and covered way.——_Trim_ insists +upon being tried by a court-martial—the cow to be shot—_Slop_ to be +_crucifix’d_—myself to be _tristram’d_ and at my very baptism made a +martyr of;——poor unhappy devils that we all are!——I want swaddling——but +there is no time to be lost in exclamations——I have left my father +lying across his bed, and my uncle _Toby_ in his old fringed chair, +sitting beside him, and promised I would go back to them in half an +hour; and five-and-thirty minutes are laps’d already.——Of all the +perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in—this certainly is the +greatest, for I have _Hafen Slawkenbergius_’s folio, Sir, to finish——a +dialogue between my father and my uncle _Toby_, upon the solution of +_Prignitz, Scroderus, Ambrose Paræus, Panocrates_, and _Grangousier_ to +relate—a tale out of _Slawkenbergius_ to translate, and all this in +five minutes less than no time at all;——such a head!—would to Heaven my +enemies only saw the inside of it! + +C H A P. XXXII + +THERE was not any one scene more entertaining in our family—and to do +it justice in this point;——and I here put off my cap and lay it upon +the table close beside my ink-horn, on purpose to make my declaration +to the world concerning this one article the more solemn——that I +believe in my soul (unless my love and partiality to my understanding +blinds me) the hand of the supreme Maker and first Designer of all +things never made or put a family together (in that period at least of +it which I have sat down to write the story of)——where the characters +of it were cast or contrasted with so dramatick a felicity as ours was, +for this end; or in which the capacities of affording such exquisite +scenes, and the powers of shifting them perpetually from morning to +night, were lodged and intrusted with so unlimited a confidence, as in +the SHANDY FAMILY. + +Not any one of these was more diverting, I say, in this whimsical +theatre of ours——than what frequently arose out of this self-same +chapter of long noses——especially when my father’s imagination was +heated with the enquiry, and nothing would serve him but to heat my +uncle _Toby_’s too. + +My uncle _Toby_ would give my father all possible fair play in this +attempt; and with infinite patience would sit smoking his pipe for +whole hours together, whilst my father was practising upon his head, +and trying every accessible avenue to drive _Prignitz_ and +_Scroderus_’s solutions into it. + +Whether they were above my uncle _Toby_’s reason——or contrary to it——or +that his brain was like _damp_ timber, and no spark could possibly take +hold——or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such +military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into _Prignitz_ and +_Scroderus_’s doctrines——I say not—let schoolmen—scullions, anatomists, +and engineers, fight for it among themselves—— + +’Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, in this affair, that my father +had every word of it to translate for the benefit of my uncle _Toby_, +and render out of _Slawkenbergius_’s _Latin_, of which, as he was no +great master, his translation was not always of the purest——and +generally least so where ’twas most wanted.—This naturally open’d a +door to a second misfortune;——that in the warmer paroxysms of his zeal +to open my uncle _Toby_’s eyes——my father’s ideas ran on as much faster +than the translation, as the translation outmoved my uncle +_Toby_’s——neither the one or the other added much to the perspicuity of +my father’s lecture. + +C H A P. XXXIII + +THE gift of ratiocination and making syllogisms——I mean in man—for in +superior classes of being, such as angels and spirits——’tis all done, +may it please your worships, as they tell me, by INTUITION;—and beings +inferior, as your worships all know——syllogize by their noses: though +there is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether at its +ease) whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me not, are so +wonderfully gifted, as to syllogize after the same fashion, and +oft-times to make very well out too:——but that’s neither here nor +there—— + +The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, or—the great and +principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell us, is the +finding out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with +another, by the intervention of a third (called the _medius terminus_); +just as a man, as _Locke_ well observes, by a yard, finds two mens +nine-pin-alleys to be of the same length, which could not be brought +together, to measure their equality, by _juxta-position._ + +Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his +systems of noses, and observed my uncle _Toby_’s deportment—what great +attention he gave to every word—and as oft as he took his pipe from his +mouth, with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of +it——surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his finger and his +thumb——then fore-right——then this way, and then that, in all its +possible directions and fore-shortenings——he would have concluded my +uncle _Toby_ had got hold of the _medius terminus_, and was syllogizing +and measuring with it the truth of each hypothesis of long noses, in +order, as my father laid them before him. This, by-the-bye, was more +than my father wanted——his aim in all the pains he was at in these +philosophick lectures—was to enable my uncle _Toby_ not to +_discuss_——but _comprehend_—to _hold_ the grains and scruples of +learning——not to _weigh_ them.——My uncle _Toby_, as you will read in +the next chapter, did neither the one or the other. + +C H A P. XXXIV + +’TIS a pity, cried my father one winter’s night, after a three hours +painful translation of _Slawkenbergius_——’tis a pity, cried my father, +putting my mother’s threadpaper into the book for a mark, as he +spoke——that truth, brother _Toby_, should shut herself up in such +impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself +sometimes up upon the closest siege.—— + +Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle +_Toby_’s fancy, during the time of my father’s explanation of +_Prignitz_ to him——having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short +flight to the bowling-green;——his body might as well have taken a turn +there too—so that with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent +upon the _medius terminus_——my uncle _Toby_ was in fact as ignorant of +the whole lecture, and all its pros and cons, as if my father had been +translating _Hafen Slawkenbergius_ from the _Latin_ tongue into the +_Cherokee._ But the word _siege_, like a talismanic power, in my +father’s metaphor, wafting back my uncle _Toby_’s fancy, quick as a +note could follow the touch—he open’d his ears——and my father observing +that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer +the table, as with a desire to profit—my father with great pleasure +began his sentence again——changing only the plan, and dropping the +metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my father +apprehended from it. + +’Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, +brother _Toby_——considering what ingenuity these learned men have all +shewn in their solutions of noses.——Can noses be dissolved? replied my +uncle _Toby_. + +——My father thrust back his chair——rose up—put on his hat——took four +long strides to the door——jerked it open——thrust his head half way +out——shut the door again——took no notice of the bad hinge—returned to +the table—pluck’d my mother’s thread-paper out of _Slawkenbergius_’s +book——went hastily to his bureau—walked slowly back—twisted my mother’s +thread-paper about his thumb—unbutton’d his waistcoat—threw my mother’s +thread-paper into the fire——bit her sattin pin-cushion in two, fill’d +his mouth with bran—confounded it;—but mark!—the oath of confusion was +levell’d at my uncle _Toby_’s brain—which was e’en confused enough +already——the curse came charged only with the bran—the bran, may it +please your honours, was no more than powder to the ball. + +’Twas well my father’s passions lasted not long; for so long as they +did last, they led him a busy life on’t; and it is one of the most +unaccountable problems that ever I met with in my observations of human +nature, that nothing should prove my father’s mettle so much, or make +his passions go off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes his +science met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle _Toby_’s +questions.——Had ten dozen of hornets stung him behind in so many +different places all at one time—he could not have exerted more +mechanical functions in fewer seconds——or started half so much, as with +one single _quære_ of three words unseasonably popping in full upon him +in his hobby-horsical career. + +’Twas all one to my uncle _Toby_——he smoked his pipe on with unvaried +composure——his heart never intended offence to his brother—and as his +head could seldom find out where the sting of it lay——he always gave my +father the credit of cooling by himself.——He was five minutes and +thirty-five seconds about it in the present case. + +By all that’s good! said my father, swearing, as he came to himself, +and taking the oath out of _Ernulphus_’s digest of curses——(though to +do my father justice it was a fault (as he told Dr. _Slop_ in the +affair of _Ernulphus_) which he as seldom committed as any man upon +earth)——By all that’s good and great! brother _Toby_, said my father, +if it was not for the aids of philosophy, which befriend one so much as +they do—you would put a man beside all temper.——Why, by the _solutions_ +of noses, of which I was telling you, I meant, as you might have known, +had you favoured me with one grain of attention, the various accounts +which learned men of different kinds of knowledge have given the world +of the causes of short and long noses.——There is no cause but one, +replied my uncle _Toby_——why one man’s nose is longer than another’s, +but because that God pleases to have it so.——That is _Grangousier_’s +solution, said my father.—’Tis he, continued my uncle _Toby_, looking +up, and not regarding my father’s interruption, who makes us all, and +frames and puts us together in such forms and proportions, and for such +ends, as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom,.——’Tis a pious account, +cried my father, but not philosophical—there is more religion in it +than sound science. ’Twas no inconsistent part of my uncle _Toby_’s +character——that he feared God, and reverenced religion.——So the moment +my father finished his remark——my uncle _Toby_ fell a whistling +_Lillabullero_ with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual.— + +What is become of my wife’s thread-paper? + +C H A P. XXXV + +NO matter—as an appendage to seamstressy, the thread-paper might be of +some consequence to my mother—of none to my father, as a mark in +_Slawkenbergius. Slawkenbergius_ in every page of him was a rich +treasure of inexhaustible knowledge to my father—he could not open him +amiss; and he would often say in closing the book, that if all the arts +and sciences in the world, with the books which treated of them, were +lost—should the wisdom and policies of governments, he would say, +through disuse, ever happen to be forgot, and all that statesmen had +wrote or caused to be written, upon the strong or the weak sides of +courts and kingdoms, should they be forgot also—and _Slawkenbergius_ +only left——there would be enough in him in all conscience, he would +say, to set the world a-going again. A treasure therefore was he +indeed! an institute of all that was necessary to be known of noses, +and every thing else—at _matin_, noon, and vespers was _Hafen +Slawkenbergius_ his recreation and delight: ’twas for ever in his +hands——you would have sworn, Sir, it had been a canon’s prayer-book—so +worn, so glazed, so contrited and attrited was it with fingers and with +thumbs in all its parts, from one end even unto the other. + +I am not such a bigot to _Slawkenbergius_ as my father;——there is a +fund in him, no doubt: but in my opinion, the best, I don’t say the +most profitable, but the most amusing part of _Hafen Slawkenbergius_, +is his tales——and, considering he was a _German_, many of them told not +without fancy:——these take up his second book, containing nearly one +half of his folio, and are comprehended in ten decads, each decad +containing ten tales——Philosophy is not built upon tales; and therefore +’twas certainly wrong in _Slawkenbergius_ to send them into the world +by that name!——there are a few of them in his eighth, ninth, and tenth +decads, which I own seem rather playful and sportive, than +speculative—but in general they are to be looked upon by the learned as +a detail of so many independent facts, all of them turning round +somehow or other upon the main hinges of his subject, and added to his +work as so many illustrations upon the doctrines of noses. + +As we have leisure enough upon our hands——if you give me leave, madam, +I’ll tell you the ninth tale of his tenth decad. + +S L A W K E N B E R G I I + +F A B E L L A[8] + +_VESPERA quâdam frigidula, posteriori in parte mensis_ Augusti, +_peregrinus, mulo fusco colore incidens, manticâ a tergo, paucis +indusiis, binis calceis, braccisque sericis coccineis repleta_, +Argentoratum _ingressus est._ + +_Militi eum percontanti, quum portus intraret dixit, se apud Nasorum +promontorium fuisse, Francofurtum proficisci, et Argentoratum, transitu +ad fines Sarmatiæ mensis intervallo, reversurum._ + +_Miles peregrini in faciem suspexit——Di boni, nova forma nasi!_ + +_At multum mihi profuit, inquit peregrinus, carpum amento extrahens, e +quo pependit acinaces: Loculo manum inseruit; et magna cum urbanitate, +pilei parte anteriore tactâ manu sinistrâ, ut extendit dextram, militi +florinum dedit et processit._ + +_Dolet mihi, ait miles, tympanistam nanum et valgum alloquens, virum +adeo urbanum vaginam perdidisse: itinerari haud poterit nudâ acinaci; +neque vaginam toto_ Argentorato, _habilem inveniet.——Nullam unquam +habui, respondit peregrinus respiciens——seque comiter inclinans—hoc +more gesto, nudam acinacem elevans, mulo lentò progrediente, ut nasum +tueri possim._ + +_Non immerito, benigne peregrine, respondit miles._ + +_Nihili aestimo, ait ille tympanista, e pergamenâ factitius est._ + +_Prout christianus sum, inquit miles, nasus ille, ni sexties major fit, +meo esset conformis._ + +_Crepitare audivi ait tympanista._ + +_Mehercule! sanguinem emisit, respondit miles._ + +_Miseret me, inquit tympanista, qui non ambo tetigimus!_ + +_Eodem temporis puncto, quo hæc res argumentata fuit inter militem et +tympanistam, disceptabatur ibidem tubicine et uxore suâ qui tunc +accesserunt, et peregrino prætereunte, restiterunt._ + +_Quantus nasus! æque longus est, ait tubicina, ac tuba._ + +_Et ex eodem metallo, ait tubicen, velut sternutamento audias._ + +_Tantum abest, respondit illa, quod fistulam dulcedine vincit._ + +_Æneus est, ait tubicen._ + +_Nequaquam, respondit uxor._ + +_Rursum affirmo, ait tubicen, quod æneus est._ + +_Rem penitus explorabo; prius, enim digito tangam, ait uxor, quam +dormivero._ + +_Mulus peregrini gradu lento progressus est, ut unumquodque verbum +controversiæ, non tantum inter militem et tympanistam, verum etiam +inter tubicinem et uxorum ejus, audiret._ + +_Nequaquam, ait ille, in muli collum fræna demittens, et manibus +ambabus in pectus positis, (mulo lentè progrediente) nequaquam, ait +ille respiciens, non necesse est ut res isthæc dilucidata foret. Minime +gentium! meus nasus nunquam tangetur, dum spiritus hos reget artus—Ad +quid agendum? air uxor burgomagistri._ + +_Peregrinus illi non respondit. Votum faciebat tunc temporis sancto +Nicolao; quo facto, sinum dextrum inserens, e quâ negligenter pependit +acinaces, lento gradu processit per plateam Argentorati latam quæ ad +diversorium templo ex adversum ducit._ + +_Peregrinus mulo descendens stabulo includi, et manticam inferri +jussit: quâ apertâ et coccineis sericis femoralibus extractis cum +argento laciniato_ Περιζομαυτε, _his sese induit, statimque, acinaci in +manu, ad forum deambulavit._ + +_Quod ubi peregrinus esset ingressus, uxorem tubicinis obviam euntem +aspicit; illico cursum flectit, metuens ne nasus suus exploraretur, +atque ad diversorium regressus est—exuit se vestibus; braccas coccineas +sericas manticæ imposuit mulumque educi jussit._ + +_Francofurtum proficiscor, ait ille, et Argentoratum quatuor abhinc +hebdomadis revertar._ + +_Bene curasti hoc jumentam? (ait) muli faciem manu demulcens—me, +manticamque meam, plus sexcentis mille passibus portavit._ + +_Longa via est! respondet hospes, nisi plurimum esset negoti.—Enimvero, +ait peregrinus, a Nasorum promontorio redii, et nasum speciosissimum, +egregiosissimumque quem unquam quisquam sortitus est, acquisivi?_ + +_Dum peregrinus hanc miram rationem de seipso reddit, hospes et uxor +ejus, oculis intentis, peregrini nasum contemplantur——Per sanctos +sanctasque omnes, ait hospitis uxor, nasis duodecim maximis in toto +Argentorato major est!—estne, ait illa mariti in aurem insusurrans, +nonne est nasus prægrandis?_ + +_Dolus inest, anime mi, ait hospes—nasus est falsus._ + +_Verus est, respondit uxor——_ + +_Ex abiete factus est, ait ille, terebinthinum olet—_ + +_Carbunculus inest, ait uxor._ + +_Mortuus est nasus, respondit hospes._ + +_Vivus est ait illa,—et si ipsa vivam tangam._ + +_Votum feci sancto Nicolao, ait peregrinus, nasum meum intactum fore +usque ad—Quodnam tempus? illico respondit illa._ + +_Minimo tangetur, inquit ille (manibus in pectus compositis) usque ad +illam horam——Quam horam? ait illa——Nullam, respondit peregrinus, donec +pervenio ad—Quem locum,—obsecro? ait illa——Peregrinus nil respondens +mulo conscenso discessit._ + +S L A W K E N B E R G I U S’s + +T A L E + +IT was one cool refreshing evening, at the close of a very sultry day, +in the latter end of the month of _August_, when a stranger, mounted +upon a dark mule, with a small cloak-bag behind him, containing a few +shirts, a pair of shoes, and a crimson-sattin pair of breeches, entered +the town of _Strasburg._ + +He told the centinel, who questioned him as he entered the gates, that +he had been at the Promontory of NOSES—was going on to _Frankfort_——and +should be back again at _Strasburg_ that day month, in his way to the +borders of _Crim Tartary._ + +The centinel looked up into the stranger’s face——he never saw such a +Nose in his life! + +—I have made a very good venture of it, quoth the stranger—so slipping +his wrist out of the loop of a black ribbon, to which a short scymetar +was hung, he put his hand into his pocket, and with great courtesy +touching the fore part of his cap with his left hand, as he extended +his right——he put a florin into the centinel’s hand, and passed on. + +It grieves, me, said the centinel, speaking to a little dwarfish bandy- +legg’d drummer, that so courteous a soul should have lost his +scabbard——he cannot travel without one to his scymetar, and will not be +able to get a scabbard to fit it in all _Strasburg._——I never had one, +replied the stranger, looking back to the centinel, and putting his +hand up to his cap as he spoke——I carry it, continued he, thus——holding +up his naked scymetar, his mule moving on slowly all the time—on +purpose to defend my nose. + +It is well worth it, gentle stranger, replied the centinel. + +——’Tis not worth a single stiver, said the bandy-legg’d drummer——’tis a +nose of parchment. + +As I am a true catholic—except that it is six times as big—’tis a nose, +said the centinel, like my own. + +—I heard it crackle, said the drummer. + +By dunder, said the centinel, I saw it bleed. + +What a pity, cried the bandy-legg’d drummer, we did not both touch it! + +At the very time that this dispute was maintaining by the centinel and +the drummer—was the same point debating betwixt a trumpeter and a +trumpeter’s wife, who were just then coming up, and had stopped to see +the stranger pass by. + +_Benedicity!_——What a nose! ’tis as long, said the trumpeter’s wife, as +a trumpet. + +And of the same metal said the trumpeter, as you hear by its sneezing. + +’Tis as soft as a flute, said she. + +—’Tis brass, said the trumpeter. + +—’Tis a pudding’s end, said his wife. + +I tell thee again, said the trumpeter, ’tis a brazen nose, + +I’ll know the bottom of it, said the trumpeter’s wife, for I will touch +it with my finger before I sleep. + +The stranger’s mule moved on at so slow a rate, that he heard every +word of the dispute, not only betwixt the centinel and the drummer, but +betwixt the trumpeter and trumpeter’s wife. + +No! said he, dropping his reins upon his mule’s neck, and laying both +his hands upon his breast, the one over the other in a saint-like +position (his mule going on easily all the time) No! said he, looking +up—I am not such a debtor to the world——slandered and disappointed as I +have been—as to give it that conviction——no! said he, my nose shall +never be touched whilst Heaven gives me strength——To do what? said a +burgomaster’s wife. + +The stranger took no notice of the burgomaster’s wife——he was making a +vow to _Saint Nicolas_; which done, having uncrossed his arms with the +same solemnity with which he crossed them, he took up the reins of his +bridle with his left-hand, and putting his right hand into his bosom, +with the scymetar hanging loosely to the wrist of it, he rode on, as +slowly as one foot of the mule could follow another, thro’ the +principal streets of _Strasburg_, till chance brought him to the great +inn in the market-place over-against the church. + +The moment the stranger alighted, he ordered his mule to be led into +the stable, and his cloak-bag to be brought in; then opening, and +taking out of it his crimson-sattin breeches, with a +silver-fringed—(appendage to them, which I dare not translate)—he put +his breeches, with his fringed cod-piece on, and forth-with, with his +short scymetar in his hand, walked out to the grand parade. + +The stranger had just taken three turns upon the parade, when he +perceived the trumpeter’s wife at the opposite side of it—so turning +short, in pain lest his nose should be attempted, he instantly went +back to his inn—undressed himself, packed up his crimson-sattin +breeches, &c. in his cloak- bag, and called for his mule. + +I am going forwards, said the stranger, for _Frankfort_——and shall be +back at _Strasburg_ this day month. + +I hope, continued the stranger, stroking down the face of his mule with +his left hand as he was going to mount it, that you have been kind to +this faithful slave of mine—it has carried me and my cloak-bag, +continued he, tapping the mule’s back, above six hundred leagues. + +——’Tis a long journey, Sir, replied the master of the inn——unless a man +has great business.——Tut! tut! said the stranger, I have been at the +promontory of Noses; and have got me one of the goodliest, thank +Heaven, that ever fell to a single man’s lot. + +Whilst the stranger was giving this odd account of himself, the master +of the inn and his wife kept both their eyes fixed full upon the +stranger’s nose——By saint _Radagunda_, said the inn-keeper’s wife to +herself, there is more of it than in any dozen of the largest noses put +together in all _Strasburg!_ is it not, said she, whispering her +husband in his ear, is it not a noble nose? + +’Tis an imposture, my dear, said the master of the inn——’tis a false +nose. + +’Tis a true nose, said his wife. + +’Tis made of fir-tree, said he, I smell the turpentine.—— + +There’s a pimple on it, said she. + +’Tis a dead nose, replied the inn-keeper. + +’Tis a live nose, and if I am alive myself, said the inn-keeper’s, +wife, I will touch it. + +I have made a vow to saint _Nicolas_ this day, said the stranger, that +my nose shall not be touched till—Here the stranger suspending his +voice, looked up.——Till when? said she hastily. + +It never shall be touched, said he, clasping his hands and bringing +them close to his breast, till that hour—What hour? cried the inn +keeper’s wife.—Never!—never! said the stranger, never till I am got—For +Heaven’s sake, into what place? said she——The stranger rode away +without saying a word. + +The stranger had not got half a league on his way towards _Frankfort_ +before all the city of _Strasburg_ was in an uproar about his nose. The +_Compline_ bells were just ringing to call the _Strasburgers_ to their +devotions, and shut up the duties of the day in prayer:—no soul in all +_Strasburg_ heard ’em—the city was like a swarm of bees——men, women, +and children, (the _Compline_ bells tinkling all the time) flying here +and there—in at one door, out at another——this way and that way—long +ways and cross ways—up one street, down another street——in at this +alley, out of that——did you see it? did you see it? did you see it? O! +did you see it?——who saw it? who did see it? for mercy’s sake, who saw +it? + +Alack o’day! I was at vespers!—I was washing, I was starching, I was +scouring, I was quilting——God help me! I never saw it——I never touch’d +it!——would I had been a centinel, a bandy-legg’d drummer, a trumpeter, +a trumpeter’s wife, was the general cry and lamentation in every street +and corner of _Strasburg._ + +Whilst all this confusion and disorder triumphed throughout the great +city of _Strasburg_, was the courteous stranger going on as gently upon +his mule in his way to _Frankfort_, as if he had no concern at all in +the affair——talking all the way he rode in broken sentences, sometimes +to his mule—sometimes to himself—sometimes to his Julia. + +O Julia, my lovely Julia!—nay I cannot stop to let thee bite that +thistle——that ever the suspected tongue of a rival should have robbed +me of enjoyment when I was upon the point of tasting it.—— + +——Pugh!—’tis nothing but a thistle—never mind it—thou shalt have a +better supper at night. + +——Banish’d from my country——my friends——from thee.—— + +Poor devil, thou’rt sadly tired with thy journey!——come—get on a little +faster—there’s nothing in my cloak-bag but two shirts——a crimson-sattin +pair of breeches, and a fringed——Dear Julia! + +——But why to _Frankfort?_—is it that there is a hand unfelt, which +secretly is conducting me through these meanders and unsuspected +tracts? + +——Stumbling! by saint _Nicolas!_ every step—why at this rate we shall +be all night in getting in—— + +——To happiness——or am I to be the sport of fortune and slander—destined +to be driven forth unconvicted——unheard——untouch’d——if so, why did I +not stay at _Strasburg_, where justice—but I had sworn! Come, thou +shalt drink—to _St. Nicolas_—O Julia!——What dost thou prick up thy ears +at?——’tis nothing but a man, &c. + +The stranger rode on communing in this manner with his mule and +Julia—till he arrived at his inn, where, as soon as he arrived, he +alighted——saw his mule, as he had promised it, taken good care of——took +off his cloak-bag, with his crimson-sattin breeches, &c. in it—called +for an omelet to his supper, went to his bed about twelve o’clock, and +in five minutes fell fast asleep. + +It was about the same hour when the tumult in _Strasburg_ being abated +for that night,—the _Strasburgers_ had all got quietly into their +beds—but not like the stranger, for the rest either of their minds or +bodies; queen _Mab_, like an elf as she was, had taken the stranger’s +nose, and without reduction of its bulk, had that night been at the +pains of slitting and dividing it into as many noses of different cuts +and fashions, as there were heads in _Strasburg_ to hold them. The +abbess of _Quedlingberg_, who with the four great dignitaries of her +chapter, the prioress, the deaness, the sub-chantress, and senior +canonness, had that week come to _Strasburg_ to consult the university +upon a case of conscience relating to their placket- holes——was ill all +the night. + +The courteous stranger’s nose had got perched upon the top of the +pineal gland of her brain, and made such rousing work in the fancies of +the four great dignitaries of her chapter, they could not get a wink of +sleep the whole night thro’ for it——there was no keeping a limb still +amongst them——in short, they got up like so many ghosts. + +The penitentiaries of the third order of saint _Francis_——the nuns of +mount _Calvary_——the _Præmonstratenses_——the _Clunienses_[9]——the +_Carthusians_, and all the severer orders of nuns, who lay that night +in blankets or hair-cloth, were still in a worse condition than the +abbess of _Quedlingberg_—by tumbling and tossing, and tossing and +tumbling from one side of their beds to the other the whole night +long——the several sisterhoods had scratch’d and maul’d themselves all +to death——they got out of their beds almost flay’d alive—every body +thought saint _Antony_ had visited them for probation with his +fire——they had never once, in short, shut their eyes the whole night +long from vespers to matins. + +The nuns of saint _Ursula_ acted the wisest—they never attempted to go +to bed at all. + +The dean of _Strasburg_, the prebendaries, the capitulars and +domiciliars (capitularly assembled in the morning to consider the case +of butter’d buns) all wished they had followed the nuns of saint +_Ursula_’s example.—— + +In the hurry and confusion every thing had been in the night before, +the bakers had all forgot to lay their leaven—there were no butter’d +buns to be had for breakfast in all _Strasburg_—the whole close of the +cathedral was in one eternal commotion——such a cause of restlessness +and disquietude, and such a zealous inquiry into that cause of the +restlessness, had never happened in _Strasburg_, since _Martin Luther_, +with his doctrines, had turned the city upside down. + +If the stranger’s nose took this liberty of thrusting himself thus into +the dishes[10] of religious orders, &c. what a carnival did his nose +make of it, in those of the laity!—’tis more than my pen, worn to the +stump as it is, has power to describe; tho’, I acknowledge, (_cries_ +Slawkenbergius _with more gaiety of thought than I could have expected +from him_) that there is many a good simile now subsisting in the world +which might give my countrymen some idea of it; but at the close of +such a folio as this, wrote for their sakes, and in which I have spent +the greatest part of my life——tho’ I own to them the simile is in +being, yet would it not be unreasonable in them to expect I should have +either time or inclination to search for it? Let it suffice to say, +that the riot and disorder it occasioned in the _Strasburgers_ +fantasies was so general—such an overpowering mastership had it got of +all the faculties of the _Strasburgers_ minds—so many strange things, +with equal confidence on all sides, and with equal eloquence in all +places, were spoken and sworn to concerning it, that turned the whole +stream of all discourse and wonder towards it—every soul, good and +bad—rich and poor—learned and unlearned——doctor and student——mistress +and maid——gentle and simple——nun’s flesh and woman’s flesh, in +_Strasburg_ spent their time in hearing tidings about it—every eye in +_Strasburg_ languished to see it——every finger——every thumb in +_Strasburg_ burned to touch it. + +Now what might add, if any thing may be thought necessary to add, to so +vehement a desire—was this, that the centinel, the bandy-legg’d +drummer, the trumpeter, the trumpeter’s wife, the burgomaster’s widow, +the master of the inn, and the master of the inn’s wife, how widely +soever they all differed every one from another in their testimonies +and description of the stranger’s nose—they all agreed together in two +points—namely, that he was gone to _Frankfort_, and would not return to +_Strasburg_ till that day month; and secondly, whether his nose was +true or false, that the stranger himself was one of the most perfect +paragons of beauty—the finest-made man—the most genteel!—the most +generous of his purse—the most courteous in his carriage, that had ever +entered the gates of _Strasburg_—that as he rode, with scymetar slung +loosely to his wrist, thro’ the streets—and walked with his +crimson-sattin breeches across the parade—’twas with so sweet an air of +careless modesty, and so manly withal——as would have put the heart in +jeopardy (had his nose not stood in his way) of every virgin who had +cast her eyes upon him. + +I call not upon that heart which is a stranger to the throbs and +yearnings of curiosity, so excited, to justify the abbess of +_Quedlingberg_, the prioress, the deaness, and sub-chantress, for +sending at noon-day for the trumpeter’s wife: she went through the +streets of _Strasburg_ with her husband’s trumpet in her hand,——the +best apparatus the straitness of the time would allow her, for the +illustration of her theory—she staid no longer than three days. + +The centinel and bandy-legg’d drummer!——nothing on this side of old +_Athens_ could equal them! they read their lectures under the +city-gates to comers and goers, with all the pomp of a _Chrysippus_ and +a _Crantor_ in their porticos. + +The master of the inn, with his ostler on his left-hand, read his also +in the same stile—under the portico or gateway of his stable-yard—his +wife, hers more privately in a back room: all flocked to their +lectures; not promiscuously—but to this or that, as is ever the way, as +faith and credulity marshal’d them——in a word, each _Strasburger_ came +crouding for intelligence—and every _Strasburger_ had the intelligence +he wanted. + +’Tis worth remarking, for the benefit of all demonstrators in natural +philosophy, &c. that as soon as the trumpeter’s wife had finished the +abbess of _Quedlingberg_’s private lecture, and had begun to read in +public, which she did upon a stool in the middle of the great +parade,——she incommoded the other demonstrators mainly, by gaining +incontinently the most fashionable part of the city of _Strasburg_ for +her auditory—But when a demonstrator in philosophy (cries +_Slawkenbergius_) has a _trumpet_ for an apparatus, pray what rival in +science can pretend to be heard besides him? + +Whilst the unlearned, thro’ these conduits of intelligence, were all +busied in getting down to the bottom of the well, where TRUTH keeps her +little court——were the learned in their way as busy in pumping her up +thro’ the conduits of dialect induction——they concerned themselves not +with facts——they reasoned—— + +Not one profession had thrown more light upon this subject than the +Faculty—had not all their disputes about it run into the affair of +_Wens_ and œdematous swellings, they could not keep clear of them for +their bloods and souls——the stranger’s nose had nothing to do either +with wens or œdematous swellings. + +It was demonstrated however very satisfactorily, that such a ponderous +mass of heterogenous matter could not be congested and conglomerated to +the nose, whilst the infant was _in Utera_, without destroying the +statical balance of the fœtus, and throwing it plump upon its head nine +months before the time.—— + +——The opponents granted the theory——they denied the consequences. + +And if a suitable provision of veins, arteries, &c. said they, was not +laid in, for the due nourishment of such a nose, in the very first +stamina and rudiments of its formation, before it came into the world +(bating the case of Wens) it could not regularly grow and be sustained +afterwards. + +This was all answered by a dissertation upon nutriment, and the effect +which nutriment had in extending the vessels, and in the increase and +prolongation of the muscular parts to the greatest growth and expansion +imaginable—In the triumph of which theory, they went so far as to +affirm, that there was no cause in nature, why a nose might not grow to +the size of the man himself. + +The respondents satisfied the world this event could never happen to +them so long as a man had but one stomach and one pair of lungs——For +the stomach, said they, being the only organ destined for the reception +of food, and turning it into chyle—and the lungs the only engine of +sanguification—it could possibly work off no more, than what the +appetite brought it: or admitting the possibility of a man’s +overloading his stomach, nature had set bounds however to his lungs—the +engine was of a determined size and strength, and could elaborate but a +certain quantity in a given time——that is, it could produce just as +much blood as was sufficient for one single man, and no more; so that, +if there was as much nose as man——they proved a mortification must +necessarily ensue; and forasmuch as there could not be a support for +both, that the nose must either fall off from the man, or the man +inevitably fall off from his nose. + +Nature accommodates herself to these emergencies, cried the +opponents—else what do you say to the case of a whole stomach—a whole +pair of lungs, and but half a man, when both his legs have been +unfortunately shot off? + +He dies of a plethora, said they—or must spit blood, and in a fortnight +or three weeks go off in a consumption.—— + +——It happens otherwise—replied the opponents.—— + +It ought not, said they. + +The more curious and intimate inquirers after nature and her doings, +though they went hand in hand a good way together, yet they all divided +about the nose at last, almost as much as the Faculty itself. + +They amicably laid it down, that there was a just and geometrical +arrangement and proportion of the several parts of the human frame to +its several destinations, offices, and functions, which could not be +transgressed but within certain limits—that nature, though she +sported——she sported within a certain circle;—and they could not agree +about the diameter of it. + +The logicians stuck much closer to the point before them than any of +the classes of the literati;——they began and ended with the word Nose; +and had it not been for a _petitio principii_, which one of the ablest +of them ran his head against in the beginning of the combat, the whole +controversy had been settled at once. + +A nose, argued the logician, cannot bleed without blood—and not only +blood—but blood circulating in it to supply the phænomenon with a +succession of drops—(a stream being but a quicker succession of drops, +that is included, said he.)——Now death, continued the logician, being +nothing but the stagnation of the blood—— + +I deny the definition——Death is the separation of the soul from the +body, said his antagonist——Then we don’t agree about our weapons, said +the logician—Then there is an end of the dispute, replied the +antagonist. + +The civilians were still more concise: what they offered being more in +the nature of a decree——than a dispute. + +Such a monstrous nose, said they, had it been a true nose, could not +possibly have been suffered in civil society——and if false—to impose +upon society with such false signs and tokens, was a still greater +violation of its rights, and must have had still less mercy shewn it. + +The only objection to this was, that if it proved any thing, it proved +the stranger’s nose was neither true nor false. + +This left room for the controversy to go on. It was maintained by the +advocates of the ecclesiastic court, that there was nothing to inhibit +a decree, since the stranger _ex mero motu_ had confessed he had been +at the Promontory of Noses, and had got one of the goodliest, &c. +&c.——To this it was answered, it was impossible there should be such a +place as the Promontory of Noses, and the learned be ignorant where it +lay. The commissary of the bishop of _Strasburg_ undertook the +advocates, explained this matter in a treatise upon proverbial phrases, +shewing them, that the Promontory of Noses was a mere allegorick +expression, importing no more than that nature had given him a long +nose: in proof of which, with great learning, he cited the underwritten +authorities,[11] which had decided the point incontestably, had it not +appeared that a dispute about some franchises of dean and chapter-lands +had been determined by it nineteen years before. + +It happened——I must say unluckily for Truth, because they were giving +her a lift another way in so doing; that the two universities of +_Strasburg_——the _Lutheran_, founded in the year 1538 by _Jacobus +Surmis_, counsellor of the senate,——and the _Popish_, founded by +_Leopold_, arch-duke of _Austria_, were, during all this time, +employing the whole depth of their knowledge (except just what the +affair of the abbess of _Quedlingberg_’s placket-holes required)——in +determining the point of _Martin Luther_’s damnation. + +The _Popish_ doctors had undertaken to demonstrate _à priori_, that +from the necessary influence of the planets on the twenty-second day of +_October_ 1483——when the moon was in the twelfth house, _Jupiter, +Mars_, and _Venus_ in the third, the _Sun, Saturn_, and _Mercury_, all +got together in the fourth—that he must in course, and unavoidably, be +a damn’d man—and that his doctrines, by a direct corollary, must be +damn’d doctrines too. + +By inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were in coition +all at once with Scorpio[12] (in reading this my father would always +shake his head) in the ninth house, with the _Arabians_ allotted to +religion—it appeared that _Martin Luther_ did not care one stiver about +the matter——and that from the horoscope directed to the conjunction of +_Mars_—they made it plain likewise he must die cursing and +blaspheming——with the blast of which his soul (being steep’d in guilt) +sailed before the wind, in the lake of hell-fire. + +The little objection of the _Lutheran_ doctors to this, was, that it +must certainly be the soul of another man, born _Oct._ 22, 83. which +was forced to sail down before the wind in that manner—inasmuch as it +appeared from the register of _Islaben_ in the county of _Mansfelt_, +that _Luther_ was not born in the year 1483, but in 84; and not on the +22d day of _October_, but on the 10th of _November_, the eve of +_Martinmas_ day, from whence he had the name of _Martin._ + +[——I must break off my translation for a moment; for if I did not, I +know I should no more be able to shut my eyes in bed, than the abbess +of _Quedlingberg_——It is to tell the reader; that my father never read +this passage of _Slawkenbergius_ to my uncle _Toby_, but with +triumph——not over my uncle _Toby_, for he never opposed him in it——but +over the whole world. + +—Now you see, brother _Toby_, he would say, looking up, “that christian +names are not such indifferent things;”——had _Luther_ here been called +by any other name but _Martin_, he would have been damn’d to all +eternity——Not that I look upon _Martin_, he would add, as a good +name——far from it——’tis something better than a neutral, and but a +little——yet little as it is you see it was of some service to him. + +My father knew the weakness of this prop to his hypothesis, as well as +the best logician could shew him——yet so strange is the weakness of man +at the same time, as it fell in his way, he could not for his life but +make use of it; and it was certainly for this reason, that though there +are many stories in _Hafen Slawkenbergius_’s Decades full as +entertaining as this I am translating, yet there is not one amongst +them which my father read over with half the delight——it flattered two +of his strangest hypotheses together——his NAMES and his NOSES.——I will +be bold to say, he might have read all the books in the _Alexandrian_ +Library, had not fate taken other care of them, and not have met with a +book or passage in one, which hit two such nails as these upon the head +at one stroke.] + +The two universities of _Strasburg_ were hard tugging at this affair of +_Luther_’s navigation. The Protestant doctors had demonstrated, that he +had not sailed right before the wind, as the Popish doctors had +pretended; and as every one knew there was no sailing full in the teeth +of it—they were going to settle, in case he had sailed, how many points +he was off; whether _Martin_ had doubled the cape, or had fallen upon a +lee-shore; and no doubt, as it was an enquiry of much edification, at +least to those who understood this sort of NAVIGATION, they had gone on +with it in spite of the size of the stranger’s nose, had not the size +of the stranger’s nose drawn off the attention of the world from what +they were about—it was their business to follow. + +The abbess of _Quedlingberg_ and her four dignitaries was no stop; for +the enormity of the stranger’s nose running full as much in their +fancies as their case of conscience——the affair of their placket-holes +kept cold—in a word, the printers were ordered to distribute their +types——all controversies dropp’d. + +’Twas a square cap with a silver tassel upon the crown of it—to a +nut-shell—to have guessed on which side of the nose the two +universities would split. + +’Tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side. + +’Tis below reason, cried the others. + +’Tis faith, cried one. + +’Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other. + +’Tis possible, cried the one. + +’Tis impossible, said the other. + +God’s power is infinite, cried the Nosarians, he can do any thing. + +He can do nothing, replied the Anti-nosarians, which implies +contradictions. + +He can make matter think, said the Nosarians. + +As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow’s ear, replied +the Anti-nosarians. + +He cannot make two and two five, replied the Popish doctors.——’Tis +false, said their other opponents.—— + +Infinite power is infinite power, said the doctors who maintained the +_reality_ of the nose.—It extends only to all possible things, replied +the _Lutherans._ + +By God in heaven, cried the Popish doctors, he can make a nose, if he +thinks fit, as big as the steeple of _Strasburg._ + +Now the steeple of _Strasburg_ being the biggest and the tallest +church-steeple to be seen in the whole world, the Anti-nosarians denied +that a nose of 575 geometrical feet in length could be worn, at least +by a middle-siz’d man——The Popish doctors swore it could—The _Lutheran_ +doctors said No;—it could not. + +This at once started a new dispute, which they pursued a great way, +upon the extent and limitation of the moral and natural attributes of +God—That controversy led them naturally into _Thomas Aquinas_, and +_Thomas Aquinas_ to the devil. + +The stranger’s nose was no more heard of in the dispute—it just served +as a frigate to launch them into the gulph of school-divinity——and then +they all sailed before the wind. + +Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge. + +The controversy about the attributes, &c. instead of cooling, on the +contrary had inflamed the _Strasburgers_ imaginations to a most +inordinate degree——The less they understood of the matter the greater +was their wonder about it—they were left in all the distresses of +desire unsatisfied——saw their doctors, the _Parchmentarians_, the +_Brassarians_, the _Turpentarians_, on one side—the Popish doctors on +the other, like _Pantagruel_ and his companions in quest of the oracle +of the bottle, all embarked out of sight. + +——The poor _Strasburgers_ left upon the beach! + +——What was to be done?—No delay—the uproar increased——every one in +disorder——the city gates set open.—— + +Unfortunate _Strasbergers!_ was there in the store-house of nature——was +there in the lumber-rooms of learning——was there in the great arsenal +of chance, one single engine left undrawn forth to torture your +curiosities, and stretch your desires, which was not pointed by the +hand of Fate to play upon your hearts?——I dip not my pen into my ink to +excuse the surrender of yourselves—’tis to write your panegyrick. Shew +me a city so macerated with expectation——who neither eat, or drank, or +slept, or prayed, or hearkened to the calls either of religion or +nature, for seven-and-twenty days together, who could have held out one +day longer. + +On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to +_Strasburg._ + +Seven thousand coaches (_Slawkenbergius_ must certainly have made some +mistake in his numeral characters) 7000 coaches——15000 single-horse +chairs—20000 waggons, crowded as full as they could all hold with +senators, counsellors, syndicks—beguines, widows, wives, virgins, +canons, concubines, all in their coaches—The abbess of _Quedlingberg_, +with the prioress, the deaness and sub-chantress, leading the +procession in one coach, and the dean of _Strasburg_, with the four +great dignitaries of his chapter, on her left-hand—the rest following +higglety-pigglety as they could; some on horseback——some on foot——some +led——some driven——some down the _Rhine_——some this way——some that——all +set out at sun-rise to meet the courteous stranger on the road. + +Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale——I say _Catastrophe_ +(cries _Slawkenbergius_) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly +disposed, not only rejoiceth (_gaudet_) in the _Catastrophe_ and +_Peripeitia_ of a DRAMA, but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential +and integrant parts of it——it has its _Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis_, +its _Catastrophe_ or _Peripeitia_ growing one out of the other in it, +in the order _Aristotle_ first planted them——without which a tale had +better never be told at all, says _Slawkenbergius_, but be kept to a +man’s self. + +In all my ten tales, in all my ten decades, have I _Slawkenbergius_ +tied down every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have done +this of the stranger and his nose. + +——From his first parley with the centinel, to his leaving the city of +_Strasburg_, after pulling off his crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is +the _Protasis_ or first entrance——where the characters of the _Personæ +Dramatis_ are just touched in, and the subject slightly begun. + +The _Epitasis_, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and +heightened, till it arrives at its state or height called the +_Catastasis_, and which usually takes up the 2d and 3d act, is included +within that busy period of my tale, betwixt the first night’s uproar +about the nose, to the conclusion of the trumpeter’s wife’s lectures +upon it in the middle of the grand parade: and from the first embarking +of the learned in the dispute—to the doctors finally sailing away, and +leaving the _Strasburgers_ upon the beach in distress, is the +_Catastasis_ or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their +bursting forth in the fifth act. + +This commences with the setting out of the _Strasburgers_ in the +_Frankfort_ road, and terminates in unwinding the labyrinth and +bringing the hero out of a state of agitation (as _Aristotle_ calls it) +to a state of rest and quietness. + +This, says _Hafen Slawkenbergius_, constitutes the _Catastrophe_ or +_Peripeitia_ of my tale—and that is the part of it I am going to +relate. + +We left the stranger behind the curtain asleep——he enters now upon the +stage. + +—What dost thou prick up thy ears at?—’tis nothing but a man upon a +horse——was the last word the stranger uttered to his mule. It was not +proper then to tell the reader, that the mule took his master’s word +for it; and without any more _ifs_ or _ands_, let the traveller and his +horse pass by. + +The traveller was hastening with all diligence to get to _Strasburg_ +that night. What a fool am I, said the traveller to himself, when he +had rode about a league farther, to think of getting into _Strasburg_ +this night.—_Strasburg!_——the great _Strasburg!_——_Strasburg_, the +capital of all _Alsatia!_ _Strasburg_, an imperial city! _Strasburg_, a +sovereign state! _Strasburg_, garrisoned with five thousand of the best +troops in all the world!—Alas! if I was at the gates of _Strasburg_ +this moment, I could not gain admittance into it for a ducat—nay a +ducat and half—’tis too much—better go back to the last inn I have +passed——than lie I know not where——or give I know not what. The +traveller, as he made these reflections in his mind, turned his horse’s +head about, and three minutes after the stranger had been conducted +into his chamber, he arrived at the same inn. + +——We have bacon in the house, said the host, and bread——and till eleven +o’clock this night had three eggs in it——but a stranger, who arrived an +hour ago, has had them dressed into an omelet, and we have nothing.—— + +Alas! said the traveller, harassed as I am, I want nothing but a +bed.——I have one as soft as is in _Alsatia_, said the host. + +——The stranger, continued he, should have slept in it, for ’tis my best +bed, but upon the score of his nose.——He has got a defluxion, said the +traveller.——Not that I know, cried the host.——But ’tis a camp-bed, and +_Jacinta_, said he, looking towards the maid, imagined there was not +room in it to turn his nose in.——Why so? cried the traveller, starting +back.—It is so long a nose, replied the host.——The traveller fixed his +eyes upon _Jacinta_, then upon the ground—kneeled upon his right +knee—had just got his hand laid upon his breast——Trifle not with my +anxiety, said he rising up again.——’Tis no trifle, said _Jacinta_, ’tis +the most glorious nose!——The traveller fell upon his knee again—laid +his hand upon his breast—then, said he, looking up to heaven, thou hast +conducted me to the end of my pilgrimage—’Tis _Diego._ + +The traveller was the brother of the _Julia_, so often invoked that +night by the stranger as he rode from _Strasburg_ upon his mule; and +was come, on her part, in quest of him. He had accompanied his sister +from _Valadolid_ across the _Pyrenean_ mountains through _France_, and +had many an entangled skein to wind off in pursuit of him through the +many meanders and abrupt turnings of a lover’s thorny tracks. + +——_Julia_ had sunk under it——and had not been able to go a step farther +than to _Lyons_, where, with the many disquietudes of a tender heart, +which all talk of——but few feel—she sicken’d, but had just strength to +write a letter to _Diego_; and having conjured her brother never to see +her face till he had found him out, and put the letter into his hands, +_Julia_ took to her bed. + +_Fernandez_ (for that was her brother’s name)——tho’ the camp-bed was as +soft as any one in _Alsace_, yet he could not shut his eyes in it.——As +soon as it was day he rose, and hearing _Diego_ was risen too, he +entered his chamber, and discharged his sister’s commission. + +The letter was as follows: + +“Seig. DIEGO, + +“Whether my suspicions of your nose were justly excited or not——’tis +not now to inquire—it is enough I have not had firmness to put them to +farther tryal. + +“How could I know so little of myself, when I sent my _Duenna_ to +forbid your coming more under my lattice? or how could I know so little +of you, _Diego_, as to imagine you would not have staid one day in +_Valadolid_ to have given ease to my doubts?—Was I to be abandoned, +_Diego_, because I was deceived? or was it kind to take me at my word, +whether my suspicions were just or no, and leave me, as you did, a prey +to much uncertainty and sorrow? + +“In what manner _Julia_ has resented this——my brother, when he puts +this letter into your hands, will tell you; He will tell you in how few +moments she repented of the rash message she had sent you——in what +frantic haste she flew to her lattice, and how many days and nights +together she leaned immoveably upon her elbow, looking through it +towards the way which _Diego_ was wont to come. + +“He will tell you, when she heard of your departure—how her spirits +deserted her——how her heart sicken’d——how piteously she mourned——how +low she hung her head. O _Diego!_ how many weary steps has my brother’s +pity led me by the hand languishing to trace out yours; how far has +desire carried me beyond strength——and how oft have I fainted by the +way, and sunk into his arms, with only power to cry out—O my _Diego!_ + +“If the gentleness of your carriage has not belied your heart, you will +fly to me, almost as fast as you fled from me—haste as you will——you +will arrive but to see me expire.——’Tis a bitter draught, _Diego_, but +oh! ’tis embittered still more by dying _un_———” + +She could proceed no farther. + +_Slawkenbergius_ supposes the word intended was unconvinced, but her +strength would not enable her to finish her letter. + +The heart of the courteous _Diego_ over-flowed as he read the +letter——he ordered his mule forthwith and _Fernandez_’s horse to be +saddled; and as no vent in prose is equal to that of poetry in such +conflicts——chance, which as often directs us to remedies as to +_diseases_, having thrown a piece of charcoal into the window——_Diego_ +availed himself of it, and whilst the hostler was getting ready his +mule, he eased his mind against the wall as follows. + +O D E. + +_Harsh and untuneful are the notes of love_, + +_Unless my_ Julia _strikes the key_, + +_Her hand alone can touch the part_, + +_Whose dulcet movement charms the heart_, + +_And governs all the man with sympathetick sway._ + +         2d. + +_O_ Julia! + +The lines were very natural——for they were nothing at all to the +purpose, says _Slawkenbergius_, and ’tis a pity there were no more of +them; but whether it was that Seig. _Diego_ was slow in composing +verses—or the hostler quick in saddling mules——is not averred; certain +it was, that _Diego_’s mule and _Fernandez_’s horse were ready at the +door of the inn, before _Diego_ was ready for his second stanza; so +without staying to finish his ode, they both mounted, sallied forth, +passed the _Rhine_, traversed _Alsace_, shaped their course towards +_Lyons_, and before the _Strasburgers_ and the abbess of _Quedlingberg_ +had set out on their cavalcade, had _Fernandez, Diego_, and his +_Julia_, crossed the _Pyrenean_ mountains, and got safe to _Valadolid._ + +’Tis needless to inform the geographical reader, that when _Diego_ was +in _Spain_, it was not possible to meet the courteous stranger in the +_Frankfort_ road; it is enough to say, that of all restless desires, +curiosity being the strongest——the _Strasburgers_ felt the full force +of it; and that for three days and nights they were tossed to and fro +in the _Frankfort_ road, with the tempestuous fury of this passion, +before they could submit to return home.——When alas! an event was +prepared for them, of all other, the most grievous that could befal a +free people. + +As this revolution of the _Strasburgers_ affairs is often spoken of, +and little understood, I will, in ten words, says _Slawkenbergius_, +give the world an explanation of it, and with it put an end to my tale. + +Every body knows of the grand system of Universal Monarchy, wrote by +order of Mons. _Colbert_, and put in manuscript into the hands of +_Lewis_ the fourteenth, in the year 1664. + +’Tis as well known, that one branch out of many of that system, was the +getting possession of _Strasburg_, to favour an entrance at all times +into _Suabia_, in order to disturb the quiet of _Germany_——and that in +consequence of this plan, _Strasburg_ unhappily fell at length into +their hands. + +It is the lot of a few to trace out the true springs of this and such +like revolutions—The vulgar look too high for them—Statesmen look too +low——Truth (for once) lies in the middle. + +What a fatal thing is the popular pride of a free city! cries one +historian—The _Strasburgers_ deemed it a diminution of their freedom to +receive an imperial garrison——so fell a prey to a _French_ one. + +The fate, says another, of the _Strasburgers_, may be a warning to all +free people to save their money.——They anticipated their +revenues——brought themselves under taxes, exhausted their strength, and +in the end became so weak a people, they had not strength to keep their +gates shut, and so the _French_ pushed them open. + +Alas! alas! cries _Slawkenbergius_, ’twas not the _French_,——’twas +CURIOSITY pushed them open——The _French_ indeed, who are ever upon the +catch, when they saw the _Strasburgers_, men, women and children, all +marched out to follow the stranger’s nose——each man followed his own, +and marched in. + +Trade and manufactures have decayed and gradually grown down ever +since—but not from any cause which commercial heads have assigned; for +it is owing to this only, that Noses have ever so run in their heads, +that the _Strasburgers_ could not follow their business. + +Alas! alas! cries _Slawkenbergius_, making an exclamation—it is not the +first——and I fear will not be the last fortress that has been either +won——or lost by NOSES. + +The E N D of +_Slawkenbergius_’s TALE. + + [8] As _Hafen Slawkenbergius de Nasis_ is extremely scarce, it may not + be unacceptable to the learned reader to see the specimen of a few + pages of his original; I will make no reflection upon it, but that his + story-telling Latin is much more concise than his philosophic—and, I + think, has more of Latinity in it. + + [9] _Hafen Slawkenbergius_ means the Benedictine nuns of _Cluny_, + founded in the year 940, by _Odo_, abbé de _Cluny._ + + [10] Mr. _Shandy_’s compliments to orators——is very sensible that + _Slawkenbergius_ has here changed his metaphor——which he is very + guilty of:——that as a translator, Mr. _Shandy_ has all along done what + he could to make him stick to it—but that here ’twas impossible. + + [11] Nonnulli ex nostratibus eadem loquendi formulâ utun. Quinimo & + Logistæ & Canonistæ——Vid. Parce Barne Jas in d. L. Provincial. + Constitut. de conjec. vid. Vol. Lib. 4. Titul. I. n. 7 quâ etiam in re + conspir. Om de Promontorio Nas. Tichmak. ff. d. tit. 3. fol. 189. + passim. Vid. Glos. de contrahend. empt. &c. necnon J. Scrudr. in cap. + § refut. per totum. Cum his cons. Rever. J. Tubal, Sentent. & Prov. + cap. 9. ff. 11, 12. obiter. V. & Librum, cui Tit. de Terris & Phras. + Belg. ad finem, cum comment. N. Bardy Belg. Vid. Scrip. Argentotarens. + de Antiq. Ecc. in Episc Archiv. fid coll. per Von Jacobum Koinshoven + Folio Argent. 1583. præcip. ad finem. Quibus add. Rebuff in L. + obvenire de Signif. Nom. ff. fol. & de jure Gent. & Civil. de protib. + aliena feud. per federa, test. Joha. Luxius in prolegom. quem velim + videas, de Analy. Cap. 1, 2, 3. Vid. Idea. + + [12] Haec mira, satisque horrenda. Planetarum coitio sub Scorpio + Asterismo in nona cœli statione, quam Arabes religioni deputabant + efficit _Martinum Lutherum_ sacrilegum hereticum, Christianæ + religionis hostem acerrimum atque prophanum, ex horoscopi directione + ad Martis coitum, religiosissimus obiit, ejus Anima scelestissima ad + infernos navigavit—ab Alecto, Tisiphone & Megara flagellis igneis + cruciata perenniter. + +——Lucas Gaurieus in Tractatu astrologico de præteritis multorum hominum +accidentibus per genituras examinatis. + +C H A P. XXXVI + +WITH all this learning upon Noses running perpetually in my father’s +fancy——with so many family prejudices—and ten decades of such tales +running on for ever along with them——how was it possible with such +exquisite——was it a true nose?——That a man with such exquisite feelings +as my father had, could bear the shock at all below stairs——or indeed +above stairs, in any other posture, but the very posture I have +described? + +——Throw yourself down upon the bed, a dozen times——taking care only to +place a looking-glass first in a chair on one side of it, before you do +it—But was the stranger’s nose a true nose, or was it a false one? + +To tell that before-hand, madam, would be to do injury to one of the +best tales in the Christian-world; and that is the tenth of the tenth +decade, which immediately follows this. + +This tale, cried _Slawkenbergius_, somewhat exultingly, has been +reserved by me for the concluding tale of my whole work; knowing right +well, that when I shall have told it, and my reader shall have read it +thro’—’twould be even high time for both of us to shut up the book; +inasmuch, continues _Slawkenbergius_, as I know of no tale which could +possibly ever go down after it. + +’Tis a tale indeed! + +This sets out with the first interview in the inn at _Lyons_, when +_Fernandez_ left the courteous stranger and his sister _Julia_ alone in +her chamber, and is over-written. + +The I N T R I C A C I E S + +O F +_Diego_ and _Julia._ + +Heavens! thou art a strange creature, _Slawkenbergius!_ what a +whimsical view of the involutions of the heart of woman hast thou +opened! how this can ever be translated, and yet if this specimen of +_Slawkenbergius_’s tales, and the exquisitiveness of his moral, should +please the world—translated shall a couple of volumes be.——Else, how +this can ever be translated into good _English_, I have no sort of +conception—There seems in some passages to want a sixth sense to do it +rightly.——What can he mean by the lambent pupilability of slow, low, +dry chat, five notes below the natural tone——which you know, madam, is +little more than a whisper? The moment I pronounced the words, I could +perceive an attempt towards a vibration in the strings, about the +region of the heart.——The brain made no acknowledgment.——There’s often +no good understanding betwixt ’em—I felt as if I understood it.——I had +no ideas.——The movement could not be without cause.—I’m lost. I can +make nothing of it—unless, may it please your worships, the voice, in +that case being little more than a whisper, unavoidably forces the eyes +to approach not only within six inches of each other—but to look into +the pupils—is not that dangerous?——But it can’t be avoided—for to look +up to the cieling, in that case the two chins unavoidably meet——and to +look down into each other’s lap, the foreheads come to immediate +contact, which at once puts an end to the conference——I mean to the +sentimental part of it.——What is left, madam, is not worth stooping +for. + +C H A P. XXXVII + +MY father lay stretched across the bed as still as if the hand of death +had pushed him down, for a full hour and a half before he began to play +upon the floor with the toe of that foot which hung over the bed-side; +my uncle _Toby_’s heart was a pound lighter for it.——In a few moments, +his left-hand, the knuckles of which had all the time reclined upon the +handle of the chamber-pot, came to its feeling—he thrust it a little +more within the valance—drew up his hand, when he had done, into his +bosom—gave a hem! My good uncle _Toby_, with infinite pleasure, +answered it; and full gladly would have ingrafted a sentence of +consolation upon the opening it afforded: but having no talents, as I +said, that way, and fearing moreover that he might set out with +something which might make a bad matter worse, he contented himself +with resting his chin placidly upon the cross of his crutch. + +Now whether the compression shortened my uncle _Toby_’s face into a +more pleasurable oval—or that the philanthropy of his heart, in seeing +his brother beginning to emerge out of the sea of his afflictions, had +braced up his muscles——so that the compression upon his chin only +doubled the benignity which was there before, is not hard to +decide.——My father, in turning his eyes, was struck with such a gleam +of sun-shine in his face, as melted down the sullenness of his grief in +a moment. + +He broke silence as follows: + +C H A P. XXXVIII + +DID ever man, brother _Toby_, cried my father, raising himself upon his +elbow, and turning himself round to the opposite side of the bed, where +my uncle _Toby_ was sitting in his old fringed chair, with his chin +resting upon his crutch——did ever a poor unfortunate man, brother +_Toby_, cried my father, receive so many lashes?——The most I ever saw +given, quoth my uncle _Toby_ (ringing the bell at the bed’s head for +_Trim_) was to a grenadier, I think in _Mackay_’s regiment. + +——Had my uncle _Toby_ shot a bullet through my father’s heart, he could +not have fallen down with his nose upon the quilt more suddenly. + +Bless me! said my uncle _Toby_. + +C H A P. XXXIX + +WAS it _Mackay_’s regiment, quoth my uncle _Toby_, where the poor +grenadier was so unmercifully whipp’d at _Bruges_ about the ducats?—O +Christ! he was innocent! cried _Trim_, with a deep sigh.—And he was +whipp’d, may it please your honour, almost to death’s door.—They had +better have shot him outright, as he begg’d, and he had gone directly +to heaven, for he was as innocent as your honour.——I thank thee, +_Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_.——I never think of his, continued _Trim_, +and my poor brother _Tom_’s misfortunes, for we were all three +school-fellows, but I cry like a coward.——Tears are no proof of +cowardice, _Trim._—I drop them oft-times myself, cried my uncle +_Toby_.——I know your honour does, replied _Trim_, and so am not ashamed +of it myself.—But to think, may it please your honour, continued +_Trim_, a tear stealing into the corner of his eye as he spoke—to think +of two virtuous lads with hearts as warm in their bodies, and as honest +as God could make them—the children of honest people, going forth with +gallant spirits to seek their fortunes in the world—and fall into such +evils!—poor _Tom!_ to be tortured upon a rack for nothing—but marrying +a Jew’s widow who sold sausages—honest _Dick Johnson_’s soul to be +scourged out of his body, for the ducats another man put into his +knapsack!—O!—these are misfortunes, cried _Trim_,—pulling out his +handkerchief—these are misfortunes, may it please your honour, worth +lying down and crying over. + +—My father could not help blushing. + +’Twould be a pity, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, thou shouldst ever +feel sorrow of thy own—thou feelest it so tenderly for +others.—Alack-o-day, replied the corporal, brightening up his +face——your honour knows I have neither wife or child——I can have no +sorrows in this world.——My father could not help smiling.—As few as any +man, _Trim_, replied my uncle _Toby_; nor can I see how a fellow of thy +light heart can suffer, but from the distress of poverty in thy old +age—when thou art passed all services, _Trim_—and hast outlived thy +friends.——An’ please your honour, never fear, replied _Trim_, +chearily.——But I would have thee never fear, _Trim_, replied my uncle +_Toby_, and therefore, continued my uncle _Toby_, throwing down his +crutch, and getting up upon his legs as he uttered the word +_therefore_—in recompence, _Trim_, of thy long fidelity to me, and that +goodness of thy heart I have had such proofs of—whilst thy master is +worth a shilling——thou shalt never ask elsewhere, _Trim_, for a penny. +_Trim_ attempted to thank my uncle _Toby_—but had not power——tears +trickled down his cheeks faster than he could wipe them off—He laid his +hands upon his breast——made a bow to the ground, and shut the door. + +——I have left _Trim_ my bowling-green, cried my uncle _Toby_——My father +smiled.——I have left him moreover a pension, continued my uncle +_Toby_.——My father looked grave. + +C H A P. XL + +IS this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of PENSIONS and +GRENADIERS? + +C H A P. XLI + +WHEN my uncle _Toby_ first mentioned the grenadier, my father, I said, +fell down with his nose flat to the quilt, and as suddenly as if my +uncle _Toby_ had shot him; but it was not added that every other limb +and member of my father instantly relapsed with his nose into the same +precise attitude in which he lay first described; so that when corporal +_Trim_ left the room, and my father found himself disposed to rise off +the bed—he had all the little preparatory movements to run over again, +before he could do it. Attitudes are nothing, madam——’tis the +transition from one attitude to another——like the preparation and +resolution of the discord into harmony, which is all in all. + +For which reason my father played the same jig over again with his toe +upon the floor——pushed the chamber-pot still a little farther within +the valance—gave a hem—raised himself up upon his elbow—and was just +beginning to address himself to my uncle _Toby_—when recollecting the +unsuccessfulness of his first effort in that attitude——he got upon his +legs, and in making the third turn across the room, he stopped short +before my uncle _Toby_; and laying the three first fingers of his +right-hand in the palm of his left, and stooping a little, he addressed +himself to my uncle _Toby_ as follows: + +C H A P. XLII + +WHEN I reflect, brother _Toby_, upon MAN; and take a view of that dark +side of him which represents his life as open to so many causes of +trouble—when I consider, brother _Toby_, how oft we eat the bread of +affliction, and that we are born to it, as to the portion of our +inheritance——I was born to nothing, quoth my uncle _Toby_, interrupting +my father—but my commission. Zooks! said my father, did not my uncle +leave you a hundred and twenty pounds a year?——What could I have done +without it? replied my uncle _Toby_——That’s another concern, said my +father testily—But I say _Toby_, when one runs over the catalogue of +all the cross-reckonings and sorrowful _Items_ with which the heart of +man is overcharged, ’tis wonderful by what hidden resources the mind is +enabled to stand out, and bear itself up, as it does, against the +impositions laid upon our nature.——’Tis by the assistance of Almighty +God, cried my uncle _Toby_, looking up, and pressing the palms of his +hands close together——’tis not from our own strength, brother +_Shandy_——a centinel in a wooden centry-box might as well pretend to +stand it out against a detachment of fifty men.——We are upheld by the +grace and the assistance of the best of Beings. + +——That is cutting the knot, said my father, instead of untying it,——But +give me leave to lead you, brother _Toby_, a little deeper into the +mystery. + +With all my heart, replied my uncle _Toby_. + +My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which +_Socrates_ is so finely painted by _Raffael_ in his school of _Athens_; +which your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even +the particular manner of the reasoning of _Socrates_ is expressed by +it—for he holds the fore-finger of his left-hand between the +fore-finger and the thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying +to the libertine he is reclaiming——“_You grant me_ this——and this: and +this, and this, I don’t ask of you—they follow of themselves in +course.” + +So stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt his finger and +his thumb, and reasoning with my uncle _Toby_ as he sat in his old +fringed chair, valanced around with party-coloured worsted bobs——O +_Garrick!_——what a rich scene of this would thy exquisite powers make! +and how gladly would I write such another to avail myself of thy +immortality, and secure my own behind it. + +C H A P. XLIII + +THOUGH man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father, +yet at the same time ’tis of so slight a frame, and so totteringly put +together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets +with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a +dozen times a day——was it not, brother _Toby_, that there is a secret +spring within us.—Which spring, said my uncle _Toby_, I take to be +Religion.—Will that set my child’s nose on? cried my father, letting go +his finger, and striking one hand against the other.——It makes every +thing straight for us, answered my uncle _Toby_.——Figuratively +speaking, dear _Toby_, it may, for aught I know, said my father; but +the spring I am speaking of, is that great and elastic power within us +of counterbalancing evil, which, like a secret spring in a well-ordered +machine, though it can’t prevent the shock——at least it imposes upon +our sense of it. + +Now, my dear brother, said my father, replacing his fore-finger, as he +was coming closer to the point——had my child arrived safe into the +world, unmartyr’d in that precious part of him—fanciful and extravagant +as I may appear to the world in my opinion of christian names, and of +that magic bias which good or bad names irresistibly impress upon our +characters and conducts—Heaven is witness! that in the warmest +transports of my wishes for the prosperity of my child, I never once +wished to crown his head with more glory and honour than what GEORGE or +EDWARD would have spread around it. + +But alas! continued my father, as the greatest evil has befallen him——I +must counteract and undo it with the greatest good. + +He shall be christened _Trismegistus_, brother. + +I wish it may answer——replied my uncle _Toby_, rising up. + +C H A P. XLIV + +WHAT a chapter of chances, said my father, turning himself about upon +the first landing, as he and my uncle _Toby_ were going down stairs, +what a long chapter of chances do the events of this world lay open to +us! Take pen and ink in hand, brother _Toby_, and calculate it +fairly——I know no more of calculation than this balluster, said my +uncle _Toby_ (striking short of it with his crutch, and hitting my +father a desperate blow souse upon his shin-bone)——’Twas a hundred to +one—cried my uncle _Toby_—I thought, quoth my father, (rubbing his +shin) you had known nothing of calculations, brother _Toby_. + +a mere chance, said my uncle _Toby_.——Then it adds one to the +chapter——replied my father. + +The double success of my father’s repartees tickled off the pain of his +shin at once—it was well it so fell out—(chance! again)—or the world to +this day had never known the subject of my father’s calculation——to +guess it—there was no chance——What a lucky chapter of chances has this +turned out! for it has saved me the trouble of writing one express, and +in truth I have enough already upon my hands without it.—Have not I +promised the world a chapter of knots? two chapters upon the right and +the wrong end of a woman? a chapter upon whiskers? a chapter upon +wishes?——a chapter of noses?—No, I have done that—a chapter upon my +uncle _Toby_’s modesty? to say nothing of a chapter upon chapters, +which I will finish before I sleep—by my great grandfather’s whiskers, +I shall never get half of ’em through this year. + +Take pen and ink in hand, and calculate it fairly, brother _Toby_, said +my father, and it will turn out a million to one, that of all the parts +of the body, the edge of the forceps should have the ill luck just to +fall upon and break down that one part, which should break down the +fortunes of our house with it. + +It might have been worse, replied my uncle _Toby_.——I don’t comprehend, +said my father.——Suppose the hip had presented, replied my uncle +_Toby_, as Dr. _Slop_ foreboded. + +My father reflected half a minute—looked down——touched the middle of +his forehead slightly with his finger—— + +—True, said he. + +C H A P. XLV + +IS it not a shame to make two chapters of what passed in going down one +pair of stairs? for we are got no farther yet than to the first +landing, and there are fifteen more steps down to the bottom; and for +aught I know, as my father and my uncle _Toby_ are in a talking humour, +there may be as many chapters as steps:——let that be as it will, Sir, I +can no more help it than my destiny:—A sudden impulse comes across +me——drop the curtain, _Shandy_——I drop it—Strike a line here across the +paper, _Tristram_—I strike it—and hey for a new chapter. + +The deuce of any other rule have I to govern myself by in this +affair—and if I had one—as I do all things out of all rule—I would +twist it and tear it to pieces, and throw it into the fire when I had +done—Am I warm? I am, and the cause demands it——a pretty story! is a +man to follow rules——or rules to follow him? + +Now this, you must know, being my chapter upon chapters, which I +promised to write before I went to sleep, I thought it meet to ease my +conscience entirely before I laid down, by telling the world all I knew +about the matter at once: Is not this ten times better than to set out +dogmatically with a sententious parade of wisdom, and telling the world +a story of a roasted horse——that chapters relieve the mind—that they +assist—or impose upon the imagination—and that in a work of this +dramatic cast they are as necessary as the shifting of scenes——with +fifty other cold conceits, enough to extinguish the fire which roasted +him?—O! but to understand this, which is a puff at the fire of +_Diana_’s temple—you must read _Longinus_—read away—if you are not a +jot the wiser by reading him the first time over—never fear—read him +again—_Avicenna_ and _Licetus_ read _Aristotle_’s metaphysicks forty +times through a-piece, and never understood a single word.—But mark the +consequence—_Avicenna_ turned out a desperate writer at all kinds of +writing—for he wrote books _de omni scribili_; and for _Licetus +(Fortunio)_ though all the world knows he was born a fœtus,[13] of no +more than five inches and a half in length, yet he grew to that +astonishing height in literature, as to write a book with a title as +long as himself——the learned know I mean his _Gonopsychanthropologia_, +upon the origin of the human soul. + +So much for my chapter upon chapters, which I hold to be the best +chapter in my whole work; and take my word, whoever reads it, is full +as well employed, as in picking straws. + + [13] _Ce Fœtus_ n’étoit pas plus grand que la paume de la main; mais + son pere l’ayant éxaminé en qualité de Médecin, & ayant trouvé que + c’etoit quelque chose de plus qu’un Embryon, le fit transporter tout + vivant à Rapallo, ou il le fit voir à Jerôme Bardi & à d’autres + Médecins du lieu. On trouva qu’il ne lui manquoit rien d’essentiel à + la vie; & son pere pour faire voir un essai de son experience, + entreprit d’achever l’ouvrage de la Nature, & de travailler à la + formation de l’Enfant avec le même artifice que celui dont on se sert + pour faire écclorre les Poulets en Egypte. Il instruisit une Nourisse + de tout ce qu’elle avoit à faire, & ayant fait mettre son fils dans un + pour proprement accommodé, il reussit à l’elever & a lui faire prendre + ses accroissemens necessaires, par l’uniformité d’une chaleur + étrangere mesurée éxactement sur les dégrés d’un Thermométre, ou d’un + autre instrument équivalent. (Vide Mich. Giustinian, ne gli Scritt. + Liguri à Cart. 223. 488.) + +On auroit toujours été très satisfait de l’industrie d’un pere si +experimenté dans l’Art de la Generation, quand il n’auroit pû prolonger +la vie à son fils que pour Puelques mois, ou pour peu d’années. + +Mais quand on se represente que l’Enfant a vecu près de quatre-vingts +ans, & qu’il a composé quatre-vingts Ouvrages differents tous fruits +d’une longue lecture—il faut convenir que tout ce qui est incroyable +n’est pas toujours faux, & que la _Vraisemblance n’est pas toujours du +côté la Verité._ + +Il n’avoit que dix neuf ans lorsqu’il composa Gonopsychanthropologia de +Origine Animæ humanæ. + +(Les Enfans celebres, revûs & corrigés par M. de la Monnoye de +l’Academie Françoise. + +C H A P. XLVI + +WE shall bring all things to rights, said my father, setting his foot +upon the first step from the landing.—This _Trismegistus_, continued my +father, drawing his leg back and turning to my uncle _Toby_——was the +greatest (_Toby_) of all earthly beings—he was the greatest king——the +greatest lawgiver——the greatest philosopher——and the greatest +priest——and engineer—said my uncle _Toby_. + +——In course, said my father. + +C H A P. XLVII + +—AND how does your mistress? cried my father, taking the same step over +again from the landing, and calling to _Susannah_, whom he saw passing +by the foot of the stairs with a huge pin-cushion in her hand—how does +your mistress? As well, said _Susannah_, tripping by, but without +looking up, as can be expected.—What a fool am I! said my father, +drawing his leg back again—let things be as they will, brother _Toby_, +’tis ever the precise answer——And how is the child, pray?——No answer. +And where is Dr. _Slop_? added my father, raising his voice aloud, and +looking over the ballusters—_Susannah_ was out of hearing. + +Of all the riddles of a married life, said my father, crossing the +landing in order to set his back against the wall, whilst he propounded +it to my uncle _Toby_——of all the puzzling riddles, said he, in a +marriage state,——of which you may trust me, brother _Toby_, there are +more asses loads than all _Job_’s stock of asses could have +carried——there is not one that has more intricacies in it than +this—that from the very moment the mistress of the house is brought to +bed, every female in it, from my lady’s gentlewoman down to the +cinder-wench, becomes an inch taller for it; and give themselves more +airs upon that single inch, than all their other inches put together. + +I think rather, replied my uncle _Toby_, that ’tis we who sink an inch +lower.—If I meet but a woman with child—I do it.—’Tis a heavy tax upon +that half of our fellow-creatures, brother _Shandy_, said my uncle +_Toby_—’Tis a piteous burden upon ’em, continued he, shaking his +head—Yes, yes, ’tis a painful thing—said my father, shaking his head +too——but certainly since shaking of heads came into fashion, never did +two heads shake together, in concert, from two such different springs. + +God bless / Deuce take ’em all—said my uncle _Toby_ and my father, each +to himself. + +C H A P. XVLIII + +HOLLA!——you, chairman!——here’s sixpence——do step into that bookseller’s +shop, and call me a day-tall critick. I am very willing to give any one +of ’em a crown to help me with his tackling, to get my father and my +uncle _Toby_ off the stairs, and to put them to bed. + +—’Tis even high time; for except a short nap, which they both got +whilst _Trim_ was boring the jack-boots—and which, by-the-bye, did my +father no sort of good, upon the score of the bad hinge—they have not +else shut their eyes, since nine hours before the time that doctor +_Slop_ was led into the back parlour in that dirty pickle by _Obadiah_. + +Was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this—and to take +up—Truce. + +I will not finish that sentence till I have made an observation upon +the strange state of affairs between the reader and myself, just as +things stand at present—an observation never applicable before to any +one biographical writer since the creation of the world, but to +myself—and I believe, will never hold good to any other, until its +final destruction—and therefore, for the very novelty of it alone, it +must be worth your worships attending to. + +I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; +and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my third +volume[14]—and no farther than to my first day’s life—’tis +demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four days more life +to write just now, than when I first set out; so that instead of +advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing +at it—on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back—was every +day of my life to be as busy a day as this—And why not?——and the +transactions and opinions of it to take up as much description—And for +what reason should they be cut short? as at this rate I should just +live 364 times faster than I should write—It must follow, an’ please +your worships, that the more I write, the more I shall have to +write—and consequently, the more your worships read, the more your +worships will have to read. + +Will this be good for your worships eyes? + +It will do well for mine; and, was it not that my OPINIONS will be the +death of me, I perceive I shall lead a fine life of it out of this +self-same life of mine; or, in other words, shall lead a couple of fine +lives together. + +As for the proposal of twelve volumes a year, or a volume a month, it +no way alters my prospect—write as I will, and rush as I may into the +middle of things, as _Horace_ advises—I shall never overtake myself +whipp’d and driven to the last pinch; at the worst I shall have one day +the start of my pen—and one day is enough for two volumes——and two +volumes will be enough for one year.— + +Heaven prosper the manufacturers of paper under this propitious reign, +which is now opened to us——as I trust its providence will prosper every +thing else in it that is taken in hand. + +As for the propagation of Geese—I give myself no concern—Nature is +all-bountiful—I shall never want tools to work with. + +—So then, friend! you have got my father and my uncle _Toby_ off the +stairs, and seen them to bed?——And how did you manage it?——You dropp’d +a curtain at the stair-foot—I thought you had no other way for +it——Here’s a crown for your trouble. + + [14] According to the preceding Editions. + +C H A P. XLIX + +—THEN reach me my breeches off the chair, said my father to +_Susannah._—There is not a moment’s time to dress you, Sir, cried +_Susannah_—the child is as black in the face as my——As your what? said +my father, for like all orators, he was a dear searcher into +comparisons.—Bless, me, Sir, said _Susannah_, the child’s in a fit.—And +where’s Mr. _Yorick?_—Never where he should be, said _Susannah_, but +his curate’s in the dressing-room, with the child upon his arm, waiting +for the name—and my mistress bid me run as fast as I could to know, as +captain _Shandy_ is the godfather, whether it should not be called +after him. + +Were one sure, said my father to himself, scratching his eye-brow, that +the child was expiring, one might as well compliment my brother _Toby_ +as not—and it would be a pity, in such a case, to throw away so great a +name as _Trismegistus_ upon him——but he may recover. + +No, no,——said my father to _Susannah_, I’ll get up——There is no time, +cried _Susannah_, the child’s as black as my shoe. _Trismegistus_, said +my father——But stay—thou art a leaky vessel, _Susannah_, added my +father; canst thou carry _Trismegistus_ in thy head, the length of the +gallery without scattering?——Can I? cried _Susannah_, shutting the door +in a huff.——If she can, I’ll be shot, said my father, bouncing out of +bed in the dark, and groping for his breeches. + +_Susannah_ ran with all speed along the gallery. + +My father made all possible speed to find his breeches. + +_Susannah_ got the start, and kept it—’Tis _Tris_—something, cried +_Susannah_—There is no christian-name in the world, said the curate, +beginning with _Tris_—but _Tristram._ Then ’tis _Tristram-gistus_, +quoth _Susannah._ + +——There is no _gistus_ to it, noodle!—’tis my own name, replied the +curate, dipping his hand, as he spoke, into the bason—_Tristram!_ said +he, &c. &c. &c. &c.—so _Tristram_ was I called, and _Tristram_ shall I +be to the day of my death. + +My father followed _Susannah_, with his night-gown across his arm, with +nothing more than his breeches on, fastened through haste with but a +single button, and that button through haste thrust only half into the +button-hole. + +——She has not forgot the name, cried my father, half opening the +door?——No, no, said the curate, with a tone of intelligence.——And the +child is better, cried _Susannah._——And how does your mistress? As +well, said _Susannah_, as can be expected.—Pish! said my father, the +button of his breeches slipping out of the button-hole—So that whether +the interjection was levelled at _Susannah_, or the button-hole—whether +Pish was an interjection of contempt or an interjection of modesty, is +a doubt, and must be a doubt till I shall have time to write the three +following favourite chapters, that is, my chapter of _chamber-maids_, +my chapter of _pishes_, and my chapter of _button-holes._ + +All the light I am able to give the reader at present is this, that the +moment my father cried Pish! he whisk’d himself about—and with his +breeches held up by one hand, and his night-gown thrown across the arm +of the other, he turned along the gallery to bed, something slower than +he came. + +C H A P. L + +I WISH I could write a chapter upon sleep. + +A fitter occasion could never have presented itself, than what this +moment offers, when all the curtains of the family are drawn—the +candles put out—and no creature’s eyes are open but a single one, for +the other has been shut these twenty years, of my mother’s nurse. + +It is a fine subject. + +And yet, as fine as it is, I would undertake to write a dozen chapters +upon button-holes, both quicker and with more fame, than a single +chapter upon this. + +Button-holes! there is something lively in the very idea of ’em——and +trust me, when I get amongst ’em——You gentry with great beards——look as +grave as you will——I’ll make merry work with my button-holes—I shall +have ’em all to myself—’tis a maiden subject—I shall run foul of no +man’s wisdom or fine sayings in it. + +But for sleep—I know I shall make nothing of it before I begin—I am no +dab at your fine sayings in the first place—and in the next, I cannot +for my soul set a grave face upon a bad matter, and tell the world—’tis +the refuge of the unfortunate—the enfranchisement of the prisoner—the +downy lap of the hopeless, the weary, and the broken-hearted; nor could +I set out with a lye in my mouth, by affirming, that of all the soft +and delicious functions of our nature, by which the great Author of it, +in his bounty, has been pleased to recompence the sufferings wherewith +his justice and his good pleasure has wearied us——that this is the +chiefest (I know pleasures worth ten of it); or what a happiness it is +to man, when the anxieties and passions of the day are over, and he +lies down upon his back, that his soul shall be so seated within him, +that whichever way she turns her eyes, the heavens shall look calm and +sweet above her—no desire—or fear—or doubt that troubles the air, nor +any difficulty past, present, or to come, that the imagination may not +pass over without offence, in that sweet secession. + +“God’s blessing,” said _Sancho Pança_, “be upon the man who first +invented this self-same thing called sleep—it covers a man all over +like a cloak.” + +Now there is more to me in this, and it speaks warmer to my heart and +affections, than all the dissertations squeez’d out of the heads of the +learned together upon the subject. + +—Not that I altogether disapprove of what _Montaigne_ advances upon +it—’tis admirable in its way—(I quote by memory.) + +The world enjoys other pleasures, says he, as they do that of sleep, +without tasting or feeling it as it slips and passes by.—We should +study and ruminate upon it, in order to render proper thanks to him who +grants it to us.—For this end I cause myself to be disturbed in my +sleep, that I may the better and more sensibly relish it.——And yet I +see few, says he again, who live with less sleep, when need requires; +my body is capable of a firm, but not of a violent and sudden +agitation—I evade of late all violent exercises——I am never weary with +walking——but from my youth, I never looked to ride upon pavements. I +love to lie hard and alone, and even without my wife——This last word +may stagger the faith of the world——but remember, “La Vraisemblance’ +(as _Bayle_ says in the affair of _Liceti_) ’est pas toujours du Côté +de la Verité.” And so much for sleep. + +C H A P. LI + +IF my wife will but venture him—brother _Toby, Trismegistus_ shall be +dress’d and brought down to us, whilst you and I are getting our +breakfasts together.—— + +——Go, tell _Susannah, Obadiah_, to step here. + +She is run up stairs, answered _Obadiah_, this very instant, sobbing +and crying, and wringing her hands as if her heart would break. + +We shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning his head from +_Obadiah_, and looking wistfully in my uncle _Toby_’s face for some +time—we shall have a devilish month of it, brother _Toby_, said my +father, setting his arms a’kimbo, and shaking his head; fire, water, +women, wind—brother _Toby_!—’Tis some misfortune, quoth my uncle +_Toby_.——That it is, cried my father—to have so many jarring elements +breaking loose, and riding triumph in every corner of a gentleman’s +house—Little boots it to the peace of a family, brother _Toby_, that +you and I possess ourselves, and sit here silent and unmoved——whilst +such a storm is whistling over our heads.—— + +And what’s the matter, _Susannah?_ They have called the child +_Tristram_——and my mistress is just got out of an hysterick fit about +it——No!——’tis not my fault, said _Susannah_—I told him it was +_Tristram-gistus._ + +——Make tea for yourself, brother _Toby_, said my father, taking down +his hat——but how different from the sallies and agitations of voice and +members which a common reader would imagine! + +—For he spake in the sweetest modulation—and took down his hat with the +genteelest movement of limbs, that ever affliction harmonized and +attuned together. + +——Go to the bowling-green for corporal _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, +speaking to _Obadiah_, as soon as my father left the room. + +C H A P. LII + +WHEN the misfortune of my Nose fell so heavily upon my father’s +head;—the reader remembers that he walked instantly up stairs, and cast +himself down upon his bed; and from hence, unless he has a great +insight into human nature, he will be apt to expect a rotation of the +same ascending and descending movements from him, upon this misfortune +of my NAME;—no. + +The different weight, dear Sir——nay even the different package of two +vexations of the same weight——makes a very wide difference in our +manner of bearing and getting through with them.——It is not half an +hour ago, when (in the great hurry and precipitation of a poor devil’s +writing for daily bread) I threw a fair sheet, which I had just +finished, and carefully wrote out, slap into the fire, instead of the +foul one. + +Instantly I snatch’d off my wig, and threw it perpendicularly, with all +imaginable violence, up to the top of the room—indeed I caught it as it +fell——but there was an end of the matter; nor do I think any think else +in _Nature_ would have given such immediate ease: She, dear Goddess, by +an instantaneous impulse, in all _provoking cases_, determines us to a +sally of this or that member—or else she thrusts us into this or that +place, or posture of body, we know not why——But mark, madam, we live +amongst riddles and mysteries——the most obvious things, which come in +our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate +into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us +find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature’s +works: so that this, like a thousand other things, falls out for us in +a way, which tho’ we cannot reason upon it—yet we find the good of it, +may it please your reverences and your worships——and that’s enough for +us. + +Now, my father could not lie down with this affliction for his +life——nor could he carry it up stairs like the other—he walked +composedly out with it to the fish-pond. + +Had my father leaned his head upon his hand, and reasoned an hour which +way to have gone——reason, with all her force, could not have directed +him to any think like it: there is something, Sir, in fish-ponds——but +what it is, I leave to system-builders and fish-pond-diggers betwixt +’em to find out—but there is something, under the first disorderly +transport of the humours, so unaccountably becalming in an orderly and +a sober walk towards one of them, that I have often wondered that +neither _Pythagoras_, nor _Plato_, nor _Solon_, nor _Lycurgus_, nor +_Mahomet_, nor any one of your noted lawgivers, ever gave order about +them. + +C H A P. LIII + +YOUR honour, said _Trim_, shutting the parlour-door before he began to +speak, has heard, I imagine, of this unlucky accident——O yes, _Trim_, +said my uncle _Toby_, and it gives me great concern.—I am heartily +concerned too, but I hope your honour, replied _Trim_, will do me the +justice to believe, that it was not in the least owing to me.——To +thee—_Trim?_—cried my uncle _Toby_, looking kindly in his face——’twas +_Susannah_’s and the curate’s folly betwixt them.——What business could +they have together, an’ please your honour, in the garden?——In the +gallery thou meanest, replied my uncle _Toby_. + +Trim found he was upon a wrong scent, and stopped short with a low +bow——Two misfortunes, quoth the corporal to himself, are twice as many +at least as are needful to be talked over at one time;——the mischief +the cow has done in breaking into the fortifications, may be told his +honour hereafter.——_Trim_’s casuistry and address, under the cover of +his low bow, prevented all suspicion in my uncle _Toby_, so he went on +with what he had to say to _Trim_ as follows: + +——For my own part, _Trim_, though I can see little or no difference +betwixt my nephew’s being called _Tristram_ or _Trismegistus_—yet as +the thing sits so near my brother’s heart, _Trim_——I would freely have +given a hundred pounds rather than it should have happened.——A hundred +pounds, an’ please your honour! replied _Trim_,—I would not give a +cherry-stone to boot.——Nor would I, _Trim_, upon my own account, quoth +my uncle _Toby_——but my brother, whom there is no arguing with in this +case—maintains that a great deal more depends, _Trim_, upon +christian-names, than what ignorant people imagine——for he says there +never was a great or heroic action performed since the world began by +one called _Tristram_—nay, he will have it, _Trim_, that a man can +neither be learned, or wise, or brave.——’Tis all fancy, an’ please your +honour—I fought just as well, replied the corporal, when the regiment +called me _Trim_, as when they called me _James Butler._——And for my +own part, said my uncle _Toby_, though I should blush to boast of +myself, _Trim_——yet had my name been _Alexander_, I could have done no +more at _Namur_ than my duty.—Bless your honour! cried _Trim_, +advancing three steps as he spoke, does a man think of his +christian-name when he goes upon the attack?——Or when he stands in the +trench, _Trim?_ cried my uncle _Toby_, looking firm.——Or when he enters +a breach? said _Trim_, pushing in between two chairs.——Or forces the +lines? cried my uncle, rising up, and pushing his crutch like a +pike.——Or facing a platoon? cried _Trim_, presenting his stick like a +firelock.——Or when he marches up the glacis? cried my uncle _Toby_, +looking warm and setting his foot upon his stool.—— + +C H A P. LIV + +MY father was returned from his walk to the fish-pond——and opened the +parlour-door in the very height of the attack, just as my uncle _Toby_ +was marching up the glacis——_Trim_ recovered his arms——never was my +uncle _Toby_ caught in riding at such a desperate rate in his life! +Alas! my uncle _Toby!_ had not a weightier matter called forth all the +ready eloquence of my father—how hadst thou then and thy poor +HOBBY-HORSE too been insulted! + +My father hung up his hat with the same air he took it down; and after +giving a slight look at the disorder of the room, he took hold of one +of the chairs which had formed the corporal’s breach, and placing it +over-against my uncle _Toby_, he sat down in it, and as soon as the +tea-things were taken away, and the door shut, he broke out in a +lamentation as follows: + +MY FATHER'S LAMENTATION + +IT is in vain longer, said my father, addressing himself as much to +_Ernulphus_’s curse, which was laid upon the corner of the +chimney-piece——as to my uncle _Toby_ who sat under it——it is in vain +longer, said my father, in the most querulous monotony imaginable, to +struggle as I have done against this most uncomfortable of human +persuasions——I see it plainly, that either for my own sins, brother +_Toby_, or the sins and follies of the _Shandy_ family, Heaven has +thought fit to draw forth the heaviest of its artillery against me; and +that the prosperity of my child is the point upon which the whole force +of it is directed to play.——Such a thing would batter the whole +universe about our ears, brother _Shandy_, said my uncle _Toby_—if it +was so—Unhappy _Tristram!_ child of wrath! child of decrepitude! +interruption! mistake! and discontent! What one misfortune or disaster +in the book of embryotic evils, that could unmechanize thy frame, or +entangle thy filaments! which has not fallen upon thy head, or ever +thou camest into the world——what evils in thy passage into it!——what +evils since!——produced into being, in the decline of thy father’s +days——when the powers of his imagination and of his body were waxing +feeble——when radical heat and radical moisture, the elements which +should have temper’d thine, were drying up; and nothing left to found +thy stamina in, but negations—’tis pitiful——brother _Toby_, at the +best, and called out for all the little helps that care and attention +on both sides could give it. But how were we defeated! You know the +event, brother _Toby_——’tis too melancholy a one to be repeated +now——when the few animal spirits I was worth in the world, and with +which memory, fancy, and quick parts should have been convey’d——were +all dispersed, confused, confounded, scattered, and sent to the +devil.—— + +Here then was the time to have put a stop to this persecution against +him;——and tried an experiment at least——whether calmness and serenity +of mind in your sister, with a due attention, brother _Toby_, to her +evacuations and repletions——and the rest of her non-naturals, might +not, in a course of nine months gestation, have set all things to +rights.——My child was bereft of these!——What a teazing life did she +lead herself, and consequently her fœtus too, with that nonsensical +anxiety of hers about lying-in in town? I thought my sister submitted +with the greatest patience, replied my uncle _Toby_——I never heard her +utter one fretful word about it.——She fumed inwardly, cried my father; +and that, let me tell you, brother, was ten times worse for the +child—and then! what battles did she fight with me, and what perpetual +storms about the midwife.——There she gave vent, said my uncle +_Toby_.——Vent! cried my father, looking up. + +But what was all this, my dear _Toby_, to the injuries done us by my +child’s coming head foremost into the world, when all I wished, in this +general wreck of his frame, was to have saved this little casket +unbroke, unrifled.—— + +With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside-turvy in the +womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a +pressure of 470 pounds avoirdupois weight acting so perpendicularly +upon its apex—that at this hour ’tis ninety _per Cent._ insurance, that +the fine net-work of the intellectual web be not rent and torn to a +thousand tatters. + +——Still we could have done.——Fool, coxcomb, puppy——give him but a +NOSE——Cripple, Dwarf, Driveller, Goosecap——shape him as you will) the +door of fortune stands open—_O Licetus! Licetus!_ had I been blest with +a fœtus five inches long and a half, like thee—Fate might have done her +worst. + +Still, brother _Toby_, there was one cast of the dye left for our child +after all—_O Tristram! Tristram! Tristram!_ + +We will send for Mr. _Yorick_, said my uncle _Toby_. + +——You may send for whom you will, replied my father. + +C H A P. LV + +WHAT a rate have I gone on at, curvetting and striking it away, two up +and two down for three volumes[15] together, without looking once +behind, or even on one side of me, to see whom I trod upon!—I’ll tread +upon no one——quoth I to myself when I mounted——I’ll take a good +rattling gallop; but I’ll not hurt the poorest jack-ass upon the +road.——So off I set——up one lane——down another, through this +turnpike——over that, as if the arch-jockey of jockeys had got behind +me. + +Now ride at this rate with what good intention and resolution you +may——’tis a million to one you’ll do some one a mischief, if not +yourself——He’s flung—he’s off—he’s lost his hat—he’s down——he’ll break +his neck——see!——if he has not galloped full among the scaffolding of +the undertaking criticks!——he’ll knock his brains out against some of +their posts—he’s bounced out!—look—he’s now riding like a mad-cap full +tilt through a whole crowd of painters, fiddlers, poets, biographers, +physicians, lawyers, logicians, players, school-men, churchmen, +statesmen, soldiers, casuists, connoisseurs, prelates, popes, and +engineers.—Don’t fear, said I—I’ll not hurt the poorest jack-ass upon +the king’s highway.—But your horse throws dirt; see you’ve splash’d a +bishop——I hope in God, ’twas only _Ernulphus_, said I.——But you have +squirted full in the faces of Mess. _Le Moyne, De Romigny_, and _De +Marcilly_, doctors of the _Sorbonne._——That was last year, replied +I.—But you have trod this moment upon a king.——Kings have bad times +on’t, said I, to be trod upon by such people as me. + +You have done it, replied my accuser. + +I deny it, quoth I, and so have got off, and here am I standing with my +bridle in one hand, and with my cap in the other, to tell my +story.——And what in it? You shall hear in the next chapter. + + [15] According to the preceding Editions. + +C H A P. LVI + +AS _Francis_ the first of _France_ was one winterly night warming +himself over the embers of a wood fire, and talking with his first +minister of sundry things for the good of the state[16]—It would not be +amiss, said the king, stirring up the embers with his cane, if this +good understanding betwixt ourselves and _Switzerland_ was a little +strengthened.—There is no end, Sire, replied the minister, in giving +money to these people—they would swallow up the treasury of +_France._—Poo! poo! answered the king—there are more ways, Mons. _le +Premier_, of bribing states, besides that of giving money—I’ll pay +_Switzerland_ the honour of standing godfather for my next child.——Your +majesty, said the minister, in so doing, would have all the grammarians +in _Europe_ upon your back;——_Switzerland_, as a republic, being a +female, can in no construction be godfather.—She may be godmother, +replied _Francis_ hastily—so announce my intentions by a courier +to-morrow morning. + +I am astonished, said _Francis_ the First, (that day fortnight) +speaking to his minister as he entered the closet, that we have had no +answer from _Switzerland._——Sire, I wait upon you this moment, said +Mons. _le Premier_, to lay before you my dispatches upon that +business.—They take it kindly, said the king.—They do, Sire, replied +the minister, and have the highest sense of the honour your majesty has +done them——but the republick, as godmother, claims her right, in this +case, of naming the child. + +In all reason, quoth the king—she will christen him _Francis_, or +_Henry_, or _Lewis_, or some name that she knows will be agreeable to +us. Your majesty is deceived, replied the minister——I have this hour +received a dispatch from our resident, with the determination of the +republic on that point also.——And what name has the republick fixed +upon for the Dauphin?——_Shadrach, Mesech, Abed-nego_, replied the +minister.—By Saint _Peter_’s girdle, I will have nothing to do with the +_Swiss_, cried _Francis_ the First, pulling up his breeches and walking +hastily across the floor. + +Your majesty, replied the minister calmly, cannot bring yourself off. + +We’ll pay them in money——said the king. + +Sire, there are not sixty thousand crowns in the treasury, answered the +minister.——I’ll pawn the best jewel in my crown, quoth _Francis_ the +First. + +Your honour stands pawn’d already in this matter, answered Monsieur _le +Premier._ + +Then, Mons. _le Premier_, said the king, by——we’ll go to war with ’em. + + [16] Vide Menagiana, Vol. I. + +C H A P. LVII + +ALBEIT, gentle reader, I have lusted earnestly, and endeavoured +carefully (according to the measure of such a slender skill as God has +vouchsafed me, and as convenient leisure from other occasions of +needful profit and healthful pastime have permitted) that these little +books which I here put into thy hands, might stand instead of many +bigger books—yet have I carried myself towards thee in such fanciful +guise of careless disport, that right sore am I ashamed now to intreat +thy lenity seriously——in beseeching thee to believe it of me, that in +the story of my father and his christian-names—I have no thoughts of +treading upon _Francis_ the First——nor in the affair of the nose—upon +_Francis_ the Ninth—nor in the character of my uncle _Toby_——of +characterizing the militiating spirits of my country—the wound upon his +groin, is a wound to every comparison of that kind—nor by _Trim_—that I +meant the duke of _Ormond_—or that my book is wrote against +predestination, or free-will, or taxes—If ’tis wrote against any +thing,——’tis wrote, an’ please your worships, against the spleen! in +order, by a more frequent and a more convulsive elevation and +depression of the diaphragm, and the succussations of the intercostal +and abdominal muscles in laughter, to drive the _gall_ and other +_bitter juices_ from the gall-bladder, liver, and sweet-bread of his +majesty’s subjects, with all the inimicitious passions which belong to +them, down into their duodenums. + +C H A P. LVIII + +—BUT can the thing be undone, _Yorick?_ said my father—for in my +opinion, continued he, it cannot. I am a vile canonist, replied +_Yorick_—but of all evils, holding suspence to be the most tormenting, +we shall at least know the worst of this matter. I hate these great +dinners——said my father—The size of the dinner is not the point, +answered _Yorick_——we want, Mr. _Shandy_, to dive into the bottom of +this doubt, whether the name can be changed or not—and as the beards of +so many commissaries, officials, advocates, proctors, registers, and of +the most eminent of our school-divines, and others, are all to meet in +the middle of one table, and _Didius_ has so pressingly invited you—who +in your distress would miss such an occasion? All that is requisite, +continued _Yorick_, is to apprize _Didius_, and let him manage a +conversation after dinner so as to introduce the subject.—Then my +brother _Toby_, cried my father, clapping his two hands together, shall +go with us. + +——Let my old tye-wig, quoth my uncle _Toby_, and my laced regimentals, +be hung to the fire all night, _Trim._ + +C H A P. LX + +—NO doubt, Sir,—there is a whole chapter wanting here—and a chasm of +ten pages made in the book by it—but the book-binder is neither a fool, +or a knave, or a puppy—nor is the book a jot more imperfect (at least +upon that score)——but, on the contrary, the book is more perfect and +complete by wanting the chapter, than having it, as I shall demonstrate +to your reverences in this manner.—I question first, by-the-bye, +whether the same experiment might not be made as successfully upon +sundry other chapters——but there is no end, an’ please your reverences, +in trying experiments upon chapters——we have had enough of it——So +there’s an end of that matter. + +But before I begin my demonstration, let me only tell you, that the +chapter which I have torn out, and which otherwise you would all have +been reading just now, instead of this——was the description of my +father’s, my uncle _Toby_’s, _Trim_’s, and _Obadiah_’s setting out and +journeying to the visitation at **** + +We’ll go in the coach, said my father—Prithee, have the arms been +altered, _Obadiah_?—It would have made my story much better to have +begun with telling you, that at the time my mother’s arms were added to +the _Shandy_’s, when the coach was re-painted upon my father’s +marriage, it had so fallen out that the coach-painter, whether by +performing all his works with the left hand, like _Turpilius_ the +_Roman_, or _Hans Holbein_ of _Basil_——or whether ’twas more from the +blunder of his head than hand——or whether, lastly, it was from the +sinister turn which every thing relating to our family was apt to +take——it so fell out, however, to our reproach, that instead of the +_bend-dexter_, which since _Harry_ the Eighth’s reign was honestly our +due——a _bend-sinister_, by some of these fatalities, had been drawn +quite across the field of the _Shandy_ arms. ’Tis scarce credible that +the mind of so wise a man as my father was, could be so much incommoded +with so small a matter. The word coach—let it be whose it would—or +coach-man, or coach-horse, or coach-hire, could never be named in the +family, but he constantly complained of carrying this vile mark of +illegitimacy upon the door of his own; he never once was able to step +into the coach, or out of it, without turning round to take a view of +the arms, and making a vow at the same time, that it was the last time +he would ever set his foot in it again, till the _bend-sinister_ was +taken out—but like the affair of the hinge, it was one of the many +things which the _Destinies_ had set down in their books ever to be +grumbled at (and in wiser families than ours)—but never to be mended. + +—Has the _bend-sinister_ been brush’d out, I say? said my +father.——There has been nothing brush’d out, Sir, answered _Obadiah_, +but the lining. We’ll go o’horseback, said my father, turning to +_Yorick_—Of all things in the world, except politicks, the clergy know +the least of heraldry, said _Yorick._—No matter for that, cried my +father——I should be sorry to appear with a blot in my escutcheon before +them.—Never mind the _bend-sinister_, said my uncle _Toby_, putting on +his tye-wig.——No, indeed, said my father—you may go with my aunt +_Dinah_ to a visitation with a _bend-sinister_, if you think fit—My +poor uncle _Toby_ blush’d. My father was vexed at himself.——No——my dear +brother _Toby_, said my father, changing his tone——but the damp of the +coach-lining about my loins, may give me the sciatica again, as it did +_December, January_, and _February_ last winter—so if you please you +shall ride my wife’s pad——and as you are to preach, _Yorick_, you had +better make the best of your way before——and leave me to take care of +my brother _Toby_, and to follow at our own rates. + +Now the chapter I was obliged to tear out, was the description of this +cavalcade, in which Corporal _Trim_ and _Obadiah_, upon two +coach-horses a-breast, led the way as slow as a patrole——whilst my +uncle _Toby_, in his laced regimentals and tye-wig, kept his rank with +my father, in deep roads and dissertations alternately upon the +advantage of learning and arms, as each could get the start. + +—But the painting of this journey, upon reviewing it, appears to be so +much above the stile and manner of any thing else I have been able to +paint in this book, that it could not have remained in it, without +depreciating every other scene; and destroying at the same time that +necessary equipoise and balance, (whether of good or bad) betwixt +chapter and chapter, from whence the just proportions and harmony of +the whole work results. For my own part, I am but just set up in the +business, so know little about it—but, in my opinion, to write a book +is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, +madam, ’tis no matter how high or how low you take it. + +—This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that some of the +lowest and flattest compositions pass off very well——(as _Yorick_ told +my uncle _Toby_ one night) by siege.——My uncle _Toby_ looked brisk at +the sound of the word siege, but could make neither head or tail of it. + +I’m to preach at court next Sunday, said _Homenas_——run over my +notes——so I humm’d over doctor _Homenas_’s notes—the modulation’s very +well—’twill do, _Homenas_, if it holds on at this rate——so on I +humm’d——and a tolerable tune I thought it was; and to this hour, may it +please your reverences, had never found out how low, how flat, how +spiritless and jejune it was, but that all of a sudden, up started an +air in the middle of it, so fine, so rich, so heavenly,—it carried my +soul up with it into the other world; now had I (as _Montaigne_ +complained in a parallel accident)—had I found the declivity easy, or +the ascent accessible——certes I had been outwitted.——Your notes, +_Homenas_, I should have said, are good notes;——but it was so +perpendicular a precipice——so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, +that by the first note I humm’d I found myself flying into the other +world, and from thence discovered the vale from whence I came, so deep, +so low, and dismal, that I shall never have the heart to descend into +it again. + +=>A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own +size—take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.—And so much +for tearing out of chapters. + +C H A P. LXI + +——SEE if he is not cutting it into slips, and giving them about him to +light their pipes!——’Tis abominable, answered _Didius;_ it should not +go unnoticed, said doctor _Kysarcius_—— => he was of the _Kysarcii_ of +the Low Countries. + +Methinks, said _Didius_, half rising from his chair, in order to remove +a bottle and a tall decanter, which stood in a direct line betwixt him +and _Yorick_——you might have spared this sarcastic stroke, and have hit +upon a more proper place, Mr. _Yorick_—or at least upon a more proper +occasion to have shewn your contempt of what we have been about: If the +sermon is of no better worth than to light pipes with——’twas certainly, +Sir, not good enough to be preached before so learned a body; and if +’twas good enough to be preached before so learned a body——’twas +certainly Sir, too good to light their pipes with afterwards. + +——I have got him fast hung up, quoth _Didius_ to himself, upon one of +the two horns of my dilemma——let him get off as he can. + +I have undergone such unspeakable torments, in bringing forth this +sermon, quoth _Yorick_, upon this occasion——that I declare, _Didius_, I +would suffer martyrdom—and if it was possible my horse with me, a +thousand times over, before I would sit down and make such another: I +was delivered of it at the wrong end of me——it came from my head +instead of my heart——and it is for the pain it gave me, both in the +writing and preaching of it, that I revenge myself of it, in this +manner—To preach, to shew the extent of our reading, or the subtleties +of our wit—to parade in the eyes of the vulgar with the beggarly +accounts of a little learning, tinsel’d over with a few words which +glitter, but convey little light and less warmth——is a dishonest use of +the poor single half hour in a week which is put into our hands—’Tis +not preaching the gospel—but ourselves——For my own part, continued +_Yorick_, I had rather direct five words point-blank to the heart.— + +As _Yorick_ pronounced the word _point-blank_, my uncle _Toby_ rose up +to say something upon projectiles——when a single word and no more +uttered from the opposite side of the table drew every one’s ears +towards it—a word of all others in the dictionary the last in that +place to be expected—a word I am ashamed to write—yet must be +written——must be read—illegal—uncanonical—guess ten thousand guesses, +multiplied into themselves—rack—torture your invention for ever, you’re +where you was——In short, I’ll tell it in the next chapter. + +C H A P. LXII + +ZOUNDS!————————————————————————Z——ds! cried _Phutatorius_, partly to +himself——and yet high enough to be heard—and what seemed odd, ’twas +uttered in a construction of look, and in a tone of voice, somewhat +between that of a man in amazement and one in bodily pain. + +One or two who had very nice ears, and could distinguish the expression +and mixture of the two tones as plainly as a _third_ or a _fifth_, or +any other chord in musick—were the most puzzled and perplexed with +it—the concord was good in itself—but then ’twas quite out of the key, +and no way applicable to the subject started;——so that with all their +knowledge, they could not tell what in the world to make of it. + +Others who knew nothing of musical expression, and merely lent their +ears to the plain import of the _word_, imagined that _Phutatorius_, +who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the +cudgels out of _Didius_’s hands, in order to bemaul _Yorick_ to some +purpose—and that the desperate monosyllable Z——ds was the exordium to +an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but a rough +kind of handling of him; so that my uncle _Toby_’s good-nature felt a +pang for what _Yorick_ was about to undergo. But seeing _Phutatorius_ +stop short, without any attempt or desire to go on—a third party began +to suppose, that it was no more than an involuntary respiration, +casually forming itself into the shape of a twelve-penny oath—without +the sin or substance of one. + +Others, and especially one or two who sat next him, looked upon it on +the contrary as a real and substantial oath, propensly formed against +_Yorick_, to whom he was known to bear no good liking—which said oath, +as my father philosophized upon it, actually lay fretting and fuming at +that very time in the upper regions of _Phutatorius_’s purtenance; and +so was naturally, and according to the due course of things, first +squeezed out by the sudden influx of blood which was driven into the +right ventricle of _Phutatorius_’s heart, by the stroke of surprize +which so strange a theory of preaching had excited. + +How finely we argue upon mistaken facts! + +There was not a soul busied in all these various reasonings upon the +monosyllable which _Phutatorius_ uttered—who did not take this for +granted, proceeding upon it as from an axiom, namely, that +_Phutatorius_’s mind was intent upon the subject of debate which was +arising between _Didius_ and _Yorick;_ and indeed as he looked first +towards the one and then towards the other, with the air of a man +listening to what was going forwards—who would not have thought the +same? But the truth was, that _Phutatorius_ knew not one word or one +syllable of what was passing—but his whole thoughts and attention were +taken up with a transaction which was going forwards at that very +instant within the precincts of his own _Galligaskins_, and in a part +of them, where of all others he stood most interested to watch +accidents: So that notwithstanding he looked with all the attention in +the world, and had gradually skrewed up every nerve and muscle in his +face, to the utmost pitch the instrument would bear, in order, as it +was thought, to give a sharp reply to _Yorick_, who sat over-against +him——yet, I say, was _Yorick_ never once in any one domicile of +_Phutatorius_’s brain——but the true cause of his exclamation lay at +least a yard below. + +This I will endeavour to explain to you with all imaginable decency. + +You must be informed then, that _Gastripheres_, who had taken a turn +into the kitchen a little before dinner, to see how things went +on—observing a wicker-basket of fine chesnuts standing upon the +dresser, had ordered that a hundred or two of them might be roasted and +sent in, as soon as dinner was over— _Gastripheres_ inforcing his +orders about them, that _Didius_, but _Phutatorius_ especially, were +particularly fond of ’em. + +About two minutes before the time that my uncle _Toby_ interrupted +_Yorick_’s harangue—_Gastripheres_’s chesnuts were brought in—and as +_Phutatorius_’s fondness for ’em was uppermost in the waiter’s head, he +laid them directly before _Phutatorius_, wrapt up hot in a clean damask +napkin. + +Now whether it was physically impossible, with half a dozen hands all +thrust into the napkin at a time—but that some one chesnut, of more +life and rotundity than the rest, must be put in motion—it so fell out, +however, that one was actually sent rolling off the table; and as +_Phutatorius_ sat straddling under——it fell perpendicularly into that +particular aperture of _Phutatorius_’s breeches, for which, to the +shame and indelicacy of our language be it spoke, there is no chaste +word throughout all _Johnson_’s dictionary——let it suffice to say——it +was that particular aperture which, in all good societies, the laws of +decorum do strictly require, like the temple of _Janus_ (in peace at +least) to be universally shut up. + +The neglect of this punctilio in _Phutatorius_ (which by-the-bye should +be a warning to all mankind) had opened a door to this accident.—— + +Accident I call it, in compliance to a received mode of speaking——but +in no opposition to the opinion either of _Acrites_ or _Mythogeras_ in +this matter; I know they were both prepossessed and fully persuaded of +it—and are so to this hour, That there was nothing of accident in the +whole event——but that the chesnut’s taking that particular course, and +in a manner of its own accord—and then falling with all its heat +directly into that one particular place, and no other——was a real +judgment upon _Phutatorius_ for that filthy and obscene treatise _de +Concubinis retinendis_, which _Phutatorius_ had published about twenty +years ago——and was that identical week going to give the world a second +edition of. + +It is not my business to dip my pen in this controversy——much +undoubtedly may be wrote on both sides of the question—all that +concerns me as an historian, is to represent the matter of fact, and +render it credible to the reader, that the hiatus in _Phutatorius_’s +breeches was sufficiently wide to receive the chesnut;——and that the +chesnut, somehow or other, did fall perpendicularly, and piping hot +into it, without _Phutatorius_’s perceiving it, or any one else at that +time. + +The genial warmth which the chesnut imparted, was not undelectable for +the first twenty or five-and-twenty seconds——and did no more than +gently solicit _Phutatorius_’s attention towards the part:——But the +heat gradually increasing, and in a few seconds more getting beyond the +point of all sober pleasure, and then advancing with all speed into the +regions of pain, the soul of _Phutatorius_, together with all his +ideas, his thoughts, his attention, his imagination, judgment, +resolution, deliberation, ratiocination, memory, fancy, with ten +battalions of animal spirits, all tumultuously crowded down, through +different defiles and circuits, to the place of danger, leaving all his +upper regions, as you may imagine, as empty as my purse. + +With the best intelligence which all these messengers could bring him +back, _Phutatorius_ was not able to dive into the secret of what was +going forwards below, nor could he make any kind of conjecture, what +the devil was the matter with it: However, as he knew not what the true +cause might turn out, he deemed it most prudent in the situation he was +in at present, to bear it, if possible, like a Stoick; which, with the +help of some wry faces and compursions of the mouth, he had certainly +accomplished, had his imagination continued neuter;——but the sallies of +the imagination are ungovernable in things of this kind—a thought +instantly darted into his mind, that tho’ the anguish had the sensation +of glowing heat—it might, notwithstanding that, be a bite as well as a +burn; and if so, that possibly a _Newt_ or an _Asker_, or some such +detested reptile, had crept up, and was fastening his teeth——the horrid +idea of which, with a fresh glow of pain arising that instant from the +chesnut, seized _Phutatorius_ with a sudden panick, and in the first +terrifying disorder of the passion, it threw him, as it has done the +best generals upon earth, quite off his guard:——the effect of which was +this, that he leapt incontinently up, uttering as he rose that +interjection of surprise so much descanted upon, with the aposiopestic +break after it, marked thus, Z——ds—which, though not strictly +canonical, was still as little as any man could have said upon the +occasion;——and which, by-the-bye, whether canonical or not, +_Phutatorius_ could no more help than he could the cause of it. + +Though this has taken up some time in the narrative, it took up little +more time in the transaction, than just to allow time for _Phutatorius_ +to draw forth the chesnut, and throw it down with violence upon the +floor—and for _Yorick_ to rise from his chair, and pick the chesnut up. + +It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the +mind:——What incredible weight they have in forming and governing our +opinions, both of men and things——that trifles, light as air, shall +waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immoveably within it——that +_Euclid_’s demonstrations, could they be brought to batter it in +breach, should not all have power to overthrow it. + +_Yorick_, I said, picked up the chesnut which _Phutatorius_’s wrath had +flung down——the action was trifling——I am ashamed to account for it—he +did it, for no reason, but that he thought the chesnut not a jot worse +for the adventure—and that he held a good chesnut worth stooping +for.——But this incident, trifling as it was, wrought differently in +_Phutatorius_’s head: He considered this act of _Yorick_’s in getting +off his chair and picking up the chesnut, as a plain acknowledgment in +him, that the chesnut was originally his—and in course, that it must +have been the owner of the chesnut, and no one else, who could have +played him such a prank with it: What greatly confirmed him in this +opinion, was this, that the table being parallelogramical and very +narrow, it afforded a fair opportunity for _Yorick_, who sat directly +over against _Phutatorius_, of slipping the chesnut in——and +consequently that he did it. The look of something more than suspicion, +which _Phutatorius_ cast full upon _Yorick_ as these thoughts arose, +too evidently spoke his opinion——and as _Phutatorius_ was naturally +supposed to know more of the matter than any person besides, his +opinion at once became the general one;——and for a reason very +different from any which have been yet given——in a little time it was +put out of all manner of dispute. + +When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this +sublunary world——the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of a +substance, naturally takes a flight behind the scenes to see what is +the cause and first spring of them.—The search was not long in this +instance. + +It was well known that _Yorick_ had never a good opinion of the +treatise which _Phutatorius_ had wrote _de Concubinis retinendis_, as a +thing which he feared had done hurt in the world——and ’twas easily +found out, that there was a mystical meaning in _Yorick_’s prank—and +that his chucking the chesnut hot into _Phutatorius_’s ***——***, was a +sarcastical fling at his book—the doctrines of which, they said, had +enflamed many an honest man in the same place. + +This conceit awaken’d _Somnolentus_——made _Agelastes_ smile——and if you +can recollect the precise look and air of a man’s face intent in +finding out a riddle——it threw _Gastripheres_’s into that form—and in +short was thought by many to be a master-stroke of arch-wit. + +This, as the reader has seen from one end to the other, was as +groundless as the dreams of philosophy: _Yorick_, no doubt, as +_Shakespeare_ said of his ancestor——“_was a man of jest_,” but it was +temper’d with something which withheld him from that, and many other +ungracious pranks, of which he as undeservedly bore the blame;—but it +was his misfortune all his life long to bear the imputation of saying +and doing a thousand things, of which (unless my esteem blinds me) his +nature was incapable. All I blame him for——or rather, all I blame and +alternately like him for, was that singularity of his temper, which +would never suffer him to take pains to set a story right with the +world, however in his power. In every ill usage of that sort, he acted +precisely as in the affair of his lean horse——he could have explained +it to his honour, but his spirit was above it; and besides, he ever +looked upon the inventor, the propagator and believer of an illiberal +report alike so injurious to him—he could not stoop to tell his story +to them——and so trusted to time and truth to do it for him. + +This heroic cast produced him inconveniences in many respects—in the +present it was followed by the fixed resentment of _Phutatorius_, who, +as _Yorick_ had just made an end of his chesnut, rose up from his chair +a second time, to let him know it—which indeed he did with a smile; +saying only—that he would endeavour not to forget the obligation. + +But you must mark and carefully separate and distinguish these two +things in your mind. + +——The smile was for the company. + +——The threat was for _Yorick._ + +C H A P. LXIII + +—CAN you tell me, quoth _Phutatorius_, speaking _to Gastripheres_ who +sat next to him——for one would not apply to a surgeon in so foolish an +affair——can you tell me, _Gastripheres_, what is best to take out the +fire?——Ask _Eugenius_, said _Gastripheres._——That greatly depends, said +_Eugenius_, pretending ignorance of the adventure, upon the nature of +the part——If it is a tender part, and a part which can conveniently be +wrapt up——It is both the one and the other, replied _Phutatorius_, +laying his hand as he spoke, with an emphatical nod of his head, upon +the part in question, and lifting up his right leg at the same time to +ease and ventilate it.——If that is the case, said _Eugenius_, I would +advise you, _Phutatorius_, not to tamper with it by any means; but if +you will send to the next printer, and trust your cure to such a simple +thing as a soft sheet of paper just come off the press—you need do +nothing more than twist it round.—The damp paper, quoth _Yorick_ (who +sat next to his friend _Eugenius_) though I know it has a refreshing +coolness in it—yet I presume is no more than the vehicle—and that the +oil and lamp-black with which the paper is so strongly impregnated, +does the business.—Right, said _Eugenius_, and is, of any outward +application I would venture to recommend, the most anodyne and safe. + +Was it my case, said _Gastripheres_, as the main thing is the oil and +lamp-black, I should spread them thick upon a rag, and clap it on +directly.——That would make a very devil of it, replied _Yorick._——And +besides, added _Eugenius_, it would not answer the intention, which is +the extreme neatness and elegance of the prescription, which the +Faculty hold to be half in half;——for consider, if the type is a very +small one (which it should be) the sanative particles, which come into +contact in this form, have the advantage of being spread so infinitely +thin, and with such a mathematical equality (fresh paragraphs and large +capitals excepted) as no art or management of the spatula can come up +to.——It falls out very luckily, replied _Phutatorius_, that the second +edition of my treatise _de Concubinis retinendis_ is at this instant in +the press.——You may take any leaf of it, said _Eugenius_——no matter +which.——Provided, quoth _Yorick_, there is no bawdry in it.—— + +They are just now, replied _Phutatorius_, printing off the ninth +chapter——which is the last chapter but one in the book.——Pray what is +the title of that chapter? said _Yorick;_ making a respectful bow to +_Phutatorius_ as he spoke.——I think, answered _Phutatorius_, ’tis that +_de re concubinaria._ + +For Heaven’s sake keep out of that chapter, quoth _Yorick._ + +——By all means—added _Eugenius._ + +C H A P. LXIV + +—NOW, quoth _Didius_, rising up, and laying his right hand with his +fingers spread upon his breast——had such a blunder about a +christian-name happened before the Reformation——[It happened the day +before yesterday, quoth my uncle _Toby_ to himself]—and when baptism +was administer’d in _Latin_—[’Twas all in _English_, said my +uncle]——many things might have coincided with it, and upon the +authority of sundry decreed cases, to have pronounced the baptism null, +with a power of giving the child a new name—Had a priest, for instance, +which was no uncommon thing, through ignorance of the _Latin_ tongue, +baptized a child of Tom-o’stiles, _in nomine patriæ & filia & spiritum +sanctos_—the baptism was held null.——I beg your pardon, replied +_Kysarcius_——in that case, as the mistake was only the _terminations_, +the baptism was valid——and to have rendered it null, the blunder of the +priest should have fallen upon the first syllable of each noun——and +not, as in your case, upon the last. + +My father delighted in subtleties of this kind, and listen’d with +infinite attention. + +_Gastripheres_, for example, continued _Kysarcius_, baptizes a child of +_John Stradling_’s in _Gomine_ gatris, &c. &c. instead of _in Nomine +patris_, &c.——Is this a baptism? No—say the ablest canonists; in as +much as the radix of each word is hereby torn up, and the sense and +meaning of them removed and changed quite to another object; for +_Gomine_ does not signify a name, nor _gatris_ a father.—What do they +signify? said my uncle _Toby_.—Nothing at all——quoth _Yorick._——Ergo, +such a baptism is null, said _Kysarcius._—— + +In course, answered _Yorick_, in a tone two parts jest and one part +earnest.—— + +But in the case cited, continued _Kysarcius_, where _patriæ_ is put for +_patris, filia_ for _filii_, and so on——as it is a fault only in the +declension, and the roots of the words continue untouch’d, the +inflections of their branches either this way or that, does not in any +sort hinder the baptism, inasmuch as the same sense continues in the +words as before.——But then, said _Didius_, the intention of the +priest’s pronouncing them grammatically must have been proved to have +gone along with it.——————Right, answered _Kysarcius;_ and of this, +brother _Didius_, we have an instance in a decree of the decretals of +Pope _Leo_ the IIId.——But my brother’s child, cried my uncle _Toby_, +has nothing to do with the Pope——’tis the plain child of a Protestant +gentleman, christen’d _Tristram_ against the wills and wishes both of +his father and mother, and all who are a-kin to it.—— + +If the wills and wishes, said _Kysarcius_, interrupting my uncle +_Toby_, of those only who stand related to Mr. _Shandy_’s child, were +to have weight in this matter, Mrs. _Shandy_, of all people, has the +least to do in it.——My uncle _Toby_ lay’d down his pipe, and my father +drew his chair still closer to the table, to hear the conclusion of so +strange an introduction. + +——It has not only been a question, Captain _Shandy_, amongst the[17] +best lawyers and civilians in this land, continued _Kysarcius, “Whether +the mother be of kin to her child,”_—but, after much dispassionate +enquiry and jactitation of the arguments on all sides—it has been +adjudged for the negative—namely, _“That the mother is not of kin to +her child.”_[18] My father instantly clapp’d his hand upon my uncle +_Toby_’s mouth, under colour of whispering in his ear;—the truth was, +he was alarmed for _Lillabullero_—and having a great desire to hear +more of so curious an argument—he begg’d my uncle _Toby_, for heaven’s +sake, not to disappoint him in it.—My uncle _Toby_ gave a nod—resumed +his pipe, and contenting himself with whistling _Lillabullero_ +inwardly——_Kysarcius, Didius_, and _Triptolemus_ went on with the +discourse as follows: + +This determination, continued _Kysarcius_, how contrary soever it may +seem to run to the stream of vulgar ideas, yet had reason strongly on +its side; and has been put out of all manner of dispute from the famous +case, known commonly by the name of the Duke of _Suffolk_’s case.——It +is cited in _Brook_, said _Triptolemus_——And taken notice of by Lord +_Coke_, added _Didius._—And you may find it in _Swinburn_ on +Testaments, said _Kysarcius._ + +The case, Mr. _Shandy_, was this: + +In the reign of _Edward_ the Sixth, _Charles_ duke of _Suffolk_ having +issue a son by one venter, and a daughter by another venter, made his +last will, wherein he devised goods to his son, and died; after whose +death the son died also——but without will, without wife, and without +child—his mother and his sister by the father’s side (for she was born +of the former venter) then living. The mother took the administration +of her son’s goods, according to the statute of the 21st of _Harry_ the +Eighth, whereby it is enacted, That in case any person die intestate +the administration of his goods shall be committed to the next of kin. + +The administration being thus (surreptitiously) granted to the mother, +the sister by the father’s side commenced a suit before the +Ecclesiastical Judge, alledging, 1st, That she herself was next of kin; +and 2dly, That the mother was not of kin at all to the party deceased; +and therefore prayed the court, that the administration granted to the +mother might be revoked, and be committed unto her, as next of kin to +the deceased, by force of the said statute. + +Hereupon, as it was a great cause, and much depending upon its +issue—and many causes of great property likely to be decided in times +to come, by the precedent to be then made——the most learned, as well in +the laws of this realm, as in the civil law, were consulted together, +whether the mother was of kin to her son, or no.—Whereunto not only the +temporal lawyers——but the church lawyers—the juris-consulti—the +jurisprudentes—the civilians—the advocates—the commissaries—the judges +of the consistory and prerogative courts of _Canterbury_ and _York_, +with the master of the faculties, were all unanimously of opinion, That +the mother was not of[19] kin to her child.—— + +And what said the duchess of _Suffolk_ to it? said my uncle _Toby_. + +The unexpectedness of my uncle _Toby_’s question, confounded +_Kysarcius_ more than the ablest advocate——He stopp’d a full minute, +looking in my uncle _Toby_’s face without replying——and in that single +minute _Triptolemus_ put by him, and took the lead as follows. + +’Tis a ground and principle in the law, said _Triptolemus_, that things +do not ascend, but descend in it; and I make no doubt ’tis for this +cause, that however true it is, that the child may be of the blood and +seed of its parents——that the parents, nevertheless, are not of the +blood and seed of it; inasmuch as the parents are not begot by the +child, but the child by the parents—For so they write, _Liberi sunt de +sanguine patris & matris, sed pater & mater non sunt de sanguine +liberorum._ + +——But this, _Triptolemus_, cried Didius, proves too much—for from this +authority cited it would follow, not only what indeed is granted on all +sides, that the mother is not of kin to her child—but the father +likewise.——It is held, said _Triptolemus_, the better opinion; because +the father, the mother, and the child, though they be three persons, +yet are they but (_una caro_[20]) one flesh; and consequently no degree +of kindred——or any method of acquiring one _in nature._——There you push +the argument again too far, cried _Didius_——for there is no prohibition +_in nature_, though there is in the Levitical law——but that a man may +beget a child upon his grandmother——in which case, supposing the issue +a daughter, she would stand in relation both of——But who ever thought, +cried _Kysarcius_, of laying with his grandmother?——The young +gentleman, replied _Yorick_, whom _Selden_ speaks of——who not only +thought of it, but justified his intention to his father by the +argument drawn from the law of retaliation.—“You laid, Sir, with my +mother,” said the lad—“why may not I lay with yours?”——’Tis the +_Argumentum commune_, added _Yorick._——’Tis as good, replied +_Eugenius_, taking down his hat, as they deserve. + +The company broke up. + + [17] Vide Swinburn on Testaments, Part 7. §8. + + [18] Vide Brook Abridg. Tit. Administr. N. 47. + + [19] Mater non numeratur inter consanguineos, Bald. in ult. C. de + Verb. signific. + + [20] Vide Brook Abridg. tit. Administr. N .47. + +C H A P. LXV + +—AND pray, said my uncle _Toby_, leaning upon _Yorick_, as he and my +father were helping him leisurely down the stairs——don’t be terrified, +madam, this stair-case conversation is not so long as the last——And +pray, _Yorick_, said my uncle _Toby_, which way is this said affair of +_Tristram_ at length settled by these learned men? Very satisfactorily, +replied _Yorick;_ no mortal, Sir, has any concern with it——for Mrs. +_Shandy_ the mother is nothing at all a-kin to him——and as the mother’s +is the surest side——Mr. _Shandy_, in course is still less than +nothing——In short, he is not as much a-kin to him, Sir, as I am.—— + +——That may well be, said my father, shaking his head. + +——Let the learned say what they will, there must certainly, quoth my +uncle _Toby_, have been some sort of consanguinity betwixt the duchess +of _Suffolk_ and her son. + +The vulgar are of the same opinion, quoth _Yorick_, to this hour. + +C H A P. LXVI + +THOUGH my father was hugely tickled with the subtleties of these +learned discourses——’twas still but like the anointing of a broken +bone——The moment he got home, the weight of his afflictions returned +upon him but so much the heavier, as is ever the case when the staff we +lean on slips from under us.—He became pensive—walked frequently forth +to the fish-pond—let down one loop of his hat——sigh’d often——forbore to +snap—and, as the hasty sparks of temper, which occasion snapping, so +much assist perspiration and digestion, as _Hippocrates_ tells us—he +had certainly fallen ill with the extinction of them, had not his +thoughts been critically drawn off, and his health rescued by a fresh +train of disquietudes left him, with a legacy of a thousand pounds, by +my aunt _Dinah._ + +My father had scarce read the letter, when taking the thing by the +right end, he instantly began to plague and puzzle his head how to lay +it out mostly to the honour of his family.—A hundred-and-fifty odd +projects took possession of his brains by turns—he would do this, and +that and t’other—He would go to _Rome_——he would go to law——he would +buy stock——he would buy _John Hobson_’s farm—he would new fore front +his house, and add a new wing to make it even——There was a fine +water-mill on this side, and he would build a wind-mill on the other +side of the river in full view to answer it—But above all things in the +world, he would inclose the great _Ox-moor_, and send out my brother +_Bobby_ immediately upon his travels. + +But as the sum was finite, and consequently could not do every +thing——and in truth very few of these to any purpose—of all the +projects which offered themselves upon this occasion, the two last +seemed to make the deepest impression; and he would infallibly have +determined upon both at once, but for the small inconvenience hinted at +above, which absolutely put him under a necessity of deciding in favour +either of the one or the other. + +This was not altogether so easy to be done; for though ’tis certain my +father had long before set his heart upon this necessary part of my +brother’s education, and like a prudent man had actually determined to +carry it into execution, with the first money that returned from the +second creation of actions in the _Missisippi_-scheme, in which he was +an adventurer——yet the _Ox-moor_, which was a fine, large, whinny, +undrained, unimproved common, belonging to the _Shandy_-estate, had +almost as old a claim upon him: he had long and affectionately set his +heart upon turning it likewise to some account. + +But having never hitherto been pressed with such a conjuncture of +things, as made it necessary to settle either the priority or justice +of their claims——like a wise man he had refrained entering into any +nice or critical examination about them: so that upon the dismission of +every other project at this crisis——the two old projects, the OX-MOOR +and my BROTHER, divided him again; and so equal a match were they for +each other, as to become the occasion of no small contest in the old +gentleman’s mind—which of the two should be set o’going first. + +——People may laugh as they will—but the case was this. + +It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was +almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it +should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before +marriage—not only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by +the benefit of exercise and change of so much air—but simply for the +mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of +having been abroad—_tantum valet_, my father would say, _quantum +sonat._ + +Now as this was a reasonable, and in course a most christian +indulgence——to deprive him of it, without why or wherefore——and thereby +make an example of him, as the first _Shandy_ unwhirl’d about _Europe_ +in a post-chaise, and only because he was a heavy lad——would be using +him ten times worse than a _Turk._ + +On the other hand, the case of the _Ox-moor_ was full as hard. + +Exclusive of the original purchase-money, which was eight hundred +pounds——it had cost the family eight hundred pounds more in a law-suit +about fifteen years before—besides the Lord knows what trouble and +vexation. + +It had been moreover in possession of the _Shandy_-family ever since +the middle of the last century; and though it lay full in view before +the house, bounded on one extremity by the water-mill, and on the other +by the projected wind-mill spoken of above—and for all these reasons +seemed to have the fairest title of any part of the estate to the care +and protection of the family—yet by an unaccountable fatality, common +to men, as well as the ground they tread on——it had all along most +shamefully been overlook’d; and to speak the truth of it, had suffered +so much by it, that it would have made any man’s heart have bled +(_Obadiah_ said) who understood the value of the land, to have rode +over it, and only seen the condition it was in. + +However, as neither the purchasing this tract of ground—nor indeed the +placing of it where it lay, were either of them, properly speaking, of +my father’s doing——he had never thought himself any way concerned in +the affair——till the fifteen years before, when the breaking out of +that cursed law-suit mentioned above (and which had arose about its +boundaries)——which being altogether my father’s own act and deed, it +naturally awakened every other argument in its favour, and upon summing +them all up together, he saw, not merely in interest, but in honour, he +was bound to do something for it——and that now or never was the time. + +I think there must certainly have been a mixture of ill-luck in it, +that the reasons on both sides should happen to be so equally balanced +by each other; for though my father weigh’d them in all humours and +conditions——spent many an anxious hour in the most profound and +abstracted meditation upon what was best to be done—reading books of +farming one day——books of travels another——laying aside all passion +whatever—viewing the arguments on both sides in all their lights and +circumstances—communing every day with my uncle _Toby_—arguing with +_Yorick_, and talking over the whole affair of the _Ox-moor_ with +_Obadiah_——yet nothing in all that time appeared so strongly in behalf +of the one, which was not either strictly applicable to the other, or +at least so far counterbalanced by some consideration of equal weight, +as to keep the scales even. + +For to be sure, with proper helps, in the hands of some people, tho’ +the _Ox-moor_ would undoubtedly have made a different appearance in the +world from what it did, or ever could do in the condition it lay——yet +every tittle of this was true, with regard to my brother _Bobby_——let +_Obadiah_ say what he would.—— + +In point of interest——the contest, I own, at first sight, did not +appear so undecisive betwixt them; for whenever my father took pen and +ink in hand, and set about calculating the simple expence of paring and +burning, and fencing in the _Ox-moor_, &c. &c.—with the certain profit +it would bring him in return——the latter turned out so prodigiously in +his way of working the account, that you would have sworn the _Ox-moor_ +would have carried all before it. For it was plain he should reap a +hundred lasts of rape, at twenty pounds a last, the very first +year——besides an excellent crop of wheat the year following——and the +year after that, to speak within bounds, a hundred——but in all +likelihood, a hundred and fifty——if not two hundred quarters of pease +and beans——besides potatoes without end.——But then, to think he was all +this while breeding up my brother, like a hog to eat them——knocked all +on the head again, and generally left the old gentleman in such a state +of suspense——that, as he often declared to my uncle _Toby_——he knew no +more than his heels what to do. + +No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it +is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, +both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time: for +to say nothing of the havock, which by a certain consequence is +unavoidably made by it all over the finer system of the nerves, which +you know convey the animal spirits and more subtle juices from the +heart to the head, and so on——it is not to be told in what a degree +such a wayward kind of friction works upon the more gross and solid +parts, wasting the fat and impairing the strength of a man every time +as it goes backwards and forwards. + +My father had certainly sunk under this evil, as certainly as he had +done under that of my CHRISTIAN NAME——had he not been rescued out of +it, as he was out of that, by a fresh evil——the misfortune of my +brother _Bobby_’s death. + +What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side?——from +sorrow to sorrow?——to button up one cause of vexation——and unbutton +another? + +C H A P. LXVII + +FROM this moment I am to be considered as heir-apparent to the _Shandy_ +family——and it is from this point properly, that the story of my LIFE +and my OPINIONS sets out. With all my hurry and precipitation, I have +but been clearing the ground to raise the building——and such a building +do I foresee it will turn out, as never was planned, and as never was +executed since _Adam._ In less than five minutes I shall have thrown my +pen into the fire, and the little drop of thick ink which is left +remaining at the bottom of my ink-horn, after it—I have but half a +score things to do in the time——I have a thing to name——a thing to +lament——a thing to hope——a thing to promise, and a thing to threaten—I +have a thing to suppose—a thing to declare——a thing to conceal——a thing +to choose, and a thing to pray for——This chapter, therefore, I _name_ +the chapter of THINGS——and my next chapter to it, that is, the first +chapter of my next volume, if I live, shall be my chapter upon +WHISKERS, in order to keep up some sort of connection in my works. + +The thing I lament is, that things have crowded in so thick upon me, +that I have not been able to get into that part of my work, towards +which I have all the way looked forwards, with so much earnest desire; +and that is the Campaigns, but especially the amours of my uncle +_Toby_, the events of which are of so singular a nature, and so +Cervantick a cast, that if I can so manage it, as to convey but the +same impressions to every other brain, which the occurrences themselves +excite in my own—I will answer for it the book shall make its way in +the world, much better than its master has done before it.——Oh +_Tristram! Tristram!_ can this but be once brought about——the credit, +which will attend thee as an author, shall counterbalance the many +evils will have befallen thee as a man——thou wilt feast upon the +one——when thou hast lost all sense and remembrance of the other!—— + +No wonder I itch so much as I do, to get at these amours—They are the +choicest morsel of my whole story! and when I do get at ’em——assure +yourselves, good folks—(nor do I value whose squeamish stomach takes +offence at it) I shall not be at all nice in the choice of my +words!——and that’s the thing I have to _declare._——I shall never get +all through in five minutes, that I fear——and the thing I _hope_ is, +that your worships and reverences are not offended—if you are, depend +upon’t I’ll give you something, my good gentry, next year to be +offended at——that’s my dear _Jenny_’s way—but who my _Jenny_ is—and +which is the right and which the wrong end of a woman, is the thing to +be _concealed_—it shall be told you in the next chapter but one to my +chapter of Button-holes——and not one chapter before. + +And now that you have just got to the end of these[21] three +volumes——the thing I have to _ask_ is, how you feel your heads? my own +akes dismally!——as for your healths, I know, they are much better.—True +_Shandeism_, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, +and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces +the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely through its +channels, makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round. + +Was I left, like _Sancho Pança_, to choose my kingdom, it should not be +maritime—or a kingdom of blacks to make a penny of;—no, it should be a +kingdom of hearty laughing subjects: And as the bilious and more +saturnine passions, by creating disorders in the blood and humours, +have as bad an influence, I see, upon the body politick as body +natural——and as nothing but a habit of virtue can fully govern those +passions, and subject them to reason——I should add to my prayer—that +God would give my subjects grace to be as WISE as they were MERRY; and +then should I be the happiest monarch, and they are the happiest people +under heaven. + +And so with this moral for the present, may it please your worships and +your reverences, I take my leave of you till this time twelve-month, +when, (unless this vile cough kills me in the mean time) I’ll have +another pluck at your beards, and lay open a story to the world you +little dream of. + + [21] According to the preceding Editions. + +END OF THE SECOND VOLUME + +Tristram Shandy + +_Tristram Shandy_ + + + + +THE +LIFE AND OPINIONS +OF +TRISTRAM SHANDY, +GENTLEMAN +——— +Volume the Third +——— + +Dixero si quid fortè jocosius, hoc mihi juris +Cum venia dabis.——                  HOR. + +—Si quis calumnietur levius esse quam decet theologum, aut mordacius +quam deceat Christianum—non Ego, sed Democritus dixit.—                + ERASMUS. + +Si quis Clericus, aut Monachus, verba joculatoria, risum moventia, +sciebat, anathema esto.                 Second Council of CARTHAGE. + +TO THE +RIGHT HONOURABLE +J O H N, +LORD VISCOUNT SPENCER + +MY LORD, + +I HUMBLY beg leave to offer you these two Volumes[22]; they are the +best my talents, with such bad health as I have, could produce:—had +Providence granted me a larger stock of either, they had been a much +more proper present to your Lordship. + +I beg your Lordship will forgive me, if, at the same time I dedicate +this work to you, I join Lady SPENCER, in the liberty I take of +inscribing the story of _Le Fever_ to her name; for which I have no +other motive, which my heart has informed me of, but that the story is +a humane one. + + I am, + +MY LORD, +Your Lordship’s most devoted +and most humble Servant, + +LAUR. STERNE. + + [22] Volumes V. and VI. in the first Edition. + +C H A P. I + +IF it had not been for those two mettlesome tits, and that madcap of a +postillion who drove them from Stilton to Stamford, the thought had +never entered my head. He flew like lightning——there was a slope of +three miles and a half——we scarce touched the ground——the motion was +most rapid——most impetuous——’twas communicated to my brain—my heart +partook of it——“By the great God of day,” said I, looking towards the +sun, and thrusting my arm out of the fore-window of the chaise, as I +made my vow, “I will lock up my study-door the moment I get home, and +throw the key of it ninety feet below the surface of the earth, into +the draw-well at the back of my house.” + +The London waggon confirmed me in my resolution; it hung tottering upon +the hill, scarce progressive, drag’d—drag’d up by eight _heavy +beasts_—“by main strength!——quoth I, nodding——but your betters draw the +same way——and something of every body’s!——O rare!” + +Tell me, ye learned, shall we for ever be adding so much to the +_bulk_—so little to the _stock?_ + +Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by +pouring only out of one vessel into another? + +Are we for ever to be twisting, and untwisting the same rope? for ever +in the same track—for ever at the same pace? + +Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as +working-days, to be shewing the _relicks of learning_, as monks do the +relicks of their saints—without working one—one single miracle with +them? + +Who made Man, with powers which dart him from earth to heaven in a +moment—that great, that most excellent, and most noble creature of the +world—the _miracle_ of nature, as Zoroaster in his book ωεσι φυσεως +called him—the SHEKINAH of the divine presence, as Chrysostom——the +_image_ of God, as Moses——the _ray_ of divinity, as Plato—the _marvel_ +of _marvels_, as Aristotle—to go sneaking on at this +pitiful—pimping——pettifogging rate? + +I scorn to be as abusive as Horace upon the occasion——but if there is +no catachresis in the wish, and no sin in it, I wish from my soul, that +every imitator in _Great Britain, France_, and _Ireland_, had the farcy +for his pains; and that there was a good farcical house, large enough +to hold—aye—and sublimate them, _shag rag and bob-tail_, male and +female, all together: and this leads me to the affair of +_Whiskers_——but, by what chain of ideas—I leave as a legacy in +_mort-main_ to Prudes and Tartufs, to enjoy and make the most of. + +UPON WHISKERS. + +I’m sorry I made it——’twas as inconsiderate a promise as ever entered a +man’s head——A chapter upon whiskers! alas! the world will not bear +it—’tis a delicate world——but I knew not of what mettle it was made—nor +had I ever seen the under-written fragment; otherwise, as surely as +noses are noses, and whiskers are whiskers still (let the world say +what it will to the contrary); so surely would I have steered clear of +this dangerous chapter. + +THE FRAGMENT. + +* * * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * +——You are half asleep, my good lady, said the old gentleman, taking +hold of the old lady’s hand, and giving it a gentle squeeze, as he +pronounced the word _Whiskers_——shall we change the subject? By no +means, replied the old lady—I like your account of those matters; so +throwing a thin gauze handkerchief over her head, and leaning it back +upon the chair with her face turned towards him, and advancing her two +feet as she reclined herself——I desire, continued she, you will go on. + +The old gentleman went on as follows:——Whiskers! cried the queen of +_Navarre_, dropping her knotting ball, as _La Fosseuse_ uttered the +word——Whiskers, madam, said _La Fosseuse_, pinning the ball to the +queen’s apron, and making a courtesy as she repeated it. + +_La Fosseuse_’s voice was naturally soft and low, yet ’twas an +articulate voice: and every letter of the word _Whiskers_ fell +distinctly upon the queen of _Navarre_’s ear—Whiskers! cried the queen, +laying a greater stress upon the word, and as if she had still +distrusted her ears——Whiskers! replied _La Fosseuse_, repeating the +word a third time——There is not a cavalier, madam, of his age in +_Navarre_, continued the maid of honour, pressing the page’s interest +upon the queen, that has so gallant a pair——Of what? cried _Margaret_, +smiling—Of whiskers, said _La Fosseuse_, with infinite modesty. + +The word _Whiskers_ still stood its ground, and continued to be made +use of in most of the best companies throughout the little kingdom of +_Navarre_, notwithstanding the indiscreet use which _La Fosseuse_ had +made of it: the truth was, _La Fosseuse_ had pronounced the word, not +only before the queen, but upon sundry other occasions at court, with +an accent which always implied something of a mystery—And as the court +of _Margaret_, as all the world knows, was at that time a mixture of +gallantry and devotion——and whiskers being as applicable to the one, as +the other, the word naturally stood its ground——it gained full as much +as it lost; that is, the clergy were for it——the laity were against +it——and for the women,——_they_ were divided. + +The excellency of the figure and mien of the young Sieur _De Croix_, +was at that time beginning to draw the attention of the maids of honour +towards the terrace before the palace gate, where the guard was +mounted. The lady _De Baussiere_ fell deeply in love with him,——_La +Battarelle_ did the same—it was the finest weather for it, that ever +was remembered in _Navarre——La Guyol, La Maronette, La Sabatiere_, fell +in love with the Sieur _De Croix_ also——_La Rebours_ and _La Fosseuse_ +knew better——_De Croix_ had failed in an attempt to recommend himself +to _La Rebours;_ and _La Rebours_ and _La Fosseuse_ were inseparable. + +The queen of _Navarre_ was sitting with her ladies in the painted +bow-window, facing the gate of the second court, as _De Croix_ passed +through it—He is handsome, said the Lady _Baussiere_——He has a good +mien, said _La Battarelle_——He is finely shaped, said _La Guyol_—I +never saw an officer of the horse-guards in my life, said _La +Maronette_, with two such legs——Or who stood so well upon them, said +_La Sabatiere_——But he has no whiskers, cried _La Fosseuse_——Not a +pile, said _La Rebours._ + +The queen went directly to her oratory, musing all the way, as she +walked through the gallery, upon the subject; turning it this way and +that way in her fancy—_Ave Maria!_——what can _La-Fosseuse_ mean? said +she, kneeling down upon the cushion. + +_La Guyol, La Battarelle, La Maronette, La Sabatiere_, retired +instantly to their chambers——Whiskers! said all four of them to +themselves, as they bolted their doors on the inside. + +The Lady _Carnavallette_ was counting her beads with both hands, +unsuspected, under her farthingal——from St. _Antony_ down to St. +_Ursula_ inclusive, not a saint passed through her fingers without +whiskers; St. _Francis_, St. _Dominick_, St. _Bennet_, St. _Basil_, St. +_Bridget_, had all whiskers. + +The Lady _Baussiere_ had got into a wilderness of conceits, with +moralizing too intricately upon _La Fosseuse_’s text——She mounted her +palfrey, her page followed her——the host passed by—the Lady _Baussiere_ +rode on. + +One denier, cried the order of mercy—one single denier, in behalf of a +thousand patient captives, whose eyes look towards heaven and you for +their redemption. + +——The Lady _Baussiere_ rode on. + +Pity the unhappy, said a devout, venerable, hoary-headed man, meekly +holding up a box, begirt with iron, in his withered hands——I beg for +the unfortunate—good my Lady, ’tis for a prison—for an hospital—’tis +for an old man—a poor man undone by shipwreck, by suretyship, by +fire——I call God and all his angels to witness——’tis to clothe the +naked——to feed the hungry——’tis to comfort the sick and the +broken-hearted. + +The Lady _Baussiere_ rode on. + +A decayed kinsman bowed himself to the ground. + +——The Lady _Baussiere_ rode on. + +He ran begging bare-headed on one side of her palfrey, conjuring her by +the former bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, &c.——Cousin, +aunt, sister, mother,——for virtue’s sake, for your own, for mine, for +Christ’s sake, remember me——pity me. + +——The Lady _Baussiere_ rode on. + +Take hold of my whiskers, said the Lady _Baussiere_—The page took hold +of her palfrey. She dismounted at the end of the terrace. + +There are some trains of certain ideas which leave prints of themselves +about our eyes and eye-brows; and there is a consciousness of it, +somewhere about the heart, which serves but to make these etchings the +stronger—we see, spell, and put them together without a dictionary. + +Ha, ha! he, hee! cried _La Guyol_ and _La Sabatiere_, looking close at +each other’s prints——Ho, ho! cried _La Battarelle_ and _Maronette_, +doing the same:—Whist! cried one—ft, ft,—said a second—hush, quoth a +third—poo, poo, replied a fourth—gramercy! cried the Lady +_Carnavallette;_——’twas she who bewhisker’d St. _Bridget._ + +_La Fosseuse_ drew her bodkin from the knot of her hair, and having +traced the outline of a small whisker, with the blunt end of it, upon +one side of her upper lip, put in into _La Rebours_’ hand—_La Rebours_ +shook her head. + +The Lady _Baussiere_ coughed thrice into the inside of her muff—_La +Guyol_ smiled—Fy, said the Lady _Baussiere._ The queen of _Navarre_ +touched her eye with the tip of her fore-finger—as much as to say, I +understand you all. + +’Twas plain to the whole court the word was ruined: _La Fosseuse_ had +given it a wound, and it was not the better for passing through all +these defiles——It made a faint stand, however, for a few months, by the +expiration of which, the Sieur _De Croix_, finding it high time to +leave _Navarre_ for want of whiskers——the word in course became +indecent, and (after a few efforts) absolutely unfit for use. + +The best word, in the best language of the best world, must have +suffered under such combinations.——The curate of _d’Estella_ wrote a +book against them, setting forth the dangers of accessory ideas, and +warning the _Navarois_ against them. + +Does not all the world know, said the curate _d’Estella_ at the +conclusion of his work, that Noses ran the same fate some centuries ago +in most parts of _Europe_, which Whiskers have now done in the kingdom +of _Navarre?_—The evil indeed spread no farther then—but have not beds +and bolsters, and night-caps and chamber-pots stood upon the brink of +destruction ever since? Are not trouse, and placket-holes, and +pump-handles—and spigots and faucets, in danger still from the same +association?—Chastity, by nature, the gentlest of all affections—give +it but its head——’tis like a ramping and a roaring lion. + +The drift of the curate _d’Estella_’s argument was not understood.—They +ran the scent the wrong way.—The world bridled his ass at the tail.—And +when the _extremes_ of DELICACY, and the _beginnings_ of CONCUPISCENCE, +hold their next provincial chapter together, they may decree that bawdy +also. + +C H A P. II + +WHEN my father received the letter which brought him the melancholy +account of my brother _Bobby_’s death, he was busy calculating the +expence of his riding post from _Calais_ to _Paris_, and so on to +_Lyons._ + +’Twas a most inauspicious journey; my father having had every foot of +it to travel over again, and his calculation to begin afresh, when he +had almost got to the end of it, by _Obadiah_’s opening the door to +acquaint him the family was out of yeast—and to ask whether he might +not take the great coach-horse early in the morning and ride in search +of some.—With all my heart, _Obadiah_, said my father (pursuing his +journey)—take the coach-horse, and welcome.——But he wants a shoe, poor +creature! said _Obadiah._——Poor creature! said my uncle _Toby_, +vibrating the note back again, like a string in unison. Then ride the +_Scotch_ horse, quoth my father hastily.—He cannot bear a saddle upon +his back, quoth _Obadiah_, for the whole world.——The devil’s in that +horse; then take PATRIOT, cried my father, and shut the door.——PATRIOT +is sold, said _Obadiah._ Here’s for you! cried my father, making a +pause, and looking in my uncle _Toby_’s face, as if the thing had not +been a matter of fact.—Your worship ordered me to sell him last +_April_, said _Obadiah._—Then go on foot for your pains, cried my +father——I had much rather walk than ride, said _Obadiah_, shutting the +door. + +What plagues, cried my father, going on with his calculation.——But the +waters are out, said _Obadiah_,—opening the door again. + +Till that moment, my father, who had a map of _Sanson_’s, and a book of +the post-roads before him, had kept his hand upon the head of his +compasses, with one foot of them fixed upon _Nevers_, the last stage he +had paid for—purposing to go on from that point with his journey and +calculation, as soon as _Obadiah_ quitted the room: but this second +attack of _Obadiah_’s, in opening the door and laying the whole country +under water, was too much.——He let go his compasses—or rather with a +mixed motion between accident and anger, he threw them upon the table; +and then there was nothing for him to do, but to return back to +_Calais_ (like many others) as wise as he had set out. + +When the letter was brought into the parlour, which contained the news +of my brother’s death, my father had got forwards again upon his +journey to within a stride of the compasses of the very same stage of +_Nevers._——By your leave, Mons. _Sanson_, cried my father, striking the +point of his compasses through _Nevers_ into the table—and nodding to +my uncle _Toby_ to see what was in the letter—twice of one night, is +too much for an English gentleman and his son, Mons. _Sanson_, to be +turned back from so lousy a town as _Nevers_—What think’st thou, +_Toby_? added my father in a sprightly tone.——Unless it be a garrison +town, said my uncle _Toby_——for then—I shall be a fool, said my father, +smiling to himself, as long as I live.—So giving a second nod—and +keeping his compasses still upon _Nevers_ with one hand, and holding +his book of the post-roads in the other—half calculating and half +listening, he leaned forwards upon the table with both elbows, as my +uncle _Toby_ hummed over the letter. + +—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —he’s gone! +said my uncle _Toby_——Where——Who? cried my father.——My nephew, said my +uncle _Toby._——What—without leave—without money—without governor? cried +my father in amazement. No:——he is dead, my dear brother, quoth my +uncle _Toby._—Without being ill? cried my father again.—I dare say not, +said my uncle _Toby_, in a low voice, and fetching a deep sigh from the +bottom of his heart, he has been ill enough, poor lad! I’ll answer for +him——for he is dead. + +When _Agrippina_ was told of her son’s death, _Tacitus_ informs us, +that, not being able to moderate the violence of her passions, she +abruptly broke off her work—My father stuck his compasses into +_Nevers_, but so much the faster.—What contrarieties! his, indeed, was +matter of calculation!—_Agrippina_’s must have been quite a different +affair; who else could pretend to reason from history? + +How my father went on, in my opinion, deserves a chapter to itself.— + +C H A P. III + +————And a chapter it shall have, and a devil of a one too—so look to +yourselves. + +’Tis either _Plato_, or _Plutarch_, or _Seneca_, or _Xenophon_, or +_Epictetus_, or _Theophrastus_, or _Lucian_—or some one perhaps of +later date—either _Cardan_, or _Budæus_, or _Petrarch_, or _Stella_—or +possibly it may be some divine or father of the church, St. _Austin_, +or St. _Cyprian_, or _Barnard_, who affirms that it is an irresistible +and natural passion to weep for the loss of our friends or children—and +_Seneca_ (I’m positive) tells us somewhere, that such griefs evacuate +themselves best by that particular channel—And accordingly we find, +that _David_ wept for his son _Absalom_—_Adrian_ for his +_Antinous_—_Niobe_ for her children, and that _Apollodorus_ and _Crito_ +both shed tears for _Socrates_ before his death. + +My father managed his affliction otherwise; and indeed differently from +most men either ancient or modern; for he neither wept it away, as the +_Hebrews_ and the _Romans_—or slept it off, as the _Laplanders_—or +hanged it, as the _English_, or drowned it, as the _Germans_,—nor did +he curse it, or damn it, or excommunicate it, or rhyme it, or +lillabullero it.—— + +——He got rid of it, however. + +Will your worships give me leave to squeeze in a story between these +two pages? + +When _Tully_ was bereft of his dear daughter _Tullia_, at first he laid +it to his heart,—he listened to the voice of nature, and modulated his +own unto it.—O my _Tullia!_ my daughter! my child!—still, still, +still,—’twas O my _Tullia!_—my _Tullia!_ Methinks I see my _Tullia_, I +hear my _Tullia_, I talk with my _Tullia._—But as soon as he began to +look into the stores of philosophy, and consider how many excellent +things might be said upon the occasion—no body upon earth can conceive, +says the great orator, how happy, how joyful it made me. + +My father was as proud of his eloquence as MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO could +be for his life, and, for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at +present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength—and his +weakness too.——His strength—for he was by nature eloquent; and his +weakness—for he was hourly a dupe to it; and, provided an occasion in +life would but permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise +thing, a witty, or a shrewd one—(bating the case of a systematic +misfortune)—he had all he wanted.—A blessing which tied up my father’s +tongue, and a misfortune which let it loose with a good grace, were +pretty equal: sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the +two; for instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as _ten_, and +the pain of the misfortune but as _five_—my father gained half in half, +and consequently was as well again off, as if it had never befallen +him. + +This clue will unravel what otherwise would seem very inconsistent in +my father’s domestic character; and it is this, that, in the +provocations arising from the neglects and blunders of servants, or +other mishaps unavoidable in a family, his anger, or rather the +duration of it, eternally ran counter to all conjecture. + +My father had a favourite little mare, which he had consigned over to a +most beautiful Arabian horse, in order to have a pad out of her for his +own riding: he was sanguine in all his projects; so talked about his +pad every day with as absolute a security, as if it had been reared, +broke,—and bridled and saddled at his door ready for mounting. By some +neglect or other in _Obadiah_, it so fell out, that my father’s +expectations were answered with nothing better than a mule, and as ugly +a beast of the kind as ever was produced. + +My mother and my uncle _Toby_ expected my father would be the death of +_Obadiah_—and that there never would be an end of the disaster——See +here! you rascal, cried my father, pointing to the mule, what you have +done!——It was not me, said _Obadiah._——How do I know that? replied my +father. + +Triumph swam in my father’s eyes, at the repartee—the _Attic_ salt +brought water into them—and so _Obadiah_ heard no more about it. + +Now let us go back to my brother’s death. + +Philosophy has a fine saying for every thing.—For _Death_ it has an +entire set; the misery was, they all at once rushed into my father’s +head, that ’twas difficult to string them together, so as to make any +thing of a consistent show out of them.—He took them as they came. + +“’Tis an inevitable chance—the first statute in _Magna Charta_—it is an +everlasting act of parliament, my dear brother,—_All must die._ + +“If my son could not have died, it had been matter of wonder,—not that +he is dead. + +“Monarchs and princes dance in the same ring with us. + +“—_To die_, is the great debt and tribute due unto nature: tombs and +monuments, which should perpetuate our memories, pay it themselves; and +the proudest pyramid of them all, which wealth and science have +erected, has lost its apex, and stands obtruncated in the traveller’s +horizon.” (My father found he got great ease, and went on)—“Kingdoms +and provinces, and towns and cities, have they not their periods? and +when those principles and powers, which at first cemented and put them +together, performed their several evolutions, they fall back.”—Brother +_Shandy_, said my uncle _Toby_, laying down his pipe at the word +_evolutions_—Revolutions, I meant, quoth my father,—by heaven! I meant +revolutions, brother _Toby_—evolutions is nonsense.——’Tis not +nonsense—said my uncle _Toby._——But is it not nonsense to break the +thread of such a discourse upon such an occasion? cried my father—do +not—dear _Toby_, continued he, taking him by the hand, do not—do not, I +beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis.——My uncle _Toby_ put his +pipe into his mouth. + +“Where is _Troy_ and _Mycenæ_, and _Thebes_ and _Delos_, and +_Persepolis_ and _Agrigentum?_”—continued my father, taking up his book +of post-roads, which he had laid down.—“What is become, brother _Toby_, +of _Nineveh_ and _Babylon_, of _Cizicum_ and _Mitylenæ?_ The fairest +towns that ever the sun rose upon, are now no more; the names only are +left, and those (for many of them are wrong spelt) are falling +themselves by piece-meals to decay, and in length of time will be +forgotten, and involved with every thing in a perpetual night: the +world itself, brother _Toby_, must—must come to an end. + +“Returning out of _Asia_, when I sailed from _Ægina_ towards _Megara_,” +(_when can this have been? thought my uncle Toby_,) “I began to view +the country round about. _Ægina_ was behind me, _Megara_ was before, +_Pyræus_ on the right hand, _Corinth_ on the left.—What flourishing +towns now prostrate upon the earth! Alas! alas! said I to myself, that +man should disturb his soul for the loss of a child, when so much as +this lies awfully buried in his presence——Remember, said I to myself +again—remember thou art a man.”— + +Now my uncle _Toby_ knew not that this last paragraph was an extract of +_Servius Sulpicius_’s consolatory letter to Tully.—He had as little +skill, honest man, in the fragments, as he had in the whole pieces of +antiquity.—And as my father, whilst he was concerned in the _Turkey_ +trade, had been three or four different times in the _Levant_, in one +of which he had stayed a whole year and an half at _Zant_, my uncle +_Toby_ naturally concluded, that, in some one of these periods, he had +taken a trip across the _Archipelago_ into _Asia;_ and that all this +sailing affair with _Ægina_ behind, and _Megara_ before, and _Pyræus_ +on the right hand, &c. &c. was nothing more than the true course of my +father’s voyage and reflections.—’Twas certainly in his _manner_, and +many an undertaking critic would have built two stories higher upon +worse foundations.—And pray, brother, quoth my uncle _Toby_, laying the +end of his pipe upon my father’s hand in a kindly way of +interruption—but waiting till he finished the account—what year of our +Lord was this?—’Twas no year of our Lord, replied my father.—That’s +impossible, cried my uncle _Toby._—Simpleton! said my father,—’twas +forty years before Christ was born. + +My uncle _Toby_ had but two things for it; either to suppose his +brother to be the wandering _Jew_, or that his misfortunes had +disordered his brain.—“May the Lord God of heaven and earth protect him +and restore him!” said my uncle _Toby_, praying silently for my father, +and with tears in his eyes. + +—My father placed the tears to a proper account, and went on with his +harangue with great spirit. + +“There is not such great odds, brother _Toby_, betwixt good and evil, +as the world imagines”——(this way of setting off, by the bye, was not +likely to cure my uncle _Toby_’s suspicions).——“Labour, sorrow, grief, +sickness, want, and woe, are the sauces of life.”—Much good may do +them—said my uncle _Toby_ to himself.—— + +“My son is dead!—so much the better;—’tis a shame in such a tempest to +have but one anchor. + +“But he is gone for ever from us!—be it so. He is got from under the +hands of his barber before he was bald—he is but risen from a feast +before he was surfeited—from a banquet before he had got drunken. + +“The _Thracians_ wept when a child was born,”—(and we were very near +it, quoth my uncle _Toby_,)—“and feasted and made merry when a man went +out of the world; and with reason.——Death opens the gate of fame, and +shuts the gate of envy after it,—it unlooses the chain of the captive, +and puts the bondsman’s task into another man’s hands. + +“Shew me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads it, and I’ll shew +thee a prisoner who dreads his liberty.” + +Is it not better, my dear brother _Toby_, (for mark—our appetites are +but diseases,)—is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat?—not +to thirst, than to take physic to cure it? + +Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and +melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a +galled traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his +journey afresh? + +There is no terrour, brother _Toby_, in its looks, but what it borrows +from groans and convulsions—and the blowing of noses and the wiping +away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man’s +room.—Strip it of these, what is it?—’Tis better in battle than in bed, +said my uncle _Toby._—Take away its hearses, its mutes, and its +mourning,—its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic aids—What is +it?—_Better in battle!_ continued my father, smiling, for he had +absolutely forgot my brother _Bobby_—’tis terrible no way—for consider, +brother _Toby_,—when we _are_—death is _not;_—and when death _is_—we +are _not._ My uncle _Toby_ laid down his pipe to consider the +proposition; my father’s eloquence was too rapid to stay for any +man—away it went,—and hurried my uncle _Toby_’s ideas along with it.—— + +For this reason, continued my father, ’tis worthy to recollect, how +little alteration, in great men, the approaches of death have +made.—_Vespasian_ died in a jest upon his close-stool—_Galba_ with a +sentence—_Septimus Severus_ in a dispatch—_Tiberius_ in dissimulation, +and _Cæsar Augustus_ in a compliment.—I hope ’twas a sincere one—quoth +my uncle _Toby._ + +—’Twas to his wife,—said my father. + +C H A P. IV + +——And lastly—for all the choice anecdotes which history can produce of +this matter, continued my father,—this, like the gilded dome which +covers in the fabric—crowns all.— + +’Tis of _Cornelius Gallus_, the prætor—which, I dare say, brother +_Toby_, you have read.—I dare say I have not, replied my uncle.—He +died, said my father as * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * —And if it was +with his wife, said my uncle _Toby_—there could be no hurt in +it.—That’s more than I know—replied my father. + +C H A P. V + +MY mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which +led to the parlour, as my uncle _Toby_ pronounced the word _wife._—’Tis +a shrill penetrating sound of itself, and _Obadiah_ had helped it by +leaving the door a little a-jar, so that my mother heard enough of it +to imagine herself the subject of the conversation; so laying the edge +of her finger across her two lips—holding in her breath, and bending +her head a little downwards, with a twist of her neck—(not towards the +door, but from it, by which means her ear was brought to the chink)—she +listened with all her powers:——the listening slave, with the Goddess of +Silence at his back, could not have given a finer thought for an +intaglio. + +In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes: +till I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as _Rapin_ does those of +the church) to the same period. + +C H A P. VI + +THOUGH in one sense, our family was certainly a simple machine, as it +consisted of a few wheels; yet there was thus much to be said for it, +that these wheels were set in motion by so many different springs, and +acted one upon the other from such a variety of strange principles and +impulses——that though it was a simple machine, it had all the honour +and advantages of a complex one,——and a number of as odd movements +within it, as ever were beheld in the inside of a _Dutch_ silk-mill. + +Amongst these there was one, I am going to speak of, in which, perhaps, +it was not altogether so singular, as in many others; and it was this, +that whatever motion, debate, harangue, dialogue, project, or +dissertation, was going forwards in the parlour, there was generally +another at the same time, and upon the same subject, running parallel +along with it in the kitchen. + +Now to bring this about, whenever an extraordinary message, or letter, +was delivered in the parlour—or a discourse suspended till a servant +went out—or the lines of discontent were observed to hang upon the +brows of my father or mother—or, in short, when any thing was supposed +to be upon the tapis worth knowing or listening to, ’twas the rule to +leave the door, not absolutely shut, but somewhat a-jar—as it stands +just now,—which, under covert of the bad hinge, (and that possibly +might be one of the many reasons why it was never mended,) it was not +difficult to manage; by which means, in all these cases, a passage was +generally left, not indeed as wide as the _Dardanelles_, but wide +enough, for all that, to carry on as much of this windward trade, as +was sufficient to save my father the trouble of governing his house;—my +mother at this moment stands profiting by it.—_Obadiah_ did the same +thing, as soon as he had left the letter upon the table which brought +the news of my brother’s death, so that before my father had well got +over his surprise, and entered upon his harangue,—had _Trim_ got upon +his legs, to speak his sentiments upon the subject. + +A curious observer of nature, had he been worth the inventory of all +_Job_’s stock—though by the bye, _your curious observers are seldom +worth a groat_—would have given the half of it, to have heard Corporal +_Trim_ and my father, two orators so contrasted by nature and +education, haranguing over the same bier. + +My father—a man of deep reading—prompt memory—with _Cato_, and +_Seneca_, and _Epictetus_, at his fingers ends.— + +The corporal—with nothing—to remember—of no deeper reading than his +muster-roll—or greater names at his fingers end, than the contents of +it. + +The one proceeding from period to period, by metaphor and allusion, and +striking the fancy as he went along (as men of wit and fancy do) with +the entertainment and pleasantry of his pictures and images. + +The other, without wit or antithesis, or point, or turn, this way or +that; but leaving the images on one side, and the picture on the other, +going straight forwards as nature could lead him, to the heart. O +_Trim!_ would to heaven thou had’st a better historian!—would!—thy +historian had a better pair of breeches!——O ye critics! will nothing +melt you? + +C H A P. VII + +——My young master in London is dead? said _Obadiah._— + +——A green sattin night-gown of my mother’s, which had been twice +scoured, was the first idea which _Obadiah_’s exclamation brought into +_Susannah_’s head. + +—Well might _Locke_ write a chapter upon the imperfections of +words.—Then, quoth _Susannah_, we must all go into mourning.—But note a +second time: the word _mourning_, notwithstanding _Susannah_ made use +of it herself—failed also of doing its office; it excited not one +single idea, tinged either with grey or black,—all was green.——The +green sattin night-gown hung there still. + +—O! ’twill be the death of my poor mistress, cried _Susannah._—My +mother’s whole wardrobe followed.—What a procession! her red +damask,—her orange tawney,—her white and yellow lutestrings,—her brown +taffata,—her bone-laced caps, her bed-gowns, and comfortable +under-petticoats.—Not a rag was left behind.—“_No,—she will never look +up again_,” said _Susannah._ + +We had a fat, foolish scullion—my father, I think, kept her for her +simplicity;—she had been all autumn struggling with a dropsy.—He is +dead, said _Obadiah_,—he is certainly dead!—So am not I, said the +foolish scullion. + +——Here is sad news, _Trim_, cried _Susannah_, wiping her eyes as _Trim_ +stepp’d into the kitchen,—master _Bobby_ is dead and _buried_—the +funeral was an interpolation of _Susannah_’s—we shall have all to go +into mourning, said _Susannah._ + +I hope not, said _Trim._—You hope not! cried _Susannah_ earnestly.—The +mourning ran not in _Trim_’s head, whatever it did in _Susannah_’s.—I +hope—said _Trim_, explaining himself, I hope in God the news is not +true. I heard the letter read with my own ears, answered _Obadiah;_ and +we shall have a terrible piece of work of it in stubbing the +ox-moor.—Oh! he’s dead, said _Susannah._—As sure, said the scullion, as +I’m alive. + +I lament for him from my heart and my soul, said _Trim_, fetching a +sigh.—Poor creature!—poor boy!—poor gentleman! + +—He was alive last _Whitsontide!_ said the coachman.—_Whitsontide!_ +alas! cried _Trim_, extending his right arm, and falling instantly into +the same attitude in which he read the sermon,—what is _Whitsontide, +Jonathan_ (for that was the coachman’s name), or _Shrovetide_, or any +tide or time past, to this? Are we not here now, continued the corporal +(striking the end of his stick perpendicularly upon the floor, so as to +give an idea of health and stability)—and are we not—(dropping his hat +upon the ground) gone! in a moment!—’Twas infinitely striking! +_Susannah_ burst into a flood of tears.—We are not stocks and +stones.—_Jonathan, Obadiah_, the cook-maid, all melted.—The foolish fat +scullion herself, who was scouring a fish-kettle upon her knees, was +rous’d with it.—The whole kitchen crowded about the corporal. + +Now, as I perceive plainly, that the preservation of our constitution +in church and state,—and possibly the preservation of the whole +world—or what is the same thing, the distribution and balance of its +property and power, may in time to come depend greatly upon the right +understanding of this stroke of the corporal’s eloquence—I do demand +your attention—your worships and reverences, for any ten pages +together, take them where you will in any other part of the work, shall +sleep for it at your ease. + +I said, “we were not stocks and stones”—’tis very well. I should have +added, nor are we angels, I wish we were,—but men clothed with bodies, +and governed by our imaginations;—and what a junketing piece of work of +it there is, betwixt these and our seven senses, especially some of +them, for my own part, I own it, I am ashamed to confess. Let it +suffice to affirm, that of all the senses, the eye (for I absolutely +deny the touch, though most of your _Barbati_, I know, are for it) has +the quickest commerce with the soul,—gives a smarter stroke, and leaves +something more inexpressible upon the fancy, than words can either +convey—or sometimes get rid of. + +—I’ve gone a little about—no matter, ’tis for health—let us only carry +it back in our mind to the mortality of _Trim_’s hat—“Are we not here +now,—and gone in a moment?”—There was nothing in the sentence—’twas one +of your self-evident truths we have the advantage of hearing every day; +and if _Trim_ had not trusted more to his hat than his head—he made +nothing at all of it. + +——“Are we not here now;” continued the corporal, “and are we +not”—(dropping his hat plumb upon the ground—and pausing, before he +pronounced the word)—“gone! in a moment?” The descent of the hat was as +if a heavy lump of clay had been kneaded into the crown of it.——Nothing +could have expressed the sentiment of mortality, of which it was the +type and fore-runner, like it,—his hand seemed to vanish from under +it,—it fell dead,—the corporal’s eye fixed upon it, as upon a +corpse,—and _Susannah_ burst into a flood of tears. + +Now—Ten thousand, and ten thousand times ten thousand (for matter and +motion are infinite) are the ways by which a hat may be dropped upon +the ground, without any effect.——Had he flung it, or thrown it, or cast +it, or skimmed it, or squirted it, or let it slip or fall in any +possible direction under heaven,—or in the best direction that could be +given to it,—had he dropped it like a goose—like a puppy—like an ass—or +in doing it, or even after he had done, had he looked like a fool—like +a ninny—like a nincompoop—it had fail’d, and the effect upon the heart +had been lost. + +Ye who govern this mighty world and its mighty concerns with the +engines of eloquence,—who heat it, and cool it, and melt it, and +mollify it,——and then harden it again to _your purpose_—— + +Ye who wind and turn the passions with this great windlass, and, having +done it, lead the owners of them, whither ye think meet. + +Ye, lastly, who drive——and why not, Ye also who are driven, like +turkeys to market with a stick and a red clout—meditate—meditate, I +beseech you, upon _Trim_’s hat. + +C H A P. VIII + +STAY—I have a small account to settle with the reader before _Trim_ can +go on with his harangue.—It shall be done in two minutes. + +Amongst many other book-debts, all of which I shall discharge in due +time,—I own myself a debtor to the world for two items,—a chapter upon +_chamber-maids and button-holes_, which, in the former part of my work, +I promised and fully intended to pay off this year: but some of your +worships and reverences telling me, that the two subjects, especially +so connected together, might endanger the morals of the world,—I pray +the chapter upon chamber-maids and button-holes may be forgiven me,—and +that they will accept of the last chapter in lieu of it; which is +nothing, an’t please your reverences, but a chapter of _chamber-maids, +green gowns, and old hats._ + +_Trim_ took his hat off the ground,—put it upon his head,—and then went +on with his oration upon death, in manner and form following. + +C H A P. IX + +——To us, _Jonathan_, who know not what want or care is—who live here in +the service of two of the best of masters—(bating in my own case his +majesty King _William_ the Third, whom I had the honour to serve both +in _Ireland_ and _Flanders_)—I own it, that from _Whitsontide_ to +within three weeks of _Christmas_,—’tis not long—’tis like nothing;—but +to those, _Jonathan_, who know what death is, and what havock and +destruction he can make, before a man can well wheel about—’tis like a +whole age.—O _Jonathan!_ ’twould make a good-natured man’s heart bleed, +to consider, continued the corporal (standing perpendicularly), how low +many a brave and upright fellow has been laid since that time!—And +trust me, _Susy_, added the corporal, turning to _Susannah_, whose eyes +were swimming in water,—before that time comes round again,—many a +bright eye will be dim.—_Susannah_ placed it to the right side of the +page—she wept—but she court’sied too.—Are we not, continued _Trim_, +looking still at _Susannah_—are we not like a flower of the field—a +tear of pride stole in betwixt every two tears of humiliation—else no +tongue could have described _Susannah_’s affliction—is not all flesh +grass?—Tis clay,—’tis dirt.—They all looked directly at the +scullion,—the scullion had just been scouring a fish-kettle.—It was not +fair.— + +—What is the finest face that ever man looked at!—I could hear _Trim_ +talk so for ever, cried _Susannah_,—what is it! (_Susannah_ laid her +hand upon _Trim_’s shoulder)—but corruption?——_Susannah_ took it off. + +Now I love you for this—and ’tis this delicious mixture within you +which makes you dear creatures what you are—and he who hates you for +it——all I can say of the matter is—That he has either a pumpkin for his +head—or a pippin for his heart,—and whenever he is dissected ’twill be +found so. + +C H A P. X + +WHETHER _Susannah_, by taking her hand too suddenly from off the +corporal’s shoulder (by the whisking about of her passions)——broke a +little the chain of his reflexions—— + +Or whether the corporal began to be suspicious, he had got into the +doctor’s quarters, and was talking more like the chaplain than +himself—— + +Or whether - - - - - - - - Or whether——for in all such cases a +man of invention and parts may with pleasure fill a couple of pages +with suppositions——which of all these was the cause, let the curious +physiologist, or the curious any body determine——’tis certain, at +least, the corporal went on thus with his harangue. + +For my own part, I declare it, that out of doors, I value not death at +all:—not this . . added the corporal, snapping his fingers,—but with an +air which no one but the corporal could have given to the sentiment.—In +battle, I value death not this . . . and let him not take me cowardly, +like poor _Joe Gibbins_, in scouring his gun.—What is he? A pull of a +trigger—a push of a bayonet an inch this way or that—makes the +difference.—Look along the line—to the right—see! _Jack_’s down! +well,—’tis worth a regiment of horse to him.—No—’tis _Dick._ Then +_Jack_’s no worse.—Never mind which,—we pass on,—in hot pursuit the +wound itself which brings him is not felt,—the best way is to stand up +to him,—the man who flies, is in ten times more danger than the man who +marches up into his jaws.—I’ve look’d him, added the corporal, an +hundred times in the face,—and know what he is.—He’s nothing, +_Obadiah_, at all in the field.—But he’s very frightful in a house, +quoth _Obadiah._——I never mind it myself, said _Jonathan_, upon a +coach-box.—It must, in my opinion, be most natural in bed, replied +_Susannah._—And could I escape him by creeping into the worst calf’s +skin that ever was made into a knapsack, I would do it there—said +_Trim_—but that is nature. + +——Nature is nature, said _Jonathan._—And that is the reason, cried +_Susannah_, I so much pity my mistress.—She will never get the better +of it.—Now I pity the captain the most of any one in the family, +answered _Trim._——Madam will get ease of heart in weeping,—and the +Squire in talking about it,—but my poor master will keep it all in +silence to himself.—I shall hear him sigh in his bed for a whole month +together, as he did for lieutenant _Le Fever._ An’ please your honour, +do not sigh so piteously, I would say to him as I laid besides him. I +cannot help it, _Trim_, my master would say,—’tis so melancholy an +accident—I cannot get it off my heart.—Your honour fears not death +yourself.—I hope, _Trim_, I fear nothing, he would say, but the doing a +wrong thing.——Well, he would add, whatever betides, I will take care of +_Le Fever_’s boy.—And with that, like a quieting draught, his honour +would fall asleep. + +I like to hear _Trim_’s stories about the captain, said _Susannah._—He +is a kindly-hearted gentleman, said _Obadiah_, as ever lived.—Aye, and +as brave a one too, said the corporal, as ever stept before a +platoon.—There never was a better officer in the king’s army,—or a +better man in God’s world; for he would march up to the mouth of a +cannon, though he saw the lighted match at the very touch-hole,—and +yet, for all that, he has a heart as soft as a child for other +people.——He would not hurt a chicken.——I would sooner, quoth +_Jonathan_, drive such a gentleman for seven pounds a year—than some +for eight.—Thank thee, _Jonathan!_ for thy twenty shillings,—as much, +_Jonathan_, said the corporal, shaking him by the hand, as if thou +hadst put the money into my own pocket.——I would serve him to the day +of my death out of love. He is a friend and a brother to me,—and could +I be sure my poor brother _Tom_ was dead,—continued the corporal, +taking out his handkerchief,—was I worth ten thousand pounds, I would +leave every shilling of it to the captain.——_Trim_ could not refrain +from tears at this testamentary proof he gave of his affection to his +master.——The whole kitchen was affected.—Do tell us the story of the +poor lieutenant, said _Susannah._——With all my heart, answered the +corporal. + +_Susannah_, the cook, _Jonathan_, _Obadiah_, and corporal _Trim_, +formed a circle about the fire; and as soon as the scullion had shut +the kitchen door,—the corporal begun. + +C H A P. XI + +I AM a _Turk_ if I had not as much forgot my mother, as if Nature had +plaistered me up, and set me down naked upon the banks of the river +_Nile_, without one.——Your most obedient servant, Madam—I’ve cost you a +great deal of trouble,—I wish it may answer;—but you have left a crack +in my back,—and here’s a great piece fallen off here before,—and what +must I do with this foot?——I shall never reach _England_ with it. + +For my own part, I never wonder at any thing;—and so often has my +judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, right or +wrong,—at least I am seldom hot upon cold subjects. For all this, I +reverence truth as much as any body; and when it has slipped us, if a +man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for it, as +for a thing we have both lost, and can neither of us do well +without,—I’ll go to the world’s end with him:——But I hate disputes,—and +therefore (bating religious points, or such as touch society) I would +almost subscribe to any thing which does not choak me in the first +passage, rather than be drawn into one——But I cannot bear +suffocation,——and bad smells worst of all.——For which reasons, I +resolved from the beginning, That if ever the army of martyrs was to be +augmented,—or a new-one raised,—I would have no hand in it, one way or +t’other. + +C H A P. XII + +——BUT to return to my mother. + +My uncle _Toby_’s opinion, Madam, “that there could be no harm in +_Cornelius Gallus_, the _Roman_ prætor’s lying with his wife;”——or +rather the last word of that opinion,—(for it was all my mother heard +of it) caught hold of her by the weak part of the whole sex:——You shall +not mistake me,—I mean her curiosity,—she instantly concluded herself +the subject of the conversation, and with that prepossession upon her +fancy, you will readily conceive every word my father said, was +accommodated either to herself, or her family concerns. + +——Pray, Madam, in what street does the lady live, who would not have +done the same? + +From the strange mode of _Cornelius_’s death, my father had made a +transition to that of _Socrates_, and was giving my uncle _Toby_ an +abstract of his pleading before his judges;——’twas irresistible:——not +the oration of _Socrates_,—but my father’s temptation to it.——He had +wrote the Life of _Socrates_[23] himself the year before he left off +trade, which, I fear, was the means of hastening him out of it;——so +that no one was able to set out with so full a sail, and in so swelling +a tide of heroic loftiness upon the occasion, as my father was. Not a +period in _Socrates_’s oration, which closed with a shorter word than +_transmigration_, or _annihilation_,—or a worse thought in the middle +of it than _to be—or not to be_,—the entering upon a new and untried +state of things,—or, upon a long, a profound and peaceful sleep, +without dreams, without disturbance?——_That we and our children were +born to die,—but neither of us born to be slaves._——No—there I mistake; +that was part of _Eleazer_’s oration, as recorded by _Josephus (de +Bell. Judaic)_——_Eleazer_ owns he had it from the philosophers of +_India;_ in all likelihood _Alexander_ the Great, in his irruption into +_India_, after he had over-run _Persia_, amongst the many things he +stole,—stole that sentiment also; by which means it was carried, if not +all the way by himself (for we all know he died at _Babylon_), at least +by some of his maroders, into _Greece_,—from _Greece_ it got to +_Rome_,—from _Rome_ to _France_,—and from _France_ to _England:_——So +things come round.—— + +By land carriage, I can conceive no other way.—— + +By water the sentiment might easily have come down the _Ganges_ into +the _Sinus Gangeticus_, or _Bay of Bengal_, and so into the _Indian +Sea;_ and following the course of trade (the way from _India_ by the +_Cape of Good Hope_ being then unknown), might be carried with other +drugs and spices up the _Red Sea_ to _Joddah_, the port of _Mekka_, or +else to _Tor_ or _Sues_, towns at the bottom of the gulf; and from +thence by karrawans to _Coptos_, but three days journey distant, so +down the _Nile_ directly to _Alexandria_, where the SENTIMENT would be +landed at the very foot of the great stair-case of the _Alexandrian_ +library,——and from that store-house it would be fetched.——Bless me! +what a trade was driven by the learned in those days! + + [23] This book my father would never consent to publish; ’tis in + manuscript, with some other tracts of his, in the family, all, or most + of which will be printed in due time. + +C H A P. XIII + +——NOW my father had a way, a little like that of _Job_’s (in case there +ever was such a man——if not, there’s an end of the matter.—— + +Though, by the bye, because your learned men find some difficulty in +fixing the precise æra in which so great a man lived;—whether, for +instance, before or after the patriarchs, &c.——to vote, therefore, that +he never lived at all, is a little cruel,—’tis not doing as they would +be done by,—happen that as it may)——My father, I say, had a way, when +things went extremely wrong with him, especially upon the first sally +of his impatience,—of wondering why he was begot,—wishing himself +dead;—sometimes worse:——And when the provocation ran high, and grief +touched his lips with more than ordinary powers—Sir, you scarce could +have distinguished him from _Socrates_ himself.——Every word would +breathe the sentiments of a soul disdaining life, and careless about +all its issues; for which reason, though my mother was a woman of no +deep reading, yet the abstract of _Socrates_’s oration, which my father +was giving my uncle _Toby_, was not altogether new to her.—She listened +to it with composed intelligence, and would have done so to the end of +the chapter, had not my father plunged (which he had no occasion to +have done) into that part of the pleading where the great philosopher +reckons up his connections, his alliances, and children; but renounces +a security to be so won by working upon the passions of his judges.—“I +have friends—I have relations,—I have three desolate children,”—says +_Socrates._— + +——Then, cried my mother, opening the door,——you have one more, Mr. +_Shandy_, than I know of. + +By heaven! I have one less,—said my father, getting up and walking out +of the room. + +C H A P. XIV + +——THEY are _Socrates_’s children, said my uncle _Toby._ He has been +dead a hundred years ago, replied my mother. + +My uncle _Toby_ was no chronologer—so not caring to advance one step +but upon safe ground, he laid down his pipe deliberately upon the +table, and rising up, and taking my mother most kindly by the hand, +without saying another word, either good or bad, to her, he led her out +after my father, that he might finish the ecclaircissement himself. + +C H A P. XV + +HAD this volume been a farce, which, unless every one’s life and +opinions are to be looked upon as a farce as well as mine, I see no +reason to suppose—the last chapter, Sir, had finished the first act of +it, and then this chapter must have set off thus. + +Pt . . . r . . . r . . . ing—twing—twang—prut—trut——’tis a cursed bad +fiddle.—Do you know whether my fiddle’s in tune or no?—trut . . . prut. + . — They should be _fifths._——’Tis wickedly strung—tr . . . a . e . i +. o . u .-twang.—The bridge is a mile too high, and the sound post +absolutely down,—else—trut . . prut—hark! tis not so bad a tone.—Diddle +diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle, dum. There is nothing in playing +before good judges,—but there’s a man there—no—not him with the bundle +under his arm—the grave man in black.—’Sdeath! not the gentleman with +the sword on.—Sir, I had rather play a _Caprichio_ to _Calliope_ +herself, than draw my bow across my fiddle before that very man; and +yet I’ll stake my _Cremona_ to a _Jew_’s trump, which is the greatest +musical odds that ever were laid, that I will this moment stop three +hundred and fifty leagues out of tune upon my fiddle, without punishing +one single nerve that belongs to him—Twaddle diddle, tweddle +diddle,—twiddle diddle,—twoddle diddle,—twuddle diddle,——prut +trut—krish—krash—krush.—I’ve undone you, Sir,—but you see he’s no +worse,—and was _Apollo_ to take his fiddle after me, he can make him no +better. + +Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle—hum—dum—drum. + +—Your worships and your reverences love music—and God has made you all +with good ears—and some of you play delightfully +yourselves—trut-prut,—prut-trut. + +O! there is—whom I could sit and hear whole days,—whose talents lie in +making what he fiddles to be felt,—who inspires me with his joys and +hopes, and puts the most hidden springs of my heart into motion.—If you +would borrow five guineas of me, Sir,—which is generally ten guineas +more than I have to spare—or you Messrs. Apothecary and Taylor, want +your bills paying,—that’s your time. + +C H A P. XVI + +THE first thing which entered my father’s head, after affairs were a +little settled in the family, and _Susanna_ had got possession of my +mother’s green sattin night-gown,—was to sit down coolly, after the +example of _Xenophon_, and write a TRISTRA-_pædia_, or system of +education for me; collecting first for that purpose his own scattered +thoughts, counsels, and notions; and binding them together, so as to +form an INSTITUTE for the government of my childhood and adolescence. I +was my father’s last stake—he had lost my brother _Bobby_ entirely,—he +had lost, by his own computation, full three-fourths of me—that is, he +had been unfortunate in his three first great casts for me—my geniture, +nose, and name,—there was but this one left; and accordingly my father +gave himself up to it with as much devotion as ever my uncle _Toby_ had +done to his doctrine of projectils.—The difference between them was, +that my uncle _Toby_ drew his whole knowledge of projectils from +_Nicholas Tartaglia_—My father spun his, every thread of it, out of his +own brain,—or reeled and cross-twisted what all other spinners and +spinsters had spun before him, that ’twas pretty near the same torture +to him. + +In about three years, or something more, my father had got advanced +almost into the middle of his work.—Like all other writers, he met with +disappointments.—He imagined he should be able to bring whatever he had +to say, into so small a compass, that when it was finished and bound, +it might be rolled up in my mother’s hussive.—Matter grows under our +hands.—Let no man say,—“Come—I’ll write a duodecimo.” + +My father gave himself up to it, however, with the most painful +diligence, proceeding step by step in every line, with the same kind of +caution and circumspection (though I cannot say upon quite so religious +a principle) as was used by _John de la Casse_, the lord archbishop of +_Benevento_, in compassing his _Galatea;_ in which his Grace of +_Benevento_ spent near forty years of his life; and when the thing came +out, it was not of above half the size or the thickness of a _Rider_’s +Almanack.—How the holy man managed the affair, unless he spent the +greatest part of his time in combing his whiskers, or playing at +_primero_ with his chaplain,—would pose any mortal not let into the +true secret;—and therefore ’tis worth explaining to the world, was it +only for the encouragement of those few in it, who write not so much to +be fed—as to be famous. + +I own had _John de la Casse_, the archbishop of _Benevento_, for whose +memory (notwithstanding his _Galatea_,) I retain the highest +veneration,—had he been, Sir, a slender clerk—of dull wit—slow +parts—costive head, and so forth,—he and his _Galatea_ might have +jogged on together to the age of _Methuselah_ for me,—the phænomenon +had not been worth a parenthesis.— + +But the reverse of this was the truth: _John de la Casse_ was a genius +of fine parts and fertile fancy; and yet with all these great +advantages of nature, which should have pricked him forwards with his +_Galatea_, he lay under an impuissance at the same time of advancing +above a line and a half in the compass of a whole summer’s day: this +disability in his Grace arose from an opinion he was afflicted +with,—which opinion was this,—_viz._ that whenever a Christian was +writing a book (not for his private amusement, but) where his intent +and purpose was, _bonâ fide_, to print and publish it to the world, his +first thoughts were always the temptations of the evil one.—This was +the state of ordinary writers: but when a personage of venerable +character and high station, either in church or state, once turned +author,—he maintained, that from the very moment he took pen in +hand—all the devils in hell broke out of their holes to cajole +him.—’Twas Term-time with them,—every thought, first and last, was +captious;—how specious and good soever,—’twas all one;—in whatever form +or colour it presented itself to the imagination,—’twas still a stroke +of one or other of ’em levell’d at him, and was to be fenced off.—So +that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was +not so much a state of _composition_, as a state of _warfare;_ and his +probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon +earth,—both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his +wit—as his RESISTANCE. + +My father was hugely pleased with this theory of _John de la Casse_, +archbishop of _Benevento;_ and (had it not cramped him a little in his +creed) I believe would have given ten of the best acres in the _Shandy_ +estate, to have been the broacher of it.—How far my father actually +believed in the devil, will be seen, when I come to speak of my +father’s religious notions, in the progress of this work: ’tis enough +to say here, as he could not have the honour of it, in the literal +sense of the doctrine—he took up with the allegory of it; and would +often say, especially when his pen was a little retrograde, there was +as much good meaning, truth, and knowledge, couched under the veil of +_John de la Casse_’s parabolical representation,—as was to be found in +any one poetic fiction or mystic record of antiquity.—Prejudice of +education, he would say, _is the devil_,—and the multitudes of them +which we suck in with our mother’s milk—_are the devil and all._——We +are haunted with them, brother _Toby_, in all our lucubrations and +researches; and was a man fool enough to submit tamely to what they +obtruded upon him,—what would his book be? Nothing,—he would add, +throwing his pen away with a vengeance,—nothing but a farrago of the +clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes) +throughout the kingdom. + +This is the best account I am determined to give of the slow progress +my father made in his _Tristra-pædia;_ at which (as I said) he was +three years, and something more, indefatigably at work, and, at last, +had scarce completed, by this own reckoning, one half of his +undertaking: the misfortune was, that I was all that time totally +neglected and abandoned to my mother; and what was almost as bad, by +the very delay, the first part of the work, upon which my father had +spent the most of his pains, was rendered entirely useless,——every day +a page or two became of no consequence.—— + +——Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human +wisdom, That the wisest of us all should thus outwit ourselves, and +eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them. + +In short my father was so long in all his acts of resistance,—or in +other words,—he advanced so very slow with his work, and I began to +live and get forwards at such a rate, that if an event had not +happened,——which, when we get to it, if it can be told with decency, +shall not be concealed a moment from the reader——I verily believe, I +had put by my father, and left him drawing a sundial, for no better +purpose than to be buried under ground. + +C H A P. XVII + +——’TWAS nothing,—I did not lose two drops of blood by it——’twas not +worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door to us——thousands +suffer by choice, what I did by accident.——Doctor _Slop_ made ten times +more of it, than there was occasion:——some men rise, by the art of +hanging great weights upon small wires,—and I am this day (_August_ the +10th, 1761) paying part of the price of this man’s reputation.——O +’twould provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this +world!——The chamber-maid had left no ******* *** under the bed:——Cannot +you contrive, master, quoth _Susannah_, lifting up the sash with one +hand, as she spoke, and helping me up into the window-seat with the +other,—cannot you manage, my dear, for a single time, to **** *** ** +*** ****** ? + +I was five years old.——_Susannah_ did not consider that nothing was +well hung in our family,——so slap came the sash down like lightning +upon us;—Nothing is left,—cried _Susannah_,—nothing is left—for me, but +to run my country.—— + +My uncle _Toby_’s house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so _Susannah_ +fled to it. + +C H A P. XVIII + +WHEN _Susannah_ told the corporal the misadventure of the sash, with +all the circumstances which attended the _murder_ of me,—(as she called +it,)—the blood forsook his cheeks,—all accessaries in murder being +principals,—_Trim_’s conscience told him he was as much to blame as +_Susannah_,—and if the doctrine had been true, my uncle _Toby_ had as +much of the bloodshed to answer for to heaven, as either of ’em;—so +that neither reason or instinct, separate or together, could possibly +have guided _Susannah_’s steps to so proper an asylum. It is in vain to +leave this to the Reader’s imagination:——to form any kind of hypothesis +that will render these propositions feasible, he must cudgel his brains +sore,—and to do it without,—he must have such brains as no reader ever +had before him.—Why should I put them either to trial or to torture? +’Tis my own affair: I’ll explain it myself. + +C H A P. XIX + +’TIS a pity, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, resting with his hand upon +the corporal’s shoulder, as they both stood surveying their works,—that +we have not a couple of field-pieces to mount in the gorge of that new +redoubt;—’twould secure the lines all along there, and make the attack +on that side quite complete:——get me a couple cast, _Trim._ + +Your honour shall have them, replied _Trim_, before tomorrow morning. + +It was the joy of _Trim_’s heart, nor was his fertile head ever at a +loss for expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle _Toby_ in his +campaigns, with whatever his fancy called for; had it been his last +crown, he would have sate down and hammered it into a paderero, to have +prevented a single wish in his master. The corporal had already,—what +with cutting off the ends of my uncle _Toby_’s spouts—hacking and +chiseling up the sides of his leaden gutters,—melting down his pewter +shaving-bason,—and going at last, like _Lewis_ the Fourteenth, on to +the top of the church, for spare ends, &c.——he had that very campaign +brought no less than eight new battering cannons, besides three +demi-culverins, into the field; my uncle _Toby_’s demand for two more +pieces for the redoubt, had set the corporal at work again; and no +better resource offering, he had taken the two leaden weights from the +nursery window: and as the sash pullies, when the lead was gone, were +of no kind of use, he had taken them away also, to make a couple of +wheels for one of their carriages. + +He had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle _Toby_’s house long +before, in the very same way,—though not always in the same order; for +sometimes the pullies have been wanted, and not the lead,—so then he +began with the pullies,—and the pullies being picked out, then the lead +became useless,—and so the lead went to pot too. + +——A great MORAL might be picked handsomely out of this, but I have not +time—’tis enough to say, wherever the demolition began, ’twas equally +fatal to the sash window. + +C H A P. XX + +THE corporal had not taken his measures so badly in this stroke of +artilleryship, but that he might have kept the matter entirely to +himself, and left _Susannah_ to have sustained the whole weight of the +attack, as she could;—true courage is not content with coming off +so.——The corporal, whether as general or comptroller of the +train,—’twas no matter,——had done that, without which, as he imagined, +the misfortune could never have happened,—_at least in_ Susannah_’s +hands;_——How would your honours have behaved?——He determined at once, +not to take shelter behind _Susannah_,—but to give it; and with this +resolution upon his mind, he marched upright into the parlour, to lay +the whole _manœuvre_ before my uncle _Toby._ + +My uncle _Toby_ had just then been giving _Yorick_ an account of the +Battle of _Steenkirk_, and of the strange conduct of count _Solmes_ in +ordering the foot to halt, and the horse to march where it could not +act; which was directly contrary to the king’s commands, and proved the +loss of the day. + +There are incidents in some families so pat to the purpose of what is +going to follow,—they are scarce exceeded by the invention of a +dramatic writer;—I mean of ancient days.—— + +_Trim_, by the help of his fore-finger, laid flat upon the table, and +the edge of his hand striking across it at right angles, made a shift +to tell his story so, that priests and virgins might have listened to +it;—and the story being told,—the dialogue went on as follows. + +C H A P. XXI + +——I would be picquetted to death, cried the corporal, as he concluded +_Susannah_’s story, before I would suffer the woman to come to any +harm,—’twas my fault, an’ please your honour,—not her’s. + +Corporal _Trim_, replied my uncle _Toby_, putting on his hat which lay +upon the table,——if any thing can be said to be a fault, when the +service absolutely requires it should be done,—’tis I certainly who +deserve the blame,—you obeyed your orders. + +Had count _Solmes_, _Trim_, done the same at the battle of _Steenkirk_, +said _Yorick_, drolling a little upon the corporal, who had been run +over by a dragoon in the retreat,——he had saved thee;——Saved! cried +_Trim_, interrupting _Yorick_, and finishing the sentence for him after +his own fashion,——he had saved five battalions, an’ please your +reverence, every soul of them:——there was _Cutt_ ’s,—continued the +corporal, clapping the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of +his left, and counting round his hand,——there was _Cutt _’s,——_Mackay +_’s,——_Angus _’s,——_Graham _’s,——and _Leven _’s, all cut to +pieces;——and so had the _English_ life-guards too, had it not been for +some regiments upon the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, +and received the enemy’s fire in their faces, before any one of their +own platoons discharged a musket,——they’ll go to heaven for it,—added +_Trim._—_Trim_ is right, said my uncle _Toby_, nodding to +_Yorick_,——he’s perfectly right. What signified his marching the horse, +continued the corporal, where the ground was so strait, that the +_French_ had such a nation of hedges, and copses, and ditches, and +fell’d trees laid this way and that to cover them (as they always +have).——Count _Solmes_ should have sent us,——we would have fired muzzle +to muzzle with them for their lives.——There was nothing to be done for +the horse:——he had his foot shot off however for his pains, continued +the corporal, the very next campaign at _Landen._—Poor _Trim_ got his +wound there, quoth my uncle _Toby._——’Twas owing, an’ please your +honour, entirely to count _Solmes_,——had he drubbed them soundly at +_Steenkirk_, they would not have fought us at _Landen._——Possibly +not,——_Trim_, said my uncle _Toby;_——though if they have the advantage +of a wood, or you give them a moment’s time to intrench themselves, +they are a nation which will pop and pop for ever at you.——There is no +way but to march coolly up to them,——receive their fire, and fall in +upon them, pell-mell——Ding dong, added _Trim._——Horse and foot, said my +uncle _Toby._——Helter Skelter, said _Trim._——Right and left, cried my +uncle _Toby._——Blood an’ ounds, shouted the corporal;——the battle +raged,——_Yorick_ drew his chair a little to one side for safety, and +after a moment’s pause, my uncle _Toby_ sinking his voice a +note,—resumed the discourse as follows. + +C H A P. XXII + +KING _William_, said my uncle _Toby_, addressing himself to _Yorick_, +was so terribly provoked at count _Solmes_ for disobeying his orders, +that he would not suffer him to come into his presence for many months +after.——I fear, answered _Yorick_, the squire will be as much provoked +at the corporal, as the King at the count.——But ’twould be singularly +hard in this case, continued be, if corporal _Trim_, who has behaved so +diametrically opposite to count _Solmes_, should have the fate to be +rewarded with the same disgrace:——too oft in this world, do things take +that train.——I would spring a mine, cried my uncle _Toby_, rising +up,——and blow up my fortifications, and my house with them, and we +would perish under their ruins, ere I would stand by and see +it.——_Trim_ directed a slight,——but a grateful bow towards his +master,——and so the chapter ends. + +C H A P. XXIII + +——Then, _Yorick_, replied my uncle _Toby_, you and I will lead the way +abreast,——and do you, corporal, follow a few paces behind us.——And +_Susannah_, an’ please your honour, said _Trim_, shall be put in the +rear.——’Twas an excellent disposition,—and in this order, without +either drums beating, or colours flying, they marched slowly from my +uncle _Toby_’s house to _Shandy-hall._ + +——I wish, said _Trim_, as they entered the door,—instead of the sash +weights, I had cut off the church spout, as I once thought to have +done.—You have cut off spouts enow, replied _Yorick._ + +C H A P. XXIV + +As many pictures as have been given of my father, how like him soever +in different airs and attitudes,—not one, or all of them, can ever help +the reader to any kind of preconception of how my father would think, +speak, or act, upon any untried occasion or occurrence of life.—There +was that infinitude of oddities in him, and of chances along with it, +by which handle he would take a thing,—it baffled, Sir, all +calculations.——The truth was, his road lay so very far on one side, +from that wherein most men travelled,—that every object before him +presented a face and section of itself to his eye, altogether different +from the plan and elevation of it seen by the rest of mankind.—In other +words, ’twas a different object, and in course was differently +considered: + +This is the true reason, that my dear _Jenny_ and I, as well as all the +world besides us, have such eternal squabbles about nothing.—She looks +at her outside,—I, at her in—. How is it possible we should agree about +her value? + +C H A P. XXV + +’TIS a point settled,—and I mention it for the comfort of +_Confucius_,[24] who is apt to get entangled in telling a plain +story—that provided he keeps along the line of his story,—he may go +backwards and forwards as he will,—’tis still held to be no digression. + +This being premised, I take the benefit of the _act of going backwards_ +myself. + + [24] Mr _Shandy_ is supposed to mean * * * * * * * * * * *, Esq; + member for * * * * * *,——and not the _Chinese_ Legislator. + +C H A P. XXVI + +FIFTY thousand pannier loads of devils—(not of the Archbishop of +_Benevento_’s—I mean of _Rabelais_’s devils), with their tails chopped +off by their rumps, could not have made so diabolical a scream of it, +as I did—when the accident befel me: it summoned up my mother instantly +into the nursery,—so that _Susannah_ had but just time to make her +escape down the back stairs, as my mother came up the fore. + +Now, though I was old enough to have told the story myself,—and young +enough, I hope, to have done it without malignity; yet _Susannah_, in +passing by the kitchen, for fear of accidents, had left it in +short-hand with the cook—the cook had told it with a commentary to +_Jonathan_, and _Jonathan_ to _Obadiah;_ so that by the time my father +had rung the bell half a dozen times, to know what was the matter +above,—was _Obadiah_ enabled to give him a particular account of it, +just as it had happened.—I thought as much, said my father, tucking up +his night-gown;—and so walked up stairs. + +One would imagine from this——(though for my own part I somewhat +question it)—that my father, before that time, had actually wrote that +remarkable character in the _Tristra-pædia_, which to me is the most +original and entertaining one in the whole book;—and that is the +_chapter upon sash-windows_, with a bitter _Philippick_ at the end of +it, upon the forgetfulness of chamber-maids.—I have but two reasons for +thinking otherwise. + +First, Had the matter been taken into consideration, before the event +happened, my father certainly would have nailed up the sash window for +good an’ all;—which, considering with what difficulty he composed +books,—he might have done with ten times less trouble, than he could +have wrote the chapter: this argument I foresee holds good against his +writing a chapter, even after the event; but ’tis obviated under the +second reason, which I have the honour to offer to the world in support +of my opinion, that my father did not write the chapter upon +sash-windows and chamber-pots, at the time supposed,—and it is this. + +——That, in order to render the _Tristra-pædia_ complete,—I wrote the +chapter myself. + +C H A P. XXVII + +MY father put on his spectacles—looked,—took them off,—put them into +the case—all in less than a statutable minute; and without opening his +lips, turned about and walked precipitately down stairs: my mother +imagined he had stepped down for lint and basilicon; but seeing him +return with a couple of folios under his arm, and _Obadiah_ following +him with a large reading-desk, she took it for granted ’twas an herbal, +and so drew him a chair to the bedside, that he might consult upon the +case at his ease. + +——If it be but right done,—said my father, turning to the _Section—de +sede vel subjecto circumcisionis_,—for he had brought up _Spenser de +Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus_—and _Maimonides_, in order to confront +and examine us altogether.—— + +——If it be but right done, quoth he:—only tell us, cried my mother, +interrupting him, what herbs?——For that, replied my father, you must +send for Dr. _Slop._ + +My mother went down, and my father went on, reading the section as +follows, + +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * *—Very well,—said my father, * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *—nay, if +it has that convenience——and so without stopping a moment to settle it +first in his mind, whether the _Jews_ had it from the _Egyptians_, or +the _Egyptians_ from the _Jews_,—he rose up, and rubbing his forehead +two or three times across with the palm of his hand, in the manner we +rub out the footsteps of care, when evil has trod lighter upon us than +we foreboded,—he shut the book, and walked down stairs.—Nay, said he, +mentioning the name of a different great nation upon every step as he +set his foot upon it—if the EGYPTIANS,—the SYRIANS,—the +PHOENICIANS,—the ARABIANS,—the CAPPADOCIANS,——if the COLCHI, and +TROGLODYTES did it——if SOLON and PYTHAGORAS submitted,—what is +TRISTRAM?——Who am I, that I should fret or fume one moment about the +matter? + +C H A P. XXVIII + +DEAR _Yorick_, said my father smiling (for _Yorick_ had broke his rank +with my uncle _Toby_ in coming through the narrow entry, and so had +stept first into the parlour)—this _Tristram_ of ours, I find, comes +very hardly by all his religious rites.—Never was the son of _Jew, +Christian, Turk_, or _Infidel_ initiated into them in so oblique and +slovenly a manner.—But he is no worse, I trust, said _Yorick._—There +has been certainly, continued my father, the deuce and all to do in +some part or other of the ecliptic, when this offspring of mine was +formed.—That, you are a better judge of than I, replied +_Yorick._—Astrologers, quoth my father, know better than us both:—the +trine and sextil aspects have jumped awry,—or the opposite of their +ascendents have not hit it, as they should,—or the lords of the +genitures (as they call them) have been at _bo-peep_,—or something has +been wrong above, or below with us. + +’Tis possible, answered _Yorick._—But is the child, cried my uncle +_Toby_, the worse?—The _Troglodytes_ say not, replied my father. And +your theologists, _Yorick_, tell us—Theologically? said _Yorick_,—or +speaking after the manner of apothecaries?[25]—statesmen?[26]—or +washer-women?[27] + +——I’m not sure, replied my father,—but they tell us, brother _Toby_, +he’s the better for it.——Provided, said _Yorick_, you travel him into +_Egypt._—Of that, answered my father, he will have the advantage, when +he sees the _Pyramids._—— + +Now every word of this, quoth my uncle _Toby_, is _Arabic_ to me.——I +wish, said _Yorick_, ’twas so, to half the world. + +—ILUS,[28] continued my father, circumcised his whole army one +morning.—Not without a court martial? cried my uncle _Toby._——Though +the learned, continued he, taking no notice of my uncle _Toby_’s +remark, but turning to _Yorick_,—are greatly divided still who _Ilus_ +was;—some say _Saturn;_—some the Supreme Being;—others, no more than a +brigadier general under _Pharaoh-neco._——Let him be who he will, said +my uncle _Toby_, I know not by what article of war he could justify it. + +The controvertists, answered my father, assign two-and-twenty different +reasons for it:—others, indeed, who have drawn their pens on the +opposite side of the question, have shewn the world the futility of the +greatest part of them.—But then again, our best polemic divines—I wish +there was not a polemic divine, said _Yorick_, in the kingdom;—one +ounce of practical divinity—is worth a painted ship-load of all their +reverences have imported these fifty years.—Pray, Mr. _Yorick_, quoth +my uncle _Toby_,—do tell me what a polemic divine is?——The best +description, captain _Shandy_, I have ever read, is of a couple of ’em, +replied _Yorick_, in the account of the battle fought single hands +betwixt _Gymnast_ and captain _Tripet;_ which I have in my pocket.——I +beg I may hear it, quoth my uncle _Toby_ earnestly.—You shall, said +_Yorick._—And as the corporal is waiting for me at the door,—and I know +the description of a battle will do the poor fellow more good than his +supper,—I beg, brother, you’ll give him leave to come in.—With all my +soul, said my father.——_Trim_ came in, erect and happy as an emperor; +and having shut the door, _Yorick_ took a book from his right-hand +coat-pocket, and read, or pretended to read, as follows. + + [25] Χαλεπῆς νόσου, καὶ δυσιάτου ἀπαλλαγὴν, ἣν ἄνθρακα καλοῦσιν.—PHILO + + [26] Τὰ τεμνόμενα τῶν ἐθνῶν τολυγονώτατα, καὶ πολυανθρωπότατα εἶναι. + + [27] Καθαριότητος εἵνεκεν.—BOCHART. + + [28] Ὁ Ἶλος, τὰ αἰδοῖα περιτέμνεται, ταὐτὸ ποιῆσαι καὶ τοὺς ἅμ’ αυτῷ + συμμάχους καταναγκάσας.—SANCHUNIATHO. + +C H A P. XXIX + +——“which words being heard by all the soldiers which were there, divers +of them being inwardly terrified, did shrink back and make room for the +assailant: all this did _Gymnast_ very well remark and consider; and +therefore, making as if he would have alighted from off his horse, as +he was poising himself on the mounting side, he most nimbly (with his +short sword by this thigh) shifting his feet in the stirrup, and +performing the stirrup-leather feat, whereby, after the inclining of +his body downwards, he forthwith launched himself aloft into the air, +and placed both his feet together upon the saddle, standing upright, +with his back turned towards his horse’s head,—Now, (said he) my case +goes forward. Then suddenly in the same posture wherein he was, he +fetched a gambol upon one foot, and turning to the left-hand, failed +not to carry his body perfectly round, just into his former position, +without missing one jot.——Ha! said _Tripet_, I will not do that at this +time,—and not without cause. Well, said _Gymnast_, I have failed,—I +will undo this leap; then with a marvellous strength and agility, +turning towards the right-hand, he fetched another striking gambol as +before; which done, he set his right hand thumb upon the bow of the +saddle, raised himself up, and sprung into the air, poising and +upholding his whole weight upon the muscle and nerve of the said thumb, +and so turned and whirled himself about three times: at the fourth, +reversing his body, and overturning it upside down, and foreside back, +without _touching any thing_, he brought himself betwixt the horse’s +two ears, and then giving himself a jerking swing, he seated himself +upon the crupper—” + +(This can’t be fighting, said my uncle _Toby._——The corporal shook his +head at it.——Have patience, said _Yorick._) + +“Then (_Tripet_) pass’d his right leg over his saddle, and placed +himself _en croup._—But, said he, ’twere better for me to get into the +saddle; then putting the thumbs of both hands upon the crupper before +him, and there-upon leaning himself, as upon the only supporters of his +body, he incontinently turned heels over head in the air, and strait +found himself betwixt the bow of the saddle in a tolerable seat; then +springing into the air with a summerset, he turned him about like a +wind-mill, and made above a hundred frisks, turns, and +demi-pommadas.”—Good God! cried _Trim_, losing all patience,—one home +thrust of a bayonet is worth it all.——I think so too, replied +_Yorick._—— + +I am of a contrary opinion, quoth my father. + +C H A P. XXX + +——No,—I think I have advanced nothing, replied my father, making answer +to a question which _Yorick_ had taken the liberty to put to him,—I +have advanced nothing in the _Tristra-pædia_, but what is as clear as +any one proposition in _Euclid._—Reach me, _Trim_, that book from off +the scrutoir:—it has oft-times been in my mind, continued my father, to +have read it over both to you, _Yorick_, and to my brother _Toby_, and +I think it a little unfriendly in myself, in not having done it long +ago:——shall we have a short chapter or two now,—and a chapter or two +hereafter, as occasions serve; and so on, till we get through the +whole? My uncle _Toby_ and _Yorick_ made the obeisance which was +proper; and the corporal, though he was not included in the compliment, +laid his hand upon his breast, and made his bow at the same time.——The +company smiled. _Trim_, quoth my father, has paid the full price for +staying out the _entertainment._——He did not seem to relish the play, +replied _Yorick._——’Twas a Tom-fool-battle, an’ please your reverence, +of captain _Tripet_ ’s and that other officer, making so many +summersets, as they advanced;——the _French_ come on capering now and +then in that way,—but not quite so much. + +My uncle _Toby_ never felt the consciousness of his existence with more +complacency than what the corporal’s, and his own reflections, made him +do at that moment;——he lighted his pipe,——_Yorick_ drew his chair +closer to the table,—_Trim_ snuff’d the candle,—my father stirr’d up +the fire,—took up the book,—cough’d twice, and begun. + +C H A P. XXXI + +THE first thirty pages, said my father, turning over the leaves,—are a +little dry; and as they are not closely connected with the +subject,——for the present we’ll pass them by: ’tis a prefatory +introduction, continued my father, or an introductory preface (for I am +not determined which name to give it) upon political or civil +government; the foundation of which being laid in the first conjunction +betwixt male and female, for procreation of the species——I was +insensibly led into it.——’Twas natural, said _Yorick._ + +The original of society, continued my father, I’m satisfied is, what +_Politian_ tells us, _i.e._ merely conjugal; and nothing more than the +getting together of one man and one woman;—to which, (according to +_Hesiod_) the philosopher adds a servant:—but supposing in the first +beginning there were no men servants born——he lays the foundation of +it, in a man,—a woman—and a bull.——I believe ’tis an ox, quoth +_Yorick_, quoting the passage ([Greek text])——A bull must have given +more trouble than his head was worth.—But there is a better reason +still, said my father (dipping his pen into his ink); for the ox being +the most patient of animals, and the most useful withal in tilling the +ground for their nourishment,—was the properest instrument, and emblem +too, for the new joined couple, that the creation could have associated +with them.—And there is a stronger reason, added my uncle _Toby_, than +them all for the ox.—My father had not power to take his pen out of his +ink-horn, till he had heard my uncle _Toby_’s reason.—For when the +ground was tilled, said my uncle _Toby_, and made worth inclosing, then +they began to secure it by walls and ditches, which was the origin of +fortification.——True, true, dear _Toby_, cried my father, striking out +the bull, and putting the ox in his place. + +My father gave _Trim_ a nod, to snuff the candle, and resumed his +discourse. + +——I enter upon this speculation, said my father carelessly, and half +shutting the book, as he went on, merely to shew the foundation of the +natural relation between a father and his child; the right and +jurisdiction over whom he acquires these several ways— + +1st, by marriage. + +2d, by adoption. + +3d, by legitimation. + +And 4th, by procreation; all which I consider in their order. + +I lay a slight stress upon one of them, replied _Yorick_——the act, +especially where it ends there, in my opinion lays as little obligation +upon the child, as it conveys power to the father.—You are wrong,—said +my father argutely, and for this plain reason * * * * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.—I own, added my +father, that the offspring, upon this account, is not so under the +power and jurisdiction of the mother.—But the reason, replied _Yorick_, +equally holds good for her.—She is under authority herself, said my +father:—and besides, continued my father, nodding his head, and laying +his finger upon the side of his nose, as he assigned his reason,—_she +is not the principal agent_, Yorick.—In what, quoth my uncle _Toby?_ +stopping his pipe.—Though by all means, added my father (not attending +to my uncle _Toby_), “The son ought to pay her respect,” as you may +read, _Yorick_, at large in the first book of the Institutes of +_Justinian_, at the eleventh title and the tenth section.—I can read it +as well, replied _Yorick_, in the Catechism. + +C H A P. XXXII + +TRIM can repeat every word of it by heart, quoth my uncle _Toby._—Pugh! +said my father, not caring to be interrupted with _Trim_’s saying his +Catechism. He can, upon my honour, replied my uncle _Toby._—Ask him, +Mr. _Yorick_, any question you please.—— + +—The fifth Commandment, _Trim_,—said _Yorick_, speaking mildly, and +with a gentle nod, as to a modest Catechumen. The corporal stood +silent.—You don’t ask him right, said my uncle _Toby_, raising his +voice, and giving it rapidly like the word of command:——The +fifth———cried my uncle _Toby._—I must begin with the first, an’ please +your honour, said the corporal.—— + +—_Yorick_ could not forbear smiling.—Your reverence does not consider, +said the corporal, shouldering his stick like a musket, and marching +into the middle of the room, to illustrate his position,—that ’tis +exactly the same thing, as doing one’s exercise in the field.— + +“_Join your right-hand to your firelock_,” cried the corporal, giving +the word of command, and performing the motion.— + +“_Poise your firelock_,” cried the corporal, doing the duty still both +of adjutant and private man. + +“_Rest your firelock;_”—one motion, an’ please your reverence, you see +leads into another.—If his honour will begin but with the _first_— + +THE FIRST—cried my uncle _Toby_, setting his hand upon his side—* * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. + +THE SECOND—cried my uncle _Toby_, waving his tobacco-pipe, as he would +have done his sword at the head of a regiment.—The corporal went +through his _manual_ with exactness; and having _honoured his father +and mother_, made a low bow, and fell back to the side of the room. + +Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest, and has +wit in it, and instruction too,—if we can but find it out. + +—Here is the _scaffold work_ of INSTRUCTION, its true point of folly, +without the BUILDING behind it. + +—Here is the glass for pedagogues, preceptors, tutors, governors, +gerund-grinders, and bear-leaders to view themselves in, in their true +dimensions.— + +Oh! there is a husk and shell, _Yorick_, which grows up with learning, +which their unskilfulness knows not how to fling away! + +—SCIENCES MAY BE LEARNED BY ROTE BUT WISDOM NOT. + +_Yorick_ thought my father inspired.—I will enter into obligations this +moment, said my father, to lay out all my aunt _Dinah_’s legacy in +charitable uses (of which, by the bye, my father had no high opinion), +if the corporal has any one determinate idea annexed to any one word he +has repeated.—Prithee, _Trim_, quoth my father, turning round to +him,—What dost thou mean, by “_honouring thy father and mother?_” + +Allowing them, an’ please your honour, three halfpence a day out of my +pay, when they grow old.—And didst thou do that, _Trim_? said +_Yorick._—He did indeed, replied my uncle _Toby._—Then, _Trim_, said +_Yorick_, springing out of his chair, and taking the corporal by the +hand, thou art the best commentator upon that part of the _Decalogue;_ +and I honour thee more for it, corporal _Trim_, than if thou hadst had +a hand in the _Talmud_ itself. + +C H A P. XXXIIIV + +O BLESSED health! cried my father, making an exclamation, as he turned +over the leaves to the next chapter, thou art before all gold and +treasure; ’tis thou who enlargest the soul,—and openest all its powers +to receive instruction and to relish virtue.—He that has thee, has +little more to wish for;—and he that is so wretched as to want +thee,—wants every thing with thee. + +I have concentrated all that can be said upon this important head, said +my father, into a very little room, therefore we’ll read the chapter +quite through. + +My father read as follows: + +“The whole secret of health depending upon the due contention for +mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture”—You have +proved that matter of fact, I suppose, above, said _Yorick._ +Sufficiently, replied my father. + +In saying this, my father shut the book,—not as if he resolved to read +no more of it, for he kept his fore-finger in the chapter:——nor +pettishly,—for he shut the book slowly; his thumb resting, when he had +done it, upon the upper-side of the cover, as his three fingers +supported the lower side of it, without the least compressive +violence.—— + +I have demonstrated the truth of that point, quoth my father, nodding +to _Yorick_, most sufficiently in the preceding chapter. + +Now could the man in the moon be told, that a man in the earth had +wrote a chapter, sufficiently demonstrating, That the secret of all +health depended upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the +_radical heat_ and the _radical moisture_,—and that he had managed the +point so well, that there was not one single word wet or dry upon +radical heat or radical moisture, throughout the whole chapter,—or a +single syllable in it, _pro_ or _con_, directly or indirectly, upon the +contention betwixt these two powers in any part of the animal œconomy—— + +“O thou eternal Maker of all beings!”—he would cry, striking his breast +with his right hand (in case he had one)—“Thou whose power and goodness +can enlarge the faculties of thy creatures to this infinite degree of +excellence and perfection,—What have we MOONITES done?” + +C H A P. XXXIV + +WITH two strokes, the one at _Hippocrates_, the other at Lord +_Verulam_, did my father achieve it. + +The stroke at the prince of physicians, with which he began, was no +more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the _Ars +longa_,—and _Vita brevis._——Life short, cried my father,—and the art of +healing tedious! And who are we to thank for both the one and the +other, but the ignorance of quacks themselves,—and the stage-loads of +chymical nostrums, and peripatetic lumber, with which, in all ages, +they have first flatter’d the world, and at last deceived it? + +——O my lord _Verulam!_ cried my father, turning from _Hippocrates_, and +making his second stroke at him, as the principal of nostrum-mongers, +and the fittest to be made an example of to the rest,—What shall I say +to thee, my great lord _Verulam?_ What shall I say to thy internal +spirit,—thy opium, thy salt-petre,——thy greasy unctions,—thy daily +purges,—thy nightly clysters, and succedaneums? + +——My father was never at a loss what to say to any man, upon any +subject; and had the least occasion for the exordium of any man +breathing: how he dealt with his lordship’s opinion,——you shall +see;——but when—I know not:——we must first see what his lordship’s +opinion was. + +C H A P. XXXV + +“THE two great causes, which conspire with each other to shorten life, +says lord _Verulam_, are first—— + +“The internal spirit, which like a gentle flame wastes the body down to +death:—And secondly, the external air, that parches the body up to +ashes:—which two enemies attacking us on both sides of our bodies +together, at length destroy our organs, and render them unfit to carry +on the functions of life.” + +This being the state of the case, the road to longevity was plain; +nothing more being required, says his lordship, but to repair the waste +committed by the internal spirit, by making the substance of it more +thick and dense, by a regular course of opiates on one side, and by +refrigerating the heat of it on the other, by three grains and a half +of salt-petre every morning before you got up.—— + +Still this frame of ours was left exposed to the inimical assaults of +the air without;—but this was fenced off again by a course of greasy +unctions, which so fully saturated the pores of the skin, that no +spicula could enter;——nor could any one get out.——This put a stop to +all perspiration, sensible and insensible, which being the cause of so +many scurvy distempers—a course of clysters was requisite to carry off +redundant humours,—and render the system complete. + +What my father had to say to my lord of _Verulam_’s opiates, his +salt-petre, and greasy unctions and clysters, you shall read,—but not +to-day—or to-morrow: time presses upon me,—my reader is impatient—I +must get forwards——You shall read the chapter at your leisure (if you +chuse it), as soon as ever the _Tristra-pædia_ is published.—— + +Sufficeth it, at present to say, my father levelled the hypothesis with +the ground, and in doing that, the learned know, he built up and +established his own.—— + +C H A P. XXXVI + +THE whole secret of health, said my father, beginning the sentence +again, depending evidently upon the due contention betwixt the radical +heat and radical moisture within us;—the least imaginable skill had +been sufficient to have maintained it, had not the school-men +confounded the task, merely (as _Van Helmont_, the famous chymist, has +proved) by all along mistaking the radical moisture for the tallow and +fat of animal bodies. + +Now the radical moisture is not the tallow or fat of animals, but an +oily and balsamous substance; for the fat and tallow, as also the +phlegm or watery parts, are cold; whereas the oily and balsamous parts +are of a lively heat and spirit, which accounts for the observation of +_Aristotle_, “_Quod omne animal post coitum est_ triste.” + +Now it is certain, that the radical heat lives in the radical moisture, +but whether _vice versa_, is a doubt: however, when the one decays, the +other decays also; and then is produced, either an unnatural heat, +which causes an unnatural dryness——or an unnatural moisture, which +causes dropsies.——So that if a child, as he grows up, can but be taught +to avoid running into fire or water, as either of ’em threaten his +destruction,——’twill be all that is needful to be done upon that +head.—— + +C H A P. XXXVII + +THE description of the siege of _Jericho_ itself, could not have +engaged the attention of my uncle _Toby_ more powerfully than the last +chapter;—his eyes were fixed upon my father throughout it;—he never +mentioned radical heat and radical moisture, but my uncle _Toby_ took +his pipe out of his mouth, and shook his head; and as soon as the +chapter was finished, he beckoned to the corporal to come close to his +chair, to ask him the following question,—_aside._— * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * *. It was at the siege of _Limerick_, an’ please +your honour, replied the corporal, making a bow. + +The poor fellow and I, quoth my uncle _Toby_, addressing himself to my +father, were scarce able to crawl out of our tents, at the time the +siege of _Limerick_ was raised, upon the very account you mention.——Now +what can have got into that precious noddle of thine, my dear brother +_Toby?_ cried my father, mentally.——By Heaven! continued he, communing +still with himself, it would puzzle an _Œdipus_ to bring it in point.—— + +I believe, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, that if it had +not been for the quantity of brandy we set fire to every night, and the +claret and cinnamon with which I plyed your honour off;—And the geneva, +_Trim_, added my uncle _Toby_, which did us more good than all——I +verily believe, continued the corporal, we had both, an’ please your +honour, left our lives in the trenches, and been buried in them +too.——The noblest grave, corporal! cried my uncle _Toby_, his eyes +sparkling as he spoke, that a soldier could wish to lie down in.——But a +pitiful death for him! an’ please your honour, replied the corporal. + +All this was as much _Arabick_ to my father, as the rites of the +_Colchi_ and _Troglodites_ had been before to my uncle _Toby;_ my +father could not determine whether he was to frown or to smile. + +My uncle _Toby_, turning to _Yorick_, resumed the case at _Limerick_, +more intelligibly than he had begun it,—and so settled the point for my +father at once. + +C H A P. XXXVIII + +IT was undoubtedly, said my uncle _Toby_, a great happiness for myself +and the corporal, that we had all along a burning fever, attended with +a most raging thirst, during the whole five-and-twenty days the flux +was upon us in the camp; otherwise what my brother calls the radical +moisture, must, as I conceive it, inevitably have got the better.——My +father drew in his lungs top-full of air, and looking up, blew it forth +again, as slowly as he possibly could.—— + +——It was Heaven’s mercy to us, continued my uncle _Toby_, which put it +into the corporal’s head to maintain that due contention betwixt the +radical heat and the radical moisture, by reinforceing the fever, as he +did all along, with hot wine and spices; whereby the corporal kept up +(as it were) a continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its +ground from the beginning to the end, and was a fair match for the +moisture, terrible as it was.——Upon my honour, added my uncle _Toby_, +you might have heard the contention within our bodies, brother +_Shandy_, twenty toises.—If there was no firing, said _Yorick._ + +Well—said my father, with a full aspiration, and pausing a while after +the word——Was I a judge, and the laws of the country which made me one +permitted it, I would condemn some of the worst malefactors, provided +they had had their clergy—————————————_Yorick_, foreseeing the sentence +was likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his hand upon my father’s +breast, and begged he would respite it for a few minutes, till he asked +the corporal a question.——Prithee, _Trim_, said _Yorick_, without +staying for my father’s leave,—tell us honestly—what is thy opinion +concerning this self-same radical heat and radical moisture? + +With humble submission to his honour’s better judgment, quoth the +corporal, making a bow to my uncle _Toby_—Speak thy opinion freely, +corporal, said my uncle _Toby._—The poor fellow is my servant,—not my +slave,—added my uncle _Toby_, turning to my father.—— + +The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging +upon the wrist of it, by a black thong split into a tassel about the +knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; +then touching his under-jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right +hand before he opened his mouth,——he delivered his notion thus. + +C H A P. XXXIX + +JUST as the corporal was humming, to begin—in waddled Dr. _Slop._—’Tis +not two-pence matter—the corporal shall go on in the next chapter, let +who will come in.—— + +Well, my good doctor, cried my father sportively, for the transitions +of his passions were unaccountably sudden,—and what has this whelp of +mine to say to the matter? + +Had my father been asking after the amputation of the tail of a +puppy-dog—he could not have done it in a more careless air: the system +which Dr. _Slop_ had laid down, to treat the accident by, no way +allowed of such a mode of enquiry.—He sat down. + +Pray, Sir, quoth my uncle _Toby_, in a manner which could not go +unanswered,—in what condition is the boy?—’Twill end in a _phimosis_, +replied Dr. _Slop._ + +I am no wiser than I was, quoth my uncle _Toby_—returning his pipe into +his mouth.——Then let the corporal go on, said my father, with his +medical lecture.—The corporal made a bow to his old friend, Dr. _Slop_, +and then delivered his opinion concerning radical heat and radical +moisture, in the following words. + +C H A P. XL + +THE city of _Limerick_, the siege of which was begun under his majesty +king _William_ himself, the year after I went into the army—lies, an’ +please your honours, in the middle of a devilish wet, swampy +country.—’Tis quite surrounded, said my uncle _Toby_, with the +_Shannon_, and is, by its situation, one of the strongest fortified +places in _Ireland._—— + +I think this is a new fashion, quoth Dr. _Slop_, of beginning a medical +lecture.—’Tis all true, answered _Trim._—Then I wish the faculty would +follow the cut of it, said _Yorick._—’Tis all cut through, an’ please +your reverence, said the corporal, with drains and bogs; and besides, +there was such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, the whole +country was like a puddle,—’twas that, and nothing else, which brought +on the flux, and which had like to have killed both his honour and +myself; now there was no such thing, after the first ten days, +continued the corporal, for a soldier to lie dry in his tent, without +cutting a ditch round it, to draw off the water;—nor was that enough, +for those who could afford it, as his honour could, without setting +fire every night to a pewter dish full of brandy, which took off the +damp of the air, and made the inside of the tent as warm as a stove.—— + +And what conclusion dost thou draw, corporal _Trim_, cried my father, +from all these premises? + +I infer, an’ please your worship, replied _Trim_, that the radical +moisture is nothing in the world but ditch-water—and that the radical +heat, of those who can go to the expence of it, is burnt brandy,—the +radical heat and moisture of a private man, an’ please your honour, is +nothing but ditch-water—and a dram of geneva——and give us but enough of +it, with a pipe of tobacco, to give us spirits, and drive away the +vapours—we know not what it is to fear death. + +I am at a loss, Captain _Shandy_, quoth Doctor _Slop_, to determine in +which branch of learning your servant shines most, whether in +physiology or divinity.—_Slop_ had not forgot _Trim_’s comment upon the +sermon.— + +It is but an hour ago, replied _Yorick_, since the corporal was +examined in the latter, and passed muster with great honour.—— + +The radical heat and moisture, quoth Doctor _Slop_, turning to my +father, you must know, is the basis and foundation of our being—as the +root of a tree is the source and principle of its vegetation.—It is +inherent in the seeds of all animals, and may be preserved sundry ways, +but principally in my opinion by _consubstantials, impriments_, and +_occludents._——Now this poor fellow, continued Dr. _Slop_, pointing to +the corporal, has had the misfortune to have heard some superficial +empiric discourse upon this nice point.——That he has,—said my +father.——Very likely, said my uncle.—I’m sure of it—quoth _Yorick._—— + +C H A P. XLI + +DOCTOR _Slop_ being called out to look at a cataplasm he had ordered, +it gave my father an opportunity of going on with another chapter in +the _Tristra-pædia._——Come! cheer up, my lads; I’ll shew you land——for +when we have tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened +again this twelve-month.—Huzza!— + +C H A P. XLII + +——FIVE years with a bib under his chin; + +Four years in travelling from Christ-cross-row to _Malachi;_ + +A year and a half in learning to write his own name; + +Seven long years and more τυπιω-ing it, at Greek and Latin; + +Four years at his _probations_ and his _negations_—the fine statue +still lying in the middle of the marble block,—and nothing done, but +his tools sharpened to hew it out!—’Tis a piteous delay!—Was not the +great _Julius Scaliger_ within an ace of never getting his tools +sharpened at all?——Forty-four years old was he before he could manage +his Greek;—and _Peter Damianus_, lord bishop of _Ostia_, as all the +world knows, could not so much as read, when he was of man’s +estate.—And _Baldus_ himself, as eminent as he turned out after, +entered upon the law so late in life, that every body imagined he +intended to be an advocate in the other world: no wonder, when +_Eudamidas_, the son of _Archidamas_, heard _Xenocrates_ at +seventy-five disputing about _wisdom_, that he asked gravely,—_If the +old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning wisdom,—what time +will he have to make use of it?_ + +_Yorick_ listened to my father with great attention; there was a +seasoning of wisdom unaccountably mixed up with his strangest whims, +and he had sometimes such illuminations in the darkest of his eclipses, +as almost atoned for them:—be wary, Sir, when you imitate him. + +I am convinced, _Yorick_, continued my father, half reading and half +discoursing, that there is a North-west passage to the intellectual +world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in +furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally +take with it.——But, alack! all fields have not a river or a spring +running besides them;—every child, _Yorick_, has not a parent to point +it out. + +——The whole entirely depends, added my father, in a low voice, upon the +_auxiliary verbs_, Mr. _Yorick._ + +Had _Yorick_ trod upon _Virgil_ ’s snake, he could not have looked more +surprised.—I am surprised too, cried my father, observing it,—and I +reckon it as one of the greatest calamities which ever befel the +republic of letters, That those who have been entrusted with the +education of our children, and whose business it was to open their +minds, and stock them early with ideas, in order to set the imagination +loose upon them, have made so little use of the auxiliary verbs in +doing it, as they have done——So that, except _Raymond Lullius_, and the +elder _Pelegrini_, the last of which arrived to such perfection in the +use of ’em, with his topics, that, in a few lessons, he could teach a +young gentleman to discourse with plausibility upon any subject, _pro_ +and _con_, and to say and write all that could be spoken or written +concerning it, without blotting a word, to the admiration of all who +beheld him.—I should be glad, said _Yorick_, interrupting my father, to +be made to comprehend this matter. You shall, said my father. + +The highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of, is a +high metaphor,——for which, in my opinion, the idea is generally the +worse, and not the better;——but be that as it may,—when the mind has +done that with it—there is an end,—the mind and the idea are at +rest,—until a second idea enters;—and so on. + +Now the use of the _Auxiliaries_ is, at once to set the soul a-going by +herself upon the materials as they are brought her; and by the +versability of this great engine, round which they are twisted, to open +new tracts of enquiry, and make every idea engender millions. + +You excite my curiosity greatly, said _Yorick._ + +For my own part, quoth my uncle _Toby_, I have given it up.——The +_Danes_, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, who were on the +left at the siege of _Limerick_, were all auxiliaries.——And very good +ones, said my uncle _Toby._—But the auxiliaries, _Trim_, my brother is +talking about,—I conceive to be different things.—— + +——You do? said my father, rising up. + +C H A P. XLIII + +MY father took a single turn across the room, then sat down, and +finished the chapter. + +The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here, continued my father, are, +_am; was; have; had; do; did; make; made; suffer; shall; should; will; +would; can; could; owe; ought; used;_ or _is wont._—And these varied +with tenses, _present, past, future_, and _conjugated_ with the verb +_see_,—or with these questions added to them;—_Is it? Was it? Will it +be? Would it be? May it be? Might it be?_ And these again put +negatively, _Is it not? Was it not? Ought it not?_—Or +affirmatively,—_It is; It was; It ought to be._ Or +chronologically,—_Has it been always? Lately? How long ago?_—Or +hypothetically,—_If it was? If it was not?_ What would follow?—If the +_French_ should beat the _English?_ If the _Sun_ go out of the +_Zodiac?_ + +Now, by the right use and application of these, continued my father, in +which a child’s memory should be exercised, there is no one idea can +enter his brain, how barren soever, but a magazine of conceptions and +conclusions may be drawn forth from it.——Didst thou ever see a white +bear? cried my father, turning his head round to _Trim_, who stood at +the back of his chair:—No, an’ please your honour, replied the +corporal.——But thou couldst discourse about one, _Trim_, said my +father, in case of need?——How is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle +_Toby_, if the corporal never saw one?——’Tis the fact I want, replied +my father,—and the possibility of it is as follows. + +A WHITE BEAR! Very well. Have I ever seen one? Might I ever have seen +one? Am I ever to see one? Ought I ever to have seen one? Or can I ever +see one? + +Would I had seen a white bear! (for how can I imagine it?) + +If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If I should never see +a white bear, what then? + +If I never have, can, must, or shall see a white bear alive; have I +ever seen the skin of one? Did I ever see one painted?—described? Have +I never dreamed of one? + +Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or sisters, ever see a +white bear? What would they give? How would they behave? How would the +white bear have behaved? Is he wild? Tame? Terrible? Rough? Smooth? + +—Is the white bear worth seeing?— + +—Is there no sin in it?— + +Is it better than a BLACK ONE? + +C H A P. XLIV + +——WE’LL not stop two moments, my dear Sir,—only, as we have got through +these five volumes[29], (do, Sir, sit down upon a set——they are better +than nothing) let us just look back upon the country we have pass’d +through.—— + +——What a wilderness has it been! and what a mercy that we have not both +of us been lost, or devoured by wild beasts in it! + +Did you think the world itself, Sir, had contained such a number of +Jack Asses?——How they view’d and review’d us as we passed over the +rivulet at the bottom of that little valley!——and when we climbed over +that hill, and were just getting out of sight—good God! what a braying +did they all set up together! + +——Prithee, shepherd! who keeps all those Jack Asses? * * * + +——Heaven be their comforter——What! are they never curried?——Are they +never taken in in winter?——Bray bray—bray. Bray on,—the world is deeply +your debtor;——louder still—that’s nothing:—in good sooth, you are +ill-used:——Was I a Jack Asse, I solemnly declare, I would bray in +G-sol-re-ut from morning, even unto night. + + [29] In the first edition, the sixth volume began with this chapter. + +C H A P. XLV + +WHEN my father had danced his white bear backwards and forwards through +half a dozen pages, he closed the book for good an’ all,—and in a kind +of triumph redelivered it into _Trim_’s hand, with a nod to lay it upon +the ’scrutoire, where he found it.——_Tristram_, said he, shall be made +to conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the +same way;——every word, _Yorick_, by this means, you see, is converted +into a thesis or an hypothesis;—every thesis and hypothesis have an +off-spring of propositions;—and each proposition has its own +consequences and conclusions; every one of which leads the mind on +again, into fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings.——The force of this +engine, added my father, is incredible in opening a child’s head.——’Tis +enough, brother _Shandy_, cried my uncle _Toby_, to burst it into a +thousand splinters.—— + +I presume, said _Yorick_, smiling,—it must be owing to this,—(for let +logicians say what they will, it is not to be accounted for +sufficiently from the bare use of the ten predicaments)——That the +famous _Vincent Quirino_, amongst the many other astonishing feats of +his childhood, of which the Cardinal _Bembo_ has given the world so +exact a story,—should be able to paste up in the public schools at +_Rome_, so early as in the eighth year of his age, no less than four +thousand five hundred and fifty different theses, upon the most +abstruse points of the most abstruse theology;—and to defend and +maintain them in such sort, as to cramp and dumbfound his +opponents.——What is that, cried my father, to what is told us of +_Alphonsus Tostatus_, who, almost in his nurse’s arms, learned all the +sciences and liberal arts without being taught any one of them?——What +shall we say of the great _Piereskius?_—That’s the very man, cried my +uncle _Toby_, I once told you of, brother _Shandy_, who walked a matter +of five hundred miles, reckoning from _Paris_ to _Shevling_, and from +_Shevling_ back again, merely to see _Stevinus_’s flying chariot.——He +was a very great man! added my uncle _Toby_ (meaning _Stevinus_)—He was +so, brother _Toby_, said my father (meaning _Piereskius_)——and had +multiplied his ideas so fast, and increased his knowledge to such a +prodigious stock, that, if we may give credit to an anecdote concerning +him, which we cannot withhold here, without shaking the authority of +all anecdotes whatever—at seven years of age, his father committed +entirely to his care the education of his younger brother, a boy of +five years old,—with the sole management of all his concerns.—Was the +father as wise as the son? quoth my uncle _Toby:_—I should think not, +said _Yorick:_—But what are these, continued my father—(breaking out in +a kind of enthusiasm)—what are these, to those prodigies of childhood +in _Grotius, Scioppius, Heinsius, Politian, Pascal, Joseph Scaliger, +Ferdinand de Cordouè_, and others—some of which left off their +_substantial forms_ at nine years old, or sooner, and went on reasoning +without them;—others went through their classics at seven;—wrote +tragedies at eight;—_Ferdinand de Cordouè_ was so wise at nine,—’twas +thought the Devil was in him;—and at _Venice_ gave such proofs of his +knowledge and goodness, that the monks imagined he was _Antichrist_, or +nothing.——Others were masters of fourteen languages at ten,—finished +the course of their rhetoric, poetry, logic, and ethics, at eleven,—put +forth their commentaries upon _Servius_ and _Martianus Capella_ at +twelve,—and at thirteen received their degrees in philosophy, laws, and +divinity:——but you forget the great _Lipsius_, quoth _Yorick_, who +composed a work[30] the day he was born:——They should have wiped it up, +said my uncle _Toby_, and said no more about it. + + [30] Nous aurions quelque interêt, says _Baillet_, de montrer qu’il + n’a rien de ridicule s’il étoit veritable, au moins dans le sens + énigmatique que _Nicius Erythræus_ a tâ hé de lui donner. Cet auteur + dit que pour comprendre comme _Lipse_, il a pû composer un ouvrage le + premier jour de sa vie, il faut s’imaginer, que ce premier jour n’est + pas celui de sa naissance charnelle, mais celui au quel il a commencé + d’user de la raison; il veut que ç’ait été à l’âge de _neuf_ ans; et + il nous veut persuader que ce fut en cet âge, que _Lipse_ fit un + poëme.——Le tour est ingénieux, &c. &c. + +C H A P. XLVI + +WHEN the cataplasm was ready, a scruple of _decorum_ had unseasonably +rose up in _Susannah_’s conscience, about holding the candle, whilst +_Slop_ tied it on; _Slop_ had not treated _Susannah_’s distemper with +anodynes,—and so a quarrel had ensued betwixt them. + +——Oh! oh!——said _Slop_, casting a glance of undue freedom in +_Susannah_’s face, as she declined the office;——then, I think I know +you, madam——You know me, Sir! cried _Susannah_ fastidiously, and with a +toss of her head, levelled evidently, not at his profession, but at the +doctor himself,——you know me! cried _Susannah_ again.——Doctor _Slop_ +clapped his finger and his thumb instantly upon his +nostrils;——_Susannah_’s spleen was ready to burst at it;——’Tis false, +said _Susannah._—Come, come, Mrs. Modesty, said _Slop_, not a little +elated with the success of his last thrust,——If you won’t hold the +candle, and look—you may hold it and shut your eyes:—That’s one of your +popish shifts, cried _Susannah:_—’Tis better, said _Slop_, with a nod, +than no shift at all, young woman;——I defy you, Sir, cried _Susannah_, +pulling her shift sleeve below her elbow. + +It was almost impossible for two persons to assist each other in a +surgical case with a more splenetic cordiality. + +_Slop_ snatched up the cataplasm——_Susannah_ snatched up the candle;——A +little this way, said _Slop;_ _Susannah_ looking one way, and rowing +another, instantly set fire to _Slop_’s wig, which being somewhat bushy +and unctuous withal, was burnt out before it was well kindled.——You +impudent whore! cried _Slop_,—(for what is passion, but a wild +beast?)—you impudent whore, cried _Slop_, getting upright, with the +cataplasm in his hand;——I never was the destruction of any body’s nose, +said _Susannah_,—which is more than you can say:——Is it? cried _Slop_, +throwing the cataplasm in her face;——Yes, it is, cried _Susannah_, +returning the compliment with what was left in the pan. + +C H A P. XLVII + +DOCTOR _Slop_ and _Susannah_ filed cross-bills against each other in +the parlour; which done, as the cataplasm had failed, they retired into +the kitchen to prepare a fomentation for me;—and whilst that was doing, +my father determined the point as you will read. + +C H A P. XLVIII + +YOU see ’tis high time, said my father, addressing himself equally to +my uncle _Toby_ and _Yorick_, to take this young creature out of these +women’s hands, and put him into those of a private governor. _Marcus +Antoninus_ provided fourteen governors all at once to superintend his +son _Commodus_’s education,—and in six weeks he cashiered five of +them;—I know very well, continued my father, that _Commodus_’s mother +was in love with a gladiator at the time of her conception, which +accounts for a great many of _Commodus_’s cruelties when he became +emperor;—but still I am of opinion, that those five whom _Antoninus_ +dismissed, did _Commodus_’s temper, in that short time, more hurt than +the other nine were able to rectify all their lives long. + +Now as I consider the person who is to be about my son, as the mirror +in which he is to view himself from morning to night, by which he is to +adjust his looks, his carriage, and perhaps the inmost sentiments of +his heart;—I would have one, _Yorick_, if possible, polished at all +points, fit for my child to look into.——This is very good sense, quoth +my uncle _Toby_ to himself. + +——There is, continued my father, a certain mien and motion of the body +and all its parts, both in acting and speaking, which argues a man +_well within;_ and I am not at all surprised that _Gregory_ of +_Nazianzum_, upon observing the hasty and untoward gestures of +_Julian_, should foretel he would one day become an apostate;——or that +St. _Ambrose_ should turn his _Amanuensis_ out of doors, because of an +indecent motion of his head, which went backwards and forwards like a +flail;——or that _Democritus_ should conceive _Protagoras_ to be a +scholar, from seeing him bind up a faggot, and thrusting, as he did it, +the small twigs inwards.——There are a thousand unnoticed openings, +continued my father, which let a penetrating eye at once into a man’s +soul; and I maintain it, added he, that a man of sense does not lay +down his hat in coming into a room,—or take it up in going out of it, +but something escapes, which discovers him. + +It is for these reasons, continued my father, that the governor I make +choice of shall neither[31] lisp, or squint, or wink, or talk loud, or +look fierce, or foolish;——or bite his lips, or grind his teeth, or +speak through his nose, or pick it, or blow it with his fingers.—— + +He shall neither walk fast,—or slow, or fold his arms,—for that is +laziness;—or hang them down,—for that is folly; or hide them in his +pocket, for that is nonsense.—— + +He shall neither strike, or pinch, or tickle—or bite, or cut his nails, +or hawk, or spit, or snift, or drum with his feet or fingers in +company;——nor (according to _Erasmus_) shall he speak to any one in +making water,—nor shall he point to carrion or excrement.——Now this is +all nonsense again, quoth my uncle _Toby_ to himself.—— + +I will have him, continued my father, cheerful, faceté, jovial; at the +same time, prudent, attentive to business, vigilant, acute, argute, +inventive, quick in resolving doubts and speculative questions;——he +shall be wise, and judicious, and learned:——And why not humble, and +moderate, and gentle-tempered, and good? said _Yorick:_——And why not, +cried my uncle _Toby_, free, and generous, and bountiful, and +brave?——He shall, my dear _Toby_, replied my father, getting up and +shaking him by his hand.—Then, brother _Shandy_, answered my uncle +_Toby_, raising himself off the chair, and laying down his pipe to take +hold of my father’s other hand,—I humbly beg I may recommend poor _Le +Fever_’s son to you;——a tear of joy of the first water sparkled in my +uncle _Toby_’s eye, and another, the fellow to it, in the corporal’s, +as the proposition was made;——you will see why when you read _Le +Fever_’s story:——fool that I was! nor can I recollect (nor perhaps you) +without turning back to the place, what it was that hindered me from +letting the corporal tell it in his own words;—but the occasion is +lost,—I must tell it now in my own. + + [31] Vid. _Pellegrina._ + +C H A P. XLIX + +THE STORY OF LE FEVER + +IT was some time in the summer of that year in which _Dendermond_ was +taken by the allies,—which was about seven years before my father came +into the country,—and about as many, after the time, that my uncle +_Toby_ and _Trim_ had privately decamped from my father’s house in +town, in order to lay some of the finest sieges to some of the finest +fortified cities in _Europe_——when my uncle _Toby_ was one evening +getting his supper, with _Trim_ sitting behind him at a small +sideboard,—I say, sitting—for in consideration of the corporal’s lame +knee (which sometimes gave him exquisite pain)—when my uncle _Toby_ +dined or supped alone, he would never suffer the corporal to stand; and +the poor fellow’s veneration for his master was such, that, with a +proper artillery, my uncle _Toby_ could have taken _Dendermond_ itself, +with less trouble than he was able to gain this point over him; for +many a time when my uncle _Toby_ supposed the corporal’s leg was at +rest, he would look back, and detect him standing behind him with the +most dutiful respect: this bred more little squabbles betwixt them, +than all other causes for five-and-twenty years together—But this is +neither here nor there—why do I mention it?——Ask my pen,—it governs +me,—I govern not it. + +He was one evening sitting thus at his supper, when the landlord of a +little inn in the village came into the parlour, with an empty phial in +his hand, to beg a glass or two of sack; ’Tis for a poor gentleman,—I +think, of the army, said the landlord, who has been taken ill at my +house four days ago, and has never held up his head since, or had a +desire to taste any thing, till just now, that he has a fancy for a +glass of sack and a thin toast,——_I think_, says he, taking his hand +from his forehead, _it would comfort me._—— + +——If I could neither beg, borrow, or buy such a thing—added the +landlord,—I would almost steal it for the poor gentleman, he is so +ill.——I hope in God he will still mend, continued he,—we are all of us +concerned for him. + +Thou art a good-natured soul, I will answer for thee, cried my uncle +_Toby;_ and thou shalt drink the poor gentleman’s health in a glass of +sack thyself,—and take a couple of bottles with my service, and tell +him he is heartily welcome to them, and to a dozen more if they will do +him good. + +Though I am persuaded, said my uncle _Toby_, as the landlord shut the +door, he is a very compassionate fellow—_Trim_,—yet I cannot help +entertaining a high opinion of his guest too; there must be something +more than common in him, that in so short a time should win so much +upon the affections of his host;——And of his whole family, added the +corporal, for they are all concerned for him.——Step after him, said my +uncle _Toby_,—do _Trim_,—and ask if he knows his name. + +——I have quite forgot it truly, said the landlord, coming back into the +parlour with the corporal,—but I can ask his son again:——Has he a son +with him then? said my uncle _Toby._—A boy, replied the landlord, of +about eleven or twelve years of age;—but the poor creature has tasted +almost as little as his father; he does nothing but mourn and lament +for him night and day:——He has not stirred from the bed-side these two +days. + +My uncle _Toby_ laid down his knife and fork, and thrust his plate from +before him, as the landlord gave him the account; and _Trim_, without +being ordered, took away, without saying one word, and in a few minutes +after brought him his pipe and tobacco. + +——Stay in the room a little, said my uncle _Toby._ + +_Trim!_——said my uncle _Toby_, after he lighted his pipe, and smoak’d +about a dozen whiffs.——_Trim_ came in front of his master, and made his +bow;—my uncle _Toby_ smoak’d on, and said no more.——Corporal! said my +uncle _Toby_—the corporal made his bow.——My uncle _Toby_ proceeded no +farther, but finished his pipe. + +_Trim!_ said my uncle _Toby_, I have a project in my head, as it is a +bad night, of wrapping myself up warm in my roquelaure, and paying a +visit to this poor gentleman.——Your honour’s roquelaure, replied the +corporal, has not once been had on, since the night before your honour +received your wound, when we mounted guard in the trenches before the +gate of St. _Nicholas;_—and besides, it is so cold and rainy a night, +that what with the roquelaure, and what with the weather, ’twill be +enough to give your honour your death, and bring on your honour’s +torment in your groin. I fear so, replied my uncle _Toby;_ but I am not +at rest in my mind, _Trim_, since the account the landlord has given +me.——I wish I had not known so much of this affair,—added my uncle +_Toby_,—or that I had known more of it:——How shall we manage it? Leave +it, an’t please your honour, to me, quoth the corporal;——I’ll take my +hat and stick and go to the house and reconnoitre, and act accordingly; +and I will bring your honour a full account in an hour.——Thou shalt go, +_Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, and here’s a shilling for thee to drink +with his servant.——I shall get it all out of him, said the corporal, +shutting the door. + +My uncle _Toby_ filled his second pipe; and had it not been, that he +now and then wandered from the point, with considering whether it was +not full as well to have the curtain of the tennaile a straight line, +as a crooked one,—he might be said to have thought of nothing else but +poor _Le Fever_ and his boy the whole time he smoaked it. + +C H A P. L + +THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED + +IT was not till my uncle _Toby_ had knocked the ashes out of his third +pipe, that corporal _Trim_ returned from the inn, and gave him the +following account. + +I despaired, at first, said the corporal, of being able to bring back +your honour any kind of intelligence concerning the poor sick +lieutenant—Is he in the army, then? said my uncle _Toby_——He is, said +the corporal——And in what regiment? said my uncle _Toby_——I’ll tell +your honour, replied the corporal, every thing straight forwards, as I +learnt it.—Then, _Trim_, I’ll fill another pipe, said my uncle _Toby_, +and not interrupt thee till thou hast done; so sit down at thy ease, +_Trim_, in the window-seat, and begin thy story again. The corporal +made his old bow, which generally spoke as plain as a bow could speak +it—_Your honour is good:_—And having done that, he sat down, as he was +ordered,—and begun the story to my uncle _Toby_ over again in pretty +near the same words. + +I despaired at first, said the corporal, of being able to bring back +any intelligence to your honour, about the lieutenant and his son; for +when I asked where his servant was, from whom I made myself sure of +knowing every thing which was proper to be asked,—That’s a right +distinction, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_—I was answered, an’ please +your honour, that he had no servant with him;——that he had come to the +inn with hired horses, which, upon finding himself unable to proceed +(to join, I suppose, the regiment), he had dismissed the morning after +he came.—If I get better, my dear, said he, as he gave his purse to his +son to pay the man,—we can hire horses from hence.——But alas! the poor +gentleman will never get from hence, said the landlady to me,—for I +heard the death-watch all night long;——and when he dies, the youth, his +son, will certainly die with him; for he is broken- hearted already. + +I was hearing this account, continued the corporal, when the youth came +into the kitchen, to order the thin toast the landlord spoke of;——but I +will do it for my father myself, said the youth.——Pray let my save you +the trouble, young gentleman, said I, taking up a fork for the purpose, +and offering him my chair to sit down upon by the fire, whilst I did +it.——I believe, Sir, said he, very modestly, I can please him best +myself.——I am sure, said I, his honour will not like the toast the +worse for being toasted by an old soldier.——The youth took hold of my +hand, and instantly burst into tears.——Poor youth! said my uncle +_Toby_,—he has been bred up from an infant in the army, and the name of +a soldier, _Trim_, sounded in his ears like the name of a friend;—I +wish I had him here. + +——I never, in the longest march, said the corporal, had so great a mind +to my dinner, as I had to cry with him for company:—What could be the +matter with me, an’ please your honour? Nothing in the world, _Trim_, +said my uncle _Toby_, blowing his nose,—but that thou art a +good-natured fellow. + +When I gave him the toast, continued the corporal, I thought it was +proper to tell him I was captain _Shandy_’s servant, and that your +honour (though a stranger) was extremely concerned for his father;—and +that if there was any thing in your house or cellar——(And thou might’st +have added my purse too, said my uncle _Toby_),——he was heartily +welcome to it:——He made a very low bow (which was meant to your +honour), but no answer—for his heart was full—so he went up stairs with +the toast;—I warrant you, my dear, said I, as I opened the +kitchen-door, your father will be well again.——Mr. _Yorick_’s curate +was smoking a pipe by the kitchen fire,—but said not a word good or bad +to comfort the youth.——I thought it wrong; added the corporal——I think +so too, said my uncle _Toby._ + +When the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast, he felt +himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen, to let me +know, that in about ten minutes he should be glad if I would step up +stairs.——I believe, said the landlord, he is going to say his +prayers,——for there was a book laid upon the chair by his bed-side, and +as I shut the door, I saw his son take up a cushion.—— + +I thought, said the curate, that you gentlemen of the army, Mr. _Trim_, +never said your prayers at all.——I heard the poor gentleman say his +prayers last night, said the landlady, very devoutly, and with my own +ears, or I could not have believed it.——Are you sure of it? replied the +curate.——A soldier, an’ please your reverence, said I, prays as often +(of his own accord) as a parson;——and when he is fighting for his king, +and for his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to +pray to God of any one in the whole world——’Twas well said of thee, +_Trim_, said my uncle _Toby._——But when a soldier, said I, an’ please +your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the +trenches, up to his knees in cold water,—or engaged, said I, for months +together in long and dangerous marches;—harassed, perhaps, in his rear +to-day;—harassing others to-morrow;—detached here;—countermanded +there;—resting this night out upon his arms;—beat up in his shirt the +next;—benumbed in his joints;—perhaps without straw in his tent to +kneel on;—must say his prayers _how_ and _when_ he can.—I believe, said +I,—for I was piqued, quoth the corporal, for the reputation of the +army,—I believe, an’ please your reverence, said I, that when a soldier +gets time to pray,—he prays as heartily as a parson,—though not with +all his fuss and hypocrisy.——Thou shouldst not have said that, _Trim_, +said my uncle _Toby_,—for God only knows who is a hypocrite, and who is +not:——At the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day +of judgment (and not till then)—it will be seen who has done their +duties in this world,—and who has not; and we shall be advanced, +_Trim_, accordingly.——I hope we shall, said _Trim._——It is in the +Scripture, said my uncle _Toby;_ and I will shew it thee to-morrow:—In +the mean time we may depend upon it, _Trim_, for our comfort, said my +uncle _Toby_, that God Almighty is so good and just a governor of the +world, that if we have but done our duties in it,—it will never be +enquired into, whether we have done them in a red coat or a black +one:——I hope not, said the corporal——But go on, _Trim_, said my uncle +_Toby_, with thy story. + +When I went up, continued the corporal, into the lieutenant’s room, +which I did not do till the expiration of the ten minutes,—he was lying +in his bed with his head raised upon his hand, with his elbow upon the +pillow, and a clean white cambrick handkerchief beside it:——The youth +was just stooping down to take up the cushion, upon which I supposed he +had been kneeling,—the book was laid upon the bed,—and, as he rose, in +taking up the cushion with one hand, he reached out his other to take +it away at the same time.——Let it remain there, my dear, said the +lieutenant. + +He did not offer to speak to me, till I had walked up close to his bed- +side:—If you are captain _Shandy_’s servant, said he, you must present +my thanks to your master, with my little boy’s thanks along with them, +for his courtesy to me;—if he was of _Levens_’s—said the lieutenant.—I +told him your honour was—Then, said he, I served three campaigns with +him in _Flanders_, and remember him,—but ’tis most likely, as I had not +the honour of any acquaintance with him, that he knows nothing of +me.——You will tell him, however, that the person his good-nature has +laid under obligations to him, is one _Le Fever_, a lieutenant in +_Angus_’s——but he knows me not,—said he, a second time, +musing;——possibly he may my story—added he—pray tell the captain, I was +the ensign at _Breda_, whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a +musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.——I remember the story, +an’t please your honour, said I, very well.——Do you so? said he, wiping +his eyes with his handkerchief—then well may I.—In saying this, he drew +a little ring out of his bosom, which seemed tied with a black ribband +about his neck, and kiss’d it twice——Here, _Billy_, said he,—the boy +flew across the room to the bed-side,—and falling down upon his knee, +took the ring in his hand, and kissed it too,—then kissed his father, +and sat down upon the bed and wept. + +I wish, said my uncle _Toby_, with a deep sigh,—I wish, _Trim_, I was +asleep. + +Your honour, replied the corporal, is too much concerned;—shall I pour +your honour out a glass of sack to your pipe?——Do, _Trim_, said my +uncle _Toby._ + +I remember, said my uncle _Toby_, sighing again, the story of the +ensign and his wife, with a circumstance his modesty omitted;—and +particularly well that he, as well as she, upon some account or other +(I forget what) was universally pitied by the whole regiment;—but +finish the story thou art upon:—’Tis finished already, said the +corporal,—for I could stay no longer,—so wished his honour a good +night; young _Le Fever_ rose from off the bed, and saw me to the bottom +of the stairs; and as we went down together, told me, they had come +from _Ireland_, and were on their route to join the regiment in +_Flanders._——But alas! said the corporal,—the lieutenant’s last day’s +march is over.—Then what is to become of his poor boy? cried my uncle +_Toby._ + +C H A P. LI + +THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED + +IT was to my uncle _Toby_’s eternal honour,——though I tell it only for +the sake of those, who, when coop’d in betwixt a natural and a positive +law, know not, for their souls, which way in the world to turn +themselves——That notwithstanding my uncle _Toby_ was warmly engaged at +that time in carrying on the siege of _Dendermond_, parallel with the +allies, who pressed theirs on so vigorously, that they scarce allowed +him time to get his dinner——that nevertheless he gave up _Dendermond_, +though he had already made a lodgment upon the counterscarp;—and bent +his whole thoughts towards the private distresses at the inn; and +except that he ordered the garden gate to be bolted up, by which he +might be said to have turned the siege of _Dendermond_ into a +blockade,—he left _Dendermond_ to itself—to be relieved or not by the +_French_ king, as the _French_ king thought good; and only considered +how he himself should relieve the poor lieutenant and his son. + +——That kind BEING, who is a friend to the friendless, shall recompence +thee for this. + +Thou hast left this matter short, said my uncle _Toby_ to the corporal, +as he was putting him to bed,——and I will tell thee in what, +_Trim._——In the first place, when thou madest an offer of my services +to _Le Fever_,——as sickness and travelling are both expensive, and thou +knowest he was but a poor lieutenant, with a son to subsist as well as +himself out of his pay,—that thou didst not make an offer to him of my +purse; because, had he stood in need, thou knowest, _Trim_, he had been +as welcome to it as myself.——Your honour knows, said the corporal, I +had no orders;——True, quoth my uncle _Toby_,—thou didst very right, +_Trim_, as a soldier,—but certainly very wrong as a man. + +In the second place, for which, indeed, thou hast the same excuse, +continued my uncle _Toby_,——when thou offeredst him whatever was in my +house,——thou shouldst have offered him my house too:——A sick brother +officer should have the best quarters, _Trim_, and if we had him with +us,—we could tend and look to him:——Thou art an excellent nurse +thyself, _Trim_,—and what with thy care of him, and the old woman’s and +his boy’s, and mine together, we might recruit him again at once, and +set him upon his legs.—— + +——In a fortnight or three weeks, added my uncle _Toby_, smiling,——he +might march.——He will never march; an’ please your honour, in this +world, said the corporal:——He will march; said my uncle _Toby_, rising +up from the side of the bed, with one shoe off:——An’ please your +honour, said the corporal, he will never march but to his grave:——He +shall march, cried my uncle _Toby_, marching the foot which had a shoe +on, though without advancing an inch,—he shall march to his +regiment.——He cannot stand it, said the corporal;——He shall be +supported, said my uncle _Toby;_——He’ll drop at last, said the +corporal, and what will become of his boy?——He shall not drop, said my +uncle _Toby_, firmly.——A-well-o’day,—do what we can for him, said +_Trim_, maintaining his point,—the poor soul will die:——He shall not +die, by G—, cried my uncle _Toby._ + +—The ACCUSING SPIRIT, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, +blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL, as he wrote it down, +dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever. + +C H A P. LII + +——MY uncle _Toby_ went to his bureau,—put his purse into his breeches +pocket, and having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for +a physician,—he went to bed, and fell asleep. + +C H A P. LIII + +THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED + +THE sun looked bright the morning after, to every eye in the village +but _Le Fever_’s and his afflicted son’s; the hand of death pressed +heavy upon his eye-lids,——and hardly could the wheel at the cistern +turn round its circle,—when my uncle _Toby_, who had rose up an hour +before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant’s room, and without +preface or apology, sat himself down upon the chair by the bed-side, +and, independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the +manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked +him how he did,—how he had rested in the night,—what was his +complaint,—where was his pain,—and what he could do to help him:——and +without giving him time to answer any one of the enquiries, went on, +and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the +corporal the night before for him.—— + +——You shall go home directly, _Le Fever_, said my uncle _Toby_, to my +house,—and we’ll send for a doctor to see what’s the matter,—and we’ll +have an apothecary,—and the corporal shall be your nurse;——and I’ll be +your servant, _Le Fever._ + +There was a frankness in my uncle _Toby_,—not the _effect_ of +familiarity,—but the cause of it,—which let you at once into his soul, +and shewed you the goodness of his nature; to this there was something +in his looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, which eternally +beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him, so that +before my uncle _Toby_ had half finished the kind offers he was making +to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, +and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it +towards him.——The blood and spirits of _Le Fever_, which were waxing +cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, +the heart—rallied back,—the film forsook his eyes for a moment,—he +looked up wishfully in my uncle _Toby_’s face,—then cast a look upon +his boy,——and that _ligament_, fine as it was,—was never broken.—— + +Nature instantly ebb’d again,—the film returned to its place,——the +pulse fluttered——stopp’d——went on——throbb’d———stopp’d +again——moved——stopp’d——shall I go on?——No. + +C H A P. LIV + +I AM so impatient to return to my own story, that what remains of young +_Le Fever_’s, that is, from this turn of his fortune, to the time my +uncle _Toby_ recommended him for my preceptor, shall be told in a very +few words in the next chapter.—All that is necessary to be added to +this chapter is as follows.— + +That my uncle _Toby_, with young _Le Fever_ in his hand, attended the +poor lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his grave. + +That the governor of _Dendermond_ paid his obsequies all military +honours,—and that _Yorick_, not to be behind-hand—paid him all +ecclesiastic—for he buried him in his chancel:—And it appears likewise, +he preached a funeral sermon over him——I say it _appears_,—for it was +_Yorick_’s custom, which I suppose a general one with those of his +profession, on the first leaf of every sermon which he composed, to +chronicle down the time, the place, and the occasion of its being +preached: to this, he was ever wont to add some short comment or +stricture upon the sermon itself, seldom, indeed, much to its +credit:—For instance, _This sermon upon the Jewish dispensation—I don’t +like it at all;—Though I own there is a world of_ WATER-LANDISH +_knowledge in it;—but ’tis all tritical, and most tritically put +together.—This is but a flimsy kind of a composition; what was in my +head when I made it?_ + +——N.B. _The excellency of this text is, that it will suit any +sermon,—and of this sermon,——that it will suit any text.——_ + +——_For this sermon I shall be hanged,—for I have stolen the greatest +part of it. Doctor_ Paidagunes _found me out. => Set a thief to catch a +thief.——_ + +On the back of half a dozen I find written, So, so, and no more——and +upon a couple _Moderato;_ by which, as far as one may gather from +_Altieri’s Italian_ dictionary,—but mostly from the authority of a +piece of green whipcord, which seemed to have been the unravelling of +_Yorick_’s whip-lash, with which he has left us the two sermons marked +_Moderato_, and the half dozen of _So, so_, tied fast together in one +bundle by themselves,—one may safely suppose he meant pretty near the +same thing. + +There is but one difficulty in the way of this conjecture, which is +this, that the _moderato_’s are five times better than the _so, +so_’s;—show ten times more knowledge of the human heart;—have seventy +times more wit and spirit in them;—(and, to rise properly in my +climax)—discovered a thousand times more genius;—and to crown all, are +infinitely more entertaining than those tied up with them:—for which +reason, whene’er _Yorick’s dramatic_ sermons are offered to the world, +though I shall admit but one out of the whole number of the _so, so_’s, +I shall, nevertheless, adventure to print the two _moderato_’s without +any sort of scruple. + +What _Yorick_ could mean by the words _lentamente,—tenutè,—grave_,—and +sometimes _adagio_,—as applied to _theological_ compositions, and with +which he has characterised some of these sermons, I dare not venture to +guess.——I am more puzzled still upon finding _a l’octava alta!_ upon +one;——_Con strepito_ upon the back of another;——_Scicilliana_ upon a +third;——_Alla capella_ upon a fourth;——_Con l’arco_ upon this;——_Senza +l’arco_ upon that.——All I know is, that they are musical terms, and +have a meaning;——and as he was a musical man, I will make no doubt, but +that by some quaint application of such metaphors to the compositions +in hand, they impressed very distinct ideas of their several characters +upon his fancy,—whatever they may do upon that of others. + +Amongst these, there is that particular sermon which has unaccountably +led me into this digression——The funeral sermon upon poor _Le Fever_, +wrote out very fairly, as if from a hasty copy.—I take notice of it the +more, because it seems to have been his favourite composition——It is +upon mortality; and is tied length-ways and cross-ways with a yarn +thrum, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half-sheet of dirty +blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general +review, which to this day smells horribly of horse drugs.——Whether +these marks of humiliation were designed,—I something doubt;——because +at the end of the sermon (and not at the beginning of it)—very +different from his way of treating the rest, he had wrote—— + +Bravo! + +——Though not very offensively,——for it is at two inches, at least, and +a half’s distance from, and below the concluding line of the sermon, at +the very extremity of the page, and in that right hand corner of it, +which, you know, is generally covered with your thumb; and, to do it +justice, it is wrote besides with a crow’s quill so faintly in a small +_Italian_ hand, as scarce to solicit the eye towards the place, whether +your thumb is there or not,—so that from the _manner of it_, it stands +half excused; and being wrote moreover with very pale ink, diluted +almost to nothing,—’tis more like a _ritratto_ of the shadow of vanity, +than of VANITY herself—of the two; resembling rather a faint thought of +transient applause, secretly stirring up in the heart of the composer; +than a gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded upon the world. + +With all these extenuations, I am aware, that in publishing this, I do +no service to _Yorick_’s character as a modest man;—but all men have +their failings! and what lessens this still farther, and almost wipes +it away, is this; that the word was struck through sometime afterwards +(as appears from a different tint of the ink) with a line quite across +it in this manner, BRAVO——as if he had retracted, or was ashamed of the +opinion he had once entertained of it. + +These short characters of his sermons were always written, excepting in +this one instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, which served as a +cover to it; and usually upon the inside of it, which was turned +towards the text;—but at the end of his discourse, where, perhaps, he +had five or six pages, and sometimes, perhaps, a whole score to turn +himself in,—he took a large circuit, and, indeed, a much more +mettlesome one;—as if he had snatched the occasion of unlacing himself +with a few more frolicksome strokes at vice, than the straitness of the +pulpit allowed.—These, though hussar-like, they skirmish lightly and +out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side of virtue;—tell me +then, Mynheer Vander Blonederdondergewdenstronke, why they should not +be printed together? + +C H A P. lV + +When my uncle _Toby_ had turned every thing into money, and settled all +accounts betwixt the agent of the regiment and _Le Fever_, and betwixt +_Le Fever_ and all mankind,——there remained nothing more in my uncle +_Toby_’s hands, than an old regimental coat and a sword; so that my +uncle _Toby_ found little or no opposition from the world in taking +administration. The coat my uncle _Toby_ gave the corporal;——Wear it, +_Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, as long as it will hold together, for the +sake of the poor lieutenant——And this,——said my uncle _Toby_, taking up +the sword in his hand, and drawing it out of the scabbard as he +spoke——and this, _Le Fever_, I’ll save for thee,—’tis all the fortune, +continued my uncle _Toby_, hanging it up upon a crook, and pointing to +it,—’tis all the fortune, my dear _Le Fever_, which God has left thee; +but if he has given thee a heart to fight thy way with it in the +world,—and thou doest it like a man of honour,—’tis enough for us. + +As soon as my uncle _Toby_ had laid a foundation, and taught him to +inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to a public school, +where, excepting _Whitsontide_ and _Christmas_, at which times the +corporal was punctually dispatched for him,—he remained to the spring +of the year, seventeen; when the stories of the emperor’s sending his +army into _Hungary_ against the _Turks_, kindling a spark of fire in +his bosom, he left his _Greek_ and _Latin_ without leave, and throwing +himself upon his knees before my uncle _Toby_, begged his father’s +sword, and my uncle _Toby_’s leave along with it, to go and try his +fortune under _Eugene._—Twice did my uncle _Toby_ forget his wound and +cry out, _Le Fever!_ I will go with thee, and thou shalt fight beside +me——And twice he laid his hand upon his groin, and hung down his head +in sorrow and disconsolation.—— + +My uncle _Toby_ took down the sword from the crook, where it had hung +untouched ever since the lieutenant’s death, and delivered it to the +corporal to brighten up;——and having detained _Le Fever_ a single +fortnight to equip him, and contract for his passage to _Leghorn_,—he +put the sword into his hand.——If thou art brave, _Le Fever_, said my +uncle _Toby_, this will not fail thee,——but Fortune, said he (musing a +little),——Fortune may——And if she does,—added my uncle _Toby_, +embracing him, come back again to me, _Le Fever_, and we will shape +thee another course. + +The greatest injury could not have oppressed the heart of _Le Fever_ +more than my uncle _Toby_’s paternal kindness;——he parted from my uncle +_Toby_, as the best of sons from the best of fathers——both dropped +tears——and as my uncle _Toby_ gave him his last kiss, he slipped sixty +guineas, tied up in an old purse of his father’s, in which was his +mother’s ring, into his hand,—and bid God bless him. + +C H A P. LVI + +LE FEVER got up to the Imperial army just time enough to try what metal +his sword was made of, at the defeat of the _Turks_ before _Belgrade;_ +but a series of unmerited mischances had pursued him from that moment, +and trod close upon his heels for four years together after; he had +withstood these buffetings to the last, till sickness overtook him at +_Marseilles_, from whence he wrote my uncle _Toby_ word, he had lost +his time, his services, his health, and, in short, every thing but his +sword;——and was waiting for the first ship to return back to him. + +As this letter came to hand about six weeks before _Susannah_’s +accident, _Le Fever_ was hourly expected; and was uppermost in my uncle +_Toby_’s mind all the time my father was giving him and _Yorick_ a +description of what kind of a person he would chuse for a preceptor to +me: but as my uncle _Toby_ thought my father at first somewhat fanciful +in the accomplishments he required, he forbore mentioning _Le Fever_’s +name,——till the character, by _Yorick_’s inter-position, ending +unexpectedly, in one, who should be gentle-tempered, and generous, and +good, it impressed the image of _Le Fever_, and his interest, upon my +uncle _Toby_ so forcibly, he rose instantly off his chair; and laying +down his pipe, in order to take hold of both my father’s hands——I beg, +brother _Shandy_, said my uncle _Toby_, I may recommend poor _Le +Fever_’s son to you—I beseech you do, added _Yorick_——He has a good +heart, said my uncle _Toby_——And a brave one too, an’ please your +honour, said the corporal. + +——The best hearts, _Trim_, are ever the bravest, replied my uncle +_Toby._——And the greatest cowards, an’ please your honour, in our +regiment, were the greatest rascals in it.—There was serjeant _Kumber_, +and ensign—— + +——We’ll talk of them, said my father, another time. + +C H A P. LVII + +WHAT a jovial and a merry world would this be, may it please your +worships, but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, +want, grief, discontent, melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and +lies! + +Doctor _Slop_, like a son of a w——, as my father called him for it,—to +exalt himself,—debased me to death,—and made ten thousand times more of +_Susannah_’s accident, than there was any grounds for; so that in a +week’s time, or less, it was in every body’s mouth, _That poor Master +Shandy_ * * * * * * * * * * * * entirely.—And FAME, who loves to double +every thing,—in three days more, had sworn, positively she saw it,—and +all the world, as usual, gave credit to her evidence——“That the nursery +window had not only * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * +;—but that * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ’s also.” + +Could the world have been sued like a BODY-CORPORATE,—my father had +brought an action upon the case, and trounced it sufficiently; but to +fall foul of individuals about it——as every soul who had mentioned the +affair, did it with the greatest pity imaginable;——’twas like flying in +the very face of his best friends:——And yet to acquiesce under the +report, in silence—was to acknowledge it openly,—at least in the +opinion of one half of the world; and to make a bustle again, in +contradicting it,—was to confirm it as strongly in the opinion of the +other half.—— + +——Was ever poor devil of a country gentleman so hampered? said my +father. + +I would shew him publickly, said my uncle _Toby_, at the market cross. + +——’Twill have no effect, said my father. + +C H A P. LVIII + +——I’ll put him, however, into breeches, said my father,—let the world +say what it will. + +C H A P. LIX + +THERE are a thousand resolutions, Sir, both in church and state, as +well as in matters, Madam, of a more private concern;—which, though +they have carried all the appearance in the world of being taken, and +entered upon in a hasty, hare-brained, and unadvised manner, were, +notwithstanding this, (and could you or I have got into the cabinet, or +stood behind the curtain, we should have found it was so) weighed, +poized, and perpended——argued upon——canvassed through——entered into, +and examined on all sides with so much coolness, that the GODDESS OF +COOLNESS herself (I do not take upon me to prove her existence) could +neither have wished it, or done it better. + +Of the number of these was my father’s resolution of putting me into +breeches; which, though determined at once,—in a kind of huff, and a +defiance of all mankind, had, nevertheless, been _pro’d_ and _conn’d_, +and judicially talked over betwixt him and my mother about a month +before, in two several _beds of justice_, which my father had held for +that purpose. I shall explain the nature of these beds of justice in my +next chapter; and in the chapter following that, you shall step with +me, Madam, behind the curtain, only to hear in what kind of manner my +father and my mother debated between themselves, this affair of the +breeches,—from which you may form an idea, how they debated all lesser +matters. + +C H A P. LX + +THE ancient _Goths_ of _Germany_, who (the learned _Cluverius_ is +positive) were first seated in the country between the _Vistula_ and +the _Oder_, and who afterwards incorporated the _Herculi_, the +_Bugians_, and some other _Vandallick_ clans to ’em—had all of them a +wise custom of debating every thing of importance to their state, +twice, that is,—once drunk, and once sober:——Drunk—that their councils +might not want vigour;——and sober—that they might not want discretion. + +Now my father being entirely a water-drinker,—was a long time gravelled +almost to death, in turning this as much to his advantage, as he did +every other thing which the ancients did or said; and it was not till +the seventh year of his marriage, after a thousand fruitless +experiments and devices, that he hit upon an expedient which answered +the purpose;——and that was, when any difficult and momentous point was +to be settled in the family, which required great sobriety, and great +spirit too, in its determination,——he fixed and set apart the first +_Sunday_ night in the month, and the _Saturday_ night which immediately +preceded it, to argue it over, in bed with my mother: By which +contrivance, if you consider, Sir, with yourself, * * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * +* * + +These my father, humorously enough, called his _beds of justice;_——for +from the two different counsels taken in these two different humours, a +middle one was generally found out which touched the point of wisdom as +well, as if he had got drunk and sober a hundred times. + +I must not be made a secret of to the world, that this answers full as +well in literary discussions, as either in military or conjugal; but it +is not every author that can try the experiment as the _Goths_ and +_Vandals_ did it——or, if he can, may it be always for his body’s +health; and to do it, as my father did it,—am I sure it would be always +for his soul’s. + +My way is this:—— + +In all nice and ticklish discussions,—(of which, heaven knows, there +are but too many in my book)—where I find I cannot take a step without +the danger of having either their worships or their reverences upon my +back——I write one-half _full_,—and t’other _fasting;_——or write it all +full,—and correct it fasting;——or write it fasting,—and correct it +full, for they all come to the same thing:——So that with a less +variation from my father’s plan, than my father’s from the _Gothick_—I +feel myself upon a par with him in his first bed of justice,—and no way +inferior to him in his second.——These different and almost +irreconcileable effects, flow uniformly from the wise and wonderful +mechanism of nature,—of which,—be her’s the honour.——All that we can +do, is to turn and work the machine to the improvement and better +manufactory of the arts and sciences.—— + +Now, when I write full,—I write as if I was never to write fasting +again as long as I live;——that is, I write free from the cares as well +as the terrors of the world.——I count not the number of my scars,—nor +does my fancy go forth into dark entries and bye-corners to ante-date +my stabs.——In a word, my pen takes its course; and I write on as much +from the fulness of my heart, as my stomach.—— + +But when, an’ please your honours, I indite fasting, ’tis a different +history.——I pay the world all possible attention and respect,—and have +as great a share (whilst it lasts) of that under strapping virtue of +discretion as the best of you.——So that betwixt both, I write a +careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good-humoured _Shandean_ book, +which will do all your hearts good—— + +——And all your heads too,—provided you understand it. + +C H A P. LXI + +WE should begin, said my father, turning himself half round in bed, and +shifting his pillow a little towards my mother’s, as he opened the +debate——We should begin to think, Mrs. _Shandy_, of putting this boy +into breeches.—— + +We should so,—said my mother.——We defer it, my dear, quoth my father, +shamefully.—— + +I think we do, Mr. _Shandy_,—said my mother. + +——Not but the child looks extremely well, said my father, in his vests +and tunicks.—— + +——He does look very well in them,—replied my mother.—— + +——And for that reason it would be almost a sin, added my father, to +take him out of ’em.—— + +——It would so,—said my mother:——But indeed he is growing a very tall +lad,—rejoined my father. + +——He is very tall for his age, indeed,—said my mother.—— + +——I can not (making two syllables of it) imagine, quoth my father, who +the deuce he takes after.—— + +I cannot conceive, for my life, said my mother.—— + +Humph!——said my father. + +(The dialogue ceased for a moment.) + +——(I am very short myself,—continued my father gravely. + +You are very short, Mr _Shandy_,—said my mother. + +Humph! quoth my father to himself, a second time: in muttering which, +he plucked his pillow a little further from my mother’s,—and turning +about again, there was an end of the debate for three minutes and a +half. + +——When he gets these breeches made, cried my father in a higher tone, +he’ll look like a beast in ’em. + +He will be very awkward in them at first, replied my mother. + +——And ’twill be lucky, if that’s the worst on’t, added my father. + +It will be very lucky, answered my mother. + +I suppose, replied my father,—making some pause first,—he’ll be exactly +like other people’s children.—— + +Exactly, said my mother.—— + +——Though I shall be sorry for that, added my father: and so the debate +stopp’d again. + +——They should be of leather, said my father, turning him about again.— + +They will last him, said my mother, the longest. + +But he can have no linings to ’em, replied my father.—— + +He cannot, said my mother. + +’Twere better to have them of fustian, quoth my father. + +Nothing can be better, quoth my mother.—— + +——Except dimity,—replied my father:——’Tis best of all,—replied my +mother. + +——One must not give him his death, however,—interrupted my father. + +By no means, said my mother:——and so the dialogue stood still again. + +I am resolved, however, quoth my father, breaking silence the fourth +time, he shall have no pockets in them.—— + +——There is no occasion for any, said my mother.—— + +I mean in his coat and waistcoat,—cried my father. + +——I mean so too,—replied my mother. + +——Though if he gets a gig or top——Poor souls! it is a crown and a +sceptre to them,—they should have where to secure it.—— + +Order it as you please, Mr. _Shandy_, replied my mother.—— + +——But don’t you think it right? added my father, pressing the point +home to her. + +Perfectly, said my mother, if it pleases you, Mr. _Shandy._—— + +——There’s for you! cried my father, losing his temper——Pleases me!——You +never will distinguish, Mrs. _Shandy_, nor shall I ever teach you to do +it, betwixt a point of pleasure and a point of convenience.——This was +on the _Sunday_ night:——and further this chapter sayeth not. + +C H A P. LXII + +AFTER my father had debated the affair of the breeches with my +mother,—he consulted _Albertus Rubenius_ upon it; and _Albertus +Rubenius_ used my father ten times worse in the consultation (if +possible) than even my father had used my mother: For as _Rubenius_ had +wrote a quarto _express, De re Vestiaria Veterum_,—it was _Rubenius_’s +business to have given my father some lights.—On the contrary, my +father might as well have thought of extracting the seven cardinal +virtues out of a long beard,—as of extracting a single word out of +_Rubenius_ upon the subject. + +Upon every other article of ancient dress, _Rubenius_ was very +communicative to my father;—gave him a full satisfactory account of + +The Toga, or loose gown. + +The Chlamys. + +The Ephod. + +The Tunica, or Jacket. + +The Synthesis. + +The Pænula. + +The Lacema, with its Cucullus. + +The Paludamentum. + +The Prætexta. + +The Sagum, or soldier’s jerkin. + +The Trabea: of which, according to _Suetonius_, there was three kinds.— + +——But what are all these to the breeches? said my father. + +_Rubenius_ threw him down upon the counter all kinds of shoes which had +been in fashion with the _Romans._—— + +There was, + +The open shoe. + +The close shoe. + +The slip shoe. + +The wooden shoe. + +The soc. + +The buskin. + +And The military shoe with hobnails in it, which _Juvenal_ takes notice +of. + +There were, The clogs. + +The pattins. + +The pantoufles. + +The brogues. + +The sandals, with latchets to them. + +There was, The felt shoe. + +The linen shoe. + +The laced shoe. + +The braided shoe. + +The calceus incisus. + +And The calceus rostratus. + +_Rubenius_ shewed my father how well they all fitted,—in what manner +they laced on,—with what points, straps, thongs, latchets, ribbands, +jaggs, and ends.—— + +——But I want to be informed about the breeches, said my father. + +_Albertus Rubenius_ informed my father that the _Romans_ manufactured +stuffs of various fabrics,——some plain,—some striped,—others diapered +throughout the whole contexture of the wool, with silk and gold——That +linen did not begin to be in common use till towards the declension of +the empire, when the _Egyptians_ coming to settle amongst them, brought +it into vogue. + +——That persons of quality and fortune distinguished themselves by the +fineness and whiteness of their clothes; which colour (next to purple, +which was appropriated to the great offices) they most affected, and +wore on their birth-days and public rejoicings.——That it appeared from +the best historians of those times, that they frequently sent their +clothes to the fuller, to be clean’d and whitened:——but that the +inferior people, to avoid that expence, generally wore brown clothes, +and of a something coarser texture,—till towards the beginning of +_Augustus_’s reign, when the slave dressed like his master, and almost +every distinction of habiliment was lost, but the _Latus Clavus._ + +And what was the _Latus Clavus?_ said my father. + +_Rubenius_ told him, that the point was still litigating amongst the +learned:——That _Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius Ticinensis, Bayfius Budæus, +Salmasius, Lipsius, Lazius, Isaac Casaubon_, and _Joseph Scaliger_, all +differed from each other,—and he from them: That some took it to be the +button,—some the coat itself,—others only the colour of it;—That the +great _Bayfuis_ in his Wardrobe of the Ancients, chap. 12—honestly +said, he knew not what it was,—whether a tibula,—a stud,—a button,—a +loop,—a buckle,—or clasps and keepers.—— + +——My father lost the horse, but not the saddle——They are _hooks and +eyes_, said my father——and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches +to be made. + +C H A P. LXIII + +WE are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.—— + +——Leave we then the breeches in the taylor’s hands, with my father +standing over him with his cane, reading him as he sat at work a +lecture upon the _latus clavus_, and pointing to the precise part of +the waistband, where he was determined to have it sewed on.—— + +Leave we my mother—(truest of all the _Poco-curante_’s of her +sex!)—careless about it, as about every thing else in the world which +concerned her;—that is,—indifferent whether it was done this way or +that,——provided it was but done at all.—— + +Leave we _Slop_ likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours.—— + +Leave we poor _Le Fever_ to recover, and get home from _Marseilles_ as +he can.——And last of all,—because the hardest of all—— + +Let us leave, if possible, _myself:_——But ’tis impossible,—I must go +along with you to the end of the work. + +C H A P. LXIV + +IF the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of +ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle _Toby_’s kitchen-garden, and +which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours,—the fault is not +in me,—but in his imagination;—for I am sure I gave him so minute a +description, I was almost ashamed of it. + +When FATE was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great +transactions of future times,—and recollected for what purposes this +little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been +destined,—she gave a nod to NATURE,—’twas enough—Nature threw half a +spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so _much_ clay +in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings,—and so _little_ +of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much +glory, nasty in foul weather. + +My uncle _Toby_ came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans +along with him, of almost every fortified town in _Italy_ and +_Flanders;_ so let the duke of _Marlborough_, or the allies, have set +down before what town they pleased, my uncle _Toby_ was prepared for +them. + +His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as soon as +ever a town was invested—(but sooner when the design was known) to take +the plan of it (let it be what town it would), and enlarge it upon a +scale to the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of +which, by means of a large role of packthread, and a number of small +piquets driven into the ground, at the several angles and redans, he +transferred the lines from his paper; then taking the profile of the +place, with its works, to determine the depths and slopes of the +ditches,—the talus of the glacis, and the precise height of the several +banquets, parapets, &c.—he set the corporal to work——and sweetly went +it on:——The nature of the soil,—the nature of the work itself,—and +above all, the good-nature of my uncle _Toby_ sitting by from morning +to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past- done +deeds,—left LABOUR little else but the ceremony of the name. + +When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper +posture of defence,—it was invested,—and my uncle _Toby_ and the +corporal began to run their first parallel.—I beg I may not be +interrupted in my story, by being told, _That the first parallel should +be at least three hundred toises distant from the main body of the +place,—and that I have not left a single inch for it;_——for my uncle +_Toby_ took the liberty of incroaching upon his kitchen-garden, for the +sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green, and for that reason +generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt two rows of his +cabbages and his cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of +which will be considered at large in the history of my uncle _Toby_’s +and the corporal’s campaigns, of which, this I’m now writing is but a +sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three pages +(but there is no guessing)——The campaigns themselves will take up as +many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a +weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to +rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work——surely +they had better be printed apart,——we’ll consider the affair——so take +the following sketch of them in the mean time. + +C H A P. LXV + +WHEN the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle _Toby_ and the +corporal began to run their first parallel——not at random, or any +how——but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run +theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my +uncle _Toby_ received from the daily papers,—they went on, during the +whole siege, step by step with the allies. + +When the duke of _Marlborough_ made a lodgment,——my uncle _Toby_ made a +lodgment too.——And when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a +defence ruined,—the corporal took his mattock and did as much,—and so +on;——gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works one +after another, till the town fell into their hands. + +To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,—there could not +have been a greater sight in world, than on a post morning, in which a +practicable breach had been made by the duke of _Marlborough_, in the +main body of the place,—to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and +observed the spirit with which my uncle _Toby_, with _Trim_ behind him, +sallied forth;——the one with the _Gazette_ in his hand,—the other with +a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents.——What an honest +triumph in my uncle _Toby_’s looks as he marched up to the ramparts! +What intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the +corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at +work, lest, peradventure, he should make the breach an inch too +wide,—or leave it an inch too narrow.——But when the _chamade_ was beat, +and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours +in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts—Heaven! Earth! Sea!——but +what avails apostrophes?——with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never +compounded so intoxicating a draught. + +In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to +it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a +week or ten days together, which detained the _Flanders_ mail, and kept +them so long in torture,—but still ’twas the torture of the happy——In +this track, I say, did my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ move for many years, +every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of +either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk +of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs +of delight in carrying them on. + +The first year’s campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the +plain and simple method I’ve related. + +In the second year, in which my uncle _Toby_ took _Liege_ and +_Ruremond_, he thought he might afford the expence of four handsome +draw-bridges; of two of which I have given an exact description in the +former part of my work. + +At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with +port-cullises:——These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as +the better thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle +_Toby_, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at +_Christmas_, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at +the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of +the glacis, there was left a little kind of an esplanade for him and +the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon. + +——The sentry-box was in case of rain. + +All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which +enabled my uncle _Toby_ to take the field with great splendour. + +My father would often say to _Yorick_, that if any mortal in the whole +universe had done such a thing except his brother _Toby_, it would have +been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon +the parade and prancing manner in which _Lewis_ XIV. from the beginning +of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field——But +’tis not my brother _Toby_’s nature, kind soul! my father would add, to +insult any one. + +——But let us go on. + +C H A P. LXVI + +I MUST observe, that although in the first year’s campaign, the word +town is often mentioned,—yet there was no town at that time within the +polygon; that addition was not made till the summer following the +spring in which the bridges and sentry-box were painted, which was the +third year of my uncle _Toby_’s campaigns,—when upon his taking +_Amberg, Bonn_, and _Rhinberg_, and _Huy_ and _Limbourg_, one after +another, a thought came into the corporal’s head, that to talk of +taking so many towns, _without one_ TOWN _to shew for it_,—was a very +nonsensical way of going to work, and so proposed to my uncle _Toby_, +that they should have a little model of a town built for them,—to be +run up together of slit deals, and then painted, and clapped within the +interior polygon to serve for all. + +My uncle _Toby_ felt the good of the project instantly, and instantly +agreed to it, but with the addition of two singular improvements, of +which he was almost as proud as if he had been the original inventor of +the project itself. + +The one was, to have the town built exactly in the style of those of +which it was most likely to be the representative:——with grated +windows, and the gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. +&c.—as those in _Ghent_ and _Bruges_, and the rest of the towns in +_Brabant_ and _Flanders._ + +The other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the corporal +proposed, but to have every house independent, to hook on, or off, so +as to form into the plan of whatever town they pleased. This was put +directly into hand, and many and many a look of mutual congratulation +was exchanged between my uncle _Toby_ and the corporal, as the +carpenter did the work. + +——It answered prodigiously the next summer——the town was a perfect +_Proteus_——It was _Landen_, and _Trerebach_, and _Santvliet_, and +_Drusen_, and _Hagenau_,—and then it was _Ostend_ and _Menin_, and +_Aeth_ and _Dendermond._ + +——Surely never did any TOWN act so many parts, since _Sodom_ and +_Gomorrah_, as my uncle _Toby_’s town did. + +In the fourth year, my uncle _Toby_ thinking a town looked foolishly +without a church, added a very fine one with a steeple.——_Trim_ was for +having bells in it;——my uncle _Toby_ said, the metal had better be cast +into cannon. + +This led the way the next campaign for half a dozen brass field-pieces, +to be planted three and three on each side of my uncle _Toby_’s +sentry-box; and in a short time, these led the way for a train of +somewhat larger,—and so on—(as must always be the case in +hobby-horsical affairs) from pieces of half an inch bore, till it came +at last to my father’s jack boots. + +The next year, which was that in which _Lisle_ was besieged, and at the +close of which both _Ghent_ and _Bruges_ fell into our hands,—my uncle +_Toby_ was sadly put to it for _proper_ ammunition;——I say proper +ammunition——because his great artillery would not bear powder; and +’twas well for the _Shandy_ family they would not——For so full were the +papers, from the beginning to the end of the siege, of the incessant +firings kept up by the besiegers,——and so heated was my uncle _Toby_’s +imagination with the accounts of them, that he had infallibly shot away +all his estate. + +SOMETHING therefore was wanting as a _succedaneum_, especially in one +or two of the more violent paroxysms of the siege, to keep up something +like a continual firing in the imagination,——and this something, the +corporal, whose principal strength lay in invention, supplied by an +entire new system of battering of his own,—without which, this had been +objected to by military critics, to the end of the world, as one of the +great _desiderata_ of my uncle _Toby_’s apparatus. + +This will not be explained the worse, for setting off, as I generally +do, at a little distance from the subject. + +C H A P. LXVII + +WITH two or three other trinkets, small in themselves, but of great +regard, which poor _Tom_, the corporal’s unfortunate brother, had sent +him over, with the account of his marriage with the _Jew_’s +widow——there was + +A _Montero_-cap and two _Turkish_ tobacco-pipes. + +The _Montero_-cap I shall describe by and bye.—The _Turkish_ +tobacco-pipes had nothing particular in them, they were fitted up and +ornamented as usual, with flexible tubes of _Morocco_ leather and gold +wire, and mounted at their ends, the one of them with ivory,—the other +with black ebony, tipp’d with silver. + +My father, who saw all things in lights different from the rest of the +world, would say to the corporal, that he ought to look upon these two +presents more as tokens of his brother’s nicety, than his +affection.——Tom did not care, _Trim_, he would say, to put on the cap, +or to smoke in the tobacco-pipe of a _Jew._——God bless your honour, the +corporal would say (giving a strong reason to the contrary)—how can +that be? + +The Montero-cap was scarlet, of a superfine _Spanish_ cloth, dyed in +grain, and mounted all round with fur, except about four inches in the +front, which was faced with a light blue, slightly embroidered,—and +seemed to have been the property of a _Portuguese_ quarter-master, not +of foot, but of horse, as the word denotes. + +The corporal was not a little proud of it, as well for its own sake, as +the sake of the giver, so seldom or never put it on but upon GALA-days; +and yet never was a Montero-cap put to so many uses; for in all +controverted points, whether military or culinary, provided the +corporal was sure he was in the right,—it was either his _oath_,—his +_wager_,—or his _gift._ + +——’Twas his gift in the present case. + +I’ll be bound, said the corporal, speaking to himself, to give away my +Montero-cap to the first beggar who comes to the door, if I do not +manage this matter to his honour’s satisfaction. + +The completion was no further off, than the very next morning; which +was that of the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the _Lower Deule_, to +the right, and the gate St. _Andrew_,—and on the left, between St. +_Magdalen_’s and the river. + +As this was the most memorable attack in the whole war,—the most +gallant and obstinate on both sides,—and I must add the most bloody +too, for it cost the allies themselves that morning above eleven +hundred men,—my uncle _Toby_ prepared himself for it with a more than +ordinary solemnity. + +The eve which preceded, as my uncle _Toby_ went to bed, he ordered his +ramallie wig, which had laid inside out for many years in the corner of +an old campaigning trunk, which stood by his bedside, to be taken out +and laid upon the lid of it, ready for the morning;—and the very first +thing he did in his shirt, when he had stepped out of bed, my uncle +_Toby_, after he had turned the rough side outwards,—put it on:——This +done, he proceeded next to his breeches, and having buttoned the +waist-band, he forthwith buckled on his sword-belt, and had got his +sword half way in,—when he considered he should want shaving, and that +it would be very inconvenient doing it with his sword on,—so took it +off:——In essaying to put on his regimental coat and waistcoat, my uncle +_Toby_ found the same objection in his wig,—so that went off too:—So +that what with one thing and what with another, as always falls out +when a man is in the most haste,—’twas ten o’clock, which was half an +hour later than his usual time, before my uncle _Toby_ sallied out. + +C H A P. LXVIII + +MY uncle _Toby_ had scarce turned the corner of his yew hedge, which +separated his kitchen-garden from his bowling-green, when he perceived +the corporal had begun the attack without him.—— + +Let me stop and give you a picture of the corporal’s apparatus; and of +the corporal himself in the height of his attack, just as it struck my +uncle _Toby_, as he turned towards the sentry-box, where the corporal +was at work,——for in nature there is not such another,——nor can any +combination of all that is grotesque and whimsical in her works produce +its equal. + +The corporal——— + +——Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius,——for he was your +kinsman: + +Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness,—for he was your brother.—Oh +corporal! had I thee, but now,—now, that I am able to give thee a +dinner and protection,—how would I cherish thee! thou should’st wear +thy Montero-cap every hour of the day, and every day of the week.—and +when it was worn out, I would purchase thee a couple like it:——But +alas! alas! alas! now that I can do this in spite of their +reverences—the occasion is lost—for thou art gone;—thy genius fled up +to the stars from whence it came;—and that warm heart of thine, with +all its generous and open vessels, compressed into a _clod of the +valley!_ + +——But what——what is this, to that future and dreaded page, where I look +towards the velvet pall, decorated with the military ensigns of thy +master—the first—the foremost of created beings;——where, I shall see +thee, faithful servant! laying his sword and scabbard with a trembling +hand across his coffin, and then returning pale as ashes to the door, +to take his mourning horse by the bridle, to follow his hearse, as he +directed thee;——where—all my father’s systems shall be baffled by his +sorrows; and, in spite of his philosophy, I shall behold him, as he +inspects the lackered plate, twice taking his spectacles from off his +nose, to wipe away the dew which nature has shed upon them——When I see +him cast in the rosemary with an air of disconsolation, which cries +through my ears,——O _Toby!_ in what corner of the world shall I seek +thy fellow? + +——Gracious powers! which erst have opened the lips of the dumb in his +distress, and made the tongue of the stammerer speak plain—when I shall +arrive at this dreaded page, deal not with me, then, with a stinted +hand. + +C H A P. LXIX + +THE corporal, who the night before had resolved in his mind to supply +the grand _desideratum_, of keeping up something like an incessant +firing upon the enemy during the heat of the attack,—had no further +idea in his fancy at that time, than a contrivance of smoking tobacco +against the town, out of one of my uncle _Toby_’s six field-pieces, +which were planted on each side of his sentry-box; the means of +effecting which occurring to his fancy at the same time, though he had +pledged his cap, he thought it in no danger from the miscarriage of his +projects. + +Upon turning it this way, and that, a little in his mind, he soon began +to find out, that by means of his two _Turkish_ tobacco-pipes, with the +supplement of three smaller tubes of wash-leather at each of their +lower ends, to be tagg’d by the same number of tin-pipes fitted to the +touch-holes, and sealed with clay next the cannon, and then tied +hermetically with waxed silk at their several insertions into the +_Morocco_ tube,—he should be able to fire the six field-pieces all +together, and with the same ease as to fire one.——— + +——Let no man say from what taggs and jaggs hints may not be cut out for +the advancement of human knowledge. Let no man, who has read my +father’s first and second _beds of justice_, ever rise up and say +again, from collision of what kinds of bodies light may or may not be +struck out, to carry the arts and sciences up to perfection.——Heaven! +thou knowest how I love them;——thou knowest the secrets of my heart, +and that I would this moment give my shirt——Thou art a fool, _Shandy_, +says _Eugenius_, for thou hast but a dozen in the world,—and ’twill +break thy set.—— + +No matter for that, _Eugenius;_ I would give the shirt off my back to +be burnt into tinder, were it only to satisfy one feverish enquirer, +how many sparks at one good stroke, a good flint and steel could strike +into the tail of it.——Think ye not that in striking these _in_,—he +might, per-adventure, strike something _out?_ as sure as a gun.—— + +——But this project, by the bye. + +The corporal sat up the best part of the night, in bringing _his_ to +perfection; and having made a sufficient proof of his cannon, with +charging them to the top with tobacco,—he went with contentment to bed. + +C H A P. LXX + +THE corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle _Toby_, +in order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two +before my uncle _Toby_ came. + +He had drawn the six field-pieces for this end, all close up together +in front of my uncle _Toby_’s sentry-box, leaving only an interval of +about a yard and a half betwixt the three, on the right and left, for +the convenience of charging, &c.—and the sake possibly of two +batteries, which he might think double the honour of one. + +In the rear and facing this opening, with his back to the door of the +sentry-box, for fear of being flanked, had the corporal wisely taken +his post:——He held the ivory pipe, appertaining to the battery on the +right, betwixt the finger and thumb of his right hand,—and the ebony +pipe tipp’d with silver, which appertained to the battery on the left, +betwixt the finger and thumb of the other——and with his right knee +fixed firm upon the ground, as if in the front rank of his platoon, was +the corporal, with his Montero-cap upon his head, furiously playing off +his two cross batteries at the same time against the counter-guard, +which faced the counterscarp, where the attack was to be made that +morning. His first intention, as I said, was no more than giving the +enemy a single puff or two;—but the pleasure of the _puffs_, as well as +the _puffing_, had insensibly got hold of the corporal, and drawn him +on from puff to puff, into the very height of the attack, by the time +my uncle _Toby_ joined him. + +’Twas well for my father, that my uncle _Toby_ had not his will to make +that day. + +C H A P. LXXI + +MY uncle _Toby_ took the ivory pipe out of the corporal’s hand,—looked +at it for half a minute, and returned it. + +In less than two minutes, my uncle _Toby_ took the pipe from the +corporal again, and raised it half way to his mouth——then hastily gave +it back a second time. + +The corporal redoubled the attack,——my uncle _Toby_ smiled,——then +looked grave,——then smiled for a moment,——then looked serious for a +long time;——Give me hold of the ivory pipe, _Trim_, said my uncle +_Toby_——my uncle _Toby_ put it to his lips,——drew it back +directly,——gave a peep over the horn-beam hedge;——never did my uncle +_Toby_’s mouth water so much for a pipe in his life.——My uncle _Toby_ +retired into the sentry-box with the pipe in his hand.——— + +——Dear uncle _Toby_! don’t go into the sentry-box with the +pipe,—there’s no trusting a man’s self with such a thing in such a +corner. + +C H A P. LXXII + +I BEG the reader will assist me here, to wheel off my uncle _Toby_’s +ordnance behind the scenes,——to remove his sentry-box, and clear the +theatre, if possible, of horn-works and half moons, and get the rest of +his military apparatus out of the way;——that done, my dear friend +_Garrick_, we’ll snuff the candles bright,—sweep the stage with a new +broom,—draw up the curtain, and exhibit my uncle _Toby_ dressed in a +new character, throughout which the world can have no idea how he will +act: and yet, if pity be a-kin to love,—and bravery no alien to it, you +have seen enough of my uncle _Toby_ in these, to trace these family +likenesses, betwixt the two passions (in case there is one) to your +heart’s content. + +Vain science! thou assistest us in no case of this kind—and thou +puzzlest us in every one. + +There was, Madam, in my uncle _Toby_, a singleness of heart which +misled him so far out of the little serpentine tracks in which things +of this nature usually go on; you can—you can have no conception of it: +with this, there was a plainness and simplicity of thinking, with such +an unmistrusting ignorance of the plies and foldings of the heart of +woman;——and so naked and defenceless did he stand before you, (when a +siege was out of his head,) that you might have stood behind any one of +your serpentine walks, and shot my uncle _Toby_ ten times in a day, +through his liver, if nine times in a day, Madam, had not served your +purpose. + +With all this, Madam,—and what confounded every thing as much on the +other hand, my uncle _Toby_ had that unparalleled modesty of nature I +once told you of, and which, by the bye, stood eternal sentry upon his +feelings, that you might as soon——But where am I going? these +reflections crowd in upon me ten pages at least too soon, and take up +that time, which I ought to bestow upon facts. + +C H A P. LXXIII + +OF the few legitimate sons of _Adam_ whose breasts never felt what the +sting of love was,—(maintaining first, all mysogynists to be +bastards,)—the greatest heroes of ancient and modern story have carried +off amongst them nine parts in ten of the honour; and I wish for their +sakes I had the key of my study, out of my draw-well, only for five +minutes, to tell you their names—recollect them I cannot—so be content +to accept of these, for the present, in their stead. + +There was the great king _Aldrovandus_, and _Bosphorus_, and +_Cappadocius_, and _Dardanus_, and _Pontus_, and _Asius_,——to say +nothing of the iron-hearted _Charles_ the XIIth, whom the Countess of +K***** herself could make nothing of.——There was _Babylonicus_, and +_Mediterraneus_, and _Polixenes_, and _Persicus_, and _Prusicus_, not +one of whom (except _Cappadocius_ and _Pontus_, who were both a little +suspected) ever once bowed down his breast to the goddess——The truth +is, they had all of them something else to do—and so had my uncle +_Toby_—till Fate—till Fate I say, envying his name the glory of being +handed down to posterity with _Aldrovandus_’s and the rest,—she basely +patched up the peace of _Utrecht._ + +——Believe me, Sirs, ’twas the worst deed she did that year. + +C H A P. LXXIV + +AMONGST the many ill consequences of the treaty of _Utrecht_, it was +within a point of giving my uncle _Toby_ a surfeit of sieges; and +though he recovered his appetite afterwards, yet _Calais_ itself left +not a deeper scar in _Mary_’s heart, than _Utrecht_ upon my uncle +_Toby_’s. To the end of his life he never could hear _Utrecht_ +mentioned upon any account whatever,—or so much as read an article of +news extracted out of the _Utrecht Gazette_, without fetching a sigh, +as if his heart would break in twain. + +My father, who was a great MOTIVE-MONGER, and consequently a very +dangerous person for a man to sit by, either laughing or crying,—for he +generally knew your motive for doing both, much better than you knew it +yourself—would always console my uncle _Toby_ upon these occasions, in +a way, which shewed plainly, he imagined my uncle _Toby_ grieved for +nothing in the whole affair, so much as the loss of his +_hobby-horse._——Never mind, brother _Toby_, he would say,—by God’s +blessing we shall have another war break out again some of these days; +and when it does,—the belligerent powers, if they would hang +themselves, cannot keep us out of play.——I defy ’em, my dear _Toby_, he +would add, to take countries without taking towns,——or towns without +sieges. + +My uncle _Toby_ never took this back-stroke of my father’s at his +hobby-horse kindly.——He thought the stroke ungenerous; and the more so, +because in striking the horse he hit the rider too, and in the most +dishonourable part a blow could fall; so that upon these occasions, he +always laid down his pipe upon the table with more fire to defend +himself than common. + +I told the reader, this time two years, that my uncle _Toby_ was not +eloquent; and in the very same page gave an instance to the +contrary:——I repeat the observation, and a fact which contradicts it +again.—He was not eloquent,—it was not easy to my uncle _Toby_ to make +long harangues,—and he hated florid ones; but there were occasions +where the stream overflowed the man, and ran so counter to its usual +course, that in some parts my uncle _Toby_, for a time, was at least +equal to _Tertullus_——but in others, in my own opinion, infinitely +above him. + +My father was so highly pleased with one of these apologetical orations +of my uncle _Toby_’s, which he had delivered one evening before him and +_Yorick_, that he wrote it down before he went to bed. + +I have had the good fortune to meet with it amongst my father’s papers, +with here and there an insertion of his own, betwixt two crooks, thus +[  ], and is endorsed, +MY BROTHER TOBY’S JUSTIFICATION OF HIS OWN PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT IN +WISHING TO CONTINUE THE WAR. + +I may safely say, I have read over this apologetical oration of my +uncle _Toby_’s a hundred times, and think it so fine a model of +defence,—and shews so sweet a temperament of gallantry and good +principles in him, that I give it the world, word for word +(interlineations and all), as I find it. + +C H A P. LXXV + +MY UNCLE TOBY’S APOLOGETICAL ORATION + +I AM not insensible, brother _Shandy_, that when a man whose profession +is arms, wishes, as I have done, for war,—it has an ill aspect to the +world;——and that, how just and right soever his motives the intentions +may be,—he stands in an uneasy posture in vindicating himself from +private views in doing it. + +For this cause, if a soldier is a prudent man, which he may be without +being a jot the less brave, he will be sure not to utter his wish in +the hearing of an enemy; for say what he will, an enemy will not +believe him.——He will be cautious of doing it even to a friend,—lest he +may suffer in his esteem:——But if his heart is overcharged, and a +secret sigh for arms must have its vent, he will reserve it for the ear +of a brother, who knows his character to the bottom, and what his true +notions, dispositions, and principles of honour are: What, I _hope_, I +have been in all these, brother _Shandy_, would be unbecoming in me to +say:——much worse, I know, have I been than I ought,—and something +worse, perhaps, than I think: But such as I am, you, my dear brother +_Shandy_, who have sucked the same breasts with me,—and with whom I +have been brought up from my cradle,—and from whose knowledge, from the +first hours of our boyish pastimes, down to this, I have concealed no +one action of my life, and scarce a thought in it——Such as I am, +brother, you must by this time know me, with all my vices, and with all +my weaknesses too, whether of my age, my temper, my passions, or my +understanding. + +Tell me then, my dear brother _Shandy_, upon which of them it is, that +when I condemned the peace of _Utrecht_, and grieved the war was not +carried on with vigour a little longer, you should think your brother +did it upon unworthy views; or that in wishing for war, he should be +bad enough to wish more of his fellow-creatures slain,—more slaves +made, and more families driven from their peaceful habitations, merely +for his own pleasure:——Tell me, brother _Shandy_, upon what one deed of +mine do you ground it? [_The devil a deed do I know of, dear_ Toby, +_but one for a hundred pounds, which I lent thee to carry on these +cursed sieges._] + +If, when I was a school-boy, I could not hear a drum beat, but my heart +beat with it—was it my fault?——Did I plant the propensity there?——Did I +sound the alarm within, or Nature? + +When _Guy_, Earl of _Warwick_, and _Parismus_ and _Parismenus_, and +_Valentine_ and _Orson_, and the _Seven Champions of England_, were +handed around the school,—were they not all purchased with my own +pocket-money? Was that selfish, brother _Shandy_? When we read over the +siege of _Troy_, which lasted ten years and eight months,——though with +such a train of artillery as we had at _Namur_, the town might have +been carried in a week—was I not as much concerned for the destruction +of the _Greeks_ and _Trojans_ as any boy of the whole school? Had I not +three strokes of a ferula given me, two on my right hand, and one on my +left, for calling _Helena_ a bitch for it? Did any one of you shed more +tears for _Hector?_ And when king _Priam_ came to the camp to beg his +body, and returned weeping back to _Troy_ without it,—you know, +brother, I could not eat my dinner.—— + +——Did that bespeak me cruel? Or because, brother _Shandy_, my blood +flew out into the camp, and my heart panted for war,—was it a proof it +could not ache for the distresses of war too? + +O brother! ’tis one thing for a soldier to gather laurels,—and ’tis +another to scatter cypress.——[_Who told thee, my dear Toby, that +cypress was used by the antients on mournful occasions?_ ] + +——’Tis one thing, brother _Shandy_, for a soldier to hazard his own +life—to leap first down into the trench, where he is sure to be cut in +pieces:——’Tis one thing, from public spirit and a thirst of glory, to +enter the breach the first man,—to stand in the foremost rank, and +march bravely on with drums and trumpets, and colours flying about his +ears:——’Tis one thing, I say, brother _Shandy_, to do this,—and ’tis +another thing to reflect on the miseries of war;—to view the +desolations of whole countries, and consider the intolerable fatigues +and hardships which the soldier himself, the instrument who works them, +is forced (for sixpence a day, if he can get it) to undergo. + +Need I be told, dear _Yorick_, as I was by you, in _Le Fever_’s funeral +sermon, _That so soft and gentle a creature, born to love, to mercy, +and kindness, as man is, was not shaped for this?_——But why did you not +add, _Yorick_,—if not by NATURE—that he is so by NECESSITY?——For what +is war? what is it, _Yorick_, when fought as ours has been, upon +principles of _liberty_, and upon principles of _honour_—what is it, +but the getting together of quiet and harmless people, with their +swords in their hands, to keep the ambitious and the turbulent within +bounds? And heaven is my witness, brother _Shandy_, that the pleasure I +have taken in these things,—and that infinite delight, in particular, +which has attended my sieges in my bowling-green, has arose within me, +and I hope in the corporal too, from the consciousness we both had, +that in carrying them on, we were answering the great ends of our +creation. + +C H A P. LXXVI + +I TOLD the Christian reader—I say _Christian_——hoping he is one——and if +he is not, I am sorry for it——and only beg he will consider the matter +with himself, and not lay the blame entirely upon this book—— + +I told him, Sir——for in good truth, when a man is telling a story in +the strange way I do mine, he is obliged continually to be going +backwards and forwards to keep all tight together in the reader’s +fancy——which, for my own part, if I did not take heed to do more than +at first, there is so much unfixed and equivocal matter starting up, +with so many breaks and gaps in it,—and so little service do the stars +afford, which, nevertheless, I hang up in some of the darkest passages, +knowing that the world is apt to lose its way, with all the lights the +sun itself at noon-day can give it——and now you see, I am lost +myself!—— + +——But ’tis my father’s fault; and whenever my brains come to be +dissected, you will perceive, without spectacles, that he has left a +large uneven thread, as you sometimes see in an unsaleable piece of +cambrick, running along the whole length of the web, and so untowardly, +you cannot so much as cut out a * *, (here I hang up a couple of lights +again)——or a fillet, or a thumb-stall, but it is seen or felt.—— + +_Quanto id diligentias in liberis procreandis cavendum_, sayeth +_Cardan._ All which being considered, and that you see ’tis morally +impracticable for me to wind this round to where I set out—— + +I begin the chapter over again. + +C H A P. LXXVII + +I TOLD the Christian reader in the beginning of the chapter which +preceded my uncle _Toby_’s apologetical oration,—though in a different +trope from what I should make use of now, That the peace of _Utrecht_ +was within an ace of creating the same shyness betwixt my uncle _Toby_ +and his hobby-horse, as it did betwixt the queen and the rest of the +confederating powers. + +There is an indignant way in which a man sometimes dismounts his horse, +which, as good as says to him, “I’ll go afoot, Sir, all the days of my +life before I would ride a single mile upon your back again.” Now my +uncle _Toby_ could not be said to dismount his horse in this manner; +for in strictness of language, he could not be said to dismount his +horse at all——his horse rather flung him——and somewhat _viciously_, +which made my uncle _Toby_ take it ten times more unkindly. Let this +matter be settled by state-jockies as they like.——It created, I say, a +sort of shyness betwixt my uncle _Toby_ and his hobby-horse.——He had no +occasion for him from the month of _March_ to _November_, which was the +summer after the articles were signed, except it was now and then to +take a short ride out, just to see that the fortifications and harbour +of _Dunkirk_ were demolished, according to stipulation. + +The _French_ were so backwards all that summer in setting about that +affair, and Monsieur _Tugghe_, the deputy from the magistrates of +_Dunkirk_, presented so many affecting petitions to the +queen,—beseeching her majesty to cause only her thunderbolts to fall +upon the martial works, which might have incurred her displeasure,—but +to spare—to spare the mole, for the mole’s sake; which, in its naked +situation, could be no more than an object of pity——and the queen (who +was but a woman) being of a pitiful disposition,—and her ministers +also, they not wishing in their hearts to have the town dismantled, for +these private reasons, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *—— + +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ; so that the whole +went heavily on with my uncle _Toby;_ insomuch, that it was not within +three full months, after he and the corporal had constructed the town, +and put it in a condition to be destroyed, that the several +commandants, commissaries, deputies, negociators, and intendants, would +permit him to set about it.——Fatal interval of inactivity! + +The corporal was for beginning the demolition, by making a breach in +the ramparts, or main fortifications of the town——No,—that will never +do, corporal, said my uncle _Toby_, for in going that way to work with +the town, the _English_ garrison will not be safe in it an hour; +because if the French are treacherous——They are as treacherous as +devils, an’ please your honour, said the corporal——It gives me concern +always when I hear it, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby;_—for they don’t +want personal bravery; and if a breach is made in the ramparts, they +may enter it, and make themselves masters of the place when they +please:—Let them enter it, said the corporal, lifting up his pioneer’s +spade in both his hands, as if he was going to lay about him with +it,—let them enter, an’ please your honour, if they dare.——In cases +like this, corporal, said my uncle _Toby_, slipping his right hand down +to the middle of his cane, and holding it afterwards truncheon-wise +with his fore-finger extended,——’tis no part of the consideration of a +commandant, what the enemy dare,—or what they dare not do; he must act +with prudence. We will begin with the outworks both towards the sea and +the land, and particularly with fort _Louis_, the most distant of them +all, and demolish it first,—and the rest, one by one, both on our right +and left, as we retreat towards the town;——then we’ll demolish the +mole,—next fill up the harbour,—then retire into the citadel, and blow +it up into the air: and having done that, corporal, we’ll embark for +_England._——We are there, quoth the corporal, recollecting +himself——Very true, said my uncle _Toby_—looking at the church. + +C H A P. LXXVIII + +A DELUSIVE, delicious consultation or two of this kind, betwixt my +uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_, upon the demolition of _Dunkirk_,—for a moment +rallied back the ideas of those pleasures, which were slipping from +under him:——still—still all went on heavily——the magic left the mind +the weaker—STILLNESS, with SILENCE at her back, entered the solitary +parlour, and drew their gauzy mantle over my uncle _Toby_’s head;—and +LISTLESSNESS, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly down +beside him in his arm-chair.——No longer _Amberg_ and _Rhinberg_, and +_Limbourg_, and _Huy_, and _Bonn_, in one year,—and the prospect of +_Landen_, and _Trerebach_, and _Drusen_, and _Dendermond_, the +next,—hurried on the blood:—No longer did saps, and mines, and blinds, +and gabions, and palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of man’s +repose:——No more could my uncle _Toby_, after passing the _French_ +lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from thence break into the heart of +_France_,—cross over the _Oyes_, and with all _Picardie_ open behind +him, march up to the gates of _Paris_, and fall asleep with nothing but +ideas of glory:——No more was he to dream, he had fixed the royal +standard upon the tower of the _Bastile_, and awake with it streaming +in his head. + +——Softer visions,—gentler vibrations stole sweetly in upon his +slumbers;—the trumpet of war fell out of his hands,—he took up the +lute, sweet instrument! of all others the most delicate! the most +difficult!——how wilt thou touch it, my dear uncle _Toby_? + +C H A P. LXXIX + +NOW, because I have once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way of +talking, That I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle +_Toby_’s courtship of widow _Wadman_, whenever I got time to write +them, would turn out one of the most complete systems, both of the +elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever was +addressed to the world——are you to imagine from thence, that I shall +set out with a description of _what love is?_ whether part God and part +Devil, as _Plotinus_ will have it—— + +——Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be +as ten——to determine with _Ficinus_, “_How many parts of it—the +one,—and how many the other;_”—or whether it is _all of it one great +Devil_, from head to tail, as _Plato_ has taken upon him to pronounce; +concerning which conceit of his, I shall not offer my opinion:—but my +opinion of _Plato_ is this; that he appears, from this instance, to +have been a man of much the same temper and way of reasoning with +doctor _Baynyard_, who being a great enemy to blisters, as imagining +that half a dozen of ’em at once, would draw a man as surely to his +grave, as a herse and six—rashly concluded, that the Devil himself was +nothing in the world, but one great bouncing _Cantharidis._—— + +I have nothing to say to people who allow themselves this monstrous +liberty in arguing, but what _Nazianzen_ cried out (_that is, +polemically_) to _Philagrius_—— + +“’Ευγε!” _O rare! ’tis fine reasoning, Sir indeed!_—“οτι φιλοσοφεισ ευ +Παθεσ.” _and most nobly do you aim at truth, when you philosophize +about it in your moods and passions._ + +Nor is it to be imagined, for the same reason, I should stop to +inquire, whether love is a disease,——or embroil myself with _Rhasis_ +and _Dioscorides_, whether the seat of it is in the brain or +liver;—because this would lead me on, to an examination of the two very +opposite manners, in which patients have been treated——the one, of +_Aœtius_, who always begun with a cooling clyster of hempseed and +bruised cucumbers;—and followed on with thin potations of water-lilies +and purslane—to which he added a pinch of snuff, of the herb +_Hanea;_—and where _Aœtius_ durst venture it,—his topaz-ring. + +——The other, that of _Gordonius_, who (in his cap. 15. _de Amore_) +directs they should be thrashed, “_ad putorem usque_,”——till they stink +again. + +These are disquisitions which my father, who had laid in a great stock +of knowledge of this kind, will be very busy with in the progress of my +uncle _Toby_’s affairs: I must anticipate thus much, That from his +theories of love, (with which, by the way, he contrived to crucify my +uncle _Toby_’s mind, almost as much as his amours themselves,)—he took +a single step into practice;—and by means of a camphorated cerecloth, +which he found means to impose upon the taylor for buckram, whilst he +was making my uncle _Toby_ a new pair of breeches, he produced +_Gordonius_’s effect upon my uncle _Toby_ without the disgrace. + +What changes this produced, will be read in its proper place: all that +is needful to be added to the anecdote, is this——That whatever effect +it had upon my uncle _Toby_,——it had a vile effect upon the house;——and +if my uncle _Toby_ had not smoaked it down as he did, it might have had +a vile effect upon my father too. + +C H A P. LXXX + +——’TWILL come out of itself by and bye.——All I contend for is, that I +am not obliged to set out with a definition of what love is; and so +long as I can go on with my story intelligibly, with the help of the +word itself, without any other idea to it, than what I have in common +with the rest of the world, why should I differ from it a moment before +the time?——When I can get on no further,—and find myself entangled on +all sides of this mystic labyrinth,—my Opinion will then come in, in +course,—and lead me out. + +At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently understood, in telling the +reader, my uncle _Toby fell in love:_ + +—Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a man is +_fallen_ in love,—or that he is _deeply_ in love,—or up to the ears in +love,—and sometimes even _over head and ears in it_,—carries an +idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing _below_ a +man:—this is recurring again to _Plato_’s opinion, which, with all his +divinityship,—I hold to be damnable and heretical:—and so much for +that. + +Let love therefore be what it will,—my uncle _Toby_ fell into it. + +——And possibly, gentle reader, with such a temptation—so wouldst thou: +For never did thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence covet any thing in +this world, more concupiscible than widow _Wadman._ + +C H A P. LXXXI + +TO conceive this right,—call for pen and ink—here’s paper ready to your +hand.——Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind——as like your mistress +as you can——as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you—’tis +all one to me——please but your own fancy in it. + +——Was ever any thing in Nature so sweet!—so exquisite! + +——Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle _Toby_ resist it? + +Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy +covers, which MALICE will not blacken, and which IGNORANCE cannot +misrepresent. + +C H A P. LXXXII + +AS _Susannah_ was informed by an express from Mrs. _Bridget_, of my +uncle _Toby_’s falling in love with her mistress fifteen days before it +happened,—the contents of which express, _Susannah_ communicated to my +mother the next day,—it has just given me an opportunity of entering +upon my uncle _Toby_’s amours a fortnight before their existence. + +I have an article of news to tell you, Mr. _Shandy_, quoth my mother, +which will surprise you greatly.—— + +Now my father was then holding one of his second beds of justice, and +was musing within himself about the hardships of matrimony, as my +mother broke silence.—— + +“—My brother _Toby_, quoth she, is going to be married to Mrs. +_Wadman._” + +——Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his +bed again as long as he lives. + +It was a consuming vexation to my father, that my mother never asked +the meaning of a thing she did not understand. + +——That she is not a woman of science, my father would say—is her +misfortune—but she might ask a question.— + +My mother never did.——In short, she went out of the world at last +without knowing whether it turned _round_, or stood _still._——My father +had officiously told her above a thousand times which way it was,—but +she always forgot. + +For these reasons, a discourse seldom went on much further betwixt +them, than a proposition,—a reply, and a rejoinder; at the end of +which, it generally took breath for a few minutes (as in the affair of +the breeches), and then went on again. + +If he marries, ’twill be the worse for us,—quoth my mother. + +Not a cherry-stone, said my father,—he may as well batter away his +means upon that, as any thing else, + +——To be sure, said my mother: so here ended the proposition—the +reply,—and the rejoinder, I told you of. + +It will be some amusement to him, too,——said my father. + +A very great one, answered my mother, if he should have children.—— + +——Lord have mercy upon me,—said my father to himself——* * * * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * + +C H A P. LXXXIII + +I AM now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a +vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I +shall be able to go on with my uncle _Toby_’s story, and my own, in a +tolerable straight line. Now, + +four very squiggly lines across the page signed Inv.T.S and Scw.T.S + +These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, +and fourth volumes[32]——In the fifth volume I have been very good,——the +precise line I have described in it being this: + +One very squiggly line across the page with loops marked +A,B,C,C,C,C,C,D. + +By which it appears, that except at the curve, marked A. where I took a +trip to _Navarre_,—and the indented curve B. which is the short airing +when I was there with the Lady _Baussiere_ and her page,—I have not +taken the least frisk of a digression, till _John de la Casse_’s devils +led me the round you see marked D.—for as for _c c c c c_ they are +nothing but parentheses, and the common ins and outs incident to the +lives of the greatest ministers of state; and when compared with what +men have done,—or with my own transgressions at the letters A B D—they +vanish into nothing. + +In this last volume I have done better still—for from the end of Le +Fever’s episode, to the beginning of my uncle _Toby_’s campaigns,—I +have scarce stepped a yard out of my way. + +If I mend at this rate, it is not impossible——by the good leave of his +grace of _Benevento_’s devils——but I may arrive hereafter at the +excellency of going on even thus: + +which is a line drawn as straight as I could draw it, by a +writing-master’s ruler (borrowed for that purpose), turning neither to +the right hand or to the left. + +This _right line_,—the path-way for Christians to walk in! say +divines—— + +——The emblem of moral rectitude! says _Cicero_—— + +——_The best line!_ say cabbage planters——is the shortest line, says +_Archimedes_, which can be drawn from one given point to another.—— + +I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart, in your next +birth- day suits! + +——What a journey! + +Pray can you tell me,—that is, without anger, before I write my chapter +upon straight lines——by what mistake——who told them so——or how it has +come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded +this line, with the line of GRAVITATION? + + [32] Alluding to the first edition. + +C H A P. LXXXIV + +NO——I think, I said, I would write two volumes every year, provided the +vile cough which then tormented me, and which to this hour I dread +worse than the devil, would but give me leave—and in another place—(but +where, I can’t recollect now) speaking of my book as a _machine_, and +laying my pen and ruler down cross-wise upon the table, in order to +gain the greater credit to it—I swore it should be kept a going at that +rate these forty years, if it pleased but the fountain of life to bless +me so long with health and good spirits. + +Now as for my spirits, little have I to lay to their charge—nay so very +little (unless the mounting me upon a long stick and playing the fool +with me nineteen hours out of the twenty-four, be accusations) that on +the contrary, I have much—much to thank ’em for: cheerily have ye made +me tread the path of life with all the burthens of it (except its +cares) upon my back; in no one moment of my existence, that I remember, +have ye once deserted me, or tinged the objects which came in my way, +either with sable, or with a sickly green; in dangers ye gilded my +horizon with hope, and when DEATH himself knocked at my door—ye bad him +come again; and in so gay a tone of careless indifference, did ye do +it, that he doubted of his commission—— + +“—There must certainly be some mistake in this matter,” quoth he. + +Now there is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be +interrupted in a story——and I was that moment telling _Eugenius_ a most +tawdry one in my way, of a nun who fancied herself a shell-fish, and of +a monk damn’d for eating a muscle, and was shewing him the grounds and +justice of the procedure—— + +“—Did ever so grave a personage get into so vile a scrape?” quoth +Death. Thou hast had a narrow escape, _Tristram_, said _Eugenius_, +taking hold of my hand as I finished my story—— + +But there is no living, _Eugenius_, replied I, at this rate; for as +this _son of a whore_ has found out my lodgings—— + +—You call him rightly, said _Eugenius_,—for by sin, we are told, he +enter’d the world——I care not which way he enter’d, quoth I, provided +he be not in such a hurry to take me out with him—for I have forty +volumes to write, and forty thousand things to say and do which no body +in the world will say and do for me, except thyself; and as thou seest +he has got me by the throat (for _Eugenius_ could scarce hear me speak +across the table), and that I am no match for him in the open field, +had I not better, whilst these few scatter’d spirits remain, and these +two spider legs of mine (holding one of them up to him) are able to +support me—had I not better, _Eugenius_, fly for my life? ’Tis my +advice, my dear _Tristram_, said _Eugenius_—Then by heaven! I will lead +him a dance he little thinks of——for I will gallop, quoth I, without +looking once behind me, to the banks of the _Garonne;_ and if I hear +him clattering at my heels——I’ll scamper away to mount _Vesuvius_——from +thence to _Joppa_, and from _Joppa_ to the world’s end; where, if he +follows me, I pray God he may break his neck—— + +—He runs more risk _there_, said _Eugenius_, than thou. + +_Eugenius_’s wit and affection brought blood into the cheek from whence +it had been some months banish’d——’twas a vile moment to bid adieu in; +he led me to my chaise——_Allons!_ said I; the post-boy gave a crack +with his whip——off I went like a cannon, and in half a dozen bounds got +into _Dover._ + +C H A P. LXXXV + +NOW hang it! quoth I, as I look’d towards the _French_ coast—a man +should know something of his own country too, before he goes +abroad——and I never gave a peep into _Rochester_ church, or took notice +of the dock of _Chatham_, or visited St. _Thomas_ at _Canterbury_, +though they all three laid in my way—— + +—But mine, indeed, is a particular case—— + +So without arguing the matter further with _Thomas o’Becket_, or any +one else—I skip’d into the boat, and in five minutes we got under sail, +and scudded away like the wind. + +Pray, captain, quoth I, as I was going down into the cabin, is a man +never overtaken by _Death_ in this passage? + +Why, there is not time for a man to be sick in it, replied he——What a +cursed lyar! for I am sick as a horse, quoth I, already——what a +brain!——upside down!——hey-day! the cells are broke loose one into +another, and the blood, and the lymph, and the nervous juices, with the +fix’d and volatile salts, are all jumbled into one mass——good G—! every +thing turns round in it like a thousand whirlpools——I’d give a shilling +to know if I shan’t write the clearer for it—— + +Sick! sick! sick! sick!—— + +—When shall we get to land? captain—they have hearts like stones——O I +am deadly sick!——reach me that thing, boy——’tis the most discomfiting +sickness——I wish I was at the bottom—Madam! how is it with you? Undone! +undone! un——O! undone! sir——What the first time?——No, ’tis the second, +third, sixth, tenth time, sir,——hey-day!—what a trampling over +head!—hollo! cabin boy! what’s the matter? + +The wind chopp’d about! s’Death—then I shall meet him full in the face. + +What luck!—’tis chopp’d about again, master——O the devil chop it—— + +Captain, quoth she, for heaven’s sake, let us get ashore. + +C H A P. LXXXVI + +IT is a great inconvenience to a man in a haste, that there are three +distinct roads between _Calais_ and _Paris_, in behalf of which there +is so much to be said by the several deputies from the towns which lie +along them, that half a day is easily lost in settling which you’ll +take. + +First, the road by _Lisle_ and _Arras_, which is the most about——but +most interesting, and instructing. + +The second, that by _Amiens_, which you may go, if you would see +_Chantilly_—— + +And that by _Beauvais_, which you may go, if you will. + +For this reason a great many chuse to go by _Beauvais._ + +C H A P. LXXXVII + +“NOW before I quit _Calais_,” a travel-writer would say, “it would not +be amiss to give some account of “it.”—Now I think it very much +amiss—that a man cannot go quietly through a town and let it alone, +when it does not meddle with him, but that he must be turning about and +drawing his pen at every kennel he crosses over, merely o’ my +conscience for the sake of drawing it; because, if we may judge from +what has been wrote of these things, by all who have _wrote and +gallop’d_—or who have _gallop’d and wrote_, which is a different way +still; or who, for more expedition than the rest, have _wrote +galloping_, which is the way I do at present——from the great _Addison_, +who did it with his satchel of school books hanging at his a—, and +galling his beast’s crupper at every stroke—there is not a gallopper of +us all who might not have gone on ambling quietly in his own ground (in +case he had any), and have wrote all he had to write, dry-shod, as well +as not. + +For my own part, as heaven is my judge, and to which I shall ever make +my last appeal—I know no more of _Calais_ (except the little my barber +told me of it as he was whetting his razor) than I do this moment of +_Grand Cairo_; for it was dusky in the evening when I landed, and dark +as pitch in the morning when I set out, and yet by merely knowing what +is what, and by drawing this from that in one part of the town, and by +spelling and putting this and that together in another—I would lay any +travelling odds, that I this moment write a chapter upon _Calais_ as +long as my arm; and with so distinct and satisfactory a detail of every +item, which is worth a stranger’s curiosity in the town—that you would +take me for the town-clerk of _Calais_ itself—and where, sir, would be +the wonder? was not _Democritus_, who laughed ten times more than +I—town-clerk of _Abdera?_ and was not (I forget his name) who had more +discretion than us both, town-clerk of _Ephesus?_——it should be penn’d +moreover, sir, with so much knowledge and good sense, and truth, and +precision—— + +—Nay—if you don’t believe me, you may read the chapter for your pains. + +C H A P. LXXXVIII + +CALAIS, _Calatium, Calusium, Calesium._ + +This town, if we may trust its archives, the authority of which I see +no reason to call in question in this place—was _once_ no more than a +small village belonging to one of the first Counts de _Guignes;_ and as +it boasts at present of no less than fourteen thousand inhabitants, +exclusive of four hundred and twenty distinct families in the _basse +ville_, or suburbs——it must have grown up by little and little, I +suppose, to its present size. + +Though there are four convents, there is but one parochial church in +the whole town; I had not an opportunity of taking its exact +dimensions, but it is pretty easy to make a tolerable conjecture of +’em—for as there are fourteen thousand inhabitants in the town, if the +church holds them all it must be considerably large—and if it will +not—’tis a very great pity they have not another—it is built in form of +a cross, and dedicated to the Virgin _Mary;_ the steeple, which has a +spire to it, is placed in the middle of the church, and stands upon +four pillars elegant and light enough, but sufficiently strong at the +same time—it is decorated with eleven altars, most of which are rather +fine than beautiful. The great altar is a master- piece in its kind; +’tis of white marble, and, as I was told, near sixty feet high—had it +been much higher, it had been as high as mount _Calvary_ +itself—therefore, I suppose it must be high enough in all conscience. + +There was nothing struck me more than the great _Square;_ tho’ I cannot +say ’tis either well paved or well built; but ’tis in the heart of the +town, and most of the streets, especially those in that quarter, all +terminate in it; could there have been a fountain in all _Calais_, +which it seems there cannot, as such an object would have been a great +ornament, it is not to be doubted, but that the inhabitants would have +had it in the very centre of this square,—not that it is properly a +square,—because ’tis forty feet longer from east to west, than from +north to south; so that the _French_ in general have more reason on +their side in calling them _Places_ than _Squares_, which, strictly +speaking, to be sure, they are not. + +The town-house seems to be but a sorry building, and not to be kept in +the best repair; otherwise it had been a second great ornament to this +place; it answers however its destination, and serves very well for the +reception of the magistrates, who assemble in it from time to time; so +that ’tis presumable, justice is regularly distributed. + +I have heard much of it, but there is nothing at all curious in the +_Courgain;_ ’tis a distinct quarter of the town, inhabited solely by +sailors and fishermen; it consists of a number of small streets, neatly +built and mostly of brick; ’tis extremely populous, but as that may be +accounted for, from the principles of their diet,—there is nothing +curious in that neither.——A traveller may see it to satisfy himself—he +must not omit however taking notice of _La Tour de Guet_, upon any +account; ’tis so called from its particular destination, because in war +it serves to discover and give notice of the enemies which approach the +place, either by sea or land;——but ’tis monstrous high, and catches the +eye so continually, you cannot avoid taking notice of it if you would. + +It was a singular disappointment to me, that I could not have +permission to take an exact survey of the fortifications, which are the +strongest in the world, and which, from first to last, that is, for the +time they were set about by _Philip_ of _France_, Count of _Bologne_, +to the present war, wherein many reparations were made, have cost (as I +learned afterwards from an engineer in _Gascony_)—above a hundred +millions of livres. It is very remarkable, that at the _Tête de +Gravelenes_, and where the town is naturally the weakest, they have +expended the most money; so that the outworks stretch a great way into +the campaign, and consequently occupy a large tract of ground—However, +after all that is _said_ and _done_, it must be acknowledged that +_Calais_ was never upon any account so considerable from itself, as +from its situation, and that easy entrance which it gave our ancestors, +upon all occasions, into _France:_ it was not without its +inconveniences also; being no less troublesome to the _English_ in +those times, than _Dunkirk_ has been to us, in ours; so that it was +deservedly looked upon as the key to both kingdoms, which no doubt is +the reason that there have arisen so many contentions who should keep +it: of these, the siege of _Calais_, or rather the blockade (for it was +shut up both by land and sea), was the most memorable, as it with-stood +the efforts of _Edward_ the Third a whole year, and was not terminated +at last but by famine and extreme misery; the gallantry of _Eustace de +St. Pierre_, who first offered himself a victim for his +fellow-citizens, has rank’d his name with heroes. As it will not take +up above fifty pages, it would be injustice to the reader, not to give +him a minute account of that romantic transaction, as well as of the +siege itself, in _Rapin_’s own words: + +C H A P. LXXXIX + +——BUT courage! gentle reader!——I scorn it——’tis enough to have thee in +my power——but to make use of the advantage which the fortune of the pen +has now gained over thee, would be too much——No——! by that all-powerful +fire which warms the visionary brain, and lights the spirits through +unworldly tracts! ere I would force a helpless creature upon this hard +service, and make thee pay, poor soul! for fifty pages, which I have no +right to sell thee,——naked as I am, I would browse upon the mountains, +and smile that the north wind brought me neither my tent or my supper. + +—So put on, my brave boy! and make the best of thy way to _Boulogne._ + +C H A P. XC + +——BOULOGNE!——hah!——so we are all got together——debtors and sinners +before heaven; a jolly set of us—but I can’t stay and quaff it off with +you—I’m pursued myself like a hundred devils, and shall be overtaken, +before I can well change horses:——for heaven’s sake, make haste——’Tis +for high-treason, quoth a very little man, whispering as low as he +could to a very tall man, that stood next him——Or else for murder; +quoth the tall man——Well thrown, _Size-ace!_ quoth I. No; quoth a +third, the gentleman has been committing——— + +_Ah! ma chere fille!_ said I, as she tripp’d by from her matins—you +look as rosy as the morning (for the sun was rising, and it made the +compliment the more gracious)—No; it can’t be that, quoth a +fourth——(she made a curt’sy to me—I kiss’d my hand) ’tis debt, +continued he: ’Tis certainly for debt; quoth a fifth; I would not pay +that gentleman’s debts, quoth _Ace_, for a thousand pounds; nor would +I, quoth _Size_, for six times the sum—Well thrown, _Size-ace_, again! +quoth I;—but I have no debt but the debt of NATURE, and I want but +patience of her, and I will pay her every farthing I owe her——How can +you be so hard-hearted, Madam, to arrest a poor traveller going along +without molestation to any one upon his lawful occasions? do stop that +death-looking, long-striding scoundrel of a scare-sinner, who is +posting after me——he never would have followed me but for you——if it be +but for a stage or two, just to give me start of him, I beseech you, +madam——do, dear lady—— + +——Now, in troth, ’tis a great pity, quoth mine _Irish_ host, that all +this good courtship should be lost; for the young gentlewoman has been +after going out of hearing of it all along.—— + +——Simpleton! quoth I. + +——So you have nothing _else_ in _Boulogne_ worth seeing? + +—By Jasus! there is the finest SEMINARY for the HUMANITIES—— + +—There cannot be a finer; quoth I. + +C H A P. XCI + +WHEN the precipitancy of a man’s wishes hurries on his ideas ninety +times faster than the vehicle he rides in—woe be to truth! and woe be +to the vehicle and its tackling (let ’em be made of what stuff you +will) upon which he breathes forth the disappointment of his soul! + +As I never give general characters either of men or things in choler, +“_the most haste the worse speed_,” was all the reflection I made upon +the affair, the first time it happen’d;—the second, third, fourth, and +fifth time, I confined it respectively to those times, and accordingly +blamed only the second, third, fourth, and fifth post-boy for it, +without carrying my reflections further; but the event continuing to +befal me from the fifth, to the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and +tenth time, and without one exception, I then could not avoid making a +national reflection of it, which I do in these words; + +_That something is always wrong in a French post-chaise, upon first +setting out._ + +Or the proposition may stand thus: + +_A French postilion has always to alight before he has got three +hundred yards out of town._ + +What’s wrong now?——Diable!——a rope’s broke!——a knot has slipt!——a +staple’s drawn!——a bolt’s to whittle!——a tag, a rag, a jag, a strap, a +buckle, or a buckle’s tongue, want altering. + +Now true as all this is, I never think myself impowered to +excommunicate thereupon either the post-chaise, or its driver——nor do I +take it into my head to swear by the living G—, I would rather go +a-foot ten thousand times——or that I will be damn’d, if ever I get into +another——but I take the matter coolly before me, and consider, that +some tag, or rag, or jag, or bolt, or buckle, or buckle’s tongue, will +ever be a wanting or want altering, travel where I will—so I never +chaff, but take the good and the bad as they fall in my road, and get +on:——Do so, my lad! said I; he had lost five minutes already, in +alighting in order to get at a luncheon of black bread, which he had +cramm’d into the chaise-pocket, and was remounted, and going leisurely +on, to relish it the better.——Get on, my lad, said I, briskly—but in +the most persuasive tone imaginable, for I jingled a four-and-twenty +sous piece against the glass, taking care to hold the flat side towards +him, as he look’d back: the dog grinn’d intelligence from his right ear +to his left, and behind his sooty muzzle discovered such a pearly row +of teeth, that _Sovereignty_ would have pawn’d her jewels for them. +Just heaven! {What masticators!—/What bread!— + +and so as he finished the last mouthful of it, we entered the town of +_Montreuil._ + +C H A P. XCII + +THERE is not a town in all _France_ which, in my opinion, looks better +in the map, than MONTREUIL;——I own, it does not look so well in the +book of post-roads; but when you come to see it—to be sure it looks +most pitifully. + +There is one thing, however, in it at present very handsome; and that +is, the inn-keeper’s daughter: She has been eighteen months at +_Amiens_, and six at _Paris_, in going through her classes; so knits, +and sews, and dances, and does the little coquetries very well.—— + +—A slut! in running them over within these five minutes that I have +stood looking at her, she has let fall at least a dozen loops in a +white thread stocking——yes, yes—I see, you cunning gipsy!—’tis long and +taper—you need not pin it to your knee—and that ’tis your own—and fits +you exactly.—— + +——That Nature should have told this creature a word about a _statue’s +thumb!_ + +—But as this sample is worth all their thumbs—besides, I have her +thumbs and fingers in at the bargain, if they can be any guide to +me,—and as _Janatone_ withal (for that is her name) stands so well for +a drawing——may I never draw more, or rather may I draw like a +draught-horse, by main strength all the days of my life,—if I do not +draw her in all her proportions, and with as determined a pencil, as if +I had her in the wettest drapery.—— + +—But your worships chuse rather that I give you the length, breadth, +and perpendicular height of the great parish-church, or drawing of the +façade of the abbey of Saint _Austreberte_ which has been transported +from _Artois_ hither—every thing is just I suppose as the masons and +carpenters left them,—and if the belief in _Christ_ continues so long, +will be so these fifty years to come—so your worships and reverences +may all measure them at your leisures——but he who measures thee, +_Janatone_, must do it now—thou carriest the principles of change +within thy frame; and considering the chances of a transitory life, I +would not answer for thee a moment; ere twice twelve months are passed +and gone, thou mayest grow out like a pumpkin, and lose thy shapes——or +thou mayest go off like a flower, and lose thy beauty—nay, thou mayest +go off like a hussy—and lose thyself.—I would not answer for my aunt +_Dinah_, was she alive——’faith, scarce for her picture——were it but +painted by _Reynolds_— + +But if I go on with my drawing, after naming that son of _Apollo_, I’ll +be shot—— + +So you must e’en be content with the original; which, if the evening is +fine in passing thro’ _Montreuil_, you will see at your chaise-door, as +you change horses: but unless you have as bad a reason for haste as I +have—you had better stop:—She has a little of the _devote:_ but that, +sir, is a terce to a nine in your favour—— + +—L— help me! I could not count a single point: so had been piqued and +repiqued, and capotted to the devil. + +C H A P. XCIII + +ALL which being considered, and that Death moreover might be much +nearer me than I imagined——I wish I was at _Abbeville_, quoth I, were +it only to see how they card and spin——so off we set. + +[33]_de Montreuil a Nampont - poste et demi +de Nampont_ a Bernay - - - - - - poste +de Bernay a Nouvion - - - - - poste +de Nouvion a ABBEVILLE poste +——but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed. + + [33] Vid. Book of French post-roads, page 36. edition of 1762. + +C H A P. XCIV + +WHAT a vast advantage is travelling! only it heats one; but there is a +remedy for that, which you may pick out of the next chapter. + +C H A P. XCV + +WAS I in a condition to stipulate with Death, as I am this moment with +my apothecary, how and where I will take his clyster——I should +certainly declare against submitting to it before my friends; and +therefore I never seriously think upon the mode and manner of this +great catastrophe, which generally takes up and torments my thoughts as +much as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain +across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order +it, that it happen not to me in my own house——but rather in some decent +inn——at home, I know it,——the concern of my friends, and the last +services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the +quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, +that I shall die of a distemper which my physician is not aware of: but +in an inn, the few cold offices I wanted, would be purchased with a few +guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed, but punctual attention——but +mark. This inn should not be the inn at _Abbeville_——if there was not +another inn in the universe, I would strike that inn out of the +capitulation: so + +Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning——Yes, by +four, Sir,——or by _Genevieve!_ I’ll raise a clatter in the house shall +wake the dead. + +C H A P. XCVI + +“MAKE _them like unto a wheel_,” is a bitter sarcasm, as all the +learned know, against the _grand tour_, and that restless spirit for +making it, which _David_ prophetically foresaw would haunt the children +of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop +_Hall_, ’tis one of the severest imprecations which _David_ ever +utter’d against the enemies of the Lord—and, as if he had said, “I wish +them no worse luck than always to be rolling about.”—So much motion, +continues he (for he was very corpulent)—is so much unquietness; and so +much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much of heaven. + +Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, +is so much of life, and so much of joy——and that to stand still, or get +on but slowly, is death and the devil—— + +Hollo! Ho!——the whole world’s asleep!——bring out the horses——grease the +wheels——tie on the mail——and drive a nail into that moulding——I’ll not +lose a moment—— + +Now the wheel we are talking of, and _whereinto_ (but not _whereonto_, +for that would make an Ixion’s wheel of it) he curseth his enemies, +according to the bishop’s habit of body, should certainly be a +post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in _Palestine_ at that time +or not——and my wheel, for the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a +cart-wheel groaning round its revolution once in an age; and of which +sort, were I to turn commentator, I should make no scruple to affirm, +they had great store in that hilly country. + +I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear +_Jenny_) for their “Χωξισμον απο τκ Εωμαιος, εις το καλως +φιλοσοφειν”——[their] “getting out of the body, in order to think well.” + +No man thinks right, whilst he is in it; blinded as he must be, with +his congenial humours, and drawn differently aside, as the bishop and +myself have been, with too lax or too tense a fibre——REASON is, half of +it, SENSE; and the measure of heaven itself is but the measure of our +present appetites and concoctions.—— + +——But which of the two, in the present case, do you think to be mostly +in the wrong? + +You, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so early. + +C H A P. XCVII + +——But she did not know I was under a vow not to shave my beard till I +got to _Paris;_——yet I hate to make mysteries of nothing;——’tis the +cold cautiousness of one of those little souls from which _Lessius +(lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24.)_ hath made his estimate, +wherein he setteth forth, That one _Dutch_ mile, cubically multiplied, +will allow room enough, and to spare, for eight hundred thousand +millions, which he supposes to be as great a number of souls (counting +from the fall of _Adam_) as can possibly be damn’d to the end of the +world. + +From what he has made this second estimate——unless from the parental +goodness of God—I don’t know—I am much more at a loss what could be in +_Franciscus Ribbera_’s head, who pretends that no less a space than one +of two hundred _Italian_ miles multiplied into itself, will be +sufficient to hold the like number——he certainly must have gone upon +some of the old _Roman_ souls, of which he had read, without reflecting +how much, by a gradual and most tabid decline, in the course of +eighteen hundred years, they must unavoidably have shrunk so as to have +come, when he wrote, almost to nothing. + +In _Lessius_’s time, who seems the cooler man, they were as little as +can be imagined—— + +——We find them less _now_—— + +And next winter we shall find them less again; so that if we go on from +little to less, and from less to nothing, I hesitate not one moment to +affirm, that in half a century at this rate, we shall have no souls at +all; which being the period beyond which I doubt likewise of the +existence of the Christian faith, ’twill be one advantage that both of +’em will be exactly worn out together. + +Blessed _Jupiter!_ and blessed every other heathen god and goddess! for +now ye will all come into play again, and with _Priapus_ at your +tails——what jovial times!——but where am I? and into what a delicious +riot of things am I rushing? I——I who must be cut short in the midst of +my days, and taste no more of ’em than what I borrow from my +imagination——peace to thee, generous fool! and let me go on. + +C H A P. XCVIII + +——“So hating, I say, to make mysteries of _nothing_”——I intrusted it +with the post-boy, as soon as ever I got off the stones; he gave a +crack with his whip to balance the compliment; and with the thill-horse +trotting, and a sort of an up and a down of the other, we danced it +along to _Ailly au clochers_, famed in days of yore for the finest +chimes in the world; but we danced through it without music—the chimes +being greatly out of order—(as in truth they were through all +_France_). + +And so making all possible speed, from + +_Ailly au clochers_, I got to _Hixcourt_, +from _Hixcourt_ I got to _Pequignay_, and +from _Pequignay_, I got to AMIENS, +concerning which town I have nothing to inform you, but what I have +informed you once before——and that was—that _Janatone_ went there to +school. + +C H A P. XCIX + +IN the whole catalogue of those whiffling vexations which come puffing +across a man’s canvass, there is not one of a more teasing and +tormenting nature, than this particular one which I am going to +describe——and for which (unless you travel with an avance-courier, +which numbers do in order to prevent it)——there is no help: and it is +this. + +That be you in never so kindly a propensity to sleep——though you are +passing perhaps through the finest country—upon the best roads, and in +the easiest carriage for doing it in the world——nay, was you sure you +could sleep fifty miles straight forwards, without once opening your +eyes—nay, what is more, was you as demonstratively satisfied as you can +be of any truth in _Euclid_, that you should upon all accounts be full +as well asleep as awake——nay, perhaps better——Yet the incessant returns +of paying for the horses at every stage,——with the necessity thereupon +of putting your hand into your pocket, and counting out from thence +three livres fifteen sous (sous by sous), puts an end to so much of the +project, that you cannot execute above six miles of it (or supposing it +is a post and a half, that is but nine)——were it to save your soul from +destruction. + +—I’ll be even with ’em, quoth I, for I’ll put the precise sum into a +piece of paper, and hold it ready in my hand all the way: “Now I shall +have nothing to do,” said I (composing myself to rest), “but to drop +this gently into the post-boy’s hat, and not say a word.”——Then there +wants two sous more to drink——or there is a twelve sous piece of +_Louis_ XIV. which will not pass—or a livre and some odd liards to be +brought over from the last stage, which Monsieur had forgot; which +altercations (as a man cannot dispute very well asleep) rouse him: +still is sweet sleep retrievable; and still might the flesh weigh down +the spirit, and recover itself of these blows—but then, by heaven! you +have paid but for a single post—whereas ’tis a post and a half; and +this obliges you to pull out your book of post-roads, the print of +which is so very small, it forces you to open your eyes, whether you +will or no: Then Monsieur _le Curé_ offers you a pinch of snuff——or a +poor soldier shews you his leg——or a shaveling his box——or the +priestesse of the cistern will water your wheels——they do not want +it——but she swears by her _priesthood_ (throwing it back) that they +do:——then you have all these points to argue, or consider over in your +mind; in doing of which, the rational powers get so thoroughly +awakened——you may get ’em to sleep again as you can. + +It was entirely owing to one of these misfortunes, or I had pass’d +clean by the stables of _Chantilly_—— + +——But the postillion first affirming, and then persisting in it to my +face, that there was no mark upon the two sous piece, I open’d my eyes +to be convinced—and seeing the mark upon it as plain as my nose—I +leap’d out of the chaise in a passion, and so saw every thing at +_Chantilly_ in spite.——I tried it but for three posts and a half, but +believe ’tis the best principle in the world to travel speedily upon; +for as few objects look very inviting in that mood—you have little or +nothing to stop you; by which means it was that I passed through St. +_Dennis_, without turning my head so much as on one side towards the +Abby—— + +——Richness of their treasury! stuff and nonsense!——bating their jewels, +which are all false, I would not give three sous for any one thing in +it, but _Jaidas’s lantern_——nor for that either, only as it grows dark, +it might be of use. + +C H A P. C + +CRACK, crack——crack, crack——crack, crack—so this is _Paris!_ quoth I +(continuing in the same mood)—and this is _Paris!_——humph!——_Paris!_ +cried I, repeating the name the third time—— + +The first, the finest, the most brilliant—— + +The streets however are nasty. + +But it looks, I suppose, better than it smells——crack, crack——crack, +crack——what a fuss thou makest!—as if it concerned the good people to +be informed, that a man with pale face and clad in black, had the +honour to be driven into _Paris_ at nine o’clock at night, by a +postillion in a tawny yellow jerkin, turned up with red +calamanco—crack, crack——crack, crack——crack, crack,——I wish thy whip—— + +——But ’tis the spirit of thy nation; so crack—crack on. + +Ha!——and no one gives the wall!——but in the SCHOOL of URBANITY herself, +if the walls are besh-t—how can you do otherwise? + +And prithee when do they light the lamps? What?—never in the summer +months!——Ho! ’tis the time of sallads.——O rare! sallad and soup—soup +and sallad—sallad and soup, _encore_—— + +——’Tis _too much_ for sinners. + +Now I cannot bear the barbarity of it; how can that unconscionable +coachman talk so much bawdy to that lean horse? don’t you see, friend, +the streets are so villanously narrow, that there is not room in all +_Paris_ to turn a wheelbarrow? In the grandest city of the whole world, +it would not have been amiss, if they had been left a thought wider; +nay, were it only so much in every single street, as that a man might +know (was it only for satisfaction) on which side of it he was walking. + +One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten.—Ten cooks shops! and +twice the number of barbers! and all within three minutes driving! one +would think that all the cooks in the world, on some great +merry-meeting with the barbers, by joint consent had said—Come, let us +all go live at _Paris:_ the _French_ love good eating——they are all +_gourmands_——we shall rank high; if their god is their belly——their +cooks must be gentlemen: and forasmuch as _the periwig maketh the man_, +and the periwig-maker maketh the periwig—_ergo_, would the barbers say, +we shall rank higher still—we shall be above you all—we shall be +_Capitouls_[34] at least—_pardi!_ we shall all wear swords—— + +—And so, one would swear, (that is, by candle-light,—but there is no +depending upon it,) they continued to do, to this day. + + [34] Chief Magistrate in Toulouse, &c. &c. &c. + +C H A P. CI + +THE _French_ are certainly misunderstood:——but whether the fault is +theirs, in not sufficiently explaining themselves; or speaking with +that exact limitation and precision which one would expect on a point +of such importance, and which, moreover, is so likely to be contested +by us——or whether the fault may not be altogether on our side, in not +understanding their language always so critically as to know “what they +would be at”——I shall not decide; but ’tis evident to me, when they +affirm, “_That they who have seen_ Paris, _have seen every thing_,” +they must mean to speak of those who have seen it by day-light. + +As for candle-light—I give it up——I have said before, there was no +depending upon it—and I repeat it again; but not because the lights and +shades are too sharp—or the tints confounded—or that there is neither +beauty or keeping, &c. . . . for that’s not truth—but it is an +uncertain light in this respect, That in all the five hundred grand +Hôtels, which they number up to you in _Paris_—and the five hundred +good things, at a modest computation (for ’tis only allowing one good +thing to a Hôtel), which by candle-light are best to be _seen, felt, +heard_, and _understood_ (which, by the bye, is a quotation from +_Lilly_)——the devil a one of us out of fifty, can get our heads fairly +thrust in amongst them. + +This is no part of the _French_ computation: ’tis simply this, + +That by the last survey taken in the year one thousand seven hundred +and sixteen, since which time there have been considerable +augmentations, _Paris_ doth contain nine hundred streets; (viz) + +In the quarter called the _City_—there are + fifty-three streets. + +In St. _James_ of the Shambles, + fifty-five streets. + +In St. _Oportune_, thirty-four streets. + +In the quarter of the _Louvre_, + twenty-five streets. + +In the _Palace Royal_, or St. _Honorius_, + forty-nine streets. + +In _Mont. Martyr_, forty-one streets. + +In St. _Eustace_, twenty-nine streets. + +In the _Halles_, twenty-seven streets. + +In St. _Dennis_, fifty-five streets. + +In St. _Martin_, fifty-four streets. + +In St. _Paul_, or the _Mortellerie_, + twenty-seven streets. + +The _Greve_, thirty-eight streets. + +In St. _Avoy_, or the _Verrerie_, + nineteen streets. + +In the _Marais_, or the _Temple_, + fifty-two streets. + +In St. _Antony_’s, sixty-eight streets. + +In the _Place Maubert_, eighty-one streets. + +In St. _Bennet_, sixty streets. + +In St. _Andrews de Arcs_, fifty-one streets. + +In the quarter of the _Luxembourg_, + sixty-two streets. + +And in that of St. Germain, fifty-five streets, into any of which you +may walk; and that when you have seen them with all that belongs to +them, fairly by day-light—their gates, their bridges, their squares, +their statues - - - and have crusaded it moreover, through all their +parish-churches, by no means omitting St. _Roche_ and _Sulpice_ - - - +and to crown all, have taken a walk to the four palaces, which you may +see, either with or without the statues and pictures, just as you +chuse— + +——Then you will have seen—— + +——but ’tis what no one needeth to tell you, for you will read of it +yourself upon the portico of the _Louvre_, in these words, + +[35]EARTH NO SUCH FOLKS!—NO FOLKS E’ER SUCH A TOWN + +AS PARIS IS!—SING, DERRY, DERRY, DOWN. + +The _French_ have a _gay_ way of treating every thing that is Great; +and that is all can be said upon it. + + [35] Non orbis gentem, non urbem gens habet ullam +——————ulla parem. + +C H A P. CII + +IN mentioning the word _gay_ (as in the close of the last chapter) it +puts one (_i.e._ an author) in mind of the word _spleen_——especially if +he has any thing to say upon it: not that by any analysis—or that from +any table of interest or genealogy, there appears much more ground of +alliance betwixt them, than betwixt light and darkness, or any two of +the most unfriendly opposites in nature——only ’tis an undercraft of +authors to keep up a good understanding amongst words, as politicians +do amongst men—not knowing how near they may be under a necessity of +placing them to each other——which point being now gain’d, and that I +may place mine exactly to my mind, I write it down here— + +S P L E E N + +This, upon leaving _Chantilly_, I declared to be the best principle in +the world to travel speedily upon; but I gave it only as matter of +opinion. I still continue in the same sentiments—only I had not then +experience enough of its working to add this, that though you do get on +at a tearing rate, yet you get on but uneasily to yourself at the same +time; for which reason I here quit it entirely, and for ever, and ’tis +heartily at any one’s service—it has spoiled me the digestion of a good +supper, and brought on a bilious diarrhœa, which has brought me back +again to my first principle on which I set out——and with which I shall +now scamper it away to the banks of the _Garonne_— + +——No;——I cannot stop a moment to give you the character of the +people—their genius—— their manners—their customs—their laws——their +religion—their government— their manufactures—their commerce—their +finances, with all the resources and hidden springs which sustain them: +qualified as I may be, by spending three days and two nights amongst +them, and during all that time making these things the entire subject +of my enquiries and reflections—— + +Still—still I must away——the roads are paved—the posts are short—the +days are long—’tis no more than noon—I shall be at _Fontainebleau_ +before the king—— + +—Was he going there? not that I know—— + +END OF THE THIRD VOLUME + +Tristram Shandy + +_Tristram Shandy_ + + + + +THE +LIFE AND OPINIONS +OF +TRISTRAM SHANDY, +GENTLEMAN +——— +Volume the Fourth +——— + +Non enim excursus hic ejus, sed opus ipsum est. + +PLIN. Lib. V. Epist. 6. + +Si quid urbaniusculè lusum a nobis, per Musas et Charitas et omnium +poëtarum Numina, Oro te, ne me malè capias. + +A + +D E D I C A T I O N + +TO + +A GREAT MAN + +HAVING, _a priori_, intended to dedicate _The Amours of my Uncle Toby_ +to Mr. ***——I see more reasons, _a posteriori_, for doing it to Lord +*******. + + I should lament from my soul, if this exposed me to the jealousy of + their Reverences; because _a posteriori_, in Court-latin, signifies + the kissing hands for preferment—or any thing else—in order to get + it. + +DEDICATION + + My opinion of Lord ******* is neither better nor worse, than it was + of Mr. ***. Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal + and local value to a bit of base metal; but Gold and Silver will + pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their + own weight. + + The same good-will that made me think of offering up half an hour’s + amusement to Mr. *** when out of place—operates more forcibly at + present, as half an hour’s amusement will be more serviceable and + refreshing after labour and sorrow, than after a philosophical + repast. + +Nothing is so perfectly _amusement_ as a total change of ideas; no +ideas are so totally different as those of Ministers, and innocent +Lovers: for which reason, when I come to talk of Statesmen and +Patriots, and set such marks upon them as will prevent confusion and +mistakes concerning them for the future—I propose to dedicate that +Volume to some gentle Shepherd, + +Whose thoughts proud Science never taught to stray, +Far as the Statesman’s walk or Patriot-way; +Yet _simple Nature_ to his hopes had given +Out of a cloud-capp’d head a humbler heaven; +Some _untam’d_ World in depths of wood embraced— +Some happier Island in the wat’ry-waste— +And where admitted to that equal sky, +His _faithful_ Dogs should bear him company. + +In a word, by thus introducing an entire new set of objects to his +Imagination, I shall unavoidably give a _Diversion_ to his passionate +and love-sick Contemplations. In the mean time, + +I am +THE AUTHOR. + +C H A P. I + +NOW I hate to hear a person, especially if he be a traveller, complain +that we do not get on so fast in _France_ as we do in _England;_ +whereas we get on much faster, _consideratis considerandis;_ thereby +always meaning, that if you weigh their vehicles with the mountains of +baggage which you lay both before and behind upon them—and then +consider their puny horses, with the very little they give them—’tis a +wonder they get on at all: their suffering is most unchristian, and +’tis evident thereupon to me, that a _French_ post-horse would not know +what in the world to do, was it not for the two words * * * * * * and * +* * * * * in which there is as much sustenance, as if you give him a +peck of corn: now as these words cost nothing, I long from my soul to +tell the reader what they are; but here is the question—they must be +told him plainly, and with the most distinct articulation, or it will +answer no end—and yet to do it in that plain way—though their +reverences may laugh at it in the bed-chamber—full well I wot, they +will abuse it in the parlour: for which cause, I have been volving and +revolving in my fancy some time, but to no purpose, by what clean +device or facette contrivance I might so modulate them, that whilst I +satisfy _that ear_ which the reader chuses to _lend_ me—I might not +dissatisfy the other which he keeps to himself. + +——My ink burns my finger to try——and when I have——’twill have a worse +consequence——It will burn (I fear) my paper. + +——No;——I dare not—— + +But if you wish to know how the _abbess_ of _Andoüillets_ and a novice +of her convent got over the difficulty (only first wishing myself all +imaginable success)—I’ll tell you without the least scruple. + +C H A P. II + +THE abbess of _Andoüillets_, which if you look into the large set of +provincial maps now publishing at _Paris_, you will find situated +amongst the hills which divide _Burgundy_ from _Savoy_, being in danger +of an _Anchylosis_ or stiff joint (the _sinovia_ of her knee becoming +hard by long matins), and having tried every remedy——first, prayers and +thanksgiving; then invocations to all the saints in heaven +promiscuously——then particularly to every saint who had ever had a +stiff leg before her——then touching it with all the reliques of the +convent, principally with the thigh-bone of the man of _Lystra_, who +had been impotent from his youth——then wrapping it up in her veil when +she went to bed—then cross-wise her rosary—then bringing in to her aid +the secular arm, and anointing it with oils and hot fat of +animals——then treating it with emollient and resolving +fomentations——then with poultices of marsh-mallows, mallows, bonus +Henricus, white lillies and fenugreek—then taking the woods, I mean the +smoak of ’em, holding her scapulary across her lap——then decoctions of +wild chicory, water-cresses, chervil, sweet cecily and cochlearia——and +nothing all this while answering, was prevailed on at last to try the +hot-baths of _Bourbon_——so having first obtained leave of the +visitor-general to take care of her existence—she ordered all to be got +ready for her journey: a novice of the convent of about seventeen, who +had been troubled with a whitloe in her middle finger, by sticking it +constantly into the abbess’s cast poultices, &c.—had gained such an +interest, that overlooking a sciatical old nun, who might have been set +up for ever by the hot-baths of _Bourbon, Margarita_, the little +novice, was elected as the companion of the journey. + +An old calesh, belonging to the abbesse, lined with green frize, was +ordered to be drawn out into the sun—the gardener of the convent being +chosen muleteer, led out the two old mules, to clip the hair from the +rump- ends of their tails, whilst a couple of lay-sisters were busied, +the one in darning the lining, and the other in sewing on the shreds of +yellow binding, which the teeth of time had unravelled——the +under-gardener dress’d the muleteer’s hat in hot wine-lees——and a +taylor sat musically at it, in a shed over-against the convent, in +assorting four dozen of bells for the harness, whistling to each bell, +as he tied it on with a thong.—— + +——The carpenter and the smith of _Andoüillets_ held a council of +wheels; and by seven, the morning after, all look’d spruce, and was +ready at the gate of the convent for the hot-baths of _Bourbon_—two +rows of the unfortunate stood ready there an hour before. + +The abbess of _Andoüillets_, supported by _Margarita_ the novice, +advanced slowly to the calesh, both clad in white, with their black +rosaries hanging at their breasts—— + +——There was a simple solemnity in the contrast: they entered the +calesh; the nuns in the same uniform, sweet emblem of innocence, each +occupied a window, and as the abbess and _Margarita_ look’d up—each +(the sciatical poor nun excepted)—each stream’d out the end of her veil +in the air—then kiss’d the lilly hand which let it go: the good abbess +and _Margarita_ laid their hands saint-wise upon their breasts—look’d +up to heaven—then to them—and look’d “God bless you, dear sisters.” + +I declare I am interested in this story, and wish I had been there. + +The gardener, whom I shall now call the muleteer, was a little, hearty, +broad-set, good-natured, chattering, toping kind of a fellow, who +troubled his head very little with the _hows_ and _whens_ of life; so +had mortgaged a month of his conventical wages in a borrachio, or +leathern cask of wine, which he had disposed behind the calesh, with a +large russet-coloured riding-coat over it, to guard it from the sun; +and as the weather was hot, and he not a niggard of his labours, +walking ten times more than he rode—he found more occasions than those +of nature, to fall back to the rear of his carriage; till by frequent +coming and going, it had so happen’d, that all his wine had leak’d out +at the legal vent of the borrachio, before one half of the journey was +finish’d. + +Man is a creature born to habitudes. The day had been sultry—the +evening was delicious—the wine was generous—the _Burgundian_ hill on +which it grew was steep—a little tempting bush over the door of a cool +cottage at the foot of it, hung vibrating in full harmony with the +passions—a gentle air rustled distinctly through the leaves—“Come—come, +thirsty muleteer,—come in.” + +—The muleteer was a son of _Adam_, I need not say a word more. He gave +the mules, each of ’em, a sound lash, and looking in the abbess’s and +_Margarita_’s faces (as he did it)—as much as to say “here I am”—he +gave a second good crack—as much as to say to his mules, “get on”——so +slinking behind, he enter’d the little inn at the foot of the hill. + +The muleteer, as I told you, was a little, joyous, chirping fellow, who +thought not of to-morrow, nor of what had gone before, or what was to +follow it, provided he got but his scantling of Burgundy, and a little +chit-chat along with it; so entering into a long conversation, as how +he was chief gardener to the convent of _Andoüillets_, &c. &c. and out +of friendship for the abbess and Mademoiselle _Margarita_, who was only +in her noviciate, he had come along with them from the confines of +_Savoy_, &c. &c.—and as how she had got a white swelling by her +devotions—and what a nation of herbs he had procured to mollify her +humours, &c. &c. and that if the waters of _Bourbon_ did not mend that +leg—she might as well be lame of both—&c. &c. &c.—He so contrived his +story, as absolutely to forget the heroine of it—and with her the +little novice, and what was a more ticklish point to be forgot than +both—the two mules; who being creatures that take advantage of the +world, inasmuch as their parents took it of them—and they not being in +a condition to return the obligation _downwards_ (as men and women and +beasts are)—they do it side-ways, and long-ways, and back-ways—and up +hill, and down hill, and which way they can.——Philosophers, with all +their ethicks, have never considered this rightly—how should the poor +muleteer, then in his cups, consider it at all? he did not in the +least—’tis time we do; let us leave him then in the vortex of his +element, the happiest and most thoughtless of mortal men—and for a +moment let us look after the mules, the abbess, and _Margarita._ + +By virtue of the muleteer’s two last strokes the mules had gone quietly +on, following their own consciences up the hill, till they had +conquer’d about one half of it; when the elder of them, a shrewd crafty +old devil, at the turn of an angle, giving a side glance, and no +muleteer behind them,—— + +By my fig! said she, swearing, I’ll go no further——And if I do, replied +the other, they shall make a drum of my hide.—— + +And so with one consent they stopp’d thus—— + +C H A P. III + +——Get on with you, said the abbess. + +——Wh - - - - - ysh——ysh——cried _Margarita._ + +Sh - - - a——shu - u——shu - - u—sh - - aw——shaw’d the abbess. + +——Whu—v—w—whew—w—w—whuv’d _Margarita_, pursing up her sweet lips +betwixt a hoot and a whistle. + +Thump—thump—thump—obstreperated the abbess of _Andoüillets_ with the +end of her gold-headed cane against the bottom of the calesh—— + +The old mule let a f— + +C H A P. IV + +WE are ruin’d and undone, my child, said the abbess to _Margarita_,——we +shall be here all night——we shall be plunder’d——we shall be ravished—— + +——We shall be ravish’d, said _Margarita_, as sure as a gun. + +_Sancta Maria!_ cried the abbess (forgetting the _O!_)—why was I +govern’d by this wicked stiff joint? why did I leave the convent of +_Andoüillets?_ and why didst thou not suffer thy servant to go +unpolluted to her tomb? + +O my finger! my finger! cried the novice, catching fire at the word +_servant_—why was I not content to put it here, or there, any where +rather than be in this strait? + +Strait! said the abbess. + +Strait——said the novice; for terror had struck their +understandings——the one knew not what she said——the other what she +answer’d. + +O my virginity! virginity! cried the abbess. + +——inity!——inity! said the novice, sobbing. + +C H A P. V + +MY dear mother, quoth the novice, coming a little to herself,—there are +two certain words, which I have been told will force any horse, or ass, +or mule, to go up a hill whether he will or no; be he never so +obstinate or ill-will’d, the moment he hears them utter’d, he obeys. +They are words magic! cried the abbess in the utmost horror—No; replied +_Margarita_ calmly—but they are words sinful—What are they? quoth the +abbess, interrupting her: They are sinful in the first degree, answered +_Margarita_,—they are mortal—and if we are ravished and die unabsolved +of them, we shall both——but you may pronounce them to me, quoth the +abbess of _Andoüillets_——They cannot, my dear mother, said the novice, +be pronounced at all; they will make all the blood in one’s body fly up +into one’s face—But you may whisper them in my ear, quoth the abbess. + +Heaven! hadst thou no guardian angel to delegate to the inn at the +bottom of the hill? was there no generous and friendly spirit +unemployed——no agent in nature, by some monitory shivering, creeping +along the artery which led to his heart, to rouse the muleteer from his +banquet?——no sweet minstrelsy to bring back the fair idea of the abbess +and _Margarita_, with their black rosaries! + +Rouse! rouse!——but ’tis too late—the horrid words are pronounced this +moment—— + +——and how to tell them—Ye, who can speak of every thing existing, with +unpolluted lips—instruct me——guide me—— + +C H A P. VI + +ALL sins whatever, quoth the abbess, turning casuist in the distress +they were under, are held by the confessor of our convent to be either +mortal or venial: there is no further division. Now a venial sin being +the slightest and least of all sins—being halved—by taking either only +the half of it, and leaving the rest—or, by taking it all, and amicably +halving it betwixt yourself and another person—in course becomes +diluted into no sin at all. + +Now I see no sin in saying, _bou, bou, bou, bou, bou_, a hundred times +together; nor is there any turpitude in pronouncing the syllable _ger, +ger, ger, ger, ger_, were it from our matins to our vespers: Therefore, +my dear daughter, continued the abbess of _Andoüillets_—I will say +_bou_, and thou shalt say _ger;_ and then alternately, as there is no +more sin in _fou_ than in _bou_—Thou shalt say _fou_—and I will come in +(like fa, sol, la, re, mi, ut, at our complines) with _ter._ And +accordingly the abbess, giving the pitch note, set off thus: + +Abbess, )  Bou - - bou - - bou - - +_Margarita_,) ——ger, - - ger, - - ger. +_Margarita_,)  Fou...fou...fou.. +Abbess, ) —ter, - - ter, - - ter. + +The two mules acknowledged the notes by a mutual lash of their tails; +but it went no further——’Twill answer by an’ by, said the novice. + +Abbess, )  Bou. bou. bou. bou. bou. bou. +Margarita,) —ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, ger. + +Quicker still, cried _Margarita._ + +Fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou. + +Quicker still, cried _Margarita._ + +Bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou. + +Quicker still—God preserve me; said the abbess—They do not understand +us, cried _Margarita_—But the Devil does, said the abbess of +_Andoüillets._ + +C H A P. VII + +WHAT a tract of country have I run!—how many degrees nearer to the warm +sun am I advanced, and how many fair and goodly cities have I seen, +during the time you have been reading and reflecting, Madam, upon this +story! There’s FONTAINBLEAU, and SENS, and JOIGNY, and AUXERRE, and +DIJON the capital of _Burgundy_, and CHALLON, and _Mâcon_ the capital +of the _Maconese_, and a score more upon the road to LYONS——and now I +have run them over——I might as well talk to you of so many market towns +in the moon, as tell you one word about them: it will be this chapter +at the least, if not both this and the next entirely lost, do what I +will—— + +—Why, ’tis a strange story! _Tristram._ + +——Alas! Madam, + +had it been upon some melancholy lecture of the cross—the peace of +meekness, or the contentment of resignation——I had not been incommoded: +or had I thought of writing it upon the purer abstractions of the soul, +and that food of wisdom and holiness and contemplation, upon which the +spirit of man (when separated from the body) is to subsist for +ever——You would have come with a better appetite from it—— + +——I wish I never had wrote it: but as I never blot any thing out——let +us use some honest means to get it out of our heads directly. + +——Pray reach me my fool’s cap——I fear you sit upon it, Madam——’tis +under the cushion——I’ll put it on—— + +Bless me! you have had it upon your head this half hour.——There then +let it stay, with a + +Fa-ra diddle di + +and a fa-ri diddle d + +and a high-dum—dye-dum + + fiddle - - - dumb - c. + +And now, Madam, we may venture, I hope a little to go on. + +C H A P. VIII + +——All you need say of _Fontainbleau_ (in case you are ask’d) is, that +it stands about forty miles (south something) from _Paris_, in the +middle of a large forest_—_That there is something great in it_—_That +the king goes there once every two or three years, with his whole +court, for the pleasure of the chace—and that, during that carnival of +sporting, any _English_ gentleman of fashion (you need not forget +yourself) may be accommodated with a nag or two, to partake of the +sport, taking care only not to out-gallop the king—— + +Though there are two reasons why you need not talk loud of this to +every one. + +First, Because ’twill make the said nags the harder to be got; and + +Secondly, ’Tis not a word of it true.——_Allons!_ + +As for SENS——you may dispatch—in a word——“_’Tis an archiepiscopal +see._” + +——For JOIGNY—the less, I think, one says of it the better. + +But for AUXERRE—I could go on for ever: for in my _grand tour_ through +_Europe_, in which, after all, my father (not caring to trust me with +any one) attended me himself, with my uncle _Toby_, and _Trim_, and +_Obadiah_, and indeed most of the family, except my mother, who being +taken up with a project of knitting my father a pair of large worsted +breeches—(the thing is common sense)—and she not caring to be put out +of her way, she staid at home, at SHANDY HALL, to keep things right +during the expedition; in which, I say, my father stopping us two days +at _Auxerre_, and his researches being ever of such a nature, that they +would have found fruit even in a desert——he has left me enough to say +upon AUXERRE: in short, wherever my father went——but ’twas more +remarkably so, in this journey through _France_ and _Italy_, than in +any other stages of his life—his road seemed to lie so much on one side +of that, wherein all other travellers have gone before him—he saw kings +and courts and silks of all colours, in such strange lights——and his +remarks and reasonings upon the characters, the manners, and customs of +the countries we pass’d over, were so opposite to those of all other +mortal men, particularly those of my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_—(to say +nothing of myself)—and to crown all—the occurrences and scrapes which +we were perpetually meeting and getting into, in consequence of his +systems and opiniotry—they were of so odd, so mix’d and tragi-comical a +contexture—That the whole put together, it appears of so different a +shade and tint from any tour of _Europe_, which was ever executed—that +I will venture to pronounce—the fault must be mine and mine only—if it +be not read by all travellers and travel-readers, till travelling is no +more,—or which comes to the same point—till the world, finally, takes +it into its head to stand still.—— + +——But this rich bale is not to be open’d now; except a small thread or +two of it, merely to unravel the mystery of my father’s stay at +AUXERRE. + +——As I have mentioned it—’tis too slight to be kept suspended; and when +’tis wove in, there is an end of it. + +We’ll go, brother _Toby_, said my father, whilst dinner is coddling—to +the abbey of Saint _Germain_, if it be only to see these bodies, of +which Monsieur _Sequier_ has given such a recommendation.——I’ll go see +any body, quoth my uncle _Toby;_ for he was all compliance through +every step of the journey——Defend me! said my father—they are all +mummies——Then one need not shave; quoth my uncle _Toby_——Shave! +no—cried my father—’twill be more like relations to go with our beards +on—So out we sallied, the corporal lending his master his arm, and +bringing up the rear, to the abbey of Saint _Germain._ + +Every thing is very fine, and very rich, and very superb, and very +magnificent, said my father, addressing himself to the sacristan, who +was a younger brother of the order of _Benedictines_—but our curiosity +has led us to see the bodies, of which Monsieur _Sequier_ has given the +world so exact a description.—The sacristan made a bow, and lighting a +torch first, which he had always in the vestry ready for the purpose; +he led us into the tomb of St. _Heribald_——This, said the sacristan, +laying his hand upon the tomb, was a renowned prince of the house of +_Bavaria_, who under the successive reigns of _Charlemagne, Louis le +Debonnair_, and _Charles the Bald_, bore a great sway in the +government, and had a principal hand in bringing every thing into order +and discipline—— + +Then he has been as great, said my uncle, in the field, as in the +cabinet——I dare say he has been a gallant soldier——He was a monk—said +the sacristan. + +My uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ sought comfort in each other’s faces—but +found it not: my father clapped both his hands upon his cod-piece, +which was a way he had when any thing hugely tickled him: for though he +hated a monk and the very smell of a monk worse than all the devils in +hell——yet the shot hitting my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ so much harder +than him, ’twas a relative triumph; and put him into the gayest humour +in the world. + +——And pray what do you call this gentleman? quoth my father, rather +sportingly: This tomb, said the young _Benedictine_, looking downwards, +contains the bones of Saint MAXIMA, who came from _Ravenna_ on purpose +to touch the body—— + +——Of Saint MAXIMUS, said my father, popping in with his saint before +him,—they were two of the greatest saints in the whole martyrology, +added my father——Excuse me, said the sacristan——’twas to touch the +bones of Saint _Germain_, the builder of the abbey——And what did she +get by it? said my uncle _Toby_——What does any woman get by it? said my +father——MARTYRDOME; replied the young _Benedictine_, making a bow down +to the ground, and uttering the word with so humble, but decisive a +cadence, it disarmed my father for a moment. ’Tis supposed, continued +the _Benedictine_, that St. _Maxima_ has lain in this tomb four hundred +years, and two hundred before her canonization——’Tis but a slow rise, +brother _Toby_, quoth my father, in this self-same army of martyrs.——A +desperate slow one, an’ please your honour, said _Trim_, unless one +could purchase——I should rather sell out entirely, quoth my uncle +_Toby_——I am pretty much of your opinion, brother _Toby_, said my +father. + +——Poor St. _Maxima!_ said my uncle _Toby_ low to himself, as we turn’d +from her tomb: She was one of the fairest and most beautiful ladies +either of _Italy_ or _France_, continued the sacristan——But who the +duce has got lain down here, besides her? quoth my father, pointing +with his cane to a large tomb as we walked on——It is Saint _Optat_, +Sir, answered the sacristan——And properly is Saint _Optat_ plac’d! said +my father: And what is Saint _Optat_’s story? continued he. Saint +_Optat_, replied the sacristan, was a bishop—— + +——I thought so, by heaven! cried my father, interrupting him—Saint +_Optat!_——how should Saint _Optat_ fail? so snatching out his +pocket-book, and the young _Benedictine_ holding him the torch as he +wrote, he set it down as a new prop to his system of Christian names, +and I will be bold to say, so disinterested was he in the search of +truth, that had he found a treasure in Saint _Optat_’s tomb, it would +not have made him half so rich: ’Twas as successful a short visit as +ever was paid to the dead; and so highly was his fancy pleas’d with all +that had passed in it,—that he determined at once to stay another day +in _Auxerre._ + +—I’ll see the rest of these good gentry to-morrow, said my father, as +we cross’d over the square—And while you are paying that visit, brother +_Shandy_, quoth my uncle _Toby_—the corporal and I will mount the +ramparts. + +C H A P. IX + +——NOW this is the most puzzled skein of all——for in this last chapter, +as far at least as it has help’d me through _Auxerre_, I have been +getting forwards in two different journies together, and with the same +dash of the pen—for I have got entirely out of _Auxerre_ in this +journey which I am writing now, and I am got half way out of _Auxerre_ +in that which I shall write hereafter——There is but a certain degree of +perfection in every thing; and by pushing at something beyond that, I +have brought myself into such a situation, as no traveller ever stood +before me; for I am this moment walking across the market-place of +_Auxerre_ with my father and my uncle _Toby_, in our way back to +dinner——and I am this moment also entering _Lyons_ with my post-chaise +broke into a thousand pieces—and I am moreover this moment in a +handsome pavillion built by _Pringello_,[36] upon the banks of the +_Garonne_, which Mons. _Sligniac_ has lent me, and where I now sit +rhapsodising all these affairs. + +——Let me collect myself, and pursue my journey. + + [36] The same Don _Pringello_, the celebrated _Spanish_ architect, of + whom my cousin _Antony_ has made such honourable mention in a scholium + to the Tale inscribed to his name.—Vid. p.129, small edit. + +C H A P. X + +I AM glad of it, said I, settling the account with myself, as I walk’d +into _Lyons_——my chaise being all laid higgledy-piggledy with my +baggage in a cart, which was moving slowly before me——I am heartily +glad, said I, that ’tis all broke to pieces; for now I can go directly +by water to _Avignon_, which will carry me on a hundred and twenty +miles of my journey, and not cost me seven livres——and from thence, +continued I, bringing forwards the account, I can hire a couple of +mules—or asses, if I like, (for nobody knows me,) and cross the plains +of _Languedoc_ for almost nothing——I shall gain four hundred livres by +the misfortune clear into my purse: and pleasure! worth—worth double +the money by it. With what velocity, continued I, clapping my two hands +together, shall I fly down the rapid _Rhône_, with the VIVARES on my +right hand, and DAUPHINY on my left, scarce seeing the ancient cities +of VIENNE, _Valence_, and _Vivieres._ What a flame will it rekindle in +the lamp, to snatch a blushing grape from the _Hermitage_ and _Cotê +roti_, as I shoot by the foot of them! and what a fresh spring in the +blood! to behold upon the banks advancing and retiring, the castles of +romance, whence courteous knights have whilome rescued the +distress’d——and see vertiginous, the rocks, the mountains, the +cataracts, and all the hurry which Nature is in with all her great +works about her. + +As I went on thus, methought my chaise, the wreck of which look’d +stately enough at the first, insensibly grew less and less in its size; +the freshness of the painting was no more—the gilding lost its +lustre—and the whole affair appeared so poor in my eyes—so sorry!—so +contemptible! and, in a word, so much worse than the abbess of +_Andoüillets’_ itself—that I was just opening my mouth to give it to +the devil—when a pert vamping chaise-undertaker, stepping nimbly across +the street, demanded if Monsieur would have his chaise refitted——No, +no, said I, shaking my head sideways—Would Monsieur choose to sell it? +rejoined the undertaker—With all my soul, said I—the iron work is worth +forty livres—and the glasses worth forty more—and the leather you may +take to live on. + +What a mine of wealth, quoth I, as he counted me the money, has this +post-chaise brought me in? And this is my usual method of book-keeping, +at least with the disasters of life—making a penny of every one of ’em +as they happen to me—— + +——Do, my dear _Jenny_, tell the world for me, how I behaved under one, +the most oppressive of its kind, which could befal me as a man, proud +as he ought to be of his manhood—— + +’Tis enough, saidst thou, coming close up to me, as I stood with my +garters in my hand, reflecting upon what had not pass’d——’Tis enough, +_Tristram_, and I am satisfied, saidst thou, whispering these words in +my ear, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *;—* * * * * * * * +*——any other man would have sunk down to the centre—— + +——Every thing is good for something, quoth I. + +——I’ll go into _Wales_ for six weeks, and drink goat’s whey—and I’ll +gain seven years longer life for the accident. For which reason I think +myself inexcusable, for blaming Fortune so often as I have done, for +pelting me all my life long, like an ungracious duchess, as I call’d +her, with so many small evils: surely, if I have any cause to be angry +with her, ’tis that she has not sent me great ones—a score of good +cursed, bouncing losses, would have been as good as a pension to me. + +——One of a hundred a year, or so, is all I wish—I would not be at the +plague of paying land-tax for a larger. + +C H A P. XI + +TO those who call vexations, VEXATIONS, as knowing what they are, there +could not be a greater, than to be the best part of a day at _Lyons_, +the most opulent and flourishing city in _France_, enriched with the +most fragments of antiquity—and not be able to see it. To be withheld +upon _any_ account, must be a vexation; but to be withheld _by_ a +vexation——must certainly be, what philosophy justly calls + +VEXATION +upon +VEXATION. + +I had got my two dishes of milk coffee (which by the bye is excellently +good for a consumption, but you must boil the milk and coffee +together—otherwise ’tis only coffee and milk)—and as it was no more +than eight in the morning, and the boat did not go off till noon, I had +time to see enough of _Lyons_ to tire the patience of all the friends I +had in the world with it. I will take a walk to the cathedral, said I, +looking at my list, and see the wonderful mechanism of this great clock +of _Lippius_ of _Basil_, in the first place—— + +Now, of all things in the world, I understand the least of mechanism——I +have neither genius, or taste, or fancy—and have a brain so entirely +unapt for every thing of that kind, that I solemnly declare I was never +yet able to comprehend the principles of motion of a squirrel cage, or +a common knife-grinder’s wheel—tho’ I have many an hour of my life +look’d up with great devotion at the one—and stood by with as much +patience as any christian ever could do, at the other—— + +I’ll go see the surprising movements of this great clock, said I, the +very first thing I do: and then I will pay a visit to the great library +of the Jesuits, and procure, if possible, a sight of the thirty volumes +of the general history of _China_, wrote (not in the _Tartarean_, but) +in the _Chinese_ language, and in the _Chinese_ character too. + +Now I almost know as little of the _Chinese_ language, as I do of the +mechanism of _Lippius_’s clock-work; so, why these should have jostled +themselves into the two first articles of my list——I leave to the +curious as a problem of Nature. I own it looks like one of her +ladyship’s obliquities; and they who court her, are interested in +finding out her humour as much as I. + +When these curiosities are seen, quoth I, half addressing myself to my +_valet de place_, who stood behind me——’twill be no hurt if we go to +the church of St. _Irenæus_, and see the pillar to which _Christ_ was +tied——and after that, the house where _Pontius Pilate_ lived——’Twas at +the next town, said the _valet de place_—at _Vienne;_ I am glad of it, +said I, rising briskly from my chair, and walking across the room with +strides twice as long as my usual pace——“for so much the sooner shall I +be at the _Tomb of the two lovers._” + +What was the cause of this movement, and why I took such long strides +in uttering this——I might leave to the curious too; but as no principle +of clock-work is concerned in it——’twill be as well for the reader if I +explain it myself. + +C H A P. XII + +O! THERE is a sweet æra in the life of man, when (the brain being +tender and fibrillous, and more like pap than any thing else)——a story +read of two fond lovers, separated from each other by cruel parents, +and by still more cruel destiny—— + +     _Amandus_——He +     _Amanda_——She—— + +each ignorant of the other’s course, +     He——east +     She——west +_Amandus_ taken captive by the _Turks_, and carried to the emperor of +_Morocco_’s court, where the princess of _Morocco_ falling in love with +him, keeps him twenty years in prison for the love of his _Amanda._—— + +She—(_Amanda_) all the time wandering barefoot, and with dishevell’d +hair, o’er rocks and mountains, enquiring for _Amandus!——Amandus! +Amandus!—_making every hill and valley to echo back his name—— + +_Amandus! Amandus!_ + +at every town and city, sitting down forlorn at the gate——Has +Amandus!—has my _Amandus_ enter’d?——till,——going round, and round, and +round the world——chance unexpected bringing them at the same moment of +the night, though by different ways, to the gate of _Lyons_, their +native city, and each in well-known accents calling out aloud, + +Is _Amandus_ + +still alive? + +Is my _Amanda_ + +they fly into each other’s arms, and both drop down dead for joy. + +There is a soft æra in every gentle mortal’s life, where such a story +affords more _pabulum_ to the brain, than all the _Frusts_, and +_Crusts_, and _Rusts_ of antiquity, which travellers can cook up for +it. + +——’Twas all that stuck on the right side of the cullender in my own, of +what _Spon_ and others, in their accounts of _Lyons_, had _strained_ +into it; and finding, moreover, in some Itinerary, but in what God +knows——That sacred to the fidelity of _Amandus_ and _Amanda_, a tomb +was built without the gates, where, to this hour, lovers called upon +them to attest their truths——I never could get into a scrape of that +kind in my life, but this _tomb of the lovers_ would, somehow or other, +come in at the close —nay such a kind of empire had it establish’d over +me, that I could seldom think or speak of _Lyons_—and sometimes not so +much as see even a _Lyons-waistcoat_, but this remnant of antiquity +would present itself to my fancy; and I have often said in my wild way +of running on——tho’ I fear with some irreverence——“I thought this +shrine (neglected as it was) as valuable as that of _Mecca_, and so +little short, except in wealth, of the _Santa Casa_ itself, that some +time or other, I would go a pilgrimage (though I had no other business +at _Lyons_) on purpose to pay it a visit.” + +In my list, therefore, of _Videnda_ at _Lyons_, this, tho’ _last_,—was +not, you see, _least_ ; so taking a dozen or two of longer strides than +usual cross my room, just whilst it passed my brain, I walked down +calmly into the _basse cour_, in order to sally forth; and having +called for my bill—as it was uncertain whether I should return to my +inn, I had paid it——had moreover given the maid ten sous, and was just +receiving the dernier compliments of Monsieur _Le Blanc_, for a +pleasant voyage down the _Rhône_——when I was stopped at the gate—— + +C H A P. XIII + +——’TWAS by a poor ass, who had just turned in with a couple of large +panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and +cabbage-leaves; and stood dubious, with his two fore-feet on the inside +of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as +not knowing very well whether he was to go in or no. + +Now, ’tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to +strike——there is a patient endurance of sufferings, wrote so +unaffectedly in his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily for +him, that it always disarms me; and to that degree, that I do not like +to speak unkindly to him: on the contrary, meet him where I +will—whether in town or country—in cart or under panniers—whether in +liberty or bondage——I have ever something civil to say to him on my +part; and as one word begets another (if he has as little to do as +I)——I generally fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my +imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of +his countenance—and where those carry me not deep enough—in flying from +my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to +think—as well as a man, upon the occasion. In truth, it is the only +creature of all the classes of beings below me, with whom I can do +this: for parrots, jackdaws, &c.——I never exchange a word with +them——nor with the apes, &c. for pretty near the same reason; they act +by rote, as the others speak by it, and equally make me silent: nay my +dog and my cat, though I value them both——(and for my dog he would +speak if he could)—yet somehow or other, they neither of them possess +the talents for conversation——I can make nothing of a discourse with +them, beyond the _proposition_, the _reply_, and _rejoinder_, which +terminated my father’s and my mother’s conversations, in his beds of +justice——and those utter’d——there’s an end of the dialogue—— + +—But with an ass, I can commune for ever. + +Come, _Honesty!_ said I,——seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt +him and the gate——art thou for coming in, or going out? + +The ass twisted his head round to look up the street—— + +Well—replied I—we’ll wait a minute for thy driver: + +——He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the +opposite way—— + +I understand thee perfectly, answered I——If thou takest a wrong step in +this affair, he will cudgel thee to death——Well! a minute is but a +minute, and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be +set down as ill-spent. + +He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and +in the little peevish contentions of nature betwixt hunger and +unsavouriness, had dropt it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and +pick’d it up again——God help thee, _Jack!_ said I, thou hast a bitter +breakfast on’t—and many a bitter day’s labour,—and many a bitter blow, +I fear, for its wages——’tis all—all bitterness to thee, whatever life +is to others.——And now thy mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is as +bitter, I dare say, as soot—(for he had cast aside the stem) and thou +hast not a friend perhaps in all this world, that will give thee a +macaroon.——In saying this, I pull’d out a paper of ’em, which I had +just purchased, and gave him one—and at this moment that I am telling +it, my heart smites me, that there was more of pleasantry in the +conceit, of seeing _how_ an ass would eat a macaroon——than of +benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act. + +When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I press’d him to come in——the poor +beast was heavy loaded——his legs seem’d to tremble under him——he hung +rather backwards, and as I pull’d at his halter, it broke short in my +hand——he look’d up pensive in my face—“Don’t thrash me with it—but if +you will, you may”——If I do, said I, I’ll be d——d. + +The word was but one-half of it pronounced, like the abbess of +_Andoüillet_’s—(so there was no sin in it)—when a person coming in, let +fall a thundering bastinado upon the poor devil’s crupper, which put an +end to the ceremony. + +_ Out upon it!_ + +cried I——but the interjection was equivocal——and, I think, wrong placed +too—for the end of an osier which had started out from the contexture +of the ass’s panier, had caught hold of my breeches pocket, as he +rush’d by me, and rent it in the most disastrous direction you can +imagine——so that the + +_Out upon it!_ in my opinion, should have come in here——but this I +leave to be settled by + +The +REVIEWERS +of +MY BREECHES, + +which I have brought over along with me for that purpose. + +C H A P. XIV + +WHEN all was set to rights, I came down stairs again into the _basse +cour_ with my _valet de place_, in order to sally out towards the tomb +of the two lovers, &c.—and was a second time stopp’d at the gate——not +by the ass—but by the person who struck him; and who, by that time, had +taken possession (as is not uncommon after a defeat) of the very spot +of ground where the ass stood. + +It was a commissary sent to me from the post-office, with a rescript in +his hand for the payment of some six livres odd sous. + +Upon what account? said I.——’Tis upon the part of the king, replied the +commissary, heaving up both his shoulders—— + +——My good friend, quoth I——as sure as I am I—and you are you—— + +——And who are you? said he.—— + +——Don’t puzzle me; said I. + +C H A P. XV + +——But it is an indubitable verity, continued I, addressing myself to +the commissary, changing only the form of my asseveration——that I owe +the king of _France_ nothing but my good will; for he is a very honest +man, and I wish him all health and pastime in the world—— + +_Pardonnez moi_—replied the commissary, you are indebted to him six +livres four sous, for the next post from hence to St. _Fons_, in your +route to _Avignon_—which being a post royal, you pay double for the +horses and postillion—otherwise ’twould have amounted to no more than +three livres two sous—— + +——But I don’t go by land; said I. + +——You may if you please; replied the commissary—— + +Your most obedient servant——said I, making him a low bow—— + +The commissary, with all the sincerity of grave good breeding—made me +one, as low again.——I never was more disconcerted with a bow in my +life. + +——The devil take the serious character of these people! quoth I—(aside) +they understand no more of Irony than this—— + +The comparison was standing close by with his panniers—but something +seal’d up my lips—I could not pronounce the name— + +Sir, said I, collecting myself—it is not my intention to take post—— + +—But you may—said he, persisting in his first reply—you may take post +if you chuse—— + +—And I may take salt to my pickled herring, said I, if I chuse— + +—But I do not chuse— + +—But you must pay for it, whether you do or no. + +Aye! for the salt; said I (I know)—— + +—And for the post too; added he. Defend me! cried I—— + +I travel by water—I am going down the _Rhône_ this very afternoon—my +baggage is in the boat—and I have actually paid nine livres for my +passage—— + +_C’est tout egal_—’tis all one; said he. + +_Bon Dieu!_ what, pay for the way I go! and for the way I do _not_ go! + +——_C’est tout egal;_ replied the commissary—— + +——The devil it is! said I—but I will go to ten thousand Bastiles +first—— + +_O England! England!_ thou land of liberty, and climate of good sense, +thou tenderest of mothers—and gentlest of nurses, cried I, kneeling +upon one knee, as I was beginning my apostrophè. + +When the director of Madam _Le Blanc_’s conscience coming in at that +instant, and seeing a person in black, with a face as pale as ashes, at +his devotions—looking still paler by the contrast and distress of his +drapery—ask’d, if I stood in want of the aids of the church—— + +I go by WATER—said I—and here’s another will be for making me pay for +going by OIL. + +C H A P. XVI + +AS I perceived the commissary of the post-office would have his six +livres four sous, I had nothing else for it, but to say some smart +thing upon the occasion, worth the money: + +And so I set off thus:—— + +——And pray, Mr. Commissary, by what law of courtesy is a defenceless +stranger to be used just the reverse from what you use a _Frenchman_ in +this matter? + +By no means; said he. + +Excuse me; said I—for you have begun, Sir, with first tearing off my +breeches—and now you want my pocket—— + +Whereas—had you first taken my pocket, as you do with your own +people—and then left me bare a—’d after—I had been a beast to have +complain’d—— + +As it is—— + +——’Tis contrary to the _law of nature._ + +——’Tis contrary to _reason._ + +——’Tis contrary to the GOSPEL. + +But not to this——said he—putting a printed paper into my hand, + +PAR le ROY. + +———’Tis a pithy prolegomenon, quoth I—and so read on — — — — — — — — — +— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — + +——By all which it appears, quoth I, having read it over, a little too +rapidly, that if a man sets out in a post-chaise from _Paris_—he must +go on travelling in one, all the days of his life—or pay for it.—Excuse +me, said the commissary, the spirit of the ordinance is this—That if +you set out with an intention of running post from _Paris_ to +_Avignon_, &c. you shall not change that intention or mode of +travelling, without first satisfying the fermiers for two posts further +than the place you repent at—and ’tis founded, continued he, upon this, +that the REVENUES are not to fall short through your _fickleness_—— + +——O by heavens! cried I—if fickleness is taxable in _France_—we have +nothing to do but to make the best peace with you we can—— + +AND SO THE PEACE WAS MADE; + +——And if it is a bad one—as _Tristram Shandy_ laid the corner-stone of +it—nobody but _Tristram Shandy_ ought to be hanged. + +C H A P. XVII + +THOUGH I was sensible I had said as many clever things to the +commissary as came to six livres four sous, yet I was determined to +note down the imposition amongst my remarks before I retired from the +place; so putting my hand into my coat-pocket for my remarks—(which, by +the bye, may be a caution to travellers to take a little more care of +_their_ remarks for the future) “my remarks were _stolen_”——Never did +sorry traveller make such a pother and racket about his remarks as I +did about mine, upon the occasion. + +Heaven! earth! sea! fire! cried I, calling in every thing to my aid but +what I should——My remarks are stolen!—what shall I do?——Mr. Commissary! +pray did I drop any remarks, as I stood besides you?—— + +You dropp’d a good many very singular ones; replied he——Pugh! said I, +those were but a few, not worth above six livres two sous—but these are +a large parcel——He shook his head——Monsieur _Le Blanc!_ Madam _Le +Blanc!_ did you see any papers of mine?—you maid of the house! run up +stairs—_François!_ run up after her—— + +—I must have my remarks——they were the best remarks, cried I, that ever +were made—the wisest—the wittiest—What shall I do?—which way shall I +turn myself? + +_Sancho Pança_, when he lost his ass’s FURNITURE, did not exclaim more +bitterly. + +C H A P. XVIII + +WHEN the first transport was over, and the registers of the brain were +beginning to get a little out of the confusion into which this jumble +of cross accidents had cast them—it then presently occurr’d to me, that +I had left my remarks in the pocket of the chaise—and that in selling +my chaise, I had sold my remarks along with it, to the chaise-vamper.   +      I leave this void space that the reader may swear into it any +oath that he is most accustomed to——For my own part, if ever I swore a +_whole_ oath into a vacancy in my life, I think it was into that—— * * +* * * * * * *, said I—and so my remarks through _France_, which were as +full of wit, as an egg is full of meat, and as well worth four hundred +guineas, as the said egg is worth a penny—have I been selling here to a +chaise-vamper—for four _Louis d’Ors_—and giving him a post-chaise (by +heaven) worth six into the bargain; had it been to _Dodsley_, or +_Becket_, or any creditable bookseller, who was either leaving off +business, and wanted a post-chaise—or who was beginning it—and wanted +my remarks, and two or three guineas along with them—I could have borne +it——but to a chaise-vamper!—shew me to him this moment, +_François_,—said I—The valet de place put on his hat, and led the +way—and I pull’d off mine, as I pass’d the commissary, and followed +him. + +C H A P. XIX + +WHEN we arrived at the chaise-vamper’s house, both the house and the +shop were shut up; it was the eighth of _September_, the nativity of +the blessed Virgin _Mary_, mother of God— + +——Tantarra - ra - tan - tivi——the whole world was gone out a +May-poling—frisking here—capering there——no body cared a button for me +or my remarks; so I sat me down upon a bench by the door, +philosophating upon my condition: by a better fate than usually attends +me, I had not waited half an hour, when the mistress came in to take +the papilliotes from off her hair, before she went to the May-poles—— + +The _French_ women, by the bye, love May-poles, _à la folie_—that is, +as much as their matins——give ’em but a May-pole, whether in _May, +June, July_ or _September_—they never count the times——down it +goes——’tis meat, drink, washing, and lodging to ’em——and had we but the +policy, an’ please your worships (as wood is a little scarce in +_France_), to send them but plenty of May-poles—— + +The women would set them up; and when they had done, they would dance +round them (and the men for company) till they were all blind. + +The wife of the chaise-vamper stepp’d in, I told you, to take the +papilliotes from off her hair——the toilet stands still for no man——so +she jerk’d off her cap, to begin with them as she open’d the door, in +doing which, one of them fell upon the ground—I instantly saw it was my +own writing—— + +O Seigneur! cried I—you have got all my remarks upon your head, +Madam!——_J’en suis bien mortifiée_, said she——’tis well, thinks I, they +have stuck there—for could they have gone deeper, they would have made +such confusion in a _French_ woman’s noddle—She had better have gone +with it unfrizled, to the day of eternity. + +_Tenez_—said she—so without any idea of the nature of my suffering, she +took them from her curls, and put them gravely one by one into my +hat——one was twisted this way——another twisted that——ey! by my faith; +and when they are published, quoth I,—— + +They will be worse twisted still. + +C H A P. XX + +ANS now for _Lippius_’s clock! said I, with the air of a man, who had +got thro’ all his difficulties——nothing can prevent us seeing that, and +the _Chinese_ history, &c. except the time, said _François_——for ’tis +almost eleven—then we must speed the faster, said I, striding it away +to the cathedral. + +I cannot say, in my heart, that it gave me any concern in being told by +one of the minor canons, as I was entering the west door,—That +_Lippius_’s great clock was all out of joints, and had not gone for +some years——It will give me the more time, thought I, to peruse the +_Chinese_ history; and besides I shall be able to give the world a +better account of the clock in its decay, than I could have done in its +flourishing condition—— + +——And so away I posted to the college of the Jesuits. + +Now it is with the project of getting a peep at the history of _China_ +in _Chinese_ characters—as with many others I could mention, which +strike the fancy only at a distance; for as I came nearer and nearer to +the point—my blood cool’d—the freak gradually went off, till at length +I would not have given a cherry-stone to have it gratified——The truth +was, my time was short, and my heart was at the Tomb of the Lovers——I +wish to God, said I, as I got the rapper in my hand, that the key of +the library may be but lost; it fell out as well—— + +_For all the_ JESUITS _had got the cholic_—and to that degree, as never +was known in the memory of the oldest practitioner. + +C H A P. XXI + +AS I knew the geography of the Tomb of the Lovers, as well as if I had +lived twenty years in _Lyons_, namely, that it was upon the turning of +my right hand, just without the gate, leading to the _Fauxbourg de +Vaise_——I dispatched _François_ to the boat, that I might pay the +homage I so long ow’d it, without a witness of my weakness—I walk’d +with all imaginable joy towards the place——when I saw the gate which +intercepted the tomb, my heart glowed within me—— + +—Tender and faithful spirits! cried I, addressing myself to _Amandus_ +and _Amanda_—long—long have I tarried to drop this tear upon your +tomb——I come——I come—— + +When I came—there was no tomb to drop it upon. + +What would I have given for my uncle _Toby_, to have whistled Lillo +bullero! + +C H A P. XXII + +NO matter how, or in what mood—but I flew from the tomb of the +lovers—or rather I did not fly _from_ it—(for there was no such thing +existing) and just got time enough to the boat to save my passage;—and +ere I had sailed a hundred yards, the _Rhône_ and the _Saôn_ met +together, and carried me down merrily betwixt them. + +But I have described this voyage down the _Rhône_, before I made it—— + +——So now I am at _Avignon_, and as there is nothing to see but the old +house, in which the duke of _Ormond_ resided, and nothing to stop me +but a short remark upon the place, in three minutes you will see me +crossing the bridge upon a mule, with _François_ upon a horse with my +portmanteau behind him, and the owner of both, striding the way before +us, with a long gun upon his shoulder, and a sword under his arm, lest +peradventure we should run away with his cattle. Had you seen my +breeches in entering _Avignon_,——Though you’d have seen them better, I +think, as I mounted—you would not have thought the precaution amiss, or +found in your heart to have taken it in dudgeon; for my own part, I +took it most kindly; and determined to make him a present of them, when +we got to the end of our journey, for the trouble they had put him to, +of arming himself at all points against them. + +Before I go further, let me get rid of my remark upon _Avignon_, which +is this: That I think it wrong, merely because a man’s hat has been +blown off his head by chance the first night he comes to +_Avignon_,——that he should therefore say, “_Avignon_ is more subject to +high winds than any town in all _France:_” for which reason I laid no +stress upon the accident till I had enquired of the master of the inn +about it, who telling me seriously it was so——and hearing, moreover, +the windiness of _Avignon_ spoke of in the country about as a +proverb——I set it down, merely to ask the learned what can be the +cause——the consequence I saw—for they are all Dukes, Marquisses, and +Counts, there——the duce a Baron, in all _Avignon_——so that there is +scarce any talking to them on a windy day. + +Prithee, friend, said I, take hold of my mule for a moment——for I +wanted to pull off one of my jack-boots, which hurt my heel—the man was +standing quite idle at the door of the inn, and as I had taken it into +my head, he was someway concerned about the house or stable, I put the +bridle into his hand—so begun with the boot:—when I had finished the +affair, I turned about to take the mule from the man, and thank him—— + +——But _Monsieur le Marquis_ had walked in—— + +C H A P. XXIII + +I HAD now the whole south of _France_, from the banks of the _Rhône_ to +those of the _Garonne_, to traverse upon my mule at my own leisure—_at +my own leisure_——for I had left Death, the Lord knows——and He only—how +far behind me——“I have followed many a man thro’ _France_, quoth he—but +never at this mettlesome rate.”——Still he followed,——and still I fled +him——but I fled him cheerfully——still he pursued——but, like one who +pursued his prey without hope——as he lagg’d, every step he lost, +softened his looks——why should I fly him at this rate? + +So notwithstanding all the commissary of the post-office had said, I +changed the _mode_ of my travelling once more; and, after so +precipitate and rattling a course as I had run, I flattered my fancy +with thinking of my mule, and that I should traverse the rich plains of +_Languedoc_ upon his back, as slowly as foot could fall. + +There is nothing more pleasing to a traveller——or more terrible to +travel-writers, than a large rich plain; especially if it is without +great rivers or bridges; and presents nothing to the eye, but one +unvaried picture of plenty: for after they have once told you, that +’tis delicious! or delightful! (as the case happens)—that the soil was +grateful, and that nature pours out all her abundance, &c. . . . they +have then a large plain upon their hands, which they know not what to +do with—and which is of little or no use to them but to carry them to +some town; and that town, perhaps of little more, but a new place to +start from to the next plain——and so on. + +—This is most terrible work; judge if I don’t manage my plains better. + +C H A P. XXIV + +I HAD not gone above two leagues and a half, before the man with his +gun began to look at his priming. + +I had three several times loiter’d _terribly_ behind; half a mile at +least every time; once, in deep conference with a drum-maker, who was +making drums for the fairs of _Baucaira_ and _Tarascone_—I did not +understand the principles—— + +The second time, I cannot so properly say, I stopp’d——for meeting a +couple of _Franciscans_ straitened more for time than myself, and not +being able to get to the bottom of what I was about——I had turn’d back +with them—— + +The third, was an affair of trade with a gossip, for a hand-basket of +_Provence_ figs for four sous; this would have been transacted at once; +but for a case of conscience at the close of it; for when the figs were +paid for, it turn’d out, that there were two dozen of eggs covered over +with vine-leaves at the bottom of the basket—as I had no intention of +buying eggs—I made no sort of claim of them—as for the space they had +occupied—what signified it? I had figs enow for my money—— + +—But it was my intention to have the basket—it was the gossip’s +intention to keep it, without which, she could do nothing with her +eggs——and unless I had the basket, I could do as little with my figs, +which were too ripe already, and most of ’em burst at the side: this +brought on a short contention, which terminated in sundry proposals, +what we should both do—— + +——How we disposed of our eggs and figs, I defy you, or the Devil +himself, had he not been there (which I am persuaded he was), to form +the least probable conjecture: You will read the whole of it——not this +year, for I am hastening to the story of my uncle _Toby_’s amours—but +you will read it in the collection of those which have arose out of the +journey across this plain—and which, therefore, I call my + +PLAIN STORIES. + +How far my pen has been fatigued, like those of other travellers, in +this journey of it, over so barren a track—the world must judge—but the +traces of it, which are now all set o’ vibrating together this moment, +tell me ’tis the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for as I had +made no convention with my man with the gun, as to time—by stopping and +talking to every soul I met, who was not in a full trot—joining all +parties before me—waiting for every soul behind—hailing all those who +were coming through cross-roads—arresting all kinds of beggars, +pilgrims, fiddlers, friars—not passing by a woman in a mulberry-tree +without commending her legs, and tempting her into conversation with a +pinch of snuff——In short, by seizing every handle, of what size or +shape soever, which chance held out to me in this journey—I turned my +_plain_ into a _city_—I was always in company, and with great variety +too; and as my mule loved society as much as myself, and had some +proposals always on his part to offer to every beast he met—I am +confident we could have passed through _Pall-Mall_, or St. +_James_’s-Street, for a month together, with fewer adventures—and seen +less of human nature. + +O! there is that sprightly frankness, which at once unpins every plait +of a _Languedocian_’s dress—that whatever is beneath it, it looks so +like the simplicity which poets sing of in better days—I will delude my +fancy, and believe it is so. + +’Twas in the road betwixt _Nismes_ and _Lunel_, where there is the best +_Muscatto_ wine in all _France_, and which by the bye belongs to the +honest canons of MONTPELLIER—and foul befal the man who has drunk it at +their table, who grudges them a drop of it. + +——The sun was set—they had done their work; the nymphs had tied up +their hair afresh—and the swains were preparing for a carousal—my mule +made a dead point——’Tis the fife and tabourin, said I——I’m frighten’d +to death, quoth he——They are running at the ring of pleasure, said I, +giving him a prick——By saint _Boogar_, and all the saints at the +backside of the door of purgatory, said he—(making the same resolution +with the abbesse of _Andoüillets_) I’ll not go a step further——’Tis +very well, sir, said I——I never will argue a point with one of your +family, as long as I live; so leaping off his back, and kicking off one +boot into this ditch, and t’other into that—I’ll take a dance, said +I—so stay you here. + +A sun-burnt daughter of Labour rose up from the groupe to meet me, as I +advanced towards them; her hair, which was a dark chesnut approaching +rather to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a single tress. + +We want a cavalier, said she, holding out both her hands, as if to +offer them—And a cavalier ye shall have; said I, taking hold of both of +them. + +Hadst thou, _Nannette_, been array’d like a duchesse! + +——But that cursed slit in thy petticoat! + +_Nannette_ cared not for it. + +We could not have done without you, said she, letting go one hand, with +self-taught politeness, leading me up with the other. + +A lame youth, whom _Apollo_ had recompensed with a pipe, and to which +he had added a tabourin of his own accord, ran sweetly over the +prelude, as he sat upon the bank——Tie me up this tress instantly, said +_Nannette_, putting a piece of string into my hand—It taught me to +forget I was a stranger—— The whole knot fell down——We had been seven +years acquainted. + +The youth struck the note upon the tabourin—his pipe followed, and off +we bounded——“the duce take that slit!” + +The sister of the youth, who had stolen her voice from heaven, sung +alternately with her brother——’twas a _Gascoigne_ roundelay. + +VIVA LA JOIA! + +FIDON LA TRISTESSA! + +The nymphs join’d in unison, and their swains an octave below them—— + +I would have given a crown to have it sew’d up—_Nannette_ would not +have given a sous—_Viva la joia!_ was in her lips—_Viva la joia!_ was +in her eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt +us——She look’d amiable!——Why could I not live, and end my days thus? +Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why could not a man sit +down in the lap of content here——and dance, and sing, and say his +prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid? Capriciously did +she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious——Then ’tis time +to dance off, quoth I; so changing only partners and tunes, I danced it +away from _Lunel_ to _Montpellier_——from thence to _Pesçnas, +Beziers_——I danced it along through _Narbonne, Carcasson_, and _Castle +Naudairy_, till at last I danced myself into _Perdrillo_’s pavillion, +where pulling out a paper of black lines, that I might go on straight +forwards, without digression or parenthesis, in my uncle _Toby_’s +amours—— + +I begun thus—— + +C H A P. XXV + +——BUT softly——for in these sportive plains, and under this genial sun, +where at this instant all flesh is running out piping, fiddling, and +dancing to the vintage, and every step that’s taken, the judgment is +surprised by the imagination, I defy, notwithstanding all that has been +said upon _straight lines_[37] in sundry pages of my book—I defy the +best cabbage planter that ever existed, whether he plants backwards or +forwards, it makes little difference in the account (except that he +will have more to answer for in the one case than in the other)—I defy +him to go on coolly, critically, and canonically, planting his cabbages +one by one, in straight lines, and stoical distances, especially if +slits in petticoats are unsew’d up—without ever and anon straddling +out, or sidling into some bastardly digression——In _Freeze-land, +Fog-land_, and some other lands I wot of—it may be done—— + +But in this clear climate of fantasy and perspiration, where every +idea, sensible and insensible, gets vent—in this land, my dear +_Eugenius_—in this fertile land of chivalry and romance, where I now +sit, unskrewing my ink-horn to write my uncle _Toby_’s amours, and with +all the meanders of JULIA’s track in quest of her DIEGO, in full view +of my study window—if thou comest not and takest me by the hand—— + +What a work it is likely to turn out! + +Let us begin it. + + [37] Vid. Vol. III. p. 243. + +C H A P. XXVI + +IT is with LOVE as with CUCKOLDOM—— + +But now I am talking of beginning a book, and have long had a thing +upon my mind to be imparted to the reader, which, if not imparted now, +can never be imparted to him as long as I live (whereas the COMPARISON +may be imparted to him any hour in the day)——I’ll just mention it, and +begin in good earnest. + +The thing is this. + +That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in +practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing +it is the best——I’m sure it is the most religious——for I begin with +writing the first sentence——and trusting to Almighty God for the +second. + +’Twould cure an author for ever of the fuss and folly of opening his +street-door, and calling in his neighbours and friends, and kinsfolk, +with the devil and all his imps, with their hammers and engines, &c. +only to observe how one sentence of mine follows another, and how the +plan follows the whole. + +I wish you saw me half starting out of my chair, with what confidence, +as I grasp the elbow of it, I look up——catching the idea, even +sometimes before it half way reaches me—— + +I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought which heaven +intended for another man. + +_Pope_ and his Portrait[38] are fools to me——no martyr is ever so full +of faith or fire——I wish I could say of good works too——but I have no + +Zeal or Anger——or + +Anger or Zeal—— + +And till gods and men agree together to call it by the same name——the +errantest TARTUFFE, in science——in politics—or in religion, shall never +kindle a spark within me, or have a worse word, or a more unkind +greeting, than what he will read in the next chapter. + + [38] Vid. _Pope_’s Portrait. + +C H A P. XXVII + +——Bon jour!——good morrow!——so you have got your cloak on betimes!——but +’tis a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly——’tis better to +be well mounted, than go o’ foot——and obstructions in the glands are +dangerous——And how goes it with thy concubine—thy wife,—and thy little +ones o’ both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and +lady—your sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins——I hope they have got better +of their colds, coughs, claps, tooth-aches, fevers, stranguries, +sciaticas, swellings, and sore eyes. + +——What a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood—give such a vile +purge—puke—poultice—plaister—night-draught—clyster—blister?——And why so +many grains of calomel? santa Maria! and such a dose of opium! +periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail——By my +great-aunt _Dinah_’s old black velvet mask! I think there is no +occasion for it. + +Now this being a little bald about the chin, by frequently putting off +and on, _before_ she was got with child by the coachman—not one of our +family would wear it after. To cover the MASK afresh, was more than the +mask was worth——and to wear a mask which was bald, or which could be +half seen through, was as bad as having no mask at all—— + +This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that in all our +numerous family, for these four generations, we count no more than one +archbishop, a _Welch_ judge, some three or four aldermen, and a single +mountebank—— + +In the sixteenth century, we boast of no less than a dozen alchymists. + +C H A P. XXVIII + +“IT is with Love as with Cuckoldom”——the suffering party is at least +the _third_, but generally the last in the house who knows any thing +about the matter: this comes, as all the world knows, from having half +a dozen words for one thing; and so long, as what in this vessel of the +human frame, is _Love_—may be _Hatred_, in that——_Sentiment_ half a +yard higher——and _Nonsense_———no, Madam,—not there——I mean at the part +I am now pointing to with my forefinger——how can we help ourselves? + +Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever +soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle _Toby_ was the worst +fitted, to have push’d his researches, thro’ such a contention of +feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do worse +matters, to see what they would turn out——had not _Bridget_’s +pre-notification of them to _Susannah_, and _Susannah_’s repeated +manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle +_Toby_ to look into the affair. + +C H A P. XXIX + +WHY weavers, gardeners, and gladiators—or a man with a pined leg +(proceeding from some ailment in the _foot_)—should ever have had some +tender nymph breaking her heart in secret for them, are points well and +duly settled and accounted for, by ancient and modern physiologists. + +A water-drinker, provided he is a profess’d one, and does it without +fraud or covin, is precisely in the same predicament: not that, at +first sight, there is any consequence, or show of logic in it, “That a +rill of cold water dribbling through my inward parts, should light up a +torch in my _Jenny_’s—” + +——The proposition does not strike one; on the contrary, it seems to run +opposite to the natural workings of causes and effects—— + +But it shews the weakness and imbecility of human reason. + +——“And in perfect good health with it?” + +—The most perfect,—Madam, that friendship herself could wish me—— + +“And drink nothing!—nothing but water?” + +—Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of +the brain——see how they give way!—— + +In swims CURIOSITY, beckoning to her damsels to follow—they dive into +the center of the current—— + +FANCY sits musing upon the bank, and with her eyes following the +stream, turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bow-sprits——And +DESIRE, with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as +they swim by her, with the other—— + +O ye water drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain, that ye have +so often governed and turn’d this world about like a +mill-wheel—grinding the faces of the impotent—bepowdering their +ribs—bepeppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very +frame and face of nature—— + +If I was you, quoth _Yorick_, I would drink more water, _Eugenius_—And, +if I was you, _Yorick_, replied _Eugenius_, so would I. + +Which shews they had both read _Longinus_— + +For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as +long as I live. + +C H A P. XXX + +I WISH my uncle _Toby_ had been a water-drinker; for then the thing had +been accounted for, That the first moment Widow _Wadman_ saw him, she +felt something stirring within her in his favour—Something!—something. + +—Something perhaps more than friendship—less than love—something—no +matter what—no matter where—I would not give a single hair off my +mule’s tail, and be obliged to pluck it off myself (indeed the villain +has not many to spare, and is not a little vicious into the bargain), +to be let by your worships into the secret—— + +But the truth is, my uncle _Toby_ was not a water-drinker; he drank it +neither pure nor mix’d, or any how, or any where, except fortuitously +upon some advanced posts, where better liquor was not to be had——or +during the time he was under cure; when the surgeon telling him it +would extend the fibres, and bring them sooner into contact——my uncle +_Toby_ drank it for quietness sake. + +Now as all the world knows, that no effect in nature can be produced +without a cause, and as it is as well known, that my uncle _Toby_ was +neither a weaver—a gardener, or a gladiator——unless as a captain, you +will needs have him one—but then he was only a captain of foot—and +besides, the whole is an equivocation——There is nothing left for us to +suppose, but that my uncle _Toby_’s leg——but that will avail us little +in the present hypothesis, unless it had proceeded from some ailment +_in the foot_—whereas his leg was not emaciated from any disorder in +his foot—for my uncle _Toby_’s leg was not emaciated at all. It was a +little stiff and awkward, from a total disuse of it, for the three +years he lay confined at my father’s house in town; but it was plump +and muscular, and in all other respects as good and promising a leg as +the other. + +I declare, I do not recollect any one opinion or passage of my life, +where my understanding was more at a loss to make ends meet, and +torture the chapter I had been writing, to the service of the chapter +following it, than in the present case: one would think I took a +pleasure in running into difficulties of this kind, merely to make +fresh experiments of getting out of ’em——Inconsiderate soul that thou +art! What! are not the unavoidable distresses with which, as an author +and a man, thou art hemm’d in on every side of thee——are they, +_Tristram_, not sufficient, but thou must entangle thyself still more? + +Is it not enough that thou art in debt, and that thou hast ten +cart-loads of thy fifth and sixth volumes[39] still—still unsold, and +art almost at thy wit’s ends, how to get them off thy hands? + +To this hour art thou not tormented with the vile asthma that thou +gattest in skating against the wind in _Flanders?_ and is it but two +months ago, that in a fit of laughter, on seeing a cardinal make water +like a quirister (with both hands) thou brakest a vessel in thy lungs, +whereby, in two hours, thou lost as many quarts of blood; and hadst +thou lost as much more, did not the faculty tell thee——it would have +amounted to a gallon?—— + + [39] Alluding to the first edition. + +C H A P. XXXI + +—But for heaven’s sake, let us not talk of quarts or gallons——let us +take the story straight before us; it is so nice and intricate a one, +it will scarce bear the transposition of a single tittle; and, somehow +or other, you have got me thrust almost into the middle of it— + +—I beg we may take more care. + +C H A P. XXXII + +MY uncle _Toby_ and the corporal had posted down with so much heat and +precipitation, to take possession of the spot of ground we have so +often spoke of, in order to open their campaign as early as the rest of +the allies; that they had forgot one of the most necessary articles of +the whole affair, it was neither a pioneer’s spade, a pickax, or a +shovel— + +—It was a bed to lie on: so that as _Shandy-Hall_ was at that time +unfurnished; and the little inn where poor _Le Fever_ died, not yet +built; my uncle _Toby_ was constrained to accept of a bed at Mrs. +_Wadman_’s, for a night or two, till corporal _Trim_ (who to the +character of an excellent valet, groom, cook, sempster, surgeon, and +engineer, superadded that of an excellent upholsterer too), with the +help of a carpenter and a couple of taylors, constructed one in my +uncle _Toby_’s house. + +A daughter of _Eve_, for such was widow _Wadman_, and ’tis all the +character I intend to give of her— + +—“_ That she was a perfect woman—_” had better be fifty leagues off—or +in her warm bed—or playing with a case-knife—or any thing you +please—than make a man the object of her attention, when the house and +all the furniture is her own. + +There is nothing in it out of doors and in broad day-light, where a +woman has a power, physically speaking, of viewing a man in more lights +than one—but here, for her soul, she can see him in no light without +mixing something of her own goods and chattels along with him——till by +reiterated acts of such combination, he gets foisted into her +inventory—— + +—And then good night. + +But this is not matter of SYSTEM; for I have delivered that above——nor +is it matter of BREVIARY——for I make no man’s creed but my own——nor +matter of FACT——at least that I know of; but ’tis matter copulative and +introductory to what follows. + +C H A P. XXXIII + +I DO not speak it with regard to the coarseness or cleanness of them—or +the strength of their gussets——but pray do not night-shifts differ from +day-shifts as much in this particular, as in any thing else in the +world; that they so far exceed the others in length, that when you are +laid down in them, they fall almost as much below the feet, as the +day-shifts fall short of them? + +Widow _Wadman_’s night-shifts (as was the mode I suppose in King +_William_’s and Queen _Anne_’s reigns) were cut however after this +fashion; and if the fashion is changed (for in _Italy_ they are come to +nothing)——so much the worse for the public; they were two _Flemish_ +ells and a half in length, so that allowing a moderate woman two ells, +she had half an ell to spare, to do what she would with. + +Now from one little indulgence gained after another, in the many bleak +and decemberley nights of a seven years widow-hood, things had +insensibly come to this pass, and for the two last years had got +establish’d into one of the ordinances of the bed-chamber—That as soon +as Mrs. _Wadman_ was put to bed, and had got her legs stretched down to +the bottom of it, of which she always gave _Bridget_ notice—_Bridget_, +with all suitable decorum, having first open’d the bed-clothes at the +feet, took hold of the half-ell of cloth we are speaking of, and having +gently, and with both her hands, drawn it downwards to its furthest +extension, and then contracted it again side-long by four or five even +plaits, she took a large corking-pin out of her sleeve, and with the +point directed towards her, pinn’d the plaits all fast together a +little above the hem; which done, she tuck’d all in tight at the feet, +and wish’d her mistress a good night. + +This was constant, and without any other variation than this; that on +shivering and tempestuous nights, when _Bridget_ untuck’d the feet of +the bed, &c. to do this——she consulted no thermometer but that of her +own passions; and so performed it standing—kneeling—or squatting, +according to the different degrees of faith, hope, and charity, she was +in, and bore towards her mistress that night. In every other respect, +the _etiquette_ was sacred, and might have vied with the most +mechanical one of the most inflexible bed-chamber in _Christendom._ + +The first night, as soon as the corporal had conducted my uncle _Toby_ +up stairs, which was about ten——Mrs. _Wadman_ threw herself into her +arm-chair, and crossing her left knee with her right, which formed a +resting-place for her elbow, she reclin’d her cheek upon the palm of +her hand, and leaning forwards, ruminated till midnight upon both sides +of the question. + +The second night she went to her bureau, and having ordered _Bridget_ +to bring her up a couple of fresh candles and leave them upon the +table, she took out her marriage-settlement, and read it over with +great devotion: and the third night (which was the last of my uncle +_Toby_’s stay) when _Bridget_ had pull’d down the night-shift, and was +assaying to stick in the corking pin—— + +——With a kick of both heels at once, but at the same time the most +natural kick that could be kick’d in her situation——for supposing * * * +* * * * * * to be the sun in its meridian, it was a north-east +kick——she kick’d the pin out of her fingers——the _etiquette_ which hung +upon it, down——down it fell to the ground, and was shiver’d into a +thousand atoms. + +From all which it was plain that widow _Wadman_ was in love with my +uncle _Toby._ + +C H A P. XXXIV + +MY uncle _Toby_’s head at that time was full of other matters, so that +it was not till the demolition of _Dunkirk_, when all the other +civilities of _Europe_ were settled, that he found leisure to return +this. + +This made an armistice (that is, speaking with regard to my uncle +_Toby_—but with respect to Mrs. _Wadman_, a vacancy)—of almost eleven +years. But in all cases of this nature, as it is the second blow, +happen at what distance of time it will, which makes the fray——I chuse +for that reason to call these the amours of my uncle _Toby_ with Mrs. +_Wadman_, rather than the amours of Mrs. _Wadman_ with my uncle _Toby._ + +This is not a distinction without a difference. + +It is not like the affair of _an old hat cock’d——and a cock’d old hat_, +about which your reverences have so often been at odds with one +another——but there is a difference here in the nature of things—— + +And let me tell you, gentry, a wide one too. + +C H A P. XXXV + +NOW as widow _Wadman_ did love my uncle _Toby_——and my uncle _Toby_ did +not love widow _Wadman_, there was nothing for widow _Wadman_ to do, +but to go on and love my uncle _Toby_——or let it alone. + +Widow _Wadman_ would do neither the one or the other. + +——Gracious heaven!——but I forget I am a little of her temper myself; +for whenever it so falls out, which it sometimes does about the +equinoxes, that an earthly goddess is so much this, and that, and +t’other, that I cannot eat my breakfast for her——and that she careth +not three halfpence whether I eat my breakfast or no—— + +——Curse on her! and so I send her to _Tartary_, and from _Tartary_ to +_Terra del Fuogo_, and so on to the devil: in short, there is not an +infernal nitch where I do not take her divinityship and stick it. + +But as the heart is tender, and the passions in these tides ebb and +flow ten times in a minute, I instantly bring her back again; and as I +do all things in extremes, I place her in the very center of the +milky-way—— + +Brightest of stars! thou wilt shed thy influence upon some one—— + +——The duce take her and her influence too——for at that word I lose all +patience——much good may it do him!——By all that is hirsute and gashly! +I cry, taking off my furr’d cap, and twisting it round my finger——I +would not give sixpence for a dozen such! + +——But ’tis an excellent cap too (putting it upon my head, and pressing +it close to my ears)—and warm—and soft; especially if you stroke it the +right way—but alas! that will never be my luck——(so here my philosophy +is shipwreck’d again.) + +——No; I shall never have a finger in the pye (so here I break my +metaphor)—— + +Crust and Crumb + +Inside and out + +Top and bottom——I detest it, I hate it, I repudiate it——I’m sick at the +sight of it—— + +’Tis all pepper, +     garlick, +     speak-punctuation:, +     salt, and +     devil’s dung——by the great arch-cooks of cooks, who does nothing, +I think, from morning to night, but sit down by the fire-side and +invent inflammatory dishes for us, I would not touch it for the world—— + +——_O Tristram! Tristram!_ cried _Jenny._ + +_O Jenny! Jenny!_ replied I, and so went on with the thirty-sixth +chapter. + +C H A P. XXXVI + +——“Not touch it for the world,” did I say—— + +Lord, how I have heated my imagination with this metaphor! + +C H A P. XXXVII + +WHICH shews, let your reverences and worships say what you will of it +(for as for _thinking_——all who do think—think pretty much alike both +upon it and other matters)——Love is certainly, at least alphabetically +speaking, one of the most + +A gitating + +B ewitching + +C onfounded + +D evilish affairs of life——the most + +E xtravagant + +F utilitous + +G alligaskinish + +H andy-dandyish + +I racundulous (there is no K to it) and + +L yrical of all human passions: at the + +same time, the most + +M isgiving + +N innyhammering + +O bstipating + +P ragmatical + +S tridulous + +R idiculous—though by the bye the R should have gone first—But in short +’tis of such a nature, as my father once told my uncle _Toby_ upon the +close of a long dissertation upon the subject——“You can scarce,” said +he, “combine two ideas together upon it, brother _Toby_, without an +hypallage”——What’s that? cried my uncle _Toby._ + +The cart before the horse, replied my father—— + +——And what is he to do there? cried my uncle _Toby._ + +Nothing, quoth my father, but to get in——or let it alone. + +Now widow _Wadman_, as I told you before, would do neither the one or +the other. + +She stood however ready harnessed and caparisoned at all points, to +watch accidents. + +C H A P. XXXVIII + +THE Fates, who certainly all fore-knew of these amours of widow +_Wadman_ and my uncle _Toby_, had, from the first creation of matter +and motion (and with more courtesy than they usually do things of this +kind), established such a chain of causes and effects hanging so fast +to one another, that it was scarce possible for my uncle _Toby_ to have +dwelt in any other house in the world, or to have occupied any other +garden in _Christendom_, but the very house and garden which join’d and +laid parallel to Mrs. _Wadman_’s; this, with the advantage of a +thickset arbour in Mrs. _Wadman_’s garden, but planted in the hedge-row +of my uncle _Toby_’s, put all the occasions into her hands which +Love-militancy wanted; she could observe my uncle _Toby_’s motions, and +was mistress likewise of his councils of war; and as his unsuspecting +heart had given leave to the corporal, through the mediation of +_Bridget_, to make her a wicker-gate of communication to enlarge her +walks, it enabled her to carry on her approaches to the very door of +the sentry-box; and sometimes out of gratitude, to make an attack, and +endeavour to blow my uncle _Toby_ up in the very sentry-box itself. + +C H A P. XXXIX + +IT is a great pity——but ’tis certain from every day’s observation of +man, that he may be set on fire like a candle, at either end—provided +there is a sufficient wick standing out; if there is not—there’s an end +of the affair; and if there is—by lighting it at the bottom, as the +flame in that case has the misfortune generally to put out +itself—there’s an end of the affair again. + +For my part, could I always have the ordering of it which way I would +be burnt myself—for I cannot bear the thoughts of being burnt like a +beast—I would oblige a housewife constantly to light me at the top; for +then I should burn down decently to the socket; that is, from my head +to my heart, from my heart to my liver, from my liver to my bowels, and +so on by the meseraick veins and arteries, through all the turns and +lateral insertions of the intestines and their tunicles to the blind +gut—— + +——I beseech you, doctor _Slop_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, interrupting him +as he mentioned the _blind gut_, in a discourse with my father the +night my mother was brought to bed of me——I beseech you, quoth my uncle +_Toby_, to tell me which is the blind gut; for, old as I am, I vow I do +not know to this day where it lies. + +The blind gut, answered doctor _Slop_, lies betwixt the _Ilion_ and +_Colon_—— + +In a man? said my father. + +——’Tis precisely the same, cried doctor _Slop_, in a woman.—— + +That’s more than I know; quoth my father. + +C H A P. XL + +——And so to make sure of both systems, Mrs. _Wadman_ predetermined to +light my uncle _Toby_ neither at this end or that; but, like a +prodigal’s candle, to light him, if possible, at both ends at once. + +Now, through all the lumber rooms of military furniture, including both +of horse and foot, from the great arsenal of _Venice_ to the _Tower_ of +_London_ (exclusive), if Mrs. _Wadman_ had been rummaging for seven +years together, and with _Bridget_ to help her, she could not have +found any one _blind_ or _mantelet_ so fit for her purpose, as that +which the expediency of my uncle _Toby_’s affairs had fix’d up ready to +her hands. + +I believe I have not told you——but I don’t know——possibly I have——be it +as it will, ’tis one of the number of those many things, which a man +had better do over again, than dispute about it—That whatever town or +fortress the corporal was at work upon, during the course of their +campaign, my uncle _Toby_ always took care, on the inside of his +sentry-box, which was towards his left hand, to have a plan of the +place, fasten’d up with two or three pins at the top, but loose at the +bottom, for the conveniency of holding it up to the eye, &c. . . . as +occasions required; so that when an attack was resolved upon, Mrs. +_Wadman_ had nothing more to do, when she had got advanced to the door +of the sentry-box, but to extend her right hand; and edging in her left +foot at the same movement, to take hold of the map or plan, or upright, +or whatever it was, and with out-stretched neck meeting it half way,—to +advance it towards her; on which my uncle _Toby_’s passions were sure +to catch fire——for he would instantly take hold of the other corner of +the map in his left hand, and with the end of his pipe in the other, +begin an explanation. + +When the attack was advanced to this point;——the world will naturally +enter into the reasons of Mrs. _Wadman_’s next stroke of +generalship——which was, to take my uncle _Toby_’s tobacco-pipe out of +his hand as soon as she possibly could; which, under one pretence or +other, but generally that of pointing more distinctly at some redoubt +or breastwork in the map, she would effect before my uncle _Toby_ (poor +soul!) had well march’d above half a dozen toises with it. + +—It obliged my uncle _Toby_ to make use of his forefinger. + +The difference it made in the attack was this; That in going upon it, +as in the first case, with the end of her fore-finger against the end +of my uncle _Toby_’s tobacco-pipe, she might have travelled with it, +along the lines, from _Dan_ to _Beersheba_, had my uncle _Toby_’s lines +reach’d so far, without any effect: For as there was no arterial or +vital heat in the end of the tobacco-pipe, it could excite no +sentiment——it could neither give fire by pulsation——or receive it by +sympathy——’twas nothing but smoke. + +Whereas, in following my uncle _Toby_’s forefinger with hers, close +thro’ all the little turns and indentings of his works——pressing +sometimes against the side of it——then treading upon its nail——then +tripping it up——then touching it here——then there, and so on——it set +something at least in motion. + +This, tho’ slight skirmishing, and at a distance from the main body, +yet drew on the rest; for here, the map usually falling with the back +of it, close to the side of the sentry-box, my uncle _Toby_, in the +simplicity of his soul, would lay his hand flat upon it, in order to go +on with his explanation; and Mrs. _Wadman_, by a manœuvre as quick as +thought, would as certainly place her’s close beside it; this at once +opened a communication, large enough for any sentiment to pass or +re-pass, which a person skill’d in the elementary and practical part of +love-making, has occasion for—— + +By bringing up her forefinger parallel (as before) to my uncle +_Toby_’s——it unavoidably brought the thumb into action——and the +forefinger and thumb being once engaged, as naturally brought in the +whole hand. Thine, dear uncle _Toby!_ was never now in ’ts right +place——Mrs. _Wadman_ had it ever to take up, or, with the gentlest +pushings, protrusions, and equivocal compressions, that a hand to be +removed is capable of receiving——to get it press’d a hair breadth of +one side out of her way. + +Whilst this was doing, how could she forget to make him sensible, that +it was her leg (and no one’s else) at the bottom of the sentry-box, +which slightly press’d against the calf of his——So that my uncle _Toby_ +being thus attack’d and sore push’d on both his wings——was it a wonder, +if now and then, it put his centre into disorder?—— + +——The duce take it! said my uncle _Toby._ + +C H A P. XLI + +THESE attacks of Mrs. _Wadman_, you will readily conceive to be of +different kinds; varying from each other, like the attacks which +history is full of, and from the same reasons. A general looker-on +would scarce allow them to be attacks at all——or if he did, would +confound them all together——but I write not to them: it will be time +enough to be a little more exact in my descriptions of them, as I come +up to them, which will not be for some chapters; having nothing more to +add in this, but that in a bundle of original papers and drawings which +my father took care to roll up by themselves, there is a plan of +_Bouchain_ in perfect preservation (and shall be kept so, whilst I have +power to preserve any thing), upon the lower corner of which, on the +right hand side, there is still remaining the marks of a snuffy finger +and thumb, which there is all the reason in the world to imagine, were +Mrs. _Wadman_’s; for the opposite side of the margin, which I suppose +to have been my uncle _Toby_’s, is absolutely clean: This seems an +authenticated record of one of these attacks; for there are vestigia of +the two punctures partly grown up, but still visible on the opposite +corner of the map, which are unquestionably the very holes, through +which it has been pricked up in the sentry-box—— + +By all that is priestly! I value this precious relick, with its +_stigmata_ and pricks, more than all the relicks of the _Romish_ +church——always excepting, when I am writing upon these matters, the +pricks which entered the flesh of St. _Radagunda_ in the desert, which +in your road from FESSE to CLUNY, the nuns of that name will shew you +for love. + +C H A P. XLII + +I THINK, an’ please your honour, quoth _Trim_, the fortifications are +quite destroyed——and the bason is upon a level with the mole——I think +so too; replied my uncle _Toby_ with a sigh half suppress’d——but step +into the parlour, _Trim_, for the stipulation——it lies upon the table. + +It has lain there these six weeks, replied the corporal, till this very +morning that the old woman kindled the fire with it— + +——Then, said my uncle _Toby_, there is no further occasion for our +services. The more, an’ please your honour, the pity, said the +corporal; in uttering which he cast his spade into the wheel-barrow, +which was beside him, with an air the most expressive of disconsolation +that can be imagined, and was heavily turning about to look for his +pickax, his pioneer’s shovel, his picquets, and other little military +stores, in order to carry them off the field——when a heigh-ho! from the +sentry-box, which being made of thin slit deal, reverberated the sound +more sorrowfully to his ear, forbad him. + +——No; said the corporal to himself, I’ll do it before his honour rises +to-morrow morning; so taking his spade out of the wheel-barrow again, +with a little earth in it, as if to level something at the foot of the +glacis——but with a real intent to approach nearer to his master, in +order to divert him——he loosen’d a sod or two——pared their edges with +his spade, and having given them a gentle blow or two with the back of +it, he sat himself down close by my uncle _Toby_’s feet and began as +follows. + +C H A P. XLIII + +IT was a thousand pities——though I believe, an’ please your honour, I +am going to say but a foolish kind of a thing for a soldier—— + +A soldier, cried my uncle _Toby_, interrupting the corporal, is no more +exempt from saying a foolish thing, _Trim_, than a man of letters——But +not so often, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal——my uncle +_Toby_ gave a nod. + +It was a thousand pities then, said the corporal, casting his eye upon +_Dunkirk_, and the mole, as _Servius Sulpicius_, in returning out of +_Asia_ (when he sailed from _Ægina_ towards _Megara_), did upon +_Corinth_ and _Pyreus_—— + +—“It was a thousand pities, an’ please your honour, to destroy these +works——and a thousand pities to have let them stood.”—— + +——Thou art right, _Trim_, in both cases; said my uncle _Toby._——This, +continued the corporal, is the reason, that from the beginning of their +demolition to the end——I have never once whistled, or sung, or laugh’d, +or cry’d, or talk’d of past done deeds, or told your honour one story +good or bad—— + +——Thou hast many excellencies, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, and I hold +it not the least of them, as thou happenest to be a story-teller, that +of the number thou hast told me, either to amuse me in my painful +hours, or divert me in my grave ones—thou hast seldom told me a bad +one—— + +——Because, an’ please your honour, except one of a _King of Bohemia and +his seven castles_,—they are all true; for they are about myself—— + +I do not like the subject the worse, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, on +that score: But prithee what is this story? thou hast excited my +curiosity. + +I’ll tell it your honour, quoth the corporal, directly—Provided, said +my uncle _Toby_, looking earnestly towards _Dunkirk_ and the mole +again——provided it is not a merry one; to such, _Trim_, a man should +ever bring one half of the entertainment along with him; and the +disposition I am in at present would wrong both thee, _Trim_, and thy +story——It is not a merry one by any means, replied the corporal—Nor +would I have it altogether a grave one, added my uncle _Toby_——It is +neither the one nor the other, replied the corporal, but will suit your +honour exactly——Then I’ll thank thee for it with all my heart, cried my +uncle _Toby;_ so prithee begin it, _Trim._ + +The corporal made his reverence; and though it is not so easy a matter +as the world imagines, to pull off a lank _Montero_-cap with grace——or +a whit less difficult, in my conceptions, when a man is sitting squat +upon the ground, to make a bow so teeming with respect as the corporal +was wont; yet by suffering the palm of his right hand, which was +towards his master, to slip backwards upon the grass, a little beyond +his body, in order to allow it the greater sweep——and by an unforced +compression, at the same time, of his cap with the thumb and the two +forefingers of his left, by which the diameter of the cap became +reduced, so that it might be said, rather to be insensibly +squeez’d—than pull’d off with a flatus——the corporal acquitted himself +of both in a better manner than the posture of his affairs promised; +and having hemmed twice, to find in what key his story would best go, +and best suit his master’s humour,—he exchanged a single look of +kindness with him, and set off thus. + +THE STORY OF THE +KING OF BOHEMIA AND +HIS SEVEN CASTLES + +THERE was a certain king of Bo - - he—— + +As the corporal was entering the confines of _Bohemia_, my uncle _Toby_ +obliged him to halt for a single moment; he had set out bare-headed, +having, since he pull’d off his _Montero_-cap in the latter end of the +last chapter, left it lying beside him on the ground. + +——The eye of Goodness espieth all things——so that before the corporal +had well got through the first five words of his story, had my uncle +_Toby_ twice touch’d his _Montero_-cap with the end of his cane, +interrogatively——as much as to say, Why don’t you put it on, _Trim? +Trim_ took it up with the most respectful slowness, and casting a +glance of humiliation as he did it, upon the embroidery of the +fore-part, which being dismally tarnish’d and fray’d moreover in some +of the principal leaves and boldest parts of the pattern, he lay’d it +down again between his two feet, in order to moralize upon the subject. + +——’Tis every word of it but too true, cried my uncle _Toby_, that thou +art about to observe—— + +“_Nothing in this world, Trim, is made to last for ever._” + +——But when tokens, dear _Tom_, of thy love and remembrance wear out, +said _Trim_, what shall we say? + +There is no occasion, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, to say any thing +else; and was a man to puzzle his brains till Doom’s day, I believe, +_Trim_, it would be impossible. + +The corporal, perceiving my uncle _Toby_ was in the right, and that it +would be in vain for the wit of man to think of extracting a purer +moral from his cap, without further attempting it, he put it on; and +passing his hand across his forehead to rub out a pensive wrinkle, +which the text and the doctrine between them had engender’d, he +return’d, with the same look and tone of voice, to his story of the +king of _Bohemia_ and his seven castles. + +THE STORY OF THE +KING OF BOHEMIA AND +HIS SEVEN CASTLES, +CONTINUED + +THERE was a certain king of _Bohemia_, but in whose reign, except his +own, I am not able to inform your honour—— + +I do not desire it of thee, _Trim_, by any means, cried my uncle +_Toby._ + +——It was a little before the time, an’ please your honour, when giants +were beginning to leave off breeding:—but in what year of our Lord that +was— + +I would not give a halfpenny to know, said my uncle _Toby._ + +——Only, an’ please your honour, it makes a story look the better in the +face—— + +——’Tis thy own, _Trim_, so ornament it after thy own fashion; and take +any date, continued my uncle _Toby_, looking pleasantly upon him—take +any date in the whole world thou chusest, and put it to—thou art +heartily welcome—— + +The corporal bowed; for of every century, and of every year of that +century, from the first creation of the world down to _Noah_’s flood; +and from _Noah_’s flood to the birth of _Abraham;_ through all the +pilgrimages of the patriarchs, to the departure of the _Israelites_ out +of _Egypt_——and throughout all the Dynasties, Olympiads, Urbeconditas, +and other memorable epochas of the different nations of the world, down +to the coming of Christ, and from thence to the very moment in which +the corporal was telling his story——had my uncle _Toby_ subjected this +vast empire of time and all its abysses at his feet; but as MODESTY +scarce touches with a finger what LIBERALITY offers her with both hands +open—the corporal contented himself with the very _worst year_ of the +whole bunch; which, to prevent your honours of the Majority and +Minority from tearing the very flesh off your bones in contestation, ‘ +Whether that year is not always the last cast-year of the last +cast-almanack’——I tell you plainly it was; but from a different reason +than you wot of—— + +——It was the year next him——which being the year of our Lord seventeen +hundred and twelve, when the Duke of _Ormond_ was playing the devil in +_Flanders_——the corporal took it, and set out with it afresh on his +expedition to _Bohemia._ + +THE STORY OF THE +KING OF BOHEMIA AND +HIS SEVEN CASTLES, +CONTINUED + +IN the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and twelve, there +was, an’ please your honour—— + +—To tell thee truly, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, any other date +would have pleased me much better, not only on account of the sad stain +upon our history that year, in marching off our troops, and refusing to +cover the siege of _Quesnoi_, though _Fagel_ was carrying on the works +with such incredible vigour—but likewise on the score, _Trim_, of thy +own story; because if there are—and which, from what thou hast dropt, I +partly suspect to be the fact—if there are giants in it—— + +There is but one, an’ please your honour—— + +——’Tis as bad as twenty, replied my uncle _Toby_——thou should’st have +carried him back some seven or eight hundred years out of harm’s way, +both of critics and other people: and therefore I would advise thee, if +ever thou tellest it again—— + +——If I live, an’ please your honour, but once to get through it, I will +never tell it again, quoth _Trim_, either to man, woman, or +child——Poo—poo! said my uncle _Toby_—but with accents of such sweet +encouragement did he utter it, that the corporal went on with his story +with more alacrity than ever. + +THE STORY OF THE +KING OF BOHEMIA AND +HIS SEVEN CASTLES, +CONTINUED + +THERE was, an’ please your honour, said the corporal, raising his voice +and rubbing the palms of his two hands cheerily together as he begun, a +certain king of _Bohemia_—— + +——Leave out the date entirely, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, leaning +forwards, and laying his hand gently upon the corporal’s shoulder to +temper the interruption—leave it out entirely, _Trim;_ a story passes +very well without these niceties, unless one is pretty sure of +’em——Sure of ’em! said the corporal, shaking his head—— + +Right; answered my uncle _Toby_, it is not easy, _Trim_, for one, bred +up as thou and I have been to arms, who seldom looks further forward +than to the end of his musket, or backwards beyond his knapsack, to +know much about this matter——God bless your honour! said the corporal, +won by the manner of my uncle _Toby_’s reasoning, as much as by the +reasoning itself, he has something else to do; if not on action, or a +march, or upon duty in his garrison—he has his firelock, an’ please +your honour, to furbish—his accoutrements to take care of—his +regimentals to mend—himself to shave and keep clean, so as to appear +always like what he is upon the parade; what business, added the +corporal triumphantly, has a soldier, an’ please your honour, to know +any thing at all of _geography?_ + +——Thou would’st have said _chronology, Trim_, said my uncle _Toby;_ for +as for geography, ’tis of absolute use to him; he must be acquainted +intimately with every country and its boundaries where his profession +carries him; he should know every town and city, and village and +hamlet, with the canals, the roads, and hollow ways which lead up to +them; there is not a river or a rivulet he passes, _Trim_, but he +should be able at first sight to tell thee what is its name—in what +mountains it takes its rise—what is its course—how far it is +navigable—where fordable—where not; he should know the fertility of +every valley, as well as the hind who ploughs it; and be able to +describe, or, if it is required, to give thee an exact map of all the +plains and defiles, the forts, the acclivities, the woods and morasses, +thro’ and by which his army is to march; he should know their produce, +their plants, their minerals, their waters, their animals, their +seasons, their climates, their heats and cold, their inhabitants, their +customs, their language, their policy, and even their religion. + +Is it else to be conceived, corporal, continued my uncle _Toby_, rising +up in his sentry-box, as he began to warm in this part of his +discourse—how _Marlborough_ could have marched his army from the banks +of the _Maes_ to _Belburg;_ from _Belburg_ to _Kerpenord_—(here the +corporal could sit no longer) from _Kerpenord, Trim_, to _Kalsaken;_ +from _Kalsaken_ to _Newdorf;_ from _Newdorf_ to _Landenbourg;_ from +_Landenbourg_ to _Mildenheim;_ from _Mildenheim_ to _Elchingen;_ from +_Elchingen_ to _Gingen;_ from _Gingen_ to _Balmerchoffen;_ from +_Balmerchoffen_ to _Skellenburg_, where he broke in upon the enemy’s +works; forced his passage over the _Danube;_ cross’d the _Lech_—push’d +on his troops into the heart of the empire, marching at the head of +them through _Fribourg, Hokenwert_, and _Schonevelt_, to the plains of +_Blenheim_ and _Hochstet?_——Great as he was, corporal, he could not +have advanced a step, or made one single day’s march without the aids +of _Geography._——As for _Chronology_, I own, _Trim_, continued my uncle +_Toby_, sitting down again coolly in his sentry-box, that of all +others, it seems a science which the soldier might best spare, was it +not for the lights which that science must one day give him, in +determining the invention of powder; the furious execution of which, +renversing every thing like thunder before it, has become a new æra to +us of military improvements, changing so totally the nature of attacks +and defences both by sea and land, and awakening so much art and skill +in doing it, that the world cannot be too exact in ascertaining the +precise time of its discovery, or too inquisitive in knowing what great +man was the discoverer, and what occasions gave birth to it. + +I am far from controverting, continued my uncle _Toby_, what historians +agree in, that in the year of our Lord 1380, under the reign of +_Wencelaus_, son of _Charles_ the Fourth——a certain priest, whose name +was _Schwartz_, shew’d the use of powder to the _Venetians_, in their +wars against the _Genoese;_ but ’tis certain he was not the first; +because if we are to believe Don _Pedro_, the bishop of _Leon_—How came +priests and bishops, an’ please your honour, to trouble their heads so +much about gun-powder? God knows, said my uncle _Toby_——his providence +brings good out of every thing—and he avers, in his chronicle of King +_Alphonsus_, who reduced _Toledo_, That in the year 1343, which was +full thirty-seven years before that time, the secret of powder was well +known, and employed with success, both by Moors and Christians, not +only in their sea-combats, at that period, but in many of their most +memorable sieges in _Spain_ and _Barbary_—And all the world knows, that +Friar _Bacon_ had wrote expressly about it, and had generously given +the world a receipt to make it by, above a hundred and fifty years +before even _Schwartz_ was born—And that the _Chinese_, added my uncle +_Toby_, embarrass us, and all accounts of it, still more, by boasting +of the invention some hundreds of years even before him—— + +They are a pack of liars, I believe, cried _Trim_—— + +——They are somehow or other deceived, said my uncle _Toby_, in this +matter, as is plain to me from the present miserable state of military +architecture amongst them; which consists of nothing more than a fossé +with a brick wall without flanks—and for what they gave us as a bastion +at each angle of it, ’tis so barbarously constructed, that it looks for +all the world—————Like one of my seven castles, an’ please your honour, +quoth _Trim._ + +My uncle _Toby_, tho’ in the utmost distress for a comparison, most +courteously refused _Trim_’s offer—till _Trim_ telling him, he had half +a dozen more in _Bohemia_, which he knew not how to get off his +hands——my uncle _Toby_ was so touch’d with the pleasantry of heart of +the corporal——that he discontinued his dissertation upon +gun-powder——and begged the corporal forthwith to go on with his story +of the King of _Bohemia_ and his seven castles. + +THE STORY OF THE +KING OF BOHEMIA AND +HIS SEVEN CASTLES, +CONTINUED + +THIS unfortunate King of _Bohemia_, said _Trim_,——Was he unfortunate, +then? cried my uncle _Toby_, for he had been so wrapt up in his +dissertation upon gun-powder, and other military affairs, that tho’ he +had desired the corporal to go on, yet the many interruptions he had +given, dwelt not so strong upon his fancy as to account for the +epithet——Was he _unfortunate_, then, _Trim?_ said my uncle _Toby_, +pathetically——The corporal, wishing first the word and all its +synonimas at the devil, forthwith began to run back in his mind, the +principal events in the King of _Bohemia_’s story; from every one of +which, it appearing that he was the most fortunate man that ever +existed in the world——it put the corporal to a stand: for not caring to +retract his epithet——and less to explain it——and least of all, to twist +his tale (like men of lore) to serve a system——he looked up in my uncle +_Toby_’s face for assistance——but seeing it was the very thing my uncle +_Toby_ sat in expectation of himself——after a hum and a haw, he went +on—— + +The King of _Bohemia_, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal, +was _unfortunate_, as thus——That taking great pleasure and delight in +navigation and all sort of sea affairs——and there _happening_ +throughout the whole kingdom of _Bohemia_, to be no sea-port town +whatever—— + +How the duce should there—_Trim?_ cried my uncle _Toby;_ for _Bohemia_ +being totally inland, it could have happen’d no otherwise——It might, +said _Trim_, if it had pleased God—— + +My uncle _Toby_ never spoke of the being and natural attributes of God, +but with diffidence and hesitation—— + +——I believe not, replied my uncle _Toby_, after some pause—for being +inland, as I said, and having _Silesia_ and _Moravia_ to the east; +_Lusatia_ and _Upper Saxony_ to the north; _Franconia_ to the west; and +_Bavaria_ to the south; _Bohemia_ could not have been propell’d to the +sea without ceasing to be _Bohemia_——nor could the sea, on the other +hand, have come up to _Bohemia_, without overflowing a great part of +_Germany_, and destroying millions of unfortunate inhabitants who could +make no defence against it——Scandalous! cried _Trim_—Which would +bespeak, added my uncle _Toby_, mildly, such a want of compassion in +him who is the father of it——that, I think, _Trim_——the thing could +have happen’d no way. + +The corporal made the bow of unfeign’d conviction; and went on. + +Now the King of _Bohemia_ with his queen and courtiers _happening_ one +fine summer’s evening to walk out——Aye! there the word _happening_ is +right, _Trim_, cried my uncle _Toby;_ for the King of _Bohemia_ and his +queen might have walk’d out or let it alone:——’twas a matter of +contingency, which might happen, or not, just as chance ordered it. + +King _William_ was of an opinion, an’ please your honour, quoth _Trim_, +that every thing was predestined for us in this world; insomuch, that +he would often say to his soldiers, that “every ball had its billet.” +He was a great man, said my uncle _Toby_——And I believe, continued +_Trim_, to this day, that the shot which disabled me at the battle of +_Landen_, was pointed at my knee for no other purpose, but to take me +out of his service, and place me in your honour’s, where I should be +taken so much better care of in my old age——It shall never, _Trim_, be +construed otherwise, said my uncle _Toby._ + +The heart, both of the master and the man, were alike subject to sudden +over-flowings;——a short silence ensued. + +Besides, said the corporal, resuming the discourse—but in a gayer +accent——if it had not been for that single shot, I had never, ’an +please your honour, been in love—— + +So, thou wast once in love, _Trim!_ said my uncle _Toby_, smiling—— + +Souse! replied the corporal—over head and ears! an’ please your honour. +Prithee when? where?—and how came it to pass?—I never heard one word of +it before; quoth my uncle _Toby:_——I dare say, answered _Trim_, that +every drummer and serjeant’s son in the regiment knew of it——It’s high +time I should——said my uncle _Toby._ + +Your honour remembers with concern, said the corporal, the total rout +and confusion of our camp and army at the affair of _Landen;_ every one +was left to shift for himself; and if it had not been for the regiments +of _Wyndham, Lumley_, and _Galway_, which covered the retreat over the +bridge _Neerspeeken_, the king himself could scarce have gained it——he +was press’d hard, as your honour knows, on every side of him—— + +Gallant mortal! cried my uncle _Toby_, caught up with enthusiasm—this +moment, now that all is lost, I see him galloping across me, corporal, +to the left, to bring up the remains of the _English_ horse along with +him to support the right, and tear the laurel from _Luxembourg_’s +brows, if yet ’tis possible——I see him with the knot of his scarfe just +shot off, infusing fresh spirits into poor _Galway_’s regiment—riding +along the line—then wheeling about, and charging _Conti_ at the head of +it——Brave, brave, by heaven! cried my uncle _Toby_—he deserves a +crown——As richly, as a thief a halter; shouted _Trim._ + +My uncle _Toby_ knew the corporal’s loyalty;—otherwise the comparison +was not at all to his mind——it did not altogether strike the corporal’s +fancy when he had made it——but it could not be recall’d——so he had +nothing to do, but proceed. + +As the number of wounded was prodigious, and no one had time to think +of any thing but his own safety—Though _Talmash_, said my uncle _Toby_, +brought off the foot with great prudence——But I was left upon the +field, said the corporal. Thou wast so; poor fellow! replied my uncle +_Toby_—So that it was noon the next day, continued the corporal, before +I was exchanged, and put into a cart with thirteen or fourteen more, in +order to be convey’d to our hospital. + +There is no part of the body, an’ please your honour, where a wound +occasions more intolerable anguish than upon the knee—— + +Except the groin; said my uncle _Toby._ An’ please your honour, replied +the corporal, the knee, in my opinion, must certainly be the most +acute, there being so many tendons and what-d’ye-call-’ems all about +it. + +It is for that reason, quoth my uncle _Toby_, that the groin is +infinitely more sensible——there being not only as many tendons and +what-d’ye-call-’ems (for I know their names as little as thou +dost)——about it——but moreover * * *—— + +Mrs. _Wadman_, who had been all the time in her arbour—instantly +stopp’d her breath—unpinn’d her mob at the chin, and stood upon one +leg—— + +The dispute was maintained with amicable and equal force betwixt my +uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ for some time; till _Trim_ at length +recollecting that he had often cried at his master’s sufferings, but +never shed a tear at his own—was for giving up the point, which my +uncle _Toby_ would not allow——’Tis a proof of nothing, _Trim_, said he, +but the generosity of thy temper—— + +So that whether the pain of a wound in the groin (cæteris paribus) is +greater than the pain of a wound in the knee——or + +Whether the pain of a wound in the knee is not greater than the pain of +a wound in the groin——are points which to this day remain unsettled. + +C H A P. XLIV + +THE anguish of my knee, continued the corporal, was excessive in +itself; and the uneasiness of the cart, with the roughness of the +roads, which were terribly cut up—making bad still worse—every step was +death to me: so that with the loss of blood, and the want of +care-taking of me, and a fever I felt coming on besides——(Poor soul! +said my uncle _Toby_)——all together, an’ please your honour, was more +than I could sustain. + +I was telling my sufferings to a young woman at a peasant’s house, +where our cart, which was the last of the line, had halted; they had +help’d me in, and the young woman had taken a cordial out of her pocket +and dropp’d it upon some sugar, and seeing it had cheer’d me, she had +given it me a second and a third time——So I was telling her, an’ please +your honour, the anguish I was in, and was saying it was so intolerable +to me, that I had much rather lie down upon the bed, turning my face +towards one which was in the corner of the room—and die, than go +on——when, upon her attempting to lead me to it, I fainted away in her +arms. She was a good soul! as your honour, said the corporal, wiping +his eyes, will hear. + +I thought _love_ had been a joyous thing, quoth my uncle _Toby._ + +’Tis the most serious thing, an’ please your honour (sometimes), that +is in the world. + +By the persuasion of the young woman, continued the corporal, the cart +with the wounded men set off without me: she had assured them I should +expire immediately if I was put into the cart. So when I came to +myself——I found myself in a still quiet cottage, with no one but the +young woman, and the peasant and his wife. I was laid across the bed in +the corner of the room, with my wounded leg upon a chair, and the young +woman beside me, holding the corner of her handkerchief dipp’d in +vinegar to my nose with one hand, and rubbing my temples with the +other. + +I took her at first for the daughter of the peasant (for it was no +inn)—so had offer’d her a little purse with eighteen florins, which my +poor brother _Tom_ (here _Trim_ wip’d his eyes) had sent me as a token, +by a recruit, just before he set out for _Lisbon_—— + +——I never told your honour that piteous story yet——here _Trim_ wiped +his eyes a third time. + +The young woman call’d the old man and his wife into the room, to shew +them the money, in order to gain me credit for a bed and what little +necessaries I should want, till I should be in a condition to be got to +the hospital——Come then! said she, tying up the little purse—I’ll be +your banker—but as that office alone will not keep me employ’d, I’ll be +your nurse too. + +I thought by her manner of speaking this, as well as by her dress, +which I then began to consider more attentively——that the young woman +could not be the daughter of the peasant. + +She was in black down to her toes, with her hair conceal’d under a +cambric border, laid close to her forehead: she was one of those kind +of nuns, an’ please your honour, of which, your honour knows, there are +a good many in _Flanders_, which they let go loose——By thy description, +_Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, I dare say she was a young _Beguine_, of +which there are none to be found any where but in the _Spanish +Netherlands_—except at _Amsterdam_——they differ from nuns in this, that +they can quit their cloister if they choose to marry; they visit and +take care of the sick by profession——I had rather, for my own part, +they did it out of good-nature. + +——She often told me, quoth _Trim_, she did it for the love of Christ—I +did not like it.——I believe, _Trim_, we are both wrong, said my uncle +_Toby_—we’ll ask Mr. _Yorick_ about it to-night at my brother +_Shandy_’s——so put me in mind; added my uncle _Toby._ + +The young _Beguine_, continued the corporal, had scarce given herself +time to tell me “she would be my nurse,” when she hastily turned about +to begin the office of one, and prepare something for me——and in a +short time—though I thought it a long one—she came back with flannels, +&c. &c. and having fomented my knee soundly for a couple of hours, &c. +and made me a thin bason of gruel for my supper—she wish’d me rest, and +promised to be with me early in the morning.——She wish’d me, an’ please +your honour, what was not to be had. My fever ran very high that +night—her figure made sad disturbance within me—I was every moment +cutting the world in two—to give her half of it—and every moment was I +crying, That I had nothing but a knapsack and eighteen florins to share +with her——The whole night long was the fair _Beguine_, like an angel, +close by my bed-side, holding back my curtain and offering me +cordials—and I was only awakened from my dream by her coming there at +the hour promised, and giving them in reality. In truth, she was scarce +ever from me; and so accustomed was I to receive life from her hands, +that my heart sickened, and I lost colour when she left the room: and +yet, continued the corporal (making one of the strangest reflections +upon it in the world)—— + +——“_It was not love_”——for during the three weeks she was almost +constantly with me, fomenting my knee with her hand, night and day—I +can honestly say, an’ please your honour—that * * * * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * once. + +That was very odd, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby._ + +I think so too—said Mrs. _Wadman._ + +It never did, said the corporal. + +C H A P. XLV + +——But ’tis no marvel, continued the corporal—seeing my uncle _Toby_ +musing upon it—for Love, an’ please your honour, is exactly like war, +in this; that a soldier, though he has escaped three weeks complete +o’_Saturday_ night,—may nevertheless be shot through his heart on +_Sunday_ morning——_It happened so here_, an’ please your honour, with +this difference only—that it was on _Sunday_ in the afternoon, when I +fell in love all at once with a sisserara——It burst upon me, an’ please +your honour, like a bomb——scarce giving me time to say, “God bless me.” + +I thought, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, a man never fell in love so +very suddenly. + +Yes, an’ please your honour, if he is in the way of it——replied _Trim._ + +I prithee, quoth my uncle _Toby_, inform me how this matter happened. + +——With all pleasure, said the corporal, making a bow. + +C H A P. XLVI + +I HAD escaped, continued the corporal, all that time from falling in +love, and had gone on to the end of the chapter, had it not been +predestined otherwise——there is no resisting our fate. + +It was on a _Sunday_, in the afternoon, as I told your honour. + +The old man and his wife had walked out—— + +Every thing was still and hush as midnight about the house—— + +There was not so much as a duck or a duckling about the yard—— + +——When the fair _Beguine_ came in to see me. + +My wound was then in a fair way of doing well——the inflammation had +been gone off for some time, but it was succeeded with an itching both +above and below my knee, so insufferable, that I had not shut my eyes +the whole night for it. + +Let me see it, said she, kneeling down upon the ground parallel to my +knee, and laying her hand upon the part below it——it only wants rubbing +a little, said the _Beguine;_ so covering it with the bed-clothes, she +began with the fore-finger of her right hand to rub under my knee, +guiding her fore-finger backwards and forwards by the edge of the +flannel which kept on the dressing. + +In five or six minutes I felt slightly the end of her second finger—and +presently it was laid flat with the other, and she continued rubbing in +that way round and round for a good while; it then came into my head, +that I should fall in love—I blush’d when I saw how white a hand she +had—I shall never, an’ please your honour, behold another hand so white +whilst I live—— + +——Not in that place, said my uncle _Toby_—— + +Though it was the most serious despair in nature to the corporal—he +could not forbear smiling. + +The young _Beguine_, continued the corporal, perceiving it was of great +service to me—from rubbing for some time, with two fingers—proceeded to +rub at length, with three—till by little and little she brought down +the fourth, and then rubb’d with her whole hand: I will never say +another word, an’ please your honour, upon hands again—but it was +softer than sattin—— + +——Prithee, _Trim_, commend it as much as thou wilt, said my uncle +_Toby;_ I shall hear thy story with the more delight——The corporal +thank’d his master most unfeignedly; but having nothing to say upon the +_Beguine_’s hand but the same over again——he proceeded to the effects +of it. + +The fair _Beguine_, said the corporal, continued rubbing with her whole +hand under my knee—till I fear’d her zeal would weary her——“I would do +a thousand times more,” said she, “for the love of Christ”——In saying +which, she pass’d her hand across the flannel, to the part above my +knee, which I had equally complain’d of, and rubb’d it also. + +I perceiv’d, then, I was beginning to be in love—— + +As she continued rub-rub-rubbing—I felt it spread from under her hand, +an’ please your honour, to every part of my frame—— + +The more she rubb’d, and the longer strokes she took——the more the fire +kindled in my veins——till at length, by two or three strokes longer +than the rest——my passion rose to the highest pitch——I seiz’d her +hand—— + +——And then thou clapped’st it to thy lips, _Trim_, said my uncle +_Toby_——and madest a speech. + +Whether the corporal’s amour terminated precisely in the way my uncle +_Toby_ described it, is not material; it is enough that it contained in +it the essence of all the love romances which ever have been wrote +since the beginning of the world. + +C H A P. XLVII + +AS soon as the corporal had finished the story of his amour—or rather +my uncle _Toby_ for him—Mrs. _Wadman_ silently sallied forth from her +arbour, replaced the pin in her mob, pass’d the wicker gate, and +advanced slowly towards my uncle _Toby_’s sentry-box: the disposition +which _Trim_ had made in my uncle _Toby_’s mind, was too favourable a +crisis to be let slipp’d—— + +——The attack was determin’d upon: it was facilitated still more by my +uncle _Toby_’s having ordered the corporal to wheel off the pioneer’s +shovel, the spade, the pick-axe, the picquets, and other military +stores which lay scatter’d upon the ground where _Dunkirk_ stood—The +corporal had march’d—the field was clear. + +Now, consider, sir, what nonsense it is, either in fighting, or +writing, or any thing else (whether in rhyme to it, or not) which a man +has occasion to do—to act by plan: for if ever Plan, independent of all +circumstances, deserved registering in letters of gold (I mean in the +archives of _Gotham_)—it was certainly the PLAN of Mrs. _Wadman_’s +attack of my uncle _Toby_ in his sentry-box, BY PLAN——Now the plan +hanging up in it at this juncture, being the Plan of _Dunkirk_—and the +tale of _Dunkirk_ a tale of relaxation, it opposed every impression she +could make: and besides, could she have gone upon it—the manœuvre of +fingers and hands in the attack of the sentry-box, was so outdone by +that of the fair _Beguine_’s, in _Trim_’s story—that just then, that +particular attack, however successful before—became the most heartless +attack that could be made—— + +O! let woman alone for this. Mrs. _Wadman_ had scarce open’d the +wicker-gate, when her genius sported with the change of circumstances. + +——She formed a new attack in a moment. + +C H A P. XLVIII + +——I am half distracted, captain _Shandy_, said Mrs. _Wadman_, holding +up her cambrick handkerchief to her left eye, as she approach’d the +door of my uncle _Toby_’s sentry-box——a mote——or sand——or something——I +know not what, has got into this eye of mine——do look into it—it is not +in the white— + +In saying which, Mrs. _Wadman_ edged herself close in beside my uncle +_Toby_, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she +gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up—Do look into +it—said she. + +Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart, +as ever child look’d into a raree-shew-box; and ’twere as much a sin to +have hurt thee. + +——If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that +nature——I’ve nothing to say to it—— + +My uncle _Toby_ never did: and I will answer for him, that he would +have sat quietly upon a sofa from _June_ to _January_ (which, you know, +takes in both the hot and cold months), with an eye as fine as the +_Thracian_[40] _Rodope_’s besides him, without being able to tell, +whether it was a black or blue one. + +The difficulty was to get my uncle _Toby_, to look at one at all. + +’Tis surmounted. And + +I see him yonder with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes +falling out of it—looking—and looking—then rubbing his eyes—and looking +again, with twice the good-nature that ever _Galileo_ look’d for a spot +in the sun. + +——In vain! for by all the powers which animate the organ——Widow +_Wadman_’s left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right——there is +neither mote, or sand, or dust, or chaff, or speck, or particle of +opake matter floating in it—There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! +but one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part +of it, in all directions, into thine—— + +——If thou lookest, uncle _Toby_, in search of this mote one moment +longer,——thou art undone. + + [40] _Rodope Thracia_ tam inevitabili fascino instructa, tam exactè + oculus intuens attraxit, ut si in illam quis incidisset, fieri non + posset, quin caperetur.——I know not who. + +C H A P. XLIX + +AN eye is for all the world exactly like a cannon, in this respect; +That it is not so much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, as it is +the carriage of the eye——and the carriage of the cannon, by which both +the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. I don’t +think the comparison a bad one: However, as ’tis made and placed at the +head of the chapter, as much for use as ornament, all I desire in +return, is, that whenever I speak of Mrs. _Wadman_’s eyes (except once +in the next period), that you keep it in your fancy. + +I protest, Madam, said my uncle _Toby_, I can see nothing whatever in +your eye. + +It is not in the white; said Mrs _Wadman:_ my uncle _Toby_ look’d with +might and main into the pupil—— + +Now of all the eyes which ever were created——from your own, Madam, up +to those of _Venus_ herself, which certainly were as venereal a pair of +eyes as ever stood in a head——there never was an eye of them all, so +fitted to rob my uncle _Toby_ of his repose, as the very eye, at which +he was looking——it was not, Madam a rolling eye——a romping or a wanton +one—nor was it an eye sparkling—petulant or imperious—of high claims +and terrifying exactions, which would have curdled at once that milk of +human nature, of which my uncle _Toby_ was made up——but ’twas an eye +full of gentle salutations——and soft responses——speaking——not like the +trumpet stop of some ill-made organ, in which many an eye I talk to, +holds coarse converse——but whispering soft——like the last low accent of +an expiring saint——“How can you live comfortless, captain _Shandy_, and +alone, without a bosom to lean your head on——or trust your cares to?” + +It was an eye—— + +But I shall be in love with it myself, if I say another word about it. + +——It did my uncle _Toby_’s business. + +C H A P. L + +THERE is nothing shews the character of my father and my uncle _Toby_, +in a more entertaining light, than their different manner of +deportment, under the same accident——for I call not love a misfortune, +from a persuasion, that a man’s heart is ever the better for it——Great +God! what must my uncle _Toby_’s have been, when ’twas all benignity +without it. + +My father, as appears from many of his papers, was very subject to this +passion, before he married——but from a little subacid kind of drollish +impatience in his nature, whenever it befell him, he would never submit +to it like a christian; but would pish, and huff, and bounce, and kick, +and play the Devil, and write the bitterest Philippicks against the eye +that ever man wrote——there is one in verse upon somebody’s eye or +other, that for two or three nights together, had put him by his rest; +which in his first transport of resentment against it, he begins thus: + +“A Devil ’tis——and mischief such doth work +As never yet did _Pagan, Jew_, or _Turk._”[41] + +In short, during the whole paroxism, my father was all abuse and foul +language, approaching rather towards malediction——only he did not do it +with as much method as _Ernulphus_——he was too impetuous; nor with +_Ernulphus_’s policy——for tho’ my father, with the most intolerant +spirit, would curse both this and that, and every thing under heaven, +which was either aiding or abetting to his love——yet never concluded +his chapter of curses upon it, without cursing himself in at the +bargain, as one of the most egregious fools and cox-combs, he would +say, that ever was let loose in the world. + +My uncle _Toby_, on the contrary, took it like a lamb——sat still and +let the poison work in his veins without resistance——in the sharpest +exacerbations of his wound (like that on his groin) he never dropt one +fretful or discontented word——he blamed neither heaven nor earth——or +thought or spoke an injurious thing of any body, or any part of it; he +sat solitary and pensive with his pipe——looking at his lame leg——then +whiffing out a sentimental heigh ho! which mixing with the smoke, +incommoded no one mortal. + +He took it like a lamb——I say. + +In truth he had mistook it at first; for having taken a ride with my +father, that very morning, to save if possible a beautiful wood, which +the dean and chapter were hewing down to give to the poor;[42] which +said wood being in full view of my uncle _Toby_’s house, and of +singular service to him in his description of the battle of +_Wynnendale_—by trotting on too hastily to save it——upon an uneasy +saddle——worse horse, &c. &c. . . it had so happened, that the serous +part of the blood had got betwixt the two skins, in the nethermost part +of my uncle _Toby_——the first shootings of which (as my uncle _Toby_ +had no experience of love) he had taken for a part of the passion—till +the blister breaking in the one case—and the other remaining—my uncle +_Toby_ was presently convinced, that his wound was not a skin-deep +wound——but that it had gone to his heart. + + [41] This will be printed with my father’s Life of _Socrates_, &c. &c. + + [42] Mr _Shandy_ must mean the poor _in spirit;_ inasmuch as they + divided the money amongst themselves. + +C H A P. LI + +THE world is ashamed of being virtuous——my uncle _Toby_ knew little of +the world; and therefore when he felt he was in love with widow +_Wadman_, he had no conception that the thing was any more to be made a +mystery of, than if Mrs. _Wadman_ had given him a cut with a gap’d +knife across his finger: Had it been otherwise——yet as he ever look’d +upon _Trim_ as a humble friend; and saw fresh reasons every day of his +life, to treat him as such——it would have made no variation in the +manner in which he informed him of the affair. + +“I am in love, corporal!” quoth my uncle _Toby._ + +C H A P. LII + +IN love!——said the corporal—your honour was very well the day before +yesterday, when I was telling your honour of the story of the King of +_Bohemia—Bohemia!_ said my uncle _Toby_ - - - - musing a long time - - +- What became of that story, _Trim?_ + +—We lost it, an’ please your honour, somehow betwixt us—but your honour +was as free from love then, as I am——’twas just whilst thou went’st off +with the wheel-barrow——with Mrs. _Wadman_, quoth my uncle _Toby_——She +has left a ball here—added my uncle _Toby_—pointing to his breast—— + +——She can no more, an’ please your honour, stand a siege, than she can +fly—cried the corporal—— + +——But as we are neighbours, _Trim_,—the best way I think is to let her +know it civilly first—quoth my uncle _Toby._ + +Now if I might presume, said the corporal, to differ from your honour—— + +—Why else do I talk to thee, _Trim?_ said my uncle _Toby_, mildly—— + +—Then I would begin, an’ please your honour, with making a good +thundering attack upon her, in return—and telling her civilly +afterwards—for if she knows any thing of your honour’s being in love, +before hand——L—d help her!—she knows no more at present of it, _Trim_, +said my uncle _Toby_—than the child unborn—— + +Precious souls!—— + +Mrs. _Wadman_ had told it, with all its circumstances, to Mrs. +_Bridget_ twenty-four hours before; and was at that very moment sitting +in council with her, touching some slight misgivings with regard to the +issue of the affairs, which the Devil, who never lies dead in a ditch, +had put into her head—before he would allow half time, to get quietly +through her _Te Deum._ + +I am terribly afraid, said widow _Wadman_, in case I should marry him, +_Bridget_—that the poor captain will not enjoy his health, with the +monstrous wound upon his groin—— + +It may not, Madam, be so very large, replied _Bridget_, as you +think——and I believe, besides, added she—that ’tis dried up—— + +——I could like to know—merely for his sake, said Mrs. _Wadman_—— + +—We’ll know and long and the broad of it, in ten days—answered Mrs. +_Bridget_, for whilst the captain is paying his addresses to you—I’m +confident Mr. _Trim_ will be for making love to me—and I’ll let him as +much as he will—added _Bridget_—to get it all out of him—— + +The measures were taken at once——and my uncle _Toby_ and the corporal +went on with theirs. + +Now, quoth the corporal, setting his left hand a-kimbo, and giving such +a flourish with his right, as just promised success—and no more——if +your honour will give me leave to lay down the plan of this attack—— + +——Thou wilt please me by it, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, +exceedingly—and as I foresee thou must act in it as my _aid de camp_, +here’s a crown, corporal, to begin with, to steep thy commission. + +Then, an’ please your honour, said the corporal (making a bow first for +his commission)—we will begin with getting your honour’s laced clothes +out of the great campaign-trunk, to be well air’d, and have the blue +and gold taken up at the sleeves—and I’ll put your white ramallie-wig +fresh into pipes—and send for a taylor, to have your honour’s thin +scarlet breeches turn’d—— + +—I had better take the red plush ones, quoth my uncle _Toby_—They will +be too clumsy—said the corporal. + +C H A P. LIII + +——Thou wilt get a brush and a little chalk to my sword——’Twill be only +in your honour’s way, replied _Trim._ + +C H A P. LIV + +—But your honour’s two razors shall be new set—and I will get my +_Montero_ cap furbish’d up, and put on poor lieutenant _Le Fever_’s +regimental coat, which your honour gave me to wear for his sake—and as +soon as your honour is clean shaved—and has got your clean shirt on, +with your blue and gold, or your fine scarlet——sometimes one and +sometimes t’other—and every thing is ready for the attack—we’ll march +up boldly, as if ’twas to the face of a bastion; and whilst your honour +engages Mrs. _Wadman_ in the parlour, to the right——I’ll attack Mrs. +_Bridget_ in the kitchen, to the left; and having seiz’d the pass, I’ll +answer for it, said the corporal, snapping his fingers over his +head—that the day is our own. + +I wish I may but manage it right; said my uncle _Toby_—but I declare, +corporal, I had rather march up to the very edge of a trench—— + +—A woman is quite a different thing—said the corporal. + +—I suppose so, quoth my uncle _Toby._ + +C H A P. LV + +IF any thing in this world, which my father said, could have provoked +my uncle _Toby_, during the time he was in love, it was the perverse +use my father was always making of an expression of _Hilarion_ the +hermit; who, in speaking of his abstinence, his watchings, +flagellations, and other instrumental parts of his religion—would +say—tho’ with more facetiousness than became an hermit—“That they were +the means he used, to make his _ass_ (meaning his body) leave off +kicking.” + +It pleased my father well; it was not only a laconick way of +expressing——but of libelling, at the same time, the desires and +appetites of the lower part of us; so that for many years of my +father’s life, ’twas his constant mode of expression—he never used the +word _passions_ once—but _ass_ always instead of them——So that he might +be said truly, to have been upon the bones, or the back of his own ass, +or else of some other man’s, during all that time. + +I must here observe to you the difference betwixt + +My father’s ass + +and my hobby-horse—in order to keep characters as separate as may be, +in our fancies as we go along. + +For my hobby-horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a vicious +beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him——’Tis +the sporting little filly-folly which carries you out for the present +hour—a maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddlestick—an uncle _Toby_’s +siege—or an _any thing_, which a man makes a shift to get a-stride on, +to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life—’Tis as useful +a beast as is in the whole creation—nor do I really see how the world +could do without it—— + +——But for my father’s ass——oh! mount him—mount him—mount him—(that’s +three times, is it not?)—mount him not:—’tis a beast concupiscent—and +foul befal the man, who does not hinder him from kicking. + +C H A P. LVI + +WELL! dear brother _Toby_, said my father, upon his first seeing him +after he fell in love—and how goes it with your ASSE? + +Now my uncle _Toby_ thinking more of the part where he had had the +blister, than of _Hilarion_’s metaphor—and our preconceptions having +(you know) as great a power over the sounds of words as the shapes of +things, he had imagined, that my father, who was not very ceremonious +in his choice of words, had enquired after the part by its proper name: +so notwithstanding my mother, doctor _Slop_, and Mr. _Yorick_, were +sitting in the parlour, he thought it rather civil to conform to the +term my father had made use of than not. When a man is hemm’d in by two +indecorums, and must commit one of ’em—I always observe—let him chuse +which he will, the world will blame him—so I should not be astonished +if it blames my uncle _Toby._ + +My A—e, quoth my uncle _Toby_, is much better—brother _Shandy_—My +father had formed great expectations from his Asse in this onset; and +would have brought him on again; but doctor _Slop_ setting up an +intemperate laugh—and my mother crying out L— bless us!—it drove my +father’s Asse off the field—and the laugh then becoming general—there +was no bringing him back to the charge, for some time—— + +And so the discourse went on without him. + +Every body, said my mother, says you are in love, brother _Toby_,—and +we hope it is true. + +I am as much in love, sister, I believe, replied my uncle _Toby_, as +any man usually is——Humph! said my father——and when did you know it? +quoth my mother—— + +——When the blister broke; replied my uncle _Toby._ + +My uncle _Toby_’s reply put my father into good temper—so he charg’d o’ +foot. + +C H A P. LVII + +AS the ancients agree, brother _Toby_, said my father, that there are +two different and distinct kinds of love, according to the different +parts which are affected by it—the Brain or Liver——I think when a man +is in love, it behoves him a little to consider which of the two he is +fallen into. + +What signifies it, brother _Shandy_, replied my uncle _Toby_, which of +the two it is, provided it will but make a man marry, and love his +wife, and get a few children? + +——A few children! cried my father, rising out of his chair, and looking +full in my mother’s face, as he forced his way betwixt her’s and doctor +_Slop_’s—a few children! cried my father, repeating my uncle _Toby_’s +words as he walk’d to and fro—— + +——Not, my dear brother _Toby_, cried my father, recovering himself all +at once, and coming close up to the back of my uncle _Toby_’s chair—not +that I should be sorry hadst thou a score—on the contrary, I should +rejoice—and be as kind, _Toby_, to every one of them as a father— + +My uncle _Toby_ stole his hand unperceived behind his chair, to give my +father’s a squeeze—— + +——Nay, moreover, continued he, keeping hold of my uncle _Toby_’s +hand—so much dost thou possess, my dear _Toby_, of the milk of human +nature, and so little of its asperities—’tis piteous the world is not +peopled by creatures which resemble thee; and was I an _Asiatic_ +monarch, added my father, heating himself with his new project—I would +oblige thee, provided it would not impair thy strength—or dry up thy +radical moisture too fast—or weaken thy memory or fancy, brother +_Toby_, which these gymnics inordinately taken are apt to do—else, dear +_Toby_, I would procure thee the most beautiful woman in my empire, and +I would oblige thee, _nolens, volens_, to beget for me one subject +every _month_—— + +As my father pronounced the last word of the sentence—my mother took a +pinch of snuff. + +Now I would not, quoth my uncle _Toby_, get a child, _nolens, volens_, +that is, whether I would or no, to please the greatest prince upon +earth—— + +——And ’twould be cruel in me, brother _Toby_, to compel thee; said my +father—but ’tis a case put to shew thee, that it is not thy begetting a +child—in case thou should’st be able—but the system of Love and +Marriage thou goest upon, which I would set thee right in—— + +There is at least, said _Yorick_, a great deal of reason and plain +sense in captain _Shandy_’s opinion of love; and ’tis amongst the +ill-spent hours of my life, which I have to answer for, that I have +read so many flourishing poets and rhetoricians in my time, from whom I +never could extract so much—— + +I wish, _Yorick_, said my father, you had read _Plato;_ for there you +would have learnt that there are two LOVES—I know there were two +RELIGIONS, replied _Yorick_, amongst the ancients——one—for the vulgar, +and another for the learned;—but I think ONE LOVE might have served +both of them very well— + +I could not; replied my father—and for the same reasons: for of these +Loves, according to _Ficinus_’s comment upon _Velasius_, the one is +rational—— + +——the other is _natural_—— +the first ancient——without mother——where _Venus_ had nothing to do: the +second, begotten of _Jupiter_ and _Dione_— + +——Pray, brother, quoth my uncle _Toby_, what has a man who believes in +God to do with this? My father could not stop to answer, for fear of +breaking the thread of his discourse—— + +This latter, continued he, partakes wholly of the nature of _Venus._ + +The first, which is the golden chain let down from heaven, excites to +love heroic, which comprehends in it, and excites to the desire of +philosophy and truth——the second, excites to _desire_, simply—— + +——I think the procreation of children as beneficial to the world, said +_Yorick_, as the finding out the longitude—— + +——To be sure, said my mother, _love_ keeps peace in the world—— + +——In the _house_—my dear, I own— + +——It replenishes the earth; said my mother—— + +But it keeps heaven empty—my dear; replied my father. + +——’Tis Virginity, cried _Slop_, triumphantly, which fills paradise. + +Well push’d nun! quoth my father. + +C H A P. LVIII + +MY father had such a skirmishing, cutting kind of a slashing way with +him in his disputations, thrusting and ripping, and giving every one a +re were twenty people in company—in less than half an hour he was sure +to have every one of ’em against him. + +What did not a little contribute to leave him thus without an ally, +was, that if there was any one post more untenable than the rest, he +would be sure to throw himself into it; and to do him justice, when he +was once there, he would defend it so gallantly, that ’twould have been +a concern, either to a brave man or a good-natured one, to have seen +him driven out. + +_Yorick_, for this reason, though he would often attack him—yet could +never bear to do it with all his force. + +Doctor _Slop_’s VIRGINITY, in the close of the last chapter, had got +him for once on the right side of the rampart; and he was beginning to +blow up all the convents in _Christendom_ about _Slop_’s ears, when +corporal _Trim_ came into the parlour to inform my uncle _Toby_, that +his thin scarlet breeches, in which the attack was to be made upon Mrs. +_Wadman_, would not do; for that the taylor, in ripping them up, in +order to turn them, had found they had been turn’d before——Then turn +them again, brother, said my father, rapidly, for there will be many a +turning of ’em yet before all’s done in the affair——They are as rotten +as dirt, said the corporal——Then by all means, said my father, bespeak +a new pair, brother——for though I know, continued my father, turning +himself to the company, that widow _Wadman_ has been deeply in love +with my brother _Toby_ for many years, and has used every art and +circumvention of woman to outwit him into the same passion, yet now +that she has caught him——her fever will be pass’d its height—— + +——She has gained her point. + +In this case, continued my father, which _Plato_, I am persuaded, never +thought of——Love, you see, is not so much a SENTIMENT as a SITUATION, +into which a man enters, as my brother _Toby_ would do, into a +_corps_——no matter whether he loves the service or no——being once in +it—he acts as if he did; and takes every step to shew himself a man of +prowesse. + +The hypothesis, like the rest of my father’s, was plausible enough, and +my uncle _Toby_ had but a single word to object to it—in which _Trim_ +stood ready to second him——but my father had not drawn his conclusion—— + +For this reason, continued my father (stating the case over +again)—notwithstanding all the world knows, that Mrs. _Wadman affects_ +my brother _Toby_—and my brother _Toby_ contrariwise _affects_ Mrs. +_Wadman_, and no obstacle in nature to forbid the music striking up +this very night, yet will I answer for it, that this self-same tune +will not be play’d this twelvemonth. + +We have taken our measures badly, quoth my uncle _Toby_, looking up +interrogatively in _Trim_’s face. + +I would lay my _Montero_-cap, said _Trim_——Now _Trim_’s _Montero_-cap, +as I once told you, was his constant wager; and having furbish’d it up +that very night, in order to go upon the attack—it made the odds look +more considerable——I would lay, an’ please your honour, my +_Montero_-cap to a shilling—was it proper, continued _Trim_ (making a +bow), to offer a wager before your honours—— + +——There is nothing improper in it, said my father—’tis a mode of +expression; for in saying thou would’st lay thy _Montero_-cap to a +shilling—all thou meanest is this—that thou believest—— + +——Now, What do’st thou believe? + +That widow _Wadman_, an’ please your worship, cannot hold it out ten +days—— + +And whence, cried _Slop_, jeeringly, hast thou all this knowledge of +woman, friend? + +By falling in love with a popish clergy-woman; said _Trim._ + +’Twas a _Beguine_, said my uncle _Toby._ + +Doctor _Slop_ was too much in wrath to listen to the distinction; and +my father taking that very crisis to fall in helter-skelter upon the +whole order of Nuns and _Beguines_, a set of silly, fusty, +baggages——_Slop_ could not stand it——and my uncle Toby having some +measures to take about his breeches—and _Yorick_ about his fourth +general division—in order for their several attacks next day—the +company broke up: and my father being left alone, and having half an +hour upon his hands betwixt that and bed-time; he called for pen, ink, +and paper, and wrote my uncle _Toby_ the following letter of +instructions: + +My dear brother _Toby_, + +WHAT I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of +love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee—tho’ not so +well for me—that thou hast occasion for a letter of instructions upon +that head, and that I am able to write it to thee. + +Had it been the good pleasure of him who disposes of our lots—and thou +no sufferer by the knowledge, I had been well content that thou +should’st have dipp’d the pen this moment into the ink, instead of +myself; but that not being the case———Mrs _Shandy_ being now close +beside me, preparing for bed——I have thrown together without order, and +just as they have come into my mind, such hints and documents as I deem +may be of use to thee; intending, in this, to give thee a token of my +love; not doubting, my dear _Toby_, of the manner in which it will be +accepted. + +In the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion in the +affair——though I perceive from a glow in my cheek, that I blush as I +begin to speak to thee upon the subject, as well knowing, +notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how few of its offices thou +neglectest—yet I would remind thee of one (during the continuance of +thy courtship) in a particular manner, which I would not have omitted; +and that is, never to go forth upon the enterprize, whether it be in +the morning or the afternoon, without first recommending thyself to the +protection of Almighty God, that he may defend thee from the evil one. + +Shave the whole top of thy crown clean once at least every four or five +days, but oftner if convenient; lest in taking off thy wig before her, +thro’ absence of mind, she should be able to discover how much has been +cut away by Time——how much by _Trim._ + +—’Twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her fancy. + +Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim, _Toby_—— + +“_That women are timid:_” And ’tis well they are——else there would be +no dealing with them. + +Let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang too loose about thy thighs, +like the trunk-hose of our ancestors. + +——A just medium prevents all conclusions. + +Whatever thou hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to utter it +in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches it, +weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: For this cause, if +thou canst help it, never throw down the tongs and poker. + +Avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse with +her, and do whatever lies in thy power at the same time, to keep her +from all books and writings which tend thereto: there are some +devotional tracts, which if thou canst entice her to read over—it will +be well: but suffer her not to look into _Rabelais_, or _Scarron_, or +_Don Quixote_—— + +——They are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear +_Toby_, that there is no passion so serious as lust. + +Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her +parlour. + +And if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sopha with her, and she +gives thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers—beware of taking it——thou +canst not lay thy hand on hers, but she will feel the temper of thine. +Leave that and as many other things as thou canst, quite undetermined; +by so doing, thou wilt have her curiosity on thy side; and if she is +not conquered by that, and thy Asse continues still kicking, which +there is great reason to suppose——Thou must begin, with first losing a +few ounces of blood below the ears, according to the practice of the +ancient _Scythians_, who cured the most intemperate fits of the +appetite by that means. + +_Avicenna_, after this, is for having the part anointed with the syrup +of hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges——and I believe +rightly. But thou must eat little or no goat’s flesh, nor red deer——nor +even foal’s flesh by any means; and carefully abstain——that is, as much +as thou canst, from peacocks, cranes, coots, didappers, and +water-hens—— + +As for thy drink—I need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of +VERVAIN and the herb HANEA, of which _Ælian_ relates such effects—but +if thy stomach palls with it—discontinue it from time to time, taking +cucumbers, melons, purslane, water-lillies, woodbine, and lettice, in +the stead of them. + +There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present—— + +——Unless the breaking out of a fresh war——So wishing every thing, dear +_Toby_, for best, + +I rest thy affectionate brother, + +WALTER SHANDY. + +C H A P. LIX + +WHILST my father was writing his letter of instructions, my uncle +_Toby_ and the corporal were busy in preparing every thing for the +attack. As the turning of the thin scarlet breeches was laid aside (at +least for the present), there was nothing which should put it off +beyond the next morning; so accordingly it was resolv’d upon, for +eleven o’clock. + +Come, my dear, said my father to my mother—’twill be but like a brother +and sister, if you and I take a walk down to my brother _Toby_’s——to +countenance him in this attack of his. + +My uncle _Toby_ and the corporal had been accoutred both some time, +when my father and mother enter’d, and the clock striking eleven, were +that moment in motion to sally forth—but the account of this is worth +more than to be wove into the fag end of the eighth[43] volume of such +a work as this.——My father had no time but to put the letter of +instructions into my uncle _Toby_’s coat-pocket——and join with my +mother in wishing his attack prosperous. + +I could like, said my mother, to look through the key-hole out of +_curiosity_——Call it by its right name, my dear, quoth my father— + +_And look through the key-hole_ as long as you will. + + [43] Alluding to the first edition. + +C H A P. LX + +I CALL all the powers of time and chance, which severally check us in +our careers in this world, to bear me witness, that I could never yet +get fairly to my uncle _Toby_’s amours, till this very moment, that my +mother’s _curiosity_, as she stated the affair,——or a different impulse +in her, as my father would have it——wished her to take a peep at them +through the key-hole. + +“Call it, my dear, by its right name, quoth my father, and look through +the key-hole as long as you will.” + +Nothing but the fermentation of that little subacid humour, which I +have often spoken of, in my father’s habit, could have vented such an +insinuation——he was however frank and generous in his nature, and at +all times open to conviction; so that he had scarce got to the last +word of this ungracious retort, when his conscience smote him. + +My mother was then conjugally swinging with her left arm twisted under +his right, in such wise, that the inside of her hand rested upon the +back of his—she raised her fingers, and let them fall—it could scarce +be call’d a tap; or if it was a tap——’twould have puzzled a casuist to +say, whether ’twas a tap of remonstrance, or a tap of confession: my +father, who was all sensibilities from head to foot, class’d it +right—Conscience redoubled her blow—he turn’d his face suddenly the +other way, and my mother supposing his body was about to turn with it +in order to move homewards, by a cross movement of her right leg, +keeping her left as its centre, brought herself so far in front, that +as he turned his head, he met her eye——Confusion again! he saw a +thousand reasons to wipe out the reproach, and as many to reproach +himself——a thin, blue, chill, pellucid chrystal with all its humours so +at rest, the least mote or speck of desire might have been seen, at the +bottom of it, had it existed——it did not——and how I happen to be so +lewd myself, particularly a little before the vernal and autumnal +equinoxes——Heaven above knows——My mother——madam——was so at no time, +either by nature, by institution, or example. + +A temperate current of blood ran orderly through her veins in all +months of the year, and in all critical moments both of the day and +night alike; nor did she superinduce the least heat into her humours +from the manual effervescencies of devotional tracts, which having +little or no meaning in them, nature is oft-times obliged to find +one——And as for my father’s example! ’twas so far from being either +aiding or abetting thereunto, that ’twas the whole business of his +life, to keep all fancies of that kind out of her head——Nature had done +her part, to have spared him this trouble; and what was not a little +inconsistent, my father knew it——And here am I sitting, this 12th day +of _August_ 1766, in a purple jerkin and yellow pair of slippers, +without either wig or cap on, a most tragicomical completion of his +prediction, “That I should neither think, nor act like any other man’s +child, upon that very account.” + +The mistake in my father, was in attacking my mother’s motive, instead +of the act itself; for certainly key-holes were made for other +purposes; and considering the act, as an act which interfered with a +true proposition, and denied a key-hole to be what it was——it became a +violation of nature; and was so far, you see, criminal. + +It is for this reason, an’ please your Reverences, That key-holes are +the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this +world put together. + +——which leads me to my uncle _Toby_’s amours. + +C H A P. LXI + +THOUGH the corporal had been as good as his word in putting my uncle +_Toby_’s great ramallie-wig into pipes, yet the time was too short to +produce any great effects from it: it had lain many years squeezed up +in the corner of his old campaign trunk; and as bad forms are not so +easy to be got the better of, and the use of candle-ends not so well +understood, it was not so pliable a business as one would have wished. +The corporal with cheary eye and both arms extended, had fallen back +perpendicular from it a score times, to inspire it, if possible, with a +better air——had SPLEEN given a look at it, ’twould have cost her +ladyship a smile——it curl’d every where but where the corporal would +have it; and where a buckle or two, in his opinion, would have done it +honour, he could as soon have raised the dead. + +Such it was——or rather such would it have seem’d upon any other brow; +but the sweet look of goodness which sat upon my uncle _Toby_’s, +assimilated every thing around it so sovereignly to itself, and Nature +had moreover wrote GENTLEMAN with so fair a hand in every line of his +countenance, that even his tarnish’d gold-laced hat and huge cockade of +flimsy taffeta became him; and though not worth a button in themselves, +yet the moment my uncle _Toby_ put them on, they became serious +objects, and altogether seem’d to have been picked up by the hand of +Science to set him off to advantage. + +Nothing in this world could have co-operated more powerfully towards +this, than my uncle _Toby_’s blue and gold——_had not Quantity in some +measure been necessary to Grace:_ in a period of fifteen or sixteen +years since they had been made, by a total inactivity in my uncle +_Toby_’s life, for he seldom went further than the bowling-green—his +blue and gold had become so miserably too straight for him, that it was +with the utmost difficulty the corporal was able to get him into them; +the taking them up at the sleeves, was of no advantage.——They were +laced however down the back, and at the seams of the sides, &c. in the +mode of King _William_’s reign; and to shorten all description, they +shone so bright against the sun that morning, and had so metallick and +doughty an air with them, that had my uncle _Toby_ thought of attacking +in armour, nothing could have so well imposed upon his imagination. + +As for the thin scarlet breeches, they had been unripp’d by the taylor +between the legs, and left at _sixes and sevens_—— + +——Yes, Madam,——but let us govern our fancies. It is enough they were +held impracticable the night before, and as there was no alternative in +my uncle _Toby_’s wardrobe, he sallied forth in the red plush. + +The corporal had array’d himself in poor _Le Fever_’s regimental coat; +and with his hair tuck’d up under his _Montero_-cap, which he had +furbish’d up for the occasion, march’d three paces distant from his +master: a whiff of military pride had puff’d out his shirt at the +wrist; and upon that in a black leather thong clipp’d into a tassel +beyond the knot, hung the corporal’s stick——my uncle _Toby_ carried his +cane like a pike. + +——It looks well at least; quoth my father to himself. + +C H A P. LXII + +MY uncle _Toby_ turn’d his head more than once behind him, to see how +he was supported by the corporal; and the corporal as oft as he did it, +gave a slight flourish with his stick—but not vapouringly; and with the +sweetest accent of most respectful encouragement, bid his honour “never +fear.” + +Now my uncle _Toby_ did fear; and grievously too; he knew not (as my +father had reproach’d him) so much as the right end of a Woman from the +wrong, and therefore was never altogether at his ease near any one of +them——unless in sorrow or distress; then infinite was his pity; nor +would the most courteous knight of romance have gone further, at least +upon one leg, to have wiped away a tear from a woman’s eye; and yet +excepting once that he was beguiled into it by Mrs. _Wadman_, he had +never looked stedfastly into one; and would often tell my father in the +simplicity of his heart, that it was almost (if not about) as bad as +taking bawdy.—— + +——And suppose it is? my father would say. + +C H A P. LXIII + +SHE cannot, quoth my uncle _Toby_, halting, when they had march’d up to +within twenty paces of Mrs. _Wadman_’s door—she cannot, corporal, take +it amiss.—— + +——She will take it, an’ please your honour, said the corporal, just as +the _Jew_’s widow at _Lisbon_ took it of my brother _Tom._—— + +——And how was that? quoth my uncle _Toby_, facing quite about to the +corporal. + +Your honour, replied the corporal, knows of _Tom_’s misfortunes; but +this affair has nothing to do with them any further than this, That if +_Tom_ had not married the widow——or had it pleased God after their +marriage, that they had but put pork into their sausages, the honest +soul had never been taken out of his warm bed, and dragg’d to the +inquisition——’Tis a cursed place—added the corporal, shaking his +head,—when once a poor creature is in, he is in, an’ please your +honour, for ever. + +’Tis very true; said my uncle _Toby_, looking gravely at Mrs. +_Wadman_’s house, as he spoke. + +Nothing, continued the corporal, can be so sad as confinement for +life—or so sweet, an’ please your honour, as liberty. + +Nothing, _Trim_——said my uncle Toby, musing—— + +Whilst a man is free,—cried the corporal, giving a flourish with his +stick thus—— + +squiqqly line diagonally across the page + +A thousand of my father’s most subtle syllogisms could not have said +more for celibacy. + +My uncle _Toby_ look’d earnestly towards his cottage and his +bowling-green. + +The corporal had unwarily conjured up the Spirit of calculation with +his wand; and he had nothing to do, but to conjure him down again with +his story, and in this form of Exorcism, most un-ecclesiastically did +the corporal do it. + +C H A P. LXIV + +AS _Tom_’s place, an’ please your honour, was easy—and the weather +warm—it put him upon thinking seriously of settling himself in the +world; and as it fell out about that time, that a _Jew_ who kept a +sausage shop in the same street, had the ill luck to die of a +strangury, and leave his widow in possession of a rousing trade——_Tom_ +thought (as every body in _Lisbon_ was doing the best he could devise +for himself) there could be no harm in offering her his service to +carry it on: so without any introduction to the widow, except that of +buying a pound of sausages at her shop—_Tom_ set out—counting the +matter thus within himself, as he walk’d along; that let the worst come +of it that could, he should at least get a pound of sausages for their +worth—but, if things went well, he should be set up; inasmuch as he +should get not only a pound of sausages—but a wife and—a sausage shop, +an’ please your honour, into the bargain. + +Every servant in the family, from high to low, wish’d _Tom_ success; +and I can fancy, an’ please your honour, I see him this moment with his +white dimity waist-coat and breeches, and hat a little o’ one side, +passing jollily along the street, swinging his stick, with a smile and +a chearful word for every body he met:——But alas! _Tom!_ thou smilest +no more, cried the corporal, looking on one side of him upon the +ground, as if he apostrophised him in his dungeon. + +Poor fellow! said my uncle _Toby_, feelingly. + +He was an honest, light-hearted lad, an’ please your honour, as ever +blood warm’d—— + +——Then he resembled thee, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, rapidly. + +The corporal blush’d down to his fingers ends—a tear of sentimental +bashfulness—another of gratitude to my uncle _Toby_—and a tear of +sorrow for his brother’s misfortunes, started into his eye, and ran +sweetly down his cheek together; my uncle _Toby_’s kindled as one lamp +does at another; and taking hold of the breast of _Trim_’s coat (which +had been that of _Le Fever_’s) as if to ease his lame leg, but in +reality to gratify a finer feeling——he stood silent for a minute and a +half; at the end of which he took his hand away, and the corporal +making a bow, went on with his story of his brother and the _Jew_’s +widow. + +C H A P. LXV + +WHEN _Tom_, an’ please your honour, got to the shop, there was nobody +in it, but a poor negro girl, with a bunch of white feathers slightly +tied to the end of a long cane, flapping away flies—not killing +them.——’Tis a pretty picture! said my uncle _Toby_—she had suffered +persecution, _Trim_, and had learnt mercy—— + +——She was good, an’ please your honour, from nature, as well as from +hardships; and there are circumstances in the story of that poor +friendless slut, that would melt a heart of stone, said _Trim;_ and +some dismal winter’s evening, when your honour is in the humour, they +shall be told you with the rest of _Tom_’s story, for it makes a part +of it—— + +Then do not forget, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby._ + +A negro has a soul? an’ please your honour, said the corporal +(doubtingly). + +I am not much versed, corporal, quoth my uncle _Toby_, in things of +that kind; but I suppose, God would not leave him without one, any more +than thee or me—— + +——It would be putting one sadly over the head of another, quoth the +corporal. + +It would so; said my uncle _Toby._ Why then, an’ please your honour, is +a black wench to be used worse than a white one? + +I can give no reason, said my uncle _Toby_—— + +——Only, cried the corporal, shaking his head, because she has no one to +stand up for her—— + +——’Tis that very thing, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_,——which +recommends her to protection——and her brethren with her; ’tis the +fortune of war which has put the whip into our hands _now_——where it +may be hereafter, heaven knows!——but be it where it will, the brave, +_Trim!_ will not use it unkindly. + +——God forbid, said the corporal. + +Amen, responded my uncle _Toby_, laying his hand upon his heart. + +The corporal returned to his story, and went on——but with an +embarrassment in doing it, which here and there a reader in this world +will not be able to comprehend; for by the many sudden transitions all +along, from one kind and cordial passion to another, in getting thus +far on his way, he had lost the sportable key of his voice, which gave +sense and spirit to his tale: he attempted twice to resume it, but +could not please himself; so giving a stout hem! to rally back the +retreating spirits, and aiding nature at the same time with his left +arm a kimbo on one side, and with his right a little extended, +supporting her on the other—the corporal got as near the note as he +could; and in that attitude, continued his story. + +C H A P. LXVI + +AS _Tom_, an’ please your honour, had no business at that time with the +_Moorish_ girl, he passed on into the room beyond, to talk to the +_Jew_’s widow about love——and this pound of sausages; and being, as I +have told your honour, an open cheary-hearted lad, with his character +wrote in his looks and carriage, he took a chair, and without much +apology, but with great civility at the same time, placed it close to +her at the table, and sat down. + +There is nothing so awkward, as courting a woman, an’ please your +honour, whilst she is making sausages——So _Tom_ began a discourse upon +them; first, gravely,——“as how they were made——with what meats, herbs, +and spices.”—Then a little gayly,—as, “With what skins——and if they +never burst——Whether the largest were not the best?”—and so on—taking +care only as he went along, to season what he had to say upon sausages, +rather under than over;——that he might have room to act in—— + +It was owing to the neglect of that very precaution, said my uncle +_Toby_, laying his hand upon _Trim_’s shoulder, that Count _De la +Motte_ lost the battle of _Wynendale:_ he pressed too speedily into the +wood; which if he had not done, _Lisle_ had not fallen into our hands, +nor _Ghent_ and _Bruges_, which both followed her example; it was so +late in the year, continued my uncle _Toby_, and so terrible a season +came on, that if things had not fallen out as they did, our troops must +have perish’d in the open field.—— + +——Why, therefore, may not battles, an’ please your honour, as well as +marriages, be made in heaven?—my uncle _Toby_ mused—— + +Religion inclined him to say one thing, and his high idea of military +skill tempted him to say another; so not being able to frame a reply +exactly to his mind——my uncle _Toby_ said nothing at all; and the +corporal finished his story. + +As _Tom_ perceived, an’ please your honour, that he gained ground, and +that all he had said upon the subject of sausages was kindly taken, he +went on to help her a little in making them.——First, by taking hold of +the ring of the sausage whilst she stroked the forced meat down with +her hand——then by cutting the strings into proper lengths, and holding +them in his hand, whilst she took them out one by one——then, by putting +them across her mouth, that she might take them out as she wanted +them——and so on from little to more, till at last he adventured to tie +the sausage himself, whilst she held the snout.—— + +——Now a widow, an’ please your honour, always chuses a second husband +as unlike the first as she can: so the affair was more than half +settled in her mind before _Tom_ mentioned it. + +She made a feint however of defending herself, by snatching up a +sausage:——_Tom_ instantly laid hold of another—— + +But seeing _Tom_’s had more gristle in it—— + +She signed the capitulation——and _Tom_ sealed it; and there was an end +of the matter. + +C H A P. LXVII + +ALL womankind, continued _Trim_, (commenting upon his story) from the +highest to the lowest, an’ please your honour, love jokes; the +difficulty is to know how they chuse to have them cut; and there is no +knowing that, but by trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, +by raising or letting down their breeches, till we hit the mark.—— + +——I like the comparison, said my uncle _Toby_, better than the thing +itself—— + +——Because your honour, quoth the corporal, loves glory, more than +pleasure. + +I hope, _Trim_, answered my uncle _Toby_, I love mankind more than +either; and as the knowledge of arms tends so apparently to the good +and quiet of the world——and particularly that branch of it which we +have practised together in our bowling-green, has no object but to +shorten the strides of AMBITION, and intrench the lives and fortunes of +the _few_, from the plunderings of the _many_——whenever that drum beats +in our ears, I trust, corporal, we shall neither of us want so much +humanity and fellow-feeling, as to face about and march. + +In pronouncing this, my uncle _Toby_ faced about, and march’d firmly as +at the head of his company——and the faithful corporal, shouldering his +stick, and striking his hand upon his coat-skirt as he took his first +step——march’d close behind him down the avenue. + +——Now what can their two noddles be about? cried my father to my +mother——by all that’s strange, they are besieging Mrs. _Wadman_ in +form, and are marching round her house to mark out the lines of +circumvallation. + +I dare say, quoth my mother——But stop, dear Sir——for what my mother +dared to say upon the occasion——and what my father did say upon +it——with her replies and his rejoinders, shall be read, perused, +paraphrased, commented, and descanted upon—or to say it all in a word, +shall be thumb’d over by Posterity in a chapter apart——I say, by +Posterity—and care not, if I repeat the word again—for what has this +book done more than the Legation of _Moses_, or the Tale of a Tub, that +it may not swim down the gutter of Time along with them? + +I will not argue the matter: Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace +tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen: the days and hours of +it, more precious, my dear _Jenny!_ than the rubies about thy neck, are +flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return +more——every thing presses on——whilst thou art twisting that lock,——see! +it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every +absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which +we are shortly to make.—— + +——Heaven have mercy upon us both! + +C H A P. LXVIII + +NOW, for what the world thinks of that ejaculation——I would not give a +groat. + +C H A P. LXIX + +MY mother had gone with her left arm twisted in my father’s right, till +they had got to the fatal angle of the old garden wall, where Doctor +_Slop_ was overthrown by _Obadiah_ on the coach-horse: as this was +directly opposite to the front of Mrs. _Wadman_’s house, when my father +came to it, he gave a look across; and seeing my uncle _Toby_ and the +corporal within ten paces of the door, he turn’d about——“Let us just +stop a moment, quoth my father, and see with what ceremonies my brother +_Toby_ and his man _Trim_ make their first entry——it will not detain +us, added my father, a single minute:”——No matter, if it be ten +minutes, quoth my mother. + +——It will not detain us half one; said my father. + +The corporal was just then setting in with the story of his brother +_Tom_ and the _Jew_’s widow: the story went on—and on——it had episodes +in it——it came back, and went on——and on again; there was no end of +it——the reader found it very long—— + +——G— help my father! he pish’d fifty times at every new attitude, and +gave the corporal’s stick, with all its flourishings and danglings, to +as many devils as chose to accept of them. + +When issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are hanging +in the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the +principle of expectation three times, without which it would not have +power to see it out. + +Curiosity governs the _first moment;_ and the second moment is all +œconomy to justify the expence of the first——and for the third, fourth, +fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment—’tis a point +of HONOUR. + +I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to +Patience; but that VIRTUE, methinks, has extent of dominion sufficient +of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled +castles which HONOUR has left him upon the earth. + +My father stood it out as well as he could with these three auxiliaries +to the end of _Trim_’s story; and from thence to the end of my uncle +_Toby_’s panegyrick upon arms, in the chapter following it; when +seeing, that instead of marching up to Mrs. _Wadman_’s door, they both +faced about and march’d down the avenue diametrically opposite to his +expectation—he broke out at once with that little subacid soreness of +humour, which, in certain situations, distinguished his character from +that of all other men. + +C H A P. LXX + +——“Now what can their two noddles be about?” cried my father - - &c. - +- - - + +I dare say, said my mother, they are making fortifications—— + +——Not on Mrs. _Wadman_’s premises! cried my father, stepping back—— + +I suppose not: quoth my mother. + +I wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of +fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, +blinds, gabions, fausse-brays and cuvetts—— + +——They are foolish things——said my mother. + +Now she had a way, which, by the bye, I would this moment give away my +purple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if some of your +reverences would imitate—and that was, never to refuse her assent and +consent to any proposition my father laid before her, merely because +she did not understand it, or had no ideas of the principal word or +term of art, upon which the tenet or proposition rolled. She contented +herself with doing all that her godfathers and godmothers promised for +her—but no more; and so would go on using a hard word twenty years +together—and replying to it too, if it was a verb, in all its moods and +tenses, without giving herself any trouble to enquire about it. + +This was an eternal source of misery to my father, and broke the neck, +at the first setting out, of more good dialogues between them, than +could have done the most petulant contradiction——the few which survived +were the better for the _cuvetts_—— + +—“They are foolish things;” said my mother. + +——Particularly the _cuvetts;_ replied my father. + +’Tis enough—he tasted the sweet of triumph—and went on. + +—Not that they are, properly speaking, Mrs. _Wadman_’s premises, said +my father, partly correcting himself—because she is but tenant for +life—— + +——That makes a great difference—said my mother—— + +—In a fool’s head, replied my father—— + +Unless she should happen to have a child—said my mother—— + +——But she must persuade my brother _Toby_ first to get her one— + +To be sure, Mr. _Shandy_, quoth my mother. + +——Though if it comes to persuasion—said my father—Lord have mercy upon +them. + +Amen: said my mother, _piano._ + +Amen: cried my father, _fortissimè._ + +Amen: said my mother again——but with such a sighing cadence of personal +pity at the end of it, as discomfited every fibre about my father—he +instantly took out his almanack; but before he could untie it, +_Yorick_’s congregation coming out of church, became a full answer to +one half of his business with it—and my mother telling him it was a +sacrament day—left him as little in doubt, as to the other part—He put +his almanack into his pocket. + +The first Lord of the Treasury thinking of _ways and means_, could not +have returned home with a more embarrassed look. + +C H A P. LXXI + +UPON looking back from the end of the last chapter, and surveying the +texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page +and the three following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be +inserted to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without +which a book would not hold together a single year: nor is it a poor +creeping digression (which but for the name of, a man might continue as +well going on in the king’s highway) which will do the business——no; if +it is to be a digression, it must be a good frisky one, and upon a +frisky subject too, where neither the horse or his rider are to be +caught, but by rebound. + +The only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of the +service: FANCY is capricious—WIT must not be searched for—and +PLEASANTRY (good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, +was an empire to be laid at her feet. + +——The best way for a man, is to say his prayers—— + +Only if it puts him in mind of his infirmities and defects as well +ghostly as bodily—for that purpose, he will find himself rather worse +after he has said them than before—for other purposes, better. + +For my own part, there is not a way either moral or mechanical under +heaven that I could think of, which I have not taken with myself in +this case: sometimes by addressing myself directly to the soul herself, +and arguing the point over and over again with her upon the extent of +her own faculties—— + +——I never could make them an inch the wider—— + +Then by changing my system, and trying what could be made of it upon +the body, by temperance, soberness, and chastity: These are good, quoth +I, in themselves—they are good, absolutely;—they are good, +relatively;—they are good for health—they are good for happiness in +this world—they are good for happiness in the next—— + +In short, they were good for every thing but the thing wanted; and +there they were good for nothing, but to leave the soul just as heaven +made it: as for the theological virtues of faith and hope, they give it +courage; but then that snivelling virtue of Meekness (as my father +would always call it) takes it quite away again, so you are exactly +where you started. + +Now in all common and ordinary cases, there is nothing which I have +found to answer so well as this—— + +——Certainly, if there is any dependence upon Logic, and that I am not +blinded by self-love, there must be something of true genius about me, +merely upon this symptom of it, that I do not know what envy is: for +never do I hit upon any invention or device which tendeth to the +furtherance of good writing, but I instantly make it public; willing +that all mankind should write as well as myself. + +——Which they certainly will, when they think as little. + +C H A P. LXXII + +NOW in ordinary cases, that is, when I am only stupid, and the thoughts +rise heavily and pass gummous through my pen—— + +Or that I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of +infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it _for my soul;_ +so must be obliged to go on writing like a _Dutch_ commentator to the +end of the chapter, unless something be done— + +——I never stand conferring with pen and ink one moment; for if a pinch +of snuff, or a stride or two across the room will not do the business +for me—I take a razor at once; and having tried the edge of it upon the +palm of my hand, without further ceremony, except that of first +lathering my beard, I shave it off; taking care only if I do leave a +hair, that it be not a grey one: this done, I change my shirt—put on a +better coat—send for my last wig—put my topaz ring upon my finger; and +in a word, dress myself from one end to the other of me, after my best +fashion. + +Now the devil in hell must be in it, if this does not do: for consider, +Sir, as every man chuses to be present at the shaving of his own beard +(though there is no rule without an exception), and unavoidably sits +over-against himself the whole time it is doing, in case he has a hand +in it—the Situation, like all others, has notions of her own to put +into the brain.—— + +——I maintain it, the conceits of a rough-bearded man, are seven years +more terse and juvenile for one single operation; and if they did not +run a risk of being quite shaved away, might be carried up by continual +shavings, to the highest pitch of sublimity—How _Homer_ could write +with so long a beard, I don’t know——and as it makes against my +hypothesis, I as little care——But let us return to the Toilet. + +_Ludovicus Sorbonensis_ makes this entirely an affair of the body +(εξωιεριχη πραξις) as he calls it——but he is deceived: the soul and +body are joint-sharers in every thing they get: A man cannot dress, but +his ideas get cloth’d at the same time; and if he dresses like a +gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination, +genteelized along with him—so that he has nothing to do, but take his +pen, and write like himself. + +For this cause, when your honours and reverences would know whether I +writ clean and fit to be read, you will be able to judge full as well +by looking into my Laundress’s bill, as my book: there is one single +month in which I can make it appear, that I dirtied one and thirty +shirts with clean writing; and after all, was more abus’d, cursed, +criticis’d, and confounded, and had more mystic heads shaken at me, for +what I had wrote in that one month, than in all the other months of +that year put together. + +——But their honours and reverences had not seen my bills. + +C H A P. LXXIII + +AS I never had any intention of beginning the Digression, I am making +all this preparation for, till I come to the 74th chapter——I have this +chapter to put to whatever use I think proper——I have twenty this +moment ready for it——I could write my chapter of Button-holes in it—— + +Or my chapter of _Pishes_, which should follow them—— + +Or my chapter of _Knots_, in case their reverences have done with +them——they might lead me into mischief: the safest way is to follow the +track of the learned, and raise objections against what I have been +writing, tho’ I declare before-hand, I know no more than my heels how +to answer them. + +And first, it may be said, there is a pelting kind of _thersitical_ +satire, as black as the very ink ’tis wrote with——(and by the bye, +whoever says so, is indebted to the muster-master general of the +_Grecian_ army, for suffering the name of so ugly and foul-mouth’d a +man as _Thersites_ to continue upon his roll——for it has furnish’d him +with an epithet)——in these productions he will urge, all the personal +washings and scrubbings upon earth do a sinking genius no sort of +good——but just the contrary, inasmuch as the dirtier the fellow is, the +better generally he succeeds in it. + +To this, I have no other answer——at least ready——but that the +Archbishop of _Benevento_ wrote his _nasty_ Romance of the _Galatea_, +as all the world knows, in a purple coat, waistcoat, and purple pair of +breeches; and that the penance set him of writing a commentary upon the +book of the _Revelations_, as severe as it was look’d upon by one part +of the world, was far from being deem’d so, by the other, upon the +single account of that _Investment._ + +Another objection, to all this remedy, is its want of universality; +forasmuch as the shaving part of it, upon which so much stress is laid, +by an unalterable law of nature excludes one half of the species +entirely from its use: all I can say is, that female writers, whether +of _England_, or of _France_, must e’en go without it—— + +As for the _Spanish_ ladies——I am in no sort of distress—— + +C H A P. LXXIV + +THE seventy-fourth chapter is come at last; and brings nothing with it +but a sad signature of “How our pleasures slip from under us in this +world!” + +For in talking of my digression——I declare before heaven I have made +it! What a strange creature is mortal man! said she. + +’Tis very true, said I——but ’twere better to get all these things out +of our heads, and return to my uncle _Toby._ + +C H A P. LXXV + +WHEN my uncle _Toby_ and the corporal had marched down to the bottom of +the avenue, they recollected their business lay the other way; so they +faced about and marched up straight to Mrs. _Wadman_’s door. + +I warrant your honour; said the corporal, touching his _Montero_-cap +with his hand, as he passed him in order to give a knock at the +door——My uncle _Toby_, contrary to his invariable way of treating his +faithful servant, said nothing good or bad: the truth was, he had not +altogether marshal’d his ideas; he wish’d for another conference, and +as the corporal was mounting up the three steps before the door—he +hem’d twice—a portion of my uncle _Toby_’s most modest spirits fled, at +each expulsion, towards the corporal; he stood with the rapper of the +door suspended for a full minute in his hand, he scarce knew why. +_Bridget_ stood perdue within, with her finger and her thumb upon the +latch, benumb’d with expectation; and Mrs _Wadman_, with an eye ready +to be deflowered again, sat breathless behind the window-curtain of her +bed-chamber, watching their approach. + +_Trim!_ said my uncle _Toby_——but as he articulated the word, the +minute expired, and _Trim_ let fall the rapper. + +My uncle _Toby_ perceiving that all hopes of a conference were knock’d +on the head by it——whistled Lillabullero. + +C H A P. LXXVI + +AS Mrs. _Bridget_’s finger and thumb were upon the latch, the corporal +did not knock as often as perchance your honour’s taylor——I might have +taken my example something nearer home; for I owe mine, some five and +twenty pounds at least, and wonder at the man’s patience—— + +——But this is nothing at all to the world: only ’tis a cursed thing to +be in debt; and there seems to be a fatality in the exchequers of some +poor princes, particularly those of our house, which no Economy can +bind down in irons: for my own part, I’m persuaded there is not any one +prince, prelate, pope, or potentate, great or small upon earth, more +desirous in his heart of keeping straight with the world than I am——or +who takes more likely means for it. I never give above half a +guinea——or walk with boots——or cheapen tooth-picks——or lay out a +shilling upon a band-box the year round; and for the six months I’m in +the country, I’m upon so small a scale, that with all the good temper +in the world, I outdo _Rousseau_, a bar length——for I keep neither man +or boy, or horse, or cow, or dog, or cat, or any thing that can eat or +drink, except a thin poor piece of a Vestal (to keep my fire in), and +who has generally as bad an appetite as myself——but if you think this +makes a philosopher of me——I would not, my good people! give a rush for +your judgments. + +True philosophy——but there is no treating the subject whilst my uncle +is whistling Lillabullero. + +——Let us go into the house. + +C H A P. LXXVII + +C H A P. LXXVIII + +C H A P. LXXIX + +—— * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. + +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * +*.—— + +——You shall see the very place, Madam; said my uncle _Toby._ + +Mrs. _Wadman_ blush’d——look’d towards the door——turn’d pale——blush’d +slightly again——recover’d her natural colour——blush’d worse than ever; +which, for the sake of the unlearned reader, I translate thus—— + +“_L—d! I cannot look at it——_ + +_What would the world say if I look’d at it?_ + +_I should drop down, if I look’d at it—_ + +_I wish I could look at it—_ + +_There can be no sin in looking at it._ + +_——I will look at it._” + +Whilst all this was running through Mrs. _Wadman_’s imagination, my +uncle _Toby_ had risen from the sopha, and got to the other side of the +parlour door, to give _Trim_ an order about it in the passage—— + +* * * * * * * * * * * * * *——I believe it is in the garret, said my +uncle _Toby_——I saw it there, an’ please your honour, this morning, +answered _Trim_——Then prithee, step directly for it, _Trim_, said my +uncle _Toby_, and bring it into the parlour. + +The corporal did not approve of the orders, but most cheerfully obeyed +them. The first was not an act of his will—the second was; so he put on +his _Montero_-cap, and went as fast as his lame knee would let him. My +uncle _Toby_ returned into the parlour, and sat himself down again upon +the sopha. + +——You shall lay your finger upon the place—said my uncle _Toby._——I +will not touch it, however, quoth Mrs. _Wadman_ to herself. + +This requires a second translation:—it shews what little knowledge is +got by mere words—we must go up to the first springs. + +Now in order to clear up the mist which hangs upon these three pages, I +must endeavour to be as clear as possible myself. + +Rub your hands thrice across your foreheads—blow your noses—cleanse +your emunctories—sneeze, my good people!——God bless you—— + +Now give me all the help you can. + +C H A P. LXXX + +AS there are fifty different ends (counting all ends in——as well civil +as religious) for which a woman takes a husband, the first sets about +and carefully weighs, then separates and distinguishes in her mind, +which of all that number of ends is hers; then by discourse, enquiry, +argumentation, and inference, she investigates and finds out whether +she has got hold of the right one——and if she has——then, by pulling it +gently this way and that way, she further forms a judgment, whether it +will not break in the drawing. + +The imagery under which _Slawkenbergius_ impresses this upon the +reader’s fancy, in the beginning of his third Decad, is so ludicrous, +that the honour I bear the sex, will not suffer me to quote +it——otherwise it is not destitute of humour. + +“She first, saith _Slawkenbergius_, stops the asse, and holding his +halter in her left hand (lest he should get away) she thrusts her right +hand into the very bottom of his pannier to search for it—For +what?—you’ll not know the sooner, quoth _Slawkenbergius_, for +interrupting me—— + +“I have nothing, good Lady, but empty bottles;’ says the asse. + +“I’m loaded with tripes;” says the second. + +——And thou art little better, quoth she to the third; for nothing is +there in thy panniers but trunk-hose and pantofles—and so to the fourth +and fifth, going on one by one through the whole string, till coming to +the asse which carries it, she turns the pannier upside down, looks at +it—considers it—samples it—measures it—stretches it—wets it—dries +it—then takes her teeth both to the warp and weft of it. + +——Of what? for the love of Christ! + +I am determined, answered _Slawkenbergius_, that all the powers upon +earth shall never wring that secret from my breast. + +C H A P. LXXXI + +WE live in a world beset on all sides with mysteries and riddles—and so +’tis no matter——else it seems strange, that Nature, who makes every +thing so well to answer its destination, and seldom or never errs, +unless for pastime, in giving such forms and aptitudes to whatever +passes through her hands, that whether she designs for the plough, the +caravan, the cart—or whatever other creature she models, be it but an +asse’s foal, you are sure to have the thing you wanted; and yet at the +same time should so eternally bungle it as she does, in making so +simple a thing as a married man. + +Whether it is in the choice of the clay——or that it is frequently +spoiled in the baking; by an excess of which a husband may turn out too +crusty (you know) on one hand——or not enough so, through defect of +heat, on the other——or whether this great Artificer is not so attentive +to the little Platonic exigences _of that part_ of the species, for +whose use she is fabricating _this_——or that her Ladyship sometimes +scarce knows what sort of a husband will do——I know not: we will +discourse about it after supper. + +It is enough, that neither the observation itself, or the reasoning +upon it, are at all to the purpose—but rather against it; since with +regard to my uncle _Toby_’s fitness for the marriage state, nothing was +ever better: she had formed him of the best and kindliest clay——had +temper’d it with her own milk, and breathed into it the sweetest +spirit——she had made him all gentle, generous, and humane——she had +filled his heart with trust and confidence, and disposed every passage +which led to it, for the communication of the tenderest offices——she +had moreover considered the other causes for which matrimony was +ordained—— + +And accordingly * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. + +The DONATION was not defeated by my uncle _Toby_’s wound. + +Now this last article was somewhat apocryphal; and the Devil, who is +the great disturber of our faiths in this world, had raised scruples in +Mrs. _Wadman_’s brain about it; and like a true devil as he was, had +done his own work at the same time, by turning my uncle _Toby_’s Virtue +thereupon into nothing but _empty bottles, tripes, trunk-hose_, and +_pantofles._ + +C H A P. LXXXII + +MRS. _Bridget_ had pawn’d all the little stock of honour a poor +chamber-maid was worth in the world, that she would get to the bottom +of the affair in ten days; and it was built upon one of the most +concessible _postulata_ in nature: namely, that whilst my uncle _Toby_ +was making love to her mistress, the corporal could find nothing better +to do, than make love to her——“_And I’ll let him as much as he will_, +said _Bridget_, to get it out of him.” + +Friendship has two garments; an outer and an under one. _Bridget_ was +serving her mistress’s interests in the one—and doing the thing which +most pleased herself in the other: so had as many stakes depending upon +my uncle _Toby_’s wound, as the Devil himself——Mrs. _Wadman_ had but +one—and as it possibly might be her last (without discouraging Mrs. +_Bridget_, or discrediting her talents) was determined to play her +cards herself. + +She wanted not encouragement: a child might have look’d into his +hand——there was such a plainness and simplicity in his playing out what +trumps he had——with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the +_ten-ace_——and so naked and defenceless did he sit upon the same sopha +with widow _Wadman_, that a generous heart would have wept to have won +the game of him. + +Let us drop the metaphor. + +C H A P. LXXXIII + +——AND the story too—if you please: for though I have all along been +hastening towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as well +knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what I had to offer to the +world, yet now that I am got to it, any one is welcome to take my pen, +and go on with the story for me that will—I see the difficulties of the +descriptions I’m going to give—and feel my want of powers. + +It is one comfort at least to me, that I lost some fourscore ounces of +blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the +beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining, +it may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood, than in +the subtile _aura_ of the brain——be it which it will—an Invocation can +do no hurt——and I leave the affair entirely to the _invoked_, to +inspire or to inject me according as he sees good. + +T H E I N V O C A T I O N + +GENTLE Spirit of sweetest humour, who erst did sit upon the easy pen of +my beloved CERVANTES; Thou who glidedst daily through his lattice, and +turned’st the twilight of his prison into noon-day brightness by thy +presence——tinged’st his little urn of water with heaven-sent nectar, +and all the time he wrote of _Sancho_ and his master, didst cast thy +mystic mantle o’er his wither’d stump[44], and wide extended it to all +the evils of his life—— + +——Turn in hither, I beseech thee!——behold these breeches!——they are all +I have in world——that piteous rent was given them at _Lyons_—— + +My shirts! see what a deadly schism has happen’d amongst ’em—for the +laps are in _Lombardy_, and the rest of ’em here—I never had but six, +and a cunning gypsey of a laundress at _Milan_ cut me off the +_fore_-laps of five—To do her justice, she did it with some +consideration—for I was returning out of _Italy._ + +And yet, notwithstanding all this, and a pistol tinder-box which was +moreover filch’d from me at _Sienna_, and twice that I pay’d five Pauls +for two hard eggs, once at _Raddicoffini_, and a second time at +_Capua_—I do not think a journey through _France_ and _Italy_, provided +a man keeps his temper all the way, so bad a thing as some people would +make you believe: there must be _ups_ and _downs_, or how the duce +should we get into vallies where Nature spreads so many tables of +entertainment.—’Tis nonsense to imagine they will lend you their +voitures to be shaken to pieces for nothing; and unless you pay twelve +sous for greasing your wheels, how should the poor peasant get butter +to his bread?—We really expect too much—and for the livre or two above +par for your suppers and bed—at the most they are but one shilling and +ninepence halfpenny——who would embroil their philosophy for it? for +heaven’s and for your own sake, pay it——pay it with both hands open, +rather than leave _Disappointment_ sitting drooping upon the eye of +your fair Hostess and her Damsels in the gate-way, at your +departure—and besides, my dear Sir, you get a sisterly kiss of each of +’em worth a pound——at least I did—— + +——For my uncle _Toby_’s amours running all the way in my head, they had +the same effect upon me as if they had been my own——I was in the most +perfect state of bounty and good-will; and felt the kindliest harmony +vibrating within me, with every oscillation of the chaise alike; so +that whether the roads were rough or smooth, it made no difference; +every thing I saw or had to do with, touch’d upon some secret spring +either of sentiment or rapture. + +——They were the sweetest notes I ever heard; and I instantly let down +the fore-glass to hear them more distinctly——’Tis _Maria;_ said the +postillion, observing I was listening——Poor _Maria_, continued he +(leaning his body on one side to let me see her, for he was in a line +betwixt us), is sitting upon a bank playing her vespers upon her pipe, +with her little goat beside her. + +The young fellow utter’d this with an accent and a look so perfectly in +tune to a feeling heart, that I instantly made a vow, I would give him +a four-and-twenty sous piece, when I got to _Moulins_—— + +——And who is poor _Maria?_ said I. + +The love and piety of all the villages around us; said the +postillion——it is but three years ago, that the sun did not shine upon +so fair, so quick- witted and amiable a maid; and better fate did +_Maria_ deserve, than to have her Banns forbid, by the intrigues of the +curate of the parish who published them—— + +He was going on, when _Maria_, who had made a short pause, put the pipe +to her mouth, and began the air again——they were the same notes;——yet +were ten times sweeter: It is the evening service to the Virgin, said +the young man——but who has taught her to play it—or how she came by her +pipe, no one knows; we think that heaven has assisted her in both; for +ever since she has been unsettled in her mind, it seems her only +consolation——she has never once had the pipe out of her hand, but plays +that _service_ upon it almost night and day. + +The postillion delivered this with so much discretion and natural +eloquence, that I could not help decyphering something in his face +above his condition, and should have sifted out his history, had not +poor _Maria_ taken such full possession of me. + +We had got up by this time almost to the bank where _Maria_ was +sitting: she was in a thin white jacket, with her hair, all but two +tresses, drawn up into a silk-net, with a few olive leaves twisted a +little fantastically on one side——she was beautiful; and if ever I felt +the full force of an honest heart-ache, it was the moment I saw her—— + +——God help her! poor damsel! above a hundred masses, said the +postillion, have been said in the several parish churches and convents +around, for her,——but without effect; we have still hopes, as she is +sensible for short intervals, that the Virgin at last will restore her +to herself; but her parents, who know her best, are hopeless upon that +score, and think her senses are lost for ever. + +As the postillion spoke this, MARIA made a cadence so melancholy, so +tender and querulous, that I sprung out of the chaise to help her, and +found myself sitting betwixt her and her goat before I relapsed from my +enthusiasm. + +MARIA look’d wistfully for some time at me, and then at her goat——and +then at me——and then at her goat again, and so on, alternately—— + +——Well, _Maria_, said I softly——What resemblance do you find? + +I do entreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from the +humblest conviction of what a _Beast_ man is,——that I asked the +question; and that I would not have let fallen an unseasonable +pleasantry in the venerable presence of Misery, to be entitled to all +the wit that ever _Rabelais_ scatter’d——and yet I own my heart smote +me, and that I so smarted at the very idea of it, that I swore I would +set up for Wisdom, and utter grave sentences the rest of my days——and +never——never attempt again to commit mirth with man, woman, or child, +the longest day I had to live. + +As for writing nonsense to them——I believe there was a reserve—but that +I leave to the world. + +Adieu, _Maria!_—adieu, poor hapless damsel!——some time, but not now, I +may hear thy sorrows from thy own lips——but I was deceived; for that +moment she took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that I +rose up, and with broken and irregular steps walk’d softly to my +chaise. + +——What an excellent inn at _Moulins!_ + + [44] He lost his hand at the battle of _Lepanto._ + +C H A P. LXXXIV + +WHEN we have got to the end of this chapter (but not before) we must +all turn back to the two blank chapters, on the account of which my +honour has lain bleeding this half hour——I stop it, by pulling off one +of my yellow slippers and throwing it with all my violence to the +opposite side of my room, with a declaration at the heel of it—— + +——That whatever resemblance it may bear to half the chapters which are +written in the world, or for aught I know may be now writing in it—that +it was as casual as the foam of _Zeuxis_ his horse; besides, I look +upon a chapter which has _only nothing in it_, with respect; and +considering what worse things there are in the world——That it is no way +a proper subject for satire—— + +——Why then was it left so? And here without staying for my reply, shall +I be called as many blockheads, numsculs, doddypoles, dunderheads, +ninny-hammers, goosecaps, joltheads, nincompoops, and sh- +-t-a-beds——and other unsavoury appellations, as ever the cake-bakers of +_Lernè_ cast in the teeth of King _Garangantan_’s shepherds——And I’ll +let them do it, as _Bridget_ said, as much as they please; for how was +it possible they should foresee the necessity I was under of writing +the 84th chapter of my book, before the 77th, &c? + +——So I don’t take it amiss——All I wish is, that it may be a lesson to +the world, “_to let people tell their stories their own way._” + +The Seventy-seventh Chapter + +AS Mrs. _Bridget_ opened the door before the corporal had well given +the rap, the interval betwixt that and my uncle _Toby_’s introduction +into the parlour, was so short, that Mrs. _Wadman_ had but just time to +get from behind the curtain——lay a Bible upon the table, and advance a +step or two towards the door to receive him. + +My uncle _Toby_ saluted Mrs. _Wadman_, after the manner in which women +were saluted by men in the year of our Lord God one thousand seven +hundred and thirteen——then facing about, he march’d up abreast with her +to the sopha, and in three plain words——though not before he was sat +down——nor after he was sat down——but as he was sitting down, told her, +“_he was in love_”——so that my uncle _Toby_ strained himself more in +the declaration than he needed. + +Mrs. _Wadman_ naturally looked down, upon a slit she had been darning +up in her apron, in expectation every moment, that my uncle _Toby_ +would go on; but having no talents for amplification, and Love moreover +of all others being a subject of which he was the least a master——When +he had told Mrs. _Wadman_ once that he loved her, he let it alone, and +left the matter to work after its own way. + +My father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle _Toby_’s, +as he falsely called it, and would often say, that could his brother +_Toby_ to his processe have added but a pipe of tobacco——he had +wherewithal to have found his way, if there was faith in a _Spanish_ +proverb, towards the hearts of half the women upon the globe. + +My uncle _Toby_ never understood what my father meant; nor will I +presume to extract more from it, than a condemnation of an error which +the bulk of the world lie under——but the _French_, every one of ’em to +a man, who believe in it, almost as much as the REAL PRESENCE, “_That +talking of love, is making it._” + +——I would as soon set about making a black-pudding by the same receipt. + +Let us go on: Mrs. _Wadman_ sat in expectation my uncle _Toby_ would do +so, to almost the first pulsation of that minute, wherein silence on +one side or the other, generally becomes indecent: so edging herself a +little more towards him, and raising up her eyes, sub blushing, as she +did it——she took up the gauntlet——or the discourse (if you like it +better) and communed with my uncle _Toby_, thus: + +The cares and disquietudes of the marriage state, quoth Mrs. _Wadman_, +are very great. I suppose so—said my uncle _Toby:_ and therefore when a +person, continued Mrs. _Wadman_, is so much at his ease as you are—so +happy, captain _Shandy_, in yourself, your friends and your +amusements—I wonder, what reasons can incline you to the state—— + +——They are written, quoth my uncle _Toby_, in the Common-Prayer Book. + +Thus far my uncle _Toby_ went on warily, and kept within his depth, +leaving Mrs. _Wadman_ to sail upon the gulph as she pleased. + +——As for children—said Mrs. _Wadman_—though a principal end perhaps of +the institution, and the natural wish, I suppose, of every parent—yet +do not we all find, they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain +comforts? and what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the +heart-achs—what compensation for the many tender and disquieting +apprehensions of a suffering and defenceless mother who brings them +into life? I declare, said my uncle _Toby_, smit with pity, I know of +none; unless it be the pleasure which it has pleased God—— + +A fiddlestick! quoth she. + +Chapter the Seventy-eighth + +NOW there are such an infinitude of notes, tunes, cants, chants, airs, +looks, and accents with which the word _fiddlestick_ may be pronounced +in all such causes as this, every one of ’em impressing a sense and +meaning as different from the other, as _dirt_ from _cleanliness_—That +Casuists (for it is an affair of conscience on that score) reckon up no +less than fourteen thousand in which you may do either right or wrong. + +Mrs. _Wadman_ hit upon the _fiddlestick_, which summoned up all my +uncle _Toby_’s modest blood into his cheeks—so feeling within himself +that he had somehow or other got beyond his depth, he stopt short; and +without entering further either into the pains or pleasures of +matrimony, he laid his hand upon his heart, and made an offer to take +them as they were, and share them along with her. + +When my uncle _Toby_ had said this, he did not care to say it again; so +casting his eye upon the Bible which Mrs. _Wadman_ had laid upon the +table, he took it up; and popping, dear soul! upon a passage in it, of +all others the most interesting to him—which was the siege of +_Jericho_—he set himself to read it over—leaving his proposal of +marriage, as he had done his declaration of love, to work with her +after its own way. Now it wrought neither as an astringent or a +loosener; nor like opium, or bark, or mercury, or buckthorn, or any one +drug which nature had bestowed upon the world—in short, it work’d not +at all in her; and the cause of that was, that there was something +working there before——Babbler that I am! I have anticipated what it was +a dozen times; but there is fire still in the subject——allons. + +C H A P. LXXXV + +IT is natural for a perfect stranger who is going from _London_ to +_Edinburgh_, to enquire before he sets out, how many miles to _York;_ +which is about the half way——nor does any body wonder, if he goes on +and asks about the corporation, &c. - - + +It was just as natural for Mrs. _Wadman_, whose first husband was all +his time afflicted with a Sciatica, to wish to know how far from the +hip to the groin; and how far she was likely to suffer more or less in +her feelings, in the one case than in the other. + +She had accordingly read _Drake_’s anatomy from one end to the other. +She had peeped into _Wharton_ upon the brain, and borrowed[45] _Graaf_ +upon the bones and muscles; but could make nothing of it. + +She had reason’d likewise from her own powers——laid down +theorems——drawn consequences, and come to no conclusion. + +To clear up all, she had twice asked Doctor _Slop_, “if poor captain +_Shandy_ was ever likely to recover of his wound——?” + +——He is recovered, Doctor _Slop_ would say—— + +What! quite? + +Quite: madam—— + +But what do you mean by a recovery? Mrs. _Wadman_ would say. + +Doctor _Slop_ was the worst man alive at definitions; and so Mrs. +_Wadman_ could get no knowledge: in short, there was no way to extract +it, but from my uncle _Toby_ himself. + +There is an accent of humanity in an enquiry of this kind which lulls +SUSPICION to rest——and I am half persuaded the serpent got pretty near +it, in his discourse with Eve; for the propensity in the sex to be +deceived could not be so great, that she should have boldness to hold +chat with the devil, without it——But there is an accent of +humanity——how shall I describe it?—’tis an accent which covers the part +with a garment, and gives the enquirer a right to be as particular with +it, as your body-surgeon. + +“——Was it without remission?— + +“——Was it more tolerable in bed? + +“——Could he lie on both sides alike with it? + +“——Was he able to mount a horse? + +“——Was motion bad for it?’ _et cætera_, were so tenderly spoke to, and +so directed towards my uncle _Toby_’s heart, that every item of them +sunk ten times deeper into it than the evils themselves——but when Mrs. +_Wadman_ went round about by _Namur_ to get at my uncle _Toby_’s groin; +and engaged him to attack the point of the advanced counterscarp, and +_péle mele_ with the _Dutch_ to take the counterguard of St. _Roch_ +sword in hand—and then with tender notes playing upon his ear, led him +all bleeding by the hand out of the trench, wiping her eye, as he was +carried to his tent——Heaven! Earth! Sea!—all was lifted up—the springs +of nature rose above their levels—an angel of mercy sat besides him on +the sopha—his heart glow’d with fire—and had he been worth a thousand, +he had lost every heart of them to Mrs. _Wadman._ + +—And whereabouts, dear sir, quoth Mrs. _Wadman_, a little +categorically, did you receive this sad blow?——In asking this question, +Mrs. _Wadman_ gave a slight glance towards the waistband of my uncle +_Toby_’s red plush breeches, expecting naturally, as the shortest reply +to it, that my uncle _Toby_ would lay his fore-finger upon the +place——It fell out otherwise——for my uncle _Toby_ having got his wound +before the gate of St. _Nicolas_, in one of the traverses of the trench +opposite to the salient angle of the demibastion of St. _Roch;_ he +could at any time stick a pin upon the identical spot of ground where +he was standing when the stone struck him: this struck instantly upon +my uncle _Toby_’s sensorium——and with it, struck his large map of the +town and citadel of _Namur_ and its environs, which he had purchased +and pasted down upon a board, by the corporal’s aid, during his long +illness——it had lain with other military lumber in the garret ever +since, and accordingly the corporal was detached to the garret to fetch +it. + +My uncle _Toby_ measured off thirty toises, with Mrs. _Wadman_’s +scissars, from the returning angle before the gate of St. _Nicolas;_ +and with such a virgin modesty laid her finger upon the place, that the +goddess of Decency, if then in being—if not, ’twas her shade—shook her +head, and with a finger wavering across her eyes—forbid her to explain +the mistake. + +Unhappy Mrs. _Wadman!_ + +——For nothing can make this chapter go off with spirit but an +apostrophe to thee——but my heart tells me, that in such a crisis an +apostrophe is but an insult in disguise, and ere I would offer one to a +woman in distress—let the chapter go to the devil; provided any damn’d +critic in _keeping_ will be but at the trouble to take it with him. + + [45] This must be a mistake in Mr. _Shandy;_ for _Graaf_ wrote upon + the pancreatick juice, and the parts of generation. + +C H A P. LXXXVI + +MYy uncle _Toby_’s Map is carried down into the kitchen. + +C H A P. LXXXVII + +——AND here is the _Maes_—and this is the _Sambre;_ said the corporal, +pointing with his right hand extended a little towards the map, and his +left upon Mrs. _Bridget_’s shoulder—but not the shoulder next him—and +this, said he, is the town of _Namur_—and this the citadel—and there +lay the _French_—and here lay his honour and myself——and in this cursed +trench, Mrs. _Bridget_, quoth the corporal, taking her by the hand, did +he receive the wound which crush’d him so miserably _here._——In +pronouncing which, he slightly press’d the back of her hand towards the +part he felt for——and let it fall. + +We thought, Mr. _Trim_, it had been more in the middle,——said Mrs. +_Bridget_—— + +That would have undone us for ever—said the corporal. + +——And left my poor mistress undone too, said _Bridget._ + +The corporal made no reply to the repartee, but by giving Mrs. +_Bridget_ a kiss. + +Come—come—said _Bridget_—holding the palm of her left hand parallel to +the plane of the horizon, and sliding the fingers of the other over it, +in a way which could not have been done, had there been the least wart +or protruberance——’Tis every syllable of it false, cried the corporal, +before she had half finished the sentence—— + +—I know it to be fact, said _Bridget_, from credible witnesses. + +——Upon my honour, said the corporal, laying his hand upon his heart, +and blushing, as he spoke, with honest resentment—’tis a story, Mrs. +_Bridget_, as false as hell——Not, said _Bridget_, interrupting him, +that either I or my mistress care a halfpenny about it, whether ’tis so +or no——only that when one is married, one would chuse to have such a +thing by one at least—— + +It was somewhat unfortunate for Mrs. _Bridget_, that she had begun the +attack with her manual exercise; for the corporal instantly * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. + +C H A P. LXXXVIII + +IT was like the momentary contest in the moist eye-lids of an _April_ +morning, “Whether Bridget should laugh or cry.” + +She snatch’d up a rolling-pin——’twas ten to one, she had laugh’d—— + +She laid it down——she cried; and had one single tear of ’em but tasted +of bitterness, full sorrowful would the corporal’s heart have been that +he had used the argument; but the corporal understood the sex, a _quart +major to a terce_ at least, better than my uncle _Toby_, and +accordingly he assailed Mrs. _Bridget_ after this manner. + +I know, Mrs. _Bridget_, said the corporal, giving her a most respectful +kiss, that thou art good and modest by nature, and art withal so +generous a girl in thyself, that, if I know thee rightly, thou would’st +not wound an insect, much less the honour of so gallant and worthy a +soul as my master, wast thou sure to be made a countess of——but thou +hast been set on, and deluded, dear _Bridget_, as is often a woman’s +case, “to please others more than themselves——” + +_Bridget_’s eyes poured down at the sensations the corporal excited. + +——Tell me——tell me, then, my dear _Bridget_, continued the corporal, +taking hold of her hand, which hung down dead by her side,——and giving +a second kiss——whose suspicion has misled thee? + +_Bridget_ sobb’d a sob or two——then open’d her eyes——the corporal wiped +’em with the bottom of her apron——she then open’d her heart and told +him all. + +C H A P. LXXXIX + +MY uncle _Toby_ and the corporal had gone on separately with their +operations the greatest part of the campaign, and as effectually cut +off from all communication of what either the one or the other had been +doing, as if they had been separated from each other by the _Maes_ or +the _Sambre._ + +My uncle _Toby_, on his side, had presented himself every afternoon in +his red and silver, and blue and gold alternately, and sustained an +infinity of attacks in them, without knowing them to be attacks—and so +had nothing to communicate—— + +The corporal, on his side, in taking _Bridget_, by it had gain’d +considerable advantages——and consequently had much to communicate——but +what were the advantages——as well as what was the manner by which he +had seiz’d them, required so nice an historian, that the corporal durst +not venture upon it; and as sensible as he was of glory, would rather +have been contented to have gone bareheaded and without laurels for +ever, than torture his master’s modesty for a single moment—— + +——Best of honest and gallant servants!——But I have apostrophiz’d thee, +_Trim!_ once before——and could I apotheosize thee also (that is to say) +with good company——I would do it _without ceremony_ in the very next +page. + +C H A P. XC + +NOW my uncle _Toby_ had one evening laid down his pipe upon the table, +and was counting over to himself upon his finger ends (beginning at his +thumb) all Mrs. _Wadman_’s perfections one by one; and happening two or +three times together, either by omitting some, or counting others twice +over, to puzzle himself sadly before he could get beyond his middle +finger——Prithee, _Trim!_ said he, taking up his pipe again,——bring me a +pen and ink: _Trim_ brought paper also. + +Take a full sheet——_Trim!_ said my uncle _Toby_, making a sign with his +pipe at the same time to take a chair and sit down close by him at the +table. The corporal obeyed——placed the paper directly before him——took +a pen, and dipp’d it in the ink. + +—She has a thousand virtues, _Trim!_ said my uncle _Toby_—— + +Am I to set them down, an’ please your honour? quoth the corporal. + +——But they must be taken in their ranks, replied my uncle _Toby;_ for +of them all, _Trim_, that which wins me most, and which is a security +for all the rest, is the compassionate turn and singular humanity of +her character—I protest, added my uncle _Toby_, looking up, as he +protested it, towards the top of the ceiling—That was I her brother, +_Trim_, a thousand fold, she could not make more constant or more +tender enquiries after my sufferings——though now no more. + +The corporal made no reply to my uncle _Toby_’s protestation, but by a +short cough—he dipp’d the pen a second time into the inkhorn; and my +uncle _Toby_, pointing with the end of his pipe as close to the top of +the sheet at the left hand corner of it, as he could get it——the +corporal wrote down the word +H U M A N I T Y - - - - thus. + +Prithee, corporal, said my uncle _Toby_, as soon as _Trim_ had done +it——how often does Mrs. _Bridget_ enquire after the wound on the cap of +thy knee, which thou received’st at the battle of _Landen?_ + +She never, an’ please your honour, enquires after it at all. + +That, corporal, said my uncle _Toby_, with all the triumph the goodness +of his nature would permit——That shews the difference in the character +of the mistress and maid——had the fortune of war allotted the same +mischance to me, Mrs. _Wadman_ would have enquired into every +circumstance relating to it a hundred times——She would have enquired, +an’ please your honour, ten times as often about your honour’s +groin——The pain, _Trim_, is equally excruciating,——and Compassion has +as much to do with the one as the other—— + +——God bless your honour! cried the corporal——what has a woman’s +compassion to do with a wound upon the cap of a man’s knee? had your +honour’s been shot into ten thousand splinters at the affair of +_Landen_, Mrs. _Wadman_ would have troubled her head as little about it +as _Bridget;_ because, added the corporal, lowering his voice, and +speaking very distinctly, as he assigned his reason—— + +“The knee is such a distance from the main body——whereas the groin, +your honour knows, is upon the very _curtain_ of the _place._” + +My uncle _Toby_ gave a long whistle——but in a note which could scarce +be heard across the table. + +The corporal had advanced too far to retire——in three words he told the +rest—— + +My uncle _Toby_ laid down his pipe as gently upon the fender, as if it +had been spun from the unravellings of a spider’s web—— + +——Let us go to my brother _Shandy_’s, said he. + +C H A P. XCI + +THERE will be just time, whilst my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ are walking +to my father’s, to inform you that Mrs. _Wadman_ had, some moons before +this, made a confident of my mother; and that Mrs. _Bridget_, who had +the burden of her own, as well as her mistress’s secret to carry, had +got happily delivered of both to _Susannah_ behind the garden-wall. + +As for my mother, she saw nothing at all in it, to make the least +bustle about——but _Susannah_ was sufficient by herself for all the ends +and purposes you could possibly have, in exporting a family secret; for +she instantly imparted it by signs to _Jonathan_——and _Jonathan_ by +tokens to the cook as she was basting a loin of mutton; the cook sold +it with some kitchen-fat to the postillion for a groat, who truck’d it +with the dairy maid for something of about the same value——and though +whisper’d in the hay-loft, FAME caught the notes with her brazen +trumpet, and sounded them upon the house-top—In a word, not an old +woman in the village or five miles round, who did not understand the +difficulties of my uncle _Toby_’s siege, and what were the secret +articles which had delayed the surrender.—— + +My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an +hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he +did——had but just heard of the report as my uncle _Toby_ set out; and +catching fire suddenly at the trespass done his brother by it, was +demonstrating to _Yorick_, notwithstanding my mother was sitting +by——not only, “That the devil was in women, and that the whole of the +affair was lust;” but that every evil and disorder in the world, of +what kind or nature soever, from the first fall of _Adam_, down to my +uncle _Toby_’s (inclusive), was owing one way or other to the same +unruly appetite. + +_Yorick_ was just bringing my father’s hypothesis to some temper, when +my uncle _Toby_ entering the room with marks of infinite benevolence +and forgiveness in his looks, my father’s eloquence re-kindled against +the passion——and as he was not very nice in the choice of his words +when he was wroth——as soon as my uncle _Toby_ was seated by the fire, +and had filled his pipe, my father broke out in this manner. + +C H A P. XCII + +——THAT provision should be made for continuing the race of so great, so +exalted and godlike a Being as man—I am far from denying—but philosophy +speaks freely of every thing; and therefore I still think and do +maintain it to be a pity, that it should be done by means of a passion +which bends down the faculties, and turns all the wisdom, +contemplations, and operations of the soul backwards——a passion, my +dear, continued my father, addressing himself to my mother, which +couples and equals wise men with fools, and makes us come out of our +caverns and hiding-places more like satyrs and four-footed beasts than +men. + +I know it will be said, continued my father (availing himself of the +_Prolepsis_), that in itself, and simply taken——like hunger, or thirst, +or sleep——’tis an affair neither good or bad—or shameful or +otherwise.——Why then did the delicacy of _Diogenes_ and _Plato_ so +recalcitrate against it? and wherefore, when we go about to make and +plant a man, do we put out the candle? and for what reason is it, that +all the parts thereof—the congredients—the preparations—the +instruments, and whatever serves thereto, are so held as to be conveyed +to a cleanly mind by no language, translation, or periphrasis whatever? + +——The act of killing and destroying a man, continued my father, raising +his voice—and turning to my uncle _Toby_—you see, is glorious—and the +weapons by which we do it are honourable——We march with them upon our +shoulders——We strut with them by our sides——We gild them——We carve +them——We in-lay them——We enrich them——Nay, if it be but a _scoundrel_ +cannon, we cast an ornament upon the breach of it.— + +——My uncle _Toby_ laid down his pipe to intercede for a better +epithet——and _Yorick_ was rising up to batter the whole hypothesis to +pieces—— + +——When _Obadiah_ broke into the middle of the room with a complaint, +which cried out for an immediate hearing. + +The case was this: + +My father, whether by ancient custom of the manor, or as impropriator +of the great tythes, was obliged to keep a Bull for the service of the +Parish, and _Obadiah_ had led his cow upon a _pop-visit_ to him one day +or other the preceding summer——I say, one day or other—because as +chance would have it, it was the day on which he was married to my +father’s house-maid——so one was a reckoning to the other. Therefore +when _Obadiah_’s wife was brought to bed—_Obadiah_ thanked God—— + +——Now, said _Obadiah_, I shall have a calf: so _Obadiah_ went daily to +visit his cow. + +She’ll calve on _Monday_—on _Tuesday_—on _Wednesday_ at the farthest—— + +The cow did not calve——no—she’ll not calve till next week——the cow put +it off terribly——till at the end of the sixth week _Obadiah_’s +suspicions (like a good man’s) fell upon the Bull. + +Now the parish being very large, my father’s Bull, to speak the truth +of him, was no way equal to the department; he had, however, got +himself, somehow or other, thrust into employment—and as he went +through the business with a grave face, my father had a high opinion of +him. + +——Most of the townsmen, an’ please your worship, quoth _Obadiah_, +believe that ’tis all the Bull’s fault—— + +——But may not a cow be barren? replied my father, turning to Doctor +_Slop._ + +It never happens: said Dr. _Slop_, but the man’s wife may have come +before her time naturally enough——Prithee has the child hair upon his +head?—added Dr. _Slop_—— + +——It is as hairy as I am; said _Obadiah.——Obadiah_ had not been shaved +for three weeks——Wheu - - u - - - - u - - - - - - - - cried my father; +beginning the sentence with an exclamatory whistle——and so, brother +_Toby_, this poor Bull of mine, who is as good a Bull as ever p—ss’d, +and might have done for _Europa_ herself in purer times——had he but two +legs less, might have been driven into Doctors Commons and lost his +character——which to a Town Bull, brother _Toby_, is the very same thing +as his life—— + +L—d! said my mother, what is all this story about?—— + +A COCK and a BULL, said _Yorick_——And one of the best of its kind, I +ever heard. + +END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1079 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1080-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1080-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..aff6def0 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1080-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,342 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1080 *** + +A Modest Proposal + +For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, +from being a burden on their parents or country, +and for making them beneficial to the publick. + +by Dr. Jonathan Swift + +1729 + + + + +It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, +or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and +cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, +four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for +an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest +livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg +sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn +thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight +for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes. + +I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of +children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their +mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable +state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore +whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these +children sound and useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so +well of the publick, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of +the nation. + +But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for +the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and +shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age, who are +born of parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who +demand our charity in the streets. + +As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this +important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of our +projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their +computation. It is true, a child just dropt from its dam, may be +supported by her milk, for a solar year, with little other nourishment: +at most not above the value of two shillings, which the mother may +certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of +begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide +for them in such a manner, as, instead of being a charge upon their +parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of +their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding, +and partly to the clothing of many thousands. + +There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will +prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women +murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us, +sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expence +than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and +inhuman breast. + +The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million +and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred +thousand couple, whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract +thirty thousand couple, who are able to maintain their own children, +(although I apprehend there cannot be so many under the present +distresses of the kingdom) but this being granted, there will remain a +hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand, +for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or +disease within the year. There only remain a hundred and twenty +thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore +is, How this number shall be reared and provided for? which, as I have +already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly +impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither +employ them in handicraft or agriculture; they neither build houses, (I +mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a +livelihood by stealing till they arrive at six years old; except where +they are of towardly parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments +much earlier; during which time they can however be properly looked +upon only as probationers; as I have been informed by a principal +gentleman in the county of Cavan, who protested to me, that he never +knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of +the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art. + +I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl, before twelve +years old, is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to this +age, they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half a +crown at most, on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to +the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriments and rags having been +at least four times that value. + +I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will +not be liable to the least objection. + +I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in +London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a +most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, +baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a +fricasee, or a ragoust. + +I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of the +hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand +may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males; +which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my +reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a +circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will +be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred +thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of +quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to +let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them +plump, and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an +entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or +hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little +pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially +in winter. + +I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 +pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, encreaseth to 28 +pounds. + +I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for +landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem +to have the best title to the children. + +Infant’s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more +plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a +grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolifick +dyet, there are more children born in Roman Catholick countries about +nine months after Lent, than at any other season; therefore, reckoning +a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because +the number of Popish infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom, +and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening +the number of Papists among us. + +I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in +which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the +farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I +believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass +of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of +excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend, or +his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a +good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have +eight shillings neat profit, and be fit for work till she produces +another child. + +Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may +flay the carcass; the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make +admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen. + +As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, +in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will +not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, +and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs. + +A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I +highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter, to +offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said, that many gentlemen of this +kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the +want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and +maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age, nor under twelve; so +great a number of both sexes in every county being now ready to starve +for want of work and service: and these to be disposed of by their +parents if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due +deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a patriot, I +cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my +American acquaintance assured me from frequent experience, that their +flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys, by +continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable, and to fatten them +would not answer the charge. Then as to the females, it would, I think, +with humble submission, be a loss to the publick, because they soon +would become breeders themselves: and besides, it is not improbable +that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice, +(although indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering upon cruelty, +which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection +against any project, how well soever intended. + +But in order to justify my friend, he confessed, that this expedient +was put into his head by the famous Psalmanaazor, a native of the +island Formosa, who came from thence to London, above twenty years ago, +and in conversation told my friend, that in his country, when any young +person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to +persons of quality, as a prime dainty; and that, in his time, the body +of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison +the Emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty’s prime minister of +state, and other great mandarins of the court in joints from the +gibbet, at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the +same use were made of several plump young girls in this town, who +without one single groat to their fortunes, cannot stir abroad without +a chair, and appear at a playhouse and assemblies in foreign fineries +which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse. + +Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that +vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed; and I +have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken, to +ease the nation of so grievous an incumbrance. But I am not in the +least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known, that they +are every day dying, and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth, and +vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young +labourers, they are now in almost as hopeful a condition. They cannot +get work, and consequently pine away from want of nourishment, to a +degree, that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common +labour, they have not strength to perform it, and thus the country and +themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come. + +I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I +think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and +many, as well as of the highest importance. + +For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the +number of Papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal +breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who +stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the +Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many +good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country, than +stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal +curate. + +Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, +which by law may be made liable to a distress, and help to pay their +landlord’s rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money +a thing unknown. + +Thirdly, Whereas the maintainance of a hundred thousand children, from +two years old, and upwards, cannot be computed at less than ten +shillings a piece per annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby +encreased fifty thousand pounds per annum, besides the profit of a new +dish, introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the +kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate +among our selves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and +manufacture. + +Fourthly, The constant breeders, besides the gain of eight shillings +sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the +charge of maintaining them after the first year. + +Fifthly, This food would likewise bring great custom to taverns, where +the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best +receipts for dressing it to perfection; and consequently have their +houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value +themselves upon their knowledge in good eating; and a skilful cook, who +understands how to oblige his guests, will contrive to make it as +expensive as they please. + +Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise +nations have either encouraged by rewards, or enforced by laws and +penalties. It would encrease the care and tenderness of mothers towards +their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the +poor babes, provided in some sort by the publick, to their annual +profit instead of expence. We should soon see an honest emulation among +the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the +market. Men would become as fond of their wives, during the time of +their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in +calf, or sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick +them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage. + +Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition +of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barrel’d beef: the +propagation of swine’s flesh, and improvement in the art of making good +bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too +frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or +magnificence to a well grown, fat yearling child, which roasted whole +will make a considerable figure at a Lord Mayor’s feast, or any other +publick entertainment. But this, and many others, I omit, being +studious of brevity. + +Supposing that one thousand families in this city, would be constant +customers for infants flesh, besides others who might have it at merry +meetings, particularly at weddings and christenings, I compute that +Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses; and the +rest of the kingdom (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) +the remaining eighty thousand. + +I can think of no one objection, that will possibly be raised against +this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number of people +will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and +was indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. I desire +the reader will observe, that I calculate my remedy for this one +individual Kingdom of Ireland, and for no other that ever was, is, or, +I think, ever can be upon Earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of +other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of +using neither clothes, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our +own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and +instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of +pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein +of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, +wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of +Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any +longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment +their city was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our +country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to have at +least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly, of putting a +spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shopkeepers, who, if a +resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would +immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, +and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair +proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it. + +Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like +expedients, till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will +ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice. + +But, as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering +vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of +success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly +new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expence and little +trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in +disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear +exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistence, to admit a +long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country, +which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it. + +After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion, as to reject +any offer, proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, +cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be +advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire +the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points. +First, As things now stand, how they will be able to find food and +raiment for a hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. And secondly, +There being a round million of creatures in humane figure throughout +this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock, would +leave them in debt two million of pounds sterling, adding those who are +beggars by profession, to the bulk of farmers, cottagers and labourers, +with their wives and children, who are beggars in effect; I desire +those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold +to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these +mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness +to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, +and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as they +have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the +impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common +sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the +inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of +intailing the like, or greater miseries, upon their breed for ever. + +I profess in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least +personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, +having no other motive than the publick good of my country, by +advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and +giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children, by which I can +propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and +my wife past child-bearing. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1080 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1081-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1081-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..563ca7c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1081-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14624 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1081 *** +DEAD SOULS + +By Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol + +Translated by D. J. Hogarth + +Introduction By John Cournos + + + + +Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, born at Sorochintsky, Russia, on 31st +March 1809. Obtained government post at St. Petersburg and later an +appointment at the university. Lived in Rome from 1836 to 1848. Died on +21st February 1852. + + + + +PREPARER’S NOTE + +The book this was typed from contains a complete Part I, and a partial +Part II, as it seems only part of Part II survived the adventures +described in the introduction. Where the text notes that pages are +missing from the “original”, this refers to the Russian original, not +the translation. + +All the foreign words were italicised in the original, a style not +preserved here. Accents and diphthongs have also been left out. + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +Dead Souls, first published in 1842, is the great prose classic of +Russia. That amazing institution, “the Russian novel,” not only began +its career with this unfinished masterpiece by Nikolai Vasil’evich +Gogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come since +have grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree. Dostoieffsky +goes so far as to bestow this tribute upon an earlier work by the same +author, a short story entitled The Cloak; this idea has been wittily +expressed by another compatriot, who says: “We have all issued out of +Gogol’s Cloak.” + +Dead Souls, which bears the word “Poem” upon the title page of the +original, has been generally compared to Don Quixote and to the Pickwick +Papers, while E. M. Vogue places its author somewhere between Cervantes +and Le Sage. However considerable the influences of Cervantes and +Dickens may have been--the first in the matter of structure, the other +in background, humour, and detail of characterisation--the predominating +and distinguishing quality of the work is undeniably something foreign +to both and quite peculiar to itself; something which, for want of +a better term, might be called the quality of the Russian soul. The +English reader familiar with the works of Dostoieffsky, Turgenev, and +Tolstoi, need hardly be told what this implies; it might be defined in +the words of the French critic just named as “a tendency to pity.” One +might indeed go further and say that it implies a certain tolerance of +one’s characters even though they be, in the conventional sense, knaves, +products, as the case might be, of conditions or circumstance, which +after all is the thing to be criticised and not the man. But pity and +tolerance are rare in satire, even in clash with it, producing in the +result a deep sense of tragic humour. It is this that makes of Dead +Souls a unique work, peculiarly Gogolian, peculiarly Russian, and +distinct from its author’s Spanish and English masters. + +Still more profound are the contradictions to be seen in the author’s +personal character; and unfortunately they prevented him from completing +his work. The trouble is that he made his art out of life, and when in +his final years he carried his struggle, as Tolstoi did later, back into +life, he repented of all he had written, and in the frenzy of a wakeful +night burned all his manuscripts, including the second part of Dead +Souls, only fragments of which were saved. There was yet a third part to +be written. Indeed, the second part had been written and burned twice. +Accounts differ as to why he had burned it finally. Religious remorse, +fury at adverse criticism, and despair at not reaching ideal perfection +are among the reasons given. Again it is said that he had destroyed the +manuscript with the others inadvertently. + +The poet Pushkin, who said of Gogol that “behind his laughter you feel +the unseen tears,” was his chief friend and inspirer. It was he who +suggested the plot of Dead Souls as well as the plot of the earlier work +The Revisor, which is almost the only comedy in Russian. The importance +of both is their introduction of the social element in Russian +literature, as Prince Kropotkin points out. Both hold up the mirror +to Russian officialdom and the effects it has produced on the national +character. The plot of Dead Souls is simple enough, and is said to have +been suggested by an actual episode. + +It was the day of serfdom in Russia, and a man’s standing was often +judged by the numbers of “souls” he possessed. There was a periodical +census of serfs, say once every ten or twenty years. This being the +case, an owner had to pay a tax on every “soul” registered at the +last census, though some of the serfs might have died in the meantime. +Nevertheless, the system had its material advantages, inasmuch as an +owner might borrow money from a bank on the “dead souls” no less than +on the living ones. The plan of Chichikov, Gogol’s hero-villain, was +therefore to make a journey through Russia and buy up the “dead souls,” + at reduced rates of course, saving their owners the government tax, +and acquiring for himself a list of fictitious serfs, which he meant to +mortgage to a bank for a considerable sum. With this money he would buy +an estate and some real life serfs, and make the beginning of a fortune. + +Obviously, this plot, which is really no plot at all but merely a ruse +to enable Chichikov to go across Russia in a troika, with Selifan the +coachman as a sort of Russian Sancho Panza, gives Gogol a magnificent +opportunity to reveal his genius as a painter of Russian panorama, +peopled with characteristic native types commonplace enough but drawn in +comic relief. “The comic,” explained the author yet at the beginning of +his career, “is hidden everywhere, only living in the midst of it we are +not conscious of it; but if the artist brings it into his art, on the +stage say, we shall roll about with laughter and only wonder we did not +notice it before.” But the comic in Dead Souls is merely external. Let +us see how Pushkin, who loved to laugh, regarded the work. As Gogol read +it aloud to him from the manuscript the poet grew more and more gloomy +and at last cried out: “God! What a sad country Russia is!” And later he +said of it: “Gogol invents nothing; it is the simple truth, the terrible +truth.” + +The work on one hand was received as nothing less than an exposure of +all Russia--what would foreigners think of it? The liberal elements, +however, the critical Belinsky among them, welcomed it as a revelation, +as an omen of a freer future. Gogol, who had meant to do a service to +Russia and not to heap ridicule upon her, took the criticisms of the +Slavophiles to heart; and he palliated his critics by promising to bring +about in the succeeding parts of his novel the redemption of Chichikov +and the other “knaves and blockheads.” But the “Westerner” Belinsky +and others of the liberal camp were mistrustful. It was about this time +(1847) that Gogol published his Correspondence with Friends, and aroused +a literary controversy that is alive to this day. Tolstoi is to be found +among his apologists. + +Opinions as to the actual significance of Gogol’s masterpiece differ. +Some consider the author a realist who has drawn with meticulous detail +a picture of Russia; others, Merejkovsky among them, see in him a great +symbolist; the very title Dead Souls is taken to describe the living of +Russia as well as its dead. Chichikov himself is now generally regarded +as a universal character. We find an American professor, William Lyon +Phelps [1], of Yale, holding the opinion that “no one can travel far in +America without meeting scores of Chichikovs; indeed, he is an accurate +portrait of the American promoter, of the successful commercial +traveller whose success depends entirely not on the real value and +usefulness of his stock-in-trade, but on his knowledge of human nature +and of the persuasive power of his tongue.” This is also the opinion +held by Prince Kropotkin [2], who says: “Chichikov may buy dead +souls, or railway shares, or he may collect funds for some charitable +institution, or look for a position in a bank, but he is an immortal +international type; we meet him everywhere; he is of all lands and of +all times; he but takes different forms to suit the requirements of +nationality and time.” + +Again, the work bears an interesting relation to Gogol himself. A +romantic, writing of realities, he was appalled at the commonplaces +of life, at finding no outlet for his love of colour derived from his +Cossack ancestry. He realised that he had drawn a host of “heroes,” “one +more commonplace than another, that there was not a single palliating +circumstance, that there was not a single place where the reader might +find pause to rest and to console himself, and that when he had finished +the book it was as though he had walked out of an oppressive cellar +into the open air.” He felt perhaps inward need to redeem Chichikov; +in Merejkovsky’s opinion he really wanted to save his own soul, but +had succeeded only in losing it. His last years were spent morbidly; +he suffered torments and ran from place to place like one hunted; but +really always running from himself. Rome was his favourite refuge, and +he returned to it again and again. In 1848, he made a pilgrimage to the +Holy Land, but he could find no peace for his soul. Something of this +mood had reflected itself even much earlier in the Memoirs of a Madman: +“Oh, little mother, save your poor son! Look how they are tormenting +him.... There’s no place for him on earth! He’s being driven!... Oh, +little mother, take pity on thy poor child.” + +All the contradictions of Gogol’s character are not to be disposed of +in a brief essay. Such a strange combination of the tragic and the comic +was truly seldom seen in one man. He, for one, realised that “it is +dangerous to jest with laughter.” “Everything that I laughed at became +sad.” “And terrible,” adds Merejkovsky. But earlier his humour was +lighter, less tinged with the tragic; in those days Pushkin never failed +to be amused by what Gogol had brought to read to him. Even Revizor +(1835), with its tragic undercurrent, was a trifle compared to Dead +Souls, so that one is not astonished to hear that not only did the Tsar, +Nicholas I, give permission to have it acted, in spite of its being a +criticism of official rottenness, but laughed uproariously, and led the +applause. Moreover, he gave Gogol a grant of money, and asked that its +source should not be revealed to the author lest “he might feel obliged +to write from the official point of view.” + +Gogol was born at Sorotchinetz, Little Russia, in March 1809. He left +college at nineteen and went to St. Petersburg, where he secured a +position as copying clerk in a government department. He did not keep +his position long, yet long enough to store away in his mind a number of +bureaucratic types which proved useful later. He quite suddenly started +for America with money given to him by his mother for another purpose, +but when he got as far as Lubeck he turned back. He then wanted to +become an actor, but his voice proved not strong enough. Later he wrote +a poem which was unkindly received. As the copies remained unsold, he +gathered them all up at the various shops and burned them in his room. + +His next effort, Evenings at the Farm of Dikanka (1831) was more +successful. It was a series of gay and colourful pictures of Ukraine, +the land he knew and loved, and if he is occasionally a little over +romantic here and there, he also achieves some beautifully lyrical +passages. Then came another even finer series called Mirgorod, which won +the admiration of Pushkin. Next he planned a “History of Little Russia” + and a “History of the Middle Ages,” this last work to be in eight or +nine volumes. The result of all this study was a beautiful and short +Homeric epic in prose, called Taras Bulba. His appointment to a +professorship in history was a ridiculous episode in his life. After a +brilliant first lecture, in which he had evidently said all he had to +say, he settled to a life of boredom for himself and his pupils. When he +resigned he said joyously: “I am once more a free Cossack.” Between +1834 and 1835 he produced a new series of stories, including his famous +Cloak, which may be regarded as the legitimate beginning of the Russian +novel. + +Gogol knew little about women, who played an equally minor role in +his life and in his books. This may be partly because his personal +appearance was not prepossessing. He is described by a contemporary as +“a little man with legs too short for his body. He walked crookedly; he +was clumsy, ill-dressed, and rather ridiculous-looking, with his long +lock of hair flapping on his forehead, and his large prominent nose.” + +From 1835 Gogol spent almost his entire time abroad; some strange +unrest--possibly his Cossack blood--possessed him like a demon, and +he never stopped anywhere very long. After his pilgrimage in 1848 to +Jerusalem, he returned to Moscow, his entire possessions in a little +bag; these consisted of pamphlets, critiques, and newspaper articles +mostly inimical to himself. He wandered about with these from house to +house. Everything he had of value he gave away to the poor. He ceased +work entirely. According to all accounts he spent his last days in +praying and fasting. Visions came to him. His death, which came in 1852, +was extremely fantastic. His last words, uttered in a loud frenzy, +were: “A ladder! Quick, a ladder!” This call for a ladder--“a spiritual +ladder,” in the words of Merejkovsky--had been made on an earlier +occasion by a certain Russian saint, who used almost the same language. +“I shall laugh my bitter laugh” [3] was the inscription placed on +Gogol’s grave. + + JOHN COURNOS + + +Evenings on the Farm near the Dikanka, 1829-31; Mirgorod, 1831-33; Taras +Bulba, 1834; Arabesques (includes tales, The Portrait and A Madman’s +Diary), 1831-35; The Cloak, 1835; The Revizor (The Inspector-General), +1836; Dead Souls, 1842; Correspondence with Friends, 1847. + +ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Cossack Tales (The Night of Christmas Eve, Tarass +Boolba), trans. by G. Tolstoy, 1860; St. John’s Eve and Other Stories, +trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York, Crowell, 1886; Taras Bulba: Also +St. John’s Eve and Other Stories, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Taras Bulba, +trans. by B. C. Baskerville, London, Scott, 1907; The Inspector: a +Comedy, Calcutta, 1890; The Inspector-General, trans. by A. A. Sykes, +London, Scott, 1892; Revizor, trans. for the Yale Dramatic Association +by Max S. Mandell, New Haven, Conn., 1908; Home Life in Russia +(adaptation of Dead Souls), London, Hurst, 1854; Tchitchikoff’s +Journey’s; or Dead Souls, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York, +Crowell, 1886; Dead Souls, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Dead Souls, London, +Maxwell 1887; Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, trans. by L. Alexeieff, +London, A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1913. + +LIVES, etc.: (Russian) Kotlyarevsky (N. A.), 1903; Shenrok (V. I.), +Materials for a Biography, 1892; (French) Leger (L.), Nicholas Gogol, +1914. + + + + +AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FIRST PORTION OF THIS WORK + +Second Edition published in 1846 + +From the Author to the Reader + +Reader, whosoever or wheresoever you be, and whatsoever be your +station--whether that of a member of the higher ranks of society or that +of a member of the plainer walks of life--I beg of you, if God shall +have given you any skill in letters, and my book shall fall into your +hands, to extend to me your assistance. + +For in the book which lies before you, and which, probably, you have +read in its first edition, there is portrayed a man who is a type taken +from our Russian Empire. This man travels about the Russian land and +meets with folk of every condition--from the nobly-born to the humble +toiler. Him I have taken as a type to show forth the vices and the +failings, rather than the merits and the virtues, of the commonplace +Russian individual; and the characters which revolve around him have +also been selected for the purpose of demonstrating our national +weaknesses and shortcomings. As for men and women of the better sort, I +propose to portray them in subsequent volumes. Probably much of what I +have described is improbable and does not happen as things customarily +happen in Russia; and the reason for that is that for me to learn all +that I have wished to do has been impossible, in that human life is not +sufficiently long to become acquainted with even a hundredth part +of what takes place within the borders of the Russian Empire. Also, +carelessness, inexperience, and lack of time have led to my perpetrating +numerous errors and inaccuracies of detail; with the result that in +every line of the book there is something which calls for correction. +For these reasons I beg of you, my reader, to act also as my corrector. +Do not despise the task, for, however superior be your education, and +however lofty your station, and however insignificant, in your eyes, +my book, and however trifling the apparent labour of correcting and +commenting upon that book, I implore you to do as I have said. And you +too, O reader of lowly education and simple status, I beseech you not to +look upon yourself as too ignorant to be able in some fashion, however +small, to help me. Every man who has lived in the world and mixed with +his fellow men will have remarked something which has remained hidden +from the eyes of others; and therefore I beg of you not to deprive me +of your comments, seeing that it cannot be that, should you read my book +with attention, you will have NOTHING to say at some point therein. + +For example, how excellent it would be if some reader who is +sufficiently rich in experience and the knowledge of life to be +acquainted with the sort of characters which I have described herein +would annotate in detail the book, without missing a single page, and +undertake to read it precisely as though, laying pen and paper before +him, he were first to peruse a few pages of the work, and then to recall +his own life, and the lives of folk with whom he has come in contact, +and everything which he has seen with his own eyes or has heard of from +others, and to proceed to annotate, in so far as may tally with his own +experience or otherwise, what is set forth in the book, and to jot down +the whole exactly as it stands pictured to his memory, and, lastly, to +send me the jottings as they may issue from his pen, and to continue +doing so until he has covered the entire work! Yes, he would indeed do +me a vital service! Of style or beauty of expression he would need +to take no account, for the value of a book lies in its truth and its +actuality rather than in its wording. Nor would he need to consider my +feelings if at any point he should feel minded to blame or to upbraid +me, or to demonstrate the harm rather than the good which has been +done through any lack of thought or verisimilitude of which I have +been guilty. In short, for anything and for everything in the way of +criticism I should be thankful. + +Also, it would be an excellent thing if some reader in the higher walks +of life, some person who stands remote, both by life and by education, +from the circle of folk which I have pictured in my book, but who knows +the life of the circle in which he himself revolves, would undertake to +read my work in similar fashion, and methodically to recall to his mind +any members of superior social classes whom he has met, and carefully to +observe whether there exists any resemblance between one such class and +another, and whether, at times, there may not be repeated in a higher +sphere what is done in a lower, and likewise to note any additional fact +in the same connection which may occur to him (that is to say, any fact +pertaining to the higher ranks of society which would seem to confirm or +to disprove his conclusions), and, lastly, to record that fact as it may +have occurred within his own experience, while giving full details of +persons (of individual manners, tendencies, and customs) and also of +inanimate surroundings (of dress, furniture, fittings of houses, and so +forth). For I need knowledge of the classes in question, which are the +flower of our people. In fact, this very reason--the reason that I do +not yet know Russian life in all its aspects, and in the degree to +which it is necessary for me to know it in order to become a successful +author--is what has, until now, prevented me from publishing any +subsequent volumes of this story. + +Again, it would be an excellent thing if some one who is endowed with +the faculty of imagining and vividly picturing to himself the various +situations wherein a character may be placed, and of mentally following +up a character’s career in one field and another--by this I mean some +one who possesses the power of entering into and developing the ideas +of the author whose work he may be reading--would scan each character +herein portrayed, and tell me how each character ought to have acted +at a given juncture, and what, to judge from the beginnings of each +character, ought to have become of that character later, and what new +circumstances might be devised in connection therewith, and what new +details might advantageously be added to those already described. +Honestly can I say that to consider these points against the time when a +new edition of my book may be published in a different and a better form +would give me the greatest possible pleasure. + +One thing in particular would I ask of any reader who may be willing to +give me the benefit of his advice. That is to say, I would beg of him +to suppose, while recording his remarks, that it is for the benefit of +a man in no way his equal in education, or similar to him in tastes and +ideas, or capable of apprehending criticisms without full explanation +appended, that he is doing so. Rather would I ask such a reader to +suppose that before him there stands a man of incomparably inferior +enlightenment and schooling--a rude country bumpkin whose life, +throughout, has been passed in retirement--a bumpkin to whom it is +necessary to explain each circumstance in detail, while never forgetting +to be as simple of speech as though he were a child, and at every step +there were a danger of employing terms beyond his understanding. Should +these precautions be kept constantly in view by any reader undertaking +to annotate my book, that reader’s remarks will exceed in weight +and interest even his own expectations, and will bring me very real +advantage. + +Thus, provided that my earnest request be heeded by my readers, and +that among them there be found a few kind spirits to do as I desire, the +following is the manner in which I would request them to transmit their +notes for my consideration. Inscribing the package with my name, let +them then enclose that package in a second one addressed either to the +Rector of the University of St. Petersburg or to Professor Shevirev of +the University of Moscow, according as the one or the other of those two +cities may be the nearer to the sender. + +Lastly, while thanking all journalists and litterateurs for their +previously published criticisms of my book--criticisms which, in spite +of a spice of that intemperance and prejudice which is common to all +humanity, have proved of the greatest use both to my head and to my +heart--I beg of such writers again to favour me with their reviews. For +in all sincerity I can assure them that whatsoever they may be pleased +to say for my improvement and my instruction will be received by me with +naught but gratitude. + + + + +DEAD SOULS + + + + +PART I + + + +CHAPTER I + +To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart +britchka--a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, +retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of +about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen +of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a +gentleman--a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not +over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was +not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in the town, and was +accompanied by no particular incident, beyond that a couple of peasants +who happened to be standing at the door of a dramshop exchanged a few +comments with reference to the equipage rather than to the individual +who was seated in it. “Look at that carriage,” one of them said to the +other. “Think you it will be going as far as Moscow?” “I think it will,” +replied his companion. “But not as far as Kazan, eh?” “No, not as far as +Kazan.” With that the conversation ended. Presently, as the britchka was +approaching the inn, it was met by a young man in a pair of very short, +very tight breeches of white dimity, a quasi-fashionable frockcoat, and +a dickey fastened with a pistol-shaped bronze tie-pin. The young man +turned his head as he passed the britchka and eyed it attentively; +after which he clapped his hand to his cap (which was in danger of being +removed by the wind) and resumed his way. On the vehicle reaching the +inn door, its occupant found standing there to welcome him the polevoi, +or waiter, of the establishment--an individual of such nimble and +brisk movement that even to distinguish the character of his face was +impossible. Running out with a napkin in one hand and his lanky form +clad in a tailcoat, reaching almost to the nape of his neck, he tossed +back his locks, and escorted the gentleman upstairs, along a wooden +gallery, and so to the bedchamber which God had prepared for the +gentleman’s reception. The said bedchamber was of quite ordinary +appearance, since the inn belonged to the species to be found in all +provincial towns--the species wherein, for two roubles a day, travellers +may obtain a room swarming with black-beetles, and communicating by a +doorway with the apartment adjoining. True, the doorway may be blocked +up with a wardrobe; yet behind it, in all probability, there will be +standing a silent, motionless neighbour whose ears are burning to learn +every possible detail concerning the latest arrival. The inn’s exterior +corresponded with its interior. Long, and consisting only of two +storeys, the building had its lower half destitute of stucco; with the +result that the dark-red bricks, originally more or less dingy, had +grown yet dingier under the influence of atmospheric changes. As for the +upper half of the building, it was, of course, painted the usual tint +of unfading yellow. Within, on the ground floor, there stood a number +of benches heaped with horse-collars, rope, and sheepskins; while the +window-seat accommodated a sbitentshik [4], cheek by jowl with a samovar +[5]--the latter so closely resembling the former in appearance that, but +for the fact of the samovar possessing a pitch-black lip, the samovar +and the sbitentshik might have been two of a pair. + +During the traveller’s inspection of his room his luggage was brought +into the apartment. First came a portmanteau of white leather whose +raggedness indicated that the receptacle had made several previous +journeys. The bearers of the same were the gentleman’s coachman, +Selifan (a little man in a large overcoat), and the gentleman’s +valet, Petrushka--the latter a fellow of about thirty, clad in a worn, +over-ample jacket which formerly had graced his master’s shoulders, and +possessed of a nose and a pair of lips whose coarseness communicated to +his face rather a sullen expression. Behind the portmanteau came a +small dispatch-box of redwood, lined with birch bark, a boot-case, +and (wrapped in blue paper) a roast fowl; all of which having been +deposited, the coachman departed to look after his horses, and the valet +to establish himself in the little dark anteroom or kennel where already +he had stored a cloak, a bagful of livery, and his own peculiar smell. +Pressing the narrow bedstead back against the wall, he covered it with +the tiny remnant of mattress--a remnant as thin and flat (perhaps also +as greasy) as a pancake--which he had managed to beg of the landlord of +the establishment. + +While the attendants had been thus setting things straight the gentleman +had repaired to the common parlour. The appearance of common parlours of +the kind is known to every one who travels. Always they have varnished +walls which, grown black in their upper portions with tobacco smoke, +are, in their lower, grown shiny with the friction of customers’ +backs--more especially with that of the backs of such local tradesmen +as, on market-days, make it their regular practice to resort to +the local hostelry for a glass of tea. Also, parlours of this kind +invariably contain smutty ceilings, an equally smutty chandelier, a +number of pendent shades which jump and rattle whenever the waiter +scurries across the shabby oilcloth with a trayful of glasses (the +glasses looking like a flock of birds roosting by the seashore), and a +selection of oil paintings. In short, there are certain objects which +one sees in every inn. In the present case the only outstanding feature +of the room was the fact that in one of the paintings a nymph was +portrayed as possessing breasts of a size such as the reader can never +in his life have beheld. A similar caricaturing of nature is to be noted +in the historical pictures (of unknown origin, period, and creation) +which reach us--sometimes through the instrumentality of Russian +magnates who profess to be connoisseurs of art--from Italy; owing to +the said magnates having made such purchases solely on the advice of the +couriers who have escorted them. + +To resume, however--our traveller removed his cap, and divested his neck +of a parti-coloured woollen scarf of the kind which a wife makes for +her husband with her own hands, while accompanying the gift with +interminable injunctions as to how best such a garment ought to be +folded. True, bachelors also wear similar gauds, but, in their case, +God alone knows who may have manufactured the articles! For my part, +I cannot endure them. Having unfolded the scarf, the gentleman ordered +dinner, and whilst the various dishes were being got ready--cabbage +soup, a pie several weeks old, a dish of marrow and peas, a dish of +sausages and cabbage, a roast fowl, some salted cucumber, and the sweet +tart which stands perpetually ready for use in such establishments; +whilst, I say, these things were either being warmed up or brought in +cold, the gentleman induced the waiter to retail certain fragments of +tittle-tattle concerning the late landlord of the hostelry, the amount +of income which the hostelry produced, and the character of its present +proprietor. To the last-mentioned inquiry the waiter returned the answer +invariably given in such cases--namely, “My master is a terribly hard +man, sir.” Curious that in enlightened Russia so many people cannot even +take a meal at an inn without chattering to the attendant and making +free with him! Nevertheless not ALL the questions which the gentleman +asked were aimless ones, for he inquired who was Governor of the town, +who President of the Local Council, and who Public Prosecutor. In short, +he omitted no single official of note, while asking also (though with an +air of detachment) the most exact particulars concerning the landowners +of the neighbourhood. Which of them, he inquired, possessed serfs, and +how many of them? How far from the town did those landowners reside? +What was the character of each landowner, and was he in the habit of +paying frequent visits to the town? The gentleman also made searching +inquiries concerning the hygienic condition of the countryside. Was +there, he asked, much sickness about--whether sporadic fever, fatal +forms of ague, smallpox, or what not? Yet, though his solicitude +concerning these matters showed more than ordinary curiosity, his +bearing retained its gravity unimpaired, and from time to time he +blew his nose with portentous fervour. Indeed, the manner in which he +accomplished this latter feat was marvellous in the extreme, for, though +that member emitted sounds equal to those of a trumpet in intensity, +he could yet, with his accompanying air of guileless dignity, evoke the +waiter’s undivided respect--so much so that, whenever the sounds of +the nose reached that menial’s ears, he would shake back his locks, +straighten himself into a posture of marked solicitude, and inquire +afresh, with head slightly inclined, whether the gentleman happened +to require anything further. After dinner the guest consumed a cup of +coffee, and then, seating himself upon the sofa, with, behind him, +one of those wool-covered cushions which, in Russian taverns, +resemble nothing so much as a cobblestone or a brick, fell to snoring; +whereafter, returning with a start to consciousness, he ordered himself +to be conducted to his room, flung himself at full length upon the bed, +and once more slept soundly for a couple of hours. Aroused, eventually, +by the waiter, he, at the latter’s request, inscribed a fragment of +paper with his name, his surname, and his rank (for communication, in +accordance with the law, to the police): and on that paper the waiter, +leaning forward from the corridor, read, syllable by syllable: “Paul +Ivanovitch Chichikov, Collegiate Councillor--Landowner--Travelling +on Private Affairs.” The waiter had just time to accomplish this +feat before Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov set forth to inspect the town. +Apparently the place succeeded in satisfying him, and, to tell the +truth, it was at least up to the usual standard of our provincial +capitals. Where the staring yellow of stone edifices did not greet his +eye he found himself confronted with the more modest grey of wooden +ones; which, consisting, for the most part, of one or two storeys (added +to the range of attics which provincial architects love so well), looked +almost lost amid the expanses of street and intervening medleys of +broken or half-finished partition-walls. At other points evidence of +more life and movement was to be seen, and here the houses stood crowded +together and displayed dilapidated, rain-blurred signboards whereon +boots or cakes or pairs of blue breeches inscribed “Arshavski, Tailor,” +and so forth, were depicted. Over a shop containing hats and caps +was written “Vassili Thedorov, Foreigner”; while, at another spot, a +signboard portrayed a billiard table and two players--the latter clad +in frockcoats of the kind usually affected by actors whose part it is +to enter the stage during the closing act of a piece, even though, with +arms sharply crooked and legs slightly bent, the said billiard players +were taking the most careful aim, but succeeding only in making abortive +strokes in the air. Each emporium of the sort had written over it: “This +is the best establishment of its kind in the town.” Also, al fresco in +the streets there stood tables heaped with nuts, soap, and gingerbread +(the latter but little distinguishable from the soap), and at an +eating-house there was displayed the sign of a plump fish transfixed +with a gaff. But the sign most frequently to be discerned was the +insignia of the State, the double-headed eagle (now replaced, in this +connection, with the laconic inscription “Dramshop”). As for the paving +of the town, it was uniformly bad. + +The gentleman peered also into the municipal gardens, which contained +only a few sorry trees that were poorly selected, requiring to be +propped with oil-painted, triangular green supports, and able to boast +of a height no greater than that of an ordinary walking-stick. Yet +recently the local paper had said (apropos of a gala) that, “Thanks to +the efforts of our Civil Governor, the town has become enriched with a +pleasaunce full of umbrageous, spaciously-branching trees. Even on the +most sultry day they afford agreeable shade, and indeed gratifying +was it to see the hearts of our citizens panting with an impulse of +gratitude as their eyes shed tears in recognition of all that their +Governor has done for them!” + +Next, after inquiring of a gendarme as to the best ways and means of +finding the local council, the local law-courts, and the local Governor, +should he (Chichikov) have need of them, the gentleman went on to +inspect the river which ran through the town. En route he tore off a +notice affixed to a post, in order that he might the more conveniently +read it after his return to the inn. Also, he bestowed upon a lady +of pleasant exterior who, escorted by a footman laden with a bundle, +happened to be passing along a wooden sidewalk a prolonged stare. +Lastly, he threw around him a comprehensive glance (as though to fix in +his mind the general topography of the place) and betook himself +home. There, gently aided by the waiter, he ascended the stairs to his +bedroom, drank a glass of tea, and, seating himself at the table, called +for a candle; which having been brought him, he produced from his pocket +the notice, held it close to the flame, and conned its tenour--slightly +contracting his right eye as he did so. Yet there was little in the +notice to call for remark. All that it said was that shortly one of +Kotzebue’s [6] plays would be given, and that one of the parts in the +play was to be taken by a certain Monsieur Poplevin, and another by +a certain Mademoiselle Ziablova, while the remaining parts were to +be filled by a number of less important personages. Nevertheless the +gentleman perused the notice with careful attention, and even jotted +down the prices to be asked for seats for the performance. Also, he +remarked that the bill had been printed in the press of the Provincial +Government. Next, he turned over the paper, in order to see if anything +further was to be read on the reverse side; but, finding nothing there, +he refolded the document, placed it in the box which served him as a +receptacle for odds and ends, and brought the day to a close with a +portion of cold veal, a bottle of pickles, and a sound sleep. + +The following day he devoted to paying calls upon the various municipal +officials--a first, and a very respectful, visit being paid to the +Governor. This personage turned out to resemble Chichikov himself in +that he was neither fat nor thin. Also, he wore the riband of the order +of Saint Anna about his neck, and was reported to have been recommended +also for the star. For the rest, he was large and good-natured, and had +a habit of amusing himself with occasional spells of knitting. Next, +Chichikov repaired to the Vice-Governor’s, and thence to the house of +the Public Prosecutor, to that of the President of the Local Council, to +that of the Chief of Police, to that of the Commissioner of Taxes, and +to that of the local Director of State Factories. True, the task of +remembering every big-wig in this world of ours is not a very easy one; +but at least our visitor displayed the greatest activity in his work of +paying calls, seeing that he went so far as to pay his respects also to +the Inspector of the Municipal Department of Medicine and to the City +Architect. Thereafter he sat thoughtfully in his britchka--plunged +in meditation on the subject of whom else it might be well to visit. +However, not a single magnate had been neglected, and in conversation +with his hosts he had contrived to flatter each separate one. For +instance to the Governor he had hinted that a stranger, on arriving +in his, the Governor’s province, would conceive that he had reached +Paradise, so velvety were the roads. “Governors who appoint capable +subordinates,” had said Chichikov, “are deserving of the most ample meed +of praise.” Again, to the Chief of Police our hero had passed a most +gratifying remark on the subject of the local gendarmery; while in +his conversation with the Vice-Governor and the President of the Local +Council (neither of whom had, as yet, risen above the rank of State +Councillor) he had twice been guilty of the gaucherie of addressing his +interlocutors with the title of “Your Excellency”--a blunder which had +not failed to delight them. In the result the Governor had invited +him to a reception the same evening, and certain other officials had +followed suit by inviting him, one of them to dinner, a second to a +tea-party, and so forth, and so forth. + +Of himself, however, the traveller had spoken little; or, if he had +spoken at any length, he had done so in a general sort of way and with +marked modesty. Indeed, at moments of the kind his discourse had assumed +something of a literary vein, in that invariably he had stated that, +being a worm of no account in the world, he was deserving of no +consideration at the hands of his fellows; that in his time he had +undergone many strange experiences; that subsequently he had suffered +much in the cause of Truth; that he had many enemies seeking his life; +and that, being desirous of rest, he was now engaged in searching for a +spot wherein to dwell--wherefore, having stumbled upon the town in which +he now found himself, he had considered it his bounden duty to evince +his respect for the chief authorities of the place. This, and no more, +was all that, for the moment, the town succeeded in learning about the +new arrival. Naturally he lost no time in presenting himself at the +Governor’s evening party. First, however, his preparations for that +function occupied a space of over two hours, and necessitated an +attention to his toilet of a kind not commonly seen. That is to say, +after a brief post-prandial nap he called for soap and water, and spent +a considerable period in the task of scrubbing his cheeks (which, for +the purpose, he supported from within with his tongue) and then of +drying his full, round face, from the ears downwards, with a towel which +he took from the waiter’s shoulder. Twice he snorted into the waiter’s +countenance as he did this, and then he posted himself in front of the +mirror, donned a false shirt-front, plucked out a couple of hairs which +were protruding from his nose, and appeared vested in a frockcoat +of bilberry-coloured check. Thereafter driving through broad streets +sparsely lighted with lanterns, he arrived at the Governor’s residence +to find it illuminated as for a ball. Barouches with gleaming lamps, +a couple of gendarmes posted before the doors, a babel of postillions’ +cries--nothing of a kind likely to be impressive was wanting; and, on +reaching the salon, the visitor actually found himself obliged to +close his eyes for a moment, so strong was the mingled sheen of lamps, +candles, and feminine apparel. Everything seemed suffused with light, +and everywhere, flitting and flashing, were to be seen black coats--even +as on a hot summer’s day flies revolve around a sugar loaf while the +old housekeeper is cutting it into cubes before the open window, and +the children of the house crowd around her to watch the movements of her +rugged hands as those members ply the smoking pestle; and airy squadrons +of flies, borne on the breeze, enter boldly, as though free of the +house, and, taking advantage of the fact that the glare of the sunshine +is troubling the old lady’s sight, disperse themselves over broken +and unbroken fragments alike, even though the lethargy induced by the +opulence of summer and the rich shower of dainties to be encountered at +every step has induced them to enter less for the purpose of eating than +for that of showing themselves in public, of parading up and down the +sugar loaf, of rubbing both their hindquarters and their fore against +one another, of cleaning their bodies under the wings, of extending +their forelegs over their heads and grooming themselves, and of flying +out of the window again to return with other predatory squadrons. +Indeed, so dazed was Chichikov that scarcely did he realise that the +Governor was taking him by the arm and presenting him to his (the +Governor’s) lady. Yet the newly-arrived guest kept his head sufficiently +to contrive to murmur some such compliment as might fittingly come +from a middle-aged individual of a rank neither excessively high nor +excessively low. Next, when couples had been formed for dancing and the +remainder of the company found itself pressed back against the walls, +Chichikov folded his arms, and carefully scrutinised the dancers. Some +of the ladies were dressed well and in the fashion, while the remainder +were clad in such garments as God usually bestows upon a provincial +town. Also here, as elsewhere, the men belonged to two separate and +distinct categories; one of which comprised slender individuals who, +flitting around the ladies, were scarcely to be distinguished from +denizens of the metropolis, so carefully, so artistically, groomed were +their whiskers, so presentable their oval, clean-shaven faces, so easy +the manner of their dancing attendance upon their womenfolk, so glib +their French conversation as they quizzed their female companions. As +for the other category, it comprised individuals who, stout, or of the +same build as Chichikov (that is to say, neither very portly nor very +lean), backed and sidled away from the ladies, and kept peering hither +and thither to see whether the Governor’s footmen had set out green +tables for whist. Their features were full and plump, some of them had +beards, and in no case was their hair curled or waved or arranged in +what the French call “the devil-may-care” style. On the contrary, their +heads were either close-cropped or brushed very smooth, and their faces +were round and firm. This category represented the more respectable +officials of the town. In passing, I may say that in business matters +fat men always prove superior to their leaner brethren; which is +probably the reason why the latter are mostly to be found in the +Political Police, or acting as mere ciphers whose existence is a purely +hopeless, airy, trivial one. Again, stout individuals never take a back +seat, but always a front one, and, wheresoever it be, they sit firmly, +and with confidence, and decline to budge even though the seat crack and +bend with their weight. For comeliness of exterior they care not a rap, +and therefore a dress coat sits less easily on their figures than is the +case with figures of leaner individuals. Yet invariably fat men amass +the greater wealth. In three years’ time a thin man will not have a +single serf whom he has left unpledged; whereas--well, pray look at +a fat man’s fortunes, and what will you see? First of all a suburban +villa, and then a larger suburban villa, and then a villa close to a +town, and lastly a country estate which comprises every amenity! That is +to say, having served both God and the State, the stout individual +has won universal respect, and will end by retiring from business, +reordering his mode of life, and becoming a Russian landowner--in other +words, a fine gentleman who dispenses hospitality, lives in comfort and +luxury, and is destined to leave his property to heirs who are purposing +to squander the same on foreign travel. + +That the foregoing represents pretty much the gist of Chichikov’s +reflections as he stood watching the company I will not attempt to deny. +And of those reflections the upshot was that he decided to join +himself to the stouter section of the guests, among whom he had +already recognised several familiar faces--namely, those of the Public +Prosecutor (a man with beetling brows over eyes which seemed to be +saying with a wink, “Come into the next room, my friend, for I have +something to say to you”--though, in the main, their owner was a man of +grave and taciturn habit), of the Postmaster (an insignificant-looking +individual, yet a would-be wit and a philosopher), and of the President +of the Local Council (a man of much amiability and good sense). These +three personages greeted Chichikov as an old acquaintance, and to their +salutations he responded with a sidelong, yet a sufficiently civil, bow. +Also, he became acquainted with an extremely unctuous and approachable +landowner named Manilov, and with a landowner of more uncouth exterior +named Sobakevitch--the latter of whom began the acquaintance by treading +heavily upon Chichikov’s toes, and then begging his pardon. Next, +Chichikov received an offer of a “cut in” at whist, and accepted +the same with his usual courteous inclination of the head. Seating +themselves at a green table, the party did not rise therefrom till +supper time; and during that period all conversation between the players +became hushed, as is the custom when men have given themselves up to +a really serious pursuit. Even the Postmaster--a talkative man by +nature--had no sooner taken the cards into his hands than he assumed +an expression of profound thought, pursed his lips, and retained this +attitude unchanged throughout the game. Only when playing a court card +was it his custom to strike the table with his fist, and to exclaim (if +the card happened to be a queen), “Now, old popadia [7]!” and (if +the card happened to be a king), “Now, peasant of Tambov!” To which +ejaculations invariably the President of the Local Council retorted, +“Ah, I have him by the ears, I have him by the ears!” And from the +neighbourhood of the table other strong ejaculations relative to the +play would arise, interposed with one or another of those nicknames +which participants in a game are apt to apply to members of the various +suits. I need hardly add that, the game over, the players fell to +quarrelling, and that in the dispute our friend joined, though so +artfully as to let every one see that, in spite of the fact that he was +wrangling, he was doing so only in the most amicable fashion possible. +Never did he say outright, “You played the wrong card at such and such +a point.” No, he always employed some such phrase as, “You permitted +yourself to make a slip, and thus afforded me the honour of covering +your deuce.” Indeed, the better to keep in accord with his antagonists, +he kept offering them his silver-enamelled snuff-box (at the bottom +of which lay a couple of violets, placed there for the sake of their +scent). In particular did the newcomer pay attention to landowners +Manilov and Sobakevitch; so much so that his haste to arrive on good +terms with them led to his leaving the President and the Postmaster +rather in the shade. At the same time, certain questions which he put +to those two landowners evinced not only curiosity, but also a certain +amount of sound intelligence; for he began by asking how many peasant +souls each of them possessed, and how their affairs happened at present +to be situated, and then proceeded to enlighten himself also as their +standing and their families. Indeed, it was not long before he had +succeeded in fairly enchanting his new friends. In particular did +Manilov--a man still in his prime, and possessed of a pair of eyes +which, sweet as sugar, blinked whenever he laughed--find himself unable +to make enough of his enchanter. Clasping Chichikov long and fervently +by the hand, he besought him to do him, Manilov, the honour of visiting +his country house (which he declared to lie at a distance of not more +than fifteen versts from the boundaries of the town); and in return +Chichikov averred (with an exceedingly affable bow and a most sincere +handshake) that he was prepared not only to fulfil his friend’s behest, +but also to look upon the fulfilling of it as a sacred duty. In the same +way Sobakevitch said to him laconically: “And do you pay ME a visit,” + and then proceeded to shuffle a pair of boots of such dimensions that +to find a pair to correspond with them would have been indeed +difficult--more especially at the present day, when the race of epic +heroes is beginning to die out in Russia. + +Next day Chichikov dined and spent the evening at the house of the Chief +of Police--a residence where, three hours after dinner, every one sat +down to whist, and remained so seated until two o’clock in the morning. +On this occasion Chichikov made the acquaintance of, among others, a +landowner named Nozdrev--a dissipated little fellow of thirty who had no +sooner exchanged three or four words with his new acquaintance than he +began to address him in the second person singular. Yet although he did +the same to the Chief of Police and the Public Prosecutor, the company +had no sooner seated themselves at the card-table than both the one +and the other of these functionaries started to keep a careful eye upon +Nozdrev’s tricks, and to watch practically every card which he played. +The following evening Chichikov spent with the President of the Local +Council, who received his guests--even though the latter included two +ladies--in a greasy dressing-gown. Upon that followed an evening at the +Vice-Governor’s, a large dinner party at the house of the Commissioner +of Taxes, a smaller dinner-party at the house of the Public Prosecutor +(a very wealthy man), and a subsequent reception given by the Mayor. In +short, not an hour of the day did Chichikov find himself forced to +spend at home, and his return to the inn became necessary only for the +purposes of sleeping. Somehow or other he had landed on his feet, and +everywhere he figured as an experienced man of the world. No matter what +the conversation chanced to be about, he always contrived to maintain +his part in the same. Did the discourse turn upon horse-breeding, upon +horse-breeding he happened to be peculiarly well-qualified to speak. Did +the company fall to discussing well-bred dogs, at once he had remarks of +the most pertinent kind possible to offer. Did the company touch upon +a prosecution which had recently been carried out by the Excise +Department, instantly he showed that he too was not wholly unacquainted +with legal affairs. Did an opinion chance to be expressed concerning +billiards, on that subject too he was at least able to avoid committing +a blunder. Did a reference occur to virtue, concerning virtue he +hastened to deliver himself in a way which brought tears to every eye. +Did the subject in hand happen to be the distilling of brandy--well, +that was a matter concerning which he had the soundest of knowledge. Did +any one happen to mention Customs officials and inspectors, from that +moment he expatiated as though he too had been both a minor functionary +and a major. Yet a remarkable fact was the circumstance that he always +contrived to temper his omniscience with a certain readiness to give +way, a certain ability so to keep a rein upon himself that never did his +utterances become too loud or too soft, or transcend what was perfectly +befitting. In a word, he was always a gentleman of excellent manners, +and every official in the place felt pleased when he saw him enter the +door. Thus the Governor gave it as his opinion that Chichikov was a man +of excellent intentions; the Public Prosecutor, that he was a good man +of business; the Chief of Gendarmery, that he was a man of education; +the President of the Local Council, that he was a man of breeding and +refinement; and the wife of the Chief of Gendarmery, that his politeness +of behaviour was equalled only by his affability of bearing. Nay, even +Sobakevitch--who as a rule never spoke well of ANY ONE--said to his +lanky wife when, on returning late from the town, he undressed and +betook himself to bed by her side: “My dear, this evening, after dining +with the Chief of Police, I went on to the Governor’s, and met there, +among others, a certain Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov, who is a Collegiate +Councillor and a very pleasant fellow.” To this his spouse replied “Hm!” + and then dealt him a hearty kick in the ribs. + +Such were the flattering opinions earned by the newcomer to the town; +and these opinions he retained until the time when a certain speciality +of his, a certain scheme of his (the reader will learn presently what it +was), plunged the majority of the townsfolk into a sea of perplexity. + + + +CHAPTER II + +For more than two weeks the visitor lived amid a round of evening +parties and dinners; wherefore he spent (as the saying goes) a very +pleasant time. Finally he decided to extend his visits beyond the urban +boundaries by going and calling upon landowners Manilov and Sobakevitch, +seeing that he had promised on his honour to do so. Yet what really +incited him to this may have been a more essential cause, a matter of +greater gravity, a purpose which stood nearer to his heart, than the +motive which I have just given; and of that purpose the reader will +learn if only he will have the patience to read this prefatory narrative +(which, lengthy though it be, may yet develop and expand in proportion +as we approach the denouement with which the present work is destined to +be crowned). + +One evening, therefore, Selifan the coachman received orders to have +the horses harnessed in good time next morning; while Petrushka +received orders to remain behind, for the purpose of looking after the +portmanteau and the room. In passing, the reader may care to become +more fully acquainted with the two serving-men of whom I have spoken. +Naturally, they were not persons of much note, but merely what folk call +characters of secondary, or even of tertiary, importance. Yet, despite +the fact that the springs and the thread of this romance will not DEPEND +upon them, but only touch upon them, and occasionally include them, +the author has a passion for circumstantiality, and, like the average +Russian, such a desire for accuracy as even a German could not rival. +To what the reader already knows concerning the personages in hand it is +therefore necessary to add that Petrushka usually wore a cast-off brown +jacket of a size too large for him, as also that he had (according to +the custom of individuals of his calling) a pair of thick lips and +a very prominent nose. In temperament he was taciturn rather than +loquacious, and he cherished a yearning for self-education. That is to +say, he loved to read books, even though their contents came alike to +him whether they were books of heroic adventure or mere grammars or +liturgical compendia. As I say, he perused every book with an equal +amount of attention, and, had he been offered a work on chemistry, +would have accepted that also. Not the words which he read, but the mere +solace derived from the act of reading, was what especially pleased his +mind; even though at any moment there might launch itself from the page +some devil-sent word whereof he could make neither head nor tail. For +the most part, his task of reading was performed in a recumbent position +in the anteroom; which circumstance ended by causing his mattress to +become as ragged and as thin as a wafer. In addition to his love of +poring over books, he could boast of two habits which constituted two +other essential features of his character--namely, a habit of +retiring to rest in his clothes (that is to say, in the brown jacket +above-mentioned) and a habit of everywhere bearing with him his own +peculiar atmosphere, his own peculiar smell--a smell which filled +any lodging with such subtlety that he needed but to make up his bed +anywhere, even in a room hitherto untenanted, and to drag thither his +greatcoat and other impedimenta, for that room at once to assume an air +of having been lived in during the past ten years. Nevertheless, though +a fastidious, and even an irritable, man, Chichikov would merely frown +when his nose caught this smell amid the freshness of the morning, and +exclaim with a toss of his head: “The devil only knows what is up with +you! Surely you sweat a good deal, do you not? The best thing you can do +is to go and take a bath.” To this Petrushka would make no reply, but, +approaching, brush in hand, the spot where his master’s coat would be +pendent, or starting to arrange one and another article in order, would +strive to seem wholly immersed in his work. Yet of what was he thinking +as he remained thus silent? Perhaps he was saying to himself: “My master +is a good fellow, but for him to keep on saying the same thing forty +times over is a little wearisome.” Only God knows and sees all things; +wherefore for a mere human being to know what is in the mind of a +servant while his master is scolding him is wholly impossible. However, +no more need be said about Petrushka. On the other hand, Coachman +Selifan-- + +But here let me remark that I do not like engaging the reader’s +attention in connection with persons of a lower class than himself; for +experience has taught me that we do not willingly familiarise ourselves +with the lower orders--that it is the custom of the average Russian to +yearn exclusively for information concerning persons on the higher rungs +of the social ladder. In fact, even a bowing acquaintance with a prince +or a lord counts, in his eyes, for more than do the most intimate of +relations with ordinary folk. For the same reason the author feels +apprehensive on his hero’s account, seeing that he has made that hero +a mere Collegiate Councillor--a mere person with whom Aulic Councillors +might consort, but upon whom persons of the grade of full General +[8] would probably bestow one of those glances proper to a man who is +cringing at their august feet. Worse still, such persons of the grade of +General are likely to treat Chichikov with studied negligence--and to an +author studied negligence spells death. + +However, in spite of the distressfulness of the foregoing possibilities, +it is time that I returned to my hero. After issuing, overnight, the +necessary orders, he awoke early, washed himself, rubbed himself +from head to foot with a wet sponge (a performance executed only on +Sundays--and the day in question happened to be a Sunday), shaved his +face with such care that his cheeks issued of absolutely satin-like +smoothness and polish, donned first his bilberry-coloured, spotted +frockcoat, and then his bearskin overcoat, descended the staircase +(attended, throughout, by the waiter) and entered his britchka. With a +loud rattle the vehicle left the inn-yard, and issued into the street. +A passing priest doffed his cap, and a few urchins in grimy shirts +shouted, “Gentleman, please give a poor orphan a trifle!” Presently the +driver noticed that a sturdy young rascal was on the point of climbing +onto the splashboard; wherefore he cracked his whip and the britchka +leapt forward with increased speed over the cobblestones. At last, with +a feeling of relief, the travellers caught sight of macadam ahead, which +promised an end both to the cobblestones and to sundry other annoyances. +And, sure enough, after his head had been bumped a few more times +against the boot of the conveyance, Chichikov found himself bowling over +softer ground. On the town receding into the distance, the sides of the +road began to be varied with the usual hillocks, fir trees, clumps of +young pine, trees with old, scarred trunks, bushes of wild juniper, and +so forth. Presently there came into view also strings of country villas +which, with their carved supports and grey roofs (the latter looking +like pendent, embroidered tablecloths), resembled, rather, bundles +of old faggots. Likewise the customary peasants, dressed in sheepskin +jackets, could be seen yawning on benches before their huts, while +their womenfolk, fat of feature and swathed of bosom, gazed out of upper +windows, and the windows below displayed, here a peering calf, and there +the unsightly jaws of a pig. In short, the view was one of the familiar +type. After passing the fifteenth verst-stone Chichikov suddenly +recollected that, according to Manilov, fifteen versts was the exact +distance between his country house and the town; but the sixteenth verst +stone flew by, and the said country house was still nowhere to be +seen. In fact, but for the circumstance that the travellers happened to +encounter a couple of peasants, they would have come on their errand in +vain. To a query as to whether the country house known as Zamanilovka +was anywhere in the neighbourhood the peasants replied by doffing their +caps; after which one of them who seemed to boast of a little more +intelligence than his companion, and who wore a wedge-shaped beard, made +answer: + +“Perhaps you mean Manilovka--not ZAmanilovka?” + +“Yes, yes--Manilovka.” + +“Manilovka, eh? Well, you must continue for another verst, and then you +will see it straight before you, on the right.” + +“On the right?” re-echoed the coachman. + +“Yes, on the right,” affirmed the peasant. “You are on the proper road +for Manilovka, but ZAmanilovka--well, there is no such place. The house +you mean is called Manilovka because Manilovka is its name; but no house +at all is called ZAmanilovka. The house you mean stands there, on that +hill, and is a stone house in which a gentleman lives, and its name +is Manilovka; but ZAmanilovka does not stand hereabouts, nor ever has +stood.” + +So the travellers proceeded in search of Manilovka, and, after driving +an additional two versts, arrived at a spot whence there branched off a +by-road. Yet two, three, or four versts of the by-road had been covered +before they saw the least sign of a two-storied stone mansion. Then it +was that Chichikov suddenly recollected that, when a friend has invited +one to visit his country house, and has said that the distance thereto +is fifteen versts, the distance is sure to turn out to be at least +thirty. + +Not many people would have admired the situation of Manilov’s abode, for +it stood on an isolated rise and was open to every wind that blew. On +the slope of the rise lay closely-mown turf, while, disposed here and +there, after the English fashion, were flower-beds containing clumps of +lilac and yellow acacia. Also, there were a few insignificant groups +of slender-leaved, pointed-tipped birch trees, with, under two of the +latter, an arbour having a shabby green cupola, some blue-painted wooden +supports, and the inscription “This is the Temple of Solitary Thought.” + Lower down the slope lay a green-coated pond--green-coated ponds +constitute a frequent spectacle in the gardens of Russian landowners; +and, lastly, from the foot of the declivity there stretched a line of +mouldy, log-built huts which, for some obscure reason or another, our +hero set himself to count. Up to two hundred or more did he count, but +nowhere could he perceive a single leaf of vegetation or a single stick +of timber. The only thing to greet the eye was the logs of which the +huts were constructed. Nevertheless the scene was to a certain extent +enlivened by the spectacle of two peasant women who, with clothes +picturesquely tucked up, were wading knee-deep in the pond and dragging +behind them, with wooden handles, a ragged fishing-net, in the meshes +of which two crawfish and a roach with glistening scales were entangled. +The women appeared to have cause of dispute between themselves--to be +rating one another about something. In the background, and to one side +of the house, showed a faint, dusky blur of pinewood, and even the +weather was in keeping with the surroundings, since the day was neither +clear nor dull, but of the grey tint which may be noted in uniforms of +garrison soldiers which have seen long service. To complete the picture, +a cock, the recognised harbinger of atmospheric mutations, was present; +and, in spite of the fact that a certain connection with affairs of +gallantry had led to his having had his head pecked bare by other +cocks, he flapped a pair of wings--appendages as bare as two pieces of +bast--and crowed loudly. + +As Chichikov approached the courtyard of the mansion he caught sight +of his host (clad in a green frock coat) standing on the verandah and +pressing one hand to his eyes to shield them from the sun and so get a +better view of the approaching carriage. In proportion as the britchka +drew nearer and nearer to the verandah, the host’s eyes assumed a more +and more delighted expression, and his smile a broader and broader +sweep. + +“Paul Ivanovitch!” he exclaimed when at length Chichikov leapt from the +vehicle. “Never should I have believed that you would have remembered +us!” + +The two friends exchanged hearty embraces, and Manilov then conducted +his guest to the drawing-room. During the brief time that they are +traversing the hall, the anteroom, and the dining-room, let me try +to say something concerning the master of the house. But such an +undertaking bristles with difficulties--it promises to be a far less +easy task than the depicting of some outstanding personality which calls +but for a wholesale dashing of colours upon the canvas--the colours of +a pair of dark, burning eyes, a pair of dark, beetling brows, a forehead +seamed with wrinkles, a black, or a fiery-red, cloak thrown backwards +over the shoulder, and so forth, and so forth. Yet, so numerous are +Russian serf owners that, though careful scrutiny reveals to one’s sight +a quantity of outre peculiarities, they are, as a class, exceedingly +difficult to portray, and one needs to strain one’s faculties to the +utmost before it becomes possible to pick out their variously subtle, +their almost invisible, features. In short, one needs, before doing +this, to carry out a prolonged probing with the aid of an insight +sharpened in the acute school of research. + +Only God can say what Manilov’s real character was. A class of men +exists whom the proverb has described as “men unto themselves, neither +this nor that--neither Bogdan of the city nor Selifan of the village.” + And to that class we had better assign also Manilov. Outwardly he was +presentable enough, for his features were not wanting in amiability, but +that amiability was a quality into which there entered too much of the +sugary element, so that his every gesture, his every attitude, seemed +to connote an excess of eagerness to curry favour and cultivate a closer +acquaintance. On first speaking to the man, his ingratiating smile, his +flaxen hair, and his blue eyes would lead one to say, “What a pleasant, +good-tempered fellow he seems!” yet during the next moment or two one +would feel inclined to say nothing at all, and, during the third moment, +only to say, “The devil alone knows what he is!” And should, thereafter, +one not hasten to depart, one would inevitably become overpowered with +the deadly sense of ennui which comes of the intuition that nothing +in the least interesting is to be looked for, but only a series of +wearisome utterances of the kind which are apt to fall from the lips +of a man whose hobby has once been touched upon. For every man HAS his +hobby. One man’s may be sporting dogs; another man’s may be that of +believing himself to be a lover of music, and able to sound the art to +its inmost depths; another’s may be that of posing as a connoisseur of +recherche cookery; another’s may be that of aspiring to play roles of +a kind higher than nature has assigned him; another’s (though this is +a more limited ambition) may be that of getting drunk, and of dreaming +that he is edifying both his friends, his acquaintances, and people with +whom he has no connection at all by walking arm-in-arm with an Imperial +aide-de-camp; another’s may be that of possessing a hand able to chip +corners off aces and deuces of diamonds; another’s may be that of +yearning to set things straight--in other words, to approximate his +personality to that of a stationmaster or a director of posts. In short, +almost every man has his hobby or his leaning; yet Manilov had none +such, for at home he spoke little, and spent the greater part of +his time in meditation--though God only knows what that meditation +comprised! Nor can it be said that he took much interest in the +management of his estate, for he never rode into the country, and the +estate practically managed itself. Whenever the bailiff said to him, “It +might be well to have such-and-such a thing done,” he would reply, “Yes, +that is not a bad idea,” and then go on smoking his pipe--a habit which +he had acquired during his service in the army, where he had been looked +upon as an officer of modesty, delicacy, and refinement. “Yes, it is NOT +a bad idea,” he would repeat. Again, whenever a peasant approached him +and, rubbing the back of his neck, said “Barin, may I have leave to go +and work for myself, in order that I may earn my obrok [9]?” he would +snap out, with pipe in mouth as usual, “Yes, go!” and never trouble his +head as to whether the peasant’s real object might not be to go and get +drunk. True, at intervals he would say, while gazing from the verandah +to the courtyard, and from the courtyard to the pond, that it would be +indeed splendid if a carriage drive could suddenly materialise, and the +pond as suddenly become spanned with a stone bridge, and little shops +as suddenly arise whence pedlars could dispense the petty merchandise of +the kind which peasantry most need. And at such moments his eyes +would grow winning, and his features assume an expression of intense +satisfaction. Yet never did these projects pass beyond the stage of +debate. Likewise there lay in his study a book with the fourteenth page +permanently turned down. It was a book which he had been reading for +the past two years! In general, something seemed to be wanting in the +establishment. For instance, although the drawing-room was filled with +beautiful furniture, and upholstered in some fine silken material which +clearly had cost no inconsiderable sum, two of the chairs lacked +any covering but bast, and for some years past the master had been +accustomed to warn his guests with the words, “Do not sit upon these +chairs; they are not yet ready for use.” Another room contained no +furniture at all, although, a few days after the marriage, it had been +said: “My dear, to-morrow let us set about procuring at least some +TEMPORARY furniture for this room.” Also, every evening would see placed +upon the drawing-room table a fine bronze candelabrum, a statuette +representative of the Three Graces, a tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl, +and a rickety, lop-sided copper invalide. Yet of the fact that all four +articles were thickly coated with grease neither the master of the +house nor the mistress nor the servants seemed to entertain the least +suspicion. At the same time, Manilov and his wife were quite satisfied +with each other. More than eight years had elapsed since their marriage, +yet one of them was for ever offering his or her partner a piece of +apple or a bonbon or a nut, while murmuring some tender something which +voiced a whole-hearted affection. “Open your mouth, dearest”--thus ran +the formula--“and let me pop into it this titbit.” You may be sure that +on such occasions the “dearest mouth” parted its lips most graciously! +For their mutual birthdays the pair always contrived some “surprise +present” in the shape of a glass receptacle for tooth-powder, or what +not; and as they sat together on the sofa he would suddenly, and for +some unknown reason, lay aside his pipe, and she her work (if at the +moment she happened to be holding it in her hands) and husband and wife +would imprint upon one another’s cheeks such a prolonged and languishing +kiss that during its continuance you could have smoked a small cigar. In +short, they were what is known as “a very happy couple.” Yet it may be +remarked that a household requires other pursuits to be engaged in than +lengthy embracings and the preparing of cunning “surprises.” Yes, many +a function calls for fulfilment. For instance, why should it be thought +foolish or low to superintend the kitchen? Why should care not be taken +that the storeroom never lacks supplies? Why should a housekeeper be +allowed to thieve? Why should slovenly and drunken servants exist? +Why should a domestic staff be suffered in indulge in bouts of +unconscionable debauchery during its leisure time? Yet none of these +things were thought worthy of consideration by Manilov’s wife, for she +had been gently brought up, and gentle nurture, as we all know, is to +be acquired only in boarding schools, and boarding schools, as we know, +hold the three principal subjects which constitute the basis of human +virtue to be the French language (a thing indispensable to the happiness +of married life), piano-playing (a thing wherewith to beguile +a husband’s leisure moments), and that particular department of +housewifery which is comprised in the knitting of purses and other +“surprises.” Nevertheless changes and improvements have begun to take +place, since things now are governed more by the personal inclinations +and idiosyncracies of the keepers of such establishments. For instance, +in some seminaries the regimen places piano-playing first, and the +French language second, and then the above department of housewifery; +while in other seminaries the knitting of “surprises” heads the list, +and then the French language, and then the playing of pianos--so diverse +are the systems in force! None the less, I may remark that Madame +Manilov-- + +But let me confess that I always shrink from saying too much about +ladies. Moreover, it is time that we returned to our heroes, who, during +the past few minutes, have been standing in front of the drawing-room +door, and engaged in urging one another to enter first. + +“Pray be so good as not to inconvenience yourself on my account,” said +Chichikov. “_I_ will follow YOU.” + +“No, Paul Ivanovitch--no! You are my guest.” And Manilov pointed towards +the doorway. + +“Make no difficulty about it, I pray,” urged Chichikov. “I beg of you to +make no difficulty about it, but to pass into the room.” + +“Pardon me, I will not. Never could I allow so distinguished and so +welcome a guest as yourself to take second place.” + +“Why call me ‘distinguished,’ my dear sir? I beg of you to proceed.” + +“Nay; be YOU pleased to do so.” + +“And why?” + +“For the reason which I have stated.” And Manilov smiled his very +pleasantest smile. + +Finally the pair entered simultaneously and sideways; with the result +that they jostled one another not a little in the process. + +“Allow me to present to you my wife,” continued Manilov. “My dear--Paul +Ivanovitch.” + +Upon that Chichikov caught sight of a lady whom hitherto he had +overlooked, but who, with Manilov, was now bowing to him in the doorway. +Not wholly of unpleasing exterior, she was dressed in a well-fitting, +high-necked morning dress of pale-coloured silk; and as the visitor +entered the room her small white hands threw something upon the table +and clutched her embroidered skirt before rising from the sofa where she +had been seated. Not without a sense of pleasure did Chichikov take her +hand as, lisping a little, she declared that she and her husband were +equally gratified by his coming, and that, of late, not a day had passed +without her husband recalling him to mind. + +“Yes,” affirmed Manilov; “and every day SHE has said to ME: ‘Why does +not your friend put in an appearance?’ ‘Wait a little dearest,’ I have +always replied. ‘’Twill not be long now before he comes.’ And you HAVE +come, you HAVE honoured us with a visit, you HAVE bestowed upon us a +treat--a treat destined to convert this day into a gala day, a true +birthday of the heart.” + +The intimation that matters had reached the point of the occasion being +destined to constitute a “true birthday of the heart” caused Chichikov +to become a little confused; wherefore he made modest reply that, as a +matter of fact, he was neither of distinguished origin nor distinguished +rank. + +“Ah, you ARE so,” interrupted Manilov with his fixed and engaging smile. +“You are all that, and more.” + +“How like you our town?” queried Madame. “Have you spent an agreeable +time in it?” + +“Very,” replied Chichikov. “The town is an exceedingly nice one, and I +have greatly enjoyed its hospitable society.” + +“And what do you think of our Governor?” + +“Yes; IS he not a most engaging and dignified personage?” added Manilov. + +“He is all that,” assented Chichikov. “Indeed, he is a man worthy of the +greatest respect. And how thoroughly he performs his duty according to +his lights! Would that we had more like him!” + +“And the tactfulness with which he greets every one!” added Manilov, +smiling, and half-closing his eyes, like a cat which is being tickled +behind the ears. + +“Quite so,” assented Chichikov. “He is a man of the most eminent +civility and approachableness. And what an artist! Never should I have +thought he could have worked the marvellous household samplers which he +has done! Some specimens of his needlework which he showed me could not +well have been surpassed by any lady in the land!” + +“And the Vice-Governor, too--he is a nice man, is he not?” inquired +Manilov with renewed blinkings of the eyes. + +“Who? The Vice-Governor? Yes, a most worthy fellow!” replied Chichikov. + +“And what of the Chief of Police? Is it not a fact that he too is in the +highest degree agreeable?” + +“Very agreeable indeed. And what a clever, well-read individual! With +him and the Public Prosecutor and the President of the Local Council I +played whist until the cocks uttered their last morning crow. He is a +most excellent fellow.” + +“And what of his wife?” queried Madame Manilov. “Is she not a most +gracious personality?” + +“One of the best among my limited acquaintance,” agreed Chichikov. + +Nor were the President of the Local Council and the Postmaster +overlooked; until the company had run through the whole list of urban +officials. And in every case those officials appeared to be persons of +the highest possible merit. + +“Do you devote your time entirely to your estate?” asked Chichikov, in +his turn. + +“Well, most of it,” replied Manilov; “though also we pay occasional +visits to the town, in order that we may mingle with a little well-bred +society. One grows a trifle rusty if one lives for ever in retirement.” + +“Quite so,” agreed Chichikov. + +“Yes, quite so,” capped Manilov. “At the same time, it would be a +different matter if the neighbourhood were a GOOD one--if, for example, +one had a friend with whom one could discuss manners and polite +deportment, or engage in some branch of science, and so stimulate one’s +wits. For that sort of thing gives one’s intellect an airing. It, it--” + At a loss for further words, he ended by remarking that his feelings +were apt to carry him away; after which he continued with a gesture: +“What I mean is that, were that sort of thing possible, I, for +one, could find the country and an isolated life possessed of great +attractions. But, as matters stand, such a thing is NOT possible. All +that I can manage to do is, occasionally, to read a little of A Son of +the Fatherland.” + +With these sentiments Chichikov expressed entire agreement: adding that +nothing could be more delightful than to lead a solitary life in which +there should be comprised only the sweet contemplation of nature and the +intermittent perusal of a book. + +“Nay, but even THAT were worth nothing had not one a friend with whom to +share one’s life,” remarked Manilov. + +“True, true,” agreed Chichikov. “Without a friend, what are all the +treasures in the world? ‘Possess not money,’ a wise man has said, ‘but +rather good friends to whom to turn in case of need.’” + +“Yes, Paul Ivanovitch,” said Manilov with a glance not merely sweet, +but positively luscious--a glance akin to the mixture which even clever +physicians have to render palatable before they can induce a hesitant +patient to take it. “Consequently you may imagine what happiness--what +PERFECT happiness, so to speak--the present occasion has brought me, +seeing that I am permitted to converse with you and to enjoy your +conversation.” + +“But WHAT of my conversation?” replied Chichikov. “I am an insignificant +individual, and, beyond that, nothing.” + +“Oh, Paul Ivanovitch!” cried the other. “Permit me to be frank, and to +say that I would give half my property to possess even a PORTION of the +talents which you possess.” + +“On the contrary, I should consider it the highest honour in the world +if--” + +The lengths to which this mutual outpouring of soul would have proceeded +had not a servant entered to announce luncheon must remain a mystery. + +“I humbly invite you to join us at table,” said Manilov. “Also, you will +pardon us for the fact that we cannot provide a banquet such as is to +be obtained in our metropolitan cities? We partake of simple fare, +according to Russian custom--we confine ourselves to shtchi [10], but we +do so with a single heart. Come, I humbly beg of you.” + +After another contest for the honour of yielding precedence, Chichikov +succeeded in making his way (in zigzag fashion) to the dining-room, +where they found awaiting them a couple of youngsters. These were +Manilov’s sons, and boys of the age which admits of their presence at +table, but necessitates the continued use of high chairs. Beside them +was their tutor, who bowed politely and smiled; after which the hostess +took her seat before her soup plate, and the guest of honour found +himself esconsed between her and the master of the house, while the +servant tied up the boys’ necks in bibs. + +“What charming children!” said Chichikov as he gazed at the pair. “And +how old are they?” + +“The eldest is eight,” replied Manilov, “and the younger one attained +the age of six yesterday.” + +“Themistocleus,” went on the father, turning to his first-born, who was +engaged in striving to free his chin from the bib with which the footman +had encircled it. On hearing this distinctly Greek name (to which, for +some unknown reason, Manilov always appended the termination “eus”), +Chichikov raised his eyebrows a little, but hastened, the next moment, +to restore his face to a more befitting expression. + +“Themistocleus,” repeated the father, “tell me which is the finest city +in France.” + +Upon this the tutor concentrated his attention upon Themistocleus, and +appeared to be trying hard to catch his eye. Only when Themistocleus had +muttered “Paris” did the preceptor grow calmer, and nod his head. + +“And which is the finest city in Russia?” continued Manilov. + +Again the tutor’s attitude became wholly one of concentration. + +“St. Petersburg,” replied Themistocleus. + +“And what other city?” + +“Moscow,” responded the boy. + +“Clever little dear!” burst out Chichikov, turning with an air of +surprise to the father. “Indeed, I feel bound to say that the child +evinces the greatest possible potentialities.” + +“You do not know him fully,” replied the delighted Manilov. “The amount +of sharpness which he possesses is extraordinary. Our younger one, +Alkid, is not so quick; whereas his brother--well, no matter what he +may happen upon (whether upon a cowbug or upon a water-beetle or upon +anything else), his little eyes begin jumping out of his head, and he +runs to catch the thing, and to inspect it. For HIM I am reserving a +diplomatic post. Themistocleus,” added the father, again turning to his +son, “do you wish to become an ambassador?” + +“Yes, I do,” replied Themistocleus, chewing a piece of bread and wagging +his head from side to side. + +At this moment the lacquey who had been standing behind the future +ambassador wiped the latter’s nose; and well it was that he did so, +since otherwise an inelegant and superfluous drop would have been added +to the soup. After that the conversation turned upon the joys of a quiet +life--though occasionally it was interrupted by remarks from the hostess +on the subject of acting and actors. Meanwhile the tutor kept his eyes +fixed upon the speakers’ faces; and whenever he noticed that they were +on the point of laughing he at once opened his mouth, and laughed with +enthusiasm. Probably he was a man of grateful heart who wished to +repay his employers for the good treatment which he had received. Once, +however, his features assumed a look of grimness as, fixing his eyes +upon his vis-a-vis, the boys, he tapped sternly upon the table. This +happened at a juncture when Themistocleus had bitten Alkid on the ear, +and the said Alkid, with frowning eyes and open mouth, was preparing +himself to sob in piteous fashion; until, recognising that for such a +proceeding he might possibly be deprived of his plate, he hastened to +restore his mouth to its original expression, and fell tearfully to +gnawing a mutton bone--the grease from which had soon covered his +cheeks. + +Every now and again the hostess would turn to Chichikov with the words, +“You are eating nothing--you have indeed taken little;” but invariably +her guest replied: “Thank you, I have had more than enough. A pleasant +conversation is worth all the dishes in the world.” + +At length the company rose from table. Manilov was in high spirits, +and, laying his hand upon his guest’s shoulder, was on the point of +conducting him to the drawing-room, when suddenly Chichikov intimated +to him, with a meaning look, that he wished to speak to him on a very +important matter. + +“That being so,” said Manilov, “allow me to invite you into my study.” + And he led the way to a small room which faced the blue of the forest. +“This is my sanctum,” he added. + +“What a pleasant apartment!” remarked Chichikov as he eyed it carefully. +And, indeed, the room did not lack a certain attractiveness. The walls +were painted a sort of blueish-grey colour, and the furniture consisted +of four chairs, a settee, and a table--the latter of which bore a few +sheets of writing-paper and the book of which I have before had occasion +to speak. But the most prominent feature of the room was tobacco, which +appeared in many different guises--in packets, in a tobacco jar, and in +a loose heap strewn about the table. Likewise, both window sills were +studded with little heaps of ash, arranged, not without artifice, in +rows of more or less tidiness. Clearly smoking afforded the master of +the house a frequent means of passing the time. + +“Permit me to offer you a seat on this settee,” said Manilov. “Here you +will be quieter than you would be in the drawing-room.” + +“But I should prefer to sit upon this chair.” + +“I cannot allow that,” objected the smiling Manilov. “The settee is +specially reserved for my guests. Whether you choose or no, upon it you +MUST sit.” + +Accordingly Chichikov obeyed. + +“And also let me hand you a pipe.” + +“No, I never smoke,” answered Chichikov civilly, and with an assumed air +of regret. + +“And why?” inquired Manilov--equally civilly, but with a regret that was +wholly genuine. + +“Because I fear that I have never quite formed the habit, owing to +my having heard that a pipe exercises a desiccating effect upon the +system.” + +“Then allow me to tell you that that is mere prejudice. Nay, I would +even go so far as to say that to smoke a pipe is a healthier practice +than to take snuff. Among its members our regiment numbered a +lieutenant--a most excellent, well-educated fellow--who was simply +INCAPABLE of removing his pipe from his mouth, whether at table or +(pardon me) in other places. He is now forty, yet no man could enjoy +better health than he has always done.” + +Chichikov replied that such cases were common, since nature comprised +many things which even the finest intellect could not compass. + +“But allow me to put to you a question,” he went on in a tone in which +there was a strange--or, at all events, RATHER a strange--note. For some +unknown reason, also, he glanced over his shoulder. For some equally +unknown reason, Manilov glanced over HIS. + +“How long is it,” inquired the guest, “since you last rendered a census +return?” + +“Oh, a long, long time. In fact, I cannot remember when it was.” + +“And since then have many of your serfs died?” + +“I do not know. To ascertain that I should need to ask my bailiff. +Footman, go and call the bailiff. I think he will be at home to-day.” + +Before long the bailiff made his appearance. He was a man of under +forty, clean-shaven, clad in a smock, and evidently used to a quiet +life, seeing that his face was of that puffy fullness, and the skin +encircling his slit-like eyes was of that sallow tint, which shows that +the owner of those features is well acquainted with a feather bed. In a +trice it could be seen that he had played his part in life as all such +bailiffs do--that, originally a young serf of elementary education, he +had married some Agashka of a housekeeper or a mistress’s favourite, and +then himself become housekeeper, and, subsequently, bailiff; after which +he had proceeded according to the rules of his tribe--that is to say, +he had consorted with and stood in with the more well-to-do serfs on the +estate, and added the poorer ones to the list of forced payers of obrok, +while himself leaving his bed at nine o’clock in the morning, and, when +the samovar had been brought, drinking his tea at leisure. + +“Look here, my good man,” said Manilov. “How many of our serfs have died +since the last census revision?” + +“How many of them have died? Why, a great many.” The bailiff hiccoughed, +and slapped his mouth lightly after doing so. + +“Yes, I imagined that to be the case,” corroborated Manilov. “In fact, +a VERY great many serfs have died.” He turned to Chichikov and repeated +the words. + +“How many, for instance?” asked Chichikov. + +“Yes; how many?” re-echoed Manilov. + +“HOW many?” re-echoed the bailiff. “Well, no one knows the exact number, +for no one has kept any account.” + +“Quite so,” remarked Manilov. “I supposed the death-rate to have been +high, but was ignorant of its precise extent.” + +“Then would you be so good as to have it computed for me?” said +Chichikov. “And also to have a detailed list of the deaths made out?” + +“Yes, I will--a detailed list,” agreed Manilov. + +“Very well.” + +The bailiff departed. + +“For what purpose do you want it?” inquired Manilov when the bailiff had +gone. + +The question seemed to embarrass the guest, for in Chichikov’s face +there dawned a sort of tense expression, and it reddened as though its +owner were striving to express something not easy to put into words. +True enough, Manilov was now destined to hear such strange and +unexpected things as never before had greeted human ears. + +“You ask me,” said Chichikov, “for what purpose I want the list. Well, +my purpose in wanting it is this--that I desire to purchase a few +peasants.” And he broke off in a gulp. + +“But may I ask HOW you desire to purchase those peasants?” asked +Manilov. “With land, or merely as souls for transferment--that is to +say, by themselves, and without any land?” + +“I want the peasants themselves only,” replied Chichikov. “And I want +dead ones at that.” + +“What?--Excuse me, but I am a trifle deaf. Really, your words sound most +strange!” + +“All that I am proposing to do,” replied Chichikov, “is to purchase the +dead peasants who, at the last census, were returned by you as alive.” + +Manilov dropped his pipe on the floor, and sat gaping. Yes, the two +friends who had just been discussing the joys of camaraderie sat +staring at one another like the portraits which, of old, used to hang on +opposite sides of a mirror. At length Manilov picked up his pipe, and, +while doing so, glanced covertly at Chichikov to see whether there was +any trace of a smile to be detected on his lips--whether, in short, he +was joking. But nothing of the sort could be discerned. On the contrary, +Chichikov’s face looked graver than usual. Next, Manilov wondered +whether, for some unknown reason, his guest had lost his wits; wherefore +he spent some time in gazing at him with anxious intentness. But the +guest’s eyes seemed clear--they contained no spark of the wild, restless +fire which is apt to wander in the eyes of madmen. All was as it should +be. Consequently, in spite of Manilov’s cogitations, he could think +of nothing better to do than to sit letting a stream of tobacco smoke +escape from his mouth. + +“So,” continued Chichikov, “what I desire to know is whether you are +willing to hand over to me--to resign--these actually non-living, but +legally living, peasants; or whether you have any better proposal to +make?” + +Manilov felt too confused and confounded to do aught but continue +staring at his interlocutor. + +“I think that you are disturbing yourself unnecessarily,” was +Chichikov’s next remark. + +“I? Oh no! Not at all!” stammered Manilov. “Only--pardon me--I do not +quite comprehend you. You see, never has it fallen to my lot to acquire +the brilliant polish which is, so to speak, manifest in your every +movement. Nor have I ever been able to attain the art of expressing +myself well. Consequently, although there is a possibility that in +the--er--utterances which have just fallen from your lips there may +lie something else concealed, it may equally be that--er--you have been +pleased so to express yourself for the sake of the beauty of the terms +wherein that expression found shape?” + +“Oh, no,” asserted Chichikov. “I mean what I say and no more. My +reference to such of your pleasant souls as are dead was intended to be +taken literally.” + +Manilov still felt at a loss--though he was conscious that he MUST do +something, he MUST propound some question. But what question? The devil +alone knew! In the end he merely expelled some more tobacco smoke--this +time from his nostrils as well as from his mouth. + +“So,” went on Chichikov, “if no obstacle stands in the way, we might as +well proceed to the completion of the purchase.” + +“What? Of the purchase of the dead souls?” + +“Of the ‘dead’ souls? Oh dear no! Let us write them down as LIVING ones, +seeing that that is how they figure in the census returns. Never do I +permit myself to step outside the civil law, great though has been +the harm which that rule has wrought me in my career. In my eyes an +obligation is a sacred thing. In the presence of the law I am dumb.” + +These last words reassured Manilov not a little: yet still the meaning +of the affair remained to him a mystery. By way of answer, he fell to +sucking at his pipe with such vehemence that at length the pipe began +to gurgle like a bassoon. It was as though he had been seeking of +it inspiration in the present unheard-of juncture. But the pipe only +gurgled, et praeterea nihil. + +“Perhaps you feel doubtful about the proposal?” said Chichikov. + +“Not at all,” replied Manilov. “But you will, I know, excuse me if I +say (and I say it out of no spirit of prejudice, nor yet as criticising +yourself in any way)--you will, I know, excuse me if I say that possibly +this--er--this, er, SCHEME of yours, this--er--TRANSACTION of yours, may +fail altogether to accord with the Civil Statutes and Provisions of the +Realm?” + +And Manilov, with a slight gesture of the head, looked meaningly into +Chichikov’s face, while displaying in his every feature, including +his closely-compressed lips, such an expression of profundity as +never before was seen on any human countenance--unless on that of some +particularly sapient Minister of State who is debating some particularly +abstruse problem. + +Nevertheless Chichikov rejoined that the kind of scheme or transaction +which he had adumbrated in no way clashed with the Civil Statutes and +Provisions of Russia; to which he added that the Treasury would even +BENEFIT by the enterprise, seeing it would draw therefrom the usual +legal percentage. + +“What, then, do you propose?” asked Manilov. + +“I propose only what is above-board, and nothing else.” + +“Then, that being so, it is another matter, and I have nothing to urge +against it,” said Manilov, apparently reassured to the full. + +“Very well,” remarked Chichikov. “Then we need only to agree as to the +price.” + +“As to the price?” began Manilov, and then stopped. Presently he went +on: “Surely you cannot suppose me capable of taking money for souls +which, in one sense at least, have completed their existence? Seeing +that this fantastic whim of yours (if I may so call it?) has seized +upon you to the extent that it has, I, on my side, shall be ready to +surrender to you those souls UNCONDITIONALLY, and to charge myself with +the whole expenses of the sale.” + +I should be greatly to blame if I were to omit that, as soon as Manilov +had pronounced these words, the face of his guest became replete with +satisfaction. Indeed, grave and prudent a man though Chichikov was, +he had much ado to refrain from executing a leap that would have done +credit to a goat (an animal which, as we all know, finds itself moved +to such exertions only during moments of the most ecstatic joy). +Nevertheless the guest did at least execute such a convulsive shuffle +that the material with which the cushions of the chair were covered came +apart, and Manilov gazed at him with some misgiving. Finally Chichikov’s +gratitude led him to plunge into a stream of acknowledgement of a +vehemence which caused his host to grow confused, to blush, to shake +his head in deprecation, and to end by declaring that the concession was +nothing, and that, his one desire being to manifest the dictates of +his heart and the psychic magnetism which his friend exercised, he, in +short, looked upon the dead souls as so much worthless rubbish. + +“Not at all,” replied Chichikov, pressing his hand; after which +he heaved a profound sigh. Indeed, he seemed in the right mood for +outpourings of the heart, for he continued--not without a ring of +emotion in his tone: “If you but knew the service which you have +rendered to an apparently insignificant individual who is devoid both +of family and kindred! For what have I not suffered in my time--I, a +drifting barque amid the tempestuous billows of life? What harryings, +what persecutions, have I not known? Of what grief have I not tasted? +And why? Simply because I have ever kept the truth in view, because ever +I have preserved inviolate an unsullied conscience, because ever I have +stretched out a helping hand to the defenceless widow and the hapless +orphan!” After which outpouring Chichikov pulled out his handkerchief, +and wiped away a brimming tear. + +Manilov’s heart was moved to the core. Again and again did the two +friends press one another’s hands in silence as they gazed into one +another’s tear-filled eyes. Indeed, Manilov COULD not let go our hero’s +hand, but clasped it with such warmth that the hero in question began +to feel himself at a loss how best to wrench it free: until, quietly +withdrawing it, he observed that to have the purchase completed as +speedily as possible would not be a bad thing; wherefore he himself +would at once return to the town to arrange matters. Taking up his hat, +therefore, he rose to make his adieus. + +“What? Are you departing already?” said Manilov, suddenly recovering +himself, and experiencing a sense of misgiving. At that moment his wife +sailed into the room. + +“Is Paul Ivanovitch leaving us so soon, dearest Lizanka?” she said with +an air of regret. + +“Yes. Surely it must be that we have wearied him?” her spouse replied. + +“By no means,” asserted Chichikov, pressing his hand to his heart. “In +this breast, madam, will abide for ever the pleasant memory of the time +which I have spent with you. Believe me, I could conceive of no greater +blessing than to reside, if not under the same roof as yourselves, at +all events in your immediate neighbourhood.” + +“Indeed?” exclaimed Manilov, greatly pleased with the idea. “How +splendid it would be if you DID come to reside under our roof, so that +we could recline under an elm tree together, and talk philosophy, and +delve to the very root of things!” + +“Yes, it WOULD be a paradisaical existence!” agreed Chichikov with a +sigh. Nevertheless he shook hands with Madame. “Farewell, sudarina,” he +said. “And farewell to YOU, my esteemed host. Do not forget what I have +requested you to do.” + +“Rest assured that I will not,” responded Manilov. “Only for a couple of +days will you and I be parted from one another.” + +With that the party moved into the drawing-room. + +“Farewell, dearest children,” Chichikov went on as he caught sight of +Alkid and Themistocleus, who were playing with a wooden hussar which +lacked both a nose and one arm. “Farewell, dearest pets. Pardon me for +having brought you no presents, but, to tell you the truth, I was not, +until my visit, aware of your existence. However, now that I shall be +coming again, I will not fail to bring you gifts. Themistocleus, to you +I will bring a sword. You would like that, would you not?” + +“I should,” replied Themistocleus. + +“And to you, Alkid, I will bring a drum. That would suit you, would it +not?” And he bowed in Alkid’s direction. + +“Zeth--a drum,” lisped the boy, hanging his head. + +“Good! Then a drum it shall be--SUCH a beautiful drum! What a +tur-r-r-ru-ing and a tra-ta-ta-ta-ing you will be able to kick up! +Farewell, my darling.” And, kissing the boy’s head, he turned to Manilov +and Madame with the slight smile which one assumes before assuring +parents of the guileless merits of their offspring. + +“But you had better stay, Paul Ivanovitch,” said the father as the trio +stepped out on to the verandah. “See how the clouds are gathering!” + +“They are only small ones,” replied Chichikov. + +“And you know your way to Sobakevitch’s?” + +“No, I do not, and should be glad if you would direct me.” + +“If you like I will tell your coachman.” And in very civil fashion +Manilov did so, even going so far as to address the man in the second +person plural. On hearing that he was to pass two turnings, and then to +take a third, Selifan remarked, “We shall get there all right, sir,” and +Chichikov departed amid a profound salvo of salutations and wavings of +handkerchiefs on the part of his host and hostess, who raised themselves +on tiptoe in their enthusiasm. + +For a long while Manilov stood following the departing britchka with his +eyes. In fact, he continued to smoke his pipe and gaze after the +vehicle even when it had become lost to view. Then he re-entered the +drawing-room, seated himself upon a chair, and surrendered his mind to +the thought that he had shown his guest most excellent entertainment. +Next, his mind passed imperceptibly to other matters, until at last it +lost itself God only knows where. He thought of the amenities of a life, +of friendship, and of how nice it would be to live with a comrade on, +say, the bank of some river, and to span the river with a bridge of his +own, and to build an enormous mansion with a facade lofty enough even to +afford a view to Moscow. On that facade he and his wife and friend would +drink afternoon tea in the open air, and discuss interesting subjects; +after which, in a fine carriage, they would drive to some reunion or +other, where with their pleasant manners they would so charm the company +that the Imperial Government, on learning of their merits, would raise +the pair to the grade of General or God knows what--that is to say, to +heights whereof even Manilov himself could form no idea. Then suddenly +Chichikov’s extraordinary request interrupted the dreamer’s reflections, +and he found his brain powerless to digest it, seeing that, turn and +turn the matter about as he might, he could not properly explain its +bearing. Smoking his pipe, he sat where he was until supper time. + + + +CHAPTER III + +Meanwhile, Chichikov, seated in his britchka and bowling along the +turnpike, was feeling greatly pleased with himself. From the preceding +chapter the reader will have gathered the principal subject of his bent +and inclinations: wherefore it is no matter for wonder that his body +and his soul had ended by becoming wholly immersed therein. To all +appearances the thoughts, the calculations, and the projects which +were now reflected in his face partook of a pleasant nature, since +momentarily they kept leaving behind them a satisfied smile. Indeed, so +engrossed was he that he never noticed that his coachman, elated with +the hospitality of Manilov’s domestics, was making remarks of a didactic +nature to the off horse of the troika [11], a skewbald. This skewbald +was a knowing animal, and made only a show of pulling; whereas its +comrades, the middle horse (a bay, and known as the Assessor, owing to +his having been acquired from a gentleman of that rank) and the near +horse (a roan), would do their work gallantly, and even evince in their +eyes the pleasure which they derived from their exertions. + +“Ah, you rascal, you rascal! I’ll get the better of you!” ejaculated +Selifan as he sat up and gave the lazy one a cut with his whip. “YOU +know your business all right, you German pantaloon! The bay is a good +fellow, and does his duty, and I will give him a bit over his feed, for +he is a horse to be respected; and the Assessor too is a good horse. But +what are YOU shaking your ears for? You are a fool, so just mind when +you’re spoken to. ’Tis good advice I’m giving you, you blockhead. Ah! +You CAN travel when you like.” And he gave the animal another cut, +and then shouted to the trio, “Gee up, my beauties!” and drew his whip +gently across the backs of the skewbald’s comrades--not as a punishment, +but as a sign of his approval. That done, he addressed himself to the +skewbald again. + +“Do you think,” he cried, “that I don’t see what you are doing? You can +behave quite decently when you like, and make a man respect you.” + +With that he fell to recalling certain reminiscences. + +“They were NICE folk, those folk at the gentleman’s yonder,” he mused. +“I DO love a chat with a man when he is a good sort. With a man of that +kind I am always hail-fellow-well-met, and glad to drink a glass of +tea with him, or to eat a biscuit. One CAN’T help respecting a decent +fellow. For instance, this gentleman of mine--why, every one looks up +to him, for he has been in the Government’s service, and is a Collegiate +Councillor.” + +Thus soliloquising, he passed to more remote abstractions; until, had +Chichikov been listening, he would have learnt a number of interesting +details concerning himself. However, his thoughts were wholly occupied +with his own subject, so much so that not until a loud clap of thunder +awoke him from his reverie did he glance around him. The sky was +completely covered with clouds, and the dusty turnpike beginning to +be sprinkled with drops of rain. At length a second and a nearer and a +louder peal resounded, and the rain descended as from a bucket. Falling +slantwise, it beat upon one side of the basketwork of the tilt until the +splashings began to spurt into his face, and he found himself forced to +draw the curtains (fitted with circular openings through which to obtain +a glimpse of the wayside view), and to shout to Selifan to quicken his +pace. Upon that the coachman, interrupted in the middle of his harangue, +bethought him that no time was to be lost; wherefore, extracting from +under the box-seat a piece of old blanket, he covered over his sleeves, +resumed the reins, and cheered on his threefold team (which, it may +be said, had so completely succumbed to the influence of the pleasant +lassitude induced by Selifan’s discourse that it had taken to scarcely +placing one leg before the other). Unfortunately, Selifan could not +clearly remember whether two turnings had been passed or three. Indeed, +on collecting his faculties, and dimly recalling the lie of the road, +he became filled with a shrewd suspicion that A VERY LARGE NUMBER of +turnings had been passed. But since, at moments which call for a hasty +decision, a Russian is quick to discover what may conceivably be +the best course to take, our coachman put away from him all ulterior +reasoning, and, turning to the right at the next cross-road, shouted, +“Hi, my beauties!” and set off at a gallop. Never for a moment did he +stop to think whither the road might lead him! + +It was long before the clouds had discharged their burden, and, +meanwhile, the dust on the road became kneaded into mire, and the +horses’ task of pulling the britchka heavier and heavier. Also, +Chichikov had taken alarm at his continued failure to catch sight of +Sobakevitch’s country house. According to his calculations, it ought to +have been reached long ago. He gazed about him on every side, but the +darkness was too dense for the eye to pierce. + +“Selifan!” he exclaimed, leaning forward in the britchka. + +“What is it, barin?” replied the coachman. + +“Can you see the country house anywhere?” + +“No, barin.” After which, with a flourish of the whip, the man broke +into a sort of endless, drawling song. In that song everything had +a place. By “everything” I mean both the various encouraging and +stimulating cries with which Russian folk urge on their horses, and a +random, unpremeditated selection of adjectives. + +Meanwhile Chichikov began to notice that the britchka was swaying +violently, and dealing him occasional bumps. Consequently he suspected +that it had left the road and was being dragged over a ploughed field. +Upon Selifan’s mind there appeared to have dawned a similar inkling, for +he had ceased to hold forth. + +“You rascal, what road are you following?” inquired Chichikov. + +“I don’t know,” retorted the coachman. “What can a man do at a time of +night when the darkness won’t let him even see his whip?” And as Selifan +spoke the vehicle tilted to an angle which left Chichikov no choice but +to hang on with hands and teeth. At length he realised the fact that +Selifan was drunk. + +“Stop, stop, or you will upset us!” he shouted to the fellow. + +“No, no, barin,” replied Selifan. “HOW could I upset you? To upset +people is wrong. I know that very well, and should never dream of such +conduct.” + +Here he started to turn the vehicle round a little--and kept on doing so +until the britchka capsized on to its side, and Chichikov landed in the +mud on his hands and knees. Fortunately Selifan succeeded in stopping +the horses, although they would have stopped of themselves, seeing +that they were utterly worn out. This unforeseen catastrophe evidently +astonished their driver. Slipping from the box, he stood resting his +hands against the side of the britchka, while Chichikov tumbled and +floundered about in the mud, in a vain endeavour to wriggle clear of the +stuff. + +“Ah, you!” said Selifan meditatively to the britchka. “To think of +upsetting us like this!” + +“You are as drunk as a lord!” exclaimed Chichikov. + +“No, no, barin. Drunk, indeed? Why, I know my manners too well. A word +or two with a friend--that is all that I have taken. Any one may talk +with a decent man when he meets him. There is nothing wrong in +that. Also, we had a snack together. There is nothing wrong in a +snack--especially a snack with a decent man.” + +“What did I say to you when last you got drunk?” asked Chichikov. “Have +you forgotten what I said then?” + +“No, no, barin. HOW could I forget it? I know what is what, and know +that it is not right to get drunk. All that I have been having is a word +or two with a decent man, for the reason that--” + +“Well, if I lay the whip about you, you’ll know then how to talk to a +decent fellow, I’ll warrant!” + +“As you please, barin,” replied the complacent Selifan. “Should you +whip me, you will whip me, and I shall have nothing to complain of. Why +should you not whip me if I deserve it? ’Tis for you to do as you like. +Whippings are necessary sometimes, for a peasant often plays the fool, +and discipline ought to be maintained. If I have deserved it, beat me. +Why should you not?” + +This reasoning seemed, at the moment, irrefutable, and Chichikov said +nothing more. Fortunately fate had decided to take pity on the pair, for +from afar their ears caught the barking of a dog. Plucking up courage, +Chichikov gave orders for the britchka to be righted, and the horses to +be urged forward; and since a Russian driver has at least this merit, +that, owing to a keen sense of smell being able to take the place +of eyesight, he can, if necessary, drive at random and yet reach a +destination of some sort, Selifan succeeded, though powerless to discern +a single object, in directing his steeds to a country house near by, and +that with such a certainty of instinct that it was not until the shafts +had collided with a garden wall, and thereby made it clear that to +proceed another pace was impossible, that he stopped. All that Chichikov +could discern through the thick veil of pouring rain was something +which resembled a verandah. So he dispatched Selifan to search for the +entrance gates, and that process would have lasted indefinitely had it +not been shortened by the circumstance that, in Russia, the place of +a Swiss footman is frequently taken by watchdogs; of which animals a +number now proclaimed the travellers’ presence so loudly that Chichikov +found himself forced to stop his ears. Next, a light gleamed in one +of the windows, and filtered in a thin stream to the garden wall--thus +revealing the whereabouts of the entrance gates; whereupon Selifan +fell to knocking at the gates until the bolts of the house door were +withdrawn and there issued therefrom a figure clad in a rough cloak. + +“Who is that knocking? What have you come for?” shouted the hoarse voice +of an elderly woman. + +“We are travellers, good mother,” said Chichikov. “Pray allow us to +spend the night here.” + +“Out upon you for a pair of gadabouts!” retorted the old woman. “A fine +time of night to be arriving! We don’t keep an hotel, mind you. This is +a lady’s residence.” + +“But what are we to do, mother? We have lost our way, and cannot spend +the night out of doors in such weather.” + +“No, we cannot. The night is dark and cold,” added Selifan. + +“Hold your tongue, you fool!” exclaimed Chichikov. + +“Who ARE you, then?” inquired the old woman. + +“A dvorianin [12], good mother.” + +Somehow the word dvorianin seemed to give the old woman food for +thought. + +“Wait a moment,” she said, “and I will tell the mistress.” + +Two minutes later she returned with a lantern in her hand, the gates +were opened, and a light glimmered in a second window. Entering the +courtyard, the britchka halted before a moderate-sized mansion. The +darkness did not permit of very accurate observation being made, +but, apparently, the windows only of one-half of the building were +illuminated, while a quagmire in front of the door reflected the beams +from the same. Meanwhile the rain continued to beat sonorously down upon +the wooden roof, and could be heard trickling into a water butt; nor +for a single moment did the dogs cease to bark with all the strength of +their lungs. One of them, throwing up its head, kept venting a howl +of such energy and duration that the animal seemed to be howling for a +handsome wager; while another, cutting in between the yelpings of the +first animal, kept restlessly reiterating, like a postman’s bell, the +notes of a very young puppy. Finally, an old hound which appeared to be +gifted with a peculiarly robust temperament kept supplying the part of +contrabasso, so that his growls resembled the rumbling of a bass singer +when a chorus is in full cry, and the tenors are rising on tiptoe in +their efforts to compass a particularly high note, and the whole body of +choristers are wagging their heads before approaching a climax, and +this contrabasso alone is tucking his bearded chin into his collar, and +sinking almost to a squatting posture on the floor, in order to produce +a note which shall cause the windows to shiver and their panes to crack. +Naturally, from a canine chorus of such executants it might reasonably +be inferred that the establishment was one of the utmost respectability. +To that, however, our damp, cold hero gave not a thought, for all his +mind was fixed upon bed. Indeed, the britchka had hardly come to a +standstill before he leapt out upon the doorstep, missed his footing, +and came within an ace of falling. To meet him there issued a female +younger than the first, but very closely resembling her; and on his +being conducted to the parlour, a couple of glances showed him that the +room was hung with old striped curtains, and ornamented with pictures +of birds and small, antique mirrors--the latter set in dark frames which +were carved to resemble scrolls of foliage. Behind each mirror was stuck +either a letter or an old pack of cards or a stocking, while on the wall +hung a clock with a flowered dial. More, however, Chichikov could not +discern, for his eyelids were as heavy as though smeared with treacle. +Presently the lady of the house herself entered--an elderly woman in a +sort of nightcap (hastily put on) and a flannel neck wrap. She belonged +to that class of lady landowners who are for ever lamenting failures of +the harvest and their losses thereby; to the class who, drooping their +heads despondently, are all the while stuffing money into striped +purses, which they keep hoarded in the drawers of cupboards. Into one +purse they will stuff rouble pieces, into another half roubles, and into +a third tchetvertachki [13], although from their mien you would suppose +that the cupboard contained only linen and nightshirts and skeins of +wool and the piece of shabby material which is destined--should the +old gown become scorched during the baking of holiday cakes and other +dainties, or should it fall into pieces of itself--to become converted +into a new dress. But the gown never does get burnt or wear out, for +the reason that the lady is too careful; wherefore the piece of shabby +material reposes in its unmade-up condition until the priest advises +that it be given to the niece of some widowed sister, together with a +quantity of other such rubbish. + +Chichikov apologised for having disturbed the household with his +unexpected arrival. + +“Not at all, not at all,” replied the lady. “But in what dreadful +weather God has brought you hither! What wind and what rain! You could +not help losing your way. Pray excuse us for being unable to make better +preparations for you at this time of night.” + +Suddenly there broke in upon the hostess’ words the sound of a strange +hissing, a sound so loud that the guest started in alarm, and the more +so seeing that it increased until the room seemed filled with adders. On +glancing upwards, however, he recovered his composure, for he perceived +the sound to be emanating from the clock, which appeared to be in a mind +to strike. To the hissing sound there succeeded a wheezing one, until, +putting forth its best efforts, the thing struck two with as much +clatter as though some one had been hitting an iron pot with a +cudgel. That done, the pendulum returned to its right-left, right-left +oscillation. + +Chichikov thanked his hostess kindly, and said that he needed nothing, +and she must not put herself about: only for rest was he longing--though +also he should like to know whither he had arrived, and whether the +distance to the country house of land-owner Sobakevitch was anything +very great. To this the lady replied that she had never so much as heard +the name, since no gentleman of the name resided in the locality. + +“But at least you are acquainted with landowner Manilov?” continued +Chichikov. + +“No. Who is he?” + +“Another landed proprietor, madam.” + +“Well, neither have I heard of him. No such landowner lives hereabouts.” + +“Then who ARE your local landowners?” + +“Bobrov, Svinin, Kanapatiev, Khapakin, Trepakin, and Plieshakov.” + +“Are they rich men?” + +“No, none of them. One of them may own twenty souls, and another thirty, +but of gentry who own a hundred there are none.” + +Chichikov reflected that he had indeed fallen into an aristocratic +wilderness! + +“At all events, is the town far away?” he inquired. + +“About sixty versts. How sorry I am that I have nothing for you to eat! +Should you care to drink some tea?” + +“I thank you, good mother, but I require nothing beyond a bed.” + +“Well, after such a journey you must indeed be needing rest, so you +shall lie upon this sofa. Fetinia, bring a quilt and some pillows and +sheets. What weather God has sent us! And what dreadful thunder! Ever +since sunset I have had a candle burning before the ikon in my bedroom. +My God! Why, your back and sides are as muddy as a boar’s! However have +you managed to get into such a state?” + +“That I am nothing worse than muddy is indeed fortunate, since, but for +the Almighty, I should have had my ribs broken.” + +“Dear, dear! To think of all that you must have been through. Had I not +better wipe your back?” + +“I thank you, I thank you, but you need not trouble. Merely be so good +as to tell your maid to dry my clothes.” + +“Do you hear that, Fetinia?” said the hostess, turning to a woman who +was engaged in dragging in a feather bed and deluging the room with +feathers. “Take this coat and this vest, and, after drying them before +the fire--just as we used to do for your late master--give them a good +rub, and fold them up neatly.” + +“Very well, mistress,” said Fetinia, spreading some sheets over the bed, +and arranging the pillows. + +“Now your bed is ready for you,” said the hostess to Chichikov. +“Good-night, dear sir. I wish you good-night. Is there anything else +that you require? Perhaps you would like to have your heels tickled +before retiring to rest? Never could my late husband get to sleep +without that having been done.” + +But the guest declined the proffered heel-tickling, and, on his hostess +taking her departure, hastened to divest himself of his clothing, both +upper and under, and to hand the garments to Fetinia. She wished him +good-night, and removed the wet trappings; after which he found himself +alone. Not without satisfaction did he eye his bed, which reached +almost to the ceiling. Clearly Fetinia was a past mistress in the art of +beating up such a couch, and, as the result, he had no sooner mounted +it with the aid of a chair than it sank well-nigh to the floor, and the +feathers, squeezed out of their proper confines, flew hither and thither +into every corner of the apartment. Nevertheless he extinguished the +candle, covered himself over with the chintz quilt, snuggled down +beneath it, and instantly fell asleep. Next day it was late in the +morning before he awoke. Through the window the sun was shining into his +eyes, and the flies which, overnight, had been roosting quietly on the +walls and ceiling now turned their attention to the visitor. One settled +on his lip, another on his ear, a third hovered as though intending +to lodge in his very eye, and a fourth had the temerity to alight +just under his nostrils. In his drowsy condition he inhaled the latter +insect, sneezed violently, and so returned to consciousness. He +glanced around the room, and perceived that not all the pictures were +representative of birds, since among them hung also a portrait of +Kutuzov [14] and an oil painting of an old man in a uniform with red +facings such as were worn in the days of the Emperor Paul [15]. At this +moment the clock uttered its usual hissing sound, and struck ten, while +a woman’s face peered in at the door, but at once withdrew, for the +reason that, with the object of sleeping as well as possible, Chichikov +had removed every stitch of his clothing. Somehow the face seemed to him +familiar, and he set himself to recall whose it could be. At length he +recollected that it was the face of his hostess. His clothes he found +lying, clean and dry, beside him; so he dressed and approached the +mirror, meanwhile sneezing again with such vehemence that a cock which +happened at the moment to be near the window (which was situated at no +great distance from the ground) chuckled a short, sharp phrase. Probably +it meant, in the bird’s alien tongue, “Good morning to you!” Chichikov +retorted by calling the bird a fool, and then himself approached the +window to look at the view. It appeared to comprise a poulterer’s +premises. At all events, the narrow yard in front of the window was full +of poultry and other domestic creatures--of game fowls and barn door +fowls, with, among them, a cock which strutted with measured gait, and +kept shaking its comb, and tilting its head as though it were trying to +listen to something. Also, a sow and her family were helping to grace +the scene. First, she rooted among a heap of litter; then, in passing, +she ate up a young pullet; lastly, she proceeded carelessly to munch +some pieces of melon rind. To this small yard or poultry-run a length +of planking served as a fence, while beyond it lay a kitchen garden +containing cabbages, onions, potatoes, beetroots, and other household +vegetables. Also, the garden contained a few stray fruit trees that +were covered with netting to protect them from the magpies and sparrows; +flocks of which were even then wheeling and darting from one spot to +another. For the same reason a number of scarecrows with outstretched +arms stood reared on long poles, with, surmounting one of the figures, +a cast-off cap of the hostess’s. Beyond the garden again there stood a +number of peasants’ huts. Though scattered, instead of being arranged in +regular rows, these appeared to Chichikov’s eye to comprise well-to-do +inhabitants, since all rotten planks in their roofing had been replaced +with new ones, and none of their doors were askew, and such of their +tiltsheds as faced him evinced evidence of a presence of a spare +waggon--in some cases almost a new one. + +“This lady owns by no means a poor village,” said Chichikov to himself; +wherefore he decided then and there to have a talk with his hostess, and +to cultivate her closer acquaintance. Accordingly he peeped through the +chink of the door whence her head had recently protruded, and, on seeing +her seated at a tea table, entered and greeted her with a cheerful, +kindly smile. + +“Good morning, dear sir,” she responded as she rose. “How have you +slept?” She was dressed in better style than she had been on the +previous evening. That is to say, she was now wearing a gown of some +dark colour, and lacked her nightcap, and had swathed her neck in +something stiff. + +“I have slept exceedingly well,” replied Chichikov, seating himself upon +a chair. “And how are YOU, good madam?” + +“But poorly, my dear sir.” + +“And why so?” + +“Because I cannot sleep. A pain has taken me in my middle, and my legs, +from the ankles upwards, are aching as though they were broken.” + +“That will pass, that will pass, good mother. You must pay no attention +to it.” + +“God grant that it MAY pass. However, I have been rubbing myself with +lard and turpentine. What sort of tea will you take? In this jar I have +some of the scented kind.” + +“Excellent, good mother! Then I will take that.” + +Probably the reader will have noticed that, for all his expressions of +solicitude, Chichikov’s tone towards his hostess partook of a freer, a +more unceremonious, nature than that which he had adopted towards Madam +Manilov. And here I should like to assert that, howsoever much, in +certain respects, we Russians may be surpassed by foreigners, at least +we surpass them in adroitness of manner. In fact the various shades and +subtleties of our social intercourse defy enumeration. A Frenchman or +a German would be incapable of envisaging and understanding all its +peculiarities and differences, for his tone in speaking to a millionaire +differs but little from that which he employs towards a small +tobacconist--and that in spite of the circumstance that he is accustomed +to cringe before the former. With us, however, things are different. In +Russian society there exist clever folk who can speak in one manner to +a landowner possessed of two hundred peasant souls, and in another to +a landowner possessed of three hundred, and in another to a landowner +possessed of five hundred. In short, up to the number of a million +souls the Russian will have ready for each landowner a suitable mode of +address. For example, suppose that somewhere there exists a government +office, and that in that office there exists a director. I would beg of +you to contemplate him as he sits among his myrmidons. Sheer nervousness +will prevent you from uttering a word in his presence, so great are the +pride and superiority depicted on his countenance. Also, were you to +sketch him, you would be sketching a veritable Prometheus, for his +glance is as that of an eagle, and he walks with measured, stately +stride. Yet no sooner will the eagle have left the room to seek the +study of his superior officer than he will go scurrying along (papers +held close to his nose) like any partridge. But in society, and at the +evening party (should the rest of those present be of lesser rank than +himself) the Prometheus will once more become Prometheus, and the man +who stands a step below him will treat him in a way never dreamt of by +Ovid, seeing that each fly is of lesser account than its superior fly, +and becomes, in the presence of the latter, even as a grain of sand. +“Surely that is not Ivan Petrovitch?” you will say of such and such a +man as you regard him. “Ivan Petrovitch is tall, whereas this man is +small and spare. Ivan Petrovitch has a loud, deep voice, and never +smiles, whereas this man (whoever he may be) is twittering like a +sparrow, and smiling all the time.” Yet approach and take a good look at +the fellow and you will see that is IS Ivan Petrovitch. “Alack, alack!” + will be the only remark you can make. + +Let us return to our characters in real life. We have seen that, on this +occasion, Chichikov decided to dispense with ceremony; wherefore, taking +up the teapot, he went on as follows: + +“You have a nice little village here, madam. How many souls does it +contain?” + +“A little less than eighty, dear sir. But the times are hard, and I have +lost a great deal through last year’s harvest having proved a failure.” + +“But your peasants look fine, strong fellows. May I enquire your name? +Through arriving so late at night I have quite lost my wits.” + +“Korobotchka, the widow of a Collegiate Secretary.” + +“I humbly thank you. And your Christian name and patronymic?” + +“Nastasia Petrovna.” + +“Nastasia Petrovna! Those are excellent names. I have a maternal aunt +named like yourself.” + +“And YOUR name?” queried the lady. “May I take it that you are a +Government Assessor?” + +“No, madam,” replied Chichikov with a smile. “I am not an Assessor, but +a traveller on private business.” + +“Then you must be a buyer of produce? How I regret that I have sold my +honey so cheaply to other buyers! Otherwise YOU might have bought it, +dear sir.” + +“I never buy honey.” + +“Then WHAT do you buy, pray? Hemp? I have a little of that by me, but +not more than half a pood [16] or so.” + +“No, madam. It is in other wares that I deal. Tell me, have you, of late +years, lost many of your peasants by death?” + +“Yes; no fewer than eighteen,” responded the old lady with a sigh. “Such +a fine lot, too--all good workers! True, others have since grown up, +but of what use are THEY? Mere striplings. When the Assessor last called +upon me I could have wept; for, though those workmen of mine are dead, +I have to keep on paying for them as though they were still alive! And +only last week my blacksmith got burnt to death! Such a clever hand at +his trade he was!” + +“What? A fire occurred at your place?” + +“No, no, God preserve us all! It was not so bad as that. You must +understand that the blacksmith SET HIMSELF on fire--he got set on fire +in his bowels through overdrinking. Yes, all of a sudden there burst +from him a blue flame, and he smouldered and smouldered until he had +turned as black as a piece of charcoal! Yet what a clever blacksmith he +was! And now I have no horses to drive out with, for there is no one to +shoe them.” + +“In everything the will of God, madam,” said Chichikov with a sigh. +“Against the divine wisdom it is not for us to rebel. Pray hand them +over to me, Nastasia Petrovna.” + +“Hand over whom?” + +“The dead peasants.” + +“But how could I do that?” + +“Quite simply. Sell them to me, and I will give you some money in +exchange.” + +“But how am I to sell them to you? I scarcely understand what you mean. +Am I to dig them up again from the ground?” + +Chichikov perceived that the old lady was altogether at sea, and that he +must explain the matter; wherefore in a few words he informed her that +the transfer or purchase of the souls in question would take place +merely on paper--that the said souls would be listed as still alive. + +“And what good would they be to you?” asked his hostess, staring at him +with her eyes distended. + +“That is MY affair.” + +“But they are DEAD souls.” + +“Who said they were not? The mere fact of their being dead entails upon +you a loss as dead as the souls, for you have to continue paying tax +upon them, whereas MY plan is to relieve you both of the tax and of the +resultant trouble. NOW do you understand? And I will not only do as +I say, but also hand you over fifteen roubles per soul. Is that clear +enough?” + +“Yes--but I do not know,” said his hostess diffidently. “You see, never +before have I sold dead souls.” + +“Quite so. It would be a surprising thing if you had. But surely you do +not think that these dead souls are in the least worth keeping?” + +“Oh, no, indeed! Why should they be worth keeping? I am sure they are +not so. The only thing which troubles me is the fact that they are +DEAD.” + +“She seems a truly obstinate old woman!” was Chichikov’s inward comment. +“Look here, madam,” he added aloud. “You reason well, but you are simply +ruining yourself by continuing to pay the tax upon dead souls as though +they were still alive.” + +“Oh, good sir, do not speak of it!” the lady exclaimed. “Three weeks ago +I took a hundred and fifty roubles to that Assessor, and buttered him +up, and--” + +“Then you see how it is, do you not? Remember that, according to my +plan, you will never again have to butter up the Assessor, seeing that +it will be I who will be paying for those peasants--_I_, not YOU, for I +shall have taken over the dues upon them, and have transferred them to +myself as so many bona fide serfs. Do you understand AT LAST?” + +However, the old lady still communed with herself. She could see that +the transaction would be to her advantage, yet it was one of such a +novel and unprecedented nature that she was beginning to fear lest this +purchaser of souls intended to cheat her. Certainly he had come from God +only knew where, and at the dead of night, too! + +“But, sir, I have never in my life sold dead folk--only living ones. +Three years ago I transferred two wenches to Protopopov for a hundred +roubles apiece, and he thanked me kindly, for they turned out splendid +workers--able to make napkins or anything else. + +“Yes, but with the living we have nothing to do, damn it! I am asking +you only about DEAD folk.” + +“Yes, yes, of course. But at first sight I felt afraid lest I should be +incurring a loss--lest you should be wishing to outwit me, good sir. +You see, the dead souls are worth rather more than you have offered for +them.” + +“See here, madam. (What a woman it is!) HOW could they be worth more? +Think for yourself. They are so much loss to you--so much loss, do you +understand? Take any worthless, rubbishy article you like--a piece of +old rag, for example. That rag will yet fetch its price, for it can be +bought for paper-making. But these dead souls are good for NOTHING AT +ALL. Can you name anything that they ARE good for?” + +“True, true--they ARE good for nothing. But what troubles me is the fact +that they are dead.” + +“What a blockhead of a creature!” said Chichikov to himself, for he was +beginning to lose patience. “Bless her heart, I may as well be going. +She has thrown me into a perfect sweat, the cursed old shrew!” + +He took a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the perspiration from +his brow. Yet he need not have flown into such a passion. More than one +respected statesman reveals himself, when confronted with a business +matter, to be just such another as Madam Korobotchka, in that, once he +has got an idea into his head, there is no getting it out of him--you +may ply him with daylight-clear arguments, yet they will rebound +from his brain as an india-rubber ball rebounds from a flagstone. +Nevertheless, wiping away the perspiration, Chichikov resolved to try +whether he could not bring her back to the road by another path. + +“Madam,” he said, “either you are declining to understand what I say or +you are talking for the mere sake of talking. If I hand you over some +money--fifteen roubles for each soul, do you understand?--it is MONEY, +not something which can be picked up haphazard on the street. For +instance, tell me how much you sold your honey for?” + +“For twelve roubles per pood.” + +“Ah! Then by those words, madam, you have laid a trifling sin upon your +soul; for you did NOT sell the honey for twelve roubles.” + +“By the Lord God I did!” + +“Well, well! Never mind. Honey is only honey. Now, you had collected +that stuff, it may be, for a year, and with infinite care and labour. +You had fussed after it, you had trotted to and fro, you had duly frozen +out the bees, and you had fed them in the cellar throughout the winter. +But these dead souls of which I speak are quite another matter, for in +this case you have put forth no exertions--it was merely God’s will that +they should leave the world, and thus decrease the personnel of your +establishment. In the former case you received (so you allege) twelve +roubles per pood for your labour; but in this case you will receive +money for having done nothing at all. Nor will you receive twelve +roubles per item, but FIFTEEN--and roubles not in silver, but roubles in +good paper currency.” + +That these powerful inducements would certainly cause the old woman to +yield Chichikov had not a doubt. + +“True,” his hostess replied. “But how strangely business comes to me as +a widow! Perhaps I had better wait a little longer, seeing that other +buyers might come along, and I might be able to compare prices.” + +“For shame, madam! For shame! Think what you are saying. Who else, I +would ask, would care to buy those souls? What use could they be to any +one?” + +“If that is so, they might come in useful to ME,” mused the old woman +aloud; after which she sat staring at Chichikov with her mouth open and +a face of nervous expectancy as to his possible rejoinder. + +“Dead folk useful in a household!” he exclaimed. “Why, what could you do +with them? Set them up on poles to frighten away the sparrows from your +garden?” + +“The Lord save us, but what things you say!” she ejaculated, crossing +herself. + +“Well, WHAT could you do with them? By this time they are so much bones +and earth. That is all there is left of them. Their transfer to myself +would be ON PAPER only. Come, come! At least give me an answer.” + +Again the old woman communed with herself. + +“What are you thinking of, Nastasia Petrovna?” inquired Chichikov. + +“I am thinking that I scarcely know what to do. Perhaps I had better +sell you some hemp?” + +“What do I want with hemp? Pardon me, but just when I have made to you +a different proposal altogether you begin fussing about hemp! Hemp is +hemp, and though I may want some when I NEXT visit you, I should like to +know what you have to say to the suggestion under discussion.” + +“Well, I think it a very queer bargain. Never have I heard of such a +thing.” + +Upon this Chichikov lost all patience, upset his chair, and bid her go +to the devil; of which personage even the mere mention terrified her +extremely. + +“Do not speak of him, I beg of you!” she cried, turning pale. “May God, +rather, bless him! Last night was the third night that he has appeared +to me in a dream. You see, after saying my prayers, I bethought me +of telling my fortune by the cards; and God must have sent him as a +punishment. He looked so horrible, and had horns longer than a bull’s!” + +“I wonder you don’t see SCORES of devils in your dreams! Merely out of +Christian charity he had come to you to say, ‘I perceive a poor widow +going to rack and ruin, and likely soon to stand in danger of want.’ +Well, go to rack and ruin--yes, you and all your village together!” + +“The insults!” exclaimed the old woman, glancing at her visitor in +terror. + +“I should think so!” continued Chichikov. “Indeed, I cannot find words +to describe you. To say no more about it, you are like a dog in a +manger. You don’t want to eat the hay yourself, yet you won’t let +anyone else touch it. All that I am seeking to do is to purchase +certain domestic products of yours, for the reason that I have certain +Government contracts to fulfil.” This last he added in passing, and +without any ulterior motive, save that it came to him as a happy +thought. Nevertheless the mention of Government contracts exercised a +powerful influence upon Nastasia Petrovna, and she hastened to say in a +tone that was almost supplicatory: + +“Why should you be so angry with me? Had I known that you were going to +lose your temper in this way, I should never have discussed the matter.” + +“No wonder that I lose my temper! An egg too many is no great matter, +yet it may prove exceedingly annoying.” + +“Well, well, I will let you have the souls for fifteen roubles each. +Also, with regard to those contracts, do not forget me if at any time +you should find yourself in need of rye-meal or buckwheat or groats or +dead meat.” + +“No, I shall NEVER forget you, madam!” he said, wiping his forehead, +where three separate streams of perspiration were trickling down his +face. Then he asked her whether in the town she had any acquaintance or +agent whom she could empower to complete the transference of the serfs, +and to carry out whatsoever else might be necessary. + +“Certainly,” replied Madame Korobotchka. “The son of our archpriest, +Father Cyril, himself is a lawyer.” + +Upon that Chichikov begged her to accord the gentleman in question a +power of attorney, while, to save extra trouble, he himself would then +and there compose the requisite letter. + +“It would be a fine thing if he were to buy up all my meal and stock +for the Government,” thought Madame to herself. “I must encourage him a +little. There has been some dough standing ready since last night, so I +will go and tell Fetinia to try a few pancakes. Also, it might be well +to try him with an egg pie. We make then nicely here, and they do not +take long in the making.” + +So she departed to translate her thoughts into action, as well as to +supplement the pie with other products of the domestic cuisine; while, +for his part, Chichikov returned to the drawing-room where he had spent +the night, in order to procure from his dispatch-box the necessary +writing-paper. The room had now been set in order, the sumptuous +feather bed removed, and a table set before the sofa. Depositing his +dispatch-box upon the table, he heaved a gentle sigh on becoming aware +that he was so soaked with perspiration that he might almost have +been dipped in a river. Everything, from his shirt to his socks, +was dripping. “May she starve to death, the cursed old harridan!” he +ejaculated after a moment’s rest. Then he opened his dispatch-box. In +passing, I may say that I feel certain that at least SOME of my readers +will be curious to know the contents and the internal arrangements of +that receptacle. Why should I not gratify their curiosity? To begin +with, the centre of the box contained a soap-dish, with, disposed around +it, six or seven compartments for razors. Next came square partitions +for a sand-box [17] and an inkstand, as well as (scooped out in their +midst) a hollow of pens, sealing-wax, and anything else that required +more room. Lastly there were all sorts of little divisions, both with +and without lids, for articles of a smaller nature, such as visiting +cards, memorial cards, theatre tickets, and things which Chichikov had +laid by as souvenirs. This portion of the box could be taken out, and +below it were both a space for manuscripts and a secret money-box--the +latter made to draw out from the side of the receptacle. + +Chichikov set to work to clean a pen, and then to write. Presently his +hostess entered the room. + +“What a beautiful box you have got, my dear sir!” she exclaimed as she +took a seat beside him. “Probably you bought it in Moscow?” + +“Yes--in Moscow,” replied Chichikov without interrupting his writing. + +“I thought so. One CAN get good things there. Three years ago my sister +brought me a few pairs of warm shoes for my sons, and they were such +excellent articles! To this day my boys wear them. And what nice stamped +paper you have!” (she had peered into the dispatch-box, where, sure +enough, there lay a further store of the paper in question). “Would you +mind letting me have a sheet of it? I am without any at all, although I +shall soon have to be presenting a plea to the land court, and possess +not a morsel of paper to write it on.” + +Upon this Chichikov explained that the paper was not the sort proper +for the purpose--that it was meant for serf-indenturing, and not for +the framing of pleas. Nevertheless, to quiet her, he gave her a sheet +stamped to the value of a rouble. Next, he handed her the letter to +sign, and requested, in return, a list of her peasants. Unfortunately, +such a list had never been compiled, let alone any copies of it, and the +only way in which she knew the peasants’ names was by heart. However, he +told her to dictate them. Some of the names greatly astonished our hero, +so, still more, did the surnames. Indeed, frequently, on hearing the +latter, he had to pause before writing them down. Especially did he halt +before a certain “Peter Saveliev Neuvazhai Korito.” “What a string of +titles!” involuntarily he ejaculated. To the Christian name of another +serf was appended “Korovi Kirpitch,” and to that of a third “Koleso +Ivan.” However, at length the list was compiled, and he caught a deep +breath; which latter proceeding caused him to catch also the attractive +odour of something fried in fat. + +“I beseech you to have a morsel,” murmured his hostess. Chichikov looked +up, and saw that the table was spread with mushrooms, pies, and other +viands. + +“Try this freshly-made pie and an egg,” continued Madame. + +Chichikov did so, and having eaten more than half of what she offered +him, praised the pie highly. Indeed, it was a toothsome dish, and, after +his difficulties and exertions with his hostess, it tasted even better +than it might otherwise have done. + +“And also a few pancakes?” suggested Madame. + +For answer Chichikov folded three together, and, having dipped them in +melted butter, consigned the lot to his mouth, and then wiped his +mouth with a napkin. Twice more was the process repeated, and then +he requested his hostess to order the britchka to be got ready. In +dispatching Fetinia with the necessary instructions, she ordered her to +return with a second batch of hot pancakes. + +“Your pancakes are indeed splendid,” said Chichikov, applying himself to +the second consignment of fried dainties when they had arrived. + +“Yes, we make them well here,” replied Madame. “Yet how unfortunate it +is that the harvest should have proved so poor as to have prevented me +from earning anything on my--But why should you be in such a hurry to +depart, good sir?” She broke off on seeing Chichikov reach for his cap. +“The britchka is not yet ready.” + +“Then it is being got so, madam, it is being got so, and I shall need a +moment or two to pack my things.” + +“As you please, dear sir; but do not forget me in connection with those +Government contracts.” + +“No, I have said that NEVER shall I forget you,” replied Chichikov as he +hurried into the hall. + +“And would you like to buy some lard?” continued his hostess, pursuing +him. + +“Lard? Oh certainly. Why not? Only, only--I will do so ANOTHER time.” + +“I shall have some ready at about Christmas.” + +“Quite so, madam. THEN I will buy anything and everything--the lard +included.” + +“And perhaps you will be wanting also some feathers? I shall be having +some for sale about St. Philip’s Day.” + +“Very well, very well, madam.” + +“There you see!” she remarked as they stepped out on to the verandah. +“The britchka is NOT yet ready.” + +“But it soon will be, it soon will be. Only direct me to the main road.” + +“How am I to do that?” said Madame. “‘Twould puzzle a wise man to do so, +for in these parts there are so many turnings. However, I will send a +girl to guide you. You could find room for her on the box-seat, could +you not?” + +“Yes, of course.” + +“Then I will send her. She knows the way thoroughly. Only do not carry +her off for good. Already some traders have deprived me of one of my +girls.” + +Chichikov reassured his hostess on the point, and Madame plucked up +courage enough to scan, first of all, the housekeeper, who happened to +be issuing from the storehouse with a bowl of honey, and, next, a +young peasant who happened to be standing at the gates; and, while thus +engaged, she became wholly absorbed in her domestic pursuits. But +why pay her so much attention? The Widow Korobotchka, Madame Manilov, +domestic life, non-domestic life--away with them all! How strangely are +things compounded! In a trice may joy turn to sorrow, should one halt +long enough over it: in a trice only God can say what ideas may strike +one. You may fall even to thinking: “After all, did Madame Korobotchka +stand so very low in the scale of human perfection? Was there really +such a very great gulf between her and Madame Manilov--between her and +the Madame Manilov whom we have seen entrenched behind the walls of a +genteel mansion in which there were a fine staircase of wrought metal +and a number of rich carpets; the Madame Manilov who spent most of her +time in yawning behind half-read books, and in hoping for a visit from +some socially distinguished person in order that she might display her +wit and carefully rehearsed thoughts--thoughts which had been de rigueur +in town for a week past, yet which referred, not to what was going on +in her household or on her estate--both of which properties were at odds +and ends, owing to her ignorance of the art of managing them--but to +the coming political revolution in France and the direction in which +fashionable Catholicism was supposed to be moving? But away with such +things! Why need we speak of them? Yet how comes it that suddenly into +the midst of our careless, frivolous, unthinking moments there may enter +another, and a very different, tendency?--that the smile may not have +left a human face before its owner will have radically changed his or +her nature (though not his or her environment) with the result that +the face will suddenly become lit with a radiance never before seen +there?... + +“Here is the britchka, here is the britchka!” exclaimed Chichikov on +perceiving that vehicle slowly advancing. “Ah, you blockhead!” he +went on to Selifan. “Why have you been loitering about? I suppose last +night’s fumes have not yet left your brain?” + +To this Selifan returned no reply. + +“Good-bye, madam,” added the speaker. “But where is the girl whom you +promised me?” + +“Here, Pelagea!” called the hostess to a wench of about eleven who was +dressed in home-dyed garments and could boast of a pair of bare feet +which, from a distance, might almost have been mistaken for boots, so +encrusted were they with fresh mire. “Here, Pelagea! Come and show this +gentleman the way.” + +Selifan helped the girl to ascend to the box-seat. Placing one foot upon +the step by which the gentry mounted, she covered the said step with +mud, and then, ascending higher, attained the desired position beside +the coachman. Chichikov followed in her wake (causing the britchka to +heel over with his weight as he did so), and then settled himself back +into his place with an “All right! Good-bye, madam!” as the horses moved +away at a trot. + +Selifan looked gloomy as he drove, but also very attentive to his +business. This was invariably his custom when he had committed the fault +of getting drunk. Also, the horses looked unusually well-groomed. In +particular, the collar on one of them had been neatly mended, although +hitherto its state of dilapidation had been such as perennially to allow +the stuffing to protrude through the leather. The silence preserved was +well-nigh complete. Merely flourishing his whip, Selifan spoke to the +team no word of instruction, although the skewbald was as ready as usual +to listen to conversation of a didactic nature, seeing that at such +times the reins hung loosely in the hands of the loquacious driver, +and the whip wandered merely as a matter of form over the backs of the +troika. This time, however, there could be heard issuing from Selifan’s +sullen lips only the uniformly unpleasant exclamation, “Now then, you +brutes! Get on with you, get on with you!” The bay and the Assessor too +felt put out at not hearing themselves called “my pets” or “good lads”; +while, in addition, the skewbald came in for some nasty cuts across his +sleek and ample quarters. “What has put master out like this?” thought +the animal as it shook its head. “Heaven knows where he does not keep +beating me--across the back, and even where I am tenderer still. Yes, he +keeps catching the whip in my ears, and lashing me under the belly.” + +“To the right, eh?” snapped Selifan to the girl beside him as he pointed +to a rain-soaked road which trended away through fresh green fields. + +“No, no,” she replied. “I will show you the road when the time comes.” + +“Which way, then?” he asked again when they had proceeded a little +further. + +“This way.” And she pointed to the road just mentioned. + +“Get along with you!” retorted the coachman. “That DOES go to the right. +You don’t know your right hand from your left.” + +The weather was fine, but the ground so excessively sodden that the +wheels of the britchka collected mire until they had become caked as +with a layer of felt, a circumstance which greatly increased the weight +of the vehicle, and prevented it from clearing the neighbouring parishes +before the afternoon was arrived. Also, without the girl’s help the +finding of the way would have been impossible, since roads wiggled away +in every direction, like crabs released from a net, and, but for the +assistance mentioned, Selifan would have found himself left to his own +devices. Presently she pointed to a building ahead, with the words, +“THERE is the main road.” + +“And what is the building?” asked Selifan. + +“A tavern,” she said. + +“Then we can get along by ourselves,” he observed. “Do you get down, and +be off home.” + +With that he stopped, and helped her to alight--muttering as he did so: +“Ah, you blackfooted creature!” + +Chichikov added a copper groat, and she departed well pleased with her +ride in the gentleman’s carriage. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +On reaching the tavern, Chichikov called a halt. His reasons for this +were twofold--namely, that he wanted to rest the horses, and that he +himself desired some refreshment. In this connection the author feels +bound to confess that the appetite and the capacity of such men are +greatly to be envied. Of those well-to-do folk of St. Petersburg and +Moscow who spend their time in considering what they shall eat on the +morrow, and in composing a dinner for the day following, and who never +sit down to a meal without first of all injecting a pill and then +swallowing oysters and crabs and a quantity of other monsters, while +eternally departing for Karlsbad or the Caucasus, the author has but a +small opinion. Yes, THEY are not the persons to inspire envy. Rather, +it is the folk of the middle classes--folk who at one posthouse call for +bacon, and at another for a sucking pig, and at a third for a steak of +sturgeon or a baked pudding with onions, and who can sit down to table +at any hour, as though they had never had a meal in their lives, and +can devour fish of all sorts, and guzzle and chew it with a view +to provoking further appetite--these, I say, are the folk who enjoy +heaven’s most favoured gift. To attain such a celestial condition the +great folk of whom I have spoken would sacrifice half their serfs and +half their mortgaged and non-mortgaged property, with the foreign and +domestic improvements thereon, if thereby they could compass such +a stomach as is possessed by the folk of the middle class. But, +unfortunately, neither money nor real estate, whether improved or +non-improved, can purchase such a stomach. + +The little wooden tavern, with its narrow, but hospitable, curtain +suspended from a pair of rough-hewn doorposts like old church +candlesticks, seemed to invite Chichikov to enter. True, the +establishment was only a Russian hut of the ordinary type, but it was +a hut of larger dimensions than usual, and had around its windows and +gables carved and patterned cornices of bright-coloured wood which threw +into relief the darker hue of the walls, and consorted well with the +flowered pitchers painted on the shutters. + +Ascending the narrow wooden staircase to the upper floor, and arriving +upon a broad landing, Chichikov found himself confronted with a creaking +door and a stout old woman in a striped print gown. “This way, if you +please,” she said. Within the apartment designated Chichikov +encountered the old friends which one invariably finds in such roadside +hostelries--to wit, a heavy samovar, four smooth, bescratched walls of +white pine, a three-cornered press with cups and teapots, egg-cups +of gilded china standing in front of ikons suspended by blue and red +ribands, a cat lately delivered of a family, a mirror which gives one +four eyes instead of two and a pancake for a face, and, beside the +ikons, some bunches of herbs and carnations of such faded dustiness +that, should one attempt to smell them, one is bound to burst out +sneezing. + +“Have you a sucking-pig?” Chichikov inquired of the landlady as she +stood expectantly before him. + +“Yes.” + +“And some horse-radish and sour cream?” + +“Yes.” + +“Then serve them.” + +The landlady departed for the purpose, and returned with a plate, a +napkin (the latter starched to the consistency of dried bark), a knife +with a bone handle beginning to turn yellow, a two-pronged fork as thin +as a wafer, and a salt-cellar incapable of being made to stand upright. + +Following the accepted custom, our hero entered into conversation with +the woman, and inquired whether she herself or a landlord kept the +tavern; how much income the tavern brought in; whether her sons lived +with her; whether the oldest was a bachelor or married; whom the +eldest had taken to wife; whether the dowry had been large; whether the +father-in-law had been satisfied, and whether the said father-in-law +had not complained of receiving too small a present at the wedding. +In short, Chichikov touched on every conceivable point. Likewise +(of course) he displayed some curiosity as to the landowners of the +neighbourhood. Their names, he ascertained, were Blochin, Potchitaev, +Minoi, Cheprakov, and Sobakevitch. + +“Then you are acquainted with Sobakevitch?” he said; whereupon the old +woman informed him that she knew not only Sobakevitch, but also Manilov, +and that the latter was the more delicate eater of the two, since, +whereas Manilov always ordered a roast fowl and some veal and mutton, +and then tasted merely a morsel of each, Sobakevitch would order one +dish only, but consume the whole of it, and then demand more at the same +price. + +Whilst Chichikov was thus conversing and partaking of the sucking pig +until only a fragment of it seemed likely to remain, the sound of an +approaching vehicle made itself heard. Peering through the window, he +saw draw up to the tavern door a light britchka drawn by three fine +horses. From it there descended two men--one flaxen-haired and tall, and +the other dark-haired and of slighter build. While the flaxen-haired +man was clad in a dark-blue coat, the other one was wrapped in a coat +of striped pattern. Behind the britchka stood a second, but an empty, +turn-out, drawn by four long-coated steeds in ragged collars and +rope harnesses. The flaxen-haired man lost no time in ascending the +staircase, while his darker friend remained below to fumble at something +in the britchka, talking, as he did so, to the driver of the vehicle +which stood hitched behind. Somehow, the dark-haired man’s voice struck +Chichikov as familiar; and as he was taking another look at him the +flaxen-haired gentleman entered the room. The newcomer was a man of +lofty stature, with a small red moustache and a lean, hard-bitten face +whose redness made it evident that its acquaintance, if not with the +smoke of gunpowder, at all events with that of tobacco, was intimate +and extensive. Nevertheless he greeted Chichikov civilly, and the latter +returned his bow. Indeed, the pair would have entered into conversation, +and have made one another’s acquaintance (since a beginning was made +with their simultaneously expressing satisfaction at the circumstance +that the previous night’s rain had laid the dust on the roads, +and thereby made driving cool and pleasant) when the gentleman’s +darker-favoured friend also entered the room, and, throwing his cap upon +the table, pushed back a mass of dishevelled black locks from his brow. +The latest arrival was a man of medium height, but well put together, +and possessed of a pair of full red cheeks, a set of teeth as white as +snow, and coal-black whiskers. Indeed, so fresh was his complexion that +it seemed to have been compounded of blood and milk, while health danced +in his every feature. + +“Ha, ha, ha!” he cried with a gesture of astonishment at the sight of +Chichikov. “What chance brings YOU here?” + +Upon that Chichikov recognised Nozdrev--the man whom he had met at +dinner at the Public Prosecutor’s, and who, within a minute or two of +the introduction, had become so intimate with his fellow guest as to +address him in the second person singular, in spite of the fact that +Chichikov had given him no opportunity for doing so. + +“Where have you been to-day?” Nozdrev inquired, and, without waiting for +an answer, went on: “For myself, I am just from the fair, and completely +cleaned out. Actually, I have had to do the journey back with stage +horses! Look out of the window, and see them for yourself.” And he +turned Chichikov’s head so sharply in the desired direction that he came +very near to bumping it against the window frame. “Did you ever see such +a bag of tricks? The cursed things have only just managed to get here. +In fact, on the way I had to transfer myself to this fellow’s britchka.” + He indicated his companion with a finger. “By the way, don’t you know +one another? He is Mizhuev, my brother-in-law. He and I were talking of +you only this morning. ‘Just you see,’ said I to him, ‘if we do not fall +in with Chichikov before we have done.’ Heavens, how completely cleaned +out I am! Not only have I lost four good horses, but also my watch and +chain.” Chichikov perceived that in very truth his interlocutor was +minus the articles named, as well as that one of Nozdrev’s whiskers was +less bushy in appearance than the other one. “Had I had another twenty +roubles in my pocket,” went on Nozdrev, “I should have won back all that +I have lost, as well as have pouched a further thirty thousand. Yes, I +give you my word of honour on that.” + +“But you were saying the same thing when last I met you,” put in the +flaxen-haired man. “Yet, even though I lent you fifty roubles, you lost +them all.” + +“But I should not have lost them THIS time. Don’t try to make me out +a fool. I should NOT have lost them, I tell you. Had I only played the +right card, I should have broken the bank.” + +“But you did NOT break the bank,” remarked the flaxen-haired man. + +“No. That was because I did not play my cards right. But what about your +precious major’s play? Is THAT good?” + +“Good or not, at least he beat you.” + +“Splendid of him! Nevertheless I will get my own back. Let him play me +at doubles, and we shall soon see what sort of a player he is! +Friend Chichikov, at first we had a glorious time, for the fair was a +tremendous success. Indeed, the tradesmen said that never yet had there +been such a gathering. I myself managed to sell everything from my +estate at a good price. In fact, we had a magnificent time. I can’t help +thinking of it, devil take me! But what a pity YOU were not there! Three +versts from the town there is quartered a regiment of dragoons, and you +would scarcely believe what a lot of officers it has. Forty at least +there are, and they do a fine lot of knocking about the town and +drinking. In particular, Staff-Captain Potsieluev is a SPLENDID fellow! +You should just see his moustache! Why, he calls good claret ‘trash’! +‘Bring me some of the usual trash,’ is his way of ordering it. And +Lieutenant Kuvshinnikov, too! He is as delightful as the other man. In +fact, I may say that every one of the lot is a rake. I spent my whole +time with them, and you can imagine that Ponomarev, the wine merchant, +did a fine trade indeed! All the same, he is a rascal, you know, and +ought not to be dealt with, for he puts all sorts of rubbish into his +liquor--Indian wood and burnt cork and elderberry juice, the villain! +Nevertheless, get him to produce a bottle from what he calls his +‘special cellar,’ and you will fancy yourself in the seventh heaven of +delight. And what quantities of champagne we drank! Compared with it, +provincial stuff is kvass [18]. Try to imagine not merely Clicquot, but +a sort of blend of Clicquot and Matradura--Clicquot of double strength. +Also Ponomarev produced a bottle of French stuff which he calls +‘Bonbon.’ Had it a bouquet, ask you? Why, it had the bouquet of a rose +garden, of anything else you like. What times we had, to be sure! Just +after we had left Pnomarev’s place, some prince or another arrived in +the town, and sent out for some champagne; but not a bottle was there +left, for the officers had drunk every one! Why, I myself got through +seventeen bottles at a sitting.” + +“Come, come! You CAN’T have got through seventeen,” remarked the +flaxen-haired man. + +“But I did, I give my word of honour,” retorted Nozdrev. + +“Imagine what you like, but you didn’t drink even TEN bottles at a +sitting.” + +“Will you bet that I did not?” + +“No; for what would be the use of betting about it?” + +“Then at least wager the gun which you have bought.” + +“No, I am not going to do anything of the kind.” + +“Just as an experiment?” + +“No.” + +“It is as well for you that you don’t, since, otherwise, you would have +found yourself minus both gun and cap. However, friend Chichikov, it +is a pity you were not there. Had you been there, I feel sure you would +have found yourself unable to part with Lieutenant Kuvshinnikov. You and +he would have hit it off splendidly. You know, he is quite a +different sort from the Public Prosecutor and our other provincial +skinflints--fellows who shiver in their shoes before they will spend a +single kopeck. HE will play faro, or anything else, and at any time. +Why did you not come with us, instead of wasting your time on cattle +breeding or something of the sort? But never mind. Embrace me. I like +you immensely. Mizhuev, see how curiously things have turned out. +Chichikov has nothing to do with me, or I with him, yet here is he come +from God knows where, and landed in the very spot where I happen to be +living! I may tell you that, no matter how many carriages I possessed, I +should gamble the lot away. Recently I went in for a turn at billiards, +and lost two jars of pomade, a china teapot, and a guitar. Then I staked +some more things, and, like a fool, lost them all, and six roubles in +addition. What a dog is that Kuvshinnikov! He and I attended nearly +every ball in the place. In particular, there was a woman--decolletee, +and such a swell! I merely thought to myself, ‘The devil take her!’ but +Kuvshinnikov is such a wag that he sat down beside her, and began paying +her strings of compliments in French. However, I did not neglect the +damsels altogether--although HE calls that sort of thing ‘going in for +strawberries.’ By the way, I have a splendid piece of fish and some +caviare with me. ’Tis all I HAVE brought back! In fact it is a lucky +chance that I happened to buy the stuff before my money was gone. Where +are you for?” + +“I am about to call on a friend.” + +“On what friend? Let him go to the devil, and come to my place instead.” + +“I cannot, I cannot. I have business to do.” + +“Oh, business again! I thought so!” + +“But I HAVE business to do--and pressing business at that.” + +“I wager that you’re lying. If not, tell me whom you’re going to call +upon.” + +“Upon Sobakevitch.” + +Instantly Nozdrev burst into a laugh compassable only by a healthy man +in whose head every tooth still remains as white as sugar. By this I +mean the laugh of quivering cheeks, the laugh which causes a neighbour +who is sleeping behind double doors three rooms away to leap from his +bed and exclaim with distended eyes, “Hullo! Something HAS upset him!” + +“What is there to laugh at?” asked Chichikov, a trifle nettled; but +Nozdrev laughed more unrestrainedly than ever, ejaculating: “Oh, spare +us all! The thing is so amusing that I shall die of it!” + +“I say that there is nothing to laugh at,” repeated Chichikov. “It is in +fulfilment of a promise that I am on my way to Sobakevitch’s.” + +“Then you will scarcely be glad to be alive when you’ve got there, for +he is the veriest miser in the countryside. Oh, _I_ know you. However, +if you think to find there either faro or a bottle of ‘Bonbon’ you are +mistaken. Look here, my good friend. Let Sobakevitch go to the devil, +and come to MY place, where at least I shall have a piece of sturgeon +to offer you for dinner. Ponomarev said to me on parting: ‘This piece is +just the thing for you. Even if you were to search the whole market, you +would never find a better one.’ But of course he is a terrible rogue. +I said to him outright: ‘You and the Collector of Taxes are the two +greatest skinflints in the town.’ But he only stroked his beard +and smiled. Every day I used to breakfast with Kuvshinnikov in his +restaurant. Well, what I was nearly forgetting is this: that, though I +am aware that you can’t forgo your engagement, I am not going to give +you up--no, not for ten thousand roubles of money. I tell you that in +advance.” + +Here he broke off to run to the window and shout to his servant (who was +holding a knife in one hand and a crust of bread and a piece of sturgeon +in the other--he had contrived to filch the latter while fumbling in the +britchka for something else): + +“Hi, Porphyri! Bring here that puppy, you rascal! What a puppy it is! +Unfortunately that thief of a landlord has given it nothing to eat, even +though I have promised him the roan filly which, as you may remember, I +swopped from Khvostirev.” As a matter of fact, Chichikov had never in +his life seen either Khvostirev or the roan filly. + +“Barin, do you wish for anything to eat?” inquired the landlady as she +entered. + +“No, nothing at all. Ah, friend Chichikov, what times we had! Yes, give +me a glass of vodka, old woman. What sort do you keep?” + +“Aniseed.” + +“Then bring me a glass of it,” repeated Nozdrev. + +“And one for me as well,” added the flaxen-haired man. + +“At the theatre,” went on Nozdrev, “there was an actress who sang like a +canary. Kuvshinnikov, who happened to be sitting with me, said: ‘My boy, +you had better go and gather that strawberry.’ As for the booths at the +fair, they numbered, I should say, fifty.” At this point he broke off +to take the glass of vodka from the landlady, who bowed low in +acknowledgement of his doing so. At the same moment Porphyri--a +fellow dressed like his master (that is to say, in a greasy, wadded +overcoat)--entered with the puppy. + +“Put the brute down here,” commanded Nozdrev, “and then fasten it up.” + +Porphyri deposited the animal upon the floor; whereupon it proceeded to +act after the manner of dogs. + +“THERE’S a puppy for you!” cried Nozdrev, catching hold of it by the +back, and lifting it up. The puppy uttered a piteous yelp. + +“I can see that you haven’t done what I told you to do,” he continued +to Porphyri after an inspection of the animal’s belly. “You have quite +forgotten to brush him.” + +“I DID brush him,” protested Porphyri. + +“Then where did these fleas come from?” + +“I cannot think. Perhaps they have leapt into his coat out of the +britchka.” + +“You liar! As a matter of fact, you have forgotten to brush him. +Nevertheless, look at these ears, Chichikov. Just feel them.” + +“Why should I? Without doing that, I can see that he is well-bred.” + +“Nevertheless, catch hold of his ears and feel them.” + +To humour the fellow Chichikov did as he had requested, remarking: “Yes, +he seems likely to turn out well.” + +“And feel the coldness of his nose! Just take it in your hand.” + +Not wishing to offend his interlocutor, Chichikov felt the puppy’s nose, +saying: “Some day he will have an excellent scent.” + +“Yes, will he not? ’Tis the right sort of muzzle for that. I must say +that I have long been wanting such a puppy. Porphyri, take him away +again.” + +Porphyri lifted up the puppy, and bore it downstairs. + +“Look here, Chichikov,” resumed Nozdrev. “You MUST come to my place. It +lies only five versts away, and we can go there like the wind, and you +can visit Sobakevitch afterwards.” + +“Shall I, or shall I not, go to Nozdrev’s?” reflected Chichikov. “Is he +likely to prove any more useful than the rest? Well, at least he is as +promising, even though he has lost so much at play. But he has a head on +his shoulders, and therefore I must go carefully if I am to tackle him +concerning my scheme.” + +With that he added aloud: “Very well, I WILL come with you, but do not +let us be long, for my time is very precious.” + +“That’s right, that’s right!” cried Nozdrev. “Splendid, splendid! Let me +embrace you!” And he fell upon Chichikov’s neck. “All three of us will +go.” + +“No, no,” put in the flaxen-haired man. “You must excuse me, for I must +be off home.” + +“Rubbish, rubbish! I am NOT going to excuse you.” + +“But my wife will be furious with me. You and Monsieur Chichikov must +change into the other britchka.” + +“Come, come! The thing is not to be thought of.” + +The flaxen-haired man was one of those people in whose character, at +first sight, there seems to lurk a certain grain of stubbornness--so +much so that, almost before one has begun to speak, they are ready to +dispute one’s words, and to disagree with anything that may be opposed +to their peculiar form of opinion. For instance, they will decline to +have folly called wisdom, or any tune danced to but their own. Always, +however, will there become manifest in their character a soft spot, and +in the end they will accept what hitherto they have denied, and call +what is foolish sensible, and even dance--yes, better than any one else +will do--to a tune set by some one else. In short, they generally begin +well, but always end badly. + +“Rubbish!” said Nozdrev in answer to a further objection on his +brother-in-law’s part. And, sure enough, no sooner had Nozdrev clapped +his cap upon his head than the flaxen-haired man started to follow him +and his companion. + +“But the gentleman has not paid for the vodka?” put in the old woman. + +“All right, all right, good mother. Look here, brother-in-law. Pay her, +will you, for I have not a kopeck left.” + +“How much?” inquired the brother-in-law. + +“What, sir? Eighty kopecks, if you please,” replied the old woman. + +“A lie! Give her half a rouble. That will be quite enough.” + +“No, it will NOT, barin,” protested the old woman. However, she took the +money gratefully, and even ran to the door to open it for the gentlemen. +As a matter of fact, she had lost nothing by the transaction, since she +had demanded fully a quarter more than the vodka was worth. + +The travellers then took their seats, and since Chichikov’s britchka +kept alongside the britchka wherein Nozdrev and his brother-in-law were +seated, it was possible for all three men to converse together as they +proceeded. Behind them came Nozdrev’s smaller buggy, with its team +of lean stage horses and Porphyri and the puppy. But inasmuch as the +conversation which the travellers maintained was not of a kind likely +to interest the reader, I might do worse than say something concerning +Nozdrev himself, seeing that he is destined to play no small role in our +story. + +Nozdrev’s face will be familiar to the reader, seeing that every one +must have encountered many such. Fellows of the kind are known as +“gay young sparks,” and, even in their boyhood and school days, earn a +reputation for being bons camarades (though with it all they come in for +some hard knocks) for the reason that their faces evince an element of +frankness, directness, and enterprise which enables them soon to make +friends, and, almost before you have had time to look around, to start +addressing you in the second person singular. Yet, while cementing such +friendships for all eternity, almost always they begin quarrelling the +same evening, since, throughout, they are a loquacious, dissipated, +high-spirited, over-showy tribe. Indeed, at thirty-five Nozdrev was just +what he had been an eighteen and twenty--he was just such a lover of +fast living. Nor had his marriage in any way changed him, and the less +so since his wife had soon departed to another world, and left behind +her two children, whom he did not want, and who were therefore placed +in the charge of a good-looking nursemaid. Never at any time could he +remain at home for more than a single day, for his keen scent could +range over scores and scores of versts, and detect any fair which +promised balls and crowds. Consequently in a trice he would be +there--quarrelling, and creating disturbances over the gaming-table +(like all men of his type, he had a perfect passion for cards) yet +playing neither a faultless nor an over-clean game, since he was both +a blunderer and able to indulge in a large number of illicit cuts and +other devices. The result was that the game often ended in another kind +of sport altogether. That is to say, either he received a good kicking, +or he had his thick and very handsome whiskers pulled; with the result +that on certain occasions he returned home with one of those appendages +looking decidedly ragged. Yet his plump, healthy-looking cheeks were +so robustly constituted, and contained such an abundance of recreative +vigour, that a new whisker soon sprouted in place of the old one, and +even surpassed its predecessor. Again (and the following is a phenomenon +peculiar to Russia) a very short time would have elapsed before once +more he would be consorting with the very cronies who had recently +cuffed him--and consorting with them as though nothing whatsoever had +happened--no reference to the subject being made by him, and they too +holding their tongues. + +In short, Nozdrev was, as it were, a man of incident. Never was he +present at any gathering without some sort of a fracas occurring +thereat. Either he would require to be expelled from the room by +gendarmes, or his friends would have to kick him out into the street. At +all events, should neither of those occurrences take place, at least he +did something of a nature which would not otherwise have been witnessed. +That is to say, should he not play the fool in a buffet to such an +extent as to make every one smile, you may be sure that he was engaged +in lying to a degree which at times abashed even himself. Moreover, the +man lied without reason. For instance, he would begin telling a story to +the effect that he possessed a blue-coated or a red-coated horse; until, +in the end, his listeners would be forced to leave him with the remark, +“You are giving us some fine stuff, old fellow!” Also, men like Nozdrev +have a passion for insulting their neighbours without the least excuse +afforded. (For that matter, even a man of good standing and of +respectable exterior--a man with a star on his breast--may unexpectedly +press your hand one day, and begin talking to you on subjects of a +nature to give food for serious thought. Yet just as unexpectedly may +that man start abusing you to your face--and do so in a manner worthy of +a collegiate registrar rather than of a man who wears a star on his +breast and aspires to converse on subjects which merit reflection. All +that one can do in such a case is to stand shrugging one’s shoulders in +amazement.) Well, Nozdrev had just such a weakness. The more he became +friendly with a man, the sooner would he insult him, and be ready to +spread calumnies as to his reputation. Yet all the while he would +consider himself the insulted one’s friend, and, should he meet him +again, would greet him in the most amicable style possible, and say, +“You rascal, why have you given up coming to see me.” Thus, taken all +round, Nozdrev was a person of many aspects and numerous potentialities. +In one and the same breath would he propose to go with you whithersoever +you might choose (even to the very ends of the world should you so +require) or to enter upon any sort of an enterprise with you, or to +exchange any commodity for any other commodity which you might care to +name. Guns, horses, dogs, all were subjects for barter--though not for +profit so far as YOU were concerned. Such traits are mostly the outcome +of a boisterous temperament, as is additionally exemplified by the fact +that if at a fair he chanced to fall in with a simpleton and to fleece +him, he would then proceed to buy a quantity of the very first articles +which came to hand--horse-collars, cigar-lighters, dresses for his +nursemaid, foals, raisins, silver ewers, lengths of holland, wheatmeal, +tobacco, revolvers, dried herrings, pictures, whetstones, crockery, +boots, and so forth, until every atom of his money was exhausted. Yet +seldom were these articles conveyed home, since, as a rule, the same day +saw them lost to some more skilful gambler, in addition to his pipe, his +tobacco-pouch, his mouthpiece, his four-horsed turn-out, and his +coachman: with the result that, stripped to his very shirt, he would be +forced to beg the loan of a vehicle from a friend. + +Such was Nozdrev. Some may say that characters of his type have become +extinct, that Nozdrevs no longer exist. Alas! such as say this will +be wrong; for many a day must pass before the Nozdrevs will have +disappeared from our ken. Everywhere they are to be seen in our +midst--the only difference between the new and the old being a +difference of garments. Persons of superficial observation are apt to +consider that a man clad in a different coat is quite a different person +from what he used to be. + +To continue. The three vehicles bowled up to the steps of Nozdrev’s +house, and their occupants alighted. But no preparations whatsoever had +been made for the guest’s reception, for on some wooden trestles in +the centre of the dining-room a couple of peasants were engaged in +whitewashing the ceiling and drawling out an endless song as they +splashed their stuff about the floor. Hastily bidding peasants and +trestles to be gone, Nozdrev departed to another room with further +instructions. Indeed, so audible was the sound of his voice as he +ordered dinner that Chichikov--who was beginning to feel hungry once +more--was enabled to gather that it would be at least five o’clock +before a meal of any kind would be available. On his return, Nozdrev +invited his companions to inspect his establishment--even though as +early as two o’clock he had to announce that nothing more was to be +seen. + +The tour began with a view of the stables, where the party saw two mares +(the one a grey, and the other a roan) and a colt; which latter animal, +though far from showy, Nozdrev declared to have cost him ten thousand +roubles. + +“You NEVER paid ten thousand roubles for the brute!” exclaimed the +brother-in-law. “He isn’t worth even a thousand.” + +“By God, I DID pay ten thousand!” asserted Nozdrev. + +“You can swear that as much as you like,” retorted the other. + +“Will you bet that I did not?” asked Nozdrev, but the brother-in-law +declined the offer. + +Next, Nozdrev showed his guests some empty stalls where a number of +equally fine animals (so he alleged) had lately stood. Also there was on +view the goat which an old belief still considers to be an indispensable +adjunct to such places, even though its apparent use is to pace up and +down beneath the noses of the horses as though the place belonged to it. +Thereafter the host took his guests to look at a young wolf which he had +got tied to a chain. “He is fed on nothing but raw meat,” he explained, +“for I want him to grow up as fierce as possible.” Then the party +inspected a pond in which there were “fish of such a size that it would +take two men all their time to lift one of them out.” + +This piece of information was received with renewed incredulity on the +part of the brother-in-law. + +“Now, Chichikov,” went on Nozdrev, “let me show you a truly magnificent +brace of dogs. The hardness of their muscles will surprise you, and they +have jowls as sharp as needles.” + +So saying, he led the way to a small, but neatly-built, shed surrounded +on every side with a fenced-in run. Entering this run, the visitors +beheld a number of dogs of all sorts and sizes and colours. In their +midst Nozdrev looked like a father lording it over his family circle. +Erecting their tails--their “stems,” as dog fanciers call those +members--the animals came bounding to greet the party, and fully a score +of them laid their paws upon Chichikov’s shoulders. Indeed, one dog was +moved with such friendliness that, standing on its hind legs, it licked +him on the lips, and so forced him to spit. That done, the visitors duly +inspected the couple already mentioned, and expressed astonishment at +their muscles. True enough, they were fine animals. Next, the party +looked at a Crimean bitch which, though blind and fast nearing her end, +had, two years ago, been a truly magnificent dog. At all events, so said +Nozdrev. Next came another bitch--also blind; then an inspection of +the water-mill, which lacked the spindle-socket wherein the upper stone +ought to have been revolving--“fluttering,” to use the Russian peasant’s +quaint expression. “But never mind,” said Nozdrev. “Let us proceed to +the blacksmith’s shop.” So to the blacksmith’s shop the party proceeded, +and when the said shop had been viewed, Nozdrev said as he pointed to a +field: + +“In this field I have seen such numbers of hares as to render the ground +quite invisible. Indeed, on one occasion I, with my own hands, caught a +hare by the hind legs.” + +“You never caught a hare by the hind legs with your hands!” remarked the +brother-in-law. + +“But I DID” reiterated Nozdrev. “However, let me show you the boundary +where my lands come to an end.” + +So saying, he started to conduct his guests across a field which +consisted mostly of moleheaps, and in which the party had to pick their +way between strips of ploughed land and of harrowed. Soon Chichikov +began to feel weary, for the terrain was so low-lying that in many spots +water could be heard squelching underfoot, and though for a while the +visitors watched their feet, and stepped carefully, they soon perceived +that such a course availed them nothing, and took to following their +noses, without either selecting or avoiding the spots where the mire +happened to be deeper or the reverse. At length, when a considerable +distance had been covered, they caught sight of a boundary-post and a +narrow ditch. + +“That is the boundary,” said Nozdrev. “Everything that you see on this +side of the post is mine, as well as the forest on the other side of it, +and what lies beyond the forest.” + +“WHEN did that forest become yours?” asked the brother-in-law. “It +cannot be long since you purchased it, for it never USED to be yours.” + +“Yes, it isn’t long since I purchased it,” said Nozdrev. + +“How long?” + +“How long? Why, I purchased it three days ago, and gave a pretty sum for +it, as the devil knows!” + +“Indeed? Why, three days ago you were at the fair?” + +“Wiseacre! Cannot one be at a fair and buy land at the same time? Yes, I +WAS at the fair, and my steward bought the land in my absence.” + +“Oh, your STEWARD bought it.” The brother-in-law seemed doubtful, and +shook his head. + +The guests returned by the same route as that by which they had come; +whereafter, on reaching the house, Nozdrev conducted them to his study, +which contained not a trace of the things usually to be found in such +apartments--such things as books and papers. On the contrary, the only +articles to be seen were a sword and a brace of guns--the one “of them +worth three hundred roubles,” and the other “about eight hundred.” The +brother-in-law inspected the articles in question, and then shook +his head as before. Next, the visitors were shown some “real Turkish” + daggers, of which one bore the inadvertent inscription, “Saveli +Sibiriakov [19], Master Cutler.” Then came a barrel-organ, on which +Nozdrev started to play some tune or another. For a while the sounds +were not wholly unpleasing, but suddenly something seemed to go wrong, +for a mazurka started, to be followed by “Marlborough has gone to the +war,” and to this, again, there succeeded an antiquated waltz. Also, +long after Nozdrev had ceased to turn the handle, one particularly +shrill-pitched pipe which had, throughout, refused to harmonise with the +rest kept up a protracted whistling on its own account. Then followed +an exhibition of tobacco pipes--pipes of clay, of wood, of meerschaum, +pipes smoked and non-smoked; pipes wrapped in chamois leather and not +so wrapped; an amber-mounted hookah (a stake won at cards) and a tobacco +pouch (worked, it was alleged, by some countess who had fallen in love +with Nozdrev at a posthouse, and whose handiwork Nozdrev averred +to constitute the “sublimity of superfluity”--a term which, in the +Nozdrevian vocabulary, purported to signify the acme of perfection). + +Finally, after some hors-d’oeuvres of sturgeon’s back, they sat down +to table--the time being then nearly five o’clock. But the meal did not +constitute by any means the best of which Chichikov had ever partaken, +seeing that some of the dishes were overcooked, and others were scarcely +cooked at all. Evidently their compounder had trusted chiefly to +inspiration--she had laid hold of the first thing which had happened to +come to hand. For instance, had pepper represented the nearest article +within reach, she had added pepper wholesale. Had a cabbage chanced to +be so encountered, she had pressed it also into the service. And the +same with milk, bacon, and peas. In short, her rule seemed to have been +“Make a hot dish of some sort, and some sort of taste will result.” For +the rest, Nozdrev drew heavily upon the wine. Even before the soup +had been served, he had poured out for each guest a bumper of port and +another of “haut” sauterne. (Never in provincial towns is ordinary, +vulgar sauterne even procurable.) Next, he called for a bottle of +madeira--“as fine a tipple as ever a field-marshall drank”; but the +madeira only burnt the mouth, since the dealers, familiar with the taste +of our landed gentry (who love “good” madeira) invariably doctor the +stuff with copious dashes of rum and Imperial vodka, in the hope that +Russian stomachs will thus be enabled to carry off the lot. After this +bottle Nozdrev called for another and “a very special” brand--a brand +which he declared to consist of a blend of burgundy and champagne, and +of which he poured generous measures into the glasses of Chichikov +and the brother-in-law as they sat to right and left of him. But since +Chichikov noticed that, after doing so, he added only a scanty modicum +of the mixture to his own tumbler, our hero determined to be cautious, +and therefore took advantage of a moment when Nozdrev had again plunged +into conversation and was yet a third time engaged in refilling his +brother-in-law’s glass, to contrive to upset his (Chichikov’s) +glass over his plate. In time there came also to table a tart of +mountain-ashberries--berries which the host declared to equal, in taste, +ripe plums, but which, curiously enough, smacked more of corn brandy. +Next, the company consumed a sort of pasty of which the precise name has +escaped me, but which the host rendered differently even on the second +occasion of its being mentioned. The meal over, and the whole tale of +wines tried, the guests still retained their seats--a circumstance which +embarrassed Chichikov, seeing that he had no mind to propound his pet +scheme in the presence of Nozdrev’s brother-in-law, who was a complete +stranger to him. No, that subject called for amicable and PRIVATE +conversation. Nevertheless, the brother-in-law appeared to bode little +danger, seeing that he had taken on board a full cargo, and was now +engaged in doing nothing of a more menacing nature than picking his +nose. At length he himself noticed that he was not altogether in a +responsible condition; wherefore he rose and began to make excuses for +departing homewards, though in a tone so drowsy and lethargic that, to +quote the Russian proverb, he might almost have been “pulling a collar +on to a horse by the clasps.” + +“No, no!” cried Nozdrev. “I am NOT going to let you go.” + +“But I MUST go,” replied the brother-in-law. “Don’t try to hinder me. +You are annoying me greatly.” + +“Rubbish! We are going to play a game of banker.” + +“No, no. You must play it without me, my friend. My wife is expecting me +at home, and I must go and tell her all about the fair. Yes, I MUST go +if I am to please her. Do not try to detain me.” + +“Your wife be--! But have you REALLY an important piece of business with +her?” + +“No, no, my friend. The real reason is that she is a good and trustful +woman, and that she does a great deal for me. The tears spring to my +eyes as I think of it. Do not detain me. As an honourable man I say that +I must go. Of that I do assure you in all sincerity.” + +“Oh, let him go,” put in Chichikov under his breath. “What use will he +be here?” + +“Very well,” said Nozdrev, “though, damn it, I do not like fellows who +lose their heads.” Then he added to his brother-in-law: “All right, +Thetuk [20]. Off you go to your wife and your woman’s talk and may the +devil go with you!” + +“Do not insult me with the term Thetuk,” retorted the brother-in-law. +“To her I owe my life, and she is a dear, good woman, and has shown me +much affection. At the very thought of it I could weep. You see, she +will be asking me what I have seen at the fair, and tell her about it I +must, for she is such a dear, good woman.” + +“Then off you go to her with your pack of lies. Here is your cap.” + +“No, good friend, you are not to speak of her like that. By so doing you +offend me greatly--I say that she is a dear, good woman.” + +“Then run along home to her.” + +“Yes, I am just going. Excuse me for having been unable to stay. Gladly +would I have stayed, but really I cannot.” + +The brother-in-law repeated his excuses again and again without noticing +that he had entered the britchka, that it had passed through the gates, +and that he was now in the open country. Permissibly we may suppose that +his wife succeeded in gleaning from him few details of the fair. + +“What a fool!” said Nozdrev as, standing by the window, he watched the +departing vehicle. “Yet his off-horse is not such a bad one. For a long +time past I have been wanting to get hold of it. A man like that is +simply impossible. Yes, he is a Thetuk, a regular Thetuk.” + +With that they repaired to the parlour, where, on Porphyri bringing +candles, Chichikov perceived that his host had produced a pack of cards. + +“I tell you what,” said Nozdrev, pressing the sides of the pack +together, and then slightly bending them, so that the pack cracked and +a card flew out. “How would it be if, to pass the time, I were to make a +bank of three hundred?” + +Chichikov pretended not to have heard him, but remarked with an air of +having just recollected a forgotten point: + +“By the way, I had omitted to say that I have a request to make of you.” + +“What request?” + +“First give me your word that you will grant it.” + +“What is the request, I say?” + +“Then you give me your word, do you?” + +“Certainly.” + +“Your word of honour?” + +“My word of honour.” + +“This, then, is my request. I presume that you have a large number +of dead serfs whose names have not yet been removed from the revision +list?” + +“I have. But why do you ask?” + +“Because I want you to make them over to me.” + +“Of what use would they be to you?” + +“Never mind. I have a purpose in wanting them.” + +“What purpose?” + +“A purpose which is strictly my own affair. In short, I need them.” + +“You seem to have hatched a very fine scheme. Out with it, now! What is +in the wind?” + +“How could I have hatched such a scheme as you say? One could not very +well hatch a scheme out of such a trifle as this.” + +“Then for what purpose do you want the serfs?” + +“Oh, the curiosity of the man! He wants to poke his fingers into and +smell over every detail!” + +“Why do you decline to say what is in your mind? At all events, until +you DO say I shall not move in the matter.” + +“But how would it benefit you to know what my plans are? A whim has +seized me. That is all. Nor are you playing fair. You have given me your +word of honour, yet now you are trying to back out of it.” + +“No matter what you desire me to do, I decline to do it until you have +told me your purpose.” + +“What am I to say to the fellow?” thought Chichikov. He reflected for +a moment, and then explained that he wanted the dead souls in order +to acquire a better standing in society, since at present he possessed +little landed property, and only a handful of serfs. + +“You are lying,” said Nozdrev without even letting him finish. “Yes, you +are lying my good friend.” + +Chichikov himself perceived that his device had been a clumsy one, and +his pretext weak. “I must tell him straight out,” he said to himself as +he pulled his wits together. + +“Should I tell you the truth,” he added aloud, “I must beg of you not +to repeat it. The truth is that I am thinking of getting married. But, +unfortunately, my betrothed’s father and mother are very ambitious +people, and do not want me to marry her, since they desire the +bridegroom to own not less than three hundred souls, whereas I own but a +hundred and fifty, and that number is not sufficient.” + +“Again you are lying,” said Nozdrev. + +“Then look here; I have been lying only to this extent.” And Chichikov +marked off upon his little finger a minute portion. + +“Nevertheless I will bet my head that you have been lying throughout.” + +“Come, come! That is not very civil of you. Why should I have been +lying?” + +“Because I know you, and know that you are a regular skinflint. I say +that in all friendship. If I possessed any power over you I should hang +you to the nearest tree.” + +This remark hurt Chichikov, for at any time he disliked expressions +gross or offensive to decency, and never allowed any one--no, not even +persons of the highest rank--to behave towards him with an undue +measure of familiarity. Consequently his sense of umbrage on the present +occasion was unbounded. + +“By God, I WOULD hang you!” repeated Nozdrev. “I say this frankly, and +not for the purpose of offending you, but simply to communicate to you +my friendly opinion.” + +“To everything there are limits,” retorted Chichikov stiffly. “If you +want to indulge in speeches of that sort you had better return to the +barracks.” + +However, after a pause he added: + +“If you do not care to give me the serfs, why not SELL them?” + +“SELL them? _I_ know you, you rascal! You wouldn’t give me very much for +them, WOULD you?” + +“A nice fellow! Look here. What are they to you? So many diamonds, eh?” + +“I thought so! _I_ know you!” + +“Pardon me, but I could wish that you were a member of the Jewish +persuasion. You would give them to me fast enough then.” + +“On the contrary, to show you that I am not a usurer, I will decline to +ask of you a single kopeck for the serfs. All that you need do is to buy +that colt of mine, and then I will throw in the serfs in addition.” + +“But what should _I_ want with your colt?” said Chichikov, genuinely +astonished at the proposal. + +“What should YOU want with him? Why, I have bought him for ten thousand +roubles, and am ready to let you have him for four.” + +“I ask you again: of what use could the colt possibly be to me? I am not +the keeper of a breeding establishment.” + +“Ah! I see that you fail to understand me. Let me suggest that you pay +down at once three thousand roubles of the purchase money, and leave the +other thousand until later.” + +“But I do not mean to buy the colt, damn him!” + +“Then buy the roan mare.” + +“No, nor the roan mare.” + +“Then you shall have both the mare and the grey horse which you have +seen in my stables for two thousand roubles.” + +“I require no horses at all.” + +“But you would be able to sell them again. You would be able to get +thrice their purchase price at the very first fair that was held.” + +“Then sell them at that fair yourself, seeing that you are so certain of +making a triple profit.” + +“Oh, I should make it fast enough, only I want YOU to benefit by the +transaction.” + +Chichikov duly thanked his interlocutor, but continued to decline either +the grey horse or the roan mare. + +“Then buy a few dogs,” said Nozdrev. “I can sell you a couple of hides +a-quiver, ears well pricked, coats like quills, ribs barrel-shaped, and +paws so tucked up as scarcely to graze the ground when they run.” + +“Of what use would those dogs be to me? I am not a sportsman.” + +“But I WANT you to have the dogs. Listen. If you won’t have the dogs, +then buy my barrel-organ. ’Tis a splendid instrument. As a man of honour +I can tell you that, when new, it cost me fifteen hundred roubles. Well, +you shall have it for nine hundred.” + +“Come, come! What should I want with a barrel-organ? I am not a German, +to go hauling it about the roads and begging for coppers.” + +“But this is quite a different kind of organ from the one which Germans +take about with them. You see, it is a REAL organ. Look at it for +yourself. It is made of the best wood. I will take you to have another +view of it.” + +And seizing Chichikov by the hand, Nozdrev drew him towards the other +room, where, in spite of the fact that Chichikov, with his feet planted +firmly on the floor, assured his host, again and again, that he knew +exactly what the organ was like, he was forced once more to hear how +Marlborough went to the war. + +“Then, since you don’t care to give me any money for it,” persisted +Nozdrev, “listen to the following proposal. I will give you the +barrel-organ and all the dead souls which I possess, and in return you +shall give me your britchka, and another three hundred roubles into the +bargain.” + +“Listen to the man! In that case, what should I have left to drive in?” + +“Oh, I would stand you another britchka. Come to the coach-house, and +I will show you the one I mean. It only needs repainting to look a +perfectly splendid britchka.” + +“The ramping, incorrigible devil!” thought Chichikov to himself as at +all hazards he resolved to escape from britchkas, organs, and every +species of dog, however marvellously barrel-ribbed and tucked up of paw. + +“And in exchange, you shall have the britchka, the barrel-organ, and the +dead souls,” repeated Nozdrev. + +“I must decline the offer,” said Chichikov. + +“And why?” + +“Because I don’t WANT the things--I am full up already.” + +“I can see that you don’t know how things should be done between good +friends and comrades. Plainly you are a man of two faces.” + +“What do you mean, you fool? Think for yourself. Why should I acquire +articles which I don’t want?” + +“Say no more about it, if you please. I have quite taken your measure. +But see here. Should you care to play a game of banker? I am ready to +stake both the dead souls and the barrel-organ at cards.” + +“No; to leave an issue to cards means to submit oneself to the unknown,” + said Chichikov, covertly glancing at the pack which Nozdrev had got +in his hands. Somehow the way in which his companion had cut that pack +seemed to him suspicious. + +“Why ‘to the unknown’?” asked Nozdrev. “There is no such thing as ‘the +unknown.’ Should luck be on your side, you may win the devil knows what +a haul. Oh, luck, luck!” he went on, beginning to deal, in the hope of +raising a quarrel. “Here is the cursed nine upon which, the other night, +I lost everything. All along I knew that I should lose my money. Said I +to myself: ‘The devil take you, you false, accursed card!’” + +Just as Nozdrev uttered the words Porphyri entered with a fresh bottle +of liquor; but Chichikov declined either to play or to drink. + +“Why do you refuse to play?” asked Nozdrev. + +“Because I feel indisposed to do so. Moreover, I must confess that I am +no great hand at cards.” + +“WHY are you no great hand at them?” + +Chichikov shrugged his shoulders. “Because I am not,” he replied. + +“You are no great hand at ANYTHING, I think.” + +“What does that matter? God has made me so.” + +“The truth is that you are a Thetuk, and nothing else. Once upon a +time I believed you to be a good fellow, but now I see that you +don’t understand civility. One cannot speak to you as one would to an +intimate, for there is no frankness or sincerity about you. You are a +regular Sobakevitch--just such another as he.” + +“For what reason are you abusing me? Am I in any way at fault for +declining to play cards? Sell me those souls if you are the man to +hesitate over such rubbish.” + +“The foul fiend take you! I was about to have given them to you for +nothing, but now you shan’t have them at all--not if you offer me three +kingdoms in exchange. Henceforth I will have nothing to do with you, you +cobbler, you dirty blacksmith! Porphyri, go and tell the ostler to give +the gentleman’s horses no oats, but only hay.” + +This development Chichikov had hardly expected. + +“And do you,” added Nozdrev to his guest, “get out of my sight.” + +Yet in spite of this, host and guest took supper together--even though +on this occasion the table was adorned with no wines of fictitious +nomenclature, but only with a bottle which reared its solitary head +beside a jug of what is usually known as vin ordinaire. When supper was +over Nozdrev said to Chichikov as he conducted him to a side room where +a bed had been made up: + +“This is where you are to sleep. I cannot very well wish you +good-night.” + +Left to himself on Nozdrev’s departure, Chichikov felt in a most +unenviable frame of mind. Full of inward vexation, he blamed himself +bitterly for having come to see this man and so wasted valuable +time; but even more did he blame himself for having told him of his +scheme--for having acted as carelessly as a child or a madman. Of a +surety the scheme was not one which ought to have been confided to a man +like Nozdrev, for he was a worthless fellow who might lie about it, and +append additions to it, and spread such stories as would give rise +to God knows what scandals. “This is indeed bad!” Chichikov said to +himself. “I have been an absolute fool.” Consequently he spent an uneasy +night--this uneasiness being increased by the fact that a number of +small, but vigorous, insects so feasted upon him that he could do +nothing but scratch the spots and exclaim, “The devil take you and +Nozdrev alike!” Only when morning was approaching did he fall asleep. On +rising, he made it his first business (after donning dressing-gown +and slippers) to cross the courtyard to the stable, for the purpose of +ordering Selifan to harness the britchka. Just as he was returning from +his errand he encountered Nozdrev, clad in a dressing-gown, and holding +a pipe between his teeth. + +Host and guest greeted one another in friendly fashion, and Nozdrev +inquired how Chichikov had slept. + +“Fairly well,” replied Chichikov, but with a touch of dryness in his +tone. + +“The same with myself,” said Nozdrev. “The truth is that such a lot of +nasty brutes kept crawling over me that even to speak of it gives me +the shudders. Likewise, as the effect of last night’s doings, a whole +squadron of soldiers seemed to be camping on my chest, and giving me a +flogging. Ugh! And whom also do you think I saw in a dream? You would +never guess. Why, it was Staff-Captain Potsieluev and Lieutenant +Kuvshinnikov!” + +“Yes,” though Chichikov to himself, “and I wish that they too would give +you a public thrashing!” + +“I felt so ill!” went on Nozdrev. “And just after I had fallen asleep +something DID come and sting me. Probably it was a party of hag fleas. +Now, dress yourself, and I will be with you presently. First of all I +must give that scoundrel of a bailiff a wigging.” + +Chichikov departed to his own room to wash and dress; which process +completed, he entered the dining-room to find the table laid with +tea-things and a bottle of rum. Clearly no broom had yet touched the +place, for there remained traces of the previous night’s dinner and +supper in the shape of crumbs thrown over the floor and tobacco ash on +the tablecloth. The host himself, when he entered, was still clad in a +dressing-gown exposing a hairy chest; and as he sat holding his pipe in +his hand, and drinking tea from a cup, he would have made a model for +the sort of painter who prefers to portray gentlemen of the less curled +and scented order. + +“What think you?” he asked of Chichikov after a short silence. “Are you +willing NOW to play me for those souls?” + +“I have told you that I never play cards. If the souls are for sale, I +will buy them.” + +“I decline to sell them. Such would not be the course proper between +friends. But a game of banker would be quite another matter. Let us deal +the cards.” + +“I have told you that I decline to play.” + +“And you will not agree to an exchange?” + +“No.” + +“Then look here. Suppose we play a game of chess. If you win, the souls +shall be yours. There are lots which I should like to see crossed off +the revision list. Hi, Porphyri! Bring me the chessboard.” + +“You are wasting your time. I will play neither chess nor cards.” + +“But chess is different from playing with a bank. In chess there can be +neither luck nor cheating, for everything depends upon skill. In fact, I +warn you that I cannot possibly play with you unless you allow me a move +or two in advance.” + +“The same with me,” thought Chichikov. “Shall I, or shall I not, play +this fellow? I used not to be a bad chess-player, and it is a sport in +which he would find it more difficult to be up to his tricks.” + +“Very well,” he added aloud. “I WILL play you at chess.” + +“And stake the souls for a hundred roubles?” asked Nozdrev. + +“No. Why for a hundred? Would it not be sufficient to stake them for +fifty?” + +“No. What would be the use of fifty? Nevertheless, for the hundred +roubles I will throw in a moderately old puppy, or else a gold seal and +watch-chain.” + +“Very well,” assented Chichikov. + +“Then how many moves are you going to allow me?” + +“Is THAT to be part of the bargain? Why, none, of course.” + +“At least allow me two.” + +“No, none. I myself am only a poor player.” + +“_I_ know you and your poor play,” said Nozdrev, moving a chessman. + +“In fact, it is a long time since last I had a chessman in my hand,” + replied Chichikov, also moving a piece. + +“Ah! _I_ know you and your poor play,” repeated Nozdrev, moving a second +chessman. + +“I say again that it is a long time since last I had a chessman in my +hand.” And Chichikov, in his turn, moved. + +“Ah! _I_ know you and your poor play,” repeated Nozdrev, for the third +time as he made a third move. At the same moment the cuff of one of his +sleeves happened to dislodge another chessman from its position. + +“Again, I say,” said Chichikov, “that ’tis a long time since last--But +hi! look here! Put that piece back in its place!” + +“What piece?” + +“This one.” And almost as Chichikov spoke he saw a third chessman coming +into view between the queens. God only knows whence that chessman had +materialised. + +“No, no!” shouted Chichikov as he rose from the table. “It is impossible +to play with a man like you. People don’t move three pieces at once.” + +“How ‘three pieces’? All that I have done is to make a mistake--to move +one of my pieces by accident. If you like, I will forfeit it to you.” + +“And whence has the third piece come?” + +“What third piece?” + +“The one now standing between the queens?” + +“’Tis one of your own pieces. Surely you are forgetting?” + +“No, no, my friend. I have counted every move, and can remember each +one. That piece has only just become added to the board. Put it back in +its place, I say.” + +“Its place? Which IS its place?” But Nozdrev had reddened a good deal. +“I perceive you to be a strategist at the game.” + +“No, no, good friend. YOU are the strategist--though an unsuccessful +one, as it happens.” + +“Then of what are you supposing me capable? Of cheating you?” + +“I am not supposing you capable of anything. All that I say is that I +will not play with you any more.” + +“But you can’t refuse to,” said Nozdrev, growing heated. “You see, the +game has begun.” + +“Nevertheless, I have a right not to continue it, seeing that you are +not playing as an honest man should do.” + +“You are lying--you cannot truthfully say that.” + +“’Tis you who are lying.” + +“But I have NOT cheated. Consequently you cannot refuse to play, but +must continue the game to a finish.” + +“You cannot force me to play,” retorted Chichikov coldly as, turning to +the chessboard, he swept the pieces into confusion. + +Nozdrev approached Chichikov with a manner so threatening that the other +fell back a couple of paces. + +“I WILL force you to play,” said Nozdrev. “It is no use you making a +mess of the chessboard, for I can remember every move. We will replace +the chessmen exactly as they were.” + +“No, no, my friend. The game is over, and I play you no more.” + +“You say that you will not?” + +“Yes. Surely you can see for yourself that such a thing is impossible?” + +“That cock won’t fight. Say at once that you refuse to play with me.” + And Nozdrev approached a step nearer. + +“Very well; I DO say that,” replied Chichikov, and at the same moment +raised his hands towards his face, for the dispute was growing heated. +Nor was the act of caution altogether unwarranted, for Nozdrev +also raised his fist, and it may be that one of our hero’s plump, +pleasant-looking cheeks would have sustained an indelible insult had +not he (Chichikov) parried the blow and, seizing Nozdrev by his whirling +arms, held them fast. + +“Porphyri! Pavlushka!” shouted Nozdrev as madly he strove to free +himself. + +On hearing the words, Chichikov, both because he wished to avoid +rendering the servants witnesses of the unedifying scene and because he +felt that it would be of no avail to hold Nozdrev any longer, let go of +the latter’s arms; but at the same moment Porphyri and Pavlushka entered +the room--a pair of stout rascals with whom it would be unwise to +meddle. + +“Do you, or do you not, intend to finish the game?” said Nozdrev. “Give +me a direct answer.” + +“No; it will not be possible to finish the game,” replied Chichikov, +glancing out of the window. He could see his britchka standing ready for +him, and Selifan evidently awaiting orders to draw up to the entrance +steps. But from the room there was no escape, since in the doorway was +posted the couple of well-built serving-men. + +“Then it is as I say? You refuse to finish the game?” repeated Nozdrev, +his face as red as fire. + +“I would have finished it had you played like a man of honour. But, as +it is, I cannot.” + +“You cannot, eh, you villain? You find that you cannot as soon as you +find that you are not winning? Thrash him, you fellows!” And as he spoke +Nozdrev grasped the cherrywood shank of his pipe. Chichikov turned as +white as a sheet. He tried to say something, but his quivering lips +emitted no sound. “Thrash him!” again shouted Nozdrev as he rushed +forward in a state of heat and perspiration more proper to a warrior who +is attacking an impregnable fortress. “Thrash him!” again he shouted +in a voice like that of some half-demented lieutenant whose desperate +bravery has acquired such a reputation that orders have had to be issued +that his hands shall be held lest he attempt deeds of over-presumptuous +daring. Seized with the military spirit, however, the lieutenant’s head +begins to whirl, and before his eye there flits the image of Suvorov +[21]. He advances to the great encounter, and impulsively cries, +“Forward, my sons!”--cries it without reflecting that he may be +spoiling the plan of the general attack, that millions of rifles may +be protruding their muzzles through the embrasures of the impregnable, +towering walls of the fortress, that his own impotent assault may be +destined to be dissipated like dust before the wind, and that already +there may have been launched on its whistling career the bullet which is +to close for ever his vociferous throat. However, if Nozdrev resembled +the headstrong, desperate lieutenant whom we have just pictured as +advancing upon a fortress, at least the fortress itself in no way +resembled the impregnable stronghold which I have described. As a matter +of fact, the fortress became seized with a panic which drove its spirit +into its boots. First of all, the chair with which Chichikov (the +fortress in question) sought to defend himself was wrested from his +grasp by the serfs, and then--blinking and neither alive nor dead--he +turned to parry the Circassian pipe-stem of his host. In fact, God +only knows what would have happened had not the fates been pleased by +a miracle to deliver Chichikov’s elegant back and shoulders from the +onslaught. Suddenly, and as unexpectedly as though the sound had +come from the clouds, there made itself heard the tinkling notes of +a collar-bell, and then the rumble of wheels approaching the entrance +steps, and, lastly, the snorting and hard breathing of a team of horses +as a vehicle came to a standstill. Involuntarily all present glanced +through the window, and saw a man clad in a semi-military greatcoat leap +from a buggy. After making an inquiry or two in the hall, he entered the +dining-room just at the juncture when Chichikov, almost swooning with +terror, had found himself placed in about as awkward a situation as +could well befall a mortal man. + +“Kindly tell me which of you is Monsieur Nozdrev?” said the unknown with +a glance of perplexity both at the person named (who was still standing +with pipe-shank upraised) and at Chichikov (who was just beginning to +recover from his unpleasant predicament). + +“Kindly tell ME whom I have the honour of addressing?” retorted Nozdrev +as he approached the official. + +“I am the Superintendent of Rural Police.” + +“And what do you want?” + +“I have come to fulfil a commission imposed upon me. That is to say, +I have come to place you under arrest until your case shall have been +decided.” + +“Rubbish! What case, pray?” + +“The case in which you involved yourself when, in a drunken condition, +and through the instrumentality of a walking-stick, you offered grave +offence to the person of Landowner Maksimov.” + +“You lie! To your face I tell you that never in my life have I set eyes +upon Landowner Maksimov.” + +“Good sir, allow me to represent to you that I am a Government officer. +Speeches like that you may address to your servants, but not to me.” + +At this point Chichikov, without waiting for Nozdrev’s reply, seized +his cap, slipped behind the Superintendent’s back, rushed out on to the +verandah, sprang into his britchka, and ordered Selifan to drive like +the wind. + + + +CHAPTER V + +Certainly Chichikov was a thorough coward, for, although the britchka +pursued its headlong course until Nozdrev’s establishment had +disappeared behind hillocks and hedgerows, our hero continued to glance +nervously behind him, as though every moment expecting to see a stern +chase begin. His breath came with difficulty, and when he tried his +heart with his hands he could feel it fluttering like a quail caught in +a net. + +“What a sweat the fellow has thrown me into!” he thought to himself, +while many a dire and forceful aspiration passed through his mind. +Indeed, the expressions to which he gave vent were most inelegant +in their nature. But what was to be done next? He was a Russian +and thoroughly aroused. The affair had been no joke. “But for the +Superintendent,” he reflected, “I might never again have looked upon +God’s daylight--I might have vanished like a bubble on a pool, and left +neither trace nor posterity nor property nor an honourable name for my +future offspring to inherit!” (it seemed that our hero was particularly +anxious with regard to his possible issue). + +“What a scurvy barin!” mused Selifan as he drove along. “Never have I +seen such a barin. I should like to spit in his face. ’Tis better to +allow a man nothing to eat than to refuse to feed a horse properly. A +horse needs his oats--they are his proper fare. Even if you make a man +procure a meal at his own expense, don’t deny a horse his oats, for he +ought always to have them.” + +An equally poor opinion of Nozdrev seemed to be cherished also by +the steeds, for not only were the bay and the Assessor clearly out of +spirits, but even the skewbald was wearing a dejected air. True, at home +the skewbald got none but the poorer sorts of oats to eat, and Selifan +never filled his trough without having first called him a villain; but +at least they WERE oats, and not hay--they were stuff which could be +chewed with a certain amount of relish. Also, there was the fact that +at intervals he could intrude his long nose into his companions’ troughs +(especially when Selifan happened to be absent from the stable) and +ascertain what THEIR provender was like. But at Nozdrev’s there had +been nothing but hay! That was not right. All three horses felt greatly +discontented. + +But presently the malcontents had their reflections cut short in a very +rude and unexpected manner. That is to say, they were brought back +to practicalities by coming into violent collision with a six-horsed +vehicle, while upon their heads descended both a babel of cries from the +ladies inside and a storm of curses and abuse from the coachman. “Ah, +you damned fool!” he vociferated. “I shouted to you loud enough! Draw +out, you old raven, and keep to the right! Are you drunk?” Selifan +himself felt conscious that he had been careless, but since a Russian +does not care to admit a fault in the presence of strangers, he retorted +with dignity: “Why have you run into US? Did you leave your eyes behind +you at the last tavern that you stopped at?” With that he started to +back the britchka, in the hope that it might get clear of the other’s +harness; but this would not do, for the pair were too hopelessly +intertwined. Meanwhile the skewbald snuffed curiously at his new +acquaintances as they stood planted on either side of him; while the +ladies in the vehicle regarded the scene with an expression of terror. +One of them was an old woman, and the other a damsel of about sixteen. A +mass of golden hair fell daintily from a small head, and the oval of +her comely face was as shapely as an egg, and white with the transparent +whiteness seen when the hands of a housewife hold a new-laid egg to +the light to let the sun’s rays filter through its shell. The same tint +marked the maiden’s ears where they glowed in the sunshine, and, +in short, what with the tears in her wide-open, arresting eyes, she +presented so attractive a picture that our hero bestowed upon it more +than a passing glance before he turned his attention to the hubbub which +was being raised among the horses and the coachmen. + +“Back out, you rook of Nizhni Novgorod!” the strangers’ coachman +shouted. Selifan tightened his reins, and the other driver did the same. +The horses stepped back a little, and then came together again--this +time getting a leg or two over the traces. In fact, so pleased did the +skewbald seem with his new friends that he refused to stir from the +melee into which an unforeseen chance had plunged him. Laying his muzzle +lovingly upon the neck of one of his recently-acquired acquaintances, +he seemed to be whispering something in that acquaintance’s ear--and +whispering pretty nonsense, too, to judge from the way in which that +confidant kept shaking his ears. + +At length peasants from a village which happened to be near the scene of +the accident tackled the mess; and since a spectacle of that kind is to +the Russian muzhik what a newspaper or a club-meeting is to the German, +the vehicles soon became the centre of a crowd, and the village denuded +even of its old women and children. The traces were disentangled, and a +few slaps on the nose forced the skewbald to draw back a little; after +which the teams were straightened out and separated. Nevertheless, +either sheer obstinacy or vexation at being parted from their new +friends caused the strange team absolutely to refuse to move a leg. +Their driver laid the whip about them, but still they stood as though +rooted to the spot. At length the participatory efforts of the peasants +rose to an unprecedented degree of enthusiasm, and they shouted in an +intermittent chorus the advice, “Do you, Andrusha, take the head of the +trace horse on the right, while Uncle Mitai mounts the shaft horse. Get +up, Uncle Mitai.” Upon that the lean, long, and red-bearded Uncle Mitai +mounted the shaft horse; in which position he looked like a village +steeple or the winder which is used to raise water from wells. The +coachman whipped up his steeds afresh, but nothing came of it, and +Uncle Mitai had proved useless. “Hold on, hold on!” shouted the peasants +again. “Do you, Uncle Mitai, mount the trace horse, while Uncle Minai +mounts the shaft horse.” Whereupon Uncle Minai--a peasant with a pair of +broad shoulders, a beard as black as charcoal, and a belly like the +huge samovar in which sbiten is brewed for all attending a local +market--hastened to seat himself upon the shaft horse, which almost +sank to the ground beneath his weight. “NOW they will go all right!” the +muzhiks exclaimed. “Lay it on hot, lay it on hot! Give that sorrel horse +the whip, and make him squirm like a koramora [22].” Nevertheless, the +affair in no way progressed; wherefore, seeing that flogging was of +no use, Uncles Mitai and Minai BOTH mounted the sorrel, while Andrusha +seated himself upon the trace horse. Then the coachman himself lost +patience, and sent the two Uncles about their business--and not before +it was time, seeing that the horses were steaming in a way that made it +clear that, unless they were first winded, they would never reach the +next posthouse. So they were given a moment’s rest. That done, they +moved off of their own accord! + +Throughout, Chichikov had been gazing at the young unknown with +great attention, and had even made one or two attempts to enter into +conversation with her: but without success. Indeed, when the ladies +departed, it was as in a dream that he saw the girl’s comely presence, +the delicate features of her face, and the slender outline of her form +vanish from his sight; it was as in a dream that once more he saw only +the road, the britchka, the three horses, Selifan, and the bare, empty +fields. Everywhere in life--yes, even in the plainest, the dingiest +ranks of society, as much as in those which are uniformly bright and +presentable--a man may happen upon some phenomenon which is so entirely +different from those which have hitherto fallen to his lot. Everywhere +through the web of sorrow of which our lives are woven there may +suddenly break a clear, radiant thread of joy; even as suddenly along +the street of some poor, poverty-stricken village which, ordinarily, +sees nought but a farm waggon there may came bowling a gorgeous coach +with plated harness, picturesque horses, and a glitter of glass, so that +the peasants stand gaping, and do not resume their caps until long after +the strange equipage has become lost to sight. Thus the golden-haired +maiden makes a sudden, unexpected appearance in our story, and as +suddenly, as unexpectedly, disappears. Indeed, had it not been that the +person concerned was Chichikov, and not some youth of twenty summers--a +hussar or a student or, in general, a man standing on the threshold +of life--what thoughts would not have sprung to birth, and stirred and +spoken, within him; for what a length of time would he not have stood +entranced as he stared into the distance and forgot alike his journey, +the business still to be done, the possibility of incurring loss through +lingering--himself, his vocation, the world, and everything else that +the world contains! + +But in the present case the hero was a man of middle-age, and of +cautious and frigid temperament. True, he pondered over the incident, +but in more deliberate fashion than a younger man would have done. That +is to say, his reflections were not so irresponsible and unsteady. “She +was a comely damsel,” he said to himself as he opened his snuff-box and +took a pinch. “But the important point is: Is she also a NICE DAMSEL? +One thing she has in her favour--and that is that she appears only just +to have left school, and not to have had time to become womanly in the +worser sense. At present, therefore, she is like a child. Everything in +her is simple, and she says just what she thinks, and laughs merely when +she feels inclined. Such a damsel might be made into anything--or she +might be turned into worthless rubbish. The latter, I surmise, for +trudging after her she will have a fond mother and a bevy of aunts, +and so forth--persons who, within a year, will have filled her with +womanishness to the point where her own father wouldn’t know her. And +to that there will be added pride and affectation, and she will begin +to observe established rules, and to rack her brains as to how, and how +much, she ought to talk, and to whom, and where, and so forth. Every +moment will see her growing timorous and confused lest she be saying too +much. Finally, she will develop into a confirmed prevaricator, and end +by marrying the devil knows whom!” Chichikov paused awhile. Then he went +on: “Yet I should like to know who she is, and who her father is, and +whether he is a rich landowner of good standing, or merely a respectable +man who has acquired a fortune in the service of the Government. +Should he allow her, on marriage, a dowry of, say, two hundred thousand +roubles, she will be a very nice catch indeed. She might even, so to +speak, make a man of good breeding happy.” + +Indeed, so attractively did the idea of the two hundred thousand +roubles begin to dance before his imagination that he felt a twinge of +self-reproach because, during the hubbub, he had not inquired of the +postillion or the coachman who the travellers might be. But soon the +sight of Sobakevitch’s country house dissipated his thoughts, and forced +him to return to his stock subject of reflection. + +Sobakevitch’s country house and estate were of very fair size, and on +each side of the mansion were expanses of birch and pine forest in two +shades of green. The wooden edifice itself had dark-grey walls and a +red-gabled roof, for it was a mansion of the kind which Russia builds +for her military settlers and for German colonists. A noticeable +circumstance was the fact that the taste of the architect had differed +from that of the proprietor--the former having manifestly been a pedant +and desirous of symmetry, and the latter having wished only for comfort. +Consequently he (the proprietor) had dispensed with all windows on one +side of the mansion, and had caused to be inserted, in their place, only +a small aperture which, doubtless, was intended to light an otherwise +dark lumber-room. Likewise, the architect’s best efforts had failed to +cause the pediment to stand in the centre of the building, since the +proprietor had had one of its four original columns removed. Evidently +durability had been considered throughout, for the courtyard was +enclosed by a strong and very high wooden fence, and both the stables, +the coach-house, and the culinary premises were partially constructed of +beams warranted to last for centuries. Nay, even the wooden huts of the +peasantry were wonderful in the solidity of their construction, and +not a clay wall or a carved pattern or other device was to be seen. +Everything fitted exactly into its right place, and even the draw-well +of the mansion was fashioned of the oakwood usually thought suitable +only for mills or ships. In short, wherever Chichikov’s eye turned he +saw nothing that was not free from shoddy make and well and skilfully +arranged. As he approached the entrance steps he caught sight of two +faces peering from a window. One of them was that of a woman in a mobcap +with features as long and as narrow as a cucumber, and the other that +of a man with features as broad and as short as the Moldavian pumpkins +(known as gorlianki) whereof balallaiki--the species of light, +two-stringed instrument which constitutes the pride and the joy of +the gay young fellow of twenty as he sits winking and smiling at the +white-necked, white-bosomed maidens who have gathered to listen to his +low-pitched tinkling--are fashioned. This scrutiny made, both faces +withdrew, and there came out on to the entrance steps a lacquey clad +in a grey jacket and a stiff blue collar. This functionary conducted +Chichikov into the hall, where he was met by the master of the house +himself, who requested his guest to enter, and then led him into the +inner part of the mansion. + +A covert glance at Sobakevitch showed our hero that his host exactly +resembled a moderate-sized bear. To complete the resemblance, +Sobakevitch’s long frockcoat and baggy trousers were of the precise +colour of a bear’s hide, while, when shuffling across the floor, he made +a criss-cross motion of the legs, and had, in addition, a constant habit +of treading upon his companion’s toes. As for his face, it was of the +warm, ardent tint of a piatok [23]. Persons of this kind--persons +to whose designing nature has devoted not much thought, and in the +fashioning of whose frames she has used no instruments so delicate as a +file or a gimlet and so forth--are not uncommon. Such persons she merely +roughhews. One cut with a hatchet, and there results a nose; another +such cut with a hatchet, and there materialises a pair of lips; two +thrusts with a drill, and there issues a pair of eyes. Lastly, scorning +to plane down the roughness, she sends out that person into the world, +saying: “There is another live creature.” Sobakevitch was just such a +ragged, curiously put together figure--though the above model would seem +to have been followed more in his upper portion than in his lower. One +result was that he seldom turned his head to look at the person with +whom he was speaking, but, rather, directed his eyes towards, say, the +stove corner or the doorway. As host and guest crossed the dining-room +Chichikov directed a second glance at his companion. “He is a bear, and +nothing but a bear,” he thought to himself. And, indeed, the strange +comparison was inevitable. Incidentally, Sobakevitch’s Christian name +and patronymic were Michael Semenovitch. Of his habit of treading upon +other people’s toes Chichikov had become fully aware; wherefore he +stepped cautiously, and, throughout, allowed his host to take the +lead. As a matter of fact, Sobakevitch himself seemed conscious of his +failing, for at intervals he would inquire: “I hope I have not hurt +you?” and Chichikov, with a word of thanks, would reply that as yet he +had sustained no injury. + +At length they reached the drawing-room, where Sobakevitch pointed to +an armchair, and invited his guest to be seated. Chichikov gazed with +interest at the walls and the pictures. In every such picture there were +portrayed either young men or Greek generals of the type of Movrogordato +(clad in a red uniform and breaches), Kanaris, and others; and all these +heroes were depicted with a solidity of thigh and a wealth of moustache +which made the beholder simply shudder with awe. Among them there were +placed also, according to some unknown system, and for some unknown +reason, firstly, Bagration [24]--tall and thin, and with a cluster of +small flags and cannon beneath him, and the whole set in the narrowest +of frames--and, secondly, the Greek heroine, Bobelina, whose legs looked +larger than do the whole bodies of the drawing-room dandies of the +present day. Apparently the master of the house was himself a man of +health and strength, and therefore liked to have his apartments adorned +with none but folk of equal vigour and robustness. Lastly, in the +window, and suspended cheek by jowl with Bobelina, there hung a cage +whence at intervals there peered forth a white-spotted blackbird. +Like everything else in the apartment, it bore a strong resemblance to +Sobakevitch. When host and guest had been conversing for two minutes or +so the door opened, and there entered the hostess--a tall lady in a cap +adorned with ribands of domestic colouring and manufacture. She entered +deliberately, and held her head as erect as a palm. + +“This is my wife, Theodulia Ivanovna,” said Sobakevitch. + +Chichikov approached and took her hand. The fact that she raised it +nearly to the level of his lips apprised him of the circumstance that it +had just been rinsed in cucumber oil. + +“My dear, allow me to introduce Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov,” added +Sobakevitch. “He has the honour of being acquainted both with our +Governor and with our Postmaster.” + +Upon this Theodulia Ivanovna requested her guest to be seated, and +accompanied the invitation with the kind of bow usually employed only by +actresses who are playing the role of queens. Next, she took a seat upon +the sofa, drew around her her merino gown, and sat thereafter without +moving an eyelid or an eyebrow. As for Chichikov, he glanced upwards, +and once more caught sight of Kanaris with his fat thighs and +interminable moustache, and of Bobelina and the blackbird. For fully +five minutes all present preserved a complete silence--the only sound +audible being that of the blackbird’s beak against the wooden floor of +the cage as the creature fished for grains of corn. Meanwhile Chichikov +again surveyed the room, and saw that everything in it was massive and +clumsy in the highest degree; as also that everything was curiously in +keeping with the master of the house. For example, in one corner of the +apartment there stood a hazelwood bureau with a bulging body on four +grotesque legs--the perfect image of a bear. Also, the tables and the +chairs were of the same ponderous, unrestful order, and every single +article in the room appeared to be saying either, “I, too, am a +Sobakevitch,” or “I am exactly like Sobakevitch.” + +“I heard speak of you one day when I was visiting the President of the +Council,” said Chichikov, on perceiving that no one else had a mind to +begin a conversation. “That was on Thursday last. We had a very pleasant +evening.” + +“Yes, on that occasion I was not there,” replied Sobakevitch. + +“What a nice man he is!” + +“Who is?” inquired Sobakevitch, gazing into the corner by the stove. + +“The President of the Local Council.” + +“Did he seem so to you? True, he is a mason, but he is also the greatest +fool that the world ever saw.” + +Chichikov started a little at this mordant criticism, but soon pulled +himself together again, and continued: + +“Of course, every man has his weakness. Yet the President seems to be an +excellent fellow.” + +“And do you think the same of the Governor?” + +“Yes. Why not?” + +“Because there exists no greater rogue than he.” + +“What? The Governor a rogue?” ejaculated Chichikov, at a loss to +understand how the official in question could come to be numbered with +thieves. “Let me say that I should never have guessed it. Permit me +also to remark that his conduct would hardly seem to bear out your +opinion--he seems so gentle a man.” And in proof of this Chichikov +cited the purses which the Governor knitted, and also expatiated on the +mildness of his features. + +“He has the face of a robber,” said Sobakevitch. “Were you to give him a +knife, and to turn him loose on a turnpike, he would cut your throat for +two kopecks. And the same with the Vice-Governor. The pair are just Gog +and Magog.” + +“Evidently he is not on good terms with them,” thought Chichikov to +himself. “I had better pass to the Chief of Police, which whom he DOES +seem to be friendly.” Accordingly he added aloud: “For my own part, I +should give the preference to the Head of the Gendarmery. What a frank, +outspoken nature he has! And what an element of simplicity does his +expression contain!” + +“He is mean to the core,” remarked Sobakevitch coldly. “He will sell you +and cheat you, and then dine at your table. Yes, I know them all, and +every one of them is a swindler, and the town a nest of rascals engaged +in robbing one another. Not a man of the lot is there but would sell +Christ. Yet stay: ONE decent fellow there is--the Public Prosecutor; +though even HE, if the truth be told, is little better than a pig.” + +After these eulogia Chichikov saw that it would be useless to continue +running through the list of officials--more especially since suddenly he +had remembered that Sobakevitch was not at any time given to commending +his fellow man. + +“Let us go to luncheon, my dear,” put in Theodulia Ivanovna to her +spouse. + +“Yes; pray come to table,” said Sobakevitch to his guest; whereupon they +consumed the customary glass of vodka (accompanied by sundry snacks of +salted cucumber and other dainties) with which Russians, both in town +and country, preface a meal. Then they filed into the dining-room in the +wake of the hostess, who sailed on ahead like a goose swimming across a +pond. The small dining-table was found to be laid for four persons--the +fourth place being occupied by a lady or a young girl (it would have +been difficult to say which exactly) who might have been either a +relative, the housekeeper, or a casual visitor. Certain persons in the +world exist, not as personalities in themselves, but as spots or specks +on the personalities of others. Always they are to be seen sitting in +the same place, and holding their heads at exactly the same angle, so +that one comes within an ace of mistaking them for furniture, and thinks +to oneself that never since the day of their birth can they have spoken +a single word. + +“My dear,” said Sobakevitch, “the cabbage soup is excellent.” With that +he finished his portion, and helped himself to a generous measure of +niania [25]--the dish which follows shtchi and consists of a sheep’s +stomach stuffed with black porridge, brains, and other things. “What +niania this is!” he added to Chichikov. “Never would you get such stuff +in a town, where one is given the devil knows what.” + +“Nevertheless the Governor keeps a fair table,” said Chichikov. + +“Yes, but do you know what all the stuff is MADE OF?” retorted +Sobakevitch. “If you DID know you would never touch it.” + +“Of course I am not in a position to say how it is prepared, but at +least the pork cutlets and the boiled fish seemed excellent.” + +“Ah, it might have been thought so; yet I know the way in which such +things are bought in the market-place. They are bought by some rascal of +a cook whom a Frenchman has taught how to skin a tomcat and then serve +it up as hare.” + +“Ugh! What horrible things you say!” put in Madame. + +“Well, my dear, that is how things are done, and it is no fault of mine +that it is so. Moreover, everything that is left over--everything that +WE (pardon me for mentioning it) cast into the slop-pail--is used by +such folk for making soup.” + +“Always at table you begin talking like this!” objected his helpmeet. + +“And why not?” said Sobakevitch. “I tell you straight that I would not +eat such nastiness, even had I made it myself. Sugar a frog as much +as you like, but never shall it pass MY lips. Nor would I swallow an +oyster, for I know only too well what an oyster may resemble. But +have some mutton, friend Chichikov. It is shoulder of mutton, and +very different stuff from the mutton which they cook in noble +kitchens--mutton which has been kicking about the market-place four days +or more. All that sort of cookery has been invented by French and German +doctors, and I should like to hang them for having done so. They go and +prescribe diets and a hunger cure as though what suits their flaccid +German systems will agree with a Russian stomach! Such devices are no +good at all.” Sobakevitch shook his head wrathfully. “Fellows like +those are for ever talking of civilisation. As if THAT sort of thing was +civilisation! Phew!” (Perhaps the speaker’s concluding exclamation would +have been even stronger had he not been seated at table.) “For myself, I +will have none of it. When I eat pork at a meal, give me the WHOLE pig; +when mutton, the WHOLE sheep; when goose, the WHOLE of the bird. Two +dishes are better than a thousand, provided that one can eat of them as +much as one wants.” + +And he proceeded to put precept into practice by taking half the +shoulder of mutton on to his plate, and then devouring it down to the +last morsel of gristle and bone. + +“My word!” reflected Chichikov. “The fellow has a pretty good holding +capacity!” + +“None of it for me,” repeated Sobakevitch as he wiped his hands on his +napkin. “I don’t intend to be like a fellow named Plushkin, who owns +eight hundred souls, yet dines worse than does my shepherd.” + +“Who is Plushkin?” asked Chichikov. + +“A miser,” replied Sobakevitch. “Such a miser as never you could +imagine. Even convicts in prison live better than he does. And he +starves his servants as well.” + +“Really?” ejaculated Chichikov, greatly interested. “Should you, then, +say that he has lost many peasants by death?” + +“Certainly. They keep dying like flies.” + +“Then how far from here does he reside?” + +“About five versts.” + +“Only five versts?” exclaimed Chichikov, feeling his heart beating +joyously. “Ought one, when leaving your gates, to turn to the right or +to the left?” + +“I should be sorry to tell you the way to the house of such a cur,” said +Sobakevitch. “A man had far better go to hell than to Plushkin’s.” + +“Quite so,” responded Chichikov. “My only reason for asking you is +that it interests me to become acquainted with any and every sort of +locality.” + +To the shoulder of mutton there succeeded, in turn, cutlets (each one +larger than a plate), a turkey of about the size of a calf, eggs, rice, +pastry, and every conceivable thing which could possibly be put into a +stomach. There the meal ended. When he rose from table Chichikov felt as +though a pood’s weight were inside him. In the drawing-room the company +found dessert awaiting them in the shape of pears, plums, and apples; +but since neither host nor guest could tackle these particular dainties +the hostess removed them to another room. Taking advantage of her +absence, Chichikov turned to Sobakevitch (who, prone in an armchair, +seemed, after his ponderous meal, to be capable of doing little +beyond belching and grunting--each such grunt or belch necessitating a +subsequent signing of the cross over the mouth), and intimated to him +a desire to have a little private conversation concerning a certain +matter. At this moment the hostess returned. + +“Here is more dessert,” she said. “Pray have a few radishes stewed in +honey.” + +“Later, later,” replied Sobakevitch. “Do you go to your room, and Paul +Ivanovitch and I will take off our coats and have a nap.” + +Upon this the good lady expressed her readiness to send for feather beds +and cushions, but her husband expressed a preference for slumbering in +an armchair, and she therefore departed. When she had gone Sobakevitch +inclined his head in an attitude of willingness to listen to Chichikov’s +business. Our hero began in a sort of detached manner--touching lightly +upon the subject of the Russian Empire, and expatiating upon the +immensity of the same, and saying that even the Empire of Ancient Rome +had been of considerably smaller dimensions. Meanwhile Sobakevitch sat +with his head drooping. + +From that Chichikov went on to remark that, according to the statutes of +the said Russian Empire (which yielded to none in glory--so much so that +foreigners marvelled at it), peasants on the census lists who had ended +their earthly careers were nevertheless, on the rendering of new lists, +returned equally with the living, to the end that the courts might be +relieved of a multitude of trifling, useless emendations which might +complicate the already sufficiently complex mechanism of the State. +Nevertheless, said Chichikov, the general equity of this measure did +not obviate a certain amount of annoyance to landowners, since it forced +them to pay upon a non-living article the tax due upon a living. Hence +(our hero concluded) he (Chichikov) was prepared, owing to the personal +respect which he felt for Sobakevitch, to relieve him, in part, of +the irksome obligation referred to (in passing, it may be said that +Chichikov referred to his principal point only guardedly, for he called +the souls which he was seeking not “dead,” but “non-existent”). + +Meanwhile Sobakevitch listened with bent head; though something like a +trace of expression dawned in his face as he did so. Ordinarily his +body lacked a soul--or, if he did possess a soul, he seemed to keep it +elsewhere than where it ought to have been; so that, buried beneath +mountains (as it were) or enclosed within a massive shell, its movements +produced no sort of agitation on the surface. + +“Well?” said Chichikov--though not without a certain tremor of +diffidence as to the possible response. + +“You are after dead souls?” were Sobakevitch’s perfectly simple words. +He spoke without the least surprise in his tone, and much as though the +conversation had been turning on grain. + +“Yes,” replied Chichikov, and then, as before, softened down the +expression “dead souls.” + +“They are to be found,” said Sobakevitch. “Why should they not be?” + +“Then of course you will be glad to get rid of any that you may chance +to have?” + +“Yes, I shall have no objection to SELLING them.” At this point the +speaker raised his head a little, for it had struck him that surely the +would-be buyer must have some advantage in view. + +“The devil!” thought Chichikov to himself. “Here is he selling the goods +before I have even had time to utter a word!” + +“And what about the price?” he added aloud. “Of course, the articles are +not of a kind very easy to appraise.” + +“I should be sorry to ask too much,” said Sobakevitch. “How would a +hundred roubles per head suit you?” + +“What, a hundred roubles per head?” Chichikov stared open-mouthed at +his host--doubting whether he had heard aright, or whether his host’s +slow-moving tongue might not have inadvertently substituted one word for +another. + +“Yes. Is that too much for you?” said Sobakevitch. Then he added: “What +is your own price?” + +“My own price? I think that we cannot properly have understood one +another--that you must have forgotten of what the goods consist. With +my hand on my heart do I submit that eight grivni per soul would be a +handsome, a VERY handsome, offer.” + +“What? Eight grivni?” + +“In my opinion, a higher offer would be impossible.” + +“But I am not a seller of boots.” + +“No; yet you, for your part, will agree that these souls are not live +human beings?” + +“I suppose you hope to find fools ready to sell you souls on the census +list for a couple of groats apiece?” + +“Pardon me, but why do you use the term ‘on the census list’? The souls +themselves have long since passed away, and have left behind them only +their names. Not to trouble you with any further discussion of the +subject, I can offer you a rouble and a half per head, but no more.” + +“You should be ashamed even to mention such a sum! Since you deal in +articles of this kind, quote me a genuine price.” + +“I cannot, Michael Semenovitch. Believe me, I cannot. What a man +cannot do, that he cannot do.” The speaker ended by advancing another +half-rouble per head. + +“But why hang back with your money?” said Sobakevitch. “Of a truth I am +not asking much of you. Any other rascal than myself would have cheated +you by selling you old rubbish instead of good, genuine souls, whereas +I should be ready to give you of my best, even were you buying only +nut-kernels. For instance, look at wheelwright Michiev. Never was there +such a one to build spring carts! And his handiwork was not like your +Moscow handiwork--good only for an hour. No, he did it all himself, even +down to the varnishing.” + +Chichikov opened his mouth to remark that, nevertheless, the said +Michiev had long since departed this world; but Sobakevitch’s eloquence +had got too thoroughly into its stride to admit of any interruption. + +“And look, too, at Probka Stepan, the carpenter,” his host went on. “I +will wager my head that nowhere else would you find such a workman. What +a strong fellow he was! He had served in the Guards, and the Lord only +knows what they had given for him, seeing that he was over three arshins +in height.” + +Again Chichikov tried to remark that Probka was dead, but Sobakevitch’s +tongue was borne on the torrent of its own verbiage, and the only thing +to be done was to listen. + +“And Milushkin, the bricklayer! He could build a stove in any house you +liked! And Maksim Teliatnikov, the bootmaker! Anything that he drove +his awl into became a pair of boots--and boots for which you would +be thankful, although he WAS a bit foul of the mouth. And Eremi +Sorokoplechin, too! He was the best of the lot, and used to work at +his trade in Moscow, where he paid a tax of five hundred roubles. Well, +THERE’S an assortment of serfs for you!--a very different assortment +from what Plushkin would sell you!” + +“But permit me,” at length put in Chichikov, astounded at this flood of +eloquence to which there appeared to be no end. “Permit me, I say, to +inquire why you enumerate the talents of the deceased, seeing that they +are all of them dead, and that therefore there can be no sense in doing +so. ‘A dead body is only good to prop a fence with,’ says the proverb.” + +“Of course they are dead,” replied Sobakevitch, but rather as though the +idea had only just occurred to him, and was giving him food for thought. +“But tell me, now: what is the use of listing them as still alive? And +what is the use of them themselves? They are flies, not human beings.” + +“Well,” said Chichikov, “they exist, though only in idea.” + +“But no--NOT only in idea. I tell you that nowhere else would you +find such a fellow for working heavy tools as was Michiev. He had the +strength of a horse in his shoulders.” And, with the words, Sobakevitch +turned, as though for corroboration, to the portrait of Bagration, as is +frequently done by one of the parties in a dispute when he purports to +appeal to an extraneous individual who is not only unknown to him, but +wholly unconnected with the subject in hand; with the result that the +individual is left in doubt whether to make a reply, or whether to +betake himself elsewhere. + +“Nevertheless, I CANNOT give you more than two roubles per head,” said +Chichikov. + +“Well, as I don’t want you to swear that I have asked too much of you +and won’t meet you halfway, suppose, for friendship’s sake, that you pay +me seventy-five roubles in assignats?” + +“Good heavens!” thought Chichikov to himself. “Does the man take me for +a fool?” Then he added aloud: “The situation seems to me a strange +one, for it is as though we were performing a stage comedy. No other +explanation would meet the case. Yet you appear to be a man of sense, +and possessed of some education. The matter is a very simple one. The +question is: what is a dead soul worth, and is it of any use to any +one?” + +“It is of use to YOU, or you would not be buying such articles.” + +Chichikov bit his lip, and stood at a loss for a retort. He tried +to saying something about “family and domestic circumstances,” but +Sobakevitch cut him short with: + +“I don’t want to know your private affairs, for I never poke my nose +into such things. You need the souls, and I am ready to sell them. +Should you not buy them, I think you will repent it.” + +“Two roubles is my price,” repeated Chichikov. + +“Come, come! As you have named that sum, I can understand your not +liking to go back upon it; but quote me a bona fide figure.” + +“The devil fly away with him!” mused Chichikov. “However, I will add +another half-rouble.” And he did so. + +“Indeed?” said Sobakevitch. “Well, my last word upon it is--fifty +roubles in assignats. That will mean a sheer loss to me, for nowhere +else in the world could you buy better souls than mine.” + +“The old skinflint!” muttered Chichikov. Then he added aloud, with +irritation in his tone: “See here. This is a serious matter. Any one but +you would be thankful to get rid of the souls. Only a fool would stick +to them, and continue to pay the tax.” + +“Yes, but remember (and I say it wholly in a friendly way) that +transactions of this kind are not generally allowed, and that any one +would say that a man who engages in them must have some rather doubtful +advantage in view.” + +“Have it your own away,” said Chichikov, with assumed indifference. “As +a matter of fact, I am not purchasing for profit, as you suppose, but to +humour a certain whim of mine. Two and a half roubles is the most that I +can offer.” + +“Bless your heart!” retorted the host. “At least give me thirty roubles +in assignats, and take the lot.” + +“No, for I see that you are unwilling to sell. I must say good-day to +you.” + +“Hold on, hold on!” exclaimed Sobakevitch, retaining his guest’s hand, +and at the same moment treading heavily upon his toes--so heavily, +indeed, that Chichikov gasped and danced with the pain. + +“I BEG your pardon!” said Sobakevitch hastily. “Evidently I have hurt +you. Pray sit down again.” + +“No,” retorted Chichikov. “I am merely wasting my time, and must be +off.” + +“Oh, sit down just for a moment. I have something more agreeable to +say.” And, drawing closer to his guest, Sobakevitch whispered in his +ear, as though communicating to him a secret: “How about twenty-five +roubles?” + +“No, no, no!” exclaimed Chichikov. “I won’t give you even a QUARTER of +that. I won’t advance another kopeck.” + +For a while Sobakevitch remained silent, and Chichikov did the same. +This lasted for a couple of minutes, and, meanwhile, the aquiline-nosed +Bagration gazed from the wall as though much interested in the +bargaining. + +“What is your outside price?” at length said Sobakevitch. + +“Two and a half roubles.” + +“Then you seem to rate a human soul at about the same value as a boiled +turnip. At least give me THREE roubles.” + +“No, I cannot.” + +“Pardon me, but you are an impossible man to deal with. However, even +though it will mean a dead loss to me, and you have not shown a very +nice spirit about it, I cannot well refuse to please a friend. I suppose +a purchase deed had better be made out in order to have everything in +order?” + +“Of course.” + +“Then for that purpose let us repair to the town.” + +The affair ended in their deciding to do this on the morrow, and to +arrange for the signing of a deed of purchase. Next, Chichikov requested +a list of the peasants; to which Sobakevitch readily agreed. Indeed, he +went to his writing-desk then and there, and started to indite a +list which gave not only the peasants’ names, but also their late +qualifications. + +Meanwhile Chichikov, having nothing else to do, stood looking at the +spacious form of his host; and as he gazed at his back as broad as that +of a cart horse, and at the legs as massive as the iron standards which +adorn a street, he could not help inwardly ejaculating: + +“Truly God has endowed you with much! Though not adjusted with nicety, +at least you are strongly built. I wonder whether you were born a +bear or whether you have come to it through your rustic life, with its +tilling of crops and its trading with peasants? Yet no; I believe that, +even if you had received a fashionable education, and had mixed with +society, and had lived in St. Petersburg, you would still have been just +the kulak [26] that you are. The only difference is that circumstances, +as they stand, permit of your polishing off a stuffed shoulder of mutton +at a meal; whereas in St. Petersburg you would have been unable to +do so. Also, as circumstances stand, you have under you a number +of peasants, whom you treat well for the reason that they are your +property; whereas, otherwise, you would have had under you tchinovniks +[27]: whom you would have bullied because they were NOT your property. +Also, you would have robbed the Treasury, since a kulak always remains a +money-grubber.” + +“The list is ready,” said Sobakevitch, turning round. + +“Indeed? Then please let me look at it.” Chichikov ran his eye over the +document, and could not but marvel at its neatness and accuracy. Not +only were there set forth in it the trade, the age, and the pedigree +of every serf, but on the margin of the sheet were jotted remarks +concerning each serf’s conduct and sobriety. Truly it was a pleasure to +look at it. + +“And do you mind handing me the earnest money?” said Sobakevitch. + +“Yes, I do. Why need that be done? You can receive the money in a lump +sum as soon as we visit the town.” + +“But it is always the custom, you know,” asserted Sobakevitch. + +“Then I cannot follow it, for I have no money with me. However, here are +ten roubles.” + +“Ten roubles, indeed? You might as well hand me fifty while you are +about it.” + +Once more Chichikov started to deny that he had any money upon him, but +Sobakevitch insisted so strongly that this was not so that at length +the guest pulled out another fifteen roubles, and added them to the ten +already produced. + +“Kindly give me a receipt for the money,” he added. + +“A receipt? Why should I give you a receipt?” + +“Because it is better to do so, in order to guard against mistakes.” + +“Very well; but first hand me over the money.” + +“The money? I have it here. Do you write out the receipt, and then the +money shall be yours.” + +“Pardon me, but how am I to write out the receipt before I have seen the +cash?” + +Chichikov placed the notes in Sobakevitch’s hand; whereupon the host +moved nearer to the table, and added to the list of serfs a note that +he had received for the peasants, therewith sold, the sum of twenty-five +roubles, as earnest money. This done, he counted the notes once more. + +“This is a very OLD note,” he remarked, holding one up to the light. +“Also, it is a trifle torn. However, in a friendly transaction one must +not be too particular.” + +“What a kulak!” thought Chichikov to himself. “And what a brute beast!” + +“Then you do not want any WOMEN souls?” queried Sobakevitch. + +“I thank you, no.” + +“I could let you have some cheap--say, as between friends, at a rouble a +head?” + +“No, I should have no use for them.” + +“Then, that being so, there is no more to be said. There is no +accounting for tastes. ‘One man loves the priest, and another the +priest’s wife,’ says the proverb.” + +Chichikov rose to take his leave. “Once more I would request of you,” he +said, “that the bargain be left as it is.” + +“Of course, of course. What is done between friends holds good because +of their mutual friendship. Good-bye, and thank you for your visit. In +advance I would beg that, whenever you should have an hour or two to +spare, you will come and lunch with us again. Perhaps we might be able +to do one another further service?” + +“Not if I know it!” reflected Chichikov as he mounted his britchka. “Not +I, seeing that I have had two and a half roubles per soul squeezed out +of me by a brute of a kulak!” + +Altogether he felt dissatisfied with Sobakevitch’s behaviour. In spite +of the man being a friend of the Governor and the Chief of Police, +he had acted like an outsider in taking money for what was worthless +rubbish. As the britchka left the courtyard Chichikov glanced back +and saw Sobakevitch still standing on the verandah--apparently for the +purpose of watching to see which way the guest’s carriage would turn. + +“The old villain, to be still standing there!” muttered Chichikov +through his teeth; after which he ordered Selifan to proceed so that the +vehicle’s progress should be invisible from the mansion--the truth +being that he had a mind next to visit Plushkin (whose serfs, to quote +Sobakevitch, had a habit of dying like flies), but not to let his late +host learn of his intention. Accordingly, on reaching the further end of +the village, he hailed the first peasant whom he saw--a man who was in +the act of hoisting a ponderous beam on to his shoulder before setting +off with it, ant-like, to his hut. + +“Hi!” shouted Chichikov. “How can I reach landowner Plushkin’s place +without first going past the mansion here?” + +The peasant seemed nonplussed by the question. + +“Don’t you know?” queried Chichikov. + +“No, barin,” replied the peasant. + +“What? You don’t know skinflint Plushkin who feeds his people so badly?” + +“Of course I do!” exclaimed the fellow, and added thereto an +uncomplimentary expression of a species not ordinarily employed in +polite society. We may guess that it was a pretty apt expression, since +long after the man had become lost to view Chichikov was still laughing +in his britchka. And, indeed, the language of the Russian populace is +always forcible in its phraseology. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Chichikov’s amusement at the peasant’s outburst prevented him from +noticing that he had reached the centre of a large and populous village; +but, presently, a violent jolt aroused him to the fact that he was +driving over wooden pavements of a kind compared with which the +cobblestones of the town had been as nothing. Like the keys of a piano, +the planks kept rising and falling, and unguarded passage over them +entailed either a bump on the back of the neck or a bruise on the +forehead or a bite on the tip of one’s tongue. At the same time +Chichikov noticed a look of decay about the buildings of the village. +The beams of the huts had grown dark with age, many of their roofs were +riddled with holes, others had but a tile of the roof remaining, and yet +others were reduced to the rib-like framework of the same. It would +seem as though the inhabitants themselves had removed the laths and +traverses, on the very natural plea that the huts were no protection +against the rain, and therefore, since the latter entered in bucketfuls, +there was no particular object to be gained by sitting in such huts when +all the time there was the tavern and the highroad and other places to +resort to. + +Suddenly a woman appeared from an outbuilding--apparently the +housekeeper of the mansion, but so roughly and dirtily dressed as almost +to seem indistinguishable from a man. Chichikov inquired for the master +of the place. + +“He is not at home,” she replied, almost before her interlocutor had had +time to finish. Then she added: “What do you want with him?” + +“I have some business to do,” said Chichikov. + +“Then pray walk into the house,” the woman advised. Then she turned upon +him a back that was smeared with flour and had a long slit in the lower +portion of its covering. Entering a large, dark hall which reeked like +a tomb, he passed into an equally dark parlour that was lighted only by +such rays as contrived to filter through a crack under the door. When +Chichikov opened the door in question, the spectacle of the untidiness +within struck him almost with amazement. It would seem that the floor +was never washed, and that the room was used as a receptacle for every +conceivable kind of furniture. On a table stood a ragged chair, with, +beside it, a clock minus a pendulum and covered all over with cobwebs. +Against a wall leant a cupboard, full of old silver, glassware, and +china. On a writing table, inlaid with mother-of-pearl which, in places, +had broken away and left behind it a number of yellow grooves (stuffed +with putty), lay a pile of finely written manuscript, an overturned +marble press (turning green), an ancient book in a leather cover with +red edges, a lemon dried and shrunken to the dimensions of a hazelnut, +the broken arm of a chair, a tumbler containing the dregs of some liquid +and three flies (the whole covered over with a sheet of notepaper), a +pile of rags, two ink-encrusted pens, and a yellow toothpick with which +the master of the house had picked his teeth (apparently) at least +before the coming of the French to Moscow. As for the walls, they were +hung with a medley of pictures. Among the latter was a long engraving of +a battle scene, wherein soldiers in three-cornered hats were brandishing +huge drums and slender lances. It lacked a glass, and was set in a frame +ornamented with bronze fretwork and bronze corner rings. Beside it hung +a huge, grimy oil painting representative of some flowers and fruit, +half a water melon, a boar’s head, and the pendent form of a dead +wild duck. Attached to the ceiling there was a chandelier in a holland +covering--the covering so dusty as closely to resemble a huge cocoon +enclosing a caterpillar. Lastly, in one corner of the room lay a pile +of articles which had evidently been adjudged unworthy of a place on the +table. Yet what the pile consisted of it would have been difficult to +say, seeing that the dust on the same was so thick that any hand which +touched it would have at once resembled a glove. Prominently protruding +from the pile was the shaft of a wooden spade and the antiquated sole +of a shoe. Never would one have supposed that a living creature had +tenanted the room, were it not that the presence of such a creature was +betrayed by the spectacle of an old nightcap resting on the table. + +Whilst Chichikov was gazing at this extraordinary mess, a side door +opened and there entered the housekeeper who had met him near the +outbuildings. But now Chichikov perceived this person to be a man rather +than a woman, since a female housekeeper would have had no beard to +shave, whereas the chin of the newcomer, with the lower portion of his +cheeks, strongly resembled the curry-comb which is used for grooming +horses. Chichikov assumed a questioning air, and waited to hear what the +housekeeper might have to say. The housekeeper did the same. At length, +surprised at the misunderstanding, Chichikov decided to ask the first +question. + +“Is the master at home?” he inquired. + +“Yes,” replied the person addressed. + +“Then where is he?” continued Chichikov. + +“Are you blind, my good sir?” retorted the other. “_I_ am the master.” + +Involuntarily our hero started and stared. During his travels it had +befallen him to meet various types of men--some of them, it may be, +types which you and I have never encountered; but even to Chichikov this +particular species was new. In the old man’s face there was nothing very +special--it was much like the wizened face of many another dotard, save +that the chin was so greatly projected that whenever he spoke he was +forced to wipe it with a handkerchief to avoid dribbling, and that his +small eyes were not yet grown dull, but twinkled under their overhanging +brows like the eyes of mice when, with attentive ears and sensitive +whiskers, they snuff the air and peer forth from their holes to +see whether a cat or a boy may not be in the vicinity. No, the most +noticeable feature about the man was his clothes. In no way could it +have been guessed of what his coat was made, for both its sleeves and +its skirts were so ragged and filthy as to defy description, while +instead of two posterior tails, there dangled four of those appendages, +with, projecting from them, a torn newspaper. Also, around his neck +there was wrapped something which might have been a stocking, a garter, +or a stomacher, but was certainly not a tie. In short, had Chichikov +chanced to encounter him at a church door, he would have bestowed upon +him a copper or two (for, to do our hero justice, he had a sympathetic +heart and never refrained from presenting a beggar with alms), but in +the present case there was standing before him, not a mendicant, but +a landowner--and a landowner possessed of fully a thousand serfs, the +superior of all his neighbours in wealth of flour and grain, and the +owner of storehouses, and so forth, that were crammed with homespun +cloth and linen, tanned and undressed sheepskins, dried fish, and every +conceivable species of produce. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon is +rare in Russia, where the tendency is rather to prodigality than to +parsimony. + +For several minutes Plushkin stood mute, while Chichikov remained so +dazed with the appearance of the host and everything else in the room, +that he too, could not begin a conversation, but stood wondering how +best to find words in which to explain the object of his visit. For a +while he thought of expressing himself to the effect that, having heard +so much of his host’s benevolence and other rare qualities of spirit, +he had considered it his duty to come and pay a tribute of respect; but +presently even HE came to the conclusion that this would be overdoing +the thing, and, after another glance round the room, decided that +the phrase “benevolence and other rare qualities of spirit” might to +advantage give place to “economy and genius for method.” Accordingly, +the speech mentally composed, he said aloud that, having heard of +Plushkin’s talents for thrifty and systematic management, he had +considered himself bound to make the acquaintance of his host, and +to present him with his personal compliments (I need hardly say that +Chichikov could easily have alleged a better reason, had any better one +happened, at the moment, to have come into his head). + +With toothless gums Plushkin murmured something in reply, but nothing is +known as to its precise terms beyond that it included a statement +that the devil was at liberty to fly away with Chichikov’s sentiments. +However, the laws of Russian hospitality do not permit even of a miser +infringing their rules; wherefore Plushkin added to the foregoing a more +civil invitation to be seated. + +“It is long since I last received a visitor,” he went on. “Also, I feel +bound to say that I can see little good in their coming. Once introduce +the abominable custom of folk paying calls, and forthwith there will +ensue such ruin to the management of estates that landowners will be +forced to feed their horses on hay. Not for a long, long time have I +eaten a meal away from home--although my own kitchen is a poor one, and +has its chimney in such a state that, were it to become overheated, it +would instantly catch fire.” + +“What a brute!” thought Chichikov. “I am lucky to have got through so +much pastry and stuffed shoulder of mutton at Sobakevitch’s!” + +“Also,” went on Plushkin, “I am ashamed to say that hardly a wisp of +fodder does the place contain. But how can I get fodder? My lands are +small, and the peasantry lazy fellows who hate work and think of nothing +but the tavern. In the end, therefore, I shall be forced to go and spend +my old age in roaming about the world.” + +“But I have been told that you possess over a thousand serfs?” said +Chichikov. + +“Who told you that? No matter who it was, you would have been justified +in giving him the lie. He must have been a jester who wanted to make +a fool of you. A thousand souls, indeed! Why, just reckon the taxes +on them, and see what there would be left! For these three years that +accursed fever has been killing off my serfs wholesale.” + +“Wholesale, you say?” echoed Chichikov, greatly interested. + +“Yes, wholesale,” replied the old man. + +“Then might I ask you the exact number?” + +“Fully eighty.” + +“Surely not?” + +“But it is so.” + +“Then might I also ask whether it is from the date of the last census +revision that you are reckoning these souls?” + +“Yes, damn it! And since that date I have been bled for taxes upon a +hundred and twenty souls in all.” + +“Indeed? Upon a hundred and twenty souls in all!” And Chichikov’s +surprise and elation were such that, this said, he remained sitting +open-mouthed. + +“Yes, good sir,” replied Plushkin. “I am too old to tell you lies, for I +have passed my seventieth year.” + +Somehow he seemed to have taken offence at Chichikov’s almost joyous +exclamation; wherefore the guest hastened to heave a profound sigh, and +to observe that he sympathised to the full with his host’s misfortunes. + +“But sympathy does not put anything into one’s pocket,” retorted +Plushkin. “For instance, I have a kinsman who is constantly plaguing me. +He is a captain in the army, damn him, and all day he does nothing but +call me ‘dear uncle,’ and kiss my hand, and express sympathy until I am +forced to stop my ears. You see, he has squandered all his money upon +his brother-officers, as well as made a fool of himself with an actress; +so now he spends his time in telling me that he has a sympathetic +heart!” + +Chichikov hastened to explain that HIS sympathy had nothing in common +with the captain’s, since he dealt, not in empty words alone, but in +actual deeds; in proof of which he was ready then and there (for +the purpose of cutting the matter short, and of dispensing with +circumlocution) to transfer to himself the obligation of paying the +taxes due upon such serfs as Plushkin’s as had, in the unfortunate +manner just described, departed this world. The proposal seemed to +astonish Plushkin, for he sat staring open-eyed. At length he inquired: + +“My dear sir, have you seen military service?” + +“No,” replied the other warily, “but I have been a member of the CIVIL +Service.” + +“Oh! Of the CIVIL Service?” And Plushkin sat moving his lips as though +he were chewing something. “Well, what of your proposal?” he added +presently. “Are you prepared to lose by it?” + +“Yes, certainly, if thereby I can please you.” + +“My dear sir! My good benefactor!” In his delight Plushkin lost sight of +the fact that his nose was caked with snuff of the consistency of thick +coffee, and that his coat had parted in front and was disclosing some +very unseemly underclothing. “What comfort you have brought to an old +man! Yes, as God is my witness!” + +For the moment he could say no more. Yet barely a minute had elapsed +before this instantaneously aroused emotion had, as instantaneously, +disappeared from his wooden features. Once more they assumed a careworn +expression, and he even wiped his face with his handkerchief, then +rolled it into a ball, and rubbed it to and fro against his upper lip. + +“If it will not annoy you again to state the proposal,” he went on, +“what you undertake to do is to pay the annual tax upon these souls, and +to remit the money either to me or to the Treasury?” + +“Yes, that is how it shall be done. We will draw up a deed of purchase +as though the souls were still alive and you had sold them to myself.” + +“Quite so--a deed of purchase,” echoed Plushkin, once more relapsing +into thought and the chewing motion of the lips. “But a deed of such +a kind will entail certain expenses, and lawyers are so devoid of +conscience! In fact, so extortionate is their avarice that they will +charge one half a rouble, and then a sack of flour, and then a whole +waggon-load of meal. I wonder that no one has yet called attention to +the system.” + +Upon that Chichikov intimated that, out of respect for his host, he +himself would bear the cost of the transfer of souls. This led Plushkin +to conclude that his guest must be the kind of unconscionable fool who, +while pretending to have been a member of the Civil Service, has in +reality served in the army and run after actresses; wherefore the old +man no longer disguised his delight, but called down blessings alike +upon Chichikov’s head and upon those of his children (he had never even +inquired whether Chichikov possessed a family). Next, he shuffled to the +window, and, tapping one of its panes, shouted the name of “Proshka.” +Immediately some one ran quickly into the hall, and, after much stamping +of feet, burst into the room. This was Proshka--a thirteen-year-old +youngster who was shod with boots of such dimensions as almost to engulf +his legs as he walked. The reason why he had entered thus shod was +that Plushkin only kept one pair of boots for the whole of his domestic +staff. This universal pair was stationed in the hall of the mansion, so +that any servant who was summoned to the house might don the said boots +after wading barefooted through the mud of the courtyard, and enter +the parlour dry-shod--subsequently leaving the boots where he had found +them, and departing in his former barefooted condition. Indeed, had any +one, on a slushy winter’s morning, glanced from a window into the said +courtyard, he would have seen Plushkin’s servitors performing saltatory +feats worthy of the most vigorous of stage-dancers. + +“Look at that boy’s face!” said Plushkin to Chichikov as he pointed to +Proshka. “It is stupid enough, yet, lay anything aside, and in a trice +he will have stolen it. Well, my lad, what do you want?” + +He paused a moment or two, but Proshka made no reply. + +“Come, come!” went on the old man. “Set out the samovar, and then give +Mavra the key of the store-room--here it is--and tell her to get out +some loaf sugar for tea. Here! Wait another moment, fool! Is the devil +in your legs that they itch so to be off? Listen to what more I have to +tell you. Tell Mavra that the sugar on the outside of the loaf has gone +bad, so that she must scrape it off with a knife, and NOT throw away +the scrapings, but give them to the poultry. Also, see that you yourself +don’t go into the storeroom, or I will give you a birching that you +won’t care for. Your appetite is good enough already, but a better one +won’t hurt you. Don’t even TRY to go into the storeroom, for I shall be +watching you from this window.” + +“You see,” the old man added to Chichikov, “one can never trust these +fellows.” Presently, when Proshka and the boots had departed, he fell +to gazing at his guest with an equally distrustful air, since certain +features in Chichikov’s benevolence now struck him as a little open to +question, and he had begin to think to himself: “After all, the +devil only knows who he is--whether a braggart, like most of these +spendthrifts, or a fellow who is lying merely in order to get some tea +out of me.” Finally, his circumspection, combined with a desire to +test his guest, led him to remark that it might be well to complete +the transaction IMMEDIATELY, since he had not overmuch confidence in +humanity, seeing that a man might be alive to-day and dead to-morrow. + +To this Chichikov assented readily enough--merely adding that he should +like first of all to be furnished with a list of the dead souls. This +reassured Plushkin as to his guest’s intention of doing business, so +he got out his keys, approached a cupboard, and, having pulled back the +door, rummaged among the cups and glasses with which it was filled. At +length he said: + +“I cannot find it now, but I used to possess a splendid bottle of +liquor. Probably the servants have drunk it all, for they are such +thieves. Oh no: perhaps this is it!” + +Looking up, Chichikov saw that Plushkin had extracted a decanter coated +with dust. + +“My late wife made the stuff,” went on the old man, “but that rascal of +a housekeeper went and threw away a lot of it, and never even replaced +the stopper. Consequently bugs and other nasty creatures got into the +decanter, but I cleaned it out, and now beg to offer you a glassful.” + +The idea of a drink from such a receptacle was too much for Chichikov, +so he excused himself on the ground that he had just had luncheon. + +“You have just had luncheon?” re-echoed Plushkin. “Now, THAT shows how +invariably one can tell a man of good society, wheresoever one may be. +A man of that kind never eats anything--he always says that he has had +enough. Very different that from the ways of a rogue, whom one can never +satisfy, however much one may give him. For instance, that captain of +mine is constantly begging me to let him have a meal--though he is about +as much my nephew as I am his grandfather. As it happens, there is never +a bite of anything in the house, so he has to go away empty. But about +the list of those good-for-nothing souls--I happen to possess such a +list, since I have drawn one up in readiness for the next revision.” + +With that Plushkin donned his spectacles, and once more started to +rummage in the cupboard, and to smother his guest with dust as he untied +successive packages of papers--so much so that his victim burst out +sneezing. Finally he extracted a much-scribbled document in which the +names of the deceased peasants lay as close-packed as a cloud of midges, +for there were a hundred and twenty of them in all. Chichikov grinned +with joy at the sight of the multitude. Stuffing the list into his +pocket, he remarked that, to complete the transaction, it would be +necessary to return to the town. + +“To the town?” repeated Plushkin. “But why? Moreover, how could I leave +the house, seeing that every one of my servants is either a thief or +a rogue? Day by day they pilfer things, until soon I shall have not a +single coat to hang on my back.” + +“Then you possess acquaintances in the town?” + +“Acquaintances? No. Every acquaintance whom I ever possessed has either +left me or is dead. But stop a moment. I DO know the President of the +Council. Even in my old age he has once or twice come to visit me, for +he and I used to be schoolfellows, and to go climbing walls together. +Yes, him I do know. Shall I write him a letter?” + +“By all means.” + +“Yes, him I know well, for we were friends together at school.” + +Over Plushkin’s wooden features there had gleamed a ray of warmth--a +ray which expressed, if not feeling, at all events feeling’s pale +reflection. Just such a phenomenon may be witnessed when, for a brief +moment, a drowning man makes a last re-appearance on the surface of a +river, and there rises from the crowd lining the banks a cry of hope +that even yet the exhausted hands may clutch the rope which has been +thrown him--may clutch it before the surface of the unstable element +shall have resumed for ever its calm, dread vacuity. But the hope is +short-lived, and the hands disappear. Even so did Plushkin’s face, +after its momentary manifestation of feeling, become meaner and more +insensible than ever. + +“There used to be a sheet of clean writing paper lying on the table,” he +went on. “But where it is now I cannot think. That comes of my servants +being such rascals.” + +With that he fell to looking also under the table, as well as to +hurrying about with cries of “Mavra, Mavra!” At length the call was +answered by a woman with a plateful of the sugar of which mention has +been made; whereupon there ensued the following conversation. + +“What have you done with my piece of writing paper, you pilferer?” + +“I swear that I have seen no paper except the bit with which you covered +the glass.” + +“Your very face tells me that you have made off with it.” + +“Why should I make off with it? ‘Twould be of no use to me, for I can +neither read nor write.” + +“You lie! You have taken it away for the sexton to scribble upon.” + +“Well, if the sexton wanted paper he could get some for himself. Neither +he nor I have set eyes upon your piece.” + +“Ah! Wait a bit, for on the Judgment Day you will be roasted by devils +on iron spits. Just see if you are not!” + +“But why should I be roasted when I have never even TOUCHED the paper? +You might accuse me of any other fault than theft.” + +“Nay, devils shall roast you, sure enough. They will say to you, ‘Bad +woman, we are doing this because you robbed your master,’ and then stoke +up the fire still hotter.” + +“Nevertheless _I_ shall continue to say, ‘You are roasting me for +nothing, for I never stole anything at all.’ Why, THERE it is, lying on +the table! You have been accusing me for no reason whatever!” + +And, sure enough, the sheet of paper was lying before Plushkin’s very +eyes. For a moment or two he chewed silently. Then he went on: + +“Well, and what are you making such a noise about? If one says a single +word to you, you answer back with ten. Go and fetch me a candle to seal +a letter with. And mind you bring a TALLOW candle, for it will not cost +so much as the other sort. And bring me a match too.” + +Mavra departed, and Plushkin, seating himself, and taking up a pen, sat +turning the sheet of paper over and over, as though in doubt whether +to tear from it yet another morsel. At length he came to the conclusion +that it was impossible to do so, and therefore, dipping the pen into the +mixture of mouldy fluid and dead flies which the ink bottle contained, +started to indite the letter in characters as bold as the notes of a +music score, while momentarily checking the speed of his hand, lest it +should meander too much over the paper, and crawling from line to line +as though he regretted that there was so little vacant space left on the +sheet. + +“And do you happen to know any one to whom a few runaway serfs would be +of use?” he asked as subsequently he folded the letter. + +“What? You have some runaways as well?” exclaimed Chichikov, again +greatly interested. + +“Certainly I have. My son-in-law has laid the necessary information +against them, but says that their tracks have grown cold. However, he is +only a military man--that is to say, good at clinking a pair of spurs, +but of no use for laying a plea before a court.” + +“And how many runaways have you?” + +“About seventy.” + +“Surely not?” + +“Alas, yes. Never does a year pass without a certain number of them +making off. Yet so gluttonous and idle are my serfs that they are simply +bursting with food, whereas I scarcely get enough to eat. I will take +any price for them that you may care to offer. Tell your friends about +it, and, should they find even a score of the runaways, it will repay +them handsomely, seeing that a living serf on the census list is at +present worth five hundred roubles.” + +“Perhaps so, but I am not going to let any one but myself have a finger +in this,” thought Chichikov to himself; after which he explained to +Plushkin that a friend of the kind mentioned would be impossible to +discover, since the legal expenses of the enterprise would lead to the +said friend having to cut the very tail from his coat before he would +get clear of the lawyers. + +“Nevertheless,” added Chichikov, “seeing that you are so hard pressed +for money, and that I am so interested in the matter, I feel moved to +advance you--well, to advance you such a trifle as would scarcely be +worth mentioning.” + +“But how much is it?” asked Plushkin eagerly, and with his hands +trembling like quicksilver. + +“Twenty-five kopecks per soul.” + +“What? In ready money?” + +“Yes--in money down.” + +“Nevertheless, consider my poverty, dear friend, and make it FORTY +kopecks per soul.” + +“Venerable sir, would that I could pay you not merely forty kopecks, +but five hundred roubles. I should be only too delighted if that were +possible, since I perceive that you, an aged and respected gentleman, +are suffering for your own goodness of heart.” + +“By God, that is true, that is true.” Plushkin hung his head, and wagged +it feebly from side to side. “Yes, all that I have done I have done +purely out of kindness.” + +“See how instantaneously I have divined your nature! By now it will have +become clear to you why it is impossible for me to pay you five hundred +roubles per runaway soul: for by now you will have gathered the fact +that I am not sufficiently rich. Nevertheless, I am ready to add another +five kopecks, and so to make it that each runaway serf shall cost me, in +all, thirty kopecks.” + +“As you please, dear sir. Yet stretch another point, and throw in +another two kopecks.” + +“Pardon me, but I cannot. How many runaway serfs did you say that you +possess? Seventy?” + +“No; seventy-eight.” + +“Seventy-eight souls at thirty kopecks each will amount to--to--” only +for a moment did our hero halt, since he was strong in his arithmetic, +“--will amount to twenty-four roubles, ninety-six kopecks.” [28] + +With that he requested Plushkin to make out the receipt, and then handed +him the money. Plushkin took it in both hands, bore it to a bureau with +as much caution as though he were carrying a liquid which might at any +moment splash him in the face, and, arrived at the bureau, and glancing +round once more, carefully packed the cash in one of his money bags, +where, doubtless, it was destined to lie buried until, to the intense +joy of his daughters and his son-in-law (and, perhaps, of the captain +who claimed kinship with him), he should himself receive burial at the +hands of Fathers Carp and Polycarp, the two priests attached to his +village. Lastly, the money concealed, Plushkin re-seated himself in the +armchair, and seemed at a loss for further material for conversation. + +“Are you thinking of starting?” at length he inquired, on seeing +Chichikov making a trifling movement, though the movement was only +to extract from his pocket a handkerchief. Nevertheless the question +reminded Chichikov that there was no further excuse for lingering. + +“Yes, I must be going,” he said as he took his hat. + +“Then what about the tea?” + +“Thank you, I will have some on my next visit.” + +“What? Even though I have just ordered the samovar to be got ready? +Well, well! I myself do not greatly care for tea, for I think it an +expensive beverage. Moreover, the price of sugar has risen terribly.” + +“Proshka!” he then shouted. “The samovar will not be needed. Return the +sugar to Mavra, and tell her to put it back again. But no. Bring the +sugar here, and _I_ will put it back.” + +“Good-bye, dear sir,” finally he added to Chichikov. “May the Lord bless +you! Hand that letter to the President of the Council, and let him +read it. Yes, he is an old friend of mine. We knew one another as +schoolfellows.” + +With that this strange phenomenon, this withered old man, escorted his +guest to the gates of the courtyard, and, after the guest had departed, +ordered the gates to be closed, made the round of the outbuildings for +the purpose of ascertaining whether the numerous watchmen were at their +posts, peered into the kitchen (where, under the pretence of seeing +whether his servants were being properly fed, he made a light meal +of cabbage soup and gruel), rated the said servants soundly for their +thievishness and general bad behaviour, and then returned to his room. +Meditating in solitude, he fell to thinking how best he could contrive +to recompense his guest for the latter’s measureless benevolence. “I +will present him,” he thought to himself, “with a watch. It is a good +silver article--not one of those cheap metal affairs; and though it +has suffered some damage, he can easily get that put right. A young man +always needs to give a watch to his betrothed.” + +“No,” he added after further thought. “I will leave him the watch in my +will, as a keepsake.” + +Meanwhile our hero was bowling along in high spirit. Such an unexpected +acquisition both of dead souls and of runaway serfs had come as +a windfall. Even before reaching Plushkin’s village he had had a +presentiment that he would do successful business there, but not +business of such pre-eminent profitableness as had actually resulted. +As he proceeded he whistled, hummed with hand placed trumpetwise to his +mouth, and ended by bursting into a burst of melody so striking that +Selifan, after listening for a while, nodded his head and exclaimed, “My +word, but the master CAN sing!” + +By the time they reached the town darkness had fallen, and changed the +character of the scene. The britchka bounded over the cobblestones, and +at length turned into the hostelry’s courtyard, where the travellers +were met by Petrushka. With one hand holding back the tails of his coat +(which he never liked to see fly apart), the valet assisted his +master to alight. The waiter ran out with candle in hand and napkin on +shoulder. Whether or not Petrushka was glad to see the barin return +it is impossible to say, but at all events he exchanged a wink with +Selifan, and his ordinarily morose exterior seemed momentarily to +brighten. + +“Then you have been travelling far, sir?” said the waiter, as he lit the +way upstarts. + +“Yes,” said Chichikov. “What has happened here in the meanwhile?” + +“Nothing, sir,” replied the waiter, bowing, “except that last night +there arrived a military lieutenant. He has got room number sixteen.” + +“A lieutenant?” + +“Yes. He came from Riazan, driving three grey horses.” + +On entering his room, Chichikov clapped his hand to his nose, and asked +his valet why he had never had the windows opened. + +“But I did have them opened,” replied Petrushka. Nevertheless this was +a lie, as Chichikov well knew, though he was too tired to contest the +point. After ordering and consuming a light supper of sucking pig, he +undressed, plunged beneath the bedclothes, and sank into the profound +slumber which comes only to such fortunate folk as are troubled neither +with mosquitoes nor fleas nor excessive activity of brain. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +When Chichikov awoke he stretched himself and realised that he had slept +well. For a moment or two he lay on his back, and then suddenly clapped +his hands at the recollection that he was now owner of nearly four +hundred souls. At once he leapt out of bed without so much as glancing +at his face in the mirror, though, as a rule, he had much solicitude for +his features, and especially for his chin, of which he would make the +most when in company with friends, and more particularly should any one +happen to enter while he was engaged in the process of shaving. “Look +how round my chin is!” was his usual formula. On the present occasion, +however, he looked neither at chin nor at any other feature, but at once +donned his flower-embroidered slippers of morroco leather (the kind +of slippers in which, thanks to the Russian love for a dressing-gowned +existence, the town of Torzhok does such a huge trade), and, clad only +in a meagre shirt, so far forgot his elderliness and dignity as to cut +a couple of capers after the fashion of a Scottish highlander--alighting +neatly, each time, on the flat of his heels. Only when he had done that +did he proceed to business. Planting himself before his dispatch-box, +he rubbed his hands with a satisfaction worthy of an incorruptible rural +magistrate when adjourning for luncheon; after which he extracted from +the receptacle a bundle of papers. These he had decided not to deposit +with a lawyer, for the reason that he would hasten matters, as well as +save expense, by himself framing and fair-copying the necessary deeds +of indenture; and since he was thoroughly acquainted with the necessary +terminology, he proceeded to inscribe in large characters the date, and +then in smaller ones, his name and rank. By two o’clock the whole was +finished, and as he looked at the sheets of names representing bygone +peasants who had ploughed, worked at handicrafts, cheated their masters, +fetched, carried, and got drunk (though SOME of them may have behaved +well), there came over him a strange, unaccountable sensation. To his +eye each list of names seemed to possess a character of its own; +and even individual peasants therein seemed to have taken on certain +qualities peculiar to themselves. For instance, to the majority of +Madame Korobotchka’s serfs there were appended nicknames and other +additions; Plushkin’s list was distinguished by a conciseness of +exposition which had led to certain of the items being represented +merely by Christian name, patronymic, and a couple of dots; +and Sobakevitch’s list was remarkable for its amplitude and +circumstantiality, in that not a single peasant had such of his peculiar +characteristics omitted as that the deceased had been “excellent at +joinery,” or “sober and ready to pay attention to his work.” Also, in +Sobakevitch’s list there was recorded who had been the father and +the mother of each of the deceased, and how those parents had behaved +themselves. Only against the name of a certain Thedotov was there +inscribed: “Father unknown, Mother the maidservant Kapitolina, Morals +and Honesty good.” These details communicated to the document a certain +air of freshness, they seemed to connote that the peasants in question +had lived but yesterday. As Chichikov scanned the list he felt softened +in spirit, and said with a sigh: + +“My friends, what a concourse of you is here! How did you all pass your +lives, my brethren? And how did you all come to depart hence?” + +As he spoke his eyes halted at one name in particular--that of the same +Peter Saveliev Neuvazhai Korito who had once been the property of the +window Korobotchka. Once more he could not help exclaiming: + +“What a series of titles! They occupy a whole line! Peter Saveliev, I +wonder whether you were an artisan or a plain muzhik. Also, I wonder how +you came to meet your end; whether in a tavern, or whether through going +to sleep in the middle of the road and being run over by a train of +waggons. Again, I see the name, ‘Probka Stepan, carpenter, very sober.’ +That must be the hero of whom the Guards would have been so glad to get +hold. How well I can imagine him tramping the country with an axe in his +belt and his boots on his shoulder, and living on a few groats’-worth +of bread and dried fish per day, and taking home a couple of half-rouble +pieces in his purse, and sewing the notes into his breeches, or stuffing +them into his boots! In what manner came you by your end, Probka Stepan? +Did you, for good wages, mount a scaffold around the cupola of the +village church, and, climbing thence to the cross above, miss your +footing on a beam, and fall headlong with none at hand but Uncle +Michai--the good uncle who, scratching the back of his neck, and +muttering, ‘Ah, Vania, for once you have been too clever!’ straightway +lashed himself to a rope, and took your place? ‘Maksim Teliatnikov, +shoemaker.’ A shoemaker, indeed? ‘As drunk as a shoemaker,’ says the +proverb. _I_ know what you were like, my friend. If you wish, I will +tell you your whole history. You were apprenticed to a German, who fed +you and your fellows at a common table, thrashed you with a strap, +kept you indoors whenever you had made a mistake, and spoke of you in +uncomplimentary terms to his wife and friends. At length, when your +apprenticeship was over, you said to yourself, ‘I am going to set up +on my own account, and not just to scrape together a kopeck here and a +kopeck there, as the Germans do, but to grow rich quick.’ Hence you took +a shop at a high rent, bespoke a few orders, and set to work to buy up +some rotten leather out of which you could make, on each pair of boots, +a double profit. But those boots split within a fortnight, and brought +down upon your head dire showers of maledictions; with the result that +gradually your shop grew empty of customers, and you fell to roaming +the streets and exclaiming, ‘The world is a very poor place indeed! +A Russian cannot make a living for German competition.’ Well, well! +‘Elizabeta Vorobei!’ But that is a WOMAN’S name! How comes SHE to be on +the list? That villain Sobakevitch must have sneaked her in without my +knowing it.” + +“‘Grigori Goiezhai-ne-Doiedesh,’” he went on. “What sort of a man were +YOU, I wonder? Were you a carrier who, having set up a team of three +horses and a tilt waggon, left your home, your native hovel, for ever, +and departed to cart merchandise to market? Was it on the highway that +you surrendered your soul to God, or did your friends first marry you +to some fat, red-faced soldier’s daughter; after which your harness and +team of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman’s fancy, and you, +lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you felt +that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter blundering into +an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you welcome death when +it comes!” + +“And you, my friends?” continued Chichikov, turning to the sheet whereon +were inscribed the names of Plushkin’s absconded serfs. “Although you +are still alive, what is the good of you? You are practically dead. +Whither, I wonder, have your fugitive feet carried you? Did you fare +hardly at Plushkin’s, or was it that your natural inclinations led you +to prefer roaming the wilds and plundering travellers? Are you, by this +time, in gaol, or have you taken service with other masters for the +tillage of their lands? ‘Eremei Kariakin, Nikita Volokita and Anton +Volokita (son of the foregoing).’ To judge from your surnames, you would +seem to have been born gadabouts [29]. ‘Popov, household serf.’ Probably +you are an educated man, good Popov, and go in for polite thieving, as +distinguished from the more vulgar cut-throat sort. In my mind’s eye I +seem to see a Captain of Rural Police challenging you for being without +a passport; whereupon you stake your all upon a single throw. ‘To whom +do you belong?’ asks the Captain, probably adding to his question a +forcible expletive. ‘To such and such a landowner,’ stoutly you reply. +‘And what are you doing here?’ continues the Captain. ‘I have +just received permission to go and earn my obrok,’ is your fluent +explanation. ‘Then where is your passport?’ ‘At Miestchanin [30] +Pimenov’s.’ ‘Pimenov’s? Then are you Pimenov himself?’ ‘Yes, I am +Pimenov himself.’ ‘He has given you his passport?’ ‘No, he has not given +me his passport.’ ‘Come, come!’ shouts the Captain with another forcible +expletive. ‘You are lying!’ ‘No, I am not,’ is your dogged reply. ‘It is +only that last night I could not return him his passport, because I came +home late; so I handed it to Antip Prochorov, the bell-ringer, for him +to take care of.’ ‘Bell-ringer, indeed! Then HE gave you a passport?’ +‘No; I did not receive a passport from him either.’ ‘What?’--and here +the Captain shouts another expletive--‘How dare you keep on lying? Where +is YOUR OWN passport?’ ‘I had one all right,’ you reply cunningly, ‘but +must have dropped it somewhere on the road as I came along.’ ‘And what +about that soldier’s coat?’ asks the Captain with an impolite addition. +‘Whence did you get it? And what of the priest’s cashbox and copper +money?’’ ‘About them I know nothing,’ you reply doggedly. ‘Never at any +time have I committed a theft.’ ‘Then how is it that the coat was found +at your place?’ ‘I do not know. Probably some one else put it there.’ +‘You rascal, you rascal!’ shouts the Captain, shaking his head, and +closing in upon you. ‘Put the leg-irons upon him, and off with him to +prison!’ ‘With pleasure,’ you reply as, taking a snuff-box from your +pocket, you offer a pinch to each of the two gendarmes who are manacling +you, while also inquiring how long they have been discharged from the +army, and in what wars they may have served. And in prison you remain +until your case comes on, when the justice orders you to be removed from +Tsarev-Kokshaika to such and such another prison, and a second justice +orders you to be transferred thence to Vesiegonsk or somewhere else, and +you go flitting from gaol to gaol, and saying each time, as you eye your +new habitation, ‘The last place was a good deal cleaner than this one +is, and one could play babki [31] there, and stretch one’s legs, and see +a little society.’” + +“‘Abakum Thirov,’” Chichikov went on after a pause. “What of YOU, +brother? Where, and in what capacity, are YOU disporting yourself? +Have you gone to the Volga country, and become bitten with the life of +freedom, and joined the fishermen of the river?” + +Here, breaking off, Chichikov relapsed into silent meditation. Of what +was he thinking as he sat there? Was he thinking of the fortunes of +Abakum Thirov, or was he meditating as meditates every Russian when his +thoughts once turn to the joys of an emancipated existence? + +“Ah, well!” he sighed, looking at his watch. “It has now gone twelve +o’clock. Why have I so forgotten myself? There is still much to be done, +yet I go shutting myself up and letting my thoughts wander! What a fool +I am!” + +So saying, he exchanged his Scottish costume (of a shirt and nothing +else) for attire of a more European nature; after which he pulled +tight the waistcoat over his ample stomach, sprinkled himself with +eau-de-Cologne, tucked his papers under his arm, took his fur cap, and +set out for the municipal offices, for the purpose of completing the +transfer of souls. The fact that he hurried along was not due to a fear +of being late (seeing that the President of the Local Council was an +intimate acquaintance of his, as well as a functionary who could shorten +or prolong an interview at will, even as Homer’s Zeus was able to +shorten or to prolong a night or a day, whenever it became necessary to +put an end to the fighting of his favourite heroes, or to enable them +to join battle), but rather to a feeling that he would like to have the +affair concluded as quickly as possible, seeing that, throughout, it had +been an anxious and difficult business. Also, he could not get rid of +the idea that his souls were unsubstantial things, and that therefore, +under the circumstances, his shoulders had better be relieved of their +load with the least possible delay. Pulling on his cinnamon-coloured, +bear-lined overcoat as he went, he had just stepped thoughtfully into +the street when he collided with a gentleman dressed in a similar +coat and an ear-lappeted fur cap. Upon that the gentleman uttered an +exclamation. Behold, it was Manilov! At once the friends became folded +in a strenuous embrace, and remained so locked for fully five minutes. +Indeed, the kisses exchanged were so vigorous that both suffered from +toothache for the greater portion of the day. Also, Manilov’s delight +was such that only his nose and lips remained visible--the eyes +completely disappeared. Afterwards he spent about a quarter of an hour +in holding Chichikov’s hand and chafing it vigorously. Lastly, he, in +the most pleasant and exquisite terms possible, intimated to his friend +that he had just been on his way to embrace Paul Ivanovitch; and upon +this followed a compliment of the kind which would more fittingly have +been addressed to a lady who was being asked to accord a partner the +favour of a dance. Chichikov had opened his mouth to reply--though +even HE felt at a loss how to acknowledge what had just been said--when +Manilov cut him short by producing from under his coat a roll of paper +tied with red riband. + +“What have you there?” asked Chichikov. + +“The list of my souls.” + +“Ah!” And as Chichikov unrolled the document and ran his eye over it +he could not but marvel at the elegant neatness with which it had been +inscribed. + +“It is a beautiful piece of writing,” he said. “In fact, there will be +no need to make a copy of it. Also, it has a border around its edge! Who +worked that exquisite border?” + +“Do not ask me,” said Manilov. + +“Did YOU do it?” + +“No; my wife.” + +“Dear, dear!” Chichikov cried. “To think that I should have put her to +so much trouble!” + +“NOTHING could be too much trouble where Paul Ivanovitch is concerned.” + +Chichikov bowed his acknowledgements. Next, on learning that he was +on his way to the municipal offices for the purpose of completing the +transfer, Manilov expressed his readiness to accompany him; wherefore +the pair linked arm in arm and proceeded together. Whenever they +encountered a slight rise in the ground--even the smallest unevenness +or difference of level--Manilov supported Chichikov with such energy as +almost to lift him off his feet, while accompanying the service with a +smiling implication that not if HE could help it should Paul Ivanovitch +slip or fall. Nevertheless this conduct appeared to embarrass Chichikov, +either because he could not find any fitting words of gratitude or +because he considered the proceeding tiresome; and it was with a +sense of relief that he debouched upon the square where the municipal +offices--a large, three-storied building of a chalky whiteness which +probably symbolised the purity of the souls engaged within--were +situated. No other building in the square could vie with them in size, +seeing that the remaining edifices consisted only of a sentry-box, a +shelter for two or three cabmen, and a long hoarding--the latter adorned +with the usual bills, posters, and scrawls in chalk and charcoal. At +intervals, from the windows of the second and third stories of the +municipal offices, the incorruptible heads of certain of the attendant +priests of Themis would peer quickly forth, and as quickly disappear +again--probably for the reason that a superior official had just entered +the room. Meanwhile the two friends ascended the staircase--nay, almost +flew up it, since, longing to get rid of Manilov’s ever-supporting +arm, Chichikov hastened his steps, and Manilov kept darting forward to +anticipate any possible failure on the part of his companion’s legs. +Consequently the pair were breathless when they reached the first +corridor. In passing it may be remarked that neither corridors nor rooms +evinced any of that cleanliness and purity which marked the exterior of +the building, for such attributes were not troubled about within, and +anything that was dirty remained so, and donned no meritricious, purely +external, disguise. It was as though Themis received her visitors in +neglige and a dressing-gown. The author would also give a description of +the various offices through which our hero passed, were it not that he +(the author) stands in awe of such legal haunts. + +Approaching the first desk which he happened to encounter, Chichikov +inquired of the two young officials who were seated at it whether they +would kindly tell him where business relating to serf-indenture was +transacted. + +“Of what nature, precisely, IS your business?” countered one of the +youthful officials as he turned himself round. + +“I desire to make an application.” + +“In connection with a purchase?” + +“Yes. But, as I say, I should like first to know where I can find the +desk devoted to such business. Is it here or elsewhere?” + +“You must state what it is you have bought, and for how much. THEN we +shall be happy to give you the information.” + +Chichikov perceived that the officials’ motive was merely one of +curiosity, as often happens when young tchinovniks desire to cut a more +important and imposing figure than is rightfully theirs. + +“Look here, young sirs,” he said. “I know for a fact that all serf +business, no matter to what value, is transacted at one desk alone. +Consequently I again request you to direct me to that desk. Of course, +if you do not know your business I can easily ask some one else.” + +To this the tchinovniks made no reply beyond pointing towards a corner +of the room where an elderly man appeared to be engaged in sorting some +papers. Accordingly Chichikov and Manilov threaded their way in his +direction through the desks; whereupon the elderly man became violently +busy. + +“Would you mind telling me,” said Chichikov, bowing, “whether this is +the desk for serf affairs?” + +The elderly man raised his eyes, and said stiffly: + +“This is NOT the desk for serf affairs.” + +“Where is it, then?” + +“In the Serf Department.” + +“And where might the Serf Department be?” + +“In charge of Ivan Antonovitch.” + +“And where is Ivan Antonovitch?” + +The elderly man pointed to another corner of the room; whither +Chichikov and Manilov next directed their steps. As they advanced, Ivan +Antonovitch cast an eye backwards and viewed them askance. Then, with +renewed ardour, he resumed his work of writing. + +“Would you mind telling me,” said Chichikov, bowing, “whether this is +the desk for serf affairs?” + +It appeared as though Ivan Antonovitch had not heard, so completely did +he bury himself in his papers and return no reply. Instantly it became +plain that HE at least was of an age of discretion, and not one of your +jejune chatterboxes and harum-scarums; for, although his hair was still +thick and black, he had long ago passed his fortieth year. His whole +face tended towards the nose--it was what, in common parlance, is known +as a “pitcher-mug.” + +“Would you mind telling me,” repeated Chichikov, “whether this is the +desk for serf affairs?” + +“It is that,” said Ivan Antonovitch, again lowering his jug-shaped jowl, +and resuming his writing. + +“Then I should like to transact the following business. From various +landowners in this canton I have purchased a number of peasants for +transfer. Here is the purchase list, and it needs but to be registered.” + +“Have you also the vendors here?” + +“Some of them, and from the rest I have obtained powers of attorney.” + +“And have you your statement of application?” + +“Yes. I desire--indeed, it is necessary for me so to do--to hasten +matters a little. Could the affair, therefore, be carried through +to-day?” + +“To-day? Oh, dear no!” said Ivan Antonovitch. “Before that can be done +you must furnish me with further proofs that no impediments exist.” + +“Then, to expedite matters, let me say that Ivan Grigorievitch, the +President of the Council, is a very intimate friend of mine.” + +“Possibly,” said Ivan Antonovitch without enthusiasm. “But Ivan +Grigorievitch alone will not do--it is customary to have others as +well.” + +“Yes, but the absence of others will not altogether invalidate the +transaction. I too have been in the service, and know how things can be +done.” + +“You had better go and see Ivan Grigorievitch,” said Ivan Antonovitch +more mildly. “Should he give you an order addressed to whom it may +concern, we shall soon be able to settle the matter.” + +Upon that Chichikov pulled from his pocket a paper, and laid it before +Ivan Antonovitch. At once the latter covered it with a book. Chichikov +again attempted to show it to him, but, with a movement of his head, +Ivan Antonovitch signified that that was unnecessary. + +“A clerk,” he added, “will now conduct you to Ivan Grigorievitch’s +room.” + +Upon that one of the toilers in the service of Themis--a zealot who +had offered her such heartfelt sacrifice that his coat had burst at the +elbows and lacked a lining--escorted our friends (even as Virgil had +once escorted Dante) to the apartment of the Presence. In this sanctum +were some massive armchairs, a table laden with two or three fat books, +and a large looking-glass. Lastly, in (apparently) sunlike isolation, +there was seated at the table the President. On arriving at the door of +the apartment, our modern Virgil seemed to have become so overwhelmed +with awe that, without daring even to intrude a foot, he turned back, +and, in so doing, once more exhibited a back as shiny as a mat, and +having adhering to it, in one spot, a chicken’s feather. As soon as the +two friends had entered the hall of the Presence they perceived that the +President was NOT alone, but, on the contrary, had seated by his side +Sobakevitch, whose form had hitherto been concealed by the intervening +mirror. The newcomers’ entry evoked sundry exclamations and the +pushing back of a pair of Government chairs as the voluminous-sleeved +Sobakevitch rose into view from behind the looking-glass. Chichikov +the President received with an embrace, and for a while the hall of +the Presence resounded with osculatory salutations as mutually the pair +inquired after one another’s health. It seemed that both had lately +had a touch of that pain under the waistband which comes of a sedentary +life. Also, it seemed that the President had just been conversing with +Sobakevitch on the subject of sales of souls, since he now proceeded +to congratulate Chichikov on the same--a proceeding which rather +embarrassed our hero, seeing that Manilov and Sobakevitch, two of +the vendors, and persons with whom he had bargained in the strictest +privacy, were now confronting one another direct. However, Chichikov +duly thanked the President, and then, turning to Sobakevitch, inquired +after HIS health. + +“Thank God, I have nothing to complain of,” replied Sobakevitch: which +was true enough, seeing that a piece of iron would have caught cold and +taken to sneezing sooner than would that uncouthly fashioned landowner. + +“Ah, yes; you have always had good health, have you not?” put in the +President. “Your late father was equally strong.” + +“Yes, he even went out bear hunting alone,” replied Sobakevitch. + +“I should think that you too could worst a bear if you were to try a +tussle with him,” rejoined the President. + +“Oh no,” said Sobakevitch. “My father was a stronger man than I am.” + Then with a sigh the speaker added: “But nowadays there are no such men +as he. What is even a life like mine worth?” + +“Then you do not have a comfortable time of it?” exclaimed the +President. + +“No; far from it,” rejoined Sobakevitch, shaking his head. “Judge for +yourself, Ivan Grigorievitch. I am fifty years old, yet never in my life +had been ill, except for an occasional carbuncle or boil. That is not a +good sign. Sooner or later I shall have to pay for it.” And he relapsed +into melancholy. + +“Just listen to the fellow!” was Chichikov’s and the President’s joint +inward comment. “What on earth has HE to complain of?” + +“I have a letter for you, Ivan Grigorievitch,” went on Chichikov aloud +as he produced from his pocket Plushkin’s epistle. + +“From whom?” inquired the President. Having broken the seal, he +exclaimed: “Why, it is from Plushkin! To think that HE is still alive! +What a strange world it is! He used to be such a nice fellow, and now--” + +“And now he is a cur,” concluded Sobakevitch, “as well as a miser who +starves his serfs to death.” + +“Allow me a moment,” said the President. Then he read the letter +through. When he had finished he added: “Yes, I am quite ready to act +as Plushkin’s attorney. When do you wish the purchase deeds to be +registered, Monsieur Chichikov--now or later?” + +“Now, if you please,” replied Chichikov. “Indeed, I beg that, if +possible, the affair may be concluded to-day, since to-morrow I wish to +leave the town. I have brought with me both the forms of indenture and +my statement of application.” + +“Very well. Nevertheless we cannot let you depart so soon. The +indentures shall be completed to-day, but you must continue your sojourn +in our midst. I will issue the necessary orders at once.” + +So saying, he opened the door into the general office, where the clerks +looked like a swarm of bees around a honeycomb (if I may liken affairs +of Government to such an article?). + +“Is Ivan Antonovitch here?” asked the President. + +“Yes,” replied a voice from within. + +“Then send him here.” + +Upon that the pitcher-faced Ivan Antonovitch made his appearance in the +doorway, and bowed. + +“Take these indentures, Ivan Antonovitch,” said the President, “and see +that they--” + +“But first I would ask you to remember,” put in Sobakevitch, “that +witnesses ought to be in attendance--not less than two on behalf of +either party. Let us, therefore, send for the Public Prosecutor, who has +little to do, and has even that little done for him by his chief clerk, +Zolotucha. The Inspector of the Medical Department is also a man of +leisure, and likely to be at home--if he has not gone out to a card +party. Others also there are--all men who cumber the ground for +nothing.” + +“Quite so, quite so,” agreed the President, and at once dispatched a +clerk to fetch the persons named. + +“Also,” requested Chichikov, “I should be glad if you would send for the +accredited representative of a certain lady landowner with whom I have +done business. He is the son of a Father Cyril, and a clerk in your +offices.” + +“Certainly we shall call him here,” replied the President. “Everything +shall be done to meet your convenience, and I forbid you to present any +of our officials with a gratuity. That is a special request on my part. +No friend of mine ever pays a copper.” + +With that he gave Ivan Antonovitch the necessary instructions; and +though they scarcely seemed to meet with that functionary’s approval, +upon the President the purchase deeds had evidently produced an +excellent impression, more especially since the moment when he had +perceived the sum total to amount to nearly a hundred thousand roubles. +For a moment or two he gazed into Chichikov’s eyes with an expression of +profound satisfaction. Then he said: + +“Well done, Paul Ivanovitch! You have indeed made a nice haul!” + +“That is so,” replied Chichikov. + +“Excellent business! Yes, excellent business!” + +“I, too, conceive that I could not well have done better. The truth is +that never until a man has driven home the piles of his life’s structure +upon a lasting bottom, instead of upon the wayward chimeras of youth, +will his aims in life assume a definite end.” And, that said, Chichikov +went on to deliver himself of a very telling indictment of Liberalism +and our modern young men. Yet in his words there seemed to lurk a +certain lack of conviction. Somehow he seemed secretly to be saying to +himself, “My good sir, you are talking the most absolute rubbish, and +nothing but rubbish.” Nor did he even throw a glance at Sobakevitch and +Manilov. It was as though he were uncertain what he might not encounter +in their expression. Yet he need not have been afraid. Never once did +Sobakevitch’s face move a muscle, and, as for Manilov, he was too much +under the spell of Chichikov’s eloquence to do aught beyond nod his +approval at intervals, and strike the kind of attitude which is assumed +by lovers of music when a lady singer has, in rivalry of an accompanying +violin, produced a note whereof the shrillness would exceed even the +capacity of a bird’s throstle. + +“But why not tell Ivan Grigorievitch precisely what you have bought?” + inquired Sobakevitch of Chichikov. “And why, Ivan Grigorievitch, do YOU +not ask Monsieur Chichikov precisely what his purchases have consisted +of? What a splendid lot of serfs, to be sure! I myself have sold him my +wheelwright, Michiev.” + +“What? You have sold him Michiev?” exclaimed the President. “I know the +man well. He is a splendid craftsman, and, on one occasion, made me a +drozhki [32]. Only, only--well, lately didn’t you tell me that he is +dead?” + +“That Michiev is dead?” re-echoed Sobakevitch, coming perilously near +to laughing. “Oh dear no! That was his brother. Michiev himself is very +much alive, and in even better health than he used to be. Any day he +could knock you up a britchka such as you could not procure even in +Moscow. However, he is now bound to work for only one master.” + +“Indeed a splendid craftsman!” repeated the President. “My only wonder +is that you can have brought yourself to part with him.” + +“Then think you that Michiev is the ONLY serf with whom I have parted? +Nay, for I have parted also with Probka Stepan, my carpenter, with +Milushkin, my bricklayer, and with Teliatnikov, my bootmaker. Yes, the +whole lot I have sold.” + +And to the President’s inquiry why he had so acted, seeing that the +serfs named were all skilled workers and indispensable to a household, +Sobakevitch replied that a mere whim had led him to do so, and thus the +sale had owed its origin to a piece of folly. Then he hung his head as +though already repenting of his rash act, and added: + +“Although a man of grey hairs, I have not yet learned wisdom.” + +“But,” inquired the President further, “how comes it about, Paul +Ivanovitch, that you have purchased peasants apart from land? Is it for +transferment elsewhere that you need them?” + +“Yes.” + +“Very well, then. That is quite another matter. To what province of the +country?” + +“To the province of Kherson.” + +“Indeed? That region contains some splendid land,” said the President; +whereupon he proceeded to expatiate on the fertility of the Kherson +pastures. + +“And have you MUCH land there?” he continued. + +“Yes; quite sufficient to accommodate the serfs whom I have purchased.” + +“And is there a river on the estate or a lake?” + +“Both.” + +After this reply Chichikov involuntarily threw a glance at Sobakevitch; +and though that landowner’s face was as motionless as every other, the +other seemed to detect in it: “You liar! Don’t tell ME that you own both +a river and a lake, as well as the land which you say you do.” + +Whilst the foregoing conversation had been in progress, various +witnesses had been arriving on the scene. They consisted of the +constantly blinking Public Prosecutor, the Inspector of the Medical +Department, and others--all, to quote Sobakevitch, “men who cumbered +the ground for nothing.” With some of them, however, Chichikov was +altogether unacquainted, since certain substitutes and supernumeraries +had to be pressed into the service from among the ranks of the +subordinate staff. There also arrived, in answer to the summons, not +only the son of Father Cyril before mentioned, but also Father Cyril +himself. Each such witness appended to his signature a full list of his +dignities and qualifications: one man in printed characters, another in +a flowing hand, a third in topsy-turvy characters of a kind never before +seen in the Russian alphabet, and so forth. Meanwhile our friend Ivan +Antonovitch comported himself with not a little address; and after the +indentures had been signed, docketed, and registered, Chichikov +found himself called upon to pay only the merest trifle in the way of +Government percentage and fees for publishing the transaction in the +Official Gazette. The reason of this was that the President had given +orders that only half the usual charges were to be exacted from the +present purchaser--the remaining half being somehow debited to the +account of another applicant for serf registration. + +“And now,” said Ivan Grigorievitch when all was completed, “we need only +to wet the bargain.” + +“For that too I am ready,” said Chichikov. “Do you but name the hour. +If, in return for your most agreeable company, I were not to set a few +champagne corks flying, I should be indeed in default.” + +“But we are not going to let you charge yourself with anything +whatsoever. WE must provide the champagne, for you are our guest, and +it is for us--it is our duty, it is our bounden obligation--to entertain +you. Look here, gentlemen. Let us adjourn to the house of the Chief +of Police. He is the magician who needs but to wink when passing a +fishmonger’s or a wine merchant’s. Not only shall we fare well at his +place, but also we shall get a game of whist.” + +To this proposal no one had any objection to offer, for the mere mention +of the fish shop aroused the witnesses’ appetite. Consequently, the +ceremony being over, there was a general reaching for hats and caps. +As the party were passing through the general office, Ivan Antonovitch +whispered in Chichikov’s ear, with a courteous inclination of his +jug-shaped physiognomy: + +“You have given a hundred thousand roubles for the serfs, but have paid +ME only a trifle for my trouble.” + +“Yes,” replied Chichikov with a similar whisper, “but what sort of serfs +do you suppose them to be? They are a poor, useless lot, and not worth +even half the purchase money.” + +This gave Ivan Antonovitch to understand that the visitor was a man of +strong character--a man from whom nothing more was to be expected. + +“Why have you gone and purchased souls from Plushkin?” whispered +Sobakevitch in Chichikov’s other ear. + +“Why did YOU go and add the woman Vorobei to your list?” retorted +Chichikov. + +“Vorobei? Who is Vorobei?” + +“The woman ‘Elizabet’ Vorobei--‘Elizabet,’ not ‘Elizabeta?’” + +“I added no such name,” replied Sobakevitch, and straightway joined the +other guests. + +At length the party arrived at the residence of the Chief of Police. The +latter proved indeed a man of spells, for no sooner had he learnt what +was afoot than he summoned a brisk young constable, whispered in his +ear, adding laconically, “You understand, do you not?” and brought it +about that, during the time that the guests were cutting for partners at +whist in an adjoining room, the dining-table became laden with sturgeon, +caviare, salmon, herrings, cheese, smoked tongue, fresh roe, and a +potted variety of the same--all procured from the local fish market, and +reinforced with additions from the host’s own kitchen. The fact was that +the worthy Chief of Police filled the office of a sort of father and +general benefactor to the town, and that he moved among the citizens as +though they constituted part and parcel of his own family, and watched +over their shops and markets as though those establishments were +merely his own private larder. Indeed, it would be difficult to say--so +thoroughly did he perform his duties in this respect--whether the post +most fitted him, or he the post. Matters were also so arranged that +though his income more than doubled that of his predecessors, he had +never lost the affection of his fellow townsmen. In particular did the +tradesmen love him, since he was never above standing godfather to their +children or dining at their tables. True, he had differences of opinion +with them, and serious differences at that; but always these were +skilfully adjusted by his slapping the offended ones jovially on the +shoulder, drinking a glass of tea with them, promising to call at their +houses and play a game of chess, asking after their belongings, and, +should he learn that a child of theirs was ill, prescribing the proper +medicine. In short, he bore the reputation of being a very good fellow. + +On perceiving the feast to be ready, the host proposed that his guests +should finish their whist after luncheon; whereupon all proceeded to the +room whence for some time past an agreeable odour had been tickling the +nostrils of those present, and towards the door of which Sobakevitch in +particular had been glancing since the moment when he had caught sight +of a huge sturgeon reposing on the sideboard. After a glassful of warm, +olive-coloured vodka apiece--vodka of the tint to be seen only in the +species of Siberian stone whereof seals are cut--the company applied +themselves to knife-and-fork work, and, in so doing, evinced their +several characteristics and tastes. For instance, Sobakevitch, +disdaining lesser trifles, tackled the large sturgeon, and, during the +time that his fellow guests were eating minor comestibles, and drinking +and talking, contrived to consume more than a quarter of the whole fish; +so that, on the host remembering the creature, and, with fork in hand, +leading the way in its direction and saying, “What, gentlemen, think you +of this striking product of nature?” there ensued the discovery that of +the said product of nature there remained little beyond the tail, while +Sobakevitch, with an air as though at least HE had not eaten it, was +engaged in plunging his fork into a much more diminutive piece of fish +which happened to be resting on an adjacent platter. After his divorce +from the sturgeon, Sobakevitch ate and drank no more, but sat frowning +and blinking in an armchair. + +Apparently the host was not a man who believed in sparing the wine, for +the toasts drunk were innumerable. The first toast (as the reader may +guess) was quaffed to the health of the new landowner of Kherson; the +second to the prosperity of his peasants and their safe transferment; +and the third to the beauty of his future wife--a compliment which +brought to our hero’s lips a flickering smile. Lastly, he received from +the company a pressing, as well as an unanimous, invitation to extend +his stay in town for at least another fortnight, and, in the meanwhile, +to allow a wife to be found for him. + +“Quite so,” agreed the President. “Fight us tooth and nail though you +may, we intend to have you married. You have happened upon us by chance, +and you shall have no reason to repent of it. We are in earnest on this +subject.” + +“But why should I fight you tooth and nail?” said Chichikov, smiling. +“Marriage would not come amiss to me, were I but provided with a +betrothed.” + +“Then a betrothed you shall have. Why not? We will do as you wish.” + +“Very well,” assented Chichikov. + +“Bravo, bravo!” the company shouted. “Long live Paul Ivanovitch! Hurrah! +Hurrah!” And with that every one approached to clink glasses with him, +and he readily accepted the compliment, and accepted it many times in +succession. Indeed, as the hours passed on, the hilarity of the company +increased yet further, and more than once the President (a man of great +urbanity when thoroughly in his cups) embraced the chief guest of the +day with the heartfelt words, “My dearest fellow! My own most precious +of friends!” Nay, he even started to crack his fingers, to dance around +Chichikov’s chair, and to sing snatches of a popular song. To the +champagne succeeded Hungarian wine, which had the effect of still +further heartening and enlivening the company. By this time every +one had forgotten about whist, and given himself up to shouting and +disputing. Every conceivable subject was discussed, including politics +and military affairs; and in this connection guests voiced jejune +opinions for the expression of which they would, at any other time, have +soundly spanked their offspring. Chichikov, like the rest, had never +before felt so gay, and, imagining himself really and truly to be a +landowner of Kherson, spoke of various improvements in agriculture, of +the three-field system of tillage [33], and of the beatific felicity of +a union between two kindred souls. Also, he started to recite poetry to +Sobakevitch, who blinked as he listened, for he greatly desired to go to +sleep. At length the guest of the evening realised that matters had gone +far enough, so begged to be given a lift home, and was accommodated with +the Public Prosecutor’s drozhki. Luckily the driver of the vehicle was +a practised man at his work, for, while driving with one hand, he +succeeded in leaning backwards and, with the other, holding Chichikov +securely in his place. Arrived at the inn, our hero continued babbling +awhile about a flaxen-haired damsel with rosy lips and a dimple in her +right cheek, about villages of his in Kherson, and about the amount of +his capital. Nay, he even issued seignorial instructions that Selifan +should go and muster the peasants about to be transferred, and make a +complete and detailed inventory of them. For a while Selifan listened +in silence; then he left the room, and instructed Petrushka to help the +barin to undress. As it happened, Chichikov’s boots had no sooner +been removed than he managed to perform the rest of his toilet without +assistance, to roll on to the bed (which creaked terribly as he did so), +and to sink into a sleep in every way worthy of a landowner of Kherson. +Meanwhile Petrushka had taken his master’s coat and trousers of +bilberry-coloured check into the corridor; where, spreading them over a +clothes’ horse, he started to flick and to brush them, and to fill the +whole corridor with dust. Just as he was about to replace them in his +master’s room he happened to glance over the railing of the gallery, and +saw Selifan returning from the stable. Glances were exchanged, and in +an instant the pair had arrived at an instinctive understanding--an +understanding to the effect that the barin was sound asleep, and that +therefore one might consider one’s own pleasure a little. Accordingly +Petrushka proceeded to restore the coat and trousers to their appointed +places, and then descended the stairs; whereafter he and Selifan left +the house together. Not a word passed between them as to the object +of their expedition. On the contrary, they talked solely of extraneous +subjects. Yet their walk did not take them far; it took them only to +the other side of the street, and thence into an establishment which +immediately confronted the inn. Entering a mean, dirty courtyard covered +with glass, they passed thence into a cellar where a number of customers +were seated around small wooden tables. What thereafter was done by +Selifan and Petrushka God alone knows. At all events, within an hour’s +time they issued, arm in arm, and in profound silence, yet remaining +markedly assiduous to one another, and ever ready to help one another +around an awkward corner. Still linked together--never once releasing +their mutual hold--they spent the next quarter of an hour in attempting +to negotiate the stairs of the inn; but at length even that ascent had +been mastered, and they proceeded further on their way. Halting +before his mean little pallet, Petrushka stood awhile in thought. His +difficulty was how best to assume a recumbent position. Eventually he +lay down on his face, with his legs trailing over the floor; after which +Selifan also stretched himself upon the pallet, with his head resting +upon Petrushka’s stomach, and his mind wholly oblivious of the fact that +he ought not to have been sleeping there at all, but in the servant’s +quarters, or in the stable beside his horses. Scarcely a moment had +passed before the pair were plunged in slumber and emitting the most +raucous snores; to which their master (next door) responded with snores +of a whistling and nasal order. Indeed, before long every one in the +inn had followed their soothing example, and the hostelry lay plunged +in complete restfulness. Only in the window of the room of the +newly-arrived lieutenant from Riazan did a light remain burning. +Evidently he was a devotee of boots, for he had purchased four pairs, +and was now trying on a fifth. Several times he approached the bed with +a view to taking off the boots and retiring to rest; but each time he +failed, for the reason that the boots were so alluring in their make +that he had no choice but to lift up first one foot, and then the other, +for the purpose of scanning their elegant welts. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +It was not long before Chichikov’s purchases had become the talk of the +town; and various were the opinions expressed as to whether or not it +was expedient to procure peasants for transferment. Indeed such was the +interest taken by certain citizens in the matter that they advised the +purchaser to provide himself and his convoy with an escort, in order +to ensure their safe arrival at the appointed destination; but though +Chichikov thanked the donors of this advice for the same, and declared +that he should be very glad, in case of need, to avail himself of it, he +declared also that there was no real need for an escort, seeing that the +peasants whom he had purchased were exceptionally peace-loving folk, +and that, being themselves consenting parties to the transferment, they +would undoubtedly prove in every way tractable. + +One particularly good result of this advertisement of his scheme was +that he came to rank as neither more nor less than a millionaire. +Consequently, much as the inhabitants had liked our hero in the first +instance (as seen in Chapter I.), they now liked him more than ever. +As a matter of fact, they were citizens of an exceptionally quiet, +good-natured, easy-going disposition; and some of them were even +well-educated. For instance, the President of the Local Council could +recite the whole of Zhukovski’s LUDMILLA by heart, and give such an +impressive rendering of the passage “The pine forest was asleep and the +valley at rest” (as well as of the exclamation “Phew!”) that one felt, +as he did so, that the pine forest and the valley really WERE as he +described them. The effect was also further heightened by the manner in +which, at such moments, he assumed the most portentous frown. For his +part, the Postmaster went in more for philosophy, and diligently perused +such works as Young’s Night Thoughts, and Eckharthausen’s A Key to +the Mysteries of Nature; of which latter work he would make copious +extracts, though no one had the slightest notion what they referred +to. For the rest, he was a witty, florid little individual, and much +addicted to a practice of what he called “embellishing” whatsoever he +had to say--a feat which he performed with the aid of such by-the-way +phrases as “my dear sir,” “my good So-and-So,” “you know,” “you +understand,” “you may imagine,” “relatively speaking,” “for instance,” + and “et cetera”; of which phrases he would add sackfuls to his +speech. He could also “embellish” his words by the simple expedient of +half-closing, half-winking one eye; which trick communicated to some of +his satirical utterances quite a mordant effect. Nor were his colleagues +a wit inferior to him in enlightenment. For instance, one of them made +a regular practice of reading Karamzin, another of conning the Moscow +Gazette, and a third of never looking at a book at all. Likewise, +although they were the sort of men to whom, in their more intimate +movements, their wives would very naturally address such nicknames +as “Toby Jug,” “Marmot,” “Fatty,” “Pot Belly,” “Smutty,” “Kiki,” and +“Buzz-Buzz,” they were men also of good heart, and very ready to extend +their hospitality and their friendship when once a guest had eaten +of their bread and salt, or spent an evening in their company. +Particularly, therefore, did Chichikov earn these good folk’s approval +with his taking methods and qualities--so much so that the expression +of that approval bid fair to make it difficult for him to quit the town, +seeing that, wherever he went, the one phrase dinned into his ears was +“Stay another week with us, Paul Ivanovitch.” In short, he ceased to +be a free agent. But incomparably more striking was the impression +(a matter for unbounded surprise!) which he produced upon the ladies. +Properly to explain this phenomenon I should need to say a great deal +about the ladies themselves, and to describe in the most vivid of +colours their social intercourse and spiritual qualities. Yet this would +be a difficult thing for me to do, since, on the one hand, I should be +hampered by my boundless respect for the womenfolk of all Civil +Service officials, and, on the other hand--well, simply by the innate +arduousness of the task. The ladies of N. were--But no, I cannot do +it; my heart has already failed me. Come, come! The ladies of N. were +distinguished for--But it is of no use; somehow my pen seems to refuse +to move over the paper--it seems to be weighted as with a plummet +of lead. Very well. That being so, I will merely say a word or +two concerning the most prominent tints on the feminine palette of +N.--merely a word or two concerning the outward appearance of +its ladies, and a word or two concerning their more superficial +characteristics. The ladies of N. were pre-eminently what is known as +“presentable.” Indeed, in that respect they might have served as a +model to the ladies of many another town. That is to say, in whatever +pertained to “tone,” etiquette, the intricacies of decorum, and strict +observance of the prevailing mode, they surpassed even the ladies of +Moscow and St. Petersburg, seeing that they dressed with taste, drove +about in carriages in the latest fashions, and never went out without +the escort of a footman in gold-laced livery. Again, they looked upon +a visiting card--even upon a make-shift affair consisting of an ace of +diamonds or a two of clubs--as a sacred thing; so sacred that on one +occasion two closely related ladies who had also been closely attached +friends were known to fall out with one another over the mere fact of an +omission to return a social call! Yes, in spite of the best efforts +of husbands and kinsfolk to reconcile the antagonists, it became clear +that, though all else in the world might conceivably be possible, never +could the hatchet be buried between ladies who had quarrelled over +a neglected visit. Likewise strenuous scenes used to take place over +questions of precedence--scenes of a kind which had the effect of +inspiring husbands to great and knightly ideas on the subject of +protecting the fair. True, never did a duel actually take place, since +all the husbands were officials belonging to the Civil Service; but at +least a given combatant would strive to heap contumely upon his rival, +and, as we all know, that is a resource which may prove even more +effectual than a duel. As regards morality, the ladies of N. were +nothing if not censorious, and would at once be fired with virtuous +indignation when they heard of a case of vice or seduction. Nay, even to +mere frailty they would award the lash without mercy. On the other hand, +should any instance of what they called “third personism” occur among +THEIR OWN circle, it was always kept dark--not a hint of what was going +on being allowed to transpire, and even the wronged husband holding +himself ready, should he meet with, or hear of, the “third person,” to +quote, in a mild and rational manner, the proverb, “Whom concerns it +that a friend should consort with friend?” In addition, I may say that, +like most of the female world of St. Petersburg, the ladies of N. were +pre-eminently careful and refined in their choice of words and phrases. +Never did a lady say, “I blew my nose,” or “I perspired,” or “I spat.” + No, it had to be, “I relieved my nose through the expedient of wiping it +with my handkerchief,” and so forth. Again, to say, “This glass, or +this plate, smells badly,” was forbidden. No, not even a hint to such an +effect was to be dropped. Rather, the proper phrase, in such a case, was +“This glass, or this plate, is not behaving very well,”--or some such +formula. + +In fact, to refine the Russian tongue the more thoroughly, something +like half the words in it were cut out: which circumstance necessitated +very frequent recourse to the tongue of France, since the same words, if +spoken in French, were another matter altogether, and one could use even +blunter ones than the ones originally objected to. + +So much for the ladies of N., provided that one confines one’s +observations to the surface; yet hardly need it be said that, should one +penetrate deeper than that, a great deal more would come to light. At +the same time, it is never a very safe proceeding to peer deeply into +the hearts of ladies; wherefore, restricting ourselves to the foregoing +superficialities, let us proceed further on our way. + +Hitherto the ladies had paid Chichikov no particular attention, though +giving him full credit for his gentlemanly and urbane demeanour; but +from the moment that there arose rumours of his being a millionaire +other qualities of his began to be canvassed. Nevertheless, not ALL the +ladies were governed by interested motives, since it is due to the term +“millionaire” rather than to the character of the person who bears it, +that the mere sound of the word exercises upon rascals, upon decent +folk, and upon folk who are neither the one nor the other, an undeniable +influence. A millionaire suffers from the disadvantage of everywhere +having to behold meanness, including the sort of meanness which, though +not actually based upon calculations of self-interest, yet runs after +the wealthy man with smiles, and doffs his hat, and begs for invitations +to houses where the millionaire is known to be going to dine. That +a similar inclination to meanness seized upon the ladies of N. goes +without saying; with the result that many a drawing-room heard it +whispered that, if Chichikov was not exactly a beauty, at least he was +sufficiently good-looking to serve for a husband, though he could have +borne to have been a little more rotund and stout. To that there would +be added scornful references to lean husbands, and hints that they +resembled tooth-brushes rather than men--with many other feminine +additions. Also, such crowds of feminine shoppers began to repair to the +Bazaar as almost to constitute a crush, and something like a procession +of carriages ensued, so long grew the rank of vehicles. For their part, +the tradesmen had the joy of seeing highly priced dress materials which +they had bought at fairs, and then been unable to dispose of, now +suddenly become tradeable, and go off with a rush. For instance, on one +occasion a lady appeared at Mass in a bustle which filled the church to +an extent which led the verger on duty to bid the commoner folk withdraw +to the porch, lest the lady’s toilet should be soiled in the crush. +Even Chichikov could not help privately remarking the attention which he +aroused. On one occasion, when he returned to the inn, he found on +his table a note addressed to himself. Whence it had come, and who had +delivered it, he failed to discover, for the waiter declared that the +person who had brought it had omitted to leave the name of the writer. +Beginning abruptly with the words “I MUST write to you,” the letter went +on to say that between a certain pair of souls there existed a bond of +sympathy; and this verity the epistle further confirmed with rows of +full stops to the extent of nearly half a page. Next there followed a +few reflections of a correctitude so remarkable that I have no choice +but to quote them. “What, I would ask, is this life of ours?” inquired +the writer. “’Tis nought but a vale of woe. And what, I would ask, is +the world? ’Tis nought but a mob of unthinking humanity.” Thereafter, +incidentally remarking that she had just dropped a tear to the memory of +her dear mother, who had departed this life twenty-five years ago, the +(presumably) lady writer invited Chichikov to come forth into the wilds, +and to leave for ever the city where, penned in noisome haunts, folk +could not even draw their breath. In conclusion, the writer gave way to +unconcealed despair, and wound up with the following verses: + + “Two turtle doves to thee, one day, + My dust will show, congealed in death; + And, cooing wearily, they’ll say: + ‘In grief and loneliness she drew her closing breath.’” + +True, the last line did not scan, but that was a trifle, since the +quatrain at least conformed to the mode then prevalent. Neither +signature nor date were appended to the document, but only a postscript +expressing a conjecture that Chichikov’s own heart would tell him who +the writer was, and stating, in addition, that the said writer would be +present at the Governor’s ball on the following night. + +This greatly interested Chichikov. Indeed, there was so much that was +alluring and provocative of curiosity in the anonymous missive that he +read it through a second time, and then a third, and finally said to +himself: “I SHOULD like to know who sent it!” In short, he took the +thing seriously, and spent over an hour in considering the same. At +length, muttering a comment upon the epistle’s efflorescent style, he +refolded the document, and committed it to his dispatch-box in company +with a play-bill and an invitation to a wedding--the latter of which had +for the last seven years reposed in the self-same receptacle and in +the self-same position. Shortly afterwards there arrived a card of +invitation to the Governor’s ball already referred to. In passing, it +may be said that such festivities are not infrequent phenomena in county +towns, for the reason that where Governors exist there must take place +balls if from the local gentry there is to be evoked that respectful +affection which is every Governor’s due. + +Thenceforth all extraneous thoughts and considerations were laid aside +in favour of preparing for the coming function. Indeed, this conjunction +of exciting and provocative motives led to Chichikov devoting to his +toilet an amount of time never witnessed since the creation of the +world. Merely in the contemplation of his features in the mirror, as he +tried to communicate to them a succession of varying expressions, was an +hour spent. First of all he strove to make his features assume an air +of dignity and importance, and then an air of humble, but faintly +satirical, respect, and then an air of respect guiltless of any alloy +whatsoever. Next, he practised performing a series of bows to his +reflection, accompanied with certain murmurs intended to bear a +resemblance to a French phrase (though Chichikov knew not a single word +of the Gallic tongue). Lastly came the performing of a series of what I +might call “agreeable surprises,” in the shape of twitchings of the brow +and lips and certain motions of the tongue. In short, he did all that a +man is apt to do when he is not only alone, but also certain that he is +handsome and that no one is regarding him through a chink. Finally he +tapped himself lightly on the chin, and said, “Ah, good old face!” In +the same way, when he started to dress himself for the ceremony, the +level of his high spirits remained unimpaired throughout the process. +That is to say, while adjusting his braces and tying his tie, he +shuffled his feet in what was not exactly a dance, but might be called +the entr’acte of a dance: which performance had the not very serious +result of setting a wardrobe a-rattle, and causing a brush to slide from +the table to the floor. + +Later, his entry into the ballroom produced an extraordinary effect. +Every one present came forward to meet him, some with cards in their +hands, and one man even breaking off a conversation at the most +interesting point--namely, the point that “the Inferior Land Court must +be made responsible for everything.” Yes, in spite of the responsibility +of the Inferior Land Court, the speaker cast all thoughts of it to +the winds as he hurried to greet our hero. From every side resounded +acclamations of welcome, and Chichikov felt himself engulfed in a sea of +embraces. Thus, scarcely had he extricated himself from the arms of +the President of the Local Council when he found himself just as firmly +clasped in the arms of the Chief of Police, who, in turn, surrendered +him to the Inspector of the Medical Department, who, in turn, handed +him over to the Commissioner of Taxes, who, again, committed him to the +charge of the Town Architect. Even the Governor, who hitherto had been +standing among his womenfolk with a box of sweets in one hand and +a lap-dog in the other, now threw down both sweets and lap-dog (the +lap-dog giving vent to a yelp as he did so) and added his greeting to +those of the rest of the company. Indeed, not a face was there to be +seen on which ecstatic delight--or, at all events, the reflection of +other people’s ecstatic delight--was not painted. The same expression +may be discerned on the faces of subordinate officials when, the newly +arrived Director having made his inspection, the said officials are +beginning to get over their first sense of awe on perceiving that he +has found much to commend, and that he can even go so far as to jest +and utter a few words of smiling approval. Thereupon every tchinovnik +responds with a smile of double strength, and those who (it may be) have +not heard a single word of the Director’s speech smile out of sympathy +with the rest, and even the gendarme who is posted at the distant +door--a man, perhaps, who has never before compassed a smile, but is +more accustomed to dealing out blows to the populace--summons up a kind +of grin, even though the grin resembles the grimace of a man who is +about to sneeze after inadvertently taking an over-large pinch of +snuff. To all and sundry Chichikov responded with a bow, and felt +extraordinarily at his ease as he did so. To right and left did he +incline his head in the sidelong, yet unconstrained, manner that was +his wont and never failed to charm the beholder. As for the ladies, +they clustered around him in a shining bevy that was redolent of every +species of perfume--of roses, of spring violets, and of mignonette; so +much so that instinctively Chichikov raised his nose to snuff the air. +Likewise the ladies’ dresses displayed an endless profusion of taste and +variety; and though the majority of their wearers evinced a tendency to +embonpoint, those wearers knew how to call upon art for the concealment +of the fact. Confronting them, Chichikov thought to himself: “Which of +these beauties is the writer of the letter?” Then again he snuffed the +air. When the ladies had, to a certain extent, returned to their seats, +he resumed his attempts to discern (from glances and expressions) which +of them could possibly be the unknown authoress. Yet, though those +glances and expressions were too subtle, too insufficiently open, the +difficulty in no way diminished his high spirits. Easily and gracefully +did he exchange agreeable bandinage with one lady, and then approach +another one with the short, mincing steps usually affected by young-old +dandies who are fluttering around the fair. As he turned, not without +dexterity, to right and left, he kept one leg slightly dragging +behind the other, like a short tail or comma. This trick the ladies +particularly admired. In short, they not only discovered in him a host +of recommendations and attractions, but also began to see in his face +a sort of grand, Mars-like, military expression--a thing which, as we +know, never fails to please the feminine eye. Certain of the ladies even +took to bickering over him, and, on perceiving that he spent most of +his time standing near the door, some of their number hastened to occupy +chairs nearer to his post of vantage. In fact, when a certain dame +chanced to have the good fortune to anticipate a hated rival in the +race there very nearly ensued a most lamentable scene--which, to many +of those who had been desirous of doing exactly the same thing, seemed a +peculiarly horrible instance of brazen-faced audacity. + +So deeply did Chichikov become plunged in conversation with his fair +pursuers--or rather, so deeply did those fair pursuers enmesh him in the +toils of small talk (which they accomplished through the expedient of +asking him endless subtle riddles which brought the sweat to his brow in +his attempts to guess them)--that he forgot the claims of courtesy which +required him first of all to greet his hostess. In fact, he remembered +those claims only on hearing the Governor’s wife herself addressing him. +She had been standing before him for several minutes, and now greeted +him with suave expressement and the words, “So HERE you are, Paul +Ivanovitch!” But what she said next I am not in a position to report, +for she spoke in the ultra-refined tone and vein wherein ladies and +gentlemen customarily express themselves in high-class novels which have +been written by experts more qualified than I am to describe salons, and +able to boast of some acquaintance with good society. In effect, what +the Governor’s wife said was that she hoped--she greatly hoped--that +Monsieur Chichikov’s heart still contained a corner--even the smallest +possible corner--for those whom he had so cruelly forgotten. Upon that +Chichikov turned to her, and was on the point of returning a reply at +least no worse than that which would have been returned, under similar +circumstances, by the hero of a fashionable novelette, when he stopped +short, as though thunderstruck. + +Before him there was standing not only Madame, but also a young girl +whom she was holding by the hand. The golden hair, the fine-drawn, +delicate contours, the face with its bewitching oval--a face which might +have served as a model for the countenance of the Madonna, since it was +of a type rarely to be met with in Russia, where nearly everything, from +plains to human feet, is, rather, on the gigantic scale; these features, +I say, were those of the identical maiden whom Chichikov had encountered +on the road when he had been fleeing from Nozdrev’s. His emotion was +such that he could not formulate a single intelligible syllable; he +could merely murmur the devil only knows what, though certainly +nothing of the kind which would have risen to the lips of the hero of a +fashionable novel. + +“I think that you have not met my daughter before?” said Madame. “She is +just fresh from school.” + +He replied that he HAD had the happiness of meeting Mademoiselle before, +and under rather unexpected circumstances; but on his trying to say +something further his tongue completely failed him. The Governor’s wife +added a word or two, and then carried off her daughter to speak to some +of the other guests. + +Chichikov stood rooted to the spot, like a man who, after issuing +into the street for a pleasant walk, has suddenly come to a halt on +remembering that something has been left behind him. In a moment, as +he struggles to recall what that something is, the mien of careless +expectancy disappears from his face, and he no longer sees a single +person or a single object in his vicinity. In the same way did Chichikov +suddenly become oblivious to the scene around him. Yet all the while the +melodious tongues of ladies were plying him with multitudinous hints +and questions--hints and questions inspired with a desire to captivate. +“Might we poor cumberers of the ground make so bold as to ask you what +you are thinking of?” “Pray tell us where lie the happy regions in which +your thoughts are wandering?” “Might we be informed of the name of her +who has plunged you into this sweet abandonment of meditation?”--such +were the phrases thrown at him. But to everything he turned a dead ear, +and the phrases in question might as well have been stones dropped into +a pool. Indeed, his rudeness soon reached the pitch of his walking +away altogether, in order that he might go and reconnoitre wither the +Governor’s wife and daughter had retreated. But the ladies were not +going to let him off so easily. Every one of them had made up her mind +to use upon him her every weapon, and to exhibit whatsoever might chance +to constitute her best point. Yet the ladies’ wiles proved useless, for +Chichikov paid not the smallest attention to them, even when the dancing +had begun, but kept raising himself on tiptoe to peer over people’s +heads and ascertain in which direction the bewitching maiden with the +golden hair had gone. Also, when seated, he continued to peep between +his neighbours’ backs and shoulders, until at last he discovered her +sitting beside her mother, who was wearing a sort of Oriental turban and +feather. Upon that one would have thought that his purpose was to carry +the position by storm; for, whether moved by the influence of spring, +or whether moved by a push from behind, he pressed forward with such +desperate resolution that his elbow caused the Commissioner of Taxes +to stagger on his feet, and would have caused him to lose his balance +altogether but for the supporting row of guests in the rear. Likewise +the Postmaster was made to give ground; whereupon he turned and eyed +Chichikov with mingled astonishment and subtle irony. But Chichikov +never even noticed him; he saw in the distance only the golden-haired +beauty. At that moment she was drawing on a long glove and, doubtless, +pining to be flying over the dancing-floor, where, with clicking heels, +four couples had now begun to thread the mazes of the mazurka. In +particular was a military staff-captain working body and soul and +arms and legs to compass such a series of steps as were never before +performed, even in a dream. However, Chichikov slipped past the mazurka +dancers, and, almost treading on their heels, made his way towards the +spot where Madame and her daughter were seated. Yet he approached them +with great diffidence and none of his late mincing and prancing. Nay, +he even faltered as he walked; his every movement had about it an air of +awkwardness. + +It is difficult to say whether or not the feeling which had awakened +in our hero’s breast was the feeling of love; for it is problematical +whether or not men who are neither stout nor thin are capable of any +such sentiment. Nevertheless, something strange, something which he +could not altogether explain, had come upon him. It seemed as though +the ball, with its talk and its clatter, had suddenly become a thing +remote--that the orchestra had withdrawn behind a hill, and the scene +grown misty, like the carelessly painted-in background of a picture. And +from that misty void there could be seen glimmering only the delicate +outlines of the bewitching maiden. Somehow her exquisite shape reminded +him of an ivory toy, in such fair, white, transparent relief did it +stand out against the dull blur of the surrounding throng. + +Herein we see a phenomenon not infrequently observed--the phenomenon of +the Chichikovs of this world becoming temporarily poets. At all events, +for a moment or two our Chichikov felt that he was a young man again, if +not exactly a military officer. On perceiving an empty chair beside the +mother and daughter, he hastened to occupy it, and though conversation +at first hung fire, things gradually improved, and he acquired more +confidence. + +At this point I must reluctantly deviate to say that men of weight and +high office are always a trifle ponderous when conversing with ladies. +Young lieutenants--or, at all events, officers not above the rank of +captain--are far more successful at the game. How they contrive to be so +God only knows. Let them but make the most inane of remarks, and at once +the maiden by their side will be rocking with laughter; whereas, should +a State Councillor enter into conversation with a damsel, and remark +that the Russian Empire is one of vast extent, or utter a compliment +which he has elaborated not without a certain measure of intelligence +(however strongly the said compliment may smack of a book), of a surety +the thing will fall flat. Even a witticism from him will be laughed at +far more by him himself than it will by the lady who may happen to be +listening to his remarks. + +These comments I have interposed for the purpose of explaining to the +reader why, as our hero conversed, the maiden began to yawn. Blind to +this, however, he continued to relate to her sundry adventures which had +befallen him in different parts of the world. Meanwhile (as need hardly +be said) the rest of the ladies had taken umbrage at his behaviour. One +of them purposely stalked past him to intimate to him the fact, as well +as to jostle the Governor’s daughter, and let the flying end of a scarf +flick her face; while from a lady seated behind the pair came both a +whiff of violets and a very venomous and sarcastic remark. Nevertheless, +either he did not hear the remark or he PRETENDED not to hear it. This +was unwise of him, since it never does to disregard ladies’ opinions. +Later--but too late--he was destined to learn this to his cost. + +In short, dissatisfaction began to display itself on every feminine +face. No matter how high Chichikov might stand in society, and no matter +how much he might be a millionaire and include in his expression of +countenance an indefinable element of grandness and martial ardour, +there are certain things which no lady will pardon, whosoever be the +person concerned. We know that at Governor’s balls it is customary for +the onlookers to compose verses at the expense of the dancers; and in +this case the verses were directed to Chichikov’s address. Briefly, the +prevailing dissatisfaction grew until a tacit edict of proscription had +been issued against both him and the poor young maiden. + +But an even more unpleasant surprise was in store for our hero; for +whilst the young lady was still yawning as Chichikov recounted to her +certain of his past adventures and also touched lightly upon the subject +of Greek philosophy, there appeared from an adjoining room the figure of +Nozdrev. Whether he had come from the buffet, or whether he had issued +from a little green retreat where a game more strenuous than whist had +been in progress, or whether he had left the latter resort unaided, or +whether he had been expelled therefrom, is unknown; but at all events +when he entered the ballroom, he was in an elevated condition, and +leading by the arm the Public Prosecutor, whom he seemed to have been +dragging about for a long while past, seeing that the poor man was +glancing from side to side as though seeking a means of putting an end +to this personally conducted tour. Certainly he must have found the +situation almost unbearable, in view of the fact that, after deriving +inspiration from two glasses of tea not wholly undiluted with rum, +Nozdrev was engaged in lying unmercifully. On sighting him in the +distance, Chichikov at once decided to sacrifice himself. That is to +say, he decided to vacate his present enviable position and make off +with all possible speed, since he could see that an encounter with the +newcomer would do him no good. Unfortunately at that moment the Governor +buttonholed him with a request that he would come and act as arbiter +between him (the Governor) and two ladies--the subject of dispute +being the question as to whether or not woman’s love is lasting. +Simultaneously Nozdrev descried our hero and bore down upon him. + +“Ah, my fine landowner of Kherson!” he cried with a smile which set his +fresh, spring-rose-pink cheeks a-quiver. “Have you been doing much +trade in departed souls lately?” With that he turned to the Governor. “I +suppose your Excellency knows that this man traffics in dead peasants?” + he bawled. “Look here, Chichikov. I tell you in the most friendly +way possible that every one here likes you--yes, including even the +Governor. Nevertheless, had I my way, I would hang you! Yes, by God I +would!” + +Chichikov’s discomfiture was complete. + +“And, would you believe it, your Excellency,” went on Nozdrev, “but this +fellow actually said to me, ‘Sell me your dead souls!’ Why, I laughed +till I nearly became as dead as the souls. And, behold, no sooner do +I arrive here than I am told that he has bought three million roubles’ +worth of peasants for transferment! For transferment, indeed! And he +wanted to bargain with me for my DEAD ones! Look here, Chichikov. You +are a swine! Yes, by God, you are an utter swine! Is not that so, your +Excellency? Is not that so, friend Prokurator [34]?” + +But both his Excellency, the Public Prosecutor, and Chichikov were too +taken aback to reply. The half-tipsy Nozdrev, without noticing them, +continued his harangue as before. + +“Ah, my fine sir!” he cried. “THIS time I don’t mean to let you go. No, +not until I have learnt what all this purchasing of dead peasants means. +Look here. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Yes, _I_ say that--_I_ +who am one of your best friends.” Here he turned to the Governor +again. “Your Excellency,” he continued, “you would never believe what +inseperables this man and I have been. Indeed, if you had stood there +and said to me, ‘Nozdrev, tell me on your honour which of the two you +love best--your father or Chichikov?’ I should have replied, ‘Chichikov, +by God!’” With that he tackled our hero again, “Come, come, my friend!” + he urged. “Let me imprint upon your cheeks a baiser or two. You will +excuse me if I kiss him, will you not, your Excellency? No, do not +resist me, Chichikov, but allow me to imprint at least one baiser upon +your lily-white cheek.” And in his efforts to force upon Chichikov what +he termed his “baisers” he came near to measuring his length upon the +floor. + +Every one now edged away, and turned a deaf ear to his further +babblings; but his words on the subject of the purchase of dead souls +had none the less been uttered at the top of his voice, and been +accompanied with such uproarious laughter that the curiosity even of +those who had happened to be sitting or standing in the remoter corners +of the room had been aroused. So strange and novel seemed the idea that +the company stood with faces expressive of nothing but a dumb, dull +wonder. Only some of the ladies (as Chichikov did not fail to remark) +exchanged meaning, ill-natured winks and a series of sarcastic smiles: +which circumstance still further increased his confusion. That Nozdrev +was a notorious liar every one, of course, knew, and that he should have +given vent to an idiotic outburst of this sort had surprised no one; but +a dead soul--well, what was one to make of Nozdrev’s reference to such a +commodity? + +Naturally this unseemly contretemps had greatly upset our hero; for, +however foolish be a madman’s words, they may yet prove sufficient to +sow doubt in the minds of saner individuals. He felt much as does a +man who, shod with well-polished boots, has just stepped into a dirty, +stinking puddle. He tried to put away from him the occurrence, and to +expand, and to enjoy himself once more. Nay, he even took a hand +at whist. But all was of no avail--matters kept going as awry as a +badly-bent hoop. Twice he blundered in his play, and the President of +the Council was at a loss to understand how his friend, Paul Ivanovitch, +lately so good and so circumspect a player, could perpetrate such a +mauvais pas as to throw away a particular king of spades which the +President has been “trusting” as (to quote his own expression) “he would +have trusted God.” At supper, too, matters felt uncomfortable, even +though the society at Chichikov’s table was exceedingly agreeable and +Nozdrev had been removed, owing to the fact that the ladies had found +his conduct too scandalous to be borne, now that the delinquent had +taken to seating himself on the floor and plucking at the skirts of +passing lady dancers. As I say, therefore, Chichikov found the situation +not a little awkward, and eventually put an end to it by leaving the +supper room before the meal was over, and long before the hour when +usually he returned to the inn. + +In his little room, with its door of communication blocked with a +wardrobe, his frame of mind remained as uncomfortable as the chair in +which he was seated. His heart ached with a dull, unpleasant sensation, +with a sort of oppressive emptiness. + +“The devil take those who first invented balls!” was his reflection. +“Who derives any real pleasure from them? In this province there exist +want and scarcity everywhere: yet folk go in for balls! How absurd, +too, were those overdressed women! One of them must have had a thousand +roubles on her back, and all acquired at the expense of the overtaxed +peasant, or, worse still, at that of the conscience of her neighbour. +Yes, we all know why bribes are accepted, and why men become crooked +in soul. It is all done to provide wives--yes, may the pit swallow them +up!--with fal-lals. And for what purpose? That some woman may not have +to reproach her husband with the fact that, say, the Postmaster’s wife +is wearing a better dress than she is--a dress which has cost a thousand +roubles! ‘Balls and gaiety, balls and gaiety’ is the constant cry. Yet +what folly balls are! They do not consort with the Russian spirit and +genius, and the devil only knows why we have them. A grown, middle-aged +man--a man dressed in black, and looking as stiff as a poker--suddenly +takes the floor and begins shuffling his feet about, while another man, +even though conversing with a companion on important business, will, the +while, keep capering to right and left like a billy-goat! Mimicry, sheer +mimicry! The fact that the Frenchman is at forty precisely what he was +at fifteen leads us to imagine that we too, forsooth, ought to be the +same. No; a ball leaves one feeling that one has done a wrong thing--so +much so that one does not care even to think of it. It also leaves one’s +head perfectly empty, even as does the exertion of talking to a man of +the world. A man of that kind chatters away, and touches lightly upon +every conceivable subject, and talks in smooth, fluent phrases which he +has culled from books without grazing their substance; whereas go and +have a chat with a tradesman who knows at least ONE thing thoroughly, +and through the medium of experience, and see whether his conversation +will not be worth more than the prattle of a thousand chatterboxes. For +what good does one get out of balls? Suppose that a competent writer +were to describe such a scene exactly as it stands? Why, even in a +book it would seem senseless, even as it certainly is in life. Are, +therefore, such functions right or wrong? One would answer that the +devil alone knows, and then spit and close the book.” + +Such were the unfavourable comments which Chichikov passed upon balls +in general. With it all, however, there went a second source of +dissatisfaction. That is to say, his principal grudge was not so much +against balls as against the fact that at this particular one he had +been exposed, he had been made to disclose the circumstance that he had +been playing a strange, an ambiguous part. Of course, when he reviewed +the contretemps in the light of pure reason, he could not but see that +it mattered nothing, and that a few rude words were of no account now +that the chief point had been attained; yet man is an odd creature, and +Chichikov actually felt pained by the cold-shouldering administered to +him by persons for whom he had not an atom of respect, and whose vanity +and love of display he had only that moment been censuring. Still more, +on viewing the matter clearly, he felt vexed to think that he himself +had been so largely the cause of the catastrophe. + +Yet he was not angry with HIMSELF--of that you may be sure, seeing that +all of us have a slight weakness for sparing our own faults, and +always do our best to find some fellow-creature upon whom to vent our +displeasure--whether that fellow-creature be a servant, a subordinate +official, or a wife. In the same way Chichikov sought a scapegoat upon +whose shoulders he could lay the blame for all that had annoyed him. He +found one in Nozdrev, and you may be sure that the scapegoat in question +received a good drubbing from every side, even as an experienced captain +or chief of police will give a knavish starosta or postboy a rating not +only in the terms become classical, but also in such terms as the said +captain or chief of police may invent for himself. In short, Nozdrev’s +whole lineage was passed in review; and many of its members in the +ascending line fared badly in the process. + +Meanwhile, at the other end of the town there was in progress an event +which was destined to augment still further the unpleasantness of our +hero’s position. That is to say, through the outlying streets and +alleys of the town there was clattering a vehicle to which it would be +difficult precisely to assign a name, seeing that, though it was of a +species peculiar to itself, it most nearly resembled a large, rickety +water melon on wheels. Eventually this monstrosity drew up at the gates +of a house where the archpriest of one of the churches resided, and from +its doors there leapt a damsel clad in a jerkin and wearing a scarf over +her head. For a while she thumped the gates so vigorously as to set +all the dogs barking; then the gates stiffly opened, and admitted this +unwieldy phenomenon of the road. Lastly, the barinia herself alighted, +and stood revealed as Madame Korobotchka, widow of a Collegiate +Secretary! The reason of her sudden arrival was that she had felt so +uneasy about the possible outcome of Chichikov’s whim, that during the +three nights following his departure she had been unable to sleep a +wink; whereafter, in spite of the fact that her horses were not shod, +she had set off for the town, in order to learn at first hand how the +dead souls were faring, and whether (which might God forfend!) she +had not sold them at something like a third of their true value. The +consequences of her venture the reader will learn from a conversation +between two ladies. We will reserve it for the ensuing chapter. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +Next morning, before the usual hour for paying calls, there tripped from +the portals of an orange-coloured wooden house with an attic storey and +a row of blue pillars a lady in an elegant plaid cloak. With her came +a footman in a many-caped greatcoat and a polished top hat with a gold +band. Hastily, but gracefully, the lady ascended the steps let down from +a koliaska which was standing before the entrance, and as soon as +she had done so the footman shut her in, put up the steps again, and, +catching hold of the strap behind the vehicle, shouted to the coachman, +“Right away!” The reason of all this was that the lady was the possessor +of a piece of intelligence that she was burning to communicate to a +fellow-creature. Every moment she kept looking out of the carriage +window, and perceiving, with almost speechless vexation, that, as yet, +she was but half-way on her journey. The fronts of the houses appeared +to her longer than usual, and in particular did the front of the white +stone hospital, with its rows of narrow windows, seem interminable to +a degree which at length forced her to ejaculate: “Oh, the cursed +building! Positively there is no end to it!” Also, she twice adjured the +coachman with the words, “Go quicker, Andrusha! You are a horribly long +time over the journey this morning.” But at length the goal was reached, +and the koliaska stopped before a one-storied wooden mansion, dark grey +in colour, and having white carvings over the windows, a tall wooden +fence and narrow garden in front of the latter, and a few meagre trees +looming white with an incongruous coating of road dust. In the windows +of the building were also a few flower pots and a parrot that kept +alternately dancing on the floor of its cage and hanging on to the ring +of the same with its beak. Also, in the sunshine before the door two pet +dogs were sleeping. Here there lived the lady’s bosom friend. As soon as +the bosom friend in question learnt of the newcomer’s arrival, she ran +down into the hall, and the two ladies kissed and embraced one another. +Then they adjourned to the drawing-room. + +“How glad I am to see you!” said the bosom friend. “When I heard some +one arriving I wondered who could possibly be calling so early. Parasha +declared that it must be the Vice-Governor’s wife, so, as I did not want +to be bored with her, I gave orders that I was to be reported ‘not at +home.’” + +For her part, the guest would have liked to have proceeded to business +by communicating her tidings, but a sudden exclamation from the hostess +imparted (temporarily) a new direction to the conversation. + +“What a pretty chintz!” she cried, gazing at the other’s gown. + +“Yes, it IS pretty,” agreed the visitor. “On the other hand, Praskovia +Thedorovna thinks that--” + +In other words, the ladies proceeded to indulge in a conversation on +the subject of dress; and only after this had lasted for a considerable +while did the visitor let fall a remark which led her entertainer to +inquire: + +“And how is the universal charmer?” + +“My God!” replied the other. “There has been SUCH a business! In fact, +do you know why I am here at all?” And the visitor’s breathing became +more hurried, and further words seemed to be hovering between her lips +like hawks preparing to stoop upon their prey. Only a person of the +unhumanity of a “true friend” would have had the heart to interrupt her; +but the hostess was just such a friend, and at once interposed with: + +“I wonder how any one can see anything in the man to praise or to +admire. For my own part, I think--and I would say the same thing +straight to his face--that he is a perfect rascal.” + +“Yes, but do listen to what I have got to tell you.” + +“Oh, I know that some people think him handsome,” continued the +hostess, unmoved; “but _I_ say that he is nothing of the kind--that, in +particular, his nose is perfectly odious.” + +“Yes, but let me finish what I was saying.” The guest’s tone was almost +piteous in its appeal. + +“What is it, then?” + +“You cannot imagine my state of mind! You see, this morning I received +a visit from Father Cyril’s wife--the Archpriest’s wife--you know her, +don’t you? Well, whom do you suppose that fine gentleman visitor of ours +has turned out to be?” + +“The man who has built the Archpriest a poultry-run?” + +“Oh dear no! Had that been all, it would have been nothing. No. Listen +to what Father Cyril’s wife had to tell me. She said that, last night, +a lady landowner named Madame Korobotchka arrived at the Archpriest’s +house--arrived all pale and trembling--and told her, oh, such things! +They sound like a piece out of a book. That is to say, at dead of night, +just when every one had retired to rest, there came the most dreadful +knocking imaginable, and some one screamed out, ‘Open the gates, or we +will break them down!’ Just think! After this, how any one can say that +the man is charming I cannot imagine.” + +“Well, what of Madame Korobotchka? Is she a young woman or good +looking?” + +“Oh dear no! Quite an old woman.” + +“Splendid indeed! So he is actually engaged to a person like that? One +may heartily commend the taste of our ladies for having fallen in love +with him!” + +“Nevertheless, it is not as you suppose. Think, now! Armed with weapons +from head to foot, he called upon this old woman, and said: ‘Sell me any +souls of yours which have lately died.’ Of course, Madame Korobotchka +answered, reasonably enough: ‘I cannot sell you those souls, seeing that +they have departed this world;’ but he replied: ‘No, no! They are NOT +dead. ’Tis I who tell you that--I who ought to know the truth of the +matter. I swear that they are still alive.’ In short, he made such a +scene that the whole village came running to the house, and children +screamed, and men shouted, and no one could tell what it was all +about. The affair seemed to me so horrible, so utterly horrible, that I +trembled beyond belief as I listened to the story. ‘My dearest madam,’ +said my maid, Mashka, ‘pray look at yourself in the mirror, and see how +white you are.’ ‘But I have no time for that,’ I replied, ‘as I must +be off to tell my friend, Anna Grigorievna, the news.’ Nor did I lose a +moment in ordering the koliaska. Yet when my coachman, Andrusha, asked +me for directions I could not get a word out--I just stood staring +at him like a fool, until I thought he must think me mad. Oh, Anna +Grigorievna, if you but knew how upset I am!” + +“What a strange affair!” commented the hostess. “What on earth can +the man have meant by ‘dead souls’? I confess that the words pass my +understanding. Curiously enough, this is the second time I have heard +speak of those souls. True, my husband avers that Nozdrev was lying; yet +in his lies there seems to have been a grain of truth.” + +“Well, just think of my state when I heard all this! ‘And now,’ +apparently said Korobotchka to the Archpriest’s wife, ‘I am altogether +at a loss what to do, for, throwing me fifteen roubles, the man forced +me to sign a worthless paper--yes, me, an inexperienced, defenceless +widow who knows nothing of business.’ That such things should happen! +TRY and imagine my feelings!” + +“In my opinion, there is in this more than the dead souls which meet the +eye.” + +“I think so too,” agreed the other. As a matter of fact, her friend’s +remark had struck her with complete surprise, as well as filled her with +curiosity to know what the word “more” might possibly signify. In fact, +she felt driven to inquire: “What do YOU suppose to be hidden beneath it +all?” + +“No; tell me what YOU suppose?” + +“What _I_ suppose? I am at a loss to conjecture.” + +“Yes, but tell me what is in your mind?” + +Upon this the visitor had to confess herself nonplussed; for, though +capable of growing hysterical, she was incapable of propounding any +rational theory. Consequently she felt the more that she needed tender +comfort and advice. + +“Then THIS is what I think about the dead souls,” said the hostess. +Instantly the guest pricked up her ears (or, rather, they pricked +themselves up) and straightened herself and became, somehow, more +modish, and, despite her not inconsiderable weight, posed herself to +look like a piece of thistledown floating on the breeze. + +“The dead souls,” began the hostess. + +“Are what, are what?” inquired the guest in great excitement. + +“Are, are--” + +“Tell me, tell me, for heaven’s sake!” + +“They are an invention to conceal something else. The man’s real object +is, is--TO ABDUCT THE GOVERNOR’S DAUGHTER.” + +So startling and unexpected was this conclusion that the guest sat +reduced to a state of pale, petrified, genuine amazement. + +“My God!” she cried, clapping her hands, “I should NEVER have guessed +it!” + +“Well, to tell you the truth, I guessed it as soon as ever you opened +your mouth.” + +“So much, then, for educating girls like the Governor’s daughter at +school! Just see what comes of it!” + +“Yes, indeed! And they tell me that she says things which I hesitate +even to repeat.” + +“Truly it wrings one’s heart to see to what lengths immorality has +come.” + +“Some of the men have quite lost their heads about her, but for my part +I think her not worth noticing.” + +“Of course. And her manners are unbearable. But what puzzles me most is +how a travelled man like Chichikov could come to let himself in for such +an affair. Surely he must have accomplices?” + +“Yes; and I should say that one of those accomplices is Nozdrev.” + +“Surely not?” + +“CERTAINLY I should say so. Why, I have known him even try to sell his +own father! At all events he staked him at cards.” + +“Indeed? You interest me. I should never had thought him capable of such +things.” + +“I always guessed him to be so.” + +The two ladies were still discussing the matter with acumen and success +when there walked into the room the Public Prosecutor--bushy eyebrows, +motionless features, blinking eyes, and all. At once the ladies hastened +to inform him of the events related, adducing therewith full details +both as to the purchase of dead souls and as to the scheme to abduct the +Governor’s daughter; after which they departed in different directions, +for the purpose of raising the rest of the town. For the execution of +this undertaking not more than half an hour was required. So thoroughly +did they succeed in throwing dust in the public’s eyes that for a while +every one--more especially the army of public officials--was placed in +the position of a schoolboy who, while still asleep, has had a bag of +pepper thrown in his face by a party of more early-rising comrades. The +questions now to be debated resolved themselves into two--namely, the +question of the dead souls and the question of the Governor’s daughter. +To this end two parties were formed--the men’s party and the feminine +section. The men’s party--the more absolutely senseless of the +two--devoted its attention to the dead souls: the women’s party +occupied itself exclusively with the alleged abduction of the Governor’s +daughter. And here it may be said (to the ladies’ credit) that the +women’s party displayed far more method and caution than did its rival +faction, probably because the function in life of its members had always +been that of managing and administering a household. With the ladies, +therefore, matters soon assumed vivid and definite shape; they became +clearly and irrefutably materialised; they stood stripped of all doubt +and other impedimenta. Said some of the ladies in question, Chichikov +had long been in love with the maiden, and the pair had kept tryst by +the light of the moon, while the Governor would have given his consent +(seeing that Chichikov was as rich as a Jew) but for the obstacle that +Chichikov had deserted a wife already (how the worthy dames came to +know that he was married remains a mystery), and the said deserted wife, +pining with love for her faithless husband, had sent the Governor a +letter of the most touching kind, so that Chichikov, on perceiving that +the father and mother would never give their consent, had decided to +abduct the girl. In other circles the matter was stated in a different +way. That is to say, this section averred that Chichikov did NOT possess +a wife, but that, as a man of subtlety and experience, he had bethought +him of obtaining the daughter’s hand through the expedient of first +tackling the mother and carrying on with her an ardent liaison, and +that, thereafter, he had made an application for the desired hand, but +that the mother, fearing to commit a sin against religion, and feeling +in her heart certain gnawings of conscience, had returned a blank +refusal to Chichikov’s request; whereupon Chichikov had decided to carry +out the abduction alleged. To the foregoing, of course, there became +appended various additional proofs and items of evidence, in proportion +as the sensation spread to more remote corners of the town. At length, +with these perfectings, the affair reached the ears of the Governor’s +wife herself. Naturally, as the mother of a family, and as the first +lady in the town, and as a matron who had never before been suspected of +things of the kind, she was highly offended when she heard the stories, +and very justly so: with the result that her poor young daughter, though +innocent, had to endure about as unpleasant a tete-a-tete as ever befell +a maiden of sixteen, while, for his part, the Swiss footman received +orders never at any time to admit Chichikov to the house. + +Having done their business with the Governor’s wife, the ladies’ party +descended upon the male section, with a view to influencing it to their +own side by asserting that the dead souls were an invention used solely +for the purpose of diverting suspicion and successfully affecting the +abduction. And, indeed, more than one man was converted, and joined the +feminine camp, in spite of the fact that thereby such seceders incurred +strong names from their late comrades--names such as “old women,” + “petticoats,” and others of a nature peculiarly offensive to the male +sex. + +Also, however much they might arm themselves and take the field, the +men could not compass such orderliness within their ranks as could the +women. With the former everything was of the antiquated and rough-hewn +and ill-fitting and unsuitable and badly-adapted and inferior kind; +their heads were full of nothing but discord and triviality and +confusion and slovenliness of thought. In brief, they displayed +everywhere the male bent, the rude, ponderous nature which is incapable +either of managing a household or of jumping to a conclusion, as well +as remains always distrustful and lazy and full of constant doubt and +everlasting timidity. For instance, the men’s party declared that the +whole story was rubbish--that the alleged abduction of the Governor’s +daughter was the work rather of a military than of a civilian culprit; +that the ladies were lying when they accused Chichikov of the deed; +that a woman was like a money-bag--whatsoever you put into her she +thenceforth retained; that the subject which really demanded attention +was the dead souls, of which the devil only knew the meaning, but in +which there certainly lurked something that was contrary to good order +and discipline. One reason why the men’s party was so certain that the +dead souls connoted something contrary to good order and discipline, +was that there had just been appointed to the province a new +Governor-General--an event which, of course, had thrown the whole army +of provincial tchinovniks into a state of great excitement, seeing that +they knew that before long there would ensue transferments and sentences +of censure, as well as the series of official dinners with which a +Governor-General is accustomed to entertain his subordinates. “Alas,” + thought the army of tchinovniks, “it is probable that, should he learn +of the gross reports at present afloat in our town, he will make such a +fuss that we shall never hear the last of them.” In particular did +the Director of the Medical Department turn pale at the thought that +possibly the new Governor-General would surmise the term “dead folk” + to connote patients in the local hospitals who, for want of proper +preventative measures, had died of sporadic fever. Indeed, might it not +be that Chichikov was neither more nor less than an emissary of the said +Governor-General, sent to conduct a secret inquiry? Accordingly he (the +Director of the Medical Department) communicated this last supposition +to the President of the Council, who, though at first inclined to +ejaculate “Rubbish!” suddenly turned pale on propounding to himself the +theory. “What if the souls purchased by Chichikov should REALLY be +dead ones?”--a terrible thought considering that he, the President, had +permitted their transferment to be registered, and had himself acted +as Plushkin’s representative! What if these things should reach the +Governor-General’s ears? He mentioned the matter to one friend and +another, and they, in their turn, went white to the lips, for panic +spreads faster and is even more destructive, than the dreaded black +death. Also, to add to the tchinovniks’ troubles, it so befell that +just at this juncture there came into the local Governor’s hands two +documents of great importance. The first of them contained advices that, +according to received evidence and reports, there was operating in the +province a forger of rouble-notes who had been passing under various +aliases and must therefore be sought for with the utmost diligence; +while the second document was a letter from the Governor of a +neighbouring province with regard to a malefactor who had there evaded +apprehension--a letter conveying also a warning that, if in the province +of the town of N. there should appear any suspicious individual who +could produce neither references nor passports, he was to be arrested +forthwith. These two documents left every one thunderstruck, for they +knocked on the head all previous conceptions and theories. Not for +a moment could it be supposed that the former document referred to +Chichikov; yet, as each man pondered the position from his own point of +view, he remembered that no one REALLY knew who Chichikov was; as also +that his vague references to himself had--yes!--included statements that +his career in the service had suffered much to the cause of Truth, and +that he possessed a number of enemies who were seeking his life. This +gave the tchinovniks further food for thought. Perhaps his life really +DID stand in danger? Perhaps he really WAS being sought for by some one? +Perhaps he really HAD done something of the kind above referred to? As a +matter of fact, who was he?--not that it could actually be supposed that +he was a forger of notes, still less a brigand, seeing that his exterior +was respectable in the highest degree. Yet who was he? At length +the tchinovniks decided to make enquiries among those of whom he had +purchased souls, in order that at least it might be learnt what the +purchases had consisted of, and what exactly underlay them, and whether, +in passing, he had explained to any one his real intentions, or revealed +to any one his identity. In the first instance, therefore, resort was +had to Korobotchka. Yet little was gleaned from that source--merely +a statement that he had bought of her some souls for fifteen roubles +apiece, and also a quantity of feathers, while promising also to buy +some other commodities in the future, seeing that, in particular, he had +entered into a contract with the Treasury for lard, a fact constituting +fairly presumptive proof that the man was a rogue, seeing that just such +another fellow had bought a quantity of feathers, yet had cheated folk +all round, and, in particular, had done the Archpriest out of over a +hundred roubles. Thus the net result of Madame’s cross-examination was +to convince the tchinovniks that she was a garrulous, silly old woman. +With regard to Manilov, he replied that he would answer for Chichikov as +he would for himself, and that he would gladly sacrifice his property in +toto if thereby he could attain even a tithe of the qualities which +Paul Ivanovitch possessed. Finally, he delivered on Chichikov, with +acutely-knitted brows, a eulogy couched in the most charming of terms, +and coupled with sundry sentiments on the subject of friendship and +affection in general. True, these remarks sufficed to indicate the +tender impulses of the speaker’s heart, but also they did nothing to +enlighten his examiners concerning the business that was actually at +hand. As for Sobakevitch, that landowner replied that he considered +Chichikov an excellent fellow, as well as that the souls whom he had +sold to his visitor had been in the truest sense of the word alive, but +that he could not answer for anything which might occur in the future, +seeing that any difficulties which might arise in the course of the +actual transferment of souls would not be HIS fault, in view of the fact +that God was lord of all, and that fevers and other mortal complaints +were so numerous in the world, and that instances of whole villages +perishing through the same could be found on record. + +Finally, our friends the tchinovniks found themselves compelled to +resort to an expedient which, though not particularly savoury, is not +infrequently employed--namely, the expedient of getting lacqueys quietly +to approach the servants of the person concerning whom information is +desired, and to ascertain from them (the servants) certain details with +regard to their master’s life and antecedents. Yet even from this source +very little was obtained, since Petrushka provided his interrogators +merely with a taste of the smell of his living-room, and Selifan +confined his replies to a statement that the barin had “been in the +employment of the State, and also had served in the Customs.” + +In short, the sum total of the results gathered by the tchinovniks was +that they still stood in ignorance of Chichikov’s identity, but that he +MUST be some one; wherefore it was decided to hold a final debate on the +subject on what ought to be done, and who Chichikov could possibly be, +and whether or not he was a man who ought to be apprehended and detained +as not respectable, or whether he was a man who might himself be able +to apprehend and detain THEM as persons lacking in respectability. The +debate in question, it was proposed, should be held at the residence of +the Chief of Police, who is known to our readers as the father and the +general benefactor of the town. + + + +CHAPTER X + +On assembling at the residence indicated, the tchinovniks had occasion +to remark that, owing to all these cares and excitements, every one +of their number had grown thinner. Yes, the appointment of a new +Governor-General, coupled with the rumours described and the reception +of the two serious documents above-mentioned, had left manifest traces +upon the features of every one present. More than one frockcoat had come +to look too large for its wearer, and more than one frame had fallen +away, including the frames of the President of the Council, the Director +of the Medical Department, and the Public Prosecutor. Even a certain +Semen Ivanovitch, who, for some reason or another, was never alluded to +by his family name, but who wore on his index finger a ring with which +he was accustomed to dazzle his lady friends, had diminished in bulk. +Yet, as always happens at such junctures, there were also present +a score of brazen individuals who had succeeded in NOT losing their +presence of mind, even though they constituted a mere sprinkling. +Of them the Postmaster formed one, since he was a man of equable +temperament who could always say: “WE know you, Governor-Generals! We +have seen three or four of you come and go, whereas WE have been sitting +on the same stools these thirty years.” Nevertheless a prominent feature +of the gathering was the total absence of what is vulgarly known as +“common sense.” In general, we Russians do not make a good show at +representative assemblies, for the reason that, unless there be in +authority a leading spirit to control the rest, the affair always +develops into confusion. Why this should be so one could hardly say, but +at all events a success is scored only by such gatherings as have for +their object dining and festivity--to wit, gatherings at clubs or in +German-run restaurants. However, on the present occasion, the meeting +was NOT one of this kind; it was a meeting convoked of necessity, and +likely in view of the threatened calamity to affect every tchinovnik in +the place. Also, in addition to the great divergency of views expressed +thereat, there was visible in all the speakers an invincible tendency to +indecision which led them at one moment to make assertions, and at the +next to contradict the same. But on at least one point all seemed to +agree--namely, that Chichikov’s appearance and conversation were too +respectable for him to be a forger or a disguised brigand. That is to +say, all SEEMED to agree on the point; until a sudden shout arose from +the direction of the Postmaster, who for some time past had been sitting +plunged in thought. + +“_I_ can tell you,” he cried, “who Chichikov is!” + +“Who, then?” replied the crowd in great excitement. + +“He is none other than Captain Kopeikin.” + +“And who may Captain Kopeikin be?” + +Taking a pinch of snuff (which he did with the lid of his snuff-box +half-open, lest some extraneous person should contrive to insert a not +over-clean finger into the stuff), the Postmaster related the following +story [35]. + +“After fighting in the campaign of 1812, there was sent home, wounded, +a certain Captain Kopeikin--a headstrong, lively blade who, whether on +duty or under arrest, made things lively for everybody. Now, since at +Krasni or at Leipzig (it matters not which) he had lost an arm and a +leg, and in those days no provision was made for wounded soldiers, and +he could not work with his left arm alone, he set out to see his father. +Unfortunately his father could only just support himself, and was forced +to tell his son so; wherefore the Captain decided to go and apply for +help in St. Petersburg, seeing that he had risked his life for his +country, and had lost much blood in its service. You can imagine him +arriving in the capital on a baggage waggon--in the capital which is +like no other city in the world! Before him there lay spread out the +whole field of life, like a sort of Arabian Nights--a picture made up of +the Nevski Prospect, Gorokhovaia Street, countless tapering spires, and +a number of bridges apparently supported on nothing--in fact, a regular +second Nineveh. Well, he made shift to hire a lodging, but found +everything so wonderfully furnished with blinds and Persian carpets and +so forth that he saw it would mean throwing away a lot of money. True, +as one walks the streets of St. Petersburg one seems to smell money by +the thousand roubles, but our friend Kopeikin’s bank was limited to a +few score coppers and a little silver--not enough to buy a village with! +At length, at the price of a rouble a day, he obtained a lodging in the +sort of tavern where the daily ration is a bowl of cabbage soup and a +crust of bread; and as he felt that he could not manage to live very +long on fare of that kind he asked folk what he had better do. ‘What you +had better do?’ they said. ‘Well the Government is not here--it is in +Paris, and the troops have not yet returned from the war; but there is a +TEMPORARY Commission sitting, and you had better go and see what IT can +do for you.’ ‘All right!’ he said. ‘I will go and tell the Commission +that I have shed my blood, and sacrificed my life, for my country.’ +And he got up early one morning, and shaved himself with his left hand +(since the expense of a barber was not worth while), and set out, wooden +leg and all, to see the President of the Commission. But first he +asked where the President lived, and was told that his house was in +Naberezhnaia Street. And you may be sure that it was no peasant’s hut, +with its glazed windows and great mirrors and statues and lacqueys and +brass door handles! Rather, it was the sort of place which you would +enter only after you had bought a cheap cake of soap and indulged in a +two hours’ wash. Also, at the entrance there was posted a grand Swiss +footman with a baton and an embroidered collar--a fellow looking like a +fat, over-fed pug dog. However, friend Kopeikin managed to get himself +and his wooden leg into the reception room, and there squeezed himself +away into a corner, for fear lest he should knock down the gilded china +with his elbow. And he stood waiting in great satisfaction at having +arrived before the President had so much as left his bed and been served +with his silver wash-basin. Nevertheless, it was only when Kopeikin had +been waiting four hours that a breakfast waiter entered to say, ‘The +President will soon be here.’ By now the room was as full of people as +a plate is of beans, and when the President left the breakfast-room he +brought with him, oh, such dignity and refinement, and such an air +of the metropolis! First he walked up to one person, and then up to +another, saying: ‘What do YOU want? And what do YOU want? What can I +do for YOU? What is YOUR business?’ And at length he stopped before +Kopeikin, and Kopeikin said to him: ‘I have shed my blood, and lost +both an arm and a leg, for my country, and am unable to work. Might I +therefore dare to ask you for a little help, if the regulations should +permit of it, or for a gratuity, or for a pension, or something of the +kind?’ Then the President looked at him, and saw that one of his legs +was indeed a wooden one, and that an empty right sleeve was pinned to +his uniform. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Come to me again in a few days’ +time.’ Upon this friend Kopeikin felt delighted. ‘NOW I have done my +job!’ he thought to himself; and you may imagine how gaily he trotted +along the pavement, and how he dropped into a tavern for a glass of +vodka, and how he ordered a cutlet and some caper sauce and some other +things for luncheon, and how he called for a bottle of wine, and how he +went to the theatre in the evening! In short, he did himself thoroughly +well. Next, he saw in the street a young English lady, as graceful as a +swan, and set off after her on his wooden leg. ‘But no,’ he thought to +himself. ‘To the devil with that sort of thing just now! I will wait +until I have drawn my pension. For the present I have spent enough.’ +(And I may tell you that by now he had got through fully half his +money.) Two or three days later he went to see the President of the +Commission again. ‘I should be glad to know,’ he said, ‘whether by now +you can do anything for me in return for my having shed my blood and +suffered sickness and wounds on military service.’ ‘First of all,’ said +the President, ‘I must tell you that nothing can be decided in your case +without the authority of the Supreme Government. Without that sanction +we cannot move in the matter. Surely you see how things stand until the +army shall have returned from the war? All that I can advise you to +do is wait for the Minister to return, and, in the meanwhile, to have +patience. Rest assured that then you will not be overlooked. And if for +the moment you have nothing to live upon, this is the best that I can +do for you.’ With that he handed Kopeikin a trifle until his case should +have been decided. However, that was not what Kopeikin wanted. He +had supposed that he would be given a gratuity of a thousand roubles +straight away; whereas, instead of ‘Drink and be merry,’ it was ‘Wait, +for the time is not yet.’ Thus, though his head had been full of soup +plates and cutlets and English girls, he now descended the steps with +his ears and his tail down--looking, in fact, like a poodle over which +the cook has poured a bucketful of water. You see, St. Petersburg life +had changed him not a little since first he had got a taste of it, and, +now that the devil only knew how he was going to live, it came all the +harder to him that he should have no more sweets to look forward to. +Remember that a man in the prime of years has an appetite like a +wolf; and as he passed a restaurant he could see a round-faced, +holland-shirted, snow-white aproned fellow of a French chef preparing a +dish delicious enough to make it turn to and eat itself; while, again, +as he passed a fruit shop he could see delicacies looking out of a +window for fools to come and buy them at a hundred roubles apiece. +Imagine, therefore, his position! On the one hand, so to speak, were +salmon and water-melons, while on the other hand was the bitter fare +which passed at a tavern for luncheon. ‘Well,’ he thought to himself, +‘let them do what they like with me at the Commission, but I intend +to go and raise the whole place, and to tell every blessed functionary +there that I have a mind to do as I choose.’ And in truth this +bold impertinence of a man did have the hardihood to return to the +Commission. ‘What do you want?’ said the President. ‘Why are you here +for the third time? You have had your orders given you.’ ‘I daresay I +have,’ he retorted, ‘but I am not going to be put off with THEM. I want +some cutlets to eat, and a bottle of French wine, and a chance to go and +amuse myself at the theatre.’ ‘Pardon me,’ said the President. ‘What you +really need (if I may venture to mention it) is a little patience. You +have been given something for food until the Military Committee shall +have met, and then, doubtless, you will receive your proper reward, +seeing that it would not be seemly that a man who has served his country +should be left destitute. On the other hand, if, in the meanwhile, you +desire to indulge in cutlets and theatre-going, please understand that +we cannot help you, but you must make your own resources, and try as +best you can to help yourself.’ You can imagine that this went in at one +of Kopeikin’s ears, and out at the other; that it was like shooting peas +at a stone wall. Accordingly he raised a turmoil which sent the staff +flying. One by one, he gave the mob of secretaries and clerks a real +good hammering. ‘You, and you, and you,’ he said, ‘do not even know +your duties. You are law-breakers.’ Yes, he trod every man of them under +foot. At length the General himself arrived from another office, and +sounded the alarm. What was to be done with a fellow like Kopeikin? +The President saw that strong measures were imperative. ‘Very well,’ he +said. ‘Since you decline to rest satisfied with what has been given you, +and quietly to await the decision of your case in St. Petersburg, I must +find you a lodging. Here, constable, remove the man to gaol.’ Then a +constable who had been called to the door--a constable three ells +in height, and armed with a carbine--a man well fitted to guard a +bank--placed our friend in a police waggon. ‘Well,’ reflected Kopeikin, +‘at least I shan’t have to pay my fare for THIS ride. That’s one +comfort.’ Again, after he had ridden a little way, he said to himself: +‘they told me at the Commission to go and make my own means of enjoying +myself. Very good. I’ll do so.’ However, what became of Kopeikin, +and whither he went, is known to no one. He sank, to use the poet’s +expression, into the waters of Lethe, and his doings now lie buried in +oblivion. But allow me, gentlemen, to piece together the further threads +of the story. Not two months later there appeared in the forests of +Riazan a band of robbers: and of that band the chieftain was none other +than--” + +“Allow me,” put in the Head of the Police Department. “You have said +that Kopeikin had lost an arm and a leg; whereas Chichikov--” + +To say anything more was unnecessary. The Postmaster clapped his hand +to his forehead, and publicly called himself a fool, though, later, he +tried to excuse his mistake by saying that in England the science of +mechanics had reached such a pitch that wooden legs were manufactured +which would enable the wearer, on touching a spring, to vanish +instantaneously from sight. + +Various other theories were then propounded, among them a theory that +Chichikov was Napoleon, escaped from St. Helena and travelling about +the world in disguise. And if it should be supposed that no such notion +could possibly have been broached, let the reader remember that these +events took place not many years after the French had been driven out of +Russia, and that various prophets had since declared that Napoleon was +Antichrist, and would one day escape from his island prison to exercise +universal sway on earth. Nay, some good folk had even declared the +letters of Napoleon’s name to constitute the Apocalyptic cipher! + +As a last resort, the tchinovniks decided to question Nozdrev, since not +only had the latter been the first to mention the dead souls, but +also he was supposed to stand on terms of intimacy with Chichikov. +Accordingly the Chief of Police dispatched a note by the hand of a +commissionaire. At the time Nozdrev was engaged on some very important +business--so much so that he had not left his room for four days, and +was receiving his meals through the window, and no visitors at all. The +business referred to consisted of the marking of several dozen selected +cards in such a way as to permit of his relying upon them as upon his +bosom friend. Naturally he did not like having his retirement invaded, +and at first consigned the commissionaire to the devil; but as soon +as he learnt from the note that, since a novice at cards was to be the +guest of the Chief of Police that evening, a call at the latter’s house +might prove not wholly unprofitable he relented, unlocked the door of +his room, threw on the first garments that came to hand, and set forth. +To every question put to him by the tchinovniks he answered firmly and +with assurance. Chichikov, he averred, had indeed purchased dead souls, +and to the tune of several thousand roubles. In fact, he (Nozdrev) had +himself sold him some, and still saw no reason why he should not have +done so. Next, to the question of whether or not he considered Chichikov +to be a spy, he replied in the affirmative, and added that, as long ago +as his and Chichikov’s joint schooldays, the said Chichikov had been +known as “The Informer,” and repeatedly been thrashed by his companions +on that account. Again, to the question of whether or not Chichikov was +a forger of currency notes the deponent, as before, responded in +the affirmative, and appended thereto an anecdote illustrative of +Chichikov’s extraordinary dexterity of hand--namely, an anecdote to +that effect that, once upon a time, on learning that two million +roubles worth of counterfeit notes were lying in Chichikov’s house, the +authorities had placed seals upon the building, and had surrounded it +on every side with an armed guard; whereupon Chichikov had, during the +night, changed each of these seals for a new one, and also so arranged +matters that, when the house was searched, the forged notes were found +to be genuine ones! + +Again, to the question of whether or not Chichikov had schemed to abduct +the Governor’s daughter, and also whether it was true that he, Nozdrev, +had undertaken to aid and abet him in the act, the witness replied that, +had he not undertaken to do so, the affair would never have come off. At +this point the witness pulled himself up, on realising that he had told +a lie which might get him into trouble; but his tongue was not to be +denied--the details trembling on its tip were too alluring, and he +even went on to cite the name of the village church where the pair +had arranged to be married, that of the priest who had performed +the ceremony, the amount of the fees paid for the same (seventy-five +roubles), and statements (1) that the priest had refused to solemnise +the wedding until Chichikov had frightened him by threatening to expose +the fact that he (the priest) had married Mikhail, a local corn dealer, +to his paramour, and (2) that Chichikov had ordered both a koliaska for +the couple’s conveyance and relays of horses from the post-houses on the +road. Nay, the narrative, as detailed by Nozdrev, even reached the +point of his mentioning certain of the postillions by name! Next, the +tchinovniks sounded him on the question of Chichikov’s possible identity +with Napoleon; but before long they had reason to regret the step, for +Nozdrev responded with a rambling rigmarole such as bore no resemblance +to anything possibly conceivable. Finally, the majority of the audience +left the room, and only the Chief of Police remained to listen (in the +hope of gathering something more); but at last even he found himself +forced to disclaim the speaker with a gesture which said: “The devil +only knows what the fellow is talking about!” and so voiced the general +opinion that it was no use trying to gather figs of thistles. + +Meanwhile Chichikov knew nothing of these events; for, having contracted +a slight chill, coupled with a sore throat, he had decided to keep his +room for three days; during which time he gargled his throat with +milk and fig juice, consumed the fruit from which the juice had been +extracted, and wore around his neck a poultice of camomile and camphor. +Also, to while away the hours, he made new and more detailed lists of +the souls which he had bought, perused a work by the Duchesse de la +Valliere [36], rummaged in his portmanteau, looked through various +articles and papers which he discovered in his dispatch-box, and found +every one of these occupations tedious. Nor could he understand why +none of his official friends had come to see him and inquire after his +health, seeing that, not long since, there had been standing in front of +the inn the drozhkis both of the Postmaster, the Public Prosecutor, and +the President of the Council. He wondered and wondered, and then, with +a shrug of his shoulders, fell to pacing the room. At length he felt +better, and his spirits rose at the prospect of once more going out into +the fresh air; wherefore, having shaved a plentiful growth of hair from +his face, he dressed with such alacrity as almost to cause a split +in his trousers, sprinkled himself with eau-de-Cologne, and wrapping +himself in warm clothes, and turning up the collar of his coat, sallied +forth into the street. His first destination was intended to be the +Governor’s mansion, and, as he walked along, certain thoughts concerning +the Governor’s daughter would keep whirling through his head, so that +almost he forgot where he was, and took to smiling and cracking jokes to +himself. + +Arrived at the Governor’s entrance, he was about to divest himself +of his scarf when a Swiss footman greeted him with the words, “I am +forbidden to admit you.” + +“What?” he exclaimed. “You do not know me? Look at me again, and see if +you do not recognise me.” + +“Of course I recognise you,” the footman replied. “I have seen you +before, but have been ordered to admit any one else rather than Monsieur +Chichikov.” + +“Indeed? And why so?” + +“Those are my orders, and they must be obeyed,” said the footman, +confronting Chichikov with none of that politeness with which, on +former occasions, he had hastened to divest our hero of his wrappings. +Evidently he was of opinion that, since the gentry declined to receive +the visitor, the latter must certainly be a rogue. + +“I cannot understand it,” said Chichikov to himself. Then he departed, +and made his way to the house of the President of the Council. But so +put about was that official by Chichikov’s entry that he could not utter +two consecutive words--he could only murmur some rubbish which left both +his visitor and himself out of countenance. Chichikov wondered, as he +left the house, what the President’s muttered words could have meant, +but failed to make head or tail of them. Next, he visited, in turn, the +Chief of Police, the Vice-Governor, the Postmaster, and others; but in +each case he either failed to be accorded admittance or was received +so strangely, and with such a measure of constraint and conversational +awkwardness and absence of mind and embarrassment, that he began to fear +for the sanity of his hosts. Again and again did he strive to divine +the cause, but could not do so; so he went wandering aimlessly about +the town, without succeeding in making up his mind whether he or +the officials had gone crazy. At length, in a state bordering upon +bewilderment, he returned to the inn--to the establishment whence, that +every afternoon, he had set forth in such exuberance of spirits. Feeling +the need of something to do, he ordered tea, and, still marvelling at +the strangeness of his position, was about to pour out the beverage when +the door opened and Nozdrev made his appearance. + +“What says the proverb?” he began. “‘To see a friend, seven versts is +not too long a round to make.’ I happened to be passing the house, saw a +light in your window, and thought to myself: ‘Now, suppose I were to run +up and pay him a visit? It is unlikely that he will be asleep.’ Ah, ha! +I see tea on your table! Good! Then I will drink a cup with you, for I +had wretched stuff for dinner, and it is beginning to lie heavy on my +stomach. Also, tell your man to fill me a pipe. Where is your own pipe?” + +“I never smoke,” rejoined Chichikov drily. + +“Rubbish! As if I did not know what a chimney-pot you are! What is your +man’s name? Hi, Vakhramei! Come here!” + +“Petrushka is his name, not Vakhramei.” + +“Indeed? But you USED to have a man called Vakhramei, didn’t you?” + +“No, never.” + +“Oh, well. Then it must be Derebin’s man I am thinking of. What a lucky +fellow that Derebin is! An aunt of his has gone and quarrelled with her +son for marrying a serf woman, and has left all her property to HIM, +to Derebin. Would that _I_ had an aunt of that kind to provide against +future contingencies! But why have you been hiding yourself away? I +suppose the reason has been that you go in for abstruse subjects and are +fond of reading” (why Nozdrev should have drawn these conclusions no one +could possibly have said--least of all Chichikov himself). “By the way, +I can tell you of something that would have found you scope for your +satirical vein” (the conclusion as to Chichikov’s “satirical vein” was, +as before, altogether unwarranted on Nozdrev’s part). “That is to say, +you would have seen merchant Likhachev losing a pile of money at play. +My word, you would have laughed! A fellow with me named Perependev said: +‘Would that Chichikov had been here! It would have been the very thing +for him!’” (As a matter of fact, never since the day of his birth had +Nozdrev met any one of the name of Perependev.) “However, my friend, you +must admit that you treated me rather badly the day that we played that +game of chess; but, as I won the game, I bear you no malice. A propos, +I am just from the President’s, and ought to tell you that the feeling +against you in the town is very strong, for every one believes you to be +a forger of currency notes. I myself was sent for and questioned +about you, but I stuck up for you through thick and thin, and told +the tchinovniks that I had been at school with you, and had known your +father. In fact, I gave the fellows a knock or two for themselves.” + +“You say that I am believed to be a forger?” said Chichikov, starting +from his seat. + +“Yes,” said Nozdrev. “Why have you gone and frightened everybody as you +have done? Some of our folk are almost out of their minds about it, and +declare you to be either a brigand in disguise or a spy. Yesterday the +Public Prosecutor even died of it, and is to be buried to-morrow” + (this was true in so far as that, on the previous day, the official in +question had had a fatal stroke--probably induced by the excitement of +the public meeting). “Of course, _I_ don’t suppose you to be anything of +the kind, but, you see, these fellows are in a blue funk about the new +Governor-General, for they think he will make trouble for them over your +affair. A propos, he is believed to be a man who puts on airs, and turns +up his nose at everything; and if so, he will get on badly with the +dvoriane, seeing that fellows of that sort need to be humoured a bit. +Yes, my word! Should the new Governor-General shut himself up in his +study, and give no balls, there will be the very devil to pay! By the +way, Chichikov, that is a risky scheme of yours.” + +“What scheme to you mean?” Chichikov asked uneasily. + +“Why, that scheme of carrying off the Governor’s daughter. However, to +tell the truth, I was expecting something of the kind. No sooner did +I see you and her together at the ball than I said to myself: ‘Ah, ha! +Chichikov is not here for nothing!’ For my own part, I think you have +made a poor choice, for I can see nothing in her at all. On the other +hand, the niece of a friend of mine named Bikusov--she IS a girl, and no +mistake! A regular what you might call ‘miracle in muslin!’” + +“What on earth are you talking about?” asked Chichikov with his eyes +distended. “HOW could I carry off the Governor’s daughter? What on earth +do you mean?” + +“Come, come! What a secretive fellow you are! My only object in having +come to see you is to lend you a helping hand in the matter. Look here. +On condition that you will lend me three thousand roubles, I will stand +you the cost of the wedding, the koliaska, and the relays of horses. I +must have the money even if I die for it.” + +Throughout Nozdrev’s maunderings Chichikov had been rubbing his eyes to +ascertain whether or not he was dreaming. What with the charge of being +a forger, the accusation of having schemed an abduction, the death of +the Public Prosecutor (whatever might have been its cause), and the +advent of a new Governor-General, he felt utterly dismayed. + +“Things having come to their present pass,” he reflected, “I had better +not linger here--I had better be off at once.” + +Getting rid of Nozdrev as soon as he could, he sent for Selifan, and +ordered him to be up at daybreak, in order to clean the britchka and to +have everything ready for a start at six o’clock. Yet, though Selifan +replied, “Very well, Paul Ivanovitch,” he hesitated awhile by the door. +Next, Chichikov bid Petrushka get out the dusty portmanteau from under +the bed, and then set to work to cram into it, pell-mell, socks, shirts, +collars (both clean and dirty), boot trees, a calendar, and a variety of +other articles. Everything went into the receptacle just as it came +to hand, since his one object was to obviate any possible delay in +the morning’s departure. Meanwhile the reluctant Selifan slowly, very +slowly, left the room, as slowly descended the staircase (on each +separate step of which he left a muddy foot-print), and, finally, halted +to scratch his head. What that scratching may have meant no one could +say; for, with the Russian populace, such a scratching may mean any one +of a hundred things. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Nevertheless events did not turn out as Chichikov had intended they +should. In the first place, he overslept himself. That was check number +one. In the second place, on his rising and inquiring whether the +britchka had been harnessed and everything got ready, he was informed +that neither of those two things had been done. That was check number +two. Beside himself with rage, he prepared to give Selifan the wigging +of his life, and, meanwhile, waited impatiently to hear what the +delinquent had got to say in his defence. It goes without saying that +when Selifan made his appearance in the doorway he had only the usual +excuses to offer--the sort of excuses usually offered by servants when a +hasty departure has become imperatively necessary. + +“Paul Ivanovitch,” he said, “the horses require shoeing.” + +“Blockhead!” exclaimed Chichikov. “Why did you not tell me of that +before, you damned fool? Was there not time enough for them to be shod?” + +“Yes, I suppose there was,” agreed Selifan. “Also one of the wheels is +in want of a new tyre, for the roads are so rough that the old tyre is +worn through. Also, the body of the britchka is so rickety that probably +it will not last more than a couple of stages.” + +“Rascal!” shouted Chichikov, clenching his fists and approaching Selifan +in such a manner that, fearing to receive a blow, the man backed and +dodged aside. “Do you mean to ruin me, and to break all our bones on the +road, you cursed idiot? For these three weeks past you have been doing +nothing at all; yet now, at the last moment, you come here stammering +and playing the fool! Do you think I keep you just to eat and to drive +yourself about? You must have known of this before? Did you, or did you +not, know it? Answer me at once.” + +“Yes, I did know it,” replied Selifan, hanging his head. + +“Then why didn’t you tell me about it?” + +Selifan had no reply immediately ready, so continued to hang his head +while quietly saying to himself: “See how well I have managed things! I +knew what was the matter, yet I did not say.” + +“And now,” continued Chichikov, “go you at once and fetch a blacksmith. +Tell him that everything must be put right within two hours at the most. +Do you hear? If that should not be done, I, I--I will give you the best +flogging that ever you had in your life.” Truly Chichikov was almost +beside himself with fury. + +Turning towards the door, as though for the purpose of going and +carrying out his orders, Selifan halted and added: + +“That skewbald, barin--you might think it well to sell him, seeing that +he is nothing but a rascal? A horse like that is more of a hindrance +than a help.” + +“What? Do you expect me to go NOW to the market-place and sell him?” + +“Well, Paul Ivanovitch, he is good for nothing but show, since by nature +he is a most cunning beast. Never in my life have I seen such a horse.” + +“Fool! Whenever I may wish to sell him I SHALL sell him. Meanwhile, +don’t you trouble your head about what doesn’t concern you, but go and +fetch a blacksmith, and see that everything is put right within two +hours. Otherwise I will take the very hair off your head, and beat you +till you haven’t a face left. Be off! Hurry!” + +Selifan departed, and Chichikov, his ill-humour vented, threw down +upon the floor the poignard which he always took with him as a means of +instilling respect into whomsoever it might concern, and spent the next +quarter of an hour in disputing with a couple of blacksmiths--men who, +as usual, were rascals of the type which, on perceiving that something +is wanted in a hurry, at once multiplies its terms for providing the +same. Indeed, for all Chichikov’s storming and raging as he dubbed +the fellows robbers and extortioners and thieves, he could make no +impression upon the pair, since, true to their character, they declined +to abate their prices, and, even when they had begun their work, spent +upon it, not two hours, but five and a half. Meanwhile he had the +satisfaction of experiencing that delightful time with which all +travellers are familiar--namely, the time during which one sits in a +room where, except for a litter of string, waste paper, and so forth, +everything else has been packed. But to all things there comes an end, +and there arrived also the long-awaited moment when the britchka had +received the luggage, the faulty wheel had been fitted with a new tyre, +the horses had been re-shod, and the predatory blacksmiths had departed +with their gains. “Thank God!” thought Chichikov as the britchka rolled +out of the gates of the inn, and the vehicle began to jolt over the +cobblestones. Yet a feeling which he could not altogether have defined +filled his breast as he gazed upon the houses and the streets and the +garden walls which he might never see again. Presently, on turning a +corner, the britchka was brought to a halt through the fact that along +the street there was filing a seemingly endless funeral procession. +Leaning forward in his britchka, Chichikov asked Petrushka whose +obsequies the procession represented, and was told that they represented +those of the Public Prosecutor. Disagreeably shocked, our hero hastened +to raise the hood of the vehicle, to draw the curtains across the +windows, and to lean back into a corner. While the britchka remained +thus halted Selifan and Petrushka, their caps doffed, sat watching the +progress of the cortege, after they had received strict instructions not +to greet any fellow-servant whom they might recognise. Behind the hearse +walked the whole body of tchinovniks, bare-headed; and though, for a +moment or two, Chichikov feared that some of their number might discern +him in his britchka, he need not have disturbed himself, since their +attention was otherwise engaged. In fact, they were not even exchanging +the small talk customary among members of such processions, but +thinking exclusively of their own affairs, of the advent of the new +Governor-General, and of the probable manner in which he would take up +the reins of administration. Next came a number of carriages, from +the windows of which peered the ladies in mourning toilets. Yet the +movements of their hands and lips made it evident that they were +indulging in animated conversation--probably about the Governor-General, +the balls which he might be expected to give, and their own eternal +fripperies and gewgaws. Lastly came a few empty drozhkis. As soon as the +latter had passed, our hero was able to continue on his way. Throwing +back the hood of the britchka, he said to himself: + +“Ah, good friend, you have lived your life, and now it is over! In the +newspapers they will say of you that you died regretted not only by +your subordinates, but also by humanity at large, as well as that, a +respected citizen, a kind father, and a husband beyond reproach, you +went to your grave amid the tears of your widow and orphans. Yet, should +those journals be put to it to name any particular circumstance which +justified this eulogy of you, they would be forced to fall back upon the +fact that you grew a pair of exceptionally thick eyebrows!” + +With that Chichikov bid Selifan quicken his pace, and concluded: “After +all, it is as well that I encountered the procession, for they say that +to meet a funeral is lucky.” + +Presently the britchka turned into some less frequented streets, lines +of wooden fencing of the kind which mark the outskirts of a town began +to file by, the cobblestones came to an end, the macadam of the highroad +succeeded to them, and once more there began on either side of the +turnpike a procession of verst stones, road menders, and grey villages; +inns with samovars and peasant women and landlords who came running out +of yards with seivefuls of oats; pedestrians in worn shoes which, it +might be, had covered eight hundred versts; little towns, bright with +booths for the sale of flour in barrels, boots, small loaves, and other +trifles; heaps of slag; much repaired bridges; expanses of field to +right and to left; stout landowners; a mounted soldier bearing a green, +iron-clamped box inscribed: “The --th Battery of Artillery”; long strips +of freshly-tilled earth which gleamed green, yellow, and black on the +face of the countryside. With it mingled long-drawn singing, glimpses of +elm-tops amid mist, the far-off notes of bells, endless clouds of rocks, +and the illimitable line of the horizon. + +Ah, Russia, Russia, from my beautiful home in a strange land I can still +see you! In you everything is poor and disordered and unhomely; in you +the eye is neither cheered nor dismayed by temerities of nature which +a yet more temerarious art has conquered; in you one beholds no cities +with lofty, many-windowed mansions, lofty as crags, no picturesque +trees, no ivy-clad ruins, no waterfalls with their everlasting spray and +roar, no beetling precipices which confuse the brain with their stony +immensity, no vistas of vines and ivy and millions of wild roses and +ageless lines of blue hills which look almost unreal against the clear, +silvery background of the sky. In you everything is flat and open; your +towns project like points or signals from smooth levels of plain, and +nothing whatsoever enchants or deludes the eye. Yet what secret, what +invincible force draws me to you? Why does there ceaselessly echo and +re-echo in my ears the sad song which hovers throughout the length and +the breadth of your borders? What is the burden of that song? Why does +it wail and sob and catch at my heart? What say the notes which +thus painfully caress and embrace my soul, and flit, uttering their +lamentations, around me? What is it you seek of me, O Russia? What is +the hidden bond which subsists between us? Why do you regard me as you +do? Why does everything within you turn upon me eyes full of +yearning? Even at this moment, as I stand dumbly, fixedly, perplexedly +contemplating your vastness, a menacing cloud, charged with gathering +rain, seems to overshadow my head. What is it that your boundless +expanses presage? Do they not presage that one day there will arise in +you ideas as boundless as yourself? Do they not presage that one day you +too will know no limits? Do they not presage that one day, when again +you shall have room for their exploits, there will spring to life +the heroes of old? How the power of your immensity enfolds me, and +reverberates through all my being with a wild, strange spell, and +flashes in my eyes with an almost supernatural radiance! Yes, a strange, +brilliant, unearthly vista indeed do you disclose, O Russia, country of +mine! + +“Stop, stop, you fool!” shouted Chichikov to Selifan; and even as he +spoke a troika, bound on Government business, came chattering by, and +disappeared in a cloud of dust. To Chichikov’s curses at Selifan for not +having drawn out of the way with more alacrity a rural constable with +moustaches of the length of an arshin added his quota. + +What a curious and attractive, yet also what an unreal, fascination +the term “highway” connotes! And how interesting for its own sake is +a highway! Should the day be a fine one (though chilly) in mellowing +autumn, press closer your travelling cloak, and draw down your cap over +your ears, and snuggle cosily, comfortably into a corner of the britchka +before a last shiver shall course through your limbs, and the ensuing +warmth shall put to flight the autumnal cold and damp. As the horses +gallop on their way, how delightfully will drowsiness come stealing upon +you, and make your eyelids droop! For a while, through your somnolence, +you will continue to hear the hard breathing of the team and the +rumbling of the wheels; but at length, sinking back into your corner, +you will relapse into the stage of snoring. And when you awake--behold! +you will find that five stages have slipped away, and that the moon is +shining, and that you have reached a strange town of churches and old +wooden cupolas and blackened spires and white, half-timbered houses! And +as the moonlight glints hither and thither, almost you will believe that +the walls and the streets and the pavements of the place are spread with +sheets--sheets shot with coal-black shadows which make the wooden roofs +look all the brighter under the slanting beams of the pale luminary. +Nowhere is a soul to be seen, for every one is plunged in slumber. Yet +no. In a solitary window a light is flickering where some good burgher +is mending his boots, or a baker drawing a batch of dough. O night +and powers of heaven, how perfect is the blackness of your infinite +vault--how lofty, how remote its inaccessible depths where it lies +spread in an intangible, yet audible, silence! Freshly does the lulling +breath of night blow in your face, until once more you relapse into +snoring oblivion, and your poor neighbour turns angrily in his corner as +he begins to be conscious of your weight. Then again you awake, but +this time to find yourself confronted with only fields and steppes. +Everywhere in the ascendant is the desolation of space. But suddenly the +ciphers on a verst stone leap to the eye! Morning is rising, and on the +chill, gradually paling line of the horizon you can see gleaming a faint +gold streak. The wind freshens and grows keener, and you snuggle closer +in your cloak; yet how glorious is that freshness, and how marvellous +the sleep in which once again you become enfolded! A jolt!--and for the +last time you return to consciousness. By now the sun is high in the +heavens, and you hear a voice cry “gently, gently!” as a farm waggon +issues from a by-road. Below, enclosed within an ample dike, stretches +a sheet of water which glistens like copper in the sunlight. Beyond, on +the side of a slope, lie some scattered peasants’ huts, a manor house, +and, flanking the latter, a village church with its cross flashing +like a star. There also comes wafted to your ear the sound of peasants’ +laughter, while in your inner man you are becoming conscious of an +appetite which is not to be withstood. + +Oh long-drawn highway, how excellent you are! How often have I in +weariness and despondency set forth upon your length, and found in you +salvation and rest! How often, as I followed your leading, have I been +visited with wonderful thoughts and poetic dreams and curious, wild +impressions! + +At this moment our friend Chichikov also was experiencing visions of a +not wholly prosaic nature. Let us peep into his soul and share them. +At first he remained unconscious of anything whatsoever, for he was too +much engaged in making sure that he was really clear of the town; but +as soon as he saw that it had completely disappeared, with its mills and +factories and other urban appurtenances, and that even the steeples +of the white stone churches had sunk below the horizon, he turned his +attention to the road, and the town of N. vanished from his thoughts as +completely as though he had not seen it since childhood. Again, in its +turn, the road ceased to interest him, and he began to close his eyes +and to loll his head against the cushions. Of this let the author +take advantage, in order to speak at length concerning his hero; since +hitherto he (the author) has been prevented from so doing by Nozdrev and +balls and ladies and local intrigues--by those thousand trifles which +seem trifles only when they are introduced into a book, but which, in +life, figure as affairs of importance. Let us lay them aside, and betake +ourselves to business. + +Whether the character whom I have selected for my hero has pleased my +readers is, of course, exceedingly doubtful. At all events the ladies +will have failed to approve him for the fair sex demands in a hero +perfection, and, should there be the least mental or physical stain +on him--well, woe betide! Yes, no matter how profoundly the author may +probe that hero’s soul, no matter how clearly he may portray his figure +as in a mirror, he will be given no credit for the achievement. Indeed, +Chichikov’s very stoutness and plenitude of years may have militated +against him, for never is a hero pardoned for the former, and the +majority of ladies will, in such case, turn away, and mutter to +themselves: “Phew! What a beast!” Yes, the author is well aware of this. +Yet, though he could not, to save his life, take a person of virtue for +his principal character, it may be that this story contains themes +never before selected, and that in it there projects the whole boundless +wealth of Russian psychology; that it portrays, as well as Chichikov, +the peasant who is gifted with the virtues which God has sent him, and +the marvellous maiden of Russia who has not her like in all the world +for her beautiful feminine spirituality, the roots of which lie buried +in noble aspirations and boundless self-denial. In fact, compared with +these types, the virtuous of other races seem lifeless, as does an +inanimate volume when compared with the living word. Yes, each time that +there arises in Russia a movement of thought, it becomes clear that the +movement sinks deep into the Slavonic nature where it would but have +skimmed the surface of other nations.--But why am I talking like this? +Whither am I tending? It is indeed shameful that an author who long +ago reached man’s estate, and was brought up to a course of severe +introspection and sober, solitary self-enlightenment, should give way to +such jejune wandering from the point. To everything its proper time +and place and turn. As I was saying, it does not lie in me to take a +virtuous character for my hero: and I will tell you why. It is because +it is high time that a rest were given to the “poor, but virtuous” + individual; it is because the phrase “a man of worth” has grown into a +by-word; it is because the “man of worth” has become converted into a +horse, and there is not a writer but rides him and flogs him, in and out +of season; it is because the “man of worth” has been starved until he +has not a shred of his virtue left, and all that remains of his body is +but the ribs and the hide; it is because the “man of worth” is for ever +being smuggled upon the scene; it is because the “man of worth” has at +length forfeited every one’s respect. For these reasons do I reaffirm +that it is high time to yoke a rascal to the shafts. Let us yoke that +rascal. + +Our hero’s beginnings were both modest and obscure. True, his parents +were dvoriane, but he in no way resembled them. At all events, a short, +squab female relative who was present at his birth exclaimed as she +lifted up the baby: “He is altogether different from what I had expected +him to be. He ought to have taken after his maternal grandmother, +whereas he has been born, as the proverb has it, ‘like not father nor +mother, but like a chance passer-by.’” Thus from the first life +regarded the little Chichikov with sour distaste, and as through a dim, +frost-encrusted window. A tiny room with diminutive casements which were +never opened, summer or winter; an invalid father in a dressing-gown +lined with lambskin, and with an ailing foot swathed in bandages--a man +who was continually drawing deep breaths, and walking up and down the +room, and spitting into a sandbox; a period of perpetually sitting on +a bench with pen in hand and ink on lips and fingers; a period of being +eternally confronted with the copy-book maxim, “Never tell a lie, but +obey your superiors, and cherish virtue in your heart;” an everlasting +scraping and shuffling of slippers up and down the room; a period of +continually hearing a well-known, strident voice exclaim: “So you have +been playing the fool again!” at times when the child, weary of the +mortal monotony of his task, had added a superfluous embellishment +to his copy; a period of experiencing the ever-familiar, but +ever-unpleasant, sensation which ensued upon those words as the boy’s +ear was painfully twisted between two long fingers bent backwards at +the tips--such is the miserable picture of that youth of which, in later +life, Chichikov preserved but the faintest of memories! But in this +world everything is liable to swift and sudden change; and, one day in +early spring, when the rivers had melted, the father set forth with +his little son in a teliezshka [37] drawn by a sorrel steed of the kind +known to horsy folk as a soroka, and having as coachman the diminutive +hunchback who, father of the only serf family belonging to the elder +Chichikov, served as general factotum in the Chichikov establishment. +For a day and a half the soroka conveyed them on their way; during which +time they spent the night at a roadside inn, crossed a river, dined off +cold pie and roast mutton, and eventually arrived at the county town. To +the lad the streets presented a spectacle of unwonted brilliancy, and +he gaped with amazement. Turning into a side alley wherein the mire +necessitated both the most strenuous exertions on the soroka’s part and +the most vigorous castigation on the part of the driver and the barin, +the conveyance eventually reached the gates of a courtyard which, +combined with a small fruit garden containing various bushes, a couple +of apple-trees in blossom, and a mean, dirty little shed, constituted +the premises attached to an antiquated-looking villa. Here there lived +a relative of the Chichikovs, a wizened old lady who went to market in +person and dried her stockings at the samovar. On seeing the boy, she +patted his cheek and expressed satisfaction at his physique; whereupon +the fact became disclosed that here he was to abide for a while, for +the purpose of attending a local school. After a night’s rest his father +prepared to betake himself homeward again; but no tears marked the +parting between him and his son, he merely gave the lad a copper or two +and (a far more important thing) the following injunctions. “See here, +my boy. Do your lessons well, do not idle or play the fool, and above +all things, see that you please your teachers. So long as you observe +these rules you will make progress, and surpass your fellows, even if +God shall have denied you brains, and you should fail in your studies. +Also, do not consort overmuch with your comrades, for they will do you +no good; but, should you do so, then make friends with the richer of +them, since one day they may be useful to you. Also, never entertain or +treat any one, but see that every one entertains and treats YOU. Lastly, +and above all else, keep and save your every kopeck. To save money is +the most important thing in life. Always a friend or a comrade may fail +you, and be the first to desert you in a time of adversity; but never +will a KOPECK fail you, whatever may be your plight. Nothing in the +world cannot be done, cannot be attained, with the aid of money.” These +injunctions given, the father embraced his son, and set forth on his +return; and though the son never again beheld his parent, the latter’s +words and precepts sank deep into the little Chichikov’s soul. + +The next day young Pavlushka made his first attendance at school. But no +special aptitude in any branch of learning did he display. Rather, his +distinguishing characteristics were diligence and neatness. On the other +hand, he developed great intelligence as regards the PRACTICAL aspect +of life. In a trice he divined and comprehended how things ought to +be worked, and, from that time forth, bore himself towards his +school-fellows in such a way that, though they frequently gave him +presents, he not only never returned the compliment, but even on +occasions pocketed the gifts for the mere purpose of selling them again. +Also, boy though he was, he acquired the art of self-denial. Of the +trifle which his father had given him on parting he spent not a kopeck, +but, the same year, actually added to his little store by fashioning +a bullfinch of wax, painting it, and selling the same at a handsome +profit. Next, as time went on, he engaged in other speculations--in +particular, in the scheme of buying up eatables, taking his seat in +class beside boys who had plenty of pocket-money, and, as soon as such +opulent individuals showed signs of failing attention (and, therefore, +of growing appetite), tendering them, from beneath the desk, a roll of +pudding or a piece of gingerbread, and charging according to degree +of appetite and size of portion. He also spent a couple of months in +training a mouse, which he kept confined in a little wooden cage in his +bedroom. At length, when the training had reached the point that, at the +several words of command, the mouse would stand upon its hind legs, +lie down, and get up again, he sold the creature for a respectable sum. +Thus, in time, his gains attained the amount of five roubles; whereupon +he made himself a purse and then started to fill a second receptacle of +the kind. Still more studied was his attitude towards the authorities. +No one could sit more quietly in his place on the bench than he. In the +same connection it may be remarked that his teacher was a man who, above +all things, loved peace and good behaviour, and simply could not +abide clever, witty boys, since he suspected them of laughing at him. +Consequently any lad who had once attracted the master’s attention with +a manifestation of intelligence needed but to shuffle in his place, or +unintentionally to twitch an eyebrow, for the said master at once to +burst into a rage, to turn the supposed offender out of the room, and +to visit him with unmerciful punishment. “Ah, my fine fellow,” he would +say, “I’LL cure you of your impudence and want of respect! I know you +through and through far better than you know yourself, and will take +good care that you have to go down upon your knees and curb your +appetite.” Whereupon the wretched lad would, for no cause of which he +was aware, be forced to wear out his breeches on the floor and go hungry +for days. “Talents and gifts,” the schoolmaster would declare, “are so +much rubbish. I respect only good behaviour, and shall award full marks +to those who conduct themselves properly, even if they fail to learn a +single letter of their alphabet: whereas to those in whom I may perceive +a tendency to jocularity I shall award nothing, even though they should +outdo Solon himself.” For the same reason he had no great love of the +author Krylov, in that the latter says in one of his Fables: “In my +opinion, the more one sings, the better one works;” and often the +pedagogue would relate how, in a former school of his, the silence had +been such that a fly could be heard buzzing on the wing, and for the +space of a whole year not a single pupil sneezed or coughed in class, +and so complete was the absence of all sound that no one could have +told that there was a soul in the place. Of this mentor young Chichikov +speedily appraised the mentality; wherefore he fashioned his behaviour +to correspond with it. Not an eyelid, not an eyebrow, would he stir +during school hours, howsoever many pinches he might receive from +behind; and only when the bell rang would he run to anticipate his +fellows in handing the master the three-cornered cap which that +dignitary customarily sported, and then to be the first to leave the +class-room, and contrive to meet the master not less than two or three +times as the latter walked homeward, in order that, on each occasion, +he might doff his cap. And the scheme proved entirely successful. +Throughout the period of his attendance at school he was held in high +favour, and, on leaving the establishment, received full marks for every +subject, as well as a diploma and a book inscribed (in gilt letters) +“For Exemplary Diligence and the Perfection of Good Conduct.” By this +time he had grown into a fairly good-looking youth of the age when the +chin first calls for a razor; and at about the same period his father +died, leaving behind him, as his estate, four waistcoats completely worn +out, two ancient frockcoats, and a small sum of money. Apparently he had +been skilled only in RECOMMENDING the saving of kopecks--not in ACTUALLY +PRACTISING the art. Upon that Chichikov sold the old house and its +little parcel of land for a thousand roubles, and removed, with his +one serf and the serf’s family, to the capital, where he set about +organising a new establishment and entering the Civil Service. +Simultaneously with his doing so, his old schoolmaster lost (through +stupidity or otherwise) the establishment over which he had hitherto +presided, and in which he had set so much store by silence and good +behaviour. Grief drove him to drink, and when nothing was left, even +for that purpose, he retired--ill, helpless, and starving--into a +broken-down, cheerless hovel. But certain of his former pupils--the same +clever, witty lads whom he had once been wont to accuse of impertinence +and evil conduct generally--heard of his pitiable plight, and collected +for him what money they could, even to the point of selling their own +necessaries. Only Chichikov, when appealed to, pleaded inability, and +compromised with a contribution of a single piatak [38]: which his +old schoolfellows straightway returned him--full in the face, and +accompanied with a shout of “Oh, you skinflint!” As for the poor +schoolmaster, when he heard what his former pupils had done, he buried +his face in his hands, and the tears gushed from his failing eyes as +from those of a helpless infant. “God has brought you but to weep over +my death-bed,” he murmured feebly; and added with a profound sigh, on +hearing of Chichikov’s conduct: “Ah, Pavlushka, how a human being may +become changed! Once you were a good lad, and gave me no trouble; but +now you are become proud indeed!” + +Yet let it not be inferred from this that our hero’s character had grown +so blase and hard, or his conscience so blunted, as to preclude his +experiencing a particle of sympathy or compassion. As a matter of fact, +he was capable both of the one and the other, and would have been glad +to assist his old teacher had no great sum been required, or had he not +been called upon to touch the fund which he had decided should remain +intact. In other words, the father’s injunction, “Guard and save every +kopeck,” had become a hard and fast rule of the son’s. Yet the youth had +no particular attachment to money for money’s sake; he was not possessed +with the true instinct for hoarding and niggardliness. Rather, before +his eyes there floated ever a vision of life and its amenities and +advantages--a vision of carriages and an elegantly furnished house and +recherche dinners; and it was in the hope that some day he might attain +these things that he saved every kopeck and, meanwhile, stinted both +himself and others. Whenever a rich man passed him by in a splendid +drozhki drawn by swift and handsomely-caparisoned horses, he would halt +as though deep in thought, and say to himself, like a man awakening +from a long sleep: “That gentleman must have been a financier, he has so +little hair on his brow.” In short, everything connected with wealth and +plenty produced upon him an ineffaceable impression. Even when he left +school he took no holiday, so strong in him was the desire to get to +work and enter the Civil Service. Yet, for all the encomiums contained +in his diploma, he had much ado to procure a nomination to a Government +Department; and only after a long time was a minor post found for him, +at a salary of thirty or forty roubles a year. Nevertheless, wretched +though this appointment was, he determined, by strict attention to +business, to overcome all obstacles, and to win success. And, indeed, +the self-denial, the patience, and the economy which he displayed +were remarkable. From early morn until late at night he would, with +indefatigable zeal of body and mind, remain immersed in his sordid task +of copying official documents--never going home, snatching what sleep he +could on tables in the building, and dining with the watchman on duty. +Yet all the while he contrived to remain clean and neat, to preserve +a cheerful expression of countenance, and even to cultivate a certain +elegance of movement. In passing, it may be remarked that his fellow +tchinovniks were a peculiarly plain, unsightly lot, some of them having +faces like badly baked bread, swollen cheeks, receding chins, and +cracked and blistered upper lips. Indeed, not a man of them was +handsome. Also, their tone of voice always contained a note of +sullenness, as though they had a mind to knock some one on the head; and +by their frequent sacrifices to Bacchus they showed that even yet there +remains in the Slavonic nature a certain element of paganism. Nay, the +Director’s room itself they would invade while still licking their lips, +and since their breath was not over-aromatic, the atmosphere of the room +grew not over-pleasant. Naturally, among such an official staff a man +like Chichikov could not fail to attract attention and remark, since in +everything--in cheerfulness of demeanour, in suavity of voice, and +in complete neglect of the use of strong potions--he was the absolute +antithesis of his companions. Yet his path was not an easy one to tread, +for over him he had the misfortune to have placed in authority a Chief +Clerk who was a graven image of elderly insensibility and inertia. +Always the same, always unapproachable, this functionary could never in +his life have smiled or asked civilly after an acquaintance’s health. +Nor had any one ever seen him a whit different in the street or at his +own home from what he was in the office, or showing the least interest +in anything whatever, or getting drunk and relapsing into jollity in +his cups, or indulging in that species of wild gaiety which, when +intoxicated, even a burglar affects. No, not a particle of this was +there in him. Nor, for that matter, was there in him a particle of +anything at all, whether good or bad: which complete negativeness +of character produced rather a strange effect. In the same way, his +wizened, marble-like features reminded one of nothing in particular, so +primly proportioned were they. Only the numerous pockmarks and dimples +with which they were pitted placed him among the number of those over +whose faces, to quote the popular saying, “The Devil has walked by night +to grind peas.” In short, it would seem that no human agency could have +approached such a man and gained his goodwill. Yet Chichikov made the +effort. As a first step, he took to consulting the other’s convenience +in all manner of insignificant trifles--to cleaning his pens carefully, +and, when they had been prepared exactly to the Chief Clerk’s liking, +laying them ready at his elbow; to dusting and sweeping from his table +all superfluous sand and tobacco ash; to procuring a new mat for his +inkstand; to looking for his hat--the meanest-looking hat that ever +the world beheld--and having it ready for him at the exact moment when +business came to an end; to brushing his back if it happened to become +smeared with whitewash from a wall. Yet all this passed as unnoticed +as though it had never been done. Finally, Chichikov sniffed into his +superior’s family and domestic life, and learnt that he possessed a +grown-up daughter on whose face also there had taken place a nocturnal, +diabolical grinding of peas. HERE was a quarter whence a fresh attack +might be delivered! After ascertaining what church the daughter attended +on Sundays, our hero took to contriving to meet her in a neat suit and a +well-starched dickey: and soon the scheme began to work. The surly Chief +Clerk wavered for a while; then ended by inviting Chichikov to tea. Nor +could any man in the office have told you how it came about that before +long Chichikov had removed to the Chief Clerk’s house, and become a +person necessary--indeed indispensable--to the household, seeing that he +bought the flour and the sugar, treated the daughter as his betrothed, +called the Chief Clerk “Papenka,” and occasionally kissed “Papenka’s” + hand. In fact, every one at the office supposed that, at the end of +February (i.e. before the beginning of Lent) there would take place +a wedding. Nay, the surly father even began to agitate with the +authorities on Chichikov’s behalf, and so enabled our hero, on a vacancy +occurring, to attain the stool of a Chief Clerk. Apparently this marked +the consummation of Chichikov’s relations with his host, for he hastened +stealthily to pack his trunk and, the next day, figured in a fresh +lodging. Also, he ceased to call the Chief Clerk “Papenka,” or to kiss +his hand; and the matter of the wedding came to as abrupt a termination +as though it had never been mooted. Yet also he never failed to press +his late host’s hand, whenever he met him, and to invite him to tea; +while, on the other hand, for all his immobility and dry indifference, +the Chief Clerk never failed to shake his head with a muttered, “Ah, my +fine fellow, you have grown too proud, you have grown too proud.” + +The foregoing constituted the most difficult step that our hero had to +negotiate. Thereafter things came with greater ease and swifter +success. Everywhere he attracted notice, for he developed within +himself everything necessary for this world--namely, charm of manner +and bearing, and great diligence in business matters. Armed with these +resources, he next obtained promotion to what is known as “a fat post,” + and used it to the best advantage; and even though, at that period, +strict inquiry had begun to be made into the whole subject of bribes, +such inquiry failed to alarm him--nay, he actually turned it to account +and thereby manifested the Russian resourcefulness which never fails to +attain its zenith where extortion is concerned. His method of working +was the following. As soon as a petitioner or a suitor put his hand into +his pocket, to extract thence the necessary letters of recommendation +for signature, Chichikov would smilingly exclaim as he detained his +interlocutor’s hand: “No, no! Surely you do not think that I--? But no, +no! It is our duty, it is our obligation, and we do not require rewards +for doing our work properly. So far as YOUR matter is concerned, you may +rest easy. Everything shall be carried through to-morrow. But may I +have your address? There is no need to trouble yourself, seeing that the +documents can easily be brought to you at your residence.” Upon which +the delighted suitor would return home in raptures, thinking: “Here, at +long last, is the sort of man so badly needed. A man of that kind is +a jewel beyond price.” Yet for a day, for two days--nay, even for +three--the suitor would wait in vain so far as any messengers with +documents were concerned. Then he would repair to the office--to find +that his business had not so much as been entered upon! Lastly, he would +confront the “jewel beyond price.” “Oh, pardon me, pardon me!” Chichikov +would exclaim in the politest of tones as he seized and grasped the +visitor’s hands. “The truth is that we have SUCH a quantity of business +on hand! But the matter shall be put through to-morrow, and in the +meanwhile I am most sorry about it.” And with this would go the most +fascinating of gestures. Yet neither on the morrow, nor on the day +following, nor on the third would documents arrive at the suitor’s +abode. Upon that he would take thought as to whether something more +ought not to have been done; and, sure enough, on his making inquiry, +he would be informed that “something will have to be given to the +copyists.” “Well, there can be no harm in that,” he would reply. “As a +matter of fact, I have ready a tchetvertak [39] or two.” “Oh, no, no,” + the answer would come. “Not a tchetvertak per copyist, but a rouble, +is the fee.” “What? A rouble per copyist?” “Certainly. What is there to +grumble at in that? Of the money the copyists will receive a tchetvertak +apiece, and the rest will go to the Government.” Upon that the +disillusioned suitor would fly out upon the new order of things brought +about by the inquiry into illicit fees, and curse both the tchinovniks +and their uppish, insolent behaviour. “Once upon a time,” would the +suitor lament, “one DID know what to do. Once one had tipped the +Director a bank-note, one’s affair was, so to speak, in the hat. But +now one has to pay a rouble per copyist after waiting a week because +otherwise it was impossible to guess how the wind might set! The devil +fly away with all ‘disinterested’ and ‘trustworthy’ tchinovniks!” And +certainly the aggrieved suitor had reason to grumble, seeing that, +now that bribe-takers had ceased to exist, and Directors had uniformly +become men of honour and integrity, secretaries and clerks ought not +with impunity to have continued their thievish ways. In time there +opened out to Chichikov a still wider field, for a Commission was +appointed to supervise the erection of a Government building, and, on +his being nominated to that body, he proved himself one of its most +active members. The Commission got to work without delay, but for a +space of six years had some trouble with the building in question. +Either the climate hindered operations or the materials used were of the +kind which prevents official edifices from ever rising higher than the +basement. But, meanwhile, OTHER quarters of the town saw arise, for each +member of the Commission, a handsome house of the NON-official style of +architecture. Clearly the foundation afforded by the soil of those parts +was better than that where the Government building was still engaged +in hanging fire! Likewise the members of the Commission began to look +exceedingly prosperous, and to blossom out into family life; and, for +the first time in his existence, even Chichikov also departed from the +iron laws of his self-imposed restraint and inexorable self-denial, and +so far mitigated his heretofore asceticism as to show himself a man not +averse to those amenities which, during his youth, he had been capable +of renouncing. That is to say, certain superfluities began to make their +appearance in his establishment. He engaged a good cook, took to wearing +linen shirts, bought for himself cloth of a pattern worn by no one else +in the province, figured in checks shot with the brightest of reds and +browns, fitted himself out with two splendid horses (which he drove with +a single pair of reins, added to a ring attachment for the trace horse), +developed a habit of washing with a sponge dipped in eau-de-Cologne, and +invested in soaps of the most expensive quality, in order to communicate +to his skin a more elegant polish. + +But suddenly there appeared upon the scene a new Director--a military +man, and a martinet as regarded his hostility to bribe-takers and +anything which might be called irregular. On the very day after his +arrival he struck fear into every breast by calling for accounts, +discovering hosts of deficits and missing sums, and directing his +attention to the aforesaid fine houses of civilian architecture. Upon +that there ensued a complete reshuffling. Tchinovniks were retired +wholesale, and the houses were sequestrated to the Government, or else +converted into various pious institutions and schools for soldiers’ +children. Thus the whole fabric, and especially Chichikov, came crashing +to the ground. Particularly did our hero’s agreeable face displease the +new Director. Why that was so it is impossible to say, but frequently, +in cases of the kind, no reason exists. However, the Director conceived +a mortal dislike to him, and also extended that enmity to the whole of +Chichikov’s colleagues. But inasmuch as the said Director was a military +man, he was not fully acquainted with the myriad subtleties of the +civilian mind; wherefore it was not long before, by dint of maintaining +a discreet exterior, added to a faculty for humouring all and sundry, +a fresh gang of tchinovniks succeeded in restoring him to mildness, and +the General found himself in the hands of greater thieves than before, +but thieves whom he did not even suspect, seeing that he believed +himself to have selected men fit and proper, and even ventured to +boast of possessing a keen eye for talent. In a trice the tchinovniks +concerned appraised his spirit and character; with the result that the +entire sphere over which he ruled became an agency for the detection of +irregularities. Everywhere, and in every case, were those irregularities +pursued as a fisherman pursues a fat sturgeon with a gaff; and to such +an extent did the sport prove successful that almost in no time each +participator in the hunt was seen to be in possession of several +thousand roubles of capital. Upon that a large number of the former band +of tchinovniks also became converted to paths of rectitude, and were +allowed to re-enter the Service; but not by hook or by crook could +Chichikov worm his way back, even though, incited thereto by sundry +items of paper currency, the General’s first secretary and principal +bear leader did all he could on our hero’s behalf. It seemed that the +General was the kind of man who, though easily led by the nose (provided +it was done without his knowledge) no sooner got an idea into his head +than it stuck there like a nail, and could not possibly be extracted; +and all that the wily secretary succeeded in procuring was the tearing +up of a certain dirty fragment of paper--even that being effected only +by an appeal to the General’s compassion, on the score of the unhappy +fate which, otherwise, would befall Chichikov’s wife and children (who, +luckily, had no existence in fact). + +“Well,” said Chichikov to himself, “I have done my best, and now +everything has failed. Lamenting my misfortune won’t help me, but only +action.” And with that he decided to begin his career anew, and once +more to arm himself with the weapons of patience and self-denial. The +better to effect this, he had, of course to remove to another town. Yet +somehow, for a while, things miscarried. More than once he found himself +forced to exchange one post for another, and at the briefest of notice; +and all of them were posts of the meanest, the most wretched, order. +Yet, being a man of the utmost nicety of feeling, the fact that he found +himself rubbing shoulders with anything but nice companions did not +prevent him from preserving intact his innate love of what was decent +and seemly, or from cherishing the instinct which led him to hanker +after office fittings of lacquered wood, with neatness and orderliness +everywhere. Nor did he at any time permit a foul word to creep into +his speech, and would feel hurt even if in the speech of others there +occurred a scornful reference to anything which pertained to rank and +dignity. Also, the reader will be pleased to know that our hero changed +his linen every other day, and in summer, when the weather was very +hot, EVERY day, seeing that the very faintest suspicion of an unpleasant +odour offended his fastidiousness. For the same reason it was his +custom, before being valeted by Petrushka, always to plug his nostrils +with a couple of cloves. In short, there were many occasions when his +nerves suffered rackings as cruel as a young girl’s, and so helped to +increase his disgust at having once more to associate with men who set +no store by the decencies of life. Yet, though he braced himself to the +task, this period of adversity told upon his health, and he even grew a +trifle shabby. More than once, on happening to catch sight of himself +in the mirror, he could not forbear exclaiming: “Holy Mother of God, +but what a nasty-looking brute I have become!” and for a long while +afterwards could not with anything like sang-froid contemplate his +reflection. Yet throughout he bore up stoutly and patiently--and ended +by being transferred to the Customs Department. It may be said that the +department had long constituted the secret goal of his ambition, for +he had noted the foreign elegancies with which its officials always +contrived to provide themselves, and had also observed that invariably +they were able to send presents of china and cambric to their sisters +and aunts--well, to their lady friends generally. Yes, more than once +he had said to himself with a sigh: “THAT is the department to which I +ought to belong, for, given a town near the frontier, and a sensible set +of colleagues, I might be able to fit myself out with excellent linen +shirts.” Also, it may be said that most frequently of all had his +thoughts turned towards a certain quality of French soap which imparted +a peculiar whiteness to the skin and a peerless freshness to the cheeks. +Its name is known to God alone, but at least it was to be procured only +in the immediate neighbourhood of the frontier. So, as I say, Chichikov +had long felt a leaning towards the Customs, but for a time had been +restrained from applying for the same by the various current advantages +of the Building Commission; since rightly he had adjudged the latter to +constitute a bird in the hand, and the former to constitute only a bird +in the bush. But now he decided that, come what might, into the Customs +he must make his way. And that way he made, and then applied himself +to his new duties with a zeal born of the fact that he realised that +fortune had specially marked him out for a Customs officer. Indeed, +such activity, perspicuity, and ubiquity as his had never been seen or +thought of. Within four weeks at the most he had so thoroughly got his +hand in that he was conversant with Customs procedure in every detail. +Not only could he weigh and measure, but also he could divine from +an invoice how many arshins of cloth or other material a given piece +contained, and then, taking a roll of the latter in his hand, could +specify at once the number of pounds at which it would tip the scale. As +for searchings, well, even his colleagues had to admit that he possessed +the nose of a veritable bloodhound, and that it was impossible not +to marvel at the patience wherewith he would try every button of the +suspected person, yet preserve, throughout, a deadly politeness and an +icy sang-froid which surpass belief. And while the searched were raging, +and foaming at the mouth, and feeling that they would give worlds to +alter his smiling exterior with a good, resounding slap, he would +move not a muscle of his face, nor abate by a jot the urbanity of his +demeanour, as he murmured, “Do you mind so far incommoding yourself as +to stand up?” or “Pray step into the next room, madam, where the wife +of one of our staff will attend you,” or “Pray allow me to slip this +penknife of mine into the lining of your coat” (after which he would +extract thence shawls and towels with as much nonchalance as he +would have done from his own travelling-trunk). Even his superiors +acknowledged him to be a devil at the job, rather than a human being, so +perfect was his instinct for looking into cart-wheels, carriage-poles, +horses’ ears, and places whither an author ought not to penetrate even +in thought--places whither only a Customs official is permitted to go. +The result was that the wretched traveller who had just crossed the +frontier would, within a few minutes, become wholly at sea, and, wiping +away the perspiration, and breaking out into body flushes, would be +reduced to crossing himself and muttering, “Well, well, well!” In fact, +such a traveller would feel in the position of a schoolboy who, having +been summoned to the presence of the headmaster for the ostensible +purpose of being given an order, has found that he receives, instead, a +sound flogging. In short, for some time Chichikov made it impossible +for smugglers to earn a living. In particular, he reduced Polish +Jewry almost to despair, so invincible, so almost unnatural, was the +rectitude, the incorruptibility which led him to refrain from converting +himself into a small capitalist with the aid of confiscated goods and +articles which, “to save excessive clerical labour,” had failed to be +handed over to the Government. Also, without saying it goes that +such phenomenally zealous and disinterested service attracted general +astonishment, and, eventually, the notice of the authorities; whereupon +he received promotion, and followed that up by mooting a scheme for +the infallible detection of contrabandists, provided that he could be +furnished with the necessary authority for carrying out the same. At +once such authority was accorded him, as also unlimited power to conduct +every species of search and investigation. And that was all he +wanted. It happened that previously there had been formed a well-found +association for smuggling on regular, carefully prepared lines, and +that this daring scheme seemed to promise profit to the extent of +some millions of money: yet, though he had long had knowledge of it, +Chichikov had said to the association’s emissaries, when sent to buy him +over, “The time is not yet.” But now that he had got all the reins into +his hands, he sent word of the fact to the gang, and with it the remark, +“The time is NOW.” Nor was he wrong in his calculations, for, within +the space of a year, he had acquired what he could not have made during +twenty years of non-fraudulent service. With similar sagacity he had, +during his early days in the department, declined altogether to enter +into relations with the association, for the reason that he had then +been a mere cipher, and would have come in for nothing large in the way +of takings; but now--well, now it was another matter altogether, and +he could dictate what terms he liked. Moreover, that the affair might +progress the more smoothly, he suborned a fellow tchinovnik of the type +which, in spite of grey hairs, stands powerless against temptation; +and, the contract concluded, the association duly proceeded to business. +Certainly business began brilliantly. But probably most of my readers +are familiar with the oft-repeated story of the passage of Spanish sheep +across the frontier in double fleeces which carried between their outer +layers and their inner enough lace of Brabant to sell to the tune of +millions of roubles; wherefore I will not recount the story again beyond +saying that those journeys took place just when Chichikov had become +head of the Customs, and that, had he not a hand in the enterprise, not +all the Jews in the world could have brought it to success. By the time +that three or four of these ovine invasions had taken place, Chichikov +and his accomplice had come to be the possessors of four hundred +thousand roubles apiece; while some even aver that the former’s gains +totalled half a million, owing to the greater industry which he had +displayed in the matter. Nor can any one but God say to what a figure +the fortunes of the pair might not eventually have attained, had not an +awkward contretemps cut right across their arrangements. That is to +say, for some reason or another the devil so far deprived these +tchinovnik-conspirators of sense as to make them come to words with +one another, and then to engage in a quarrel. Beginning with a heated +argument, this quarrel reached the point of Chichikov--who was, +possibly, a trifle tipsy--calling his colleague a priest’s son; and +though that description of the person so addressed was perfectly +accurate, he chose to take offence, and to answer Chichikov with the +words (loudly and incisively uttered), “It is YOU who have a priest for +your father,” and to add to that (the more to incense his companion), +“Yes, mark you! THAT is how it is.” Yet, though he had thus turned the +tables upon Chichikov with a tu quoque, and then capped that exploit +with the words last quoted, the offended tchinovnik could not remain +satisfied, but went on to send in an anonymous document to the +authorities. On the other hand, some aver that it was over a woman that +the pair fell out--over a woman who, to quote the phrase then current +among the staff of the Customs Department, was “as fresh and as strong +as the pulp of a turnip,” and that night-birds were hired to assault our +hero in a dark alley, and that the scheme miscarried, and that in any +case both Chichikov and his friend had been deceived, seeing that the +person to whom the lady had really accorded her favours was a certain +staff-captain named Shamsharev. However, only God knows the truth of the +matter. Let the inquisitive reader ferret it out for himself. The fact +remains that a complete exposure of the dealings with the contrabandists +followed, and that the two tchinovniks were put to the question, +deprived of their property, and made to formulate in writing all that +they had done. Against this thunderbolt of fortune the State Councillor +could make no headway, and in some retired spot or another sank into +oblivion; but Chichikov put a brave face upon the matter, for, in +spite of the authorities’ best efforts to smell out his gains, he had +contrived to conceal a portion of them, and also resorted to every +subtle trick of intellect which could possibly be employed by an +experienced man of the world who has a wide knowledge of his fellows. +Nothing which could be effected by pleasantness of demeanour, by moving +oratory, by clouds of flattery, and by the occasional insertion of +a coin into a palm did he leave undone; with the result that he was +retired with less ignominy than was his companion, and escaped actual +trial on a criminal charge. Yet he issued stripped of all his capital, +stripped of his imported effects, stripped of everything. That is to +say, all that remained to him consisted of ten thousand roubles which he +had stored against a rainy day, two dozen linen shirts, a small britchka +of the type used by bachelors, and two serving-men named Selifan and +Petrushka. Yes, and an impulse of kindness moved the tchinovniks of the +Customs also to set aside for him a few cakes of the soap which he had +found so excellent for the freshness of the cheeks. Thus once more our +hero found himself stranded. And what an accumulation of misfortunes had +descended upon his head!--though, true, he termed them “suffering in the +Service in the cause of Truth.” Certainly one would have thought that, +after these buffetings and trials and changes of fortune--after this +taste of the sorrows of life--he and his precious ten thousand roubles +would have withdrawn to some peaceful corner in a provincial town, +where, clad in a stuff dressing-gown, he could have sat and listened to +the peasants quarrelling on festival days, or (for the sake of a breath +of fresh air) have gone in person to the poulterer’s to finger chickens +for soup, and so have spent a quiet, but not wholly useless, existence; +but nothing of the kind took place, and therein we must do justice to +the strength of his character. In other words, although he had undergone +what, to the majority of men, would have meant ruin and discouragement +and a shattering of ideals, he still preserved his energy. True, +downcast and angry, and full of resentment against the world in general, +he felt furious with the injustice of fate, and dissatisfied with +the dealings of men; yet he could not forbear courting additional +experiences. In short, the patience which he displayed was such as to +make the wooden persistency of the German--a persistency merely due to +the slow, lethargic circulation of the Teuton’s blood--seem nothing at +all, seeing that by nature Chichikov’s blood flowed strongly, and +that he had to employ much force of will to curb within himself those +elements which longed to burst forth and revel in freedom. He thought +things over, and, as he did so, a certain spice of reason appeared in +his reflections. + +“How have I come to be what I am?” he said to himself. “Why has +misfortune overtaken me in this way? Never have I wronged a poor person, +or robbed a widow, or turned any one out of doors: I have always been +careful only to take advantage of those who possess more than their +share. Moreover, I have never gleaned anywhere but where every one else +was gleaning; and, had I not done so, others would have gleaned in my +place. Why, then, should those others be prospering, and I be sunk as +low as a worm? What am I? What am I good for? How can I, in future, hope +to look any honest father of a family in the face? How shall I escape +being tortured with the thought that I am cumbering the ground? What, +in the years to come, will my children say, save that ‘our father was a +brute, for he left us nothing to live upon?’” + +Here I may remark that we have seen how much thought Chichikov devoted +to his future descendants. Indeed, had not there been constantly +recurring to his mind the insistent question, “What will my children +say?” he might not have plunged into the affair so deeply. Nevertheless, +like a wary cat which glances hither and thither to see whether its +mistress be not coming before it can make off with whatsoever first +falls to its paw (butter, fat, lard, a duck, or anything else), so our +future founder of a family continued, though weeping and bewailing +his lot, to let not a single detail escape his eye. That is to say, +he retained his wits ever in a state of activity, and kept his brain +constantly working. All that he required was a plan. Once more he pulled +himself together, once more he embarked upon a life of toil, once more +he stinted himself in everything, once more he left clean and decent +surroundings for a dirty, mean existence. In other words, until +something better should turn up, he embraced the calling of an ordinary +attorney--a calling which, not then possessed of a civic status, was +jostled on very side, enjoyed little respect at the hands of the minor +legal fry (or, indeed, at its own), and perforce met with universal +slights and rudeness. But sheer necessity compelled Chichikov to face +these things. Among commissions entrusted to him was that of placing in +the hands of the Public Trustee several hundred peasants who belonged +to a ruined estate. The estate had reached its parlous condition through +cattle disease, through rascally bailiffs, through failures of the +harvest, through such epidemic diseases that had killed off the best +workmen, and, last, but not least, through the senseless conduct of the +owner himself, who had furnished a house in Moscow in the latest style, +and then squandered his every kopeck, so that nothing was left for +his further maintenance, and it became necessary to mortgage the +remains--including the peasants--of the estate. In those days mortgage +to the Treasury was an innovation looked upon with reserve, and, as +attorney in the matter, Chichikov had first of all to “entertain” every +official concerned (we know that, unless that be previously done, unless +a whole bottle of madeira first be emptied down each clerical throat, +not the smallest legal affair can be carried through), and to explain, +for the barring of future attachments, that half of the peasants were +dead. + +“And are they entered on the revision lists?” asked the secretary. +“Yes,” replied Chichikov. “Then what are you boggling at?” continued the +Secretary. “Should one soul die, another will be born, and in time grow +up to take the first one’s place.” Upon that there dawned on our hero +one of the most inspired ideas which ever entered the human brain. “What +a simpleton I am!” he thought to himself. “Here am I looking about for +my mittens when all the time I have got them tucked into my belt. Why, +were I myself to buy up a few souls which are dead--to buy them before +a new revision list shall have been made, the Council of Public Trust +might pay me two hundred roubles apiece for them, and I might find +myself with, say, a capital of two hundred thousand roubles! The present +moment is particularly propitious, since in various parts of the country +there has been an epidemic, and, glory be to God, a large number of +souls have died of it. Nowadays landowners have taken to card-playing +and junketting and wasting their money, or to joining the Civil Service +in St. Petersburg; consequently their estates are going to rack and +ruin, and being managed in any sort of fashion, and succeeding in paying +their dues with greater difficulty each year. That being so, not a man +of the lot but would gladly surrender to me his dead souls rather than +continue paying the poll-tax; and in this fashion I might make--well, +not a few kopecks. Of course there are difficulties, and, to avoid +creating a scandal, I should need to employ plenty of finesse; but man +was given his brain to USE, not to neglect. One good point about the +scheme is that it will seem so improbable that in case of an accident, +no one in the world will believe in it. True, it is illegal to buy or +mortgage peasants without land, but I can easily pretend to be buying +them only for transferment elsewhere. Land is to be acquired in the +provinces of Taurida and Kherson almost for nothing, provided that one +undertakes subsequently to colonise it; so to Kherson I will ‘transfer’ +them, and long may they live there! And the removal of my dead souls +shall be carried out in the strictest legal form; and if the authorities +should want confirmation by testimony, I shall produce a letter signed +by my own superintendent of the Khersonian rural police--that is to +say, by myself. Lastly, the supposed village in Kherson shall be called +Chichikovoe--better still Pavlovskoe, according to my Christian name.” + +In this fashion there germinated in our hero’s brain that strange scheme +for which the reader may or may not be grateful, but for which the +author certainly is so, seeing that, had it never occurred to Chichikov, +this story would never have seen the light. + +After crossing himself, according to the Russian custom, Chichikov set +about carrying out his enterprise. On pretence of selecting a place +wherein to settle, he started forth to inspect various corners of the +Russian Empire, but more especially those which had suffered from +such unfortunate accidents as failures of the harvest, a high rate of +mortality, or whatsoever else might enable him to purchase souls at the +lowest possible rate. But he did not tackle his landowners haphazard: he +rather selected such of them as seemed more particularly suited to his +taste, or with whom he might with the least possible trouble conclude +identical agreements; though, in the first instance, he always tried, by +getting on terms of acquaintanceship--better still, of friendship--with +them, to acquire the souls for nothing, and so to avoid purchase at all. +In passing, my readers must not blame me if the characters whom they +have encountered in these pages have not been altogether to their +liking. The fault is Chichikov’s rather than mine, for he is the master, +and where he leads we must follow. Also, should my readers gird at me +for a certain dimness and want of clarity in my principal characters +and actors, that will be tantamount to saying that never do the broad +tendency and the general scope of a work become immediately apparent. +Similarly does the entry to every town--the entry even to the Capital +itself--convey to the traveller such an impression of vagueness that +at first everything looks grey and monotonous, and the lines of smoky +factories and workshops seem never to be coming to an end; but in time +there will begin also to stand out the outlines of six-storied mansions, +and of shops and balconies, and wide perspectives of streets, and a +medley of steeples, columns, statues, and turrets--the whole framed in +rattle and roar and the infinite wonders which the hand and the brain of +men have conceived. Of the manner in which Chichikov’s first purchases +were made the reader is aware. Subsequently he will see also how the +affair progressed, and with what success or failure our hero met, +and how Chichikov was called upon to decide and to overcome even more +difficult problems than the foregoing, and by what colossal forces the +levers of his far-flung tale are moved, and how eventually the horizon +will become extended until everything assumes a grandiose and a lyrical +tendency. Yes, many a verst of road remains to be travelled by a party +made up of an elderly gentleman, a britchka of the kind affected by +bachelors, a valet named Petrushka, a coachman named Selifan, and +three horses which, from the Assessor to the skewbald, are known to us +individually by name. Again, although I have given a full description of +our hero’s exterior (such as it is), I may yet be asked for an inclusive +definition also of his moral personality. That he is no hero compounded +of virtues and perfections must be already clear. Then WHAT is he? A +villain? Why should we call him a villain? Why should we be so hard upon +a fellow man? In these days our villains have ceased to exist. Rather +it would be fairer to call him an ACQUIRER. The love of acquisition, the +love of gain, is a fault common to many, and gives rise to many and many +a transaction of the kind generally known as “not strictly honourable.” + True, such a character contains an element of ugliness, and the same +reader who, on his journey through life, would sit at the board of a +character of this kind, and spend a most agreeable time with him, would +be the first to look at him askance if he should appear in the guise of +the hero of a novel or a play. But wise is the reader who, on meeting +such a character, scans him carefully, and, instead of shrinking from +him with distaste, probes him to the springs of his being. The human +personality contains nothing which may not, in the twinkling of an eye, +become altogether changed--nothing in which, before you can look round, +there may not spring to birth some cankerous worm which is destined to +suck thence the essential juice. Yes, it is a common thing to see not +only an overmastering passion, but also a passion of the most petty +order, arise in a man who was born to better things, and lead him both +to forget his greatest and most sacred obligations, and to see only in +the veriest trifles the Great and the Holy. For human passions are as +numberless as is the sand of the seashore, and go on to become his most +insistent of masters. Happy, therefore, the man who may choose from +among the gamut of human passions one which is noble! Hour by hour will +that instinct grow and multiply in its measureless beneficence; hour by +hour will it sink deeper and deeper into the infinite paradise of his +soul. But there are passions of which a man cannot rid himself, seeing +that they are born with him at his birth, and he has no power to abjure +them. Higher powers govern those passions, and in them is something +which will call to him, and refuse to be silenced, to the end of his +life. Yes, whether in a guise of darkness, or whether in a guise which +will become converted into a light to lighten the world, they will and +must attain their consummation on life’s field: and in either case they +have been evoked for man’s good. In the same way may the passion +which drew our Chichikov onwards have been one that was independent of +himself; in the same way may there have lurked even in his cold essence +something which will one day cause men to humble themselves in the dust +before the infinite wisdom of God. + +Yet that folk should be dissatisfied with my hero matters nothing. What +matters is the fact that, under different circumstances, their approval +could have been taken as a foregone conclusion. That is to say, had not +the author pried over-deeply into Chichikov’s soul, nor stirred up in +its depths what shunned and lay hidden from the light, nor disclosed +those of his hero’s thoughts which that hero would have not have +disclosed even to his most intimate friend; had the author, indeed, +exhibited Chichikov just as he exhibited himself to the townsmen of +N. and Manilov and the rest; well, then we may rest assured that every +reader would have been delighted with him, and have voted him a most +interesting person. For it is not nearly so necessary that Chichikov +should figure before the reader as though his form and person were +actually present to the eye as that, on concluding a perusal of this +work, the reader should be able to return, unharrowed in soul, to that +cult of the card-table which is the solace and delight of all good +Russians. Yes, readers of this book, none of you really care to see +humanity revealed in its nakedness. “Why should we do so?” you say. +“What would be the use of it? Do we not know for ourselves that human +life contains much that is gross and contemptible? Do we not with our +own eyes have to look upon much that is anything but comforting? +Far better would it be if you would put before us what is comely and +attractive, so that we might forget ourselves a little.” In the same +fashion does a landowner say to his bailiff: “Why do you come and tell +me that the affairs of my estate are in a bad way? I know that without +YOUR help. Have you nothing else to tell me? Kindly allow me to forget +the fact, or else to remain in ignorance of it, and I shall be much +obliged to you.” Whereafter the said landowner probably proceeds to +spend on his diversion the money which ought to have gone towards the +rehabilitation of his affairs. + +Possibly the author may also incur censure at the hands of those +so-called “patriots” who sit quietly in corners, and become capitalists +through making fortunes at the expense of others. Yes, let but something +which they conceive to be derogatory to their country occur--for +instance, let there be published some book which voices the bitter +truth--and out they will come from their hiding-places like a spider +which perceives a fly to be caught in its web. “Is it well to proclaim +this to the world, and to set folk talking about it?” they will cry. +“What you have described touches US, is OUR affair. Is conduct of that +kind right? What will foreigners say? Does any one care calmly to sit +by and hear himself traduced? Why should you lead foreigners to suppose +that all is not well with us, and that we are not patriotic?” Well, to +these sage remarks no answer can really be returned, especially to such +of the above as refer to foreign opinion. But see here. There once lived +in a remote corner of Russia two natives of the region indicated. One of +those natives was a good man named Kifa Mokievitch, and a man of kindly +disposition; a man who went through life in a dressing-gown, and paid no +heed to his household, for the reason that his whole being was centred +upon the province of speculation, and that, in particular, he was +preoccupied with a philosophical problem usually stated by him thus: +“A beast,” he would say, “is born naked. Now, why should that be? Why +should not a beast be born as a bird is born--that is to say, through +the process of being hatched from an egg? Nature is beyond the +understanding, however much one may probe her.” This was the substance +of Kifa Mokievitch’s reflections. But herein is not the chief point. +The other of the pair was a fellow named Mofi Kifovitch, and son to the +first named. He was what we Russians call a “hero,” and while his +father was pondering the parturition of beasts, his, the son’s, lusty, +twenty-year-old temperament was violently struggling for development. +Yet that son could tackle nothing without some accident occurring. At +one moment would he crack some one’s fingers in half, and at another +would he raise a bump on somebody’s nose; so that both at home +and abroad every one and everything--from the serving-maid to the +yard-dog--fled on his approach, and even the bed in his bedroom became +shattered to splinters. Such was Mofi Kifovitch; and with it all he had +a kindly soul. But herein is not the chief point. “Good sir, good Kifa +Mokievitch,” servants and neighbours would come and say to the father, +“what are you going to do about your Moki Kifovitch? We get no rest from +him, he is so above himself.” “That is only his play, that is only his +play,” the father would reply. “What else can you expect? It is too late +now to start a quarrel with him, and, moreover, every one would accuse +me of harshness. True, he is a little conceited; but, were I to reprove +him in public, the whole thing would become common talk, and folk would +begin giving him a dog’s name. And if they did that, would not their +opinion touch me also, seeing that I am his father? Also, I am busy with +philosophy, and have no time for such things. Lastly, Moki Kifovitch +is my son, and very dear to my heart.” And, beating his breast, Kifa +Mokievitch again asserted that, even though his son should elect +to continue his pranks, it would not be for HIM, for the father, +to proclaim the fact, or to fall out with his offspring. And, this +expression of paternal feeling uttered, Kifa Mokievitch left Moki +Kifovitch to his heroic exploits, and himself returned to his beloved +subject of speculation, which now included also the problem, “Suppose +elephants were to take to being hatched from eggs, would not the +shell of such eggs be of a thickness proof against cannonballs, and +necessitate the invention of some new type of firearm?” Thus at the end +of this little story we have these two denizens of a peaceful corner of +Russia looking thence, as from a window, in less terror of doing what +was scandalous than of having it SAID of them that they were acting +scandalously. Yes, the feeling animating our so-called “patriots” is not +true patriotism at all. Something else lies beneath it. Who, if not an +author, is to speak aloud the truth? Men like you, my pseudo-patriots, +stand in dread of the eye which is able to discern, yet shrink from +using your own, and prefer, rather, to glance at everything unheedingly. +Yes, after laughing heartily over Chichikov’s misadventures, and perhaps +even commending the author for his dexterity of observation and pretty +turn of wit, you will look at yourselves with redoubled pride and a +self-satisfied smile, and add: “Well, we agree that in certain parts of +the provinces there exists strange and ridiculous individuals, as well +as unconscionable rascals.” + +Yet which of you, when quiet, and alone, and engaged in solitary +self-communion, would not do well to probe YOUR OWN souls, and to put +to YOURSELVES the solemn question, “Is there not in ME an element of +Chichikov?” For how should there not be? Which of you is not liable at +any moment to be passed in the street by an acquaintance who, nudging +his neighbour, may say of you, with a barely suppressed sneer: “Look! +there goes Chichikov! That is Chichikov who has just gone by!” + +But here are we talking at the top of our voices whilst all the time our +hero lies slumbering in his britchka! Indeed, his name has been repeated +so often during the recital of his life’s history that he must almost +have heard us! And at any time he is an irritable, irascible fellow when +spoken of with disrespect. True, to the reader Chichikov’s displeasure +cannot matter a jot; but for the author it would mean ruin to quarrel +with his hero, seeing that, arm in arm, Chichikov and he have yet far to +go. + +“Tut, tut, tut!” came in a shout from Chichikov. “Hi, Selifan!” + +“What is it?” came the reply, uttered with a drawl. + +“What is it? Why, how dare you drive like that? Come! Bestir yourself a +little!” + +And indeed, Selifan had long been sitting with half-closed eyes, and +hands which bestowed no encouragement upon his somnolent steeds save an +occasional flicking of the reins against their flanks; whilst Petrushka +had lost his cap, and was leaning backwards until his head had come to +rest against Chichikov’s knees--a position which necessitated his being +awakened with a cuff. Selifan also roused himself, and apportioned to +the skewbald a few cuts across the back of a kind which at least had the +effect of inciting that animal to trot; and when, presently, the other +two horses followed their companion’s example, the light britchka moved +forwards like a piece of thistledown. Selifan flourished his whip and +shouted, “Hi, hi!” as the inequalities of the road jerked him vertically +on his seat; and meanwhile, reclining against the leather cushions +of the vehicle’s interior, Chichikov smiled with gratification at the +sensation of driving fast. For what Russian does not love to drive fast? +Which of us does not at times yearn to give his horses their head, and +to let them go, and to cry, “To the devil with the world!”? At such +moments a great force seems to uplift one as on wings; and one flies, +and everything else flies, but contrariwise--both the verst stones, and +traders riding on the shafts of their waggons, and the forest with +dark lines of spruce and fir amid which may be heard the axe of the +woodcutter and the croaking of the raven. Yes, out of a dim, remote +distance the road comes towards one, and while nothing save the sky and +the light clouds through which the moon is cleaving her way seem halted, +the brief glimpses wherein one can discern nothing clearly have in them +a pervading touch of mystery. Ah, troika, troika, swift as a bird, who +was it first invented you? Only among a hardy race of folk can you have +come to birth--only in a land which, though poor and rough, lies spread +over half the world, and spans versts the counting whereof would leave +one with aching eyes. Nor are you a modishly-fashioned vehicle of the +road--a thing of clamps and iron. Rather, you are a vehicle but shapen +and fitted with the axe or chisel of some handy peasant of Yaroslav. +Nor are you driven by a coachman clothed in German livery, but by a man +bearded and mittened. See him as he mounts, and flourishes his whip, and +breaks into a long-drawn song! Away like the wind go the horses, and +the wheels, with their spokes, become transparent circles, and the +road seems to quiver beneath them, and a pedestrian, with a cry of +astonishment, halts to watch the vehicle as it flies, flies, flies on +its way until it becomes lost on the ultimate horizon--a speck amid a +cloud of dust! + +And you, Russia of mine--are not you also speeding like a troika which +nought can overtake? Is not the road smoking beneath your wheels, and +the bridges thundering as you cross them, and everything being left in +the rear, and the spectators, struck with the portent, halting to wonder +whether you be not a thunderbolt launched from heaven? What does that +awe-inspiring progress of yours foretell? What is the unknown force +which lies within your mysterious steeds? Surely the winds themselves +must abide in their manes, and every vein in their bodies be an +ear stretched to catch the celestial message which bids them, with +iron-girded breasts, and hooves which barely touch the earth as +they gallop, fly forward on a mission of God? Whither, then, are +you speeding, O Russia of mine? Whither? Answer me! But no answer +comes--only the weird sound of your collar-bells. Rent into a thousand +shreds, the air roars past you, for you are overtaking the whole world, +and shall one day force all nations, all empires to stand aside, to give +you way! + + 1841. + + + + +PART II + + + +CHAPTER I + +Why do I so persistently paint the poverty, the imperfections of Russian +life, and delve into the remotest depths, the most retired holes and +corners, of our Empire for my subjects? The answer is that there is +nothing else to be done when an author’s idiosyncrasy happens to incline +him that way. So again we find ourselves in a retired spot. But what a +spot! + +Imagine, if you can, a mountain range like a gigantic fortress, with +embrasures and bastions which appear to soar a thousand versts towards +the heights of heaven, and, towering grandly over a boundless expanse +of plain, are broken up into precipitous, overhanging limestone cliffs. +Here and there those cliffs are seamed with water-courses and gullies, +while at other points they are rounded off into spurs of green--spurs +now coated with fleece-like tufts of young undergrowth, now studded with +the stumps of felled trees, now covered with timber which has, by some +miracle, escaped the woodman’s axe. Also, a river winds awhile between +its banks, then leaves the meadow land, divides into runlets (all +flashing in the sun like fire), plunges, re-united, into the midst of a +thicket of elder, birch, and pine, and, lastly, speeds triumphantly past +bridges and mills and weirs which seem to be lying in wait for it at +every turn. + +At one particular spot the steep flank of the mountain range is covered +with billowy verdure of denser growth than the rest; and here the aid of +skilful planting, added to the shelter afforded by a rugged ravine, has +enabled the flora of north and south so to be brought together that, +twined about with sinuous hop-tendrils, the oak, the spruce fir, the +wild pear, the maple, the cherry, the thorn, and the mountain ash either +assist or check one another’s growth, and everywhere cover the declivity +with their straggling profusion. Also, at the edge of the summit there +can be seen mingling with the green of the trees the red roofs of a +manorial homestead, while behind the upper stories of the mansion proper +and its carved balcony and a great semi-circular window there gleam the +tiles and gables of some peasants’ huts. Lastly, over this combination +of trees and roofs there rises--overtopping everything with its gilded, +sparkling steeple--an old village church. On each of its pinnacles a +cross of carved gilt is stayed with supports of similar gilding and +design; with the result that from a distance the gilded portions +have the effect of hanging without visible agency in the air. And +the whole--the three successive tiers of woodland, roofs, and crosses +whole--lies exquisitely mirrored in the river below, where hollow +willows, grotesquely shaped (some of them rooted on the river’s banks, +and some in the water itself, and all drooping their branches until +their leaves have formed a tangle with the water lilies which float on +the surface), seem to be gazing at the marvellous reflection at their +feet. + +Thus the view from below is beautiful indeed. But the view from above +is even better. No guest, no visitor, could stand on the balcony of the +mansion and remain indifferent. So boundless is the panorama revealed +that surprise would cause him to catch at his breath, and exclaim: “Lord +of Heaven, but what a prospect!” Beyond meadows studded with spinneys +and water-mills lie forests belted with green; while beyond, again, +there can be seen showing through the slightly misty air strips of +yellow heath, and, again, wide-rolling forests (as blue as the sea or a +cloud), and more heath, paler than the first, but still yellow. Finally, +on the far horizon a range of chalk-topped hills gleams white, even in +dull weather, as though it were lightened with perpetual sunshine; +and here and there on the dazzling whiteness of its lower slopes some +plaster-like, nebulous patches represent far-off villages which lie +too remote for the eye to discern their details. Indeed, only when the +sunlight touches a steeple to gold does one realise that each such +patch is a human settlement. Finally, all is wrapped in an immensity of +silence which even the far, faint echoes of persons singing in the void +of the plain cannot shatter. + +Even after gazing at the spectacle for a couple of hours or so, the +visitor would still find nothing to say, save: “Lord of Heaven, but +what a prospect!” Then who is the dweller in, the proprietor of, this +manor--a manor to which, as to an impregnable fortress, entrance cannot +be gained from the side where we have been standing, but only from the +other approach, where a few scattered oaks offer hospitable welcome to +the visitor, and then, spreading above him their spacious branches (as +in friendly embrace), accompany him to the facade of the mansion whose +top we have been regarding from the reverse aspect, but which now stands +frontwise on to us, and has, on one side of it, a row of peasants’ huts +with red tiles and carved gables, and, on the other, the village church, +with those glittering golden crosses and gilded open-work charms which +seem to hang suspended in the air? Yes, indeed!--to what fortunate +individual does this corner of the world belong? It belongs to Andrei +Ivanovitch Tientietnikov, landowner of the canton of Tremalakhan, and, +withal, a bachelor of about thirty. + +Should my lady readers ask of me what manner of man is Tientietnikov, +and what are his attributes and peculiarities, I should refer them +to his neighbours. Of these, a member of the almost extinct tribe +of intelligent staff officers on the retired list once summed up +Tientietnikov in the phrase, “He is an absolute blockhead;” while a +General who resided ten versts away was heard to remark that “he is a +young man who, though not exactly a fool, has at least too much crowded +into his head. I myself might have been of use to him, for not only do +I maintain certain connections with St. Petersburg, but also--” And the +General left his sentence unfinished. Thirdly, a captain-superintendent +of rural police happened to remark in the course of conversation: +“To-morrow I must go and see Tientietnikov about his arrears.” Lastly, +a peasant of Tientietnikov’s own village, when asked what his barin was +like, returned no answer at all. All of which would appear to show that +Tientietnikov was not exactly looked upon with favour. + +To speak dispassionately, however, he was not a bad sort of +fellow--merely a star-gazer; and since the world contains many watchers +of the skies, why should Tientietnikov not have been one of them? +However, let me describe in detail a specimen day of his existence--one +that will closely resemble the rest, and then the reader will be enabled +to judge of Tientietnikov’s character, and how far his life corresponded +to the beauties of nature with which he lived surrounded. + +On the morning of the specimen day in question he awoke very late, and, +raising himself to a sitting posture, rubbed his eyes. And since those +eyes were small, the process of rubbing them occupied a very long time, +and throughout its continuance there stood waiting by the door his +valet, Mikhailo, armed with a towel and basin. For one hour, for two +hours, did poor Mikhailo stand there: then he departed to the kitchen, +and returned to find his master still rubbing his eyes as he sat on the +bed. At length, however, Tientietnikov rose, washed himself, donned a +dressing-gown, and moved into the drawing-room for morning tea, coffee, +cocoa, and warm milk; of all of which he partook but sparingly, while +munching a piece of bread, and scattering tobacco ash with complete +insouciance. Two hours did he sit over this meal, then poured himself +out another cup of the rapidly cooling tea, and walked to the window. +This faced the courtyard, and outside it, as usual, there took place the +following daily altercation between a serf named Grigory (who purported +to act as butler) and the housekeeper, Perfilievna. + +Grigory. Ah, you nuisance, you good-for-nothing, you had better hold +your stupid tongue. + +Perfilievna. Yes; and don’t you wish that I would? + +Grigory. What? You so thick with that bailiff of yours, you housekeeping +jade! + +Perfilievna. Nay, he is as big a thief as you are. Do you think the +barin doesn’t know you? And there he is! He must have heard everything! + +Grigory. Where? + +Perfilievna. There--sitting by the window, and looking at us! + +Next, to complete the hubbub, a serf child which had been clouted by its +mother broke out into a bawl, while a borzoi puppy which had happened +to get splashed with boiling water by the cook fell to yelping +vociferously. In short, the place soon became a babel of shouts and +squeals, and, after watching and listening for a time, the barin found +it so impossible to concentrate his mind upon anything that he sent out +word that the noise would have to be abated. + +The next item was that, a couple of hours before luncheon time, he +withdrew to his study, to set about employing himself upon a weighty +work which was to consider Russia from every point of view: from the +political, from the philosophical, and from the religious, as well as to +resolve various problems which had arisen to confront the Empire, and to +define clearly the great future to which the country stood ordained. In +short, it was to be the species of compilation in which the man of the +day so much delights. Yet the colossal undertaking had progressed but +little beyond the sphere of projection, since, after a pen had been +gnawed awhile, and a few strokes had been committed to paper, the whole +would be laid aside in favour of the reading of some book; and that +reading would continue also during luncheon and be followed by the +lighting of a pipe, the playing of a solitary game of chess, and the +doing of more or less nothing for the rest of the day. + +The foregoing will give the reader a pretty clear idea of the manner in +which it was possible for this man of thirty-three to waste his time. +Clad constantly in slippers and a dressing-gown, Tientietnikov never +went out, never indulged in any form of dissipation, and never walked +upstairs. Nothing did he care for fresh air, and would bestow not a +passing glance upon all those beauties of the countryside which moved +visitors to such ecstatic admiration. From this the reader will see that +Andrei Ivanovitch Tientietnikov belonged to that band of sluggards whom +we always have with us, and who, whatever be their present appellation, +used to be known by the nicknames of “lollopers,” “bed pressers,” and +“marmots.” Whether the type is a type originating at birth, or a type +resulting from untoward circumstances in later life, it is impossible to +say. A better course than to attempt to answer that question would be to +recount the story of Tientietnikov’s boyhood and upbringing. + +Everything connected with the latter seemed to promise success, for at +twelve years of age the boy--keen-witted, but dreamy of temperament, and +inclined to delicacy--was sent to an educational establishment presided +over by an exceptional type of master. The idol of his pupils, and the +admiration of his assistants, Alexander Petrovitch was gifted with +an extraordinary measure of good sense. How thoroughly he knew the +peculiarities of the Russian of his day! How well he understood boys! +How capable he was of drawing them out! Not a practical joker in the +school but, after perpetrating a prank, would voluntarily approach his +preceptor and make to him free confession. True, the preceptor would +put a stern face upon the matter, yet the culprit would depart with head +held higher, not lower, than before, since in Alexander Petrovitch +there was something which heartened--something which seemed to say to a +delinquent: “Forward you! Rise to your feet again, even though you have +fallen!” Not lectures on good behaviour was it, therefore, that fell +from his lips, but rather the injunction, “I want to see intelligence, +and nothing else. The boy who devotes his attention to becoming clever +will never play the fool, for under such circumstances, folly disappears +of itself.” And so folly did, for the boy who failed to strive in the +desired direction incurred the contempt of all his comrades, and even +dunces and fools of senior standing did not dare to raise a finger when +saluted by their juniors with opprobrious epithets. Yet “This is too +much,” certain folk would say to Alexander. “The result will be that +your students will turn out prigs.” “But no,” he would reply. “Not at +all. You see, I make it my principle to keep the incapables for a single +term only, since that is enough for them; but to the clever ones I allot +a double course of instruction.” And, true enough, any lad of brains was +retained for this finishing course. Yet he did not repress all boyish +playfulness, since he declared it to be as necessary as a rash to a +doctor, inasmuch as it enabled him to diagnose what lay hidden within. + +Consequently, how the boys loved him! Never was there such an attachment +between master and pupils. And even later, during the foolish years, +when foolish things attract, the measure of affection which Alexander +Petrovitch retained was extraordinary. In fact, to the day of his death, +every former pupil would celebrate the birthday of his late master by +raising his glass in gratitude to the mentor dead and buried--then close +his eyelids upon the tears which would come trickling through them. +Even the slightest word of encouragement from Alexander Petrovitch could +throw a lad into a transport of tremulous joy, and arouse in him an +honourable emulation of his fellows. Boys of small capacity he did +not long retain in his establishment; whereas those who possessed +exceptional talent he put through an extra course of schooling. This +senior class--a class composed of specially-selected pupils--was a very +different affair from what usually obtains in other colleges. Only when +a boy had attained its ranks did Alexander demand of him what other +masters indiscreetly require of mere infants--namely the superior +frame of mind which, while never indulging in mockery, can itself bear +ridicule, and disregard the fool, and keep its temper, and repress +itself, and eschew revenge, and calmly, proudly retain its tranquillity +of soul. In short, whatever avails to form a boy into a man of assured +character, that did Alexander Petrovitch employ during the pupil’s +youth, as well as constantly put him to the test. How well he understood +the art of life! + +Of assistant tutors he kept but few, since most of the necessary +instruction he imparted in person, and, without pedantic terminology +and inflated diction and views, could so transmit to his listeners the +inmost spirit of a lesson that even the youngest present absorbed its +essential elements. Also, of studies he selected none but those which +may help a boy to become a good citizen; and therefore most of the +lectures which he delivered consisted of discourses on what may be +awaiting a youth, as well as of such demarcations of life’s field that +the pupil, though seated, as yet, only at the desk, could beforehand +bear his part in that field both in thought and spirit. Nor did the +master CONCEAL anything. That is to say, without mincing words, he +invariably set before his hearers the sorrows and the difficulties which +may confront a man, the trials and the temptations which may beset +him. And this he did in terms as though, in every possible calling and +capacity, he himself had experienced the same. Consequently, either the +vigorous development of self-respect or the constant stimulus of the +master’s eye (which seemed to say to the pupil, “Forward!”--that word +which has become so familiar to the contemporary Russian, that word +which has worked such wonders upon his sensitive temperament); one or +the other, I repeat, would from the first cause the pupil to tackle +difficulties, and only difficulties, and to hunger for prowess only +where the path was arduous, and obstacles were many, and it was +necessary to display the utmost strength of mind. Indeed, few completed +the course of which I have spoken without issuing therefrom reliable, +seasoned fighters who could keep their heads in the most embarrassing +of official positions, and at times when older and wiser men, distracted +with the annoyances of life, had either abandoned everything or, grown +slack and indifferent, had surrendered to the bribe-takers and the +rascals. In short, no ex-pupil of Alexander Petrovitch ever wavered from +the right road, but, familiar with life and with men, armed with the +weapons of prudence, exerted a powerful influence upon wrongdoers. + +For a long time past the ardent young Tientietnikov’s excitable heart +had also beat at the thought that one day he might attain the senior +class described. And, indeed, what better teacher could he have had +befall him than its preceptor? Yet just at the moment when he had been +transferred thereto, just at the moment when he had reached the coveted +position, did his instructor come suddenly by his death! This was +indeed a blow for the boy--indeed a terrible initial loss! In his eyes +everything connected with the school seemed to undergo a change--the +chief reason being the fact that to the place of the deceased headmaster +there succeeded a certain Thedor Ivanovitch, who at once began to +insist upon certain external rules, and to demand of the boys what ought +rightly to have been demanded only of adults. That is to say, since +the lads’ frank and open demeanour savoured to him only of lack +of discipline, he announced (as though in deliberate spite of his +predecessor) that he cared nothing for progress and intellect, but that +heed was to be paid only to good behaviour. Yet, curiously enough, good +behaviour was just what he never obtained, for every kind of secret +prank became the rule; and while, by day, there reigned restraint +and conspiracy, by night there began to take place chambering and +wantonness. + +Also, certain changes in the curriculum of studies came about, for there +were engaged new teachers who held new views and opinions, and confused +their hearers with a multitude of new terms and phrases, and displayed +in their exposition of things both logical sequence and a zest +for modern discovery and much warmth of individual bias. Yet their +instruction, alas! contained no LIFE--in the mouths of those teachers a +dead language savoured merely of carrion. Thus everything connected with +the school underwent a radical alteration, and respect for authority +and the authorities waned, and tutors and ushers came to be dubbed “Old +Thedor,” “Crusty,” and the like. And sundry other things began to take +place--things which necessitated many a penalty and expulsion; until, +within a couple of years, no one who had known the school in former days +would now have recognised it. + +Nevertheless Tientietnikov, a youth of retiring disposition, experienced +no leanings towards the nocturnal orgies of his companions, orgies +during which the latter used to flirt with damsels before the very +windows of the headmaster’s rooms, nor yet towards their mockery of +all that was sacred, simply because fate had cast in their way an +injudicious priest. No, despite its dreaminess, his soul ever remembered +its celestial origin, and could not be diverted from the path of virtue. +Yet still he hung his head, for, while his ambition had come to life, +it could find no sort of outlet. Truly ‘twere well if it had NOT come +to life, for throughout the time that he was listening to professors +who gesticulated on their chairs he could not help remembering the +old preceptor who, invariably cool and calm, had yet known how to make +himself understood. To what subjects, to what lectures, did the boy not +have to listen!--to lectures on medicine, and on philosophy, and on law, +and on a version of general history so enlarged that even three years +failed to enable the professor to do more than finish the introduction +thereto, and also the account of the development of some self-governing +towns in Germany. None of the stuff remained fixed in Tientietnikov’s +brain save as shapeless clots; for though his native intellect could not +tell him how instruction ought to be imparted, it at least told him that +THIS was not the way. And frequently, at such moments he would recall +Alexander Petrovitch, and give way to such grief that scarcely did he +know what he was doing. + +But youth is fortunate in the fact that always before it there lies a +future; and in proportion as the time for his leaving school drew nigh, +Tientietnikov’s heart began to beat higher and higher, and he said to +himself: “This is not life, but only a preparation for life. True life +is to be found in the Public Service. There at least will there be scope +for activity.” So, bestowing not a glance upon that beautiful corner of +the world which never failed to strike the guest or chance visitor with +amazement, and reverencing not a whit the dust of his ancestors, he +followed the example of most ambitious men of his class by repairing to +St. Petersburg (whither, as we know, the more spirited youth of Russia +from every quarter gravitates--there to enter the Public Service, to +shine, to obtain promotion, and, in a word, to scale the topmost peaks +of that pale, cold, deceptive elevation which is known as society). But +the real starting-point of Tientietnikov’s ambition was the moment when +his uncle (one State Councillor Onifri Ivanovitch) instilled into him +the maxim that the only means to success in the Service lay in good +handwriting, and that, without that accomplishment, no one could ever +hope to become a Minister or Statesman. Thus, with great difficulty, +and also with the help of his uncle’s influence, young Tientietnikov at +length succeeded in being posted to a Department. On the day that he +was conducted into a splendid, shining hall--a hall fitted with inlaid +floors and lacquered desks as fine as though this were actually the +place where the great ones of the Empire met for discussion of the +fortunes of the State; on the day that he saw legions of handsome +gentlemen of the quill-driving profession making loud scratchings with +pens, and cocking their heads to one side; lastly on the day that he +saw himself also allotted a desk, and requested to copy a document which +appeared purposely to be one of the pettiest possible order (as a matter +of fact it related to a sum of three roubles, and had taken half a +year to produce)--well, at that moment a curious, an unwonted sensation +seized upon the inexperienced youth, for the gentlemen around him +appeared so exactly like a lot of college students. And, the further to +complete the resemblance, some of them were engaged in reading trashy +translated novels, which they kept hurriedly thrusting between the +sheets of their apportioned work whenever the Director appeared, as +though to convey the impression that it was to that work alone that they +were applying themselves. In short, the scene seemed to Tientietnikov +strange, and his former pursuits more important than his present, and +his preparation for the Service preferable to the Service itself. Yes, +suddenly he felt a longing for his old school; and as suddenly, and with +all the vividness of life, there appeared before his vision the figure +of Alexander Petrovitch. He almost burst into tears as he beheld his old +master, and the room seemed to swim before his eyes, and the tchinovniks +and the desks to become a blur, and his sight to grow dim. Then he +thought to himself with an effort: “No, no! I WILL apply myself to +my work, however petty it be at first.” And hardening his heart and +recovering his spirit, he determined then and there to perform his +duties in such a manner as should be an example to the rest. + +But where are compensations to be found? Even in St. Petersburg, despite +its grim and murky exterior, they exist. Yes, even though thirty degrees +of keen, cracking frost may have bound the streets, and the family of +the North Wind be wailing there, and the Snowstorm Witch have heaped +high the pavements, and be blinding the eyes, and powdering beards and +fur collars and the shaggy manes of horses--even THEN there will be +shining hospitably through the swirling snowflakes a fourth-floor window +where, in a cosy room, and by the light of modest candles, and to the +hiss of the samovar, there will be in progress a discussion which warms +the heart and soul, or else a reading aloud of a brilliant page of one +of those inspired Russian poets with whom God has dowered us, while the +breast of each member of the company is heaving with a rapture unknown +under a noontide sky. + +Gradually, therefore, Tientietnikov grew more at home in the Service. +Yet never did it become, for him, the main pursuit, the main object +in life, which he had expected. No, it remained but one of a secondary +kind. That is to say, it served merely to divide up his time, and enable +him the more to value his hours of leisure. Nevertheless, just when his +uncle was beginning to flatter himself that his nephew was destined to +succeed in the profession, the said nephew elected to ruin his every +hope. Thus it befell. Tientietnikov’s friends (he had many) included +among their number a couple of fellows of the species known as +“embittered.” That is to say, though good-natured souls of that +curiously restless type which cannot endure injustice, nor anything +which it conceives to be such, they were thoroughly unbalanced of +conduct themselves, and, while demanding general agreement with +their views, treated those of others with the scantiest of ceremony. +Nevertheless these two associates exercised upon Tientietnikov--both +by the fire of their eloquence and by the form of their noble +dissatisfaction with society--a very strong influence; with the result +that, through arousing in him an innate tendency to nervous resentment, +they led him also to notice trifles which before had escaped his +attention. An instance of this is seen in the fact that he conceived +against Thedor Thedorovitch Lienitsin, Director of one of the +Departments which was quartered in the splendid range of offices before +mentioned, a dislike which proved the cause of his discerning in the +man a host of hitherto unmarked imperfections. Above all things did +Tientietnikov take it into his head that, when conversing with his +superiors, Lienitsin became, of the moment, a stick of luscious +sweetmeat, but that, when conversing with his inferiors, he approximated +more to a vinegar cruet. Certain it is that, like all petty-minded +individuals, Lienitsin made a note of any one who failed to offer him +a greeting on festival days, and that he revenged himself upon any one +whose visiting-card had not been handed to his butler. Eventually the +youth’s aversion almost attained the point of hysteria; until he felt +that, come what might, he MUST insult the fellow in some fashion. To +that task he applied himself con amore; and so thoroughly that he met +with complete success. That is to say, he seized on an occasion to +address Lienitsin in such fashion that the delinquent received +notice either to apologise or to leave the Service; and when of these +alternatives he chose the latter his uncle came to him, and made a +terrified appeal. “For God’s sake remember what you are doing!” he +cried. “To think that, after beginning your career so well, you should +abandon it merely for the reason that you have not fallen in with the +sort of Director whom you prefer! What do you mean by it, what do you +mean by it? Were others to regard things in the same way, the Service +would find itself without a single individual. Reconsider your +conduct--forego your pride and conceit, and make Lienitsin amends.” + +“But, dear Uncle,” the nephew replied, “that is not the point. The point +is, not that I should find an apology difficult to offer, seeing that, +since Lienitsin is my superior, and I ought not to have addressed him as +I did, I am clearly in the wrong. Rather, the point is the following. +To my charge there has been committed the performance of another kind of +service. That is to say, I am the owner of three hundred peasant souls, +a badly administered estate, and a fool of a bailiff. That being so, +whereas the State will lose little by having to fill my stool with +another copyist, it will lose very much by causing three hundred peasant +souls to fail in the payment of their taxes. As I say (how am I to put +it?), I am a landowner who has preferred to enter the Public Service. +Now, should I employ myself henceforth in conserving, restoring, and +improving the fortunes of the souls whom God has entrusted to my care, +and thereby provide the State with three hundred law-abiding, sober, +hard-working taxpayers, how will that service of mine rank as inferior +to the service of a department-directing fool like Lienitsin?” + +On hearing this speech, the State Councillor could only gape, for he +had not expected Tientietnikov’s torrent of words. He reflected a few +moments, and then murmured: + +“Yes, but, but--but how can a man like you retire to rustication in +the country? What society will you get there? Here one meets at least +a general or a prince sometimes; indeed, no matter whom you pass in the +street, that person represents gas lamps and European civilisation; but +in the country, no matter what part of it you are in, not a soul is +to be encountered save muzhiks and their women. Why should you go and +condemn yourself to a state of vegetation like that?” + +Nevertheless the uncle’s expostulations fell upon deaf ears, for already +the nephew was beginning to think of his estate as a retreat of a type +more likely to nourish the intellectual faculties and afford the only +profitable field of activity. After unearthing one or two modern works +on agriculture, therefore, he, two weeks later, found himself in +the neighbourhood of the home where his boyhood had been spent, and +approaching the spot which never failed to enthral the visitor or guest. +And in the young man’s breast there was beginning to palpitate a +new feeling--in the young man’s soul there were reawakening old, +long-concealed impressions; with the result that many a spot which had +long been faded from his memory now filled him with interest, and the +beautiful views on the estate found him gazing at them like a newcomer, +and with a beating heart. Yes, as the road wound through a narrow +ravine, and became engulfed in a forest where, both above and below, he +saw three-centuries-old oaks which three men could not have spanned, +and where Siberian firs and elms overtopped even the poplars, and as +he asked the peasants to tell him to whom the forest belonged, and +they replied, “To Tientietnikov,” and he issued from the forest, and +proceeded on his way through meadows, and past spinneys of elder, and +of old and young willows, and arrived in sight of the distant range of +hills, and, crossing by two different bridges the winding river (which +he left successively to right and to left of him as he did so), he again +questioned some peasants concerning the ownership of the meadows and +the flooded lands, and was again informed that they all belonged to +Tientietnikov, and then, ascending a rise, reached a tableland where, on +one side, lay ungarnered fields of wheat and rye and barley, and, on the +other, the country already traversed (but which now showed in shortened +perspective), and then plunged into the shade of some forked, umbrageous +trees which stood scattered over turf and extended to the manor-house +itself, and caught glimpses of the carved huts of the peasants, and of +the red roofs of the stone manorial outbuildings, and of the glittering +pinnacles of the church, and felt his heart beating, and knew, without +being told by any one, whither he had at length arrived--well, then the +feeling which had been growing within his soul burst forth, and he cried +in ecstasy: + +“Why have I been a fool so long? Why, seeing that fate has appointed +me to be ruler of an earthly paradise, did I prefer to bind myself in +servitude as a scribe of lifeless documents? To think that, after I had +been nurtured and schooled and stored with all the knowledge necessary +for the diffusion of good among those under me, and for the improvement +of my domain, and for the fulfilment of the manifold duties of a +landowner who is at once judge, administrator, and constable of his +people, I should have entrusted my estate to an ignorant bailiff, and +sought to maintain an absentee guardianship over the affairs of serfs +whom I have never met, and of whose capabilities and characters I am +yet ignorant! To think that I should have deemed true estate-management +inferior to a documentary, fantastical management of provinces which lie +a thousand versts away, and which my foot has never trod, and where I +could never have effected aught but blunders and irregularities!” + +Meanwhile another spectacle was being prepared for him. On learning +that the barin was approaching the mansion, the muzhiks collected on +the verandah in very variety of picturesque dress and tonsure; and when +these good folk surrounded him, and there arose a resounding shout of +“Here is our Foster Father! He has remembered us!” and, in spite of +themselves, some of the older men and women began weeping as they +recalled his grandfather and great-grandfather, he himself could not +restrain his tears, but reflected: “How much affection! And in return +for what? In return for my never having come to see them--in return for +my never having taken the least interest in their affairs!” And then +and there he registered a mental vow to share their every task and +occupation. + +So he applied himself to supervising and administering. He reduced the +amount of the barstchina [40], he decreased the number of working-days +for the owner, and he augmented the sum of the peasants’ leisure-time. +He also dismissed the fool of a bailiff, and took to bearing a +personal hand in everything--to being present in the fields, at the +threshing-floor, at the kilns, at the wharf, at the freighting of barges +and rafts, and at their conveyance down the river: wherefore even the +lazy hands began to look to themselves. But this did not last long. The +peasant is an observant individual, and Tientietnikov’s muzhiks soon +scented the fact that, though energetic and desirous of doing much, the +barin had no notion how to do it, nor even how to set about it--that, in +short, he spoke by the book rather than out of his personal knowledge. +Consequently things resulted, not in master and men failing to +understand one another, but in their not singing together, in their not +producing the very same note. + +That is to say, it was not long before Tientietnikov noticed that on +the manorial lands, nothing prospered to the extent that it did on the +peasants’. The manorial crops were sown in good time, and came up well, +and every one appeared to work his best, so much so that Tientietnikov, +who supervised the whole, frequently ordered mugs of vodka to be served +out as a reward for the excellence of the labour performed. Yet the rye +on the peasants’ land had formed into ear, and the oats had begun to +shoot their grain, and the millet had filled before, on the manorial +lands, the corn had so much as grown to stalk, or the ears had sprouted +in embryo. In short, gradually the barin realised that, in spite of +favours conferred, the peasants were playing the rogue with him. Next he +resorted to remonstrance, but was met with the reply, “How could we not +do our best for our barin? You yourself saw how well we laboured at the +ploughing and the sowing, for you gave us mugs of vodka for our pains.” + +“Then why have things turned out so badly?” the barin persisted. + +“Who can say? It must be that a grub has eaten the crop from below. +Besides, what a summer has it been--never a drop of rain!” + +Nevertheless, the barin noted that no grub had eaten the PEASANTS’ +crops, as well as that the rain had fallen in the most curious +fashion--namely, in patches. It had obliged the muzhiks, but had shed a +mere sprinkling for the barin. + +Still more difficult did he find it to deal with the peasant women. +Ever and anon they would beg to be excused from work, or start making +complaints of the severity of the barstchina. Indeed, they were terrible +folk! However, Tientietnikov abolished the majority of the tithes of +linen, hedge fruit, mushrooms, and nuts, and also reduced by one-half +other tasks proper to the women, in the hope that they would devote +their spare time to their own domestic concerns--namely, to sewing and +mending, and to making clothes for their husbands, and to increasing +the area of their kitchen gardens. Yet no such result came about. On the +contrary, such a pitch did the idleness, the quarrelsomeness, and the +intriguing and caballing of the fair sex attain that their helpmeets +were for ever coming to the barin with a request that he would rid one +or another of his wife, since she had become a nuisance, and to live +with her was impossible. + +Next, hardening his heart, the barin attempted severity. But of what +avail was severity? The peasant woman remained always the peasant +woman, and would come and whine that she was sick and ailing, and keep +pitifully hugging to herself the mean and filthy rags which she had +donned for the occasion. And when poor Tientietnikov found himself +unable to say more to her than just, “Get out of my sight, and may the +Lord go with you!” the next item in the comedy would be that he would +see her, even as she was leaving his gates, fall to contending with a +neighbour for, say, the possession of a turnip, and dealing out slaps +in the face such as even a strong, healthy man could scarcely have +compassed! + +Again, amongst other things, Tientietnikov conceived the idea of +establishing a school for his people; but the scheme resulted in a farce +which left him in sackcloth and ashes. In the same way he found that, +when it came to a question of dispensing justice and of adjusting +disputes, the host of juridical subtleties with which the professors had +provided him proved absolutely useless. That is to say, the one party +lied, and the other party lied, and only the devil could have decided +between them. Consequently he himself perceived that a knowledge of +mankind would have availed him more than all the legal refinements and +philosophical maxims in the world could do. He lacked something; and +though he could not divine what it was, the situation brought about was +the common one of the barin failing to understand the peasant, and the +peasant failing to understand the barin, and both becoming disaffected. +In the end, these difficulties so chilled Tientietnikov’s enthusiasm +that he took to supervising the labours of the field with greatly +diminished attention. That is to say, no matter whether the scythes were +softly swishing through the grass, or ricks were being built, or rafts +were being loaded, he would allow his eyes to wander from his men, and +to fall to gazing at, say, a red-billed, red-legged heron which, after +strutting along the bank of a stream, would have caught a fish in its +beak, and be holding it awhile, as though in doubt whether to swallow +it. Next he would glance towards the spot where a similar bird, but one +not yet in possession of a fish, was engaged in watching the doings of +its mate. Lastly, with eyebrows knitted, and face turned to scan the +zenith, he would drink in the smell of the fields, and fall to listening +to the winged population of the air as from earth and sky alike the +manifold music of winged creatures combined in a single harmonious +chorus. In the rye the quail would be calling, and, in the grass, the +corncrake, and over them would be wheeling flocks of twittering linnets. +Also, the jacksnipe would be uttering its croak, and the lark executing +its roulades where it had become lost in the sunshine, and cranes +sending forth their trumpet-like challenge as they deployed towards the +zenith in triangle-shaped flocks. In fact, the neighbourhood would seem +to have become converted into one great concert of melody. O Creator, +how fair is Thy world where, in remote, rural seclusion, it lies apart +from cities and from highways! + +But soon even this began to pall upon Tientietnikov, and he ceased +altogether to visit his fields, or to do aught but shut himself up +in his rooms, where he refused to receive even the bailiff when that +functionary called with his reports. Again, although, until now, he had +to a certain extent associated with a retired colonel of hussars--a man +saturated with tobacco smoke--and also with a student of pronounced, but +immature, opinions who culled the bulk of his wisdom from contemporary +newspapers and pamphlets, he found, as time went on, that these +companions proved as tedious as the rest, and came to think their +conversation superficial, and their European method of comporting +themselves--that is to say, the method of conversing with much slapping +of knees and a great deal of bowing and gesticulation--too direct and +unadorned. So these and every one else he decided to “drop,” and carried +this resolution into effect with a certain amount of rudeness. On the +next occasion that Varvar Nikolaievitch Vishnepokromov called to indulge +in a free-and-easy symposium on politics, philosophy, literature, +morals, and the state of financial affairs in England (he was, in all +matters which admit of superficial discussion, the pleasantest fellow +alive, seeing that he was a typical representative both of the retired +fire-eater and of the school of thought which is now becoming the +rage)--when, I say, this next happened, Tientietnikov merely sent out +to say that he was not at home, and then carefully showed himself at the +window. Host and guest exchanged glances, and, while the one muttered +through his teeth “The cur!” the other relieved his feelings with a +remark or two on swine. Thus the acquaintance came to an abrupt end, and +from that time forth no visitor called at the mansion. + +Tientietnikov in no way regretted this, for he could now devote himself +wholly to the projection of a great work on Russia. Of the scale on +which this composition was conceived the reader is already aware. The +reader also knows how strange, how unsystematic, was the system employed +in it. Yet to say that Tientietnikov never awoke from his lethargy +would not be altogether true. On the contrary, when the post brought him +newspapers and reviews, and he saw in their printed pages, perhaps, the +well-known name of some former comrade who had succeeded in the great +field of Public Service, or had conferred upon science and the +world’s work some notable contribution, he would succumb to secret and +suppressed grief, and involuntarily there would burst from his soul +an expression of aching, voiceless regret that he himself had done so +little. And at these times his existence would seem to him odious and +repellent; at these times there would uprise before him the memory of +his school days, and the figure of Alexander Petrovitch, as vivid as in +life. And, slowly welling, the tears would course over Tientietnikov’s +cheeks. + +What meant these repinings? Was there not disclosed in them the secret +of his galling spiritual pain--the fact that he had failed to order his +life aright, to confirm the lofty aims with which he had started his +course; the fact that, always poorly equipped with experience, he +had failed to attain the better and the higher state, and there to +strengthen himself for the overcoming of hindrances and obstacles; the +fact that, dissolving like overheated metal, his bounteous store of +superior instincts had failed to take the final tempering; the fact that +the tutor of his boyhood, a man in a thousand, had prematurely died, and +left to Tientietnikov no one who could restore to him the moral +strength shattered by vacillation and the will power weakened by want +of virility--no one, in short, who could cry hearteningly to his soul +“Forward!”--the word for which the Russian of every degree, of every +class, of every occupation, of every school of thought, is for ever +hungering. + +Indeed, WHERE is the man who can cry aloud for any of us, in the Russian +tongue dear to our soul, the all-compelling command “Forward!”? Who is +there who, knowing the strength and the nature and the inmost depths of +the Russian genius, can by a single magic incantation divert our ideals +to the higher life? Were there such a man, with what tears, with what +affection, would not the grateful sons of Russia repay him! Yet age +succeeds to age, and our callow youth still lies wrapped in shameful +sloth, or strives and struggles to no purpose. God has not yet given us +the man able to sound the call. + +One circumstance which almost aroused Tientietnikov, which almost +brought about a revolution in his character, was the fact that he came +very near to falling in love. Yet even this resulted in nothing. Ten +versts away there lived the general whom we have heard expressing +himself in highly uncomplimentary terms concerning Tientietnikov. He +maintained a General-like establishment, dispensed hospitality (that +is to say, was glad when his neighbours came to pay him their respects, +though he himself never went out), spoke always in a hoarse voice, read +a certain number of books, and had a daughter--a curious, unfamiliar +type, but full of life as life itself. This maiden’s name was Ulinka, +and she had been strangely brought up, for, losing her mother in early +childhood, she had subsequently received instruction at the hands of an +English governess who knew not a single word of Russian. Moreover her +father, though excessively fond of her, treated her always as a toy; +with the result that, as she grew to years of discretion, she became +wholly wayward and spoilt. Indeed, had any one seen the sudden rage +which would gather on her beautiful young forehead when she was engaged +in a heated dispute with her father, he would have thought her one of +the most capricious beings in the world. Yet that rage gathered only +when she had heard of injustice or harsh treatment, and never because +she desired to argue on her own behalf, or to attempt to justify her own +conduct. Also, that anger would disappear as soon as ever she saw any +one whom she had formerly disliked fall upon evil times, and, at his +first request for alms would, without consideration or subsequent +regret, hand him her purse and its whole contents. Yes, her every act +was strenuous, and when she spoke her whole personality seemed to be +following hot-foot upon her thought--both her expression of face and her +diction and the movements of her hands. Nay, the very folds of her frock +had a similar appearance of striving; until one would have thought +that all her self were flying in pursuit of her words. Nor did she know +reticence: before any one she would disclose her mind, and no force +could compel her to maintain silence when she desired to speak. Also, +her enchanting, peculiar gait--a gait which belonged to her alone--was +so absolutely free and unfettered that every one involuntarily gave her +way. Lastly, in her presence churls seemed to become confused and fall +to silence, and even the roughest and most outspoken would lose their +heads, and have not a word to say; whereas the shy man would find +himself able to converse as never in his life before, and would feel, +from the first, as though he had seen her and known her at some previous +period--during the days of some unremembered childhood, when he was at +home, and spending a merry evening among a crowd of romping children. +And for long afterwards he would feel as though his man’s intellect and +estate were a burden. + +This was what now befell Tientietnikov; and as it did so a new feeling +entered into his soul, and his dreamy life lightened for a moment. + +At first the General used to receive him with hospitable civility, but +permanent concord between them proved impossible; their conversation +always merged into dissension and soreness, seeing that, while the +General could not bear to be contradicted or worsted in an argument, +Tientietnikov was a man of extreme sensitiveness. True, for the +daughter’s sake, the father was for a while deferred to, and thus peace +was maintained; but this lasted only until the time when there arrived, +on a visit to the General, two kinswomen of his--the Countess Bordirev +and the Princess Uziakin, retired Court dames, but ladies who still +kept up a certain connection with Court circles, and therefore were much +fawned upon by their host. No sooner had they appeared on the scene than +(so it seemed to Tientietnikov) the General’s attitude towards the young +man became colder--either he ceased to notice him at all or he spoke to +him familiarly, and as to a person having no standing in society. This +offended Tientietnikov deeply, and though, when at length he spoke out +on the subject, he retained sufficient presence of mind to compress his +lips, and to preserve a gentle and courteous tone, his face flushed and +his inner man was boiling. + +“General,” he said, “I thank you for your condescension. By addressing +me in the second person singular, you have admitted me to the circle +of your most intimate friends. Indeed, were it not that a difference of +years forbids any familiarity on my part, I should answer you in similar +fashion.” + +The General sat aghast. At length, rallying his tongue and his +faculties, he replied that, though he had spoken with a lack of +ceremony, he had used the term “thou” merely as an elderly man naturally +employs it towards a junior (he made no reference to difference of +rank). + +Nevertheless, the acquaintance broke off here, and with it any +possibility of love-making. The light which had shed a momentary gleam +before Tientietnikov’s eyes had become extinguished for ever, and upon +it there followed a darkness denser than before. Henceforth everything +conduced to evolve the regime which the reader has noted--that regime +of sloth and inaction which converted Tientietnikov’s residence into a +place of dirt and neglect. For days at a time would a broom and a heap +of dust be left lying in the middle of a room, and trousers tossing +about the salon, and pairs of worn-out braces adorning the what-not near +the sofa. In short, so mean and untidy did Tientietnikov’s mode of life +become, that not only his servants, but even his very poultry ceased to +treat him with respect. Taking up a pen, he would spend hours in idly +sketching houses, huts, waggons, troikas, and flourishes on a piece of +paper; while at other times, when he had sunk into a reverie, the pen +would, all unknowingly, sketch a small head which had delicate features, +a pair of quick, penetrating eyes, and a raised coiffure. Then suddenly +the dreamer would perceive, to his surprise, that the pen had executed +the portrait of a maiden whose picture no artist could adequately have +painted; and therewith his despondency would become greater than ever, +and, believing that happiness did not exist on earth, he would relapse +into increased ennui, increased neglect of his responsibilities. + +But one morning he noticed, on moving to the window after breakfast, +that not a word was proceeding either from the butler or the +housekeeper, but that, on the contrary, the courtyard seemed to smack of +a certain bustle and excitement. This was because through the entrance +gates (which the kitchen maid and the scullion had run to open) there +were appearing the noses of three horses--one to the right, one in the +middle, and one to the left, after the fashion of triumphal groups of +statuary. Above them, on the box seat, were seated a coachman and a +valet, while behind, again, there could be discerned a gentleman in a +scarf and a fur cap. Only when the equipage had entered the courtyard +did it stand revealed as a light spring britchka. And as it came to a +halt, there leapt on to the verandah of the mansion an individual +of respectable exterior, and possessed of the art of moving with the +neatness and alertness of a military man. + +Upon this Tientietnikov’s heart stood still. He was unused to receiving +visitors, and for the moment conceived the new arrival to be a +Government official, sent to question him concerning an abortive society +to which he had formerly belonged. (Here the author may interpolate the +fact that, in Tientietnikov’s early days, the young man had become mixed +up in a very absurd affair. That is to say, a couple of philosophers +belonging to a regiment of hussars had, together with an aesthete +who had not yet completed his student’s course and a gambler who had +squandered his all, formed a secret society of philanthropic aims under +the presidency of a certain old rascal of a freemason and the ruined +gambler aforesaid. The scope of the society’s work was to be extensive: +it was to bring lasting happiness to humanity at large, from the banks +of the Thames to the shores of Kamtchatka. But for this much money was +needed: wherefore from the noble-minded members of the society generous +contributions were demanded, and then forwarded to a destination known +only to the supreme authorities of the concern. As for Tientietnikov’s +adhesion, it was brought about by the two friends already alluded to as +“embittered”--good-hearted souls whom the wear and tear of their efforts +on behalf of science, civilisation, and the future emancipation of +mankind had ended by converting into confirmed drunkards. Perhaps it +need hardly be said that Tientietnikov soon discovered how things stood, +and withdrew from the association; but, meanwhile, the latter had had +the misfortune so to have engaged in dealings not wholly creditable +to gentlemen of noble origin as likewise to have become entangled in +dealings with the police. Consequently, it is not to be wondered at +that, though Tientietnikov had long severed his connection with the +society and its policy, he still remained uneasy in his mind as to what +might even yet be the result.) + +However, his fears vanished the instant that the guest saluted him with +marked politeness and explained, with many deferential poises of the +head, and in terms at once civil and concise, that for some time past +he (the newcomer) had been touring the Russian Empire on business and +in the pursuit of knowledge, that the Empire abounded in objects +of interest--not to mention a plenitude of manufactures and a great +diversity of soil, and that, in spite of the fact that he was greatly +struck with the amenities of his host’s domain, he would certainly +not have presumed to intrude at such an inconvenient hour but for the +circumstance that the inclement spring weather, added to the state of +the roads, had necessitated sundry repairs to his carriage at the hands +of wheelwrights and blacksmiths. Finally he declared that, even if this +last had NOT happened, he would still have felt unable to deny himself +the pleasure of offering to his host that meed of homage which was the +latter’s due. + +This speech--a speech of fascinating bonhomie--delivered, the guest +executed a sort of shuffle with a half-boot of patent leather studded +with buttons of mother-of-pearl, and followed that up by (in spite of +his pronounced rotundity of figure) stepping backwards with all the elan +of an india-rubber ball. + +From this the somewhat reassured Tientietnikov concluded that his +visitor must be a literary, knowledge-seeking professor who was engaged +in roaming the country in search of botanical specimens and fossils; +wherefore he hastened to express both his readiness to further the +visitor’s objects (whatever they might be) and his personal willingness +to provide him with the requisite wheelwrights and blacksmiths. +Meanwhile he begged his guest to consider himself at home, and, +after seating him in an armchair, made preparations to listen to the +newcomer’s discourse on natural history. + +But the newcomer applied himself, rather, to phenomena of the internal +world, saying that his life might be likened to a barque tossed on the +crests of perfidious billows, that in his time he had been fated to play +many parts, and that on more than one occasion his life had stood +in danger at the hands of foes. At the same time, these tidings were +communicated in a manner calculated to show that the speaker was also +a man of PRACTICAL capabilities. In conclusion, the visitor took out a +cambric pocket-handkerchief, and sneezed into it with a vehemence wholly +new to Tientietnikov’s experience. In fact, the sneeze rather resembled +the note which, at times, the trombone of an orchestra appears to utter +not so much from its proper place on the platform as from the immediate +neighbourhood of the listener’s ear. And as the echoes of the drowsy +mansion resounded to the report of the explosion there followed upon the +same a wave of perfume, skilfully wafted abroad with a flourish of the +eau-de-Cologne-scented handkerchief. + +By this time the reader will have guessed that the visitor was none +other than our old and respected friend Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov. +Naturally, time had not spared him his share of anxieties and alarms; +wherefore his exterior had come to look a trifle more elderly, his +frockcoat had taken on a suggestion of shabbiness, and britchka, +coachman, valet, horses, and harness alike had about them a sort of +second-hand, worse-for-wear effect. Evidently the Chichikovian finances +were not in the most flourishing of conditions. Nevertheless, the old +expression of face, the old air of breeding and refinement, remained +unimpaired, and our hero had even improved in the art of walking and +turning with grace, and of dexterously crossing one leg over the +other when taking a seat. Also, his mildness of diction, his discreet +moderation of word and phrase, survived in, if anything, increased +measure, and he bore himself with a skill which caused his tactfulness +to surpass itself in sureness of aplomb. And all these accomplishments +had their effect further heightened by a snowy immaculateness of collar +and dickey, and an absence of dust from his frockcoat, as complete as +though he had just arrived to attend a nameday festival. Lastly, his +cheeks and chin were of such neat clean-shavenness that no one but a +blind man could have failed to admire their rounded contours. + +From that moment onwards great changes took place in Tientietnikov’s +establishment, and certain of its rooms assumed an unwonted air of +cleanliness and order. The rooms in question were those assigned to +Chichikov, while one other apartment--a little front chamber opening +into the hall--became permeated with Petrushka’s own peculiar smell. +But this lasted only for a little while, for presently Petrushka was +transferred to the servants’ quarters, a course which ought to have been +adopted in the first instance. + +During the initial days of Chichikov’s sojourn, Tientietnikov feared +rather to lose his independence, inasmuch as he thought that his +guest might hamper his movements, and bring about alterations in the +established routine of the place. But these fears proved groundless, for +Paul Ivanovitch displayed an extraordinary aptitude for accommodating +himself to his new position. To begin with, he encouraged his host +in his philosophical inertia by saying that the latter would help +Tientietnikov to become a centenarian. Next, in the matter of a life of +isolation, he hit things off exactly by remarking that such a life +bred in a man a capacity for high thinking. Lastly, as he inspected the +library and dilated on books in general, he contrived an opportunity to +observe that literature safeguarded a man from a tendency to waste his +time. In short, the few words of which he delivered himself were brief, +but invariably to the point. And this discretion of speech was outdone +by his discretion of conduct. That is to say, whether entering +or leaving the room, he never wearied his host with a question if +Tientietnikov had the air of being disinclined to talk; and with equal +satisfaction the guest could either play chess or hold his tongue. +Consequently Tientietnikov said to himself: + +“For the first time in my life I have met with a man with whom it is +possible to live. In general, not many of the type exist in Russia, and, +though clever, good-humoured, well-educated men abound, one would be +hard put to it to find an individual of equable temperament with whom +one could share a roof for centuries without a quarrel arising. Anyway, +Chichikov is the first of his sort that I have met.” + +For his part, Chichikov was only too delighted to reside with a +person so quiet and agreeable as his host. Of a wandering life he was +temporarily weary, and to rest, even for a month, in such a beautiful +spot, and in sight of green fields and the slow flowering of spring, was +likely to benefit him also from the hygienic point of view. And, indeed, +a more delightful retreat in which to recuperate could not possibly have +been found. The spring, long retarded by previous cold, had now begun +in all its comeliness, and life was rampant. Already, over the first +emerald of the grass, the dandelion was showing yellow, and the red-pink +anemone was hanging its tender head; while the surface of every pond +was a swarm of dancing gnats and midges, and the water-spider was being +joined in their pursuit by birds which gathered from every quarter to +the vantage-ground of the dry reeds. Every species of creature also +seemed to be assembling in concourse, and taking stock of one another. +Suddenly the earth became populous, the forest had opened its eyes, and +the meadows were lifting up their voice in song. In the same way had +choral dances begun to be weaved in the village, and everywhere that the +eye turned there was merriment. What brightness in the green of nature, +what freshness in the air, what singing of birds in the gardens of the +mansion, what general joy and rapture and exaltation! Particularly in +the village might the shouting and singing have been in honour of a +wedding! + +Chichikov walked hither, thither, and everywhere--a pursuit for which +there was ample choice and facility. At one time he would direct his +steps along the edge of the flat tableland, and contemplate the depths +below, where still there lay sheets of water left by the floods of +winter, and where the island-like patches of forest showed leafless +boughs; while at another time he would plunge into the thicket and +ravine country, where nests of birds weighted branches almost to the +ground, and the sky was darkened with the criss-cross flight of cawing +rooks. Again, the drier portions of the meadows could be crossed to the +river wharves, whence the first barges were just beginning to set forth +with pea-meal and barley and wheat, while at the same time one’s ear +would be caught with the sound of some mill resuming its functions as +once more the water turned the wheel. Chichikov would also walk afield +to watch the early tillage operations of the season, and observe how +the blackness of a new furrow would make its way across the expanse of +green, and how the sower, rhythmically striking his hand against the +pannier slung across his breast, would scatter his fistfuls of seed with +equal distribution, apportioning not a grain too much to one side or to +the other. + +In fact, Chichikov went everywhere. He chatted and talked, now with the +bailiff, now with a peasant, now with a miller, and inquired into the +manner and nature of everything, and sought information as to how an +estate was managed, and at what price corn was selling, and what species +of grain was best for spring and autumn grinding, and what was the name +of each peasant, and who were his kinsfolk, and where he had bought his +cow, and what he fed his pigs on. Chichikov also made inquiry concerning +the number of peasants who had lately died: but of these there appeared +to be few. And suddenly his quick eye discerned that Tientietnikov’s +estate was not being worked as it might have been--that much neglect and +listlessness and pilfering and drunkenness was abroad; and on perceiving +this, he thought to himself: “What a fool is that Tientietnikov! To +think of letting a property like this decay when he might be drawing +from it an income of fifty thousand roubles a year!” + +Also, more than once, while taking these walks, our hero pondered the +idea of himself becoming a landowner--not now, of course, but later, +when his chief aim should have been achieved, and he had got into his +hands the necessary means for living the quiet life of the proprietor +of an estate. Yes, and at these times there would include itself in his +castle-building the figure of a young, fresh, fair-faced maiden of the +mercantile or other rich grade of society, a woman who could both play +and sing. He also dreamed of little descendants who should perpetuate +the name of Chichikov; perhaps a frolicsome little boy and a fair young +daughter, or possibly, two boys and quite two or three daughters; so +that all should know that he had really lived and had his being, that he +had not merely roamed the world like a spectre or a shadow; so that for +him and his the country should never be put to shame. And from that he +would go on to fancy that a title appended to his rank would not be +a bad thing--the title of State Councillor, for instance, which was +deserving of all honour and respect. Ah, it is a common thing for a +man who is taking a solitary walk so to detach himself from the irksome +realities of the present that he is able to stir and to excite and to +provoke his imagination to the conception of things he knows can never +really come to pass! + +Chichikov’s servants also found the mansion to their taste, and, like +their master, speedily made themselves at home in it. In particular did +Petrushka make friends with Grigory the butler, although at first the +pair showed a tendency to outbrag one another--Petrushka beginning +by throwing dust in Grigory’s eyes on the score of his (Petrushka’s) +travels, and Grigory taking him down a peg or two by referring to St. +Petersburg (a city which Petrushka had never visited), and Petrushka +seeking to recover lost ground by dilating on towns which he HAD +visited, and Grigory capping this by naming some town which is not to be +found on any map in existence, and then estimating the journey +thither as at least thirty thousand versts--a statement which would so +completely flabbergast the henchman of Chichikov’s suite that he would +be left staring open-mouthed, amid the general laughter of the domestic +staff. However, as I say, the pair ended by swearing eternal friendship +with one another, and making a practice of resorting to the village +tavern in company. + +For Selifan, however, the place had a charm of a different kind. That is +to say, each evening there would take place in the village a singing of +songs and a weaving of country dances; and so shapely and buxom were the +maidens--maidens of a type hard to find in our present-day villages on +large estates--that he would stand for hours wondering which of them was +the best. White-necked and white-bosomed, all had great roving eyes, the +gait of peacocks, and hair reaching to the waist. And as, with his hands +clasping theirs, he glided hither and thither in the dance, or retired +backwards towards a wall with a row of other young fellows, and then, +with them, returned to meet the damsels--all singing in chorus (and +laughing as they sang it), “Boyars, show me my bridegroom!” and dusk was +falling gently, and from the other side of the river there kept coming +far, faint, plaintive echoes of the melody--well, then our Selifan +hardly knew whether he were standing upon his head or his heels. Later, +when sleeping and when waking, both at noon and at twilight, he would +seem still to be holding a pair of white hands, and moving in the dance. + +Chichikov’s horses also found nothing of which to disapprove. Yes, +both the bay, the Assessor, and the skewbald accounted residence at +Tientietnikov’s a most comfortable affair, and voted the oats excellent, +and the arrangement of the stables beyond all cavil. True, on this +occasion each horse had a stall to himself; yet, by looking over the +intervening partition, it was possible always to see one’s fellows, and, +should a neighbour take it into his head to utter a neigh, to answer it +at once. + +As for the errand which had hitherto led Chichikov to travel about +Russia, he had now decided to move very cautiously and secretly in the +matter. In fact, on noticing that Tientietnikov went in absorbedly for +reading and for talking philosophy, the visitor said to himself, “No--I +had better begin at the other end,” and proceeded first to feel his way +among the servants of the establishment. From them he learnt several +things, and, in particular, that the barin had been wont to go and +call upon a certain General in the neighbourhood, and that the General +possessed a daughter, and that she and Tientietnikov had had an affair +of some sort, but that the pair had subsequently parted, and gone +their several ways. For that matter, Chichikov himself had noticed +that Tientietnikov was in the habit of drawing heads of which each +representation exactly resembled the rest. + +Once, as he sat tapping his silver snuff-box after luncheon, Chichikov +remarked: + +“One thing you lack, and only one, Andrei Ivanovitch.” + +“What is that?” asked his host. + +“A female friend or two,” replied Chichikov. + +Tientietnikov made no rejoinder, and the conversation came temporarily +to an end. + +But Chichikov was not to be discouraged; wherefore, while waiting for +supper and talking on different subjects, he seized an opportunity to +interject: + +“Do you know, it would do you no harm to marry.” + +As before, Tientietnikov did not reply, and the renewed mention of the +subject seemed to have annoyed him. + +For the third time--it was after supper--Chichikov returned to the +charge by remarking: + +“To-day, as I was walking round your property, I could not help thinking +that marriage would do you a great deal of good. Otherwise you will +develop into a hypochondriac.” + +Whether Chichikov’s words now voiced sufficiently the note of +persuasion, or whether Tientietnikov happened, at the moment, to be +unusually disposed to frankness, at all events the young landowner +sighed, and then responded as he expelled a puff of tobacco smoke: + +“To attain anything, Paul Ivanovitch, one needs to have been born under +a lucky star.” + +And he related to his guest the whole history of his acquaintanceship +and subsequent rupture with the General. + +As Chichikov listened to the recital, and gradually realised that the +affair had arisen merely out of a chance word on the General’s part, he +was astounded beyond measure, and gazed at Tientietnikov without knowing +what to make of him. + +“Andrei Ivanovitch,” he said at length, “what was there to take offence +at?” + +“Nothing, as regards the actual words spoken,” replied the other. “The +offence lay, rather, in the insult conveyed in the General’s tone.” + Tientietnikov was a kindly and peaceable man, yet his eyes flashed as he +said this, and his voice vibrated with wounded feeling. + +“Yet, even then, need you have taken it so much amiss?” + +“What? Could I have gone on visiting him as before?” + +“Certainly. No great harm had been done?” + +“I disagree with you. Had he been an old man in a humble station of +life, instead of a proud and swaggering officer, I should not have +minded so much. But, as it was, I could not, and would not, brook his +words.” + +“A curious fellow, this Tientietnikov!” thought Chichikov to himself. + +“A curious fellow, this Chichikov!” was Tientietnikov’s inward +reflection. + +“I tell you what,” resumed Chichikov. “To-morrow I myself will go and +see the General.” + +“To what purpose?” asked Tientietnikov, with astonishment and distrust +in his eyes. + +“To offer him an assurance of my personal respect.” + +“A strange fellow, this Chichikov!” reflected Tientietnikov. + +“A strange fellow, this Tientietnikov!” thought Chichikov, and then +added aloud: “Yes, I will go and see him at ten o’clock to-morrow; but +since my britchka is not yet altogether in travelling order, would you +be so good as to lend me your koliaska for the purpose?” + + + +CHAPTER II + +Tientietnikov’s good horses covered the ten versts to the General’s +house in a little over half an hour. Descending from the koliaska with +features attuned to deference, Chichikov inquired for the master of the +house, and was at once ushered into his presence. Bowing with head +held respectfully on one side and hands extended like those of a waiter +carrying a trayful of teacups, the visitor inclined his whole body +forward, and said: + +“I have deemed it my duty to present myself to your Excellency. I have +deemed it my duty because in my heart I cherish a most profound respect +for the valiant men who, on the field of battle, have proved the +saviours of their country.” + +That this preliminary attack did not wholly displease the General was +proved by the fact that, responding with a gracious inclination of the +head, he replied: + +“I am glad to make your acquaintance. Pray be so good as to take a seat. +In what capacity or capacities have you yourself seen service?” + +“Of my service,” said Chichikov, depositing his form, not exactly in the +centre of the chair, but rather on one side of it, and resting a hand +upon one of its arms, “--of my service the scene was laid, in the first +instance, in the Treasury; while its further course bore me successively +into the employ of the Public Buildings Commission, of the Customs +Board, and of other Government Offices. But, throughout, my life has +resembled a barque tossed on the crests of perfidious billows. In +suffering I have been swathed and wrapped until I have come to be, as +it were, suffering personified; while of the extent to which my life +has been sought by foes, no words, no colouring, no (if I may so express +it?) painter’s brush could ever convey to you an adequate idea. And now, +at length, in my declining years, I am seeking a corner in which to eke +out the remainder of my miserable existence, while at the present moment +I am enjoying the hospitality of a neighbour of your acquaintance.” + +“And who is that?” + +“Your neighbour Tientietnikov, your Excellency.” + +Upon that the General frowned. + +“Led me add,” put in Chichikov hastily, “that he greatly regrets that +on a former occasion he should have failed to show a proper respect +for--for--” + +“For what?” asked the General. + +“For the services to the public which your Excellency has rendered. +Indeed, he cannot find words to express his sorrow, but keeps repeating +to himself: ‘Would that I had valued at their true worth the men who +have saved our fatherland!’” + +“And why should he say that?” asked the mollified General. “I bear him +no grudge. In fact, I have never cherished aught but a sincere liking +for him, a sincere esteem, and do not doubt but that, in time, he may +become a useful member of society.” + +“In the words which you have been good enough to utter,” said Chichikov +with a bow, “there is embodied much justice. Yes, Tientietnikov is +in very truth a man of worth. Not only does he possess the gift of +eloquence, but also he is a master of the pen.” + +“Ah, yes; he DOES write rubbish of some sort, doesn’t he? Verses, or +something of the kind?” + +“Not rubbish, your Excellency, but practical stuff. In short, he is +inditing a history.” + +“A HISTORY? But a history of what?” + +“A history of, of--” For a moment or two Chichikov hesitated. Then, +whether because it was a General that was seated in front of him, or +because he desired to impart greater importance to the subject which +he was about to invent, he concluded: “A history of Generals, your +Excellency.” + +“Of Generals? Of WHAT Generals?” + +“Of Generals generally--of Generals at large. That is to say, and to be +more precise, a history of the Generals of our fatherland.” + +By this time Chichikov was floundering badly. Mentally he spat upon +himself and reflected: “Gracious heavens! What rubbish I am talking!” + +“Pardon me,” went on his interlocutor, “but I do not quite understand +you. Is Tientietnikov producing a history of a given period, or only a +history made up of a series of biographies? Also, is he including ALL +our Generals, or only those who took part in the campaign of 1812?” + +“The latter, your Excellency--only the Generals of 1812,” replied +Chichikov. Then he added beneath his breath: “Were I to be killed for +it, I could not say what that may be supposed to mean.” + +“Then why should he not come and see me in person?” went on his +host. “Possibly I might be able to furnish him with much interesting +material?” + +“He is afraid to come, your Excellency.” + +“Nonsense! Just because of a hasty word or two! I am not that sort of +man at all. In fact, I should be very happy to call upon HIM.” + +“Never would he permit that, your Excellency. He would greatly prefer to +be the first to make advances.” And Chichikov added to himself: “What a +stroke of luck those Generals were! Otherwise, the Lord knows where my +tongue might have landed me!” + +At this moment the door into the adjoining room opened, and there +appeared in the doorway a girl as fair as a ray of the sun--so fair, +indeed, that Chichikov stared at her in amazement. Apparently she had +come to speak to her father for a moment, but had stopped short on +perceiving that there was some one with him. The only fault to be +found in her appearance was the fact that she was too thin and +fragile-looking. + +“May I introduce you to my little pet?” said the General to Chichikov. +“To tell you the truth, I do not know your name.” + +“That you should be unacquainted with the name of one who has never +distinguished himself in the manner of which you yourself can boast is +scarcely to be wondered at.” And Chichikov executed one of his sidelong, +deferential bows. + +“Well, I should be delighted to know it.” + +“It is Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov, your Excellency.” With that went +the easy bow of a military man and the agile backward movement of an +india-rubber ball. + +“Ulinka, this is Paul Ivanovitch,” said the General, turning to his +daughter. “He has just told me some interesting news--namely, that +our neighbour Tientietnikov is not altogether the fool we had at first +thought him. On the contrary, he is engaged upon a very important +work--upon a history of the Russian Generals of 1812.” + +“But who ever supposed him to be a fool?” asked the girl quickly. “What +happened was that you took Vishnepokromov’s word--the word of a man who +is himself both a fool and a good-for-nothing.” + +“Well, well,” said the father after further good-natured dispute on the +subject of Vishnepokromov. “Do you now run away, for I wish to dress for +luncheon. And you, sir,” he added to Chichikov, “will you not join us at +table?” + +Chichikov bowed so low and so long that, by the time that his eyes had +ceased to see nothing but his own boots, the General’s daughter had +disappeared, and in her place was standing a bewhiskered butler, armed +with a silver soap-dish and a hand-basin. + +“Do you mind if I wash in your presence?” asked the host. + +“By no means,” replied Chichikov. “Pray do whatsoever you please in that +respect.” + +Upon that the General fell to scrubbing himself--incidentally, to +sending soapsuds flying in every direction. Meanwhile he seemed so +favourably disposed that Chichikov decided to sound him then and there, +more especially since the butler had left the room. + +“May I put to you a problem?” he asked. + +“Certainly,” replied the General. “What is it?” + +“It is this, your Excellency. I have a decrepit old uncle who owns three +hundred souls and two thousand roubles-worth of other property. Also, +except for myself, he possesses not a single heir. Now, although his +infirm state of health will not permit of his managing his property in +person, he will not allow me either to manage it. And the reason for his +conduct--his very strange conduct--he states as follows: ‘I do not know +my nephew, and very likely he is a spendthrift. If he wishes to show me +that he is good for anything, let him go and acquire as many souls as +_I_ have acquired; and when he has done that I will transfer to him my +three hundred souls as well.” + +“The man must be an absolute fool,” commented the General. + +“Possibly. And were that all, things would not be as bad as they are. +But, unfortunately, my uncle has gone and taken up with his housekeeper, +and has had children by her. Consequently, everything will now pass to +THEM.” + +“The old man must have taken leave of his senses,” remarked the General. +“Yet how _I_ can help you I fail to see.” + +“Well, I have thought of a plan. If you will hand me over all the dead +souls on your estate--hand them over to me exactly as though they were +still alive, and were purchasable property--I will offer them to the old +man, and then he will leave me his fortune.” + +At this point the General burst into a roar of laughter such as few can +ever have heard. Half-dressed, he subsided into a chair, threw back his +head, and guffawed until he came near to choking. In fact, the house +shook with his merriment, so much so that the butler and his daughter +came running into the room in alarm. + +It was long before he could produce a single articulate word; and +even when he did so (to reassure his daughter and the butler) he kept +momentarily relapsing into spluttering chuckles which made the house +ring and ring again. + +Chichikov was greatly taken aback. + +“Oh, that uncle!” bellowed the General in paroxysms of mirth. “Oh, that +blessed uncle! WHAT a fool he’ll look! Ha, ha, ha! Dead souls offered +him instead of live ones! Oh, my goodness!” + +“I suppose I’ve put my foot in it again,” ruefully reflected Chichikov. +“But, good Lord, what a man the fellow is to laugh! Heaven send that he +doesn’t burst of it!” + +“Ha, ha, ha!” broke out the General afresh. “WHAT a donkey the old man +must be! To think of his saying to you: ‘You go and fit yourself out +with three hundred souls, and I’ll cap them with my own lot’! My word! +What a jackass!” + +“A jackass, your Excellency?” + +“Yes, indeed! And to think of the jest of putting him off with dead +souls! Ha, ha, ha! WHAT wouldn’t I give to see you handing him the title +deeds? Who is he? What is he like? Is he very old?” + +“He is eighty, your Excellency.” + +“But still brisk and able to move about, eh? Surely he must be pretty +strong to go on living with his housekeeper like that?” + +“Yes. But what does such strength mean? Sand runs away, your +Excellency.” + +“The old fool! But is he really such a fool?” + +“Yes, your Excellency.” + +“And does he go out at all? Does he see company? Can he still hold +himself upright?” + +“Yes, but with great difficulty.” + +“And has he any teeth left?” + +“No more than two at the most.” + +“The old jackass! Don’t be angry with me, but I must say that, though +your uncle, he is also a jackass.” + +“Quite so, your Excellency. And though it grieves ME to have to confess +that he is my uncle, what am I to do with him?” + +Yet this was not altogether the truth. What would have been a far harder +thing for Chichikov to have confessed was the fact that he possessed no +uncles at all. + +“I beg of you, your Excellency,” he went on, “to hand me over those, +those--” + +“Those dead souls, eh? Why, in return for the jest I will give you some +land as well. Yes, you can take the whole graveyard if you like. Ha, ha, +ha! The old man! Ha, ha, ha! WHAT a fool he’ll look! Ha, ha, ha!” + +And once more the General’s guffaws went ringing through the house. + + + [At this point there is a long hiatus in the original.] + + + +CHAPTER III + +“If Colonel Koshkarev should turn out to be as mad as the last one it +is a bad look-out,” said Chichikov to himself on opening his eyes amid +fields and open country--everything else having disappeared save the +vault of heaven and a couple of low-lying clouds. + +“Selifan,” he went on, “did you ask how to get to Colonel Koshkarev’s?” + +“Yes, Paul Ivanovitch. At least, there was such a clatter around the +koliaska that I could not; but Petrushka asked the coachman.” + +“You fool! How often have I told you not to rely on Petrushka? Petrushka +is a blockhead, an idiot. Besides, at the present moment I believe him +to be drunk.” + +“No, you are wrong, barin,” put in the person referred to, turning his +head with a sidelong glance. “After we get down the next hill we shall +need but to keep bending round it. That is all.” + +“Yes, and I suppose you’ll tell me that sivnkha is the only thing that +has passed your lips? Well, the view at least is beautiful. In fact, +when one has seen this place one may say that one has seen one of +the beauty spots of Europe.” This said, Chichikov added to himself, +smoothing his chin: “What a difference between the features of a +civilised man of the world and those of a common lacquey!” + +Meanwhile the koliaska quickened its pace, and Chichikov once more +caught sight of Tientietnikov’s aspen-studded meadows. Undulating gently +on elastic springs, the vehicle cautiously descended the steep incline, +and then proceeded past water-mills, rumbled over a bridge or two, and +jolted easily along the rough-set road which traversed the flats. Not a +molehill, not a mound jarred the spine. The vehicle was comfort itself. + +Swiftly there flew by clumps of osiers, slender elder trees, and +silver-leaved poplars, their branches brushing against Selifan and +Petrushka, and at intervals depriving the valet of his cap. Each time +that this happened, the sullen-faced servitor fell to cursing both the +tree responsible for the occurrence and the landowner responsible for +the tree being in existence; yet nothing would induce him thereafter +either to tie on the cap or to steady it with his hand, so complete was +his assurance that the accident would never be repeated. Soon to the +foregoing trees there became added an occasional birch or spruce fir, +while in the dense undergrowth around their roots could be seen the blue +iris and the yellow wood-tulip. Gradually the forest grew darker, as +though eventually the obscurity would become complete. Then through +the trunks and the boughs there began to gleam points of light like +glittering mirrors, and as the number of trees lessened, these points +grew larger, until the travellers debouched upon the shore of a lake +four versts or so in circumference, and having on its further margin +the grey, scattered log huts of a peasant village. In the water a great +commotion was in progress. In the first place, some twenty men, immersed +to the knee, to the breast, or to the neck, were dragging a large +fishing-net inshore, while, in the second place, there was entangled in +the same, in addition to some fish, a stout man shaped precisely like a +melon or a hogshead. Greatly excited, he was shouting at the top of his +voice: “Let Kosma manage it, you lout of a Denis! Kosma, take the end +of the rope from Denis! Don’t bear so hard on it, Thoma Bolshoy [41]! Go +where Thoma Menshov [42] is! Damn it, bring the net to land, will you!” + From this it became clear that it was not on his own account that the +stout man was worrying. Indeed, he had no need to do so, since his fat +would in any case have prevented him from sinking. Yes, even if he +had turned head over heels in an effort to dive, the water would +persistently have borne him up; and the same if, say, a couple of men +had jumped on his back--the only result would have been that he would +have become a trifle deeper submerged, and forced to draw breath by +spouting bubbles through his nose. No, the cause of his agitation was +lest the net should break, and the fish escape: wherefore he was urging +some additional peasants who were standing on the bank to lay hold of +and to pull at, an extra rope or two. + +“That must be the barin--Colonel Koshkarev,” said Selifan. + +“Why?” asked Chichikov. + +“Because, if you please, his skin is whiter than the rest, and he has +the respectable paunch of a gentleman.” + +Meanwhile good progress was being made with the hauling in of the barin; +until, feeling the ground with his feet, he rose to an upright position, +and at the same moment caught sight of the koliaska, with Chichikov +seated therein, descending the declivity. + +“Have you dined yet?” shouted the barin as, still entangled in the net, +he approached the shore with a huge fish on his back. With one hand +shading his eyes from the sun, and the other thrown backwards, he +looked, in point of pose, like the Medici Venus emerging from her bath. + +“No,” replied Chichikov, raising his cap, and executing a series of +bows. + +“Then thank God for that,” rejoined the gentleman. + +“Why?” asked Chichikov with no little curiosity, and still holding his +cap over his head. + +“Because of THIS. Cast off the net, Thoma Menshov, and pick up that +sturgeon for the gentleman to see. Go and help him, Telepen Kuzma.” + +With that the peasants indicated picked up by the head what was a +veritable monster of a fish. + +“Isn’t it a beauty--a sturgeon fresh run from the river?” exclaimed the +stout barin. “And now let us be off home. Coachman, you can take the +lower road through the kitchen garden. Run, you lout of a Thoma Bolshoy, +and open the gate for him. He will guide you to the house, and I myself +shall be along presently.” + +Thereupon the barelegged Thoma Bolshoy, clad in nothing but a shirt, +ran ahead of the koliaska through the village, every hut of which had +hanging in front of it a variety of nets, for the reason that every +inhabitant of the place was a fisherman. Next, he opened a gate into a +large vegetable enclosure, and thence the koliaska emerged into a square +near a wooden church, with, showing beyond the latter, the roofs of the +manorial homestead. + +“A queer fellow, that Koshkarev!” said Chichikov to himself. + +“Well, whatever I may be, at least I’m here,” said a voice by his side. +Chichikov looked round, and perceived that, in the meanwhile, the barin +had dressed himself and overtaken the carriage. With a pair of yellow +trousers he was wearing a grass-green jacket, and his neck was as +guiltless of a collar as Cupid’s. Also, as he sat sideways in his +drozhki, his bulk was such that he completely filled the vehicle. +Chichikov was about to make some remark or another when the stout +gentleman disappeared; and presently his drozhki re-emerged into view at +the spot where the fish had been drawn to land, and his voice could be +heard reiterating exhortations to his serfs. Yet when Chichikov reached +the verandah of the house he found, to his intense surprise, the stout +gentleman waiting to welcome the visitor. How he had contrived to +convey himself thither passed Chichikov’s comprehension. Host and guest +embraced three times, according to a bygone custom of Russia. Evidently +the barin was one of the old school. + +“I bring you,” said Chichikov, “a greeting from his Excellency.” + +“From whom?” + +“From your relative General Alexander Dmitrievitch.” + +“Who is Alexander Dmitrievitch?” + +“What? You do not know General Alexander Dmitrievitch Betrishev?” + exclaimed Chichikov with a touch of surprise. + +“No, I do not,” replied the gentleman. + +Chichikov’s surprise grew to absolute astonishment. + +“How comes that about?” he ejaculated. “I hope that I have the honour of +addressing Colonel Koshkarev?” + +“Your hopes are vain. It is to my house, not to his, that you have come; +and I am Peter Petrovitch Pietukh--yes, Peter Petrovitch Pietukh.” + +Chichikov, dumbfounded, turned to Selifan and Petrushka. + +“What do you mean?” he exclaimed. “I told you to drive to the house +of Colonel Koshkarev, whereas you have brought me to that of Peter +Petrovitch Pietukh.” + +“All the same, your fellows have done quite right,” put in the gentleman +referred to. “Do you” (this to Selifan and Petrushka) “go to the +kitchen, where they will give you a glassful of vodka apiece. Then put +up the horses, and be off to the servants’ quarters.” + +“I regret the mistake extremely,” said Chichikov. + +“But it is not a mistake. When you have tried the dinner which I have in +store for you, just see whether you think IT a mistake. Enter, I beg of +you.” And, taking Chichikov by the arm, the host conducted him within, +where they were met by a couple of youths. + +“Let me introduce my two sons, home for their holidays from the +Gymnasium [43],” said Pietukh. “Nikolasha, come and entertain our +good visitor, while you, Aleksasha, follow me.” And with that the host +disappeared. + +Chichikov turned to Nikolasha, whom he found to be a budding man about +town, since at first he opened a conversation by stating that, as no +good was to be derived from studying at a provincial institution, he and +his brother desired to remove, rather, to St. Petersburg, the provinces +not being worth living in. + +“I quite understand,” Chichikov thought to himself. “The end of the +chapter will be confectioners’ assistants and the boulevards.” + +“Tell me,” he added aloud, “how does your father’s property at present +stand?” + +“It is all mortgaged,” put in the father himself as he re-entered the +room. “Yes, it is all mortgaged, every bit of it.” + +“What a pity!” thought Chichikov. “At this rate it will not be long +before this man has no property at all left. I must hurry my departure.” + Aloud he said with an air of sympathy: “That you have mortgaged the +estate seems to me a matter of regret.” + +“No, not at all,” replied Pietukh. “In fact, they tell me that it is a +good thing to do, and that every one else is doing it. Why should I act +differently from my neighbours? Moreover, I have had enough of living +here, and should like to try Moscow--more especially since my sons are +always begging me to give them a metropolitan education.” + +“Oh, the fool, the fool!” reflected Chichikov. “He is for throwing +up everything and making spendthrifts of his sons. Yet this is a nice +property, and it is clear that the local peasants are doing well, and +that the family, too, is comfortably off. On the other hand, as soon as +ever these lads begin their education in restaurants and theatres, the +devil will away with every stick of their substance. For my own part, I +could desire nothing better than this quiet life in the country.” + +“Let me guess what is in your mind,” said Pietukh. + +“What, then?” asked Chichikov, rather taken aback. + +“You are thinking to yourself: ‘That fool of a Pietukh has asked me to +dinner, yet not a bite of dinner do I see.’ But wait a little. It will +be ready presently, for it is being cooked as fast as a maiden who has +had her hair cut off plaits herself a new set of tresses.” + +“Here comes Platon Mikhalitch, father!” exclaimed Aleksasha, who had +been peeping out of the window. + +“Yes, and on a grey horse,” added his brother. + +“Who is Platon Mikhalitch?” inquired Chichikov. + +“A neighbour of ours, and an excellent fellow.” + +The next moment Platon Mikhalitch himself entered the room, accompanied +by a sporting dog named Yarb. He was a tall, handsome man, with +extremely red hair. As for his companion, it was of the keen-muzzled +species used for shooting. + +“Have you dined yet?” asked the host. + +“Yes,” replied Platon. + +“Indeed? What do you mean by coming here to laugh at us all? Do I ever +go to YOUR place after dinner?” + +The newcomer smiled. “Well, if it can bring you any comfort,” he said, +“let me tell you that I ate nothing at the meal, for I had no appetite.” + +“But you should see what I have caught--what sort of a sturgeon fate has +brought my way! Yes, and what crucians and carp!” + +“Really it tires one to hear you. How come you always to be so +cheerful?” + +“And how come YOU always to be so gloomy?” retorted the host. + +“How, you ask? Simply because I am so.” + +“The truth is you don’t eat enough. Try the plan of making a good +dinner. Weariness of everything is a modern invention. Once upon a time +one never heard of it.” + +“Well, boast away, but have you yourself never been tired of things?” + +“Never in my life. I do not so much as know whether I should find time +to be tired. In the morning, when one awakes, the cook is waiting, and +the dinner has to be ordered. Then one drinks one’s morning tea, and +then the bailiff arrives for HIS orders, and then there is fishing to be +done, and then one’s dinner has to be eaten. Next, before one has even +had a chance to utter a snore, there enters once again the cook, and one +has to order supper; and when she has departed, behold, back she comes +with a request for the following day’s dinner! What time does THAT leave +one to be weary of things?” + +Throughout this conversation, Chichikov had been taking stock of +the newcomer, who astonished him with his good looks, his upright, +picturesque figure, his appearance of fresh, unwasted youthfulness, +and the boyish purity, innocence, and clarity of his features. Neither +passion nor care nor aught of the nature of agitation or anxiety of mind +had ventured to touch his unsullied face, or to lay a single wrinkle +thereon. Yet the touch of life which those emotions might have imparted +was wanting. The face was, as it were, dreaming, even though from time +to time an ironical smile disturbed it. + +“I, too, cannot understand,” remarked Chichikov, “how a man of your +appearance can find things wearisome. Of course, if a man is hard +pressed for money, or if he has enemies who are lying in wait for his +life (as have certain folk of whom I know), well, then--” + +“Believe me when I say,” interrupted the handsome guest, “that, for the +sake of a diversion, I should be glad of ANY sort of an anxiety. Would +that some enemy would conceive a grudge against me! But no one does so. +Everything remains eternally dull.” + +“But perhaps you lack a sufficiency of land or souls?” + +“Not at all. I and my brother own ten thousand desiatins [44] of land, +and over a thousand souls.” + +“Curious! I do not understand it. But perhaps the harvest has failed, +or you have sickness about, and many of your male peasants have died of +it?” + +“On the contrary, everything is in splendid order, for my brother is the +best of managers.” + +“Then to find things wearisome!” exclaimed Chichikov. “It passes my +comprehension.” And he shrugged his shoulders. + +“Well, we will soon put weariness to flight,” interrupted the host. +“Aleksasha, do you run helter-skelter to the kitchen, and there tell +the cook to serve the fish pasties. Yes, and where have that gawk of an +Emelian and that thief of an Antoshka got to? Why have they not handed +round the zakuski?” + +At this moment the door opened, and the “gawk” and the “thief” in +question made their appearance with napkins and a tray--the latter +bearing six decanters of variously-coloured beverages. These they placed +upon the table, and then ringed them about with glasses and platefuls +of every conceivable kind of appetiser. That done, the servants applied +themselves to bringing in various comestibles under covers, through +which could be heard the hissing of hot roast viands. In particular +did the “gawk” and the “thief” work hard at their tasks. As a matter +of fact, their appellations had been given them merely to spur them to +greater activity, for, in general, the barin was no lover of abuse, but, +rather, a kind-hearted man who, like most Russians, could not get on +without a sharp word or two. That is to say, he needed them for his +tongue as he need a glass of vodka for his digestion. What else could +you expect? It was his nature to care for nothing mild. + +To the zakuski succeeded the meal itself, and the host became a perfect +glutton on his guests’ behalf. Should he notice that a guest had taken +but a single piece of a comestible, he added thereto another one, +saying: “Without a mate, neither man nor bird can live in this world.” + Should any one take two pieces, he added thereto a third, saying: “What +is the good of the number 2? God loves a trinity.” Should any one +take three pieces, he would say: “Where do you see a waggon with three +wheels? Who builds a three-cornered hut?” Lastly, should any one take +four pieces, he would cap them with a fifth, and add thereto the punning +quip, “Na piat opiat [45]”. After devouring at least twelve steaks +of sturgeon, Chichikov ventured to think to himself, “My host cannot +possibly add to THEM,” but found that he was mistaken, for, without a +word, Pietukh heaped upon his plate an enormous portion of spit-roasted +veal, and also some kidneys. And what veal it was! + +“That calf was fed two years on milk,” he explained. “I cared for it +like my own son.” + +“Nevertheless I can eat no more,” said Chichikov. + +“Do you try the veal before you say that you can eat no more.” + +“But I could not get it down my throat. There is no room left.” + +“If there be no room in a church for a newcomer, the beadle is sent for, +and room is very soon made--yes, even though before there was such a +crush that an apple couldn’t have been dropped between the people. Do +you try the veal, I say. That piece is the titbit of all.” + +So Chichikov made the attempt; and in very truth the veal was beyond all +praise, and room was found for it, even though one would have supposed +the feat impossible. + +“Fancy this good fellow removing to St. Petersburg or Moscow!” said the +guest to himself. “Why, with a scale of living like this, he would be +ruined in three years.” For that matter, Pietukh might well have been +ruined already, for hospitality can dissipate a fortune in three months +as easily as it can in three years. + +The host also dispensed the wine with a lavish hand, and what the guests +did not drink he gave to his sons, who thus swallowed glass after glass. +Indeed, even before coming to table, it was possible to discern to what +department of human accomplishment their bent was turned. When the meal +was over, however, the guests had no mind for further drinking. Indeed, +it was all that they could do to drag themselves on to the balcony, +and there to relapse into easy chairs. Indeed, the moment that the host +subsided into his seat--it was large enough for four--he fell asleep, +and his portly presence, converting itself into a sort of blacksmith’s +bellows, started to vent, through open mouth and distended nostrils, +such sounds as can have greeted the reader’s ear but seldom--sounds as +of a drum being beaten in combination with the whistling of a flute and +the strident howling of a dog. + +“Listen to him!” said Platon. + +Chichikov smiled. + +“Naturally, on such dinners as that,” continued the other, “our host +does NOT find the time dull. And as soon as dinner is ended there can +ensue sleep.” + +“Yes, but, pardon me, I still fail to understand why you should find +life wearisome. There are so many resources against ennui!” + +“As for instance?” + +“For a young man, dancing, the playing of one or another musical +instrument, and--well, yes, marriage.” + +“Marriage to whom?” + +“To some maiden who is both charming and rich. Are there none in these +parts?” + +“No.” + +“Then, were I you, I should travel, and seek a maiden elsewhere.” And a +brilliant idea therewith entered Chichikov’s head. “This last resource,” + he added, “is the best of all resources against ennui.” + +“What resource are you speaking of?” + +“Of travel.” + +“But whither?” + +“Well, should it so please you, you might join me as my companion.” This +said, the speaker added to himself as he eyed Platon: “Yes, that would +suit me exactly, for then I should have half my expenses paid, and could +charge him also with the cost of mending the koliaska.” + +“And whither should we go?” + +“In that respect I am not wholly my own master, as I have business to do +for others as well as for myself. For instance, General Betristchev--an +intimate friend and, I might add, a generous benefactor of mine--has +charged me with commissions to certain of his relatives. However, though +relatives are relatives, I am travelling likewise on my own account, +since I wish to see the world and the whirligig of humanity--which, in +spite of what people may say, is as good as a living book or a second +education.” As a matter of fact, Chichikov was reflecting, “Yes, the +plan is an excellent one. I might even contrive that he should have to +bear the whole of our expenses, and that his horses should be used while +my own should be put out to graze on his farm.” + +“Well, why should I not adopt the suggestion?” was Platon’s thought. +“There is nothing for me to do at home, since the management of the +estate is in my brother’s hands, and my going would cause him no +inconvenience. Yes, why should I not do as Chichikov has suggested?” + +Then he added aloud: + +“Would you come and stay with my brother for a couple of days? Otherwise +he might refuse me his consent.” + +“With great pleasure,” said Chichikov. “Or even for three days.” + +“Then here is my hand on it. Let us be off at once.” Platon seemed +suddenly to have come to life again. + +“Where are you off to?” put in their host unexpectedly as he roused +himself and stared in astonishment at the pair. “No, no, my good sirs. I +have had the wheels removed from your koliaska, Monsieur Chichikov, and +have sent your horse, Platon Mikhalitch, to a grazing ground fifteen +versts away. Consequently you must spend the night here, and depart +to-morrow morning after breakfast.” + +What could be done with a man like Pietukh? There was no help for it but +to remain. In return, the guests were rewarded with a beautiful spring +evening, for, to spend the time, the host organised a boating expedition +on the river, and a dozen rowers, with a dozen pairs of oars, conveyed +the party (to the accompaniment of song) across the smooth surface of +the lake and up a great river with towering banks. From time to time the +boat would pass under ropes, stretched across for purposes of fishing, +and at each turn of the rippling current new vistas unfolded themselves +as tier upon tier of woodland delighted the eye with a diversity of +timber and foliage. In unison did the rowers ply their sculls, yet it +was though of itself that the skiff shot forward, bird-like, over the +glassy surface of the water; while at intervals the broad-shouldered +young oarsman who was seated third from the bow would raise, as from +a nightingale’s throat, the opening staves of a boat song, and then be +joined by five or six more, until the melody had come to pour forth in a +volume as free and boundless as Russia herself. And Pietukh, too, would +give himself a shake, and help lustily to support the chorus; and even +Chichikov felt acutely conscious of the fact that he was a Russian. Only +Platon reflected: “What is there so splendid in these melancholy songs? +They do but increase one’s depression of spirits.” + +The journey homeward was made in the gathering dusk. Rhythmically the +oars smote a surface which no longer reflected the sky, and darkness had +fallen when they reached the shore, along which lights were twinkling +where the fisherfolk were boiling live eels for soup. Everything had now +wended its way homeward for the night; the cattle and poultry had +been housed, and the herdsmen, standing at the gates of the village +cattle-pens, amid the trailing dust lately raised by their charges, +were awaiting the milk-pails and a summons to partake of the eel-broth. +Through the dusk came the hum of humankind, and the barking of dogs in +other and more distant villages; while, over all, the moon was rising, +and the darkened countryside was beginning to glimmer to light again +under her beams. What a glorious picture! Yet no one thought of admiring +it. Instead of galloping over the countryside on frisky cobs, +Nikolasha and Aleksasha were engaged in dreaming of Moscow, with its +confectioners’ shops and the theatres of which a cadet, newly arrived on +a visit from the capital, had just been telling them; while their father +had his mind full of how best to stuff his guests with yet more food, +and Platon was given up to yawning. Only in Chichikov was a spice of +animation visible. “Yes,” he reflected, “some day I, too, will become +lord of such a country place.” And before his mind’s eye there arose +also a helpmeet and some little Chichikovs. + +By the time that supper was finished the party had again over-eaten +themselves, and when Chichikov entered the room allotted him for the +night, he lay down upon the bed, and prodded his stomach. “It is as +tight as a drum,” he said to himself. “Not another titbit of veal could +now get into it.” Also, circumstances had so brought it about that +next door to him there was situated his host’s apartment; and since the +intervening wall was thin, Chichikov could hear every word that was +said there. At the present moment the master of the house was engaged in +giving the cook orders for what, under the guise of an early breakfast, +promised to constitute a veritable dinner. You should have heard +Pietukh’s behests! They would have excited the appetite of a corpse. + +“Yes,” he said, sucking his lips, and drawing a deep breath, “in the +first place, make a pasty in four divisions. Into one of the divisions +put the sturgeon’s cheeks and some viaziga [46], and into another +division some buckwheat porridge, young mushrooms and onions, +sweet milk, calves’ brains, and anything else that you may find +suitable--anything else that you may have got handy. Also, bake the +pastry to a nice brown on one side, and but lightly on the other. Yes, +and, as to the under side, bake it so that it will be all juicy and +flaky, so that it shall not crumble into bits, but melt in the mouth +like the softest snow that ever you heard of.” And as he said this +Pietukh fairly smacked his lips. + +“The devil take him!” muttered Chichikov, thrusting his head beneath the +bedclothes to avoid hearing more. “The fellow won’t give one a chance to +sleep.” + +Nevertheless he heard through the blankets: + +“And garnish the sturgeon with beetroot, smelts, peppered mushrooms, +young radishes, carrots, beans, and anything else you like, so as to +have plenty of trimmings. Yes, and put a lump of ice into the pig’s +bladder, so as to swell it up.” + +Many other dishes did Pietukh order, and nothing was to be heard but +his talk of boiling, roasting, and stewing. Finally, just as mention was +being made of a turkey cock, Chichikov fell asleep. + +Next morning the guest’s state of repletion had reached the point +of Platon being unable to mount his horse; wherefore the latter was +dispatched homeward with one of Pietukh’s grooms, and the two guests +entered Chichikov’s koliaska. Even the dog trotted lazily in the rear; +for he, too, had over-eaten himself. + +“It has been rather too much of a good thing,” remarked Chichikov as the +vehicle issued from the courtyard. + +“Yes, and it vexes me to see the fellow never tire of it,” replied +Platon. + +“Ah,” thought Chichikov to himself, “if _I_ had an income of seventy +thousand roubles, as you have, I’d very soon give tiredness one in +the eye! Take Murazov, the tax-farmer--he, again, must be worth ten +millions. What a fortune!” + +“Do you mind where we drive?” asked Platon. “I should like first to go +and take leave of my sister and my brother-in-law.” + +“With pleasure,” said Chichikov. + +“My brother-in-law is the leading landowner hereabouts. At the present +moment he is drawing an income of two hundred thousand roubles from a +property which, eight years ago, was producing a bare twenty thousand.” + +“Truly a man worthy of the utmost respect! I shall be most interested to +make his acquaintance. To think of it! And what may his family name be?” + +“Kostanzhoglo.” + +“And his Christian name and patronymic?” + +“Constantine Thedorovitch.” + +“Constantine Thedorovitch Kostanzhoglo. Yes, it will be a most +interesting event to make his acquaintance. To know such a man must be a +whole education.” + +Here Platon set himself to give Selifan some directions as to the way, +a necessary proceeding in view of the fact that Selifan could hardly +maintain his seat on the box. Twice Petrushka, too, had fallen headlong, +and this necessitated being tied to his perch with a piece of rope. +“What a clown!” had been Chichikov’s only comment. + +“This is where my brother-in-law’s land begins,” said Platon. + +“They give one a change of view.” + +And, indeed, from this point the countryside became planted with timber; +the rows of trees running as straight as pistol-shots, and having beyond +them, and on higher ground, a second expanse of forest, newly planted +like the first; while beyond it, again, loomed a third plantation of +older trees. Next there succeeded a flat piece of the same nature. + +“All this timber,” said Platon, “has grown up within eight or ten years +at the most; whereas on another man’s land it would have taken twenty to +attain the same growth.” + +“And how has your brother-in-law effected this?” + +“You must ask him yourself. He is so excellent a husbandman that nothing +ever fails with him. You see, he knows the soil, and also knows what +ought to be planted beside what, and what kinds of timber are the best +neighbourhood for grain. Again, everything on his estate is made to +perform at least three or four different functions. For instance, he +makes his timber not only serve as timber, but also serve as a provider +of moisture and shade to a given stretch of land, and then as a +fertiliser with its fallen leaves. Consequently, when everywhere else +there is drought, he still has water, and when everywhere else there +has been a failure of the harvest, on his lands it will have proved a +success. But it is a pity that I know so little about it all as to be +unable to explain to you his many expedients. Folk call him a wizard, +for he produces so much. Nevertheless, personally I find what he does +uninteresting.” + +“Truly an astonishing fellow!” reflected Chichikov with a glance at his +companion. “It is sad indeed to see a man so superficial as to be unable +to explain matters of this kind.” + +At length the manor appeared in sight--an establishment looking almost +like a town, so numerous were the huts where they stood arranged in +three tiers, crowned with three churches, and surrounded with huge ricks +and barns. “Yes,” thought Chichikov to himself, “one can see what a +jewel of a landowner lives here.” The huts in question were stoutly +built and the intervening alleys well laid-out; while, wherever a waggon +was visible, it looked serviceable and more or less new. Also, the local +peasants bore an intelligent look on their faces, the cattle were of the +best possible breed, and even the peasants’ pigs belonged to the porcine +aristocracy. Clearly there dwelt here peasants who, to quote the +song, were accustomed to “pick up silver by the shovelful.” Nor were +Englishified gardens and parterres and other conceits in evidence, but, +on the contrary, there ran an open view from the manor house to the +farm buildings and the workmen’s cots, so that, after the old Russian +fashion, the barin should be able to keep an eye upon all that was going +on around him. For the same purpose, the mansion was topped with a tall +lantern and a superstructure--a device designed, not for ornament, +nor for a vantage-spot for the contemplation of the view, but for +supervision of the labourers engaged in distant fields. Lastly, the +brisk, active servants who received the visitors on the verandah were +very different menials from the drunken Petrushka, even though they did +not wear swallow-tailed coats, but only Cossack tchekmenu [47] of blue +homespun cloth. + +The lady of the house also issued on to the verandah. With her face of +the freshness of “blood and milk” and the brightness of God’s daylight, +she as nearly resembled Platon as one pea resembles another, save that, +whereas he was languid, she was cheerful and full of talk. + +“Good day, brother!” she cried. “How glad I am to see you! Constantine +is not at home, but will be back presently.” + +“Where is he?” + +“Doing business in the village with a party of factors,” replied the +lady as she conducted her guests to the drawing-room. + +With no little curiosity did Chichikov gaze at the interior of the +mansion inhabited by the man who received an annual income of two +hundred thousand roubles; for he thought to discern therefrom the nature +of its proprietor, even as from a shell one may deduce the species of +oyster or snail which has been its tenant, and has left therein its +impression. But no such conclusions were to be drawn. The rooms were +simple, and even bare. Not a fresco nor a picture nor a bronze nor a +flower nor a china what-not nor a book was there to be seen. In short, +everything appeared to show that the proprietor of this abode spent the +greater part of his time, not between four walls, but in the field, and +that he thought out his plans, not in sybaritic fashion by the fireside, +nor in an easy chair beside the stove, but on the spot where work was +actually in progress--that, in a word, where those plans were conceived, +there they were put into execution. Nor in these rooms could Chichikov +detect the least trace of a feminine hand, beyond the fact that +certain tables and chairs bore drying-boards whereon were arranged some +sprinklings of flower petals. + +“What is all this rubbish for?” asked Platon. + +“It is not rubbish,” replied the lady of the house. “On the contrary, it +is the best possible remedy for fever. Last year we cured every one of +our sick peasants with it. Some of the petals I am going to make into an +ointment, and some into an infusion. You may laugh as much as you like +at my potting and preserving, yet you yourself will be glad of things of +the kind when you set out on your travels.” + +Platon moved to the piano, and began to pick out a note or two. + +“Good Lord, what an ancient instrument!” he exclaimed. “Are you not +ashamed of it, sister?” + +“Well, the truth is that I get no time to practice my music. You see,” + she added to Chichikov, “I have an eight-year-old daughter to educate; +and to hand her over to a foreign governess in order that I may have +leisure for my own piano-playing--well, that is a thing which I could +never bring myself to do.” + +“You have become a wearisome sort of person,” commented Platon, and +walked away to the window. “Ah, here comes Constantine,” presently he +added. + +Chichikov also glanced out of the window, and saw approaching the +verandah a brisk, swarthy-complexioned man of about forty, a man clad in +a rough cloth jacket and a velveteen cap. Evidently he was one of those +who care little for the niceties of dress. With him, bareheaded, there +came a couple of men of a somewhat lower station in life, and all +three were engaged in an animated discussion. One of the barin’s two +companions was a plain peasant, and the other (clad in a blue Siberian +smock) a travelling factor. The fact that the party halted awhile by +the entrance steps made it possible to overhear a portion of their +conversation from within. + +“This is what you peasants had better do,” the barin was saying. +“Purchase your release from your present master. I will lend you the +necessary money, and afterwards you can work for me.” + +“No, Constantine Thedorovitch,” replied the peasant. “Why should we do +that? Remove us just as we are. You will know how to arrange it, for a +cleverer gentleman than you is nowhere to be found. The misfortune of us +muzhiks is that we cannot protect ourselves properly. The tavern-keepers +sell us such liquor that, before a man knows where he is, a glassful of +it has eaten a hole through his stomach, and made him feel as though +he could drink a pail of water. Yes, it knocks a man over before he can +look around. Everywhere temptation lies in wait for the peasant, and he +needs to be cunning if he is to get through the world at all. In fact, +things seem to be contrived for nothing but to make us peasants lose +our wits, even to the tobacco which they sell us. What are folk like +ourselves to do, Constantine Thedorovitch? I tell you it is terribly +difficult for a muzhik to look after himself.” + +“Listen to me. This is how things are done here. When I take on a serf, +I fit him out with a cow and a horse. On the other hand, I demand of him +thereafter more than is demanded of a peasant anywhere else. That is to +say, first and foremost I make him work. Whether a peasant be working +for himself or for me, never do I let him waste time. I myself toil like +a bullock, and I force my peasants to do the same, for experience +has taught me that that is the only way to get through life. All the +mischief in the world comes through lack of employment. Now, do you go +and consider the matter, and talk it over with your mir [48].” + +“We have done that already, Constantine Thedorovitch, and our elders’ +opinion is: ‘There is no need for further talk. Every peasant belonging +to Constantine Thedorovitch is well off, and hasn’t to work for nothing. +The priests of his village, too, are men of good heart, whereas ours +have been taken away, and there is no one to bury us.’” + +“Nevertheless, do you go and talk the matter over again.” + +“We will, barin.” + +Here the factor who had been walking on the barin’s other side put in a +word. + +“Constantine Thedorovitch,” he said, “I beg of you to do as I have +requested.” + +“I have told you before,” replied the barin, “that I do not care to play +the huckster. I am not one of those landowners whom fellows of your sort +visit on the very day that the interest on a mortgage is due. Ah, I know +your fraternity thoroughly, and know that you keep lists of all who have +mortgages to repay. But what is there so clever about that? Any man, +if you pinch him sufficiently, will surrender you a mortgage at +half-price,--any man, that is to say, except myself, who care nothing +for your money. Were a loan of mine to remain out three years, I should +never demand a kopeck of interest on it.” + +“Quite so, Constantine Thedorovitch,” replied the factor. “But I am +asking this of you more for the purpose of establishing us on a business +footing than because I desire to win your favour. Prey, therefore, +accept this earnest money of three thousand roubles.” And the man drew +from his breast pocket a dirty roll of bank-notes, which, carelessly +receiving, Kostanzhoglo thrust, uncounted, into the back pocket of his +overcoat. + +“Hm!” thought Chichikov. “For all he cares, the notes might have been a +handkerchief.” + +When Kostanzhoglo appeared at closer quarters--that is to say, in the +doorway of the drawing-room--he struck Chichikov more than ever with the +swarthiness of his complexion, the dishevelment of his black, slightly +grizzled locks, the alertness of his eye, and the impression of fiery +southern origin which his whole personality diffused. For he was not +wholly a Russian, nor could he himself say precisely who his forefathers +had been. Yet, inasmuch as he accounted genealogical research no part of +the science of estate-management, but a mere superfluity, he looked upon +himself as, to all intents and purposes, a native of Russia, and the +more so since the Russian language was the only tongue he knew. + +Platon presented Chichikov, and the pair exchanged greetings. + +“To get rid of my depression, Constantine,” continued Platon, “I am +thinking of accompanying our guest on a tour through a few of the +provinces.” + +“An excellent idea,” said Kostanzhoglo. “But precisely whither?” he +added, turning hospitably to Chichikov. + +“To tell you the truth,” replied that personage with an affable +inclination of the head as he smoothed the arm of his chair with his +hand, “I am travelling less on my own affairs than on the affairs of +others. That is to say, General Betristchev, an intimate friend, and, +I might add, a generous benefactor, of mine, has charged me with +commissions to some of his relatives. Nevertheless, though relatives are +relatives, I may say that I am travelling on my own account as well, in +that, in addition to possible benefit to my health, I desire to see the +world and the whirligig of humanity, which constitute, so to speak, a +living book, a second course of education.” + +“Yes, there is no harm in looking at other corners of the world besides +one’s own.” + +“You speak truly. There IS no harm in such a proceeding. Thereby one may +see things which one has not before encountered, one may meet men with +whom one has not before come in contact. And with some men of that kind +a conversation is as precious a benefit as has been conferred upon me +by the present occasion. I come to you, most worthy Constantine +Thedorovitch, for instruction, and again for instruction, and beg of you +to assuage my thirst with an exposition of the truth as it is. I hunger +for the favour of your words as for manna.” + +“But how so? What can _I_ teach you?” exclaimed Kostanzhoglo in +confusion. “I myself was given but the plainest of educations.” + +“Nay, most worthy sir, you possess wisdom, and again wisdom. Wisdom only +can direct the management of a great estate, that can derive a +sound income from the same, that can acquire wealth of a real, not a +fictitious, order while also fulfilling the duties of a citizen and +thereby earning the respect of the Russian public. All this I pray you +to teach me.” + +“I tell you what,” said Kostanzhoglo, looking meditatively at his guest. +“You had better stay with me for a few days, and during that time I can +show you how things are managed here, and explain to you everything. +Then you will see for yourself that no great wisdom is required for the +purpose.” + +“Yes, certainly you must stay here,” put in the lady of the house. Then, +turning to her brother, she added: “And you too must stay. Why should +you be in such a hurry?” + +“Very well,” he replied. “But what say YOU, Paul Ivanovitch?” + +“I say the same as you, and with much pleasure,” replied Chichikov. +“But also I ought to tell you this: that there is a relative of General +Betristchev’s, a certain Colonel Koshkarev--” + +“Yes, we know him; but he is quite mad.” + +“As you say, he is mad, and I should not have been intending to visit +him, were it not that General Betristchev is an intimate friend of mine, +as well as, I might add, my most generous benefactor.” + +“Then,” said Kostanzhoglo, “do you go and see Colonel Koshkarev NOW. +He lives less than ten versts from here, and I have a gig already +harnessed. Go to him at once, and return here for tea.” + +“An excellent idea!” cried Chichikov, and with that he seized his cap. + +Half an hour’s drive sufficed to bring him to the Colonel’s +establishment. The village attached to the manor was in a state of utter +confusion, since in every direction building and repairing operations +were in progress, and the alleys were choked with heaps of lime, bricks, +and beams of wood. Also, some of the huts were arranged to resemble +offices, and superscribed in gilt letters “Depot for Agricultural +Implements,” “Chief Office of Accounts,” “Estate Works Committee,” + “Normal School for the Education of Colonists,” and so forth. + +Chichikov found the Colonel posted behind a desk and holding a pen +between his teeth. Without an instant’s delay the master of the +establishment--who seemed a kindly, approachable man, and accorded to +his visitor a very civil welcome--plunged into a recital of the labour +which it had cost him to bring the property to its present condition of +affluence. Then he went on to lament the fact that he could not make +his peasantry understand the incentives to labour which the riches +of science and art provide; for instance, he had failed to induce his +female serfs to wear corsets, whereas in Germany, where he had resided +for fourteen years, every humble miller’s daughter could play the piano. +None the less, he said, he meant to peg away until every peasant on +the estate should, as he walked behind the plough, indulge in a regular +course of reading Franklin’s Notes on Electricity, Virgil’s Georgics, or +some work on the chemical properties of soil. + +“Good gracious!” mentally exclaimed Chichikov. “Why, I myself have not +had time to finish that book by the Duchesse de la Valliere!” + +Much else the Colonel said. In particular did he aver that, provided +the Russian peasant could be induced to array himself in German costume, +science would progress, trade increase, and the Golden Age dawn in +Russia. + +For a while Chichikov listened with distended eyes. Then he felt +constrained to intimate that with all that he had nothing to do, seeing +that his business was merely to acquire a few souls, and thereafter to +have their purchase confirmed. + +“If I understand you aright,” said the Colonel, “you wish to present a +Statement of Plea?” + +“Yes, that is so.” + +“Then kindly put it into writing, and it shall be forwarded to the +Office for the Reception of Reports and Returns. Thereafter that Office +will consider it, and return it to me, who will, in turn, dispatch it to +the Estate Works Committee, who will, in turn, revise it, and present it +to the Administrator, who, jointly with the Secretary, will--” + +“Pardon me,” expostulated Chichikov, “but that procedure will take up a +great deal of time. Why need I put the matter into writing at all? It is +simply this. I want a few souls which are--well, which are, so to speak, +dead.” + +“Very good,” commented the Colonel. “Do you write down in your Statement +of Plea that the souls which you desire are, ‘so to speak, dead.’” + +“But what would be the use of my doing so? Though the souls are dead, my +purpose requires that they should be represented as alive.” + +“Very good,” again commented the Colonel. “Do you write down in your +Statement that ‘it is necessary’ (or, should you prefer an alternative +phrase, ‘it is requested,’ or ‘it is desiderated,’ or ‘it is prayed,’) +‘that the souls be represented as alive.’ At all events, WITHOUT +documentary process of that kind, the matter cannot possibly be carried +through. Also, I will appoint a Commissioner to guide you round the +various Offices.” + +And he sounded a bell; whereupon there presented himself a man whom, +addressing as “Secretary,” the Colonel instructed to summon the +“Commissioner.” The latter, on appearing, was seen to have the air, half +of a peasant, half of an official. + +“This man,” the Colonel said to Chichikov, “will act as your escort.” + +What could be done with a lunatic like Koshkarev? In the end, curiosity +moved Chichikov to accompany the Commissioner. The Committee for the +Reception of Reports and Returns was discovered to have put up its +shutters, and to have locked its doors, for the reason that the Director +of the Committee had been transferred to the newly-formed Committee +of Estate Management, and his successor had been annexed by the same +Committee. Next, Chichikov and his escort rapped at the doors of the +Department of Estate Affairs; but that Department’s quarters happened to +be in a state of repair, and no one could be made to answer the +summons save a drunken peasant from whom not a word of sense was to be +extracted. At length the escort felt himself moved to remark: + +“There is a deal of foolishness going on here. Fellows like that +drunkard lead the barin by the nose, and everything is ruled by the +Committee of Management, which takes men from their proper work, and +sets them to do any other it likes. Indeed, only through the Committee +does ANYTHING get done.” + +By this time Chichikov felt that he had seen enough; wherefore he +returned to the Colonel, and informed him that the Office for the +Reception of Reports and Returns had ceased to exist. At once the +Colonel flamed to noble rage. Pressing Chichikov’s hand in token of +gratitude for the information which the guest had furnished, he took +paper and pen, and noted eight searching questions under three separate +headings: (1) “Why has the Committee of Management presumed to issue +orders to officials not under its jurisdiction?” (2) “Why has the Chief +Manager permitted his predecessor, though still in retention of his +post, to follow him to another Department?” and (3) “Why has the +Committee of Estate Affairs suffered the Office for the Reception of +Reports and Returns to lapse?” + +“Now for a row!” thought Chichikov to himself, and turned to depart; but +his host stopped him, saying: + +“I cannot let you go, for, in addition to my honour having become +involved, it behoves me to show my people how the regular, the +organised, administration of an estate may be conducted. Herewith I will +hand over the conduct of your affair to a man who is worth all the rest +of the staff put together, and has had a university education. Also, the +better to lose no time, may I humbly beg you to step into my library, +where you will find notebooks, paper, pens, and everything else that +you may require. Of these articles pray make full use, for you are +a gentleman of letters, and it is your and my joint duty to bring +enlightenment to all.” + +So saying, he ushered his guest into a large room lined from floor to +ceiling with books and stuffed specimens. The books in question +were divided into sections--a section on forestry, a section on +cattle-breeding, a section on the raising of swine, and a section on +horticulture, together with special journals of the type circulated +merely for the purposes of reference, and not for general reading. +Perceiving that these works were scarcely of a kind calculated to while +away an idle hour, Chichikov turned to a second bookcase. But to do so +was to fall out of the frying-pan into the fire, for the contents of the +second bookcase proved to be works on philosophy, while, in particular, +six huge volumes confronted him under a label inscribed “A Preparatory +Course to the Province of Thought, with the Theory of Community of +Effort, Co-operation, and Subsistence, in its Application to a Right +Understanding of the Organic Principles of a Mutual Division of +Social Productivity.” Indeed, wheresoever Chichikov looked, every page +presented to his vision some such words as “phenomenon,” “development,” + “abstract,” “contents,” and “synopsis.” “This is not the sort of thing +for me,” he murmured, and turned his attention to a third bookcase, +which contained books on the Arts. Extracting a huge tome in which some +by no means reticent mythological illustrations were contained, he set +himself to examine these pictures. They were of the kind which pleases +mostly middle-aged bachelors and old men who are accustomed to seek +in the ballet and similar frivolities a further spur to their waning +passions. Having concluded his examination, Chichikov had just extracted +another volume of the same species when Colonel Koshkarev returned with +a document of some sort and a radiant countenance. + +“Everything has been carried through in due form!” he cried. “The man +whom I mentioned is a genius indeed, and I intend not only to promote +him over the rest, but also to create for him a special Department. +Herewith shall you hear what a splendid intellect is his, and how in a +few minutes he has put the whole affair in order.” + +“May the Lord be thanked for that!” thought Chichikov. Then he settled +himself while the Colonel read aloud: + +“‘After giving full consideration to the Reference which your Excellency +has entrusted to me, I have the honour to report as follows: + +“‘(1) In the Statement of Plea presented by one Paul Ivanovitch +Chichikov, Gentleman, Chevalier, and Collegiate Councillor, there +lurks an error, in that an oversight has led the Petitioner to apply to +Revisional Souls the term “Dead.” Now, from the context it would appear +that by this term the Petitioner desires to signify Souls Approaching +Death rather than Souls Actually Deceased: wherefore the term employed +betrays such an empirical instruction in letters as must, beyond doubt, +have been confined to the Village School, seeing that in truth the Soul +is Deathless.’ + +“The rascal!” Koshkarev broke off to exclaim delightedly. “He has +got you there, Monsieur Chichikov. And you will admit that he has a +sufficiently incisive pen? + +“‘(2) On this Estate there exist no Unmortgaged Souls whatsoever, +whether Approaching Death or Otherwise; for the reason that all Souls +thereon have been pledged not only under a First Deed of Mortgage, but +also (for the sum of One Hundred and Fifty Roubles per Soul) under +a Second,--the village of Gurmailovka alone excepted, in that, +in consequence of a Suit having been brought against Landowner +Priadistchev, and of a caveat having been pronounced by the Land Court, +and of such caveat having been published in No. 42 of the Gazette of +Moscow, the said Village has come within the Jurisdiction of the Court +Above-Mentioned.” + +“Why did you not tell me all this before?” cried Chichikov furiously. +“Why you have kept me dancing about for nothing?” + +“Because it was absolutely necessary that you should view the matter +through forms of documentary process. This is no jest on my part. The +inexperienced may see things subconsciously, yet it is imperative that +he should also see them CONSCIOUSLY.” + +But to Chichikov’s patience an end had come. Seizing his cap, and +casting all ceremony to the winds, he fled from the house, and rushed +through the courtyard. As it happened, the man who had driven him +thither had, warned by experience, not troubled even to take out the +horses, since he knew that such a proceeding would have entailed not +only the presentation of a Statement of Plea for fodder, but also a +delay of twenty-four hours until the Resolution granting the same should +have been passed. Nevertheless the Colonel pursued his guest to the +gates, and pressed his hand warmly as he thanked him for having enabled +him (the Colonel) thus to exhibit in operation the proper management of +an estate. Also, he begged to state that, under the circumstances, it +was absolutely necessary to keep things moving and circulating, since, +otherwise, slackness was apt to supervene, and the working of the +machine to grow rusty and feeble; but that, in spite of all, the +present occasion had inspired him with a happy idea--namely, the idea +of instituting a Committee which should be entitled “The Committee of +Supervision of the Committee of Management,” and which should have +for its function the detection of backsliders among the body first +mentioned. + +It was late when, tired and dissatisfied, Chichikov regained +Kostanzhoglo’s mansion. Indeed, the candles had long been lit. + +“What has delayed you?” asked the master of the house as Chichikov +entered the drawing-room. + +“Yes, what has kept you and the Colonel so long in conversation +together?” added Platon. + +“This--the fact that never in my life have I come across such an +imbecile,” was Chichikov’s reply. + +“Never mind,” said Kostanzhoglo. “Koshkarev is a most reassuring +phenomenon. He is necessary in that in him we see expressed in +caricature all the more crying follies of our intellectuals--of the +intellectuals who, without first troubling to make themselves acquainted +with their own country, borrow silliness from abroad. Yet that is +how certain of our landowners are now carrying on. They have set up +‘offices’ and factories and schools and ‘commissions,’ and the devil +knows what else besides. A fine lot of wiseacres! After the French War +in 1812 they had to reconstruct their affairs: and see how they have +done it! Yet so much worse have they done it than a Frenchman would have +done that any fool of a Peter Petrovitch Pietukh now ranks as a good +landowner!” + +“But he has mortgaged the whole of his estate?” remarked Chichikov. + +“Yes, nowadays everything is being mortgaged, or is going to be.” This +said, Kostanzhoglo’s temper rose still further. “Out upon your factories +of hats and candles!” he cried. “Out upon procuring candle-makers +from London, and then turning landowners into hucksters! To think of +a Russian pomiestchik [49], a member of the noblest of callings, +conducting workshops and cotton mills! Why, it is for the wenches of +towns to handle looms for muslin and lace.” + +“But you yourself maintain workshops?” remarked Platon. + +“I do; but who established them? They established themselves. For +instance, wool had accumulated, and since I had nowhere to store it, I +began to weave it into cloth--but, mark you, only into good, plain cloth +of which I can dispose at a cheap rate in the local markets, and which +is needed by peasants, including my own. Again, for six years on end +did the fish factories keep dumping their offal on my bank of the river; +wherefore, at last, as there was nothing to be done with it, I took +to boiling it into glue, and cleared forty thousand roubles by the +process.” + +“The devil!” thought Chichikov to himself as he stared at his host. +“What a fist this man has for making money!” + +“Another reason why I started those factories,” continued Kostanzhoglo, +“is that they might give employment to many peasants who would otherwise +have starved. You see, the year happened to have been a lean one--thanks +to those same industry-mongering landowners, in that they had neglected +to sow their crops; and now my factories keep growing at the rate of +a factory a year, owing to the circumstance that such quantities +of remnants and cuttings become so accumulated that, if a man looks +carefully to his management, he will find every sort of rubbish to be +capable of bringing in a return--yes, to the point of his having to +reject money on the plea that he has no need of it. Yet I do not find +that to do all this I require to build a mansion with facades and +pillars!” + +“Marvellous!” exclaimed Chichikov. “Beyond all things does it surprise +me that refuse can be so utilised.” + +“Yes, and that is what can be done by SIMPLE methods. But nowadays every +one is a mechanic, and wants to open that money chest with an instrument +instead of simply. For that purpose he hies him to England. Yes, THAT is +the thing to do. What folly!” Kostanzhoglo spat and added: “Yet when +he returns from abroad he is a hundred times more ignorant than when he +went.” + +“Ah, Constantine,” put in his wife anxiously, “you know how bad for you +it is to talk like this.” + +“Yes, but how am I to help losing my temper? The thing touches me too +closely, it vexes me too deeply to think that the Russian character +should be degenerating. For in that character there has dawned a sort of +Quixotism which never used to be there. Yes, no sooner does a man get +a little education into his head than he becomes a Don Quixote, and +establishes schools on his estate such as even a madman would never have +dreamed of. And from that school there issues a workman who is good for +nothing, whether in the country or in the town--a fellow who drinks +and is for ever standing on his dignity. Yet still our landowners keep +taking to philanthropy, to converting themselves into philanthropic +knights-errant, and spending millions upon senseless hospitals and +institutions, and so ruining themselves and turning their families +adrift. Yes, that is all that comes of philanthropy.” + +Chichikov’s business had nothing to do with the spread of enlightenment, +he was but seeking an opportunity to inquire further concerning the +putting of refuse to lucrative uses; but Kostanzhoglo would not let +him get a word in edgeways, so irresistibly did the flow of sarcastic +comment pour from the speaker’s lips. + +“Yes,” went on Kostanzhoglo, “folk are always scheming to educate the +peasant. But first make him well-off and a good farmer. THEN he will +educate himself fast enough. As things are now, the world has grown +stupid to a degree that passes belief. Look at the stuff our present-day +scribblers write! Let any sort of a book be published, and at once you +will see every one making a rush for it. Similarly will you find +folk saying: ‘The peasant leads an over-simple life. He ought to be +familiarised with luxuries, and so led to yearn for things above his +station.’ And the result of such luxuries will be that the peasant will +become a rag rather than a man, and suffer from the devil only knows +what diseases, until there will remain in the land not a boy of eighteen +who will not have experienced the whole gamut of them, and found himself +left with not a tooth in his jaws or a hair on his pate. Yes, that is +what will come of infecting the peasant with such rubbish. But, thank +God, there is still one healthy class left to us--a class which has +never taken up with the ‘advantages’ of which I speak. For that we ought +to be grateful. And since, even yet, the Russian agriculturist remains +the most respect-worthy man in the land, why should he be touched? Would +to God every one were an agriculturist!” + +“Then you believe agriculture to be the most profitable of occupations?” + said Chichikov. + +“The best, at all events--if not the most profitable. ‘In the sweat +of thy brow shalt thou till the land.’ To quote that requires no +great wisdom, for the experience of ages has shown us that, in the +agricultural calling, man has ever remained more moral, more pure, more +noble than in any other. Of course I do not mean to imply that no other +calling ought to be practised: simply that the calling in question lies +at the root of all the rest. However much factories may be established +privately or by the law, there will still lie ready to man’s hand all +that he needs--he will still require none of those amenities which +are sapping the vitality of our present-day folk, nor any of those +industrial establishments which make their profit, and keep themselves +going, by causing foolish measures to be adopted which, in the end, +are bound to deprave and corrupt our unfortunate masses. I myself am +determined never to establish any manufacture, however profitable, +which will give rise to a demand for ‘higher things,’ such as sugar +and tobacco--no not if I lose a million by my refusing to do so. If +corruption MUST overtake the MIR, it shall not be through my hands. +And I think that God will justify me in my resolve. Twenty years have +I lived among the common folk, and I know what will inevitably come of +such things.” + +“But what surprises me most,” persisted Chichikov, “is that from refuse +it should be possible, with good management, to make such an immensity +of profit.” + +“And as for political economy,” continued Kostanzhoglo, without noticing +him, and with his face charged with bilious sarcasm, “--as for political +economy, it is a fine thing indeed. Just one fool sitting on another +fool’s back, and flogging him along, even though the rider can see +no further than his own nose! Yet into the saddle will that fool +climb--spectacles and all! Oh, the folly, the folly of such things!” And +the speaker spat derisively. + +“That may be true,” said his wife. “Yet you must not get angry about it. +Surely one can speak on such subjects without losing one’s temper?” + +“As I listen to you, most worthy Constantine Thedorovitch,” Chichikov +hastened to remark, “it becomes plain to me that you have penetrated +into the meaning of life, and laid your finger upon the essential root +of the matter. Yet supposing, for a moment, we leave the affairs of +humanity in general, and turn our attention to a purely individual +affair, might I ask you how, in the case of a man becoming a landowner, +and having a mind to grow wealthy as quickly as possible (in order that +he may fulfil his bounden obligations as a citizen), he can best set +about it?” + +“How he can best set about growing wealthy?” repeated Kostanzhoglo. +“Why,--” + +“Let us go to supper,” interrupted the lady of the house, rising from +her chair, and moving towards the centre of the room, where she wrapped +her shivering young form in a shawl. Chichikov sprang up with the +alacrity of a military man, offered her his arm, and escorted her, as +on parade, to the dining-room, where awaiting them there was the +soup-toureen. From it the lid had just been removed, and the room was +redolent of the fragrant odour of early spring roots and herbs. The +company took their seats, and at once the servants placed the +remainder of the dishes (under covers) upon the table and withdrew, +for Kostanzhoglo hated to have servants listening to their employers’ +conversation, and objected still more to their staring at him all the +while that he was eating. + +When the soup had been consumed, and glasses of an excellent vintage +resembling Hungarian wine had been poured out, Chichikov said to his +host: + +“Most worthy sir, allow me once more to direct your attention to the +subject of which we were speaking at the point when the conversation +became interrupted. You will remember that I was asking you how best a +man can set about, proceed in, the matter of growing...” + + + [Here from the original two pages are missing.] + + +... “A property for which, had he asked forty thousand, I should still +have demanded a reduction.” + +“Hm!” thought Chichikov; then added aloud: “But why do you not purchase +it yourself?” + +“Because to everything there must be assigned a limit. Already my +property keeps me sufficiently employed. Moreover, I should cause our +local dvoriane to begin crying out in chorus that I am exploiting their +extremities, their ruined position, for the purpose of acquiring land +for under its value. Of that I am weary.” + +“How readily folk speak evil!” exclaimed Chichikov. + +“Yes, and the amount of evil-speaking in our province surpasses belief. +Never will you hear my name mentioned without my being called also +a miser and a usurer of the worst possible sort; whereas my accusers +justify themselves in everything, and say that, ‘though we have wasted +our money, we have started a demand for the higher amenities of life, +and therefore encouraged industry with our wastefulness, a far better +way of doing things than that practised by Kostanzhoglo, who lives like +a pig.’” + +“Would _I_ could live in your ‘piggish’ fashion!” ejaculated Chichikov. + +“And so forth, and so forth. Yet what are the ‘higher amenities of +life’? What good can they do to any one? Even if a landowner of the +day sets up a library, he never looks at a single book in it, but soon +relapses into card-playing--the usual pursuit. Yet folk call me names +simply because I do not waste my means upon the giving of dinners! One +reason why I do not give such dinners is that they weary me; and another +reason is that I am not used to them. But come you to my house for the +purpose of taking pot luck, and I shall be delighted to see you. Also, +folk foolishly say that I lend money on interest; whereas the truth is +that if you should come to me when you are really in need, and should +explain to me openly how you propose to employ my money, and I should +perceive that you are purposing to use that money wisely, and that you +are really likely to profit thereby--well, in that case you would find +me ready to lend you all that you might ask without interest at all.” + +“That is a thing which it is well to know,” reflected Chichikov. + +“Yes,” repeated Kostanzhoglo, “under those circumstances I should never +refuse you my assistance. But I do object to throwing my money to the +winds. Pardon me for expressing myself so plainly. To think of lending +money to a man who is merely devising a dinner for his mistress, or +planning to furnish his house like a lunatic, or thinking of taking his +paramour to a masked ball or a jubilee in honour of some one who had +better never have been born!” + +And, spitting, he came near to venting some expression which would +scarcely have been becoming in the presence of his wife. Over his face +the dark shadow of hypochondria had cast a cloud, and furrows had formed +on his brow and temples, and his every gesture bespoke the influence of +a hot, nervous rancour. + +“But allow me once more to direct your attention to the subject of our +recently interrupted conversation,” persisted Chichikov as he sipped a +glass of excellent raspberry wine. “That is to say, supposing I were +to acquire the property which you have been good enough to bring to my +notice, how long would it take me to grow rich?” + +“That would depend on yourself,” replied Kostanzhoglo with grim +abruptness and evident ill-humour. “You might either grow rich quickly +or you might never grow rich at all. If you made up your mind to grow +rich, sooner or later you would find yourself a wealthy man.” + +“Indeed?” ejaculated Chichikov. + +“Yes,” replied Kostanzhoglo, as sharply as though he were angry with +Chichikov. “You would merely need to be fond of work: otherwise you +would effect nothing. The main thing is to like looking after your +property. Believe me, you would never grow weary of doing so. People +would have it that life in the country is dull; whereas, if I were to +spend a single day as it is spent by some folk, with their stupid clubs +and their restaurants and their theatres, I should die of ennui. The +fools, the idiots, the generations of blind dullards! But a landowner +never finds the days wearisome--he has not the time. In his life not a +moment remains unoccupied; it is full to the brim. And with it all goes +an endless variety of occupations. And what occupations! Occupations +which genuinely uplift the soul, seeing that the landowner walks with +nature and the seasons of the year, and takes part in, and is intimate +with, everything which is evolved by creation. For let us look at the +round of the year’s labours. Even before spring has arrived there will +have begun a general watching and a waiting for it, and a preparing for +sowing, and an apportioning of crops, and a measuring of seed grain by +byres, and drying of seed, and a dividing of the workers into teams. +For everything needs to be examined beforehand, and calculations must be +made at the very start. And as soon as ever the ice shall have melted, +and the rivers be flowing, and the land have dried sufficiently to be +workable, the spade will begin its task in kitchen and flower garden, +and the plough and the harrow their tasks in the field; until everywhere +there will be tilling and sowing and planting. And do you understand +what the sum of that labour will mean? It will mean that the harvest is +being sown, that the welfare of the world is being sown, that the +food of millions is being put into the earth. And thereafter will come +summer, the season of reaping, endless reaping; for suddenly the crops +will have ripened, and rye-sheaf will be lying heaped upon rye-sheaf, +with, elsewhere, stocks of barley, and of oats, and of wheat. And +everything will be teeming with life, and not a moment will there need +to be lost, seeing that, had you even twenty eyes, you would have need +for them all. And after the harvest festivities there will be grain to +be carted to byre or stacked in ricks, and stores to be prepared for the +winter, and storehouses and kilns and cattle-sheds to be cleaned for the +same purpose, and the women to be assigned their tasks, and the totals +of everything to be calculated, so that one may see the value of +what has been done. And lastly will come winter, when in every +threshing-floor the flail will be working, and the grain, when threshed, +will need to be carried from barn to binn, and the mills require to be +seen to, and the estate factories to be inspected, and the workmen’s +huts to be visited for the purpose of ascertaining how the muzhik is +faring (for, given a carpenter who is clever with his tools, I, for one, +am only too glad to spend an hour or two in his company, so cheering +to me is labour). And if, in addition, one discerns the end to which +everything is moving, and the manner in which the things of earth are +everywhere multiplying and multiplying, and bringing forth more and more +fruit to one’s profiting, I cannot adequately express what takes +place in a man’s soul. And that, not because of the growth in his +wealth--money is money and no more--but because he will feel that +everything is the work of his own hands, and that he has been the cause +of everything, and its creator, and that from him, as from a magician, +there has flowed bounty and goodness for all. In what other calling will +you find such delights in prospect?” As he spoke, Kostanzhoglo raised +his face, and it became clear that the wrinkles had fled from it, and +that, like the Tsar on the solemn day of his crowning, Kostanzhoglo’s +whole form was diffusing light, and his features had in them a gentle +radiance. “In all the world,” he repeated, “you will find no joys like +these, for herein man imitates the God who projected creation as the +supreme happiness, and now demands of man that he, too, should act as +the creator of prosperity. Yet there are folk who call such functions +tedious!” + +Kostanzhoglo’s mellifluous periods fell upon Chichikov’s ear like +the notes of a bird of paradise. From time to time he gulped, and his +softened eyes expressed the pleasure which it gave him to listen. + +“Constantine, it is time to leave the table,” said the lady of the +house, rising from her seat. Every one followed her example, and +Chichikov once again acted as his hostess’s escort--although with less +dexterity of deportment than before, owing to the fact that this time +his thoughts were occupied with more essential matters of procedure. + +“In spite of what you say,” remarked Platon as he walked behind the +pair, “I, for my part, find these things wearisome.” + +But the master of the house paid no attention to his remark, for he was +reflecting that his guest was no fool, but a man of serious thought +and speech who did not take things lightly. And, with the thought, +Kostanzhoglo grew lighter in soul, as though he had warmed himself with +his own words, and were exulting in the fact that he had found some one +capable of listening to good advice. + +When they had settled themselves in the cosy, candle-lighted +drawing-room, with its balcony and the glass door opening out into the +garden--a door through which the stars could be seen glittering amid the +slumbering tops of the trees--Chichikov felt more comfortable than he +had done for many a day past. It was as though, after long journeying, +his own roof-tree had received him once more--had received him when +his quest had been accomplished, when all that he wished for had been +gained, when his travelling-staff had been laid aside with the words “It +is finished.” And of this seductive frame of mind the true source had +been the eloquent discourse of his hospitable host. Yes, for every man +there exist certain things which, instantly that they are said, seem to +touch him more closely, more intimately, than anything has done before. +Nor is it an uncommon occurrence that in the most unexpected fashion, +and in the most retired of retreats, one will suddenly come face to face +with a man whose burning periods will lead one to forget oneself and +the tracklessness of the route and the discomfort of one’s nightly +halting-places, and the futility of crazes and the falseness of tricks +by which one human being deceives another. And at once there will become +engraven upon one’s memory--vividly, and for all time--the evening thus +spent. And of that evening one’s remembrance will hold true, both as to +who was present, and where each such person sat, and what he or she was +wearing, and what the walls and the stove and other trifling features of +the room looked like. + +In the same way did Chichikov note each detail that evening--both the +appointments of the agreeable, but not luxuriously furnished, room, and +the good-humoured expression which reigned on the face of the thoughtful +host, and the design of the curtains, and the amber-mounted pipe smoked +by Platon, and the way in which he kept puffing smoke into the fat +jowl of the dog Yarb, and the sneeze which, on each such occasion, Yarb +vented, and the laughter of the pleasant-faced hostess (though always +followed by the words “Pray do not tease him any more”) and the cheerful +candle-light, and the cricket chirping in a corner, and the glass door, +and the spring night which, laying its elbows upon the tree-tops, and +spangled with stars, and vocal with the nightingales which were pouring +forth warbled ditties from the recesses of the foliage, kept glancing +through the door, and regarding the company within. + +“How it delights me to hear your words, good Constantine Thedorovitch!” + said Chichikov. “Indeed, nowhere in Russia have I met with a man of +equal intellect.” + +Kostanzhoglo smiled, while realising that the compliment was scarcely +deserved. + +“If you want a man of GENUINE intellect,” he said, “I can tell you of +one. He is a man whose boot soles are worth more than my whole body.” + +“Who may he be?” asked Chichikov in astonishment. + +“Murazov, our local Commissioner of Taxes.” + +“Ah! I have heard of him before,” remarked Chichikov. + +“He is a man who, were he not the director of an estate, might well be a +director of the Empire. And were the Empire under my direction, I should +at once appoint him my Minister of Finance.” + +“I have heard tales beyond belief concerning him--for instance, that he +has acquired ten million roubles.” + +“Ten? More than forty. Soon half Russia will be in his hands.” + +“You don’t say so?” cried Chichikov in amazement. + +“Yes, certainly. The man who has only a hundred thousand roubles to work +with grows rich but slowly, whereas he who has millions at his disposal +can operate over a greater radius, and so back whatsoever he undertakes +with twice or thrice the money which can be brought against him. +Consequently his field becomes so spacious that he ends by having no +rivals. Yes, no one can compete with him, and, whatsoever price he may +fix for a given commodity, at that price it will have to remain, nor +will any man be able to outbid it.” + +“My God!” muttered Chichikov, crossing himself, and staring at +Kostanzhoglo with his breath catching in his throat. “The mind cannot +grasp it--it petrifies one’s thoughts with awe. You see folk marvelling +at what Science has achieved in the matter of investigating the habits +of cowbugs, but to me it is a far more marvellous thing that in the +hands of a single mortal there can become accumulated such gigantic sums +of money. But may I ask whether the great fortune of which you speak has +been acquired through honest means?” + +“Yes; through means of the most irreproachable kind--through the most +honourable of methods.” + +“Yet so improbable does it seem that I can scarcely believe it. +Thousands I could understand, but millions--!” + +“On the contrary, to make thousands honestly is a far more difficult +matter than to make millions. Millions are easily come by, for a +millionaire has no need to resort to crooked ways; the way lies straight +before him, and he needs but to annex whatsoever he comes across. No +rival will spring up to oppose him, for no rival will be sufficiently +strong, and since the millionaire can operate over an extensive radius, +he can bring (as I have said) two or three roubles to bear upon any one +else’s one. Consequently, what interest will he derive from a thousand +roubles? Why, ten or twenty per cent. at the least.” + +“And it is beyond measure marvellous that the whole should have started +from a single kopeck.” + +“Had it started otherwise, the thing could never have been done at all. +Such is the normal course. He who is born with thousands, and is brought +up to thousands, will never acquire a single kopeck more, for he will +have been set up with the amenities of life in advance, and so never +come to stand in need of anything. It is necessary to begin from the +beginning rather than from the middle; from a kopeck rather than from a +rouble; from the bottom rather than from the top. For only thus will a +man get to know the men and conditions among which his career will have +to be carved. That is to say, through encountering the rough and the +tumble of life, and through learning that every kopeck has to be beaten +out with a three-kopeck nail, and through worsting knave after knave, he +will acquire such a degree of perspicuity and wariness that he will err +in nothing which he may tackle, and never come to ruin. Believe me, it +is so. The beginning, and not the middle, is the right starting point. +No one who comes to me and says, ‘Give me a hundred thousand roubles, +and I will grow rich in no time,’ do I believe, for he is likely to meet +with failure rather than with the success of which he is so assured. +’Tis with a kopeck, and with a kopeck only, that a man must begin.” + +“If that is so, _I_ shall grow rich,” said Chichikov, involuntarily +remembering the dead souls. “For of a surety _I_ began with nothing.” + +“Constantine, pray allow Paul Ivanovitch to retire to rest,” put in +the lady of the house. “It is high time, and I am sure you have talked +enough.” + +“Yes, beyond a doubt you will grow rich,” continued Kostanzhoglo, +without heeding his wife. “For towards you there will run rivers and +rivers of gold, until you will not know what to do with all your gains.” + +As though spellbound, Chichikov sat in an aureate world of ever-growing +dreams and fantasies. All his thoughts were in a whirl, and on a carpet +of future wealth his tumultuous imagination was weaving golden patterns, +while ever in his ears were ringing the words, “towards you there will +run rivers and rivers of gold.” + +“Really, Constantine, DO allow Paul Ivanovitch to go to bed.” + +“What on earth is the matter?” retorted the master of the household +testily. “Pray go yourself if you wish to.” Then he stopped short, for +the snoring of Platon was filling the whole room, and also--outrivalling +it--that of the dog Yarb. This caused Kostanzhoglo to realise that +bedtime really had arrived; wherefore, after he had shaken Platon out +of his slumbers, and bidden Chichikov good night, all dispersed to their +several chambers, and became plunged in sleep. + +All, that is to say, except Chichikov, whose thoughts remained wakeful, +and who kept wondering and wondering how best he could become the owner, +not of a fictitious, but of a real, estate. The conversation with +his host had made everything clear, had made the possibility of +his acquiring riches manifest, had made the difficult art of estate +management at once easy and understandable; until it would seem as +though particularly was his nature adapted for mastering the art in +question. All that he would need to do would be to mortgage the dead +souls, and then to set up a genuine establishment. Already he +saw himself acting and administering as Kostanzhoglo had advised +him--energetically, and through personal oversight, and undertaking +nothing new until the old had been thoroughly learned, and viewing +everything with his own eyes, and making himself familiar with each +member of his peasantry, and abjuring all superfluities, and giving +himself up to hard work and husbandry. Yes, already could he taste the +pleasure which would be his when he had built up a complete industrial +organisation, and the springs of the industrial machine were in vigorous +working order, and each had become able to reinforce the other. Labour +should be kept in active operation, and, even as, in a mill, flour comes +flowing from grain, so should cash, and yet more cash, come flowing from +every atom of refuse and remnant. And all the while he could see before +him the landowner who was one of the leading men in Russia, and for whom +he had conceived such an unbounded respect. Hitherto only for rank or +for opulence had Chichikov respected a man--never for mere intellectual +power; but now he made a first exception in favour of Kostanzhoglo, +seeing that he felt that nothing undertaken by his host could possibly +come to naught. And another project which was occupying Chichikov’s mind +was the project of purchasing the estate of a certain landowner named +Khlobuev. Already Chichikov had at his disposal ten thousand roubles, +and a further fifteen thousand he would try and borrow of Kostanzhoglo +(seeing that the latter had himself said that he was prepared to help +any one who really desired to grow rich); while, as for the remainder, +he would either raise the sum by mortgaging the estate or force Khlobuev +to wait for it--just to tell him to resort to the courts if such might +be his pleasure. + +Long did our hero ponder the scheme; until at length the slumber which +had, these four hours past, been holding the rest of the household in +its embraces enfolded also Chichikov, and he sank into oblivion. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Next day, with Platon and Constantine, Chichikov set forth to interview +Khlobuev, the owner whose estate Constantine had consented to help +Chichikov to purchase with a non-interest-bearing, uncovenanted loan of +ten thousand roubles. Naturally, our hero was in the highest of spirits. +For the first fifteen versts or so the road led through forest land and +tillage belonging to Platon and his brother-in-law; but directly the +limit of these domains was reached, forest land began to be replaced +with swamp, and tillage with waste. Also, the village in Khlobuev’s +estate had about it a deserted air, and as for the proprietor himself, +he was discovered in a state of drowsy dishevelment, having not long +left his bed. A man of about forty, he had his cravat crooked, his +frockcoat adorned with a large stain, and one of his boots worn through. +Nevertheless he seemed delighted to see his visitors. + +“What?” he exclaimed. “Constantine Thedorovitch and Platon Mikhalitch? +Really I must rub my eyes! Never again in this world did I look to see +callers arriving. As a rule, folk avoid me like the devil, for they +cannot disabuse their minds of the idea that I am going to ask them for +a loan. Yes, it is my own fault, I know, but what would you? To the end +will swine cheat swine. Pray excuse my costume. You will observe that my +boots are in holes. But how can I afford to get them mended?” + +“Never mind,” said Constantine. “We have come on business only. May I +present to you a possible purchaser of your estate, in the person of +Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov?” + +“I am indeed glad to meet you!” was Khlobuev’s response. “Pray shake +hands with me, Paul Ivanovitch.” + +Chichikov offered one hand, but not both. + +“I can show you a property worth your attention,” went on the master of +the estate. “May I ask if you have yet dined?” + +“Yes, we have,” put in Constantine, desirous of escaping as soon as +possible. “To save you further trouble, let us go and view the estate at +once.” + +“Very well,” replied Khlobuev. “Pray come and inspect my irregularities +and futilities. You have done well to dine beforehand, for not so much +as a fowl is left in the place, so dire are the extremities to which you +see me reduced.” + +Sighing deeply, he took Platon by the arm (it was clear that he did +not look for any sympathy from Constantine) and walked ahead, while +Constantine and Chichikov followed. + +“Things are going hard with me, Platon Mikhalitch,” continued Khlobuev. +“How hard you cannot imagine. No money have I, no food, no boots. Were +I still young and a bachelor, it would have come easy to me to live on +bread and cheese; but when a man is growing old, and has got a wife +and five children, such trials press heavily upon him, and, in spite of +himself, his spirits sink.” + +“But, should you succeed in selling the estate, that would help to put +you right, would it not?” said Platon. + +“How could it do so?” replied Khlobuev with a despairing gesture. “What +I might get for the property would have to go towards discharging my +debts, and I should find myself left with less than a thousand roubles +besides.” + +“Then what do you intend to do?” + +“God knows.” + +“But is there NOTHING to which you could set your hand in order to clear +yourself of your difficulties?” + +“How could there be?” + +“Well, you might accept a Government post.” + +“Become a provincial secretary, you mean? How could I obtain such a +post? They would not offer me one of the meanest possible kind. Even +supposing that they did, how could I live on a salary of five hundred +roubles--I who have a wife and five children?” + +“Then try and obtain a bailiff’s post.” + +“Who would entrust their property to a man who has squandered his own +estate?” + +“Nevertheless, when death and destitution threaten, a man must either +do something or starve. Shall I ask my brother to use his influence to +procure you a post?” + +“No, no, Platon Mikhalitch,” sighed Khlobuev, gripping the other’s hand. +“I am no longer serviceable--I am grown old before my time, and find +that liver and rheumatism are paying me for the sins of my youth. Why +should the Government be put to a loss on my account?--not to speak of +the fact that for every salaried post there are countless numbers of +applicants. God forbid that, in order to provide me with a livelihood +further burdens should be imposed upon an impoverished public!” + +“Such are the results of improvident management!” thought Platon to +himself. “The disease is even worse than my slothfulness.” + +Meanwhile Kostanzhoglo, walking by Chichikov’s side, was almost taking +leave of his senses. + +“Look at it!” he cried with a wave of his hand. “See to what +wretchedness the peasant has become reduced! Should cattle disease come, +Khlobuev will have nothing to fall back upon, but will be forced to sell +his all--to leave the peasant without a horse, and therefore without the +means to labour, even though the loss of a single day’s work may take +years of labour to rectify. Meanwhile it is plain that the local peasant +has become a mere dissolute, lazy drunkard. Give a muzhik enough to live +upon for twelve months without working, and you will corrupt him for +ever, so inured to rags and vagrancy will he grow. And what is the good +of that piece of pasture there--of that piece on the further side of +those huts? It is a mere flooded tract. Were it mine, I should put +it under flax, and clear five thousand roubles, or else sow it with +turnips, and clear, perhaps, four thousand. And see how the rye is +drooping, and nearly laid. As for wheat, I am pretty sure that he has +not sown any. Look, too, at those ravines! Were they mine, they would +be standing under timber which even a rook could not top. To think of +wasting such quantities of land! Where land wouldn’t bear corn, I should +dig it up, and plant it with vegetables. What ought to be done is that +Khlobuev ought to take a spade into his own hands, and to set his wife +and children and servants to do the same; and even if they died of the +exertion, they would at least die doing their duty, and not through +guzzling at the dinner table.” + +This said, Kostanzhoglo spat, and his brow flushed with grim +indignation. + +Presently they reached an elevation whence the distant flashing of a +river, with its flood waters and subsidiary streams, caught the eye, +while, further off, a portion of General Betristchev’s homestead could +be discerned among the trees, and, over it, a blue, densely wooded hill +which Chichikov guessed to be the spot where Tientietnikov’s mansion was +situated. + +“This is where I should plant timber,” said Chichikov. “And, regarded +as a site for a manor house, the situation could scarcely be beaten for +beauty of view.” + +“You seem to get great store upon views and beauty,” remarked +Kostanzhoglo with reproof in his tone. “Should you pay too much +attention to those things, you might find yourself without crops or +view. Utility should be placed first, not beauty. Beauty will come of +itself. Take, for example, towns. The fairest and most beautiful towns +are those which have built themselves--those in which each man has built +to suit his own exclusive circumstances and needs; whereas towns which +men have constructed on regular, string-taut lines are no better than +collections of barracks. Put beauty aside, and look only to what is +NECESSARY.” + +“Yes, but to me it would always be irksome to have to wait. All the time +that I was doing so I should be hungering to see in front of me the +sort of prospect which I prefer.” + +“Come, come! Are you a man of twenty-five--you who have served as a +tchinovnik in St. Petersburg? Have patience, have patience. For six +years work, and work hard. Plant, sow, and dig the earth without taking +a moment’s rest. It will be difficult, I know--yes, difficult indeed; +but at the end of that time, if you have thoroughly stirred the soil, +the land will begin to help you as nothing else can do. That is to say, +over and above your seventy or so pairs of hands, there will begin to +assist in the work seven hundred pairs of hands which you cannot see. +Thus everything will be multiplied tenfold. I myself have ceased even +to have to lift a finger, for whatsoever needs to be done gets done of +itself. Nature loves patience: always remember that. It is a law given +her of God Himself, who has blessed all those who are strong to endure.” + +“To hear your words is to be both encouraged and strengthened,” said +Chichikov. To this Kostanzhoglo made no reply, but presently went on: + +“And see how that piece of land has been ploughed! To stay here longer +is more than I can do. For me, to have to look upon such want of +orderliness and foresight is death. Finish your business with Khlobuev +without me, and whatsoever you do, get this treasure out of that fool’s +hands as quickly as possible, for he is dishonouring God’s gifts.” + +And Kostanzhoglo, his face dark with the rage that was seething in +his excitable soul, left Chichikov, and caught up the owner of the +establishment. + +“What, Constantine Thedorovitch?” cried Khlobuev in astonishment. “Just +arrived, you are going already?” + +“Yes; I cannot help it; urgent business requires me at home.” And +entering his gig, Kostanzhoglo drove rapidly away. Somehow Khlobuev +seemed to divine the cause of his sudden departure. + +“It was too much for him,” he remarked. “An agriculturist of that +kind does not like to have to look upon the results of such feckless +management as mine. Would you believe it, Paul Ivanovitch, but this year +I have been unable to sow any wheat! Am I not a fine husbandman? There +was no seed for the purpose, nor yet anything with which to prepare the +ground. No, I am not like Constantine Thedorovitch, who, I hear, is a +perfect Napoleon in his particular line. Again and again the thought +occurs to me, ‘Why has so much intellect been put into that head, and +only a drop or two into my own dull pate?’ Take care of that puddle, +gentlemen. I have told my peasants to lay down planks for the spring, +but they have not done so. Nevertheless my heart aches for the poor +fellows, for they need a good example, and what sort of an example am I? +How am _I_ to give them orders? Pray take them under your charge, Paul +Ivanovitch, for I cannot teach them orderliness and method when I myself +lack both. As a matter of fact, I should have given them their freedom +long ago, had there been any use in my doing so; for even I can see that +peasants must first be afforded the means of earning a livelihood before +they can live. What they need is a stern, yet just, master who shall +live with them, day in, day out, and set them an example of tireless +energy. The present-day Russian--I know of it myself--is helpless +without a driver. Without one he falls asleep, and the mould grows over +him.” + +“Yet I cannot understand WHY he should fall asleep and grow mouldy in +that fashion,” said Platon. “Why should he need continual surveillance +to keep him from degenerating into a drunkard and a good-for-nothing?” + +“The cause is lack of enlightenment,” said Chichikov. + +“Possibly--only God knows. Yet enlightenment has reached us right +enough. Do we not attend university lectures and everything else that +is befitting? Take my own education. I learnt not only the usual things, +but also the art of spending money upon the latest refinement, the +latest amenity--the art of familiarising oneself with whatsoever money +can buy. How, then, can it be said that I was educated foolishly? And +my comrades’ education was the same. A few of them succeeded in annexing +the cream of things, for the reason that they had the wit to do so, and +the rest spent their time in doing their best to ruin their health and +squander their money. Often I think there is no hope for the present-day +Russian. While desiring to do everything, he accomplishes nothing. One +day he will scheme to begin a new mode of existence, a new dietary; yet +before evening he will have so over-eaten himself as to be unable to +speak or do aught but sit staring like an owl. The same with every one.” + +“Quite so,” agreed Chichikov with a smile. “’Tis everywhere the same +story.” + +“To tell the truth, we are not born to common sense. I doubt whether +Russia has ever produced a really sensible man. For my own part, if I +see my neighbour living a regular life, and making money, and saving +it, I begin to distrust him, and to feel certain that in old age, if not +before, he too will be led astray by the devil--led astray in a moment. +Yes, whether or not we be educated, there is something we lack. But what +that something is passes my understanding.” + +On the return journey the prospect was the same as before. Everywhere +the same slovenliness, the same disorder, was displaying itself +unadorned: the only difference being that a fresh puddle had formed in +the middle of the village street. This want and neglect was noticeable +in the peasants’ quarters equally with the quarters of the barin. In +the village a furious woman in greasy sackcloth was beating a poor young +wench within an ace of her life, and at the same time devoting some +third person to the care of all the devils in hell; further away +a couple of peasants were stoically contemplating the virago--one +scratching his rump as he did so, and the other yawning. The same yawn +was discernible in the buildings, for not a roof was there but had a +gaping hole in it. As he gazed at the scene Platon himself yawned. Patch +was superimposed upon patch, and, in place of a roof, one hut had a +piece of wooden fencing, while its crumbling window-frames were stayed +with sticks purloined from the barin’s barn. Evidently the system +of upkeep in vogue was the system employed in the case of Trishkin’s +coat--the system of cutting up the cuffs and the collar into mendings +for the elbows. + +“No, I do not admire your way of doing things,” was Chichikov’s unspoken +comment when the inspection had been concluded and the party had +re-entered the house. Everywhere in the latter the visitors were +struck with the way in which poverty went with glittering, fashionable +profusion. On a writing-table lay a volume of Shakespeare, and, on an +occasional table, a carved ivory back-scratcher. The hostess, too, was +elegantly and fashionably attired, and devoted her whole conversation +to the town and the local theatre. Lastly, the children--bright, merry +little things--were well-dressed both as regards boys and girls. Yet +far better would it have been for them if they had been clad in plain +striped smocks, and running about the courtyard like peasant children. +Presently a visitor arrived in the shape of a chattering, gossiping +woman; whereupon the hostess carried her off to her own portion of the +house, and, the children following them, the men found themselves alone. + +“How much do you want for the property?” asked Chichikov of Khlobuev. +“I am afraid I must request you to name the lowest possible sum, since I +find the estate in a far worse condition than I had expected to do.” + +“Yes, it IS in a terrible state,” agreed Khlobuev. “Nor is that the +whole of the story. That is to say, I will not conceal from you the fact +that, out of a hundred souls registered at the last revision, only fifty +survive, so terrible have been the ravages of cholera. And of these, +again, some have absconded; wherefore they too must be reckoned as dead, +seeing that, were one to enter process against them, the costs would +end in the property having to pass en bloc to the legal authorities. +For these reasons I am asking only thirty-five thousand roubles for the +estate.” + +Chichikov (it need hardly be said) started to haggle. + +“Thirty-five thousand?” he cried. “Come, come! Surely you will accept +TWENTY-five thousand?” + +This was too much for Platon’s conscience. + +“Now, now, Paul Ivanovitch!” he exclaimed. “Take the property at the +price named, and have done with it. The estate is worth at least that +amount--so much so that, should you not be willing to give it, my +brother-in-law and I will club together to effect the purchase.” + +“That being so,” said Chichikov, taken aback, “I beg to agree to the +price in question. At the same time, I must ask you to allow me to defer +payment of one-half of the purchase money until a year from now.” + +“No, no, Paul Ivanovitch. Under no circumstances could I do that. Pay +me half now, and the rest in... [50] You see, I need the money for the +redemption of the mortgage.” + +“That places me in a difficulty,” remarked Chichikov. “Ten thousand +roubles is all that at the moment I have available.” As a matter of +fact, this was not true, seeing that, counting also the money which he +had borrowed of Kostanzhoglo, he had at his disposal TWENTY thousand. +His real reason for hesitating was that he disliked the idea of making +so large a payment in a lump sum. + +“I must repeat my request, Paul Ivanovitch,” said Khlobuev, “--namely, +that you pay me at least fifteen thousand immediately.” + +“The odd five thousand _I_ will lend you,” put in Platon to Chichikov. + +“Indeed?” exclaimed Chichikov as he reflected: “So he also lends money!” + +In the end Chichikov’s dispatch-box was brought from the koliaska, and +Khlobuev received thence ten thousand roubles, together with a promise +that the remaining five thousand should be forthcoming on the morrow; +though the promise was given only after Chichikov had first proposed +that THREE thousand should be brought on the day named, and the rest +be left over for two or three days longer, if not for a still more +protracted period. The truth was that Paul Ivanovitch hated parting with +money. No matter how urgent a situation might have been, he would still +have preferred to pay a sum to-morrow rather than to-day. In other +words, he acted as we all do, for we all like keeping a petitioner +waiting. “Let him rub his back in the hall for a while,” we say. “Surely +he can bide his time a little?” Yet of the fact that every hour may be +precious to the poor wretch, and that his business may suffer from +the delay, we take no account. “Good sir,” we say, “pray come again +to-morrow. To-day I have no time to spare you.” + +“Where do you intend henceforth to live?” inquired Platon. “Have you any +other property to which you can retire?” + +“No,” replied Khlobuev. “I shall remove to the town, where I possess +a small villa. That would have been necessary, in any case, for the +children’s sake. You see, they must have instruction in God’s word, and +also lessons in music and dancing; and not for love or money can these +things be procured in the country. + +“Nothing to eat, yet dancing lessons for his children!” reflected +Chichikov. + +“An extraordinary man!” was Platon’s unspoken comment. + +“However, we must contrive to wet our bargain somehow,” continued +Khlobuev. “Hi, Kirushka! Bring that bottle of champagne.” + +“Nothing to eat, yet champagne to drink!” reflected Chichikov. As for +Platon, he did not know WHAT to think. + +In Khlobuev’s eyes it was de rigueur that he should provide a guest with +champagne; but, though he had sent to the town for some, he had been met +with a blank refusal to forward even a bottle of kvass on credit. +Only the discovery of a French dealer who had recently transferred his +business from St. Petersburg, and opened a connection on a system +of general credit, saved the situation by placing Khlobuev under the +obligation of patronising him. + +The company drank three glassfuls apiece, and so grew more cheerful. +In particular did Khlobuev expand, and wax full of civility and +friendliness, and scatter witticisms and anecdotes to right and left. +What knowledge of men and the world did his utterances display! How well +and accurately could he divine things! With what appositeness did he +sketch the neighbouring landowners! How clearly he exposed their +faults and failings! How thoroughly he knew the story of certain ruined +gentry--the story of how, why, and through what cause they had fallen +upon evil days! With what comic originality could he describe their +little habits and customs! + +In short, his guests found themselves charmed with his discourse, and +felt inclined to vote him a man of first-rate intellect. + +“What most surprises me,” said Chichikov, “is how, in view of your +ability, you come to be so destitute of means or resources.” + +“But I have plenty of both,” said Khlobuev, and with that went on to +deliver himself of a perfect avalanche of projects. Yet those projects +proved to be so uncouth, so clumsy, so little the outcome of a knowledge +of men and things, that his hearers could only shrug their shoulders and +mentally exclaim: “Good Lord! What a difference between worldly wisdom +and the capacity to use it!” In every case the projects in question were +based upon the imperative necessity of at once procuring from somewhere +two hundred--or at least one hundred--thousand roubles. That done (so +Khlobuev averred), everything would fall into its proper place, +the holes in his pockets would become stopped, his income would be +quadrupled, and he would find himself in a position to liquidate his +debts in full. Nevertheless he ended by saying: “What would you advise +me to do? I fear that the philanthropist who would lend me two hundred +thousand roubles or even a hundred thousand, does not exist. It is not +God’s will that he should.” + +“Good gracious!” inwardly ejaculated Chichikov. “To suppose that God +would send such a fool two hundred thousand roubles!” + +“However,” went on Khlobuev, “I possess an aunt worth three millions--a +pious old woman who gives freely to churches and monasteries, but finds +a difficulty in helping her neighbour. At the same time, she is a lady +of the old school, and worth having a peep at. Her canaries alone +number four hundred, and, in addition, there is an army of pug-dogs, +hangers-on, and servants. Even the youngest of the servants is sixty, +but she calls them all ‘young fellows,’ and if a guest happens to offend +her during dinner, she orders them to leave him out when handing out the +dishes. THERE’S a woman for you!” + +Platon laughed. + +“And what may her family name be?” asked Chichikov. “And where does she +live?” + +“She lives in the county town, and her name is Alexandra Ivanovna +Khanasarov.” + +“Then why do you not apply to her?” asked Platon earnestly. “It seems +to me that, once she realised the position of your family, she could not +possibly refuse you.” + +“Alas! nothing is to be looked for from that quarter,” replied Khlobuev. +“My aunt is of a very stubborn disposition--a perfect stone of a woman. +Moreover, she has around her a sufficient band of favourites already. +In particular is there a fellow who is aiming for a Governorship, and +to that end has managed to insinuate himself into the circle of her +kinsfolk. By the way,” the speaker added, turning to Platon, “would you +do me a favour? Next week I am giving a dinner to the associated guilds +of the town.” + +Platon stared. He had been unaware that both in our capitals and in +our provincial towns there exists a class of men whose lives are +an enigma--men who, though they will seem to have exhausted their +substance, and to have become enmeshed in debt, will suddenly be +reported as in funds, and on the point of giving a dinner! And though, +at this dinner, the guests will declare that the festival is bound to +be their host’s last fling, and that for a certainty he will be haled to +prison on the morrow, ten years or more will elapse, and the rascal will +still be at liberty, even though, in the meanwhile, his debts will have +increased! + +In the same way did the conduct of Khlobuev’s menage afford a curious +phenomenon, for one day the house would be the scene of a solemn Te +Deum, performed by a priest in vestments, and the next of a stage play +performed by a troupe of French actors in theatrical costume. Again, +one day would see not a morsel of bread in the house, and the next day a +banquet and generous largesse given to a party of artists and sculptors. +During these seasons of scarcity (sufficiently severe to have led any +one but Khlobuev to seek suicide by hanging or shooting), the master of +the house would be preserved from rash action by his strongly religious +disposition, which, contriving in some curious way to conform with his +irregular mode of life, enabled him to fall back upon reading the lives +of saints, ascetics, and others of the type which has risen superior to +its misfortunes. And at such times his spirit would become softened, his +thoughts full of gentleness, and his eyes wet with tears; he would fall +to saying his prayers, and invariably some strange coincidence would +bring an answer thereto in the shape of an unexpected measure of +assistance. That is to say, some former friend of his would remember +him, and send him a trifle in the way of money; or else some female +visitor would be moved by his story to let her impulsive, generous heart +proffer him a handsome gift; or else a suit whereof tidings had never +even reached his ears would end by being decided in his favour. And when +that happened he would reverently acknowledge the immensity of the mercy +of Providence, gratefully tender thanksgiving for the same, and betake +himself again to his irregular mode of existence. + +“Somehow I feel sorry for the man,” said Platon when he and Chichikov +had taken leave of their host, and left the house. + +“Perhaps so, but he is a hopeless prodigal,” replied the other. +“Personally I find it impossible to compassionate such fellows.” + +And with that the pair ceased to devote another thought to Khlobuev. In +the case of Platon, this was because he contemplated the fortunes of his +fellows with the lethargic, half-somnolent eye which he turned upon all +the rest of the world; for though the sight of distress of others would +cause his heart to contract and feel full of sympathy, the impression +thus produced never sank into the depths of his being. Accordingly, +before many minutes were over he had ceased to bestow a single thought +upon his late host. With Chichikov, however, things were different. +Whereas Platon had ceased to think of Khlobuev no more than he had +ceased to think of himself, Chichikov’s mind had strayed elsewhere, +for the reason that it had become taken up with grave meditation on the +subject of the purchase just made. Suddenly finding himself no longer +a fictitious proprietor, but the owner of a real, an actually existing, +estate, he became contemplative, and his plans and ideas assumed such a +serious vein as imparted to his features an unconsciously important air. + +“Patience and hard work!” he muttered to himself. “The thing will not be +difficult, for with those two requisites I have been familiar from the +days of my swaddling clothes. Yes, no novelty will they be to me. Yet, +in middle age, shall I be able to compass the patience whereof I was +capable in my youth?” + +However, no matter how he regarded the future, and no matter from what +point of view he considered his recent acquisition, he could see nothing +but advantage likely to accrue from the bargain. For one thing, he might +be able to proceed so that, first the whole of the estate should be +mortgaged, and then the better portions of land sold outright. Or he +might so contrive matters as to manage the property for a while +(and thus become a landowner like Kostanzhoglo, whose advice, as his +neighbour and his benefactor, he intended always to follow), and then to +dispose of the property by private treaty (provided he did not wish to +continue his ownership), and still to retain in his hands the dead and +abandoned souls. And another possible coup occurred to his mind. That is +to say, he might contrive to withdraw from the district without having +repaid Kostanzhoglo at all! Truly a splendid idea! Yet it is only fair +to say that the idea was not one of Chichikov’s own conception. Rather, +it had presented itself--mocking, laughing, and winking--unbidden. Yet +the impudent, the wanton thing! Who is the procreator of suddenly +born ideas of the kind? The thought that he was now a real, an actual, +proprietor instead of a fictitious--that he was now a proprietor of real +land, real rights of timber and pasture, and real serfs who existed not +only in the imagination, but also in veritable actuality--greatly elated +our hero. So he took to dancing up and down in his seat, to rubbing +his hands together, to winking at himself, to holding his fist, +trumpet-wise, to his mouth (while making believe to execute a march), +and even to uttering aloud such encouraging nicknames and phrases as +“bulldog” and “little fat capon.” Then suddenly recollecting that he +was not alone, he hastened to moderate his behaviour and endeavoured to +stifle the endless flow of his good spirits; with the result that when +Platon, mistaking certain sounds for utterances addressed to himself, +inquired what his companion had said, the latter retained the presence +of mind to reply “Nothing.” + +Presently, as Chichikov gazed about him, he saw that for some time past +the koliaska had been skirting a beautiful wood, and that on either side +the road was bordered with an edging of birch trees, the tenderly-green, +recently-opened leaves of which caused their tall, slender trunks to +show up with the whiteness of a snowdrift. Likewise nightingales were +warbling from the recesses of the foliage, and some wood tulips were +glowing yellow in the grass. Next (and almost before Chichikov had +realised how he came to be in such a beautiful spot when, but a moment +before, there had been visible only open fields) there glimmered among +the trees the stony whiteness of a church, with, on the further side +of it, the intermittent, foliage-buried line of a fence; while from the +upper end of a village street there was advancing to meet the vehicle a +gentleman with a cap on his head, a knotted cudgel in his hands, and a +slender-limbed English dog by his side. + +“This is my brother,” said Platon. “Stop, coachman.” And he descended +from the koliaska, while Chichikov followed his example. Yarb and the +strange dog saluted one another, and then the active, thin-legged, +slender-tongued Azor relinquished his licking of Yarb’s blunt jowl, +licked Platon’s hands instead, and, leaping upon Chichikov, slobbered +right into his ear. + +The two brothers embraced. + +“Really, Platon,” said the gentleman (whose name was Vassili), “what do +you mean by treating me like this?” + +“How so?” said Platon indifferently. + +“What? For three days past I have seen and heard nothing of you! A groom +from Pietukh’s brought your cob home, and told me you had departed on an +expedition with some barin. At least you might have sent me word as to +your destination and the probable length of your absence. What made you +act so? God knows what I have not been wondering!” + +“Does it matter?” rejoined Platon. “I forgot to send you word, and we +have been no further than Constantine’s (who, with our sister, sends you +his greeting). By the way, may I introduce Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov?” + +The pair shook hands with one another. Then, doffing their caps, they +embraced. + +“What sort of man is this Chichikov?” thought Vassili. “As a rule my +brother Platon is not over-nice in his choice of acquaintances.” And, +eyeing our hero as narrowly as civility permitted, he saw that his +appearance was that of a perfectly respectable individual. + +Chichikov returned Vassili’s scrutiny with a similar observance of the +dictates of civility, and perceived that he was shorter than Platon, +that his hair was of a darker shade, and that his features, though less +handsome, contained far more life, animation, and kindliness than did +his brother’s. Clearly he indulged in less dreaming, though that was an +aspect which Chichikov little regarded. + +“I have made up my mind to go touring our Holy Russia with Paul +Ivanovitch,” said Platon. “Perhaps it will rid me of my melancholy.” + +“What has made you come to such a sudden decision?” asked the perplexed +Vassili (very nearly he added: “Fancy going travelling with a man whose +acquaintance you have just made, and who may turn out to be a rascal +or the devil knows what!” But, in spite of his distrust, he contented +himself with another covert scrutiny of Chichikov, and this time came to +the conclusion that there was no fault to be found with his exterior). + +The party turned to the right, and entered the gates of an ancient +courtyard attached to an old-fashioned house of a type no longer +built--the type which has huge gables supporting a high-pitched roof. +In the centre of the courtyard two great lime trees covered half the +surrounding space with shade, while beneath them were ranged a number +of wooden benches, and the whole was encircled with a ring of blossoming +lilacs and cherry trees which, like a beaded necklace, reinforced the +wooden fence, and almost buried it beneath their clusters of leaves and +flowers. The house, too, stood almost concealed by this greenery, +except that the front door and the windows peered pleasantly through the +foliage, and that here and there between the stems of the trees there +could be caught glimpses of the kitchen regions, the storehouses, and +the cellar. Lastly, around the whole stood a grove, from the recesses of +which came the echoing songs of nightingales. + +Involuntarily the place communicated to the soul a sort of quiet, +restful feeling, so eloquently did it speak of that care-free period +when every one lived on good terms with his neighbour, and all was +simple and unsophisticated. Vassili invited Chichikov to seat himself, +and the party approached, for that purpose, the benches under the lime +trees; after which a youth of about seventeen, and clad in a red shirt, +brought decanters containing various kinds of kvass (some of them as +thick as syrup, and others hissing like aerated lemonade), deposited the +same upon the table, and, taking up a spade which he had left leaning +against a tree, moved away towards the garden. The reason of this was +that in the brothers’ household, as in that of Kostanzhoglo, no servants +were kept, since the whole staff were rated as gardeners, and performed +that duty in rotation--Vassili holding that domestic service was not a +specialised calling, but one to which any one might contribute a hand, +and therefore one which did not require special menials to be kept for +the purpose. Moreover, he held that the average Russian peasant remains +active and willing (rather than lazy) only so long as he wears a shirt +and a peasant’s smock; but that as soon as ever he finds himself +put into a German tailcoat, he becomes awkward, sluggish, indolent, +disinclined to change his vest or take a bath, fond of sleeping in his +clothes, and certain to breed fleas and bugs under the German apparel. +And it may be that Vassili was right. At all events, the brothers’ +peasantry were exceedingly well clad--the women, in particular, having +their head-dresses spangled with gold, and the sleeves of their blouses +embroidered after the fashion of a Turkish shawl. + +“You see here the species of kvass for which our house has long been +famous,” said Vassili to Chichikov. The latter poured himself out a +glassful from the first decanter which he lighted upon, and found +the contents to be linden honey of a kind never tasted by him even in +Poland, seeing that it had a sparkle like that of champagne, and also an +effervescence which sent a pleasant spray from the mouth into the nose. + +“Nectar!” he proclaimed. Then he took some from a second decanter. It +proved to be even better than the first. “A beverage of beverages!” he +exclaimed. “At your respected brother-in-law’s I tasted the finest +syrup which has ever come my way, but here I have tasted the very finest +kvass.” + +“Yet the recipe for the syrup also came from here,” said Vassili, +“seeing that my sister took it with her. By the way, to what part of the +country, and to what places, are you thinking of travelling?” + +“To tell the truth,” replied Chichikov, rocking himself to and fro on +the bench, and smoothing his knee with his hand, and gently inclining +his head, “I am travelling less on my own affairs than on the affairs of +others. That is to say, General Betristchev, an intimate friend, and, +I might add, a generous benefactor of mine, has charged me with +commissions to some of his relatives. Nevertheless, though relatives are +relatives, I may say that I am travelling on my own account as well, in +that, in addition to possible benefit to my health, I desire to see the +world and the whirligig of humanity, which constitute, to so speak, a +living book, a second course of education.” + +Vassili took thought. “The man speaks floridly,” he reflected, “yet his +words contain a certain element of truth.” After a moment’s silence he +added to Platon: “I am beginning to think that the tour might help you +to bestir yourself. At present you are in a condition of mental slumber. +You have fallen asleep, not so much from weariness or satiety, as +through a lack of vivid perceptions and impressions. For myself, I am +your complete antithesis. I should be only too glad if I could feel less +acutely, if I could take things less to heart.” + +“Emotion has become a disease with you,” said Platon. “You seek your own +troubles, and make your own anxieties.” + +“How can you say that when ready-made anxieties greet one at every +step?” exclaimed Vassili. “For example, have you heard of the trick +which Lienitsin has just played us--of his seizing the piece of vacant +land whither our peasants resort for their sports? That piece I would +not sell for all the money in the world. It has long been our peasants’ +play-ground, and all the traditions of our village are bound up with it. +Moreover, for me, old custom is a sacred thing for which I would gladly +sacrifice everything else.” + +“Lienitsin cannot have known of this, or he would not have seized the +land,” said Platon. “He is a newcomer, just arrived from St. Petersburg. +A few words of explanation ought to meet the case.” + +“But he DOES know of what I have stated; he DOES know of it. Purposely +I sent him word to that affect, yet he has returned me the rudest of +answers.” + +“Then go yourself and explain matters to him.” + +“No, I will not do that; he has tried to carry off things with too high +a hand. But YOU can go if you like.” + +“I would certainly go were it not that I scarcely like to interfere. +Also, I am a man whom he could easily hoodwink and outwit.” + +“Would it help you if _I_ were to go?” put in Chichikov. “Pray enlighten +me as to the matter.” + +Vassili glanced at the speaker, and thought to himself: “What a passion +the man has for travelling!” + +“Yes, pray give me an idea of the kind of fellow,” repeated Chichikov, +“and also outline to me the affair.” + +“I should be ashamed to trouble you with such an unpleasant commission,” + replied Vassili. “He is a man whom I take to be an utter rascal. +Originally a member of a family of plain dvoriane in this province, he +entered the Civil Service in St. Petersburg, then married some one’s +natural daughter in that city, and has returned to lord it with a high +hand. I cannot bear the tone he adopts. Our folk are by no means fools. +They do not look upon the current fashion as the Tsar’s ukaz any more +than they look upon St. Petersburg as the Church.” + +“Naturally,” said Chichikov. “But tell me more of the particulars of the +quarrel.” + +“They are these. He needs additional land and, had he not acted as he +has done, I would have given him some land elsewhere for nothing; but, +as it is, the pestilent fellow has taken it into his head to--” + +“I think I had better go and have a talk with him. That might settle the +affair. Several times have people charged me with similar commissions, +and never have they repented of it. General Betristchev is an example.” + +“Nevertheless I am ashamed that you should be put to the annoyance of +having to converse with such a fellow.” + + + [At this point there occurs a long hiatus.] + + +“And above all things, such a transaction would need to be carried +through in secret,” said Chichikov. “True, the law does not forbid such +things, but there is always the risk of a scandal.” + +“Quite so, quite so,” said Lienitsin with head bent down. + +“Then we agree!” exclaimed Chichikov. “How charming! As I say, my +business is both legal and illegal. Though needing to effect a mortgage, +I desire to put no one to the risk of having to pay the two roubles +on each living soul; wherefore I have conceived the idea of relieving +landowners of that distasteful obligation by acquiring dead and +absconded souls who have failed to disappear from the revision list. +This enables me at once to perform an act of Christian charity and +to remove from the shoulders of our more impoverished proprietors the +burden of tax-payment upon souls of the kind specified. Should you +yourself care to do business with me, we will draw up a formal purchase +agreement as though the souls in question were still alive.” + +“But it would be such a curious arrangement,” muttered Lienitsin, moving +his chair and himself a little further away. “It would be an arrangement +which, er--er--” + +“Would involve you in no scandal whatever, seeing that the affair +would be carried through in secret. Moreover, between friends who are +well-disposed towards one another--” + +“Nevertheless--” + +Chichikov adopted a firmer and more decided tone. “I repeat that there +would be no scandal,” he said. “The transaction would take place as +between good friends, and as between friends of mature age, and as +between friends of good status, and as between friends who know how +to keep their own counsel.” And, so saying, he looked his interlocutor +frankly and generously in the eyes. + +Nevertheless Lienitsin’s resourcefulness and acumen in business matters +failed to relieve his mind of a certain perplexity--and the less so +since he had contrived to become caught in his own net. Yet, in general, +he possessed neither a love for nor a talent for underhand dealings, +and, had not fate and circumstances favoured Chichikov by causing +Lienitsin’s wife to enter the room at that moment, things might have +turned out very differently from what they did. Madame was a pale, thin, +insignificant-looking young lady, but none the less a lady who wore her +clothes a la St. Petersburg, and cultivated the society of persons who +were unimpeachably comme il faut. Behind her, borne in a nurse’s arms, +came the first fruits of the love of husband and wife. Adopting his +most telling method of approach (the method accompanied with a sidelong +inclination of the head and a sort of hop), Chichikov hastened to greet +the lady from the metropolis, and then the baby. At first the latter +started to bellow disapproval, but the words “Agoo, agoo, my pet!” added +to a little cracking of the fingers and a sight of a beautiful seal on a +watch chain, enabled Chichikov to weedle the infant into his arms; after +which he fell to swinging it up and down until he had contrived to raise +a smile on its face--a circumstance which greatly delighted the parents, +and finally inclined the father in his visitor’s favour. Suddenly, +however--whether from pleasure or from some other cause--the infant +misbehaved itself! + +“My God!” cried Madame. “He has gone and spoilt your frockcoat!” + +True enough, on glancing downwards, Chichikov saw that the sleeve of +his brand-new garment had indeed suffered a hurt. “If I could catch you +alone, you little devil,” he muttered to himself, “I’d shoot you!” + +Host, hostess and nurse all ran for eau-de-Cologne, and from three sides +set themselves to rub the spot affected. + +“Never mind, never mind; it is nothing,” said Chichikov as he strove to +communicate to his features as cheerful an expression as possible. +“What does it matter what a child may spoil during the golden age of its +infancy?” + +To himself he remarked: “The little brute! Would it could be devoured by +wolves. It has made only too good a shot, the cussed young ragamuffin!” + +How, after this--after the guest had shown such innocent affection for +the little one, and magnanimously paid for his so doing with a brand-new +suit--could the father remain obdurate? Nevertheless, to avoid setting a +bad example to the countryside, he and Chichikov agreed to carry through +the transaction PRIVATELY, lest, otherwise, a scandal should arise. + +“In return,” said Chichikov, “would you mind doing me the following +favour? I desire to mediate in the matter of your difference with the +Brothers Platonov. I believe that you wish to acquire some additional +land? Is not that so?” + + + [Here there occurs a hiatus in the original.] + + +Everything in life fulfils its function, and Chichikov’s tour in search +of a fortune was carried out so successfully that not a little money +passed into his pockets. The system employed was a good one: he did not +steal, he merely used. And every one of us at times does the same: one +man with regard to Government timber, and another with regard to a sum +belonging to his employer, while a third defrauds his children for the +sake of an actress, and a fourth robs his peasantry for the sake of +smart furniture or a carriage. What can one do when one is surrounded +on every side with roguery, and everywhere there are insanely expensive +restaurants, masked balls, and dances to the music of gipsy bands? To +abstain when every one else is indulging in these things, and fashion +commands, is difficult indeed! + +Chichikov was for setting forth again, but the roads had now got into a +bad state, and, in addition, there was in preparation a second fair--one +for the dvoriane only. The former fair had been held for the sale of +horses, cattle, cheese, and other peasant produce, and the buyers had +been merely cattle-jobbers and kulaks; but this time the function was +to be one for the sale of manorial produce which had been bought up by +wholesale dealers at Nizhni Novgorod, and then transferred hither. To +the fair, of course, came those ravishers of the Russian purse who, in +the shape of Frenchmen with pomades and Frenchwomen with hats, make away +with money earned by blood and hard work, and, like the locusts of Egypt +(to use Kostanzhoglo’s term) not only devour their prey, but also dig +holes in the ground and leave behind their eggs. + +Although, unfortunately, the occurrence of a bad harvest retained many +landowners at their country houses, the local tchinovniks (whom the +failure of the harvest did NOT touch) proceeded to let themselves go--as +also, to their undoing, did their wives. The reading of books of the +type diffused, in these modern days, for the inoculation of humanity +with a craving for new and superior amenities of life had caused every +one to conceive a passion for experimenting with the latest luxury; and +to meet this want the French wine merchant opened a new establishment +in the shape of a restaurant as had never before been heard of in the +province--a restaurant where supper could be procured on credit as +regarded one-half, and for an unprecedentedly low sum as regarded the +other. This exactly suited both heads of boards and clerks who were +living in hope of being able some day to resume their bribes-taking from +suitors. There also developed a tendency to compete in the matter of +horses and liveried flunkeys; with the result that despite the damp and +snowy weather exceedingly elegant turnouts took to parading backwards +and forwards. Whence these equipages had come God only knows, but at +least they would not have disgraced St. Petersburg. From within them +merchants and attorneys doffed their caps to ladies, and inquired after +their health, and likewise it became a rare sight to see a bearded man +in a rough fur cap, since every one now went about clean-shaven and with +dirty teeth, after the European fashion. + +“Sir, I beg of you to inspect my goods,” said a tradesman as Chichikov +was passing his establishment. “Within my doors you will find a large +variety of clothing.” + +“Have you a cloth of bilberry-coloured check?” inquired the person +addressed. + +“I have cloths of the finest kind,” replied the tradesman, raising his +cap with one hand, and pointing to his shop with the other. Chichikov +entered, and in a trice the proprietor had dived beneath the counter, +and appeared on the other side of it, with his back to his wares and his +face towards the customer. Leaning forward on the tips of his fingers, +and indicating his merchandise with just the suspicion of a nod, he +requested the gentleman to specify exactly the species of cloth which he +required. + +“A cloth with an olive-coloured or a bottle-tinted spot in its +pattern--anything in the nature of bilberry,” explained Chichikov. + +“That being so, sir, I may say that I am about to show you clothes of a +quality which even our illustrious capitals could not surpass. Hi, boy! +Reach down that roll up there--number 34. No, NOT that one, fool! Such +fellows as you are always too good for your job. There--hand it to me. +This is indeed a nice pattern!” + +Unfolding the garment, the tradesman thrust it close to Chichikov’s nose +in order that he might not only handle, but also smell it. + +“Excellent, but not what I want,” pronounced Chichikov. “Formerly I was +in the Custom’s Department, and therefore wear none but cloth of the +latest make. What I want is of a ruddier pattern than this--not exactly +a bottle-tinted pattern, but something approaching bilberry.” + +“I understand, sir. Of course you require only the very newest thing. A +cloth of that kind I DO possess, sir, and though excessive in price, it +is of a quality to match.” + +Carrying the roll of stuff to the light--even stepping into the street +for the purpose--the shopman unfolded his prize with the words, “A truly +beautiful shade! A cloth of smoked grey, shot with flame colour!” + +The material met with the customer’s approval, a price was agreed upon, +and with incredible celerity the vendor made up the purchase into a +brown-paper parcel, and stowed it away in Chichikov’s koliaska. + +At this moment a voice asked to be shown a black frockcoat. + +“The devil take me if it isn’t Khlobuev!” muttered our hero, turning his +back upon the newcomer. Unfortunately the other had seen him. + +“Come, come, Paul Ivanovitch!” he expostulated. “Surely you do not +intend to overlook me? I have been searching for you everywhere, for I +have something important to say to you.” + +“My dear sir, my very dear sir,” said Chichikov as he pressed Khlobuev’s +hand, “I can assure you that, had I the necessary leisure, I should +at all times be charmed to converse with you.” And mentally he added: +“Would that the Evil One would fly away with you!” + +Almost at the same time Murazov, the great landowner, entered the +shop. As he did so our hero hastened to exclaim: “Why, it is Athanasi +Vassilievitch! How ARE you, my very dear sir?” + +“Well enough,” replied Murazov, removing his cap (Khlobuev and the +shopman had already done the same). “How, may I ask, are YOU?” + +“But poorly,” replied Chichikov, “for of late I have been troubled with +indigestion, and my sleep is bad. I do not get sufficient exercise.” + +However, instead of probing deeper into the subject of Chichikov’s +ailments, Murazov turned to Khlobuev. + +“I saw you enter the shop,” he said, “and therefore followed you, for +I have something important for your ear. Could you spare me a minute or +two?” + +“Certainly, certainly,” said Khlobuev, and the pair left the shop +together. + +“I wonder what is afoot between them,” said Chichikov to himself. + +“A wise and noble gentleman, Athanasi Vassilievitch!” remarked the +tradesman. Chichikov made no reply save a gesture. + +“Paul Ivanovitch, I have been looking for you everywhere,” Lienitsin’s +voice said from behind him, while again the tradesman hastened to remove +his cap. “Pray come home with me, for I have something to say to you.” + +Chichikov scanned the speaker’s face, but could make nothing of it. +Paying the tradesman for the cloth, he left the shop. + +Meanwhile Murazov had conveyed Khlobuev to his rooms. + +“Tell me,” he said to his guest, “exactly how your affairs stand. I take +it that, after all, your aunt left you something?” + +“It would be difficult to say whether or not my affairs are improved,” + replied Khlobuev. “True, fifty souls and thirty thousand roubles came +to me from Madame Khanasarova, but I had to pay them away to satisfy my +debts. Consequently I am once more destitute. But the important point is +that there was trickery connected with the legacy, and shameful trickery +at that. Yes, though it may surprise you, it is a fact that that fellow +Chichikov--” + +“Yes, Semen Semenovitch, but, before you go on to speak of Chichikov, +pray tell me something about yourself, and how much, in your opinion, +would be sufficient to clear you of your difficulties?” + +“My difficulties are grievous,” replied Khlobuev. “To rid myself of +them, and also to have enough to go on with, I should need to acquire +at least a hundred thousand roubles, if not more. In short, things are +becoming impossible for me.” + +“And, had you the money, what should you do with it?” + +“I should rent a tenement, and devote myself to the education of my +children. Not a thought should I give to myself, for my career is over, +seeing that it is impossible for me to re-enter the Civil Service and I +am good for nothing else.” + +“Nevertheless, when a man is leading an idle life he is apt to incur +temptations which shun his better-employed brother.” + +“Yes, but beyond question I am good for nothing, so broken is my health, +and such a martyr I am to dyspepsia.” + +“But how do you propose to live without working? How can a man like you +exist without a post or a position of any kind? Look around you at the +works of God. Everything has its proper function, and pursues its proper +course. Even a stone can be used for one purpose or another. How, then, +can it be right for a man who is a thinking being to remain a drone?” + +“But I should not be a drone, for I should employ myself with the +education of my children.” + +“No, Semen Semenovitch--no: THAT you would find the hardest task of +all. For how can a man educate his children who has never even educated +himself? Instruction can be imparted to children only through the medium +of example; and would a life like yours furnish them with a profitable +example--a life which has been spent in idleness and the playing of +cards? No, Semen Semenovitch. You had far better hand your children over +to me. Otherwise they will be ruined. Do not think that I am jesting. +Idleness has wrecked your life, and you must flee from it. Can a man +live with nothing to keep him in place? Even a journeyman labourer who +earns the barest pittance may take an interest in his occupation.” + +“Athanasi Vassilievitch, I have tried to overcome myself, but what +further resource lies open to me? Can I who am old and incapable +re-enter the Civil Service and spend year after year at a desk with +youths who are just starting their careers? Moreover, I have lost the +trick of taking bribes; I should only hinder both myself and others; +while, as you know, it is a department which has an established caste +of its own. Therefore, though I have considered, and even attempted to +obtain, every conceivable post, I find myself incompetent for them all. +Only in a monastery should I--” + +“Nay, nay. Monasteries, again, are only for those who have worked. To +those who have spent their youth in dissipation such havens say what +the ant said to the dragonfly--namely, ‘Go you away, and return to your +dancing.’ Yes, even in a monastery do folk toil and toil--they do +not sit playing whist.” Murazov looked at Khlobuev, and added: “Semen +Semenovitch, you are deceiving both yourself and me.” + +Poor Khlobuev could not utter a word in reply, and Murazov began to feel +sorry for him. + +“Listen, Semen Semenovitch,” he went on. “I know that you say your +prayers, and that you go to church, and that you observe both Matins and +Vespers, and that, though averse to early rising, you leave your bed at +four o’clock in the morning before the household fires have been lit.” + +“Ah, Athanasi Vassilievitch,” said Khlobuev, “that is another matter +altogether. That I do, not for man’s sake, but for the sake of Him who +has ordered all things here on earth. Yes, I believe that He at least +can feel compassion for me, that He at least, though I be foul and +lowly, will pardon me and receive me when all men have cast me out, and +my best friend has betrayed me and boasted that he has done it for a +good end.” + +Khlobuev’s face was glowing with emotion, and from the older man’s eyes +also a tear had started. + +“You will do well to hearken unto Him who is merciful,” he said. “But +remember also that, in the eyes of the All-Merciful, honest toil is of +equal merit with a prayer. Therefore take unto yourself whatsoever task +you may, and do it as though you were doing it, not unto man, but unto +God. Even though to your lot there should fall but the cleaning of a +floor, clean that floor as though it were being cleaned for Him alone. +And thence at least this good you will reap: that there will remain to +you no time for what is evil--for card playing, for feasting, for all +the life of this gay world. Are you acquainted with Ivan Potapitch?” + +“Yes, not only am I acquainted with him, but I also greatly respect +him.” + +“Time was when Ivan Potapitch was a merchant worth half a million +roubles. In everything did he look but for gain, and his affairs +prospered exceedingly, so much so that he was able to send his son to be +educated in France, and to marry his daughter to a General. And whether +in his office or at the Exchange, he would stop any friend whom he +encountered and carry him off to a tavern to drink, and spend whole days +thus employed. But at last he became bankrupt, and God sent him other +misfortunes also. His son! Ah, well! Ivan Potapitch is now my steward, +for he had to begin life over again. Yet once more his affairs are in +order, and, had it been his wish, he could have restarted in business +with a capital of half a million roubles. ‘But no,’ he said. ‘A +steward am I, and a steward will I remain to the end; for, from being +full-stomached and heavy with dropsy, I have become strong and well.’ +Not a drop of liquor passes his lips, but only cabbage soup and gruel. +And he prays as none of the rest of us pray, and he helps the poor as +none of the rest of us help them; and to this he would add yet further +charity if his means permitted him to do so.” + +Poor Khlobuev remained silent, as before. + +The elder man took his two hands in his. + +“Semen Semenovitch,” he said, “you cannot think how much I pity you, or +how much I have had you in my thoughts. Listen to me. In the monastery +there is a recluse who never looks upon a human face. Of all men whom +I know he has the broadest mind, and he breaks not his silence save to +give advice. To him I went and said that I had a friend (though I +did not actually mention your name) who was in great trouble of soul. +Suddenly the recluse interrupted me with the words: ‘God’s work first, +and our own last. There is need for a church to be built, but no money +wherewith to build it. Money must be collected to that end.’ Then he +shut to the wicket. I wondered to myself what this could mean, and +concluded that the recluse had been unwilling to accord me his counsel. +Next I repaired to the Archimandrite, and had scarce reached his door +when he inquired of me whether I could commend to him a man meet to be +entrusted with the collection of alms for a church--a man who should +belong to the dvoriane or to the more lettered merchants, but who would +guard the trust as he would guard the salvation of his soul. On the +instant thought I to myself: ‘Why should not the Holy Father appoint +my friend Semen Semenovitch? For the way of suffering would benefit him +greatly; and as he passed with his ledger from landowner to peasant, +and from peasant to townsman, he would learn where folk dwell, and who +stands in need of aught, and thus would become better acquainted with +the countryside than folk who dwell in cities. And, thus become, he +would find that his services were always in demand.’ Only of late did +the Governor-General say to me that, could he but be furnished with the +name of a secretary who should know his work not only by the book but +also by experience, he would give him a great sum, since nothing is to +be learned by the former means, and, through it, much confusion arises.” + +“You confound me, you overwhelm me!” said Khlobuev, staring at his +companion in open-eyed astonishment. “I can scarcely believe that your +words are true, seeing that for such a trust an active, indefatigable +man would be necessary. Moreover, how could I leave my wife and children +unprovided for?” + +“Have no fear,” said Murazov, “I myself will take them under my care, as +well as procure for the children a tutor. Far better and nobler were +it for you to be travelling with a wallet, and asking alms on behalf +of God, then to be remaining here and asking alms for yourself alone. +Likewise, I will furnish you with a tilt-waggon, so that you may be +saved some of the hardships of the journey, and thus be preserved in +good health. Also, I will give you some money for the journey, in +order that, as you pass on your way, you may give to those who stand +in greater need than their fellows. Thus, if, before giving, you assure +yourself that the recipient of the alms is worthy of the same, you will +do much good; and as you travel you will become acquainted with all men +and sundry, and they will treat you, not as a tchinovnik to be feared, +but as one to whom, as a petitioner on behalf of the Church, they may +unloose their tongues without peril.” + +“I feel that the scheme is a splendid one, and would gladly bear my part +in it were it not likely to exceed my strength.” + +“What is there that does NOT exceed your strength?” said Murazov. +“Nothing is wholly proportionate to it--everything surpasses it. Help +from above is necessary: otherwise we are all powerless. Strength comes +of prayer, and of prayer alone. When a man crosses himself, and cries, +‘Lord, have mercy upon me!’ he soon stems the current and wins to the +shore. Nor need you take any prolonged thought concerning this matter. +All that you need do is to accept it as a commission sent of God. The +tilt-waggon can be prepared for you immediately; and then, as soon as +you have been to the Archimandrite for your book of accounts and his +blessing, you will be free to start on your journey.” + +“I submit myself to you, and accept the commission as a divine trust.” + +And even as Khlobuev spoke he felt renewed vigour and confidence arise +in his soul, and his mind begin to awake to a sense of hopefulness of +eventually being able to put to flight his troubles. And even as it was, +the world seemed to be growing dim to his eyes.... + +Meanwhile, plea after plea had been presented to the legal authorities, +and daily were relatives whom no one had before heard of putting in +an appearance. Yes, like vultures to a corpse did these good folk come +flocking to the immense property which Madam Khanasarov had left behind +her. Everywhere were heard rumours against Chichikov, rumours with +regard to the validity of the second will, rumours with regard to will +number one, and rumours of larceny and concealment of funds. Also, there +came to hand information with regard both to Chichikov’s purchase of +dead souls and to his conniving at contraband goods during his service +in the Customs Department. In short, every possible item of evidence +was exhumed, and the whole of his previous history investigated. How +the authorities had come to suspect and to ascertain all this God only +knows, but the fact remains that there had fallen into the hands of +those authorities information concerning matters of which Chichikov had +believed only himself and the four walls to be aware. True, for a +time these matters remained within the cognisance of none but the +functionaries concerned, and failed to reach Chichikov’s ears; but at +length a letter from a confidential friend gave him reason to think that +the fat was about to fall into the fire. Said the letter briefly: “Dear +sir, I beg to advise you that possibly legal trouble is pending, but +that you have no cause for uneasiness, seeing that everything will +be attended to by yours very truly.” Yet, in spite of its tenor, the +epistle reassured its recipient. “What a genius the fellow is!” thought +Chichikov to himself. Next, to complete his satisfaction, his tailor +arrived with the new suit which he had ordered. Not without a certain +sense of pride did our hero inspect the frockcoat of smoked grey shot +with flame colour and look at it from every point of view, and then +try on the breeches--the latter fitting him like a picture, and quite +concealing any deficiencies in the matter of his thighs and calves +(though, when buckled behind, they left his stomach projecting like a +drum). True, the customer remarked that there appeared to be a slight +tightness under the right armpit, but the smiling tailor only rejoined +that that would cause the waist to fit all the better. “Sir,” he said +triumphantly, “you may rest assured that the work has been executed +exactly as it ought to have been executed. No one, except in St. +Petersburg, could have done it better.” As a matter of fact, the tailor +himself hailed from St. Petersburg, but called himself on his signboard +“Foreign Costumier from London and Paris”--the truth being that by +the use of a double-barrelled flourish of cities superior to mere +“Karlsruhe” and “Copenhagen” he designed to acquire business and cut out +his local rivals. + +Chichikov graciously settled the man’s account, and, as soon as he had +gone, paraded at leisure, and con amore, and after the manner of an +artist of aesthetic taste, before the mirror. Somehow he seemed to look +better than ever in the suit, for his cheeks had now taken on a still +more interesting air, and his chin an added seductiveness, while his +white collar lent tone to his neck, the blue satin tie heightened the +effect of the collar, the fashionable dickey set off the tie, +the rich satin waistcoat emphasised the dickey, and the +smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour frockcoat, shining like silk, +splendidly rounded off the whole. When he turned to the right he looked +well: when he turned to the left he looked even better. In short, it +was a costume worthy of a Lord Chamberlain or the species of dandy who +shrinks from swearing in the Russian language, but amply relieves his +feelings in the language of France. Next, inclining his head slightly +to one side, our hero endeavoured to pose as though he were addressing +a middle-aged lady of exquisite refinement; and the result of these +efforts was a picture which any artist might have yearned to portray. +Next, his delight led him gracefully to execute a hop in ballet fashion, +so that the wardrobe trembled and a bottle of eau-de-Cologne came +crashing to the floor. Yet even this contretemps did not upset him; he +merely called the offending bottle a fool, and then debated whom first +he should visit in his attractive guise. + +Suddenly there resounded through the hall a clatter of spurred heels, +and then the voice of a gendarme saying: “You are commanded to present +yourself before the Governor-General!” Turning round, Chichikov stared +in horror at the spectacle presented; for in the doorway there was +standing an apparition wearing a huge moustache, a helmet surmounted +with a horsehair plume, a pair of crossed shoulder-belts, and a gigantic +sword! A whole army might have been combined into a single individual! +And when Chichikov opened his mouth to speak the apparition repeated, +“You are commanded to present yourself before the Governor-General,” + and at the same moment our hero caught sight both of a second apparition +outside the door and of a coach waiting beneath the window. What was +to be done? Nothing whatever was possible. Just as he stood--in his +smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour suit--he had then and there to enter +the vehicle, and, shaking in every limb, and with a gendarme seated by +his side, to start for the residence of the Governor-General. + +And even in the hall of that establishment no time was given him to +pull himself together, for at once an aide-de-camp said: “Go inside +immediately, for the Prince is awaiting you.” And as in a dream did our +hero see a vestibule where couriers were being handed dispatches, and +then a salon which he crossed with the thought, “I suppose I am not to +be allowed a trial, but shall be sent straight to Siberia!” And at the +thought his heart started beating in a manner which the most jealous +of lovers could not have rivalled. At length there opened a door, +and before him he saw a study full of portfolios, ledgers, and +dispatch-boxes, with, standing behind them, the gravely menacing figure +of the Prince. + +“There stands my executioner,” thought Chichikov to himself. “He is +about to tear me to pieces as a wolf tears a lamb.” + +Indeed, the Prince’s lips were simply quivering with rage. + +“Once before did I spare you,” he said, “and allow you to remain in the +town when you ought to have been in prison: yet your only return for +my clemency has been to revert to a career of fraud--and of fraud as +dishonourable as ever a man engaged in.” + +“To what dishonourable fraud do you refer, your Highness?” asked +Chichikov, trembling from head to foot. + +The Prince approached, and looked him straight in the eyes. + +“Let me tell you,” he said, “that the woman whom you induced to witness +a certain will has been arrested, and that you will be confronted with +her.” + +The world seemed suddenly to grow dim before Chichikov’s sight. + +“Your Highness,” he gasped, “I will tell you the whole truth, and +nothing but the truth. I am guilty--yes, I am guilty; but I am not so +guilty as you think, for I was led away by rascals.” + +“That any one can have led you away is impossible,” retorted the Prince. +“Recorded against your name there stand more felonies than even the most +hardened liar could have invented. I believe that never in your life +have you done a deed not innately dishonourable--that not a kopeck have +you ever obtained by aught but shameful methods of trickery and theft, +the penalty for which is Siberia and the knut. But enough of this! From +this room you will be conveyed to prison, where, with other rogues and +thieves, you will be confined until your trial may come on. And this +is lenient treatment on my part, for you are worse, far worse, than the +felons who will be your companions. THEY are but poor men in smocks and +sheepskins, whereas YOU--” Without concluding his words, the Prince shot +a glance at Chichikov’s smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour apparel. + +Then he touched a bell. + +“Your Highness,” cried Chichikov, “have mercy upon me! You are the +father of a family! Spare me for the sake of my aged mother!” + +“Rubbish!” exclaimed the Prince. “Even as before you besought me for the +sake of a wife and children whom you did not even possess, so now you +would speak to me of an aged mother!” + +“Your Highness,” protested Chichikov, “though I am a wretch and the +lowest of rascals, and though it is true that I lied when I told +you that I possessed a wife and children, I swear that, as God is my +witness, it has always been my DESIRE to possess a wife, and to fulfil +all the duties of a man and a citizen, and to earn the respect of my +fellows and the authorities. But what could be done against the force +of circumstances? By hook or by crook I have ever been forced to win +a living, though confronted at every step by wiles and temptations and +traitorous enemies and despoilers. So much has this been so that my +life has, throughout, resembled a barque tossed by tempestuous waves, +a barque driven at the mercy of the winds. Ah, I am only a man, your +Highness!” + +And in a moment the tears had gushed in torrents from his eyes, and he +had fallen forward at the Prince’s feet--fallen forward just as he +was, in his smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour frockcoat, his velvet +waistcoat, his satin tie, and his exquisitely fitting breeches, while +from his neatly brushed pate, as again and again he struck his hand +against his forehead, there came an odorous whiff of best-quality +eau-de-Cologne. + +“Away with him!” exclaimed the Prince to the gendarme who had just +entered. “Summon the escort to remove him.” + +“Your Highness!” Chichikov cried again as he clasped the Prince’s knees; +but, shuddering all over, and struggling to free himself, the Prince +repeated his order for the prisoner’s removal. + +“Your Highness, I say that I will not leave this room until you have +accorded me mercy!” cried Chichikov as he clung to the Prince’s leg with +such tenacity that, frockcoat and all, he began to be dragged along the +floor. + +“Away with him, I say!” once more the Prince exclaimed with the sort of +indefinable aversion which one feels at the sight of a repulsive +insect which he cannot summon up the courage to crush with his boot. So +convulsively did the Prince shudder that Chichikov, clinging to his leg, +received a kick on the nose. Yet still the prisoner retained his hold; +until at length a couple of burly gendarmes tore him away and, +grasping his arms, hurried him--pale, dishevelled, and in that strange, +half-conscious condition into which a man sinks when he sees before +him only the dark, terrible figure of death, the phantom which is so +abhorrent to all our natures--from the building. But on the threshold +the party came face to face with Murazov, and in Chichikov’s heart +the circumstance revived a ray of hope. Wresting himself with almost +supernatural strength from the grasp of the escorting gendarmes, he +threw himself at the feet of the horror-stricken old man. + +“Paul Ivanovitch,” Murazov exclaimed, “what has happened to you?” + +“Save me!” gasped Chichikov. “They are taking me away to prison and +death!” + +Yet almost as he spoke the gendarmes seized him again, and hurried him +away so swiftly that Murazov’s reply escaped his ears. + +A damp, mouldy cell which reeked of soldiers’ boots and leggings, an +unvarnished table, two sorry chairs, a window closed with a grating, a +crazy stove which, while letting the smoke emerge through its cracks, +gave out no heat--such was the den to which the man who had just begun +to taste the sweets of life, and to attract the attention of his fellows +with his new suit of smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour, now found +himself consigned. Not even necessaries had he been allowed to bring +away with him, nor his dispatch-box which contained all his booty. No, +with the indenture deeds of the dead souls, it was lodged in the hands +of a tchinovnik; and as he thought of these things Chichikov rolled +about the floor, and felt the cankerous worm of remorse seize upon and +gnaw at his heart, and bite its way ever further and further into that +heart so defenceless against its ravages, until he made up his mind +that, should he have to suffer another twenty-four hours of this misery, +there would no longer be a Chichikov in the world. Yet over him, as over +every one, there hung poised the All-Saving Hand; and, an hour after his +arrival at the prison, the doors of the gaol opened to admit Murazov. + +Compared with poor Chichikov’s sense of relief when the old man entered +his cell, even the pleasure experienced by a thirsty, dusty traveller +when he is given a drink of clear spring water to cool his dry, parched +throat fades into insignificance. + +“Ah, my deliverer!” he cried as he rose from the floor, where he had +been grovelling in heartrending paroxysms of grief. Seizing the old +man’s hand, he kissed it and pressed it to his bosom. Then, bursting +into tears, he added: “God Himself will reward you for having come to +visit an unfortunate wretch!” + +Murazov looked at him sorrowfully, and said no more than “Ah, Paul +Ivanovitch, Paul Ivanovitch! What has happened?” + +“What has happened?” cried Chichikov. “I have been ruined by an accursed +woman. That was because I could not do things in moderation--I was +powerless to stop myself in time, Satan tempted me, and drove me from +my senses, and bereft me of human prudence. Yes, truly I have sinned, I +have sinned! Yet how came I so to sin? To think that a dvorianin--yes, +a dvorianin--should be thrown into prison without process or trial! I +repeat, a dvorianin! Why was I not given time to go home and collect my +effects? Whereas now they are left with no one to look after them! My +dispatch-box, my dispatch-box! It contained my whole property, all that +my heart’s blood and years of toil and want have been needed to acquire. +And now everything will be stolen, Athanasi Vassilievitch--everything +will be taken from me! My God!” + +And, unable to stand against the torrent of grief which came rushing +over his heart once more, he sobbed aloud in tones which penetrated even +the thickness of the prison walls, and made dull echoes awake behind +them. Then, tearing off his satin tie, and seizing by the collar, the +smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour frockcoat, he stripped the latter +from his shoulders. + +“Ah, Paul Ivanovitch,” said the old man, “how even now the property +which you have acquired is blinding your eyes, and causing you to fail +to realise your terrible position!” + +“Yes, my good friend and benefactor,” wailed poor Chichikov +despairingly, and clasping Murazov by the knees. “Yet save me if you +can! The Prince is fond of you, and would do anything for your sake.” + +“No, Paul Ivanovitch; however much I might wish to save you, and however +much I might try to do so, I could not help you as you desire; for it is +to the power of an inexorable law, and not to the authority of any one +man, that you have rendered yourself subject.” + +“Satan tempted me, and has ended by making of me an outcast from the +human race!” Chichikov beat his head against the wall and struck the +table with his fist until the blood spurted from his hand. Yet neither +his head nor his hand seemed to be conscious of the least pain. + +“Calm yourself, Paul Ivanovitch,” said Murazov. “Calm yourself, and +consider how best you can make your peace with God. Think of your +miserable soul, and not of the judgment of man.” + +“I will, Athanasi Vassilievitch, I will. But what a fate is mine! Did +ever such a fate befall a man? To think of all the patience with which +I have gathered my kopecks, of all the toil and trouble which I have +endured! Yet what I have done has not been done with the intention of +robbing any one, nor of cheating the Treasury. Why, then, did I gather +those kopecks? I gathered them to the end that one day I might be able +to live in plenty, and also to have something to leave to the wife +and children whom, for the benefit and welfare of my country, I hoped +eventually to win and maintain. That was why I gathered those kopecks. +True, I worked by devious methods--that I fully admit; but what else +could I do? And even devious methods I employed only when I saw that the +straight road would not serve my purpose so well as a crooked. Moreover, +as I toiled, the appetite for those methods grew upon me. Yet what +I took I took only from the rich; whereas villains exist who, while +drawing thousands a year from the Treasury, despoil the poor, and take +from the man with nothing even that which he has. Is it not the cruelty +of fate, therefore, that, just when I was beginning to reap the harvest +of my toil--to touch it, so to speak, with the tip of one finger--there +should have arisen a sudden storm which has sent my barque to pieces on +a rock? My capital had nearly reached the sum of three hundred thousand +roubles, and a three-storied house was as good as mine, and twice over +I could have bought a country estate. Why, then, should such a tempest +have burst upon me? Why should I have sustained such a blow? Was not my +life already like a barque tossed to and fro by the billows? Where +is Heaven’s justice--where is the reward for all my patience, for my +boundless perseverance? Three times did I have to begin life afresh, and +each time that I lost my all I began with a single kopeck at a moment +when other men would have given themselves up to despair and drink. How +much did I not have to overcome. How much did I not have to bear! Every +kopeck which I gained I had to make with my whole strength; for though, +to others, wealth may come easily, every coin of mine had to be ‘forged +with a nail worth three kopecks’ as the proverb has it. With such a +nail--with the nail of an iron, unwearying perseverance--did _I_ forge +my kopecks.” + +Convulsively sobbing with a grief which he could not repress, Chichikov +sank upon a chair, tore from his shoulders the last ragged, trailing +remnants of his frockcoat, and hurled them from him. Then, thrusting his +fingers into the hair which he had once been so careful to preserve, he +pulled it out by handfuls at a time, as though he hoped through physical +pain to deaden the mental agony which he was suffering. + +Meanwhile Murazov sat gazing in silence at the unwonted spectacle of +a man who had lately been mincing with the gait of a worldling or a +military fop now writhing in dishevelment and despair as he poured out +upon the hostile forces by which human ingenuity so often finds itself +outwitted a flood of invective. + +“Paul Ivanovitch, Paul Ivanovitch,” at length said Murazov, “what +could not each of us rise to be did we but devote to good ends the same +measure of energy and of patience which we bestow upon unworthy objects! +How much good would not you yourself have effected! Yet I do not grieve +so much for the fact that you have sinned against your fellow as I +grieve for the fact that you have sinned against yourself and the rich +store of gifts and opportunities which has been committed to your care. +Though originally destined to rise, you have wandered from the path and +fallen.” + +“Ah, Athanasi Vassilievitch,” cried poor Chichikov, clasping his friend’s +hands, “I swear to you that, if you would but restore me my freedom, and +recover for me my lost property, I would lead a different life from this +time forth. Save me, you who alone can work my deliverance! Save me!” + +“How can I do that? So to do I should need to procure the setting aside +of a law. Again, even if I were to make the attempt, the Prince is a +strict administrator, and would refuse on any consideration to release +you.” + +“Yes, but for you all things are possible. It is not the law that +troubles me: with that I could find a means to deal. It is the fact that +for no offence at all I have been cast into prison, and treated like +a dog, and deprived of my papers and dispatch-box and all my property. +Save me if you can.” + +Again clasping the old man’s knees, he bedewed them with his tears. + +“Paul Ivanovitch,” said Murazov, shaking his head, “how that property +of yours still seals your eyes and ears, so that you cannot so much as +listen to the promptings of your own soul!” + +“Ah, I will think of my soul, too, if only you will save me.” + +“Paul Ivanovitch,” the old man began again, and then stopped. For a +little while there was a pause. + +“Paul Ivanovitch,” at length he went on, “to save you does not lie +within my power. Surely you yourself see that? But, so far as I can, +I will endeavour to, at all events, lighten your lot and procure your +eventual release. Whether or not I shall succeed I do not know; but I +will make the attempt. And should I, contrary to my expectations, prove +successful, I beg of you, in return for these my efforts, to renounce +all thought of benefit from the property which you have acquired. +Sincerely do I assure you that, were I myself to be deprived of my +property (and my property greatly exceeds yours in magnitude), I should +not shed a single tear. It is not the property of which men can deprive +us that matters, but the property of which no one on earth can deprive +or despoil us. You are a man who has seen something of life--to use +your own words, you have been a barque tossed hither and thither by +tempestuous waves: yet still will there be left to you a remnant of +substance on which to live, and therefore I beseech you to settle down +in some quiet nook where there is a church, and where none but plain, +good-hearted folk abide. Or, should you feel a yearning to leave behind +you posterity, take in marriage a good woman who shall bring you, +not money, but an aptitude for simple, modest domestic life. But +this life--the life of turmoil, with its longings and its +temptations--forget, and let it forget YOU; for there is no peace in +it. See for yourself how, at every step, it brings one but hatred and +treachery and deceit.” + +“Indeed, yes!” agreed the repentant Chichikov. “Gladly will I do as you +wish, since for many a day past have I been longing to amend my life, +and to engage in husbandry, and to reorder my affairs. A demon, the +tempter Satan himself, has beguiled me and led me from the right path.” + +Suddenly there had recurred to Chichikov long-unknown, long-unfamiliar +feelings. Something seemed to be striving to come to life again in +him--something dim and remote, something which had been crushed out of +his boyhood by the dreary, deadening education of his youthful days, by +his desolate home, by his subsequent lack of family ties, by the poverty +and niggardliness of his early impressions, by the grim eye of fate--an +eye which had always seemed to be regarding him as through a misty, +mournful, frost-encrusted window-pane, and to be mocking at his +struggles for freedom. And as these feelings came back to the penitent +a groan burst from his lips, and, covering his face with his hands, he +moaned: “It is all true, it is all true!” + +“Of little avail are knowledge of the world and experience of men unless +based upon a secure foundation,” observed Murazov. “Though you have +fallen, Paul Ivanovitch, awake to better things, for as yet there is +time.” + +“No, no!” groaned Chichikov in a voice which made Murazov’s heart bleed. +“It is too late, too late. More and more is the conviction gaining upon +me that I am powerless, that I have strayed too far ever to be able to +do as you bid me. The fact that I have become what I am is due to my +early schooling; for, though my father taught me moral lessons, and beat +me, and set me to copy maxims into a book, he himself stole land from +his neighbours, and forced me to help him. I have even known him to +bring an unjust suit, and defraud the orphan whose guardian he was! +Consequently I know and feel that, though my life has been different +from his, I do not hate roguery as I ought to hate it, and that my +nature is coarse, and that in me there is no real love for what is good, +no real spark of that beautiful instinct for well-doing which becomes +a second nature, a settled habit. Also, never do I yearn to strive for +what is right as I yearn to acquire property. This is no more than the +truth. What else could I do but confess it?” + +The old man sighed. + +“Paul Ivanovitch,” he said, “I know that you possess will-power, and +that you possess also perseverance. A medicine may be bitter, yet the +patient will gladly take it when assured that only by its means can he +recover. Therefore, if it really be that you have no genuine love for +doing good, do good by FORCING yourself to do so. Thus you will benefit +yourself even more than you will benefit him for whose sake the act +is performed. Only force yourself to do good just once and again, and, +behold, you will suddenly conceive the TRUE love for well-doing. That +is so, believe me. ‘A kingdom is to be won only by striving,’ says the +proverb. That is to say, things are to be attained only by putting forth +one’s whole strength, since nothing short of one’s whole strength will +bring one to the desired goal. Paul Ivanovitch, within you there is a +source of strength denied to many another man. I refer to the strength +of an iron perseverance. Cannot THAT help you to overcome? Most men are +weak and lack will-power, whereas I believe that you possess the power +to act a hero’s part.” + +Sinking deep into Chichikov’s heart, these words would seem to have +aroused in it a faint stirring of ambition, so much so that, if it was +not fortitude which shone in his eyes, at all events it was something +virile, and of much the same nature. + +“Athanasi Vassilievitch,” he said firmly, “if you will but petition +for my release, as well as for permission for me to leave here with a +portion of my property, I swear to you on my word of honour that I will +begin a new life, and buy a country estate, and become the head of a +household, and save money, not for myself, but for others, and do good +everywhere, and to the best of my ability, and forget alike myself and +the feasting and debauchery of town life, and lead, instead, a plain, +sober existence.” + +“In that resolve may God strengthen you!” cried the old man with +unbounded joy. “And I, for my part, will do my utmost to procure +your release. And though God alone knows whether my efforts will be +successful, at all events I hope to bring about a mitigation of your +sentence. Come, let me embrace you! How you have filled my heart with +gladness! With God’s help, I will now go to the Prince.” + +And the next moment Chichikov found himself alone. His whole nature felt +shaken and softened, even as, when the bellows have fanned the furnace +to a sufficient heat, a plate compounded even of the hardest and most +fire-resisting metal dissolves, glows, and turns to the liquefied state. + +“I myself can feel but little,” he reflected, “but I intend to use my +every faculty to help others to feel. I myself am but bad and worthless, +but I intend to do my utmost to set others on the right road. I myself +am but an indifferent Christian, but I intend to strive never to yield +to temptation, but to work hard, and to till my land with the sweat of +my brow, and to engage only in honourable pursuits, and to influence my +fellows in the same direction. For, after all, am I so very useless? +At least I could maintain a household, for I am frugal and active and +intelligent and steadfast. The only thing is to make up my mind to it.” + +Thus Chichikov pondered; and as he did so his half-awakened energies of +soul touched upon something. That is to say, dimly his instinct +divined that every man has a duty to perform, and that that duty may +be performed here, there, and everywhere, and no matter what the +circumstances and the emotions and the difficulties which compass a man +about. And with such clearness did Chichikov mentally picture to himself +the life of grateful toil which lies removed from the bustle of towns +and the temptations which man, forgetful of the obligation of labour, +has invented to beguile an hour of idleness that almost our hero forgot +his unpleasant position, and even felt ready to thank Providence for +the calamity which had befallen him, provided that it should end in his +being released, and in his receiving back a portion of his property. + +Presently the massive door of the cell opened to admit a tchinovnik +named Samosvitov, a robust, sensual individual who was reputed by his +comrades to be something of a rake. Had he served in the army, he +would have done wonders, for he would have stormed any point, however +dangerous and inaccessible, and captured cannon under the very noses +of the foe; but, as it was, the lack of a more warlike field for his +energies caused him to devote the latter principally to dissipation. +Nevertheless he enjoyed great popularity, for he was loyal to the point +that, once his word had been given, nothing would ever make him break +it. At the same time, some reason or another led him to regard his +superiors in the light of a hostile battery which, come what might, he +must breach at any weak or unguarded spot or gap which might be capable +of being utilised for the purpose. + +“We have all heard of your plight,” he began as soon as the door had +been safely closed behind him. “Yes, every one has heard of it. But +never mind. Things will yet come right. We will do our very best for +you, and act as your humble servants in everything. Thirty thousand +roubles is our price--no more.” + +“Indeed?” said Chichikov. “And, for that, shall I be completely +exonerated?” + +“Yes, completely, and also given some compensation for your loss of +time.” + +“And how much am I to pay in return, you say?” + +“Thirty thousand roubles, to be divided among ourselves, the +Governor-General’s staff, and the Governor-General’s secretary.” + +“But how is even that to be managed, for all my effects, including my +dispatch-box, will have been sealed up and taken away for examination?” + +“In an hour’s time they will be within your hands again,” said +Samosvitov. “Shall we shake hands over the bargain?” + +Chichikov did so with a beating heart, for he could scarcely believe his +ears. + +“For the present, then, farewell,” concluded Samosvitov. “I have +instructed a certain mutual friend that the important points are silence +and presence of mind.” + +“Hm!” thought Chichikov. “It is to my lawyer that he is referring.” + +Even when Samosvitov had departed the prisoner found it difficult to +credit all that had been said. Yet not an hour had elapsed before a +messenger arrived with his dispatch-box and the papers and money therein +practically undisturbed and intact! Later it came out that Samosvitov +had assumed complete authority in the matter. First, he had rebuked the +gendarmes guarding Chichikov’s effects for lack of vigilance, and then +sent word to the Superintendent that additional men were required for +the purpose; after which he had taken the dispatch-box into his own +charge, removed from it every paper which could possibly compromise +Chichikov, sealed up the rest in a packet, and ordered a gendarme to +convey the whole to their owner on the pretence of forwarding him sundry +garments necessary for the night. In the result Chichikov received not +only his papers, but also some warm clothing for his hypersensitive +limbs. Such a swift recovery of his treasures delighted him beyond +expression, and, gathering new hope, he began once more to dream of such +allurements as theatre-going and the ballet girl after whom he had for +some time past been dangling. Gradually did the country estate and the +simple life begin to recede into the distance: gradually did the town +house and the life of gaiety begin to loom larger and larger in the +foreground. Oh, life, life! + +Meanwhile in Government offices and chancellories there had been set +on foot a boundless volume of work. Clerical pens slaved, and brains +skilled in legal casus toiled; for each official had the artist’s liking +for the curved line in preference to the straight. And all the while, +like a hidden magician, Chichikov’s lawyer imparted driving power to +that machine which caught up a man into its mechanism before he could +even look round. And the complexity of it increased and increased, for +Samosvitov surpassed himself in importance and daring. On learning +of the place of confinement of the woman who had been arrested, he +presented himself at the doors, and passed so well for a smart young +officer of gendarmery that the sentry saluted and sprang to attention. + +“Have you been on duty long?” asked Samosvitov. + +“Since this morning, your Excellency.” + +“And shall you soon be relieved?” + +“In three hours from now, your Excellency.” + +“Presently I shall want you, so I will instruct your officer to have you +relieved at once.” + +“Very good, your Excellency.” + +Hastening home, thereafter, at top speed, and donning the uniform of +a gendarme, with a false moustache and a pair of false whiskers--an +ensemble in which the devil himself would not have known him, Samosvitov +then made for the gaol where Chichikov was confined, and, en route, +impressed into the service the first street woman whom he encountered, +and handed her over to the care of two young fellows of like sort +with himself. The next step was to hurry back to the prison where the +original woman had been interned, and there to intimate to the sentry +that he, Samosvitov (with whiskers and rifle complete), had been sent +to relieve the said sentry at his post--a proceeding which, of course, +enabled the newly-arrived relief to ensure, while performing his +self-assumed turn of duty, that for the woman lying under arrest there +should be substituted the woman recently recruited to the plot, and that +the former should then be conveyed to a place of concealment where she +was highly unlikely to be discovered. + +Meanwhile, Samosvitov’s feats in the military sphere were being rivalled +by the wonders worked by Chichikov’s lawyer in the civilian field of +action. As a first step, the lawyer caused it to be intimated to the +local Governor that the Public Prosecutor was engaged in drawing up a +report to his, the local Governor’s, detriment; whereafter the lawyer +caused it to be intimated also to the Chief of Gendarmery that a certain +confidential official was engaged in doing the same by HIM; whereafter, +again, the lawyer confided to the confidential official in question +that, owing to the documentary exertions of an official of a still +more confidential nature than the first, he (the confidential official +first-mentioned) was in a fair way to find himself in the same boat as +both the local Governor and the Chief of Gendarmery: with the result +that the whole trio were reduced to a frame of mind in which they were +only too glad to turn to him (Samosvitov) for advice. The ultimate and +farcical upshot was that report came crowding upon report, and that such +alleged doings were brought to light as the sun had never before beheld. +In fact, the documents in question employed anything and everything as +material, even to announcing that such and such an individual had an +illegitimate son, that such and such another kept a paid mistress, and +that such and such a third was troubled with a gadabout wife; whereby +there became interwoven with and welded into Chichikov’s past history +and the story of the dead souls such a crop of scandals and innuendoes +that by no manner of means could any mortal decide to which of these +rubbishy romances to award the palm, since all of them presented an equal +claim to that honour. Naturally, when, at length, the dossier reached +the Governor-General himself it simply flabbergasted the poor man; and +even the exceptionally clever and energetic secretary to whom he deputed +the making of an abstract of the same very nearly lost his reason with +the strain of attempting to lay hold of the tangled end of the skein. It +happened that just at that time the Prince had several other important +affairs on hand, and affairs of a very unpleasant nature. That is to +say, famine had made its appearance in one portion of the province, and +the tchinovniks sent to distribute food to the people had done their +work badly; in another portion of the province certain Raskolniki [51] +were in a state of ferment, owing to the spreading of a report than +an Antichrist had arisen who would not even let the dead rest, but was +purchasing them wholesale--wherefore the said Raskolniki were summoning +folk to prayer and repentance, and, under cover of capturing the +Antichrist in question, were bludgeoning non-Antichrists in batches; +lastly, the peasants of a third portion of the province had risen +against the local landowners and superintendents of police, for the +reason that certain rascals had started a rumour that the time was come +when the peasants themselves were to become landowners, and to wear +frockcoats, while the landowners in being were about to revert to the +peasant state, and to take their own wares to market; wherefore one of +the local volosts[52], oblivious of the fact that an order of things +of that kind would lead to a superfluity alike of landowners and +of superintendents of police, had refused to pay its taxes, and +necessitated recourse to forcible measures. Hence it was in a mood +of the greatest possible despondency that the poor Prince was sitting +plunged when word was brought to him that the old man who had gone bail +for Chichikov was waiting to see him. + +“Show him in,” said the Prince; and the old man entered. + +“A fine fellow your Chichikov!” began the Prince angrily. “You defended +him, and went bail for him, even though he had been up to business which +even the lowest thief would not have touched!” + +“Pardon me, your Highness; I do not understand to what you are +referring.” + +“I am referring to the matter of the fraudulent will. The fellow ought +to have been given a public flogging for it.” + +“Although to exculpate Chichikov is not my intention, might I ask +you whether you do not think the case is non-proven? At all events, +sufficient evidence against him is still lacking.” + +“What? We have as chief witness the woman who personated the deceased, +and I will have her interrogated in your presence.” + +Touching a bell, the Prince ordered her to be sent for. + +“It is a most disgraceful affair,” he went on; “and, ashamed though I am +to have to say it, some of our leading tchinovniks, including the local +Governor himself, have become implicated in the matter. Yet you tell me +that this Chichikov ought not to be confined among thieves and rascals!” + Clearly the Governor-General’s wrath was very great indeed. + +“Your Highness,” said Murazov, “the Governor of the town is one of the +heirs under the will: wherefore he has a certain right to intervene. +Also, the fact that extraneous persons have meddled in the matter is +only what is to be expected from human nature. A rich woman dies, and +no exact, regular disposition of her property is made. Hence there comes +flocking from every side a cloud of fortune hunters. What else could one +expect? Such is human nature.” + +“Yes, but why should such persons go and commit fraud?” asked the +Prince irritably. “I feel as though not a single honest tchinovnik were +available--as though every one of them were a rogue.” + +“Your Highness, which of us is altogether beyond reproach? The +tchinovniks of our town are human beings, and no more. Some of them are +men of worth, and nearly all of them men skilled in business--though +also, unfortunately, largely inter-related.” + +“Now, tell me this, Athanasi Vassilievitch,” said the Prince, “for you +are about the only honest man of my acquaintance. What has inspired in +you such a penchant for defending rascals?” + +“This,” replied Murazov. “Take any man you like of the persons whom you +thus term rascals. That man none the less remains a human being. That +being so, how can one refuse to defend him when all the time one +knows that half his errors have been committed through ignorance and +stupidity? Each of us commits faults with every step that we take; +each of us entails unhappiness upon others with every breath that we +draw--and that although we may have no evil intention whatever in our +minds. Your Highness himself has, before now, committed an injustice of +the gravest nature.” + +“_I_ have?” cried the Prince, taken aback by this unexpected turn given +to the conversation. + +Murazov remained silent for a moment, as though he were debating +something in his thoughts. Then he said: + +“Nevertheless it is as I say. You committed the injustice in the case of +the lad Dierpiennikov.” + +“What, Athanasi Vassilievitch? The fellow had infringed one of the +Fundamental Laws! He had been found guilty of treason!” + +“I am not seeking to justify him; I am only asking you whether you think +it right that an inexperienced youth who had been tempted and led away +by others should have received the same sentence as the man who +had taken the chief part in the affair. That is to say, although +Dierpiennikov and the man Voron-Drianni received an equal measure of +punishment, their CRIMINALITY was not equal.” + +“If,” exclaimed the Prince excitedly, “you know anything further +concerning the case, for God’s sake tell it me at once. Only the other +day did I forward a recommendation that St. Petersburg should remit a +portion of the sentence.” + +“Your Highness,” replied Murazov, “I do not mean that I know of +anything which does not lie also within your own cognisance, though one +circumstance there was which might have told in the lad’s favour had he +not refused to admit it, lest another should suffer injury. All that +I have in my mind is this. On that occasion were you not a little +over-hasty in coming to a conclusion? You will understand, of course, +that I am judging only according to my own poor lights, and for the +reason that on more than one occasion you have urged me to be frank. In +the days when I myself acted as a chief of gendarmery I came in contact +with a great number of accused--some of them bad, some of them good; and +in each case I found it well also to consider a man’s past career, for +the reason that, unless one views things calmly, instead of at once +decrying a man, he is apt to take alarm, and to make it impossible +thereafter to get any real confession from him. If, on the other hand, +you question a man as friend might question friend, the result will be +that straightway he will tell you everything, nor ask for mitigation of +his penalty, nor bear you the least malice, in that he will understand +that it is not you who have punished him, but the law.” + +The Prince relapsed into thought; until presently there entered a young +tchinovnik. Portfolio in hand, this official stood waiting respectfully. +Care and hard work had already imprinted their insignia upon his fresh +young face; for evidently he had not been in the Service for nothing. As +a matter of fact, his greatest joy was to labour at a tangled case, and +successfully to unravel it. + + + [At this point a long hiatus occurs in the original.] + + +“I will send corn to the localities where famine is worst,” said +Murazov, “for I understand that sort of work better than do the +tchinovniks, and will personally see to the needs of each person. Also, +if you will allow me, your Highness, I will go and have a talk with the +Raskolniki. They are more likely to listen to a plain man than to an +official. God knows whether I shall succeed in calming them, but at +least no tchinovnik could do so, for officials of the kind merely draw +up reports and lose their way among their own documents--with the result +that nothing comes of it. Nor will I accept from you any money for these +purposes, since I am ashamed to devote as much as a thought to my own +pocket at a time when men are dying of hunger. I have a large stock of +grain lying in my granaries; in addition to which, I have sent orders to +Siberia that a new consignment shall be forwarded me before the coming +summer.” + +“Of a surety will God reward you for your services, Athanasi +Vassilievitch! Not another word will I say to you on the subject, for +you yourself feel that any words from me would be inadequate. Yet tell +me one thing: I refer to the case of which you know. Have I the right to +pass over the case? Also, would it be just and honourable on my part to +let the offending tchinovniks go unpunished?” + +“Your Highness, it is impossible to return a definite answer to those +two questions: and the more so because many rascals are at heart men of +rectitude. Human problems are difficult things to solve. Sometimes a man +may be drawn into a vicious circle, so that, having once entered it, he +ceases to be himself.” + +“But what would the tchinovniks say if I allowed the case to be passed +over? Would not some of them turn up their noses at me, and declare +that they have effected my intimidation? Surely they would be the last +persons in the world to respect me for my action?” + +“Your Highness, I think this: that your best course would be to call +them together, and to inform them that you know everything, and to +explain to them your personal attitude (exactly as you have explained +it to me), and to end by at once requesting their advice and asking +them what each of them would have done had he been placed in similar +circumstances.” + +“What? You think that those tchinovniks would be so accessible to lofty +motives that they would cease thereafter to be venal and meticulous? I +should be laughed at for my pains.” + +“I think not, your Highness. Even the baser section of humanity +possesses a certain sense of equity. Your wisest plan, your Highness, +would be to conceal nothing and to speak to them as you have just spoken +to me. If, at present, they imagine you to be ambitious and proud +and unapproachable and self-assured, your action would afford them +an opportunity of seeing how the case really stands. Why should you +hesitate? You would but be exercising your undoubted right. Speak to +them as though delivering not a message of your own, but a message from +God.” + +“I will think it over,” the Prince said musingly, “and meanwhile I thank +you from my heart for your good advice.” + +“Also, I should order Chichikov to leave the town,” suggested Murazov. + +“Yes, I will do so. Tell him from me that he is to depart hence as +quickly as possible, and that the further he should remove himself, the +better it will be for him. Also, tell him that it is only owing to your +efforts that he has received a pardon at my hands.” + +Murazov bowed, and proceeded from the Prince’s presence to that of +Chichikov. He found the prisoner cheerfully enjoying a hearty dinner +which, under hot covers, had been brought him from an exceedingly +excellent kitchen. But almost the first words which he uttered showed +Murazov that the prisoner had been having dealings with the army of +bribe-takers; as also that in those transactions his lawyer had played +the principal part. + +“Listen, Paul Ivanovitch,” the old man said. “I bring you your freedom, +but only on this condition--that you depart out of the town forthwith. +Therefore gather together your effects, and waste not a moment, lest +worse befall you. Also, of all that a certain person has contrived to +do on your behalf I am aware; wherefore let me tell you, as between +ourselves, that should the conspiracy come to light, nothing on earth +can save him, and in his fall he will involve others rather then be left +unaccompanied in the lurch, and not see the guilt shared. How is it that +when I left you recently you were in a better frame of mind than you are +now? I beg of you not to trifle with the matter. Ah me! what boots that +wealth for which men dispute and cut one another’s throats? Do they +think that it is possible to prosper in this world without thinking of +the world to come? Believe me when I say that, until a man shall have +renounced all that leads humanity to contend without giving a thought to +the ordering of spiritual wealth, he will never set his temporal goods +either upon a satisfactory foundation. Yes, even as times of want and +scarcity may come upon nations, so may they come upon individuals. No +matter what may be said to the contrary, the body can never dispense +with the soul. Why, then, will you not try to walk in the right way, +and, by thinking no longer of dead souls, but only of your only living +one, regain, with God’s help, the better road? I too am leaving the town +to-morrow. Hasten, therefore, lest, bereft of my assistance, you meet +with some dire misfortune.” + +And the old man departed, leaving Chichikov plunged in thought. Once +more had the gravity of life begun to loom large before him. + +“Yes, Murazov was right,” he said to himself. “It is time that I were +moving.” + +Leaving the prison--a warder carrying his effects in his wake--he found +Selifan and Petrushka overjoyed at seeing their master once more at +liberty. + +“Well, good fellows?” he said kindly. “And now we must pack and be off.” + +“True, true, Paul Ivanovitch,” agreed Selifan. “And by this time the +roads will have become firmer, for much snow has fallen. Yes, high time +is it that we were clear of the town. So weary of it am I that the sight +of it hurts my eyes.” + +“Go to the coachbuilder’s,” commanded Chichikov, “and have +sledge-runners fitted to the koliaska.” + +Chichikov then made his way into the town--though not with the object of +paying farewell visits (in view of recent events, that might have given +rise to some awkwardness), but for the purpose of paying an unobtrusive +call at the shop where he had obtained the cloth for his latest +suit. There he now purchased four more arshins of the same +smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour material as he had had before, with +the intention of having it made up by the tailor who had fashioned the +previous costume; and by promising double remuneration he induced the +tailor in question so to hasten the cutting out of the garments that, +through sitting up all night over the work, the man might have the whole +ready by break of day. True, the goods were delivered a trifle after +the appointed hour, yet the following morning saw the coat and breeches +completed; and while the horses were being put to, Chichikov tried on +the clothes, and found them equal to the previous creation, even though +during the process he caught sight of a bald patch on his head, and was +led mournfully to reflect: “Alas! Why did I give way to such despair? +Surely I need not have torn my hair out so freely?” + +Then, when the tailor had been paid, our hero left the town. But no +longer was he the old Chichikov--he was only a ruin of what he had been, +and his frame of mind might have been compared to a building recently +pulled down to make room for a new one, while the new one had not yet +been erected owing to the non-receipt of the plans from the architect. +Murazov, too, had departed, but at an earlier hour, and in a tilt-waggon +with Ivan Potapitch. + +An hour later the Governor-General issued to all and sundry officials +a notice that, on the occasion of his departure for St. Petersburg, +he would be glad to see the corps of tchinovniks at a private meeting. +Accordingly all ranks and grades of officialdom repaired to his +residence, and there awaited--not without a certain measure of +trepidation and of searching of heart--the Governor-General’s entry. +When that took place he looked neither clear nor dull. Yet his bearing +was proud, and his step assured. The tchinovniks bowed--some of them to +the waist, and he answered their salutations with a slight inclination +of the head. Then he spoke as follows: + +“Since I am about to pay a visit to St. Petersburg, I have thought it +right to meet you, and to explain to you privately my reasons for doing +so. An affair of a most scandalous character has taken place in our +midst. To what affair I am referring I think most of those present will +guess. Now, an automatic process has led to that affair bringing about +the discovery of other matters. Those matters are no less dishonourable +than the primary one; and to that I regret to have to add that there +stand involved in them certain persons whom I had hitherto believed +to be honourable. Of the object aimed at by those who have complicated +matters to the point of making their resolution almost impossible by +ordinary methods I am aware; as also I am aware of the identity of the +ringleader, despite the skill with which he has sought to conceal his +share in the scandal. But the principal point is, that I propose to +decide these matters, not by formal documentary process, but by the +more summary process of court-martial, and that I hope, when the +circumstances have been laid before his Imperial Majesty, to receive +from him authority to adopt the course which I have mentioned. For I +conceive that when it has become impossible to resolve a case by civil +means, and some of the necessary documents have been burnt, and attempts +have been made (both through the adduction of an excess of false and +extraneous evidence and through the framing of fictitious reports) +to cloud an already sufficiently obscure investigation with an added +measure of complexity,--when all these circumstances have arisen, I +conceive that the only possible tribunal to deal with them is a military +tribunal. But on that point I should like your opinion.” + +The Prince paused for a moment or two, as though awaiting a reply; but +none came, seeing that every man had his eyes bent upon the floor, and +many of the audience had turned white in the face. + +“Then,” he went on, “I may say that I am aware also of a matter which +those who have carried it through believe to lie only within the +cognisance of themselves. The particulars of that matter will not be set +forth in documentary form, but only through process of myself acting as +plaintiff and petitioner, and producing none but ocular evidence.” + +Among the throng of tchinovniks some one gave a start, and thereby +caused others of the more apprehensive sort to fall to trembling in +their shoes. + +“Without saying does it go that the prime conspirators ought to undergo +deprivation of rank and property, and that the remainder ought to be +dismissed from their posts; for though that course would cause a certain +proportion of the innocent to suffer with the guilty, there would seem +to be no other course available, seeing that the affair is one of +the most disgraceful nature, and calls aloud for justice. Therefore, +although I know that to some my action will fail to serve as a lesson, +since it will lead to their succeeding to the posts of dismissed +officials, as well as that others hitherto considered honourable will +lose their reputation, and others entrusted with new responsibilities +will continue to cheat and betray their trust,--although all this is +known to me, I still have no choice but to satisfy the claims of justice +by proceeding to take stern measures. I am also aware that I shall be +accused of undue severity; but, lastly, I am aware that it is my duty to +put aside all personal feeling, and to act as the unconscious instrument +of that retribution which justice demands.” + +Over every face there passed a shudder. Yet the Prince had spoken calmly, +and not a trace of anger or any other kind of emotion had been visible +on his features. + +“Nevertheless,” he went on, “the very man in whose hands the fate of +so many now lies, the very man whom no prayer for mercy could ever have +influenced, himself desires to make a request of you. Should you grant +that request, all will be forgotten and blotted out and pardoned, for +I myself will intercede with the Throne on your behalf. That request is +this. I know that by no manner of means, by no preventive measures, and +by no penalties will dishonesty ever be completely extirpated from our +midst, for the reason that its roots have struck too deep, and that +the dishonourable traffic in bribes has become a necessity to, even the +mainstay of, some whose nature is not innately venal. Also, I know that, +to many men, it is an impossibility to swim against the stream. Yet now, +at this solemn and critical juncture, when the country is calling aloud +for saviours, and it is the duty of every citizen to contribute and to +sacrifice his all, I feel that I cannot but issue an appeal to every man +in whom a Russian heart and a spark of what we understand by the word +‘nobility’ exist. For, after all, which of us is more guilty than his +fellow? It may be to ME the greatest culpability should be assigned, in +that at first I may have adopted towards you too reserved an attitude, +that I may have been over-hasty in repelling those who desired but to +serve me, even though of their services I did not actually stand in +need. Yet, had they really loved justice and the good of their country, +I think that they would have been less prone to take offence at the +coldness of my attitude, but would have sacrificed their feelings and +their personality to their superior convictions. For hardly can it +be that I failed to note their overtures and the loftiness of their +motives, or that I would not have accepted any wise and useful advice +proffered. At the same time, it is for a subordinate to adapt himself to +the tone of his superior, rather than for a superior to adapt himself to +the tone of his subordinate. Such a course is at once more regular +and more smooth of working, since a corps of subordinates has but one +director, whereas a director may have a hundred subordinates. But let us +put aside the question of comparative culpability. The important point +is, that before us all lies the duty of rescuing our fatherland. Our +fatherland is suffering, not from the incursion of a score of alien +tongues, but from our own acts, in that, in addition to the lawful +administration, there has grown up a second administration possessed of +infinitely greater powers than the system established by law. And that +second administration has established its conditions, fixed its tariff +of prices, and published that tariff abroad; nor could any ruler, even +though the wisest of legislators and administrators, do more to correct +the evil than limit it in the conduct of his more venal tchinovniks by +setting over them, as their supervisors, men of superior rectitude. No, +until each of us shall come to feel that, just as arms were taken up +during the period of the upheaval of nations, so now each of us must +make a stand against dishonesty, all remedies will end in failure. As a +Russian, therefore--as one bound to you by consanguinity and identity of +blood--I make to you my appeal. I make it to those of you who understand +wherein lies nobility of thought. I invite those men to remember the +duty which confronts us, whatsoever our respective stations; I invite +them to observe more closely their duty, and to keep more constantly in +mind their obligations of holding true to their country, in that before +us the future looms dark, and that we can scarcely....” + + ***** + + [Here the manuscript of the original comes abruptly to an end.] + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: Essays on Russian Novelists. Macmillan.] + +[Footnote 2: Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature. Duckworth and +Co.] + +[Footnote 3: This is generally referred to in the Russian criticisms of +Gogol as a quotation from Jeremiah. It appears upon investigation, +however, that it actually occurs only in the Slavonic version from the +Greek, and not in the Russian translation made direct from the Hebrew.] + +[Footnote 4: An urn for brewing honey tea.] + +[Footnote 5: An urn for brewing ordinary tea.] + +[Footnote 6: A German dramatist (1761-1819) who also filled sundry posts +in the service of the Russian Government.] + +[Footnote 7: Priest’s wife.] + +[Footnote 8: In this case the term General refers to a civil grade +equivalent to the military rank of the same title.] + +[Footnote 9: An annual tax upon peasants, payment of which secured to +the payer the right of removal.] + +[Footnote 10: Cabbage soup.] + +[Footnote 11: Three horses harnessed abreast.] + +[Footnote 12: A member of the gentry class.] + +[Footnote 13: Pieces equal in value to twenty-five kopecks (a quarter of +a rouble).] + +[Footnote 14: A Russian general who, in 1812, stoutly opposed Napoleon +at the battle of Borodino.] + +[Footnote 15: The late eighteenth century.] + +[Footnote 16: Forty Russian pounds.] + +[Footnote 17: To serve as blotting-paper.] + +[Footnote 18: A liquor distilled from fermented bread crusts or sour +fruit.] + +[Footnote 19: That is to say, a distinctively Russian name.] + +[Footnote 20: A jeering appellation which owes its origin to the fact +that certain Russians cherish a prejudice against the initial character +of the word--namely, the Greek theta, or TH.] + +[Footnote 21: The great Russian general who, after winning fame in the +Seven Years’ War, met with disaster when attempting to assist the +Austrians against the French in 1799.] + +[Footnote 22: A kind of large gnat.] + +[Footnote 23: A copper coin worth five kopecks.] + +[Footnote 24: A Russian general who fought against Napoleon, and was +mortally wounded at Borodino.] + +[Footnote 25: Literally, “nursemaid.”] + +[Footnote 26: Village factor or usurer.] + +[Footnote 27: Subordinate government officials.] + +[Footnote 28: Nevertheless Chichikov would appear to have erred, since +most people would make the sum amount to twenty-three roubles, forty +kopecks. If so, Chichikov cheated himself of one rouble, fifty-six +kopecks.] + +[Footnote 29: The names Kariakin and Volokita might, perhaps, be +translated as “Gallant” and “Loafer.”] + +[Footnote 30: Tradesman or citizen.] + +[Footnote 31: The game of knucklebones.] + +[Footnote 32: A sort of low, four-wheeled carriage.] + +[Footnote 33: The system by which, in annual rotation, two-thirds of a +given area are cultivated, while the remaining third is left fallow.] + +[Footnote 34: Public Prosecutor.] + +[Footnote 35: To reproduce this story with a raciness worthy of the +Russian original is practically impossible. The translator has not +attempted the task.] + +[Footnote 36: One of the mistresses of Louis XIV. of France. In 1680 she +wrote a book called Reflexions sur la Misericorde de Dieu, par une Dame +Penitente.] + +[Footnote 37: Four-wheeled open carriage.] + +[Footnote 38: Silver five kopeck piece.] + +[Footnote 39: A silver quarter rouble.] + +[Footnote 40: In the days of serfdom, the rate of forced labour--so many +hours or so many days per week--which the serf had to perform for his +proprietor.] + +[Footnote 41: The Elder.] + +[Footnote 42: The Younger.] + +[Footnote 43: Secondary School.] + +[Footnote 44: The desiatin = 2.86 English acres.] + +[Footnote 45: “One more makes five.”] + +[Footnote 46: Dried spinal marrow of the sturgeon.] + +[Footnote 47: Long, belted Tartar blouses.] + +[Footnote 48: Village commune.] + +[Footnote 49: Landowner.] + +[Footnote 50: Here, in the original, a word is missing.] + +[Footnote 51: Dissenters or Old Believers: i.e. members of the sect +which refused to accept the revised version of the Church Service Books +promulgated by the Patriarch Nikon in 1665.] + +[Footnote 52: Fiscal districts.] + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1081 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1082-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1082-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..af6cb79e --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1082-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,178 @@ + + + + + +404 | Project Gutenberg + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + +
+ +
+ +
+
+ + + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+
+ +
+ About Project Gutenberg + Contact Us + History & Philosophy + Kindle & eReaders + Help Pages + Offline Catalogs + Donate +
+
+ +
+ Frequently Downloaded + Main Categories + Reading Lists + Search Options +
+
+ +
+ Frequently Downloaded + Main Categories +
+
+
+ +

Error 404

+ +

Sorry, but our website does not have the page you requested.

+ +

Maybe you have just a wrong url. Go to www.gutenberg.org to see whether the error persists.

+ +

If you think something is broken, follow the “Contact Information” link at the bottom of this page if you would like to report it.

+ + +
+
+
+ + + ibiblio + +
+ + + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1083-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1083-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1d5611e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1083-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11193 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Arrow of Gold, by Joseph Conrad + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Arrow of Gold + a story between two notes + + +Author: Joseph Conrad + + + +Release Date: August 3, 2009 [eBook #1083] +[This file last updated December 27, 2010] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARROW OF GOLD*** + + +Transcribed from the 1921 T. Fisher Unwin by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + THE + ARROW OF GOLD + + + A STORY BETWEEN TWO NOTES + + BY + JOSEPH CONRAD + + Celui qui n’a connu que des hommes + polis et raisonnables, ou ne connait pas + l’homme, ou ne le connait qu’a demi. + + CARACTERES. + + * * * * * + + T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD. + LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE + + * * * * * + +_First published_ _August_ 1919 +_Reprinted_ _December_ 1919 +_Reprinted_ _October_ 1921 + + * * * * * + + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + + * * * * * + + TO + RICHARD CURLE + + * * * * * + + + + +FIRST NOTE + + +The pages which follow have been extracted from a pile of manuscript +which was apparently meant for the eye of one woman only. She seems to +have been the writer’s childhood’s friend. They had parted as children, +or very little more than children. Years passed. Then something +recalled to the woman the companion of her young days and she wrote to +him: “I have been hearing of you lately. I know where life has brought +you. You certainly selected your own road. But to us, left behind, it +always looked as if you had struck out into a pathless desert. We always +regarded you as a person that must be given up for lost. But you have +turned up again; and though we may never see each other, my memory +welcomes you and I confess to you I should like to know the incidents on +the road which has led you to where you are now.” + +And he answers her: “I believe you are the only one now alive who +remembers me as a child. I have heard of you from time to time, but I +wonder what sort of person you are now. Perhaps if I did know I wouldn’t +dare put pen to paper. But I don’t know. I only remember that we were +great chums. In fact, I chummed with you even more than with your +brothers. But I am like the pigeon that went away in the fable of the +Two Pigeons. If I once start to tell you I would want you to feel that +you have been there yourself. I may overtax your patience with the story +of my life so different from yours, not only in all the facts but +altogether in spirit. You may not understand. You may even be shocked. +I say all this to myself; but I know I shall succumb! I have a distinct +recollection that in the old days, when you were about fifteen, you +always could make me do whatever you liked.” + +He succumbed. He begins his story for her with the minute narration of +this adventure which took about twelve months to develop. In the form in +which it is presented here it has been pruned of all allusions to their +common past, of all asides, disquisitions, and explanations addressed +directly to the friend of his childhood. And even as it is the whole +thing is of considerable length. It seems that he had not only a memory +but that he also knew how to remember. But as to that opinions may +differ. + +This, his first great adventure, as he calls it, begins in Marseilles. +It ends there, too. Yet it might have happened anywhere. This does not +mean that the people concerned could have come together in pure space. +The locality had a definite importance. As to the time, it is easily +fixed by the events at about the middle years of the seventies, when Don +Carlos de Bourbon, encouraged by the general reaction of all Europe +against the excesses of communistic Republicanism, made his attempt for +the throne of Spain, arms in hand, amongst the hills and gorges of +Guipuzcoa. It is perhaps the last instance of a Pretender’s adventure +for a Crown that History will have to record with the usual grave moral +disapproval tinged by a shamefaced regret for the departing romance. +Historians are very much like other people. + +However, History has nothing to do with this tale. Neither is the moral +justification or condemnation of conduct aimed at here. If anything it +is perhaps a little sympathy that the writer expects for his buried +youth, as he lives it over again at the end of his insignificant course +on this earth. Strange person—yet perhaps not so very different from +ourselves. + +A few words as to certain facts may be added. + +It may seem that he was plunged very abruptly into this long adventure. +But from certain passages (suppressed here because mixed up with +irrelevant matter) it appears clearly that at the time of the meeting in +the café, Mills had already gathered, in various quarters, a definite +view of the eager youth who had been introduced to him in that +ultra-legitimist salon. What Mills had learned represented him as a +young gentleman who had arrived furnished with proper credentials and who +apparently was doing his best to waste his life in an eccentric fashion, +with a bohemian set (one poet, at least, emerged out of it later) on one +side, and on the other making friends with the people of the Old Town, +pilots, coasters, sailors, workers of all sorts. He pretended rather +absurdly to be a seaman himself and was already credited with an +ill-defined and vaguely illegal enterprise in the Gulf of Mexico. At +once it occurred to Mills that this eccentric youngster was the very +person for what the legitimist sympathizers had very much at heart just +then: to organize a supply by sea of arms and ammunition to the Carlist +detachments in the South. It was precisely to confer on that matter with +Doña Rita that Captain Blunt had been despatched from Headquarters. + +Mills got in touch with Blunt at once and put the suggestion before him. +The Captain thought this the very thing. As a matter of fact, on that +evening of Carnival, those two, Mills and Blunt, had been actually +looking everywhere for our man. They had decided that he should be drawn +into the affair if it could be done. Blunt naturally wanted to see him +first. He must have estimated him a promising person, but, from another +point of view, not dangerous. Thus lightly was the notorious (and at the +same time mysterious) Monsieur George brought into the world; out of the +contact of two minds which did not give a single thought to his flesh and +blood. + +Their purpose explains the intimate tone given to their first +conversation and the sudden introduction of Doña Rita’s history. Mills, +of course, wanted to hear all about it. As to Captain Blunt—I suspect +that, at the time, he was thinking of nothing else. In addition it was +Doña Rita who would have to do the persuading; for, after all, such an +enterprise with its ugly and desperate risks was not a trifle to put +before a man—however young. + +It cannot be denied that Mills seems to have acted somewhat +unscrupulously. He himself appears to have had some doubt about it, at a +given moment, as they were driving to the Prado. But perhaps Mills, with +his penetration, understood very well the nature he was dealing with. He +might even have envied it. But it’s not my business to excuse Mills. As +to him whom we may regard as Mills’ victim it is obvious that he has +never harboured a single reproachful thought. For him Mills is not to be +criticized. A remarkable instance of the great power of mere +individuality over the young. + + + + +PART ONE + + +CHAPTER I + + +Certain streets have an atmosphere of their own, a sort of universal fame +and the particular affection of their citizens. One of such streets is +the Cannebière, and the jest: “If Paris had a Cannebière it would be a +little Marseilles” is the jocular expression of municipal pride. I, too, +I have been under the spell. For me it has been a street leading into +the unknown. + +There was a part of it where one could see as many as five big cafés in a +resplendent row. That evening I strolled into one of them. It was by no +means full. It looked deserted, in fact, festal and overlighted, but +cheerful. The wonderful street was distinctly cold (it was an evening of +carnival), I was very idle, and I was feeling a little lonely. So I went +in and sat down. + +The carnival time was drawing to an end. Everybody, high and low, was +anxious to have the last fling. Companies of masks with linked arms and +whooping like red Indians swept the streets in crazy rushes while gusts +of cold mistral swayed the gas lights as far as the eye could reach. +There was a touch of bedlam in all this. + +Perhaps it was that which made me feel lonely, since I was neither +masked, nor disguised, nor yelling, nor in any other way in harmony with +the bedlam element of life. But I was not sad. I was merely in a state +of sobriety. I had just returned from my second West Indies voyage. My +eyes were still full of tropical splendour, my memory of my experiences, +lawful and lawless, which had their charm and their thrill; for they had +startled me a little and had amused me considerably. But they had left +me untouched. Indeed they were other men’s adventures, not mine. Except +for a little habit of responsibility which I had acquired they had not +matured me. I was as young as before. Inconceivably young—still +beautifully unthinking—infinitely receptive. + +You may believe that I was not thinking of Don Carlos and his fight for a +kingdom. Why should I? You don’t want to think of things which you meet +every day in the newspapers and in conversation. I had paid some calls +since my return and most of my acquaintance were legitimists and +intensely interested in the events of the frontier of Spain, for +political, religious, or romantic reasons. But I was not interested. +Apparently I was not romantic enough. Or was it that I was even more +romantic than all those good people? The affair seemed to me +commonplace. That man was attending to his business of a Pretender. + +On the front page of the illustrated paper I saw lying on a table near +me, he looked picturesque enough, seated on a boulder, a big strong man +with a square-cut beard, his hands resting on the hilt of a cavalry +sabre—and all around him a landscape of savage mountains. He caught my +eye on that spiritedly composed woodcut. (There were no inane +snapshot-reproductions in those days.) It was the obvious romance for +the use of royalists but it arrested my attention. + +Just then some masks from outside invaded the café, dancing hand in hand +in a single file led by a burly man with a cardboard nose. He gambolled +in wildly and behind him twenty others perhaps, mostly Pierrots and +Pierrettes holding each other by the hand and winding in and out between +the chairs and tables: eyes shining in the holes of cardboard faces, +breasts panting; but all preserving a mysterious silence. + +They were people of the poorer sort (white calico with red spots, +costumes), but amongst them there was a girl in a black dress sewn over +with gold half moons, very high in the neck and very short in the skirt. +Most of the ordinary clients of the café didn’t even look up from their +games or papers. I, being alone and idle, stared abstractedly. The girl +costumed as Night wore a small black velvet mask, what is called in +French a “_loup_.” What made her daintiness join that obviously rough +lot I can’t imagine. Her uncovered mouth and chin suggested refined +prettiness. + +They filed past my table; the Night noticed perhaps my fixed gaze and +throwing her body forward out of the wriggling chain shot out at me a +slender tongue like a pink dart. I was not prepared for this, not even +to the extent of an appreciative “_Très foli_,” before she wriggled and +hopped away. But having been thus distinguished I could do no less than +follow her with my eyes to the door where the chain of hands being broken +all the masks were trying to get out at once. Two gentlemen coming in +out of the street stood arrested in the crush. The Night (it must have +been her idiosyncrasy) put her tongue out at them, too. The taller of +the two (he was in evening clothes under a light wide-open overcoat) with +great presence of mind chucked her under the chin, giving me the view at +the same time of a flash of white teeth in his dark, lean face. The +other man was very different; fair, with smooth, ruddy cheeks and burly +shoulders. He was wearing a grey suit, obviously bought ready-made, for +it seemed too tight for his powerful frame. + +That man was not altogether a stranger to me. For the last week or so I +had been rather on the look-out for him in all the public places where in +a provincial town men may expect to meet each other. I saw him for the +first time (wearing that same grey ready-made suit) in a legitimist +drawing-room where, clearly, he was an object of interest, especially to +the women. I had caught his name as Monsieur Mills. The lady who had +introduced me took the earliest opportunity to murmur into my ear: “A +relation of Lord X.” (_Un proche parent de Lord X_.) And then she +added, casting up her eyes: “A good friend of the King.” Meaning Don +Carlos of course. + +I looked at the _proche parent_; not on account of the parentage but +marvelling at his air of ease in that cumbrous body and in such tight +clothes, too. But presently the same lady informed me further: “He has +come here amongst us _un naufragé_.” + +I became then really interested. I had never seen a shipwrecked person +before. All the boyishness in me was aroused. I considered a shipwreck +as an unavoidable event sooner or later in my future. + +Meantime the man thus distinguished in my eyes glanced quietly about and +never spoke unless addressed directly by one of the ladies present. +There were more than a dozen people in that drawing-room, mostly women +eating fine pastry and talking passionately. It might have been a +Carlist committee meeting of a particularly fatuous character. Even my +youth and inexperience were aware of that. And I was by a long way the +youngest person in the room. That quiet Monsieur Mills intimidated me a +little by his age (I suppose he was thirty-five), his massive +tranquillity, his clear, watchful eyes. But the temptation was too +great—and I addressed him impulsively on the subject of that shipwreck. + +He turned his big fair face towards me with surprise in his keen glance, +which (as though he had seen through me in an instant and found nothing +objectionable) changed subtly into friendliness. On the matter of the +shipwreck he did not say much. He only told me that it had not occurred +in the Mediterranean, but on the other side of Southern France—in the Bay +of Biscay. “But this is hardly the place to enter on a story of that +kind,” he observed, looking round at the room with a faint smile as +attractive as the rest of his rustic but well-bred personality. + +I expressed my regret. I should have liked to hear all about it. To +this he said that it was not a secret and that perhaps next time we met. . . + +“But where can we meet?” I cried. “I don’t come often to this house, you +know.” + +“Where? Why on the Cannebière to be sure. Everybody meets everybody +else at least once a day on the pavement opposite the _Bourse_.” + +This was absolutely true. But though I looked for him on each succeeding +day he was nowhere to be seen at the usual times. The companions of my +idle hours (and all my hours were idle just then) noticed my +preoccupation and chaffed me about it in a rather obvious way. They +wanted to know whether she, whom I expected to see, was dark or fair; +whether that fascination which kept me on tenterhooks of expectation was +one of my aristocrats or one of my marine beauties: for they knew I had a +footing in both these—shall we say circles? As to themselves they were +the bohemian circle, not very wide—half a dozen of us led by a sculptor +whom we called Prax for short. My own nick-name was “Young Ulysses.” + +I liked it. + +But chaff or no chaff they would have been surprised to see me leave them +for the burly and sympathetic Mills. I was ready to drop any easy +company of equals to approach that interesting man with every mental +deference. It was not precisely because of that shipwreck. He attracted +and interested me the more because he was not to be seen. The fear that +he might have departed suddenly for England—(or for Spain)—caused me a +sort of ridiculous depression as though I had missed a unique +opportunity. And it was a joyful reaction which emboldened me to signal +to him with a raised arm across that café. + +I was abashed immediately afterwards, when I saw him advance towards my +table with his friend. The latter was eminently elegant. He was exactly +like one of those figures one can see of a fine May evening in the +neighbourhood of the Opera-house in Paris. Very Parisian indeed. And +yet he struck me as not so perfectly French as he ought to have been, as +if one’s nationality were an accomplishment with varying degrees of +excellence. As to Mills, he was perfectly insular. There could be no +doubt about him. They were both smiling faintly at me. The burly Mills +attended to the introduction: “Captain Blunt.” + +We shook hands. The name didn’t tell me much. What surprised me was +that Mills should have remembered mine so well. I don’t want to boast of +my modesty but it seemed to me that two or three days was more than +enough for a man like Mills to forget my very existence. As to the +Captain, I was struck on closer view by the perfect correctness of his +personality. Clothes, slight figure, clear-cut, thin, sun-tanned face, +pose, all this was so good that it was saved from the danger of banality +only by the mobile black eyes of a keenness that one doesn’t meet every +day in the south of France and still less in Italy. Another thing was +that, viewed as an officer in mufti, he did not look sufficiently +professional. That imperfection was interesting, too. + +You may think that I am subtilizing my impressions on purpose, but you +may take it from a man who has lived a rough, a very rough life, that it +is the subtleties of personalities, and contacts, and events, that count +for interest and memory—and pretty well nothing else. This—you see—is +the last evening of that part of my life in which I did not know that +woman. These are like the last hours of a previous existence. It isn’t +my fault that they are associated with nothing better at the decisive +moment than the banal splendours of a gilded café and the bedlamite yells +of carnival in the street. + +We three, however (almost complete strangers to each other), had assumed +attitudes of serious amiability round our table. A waiter approached for +orders and it was then, in relation to my order for coffee, that the +absolutely first thing I learned of Captain Blunt was the fact that he +was a sufferer from insomnia. In his immovable way Mills began charging +his pipe. I felt extremely embarrassed all at once, but became +positively annoyed when I saw our Prax enter the café in a sort of +mediaeval costume very much like what Faust wears in the third act. I +have no doubt it was meant for a purely operatic Faust. A light mantle +floated from his shoulders. He strode theatrically up to our table and +addressing me as “Young Ulysses” proposed I should go outside on the +fields of asphalt and help him gather a few marguerites to decorate a +truly infernal supper which was being organized across the road at the +Maison Dorée—upstairs. With expostulatory shakes of the head and +indignant glances I called his attention to the fact that I was not +alone. He stepped back a pace as if astonished by the discovery, took +off his plumed velvet toque with a low obeisance so that the feathers +swept the floor, and swaggered off the stage with his left hand resting +on the hilt of the property dagger at his belt. + +Meantime the well-connected but rustic Mills had been busy lighting his +briar and the distinguished Captain sat smiling to himself. I was +horribly vexed and apologized for that intrusion, saying that the fellow +was a future great sculptor and perfectly harmless; but he had been +swallowing lots of night air which had got into his head apparently. + +Mills peered at me with his friendly but awfully searching blue eyes +through the cloud of smoke he had wreathed about his big head. The slim, +dark Captain’s smile took on an amiable expression. Might he know why I +was addressed as “Young Ulysses” by my friend? and immediately he added +the remark with urbane playfulness that Ulysses was an astute person. +Mills did not give me time for a reply. He struck in: “That old Greek +was famed as a wanderer—the first historical seaman.” He waved his pipe +vaguely at me. + +“Ah! _Vraiment_!” The polite Captain seemed incredulous and as if +weary. “Are you a seaman? In what sense, pray?” We were talking French +and he used the term _homme de mer_. + +Again Mills interfered quietly. “In the same sense in which you are a +military man.” (_Homme de guerre_.) + +It was then that I heard Captain Blunt produce one of his striking +declarations. He had two of them, and this was the first. + +“I live by my sword.” + +It was said in an extraordinary dandified manner which in conjunction +with the matter made me forget my tongue in my head. I could only stare +at him. He added more naturally: “2nd Reg. Castille, Cavalry.” Then +with marked stress in Spanish, “_En las filas legitimas_.” + +Mills was heard, unmoved, like Jove in his cloud: “He’s on leave here.” + +“Of course I don’t shout that fact on the housetops,” the Captain +addressed me pointedly, “any more than our friend his shipwreck +adventure. We must not strain the toleration of the French authorities +too much! It wouldn’t be correct—and not very safe either.” + +I became suddenly extremely delighted with my company. A man who “lived +by his sword,” before my eyes, close at my elbow! So such people did +exist in the world yet! I had not been born too late! And across the +table with his air of watchful, unmoved benevolence, enough in itself to +arouse one’s interest, there was the man with the story of a shipwreck +that mustn’t be shouted on housetops. Why? + +I understood very well why, when he told me that he had joined in the +Clyde a small steamer chartered by a relative of his, “a very wealthy +man,” he observed (probably Lord X, I thought), to carry arms and other +supplies to the Carlist army. And it was not a shipwreck in the ordinary +sense. Everything went perfectly well to the last moment when suddenly +the _Numancia_ (a Republican ironclad) had appeared and chased them +ashore on the French coast below Bayonne. In a few words, but with +evident appreciation of the adventure, Mills described to us how he swam +to the beach clad simply in a money belt and a pair of trousers. Shells +were falling all round till a tiny French gunboat came out of Bayonne and +shooed the _Numancia_ away out of territorial waters. + +He was very amusing and I was fascinated by the mental picture of that +tranquil man rolling in the surf and emerging breathless, in the costume +you know, on the fair land of France, in the character of a smuggler of +war material. However, they had never arrested or expelled him, since he +was there before my eyes. But how and why did he get so far from the +scene of his sea adventure was an interesting question. And I put it to +him with most naïve indiscretion which did not shock him visibly. He +told me that the ship being only stranded, not sunk, the contraband cargo +aboard was doubtless in good condition. The French custom-house men were +guarding the wreck. If their vigilance could be—h’m—removed by some +means, or even merely reduced, a lot of these rifles and cartridges could +be taken off quietly at night by certain Spanish fishing boats. In fact, +salved for the Carlists, after all. He thought it could be done. . . . + +I said with professional gravity that given a few perfectly quiet nights +(rare on that coast) it could certainly be done. + +Mr. Mills was not afraid of the elements. It was the highly inconvenient +zeal of the French custom-house people that had to be dealt with in some +way. + +“Heavens!” I cried, astonished. “You can’t bribe the French Customs. +This isn’t a South-American republic.” + +“Is it a republic?” he murmured, very absorbed in smoking his wooden +pipe. + +“Well, isn’t it?” + +He murmured again, “Oh, so little.” At this I laughed, and a faintly +humorous expression passed over Mills’ face. No. Bribes were out of the +question, he admitted. But there were many legitimist sympathies in +Paris. A proper person could set them in motion and a mere hint from +high quarters to the officials on the spot not to worry over-much about +that wreck. . . . + +What was most amusing was the cool, reasonable tone of this amazing +project. Mr. Blunt sat by very detached, his eyes roamed here and there +all over the café; and it was while looking upward at the pink foot of a +fleshy and very much foreshortened goddess of some sort depicted on the +ceiling in an enormous composition in the Italian style that he let fall +casually the words, “She will manage it for you quite easily.” + +“Every Carlist agent in Bayonne assured me of that,” said Mr. Mills. “I +would have gone straight to Paris only I was told she had fled here for a +rest; tired, discontented. Not a very encouraging report.” + +“These flights are well known,” muttered Mr. Blunt. “You shall see her +all right.” + +“Yes. They told me that you . . . ” + +I broke in: “You mean to say that you expect a woman to arrange that sort +of thing for you?” + +“A trifle, for her,” Mr. Blunt remarked indifferently. “At that sort of +thing women are best. They have less scruples.” + +“More audacity,” interjected Mr. Mills almost in a whisper. + +Mr. Blunt kept quiet for a moment, then: “You see,” he addressed me in a +most refined tone, “a mere man may suddenly find himself being kicked +down the stairs.” + +I don’t know why I should have felt shocked by that statement. It could +not be because it was untrue. The other did not give me time to offer +any remark. He inquired with extreme politeness what did I know of South +American republics? I confessed that I knew very little of them. +Wandering about the Gulf of Mexico I had a look-in here and there; and +amongst others I had a few days in Haiti which was of course unique, +being a negro republic. On this Captain Blunt began to talk of negroes +at large. He talked of them with knowledge, intelligence, and a sort of +contemptuous affection. He generalized, he particularized about the +blacks; he told anecdotes. I was interested, a little incredulous, and +considerably surprised. What could this man with such a boulevardier +exterior that he looked positively like, an exile in a provincial town, +and with his drawing-room manner—what could he know of negroes? + +Mills, sitting silent with his air of watchful intelligence, seemed to +read my thoughts, waved his pipe slightly and explained: “The Captain is +from South Carolina.” + +“Oh,” I murmured, and then after the slightest of pauses I heard the +second of Mr. J. K. Blunt’s declarations. + +“Yes,” he said. “_Je suis Américain_, _catholique et gentil-homme_,” in +a tone contrasting so strongly with the smile, which, as it were, +underlined the uttered words, that I was at a loss whether to return the +smile in kind or acknowledge the words with a grave little bow. Of +course I did neither and there fell on us an odd, equivocal silence. It +marked our final abandonment of the French language. I was the one to +speak first, proposing that my companions should sup with me, not across +the way, which would be riotous with more than one “infernal” supper, but +in another much more select establishment in a side street away from the +Cannebière. It flattered my vanity a little to be able to say that I had +a corner table always reserved in the Salon des Palmiers, otherwise Salon +Blanc, where the atmosphere was legitimist and extremely decorous +besides—even in Carnival time. “Nine tenths of the people there,” I +said, “would be of your political opinions, if that’s an inducement. +Come along. Let’s be festive,” I encouraged them. + +I didn’t feel particularly festive. What I wanted was to remain in my +company and break an inexplicable feeling of constraint of which I was +aware. Mills looked at me steadily with a faint, kind smile. + +“No,” said Blunt. “Why should we go there? They will be only turning us +out in the small hours, to go home and face insomnia. Can you imagine +anything more disgusting?” + +He was smiling all the time, but his deep-set eyes did not lend +themselves to the expression of whimsical politeness which he tried to +achieve. He had another suggestion to offer. Why shouldn’t we adjourn +to his rooms? He had there materials for a dish of his own invention for +which he was famous all along the line of the Royal Cavalry outposts, and +he would cook it for us. There were also a few bottles of some white +wine, quite possible, which we could drink out of Venetian cut-glass +goblets. A _bivouac_ feast, in fact. And he wouldn’t turn us out in the +small hours. Not he. He couldn’t sleep. + +Need I say I was fascinated by the idea? Well, yes. But somehow I +hesitated and looked towards Mills, so much my senior. He got up without +a word. This was decisive; for no obscure premonition, and of something +indefinite at that, could stand against the example of his tranquil +personality. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +The street in which Mr. Blunt lived presented itself to our eyes, narrow, +silent, empty, and dark, but with enough gas-lamps in it to disclose its +most striking feature: a quantity of flag-poles sticking out above many +of its closed portals. It was the street of Consuls and I remarked to +Mr. Blunt that coming out in the morning he could survey the flags of all +nations almost—except his own. (The U. S. consulate was on the other +side of the town.) He mumbled through his teeth that he took good care +to keep clear of his own consulate. + +“Are you afraid of the consul’s dog?” I asked jocularly. The consul’s +dog weighed about a pound and a half and was known to the whole town as +exhibited on the consular fore-arm in all places, at all hours, but +mainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on the Prado. + +But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear: “They are +all Yankees there.” + +I murmured a confused “Of course.” + +Books are nothing. I discovered that I had never been aware before that +the Civil War in America was not printed matter but a fact only about ten +years old. Of course. He was a South Carolinian gentleman. I was a +little ashamed of my want of tact. Meantime, looking like the +conventional conception of a fashionable reveller, with his opera-hat +pushed off his forehead, Captain Blunt was having some slight difficulty +with his latch-key; for the house before which we had stopped was not one +of those many-storied houses that made up the greater part of the street. +It had only one row of windows above the ground floor. Dead walls +abutting on to it indicated that it had a garden. Its dark front +presented no marked architectural character, and in the flickering light +of a street lamp it looked a little as though it had gone down in the +world. The greater then was my surprise to enter a hall paved in black +and white marble and in its dimness appearing of palatial proportions. +Mr. Blunt did not turn up the small solitary gas-jet, but led the way +across the black and white pavement past the end of the staircase, past a +door of gleaming dark wood with a heavy bronze handle. It gave access to +his rooms he said; but he took us straight on to the studio at the end of +the passage. + +It was rather a small place tacked on in the manner of a lean-to to the +garden side of the house. A large lamp was burning brightly there. The +floor was of mere flag-stones but the few rugs scattered about though +extremely worn were very costly. There was also there a beautiful sofa +upholstered in pink figured silk, an enormous divan with many cushions, +some splendid arm-chairs of various shapes (but all very shabby), a round +table, and in the midst of these fine things a small common iron stove. +Somebody must have been attending it lately, for the fire roared and the +warmth of the place was very grateful after the bone-searching cold +blasts of mistral outside. + +Mills without a word flung himself on the divan and, propped on his arm, +gazed thoughtfully at a distant corner where in the shadow of a +monumental carved wardrobe an articulated dummy without head or hands but +with beautifully shaped limbs composed in a shrinking attitude, seemed to +be embarrassed by his stare. + +As we sat enjoying the _bivouac_ hospitality (the dish was really +excellent and our host in a shabby grey jacket still looked the +accomplished man-about-town) my eyes kept on straying towards that +corner. Blunt noticed this and remarked that I seemed to be attracted by +the Empress. + +“It’s disagreeable,” I said. “It seems to lurk there like a shy skeleton +at the feast. But why do you give the name of Empress to that dummy?” + +“Because it sat for days and days in the robes of a Byzantine Empress to +a painter. . . I wonder where he discovered these priceless stuffs. . . +You knew him, I believe?” + +Mills lowered his head slowly, then tossed down his throat some wine out +of a Venetian goblet. + +“This house is full of costly objects. So are all his other houses, so +is his place in Paris—that mysterious Pavilion hidden away in Passy +somewhere.” + +Mills knew the Pavilion. The wine had, I suppose, loosened his tongue. +Blunt, too, lost something of his reserve. From their talk I gathered +the notion of an eccentric personality, a man of great wealth, not so +much solitary as difficult of access, a collector of fine things, a +painter known only to very few people and not at all to the public +market. But as meantime I had been emptying my Venetian goblet with a +certain regularity (the amount of heat given out by that iron stove was +amazing; it parched one’s throat, and the straw-coloured wine didn’t seem +much stronger than so much pleasantly flavoured water) the voices and the +impressions they conveyed acquired something fantastic to my mind. +Suddenly I perceived that Mills was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. I had +not noticed him taking off his coat. Blunt had unbuttoned his shabby +jacket, exposing a lot of starched shirt-front with the white tie under +his dark shaved chin. He had a strange air of insolence—or so it seemed +to me. I addressed him much louder than I intended really. + +“Did you know that extraordinary man?” + +“To know him personally one had to be either very distinguished or very +lucky. Mr. Mills here . . .” + +“Yes, I have been lucky,” Mills struck in. “It was my cousin who was +distinguished. That’s how I managed to enter his house in Paris—it was +called the Pavilion—twice.” + +“And saw Doña Rita twice, too?” asked Blunt with an indefinite smile and +a marked emphasis. Mills was also emphatic in his reply but with a +serious face. + +“I am not an easy enthusiast where women are concerned, but she was +without doubt the most admirable find of his amongst all the priceless +items he had accumulated in that house—the most admirable. . . ” + +“Ah! But, you see, of all the objects there she was the only one that +was alive,” pointed out Blunt with the slightest possible flavour of +sarcasm. + +“Immensely so,” affirmed Mills. “Not because she was restless, indeed +she hardly ever moved from that couch between the windows—you know.” + +“No. I don’t know. I’ve never been in there,” announced Blunt with that +flash of white teeth so strangely without any character of its own that +it was merely disturbing. + +“But she radiated life,” continued Mills. “She had plenty of it, and it +had a quality. My cousin and Henry Allègre had a lot to say to each +other and so I was free to talk to her. At the second visit we were like +old friends, which was absurd considering that all the chances were that +we would never meet again in this world or in the next. I am not +meddling with theology but it seems to me that in the Elysian fields +she’ll have her place in a very special company.” + +All this in a sympathetic voice and in his unmoved manner. Blunt +produced another disturbing white flash and muttered: + +“I should say mixed.” Then louder: “As for instance . . . ” + +“As for instance Cleopatra,” answered Mills quietly. He added after a +pause: “Who was not exactly pretty.” + +“I should have thought rather a La Vallière,” Blunt dropped with an +indifference of which one did not know what to make. He may have begun +to be bored with the subject. But it may have been put on, for the whole +personality was not clearly definable. I, however, was not indifferent. +A woman is always an interesting subject and I was thoroughly awake to +that interest. Mills pondered for a while with a sort of dispassionate +benevolence, at last: + +“Yes, Doña Rita as far as I know her is so varied in her simplicity that +even that is possible,” he said. “Yes. A romantic resigned La Vallière +. . . who had a big mouth.” + +I felt moved to make myself heard. + +“Did you know La Vallière, too?” I asked impertinently. + +Mills only smiled at me. “No. I am not quite so old as that,” he said. +“But it’s not very difficult to know facts of that kind about a +historical personage. There were some ribald verses made at the time, +and Louis XIV was congratulated on the possession—I really don’t remember +how it goes—on the possession of: + + “. . . de ce bec amoureux + Qui d’une oreille à l’autre va, + Tra là là. + +or something of the sort. It needn’t be from ear to ear, but it’s a fact +that a big mouth is often a sign of a certain generosity of mind and +feeling. Young man, beware of women with small mouths. Beware of the +others, too, of course; but a small mouth is a fatal sign. Well, the +royalist sympathizers can’t charge Doña Rita with any lack of generosity +from what I hear. Why should I judge her? I have known her for, say, +six hours altogether. It was enough to feel the seduction of her native +intelligence and of her splendid physique. And all that was brought home +to me so quickly,” he concluded, “because she had what some Frenchman has +called the ‘terrible gift of familiarity’.” + +Blunt had been listening moodily. He nodded assent. + +“Yes!” Mills’ thoughts were still dwelling in the past. “And when +saying good-bye she could put in an instant an immense distance between +herself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect figure, a change of +the physiognomy: it was like being dismissed by a person born in the +purple. Even if she did offer you her hand—as she did to me—it was as if +across a broad river. Trick of manner or a bit of truth peeping out? +Perhaps she’s really one of those inaccessible beings. What do you +think, Blunt?” + +It was a direct question which for some reason (as if my range of +sensitiveness had been increased already) displeased or rather disturbed +me strangely. Blunt seemed not to have heard it. But after a while he +turned to me. + +“That thick man,” he said in a tone of perfect urbanity, “is as fine as a +needle. All these statements about the seduction and then this final +doubt expressed after only two visits which could not have included more +than six hours altogether and this some three years ago! But it is Henry +Allègre that you should ask this question, Mr. Mills.” + +“I haven’t the secret of raising the dead,” answered Mills good +humouredly. “And if I had I would hesitate. It would seem such a +liberty to take with a person one had known so slightly in life.” + +“And yet Henry Allègre is the only person to ask about her, after all +this uninterrupted companionship of years, ever since he discovered her; +all the time, every breathing moment of it, till, literally, his very +last breath. I don’t mean to say she nursed him. He had his +confidential man for that. He couldn’t bear women about his person. But +then apparently he couldn’t bear this one out of his sight. She’s the +only woman who ever sat to him, for he would never suffer a model inside +his house. That’s why the ‘Girl in the Hat’ and the ‘Byzantine Empress’ +have that family air, though neither of them is really a likeness of Doña +Rita. . . You know my mother?” + +Mills inclined his body slightly and a fugitive smile vanished from his +lips. Blunt’s eyes were fastened on the very centre of his empty plate. + +“Then perhaps you know my mother’s artistic and literary associations,” +Blunt went on in a subtly changed tone. “My mother has been writing +verse since she was a girl of fifteen. She’s still writing verse. She’s +still fifteen—a spoiled girl of genius. So she requested one of her poet +friends—no less than Versoy himself—to arrange for a visit to Henry +Allègre’s house. At first he thought he hadn’t heard aright. You must +know that for my mother a man that doesn’t jump out of his skin for any +woman’s caprice is not chivalrous. But perhaps you do know? . . .” + +Mills shook his head with an amused air. Blunt, who had raised his eyes +from his plate to look at him, started afresh with great deliberation. + +“She gives no peace to herself or her friends. My mother’s exquisitely +absurd. You understand that all these painters, poets, art collectors +(and dealers in bric-à-brac, he interjected through his teeth) of my +mother are not in my way; but Versoy lives more like a man of the world. +One day I met him at the fencing school. He was furious. He asked me to +tell my mother that this was the last effort of his chivalry. The jobs +she gave him to do were too difficult. But I daresay he had been pleased +enough to show the influence he had in that quarter. He knew my mother +would tell the world’s wife all about it. He’s a spiteful, gingery +little wretch. The top of his head shines like a billiard ball. I +believe he polishes it every morning with a cloth. Of course they didn’t +get further than the big drawing-room on the first floor, an enormous +drawing-room with three pairs of columns in the middle. The double doors +on the top of the staircase had been thrown wide open, as if for a visit +from royalty. You can picture to yourself my mother, with her white hair +done in some 18th century fashion and her sparkling black eyes, +penetrating into those splendours attended by a sort of bald-headed, +vexed squirrel—and Henry Allègre coming forward to meet them like a +severe prince with the face of a tombstone Crusader, big white hands, +muffled silken voice, half-shut eyes, as if looking down at them from a +balcony. You remember that trick of his, Mills?” + +Mills emitted an enormous cloud of smoke out of his distended cheeks. + +“I daresay he was furious, too,” Blunt continued dispassionately. “But +he was extremely civil. He showed her all the ‘treasures’ in the room, +ivories, enamels, miniatures, all sorts of monstrosities from Japan, from +India, from Timbuctoo . . . for all I know. . . He pushed his +condescension so far as to have the ‘Girl in the Hat’ brought down into +the drawing-room—half length, unframed. They put her on a chair for my +mother to look at. The ‘Byzantine Empress’ was already there, hung on +the end wall—full length, gold frame weighing half a ton. My mother +first overwhelms the ‘Master’ with thanks, and then absorbs herself in +the adoration of the ‘Girl in the Hat.’ Then she sighs out: ‘It should +be called Diaphanéité, if there is such a word. Ah! This is the last +expression of modernity!’ She puts up suddenly her face-à-main and looks +towards the end wall. ‘And that—Byzantium itself! Who was she, this +sullen and beautiful Empress?’ + +“‘The one I had in my mind was Theodosia!’ Allègre consented to answer. +‘Originally a slave girl—from somewhere.’ + +“My mother can be marvellously indiscreet when the whim takes her. She +finds nothing better to do than to ask the ‘Master’ why he took his +inspiration for those two faces from the same model. No doubt she was +proud of her discerning eye. It was really clever of her. Allègre, +however, looked on it as a colossal impertinence; but he answered in his +silkiest tones: + +“‘Perhaps it is because I saw in that woman something of the women of all +time.’ + +“My mother might have guessed that she was on thin ice there. She is +extremely intelligent. Moreover, she ought to have known. But women can +be miraculously dense sometimes. So she exclaims, ‘Then she is a +wonder!’ And with some notion of being complimentary goes on to say that +only the eyes of the discoverer of so many wonders of art could have +discovered something so marvellous in life. I suppose Allègre lost his +temper altogether then; or perhaps he only wanted to pay my mother out, +for all these ‘Masters’ she had been throwing at his head for the last +two hours. He insinuates with the utmost politeness: + +“‘As you are honouring my poor collection with a visit you may like to +judge for yourself as to the inspiration of these two pictures. She is +upstairs changing her dress after our morning ride. But she wouldn’t be +very long. She might be a little surprised at first to be called down +like this, but with a few words of preparation and purely as a matter of +art . . .’ + +“There were never two people more taken aback. Versoy himself confesses +that he dropped his tall hat with a crash. I am a dutiful son, I hope, +but I must say I should have liked to have seen the retreat down the +great staircase. Ha! Ha! Ha!” + +He laughed most undutifully and then his face twitched grimly. + +“That implacable brute Allègre followed them down ceremoniously and put +my mother into the fiacre at the door with the greatest deference. He +didn’t open his lips though, and made a great bow as the fiacre drove +away. My mother didn’t recover from her consternation for three days. I +lunch with her almost daily and I couldn’t imagine what was the matter. +Then one day . . .” + +He glanced round the table, jumped up and with a word of excuse left the +studio by a small door in a corner. This startled me into the +consciousness that I had been as if I had not existed for these two men. +With his elbows propped on the table Mills had his hands in front of his +face clasping the pipe from which he extracted now and then a puff of +smoke, staring stolidly across the room. + +I was moved to ask in a whisper: + +“Do you know him well?” + +“I don’t know what he is driving at,” he answered drily. “But as to his +mother she is not as volatile as all that. I suspect it was business. +It may have been a deep plot to get a picture out of Allègre for +somebody. My cousin as likely as not. Or simply to discover what he +had. The Blunts lost all their property and in Paris there are various +ways of making a little money, without actually breaking anything. Not +even the law. And Mrs. Blunt really had a position once—in the days of +the Second Empire—and so. . .” + +I listened open-mouthed to these things into which my West-Indian +experiences could not have given me an insight. But Mills checked +himself and ended in a changed tone. + +“It’s not easy to know what she would be at, either, in any given +instance. For the rest, spotlessly honourable. A delightful, +aristocratic old lady. Only poor.” + +A bump at the door silenced him and immediately Mr. John Blunt, Captain +of Cavalry in the Army of Legitimity, first-rate cook (as to one dish at +least), and generous host, entered clutching the necks of four more +bottles between the fingers of his hand. + +“I stumbled and nearly smashed the lot,” he remarked casually. But even +I, with all my innocence, never for a moment believed he had stumbled +accidentally. During the uncorking and the filling up of glasses a +profound silence reigned; but neither of us took it seriously—any more +than his stumble. + +“One day,” he went on again in that curiously flavoured voice of his, “my +mother took a heroic decision and made up her mind to get up in the +middle of the night. You must understand my mother’s phraseology. It +meant that she would be up and dressed by nine o’clock. This time it was +not Versoy that was commanded for attendance, but I. You may imagine how +delighted I was. . . .” + +It was very plain to me that Blunt was addressing himself exclusively to +Mills: Mills the mind, even more than Mills the man. It was as if Mills +represented something initiated and to be reckoned with. I, of course, +could have no such pretensions. If I represented anything it was a +perfect freshness of sensations and a refreshing ignorance, not so much +of what life may give one (as to that I had some ideas at least) but of +what it really contains. I knew very well that I was utterly +insignificant in these men’s eyes. Yet my attention was not checked by +that knowledge. It’s true they were talking of a woman, but I was yet at +the age when this subject by itself is not of overwhelming interest. My +imagination would have been more stimulated probably by the adventures +and fortunes of a man. What kept my interest from flagging was Mr. Blunt +himself. The play of the white gleams of his smile round the suspicion +of grimness of his tone fascinated me like a moral incongruity. + +So at the age when one sleeps well indeed but does feel sometimes as if +the need of sleep were a mere weakness of a distant old age, I kept +easily awake; and in my freshness I was kept amused by the contrast of +personalities, of the disclosed facts and moral outlook with the rough +initiations of my West-Indian experience. And all these things were +dominated by a feminine figure which to my imagination had only a +floating outline, now invested with the grace of girlhood, now with the +prestige of a woman; and indistinct in both these characters. For these +two men had _seen_ her, while to me she was only being “presented,” +elusively, in vanishing words, in the shifting tones of an unfamiliar +voice. + +She was being presented to me now in the Bois de Boulogne at the early +hour of the ultra-fashionable world (so I understood), on a light bay +“bit of blood” attended on the off side by that Henry Allègre mounted on +a dark brown powerful weight carrier; and on the other by one of +Allègre’s acquaintances (the man had no real friends), distinguished +frequenters of that mysterious Pavilion. And so that side of the frame +in which that woman appeared to one down the perspective of the great +Allée was not permanent. That morning when Mr. Blunt had to escort his +mother there for the gratification of her irresistible curiosity (of +which he highly disapproved) there appeared in succession, at that +woman’s or girl’s bridle-hand, a cavalry general in red breeches, on whom +she was smiling; a rising politician in a grey suit, who talked to her +with great animation but left her side abruptly to join a personage in a +red fez and mounted on a white horse; and then, some time afterwards, the +vexed Mr. Blunt and his indiscreet mother (though I really couldn’t see +where the harm was) had one more chance of a good stare. The third party +that time was the Royal Pretender (Allègre had been painting his portrait +lately), whose hearty, sonorous laugh was heard long before the mounted +trio came riding very slowly abreast of the Blunts. There was colour in +the girl’s face. She was not laughing. Her expression was serious and +her eyes thoughtfully downcast. Blunt admitted that on that occasion the +charm, brilliance, and force of her personality was adequately framed +between those magnificently mounted, paladin-like attendants, one older +than the other but the two composing together admirably in the different +stages of their manhood. Mr. Blunt had never before seen Henry Allègre +so close. Allègre was riding nearest to the path on which Blunt was +dutifully giving his arm to his mother (they had got out of their fiacre) +and wondering if that confounded fellow would have the impudence to take +off his hat. But he did not. Perhaps he didn’t notice. Allègre was not +a man of wandering glances. There were silver hairs in his beard but he +looked as solid as a statue. Less than three months afterwards he was +gone. + +“What was it?” asked Mills, who had not changed his pose for a very long +time. + +“Oh, an accident. But he lingered. They were on their way to Corsica. +A yearly pilgrimage. Sentimental perhaps. It was to Corsica that he +carried her off—I mean first of all.” + +There was the slightest contraction of Mr. Blunt’s facial muscles. Very +slight; but I, staring at the narrator after the manner of all simple +souls, noticed it; the twitch of a pain which surely must have been +mental. There was also a suggestion of effort before he went on: “I +suppose you know how he got hold of her?” in a tone of ease which was +astonishingly ill-assumed for such a worldly, self-controlled, +drawing-room person. + +Mills changed his attitude to look at him fixedly for a moment. Then he +leaned back in his chair and with interest—I don’t mean curiosity, I mean +interest: “Does anybody know besides the two parties concerned?” he +asked, with something as it were renewed (or was it refreshed?) in his +unmoved quietness. “I ask because one has never heard any tales. I +remember one evening in a restaurant seeing a man come in with a lady—a +beautiful lady—very particularly beautiful, as though she had been stolen +out of Mahomet’s paradise. With Doña Rita it can’t be anything as +definite as that. But speaking of her in the same strain, I’ve always +felt that she looked as though Allègre had caught her in the precincts of +some temple . . . in the mountains.” + +I was delighted. I had never heard before a woman spoken about in that +way, a real live woman that is, not a woman in a book. For this was no +poetry and yet it seemed to put her in the category of visions. And I +would have lost myself in it if Mr. Blunt had not, most unexpectedly, +addressed himself to me. + +“I told you that man was as fine as a needle.” + +And then to Mills: “Out of a temple? We know what that means.” His dark +eyes flashed: “And must it be really in the mountains?” he added. + +“Or in a desert,” conceded Mills, “if you prefer that. There have been +temples in deserts, you know.” + +Blunt had calmed down suddenly and assumed a nonchalant pose. + +“As a matter of fact, Henry Allègre caught her very early one morning in +his own old garden full of thrushes and other small birds. She was +sitting on a stone, a fragment of some old balustrade, with her feet in +the damp grass, and reading a tattered book of some kind. She had on a +short, black, two-penny frock (_une petite robe de deux sous_) and there +was a hole in one of her stockings. She raised her eyes and saw him +looking down at her thoughtfully over that ambrosian beard of his, like +Jove at a mortal. They exchanged a good long stare, for at first she was +too startled to move; and then he murmured, “_Restez donc_.” She lowered +her eyes again on her book and after a while heard him walk away on the +path. Her heart thumped while she listened to the little birds filling +the air with their noise. She was not frightened. I am telling you this +positively because she has told me the tale herself. What better +authority can you have . . .?” Blunt paused. + +“That’s true. She’s not the sort of person to lie about her own +sensations,” murmured Mills above his clasped hands. + +“Nothing can escape his penetration,” Blunt remarked to me with that +equivocal urbanity which made me always feel uncomfortable on Mills’ +account. “Positively nothing.” He turned to Mills again. “After some +minutes of immobility—she told me—she arose from her stone and walked +slowly on the track of that apparition. Allègre was nowhere to be seen +by that time. Under the gateway of the extremely ugly tenement house, +which hides the Pavilion and the garden from the street, the wife of the +porter was waiting with her arms akimbo. At once she cried out to Rita: +‘You were caught by our gentleman.’ + +“As a matter of fact, that old woman, being a friend of Rita’s aunt, +allowed the girl to come into the garden whenever Allègre was away. But +Allègre’s goings and comings were sudden and unannounced; and that +morning, Rita, crossing the narrow, thronged street, had slipped in +through the gateway in ignorance of Allègre’s return and unseen by the +porter’s wife. + +“The child, she was but little more than that then, expressed her regret +of having perhaps got the kind porter’s wife into trouble. + +“The old woman said with a peculiar smile: ‘Your face is not of the sort +that gets other people into trouble. My gentleman wasn’t angry. He says +you may come in any morning you like.’ + +“Rita, without saying anything to this, crossed the street back again to +the warehouse full of oranges where she spent most of her waking hours. +Her dreaming, empty, idle, thoughtless, unperturbed hours, she calls +them. She crossed the street with a hole in her stocking. She had a +hole in her stocking not because her uncle and aunt were poor (they had +around them never less than eight thousand oranges, mostly in cases) but +because she was then careless and untidy and totally unconscious of her +personal appearance. She told me herself that she was not even conscious +then of her personal existence. She was a mere adjunct in the twilight +life of her aunt, a Frenchwoman, and her uncle, the orange merchant, a +Basque peasant, to whom her other uncle, the great man of the family, the +priest of some parish in the hills near Tolosa, had sent her up at the +age of thirteen or thereabouts for safe keeping. She is of peasant +stock, you know. This is the true origin of the ‘Girl in the Hat’ and of +the ‘Byzantine Empress’ which excited my dear mother so much; of the +mysterious girl that the privileged personalities great in art, in +letters, in politics, or simply in the world, could see on the big sofa +during the gatherings in Allègre’s exclusive Pavilion: the Doña Rita of +their respectful addresses, manifest and mysterious, like an object of +art from some unknown period; the Doña Rita of the initiated Paris. Doña +Rita and nothing more—unique and indefinable.” He stopped with a +disagreeable smile. + +“And of peasant stock?” I exclaimed in the strangely conscious silence +that fell between Mills and Blunt. + +“Oh! All these Basques have been ennobled by Don Sanche II,” said +Captain Blunt moodily. “You see coats of arms carved over the doorways +of the most miserable _caserios_. As far as that goes she’s Doña Rita +right enough whatever else she is or is not in herself or in the eyes of +others. In your eyes, for instance, Mills. Eh?” + +For a time Mills preserved that conscious silence. + +“Why think about it at all?” he murmured coldly at last. “A strange bird +is hatched sometimes in a nest in an unaccountable way and then the fate +of such a bird is bound to be ill-defined, uncertain, questionable. And +so that is how Henry Allègre saw her first? And what happened next?” + +“What happened next?” repeated Mr. Blunt, with an affected surprise in +his tone. “Is it necessary to ask that question? If you had asked _how_ +the next happened. . . But as you may imagine she hasn’t told me +anything about that. She didn’t,” he continued with polite sarcasm, +“enlarge upon the facts. That confounded Allègre, with his impudent +assumption of princely airs, must have (I shouldn’t wonder) made the fact +of his notice appear as a sort of favour dropped from Olympus. I really +can’t tell how the minds and the imaginations of such aunts and uncles +are affected by such rare visitations. Mythology may give us a hint. +There is the story of Danae, for instance.” + +“There is,” remarked Mills calmly, “but I don’t remember any aunt or +uncle in that connection.” + +“And there are also certain stories of the discovery and acquisition of +some unique objects of art. The sly approaches, the astute negotiations, +the lying and the circumventing . . . for the love of beauty, you know.” + +With his dark face and with the perpetual smiles playing about his +grimness, Mr. Blunt appeared to me positively satanic. Mills’ hand was +toying absently with an empty glass. Again they had forgotten my +existence altogether. + +“I don’t know how an object of art would feel,” went on Blunt, in an +unexpectedly grating voice, which, however, recovered its tone +immediately. “I don’t know. But I do know that Rita herself was not a +Danae, never, not at any time of her life. She didn’t mind the holes in +her stockings. She wouldn’t mind holes in her stockings now. . . That is +if she manages to keep any stockings at all,” he added, with a sort of +suppressed fury so funnily unexpected that I would have burst into a +laugh if I hadn’t been lost in astonishment of the simplest kind. + +“No—really!” There was a flash of interest from the quiet Mills. + +“Yes, really,” Blunt nodded and knitted his brows very devilishly +indeed. “She may yet be left without a single pair of stockings.” + +“The world’s a thief,” declared Mills, with the utmost composure. “It +wouldn’t mind robbing a lonely traveller.” + +“He is so subtle.” Blunt remembered my existence for the purpose of that +remark and as usual it made me very uncomfortable. “Perfectly true. A +lonely traveller. They are all in the scramble from the lowest to the +highest. Heavens! What a gang! There was even an Archbishop in it.” + +“_Vous plaisantez_,” said Mills, but without any marked show of +incredulity. + +“I joke very seldom,” Blunt protested earnestly. “That’s why I haven’t +mentioned His Majesty—whom God preserve. That would have been an +exaggeration. . . However, the end is not yet. We were talking about the +beginning. I have heard that some dealers in fine objects, quite +mercenary people of course (my mother has an experience in that world), +show sometimes an astonishing reluctance to part with some specimens, +even at a good price. It must be very funny. It’s just possible that +the uncle and the aunt have been rolling in tears on the floor, amongst +their oranges, or beating their heads against the walls from rage and +despair. But I doubt it. And in any case Allègre is not the sort of +person that gets into any vulgar trouble. And it’s just possible that +those people stood open-mouthed at all that magnificence. They weren’t +poor, you know; therefore it wasn’t incumbent on them to be honest. They +are still there in the old respectable warehouse, I understand. They +have kept their position in their _quartier_, I believe. But they didn’t +keep their niece. It might have been an act of sacrifice! For I seem to +remember hearing that after attending for a while some school round the +corner the child had been set to keep the books of that orange business. +However it might have been, the first fact in Rita’s and Allègre’s common +history is a journey to Italy, and then to Corsica. You know Allègre had +a house in Corsica somewhere. She has it now as she has everything he +ever had; and that Corsican palace is the portion that will stick the +longest to Doña Rita, I imagine. Who would want to buy a place like +that? I suppose nobody would take it for a gift. The fellow was having +houses built all over the place. This very house where we are sitting +belonged to him. Doña Rita has given it to her sister, I understand. Or +at any rate the sister runs it. She is my landlady . . .” + +“Her sister here!” I exclaimed. “Her sister!” + +Blunt turned to me politely, but only for a long mute gaze. His eyes +were in deep shadow and it struck me for the first time then that there +was something fatal in that man’s aspect as soon as he fell silent. I +think the effect was purely physical, but in consequence whatever he said +seemed inadequate and as if produced by a commonplace, if uneasy, soul. + +“Doña Rita brought her down from her mountains on purpose. She is asleep +somewhere in this house, in one of the vacant rooms. She lets them, you +know, at extortionate prices, that is, if people will pay them, for she +is easily intimidated. You see, she has never seen such an enormous town +before in her life, nor yet so many strange people. She has been keeping +house for the uncle-priest in some mountain gorge for years and years. +It’s extraordinary he should have let her go. There is something +mysterious there, some reason or other. It’s either theology or Family. +The saintly uncle in his wild parish would know nothing of any other +reasons. She wears a rosary at her waist. Directly she had seen some +real money she developed a love of it. If you stay with me long enough, +and I hope you will (I really can’t sleep), you will see her going out to +mass at half-past six; but there is nothing remarkable in her; just a +peasant woman of thirty-four or so. A rustic nun. . . .” + +I may as well say at once that we didn’t stay as long as that. It was +not that morning that I saw for the first time Therese of the whispering +lips and downcast eyes slipping out to an early mass from the house of +iniquity into the early winter murk of the city of perdition, in a world +steeped in sin. No. It was not on that morning that I saw Doña Rita’s +incredible sister with her brown, dry face, her gliding motion, and her +really nun-like dress, with a black handkerchief enfolding her head +tightly, with the two pointed ends hanging down her back. Yes, nun-like +enough. And yet not altogether. People would have turned round after +her if those dartings out to the half-past six mass hadn’t been the only +occasion on which she ventured into the impious streets. She was +frightened of the streets, but in a particular way, not as if of a danger +but as if of a contamination. Yet she didn’t fly back to her mountains +because at bottom she had an indomitable character, a peasant tenacity of +purpose, predatory instincts. . . . + +No, we didn’t remain long enough with Mr. Blunt to see even as much as +her back glide out of the house on her prayerful errand. She was +prayerful. She was terrible. Her one-idead peasant mind was as +inaccessible as a closed iron safe. She was fatal. . . It’s perfectly +ridiculous to confess that they all seem fatal to me now; but writing to +you like this in all sincerity I don’t mind appearing ridiculous. I +suppose fatality must be expressed, embodied, like other forces of this +earth; and if so why not in such people as well as in other more glorious +or more frightful figures? + +We remained, however, long enough to let Mr. Blunt’s half-hidden acrimony +develop itself or prey on itself in further talk about the man Allègre +and the girl Rita. Mr. Blunt, still addressing Mills with that story, +passed on to what he called the second act, the disclosure, with, what he +called, the characteristic Allègre impudence—which surpassed the +impudence of kings, millionaires, or tramps, by many degrees—the +revelation of Rita’s existence to the world at large. It wasn’t a very +large world, but then it was most choicely composed. How is one to +describe it shortly? In a sentence it was the world that rides in the +morning in the Bois. + +In something less than a year and a half from the time he found her +sitting on a broken fragment of stone work buried in the grass of his +wild garden, full of thrushes, starlings, and other innocent creatures of +the air, he had given her amongst other accomplishments the art of +sitting admirably on a horse, and directly they returned to Paris he took +her out with him for their first morning ride. + +“I leave you to judge of the sensation,” continued Mr. Blunt, with a +faint grimace, as though the words had an acrid taste in his mouth. “And +the consternation,” he added venomously. “Many of those men on that +great morning had some one of their womankind with them. But their hats +had to go off all the same, especially the hats of the fellows who were +under some sort of obligation to Allègre. You would be astonished to +hear the names of people, of real personalities in the world, who, not to +mince matters, owed money to Allègre. And I don’t mean in the world of +art only. In the first rout of the surprise some story of an adopted +daughter was set abroad hastily, I believe. You know ‘adopted’ with a +peculiar accent on the word—and it was plausible enough. I have been +told that at that time she looked extremely youthful by his side, I mean +extremely youthful in expression, in the eyes, in the smile. She must +have been . . .” + +Blunt pulled himself up short, but not so short as not to let the +confused murmur of the word “adorable” reach our attentive ears. + +The heavy Mills made a slight movement in his chair. The effect on me +was more inward, a strange emotion which left me perfectly still; and for +the moment of silence Blunt looked more fatal than ever. + +“I understand it didn’t last very long,” he addressed us politely again. +“And no wonder! The sort of talk she would have heard during that first +springtime in Paris would have put an impress on a much less receptive +personality; for of course Allègre didn’t close his doors to his friends +and this new apparition was not of the sort to make them keep away. +After that first morning she always had somebody to ride at her bridle +hand. Old Doyen, the sculptor, was the first to approach them. At that +age a man may venture on anything. He rides a strange animal like a +circus horse. Rita had spotted him out of the corner of her eye as he +passed them, putting up his enormous paw in a still more enormous glove, +airily, you know, like this” (Blunt waved his hand above his head), “to +Allègre. He passes on. All at once he wheels his fantastic animal round +and comes trotting after them. With the merest casual ‘_Bonjour_, +Allègre’ he ranges close to her on the other side and addresses her, hat +in hand, in that booming voice of his like a deferential roar of the sea +very far away. His articulation is not good, and the first words she +really made out were ‘I am an old sculptor. . . Of course there is that +habit. . . But I can see you through all that. . . ’ + +He put his hat on very much on one side. ‘I am a great sculptor of +women,’ he declared. ‘I gave up my life to them, poor unfortunate +creatures, the most beautiful, the wealthiest, the most loved. . . Two +generations of them. . . Just look at me full in the eyes, _mon enfant_.’ + +“They stared at each other. Doña Rita confessed to me that the old +fellow made her heart beat with such force that she couldn’t manage to +smile at him. And she saw his eyes run full of tears. He wiped them +simply with the back of his hand and went on booming faintly. ‘Thought +so. You are enough to make one cry. I thought my artist’s life was +finished, and here you come along from devil knows where with this young +friend of mine, who isn’t a bad smearer of canvases—but it’s marble and +bronze that you want. . . I shall finish my artist’s life with your face; +but I shall want a bit of those shoulders, too. . . You hear, Allègre, I +must have a bit of her shoulders, too. I can see through the cloth that +they are divine. If they aren’t divine I will eat my hat. Yes, I will +do your head and then—_nunc dimittis_.’ + +“These were the first words with which the world greeted her, or should I +say civilization did; already both her native mountains and the cavern of +oranges belonged to a prehistoric age. ‘Why don’t you ask him to come +this afternoon?’ Allègre’s voice suggested gently. ‘He knows the way to +the house.’ + +“The old man said with extraordinary fervour, ‘Oh, yes I will,’ pulled up +his horse and they went on. She told me that she could feel her +heart-beats for a long time. The remote power of that voice, those old +eyes full of tears, that noble and ruined face, had affected her +extraordinarily she said. But perhaps what affected her was the shadow, +the still living shadow of a great passion in the man’s heart. + +“Allègre remarked to her calmly: ‘He has been a little mad all his +life.’” + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Mills lowered the hands holding the extinct and even cold pipe before his +big face. + +“H’m, shoot an arrow into that old man’s heart like this? But was there +anything done?” + +“A terra-cotta bust, I believe. Good? I don’t know. I rather think +it’s in this house. A lot of things have been sent down from Paris here, +when she gave up the Pavilion. When she goes up now she stays in hotels, +you know. I imagine it is locked up in one of these things,” went on +Blunt, pointing towards the end of the studio where amongst the +monumental presses of dark oak lurked the shy dummy which had worn the +stiff robes of the Byzantine Empress and the amazing hat of the “Girl,” +rakishly. I wondered whether that dummy had travelled from Paris, too, +and whether with or without its head. Perhaps that head had been left +behind, having rolled into a corner of some empty room in the dismantled +Pavilion. I represented it to myself very lonely, without features, like +a turnip, with a mere peg sticking out where the neck should have been. +And Mr. Blunt was talking on. + +“There are treasures behind these locked doors, brocades, old jewels, +unframed pictures, bronzes, chinoiseries, Japoneries.” + +He growled as much as a man of his accomplished manner and voice could +growl. “I don’t suppose she gave away all that to her sister, but I +shouldn’t be surprised if that timid rustic didn’t lay a claim to the lot +for the love of God and the good of the Church. . . + +“And held on with her teeth, too,” he added graphically. + +Mills’ face remained grave. Very grave. I was amused at those little +venomous outbreaks of the fatal Mr. Blunt. Again I knew myself utterly +forgotten. But I didn’t feel dull and I didn’t even feel sleepy. That +last strikes me as strange at this distance of time, in regard of my +tender years and of the depressing hour which precedes the dawn. We had +been drinking that straw-coloured wine, too, I won’t say like water +(nobody would have drunk water like that) but, well . . . and the haze of +tobacco smoke was like the blue mist of great distances seen in dreams. + +Yes, that old sculptor was the first who joined them in the sight of all +Paris. It was that old glory that opened the series of companions of +those morning rides; a series which extended through three successive +Parisian spring-times and comprised a famous physiologist, a fellow who +seemed to hint that mankind could be made immortal or at least +everlastingly old; a fashionable philosopher and psychologist who used to +lecture to enormous audiences of women with his tongue in his cheek (but +never permitted himself anything of the kind when talking to Rita); that +surly dandy Cabanel (but he only once, from mere vanity), and everybody +else at all distinguished including also a celebrated person who turned +out later to be a swindler. But he was really a genius. . . All this +according to Mr. Blunt, who gave us all those details with a sort of +languid zest covering a secret irritation. + +“Apart from that, you know,” went on Mr. Blunt, “all she knew of the +world of men and women (I mean till Allègre’s death) was what she had +seen of it from the saddle two hours every morning during four months of +the year or so. Absolutely all, with Allègre self-denyingly on her right +hand, with that impenetrable air of guardianship. Don’t touch! He +didn’t like his treasures to be touched unless he actually put some +unique object into your hands with a sort of triumphant murmur, ‘Look +close at that.’ Of course I only have heard all this. I am much too +small a person, you understand, to even . . .” + +He flashed his white teeth at us most agreeably, but the upper part of +his face, the shadowed setting of his eyes, and the slight drawing in of +his eyebrows gave a fatal suggestion. I thought suddenly of the +definition he applied to himself: “_Américain_, _catholique et +gentil-homme_” completed by that startling “I live by my sword” uttered +in a light drawing-room tone tinged by a flavour of mockery lighter even +than air. + +He insisted to us that the first and only time he had seen Allègre a +little close was that morning in the Bois with his mother. His Majesty +(whom God preserve), then not even an active Pretender, flanked the girl, +still a girl, on the other side, the usual companion for a month past or +so. Allègre had suddenly taken it into his head to paint his portrait. +A sort of intimacy had sprung up. Mrs. Blunt’s remark was that of the +two striking horsemen Allègre looked the more kingly. + +“The son of a confounded millionaire soap-boiler,” commented Mr. Blunt +through his clenched teeth. “A man absolutely without parentage. +Without a single relation in the world. Just a freak.” + +“That explains why he could leave all his fortune to her,” said Mills. + +“The will, I believe,” said Mr. Blunt moodily, “was written on a half +sheet of paper, with his device of an Assyrian bull at the head. What +the devil did he mean by it? Anyway it was the last time that she +surveyed the world of men and women from the saddle. Less than three +months later. . .” + +“Allègre died and. . . ” murmured Mills in an interested manner. + +“And she had to dismount,” broke in Mr. Blunt grimly. “Dismount right +into the middle of it. Down to the very ground, you understand. I +suppose you can guess what that would mean. She didn’t know what to do +with herself. She had never been on the ground. She . . . ” + +“Aha!” said Mills. + +“Even eh! eh! if you like,” retorted Mr. Blunt, in an unrefined tone, +that made me open my eyes, which were well opened before, still wider. + +He turned to me with that horrible trick of his of commenting upon Mills +as though that quiet man whom I admired, whom I trusted, and for whom I +had already something resembling affection had been as much of a dummy as +that other one lurking in the shadows, pitiful and headless in its +attitude of alarmed chastity. + +“Nothing escapes his penetration. He can perceive a haystack at an +enormous distance when he is interested.” + +I thought this was going rather too far, even to the borders of +vulgarity; but Mills remained untroubled and only reached for his tobacco +pouch. + +“But that’s nothing to my mother’s interest. She can never see a +haystack, therefore she is always so surprised and excited. Of course +Doña Rita was not a woman about whom the newspapers insert little +paragraphs. But Allègre was the sort of man. A lot came out in print +about him and a lot was talked in the world about her; and at once my +dear mother perceived a haystack and naturally became unreasonably +absorbed in it. I thought her interest would wear out. But it didn’t. +She had received a shock and had received an impression by means of that +girl. My mother has never been treated with impertinence before, and the +aesthetic impression must have been of extraordinary strength. I must +suppose that it amounted to a sort of moral revolution, I can’t account +for her proceedings in any other way. When Rita turned up in Paris a +year and a half after Allègre’s death some shabby journalist (smart +creature) hit upon the notion of alluding to her as the heiress of Mr. +Allègre. ‘The heiress of Mr. Allègre has taken up her residence again +amongst the treasures of art in that Pavilion so well known to the élite +of the artistic, scientific, and political world, not to speak of the +members of aristocratic and even royal families. . . ’ You know the sort +of thing. It appeared first in the _Figaro_, I believe. And then at the +end a little phrase: ‘She is alone.’ She was in a fair way of becoming a +celebrity of a sort. Daily little allusions and that sort of thing. +Heaven only knows who stopped it. There was a rush of ‘old friends’ into +that garden, enough to scare all the little birds away. I suppose one or +several of them, having influence with the press, did it. But the gossip +didn’t stop, and the name stuck, too, since it conveyed a very certain +and very significant sort of fact, and of course the Venetian episode was +talked about in the houses frequented by my mother. It was talked about +from a royalist point of view with a kind of respect. It was even said +that the inspiration and the resolution of the war going on now over the +Pyrenees had come out from that head. . . Some of them talked as if she +were the guardian angel of Legitimacy. You know what royalist gush is +like.” + +Mr. Blunt’s face expressed sarcastic disgust. Mills moved his head the +least little bit. Apparently he knew. + +“Well, speaking with all possible respect, it seems to have affected my +mother’s brain. I was already with the royal army and of course there +could be no question of regular postal communications with France. My +mother hears or overhears somewhere that the heiress of Mr. Allègre is +contemplating a secret journey. All the noble Salons were full of +chatter about that secret naturally. So she sits down and pens an +autograph: ‘Madame, Informed that you are proceeding to the place on +which the hopes of all the right thinking people are fixed, I trust to +your womanly sympathy with a mother’s anxious feelings, etc., etc.,’ and +ending with a request to take messages to me and bring news of me. . . +The coolness of my mother!” + +Most unexpectedly Mills was heard murmuring a question which seemed to me +very odd. + +“I wonder how your mother addressed that note?” + +A moment of silence ensued. + +“Hardly in the newspaper style, I should think,” retorted Mr. Blunt, with +one of his grins that made me doubt the stability of his feelings and the +consistency of his outlook in regard to his whole tale. “My mother’s +maid took it in a fiacre very late one evening to the Pavilion and +brought an answer scrawled on a scrap of paper: ‘Write your messages at +once’ and signed with a big capital R. So my mother sat down again to +her charming writing desk and the maid made another journey in a fiacre +just before midnight; and ten days later or so I got a letter thrust into +my hand at the _avanzadas_ just as I was about to start on a night +patrol, together with a note asking me to call on the writer so that she +might allay my mother’s anxieties by telling her how I looked. + +“It was signed R only, but I guessed at once and nearly fell off my horse +with surprise.” + +“You mean to say that Doña Rita was actually at the Royal Headquarters +lately?” exclaimed Mills, with evident surprise. “Why, +we—everybody—thought that all this affair was over and done with.” + +“Absolutely. Nothing in the world could be more done with than that +episode. Of course the rooms in the hotel at Tolosa were retained for +her by an order from Royal Headquarters. Two garret-rooms, the place was +so full of all sorts of court people; but I can assure you that for the +three days she was there she never put her head outside the door. +General Mongroviejo called on her officially from the King. A general, +not anybody of the household, you see. That’s a distinct shade of the +present relation. He stayed just five minutes. Some personage from the +Foreign department at Headquarters was closeted for about a couple of +hours. That was of course business. Then two officers from the staff +came together with some explanations or instructions to her. Then Baron +H., a fellow with a pretty wife, who had made so many sacrifices for the +cause, raised a great to-do about seeing her and she consented to receive +him for a moment. They say he was very much frightened by her arrival, +but after the interview went away all smiles. Who else? Yes, the +Archbishop came. Half an hour. This is more than is necessary to give a +blessing, and I can’t conceive what else he had to give her. But I am +sure he got something out of her. Two peasants from the upper valley +were sent for by military authorities and she saw them, too. That friar +who hangs about the court has been in and out several times. Well, and +lastly, I myself. I got leave from the outposts. That was the first +time I talked to her. I would have gone that evening back to the +regiment, but the friar met me in the corridor and informed me that I +would be ordered to escort that most loyal and noble lady back to the +French frontier as a personal mission of the highest honour. I was +inclined to laugh at him. He himself is a cheery and jovial person and +he laughed with me quite readily—but I got the order before dark all +right. It was rather a job, as the Alphonsists were attacking the right +flank of our whole front and there was some considerable disorder there. +I mounted her on a mule and her maid on another. We spent one night in a +ruined old tower occupied by some of our infantry and got away at +daybreak under the Alphonsist shells. The maid nearly died of fright and +one of the troopers with us was wounded. To smuggle her back across the +frontier was another job but it wasn’t my job. It wouldn’t have done for +her to appear in sight of French frontier posts in the company of Carlist +uniforms. She seems to have a fearless streak in her nature. At one +time as we were climbing a slope absolutely exposed to artillery fire I +asked her on purpose, being provoked by the way she looked about at the +scenery, ‘A little emotion, eh?’ And she answered me in a low voice: +‘Oh, yes! I am moved. I used to run about these hills when I was +little.’ And note, just then the trooper close behind us had been +wounded by a shell fragment. He was swearing awfully and fighting with +his horse. The shells were falling around us about two to the minute. + +“Luckily the Alphonsist shells are not much better than our own. But +women are funny. I was afraid the maid would jump down and clear out +amongst the rocks, in which case we should have had to dismount and catch +her. But she didn’t do that; she sat perfectly still on her mule and +shrieked. Just simply shrieked. Ultimately we came to a curiously +shaped rock at the end of a short wooded valley. It was very still there +and the sunshine was brilliant. I said to Doña Rita: ‘We will have to +part in a few minutes. I understand that my mission ends at this rock.’ +And she said: ‘I know this rock well. This is my country.’ + +“Then she thanked me for bringing her there and presently three peasants +appeared, waiting for us, two youths and one shaven old man, with a thin +nose like a sword blade and perfectly round eyes, a character well known +to the whole Carlist army. The two youths stopped under the trees at a +distance, but the old fellow came quite close up and gazed at her, +screwing up his eyes as if looking at the sun. Then he raised his arm +very slowly and took his red _boina_ off his bald head. I watched her +smiling at him all the time. I daresay she knew him as well as she knew +the old rock. Very old rock. The rock of ages—and the aged +man—landmarks of her youth. Then the mules started walking smartly +forward, with the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanished +between the trees. These fellows were most likely sent out by her uncle +the Cura. + +“It was a peaceful scene, the morning light, the bit of open country +framed in steep stony slopes, a high peak or two in the distance, the +thin smoke of some invisible _caserios_, rising straight up here and +there. Far away behind us the guns had ceased and the echoes in the +gorges had died out. I never knew what peace meant before. . . + +“Nor since,” muttered Mr. Blunt after a pause and then went on. “The +little stone church of her uncle, the holy man of the family, might have +been round the corner of the next spur of the nearest hill. I dismounted +to bandage the shoulder of my trooper. It was only a nasty long scratch. +While I was busy about it a bell began to ring in the distance. The +sound fell deliciously on the ear, clear like the morning light. But it +stopped all at once. You know how a distant bell stops suddenly. I +never knew before what stillness meant. While I was wondering at it the +fellow holding our horses was moved to uplift his voice. He was a +Spaniard, not a Basque, and he trolled out in Castilian that song you +know, + + “‘Oh bells of my native village, + I am going away . . . good-bye!’ + +He had a good voice. When the last note had floated away I remounted, +but there was a charm in the spot, something particular and individual +because while we were looking at it before turning our horses’ heads away +the singer said: ‘I wonder what is the name of this place,’ and the other +man remarked: ‘Why, there is no village here,’ and the first one +insisted: ‘No, I mean this spot, this very place.’ The wounded trooper +decided that it had no name probably. But he was wrong. It had a name. +The hill, or the rock, or the wood, or the whole had a name. I heard of +it by chance later. It was—Lastaola.” + +A cloud of tobacco smoke from Mills’ pipe drove between my head and the +head of Mr. Blunt, who, strange to say, yawned slightly. It seemed to me +an obvious affectation on the part of that man of perfect manners, and, +moreover, suffering from distressing insomnia. + +“This is how we first met and how we first parted,” he said in a weary, +indifferent tone. “It’s quite possible that she did see her uncle on the +way. It’s perhaps on this occasion that she got her sister to come out +of the wilderness. I have no doubt she had a pass from the French +Government giving her the completest freedom of action. She must have +got it in Paris before leaving.” + +Mr. Blunt broke out into worldly, slightly cynical smiles. + +“She can get anything she likes in Paris. She could get a whole army +over the frontier if she liked. She could get herself admitted into the +Foreign Office at one o’clock in the morning if it so pleased her. Doors +fly open before the heiress of Mr. Allègre. She has inherited the old +friends, the old connections . . . Of course, if she were a toothless old +woman . . . But, you see, she isn’t. The ushers in all the ministries +bow down to the ground therefore, and voices from the innermost sanctums +take on an eager tone when they say, ‘_Faites entrer_.’ My mother knows +something about it. She has followed her career with the greatest +attention. And Rita herself is not even surprised. She accomplishes +most extraordinary things, as naturally as buying a pair of gloves. +People in the shops are very polite and people in the world are like +people in the shops. What did she know of the world? She had seen it +only from the saddle. Oh, she will get your cargo released for you all +right. How will she do it? . . Well, when it’s done—you follow me, +Mills?—when it’s done she will hardly know herself.” + +“It’s hardly possible that she shouldn’t be aware,” Mills pronounced +calmly. + +“No, she isn’t an idiot,” admitted Mr. Blunt, in the same matter-of-fact +voice. “But she confessed to myself only the other day that she suffered +from a sense of unreality. I told her that at any rate she had her own +feelings surely. And she said to me: Yes, there was one of them at least +about which she had no doubt; and you will never guess what it was. +Don’t try. I happen to know, because we are pretty good friends.” + +At that moment we all changed our attitude slightly. Mills’ staring eyes +moved for a glance towards Blunt, I, who was occupying the divan, raised +myself on the cushions a little and Mr. Blunt, with half a turn, put his +elbow on the table. + +“I asked her what it was. I don’t see,” went on Mr. Blunt, with a +perfectly horrible gentleness, “why I should have shown particular +consideration to the heiress of Mr. Allègre. I don’t mean to that +particular mood of hers. It was the mood of weariness. And so she told +me. It’s fear. I will say it once again: Fear. . . .” + +He added after a pause, “There can be not the slightest doubt of her +courage. But she distinctly uttered the word fear.” + +There was under the table the noise of Mills stretching his legs. + +“A person of imagination,” he began, “a young, virgin intelligence, +steeped for nearly five years in the talk of Allègre’s studio, where +every hard truth had been cracked and every belief had been worried into +shreds. They were like a lot of intellectual dogs, you know . . .” + +“Yes, yes, of course,” Blunt interrupted hastily, “the intellectual +personality altogether adrift, a soul without a home . . . but I, who am +neither very fine nor very deep, I am convinced that the fear is +material.” + +“Because she confessed to it being that?” insinuated Mills. + +“No, because she didn’t,” contradicted Blunt, with an angry frown and in +an extremely suave voice. “In fact, she bit her tongue. And considering +what good friends we are (under fire together and all that) I conclude +that there is nothing there to boast of. Neither is my friendship, as a +matter of fact.” + +Mills’ face was the very perfection of indifference. But I who was +looking at him, in my innocence, to discover what it all might mean, I +had a notion that it was perhaps a shade too perfect. + +“My leave is a farce,” Captain Blunt burst out, with a most unexpected +exasperation. “As an officer of Don Carlos, I have no more standing than +a bandit. I ought to have been interned in those filthy old barracks in +Avignon a long time ago. . . Why am I not? Because Doña Rita exists and +for no other reason on earth. Of course it’s known that I am about. She +has only to whisper over the wires to the Minister of the Interior, ‘Put +that bird in a cage for me,’ and the thing would be done without any more +formalities than that. . . Sad world this,” he commented in a changed +tone. “Nowadays a gentleman who lives by his sword is exposed to that +sort of thing.” + +It was then for the first time I heard Mr. Mills laugh. It was a deep, +pleasant, kindly note, not very loud and altogether free from that +quality of derision that spoils so many laughs and gives away the secret +hardness of hearts. But neither was it a very joyous laugh. + +“But the truth of the matter is that I am ‘_en mission_,’” continued +Captain Blunt. “I have been instructed to settle some things, to set +other things going, and, by my instructions, Doña Rita is to be the +intermediary for all those objects. And why? Because every bald head in +this Republican Government gets pink at the top whenever her dress +rustles outside the door. They bow with immense deference when the door +opens, but the bow conceals a smirk because of those Venetian days. That +confounded Versoy shoved his nose into that business; he says +accidentally. He saw them together on the Lido and (those writing +fellows are horrible) he wrote what he calls a vignette (I suppose +accidentally, too) under that very title. There was in it a Prince and a +lady and a big dog. He described how the Prince on landing from the +gondola emptied his purse into the hands of a picturesque old beggar, +while the lady, a little way off, stood gazing back at Venice with the +dog romantically stretched at her feet. One of Versoy’s beautiful prose +vignettes in a great daily that has a literary column. But some other +papers that didn’t care a cent for literature rehashed the mere fact. +And that’s the sort of fact that impresses your political man, especially +if the lady is, well, such as she is . . .” + +He paused. His dark eyes flashed fatally, away from us, in the direction +of the shy dummy; and then he went on with cultivated cynicism. + +“So she rushes down here. Overdone, weary, rest for her nerves. +Nonsense. I assure you she has no more nerves than I have.” + +I don’t know how he meant it, but at that moment, slim and elegant, he +seemed a mere bundle of nerves himself, with the flitting expressions on +his thin, well-bred face, with the restlessness of his meagre brown hands +amongst the objects on the table. With some pipe ash amongst a little +spilt wine his forefinger traced a capital R. Then he looked into an +empty glass profoundly. I have a notion that I sat there staring and +listening like a yokel at a play. Mills’ pipe was lying quite a foot +away in front of him, empty, cold. Perhaps he had no more tobacco. Mr. +Blunt assumed his dandified air—nervously. + +“Of course her movements are commented on in the most exclusive +drawing-rooms and also in other places, also exclusive, but where the +gossip takes on another tone. There they are probably saying that she +has got a ‘_coup de coeur_’ for some one. Whereas I think she is utterly +incapable of that sort of thing. That Venetian affair, the beginning of +it and the end of it, was nothing but a _coup de tête_, and all those +activities in which I am involved, as you see (by order of Headquarters, +ha, ha, ha!), are nothing but that, all this connection, all this +intimacy into which I have dropped . . . Not to speak of my mother, who +is delightful, but as irresponsible as one of those crazy princesses that +shock their Royal families. . . ” + +He seemed to bite his tongue and I observed that Mills’ eyes seemed to +have grown wider than I had ever seen them before. In that tranquil face +it was a great play of feature. “An intimacy,” began Mr. Blunt, with an +extremely refined grimness of tone, “an intimacy with the heiress of Mr. +Allègre on the part of . . . on my part, well, it isn’t exactly . . . +it’s open . . . well, I leave it to you, what does it look like?” + +“Is there anybody looking on?” Mills let fall, gently, through his kindly +lips. + +“Not actually, perhaps, at this moment. But I don’t need to tell a man +of the world, like you, that such things cannot remain unseen. And that +they are, well, compromising, because of the mere fact of the fortune.” + +Mills got on his feet, looked for his jacket and after getting into it +made himself heard while he looked for his hat. + +“Whereas the woman herself is, so to speak, priceless.” + +Mr. Blunt muttered the word “Obviously.” + +By then we were all on our feet. The iron stove glowed no longer and the +lamp, surrounded by empty bottles and empty glasses, had grown dimmer. + +I know that I had a great shiver on getting away from the cushions of the +divan. + +“We will meet again in a few hours,” said Mr. Blunt. + +“Don’t forget to come,” he said, addressing me. “Oh, yes, do. Have no +scruples. I am authorized to make invitations.” + +He must have noticed my shyness, my surprise, my embarrassment. And +indeed I didn’t know what to say. + +“I assure you there isn’t anything incorrect in your coming,” he +insisted, with the greatest civility. “You will be introduced by two +good friends, Mills and myself. Surely you are not afraid of a very +charming woman. . . .” + +I was not afraid, but my head swam a little and I only looked at him +mutely. + +“Lunch precisely at midday. Mills will bring you along. I am sorry you +two are going. I shall throw myself on the bed for an hour or two, but I +am sure I won’t sleep.” + +He accompanied us along the passage into the black-and-white hall, where +the low gas flame glimmered forlornly. When he opened the front door the +cold blast of the mistral rushing down the street of the Consuls made me +shiver to the very marrow of my bones. + +Mills and I exchanged but a few words as we walked down towards the +centre of the town. In the chill tempestuous dawn he strolled along +musingly, disregarding the discomfort of the cold, the depressing +influence of the hour, the desolation of the empty streets in which the +dry dust rose in whirls in front of us, behind us, flew upon us from the +side streets. The masks had gone home and our footsteps echoed on the +flagstones with unequal sound as of men without purpose, without hope. + +“I suppose you will come,” said Mills suddenly. + +“I really don’t know,” I said. + +“Don’t you? Well, remember I am not trying to persuade you; but I am +staying at the Hôtel de Louvre and I shall leave there at a quarter to +twelve for that lunch. At a quarter to twelve, not a minute later. I +suppose you can sleep?” + +I laughed. + +“Charming age, yours,” said Mills, as we came out on the quays. Already +dim figures of the workers moved in the biting dawn and the masted forms +of ships were coming out dimly, as far as the eye could reach down the +old harbour. + +“Well,” Mills began again, “you may oversleep yourself.” + +This suggestion was made in a cheerful tone, just as we shook hands at +the lower end of the Cannebière. He looked very burly as he walked away +from me. I went on towards my lodgings. My head was very full of +confused images, but I was really too tired to think. + + + + +PART TWO + + +CHAPTER I + + +Sometimes I wonder yet whether Mills wished me to oversleep myself or +not: that is, whether he really took sufficient interest to care. His +uniform kindliness of manner made it impossible for me to tell. And I +can hardly remember my own feelings. Did I care? The whole recollection +of that time of my life has such a peculiar quality that the beginning +and the end of it are merged in one sensation of profound emotion, +continuous and overpowering, containing the extremes of exultation, full +of careless joy and of an invincible sadness—like a day-dream. The sense +of all this having been gone through as if in one great rush of +imagination is all the stronger in the distance of time, because it had +something of that quality even then: of fate unprovoked, of events that +didn’t cast any shadow before. + +Not that those events were in the least extraordinary. They were, in +truth, commonplace. What to my backward glance seems startling and a +little awful is their punctualness and inevitability. Mills was +punctual. Exactly at a quarter to twelve he appeared under the lofty +portal of the Hôtel de Louvre, with his fresh face, his ill-fitting grey +suit, and enveloped in his own sympathetic atmosphere. + +How could I have avoided him? To this day I have a shadowy conviction of +his inherent distinction of mind and heart, far beyond any man I have +ever met since. He was unavoidable: and of course I never tried to avoid +him. The first sight on which his eyes fell was a victoria pulled up +before the hotel door, in which I sat with no sentiment I can remember +now but that of some slight shyness. He got in without a moment’s +hesitation, his friendly glance took me in from head to foot and (such +was his peculiar gift) gave me a pleasurable sensation. + +After we had gone a little way I couldn’t help saying to him with a +bashful laugh: “You know, it seems very extraordinary that I should be +driving out with you like this.” + +He turned to look at me and in his kind voice: + +“You will find everything extremely simple,” he said. “So simple that +you will be quite able to hold your own. I suppose you know that the +world is selfish, I mean the majority of the people in it, often +unconsciously I must admit, and especially people with a mission, with a +fixed idea, with some fantastic object in view, or even with only some +fantastic illusion. That doesn’t mean that they have no scruples. And I +don’t know that at this moment I myself am not one of them.” + +“That, of course, I can’t say,” I retorted. + +“I haven’t seen her for years,” he said, “and in comparison with what she +was then she must be very grown up by now. From what we heard from Mr. +Blunt she had experiences which would have matured her more than they +would teach her. There are of course people that are not teachable. I +don’t know that she is one of them. But as to maturity that’s quite +another thing. Capacity for suffering is developed in every human being +worthy of the name.” + +“Captain Blunt doesn’t seem to be a very happy person,” I said. “He +seems to have a grudge against everybody. People make him wince. The +things they do, the things they say. He must be awfully mature.” + +Mills gave me a sidelong look. It met mine of the same character and we +both smiled without openly looking at each other. At the end of the Rue +de Rome the violent chilly breath of the mistral enveloped the victoria +in a great widening of brilliant sunshine without heat. We turned to the +right, circling at a stately pace about the rather mean obelisk which +stands at the entrance to the Prado. + +“I don’t know whether you are mature or not,” said Mills humorously. +“But I think you will do. You . . . ” + +“Tell me,” I interrupted, “what is really Captain Blunt’s position +there?” + +And I nodded at the alley of the Prado opening before us between the rows +of the perfectly leafless trees. + +“Thoroughly false, I should think. It doesn’t accord either with his +illusions or his pretensions, or even with the real position he has in +the world. And so what between his mother and the General Headquarters +and the state of his own feelings he. . . ” + +“He is in love with her,” I interrupted again. + +“That wouldn’t make it any easier. I’m not at all sure of that. But if +so it can’t be a very idealistic sentiment. All the warmth of his +idealism is concentrated upon a certain ‘_Américain_, _Catholique et +gentil-homme_. . . ’” + +The smile which for a moment dwelt on his lips was not unkind. + +“At the same time he has a very good grip of the material conditions that +surround, as it were, the situation.” + +“What do you mean? That Doña Rita” (the name came strangely familiar to +my tongue) “is rich, that she has a fortune of her own?” + +“Yes, a fortune,” said Mills. “But it was Allègre’s fortune before. . . +And then there is Blunt’s fortune: he lives by his sword. And there is +the fortune of his mother, I assure you a perfectly charming, clever, and +most aristocratic old lady, with the most distinguished connections. I +really mean it. She doesn’t live by her sword. She . . . she lives by +her wits. I have a notion that those two dislike each other heartily at +times. . . Here we are.” + +The victoria stopped in the side alley, bordered by the low walls of +private grounds. We got out before a wrought-iron gateway which stood +half open and walked up a circular drive to the door of a large villa of +a neglected appearance. The mistral howled in the sunshine, shaking the +bare bushes quite furiously. And everything was bright and hard, the air +was hard, the light was hard, the ground under our feet was hard. + +The door at which Mills rang came open almost at once. The maid who +opened it was short, dark, and slightly pockmarked. For the rest, an +obvious “_femme-de-chambre_,” and very busy. She said quickly, “Madame +has just returned from her ride,” and went up the stairs leaving us to +shut the front door ourselves. + +The staircase had a crimson carpet. Mr. Blunt appeared from somewhere in +the hall. He was in riding breeches and a black coat with ample square +skirts. This get-up suited him but it also changed him extremely by +doing away with the effect of flexible slimness he produced in his +evening clothes. He looked to me not at all himself but rather like a +brother of the man who had been talking to us the night before. He +carried about him a delicate perfume of scented soap. He gave us a flash +of his white teeth and said: + +“It’s a perfect nuisance. We have just dismounted. I will have to lunch +as I am. A lifelong habit of beginning her day on horseback. She +pretends she is unwell unless she does. I daresay, when one thinks there +has been hardly a day for five or six years that she didn’t begin with a +ride. That’s the reason she is always rushing away from Paris where she +can’t go out in the morning alone. Here, of course, it’s different. And +as I, too, am a stranger here I can go out with her. Not that I +particularly care to do it.” + +These last words were addressed to Mills specially, with the addition of +a mumbled remark: “It’s a confounded position.” Then calmly to me with a +swift smile: “We have been talking of you this morning. You are expected +with impatience.” + +“Thank you very much,” I said, “but I can’t help asking myself what I am +doing here.” + +The upward cast in the eyes of Mills who was facing the staircase made us +both, Blunt and I, turn round. The woman of whom I had heard so much, in +a sort of way in which I had never heard a woman spoken of before, was +coming down the stairs, and my first sensation was that of profound +astonishment at this evidence that she did really exist. And even then +the visual impression was more of colour in a picture than of the forms +of actual life. She was wearing a wrapper, a sort of dressing-gown of +pale blue silk embroidered with black and gold designs round the neck and +down the front, lapped round her and held together by a broad belt of the +same material. Her slippers were of the same colour, with black bows at +the instep. The white stairs, the deep crimson of the carpet, and the +light blue of the dress made an effective combination of colour to set +off the delicate carnation of that face, which, after the first glance +given to the whole person, drew irresistibly your gaze to itself by an +indefinable quality of charm beyond all analysis and made you think of +remote races, of strange generations, of the faces of women sculptured on +immemorial monuments and of those lying unsung in their tombs. While she +moved downwards from step to step with slightly lowered eyes there +flashed upon me suddenly the recollection of words heard at night, of +Allègre’s words about her, of there being in her “something of the women +of all time.” + +At the last step she raised her eyelids, treated us to an exhibition of +teeth as dazzling as Mr. Blunt’s and looking even stronger; and indeed, +as she approached us she brought home to our hearts (but after all I am +speaking only for myself) a vivid sense of her physical perfection in +beauty of limb and balance of nerves, and not so much of grace, probably, +as of absolute harmony. + +She said to us, “I am sorry I kept you waiting.” Her voice was low +pitched, penetrating, and of the most seductive gentleness. She offered +her hand to Mills very frankly as to an old friend. Within the +extraordinarily wide sleeve, lined with black silk, I could see the arm, +very white, with a pearly gleam in the shadow. But to me she extended +her hand with a slight stiffening, as it were a recoil of her person, +combined with an extremely straight glance. It was a finely shaped, +capable hand. I bowed over it, and we just touched fingers. I did not +look then at her face. + +Next moment she caught sight of some envelopes lying on the round +marble-topped table in the middle of the hall. She seized one of them +with a wonderfully quick, almost feline, movement and tore it open, +saying to us, “Excuse me, I must . . . Do go into the dining-room. +Captain Blunt, show the way.” + +Her widened eyes stared at the paper. Mr. Blunt threw one of the doors +open, but before we passed through it we heard a petulant exclamation +accompanied by childlike stamping with both feet and ending in a laugh +which had in it a note of contempt. + +The door closed behind us; we had been abandoned by Mr. Blunt. He had +remained on the other side, possibly to soothe. The room in which we +found ourselves was long like a gallery and ended in a rotunda with many +windows. It was long enough for two fireplaces of red polished granite. +A table laid out for four occupied very little space. The floor inlaid +in two kinds of wood in a bizarre pattern was highly waxed, reflecting +objects like still water. + +Before very long Doña Rita and Blunt rejoined us and we sat down around +the table; but before we could begin to talk a dramatically sudden ring +at the front door stilled our incipient animation. Doña Rita looked at +us all in turn, with surprise and, as it were, with suspicion. “How did +he know I was here?” she whispered after looking at the card which was +brought to her. She passed it to Blunt, who passed it to Mills, who +made a faint grimace, dropped it on the table-cloth, and only whispered +to me, “A journalist from Paris.” + +“He has run me to earth,” said Doña Rita. “One would bargain for peace +against hard cash if these fellows weren’t always ready to snatch at +one’s very soul with the other hand. It frightens me.” + +Her voice floated mysterious and penetrating from her lips, which moved +very little. Mills was watching her with sympathetic curiosity. Mr. +Blunt muttered: “Better not make the brute angry.” For a moment Doña +Rita’s face, with its narrow eyes, its wide brow, and high cheek bones, +became very still; then her colour was a little heightened. “Oh,” she +said softly, “let him come in. He would be really dangerous if he had a +mind—you know,” she said to Mills. + +The person who had provoked all those remarks and as much hesitation as +though he had been some sort of wild beast astonished me on being +admitted, first by the beauty of his white head of hair and then by his +paternal aspect and the innocent simplicity of his manner. They laid a +cover for him between Mills and Doña Rita, who quite openly removed the +envelopes she had brought with her, to the other side of her plate. As +openly the man’s round china-blue eyes followed them in an attempt to +make out the handwriting of the addresses. + +He seemed to know, at least slightly, both Mills and Blunt. To me he +gave a stare of stupid surprise. He addressed our hostess. + +“Resting? Rest is a very good thing. Upon my word, I thought I would +find you alone. But you have too much sense. Neither man nor woman has +been created to live alone. . . .” After this opening he had all the +talk to himself. It was left to him pointedly, and I verily believe that +I was the only one who showed an appearance of interest. I couldn’t help +it. The others, including Mills, sat like a lot of deaf and dumb people. +No. It was even something more detached. They sat rather like a very +superior lot of waxworks, with the fixed but indetermined facial +expression and with that odd air wax figures have of being aware of their +existence being but a sham. + +I was the exception; and nothing could have marked better my status of a +stranger, the completest possible stranger in the moral region in which +those people lived, moved, enjoying or suffering their incomprehensible +emotions. I was as much of a stranger as the most hopeless castaway +stumbling in the dark upon a hut of natives and finding them in the grip +of some situation appertaining to the mentalities, prejudices, and +problems of an undiscovered country—of a country of which he had not even +had one single clear glimpse before. + +It was even worse in a way. It ought to have been more disconcerting. +For, pursuing the image of the cast-away blundering upon the +complications of an unknown scheme of life, it was I, the castaway, who +was the savage, the simple innocent child of nature. Those people were +obviously more civilized than I was. They had more rites, more +ceremonies, more complexity in their sensations, more knowledge of evil, +more varied meanings to the subtle phrases of their language. Naturally! +I was still so young! And yet I assure you, that just then I lost all +sense of inferiority. And why? Of course the carelessness and the +ignorance of youth had something to do with that. But there was +something else besides. Looking at Doña Rita, her head leaning on her +hand, with her dark lashes lowered on the slightly flushed cheek, I felt +no longer alone in my youth. That woman of whom I had heard these things +I have set down with all the exactness of unfailing memory, that woman +was revealed to me young, younger than anybody I had ever seen, as young +as myself (and my sensation of my youth was then very acute); revealed +with something peculiarly intimate in the conviction, as if she were +young exactly in the same way in which I felt myself young; and that +therefore no misunderstanding between us was possible and there could be +nothing more for us to know about each other. Of course this sensation +was momentary, but it was illuminating; it was a light which could not +last, but it left no darkness behind. On the contrary, it seemed to have +kindled magically somewhere within me a glow of assurance, of +unaccountable confidence in myself: a warm, steady, and eager sensation +of my individual life beginning for good there, on that spot, in that +sense of solidarity, in that seduction. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +For this, properly speaking wonderful, reason I was the only one of the +company who could listen without constraint to the unbidden guest with +that fine head of white hair, so beautifully kept, so magnificently +waved, so artistically arranged that respect could not be felt for it any +more than for a very expensive wig in the window of a hair-dresser. In +fact, I had an inclination to smile at it. This proves how unconstrained +I felt. My mind was perfectly at liberty; and so of all the eyes in that +room mine was the only pair able to look about in easy freedom. All the +other listeners’ eyes were cast down, including Mills’ eyes, but that I +am sure was only because of his perfect and delicate sympathy. He could +not have been concerned otherwise. + +The intruder devoured the cutlets—if they were cutlets. Notwithstanding +my perfect liberty of mind I was not aware of what we were eating. I +have a notion that the lunch was a mere show, except of course for the +man with the white hair, who was really hungry and who, besides, must +have had the pleasant sense of dominating the situation. He stooped over +his plate and worked his jaw deliberately while his blue eyes rolled +incessantly; but as a matter of fact he never looked openly at any one of +us. Whenever he laid down his knife and fork he would throw himself back +and start retailing in a light tone some Parisian gossip about prominent +people. + +He talked first about a certain politician of mark. His “dear Rita” knew +him. His costume dated back to ’48, he was made of wood and parchment +and still swathed his neck in a white cloth; and even his wife had never +been seen in a low-necked dress. Not once in her life. She was buttoned +up to the chin like her husband. Well, that man had confessed to him +that when he was engaged in political controversy, not on a matter of +principle but on some special measure in debate, he felt ready to kill +everybody. + +He interrupted himself for a comment. “I am something like that myself. +I believe it’s a purely professional feeling. Carry one’s point whatever +it is. Normally I couldn’t kill a fly. My sensibility is too acute for +that. My heart is too tender also. Much too tender. I am a Republican. +I am a Red. As to all our present masters and governors, all those +people you are trying to turn round your little finger, they are all +horrible Royalists in disguise. They are plotting the ruin of all the +institutions to which I am devoted. But I have never tried to spoil your +little game, Rita. After all, it’s but a little game. You know very +well that two or three fearless articles, something in my style, you +know, would soon put a stop to all that underhand backing of your king. +I am calling him king because I want to be polite to you. He is an +adventurer, a blood-thirsty, murderous adventurer, for me, and nothing +else. Look here, my dear child, what are you knocking yourself about +for? For the sake of that bandit? _Allons donc_! A pupil of Henry +Allègre can have no illusions of that sort about any man. And such a +pupil, too! Ah, the good old days in the Pavilion! Don’t think I claim +any particular intimacy. It was just enough to enable me to offer my +services to you, Rita, when our poor friend died. I found myself handy +and so I came. It so happened that I was the first. You remember, Rita? +What made it possible for everybody to get on with our poor dear Allègre +was his complete, equable, and impartial contempt for all mankind. There +is nothing in that against the purest democratic principles; but that +you, Rita, should elect to throw so much of your life away for the sake +of a Royal adventurer, it really knocks me over. For you don’t love him. +You never loved him, you know.” + +He made a snatch at her hand, absolutely pulled it away from under her +head (it was quite startling) and retaining it in his grasp, proceeded to +a paternal patting of the most impudent kind. She let him go on with +apparent insensibility. Meanwhile his eyes strayed round the table over +our faces. It was very trying. The stupidity of that wandering stare +had a paralysing power. He talked at large with husky familiarity. + +“Here I come, expecting to find a good sensible girl who had seen at last +the vanity of all those things; half-light in the rooms; surrounded by +the works of her favourite poets, and all that sort of thing. I say to +myself: I must just run in and see the dear wise child, and encourage her +in her good resolutions. . . And I fall into the middle of an _intime_ +lunch-party. For I suppose it is _intime_. Eh? Very? H’m, yes . . . ” + +He was really appalling. Again his wandering stare went round the table, +with an expression incredibly incongruous with the words. It was as +though he had borrowed those eyes from some idiot for the purpose of that +visit. He still held Doña Rita’s hand, and, now and then, patted it. + +“It’s discouraging,” he cooed. “And I believe not one of you here is a +Frenchman. I don’t know what you are all about. It’s beyond me. But if +we were a Republic—you know I am an old Jacobin, sans-culotte and +terrorist—if this were a real Republic with the Convention sitting and a +Committee of Public Safety attending to national business, you would all +get your heads cut off. Ha, ha . . . I am joking, ha, ha! . . . and +serve you right, too. Don’t mind my little joke.” + +While he was still laughing he released her hand and she leaned her head +on it again without haste. She had never looked at him once. + +During the rather humiliating silence that ensued he got a leather cigar +case like a small valise out of his pocket, opened it and looked with +critical interest at the six cigars it contained. The tireless +_femme-de-chambre_ set down a tray with coffee cups on the table. We +each (glad, I suppose, of something to do) took one, but he, to begin +with, sniffed at his. Doña Rita continued leaning on her elbow, her lips +closed in a reposeful expression of peculiar sweetness. There was +nothing drooping in her attitude. Her face with the delicate carnation +of a rose and downcast eyes was as if veiled in firm immobility and was +so appealing that I had an insane impulse to walk round and kiss the +forearm on which it was leaning; that strong, well-shaped forearm, +gleaming not like marble but with a living and warm splendour. So +familiar had I become already with her in my thoughts! Of course I +didn’t do anything of the sort. It was nothing uncontrollable, it was +but a tender longing of a most respectful and purely sentimental kind. I +performed the act in my thought quietly, almost solemnly, while the +creature with the silver hair leaned back in his chair, puffing at his +cigar, and began to speak again. + +It was all apparently very innocent talk. He informed his “dear Rita” +that he was really on his way to Monte Carlo. A lifelong habit of his at +this time of the year; but he was ready to run back to Paris if he could +do anything for his “_chère enfant_,” run back for a day, for two days, +for three days, for any time; miss Monte Carlo this year altogether, if +he could be of the slightest use and save her going herself. For +instance he could see to it that proper watch was kept over the Pavilion +stuffed with all these art treasures. What was going to happen to all +those things? . . . Making herself heard for the first time Doña Rita +murmured without moving that she had made arrangements with the police to +have it properly watched. And I was enchanted by the almost +imperceptible play of her lips. + +But the anxious creature was not reassured. He pointed out that things +had been stolen out of the Louvre, which was, he dared say, even better +watched. And there was that marvellous cabinet on the landing, black +lacquer with silver herons, which alone would repay a couple of burglars. +A wheelbarrow, some old sacking, and they could trundle it off under +people’s noses. + +“Have you thought it all out?” she asked in a cold whisper, while we +three sat smoking to give ourselves a countenance (it was certainly no +enjoyment) and wondering what we would hear next. + +No, he had not. But he confessed that for years and years he had been in +love with that cabinet. And anyhow what was going to happen to the +things? The world was greatly exercised by that problem. He turned +slightly his beautifully groomed white head so as to address Mr. Blunt +directly. + +“I had the pleasure of meeting your mother lately.” + +Mr. Blunt took his time to raise his eyebrows and flash his teeth at him +before he dropped negligently, “I can’t imagine where you could have met +my mother.” + +“Why, at Bing’s, the curio-dealer,” said the other with an air of the +heaviest possible stupidity. And yet there was something in these few +words which seemed to imply that if Mr. Blunt was looking for trouble he +would certainly get it. “Bing was bowing her out of his shop, but he was +so angry about something that he was quite rude even to me afterwards. I +don’t think it’s very good for _Madame votre mère_ to quarrel with Bing. +He is a Parisian personality. He’s quite a power in his sphere. All +these fellows’ nerves are upset from worry as to what will happen to the +Allègre collection. And no wonder they are nervous. A big art event +hangs on your lips, my dear, great Rita. And by the way, you too ought +to remember that it isn’t wise to quarrel with people. What have you +done to that poor Azzolati? Did you really tell him to get out and never +come near you again, or something awful like that? I don’t doubt that he +was of use to you or to your king. A man who gets invitations to shoot +with the President at Rambouillet! I saw him only the other evening; I +heard he had been winning immensely at cards; but he looked perfectly +wretched, the poor fellow. He complained of your conduct—oh, very much! +He told me you had been perfectly brutal with him. He said to me: ‘I am +no good for anything, _mon cher_. The other day at Rambouillet, whenever +I had a hare at the end of my gun I would think of her cruel words and my +eyes would run full of tears. I missed every shot’ . . . You are not fit +for diplomatic work, you know, _ma chère_. You are a mere child at it. +When you want a middle-aged gentleman to do anything for you, you don’t +begin by reducing him to tears. I should have thought any woman would +have known that much. A nun would have known that much. What do you +say? Shall I run back to Paris and make it up for you with Azzolati?” + +He waited for her answer. The compression of his thin lips was full of +significance. I was surprised to see our hostess shake her head +negatively the least bit, for indeed by her pose, by the thoughtful +immobility of her face she seemed to be a thousand miles away from us +all, lost in an infinite reverie. + +He gave it up. “Well, I must be off. The express for Nice passes at +four o’clock. I will be away about three weeks and then you shall see me +again. Unless I strike a run of bad luck and get cleaned out, in which +case you shall see me before then.” + +He turned to Mills suddenly. + +“Will your cousin come south this year, to that beautiful villa of his at +Cannes?” + +Mills hardly deigned to answer that he didn’t know anything about his +cousin’s movements. + +“A _grand seigneur_ combined with a great connoisseur,” opined the other +heavily. His mouth had gone slack and he looked a perfect and grotesque +imbecile under his wig-like crop of white hair. Positively I thought he +would begin to slobber. But he attacked Blunt next. + +“Are you on your way down, too? A little flutter. . . It seems to me you +haven’t been seen in your usual Paris haunts of late. Where have you +been all this time?” + +“Don’t you know where I have been?” said Mr. Blunt with great precision. + +“No, I only ferret out things that may be of some use to me,” was the +unexpected reply, uttered with an air of perfect vacancy and swallowed by +Mr. Blunt in blank silence. + +At last he made ready to rise from the table. “Think over what I have +said, my dear Rita.” + +“It’s all over and done with,” was Doña Rita’s answer, in a louder tone +than I had ever heard her use before. It thrilled me while she +continued: “I mean, this thinking.” She was back from the remoteness of +her meditation, very much so indeed. She rose and moved away from the +table, inviting by a sign the other to follow her; which he did at once, +yet slowly and as it were warily. + +It was a conference in the recess of a window. We three remained seated +round the table from which the dark maid was removing the cups and the +plates with brusque movements. I gazed frankly at Doña Rita’s profile, +irregular, animated, and fascinating in an undefinable way, at her +well-shaped head with the hair twisted high up and apparently held in its +place by a gold arrow with a jewelled shaft. We couldn’t hear what she +said, but the movement of her lips and the play of her features were full +of charm, full of interest, expressing both audacity and gentleness. She +spoke with fire without raising her voice. The man listened +round-shouldered, but seeming much too stupid to understand. I could see +now and then that he was speaking, but he was inaudible. At one moment +Doña Rita turned her head to the room and called out to the maid, “Give +me my hand-bag off the sofa.” + +At this the other was heard plainly, “No, no,” and then a little lower, +“You have no tact, Rita. . . .” Then came her argument in a low, +penetrating voice which I caught, “Why not? Between such old friends.” +However, she waved away the hand-bag, he calmed down, and their voices +sank again. Presently I saw him raise her hand to his lips, while with +her back to the room she continued to contemplate out of the window the +bare and untidy garden. At last he went out of the room, throwing to the +table an airy “_Bonjour, bonjour_,” which was not acknowledged by any of +us three. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Mills got up and approached the figure at the window. To my extreme +surprise, Mr. Blunt, after a moment of obviously painful hesitation, +hastened out after the man with the white hair. + +In consequence of these movements I was left to myself and I began to be +uncomfortably conscious of it when Doña Rita, near the window, addressed +me in a raised voice. + +“We have no confidences to exchange, Mr. Mills and I.” + +I took this for an encouragement to join them. They were both looking at +me. Doña Rita added, “Mr. Mills and I are friends from old times, you +know.” + +Bathed in the softened reflection of the sunshine, which did not fall +directly into the room, standing very straight with her arms down, before +Mills, and with a faint smile directed to me, she looked extremely young, +and yet mature. There was even, for a moment, a slight dimple in her +cheek. + +“How old, I wonder?” I said, with an answering smile. + +“Oh, for ages, for ages,” she exclaimed hastily, frowning a little, then +she went on addressing herself to Mills, apparently in continuation of +what she was saying before. + +. . . “This man’s is an extreme case, and yet perhaps it isn’t the +worst. But that’s the sort of thing. I have no account to render to +anybody, but I don’t want to be dragged along all the gutters where that +man picks up his living.” + +She had thrown her head back a little but there was no scorn, no angry +flash under the dark-lashed eyelids. The words did not ring. I was +struck for the first time by the even, mysterious quality of her voice. + +“Will you let me suggest,” said Mills, with a grave, kindly face, “that +being what you are, you have nothing to fear?” + +“And perhaps nothing to lose,” she went on without bitterness. “No. It +isn’t fear. It’s a sort of dread. You must remember that no nun could +have had a more protected life. Henry Allègre had his greatness. When +he faced the world he also masked it. He was big enough for that. He +filled the whole field of vision for me.” + +“You found that enough?” asked Mills. + +“Why ask now?” she remonstrated. “The truth—the truth is that I never +asked myself. Enough or not there was no room for anything else. He was +the shadow and the light and the form and the voice. He would have it +so. The morning he died they came to call me at four o’clock. I ran +into his room bare-footed. He recognized me and whispered, ‘You are +flawless.’ I was very frightened. He seemed to think, and then said +very plainly, ‘Such is my character. I am like that.’ These were the +last words he spoke. I hardly noticed them then. I was thinking that he +was lying in a very uncomfortable position and I asked him if I should +lift him up a little higher on the pillows. You know I am very strong. +I could have done it. I had done it before. He raised his hand off the +blanket just enough to make a sign that he didn’t want to be touched. It +was the last gesture he made. I hung over him and then—and then I nearly +ran out of the house just as I was, in my night-gown. I think if I had +been dressed I would have run out of the garden, into the street—run away +altogether. I had never seen death. I may say I had never heard of it. +I wanted to run from it.” + +She paused for a long, quiet breath. The harmonized sweetness and daring +of her face was made pathetic by her downcast eyes. + +“_Fuir la mort_,” she repeated, meditatively, in her mysterious voice. + +Mills’ big head had a little movement, nothing more. Her glance glided +for a moment towards me like a friendly recognition of my right to be +there, before she began again. + +“My life might have been described as looking at mankind from a +fourth-floor window for years. When the end came it was like falling out +of a balcony into the street. It was as sudden as that. Once I remember +somebody was telling us in the Pavilion a tale about a girl who jumped +down from a fourth-floor window. . . For love, I believe,” she +interjected very quickly, “and came to no harm. Her guardian angel must +have slipped his wings under her just in time. He must have. But as to +me, all I know is that I didn’t break anything—not even my heart. Don’t +be shocked, Mr. Mills. It’s very likely that you don’t understand.” + +“Very likely,” Mills assented, unmoved. “But don’t be too sure of that.” + +“Henry Allègre had the highest opinion of your intelligence,” she said +unexpectedly and with evident seriousness. “But all this is only to tell +you that when he was gone I found myself down there unhurt, but dazed, +bewildered, not sufficiently stunned. It so happened that that creature +was somewhere in the neighbourhood. How he found out. . . But it’s his +business to find out things. And he knows, too, how to worm his way in +anywhere. Indeed, in the first days he was useful and somehow he made it +look as if Heaven itself had sent him. In my distress I thought I could +never sufficiently repay. . . Well, I have been paying ever since.” + +“What do you mean?” asked Mills softly. “In hard cash?” + +“Oh, it’s really so little,” she said. “I told you it wasn’t the worst +case. I stayed on in that house from which I nearly ran away in my +nightgown. I stayed on because I didn’t know what to do next. He +vanished as he had come on the track of something else, I suppose. You +know he really has got to get his living some way or other. But don’t +think I was deserted. On the contrary. People were coming and going, +all sorts of people that Henry Allègre used to know—or had refused to +know. I had a sensation of plotting and intriguing around me, all the +time. I was feeling morally bruised, sore all over, when, one day, Don +Rafael de Villarel sent in his card. A grandee. I didn’t know him, but, +as you are aware, there was hardly a personality of mark or position that +hasn’t been talked about in the Pavilion before me. Of him I had only +heard that he was a very austere and pious person, always at Mass, and +that sort of thing. I saw a frail little man with a long, yellow face +and sunken fanatical eyes, an Inquisitor, an unfrocked monk. One missed +a rosary from his thin fingers. He gazed at me terribly and I couldn’t +imagine what he might want. I waited for him to pull out a crucifix and +sentence me to the stake there and then. But no; he dropped his eyes and +in a cold, righteous sort of voice informed me that he had called on +behalf of the prince—he called him His Majesty. I was amazed by the +change. I wondered now why he didn’t slip his hands into the sleeves of +his coat, you know, as begging Friars do when they come for a +subscription. He explained that the Prince asked for permission to call +and offer me his condolences in person. We had seen a lot of him our +last two months in Paris that year. Henry Allègre had taken a fancy to +paint his portrait. He used to ride with us nearly every morning. +Almost without thinking I said I should be pleased. Don Rafael was +shocked at my want of formality, but bowed to me in silence, very much as +a monk bows, from the waist. If he had only crossed his hands flat on +his chest it would have been perfect. Then, I don’t know why, something +moved me to make him a deep curtsy as he backed out of the room, leaving +me suddenly impressed, not only with him but with myself too. I had my +door closed to everybody else that afternoon and the Prince came with a +very proper sorrowful face, but five minutes after he got into the room +he was laughing as usual, made the whole little house ring with it. You +know his big, irresistible laugh. . . .” + +“No,” said Mills, a little abruptly, “I have never seen him.” + +“No,” she said, surprised, “and yet you . . . ” + +“I understand,” interrupted Mills. “All this is purely accidental. You +must know that I am a solitary man of books but with a secret taste for +adventure which somehow came out; surprising even me.” + +She listened with that enigmatic, still, under the eyelids glance, and a +friendly turn of the head. + +“I know you for a frank and loyal gentleman. . . Adventure—and books? +Ah, the books! Haven’t I turned stacks of them over! Haven’t I? . . .” + +“Yes,” murmured Mills. “That’s what one does.” + +She put out her hand and laid it lightly on Mills’ sleeve. + +“Listen, I don’t need to justify myself, but if I had known a single +woman in the world, if I had only had the opportunity to observe a single +one of them, I would have been perhaps on my guard. But you know I +hadn’t. The only woman I had anything to do with was myself, and they +say that one can’t know oneself. It never entered my head to be on my +guard against his warmth and his terrible obviousness. You and he were +the only two, infinitely different, people, who didn’t approach me as if +I had been a precious object in a collection, an ivory carving or a piece +of Chinese porcelain. That’s why I have kept you in my memory so well. +Oh! you were not obvious! As to him—I soon learned to regret I was not +some object, some beautiful, carved object of bone or bronze; a rare +piece of porcelain, _pâte dure_, not _pâte tendre_. A pretty specimen.” + +“Rare, yes. Even unique,” said Mills, looking at her steadily with a +smile. “But don’t try to depreciate yourself. You were never pretty. +You are not pretty. You are worse.” + +Her narrow eyes had a mischievous gleam. “Do you find such sayings in +your books?” she asked. + +“As a matter of fact I have,” said Mills, with a little laugh, “found +this one in a book. It was a woman who said that of herself. A woman +far from common, who died some few years ago. She was an actress. A +great artist.” + +“A great! . . . Lucky person! She had that refuge, that garment, while I +stand here with nothing to protect me from evil fame; a naked temperament +for any wind to blow upon. Yes, greatness in art is a protection. I +wonder if there would have been anything in me if I had tried? But Henry +Allègre would never let me try. He told me that whatever I could achieve +would never be good enough for what I was. The perfection of flattery! +Was it that he thought I had not talent of any sort? It’s possible. He +would know. I’ve had the idea since that he was jealous. He wasn’t +jealous of mankind any more than he was afraid of thieves for his +collection; but he may have been jealous of what he could see in me, of +some passion that could be aroused. But if so he never repented. I +shall never forget his last words. He saw me standing beside his bed, +defenceless, symbolic and forlorn, and all he found to say was, ‘Well, I +am like that.’” + +I forgot myself in watching her. I had never seen anybody speak with +less play of facial muscles. In the fullness of its life her face +preserved a sort of immobility. The words seemed to form themselves, +fiery or pathetic, in the air, outside her lips. Their design was hardly +disturbed; a design of sweetness, gravity, and force as if born from the +inspiration of some artist; for I had never seen anything to come up to +it in nature before or since. + +All this was part of the enchantment she cast over me; and I seemed to +notice that Mills had the aspect of a man under a spell. If he too was a +captive then I had no reason to feel ashamed of my surrender. + +“And you know,” she began again abruptly, “that I have been accustomed to +all the forms of respect.” + +“That’s true,” murmured Mills, as if involuntarily. + +“Well, yes,” she reaffirmed. “My instinct may have told me that my only +protection was obscurity, but I didn’t know how and where to find it. +Oh, yes, I had that instinct . . . But there were other instincts and +. . . How am I to tell you? I didn’t know how to be on guard against myself, +either. Not a soul to speak to, or to get a warning from. Some woman +soul that would have known, in which perhaps I could have seen my own +reflection. I assure you the only woman that ever addressed me directly, +and that was in writing, was . . . ” + +She glanced aside, saw Mr. Blunt returning from the hall and added +rapidly in a lowered voice, + +“His mother.” + +The bright, mechanical smile of Mr. Blunt gleamed at us right down the +room, but he didn’t, as it were, follow it in his body. He swerved to +the nearest of the two big fireplaces and finding some cigarettes on the +mantelpiece remained leaning on his elbow in the warmth of the bright +wood fire. I noticed then a bit of mute play. The heiress of Henry +Allègre, who could secure neither obscurity nor any other alleviation to +that invidious position, looked as if she would speak to Blunt from a +distance; but in a moment the confident eagerness of her face died out as +if killed by a sudden thought. I didn’t know then her shrinking from all +falsehood and evasion; her dread of insincerity and disloyalty of every +kind. But even then I felt that at the very last moment her being had +recoiled before some shadow of a suspicion. And it occurred to me, too, +to wonder what sort of business Mr. Blunt could have had to transact with +our odious visitor, of a nature so urgent as to make him run out after +him into the hall? Unless to beat him a little with one of the sticks +that were to be found there? White hair so much like an expensive wig +could not be considered a serious protection. But it couldn’t have been +that. The transaction, whatever it was, had been much too quiet. I must +say that none of us had looked out of the window and that I didn’t know +when the man did go or if he was gone at all. As a matter of fact he was +already far away; and I may just as well say here that I never saw him +again in my life. His passage across my field of vision was like that of +other figures of that time: not to be forgotten, a little fantastic, +infinitely enlightening for my contempt, darkening for my memory which +struggles still with the clear lights and the ugly shadows of those +unforgotten days. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +It was past four o’clock before I left the house, together with Mills. +Mr. Blunt, still in his riding costume, escorted us to the very door. He +asked us to send him the first fiacre we met on our way to town. “It’s +impossible to walk in this get-up through the streets,” he remarked, with +his brilliant smile. + +At this point I propose to transcribe some notes I made at the time in +little black books which I have hunted up in the litter of the past; very +cheap, common little note-books that by the lapse of years have acquired +a touching dimness of aspect, the frayed, worn-out dignity of documents. + +Expression on paper has never been my forte. My life had been a thing of +outward manifestations. I never had been secret or even systematically +taciturn about my simple occupations which might have been foolish but +had never required either caution or mystery. But in those four hours +since midday a complete change had come over me. For good or evil I left +that house committed to an enterprise that could not be talked about; +which would have appeared to many senseless and perhaps ridiculous, but +was certainly full of risks, and, apart from that, commanded discretion +on the ground of simple loyalty. It would not only close my lips but it +would to a certain extent cut me off from my usual haunts and from the +society of my friends; especially of the light-hearted, young, +harum-scarum kind. This was unavoidable. It was because I felt myself +thrown back upon my own thoughts and forbidden to seek relief amongst +other lives—it was perhaps only for that reason at first I started an +irregular, fragmentary record of my days. + +I made these notes not so much to preserve the memory (one cared not for +any to-morrow then) but to help me to keep a better hold of the +actuality. I scribbled them on shore and I scribbled them on the sea; +and in both cases they are concerned not only with the nature of the +facts but with the intensity of my sensations. It may be, too, that I +learned to love the sea for itself only at that time. Woman and the sea +revealed themselves to me together, as it were: two mistresses of life’s +values. The illimitable greatness of the one, the unfathomable seduction +of the other working their immemorial spells from generation to +generation fell upon my heart at last: a common fortune, an unforgettable +memory of the sea’s formless might and of the sovereign charm in that +woman’s form wherein there seemed to beat the pulse of divinity rather +than blood. + +I begin here with the notes written at the end of that very day. + +—Parted with Mills on the quay. We had walked side by side in absolute +silence. The fact is he is too old for me to talk to him freely. For +all his sympathy and seriousness I don’t know what note to strike and I +am not at all certain what he thinks of all this. As we shook hands at +parting, I asked him how much longer he expected to stay. And he +answered me that it depended on R. She was making arrangements for him +to cross the frontier. He wanted to see the very ground on which the +Principle of Legitimacy was actually asserting itself arms in hand. It +sounded to my positive mind the most fantastic thing in the world, this +elimination of personalities from what seemed but the merest political, +dynastic adventure. So it wasn’t Doña Rita, it wasn’t Blunt, it wasn’t +the Pretender with his big infectious laugh, it wasn’t all that lot of +politicians, archbishops, and generals, of monks, guerrilleros, and +smugglers by sea and land, of dubious agents and shady speculators and +undoubted swindlers, who were pushing their fortunes at the risk of their +precious skins. No. It was the Legitimist Principle asserting itself! +Well, I would accept the view but with one reservation. All the others +might have been merged into the idea, but I, the latest recruit, I would +not be merged in the Legitimist Principle. Mine was an act of +independent assertion. Never before had I felt so intensely aware of my +personality. But I said nothing of that to Mills. I only told him I +thought we had better not be seen very often together in the streets. He +agreed. Hearty handshake. Looked affectionately after his broad back. +It never occurred to him to turn his head. What was I in comparison with +the Principle of Legitimacy? + +Late that night I went in search of Dominic. That Mediterranean sailor +was just the man I wanted. He had a great experience of all unlawful +things that can be done on the seas and he brought to the practice of +them much wisdom and audacity. That I didn’t know where he lived was +nothing since I knew where he loved. The proprietor of a small, quiet +café on the quay, a certain Madame Léonore, a woman of thirty-five with +an open Roman face and intelligent black eyes, had captivated his heart +years ago. In that café with our heads close together over a marble +table, Dominic and I held an earnest and endless confabulation while +Madame Léonore, rustling a black silk skirt, with gold earrings, with her +raven hair elaborately dressed and something nonchalant in her movements, +would take occasion, in passing to and fro, to rest her hand for a moment +on Dominic’s shoulder. Later when the little café had emptied itself of +its habitual customers, mostly people connected with the work of ships +and cargoes, she came quietly to sit at our table and looking at me very +hard with her black, sparkling eyes asked Dominic familiarly what had +happened to his Signorino. It was her name for me. I was Dominic’s +Signorino. She knew me by no other; and our connection has always been +somewhat of a riddle to her. She said that I was somehow changed since +she saw me last. In her rich voice she urged Dominic only to look at my +eyes. I must have had some piece of luck come to me either in love or at +cards, she bantered. But Dominic answered half in scorn that I was not +of the sort that runs after that kind of luck. He stated generally that +there were some young gentlemen very clever in inventing new ways of +getting rid of their time and their money. However, if they needed a +sensible man to help them he had no objection himself to lend a hand. +Dominic’s general scorn for the beliefs, and activities, and abilities of +upper-class people covered the Principle of Legitimacy amply; but he +could not resist the opportunity to exercise his special faculties in a +field he knew of old. He had been a desperate smuggler in his younger +days. We settled the purchase of a fast sailing craft. Agreed that it +must be a balancelle and something altogether out of the common. He knew +of one suitable but she was in Corsica. Offered to start for Bastia by +mail-boat in the morning. All the time the handsome and mature Madame +Léonore sat by, smiling faintly, amused at her great man joining like +this in a frolic of boys. She said the last words of that evening: “You +men never grow up,” touching lightly the grey hair above his temple. + +A fortnight later. + +. . . In the afternoon to the Prado. Beautiful day. At the moment of +ringing at the door a strong emotion of an anxious kind. Why? Down the +length of the dining-room in the rotunda part full of afternoon light +Doña R., sitting cross-legged on the divan in the attitude of a very old +idol or a very young child and surrounded by many cushions, waves her +hand from afar pleasantly surprised, exclaiming: “What! Back already!” +I give her all the details and we talk for two hours across a large brass +bowl containing a little water placed between us, lighting cigarettes and +dropping them, innumerable, puffed at, yet untasted in the overwhelming +interest of the conversation. Found her very quick in taking the points +and very intelligent in her suggestions. All formality soon vanished +between us and before very long I discovered myself sitting cross-legged, +too, while I held forth on the qualities of different Mediterranean +sailing craft and on the romantic qualifications of Dominic for the task. +I believe I gave her the whole history of the man, mentioning even the +existence of Madame Léonore, since the little café would have to be the +headquarters of the marine part of the plot. + +She murmured, “_Ah_! _Une belle Romaine_,” thoughtfully. She told me +that she liked to hear people of that sort spoken of in terms of our +common humanity. She observed also that she wished to see Dominic some +day; to set her eyes for once on a man who could be absolutely depended +on. She wanted to know whether he had engaged himself in this adventure +solely for my sake. + +I said that no doubt it was partly that. We had been very close +associates in the West Indies from where we had returned together, and he +had a notion that I could be depended on, too. But mainly, I suppose, it +was from taste. And there was in him also a fine carelessness as to what +he did and a love of venturesome enterprise. + +“And you,” she said. “Is it carelessness, too?” + +“In a measure,” I said. “Within limits.” + +“And very soon you will get tired.” + +“When I do I will tell you. But I may also get frightened. I suppose +you know there are risks, I mean apart from the risk of life.” + +“As for instance,” she said. + +“For instance, being captured, tried, and sentenced to what they call +‘the galleys,’ in Ceuta.” + +“And all this from that love for . . .” + +“Not for Legitimacy,” I interrupted the inquiry lightly. “But what’s the +use asking such questions? It’s like asking the veiled figure of fate. +It doesn’t know its own mind nor its own heart. It has no heart. But +what if I were to start asking you—who have a heart and are not veiled to +my sight?” She dropped her charming adolescent head, so firm in +modelling, so gentle in expression. Her uncovered neck was round like +the shaft of a column. She wore the same wrapper of thick blue silk. At +that time she seemed to live either in her riding habit or in that +wrapper folded tightly round her and open low to a point in front. +Because of the absence of all trimming round the neck and from the deep +view of her bare arms in the wide sleeve this garment seemed to be put +directly on her skin and gave one the impression of one’s nearness to her +body which would have been troubling but for the perfect unconsciousness +of her manner. That day she carried no barbarous arrow in her hair. It +was parted on one side, brushed back severely, and tied with a black +ribbon, without any bronze mist about her forehead or temple. This +smoothness added to the many varieties of her expression also that of +child-like innocence. + +Great progress in our intimacy brought about unconsciously by our +enthusiastic interest in the matter of our discourse and, in the moments +of silence, by the sympathetic current of our thoughts. And this rapidly +growing familiarity (truly, she had a terrible gift for it) had all the +varieties of earnestness: serious, excited, ardent, and even gay. She +laughed in contralto; but her laugh was never very long; and when it had +ceased, the silence of the room with the light dying in all its many +windows seemed to lie about me warmed by its vibration. + +As I was preparing to take my leave after a longish pause into which we +had fallen as into a vague dream, she came out of it with a start and a +quiet sigh. She said, “I had forgotten myself.” I took her hand and was +raising it naturally, without premeditation, when I felt suddenly the arm +to which it belonged become insensible, passive, like a stuffed limb, and +the whole woman go inanimate all over! Brusquely I dropped the hand +before it reached my lips; and it was so lifeless that it fell heavily on +to the divan. + +I remained standing before her. She raised to me not her eyes but her +whole face, inquisitively—perhaps in appeal. + +“No! This isn’t good enough for me,” I said. + +The last of the light gleamed in her long enigmatic eyes as if they were +precious enamel in that shadowy head which in its immobility suggested a +creation of a distant past: immortal art, not transient life. Her voice +had a profound quietness. She excused herself. + +“It’s only habit—or instinct—or what you like. I have had to practise +that in self-defence lest I should be tempted sometimes to cut the arm +off.” + +I remembered the way she had abandoned this very arm and hand to the +white-haired ruffian. It rendered me gloomy and idiotically obstinate. + +“Very ingenious. But this sort of thing is of no use to me,” I declared. + +“Make it up,” suggested her mysterious voice, while her shadowy figure +remained unmoved, indifferent amongst the cushions. + +I didn’t stir either. I refused in the same low tone. + +“No. Not before you give it to me yourself some day.” + +“Yes—some day,” she repeated in a breath in which there was no irony but +rather hesitation, reluctance what did I know? + +I walked away from the house in a curious state of gloomy satisfaction +with myself. + + * * * * * + +And this is the last extract. A month afterwards. + +—This afternoon going up to the Villa I was for the first time +accompanied in my way by some misgivings. To-morrow I sail. + +First trip and therefore in the nature of a trial trip; and I can’t +overcome a certain gnawing emotion, for it is a trip that _mustn’t_ fail. +In that sort of enterprise there is no room for mistakes. Of all the +individuals engaged in it will every one be intelligent enough, faithful +enough, bold enough? Looking upon them as a whole it seems impossible; +but as each has got only a limited part to play they may be found +sufficient each for his particular trust. And will they be all punctual, +I wonder? An enterprise that hangs on the punctuality of many people, no +matter how well disposed and even heroic, hangs on a thread. This I have +perceived to be also the greatest of Dominic’s concerns. He, too, +wonders. And when he breathes his doubts the smile lurking under the +dark curl of his moustaches is not reassuring. + +But there is also something exciting in such speculations and the road to +the Villa seemed to me shorter than ever before. + +Let in by the silent, ever-active, dark lady’s maid, who is always on the +spot and always on the way somewhere else, opening the door with one +hand, while she passes on, turning on one for a moment her quick, black +eyes, which just miss being lustrous, as if some one had breathed on them +lightly. + +On entering the long room I perceive Mills established in an armchair +which he had dragged in front of the divan. I do the same to another and +there we sit side by side facing R., tenderly amiable yet somehow distant +among her cushions, with an immemorial seriousness in her long, shaded +eyes and her fugitive smile hovering about but never settling on her +lips. Mills, who is just back from over the frontier, must have been +asking R. whether she had been worried again by her devoted friend with +the white hair. At least I concluded so because I found them talking of +the heart-broken Azzolati. And after having answered their greetings I +sit and listen to Rita addressing Mills earnestly. + +“No, I assure you Azzolati had done nothing to me. I knew him. He was a +frequent visitor at the Pavilion, though I, personally, never talked with +him very much in Henry Allègre’s lifetime. Other men were more +interesting, and he himself was rather reserved in his manner to me. He +was an international politician and financier—a nobody. He, like many +others, was admitted only to feed and amuse Henry Allègre’s scorn of the +world, which was insatiable—I tell you.” + +“Yes,” said Mills. “I can imagine.” + +“But I know. Often when we were alone Henry Allègre used to pour it into +my ears. If ever anybody saw mankind stripped of its clothes as the +child sees the king in the German fairy tale, it’s I! Into my ears! A +child’s! Too young to die of fright. Certainly not old enough to +understand—or even to believe. But then his arm was about me. I used to +laugh, sometimes. Laugh! At this destruction—at these ruins!” + +“Yes,” said Mills, very steady before her fire. “But you have at your +service the everlasting charm of life; you are a part of the +indestructible.” + +“Am I? . . . But there is no arm about me now. The laugh! Where is my +laugh? Give me back my laugh. . . .” + +And she laughed a little on a low note. I don’t know about Mills, but +the subdued shadowy vibration of it echoed in my breast which felt empty +for a moment and like a large space that makes one giddy. + +“The laugh is gone out of my heart, which at any rate used to feel +protected. That feeling’s gone, too. And I myself will have to die some +day.” + +“Certainly,” said Mills in an unaltered voice. “As to this body you . . +.” + +“Oh, yes! Thanks. It’s a very poor jest. Change from body to body as +travellers used to change horses at post houses. I’ve heard of this +before. . . .” + +“I’ve no doubt you have,” Mills put on a submissive air. “But are we to +hear any more about Azzolati?” + +“You shall. Listen. I had heard that he was invited to shoot at +Rambouillet—a quiet party, not one of these great shoots. I hear a lot +of things. I wanted to have a certain information, also certain hints +conveyed to a diplomatic personage who was to be there, too. A personage +that would never let me get in touch with him though I had tried many +times.” + +“Incredible!” mocked Mills solemnly. + +“The personage mistrusts his own susceptibility. Born cautious,” +explained Doña Rita crisply with the slightest possible quiver of her +lips. “Suddenly I had the inspiration to make use of Azzolati, who had +been reminding me by a constant stream of messages that he was an old +friend. I never took any notice of those pathetic appeals before. But +in this emergency I sat down and wrote a note asking him to come and dine +with me in my hotel. I suppose you know I don’t live in the Pavilion. I +can’t bear the Pavilion now. When I have to go there I begin to feel +after an hour or so that it is haunted. I seem to catch sight of +somebody I know behind columns, passing through doorways, vanishing here +and there. I hear light footsteps behind closed doors. . . My own!” + +Her eyes, her half-parted lips, remained fixed till Mills suggested +softly, “Yes, but Azzolati.” + +Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine. “Oh! +Azzolati. It was a most solemn affair. It had occurred to me to make a +very elaborate toilet. It was most successful. Azzolati looked +positively scared for a moment as though he had got into the wrong suite +of rooms. He had never before seen me _en toilette_, you understand. In +the old days once out of my riding habit I would never dress. I draped +myself, you remember, Monsieur Mills. To go about like that suited my +indolence, my longing to feel free in my body, as at that time when I +used to herd goats. . . But never mind. My aim was to impress Azzolati. +I wanted to talk to him seriously.” + +There was something whimsical in the quick beat of her eyelids and in the +subtle quiver of her lips. “And behold! the same notion had occurred to +Azzolati. Imagine that for this tête-à-tête dinner the creature had got +himself up as if for a reception at court. He displayed a brochette of +all sorts of decorations on the lapel of his _frac_ and had a broad +ribbon of some order across his shirt front. An orange ribbon. +Bavarian, I should say. Great Roman Catholic, Azzolati. It was always +his ambition to be the banker of all the Bourbons in the world. The last +remnants of his hair were dyed jet black and the ends of his moustache +were like knitting needles. He was disposed to be as soft as wax in my +hands. Unfortunately I had had some irritating interviews during the +day. I was keeping down sudden impulses to smash a glass, throw a plate +on the floor, do something violent to relieve my feelings. His +submissive attitude made me still more nervous. He was ready to do +anything in the world for me providing that I would promise him that he +would never find my door shut against him as long as he lived. You +understand the impudence of it, don’t you? And his tone was positively +abject, too. I snapped back at him that I had no door, that I was a +nomad. He bowed ironically till his nose nearly touched his plate but +begged me to remember that to his personal knowledge I had four houses of +my own about the world. And you know this made me feel a homeless +outcast more than ever—like a little dog lost in the street—not knowing +where to go. I was ready to cry and there the creature sat in front of +me with an imbecile smile as much as to say ‘here is a poser for you. +. . .’ I gnashed my teeth at him. Quietly, you know . . . I suppose you two +think that I am stupid.” + +She paused as if expecting an answer but we made no sound and she +continued with a remark. + +“I have days like that. Often one must listen to false protestations, +empty words, strings of lies all day long, so that in the evening one is +not fit for anything, not even for truth if it comes in one’s way. That +idiot treated me to a piece of brazen sincerity which I couldn’t stand. +First of all he began to take me into his confidence; he boasted of his +great affairs, then started groaning about his overstrained life which +left him no time for the amenities of existence, for beauty, or +sentiment, or any sort of ease of heart. His heart! He wanted me to +sympathize with his sorrows. Of course I ought to have listened. One +must pay for service. Only I was nervous and tired. He bored me. I +told him at last that I was surprised that a man of such immense wealth +should still keep on going like this reaching for more and more. I +suppose he must have been sipping a good deal of wine while we talked and +all at once he let out an atrocity which was too much for me. He had +been moaning and sentimentalizing but then suddenly he showed me his +fangs. ‘No,’ he cries, ‘you can’t imagine what a satisfaction it is to +feel all that penniless, beggarly lot of the dear, honest, meritorious +poor wriggling and slobbering under one’s boots.’ You may tell me that +he is a contemptible animal anyhow, but you should have heard the tone! +I felt my bare arms go cold like ice. A moment before I had been hot and +faint with sheer boredom. I jumped up from the table, rang for Rose, and +told her to bring me my fur cloak. He remained in his chair leering at +me curiously. When I had the fur on my shoulders and the girl had gone +out of the room I gave him the surprise of his life. ‘Take yourself off +instantly,’ I said. ‘Go trample on the poor if you like but never dare +speak to me again.’ At this he leaned his head on his arm and sat so +long at the table shading his eyes with his hand that I had to ask, +calmly—you know—whether he wanted me to have him turned out into the +corridor. He fetched an enormous sigh. ‘I have only tried to be honest +with you, Rita.’ But by the time he got to the door he had regained some +of his impudence. ‘You know how to trample on a poor fellow, too,’ he +said. ‘But I don’t mind being made to wriggle under your pretty shoes, +Rita. I forgive you. I thought you were free from all vulgar +sentimentalism and that you had a more independent mind. I was mistaken +in you, that’s all.’ With that he pretends to dash a tear from his +eye-crocodile!—-and goes out, leaving me in my fur by the blazing fire, my +teeth going like castanets. . . Did you ever hear of anything so stupid +as this affair?” she concluded in a tone of extreme candour and a +profound unreadable stare that went far beyond us both. And the +stillness of her lips was so perfect directly she ceased speaking that I +wondered whether all this had come through them or only had formed itself +in my mind. + +Presently she continued as if speaking for herself only. + +“It’s like taking the lids off boxes and seeing ugly toads staring at +you. In every one. Every one. That’s what it is having to do with men +more than mere—Good-morning—Good evening. And if you try to avoid +meddling with their lids, some of them will take them off themselves. +And they don’t even know, they don’t even suspect what they are showing +you. Certain confidences—they don’t see it—are the bitterest kind of +insult. I suppose Azzolati imagines himself a noble beast of prey. Just +as some others imagine themselves to be most delicate, noble, and refined +gentlemen. And as likely as not they would trade on a woman’s +troubles—and in the end make nothing of that either. Idiots!” + +The utter absence of all anger in this spoken meditation gave it a +character of touching simplicity. And as if it had been truly only a +meditation we conducted ourselves as though we had not heard it. Mills +began to speak of his experiences during his visit to the army of the +Legitimist King. And I discovered in his speeches that this man of books +could be graphic and picturesque. His admiration for the devotion and +bravery of the army was combined with the greatest distaste for what he +had seen of the way its great qualities were misused. In the conduct of +this great enterprise he had seen a deplorable levity of outlook, a fatal +lack of decision, an absence of any reasoned plan. + +He shook his head. + +“I feel that you of all people, Doña Rita, ought to be told the truth. I +don’t know exactly what you have at stake.” + +She was rosy like some impassive statue in a desert in the flush of the +dawn. + +“Not my heart,” she said quietly. “You must believe that.” + +“I do. Perhaps it would have been better if you. . . ” + +“No, _Monsieur le Philosophe_. It would not have been better. Don’t +make that serious face at me,” she went on with tenderness in a playful +note, as if tenderness had been her inheritance of all time and +playfulness the very fibre of her being. “I suppose you think that a +woman who has acted as I did and has not staked her heart on it is . . . +How do you know to what the heart responds as it beats from day to day?” + +“I wouldn’t judge you. What am I before the knowledge you were born to? +You are as old as the world.” + +She accepted this with a smile. I who was innocently watching them was +amazed to discover how much a fleeting thing like that could hold of +seduction without the help of any other feature and with that unchanging +glance. + +“With me it is _pun d’onor_. To my first independent friend.” + +“You were soon parted,” ventured Mills, while I sat still under a sense +of oppression. + +“Don’t think for a moment that I have been scared off,” she said. “It is +they who were frightened. I suppose you heard a lot of Headquarters +gossip?” + +“Oh, yes,” Mills said meaningly. “The fair and the dark are succeeding +each other like leaves blown in the wind dancing in and out. I suppose +you have noticed that leaves blown in the wind have a look of happiness.” + +“Yes,” she said, “that sort of leaf is dead. Then why shouldn’t it look +happy? And so I suppose there is no uneasiness, no occasion for fears +amongst the ‘responsibles.’” + +“Upon the whole not. Now and then a leaf seems as if it would stick. +There is for instance Madame . . .” + +“Oh, I don’t want to know, I understand it all, I am as old as the +world.” + +“Yes,” said Mills thoughtfully, “you are not a leaf, you might have been +a tornado yourself.” + +“Upon my word,” she said, “there was a time that they thought I could +carry him off, away from them all—beyond them all. Verily, I am not very +proud of their fears. There was nothing reckless there worthy of a great +passion. There was nothing sad there worthy of a great tenderness.” + +“And is _this_ the word of the Venetian riddle?” asked Mills, fixing her +with his keen eyes. + +“If it pleases you to think so, Señor,” she said indifferently. The +movement of her eyes, their veiled gleam became mischievous when she +asked, “And Don Juan Blunt, have you seen him over there?” + +“I fancy he avoided me. Moreover, he is always with his regiment at the +outposts. He is a most valorous captain. I heard some people describe +him as foolhardy.” + +“Oh, he needn’t seek death,” she said in an indefinable tone. “I mean as +a refuge. There will be nothing in his life great enough for that.” + +“You are angry. You miss him, I believe, Doña Rita.” + +“Angry? No! Weary. But of course it’s very inconvenient. I can’t very +well ride out alone. A solitary amazon swallowing the dust and the salt +spray of the Corniche promenade would attract too much attention. And +then I don’t mind you two knowing that I am afraid of going out alone.” + +“Afraid?” we both exclaimed together. + +“You men are extraordinary. Why do you want me to be courageous? Why +shouldn’t I be afraid? Is it because there is no one in the world to +care what would happen to me?” + +There was a deep-down vibration in her tone for the first time. We had +not a word to say. And she added after a long silence: + +“There is a very good reason. There is a danger.” + +With wonderful insight Mills affirmed at once: + +“Something ugly.” + +She nodded slightly several times. Then Mills said with conviction: + +“Ah! Then it can’t be anything in yourself. And if so . . . ” + +I was moved to extravagant advice. + +“You should come out with me to sea then. There may be some danger there +but there’s nothing ugly to fear.” + +She gave me a startled glance quite unusual with her, more than wonderful +to me; and suddenly as though she had seen me for the first time she +exclaimed in a tone of compunction: + +“Oh! And there is this one, too! Why! Oh, why should he run his head +into danger for those things that will all crumble into dust before +long?” + +I said: “_You_ won’t crumble into dust.” And Mills chimed in: + +“That young enthusiast will always have his sea.” + +We were all standing up now. She kept her eyes on me, and repeated with +a sort of whimsical enviousness: + +“The sea! The violet sea—and he is longing to rejoin it! . . . At night! +Under the stars! . . . A lovers’ meeting,” she went on, thrilling me from +head to foot with those two words, accompanied by a wistful smile pointed +by a suspicion of mockery. She turned away. + +“And you, Monsieur Mills?” she asked. + +“I am going back to my books,” he declared with a very serious face. “My +adventure is over.” + +“Each one to his love,” she bantered us gently. “Didn’t I love books, +too, at one time! They seemed to contain all wisdom and hold a magic +power, too. Tell me, Monsieur Mills, have you found amongst them in some +black-letter volume the power of foretelling a poor mortal’s destiny, the +power to look into the future? Anybody’s future . . .” Mills shook his +head. . . “What, not even mine?” she coaxed as if she really believed in +a magic power to be found in books. + +Mills shook his head again. “No, I have not the power,” he said. “I am +no more a great magician, than you are a poor mortal. You have your +ancient spells. You are as old as the world. Of us two it’s you that +are more fit to foretell the future of the poor mortals on whom you +happen to cast your eyes.” + +At these words she cast her eyes down and in the moment of deep silence I +watched the slight rising and falling of her breast. Then Mills +pronounced distinctly: “Good-bye, old Enchantress.” + +They shook hands cordially. “Good-bye, poor Magician,” she said. + +Mills made as if to speak but seemed to think better of it. Doña Rita +returned my distant bow with a slight, charmingly ceremonious inclination +of her body. + +“_Bon voyage_ and a happy return,” she said formally. + +I was following Mills through the door when I heard her voice behind us +raised in recall: + +“Oh, a moment . . . I forgot . . .” + +I turned round. The call was for me, and I walked slowly back wondering +what she could have forgotten. She waited in the middle of the room with +lowered head, with a mute gleam in her deep blue eyes. When I was near +enough she extended to me without a word her bare white arm and suddenly +pressed the back of her hand against my lips. I was too startled to +seize it with rapture. It detached itself from my lips and fell slowly +by her side. We had made it up and there was nothing to say. She turned +away to the window and I hurried out of the room. + + + + +PART THREE + + +CHAPTER I + + +It was on our return from that first trip that I took Dominic up to the +Villa to be presented to Doña Rita. If she wanted to look on the +embodiment of fidelity, resource, and courage, she could behold it all in +that man. Apparently she was not disappointed. Neither was Dominic +disappointed. During the half-hour’s interview they got into touch with +each other in a wonderful way as if they had some common and secret +standpoint in life. Maybe it was their common lawlessness, and their +knowledge of things as old as the world. Her seduction, his +recklessness, were both simple, masterful and, in a sense, worthy of each +other. + +Dominic was, I won’t say awed by this interview. No woman could awe +Dominic. But he was, as it were, rendered thoughtful by it, like a man +who had not so much an experience as a sort of revelation vouchsafed to +him. Later, at sea, he used to refer to La Señora in a particular tone +and I knew that henceforth his devotion was not for me alone. And I +understood the inevitability of it extremely well. As to Doña Rita she, +after Dominic left the room, had turned to me with animation and said: +“But he is perfect, this man.” Afterwards she often asked after him and +used to refer to him in conversation. More than once she said to me: +“One would like to put the care of one’s personal safety into the hands +of that man. He looks as if he simply couldn’t fail one.” I admitted +that this was very true, especially at sea. Dominic couldn’t fail. But +at the same time I rather chaffed Rita on her preoccupation as to +personal safety that so often cropped up in her talk. + +“One would think you were a crowned head in a revolutionary world,” I +used to tell her. + +“That would be different. One would be standing then for something, +either worth or not worth dying for. One could even run away then and be +done with it. But I can’t run away unless I got out of my skin and left +that behind. Don’t you understand? You are very stupid . . .” But she +had the grace to add, “On purpose.” + +I don’t know about the on purpose. I am not certain about the stupidity. +Her words bewildered one often and bewilderment is a sort of stupidity. +I remedied it by simply disregarding the sense of what she said. The +sound was there and also her poignant heart-gripping presence giving +occupation enough to one’s faculties. In the power of those things over +one there was mystery enough. It was more absorbing than the mere +obscurity of her speeches. But I daresay she couldn’t understand that. + +Hence, at times, the amusing outbreaks of temper in word and gesture that +only strengthened the natural, the invincible force of the spell. +Sometimes the brass bowl would get upset or the cigarette box would fly +up, dropping a shower of cigarettes on the floor. We would pick them up, +re-establish everything, and fall into a long silence, so close that the +sound of the first word would come with all the pain of a separation. + +It was at that time, too, that she suggested I should take up my quarters +in her house in the street of the Consuls. There were certain advantages +in that move. In my present abode my sudden absences might have been in +the long run subject to comment. On the other hand, the house in the +street of Consuls was a known out-post of Legitimacy. But then it was +covered by the occult influence of her who was referred to in +confidential talks, secret communications, and discreet whispers of +Royalist salons as: “Madame de Lastaola.” + +That was the name which the heiress of Henry Allègre had decided to adopt +when, according to her own expression, she had found herself precipitated +at a moment’s notice into the crowd of mankind. It is strange how the +death of Henry Allègre, which certainly the poor man had not planned, +acquired in my view the character of a heartless desertion. It gave one +a glimpse of amazing egoism in a sentiment to which one could hardly give +a name, a mysterious appropriation of one human being by another as if in +defiance of unexpressed things and for an unheard-of satisfaction of an +inconceivable pride. If he had hated her he could not have flung that +enormous fortune more brutally at her head. And his unrepentant death +seemed to lift for a moment the curtain on something lofty and sinister +like an Olympian’s caprice. + +Doña Rita said to me once with humorous resignation: “You know, it +appears that one must have a name. That’s what Henry Allègre’s man of +business told me. He was quite impatient with me about it. But my name, +_amigo_, Henry Allègre had taken from me like all the rest of what I had +been once. All that is buried with him in his grave. It wouldn’t have +been true. That is how I felt about it. So I took that one.” She +whispered to herself: “Lastaola,” not as if to test the sound but as if +in a dream. + +To this day I am not quite certain whether it was the name of any human +habitation, a lonely _caserio_ with a half-effaced carving of a coat of +arms over its door, or of some hamlet at the dead end of a ravine with a +stony slope at the back. It might have been a hill for all I know or +perhaps a stream. A wood, or perhaps a combination of all these: just a +bit of the earth’s surface. Once I asked her where exactly it was +situated and she answered, waving her hand cavalierly at the dead wall of +the room: “Oh, over there.” I thought that this was all that I was going +to hear but she added moodily, “I used to take my goats there, a dozen or +so of them, for the day. From after my uncle had said his Mass till the +ringing of the evening bell.” + +I saw suddenly the lonely spot, sketched for me some time ago by a few +words from Mr. Blunt, populated by the agile, bearded beasts with cynical +heads, and a little misty figure dark in the sunlight with a halo of +dishevelled rust-coloured hair about its head. + +The epithet of rust-coloured comes from her. It was really tawny. Once +or twice in my hearing she had referred to “my rust-coloured hair” with +laughing vexation. Even then it was unruly, abhorring the restraints of +civilization, and often in the heat of a dispute getting into the eyes of +Madame de Lastaola, the possessor of coveted art treasures, the heiress +of Henry Allègre. She proceeded in a reminiscent mood, with a faint +flash of gaiety all over her face, except her dark blue eyes that moved +so seldom out of their fixed scrutiny of things invisible to other human +beings. + +“The goats were very good. We clambered amongst the stones together. +They beat me at that game. I used to catch my hair in the bushes.” + +“Your rust-coloured hair,” I whispered. + +“Yes, it was always this colour. And I used to leave bits of my frock on +thorns here and there. It was pretty thin, I can tell you. There wasn’t +much at that time between my skin and the blue of the sky. My legs were +as sunburnt as my face; but really I didn’t tan very much. I had plenty +of freckles though. There were no looking-glasses in the Presbytery but +uncle had a piece not bigger than my two hands for his shaving. One +Sunday I crept into his room and had a peep at myself. And wasn’t I +startled to see my own eyes looking at me! But it was fascinating, too. +I was about eleven years old then, and I was very friendly with the +goats, and I was as shrill as a cicada and as slender as a match. +Heavens! When I overhear myself speaking sometimes, or look at my limbs, +it doesn’t seem to be possible. And yet it is the same one. I do +remember every single goat. They were very clever. Goats are no trouble +really; they don’t scatter much. Mine never did even if I had to hide +myself out of their sight for ever so long.” + +It was but natural to ask her why she wanted to hide, and she uttered +vaguely what was rather a comment on my question: + +“It was like fate.” But I chose to take it otherwise, teasingly, because +we were often like a pair of children. + +“Oh, really,” I said, “you talk like a pagan. What could you know of +fate at that time? What was it like? Did it come down from Heaven?” + +“Don’t be stupid. It used to come along a cart-track that was there and +it looked like a boy. Wasn’t he a little devil though. You understand, +I couldn’t know that. He was a wealthy cousin of mine. Round there we +are all related, all cousins—as in Brittany. He wasn’t much bigger than +myself but he was older, just a boy in blue breeches and with good shoes +on his feet, which of course interested and impressed me. He yelled to +me from below, I screamed to him from above, he came up and sat down near +me on a stone, never said a word, let me look at him for half an hour +before he condescended to ask me who I was. And the airs he gave +himself! He quite intimidated me sitting there perfectly dumb. I +remember trying to hide my bare feet under the edge of my skirt as I sat +below him on the ground. + +“_C’est comique_, _eh_!” she interrupted herself to comment in a +melancholy tone. I looked at her sympathetically and she went on: + +“He was the only son from a rich farmhouse two miles down the slope. In +winter they used to send him to school at Tolosa. He had an enormous +opinion of himself; he was going to keep a shop in a town by and by and +he was about the most dissatisfied creature I have ever seen. He had an +unhappy mouth and unhappy eyes and he was always wretched about +something: about the treatment he received, about being kept in the +country and chained to work. He was moaning and complaining and +threatening all the world, including his father and mother. He used to +curse God, yes, that boy, sitting there on a piece of rock like a +wretched little Prometheus with a sparrow pecking at his miserable little +liver. And the grand scenery of mountains all round, ha, ha, ha!” + +She laughed in contralto: a penetrating sound with something generous in +it; not infectious, but in others provoking a smile. + +“Of course I, poor little animal, I didn’t know what to make of it, and I +was even a little frightened. But at first because of his miserable eyes +I was sorry for him, almost as much as if he had been a sick goat. But, +frightened or sorry, I don’t know how it is, I always wanted to laugh at +him, too, I mean from the very first day when he let me admire him for +half an hour. Yes, even then I had to put my hand over my mouth more +than once for the sake of good manners, you understand. And yet, you +know, I was never a laughing child. + +“One day he came up and sat down very dignified a little bit away from me +and told me he had been thrashed for wandering in the hills. + +“‘To be with me?’ I asked. And he said: ‘To be with you! No. My people +don’t know what I do.’ I can’t tell why, but I was annoyed. So instead +of raising a clamour of pity over him, which I suppose he expected me to +do, I asked him if the thrashing hurt very much. He got up, he had a +switch in his hand, and walked up to me, saying, ‘I will soon show you.’ +I went stiff with fright; but instead of slashing at me he dropped down +by my side and kissed me on the cheek. Then he did it again, and by that +time I was gone dead all over and he could have done what he liked with +the corpse but he left off suddenly and then I came to life again and I +bolted away. Not very far. I couldn’t leave the goats altogether. He +chased me round and about the rocks, but of course I was too quick for +him in his nice town boots. When he got tired of that game he started +throwing stones. After that he made my life very lively for me. +Sometimes he used to come on me unawares and then I had to sit still and +listen to his miserable ravings, because he would catch me round the +waist and hold me very tight. And yet, I often felt inclined to laugh. +But if I caught sight of him at a distance and tried to dodge out of the +way he would start stoning me into a shelter I knew of and then sit +outside with a heap of stones at hand so that I daren’t show the end of +my nose for hours. He would sit there and rave and abuse me till I would +burst into a crazy laugh in my hole; and then I could see him through the +leaves rolling on the ground and biting his fists with rage. Didn’t he +hate me! At the same time I was often terrified. I am convinced now +that if I had started crying he would have rushed in and perhaps +strangled me there. Then as the sun was about to set he would make me +swear that I would marry him when I was grown up. ‘Swear, you little +wretched beggar,’ he would yell to me. And I would swear. I was hungry, +and I didn’t want to be made black and blue all over with stones. Oh, I +swore ever so many times to be his wife. Thirty times a month for two +months. I couldn’t help myself. It was no use complaining to my sister +Therese. When I showed her my bruises and tried to tell her a little +about my trouble she was quite scandalized. She called me a sinful girl, +a shameless creature. I assure you it puzzled my head so that, between +Therese my sister and José the boy, I lived in a state of idiocy almost. +But luckily at the end of the two months they sent him away from home for +good. Curious story to happen to a goatherd living all her days out +under God’s eye, as my uncle the Cura might have said. My sister Therese +was keeping house in the Presbytery. She’s a terrible person.” + +“I have heard of your sister Therese,” I said. + +“Oh, you have! Of my big sister Therese, six, ten years older than +myself perhaps? She just comes a little above my shoulder, but then I +was always a long thing. I never knew my mother. I don’t even know how +she looked. There are no paintings or photographs in our farmhouses +amongst the hills. I haven’t even heard her described to me. I believe +I was never good enough to be told these things. Therese decided that I +was a lump of wickedness, and now she believes that I will lose my soul +altogether unless I take some steps to save it. Well, I have no +particular taste that way. I suppose it is annoying to have a sister +going fast to eternal perdition, but there are compensations. The +funniest thing is that it’s Therese, I believe, who managed to keep me +out of the Presbytery when I went out of my way to look in on them on my +return from my visit to the _Quartel Real_ last year. I couldn’t have +stayed much more than half an hour with them anyway, but still I would +have liked to get over the old doorstep. I am certain that Therese +persuaded my uncle to go out and meet me at the bottom of the hill. I +saw the old man a long way off and I understood how it was. I dismounted +at once and met him on foot. We had half an hour together walking up and +down the road. He is a peasant priest, he didn’t know how to treat me. +And of course I was uncomfortable, too. There wasn’t a single goat about +to keep me in countenance. I ought to have embraced him. I was always +fond of the stern, simple old man. But he drew himself up when I +approached him and actually took off his hat to me. So simple as that! +I bowed my head and asked for his blessing. And he said ‘I would never +refuse a blessing to a good Legitimist.’ So stern as that! And when I +think that I was perhaps the only girl of the family or in the whole +world that he ever in his priest’s life patted on the head! When I think +of that I . . . I believe at that moment I was as wretched as he was +himself. I handed him an envelope with a big red seal which quite +startled him. I had asked the Marquis de Villarel to give me a few words +for him, because my uncle has a great influence in his district; and the +Marquis penned with his own hand some compliments and an inquiry about +the spirit of the population. My uncle read the letter, looked up at me +with an air of mournful awe, and begged me to tell his excellency that +the people were all for God, their lawful King and their old privileges. +I said to him then, after he had asked me about the health of His Majesty +in an awfully gloomy tone—I said then: ‘There is only one thing that +remains for me to do, uncle, and that is to give you two pounds of the +very best snuff I have brought here for you.’ What else could I have got +for the poor old man? I had no trunks with me. I had to leave behind a +spare pair of shoes in the hotel to make room in my little bag for that +snuff. And fancy! That old priest absolutely pushed the parcel away. I +could have thrown it at his head; but I thought suddenly of that hard, +prayerful life, knowing nothing of any ease or pleasure in the world, +absolutely nothing but a pinch of snuff now and then. I remembered how +wretched he used to be when he lacked a copper or two to get some snuff +with. My face was hot with indignation, but before I could fly out at +him I remembered how simple he was. So I said with great dignity that as +the present came from the King and as he wouldn’t receive it from my hand +there was nothing else for me to do but to throw it into the brook; and I +made as if I were going to do it, too. He shouted: ‘Stay, unhappy girl! +Is it really from His Majesty, whom God preserve?’ I said +contemptuously, ‘Of course.’ He looked at me with great pity in his +eyes, sighed deeply, and took the little tin from my hand. I suppose he +imagined me in my abandoned way wheedling the necessary cash out of the +King for the purchase of that snuff. You can’t imagine how simple he is. +Nothing was easier than to deceive him; but don’t imagine I deceived him +from the vainglory of a mere sinner. I lied to the dear man, simply +because I couldn’t bear the idea of him being deprived of the only +gratification his big, ascetic, gaunt body ever knew on earth. As I +mounted my mule to go away he murmured coldly: ‘God guard you, Señora!’ +Señora! What sternness! We were off a little way already when his heart +softened and he shouted after me in a terrible voice: ‘The road to Heaven +is repentance!’ And then, after a silence, again the great shout +‘Repentance!’ thundered after me. Was that sternness or simplicity, I +wonder? Or a mere unmeaning superstition, a mechanical thing? If there +lives anybody completely honest in this world, surely it must be my +uncle. And yet—who knows? + +“Would you guess what was the next thing I did? Directly I got over the +frontier I wrote from Bayonne asking the old man to send me out my sister +here. I said it was for the service of the King. You see, I had thought +suddenly of that house of mine in which you once spent the night talking +with Mr. Mills and Don Juan Blunt. I thought it would do extremely well +for Carlist officers coming this way on leave or on a mission. In hotels +they might have been molested, but I knew that I could get protection for +my house. Just a word from the ministry in Paris to the Prefect. But I +wanted a woman to manage it for me. And where was I to find a +trustworthy woman? How was I to know one when I saw her? I don’t know +how to talk to women. Of course my Rose would have done for me that or +anything else; but what could I have done myself without her? She has +looked after me from the first. It was Henry Allègre who got her for me +eight years ago. I don’t know whether he meant it for a kindness but +she’s the only human being on whom I can lean. She knows . . . What +doesn’t she know about me! She has never failed to do the right thing +for me unasked. I couldn’t part with her. And I couldn’t think of +anybody else but my sister. + +“After all it was somebody belonging to me. But it seemed the wildest +idea. Yet she came at once. Of course I took care to send her some +money. She likes money. As to my uncle there is nothing that he +wouldn’t have given up for the service of the King. Rose went to meet +her at the railway station. She told me afterwards that there had been +no need for me to be anxious about her recognizing Mademoiselle Therese. +There was nobody else in the train that could be mistaken for her. I +should think not! She had made for herself a dress of some brown stuff +like a nun’s habit and had a crooked stick and carried all her belongings +tied up in a handkerchief. She looked like a pilgrim to a saint’s +shrine. Rose took her to the house. She asked when she saw it: ‘And +does this big place really belong to our Rita?’ My maid of course said +that it was mine. ‘And how long did our Rita live here?’—‘Madame has +never seen it unless perhaps the outside, as far as I know. I believe +Mr. Allègre lived here for some time when he was a young man.’—‘The +sinner that’s dead?’—‘Just so,’ says Rose. You know nothing ever +startles Rose. ‘Well, his sins are gone with him,’ said my sister, and +began to make herself at home. + +“Rose was going to stop with her for a week but on the third day she was +back with me with the remark that Mlle. Therese knew her way about very +well already and preferred to be left to herself. Some little time +afterwards I went to see that sister of mine. The first thing she said +to me, ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you, Rita,’ and I said, ‘What a funny +dress you have, Therese, more fit for the portress of a convent than for +this house.’—‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and unless you give this house to me, +Rita, I will go back to our country. I will have nothing to do with your +life, Rita. Your life is no secret for me.’ + +“I was going from room to room and Therese was following me. ‘I don’t +know that my life is a secret to anybody,’ I said to her, ‘but how do you +know anything about it?’ And then she told me that it was through a +cousin of ours, that horrid wretch of a boy, you know. He had finished +his schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish commercial house of some kind, +in Paris, and apparently had made it his business to write home whatever +he could hear about me or ferret out from those relations of mine with +whom I lived as a girl. I got suddenly very furious. I raged up and +down the room (we were alone upstairs), and Therese scuttled away from me +as far as the door. I heard her say to herself, ‘It’s the evil spirit in +her that makes her like this.’ She was absolutely convinced of that. +She made the sign of the cross in the air to protect herself. I was +quite astounded. And then I really couldn’t help myself. I burst into a +laugh. I laughed and laughed; I really couldn’t stop till Therese ran +away. I went downstairs still laughing and found her in the hall with +her face to the wall and her fingers in her ears kneeling in a corner. I +had to pull her out by the shoulders from there. I don’t think she was +frightened; she was only shocked. But I don’t suppose her heart is +desperately bad, because when I dropped into a chair feeling very tired +she came and knelt in front of me and put her arms round my waist and +entreated me to cast off from me my evil ways with the help of saints and +priests. Quite a little programme for a reformed sinner. I got away at +last. I left her sunk on her heels before the empty chair looking after +me. ‘I pray for you every night and morning, Rita,’ she said.—‘Oh, yes. +I know you are a good sister,’ I said to her. I was letting myself out +when she called after me, ‘And what about this house, Rita?’ I said to +her, ‘Oh, you may keep it till the day I reform and enter a convent.’ +The last I saw of her she was still on her knees looking after me with +her mouth open. I have seen her since several times, but our intercourse +is, at any rate on her side, as of a frozen nun with some great lady. +But I believe she really knows how to make men comfortable. Upon my word +I think she likes to look after men. They don’t seem to be such great +sinners as women are. I think you could do worse than take up your +quarters at number 10. She will no doubt develop a saintly sort of +affection for you, too.” + +I don’t know that the prospect of becoming a favourite of Doña Rita’s +peasant sister was very fascinating to me. If I went to live very +willingly at No. 10 it was because everything connected with Doña Rita +had for me a peculiar fascination. She had only passed through the house +once as far as I knew; but it was enough. She was one of those beings +that leave a trace. I am not unreasonable—I mean for those that knew +her. That is, I suppose, because she was so unforgettable. Let us +remember the tragedy of Azzolati the ruthless, the ridiculous financier +with a criminal soul (or shall we say heart) and facile tears. No +wonder, then, that for me, who may flatter myself without undue vanity +with being much finer than that grotesque international intriguer, the +mere knowledge that Doña Rita had passed through the very rooms in which +I was going to live between the strenuous times of the sea-expeditions, +was enough to fill my inner being with a great content. Her glance, her +darkly brilliant blue glance, had run over the walls of that room which +most likely would be mine to slumber in. Behind me, somewhere near the +door, Therese, the peasant sister, said in a funnily compassionate tone +and in an amazingly landlady-of-a-boarding-house spirit of false +persuasiveness: + +“You will be very comfortable here, Señor. It is so peaceful here in the +street. Sometimes one may think oneself in a village. It’s only a +hundred and twenty-five francs for the friends of the King. And I shall +take such good care of you that your very heart will be able to rest.” + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Doña Rita was curious to know how I got on with her peasant sister and +all I could say in return for that inquiry was that the peasant sister +was in her own way amiable. At this she clicked her tongue amusingly and +repeated a remark she had made before: “She likes young men. The younger +the better.” The mere thought of those two women being sisters aroused +one’s wonder. Physically they were altogether of different design. It +was also the difference between living tissue of glowing loveliness with +a divine breath, and a hard hollow figure of baked clay. + +Indeed Therese did somehow resemble an achievement, wonderful enough in +its way, in unglazed earthenware. The only gleam perhaps that one could +find on her was that of her teeth, which one used to get between her dull +lips unexpectedly, startlingly, and a little inexplicably, because it was +never associated with a smile. She smiled with compressed mouth. It was +indeed difficult to conceive of those two birds coming from the same +nest. And yet . . . Contrary to what generally happens, it was when one +saw those two women together that one lost all belief in the possibility +of their relationship near or far. It extended even to their common +humanity. One, as it were, doubted it. If one of the two was +representative, then the other was either something more or less than +human. One wondered whether these two women belonged to the same scheme +of creation. One was secretly amazed to see them standing together, +speaking to each other, having words in common, understanding each other. +And yet! . . . Our psychological sense is the crudest of all; we don’t +know, we don’t perceive how superficial we are. The simplest shades +escape us, the secret of changes, of relations. No, upon the whole, the +only feature (and yet with enormous differences) which Therese had in +common with her sister, as I told Doña Rita, was amiability. + +“For, you know, you are a most amiable person yourself,” I went on. +“It’s one of your characteristics, of course much more precious than in +other people. You transmute the commonest traits into gold of your own; +but after all there are no new names. You are amiable. You were most +amiable to me when I first saw you.” + +“Really. I was not aware. Not specially . . . ” + +“I had never the presumption to think that it was special. Moreover, my +head was in a whirl. I was lost in astonishment first of all at what I +had been listening to all night. Your history, you know, a wonderful +tale with a flavour of wine in it and wreathed in clouds, with that +amazing decapitated, mutilated dummy of a woman lurking in a corner, and +with Blunt’s smile gleaming through a fog, the fog in my eyes, from +Mills’ pipe, you know. I was feeling quite inanimate as to body and +frightfully stimulated as to mind all the time. I had never heard +anything like that talk about you before. Of course I wasn’t sleepy, but +still I am not used to do altogether without sleep like Blunt . . .” + +“Kept awake all night listening to my story!” She marvelled. + +“Yes. You don’t think I am complaining, do you? I wouldn’t have missed +it for the world. Blunt in a ragged old jacket and a white tie and that +incisive polite voice of his seemed strange and weird. It seemed as +though he were inventing it all rather angrily. I had doubts as to your +existence.” + +“Mr. Blunt is very much interested in my story.” + +“Anybody would be,” I said. “I was. I didn’t sleep a wink. I was +expecting to see you soon—and even then I had my doubts.” + +“As to my existence?” + +“It wasn’t exactly that, though of course I couldn’t tell that you +weren’t a product of Captain Blunt’s sleeplessness. He seemed to dread +exceedingly to be left alone and your story might have been a device to +detain us . . .” + +“He hasn’t enough imagination for that,” she said. + +“It didn’t occur to me. But there was Mills, who apparently believed in +your existence. I could trust Mills. My doubts were about the +propriety. I couldn’t see any good reason for being taken to see you. +Strange that it should be my connection with the sea which brought me +here to the Villa.” + +“Unexpected perhaps.” + +“No. I mean particularly strange and significant.” + +“Why?” + +“Because my friends are in the habit of telling me (and each other) that +the sea is my only love. They were always chaffing me because they +couldn’t see or guess in my life at any woman, open or secret. . .” + +“And is that really so?” she inquired negligently. + +“Why, yes. I don’t mean to say that I am like an innocent shepherd in +one of those interminable stories of the eighteenth century. But I don’t +throw the word love about indiscriminately. It may be all true about the +sea; but some people would say that they love sausages.” + +“You are horrible.” + +“I am surprised.” + +“I mean your choice of words.” + +“And you have never uttered a word yet that didn’t change into a pearl as +it dropped from your lips. At least not before me.” + +She glanced down deliberately and said, “This is better. But I don’t see +any of them on the floor.” + +“It’s you who are horrible in the implications of your language. Don’t +see any on the floor! Haven’t I caught up and treasured them all in my +heart? I am not the animal from which sausages are made.” + +She looked at me suavely and then with the sweetest possible smile +breathed out the word: “No.” + +And we both laughed very loud. O! days of innocence! On this occasion +we parted from each other on a light-hearted note. But already I had +acquired the conviction that there was nothing more lovable in the world +than that woman; nothing more life-giving, inspiring, and illuminating +than the emanation of her charm. I meant it absolutely—not excepting the +light of the sun. + +From this there was only one step further to take. The step into a +conscious surrender; the open perception that this charm, warming like a +flame, was also all-revealing like a great light; giving new depth to +shades, new brilliance to colours, an amazing vividness to all sensations +and vitality to all thoughts: so that all that had been lived before +seemed to have been lived in a drab world and with a languid pulse. + +A great revelation this. I don’t mean to say it was soul-shaking. The +soul was already a captive before doubt, anguish, or dismay could touch +its surrender and its exaltation. But all the same the revelation turned +many things into dust; and, amongst others, the sense of the careless +freedom of my life. If that life ever had any purpose or any aim outside +itself I would have said that it threw a shadow across its path. But it +hadn’t. There had been no path. But there was a shadow, the inseparable +companion of all light. No illumination can sweep all mystery out of the +world. After the departed darkness the shadows remain, more mysterious +because as if more enduring; and one feels a dread of them from which one +was free before. What if they were to be victorious at the last? They, +or what perhaps lurks in them: fear, deception, desire, disillusion—all +silent at first before the song of triumphant love vibrating in the +light. Yes. Silent. Even desire itself! All silent. But not for +long! + +This was, I think, before the third expedition. Yes, it must have been +the third, for I remember that it was boldly planned and that it was +carried out without a hitch. The tentative period was over; all our +arrangements had been perfected. There was, so to speak, always an +unfailing smoke on the hill and an unfailing lantern on the shore. Our +friends, mostly bought for hard cash and therefore valuable, had acquired +confidence in us. This, they seemed to say, is no unfathomable roguery +of penniless adventurers. This is but the reckless enterprise of men of +wealth and sense and needn’t be inquired into. The young _caballero_ has +got real gold pieces in the belt he wears next his skin; and the man with +the heavy moustaches and unbelieving eyes is indeed very much of a man. +They gave to Dominic all their respect and to me a great show of +deference; for I had all the money, while they thought that Dominic had +all the sense. That judgment was not exactly correct. I had my share of +judgment and audacity which surprises me now that the years have chilled +the blood without dimming the memory. I remember going about the +business with light-hearted, clear-headed recklessness which, according +as its decisions were sudden or considered, made Dominic draw his breath +through his clenched teeth, or look hard at me before he gave me either a +slight nod of assent or a sarcastic “Oh, certainly”—just as the humour of +the moment prompted him. + +One night as we were lying on a bit of dry sand under the lee of a rock, +side by side, watching the light of our little vessel dancing away at sea +in the windy distance, Dominic spoke suddenly to me. + +“I suppose Alphonso and Carlos, Carlos and Alphonso, they are nothing to +you, together or separately?” + +I said: “Dominic, if they were both to vanish from the earth together or +separately it would make no difference to my feelings.” + +He remarked: “Just so. A man mourns only for his friends. I suppose +they are no more friends to you than they are to me. Those Carlists make +a great consumption of cartridges. That is well. But why should we do +all those mad things that you will insist on us doing till my hair,” he +pursued with grave, mocking exaggeration, “till my hair tries to stand up +on my head? and all for that Carlos, let God and the devil each guard his +own, for that Majesty as they call him, but after all a man like another +and—no friend.” + +“Yes, why?” I murmured, feeling my body nestled at ease in the sand. + +It was very dark under the overhanging rock on that night of clouds and +of wind that died and rose and died again. Dominic’s voice was heard +speaking low between the short gusts. + +“Friend of the Señora, eh?” + +“That’s what the world says, Dominic.” + +“Half of what the world says are lies,” he pronounced dogmatically. “For +all his majesty he may be a good enough man. Yet he is only a king in +the mountains and to-morrow he may be no more than you. Still a woman +like that—one, somehow, would grudge her to a better king. She ought to +be set up on a high pillar for people that walk on the ground to raise +their eyes up to. But you are otherwise, you gentlemen. You, for +instance, Monsieur, you wouldn’t want to see her set up on a pillar.” + +“That sort of thing, Dominic,” I said, “that sort of thing, you +understand me, ought to be done early.” + +He was silent for a time. And then his manly voice was heard in the +shadow of the rock. + +“I see well enough what you mean. I spoke of the multitude, that only +raise their eyes. But for kings and suchlike that is not enough. Well, +no heart need despair; for there is not a woman that wouldn’t at some +time or other get down from her pillar for no bigger bribe perhaps than +just a flower which is fresh to-day and withered to-morrow. And then, +what’s the good of asking how long any woman has been up there? There is +a true saying that lips that have been kissed do not lose their +freshness.” + +I don’t know what answer I could have made. I imagine Dominic thought +himself unanswerable. As a matter of fact, before I could speak, a voice +came to us down the face of the rock crying secretly, “Olà, down there! +All is safe ashore.” + +It was the boy who used to hang about the stable of a muleteer’s inn in a +little shallow valley with a shallow little stream in it, and where we +had been hiding most of the day before coming down to the shore. We both +started to our feet and Dominic said, “A good boy that. You didn’t hear +him either come or go above our heads. Don’t reward him with more than +one peseta, Señor, whatever he does. If you were to give him two he +would go mad at the sight of so much wealth and throw up his job at the +Fonda, where he is so useful to run errands, in that way he has of +skimming along the paths without displacing a stone.” + +Meantime he was busying himself with striking a fire to set alight a +small heap of dry sticks he had made ready beforehand on that spot which +in all the circuit of the Bay was perfectly screened from observation +from the land side. + +The clear flame shooting up revealed him in the black cloak with a hood +of a Mediterranean sailor. His eyes watched the dancing dim light to +seaward. And he talked the while. + +“The only fault you have, Señor, is being too generous with your money. +In this world you must give sparingly. The only things you may deal out +without counting, in this life of ours which is but a little fight and a +little love, is blows to your enemy and kisses to a woman. . . . Ah! here +they are coming in.” + +I noticed the dancing light in the dark west much closer to the shore +now. Its motion had altered. It swayed slowly as it ran towards us, +and, suddenly, the darker shadow as of a great pointed wing appeared +gliding in the night. Under it a human voice shouted something +confidently. + +“_Bueno_,” muttered Dominic. From some receptacle I didn’t see he poured +a lot of water on the blaze, like a magician at the end of a successful +incantation that had called out a shadow and a voice from the immense +space of the sea. And his hooded figure vanished from my sight in a +great hiss and the warm feel of ascending steam. + +“That’s all over,” he said, “and now we go back for more work, more toil, +more trouble, more exertion with hands and feet, for hours and hours. +And all the time the head turned over the shoulder, too.” + +We were climbing a precipitous path sufficiently dangerous in the dark, +Dominic, more familiar with it, going first and I scrambling close behind +in order that I might grab at his cloak if I chanced to slip or miss my +footing. I remonstrated against this arrangement as we stopped to rest. +I had no doubt I would grab at his cloak if I felt myself falling. I +couldn’t help doing that. But I would probably only drag him down with +me. + +With one hand grasping a shadowy bush above his head he growled that all +this was possible, but that it was all in the bargain, and urged me +onwards. + +When we got on to the level that man whose even breathing no exertion, no +danger, no fear or anger could disturb, remarked as we strode side by +side: + +“I will say this for us, that we are carrying out all this deadly +foolishness as conscientiously as though the eyes of the Señora were on +us all the time. And as to risk, I suppose we take more than she would +approve of, I fancy, if she ever gave a moment’s thought to us out here. +Now, for instance, in the next half hour, we may come any moment on three +carabineers who would let off their pieces without asking questions. +Even your way of flinging money about cannot make safety for men set on +defying a whole big country for the sake of—what is it exactly?—the blue +eyes, or the white arms of the Señora.” + +He kept his voice equably low. It was a lonely spot and but for a vague +shape of a dwarf tree here and there we had only the flying clouds for +company. Very far off a tiny light twinkled a little way up the seaward +shoulder of an invisible mountain. Dominic moved on. + +“Fancy yourself lying here, on this wild spot, with a leg smashed by a +shot or perhaps with a bullet in your side. It might happen. A star +might fall. I have watched stars falling in scores on clear nights in +the Atlantic. And it was nothing. The flash of a pinch of gunpowder in +your face may be a bigger matter. Yet somehow it’s pleasant as we +stumble in the dark to think of our Señora in that long room with a shiny +floor and all that lot of glass at the end, sitting on that divan, you +call it, covered with carpets as if expecting a king indeed. And very +still . . .” + +He remembered her—whose image could not be dismissed. + +I laid my hand on his shoulder. + +“That light on the mountain side flickers exceedingly, Dominic. Are we +in the path?” + +He addressed me then in French, which was between us the language of more +formal moments. + +“_Prenez mon bras_, _monsieur_. Take a firm hold, or I will have you +stumbling again and falling into one of those beastly holes, with a good +chance to crack your head. And there is no need to take offence. For, +speaking with all respect, why should you, and I with you, be here on +this lonely spot, barking our shins in the dark on the way to a +confounded flickering light where there will be no other supper but a +piece of a stale sausage and a draught of leathery wine out of a stinking +skin. Pah!” + +I had good hold of his arm. Suddenly he dropped the formal French and +pronounced in his inflexible voice: + +“For a pair of white arms, Señor. _Bueno_.” + +He could understand. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +On our return from that expedition we came gliding into the old harbour +so late that Dominic and I, making for the café kept by Madame Léonore, +found it empty of customers, except for two rather sinister fellows +playing cards together at a corner table near the door. The first thing +done by Madame Léonore was to put her hands on Dominic’s shoulders and +look at arm’s length into the eyes of that man of audacious deeds and +wild stratagems who smiled straight at her from under his heavy and, at +that time, uncurled moustaches. + +Indeed we didn’t present a neat appearance, our faces unshaven, with the +traces of dried salt sprays on our smarting skins and the sleeplessness +of full forty hours filming our eyes. At least it was so with me who saw +as through a mist Madame Léonore moving with her mature nonchalant grace, +setting before us wine and glasses with a faint swish of her ample black +skirt. Under the elaborate structure of black hair her jet-black eyes +sparkled like good-humoured stars and even I could see that she was +tremendously excited at having this lawless wanderer Dominic within her +reach and as it were in her power. Presently she sat down by us, touched +lightly Dominic’s curly head silvered on the temples (she couldn’t really +help it), gazed at me for a while with a quizzical smile, observed that I +looked very tired, and asked Dominic whether for all that I was likely to +sleep soundly to-night. + +“I don’t know,” said Dominic, “He’s young. And there is always the +chance of dreams.” + +“What do you men dream of in those little barques of yours tossing for +months on the water?” + +“Mostly of nothing,” said Dominic. “But it has happened to me to dream +of furious fights.” + +“And of furious loves, too, no doubt,” she caught him up in a mocking +voice. + +“No, that’s for the waking hours,” Dominic drawled, basking sleepily with +his head between his hands in her ardent gaze. “The waking hours are +longer.” + +“They must be, at sea,” she said, never taking her eyes off him. “But I +suppose you do talk of your loves sometimes.” + +“You may be sure, Madame Léonore,” I interjected, noticing the hoarseness +of my voice, “that you at any rate are talked about a lot at sea.” + +“I am not so sure of that now. There is that strange lady from the Prado +that you took him to see, Signorino. She went to his head like a glass +of wine into a tender youngster’s. He is such a child, and I suppose +that I am another. Shame to confess it, the other morning I got a friend +to look after the café for a couple of hours, wrapped up my head, and +walked out there to the other end of the town. . . . Look at these two +sitting up! And I thought they were so sleepy and tired, the poor +fellows!” + +She kept our curiosity in suspense for a moment. + +“Well, I have seen your marvel, Dominic,” she continued in a calm voice. +“She came flying out of the gate on horseback and it would have been all +I would have seen of her if—and this is for you, Signorino—if she hadn’t +pulled up in the main alley to wait for a very good-looking cavalier. He +had his moustaches so, and his teeth were very white when he smiled at +her. But his eyes are too deep in his head for my taste. I didn’t like +it. It reminded me of a certain very severe priest who used to come to +our village when I was young; younger even than your marvel, Dominic.” + +“It was no priest in disguise, Madame Léonore,” I said, amused by her +expression of disgust. “That’s an American.” + +“Ah! _Un Americano_! Well, never mind him. It was her that I went to +see.” + +“What! Walked to the other end of the town to see Doña Rita!” Dominic +addressed her in a low bantering tone. “Why, you were always telling me +you couldn’t walk further than the end of the quay to save your life—or +even mine, you said.” + +“Well, I did; and I walked back again and between the two walks I had a +good look. And you may be sure—that will surprise you both—that on the +way back—oh, Santa Madre, wasn’t it a long way, too—I wasn’t thinking of +any man at sea or on shore in that connection.” + +“No. And you were not thinking of yourself, either, I suppose,” I said. +Speaking was a matter of great effort for me, whether I was too tired or +too sleepy, I can’t tell. “No, you were not thinking of yourself. You +were thinking of a woman, though.” + +“_Si_. As much a woman as any of us that ever breathed in the world. +Yes, of her! Of that very one! You see, we women are not like you men, +indifferent to each other unless by some exception. Men say we are +always against one another but that’s only men’s conceit. What can she +be to me? I am not afraid of the big child here,” and she tapped +Dominic’s forearm on which he rested his head with a fascinated stare. +“With us two it is for life and death, and I am rather pleased that there +is something yet in him that can catch fire on occasion. I would have +thought less of him if he hadn’t been able to get out of hand a little, +for something really fine. As for you, Signorino,” she turned on me with +an unexpected and sarcastic sally, “I am not in love with you yet.” She +changed her tone from sarcasm to a soft and even dreamy note. “A head +like a gem,” went on that woman born in some by-street of Rome, and a +plaything for years of God knows what obscure fates. “Yes, Dominic! +_Antica_. I haven’t been haunted by a face since—since I was sixteen +years old. It was the face of a young cavalier in the street. He was on +horseback, too. He never looked at me, I never saw him again, and I +loved him for—for days and days and days. That was the sort of face he +had. And her face is of the same sort. She had a man’s hat, too, on her +head. So high!” + +“A man’s hat on her head,” remarked with profound displeasure Dominic, to +whom this wonder, at least, of all the wonders of the earth, was +apparently unknown. + +“_Si_. And her face has haunted me. Not so long as that other but more +touchingly because I am no longer sixteen and this is a woman. Yes, I +did think of her, I myself was once that age and I, too, had a face of my +own to show to the world, though not so superb. And I, too, didn’t know +why I had come into the world any more than she does.” + +“And now you know,” Dominic growled softly, with his head still between +his hands. + +She looked at him for a long time, opened her lips but in the end only +sighed lightly. + +“And what do you know of her, you who have seen her so well as to be +haunted by her face?” I asked. + +I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had answered me with another sigh. +For she seemed only to be thinking of herself and looked not in my +direction. But suddenly she roused up. + +“Of her?” she repeated in a louder voice. “Why should I talk of another +woman? And then she is a great lady.” + +At this I could not repress a smile which she detected at once. + +“Isn’t she? Well, no, perhaps she isn’t; but you may be sure of one +thing, that she is both flesh and shadow more than any one that I have +seen. Keep that well in your mind: She is for no man! She would be +vanishing out of their hands like water that cannot be held.” + +I caught my breath. “Inconstant,” I whispered. + +“I don’t say that. Maybe too proud, too wilful, too full of pity. +Signorino, you don’t know much about women. And you may learn something +yet or you may not; but what you learn from her you will never forget.” + +“Not to be held,” I murmured; and she whom the quayside called Madame +Léonore closed her outstretched hand before my face and opened it at once +to show its emptiness in illustration of her expressed opinion. Dominic +never moved. + +I wished good-night to these two and left the café for the fresh air and +the dark spaciousness of the quays augmented by all the width of the old +Port where between the trails of light the shadows of heavy hulls +appeared very black, merging their outlines in a great confusion. I left +behind me the end of the Cannebière, a wide vista of tall houses and +much-lighted pavements losing itself in the distance with an extinction +of both shapes and lights. I slunk past it with only a side glance and +sought the dimness of quiet streets away from the centre of the usual +night gaieties of the town. The dress I wore was just that of a sailor +come ashore from some coaster, a thick blue woollen shirt or rather a +sort of jumper with a knitted cap like a tam-o’-shanter worn very much on +one side and with a red tuft of wool in the centre. This was even the +reason why I had lingered so long in the café. I didn’t want to be +recognized in the streets in that costume and still less to be seen +entering the house in the street of the Consuls. At that hour when the +performances were over and all the sensible citizens in their beds I +didn’t hesitate to cross the Place of the Opera. It was dark, the +audience had already dispersed. The rare passers-by I met hurrying on +their last affairs of the day paid no attention to me at all. The street +of the Consuls I expected to find empty, as usual at that time of the +night. But as I turned a corner into it I overtook three people who must +have belonged to the locality. To me, somehow, they appeared strange. +Two girls in dark cloaks walked ahead of a tall man in a top hat. I +slowed down, not wishing to pass them by, the more so that the door of +the house was only a few yards distant. But to my intense surprise those +people stopped at it and the man in the top hat, producing a latchkey, +let his two companions through, followed them, and with a heavy slam cut +himself off from my astonished self and the rest of mankind. + +In the stupid way people have I stood and meditated on the sight, before +it occurred to me that this was the most useless thing to do. After +waiting a little longer to let the others get away from the hall I +entered in my turn. The small gas-jet seemed not to have been touched +ever since that distant night when Mills and I trod the black-and-white +marble hall for the first time on the heels of Captain Blunt—who lived by +his sword. And in the dimness and solitude which kept no more trace of +the three strangers than if they had been the merest ghosts I seemed to +hear the ghostly murmur, “_Américain_, _Catholique et gentilhomme_. +_Amér. . . _” Unseen by human eye I ran up the flight of steps swiftly +and on the first floor stepped into my sitting-room of which the door was +open . . . “_et gentilhomme_.” I tugged at the bell pull and somewhere +down below a bell rang as unexpected for Therese as a call from a ghost. + +I had no notion whether Therese could hear me. I seemed to remember that +she slept in any bed that happened to be vacant. For all I knew she +might have been asleep in mine. As I had no matches on me I waited for a +while in the dark. The house was perfectly still. Suddenly without the +slightest preliminary sound light fell into the room and Therese stood in +the open door with a candlestick in her hand. + +She had on her peasant brown skirt. The rest of her was concealed in a +black shawl which covered her head, her shoulders, arms, and elbows +completely, down to her waist. The hand holding the candle protruded +from that envelope which the other invisible hand clasped together under +her very chin. And her face looked like a face in a painting. She said +at once: + +“You startled me, my young Monsieur.” + +She addressed me most frequently in that way as though she liked the very +word “young.” Her manner was certainly peasant-like with a sort of +plaint in the voice, while the face was that of a serving Sister in some +small and rustic convent. + +“I meant to do it,” I said. “I am a very bad person.” + +“The young are always full of fun,” she said as if she were gloating over +the idea. “It is very pleasant.” + +“But you are very brave,” I chaffed her, “for you didn’t expect a ring, +and after all it might have been the devil who pulled the bell.” + +“It might have been. But a poor girl like me is not afraid of the devil. +I have a pure heart. I have been to confession last evening. No. But +it might have been an assassin that pulled the bell ready to kill a poor +harmless woman. This is a very lonely street. What could prevent you to +kill me now and then walk out again free as air?” + +While she was talking like this she had lighted the gas and with the last +words she glided through the bedroom door leaving me thunderstruck at the +unexpected character of her thoughts. + +I couldn’t know that there had been during my absence a case of atrocious +murder which had affected the imagination of the whole town; and though +Therese did not read the papers (which she imagined to be full of +impieties and immoralities invented by godless men) yet if she spoke at +all with her kind, which she must have done at least in shops, she could +not have helped hearing of it. It seems that for some days people could +talk of nothing else. She returned gliding from the bedroom hermetically +sealed in her black shawl just as she had gone in, with the protruding +hand holding the lighted candle and relieved my perplexity as to her +morbid turn of mind by telling me something of the murder story in a +strange tone of indifference even while referring to its most horrible +features. “That’s what carnal sin (_pêché de chair_) leads to,” she +commented severely and passed her tongue over her thin lips. “And then +the devil furnishes the occasion.” + +“I can’t imagine the devil inciting me to murder you, Therese,” I said, +“and I didn’t like that ready way you took me for an example, as it were. +I suppose pretty near every lodger might be a potential murderer, but I +expected to be made an exception.” + +With the candle held a little below her face, with that face of one tone +and without relief she looked more than ever as though she had come out +of an old, cracked, smoky painting, the subject of which was altogether +beyond human conception. And she only compressed her lips. + +“All right,” I said, making myself comfortable on a sofa after pulling +off my boots. “I suppose any one is liable to commit murder all of a +sudden. Well, have you got many murderers in the house?” + +“Yes,” she said, “it’s pretty good. Upstairs and downstairs,” she +sighed. “God sees to it.” + +“And by the by, who is that grey-headed murderer in a tall hat whom I saw +shepherding two girls into this house?” + +She put on a candid air in which one could detect a little of her peasant +cunning. + +“Oh, yes. They are two dancing girls at the Opera, sisters, as different +from each other as I and our poor Rita. But they are both virtuous and +that gentleman, their father, is very severe with them. Very severe +indeed, poor motherless things. And it seems to be such a sinful +occupation.” + +“I bet you make them pay a big rent, Therese. With an occupation like +that . . .” + +She looked at me with eyes of invincible innocence and began to glide +towards the door, so smoothly that the flame of the candle hardly swayed. +“Good-night,” she murmured. + +“Good-night, Mademoiselle.” + +Then in the very doorway she turned right round as a marionette would +turn. + +“Oh, you ought to know, my dear young Monsieur, that Mr. Blunt, the dear +handsome man, has arrived from Navarre three days ago or more. Oh,” she +added with a priceless air of compunction, “he is such a charming +gentleman.” + +And the door shut after her. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +That night I passed in a state, mostly open-eyed, I believe, but always +on the border between dreams and waking. The only thing absolutely +absent from it was the feeling of rest. The usual sufferings of a youth +in love had nothing to do with it. I could leave her, go away from her, +remain away from her, without an added pang or any augmented +consciousness of that torturing sentiment of distance so acute that often +it ends by wearing itself out in a few days. Far or near was all one to +me, as if one could never get any further but also never any nearer to +her secret: the state like that of some strange wild faiths that get hold +of mankind with the cruel mystic grip of unattainable perfection, robbing +them of both liberty and felicity on earth. A faith presents one with +some hope, though. But I had no hope, and not even desire as a thing +outside myself, that would come and go, exhaust or excite. It was in me +just like life was in me; that life of which a popular saying affirms +that “it is sweet.” For the general wisdom of mankind will always stop +short on the limit of the formidable. + +What is best in a state of brimful, equable suffering is that it does +away with the gnawings of petty sensations. Too far gone to be sensible +to hope and desire I was spared the inferior pangs of elation and +impatience. Hours with her or hours without her were all alike, all in +her possession! But still there are shades and I will admit that the +hours of that morning were perhaps a little more difficult to get through +than the others. I had sent word of my arrival of course. I had written +a note. I had rung the bell. Therese had appeared herself in her brown +garb and as monachal as ever. I had said to her: + +“Have this sent off at once.” + +She had gazed at the addressed envelope, smiled (I was looking up at her +from my desk), and at last took it up with an effort of sanctimonious +repugnance. But she remained with it in her hand looking at me as though +she were piously gloating over something she could read in my face. + +“Oh, that Rita, that Rita,” she murmured. “And you, too! Why are you +trying, you, too, like the others, to stand between her and the mercy of +God? What’s the good of all this to you? And you such a nice, dear, +young gentleman. For no earthly good only making all the kind saints in +heaven angry, and our mother ashamed in her place amongst the blessed.” + +“Mademoiselle Therese,” I said, “_vous êtes folle_.” + +I believed she was crazy. She was cunning, too. I added an imperious: +“_Allez_,” and with a strange docility she glided out without another +word. All I had to do then was to get dressed and wait till eleven +o’clock. + +The hour struck at last. If I could have plunged into a light wave and +been transported instantaneously to Doña Rita’s door it would no doubt +have saved me an infinity of pangs too complex for analysis; but as this +was impossible I elected to walk from end to end of that long way. My +emotions and sensations were childlike and chaotic inasmuch that they +were very intense and primitive, and that I lay very helpless in their +unrelaxing grasp. If one could have kept a record of one’s physical +sensations it would have been a fine collection of absurdities and +contradictions. Hardly touching the ground and yet leaden-footed; with a +sinking heart and an excited brain; hot and trembling with a secret +faintness, and yet as firm as a rock and with a sort of indifference to +it all, I did reach the door which was frightfully like any other +commonplace door, but at the same time had a fateful character: a few +planks put together—and an awful symbol; not to be approached without +awe—and yet coming open in the ordinary way to the ring of the bell. + +It came open. Oh, yes, very much as usual. But in the ordinary course +of events the first sight in the hall should have been the back of the +ubiquitous, busy, silent maid hurrying off and already distant. But not +at all! She actually waited for me to enter. I was extremely taken +aback and I believe spoke to her for the first time in my life. + +“_Bonjour_, Rose.” + +She dropped her dark eyelids over those eyes that ought to have been +lustrous but were not, as if somebody had breathed on them the first +thing in the morning. She was a girl without smiles. She shut the door +after me, and not only did that but in the incredible idleness of that +morning she, who had never a moment to spare, started helping me off with +my overcoat. It was positively embarrassing from its novelty. While +busying herself with those trifles she murmured without any marked +intention: + +“Captain Blunt is with Madame.” + +This didn’t exactly surprise me. I knew he had come up to town; I only +happened to have forgotten his existence for the moment. I looked at the +girl also without any particular intention. But she arrested my movement +towards the dining-room door by a low, hurried, if perfectly unemotional +appeal: + +“Monsieur George!” + +That of course was not my name. It served me then as it will serve for +this story. In all sorts of strange places I was alluded to as “that +young gentleman they call Monsieur George.” Orders came from “Monsieur +George” to men who nodded knowingly. Events pivoted about “Monsieur +George.” I haven’t the slightest doubt that in the dark and tortuous +streets of the old Town there were fingers pointed at my back: there goes +“Monsieur George.” I had been introduced discreetly to several +considerable persons as “Monsieur George.” I had learned to answer to +the name quite naturally; and to simplify matters I was also “Monsieur +George” in the street of the Consuls and in the Villa on the Prado. I +verily believe that at that time I had the feeling that the name of +George really belonged to me. I waited for what the girl had to say. I +had to wait some time, though during that silence she gave no sign of +distress or agitation. It was for her obviously a moment of reflection. +Her lips were compressed a little in a characteristic, capable manner. I +looked at her with a friendliness I really felt towards her slight, +unattractive, and dependable person. + +“Well,” I said at last, rather amused by this mental hesitation. I never +took it for anything else. I was sure it was not distrust. She +appreciated men and things and events solely in relation to Doña Rita’s +welfare and safety. And as to that I believed myself above suspicion. +At last she spoke. + +“Madame is not happy.” This information was given to me not emotionally +but as it were officially. It hadn’t even a tone of warning. A mere +statement. Without waiting to see the effect she opened the dining-room +door, not to announce my name in the usual way but to go in and shut it +behind her. In that short moment I heard no voices inside. Not a sound +reached me while the door remained shut; but in a few seconds it came +open again and Rose stood aside to let me pass. + +Then I heard something: Doña Rita’s voice raised a little on an impatient +note (a very, very rare thing) finishing some phrase of protest with the +words “ . . . Of no consequence.” + +I heard them as I would have heard any other words, for she had that kind +of voice which carries a long distance. But the maid’s statement +occupied all my mind. “_Madame n’est pas heureuse_.” It had a dreadful +precision . . . “Not happy . . .” This unhappiness had almost a concrete +form—something resembling a horrid bat. I was tired, excited, and +generally overwrought. My head felt empty. What were the appearances of +unhappiness? I was still naïve enough to associate them with tears, +lamentations, extraordinary attitudes of the body and some sort of facial +distortion, all very dreadful to behold. I didn’t know what I should +see; but in what I did see there was nothing startling, at any rate from +that nursery point of view which apparently I had not yet outgrown. + +With immense relief the apprehensive child within me beheld Captain Blunt +warming his back at the more distant of the two fireplaces; and as to +Doña Rita there was nothing extraordinary in her attitude either, except +perhaps that her hair was all loose about her shoulders. I hadn’t the +slightest doubt they had been riding together that morning, but she, with +her impatience of all costume (and yet she could dress herself admirably +and wore her dresses triumphantly), had divested herself of her riding +habit and sat cross-legged enfolded in that ample blue robe like a young +savage chieftain in a blanket. It covered her very feet. And before the +normal fixity of her enigmatical eyes the smoke of the cigarette ascended +ceremonially, straight up, in a slender spiral. + +“How are you,” was the greeting of Captain Blunt with the usual smile +which would have been more amiable if his teeth hadn’t been, just then, +clenched quite so tight. How he managed to force his voice through that +shining barrier I could never understand. Doña Rita tapped the couch +engagingly by her side but I sat down instead in the armchair nearly +opposite her, which, I imagine, must have been just vacated by Blunt. +She inquired with that particular gleam of the eyes in which there was +something immemorial and gay: + +“Well?” + +“Perfect success.” + +“I could hug you.” + +At any time her lips moved very little but in this instance the intense +whisper of these words seemed to form itself right in my very heart; not +as a conveyed sound but as an imparted emotion vibrating there with an +awful intimacy of delight. And yet it left my heart heavy. + +“Oh, yes, for joy,” I said bitterly but very low; “for your Royalist, +Legitimist, joy.” Then with that trick of very precise politeness which +I must have caught from Mr. Blunt I added: + +“I don’t want to be embraced—for the King.” + +And I might have stopped there. But I didn’t. With a perversity which +should be forgiven to those who suffer night and day and are as if drunk +with an exalted unhappiness, I went on: “For the sake of an old cast-off +glove; for I suppose a disdained love is not much more than a soiled, +flabby thing that finds itself on a private rubbish heap because it has +missed the fire.” + +She listened to me unreadable, unmoved, narrowed eyes, closed lips, +slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand years ago in order to +fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all women. +Not the gross immobility of a Sphinx proposing roadside riddles but the +finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful figure seated at the very +source of the passions that have moved men from the dawn of ages. + +Captain Blunt, with his elbow on the high mantelpiece, had turned away a +little from us and his attitude expressed excellently the detachment of a +man who does not want to hear. As a matter of fact, I don’t suppose he +could have heard. He was too far away, our voices were too contained. +Moreover, he didn’t want to hear. There could be no doubt about it; but +she addressed him unexpectedly. + +“As I was saying to you, Don Juan, I have the greatest difficulty in +getting myself, I won’t say understood, but simply believed.” + +No pose of detachment could avail against the warm waves of that voice. +He had to hear. After a moment he altered his position as it were +reluctantly, to answer her. + +“That’s a difficulty that women generally have.” + +“Yet I have always spoken the truth.” + +“All women speak the truth,” said Blunt imperturbably. And this annoyed +her. + +“Where are the men I have deceived?” she cried. + +“Yes, where?” said Blunt in a tone of alacrity as though he had been +ready to go out and look for them outside. + +“No! But show me one. I say—where is he?” + +He threw his affectation of detachment to the winds, moved his shoulders +slightly, very slightly, made a step nearer to the couch, and looked down +on her with an expression of amused courtesy. + +“Oh, I don’t know. Probably nowhere. But if such a man could be found I +am certain he would turn out a very stupid person. You can’t be expected +to furnish every one who approaches you with a mind. To expect that +would be too much, even from you who know how to work wonders at such +little cost to yourself.” + +“To myself,” she repeated in a loud tone. + +“Why this indignation? I am simply taking your word for it.” + +“Such little cost!” she exclaimed under her breath. + +“I mean to your person.” + +“Oh, yes,” she murmured, glanced down, as it were upon herself, then +added very low: “This body.” + +“Well, it is you,” said Blunt with visibly contained irritation. “You +don’t pretend it’s somebody else’s. It can’t be. You haven’t borrowed +it. . . . It fits you too well,” he ended between his teeth. + +“You take pleasure in tormenting yourself,” she remonstrated, suddenly +placated; “and I would be sorry for you if I didn’t think it’s the mere +revolt of your pride. And you know you are indulging your pride at my +expense. As to the rest of it, as to my living, acting, working wonders +at a little cost. . . . it has all but killed me morally. Do you hear? +Killed.” + +“Oh, you are not dead yet,” he muttered, + +“No,” she said with gentle patience. “There is still some feeling left +in me; and if it is any satisfaction to you to know it, you may be +certain that I shall be conscious of the last stab.” + +He remained silent for a while and then with a polite smile and a +movement of the head in my direction he warned her. + +“Our audience will get bored.” + +“I am perfectly aware that Monsieur George is here, and that he has been +breathing a very different atmosphere from what he gets in this room. +Don’t you find this room extremely confined?” she asked me. + +The room was very large but it is a fact that I felt oppressed at that +moment. This mysterious quarrel between those two people, revealing +something more close in their intercourse than I had ever before +suspected, made me so profoundly unhappy that I didn’t even attempt to +answer. And she continued: + +“More space. More air. Give me air, air.” She seized the embroidered +edges of her blue robe under her white throat and made as if to tear them +apart, to fling it open on her breast, recklessly, before our eyes. We +both remained perfectly still. Her hands dropped nervelessly by her +side. “I envy you, Monsieur George. If I am to go under I should prefer +to be drowned in the sea with the wind on my face. What luck, to feel +nothing less than all the world closing over one’s head!” + +A short silence ensued before Mr. Blunt’s drawing-room voice was heard +with playful familiarity. + +“I have often asked myself whether you weren’t really a very ambitious +person, Doña Rita.” + +“And I ask myself whether you have any heart.” She was looking straight +at him and he gratified her with the usual cold white flash of his even +teeth before he answered. + +“Asking yourself? That means that you are really asking me. But why do +it so publicly? I mean it. One single, detached presence is enough to +make a public. One alone. Why not wait till he returns to those regions +of space and air—from which he came.” + +His particular trick of speaking of any third person as of a lay figure +was exasperating. Yet at the moment I did not know how to resent it, +but, in any case, Doña Rita would not have given me time. Without a +moment’s hesitation she cried out: + +“I only wish he could take me out there with him.” + +For a moment Mr. Blunt’s face became as still as a mask and then instead +of an angry it assumed an indulgent expression. As to me I had a rapid +vision of Dominic’s astonishment, awe, and sarcasm which was always as +tolerant as it is possible for sarcasm to be. But what a charming, +gentle, gay, and fearless companion she would have made! I believed in +her fearlessness in any adventure that would interest her. It would be a +new occasion for me, a new viewpoint for that faculty of admiration she +had awakened in me at sight—at first sight—before she opened her +lips—before she ever turned her eyes on me. She would have to wear some +sort of sailor costume, a blue woollen shirt open at the throat. . . . +Dominic’s hooded cloak would envelop her amply, and her face under the +black hood would have a luminous quality, adolescent charm, and an +enigmatic expression. The confined space of the little vessel’s +quarterdeck would lend itself to her cross-legged attitudes, and the blue +sea would balance gently her characteristic immobility that seemed to +hide thoughts as old and profound as itself. As restless, too—perhaps. + +But the picture I had in my eye, coloured and simple like an illustration +to a nursery-book tale of two venturesome children’s escapade, was what +fascinated me most. Indeed I felt that we two were like children under +the gaze of a man of the world—who lived by his sword. And I said +recklessly: + +“Yes, you ought to come along with us for a trip. You would see a lot of +things for yourself.” + +Mr. Blunt’s expression had grown even more indulgent if that were +possible. Yet there was something ineradicably ambiguous about that man. +I did not like the indefinable tone in which he observed: + +“You are perfectly reckless in what you say, Doña Rita. It has become a +habit with you of late.” + +“While with you reserve is a second nature, Don Juan.” + +This was uttered with the gentlest, almost tender, irony. Mr. Blunt +waited a while before he said: + +“Certainly. . . . Would you have liked me to be otherwise?” + +She extended her hand to him on a sudden impulse. + +“Forgive me! I may have been unjust, and you may only have been loyal. +The falseness is not in us. The fault is in life itself, I suppose. I +have been always frank with you.” + +“And I obedient,” he said, bowing low over her hand. He turned away, +paused to look at me for some time and finally gave me the correct sort +of nod. But he said nothing and went out, or rather lounged out with his +worldly manner of perfect ease under all conceivable circumstances. With +her head lowered Doña Rita watched him till he actually shut the door +behind him. I was facing her and only heard the door close. + +“Don’t stare at me,” were the first words she said. + +It was difficult to obey that request. I didn’t know exactly where to +look, while I sat facing her. So I got up, vaguely full of goodwill, +prepared even to move off as far as the window, when she commanded: + +“Don’t turn your back on me.” + +I chose to understand it symbolically. + +“You know very well I could never do that. I couldn’t. Not even if I +wanted to.” And I added: “It’s too late now.” + +“Well, then, sit down. Sit down on this couch.” + +I sat down on the couch. Unwillingly? Yes. I was at that stage when +all her words, all her gestures, all her silences were a heavy trial to +me, put a stress on my resolution, on that fidelity to myself and to her +which lay like a leaden weight on my untried heart. But I didn’t sit +down very far away from her, though that soft and billowy couch was big +enough, God knows! No, not very far from her. Self-control, dignity, +hopelessness itself, have their limits. The halo of her tawny hair +stirred as I let myself drop by her side. Whereupon she flung one arm +round my neck, leaned her temple against my shoulder and began to sob; +but that I could only guess from her slight, convulsive movements because +in our relative positions I could only see the mass of her tawny hair +brushed back, yet with a halo of escaped hair which as I bent my head +over her tickled my lips, my cheek, in a maddening manner. + +We sat like two venturesome children in an illustration to a tale, scared +by their adventure. But not for long. As I instinctively, yet timidly, +sought for her other hand I felt a tear strike the back of mine, big and +heavy as if fallen from a great height. It was too much for me. I must +have given a nervous start. At once I heard a murmur: “You had better go +away now.” + +I withdrew myself gently from under the light weight of her head, from +this unspeakable bliss and inconceivable misery, and had the absurd +impression of leaving her suspended in the air. And I moved away on +tiptoe. + +Like an inspired blind man led by Providence I found my way out of the +room but really I saw nothing, till in the hall the maid appeared by +enchantment before me holding up my overcoat. I let her help me into it. +And then (again as if by enchantment) she had my hat in her hand. + +“No. Madame isn’t happy,” I whispered to her distractedly. + +She let me take my hat out of her hand and while I was putting it on my +head I heard an austere whisper: + +“Madame should listen to her heart.” + +Austere is not the word; it was almost freezing, this unexpected, +dispassionate rustle of words. I had to repress a shudder, and as coldly +as herself I murmured: + +“She has done that once too often.” + +Rose was standing very close to me and I caught distinctly the note of +scorn in her indulgent compassion. + +“Oh, that! . . . Madame is like a child.” It was impossible to get the +bearing of that utterance from that girl who, as Doña Rita herself had +told me, was the most taciturn of human beings; and yet of all human +beings the one nearest to herself. I seized her head in my hands and +turning up her face I looked straight down into her black eyes which +should have been lustrous. Like a piece of glass breathed upon they +reflected no light, revealed no depths, and under my ardent gaze remained +tarnished, misty, unconscious. + +“Will Monsieur kindly let me go. Monsieur shouldn’t play the child, +either.” (I let her go.) “Madame could have the world at her feet. +Indeed she has it there only she doesn’t care for it.” + +How talkative she was, this maid with unsealed lips! For some reason or +other this last statement of hers brought me immense comfort. + +“Yes?” I whispered breathlessly. + +“Yes! But in that case what’s the use of living in fear and torment?” +she went on, revealing a little more of herself to my astonishment. She +opened the door for me and added: + +“Those that don’t care to stoop ought at least make themselves happy.” + +I turned in the very doorway: “There is something which prevents that?” I +suggested. + +“To be sure there is. _Bonjour_, Monsieur.” + + + + +PART FOUR + + +CHAPTER I + + +“Such a charming lady in a grey silk dress and a hand as white as snow. +She looked at me through such funny glasses on the end of a long handle. +A very great lady but her voice was as kind as the voice of a saint. I +have never seen anything like that. She made me feel so timid.” + +The voice uttering these words was the voice of Therese and I looked at +her from a bed draped heavily in brown silk curtains fantastically looped +up from ceiling to floor. The glow of a sunshiny day was toned down by +closed jalousies to a mere transparency of darkness. In this thin medium +Therese’s form appeared flat, without detail, as if cut out of black +paper. It glided towards the window and with a click and a scrape let in +the full flood of light which smote my aching eyeballs painfully. + +In truth all that night had been the abomination of desolation to me. +After wrestling with my thoughts, if the acute consciousness of a woman’s +existence may be called a thought, I had apparently dropped off to sleep +only to go on wrestling with a nightmare, a senseless and terrifying +dream of being in bonds which, even after waking, made me feel powerless +in all my limbs. I lay still, suffering acutely from a renewed sense of +existence, unable to lift an arm, and wondering why I was not at sea, how +long I had slept, how long Therese had been talking before her voice had +reached me in that purgatory of hopeless longing and unanswerable +questions to which I was condemned. + +It was Therese’s habit to begin talking directly she entered the room +with the tray of morning coffee. This was her method for waking me up. +I generally regained the consciousness of the external world on some +pious phrase asserting the spiritual comfort of early mass, or on angry +lamentations about the unconscionable rapacity of the dealers in fish and +vegetables; for after mass it was Therese’s practice to do the marketing +for the house. As a matter of fact the necessity of having to pay, to +actually give money to people, infuriated the pious Therese. But the +matter of this morning’s speech was so extraordinary that it might have +been the prolongation of a nightmare: a man in bonds having to listen to +weird and unaccountable speeches against which, he doesn’t know why, his +very soul revolts. + +In sober truth my soul remained in revolt though I was convinced that I +was no longer dreaming. I watched Therese coming away from the window +with that helpless dread a man bound hand and foot may be excused to +feel. For in such a situation even the absurd may appear ominous. She +came up close to the bed and folding her hands meekly in front of her +turned her eyes up to the ceiling. + +“If I had been her daughter she couldn’t have spoken more softly to me,” +she said sentimentally. + +I made a great effort to speak. + +“Mademoiselle Therese, you are raving.” + +“She addressed me as Mademoiselle, too, so nicely. I was struck with +veneration for her white hair but her face, believe me, my dear young +Monsieur, has not so many wrinkles as mine.” + +She compressed her lips with an angry glance at me as if I could help her +wrinkles, then she sighed. + +“God sends wrinkles, but what is our face?” she digressed in a tone of +great humility. “We shall have glorious faces in Paradise. But meantime +God has permitted me to preserve a smooth heart.” + +“Are you going to keep on like this much longer?” I fairly shouted at +her. “What are you talking about?” + +“I am talking about the sweet old lady who came in a carriage. Not a +fiacre. I can tell a fiacre. In a little carriage shut in with glass +all in front. I suppose she is very rich. The carriage was very shiny +outside and all beautiful grey stuff inside. I opened the door to her +myself. She got out slowly like a queen. I was struck all of a heap. +Such a shiny beautiful little carriage. There were blue silk tassels +inside, beautiful silk tassels.” + +Obviously Therese had been very much impressed by a brougham, though she +didn’t know the name for it. Of all the town she knew nothing but the +streets which led to a neighbouring church frequented only by the poorer +classes and the humble quarter around, where she did her marketing. +Besides, she was accustomed to glide along the walls with her eyes cast +down; for her natural boldness would never show itself through that +nun-like mien except when bargaining, if only on a matter of threepence. +Such a turn-out had never been presented to her notice before. The +traffic in the street of the Consuls was mostly pedestrian and far from +fashionable. And anyhow Therese never looked out of the window. She +lurked in the depths of the house like some kind of spider that shuns +attention. She used to dart at one from some dark recesses which I never +explored. + +Yet it seemed to me that she exaggerated her raptures for some reason or +other. With her it was very difficult to distinguish between craft and +innocence. + +“Do you mean to say,” I asked suspiciously, “that an old lady wants to +hire an apartment here? I hope you told her there was no room, because, +you know, this house is not exactly the thing for venerable old ladies.” + +“Don’t make me angry, my dear young Monsieur. I have been to confession +this morning. Aren’t you comfortable? Isn’t the house appointed richly +enough for anybody?” + +That girl with a peasant-nun’s face had never seen the inside of a house +other than some half-ruined _caserio_ in her native hills. + +I pointed out to her that this was not a matter of splendour or comfort +but of “convenances.” She pricked up her ears at that word which +probably she had never heard before; but with woman’s uncanny intuition I +believe she understood perfectly what I meant. Her air of saintly +patience became so pronounced that with my own poor intuition I perceived +that she was raging at me inwardly. Her weather-tanned complexion, +already affected by her confined life, took on an extraordinary clayey +aspect which reminded me of a strange head painted by El Greco which my +friend Prax had hung on one of his walls and used to rail at; yet not +without a certain respect. + +Therese, with her hands still meekly folded about her waist, had mastered +the feelings of anger so unbecoming to a person whose sins had been +absolved only about three hours before, and asked me with an insinuating +softness whether she wasn’t an honest girl enough to look after any old +lady belonging to a world which after all was sinful. She reminded me +that she had kept house ever since she was “so high” for her uncle the +priest: a man well-known for his saintliness in a large district +extending even beyond Pampeluna. The character of a house depended upon +the person who ruled it. She didn’t know what impenitent wretches had +been breathing within these walls in the time of that godless and wicked +man who had planted every seed of perdition in “our Rita’s” ill-disposed +heart. But he was dead and she, Therese, knew for certain that +wickedness perished utterly, because of God’s anger (_la colère du bon +Dieu_). She would have no hesitation in receiving a bishop, if need be, +since “our, Rita,” with her poor, wretched, unbelieving heart, had +nothing more to do with the house. + +All this came out of her like an unctuous trickle of some acrid oil. The +low, voluble delivery was enough by itself to compel my attention. + +“You think you know your sister’s heart,” I asked. + +She made small eyes at me to discover if I was angry. She seemed to have +an invincible faith in the virtuous dispositions of young men. And as I +had spoken in measured tones and hadn’t got red in the face she let +herself go. + +“Black, my dear young Monsieur. Black. I always knew it. Uncle, poor +saintly man, was too holy to take notice of anything. He was too busy +with his thoughts to listen to anything I had to say to him. For +instance as to her shamelessness. She was always ready to run half naked +about the hills. . . ” + +“Yes. After your goats. All day long. Why didn’t you mend her frocks?” + +“Oh, you know about the goats. My dear young Monsieur, I could never +tell when she would fling over her pretended sweetness and put her tongue +out at me. Did she tell you about a boy, the son of pious and rich +parents, whom she tried to lead astray into the wildness of thoughts like +her own, till the poor dear child drove her off because she outraged his +modesty? I saw him often with his parents at Sunday mass. The grace of +God preserved him and made him quite a gentleman in Paris. Perhaps it +will touch Rita’s heart, too, some day. But she was awful then. When I +wouldn’t listen to her complaints she would say: ‘All right, sister, I +would just as soon go clothed in rain and wind.’ And such a bag of +bones, too, like the picture of a devil’s imp. Ah, my dear young +Monsieur, you don’t know how wicked her heart is. You aren’t bad enough +for that yourself. I don’t believe you are evil at all in your innocent +little heart. I never heard you jeer at holy things. You are only +thoughtless. For instance, I have never seen you make the sign of the +cross in the morning. Why don’t you make a practice of crossing yourself +directly you open your eyes. It’s a very good thing. It keeps Satan off +for the day.” + +She proffered that advice in a most matter-of-fact tone as if it were a +precaution against a cold, compressed her lips, then returning to her +fixed idea, “But the house is mine,” she insisted very quietly with an +accent which made me feel that Satan himself would never manage to tear +it out of her hands. + +“And so I told the great lady in grey. I told her that my sister had +given it to me and that surely God would not let her take it away again.” + +“You told that grey-headed lady, an utter stranger! You are getting more +crazy every day. You have neither good sense nor good feeling, +Mademoiselle Therese, let me tell you. Do you talk about your sister to +the butcher and the greengrocer, too? A downright savage would have more +restraint. What’s your object? What do you expect from it? What +pleasure do you get from it? Do you think you please God by abusing your +sister? What do you think you are?” + +“A poor lone girl amongst a lot of wicked people. Do you think I wanted +to go forth amongst those abominations? it’s that poor sinful Rita that +wouldn’t let me be where I was, serving a holy man, next door to a +church, and sure of my share of Paradise. I simply obeyed my uncle. +It’s he who told me to go forth and attempt to save her soul, bring her +back to us, to a virtuous life. But what would be the good of that? She +is given over to worldly, carnal thoughts. Of course we are a good +family and my uncle is a great man in the country, but where is the +reputable farmer or God-fearing man of that kind that would dare to bring +such a girl into his house to his mother and sisters. No, let her give +her ill-gotten wealth up to the deserving and devote the rest of her life +to repentance.” + +She uttered these righteous reflections and presented this programme for +the salvation of her sister’s soul in a reasonable convinced tone which +was enough to give goose flesh to one all over. + +“Mademoiselle Therese,” I said, “you are nothing less than a monster.” + +She received that true expression of my opinion as though I had given her +a sweet of a particularly delicious kind. She liked to be abused. It +pleased her to be called names. I did let her have that satisfaction to +her heart’s content. At last I stopped because I could do no more, +unless I got out of bed to beat her. I have a vague notion that she +would have liked that, too, but I didn’t try. After I had stopped she +waited a little before she raised her downcast eyes. + +“You are a dear, ignorant, flighty young gentleman,” she said. “Nobody +can tell what a cross my sister is to me except the good priest in the +church where I go every day.” + +“And the mysterious lady in grey,” I suggested sarcastically. + +“Such a person might have guessed it,” answered Therese, seriously, “but +I told her nothing except that this house had been given me in full +property by our Rita. And I wouldn’t have done that if she hadn’t spoken +to me of my sister first. I can’t tell too many people about that. One +can’t trust Rita. I know she doesn’t fear God but perhaps human respect +may keep her from taking this house back from me. If she doesn’t want me +to talk about her to people why doesn’t she give me a properly stamped +piece of paper for it?” + +She said all this rapidly in one breath and at the end had a sort of +anxious gasp which gave me the opportunity to voice my surprise. It was +immense. + +“That lady, the strange lady, spoke to you of your sister first!” I +cried. + +“The lady asked me, after she had been in a little time, whether really +this house belonged to Madame de Lastaola. She had been so sweet and +kind and condescending that I did not mind humiliating my spirit before +such a good Christian. I told her that I didn’t know how the poor sinner +in her mad blindness called herself, but that this house had been given +to me truly enough by my sister. She raised her eyebrows at that but she +looked at me at the same time so kindly, as much as to say, ‘Don’t trust +much to that, my dear girl,’ that I couldn’t help taking up her hand, +soft as down, and kissing it. She took it away pretty quick but she was +not offended. But she only said, ‘That’s very generous on your sister’s +part,’ in a way that made me run cold all over. I suppose all the world +knows our Rita for a shameless girl. It was then that the lady took up +those glasses on a long gold handle and looked at me through them till I +felt very much abashed. She said to me, ‘There is nothing to be unhappy +about. Madame de Lastaola is a very remarkable person who has done many +surprising things. She is not to be judged like other people and as far +as I know she has never wronged a single human being. . . .’ That put +heart into me, I can tell you; and the lady told me then not to disturb +her son. She would wait till he woke up. She knew he was a bad sleeper. +I said to her: ‘Why, I can hear the dear sweet gentleman this moment +having his bath in the fencing-room,’ and I took her into the studio. +They are there now and they are going to have their lunch together at +twelve o’clock.” + +“Why on earth didn’t you tell me at first that the lady was Mrs. Blunt?” + +“Didn’t I? I thought I did,” she said innocently. I felt a sudden +desire to get out of that house, to fly from the reinforced Blunt element +which was to me so oppressive. + +“I want to get up and dress, Mademoiselle Therese,” I said. + +She gave a slight start and without looking at me again glided out of the +room, the many folds of her brown skirt remaining undisturbed as she +moved. + +I looked at my watch; it was ten o’clock. Therese had been late with my +coffee. The delay was clearly caused by the unexpected arrival of Mr. +Blunt’s mother, which might or might not have been expected by her son. +The existence of those Blunts made me feel uncomfortable in a peculiar +way as though they had been the denizens of another planet with a subtly +different point of view and something in the intelligence which was bound +to remain unknown to me. It caused in me a feeling of inferiority which +I intensely disliked. This did not arise from the actual fact that those +people originated in another continent. I had met Americans before. And +the Blunts were Americans. But so little! That was the trouble. +Captain Blunt might have been a Frenchman as far as languages, tones, and +manners went. But you could not have mistaken him for one. . . . Why? +You couldn’t tell. It was something indefinite. It occurred to me while +I was towelling hard my hair, face, and the back of my neck, that I could +not meet J. K. Blunt on equal terms in any relation of life except +perhaps arms in hand, and in preference with pistols, which are less +intimate, acting at a distance—but arms of some sort. For physically his +life, which could be taken away from him, was exactly like mine, held on +the same terms and of the same vanishing quality. + +I would have smiled at my absurdity if all, even the most intimate, +vestige of gaiety had not been crushed out of my heart by the intolerable +weight of my love for Rita. It crushed, it overshadowed, too, it was +immense. If there were any smiles in the world (which I didn’t believe) +I could not have seen them. Love for Rita . . . if it was love, I asked +myself despairingly, while I brushed my hair before a glass. It did not +seem to have any sort of beginning as far as I could remember. A thing +the origin of which you cannot trace cannot be seriously considered. It +is an illusion. Or perhaps mine was a physical state, some sort of +disease akin to melancholia which is a form of insanity? The only +moments of relief I could remember were when she and I would start +squabbling like two passionate infants in a nursery, over anything under +heaven, over a phrase, a word sometimes, in the great light of the glass +rotunda, disregarding the quiet entrances and exits of the ever-active +Rose, in great bursts of voices and peals of laughter. . . . + +I felt tears come into my eyes at the memory of her laughter, the true +memory of the senses almost more penetrating than the reality itself. It +haunted me. All that appertained to her haunted me with the same awful +intimacy, her whole form in the familiar pose, her very substance in its +colour and texture, her eyes, her lips, the gleam of her teeth, the tawny +mist of her hair, the smoothness of her forehead, the faint scent that +she used, the very shape, feel, and warmth of her high-heeled slipper +that would sometimes in the heat of the discussion drop on the floor with +a crash, and which I would (always in the heat of the discussion) pick up +and toss back on the couch without ceasing to argue. And besides being +haunted by what was Rita on earth I was haunted also by her waywardness, +her gentleness and her flame, by that which the high gods called Rita +when speaking of her amongst themselves. Oh, yes, certainly I was +haunted by her but so was her sister Therese—who was crazy. It proved +nothing. As to her tears, since I had not caused them, they only aroused +my indignation. To put her head on my shoulder, to weep these strange +tears, was nothing short of an outrageous liberty. It was a mere +emotional trick. She would have just as soon leaned her head against the +over-mantel of one of those tall, red granite chimney-pieces in order to +weep comfortably. And then when she had no longer any need of support +she dispensed with it by simply telling me to go away. How convenient! +The request had sounded pathetic, almost sacredly so, but then it might +have been the exhibition of the coolest possible impudence. With her one +could not tell. Sorrow, indifference, tears, smiles, all with her seemed +to have a hidden meaning. Nothing could be trusted. . . Heavens! Am I +as crazy as Therese I asked myself with a passing chill of fear, while +occupied in equalizing the ends of my neck-tie. + +I felt suddenly that “this sort of thing” would kill me. The definition +of the cause was vague, but the thought itself was no mere morbid +artificiality of sentiment but a genuine conviction. “That sort of +thing” was what I would have to die from. It wouldn’t be from the +innumerable doubts. Any sort of certitude would be also deadly. It +wouldn’t be from a stab—a kiss would kill me as surely. It would not be +from a frown or from any particular word or any particular act—but from +having to bear them all, together and in succession—from having to live +with “that sort of thing.” About the time I finished with my neck-tie I +had done with life too. I absolutely did not care because I couldn’t +tell whether, mentally and physically, from the roots of my hair to the +soles of my feet—whether I was more weary or unhappy. + +And now my toilet was finished, my occupation was gone. An immense +distress descended upon me. It has been observed that the routine of +daily life, that arbitrary system of trifles, is a great moral support. +But my toilet was finished, I had nothing more to do of those things +consecrated by usage and which leave you no option. The exercise of any +kind of volition by a man whose consciousness is reduced to the sensation +that he is being killed by “that sort of thing” cannot be anything but +mere trifling with death, an insincere pose before himself. I wasn’t +capable of it. It was then that I discovered that being killed by “that +sort of thing,” I mean the absolute conviction of it, was, so to speak, +nothing in itself. The horrible part was the waiting. That was the +cruelty, the tragedy, the bitterness of it. “Why the devil don’t I drop +dead now?” I asked myself peevishly, taking a clean handkerchief out of +the drawer and stuffing it in my pocket. + +This was absolutely the last thing, the last ceremony of an imperative +rite. I was abandoned to myself now and it was terrible. Generally I +used to go out, walk down to the port, take a look at the craft I loved +with a sentiment that was extremely complex, being mixed up with the +image of a woman; perhaps go on board, not because there was anything for +me to do there but just for nothing, for happiness, simply as a man will +sit contented in the companionship of the beloved object. For lunch I +had the choice of two places, one Bohemian, the other select, even +aristocratic, where I had still my reserved table in the _petit salon_, +up the white staircase. In both places I had friends who treated my +erratic appearances with discretion, in one case tinged with respect, in +the other with a certain amused tolerance. I owed this tolerance to the +most careless, the most confirmed of those Bohemians (his beard had +streaks of grey amongst its many other tints) who, once bringing his +heavy hand down on my shoulder, took my defence against the charge of +being disloyal and even foreign to that milieu of earnest visions taking +beautiful and revolutionary shapes in the smoke of pipes, in the jingle +of glasses. + +“That fellow (_ce garçon_) is a primitive nature, but he may be an artist +in a sense. He has broken away from his conventions. He is trying to +put a special vibration and his own notion of colour into his life; and +perhaps even to give it a modelling according to his own ideas. And for +all you know he may be on the track of a masterpiece; but observe: if it +happens to be one nobody will see it. It can be only for himself. And +even he won’t be able to see it in its completeness except on his +death-bed. There is something fine in that.” + +I had blushed with pleasure; such fine ideas had never entered my head. +But there was something fine. . . . How far all this seemed! How mute +and how still! What a phantom he was, that man with a beard of at least +seven tones of brown. And those shades of the other kind such as +Baptiste with the shaven diplomatic face, the _maître d’hôtel_ in charge +of the _petit salon_, taking my hat and stick from me with a deferential +remark: “Monsieur is not very often seen nowadays.” And those other +well-groomed heads raised and nodding at my passage—“_Bonjour_.” +“_Bonjour_”—following me with interested eyes; these young X.s and Z.s, +low-toned, markedly discreet, lounging up to my table on their way out +with murmurs: “Are you well?”—“Will one see you anywhere this +evening?”—not from curiosity, God forbid, but just from friendliness; and +passing on almost without waiting for an answer. What had I to do with +them, this elegant dust, these moulds of provincial fashion? + +I also often lunched with Doña Rita without invitation. But that was now +unthinkable. What had I to do with a woman who allowed somebody else to +make her cry and then with an amazing lack of good feeling did her +offensive weeping on my shoulder? Obviously I could have nothing to do +with her. My five minutes’ meditation in the middle of the bedroom came +to an end without even a sigh. The dead don’t sigh, and for all +practical purposes I was that, except for the final consummation, the +growing cold, the _rigor mortis_—that blessed state! With measured steps +I crossed the landing to my sitting-room. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +The windows of that room gave out on the street of the Consuls which as +usual was silent. And the house itself below me and above me was +soundless, perfectly still. In general the house was quiet, dumbly +quiet, without resonances of any sort, something like what one would +imagine the interior of a convent would be. I suppose it was very +solidly built. Yet that morning I missed in the stillness that feeling +of security and peace which ought to have been associated with it. It +is, I believe, generally admitted that the dead are glad to be at rest. +But I wasn’t at rest. What was wrong with that silence? There was +something incongruous in that peace. What was it that had got into that +stillness? Suddenly I remembered: the mother of Captain Blunt. + +Why had she come all the way from Paris? And why should I bother my head +about it? H’m—the Blunt atmosphere, the reinforced Blunt vibration +stealing through the walls, through the thick walls and the almost more +solid stillness. Nothing to me, of course—the movements of Mme. Blunt, +_mère_. It was maternal affection which had brought her south by either +the evening or morning Rapide, to take anxious stock of the ravages of +that insomnia. Very good thing, insomnia, for a cavalry officer +perpetually on outpost duty, a real godsend, so to speak; but on leave a +truly devilish condition to be in. + +The above sequence of thoughts was entirely unsympathetic and it was +followed by a feeling of satisfaction that I, at any rate, was not +suffering from insomnia. I could always sleep in the end. In the end. +Escape into a nightmare. Wouldn’t he revel in that if he could! But +that wasn’t for him. He had to toss about open-eyed all night and get up +weary, weary. But oh, wasn’t I weary, too, waiting for a sleep without +dreams. + +I heard the door behind me open. I had been standing with my face to the +window and, I declare, not knowing what I was looking at across the +road—the Desert of Sahara or a wall of bricks, a landscape of rivers and +forests or only the Consulate of Paraguay. But I had been thinking, +apparently, of Mr. Blunt with such intensity that when I saw him enter +the room it didn’t really make much difference. When I turned about the +door behind him was already shut. He advanced towards me, correct, +supple, hollow-eyed, and smiling; and as to his costume ready to go out +except for the old shooting jacket which he must have affectioned +particularly, for he never lost any time in getting into it at every +opportunity. Its material was some tweed mixture; it had gone +inconceivably shabby, it was shrunk from old age, it was ragged at the +elbows; but any one could see at a glance that it had been made in London +by a celebrated tailor, by a distinguished specialist. Blunt came +towards me in all the elegance of his slimness and affirming in every +line of his face and body, in the correct set of his shoulders and the +careless freedom of his movements, the superiority, the inexpressible +superiority, the unconscious, the unmarked, the not-to-be-described, and +even not-to-be-caught, superiority of the naturally born and the +perfectly finished man of the world, over the simple young man. He was +smiling, easy, correct, perfectly delightful, fit to kill. + +He had come to ask me, if I had no other engagement, to lunch with him +and his mother in about an hour’s time. He did it in a most _dégagé_ +tone. His mother had given him a surprise. The completest . . . The +foundation of his mother’s psychology was her delightful unexpectedness. +She could never let things be (this in a peculiar tone which he checked +at once) and he really would take it very kindly of me if I came to break +the tête-à-tête for a while (that is if I had no other engagement. Flash +of teeth). His mother was exquisitely and tenderly absurd. She had +taken it into her head that his health was endangered in some way. And +when she took anything into her head . . . Perhaps I might find something +to say which would reassure her. His mother had two long conversations +with Mills on his passage through Paris and had heard of me (I knew how +that thick man could speak of people, he interjected ambiguously) and his +mother, with an insatiable curiosity for anything that was rare (filially +humorous accent here and a softer flash of teeth), was very anxious to +have me presented to her (courteous intonation, but no teeth). He hoped +I wouldn’t mind if she treated me a little as an “interesting young man.” +His mother had never got over her seventeenth year, and the manner of the +spoilt beauty of at least three counties at the back of the Carolinas. +That again got overlaid by the _sans-façon_ of a _grande dame_ of the +Second Empire. + +I accepted the invitation with a worldly grin and a perfectly just +intonation, because I really didn’t care what I did. I only wondered +vaguely why that fellow required all the air in the room for himself. +There did not seem enough left to go down my throat. I didn’t say that I +would come with pleasure or that I would be delighted, but I said that I +would come. He seemed to forget his tongue in his head, put his hands in +his pockets and moved about vaguely. “I am a little nervous this +morning,” he said in French, stopping short and looking me straight in +the eyes. His own were deep sunk, dark, fatal. I asked with some +malice, that no one could have detected in my intonation, “How’s that +sleeplessness?” + +He muttered through his teeth, “_Mal_. _Je ne dors plus_.” He moved off +to stand at the window with his back to the room. I sat down on a sofa +that was there and put my feet up, and silence took possession of the +room. + +“Isn’t this street ridiculous?” said Blunt suddenly, and crossing the +room rapidly waved his hand to me, “_A bientôt donc_,” and was gone. He +had seared himself into my mind. I did not understand him nor his mother +then; which made them more impressive; but I have discovered since that +those two figures required no mystery to make them memorable. Of course +it isn’t every day that one meets a mother that lives by her wits and a +son that lives by his sword, but there was a perfect finish about their +ambiguous personalities which is not to be met twice in a life-time. I +shall never forget that grey dress with ample skirts and long corsage yet +with infinite style, the ancient as if ghostly beauty of outlines, the +black lace, the silver hair, the harmonious, restrained movements of +those white, soft hands like the hands of a queen—or an abbess; and in +the general fresh effect of her person the brilliant eyes like two stars +with the calm reposeful way they had of moving on and off one, as if +nothing in the world had the right to veil itself before their once +sovereign beauty. Captain Blunt with smiling formality introduced me by +name, adding with a certain relaxation of the formal tone the comment: +“The Monsieur George! whose fame you tell me has reached even Paris.” +Mrs. Blunt’s reception of me, glance, tones, even to the attitude of the +admirably corseted figure, was most friendly, approaching the limit of +half-familiarity. I had the feeling that I was beholding in her a +captured ideal. No common experience! But I didn’t care. It was very +lucky perhaps for me that in a way I was like a very sick man who has yet +preserved all his lucidity. I was not even wondering to myself at what +on earth I was doing there. She breathed out: “_Comme c’est +romantique_,” at large to the dusty studio as it were; then pointing to a +chair at her right hand, and bending slightly towards me she said: + +“I have heard this name murmured by pretty lips in more than one royalist +salon.” + +I didn’t say anything to that ingratiating speech. I had only an odd +thought that she could not have had such a figure, nothing like it, when +she was seventeen and wore snowy muslin dresses on the family plantation +in South Carolina, in pre-abolition days. + +“You won’t mind, I am sure, if an old woman whose heart is still young +elects to call you by it,” she declared. + +“Certainly, Madame. It will be more romantic,” I assented with a +respectful bow. + +She dropped a calm: “Yes—there is nothing like romance while one is +young. So I will call you Monsieur George,” she paused and then added, +“I could never get old,” in a matter-of-fact final tone as one would +remark, “I could never learn to swim,” and I had the presence of mind to +say in a tone to match, “_C’est évident_, Madame.” It was evident. She +couldn’t get old; and across the table her thirty-year-old son who +couldn’t get sleep sat listening with courteous detachment and the +narrowest possible line of white underlining his silky black moustache. + +“Your services are immensely appreciated,” she said with an amusing touch +of importance as of a great official lady. “Immensely appreciated by +people in a position to understand the great significance of the Carlist +movement in the South. There it has to combat anarchism, too. I who +have lived through the Commune . . .” + +Therese came in with a dish, and for the rest of the lunch the +conversation so well begun drifted amongst the most appalling inanities +of the religious-royalist-legitimist order. The ears of all the Bourbons +in the world must have been burning. Mrs. Blunt seemed to have come into +personal contact with a good many of them and the marvellous insipidity +of her recollections was astonishing to my inexperience. I looked at her +from time to time thinking: She has seen slavery, she has seen the +Commune, she knows two continents, she has seen a civil war, the glory of +the Second Empire, the horrors of two sieges; she has been in contact +with marked personalities, with great events, she has lived on her +wealth, on her personality, and there she is with her plumage unruffled, +as glossy as ever, unable to get old:—a sort of Phoenix free from the +slightest signs of ashes and dust, all complacent amongst those inanities +as if there had been nothing else in the world. In my youthful haste I +asked myself what sort of airy soul she had. + +At last Therese put a dish of fruit on the table, a small collection of +oranges, raisins, and nuts. No doubt she had bought that lot very cheap +and it did not look at all inviting. Captain Blunt jumped up. “My +mother can’t stand tobacco smoke. Will you keep her company, _mon cher_, +while I take a turn with a cigar in that ridiculous garden. The brougham +from the hotel will be here very soon.” + +He left us in the white flash of an apologetic grin. Almost directly he +reappeared, visible from head to foot through the glass side of the +studio, pacing up and down the central path of that “ridiculous” garden: +for its elegance and its air of good breeding the most remarkable figure +that I have ever seen before or since. He had changed his coat. Madame +Blunt _mère_ lowered the long-handled glasses through which she had been +contemplating him with an appraising, absorbed expression which had +nothing maternal in it. But what she said to me was: + +“You understand my anxieties while he is campaigning with the King.” + +She had spoken in French and she had used the expression “_mes transes_” +but for all the rest, intonation, bearing, solemnity, she might have been +referring to one of the Bourbons. I am sure that not a single one of +them looked half as aristocratic as her son. + +“I understand perfectly, Madame. But then that life is so romantic.” + +“Hundreds of young men belonging to a certain sphere are doing that,” she +said very distinctly, “only their case is different. They have their +positions, their families to go back to; but we are different. We are +exiles, except of course for the ideals, the kindred spirit, the +friendships of old standing we have in France. Should my son come out +unscathed he has no one but me and I have no one but him. I have to +think of his life. Mr. Mills (what a distinguished mind that is!) has +reassured me as to my son’s health. But he sleeps very badly, doesn’t +he?” + +I murmured something affirmative in a doubtful tone and she remarked +quaintly, with a certain curtness, “It’s so unnecessary, this worry! The +unfortunate position of an exile has its advantages. At a certain height +of social position (wealth has got nothing to do with it, we have been +ruined in a most righteous cause), at a certain established height one +can disregard narrow prejudices. You see examples in the aristocracies +of all the countries. A chivalrous young American may offer his life for +a remote ideal which yet may belong to his familial tradition. We, in +our great country, have every sort of tradition. But a young man of good +connections and distinguished relations must settle down some day, +dispose of his life.” + +“No doubt, Madame,” I said, raising my eyes to the figure +outside—“_Américain_, _Catholique et gentilhomme_”—walking up and down +the path with a cigar which he was not smoking. “For myself, I don’t +know anything about those necessities. I have broken away for ever from +those things.” + +“Yes, Mr. Mills talked to me about you. What a golden heart that is. +His sympathies are infinite.” + +I thought suddenly of Mills pronouncing on Mme. Blunt, whatever his text +on me might have been: “She lives by her wits.” Was she exercising her +wits on me for some purpose of her own? And I observed coldly: + +“I really know your son so very little.” + +“Oh, _voyons_,” she protested. “I am aware that you are very much +younger, but the similitudes of opinions, origins and perhaps at bottom, +faintly, of character, of chivalrous devotion—no, you must be able to +understand him in a measure. He is infinitely scrupulous and recklessly +brave.” + +I listened deferentially to the end yet with every nerve in my body +tingling in hostile response to the Blunt vibration, which seemed to have +got into my very hair. + +“I am convinced of it, Madame. I have even heard of your son’s bravery. +It’s extremely natural in a man who, in his own words, ‘lives by his +sword.’” + +She suddenly departed from her almost inhuman perfection, betrayed +“nerves” like a common mortal, of course very slightly, but in her it +meant more than a blaze of fury from a vessel of inferior clay. Her +admirable little foot, marvellously shod in a black shoe, tapped the +floor irritably. But even in that display there was something +exquisitely delicate. The very anger in her voice was silvery, as it +were, and more like the petulance of a seventeen-year-old beauty. + +“What nonsense! A Blunt doesn’t hire himself.” + +“Some princely families,” I said, “were founded by men who have done that +very thing. The great Condottieri, you know.” + +It was in an almost tempestuous tone that she made me observe that we +were not living in the fifteenth century. She gave me also to understand +with some spirit that there was no question here of founding a family. +Her son was very far from being the first of the name. His importance +lay rather in being the last of a race which had totally perished, she +added in a completely drawing-room tone, “in our Civil War.” + +She had mastered her irritation and through the glass side of the room +sent a wistful smile to his address, but I noticed the yet unextinguished +anger in her eyes full of fire under her beautiful white eyebrows. For +she was growing old! Oh, yes, she was growing old, and secretly weary, +and perhaps desperate. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Without caring much about it I was conscious of sudden illumination. I +said to myself confidently that these two people had been quarrelling all +the morning. I had discovered the secret of my invitation to that lunch. +They did not care to face the strain of some obstinate, inconclusive +discussion for fear, maybe, of it ending in a serious quarrel. And so +they had agreed that I should be fetched downstairs to create a +diversion. I cannot say I felt annoyed. I didn’t care. My perspicacity +did not please me either. I wished they had left me alone—but nothing +mattered. They must have been in their superiority accustomed to make +use of people, without compunction. From necessity, too. She +especially. She lived by her wits. The silence had grown so marked that +I had at last to raise my eyes; and the first thing I observed was that +Captain Blunt was no longer to be seen in the garden. Must have gone +indoors. Would rejoin us in a moment. Then I would leave mother and son +to themselves. + +The next thing I noticed was that a great mellowness had descended upon +the mother of the last of his race. But these terms, irritation, +mellowness, appeared gross when applied to her. It is impossible to give +an idea of the refinement and subtlety of all her transformations. She +smiled faintly at me. + +“But all this is beside the point. The real point is that my son, like +all fine natures, is a being of strange contradictions which the trials +of life have not yet reconciled in him. With me it is a little +different. The trials fell mainly to my share—and of course I have lived +longer. And then men are much more complex than women, much more +difficult, too. And you, Monsieur George? Are you complex, with +unexpected resistances and difficulties in your _être intime_—your inner +self? I wonder now . . .” + +The Blunt atmosphere seemed to vibrate all over my skin. I disregarded +the symptom. “Madame,” I said, “I have never tried to find out what sort +of being I am.” + +“Ah, that’s very wrong. We ought to reflect on what manner of beings we +are. Of course we are all sinners. My John is a sinner like the +others,” she declared further, with a sort of proud tenderness as though +our common lot must have felt honoured and to a certain extent purified +by this condescending recognition. + +“You are too young perhaps as yet . . . But as to my John,” she broke +off, leaning her elbow on the table and supporting her head on her old, +impeccably shaped, white fore-arm emerging from a lot of precious, still +older, lace trimming the short sleeve. “The trouble is that he suffers +from a profound discord between the necessary reactions to life and even +the impulses of nature and the lofty idealism of his feelings; I may say, +of his principles. I assure you that he won’t even let his heart speak +uncontradicted.” + +I am sure I don’t know what particular devil looks after the associations +of memory, and I can’t even imagine the shock which it would have been +for Mrs. Blunt to learn that the words issuing from her lips had awakened +in me the visual perception of a dark-skinned, hard-driven lady’s maid +with tarnished eyes; even of the tireless Rose handing me my hat while +breathing out the enigmatic words: “Madame should listen to her heart.” +A wave from the atmosphere of another house rolled in, overwhelming and +fiery, seductive and cruel, through the Blunt vibration, bursting through +it as through tissue paper and filling my heart with sweet murmurs and +distracting images, till it seemed to break, leaving an empty stillness +in my breast. + +After that for a long time I heard Mme. Blunt _mère_ talking with extreme +fluency and I even caught the individual words, but I could not in the +revulsion of my feelings get hold of the sense. She talked apparently of +life in general, of its difficulties, moral and physical, of its +surprising turns, of its unexpected contacts, of the choice and rare +personalities that drift on it as if on the sea; of the distinction that +letters and art gave to it, the nobility and consolations there are in +aesthetics, of the privileges they confer on individuals and (this was +the first connected statement I caught) that Mills agreed with her in the +general point of view as to the inner worth of individualities and in the +particular instance of it on which she had opened to him her innermost +heart. Mills had a universal mind. His sympathy was universal, too. He +had that large comprehension—oh, not cynical, not at all cynical, in fact +rather tender—which was found in its perfection only in some rare, very +rare Englishmen. The dear creature was romantic, too. Of course he was +reserved in his speech but she understood Mills perfectly. Mills +apparently liked me very much. + +It was time for me to say something. There was a challenge in the +reposeful black eyes resting upon my face. I murmured that I was very +glad to hear it. She waited a little, then uttered meaningly, “Mr. Mills +is a little bit uneasy about you.” + +“It’s very good of him,” I said. And indeed I thought that it was very +good of him, though I did ask myself vaguely in my dulled brain why he +should be uneasy. + +Somehow it didn’t occur to me to ask Mrs. Blunt. Whether she had +expected me to do so or not I don’t know but after a while she changed +the pose she had kept so long and folded her wonderfully preserved white +arms. She looked a perfect picture in silver and grey, with touches of +black here and there. Still I said nothing more in my dull misery. She +waited a little longer, then she woke me up with a crash. It was as if +the house had fallen, and yet she had only asked me: + +“I believe you are received on very friendly terms by Madame de Lastaola +on account of your common exertions for the cause. Very good friends, +are you not?” + +“You mean Rita,” I said stupidly, but I felt stupid, like a man who wakes +up only to be hit on the head. + +“Oh, Rita,” she repeated with unexpected acidity, which somehow made me +feel guilty of an incredible breach of good manners. “H’m, Rita. . . . +Oh, well, let it be Rita—for the present. Though why she should be +deprived of her name in conversation about her, really I don’t +understand. Unless a very special intimacy . . .” + +She was distinctly annoyed. I said sulkily, “It isn’t her name.” + +“It is her choice, I understand, which seems almost a better title to +recognition on the part of the world. It didn’t strike you so before? +Well, it seems to me that choice has got more right to be respected than +heredity or law. Moreover, Mme. de Lastaola,” she continued in an +insinuating voice, “that most rare and fascinating young woman is, as a +friend like you cannot deny, outside legality altogether. Even in that +she is an exceptional creature. For she is exceptional—you agree?” + +I had gone dumb, I could only stare at her. + +“Oh, I see, you agree. No friend of hers could deny.” + +“Madame,” I burst out, “I don’t know where a question of friendship comes +in here with a person whom you yourself call so exceptional. I really +don’t know how she looks upon me. Our intercourse is of course very +close and confidential. Is that also talked about in Paris?” + +“Not at all, not in the least,” said Mrs. Blunt, easy, equable, but with +her calm, sparkling eyes holding me in angry subjection. “Nothing of the +sort is being talked about. The references to Mme. de Lastaola are in a +very different tone, I can assure you, thanks to her discretion in +remaining here. And, I must say, thanks to the discreet efforts of her +friends. I am also a friend of Mme. de Lastaola, you must know. Oh, no, +I have never spoken to her in my life and have seen her only twice, I +believe. I wrote to her though, that I admit. She or rather the image +of her has come into my life, into that part of it where art and letters +reign undisputed like a sort of religion of beauty to which I have been +faithful through all the vicissitudes of my existence. Yes, I did write +to her and I have been preoccupied with her for a long time. It arose +from a picture, from two pictures and also from a phrase pronounced by a +man, who in the science of life and in the perception of aesthetic truth +had no equal in the world of culture. He said that there was something +in her of the women of all time. I suppose he meant the inheritance of +all the gifts that make up an irresistible fascination—a great +personality. Such women are not born often. Most of them lack +opportunities. They never develop. They end obscurely. Here and there +one survives to make her mark even in history. . . . And even that is not +a very enviable fate. They are at another pole from the so-called +dangerous women who are merely coquettes. A coquette has got to work for +her success. The others have nothing to do but simply exist. You +perceive the view I take of the difference?” + +I perceived the view. I said to myself that nothing in the world could +be more aristocratic. This was the slave-owning woman who had never +worked, even if she had been reduced to live by her wits. She was a +wonderful old woman. She made me dumb. She held me fascinated by the +well-bred attitude, something sublimely aloof in her air of wisdom. + +I just simply let myself go admiring her as though I had been a mere +slave of aesthetics: the perfect grace, the amazing poise of that +venerable head, the assured as if royal—yes, royal even flow of the +voice. . . . But what was it she was talking about now? These were no +longer considerations about fatal women. She was talking about her son +again. My interest turned into mere bitterness of contemptuous +attention. For I couldn’t withhold it though I tried to let the stuff go +by. Educated in the most aristocratic college in Paris . . . at eighteen +. . . call of duty . . . with General Lee to the very last cruel minute +. . . after that catastrophe end of the world—return to France—to old +friendships, infinite kindness—but a life hollow, without occupation. . . +Then 1870—and chivalrous response to adopted country’s call and again +emptiness, the chafing of a proud spirit without aim and handicapped not +exactly by poverty but by lack of fortune. And she, the mother, having +to look on at this wasting of a most accomplished man, of a most +chivalrous nature that practically had no future before it. + +“You understand me well, Monsieur George. A nature like this! It is the +most refined cruelty of fate to look at. I don’t know whether I suffered +more in times of war or in times of peace. You understand?” + +I bowed my head in silence. What I couldn’t understand was why he +delayed so long in joining us again. Unless he had had enough of his +mother? I thought without any great resentment that I was being +victimized; but then it occurred to me that the cause of his absence was +quite simple. I was familiar enough with his habits by this time to know +that he often managed to snatch an hour’s sleep or so during the day. He +had gone and thrown himself on his bed. + +“I admire him exceedingly,” Mrs. Blunt was saying in a tone which was not +at all maternal. “His distinction, his fastidiousness, the earnest +warmth of his heart. I know him well. I assure you that I would never +have dared to suggest,” she continued with an extraordinary haughtiness +of attitude and tone that aroused my attention, “I would never have dared +to put before him my views of the extraordinary merits and the uncertain +fate of the exquisite woman of whom we speak, if I had not been certain +that, partly by my fault, I admit, his attention has been attracted to +her and his—his—his heart engaged.” + +It was as if some one had poured a bucket of cold water over my head. I +woke up with a great shudder to the acute perception of my own feelings +and of that aristocrat’s incredible purpose. How it could have +germinated, grown and matured in that exclusive soil was inconceivable. +She had been inciting her son all the time to undertake wonderful salvage +work by annexing the heiress of Henry Allègre—the woman and the fortune. + +There must have been an amazed incredulity in my eyes, to which her own +responded by an unflinching black brilliance which suddenly seemed to +develop a scorching quality even to the point of making me feel extremely +thirsty all of a sudden. For a time my tongue literally clove to the +roof of my mouth. I don’t know whether it was an illusion but it seemed +to me that Mrs. Blunt had nodded at me twice as if to say: “You are +right, that’s so.” I made an effort to speak but it was very poor. If +she did hear me it was because she must have been on the watch for the +faintest sound. + +“His heart engaged. Like two hundred others, or two thousand, all +around,” I mumbled. + +“Altogether different. And it’s no disparagement to a woman surely. Of +course her great fortune protects her in a certain measure.” + +“Does it?” I faltered out and that time I really doubt whether she heard +me. Her aspect in my eyes had changed. Her purpose being disclosed, her +well-bred ease appeared sinister, her aristocratic repose a treacherous +device, her venerable graciousness a mask of unbounded contempt for all +human beings whatever. She was a terrible old woman with those straight, +white wolfish eye-brows. How blind I had been! Those eyebrows alone +ought to have been enough to give her away. Yet they were as beautifully +smooth as her voice when she admitted: “That protection naturally is only +partial. There is the danger of her own self, poor girl. She requires +guidance.” + +I marvelled at the villainy of my tone as I spoke, but it was only +assumed. + +“I don’t think she has done badly for herself, so far,” I forced myself +to say. “I suppose you know that she began life by herding the village +goats.” + +In the course of that phrase I noticed her wince just the least bit. Oh, +yes, she winced; but at the end of it she smiled easily. + +“No, I didn’t know. So she told you her story! Oh, well, I suppose you +are very good friends. A goatherd—really? In the fairy tale I believe +the girl that marries the prince is-—what is it?—-a _gardeuse d’oies_. And +what a thing to drag out against a woman. One might just as soon +reproach any of them for coming unclothed into the world. They all do, +you know. And then they become—what you will discover when you have +lived longer, Monsieur George—for the most part futile creatures, without +any sense of truth and beauty, drudges of all sorts, or else dolls to +dress. In a word—ordinary.” + +The implication of scorn in her tranquil manner was immense. It seemed +to condemn all those that were not born in the Blunt connection. It was +the perfect pride of Republican aristocracy, which has no gradations and +knows no limit, and, as if created by the grace of God, thinks it +ennobles everything it touches: people, ideas, even passing tastes! + +“How many of them,” pursued Mrs. Blunt, “have had the good fortune, the +leisure to develop their intelligence and their beauty in aesthetic +conditions as this charming woman had? Not one in a million. Perhaps +not one in an age.” + +“The heiress of Henry Allègre,” I murmured. + +“Precisely. But John wouldn’t be marrying the heiress of Henry Allègre.” + +It was the first time that the frank word, the clear idea, came into the +conversation and it made me feel ill with a sort of enraged faintness. + +“No,” I said. “It would be Mme. de Lastaola then.” + +“Mme. la Comtesse de Lastaola as soon as she likes after the success of +this war.” + +“And you believe in its success?” + +“Do you?” + +“Not for a moment,” I declared, and was surprised to see her look +pleased. + +She was an aristocrat to the tips of her fingers; she really didn’t care +for anybody. She had passed through the Empire, she had lived through a +siege, had rubbed shoulders with the Commune, had seen everything, no +doubt, of what men are capable in the pursuit of their desires or in the +extremity of their distress, for love, for money, and even for honour; +and in her precarious connection with the very highest spheres she had +kept her own honourability unscathed while she had lost all her +prejudices. She was above all that. Perhaps “the world” was the only +thing that could have the slightest checking influence; but when I +ventured to say something about the view it might take of such an +alliance she looked at me for a moment with visible surprise. + +“My dear Monsieur George, I have lived in the great world all my life. +It’s the best that there is, but that’s only because there is nothing +merely decent anywhere. It will accept anything, forgive anything, +forget anything in a few days. And after all who will he be marrying? A +charming, clever, rich and altogether uncommon woman. What did the world +hear of her? Nothing. The little it saw of her was in the Bois for a +few hours every year, riding by the side of a man of unique distinction +and of exclusive tastes, devoted to the cult of aesthetic impressions; a +man of whom, as far as aspect, manner, and behaviour goes, she might have +been the daughter. I have seen her myself. I went on purpose. I was +immensely struck. I was even moved. Yes. She might have been—except +for that something radiant in her that marked her apart from all the +other daughters of men. The few remarkable personalities that count in +society and who were admitted into Henry Allègre’s Pavilion treated her +with punctilious reserve. I know that, I have made enquiries. I know +she sat there amongst them like a marvellous child, and for the rest what +can they say about her? That when abandoned to herself by the death of +Allègre she has made a mistake? I think that any woman ought to be +allowed one mistake in her life. The worst they can say of her is that +she discovered it, that she had sent away a man in love directly she +found out that his love was not worth having; that she had told him to go +and look for his crown, and that, after dismissing him she had remained +generously faithful to his cause, in her person and fortune. And this, +you will allow, is rather uncommon upon the whole.” + +“You make her out very magnificent,” I murmured, looking down upon the +floor. + +“Isn’t she?” exclaimed the aristocratic Mrs. Blunt, with an almost +youthful ingenuousness, and in those black eyes which looked at me so +calmly there was a flash of the Southern beauty, still naïve and +romantic, as if altogether untouched by experience. “I don’t think there +is a single grain of vulgarity in all her enchanting person. Neither is +there in my son. I suppose you won’t deny that he is uncommon.” She +paused. + +“Absolutely,” I said in a perfectly conventional tone, I was now on my +mettle that she should not discover what there was humanly common in my +nature. She took my answer at her own valuation and was satisfied. + +“They can’t fail to understand each other on the very highest level of +idealistic perceptions. Can you imagine my John thrown away on some +enamoured white goose out of a stuffy old salon? Why, she couldn’t even +begin to understand what he feels or what he needs.” + +“Yes,” I said impenetrably, “he is not easy to understand.” + +“I have reason to think,” she said with a suppressed smile, “that he has +a certain power over women. Of course I don’t know anything about his +intimate life but a whisper or two have reached me, like that, floating +in the air, and I could hardly suppose that he would find an exceptional +resistance in that quarter of all others. But I should like to know the +exact degree.” + +I disregarded an annoying tendency to feel dizzy that came over me and +was very careful in managing my voice. + +“May I ask, Madame, why you are telling me all this?” + +“For two reasons,” she condescended graciously. “First of all because +Mr. Mills told me that you were much more mature than one would expect. +In fact you look much younger than I was prepared for.” + +“Madame,” I interrupted her, “I may have a certain capacity for action +and for responsibility, but as to the regions into which this very +unexpected conversation has taken me I am a great novice. They are +outside my interest. I have had no experience.” + +“Don’t make yourself out so hopeless,” she said in a spoilt-beauty tone. +“You have your intuitions. At any rate you have a pair of eyes. You are +everlastingly over there, so I understand. Surely you have seen how far +they are . . .” + +I interrupted again and this time bitterly, but always in a tone of +polite enquiry: + +“You think her facile, Madame?” + +She looked offended. “I think her most fastidious. It is my son who is +in question here.” + +And I understood then that she looked on her son as irresistible. For my +part I was just beginning to think that it would be impossible for me to +wait for his return. I figured him to myself lying dressed on his bed +sleeping like a stone. But there was no denying that the mother was +holding me with an awful, tortured interest. Twice Therese had opened +the door, had put her small head in and drawn it back like a tortoise. +But for some time I had lost the sense of us two being quite alone in the +studio. I had perceived the familiar dummy in its corner but it lay now +on the floor as if Therese had knocked it down angrily with a broom for a +heathen idol. It lay there prostrate, handless, without its head, +pathetic, like the mangled victim of a crime. + +“John is fastidious, too,” began Mrs. Blunt again. “Of course you +wouldn’t suppose anything vulgar in his resistances to a very real +sentiment. One has got to understand his psychology. He can’t leave +himself in peace. He is exquisitely absurd.” + +I recognized the phrase. Mother and son talked of each other in +identical terms. But perhaps “exquisitely absurd” was the Blunt family +saying? There are such sayings in families and generally there is some +truth in them. Perhaps this old woman was simply absurd. She continued: + +“We had a most painful discussion all this morning. He is angry with me +for suggesting the very thing his whole being desires. I don’t feel +guilty. It’s he who is tormenting himself with his infinite +scrupulosity.” + +“Ah,” I said, looking at the mangled dummy like the model of some +atrocious murder. “Ah, the fortune. But that can be left alone.” + +“What nonsense! How is it possible? It isn’t contained in a bag, you +can’t throw it into the sea. And moreover, it isn’t her fault. I am +astonished that you should have thought of that vulgar hypocrisy. No, it +isn’t her fortune that cheeks my son; it’s something much more subtle. +Not so much her history as her position. He is absurd. It isn’t what +has happened in her life. It’s her very freedom that makes him torment +himself and her, too—as far as I can understand.” + +I suppressed a groan and said to myself that I must really get away from +there. + +Mrs. Blunt was fairly launched now. + +“For all his superiority he is a man of the world and shares to a certain +extent its current opinions. He has no power over her. She intimidates +him. He wishes he had never set eyes on her. Once or twice this morning +he looked at me as if he could find it in his heart to hate his old +mother. There is no doubt about it—he loves her, Monsieur George. He +loves her, this poor, luckless, perfect _homme du monde_.” + +The silence lasted for some time and then I heard a murmur: “It’s a +matter of the utmost delicacy between two beings so sensitive, so proud. +It has to be managed.” + +I found myself suddenly on my feet and saying with the utmost politeness +that I had to beg her permission to leave her alone as I had an +engagement; but she motioned me simply to sit down—and I sat down again. + +“I told you I had a request to make,” she said. “I have understood from +Mr. Mills that you have been to the West Indies, that you have some +interests there.” + +I was astounded. “Interests! I certainly have been there,” I said, “but +. . .” + +She caught me up. “Then why not go there again? I am speaking to you +frankly because . . .” + +“But, Madame, I am engaged in this affair with Doña Rita, even if I had +any interests elsewhere. I won’t tell you about the importance of my +work. I didn’t suspect it but you brought the news of it to me, and so I +needn’t point it out to you.” + +And now we were frankly arguing with each other. + +“But where will it lead you in the end? You have all your life before +you, all your plans, prospects, perhaps dreams, at any rate your own +tastes and all your life-time before you. And would you sacrifice all +this to—the Pretender? A mere figure for the front page of illustrated +papers.”’ + +“I never think of him,” I said curtly, “but I suppose Doña Rita’s +feelings, instincts, call it what you like—or only her chivalrous +fidelity to her mistakes—” + +“Doña Rita’s presence here in this town, her withdrawal from the possible +complications of her life in Paris has produced an excellent effect on my +son. It simplifies infinite difficulties, I mean moral as well as +material. It’s extremely to the advantage of her dignity, of her future, +and of her peace of mind. But I am thinking, of course, mainly of my +son. He is most exacting.” + +I felt extremely sick at heart. “And so I am to drop everything and +vanish,” I said, rising from my chair again. And this time Mrs. Blunt +got up, too, with a lofty and inflexible manner but she didn’t dismiss me +yet. + +“Yes,” she said distinctly. “All this, my dear Monsieur George, is such +an accident. What have you got to do here? You look to me like somebody +who would find adventures wherever he went as interesting and perhaps +less dangerous than this one.” + +She slurred over the word dangerous but I picked it up. + +“What do you know of its dangers, Madame, may I ask?” But she did not +condescend to hear. + +“And then you, too, have your chivalrous feelings,” she went on, +unswerving, distinct, and tranquil. “You are not absurd. But my son is. +He would shut her up in a convent for a time if he could.” + +“He isn’t the only one,” I muttered. + +“Indeed!” she was startled, then lower, “Yes. That woman must be the +centre of all sorts of passions,” she mused audibly. “But what have you +got to do with all this? It’s nothing to you.” + +She waited for me to speak. + +“Exactly, Madame,” I said, “and therefore I don’t see why I should +concern myself in all this one way or another.” + +“No,” she assented with a weary air, “except that you might ask yourself +what is the good of tormenting a man of noble feelings, however absurd. +His Southern blood makes him very violent sometimes. I fear—” And then +for the first time during this conversation, for the first time since I +left Doña Rita the day before, for the first time I laughed. + +“Do you mean to hint, Madame, that Southern gentlemen are dead shots? I +am aware of that—from novels.” + +I spoke looking her straight in the face and I made that exquisite, +aristocratic old woman positively blink by my directness. There was a +faint flush on her delicate old cheeks but she didn’t move a muscle of +her face. I made her a most respectful bow and went out of the studio. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Through the great arched window of the hall I saw the hotel brougham +waiting at the door. On passing the door of the front room (it was +originally meant for a drawing-room but a bed for Blunt was put in there) +I banged with my fist on the panel and shouted: “I am obliged to go out. +Your mother’s carriage is at the door.” I didn’t think he was asleep. +My view now was that he was aware beforehand of the subject of the +conversation, and if so I did not wish to appear as if I had slunk away +from him after the interview. But I didn’t stop—I didn’t want to see +him—and before he could answer I was already half way up the stairs +running noiselessly up the thick carpet which also covered the floor of +the landing. Therefore opening the door of my sitting-room quickly I +caught by surprise the person who was in there watching the street half +concealed by the window curtain. It was a woman. A totally unexpected +woman. A perfect stranger. She came away quickly to meet me. Her face +was veiled and she was dressed in a dark walking costume and a very +simple form of hat. She murmured: “I had an idea that Monsieur was in +the house,” raising a gloved hand to lift her veil. It was Rose and she +gave me a shock. I had never seen her before but with her little black +silk apron and a white cap with ribbons on her head. This outdoor dress +was like a disguise. I asked anxiously: + +“What has happened to Madame?” + +“Nothing. I have a letter,” she murmured, and I saw it appear between +the fingers of her extended hand, in a very white envelope which I tore +open impatiently. It consisted of a few lines only. It began abruptly: + +“If you are gone to sea then I can’t forgive you for not sending the +usual word at the last moment. If you are not gone why don’t you come? +Why did you leave me yesterday? You leave me crying—I who haven’t cried +for years and years, and you haven’t the sense to come back within the +hour, within twenty hours! This conduct is idiotic”—and a sprawling +signature of the four magic letters at the bottom. + +While I was putting the letter in my pocket the girl said in an earnest +undertone: “I don’t like to leave Madame by herself for any length of +time.” + +“How long have you been in my room?” I asked. + +“The time seemed long. I hope Monsieur won’t mind the liberty. I sat +for a little in the hall but then it struck me I might be seen. In fact, +Madame told me not to be seen if I could help it.” + +“Why did she tell you that?” + +“I permitted myself to suggest that to Madame. It might have given a +false impression. Madame is frank and open like the day but it won’t do +with everybody. There are people who would put a wrong construction on +anything. Madame’s sister told me Monsieur was out.” + +“And you didn’t believe her?” + +“_Non_, Monsieur. I have lived with Madame’s sister for nearly a week +when she first came into this house. She wanted me to leave the message, +but I said I would wait a little. Then I sat down in the big porter’s +chair in the hall and after a while, everything being very quiet, I stole +up here. I know the disposition of the apartments. I reckoned Madame’s +sister would think that I got tired of waiting and let myself out.” + +“And you have been amusing yourself watching the street ever since?” + +“The time seemed long,” she answered evasively. “An empty _coupé_ came +to the door about an hour ago and it’s still waiting,” she added, looking +at me inquisitively. + +“It seems strange.” + +“There are some dancing girls staying in the house,” I said negligently. +“Did you leave Madame alone?” + +“There’s the gardener and his wife in the house.” + +“Those people keep at the back. Is Madame alone? That’s what I want to +know.” + +“Monsieur forgets that I have been three hours away; but I assure +Monsieur that here in this town it’s perfectly safe for Madame to be +alone.” + +“And wouldn’t it be anywhere else? It’s the first I hear of it.” + +“In Paris, in our apartments in the hotel, it’s all right, too; but in +the Pavilion, for instance, I wouldn’t leave Madame by herself, not for +half an hour.” + +“What is there in the Pavilion?” I asked. + +“It’s a sort of feeling I have,” she murmured reluctantly . . . “Oh! +There’s that _coupé_ going away.” + +She made a movement towards the window but checked herself. I hadn’t +moved. The rattle of wheels on the cobble-stones died out almost at +once. + +“Will Monsieur write an answer?” Rose suggested after a short silence. + +“Hardly worth while,” I said. “I will be there very soon after you. +Meantime, please tell Madame from me that I am not anxious to see any +more tears. Tell her this just like that, you understand. I will take +the risk of not being received.” + +She dropped her eyes, said: “_Oui_, Monsieur,” and at my suggestion +waited, holding the door of the room half open, till I went downstairs to +see the road clear. + +It was a kind of deaf-and-dumb house. The black-and-white hall was empty +and everything was perfectly still. Blunt himself had no doubt gone away +with his mother in the brougham, but as to the others, the dancing girls, +Therese, or anybody else that its walls may have contained, they might +have been all murdering each other in perfect assurance that the house +would not betray them by indulging in any unseemly murmurs. I emitted a +low whistle which didn’t seem to travel in that peculiar atmosphere more +than two feet away from my lips, but all the same Rose came tripping down +the stairs at once. With just a nod to my whisper: “Take a fiacre,” she +glided out and I shut the door noiselessly behind her. + +The next time I saw her she was opening the door of the house on the +Prado to me, with her cap and the little black silk apron on, and with +that marked personality of her own, which had been concealed so perfectly +in the dowdy walking dress, very much to the fore. + +“I have given Madame the message,” she said in her contained voice, +swinging the door wide open. Then after relieving me of my hat and coat +she announced me with the simple words: “_Voilà_ Monsieur,” and hurried +away. Directly I appeared Doña Rita, away there on the couch, passed the +tips of her fingers over her eyes and holding her hands up palms outwards +on each side of her head, shouted to me down the whole length of the +room: “The dry season has set in.” I glanced at the pink tips of her +fingers perfunctorily and then drew back. She let her hands fall +negligently as if she had no use for them any more and put on a serious +expression. + +“So it seems,” I said, sitting down opposite her. “For how long, I +wonder.” + +“For years and years. One gets so little encouragement. First you bolt +away from my tears, then you send an impertinent message, and then when +you come at last you pretend to behave respectfully, though you don’t +know how to do it. You should sit much nearer the edge of the chair and +hold yourself very stiff, and make it quite clear that you don’t know +what to do with your hands.” + +All this in a fascinating voice with a ripple of badinage that seemed to +play upon the sober surface of her thoughts. Then seeing that I did not +answer she altered the note a bit. + +“_Amigo_ George,” she said, “I take the trouble to send for you and here +I am before you, talking to you and you say nothing.” + +“What am I to say?” + +“How can I tell? You might say a thousand things. You might, for +instance, tell me that you were sorry for my tears.” + +“I might also tell you a thousand lies. What do I know about your tears? +I am not a susceptible idiot. It all depends upon the cause. There are +tears of quiet happiness. Peeling onions also will bring tears.” + +“Oh, you are not susceptible,” she flew out at me. “But you are an idiot +all the same.” + +“Is it to tell me this that you have written to me to come?” I asked with +a certain animation. + +“Yes. And if you had as much sense as the talking parrot I owned once +you would have read between the lines that all I wanted you here for was +to tell you what I think of you.” + +“Well, tell me what you think of me.” + +“I would in a moment if I could be half as impertinent as you are.” + +“What unexpected modesty,” I said. + +“These, I suppose, are your sea manners.” + +“I wouldn’t put up with half that nonsense from anybody at sea. Don’t +you remember you told me yourself to go away? What was I to do?” + +“How stupid you are. I don’t mean that you pretend. You really are. Do +you understand what I say? I will spell it for you. S-t-u-p-i-d. Ah, +now I feel better. Oh, _amigo_ George, my dear fellow-conspirator for +the king—the king. Such a king! _Vive le Roi_! Come, why don’t you +shout _Vive le Roi_, too?” + +“I am not your parrot,” I said. + +“No, he never sulked. He was a charming, good-mannered bird, accustomed +to the best society, whereas you, I suppose, are nothing but a heartless +vagabond like myself.” + +“I daresay you are, but I suppose nobody had the insolence to tell you +that to your face.” + +“Well, very nearly. It was what it amounted to. I am not stupid. There +is no need to spell out simple words for me. It just came out. Don Juan +struggled desperately to keep the truth in. It was most pathetic. And +yet he couldn’t help himself. He talked very much like a parrot.” + +“Of the best society,” I suggested. + +“Yes, the most honourable of parrots. I don’t like parrot-talk. It +sounds so uncanny. Had I lived in the Middle Ages I am certain I would +have believed that a talking bird must be possessed by the devil. I am +sure Therese would believe that now. My own sister! She would cross +herself many times and simply quake with terror.” + +“But you were not terrified,” I said. “May I ask when that interesting +communication took place?” + +“Yesterday, just before you blundered in here of all days in the year. I +was sorry for him.” + +“Why tell me this? I couldn’t help noticing it. I regretted I hadn’t my +umbrella with me.” + +“Those unforgiven tears! Oh, you simple soul! Don’t you know that +people never cry for anybody but themselves? . . . _Amigo_ George, tell +me—what are we doing in this world?” + +“Do you mean all the people, everybody?” + +“No, only people like you and me. Simple people, in this world which is +eaten up with charlatanism of all sorts so that even we, the simple, +don’t know any longer how to trust each other.” + +“Don’t we? Then why don’t you trust him? You are dying to do so, don’t +you know?” + +She dropped her chin on her breast and from under her straight eyebrows +the deep blue eyes remained fixed on me, impersonally, as if without +thought. + +“What have you been doing since you left me yesterday?” she asked. + +“The first thing I remember I abused your sister horribly this morning.” + +“And how did she take it?” + +“Like a warm shower in spring. She drank it all in and unfolded her +petals.” + +“What poetical expressions he uses! That girl is more perverted than one +would think possible, considering what she is and whence she came. It’s +true that I, too, come from the same spot.” + +“She is slightly crazy. I am a great favourite with her. I don’t say +this to boast.” + +“It must be very comforting.” + +“Yes, it has cheered me immensely. Then after a morning of delightful +musings on one thing and another I went to lunch with a charming lady and +spent most of the afternoon talking with her.” + +Doña Rita raised her head. + +“A lady! Women seem such mysterious creatures to me. I don’t know them. +Did you abuse her? Did she—how did you say that?—unfold her petals, too? +Was she really and truly . . .?” + +“She is simply perfection in her way and the conversation was by no means +banal. I fancy that if your late parrot had heard it, he would have +fallen off his perch. For after all, in that Allègre Pavilion, my dear +Rita, you were but a crowd of glorified _bourgeois_.” + +She was beautifully animated now. In her motionless blue eyes like +melted sapphires, around those red lips that almost without moving could +breathe enchanting sounds into the world, there was a play of light, that +mysterious ripple of gaiety that seemed always to run and faintly quiver +under her skin even in her gravest moods; just as in her rare moments of +gaiety its warmth and radiance seemed to come to one through infinite +sadness, like the sunlight of our life hiding the invincible darkness in +which the universe must work out its impenetrable destiny. + +“Now I think of it! . . . Perhaps that’s the reason I never could feel +perfectly serious while they were demolishing the world about my ears. I +fancy now that I could tell beforehand what each of them was going to +say. They were repeating the same words over and over again, those great +clever men, very much like parrots who also seem to know what they say. +That doesn’t apply to the master of the house, who never talked much. He +sat there mostly silent and looming up three sizes bigger than any of +them.” + +“The ruler of the aviary,” I muttered viciously. + +“It annoys you that I should talk of that time?” she asked in a tender +voice. “Well, I won’t, except for once to say that you must not make a +mistake: in that aviary he was the man. I know because he used to talk +to me afterwards sometimes. Strange! For six years he seemed to carry +all the world and me with it in his hand. . . . ” + +“He dominates you yet,” I shouted. + +She shook her head innocently as a child would do. + +“No, no. You brought him into the conversation yourself. You think of +him much more than I do.” Her voice drooped sadly to a hopeless note. +“I hardly ever do. He is not the sort of person to merely flit through +one’s mind and so I have no time. Look. I had eleven letters this +morning and there were also five telegrams before midday, which have +tangled up everything. I am quite frightened.” + +And she explained to me that one of them—the long one on the top of the +pile, on the table over there—seemed to contain ugly inferences directed +at herself in a menacing way. She begged me to read it and see what I +could make of it. + +I knew enough of the general situation to see at a glance that she had +misunderstood it thoroughly and even amazingly. I proved it to her very +quickly. But her mistake was so ingenious in its wrongheadedness and +arose so obviously from the distraction of an acute mind, that I couldn’t +help looking at her admiringly. + +“Rita,” I said, “you are a marvellous idiot.” + +“Am I? Imbecile,” she retorted with an enchanting smile of relief. “But +perhaps it only seems so to you in contrast with the lady so perfect in +her way. What is her way?” + +“Her way, I should say, lies somewhere between her sixtieth and +seventieth year, and I have walked tête-à-tête with her for some little +distance this afternoon.” + +“Heavens,” she whispered, thunderstruck. “And meantime I had the son +here. He arrived about five minutes after Rose left with that note for +you,” she went on in a tone of awe. “As a matter of fact, Rose saw him +across the street but she thought she had better go on to you.” + +“I am furious with myself for not having guessed that much,” I said +bitterly. “I suppose you got him out of the house about five minutes +after you heard I was coming here. Rose ought to have turned back when +she saw him on his way to cheer your solitude. That girl is stupid after +all, though she has got a certain amount of low cunning which no doubt is +very useful at times.” + +“I forbid you to talk like this about Rose. I won’t have it. Rose is +not to be abused before me.” + +“I only mean to say that she failed in this instance to read your mind, +that’s all.” + +“This is, without exception, the most unintelligent thing you have said +ever since I have known you. You may understand a lot about running +contraband and about the minds of a certain class of people, but as to +Rose’s mind let me tell you that in comparison with hers yours is +absolutely infantile, my adventurous friend. It would be contemptible if +it weren’t so—what shall I call it?—babyish. You ought to be slapped and +put to bed.” There was an extraordinary earnestness in her tone and when +she ceased I listened yet to the seductive inflexions of her voice, that +no matter in what mood she spoke seemed only fit for tenderness and love. +And I thought suddenly of Azzolati being ordered to take himself off from +her presence for ever, in that voice the very anger of which seemed to +twine itself gently round one’s heart. No wonder the poor wretch could +not forget the scene and couldn’t restrain his tears on the plain of +Rambouillet. My moods of resentment against Rita, hot as they were, had +no more duration than a blaze of straw. So I only said: + +“Much _you_ know about the management of children.” The corners of her +lips stirred quaintly; her animosity, especially when provoked by a +personal attack upon herself, was always tinged by a sort of wistful +humour of the most disarming kind. + +“Come, _amigo_ George, let us leave poor Rose alone. You had better tell +me what you heard from the lips of the charming old lady. Perfection, +isn’t she? I have never seen her in my life, though she says she has +seen me several times. But she has written to me on three separate +occasions and every time I answered her as if I were writing to a queen. +_Amigo_ George, how does one write to a queen? How should a goatherd +that could have been mistress of a king, how should she write to an old +queen from very far away; from over the sea?” + +“I will ask you as I have asked the old queen: why do you tell me all +this, Doña Rita?” + +“To discover what’s in your mind,” she said, a little impatiently. + +“If you don’t know that yet!” I exclaimed under my breath. + +“No, not in your mind. Can any one ever tell what is in a man’s mind? +But I see you won’t tell.” + +“What’s the good? You have written to her before, I understand. Do you +think of continuing the correspondence?” + +“Who knows?” she said in a profound tone. “She is the only woman that +ever wrote to me. I returned her three letters to her with my last +answer, explaining humbly that I preferred her to burn them herself. And +I thought that would be the end of it. But an occasion may still arise.” + +“Oh, if an occasion arises,” I said, trying to control my rage, “you may +be able to begin your letter by the words ‘_Chère Maman_.’” + +The cigarette box, which she had taken up without removing her eyes from +me, flew out of her hand and opening in mid-air scattered cigarettes for +quite a surprising distance all over the room. I got up at once and +wandered off picking them up industriously. Doña Rita’s voice behind me +said indifferently: + +“Don’t trouble, I will ring for Rose.” + +“No need,” I growled, without turning my head, “I can find my hat in the +hall by myself, after I’ve finished picking up . . . ” + +“Bear!” + +I returned with the box and placed it on the divan near her. She sat +cross-legged, leaning back on her arms, in the blue shimmer of her +embroidered robe and with the tawny halo of her unruly hair about her +face which she raised to mine with an air of resignation. + +“George, my friend,” she said, “we have no manners.” + +“You would never have made a career at court, Doña Rita,” I observed. +“You are too impulsive.” + +“This is not bad manners, that’s sheer insolence. This has happened to +you before. If it happens again, as I can’t be expected to wrestle with +a savage and desperate smuggler single-handed, I will go upstairs and +lock myself in my room till you leave the house. Why did you say this to +me?” + +“Oh, just for nothing, out of a full heart.” + +“If your heart is full of things like that, then my dear friend, you had +better take it out and give it to the crows. No! you said that for the +pleasure of appearing terrible. And you see you are not terrible at all, +you are rather amusing. Go on, continue to be amusing. Tell me +something of what you heard from the lips of that aristocratic old lady +who thinks that all men are equal and entitled to the pursuit of +happiness.” + +“I hardly remember now. I heard something about the unworthiness of +certain white geese out of stuffy drawing-rooms. It sounds mad, but the +lady knows exactly what she wants. I also heard your praises sung. I +sat there like a fool not knowing what to say.” + +“Why? You might have joined in the singing.” + +“I didn’t feel in the humour, because, don’t you see, I had been +incidentally given to understand that I was an insignificant and +superfluous person who had better get out of the way of serious people.” + +“Ah, _par exemple_!” + +“In a sense, you know, it was flattering; but for the moment it made me +feel as if I had been offered a pot of mustard to sniff.” + +She nodded with an amused air of understanding and I could see that she +was interested. “Anything more?” she asked, with a flash of radiant +eagerness in all her person and bending slightly forward towards me. + +“Oh, it’s hardly worth mentioning. It was a sort of threat wrapped up, I +believe, in genuine anxiety as to what might happen to my youthful +insignificance. If I hadn’t been rather on the alert just then I +wouldn’t even have perceived the meaning. But really an allusion to ‘hot +Southern blood’ I could have only one meaning. Of course I laughed at +it, but only ‘_pour l’honneur_’ and to show I understood perfectly. In +reality it left me completely indifferent.” + +Doña Rita looked very serious for a minute. + +“Indifferent to the whole conversation?” + +I looked at her angrily. + +“To the whole . . . You see I got up rather out of sorts this morning. +Unrefreshed, you know. As if tired of life.” + +The liquid blue in her eyes remained directed at me without any +expression except that of its usual mysterious immobility, but all her +face took on a sad and thoughtful cast. Then as if she had made up her +mind under the pressure of necessity: + +“Listen, _amigo_,” she said, “I have suffered domination and it didn’t +crush me because I have been strong enough to live with it; I have known +caprice, you may call it folly if you like, and it left me unharmed +because I was great enough not to be captured by anything that wasn’t +really worthy of me. My dear, it went down like a house of cards before +my breath. There is something in me that will not be dazzled by any sort +of prestige in this world, worthy or unworthy. I am telling you this +because you are younger than myself.” + +“If you want me to say that there is nothing petty or mean about you, +Doña Rita, then I do say it.” + +She nodded at me with an air of accepting the rendered justice and went +on with the utmost simplicity. + +“And what is it that is coming to me now with all the airs of virtue? +All the lawful conventions are coming to me, all the glamours of +respectability! And nobody can say that I have made as much as the +slightest little sign to them. Not so much as lifting my little finger. +I suppose you know that?” + +“I don’t know. I do not doubt your sincerity in anything you say. I am +ready to believe. You are not one of those who have to work.” + +“Have to work—what do you mean?” + +“It’s a phrase I have heard. What I meant was that it isn’t necessary +for you to make any signs.” + +She seemed to meditate over this for a while. + +“Don’t be so sure of that,” she said, with a flash of mischief, which +made her voice sound more melancholy than before. “I am not so sure +myself,” she continued with a curious, vanishing, intonation of despair. +“I don’t know the truth about myself because I never had an opportunity +to compare myself to anything in the world. I have been offered mock +adulation, treated with mock reserve or with mock devotion, I have been +fawned upon with an appalling earnestness of purpose, I can tell you; but +these later honours, my dear, came to me in the shape of a very loyal and +very scrupulous gentleman. For he is all that. And as a matter of fact +I was touched.” + +“I know. Even to tears,” I said provokingly. But she wasn’t provoked, +she only shook her head in negation (which was absurd) and pursued the +trend of her spoken thoughts. + +“That was yesterday,” she said. “And yesterday he was extremely correct +and very full of extreme self-esteem which expressed itself in the +exaggerated delicacy with which he talked. But I know him in all his +moods. I have known him even playful. I didn’t listen to him. I was +thinking of something else. Of things that were neither correct nor +playful and that had to be looked at steadily with all the best that was +in me. And that was why, in the end—I cried—yesterday.” + +“I saw it yesterday and I had the weakness of being moved by those tears +for a time.” + +“If you want to make me cry again I warn you you won’t succeed.” + +“No, I know. He has been here to-day and the dry season has set in.” + +“Yes, he has been here. I assure you it was perfectly unexpected. +Yesterday he was railing at the world at large, at me who certainly have +not made it, at himself and even at his mother. All this rather in +parrot language, in the words of tradition and morality as understood by +the members of that exclusive club to which he belongs. And yet when I +thought that all this, those poor hackneyed words, expressed a sincere +passion I could have found in my heart to be sorry for him. But he ended +by telling me that one couldn’t believe a single word I said, or +something like that. You were here then, you heard it yourself.” + +“And it cut you to the quick,” I said. “It made you depart from your +dignity to the point of weeping on any shoulder that happened to be +there. And considering that it was some more parrot talk after all (men +have been saying that sort of thing to women from the beginning of the +world) this sensibility seems to me childish.” + +“What perspicacity,” she observed, with an indulgent, mocking smile, then +changed her tone. “Therefore he wasn’t expected to-day when he turned +up, whereas you, who were expected, remained subject to the charms of +conversation in that studio. It never occurred to you . . . did it? No! +What had become of your perspicacity?” + +“I tell you I was weary of life,” I said in a passion. + +She had another faint smile of a fugitive and unrelated kind as if she +had been thinking of far-off things, then roused herself to grave +animation. + +“He came in full of smiling playfulness. How well I know that mood! +Such self-command has its beauty; but it’s no great help for a man with +such fateful eyes. I could see he was moved in his correct, restrained +way, and in his own way, too, he tried to move me with something that +would be very simple. He told me that ever since we became friends, we +two, he had not an hour of continuous sleep, unless perhaps when coming +back dead-tired from outpost duty, and that he longed to get back to it +and yet hadn’t the courage to tear himself away from here. He was as +simple as that. He’s a _très galant homme_ of absolute probity, even +with himself. I said to him: The trouble is, Don Juan, that it isn’t +love but mistrust that keeps you in torment. I might have said jealousy, +but I didn’t like to use that word. A parrot would have added that I had +given him no right to be jealous. But I am no parrot. I recognized the +rights of his passion which I could very well see. He is jealous. He is +not jealous of my past or of the future; but he is jealously mistrustful +of me, of what I am, of my very soul. He believes in a soul in the same +way Therese does, as something that can be touched with grace or go to +perdition; and he doesn’t want to be damned with me before his own +judgment seat. He is a most noble and loyal gentleman, but I have my own +Basque peasant soul and don’t want to think that every time he goes away +from my feet—yes, _mon cher_, on this carpet, look for the marks of +scorching—that he goes away feeling tempted to brush the dust off his +moral sleeve. That! Never!” + +With brusque movements she took a cigarette out of the box, held it in +her fingers for a moment, then dropped it unconsciously. + +“And then, I don’t love him,” she uttered slowly as if speaking to +herself and at the same time watching the very quality of that thought. +“I never did. At first he fascinated me with his fatal aspect and his +cold society smiles. But I have looked into those eyes too often. There +are too many disdains in this aristocratic republican without a home. +His fate may be cruel, but it will always be commonplace. While he sat +there trying in a worldly tone to explain to me the problems, the +scruples, of his suffering honour, I could see right into his heart and I +was sorry for him. I was sorry enough for him to feel that if he had +suddenly taken me by the throat and strangled me slowly, _avec délices_, +I could forgive him while I choked. How correct he was! But bitterness +against me peeped out of every second phrase. At last I raised my hand +and said to him, ‘Enough.’ I believe he was shocked by my plebeian +abruptness but he was too polite to show it. His conventions will always +stand in the way of his nature. I told him that everything that had been +said and done during the last seven or eight months was inexplicable +unless on the assumption that he was in love with me,—and yet in +everything there was an implication that he couldn’t forgive me my very +existence. I did ask him whether he didn’t think that it was absurd on +his part . . . ” + +“Didn’t you say that it was exquisitely absurd?” I asked. + +“Exquisitely! . . . ” Doña Rita was surprised at my question. “No. Why +should I say that?” + +“It would have reconciled him to your abruptness. It’s their family +expression. It would have come with a familiar sound and would have been +less offensive.” + +“Offensive,” Doña Rita repeated earnestly. “I don’t think he was +offended; he suffered in another way, but I didn’t care for that. It was +I that had become offended in the end, without spite, you understand, but +past bearing. I didn’t spare him. I told him plainly that to want a +woman formed in mind and body, mistress of herself, free in her choice, +independent in her thoughts; to love her apparently for what she is and +at the same time to demand from her the candour and the innocence that +could be only a shocking pretence; to know her such as life had made her +and at the same time to despise her secretly for every touch with which +her life had fashioned her—that was neither generous nor high minded; it +was positively frantic. He got up and went away to lean against the +mantelpiece, there, on his elbow and with his head in his hand. You have +no idea of the charm and the distinction of his pose. I couldn’t help +admiring him: the expression, the grace, the fatal suggestion of his +immobility. Oh, yes, I am sensible to aesthetic impressions, I have been +educated to believe that there is a soul in them.” + +With that enigmatic, under the eyebrows glance fixed on me she laughed +her deep contralto laugh without mirth but also without irony, and +profoundly moving by the mere purity of the sound. + +“I suspect he was never so disgusted and appalled in his life. His +self-command is the most admirable worldly thing I have ever seen. What +made it beautiful was that one could feel in it a tragic suggestion as in +a great work of art.” + +She paused with an inscrutable smile that a great painter might have put +on the face of some symbolic figure for the speculation and wonder of +many generations. I said: + +“I always thought that love for you could work great wonders. And now I +am certain.” + +“Are you trying to be ironic?” she said sadly and very much as a child +might have spoken. + +“I don’t know,” I answered in a tone of the same simplicity. “I find it +very difficult to be generous.” + +“I, too,” she said with a sort of funny eagerness. “I didn’t treat him +very generously. Only I didn’t say much more. I found I didn’t care +what I said—and it would have been like throwing insults at a beautiful +composition. He was well inspired not to move. It has spared him some +disagreeable truths and perhaps I would even have said more than the +truth. I am not fair. I am no more fair than other people. I would +have been harsh. My very admiration was making me more angry. It’s +ridiculous to say of a man got up in correct tailor clothes, but there +was a funereal grace in his attitude so that he might have been +reproduced in marble on a monument to some woman in one of those +atrocious Campo Santos: the bourgeois conception of an aristocratic +mourning lover. When I came to that conclusion I became glad that I was +angry or else I would have laughed right out before him.” + +“I have heard a woman say once, a woman of the people—do you hear me, +Doña Rita?—therefore deserving your attention, that one should never +laugh at love.” + +“My dear,” she said gently, “I have been taught to laugh at most things +by a man who never laughed himself; but it’s true that he never spoke of +love to me, love as a subject that is. So perhaps . . . But why?” + +“Because (but maybe that old woman was crazy), because, she said, there +was death in the mockery of love.” + +Doña Rita moved slightly her beautiful shoulders and went on: + +“I am glad, then, I didn’t laugh. And I am also glad I said nothing +more. I was feeling so little generous that if I had known something +then of his mother’s allusion to ‘white geese’ I would have advised him +to get one of them and lead it away on a beautiful blue ribbon. Mrs. +Blunt was wrong, you know, to be so scornful. A white goose is exactly +what her son wants. But look how badly the world is arranged. Such +white birds cannot be got for nothing and he has not enough money even to +buy a ribbon. Who knows! Maybe it was this which gave that tragic +quality to his pose by the mantelpiece over there. Yes, that was it. +Though no doubt I didn’t see it then. As he didn’t offer to move after I +had done speaking I became quite unaffectedly sorry and advised him very +gently to dismiss me from his mind definitely. He moved forward then and +said to me in his usual voice and with his usual smile that it would have +been excellent advice but unfortunately I was one of those women who +can’t be dismissed at will. And as I shook my head he insisted rather +darkly: ‘Oh, yes, Doña Rita, it is so. Cherish no illusions about that +fact.’ It sounded so threatening that in my surprise I didn’t even +acknowledge his parting bow. He went out of that false situation like a +wounded man retreating after a fight. No, I have nothing to reproach +myself with. I did nothing. I led him into nothing. Whatever illusions +have passed through my head I kept my distance, and he was so loyal to +what he seemed to think the redeeming proprieties of the situation that +he has gone from me for good without so much as kissing the tips of my +fingers. He must have felt like a man who had betrayed himself for +nothing. It’s horrible. It’s the fault of that enormous fortune of +mine, and I wish with all my heart that I could give it to him; for he +couldn’t help his hatred of the thing that is: and as to his love, which +is just as real, well—could I have rushed away from him to shut myself up +in a convent? Could I? After all I have a right to my share of +daylight.” + + + +CHAPTER V + + +I took my eyes from her face and became aware that dusk was beginning to +steal into the room. How strange it seemed. Except for the glazed +rotunda part its long walls, divided into narrow panels separated by an +order of flat pilasters, presented, depicted on a black background and in +vivid colours, slender women with butterfly wings and lean youths with +narrow birds’ wings. The effect was supposed to be Pompeiian and Rita +and I had often laughed at the delirious fancy of some enriched +shopkeeper. But still it was a display of fancy, a sign of grace; but at +that moment these figures appeared to me weird and intrusive and +strangely alive in their attenuated grace of unearthly beings concealing +a power to see and hear. + +Without words, without gestures, Doña Rita was heard again. “It may have +been as near coming to pass as this.” She showed me the breadth of her +little finger nail. “Yes, as near as that. Why? How? Just like that, +for nothing. Because it had come up. Because a wild notion had entered +a practical old woman’s head. Yes. And the best of it is that I have +nothing to complain of. Had I surrendered I would have been perfectly +safe with these two. It is they or rather he who couldn’t trust me, or +rather that something which I express, which I stand for. Mills would +never tell me what it was. Perhaps he didn’t know exactly himself. He +said it was something like genius. My genius! Oh, I am not conscious of +it, believe me, I am not conscious of it. But if I were I wouldn’t pluck +it out and cast it away. I am ashamed of nothing, of nothing! Don’t be +stupid enough to think that I have the slightest regret. There is no +regret. First of all because I am I—and then because . . . My dear, +believe me, I have had a horrible time of it myself lately.” + +This seemed to be the last word. Outwardly quiet, all the time, it was +only then that she became composed enough to light an enormous cigarette +of the same pattern as those made specially for the king—_por el Rey_! +After a time, tipping the ash into the bowl on her left hand, she asked +me in a friendly, almost tender, tone: + +“What are you thinking of, _amigo_?” + +“I was thinking of your immense generosity. You want to give a crown to +one man, a fortune to another. That is very fine. But I suppose there +is a limit to your generosity somewhere.” + +“I don’t see why there should be any limit—to fine intentions! Yes, one +would like to pay ransom and be done with it all.” + +“That’s the feeling of a captive; and yet somehow I can’t think of you as +ever having been anybody’s captive.” + +“You do display some wonderful insight sometimes. My dear, I begin to +suspect that men are rather conceited about their powers. They think +they dominate us. Even exceptional men will think that; men too great +for mere vanity, men like Henry Allègre for instance, who by his +consistent and serene detachment was certainly fit to dominate all sorts +of people. Yet for the most part they can only do it because women +choose more or less consciously to let them do so. Henry Allègre, if any +man, might have been certain of his own power; and yet, look: I was a +chit of a girl, I was sitting with a book where I had no business to be, +in his own garden, when he suddenly came upon me, an ignorant girl of +seventeen, a most uninviting creature with a tousled head, in an old +black frock and shabby boots. I could have run away. I was perfectly +capable of it. But I stayed looking up at him and—in the end it was HE +who went away and it was I who stayed.” + +“Consciously?” I murmured. + +“Consciously? You may just as well ask my shadow that lay so still by me +on the young grass in that morning sunshine. I never knew before how +still I could keep. It wasn’t the stillness of terror. I remained, +knowing perfectly well that if I ran he was not the man to run after me. +I remember perfectly his deep-toned, politely indifferent ‘_Restez +donc_.’ He was mistaken. Already then I hadn’t the slightest intention +to move. And if you ask me again how far conscious all this was the +nearest answer I can make you is this: that I remained on purpose, but I +didn’t know for what purpose I remained. Really, that couldn’t be +expected. . . . Why do you sigh like this? Would you have preferred me +to be idiotically innocent or abominably wise?” + +“These are not the questions that trouble me,” I said. “If I sighed it +is because I am weary.” + +“And getting stiff, too, I should say, in this Pompeiian armchair. You +had better get out of it and sit on this couch as you always used to do. +That, at any rate, is not Pompeiian. You have been growing of late +extremely formal, I don’t know why. If it is a pose then for goodness’ +sake drop it. Are you going to model yourself on Captain Blunt? You +couldn’t, you know. You are too young.” + +“I don’t want to model myself on anybody,” I said. “And anyway Blunt is +too romantic; and, moreover, he has been and is yet in love with you—a +thing that requires some style, an attitude, something of which I am +altogether incapable.” + +“You know it isn’t so stupid, this what you have just said. Yes, there +is something in this.” + +“I am not stupid,” I protested, without much heat. + +“Oh, yes, you are. You don’t know the world enough to judge. You don’t +know how wise men can be. Owls are nothing to them. Why do you try to +look like an owl? There are thousands and thousands of them waiting for +me outside the door: the staring, hissing beasts. You don’t know what a +relief of mental ease and intimacy you have been to me in the frankness +of gestures and speeches and thoughts, sane or insane, that we have been +throwing at each other. I have known nothing of this in my life but with +you. There had always been some fear, some constraint, lurking in the +background behind everybody, everybody—except you, my friend.” + +“An unmannerly, Arcadian state of affairs. I am glad you like it. +Perhaps it’s because you were intelligent enough to perceive that I was +not in love with you in any sort of style.” + +“No, you were always your own self, unwise and reckless and with +something in it kindred to mine, if I may say so without offence.” + +“You may say anything without offence. But has it never occurred to your +sagacity that I just, simply, loved you?” + +“Just—simply,” she repeated in a wistful tone. + +“You didn’t want to trouble your head about it, is that it?” + +“My poor head. From your tone one might think you yearned to cut it off. +No, my dear, I have made up my mind not to lose my head.” + +“You would be astonished to know how little I care for your mind.” + +“Would I? Come and sit on the couch all the same,” she said after a +moment of hesitation. Then, as I did not move at once, she added with +indifference: “You may sit as far away as you like, it’s big enough, +goodness knows.” + +The light was ebbing slowly out of the rotunda and to my bodily eyes she +was beginning to grow shadowy. I sat down on the couch and for a long +time no word passed between us. We made no movement. We did not even +turn towards each other. All I was conscious of was the softness of the +seat which seemed somehow to cause a relaxation of my stern mood, I won’t +say against my will but without any will on my part. Another thing I was +conscious of, strangely enough, was the enormous brass bowl for cigarette +ends. Quietly, with the least possible action, Doña Rita moved it to the +other side of her motionless person. Slowly, the fantastic women with +butterflies’ wings and the slender-limbed youths with the gorgeous +pinions on their shoulders were vanishing into their black backgrounds +with an effect of silent discretion, leaving us to ourselves. + +I felt suddenly extremely exhausted, absolutely overcome with fatigue +since I had moved; as if to sit on that Pompeiian chair had been a task +almost beyond human strength, a sort of labour that must end in collapse. +I fought against it for a moment and then my resistance gave way. Not +all at once but as if yielding to an irresistible pressure (for I was not +conscious of any irresistible attraction) I found myself with my head +resting, with a weight I felt must be crushing, on Doña Rita’s shoulder +which yet did not give way, did not flinch at all. A faint scent of +violets filled the tragic emptiness of my head and it seemed impossible +to me that I should not cry from sheer weakness. But I remained +dry-eyed. I only felt myself slipping lower and lower and I caught her +round the waist clinging to her not from any intention but purely by +instinct. All that time she hadn’t stirred. There was only the slight +movement of her breathing that showed her to be alive; and with closed +eyes I imagined her to be lost in thought, removed by an incredible +meditation while I clung to her, to an immense distance from the earth. +The distance must have been immense because the silence was so perfect, +the feeling as if of eternal stillness. I had a distinct impression of +being in contact with an infinity that had the slightest possible rise +and fall, was pervaded by a warm, delicate scent of violets and through +which came a hand from somewhere to rest lightly on my head. Presently +my ear caught the faint and regular pulsation of her heart, firm and +quick, infinitely touching in its persistent mystery, disclosing itself +into my very ear—and my felicity became complete. + +It was a dreamlike state combined with a dreamlike sense of insecurity. +Then in that warm and scented infinity, or eternity, in which I rested +lost in bliss but ready for any catastrophe, I heard the distant, hardly +audible, and fit to strike terror into the heart, ringing of a bell. At +this sound the greatness of spaces departed. I felt the world close +about me; the world of darkened walls, of very deep grey dusk against the +panes, and I asked in a pained voice: + +“Why did you ring, Rita?” + +There was a bell rope within reach of her hand. I had not felt her move, +but she said very low: + +“I rang for the lights.” + +“You didn’t want the lights.” + +“It was time,” she whispered secretly. + +Somewhere within the house a door slammed. I got away from her feeling +small and weak as if the best part of me had been torn away and +irretrievably lost. Rose must have been somewhere near the door. + +“It’s abominable,” I murmured to the still, idol-like shadow on the +couch. + +The answer was a hurried, nervous whisper: “I tell you it was time. I +rang because I had no strength to push you away.” + +I suffered a moment of giddiness before the door opened, light streamed +in, and Rose entered, preceding a man in a green baize apron whom I had +never seen, carrying on an enormous tray three Argand lamps fitted into +vases of Pompeiian form. Rose distributed them over the room. In the +flood of soft light the winged youths and the butterfly women reappeared +on the panels, affected, gorgeous, callously unconscious of anything +having happened during their absence. Rose attended to the lamp on the +nearest mantelpiece, then turned about and asked in a confident +undertone. + +“_Monsieur dîne_?” + +I had lost myself with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, but +I heard the words distinctly. I heard also the silence which ensued. I +sat up and took the responsibility of the answer on myself. + +“Impossible. I am going to sea this evening.” + +This was perfectly true only I had totally forgotten it till then. For +the last two days my being was no longer composed of memories but +exclusively of sensations of the most absorbing, disturbing, exhausting +nature. I was like a man who has been buffeted by the sea or by a mob +till he loses all hold on the world in the misery of his helplessness. +But now I was recovering. And naturally the first thing I remembered was +the fact that I was going to sea. + +“You have heard, Rose,” Doña Rita said at last with some impatience. + +The girl waited a moment longer before she said: + +“Oh, yes! There is a man waiting for Monsieur in the hall. A seaman.” + +It could be no one but Dominic. It dawned upon me that since the evening +of our return I had not been near him or the ship, which was completely +unusual, unheard of, and well calculated to startle Dominic. + +“I have seen him before,” continued Rose, “and as he told me he has been +pursuing Monsieur all the afternoon and didn’t like to go away without +seeing Monsieur for a moment, I proposed to him to wait in the hall till +Monsieur was at liberty.” + +I said: “Very well,” and with a sudden resumption of her extremely busy, +not-a-moment-to-lose manner Rose departed from the room. I lingered in +an imaginary world full of tender light, of unheard-of colours, with a +mad riot of flowers and an inconceivable happiness under the sky arched +above its yawning precipices, while a feeling of awe enveloped me like +its own proper atmosphere. But everything vanished at the sound of Doña +Rita’s loud whisper full of boundless dismay, such as to make one’s hair +stir on one’s head. + +“_Mon Dieu_! And what is going to happen now?” + +She got down from the couch and walked to a window. When the lights had +been brought into the room all the panes had turned inky black; for the +night had come and the garden was full of tall bushes and trees screening +off the gas lamps of the main alley of the Prado. Whatever the question +meant she was not likely to see an answer to it outside. But her whisper +had offended me, had hurt something infinitely deep, infinitely subtle +and infinitely clear-eyed in my nature. I said after her from the couch +on which I had remained, “Don’t lose your composure. You will always +have some sort of bell at hand.” + +I saw her shrug her uncovered shoulders impatiently. Her forehead was +against the very blackness of the panes; pulled upward from the +beautiful, strong nape of her neck, the twisted mass of her tawny hair +was held high upon her head by the arrow of gold. + +“You set up for being unforgiving,” she said without anger. + +I sprang to my feet while she turned about and came towards me bravely, +with a wistful smile on her bold, adolescent face. + +“It seems to me,” she went on in a voice like a wave of love itself, +“that one should try to understand before one sets up for being +unforgiving. Forgiveness is a very fine word. It is a fine invocation.” + +“There are other fine words in the language such as fascination, +fidelity, also frivolity; and as for invocations there are plenty of +them, too; for instance: alas, heaven help me.” + +We stood very close together, her narrow eyes were as enigmatic as ever, +but that face, which, like some ideal conception of art, was incapable of +anything like untruth and grimace, expressed by some mysterious means +such a depth of infinite patience that I felt profoundly ashamed of +myself. + +“This thing is beyond words altogether,” I said. “Beyond forgiveness, +beyond forgetting, beyond anger or jealousy. . . . There is nothing +between us two that could make us act together.” + +“Then we must fall back perhaps on something within us, that—you admit +it?—we have in common.” + +“Don’t be childish,” I said. “You give one with a perpetual and intense +freshness feelings and sensations that are as old as the world itself, +and you imagine that your enchantment can be broken off anywhere, at any +time! But it can’t be broken. And forgetfulness, like everything else, +can only come from you. It’s an impossible situation to stand up +against.” + +She listened with slightly parted lips as if to catch some further +resonances. + +“There is a sort of generous ardour about you,” she said, “which I don’t +really understand. No, I don’t know it. Believe me, it is not of myself +I am thinking. And you—you are going out to-night to make another +landing.” + +“Yes, it is a fact that before many hours I will be sailing away from you +to try my luck once more.” + +“Your wonderful luck,” she breathed out. + +“Oh, yes, I am wonderfully lucky. Unless the luck really is yours—in +having found somebody like me, who cares at the same time so much and so +little for what you have at heart.” + +“What time will you be leaving the harbour?” she asked. + +“Some time between midnight and daybreak. Our men may be a little late +in joining, but certainly we will be gone before the first streak of +light.” + +“What freedom!” she murmured enviously. “It’s something I shall never +know. . . .” + +“Freedom!” I protested. “I am a slave to my word. There will be a +siring of carts and mules on a certain part of the coast, and a most +ruffianly lot of men, men you understand, men with wives and children and +sweethearts, who from the very moment they start on a trip risk a bullet +in the head at any moment, but who have a perfect conviction that I will +never fail them. That’s my freedom. I wonder what they would think if +they knew of your existence.” + +“I don’t exist,” she said. + +“That’s easy to say. But I will go as if you didn’t exist—yet only +because you do exist. You exist in me. I don’t know where I end and you +begin. You have got into my heart and into my veins and into my brain.” + +“Take this fancy out and trample it down in the dust,” she said in a tone +of timid entreaty. + +“Heroically,” I suggested with the sarcasm of despair. + +“Well, yes, heroically,” she said; and there passed between us dim +smiles, I have no doubt of the most touching imbecility on earth. We +were standing by then in the middle of the room with its vivid colours on +a black background, with its multitude of winged figures with pale limbs, +with hair like halos or flames, all strangely tense in their strained, +decorative attitudes. Doña Rita made a step towards me, and as I +attempted to seize her hand she flung her arms round my neck. I felt +their strength drawing me towards her and by a sort of blind and +desperate effort I resisted. And all the time she was repeating with +nervous insistence: + +“But it is true that you will go. You will surely. Not because of those +people but because of me. You will go away because you feel you must.” + +With every word urging me to get away, her clasp tightened, she hugged my +head closer to her breast. I submitted, knowing well that I could free +myself by one more effort which it was in my power to make. But before I +made it, in a sort of desperation, I pressed a long kiss into the hollow +of her throat. And lo—there was no need for any effort. With a stifled +cry of surprise her arms fell off me as if she had been shot. I must +have been giddy, and perhaps we both were giddy, but the next thing I +knew there was a good foot of space between us in the peaceful glow of +the ground-glass globes, in the everlasting stillness of the winged +figures. Something in the quality of her exclamation, something utterly +unexpected, something I had never heard before, and also the way she was +looking at me with a sort of incredulous, concentrated attention, +disconcerted me exceedingly. I knew perfectly well what I had done and +yet I felt that I didn’t understand what had happened. I became suddenly +abashed and I muttered that I had better go and dismiss that poor +Dominic. She made no answer, gave no sign. She stood there lost in a +vision—or was it a sensation?—of the most absorbing kind. I hurried out +into the hall, shamefaced, as if I were making my escape while she wasn’t +looking. And yet I felt her looking fixedly at me, with a sort of +stupefaction on her features—in her whole attitude—as though she had +never even heard of such a thing as a kiss in her life. + +A dim lamp (of Pompeiian form) hanging on a long chain left the hall +practically dark. Dominic, advancing towards me from a distant corner, +was but a little more opaque shadow than the others. He had expected me +on board every moment till about three o’clock, but as I didn’t turn up +and gave no sign of life in any other way he started on his hunt. He +sought news of me from the _garçons_ at the various cafés, from the +_cochers de fiacre_ in front of the Exchange, from the tobacconist lady +at the counter of the fashionable _Débit de Tabac_, from the old man who +sold papers outside the _cercle_, and from the flower-girl at the door of +the fashionable restaurant where I had my table. That young woman, whose +business name was Irma, had come on duty about mid-day. She said to +Dominic: “I think I’ve seen all his friends this morning but I haven’t +seen him for a week. What has become of him?” + +“That’s exactly what I want to know,” Dominic replied in a fury and then +went back to the harbour on the chance that I might have called either on +board or at Madame Léonore’s café. + +I expressed to him my surprise that he should fuss about me like an old +hen over a chick. It wasn’t like him at all. And he said that “_en +effet_” it was Madame Léonore who wouldn’t give him any peace. He hoped +I wouldn’t mind, it was best to humour women in little things; and so he +started off again, made straight for the street of the Consuls, was told +there that I wasn’t at home but the woman of the house looked so funny +that he didn’t know what to make of it. Therefore, after some +hesitation, he took the liberty to inquire at this house, too, and being +told that I couldn’t be disturbed, had made up his mind not to go on +board without actually setting his eyes on me and hearing from my own +lips that nothing was changed as to sailing orders. + +“There is nothing changed, Dominic,” I said. + +“No change of any sort?” he insisted, looking very sombre and speaking +gloomily from under his black moustaches in the dim glow of the alabaster +lamp hanging above his head. He peered at me in an extraordinary manner +as if he wanted to make sure that I had all my limbs about me. I asked +him to call for my bag at the other house, on his way to the harbour, and +he departed reassured, not, however, without remarking ironically that +ever since she saw that American cavalier Madame Léonore was not easy in +her mind about me. + +As I stood alone in the hall, without a sound of any sort, Rose appeared +before me. + +“Monsieur will dine after all,” she whispered calmly. + +“My good girl, I am going to sea to-night.” + +“What am I going to do with Madame?” she murmured to herself. “She will +insist on returning to Paris.” + +“Oh, have you heard of it?” + +“I never get more than two hours’ notice,” she said. “But I know how it +will be,” her voice lost its calmness. “I can look after Madame up to a +certain point but I cannot be altogether responsible. There is a +dangerous person who is everlastingly trying to see Madame alone. I have +managed to keep him off several times but there is a beastly old +journalist who is encouraging him in his attempts, and I daren’t even +speak to Madame about it.” + +“What sort of person do you mean?” + +“Why, a man,” she said scornfully. + +I snatched up my coat and hat. + +“Aren’t there dozens of them?” + +“Oh! But this one is dangerous. Madame must have given him a hold on +her in some way. I ought not to talk like this about Madame and I +wouldn’t to anybody but Monsieur. I am always on the watch, but what is +a poor girl to do? . . . Isn’t Monsieur going back to Madame?” + +“No, I am not going back. Not this time.” A mist seemed to fall before +my eyes. I could hardly see the girl standing by the closed door of the +Pempeiian room with extended hand, as if turned to stone. But my voice +was firm enough. “Not this time,” I repeated, and became aware of the +great noise of the wind amongst the trees, with the lashing of a rain +squall against the door. + +“Perhaps some other time,” I added. + +I heard her say twice to herself: “_Mon Dieu_! _Mon_, _Dieu_!” and then +a dismayed: “What can Monsieur expect me to do?” But I had to appear +insensible to her distress and that not altogether because, in fact, I +had no option but to go away. I remember also a distinct wilfulness in +my attitude and something half-contemptuous in my words as I laid my hand +on the knob of the front door. + +“You will tell Madame that I am gone. It will please her. Tell her that +I am gone—heroically.” + +Rose had come up close to me. She met my words by a despairing outward +movement of her hands as though she were giving everything up. + +“I see it clearly now that Madame has no friends,” she declared with such +a force of restrained bitterness that it nearly made me pause. But the +very obscurity of actuating motives drove me on and I stepped out through +the doorway muttering: “Everything is as Madame wishes it.” + +She shot at me a swift: “You should resist,” of an extraordinary +intensity, but I strode on down the path. Then Rose’s schooled temper +gave way at last and I heard her angry voice screaming after me furiously +through the wind and rain: “No! Madame has no friends. Not one!” + + + + +PART FIVE + + +CHAPTER I + + +That night I didn’t get on board till just before midnight and Dominic +could not conceal his relief at having me safely there. Why he should +have been so uneasy it was impossible to say but at the time I had a sort +of impression that my inner destruction (it was nothing less) had +affected my appearance, that my doom was as it were written on my face. +I was a mere receptacle for dust and ashes, a living testimony to the +vanity of all things. My very thoughts were like a ghostly rustle of +dead leaves. But we had an extremely successful trip, and for most of +the time Dominic displayed an unwonted jocularity of a dry and biting +kind with which, he maintained, he had been infected by no other person +than myself. As, with all his force of character, he was very responsive +to the moods of those he liked I have no doubt he spoke the truth. But I +know nothing about it. The observer, more or less alert, whom each of us +carries in his own consciousness, failed me altogether, had turned away +his face in sheer horror, or else had fainted from the strain. And thus +I had to live alone, unobserved even by myself. + +But the trip had been successful. We re-entered the harbour very quietly +as usual and when our craft had been moored unostentatiously amongst the +plebeian stone-carriers, Dominic, whose grim joviality had subsided in +the last twenty-four hours of our homeward run, abandoned me to myself as +though indeed I had been a doomed man. He only stuck his head for a +moment into our little cuddy where I was changing my clothes and being +told in answer to his question that I had no special orders to give went +ashore without waiting for me. + +Generally we used to step on the quay together and I never failed to +enter for a moment Madame Léonore’s café. But this time when I got on +the quay Dominic was nowhere to be seen. What was it? +Abandonment—discretion—or had he quarrelled with his Léonore before +leaving on the trip? + +My way led me past the café and through the glass panes I saw that he was +already there. On the other side of the little marble table Madame +Léonore, leaning with mature grace on her elbow, was listening to him +absorbed. Then I passed on and—what would you have!—I ended by making my +way into the street of the Consuls. I had nowhere else to go. There +were my things in the apartment on the first floor. I couldn’t bear the +thought of meeting anybody I knew. + +The feeble gas flame in the hall was still there, on duty, as though it +had never been turned off since I last crossed the hall at half-past +eleven in the evening to go to the harbour. The small flame had watched +me letting myself out; and now, exactly of the same size, the poor little +tongue of light (there was something wrong with that burner) watched me +letting myself in, as indeed it had done many times before. Generally +the impression was that of entering an untenanted house, but this time +before I could reach the foot of the stairs Therese glided out of the +passage leading into the studio. After the usual exclamations she +assured me that everything was ready for me upstairs, had been for days, +and offered to get me something to eat at once. I accepted and said I +would be down in the studio in half an hour. I found her there by the +side of the laid table ready for conversation. She began by telling +me—the dear, poor young Monsieur—in a sort of plaintive chant, that there +were no letters for me, no letters of any kind, no letters from anybody. +Glances of absolutely terrifying tenderness mingled with flashes of +cunning swept over me from head to foot while I tried to eat. + +“Are you giving me Captain Blunt’s wine to drink?” I asked, noting the +straw-coloured liquid in my glass. + +She screwed up her mouth as if she had a twinge of toothache and assured +me that the wine belonged to the house. I would have to pay her for it. +As far as personal feelings go, Blunt, who addressed her always with +polite seriousness, was not a favourite with her. The “charming, brave +Monsieur” was now fighting for the King and religion against the impious +Liberals. He went away the very morning after I had left and, oh! she +remembered, he had asked her before going away whether I was still in the +house. Wanted probably to say good-bye to me, shake my hand, the dear, +polite Monsieur. + +I let her run on in dread expectation of what she would say next but she +stuck to the subject of Blunt for some time longer. He had written to +her once about some of his things which he wanted her to send to Paris to +his mother’s address; but she was going to do nothing of the kind. She +announced this with a pious smile; and in answer to my questions I +discovered that it was a stratagem to make Captain Blunt return to the +house. + +“You will get yourself into trouble with the police, Mademoiselle +Therese, if you go on like that,” I said. But she was as obstinate as a +mule and assured me with the utmost confidence that many people would be +ready to defend a poor honest girl. There was something behind this +attitude which I could not fathom. Suddenly she fetched a deep sigh. + +“Our Rita, too, will end by coming to her sister.” + +The name for which I had been waiting deprived me of speech for the +moment. The poor mad sinner had rushed off to some of her wickednesses +in Paris. Did I know? No? How could she tell whether I did know or +not? Well! I had hardly left the house, so to speak, when Rita was down +with her maid behaving as if the house did really still belong to +her. . . + +“What time was it?” I managed to ask. And with the words my life itself +was being forced out through my lips. But Therese, not noticing anything +strange about me, said it was something like half-past seven in the +morning. The “poor sinner” was all in black as if she were going to +church (except for her expression, which was enough to shock any honest +person), and after ordering her with frightful menaces not to let anybody +know she was in the house she rushed upstairs and locked herself up in my +bedroom, while “that French creature” (whom she seemed to love more than +her own sister) went into my salon and hid herself behind the window +curtain. + +I had recovered sufficiently to ask in a quiet natural voice whether Doña +Rita and Captain Blunt had seen each other. Apparently they had not seen +each other. The polite captain had looked so stern while packing up his +kit that Therese dared not speak to him at all. And he was in a hurry, +too. He had to see his dear mother off to Paris before his own +departure. Very stern. But he shook her hand with a very nice bow. + +Therese elevated her right hand for me to see. It was broad and short +with blunt fingers, as usual. The pressure of Captain Blunt’s handshake +had not altered its unlovely shape. + +“What was the good of telling him that our Rita was here?” went on +Therese. “I would have been ashamed of her coming here and behaving as +if the house belonged to her! I had already said some prayers at his +intention at the half-past six mass, the brave gentleman. That maid of +my sister Rita was upstairs watching him drive away with her evil eyes, +but I made a sign of the cross after the fiacre, and then I went upstairs +and banged at your door, my dear kind young Monsieur, and shouted to Rita +that she had no right to lock herself in any of my _locataires_’ rooms. +At last she opened it—and what do you think? All her hair was loose over +her shoulders. I suppose it all came down when she flung her hat on your +bed. I noticed when she arrived that her hair wasn’t done properly. She +used your brushes to do it up again in front of your glass.” + +“Wait a moment,” I said, and jumped up, upsetting my wine to run upstairs +as fast as I could. I lighted the gas, all the three jets in the middle +of the room, the jet by the bedside and two others flanking the +dressing-table. I had been struck by the wild hope of finding a trace of +Rita’s passage, a sign or something. I pulled out all the drawers +violently, thinking that perhaps she had hidden there a scrap of paper, a +note. It was perfectly mad. Of course there was no chance of that. +Therese would have seen to it. I picked up one after another all the +various objects on the dressing-table. On laying my hands on the brushes +I had a profound emotion, and with misty eyes I examined them +meticulously with the new hope of finding one of Rita’s tawny hairs +entangled amongst the bristles by a miraculous chance. But Therese would +have done away with that chance, too. There was nothing to be seen, +though I held them up to the light with a beating heart. It was written +that not even that trace of her passage on the earth should remain with +me; not to help but, as it were, to soothe the memory. Then I lighted a +cigarette and came downstairs slowly. My unhappiness became dulled, as +the grief of those who mourn for the dead gets dulled in the overwhelming +sensation that everything is over, that a part of themselves is lost +beyond recall taking with it all the savour of life. + +I discovered Therese still on the very same spot of the floor, her hands +folded over each other and facing my empty chair before which the spilled +wine had soaked a large portion of the table-cloth. She hadn’t moved at +all. She hadn’t even picked up the overturned glass. But directly I +appeared she began to speak in an ingratiating voice. + +“If you have missed anything of yours upstairs, my dear young Monsieur, +you mustn’t say it’s me. You don’t know what our Rita is.” + +“I wish to goodness,” I said, “that she had taken something.” + +And again I became inordinately agitated as though it were my absolute +fate to be everlastingly dying and reviving to the tormenting fact of her +existence. Perhaps she had taken something? Anything. Some small +object. I thought suddenly of a Rhenish-stone match-box. Perhaps it was +that. I didn’t remember having seen it when upstairs. I wanted to make +sure at once. At once. But I commanded myself to sit still. + +“And she so wealthy,” Therese went on. “Even you with your dear generous +little heart can do nothing for our Rita. No man can do anything for +her—except perhaps one, but she is so evilly disposed towards him that +she wouldn’t even see him, if in the goodness of his forgiving heart he +were to offer his hand to her. It’s her bad conscience that frightens +her. He loves her more than his life, the dear, charitable man.” + +“You mean some rascal in Paris that I believe persecutes Doña Rita. +Listen, Mademoiselle Therese, if you know where he hangs out you had +better let him have word to be careful. I believe he, too, is mixed up +in the Carlist intrigue. Don’t you know that your sister can get him +shut up any day or get him expelled by the police?” + +Therese sighed deeply and put on a look of pained virtue. + +“Oh, the hardness of her heart. She tried to be tender with me. She is +awful. I said to her, ‘Rita, have you sold your soul to the Devil?’ and +she shouted like a fiend: ‘For happiness! Ha, ha, ha!’ She threw +herself backwards on that couch in your room and laughed and laughed and +laughed as if I had been tickling her, and she drummed on the floor with +the heels of her shoes. She is possessed. Oh, my dear innocent young +Monsieur, you have never seen anything like that. That wicked girl who +serves her rushed in with a tiny glass bottle and put it to her nose; but +I had a mind to run out and fetch the priest from the church where I go +to early mass. Such a nice, stout, severe man. But that false, cheating +creature (I am sure she is robbing our Rita from morning to night), she +talked to our Rita very low and quieted her down. I am sure I don’t know +what she said. She must be leagued with the devil. And then she asked +me if I would go down and make a cup of chocolate for her Madame. +Madame—that’s our Rita. Madame! It seems they were going off directly +to Paris and her Madame had had nothing to eat since the morning of the +day before. Fancy me being ordered to make chocolate for our Rita! +However, the poor thing looked so exhausted and white-faced that I went. +Ah! the devil can give you an awful shake up if he likes.” + +Therese fetched another deep sigh and raising her eyes looked at me with +great attention. I preserved an inscrutable expression, for I wanted to +hear all she had to tell me of Rita. I watched her with the greatest +anxiety composing her face into a cheerful expression. + +“So Doña Rita is gone to Paris?” I asked negligently. + +“Yes, my dear Monsieur. I believe she went straight to the railway +station from here. When she first got up from the couch she could hardly +stand. But before, while she was drinking the chocolate which I made for +her, I tried to get her to sign a paper giving over the house to me, but +she only closed her eyes and begged me to try and be a good sister and +leave her alone for half an hour. And she lying there looking as if she +wouldn’t live a day. But she always hated me.” + +I said bitterly, “You needn’t have worried her like this. If she had not +lived for another day you would have had this house and everything else +besides; a bigger bit than even your wolfish throat can swallow, +Mademoiselle Therese.” + +I then said a few more things indicative of my disgust with her rapacity, +but they were quite inadequate, as I wasn’t able to find words strong +enough to express my real mind. But it didn’t matter really because I +don’t think Therese heard me at all. She seemed lost in rapt amazement. + +“What do you say, my dear Monsieur? What! All for me without any sort +of paper?” + +She appeared distracted by my curt: “Yes.” Therese believed in my +truthfulness. She believed me implicitly, except when I was telling her +the truth about herself, mincing no words, when she used to stand +smilingly bashful as if I were overwhelming her with compliments. I +expected her to continue the horrible tale but apparently she had found +something to think about which checked the flow. She fetched another +sigh and muttered: + +“Then the law can be just, if it does not require any paper. After all, +I am her sister.” + +“It’s very difficult to believe that—at sight,” I said roughly. + +“Ah, but that I could prove. There are papers for that.” + +After this declaration she began to clear the table, preserving a +thoughtful silence. + +I was not very surprised at the news of Doña Rita’s departure for Paris. +It was not necessary to ask myself why she had gone. I didn’t even ask +myself whether she had left the leased Villa on the Prado for ever. +Later talking again with Therese, I learned that her sister had given it +up for the use of the Carlist cause and that some sort of unofficial +Consul, a Carlist agent of some sort, either was going to live there or +had already taken possession. This, Rita herself had told her before her +departure on that agitated morning spent in the house—in my rooms. A +close investigation demonstrated to me that there was nothing missing +from them. Even the wretched match-box which I really hoped was gone +turned up in a drawer after I had, delightedly, given it up. It was a +great blow. She might have taken that at least! She knew I used to +carry it about with me constantly while ashore. She might have taken it! +Apparently she meant that there should be no bond left even of that kind; +and yet it was a long time before I gave up visiting and revisiting all +the corners of all possible receptacles for something that she might have +left behind on purpose. It was like the mania of those disordered minds +who spend their days hunting for a treasure. I hoped for a forgotten +hairpin, for some tiny piece of ribbon. Sometimes at night I reflected +that such hopes were altogether insensate; but I remember once getting up +at two in the morning to search for a little cardboard box in the +bathroom, into which, I remembered, I had not looked before. Of course +it was empty; and, anyway, Rita could not possibly have known of its +existence. I got back to bed shivering violently, though the night was +warm, and with a distinct impression that this thing would end by making +me mad. It was no longer a question of “this sort of thing” killing me. +The moral atmosphere of this torture was different. It would make me +mad. And at that thought great shudders ran down my prone body, because, +once, I had visited a famous lunatic asylum where they had shown me a +poor wretch who was mad, apparently, because he thought he had been +abominably fooled by a woman. They told me that his grievance was quite +imaginary. He was a young man with a thin fair beard, huddled up on the +edge of his bed, hugging himself forlornly; and his incessant and +lamentable wailing filled the long bare corridor, striking a chill into +one’s heart long before one came to the door of his cell. + +And there was no one from whom I could hear, to whom I could speak, with +whom I could evoke the image of Rita. Of course I could utter that word +of four letters to Therese; but Therese for some reason took it into her +head to avoid all topics connected with her sister. I felt as if I could +pull out great handfuls of her hair hidden modestly under the black +handkerchief of which the ends were sometimes tied under her chin. But, +really, I could not have given her any intelligible excuse for that +outrage. Moreover, she was very busy from the very top to the very +bottom of the house, which she persisted in running alone because she +couldn’t make up her mind to part with a few francs every month to a +servant. It seemed to me that I was no longer such a favourite with her +as I used to be. That, strange to say, was exasperating, too. It was as +if some idea, some fruitful notion had killed in her all the softer and +more humane emotions. She went about with brooms and dusters wearing an +air of sanctimonious thoughtfulness. + +The man who to a certain extent took my place in Therese’s favour was the +old father of the dancing girls inhabiting the ground floor. In a tall +hat and a well-to-do dark blue overcoat he allowed himself to be +button-holed in the hall by Therese who would talk to him interminably +with downcast eyes. He smiled gravely down at her, and meanwhile tried +to edge towards the front door. I imagine he didn’t put a great value on +Therese’s favour. Our stay in harbour was prolonged this time and I kept +indoors like an invalid. One evening I asked that old man to come in and +drink and smoke with me in the studio. He made no difficulties to +accept, brought his wooden pipe with him, and was very entertaining in a +pleasant voice. One couldn’t tell whether he was an uncommon person or +simply a ruffian, but in any case with his white beard he looked quite +venerable. Naturally he couldn’t give me much of his company as he had +to look closely after his girls and their admirers; not that the girls +were unduly frivolous, but of course being very young they had no +experience. They were friendly creatures with pleasant, merry voices and +he was very much devoted to them. He was a muscular man with a high +colour and silvery locks curling round his bald pate and over his ears, +like a _barocco_ apostle. I had an idea that he had had a lurid past and +had seen some fighting in his youth. The admirers of the two girls stood +in great awe of him, from instinct no doubt, because his behaviour to +them was friendly and even somewhat obsequious, yet always with a certain +truculent glint in his eye that made them pause in everything but their +generosity—which was encouraged. I sometimes wondered whether those two +careless, merry hard-working creatures understood the secret moral beauty +of the situation. + +My real company was the dummy in the studio and I can’t say it was +exactly satisfying. After taking possession of the studio I had raised +it tenderly, dusted its mangled limbs and insensible, hard-wood bosom, +and then had propped it up in a corner where it seemed to take on, of +itself, a shy attitude. I knew its history. It was not an ordinary +dummy. One day, talking with Doña Rita about her sister, I had told her +that I thought Therese used to knock it down on purpose with a broom, and +Doña Rita had laughed very much. This, she had said, was an instance of +dislike from mere instinct. That dummy had been made to measure years +before. It had to wear for days and days the Imperial Byzantine robes in +which Doña Rita sat only once or twice herself; but of course the folds +and bends of the stuff had to be preserved as in the first sketch. Doña +Rita described amusingly how she had to stand in the middle of her room +while Rose walked around her with a tape measure noting the figures down +on a small piece of paper which was then sent to the maker, who presently +returned it with an angry letter stating that those proportions were +altogether impossible in any woman. Apparently Rose had muddled them all +up; and it was a long time before the figure was finished and sent to the +Pavilion in a long basket to take on itself the robes and the hieratic +pose of the Empress. Later, it wore with the same patience the +marvellous hat of the “Girl in the Hat.” But Doña Rita couldn’t +understand how the poor thing ever found its way to Marseilles minus its +turnip head. Probably it came down with the robes and a quantity of +precious brocades which she herself had sent down from Paris. The +knowledge of its origin, the contempt of Captain Blunt’s references to +it, with Therese’s shocked dislike of the dummy, invested that summary +reproduction with a sort of charm, gave me a faint and miserable illusion +of the original, less artificial than a photograph, less precise, too. +. . . But it can’t be explained. I felt positively friendly to it as if it +had been Rita’s trusted personal attendant. I even went so far as to +discover that it had a sort of grace of its own. But I never went so far +as to address set speeches to it where it lurked shyly in its corner, or +drag it out from there for contemplation. I left it in peace. I wasn’t +mad. I was only convinced that I soon would be. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Notwithstanding my misanthropy I had to see a few people on account of +all these Royalist affairs which I couldn’t very well drop, and in truth +did not wish to drop. They were my excuse for remaining in Europe, which +somehow I had not the strength of mind to leave for the West Indies, or +elsewhere. On the other hand, my adventurous pursuit kept me in contact +with the sea where I found occupation, protection, consolation, the +mental relief of grappling with concrete problems, the sanity one +acquires from close contact with simple mankind, a little self-confidence +born from the dealings with the elemental powers of nature. I couldn’t +give all that up. And besides all this was related to Doña Rita. I had, +as it were, received it all from her own hand, from that hand the clasp +of which was as frank as a man’s and yet conveyed a unique sensation. +The very memory of it would go through me like a wave of heat. It was +over that hand that we first got into the habit of quarrelling, with the +irritability of sufferers from some obscure pain and yet half unconscious +of their disease. Rita’s own spirit hovered over the troubled waters of +Legitimity. But as to the sound of the four magic letters of her name I +was not very likely to hear it fall sweetly on my ear. For instance, the +distinguished personality in the world of finance with whom I had to +confer several times, alluded to the irresistible seduction of the power +which reigned over my heart and my mind; which had a mysterious and +unforgettable face, the brilliance of sunshine together with the +unfathomable splendour of the night as—Madame de Lastaola. That’s how +that steel-grey man called the greatest mystery of the universe. When +uttering that assumed name he would make for himself a guardedly solemn +and reserved face as though he were afraid lest I should presume to +smile, lest he himself should venture to smile, and the sacred formality +of our relations should be outraged beyond mending. + +He would refer in a studiously grave tone to Madame de Lastaola’s wishes, +plans, activities, instructions, movements; or picking up a letter from +the usual litter of paper found on such men’s desks, glance at it to +refresh his memory; and, while the very sight of the handwriting would +make my lips go dry, would ask me in a bloodless voice whether perchance +I had “a direct communication from—er—Paris lately.” And there would be +other maddening circumstances connected with those visits. He would +treat me as a serious person having a clear view of certain +eventualities, while at the very moment my vision could see nothing but +streaming across the wall at his back, abundant and misty, unearthly and +adorable, a mass of tawny hair that seemed to have hot sparks tangled in +it. Another nuisance was the atmosphere of Royalism, of Legitimacy, that +pervaded the room, thin as air, intangible, as though no Legitimist of +flesh and blood had ever existed to the man’s mind except perhaps myself. +He, of course, was just simply a banker, a very distinguished, a very +influential, and a very impeccable banker. He persisted also in +deferring to my judgment and sense with an over-emphasis called out by +his perpetual surprise at my youth. Though he had seen me many times (I +even knew his wife) he could never get over my immature age. He himself +was born about fifty years old, all complete, with his iron-grey whiskers +and his bilious eyes, which he had the habit of frequently closing during +a conversation. On one occasion he said to me. “By the by, the Marquis +of Villarel is here for a time. He inquired after you the last time he +called on me. May I let him know that you are in town?” + +I didn’t say anything to that. The Marquis of Villarel was the Don +Rafael of Rita’s own story. What had I to do with Spanish grandees? And +for that matter what had she, the woman of all time, to do with all the +villainous or splendid disguises human dust takes upon itself? All this +was in the past, and I was acutely aware that for me there was no +present, no future, nothing but a hollow pain, a vain passion of such +magnitude that being locked up within my breast it gave me an illusion of +lonely greatness with my miserable head uplifted amongst the stars. But +when I made up my mind (which I did quickly, to be done with it) to call +on the banker’s wife, almost the first thing she said to me was that the +Marquis de Villarel was “amongst us.” She said it joyously. If in her +husband’s room at the bank legitimism was a mere unpopulated principle, +in her salon Legitimacy was nothing but persons. “_Il m’a causé beaucoup +de vous_,” she said as if there had been a joke in it of which I ought to +be proud. I slunk away from her. I couldn’t believe that the grandee +had talked to her about me. I had never felt myself part of the great +Royalist enterprise. I confess that I was so indifferent to everything, +so profoundly demoralized, that having once got into that drawing-room I +hadn’t the strength to get away; though I could see perfectly well my +volatile hostess going from one to another of her acquaintances in order +to tell them with a little gesture, “Look! Over there—in that corner. +That’s the notorious Monsieur George.” At last she herself drove me out +by coming to sit by me vivaciously and going into ecstasies over “_ce +cher_ Monsieur Mills” and that magnificent Lord X; and ultimately, with a +perfectly odious snap in the eyes and drop in the voice, dragging in the +name of Madame de Lastaola and asking me whether I was really so much in +the confidence of that astonishing person. “_Vous devez bien regretter +son départ pour Paris_,” she cooed, looking with affected bashfulness at +her fan. . . . How I got out of the room I really don’t know. There was +also a staircase. I did not fall down it head first—that much I am +certain of; and I also remember that I wandered for a long time about the +seashore and went home very late, by the way of the Prado, giving in +passing a fearful glance at the Villa. It showed not a gleam of light +through the thin foliage of its trees. + +I spent the next day with Dominic on board the little craft watching the +shipwrights at work on her deck. From the way they went about their +business those men must have been perfectly sane; and I felt greatly +refreshed by my company during the day. Dominic, too, devoted himself to +his business, but his taciturnity was sardonic. Then I dropped in at the +café and Madame Léonore’s loud “Eh, Signorino, here you are at last!” +pleased me by its resonant friendliness. But I found the sparkle of her +black eyes as she sat down for a moment opposite me while I was having my +drink rather difficult to bear. That man and that woman seemed to know +something. What did they know? At parting she pressed my hand +significantly. What did she mean? But I didn’t feel offended by these +manifestations. The souls within these people’s breasts were not +volatile in the manner of slightly scented and inflated bladders. +Neither had they the impervious skins which seem the rule in the fine +world that wants only to get on. Somehow they had sensed that there was +something wrong; and whatever impression they might have formed for +themselves I had the certitude that it would not be for them a matter of +grins at my expense. + +That day on returning home I found Therese looking out for me, a very +unusual occurrence of late. She handed me a card bearing the name of the +Marquis de Villarel. + +“How did you come by this?” I asked. She turned on at once the tap of +her volubility and I was not surprised to learn that the grandee had not +done such an extraordinary thing as to call upon me in person. A young +gentleman had brought it. Such a nice young gentleman, she interjected +with her piously ghoulish expression. He was not very tall. He had a +very smooth complexion (that woman was incorrigible) and a nice, tiny +black moustache. Therese was sure that he must have been an officer _en +las filas legitimas_. With that notion in her head she had asked him +about the welfare of that other model of charm and elegance, Captain +Blunt. To her extreme surprise the charming young gentleman with +beautiful eyes had apparently never heard of Blunt. But he seemed very +much interested in his surroundings, looked all round the hall, noted the +costly wood of the door panels, paid some attention to the silver +statuette holding up the defective gas burner at the foot of the stairs, +and, finally, asked whether this was in very truth the house of the most +excellent Señora Doña Rita de Lastaola. The question staggered Therese, +but with great presence of mind she answered the young gentleman that she +didn’t know what excellence there was about it, but that the house was +her property, having been given to her by her own sister. At this the +young gentleman looked both puzzled and angry, turned on his heel, and +got back into his fiacre. Why should people be angry with a poor girl +who had never done a single reprehensible thing in her whole life? + +“I suppose our Rita does tell people awful lies about her poor sister.” +She sighed deeply (she had several kinds of sighs and this was the +hopeless kind) and added reflectively, “Sin on sin, wickedness on +wickedness! And the longer she lives the worse it will be. It would be +better for our Rita to be dead.” + +I told “Mademoiselle Therese” that it was really impossible to tell +whether she was more stupid or atrocious; but I wasn’t really very much +shocked. These outbursts did not signify anything in Therese. One got +used to them. They were merely the expression of her rapacity and her +righteousness; so that our conversation ended by my asking her whether +she had any dinner ready for me that evening. + +“What’s the good of getting you anything to eat, my dear young Monsieur,” +she quizzed me tenderly. “You just only peck like a little bird. Much +better let me save the money for you.” It will show the +super-terrestrial nature of my misery when I say that I was quite +surprised at Therese’s view of my appetite. Perhaps she was right. I +certainly did not know. I stared hard at her and in the end she admitted +that the dinner was in fact ready that very moment. + +The new young gentleman within Therese’s horizon didn’t surprise me very +much. Villarel would travel with some sort of suite, a couple of +secretaries at least. I had heard enough of Carlist headquarters to know +that the man had been (very likely was still) Captain General of the +Royal Bodyguard and was a person of great political (and domestic) +influence at Court. The card was, under its social form, a mere command +to present myself before the grandee. No Royalist devoted by conviction, +as I must have appeared to him, could have mistaken the meaning. I put +the card in my pocket and after dining or not dining—I really don’t +remember—spent the evening smoking in the studio, pursuing thoughts of +tenderness and grief, visions exalting and cruel. From time to time I +looked at the dummy. I even got up once from the couch on which I had +been writhing like a worm and walked towards it as if to touch it, but +refrained, not from sudden shame but from sheer despair. By and by +Therese drifted in. It was then late and, I imagine, she was on her way +to bed. She looked the picture of cheerful, rustic innocence and started +propounding to me a conundrum which began with the words: + +“If our Rita were to die before long . . .” + +She didn’t get any further because I had jumped up and frightened her by +shouting: “Is she ill? What has happened? Have you had a letter?” + +She had had a letter. I didn’t ask her to show it to me, though I +daresay she would have done so. I had an idea that there was no meaning +in anything, at least no meaning that mattered. But the interruption had +made Therese apparently forget her sinister conundrum. She observed me +with her shrewd, unintelligent eyes for a bit, and then with the fatuous +remark about the Law being just she left me to the horrors of the studio. +I believe I went to sleep there from sheer exhaustion. Some time during +the night I woke up chilled to the bone and in the dark. These were +horrors and no mistake. I dragged myself upstairs to bed past the +indefatigable statuette holding up the ever-miserable light. The +black-and-white hall was like an ice-house. + +The main consideration which induced me to call on the Marquis of +Villarel was the fact that after all I was a discovery of Doña Rita’s, +her own recruit. My fidelity and steadfastness had been guaranteed by +her and no one else. I couldn’t bear the idea of her being criticized by +every empty-headed chatterer belonging to the Cause. And as, apart from +that, nothing mattered much, why, then—I would get this over. + +But it appeared that I had not reflected sufficiently on all the +consequences of that step. First of all the sight of the Villa looking +shabbily cheerful in the sunshine (but not containing her any longer) was +so perturbing that I very nearly went away from the gate. Then when I +got in after much hesitation—being admitted by the man in the green baize +apron who recognized me—the thought of entering that room, out of which +she was gone as completely as if she had been dead, gave me such an +emotion that I had to steady myself against the table till the faintness +was past. Yet I was irritated as at a treason when the man in the baize +apron instead of letting me into the Pompeiian dining-room crossed the +hall to another door not at all in the Pompeiian style (more Louis XV +rather—that Villa was like a _Salade Russe_ of styles) and introduced me +into a big, light room full of very modern furniture. The portrait _en +pied_ of an officer in a sky-blue uniform hung on the end wall. The +officer had a small head, a black beard cut square, a robust body, and +leaned with gauntleted hands on the simple hilt of a straight sword. +That striking picture dominated a massive mahogany desk, and, in front of +this desk, a very roomy, tall-backed armchair of dark green velvet. I +thought I had been announced into an empty room till glancing along the +extremely loud carpet I detected a pair of feet under the armchair. + +I advanced towards it and discovered a little man, who had made no sound +or movement till I came into his view, sunk deep in the green velvet. He +altered his position slowly and rested his hollow, black, quietly burning +eyes on my face in prolonged scrutiny. I detected something comminatory +in his yellow, emaciated countenance, but I believe now he was simply +startled by my youth. I bowed profoundly. He extended a meagre little +hand. + +“Take a chair, Don Jorge.” + +He was very small, frail, and thin, but his voice was not languid, though +he spoke hardly above his breath. Such was the envelope and the voice of +the fanatical soul belonging to the Grand-master of Ceremonies and +Captain General of the Bodyguard at the Headquarters of the Legitimist +Court, now detached on a special mission. He was all fidelity, +inflexibility, and sombre conviction, but like some great saints he had +very little body to keep all these merits in. + +“You are very young,” he remarked, to begin with. “The matters on which +I desired to converse with you are very grave.” + +“I was under the impression that your Excellency wished to see me at +once. But if your Excellency prefers it I will return in, say, seven +years’ time when I may perhaps be old enough to talk about grave +matters.” + +He didn’t stir hand or foot and not even the quiver of an eyelid proved +that he had heard my shockingly unbecoming retort. + +“You have been recommended to us by a noble and loyal lady, in whom His +Majesty—whom God preserve—reposes an entire confidence. God will reward +her as she deserves and you, too, Señor, according to the disposition you +bring to this great work which has the blessing (here he crossed himself) +of our Holy Mother the Church.” + +“I suppose your Excellency understands that in all this I am not looking +for reward of any kind.” + +At this he made a faint, almost ethereal grimace. + +“I was speaking of the spiritual blessing which rewards the service of +religion and will be of benefit to your soul,” he explained with a slight +touch of acidity. “The other is perfectly understood and your fidelity +is taken for granted. His Majesty—whom God preserve—has been already +pleased to signify his satisfaction with your services to the most noble +and loyal Doña Rita by a letter in his own hand.” + +Perhaps he expected me to acknowledge this announcement in some way, +speech, or bow, or something, because before my immobility he made a +slight movement in his chair which smacked of impatience. “I am afraid, +Señor, that you are affected by the spirit of scoffing and irreverence +which pervades this unhappy country of France in which both you and I are +strangers, I believe. Are you a young man of that sort?” + +“I am a very good gun-runner, your Excellency,” I answered quietly. + +He bowed his head gravely. “We are aware. But I was looking for the +motives which ought to have their pure source in religion.” + +“I must confess frankly that I have not reflected on my motives,” I said. +“It is enough for me to know that they are not dishonourable and that +anybody can see they are not the motives of an adventurer seeking some +sordid advantage.” + +He had listened patiently and when he saw that there was nothing more to +come he ended the discussion. + +“Señor, we should reflect upon our motives. It is salutary for our +conscience and is recommended (he crossed himself) by our Holy Mother the +Church. I have here certain letters from Paris on which I would consult +your young sagacity which is accredited to us by the most loyal Doña +Rita.” + +The sound of that name on his lips was simply odious. I was convinced +that this man of forms and ceremonies and fanatical royalism was +perfectly heartless. Perhaps he reflected on his motives; but it seemed +to me that his conscience could be nothing else but a monstrous thing +which very few actions could disturb appreciably. Yet for the credit of +Doña Rita I did not withhold from him my young sagacity. What he thought +of it I don’t know. The matters we discussed were not of course of high +policy, though from the point of view of the war in the south they were +important enough. We agreed on certain things to be done, and finally, +always out of regard for Doña Rita’s credit, I put myself generally at +his disposition or of any Carlist agent he would appoint in his place; +for I did not suppose that he would remain very long in Marseilles. He +got out of the chair laboriously, like a sick child might have done. The +audience was over but he noticed my eyes wandering to the portrait and he +said in his measured, breathed-out tones: + +“I owe the pleasure of having this admirable work here to the gracious +attention of Madame de Lastaola, who, knowing my attachment to the royal +person of my Master, has sent it down from Paris to greet me in this +house which has been given up for my occupation also through her +generosity to the Royal Cause. Unfortunately she, too, is touched by the +infection of this irreverent and unfaithful age. But she is young yet. +She is young.” + +These last words were pronounced in a strange tone of menace as though he +were supernaturally aware of some suspended disasters. With his burning +eyes he was the image of an Inquisitor with an unconquerable soul in that +frail body. But suddenly he dropped his eyelids and the conversation +finished as characteristically as it had begun: with a slow, dismissing +inclination of the head and an “Adios, Señor—may God guard you from sin.” + + + +CHAPTER III + + +I must say that for the next three months I threw myself into my unlawful +trade with a sort of desperation, dogged and hopeless, like a fairly +decent fellow who takes deliberately to drink. The business was getting +dangerous. The bands in the South were not very well organized, worked +with no very definite plan, and now were beginning to be pretty closely +hunted. The arrangements for the transport of supplies were going to +pieces; our friends ashore were getting scared; and it was no joke to +find after a day of skilful dodging that there was no one at the landing +place and have to go out again with our compromising cargo, to slink and +lurk about the coast for another week or so, unable to trust anybody and +looking at every vessel we met with suspicion. Once we were ambushed by +a lot of “rascally Carabineers,” as Dominic called them, who hid +themselves among the rocks after disposing a train of mules well in view +on the seashore. Luckily, on evidence which I could never understand, +Dominic detected something suspicious. Perhaps it was by virtue of some +sixth sense that men born for unlawful occupations may be gifted with. +“There is a smell of treachery about this,” he remarked suddenly, turning +at his oar. (He and I were pulling alone in a little boat to +reconnoitre.) I couldn’t detect any smell and I regard to this day our +escape on that occasion as, properly speaking, miraculous. Surely some +supernatural power must have struck upwards the barrels of the +Carabineers’ rifles, for they missed us by yards. And as the Carabineers +have the reputation of shooting straight, Dominic, after swearing most +horribly, ascribed our escape to the particular guardian angel that looks +after crazy young gentlemen. Dominic believed in angels in a +conventional way, but laid no claim to having one of his own. Soon +afterwards, while sailing quietly at night, we found ourselves suddenly +near a small coasting vessel, also without lights, which all at once +treated us to a volley of rifle fire. Dominic’s mighty and inspired +yell: “_A plat ventre_!” and also an unexpected roll to windward saved +all our lives. Nobody got a scratch. We were past in a moment and in a +breeze then blowing we had the heels of anything likely to give us chase. +But an hour afterwards, as we stood side by side peering into the +darkness, Dominic was heard to mutter through his teeth: “_Le métier se +gâte_.” I, too, had the feeling that the trade, if not altogether +spoiled, had seen its best days. But I did not care. In fact, for my +purpose it was rather better, a more potent influence; like the stronger +intoxication of raw spirit. A volley in the dark after all was not such +a bad thing. Only a moment before we had received it, there, in that +calm night of the sea full of freshness and soft whispers, I had been +looking at an enchanting turn of a head in a faint light of its own, the +tawny hair with snared red sparks brushed up from the nape of a white +neck and held up on high by an arrow of gold feathered with brilliants +and with ruby gleams all along its shaft. That jewelled ornament, which +I remember often telling Rita was of a very Philistinish conception (it +was in some way connected with a tortoiseshell comb) occupied an undue +place in my memory, tried to come into some sort of significance even in +my sleep. Often I dreamed of her with white limbs shimmering in the +gloom like a nymph haunting a riot of foliage, and raising a perfect +round arm to take an arrow of gold out of her hair to throw it at me by +hand, like a dart. It came on, a whizzing trail of light, but I always +woke up before it struck. Always. Invariably. It never had a chance. +A volley of small arms was much more likely to do the business some +day—or night. + + * * * * * + +At last came the day when everything slipped out of my grasp. The little +vessel, broken and gone like the only toy of a lonely child, the sea +itself, which had swallowed it, throwing me on shore after a shipwreck +that instead of a fair fight left in me the memory of a suicide. It took +away all that there was in me of independent life, but just failed to +take me out of the world, which looked then indeed like Another World fit +for no one else but unrepentant sinners. Even Dominic failed me, his +moral entity destroyed by what to him was a most tragic ending of our +common enterprise. The lurid swiftness of it all was like a stunning +thunder-clap—and, one evening, I found myself weary, heartsore, my brain +still dazed and with awe in my heart entering Marseilles by way of the +railway station, after many adventures, one more disagreeable than +another, involving privations, great exertions, a lot of difficulties +with all sorts of people who looked upon me evidently more as a +discreditable vagabond deserving the attentions of gendarmes than a +respectable (if crazy) young gentleman attended by a guardian angel of +his own. I must confess that I slunk out of the railway station shunning +its many lights as if, invariably, failure made an outcast of a man. I +hadn’t any money in my pocket. I hadn’t even the bundle and the stick of +a destitute wayfarer. I was unshaven and unwashed, and my heart was +faint within me. My attire was such that I daren’t approach the rank of +fiacres, where indeed I could perceive only two pairs of lamps, of which +one suddenly drove away while I looked. The other I gave up to the +fortunate of this earth. I didn’t believe in my power of persuasion. I +had no powers. I slunk on and on, shivering with cold, through the +uproarious streets. Bedlam was loose in them. It was the time of +Carnival. + +Small objects of no value have the secret of sticking to a man in an +astonishing way. I had nearly lost my liberty and even my life, I had +lost my ship, a money-belt full of gold, I had lost my companions, had +parted from my friend; my occupation, my only link with life, my touch +with the sea, my cap and jacket were gone—but a small penknife and a +latchkey had never parted company with me. With the latchkey I opened +the door of refuge. The hall wore its deaf-and-dumb air, its +black-and-white stillness. + +The sickly gas-jet still struggled bravely with adversity at the end of +the raised silver arm of the statuette which had kept to a hair’s breadth +its graceful pose on the toes of its left foot; and the staircase lost +itself in the shadows above. Therese was parsimonious with the lights. +To see all this was surprising. It seemed to me that all the things I +had known ought to have come down with a crash at the moment of the final +catastrophe on the Spanish coast. And there was Therese herself +descending the stairs, frightened but plucky. Perhaps she thought that +she would be murdered this time for certain. She had a strange, +unemotional conviction that the house was particularly convenient for a +crime. One could never get to the bottom of her wild notions which she +held with the stolidity of a peasant allied to the outward serenity of a +nun. She quaked all over as she came down to her doom, but when she +recognized me she got such a shock that she sat down suddenly on the +lowest step. She did not expect me for another week at least, and, +besides, she explained, the state I was in made her blood take “one +turn.” + +Indeed my plight seemed either to have called out or else repressed her +true nature. But who had ever fathomed her nature! There was none of +her treacly volubility. There were none of her “dear young gentlemans” +and “poor little hearts” and references to sin. In breathless silence +she ran about the house getting my room ready, lighting fires and +gas-jets and even hauling at me to help me up the stairs. Yes, she did +lay hands on me for that charitable purpose. They trembled. Her pale +eyes hardly left my face. “What brought you here like this?” she +whispered once. + +“If I were to tell you, Mademoiselle Therese, you would see there the +hand of God.” + +She dropped the extra pillow she was carrying and then nearly fell over +it. “Oh, dear heart,” she murmured, and ran off to the kitchen. + +I sank into bed as into a cloud and Therese reappeared very misty and +offering me something in a cup. I believe it was hot milk, and after I +drank it she took the cup and stood looking at me fixedly. I managed to +say with difficulty: “Go away,” whereupon she vanished as if by magic +before the words were fairly out of my mouth. Immediately afterwards the +sunlight forced through the slats of the jalousies its diffused glow, and +Therese was there again as if by magic, saying in a distant voice: “It’s +midday”. . . Youth will have its rights. I had slept like a stone for +seventeen hours. + +I suppose an honourable bankrupt would know such an awakening: the sense +of catastrophe, the shrinking from the necessity of beginning life again, +the faint feeling that there are misfortunes which must be paid for by a +hanging. In the course of the morning Therese informed me that the +apartment usually occupied by Mr. Blunt was vacant and added mysteriously +that she intended to keep it vacant for a time, because she had been +instructed to do so. I couldn’t imagine why Blunt should wish to return +to Marseilles. She told me also that the house was empty except for +myself and the two dancing girls with their father. Those people had +been away for some time as the girls had engagements in some Italian +summer theatres, but apparently they had secured a re-engagement for the +winter and were now back. I let Therese talk because it kept my +imagination from going to work on subjects which, I had made up my mind, +were no concern of mine. But I went out early to perform an unpleasant +task. It was only proper that I should let the Carlist agent ensconced +in the Prado Villa know of the sudden ending of my activities. It would +be grave enough news for him, and I did not like to be its bearer for +reasons which were mainly personal. I resembled Dominic in so far that +I, too, disliked failure. + +The Marquis of Villarel had of course gone long before. The man who was +there was another type of Carlist altogether, and his temperament was +that of a trader. He was the chief purveyor of the Legitimist armies, an +honest broker of stores, and enjoyed a great reputation for cleverness. +His important task kept him, of course, in France, but his young wife, +whose beauty and devotion to her King were well known, represented him +worthily at Headquarters, where his own appearances were extremely rare. +The dissimilar but united loyalties of those two people had been rewarded +by the title of baron and the ribbon of some order or other. The gossip +of the Legitimist circles appreciated those favours with smiling +indulgence. He was the man who had been so distressed and frightened by +Doña Rita’s first visit to Tolosa. He had an extreme regard for his +wife. And in that sphere of clashing arms and unceasing intrigue nobody +would have smiled then at his agitation if the man himself hadn’t been +somewhat grotesque. + +He must have been startled when I sent in my name, for he didn’t of +course expect to see me yet—nobody expected me. He advanced soft-footed +down the room. With his jutting nose, flat-topped skull and sable +garments he recalled an obese raven, and when he heard of the disaster he +manifested his astonishment and concern in a most plebeian manner by a +low and expressive whistle. I, of course, could not share his +consternation. My feelings in that connection were of a different order; +but I was annoyed at his unintelligent stare. + +“I suppose,” I said, “you will take it on yourself to advise Doña Rita, +who is greatly interested in this affair.” + +“Yes, but I was given to understand that Madame de Lastaola was to leave +Paris either yesterday or this morning.” + +It was my turn to stare dumbly before I could manage to ask: “For +Tolosa?” in a very knowing tone. + +Whether it was the droop of his head, play of light, or some other subtle +cause, his nose seemed to have grown perceptibly longer. + +“That, Señor, is the place where the news has got to be conveyed without +undue delay,” he said in an agitated wheeze. “I could, of course, +telegraph to our agent in Bayonne who would find a messenger. But I +don’t like, I don’t like! The Alphonsists have agents, too, who hang +about the telegraph offices. It’s no use letting the enemy get that +news.” + +He was obviously very confused, unhappy, and trying to think of two +different things at once. + +“Sit down, Don George, sit down.” He absolutely forced a cigar on me. +“I am extremely distressed. That—I mean Doña Rita is undoubtedly on her +way to Tolosa. This is very frightful.” + +I must say, however, that there was in the man some sense of duty. He +mastered his private fears. After some cogitation he murmured: “There is +another way of getting the news to Headquarters. Suppose you write me a +formal letter just stating the facts, the unfortunate facts, which I will +be able to forward. There is an agent of ours, a fellow I have been +employing for purchasing supplies, a perfectly honest man. He is coming +here from the north by the ten o’clock train with some papers for me of a +confidential nature. I was rather embarrassed about it. It wouldn’t do +for him to get into any sort of trouble. He is not very intelligent. I +wonder, Don George, whether you would consent to meet him at the station +and take care of him generally till to-morrow. I don’t like the idea of +him going about alone. Then, to-morrow night, we would send him on to +Tolosa by the west coast route, with the news; and then he can also call +on Doña Rita who will no doubt be already there. . . .” He became again +distracted all in a moment and actually went so far as to wring his fat +hands. “Oh, yes, she will be there!” he exclaimed in most pathetic +accents. + +I was not in the humour to smile at anything, and he must have been +satisfied with the gravity with which I beheld his extraordinary antics. +My mind was very far away. I thought: Why not? Why shouldn’t I also +write a letter to Doña Rita, telling her that now nothing stood in the +way of my leaving Europe, because, really, the enterprise couldn’t be +begun again; that things that come to an end can never be begun again. +The idea—never again—had complete possession of my mind. I could think +of nothing else. Yes, I would write. The worthy Commissary General of +the Carlist forces was under the impression that I was looking at him; +but what I had in my eye was a jumble of butterfly women and winged +youths and the soft sheen of Argand lamps gleaming on an arrow of gold in +the hair of a head that seemed to evade my outstretched hand. + +“Oh, yes,” I said, “I have nothing to do and even nothing to think of +just now, I will meet your man as he gets off the train at ten o’clock +to-night. What’s he like?” + +“Oh, he has a black moustache and whiskers, and his chin is shaved,” said +the newly-fledged baron cordially. “A very honest fellow. I always +found him very useful. His name is José Ortega.” + +He was perfectly self-possessed now, and walking soft-footed accompanied +me to the door of the room. He shook hands with a melancholy smile. +“This is a very frightful situation. My poor wife will be quite +distracted. She is such a patriot. Many thanks, Don George. You +relieve me greatly. The fellow is rather stupid and rather bad-tempered. +Queer creature, but very honest! Oh, very honest!” + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +It was the last evening of Carnival. The same masks, the same yells, the +same mad rushes, the same bedlam of disguised humanity blowing about the +streets in the great gusts of mistral that seemed to make them dance like +dead leaves on an earth where all joy is watched by death. + +It was exactly twelve months since that other carnival evening when I had +felt a little weary and a little lonely but at peace with all mankind. +It must have been—to a day or two. But on this evening it wasn’t merely +loneliness that I felt. I felt bereaved with a sense of a complete and +universal loss in which there was perhaps more resentment than mourning; +as if the world had not been taken away from me by an august decree but +filched from my innocence by an underhand fate at the very moment when it +had disclosed to my passion its warm and generous beauty. This +consciousness of universal loss had this advantage that it induced +something resembling a state of philosophic indifference. I walked up to +the railway station caring as little for the cold blasts of wind as +though I had been going to the scaffold. The delay of the train did not +irritate me in the least. I had finally made up my mind to write a +letter to Doña Rita; and this “honest fellow” for whom I was waiting +would take it to her. He would have no difficulty in Tolosa in finding +Madame de Lastaola. The General Headquarters, which was also a Court, +would be buzzing with comments on her presence. Most likely that “honest +fellow” was already known to Doña Rita. For all I knew he might have +been her discovery just as I was. Probably I, too, was regarded as an +“honest fellow” enough; but stupid—since it was clear that my luck was +not inexhaustible. I hoped that while carrying my letter the man would +not let himself be caught by some Alphonsist guerilla who would, of +course, shoot him. But why should he? I, for instance, had escaped with +my life from a much more dangerous enterprise than merely passing through +the frontier line in charge of some trustworthy guide. I pictured the +fellow to myself trudging over the stony slopes and scrambling down wild +ravines with my letter to Doña Rita in his pocket. It would be such a +letter of farewell as no lover had ever written, no woman in the world +had ever read, since the beginning of love on earth. It would be worthy +of the woman. No experience, no memories, no dead traditions of passion +or language would inspire it. She herself would be its sole inspiration. +She would see her own image in it as in a mirror; and perhaps then she +would understand what it was I was saying farewell to on the very +threshold of my life. A breath of vanity passed through my brain. A +letter as moving as her mere existence was moving would be something +unique. I regretted I was not a poet. + +I woke up to a great noise of feet, a sudden influx of people through the +doors of the platform. I made out my man’s whiskers at once—not that +they were enormous, but because I had been warned beforehand of their +existence by the excellent Commissary General. At first I saw nothing of +him but his whiskers: they were black and cut somewhat in the shape of a +shark’s fin and so very fine that the least breath of air animated them +into a sort of playful restlessness. The man’s shoulders were hunched up +and when he had made his way clear of the throng of passengers I +perceived him as an unhappy and shivery being. Obviously he didn’t +expect to be met, because when I murmured an enquiring, “Señor Ortega?” +into his ear he swerved away from me and nearly dropped a little handbag +he was carrying. His complexion was uniformly pale, his mouth was red, +but not engaging. His social status was not very definite. He was +wearing a dark blue overcoat of no particular cut, his aspect had no +relief; yet those restless side-whiskers flanking his red mouth and the +suspicious expression of his black eyes made him noticeable. This I +regretted the more because I caught sight of two skulking fellows, +looking very much like policemen in plain clothes, watching us from a +corner of the great hall. I hurried my man into a fiacre. He had been +travelling from early morning on cross-country lines and after we got on +terms a little confessed to being very hungry and cold. His red lips +trembled and I noted an underhand, cynical curiosity when he had occasion +to raise his eyes to my face. I was in some doubt how to dispose of him +but as we rolled on at a jog trot I came to the conclusion that the best +thing to do would be to organize for him a shake-down in the studio. +Obscure lodging houses are precisely the places most looked after by the +police, and even the best hotels are bound to keep a register of +arrivals. I was very anxious that nothing should stop his projected +mission of courier to headquarters. As we passed various street corners +where the mistral blast struck at us fiercely I could feel him shivering +by my side. However, Therese would have lighted the iron stove in the +studio before retiring for the night, and, anyway, I would have to turn +her out to make up a bed on the couch. Service of the King! I must say +that she was amiable and didn’t seem to mind anything one asked her to +do. Thus while the fellow slumbered on the divan I would sit upstairs in +my room setting down on paper those great words of passion and sorrow +that seethed in my brain and even must have forced themselves in murmurs +on to my lips, because the man by my side suddenly asked me: “What did +you say?”—“Nothing,” I answered, very much surprised. In the shifting +light of the street lamps he looked the picture of bodily misery with his +chattering teeth and his whiskers blown back flat over his ears. But +somehow he didn’t arouse my compassion. He was swearing to himself, in +French and Spanish, and I tried to soothe him by the assurance that we +had not much farther to go. “I am starving,” he remarked acidly, and I +felt a little compunction. Clearly, the first thing to do was to feed +him. We were then entering the Cannebière and as I didn’t care to show +myself with him in the fashionable restaurant where a new face (and such +a face, too) would be remarked, I pulled up the fiacre at the door of the +Maison Dorée. That was more of a place of general resort where, in the +multitude of casual patrons, he would pass unnoticed. + +For this last night of carnival the big house had decorated all its +balconies with rows of coloured paper lanterns right up to the roof. I +led the way to the grand salon, for as to private rooms they had been all +retained days before. There was a great crowd of people in costume, but +by a piece of good luck we managed to secure a little table in a corner. +The revellers, intent on their pleasure, paid no attention to us. Señor +Ortega trod on my heels and after sitting down opposite me threw an +ill-natured glance at the festive scene. It might have been about +half-past ten, then. + +Two glasses of wine he drank one after another did not improve his +temper. He only ceased to shiver. After he had eaten something it must +have occurred to him that he had no reason to bear me a grudge and he +tried to assume a civil and even friendly manner. His mouth, however, +betrayed an abiding bitterness. I mean when he smiled. In repose it was +a very expressionless mouth, only it was too red to be altogether +ordinary. The whole of him was like that: the whiskers too black, the +hair too shiny, the forehead too white, the eyes too mobile; and he lent +you his attention with an air of eagerness which made you uncomfortable. +He seemed to expect you to give yourself away by some unconsidered word +that he would snap up with delight. It was that peculiarity that somehow +put me on my guard. I had no idea who I was facing across the table and +as a matter of fact I did not care. All my impressions were blurred; and +even the promptings of my instinct were the haziest thing imaginable. +Now and then I had acute hallucinations of a woman with an arrow of gold +in her hair. This caused alternate moments of exaltation and depression +from which I tried to take refuge in conversation; but Señor Ortega was +not stimulating. He was preoccupied with personal matters. When +suddenly he asked me whether I knew why he had been called away from his +work (he had been buying supplies from peasants somewhere in Central +France), I answered that I didn’t know what the reason was originally, +but I had an idea that the present intention was to make of him a +courier, bearing certain messages from Baron H. to the Quartel Real in +Tolosa. + +He glared at me like a basilisk. “And why have I been met like this?” he +enquired with an air of being prepared to hear a lie. + +I explained that it was the Baron’s wish, as a matter of prudence and to +avoid any possible trouble which might arise from enquiries by the +police. + +He took it badly. “What nonsense.” He was—he said—an employé (for +several years) of Hernandez Brothers in Paris, an importing firm, and he +was travelling on their business—as he could prove. He dived into his +side pocket and produced a handful of folded papers of all sorts which he +plunged back again instantly. + +And even then I didn’t know whom I had there, opposite me, busy now +devouring a slice of pâté de foie gras. Not in the least. It never +entered my head. How could it? The Rita that haunted me had no history; +she was but the principle of life charged with fatality. Her form was +only a mirage of desire decoying one step by step into despair. + +Señor Ortega gulped down some more wine and suggested I should tell him +who I was. “It’s only right I should know,” he added. + +This could not be gainsaid; and to a man connected with the Carlist +organization the shortest way was to introduce myself as that “Monsieur +George” of whom he had probably heard. + +He leaned far over the table, till his very breast-bone was over the +edge, as though his eyes had been stilettos and he wanted to drive them +home into my brain. It was only much later that I understood how near +death I had been at that moment. But the knives on the tablecloth were +the usual restaurant knives with rounded ends and about as deadly as +pieces of hoop-iron. Perhaps in the very gust of his fury he remembered +what a French restaurant knife is like and something sane within him made +him give up the sudden project of cutting my heart out where I sat. For +it could have been nothing but a sudden impulse. His settled purpose was +quite other. It was not my heart that he was after. His fingers indeed +were groping amongst the knife handles by the side of his plate but what +captivated my attention for a moment were his red lips which were formed +into an odd, sly, insinuating smile. Heard! To be sure he had heard! +The chief of the great arms smuggling organization! + +“Oh!” I said, “that’s giving me too much importance.” The person +responsible and whom I looked upon as chief of all the business was, as +he might have heard, too, a certain noble and loyal lady. + +“I am as noble as she is,” he snapped peevishly, and I put him down at +once as a very offensive beast. “And as to being loyal, what is that? +It is being truthful! It is being faithful! I know all about her.” + +I managed to preserve an air of perfect unconcern. He wasn’t a fellow to +whom one could talk of Doña Rita. + +“You are a Basque,” I said. + +He admitted rather contemptuously that he was a Basque and even then the +truth did not dawn upon me. I suppose that with the hidden egoism of a +lover I was thinking of myself, of myself alone in relation to Doña Rita, +not of Doña Rita herself. He, too, obviously. He said: “I am an +educated man, but I know her people, all peasants. There is a sister, an +uncle, a priest, a peasant, too, and perfectly unenlightened. One can’t +expect much from a priest (I am a free-thinker of course), but he is +really too bad, more like a brute beast. As to all her people, mostly +dead now, they never were of any account. There was a little land, but +they were always working on other people’s farms, a barefooted gang, a +starved lot. I ought to know because we are distant relations. +Twentieth cousins or something of the sort. Yes, I am related to that +most loyal lady. And what is she, after all, but a Parisian woman with +innumerable lovers, as I have been told.” + +“I don’t think your information is very correct,” I said, affecting to +yawn slightly. “This is mere gossip of the gutter and I am surprised at +you, who really know nothing about it—” + +But the disgusting animal had fallen into a brown study. The hair of his +very whiskers was perfectly still. I had now given up all idea of the +letter to Rita. Suddenly he spoke again: + +“Women are the origin of all evil. One should never trust them. They +have no honour. No honour!” he repeated, striking his breast with his +closed fist on which the knuckles stood out very white. “I left my +village many years ago and of course I am perfectly satisfied with my +position and I don’t know why I should trouble my head about this loyal +lady. I suppose that’s the way women get on in the world.” + +I felt convinced that he was no proper person to be a messenger to +headquarters. He struck me as altogether untrustworthy and perhaps not +quite sane. This was confirmed by him saying suddenly with no visible +connection and as if it had been forced from him by some agonizing +process: “I was a boy once,” and then stopping dead short with a smile. +He had a smile that frightened one by its association of malice and +anguish. + +“Will you have anything more to eat?” I asked. + +He declined dully. He had had enough. But he drained the last of a +bottle into his glass and accepted a cigar which I offered him. While he +was lighting it I had a sort of confused impression that he wasn’t such a +stranger to me as I had assumed he was; and yet, on the other hand, I was +perfectly certain I had never seen him before. Next moment I felt that I +could have knocked him down if he hadn’t looked so amazingly unhappy, +while he came out with the astounding question: “Señor, have you ever +been a lover in your young days?” + +“What do you mean?” I asked. “How old do you think I am?” + +“That’s true,” he said, gazing at me in a way in which the damned gaze +out of their cauldrons of boiling pitch at some soul walking scot free in +the place of torment. “It’s true, you don’t seem to have anything on +your mind.” He assumed an air of ease, throwing an arm over the back of +his chair and blowing the smoke through the gash of his twisted red +mouth. “Tell me,” he said, “between men, you know, has this—wonderful +celebrity—what does she call herself? How long has she been your +mistress?” + +I reflected rapidly that if I knocked him over, chair and all, by a +sudden blow from the shoulder it would bring about infinite complications +beginning with a visit to the Commissaire de Police on night-duty, and +ending in God knows what scandal and disclosures of political kind; +because there was no telling what, or how much, this outrageous brute +might choose to say and how many people he might not involve in a most +undesirable publicity. He was smoking his cigar with a poignantly +mocking air and not even looking at me. One can’t hit like that a man +who isn’t even looking at one; and then, just as I was looking at him +swinging his leg with a caustic smile and stony eyes, I felt sorry for +the creature. It was only his body that was there in that chair. It was +manifest to me that his soul was absent in some hell of its own. At that +moment I attained the knowledge of who it was I had before me. This was +the man of whom both Doña Rita and Rose were so much afraid. It remained +then for me to look after him for the night and then arrange with Baron +H. that he should be sent away the very next day—and anywhere but to +Tolosa. Yes, evidently, I mustn’t lose sight of him. I proposed in the +calmest tone that we should go on where he could get his much-needed +rest. He rose with alacrity, picked up his little hand-bag, and, walking +out before me, no doubt looked a very ordinary person to all eyes but +mine. It was then past eleven, not much, because we had not been in that +restaurant quite an hour, but the routine of the town’s night-life being +upset during the Carnival the usual row of fiacres outside the Maison +Dorée was not there; in fact, there were very few carriages about. +Perhaps the coachmen had assumed Pierrot costumes and were rushing about +the streets on foot yelling with the rest of the population. “We will +have to walk,” I said after a while.—“Oh, yes, let us walk,” assented +Señor Ortega, “or I will be frozen here.” It was like a plaint of +unutterable wretchedness. I had a fancy that all his natural heat had +abandoned his limbs and gone to his brain. It was otherwise with me; my +head was cool but I didn’t find the night really so very cold. We +stepped out briskly side by side. My lucid thinking was, as it were, +enveloped by the wide shouting of the consecrated Carnival gaiety. I +have heard many noises since, but nothing that gave me such an intimate +impression of the savage instincts hidden in the breast of mankind; these +yells of festivity suggested agonizing fear, rage of murder, ferocity of +lust, and the irremediable joylessness of human condition: yet they were +emitted by people who were convinced that they were amusing themselves +supremely, traditionally, with the sanction of ages, with the approval of +their conscience—and no mistake about it whatever! Our appearance, the +soberness of our gait made us conspicuous. Once or twice, by common +inspiration, masks rushed forward and forming a circle danced round us +uttering discordant shouts of derision; for we were an outrage to the +peculiar proprieties of the hour, and besides we were obviously lonely +and defenceless. On those occasions there was nothing for it but to +stand still till the flurry was over. My companion, however, would stamp +his feet with rage, and I must admit that I myself regretted not having +provided for our wearing a couple of false noses, which would have been +enough to placate the just resentment of those people. We might have +also joined in the dance, but for some reason or other it didn’t occur to +us; and I heard once a high, clear woman’s voice stigmatizing us for a +“species of swelled heads” (_espèce d’enflés_). We proceeded sedately, +my companion muttered with rage, and I was able to resume my thinking. +It was based on the deep persuasion that the man at my side was insane +with quite another than Carnivalesque lunacy which comes on at one stated +time of the year. He was fundamentally mad, though not perhaps +completely; which of course made him all the greater, I won’t say danger +but, nuisance. + +I remember once a young doctor expounding the theory that most +catastrophes in family circles, surprising episodes in public affairs and +disasters in private life, had their origin in the fact that the world +was full of half-mad people. He asserted that they were the real +majority. When asked whether he considered himself as belonging to the +majority, he said frankly that he didn’t think so; unless the folly of +voicing this view in a company, so utterly unable to appreciate all its +horror, could be regarded as the first symptom of his own fate. We +shouted down him and his theory, but there is no doubt that it had thrown +a chill on the gaiety of our gathering. + +We had now entered a quieter quarter of the town and Señor Ortega had +ceased his muttering. For myself I had not the slightest doubt of my own +sanity. It was proved to me by the way I could apply my intelligence to +the problem of what was to be done with Señor Ortega. Generally, he was +unfit to be trusted with any mission whatever. The unstability of his +temper was sure to get him into a scrape. Of course carrying a letter to +Headquarters was not a very complicated matter; and as to that I would +have trusted willingly a properly trained dog. My private letter to Doña +Rita, the wonderful, the unique letter of farewell, I had given up for +the present. Naturally I thought of the Ortega problem mainly in the +terms of Doña Rita’s safety. Her image presided at every council, at +every conflict of my mind, and dominated every faculty of my senses. It +floated before my eyes, it touched my elbow, it guarded my right side and +my left side; my ears seemed to catch the sound of her footsteps behind +me, she enveloped me with passing whiffs of warmth and perfume, with +filmy touches of the hair on my face. She penetrated me, my head was +full of her . . . And his head, too, I thought suddenly with a side +glance at my companion. He walked quietly with hunched-up shoulders +carrying his little hand-bag and he looked the most commonplace figure +imaginable. + +Yes. There was between us a most horrible fellowship; the association of +his crazy torture with the sublime suffering of my passion. We hadn’t +been a quarter of an hour together when that woman had surged up fatally +between us; between this miserable wretch and myself. We were haunted by +the same image. But I was sane! I was sane! Not because I was certain +that the fellow must not be allowed to go to Tolosa, but because I was +perfectly alive to the difficulty of stopping him from going there, since +the decision was absolutely in the hands of Baron H. + +If I were to go early in the morning and tell that fat, bilious man: +“Look here, your Ortega’s mad,” he would certainly think at once that I +was, get very frightened, and . . . one couldn’t tell what course he +would take. He would eliminate me somehow out of the affair. And yet I +could not let the fellow proceed to where Doña Rita was, because, +obviously, he had been molesting her, had filled her with uneasiness and +even alarm, was an unhappy element and a disturbing influence in her +life—incredible as the thing appeared! I couldn’t let him go on to make +himself a worry and a nuisance, drive her out from a town in which she +wished to be (for whatever reason) and perhaps start some explosive +scandal. And that girl Rose seemed to fear something graver even than a +scandal. But if I were to explain the matter fully to H. he would simply +rejoice in his heart. Nothing would please him more than to have Doña +Rita driven out of Tolosa. What a relief from his anxieties (and his +wife’s, too); and if I were to go further, if I even went so far as to +hint at the fears which Rose had not been able to conceal from me, why +then—I went on thinking coldly with a stoical rejection of the most +elementary faith in mankind’s rectitude—why then, that accommodating +husband would simply let the ominous messenger have his chance. He would +see there only his natural anxieties being laid to rest for ever. +Horrible? Yes. But I could not take the risk. In a twelvemonth I had +travelled a long way in my mistrust of mankind. + +We paced on steadily. I thought: “How on earth am I going to stop you?” +Had this arisen only a month before, when I had the means at hand and +Dominic to confide in, I would have simply kidnapped the fellow. A +little trip to sea would not have done Señor Ortega any harm; though no +doubt it would have been abhorrent to his feelings. But now I had not +the means. I couldn’t even tell where my poor Dominic was hiding his +diminished head. + +Again I glanced at him sideways. I was the taller of the two and as it +happened I met in the light of the street lamp his own stealthy glance +directed up at me with an agonized expression, an expression that made me +fancy I could see the man’s very soul writhing in his body like an +impaled worm. In spite of my utter inexperience I had some notion of the +images that rushed into his mind at the sight of any man who had +approached Doña Rita. It was enough to awaken in any human being a +movement of horrified compassion; but my pity went out not to him but to +Doña Rita. It was for her that I felt sorry; I pitied her for having +that damned soul on her track. I pitied her with tenderness and +indignation, as if this had been both a danger and a dishonour. + +I don’t mean to say that those thoughts passed through my head +consciously. I had only the resultant, settled feeling. I had, however, +a thought, too. It came on me suddenly, and I asked myself with rage and +astonishment: “Must I then kill that brute?” There didn’t seem to be any +alternative. Between him and Doña Rita I couldn’t hesitate. I believe I +gave a slight laugh of desperation. The suddenness of this sinister +conclusion had in it something comic and unbelievable. It loosened my +grip on my mental processes. A Latin tag came into my head about the +facile descent into the abyss. I marvelled at its aptness, and also that +it should have come to me so pat. But I believe now that it was +suggested simply by the actual declivity of the street of the Consuls +which lies on a gentle slope. We had just turned the corner. All the +houses were dark and in a perspective of complete solitude our two +shadows dodged and wheeled about our feet. + +“Here we are,” I said. + +He was an extraordinarily chilly devil. When we stopped I could hear his +teeth chattering again. I don’t know what came over me, I had a sort of +nervous fit, was incapable of finding my pockets, let alone the latchkey. +I had the illusion of a narrow streak of light on the wall of the house +as if it had been cracked. “I hope we will be able to get in,” I +murmured. + +Señor Ortega stood waiting patiently with his handbag, like a rescued +wayfarer. “But you live in this house, don’t you?” he observed. + +“No,” I said, without hesitation. I didn’t know how that man would +behave if he were aware that I was staying under the same roof. He was +half mad. He might want to talk all night, try crazily to invade my +privacy. How could I tell? Moreover, I wasn’t so sure that I would +remain in the house. I had some notion of going out again and walking up +and down the street of the Consuls till daylight. “No, an absent friend +lets me use . . . I had that latchkey this morning . . . Ah! here it is.” + +I let him go in first. The sickly gas flame was there on duty, +undaunted, waiting for the end of the world to come and put it out. I +think that the black-and-white hall surprised Ortega. I had closed the +front door without noise and stood for a moment listening, while he +glanced about furtively. There were only two other doors in the hall, +right and left. Their panels of ebony were decorated with bronze +applications in the centre. The one on the left was of course Blunt’s +door. As the passage leading beyond it was dark at the further end I +took Señor Ortega by the hand and led him along, unresisting, like a +child. For some reason or other I moved on tip-toe and he followed my +example. The light and the warmth of the studio impressed him +favourably; he laid down his little bag, rubbed his hands together, and +produced a smile of satisfaction; but it was such a smile as a totally +ruined man would perhaps force on his lips, or a man condemned to a short +shrift by his doctor. I begged him to make himself at home and said that +I would go at once and hunt up the woman of the house who would make him +up a bed on the big couch there. He hardly listened to what I said. +What were all those things to him! He knew that his destiny was to sleep +on a bed of thorns, to feed on adders. But he tried to show a sort of +polite interest. He asked: “What is this place?” + +“It used to belong to a painter,” I mumbled. + +“Ah, your absent friend,” he said, making a wry mouth. “I detest all +those artists, and all those writers, and all politicos who are thieves; +and I would go even farther and higher, laying a curse on all idle lovers +of women. You think perhaps I am a Royalist? No. If there was anybody +in heaven or hell to pray to I would pray for a revolution—a red +revolution everywhere.” + +“You astonish me,” I said, just to say something. + +“No! But there are half a dozen people in the world with whom I would +like to settle accounts. One could shoot them like partridges and no +questions asked. That’s what revolution would mean to me.” + +“It’s a beautifully simple view,” I said. “I imagine you are not the +only one who holds it; but I really must look after your comforts. You +mustn’t forget that we have to see Baron H. early to-morrow morning.” +And I went out quietly into the passage wondering in what part of the +house Therese had elected to sleep that night. But, lo and behold, when +I got to the foot of the stairs there was Therese coming down from the +upper regions in her nightgown, like a sleep-walker. However, it wasn’t +that, because, before I could exclaim, she vanished off the first floor +landing like a streak of white mist and without the slightest sound. Her +attire made it perfectly clear that she could not have heard us coming +in. In fact, she must have been certain that the house was empty, +because she was as well aware as myself that the Italian girls after +their work at the opera were going to a masked ball to dance for their +own amusement, attended of course by their conscientious father. But +what thought, need, or sudden impulse had driven Therese out of bed like +this was something I couldn’t conceive. + +I didn’t call out after her. I felt sure that she would return. I went +up slowly to the first floor and met her coming down again, this time +carrying a lighted candle. She had managed to make herself presentable +in an extraordinarily short time. + +“Oh, my dear young Monsieur, you have given me a fright.” + +“Yes. And I nearly fainted, too,” I said. “You looked perfectly awful. +What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?” + +She had lighted by then the gas on the landing and I must say that I had +never seen exactly that manner of face on her before. She wriggled, +confused and shifty-eyed, before me; but I ascribed this behaviour to her +shocked modesty and without troubling myself any more about her feelings +I informed her that there was a Carlist downstairs who must be put up for +the night. Most unexpectedly she betrayed a ridiculous consternation, +but only for a moment. Then she assumed at once that I would give him +hospitality upstairs where there was a camp-bedstead in my dressing-room. +I said: + +“No. Give him a shake-down in the studio, where he is now. It’s warm in +there. And remember! I charge you strictly not to let him know that I +sleep in this house. In fact, I don’t know myself that I will; I have +certain matters to attend to this very night. You will also have to +serve him his coffee in the morning. I will take him away before ten +o’clock.” + +All this seemed to impress her more than I had expected. As usual when +she felt curious, or in some other way excited, she assumed a saintly, +detached expression, and asked: + +“The dear gentleman is your friend, I suppose?” + +“I only know he is a Spaniard and a Carlist,” I said: “and that ought to +be enough for you.” + +Instead of the usual effusive exclamations she murmured: “Dear me, dear +me,” and departed upstairs with the candle to get together a few blankets +and pillows, I suppose. As for me I walked quietly downstairs on my way +to the studio. I had a curious sensation that I was acting in a +preordained manner, that life was not at all what I had thought it to be, +or else that I had been altogether changed sometime during the day, and +that I was a different person from the man whom I remembered getting out +of my bed in the morning. + +Also feelings had altered all their values. The words, too, had become +strange. It was only the inanimate surroundings that remained what they +had always been. For instance the studio. . . . + +During my absence Señor Ortega had taken off his coat and I found him as +it were in the air, sitting in his shirt sleeves on a chair which he had +taken pains to place in the very middle of the floor. I repressed an +absurd impulse to walk round him as though he had been some sort of +exhibit. His hands were spread over his knees and he looked perfectly +insensible. I don’t mean strange, or ghastly, or wooden, but just +insensible—like an exhibit. And that effect persisted even after he +raised his black suspicious eyes to my face. He lowered them almost at +once. It was very mechanical. I gave him up and became rather concerned +about myself. My thought was that I had better get out of that before +any more queer notions came into my head. So I only remained long enough +to tell him that the woman of the house was bringing down some bedding +and that I hoped that he would have a good night’s rest. And directly I +spoke it struck me that this was the most extraordinary speech that ever +was addressed to a figure of that sort. He, however, did not seem +startled by it or moved in any way. He simply said: + +“Thank you.” + +In the darkest part of the long passage outside I met Therese with her +arms full of pillows and blankets. + + + +CHAPTER V + + +Coming out of the bright light of the studio I didn’t make out Therese +very distinctly. She, however, having groped in dark cupboards, must +have had her pupils sufficiently dilated to have seen that I had my hat +on my head. This has its importance because after what I had said to her +upstairs it must have convinced her that I was going out on some midnight +business. I passed her without a word and heard behind me the door of +the studio close with an unexpected crash. It strikes me now that under +the circumstances I might have without shame gone back to listen at the +keyhole. But truth to say the association of events was not so clear in +my mind as it may be to the reader of this story. Neither were the exact +connections of persons present to my mind. And, besides, one doesn’t +listen at a keyhole but in pursuance of some plan; unless one is +afflicted by a vulgar and fatuous curiosity. But that vice is not in my +character. As to plan, I had none. I moved along the passage between +the dead wall and the black-and-white marble elevation of the staircase +with hushed footsteps, as though there had been a mortally sick person +somewhere in the house. And the only person that could have answered to +that description was Señor Ortega. I moved on, stealthy, absorbed, +undecided; asking myself earnestly: “What on earth am I going to do with +him?” That exclusive preoccupation of my mind was as dangerous to Señor +Ortega as typhoid fever would have been. It strikes me that this +comparison is very exact. People recover from typhoid fever, but +generally the chance is considered poor. This was precisely his case. +His chance was poor; though I had no more animosity towards him than a +virulent disease has against the victim it lays low. He really would +have nothing to reproach me with; he had run up against me, unwittingly, +as a man enters an infected place, and now he was very ill, very ill +indeed. No, I had no plans against him. I had only the feeling that he +was in mortal danger. + +I believe that men of the most daring character (and I make no claim to +it) often do shrink from the logical processes of thought. It is only +the devil, they say, that loves logic. But I was not a devil. I was not +even a victim of the devil. It was only that I had given up the +direction of my intelligence before the problem; or rather that the +problem had dispossessed my intelligence and reigned in its stead side by +side with a superstitious awe. A dreadful order seemed to lurk in the +darkest shadows of life. The madness of that Carlist with the soul of a +Jacobin, the vile fears of Baron H., that excellent organizer of +supplies, the contact of their two ferocious stupidities, and last, by a +remote disaster at sea, my love brought into direct contact with the +situation: all that was enough to make one shudder—not at the chance, but +at the design. + +For it was my love that was called upon to act here, and nothing else. +And love which elevates us above all safeguards, above restraining +principles, above all littlenesses of self-possession, yet keeps its feet +always firmly on earth, remains marvellously practical in its +suggestions. + +I discovered that however much I had imagined I had given up Rita, that +whatever agonies I had gone through, my hope of her had never been lost. +Plucked out, stamped down, torn to shreds, it had remained with me +secret, intact, invincible. Before the danger of the situation it +sprang, full of life, up in arms—the undying child of immortal love. +What incited me was independent of honour and compassion; it was the +prompting of a love supreme, practical, remorseless in its aim; it was +the practical thought that no woman need be counted as lost for ever, +unless she be dead! + +This excluded for the moment all considerations of ways and means and +risks and difficulties. Its tremendous intensity robbed it of all +direction and left me adrift in the big black-and-white hall as on a +silent sea. It was not, properly speaking, irresolution. It was merely +hesitation as to the next immediate step, and that step even of no great +importance: hesitation merely as to the best way I could spend the rest +of the night. I didn’t think further forward for many reasons, more or +less optimistic, but mainly because I have no homicidal vein in my +composition. The disposition to gloat over homicide was in that +miserable creature in the studio, the potential Jacobin; in that +confounded buyer of agricultural produce, the punctual employé of +Hernandez Brothers, the jealous wretch with an obscene tongue and an +imagination of the same kind to drive him mad. I thought of him without +pity but also without contempt. I reflected that there were no means of +sending a warning to Doña Rita in Tolosa; for of course no postal +communication existed with the Headquarters. And moreover what would a +warning be worth in this particular case, supposing it would reach her, +that she would believe it, and that she would know what to do? How could +I communicate to another that certitude which was in my mind, the more +absolute because without proofs that one could produce? + +The last expression of Rose’s distress rang again in my ears: “Madame has +no friends. Not one!” and I saw Doña Rita’s complete loneliness beset by +all sorts of insincerities, surrounded by pitfalls; her greatest dangers +within herself, in her generosity, in her fears, in her courage, too. +What I had to do first of all was to stop that wretch at all costs. I +became aware of a great mistrust of Therese. I didn’t want her to find +me in the hall, but I was reluctant to go upstairs to my rooms from an +unreasonable feeling that there I would be too much out of the way; not +sufficiently on the spot. There was the alternative of a live-long night +of watching outside, before the dark front of the house. It was a most +distasteful prospect. And then it occurred to me that Blunt’s former +room would be an extremely good place to keep a watch from. I knew that +room. When Henry Allègre gave the house to Rita in the early days (long +before he made his will) he had planned a complete renovation and this +room had been meant for the drawing-room. Furniture had been made for it +specially, upholstered in beautiful ribbed stuff, made to order, of dull +gold colour with a pale blue tracery of arabesques and oval medallions +enclosing Rita’s monogram, repeated on the backs of chairs and sofas, and +on the heavy curtains reaching from ceiling to floor. To the same time +belonged the ebony and bronze doors, the silver statuette at the foot of +the stairs, the forged iron balustrade reproducing right up the marble +staircase Rita’s decorative monogram in its complicated design. +Afterwards the work was stopped and the house had fallen into disrepair. +When Rita devoted it to the Carlist cause a bed was put into that +drawing-room, just simply the bed. The room next to that yellow salon +had been in Allègre’s young days fitted as a fencing-room containing also +a bath, and a complicated system of all sorts of shower and jet +arrangements, then quite up to date. That room was very large, lighted +from the top, and one wall of it was covered by trophies of arms of all +sorts, a choice collection of cold steel disposed on a background of +Indian mats and rugs: Blunt used it as a dressing-room. It communicated +by a small door with the studio. + +I had only to extend my hand and make one step to reach the magnificent +bronze handle of the ebony door, and if I didn’t want to be caught by +Therese there was no time to lose. I made the step and extended the +hand, thinking that it would be just like my luck to find the door +locked. But the door came open to my push. In contrast to the dark hall +the room was most unexpectedly dazzling to my eyes, as if illuminated _a +giorno_ for a reception. No voice came from it, but nothing could have +stopped me now. As I turned round to shut the door behind me noiselessly +I caught sight of a woman’s dress on a chair, of other articles of +apparel scattered about. The mahogany bed with a piece of light silk +which Therese found somewhere and used for a counterpane was a +magnificent combination of white and crimson between the gleaming +surfaces of dark wood; and the whole room had an air of splendour with +marble consoles, gilt carvings, long mirrors and a sumptuous Venetian +lustre depending from the ceiling: a darkling mass of icy pendants +catching a spark here and there from the candles of an eight-branched +candelabra standing on a little table near the head of a sofa which had +been dragged round to face the fireplace. The faintest possible whiff of +a familiar perfume made my head swim with its suggestion. + +I grabbed the back of the nearest piece of furniture and the splendour of +marbles and mirrors, of cut crystals and carvings, swung before my eyes +in the golden mist of walls and draperies round an extremely conspicuous +pair of black stockings thrown over a music stool which remained +motionless. The silence was profound. It was like being in an enchanted +place. Suddenly a voice began to speak, clear, detached, infinitely +touching in its calm weariness. + +“Haven’t you tormented me enough to-day?” it said. . . . My head was +steady now but my heart began to beat violently. I listened to the end +without moving, “Can’t you make up your mind to leave me alone for +to-night?” It pleaded with an accent of charitable scorn. + +The penetrating quality of these tones which I had not heard for so many, +many days made my eyes run full of tears. I guessed easily that the +appeal was addressed to the atrocious Therese. The speaker was concealed +from me by the high back of the sofa, but her apprehension was perfectly +justified. For was it not I who had turned back Therese the pious, the +insatiable, coming downstairs in her nightgown to torment her sister some +more? Mere surprise at Doña Rita’s presence in the house was enough to +paralyze me; but I was also overcome by an enormous sense of relief, by +the assurance of security for her and for myself. I didn’t even ask +myself how she came there. It was enough for me that she was not in +Tolosa. I could have smiled at the thought that all I had to do now was +to hasten the departure of that abominable lunatic—for Tolosa: an easy +task, almost no task at all. Yes, I would have smiled, had not I felt +outraged by the presence of Señor Ortega under the same roof with Doña +Rita. The mere fact was repugnant to me, morally revolting; so that I +should have liked to rush at him and throw him out into the street. But +that was not to be done for various reasons. One of them was pity. I +was suddenly at peace with all mankind, with all nature. I felt as if I +couldn’t hurt a fly. The intensity of my emotion sealed my lips. With a +fearful joy tugging at my heart I moved round the head of the couch +without a word. + +In the wide fireplace on a pile of white ashes the logs had a deep +crimson glow; and turned towards them Doña Rita reclined on her side +enveloped in the skins of wild beasts like a charming and savage young +chieftain before a camp fire. She never even raised her eyes, giving me +the opportunity to contemplate mutely that adolescent, delicately +masculine head, so mysteriously feminine in the power of instant +seduction, so infinitely suave in its firm design, almost childlike in +the freshness of detail: altogether ravishing in the inspired strength of +the modelling. That precious head reposed in the palm of her hand; the +face was slightly flushed (with anger perhaps). She kept her eyes +obstinately fixed on the pages of a book which she was holding with her +other hand. I had the time to lay my infinite adoration at her feet +whose white insteps gleamed below the dark edge of the fur out of quilted +blue silk bedroom slippers, embroidered with small pearls. I had never +seen them before; I mean the slippers. The gleam of the insteps, too, +for that matter. I lost myself in a feeling of deep content, something +like a foretaste of a time of felicity which must be quiet or it couldn’t +be eternal. I had never tasted such perfect quietness before. It was +not of this earth. I had gone far beyond. It was as if I had reached +the ultimate wisdom beyond all dreams and all passions. She was That +which is to be contemplated to all Infinity. + +The perfect stillness and silence made her raise her eyes at last, +reluctantly, with a hard, defensive expression which I had never seen in +them before. And no wonder! The glance was meant for Therese and +assumed in self-defence. For some time its character did not change and +when it did it turned into a perfectly stony stare of a kind which I also +had never seen before. She had never wished so much to be left in peace. +She had never been so astonished in her life. She had arrived by the +evening express only two hours before Señor Ortega, had driven to the +house, and after having something to eat had become for the rest of the +evening the helpless prey of her sister who had fawned and scolded and +wheedled and threatened in a way that outraged all Rita’s feelings. +Seizing this unexpected occasion Therese had displayed a distracting +versatility of sentiment: rapacity, virtue, piety, spite, and false +tenderness—while, characteristically enough, she unpacked the +dressing-bag, helped the sinner to get ready for bed, brushed her hair, +and finally, as a climax, kissed her hands, partly by surprise and partly +by violence. After that she had retired from the field of battle slowly, +undefeated, still defiant, firing as a last shot the impudent question: +“Tell me only, have you made your will, Rita?” To this poor Doña Rita +with the spirit of opposition strung to the highest pitch answered: “No, +and I don’t mean to”—being under the impression that this was what her +sister wanted her to do. There can be no doubt, however, that all +Therese wanted was the information. + +Rita, much too agitated to expect anything but a sleepless night, had not +the courage to get into bed. She thought she would remain on the sofa +before the fire and try to compose herself with a book. As she had no +dressing-gown with her she put on her long fur coat over her night-gown, +threw some logs on the fire, and lay down. She didn’t hear the slightest +noise of any sort till she heard me shut the door gently. Quietness of +movement was one of Therese’s accomplishments, and the harassed heiress +of the Allègre millions naturally thought it was her sister coming again +to renew the scene. Her heart sank within her. In the end she became a +little frightened at the long silence, and raised her eyes. She didn’t +believe them for a long time. She concluded that I was a vision. In +fact, the first word which I heard her utter was a low, awed “No,” which, +though I understood its meaning, chilled my blood like an evil omen. + +It was then that I spoke. “Yes,” I said, “it’s me that you see,” and +made a step forward. She didn’t start; only her other hand flew to the +edges of the fur coat, gripping them together over her breast. Observing +this gesture I sat down in the nearest chair. The book she had been +reading slipped with a thump on the floor. + +“How is it possible that you should be here?” she said, still in a +doubting voice. + +“I am really here,” I said. “Would you like to touch my hand?” + +She didn’t move at all; her fingers still clutched the fur coat. + +“What has happened?” + +“It’s a long story, but you may take it from me that all is over. The +tie between us is broken. I don’t know that it was ever very close. It +was an external thing. The true misfortune is that I have ever seen +you.” + +This last phrase was provoked by an exclamation of sympathy on her part. +She raised herself on her elbow and looked at me intently. “All over,” +she murmured. + +“Yes, we had to wreck the little vessel. It was awful. I feel like a +murderer. But she had to be killed.” + +“Why?” + +“Because I loved her too much. Don’t you know that love and death go +very close together?” + +“I could feel almost happy that it is all over, if you hadn’t had to lose +your love. Oh, _amigo_ George, it was a safe love for you.” + +“Yes,” I said. “It was a faithful little vessel. She would have saved +us all from any plain danger. But this was a betrayal. It was—never +mind. All that’s past. The question is what will the next one be.” + +“Why should it be that?” + +“I don’t know. Life seems but a series of betrayals. There are so many +kinds of them. This was a betrayed plan, but one can betray confidence, +and hope and—desire, and the most sacred . . .” + +“But what are you doing here?” she interrupted. + +“Oh, yes! The eternal why. Till a few hours ago I didn’t know what I +was here for. And what are you here for?” I asked point blank and with a +bitterness she disregarded. She even answered my question quite readily +with many words out of which I could make very little. I only learned +that for at least five mixed reasons, none of which impressed me +profoundly, Doña Rita had started at a moment’s notice from Paris with +nothing but a dressing-bag, and permitting Rose to go and visit her aged +parents for two days, and then follow her mistress. That girl of late +had looked so perturbed and worried that the sensitive Rita, fearing that +she was tired of her place, proposed to settle a sum of money on her +which would have enabled her to devote herself entirely to her aged +parents. And did I know what that extraordinary girl said? She had +said: “Don’t let Madame think that I would be too proud to accept +anything whatever from her; but I can’t even dream of leaving Madame. I +believe Madame has no friends. Not one.” So instead of a large sum of +money Doña Rita gave the girl a kiss and as she had been worried by +several people who wanted her to go to Tolosa she bolted down this way +just to get clear of all those busybodies. “Hide from them,” she went on +with ardour. “Yes, I came here to hide,” she repeated twice as if +delighted at last to have hit on that reason among so many others. “How +could I tell that you would be here?” Then with sudden fire which only +added to the delight with which I had been watching the play of her +physiognomy she added: “Why did you come into this room?” + +She enchanted me. The ardent modulations of the sound, the slight play +of the beautiful lips, the still, deep sapphire gleam in those long eyes +inherited from the dawn of ages and that seemed always to watch +unimaginable things, that underlying faint ripple of gaiety that played +under all her moods as though it had been a gift from the high gods moved +to pity for this lonely mortal, all this within the four walls and +displayed for me alone gave me the sense of almost intolerable joy. The +words didn’t matter. They had to be answered, of course. + +“I came in for several reasons. One of them is that I didn’t know you +were here.” + +“Therese didn’t tell you?” + +“No.” + +“Never talked to you about me?” + +I hesitated only for a moment. “Never,” I said. Then I asked in my +turn, “Did she tell you I was here?” + +“No,” she said. + +“It’s very clear she did not mean us to come together again.” + +“Neither did I, my dear.” + +“What do you mean by speaking like this, in this tone, in these words? +You seem to use them as if they were a sort of formula. Am I a dear to +you? Or is anybody? . . . or everybody? . . .” + +She had been for some time raised on her elbow, but then as if something +had happened to her vitality she sank down till her head rested again on +the sofa cushion. + +“Why do you try to hurt my feelings?” she asked. + +“For the same reason for which you call me dear at the end of a sentence +like that: for want of something more amusing to do. You don’t pretend +to make me believe that you do it for any sort of reason that a decent +person would confess to.” + +The colour had gone from her face; but a fit of wickedness was on me and +I pursued, “What are the motives of your speeches? What prompts your +actions? On your own showing your life seems to be a continuous running +away. You have just run away from Paris. Where will you run to-morrow? +What are you everlastingly running from—or is it that you are running +after something? What is it? A man, a phantom—or some sensation that +you don’t like to own to?” + +Truth to say, I was abashed by the silence which was her only answer to +this sally. I said to myself that I would not let my natural anger, my +just fury be disarmed by any assumption of pathos or dignity. I suppose +I was really out of my mind and what in the middle ages would have been +called “possessed” by an evil spirit. I went on enjoying my own +villainy. + +“Why aren’t you in Tolosa? You ought to be in Tolosa. Isn’t Tolosa the +proper field for your abilities, for your sympathies, for your +profusions, for your generosities—the king without a crown, the man +without a fortune! But here there is nothing worthy of your talents. +No, there is no longer anything worth any sort of trouble here. There +isn’t even that ridiculous Monsieur George. I understand that the talk +of the coast from here to Cette is that Monsieur George is drowned. Upon +my word I believe he is. And serve him right, too. There’s Therese, but +I don’t suppose that your love for your sister . . .” + +“For goodness’ sake don’t let her come in and find you here.” + +Those words recalled me to myself, exorcised the evil spirit by the mere +enchanting power of the voice. They were also impressive by their +suggestion of something practical, utilitarian, and remote from +sentiment. The evil spirit left me and I remained taken aback slightly. + +“Well,” I said, “if you mean that you want me to leave the room I will +confess to you that I can’t very well do it yet. But I could lock both +doors if you don’t mind that.” + +“Do what you like as long as you keep her out. You two together would be +too much for me to-night. Why don’t you go and lock those doors? I have +a feeling she is on the prowl.” + +I got up at once saying, “I imagine she has gone to bed by this time.” I +felt absolutely calm and responsible. I turned the keys one after +another so gently that I couldn’t hear the click of the locks myself. +This done I recrossed the room with measured steps, with downcast eyes, +and approaching the couch without raising them from the carpet I sank +down on my knees and leaned my forehead on its edge. That penitential +attitude had but little remorse in it. I detected no movement and heard +no sound from her. In one place a bit of the fur coat touched my cheek +softly, but no forgiving hand came to rest on my bowed head. I only +breathed deeply the faint scent of violets, her own particular fragrance +enveloping my body, penetrating my very heart with an inconceivable +intimacy, bringing me closer to her than the closest embrace, and yet so +subtle that I sensed her existence in me only as a great, glowing, +indeterminate tenderness, something like the evening light disclosing +after the white passion of the day infinite depths in the colours of the +sky and an unsuspected soul of peace in the protean forms of life. I had +not known such quietness for months; and I detected in myself an immense +fatigue, a longing to remain where I was without changing my position to +the end of time. Indeed to remain seemed to me a complete solution for +all the problems that life presents—even as to the very death itself. + +Only the unwelcome reflection that this was impossible made me get up at +last with a sigh of deep grief at the end of the dream. But I got up +without despair. She didn’t murmur, she didn’t stir. There was +something august in the stillness of the room. It was a strange peace +which she shared with me in this unexpected shelter full of disorder in +its neglected splendour. What troubled me was the sudden, as it were +material, consciousness of time passing as water flows. It seemed to me +that it was only the tenacity of my sentiment that held that woman’s +body, extended and tranquil above the flood. But when I ventured at last +to look at her face I saw her flushed, her teeth clenched—it was +visible—her nostrils dilated, and in her narrow, level-glancing eyes a +look of inward and frightened ecstasy. The edges of the fur coat had +fallen open and I was moved to turn away. I had the same impression as +on the evening we parted that something had happened which I did not +understand; only this time I had not touched her at all. I really didn’t +understand. At the slightest whisper I would now have gone out without a +murmur, as though that emotion had given her the right to be obeyed. But +there was no whisper; and for a long time I stood leaning on my arm, +looking into the fire and feeling distinctly between the four walls of +that locked room the unchecked time flow past our two stranded +personalities. + +And suddenly she spoke. She spoke in that voice that was so profoundly +moving without ever being sad, a little wistful perhaps and always the +supreme expression of her grace. She asked as if nothing had happened: + +“What are you thinking of, _amigo_?” + +I turned about. She was lying on her side, tranquil above the smooth +flow of time, again closely wrapped up in her fur, her head resting on +the old-gold sofa cushion bearing like everything else in that room the +decoratively enlaced letters of her monogram; her face a little pale now, +with the crimson lobe of her ear under the tawny mist of her loose hair, +the lips a little parted, and her glance of melted sapphire level and +motionless, darkened by fatigue. + +“Can I think of anything but you?” I murmured, taking a seat near the +foot of the couch. “Or rather it isn’t thinking, it is more like the +consciousness of you always being present in me, complete to the last +hair, to the faintest shade of expression, and that not only when we are +apart but when we are together, alone, as close as this. I see you now +lying on this couch but that is only the insensible phantom of the real +you that is in me. And it is the easier for me to feel this because that +image which others see and call by your name—how am I to know that it is +anything else but an enchanting mist? You have always eluded me except +in one or two moments which seem still more dream-like than the rest. +Since I came into this room you have done nothing to destroy my +conviction of your unreality apart from myself. You haven’t offered me +your hand to touch. Is it because you suspect that apart from me you are +but a mere phantom, and that you fear to put it to the test?” + +One of her hands was under the fur and the other under her cheek. She +made no sound. She didn’t offer to stir. She didn’t move her eyes, not +even after I had added after waiting for a while, + +“Just what I expected. You are a cold illusion.” + +She smiled mysteriously, right away from me, straight at the fire, and +that was all. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +I had a momentary suspicion that I had said something stupid. Her smile +amongst many other things seemed to have meant that, too. And I answered +it with a certain resignation: + +“Well, I don’t know that you are so much mist. I remember once hanging +on to you like a drowning man . . . But perhaps I had better not speak of +this. It wasn’t so very long ago, and you may . . . ” + +“I don’t mind. Well . . .” + +“Well, I have kept an impression of great solidity. I’ll admit that. A +woman of granite.” + +“A doctor once told me that I was made to last for ever,” she said. + +“But essentially it’s the same thing,” I went on. “Granite, too, is +insensible.” + +I watched her profile against the pillow and there came on her face an +expression I knew well when with an indignation full of suppressed +laughter she used to throw at me the word “Imbecile.” I expected it to +come, but it didn’t come. I must say, though, that I was swimmy in my +head and now and then had a noise as of the sea in my ears, so I might +not have heard it. The woman of granite, built to last for ever, +continued to look at the glowing logs which made a sort of fiery ruin on +the white pile of ashes. “I will tell you how it is,” I said. “When I +have you before my eyes there is such a projection of my whole being +towards you that I fail to see you distinctly. It was like that from the +beginning. I may say that I never saw you distinctly till after we had +parted and I thought you had gone from my sight for ever. It was then +that you took body in my imagination and that my mind seized on a +definite form of you for all its adorations—for its profanations, too. +Don’t imagine me grovelling in spiritual abasement before a mere image. +I got a grip on you that nothing can shake now.” + +“Don’t speak like this,” she said. “It’s too much for me. And there is +a whole long night before us.” + +“You don’t think that I dealt with you sentimentally enough perhaps? But +the sentiment was there; as clear a flame as ever burned on earth from +the most remote ages before that eternal thing which is in you, which is +your heirloom. And is it my fault that what I had to give was real +flame, and not a mystic’s incense? It is neither your fault nor mine. +And now whatever we say to each other at night or in daylight, that +sentiment must be taken for granted. It will be there on the day I +die—when you won’t be there.” + +She continued to look fixedly at the red embers; and from her lips that +hardly moved came the quietest possible whisper: “Nothing would be easier +than to die for you.” + +“Really,” I cried. “And you expect me perhaps after this to kiss your +feet in a transport of gratitude while I hug the pride of your words to +my breast. But as it happens there is nothing in me but contempt for +this sublime declaration. How dare you offer me this charlatanism of +passion? What has it got to do between you and me who are the only two +beings in the world that may safely say that we have no need of shams +between ourselves? Is it possible that you are a charlatan at heart? +Not from egoism, I admit, but from some sort of fear. Yet, should you be +sincere, then—listen well to me—I would never forgive you. I would visit +your grave every day to curse you for an evil thing.” + +“Evil thing,” she echoed softly. + +“Would you prefer to be a sham—that one could forget?” + +“You will never forget me,” she said in the same tone at the glowing +embers. “Evil or good. But, my dear, I feel neither an evil nor a sham. +I have got to be what I am, and that, _amigo_, is not so easy; because I +may be simple, but like all those on whom there is no peace I am not One. +No, I am not One!” + +“You are all the women in the world,” I whispered bending over her. She +didn’t seem to be aware of anything and only spoke—always to the glow. + +“If I were that I would say: God help them then. But that would be more +appropriate for Therese. For me, I can only give them my infinite +compassion. I have too much reverence in me to invoke the name of a God +of whom clever men have robbed me a long time ago. How could I help it? +For the talk was clever and—and I had a mind. And I am also, as Therese +says, naturally sinful. Yes, my dear, I may be naturally wicked but I am +not evil and I could die for you.” + +“You!” I said. “You are afraid to die.” + +“Yes. But not for you.” + +The whole structure of glowing logs fell down, raising a small turmoil of +white ashes and sparks. The tiny crash seemed to wake her up thoroughly. +She turned her head upon the cushion to look at me. + +“It’s a very extraordinary thing, we two coming together like this,” she +said with conviction. “You coming in without knowing I was here and then +telling me that you can’t very well go out of the room. That sounds +funny. I wouldn’t have been angry if you had said that you wouldn’t. It +would have hurt me. But nobody ever paid much attention to my feelings. +Why do you smile like this?” + +“At a thought. Without any charlatanism of passion I am able to tell you +of something to match your devotion. I was not afraid for your sake to +come within a hair’s breadth of what to all the world would have been a +squalid crime. Note that you and I are persons of honour. And there +might have been a criminal trial at the end of it for me. Perhaps the +scaffold.” + +“Do you say these horrors to make me tremble?” + +“Oh, you needn’t tremble. There shall be no crime. I need not risk the +scaffold, since now you are safe. But I entered this room meditating +resolutely on the ways of murder, calculating possibilities and chances +without the slightest compunction. It’s all over now. It was all over +directly I saw you here, but it had been so near that I shudder yet.” + +She must have been very startled because for a time she couldn’t speak. +Then in a faint voice: + +“For me! For me!” she faltered out twice. + +“For you—or for myself? Yet it couldn’t have been selfish. What would +it have been to me that you remained in the world? I never expected to +see you again. I even composed a most beautiful letter of farewell. +Such a letter as no woman had ever received.” + +Instantly she shot out a hand towards me. The edges of the fur cloak +fell apart. A wave of the faintest possible scent floated into my +nostrils. + +“Let me have it,” she said imperiously. + +“You can’t have it. It’s all in my head. No woman will read it. I +suspect it was something that could never have been written. But what a +farewell! And now I suppose we shall say good-bye without even a +handshake. But you are safe! Only I must ask you not to come out of +this room till I tell you you may.” + +I was extremely anxious that Señor Ortega should never even catch a +glimpse of Doña Rita, never guess how near he had been to her. I was +extremely anxious the fellow should depart for Tolosa and get shot in a +ravine; or go to the Devil in his own way, as long as he lost the track +of Doña Rita completely. He then, probably, would get mad and get shut +up, or else get cured, forget all about it, and devote himself to his +vocation, whatever it was—keep a shop and grow fat. All this flashed +through my mind in an instant and while I was still dazzled by those +comforting images, the voice of Doña Rita pulled me up with a jerk. + +“You mean not out of the house?” + +“No, I mean not out of this room,” I said with some embarrassment. + +“What do you mean? Is there something in the house then? This is most +extraordinary! Stay in this room? And you, too, it seems? Are you also +afraid for yourself?” + +“I can’t even give you an idea how afraid I was. I am not so much now. +But you know very well, Doña Rita, that I never carry any sort of weapon +in my pocket.” + +“Why don’t you, then?” she asked in a flash of scorn which bewitched me +so completely for an instant that I couldn’t even smile at it. + +“Because if I am unconventionalized I am an old European,” I murmured +gently. “No, _Excellentissima_, I shall go through life without as much +as a switch in my hand. It’s no use you being angry. Adapting to this +great moment some words you’ve heard before: I am like that. Such is my +character!” + +Doña Rita frankly stared at me—a most unusual expression for her to have. +Suddenly she sat up. + +“Don George,” she said with lovely animation, “I insist upon knowing who +is in my house.” + +“You insist! . . . But Therese says it is _her_ house.” + +Had there been anything handy, such as a cigarette box, for instance, it +would have gone sailing through the air spouting cigarettes as it went. +Rosy all over, cheeks, neck, shoulders, she seemed lighted up softly from +inside like a beautiful transparency. But she didn’t raise her voice. + +“You and Therese have sworn my ruin. If you don’t tell me what you mean +I will go outside and shout up the stairs to make her come down. I know +there is no one but the three of us in the house.” + +“Yes, three; but not counting my Jacobin. There is a Jacobin in the +house.” + +“A Jac . . .! Oh, George, is this the time to jest?” she began in +persuasive tones when a faint but peculiar noise stilled her lips as +though they had been suddenly frozen. She became quiet all over +instantly. I, on the contrary, made an involuntary movement before I, +too, became as still as death. We strained our ears; but that peculiar +metallic rattle had been so slight and the silence now was so perfect +that it was very difficult to believe one’s senses. Doña Rita looked +inquisitively at me. I gave her a slight nod. We remained looking into +each other’s eyes while we listened and listened till the silence became +unbearable. Doña Rita whispered composedly: “Did you hear?” + +“I am asking myself . . . I almost think I didn’t.” + +“Don’t shuffle with me. It was a scraping noise.” + +“Something fell.” + +“Something! What thing? What are the things that fall by themselves? +Who is that man of whom you spoke? Is there a man?” + +“No doubt about it whatever. I brought him here myself.” + +“What for?” + +“Why shouldn’t I have a Jacobin of my own? Haven’t you one, too? But +mine is a different problem from that white-haired humbug of yours. He +is a genuine article. There must be plenty like him about. He has +scores to settle with half a dozen people, he says, and he clamours for +revolutions to give him a chance.” + +“But why did you bring him here?” + +“I don’t know—from sudden affection . . . ” + +All this passed in such low tones that we seemed to make out the words +more by watching each other’s lips than through our sense of hearing. +Man is a strange animal. I didn’t care what I said. All I wanted was to +keep her in her pose, excited and still, sitting up with her hair loose, +softly glowing, the dark brown fur making a wonderful contrast with the +white lace on her breast. All I was thinking of was that she was +adorable and too lovely for words! I cared for nothing but that +sublimely aesthetic impression. It summed up all life, all joy, all +poetry! It had a divine strain. I am certain that I was not in my right +mind. I suppose I was not quite sane. I am convinced that at that +moment of the four people in the house it was Doña Rita who upon the +whole was the most sane. She observed my face and I am sure she read +there something of my inward exaltation. She knew what to do. In the +softest possible tone and hardly above her breath she commanded: “George, +come to yourself.” + +Her gentleness had the effect of evening light. I was soothed. Her +confidence in her own power touched me profoundly. I suppose my love was +too great for madness to get hold of me. I can’t say that I passed to a +complete calm, but I became slightly ashamed of myself. I whispered: + +“No, it was not from affection, it was for the love of you that I brought +him here. That imbecile H. was going to send him to Tolosa.” + +“That Jacobin!” Doña Rita was immensely surprised, as she might well have +been. Then resigned to the incomprehensible: “Yes,” she breathed out, +“what did you do with him?” + +“I put him to bed in the studio.” + +How lovely she was with the effort of close attention depicted in the +turn of her head and in her whole face honestly trying to approve. “And +then?” she inquired. + +“Then I came in here to face calmly the necessity of doing away with a +human life. I didn’t shirk it for a moment. That’s what a short +twelvemonth has brought me to. Don’t think I am reproaching you, O blind +force! You are justified because you _are_. Whatever had to happen you +would not even have heard of it.” + +Horror darkened her marvellous radiance. Then her face became utterly +blank with the tremendous effort to understand. Absolute silence reigned +in the house. It seemed to me that everything had been said now that +mattered in the world; and that the world itself had reached its ultimate +stage, had reached its appointed end of an eternal, phantom-like silence. +Suddenly Doña Rita raised a warning finger. I had heard nothing and +shook my head; but she nodded hers and murmured excitedly, + +“Yes, yes, in the fencing-room, as before.” + +In the same way I answered her: “Impossible! The door is locked and +Therese has the key.” She asked then in the most cautious manner, + +“Have you seen Therese to-night?” + +“Yes,” I confessed without misgiving. “I left her making up the fellow’s +bed when I came in here.” + +“The bed of the Jacobin?” she said in a peculiar tone as if she were +humouring a lunatic. + +“I think I had better tell you he is a Spaniard—that he seems to know you +from early days. . . .” I glanced at her face, it was extremely tense, +apprehensive. For myself I had no longer any doubt as to the man and I +hoped she would reach the correct conclusion herself. But I believe she +was too distracted and worried to think consecutively. She only seemed +to feel some terror in the air. In very pity I bent down and whispered +carefully near her ear, “His name is Ortega.” + +I expected some effect from that name but I never expected what happened. +With the sudden, free, spontaneous agility of a young animal she leaped +off the sofa, leaving her slippers behind, and in one bound reached +almost the middle of the room. The vigour, the instinctive precision of +that spring, were something amazing. I just escaped being knocked over. +She landed lightly on her bare feet with a perfect balance, without the +slightest suspicion of swaying in her instant immobility. It lasted less +than a second, then she spun round distractedly and darted at the first +door she could see. My own agility was just enough to enable me to grip +the back of the fur coat and then catch her round the body before she +could wriggle herself out of the sleeves. She was muttering all the +time, “No, no, no.” She abandoned herself to me just for an instant +during which I got her back to the middle of the room. There she +attempted to free herself and I let her go at once. With her face very +close to mine, but apparently not knowing what she was looking at she +repeated again twice, “No—No,” with an intonation which might well have +brought dampness to my eyes but which only made me regret that I didn’t +kill the honest Ortega at sight. Suddenly Doña Rita swung round and +seizing her loose hair with both hands started twisting it up before one +of the sumptuous mirrors. The wide fur sleeves slipped down her white +arms. In a brusque movement like a downward stab she transfixed the +whole mass of tawny glints and sparks with the arrow of gold which she +perceived lying there, before her, on the marble console. Then she +sprang away from the glass muttering feverishly, “Out—out—out of this +house,” and trying with an awful, senseless stare to dodge past me who +had put myself in her way with open arms. At last I managed to seize her +by the shoulders and in the extremity of my distress I shook her roughly. +If she hadn’t quieted down then I believe my heart would have broken. I +spluttered right into her face: “I won’t let you. Here you stay.” She +seemed to recognize me at last, and suddenly still, perfectly firm on her +white feet, she let her arms fall and, from an abyss of desolation, +whispered, “O! George! No! No! Not Ortega.” + +There was a passion of mature grief in this tone of appeal. And yet she +remained as touching and helpless as a distressed child. It had all the +simplicity and depth of a child’s emotion. It tugged at one’s +heart-strings in the same direct way. But what could one do? How could +one soothe her? It was impossible to pat her on the head, take her on +the knee, give her a chocolate or show her a picture-book. I found +myself absolutely without resource. Completely at a loss. + +“Yes, Ortega. Well, what of it?” I whispered with immense assurance. + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +My brain was in a whirl. I am safe to say that at this precise moment +there was nobody completely sane in the house. Setting apart Therese and +Ortega, both in the grip of unspeakable passions, all the moral economy +of Doña Rita had gone to pieces. Everything was gone except her strong +sense of life with all its implied menaces. The woman was a mere chaos +of sensations and vitality. I, too, suffered most from inability to get +hold of some fundamental thought. The one on which I could best build +some hopes was the thought that, of course, Ortega did not know anything. +I whispered this into the ear of Doña Rita, into her precious, her +beautifully shaped ear. + +But she shook her head, very much like an inconsolable child and very +much with a child’s complete pessimism she murmured, “Therese has told +him.” + +The words, “Oh, nonsense,” never passed my lips, because I could not +cheat myself into denying that there had been a noise; and that the noise +was in the fencing-room. I knew that room. There was nothing there that +by the wildest stretch of imagination could be conceived as falling with +that particular sound. There was a table with a tall strip of +looking-glass above it at one end; but since Blunt took away his +campaigning kit there was no small object of any sort on the console or +anywhere else that could have been jarred off in some mysterious manner. +Along one of the walls there was the whole complicated apparatus of solid +brass pipes, and quite close to it an enormous bath sunk into the floor. +The greatest part of the room along its whole length was covered with +matting and had nothing else but a long, narrow leather-upholstered bench +fixed to the wall. And that was all. And the door leading to the studio +was locked. And Therese had the key. And it flashed on my mind, +independently of Doña Rita’s pessimism, by the force of personal +conviction, that, of course, Therese would tell him. I beheld the whole +succession of events perfectly connected and tending to that particular +conclusion. Therese would tell him! I could see the contrasted heads of +those two formidable lunatics close together in a dark mist of whispers +compounded of greed, piety, and jealousy, plotting in a sense of perfect +security as if under the very wing of Providence. So at least Therese +would think. She could not be but under the impression that +(providentially) I had been called out for the rest of the night. + +And now there was one sane person in the house, for I had regained +complete command of my thoughts. Working in a logical succession of +images they showed me at last as clearly as a picture on a wall, Therese +pressing with fervour the key into the fevered palm of the rich, +prestigious, virtuous cousin, so that he should go and urge his +self-sacrificing offer to Rita, and gain merit before Him whose Eye sees +all the actions of men. And this image of those two with the key in the +studio seemed to me a most monstrous conception of fanaticism, of a +perfectly horrible aberration. For who could mistake the state that made +José Ortega the figure he was, inspiring both pity and fear? I could not +deny that I understood, not the full extent but the exact nature of his +suffering. Young as I was I had solved for myself that grotesque and +sombre personality. His contact with me, the personal contact with (as +he thought) one of the actual lovers of that woman who brought to him as +a boy the curse of the gods, had tipped over the trembling scales. No +doubt I was very near death in the “grand salon” of the Maison Dorée, +only that his torture had gone too far. It seemed to me that I ought to +have heard his very soul scream while we were seated at supper. But in a +moment he had ceased to care for me. I was nothing. To the crazy +exaggeration of his jealousy I was but one amongst a hundred thousand. +What was my death? Nothing. All mankind had possessed that woman. I +knew what his wooing of her would be: Mine—or Dead. + +All this ought to have had the clearness of noon-day, even to the veriest +idiot that ever lived; and Therese was, properly speaking, exactly that. +An idiot. A one-ideaed creature. Only the idea was complex; therefore +it was impossible really to say what she wasn’t capable of. This was +what made her obscure processes so awful. She had at times the most +amazing perceptions. Who could tell where her simplicity ended and her +cunning began? She had also the faculty of never forgetting any fact +bearing upon her one idea; and I remembered now that the conversation +with me about the will had produced on her an indelible impression of the +Law’s surprising justice. Recalling her naïve admiration of the “just” +law that required no “paper” from a sister, I saw her casting loose the +raging fate with a sanctimonious air. And Therese would naturally give +the key of the fencing-room to her dear, virtuous, grateful, +disinterested cousin, to that damned soul with delicate whiskers, because +she would think it just possible that Rita might have locked the door +leading front her room into the hall; whereas there was no earthly +reason, not the slightest likelihood, that she would bother about the +other. Righteousness demanded that the erring sister should be taken +unawares. + +All the above is the analysis of one short moment. Images are to words +like light to sound—incomparably swifter. And all this was really one +flash of light through my mind. A comforting thought succeeded it: that +both doors were locked and that really there was no danger. + +However, there had been that noise—the why and the how of it? Of course +in the dark he might have fallen into the bath, but that wouldn’t have +been a faint noise. It wouldn’t have been a rattle. There was +absolutely nothing he could knock over. He might have dropped a +candle-stick if Therese had left him her own. That was possible, but +then those thick mats—and then, anyway, why should he drop it? and, hang +it all, why shouldn’t he have gone straight on and tried the door? I had +suddenly a sickening vision of the fellow crouching at the key-hole, +listening, listening, listening, for some movement or sigh of the sleeper +he was ready to tear away from the world, alive or dead. I had a +conviction that he was still listening. Why? Goodness knows! He may +have been only gloating over the assurance that the night was long and +that he had all these hours to himself. + +I was pretty certain that he could have heard nothing of our whispers, +the room was too big for that and the door too solid. I hadn’t the same +confidence in the efficiency of the lock. Still I . . . Guarding my lips +with my hand I urged Doña Rita to go back to the sofa. She wouldn’t +answer me and when I got hold of her arm I discovered that she wouldn’t +move. She had taken root in that thick-pile Aubusson carpet; and she was +so rigidly still all over that the brilliant stones in the shaft of the +arrow of gold, with the six candles at the head of the sofa blazing full +on them, emitted no sparkle. + +I was extremely anxious that she shouldn’t betray herself. I reasoned, +save the mark, as a psychologist. I had no doubt that the man knew of +her being there; but he only knew it by hearsay. And that was bad +enough. I could not help feeling that if he obtained some evidence for +his senses by any sort of noise, voice, or movement, his madness would +gain strength enough to burst the lock. I was rather ridiculously +worried about the locks. A horrid mistrust of the whole house possessed +me. I saw it in the light of a deadly trap. I had no weapon, I couldn’t +say whether he had one or not. I wasn’t afraid of a struggle as far as +I, myself, was concerned, but I was afraid of it for Doña Rita. To be +rolling at her feet, locked in a literally tooth-and-nail struggle with +Ortega would have been odious. I wanted to spare her feelings, just as I +would have been anxious to save from any contact with mud the feet of +that goatherd of the mountains with a symbolic face. I looked at her +face. For immobility it might have been a carving. I wished I knew how +to deal with that embodied mystery, to influence it, to manage it. Oh, +how I longed for the gift of authority! In addition, since I had become +completely sane, all my scruples against laying hold of her had returned. +I felt shy and embarrassed. My eyes were fixed on the bronze handle of +the fencing-room door as if it were something alive. I braced myself up +against the moment when it would move. This was what was going to happen +next. It would move very gently. My heart began to thump. But I was +prepared to keep myself as still as death and I hoped Doña Rita would +have sense enough to do the same. I stole another glance at her face and +at that moment I heard the word: “Beloved!” form itself in the still air +of the room, weak, distinct, piteous, like the last request of the dying. + +With great presence of mind I whispered into Doña Rita’s ear: “Perfect +silence!” and was overjoyed to discover that she had heard me, understood +me; that she even had command over her rigid lips. She answered me in a +breath (our cheeks were nearly touching): “Take me out of this house.” + +I glanced at all her clothing scattered about the room and hissed +forcibly the warning “Perfect immobility”; noticing with relief that she +didn’t offer to move, though animation was returning to her and her lips +had remained parted in an awful, unintended effect of a smile. And I +don’t know whether I was pleased when she, who was not to be touched, +gripped my wrist suddenly. It had the air of being done on purpose +because almost instantly another: “Beloved!” louder, more agonized if +possible, got into the room and, yes, went home to my heart. It was +followed without any transition, preparation, or warning, by a positively +bellowed: “Speak, perjured beast!” which I felt pass in a thrill right +through Doña Rita like an electric shock, leaving her as motionless as +before. + +Till he shook the door handle, which he did immediately afterwards, I +wasn’t certain through which door he had spoken. The two doors (in +different walls) were rather near each other. It was as I expected. He +was in the fencing-room, thoroughly aroused, his senses on the alert to +catch the slightest sound. A situation not to be trifled with. Leaving +the room was for us out of the question. It was quite possible for him +to dash round into the hall before we could get clear of the front door. +As to making a bolt of it upstairs there was the same objection; and to +allow ourselves to be chased all over the empty house by this maniac +would have been mere folly. There was no advantage in locking ourselves +up anywhere upstairs where the original doors and locks were much +lighter. No, true safety was in absolute stillness and silence, so that +even his rage should be brought to doubt at last and die expended, or +choke him before it died; I didn’t care which. + +For me to go out and meet him would have been stupid. Now I was certain +that he was armed. I had remembered the wall in the fencing-room +decorated with trophies of cold steel in all the civilized and savage +forms; sheaves of assegais, in the guise of columns and grouped between +them stars and suns of choppers, swords, knives; from Italy, from +Damascus, from Abyssinia, from the ends of the world. Ortega had only to +make his barbarous choice. I suppose he had got up on the bench, and +fumbling about amongst them must have brought one down, which, falling, +had produced that rattling noise. But in any case to go to meet him +would have been folly, because, after all, I might have been overpowered +(even with bare hands) and then Doña Rita would have been left utterly +defenceless. + +“He will speak,” came to me the ghostly, terrified murmur of her voice. +“Take me out of the house before he begins to speak.” + +“Keep still,” I whispered. “He will soon get tired of this.” + +“You don’t know him.” + +“Oh, yes, I do. Been with him two hours.” + +At this she let go my wrist and covered her face with her hands +passionately. When she dropped them she had the look of one morally +crushed. + +“What did he say to you?” + +“He raved.” + +“Listen to me. It was all true!” + +“I daresay, but what of that?” + +These ghostly words passed between us hardly louder than thoughts; but +after my last answer she ceased and gave me a searching stare, then drew +in a long breath. The voice on the other side of the door burst out with +an impassioned request for a little pity, just a little, and went on +begging for a few words, for two words, for one word—one poor little +word. Then it gave up, then repeated once more, “Say you are there, +Rita, Say one word, just one word. Say ‘yes.’ Come! Just one little +yes.” + +“You see,” I said. She only lowered her eyelids over the anxious glance +she had turned on me. + +For a minute we could have had the illusion that he had stolen away, +unheard, on the thick mats. But I don’t think that either of us was +deceived. The voice returned, stammering words without connection, +pausing and faltering, till suddenly steadied it soared into impassioned +entreaty, sank to low, harsh tones, voluble, lofty sometimes and +sometimes abject. When it paused it left us looking profoundly at each +other. + +“It’s almost comic,” I whispered. + +“Yes. One could laugh,” she assented, with a sort of sinister +conviction. Never had I seen her look exactly like that, for an instant +another, an incredible Rita! “Haven’t I laughed at him innumerable +times?” she added in a sombre whisper. + +He was muttering to himself out there, and unexpectedly shouted: “What?” +as though he had fancied he had heard something. He waited a while +before he started up again with a loud: “Speak up, Queen of the goats, +with your goat tricks. . .” All was still for a time, then came a most +awful bang on the door. He must have stepped back a pace to hurl himself +bodily against the panels. The whole house seemed to shake. He repeated +that performance once more, and then varied it by a prolonged drumming +with his fists. It _was_ comic. But I felt myself struggling mentally +with an invading gloom as though I were no longer sure of myself. + +“Take me out,” whispered Doña Rita feverishly, “take me out of this house +before it is too late.” + +“You will have to stand it,” I answered. + +“So be it; but then you must go away yourself. Go now, before it is too +late.” + +I didn’t condescend to answer this. The drumming on the panels stopped +and the absurd thunder of it died out in the house. I don’t know why +precisely then I had the acute vision of the red mouth of José Ortega +wriggling with rage between his funny whiskers. He began afresh but in a +tired tone: + +“Do you expect a fellow to forget your tricks, you wicked little devil? +Haven’t you ever seen me dodging about to get a sight of you amongst +those pretty gentlemen, on horseback, like a princess, with pure cheeks +like a carved saint? I wonder I didn’t throw stones at you, I wonder I +didn’t run after you shouting the tale—curse my timidity! But I daresay +they knew as much as I did. More. All the new tricks—if that were +possible.” + +While he was making this uproar, Doña Rita put her fingers in her ears +and then suddenly changed her mind and clapped her hands over my ears. +Instinctively I disengaged my head but she persisted. We had a short +tussle without moving from the spot, and suddenly I had my head free, and +there was complete silence. He had screamed himself out of breath, but +Doña Rita muttering: “Too late, too late,” got her hands away from my +grip and slipping altogether out of her fur coat seized some garment +lying on a chair near by (I think it was her skirt), with the intention +of dressing herself, I imagine, and rushing out of the house. Determined +to prevent this, but indeed without thinking very much what I was doing, +I got hold of her arm. That struggle was silent, too; but I used the +least force possible and she managed to give me an unexpected push. +Stepping back to save myself from falling I overturned the little table, +bearing the six-branched candlestick. It hit the floor, rebounded with a +dull ring on the carpet, and by the time it came to a rest every single +candle was out. He on the other side of the door naturally heard the +noise and greeted it with a triumphant screech: “Aha! I’ve managed to +wake you up,” the very savagery of which had a laughable effect. I felt +the weight of Doña Rita grow on my arm and thought it best to let her +sink on the floor, wishing to be free in my movements and really afraid +that now he had actually heard a noise he would infallibly burst the +door. But he didn’t even thump it. He seemed to have exhausted himself +in that scream. There was no other light in the room but the darkened +glow of the embers and I could hardly make out amongst the shadows of +furniture Doña Rita sunk on her knees in a penitential and despairing +attitude. Before this collapse I, who had been wrestling desperately +with her a moment before, felt that I dare not touch her. This emotion, +too, I could not understand; this abandonment of herself, this +conscience-stricken humility. A humbly imploring request to open the +door came from the other side. Ortega kept on repeating: “Open the door, +open the door,” in such an amazing variety of intonations, imperative, +whining, persuasive, insinuating, and even unexpectedly jocose, that I +really stood there smiling to myself, yet with a gloomy and uneasy heart. +Then he remarked, parenthetically as it were, “Oh, you know how to +torment a man, you brown-skinned, lean, grinning, dishevelled imp, you. +And mark,” he expounded further, in a curiously doctoral tone—“you are in +all your limbs hateful: your eyes are hateful and your mouth is hateful, +and your hair is hateful, and your body is cold and vicious like a +snake—and altogether you are perdition.” + +This statement was astonishingly deliberate. He drew a moaning breath +after it and uttered in a heart-rending tone, “You know, Rita, that I +cannot live without you. I haven’t lived. I am not living now. This +isn’t life. Come, Rita, you can’t take a boy’s soul away and then let +him grow up and go about the world, poor devil, while you go amongst the +rich from one pair of arms to another, showing all your best tricks. But +I will forgive you if you only open the door,” he ended in an inflated +tone: “You remember how you swore time after time to be my wife. You are +more fit to be Satan’s wife but I don’t mind. You shall be my wife!” + +A sound near the floor made me bend down hastily with a stern: “Don’t +laugh,” for in his grotesque, almost burlesque discourses there seemed to +me to be truth, passion, and horror enough to move a mountain. + +Suddenly suspicion seized him out there. With perfectly farcical +unexpectedness he yelled shrilly: “Oh, you deceitful wretch! You won’t +escape me! I will have you. . . .” + +And in a manner of speaking he vanished. Of course I couldn’t see him +but somehow that was the impression. I had hardly time to receive it +when crash! . . . he was already at the other door. I suppose he thought +that his prey was escaping him. His swiftness was amazing, almost +inconceivable, more like the effect of a trick or of a mechanism. The +thump on the door was awful as if he had not been able to stop himself in +time. The shock seemed enough to stun an elephant. It was really funny. +And after the crash there was a moment of silence as if he were +recovering himself. The next thing was a low grunt, and at once he +picked up the thread of his fixed idea. + +“You will have to be my wife. I have no shame. You swore you would be +and so you will have to be.” Stifled low sounds made me bend down again +to the kneeling form, white in the flush of the dark red glow. “For +goodness’ sake don’t,” I whispered down. She was struggling with an +appalling fit of merriment, repeating to herself, “Yes, every day, for +two months. Sixty times at least, sixty times at least.” Her voice was +rising high. She was struggling against laughter, but when I tried to +put my hand over her lips I felt her face wet with tears. She turned it +this way and that, eluding my hand with repressed low, little moans. I +lost my caution and said, “Be quiet,” so sharply as to startle myself +(and her, too) into expectant stillness. + +Ortega’s voice in the hall asked distinctly: “Eh? What’s this?” and then +he kept still on his side listening, but he must have thought that his +ears had deceived him. He was getting tired, too. He was keeping quiet +out there—resting. Presently he sighed deeply; then in a harsh +melancholy tone he started again. + +“My love, my soul, my life, do speak to me. What am I that you should +take so much trouble to pretend that you aren’t there? Do speak to me,” +he repeated tremulously, following this mechanical appeal with a string +of extravagantly endearing names, some of them quite childish, which all +of a sudden stopped dead; and then after a pause there came a distinct, +unutterably weary: “What shall I do now?” as though he were speaking to +himself. + +I shuddered to hear rising from the floor, by my side, a vibrating, +scornful: “Do! Why, slink off home looking over your shoulder as you +used to years ago when I had done with you—all but the laughter.” + +“Rita,” I murmured, appalled. He must have been struck dumb for a +moment. Then, goodness only knows why, in his dismay or rage he was +moved to speak in French with a most ridiculous accent. + +“So you have found your tongue at last—_Catin_! You were that from the +cradle. Don’t you remember how . . .” + +Doña Rita sprang to her feet at my side with a loud cry, “No, George, +no,” which bewildered me completely. The suddenness, the loudness of it +made the ensuing silence on both sides of the door perfectly awful. It +seemed to me that if I didn’t resist with all my might something in me +would die on the instant. In the straight, falling folds of the +night-dress she looked cold like a block of marble; while I, too, was +turned into stone by the terrific clamour in the hall. + +“Therese, Therese,” yelled Ortega. “She has got a man in there.” He ran +to the foot of the stairs and screamed again, “Therese, Therese! There +is a man with her. A man! Come down, you miserable, starved peasant, +come down and see.” + +I don’t know where Therese was but I am sure that this voice reached her, +terrible, as if clamouring to heaven, and with a shrill over-note which +made me certain that if she was in bed the only thing she would think of +doing would be to put her head under the bed-clothes. With a final yell: +“Come down and see,” he flew back at the door of the room and started +shaking it violently. + +It was a double door, very tall, and there must have been a lot of things +loose about its fittings, bolts, latches, and all those brass +applications with broken screws, because it rattled, it clattered, it +jingled; and produced also the sound as of thunder rolling in the big, +empty hall. It was deafening, distressing, and vaguely alarming as if it +could bring the house down. At the same time the futility of it had, it +cannot be denied, a comic effect. The very magnitude of the racket he +raised was funny. But he couldn’t keep up that violent exertion +continuously, and when he stopped to rest we could hear him shouting to +himself in vengeful tones. He saw it all! He had been decoyed there! +(Rattle, rattle, rattle.) He had been decoyed into that town, he +screamed, getting more and more excited by the noise he made himself, in +order to be exposed to this! (Rattle, rattle.) By this shameless +“_Catin_! _Catin_! _Catin_!” + +He started at the door again with superhuman vigour. Behind me I heard +Doña Rita laughing softly, statuesque, turned all dark in the fading +glow. I called out to her quite openly, “Do keep your self-control.” +And she called back to me in a clear voice: “Oh, my dear, will you ever +consent to speak to me after all this? But don’t ask for the impossible. +He was born to be laughed at.” + +“Yes,” I cried. “But don’t let yourself go.” + +I don’t know whether Ortega heard us. He was exerting then his utmost +strength of lung against the infamous plot to expose him to the derision +of the fiendish associates of that obscene woman! . . . Then he began +another interlude upon the door, so sustained and strong that I had the +thought that this was growing absurdly impossible, that either the +plaster would begin to fall off the ceiling or he would drop dead next +moment, out there. + +He stopped, uttered a few curses at the door, and seemed calmer from +sheer exhaustion. + +“This story will be all over the world,” we heard him begin. “Deceived, +decoyed, inveighed, in order to be made a laughing-stock before the most +debased of all mankind, that woman and her associates.” This was really +a meditation. And then he screamed: “I will kill you all.” Once more he +started worrying the door but it was a startlingly feeble effort which he +abandoned almost at once. He must have been at the end of his strength. +Doña Rita from the middle of the room asked me recklessly loud: “Tell me! +Wasn’t he born to be laughed at?” I didn’t answer her. I was so near +the door that I thought I ought to hear him panting there. He was +terrifying, but he was not serious. He was at the end of his strength, +of his breath, of every kind of endurance, but I did not know it. He was +done up, finished; but perhaps he did not know it himself. How still he +was! Just as I began to wonder at it, I heard him distinctly give a slap +to his forehead. “I see it all!” he cried. “That miserable, canting +peasant-woman upstairs has arranged it all. No doubt she consulted her +priests. I must regain my self-respect. Let her die first.” I heard +him make a dash for the foot of the stairs. I was appalled; yet to think +of Therese being hoisted with her own petard was like a turn of affairs +in a farce. A very ferocious farce. Instinctively I unlocked the door. +Doña Rita’s contralto laugh rang out loud, bitter, and contemptuous; and +I heard Ortega’s distracted screaming as if under torture. “It hurts! +It hurts! It hurts!” I hesitated just an instant, half a second, no +more, but before I could open the door wide there was in the hall a short +groan and the sound of a heavy fall. + +The sight of Ortega lying on his back at the foot of the stairs arrested +me in the doorway. One of his legs was drawn up, the other extended +fully, his foot very near the pedestal of the silver statuette holding +the feeble and tenacious gleam which made the shadows so heavy in that +hall. One of his arms lay across his breast. The other arm was extended +full length on the white-and-black pavement with the hand palm upwards +and the fingers rigidly spread out. The shadow of the lowest step +slanted across his face but one whisker and part of his chin could be +made out. He appeared strangely flattened. He didn’t move at all. He +was in his shirt-sleeves. I felt an extreme distaste for that sight. +The characteristic sound of a key worrying in the lock stole into my +ears. I couldn’t locate it but I didn’t attend much to that at first. I +was engaged in watching Señor Ortega. But for his raised leg he clung so +flat to the floor and had taken on himself such a distorted shape that he +might have been the mere shadow of Señor Ortega. It was rather +fascinating to see him so quiet at the end of all that fury, clamour, +passion, and uproar. Surely there was never anything so still in the +world as this Ortega. I had a bizarre notion that he was not to be +disturbed. + +A noise like the rattling of chain links, a small grind and click +exploded in the stillness of the hall and a voice began to swear in +Italian. These surprising sounds were quite welcome, they recalled me to +myself, and I perceived they came from the front door which seemed pushed +a little ajar. Was somebody trying to get in? I had no objection, I +went to the door and said: “Wait a moment, it’s on the chain.” The deep +voice on the other side said: “What an extraordinary thing,” and I +assented mentally. It was extraordinary. The chain was never put up, +but Therese was a thorough sort of person, and on this night she had put +it up to keep no one out except myself. It was the old Italian and his +daughters returning from the ball who were trying to get in. + +Suddenly I became intensely alive to the whole situation. I bounded +back, closed the door of Blunt’s room, and the next moment was speaking +to the Italian. “A little patience.” My hands trembled but I managed to +take down the chain and as I allowed the door to swing open a little more +I put myself in his way. He was burly, venerable, a little indignant, +and full of thanks. Behind him his two girls, in short-skirted costumes, +white stockings, and low shoes, their heads powdered and earrings +sparkling in their ears, huddled together behind their father, wrapped up +in their light mantles. One had kept her little black mask on her face, +the other held hers in her hand. + +The Italian was surprised at my blocking the way and remarked pleasantly, +“It’s cold outside, Signor.” I said, “Yes,” and added in a hurried +whisper: “There is a dead man in the hall.” He didn’t say a single word +but put me aside a little, projected his body in for one searching +glance. “Your daughters,” I murmured. He said kindly, “_Va bene_, _va +bene_.” And then to them, “Come in, girls.” + +There is nothing like dealing with a man who has had a long past of +out-of-the-way experiences. The skill with which he rounded up and drove +the girls across the hall, paternal and irresistible, venerable and +reassuring, was a sight to see. They had no time for more than one +scared look over the shoulder. He hustled them in and locked them up +safely in their part of the house, then crossed the hall with a quick, +practical stride. When near Señor Ortega he trod short just in time and +said: “In truth, blood”; then selecting the place, knelt down by the body +in his tall hat and respectable overcoat, his white beard giving him +immense authority somehow. “But—this man is not dead,” he exclaimed, +looking up at me. With profound sagacity, inherent as it were in his +great beard, he never took the trouble to put any questions to me and +seemed certain that I had nothing to do with the ghastly sight. “He +managed to give himself an enormous gash in his side,” was his calm +remark. “And what a weapon!” he exclaimed, getting it out from under the +body. It was an Abyssinian or Nubian production of a bizarre shape; the +clumsiest thing imaginable, partaking of a sickle and a chopper with a +sharp edge and a pointed end. A mere cruel-looking curio of +inconceivable clumsiness to European eyes. + +The old man let it drop with amused disdain. “You had better take hold +of his legs,” he decided without appeal. I certainly had no inclination +to argue. When we lifted him up the head of Señor Ortega fell back +desolately, making an awful, defenceless display of his large, white +throat. + +We found the lamp burning in the studio and the bed made up on the couch +on which we deposited our burden. My venerable friend jerked the upper +sheet away at once and started tearing it into strips. + +“You may leave him to me,” said that efficient sage, “but the doctor is +your affair. If you don’t want this business to make a noise you will +have to find a discreet man.” + +He was most benevolently interested in all the proceedings. He remarked +with a patriarchal smile as he tore the sheet noisily: “You had better +not lose any time.” I didn’t lose any time. I crammed into the next +hour an astonishing amount of bodily activity. Without more words I flew +out bare-headed into the last night of Carnival. Luckily I was certain +of the right sort of doctor. He was an iron-grey man of forty and of a +stout habit of body but who was able to put on a spurt. In the cold, +dark, and deserted by-streets, he ran with earnest, and ponderous +footsteps, which echoed loudly in the cold night air, while I skimmed +along the ground a pace or two in front of him. It was only on arriving +at the house that I perceived that I had left the front door wide open. +All the town, every evil in the world could have entered the +black-and-white hall. But I had no time to meditate upon my imprudence. +The doctor and I worked in silence for nearly an hour and it was only +then while he was washing his hands in the fencing-room that he asked: + +“What was he up to, that imbecile?” + +“Oh, he was examining this curiosity,” I said. + +“Oh, yes, and it accidentally went off,” said the doctor, looking +contemptuously at the Nubian knife I had thrown on the table. Then while +wiping his hands: “I would bet there is a woman somewhere under this; but +that of course does not affect the nature of the wound. I hope this +blood-letting will do him good.” + +“Nothing will do him any good,” I said. + +“Curious house this,” went on the doctor, “It belongs to a curious sort +of woman, too. I happened to see her once or twice. I shouldn’t wonder +if she were to raise considerable trouble in the track of her pretty feet +as she goes along. I believe you know her well.” + +“Yes.” + +“Curious people in the house, too. There was a Carlist officer here, a +lean, tall, dark man, who couldn’t sleep. He consulted me once. Do you +know what became of him?” + +“No.” + +The doctor had finished wiping his hands and flung the towel far away. + +“Considerable nervous over-strain. Seemed to have a restless brain. Not +a good thing, that. For the rest a perfect gentleman. And this Spaniard +here, do you know him?” + +“Enough not to care what happens to him,” I said, “except for the trouble +he might cause to the Carlist sympathizers here, should the police get +hold of this affair.” + +“Well, then, he must take his chance in the seclusion of that +conservatory sort of place where you have put him. I’ll try to find +somebody we can trust to look after him. Meantime, I will leave the case +to you.” + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Directly I had shut the door after the doctor I started shouting for +Therese. “Come down at once, you wretched hypocrite,” I yelled at the +foot of the stairs in a sort of frenzy as though I had been a second +Ortega. Not even an echo answered me; but all of a sudden a small flame +flickered descending from the upper darkness and Therese appeared on the +first floor landing carrying a lighted candle in front of a livid, hard +face, closed against remorse, compassion, or mercy by the meanness of her +righteousness and of her rapacious instincts. She was fully dressed in +that abominable brown stuff with motionless folds, and as I watched her +coming down step by step she might have been made of wood. I stepped +back and pointed my finger at the darkness of the passage leading to the +studio. She passed within a foot of me, her pale eyes staring straight +ahead, her face still with disappointment and fury. Yet it is only my +surmise. She might have been made thus inhuman by the force of an +invisible purpose. I waited a moment, then, stealthily, with extreme +caution, I opened the door of the so-called Captain Blunt’s room. + +The glow of embers was all but out. It was cold and dark in there; but +before I closed the door behind me the dim light from the hall showed me +Doña Rita standing on the very same spot where I had left her, statuesque +in her night-dress. Even after I shut the door she loomed up enormous, +indistinctly rigid and inanimate. I picked up the candelabra, groped for +a candle all over the carpet, found one, and lighted it. All that time +Doña Rita didn’t stir. When I turned towards her she seemed to be slowly +awakening from a trance. She was deathly pale and by contrast the +melted, sapphire-blue of her eyes looked black as coal. They moved a +little in my direction, incurious, recognizing me slowly. But when they +had recognized me completely she raised her hands and hid her face in +them. A whole minute or more passed. Then I said in a low tone: “Look +at me,” and she let them fall slowly as if accepting the inevitable. + +“Shall I make up the fire?” . . . I waited. “Do you hear me?” She made +no sound and with the tip of my finger I touched her bare shoulder. But +for its elasticity it might have been frozen. At once I looked round for +the fur coat; it seemed to me that there was not a moment to lose if she +was to be saved, as though we had been lost on an Arctic plain. I had to +put her arms into the sleeves, myself, one after another. They were +cold, lifeless, but flexible. Then I moved in front of her and buttoned +the thing close round her throat. To do that I had actually to raise her +chin with my finger, and it sank slowly down again. I buttoned all the +other buttons right down to the ground. It was a very long and splendid +fur. Before rising from my kneeling position I felt her feet. Mere ice. +The intimacy of this sort of attendance helped the growth of my +authority. “Lie down,” I murmured, “I shall pile on you every blanket I +can find here,” but she only shook her head. + +Not even in the days when she ran “shrill as a cicada and thin as a +match” through the chill mists of her native mountains could she ever +have felt so cold, so wretched, and so desolate. Her very soul, her +grave, indignant, and fantastic soul, seemed to drowse like an exhausted +traveller surrendering himself to the sleep of death. But when I asked +her again to lie down she managed to answer me, “Not in this room.” The +dumb spell was broken. She turned her head from side to side, but oh! +how cold she was! It seemed to come out of her, numbing me, too; and the +very diamonds on the arrow of gold sparkled like hoar frost in the light +of the one candle. + +“Not in this room; not here,” she protested, with that peculiar suavity +of tone which made her voice unforgettable, irresistible, no matter what +she said. “Not after all this! I couldn’t close my eyes in this place. +It’s full of corruption and ugliness all round, in me, too, everywhere +except in your heart, which has nothing to do where I breathe. And here +you may leave me. But wherever you go remember that I am not evil, I am +not evil.” + +I said: “I don’t intend to leave you here. There is my room upstairs. +You have been in it before.” + +“Oh, you have heard of that,” she whispered. The beginning of a wan +smile vanished from her lips. + +“I also think you can’t stay in this room; and, surely, you needn’t +hesitate . . .” + +“No. It doesn’t matter now. He has killed me. Rita is dead.” + +While we exchanged these words I had retrieved the quilted, blue slippers +and had put them on her feet. She was very tractable. Then taking her +by the arm I led her towards the door. + +“He has killed me,” she repeated in a sigh. “The little joy that was in +me.” + +“He has tried to kill himself out there in the hall,” I said. She put +back like a frightened child but she couldn’t be dragged on as a child +can be. + +I assured her that the man was no longer there but she only repeated, “I +can’t get through the hall. I can’t walk. I can’t . . .” + +“Well,” I said, flinging the door open and seizing her suddenly in my +arms, “if you can’t walk then you shall be carried,” and I lifted her +from the ground so abruptly that she could not help catching me round the +neck as any child almost will do instinctively when you pick it up. + +I ought really to have put those blue slippers in my pocket. One dropped +off at the bottom of the stairs as I was stepping over an +unpleasant-looking mess on the marble pavement, and the other was lost a +little way up the flight when, for some reason (perhaps from a sense of +insecurity), she began to struggle. Though I had an odd sense of being +engaged in a sort of nursery adventure she was no child to carry. I +could just do it. But not if she chose to struggle. I set her down +hastily and only supported her round the waist for the rest of the way. +My room, of course, was perfectly dark but I led her straight to the sofa +at once and let her fall on it. Then as if I had in sober truth rescued +her from an Alpine height or an Arctic floe, I busied myself with nothing +but lighting the gas and starting the fire. I didn’t even pause to lock +my door. All the time I was aware of her presence behind me, nay, of +something deeper and more my own—of her existence itself—of a small blue +flame, blue like her eyes, flickering and clear within her frozen body. +When I turned to her she was sitting very stiff and upright, with her +feet posed hieratically on the carpet and her head emerging out of the +ample fur collar, such as a gem-like flower above the rim of a dark vase. +I tore the blankets and the pillows off my bed and piled them up in +readiness in a great heap on the floor near the couch. My reason for +this was that the room was large, too large for the fireplace, and the +couch was nearest to the fire. She gave no sign but one of her wistful +attempts at a smile. In a most business-like way I took the arrow out of +her hair and laid it on the centre table. The tawny mass fell loose at +once about her shoulders and made her look even more desolate than +before. But there was an invincible need of gaiety in her heart. She +said funnily, looking at the arrow sparkling in the gas light: + +“Ah! That poor philistinish ornament!” + +An echo of our early days, not more innocent but so much more youthful, +was in her tone; and we both, as if touched with poignant regret, looked +at each other with enlightened eyes. + +“Yes,” I said, “how far away all this is. And you wouldn’t leave even +that object behind when you came last in here. Perhaps it is for that +reason it haunted me—mostly at night. I dreamed of you sometimes as a +huntress nymph gleaming white through the foliage and throwing this arrow +like a dart straight at my heart. But it never reached it. It always +fell at my feet as I woke up. The huntress never meant to strike down +that particular quarry.” + +“The huntress was wild but she was not evil. And she was no nymph, but +only a goatherd girl. Dream of her no more, my dear.” + +I had the strength of mind to make a sign of assent and busied myself +arranging a couple of pillows at one end of the sofa. “Upon my soul, +goatherd, you are not responsible,” I said. “You are not! Lay down that +uneasy head,” I continued, forcing a half-playful note into my immense +sadness, “that has even dreamed of a crown—but not for itself.” + +She lay down quietly. I covered her up, looked once into her eyes and +felt the restlessness of fatigue over-power me so that I wanted to +stagger out, walk straight before me, stagger on and on till I dropped. +In the end I lost myself in thought. I woke with a start to her voice +saying positively: + +“No. Not even in this room. I can’t close my eyes. Impossible. I have +a horror of myself. That voice in my ears. All true. All true.” + +She was sitting up, two masses of tawny hair fell on each side of her +tense face. I threw away the pillows from which she had risen and sat +down behind her on the couch. “Perhaps like this,” I suggested, drawing +her head gently on my breast. She didn’t resist, she didn’t even sigh, +she didn’t look at me or attempt to settle herself in any way. It was I +who settled her after taking up a position which I thought I should be +able to keep for hours—for ages. After a time I grew composed enough to +become aware of the ticking of the clock, even to take pleasure in it. +The beat recorded the moments of her rest, while I sat, keeping as still +as if my life depended upon it with my eyes fixed idly on the arrow of +gold gleaming and glittering dimly on the table under the lowered +gas-jet. And presently my breathing fell into the quiet rhythm of the +sleep which descended on her at last. My thought was that now nothing +mattered in the world because I had the world safe resting in my arms—or +was it in my heart? + +Suddenly my heart seemed torn in two within my breast and half of my +breath knocked out of me. It was a tumultuous awakening. The day had +come. Doña Rita had opened her eyes, found herself in my arms, and +instantly had flung herself out of them with one sudden effort. I saw +her already standing in the filtered sunshine of the closed shutters, +with all the childlike horror and shame of that night vibrating afresh in +the awakened body of the woman. + +“Daylight,” she whispered in an appalled voice. “Don’t look at me, +George. I can’t face daylight. No—not with you. Before we set eyes on +each other all that past was like nothing. I had crushed it all in my +new pride. Nothing could touch the Rita whose hand was kissed by you. +But now! Never in daylight.” + +I sat there stupid with surprise and grief. This was no longer the +adventure of venturesome children in a nursery-book. A grown man’s +bitterness, informed, suspicious, resembling hatred, welled out of my +heart. + +“All this means that you are going to desert me again?” I said with +contempt. “All right. I won’t throw stones after you . . . Are you +going, then?” + +She lowered her head slowly with a backward gesture of her arm as if to +keep me off, for I had sprung to my feet all at once as if mad. + +“Then go quickly,” I said. “You are afraid of living flesh and blood. +What are you running after? Honesty, as you say, or some distinguished +carcass to feed your vanity on? I know how cold you can be—and yet live. +What have I done to you? You go to sleep in my arms, wake up and go +away. Is it to impress me? Charlatanism of character, my dear.” + +She stepped forward on her bare feet as firm on that floor which seemed +to heave up and down before my eyes as she had ever been—goatherd child +leaping on the rocks of her native hills which she was never to see +again. I snatched the arrow of gold from the table and threw it after +her. + +“Don’t forget this thing,” I cried, “you would never forgive yourself for +leaving it behind.” + +It struck the back of the fur coat and fell on the floor behind her. She +never looked round. She walked to the door, opened it without haste, and +on the landing in the diffused light from the ground-glass skylight there +appeared, rigid, like an implacable and obscure fate, the awful +Therese—waiting for her sister. The heavy ends of a big black shawl +thrown over her head hung massively in biblical folds. With a faint cry +of dismay Doña Rita stopped just within my room. + +The two women faced each other for a few moments silently. Therese spoke +first. There was no austerity in her tone. Her voice was as usual, +pertinacious, unfeeling, with a slight plaint in it; terrible in its +unchanged purpose. + +“I have been standing here before this door all night,” she said. “I +don’t know how I lived through it. I thought I would die a hundred times +for shame. So that’s how you are spending your time? You are worse than +shameless. But God may still forgive you. You have a soul. You are my +sister. I will never abandon you—till you die.” + +“What is it?” Doña Rita was heard wistfully, “my soul or this house that +you won’t abandon.” + +“Come out and bow your head in humiliation. I am your sister and I shall +help you to pray to God and all the Saints. Come away from that poor +young gentleman who like all the others can have nothing but contempt and +disgust for you in his heart. Come and hide your head where no one will +reproach you—but I, your sister. Come out and beat your breast: come, +poor Sinner, and let me kiss you, for you are my sister!” + +While Therese was speaking Doña Rita stepped back a pace and as the other +moved forward still extending the hand of sisterly love, she slammed the +door in Therese’s face. “You abominable girl!” she cried fiercely. Then +she turned about and walked towards me who had not moved. I felt hardly +alive but for the cruel pain that possessed my whole being. On the way +she stooped to pick up the arrow of gold and then moved on quicker, +holding it out to me in her open palm. + +“You thought I wouldn’t give it to you. _Amigo_, I wanted nothing so +much as to give it to you. And now, perhaps—you will take it.” + +“Not without the woman,” I said sombrely. + +“Take it,” she said. “I haven’t the courage to deliver myself up to +Therese. No. Not even for your sake. Don’t you think I have been +miserable enough yet?” + +I snatched the arrow out of her hand then and ridiculously pressed it to +my breast; but as I opened my lips she who knew what was struggling for +utterance in my heart cried in a ringing tone: + +“Speak no words of love, George! Not yet. Not in this house of ill-luck +and falsehood. Not within a hundred miles of this house, where they came +clinging to me all profaned from the mouth of that man. Haven’t you +heard them—the horrible things? And what can words have to do between +you and me?” + +Her hands were stretched out imploringly, I said, childishly +disconcerted: + +“But, Rita, how can I help using words of love to you? They come of +themselves on my lips!” + +“They come! Ah! But I shall seal your lips with the thing itself,” she +said. “Like this. . . ” + + + + +SECOND NOTE + + +The narrative of our man goes on for some six months more, from this, the +last night of the Carnival season up to and beyond the season of roses. +The tone of it is much less of exultation than might have been expected. +Love as is well known having nothing to do with reason, being insensible +to forebodings and even blind to evidence, the surrender of those two +beings to a precarious bliss has nothing very astonishing in itself; and +its portrayal, as he attempts it, lacks dramatic interest. The +sentimental interest could only have a fascination for readers themselves +actually in love. The response of a reader depends on the mood of the +moment, so much so that a book may seem extremely interesting when read +late at night, but might appear merely a lot of vapid verbiage in the +morning. My conviction is that the mood in which the continuation of his +story would appear sympathetic is very rare. This consideration has +induced me to suppress it—all but the actual facts which round up the +previous events and satisfy such curiosity as might have been aroused by +the foregoing narrative. + +It is to be remarked that this period is characterized more by a deep and +joyous tenderness than by sheer passion. All fierceness of spirit seems +to have burnt itself out in their preliminary hesitations and struggles +against each other and themselves. Whether love in its entirety has, +speaking generally, the same elementary meaning for women as for men, is +very doubtful. Civilization has been at work there. But the fact is +that those two display, in every phase of discovery and response, an +exact accord. Both show themselves amazingly ingenuous in the practice +of sentiment. I believe that those who know women won’t be surprised to +hear me say that she was as new to love as he was. During their retreat +in the region of the Maritime Alps, in a small house built of dry stones +and embowered with roses, they appear all through to be less like +released lovers than as companions who had found out each other’s fitness +in a specially intense way. Upon the whole, I think that there must be +some truth in his insistence of there having always been something +childlike in their relation. In the unreserved and instant sharing of +all thoughts, all impressions, all sensations, we see the naïveness of a +children’s foolhardy adventure. This unreserved expressed for him the +whole truth of the situation. With her it may have been different. It +might have been assumed; yet nobody is altogether a comedian; and even +comedians themselves have got to believe in the part they play. Of the +two she appears much the more assured and confident. But if in this she +was a comedienne then it was but a great achievement of her ineradicable +honesty. Having once renounced her honourable scruples she took good +care that he should taste no flavour of misgivings in the cup. Being +older it was she who imparted its character to the situation. As to the +man if he had any superiority of his own it was simply the superiority of +him who loves with the greater self-surrender. + +This is what appears from the pages I have discreetly suppressed—partly +out of regard for the pages themselves. In every, even terrestrial, +mystery there is as it were a sacred core. A sustained commentary on +love is not fit for every eye. A universal experience is exactly the +sort of thing which is most difficult to appraise justly in a particular +instance. + +How this particular instance affected Rose, who was the only companion of +the two hermits in their rose-embowered hut of stones, I regret not to be +able to report; but I will venture to say that for reasons on which I +need not enlarge, the girl could not have been very reassured by what she +saw. It seems to me that her devotion could never be appeased; for the +conviction must have been growing on her that, no matter what happened, +Madame could never have any friends. It may be that Doña Rita had given +her a glimpse of the unavoidable end, and that the girl’s tarnished eyes +masked a certain amount of apprehensive, helpless desolation. + +What meantime was becoming of the fortune of Henry Allègre is another +curious question. We have been told that it was too big to be tied up in +a sack and thrown into the sea. That part of it represented by the +fabulous collections was still being protected by the police. But for +the rest, it may be assumed that its power and significance were lost to +an interested world for something like six months. What is certain is +that the late Henry Allègre’s man of affairs found himself comparatively +idle. The holiday must have done much good to his harassed brain. He +had received a note from Doña Rita saying that she had gone into retreat +and that she did not mean to send him her address, not being in the +humour to be worried with letters on any subject whatever. “It’s enough +for you”—she wrote—“to know that I am alive.” Later, at irregular +intervals, he received scraps of paper bearing the stamps of various post +offices and containing the simple statement: “I am still alive,” signed +with an enormous, flourished exuberant R. I imagine Rose had to travel +some distances by rail to post those messages. A thick veil of secrecy +had been lowered between the world and the lovers; yet even this veil +turned out not altogether impenetrable. + +He—it would be convenient to call him Monsieur George to the end—shared +with Doña Rita her perfect detachment from all mundane affairs; but he +had to make two short visits to Marseilles. The first was prompted by +his loyal affection for Dominic. He wanted to discover what had happened +or was happening to Dominic and to find out whether he could do something +for that man. But Dominic was not the sort of person for whom one can do +much. Monsieur George did not even see him. It looked uncommonly as if +Dominic’s heart were broken. Monsieur George remained concealed for +twenty-four hours in the very house in which Madame Léonore had her café. +He spent most of that time in conversing with Madame Léonore about +Dominic. She was distressed, but her mind was made up. That +bright-eyed, nonchalant, and passionate woman was making arrangements to +dispose of her café before departing to join Dominic. She would not say +where. Having ascertained that his assistance was not required Monsieur +George, in his own words, “managed to sneak out of the town without being +seen by a single soul that mattered.” + +The second occasion was very prosaic and shockingly incongruous with the +super-mundane colouring of these days. He had neither the fortune of +Henry Allègre nor a man of affairs of his own. But some rent had to be +paid to somebody for the stone hut and Rose could not go marketing in the +tiny hamlet at the foot of the hill without a little money. There came a +time when Monsieur George had to descend from the heights of his love in +order, in his own words, “to get a supply of cash.” As he had +disappeared very suddenly and completely for a time from the eyes of +mankind it was necessary that he should show himself and sign some +papers. That business was transacted in the office of the banker +mentioned in the story. Monsieur George wished to avoid seeing the man +himself but in this he did not succeed. The interview was short. The +banker naturally asked no questions, made no allusions to persons and +events, and didn’t even mention the great Legitimist Principle which +presented to him now no interest whatever. But for the moment all the +world was talking of the Carlist enterprise. It had collapsed utterly, +leaving behind, as usual, a large crop of recriminations, charges of +incompetency and treachery, and a certain amount of scandalous gossip. +The banker (his wife’s salon had been very Carlist indeed) declared that +he had never believed in the success of the cause. “You are well out of +it,” he remarked with a chilly smile to Monsieur George. The latter +merely observed that he had been very little “in it” as a matter of fact, +and that he was quite indifferent to the whole affair. + +“You left a few of your feathers in it, nevertheless,” the banker +concluded with a wooden face and with the curtness of a man who knows. + +Monsieur George ought to have taken the very next train out of the town +but he yielded to the temptation to discover what had happened to the +house in the street of the Consuls after he and Doña Rita had stolen out +of it like two scared yet jubilant children. All he discovered was a +strange, fat woman, a sort of virago, who had, apparently, been put in as +a caretaker by the man of affairs. She made some difficulties to admit +that she had been in charge for the last four months; ever since the +person who was there before had eloped with some Spaniard who had been +lying in the house ill with fever for more than six weeks. No, she never +saw the person. Neither had she seen the Spaniard. She had only heard +the talk of the street. Of course she didn’t know where these people had +gone. She manifested some impatience to get rid of Monsieur George and +even attempted to push him towards the door. It was, he says, a very +funny experience. He noticed the feeble flame of the gas-jet in the hall +still waiting for extinction in the general collapse of the world. + +Then he decided to have a bit of dinner at the Restaurant de la Gare +where he felt pretty certain he would not meet any of his friends. He +could not have asked Madame Léonore for hospitality because Madame +Léonore had gone away already. His acquaintances were not the sort of +people likely to happen casually into a restaurant of that kind and +moreover he took the precaution to seat himself at a small table so as to +face the wall. Yet before long he felt a hand laid gently on his +shoulder, and, looking up, saw one of his acquaintances, a member of the +Royalist club, a young man of a very cheerful disposition but whose face +looked down at him with a grave and anxious expression. + +Monsieur George was far from delighted. His surprise was extreme when in +the course of the first phrases exchanged with him he learned that this +acquaintance had come to the station with the hope of finding him there. + +“You haven’t been seen for some time,” he said. “You were perhaps +somewhere where the news from the world couldn’t reach you? There have +been many changes amongst our friends and amongst people one used to hear +of so much. There is Madame de Lastaola for instance, who seems to have +vanished from the world which was so much interested in her. You have no +idea where she may be now?” + +Monsieur George remarked grumpily that he couldn’t say. + +The other tried to appear at ease. Tongues were wagging about it in +Paris. There was a sort of international financier, a fellow with an +Italian name, a shady personality, who had been looking for her all over +Europe and talked in clubs—astonishing how such fellows get into the best +clubs—oh! Azzolati was his name. But perhaps what a fellow like that +said did not matter. The funniest thing was that there was no man of any +position in the world who had disappeared at the same time. A friend in +Paris wrote to him that a certain well-known journalist had rushed South +to investigate the mystery but had returned no wiser than he went. + +Monsieur George remarked more unamiably than before that he really could +not help all that. + +“No,” said the other with extreme gentleness, “only of all the people +more or less connected with the Carlist affair you are the only one that +had also disappeared before the final collapse.” + +“What!” cried Monsieur George. + +“Just so,” said the other meaningly. “You know that all my people like +you very much, though they hold various opinions as to your discretion. +Only the other day Jane, you know my married sister, and I were talking +about you. She was extremely distressed. I assured her that you must be +very far away or very deeply buried somewhere not to have given a sign of +life under this provocation.” + +Naturally Monsieur George wanted to know what it was all about; and the +other appeared greatly relieved. + +“I was sure you couldn’t have heard. I don’t want to be indiscreet, I +don’t want to ask you where you were. It came to my ears that you had +been seen at the bank to-day and I made a special effort to lay hold of +you before you vanished again; for, after all, we have been always good +friends and all our lot here liked you very much. Listen. You know a +certain Captain Blunt, don’t you?” + +Monsieur George owned to knowing Captain Blunt but only very slightly. +His friend then informed him that this Captain Blunt was apparently well +acquainted with Madame de Lastaola, or, at any rate, pretended to be. He +was an honourable man, a member of a good club, he was very Parisian in a +way, and all this, he continued, made all the worse that of which he was +under the painful necessity of warning Monsieur George. This Blunt on +three distinct occasions when the name of Madame de Lastaola came up in +conversation in a mixed company of men had expressed his regret that she +should have become the prey of a young adventurer who was exploiting her +shamelessly. He talked like a man certain of his facts and as he +mentioned names . . . + +“In fact,” the young man burst out excitedly, “it is your name that he +mentions. And in order to fix the exact personality he always takes care +to add that you are that young fellow who was known as Monsieur George +all over the South amongst the initiated Carlists.” + +How Blunt had got enough information to base that atrocious calumny upon, +Monsieur George couldn’t imagine. But there it was. He kept silent in +his indignation till his friend murmured, “I expect you will want him to +know that you are here.” + +“Yes,” said Monsieur George, “and I hope you will consent to act for me +altogether. First of all, pray, let him know by wire that I am waiting +for him. This will be enough to fetch him down here, I can assure you. +You may ask him also to bring two friends with him. I don’t intend this +to be an affair for Parisian journalists to write paragraphs about.” + +“Yes. That sort of thing must be stopped at once,” the other admitted. +He assented to Monsieur George’s request that the meeting should be +arranged for at his elder brother’s country place where the family stayed +very seldom. There was a most convenient walled garden there. And then +Monsieur George caught his train promising to be back on the fourth day +and leaving all further arrangements to his friend. He prided himself on +his impenetrability before Doña Rita; on the happiness without a shadow +of those four days. However, Doña Rita must have had the intuition of +there being something in the wind, because on the evening of the very +same day on which he left her again on some pretence or other, she was +already ensconced in the house in the street of the Consuls, with the +trustworthy Rose scouting all over the town to gain information. + +Of the proceedings in the walled garden there is no need to speak in +detail. They were conventionally correct, but an earnestness of purpose +which could be felt in the very air lifted the business above the common +run of affairs of honour. One bit of byplay unnoticed by the seconds, +very busy for the moment with their arrangements, must be mentioned. +Disregarding the severe rules of conduct in such cases Monsieur George +approached his adversary and addressed him directly. + +“Captain Blunt,” he said, “the result of this meeting may go against me. +In that case you will recognize publicly that you were wrong. For you +are wrong and you know it. May I trust your honour?” + +In answer to that appeal Captain Blunt, always correct, didn’t open his +lips but only made a little bow. For the rest he was perfectly ruthless. +If he was utterly incapable of being carried away by love there was +nothing equivocal about his jealousy. Such psychology is not very rare +and really from the point of view of the combat itself one cannot very +well blame him. What happened was this. Monsieur George fired on the +word and, whether luck or skill, managed to hit Captain Blunt in the +upper part of the arm which was holding the pistol. That gentleman’s arm +dropped powerless by his side. But he did not drop his weapon. There +was nothing equivocal about his determination. With the greatest +deliberation he reached with his left hand for his pistol and taking +careful aim shot Monsieur George through the left side of his breast. +One may imagine the consternation of the four seconds and the activity of +the two surgeons in the confined, drowsy heat of that walled garden. It +was within an easy drive of the town and as Monsieur George was being +conveyed there at a walking pace a little brougham coming from the +opposite direction pulled up at the side of the road. A thickly veiled +woman’s head looked out of the window, took in the state of affairs at a +glance, and called out in a firm voice: “Follow my carriage.” The +brougham turning round took the lead. Long before this convoy reached +the town another carriage containing four gentlemen (of whom one was +leaning back languidly with his arm in a sling) whisked past and vanished +ahead in a cloud of white, Provençal dust. And this is the last +appearance of Captain Blunt in Monsieur George’s narrative. Of course he +was only told of it later. At the time he was not in a condition to +notice things. Its interest in his surroundings remained of a hazy and +nightmarish kind for many days together. From time to time he had the +impression that he was in a room strangely familiar to him, that he had +unsatisfactory visions of Doña Rita, to whom he tried to speak as if +nothing had happened, but that she always put her hand on his mouth to +prevent him and then spoke to him herself in a very strange voice which +sometimes resembled the voice of Rose. The face, too, sometimes +resembled the face of Rose. There were also one or two men’s faces which +he seemed to know well enough though he didn’t recall their names. He +could have done so with a slight effort, but it would have been too much +trouble. Then came a time when the hallucinations of Doña Rita and the +faithful Rose left him altogether. Next came a period, perhaps a year, +or perhaps an hour, during which he seemed to dream all through his past +life. He felt no apprehension, he didn’t try to speculate as to the +future. He felt that all possible conclusions were out of his power, and +therefore he was indifferent to everything. He was like that dream’s +disinterested spectator who doesn’t know what is going to happen next. +Suddenly for the first time in his life he had the soul-satisfying +consciousness of floating off into deep slumber. + +When he woke up after an hour, or a day, or a month, there was dusk in +the room; but he recognized it perfectly. It was his apartment in Doña +Rita’s house; those were the familiar surroundings in which he had so +often told himself that he must either die or go mad. But now he felt +perfectly clear-headed and the full sensation of being alive came all +over him, languidly delicious. The greatest beauty of it was that there +was no need to move. This gave him a sort of moral satisfaction. Then +the first thought independent of personal sensations came into his head. +He wondered when Therese would come in and begin talking. He saw vaguely +a human figure in the room but that was a man. He was speaking in a +deadened voice which had yet a preternatural distinctness. + +“This is the second case I have had in this house, and I am sure that +directly or indirectly it was connected with that woman. She will go on +like this leaving a track behind her and then some day there will be +really a corpse. This young fellow might have been it.” + +“In this case, Doctor,” said another voice, “one can’t blame the woman +very much. I assure you she made a very determined fight.” + +“What do you mean? That she didn’t want to. . . ” + +“Yes. A very good fight. I heard all about it. It is easy to blame +her, but, as she asked me despairingly, could she go through life veiled +from head to foot or go out of it altogether into a convent? No, she +isn’t guilty. She is simply—what she is.” + +“And what’s that?” + +“Very much of a woman. Perhaps a little more at the mercy of +contradictory impulses than other women. But that’s not her fault. I +really think she has been very honest.” + +The voices sank suddenly to a still lower murmur and presently the shape +of the man went out of the room. Monsieur George heard distinctly the +door open and shut. Then he spoke for the first time, discovering, with +a particular pleasure, that it was quite easy to speak. He was even +under the impression that he had shouted: + +“Who is here?” + +From the shadow of the room (he recognized at once the characteristic +outlines of the bulky shape) Mills advanced to the side of the bed. Doña +Rita had telegraphed to him on the day of the duel and the man of books, +leaving his retreat, had come as fast as boats and trains could carry him +South. For, as he said later to Monsieur George, he had become fully +awake to his part of responsibility. And he added: “It was not of you +alone that I was thinking.” But the very first question that Monsieur +George put to him was: + +“How long is it since I saw you last?” + +“Something like ten months,” answered Mills’ kindly voice. + +“Ah! Is Therese outside the door? She stood there all night, you know.” + +“Yes, I heard of it. She is hundreds of miles away now.” + +“Well, then, ask Rita to come in.” + +“I can’t do that, my dear boy,” said Mills with affectionate gentleness. +He hesitated a moment. “Doña Rita went away yesterday,” he said softly. + +“Went away? Why?” asked Monsieur George. + +“Because, I am thankful to say, your life is no longer in danger. And I +have told you that she is gone because, strange as it may seem, I believe +you can stand this news better now than later when you get stronger.” + +It must be believed that Mills was right. Monsieur George fell asleep +before he could feel any pang at that intelligence. A sort of confused +surprise was in his mind but nothing else, and then his eyes closed. The +awakening was another matter. But that, too, Mills had foreseen. For +days he attended the bedside patiently letting the man in the bed talk to +him of Doña Rita but saying little himself; till one day he was asked +pointedly whether she had ever talked to him openly. And then he said +that she had, on more than one occasion. “She told me amongst other +things,” Mills said, “if this is any satisfaction to you to know, that +till she met you she knew nothing of love. That you were to her in more +senses than one a complete revelation.” + +“And then she went away. Ran away from the revelation,” said the man in +the bed bitterly. + +“What’s the good of being angry?” remonstrated Mills, gently. “You know +that this world is not a world for lovers, not even for such lovers as +you two who have nothing to do with the world as it is. No, a world of +lovers would be impossible. It would be a mere ruin of lives which seem +to be meant for something else. What this something is, I don’t know; +and I am certain,” he said with playful compassion, “that she and you +will never find out.” + +A few days later they were again talking of Doña Rita Mills said: + +“Before she left the house she gave me that arrow she used to wear in her +hair to hand over to you as a keepsake and also to prevent you, she said, +from dreaming of her. This message sounds rather cryptic.” + +“Oh, I understand perfectly,” said Monsieur George. “Don’t give me the +thing now. Leave it somewhere where I can find it some day when I am +alone. But when you write to her you may tell her that now at last—surer +than Mr. Blunt’s bullet—the arrow has found its mark. There will be no +more dreaming. Tell her. She will understand.” + +“I don’t even know where she is,” murmured Mills. + +“No, but her man of affairs knows. . . . Tell me, Mills, what will become +of her?” + +“She will be wasted,” said Mills sadly. “She is a most unfortunate +creature. Not even poverty could save her now. She cannot go back to +her goats. Yet who can tell? She may find something in life. She may! +It won’t be love. She has sacrificed that chance to the integrity of +your life—heroically. Do you remember telling her once that you meant to +live your life integrally—oh, you lawless young pedant! Well, she is +gone; but you may be sure that whatever she finds now in life it will not +be peace. You understand me? Not even in a convent.” + +“She was supremely lovable,” said the wounded man, speaking of her as if +she were lying dead already on his oppressed heart. + +“And elusive,” struck in Mills in a low voice. “Some of them are like +that. She will never change. Amid all the shames and shadows of that +life there will always lie the ray of her perfect honesty. I don’t know +about your honesty, but yours will be the easier lot. You will always +have your . . . other love—you pig-headed enthusiast of the sea.” + +“Then let me go to it,” cried the enthusiast. “Let me go to it.” + +He went to it as soon as he had strength enough to feel the crushing +weight of his loss (or his gain) fully, and discovered that he could bear +it without flinching. After this discovery he was fit to face anything. +He tells his correspondent that if he had been more romantic he would +never have looked at any other woman. But on the contrary. No face +worthy of attention escaped him. He looked at them all; and each +reminded him of Doña Rita, either by some profound resemblance or by the +startling force of contrast. + +The faithful austerity of the sea protected him from the rumours that fly +on the tongues of men. He never heard of her. Even the echoes of the +sale of the great Allègre collection failed to reach him. And that event +must have made noise enough in the world. But he never heard. He does +not know. Then, years later, he was deprived even of the arrow. It was +lost to him in a stormy catastrophe; and he confesses that next day he +stood on a rocky, wind-assaulted shore, looking at the seas raging over +the very spot of his loss and thought that it was well. It was not a +thing that one could leave behind one for strange hands—for the cold eyes +of ignorance. Like the old King of Thule with the gold goblet of his +mistress he would have had to cast it into the sea, before he died. He +says he smiled at the romantic notion. But what else could he have done +with it? + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARROW OF GOLD*** + + +******* This file should be named 1083-0.txt or 1083-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/8/1083 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1084-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1084-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..af6cb79e --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1084-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,178 @@ + + + + + +404 | Project Gutenberg + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + +
+ +
+ +
+
+ + + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+
+ +
+ About Project Gutenberg + Contact Us + History & Philosophy + Kindle & eReaders + Help Pages + Offline Catalogs + Donate +
+
+ +
+ Frequently Downloaded + Main Categories + Reading Lists + Search Options +
+
+ +
+ Frequently Downloaded + Main Categories +
+
+
+ +

Error 404

+ +

Sorry, but our website does not have the page you requested.

+ +

Maybe you have just a wrong url. Go to www.gutenberg.org to see whether the error persists.

+ +

If you think something is broken, follow the “Contact Information” link at the bottom of this page if you would like to report it.

+ + +
+
+
+ + + ibiblio + +
+ + + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1085-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1085-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..418a6d06 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1085-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8497 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1085 *** + +LIFE OF JOHN STERLING + +By Thomas Carlyle + + +Transcriber's Note: Italics in the text are indicated by the use of an +underscore as delimiter, _thusly_. All footnotes have been collected at +the end of the text, and numbered sequentially in brackets, [thusly]. +One illustration has been omitted. The "pound" symbol has been replaced +by the word "pounds". Otherwise, all spelling, punctuation, etc., have +been left as in the printed text. + +Taken from volume 2 of Carlyle's Complete Works, which additionally +contains the Latter-Day Pamphlets, to be provided as a separate etext. + + + + +PART I. + + + +CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. + +Near seven years ago, a short while before his death in 1844, John +Sterling committed the care of his literary Character and printed +Writings to two friends, Archdeacon Hare and myself. His estimate of the +bequest was far from overweening; to few men could the small sum-total +of his activities in this world seem more inconsiderable than, in those +last solemn days, it did to him. He had burnt much; found much unworthy; +looking steadfastly into the silent continents of Death and Eternity, a +brave man's judgments about his own sorry work in the field of Time are +not apt to be too lenient. But, in fine, here was some portion of his +work which the world had already got hold of, and which he could not +burn. This too, since it was not to be abolished and annihilated, but +must still for some time live and act, he wished to be wisely settled, +as the rest had been. And so it was left in charge to us, the survivors, +to do for it what we judged fittest, if indeed doing nothing did not +seem the fittest to us. This message, communicated after his decease, +was naturally a sacred one to Mr. Hare and me. + +After some consultation on it, and survey of the difficulties and +delicate considerations involved in it, Archdeacon Hare and I agreed +that the whole task, of selecting what Writings were to be reprinted, +and of drawing up a Biography to introduce them, should be left to him +alone; and done without interference of mine:--as accordingly it was, [1] +in a manner surely far superior to the common, in every good quality of +editing; and visibly everywhere bearing testimony to the friendliness, +the piety, perspicacity and other gifts and virtues of that eminent and +amiable man. + +In one respect, however, if in one only, the arrangement had been +unfortunate. Archdeacon Hare, both by natural tendency and by his +position as a Churchman, had been led, in editing a Work not free from +ecclesiastical heresies, and especially in writing a Life very full of +such, to dwell with preponderating emphasis on that part of his subject; +by no means extenuating the fact, nor yet passing lightly over it (which +a layman could have done) as needing no extenuation; but carefully +searching into it, with the view of excusing and explaining it; dwelling +on it, presenting all the documents of it, and as it were spreading it +over the whole field of his delineation; as if religious heterodoxy had +been the grand fact of Sterling's life, which even to the Archdeacon's +mind it could by no means seem to be. _Hinc illae lachrymae_. For the +Religious Newspapers, and Periodical Heresy-hunters, getting very lively +in those years, were prompt to seize the cue; and have prosecuted +and perhaps still prosecute it, in their sad way, to all lengths and +breadths. John Sterling's character and writings, which had little +business to be spoken of in any Church-court, have hereby been carried +thither as if for an exclusive trial; and the mournfulest set of +pleadings, out of which nothing but a misjudgment _can_ be formed, +prevail there ever since. The noble Sterling, a radiant child of the +empyrean, clad in bright auroral hues in the memory of all that knew +him,--what is he doing here in inquisitorial _sanbenito_, with nothing +but ghastly spectralities prowling round him, and inarticulately +screeching and gibbering what they call their judgment on him! + +"The sin of Hare's Book," says one of my Correspondents in those years, +"is easily defined, and not very condemnable, but it is nevertheless +ruinous to his task as Biographer. He takes up Sterling as a clergyman +merely. Sterling, I find, was a curate for exactly eight months; during +eight months and no more had he any special relation to the Church. But +he was a man, and had relation to the Universe, for eight-and-thirty +years: and it is in this latter character, to which all the others were +but features and transitory hues, that we wish to know him. His battle +with hereditary Church formulas was severe; but it was by no means his +one battle with things inherited, nor indeed his chief battle; +neither, according to my observation of what it was, is it successfully +delineated or summed up in this Book. The truth is, nobody that had +known Sterling would recognize a feature of him here; you would never +dream that this Book treated of _him_ at all. A pale sickly shadow in +torn surplice is presented to us here; weltering bewildered amid +heaps of what you call 'Hebrew Old-clothes;' wrestling, with impotent +impetuosity, to free itself from the baleful imbroglio, as if that +had been its one function in life: who in this miserable figure would +recognize the brilliant, beautiful and cheerful John Sterling, with +his ever-flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imaginations; with his frank +affections, inexhaustible hopes, audacities, activities, and general +radiant vivacity of heart and intelligence, which made the presence of +him an illumination and inspiration wherever he went? It is too bad. +Let a man be honestly forgotten when his life ends; but let him not be +misremembered in this way. To be hung up as an ecclesiastical scarecrow, +as a target for heterodox and orthodox to practice archery upon, is no +fate that can be due to the memory of Sterling. It was not as a ghastly +phantasm, choked in Thirty-nine-article controversies, or miserable +Semitic, Anti-Semitic street-riots,--in scepticisms, agonized +self-seekings, that this man appeared in life; nor as such, if the world +still wishes to look at him should you suffer the world's memory of him +now to be. Once for all, it is unjust; emphatically untrue as an image +of John Sterling: perhaps to few men that lived along with him could +such an interpretation of their existence be more inapplicable." + + +Whatever truth there might be in these rather passionate +representations, and to myself there wanted not a painful feeling of +their truth, it by no means appeared what help or remedy any friend of +Sterling's, and especially one so related to the matter as myself, could +attempt in the interim. Perhaps endure in patience till the dust +laid itself again, as all dust does if you leave it well alone? Much +obscuration would thus of its own accord fall away; and, in Mr. Hare's +narrative itself, apart from his commentary, many features of Sterling's +true character would become decipherable to such as sought them. +Censure, blame of this Work of Mr. Hare's was naturally far from my +thoughts. A work which distinguishes itself by human piety and candid +intelligence; which, in all details, is careful, lucid, exact; and which +offers, as we say, to the observant reader that will interpret facts, +many traits of Sterling besides his heterodoxy. Censure of it, from me +especially, is not the thing due; from me a far other thing is due!-- + +On the whole, my private thought was: First, How happy it comparatively +is, for a man of any earnestness of life, to have no Biography written +of him; but to return silently, with his small, sorely foiled bit of +work, to the Supreme Silences, who alone can judge of it or him; and not +to trouble the reviewers, and greater or lesser public, with attempting +to judge it! The idea of "fame," as they call it, posthumous or +other, does not inspire one with much ecstasy in these points of +view.--Secondly, That Sterling's performance and real or seeming +importance in this world was actually not of a kind to demand an express +Biography, even according to the world's usages. His character was not +supremely original; neither was his fate in the world wonderful. What +he did was inconsiderable enough; and as to what it lay in him to have +done, this was but a problem, now beyond possibility of settlement. Why +had a Biography been inflicted on this man; why had not No-biography, +and the privilege of all the weary, been his lot?--Thirdly, That such +lot, however, could now no longer be my good Sterling's; a tumult having +risen around his name, enough to impress some pretended likeness of him +(about as like as the Guy-Fauxes are, on Gunpowder-Day) upon the minds +of many men: so that he could not be forgotten, and could only be +misremembered, as matters now stood. + +Whereupon, as practical conclusion to the whole, arose by degrees this +final thought, That, at some calmer season, when the theological dust +had well fallen, and both the matter itself, and my feelings on it, were +in a suitabler condition, I ought to give my testimony about this friend +whom I had known so well, and record clearly what my knowledge of him +was. This has ever since seemed a kind of duty I had to do in the world +before leaving it. + + +And so, having on my hands some leisure at this time, and being bound to +it by evident considerations, one of which ought to be especially +sacred to me, I decide to fling down on paper some outline of what +my recollections and reflections contain in reference to this most +friendly, bright and beautiful human soul; who walked with me for a +season in this world, and remains to me very memorable while I continue +in it. Gradually, if facts simple enough in themselves can be narrated +as they came to pass, it will be seen what kind of man this was; to what +extent condemnable for imaginary heresy and other crimes, to what +extent laudable and lovable for noble manful _orthodoxy_ and other +virtues;--and whether the lesson his life had to teach us is not much +the reverse of what the Religious Newspapers hitherto educe from it. + +Certainly it was not as a "sceptic" that you could define him, whatever +his definition might be. Belief, not doubt, attended him at all points +of his progress; rather a tendency to too hasty and headlong belief. +Of all men he was the least prone to what you could call scepticism: +diseased self-listenings, self-questionings, impotently painful +dubitations, all this fatal nosology of spiritual maladies, so rife +in our day, was eminently foreign to him. Quite on the other side lay +Sterling's faults, such as they were. In fact, you could observe, in +spite of his sleepless intellectual vivacity, he was not properly a +thinker at all; his faculties were of the active, not of the passive or +contemplative sort. A brilliant _improvisatore_; rapid in thought, in +word and in act; everywhere the promptest and least hesitating of men. +I likened him often, in my banterings, to sheet-lightning; and +reproachfully prayed that he would concentrate himself into a bolt, and +rive the mountain-barriers for us, instead of merely playing on them and +irradiating them. + +True, he had his "religion" to seek, and painfully shape together for +himself, out of the abysses of conflicting disbelief and sham-belief and +bedlam delusion, now filling the world, as all men of reflection have; +and in this respect too,--more especially as his lot in the battle +appointed for us all was, if you can understand it, victory and not +defeat,--he is an expressive emblem of his time, and an instruction and +possession to his contemporaries. For, I say, it is by no means as a +vanquished _doubter_ that he figures in the memory of those who knew +him; but rather as a victorious _believer_, and under great difficulties +a victorious doer. An example to us all, not of lamed misery, helpless +spiritual bewilderment and sprawling despair, or any kind of _drownage_ +in the foul welter of our so-called religious or other controversies and +confusions; but of a swift and valiant vanquisher of all these; a noble +asserter of himself, as worker and speaker, in spite of all these. +Continually, so far as he went, he was a teacher, by act and word, of +hope, clearness, activity, veracity, and human courage and nobleness: +the preacher of a good gospel to all men, not of a bad to any man. The +man, whether in priest's cassock or other costume of men, who is the +enemy or hater of John Sterling, may assure himself that he does not yet +know him,--that miserable differences of mere costume and dialect still +divide him, whatsoever is worthy, catholic and perennial in him, from a +brother soul who, more than most in his day, was his brother and not his +adversary in regard to all that. + +Nor shall the irremediable drawback that Sterling was not current in the +Newspapers, that he achieved neither what the world calls greatness nor +what intrinsically is such, altogether discourage me. What his natural +size, and natural and accidental limits were, will gradually appear, if +my sketching be successful. And I have remarked that a true delineation +of the smallest man, and his scene of pilgrimage through life, is +capable of interesting the greatest man; that all men are to an +unspeakable degree brothers, each man's life a strange emblem of every +man's; and that Human Portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all pictures +the welcomest on human walls. Monitions and moralities enough may lie +in this small Work, if honestly written and honestly read;--and, in +particular, if any image of John Sterling and his Pilgrimage through +our poor Nineteenth Century be one day wanted by the world, and they can +find some shadow of a true image here, my swift scribbling (which shall +be very swift and immediate) may prove useful by and by. + + + +CHAPTER II. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. + +John Sterling was born at Kaimes Castle, a kind of dilapidated baronial +residence to which a small farm was then attached, rented by his Father, +in the Isle of Bute,--on the 20th July, 1806. Both his parents were +Irish by birth, Scotch by extraction; and became, as he himself did, +essentially English by long residence and habit. Of John himself +Scotland has little or nothing to claim except the birth and genealogy, +for he left it almost before the years of memory; and in his mature days +regarded it, if with a little more recognition and intelligence, yet +without more participation in any of its accents outward or inward, +than others natives of Middlesex or Surrey, where the scene of his chief +education lay. + +The climate of Bute is rainy, soft of temperature; with skies of unusual +depth and brilliancy, while the weather is fair. In that soft rainy +climate, on that wild-wooded rocky coast, with its gnarled mountains and +green silent valleys, with its seething rain-storms and many-sounding +seas, was young Sterling ushered into his first schooling in this world. +I remember one little anecdote his Father told me of those first +years: One of the cows had calved; young John, still in petticoats, was +permitted to go, holding by his father's hand, and look at the newly +arrived calf; a mystery which he surveyed with open intent eyes, and the +silent exercise of all the scientific faculties he had;--very strange +mystery indeed, this new arrival, and fresh denizen of our Universe: +"Wull't eat a-body?" said John in his first practical Scotch, inquiring +into the tendencies this mystery might have to fall upon a little fellow +and consume him as provision: "Will it eat one, Father?"--Poor little +open-eyed John: the family long bantered him with this anecdote; and +we, in far other years, laughed heartily on hearing it.--Simple peasant +laborers, ploughers, house-servants, occasional fisher-people too; and +the sight of ships, and crops, and Nature's doings where Art has little +meddled with her: this was the kind of schooling our young friend had, +first of all; on this bench of the grand world-school did he sit, for +the first four years of his life. + +Edward Sterling his Father, a man who subsequently came to considerable +notice in the world, was originally of Waterford in Munster; son of the +Episcopalian Clergyman there; and chief representative of a family of +some standing in those parts. Family founded, it appears, by a +Colonel Robert Sterling, called also Sir Robert Sterling; a Scottish +Gustavus-Adolphus soldier, whom the breaking out of the Civil War had +recalled from his German campaignings, and had before long, though not +till after some waverings on his part, attached firmly to the Duke +of Ormond and to the King's Party in that quarrel. A little bit of +genealogy, since it lies ready to my hand, gathered long ago out of +wider studies, and pleasantly connects things individual and present +with the dim universal crowd of things past,--may as well be inserted +here as thrown away. + +This Colonel Robert designates himself Sterling "of Glorat;" I believe, +a younger branch of the well-known Stirlings of Keir in Stirlingshire. +It appears he prospered in his soldiering and other business, in +those bad Ormond times; being a man of energy, ardor and +intelligence,--probably prompt enough both with his word and with his +stroke. There survives yet, in the Commons Journals, [2] dim notice of +his controversies and adventures; especially of one controversy he had +got into with certain victorious Parliamentary official parties, +while his own party lay vanquished, during what was called the Ormond +Cessation, or Temporary Peace made by Ormond with the Parliament in +1646:--in which controversy Colonel Robert, after repeated applications, +journeyings to London, attendances upon committees, and such like, finds +himself worsted, declared to be in the wrong; and so vanishes from the +Commons Journals. + +What became of him when Cromwell got to Ireland, and to Munster, I +have not heard: his knighthood, dating from the very year of Cromwell's +Invasion (1649), indicates a man expected to do his best on the +occasion:--as in all probability he did; had not Tredah Storm proved +ruinous, and the neck of this Irish War been broken at once. Doubtless +the Colonel Sir Robert followed or attended his Duke of Ormond into +foreign parts, and gave up his management of Munster, while it was yet +time: for after the Restoration we find him again, safe, and as was +natural, flourishing with new splendor; gifted, recompensed with +lands;--settled, in short, on fair revenues in those Munster regions. +He appears to have had no children; but to have left his property to +William, a younger brother who had followed him into Ireland. From this +William descends the family which, in the years we treat of, had Edward +Sterling, Father of our John, for its representative. And now enough of +genealogy. + + +Of Edward Sterling, Captain Edward Sterling as his title was, who in the +latter period of his life became well known in London political society, +whom indeed all England, with a curious mixture of mockery and respect +and even fear, knew well as "the Thunderer of the Times Newspaper," +there were much to be said, did the present task and its limits permit. +As perhaps it might, on certain terms? What is indispensable let us not +omit to say. The history of a man's childhood is the description of his +parents and environment: this is his inarticulate but highly important +history, in those first times, while of articulate he has yet none. + +Edward Sterling had now just entered on his thirty-fourth year; and was +already a man experienced in fortunes and changes. A native of Waterford +in Munster, as already mentioned; born in the "Deanery House of +Waterford, 27th February, 1773," say the registers. For his Father, as +we learn, resided in the Deanery House, though he was not himself Dean, +but only "Curate of the Cathedral" (whatever that may mean); he was +withal rector of two other livings, and the Dean's friend,--friend +indeed of the Dean's kinsmen the Beresfords generally; whose grand house +of Curraghmore, near by Waterford, was a familiar haunt of his and his +children's. This reverend gentleman, along with his three livings and +high acquaintanceships, had inherited political connections;--inherited +especially a Government Pension, with survivorship for still one life +beyond his own; his father having been Clerk of the Irish House of +Commons at the time of the Union, of which office the lost salary was +compensated in this way. The Pension was of two hundred pounds; and only +expired with the life of Edward, John's Father, in 1847. There were, +and still are, daughters of the family; but Edward was the only +son;--descended, too, from the Scottish hero Wallace, as the old +gentleman would sometimes admonish him; his own wife, Edward's mother, +being of that name, and boasting herself, as most Scotch Wallaces do, to +have that blood in her veins. + +This Edward had picked up, at Waterford, and among the young Beresfords +of Curraghmore and elsewhere, a thoroughly Irish form of character: fire +and fervor, vitality of all kinds, in genial abundance; but in a much +more loquacious, ostentatious, much _louder_ style than is freely +patronized on this side of the Channel. Of Irish accent in speech he had +entirely divested himself, so as not to be traced by any vestige in that +respect; but his Irish accent of character, in all manner of other more +important respects, was very recognizable. An impetuous man, full +of real energy, and immensely conscious of the same; who transacted +everything not with the minimum of fuss and noise, but with the maximum: +a very Captain Whirlwind, as one was tempted to call him. + +In youth, he had studied at Trinity College, Dublin; visited the Inns +of Court here, and trained himself for the Irish Bar. To the Bar he +had been duly called, and was waiting for the results,--when, in his +twenty-fifth year, the Irish Rebellion broke out; whereupon the Irish +Barristers decided to raise a corps of loyal Volunteers, and a complete +change introduced itself into Edward Sterling's way of life. For, +naturally, he had joined the array of Volunteers;--fought, I have +heard, "in three actions with the rebels" (Vinegar Hill, for one); and +doubtless fought well: but in the mess-rooms, among the young military +and civil officials, with all of whom he was a favorite, he had acquired +a taste for soldier life, and perhaps high hopes of succeeding in it: at +all events, having a commission in the Lancashire Militia offered +him, he accepted that; altogether quitted the Bar, and became Captain +Sterling thenceforth. From the Militia, it appears, he had volunteered +with his Company into the Line; and, under some disappointments, and +official delays of expected promotion, was continuing to serve as +Captain there, "Captain of the Eighth Battalion of Reserve," say the +Military Almanacs of 1803,--in which year the quarters happened to be +Derry, where new events awaited him. At a ball in Derry he met with Miss +Hester Coningham, the queen of the scene, and of the fair world in Derry +at that time. The acquaintance, in spite of some Opposition, grew with +vigor, and rapidly ripened: and "at Fehan Church, Diocese of Derry," +where the Bride's father had a country-house, "on Thursday 5th April, +1804, Hester Coningham, only daughter of John Coningham, Esquire, +Merchant in Derry, and of Elizabeth Campbell his wife," was wedded to +Captain Sterling; she happiest to him happiest,--as by Nature's kind law +it is arranged. + +Mrs. Sterling, even in her later days, had still traces of the old +beauty: then and always she was a woman of delicate, pious, affectionate +character; exemplary as a wife, a mother and a friend. A refined female +nature; something tremulous in it, timid, and with a certain rural +freshness still unweakened by long converse with the world. The tall +slim figure, always of a kind of quaker neatness; the innocent anxious +face, anxious bright hazel eyes; the timid, yet gracefully cordial +ways, the natural intelligence, instinctive sense and worth, were very +characteristic. Her voice too; with its something of soft querulousness, +easily adapting itself to a light thin-flowing style of mirth on +occasion, was characteristic: she had retained her Ulster intonations, +and was withal somewhat copious in speech. A fine tremulously sensitive +nature, strong chiefly on the side of the affections, and the graceful +insights and activities that depend on these:--truly a beautiful, +much-suffering, much-loving house-mother. From her chiefly, as one could +discern, John Sterling had derived the delicate _aroma_ of his nature, +its piety, clearness, sincerity; as from his Father, the ready practical +gifts, the impetuosities and the audacities, were also (though in +strange new form) visibly inherited. A man was lucky to have such a +Mother; to have such Parents as both his were. + +Meanwhile the new Wife appears to have had, for the present, no +marriage-portion; neither was Edward Sterling rich,--according to +his own ideas and aims, far from it. Of course he soon found that +the fluctuating barrack-life, especially with no outlooks of speedy +promotion, was little suited to his new circumstances: but how change +it? His father was now dead; from whom he had inherited the Speaker +Pension of two hundred pounds; but of available probably little or +nothing more. The rents of the small family estate, I suppose, and other +property, had gone to portion sisters. Two hundred pounds, and the pay +of a marching captain: within the limits of that revenue all plans of +his had to restrict themselves at present. + +He continued for some time longer in the Army; his wife undivided from +him by the hardships, of that way of life. Their first son Anthony +(Captain Anthony Sterling, the only child who now survives) was born +to them in this position, while lying at Dundalk, in January, 1805. Two +months later, some eleven months after their marriage, the regiment was +broken; and Captain Sterling, declining to serve elsewhere on the +terms offered, and willingly accepting such decision of his doubts, was +reduced to half-pay. This was the end of his soldiering: some five +or six years in all; from which he had derived for life, among other +things, a decided military bearing, whereof he was rather proud; an +incapacity for practicing law;--and considerable uncertainty as to what +his next course of life was now to be. + +For the present, his views lay towards farming: to establish himself, +if not as country gentleman, which was an unattainable ambition, then +at least as some kind of gentleman-farmer which had a flattering +resemblance to that. Kaimes Castle with a reasonable extent of land, +which, in his inquiries after farms, had turned up, was his first place +of settlement in this new capacity; and here, for some few months, he +had established himself when John his second child was born. This was +Captain Sterling's first attempt towards a fixed course of life; not +a very wise one, I have understood:--yet on the whole, who, then and +there, could have pointed out to him a wiser? + +A fixed course of life and activity he could never attain, or not till +very late; and this doubtless was among the important points of his +destiny, and acted both on his own character and that of those who had +to attend him on his wayfarings. + + + +CHAPTER III. SCHOOLS: LLANBLETHIAN; PARIS; LONDON. + +Edward Sterling never shone in farming; indeed I believe he never took +heartily to it, or tried it except in fits. His Bute farm was, at +best, a kind of apology for some far different ideal of a country +establishment which could not be realized; practically a temporary +landing-place from which he could make sallies and excursions in search +of some more generous field of enterprise. Stormy brief efforts at +energetic husbandry, at agricultural improvement and rapid field-labor, +alternated with sudden flights to Dublin, to London, whithersoever any +flush of bright outlook which he could denominate practical, or any +gleam of hope which his impatient ennui could represent as such, +allured him. This latter was often enough the case. In wet hay-times and +harvest-times, the dripping outdoor world, and lounging indoor one, in +the absence of the master, offered far from a satisfactory appearance! +Here was, in fact, a man much imprisoned; haunted, I doubt not, by +demons enough; though ever brisk and brave withal,--iracund, but +cheerfully vigorous, opulent in wise or unwise hope. A fiery energetic +soul consciously and unconsciously storming for deliverance into better +arenas; and this in a restless, rapid, impetuous, rather than in a +strong, silent and deliberate way. + +In rainy Bute and the dilapidated Kaimes Castle, it was evident, there +lay no Goshen for such a man. The lease, originally but for some three +years and a half, drawing now to a close, he resolved to quit Bute; had +heard, I know not where, of an eligible cottage without farm attached, +in the pleasant little village of Llanblethian close by Cowbridge in +Glamorganshire; of this he took a lease, and thither with his family he +moved in search of new fortunes. Glamorganshire was at least a better +climate than Bute; no groups of idle or of busy reapers could here stand +waiting on the guidance of a master, for there was no farm here;--and +among its other and probably its chief though secret advantages, +Llanblethian was much more convenient both for Dublin and London than +Kaimes Castle had been. + +The removal thither took place in the autumn of 1809. Chief part of the +journey (perhaps from Greenock to Swansea or Bristol) was by sea: John, +just turned of three years, could in after-times remember nothing of +this voyage; Anthony, some eighteen months older, has still a vivid +recollection of the gray splashing tumult, and dim sorrow, uncertainty, +regret and distress he underwent: to him a "dissolving-view" which not +only left its effect on the _plate_ (as all views and dissolving-views +doubtless do on that kind of "plate"), but remained consciously present +there. John, in the close of his twenty-first year, professes not +to remember anything whatever of Bute; his whole existence, in that +earliest scene of it, had faded away from him: Bute also, with its +shaggy mountains, moaning woods, and summer and winter seas, had been +wholly a dissolving-view for him, and had left no conscious impression, +but only, like this voyage, an effect. + +Llanblethian hangs pleasantly, with its white cottages, and orchard and +other trees, on the western slope of a green hill looking far and wide +over green meadows and little or bigger hills, in the pleasant plain of +Glamorgan; a short mile to the south of Cowbridge, to which smart little +town it is properly a kind of suburb. Plain of Glamorgan, some ten +miles wide and thirty or forty long, which they call the Vale of +Glamorgan;--though properly it is not quite a Vale, there being only one +range of mountains to it, if even one: certainly the central Mountains +of Wales do gradually rise, in a miscellaneous manner, on the north +side of it; but on the south are no mountains, not even land, only +the Bristol Channel, and far off, the Hills of Devonshire, for +boundary,--the "English Hills," as the natives call them, visible from +every eminence in those parts. On such wide terms is it called Vale of +Glamorgan. But called by whatever name, it is a most pleasant fruitful +region: kind to the native, interesting to the visitor. A waving grassy +region; cut with innumerable ragged lanes; dotted with sleepy unswept +human hamlets, old ruinous castles with their ivy and their daws, gray +sleepy churches with their ditto ditto: for ivy everywhere abounds; and +generally a rank fragrant vegetation clothes all things; hanging, in +rude many-colored festoons and fringed odoriferous tapestries, on your +right and on your left, in every lane. A country kinder to the sluggard +husbandman than any I have ever seen. For it lies all on limestone, +needs no draining; the soil, everywhere of handsome depth and finest +quality, will grow good crops for you with the most imperfect tilling. +At a safe distance of a day's riding lie the tartarean copper-forges of +Swansea, the tartarean iron-forges of Merthyr; their sooty battle far +away, and not, at such safe distance, a defilement to the face of +the earth and sky, but rather an encouragement to the earth at least; +encouraging the husbandman to plough better, if he only would. + +The peasantry seem indolent and stagnant, but peaceable and +well-provided; much given to Methodism when they have any +character;--for the rest, an innocent good-humored people, who all drink +home-brewed beer, and have brown loaves of the most excellent home-baked +bread. The native peasant village is not generally beautiful, though +it might be, were it swept and trimmed; it gives one rather the idea +of sluttish stagnancy,--an interesting peep into the Welsh Paradise of +Sleepy Hollow. Stones, old kettles, naves of wheels, all kinds of broken +litter, with live pigs and etceteras, lie about the street: for, as +a rule, no rubbish is removed, but waits patiently the action of mere +natural chemistry and accident; if even a house is burnt or falls, you +will find it there after half a century, only cloaked by the ever-ready +ivy. Sluggish man seems never to have struck a pick into it; his new hut +is built close by on ground not encumbered, and the old stones are still +left lying. + +This is the ordinary Welsh village; but there are exceptions, +where people of more cultivated tastes have been led to settle, and +Llanblethian is one of the more signal of these. A decidedly cheerful +group of human homes, the greater part of them indeed belonging to +persons of refined habits; trimness, shady shelter, whitewash, neither +conveniency nor decoration has been neglected here. Its effect from +the distance on the eastward is very pretty: you see it like a little +sleeping cataract of white houses, with trees overshadowing and fringing +it; and there the cataract hangs, and does not rush away from you. + +John Sterling spent his next five years in this locality. He did not +again see it for a quarter of a century; but retained, all his life, a +lively remembrance of it; and, just in the end of his twenty-first year, +among his earliest printed pieces, we find an elaborate and diffuse +description of it and its relations to him,--part of which piece, in +spite of its otherwise insignificant quality, may find place here:-- + +"The fields on which I first looked, and the sands which were marked by +my earliest footsteps, are completely lost to my memory; and of those +ancient walls among which I began to breathe, I retain no recollection +more clear than the outlines of a cloud in a moonless sky. But of L----, +the village where I afterwards lived, I persuade myself that every line +and hue is more deeply and accurately fixed than those of any spot +I have since beheld, even though borne in upon the heart by the +association of the strongest feelings. + +"My home was built upon the slope of a hill, with a little orchard +stretching down before it, and a garden rising behind. At a considerable +distance beyond and beneath the orchard, a rivulet flowed through +meadows and turned a mill; while, above the garden, the summit of +the hill was crowned by a few gray rocks, from which a yew-tree grew, +solitary and bare. Extending at each side of the orchard, toward +the brook, two scattered patches of cottages lay nestled among their +gardens; and beyond this streamlet and the little mill and bridge, +another slight eminence arose, divided into green fields, tufted and +bordered with copsewood, and crested by a ruined castle, contemporary, +as was said, with the Conquest. I know not whether these things in truth +made up a prospect of much beauty. Since I was eight years old, I have +never seen them; but I well know that no landscape I have since beheld, +no picture of Claude or Salvator, gave me half the impression of living, +heartfelt, perfect beauty which fills my mind when I think of that green +valley, that sparkling rivulet, that broken fortress of dark antiquity, +and that hill with its aged yew and breezy summit, from which I have +so often looked over the broad stretch of verdure beneath it, and the +country-town, and church-tower, silent and white beyond. + +"In that little town there was, and I believe is, a school where the +elements of human knowledge were communicated to me, for some hours of +every day, during a considerable time. The path to it lay across the +rivulet and past the mill; from which point we could either journey +through the fields below the old castle, and the wood which surrounded +it, or along a road at the other side of the ruin, close to the gateway +of which it passed. The former track led through two or three beautiful +fields, the sylvan domain of the keep on one hand, and the brook on the +other; while an oak or two, like giant warders advanced from the wood, +broke the sunshine of the green with a soft and graceful shadow. How +often, on my way to school, have I stopped beneath the tree to collect +the fallen acorns; how often run down to the stream to pluck a branch of +the hawthorn which hung over the water! The road which passed the castle +joined, beyond these fields, the path which traversed them. It took, I +well remember, a certain solemn and mysterious interest from the ruin. +The shadow of the archway, the discolorizations of time on all the +walls, the dimness of the little thicket which encircled it, the +traditions of its immeasurable age, made St. Quentin's Castle a +wonderful and awful fabric in the imagination of a child; and long after +I last saw its mouldering roughness, I never read of fortresses, or +heights, or spectres, or banditti, without connecting them with the one +ruin of my childhood. + +"It was close to this spot that one of the few adventures occurred +which marked, in my mind, my boyish days with importance. When loitering +beyond the castle, on the way to school, with a brother somewhat older +than myself, who was uniformly my champion and protector, we espied a +round sloe high up in the hedge-row. We determined to obtain it; and +I do not remember whether both of us, or only my brother, climbed the +tree. However, when the prize was all but reached,--and no alchemist +ever looked more eagerly for the moment of projection which was to give +him immortality and omnipotence,--a gruff voice startled us with an +oath, and an order to desist; and I well recollect looking back, for +long after, with terror to the vision of an old and ill-tempered +farmer, armed with a bill-hook, and vowing our decapitation; nor did I +subsequently remember without triumph the eloquence whereby alone, in my +firm belief, my brother and myself had been rescued from instant death. + +"At the entrance of the little town stood an old gateway, with a pointed +arch and decaying battlements. It gave admittance to the street which +contained the church, and which terminated in another street, the +principal one in the town of C----. In this was situated the school to +which I daily wended. I cannot now recall to mind the face of its good +conductor, nor of any of his scholars; but I have before me a strong +general image of the interior of his establishment. I remember the +reverence with which I was wont to carry to his seat a well-thumbed +duodecimo, the _History of Greece_ by Oliver Goldsmith. I remember the +mental agonies I endured in attempting to master the art and mystery of +penmanship; a craft in which, alas, I remained too short a time under +Mr. R---- to become as great a proficient as he made his other scholars, +and which my awkwardness has prevented me from attaining in any +considerable perfection under my various subsequent pedagogues. But that +which has left behind it a brilliant trait of light was the exhibition +of what are called 'Christmas pieces;' things unknown in aristocratic +seminaries, but constantly used at the comparatively humble academy +which supplied the best knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic to +be attained in that remote neighborhood. + +"The long desks covered from end to end with those painted masterpieces, +the Life of Robinson Crusoe, the Hunting of Chevy-Chase, the History +of Jack the Giant-Killer, and all the little eager faces and trembling +hands bent over these, and filling them up with some choice quotation, +sacred or profane;--no, the galleries of art, the theatrical +exhibitions, the reviews and processions,--which are only not childish +because they are practiced and admired by men instead of children,--all +the pomps and vanities of great cities, have shown me no revelation of +glory such as did that crowded school-room the week before the Christmas +holidays. But these were the splendors of life. The truest and the +strongest feelings do not connect themselves with any scenes of gorgeous +and gaudy magnificence; they are bound up in the remembrances of home. + +"The narrow orchard, with its grove of old apple-trees against one of +which I used to lean, and while I brandished a beanstalk, roar out with +Fitzjames,-- + + 'Come one, come all; this rock shall fly + From its firm base as soon as I!'-- + +while I was ready to squall at the sight of a cur, and run valorously +away from a casually approaching cow; the field close beside it, where +I rolled about in summer among the hay; the brook in which, despite +of maid and mother, I waded by the hour; the garden where I sowed +flower-seeds, and then turned up the ground again and planted potatoes, +and then rooted out the potatoes to insert acorns and apple-pips, and +at last, as may be supposed, reaped neither roses, nor potatoes, nor +oak-trees, nor apples; the grass-plots on which I played among those +with whom I never can play nor work again: all these are places and +employments,--and, alas, playmates,--such as, if it were worth while to +weep at all, it would be worth weeping that I enjoy no longer. + +"I remember the house where I first grew familiar with peacocks; and the +mill-stream into which I once fell; and the religious awe wherewith I +heard, in the warm twilight, the psalm-singing around the house of the +Methodist miller; and the door-post against which I discharged my brazen +artillery; I remember the window by which I sat while my mother taught +me French; and the patch of garden which I dug for-- But her name is +best left blank; it was indeed writ in water. These recollections are +to me like the wealth of a departed friend, a mournful treasure. But the +public has heard enough of them; to it they are worthless: they are +a coin which only circulates at its true value between the different +periods of an individual's existence, and good for nothing but to keep +up a commerce between boyhood and manhood. I have for years looked +forward to the possibility of visiting L----; but I am told that it is +a changed village; and not only has man been at work, but the old yew on +the hill has fallen, and scarcely a low stump remains of the tree which +I delighted in childhood to think might have furnished bows for the +Norman archers." [3] + +In Cowbridge is some kind of free school, or grammar-school, of a +certain distinction; and this to Captain Sterling was probably a motive +for settling in the neighborhood of it with his children. Of this +however, as it turned out, there was no use made: the Sterling family, +during its continuance in those parts, did not need more than a primary +school. The worthy master who presided over these Christmas galas, and +had the honor to teach John Sterling his reading and writing, was an +elderly Mr. Reece of Cowbridge, who still (in 1851) survives, or lately +did; and is still remembered by his old pupils as a worthy, ingenious +and kindly man, "who wore drab breeches and white stockings." Beyond the +Reece sphere of tuition John Sterling did not go in this locality. + +In fact the Sterling household was still fluctuating; the problem of a +task for Edward Sterling's powers, and of anchorage for his affairs in +any sense, was restlessly struggling to solve itself, but was still a +good way from being solved. Anthony, in revisiting these scenes with +John in 1839, mentions going to the spot "where we used to stand with +our Father, looking out for the arrival of the London mail:" a little +chink through which is disclosed to us a big restless section of a human +life. The Hill of Welsh Llanblethian, then, is like the mythic Caucasus +in its degree (as indeed all hills and habitations where men sojourn +are); and here too, on a small scale, is a Prometheus Chained! Edward +Sterling, I can well understand, was a man to tug at the chains that +held him idle in those the prime of his years; and to ask restlessly, +yet not in anger and remorse, so much as in hope, locomotive +speculation, and ever-new adventure and attempt, Is there no task nearer +my own natural size, then? So he looks out from the Hill-side "for +the arrival of the London mail;" thence hurries into Cowbridge to the +Post-office; and has a wide web, of threads and gossamers, upon his +loom, and many shuttles flying, in this world. + +By the Marquis of Bute's appointment he had, very shortly after his +arrival in that region, become Adjutant of the Glamorganshire Militia, +"Local Militia," I suppose; and was, in this way, turning his military +capabilities to some use. The office involved pretty frequent absences, +in Cardiff and elsewhere. This doubtless was a welcome outlet, though +a small one. He had also begun to try writing, especially on public +subjects; a much more copious outlet,--which indeed, gradually widening +itself, became the final solution for him. Of the year 1811 we have a +Pamphlet of his, entitled _Military Reform_; this is the second edition, +"dedicated to the Duke of Kent;" the first appears to have come out the +year before, and had thus attained a certain notice, which of course was +encouraging. He now furthermore opened a correspondence with the _Times_ +Newspaper; wrote to it, in 1812, a series of Letters under the signature +_Vetus_: voluntary Letters I suppose, without payment or pre-engagement, +one successful Letter calling out another; till _Vetus_ and his +doctrines came to be a distinguishable entity, and the business amounted +to something. Out of my own earliest Newspaper reading, I can remember +the name _Vetus_, as a kind of editorial hacklog on which able-editors +were wont to chop straw now and then. Nay the Letters were collected and +reprinted; both this first series, of 1812, and then a second of next +year: two very thin, very dim-colored cheap octavos; stray copies of +which still exist, and may one day become distillable into a drop of +History (should such be wanted of our poor "Scavenger Age" in +time coming), though the reading of them has long ceased in this +generation.[4] The first series, we perceive, had even gone to a second +edition. The tone, wherever one timidly glances into this extinct +cockpit, is trenchant and emphatic: the name of _Vetus_, strenuously +fighting there, had become considerable in the talking political world; +and, no doubt, was especially of mark, as that of a writer who might +otherwise be important, with the proprietors of the _Times_. The +connection continued: widened and deepened itself,--in a slow tentative +manner; passing naturally from voluntary into remunerated: and indeed +proving more and more to be the true ultimate arena, and battle-field +and seed-field, for the exuberant impetuosities and faculties of this +man. + +What the _Letters of Vetus_ treated of I do not know; doubtless they ran +upon Napoleon, Catholic Emancipation, true methods of national defence, +of effective foreign Anti-gallicism, and of domestic ditto; which +formed the staple of editorial speculation at that time. I have heard +in general that Captain Sterling, then and afterwards, advocated "the +Marquis of Wellesley's policy;" but that also, what it was, I have +forgotten, and the world has been willing to forget. Enough, the heads +of the _Times_ establishment, perhaps already the Marquis of Wellesley +and other important persons, had their eye on this writer; and it began +to be surmised by him that here at last was the career he had been +seeking. + + +Accordingly, in 1814, when victorious Peace unexpectedly arrived; and +the gates of the Continent after five-and-twenty years of fierce closure +were suddenly thrown open; and the hearts of all English and European +men awoke staggering as if from a nightmare suddenly removed, and ran +hither and thither,--Edward Sterling also determined on a new adventure, +that of crossing to Paris, and trying what might lie in store for him. +For curiosity, in its idler sense, there was evidently pabulum enough. +But he had hopes moreover of learning much that might perhaps avail him +afterwards;--hopes withal, I have understood, of getting to be Foreign +Correspondent of the _Times_ Newspaper, and so adding to his income in +the mean while. He left Llanblethian in May; dates from Dieppe the 27th +of that month. He lived in occasional contact with Parisian notabilities +(all of them except Madame de Stael forgotten now), all summer, +diligently surveying his ground;--returned for his family, who were +still in Wales but ready to move, in the beginning of August; took them +immediately across with him; a house in the neighborhood of Paris, in +the pleasant village of Passy at once town and country, being now ready; +and so, under foreign skies, again set up his household there. + +Here was a strange new "school" for our friend John now in his eighth +year! Out of which the little Anthony and he drank doubtless at all +pores, vigorously as they had done in no school before. A change total +and immediate. Somniferous green Llanblethian has suddenly been blotted +out; presto, here are wakeful Passy and the noises of paved Paris +instead. Innocent ingenious Mr. Reece in drab breeches and white +stockings, he with his mild Christmas galas and peaceable rules of +Dilworth and Butterworth, has given place to such a saturnalia of +panoramic, symbolic and other teachers and monitors, addressing all the +five senses at once. Who John's express tutors were, at Passy, I never +heard; nor indeed, especially in his case, was it much worth inquiring. +To him and to all of us, the expressly appointed schoolmasters and +schoolings we get are as nothing, compared with the unappointed +incidental and continual ones, whose school-hours are all the days and +nights of our existence, and whose lessons, noticed or unnoticed, stream +in upon us with every breath we draw. Anthony says they attended a +French school, though only for about three months; and he well remembers +the last scene of it, "the boys shouting _Vive l'Empereur_ when Napoleon +came back." + +Of John Sterling's express schooling, perhaps the most important +feature, and by no means a favorable one to him, was the excessive +fluctuation that prevailed in it. Change of scene, change of teacher, +_both_ express and implied, was incessant with him; and gave his +young life a nomadic character,--which surely, of all the adventitious +tendencies that could have been impressed upon him, so volatile, +swift and airy a being as him, was the one he needed least. His gentle +pious-hearted Mother, ever watching over him in all outward changes, and +assiduously keeping human pieties and good affections alive in him, was +probably the best counteracting element in his lot. And on the whole, +have we not all to run our chance in that respect; and take, the most +victoriously we can, such schooling as pleases to be attainable in +our year and place? Not very victoriously, the most of us! A wise +well-calculated breeding of a young genial soul in this world, or +alas of any young soul in it, lies fatally over the horizon in these +epochs!--This French scene of things, a grand school of its sort, and +also a perpetual banquet for the young soul, naturally captivated John +Sterling; he said afterwards, "New things and experiences here were +poured upon his mind and sense, not in streams, but in a Niagara +cataract." This too, however, was but a scene; lasted only some six or +seven months; and in the spring of the next year terminated as abruptly +as any of the rest could do. + +For in the spring of the next year, Napoleon abruptly emerged from +Elba; and set all the populations of the world in motion, in a strange +manner;--set the Sterling household afloat, in particular; the big +European tide rushing into all smallest creeks, at Passy and elsewhere. +In brief, on the 20th of March, 1815, the family had to shift, almost +to fly, towards home and the sea-coast; and for a day or two were under +apprehension of being detained and not reaching home. Mrs. Sterling, +with her children and effects, all in one big carriage with two horses, +made the journey to Dieppe; in perfect safety, though in continual +tremor: here they were joined by Captain Sterling, who had stayed behind +at Paris to see the actual advent of Napoleon, and to report what +the aspect of affairs was, "Downcast looks of citizens, with fierce +saturnalian acclaim of soldiery:" after which they proceeded together to +London without farther apprehension;--there to witness, in due time, the +tar-barrels of Waterloo, and other phenomena that followed. + + +Captain Sterling never quitted London as a residence any more; and +indeed was never absent from it, except on autumnal or other excursions +of a few weeks, till the end of his life. Nevertheless his course there +was as yet by no means clear; nor had his relations with the heads of +the _Times_, or with other high heads, assumed a form which could be +called definite, but were hanging as a cloudy maze of possibilities, +firm substance not yet divided from shadow. It continued so for some +years. The Sterling household shifted twice or thrice to new streets +or localities,--Russell Square or Queen Square, Blackfriars Road, +and longest at the Grove, Blackheath,--before the vapors of Wellesley +promotions and such like slowly sank as useless precipitate, and +the firm rock, which was definite employment, ending in lucrative +co-proprietorship and more and more important connection with the +_Times_ Newspaper, slowly disclosed itself. + +These changes of place naturally brought changes in John Sterling's +schoolmasters: nor were domestic tragedies wanting, still more important +to him. New brothers and sisters had been born; two little brothers +more, three little sisters he had in all; some of whom came to their +eleventh year beside him, some passed away in their second or fourth: +but from his ninth to his sixteenth year they all died; and in 1821 only +Anthony and John were left. [5] How many tears, and passionate pangs, +and soft infinite regrets; such as are appointed to all mortals! In one +year, I find, indeed in one half-year, he lost three little playmates, +two of them within one month. His own age was not yet quite twelve. For +one of these three, for little Edward, his next younger, who died now +at the age of nine, Mr. Hare records that John copied out, in large +school-hand, a _History of Valentine and Orson_, to beguile the poor +child's sickness, which ended in death soon, leaving a sad cloud on +John. + + +Of his grammar and other schools, which, as I said, are hardly worth +enumerating in comparison, the most important seems to have been a Dr. +Burney's at Greenwich; a large day-school and boarding-school, where +Anthony and John gave their attendance for a year or two (1818-19) from +Blackheath. "John frequently did themes for the boys," says Anthony, +"and for myself when I was aground." His progress in all school learning +was certain to be rapid, if he even moderately took to it. A lean, +tallish, loose-made boy of twelve; strange alacrity, rapidity and joyous +eagerness looking out of his eyes, and of all his ways and movements. +I have a Picture of him at this stage; a little portrait, which carries +its verification with it. In manhood too, the chief expression of his +eyes and physiognomy was what I might call alacrity, cheerful rapidity. +You could see, here looked forth a soul which was winged; which dwelt +in hope and action, not in hesitation or fear. Anthony says, he was "an +affectionate and gallant kind of boy, adventurous and generous, daring +to a singular degree." Apt enough withal to be "petulant now and then;" +on the whole, "very self-willed;" doubtless not a little discursive in +his thoughts and ways, and "difficult to manage." + +I rather think Anthony, as the steadier, more substantial boy, was +the Mother's favorite; and that John, though the quicker and cleverer, +perhaps cost her many anxieties. Among the Papers given me, is an old +browned half-sheet in stiff school hand, unpunctuated, occasionally ill +spelt,--John Sterling's earliest remaining Letter,--which gives record +of a crowning escapade of his, the first and the last of its kind; and +so may be inserted here. A very headlong adventure on the boy's part; so +hasty and so futile, at once audacious and impracticable; emblematic of +much that befell in the history of the man! + + "_To Mrs. Sterling, Blackheath_. + "21st September, 1818. + +"DEAR MAMMA,--I am now at Dover, where I arrived this morning about +seven o'clock. When you thought I was going to church, I went down the +Kent Road, and walked on till I came to Gravesend, which is upwards of +twenty miles from Blackheath; at about seven o'clock in the evening, +without having eat anything the whole time. I applied to an inkeeper +(_sic_) there, pretending that I had served a haberdasher in London, who +left of (_sic_) business, and turned me away. He believed me; and got +me a passage in the coach here, for I said that I had an Uncle here, and +that my Father and Mother were dead;--when I wandered about the quays +for some time, till I met Captain Keys, whom I asked to give me a +passage to Boulogne; which he promised to do, and took me home to +breakfast with him: but Mrs. Keys questioned me a good deal; when I not +being able to make my story good, I was obliged to confess to her that +I had run away from you. Captain Keys says that he will keep me at his +house till you answer my letter. + + "J. STERLING." + +Anthony remembers the business well; but can assign no origin to +it,--some penalty, indignity or cross put suddenly on John, which the +hasty John considered unbearable. His Mother's inconsolable weeping, and +then his own astonishment at such a culprit's being forgiven, are all +that remain with Anthony. The steady historical style of the young +runaway of twelve, narrating merely, not in the least apologizing, is +also noticeable. + +This was some six months after his little brother Edward's death; three +months after that of Hester, his little sister next in the family series +to him: troubled days for the poor Mother in that small household on +Blackheath, as there are for mothers in so many households in this +world! I have heard that Mrs. Sterling passed much of her time alone, at +this period. Her husband's pursuits, with his Wellesleys and the like, +often carrying him into Town and detaining him late there, she would +sit among her sleeping children, such of them as death had still spared, +perhaps thriftily plying her needle, full of mournful affectionate +night-thoughts,--apprehensive too, in her tremulous heart, that the head +of the house might have fallen among robbers in his way homeward. + + + +CHAPTER IV. UNIVERSITIES: GLASGOW; CAMBRIDGE. + +At a later stage, John had some instruction from a Dr. Waite at +Blackheath; and lastly, the family having now removed into Town, to +Seymour Street in the fashionable region there, he "read for a while +with Dr. Trollope, Master of Christ's Hospital;" which ended his school +history. + +In this his ever-changing course, from Reece at Cowbridge to Trollope +in Christ's, which was passed so nomadically, under ferulas of various +color, the boy had, on the whole, snatched successfully a fair share +of what was going. Competent skill in construing Latin, I think also an +elementary knowledge of Greek; add ciphering to a small extent, Euclid +perhaps in a rather imaginary condition; a swift but not very legible or +handsome penmanship, and the copious prompt habit of employing it in all +manner of unconscious English prose composition, or even occasionally +in verse itself: this, or something like this, he had gained from his +grammar-schools: this is the most of what they offer to the poor young +soul in general, in these indigent times. The express schoolmaster is +not equal to much at present,--while the _un_express, for good or +for evil, is so busy with a poor little fellow! Other departments of +schooling had been infinitely more productive, for our young friend, +than the gerund-grinding one. A voracious reader I believe he all along +was,--had "read the whole Edinburgh Review" in these boyish years, and +out of the circulating libraries one knows not what cartloads; wading +like Ulysses towards his palace "through infinite dung." A voracious +observer and participator in all things he likewise all along was; and +had had his sights, and reflections, and sorrows and adventures, from +Kaimes Castle onward,--and had gone at least to Dover on his own score. +_Puer bonae spei_, as the school-albums say; a boy of whom much may be +hoped? Surely, in many senses, yes. A frank veracity is in him, truth +and courage, as the basis of all; and of wild gifts and graces there is +abundance. I figure him a brilliant, swift, voluble, affectionate and +pleasant creature; out of whom, if it were not that symptoms of delicate +health already show themselves, great things might be made. Promotions +at least, especially in this country and epoch of parliaments and +eloquent palavers, are surely very possible for such a one! + + +Being now turned of sixteen, and the family economics getting yearly +more propitious and flourishing, he, as his brother had already +been, was sent to Glasgow University, in which city their Mother had +connections. His brother and he were now all that remained of the +young family; much attached to one another in their College years as +afterwards. Glasgow, however, was not properly their College scene: +here, except that they had some tuition from Mr. Jacobson, then a senior +fellow-student, now (1851) the learned editor of St. Basil, and Regius +Professor of Divinity in Oxford, who continued ever afterwards a valued +intimate of John's, I find nothing special recorded of them. The Glasgow +curriculum, for John especially, lasted but one year; who, after some +farther tutorage from Mr. Jacobson or Dr. Trollope, was appointed for a +more ambitious sphere of education. + +In the beginning of his nineteenth year, "in the autumn of 1824," he +went to Trinity College, Cambridge. His brother Anthony, who had already +been there a year, had just quitted this Establishment, and entered on +a military life under good omens; I think, at Dublin under the Lord +Lieutenant's patronage, to whose service he was, in some capacity, +attached. The two brothers, ever in company hitherto, parted roads +at this point; and, except on holiday visits and by frequent +correspondence, did not again live together; but they continued in a +true fraternal attachment while life lasted, and I believe never had +any even temporary estrangement, or on either side a cause for such. The +family, as I said, was now, for the last three years, reduced to these +two; the rest of the young ones, with their laughter and their +sorrows, all gone. The parents otherwise were prosperous in outward +circumstances; the Father's position more and more developing itself +into affluent security, an agreeable circle of acquaintance, and a +certain real influence, though of a peculiar sort, according to his +gifts for work in this world. + + +Sterling's Tutor at Trinity College was Julius Hare, now the +distinguished Archdeacon of Lewes:--who soon conceived a great esteem +for him, and continued ever afterwards, in looser or closer connection, +his loved and loving friend. As the Biographical and Editorial work +above alluded to abundantly evinces. Mr. Hare celebrates the wonderful +and beautiful gifts, the sparkling ingenuity, ready logic, eloquent +utterance, and noble generosities and pieties of his pupil;--records +in particular how once, on a sudden alarm of fire in some neighboring +College edifice while his lecture was proceeding, all hands rushed out +to help; how the undergraduates instantly formed themselves in lines +from the fire to the river, and in swift continuance kept passing +buckets as was needful, till the enemy was visibly fast yielding,--when +Mr. Hare, going along the line, was astonished to find Sterling, at the +river-end of it, standing up to his waist in water, deftly dealing with +the buckets as they came and went. You in the river, Sterling; you with +your coughs, and dangerous tendencies of health!--"Somebody must be +in it," answered Sterling; "why not I, as well as another?" Sterling's +friends may remember many traits of that kind. The swiftest in all +things, he was apt to be found at the head of the column, whithersoever +the march might be; if towards any brunt of danger, there was he surest +to be at the head; and of himself and his peculiar risks or impediments +he was negligent at all times, even to an excessive and plainly +unreasonable degree. + +Mr. Hare justly refuses him the character of an exact scholar, or +technical proficient at any time in either of the ancient literatures. +But he freely read in Greek and Latin, as in various modern languages; +and in all fields, in the classical as well, his lively faculty of +recognition and assimilation had given him large booty in proportion to +his labor. One cannot under any circumstances conceive of Sterling as +a steady dictionary philologue, historian, or archaeologist; nor did he +here, nor could he well, attempt that course. At the same time, Greek +and the Greeks being here before him, he could not fail to gather +somewhat from it, to take some hue and shape from it. Accordingly there +is, to a singular extent, especially in his early writings, a +certain tinge of Grecism and Heathen classicality traceable in +him;--Classicality, indeed, which does not satisfy one's sense as real +or truly living, but which glitters with a certain genial, if perhaps +almost meretricious half-_japannish_ splendor,--greatly distinguishable +from mere gerund-grinding, and death in longs and shorts. If +Classicality mean the practical conception, or attempt to conceive, what +human life was in the epoch called classical,--perhaps few or none of +Sterling's contemporaries in that Cambridge establishment carried away +more of available Classicality than even he. + +But here, as in his former schools, his studies and inquiries, +diligently prosecuted I believe, were of the most discursive +wide-flowing character; not steadily advancing along beaten roads +towards College honors, but pulsing out with impetuous irregularity +now on this tract, now on that, towards whatever spiritual Delphi might +promise to unfold the mystery of this world, and announce to him +what was, in our new day, the authentic message of the gods. His +speculations, readings, inferences, glances and conclusions were +doubtless sufficiently encyclopedic; his grand tutors the multifarious +set of Books he devoured. And perhaps,--as is the singular case in most +schools and educational establishments of this unexampled epoch,--it +was not the express set of arrangements in this or any extant University +that could essentially forward him, but only the implied and silent +ones; less in the prescribed "course of study," which seems to tend +no-whither, than--if you will consider it--in the generous (not +ungenerous) rebellion against said prescribed course, and the voluntary +spirit of endeavor and adventure excited thereby, does help lie for +a brave youth in such places. Curious to consider. The fagging, the +illicit boating, and the things _forbidden_ by the schoolmaster,--these, +I often notice in my Eton acquaintances, are the things that have done +them good; these, and not their inconsiderable or considerable knowledge +of the Greek accidence almost at all! What is Greek accidence, compared +to Spartan discipline, if it can be had? That latter is a real and grand +attainment. Certainly, if rebellion is unfortunately needful, and you +can rebel in a generous manner, several things may be acquired in that +operation,--rigorous mutual fidelity, reticence, steadfastness, mild +stoicism, and other virtues far transcending your Greek accidence. +Nor can the unwisest "prescribed course of study" be considered quite +useless, if it have incited you to try nobly on all sides for a course +of your own. A singular condition of Schools and High-schools, which +have come down, in their strange old clothes and "courses of study," +from the monkish ages into this highly unmonkish one;--tragical +condition, at which the intelligent observer makes deep pause! + +One benefit, not to be dissevered from the most obsolete University +still frequented by young ingenuous living souls, is that of manifold +collision and communication with the said young souls; which, to every +one of these coevals, is undoubtedly the most important branch of +breeding for him. In this point, as the learned Huber has insisted, [6] +the two English Universities,--their studies otherwise being granted to +be nearly useless, and even ill done of their kind,--far excel all other +Universities: so valuable are the rules of human behavior which from of +old have tacitly established themselves there; so manful, with all its +sad drawbacks, is the style of English character, "frank, simple, +rugged and yet courteous," which has tacitly but imperatively got itself +sanctioned and prescribed there. Such, in full sight of Continental and +other Universities, is Huber's opinion. Alas, the question of University +Reform goes deep at present; deep as the world;--and the real University +of these new epochs is yet a great way from us! Another judge in whom +I have confidence declares further, That of these two Universities, +Cambridge is decidedly the more catholic (not Roman catholic, but Human +catholic) in its tendencies and habitudes; and that in fact, of all the +miserable Schools and High-schools in the England of these years, he, +if reduced to choose from them, would choose Cambridge as a place +of culture for the young idea. So that, in these bad circumstances, +Sterling had perhaps rather made a hit than otherwise? + + +Sterling at Cambridge had undoubtedly a wide and rather genial circle of +comrades; and could not fail to be regarded and beloved by many of them. +Their life seems to have been an ardently speculating and talking one; +by no means excessively restrained within limits; and, in the more +adventurous heads like Sterling's, decidedly tending towards the +latitudinarian in most things. They had among them a Debating Society +called The Union; where on stated evenings was much logic, and other +spiritual fencing and ingenuous collision,--probably of a really +superior quality in that kind; for not a few of the then disputants have +since proved themselves men of parts, and attained distinction in the +intellectual walks of life. Frederic Maurice, Richard Trench, John +Kemble, Spedding, Venables, Charles Buller, Richard Milnes and +others:--I have heard that in speaking and arguing, Sterling was the +acknowledged chief in this Union Club; and that "none even came near +him, except the late Charles Buller," whose distinction in this and +higher respects was also already notable. + +The questions agitated seem occasionally to have touched on the +political department, and even on the ecclesiastical. I have heard one +trait of Sterling's eloquence, which survived on the wings of grinning +rumor, and had evidently borne upon Church Conservatism in some form: +"Have they not,"--or perhaps it was, Has she (the Church) not,--"a +black dragoon in every parish, on good pay and rations, horse-meat and +man's-meat, to patrol and battle for these things?" The "black dragoon," +which naturally at the moment ruffled the general young imagination +into stormy laughter, points towards important conclusions in respect +to Sterling at this time. I conclude he had, with his usual alacrity and +impetuous daring, frankly adopted the anti-superstitious side of things; +and stood scornfully prepared to repel all aggressions or pretensions +from the opposite quarter. In short, that he was already, what +afterwards there is no doubt about his being, at all points a Radical, +as the name or nickname then went. In other words, a young ardent soul +looking with hope and joy into a world which was infinitely beautiful to +him, though overhung with falsities and foul cobwebs as world never was +before; overloaded, overclouded, to the zenith and the nadir of it, +by incredible uncredited traditions, solemnly sordid hypocrisies, and +beggarly deliriums old and new; which latter class of objects it was +clearly the part of every noble heart to expend all its lightnings and +energies in burning up without delay, and sweeping into their native +Chaos out of such a Cosmos as this. Which process, it did not then seem +to him could be very difficult; or attended with much other than heroic +joy, and enthusiasm of victory or of battle, to the gallant operator, in +his part of it. This was, with modifications such as might be, the +humor and creed of College Radicalism five-and-twenty years ago. Rather +horrible at that time; seen to be not so horrible now, at least to have +grown very universal, and to need no concealment now. The natural +humor and attitude, we may well regret to say,--and honorable not +dishonorable, for a brave young soul such as Sterling's, in those years +in those localities! + +I do not find that Sterling had, at that stage, adopted the then +prevalent Utilitarian theory of human things. But neither, apparently, +had he rejected it; still less did he yet at all denounce it with the +damnatory vehemence we were used to in him at a later period. Probably +he, so much occupied with the negative side of things, had not yet +thought seriously of any positive basis for his world; or asked himself, +too earnestly, What, then, is the noble rule of living for a man? +In this world so eclipsed and scandalously overhung with fable and +hypocrisy, what is the eternal fact, on which a man may front the +Destinies and the Immensities? The day for such questions, sure enough +to come in his case, was still but coming. Sufficient for this day +be the work thereof; that of blasting into merited annihilation the +innumerable and immeasurable recognized deliriums, and extirpating or +coercing to the due pitch those legions of "black dragoons," of all +varieties and purposes, who patrol, with horse-meat and man's-meat, this +afflicted earth, so hugely to the detriment of it. + + +Sterling, it appears, after above a year of Trinity College, followed +his friend Maurice into Trinity Hall, with the intention of taking +a degree in Law; which intention, like many others with him, came to +nothing; and in 1827 he left Trinity Hall and Cambridge altogether; here +ending, after two years, his brief University life. + + + +CHAPTER V. A PROFESSION. + +Here, then, is a young soul, brought to the years of legal majority, +furnished from his training-schools with such and such shining +capabilities, and ushered on the scene of things to inquire practically, +What he will do there? Piety is in the man, noble human valor, bright +intelligence, ardent proud veracity; light and fire, in none of their +many senses, wanting for him, but abundantly bestowed: a kingly kind of +man;--whose "kingdom," however, in this bewildered place and epoch of +the world will probably be difficult to find and conquer! + +For, alas, the world, as we said, already stands convicted to this young +soul of being an untrue, unblessed world; its high dignitaries many +of them phantasms and players'-masks; its worthships and worships +unworshipful: from Dan to Beersheba, a mad world, my masters. And surely +we may say, and none will now gainsay, this his idea of the world at +that epoch was nearer to the fact than at most other epochs it has been. +Truly, in all times and places, the young ardent soul that enters on +this world with heroic purpose, with veracious insight, and the +yet unclouded "inspiration of the Almighty" which has given us our +intelligence, will find this world a very mad one: why else is he, with +his little outfit of heroisms and inspirations, come hither into it, +except to make it diligently a little saner? Of him there would have +been no need, had it been quite sane. This is true; this will, in all +centuries and countries, be true. + +And yet perhaps of no time or country, for the last two thousand years, +was it _so_ true as here in this waste-weltering epoch of Sterling's and +ours. A world all rocking and plunging, like that old Roman one when the +measure of its iniquities was full; the abysses, and subterranean and +supernal deluges, plainly broken loose; in the wild dim-lighted chaos +all stars of Heaven gone out. No star of Heaven visible, hardly now to +any man; the pestiferous fogs, and foul exhalations grown continual, +have, except on the highest mountaintops, blotted out all stars: +will-o'-wisps, of various course and color, take the place of stars. +Over the wild-surging chaos, in the leaden air, are only sudden glares +of revolutionary lightning; then mere darkness, with philanthropistic +phosphorescences, empty meteoric lights; here and there an +ecclesiastical luminary still hovering, hanging on to its old quaking +fixtures, pretending still to be a Moon or Sun,--though visibly it is +but a Chinese lantern made of _paper_ mainly, with candle-end foully +dying in the heart of it. Surely as mad a world as you could wish! + +If you want to make sudden fortunes in it, and achieve the temporary +hallelujah of flunkies for yourself, renouncing the perennial esteem +of wise men; if you can believe that the chief end of man is to collect +about him a bigger heap of gold than ever before, in a shorter time than +ever before, you will find it a most handy and every way furthersome, +blessed and felicitous world. But for any other human aim, I think you +will find it not furthersome. If you in any way ask practically, How a +noble life is to be led in it? you will be luckier than Sterling or I if +you get any credible answer, or find any made road whatever. Alas, it is +even so. Your heart's question, if it be of that sort, most things and +persons will answer with a "Nonsense! Noble life is in Drury Lane, +and wears yellow boots. You fool, compose yourself to your +pudding!"--Surely, in these times, if ever in any, the young heroic soul +entering on life, so opulent, full of sunny hope, of noble valor and +divine intention, is tragical as well as beautiful to us. + +Of the three learned Professions none offered any likelihood for +Sterling. From the Church his notions of the "black dragoon," had there +been no other obstacle, were sufficient to exclude him. Law he had just +renounced, his own Radical philosophies disheartening him, in face of +the ponderous impediments, continual up-hill struggles and formidable +toils inherent in such a pursuit: with Medicine he had never been in +any contiguity, that he should dream of it as a course for him. Clearly +enough the professions were unsuitable; they to him, he to them. +Professions, built so largely on speciosity instead of performance; +clogged, in this bad epoch, and defaced under such suspicions of fatal +imposture, were hateful not lovable to the young radical soul, scornful +of gross profit, and intent on ideals and human noblenesses. Again, the +professions, were they never so perfect and veracious, will require slow +steady pulling, to which this individual young radical, with his swift, +far-darting brilliancies, and nomadic desultory ways, is of all men the +most averse and unfitted. No profession could, in any case, have well +gained the early love of Sterling. And perhaps withal the most tragic +element of his life is even this, That there now was none to which +he could fitly, by those wiser than himself, have been bound and +constrained, that he might learn to love it. So swift, light-limbed and +fiery an Arab courser ought, for all manner of reasons, to have +been trained to saddle and harness. Roaming at full gallop over the +heaths,--especially when your heath was London, and English and +European life, in the nineteenth century,--he suffered much, and did +comparatively little. I have known few creatures whom it was more +wasteful to send forth with the bridle thrown up, and to set to +steeple-hunting instead of running on highways! But it is the lot of +many such, in this dislocated time,--Heaven mend it! In a better time +there will be other "professions" than those three extremely cramp, +confused and indeed almost obsolete ones: professions, if possible, +that are true, and do _not_ require you at the threshold to constitute +yourself an impostor. Human association,--which will mean discipline, +vigorous wise subordination and co-ordination,--is so unspeakably +important. Professions, "regimented human pursuits," how many of +honorable and manful might be possible for men; and which should _not_, +in their results to society, need to stumble along, in such an unwieldy +futile manner, with legs swollen into such enormous elephantiasis and no +go at all in them! Men will one day think of the force they squander in +every generation, and the fatal damage they encounter, by this neglect. + + +The career likeliest for Sterling, in his and the world's circumstances, +would have been what is called public life: some secretarial, diplomatic +or other official training, to issue if possible in Parliament as the +true field for him. And here, beyond question, had the gross material +conditions been allowed, his spiritual capabilities were first-rate. +In any arena where eloquence and argument was the point, this man +was calculated to have borne the bell from all competitors. In lucid +ingenious talk and logic, in all manner of brilliant utterance and +tongue-fence, I have hardly known his fellow. So ready lay his store of +knowledge round him, so perfect was his ready utterance of the same,--in +coruscating wit, in jocund drollery, in compact articulated clearness +or high poignant emphasis, as the case required,--he was a match for any +man in argument before a crowd of men. One of the most supple-wristed, +dexterous, graceful and successful fencers in that kind. A man, as Mr. +Hare has said, "able to argue with four or five at once;" could do the +parrying all round, in a succession swift as light, and plant his hits +wherever a chance offered. In Parliament, such a soul put into a body of +the due toughness might have carried it far. If ours is to be called, as +I hear some call it, the Talking Era, Sterling of all men had the talent +to excel in it. + +Probably it was with some vague view towards chances in this direction +that Sterling's first engagement was entered upon; a brief connection as +Secretary to some Club or Association into which certain public men, of +the reforming sort, Mr. Crawford (the Oriental Diplomatist and Writer), +Mr. Kirkman Finlay (then Member for Glasgow), and other political +notabilities had now formed themselves,--with what specific objects I do +not know, nor with what result if any. I have heard vaguely, it was "to +open the trade to India." Of course they intended to stir up the public +mind into co-operation, whatever their goal or object was: Mr. Crawford, +an intimate in the Sterling household, recognized the fine literary +gift of John; and might think it a lucky hit that he had caught such a +Secretary for three hundred pounds a year. That was the salary agreed +upon; and for some months actually worked for and paid; Sterling +becoming for the time an intimate and almost an inmate in Mr. Crawford's +circle, doubtless not without results to himself beyond the secretarial +work and pounds sterling: so much is certain. But neither the +Secretaryship nor the Association itself had any continuance; nor can +I now learn accurately more of it than what is here stated;--in which +vague state it must vanish from Sterling's history again, as it in great +measure did from his life. From himself in after-years I never heard +mention of it; nor were his pursuits connected afterwards with those of +Mr. Crawford, though the mutual good-will continued unbroken. + +In fact, however splendid and indubitable Sterling's qualifications for +a parliamentary life, there was that in him withal which flatly put +a negative on any such project. He had not the slow steady-pulling +diligence which is indispensable in that, as in all important pursuits +and strenuous human competitions whatsoever. In every sense, his +momentum depended on velocity of stroke, rather than on weight of metal; +"beautifulest sheet-lightning," as I often said, "not to be condensed +into thunder-bolts." Add to this,--what indeed is perhaps but the same +phenomenon in another form,--his bodily frame was thin, excitable, +already manifesting pulmonary symptoms; a body which the tear and wear +of Parliament would infallibly in few months have wrecked and ended. +By this path there was clearly no mounting. The far-darting, restlessly +coruscating soul, equips beyond all others to shine in the Talking +Era, and lead National Palavers with their _spolia opima_ captive, is +imprisoned in a fragile hectic body which quite forbids the adventure. +"_Es ist dafur gesorgt_," says Goethe, "Provision has been made that the +trees do not grow into the sky;"--means are always there to stop them +short of the sky. + + + +CHAPTER VI. LITERATURE: THE ATHENAEUM. + +Of all forms of public life, in the Talking Era, it was clear that only +one completely suited Sterling,--the anarchic, nomadic, entirely aerial +and unconditional one, called Literature. To this all his tendencies, +and fine gifts positive and negative, were evidently pointing; and here, +after such brief attempting or thoughts to attempt at other posts, he +already in this same year arrives. As many do, and ever more must do, +in these our years and times. This is the chaotic haven of so many +frustrate activities; where all manner of good gifts go up in far-seen +smoke or conflagration; and whole fleets, that might have been +war-fleets to conquer kingdoms, are _consumed_ (too truly, often), amid +"fame" enough, and the admiring shouts of the vulgar, which is always +fond to see fire going on. The true Canaan and Mount Zion of a +Talking Era must ever be Literature: the extraneous, miscellaneous, +self-elected, indescribable _Parliamentum_, or Talking Apparatus, which +talks by books and printed papers. + +A literary Newspaper called _The Athenaeum_, the same which still +subsists, had been founded in those years by Mr. Buckingham; James Silk +Buckingham, who has since continued notable under various figures. +Mr. Buckingham's _Athenaeum_ had not as yet got into a flourishing +condition; and he was willing to sell the copyright of it for a +consideration. Perhaps Sterling and old Cambridge friends of his had +been already writing for it. At all events, Sterling, who had already +privately begun writing a Novel, and was clearly looking towards +Literature, perceived that his gifted Cambridge friend, Frederic +Maurice, was now also at large in a somewhat similar situation; and that +here was an opening for both of them, and for other gifted friends. The +copyright was purchased for I know not what sum, nor with whose money, +but guess it may have been Sterling's, and no great sum;--and so, under +free auspices, themselves their own captains, Maurice and he spread sail +for this new voyage of adventure into all the world. It was about the +end of 1828 that readers of periodical literature, and quidnuncs in +those departments, began to report the appearance, in a Paper called the +_Athenaeum, of_ writings showing a superior brilliancy, and height +of aim; one or perhaps two slight specimens of which came into my own +hands, in my remote corner, about that time, and were duly recognized by +me, while the authors were still far off and hidden behind deep veils. + +Some of Sterling's best Papers from the _Athenaeum_ have been published +by Archdeacon Hare: first-fruits by a young man of twenty-two; crude, +imperfect, yet singularly beautiful and attractive; which will still +testify what high literary promise lay in him. The ruddiest glow of +young enthusiasm, of noble incipient spiritual manhood reigns over them; +once more a divine Universe unveiling itself in gloom and splendor, in +auroral firelight and many-tinted shadow, full of hope and full of awe, +to a young melodious pious heart just arrived upon it. Often enough the +delineation has a certain flowing completeness, not to be expected from +so young an artist; here and there is a decided felicity of insight; +everywhere the point of view adopted is a high and noble one, and the +result worked out a result to be sympathized with, and accepted so far +as it will go. Good reading still, those Papers, for the less-furnished +mind,--thrice-excellent reading compared with what is usually going. +For the rest, a grand melancholy is the prevailing impression they +leave;--partly as if, while the surface was so blooming and opulent, +the heart of them was still vacant, sad and cold. Here is a beautiful +mirage, in the dry wilderness; but you cannot quench your thirst there! +The writer's heart is indeed still too vacant, except of beautiful +shadows and reflexes and resonances; and is far from joyful, though it +wears commonly a smile. + +In some of the Greek delineations (_The Lycian Painter_, for example), +we have already noticed a strange opulence of splendor, characterizable +as half-legitimate, half-meretricious,--a splendor hovering between the +raffaelesque and the japannish. What other things Sterling wrote there, +I never knew; nor would he in any mood, in those later days, have told +you, had you asked. This period of his life he always rather accounted, +as the Arabs do the idolatrous times before Mahomet's advent, the +"period of darkness." + + + +CHAPTER VII. REGENT STREET. + +On the commercial side the _Athenaeum_ still lacked success; nor was +like to find it under the highly uncommercial management it had now got +into. This, by and by, began to be a serious consideration. For money +is the sinews of Periodical Literature almost as much as of war itself; +without money, and under a constant drain of loss, Periodical Literature +is one of the things that cannot be carried on. In no long time Sterling +began to be practically sensible of this truth, and that an unpleasant +resolution in accordance with it would be necessary. By him also, after +a while, the _Athenaeum_ was transferred to other hands, better fitted +in that respect; and under these it did take vigorous root, and still +bears fruit according to its kind. + +For the present, it brought him into the thick of London Literature, +especially of young London Literature and speculation; in which turbid +exciting element he swam and revelled, nothing loath, for certain months +longer,--a period short of two years in all. He had lodgings in +Regent Street: his Father's house, now a flourishing and stirring +establishment, in South Place, Knightsbridge, where, under the warmth of +increasing revenue and success, miscellaneous cheerful socialities and +abundant speculations, chiefly political (and not John's kind, but +that of the _Times_ Newspaper and the Clubs), were rife, he could visit +daily, and yet be master of his own studies and pursuits. Maurice, +Trench, John Mill, Charles Buller: these, and some few others, among +a wide circle of a transitory phantasmal character, whom he speedily +forgot and cared not to remember, were much about him; with these he in +all ways employed and disported himself: a first favorite with them all. + +No pleasanter companion, I suppose, had any of them. So frank, open, +guileless, fearless, a brother to all worthy souls whatsoever. Come when +you might, here is he open-hearted, rich in cheerful fancies, in grave +logic, in all kinds of bright activity. If perceptibly or imperceptibly +there is a touch of ostentation in him, blame it not; it is so innocent, +so good and childlike. He is still fonder of jingling publicly, and +spreading on the table, your big purse of opulences than his own. Abrupt +too he is, cares little for big-wigs and garnitures; perhaps laughs +more than the real fun he has would order; but of arrogance there is +no vestige, of insincerity or of ill-nature none. These must have been +pleasant evenings in Regent Street, when the circle chanced to be well +adjusted there. At other times, Philistines would enter, what we call +bores, dullards, Children of Darkness; and then,--except in a hunt of +dullards, and a _bore-baiting_, which might be permissible,--the evening +was dark. Sterling, of course, had innumerable cares withal; and was +toiling like a slave; his very recreations almost a kind of work. An +enormous activity was in the man;--sufficient, in a body that could +have held it without breaking, to have gone far, even under the unstable +guidance it was like to have! + +Thus, too, an extensive, very variegated circle of connections was +forming round him. Besides his _Athenaeum_ work, and evenings in Regent +Street and elsewhere, he makes visits to country-houses, the Bullers' +and others; converses with established gentlemen, with honorable women +not a few; is gay and welcome with the young of his own age; knows also +religious, witty, and other distinguished ladies, and is admiringly +known by them. On the whole, he is already locomotive; visits hither +and thither in a very rapid flying manner. Thus I find he had made one +flying visit to the Cumberland Lake-region in 1828, and got sight of +Wordsworth; and in the same year another flying one to Paris, and seen +with no undue enthusiasm the Saint-Simonian Portent just beginning +to preach for itself, and France in general simmering under a scum of +impieties, levities, Saint-Simonisms, and frothy fantasticalities of all +kinds, towards the boiling-over which soon made the Three Days of July +famous. But by far the most important foreign home he visited was that +of Coleridge on the Hill of Highgate,--if it were not rather a foreign +shrine and Dodona-Oracle, as he then reckoned,--to which (onwards from +1828, as would appear) he was already an assiduous pilgrim. Concerning +whom, and Sterling's all-important connection with him, there will be +much to say anon. + +Here, from this period, is a Letter of Sterling's, which the glimpses +it affords of bright scenes and figures now sunk, so many of them, +sorrowfully to the realm of shadows, will render interesting to some of +my readers. To me on the mere Letter, not on its contents alone, there +is accidentally a kind of fateful stamp. A few months after Charles +Buller's death, while his loss was mourned by many hearts, and to his +poor Mother all light except what hung upon his memory had gone out in +the world, a certain delicate and friendly hand, hoping to give the poor +bereaved lady a good moment, sought out this Letter of Sterling's, one +morning, and called, with intent to read it to her:--alas, the poor lady +had herself fallen suddenly into the languors of death, help of another +grander sort now close at hand; and to her this Letter was never read! + +On "Fanny Kemble," it appears, there is an Essay by Sterling in the +_Athenaeum_ of this year: "16th December, 1829." Very laudatory, I +conclude. He much admired her genius, nay was thought at one time to +be vaguely on the edge of still more chivalrous feelings. As the Letter +itself may perhaps indicate. + + "_To Anthony Sterling, Esq., 24th Regiment, Dublin_. + "KNIGHTSBRIDGE, 10th Nov., 1829. + +"MY DEAR ANTHONY,--Here in the Capital of England and of Europe, +there is less, so far as I hear, of movement and variety than in your +provincial Dublin, or among the Wicklow Mountains. We have the old +prospect of bricks and smoke, the old crowd of busy stupid faces, the +old occupations, the old sleepy amusements; and the latest news that +reaches us daily has an air of tiresome, doting antiquity. The world has +nothing for it but to exclaim with Faust, "Give me my youth again." And +as for me, my month of Cornish amusement is over; and I must tie myself +to my old employments. I have not much to tell you about these; but +perhaps you may like to hear of my expedition to the West. + +"I wrote to Polvellan (Mr. Buller's) to announce the day on which I +intended to be there, so shortly before setting out, that there was +no time to receive an answer; and when I reached Devonport, which is +fifteen or sixteen miles from my place of destination, I found a letter +from Mrs. Buller, saying that she was coming in two days to a Ball at +Plymouth, and if I chose to stay in the mean while and look about me, +she would take me back with her. She added an introduction to a relation +of her husband's, a certain Captain Buller of the Rifles, who was with +the Depot there,--a pleasant person, who I believe had been +acquainted with Charlotte, [7] or at least had seen her. Under his +superintendence--... + +"On leaving Devonport with Mrs. Buller, I went some of the way by water, +up the harbor and river; and the prospects are certainly very beautiful; +to say nothing of the large ships, which I admire almost as much as you, +though without knowing so much about them. There is a great deal of +fine scenery all along the road to Looe; and the House itself, a very +unpretending Gothic cottage, stands beautifully among trees, hills and +water, with the sea at the distance of a quarter of a mile. + +"And here, among pleasant, good-natured, well-informed and clever +people, I spent an idle month. I dined at one or two Corporation +dinners; spent a few days at the old Mansion of Mr. Buller of Morval, +the patron of West Looe; and during the rest of the time, read, wrote, +played chess, lounged, and ate red mullet (he who has not done this +has not begun to live); talked of cookery to the philosophers, and of +metaphysics to Mrs. Buller; and altogether cultivated indolence, +and developed the faculty of nonsense with considerable pleasure and +unexampled success. Charles Buller you know: he has just come to town, +but I have not yet seen him. Arthur, his younger brother, I take to +be one of the handsomest men in England; and he too has considerable +talent. Mr. Buller the father is rather a clever man of sense, and +particularly good-natured and gentlemanly; and his wife, who was a +renowned beauty and queen of Calcutta, has still many striking and +delicate traces of what she was. Her conversation is more brilliant and +pleasant than that of any one I know; and, at all events, I am bound to +admire her for the kindness with which she patronizes me. I hope that, +some day or other, you may be acquainted with her. + +"I believe I have seen no one in London about whom you would care to +hear,--unless the fame of Fanny Kemble has passed the Channel, and +astonished the Irish Barbarians in the midst of their bloody-minded +politics. Young Kemble, whom you have seen, is in Germany: but I have +the happiness of being also acquainted with his sister, the divine +Fanny; and I have seen her twice on the stage, and three or four times +in private, since my return from Cornwall. I had seen some beautiful +verses of hers, long before she was an actress; and her conversation +is full of spirit and talent. She never was taught to act at all; and +though there are many faults in her performance of Juliet, there is more +power than in any female playing I ever saw, except Pasta's Medea. She +is not handsome, rather short, and by no means delicately formed; +but her face is marked, and the eyes are brilliant, dark, and full of +character. She has far more ability than she ever can display on the +stage; but I have no doubt that, by practice and self-culture, she will +be a far finer actress at least than any one since Mrs. Siddons. I was +at Charles Kemble's a few evenings ago, when a drawing of Miss Kemble, +by Sir Thomas Lawrence, was brought in; and I have no doubt that you +will shortly see, even in Dublin, an engraving of her from it, very +unlike the caricatures that have hitherto appeared. I hate the stage; +and but for her, should very likely never have gone to a theatre again. +Even as it is, the annoyance is much more than the pleasure; but I +suppose I must go to see her in every character in which she acts. If +Charlotte cares for plays, let me know, and I will write in more detail +about this new Melpomene. I fear there are very few subjects on which I +can say anything that will in the least interest her. + + "Ever affectionately yours, + "J. STERLING." + +Sterling and his circle, as their ardent speculation and activity +fermented along, were in all things clear for progress, liberalism; +their politics, and view of the Universe, decisively of the Radical +sort. As indeed that of England then was, more than ever; the crust of +old hide-bound Toryism being now openly cracking towards some incurable +disruption, which accordingly ensued as the Reform Bill before long. +The Reform Bill already hung in the wind. Old hide-bound Toryism, long +recognized by all the world, and now at last obliged to recognize its +very self, for an overgrown Imposture, supporting itself not by human +reason, but by flunky blustering and brazen lying, superadded to mere +brute force, could be no creed for young Sterling and his friends. In +all things he and they were liberals, and, as was natural at this +stage, democrats; contemplating root-and-branch innovation by aid of the +hustings and ballot-box. Hustings and ballot-box had speedily to +vanish out of Sterling's thoughts: but the character of root-and-branch +innovator, essentially of "Radical Reformer," was indelible with him, +and under all forms could be traced as his character through life. + +For the present, his and those young people's aim was: By democracy, +or what means there are, be all impostures put down. Speedy end to +Superstition,--a gentle one if you can contrive it, but an end. What can +it profit any mortal to adopt locutions and imaginations which do not +correspond to fact; which no sane mortal can deliberately adopt in his +soul as true; which the most orthodox of mortals can only, and this +after infinite essentially _impious_ effort to put out the eyes of his +mind, persuade himself to "believe that he believes"? Away with it; in +the name of God, come out of it, all true men! + +Piety of heart, a certain reality of religious faith, was always +Sterling's, the gift of nature to him which he would not and could +not throw away; but I find at this time his religion is as good as +altogether Ethnic, Greekish, what Goethe calls the Heathen form of +religion. The Church, with her articles, is without relation to him. +And along with obsolete spiritualisms, he sees all manner of obsolete +thrones and big-wigged temporalities; and for them also can prophesy, +and wish, only a speedy doom. Doom inevitable, registered in Heaven's +Chancery from the beginning of days, doom unalterable as the pillars of +the world; the gods are angry, and all nature groans, till this doom of +eternal justice be fulfilled. + +With gay audacity, with enthusiasm tempered by mockery, as is the manner +of young gifted men, this faith, grounded for the present on democracy +and hustings operations, and giving to all life the aspect of a +chivalrous battle-field, or almost of a gay though perilous tournament, +and bout of "A hundred knights against all comers,"--was maintained +by Sterling and his friends. And in fine, after whatever loud +remonstrances, and solemn considerations, and such shaking of our wigs +as is undoubtedly natural in the case, let us be just to it and him. We +shall have to admit, nay it will behoove us to see and practically know, +for ourselves and him and others, that the essence of this creed, in +times like ours, was right and not wrong. That, however the ground and +form of it might change, essentially it was the monition of his natal +genius to this as it is to every brave man; the behest of all his clear +insight into this Universe, the message of Heaven through him, which +he could not suppress, but was inspired and compelled to utter in +this world by such methods as he had. There for him lay the first +commandment; _this_ is what it would have been the unforgivable sin to +swerve from and desert: the treason of treasons for him, it were there; +compared with which all other sins are venial! + +The message did not cease at all, as we shall see; the message was +ardently, if fitfully, continued to the end: but the methods, the tone +and dialect and all outer conditions of uttering it, underwent most +important modifications! + + + +CHAPTER VIII. COLERIDGE. + +Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down +on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of +life's battle; attracting towards him the thoughts of innumerable +brave souls still engaged there. His express contributions to +poetry, philosophy, or any specific province of human literature or +enlightenment, had been small and sadly intermittent; but he had, +especially among young inquiring men, a higher than literary, a kind +of prophetic or magician character. He was thought to hold, he alone +in England, the key of German and other Transcendentalisms; knew the +sublime secret of believing by "the reason" what "the understanding" had +been obliged to fling out as incredible; and could still, after Hume +and Voltaire had done their best and worst with him, profess himself an +orthodox Christian, and say and print to the Church of England, with its +singular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, _Esto perpetua_. +A sublime man; who, alone in those dark days, had saved his crown +of spiritual manhood; escaping from the black materialisms, and +revolutionary deluges, with "God, Freedom, Immortality" still his: a +king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed +him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the +rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime +character; and sat there as a kind of _Magus_, girt in mystery and +enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering +strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon. + +The Gilmans did not encourage much company, or excitation of any sort, +round their sage; nevertheless access to him, if a youth did reverently +wish it, was not difficult. He would stroll about the pleasant garden +with you, sit in the pleasant rooms of the place,--perhaps take you +to his own peculiar room, high up, with a rearward view, which was the +chief view of all. A really charming outlook, in fine weather. Close +at hand, wide sweep of flowery leafy gardens, their few houses mostly +hidden, the very chimney-pots veiled under blossomy umbrage, flowed +gloriously down hill; gloriously issuing in wide-tufted undulating +plain-country, rich in all charms of field and town. Waving blooming +country of the brightest green; dotted all over with handsome villas, +handsome groves; crossed by roads and human traffic, here inaudible or +heard only as a musical hum: and behind all swam, under olive-tinted +haze, the illimitable limitary ocean of London, with its domes and +steeples definite in the sun, big Paul's and the many memories attached +to it hanging high over all. Nowhere, of its kind, could you see a +grander prospect on a bright summer day, with the set of the air going +southward,--southward, and so draping with the city-smoke not you +but the city. Here for hours would Coleridge talk, concerning all +conceivable or inconceivable things; and liked nothing better than to +have an intelligent, or failing that, even a silent and patient human +listener. He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at +least the most surprising talker extant in this world,--and to some +small minority, by no means to all, as the most excellent. + +The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty perhaps; and +gave you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life +heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of +manifold physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were round, +and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The +deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration; +confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild +astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, +might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under +possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, +and stooping attitude; in walking, he rather shuffled than decisively +steps; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of the +garden walk would suit him best, but continually shifted, in corkscrew +fashion, and kept trying both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring and surely +much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted +itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong; he spoke as if +preaching,--you would have said, preaching earnestly and also hopelessly +the weightiest things. I still recollect his "object" and "subject," +terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he sang +and snuffled them into "om-m-mject" and "sum-m-mject," with a kind of +solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along. No talk, in his century or +in any other, could be more surprising. + +Sterling, who assiduously attended him, with profound reverence, and +was often with him by himself, for a good many months, gives a record +of their first colloquy. [8] Their colloquies were numerous, and he +had taken note of many; but they are all gone to the fire, except this +first, which Mr. Hare has printed,--unluckily without date. It contains +a number of ingenious, true and half-true observations, and is of +course a faithful epitome of the things said; but it gives small idea +of Coleridge's way of talking;--this one feature is perhaps the most +recognizable, "Our interview lasted for three hours, during which he +talked two hours and three quarters." Nothing could be more copious than +his talk; and furthermore it was always, virtually or literally, of +the nature of a monologue; suffering no interruption, however reverent; +hastily putting aside all foreign additions, annotations, or most +ingenuous desires for elucidation, as well-meant superfluities which +would never do. Besides, it was talk not flowing any-whither like +a river, but spreading every-whither in inextricable currents and +regurgitations like a lake or sea; terribly deficient in definite goal +or aim, nay often in logical intelligibility; _what_ you were to believe +or do, on any earthly or heavenly thing, obstinately refusing to appear +from it. So that, most times, you felt logically lost; swamped near to +drowning in this tide of ingenious vocables, spreading out boundless as +if to submerge the world. + +To sit as a passive bucket and be pumped into, whether you consent or +not, can in the long-run be exhilarating to no creature; how eloquent +soever the flood of utterance that is descending. But if it be withal a +confused unintelligible flood of utterance, threatening to submerge all +known landmarks of thought, and drown the world and you!--I have heard +Coleridge talk, with eager musical energy, two stricken hours, his +face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any +individual of his hearers,--certain of whom, I for one, still kept +eagerly listening in hope; the most had long before given up, and formed +(if the room were large enough) secondary humming groups of their own. +He began anywhere: you put some question to him, made some suggestive +observation: instead of answering this, or decidedly setting out +towards answer of it, he would accumulate formidable apparatus, logical +swim-bladders, transcendental life-preservers and other precautionary +and vehiculatory gear, for setting out; perhaps did at last get under +way,--but was swiftly solicited, turned aside by the glance of some +radiant new game on this hand or that, into new courses; and ever into +new; and before long into all the Universe, where it was uncertain what +game you would catch, or whether any. + +His talk, alas, was distinguished, like himself, by irresolution: +it disliked to be troubled with conditions, abstinences, definite +fulfilments;--loved to wander at its own sweet will, and make its +auditor and his claims and humble wishes a mere passive bucket for +itself! He had knowledge about many things and topics, much curious +reading; but generally all topics led him, after a pass or two, into +the high seas of theosophic philosophy, the hazy infinitude of Kantean +transcendentalism, with its "sum-m-mjects" and "om-m-mjects." Sad +enough; for with such indolent impatience of the claims and ignorances +of others, he had not the least talent for explaining this or anything +unknown to them; and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest wide +unintelligible deluge of things, for most part in a rather profitless +uncomfortable manner. + +Glorious islets, too, I have seen rise out of the haze; but they were +few, and soon swallowed in the general element again. Balmy sunny +islets, islets of the blest and the intelligible:--on which occasions +those secondary humming groups would all cease humming, and hang +breathless upon the eloquent words; till once your islet got wrapt in +the mist again, and they could recommence humming. Eloquent artistically +expressive words you always had; piercing radiances of a most subtle +insight came at intervals; tones of noble pious sympathy, recognizable +as pious though strangely colored, were never wanting long: but in +general you could not call this aimless, cloud-capt, cloud-based, +lawlessly meandering human discourse of reason by the name of "excellent +talk," but only of "surprising;" and were reminded bitterly of Hazlitt's +account of it: "Excellent talker, very,--if you let him start from no +premises and come to no conclusion." Coleridge was not without what +talkers call wit, and there were touches of prickly sarcasm in him, +contemptuous enough of the world and its idols and popular dignitaries; +he had traits even of poetic humor: but in general he seemed deficient +in laughter; or indeed in sympathy for concrete human things either on +the sunny or on the stormy side. One right peal of concrete laughter at +some convicted flesh-and-blood absurdity, one burst of noble indignation +at some injustice or depravity, rubbing elbows with us on this solid +Earth, how strange would it have been in that Kantean haze-world, and +how infinitely cheering amid its vacant air-castles and dim-melting +ghosts and shadows! None such ever came. His life had been an abstract +thinking and dreaming, idealistic, passed amid the ghosts of +defunct bodies and of unborn ones. The moaning singsong of that +theosophico-metaphysical monotony left on you, at last, a very dreary +feeling. + +In close colloquy, flowing within narrower banks, I suppose he was more +definite and apprehensible; Sterling in after-times did not complain of +his unintelligibility, or imputed it only to the abtruse high nature of +the topics handled. Let us hope so, let us try to believe so! There +is no doubt but Coleridge could speak plain words on things plain: his +observations and responses on the trivial matters that occurred were as +simple as the commonest man's, or were even distinguished by superior +simplicity as well as pertinency. "Ah, your tea is too cold, Mr. +Coleridge!" mourned the good Mrs. Gilman once, in her kind, reverential +and yet protective manner, handing him a very tolerable though belated +cup.--"It's better than I deserve!" snuffled he, in a low hoarse murmur, +partly courteous, chiefly pious, the tone of which still abides with me: +"It's better than I deserve!" + +But indeed, to the young ardent mind, instinct with pious nobleness, yet +driven to the grim deserts of Radicalism for a faith, his speculations +had a charm much more than literary, a charm almost religious and +prophetic. The constant gist of his discourse was lamentation over +the sunk condition of the world; which he recognized to be given up to +Atheism and Materialism, full of mere sordid misbeliefs, mispursuits and +misresults. All Science had become mechanical; the science not of men, +but of a kind of human beavers. Churches themselves had died away into a +godless mechanical condition; and stood there as mere Cases of Articles, +mere Forms of Churches; like the dried carcasses of once swift +camels, which you find left withering in the thirst of the universal +desert,--ghastly portents for the present, beneficent ships of the +desert no more. Men's souls were blinded, hebetated; and sunk under the +influence of Atheism and Materialism, and Hume and Voltaire: the world +for the present was as an extinct world, deserted of God, and incapable +of well-doing till it changed its heart and spirit. This, expressed +I think with less of indignation and with more of long-drawn +querulousness, was always recognizable as the ground-tone:--in which +truly a pious young heart, driven into Radicalism and the opposition +party, could not but recognize a too sorrowful truth; and ask of the +Oracle, with all earnestness, What remedy, then? + +The remedy, though Coleridge himself professed to see it as in sunbeams, +could not, except by processes unspeakably difficult, be described to +you at all. On the whole, those dead Churches, this dead English Church +especially, must be brought to life again. Why not? It was not dead; +the soul of it, in this parched-up body, was tragically asleep only. +Atheistic Philosophy was true on its side, and Hume and Voltaire could +on their own ground speak irrefragably for themselves against any +Church: but lift the Church and them into a higher sphere. Of argument, +_they_ died into inanition, the Church revivified itself into pristine +florid vigor,--became once more a living ship of the desert, and +invincibly bore you over stock and stone. But how, but how! By attending +to the "reason" of man, said Coleridge, and duly chaining up the +"understanding" of man: the _Vernunft_ (Reason) and _Verstand_ +(Understanding) of the Germans, it all turned upon these, if you could +well understand them,--which you couldn't. For the rest, Mr. Coleridge +had on the anvil various Books, especially was about to write one grand +Book _On the Logos_, which would help to bridge the chasm for us. +So much appeared, however: Churches, though proved false (as you had +imagined), were still true (as you were to imagine): here was an Artist +who could burn you up an old Church, root and branch; and then as the +Alchemists professed to do with organic substances in general, distil +you an "Astral Spirit" from the ashes, which was the very image of the +old burnt article, its air-drawn counterpart,--this you still had, or +might get, and draw uses from, if you could. Wait till the Book on the +Logos were done;--alas, till your own terrene eyes, blind with conceit +and the dust of logic, were purged, subtilized and spiritualized +into the sharpness of vision requisite for discerning such an +"om-m-mject."--The ingenuous young English head, of those days, stood +strangely puzzled by such revelations; uncertain whether it were getting +inspired, or getting infatuated into flat imbecility; and strange +effulgence, of new day or else of deeper meteoric night, colored the +horizon of the future for it. + +Let me not be unjust to this memorable man. Surely there was here, +in his pious, ever-laboring, subtle mind, a precious truth, or +prefigurement of truth; and yet a fatal delusion withal. Prefigurement +that, in spite of beaver sciences and temporary spiritual hebetude and +cecity, man and his Universe were eternally divine; and that no past +nobleness, or revelation of the divine, could or would ever be lost to +him. Most true, surely, and worthy of all acceptance. Good also to do +what you can with old Churches and practical Symbols of the Noble: nay +quit not the burnt ruins of them while you find there is still gold +to be dug there. But, on the whole, do not think you can, by logical +alchemy, distil astral spirits from them; or if you could, that said +astral spirits, or defunct logical phantasms, could serve you in +anything. What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration +of the Almighty, pronounces incredible,--that, in God's name, leave +uncredited; at your peril do not try believing that. No subtlest +hocus-pocus of "reason" versus "understanding" will avail for that +feat;--and it is terribly perilous to try it in these provinces! + +The truth is, I now see, Coleridge's talk and speculation was the emblem +of himself: in it as in him, a ray of heavenly inspiration struggled, in +a tragically ineffectual degree, with the weakness of flesh and blood. +He says once, he "had skirted the howling deserts of Infidelity;" this +was evident enough: but he had not had the courage, in defiance of pain +and terror, to press resolutely across said deserts to the new firm +lands of Faith beyond; he preferred to create logical fata-morganas for +himself on this hither side, and laboriously solace himself with these. + +To the man himself Nature had given, in high measure, the seeds of +a noble endowment; and to unfold it had been forbidden him. A subtle +lynx-eyed intellect, tremulous pious sensibility to all good and all +beautiful; truly a ray of empyrean light;--but embedded in such weak +laxity of character, in such indolences and esuriences as had made +strange work with it. Once more, the tragic story of a high endowment +with an insufficient will. An eye to discern the divineness of the +Heaven's spendors and lightnings, the insatiable wish to revel in their +godlike radiances and brilliances; but no heart to front the scathing +terrors of them, which is the first condition of your conquering an +abiding place there. The courage necessary for him, above all things, +had been denied this man. His life, with such ray of the empyrean in it, +was great and terrible to him; and he had not valiantly grappled with +it, he had fled from it; sought refuge in vague daydreams, hollow +compromises, in opium, in theosophic metaphysics. Harsh pain, danger, +necessity, slavish harnessed toil, were of all things abhorrent to him. +And so the empyrean element, lying smothered under the terrene, and +yet inextinguishable there, made sad writhings. For pain, danger, +difficulty, steady slaving toil, and other highly disagreeable behests +of destiny, shall in nowise be shirked by any brightest mortal that will +approve himself loyal to his mission in this world; nay precisely +the higher he is, the deeper will be the disagreeableness, and the +detestability to flesh and blood, of the tasks laid on him; and the +heavier too, and more tragic, his penalties if he neglect them. + +For the old Eternal Powers do live forever; nor do their laws know any +change, however we in our poor wigs and church-tippets may attempt +to read their laws. To _steal_ into Heaven,--by the modern method, of +sticking ostrich-like your head into fallacies on Earth, equally as +by the ancient and by all conceivable methods,--is forever forbidden. +High-treason is the name of that attempt; and it continues to be +punished as such. Strange enough: here once more was a kind of +Heaven-scaling Ixion; and to him, as to the old one, the just gods were +very stern! The ever-revolving, never-advancing Wheel (of a kind) was +his, through life; and from his Cloud-Juno did not he too procreate +strange Centaurs, spectral Puseyisms, monstrous illusory Hybrids, and +ecclesiastical Chimeras,--which now roam the earth in a very lamentable +manner! + + + +CHAPTER IX. SPANISH EXILES. + +This magical ingredient thrown into the wild caldron of such a mind, +which we have seen occupied hitherto with mere Ethnicism, Radicalism and +revolutionary tumult, but hungering all along for something higher and +better, was sure to be eagerly welcomed and imbibed, and could not fail +to produce important fermentations there. Fermentations; important new +directions, and withal important new perversions, in the spiritual life +of this man, as it has since done in the lives of so many. Here then +is the new celestial manna we were all in quest of? This thrice-refined +pabulum of transcendental moonshine? Whoso eateth thereof,--yes, what, +on the whole, will _he_ probably grow to? + +Sterling never spoke much to me of his intercourse with Coleridge; and +when we did compare notes about him, it was usually rather in the way +of controversial discussion than of narrative. So that, from my own +resources, I can give no details of the business, nor specify anything +in it, except the general fact of an ardent attendance at Highgate +continued for many months, which was impressively known to all +Sterling's friends; and am unable to assign even the limitary dates, +Sterling's own papers on the subject having all been destroyed by +him. Inferences point to the end of 1828 as the beginning of this +intercourse; perhaps in 1829 it was at the highest point; and already in +1830, when the intercourse itself was about to terminate, we have proof +of the influences it was producing,--in the Novel of _Arthur Coningsby_, +then on hand, the first and only Book that Sterling ever wrote. His +writings hitherto had been sketches, criticisms, brief essays; he was +now trying it on a wider scale; but not yet with satisfactory results, +and it proved to be his only trial in that form. + +He had already, as was intimated, given up his brief proprietorship of +the _Athenaeum_; the commercial indications, and state of sales and of +costs, peremptorily ordering him to do so; the copyright went by sale or +gift, I know not at what precise date, into other fitter hands; and with +the copyright all connection on the part of Sterling. To _Athenaeum_ +Sketches had now (in 1829-30) succeeded _Arthur Coningsby_, a Novel +in three volumes; indicating (when it came to light, a year or +two afterwards) equally hasty and much more ambitious aims in +Literature;--giving strong evidence, too, of internal spiritual +revulsions going painfully forward, and in particular of the impression +Coleridge was producing on him. Without and within, it was a wild tide +of things this ardent light young soul was afloat upon, at present; +and his outlooks into the future, whether for his spiritual or economic +fortunes, were confused enough. + +Among his familiars in this period, I might have mentioned one Charles +Barton, formerly his fellow-student at Cambridge, now an amiable, +cheerful, rather idle young fellow about Town; who led the way into +certain new experiences, and lighter fields, for Sterling. His Father, +Lieutenant-General Barton of the Life-guards, an Irish landlord, I think +in Fermanagh County, and a man of connections about Court, lived in +a certain figure here in Town; had a wife of fashionable habits, with +other sons, and also daughters, bred in this sphere. These, all of +them, were amiable, elegant and pleasant people;--such was especially +an eldest daughter, Susannah Barton, a stately blooming black-eyed young +woman, attractive enough in form and character; full of gay softness, of +indolent sense and enthusiasm; about Sterling's own age, if not a little +older. In this house, which opened to him, more decisively than +his Father's, a new stratum of society, and where his reception for +Charles's sake and his own was of the kindest, he liked very well to be; +and spent, I suppose, many of his vacant half-hours, lightly chatting +with the elders or the youngsters,--doubtless with the young lady too, +though as yet without particular intentions on either side. + +Nor, with all the Coleridge fermentation, was democratic Radicalism +by any means given up;--though how it was to live if the Coleridgean +moonshine took effect, might have been an abtruse question. Hitherto, +while said moonshine was but taking effect, and coloring the outer +surface of things without quite penetrating into the heart, democratic +Liberalism, revolt against superstition and oppression, and help to +whosoever would revolt, was still the grand element in Sterling's creed; +and practically he stood, not ready only, but full of alacrity to fulfil +all its behests. We heard long since of the "black dragoons,"--whom +doubtless the new moonshine had considerably silvered-over into new +hues, by this time;--but here now, while Radicalism is tottering for him +and threatening to crumble, comes suddenly the grand consummation and +explosion of Radicalism in his life; whereby, all at once, Radicalism +exhausted and ended itself, and appeared no more there. + + +In those years a visible section of the London population, and +conspicuous out of all proportion to its size or value, was a small +knot of Spaniards, who had sought shelter here as Political Refugees. +"Political Refugees:" a tragic succession of that class is one of the +possessions of England in our time. Six-and-twenty years ago, when I +first saw London, I remember those unfortunate Spaniards among the new +phenomena. Daily in the cold spring air, under skies so unlike their +own, you could see a group of fifty or a hundred stately tragic figures, +in proud threadbare cloaks; perambulating, mostly with closed lips, the +broad pavements of Euston Square and the regions about St. Pancras new +Church. Their lodging was chiefly in Somers Town, as I understood: and +those open pavements about St. Pancras Church were the general place of +rendezvous. They spoke little or no English; knew nobody, could employ +themselves on nothing, in this new scene. Old steel-gray heads, many +of them; the shaggy, thick, blue-black hair of others struck you; their +brown complexion, dusky look of suppressed fire, in general their tragic +condition as of caged Numidian lions. + +That particular Flight of Unfortunates has long since fled again, and +vanished; and new have come and fled. In this convulsed revolutionary +epoch, which already lasts above sixty years, what tragic flights of +such have we not seen arrive on the one safe coast which is open to +them, as they get successively vanquished, and chased into exile to +avoid worse! Swarm after swarm, of ever-new complexion, from Spain as +from other countries, is thrown off, in those ever-recurring paroxysms; +and will continue to be thrown off. As there could be (suggests +Linnaeus) a "flower-clock," measuring the hours of the day, and the +months of the year, by the kinds of flowers that go to sleep and awaken, +that blow into beauty and fade into dust: so in the great Revolutionary +Horologe, one might mark the years and epochs by the successive kinds of +exiles that walk London streets, and, in grim silent manner, demand +pity from us and reflections from us.--This then extant group of Spanish +Exiles was the Trocadero swarm, thrown off in 1823, in the Riego and +Quirogas quarrel. These were they whom Charles Tenth had, by sheer +force, driven from their constitutionalisms and their Trocadero +fortresses,--Charles Tenth, who himself was soon driven out, manifoldly +by sheer force; and had to head his own swarm of fugitives; and has now +himself quite vanished, and given place to others. For there is no end +of them; propelling and propelled!-- + +Of these poor Spanish Exiles, now vegetating about Somers Town, and +painfully beating the pavement in Euston Square, the acknowledged chief +was General Torrijos, a man of high qualities and fortunes, still in +the vigor of his years, and in these desperate circumstances refusing to +despair; with whom Sterling had, at this time, become intimate. + + + +CHAPTER X. TORRIJOS. + +Torrijos, who had now in 1829 been here some four or five years, having +come over in 1824, had from the first enjoyed a superior reception +in England. Possessing not only a language to speak, which few of the +others did, but manifold experiences courtly, military, diplomatic, +with fine natural faculties, and high Spanish manners tempered into +cosmopolitan, he had been welcomed in various circles of society; +and found, perhaps he alone of those Spaniards, a certain human +companionship among persons of some standing in this country. With the +elder Sterlings, among others, he had made acquaintance; became familiar +in the social circle at South Place, and was much esteemed there. With +Madam Torrijos, who also was a person of amiable and distinguished +qualities, an affectionate friendship grew up on the part of Mrs. +Sterling, which ended only with the death of these two ladies. John +Sterling, on arriving in London from his University work, naturally +inherited what he liked to take up of this relation: and in the lodgings +in Regent Street, and the democratico-literary element there, Torrijos +became a very prominent, and at length almost the central object. + +The man himself, it is well known, was a valiant, gallant man; of +lively intellect, of noble chivalrous character: fine talents, fine +accomplishments, all grounding themselves on a certain rugged veracity, +recommended him to the discerning. He had begun youth in the Court of +Ferdinand; had gone on in Wellington and other arduous, victorious +and unvictorious, soldierings; familiar in camps and council-rooms, +in presence-chambers and in prisons. He knew romantic Spain;--he was +himself, standing withal in the vanguard of Freedom's fight, a kind of +living romance. Infinitely interesting to John Sterling, for one. + +It was to Torrijos that the poor Spaniards of Somers Town looked mainly, +in their helplessness, for every species of help. Torrijos, it was +hoped, would yet lead them into Spain and glorious victory there; +meanwhile here in England, under defeat, he was their captain and +sovereign in another painfully inverse sense. To whom, in extremity, +everybody might apply. When all present resources failed, and the +exchequer was quite out, there still remained Torrijos. Torrijos has to +find new resources for his destitute patriots, find loans, find Spanish +lessons for them among his English friends: in all which charitable +operations, it need not be said, John Sterling was his foremost man; +zealous to empty his own purse for the object; impetuous in rushing +hither or thither to enlist the aid of others, and find lessons or +something that would do. His friends, of course, had to assist; the +Bartons, among others, were wont to assist;--and I have heard that the +fair Susan, stirring up her indolent enthusiasm into practicality, was +very successful in finding Spanish lessons, and the like, for these +distressed men. Sterling and his friends were yet new in this business; +but Torrijos and the others were getting old in it?--and doubtless weary +and almost desperate of it. They had now been seven years in it, many of +them; and were asking, When will the end be? + +Torrijos is described as a man of excellent discernment: who knows how +long he had repressed the unreasonable schemes of his followers, and +turned a deaf ear to the temptings of fallacious hope? But there comes +at length a sum-total of oppressive burdens which is intolerable, which +tempts the wisest towards fallacies for relief. These weary groups, +pacing the Euston-Square pavements, had often said in their despair, +"Were not death in battle better? Here are we slowly mouldering into +nothingness; there we might reach it rapidly, in flaming splendor. +Flame, either of victory to Spain and us, or of a patriot death, the +sure harbinger of victory to Spain. Flame fit to kindle a fire which no +Ferdinand, with all his Inquisitions and Charles Tenths, could put +out." Enough, in the end of 1829, Torrijos himself had yielded to this +pressure; and hoping against hope, persuaded himself that if he could +but land in the South of Spain with a small patriot band well armed +and well resolved, a band carrying fire in its heart,--then Spain, all +inflammable as touchwood, and groaning indignantly under its brutal +tyrant, might blaze wholly into flame round him, and incalculable +victory be won. Such was his conclusion; not sudden, yet surely not +deliberate either,--desperate rather, and forced on by circumstances. +He thought with himself that, considering Somers Town and considering +Spain, the terrible chance was worth trying; that this big game of Fate, +go how it might, was one which the omens credibly declared he and these +poor Spaniards ought to play. + +His whole industries and energies were thereupon bent towards starting +the said game; and his thought and continual speech and song now was, +That if he had a few thousand pounds to buy arms, to freight a ship and +make the other preparations, he and these poor gentlemen, and Spain and +the world, were made men and a saved Spain and world. What talks and +consultations in the apartment in Regent Street, during those winter +days of 1829-30; setting into open conflagration the young democracy +that was wont to assemble there! Of which there is now left next to +no remembrance. For Sterling never spoke a word of this affair in +after-days, nor was any of the actors much tempted to speak. We can +understand too well that here were young fervid hearts in an explosive +condition; young rash heads, sanctioned by a man's experienced head. +Here at last shall enthusiasm and theory become practice and fact; fiery +dreams are at last permitted to realize themselves; and now is the time +or never!--How the Coleridge moonshine comported itself amid these hot +telluric flames, or whether it had not yet begun to play there (which I +rather doubt), must be left to conjecture. + +Mr. Hare speaks of Sterling "sailing over to St. Valery in an open +boat along with others," upon one occasion, in this enterprise;--in +the _final_ English scene of it, I suppose. Which is very possible. +Unquestionably there was adventure enough of other kinds for it, and +running to and fro with all his speed on behalf of it, during these +months of his history! Money was subscribed, collected: the young +Cambridge democrats were all ablaze to assist Torrijos; nay certain of +them decided to go with him,--and went. Only, as yet, the funds were +rather incomplete. And here, as I learn from a good hand, is the secret +history of their becoming complete. Which, as we are upon the subject, +I had better give. But for the following circumstance, they had perhaps +never been completed; nor had the rash enterprise, or its catastrophe, +so influential on the rest of Sterling's life, taken place at all. + +A certain Lieutenant Robert Boyd, of the Indian Army, an Ulster +Irishman, a cousin of Sterling's, had received some affront, or +otherwise taken some disgust in that service; had thrown up his +commission in consequence; and returned home, about this time, with +intent to seek another course of life. Having only, for outfit, these +impatient ardors, some experience in Indian drill exercise, and five +thousand pounds of inheritance, he found the enterprise attended with +difficulties; and was somewhat at a loss how to dispose of himself. Some +young Ulster comrade, in a partly similar situation, had pointed out to +him that there lay in a certain neighboring creek of the Irish coast, a +worn-out royal gun-brig condemned to sale, to be had dog-cheap: this he +proposed that they two, or in fact Boyd with his five thousand pounds, +should buy; that they should refit and arm and man it;--and sail +a-privateering "to the Eastern Archipelago," Philippine Isles, or I know +not where; and _so_ conquer the golden fleece. + +Boyd naturally paused a little at this great proposal; did not quite +reject it; came across, with it and other fine projects and impatiences +fermenting in his head, to London, there to see and consider. It was in +the months when the Torrijos enterprise was in the birth-throes; crying +wildly for capital, of all things. Boyd naturally spoke of his projects +to Sterling,--of his gun-brig lying in the Irish creek, among others. +Sterling naturally said, "If you want an adventure of the Sea-king sort, +and propose to lay your money and your life into such a game, here is +Torrijos and Spain at his back; here is a golden fleece to conquer, +worth twenty Eastern Archipelagoes."--Boyd and Torrijos quickly met; +quickly bargained. Boyd's money was to go in purchasing, and storing +with a certain stock of arms and etceteras, a small ship in the Thames, +which should carry Boyd with Torrijos and the adventurers to the south +coast of Spain; and there, the game once played and won, Boyd was to +have promotion enough,--"the colonelcy of a Spanish cavalry regiment," +for one express thing. What exact share Sterling had in this +negotiation, or whether he did not even take the prudent side and +caution Boyd to be wary I know not; but it was he that brought the +parties together; and all his friends knew, in silence, that to the end +of his life he painfully remembered that fact. + +And so a ship was hired, or purchased, in the Thames; due furnishings +began to be executed in it; arms and stores were gradually got on board; +Torrijos with his Fifty picked Spaniards, in the mean while, getting +ready. This was in the spring of 1830. Boyd's 5000 pounds was the grand +nucleus of finance; but vigorous subscription was carried on likewise +in Sterling's young democratic circle, or wherever a member of it could +find access; not without considerable result, and with a zeal that may +be imagined. Nay, as above hinted, certain of these young men decided, +not to give their money only, but themselves along with it, as +democratic volunteers and soldiers of progress; among whom, it need not +be said, Sterling intended to be foremost. Busy weeks with him, those +spring ones of the year 1830! Through this small Note, accidentally +preserved to us, addressed to his friend Barton, we obtain a curious +glance into the subterranean workshop:-- + + "_To Charles Barton, Esq., Dorset Sq., Regent's Park_. + [No date; apparently March or February, 1830.] + +"MY DEAR CHARLES,--I have wanted to see you to talk to you about my +Foreign affairs. If you are going to be in London for a few days, I +believe you can be very useful to me, at a considerable expense and +trouble to yourself, in the way of buying accoutrements; _inter alia_, a +sword and a saddle,--not, you will understand, for my own use. + +"Things are going on very well, but are very, even frightfully near; +only be quiet! Pray would you, in case of necessity, take a free passage +to Holland, next week or the week after; stay two or three days, and +come back, all expenses paid? If you write to B---- at Cambridge, tell +him above all things to hold his tongue. If you are near Palace Yard +to-morrow before two, pray come to see me. Do not come on purpose; +especially as I may perhaps be away, and at all events shall not be +there until eleven, nor perhaps till rather later. + +"I fear I shall have alarmed your Mother by my irruption. Forgive me +for that and all my exactions from you. If the next month were over, I +should not have to trouble any one. + + "Yours affectionately, + "J. STERLING." + +Busy weeks indeed; and a glowing smithy-light coming through the +chinks!--The romance of _Arthur Coningsby_ lay written, or half-written, +in his desk; and here, in his heart and among his hands, was an acted +romance and unknown catastrophes keeping pace with that. + +Doubts from the doctors, for his health was getting ominous, threw some +shade over the adventure. Reproachful reminiscences of Coleridge and +Theosophy were natural too; then fond regrets for Literature and its +glories: if you act your romance, how can you also write it? Regrets, +and reproachful reminiscences, from Art and Theosophy; perhaps some +tenderer regrets withal. A crisis in life had come; when, of innumerable +possibilities one possibility was to be elected king, and to swallow all +the rest, the rest of course made noise enough, and swelled themselves +to their biggest. + + +Meanwhile the ship was fast getting ready: on a certain day, it was +to drop quietly down the Thames; then touch at Deal, and take on board +Torrijos and his adventurers, who were to be in waiting and on the +outlook for them there. Let every man lay in his accoutrements, then; +let every man make his packages, his arrangements and farewells. +Sterling went to take leave of Miss Barton. "You are going, then; to +Spain? To rough it amid the storms of war and perilous insurrection; and +with that weak health of yours; and--we shall never see you more, then!" +Miss Barton, all her gayety gone, the dimpling softness become liquid +sorrow, and the musical ringing voice one wail of woe, "burst into +tears,"--so I have it on authority:--here was one possibility about to +be strangled that made unexpected noise! Sterling's interview ended in +the offer of his hand, and the acceptance of it;--any sacrifice to get +rid of this horrid Spanish business, and save the health and life of a +gifted young man so precious to the world and to another! + +"Ill-health," as often afterwards in Sterling's life, when the excuse +was real enough but not the chief excuse; "ill-health, and insuperable +obstacles and engagements," had to bear the chief brunt in apologizing: +and, as Sterling's actual presence, or that of any Englishman except +Boyd and his money, was not in the least vital to the adventure, his +excuse was at once accepted. The English connections and subscriptions +are a given fact, to be presided over by what English volunteers there +are: and as for Englishmen, the fewer Englishmen that go, the larger +will be the share of influence for each. The other adventurers, Torrijos +among them in due readiness, moved silently one by one down to Deal; +Sterling, superintending the naval hands, on board their ship in +the Thames, was to see the last finish given to everything in that +department; then, on the set evening, to drop down quietly to Deal, and +there say _Andad con Dios_, and return. + +Behold! Just before the set evening came, the Spanish Envoy at this +Court has got notice of what is going on; the Spanish Envoy, and of +course the British Foreign Secretary, and of course also the Thames +Police. Armed men spring suddenly on board, one day, while Sterling is +there; declare the ship seized and embargoed in the King's name; nobody +on board to stir till he has given some account of himself in due time +and place! Huge consternation, naturally, from stem to stern. Sterling, +whose presence of mind seldom forsook him, casts his eye over the River +and its craft; sees a wherry, privately signals it, drops rapidly on +board of it: "Stop!" fiercely interjects the marine policeman from the +ship's deck.--"Why stop? What use have you for me, or I for you?" and +the oars begin playing.--"Stop, or I'll shoot you!" cries the marine +policeman, drawing a pistol.--"No, you won't."--"I will!"--"If you do +you'll be hanged at the next Maidstone assizes, then; that's all,"--and +Sterling's wherry shot rapidly ashore; and out of this perilous +adventure. + +That same night he posted down to Deal; disclosed to the Torrijos party +what catastrophe had come. No passage Spainward from the Thames; well +if arrestment do not suddenly come from the Thames! It was on this +occasion, I suppose, that the passage in the open boat to St. Valery +occurred;--speedy flight in what boat or boats, open or shut, could +be got at Deal on the sudden. Sterling himself, according to Hare's +authority, actually went with them so far. Enough, they got shipping, +as private passengers in one craft or the other; and, by degrees or at +once, arrived all at Gibraltar,--Boyd, one or two young democrats of +Regent Street, the fifty picked Spaniards, and Torrijos,--safe, though +without arms; still in the early part of the year. + + + +CHAPTER XI. MARRIAGE: ILL-HEALTH; WEST-INDIES. + +Sterling's outlooks and occupations, now that his Spanish friends were +gone, must have been of a rather miscellaneous confused description. +He had the enterprise of a married life close before him; and as yet +no profession, no fixed pursuit whatever. His health was already very +threatening; often such as to disable him from present activity, +and occasion the gravest apprehensions; practically blocking up all +important courses whatsoever, and rendering the future, if even +life were lengthened and he had any future, an insolubility for him. +Parliament was shut, public life was shut: Literature,--if, alas, any +solid fruit could lie in literature! + +Or perhaps one's health would mend, after all; and many things be better +than was hoped! Sterling was not of a despondent temper, or given in +any measure to lie down and indolently moan: I fancy he walked briskly +enough into this tempestuous-looking future; not heeding too much its +thunderous aspects; doing swiftly, for the day, what his hand found to +do. _Arthur Coningsby_, I suppose, lay on the anvil at present; visits +to Coleridge were now again more possible; grand news from Torrijos +might be looked for, though only small yet came:--nay here, in the hot +July, is France, at least, all thrown into volcano again! Here are the +miraculous Three Days; heralding, in thunder, great things to Torrijos +and others; filling with babblement and vaticination the mouths and +hearts of all democratic men. + +So rolled along, in tumult of chaotic remembrance and uncertain hope, +in manifold emotion, and the confused struggle (for Sterling as for +the world) to extricate the New from the falling ruins of the Old, the +summer and autumn of 1830. From Gibraltar and Torrijos the tidings were +vague, unimportant and discouraging: attempt on Cadiz, attempt on the +lines of St. Roch, those attempts, or rather resolutions to attempt, +had died in the birth, or almost before it. Men blamed Torrijos, little +knowing his impediments. Boyd was still patient at his post: others of +the young English (on the strength of the subscribed moneys) were said +to be thinking of tours,--perhaps in the Sierra Morena and neighboring +Quixote regions. From that Torrijos enterprise it did not seem that +anything considerable would come. + + +On the edge of winter, here at home, Sterling was married: "at +Christchurch, Marylebone, 2d November, 1830," say the records. His +blooming, kindly and true-hearted Wife had not much money, nor had he as +yet any: but friends on both sides were bountiful and hopeful; had +made up, for the young couple, the foundations of a modestly effective +household; and in the future there lay more substantial prospects. On +the finance side Sterling never had anything to suffer. His Wife, though +somewhat languid, and of indolent humor, was a graceful, pious-minded, +honorable and affectionate woman; she could not much support him in the +ever-shifting struggles of his life, but she faithfully attended him in +them, and loyally marched by his side through the changes and nomadic +pilgrimings, of which many were appointed him in his short course. + +Unhappily a few weeks after his marriage, and before any household was +yet set up, he fell dangerously ill; worse in health than he had ever +yet been: so many agitations crowded into the last few months had been +too much for him. He fell into dangerous pulmonary illness, sank ever +deeper; lay for many weeks in his Father's house utterly prostrate, +his young Wife and his Mother watching over him; friends, sparingly +admitted, long despairing of his life. All prospects in this world were +now apparently shut upon him. + +After a while, came hope again, and kindlier symptoms: but the doctors +intimated that there lay consumption in the question, and that perfect +recovery was not to be looked for. For weeks he had been confined to +bed; it was several months before he could leave his sick-room, +where the visits of a few friends had much cheered him. And now when +delivered, readmitted to the air of day again,--weak as he was, and with +such a liability still lurking in him,--what his young partner and he +were to do, or whitherward to turn for a good course of life, was by no +means too apparent. + + +One of his Mother Mrs. Edward Sterling's Uncles, a Coningham from Derry, +had, in the course of his industrious and adventurous life, realized +large property in the West Indies,--a valuable Sugar-estate, with its +equipments, in the Island of St. Vincent;--from which Mrs. Sterling +and her family were now, and had been for some years before her Uncle's +decease, deriving important benefits. I have heard, it was then worth +some ten thousand pounds a year to the parties interested. Anthony +Sterling, John, and another a cousin of theirs were ultimately to be +heirs, in equal proportions. The old gentleman, always kind to his +kindred, and a brave and solid man though somewhat abrupt in his ways, +had lately died; leaving a settlement to this effect, not without some +intricacies, and almost caprices, in the conditions attached. + +This property, which is still a valuable one, was Sterling's chief +pecuniary outlook for the distant future. Of course it well deserved +taking care of; and if the eye of the master were upon it, of course +too (according to the adage) the cattle would fatten better. As the +warm climate was favorable to pulmonary complaints, and Sterling's +occupations were so shattered to pieces and his outlooks here so waste +and vague, why should not he undertake this duty for himself and others? + +It was fixed upon as the eligiblest course. A visit to St. Vincent, +perhaps a permanent residence there: he went into the project with his +customary impetuosity; his young Wife cheerfully consenting, and all +manner of new hopes clustering round it. There are the rich tropical +sceneries, the romance of the torrid zone with its new skies and +seas and lands; there are Blacks, and the Slavery question to be +investigated: there are the bronzed Whites and Yellows, and their +strange new way of life: by all means let us go and try!--Arrangements +being completed, so soon as his strength had sufficiently recovered, and +the harsh spring winds had sufficiently abated, Sterling with his small +household set sail for St. Vincent; and arrived without accident. His +first child, a son Edward, now living and grown to manhood, was born +there, "at Brighton in the Island of St. Vincent," in the fall of that +year 1831. + + + +CHAPTER XII. ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. + +Sterling found a pleasant residence, with all its adjuncts, ready +for him, at Colonarie, in this "volcanic Isle" under the hot sun. An +interesting Isle: a place of rugged chasms, precipitous gnarled +heights, and the most fruitful hollows; shaggy everywhere with luxuriant +vegetation; set under magnificent skies, in the mirror of the summer +seas; offering everywhere the grandest sudden outlooks and contrasts. +His Letters represent a placidly cheerful riding life: a pensive humor, +but the thunder-clouds all sleeping in the distance. Good relations +with a few neighboring planters; indifference to the noisy political +and other agitations of the rest: friendly, by no means romantic +appreciation of the Blacks; quiet prosperity economic and domestic: on +the whole a healthy and recommendable way of life, with Literature very +much in abeyance in it. + +He writes to Mr. Hare (date not given): "The landscapes around me here +are noble and lovely as any that can be conceived on Earth. How indeed +could it be otherwise, in a small Island of volcanic mountains, +far within the Tropics, and perpetually covered with the richest +vegetation?" The moral aspect of things is by no means so good; but +neither is that without its fair features. "So far as I see, the Slaves +here are cunning, deceitful and idle; without any great aptitude for +ferocious crimes, and with very little scruple at committing others. But +I have seen them much only in very favorable circumstances. They are, +as a body, decidedly unfit for freedom; and if left, as at present, +completely in the hands of their masters, will never become so, unless +through the agency of the Methodists." [9] + +In the Autumn came an immense hurricane; with new and indeed quite +perilous experiences of West-Indian life. This hasty Letter, addressed +to his Mother, is not intrinsically his remarkablest from St. Vincent: +but the body of fact delineated in it being so much the greatest, we +will quote it in preference. A West-Indian tornado, as John Sterling +witnesses it, and with vivid authenticity describes it, may be +considered worth looking at. + + "_To Mrs. Sterling, South Place, Knightsbridge, London_. + "BRIGHTON, ST. VINCENT, 28th August, 1831. + +"MY DEAR MOTHER,--The packet came in yesterday; bringing me some +Newspapers, a Letter from my Father, and one from Anthony, with a few +lines from you. I wrote, some days ago, a hasty Note to my Father, +on the chance of its reaching you through Grenada sooner than any +communication by the packet; and in it I spoke of the great misfortune +which had befallen this Island and Barbadoes, but from which all those +you take an interest in have happily escaped unhurt. + +"From the day of our arrival in the West Indies until Thursday the 11th +instant, which will long be a memorable day with us, I had been doing my +best to get ourselves established comfortably; and I had at last bought +the materials for making some additions to the house. But on the morning +I have mentioned, all that I had exerted myself to do, nearly all the +property both of Susan and myself, and the very house we lived in, were +suddenly destroyed by a visitation of Providence far more terrible than +any I have ever witnessed. + +"When Susan came from her room, to breakfast, at eight o'clock, I +pointed out to her the extraordinary height and violence of the surf, +and the singular appearance of the clouds of heavy rain sweeping down +the valleys before us. At this time I had so little apprehension of what +was coming, that I talked of riding down to the shore when the storm +should abate, as I had never seen so fierce a sea. In about a quarter of +an hour the House-Negroes came in, to close the outside shutters of the +windows. They knew that the plantain-trees about the Negro houses had +been blown down in the night; and had told the maid-servant Tyrrell, but +I had heard nothing of it. A very few minutes after the closing of the +windows, I found that the shutters of Tyrrell's room, at the south and +commonly the most sheltered end of the House, were giving way. I tried +to tie them; but the silk handkerchief which I used soon gave way; +and as I had neither hammer, boards nor nails in the house, I could do +nothing more to keep out the tempest. I found, in pushing at the leaf of +the shutter, that the wind resisted, more as if it had been a stone wall +or a mass of iron, than a mere current of air. There were one or two +people outside trying to fasten the windows, and I went out to help; but +we had no tools at hand: one man was blown down the hill in front of the +house, before my face; and the other and myself had great difficulty in +getting back again inside the door. The rain on my face and hands felt +like so much small shot from a gun. There was great exertion necessary +to shut the door of the house. + +"The windows at the end of the large room were now giving way; and I +suppose it was about nine o'clock, when the hurricane burst them in, as +if it had been a discharge from a battery of heavy cannon. The shutters +were first forced open, and the wind fastened them back to the wall; +and then the panes of glass were smashed by the mere force of the gale, +without anything having touched them. Even now I was not at all sure the +house would go. My books, I saw, were lost; for the rain poured past the +bookcases, as if it had been the Colonarie River. But we carried a good +deal of furniture into the passage at the entrance; we set Susan there +on a sofa, and the Black Housekeeper was even attempting to get her some +breakfast. The house, however, began to shake so violently, and the rain +was so searching, that she could not stay there long. She went into her +own room and I stayed to see what could be done. + +"Under the forepart of the house, there are cellars built of stone, +but not arched. To these, however, there was no access except on the +outside; and I knew from my own experience that Susan could not have +gone a step beyond the door, without being carried away by the storm, +and probably killed on the spot. The only chance seemed to be that of +breaking through the floor. But when the old Cook and myself resolved on +this, we found that we had no instrument with which it would be possible +to do it. It was now clear that we had only God to trust in. The front +windows were giving way with successive crashes, and the floor shook +as you may have seen a carpet on a gusty day in London. I went into +our bedroom; where I found Susan, Tyrrell, and a little Colored girl of +seven or eight years old; and told them that we should probably not +be alive in half an hour. I could have escaped, if I had chosen to go +alone, by crawling on the ground either into the kitchen, a separate +stone building at no great distance, or into the open fields away from +trees or houses; but Susan could not have gone a yard. She became quite +calm when she knew the worst; and she sat on my knee in what seemed the +safest corner of the room, while every blast was bringing nearer and +nearer the moment of our seemingly certain destruction.-- + +"The house was under two parallel roofs; and the one next the sea, +which sheltered the other, and us who were under the other, went off, I +suppose about ten o'clock. After my old plan, I will give you a sketch, +from which you may perceive how we were situated:-- + + [In print, a figure representing a floor-plan appears here] + +The _a_, _a_ are the windows that were first destroyed: _b_ went next; +my books were between the windows _b_, and on the wall opposite to them. +The lines _c_ and _d_ mark the directions of the two roofs; _e_ is the +room in which we were, and 2 is a plan of it on a larger scale. Look +now at 2: _a_ is the bed; _c_, _c_ the two wardrobes; _b_ the corner +in which we were. I was sitting in an arm-chair, holding my Wife; and +Tyrrell and the little Black child were close to us. We had given up all +notion of surviving; and only waited for the fall of the roof to perish +together. + +"Before long the roof went. Most of the materials, however, were carried +clear away: one of the large couples was caught on the bedpost marked +_d_, and held fast by the iron spike; while the end of it hung over our +heads: had the beam fallen an inch on either side of the bedpost, it +must necessarily have crushed us. The walls did not go with the roof; +and we remained for half an hour, alternately praying to God, and +watching them as they bent, creaked, and shivered before the storm. + +"Tyrrell and the child, when the roof was off, made their way through +the remains of the partition, to the outer door; and with the help of +the people who were looking for us, got into the kitchen. A good while +after they were gone, and before we knew anything of their fate, a Negro +suddenly came upon us; and the sight of him gave us a hope of safety. +When the people learned that we were in danger, and while their own huts +were flying about their ears, they crowded to help us; and the old +Cook urged them on to our rescue. He made five attempts, after saving +Tyrrell, to get to us; and four times he was blown down. The fifth time +he, and the Negro we first saw, reached the house. The space they had +to traverse was not above twenty yards of level ground, if so much. In +another minute or two, the Overseers and a crowd of Negroes, most of +whom had come on their hands and knees, were surrounding us; and with +their help Susan was carried round to the end of the house; where they +broke open the cellar window, and placed her in comparative safety. The +force of the hurricane was, by this time, a good deal diminished, or it +would have been impossible to stand before it. + +"But the wind was still terrific; and the rain poured into the cellars +through the floor above. Susan, Tyrrell, and a crowd of Negroes remained +under it, for more than two hours: and I was long afraid that the wet +and cold would kill her, if she did not perish more violently. Happily +we had wine and spirits at hand, and she was much nerved by a tumbler +of claret. As soon as I saw her in comparative security, I went off with +one of the Overseers down to the Works, where the greater number of the +Negroes were collected, that we might see what could be done for them. +They were wretched enough, but no one was hurt; and I ordered them a +dram apiece, which seemed to give them a good deal of consolation. + +"Before I could make my way back, the hurricane became as bad as at +first; and I was obliged to take shelter for half an hour in a ruined +Negro house. This, however, was the last of its extreme violence. By +one o'clock, even the rain had in a great degree ceased; and as only +one room of the house, the one marked _f_; was standing, and that +rickety,--I had Susan carried in a chair down the hill, to the Hospital; +where, in a small paved unlighted room, she spent the next twenty-four +hours. She was far less injured than might have been expected from such +a catastrophe. + +"Next day, I had the passage at the entrance of the house repaired and +roofed; and we returned to the ruins of our habitation, still encumbered +as they were with the wreck of almost all we were possessed of. The +walls of the part of the house next the sea were carried away, in less I +think than half an hour after we reached the cellar: when I had leisure +to examine the remains of the house, I found the floor strewn with +fragments of the building, and with broken furniture; and our books all +soaked as completely as if they had been for several hours in the sea. + +"In the course of a few days I had the other room, _g_, which is under +the same roof as the one saved, rebuilt; and Susan stayed in this +temporary abode for a week,--when we left Colonarie, and came to +Brighton. Mr. Munro's kindness exceeds all precedent. We shall certainly +remain here till my Wife is recovered from her confinement. In the +mean while we shall have a new house built, in which we hope to be well +settled before Christmas. + +"The roof was half blown off the kitchen, but I have had it mended +already; the other offices were all swept away. The gig is much injured; +and my horse received a wound in the fall of the stable, from which he +will not be recovered for some weeks: in the mean time I have no choice +but to buy another, as I must go at least once or twice a week to +Colonarie, besides business in Town. As to our own comforts, we can +scarcely expect ever to recover from the blow that has now stricken +us. No money would repay me for the loss of my books, of which a large +proportion had been in my hands for so many years that they were +like old and faithful friends, and of which many had been given me at +different times by the persons in the world whom I most value. + +"But against all this I have to set the preservation of our lives, in +a way the most awfully providential; and the safety of every one on the +Estate. And I have also the great satisfaction of reflecting that all +the Negroes from whom any assistance could reasonably be expected, +behaved like so many Heroes of Antiquity; risking their lives and limbs +for us and our property, while their own poor houses were flying like +chaff before the hurricane. There are few White people here who can +say as much for their Black dependents; and the force and value of the +relation between Master and Slave has been tried by the late calamity on +a large scale. + +"Great part of both sides of this Island has been laid completely +waste. The beautiful wide and fertile Plain called the Charib Country, +extending for many miles to the north of Colonarie, and formerly +containing the finest sets of works and best dwelling-houses in the +Island, is, I am told, completely desolate: on several estates not a +roof even of a Negro hut standing. In the embarrassed circumstances of +many of the proprietors, the ruin is, I fear, irreparable.--At Colonarie +the damage is serious, but by no means desperate. The crop is perhaps +injured ten or fifteen per cent. The roofs of several large buildings +are destroyed, but these we are already supplying; and the injuries done +to the cottages of the Negroes are, by this time, nearly if not quite +remedied. + +"Indeed, all that has been suffered in St. Vincent appears nothing +when compared with the appalling loss of property and of human lives at +Barbadoes. There the Town is little but a heap of ruins, and the corpses +are reckoned by thousands; while throughout the Island there are not, I +believe, ten estates on which the buildings are standing. The Elliotts, +from whom we have heard, are living with all their family in a tent; and +may think themselves wonderfully saved, when whole families round them +were crushed at once beneath their houses. Hugh Barton, the only officer +of the Garrison hurt, has broken his arm, and we know nothing of his +prospects of recovery. The more horrible misfortune of Barbadoes is +partly to be accounted for by the fact of the hurricane having begun +there during the night. The flatness of the surface in that Island +presented no obstacle to the wind, which must, however, I think have +been in itself more furious than with us. No other island has suffered +considerably. + +"I have told both my Uncle and Anthony that I have given you the details +of our recent history;--which are not so pleasant that I should wish to +write them again. Perhaps you will be good enough to let them see this, +as soon as you and my Father can spare it.... I am ever, dearest Mother, + + "Your grateful and affectionate + "JOHN STERLING." + +This Letter, I observe, is dated 28th August, 1831; which is otherwise a +day of mark to the world and me,--the Poet Goethe's last birthday. While +Sterling sat in the Tropical solitudes, penning this history, little +European Weimar had its carriages and state-carriages busy on the +streets, and was astir with compliments and visiting-cards, doing its +best, as heretofore, on behalf of a remarkable day; and was not, for +centuries or tens of centuries, to see the like of it again!-- + + +At Brighton, the hospitable home of those Munros, our friends continued +for above two months. Their first child, Edward, as above noticed, was +born here, "14th October, 1831;"--and now the poor lady, safe from all +her various perils, could return to Colonarie under good auspices. + +It was in this year that I first heard definitely of Sterling as a +contemporary existence; and laid up some note and outline of him in my +memory, as of one whom I might yet hope to know. John Mill, Mrs. Austin +and perhaps other friends, spoke of him with great affection and much +pitying admiration; and hoped to see him home again, under better omens, +from over the seas. As a gifted amiable being, of a certain radiant +tenuity and velocity, too thin and rapid and diffusive, in danger of +dissipating himself into the vague, or alas into death itself: it was +so that, like a spot of bright colors, rather than a portrait with +features, he hung occasionally visible in my imagination. + + + +CHAPTER XIII. A CATASTROPHE. + +The ruin of his house had hardly been repaired, when there arrived out +of Europe tidings which smote as with a still more fatal hurricane on +the four corners of his inner world, and awoke all the old thunders that +lay asleep on his horizon there. Tidings, at last of a decisive nature, +from Gibraltar and the Spanish democrat adventure. This is what the +Newspapers had to report--the catastrophe at once, the details by +degrees--from Spain concerning that affair, in the beginning of the new +year 1832. + +Torrijos, as we have seen, had hitherto accomplished as good as nothing, +except disappointment to his impatient followers, and sorrow and regret +to himself. Poor Torrijos, on arriving at Gibraltar with his wild band, +and coming into contact with the rough fact, had found painfully how +much his imagination had deceived him. The fact lay round him haggard +and iron-bound; flatly refusing to be handled according to his scheme +of it. No Spanish soldiery nor citizenry showed the least disposition to +join him; on the contrary the official Spaniards of that coast seemed +to have the watchfulest eye on all his movements, nay it was conjectured +they had spies in Gibraltar who gathered his very intentions and +betrayed them. This small project of attack, and then that other, +proved futile, or was abandoned before the attempt. Torrijos had to lie +painfully within the lines of Gibraltar,--his poor followers reduced to +extremity of impatience and distress; the British Governor too, though +not unfriendly to him, obliged to frown. As for the young Cantabs, they, +as was said, had wandered a little over the South border of romantic +Spain; had perhaps seen Seville, Cadiz, with picturesque views, since +not with belligerent ones; and their money being done, had now returned +home. So had it lasted for eighteen months. + +The French Three Days breaking out had armed the Guerrillero Mina, armed +all manner of democratic guerrieros and guerrilleros; and considerable +clouds of Invasion, from Spanish exiles, hung minatory over the North +and North-East of Spain, supported by the new-born French Democracy, +so far as privately possible. These Torrijos had to look upon with +inexpressible feelings, and take no hand in supporting from the South; +these also he had to see brushed away, successively abolished by +official generalship; and to sit within his lines, in the painfulest +manner, unable to do anything. The fated, gallant-minded, but too +headlong man. At length the British Governor himself was obliged, in +official decency and as is thought on repeated remonstrance from his +Spanish official neighbors, to signify how indecorous, improper +and impossible it was to harbor within one's lines such explosive +preparations, once they were discovered, against allies in full peace +with us,--the necessity, in fact, there was for the matter ending. It +is said, he offered Torrijos and his people passports, and British +protection, to any country of the world except Spain: Torrijos did not +accept the passports; spoke of going peaceably to this place or to that; +promised at least, what he saw and felt to be clearly necessary, that he +would soon leave Gibraltar. And he did soon leave it; he and his, Boyd +alone of the Englishmen being now with him. + +It was on the last night of November, 1831, that they all set forth; +Torrijos with Fifty-five companions; and in two small vessels committed +themselves to their nigh-desperate fortune. No sentry or official person +had noticed them; it was from the Spanish Consul, next morning, that the +British Governor first heard they were gone. The British Governor knew +nothing of them; but apparently the Spanish officials were much better +informed. Spanish guardships, instantly awake, gave chase to the two +small vessels, which were making all sail towards Malaga; and, on shore, +all manner of troops and detached parties were in motion, to render a +retreat to Gibraltar by land impossible. + +Crowd all sail for Malaga, then; there perhaps a regiment will join us; +there,--or if not, we are but lost! Fancy need not paint a more tragic +situation than that of Torrijos, the unfortunate gallant man, in the +gray of this morning, first of December, 1831,--his last free morning. +Noble game is afoot, afoot at last; and all the hunters have him in +their toils.--The guardships gain upon Torrijos; he cannot even reach +Malaga; has to run ashore at a place called Fuengirola, not far from +that city;--the guardships seizing his vessels, so soon as he +is disembarked. The country is all up; troops scouring the coast +everywhere: no possibility of getting into Malaga with a party of +Fifty-five. He takes possession of a farmstead (Ingles, the place is +called); barricades himself there, but is speedily beleaguered with +forces hopelessly superior. He demands to treat; is refused all treaty; +is granted six hours to consider, shall then either surrender at +discretion, or be forced to do it. Of course he _does_ it, having no +alternative; and enters Malaga a prisoner, all his followers prisoners. +Here had the Torrijos Enterprise, and all that was embarked upon it, +finally arrived. + +Express is sent to Madrid; express instantly returns; "Military +execution on the instant; give them shriving if they want it; that +done, fusillade them all." So poor Torrijos and his followers, the whole +Fifty-six of them, Robert Boyd included, meet swift death in Malaga. +In such manner rushes down the curtain on them and their affair; they +vanish thus on a sudden; rapt away as in black clouds of fate. Poor +Boyd, Sterling's cousin, pleaded his British citizenship; to no purpose: +it availed only to his dead body, this was delivered to the British +Consul for interment, and only this. Poor Madam Torrijos, hearing, +at Paris where she now was, of her husband's capture, hurries towards +Madrid to solicit mercy; whither also messengers from Lafayette and the +French Government were hurrying, on the like errand: at Bayonne, news +met the poor lady that it was already all over, that she was now a +widow, and her husband hidden from her forever.--Such was the handsel of +the new year 1832 for Sterling in his West-Indian solitudes. + + +Sterling's friends never heard of these affairs; indeed we were all +secretly warned not to mention the name of Torrijos in his hearing, +which accordingly remained strictly a forbidden subject. His misery over +this catastrophe was known, in his own family, to have been immense. He +wrote to his Brother Anthony: "I hear the sound of that musketry; it is +as if the bullets were tearing my own brain." To figure in one's sick +and excited imagination such a scene of fatal man-hunting, lost valor +hopelessly captured and massacred; and to add to it, that the victims +are not men merely, that they are noble and dear forms known lately +as individual friends: what a Dance of the Furies and wild-pealing +Dead-march is this, for the mind of a loving, generous and vivid man! +Torrijos getting ashore at Fuengirola; Robert Boyd and others ranked +to die on the esplanade at Malaga--Nay had not Sterling, too, been the +innocent yet heedless means of Boyd's embarking in this enterprise? By +his own kinsman poor Boyd had been witlessly guided into the pitfalls. +"I hear the sound of that musketry; it is as if the bullets were tearing +my own brain!" + + + +CHAPTER XIV. PAUSE. + +These thoughts dwelt long with Sterling; and for a good while, I fancy, +kept possession of the proscenium of his mind; madly parading there, to +the exclusion of all else,--coloring all else with their own black hues. +He was young, rich in the power to be miserable or otherwise; and this +was his first grand sorrow which had now fallen upon him. + +An important spiritual crisis, coming at any rate in some form, had +hereby suddenly in a very sad form come. No doubt, as youth was passing +into manhood in these Tropical seclusions, and higher wants were +awakening in his mind, and years and reflection were adding new insight +and admonition, much in his young way of thought and action lay already +under ban with him, and repentances enough over many things were not +wanting. But here on a sudden had all repentances, as it were, dashed +themselves together into one grand whirlwind of repentance; and his +past life was fallen wholly as into a state of reprobation. A great +remorseful misery had come upon him. Suddenly, as with a sudden +lightning-stroke, it had kindled into conflagration all the ruined +structure of his past life; such ruin had to blaze and flame round +him, in the painfulest manner, till it went out in black ashes. His +democratic philosophies, and mutinous radicalisms, already falling +doomed in his thoughts, had reached their consummation and final +condemnation here. It was all so rash, imprudent, arrogant, all +that; false, or but half true; inapplicable wholly as a rule of noble +conduct;--and it has ended _thus_. Woe on it! Another guidance must be +found in life, or life is impossible!-- + +It is evident, Sterling's thoughts had already, since the old days of +the "black dragoon," much modified themselves. We perceive that, by mere +increase of experience and length of time, the opposite and much deeper +side of the question, which also has its adamantine basis of truth, was +in turn coming into play; and in fine that a Philosophy of Denial, and +world illuminated merely by the flames of Destruction, could never have +permanently been the resting-place of such a man. Those pilgrimings to +Coleridge, years ago, indicate deeper wants beginning to be felt, and +important ulterior resolutions becoming inevitable for him. If in your +own soul there is any tone of the "Eternal Melodies," you cannot live +forever in those poor outer, transitory grindings and discords; you will +have to struggle inwards and upwards, in search of some diviner home +for yourself!--Coleridge's prophetic moonshine, Torrijos's sad tragedy: +those were important occurrences in Sterling's life. But, on the whole, +there was a big Ocean for him, with impetuous Gulf-streams, and a doomed +voyage in quest of the Atlantis, _before_ either of those arose as +lights on the horizon. As important beacon-lights let us count them +nevertheless;--signal-dates they form to us, at lowest. We may +reckon this Torrijos tragedy the crisis of Sterling's history; the +turning-point, which modified, in the most important and by no means +wholly in the most favorable manner, all the subsequent stages of it. + + +Old Radicalism and mutinous audacious Ethnicism having thus fallen +to wreck, and a mere black world of misery and remorse now disclosing +itself, whatsoever of natural piety to God and man, whatsoever of pity +and reverence, of awe and devout hope was in Sterling's heart now awoke +into new activity; and strove for some due utterance and predominance. +His Letters, in these months, speak of earnest religious studies and +efforts;--of attempts by prayer and longing endeavor of all kinds, to +struggle his way into the temple, if temple there were, and there find +sanctuary. [10] The realities were grown so haggard; life a field of +black ashes, if there rose no temple anywhere on it! Why, like a fated +Orestes, is man so whipt by the Furies, and driven madly hither and +thither, if it is not even that he may seek some shrine, and there make +expiation and find deliverance? + +In these circumstances, what a scope for Coleridge's philosophy, above +all! "If the bottled moonshine _be_ actually substance? Ah, could one +but believe in a Church while finding it incredible! What is faith; what +is conviction, credibility, insight? Can a thing be at once known for +true, and known for false? 'Reason,' 'Understanding:' is there, then, +such an internecine war between these two? It was so Coleridge +imagined it, the wisest of existing men!"--No, it is not an easy matter +(according to Sir Kenelm Digby), this of getting up your "astral spirit" +of a thing, and setting it in action, when the thing itself is well +burnt to ashes. Poor Sterling; poor sons of Adam in general, in this sad +age of cobwebs, worn-out symbolisms, reminiscences and simulacra! Who +can tell the struggles of poor Sterling, and his pathless wanderings +through these things! Long afterwards, in speech with his Brother, +he compared his case in this time to that of "a young lady who has +tragically lost her lover, and is willing to be half-hoodwinked into a +convent, or in any noble or quasi-noble way to escape from a world which +has become intolerable." + + +During the summer of 1832, I find traces of attempts towards +Anti-Slavery Philanthropy; shadows of extensive schemes in that +direction. Half-desperate outlooks, it is likely, towards the refuge of +Philanthropism, as a new chivalry of life. These took no serious hold +of so clear an intellect; but they hovered now and afterwards as +day-dreams, when life otherwise was shorn of aim;--mirages in the +desert, which are found not to be lakes when you put your bucket into +them. One thing was clear, the sojourn in St. Vincent was not to last +much longer. + +Perhaps one might get some scheme raised into life, in Downing Street, +for universal Education to the Blacks, preparatory to emancipating +them? There were a noble work for a man! Then again poor Mrs. Sterling's +health, contrary to his own, did not agree with warm moist climates. +And again, &c. &c. These were the outer surfaces of the measure; the +unconscious pretexts under which it showed itself to Sterling and +was shown by him: but the inner heart and determining cause of it (as +frequently in Sterling's life, and in all our lives) was not these. In +brief, he had had enough of St. Vincent. The strangling oppressions of +his soul were too heavy for him there. Solution lay in Europe, or might +lie; not in these remote solitudes of the sea,--where no shrine or +saint's well is to be looked for, no communing of pious pilgrims +journeying together towards a shrine. + + + +CHAPTER XV. BONN; HERSTMONCEUX. + +After a residence of perhaps fifteen months Sterling quitted St. +Vincent, and never returned. He reappeared at his Father's house, to the +joy of English friends, in August, 1832; well improved in health, and +eager for English news; but, beyond vague schemes and possibilities, +considerably uncertain what was next to be done. + +After no long stay in this scene,--finding Downing Street dead as stone +to the Slave-Education and to all other schemes,--he went across, with +his wife and child, to Germany; purposing to make not so much a tour +as some loose ramble, or desultory residence in that country, in the +Rhineland first of all. Here was to be hoped the picturesque in scenery, +which he much affected; here the new and true in speculation, which +he inwardly longed for and wanted greatly more; at all events, here as +readily as elsewhere might a temporary household be struck up, under +interesting circumstances.--I conclude he went across in the Spring +of 1833; perhaps directly after _Arthur Coningsby_ had got through the +press. This Novel, which, as we have said, was begun two or three years +ago, probably on his cessation from the _Athenaeum_, and was mainly +finished, I think, before the removal to St. Vincent, had by this time +fallen as good as obsolete to his own mind; and its destination now, +whether to the press or to the fire, was in some sort a matter at once +of difficulty and of insignificance to him. At length deciding for the +milder alternative, he had thrown in some completing touches here +and there,--especially, as I conjecture, a proportion of Coleridgean +moonshine at the end; and so sent it forth. + +It was in the sunny days, perhaps in May or June of this year, that +_Arthur Coningsby_ reached my own hand, far off amid the heathy +wildernesses; sent by John Mill: and I can still recollect the pleasant +little episode it made in my solitude there. The general impression it +left on me, which has never since been renewed by a second reading in +whole or in part, was the certain prefigurement to myself, more or +less distinct, of an opulent, genial and sunny mind, but misdirected, +disappointed, experienced in misery;--nay crude and hasty; mistaking for +a solid outcome from its woes what was only to me a gilded vacuity. The +hero an ardent youth, representing Sterling himself, plunges into +life such as we now have it in these anarchic times, with the radical, +utilitarian, or mutinous heathen theory, which is the readiest for +inquiring souls; finds, by various courses of adventure, utter shipwreck +in this; lies broken, very wretched: that is the tragic nodus, or +apogee of his life-course. In this mood of mind, he clutches desperately +towards some new method (recognizable as Coleridge's) of laying hand +again on the old Church, which has hitherto been extraneous and as +if non-extant to his way of thought; makes out, by some Coleridgean +legedermain, that there actually is still a Church for him; that this +extant Church, which he long took for an extinct shadow, is not such, +but a substance; upon which he can anchor himself amid the storms of +fate;--and he does so, even taking orders in it, I think. Such could +by no means seem to me the true or tenable solution. Here clearly, +struggling amid the tumults, was a lovable young fellow-soul; who had +by no means yet got to land; but of whom much might be hoped, if he ever +did. Some of the delineations are highly pictorial, flooded with a +deep ruddy effulgence; betokening much wealth, in the crude or the ripe +state. The hope of perhaps, one day, knowing Sterling, was welcome +and interesting to me. _Arthur Coningsby_, struggling imperfectly in a +sphere high above circulating-library novels, gained no notice whatever +in that quarter; gained, I suppose in a few scattered heads, some such +recognition as the above; and there rested. Sterling never mentioned the +name of it in my hearing, or would hear it mentioned. + + +In those very days while _Arthur Coningsby_ was getting read amid the +Scottish moors, "in June, 1833," Sterling, at Bonn in the Rhine-country, +fell in with his old tutor and friend, the Reverend Julius Hare; one +with whom he always delighted to communicate, especially on such topics +as then altogether occupied him. A man of cheerful serious character, of +much approved accomplishment, of perfect courtesy; surely of much piety, +in all senses of that word. Mr. Hare had quitted his scholastic labors +and distinctions, some time ago; the call or opportunity for taking +orders having come; and as Rector of Herstmonceux in Sussex, a place +patrimonially and otherwise endeared to him, was about entering, under +the best omens, on a new course of life. He was now on his return from +Rome, and a visit of some length to Italy. Such a meeting could not +but be welcome and important to Sterling in such a mood. They had +much earnest conversation, freely communing on the highest matters; +especially of Sterling's purpose to undertake the clerical profession, +in which course his reverend friend could not but bid him good speed. + +It appears, Sterling already intimated his intention to become a +clergyman: He would study theology, biblicalities, perfect himself in +the knowledge seemly or essential for his new course;--read diligently +"for a year or two in some good German University," then seek to obtain +orders: that was his plan. To which Mr. Hare gave his hearty _Euge_; +adding that if his own curacy happened then to be vacant, he should be +well pleased to have Sterling in that office. So they parted. + +"A year or two" of serious reflection "in some good German University," +or anywhere in the world, might have thrown much elucidation upon these +confused strugglings and purposings of Sterling's, and probably have +spared him some confusion in his subsequent life. But the talent of +waiting was, of all others, the one he wanted most. Impetuous velocity, +all-hoping headlong alacrity, what we must call rashness and impatience, +characterized him in most of his important and unimportant procedures; +from the purpose to the execution there was usually but one big leap +with him. A few months after Mr. Hare was gone, Sterling wrote that his +purposes were a little changed by the late meeting at Bonn; that he now +longed to enter the Church straightway: that if the Herstmonceux Curacy +was still vacant, and the Rector's kind thought towards him still held, +he would instantly endeavor to qualify himself for that office. + +Answer being in the affirmative on both heads, Sterling returned to +England; took orders,--"ordained deacon at Chichester on Trinity Sunday +in 1834" (he never became technically priest):--and so, having fitted +himself and family with a reasonable house, in one of those leafy lanes +in quiet Herstmonceux, on the edge of Pevensey Level, he commenced the +duties of his Curacy. + + +The bereaved young lady has _taken_ the veil, then! Even so. "Life is +growing all so dark and brutal; must be redeemed into human, if it will +continue life. Some pious heroism, to give a human color to life again, +on any terms,"--even on impossible ones! + +To such length can transcendental moonshine, cast by some morbidly +radiating Coleridge into the chaos of a fermenting life, act magically +there, and produce divulsions and convulsions and diseased developments. +So dark and abstruse, without lamp or authentic finger-post, is the +course of pious genius towards the Eternal Kingdoms grown. No fixed +highway more; the old spiritual highways and recognized paths to the +Eternal, now all torn up and flung in heaps, submerged in unutterable +boiling mud-oceans of Hypocrisy and Unbelievability, of brutal living +Atheism and damnable dead putrescent Cant: surely a tragic pilgrimage +for all mortals; Darkness, and the mere shadow of Death, enveloping all +things from pole to pole; and in the raging gulf-currents, offering us +will-o'-wisps for loadstars,--intimating that there are no stars, nor +ever were, except certain Old-Jew ones which have now gone out. Once +more, a tragic pilgrimage for all mortals; and for the young pious soul, +winged with genius, and passionately seeking land, and passionately +abhorrent of floating carrion withal, more tragical than for any!--A +pilgrimage we must all undertake nevertheless, and make the best of +with our respective means. Some arrive; a glorious few: many must be +lost,--go down upon the floating wreck which they took for land. Nay, +courage! These also, so far as there was any heroism in them, have +bequeathed their life as a contribution to us, have valiantly laid their +bodies in the chasm for us: of these also there is no ray of heroism +_lost_,--and, on the whole, what else of them could or should be "saved" +at any time? Courage, and ever Forward! + +Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to find sanctuary in the old +Church, and desperately grasp the hem of her garment in such manner, +there will at present be many opinions: and mine must be recorded here +in flat reproval of it, in mere pitying condemnation of it, as a rash, +false, unwise and unpermitted step. Nay, among the evil lessons of his +Time to poor Sterling, I cannot but account this the worst; properly +indeed, as we may say, the apotheosis, the solemn apology and +consecration, of all the evil lessons that were in it to him. Alas, if +we did remember the divine and awful nature of God's Truth, and had not +so forgotten it as poor doomed creatures never did before,--should we, +durst we in our most audacious moments, think of wedding _it_ to the +World's Untruth, which is also, like all untruths, the Devil's? Only in +the world's last lethargy can such things be done, and accounted safe +and pious! Fools! "Do you think the Living God is a buzzard idol," +sternly asks Milton, that you dare address Him in this manner?--Such +darkness, thick sluggish clouds of cowardice and oblivious baseness, +have accumulated on us: thickening as if towards the eternal sleep! +It is not now known, what never needed proof or statement before, that +Religion is not a doubt; that it is a certainty,--or else a mockery and +horror. That none or all of the many things we are in doubt about, and +need to have demonstrated and rendered probable, can by any alchemy be +made a "Religion" for us; but are and must continue a baleful, quiet or +unquiet, Hypocrisy for us; and bring--_salvation_, do we fancy? I think, +it is another thing they will bring, and are, on all hands, visibly +bringing this good while!-- + + +The time, then, with its deliriums, has done its worst for poor +Sterling. Into deeper aberration it cannot lead him; this is the +crowning error. Happily, as beseems the superlative of errors, it was +a very brief, almost a momentary one. In June, 1834, Sterling dates as +installed at Herstmonceux; and is flinging, as usual, his whole soul +into the business; successfully so far as outward results could show: +but already in September, he begins to have misgivings; and in February +following, quits it altogether,--the rest of his life being, in great +part, a laborious effort of detail to pick the fragments of it off him, +and be free of it in soul as well as in title. + +At this the extreme point of spiritual deflexion and depression, when +the world's madness, unusually impressive on such a man, has done its +very worst with him, and in all future errors whatsoever he will be a +little less mistaken, we may close the First Part of Sterling's Life. + + + + +PART II. + + + + +CHAPTER I. CURATE. + +By Mr. Hare's account, no priest of any Church could more fervently +address himself to his functions than Sterling now did. He went about +among the poor, the ignorant, and those that had need of help; zealously +forwarded schools and beneficences; strove, with his whole might, to +instruct and aid whosoever suffered consciously in body, or still worse +unconsciously in mind. He had charged himself to make the Apostle Paul +his model; the perils and voyagings and ultimate martyrdom of Christian +Paul, in those old ages, on the great scale, were to be translated into +detail, and become the practical emblem of Christian Sterling on the +coast of Sussex in this new age. "It would be no longer from Jerusalem +to Damascus," writes Sterling, "to Arabia, to Derbe, Lystra, Ephesus, +that he would travel: but each house of his appointed Parish would be +to him what each of those great cities was,--a place where he would bend +his whole being, and spend his heart for the conversion, purification, +elevation of those under his influence. The whole man would be +forever at work for this purpose; head, heart, knowledge, time, body, +possessions, all would be directed to this end." A high enough model +set before one:--how to be realized!--Sterling hoped to realize it, to +struggle towards realizing it, in some small degree. This is Mr. Hare's +report of him:-- + +"He was continually devising some fresh scheme for improving the +condition of the Parish. His aim was to awaken the minds of the +people, to arouse their conscience, to call forth their sense of moral +responsibility, to make them feel their own sinfulness, their need of +redemption, and thus lead them to a recognition of the Divine Love by +which that redemption is offered to us. In visiting them he was diligent +in all weathers, to the risk of his own health, which was greatly +impaired thereby; and his gentleness and considerate care for the sick +won their affection; so that, though his stay was very short, his name +is still, after a dozen years, cherished by many." + +How beautiful would Sterling be in all this; rushing forward like a host +towards victory; playing and pulsing like sunshine or soft lightning; +busy at all hours to perform his part in abundant and superabundant +measure! "Of that which it was to me personally," continues Mr. Hare, +"to have such a fellow-laborer, to live constantly in the freest +communion with such a friend, I cannot speak. He came to me at a time of +heavy affliction, just after I had heard that the Brother, who had +been the sharer of all my thoughts and feelings from childhood, had bid +farewell to his earthly life at Rome; and thus he seemed given to me to +make up in some sort for him whom I had lost. Almost daily did I look +out for his usual hour of coming to me, and watch his tall slender +form walking rapidly across the hill in front of my window; with the +assurance that he was coming to cheer and brighten, to rouse and stir +me, to call me up to some height of feeling, or down to some depth of +thought. His lively spirit, responding instantaneously to every impulse +of Nature and Art; his generous ardor in behalf of whatever is noble and +true; his scorn of all meanness, of all false pretences and conventional +beliefs, softened as it was by compassion for the victims of those +besetting sins of a cultivated age; his never-flagging impetuosity in +pushing onward to some unattained point of duty or of knowledge: all +this, along with his gentle, almost reverential affectionateness towards +his former tutor, rendered my intercourse with him an unspeakable +blessing; and time after time has it seemed to me that his visit had +been like a shower of rain, bringing down freshness and brightness on +a dusty roadside hedge. By him too the recollection of these our daily +meetings was cherished till the last." [11] + +There are many poor people still at Herstmonceux who affectionately +remember him: Mr. Hare especially makes mention of one good man there, +in his young days "a poor cobbler," and now advanced to a much +better position, who gratefully ascribes this outward and the other +improvements in his life to Sterling's generous encouragement and +charitable care for him. Such was the curate life at Herstmonceux. So, +in those actual leafy lanes, on the edge of Pevensey Level, in this new +age, did our poor New Paul (on hest of certain oracles) diligently +study to comport himself,--and struggle with all his might _not_ to be a +moonshine shadow of the First Paul. + + +It was in this summer of 1834,--month of May, shortly after arriving in +London,--that I first saw Sterling's Father. A stout broad gentleman +of sixty, perpendicular in attitude, rather showily dressed, and of +gracious, ingenious and slightly elaborate manners. It was at Mrs. +Austin's in Bayswater; he was just taking leave as I entered, so our +interview lasted only a moment: but the figure of the man, as Sterling's +father, had already an interest for me, and I remember the time well. +Captain Edward Sterling, as we formerly called him, had now quite dropt +the military title, nobody even of his friends now remembering it; and +was known, according to his wish, in political and other circles, as Mr. +Sterling, a private gentleman of some figure. Over whom hung, moreover, +a kind of mysterious nimbus as the principal or one of the principal +writers in the _Times_, which gave an interesting chiaroscuro to his +character in society. A potent, profitable, but somewhat questionable +position; of which, though he affected, and sometimes with anger, +altogether to disown it, and rigorously insisted on the rights of +anonymity, he was not unwilling to take the honors too: the private +pecuniary advantages were very undeniable; and his reception in the +Clubs, and occasionally in higher quarters, was a good deal modelled on +the universal belief in it. + + +John Sterling at Herstmonceux that afternoon, and his Father here in +London, would have offered strange contrasts to an eye that had +seen them both. Contrasts, and yet concordances. They were two very +different-looking men, and were following two very different modes of +activity that afternoon. And yet with a strange family likeness, too, +both in the men and their activities; the central impulse in each, the +faculties applied to fulfil said impulse, not at all dissimilar,--as +grew visible to me on farther knowledge. + + + +CHAPTER II. NOT CURATE. + +Thus it went on for some months at Herstmonceux; but thus it could +not last. We said there were already misgivings as to health, &c. in +September: [12] that was but the fourth month, for it had begun only in +June. The like clouds of misgiving, flights of dark vapor, chequering +more and more the bright sky of this promised land, rose heavier and +rifer month after month; till in February following, that is in the +eighth month from starting, the sky had grown quite overshaded; and poor +Sterling had to think practically of departure from his promised land +again, finding that the goal of his pilgrimage was _not_ there. Not +there, wherever it may be! March again, therefore; the abiding city, +and post at which we can live and die, is still ahead of us, it would +appear! + +"Ill-health" was the external cause; and, to all parties concerned, +to Sterling himself I have no doubt as completely as to any, the one +determining cause. Nor was the ill-health wanting; it was there in too +sad reality. And yet properly it was not there as the burden; it was +there as the last ounce which broke the camel's back. I take it, in this +as in other cases known to me, ill-health was not the primary cause +but rather the ultimate one, the summing-up of innumerable far deeper +conscious and unconscious causes,--the cause which could boldly show +itself on the surface, and give the casting vote. Such was often +Sterling's way, as one could observe in such cases: though the most +guileless, undeceptive and transparent of men, he had a noticeable, +almost childlike faculty of self-deception, and usually substituted +for the primary determining motive and set of motives, some ultimate +ostensible one, and gave that out to himself and others as the ruling +impulse for important changes in life. As is the way with much more +ponderous and deliberate men;--as is the way, in a degree, with all men! + +Enough, in February, 1835, Sterling came up to London, to consult with +his physicians,--and in fact in all ways to consider with himself and +friends,--what was to be done in regard to this Herstmonceux business. +The oracle of the physicians, like that of Delphi, was not exceedingly +determinate: but it did bear, what was a sufficiently undeniable fact, +that Sterling's constitution, with a tendency to pulmonary ailments, +was ill-suited for the office of a preacher; that total abstinence from +preaching for a year or two would clearly be the safer course. To which +effect he writes to Mr. Hare with a tone of sorrowful agitation; gives +up his clerical duties at Herstmonceux;--and never resumed them there +or elsewhere. He had been in the Church eight months in all: a brief +section of his life, but an important one, which colored several of his +subsequent years, and now strangely colors all his years in the memory +of some. + +This we may account the second grand crisis of his History. Radicalism, +not long since, had come to its consummation, and vanished from him in +a tragic manner. "Not by Radicalism is the path to Human Nobleness for +me!" And here now had English Priesthood risen like a sun, over the +waste ruins and extinct volcanoes of his dead Radical world, with +promise of new blessedness and healing under its Wings; and this too has +soon found itself an illusion: "Not by Priesthood either lies the way, +then. Once more, where does the way lie!"--To follow illusions till they +burst and vanish is the lot of all new souls who, luckily or lucklessly, +are left to their own choice in starting on this Earth. The roads are +many; the authentic finger-posts are few,--never fewer than in this era, +when in so many senses the waters are out. Sterling of all men had the +quickest sense for nobleness, heroism and the human _summum bonum_; the +liveliest headlong spirit of adventure and audacity; few gifted living +men less stubbornness of perseverance. Illusions, in his chase of the +_summum bonum_, were not likely to be wanting; aberrations, and wasteful +changes of course, were likely to be many! It is in the history of +such vehement, trenchant, far-shining and yet intrinsically light and +volatile souls, missioned into this epoch to seek their way there, that +we best see what a confused epoch it is. + +This clerical aberration,--for such it undoubtedly was in Sterling,--we +have ascribed to Coleridge; and do clearly think that had there been +no Coleridge, neither had this been,--nor had English Puseyism or some +other strange enough universal portents been. Nevertheless, let us say +farther that it lay partly in the general bearing of the world for +such a man. This battle, universal in our sad epoch of "all old things +passing away" against "all things becoming new," has its summary and +animating heart in that of Radicalism against Church; there, as in its +flaming core, and point of focal splendor, does the heroic worth that +lies in each side of the quarrel most clearly disclose itself; and +Sterling was the man, above many, to recognize such worth on both sides. +Natural enough, in such a one, that the light of Radicalism having gone +out in darkness for him, the opposite splendor should next rise as the +chief, and invite his loyalty till it also failed. In one form or the +other, such an aberration was not unlikely for him. But an aberration, +especially in this form, we may certainly call it. No man of Sterling's +veracity, had he clearly consulted his own heart, or had his own heart +been capable of clearly responding, and not been dazzled and bewildered +by transient fantasies and theosophic moonshine, could have undertaken +this function. His heart would have answered: "No, thou canst not. What +is incredible to thee, thou shalt not, at thy soul's peril, attempt to +believe!--Elsewhither for a refuge, or die here. Go to Perdition if thou +must,--but not with a lie in thy mouth; by the Eternal Maker, no!" + +Alas, once more! How are poor mortals whirled hither and thither in the +tumultuous chaos of our era; and, under the thick smoke-canopy which +has eclipsed all stars, how do they fly now after this poor meteor, now +after that!--Sterling abandoned his clerical office in February, 1835; +having held it, and ardently followed it, so long as we say,--eight +calendar months in all. + + +It was on this his February expedition to London that I first saw +Sterling,--at the India House incidentally, one afternoon, where I +found him in company with John Mill, whom I happened like himself to be +visiting for a few minutes. The sight of one whose fine qualities I had +often heard of lately, was interesting enough; and, on the whole, proved +not disappointing, though it was the translation of dream into fact, +that is of poetry into prose, and showed its unrhymed side withal. A +loose, careless-looking, thin figure, in careless dim costume, sat, in +a lounging posture, carelessly and copiously talking. I was struck with +the kindly but restless swift-glancing eyes, which looked as if the +spirits were all out coursing like a pack of merry eager beagles, +beating every bush. The brow, rather sloping in form, was not of +imposing character, though again the head was longish, which is always +the best sign of intellect; the physiognomy in general indicated +animation rather than strength. + +We talked rapidly of various unmemorable things: I remember coming on +the Negroes, and noticing that Sterling's notion on the Slavery Question +had not advanced into the stage of mine. In reference to the question +whether an "engagement for life," on just terms, between parties who +are fixed in the character of master and servant, as the Whites and the +Negroes are, is not really better than one from day to day,--he said +with a kindly jeer, "I would have the Negroes themselves consulted as to +that!"--and would not in the least believe that the Negroes were by +no means final or perfect judges of it.--His address, I perceived, was +abrupt, unceremonious; probably not at all disinclined to logic, and +capable of dashing in upon you like a charge of Cossacks, on occasion: +but it was also eminently ingenious, social, guileless. We did all very +well together: and Sterling and I walked westward in company, choosing +whatever lanes or quietest streets there were, as far as Knightsbridge +where our roads parted; talking on moralities, theological philosophies; +arguing copiously, but _except_ in opinion not disagreeing + +In his notions on such subjects, the expected Coleridge cast of thought +was very visible; and he seemed to express it even with exaggeration, +and in a fearless dogmatic manner. Identity of sentiment, difference of +opinion: these are the known elements of a pleasant dialogue. We parted +with the mutual wish to meet again;--which accordingly, at his Father's +house and at mine, we soon repeatedly did; and already, in the few days +before his return to Herstmonceux, had laid the foundations of a frank +intercourse, pointing towards pleasant intimacies both with himself +and with his circle, which in the future were abundantly fulfilled. +His Mother, essentially and even professedly "Scotch," took to my Wife +gradually with a most kind maternal relation; his Father, a gallant +showy stirring gentleman, the Magus of the _Times_, had talk and +argument ever ready, was an interesting figure, and more and more took +interest in us. We had unconsciously made an acquisition, which grew +richer and wholesomer with every new year; and ranks now, seen in +the pale moonlight of memory, and must ever rank, among the precious +possessions of life. + +Sterling's bright ingenuity, and also his audacity, velocity and +alacrity, struck me more and more. It was, I think, on the occasion of a +party given one of these evenings at his Father's, where I remember John +Mill, John Crawford, Mrs. Crawford, and a number of young and elderly +figures of distinction,--that a group having formed on the younger side +of the room, and transcendentalisms and theologies forming the topic, a +number of deep things were said in abrupt conversational style, Sterling +in the thick of it. For example, one sceptical figure praised the +Church of England, in Hume's phrase, "as a Church tending to keep down +fanaticism," and recommendable for its very indifferency; whereupon a +transcendental figure urges him: "You are afraid of the horse's kicking: +but will you sacrifice all qualities to being safe from that? Then get +a dead horse. None comparable to that for not kicking in your stable!" +Upon which, a laugh; with new laughs on other the like occasions;--and +at last, in the fire of some discussion, Sterling, who was unusually +eloquent and animated, broke out with this wild phrase, "I could plunge +into the bottom of Hell, if I were sure of finding the Devil there and +getting him strangled!" Which produced the loudest laugh of all; and had +to be repeated, on Mrs. Crawford's inquiry, to the house at large; and, +creating among the elders a kind of silent shudder,--though we +urged that the feat would really be a good investment of human +industry,--checked or stopt these theologic thunders for the evening. +I still remember Sterling as in one of his most animated moods that +evening. He probably returned to Herstmonceux next day, where he +proposed yet to reside for some indefinite time. + +Arrived at Herstmonceux, he had not forgotten us. One of his Letters +written there soon after was the following, which much entertained +me, in various ways. It turns on a poor Book of mine, called _Sartor +Resartus_; which was not then even a Book, but was still hanging +desolately under bibliopolic difficulties, now in its fourth or fifth +year, on the wrong side of the river, as a mere aggregate of Magazine +Articles; having at last been slit into that form, and lately completed +_so_, and put together into legibility. I suppose Sterling had borrowed +it of me. The adventurous hunter spirit which had started such a bemired +_Auerochs_, or Urus of the German woods, and decided on chasing that as +game, struck me not a little;--and the poor Wood-Ox, so bemired in the +forests, took it as a compliment rather:-- + + "_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_. + "HERSTMONCEUX near BATTLE, 29th May, 1835. + +"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--I have now read twice, with care, the wondrous +account of Teufelsdrockh and his Opinions; and I need not say that it +has given me much to think of. It falls in with the feelings and tastes +which were, for years, the ruling ones of my life; but which you will +not be angry with me when I say that I am infinitely and hourly thankful +for having escaped from. Not that I think of this state of mind as one +with which I have no longer any concern. The sense of a oneness of life +and power in all existence; and of a boundless exuberance of beauty +around us, to which most men are well-nigh dead, is a possession which +no one that has ever enjoyed it would wish to lose. When to this we add +the deep feeling of the difference between the actual and the ideal +in Nature, and still more in Man; and bring in, to explain this, the +principle of duty, as that which connects us with a possible Higher +State, and sets us in progress towards it,--we have a cycle of thoughts +which was the whole spiritual empire of the wisest Pagans, and which +might well supply food for the wide speculations and richly creative +fancy of Teufelsdrockh, or his prototype Jean Paul. + +"How then comes it, we cannot but ask, that these ideas, displayed +assuredly with no want of eloquence, vivacity or earnestness, have +found, unless I am much mistaken, so little acceptance among the best +and most energetic minds in this country? In a country where millions +read the Bible, and thousands Shakspeare; where Wordsworth circulates +through book-clubs and drawing-rooms; where there are innumerable +admirers of your favorite Burns; and where Coleridge, by sending from +his solitude the voice of earnest spiritual instruction, came to be +beloved, studied and mourned for, by no small or careless school of +disciples?--To answer this question would, of course, require more +thought and knowledge than I can pretend to bring to it. But there are +some points on which I will venture to say a few words. + +"In the first place, as to the form of composition,--which may be +called, I think, the Rhapsodico-Reflective. In this the _Sartor +Resartus_ resembles some of the master-works of human invention, which +have been acknowledged as such by many generations; and especially the +works of Rabelais, Montaigne, Sterne and Swift. There is nothing I +know of in Antiquity like it. That which comes nearest is perhaps the +Platonic Dialogue. But of this, although there is something of the +playful and fanciful on the surface, there is in reality neither in the +language (which is austerely determined to its end), nor in the method +and progression of the work, any of that headlong self-asserting +capriciousness, which, if not discernible in the plan of Teufelsdrockh's +Memoirs, is yet plainly to be seen in the structure of the sentences, +the lawless oddity, and strange heterogeneous combination and allusion. +The principle of this difference, observable often elsewhere in modern +literature (for the same thing is to be found, more or less, in many of +our most genial works of imagination,--_Don Quixote_, for instance, and +the writings of Jeremy Taylor), seems to be that well-known one of the +predominant objectivity of the Pagan mind; while among us the subjective +has risen into superiority, and brought with it in each individual +a multitude of peculiar associations and relations. These, as not +explicable from any one _external_ principle assumed as a premise by +the ancient philosopher, were rejected from the sphere of his aesthetic +creation: but to us they all have a value and meaning; being connected +by the bond of our own personality and all alike existing in that +infinity which is its arena. + +"But however this may be, and comparing the Teufelsdrockhean Epopee +only with those other modern works,--it is noticeable that Rabelais, +Montaigne and Sterne have trusted for the currency of their writings, in +a great degree, to the use of obscene and sensual stimulants. Rabelais, +besides, was full of contemporary and personal satire; and seems to +have been a champion in the great cause of his time,--as was Montaigne +also,--that of the right of thought in all competent minds, unrestrained +by any outward authority. Montaigne, moreover, contains more pleasant +and lively gossip, and more distinct good-humored painting of his own +character and daily habits, than any other writer I know. Sterne is +never obscure, and never moral; and the costume of his subjects is drawn +from the familiar experience of his own time and country: and Swift, +again, has the same merit of the clearest perspicuity, joined to that +of the most homely, unaffected, forcible English. These points of +difference seem to me the chief ones which bear against the success of +the _Sartor_. On the other hand, there is in Teufelsdrockh a depth and +fervor of feeling, and a power of serious eloquence, far beyond that of +any of these four writers; and to which indeed there is nothing at +all comparable in any of them, except perhaps now and then, and very +imperfectly, in Montaigne. + +"Of the other points of comparison there are two which I would +chiefly dwell on: and first as to the language. A good deal of this +is positively barbarous. 'Environment,' 'vestural,' 'stertorous,' +'visualized,' 'complected,' and others to be found I think in the first +twenty pages,--are words, so far as I know, without any authority; +some of them contrary to analogy: and none repaying by their value +the disadvantage of novelty. To these must be added new and erroneous +locutions; 'whole other tissues' for _all the other_, and similar +uses of the word _whole_; 'orients' for _pearls_; 'lucid' and 'lucent' +employed as if they were different in meaning; 'hulls' perpetually for +_coverings_, it being a word hardly used, and then only for the husk +of a nut; 'to insure a man of misapprehension;' 'talented,' a mere +newspaper and hustings word, invented, I believe, by O'Connell. + +"I must also mention the constant recurrence of some words in a quaint +and queer connection, which gives a grotesque and somewhat repulsive +mannerism to many sentences. Of these the commonest offender is 'quite;' +which appears in almost every page, and gives at first a droll kind of +emphasis; but soon becomes wearisome. 'Nay,' 'manifold,' 'cunning enough +significance,' 'faculty' (meaning a man's rational or moral _power_), +'special,' 'not without,' haunt the reader as if in some uneasy dream +which does not rise to the dignity of nightmare. Some of these strange +mannerisms fall under the general head of a singularity peculiar, so far +as I know, to Teufelsdrockh. For instance, that of the incessant use of +a sort of odd superfluous qualification of his assertions; which seems +to give the character of deliberateness and caution to the style, but +in time sounds like mere trick or involuntary habit. 'Almost' does more +than yeoman's, _almost_ slave's service in this way. Something similar +may be remarked of the use of the double negative by way of affirmation. + +"Under this head, of language, may be mentioned, though not with strict +grammatical accuracy, two standing characteristics of the Professor's +style,--at least as rendered into English: _First_, the composition +of words, such as 'snow-and-rosebloom maiden:' an attractive damsel +doubtless in Germany, but, with all her charms, somewhat uncouth here. +'Life-vision' is another example; and many more might be found. To +say nothing of the innumerable cases in which the words are only +intelligible as a compound term, though not distinguished by hyphens. Of +course the composition of words is sometimes allowable even in English: +but the habit of dealing with German seems to have produced, in the +pages before us, a prodigious superabundance of this form of expression; +which gives harshness and strangeness, where the matter would at all +events have been surprising enough. _Secondly_, I object, with the +same qualification, to the frequent use of _inversion_; which generally +appears as a transposition of the two members of a clause, in a way +which would not have been practiced in conversation. It certainly gives +emphasis and force, and often serves to point the meaning. But a style +may be fatiguing and faulty precisely by being too emphatic, forcible +and pointed; and so straining the attention to find its meaning, or the +admiration to appreciate its beauty. + +"Another class of considerations connects itself with the heightened +and plethoric fulness of the style: its accumulation and contrast of +imagery; its occasional jerking and almost spasmodic violence;--and +above all, the painful subjective excitement, which seems the element +and groundwork even of every description of Nature; often taking the +shape of sarcasm or broad jest, but never subsiding into calm. There is +also a point which I should think worth attending to, were I planning +any similar book: I mean the importance, in a work of imagination, of +not too much disturbing in the reader's mind the balance of the New +and Old. The former addresses itself to his active, the latter to his +passive faculty; and these are mutually dependent, and must coexist in +certain proportion, if you wish to combine his sympathy and progressive +exertion with willingness and ease of attention. This should be taken +into account in forming a style; for of course it cannot be consciously +thought of in composing each sentence. + +"But chiefly it seems important in determining the plan of a work. If +the tone of feeling, the line of speculation are out of the common way, +and sure to present some difficulty to the average reader, then it would +probably be desirable to select, for the circumstances, drapery +and accessories of all kinds, those most familiar, or at least most +attractive. A fable of the homeliest purport, and commonest every-day +application, derives an interest and charm from its turning on the +characters and acts of gods and genii, lions and foxes, Arabs and +Affghauns. On the contrary, for philosophic inquiry and truths of awful +preciousness, I would select as my personages and interlocutors beings +with whose language and 'whereabouts' my readers would be familiar. Thus +did Plato in his Dialogues, Christ in his Parables. Therefore it seems +doubtful whether it was judicious to make a German Professor the hero +of _Sartor_. Berkeley began his _Siris_ with tar-water; but what can +English readers be expected to make of _Gukguk_ by way of prelibation to +your nectar and tokay? The circumstances and details do not flash with +living reality on the minds of your readers, but, on the contrary, +themselves require some of that attention and minute speculation, the +whole original stock of which, in the minds of most of them, would not +be too much to enable them to follow your views of Man and Nature. In +short, there is not a sufficient basis of the common to justify +the amount of peculiarity in the work. In a book of science, these +considerations would of course be inapplicable; but then the whole shape +and coloring of the book must be altered to make it such; and a man +who wishes merely to get at the philosophical result, or summary of the +whole, will regard the details and illustrations as so much unprofitable +surplusage. + +"The sense of strangeness is also awakened by the marvellous +combinations, in which the work abounds to a degree that the common +reader must find perfectly bewildering. This can hardly, however, be +treated as a consequence of the _style_; for the style in this respect +coheres with, and springs from, the whole turn and tendency of thought. +The noblest images are objects of a humorous smile, in a mind which +sees itself above all Nature and throned in the arms of an Almighty +Necessity; while the meanest have a dignity, inasmuch as they are +trivial symbols of the same one life to which the great whole +belongs. And hence, as I divine, the startling whirl of incongruous +juxtaposition, which of a truth must to many readers seem as amazing as +if the Pythia on the tripod should have struck up a drinking-song, or +Thersites had caught the prophetic strain of Cassandra. + +"All this, of course, appears to me true and relevant; but I cannot help +feeling that it is, after all, but a poor piece of quackery to comment +on a multitude of phenomena without adverting to the principle which +lies at the root, and gives the true meaning to them all. Now this +principle I seem to myself to find in the state of mind which is +attributed to Teufelsdrockh; in his state of mind, I say, not in his +opinions, though these are, in him as in all men, most important,--being +one of the best indices to his state of mind. Now what distinguishes +him, not merely from the greatest and best men who have been on earth +for eighteen hundred years, but from the whole body of those who have +been working forwards towards the good, and have been the salt and light +of the world, is this: That he does not believe in a God. Do not be +indignant, I am blaming no one;--but if I write my thoughts, I must +write them honestly. + +"Teufelsdrockh does not belong to the herd of sensual and thoughtless +men; because he does perceive in all Existence a unity of power; because +he does believe that this is a real power external to him and dominant +to a certain extent over him, and does not think that he is himself a +shadow in a world of shadows. He had a deep feeling of the beautiful, +the good and the true; and a faith in their final victory. + +"At the same time, how evident is the strong inward unrest, the Titanic +heaving of mountain on mountain; the storm-like rushing over land and +sea in search of peace. He writhes and roars under his consciousness +of the difference in himself between the possible and the actual, the +hoped-for and the existent. He feels that duty is the highest law of +his own being; and knowing how it bids the waves be stilled into an +icy fixedness and grandeur, he trusts (but with a boundless inward +misgiving) that there is a principle of order which will reduce all +confusion to shape and clearness. But wanting peace himself, his fierce +dissatisfaction fixes on all that is weak, corrupt and imperfect around +him; and instead of a calm and steady co-operation with all those who +are endeavoring to apply the highest ideas as remedies for the worst +evils, he holds himself aloof in savage isolation; and cherishes (though +he dare not own) a stern joy at the prospect of that Catastrophe which +is to turn loose again the elements of man's social life, and give for +a time the victory to evil;--in hopes that each new convulsion of the +world must bring us nearer to the ultimate restoration of all things; +fancying that each may be the last. Wanting the calm and cheerful +reliance, which would be the spring of active exertion, he flatters his +own distemper by persuading himself that his own age and generation +are peculiarly feeble and decayed; and would even perhaps be willing +to exchange the restless immaturity of our self-consciousness, and +the promise of its long throe-pangs, for the unawakened undoubting +simplicity of the world's childhood; of the times in which there was all +the evil and horror of our day, only with the difference that conscience +had not arisen to try and condemn it. In these longings, if they are +Teufelsdrockh's, he seems to forget that, could we go back five thousand +years, we should only have the prospect of travelling them again, and +arriving at last at the same point at which we stand now. + +"Something of this state of mind I may say that I understand; for I have +myself experienced it. And the root of the matter appears to me: A want +of sympathy with the great body of those who are now endeavoring to +guide and help onward their fellow-men. And in what is this alienation +grounded? It is, as I believe, simply in the difference on that point: +viz. the clear, deep, habitual recognition of a one Living _Personal_ +God, essentially good, wise, true and holy, the Author of all that +exists; and a reunion with whom is the only end of all rational beings. +This belief... [_There follow now several pages on "Personal God," and +other abstruse or indeed properly unspeakable matters; these, and a +general Postscript of qualifying purport, I will suppress; extracting +only the following fractions, as luminous or slightly significant to +us:_] + +"Now see the difference of Teufelsdrockh's feelings. At the end of book +iii. chap. 8, I find these words: 'But whence? O Heaven, whither? Sense +knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through mystery to mystery, +from God to God. + + 'We _are such stuff_ + As dreams are made of, and our little life + Is rounded with a sleep.' + +And this tallies with the whole strain of his character. What we find +everywhere, with an abundant use of the name of God, is the conception +of a formless Infinite whether in time or space; of a high inscrutable +Necessity, which it is the chief wisdom and virtue to submit to, which +is the mysterious impersonal base of all Existence,--shows itself in the +laws of every separate being's nature; and for man in the shape of duty. +On the other hand, I affirm, we do know whence we come and whither we +go!-- + +... "And in this state of mind, as there is no true sympathy with +others, just as little is there any true peace for ourselves. There is +indeed possible the unsympathizing factitious calm of Art, which we +find in Goethe. But at what expense is it bought? Simply, by abandoning +altogether the idea of duty, which is the great witness of our +personality. And he attains his inhuman ghastly calmness by reducing the +Universe to a heap of material for the idea of beauty to work on!-- + +... "The sum of all I have been writing as to the connection of our +faith in God with our feeling towards men and our mode of action, may of +course be quite erroneous: but granting its truth, it would supply the +one principle which I have been seeking for, in order to explain +the peculiarities of style in your account of Teufelsdrockh and his +writings.... The life and works of Luther are the best comment I know of +on this doctrine of mine. + +"Reading over what I have written, I find I have not nearly done justice +to my own sense of the genius and moral energy of the book; but this +is what you will best excuse.--Believe me most sincerely and faithfully +yours, + + "JOHN STERLING." + +Here are sufficient points of "discrepancy with agreement," here is +material for talk and argument enough; and an expanse of free discussion +open, which requires rather to be speedily restricted for convenience' +sake, than allowed to widen itself into the boundless, as it tends to +do!-- + +In all Sterling's Letters to myself and others, a large collection of +which now lies before me, duly copied and indexed, there is, to one that +knew his speech as well, a perhaps unusual likeness between the speech +and the Letters; and yet, for most part, with a great inferiority on +the part of these. These, thrown off, one and all of them, without +premeditation, and with most rapid-flowing pen, are naturally as like +his speech as writing can well be; this is their grand merit to us: +but on the other hand, the want of the living tones, swift looks and +motions, and manifold dramatic accompaniments, tells heavily, more +heavily than common. What can be done with champagne itself, much more +with soda-water, when the gaseous spirit is fled! The reader, in any +specimens he may see, must bear this in mind. + +Meanwhile these Letters do excel in honesty, in candor and transparency; +their very carelessness secures their excellence in this respect. And in +another much deeper and more essential respect I must likewise call them +excellent,--in their childlike goodness, in the purity of heart, the +noble affection and fidelity they everywhere manifest in the writer. +This often touchingly strikes a familiar friend in reading them; and +will awaken reminiscences (when you have the commentary in your own +memory) which are sad and beautiful, and not without reproach to you on +occasion. To all friends, and all good causes, this man is true; behind +their back as before their face, the same man!--Such traits of the +autobiographic sort, from these Letters, as can serve to paint him +or his life, and promise not to weary the reader, I must endeavor to +select, in the sequel. + + + +CHAPTER III. BAYSWATER + +Sterling continued to reside at Herstmonceux through the spring and +summer; holding by the peaceable retired house he still had there, till +the vague future might more definitely shape itself, and better point +out what place of abode would suit him in his new circumstances. He +made frequent brief visits to London; in which I, among other friends, +frequently saw him, our acquaintance at each visit improving in all +ways. Like a swift dashing meteor he came into our circle; coruscated +among us, for a day or two, with sudden pleasant illumination; then +again suddenly withdrew,--we hoped, not for long. + +I suppose, he was full of uncertainties; but undoubtedly was gravitating +towards London. Yet, on the whole, on the surface of him, you saw no +uncertainties; far from that: it seemed always rather with peremptory +resolutions, and swift express businesses, that he was charged. Sickly +in body, the testimony said: but here always was a mind that gave you +the impression of peremptory alertness, cheery swift decision,--of a +_health_ which you might have called exuberant. I remember dialogues +with him, of that year; one pleasant dialogue under the trees of the +Park (where now, in 1851, is the thing called "Crystal Palace"), with +the June sunset flinging long shadows for us; the last of the Quality +just vanishing for dinner, and the great night beginning to prophesy of +itself. Our talk (like that of the foregoing Letter) was of the faults +of my style, of my way of thinking, of my &c. &c.; all which +admonitions and remonstrances, so friendly and innocent, from this young +junior-senior, I was willing to listen to, though unable, as usual, to +get almost any practical hold of them. As usual, the garments do not fit +you, you are lost in the garments, or you cannot get into them at all; +this is not your suit of clothes, it must be another's:--alas, these are +not your dimensions, these are only the optical angles you subtend; on +the whole, you will never get measured in that way!-- + +Another time, of date probably very contiguous, I remember hearing +Sterling preach. It was in some new college-chapel in Somerset-house (I +suppose, what is now called King's College); a very quiet small place, +the audience student-looking youths, with a few elder people, perhaps +mostly friends of the preacher's. The discourse, delivered with a +grave sonorous composure, and far surpassing in talent the usual run of +sermons, had withal an air of human veracity as I still recollect, and +bespoke dignity and piety of mind: but gave me the impression rather +of artistic excellence than of unction or inspiration in that kind. +Sterling returned with us to Chelsea that day;--and in the afternoon we +went on the Thames Putney-ward together, we two with my Wife; under +the sunny skies, on the quiet water, and with copious cheery talk, the +remembrance of which is still present enough to me. + +This was properly my only specimen of Sterling's preaching. Another +time, late in the same autumn, I did indeed attend him one evening to +some Church in the City,--a big Church behind Cheapside, "built by Wren" +as he carefully informed me;--but there, in my wearied mood, the chief +subject of reflection was the almost total vacancy of the place, and how +an eloquent soul was preaching to mere lamps and prayer-books; and of +the sermon I retain no image. It came up in the way of banter, if he +ever urged the duty of "Church extension," which already he very seldom +did and at length never, what a specimen we once had of bright lamps, +gilt prayer-books, baize-lined pews, Wren-built architecture; and how, +in almost all directions, you might have fired a musket through the +church, and hit no Christian life. A terrible outlook indeed for the +Apostolic laborer in the brick-and-mortar line!-- + + +In the Autumn of this same 1835, he removed permanently to London, +whither all summer he had been evidently tending; took a house in +Bayswater, an airy suburb, half town, half country, near his Father's, +and within fair distance of his other friends and objects; and decided +to await there what the ultimate developments of his course might be. +His house was in Orme Square, close by the corner of that little place +(which has only _three_ sides of houses); its windows looking to the +east: the Number was, and I believe still is, No. 5. A sufficiently +commodious, by no means sumptuous, small mansion; where, with the means +sure to him, he could calculate on finding adequate shelter for his +family, his books and himself, and live in a decent manner, in no terror +of debt, for one thing. His income, I suppose, was not large; but he +lived generally a safe distance within it; and showed himself always as +a man bountiful in money matters, and taking no thought that way. + +His study-room in this house was perhaps mainly the drawing-room; +looking out safe, over the little dingy grassplot in front, and the +quiet little row of houses opposite, with the huge dust-whirl of +Oxford Street and London far enough ahead of you as background,--as +back-curtain, blotting out only _half_ your blue hemisphere with dust +and smoke. On the right, you had the continuous growl of the Uxbridge +Road and its wheels, coming as lullaby not interruption. Leftward and +rearward, after some thin belt of houses, lay mere country; bright +sweeping green expanses, crowned by pleasant Hampstead, pleasant Harrow, +with their rustic steeples rising against the sky. Here on winter +evenings, the bustle of removal being all well ended, and family and +books got planted in their new places, friends could find Sterling, as +they often did, who was delighted to be found by them, and would give +and take, vividly as few others, an hour's good talk at any time. + +His outlooks, it must be admitted, were sufficiently vague and +overshadowed; neither the past nor the future of a too joyful kind. +Public life, in any professional form, is quite forbidden; to work +with his fellows anywhere appears to be forbidden: nor can the humblest +solitary endeavor to work worthily as yet find an arena. How unfold +one's little bit of talent; and live, and not lie sleeping, while it +is called To-day? As Radical, as Reforming Politician in any public or +private form,--not only has this, in Sterling's case, received tragical +sentence and execution; but the opposite extreme, the Church whither he +had fled, likewise proves abortive: the Church also is not the haven for +him at all. What is to be done? Something must be done, and soon,--under +penalties. Whoever has received, on him there is an inexorable behest to +give. "_Fais ton fait_, Do thy little stroke of work:" this is Nature's +voice, and the sum of all the commandments, to each man! + +A shepherd of the people, some small Agamemnon after his sort, doing +what little sovereignty and guidance he can in his day and generation: +such every gifted soul longs, and should long, to be. But how, in any +measure, is the small kingdom necessary for Sterling to be attained? Not +through newspapers and parliaments, not by rubrics and reading-desks: +none of the sceptres offered in the world's market-place, nor none of +the crosiers there, it seems, can be the shepherd's-crook for this man. +A most cheerful, hoping man; and full of swift faculty, though much +lamed,--considerably bewildered too; and tending rather towards the +wastes and solitary places for a home; the paved world not being +friendly to him hitherto! The paved world, in fact, both on its +practical and spiritual side, slams to its doors against him; indicates +that he cannot enter, and even must not,--that it will prove a +choke-vault, deadly to soul and to body, if he enter. Sceptre, crosier, +sheep-crook is none there for him. + +There remains one other implement, the resource of all Adam's posterity +that are otherwise foiled,--the Pen. It was evident from this point that +Sterling, however otherwise beaten about, and set fluctuating, would +gravitate steadily with all his real weight towards Literature. That he +would gradually try with consciousness to get into Literature; and, on +the whole, never quit Literature, which was now all the world for him. +Such is accordingly the sum of his history henceforth: such small sum, +so terribly obstructed and diminished by circumstances, is all we have +realized from him. + + +Sterling had by no means as yet consciously quitted the clerical +profession, far less the Church as a creed. We have seen, he +occasionally officiated still in these months, when a friend requested +or an opportunity invited. Nay it turned out afterwards, he had, unknown +even to his own family, during a good many weeks in the coldest period +of next spring, when it was really dangerous for his health and did +prove hurtful to it,--been constantly performing the morning service +in some Chapel in Bayswater for a young clerical neighbor, a slight +acquaintance of his, who was sickly at the time. So far as I know, this +of the Bayswater Chapel in the spring of 1836, a feat severely rebuked +by his Doctor withal, was his last actual service as a churchman. But +the conscious life ecclesiastical still hung visibly about his inner +unconscious and real life, for years to come; and not till by slow +degrees he had unwinded from him the wrappages of it, could he become +clear about himself, and so much as try heartily what his now sole +course was. Alas, and he had to live all the rest of his days, as in +continual flight for his very existence; "ducking under like a poor +unfledged partridge-bird," as one described it, "before the mower; +darting continually from nook to nook, and there crouching, to escape +the scythe of Death." For Literature Proper there was but little left +in such a life. Only the smallest broken fractions of his last and +heaviest-laden years can poor Sterling be said to have completely lived. +His purpose had risen before him slowly in noble clearness; clear at +last,--and even then the inevitable hour was at hand. + +In those first London months, as always afterwards while it remained +physically possible, I saw much of him; loved him, as was natural, +more and more; found in him, many ways, a beautiful acquisition to my +existence here. He was full of bright speech and argument; radiant with +arrowy vitalities, vivacities and ingenuities. Less than any man he gave +you the idea of ill-health. Hopeful, sanguine; nay he did not even seem +to need definite hope, or much to form any; projecting himself in aerial +pulses like an aurora borealis, like a summer dawn, and filling all the +world with present brightness for himself and others. Ill-health? Nay +you found at last, it was the very excess of _life_ in him that brought +on disease. This restless play of being, fit to conquer the world, could +it have been held and guided, could not be held. It had worn _holes_ in +the outer case of it, and there found vent for itself,--there, since not +otherwise. + +In our many promenades and colloquies, which were of the freest, most +copious and pleasant nature, religion often formed a topic, and perhaps +towards the beginning of our intercourse was the prevailing topic. +Sterling seemed much engrossed in matters theological, and led the +conversation towards such; talked often about Church, Christianity +Anglican and other, how essential the belief in it to man; then, on +the other side, about Pantheism and such like;--all in the Coleridge +dialect, and with eloquence and volubility to all lengths. I remember +his insisting often and with emphasis on what he called a "personal +God," and other high topics, of which it was not always pleasant to give +account in the argumentative form, in a loud hurried voice, walking and +arguing through the fields or streets. Though of warm quick feelings, +very positive in his opinions, and vehemently eager to convince and +conquer in such discussions, I seldom or never saw the least anger in +him against me or any friend. When the blows of contradiction came too +thick, he could with consummate dexterity whisk aside out of their way; +prick into his adversary on some new quarter; or gracefully flourishing +his weapon, end the duel in some handsome manner. One angry glance I +remember in him, and it was but a glance, and gone in a moment. "Flat +Pantheism!" urged he once (which he would often enough do about this +time), as if triumphantly, of something or other, in the fire of a +debate, in my hearing: "It is mere Pantheism, that!"--"And suppose it +were Pot-theism?" cried the other: "If the thing is true!"--Sterling did +look hurt at such flippant heterodoxy, for a moment. The soul of his own +creed, in those days, was far other than this indifference to Pot or Pan +in such departments of inquiry. + +To me his sentiments for most part were lovable and admirable, though in +the logical outcome there was everywhere room for opposition. I admired +the temper, the longing towards antique heroism, in this young man of +the nineteenth century; but saw not how, except in some German-English +empire of the air, he was ever to realize it on those terms. In fact, +it became clear to me more and more that here was nobleness of heart +striving towards all nobleness; here was ardent recognition of the worth +of Christianity, for one thing; but no belief in it at all, in my sense +of the word belief,--no belief but one definable as mere theoretic +moonshine, which would never stand the wind and weather of fact. Nay it +struck me farther that Sterling's was not intrinsically, nor had ever +been in the highest or chief degree, a devotional mind. Of course all +excellence in man, and worship as the supreme excellence, was part +of the inheritance of this gifted man: but if called to define him, +I should say, Artist not Saint was the real bent of his being. He had +endless admiration, but intrinsically rather a deficiency of reverence +in comparison. Fear, with its corollaries, on the religious side, he +appeared to have none, nor ever to have had any. + +In short, it was a strange enough symptom to me of the bewildered +condition of the world, to behold a man of this temper, and of this +veracity and nobleness, self-consecrated here, by free volition and +deliberate selection, to be a Christian Priest; and zealously struggling +to fancy himself such in very truth. Undoubtedly a singular present +fact;--from which, as from their point of intersection, great +perplexities and aberrations in the past, and considerable confusions in +the future might be seen ominously radiating. Happily our friend, as I +said, needed little hope. To-day with its activities was always bright +and rich to him. His unmanageable, dislocated, devastated world, +spiritual or economical, lay all illuminated in living sunshine, making +it almost beautiful to his eyes, and gave him no hypochondria. A richer +soul, in the way of natural outfit for felicity, for joyful activity in +this world, so far as his strength would go, was nowhere to be met with. + + +The Letters which Mr. Hare has printed, Letters addressed, I imagine, +mostly to himself, in this and the following year or two, give record +of abundant changeful plannings and laborings, on the part of Sterling; +still chiefly in the theological department. Translation from Tholuck, +from Schleiermacher; treatise on this thing, then on that, are on the +anvil: it is a life of abstruse vague speculations, singularly cheerful +and hopeful withal, about Will, Morals, Jonathan Edwards, Jewhood, +Manhood, and of Books to be written on these topics. Part of which +adventurous vague plans, as the Translation from Tholuck, he actually +performed; other greater part, merging always into wider undertakings, +remained plan merely. I remember he talked often about Tholuck, +Schleiermacher, and others of that stamp; and looked disappointed, +though full of good nature, at my obstinate indifference to them and +their affairs. + +His knowledge of German Literature, very slight at this time, +limited itself altogether to writers on Church matters,--Evidences, +Counter-Evidences, Theologies and Rumors of Theologies; by the Tholucks, +Schleiermachers, Neanders, and I know not whom. Of the true sovereign +souls of that Literature, the Goethes, Richters, Schillers, Lessings, +he had as good as no knowledge; and of Goethe in particular an obstinate +misconception, with proper abhorrence appended,--which did not abate for +several years, nor quite abolish itself till a very late period. Till, +in a word, he got Goethe's works fairly read and studied for himself! +This was often enough the course with Sterling in such cases. He had a +most swift glance of recognition for the worthy and for the unworthy; +and was prone, in his ardent decisive way, to put much faith in it. +"Such a one is a worthless idol; not excellent, only sham-excellent:" +here, on this negative side especially, you often had to admire how +right he was;--often, but not quite always. And he would maintain, with +endless ingenuity, confidence and persistence, his fallacious spectrum +to be a real image. However, it was sure to come all right in the end. +Whatever real excellence he might misknow, you had but to let it stand +before him, soliciting new examination from him: none surer than he to +recognize it at last, and to pay it all his dues, with the arrears +and interest on them. Goethe, who figures as some absurd high-stalking +hollow play-actor, or empty ornamental clock-case of an "Artist" +so-called, in the Tale of the _Onyx Ring_, was in the throne of +Sterling's intellectual world before all was done; and the theory +of "Goethe's want of feeling," want of &c. &c. appeared to him also +abundantly contemptible and forgettable. + +Sterling's days, during this time as always, were full of occupation, +cheerfully interesting to himself and others; though, the wrecks of +theology so encumbering him, little fruit on the positive side could +come of these labors. On the negative side they were productive; and +there also, so much of encumbrance requiring removal, before fruit could +grow, there was plenty of labor needed. He looked happy as well as +busy; roamed extensively among his friends, and loved to have them about +him,--chiefly old Cambridge comrades now settling into occupations in +the world;--and was felt by all friends, by myself as by few, to be a +welcome illumination in the dim whirl of things. A man of altogether +social and human ways; his address everywhere pleasant and enlivening. +A certain smile of thin but genuine laughter, we might say, hung +gracefully over all he said and did;--expressing gracefully, according +to the model of this epoch, the stoical pococurantism which is required +of the cultivated Englishman. Such laughter in him was not deep, but +neither was it false (as lamentably happens often); and the cheerfulness +it went to symbolize was hearty and beautiful,--visible in the silent +unsymbolized state in a still gracefuler fashion. + +Of wit, so far as rapid lively intellect produces wit, he had plenty, +and did not abuse his endowment that way, being always fundamentally +serious in the purport of his speech: of what we call humor, he had +some, though little; nay of real sense for the ludicrous, in any form, +he had not much for a man of his vivacity; and you remarked that his +laugh was limited in compass, and of a clear but not rich quality. To +the like effect shone something, a kind of childlike half-embarrassed +shimmer of expression, on his fine vivid countenance; curiously mingling +with its ardors and audacities. A beautiful childlike soul! He was +naturally a favorite in conversation, especially with all who had +any funds for conversing: frank and direct, yet polite and delicate +withal,--though at times too he could crackle with his dexterous +petulancies, making the air all like needles round you; and there was +no end to his logic when you excited it; no end, unless in some form of +silence on your part. Elderly men of reputation I have sometimes known +offended by him: for he took a frank way in the matter of talk; spoke +freely out of him, freely listening to what others spoke, with a kind of +"hail fellow well met" feeling; and carelessly measured a men much less +by his reputed account in the bank of wit, or in any other bank, than by +what the man had to show for himself in the shape of real spiritual cash +on the occasion. But withal there was ever a fine element of natural +courtesy in Sterling; his deliberate demeanor to acknowledged superiors +was fine and graceful; his apologies and the like, when in a fit of +repentance he felt commanded to apologize, were full of naivete, and +very pretty and ingenuous. + +His circle of friends was wide enough; chiefly men of his own standing, +old College friends many of them; some of whom have now become +universally known. Among whom the most important to him was Frederic +Maurice, who had not long before removed to the Chaplaincy of Guy's +Hospital here, and was still, as he had long been, his intimate and +counsellor. Their views and articulate opinions, I suppose, were now +fast beginning to diverge; and these went on diverging far enough: but +in their kindly union, in their perfect trustful familiarity, precious +to both parties, there never was the least break, but a steady, equable +and duly increasing current to the end. One of Sterling's commonest +expeditions, in this time, was a sally to the other side of London +Bridge: "Going to Guy's to-day." Maurice, in a year or two, became +Sterling's brother-in-law; wedded Mrs. Sterling's younger sister,--a +gentle excellent female soul; by whom the relation was, in many ways, +strengthened and beautified for Sterling and all friends of the parties. +With the Literary notabilities I think he had no acquaintance; his +thoughts indeed still tended rather towards a certain class of the +Clerical; but neither had he much to do with these; for he was at +no time the least of a tuft-hunter, but rather had a marked natural +indifference to _tufts_. + +The Rev. Mr. Dunn, a venerable and amiable Irish gentleman, +"distinguished," we were told, "by having refused a bishopric:" and +who was now living, in an opulent enough retirement, amid his books +and philosophies and friends, in London,--is memorable to me among this +clerical class: one of the mildest, beautifulest old men I have ever +seen,--"like Fenelon," Sterling said: his very face, with its kind true +smile, with its look of suffering cheerfulness and pious wisdom, was a +sort of benediction. It is of him that Sterling writes, in the Extract +which Mr. Hare, modestly reducing the name to an initial "Mr. D.," has +given us: [13] "Mr. Dunn, for instance; the defect of whose Theology, +compounded as it is of the doctrine of the Greek Fathers, of the Mystics +and of Ethical Philosophers, consists,--if I may hint a fault in one +whose holiness, meekness and fervor would have made him the beloved +disciple of him whom Jesus loved,--in an insufficient apprehension of +the reality and depth of Sin." A characteristic "defect" of this fine +gentle soul. On Mr. Dunn's death, which occurred two or three +years later, Stirling gave, in some veiled yet transparent form, in +_Blackwood's Magazine_, an affectionate and eloquent notice of him; +which, stript of the veil, was excerpted into the Newspapers also. [14] + +Of Coleridge there was little said. Coleridge was now dead, not long +since; nor was his name henceforth much heard in Sterling's circle; +though on occasion, for a year or two to come, he would still assert his +transcendent admiration, especially if Maurice were by to help. But he +was getting into German, into various inquiries and sources of knowledge +new to him, and his admirations and notions on many things were silently +and rapidly modifying themselves. + +So, amid interesting human realities, and wide cloud-canopies of +uncertain speculation, which also had their interests and their +rainbow-colors to him, and could not fail in his life just now, did +Sterling pass his year and half at Bayswater. Such vaporous speculations +were inevitable for him at present; but it was to be hoped they would +subside by and by, and leave the sky clear. All this was but the +preliminary to whatever work might lie in him:--and, alas, much other +interruption lay between him and that. + + +CHAPTER V. TO MADEIRA. + +Sterling's dubieties as to continuing at Bordeaux were quickly decided. +The cholera in France, the cholera in Nice, the-- In fact his moorings +were now loose; and having been fairly at sea, he never could anchor +himself here again. Very shortly after this Letter, he left Belsito +again (for good, as it proved); and returned to England with his +household, there to consider what should next be done. + +On my return from Scotland, that year, perhaps late in September, I +remember finding him lodged straitly but cheerfully, and in happy humor, +in a little cottage on Blackheath; whither his Father one day persuaded +me to drive out with him for dinner. Our welcome, I can still recollect, +was conspicuously cordial; the place of dinner a kind of upper room, +half garret and full of books, which seemed to be John's place of study. +From a shelf, I remember also, the good soul took down a book modestly +enough bound in three volumes, lettered on the back Carlyle's _French +Revolution_, which had been published lately; this he with friendly +banter bade me look at as a first symptom, small but significant, that +the book was not to die all at once. "One copy of it at least might hope +to last the date of sheep-leather," I admitted,--and in my then mood +the little fact was welcome. Our dinner, frank and happy on the part +of Sterling, was peppered with abundant jolly satire from his Father: +before tea, I took myself away; towards Woolwich, I remember, where +probably there was another call to make, and passage homeward by +steamer: Sterling strode along with me a good bit of road in the bright +sunny evening, full of lively friendly talk, and altogether kind and +amiable; and beautifully sympathetic with the loads he thought he saw on +_me_, forgetful of his own. We shook hands on the road near the foot of +Shooter's Hill:--at which point dim oblivious clouds rush down; and of +small or great I remember nothing more in my history or his for some +time. + +Besides running much about among friends, and holding counsels for the +management of the coming winter, Sterling was now considerably occupied +with Literature again; and indeed may be said to have already +definitely taken it up as the one practical pursuit left for him. Some +correspondence with _Blackwood's Magazine_ was opening itself, under +promising omens: now, and more and more henceforth, he began to look +on Literature as his real employment, after all; and was prosecuting it +with his accustomed loyalty and ardor. And he continued ever afterwards, +in spite of such fitful circumstances and uncertain outward fluctuations +as his were sure of being, to prosecute it steadily with all the +strength he had. + +One evening about this time, he came down to us, to Chelsea, most likely +by appointment and with stipulation for privacy; and read, for our +opinion, his Poem of the _Sexton's Daughter_, which we now first +heard of. The judgment in this house was friendly, but not the most +encouraging. We found the piece monotonous, cast in the mould of +Wordsworth, deficient in real human fervor or depth of melody, dallying +on the borders of the infantile and "goody-good;"--in fact, involved +still in the shadows of the surplice, and inculcating (on hearsay +mainly) a weak morality, which he would one day find not to be moral at +all, but in good part maudlin-hypocritical and immoral. As indeed was +to be said still of most of his performances, especially the poetical; +a sickly _shadow_ of the parish-church still hanging over them, which +he could by no means recognize for sickly. _Imprimatur_ nevertheless +was the concluding word,--with these grave abatements, and rhadamanthine +admonitions. To all which Sterling listened seriously and in the mildest +humor. His reading, it might have been added, had much hurt the effect +of the piece: a dreary pulpit or even conventicle manner; that flattest +moaning hoo-hoo of predetermined pathos, with a kind of rocking canter +introduced by way of intonation, each stanza the exact fellow Of the +other, and the dull swing of the rocking-horse duly in each;--no reading +could be more unfavorable to Sterling's poetry than his own. Such a mode +of reading, and indeed generally in a man of such vivacity the total +absence of all gifts for play-acting or artistic mimicry in any kind, +was a noticeable point. + + +After much consultation, it was settled at last that Sterling should go +to Madeira for the winter. One gray dull autumn afternoon, towards +the middle of October, I remember walking with him to the eastern Dock +region, to see his ship, and how the final preparations in his own +little cabin were proceeding there. A dingy little ship, the deck +crowded with packages, and bustling sailors within eight-and-forty hours +of lifting anchor; a dingy chill smoky day, as I have said withal, and +a chaotic element and outlook, enough to make a friend's heart sad. I +admired the cheerful careless humor and brisk activity of Sterling, who +took the matter all on the sunny side, as he was wont in such cases. We +came home together in manifold talk: he accepted with the due smile +my last contribution to his sea-equipment, a sixpenny box of German +lucifers purchased on the sudden in St. James's Street, fit to be +offered with laughter or with tears or with both; he was to leave for +Portsmouth almost immediately, and there go on board. Our next news +was of his safe arrival in the temperate Isle. Mrs. Sterling and the +children were left at Knightsbridge; to pass this winter with his Father +and Mother. + + +At Madeira Sterling did well: improved in health; was busy with much +Literature; and fell in with society which he could reckon pleasant. +He was much delighted with the scenery of the place; found the climate +wholesome to him in a marked degree; and, with good news from home, +and kindly interests here abroad, passed no disagreeable winter in that +exile. There was talking, there was writing, there was hope of better +health; he rode almost daily, in cheerful busy humor, along those +fringed shore-roads:--beautiful leafy roads and horse-paths; with here +and there a wild cataract and bridge to look at; and always with the +soft sky overhead, the dead volcanic mountain on one hand, and broad +illimitable sea spread out on the other. Here are two Letters which give +reasonably good account of him:-- + + "_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_. + "FUNCHAL, MADEIRA, 16th November, 1837. + +"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--I have been writing a good many letters all in a +batch, to go by the same opportunity; and I am thoroughly weary of +writing the same things over and over again to different people. My +letter to you therefore, I fear, must have much of the character of +remainder-biscuit. But you will receive it as a proof that I do not wish +you to forget me, though it may be useless for any other purpose. + +"I reached this on the 2d, after a tolerably prosperous voyage, deformed +by some days of sea-sickness, but otherwise not to be complained of. I +liked my twenty fellow-passengers far better than I expected;--three or +four of them I like much, and continue to see frequently. The Island +too is better than I expected: so that my Barataria at least does not +disappoint me. The bold rough mountains, with mist about their summits, +verdure below, and a bright sun over all, please me much; and I +ride daily on the steep and narrow paved roads, which no wheels ever +journeyed on. The Town is clean, and there its merits end: but I am +comfortably lodged; with a large and pleasant sitting-room to myself. I +have met with much kindness; and see all the society I want,--though it +is not quite equal to that of London, even excluding Chelsea. + +"I have got about me what Books I brought out; and have read a little, +and done some writing for _Blackwood_,--all, I have the pleasure to +inform you, prose, nay extremely prose. I shall now be more at leisure; +and hope to get more steadily to work; though I do not know what I shall +begin upon. As to reading, I have been looking at _Goethe_, especially +the _Life_,--much as a shying horse looks at a post. In truth, I am +afraid of him. I enjoy and admire him so much, and feel I could so +easily be tempted to go along with him. And yet I have a deeply rooted +and old persuasion that he was the most splendid of anachronisms. A +thoroughly, nay intensely Pagan Life, in an age when it is men's duty +to be Christian. I therefore never take him up without a kind of inward +check, as if I were trying some forbidden spell; while, on the other +hand, there is so infinitely much to be learnt from him, and it is +so needful to understand the world we live in, and our own age, and +especially its greatest minds, that I cannot bring myself to burn my +books as the converted Magicians did, or sink them as did Prospero. +There must, as I think, have been some prodigious defect in his mind, to +let him hold such views as his about women and some other things; and +in another respect, I find so much coldness and hollowness as to the +highest truths, and feel so strongly that the Heaven he looks up to is +but a vault of ice,--that these two indications, leading to the same +conclusion, go far to convince me he was a profoundly immoral and +irreligious spirit, with as rare faculties of intelligence as ever +belonged to any one. All this may be mere _goody_ weakness and twaddle, +on my part: but it is a persuasion that I cannot escape from; though I +should feel the doing so to be a deliverance from a most painful load. +If you could help me, I heartily wish you would. I never take him up +without high admiration, or lay him down without real sorrow for what he +chose to be. + +"I have been reading nothing else that you would much care for. +Southey's _Amadis_ has amused me; and Lyell's _Geology_ interested me. +The latter gives one the same sort of bewildering view of the abysmal +extent of Time that Astronomy does of Space. I do not think I shall take +your advice as to learning Portuguese. It is said to be very ill spoken +here; and assuredly it is the most direful series of nasal twangs I ever +heard. One gets on quite well with English. + +"The people here are, I believe, in a very low condition; but they do +not appear miserable. I am told that the influence of the priests makes +the peasantry all Miguelites; but it is said that nobody wants any more +revolutions. There is no appearance of riot or crime; and they are all +extremely civil. I was much interested by learning that Columbus once +lived here, before he found America and fame. I have been to see a +deserted _quinta_ (country-house), where there is a great deal of +curious old sculpture, in relief, upon the masonry; many of the figures, +which are nearly as large as life, representing soldiers clad and armed +much as I should suppose those of Cortez were. There are no buildings +about the Town, of the smallest pretensions to beauty or charm of any +kind. On the whole, if Madeira were one's world, life would certainly +rather tend to stagnate; but as a temporary refuge, a niche in an old +ruin where one is sheltered from the shower, it has great merit. I am +more comfortable and contented than I expected to be, so far from home +and from everybody I am closely connected with: but, of course, it is at +best a tolerable exile. + +"Tell Mrs. Carlyle that I have written, since I have been here, and +am going to send to _Blackwood_, a humble imitation of her _Watch and +Canary-Bird_, entitled _The Suit of Armor and the Skeleton_. [15] I am +conscious that I am far from having reached the depth and fulness of +despair and mockery which distinguish the original! But in truth there +is a lightness of tone about her style, which I hold to be invaluable: +where she makes hairstrokes, I make blotches. I have a vehement +suspicion that my Dialogue is an entire failure; but I cannot be plagued +with it any longer. Tell her I will not send her messages, but will +write to her soon.--Meanwhile I am affectionately hers and yours, + + "JOHN STERLING." + +The next is to his Brother-in-law; and in a still hopefuler tone:-- + + "_To Charles Barton, Esq._ [16] + FUNCHAL, MADEIRA, 3d March, 1838. + +"MY DEAR CHARLES,--I have often been thinking of you and your +whereabouts in Germany, and wishing I knew more about you; and at last +it occurred to me that you might perhaps have the same wish about me, +and that therefore I should do well to write to you. + +"I have been here exactly four months, having arrived on the 2d of +November,--my wedding-day; and though you perhaps may not think it a +compliment to Susan, I have seldom passed four months more cheerfully +and agreeably. I have of course felt my absence from my family, and +missed the society of my friends; for there is not a person here whom +I knew before I left England. But, on the whole, I have been in good +health, and actively employed. I have a good many agreeable and valuable +acquaintances, one or two of whom I hope I may hereafter reckon as +friends. The weather has generally been fine, and never cold; and the +scenery of the Island is of a beauty which you unhappy Northern people +can have little conception of. + +"It consists of a great mass of volcanic mountains, covered in their +lower parts with cottages, vines and patches of vegetables. When you +pass through, or over the central ridge, and get towards the North, +there are woods of trees, of the laurel kind, covering the wild steep +slopes, and forming some of the strangest and most beautiful prospects I +have ever seen. Towards the interior, the forms of the hills become +more abrupt, and loftier; and give the notion of very recent volcanic +disturbances, though in fact there has been nothing of the kind since +the discovery of the Island by Europeans. Among these mountains, the +dark deep precipices, and narrow ravines with small streams at the +bottom; the basaltic knobs and ridges on the summits; and the perpetual +play of mist and cloud around them, under this bright sun and clear +sky,--form landscapes which you would thoroughly enjoy, and which I +much wish I could give you a notion of. The Town is on the south, and +of course the sheltered side of the Island; perfectly protected from the +North and East; although we have seen sometimes patches of bright snow +on the dark peaks in the distance. It is a neat cheerful place; all +built of gray stone, but having many of the houses colored white or red. +There is not a really handsome building in it, but there is a general +aspect of comfort and solidity. The shops are very poor. The English do +not mix at all with the Portuguese. The Bay is a very bad anchorage; but +is wide, bright and cheerful; and there are some picturesque points--one +a small black island--scattered about it. + +"I lived till a fortnight ago in lodgings, having two rooms, one a +very good one; and paying for everything fifty-six dollars a month, the +dollar being four shillings and twopence. This you will see is dear; but +I could make no better arrangement, for there is an unusual affluence +of strangers this year. I have now come to live with a friend, a Dr. +Calvert, in a small house of our own, where I am much more comfortable, +and live greatly cheaper. He is a friend of Mrs. Percival's; about my +age, an Oriel man, and a very superior person. I think the chances are, +we shall go home together.... I cannot tell you of all the other people +I have become familiar with; and shall only mention in addition Bingham +Baring, eldest son of Lord Ashburton, who was here for some weeks on +account of a dying brother, and whom I saw a great deal of. He is a +pleasant, very good-natured and rather clever man; Conservative Member +for North Staffordshire. + +"During the first two months I was here, I rode a great deal about the +Island, having a horse regularly; and was much in agreeable company, +seeing a great deal of beautiful scenery. Since then, the weather has +been much more unsettled, though not cold; and I have gone about less, +as I cannot risk the being wet. But I have spent my time pleasantly, +reading and writing. I have written a good many things for _Blackwood_; +one of which, the _Armor and the Skeleton_, I see is printed in the +February Number. I have just sent them a long Tale, called the _Onyx +Ring_, which cost me a good deal of trouble; and the extravagance +of which, I think, would amuse you; but its length may prevent its +appearance in _Blackwood_. If so, I think I should make a volume of it. +I have also written some poems, and shall probably publish the _Sexton's +Daughter_ when I return. + +"My health goes on most favorably. I have had no attack of the chest +this spring; which has not happened to me since the spring before we +went to Bonn; and I am told, if I take care, I may roll along for years. +But I have little hope of being allowed to spend the four first months +of any year in England; and the question will be, Whether to go at +once to Italy, by way of Germany and Switzerland, with my family, or to +settle with them in England, perhaps at Hastings, and go abroad myself +when it may be necessary. I cannot decide till I return; but I think the +latter the most probable. + +"To my dear Charles I do not like to use the ordinary forms of ending +a letter, for they are very inadequate to express my sense of your long +and most unvarying kindness; but be assured no one living could say with +more sincerity that he is ever affectionately yours, + + "JOHN STERLING." + +Other Letters give occasionally views of the shadier side of things: +dark broken weather, in the sky and in the mind; ugly clouds covering +one's poor fitful transitory prospect, for a time, as they might well do +in Sterling's case. Meanwhile we perceive his literary business is fast +developing itself; amid all his confusions, he is never idle long. +Some of his best Pieces--the Onyx _Ring_, for one, as we perceive--were +written here this winter. Out of the turbid whirlpool of the days he +strives assiduously to snatch what he can. + +Sterling's communications with _Blackwood's Magazine_ had now issued +in some open sanction of him by Professor Wilson, the distinguished +presiding spirit of that Periodical; a fact naturally of high importance +to him under the literary point of view. For Wilson, with his clear +flashing eye and great genial heart, had at once recognized Sterling; +and lavished stormily, in his wild generous way, torrents of praise +on him in the editorial comments: which undoubtedly was one of the +gratefulest literary baptisms, by fire or by water, that could befall a +soul like Sterling's. He bore it very gently, being indeed past the +age to have his head turned by anybody's praises: nor do I think the +exaggeration that was in these eulogies did him any ill whatever; while +surely their generous encouragement did him much good, in his solitary +struggle towards new activity under such impediments as his. _Laudari a +laudato_; to be called noble by one whom you and the world recognize as +noble: this great satisfaction, never perhaps in such a degree before +or after had now been vouchsafed to Sterling; and was, as I compute, an +important fact for him. He proceeded on his pilgrimage with new energy, +and felt more and more as if authentically consecrated to the same. + +The _Onyx Ring_, a curious Tale, with wild improbable basis, but with +a noble glow of coloring and with other high merits in it, a Tale still +worth reading, in which, among the imaginary characters, various friends +of Sterling's are shadowed forth, not always in the truest manner, came +out in _Blackwood_ in the winter of this year. Surely a very high talent +for painting, both of scenery and persons, is visible in this Fiction; +the promise of a Novel such as we have few. But there wants maturing, +wants purifying of clear from unclear;--properly there want patience +and steady depth. The basis, as we said, is wild and loose; and in the +details, lucent often with fine color, and dipt in beautiful sunshine, +there are several things mis_seen_, untrue, which is the worst species +of mispainting. Witness, as Sterling himself would have by and by +admitted, the "empty clockcase" (so we called it) which he has labelled +Goethe,--which puts all other untruths in the Piece to silence. + + +One of the great alleviations of his exile at Madeira he has already +celebrated to us: the pleasant circle of society he fell into there. +Great luck, thinks Sterling in this voyage; as indeed there was: but +he himself, moreover, was readier than most men to fall into pleasant +circles everywhere, being singularly prompt to make the most of any +circle. Some of his Madeira acquaintanceships were really good; and one +of them, if not more, ripened into comradeship and friendship for him. +He says, as we saw, "The chances are, Calvert and I will come home +together." + +Among the English in pursuit of health, or in flight from fatal disease, +that winter, was this Dr. Calvert; an excellent ingenious cheery +Cumberland gentleman, about Sterling's age, and in a deeper stage of +ailment, this not being his first visit to Madeira: he, warmly joining +himself to Sterling, as we have seen, was warmly received by him; so +that there soon grew a close and free intimacy between them; which for +the next three years, till poor Calvert ended his course, was a leading +element in the history of both. Companionship in incurable malady, +a touching bond of union, was by no means purely or chiefly a +companionship in misery in their case. The sunniest inextinguishable +cheerfulness shone, through all manner of clouds, in both. Calvert had +been travelling physician in some family of rank, who had rewarded him +with a pension, shielding his own ill-health from one sad evil. Being +hopelessly gone in pulmonary disorder, he now moved about among friendly +climates and places, seeking what alleviation there might be; often +spending his summers in the house of a sister in the environs of London; +an insatiable rider on his little brown pony; always, wherever you might +meet him, one of the cheeriest of men. He had plenty of speculation too, +clear glances of all kinds into religious, social, moral concerns; and +pleasantly incited Sterling's outpourings on such subjects. He could +report of fashionable persons and manners, in a fine human Cumberland +manner; loved art, a great collector of drawings; he had endless help +and ingenuity; and was in short every way a very human, lovable, good +and nimble man,--the laughing blue eyes of him, the clear cheery soul +of him, still redolent of the fresh Northern breezes and transparent +Mountain streams. With this Calvert, Sterling formed a natural intimacy; +and they were to each other a great possession, mutually enlivening many +a dark day during the next three years. They did come home together +this spring; and subsequently made several of these health-journeys in +partnership. + + + +CHAPTER VI. LITERATURE: THE STERLING CLUB. + +In spite of these wanderings, Sterling's course in life, so far as his +poor life could have any course or aim beyond that of screening itself +from swift death, was getting more and more clear to him; and he pursued +it diligently, in the only way permitted him, by hasty snatches, in +the intervals of continual fluctuation, change of place and other +interruption. + +Such, once for all, were the conditions appointed him. And it must be +owned he had, with a most kindly temper, adjusted himself to these; nay +you would have said, he loved them; it was almost as if he would have +chosen them as the suitablest. Such an adaptation was there in him +of volition to necessity:--for indeed they both, if well seen into, +proceeded from one source. Sterling's bodily disease was the expression, +under physical conditions, of the too vehement life which, under the +moral, the intellectual and other aspects, incessantly struggled within +him. Too vehement;--which would have required a frame of oak and iron +to contain it: in a thin though most wiry body of flesh and bone, it +incessantly "wore holes," and so found outlet for itself. He could take +no rest, he had never learned that art; he was, as we often reproached +him, fatally incapable of sitting still. Rapidity, as of pulsing +auroras, as of dancing lightnings: rapidity in all forms characterized +him. This, which was his bane, in many senses, being the real origin of +his disorder, and of such continual necessity to move and change,--was +also his antidote, so far as antidote there might be; enabling him to +love change, and to snatch, as few others could have done, from the +waste chaotic years, all tumbled into ruin by incessant change, what +hours and minutes of available turned up. He had an incredible facility +of labor. He flashed with most piercing glance into a subject; gathered +it up into organic utterability, with truly wonderful despatch, +considering the success and truth attained; and threw it on paper with a +swift felicity, ingenuity, brilliancy and general excellence, of which, +under such conditions of swiftness, I have never seen a parallel. +Essentially an _improviser_ genius; as his Father too was, and of +admirable completeness he too, though under a very different form. + +If Sterling has done little in Literature, we may ask, What other man +than he, in such circumstances, could have done anything? In virtue of +these rapid faculties, which otherwise cost him so dear, he has built +together, out of those wavering boiling quicksands of his few later +years, a result which may justly surprise us. There is actually some +result in those poor Two Volumes gathered from him, such as they are; he +that reads there will not wholly lose his time, nor rise with a +malison instead of a blessing on the writer. Here actually is a real +seer-glance, of some compass, into the world of our day; blessed glance, +once more, of an eye that is human; truer than one of a thousand, +and beautifully capable of making others see with it. I have known +considerable temporary reputations gained, considerable piles of +temporary guineas, with loud reviewing and the like to match, on a far +less basis than lies in those two volumes. Those also, I expect, will +be held in memory by the world, one way or other, till the world +has extracted all its benefit from them. Graceful, ingenious and +illuminative reading, of their sort, for all manner of inquiring souls. +A little verdant flowery island of poetic intellect, of melodious +human verity; sunlit island founded on the rocks;--which the enormous +circumambient continents of mown reed-grass and floating lumber, with +_their_ mountain-ranges of ejected stable-litter however alpine, cannot +by any means or chance submerge: nay, I expect, they will not even quite +hide it, this modest little island, from the well-discerning; but will +float past it towards the place appointed for them, and leave said +island standing. _Allah kereem_, say the Arabs! And of the English +also some still know that there is a, difference in the material of +mountains!-- + +As it is this last little result, the amount of his poor and +ever-interrupted literary labor, that henceforth forms the essential +history of Sterling, we need not dwell at too much length on the foreign +journeys, disanchorings, and nomadic vicissitudes of household, which +occupy his few remaining years, and which are only the disastrous and +accidental arena of this. He had now, excluding his early and more +deliberate residence in the West Indies, made two flights abroad, once +with his family, once without, in search of health. He had two more, in +rapid succession, to make, and many more to meditate; and in the whole +from Bayswater to the end, his family made no fewer than five complete +changes of abode, for his sake. But these cannot be accepted as in any +sense epochs in his life: the one last epoch of his life was that of his +internal change towards Literature as his work in the world; and we need +not linger much on these, which are the mere outer accidents of that, +and had no distinguished influence in modifying that. + +Friends still hoped the unrest of that brilliant too rapid soul would +abate with years. Nay the doctors sometimes promised, on the physical +side, a like result; prophesying that, at forty-five or some mature age, +the stress of disease might quit the lungs, and direct itself to other +quarters of the system. But no such result was appointed for us; neither +forty-five itself, nor the ameliorations promised then, were ever to +be reached. Four voyages abroad, three of them without his family, +in flight from death; and at home, for a like reason, five complete +shiftings of abode: in such wandering manner, and not otherwise, had +Sterling to continue his pilgrimage till it ended. + +Once more I must say, his cheerfulness throughout was wonderful. A +certain grimmer shade, coming gradually over him, might perhaps be +noticed in the concluding years; not impatience properly, yet the +consciousness how much he needed patience; something more caustic in his +tone of wit, more trenchant and indignant occasionally in his tone of +speech: but at no moment was his activity bewildered or abated, nor did +his composure ever give way. No; both his activity and his composure +he bore with him, through all weathers, to the final close; and on the +whole, right manfully he walked his wild stern way towards the goal, and +like a Roman wrapt his mantle round him when he fell.--Let us glance, +with brevity, at what he saw and suffered in his remaining pilgrimings +and chargings; and count up what fractions of spiritual fruit he +realized to us from them. + + +Calvert and he returned from Madeira in the spring of 1838. Mrs. +Sterling and the family had lived in Knightsbridge with his Father's +people through the winter: they now changed to Blackheath, or ultimately +Hastings, and he with them, coming up to London pretty often; uncertain +what was to be done for next winter. Literature went on briskly here: +_Blackwood_ had from him, besides the _Onyx Ring_ which soon came out +with due honor, assiduous almost monthly contributions in prose and +verse. The series called _Hymns of a Hermit_ was now going on; eloquent +melodies, tainted to me with something of the same disease as the +_Sexton's Daughter_, though perhaps in a less degree, considering +that the strain was in a so much higher pitch. Still better, in clear +eloquent prose, the series of detached thoughts, entitled _Crystals from +a Cavern_; of which the set of fragments, generally a little larger in +compass, called _Thoughts and Images_, and again those called _Sayings +and Essayings_, [17] are properly continuations. Add to which, his friend +John Mill had now charge of a Review, _The London and Westminster_ +its name; wherein Sterling's assistance, ardently desired, was freely +afforded, with satisfaction to both parties, in this and the following +years. An Essay on _Montaigne_, with the notes and reminiscences +already spoken of, was Sterling's first contribution here; then one on +_Simonides_: [18] both of the present season. + +On these and other businesses, slight or important, he was often running +up to London; and gave us almost the feeling of his being resident among +us. In order to meet the most or a good many of his friends at once +on such occasions, he now furthermore contrived the scheme of a little +Club, where monthly over a frugal dinner some reunion might take place; +that is, where friends of his, and withal such friends of theirs as +suited,--and in fine, where a small select company definable as +persons to whom it was pleasant to talk together,--might have a +little opportunity of talking. The scheme was approved by the persons +concerned: I have a copy of the Original Regulations, probably drawn up +by Sterling, a very solid lucid piece of economics; and the List of the +proposed Members, signed "James Spedding, Secretary," and dated "8th +August, 1838." [19] The Club grew; was at first called the _Anonymous +Club_; then, after some months of success, in compliment to the founder +who had now left us again, the _Sterling Club_;--under which latter +name, it once lately, for a time, owing to the Religious Newspapers, +became rather famous in the world! In which strange circumstances +the name was again altered, to suit weak brethren; and the Club still +subsists, in a sufficiently flourishing though happily once more a +private condition. That is the origin and genesis of poor Sterling's +Club; which, having honestly paid the shot for itself at Will's +Coffee-house or elsewhere, rashly fancied its bits of affairs were quite +settled; and once little thought of getting into Books of History with +them!-- + + +But now, Autumn approaching, Sterling had to quit Clubs, for matters +of sadder consideration. A new removal, what we call "his third +peregrinity," had to be decided on; and it was resolved that Rome should +be the goal of it, the journey to be done in company with Calvert, whom +also the Italian climate might be made to serve instead of Madeira. One +of the liveliest recollections I have, connected with the _Anonymous +Club_, is that of once escorting Sterling, after a certain meeting +there, which I had seen only towards the end, and now remember nothing +of,--except that, on breaking up, he proved to be encumbered with a +carpet-bag, and could not at once find a cab for Knightsbridge. Some +small bantering hereupon, during the instants of embargo. But we carried +his carpet-bag, slinging it on my stick, two or three of us alternately, +through dusty vacant streets, under the gaslights and the stars, towards +the surest cab-stand; still jesting, or pretending to jest, he and we, +not in the mirthfulest manner; and had (I suppose) our own feelings +about the poor Pilgrim, who was to go on the morrow, and had hurried to +meet us in this way, as the last thing before leaving England. + + + +CHAPTER VII. ITALY. + +The journey to Italy was undertaken by advice of Sir James Clark, +reckoned the chief authority in pulmonary therapeutics; who prophesied +important improvements from it, and perhaps even the possibility +henceforth of living all the year in some English home. Mrs. Sterling +and the children continued in a house avowedly temporary, a furnished +house at Hastings, through the winter. The two friends had set off +for Belgium, while the due warmth was still in the air. They traversed +Belgium, looking well at pictures and such objects; ascended the Rhine; +rapidly traversed Switzerland and the Alps; issuing upon Italy and +Milan, with immense appetite for pictures, and time still to gratify +themselves in that pursuit, and be deliberate in their approach to Rome. +We will take this free-flowing sketch of their passage over the Alps; +written amid "the rocks of Arona,"--Santo Borromeo's country, and poor +little Mignon's! The "elder Perdonnets" are opulent Lausanne people, to +whose late son Sterling had been very kind in Madeira the year before:-- + + "_To Mrs. Sterling, Knightsbridge, London_. + "ARONA on the LAGO MAGGIORE, 8th Oct., 1838. + +"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I bring down the story of my proceedings to the +present time since the 29th of September. I think it must have been +after that day that I was at a great breakfast at the elder Perdonnets', +with whom I had declined to dine, not choosing to go out at night.... +I was taken by my hostess to see several pretty pleasure-grounds and +points of view in the neighborhood; and latterly Calvert was better, and +able to go with us. He was in force again, and our passports were all +settled so as to enable us to start on the morning of the 2d, after +taking leave of our kind entertainer with thanks for her infinite +kindness. + +"We reached St. Maurice early that evening; having had the Dent du +Midi close to us for several hours; glittering like the top of a silver +teapot, far up in the sky. Our course lay along the Valley of the Rhone; +which is considered one of the least beautiful parts of Switzerland, +and perhaps for this reason pleased us, as we had not been prepared +to expect much. We saw, before reaching the foot of the Alpine pass at +Brieg, two rather celebrated Waterfalls; the one the Pissevache, which +has no more beauty than any waterfall one hundred or two hundred feet +high must necessarily have: the other, near Tourtemagne, is much more +pleasing, having foliage round it, and being in a secluded dell. If you +buy a Swiss Waterfall, choose this one. + +"Our second day took us through Martigny to Sion, celebrated for its +picturesque towers upon detached hills, for its strong Romanism and its +population of _cretins_,--that is, maimed idiots having the _goitre_. It +looked to us a more thriving place than we expected. They are building +a great deal; among other things, a new Bishop's Palace and a new +Nunnery,--to inhabit either of which _ex officio_ I feel myself very +unsuitable. From Sion we came to Brieg; a little village in a nook, +close under an enormous mountain and glacier, where it lies like a +molehill, or something smaller, at the foot of a haystack. Here also we +slept; and the next day our voiturier, who had brought us from Lausanne, +started with us up the Simplon Pass; helped on by two extra horses. + +"The beginning of the road was rather cheerful; having a good deal of +green pasturage, and some mountain villages; but it soon becomes dreary +and savage in aspect, and but for our bright sky and warm air, would +have been truly dismal. However, we gained gradually a distinct and +near view of several large glaciers; and reached at last the high +and melancholy valleys of the Upper Alps; where even the pines become +scanty, and no sound is heard but the wheels of one's carriage, except +when there happens to be a storm or an avalanche, neither of which +entertained us. There is, here and there, a small stream of water +pouring from the snow; but this is rather a monotonous accompaniment to +the general desolation than an interruption of it. The road itself is +certainly very good, and impresses one with a strong notion of human +power. But the common descriptions are much exaggerated; and many of +what the Guide-Books call 'galleries' are merely parts of the road +supported by a wall built against the rock, and have nothing like a +roof above them. The 'stupendous bridges,' as they are called, might be +packed, a dozen together, into one arch of London Bridge; and they +are seldom even very striking from the depth below. The roadway is +excellent, and kept in the best order. On the whole, I am very glad +to have travelled the most famous road in Europe, and to have had +delightful weather for doing so, as indeed we have had ever since we +left Lausanne. The Italian descent is greatly more remarkable than the +other side. + +"We slept near the top, at the Village of Simplon, in a very fair and +well-warmed inn, close to a mountain stream, which is one of the great +ornaments of this side of the road. We have here passed into a region of +granite, from that of limestone, and what is called gneiss. The valleys +are sharper and closer,--like cracks in a hard and solid mass;--and +there is much more of the startling contrast of light and shade, as +well as more angular boldness of outline; to all which the more abundant +waters add a fresh and vivacious interest. Looking back through one +of these abysmal gorges, one sees two torrents dashing together, the +precipice and ridge on one side, pitch-black with shade; and that on the +other all flaming gold; while behind rises, in a huge cone, one of the +glacier summits of the chain. The stream at one's feet rushes at a leap +some two hundred feet down, and is bordered with pines and beeches, +struggling through a ruined world of clefts and boulders. I never saw +anything so much resembling some of the _Circles_ described by Dante. +From Simplon we made for Duomo d'Ossola; having broken out, as through +the mouth of a mine, into green and fertile valleys full of vines and +chestnuts, and white villages,--in short, into sunshine and Italy. + +"At this place we dismissed our Swiss voiturier, and took an Italian +one; who conveyed us to Omegna on the Lake of Orta; a place little +visited by English travellers, but which fully repaid us the trouble of +going there. We were lodged in a simple and even rude Italian inn; where +they cannot speak a word of French; where we occupied a barn-like room, +with a huge chimney fit to lodge a hundred ghosts, whom we expelled by +dint of a hot woodfire. There were two beds, and as it happened good +ones, in this strange old apartment; which was adorned by pictures of +Architecture, and by Heads of Saints, better than many at the Royal +Academy Exhibition, and which one paid nothing for looking at. The +thorough Italian character of the whole scene amused us, much more than +Meurice's at Paris would have done; for we had voluble, commonplace +good-humor, with the aspect and accessories of a den of banditti. + +"To-day we have seen the Lake of Orta, have walked for some miles among +its vineyards and chestnuts; and thence have come, by Baveno, to this +place;--having seen by the way, I believe, the most beautiful part +of the Lago Maggiore, and certainly the most cheerful, complete and +extended example of fine scenery I have ever fallen in with. Here we +are, much to my wonder,--for it seems too good to be true,--fairly in +Italy; and as yet my journey has been a pleasanter and more instructive, +and in point of health a more successful one, than I at all imagined +possible. Calvert and I go on as well as can be. I let him have his way +about natural science, and he only laughs benignly when he thinks +me absurd in my moral speculations. My only regrets are caused by my +separation from my family and friends, and by the hurry I have been +living in, which has prevented me doing any work,--and compelled me to +write to you at a good deal faster rate than the _vapore_ moves on the +Lago Maggiore. It will take me to-morrow to Sesto Calende, whence we go +to Varese. We shall not be at Milan for some days. Write thither, if you +are kind enough to write at all, till I give you another address. Love +to my Father. + + "Your affectionate son, + "JOHN STERLING." + +Omitting Milan, Florence nearly all, and much about "Art," Michael +Angelo, and other aerial matters, here are some select terrestrial +glimpses, the fittest I can find, of his progress towards Rome:-- + + _To his Mother_. + +"_Lucca, Nov. 27th_, 1838.--I had dreams, like other people, before I +came here, of what the Lombard Lakes must be; and the week I spent among +them has left me an image, not only more distinct, but far more warm, +shining and various, and more deeply attractive in innumerable respects, +than all I had before conceived of them. And so also it has been with +Florence; where I spent three weeks: enough for the first hazy radiant +dawn of sympathy to pass away; yet constantly adding an increase of +knowledge and of love, while I examined, and tried to understand, the +wonderful minds that have left behind them there such abundant traces of +their presence.... On Sunday, the day before I left Florence, I went to +the highest part of the Grand Duke's Garden of Boboli, which commands a +view of most of the City, and of the vale of the Arno to the westward; +where, as we had been visited by several rainy days, and now at last had +a very fine one, the whole prospect was in its highest beauty. The mass +of buildings, chiefly on the other side of the River, is sufficient +to fill the eye, without perplexing the mind by vastness like that of +London; and its name and history, its outline and large and picturesque +buildings, give it grandeur of a higher order than that of mere +multitudinous extent. The Hills that border the Valley of the Arno are +also very pleasing and striking to look upon; and the view of the rich +Plain, glimmering away into blue distance, covered with an endless web +of villages and country-houses, is one of the most delightful images of +human well-being I have ever seen.... + +"Very shortly before leaving Florence, I went through the house of +Michael Angelo; which is still possessed by persons of the same family, +descendants, I believe, of his Nephew. There is in it his 'first work in +marble,' as it is called; and a few drawings,--all with the stamp of +his enginery upon them, which was more powerful than all the steam in +London.... On the whole, though I have done no work in Florence that can +be of any use or pleasure to others, except my Letters to my Wife,--I +leave it with the certainty of much valuable knowledge gained there, and +with a most pleasant remembrance of the busy and thoughtful days I owe +to it. + + +"We left Florence before seven yesterday morning [26th November] for +this place; travelling on the northern side of the Arno, by Prato, +Pistoia, Pescia. We tried to see some old frescos in a Church at Prato; +but found the Priests all about, saying mass; and of course did not +venture to put our hands into a hive where the bees were buzzing and on +the wing. Pistoia we only coasted. A little on one side of it, there is +a Hill, the first on the road from Florence; which we walked up, and +had a very lively and brilliant prospect over the road we had just +travelled, and the town of Pistoia. Thence to this place the whole land +is beautiful, and in the highest degree prosperous,--in short, to speak +metaphorically, all dotted with Leghorn bonnets, and streaming with +olive-oil. The girls here are said to employ themselves chiefly in +platting straw, which is a profitable employment; and the slightness and +quiet of the work are said to be much more favorable to beauty than the +coarser kinds of labor performed by the country-women elsewhere. Certain +it is that I saw more pretty women in Pescia, in the hour I spent there, +than I ever before met with among the same numbers of the 'phare sect.' +Wherefore, as a memorial of them, I bought there several Legends of +Female Saints and Martyrs, and of other Ladies quite the reverse, and +held up as warnings; all of which are written in _ottava rima_, and sold +for three halfpence apiece. But unhappily I have not yet had time to +read them. This Town has 30,000 inhabitants, and is surrounded by +Walls, laid out as walks, and evidently not at present intended to be +besieged,--for which reason, this morning, I merely walked on them round +the Town, and did not besiege them.... + +"The Cathedral [of Lucca] contains some Relics; which have undoubtedly +worked miracles on the imagination of the people hereabouts. The +Grandfather of all Relics (as the Arabs would say) in the place is the +_Volto Santo_, which is a Face of the Saviour appertaining to a wooden +Crucifix. Now you must know that, after the ascension of Christ, +Nicodemus was ordered by an Angel to carve an image of him; and went +accordingly with a hatchet, and cut down a cedar for that purpose. He +then proceeded to carve the figure; and being tired, fell asleep before +he had done the face; which however, on awaking, he found completed by +celestial aid. This image was brought to Lucca, from Leghorn, I think, +where it had arrived in a ship, 'more than a thousand years ago,' +and has ever since been kept, in purple and fine linen and gold and +diamonds, quietly working miracles. I saw the gilt Shrine of it; and +also a Hatchet which refused to cut off the head of an innocent man, +who had been condemned to death, and who prayed to the _Volto Santo_. +I suppose it is by way of economy (they being a frugal people) that +the Italians have their Book of Common Prayer and their Arabian Nights' +Entertainments condensed into one." + + _To the Same_. + +"_Pisa, December 2d_, 1838.--Pisa is very unfairly treated in all the +Books I have read. It seems to me a quiet, but very agreeable place; +with wide clean streets, and a look of stability and comfort; and I +admire the Cathedral and its appendages more, the more I see them. The +leaning of the Tower is to my eye decidedly unpleasant; but it is a +beautiful building nevertheless, and the view from the top is, under a +bright sky, remarkably lively and satisfactory. The Lucchese Hills form +a fine mass, and the sea must in clear weather be very distinct. There +was some haze over it when I was up, though the land was all clear. I +could just see the Leghorn Light-house. Leghorn itself I shall not be +able to visit.... + +"The quiet gracefulness of Italian life, and the mental maturity and +vigor of Germany, have a great charm when compared with the restless +whirl of England, and the chorus of mingled yells and groans sent up by +our parties and sects, and by the suffering and bewildered crowds of the +laboring people. Our politics make my heart ache, whenever I think +of them. The base selfish frenzies of factions seem to me, at this +distance, half diabolic; and I am out of the way of knowing anything +that may be quietly a-doing to elevate the standard of wise and +temperate manhood in the country, and to diffuse the means of physical +and moral well-being among all the people.... I will write to my +Father as soon as I can after reaching the capital of his friend the +Pope,--who, if he had happened to be born an English gentleman, would no +doubt by this time be a respectable old-gentlemanly gouty member of the +Carlton. I have often amused myself by thinking what a mere accident +it is that Phillpotts is not Archbishop of Tuam, and M'Hale Bishop of +Exeter; and how slight a change of dress, and of a few catchwords, +would even now enable them to fill those respective posts with all the +propriety and discretion they display in their present positions." + + +At Rome he found the Crawfords, known to him long since; and at +different dates other English friends old and new; and was altogether in +the liveliest humor, no end to his activities and speculations. Of +all which, during the next four months, the Letters now before me give +abundant record,--far too abundant for our objects here. His grand +pursuit, as natural at Rome, was Art; into which metaphysical domain we +shall not follow him; preferring to pick out, here and there, something +of concrete and human. Of his interests, researches, speculations +and descriptions on this subject of Art, there is always rather a +superabundance, especially in the Italian Tour. Unfortunately, in +the hard weather, poor Calvert fell ill; and Sterling, along with his +Art-studies, distinguished himself as a sick-nurse till his poor comrade +got afoot again. His general impressions of the scene and what it held +for him may be read in the following excerpts. The Letters are all dated +_Rome_, and addressed to his Father or Mother:-- + +"_December 21st_, 1838.--Of Rome itself, as a whole, there are infinite +things to be said, well worth saying; but I shall confine myself to +two remarks: first, that while the Monuments and works of Art gain in +wondrousness and significance by familiarity with them, the actual life +of Rome, the Papacy and its pride, lose; and though one gets accustomed +to Cardinals and Friars and Swiss Guards, and ragged beggars and the +finery of London and Paris, all rolling on together, and sees how it is +that they subsist in a sort of spurious unity, one loses all tendency to +idealize the Metropolis and System of the Hierarchy into anything +higher than a piece of showy stage-declamation, at bottom, in our day, +thoroughly mean and prosaic. My other remark is, that Rome, seen from +the tower of the Capitol, from the Pincian or the Janiculum, is at this +day one of the most beautiful spectacles which eyes ever beheld. The +company of great domes rising from a mass of large and solid buildings, +with a few stone-pines and scattered edifices on the outskirts; the +broken bare Campagna all around; the Alban Hills not far, and the purple +range of Sabine Mountains in the distance with a cope of snow;--this +seen in the clear air, and the whole spiritualized by endless +recollections, and a sense of the grave and lofty reality of human +existence which has had this place for a main theatre, fills at once the +eyes and heart more forcibly, and to me delightfully, than I can find +words to say." + +"_January 22d_, 1839.--The Modern Rome, Pope and all inclusive, are +a shabby attempt at something adequate to fill the place of the old +Commonwealth. It is easy enough to live among them, and there is much +to amuse and even interest a spectator; but the native existence of the +place is now thin and hollow, and there is a stamp of littleness, and +childish poverty of taste, upon all the great Christian buildings I have +seen here,--not excepting St. Peter's; which is crammed with bits of +colored marble and gilding, and Gog-and-Magog colossal statues of saints +(looking prodigiously small), and mosaics from the worst pictures in +Rome; and has altogether, with most imposing size and lavish splendor, +a tang of Guildhall finery about it that contrasts oddly with the +melancholy vastness and simplicity of the Ancient Monuments, though +these have not the Athenian elegance. I recur perpetually to the +galleries of Sculpture in the Vatican, and to the Frescos of Raffael +and Michael Angelo, of inexhaustible beauty and greatness, and to +the general aspect of the City and the Country round it, as the most +impressive scene on earth. But the Modern City, with its churches, +palaces, priests and beggars, is far from sublime." + +Of about the same date, here is another paragraph worth inserting: +"Gladstone has three little agate crosses which he will give you for my +little girls. Calvert bought them, as a present, for 'the bodies,' +at Martigny in Switzerland, and I have had no earlier opportunity +of sending them. Will you despatch them to Hastings when you have an +opportunity? I have not yet seen Gladstone's _Church and State_; but as +there is a copy in Rome, I hope soon to lay hands on it. I saw yesterday +in the _Times_ a furious, and I am sorry to say, most absurd attack on +him and it, and the new Oxonian school." + +"_February 28th, 1839_.--There is among the people plenty of squalid +misery; though not nearly so much as, they say, exists in Ireland; and +here there is a certain freedom and freshness of manners, a dash of +Southern enjoyment in the condition of the meanest and most miserable. +There is, I suppose, as little as well can be of conscience or +artificial cultivation of any kind; but there is not the affectation of +a virtue which they do not possess, nor any feeling of being despised +for the want of it; and where life generally is so inert, except as to +its passions and material wants, there is not the bitter consciousness +of having been beaten by the more prosperous, in a race which the +greater number have never thought of running. Among the laboring poor of +Rome, a bribe will buy a crime; but if common work procures enough for +a day's food or idleness, ten times the sum will not induce them to toil +on, as an English workman would, for the sake of rising in the world. +Sixpence any day will put any of them at the top of the only tree they +care for,--that on which grows the fruit of idleness. It is striking to +see the way in which, in magnificent churches, the most ragged beggars +kneel on the pavement before some favorite altar in the midst of +well-dressed women and of gazing foreigners. Or sometimes you will see +one with a child come in from the street where she has been begging, +put herself in a corner, say a prayer (probably for the success of her +petitions), and then return to beg again. There is wonderfully little of +any moral strength connected with this devotion; but still it is better +than nothing, and more than is often found among the men of the upper +classes in Rome. I believe the Clergy to be generally profligate, and +the state of domestic morals as bad as it has ever been represented."-- + +Or, in sudden contrast, take this other glance homeward; a Letter to his +eldest child; in which kind of Letters, more than in any other, Sterling +seems to me to excel. Readers recollect the hurricane in St. Vincent; +the hasty removal to a neighbor's house, and the birth of a son there, +soon after. The boy has grown to some articulation, during these +seven years; and his Father, from the new foreign scene of Priests and +Dilettanti, thus addresses him:-- + + "_To Master Edward C. Sterling, Hastings_. + "ROME, 21st January, 1839. + +"MY DEAR EDWARD,--I was very glad to receive your Letter, which showed +me that you have learned something since I left home. If you knew how +much pleasure it gave me to see your handwriting, I am sure you would +take pains to be able to write well, that you might often send me +letters, and tell me a great many things which I should like to know +about Mamma and your Sisters as well as yourself. + +"If I go to Vesuvius, I will try to carry away a bit of the lava, which +you wish for. There has lately been a great eruption, as it is called, +of that Mountain; which means a great breaking-out of hot ashes and +fire, and of melted stones which is called lava. + +"Miss Clark is very kind to take so much pains with you; and I trust you +will show that you are obliged to her, by paying attention to all she +tells you. When you see how much more grown people know than you, you +ought to be anxious to learn all you can from those who teach you; and +as there are so many wise and good things written in Books, you ought +to try to read early and carefully; that you may learn something of what +God has made you able to know. There are Libraries containing very many +thousands of Volumes; and all that is written in these is,--accounts of +some part or other of the World which God has made, or of the Thoughts +which he has enabled men to have in their minds. Some Books are +descriptions of the earth itself, with its rocks and ground and water, +and of the air and clouds, and the stars and moon and sun, which shine +so beautifully in the sky. Some tell you about the things that grow upon +the ground; the many millions of plants, from little mosses and threads +of grass up to great trees and forests. Some also contain accounts of +living things: flies, worms, fishes, birds and four-legged beasts. And +some, which are the most, are about men and their thoughts and doings. +These are the most important of all; for men are the best and most +wonderful creatures of God in the world; being the only ones able to +know him and love him, and to try of their own accord to do his will. + +"These Books about men are also the most important to us, because we +ourselves are human beings, and may learn from such Books what we ought +to think and to do and to try to be. Some of them describe what sort of +people have lived in old times and in other countries. By reading them, +we know what is the difference between ourselves in England now, and the +famous nations which lived in former days. Such were the Egyptians who +built the Pyramids, which are the greatest heaps of stone upon the face +of the earth: and the Babylonians, who had a city with huge walls, built +of bricks, having writing on them that no one in our time has been able +to make out. There were also the Jews, who were the only ancient people +that knew how wonderful and how good God is: and the Greeks, who were +the wisest of all in thinking about men's lives and hearts, and who knew +best how to make fine statues and buildings, and to write wise books. By +Books also we may learn what sort of people the old Romans were, whose +chief city was Rome, where I am now; and how brave and skilful they were +in war; and how well they could govern and teach many nations which they +had conquered. It is from Books, too, that you must learn what kind of +men were our Ancestors in the Northern part of Europe, who belonged +to the tribes that did the most towards pulling down the power of the +Romans: and you will see in the same way how Christianity was sent among +them by God, to make them wiser and more peaceful, and more noble +in their minds; and how all the nations that now are in Europe, and +especially the Italians and the Germans, and the French and the English, +came to be what they now are.--It is well worth knowing (and it can be +known only by reading) how the Germans found out the Printing of Books, +and what great changes this has made in the world. And everybody in +England ought to try to understand how the English came to have their +Parliaments and Laws; and to have fleets that sail over all seas of the +world. + +"Besides learning all these things, and a great many more about +different times and countries, you may learn from Books, what is the +truth of God's will, and what are the best and wisest thoughts, and the +most beautiful words; and how men are able to lead very right lives, and +to do a great deal to better the world. I have spent a great part of my +life in reading; and I hope you will come to like it as much as I do, +and to learn in this way all that I know. + +"But it is a still more serious matter that you should try to be +obedient and gentle; and to command your temper; and to think of other +people's pleasure rather than your own, and of what you _ought_ to do +rather than what you _like_. If you try to be better for all you read, +as well as wiser, you will find Books a great help towards goodness as +well as knowledge, and above all other Books, the Bible; which tells us +of the will of God, and of the love of Jesus Christ towards God and men. + +"I had a Letter from Mamma to-day, which left Hastings on the 10th of +this month. I was very glad to find in it that you were all well +and happy; but I know Mamma is not well, and is likely to be more +uncomfortable every day for some time. So I hope you will all take care +to give her as little trouble as possible. After sending you so much +advice, I shall write a little Story to divert you.--I am, my dear Boy, + + "Your affectionate Father, + "JOHN STERLING." + +The "Story" is lost, destroyed, as are many such which Sterling wrote, +with great felicity, I am told, and much to the satisfaction of the +young folk, when the humor took him. + +Besides these plentiful communications still left, I remember long +Letters, not now extant, principally addressed to his Wife, of which we +and the circle at Knightsbridge had due perusal, treating with animated +copiousness about all manner of picture-galleries, pictures, statues and +objects of Art at Rome, and on the road to Rome and from it, wheresoever +his course led him into neighborhood of such objects. That was +Sterling's habit. It is expected in this Nineteenth Century that a man +of culture shall understand and worship Art: among the windy gospels +addressed to our poor Century there are few louder than this of +Art;--and if the Century expects that every man shall do his duty, +surely Sterling was not the man to balk it! Various extracts from these +picture-surveys are given in Hare; the others, I suppose, Sterling +himself subsequently destroyed, not valuing them much. + +Certainly no stranger could address himself more eagerly to reap what +artistic harvest Rome offers, which is reckoned the peculiar produce +of Rome among cities under the sun; to all galleries, churches, sistine +chapels, ruins, coliseums, and artistic or dilettante shrines he +zealously pilgrimed; and had much to say then and afterwards, and with +real technical and historical knowledge I believe, about the objects of +devotion there. But it often struck me as a question, Whether all this +even to himself was not, more or less, a nebulous kind of element; +prescribed not by Nature and her verities, but by the Century expecting +every man to do his duty? Whether not perhaps, in good part, temporary +dilettante cloudland of our poor Century;--or can it be the real diviner +Pisgah height, and everlasting mount of vision, for man's soul in +any Century? And I think Sterling himself bent towards a negative +conclusion, in the course of years. Certainly, of all subjects this +was the one I cared least to hear even Sterling talk of: indeed it is a +subject on which earnest men, abhorrent of hypocrisy and speech that has +no meaning, are admonished to silence in this sad time, and had better, +in such a Babel as we have got into for the present, "perambulate their +picture-gallery with little or no speech." + +Here is another and to me much more earnest kind of "Art," which +renders Rome unique among the cities of the world; of this we will, in +preference; take a glance through Sterling's eyes:-- + +"January 22d, 1839.--On Friday last there was a great Festival at St. +Peter's; the only one I have seen. The Church was decorated with crimson +hangings, and the choir fitted up with seats and galleries, and a throne +for the Pope. There were perhaps a couple of hundred guards of different +kinds; and three or four hundred English ladies, and not so many foreign +male spectators; so that the place looked empty. The Cardinals in +scarlet, and Monsignori in purple, were there; and a body of officiating +Clergy. The Pope was carried in in his chair on men's shoulders, wearing +the Triple Crown; which I have thus actually seen: it is something +like a gigantic Egg, and of the same color, with three little bands of +gold,--very large Egg-shell with three streaks of the yolk smeared round +it. He was dressed in white silk robes, with gold trimmings. + +"It was a fine piece of state-show; though, as there are three or four +such Festivals yearly, of course there is none of the eager interest +which breaks out at coronations and similar rare events; no explosion +of unwonted velvets, jewels, carriages and footmen, such as London and +Milan have lately enjoyed. I guessed all the people in St. Peter's, +including performers and spectators, at 2,000; where 20,000 would hardly +have been a crushing crowd. Mass was performed, and a stupid but short +Latin sermon delivered by a lad, in honor of St. Peter, who would have +been much astonished if he could have heard it. The genuflections, and +train-bearings, and folding up the tails of silk petticoats while the +Pontiff knelt, and the train of Cardinals going up to kiss his Ring, and +so forth,--made on me the impression of something immeasurably old and +sepulchral, such as might suit the Grand Lama's court, or the inside of +an Egyptian Pyramid; or as if the Hieroglyphics on one of the Obelisks +here should begin to pace and gesticulate, and nod their bestial heads +upon the granite tablets. The careless bystanders, the London ladies +with their eye-glasses and look of an Opera-box, the yawning young +gentlemen of the _Guarda Nobile_, and the laugh of one of the file of +vermilion Priests round the steps of the altar at the whispered good +thing of his neighbor, brought one back to nothing indeed of a very +lofty kind, but still to the Nineteenth Century."-- + +"At the great Benediction of the City and the World on Easter Sunday by +the Pope," he writes afterwards, "there was a large crowd both native +and foreign, hundreds of carriages, and thousands of the lower orders of +people from the country; but even of the poor hardly one in twenty took +off his hat, and a still smaller number knelt down. A few years ago, +not a head was covered, nor was there a knee which did not bow."--A very +decadent "Holiness of our Lord the Pope," it would appear!-- + +Sterling's view of the Pope, as seen in these his gala days, doing his +big play-actorism under God's earnest sky, was much more substantial +to me than his studies in the picture-galleries. To Mr. Hare also he +writes: "I have seen the Pope in all his pomp at St. Peter's; and he +looked to me a mere lie in livery. The Romish Controversy is doubtless a +much more difficult one than the managers of the Religious-Tract Society +fancy, because it is a theoretical dispute; and in dealing with notions +and authorities, I can quite understand how a mere student in a library, +with no eye for facts, should take either one side or other. But how any +man with clear head and honest heart, and capable of seeing realities, +and distinguishing them from scenic falsehoods, should, after living in +a Romanist country, and especially at Rome, be inclined to side with Leo +against Luther, I cannot understand." [20] + +It is fit surely to recognize with admiring joy any glimpse of the +Beautiful and the Eternal that is hung out for us, in color, in form or +tone, in canvas, stone, or atmospheric air, and made accessible by any +sense, in this world: but it is greatly fitter still (little as we are +used that way) to shudder in pity and abhorrence over the scandalous +tragedy, transcendent nadir of human ugliness and contemptibility, which +under the daring title of religious worship, and practical recognition +of the Highest God, daily and hourly everywhere transacts itself there. +And, alas, not there only, but elsewhere, everywhere more or less; +whereby our sense is so blunted to it;--whence, in all provinces of +human life, these tears!-- + +But let us take a glance at the Carnival, since we are here. The +Letters, as before, are addressed to Knightsbridge; the date _Rome_:-- + +"_February 5th_, 1839.--The Carnival began yesterday. It is a curious +example of the trifling things which will heartily amuse tens of +thousands of grown people, precisely because they are trifling, and +therefore a relief from serious business, cares and labors. The Corso +is a street about a mile long, and about as broad as Jermyn Street; but +bordered by much loftier houses, with many palaces and churches, and +has two or three small squares opening into it. Carriages, mostly open, +drove up and down it for two or three hours; and the contents were shot +at with handfuls of comfits from the windows,--in the hope of making +them as non-content as possible,--while they returned the fire to the +best of their inferior ability. The populace, among whom was I, walked +about; perhaps one in fifty were masked in character; but there was +little in the masquerade either of splendor of costume or liveliness of +mimicry. However, the whole scene was very gay; there were a good many +troops about, and some of them heavy dragoons, who flourished +their swords with the magnanimity of our Life-Guards, to repel the +encroachments of too ambitious little boys. Most of the windows +and balconies were hung with colored drapery; and there were flags, +trumpets, nosegays and flirtations of all shapes and sizes. The best of +all was, that there was laughter enough to have frightened Cassius out +of his thin carcass, could the lean old homicide have been present, +otherwise than as a fleshless ghost;--in which capacity I thought I had +a glimpse of him looking over the shoulder of a particolored clown, in +a carriage full of London Cockneys driving towards the Capitol. This +good-humored foolery will go on for several days to come, ending always +with the celebrated Horse-race, of horses without riders. The long +street is cleared in the centre by troops, and half a dozen quadrupeds, +ornamented like Grimaldi in a London pantomime, scamper away, with the +mob closing and roaring at their heels." + +"_February_ 9th, 1839.--The usual state of Rome is quiet and sober. One +could almost fancy the actual generation held their breath, and stole by +on tiptoe, in presence of so memorable a past. But during the Carnival +all mankind, womankind and childkind think it unbecoming not to play +the fool. The modern donkey pokes its head out of the lion's skin of old +Rome, and brays out the absurdest of asinine roundelays. Conceive twenty +thousand grown people in a long street, at the windows, on the footways, +and in carriages, amused day after day for several hours in pelting and +being pelted with handfuls of mock or real sugar-plums; and this no name +or presence, but real downright showers of plaster comfits, from which +people guard their eyes with meshes of wire. As sure as a carriage +passes under a window or balcony where are acquaintances of theirs, down +comes a shower of hail, ineffectually returned from below. The parties +in two crossing carriages similarly assault each other; and there are +long balconies hung the whole way with a deep canvas pocket full of this +mortal shot. One Russian Grand Duke goes with a troop of youngsters in a +wagon, all dressed in brown linen frocks and masked, and pelts among the +most furious, also being pelted. The children are of course preeminently +vigorous, and there is a considerable circulation of real sugar-plums, +which supply consolation for all disappointments." + +The whole to conclude, as is proper, with a display, with two displays, +of fireworks; in which art, as in some others, Rome is unrivalled:-- + +"_February 9th_, 1839.--It seems to be the ambition of all the lower +classes to wear a mask and showy grotesque disguise of some kind; and I +believe many of the upper ranks do the same. They even put St. Peter's +into masquerade; and make it a Cathedral of Lamplight instead of a stone +one. Two evenings ago this feat was performed; and I was able to see it +from the rooms of a friend near this, which command an excellent view of +it. I never saw so beautiful an effect of artificial light. The evening +was perfectly serene and clear; the principal lines of the building, the +columns, architrave and pediment of the front, the two inferior cupolas, +the curves of the dome from which the dome rises, the ribs of the dome +itself, the small oriel windows between them, and the lantern and ball +and cross,--all were delineated in the clear vault of air by lines of +pale yellow fire. The dome of another great Church, much nearer to +the eye, stood up as a great black mass,--a funereal contrast to the +luminous tabernacle. + +"While I was looking at this latter, a red blaze burst from the summit, +and at the same moment seemed to flash over the whole building, filling +up the pale outline with a simultaneous burst of fire. This is a +celebrated display; and is done, I believe, by the employment of a very +great number of men to light, at the same instant, the torches which are +fixed for the purpose all over the building. After the first glare of +fire, I did not think the second aspect of the building so beautiful +as the first; it wanted both softness and distinctness. The two most +animated days of the Carnival are still to come." + +"_April 4th_, 1839.--We have just come to the termination of all the +Easter spectacles here. On Sunday evening St. Peter's was a second time +illuminated; I was in the Piazza, and admired the sight from a nearer +point than when I had seen it before at the time of the Carnival. + +"On Monday evening the celebrated fire-works were let off from the +Castle of St. Angelo; they were said to be, in some respects more +brilliant than usual. I certainly never saw any fireworks comparable +to them for beauty. The Girandola is a discharge of many thousands of +rockets at once, which of course fall back, like the leaves of a lily, +and form for a minute a very beautiful picture. There was also in +silvery light a very long Facade of a Palace, which looked a residence +for Oberon and Titania, and beat Aladdin's into darkness. Afterwards a +series of cascades of red fire poured down the faces of the Castle and +of the scaffoldings round it, and seemed a burning Niagara. Of course +there were abundance of serpents, wheels and cannon-shot; there was also +a display of dazzling white light, which made a strange appearance on +the houses, the river, the bridge, and the faces of the multitude. The +whole ended with a second and a more splendid Girandola." + +Take finally, to people the scene a little for us, if our imagination +be at all lively, these three small entries, of different dates, and so +wind up:-- + +"_December 30th_, 1838.--I received on Christmas-day a packet from +Dr. Carlyle, containing Letters from the Maurices; which were a very +pleasant arrival. The Dr. wrote a few lines with them, mentioning that +he was only at Civita Vecchia while the steamer baited on its way to +Naples. I have written to thank him for his despatches." + +"_March 16th_, 1839.--I have seen a good deal of John Mill, whose +society I like much. He enters heartily into the interest of the things +which I most care for here, and I have seldom had more pleasure than +in taking him to see Raffael's Loggie, where are the Frescos called his +Bible, and to the Sixtine Chapel, which I admire and love more and +more. He is in very weak health, but as fresh and clear in mind as +possible.... English politics seem in a queer state, the Conservatives +creeping on, the Whigs losing ground; like combatants on the top of a +breach, while there is a social mine below which will probably blow both +parties into the air." + +"_April 4th_, 1839.--I walked out on Tuesday on the Ancona Road, and +about noon met a travelling carriage, which from a distance looked very +suspicious, and on nearer approach was found really to contain Captain +Sterling and an Albanian manservant on the front, and behind under the +hood Mrs. A. Sterling and the she portion of the tail. They seemed very +well; and, having turned the Albanian back to the rear of the whole +machine, I sat by Anthony, and entered Rome in triumph."--Here is indeed +a conquest! Captain A. Sterling, now on his return from service in +Corfu, meets his Brother in this manner; and the remaining Roman days +are of a brighter complexion. As these suddenly ended, I believe he +turned southward, and found at Naples the Dr. Carlyle above mentioned +(an extremely intimate acquaintance of mine), who was still there. For +we are a most travelling people, we of this Island in this time; and, +as the Prophet threatened, see ourselves, in so many senses, made "like +unto a wheel!"-- + +Sterling returned from Italy filled with much cheerful imagery and +reminiscence, and great store of artistic, serious, dilettante and other +speculation for the time; improved in health, too; but probably +little enriched in real culture or spiritual strength; and indeed not +permanently altered by his tour in any respect to a sensible extent, +that one could notice. He returned rather in haste, and before the +expected time; summoned, about the middle of April, by his Wife's +domestic situation at Hastings; who, poor lady, had been brought to bed +before her calculation, and had in few days lost her infant; and now saw +a household round her much needing the master's presence. He hurried off +to Malta, dreading the Alps at that season; and came home, by steamer, +with all speed, early in May, 1839. + + + + +PART III. + + + + +CHAPTER I. CLIFTON. + +Matters once readjusted at Hastings, it was thought Sterling's health +had so improved, and his activities towards Literature so developed +themselves into congruity, that a permanent English place of abode +might now again be selected,--on the Southwest coast somewhere,--and the +family once more have the blessing of a home, and see its _lares_ +and _penates_ and household furniture unlocked from the Pantechnicon +repositories, where they had so long been lying. + +Clifton, by Bristol, with its soft Southern winds and high cheerful +situation, recommended too by the presence of one or more valuable +acquaintances there, was found to be the eligible place; and thither in +this summer of 1839, having found a tolerable lodging, with the prospect +by and by of an agreeable house, he and his removed. This was the end of +what I call his "third peregrinity;"--or reckoning the West Indies one, +his fourth. This also is, since Bayswater, the fourth time his family +has had to shift on his account. Bayswater; then to Bordeaux, to +Blackheath and Knightsbridge (during the Madeira time), to Hastings +(Roman time); and now to Clifton, not to stay there either: a sadly +nomadic life to be prescribed to a civilized man! + + +At Clifton his habitation was speedily enough set up; household +conveniences, methods of work, daily promenades on foot or horseback, +and before long even a circle of friends, or of kindly neighborhoods +ripening into intimacy, were established round him. In all this no man +could be more expert or expeditious, in such cases. It was with singular +facility, in a loving, hoping manner, that he threw himself open to +the new interests and capabilities of the new place; snatched out of +it whatsoever of human or material would suit him; and in brief, in +all senses had pitched his tent-habitation, and grew to look on it as a +house. It was beautiful too, as well as pathetic. This man saw himself +reduced to be a dweller in tents, his house is but a stone tent; and he +can so kindly accommodate himself to that arrangement;--healthy faculty +and diseased necessity, nature and habit, and all manner of things +primary and secondary, original and incidental, conspiring now to make +it easy for him. With the evils of nomadism, he participated to the full +in whatever benefits lie in it for a man. + +He had friends enough, old and new, at Clifton, whose intercourse made +the place human for him. Perhaps among the most valued of the former +sort may be mentioned Mrs. Edward Strachey, Widow of the late Indian +Judge, who now resided here; a cultivated, graceful, most devout and +high-minded lady; whom he had known in old years, first probably as +Charles Buller's Aunt, and whose esteem was constant for him, and always +precious to him. She was some ten or twelve years older than he; she +survived him some years, but is now also gone from us. Of new friends +acquired here, besides a skilful and ingenious Dr. Symonds, physician +as well as friend, the principal was Francis Newman, then and still an +ardently inquiring soul, of fine University and other attainments, of +sharp-cutting, restlessly advancing intellect, and the mildest pious +enthusiasm; whose worth, since better known to all the world, Sterling +highly estimated;--and indeed practically testified the same; having by +will appointed him, some years hence, guardian to his eldest Son; which +pious function Mr. Newman now successfully discharges. + + +Sterling was not long in certainty as to his abode at Clifton: alas, +where could he long be so? Hardly six months were gone when his old +enemy again overtook him; again admonished him how frail his hopes of +permanency were. Each winter, it turned out, he had to fly; and after +the second of these, he quitted the place altogether. Here, meanwhile, +in a Letter to myself, and in Excerpts from others, are some glimpses of +his advent and first summer there:-- + + _To his Mother_. + +"_Clifton, June 11th_, 1839.--As yet I am personally very uncomfortable +from the general confusion of this house, which deprives me of my room +to sit and read and write in; all being more or less lumbered by boxes, +and invaded by servile domesticities aproned, handled, bristled, and of +nondescript varieties. We have very fine warm weather, with occasional +showers; and the verdure of the woods and fields is very beautiful. +Bristol seems as busy as need be; and the shops and all kinds of +practical conveniences are excellent; but those of Clifton have the +usual sentimental, not to say meretricious fraudulence of commercial +establishments in Watering-places. + +"The bag which Hannah forgot reached us safely at Bath on Friday +morning; but I cannot quite unriddle the mystery of the change of +padlocks, for I left the right one in care of the Head Steam-engine at +Paddington, which seemed a very decent person with a good black coat on, +and a pen behind its ear. I have been meditating much on the story of +Palarea's 'box of papers;' which does not appear to be in my possession, +and I have a strong impression that I gave it to young Florez Calderon. +I will write to say so to Madam Torrijos speedily." Palarea, Dr. +Palarea, I understand, was "an old guerilla leader whom they called +_El Medico_." Of him and of the vanished shadows, now gone to Paris, to +Madrid, or out of the world, let us say nothing! + + _To Mr. Carlyle_. + +"_June 15th_, 1839.--We have a room now occupied by Robert Barton [a +brother-in-law]; to which Anthony may perhaps succeed; but which after +him, or in lieu of him, would expand itself to receive you. Is there no +hope of your coming? I would undertake to ride with you at all possible +paces, and in all existing directions. + +"As yet my books are lying as ghost books, in a limbo on the banks of +a certain Bristolian Styx, humanly speaking, a _Canal_; but the other +apparatus of life is gathered about me, and performs its diurnal +functions. The place pleases me better than I expected: a far lookout on +all sides, over green country; a sufficient old City lying in the hollow +near; and civilization, in no tumultuous state, rather indeed stagnant, +visible in the Rows of Houses and Gardens which call themselves Clifton. +I hope soon to take a lease of a house, where I may arrange myself more +methodically; keep myself equably boiling in my own kitchen; and spread +myself over a series of book-shelves.... I have just been interrupted +by a visit from Mrs. Strachey; with whom I dined yesterday. She seems a +very good and thoroughly kind-hearted woman; and it is pleasant to have +her for a neighbor.... I have read Emerson's Pamphlets. I should find it +more difficult than ever to write to him." + + _To his Father_. + +"_June 30th_, 1839.--Of Books I shall have no lack, though no plethora; +and the Reading-room supplies all one can want in the way of Papers +and Reviews. I go there three or four times a week, and inquire how the +human race goes on. I suppose this Turco-Egyptian War will throw several +diplomatists into a state of great excitement, and massacre a good many +thousands of Africans and Asiatics?--For the present, it appears, the +English Education Question is settled. I wish the Government had said +that, in their inspection and superintendence, they would look only to +secular matters, and leave religious ones to the persons who set up the +schools, whoever these might be. It seems to me monstrous that the State +should be prevented taking any efficient measures for teaching Roman +Catholic children to read, write and cipher, merely because they believe +in the Pope, and the Pope is an impostor,--which I candidly confess he +is! There is no question which I can so ill endure to see made a party +one as that of Education."--The following is of the same day:-- + + "_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_. + "MANOR HOUSE, CLIFTON PLACE, CLIFTON, + "30th June, 1839. + +"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--I have heard, this morning, from my Father, that you +are to set out on Tuesday for Scotland: so I have determined to fillip +away some spurt of ink in your direction, which may reach you before you +move towards Thule. + +"Writing to you, in fact, is considerably easier than writing about +you; which has been my employment of late, at leisure moments,--that +is, moments of leisure from idleness, not work. As you partly guessed, +I took in hand a Review of _Teufelsdrockh_--for want of a better +Heuschrecke to do the work; and when I have been well enough, and alert +enough, during the last fortnight, have tried to set down some notions +about Tobacco, Radicalism, Christianity, Assafoetida and so forth. But a +few abortive pages are all the result as yet. If my speculations should +ever see daylight, they may chance to get you into scrapes, but +will certainly get me into worse.... But one must work; _sic itur ad +astra_,--and the _astra_ are always there to befriend one, at least as +asterisks, filling up the gaps which yawn in vain for words. + +"Except my unsuccessful efforts to discuss you and your offences, I have +done nothing that leaves a trace behind;--unless the endeavor to teach +my little boy the Latin declensions shall be found, at some time short +of the Last Day, to have done so. I have--rather I think from dyspepsia +than dyspneumony--been often and for days disabled from doing anything +but read. In this way I have gone through a good deal of Strauss's Book; +which is exceedingly clever and clearheaded; with more of insight, and +less of destructive rage than I expected. It will work deep and far, +in such a time as ours. When so many minds are distracted about the +history, or rather genesis of the Gospel, it is a great thing for +partisans on the one side to have, what the other never have wanted, +a Book of which they can say, This is our Creed and Code,--or rather +Anti-creed and Anti-code. And Strauss seems perfectly secure against the +sort of answer to which Voltaire's critical and historical shallowness +perpetually exposed him. I mean to read the Book through. It seems +admitted that the orthodox theologians have failed to give any +sufficient answer.--I have also looked through Michelet's _Luther_, with +great delight; and have read the fourth volume of Coleridge's _Literary +Remains_, in which there are things that would interest you. He has a +great hankering after Cromwell, and explicitly defends the execution of +Charles. + +"Of Mrs. Strachey we have seen a great deal; and might have seen more, +had I had time and spirits for it. She is a warm-hearted, enthusiastic +creature, whom one cannot but like. She seems always excited by the wish +for more excitement than her life affords. And such a person is always +in danger of doing something less wise than his best knowledge and +aspirations; because he must do something, and circumstances do not +allow him to do what he desires. Thence, after the first glow of +novelty, endless self-tormenting comes from the contrast between aims +and acts. She sets out, with her daughter and two boys, for a Tour in +Wales to-morrow morning. Her talk of you is always most affectionate; +and few, I guess, will read _Sartor_ with more interest than she. + +"I am still in a very extempore condition as to house, books, &c. One +which I have hired for three years will be given up to me in the middle +of August; and then I may hope to have something like a house,--so far +as that is possible for any one to whom Time itself is often but a worse +or a better kind of cave in the desert. We have had rainy and cheerless +weather almost since the day of our arrival. But the sun now shines +more lovingly, and the skies seem less disdainful of man and his +perplexities. The earth is green, abundant and beautiful. But human +life, so far as I can learn, is mean and meagre enough in its purposes, +however striking to the speculative or sentimental bystander. Pray be +assured that whatever you may say of the 'landlord at Clifton,' [21] the +more I know of him, the less I shall like him. Well with me if I can +put up with him for the present, and make use of him, till at last I can +joyfully turn him off forever! + +"Love to you Wife and self. My little Charlotte desires me to tell you +that she has new shoes for her Doll, which she will show you when you +come. + + "Yours, + "JOHN STERLING." + +The visit to Clifton never took effect; nor to any of Sterling's +subsequent homes; which now is matter of regret to me. Concerning +the "Review of _Teufelsdrockh_" there will be more to say anon. As to +"little Charlotte and her Doll," I remember well enough and was more +than once reminded, this bright little creature, on one of my first +visits to Bayswater, had earnestly applied to me to put her Doll's shoes +on for her; which feat was performed.--The next fragment indicates a +household settled, fallen into wholesome routine again; and may close +the series here:-- + + _To his Mother_. + +"_July 22d_, 1839.--A few evenings ago we went to Mr. Griffin's, and +met there Dr. Prichard, the author of a well-known Book on the _Races of +Mankind_, to which it stands in the same relation among English books +as the Racing Calendar does to those of Horsekind. He is a very +intelligent, accomplished person. We had also there the Dean; a certain +Dr. ---- of Corpus College, Cambridge (a booby); and a clever fellow, +a Mr. Fisher, one of the Tutors of Trinity in my days. We had a very +pleasant evening."-- + +At London we were in the habit of expecting Sterling pretty often; his +presence, in this house as in others, was looked for, once in the month +or two, and came always as sunshine in the gray weather to me and mine. +My daily walks with him had long since been cut short without renewal; +that walk to Eltham and Edgeworth's perhaps the last of the kind he and +I had: but our intimacy, deepening and widening year after year, knew no +interruption or abatement of increase; an honest, frank and truly human +mutual relation, valuable or even invaluable to both parties, and a +lasting loss, hardly to be replaced in this world, to the survivor of +the two. + +His visits, which were usually of two or three days, were always full of +business, rapid in movement as all his life was. To me, if possible, he +would come in the evening; a whole cornucopia of talk and speculation +was to be discharged. If the evening would not do, and my affairs +otherwise permitted, I had to mount into cabs with him; fly far and +wide, shuttling athwart the big Babel, wherever his calls and pauses had +to be. This was his way to husband time! Our talk, in such straitened +circumstances, was loud or low as the circumambient groaning rage +of wheels and sound prescribed,--very loud it had to be in such +thoroughfares as London Bridge and Cheapside; but except while he +was absent, off for minutes into some banker's office, lawyer's, +stationer's, haberdasher's or what office there might be, it never +paused. In this way extensive strange dialogues were carried on: to me +also very strange,--private friendly colloquies, on all manner of rich +subjects, held thus amid the chaotic roar of things. Sterling was full +of speculations, observations and bright sallies; vividly awake to what +was passing in the world; glanced pertinently with victorious clearness, +without spleen, though often enough with a dash of mockery, into its +Puseyisms, Liberalisms, literary Lionisms, or what else the mad hour +might be producing,--always prompt to recognize what grain of sanity +might be in the same. He was opulent in talk, and the rapid movement and +vicissitude on such occasions seemed to give him new excitement. + +Once, I still remember,--it was some years before, probably in May, on +his return from Madeira,--he undertook a day's riding with me; once and +never again. We coursed extensively, over the Hampstead and Highgate +regions, and the country beyond, sauntering or galloping through many +leafy lanes and pleasant places, in ever-flowing, ever-changing talk; +and returned down Regent Street at nightfall: one of the cheerfulest +days I ever had;--not to be repeated, said the Fates. Sterling was +charming on such occasions: at once a child and a gifted man. A serious +fund of thought he always had, a serious drift you never missed in him: +nor indeed had he much depth of real laughter or sense of the ludicrous, +as I have elsewhere said; but what he had was genuine, free and +continual: his sparkling sallies bubbled up as from aerated natural +fountains; a mild dash of gayety was native to the man, and had moulded +his physiognomy in a very graceful way. We got once into a cab, about +Charing Cross; I know not now whence or well whitherward, nor that our +haste was at all special; however, the cabman, sensible that his pace +was slowish, took to whipping, with a steady, passionless, businesslike +assiduity which, though the horse seemed lazy rather than weak, became +afflictive; and I urged remonstrance with the savage fellow: "Let him +alone," answered Sterling; "he is kindling the enthusiasm of his horse, +you perceive; that is the first thing, then we shall do very well!"--as +accordingly we did. + + +At Clifton, though his thoughts began to turn more on poetic forms +of composition, he was diligent in prose elaborations too,--doing +Criticism, for one thing, as we incidentally observed. He wrote there, +and sent forth in this autumn of 1839, his most important contribution +to John Mill's Review, the article on _Carlyle_, which stands also in +Mr. Hare's collection. [22] What its effect on the public was I knew +not, and know not; but remember well, and may here be permitted to +acknowledge, the deep silent joy, not of a weak or ignoble nature, which +it gave to myself in my then mood and situation; as it well might. The +first generous human recognition, expressed with heroic emphasis, and +clear conviction visible amid its fiery exaggeration, that one's poor +battle in this world is not quite a mad and futile, that it is perhaps a +worthy and manful one, which will come to something yet: this fact is +a memorable one in every history; and for me Sterling, often enough the +stiff gainsayer in our private communings, was the doer of this. The +thought burnt in me like a lamp, for several days; lighting up into +a kind of heroic splendor the sad volcanic wrecks, abysses, and +convulsions of said poor battle, and secretly I was very grateful to my +daring friend, and am still, and ought to be. What the public might be +thinking about him and his audacities, and me in consequence, or whether +it thought at all, I never learned, or much heeded to learn. + +Sterling's gainsaying had given way on many points; but on others it +continued stiff as ever, as may be seen in that article; indeed he +fought Parthian-like in such cases, holding out his last position as +doggedly as the first: and to some of my notions he seemed to grow in +stubbornness of opposition, with the growing inevitability, and +never would surrender. Especially that doctrine of the "greatness and +fruitfulness of Silence," remained afflictive and incomprehensible: +"Silence?" he would say: "Yes, truly; if they give you leave to proclaim +silence by cannon-salvos! My Harpocrates-Stentor!" In like manner, +"Intellect and Virtue," how they are proportional, or are indeed one +gift in us, the same great summary of gifts; and again, "Might and +Right," the identity of these two, if a man will understand this +God's-Universe, and that only he who conforms to the law of it can +in the long-run have any "might:" all this, at the first blush, often +awakened Sterling's musketry upon me, and many volleys I have had +to stand,--the thing not being decidable by that kind of weapon or +strategy. + +In such cases your one method was to leave our friend in peace. By +small-arms practice no mortal could dislodge him: but if you were in the +right, the silent hours would work continually for you; and Sterling, +more certainly than any man, would and must at length swear fealty to +the right, and passionately adopt it, burying all hostilities under +foot. A more candid soul, once let the stormful velocities of it expend +themselves, was nowhere to be met with. A son of light, if I have ever +seen one; recognizing the truth, if truth there were; hurling overboard +his vanities, petulances, big and small interests, in ready loyalty to +truth: very beautiful; at once a loyal child, as I said, and a gifted +man!--Here is a very pertinent passage from one of his Letters, which, +though the name continues blank, I will insert:-- + + _To his Father_. + +"_October 15th_, 1839.--As to my 'over-estimate of ----,' your +expressions rather puzzle me. I suppose there may be, at the outside, a +hundred persons in England whose opinions on such a matter are worth +as much as mine. If by 'the public' you and my Mother mean the other +ninety-nine, I submit. I have no doubt that, on any matter not relating +peculiarly to myself, the judgment of the ninety-nine most philosophical +heads in the country, if unanimous, would be right, and mine, if opposed +to them, wrong. But then I am at a loss to make out, How the decision of +the very few really competent persons has been ascertained to be thus in +contradiction to me? And on the other hand, I conceive myself, from my +opportunities, knowledge and attention to the subject, to be alone quite +entitled to outvote tens of thousands of gentlemen, however much my +superiors as men of business, men of the world, or men of merely dry or +merely frivolous literature. + +"I do not remember ever before to have heard the saying, whether of +Talleyrand or of any one else, That _all_ the world is a wiser man +than any man in the world. Had it been said even by the Devil, it would +nevertheless be false. I have often indeed heard the saying, _On peut +etre plus FIN qu'un autre, mais pas plus FIN que tous les autres_. But +observe that '_fin_' means _cunning_, not _wise_. The difference between +this assertion and the one you refer to is curious and worth examining. +It is quite certain, there is always some one man in the world wiser +than all the rest; as Socrates was declared by the oracle to be; and as, +I suppose, Bacon was in his day, and perhaps Burke in his. There is also +some one, whose opinion would be probably true, if opposed to that of +all around him; and it is always indubitable that the wise men are the +scores, and the unwise the millions. The millions indeed come round, in +the course of a generation or two, to the opinions of the wise; but +by that time a new race of wise men have again shot ahead of their +contemporaries: so it has always been, and so, in the nature of things, +it always must be. But with cunning, the matter is quite different. +Cunning is not _dishonest wisdom_, which would be a contradiction +in terms; it is _dishonest prudence_, acuteness in practice, not in +thought: and though there must always be some one the most cunning in +the world, as well as some one the most wise, these two superlatives +will fare very differently in the world. In the case of cunning, the +shrewdness of a whole people, of a whole generation, may doubtless be +combined against that of the one, and so triumph over it; which was +pretty much the case with Napoleon. But although a man of the greatest +cunning can hardly conceal his designs and true character from millions +of unfriendly eyes, it is quite impossible thus to club the eyes of +the mind, and to constitute by the union of ten thousand follies an +equivalent for a single wisdom. A hundred school-boys can easily unite +and thrash their one master; but a hundred thousand school-boys would +not be nearer than a score to knowing as much Greek among them as +Bentley or Scaliger. To all which, I believe, you will assent as readily +as I;--and I have written it down only because I have nothing more +important to say."-- + + +Besides his prose labors, Sterling had by this time written, publishing +chiefly in _Blackwood_, a large assortment of verses, _Sexton's +Daughter_, _Hymns of a Hermit_, and I know not what other extensive +stock of pieces; concerning which he was now somewhat at a loss as to +his true course. He could write verses with astonishing facility, in any +given form of metre; and to various readers they seemed excellent, +and high judges had freely called them so, but he himself had grave +misgivings on that latter essential point. In fact here once more was +a parting of the ways, "Write in Poetry; write in Prose?" upon which, +before all else, it much concerned him to come to a settlement. + +My own advice was, as it had always been, steady against Poetry; and we +had colloquies upon it, which must have tried his patience, for in him +there was a strong leaning the other way. But, as I remarked and urged: +Had he not already gained superior excellence in delivering, by way of +_speech_ or prose, what thoughts were in him, which is the grand and +only intrinsic function of a writing man, call him by what title you +will? Cultivate that superior excellence till it become a perfect and +superlative one. Why _sing_ your bits of thoughts, if you _can_ contrive +to speak them? By your thought, not by your mode of delivering it, +you must live or die.--Besides I had to observe there was in Sterling +intrinsically no depth of _tune_; which surely is the real test of a +Poet or Singer, as distinguished from a Speaker? In music proper he +had not the slightest ear; all music was mere impertinent noise to him, +nothing in it perceptible but the mere march or time. Nor in his way +of conception and utterance, in the verses he wrote, was there any +contradiction, but a constant confirmation to me, of that fatal +prognostic;--as indeed the whole man, in ear and heart and tongue, is +one; and he whose soul does not sing, need not try to do it with his +throat. Sterling's verses had a monotonous rub-a-dub, instead of tune; +no trace of music deeper than that of a well-beaten drum; to which +limited range of excellence the substance also corresponded; being +intrinsically always a rhymed and slightly rhythmical _speech_, not a +_song_. + +In short, all seemed to me to say, in his case: "You can speak with +supreme excellence; sing with considerable excellence you never can. And +the Age itself, does it not, beyond most ages, demand and require clear +speech; an Age incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, +till these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings +readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical psalmody +and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of battle. Beyond all ages, +our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking or writing man it has: Oh, speak +to me some wise intelligible speech; your wise meaning in the shortest +and clearest way; behold I am dying for want of wise meaning, and +insight into the devouring fact: speak, if you have any wisdom! As to +song so called, and your fiddling talent,--even if you have one, much +more if you have none,--we will talk of that a couple of centuries +hence, when things are calmer again. Homer shall be thrice welcome; but +only when Troy is _taken_: alas, while the siege lasts, and battle's +fury rages everywhere, what can I do with the Homer? I want Achilleus +and Odysseus, and am enraged to see them trying to be Homers!"-- + +Sterling, who respected my sincerity, and always was amenable enough to +counsel, was doubtless much confused by such contradictory diagnosis of +his case. The question, Poetry or Prose? became more and more pressing, +more and more insoluble. He decided, at last, to appeal to the public +upon it;--got ready, in the late autumn, a small select Volume of his +verses; and was now busy pushing it through the press. Unfortunately, +in the mean while, a grave illness, of the old pulmonary sort, overtook +him, which at one time threatened to be dangerous. This is a glance +again into his interior household in these circumstances:-- + + _To his Mother_. + +"_December 21st_, 1839.--The Tin box came quite safe, with all its +miscellaneous contents. I suppose we are to thank you for the _Comic +Almanac_, which, as usual, is very amusing; and for the Book on _Watt_, +which disappointed me. The scientific part is no doubt very good, and +particularly clear and simple; but there is nothing remarkable in +the account of Watt's character; and it is an absurd piece of French +impertinence in Arago to say, that England has not yet learnt to +appreciate men like Watt, because he was not made a peer; which, were +our peerage an institution like that of France, would have been very +proper. + +"I have now finished correcting the proofs of my little Volume of +Poems. It has been a great plague to me, and one that I would not have +incurred, had I expected to be laid up as I have been; but the +matter was begun before I had any notion of being disabled by such an +illness,--the severest I have suffered since I went to the West Indies. +The Book will, after all, be a botched business in many respects; and I +much doubt whether it will pay its expenses: but I try to consider it +as out of my hands, and not to fret myself about it. I shall be very +curious to see Carlyle's Tractate on _Chartism_; which"--But we need not +enter upon that. + +Sterling's little Book was printed at his own expense; [23] published by +Moxon in the very end of this year. It carries an appropriate and pretty +Epigraph:-- + + "Feeling, Thought, and Fancy be + Gentle sister Graces three: + If these prove averse to me, + They will punish,--pardon Ye!" + +He had dedicated the little Volume to Mr. Hare;--and he submitted very +patiently to the discouraging neglect with which it was received by the +world; for indeed the "Ye" said nothing audible, in the way of pardon +or other doom; so that whether the "sister Graces" were averse or not, +remained as doubtful as ever. + + + +CHAPTER II. TWO WINTERS. + +As we said above, it had been hoped by Sterling's friends, not very +confidently by himself, that in the gentler air of Clifton his health +might so far recover as to enable him to dispense with autumnal voyages, +and to spend the year all round in a house of his own. These hopes, +favorable while the warm season lasted, broke down when winter came. In +November of this same year, while his little Volume was passing through +the press, bad and worse symptoms, spitting of blood to crown the sad +list, reappeared; and Sterling had to equip himself again, at this late +season, for a new flight to Madeira; wherein the good Calvert, himself +suffering, and ready on all grounds for such an adventure, offered to +accompany him. Sterling went by land to Falmouth, meaning there to wait +for Calvert, who was to come by the Madeira Packet, and there take him +on board. + +Calvert and the Packet did arrive, in stormy January weather; which +continued wildly blowing for weeks; forbidding all egress Westward, +especially for invalids. These elemental tumults, and blustering wars +of sea and sky, with nothing but the misty solitude of Madeira in the +distance, formed a very discouraging outlook. In the mean while Falmouth +itself had offered so many resources, and seemed so tolerable in climate +and otherwise, while this wintry ocean looked so inhospitable for +invalids, it was resolved our voyagers should stay where they were till +spring returned. Which accordingly was done; with good effect for that +season, and also with results for the coming seasons. Here again, from +Letters to Knightsbridge, are some glimpses of his winter-life:-- + +"_Falmouth, February 5th_, 1840.--I have been to-day to see a new +tin-mine, two or three miles off, which is expected to turn into a +copper-mine by and by, so they will have the two constituents of bronze +close together. This, by the way, was the 'brass' of Homer and the +Ancients generally, who do not seem to have known our brass made of +copper and zinc. Achilles in his armor must have looked like a bronze +statue.--I took Sheridan's advice, and did not go down the mine." + +"_February 15th_.--To some iron-works the other day; where I saw half +the beam of a great steam-engine, a piece of iron forty feet long +and seven broad, cast in about five minutes. It was a very striking +spectacle. I hope to go to Penzance before I leave this country, and +will not fail to tell you about it." He did make trial of Penzance, +among other places, next year; but only of Falmouth this. + +"_February 20th_.--I am going on _asy_ here, in spite of a great change +of weather. The East-winds are come at last, bringing with them snow, +which has been driving about for the last twenty-four hours; not falling +heavily, nor lying long when fallen. Neither is it as yet very cold, but +I suppose there will be some six weeks of unpleasant temperature. +The marine climate of this part of England will, no doubt, modify and +mollify the air into a happier sort of substance than that you breathe +in London. + +"The large vessels that had been lying here for weeks, waiting for a +wind, have now sailed; two of them for the East Indies, and having three +hundred soldiers on board. It is a curious thing that the long-continued +westerly winds had so prevented the coasters arriving, that the Town was +almost on the point of a famine as to bread. The change has brought in +abundance of flour.--The people in general seem extremely comfortable; +their houses are excellent, almost all of stone. Their habits are very +little agricultural, but mining and fishing seem to prosper with +them. There are hardly any gentry here; I have not seen more than two +gentlemen's carriages in the Town; indeed I think the nearest one comes +from five miles off.... + +"I have been obliged to try to occupy myself with Natural Science, in +order to give some interest to my walks; and have begun to feel my way +in Geology. I have now learnt to recognize three or four of the common +kinds of stone about here, when I see them; but I find it stupid work +compared with Poetry and Philosophy. In the mornings, however, for an +hour or so before I get up, I generally light my candle, and try to +write some verses; and since I have been here, I have put together short +poems, almost enough for another small volume. In the evenings I have +gone on translating some of Goethe. But six or seven hours spent on my +legs, in the open air, do not leave my brain much energy for thinking. +Thus my life is a dull and unprofitable one, but still better than it +would have been in Madeira or on board ship. I hear from Susan every +day, and write to her by return of post." + +At Falmouth Sterling had been warmly welcomed by the well-known +Quaker family of the Foxes, principal people in that place, persons of +cultivated opulent habits, and joining to the fine purities and pieties +of their sect a reverence for human intelligence in all kinds; to whom +such a visitor as Sterling was naturally a welcome windfall. The family +had grave elders, bright cheery younger branches, men and women; truly +amiable all, after their sort: they made a pleasant image of home for +Sterling in his winter exile. "Most worthy, respectable and highly +cultivated people, with a great deal of money among them," writes +Sterling in the end of February; "who make the place pleasant to me. +They are connected with all the large Quaker circle, the Gurneys, Frys, +&c., and also with Buxton the Abolitionist. It is droll to hear them +talking of all the common topics of science, literature, and life, and +in the midst of it: 'Does thou know Wordsworth?' or, 'Did thou see the +Coronation?' or 'Will thou take some refreshment?' They are very kind +and pleasant people to know." + +"Calvert," continues our Diarist, "is better than he lately was, though +he has not been at all laid up. He shoots little birds, and dissects +and stuffs them; while I carry a hammer, and break flints and slates, +to look for diamonds and rubies inside; and admire my success in the +evening, when I empty my great-coat pocket of its specimens. On the +whole, I doubt whether my physical proceedings will set the Thames +on fire. Give my love to Anthony's Charlotte; also remember me +affectionately to the Carlyles."-- + +At this time, too, John Mill, probably encouraged by Sterling, arrived +in Falmouth, seeking refuge of climate for a sickly younger Brother, to +whom also, while he continued there, and to his poor patient, the doors +and hearts of this kind family were thrown wide open. Falmouth, during +these winter weeks, especially while Mill continued, was an unexpectedly +engaging place to Sterling; and he left it in spring, for Clifton, with +a very kindly image of it in his thoughts. So ended, better than it +might have done, his first year's flight from the Clifton winter. + +In April, 1840, he was at his own hearth again; cheerily pursuing his +old labors,--struggling to redeem, as he did with a gallant constancy, +the available months and days, out of the wreck of so many that were +unavailable, for the business allotted him in this world. His swift, +decisive energy of character; the valiant rally he made again and ever +again, starting up fresh from amid the wounded, and cheerily storming in +anew, was admirable, and showed a noble fund of natural health amid such +an element of disease. Somehow one could never rightly fancy that he +was diseased; that those fatal ever-recurring downbreaks were not almost +rather the penalties paid for exuberance of health, and of faculty +for living and working; criminal forfeitures, incurred by excess of +self-exertion and such irrepressible over-rapidity of movement: and the +vague hope was habitual with us, that increase of years, as it deadened +this over-energy, would first make the man secure of life, and a sober +prosperous worker among his fellows. It was always as if with a kind +of blame that one heard of his being ill again! Poor Sterling;--no man +knows another's burden: these things were not, and were not to be, in +the way we had fancied them! + +Summer went along in its usual quiet tenor at Clifton; health good, as +usual while the warm weather lasted, and activity abundant; the scene +as still as the busiest could wish. "You metropolitan signors," writes +Sterling to his Father, "cannot conceive the dulness and scantiness of +our provincial chronicle." Here is a little excursion to the seaside; +the lady of the family being again,--for good reasons,--in a weakly +state:-- + + "_To Edward Sterling, Esq., Knightsbridge, London_. + "PORTSHEAD, BRISTOL, 1st Sept., 1840. + +"MY DEAR FATHER,--This place is a southern headland at the mouth of the +Avon. Susan, and the Children too, were all suffering from languor; and +as she is quite unfit to travel in a carriage, we were obliged to move, +if at all, to some place accessible by water; and this is the nearest +where we could get the fresher air of the Bristol Channel. We sent to +take a house, for a week; and came down here in a steamer yesterday +morning. It seems likely to do every one good. We have a comfortable +house, with eight rather small bedrooms, for which we pay four guineas +and a half for the week. We have brought three of our own maids, and +leave one to take care of the house at Clifton. + +"A week ago my horse fell with me, but did not hurt seriously either +himself or me: it was, however, rather hard that, as there were six legs +to be damaged, the one that did scratch itself should belong to the part +of the machine possessing only two, instead of the quadrupedal portion. +I grazed about the size of a halfpenny on my left knee; and for a couple +of days walked about as if nothing had happened. I found, however, +that the skin was not returning correctly; and so sent for a doctor: he +treated the thing as quite insignificant, but said I must keep my leg +quiet for a few days. It is still not quite healed; and I lie all day +on a sofa, much to my discomposure; but the thing is now rapidly +disappearing; and I hope, in a day or two more, I shall be free again. I +find I can do no work, while thus crippled in my leg. The man in Horace +who made verses _stans pede in uno_ had the advantage of me. + +"The Great Western came in last night about eleven, and has just been +making a flourish past our windows; looking very grand, with four +streamers of bunting, and one of smoke. Of course I do not yet know +whether I have Letters by her, as if so they will have gone to Clifton +first. This place is quiet, green and pleasant; and will suit us very +well, if we have good weather, of which there seems every appearance. + +"Milnes spent last Sunday with me at Clifton; and was very amusing +and cordial. It is impossible for those who know him well not to like +him.--I send this to Knightsbridge, not knowing where else to hit you. +Love to my Mother. + + "Your affectionate, + "JOHN STERLING." + +The expected "Letters by the Great Western" are from Anthony, now in +Canada, doing military duties there. The "Milnes" is our excellent +Richard, whom all men know, and truly whom none can know well without +even doing as Sterling says.--In a week the family had returned to +Clifton; and Sterling was at his poetizings and equitations again. His +grand business was now Poetry; all effort, outlook and aim exclusively +directed thither, this good while. + +Of the published Volume Moxon gave the worst tidings; no man had +hailed it with welcome; unsold it lay, under the leaden seal of general +neglect; the public when asked what it thought, had answered hitherto by +a lazy stare. It shall answer otherwise, thought Sterling; by no means +taking that as the final response. It was in this same September that he +announced to me and other friends, under seal of secrecy as usual, the +completion, or complete first-draught, of "a new Poem reaching to two +thousand verses." By working "three hours every morning" he had brought +it so far. This Piece, entitled _The Election_, of which in due time we +obtained perusal, and had to give some judgment, proved to be in a new +vein,--what might be called the mock-heroic, or sentimental Hudibrastic, +reminding one a little, too, of Wieland's _Oberon_;--it had touches of +true drollery combined not ill with grave clear insight; showed spirit +everywhere, and a plainly improved power of execution. Our stingy +verdict was to the effect, "Better, but still not good enough:--why +follow that sad 'metrical' course, climbing the loose sandhills, when +you have a firm path along the plain?" To Sterling himself it remained +dubious whether so slight a strain, new though it were, would suffice to +awaken the sleeping public; and the Piece was thrown away and taken up +again, at intervals; and the question, Publish or not publish? lay many +months undecided. + +Meanwhile his own feeling was now set more and more towards Poetry; +and in spite of symptoms and dissuasions, and perverse prognostics of +outward wind and weather, he was rallying all his force for a downright +struggle with it; resolute to see which _was_ the stronger. It must be +owned, he takes his failures in the kindliest manner; and goes along, +bating no jot of heart or hope. Perhaps I should have more admired this +than I did! My dissuasions, in that case, might have been fainter. But +then my sincerity, which was all the use of my poor counsel in assent +or dissent, would have been less. He was now furthermore busy with a +_Tragedy of Strafford_, the theme of many failures in Tragedy; planning +it industriously in his head; eagerly reading in _Whitlocke, Rushworth_ +and the Puritan Books, to attain a vesture and local habitation for it. +Faithful assiduous studies I do believe;--of which, knowing my stubborn +realism, and savage humor towards singing by the Thespian or other +methods, he told me little, during his visits that summer. + + +The advance of the dark weather sent him adrift again; to Torquay, +for this winter: there, in his old Falmouth climate, he hoped to do +well;--and did, so far as well-doing was readily possible, in that sad +wandering way of life. However, be where he may, he tries to work "two +or three hours in the morning," were it even "with a lamp," in bed, +before the fires are lit; and so makes something of it. From abundant +Letters of his now before me, I glean these two or three small glimpses; +sufficient for our purpose at present. The general date is "Tor, near +Torquay:"-- + + _To Mrs. Charles Fox, Falmouth_. + +_Tor, November 30th_, 1840.--I reached this place on Thursday; having, +after much hesitation, resolved to come here, at least for the next +three weeks,--with some obscure purpose of embarking, at the New Year, +from Falmouth for Malta, and so reaching Naples, which I have not seen. +There was also a doubt whether I should not, after Christmas, bring my +family here for the first four months of the year. All this, however, +is still doubtful. But for certain inhabitants of Falmouth and its +neighborhood, this place would be far more attractive than it. But I +have here also friends, whose kindness, like much that I met with last +winter, perpetually makes me wonder at the stock of benignity in human +nature. A brother of my friend Julius Hare, Marcus by name, a Naval man, +and though not a man of letters, full of sense and knowledge, lives +here in a beautiful place, with a most agreeable and excellent wife, a +daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley. I had hardly seen them before; +but they are fraternizing with me, in a much better than the Jacobin +fashion; and one only feels ashamed at the enormity of some people's +good-nature. I am in a little rural sort of lodging; and as comfortable +as a solitary oyster can expect to be."-- + + _To C. Barton_. + +"_December 5th_.--This place is extremely small, much more so than +Falmouth even; but pretty, cheerful, and very mild in climate. There are +a great many villas in and about the little Town, having three or +four reception-rooms, eight or ten bedrooms; and costing about fifteen +hundred or two thousand pounds each, and occupied by persons spending +a thousand or more pounds a year. If the Country would acknowledge my +merits by the gift of one of these, I could prevail on myself to come +and live here; which would be the best move for my health I could +make in England; but, in the absence of any such expression of public +feeling, it would come rather dear."-- + + _To Mrs. Fox again_. + +"_December 22d_.--By the way, did you ever read a Novel? If you ever +mean to do so hereafter, let it be Miss Martineau's _Deerbrook_. It is +really very striking; and parts of it are very true and very beautiful. +It is not so true, or so thoroughly clear and harmonious, among +delineations of English middle-class gentility, as Miss Austen's books, +especially as _Pride and Prejudice_, which I think exquisite; but it +is worth reading. _The hour and the Man_ is eloquent, but an absurd +exaggeration.--I hold out so valorously against this Scandinavian +weather, that I deserve to be ranked with Odin and Thor; and fancy I may +go to live at Clifton or Drontheim. Have you had the same icy desolation +as prevails here?" + + _To W. Coningham, Esq_. + +"_December 28th_.--Looking back to him [a deceased Uncle, father of his +correspondent], as I now very often do, I feel strongly, what the loss +of other friends has also impressed on me, how much Death deepens our +affection; and sharpens our regret for whatever has been even slightly +amiss in our conduct towards those who are gone. What trifles then +swell into painful importance; how we believe that, could the past be +recalled, life would present no worthier, happier task, than that of so +bearing ourselves towards those we love, that we might ever after find +nothing but melodious tranquillity breathing about their graves! Yet, +too often, I feel the difficulty of always practicing such mild wisdom +towards those who are still left me.--You will wonder less at my +rambling off in this way, when I tell you that my little lodging is +close to a picturesque old Church and Churchyard, where, every day, I +brush past a tombstone, recording that an Italian, of Manferrato, has +buried there a girl of sixteen, his only daughter: _'L' unica speranza +di mia vita_.'--No doubt, as you say, our Mechanical Age is necessary as +a passage to something better; but, at least, do not let us go back."-- + +At the New-year time, feeling unusually well, he returns to Clifton. His +plans, of course, were ever fluctuating; his movements were swift and +uncertain. Alas, his whole life, especially his winter-life, had to be +built as if on wavering drift-sand; nothing certain in it, except if +possible the "two or three hours of work" snatched from the general +whirlpool of the dubious four-and-twenty! + + _To Dr. Carlyle_. + +"_Clifton, January 10th_, 1841.--I stood the sharp frost at Torquay +with such entire impunity, that at last I took courage, and resolved to +return home. I have been here a week, in extreme cold; and have suffered +not at all; so that I hope, with care I may prosper in spite of medical +prognostics,--if you permit such profane language. I am even able to +work a good deal; and write for some hours every morning, by dint +of getting up early, which an Arnott stove in my study enables me to +do."--But at Clifton he cannot continue. Again, before long, the rude +weather has driven him Southward; the spring finds him in his former +haunts; doubtful as ever what to decide upon for the future; but tending +evidently towards a new change of residence for household and self:-- + + _To W. Coningham, Esq_. + +"_Penzance, April 19th_, 1841.--My little Boy and I have been wandering +about between Torquay and this place; and latterly have had my Father +for a few days with us,--he left us yesterday. In all probability I +shall endeavor to settle either at Torquay, at Falmouth, or here; as it +is pretty clear that I cannot stand the sharp air of Clifton, and +still less the London east-winds. Penzance is, on the whole, a +pleasant-looking, cheerful place; with a delightful mildness of air, and +a great appearance of comfort among the people: the view of Mount's Bay +is certainly a very noble one. Torquay would suit the health of my +Wife and Children better; or else I should be glad to live here always, +London and its neighborhood being impracticable."--Such was his second +wandering winter; enough to render the prospect of a third at Clifton +very uninviting. + + +With the Falmouth friends, young and old, his intercourse had meanwhile +continued cordial and frequent. The omens were pointing towards that +region at his next place of abode. Accordingly, in few weeks hence, in +the June of this Summer, 1841, his dubitations and inquirings are again +ended for a time; he has fixed upon a house in Falmouth, and removed +thither; bidding Clifton, and the regretful Clifton friends, a kind +farewell. This was the _fifth_ change of place for his family since +Bayswater; the fifth, and to one chief member of it the last. Mrs. +Sterling had brought him a new child in October last; and went hopefully +to Falmouth, dreading _other_ than what befell there. + + + +CHAPTER III. FALMOUTH: POEMS. + +At Falmouth, as usual, he was soon at home in his new environment; +resumed his labors; had his new small circle of acquaintance, the ready +and constant centre of which was the Fox family, with whom he lived on +an altogether intimate, honored and beloved footing; realizing his best +anticipations in that respect, which doubtless were among his first +inducements to settle in this new place. Open cheery heights, rather +bare of wood: fresh southwestern breezes; a brisk laughing sea, swept by +industrious sails, and the nets of a most stalwart, wholesome, frank +and interesting population: the clean little fishing, trading and packet +Town; hanging on its slope towards the Eastern sun, close on the waters +of its basin and intricate bay,--with the miniature Pendennis Castle +seaward on the right, the miniature St. Mawes landward to left, and the +mining world and the farming world open boundlessly to the rear:--all +this made a pleasant outlook and environment. And in all this, as in the +other new elements of his position, Sterling, open beyond most men to +the worth of things about him, took his frank share. From the first, +he had liked the general aspect of the population, and their healthy, +lively ways; not to speak of the special friendships he had formed +there, which shed a charm over them all. "Men of strong character, clear +heads and genuine goodness," writes he, "are by no means wanting." And +long after: "The common people here dress better than in most parts of +England; and on Sundays, if the weather be at all fine, their appearance +is very pleasant. One sees them all round the Town, especially towards +Pendennis Castle, streaming in a succession of little groups, and +seeming for the most part really and quietly happy." On the whole he +reckoned himself lucky; and, so far as locality went, found this a +handsome shelter for the next two years of his life. Two years, and not +without an interruption; that was all. Here we have no continuing city; +he less than any of us! One other flight for shelter; and then it is +ended, and he has found an inexpugnable refuge. Let us trace his remote +footsteps, as we have opportunity:-- + + _To Dr. Symonds, Clifton_. + +"_Falmouth, June 28th_, 1841.--Newman writes to me that he is gone to +the Rhine. I wish I were! And yet the only 'wish' at the bottom of my +heart, is to be able to work vigorously in my own way anywhere, were it +in some Circle of Dante's Inferno. This, however, is the secret of my +soul, which I disclose only to a few." + + _To his Mother_. + +"_Falmouth, July 6th_, 1841.--I have at last my own study made +comfortable; the carpet being now laid down, and most of my +appurtenances in tolerable order. By and by I shall, unless stopped by +illness, get myself together, and begin living an orderly life and +doing my daily task. I have swung a cot in my dressing-room; partly as +a convenience for myself, partly as a sort of memorial of my poor Uncle, +in whose cot in his dressing-room at Lisworney I remember to have slept +when a child. I have put a good large bookcase in my drawing-room, and +all the rest of my books fit very well into the study." + + _To Mr. Carlyle_. + +"_July 6th_.--No books have come in my way but Emerson's, which I value +full as much as you, though as yet I have read only some corners of +it. We have had an Election here, of the usual stamp; to me a droll +'realized Ideal,' after my late metrical adventures in that line. But +the oddest sign of the Times I know, is a cheap Translation of Strauss's +_Leben Jesu_, now publishing in numbers, and said to be circulating far +and wide. What does--or rather, what does not--this portend?"-- + + +With the Poem called _The Election_, here alluded to, which had been +more than once revised and reconsidered, he was still under some +hesitations; but at last had well-nigh resolved, as from the first it +was clear he would do, on publishing it. This occupied some occasional +portion of his thoughts. But his grand private affair, I believe, was +now _Strafford_; to which, or to its adjuncts, all working hours were +devoted. Sterling's notions of Tragedy are high enough. This is what he +writes once, in reference to his own task in these weeks: "Few, I fancy, +know how much harder it is to write a Tragedy than to realize or be one. +Every man has in his heart and lot, if he pleases, and too many whether +they please or no, all the woes of OEdipus and Antigone. But it takes +the One, the Sophocles of a thousand years, to utter these in the +full depth and harmony of creative song. Curious, by the way, how that +Dramatic Form of the old Greek, with only some superficial changes, +remains a law not only for the stage, but for the thoughts of all Poets; +and what a charm it has even for the reader who never saw a theatre. The +Greek Plays and Shakspeare have interested a hundred as books, for one +who has seen their writings acted. How lightly does the mere clown, the +idle school-girl, build a private theatre in the fancy, and laugh or +weep with Falstaff and Macbeth: with how entire an oblivion of the +artificial nature of the whole contrivance, which thus compels them +to be their own architects, machinists, scene-painters, and actors! In +fact, the artifice succeeds,--becomes grounded in the substance of the +soul: and every one loves to feel how he is thus brought face to face +with the brave, the fair, the woful and the great of all past ages; +looks into their eyes, and feels the beatings of their hearts; and +reads, over the shoulder, the secret written tablets of the busiest +and the largest brains; while the Juggler, by whose cunning the whole +strange beautiful absurdity is set in motion, keeps himself hidden; +sings loud with a mouth unmoving as that of a statue, and makes the +human race cheat itself unanimously and delightfully by the illusion +that he preordains; while as an obscure Fate, he sits invisible, and +hardly lets his being be divined by those who cannot flee him. The Lyric +Art is childish, and the Epic barbarous, compared to this. But of the +true and perfect Drama it may be said, as of even higher mysteries, +Who is sufficient for these things?"--On this _Tragedy of Strafford_, +writing it and again writing it, studying for it, and bending himself +with his whole strength to do his best on it, he expended many strenuous +months,--"above a year of his life," he computes, in all. + +For the rest, what Falmouth has to give him he is willing to take, and +mingles freely in it. In Hare's Collection there is given a _Lecture_ +which he read in Autumn, 1841 (Mr. Hare says "1842," by mistake), to a +certain Public Institution in the place,--of which more anon;--a piece +interesting in this, if not much in any other respect. Doubtless his +friends the Foxes were at the heart of that lecturing enterprise, and +had urged and solicited him. Something like proficiency in certain +branches of science, as I have understood, characterized one or more of +this estimable family; love of knowledge, taste for art, wish to consort +with wisdom and wise men, were the tendencies of all; to opulent means +superadd the Quaker beneficence, Quaker purity and reverence, there is a +circle in which wise men also may love to be. Sterling made acquaintance +here with whatever of notable in worthy persons or things might be +afoot in those parts; and was led thereby, now and then, into pleasant +reunions, in new circles of activity, which might otherwise have +continued foreign to him. The good Calvert, too, was now here; and +intended to remain;--which he mostly did henceforth, lodging in +Sterling's neighborhood, so long as lodging in this world was permitted +him. Still good and clear and cheerful; still a lively comrade, within +doors or without,--a diligent rider always,--though now wearing visibly +weaker, and less able to exert himself. + +Among those accidental Falmouth reunions, perhaps the notablest for +Sterling occurred in this his first season. There is in Falmouth an +Association called the _Cornwall Polytechnic Society_, established about +twenty years ago, and supported by the wealthy people of the Town and +neighborhood, for the encouragement of the arts in that region; it has +its Library, its Museum, some kind of Annual Exhibition withal; gives +prizes, publishes reports: the main patrons, I believe, are Sir Charles +Lemon, a well-known country gentleman of those parts, and the Messrs. +Fox. To this, so far as he liked to go in it, Sterling was sure to be +introduced and solicited. The Polytechnic meeting of 1841 was unusually +distinguished; and Sterling's part in it formed one of the pleasant +occurrences for him in Falmouth. It was here that, among other +profitable as well as pleasant things, he made acquaintance with +Professor Owen (an event of which I too had my benefit in due time, and +still have): the bigger assemblage called _British Association_, which +met at Plymouth this year, having now just finished its affairs there, +Owen and other distinguished persons had taken Falmouth in their route +from it. Sterling's account of this Polytechnic gala still remains,--in +three Letters to his Father, which, omitting the extraneous portions, +I will give in one,--as a piece worth reading among those still-life +pictures:-- + + "To Edward Sterling, Esq., Knightsbridge, London. + "FALMOUTH, 10th August, 1841. + +"MY DEAR FATHER,--I was not well for a day or two after you went; and +since, I have been busy about an annual show of the Polytechnic Society +here, in which my friends take much interest, and for which I have been +acting as one of the judges in the department of the Fine Arts, and have +written a little Report for them. As I have not said that Falmouth is as +eminent as Athens or Florence, perhaps the Committee will not adopt my +statement. But if they do, it will be of some use; for I have hinted, as +delicately as possible, that people should not paint historical pictures +before they have the power of drawing a decent outline of a pig or a +cabbage. I saw Sir Charles Lemon yesterday, who was kind as well as +civil in his manner; and promises to be a pleasant neighbor. There are +several of the British Association heroes here; but not Whewell, or any +one whom I know." + +"_August 17th_.--At the Polytechnic Meeting here we had several very +eminent men; among others, Professor Owen, said to be the first of +comparative anatomists, and Conybeare the geologist. Both of these +gave evening Lectures; and after Conybeare's, at which I happened to be +present, I said I would, if they chose, make some remarks on the +Busts which happened to be standing there, intended for prizes in the +department of the Fine Arts. They agreed gladly. The heads were Homer, +Pericles, Augustus, Dante and Michael Angelo. I got into the box-like +platform, with these on a shelf before me; and began a talk which +must have lasted some three quarters of an hour; describing partly the +characters and circumstances of the men, illustrated by anecdotes and +compared with their physiognomies, and partly the several styles of +sculpture exhibited in the Casts, referring these to what I considered +the true principles of the Art. The subject was one that interests +me, and I got on in famous style; and had both pit and galleries all +applauding, in a way that had had no precedent during any other part +of the meeting. Conybeare paid me high compliments; Owen looked much +pleased,--an honor well purchased by a year's hard work;--and everybody, +in short, seemed delighted. Susan was not there, and I had nothing to +make me nervous; so that I worked away freely, and got vigorously over +the ground. After so many years' disuse of rhetoric, it was a pleasant +surprise to myself to find that I could still handle the old weapons +without awkwardness. More by good luck than good guidance, it has done +my health no harm. I have been at Sir Charles Lemon's, though only to +pay a morning visit, having declined to stay there or dine, the hours +not suiting me. They were very civil. The person I saw most of was +his sister, Lady Dunstanville; a pleasant, well-informed and well-bred +woman. He seems a most amiable, kindly man, of fair good sense and +cultivated tastes.--I had a letter to-day from my Mother [in Scotland]; +who says she sent you one which you were to forward me; which I hope +soon to have." + +"_August 29th_.--I returned yesterday from Carclew, Sir C. Lemon's fine +place about five miles off; where I had been staying a couple of days, +with apparently the heartiest welcome. Susan was asked; but wanting a +Governess, could not leave home. + +"Sir Charles is a widower (his Wife was sister to Lord Ilchester) +without children; but had a niece staying with him, and his sister +Lady Dunstanville, a pleasant and very civil woman. There were also Mr. +Bunbury, eldest son of Sir Henry Bunbury, a man of much cultivation and +strong talents; Mr. Fox Talbot, son, I think, of another Ilchester +lady, and brother of _the_ Talbot of Wales, but himself a man of +large fortune, and known for photogenic and other scientific plans of +extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. He also is a man of known ability, +but chiefly employed in that peculiar department. _Item_ Professors +Lloyd and Owen: the former, of Dublin, son of the late Provost, I +had seen before and knew; a great mathematician and optician, and a +discoverer in those matters; with a clever little Wife, who has a great +deal of knowledge, quite free from pretension. Owen is a first-rate +comparative anatomist, they say the greatest since Cuvier; lives in +London, and lectures there. On the whole, he interested me more than any +of them,--by an apparent force and downrightness of mind, combined with +much simplicity and frankness. + +"Nothing could be pleasanter and easier than the habits of life, with +what to me was a very unusual degree of luxury, though probably nothing +but what is common among people of large fortune. The library and +pictures are nothing extraordinary. The general tone of good nature, +good sense and quiet freedom, was what struck me most; and I think +besides this there was a disposition to be cordially courteous towards +me.... + +"I took Edward a ride of two hours yesterday on Calvert's pony, and he +is improving fast in horsemanship. The school appears to answer very +well. We shall have the Governess in a day or two, which will be a great +satisfaction. Will you send my Mother this scribble with my love; and +believe me, + + "Your affectionate son, + "JOHN STERLING." + +One other little event dwells with me, out of those Falmouth times, +exact date now forgotten; a pleasant little matter, in which Sterling, +and principally the Misses Fox, bright cheery young creatures, were +concerned; which, for the sake of its human interest, is worth mention. +In a certain Cornish mine, said the Newspapers duly specifying it, +two miners deep down in the shaft were engaged putting in a shot for +blasting: they had completed their affair, and were about to give the +signal for being hoisted up,--one at a time was all their coadjutor at +the top could manage, and the second was to kindle the match, and then +mount with all speed. Now it chanced while they were both still below, +one of them thought the match too long; tried to break it shorter, took +a couple of stones, a flat and a sharp, to cut it shorter; did cut it +of the due length, but, horrible to relate, kindled it at the same time, +and both were still below! Both shouted vehemently to the coadjutor at +the windlass, both sprang at the basket; the windlass man could not move +it with them both. Here was a moment for poor miner Jack and miner Will! +Instant horrible death hangs over both,--when Will generously resigns +himself: "Go aloft, Jack," and sits down; "away; in one minute I shall +be in Heaven!" Jack bounds aloft, the explosion instantly follows, +bruises his face as he looks over; he is safe above ground: and poor +Will? Descending eagerly they find Will too, as if by miracle, buried +under rocks which had arched themselves over him, and little injured: he +too is brought up safe, and all ends joyfully, say the Newspapers. + +Such a piece of manful promptitude, and salutary human heroism, was +worth investigating. It was investigated; found to be accurate to the +letter,--with this addition and explanation, that Will, an honest, +ignorant good man, entirely given up to Methodism, had been perfect in +the "faith of assurance," certain that _he_ should get to Heaven if +he died, certain that Jack would not, which had been the ground of his +decision in that great moment;--for the rest, that he much wished +to learn reading and writing, and find some way of life above ground +instead of below. By aid of the Misses Fox and the rest of that family, +a subscription (modest _Anti_-Hudson testimonial) was raised to this +Methodist hero: he emerged into daylight with fifty pounds in his +pocket; did strenuously try, for certain months, to learn reading and +writing; found he could not learn those arts or either of them; took his +money and bought cows with it, wedding at the same time some religious +likely milkmaid; and is, last time I heard of him, a prosperous modest +dairyman, thankful for the upper light and safety from the wrath to +come. Sterling had some hand in this affair: but, as I said, it was the +two young ladies of the family that mainly did it. + +In the end of 1841, after many hesitations and revisals, _The Election_ +came out; a tiny Duodecimo without name attached; [24] again inquiring of +the public what its suffrage was; again to little purpose. My vote had +never been loud for this step, but neither was it quite adverse; and +now, in reading the poor little Poem over again, after ten years' +space, I find it, with a touching mixture of pleasure and repentance, +considerably better than it then seemed to me. My encouragement, if not +to print this poem, yet to proceed with Poetry, since there was such a +resolution for it, might have been a little more decided! + +This is a small Piece, but aims at containing great things; a _multum +in parvo_ after its sort; and is executed here and there with undeniable +success. The style is free and flowing, the rhyme dances along with a +certain joyful triumph; everything of due brevity withal. That mixture +of mockery on the surface, which finely relieves the real earnestness +within, and flavors even what is not very earnest and might even be +insipid otherwise, is not ill managed: an amalgam difficult to effect +well in writing; nay, impossible in writing,--unless it stand already +done and effected, as a general fact, in the writer's mind and +character; which will betoken a certain ripeness there. + +As I said, great things are intended in this little Piece; the motto +itself foreshadowing them:-- + + "_Fluellen_. Ancient Pistol, I do partly understand your + meaning. + _Pistol_. Why, then, rejoice therefor." + +A stupid commonplace English Borough has lost its Member suddenly, by +apoplexy or otherwise; resolves, in the usual explosive temper of mind, +to replace him by one of two others; whereupon strange stirring-up of +rival-attorney and other human interests and catastrophes. "Frank Vane" +(Sterling himself), and "Peter Mogg," the pattern English blockhead of +elections: these are the candidates. There are, of course, fierce rival +attorneys; electors of all creeds and complexions to be canvassed: a +poor stupid Borough thrown all into red or white heat; into blazing +paroxysms of activity and enthusiasm, which render the inner life of it +(and of England and the world through it) luminously transparent, so to +speak;--of which opportunity our friend and his "Muse" take dexterous +advantage, to delineate the same. His pictures are uncommonly good; +brief, joyous, sometimes conclusively true: in rigorously compressed +shape; all is merry freshness and exuberance: we have leafy summer +embowering red bricks and small human interests, presented as in glowing +miniature; a mock-heroic action fitly interwoven;--and many a clear +glance is carelessly given into the deepest things by the way. Very +happy also is the little love-episode; and the absorption of all the +interest into that, on the part of Frank Vane and of us, when once this +gallant Frank,--having fairly from his barrel-head stated his own (and +John Sterling's) views on the aspects of the world, and of course having +quite broken down with his attorney and his public,--handsomely, by +stratagem, gallops off with the fair Anne; and leaves free field to +Mogg, free field to the Hippopotamus if it like. This portrait of Mogg +may be considered to have merit:-- + + "Though short of days, how large the mind of man; + A godlike force enclosed within a span! + To climb the skies we spurn our nature's clog, + And toil as Titans to elect a Mogg. + + "And who was Mogg? O Muse! the man declare, + How excellent his worth, his parts how rare. + A younger son, he learnt in Oxford's halls + The spheral harmonies of billiard-balls, + Drank, hunted, drove, and hid from Virtue's frown + His venial follies in Decorum's gown. + Too wise to doubt on insufficient cause, + He signed old Cranmer's lore without a pause; + And knew that logic's cunning rules are taught + To guard our creed, and not invigorate thought,-- + As those bronze steeds at Venice, kept for pride, + Adorn a Town where not one man can ride. + + "From Isis sent with all her loud acclaims, + The Laws he studied on the banks of Thames. + Park, race and play, in his capacious plan, + Combined with Coke to form the finished man, + Until the wig's ambrosial influence shed + Its last full glories on the lawyer's head. + + "But vain are mortal schemes. The eldest son + At Harrier Hall had scarce his stud begun, + When Death's pale courser took the Squire away + To lands where never dawns a hunting day: + And so, while Thomas vanished 'mid the fog, + Bright rose the morning-star of Peter Mogg." [25] + +And this little picture, in a quite opposite way:-- + + "Now, in her chamber all alone, the maid + Her polished limbs and shoulders disarrayed; + One little taper gave the only light, + One little mirror caught so dear a sight; + 'Mid hangings dusk and shadows wide she stood, + Like some pale Nymph in dark-leafed solitude + Of rocks and gloomy waters all alone, + Where sunshine scarcely breaks on stump or stone + To scare the dreamy vision. Thus did she, + A star in deepest night, intent but free, + Gleam through the eyeless darkness, heeding not + Her beauty's praise, but musing o'er her lot. + + "Her garments one by one she laid aside, + And then her knotted hair's long locks untied + With careless hand, and down her cheeks they fell, + And o'er her maiden bosom's blue-veined swell. + The right-hand fingers played amidst her hair, + And with her reverie wandered here and there: + The other hand sustained the only dress + That now but half concealed her loveliness; + And pausing, aimlessly she stood and thought, + In virgin beauty by no fear distraught." + +Manifold, and beautiful of their sort, are Anne's musings, in this +interesting attitude, in the summer midnight, in the crisis of her +destiny now near;--at last:-- + + "But Anne, at last her mute devotions o'er, + Perceived the feet she had forgot before + Of her too shocking nudity; and shame + Flushed from her heart o'er all the snowy frame: + And, struck from top to toe with burning dread, + She blew the light out, and escaped to bed." [26] + +--which also is a very pretty movement. + +It must be owned withal, the Piece is crude in parts, and far enough +from perfect. Our good painter has yet several things to learn, and +to unlearn. His brush is not always of the finest; and dashes about, +sometimes, in a recognizably sprawling way: but it hits many a feature +with decisive accuracy and felicity; and on the palette, as usual, lie +the richest colors. A grand merit, too, is the brevity of everything; by +no means a spontaneous, or quite common merit with Sterling. + +This new poetic Duodecimo, as the last had done and as the next also +did, met with little or no recognition from the world: which was not +very inexcusable on the world's part; though many a poem with far less +proof of merit than this offers, has run, when the accidents favored it, +through its tens of editions, and raised the writer to the demigods for +a year or two, if not longer. Such as it is, we may take it as marking, +in its small way, in a noticed or unnoticed manner, a new height arrived +at by Sterling in his Poetic course; and almost as vindicating the +determination he had formed to keep climbing by that method. Poor Poem, +or rather Promise of a Poem! In Sterling's brave struggle, this little +_Election_ is the highest point he fairly lived to see attained, and +openly demonstrated in print. His next public adventure in this kind +was of inferior worth; and a third, which had perhaps intrinsically gone +much higher than any of its antecessors, was cut off as a fragment, and +has not hitherto been published. Steady courage is needed on the Poetic +course, as on all courses!-- + +Shortly after this Publication, in the beginning of 1842, poor Calvert, +long a hopeless sufferer, was delivered by death: Sterling's faithful +fellow-pilgrim could no more attend him in his wayfarings through this +world. The weary and heavy-laden man had borne his burden well. Sterling +says of him to Hare: "Since I wrote last, I have lost Calvert; the +man with whom, of all others, I have been during late years the most +intimate. Simplicity, benevolence, practical good sense and moral +earnestness were his great unfailing characteristics; and no man, I +believe, ever possessed them more entirely. His illness had latterly +so prostrated him, both in mind and body, that those who most loved him +were most anxious for his departure." There was something touching in +this exit; in the quenching of so kind and bright a little life under +the dark billows of death. To me he left a curious old Print of James +Nayler the Quaker, which I still affectionately preserve. + + +Sterling, from this greater distance, came perhaps rather seldomer to +London; but we saw him still at moderate intervals; and, through his +family here and other direct and indirect channels, were kept in lively +communication with him. Literature was still his constant pursuit; and, +with encouragement or without, Poetic composition his chosen department +therein. On the ill success of _The Election_, or any ill success with +the world, nobody ever heard him utter the least murmur; condolence upon +that or any such subject might have been a questionable operation, by no +means called for! Nay, my own approval, higher than this of the world, +had been languid, by no means enthusiastic. But our valiant friend took +all quietly; and was not to be repulsed from his Poetics either by the +world's coldness or by mine; he labored at his _Strafford_;--determined +to labor, in all ways, till he felt the end of his tether in this +direction. + +He sometimes spoke, with a certain zeal, of my starting a Periodical: +Why not lift up some kind of war-flag against the obese platitudes, and +sickly superstitious aperies and impostures of the time? But I had to +answer, "Who will join it, my friend?" He seemed to say, "I, for one;" +and there was occasionally a transient temptation in the thought, but +transient only. No fighting regiment, with the smallest attempt towards +drill, co-operation, commissariat, or the like unspeakable advantages, +could be raised in Sterling's time or mine; which truly, to honest +fighters, is a rather grievous want. A grievous, but not quite a fatal +one. For, failing this, failing all things and all men, there remains +the solitary battle (and were it by the poorest weapon, the tongue only, +or were it even by wise abstinence and silence and without any weapon), +such as each man for himself can wage while he has life: an indubitable +and infinitely comfortable fact for every man! Said battle shaped itself +for Sterling, as we have long since seen, chiefly in the poetic form, in +the singing or hymning rather than the speaking form; and in that he was +cheerfully assiduous according to his light. The unfortunate _Strafford_ +is far on towards completion; a _Coeur-de-Lion_, of which we shall hear +farther, "_Coeur-de-Lion_, greatly the best of all his Poems," unluckily +not completed, and still unpublished, already hangs in the wind. + +His Letters to friends continue copious; and he has, as always, a +loyally interested eye on whatsoever of notable is passing in the world. +Especially on whatsoever indicates to him the spiritual condition of the +world. Of "Strauss," in English or in German, we now hear nothing more; +of Church matters, and that only to special correspondents, less and +less. Strauss, whom he used to mention, had interested him only as a +sign of the times; in which sense alone do we find, for a year or two +back, any notice of the Church, or its affairs by Sterling; and at last +even this as good as ceases: "Adieu, O Church; thy road is that way, +mine is this: in God's name, adieu!" "What we are going _to_," says he +once, "is abundantly obscure; but what all men are going _from_, is very +plain."--Sifted out of many pages, not of sufficient interest, here are +one or two miscellaneous sentences, about the date we are now arrived +at:-- + + _To Dr. Symonds_. + +"_Falmouth, 3d November_, 1841.--Yesterday was my Wedding-day: eleven +years of marriage; and on the whole my verdict is clear for matrimony. +I solemnized the day by reading _John Gilpin_ to the children, who +with their Mother are all pretty well.... There is a trick of sham +Elizabethan writing now prevalent, that looks plausible, but in most +cases means nothing at all. Darley has real (lyrical) genius; Taylor, +wonderful sense, clearness and weight of purpose; Tennyson, a rich and +exquisite fancy. All the other men of our tiny generation that I know +of are, in Poetry, either feeble or fraudulent. I know nothing of the +Reviewer you ask about." + + _To his Mother_ + +"_December 11th_.--I have seen no new books; but am reading your last. +I got hold of the two first Numbers of the _Hoggarty Diamond_; and +read them with extreme delight. What is there better in Fielding or +Goldsmith? The man is a true genius; and, with quiet and comfort, might +produce masterpieces that would last as long as any we have, and delight +millions of unborn readers. There is more truth and nature in one of +these papers than in all ----'s Novels together."--Thackeray, always +a close friend of the Sterling house, will observe that this is dated +1841, not 1851, and have his own reflections on the matter! + + _To the Same_. + +"_December 17th_.--I am not much surprised at Lady ----'s views of +Coleridge's little Book on _Inspiration_.--Great part of the obscurity +of the Letters arises from his anxiety to avoid the difficulties and +absurdities of the common views, and his panic terror of saying anything +that bishops and good people would disapprove. He paid a heavy price, +viz. all his own candor and simplicity, in hope of gaining the favor of +persons like Lady ----; and you see what his reward is! A good lesson +for us all." + + _To the Same_. + +"_February 1st_, 1842.--English Toryism has, even in my eyes, about as +much to say for itself as any other form of doctrine; but Irish Toryism +is the downright proclamation of brutal injustice, and all in the name +of God and the Bible! It is almost enough to make one turn Mahometan, +but for the fear of the four wives." + + _To his Father_. + +"_March 12th_, 1842.--... Important to me as these matters are, it +almost seems as if there were something unfeeling in writing of them, +under the pressure of such news as ours from India. If the Cabool Troops +have perished, England has not received such a blow from an enemy, nor +anything approaching it, since Buckingham's Expedition to the Isle +of Rhe. Walcheren destroyed us by climate; and Corunna, with all its +losses, had much of glory. But here we are dismally injured by mere +Barbarians, in a War on our part shamefully unjust as well as foolish: +a combination of disgrace and calamity that would have shocked Augustus +even more than the defeat of Varus. One of the four officers with +Macnaghten was George Lawrence, a brother-in-law of Nat Barton; a +distinguished man, and the father of five totally unprovided children. +He is a prisoner, if not since murdered. Macnaghten I do not pity; he +was the prime author of the whole mad War. But Burnes; and the women; +and our regiments! India, however, I feel sure, is safe." + + +So roll the months at Falmouth; such is the ticking of the great +World-Horologe as heard there by a good ear. "I willingly add," so ends +he, once, "that I lately found somewhere this fragment of an Arab's +love-song: 'O Ghalia! If my father were a jackass, I would sell him to +purchase Ghalia!' A beautiful parallel to the French _'Avec cette sauce +on mangerait son pere_.'" + + + +CHAPTER IV. NAPLES: POEMS. + +In the bleak weather of this spring, 1842, he was again abroad for a +little while; partly from necessity, or at least utility; and partly, as +I guess, because these circumstances favored, and he could with a good +countenance indulge a little wish he had long had. In the Italian Tour, +which ended suddenly by Mrs. Sterling's illness recalling him, he had +missed Naples; a loss which he always thought to be considerable; +and which, from time to time, he had formed little projects, failures +hitherto, for supplying. The rigors of spring were always dangerous to +him in England, and it was always of advantage to get out of them: and +then the sight of Naples, too; this, always a thing to be done some day, +was now possible. Enough, with the real or imaginary hope of bettering +himself in health, and the certain one of seeing Naples, and catching a +glance of Italy again, he now made a run thither. It was not long after +Calvert's death. The Tragedy of _Strafford_ lay finished in his desk. +Several things, sad and bright, were finished. A little intermezzo of +ramble was not unadvisable. + +His tour by water and by land was brief and rapid enough; hardly above +two months in all. Of which the following Letters will, with some +abridgment, give us what details are needful:-- + + "_To Charles Barton, Esq., Leamington_. + "FALMOUTH, 25th March, 1842. + +"MY DEAR CHARLES,--My attempts to shoot you flying with my paper pellets +turned out very ill. I hope young ladies succeed better when they happen +to make appointments with you. Even now, I hardly know whether you +have received a Letter I wrote on Sunday last, and addressed to The +Cavendish. I sent it thither by Susan's advice. + +"In this missive,--happily for us both, it did not contain a +hundred-pound note or any trifle of that kind,--I informed you that I +was compelled to plan an expedition towards the South Pole; stopping, +however, in the Mediterranean; and that I designed leaving this on +Monday next for Cadiz or Gibraltar, and then going on to Malta, whence +Italy and Sicily would be accessible. Of course your company would be +a great pleasure, if it were possible for you to join me. The delay in +hearing from you, through no fault of yours, has naturally put me out a +little; but, on the whole, my plan still holds, and I shall leave this +on Monday for Gibraltar, where the _Great Liverpool_ will catch me, and +carry me to Malta. The _Great Liverpool_ leaves Southampton on the 1st +of April, and Falmouth on the 2d; and will reach Gibraltar in from four +to five days. + +"Now, if you _should_ be able and disposed to join me, you have only to +embark in that sumptuous tea-kettle, and pick me up under the guns of +the Rock. We could then cruise on to Malta, Sicily, Naples, Rome, &c., +_a discretion_. It is just _possible_, though extremely improbable, +that my steamer of Monday (most likely the _Montrose_) may not reach +Gibraltar so soon as the _Liverpool_. If so, and if you should actually +be on board, you must stop at Gibraltar. But there are ninety-nine +chances to one against this. Write at all events to Susan, to let her +know what you propose. + +"I do not wait till the _Great Liverpool_ goes, because the object for +me is to get into a warm climate as soon as possible. I am decidedly +better. + + "Your affectionate Brother, + "JOHN STERLING." + +Barton did not go with him, none went; but he arrives safe, and not +_hurt_ in health, which is something. + + "_To Mrs. Sterling, Knightsbridge, London_. + "MALTA, 14th April, 1842. + +"DEAREST MOTHER,--I am writing to Susan through France, by to-morrow's +mail; and will also send you a line, instead of waiting for the longer +English conveyance. + +"We reached this the day before yesterday, in the evening; having had +a strong breeze against us for a day or two before; which made me +extremely uncomfortable,--and indeed my headache is hardly gone yet. +From about the 4th to the 9th of the month, we had beautiful weather, +and I was happy enough. You will see by the map that the straightest +line from Gibraltar to this place goes close along the African coast; +which accordingly we saw with the utmost clearness; and found it +generally a line of mountains, the higher peaks and ridges covered with +snow. We went close in to Algiers; which looks strong, but entirely from +art. The town lies on the slope of a straight coast; and is not at all +embayed, though there is some little shelter for shipping within the +mole. It is a square patch of white buildings huddled together; fringed +with batteries; and commanded by large forts on the ridge above: a most +uncomfortable-looking place; though, no doubt, there are _cafes_ and +billiard-rooms and a theatre within,--for the French like to have their +Houris, &c., on _this_ side of Paradise, if possible. + +"Our party of fifty people (we had taken some on board at Gibraltar) +broke up, on reaching this; never, of course, to meet again. The greater +part do not proceed to Alexandria. Considering that there was a bundle +of midshipmen, ensigns, &c., we had as much reason among us as could +perhaps be looked for; and from several I gained bits of information and +traits of character, though nothing very remarkable.... + +"I have established myself in an inn, rather than go to Lady +Louis's; [27] I not feeling quite equal to company, except in moderate +doses. I have, however, seen her a good deal; and dine there to-day, +very privately, for Sir John is not quite well, and they will have no +guests. The place, however, is full of official banqueting, for various +unimportant reasons. When here before, I was in much distress and +anxiety, on my way from Rome; and I suppose this it was that prevented +its making the same impression on me as now, when it seems really the +stateliest town I have ever seen. The architecture is generally of a +corrupt Roman kind; with something of the varied and picturesque look, +though much more massive, of our Elizabethan buildings. We have the +finest English summer and a pellucid sky.... Your affectionate + + "JOHN STERLING." + +At Naples next, for three weeks, was due admiration of the sceneries +and antiquities, Bay and Mountain, by no means forgetting Art and +the Museum: "to Pozzuoli, to Baiae, round the Promontory of +Sorrento;"--above all, "twice to Pompeii," where the elegance and +classic simplicity of Ancient Housekeeping strikes us much; and again to +Paestum, where "the Temple of Neptune is far the noblest building I +have ever seen; and makes both Greek and Revived Roman seem quite +barbaric.... Lord Ponsonby lodges in the same house with me;--but, of +course, I do not countenance an adherent of a beaten Party!" [28]--Or let +us take this more compendious account, which has much more of human in +it, from an onward stage, ten days later:-- + + "_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_. + "ROME, 13th May, 1842, + +"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--I hope I wrote to you before leaving England, to tell +you of the necessity for my doing so. Though coming to Italy, there +was little comfort in the prospect of being divided from my family, and +pursuits which grew on me every day. However, I tried to make the best +of it, and have gained both health and pleasure. + +"In spite of scanty communications from England (owing to the +uncertainty of my position), a word or two concerning you and your dear +Wife have reached me. Lately it has often occurred to me, that the sight +of the Bay of Naples, of the beautiful coast from that to this place, +and of Rome itself, all bathed in summer sunshine, and green with spring +foliage, would be some consolation to her. [29] Pray give her my love. + +"I have been two days here; and almost the first thing I did was to +visit the Protestant burial-ground, and the graves of those I knew when +here before. But much as being now alone here, I feel the difference, +there is no scene where Death seems so little dreadful and miserable as +in the lonelier neighborhoods of this old place. All one's impressions, +however, as to that and everything else, appear to me, on reflection, +more affected than I had for a long time any notion of, by one's own +isolation. All the feelings and activities which family, friends and +occupation commonly engage, are turned, here in one's solitude, with +strange force into the channels of mere observation and contemplation; +and the objects one is conversant with seem to gain a tenfold +significance from the abundance of spare interest one now has to bestow +on them. This explains to me a good deal of the peculiar effect that +Italy has always had on me: and something of that artistic enthusiasm +which I remember you used to think so singular in Goethe's _Travels_. +Darley, who is as much a brooding hermit in England as here, felt +nothing but disappointment from a country which fills me with childish +wonder and delight. + +"Of you I have received some slight notice from Mrs. Strachey; who is +on her way hither; and will (she writes) be at Florence on the 15th, and +here before the end of the month. She notices having received a Letter +of yours which had pleased her much. She now proposes spending the +summer at Sorrento, or thereabouts; and if mere delight of landscape and +climate were enough, Adam and Eve, had their courier taken them to that +region, might have done well enough without Paradise,--and not been +tempted, either, by any Tree of Knowledge; a kind that does not flourish +in the Two Sicilies. + +"The ignorance of the Neapolitans, from the highest to the lowest, is +very eminent; and excites the admiration of all the rest of Italy. In +the great building containing all the Works of Art, and a Library +of 150,000 volumes, I asked for the best existing Book (a German one +published ten years ago) on the Statues in that very Collection; and, +after a rabble of clerks and custodes, got up to a dirty priest, who +bowing to the ground regretted 'they did not possess it,' but at last +remembered that 'they _had_ entered into negotiations on the subject, +which as yet had been unsuccessful.'--The favorite device on the walls +at Naples is a vermilion Picture of a Male and Female Soul respectively +up to the waist (the waist of a _soul_) in fire, and an Angel above +each, watering the sufferers from a watering-pot. This is intended +to gain alms for Masses. The same populace sit for hours on the Mole, +listening to rhapsodists who recite Ariosto. I have seen I think five of +them all within a hundred yards of each other, and some sets of fiddlers +to boot. Yet there are few parts of the world where I have seen less +laughter than there. The Miracle of Januarius's Blood is, on the whole, +my most curious experience. The furious entreaties, shrieks and sobs, of +a set of old women, yelling till the Miracle was successfully performed, +are things never to be forgotten. + +"I spent three weeks in this most glittering of countries, and saw most +of the usual wonders,--the Paestan Temples being to me much the most +valuable. But Pompeii and all that it has yielded, especially the Fresco +Paintings, have also an infinite interest. When one considers that this +prodigious series of beautiful designs supplied the place of our common +room-papers,--the wealth of poetic imagery among the Ancients, and the +corresponding traditional variety and elegance of pictorial treatment, +seem equally remarkable. The Greek and Latin Books do not give one quite +so fully this sort of impression; because they afford no direct measure +of the extent of their own diffusion. But these are ornaments from the +smaller class of decent houses in a little Country Town; and the greater +number of them, by the slightness of the execution, show very clearly +that they were adapted to ordinary taste, and done by mere artisans. +In general clearness, symmetry and simplicity of feeling, I cannot say +that, on the whole, the works of Raffaelle equal them; though of course +he has endless beauties such as we could not find unless in the great +original works from which these sketches at Pompeii were taken. Yet with +all my much increased reverence for the Greeks, it seems more plain than +ever that they had hardly anything of the peculiar devotional feeling of +Christianity. + +"Rome, which I loved before above all the earth, now delights me more +than ever;--though at this moment there is rain falling that would not +discredit Oxford Street. The depth, sincerity and splendor that there +once was in the semi-paganism of the old Catholics comes out in St. +Peter's and its dependencies, almost as grandly as does Greek and Roman +Art in the Forum and the Vatican Galleries. I wish you were here: but, +at all events, hope to see you and your Wife once more during this +summer. + + "Yours, + "JOHN STERLING." + +At Paris, where he stopped a day and night, and generally through his +whole journey from Marseilles to Havre, one thing attended him: the +prevailing epidemic of the place and year; now gone, and nigh forgotten, +as other influenzas are. He writes to his Father: "I have not yet met a +single Frenchman, who could give me any rational explanation _why_ +they were all in such a confounded rage against us. Definite causes of +quarrel a statesman may know how to deal with, inasmuch as the removal +of them may help to settle the dispute. But it must be a puzzling task +to negotiate about instincts; to which class, as it seems to me, we +must have recourse for an understanding of the present abhorrence which +everybody on the other side of the Channel not only feels, but makes a +point to boast of, against the name of Britain. France is slowly arming, +especially with Steam, _en attendant_ a more than possible contest, in +which they reckon confidently on the eager co-operation of the Yankees; +as, _vice versa_, an American told me that his countrymen do on that of +France. One person at Paris (M. ---- whom you know) provoked me to +tell him that 'England did not want another battle of Trafalgar; but if +France did, she might compel England to gratify her.'"--After a couple +of pleasant and profitable months, he was safe home again in the first +days of June; and saw Falmouth not under gray iron skies, and whirls of +March dust, but bright with summer opulence and the roses coming out. + +It was what I call his "_fifth_ peregrinity;" his fifth and last. He +soon afterwards came up to London; spent a couple of weeks, with all his +old vivacity, among us here. The AEsculapian oracles, it would appear, +gave altogether cheerful prophecy; the highest medical authority +"expresses the most decided opinion that I have gradually mended for +some years; and in truth I have not, for six or seven, been so free +from serious symptoms of illness as at present." So uncertain are all +oracles, AEsculapian and other! + +During this visit, he made one new acquaintance which he much +valued; drawn thither, as I guess, by the wish to take counsel about +_Strafford_. He writes to his Clifton friend, under date, 1st July 1842: +"Lockhart, of the _Quarterly Review_, I made my first oral acquaintance +with; and found him as neat, clear and cutting a brain as you would +expect; but with an amount of knowledge, good nature and liberal +anti-bigotry, that would much surprise many. The tone of his children +towards him seemed to me decisive of his real kindness. He quite +agreed with me as to the threatening seriousness of our present social +perplexities, and the necessity and difficulty of doing something +effectual for so satisfying the manual multitude as not to overthrow all +legal security.... + +"Of other persons whom I saw in London," continues he, "there are +several that would much interest you,--though I missed Tennyson, by +a mere chance.... John Mill has completely finished, and sent to the +bookseller, his great work on Logic; the labor of many years of a +singularly subtle, patient and comprehensive mind. It will be our chief +speculative monument of this age. Mill and I could not meet above two +or three times; but it was with the openness and freshness of school-boy +friends, though our friendship only dates from the manhood of both." + +He himself was busier than ever; occupied continually with all manner of +Poetic interests. _Coeur-de-Lion_, a new and more elaborate attempt in +the mock-heroic or comico-didactic vein, had been on hand for some time, +the scope of it greatly deepening and expanding itself since it first +took hold of him; and now, soon after the Naples journey, it rose into +shape on the wider plan; shaken up probably by this new excitement, and +indebted to Calabria, Palermo and the Mediterranean scenes for much of +the vesture it had. With this, which opened higher hopes for him than +any of his previous efforts, he was now employing all his time and +strength;--and continued to do so, this being the last effort granted +him among us. + +Already, for some months, _Strafford_ lay complete: but how to get it +from the stocks; in what method to launch it? The step was questionable. +Before going to Italy he had sent me the Manuscript; still loyal and +friendly; and willing to hear the worst that could be said of his poetic +enterprise. I had to afflict him again, the good brave soul, with the +deliberate report that I could _not_ accept this Drama as his Picture +of the Life of Strafford, or as any _Picture_ of that strange Fact. To +which he answered, with an honest manfulness, in a tone which is now +pathetic enough to me, that he was much grieved yet much obliged, and +uncertain how to decide. On the other hand, Mr. Hare wrote, warmly +eulogizing. Lockhart too spoke kindly, though taking some exceptions. +It was a questionable case. On the whole, _Strafford_ remained, for the +present, unlaunched; and _Coeur de-Lion_ was getting its first timbers +diligently laid down. So passed, in peaceable seclusion, in wholesome +employment and endeavor, the autumn and winter of 1842-43. On +Christmas-day, he reports to his Mother:-- + +"I wished to write to you yesterday; but was prevented by the important +business of preparing a Tree, in the German fashion, for the children. +This project answered perfectly, as it did last year; and gave them the +greatest pleasure. I wish you and my Father could have been here to see +their merry faces. Johnny was in the thick of the fun, and much happier +than Lord Anson on capturing the galleon. We are all going on well and +quietly, but with nothing very new among us.... The last book I have +lighted on is Moffat's _Missionary Labors in South Africa_; which is +worth reading. There is the best collection of lion stories in it that I +have ever seen. But the man is, also, really a very good fellow; and fit +for something much better than most lions are. He is very ignorant, +and mistaken in some things; but has strong sense and heart; and his +Narrative adds another to the many proofs of the enormous power of +Christianity on rude minds. Nothing can be more chaotic, that is human +at all, than the notions of these poor Blacks, even after what is called +their conversion; but the effect is produced. They do adopt pantaloons, +and abandon polygamy; and I suppose will soon have newspapers and +literary soirees." + + + +CHAPTER V. DISASTER ON DISASTER. + +DURING all these years of struggle and wayfaring, his Father's household +at Knightsbridge had stood healthful, happy, increasing in wealth, free +diligence, solidity and honest prosperity: a fixed sunny islet, towards +which, in all his voyagings and overclouded roamings, he could look with +satisfaction, as to an ever-open port of refuge. + +The elder Sterling, after many battles, had reached his field of +conquest in these years; and was to be regarded as a victorious man. +Wealth sufficient, increasing not diminishing, had rewarded his labors +in the _Times_, which were now in their full flower; he had influence +of a sort; went busily among busy public men; and enjoyed, in the +questionable form attached to journalism and anonymity, a social +consideration and position which were abundantly gratifying to him. A +singular figure of the epoch; and when you came to know him, which it +was easy to fail of doing if you had not eyes and candid insight, a +gallant, truly gifted, and manful figure, of his kind. We saw much of +him in this house; much of all his family; and had grown to love them +all right well,--him too, though that was the difficult part of the +feat. For in his Irish way he played the conjurer very much,--"three +hundred and sixty-five opinions in the year upon every subject," as a +wag once said. In fact his talk, ever ingenious, emphatic and spirited +in detail, was much defective in earnestness, at least in clear +earnestness, of purport and outcome; but went tumbling as if in mere +welters of explosive unreason; a volcano heaving under vague deluges of +scoriae, ashes and imponderous pumice-stones, you could not say in what +direction, nor well whether in any. Not till after good study did you +see the deep molten lava-flood, which simmered steadily enough, and +showed very well by and by whither it was bound. For I must say +of Edward Sterling, after all his daily explosive sophistries, and +fallacies of talk, he had a stubborn instinctive sense of what was +manful, strong and worthy; recognized, with quick feeling, the charlatan +under his solemnest wig; knew as clearly as any man a pusillanimous +tailor in buckram, an ass under the lion's skin, and did with his whole +heart despise the same. + +The sudden changes of doctrine in the _Times_, which failed not to +excite loud censure and indignant amazement in those days, were first +intelligible to you when you came to interpret them as his changes. +These sudden whirls from east to west on his part, and total changes of +party and articulate opinion at a day's warning, lay in the nature of +the man, and could not be helped; products of his fiery impatience, +of the combined impetuosity and limitation of an intellect, which did +nevertheless continually gravitate towards what was loyal, true and +right on all manner of subjects. These, as I define them, were the mere +scoriae and pumice wreck of a steady central lava-flood, which truly was +volcanic and explosive to a strange degree, but did rest as few others +on the grand fire-depths of the world. Thus, if he stormed along, ten +thousand strong, in the time of the Reform Bill, indignantly denouncing +Toryism and its obsolete insane pretensions; and then if, after some +experience of Whig management, he discerned that Wellington and Peel, +by whatever name entitled, were the men to be depended on by +England,--there lay in all this, visible enough, a deeper consistency +far more important than the superficial one, so much clamored after by +the vulgar. Which is the lion's-skin; which is the real lion? Let a man, +if he is prudent, ascertain that before speaking;--but above and beyond +all things, _let_ him ascertain it, and stand valiantly to it when +ascertained! In the latter essential part of the operation Edward +Sterling was honorably successful to a really marked degree; in the +former, or prudential part, very much the reverse, as his history in the +Journalistic department at least, was continually teaching him. + +An amazingly impetuous, hasty, explosive man, this "Captain Whirlwind," +as I used to call him! Great sensibility lay in him, too; a real +sympathy, and affectionate pity and softness, which he had an +over-tendency to express even by tears,--a singular sight in so leonine +a man. Enemies called them maudlin and hypocritical, these tears; but +that was nowise the complete account of them. On the whole, there did +conspicuously lie a dash of ostentation, a self-consciousness apt to +become loud and braggart, over all he said and did and felt: this was +the alloy of the man, and you had to be thankful for the abundant gold +along with it. + +Quizzing enough he got among us for all this, and for the singular +_chiaroscuro_ manner of procedure, like that of an Archimagus +Cagliostro, or Kaiser Joseph Incognito, which his anonymous +known-unknown thunderings in the _Times_ necessitated in him; and much +we laughed,--not without explosive counter-banterings on his part;--but, +in fine, one could not do without him; one knew him at heart for a right +brave man. "By Jove, sir!" thus he would swear to you, with radiant +face; sometimes, not often, by a deeper oath. With persons of dignity, +especially with women, to whom he was always very gallant, he had +courtly delicate manners, verging towards the wire-drawn and elaborate; +on common occasions, he bloomed out at once into jolly familiarity of +the gracefully boisterous kind, reminding you of mess-rooms and old +Dublin days. His off-hand mode of speech was always precise, emphatic, +ingenious: his laugh, which was frequent rather than otherwise, had a +sincerity of banter, but no real depth of sense for the ludicrous; and +soon ended, if it grew too loud, in a mere dissonant scream. He was +broad, well-built, stout of stature; had a long lowish head, sharp gray +eyes, with large strong aquiline face to match; and walked, or sat, in +an erect decisive manner. A remarkable man; and playing, especially in +those years 1830-40, a remarkable part in the world. + +For it may be said, the emphatic, big-voiced, always influential and +often strongly unreasonable _Times_ Newspaper was the express emblem of +Edward Sterling; he, more than any other man or circumstance, _was_ +the _Times_ Newspaper, and thundered through it to the shaking of the +spheres. And let us assert withal that his and its influence, in those +days, was not ill grounded but rather well; that the loud manifold +unreason, often enough vituperated and groaned over, was of the surface +mostly; that his conclusions, unreasonable, partial, hasty as they might +at first be, gravitated irresistibly towards the right: in virtue of +which grand quality indeed, the root of all good insight in man, his +_Times_ oratory found acceptance and influential audience, amid the loud +whirl of an England itself logically very stupid, and wise chiefly by +instinct. + +England listened to this voice, as all might observe; and to one who +knew England and it, the result was not quite a strange one, and was +honorable rather than otherwise to both parties. A good judge of men's +talents has been heard to say of Edward Sterling: "There is not a +_faculty of improvising_ equal to this in all my circle. Sterling rushes +out into the clubs, into London society, rolls about all day, copiously +talking modish nonsense or sense, and listening to the like, with the +multifarious miscellany of men; comes home at night; redacts it into a +_Times_ Leader,--and is found to have hit the essential purport of the +world's immeasurable babblement that day, with an accuracy beyond all +other men. This is what the multifarious Babel sound did mean to say in +clear words; this, more nearly than anything else. Let the most gifted +intellect, capable of writing epics, try to write such a Leader for the +Morning Newspapers! No intellect but Edward Sterling's can do it. +An improvising faculty without parallel in my experience."--In this +"improvising faculty," much more nobly developed, as well as in other +faculties and qualities with unexpectedly new and improved figure, John +Sterling, to the accurate observer, showed himself very much the son of +Edward. + +Connected with this matter, a remarkable Note has come into my hands; +honorable to the man I am writing of, and in some sort to another higher +man; which, as it may now (unhappily for us all) be published without +scruple, I will not withhold here. The support, by Edward Sterling +and the _Times_, of Sir Robert Peel's first Ministry, and generally of +Peel's statesmanship, was a conspicuous fact in its day; but the return +it met with from the person chiefly interested may be considered well +worth recording. The following Letter, after meandering through I know +not what intricate conduits, and consultations of the Mysterious +Entity whose address it bore, came to Edward Sterling as the real +flesh-and-blood proprietor, and has been found among his papers. It is +marked _Private_:-- + + "(Private) _To the Editor of the Times_. + "WHITEHALL, 18th April, 1835. + +"SIR,--Having this day delivered into the hands of the King the Seals +of Office, I can, without any imputation of an interested motive, or any +impediment from scrupulous feelings of delicacy, express my deep sense +of the powerful support which that Government over which I had the honor +to preside received from the _Times_ Newspaper. + +"If I do not offer the expressions of personal gratitude, it is because +I feel that such expressions would do injustice to the character of a +support which was given exclusively on the highest and most independent +grounds of public principle. I can say this with perfect truth, as I +am addressing one whose person even is unknown to me, and who during my +tenure of power studiously avoided every species of intercourse which +could throw a suspicion upon the motives by which he was actuated. I +should, however, be doing injustice to my own feelings, if I were to +retire from Office without one word of acknowledgment; without at +least assuring you of the admiration with which I witnessed, during the +arduous contest in which I was engaged, the daily exhibition of that +extraordinary ability to which I was indebted for a support, the more +valuable because it was an impartial and discriminating support.--I have +the honor to be, Sir, + + "Ever your most obedient and faithful servant, + "ROBERT PEEL." + +To which, with due loftiness and diplomatic gravity and brevity, +there is Answer, Draught of Answer in Edward Sterling's hand, from the +Mysterious Entity so honored, in the following terms:-- + + "_To the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart., &c. &c. &c_. + +"SIR,--It gives me sincere satisfaction to learn from the Letter with +which you have honored me, bearing yesterday's date, that you estimate +so highly the efforts which have been made during the last five months +by the _Times_ Newspaper to support the cause of rational and wholesome +Government which his Majesty had intrusted to your guidance; and that +you appreciate fairly the disinterested motive, of regard to the public +welfare, and to that alone, through which this Journal has been prompted +to pursue a policy in accordance with that of your Administration. It +is, permit me to say, by such motives only, that the _Times_, ever +since I have known it, has been influenced, whether in defence of the +Government of the day, or in constitutional resistance to it: and indeed +there exist no other motives of action for a Journalist, compatible +either with the safety of the press, or with the political morality of +the great bulk of its readers.--With much respect, I have the honor to +be, Sir, &c. &c. &c. + + "THE EDITOR OF THE 'TIMES.'" + +Of this Note I do not think there was the least whisper during Edward +Sterling's lifetime; which fact also one likes to remember of him, +so ostentatious and little-reticent a man. For the rest, his loyal +admiration of Sir Robert Peel,--sanctioned, and as it were almost +consecrated to his mind, by the great example of the Duke of +Wellington, whom he reverenced always with true hero-worship,--was not +a journalistic one, but a most intimate authentic feeling, sufficiently +apparent in the very heart of his mind. Among the many opinions "liable +to three hundred and sixty-five changes in the course of the year," this +in reference to Peel and Wellington was one which ever changed, but was +the same all days and hours. To which, equally genuine, and coming still +oftener to light in those times, there might one other be added, one and +hardly more: fixed contempt, not unmingled with detestation, for Daniel +O'Connell. This latter feeling, we used often laughingly to say, was +his grand political principle, the one firm centre where all else went +revolving. But internally the other also was deep and constant; and +indeed these were properly his _two_ centres,--poles of the same axis, +negative and positive, the one presupposing the other. + +O'Connell he had known in young Dublin days;--and surely no man could +well venerate another less! It was his deliberate, unalterable opinion +of the then Great O, that good would never come of him; that only +mischief, and this in huge measure, would come. That however showy, and +adroit in rhetoric and management, he was a man of incurably commonplace +intellect, and of no character but a hollow, blustery, pusillanimous +and unsound one; great only in maudlin patriotisms, in speciosities, +astucities,--in the miserable gifts for becoming Chief _Demagogos_, +Leader of a deep-sunk Populace towards _its_ Lands of Promise; which +trade, in any age or country, and especially in the Ireland of this age, +our indignant friend regarded (and with reason) as an extremely ugly one +for a man. He had himself zealously advocated Catholic Emancipation, +and was not without his Irish patriotism, very different from the Orange +sort; but the "Liberator" was not admirable to him, and grew daily less +so to an extreme degree. Truly, his scorn of the said Liberator, now +riding in supreme dominion on the wings of _blarney_, devil-ward of a +surety, with the Liberated all following and huzzaing; his fierce gusts +of wrath and abhorrence over him,--rose occasionally almost to the +sublime. We laughed often at these vehemences:--and they were not wholly +laughable; there was something very serious, and very true, in them! +This creed of Edward Sterling's would not now, in either pole of its +axis, look so strange as it then did in many quarters. + + +During those ten years which might be defined as the culminating period +of Edward Sterling's life, his house at South Place, Knights bridge, had +worn a gay and solid aspect, as if built at last on the high table-land +of sunshine and success, the region of storms and dark weather now +all victoriously traversed and lying safe below. Health, work, wages, +whatever is needful to a man, he had, in rich measure; and a frank stout +heart to guide the same: he lived in such style as pleased him; drove +his own chariot up and down (himself often acting as Jehu, and reminding +you a little of _Times_ thunder even in driving); consorted, after +a fashion, with the powerful of the world; saw in due vicissitude a +miscellany of social faces round him,--pleasant parties, which he liked +well enough to garnish by a lord; "Irish lord, if no better might be," +as the banter went. For the rest, he loved men of worth and intellect, +and recognized them well, whatever their title: this was his own patent +of worth which Nature had given him; a central light in the man, +which illuminated into a kind of beauty, serious or humorous, all the +artificialities he had accumulated on the surface of him. So rolled his +days, not quietly, yet prosperously, in manifold commerce with men. +At one in the morning, when all had vanished into sleep, his lamp +was kindled in his library; and there, twice or thrice a week, for a +three-hours' space, he launched his bolts, which next morning were to +shake the high places of the world. + +John's relation to his Father, when one saw John here, was altogether +frank, joyful and amiable: he ignored the _Times_ thunder for most part, +coldly taking the Anonymous for non-extant; spoke of it floutingly, if +he spoke at all: indeed a pleasant half-bantering dialect was the +common one between Father and Son; and they, especially with the gentle, +simple-hearted, just-minded Mother for treble-voice between them, made a +very pretty glee-harmony together. + +So had it lasted, ever since poor John's voyagings began; his Father's +house standing always as a fixed sunny islet with safe harbor for him. +So it could not always last. This sunny islet was now also to break and +go down: so many firm islets, fixed pillars in his fluctuating world, +pillar after pillar, were to break and go down; till swiftly all, so +to speak, were sunk in the dark waters, and he with them! Our little +History is now hastening to a close. + + +In the beginning of 1843 news reached us that Sterling had, in his too +reckless way, encountered a dangerous accident: maids, in the room where +he was, were lifting a heavy table; he, seeing them in difficulty, had +snatched at the burden; heaved it away,--but had broken a blood-vessel +by the business; and was now, after extensive hemorrhage, lying +dangerously ill. The doctors hoped the worst was over; but the case was +evidently serious. In the same days, too, his Mother had been seized +here by some painful disease, which from its continuance grew alarming. +Sad omens for Edward Sterling, who by this time had as good as ceased +writing or working in the _Times_, having comfortably winded up his +affairs there; and was looking forward to a freer idle life befitting +his advanced years henceforth. Fatal eclipse had fallen over that +household of his; never to be lifted off again till all darkened into +night. + +By dint of watchful nursing, John Sterling got on foot once more: but +his Mother did not recover, quite the contrary. Her case too grew very +questionable. Disease of the heart, said the medical men at last; not +immediately, not perhaps for a length of years, dangerous to life, said +they; but without hope of cure. The poor lady suffered much; and, though +affecting hope always, grew weaker and weaker. John ran up to Town in +March; I saw him, on the morrow or next day after, in his own room at +Knightsbridge: he had caught fresh cold overnight, the servant having +left his window up, but I was charged to say nothing of it, not to +flutter the already troubled house: he was going home again that very +day, and nothing ill would come of it. We understood the family at +Falmouth, his Wife being now near her confinement again, could at any +rate comport with no long absence. He was cheerful, even rudely merry; +himself pale and ill, his poor Mother's cough audible occasionally +through the wall. Very kind, too, and gracefully affectionate; but I +observed a certain grimness in his mood of mind, and under his light +laughter lay something unusual, something stern, as if already dimmed +in the coming shadows of Fate. "Yes, yes, you are a good man: but I +understand they mean to appoint you to Rhadamanthus's post, which has +been vacant for some time; and you will see how you like that!" This +was one of the things he said; a strange effulgence of wild drollery +flashing through the ice of earnest pain and sorrow. He looked paler +than usual: almost for the first time, I had myself a twinge of +misgiving as to his own health; for hitherto I had been used to blame +as much as pity his fits of dangerous illness, and would often angrily +remonstrate with him that he might have excellent health, would he but +take reasonable care of himself, and learn the art of sitting still. +Alas, as if he _could_ learn it; as if Nature had not laid her ban on +him even there, and said in smiles and frowns manifoldly, "No, that thou +shalt not learn!" + +He went that day; he never saw his good true Mother more. Very shortly +afterwards, in spite of doctors' prophecies, and affectionate illusions, +she grew alarmingly and soon hopelessly worse. Here are his last two +Letters to her:-- + + "_To Mrs. Sterling, Knightsbridge, London_. + "FALMOUTH 8th April, 1843. + +"DEAREST MOTHER,--I could do you no good, but it would be the greatest +comfort to me if I could be near you. Nothing would detain me but +Susan's condition. I feel that until her confinement is over, I ought to +remain here,--unless you wished me to go to you; in which case she would +be the first to send me off. Happily she is doing as well as possible, +and seems even to gain strength every day. She sends her love to you. + +"The children are all doing well. I rode with Edward to-day through some +of the pleasant lanes in the neighborhood; and was delighted, as I have +often been at the same season, to see the primroses under every hedge. +It is pleasant to think that the Maker of them can make other flowers +for the gardens of his other mansions. We have here a softness in the +air, a smoothness of the clouds, and a mild sunshine, that combine in +lovely peace with the first green of spring and the mellow whiteness of +the sails upon the quiet sea. The whole aspect of the world is full of +a quiet harmony, that influences even one's bodily frame, and seems to +make one's very limbs aware of something living, good and immortal in +all around us. Knowing how you suffer, and how weak you are, anything is +a blessing to me that helps me to rise out of confusion and grief into +the sense of God and joy. I could not indeed but feel how much happier I +should have been, this morning, had you been with me, and delighting as +you would have done in all the little as well as the large beauty of the +world. But it was still a satisfaction to feel how much I owe to you of +the power of perceiving meaning, reality and sweetness in all healthful +life. And thus I could fancy that you were still near me; and that I +could see you, as I have so often seen you, looking with earnest eyes at +wayside flowers. + +"I would rather not have written what must recall your thoughts to your +present sufferings: but, dear Mother, I wrote only what I felt; and +perhaps you would rather have it so, than that I should try to find +other topics. I still hope to be with you before long. Meanwhile and +always, God bless you, is the prayer of + + "Your affectionate son, + "JOHN STERLING." + + _To the same_. + "FALMOUTH, 12th April, 1843. + +"DEAREST MOTHER,--I have just received my Father's Letter; which gives +me at least the comfort of believing that you do not suffer very much +pain. That your mind has remained so clear and strong, is an infinite +blessing. + +"I do not know anything in the world that would make up to me at all for +wanting the recollection of the days I spent with you lately, when I was +amazed at the freshness and life of all your thoughts. It brought back +far-distant years, in the strangest, most peaceful way. I felt myself +walking with you in Greenwich Park, and on the seashore at Sandgate; +almost even I seemed a baby, with you bending over me. Dear Mother, +there is surely something uniting us that cannot perish. I seem so sure +of a love which shall last and reunite us, that even the remembrance, +painful as that is, of all my own follies and ill tempers, cannot shake +this faith. When I think of you, and know how you feel towards me, and +have felt for every moment of almost forty years, it would be too dark +to believe that we shall never meet again. It was from you that I first +learnt to think, to feel, to imagine, to believe; and these powers, +which cannot be extinguished, will one day enter anew into communion +with you. I have bought it very dear by the prospect of losing you in +this world,--but since you have been so ill, everything has seemed to me +holier, loftier and more lasting, more full of hope and final joy. + +"It would be a very great happiness to see you once more even here; but +I do not know if that will be granted to me. But for Susan's state, I +should not hesitate an instant; as it is, my duty seems to be to remain, +and I have no right to repine. There is no sacrifice that she would not +make for me, and it would be too cruel to endanger her by mere anxiety +on my account. Nothing can exceed her sympathy with my sorrow. But she +cannot know, no one can, the recollections of all you have been and +done for me; which now are the most sacred and deepest, as well as +most beautiful, thoughts that abide with me. May God bless you, dearest +Mother. It is much to believe that He feels for you all that you have +ever felt for your children. + + "JOHN STERLING." + +A day or two after this, "on Good Friday, 1843," his Wife got happily +through her confinement, bringing him, he writes, "a stout little girl, +who and the Mother are doing as well as possible." The little girl still +lives and does well; but for the Mother there was another lot. Till the +Monday following she too did altogether well, he affectionately watching +her; but in the course of that day, some change for the worse was +noticed, though nothing to alarm either the doctors or him; he watched +by her bedside all night, still without alarm; but sent again in the +morning, Tuesday morning, for the doctors,--Who did not seem able +to make much of the symptoms. She appeared weak and low, but made no +particular complaint. The London post meanwhile was announced; Sterling +went into another room to learn what tidings of his Mother it brought +him. Returning speedily with a face which in vain strove to be calm, +his Wife asked, How at Knightsbridge? "My Mother is dead," answered +Sterling; "died on Sunday: She is gone." "Poor old man!" murmured the +other, thinking of old Edward Sterling now left alone in the world; and +these were her own last words: in two hours more she too was dead. In +two hours Mother and Wife were suddenly both snatched away from him. + +"It came with awful suddenness!" writes he to his Clifton friend. "Still +for a short time I had my Susan: but I soon saw that the medical +men were in terror; and almost within half an hour of that fatal +Knightsbridge news, I began to suspect our own pressing danger. I +received her last breath upon my lips. Her mind was much sunk, and +her perceptions slow; but a few minutes before the last, she must have +caught the idea of dissolution; and signed that I should kiss her. She +faltered painfully, 'Yes! yes!'--returned with fervency the pressure of +my lips; and in a few moments her eyes began to fix, her pulse to cease. +She too is gone from me!" It was Tuesday morning, April 18th, 1843. His +Mother had died on the Sunday before. + + +He had loved his excellent kind Mother, as he ought and well might: in +that good heart, in all the wanderings of his own, there had ever been +a shrine of warm pity, of mother's love and blessed soft affections +for him; and now it was closed in the Eternities forevermore. His poor +Life-partner too, his other self, who had faithfully attended him so +long in all his pilgrimings, cheerily footing the heavy tortuous ways +along with him, can follow him no farther; sinks now at his side: "The +rest of your pilgrimings alone, O Friend,--adieu, adieu!" She too +is forever hidden from his eyes; and he stands, on the sudden, very +solitary amid the tumult of fallen and falling things. "My little baby +girl is doing well; poor little wreck cast upon the sea-beach of life. +My children require me tenfold now. What I shall do, is all confusion +and darkness." + +The younger Mrs. Sterling was a true good woman; loyal-hearted, willing +to do well, and struggling wonderfully to do it amid her languors and +infirmities; rescuing, in many ways, with beautiful female heroism and +adroitness, what of fertility their uncertain, wandering, unfertile +way of life still left possible, and cheerily making the most of it. A +genial, pious and harmonious fund of character was in her; and withal an +indolent, half-unconscious force of intellect, and justness and delicacy +of perception, which the casual acquaintance scarcely gave her credit +for. Sterling much respected her decision in matters literary; often +altering and modifying where her feeling clearly went against him; and +in verses especially trusting to her ear, which was excellent, while he +knew his own to be worth little. I remember her melodious rich plaintive +tone of voice; and an exceedingly bright smile which she sometimes had, +effulgent with sunny gayety and true humor, among other fine qualities. + +Sterling has lost much in these two hours; how much that has long been +can never again be for him! Twice in one morning, so to speak, has a +mighty wind smitten the corners of his house; and much lies in dismal +ruins round him. + + + +CHAPTER VI. VENTNOR: DEATH. + +In this sudden avalanche of sorrows Sterling, weak and worn as we have +seen, bore up manfully, and with pious valor fronted what had come upon +him. He was not a man to yield to vain wailings, or make repinings at +the unalterable: here was enough to be long mourned over; but here, +for the moment, was very much imperatively requiring to be done. That +evening, he called his children round him; spoke words of religious +admonition and affection to them; said, "He must now be a Mother as well +as Father to them." On the evening of the funeral, writes Mr. Hare, he +bade them good-night, adding these words, "If I am taken from you, God +will take care of you." He had six children left to his charge, two of +them infants; and a dark outlook ahead of them and him. The good Mrs. +Maurice, the children's young Aunt, present at this time and often +afterwards till all ended, was a great consolation. + + +Falmouth, it may be supposed, had grown a sorrowful place to him, +peopled with haggard memories in his weak state; and now again, as had +been usual with him, change of place suggested itself as a desirable +alleviation;--and indeed, in some sort, as a necessity. He has "friends +here," he admits to himself, "whose kindness is beyond all price, all +description;" but his little children, if anything befell him, have no +relative within two hundred miles. He is now sole watcher over them; and +his very life is so precarious; nay, at any rate, it would appear, he +has to leave Falmouth every spring, or run the hazard of worse. Once +more, what is to be done? Once more,--and now, as it turned out, for the +last time. + +A still gentler climate, greater proximity to London, where his Brother +Anthony now was and most of his friends and interests were: these +considerations recommended Ventnor, in the beautiful Southeastern corner +of the Isle of Wight; where on inquiry an eligible house was found for +sale. The house and its surrounding piece of ground, improvable both, +were purchased; he removed thither in June of this year 1843; and set +about improvements and adjustments on a frank scale. By the decease of +his Mother, he had become rich in money; his share of the West-India +properties having now fallen to him, which, added to his former +incomings, made a revenue he could consider ample and abundant. Falmouth +friends looked lovingly towards him, promising occasional visits; old +Herstmonceux, which he often spoke of revisiting but never did, was not +far off; and London, with all its resources and remembrances, was now +again accessible. He resumed his work; and had hopes of again achieving +something. + +The Poem of _Coeur-de-Lion_ has been already mentioned, and the wider +form and aim it had got since he first took it in hand. It was above a +year before the date of these tragedies and changes, that he had sent +me a Canto, or couple of Cantos, of _Coeur-de-Lion_; loyally again +demanding my opinion, harsh as it had often been on that side. This +time I felt right glad to answer in another tone: "That here was real +felicity and ingenuity, on the prescribed conditions; a decisively +rhythmic quality in this composition; thought and phraseology actually +_dancing_, after a sort. What the plan and scope of the Work might be, +he had not said, and I could not judge; but here was a light opulence of +airy fancy, picturesque conception, vigorous delineation, all marching +on as with cheerful drum and fife, if without more rich and complicated +forms of melody: if a man _would_ write in metre, this sure enough +was the way to try doing it." For such encouragement from that stinted +quarter, Sterling, I doubt not, was very thankful; and of course it +might co-operate with the inspirations from his Naples Tour to further +him a little in this his now chief task in the way of Poetry; a thought +which, among my many almost pathetic remembrances of contradictions to +his Poetic tendency, is pleasant for me. + +But, on the whole, it was no matter. With or without encouragement, he +was resolute to persevere in Poetry, and did persevere. When I think now +of his modest, quiet steadfastness in this business of Poetry; how, in +spite of friend and foe, he silently persisted, without wavering, in +the form of utterance he had chosen for himself; and to what length he +carried it, and vindicated himself against us all;--his character comes +out in a new light to me, with more of a certain central inflexibility +and noble silent resolution than I had elsewhere noticed in it. This +summer, moved by natural feelings, which were sanctioned, too, and in a +sort sanctified to him, by the remembered counsel of his late Wife, +he printed the _Tragedy of Strafford_. But there was in the public no +contradiction to the hard vote I had given about it: the little +Book fell dead-born; and Sterling had again to take his +disappointment;--which it must be owned he cheerfully did; and, resolute +to try it again and ever again, went along with his _Coeur-de-Lion_, +as if the public had been all with him. An honorable capacity to stand +single against the whole world; such as all men need, from time to time! +After all, who knows whether, in his overclouded, broken, flighty way +of life, incapable of long hard drudgery, and so shut out from the solid +forms of Prose, this Poetic Form, which he could well learn as he could +all forms, was not the suitablest for him? + +This work of _Coeur-de-Lion_ he prosecuted steadfastly in his new home; +and indeed employed on it henceforth all the available days that were +left him in this world. As was already said, he did not live to complete +it; but some eight Cantos, three or four of which I know to possess high +worth, were finished, before Death intervened, and there he had to leave +it. Perhaps it will yet be given to the public; and in that case be +better received than the others were, by men of judgment; and serve to +put Sterling's Poetic pretensions on a much truer footing. I can say, +that to readers who do prefer a poetic diet, this ought to be welcome: +if you can contrive to love the thing which is still called "poetry" in +these days, here is a decidedly superior article in that kind,--richer +than one of a hundred that you smilingly consume. + +In this same month of June, 1843, while the house at Ventnor was +getting ready, Sterling was again in London for a few days. Of course +at Knightsbridge, now fallen under such sad change, many private matters +needed to be settled by his Father and Brother and him. Captain Anthony, +now minded to remove with his family to London and quit the military +way of life, had agreed to purchase the big family house, which he still +occupies; the old man, now rid of that encumbrance, retired to a smaller +establishment of his own; came ultimately to be Anthony's guest, and +spent his last days so. He was much lamed and broken, the half of his +old life suddenly torn away;--and other losses, which he yet knew not +of, lay close ahead of him. In a year or two, the rugged old man, borne +down by these pressures, quite gave way; sank into paralytic and +other infirmities; and was released from life's sorrows, under his son +Anthony's roof, in the fall of 1847.--The house in Knightsbridge was, +at the time we now speak of, empty except of servants; Anthony having +returned to Dublin, I suppose to conclude his affairs there, prior to +removal. John lodged in a Hotel. + +We had our fair share of his company in this visit, as in all the past +ones; but the intercourse, I recollect, was dim and broken, a disastrous +shadow hanging over it, not to be cleared away by effort. Two American +gentlemen, acquaintances also of mine, had been recommended to him, by +Emerson most likely: one morning Sterling appeared here with a strenuous +proposal that we should come to Knightsbridge, and dine with him and +them. Objections, general dissuasions were not wanting: The empty dark +house, such needless trouble, and the like;--but he answered in his +quizzing way, "Nature herself prompts you, when a stranger comes, to +give him a dinner. There are servants yonder; it is all easy; come; both +of you are bound to come." And accordingly we went. I remember it as +one of the saddest dinners; though Sterling talked copiously, and our +friends, Theodore Parker one of them, were pleasant and distinguished +men. All was so haggard in one's memory, and half consciously in one's +anticipations; sad, as if one had been dining in a will, in the crypt of +a mausoleum. Our conversation was waste and logical, I forget quite on +what, not joyful and harmoniously effusive: Sterling's silent sadness +was painfully apparent through the bright mask he had bound himself +to wear. Withal one could notice now, as on his last visit, a certain +sternness of mood, unknown in better days; as if strange gorgon-faces +of earnest Destiny were more and more rising round him, and the time for +sport were past. He looked always hurried, abrupt, even beyond wont; and +indeed was, I suppose, overwhelmed in details of business. + +One evening, I remember, he came down hither, designing to have a +freer talk with us. We were all sad enough; and strove rather to avoid +speaking of what might make us sadder. Before any true talk had been +got into, an interruption occurred, some unwelcome arrival; Sterling +abruptly rose; gave me the signal to rise; and we unpolitely walked +away, adjourning to his Hotel, which I recollect was in the Strand, near +Hungerford Market; some ancient comfortable quaint-looking place, off +the street; where, in a good warm queer old room, the remainder of our +colloquy was duly finished. We spoke of Cromwell, among other things +which I have now forgotten; on which subject Sterling was trenchant, +positive, and in some essential points wrong,--as I said I would +convince him some day. "Well, well!" answered he, with a shake of +the head.--We parted before long; bedtime for invalids being come: +he escorted me down certain carpeted backstairs, and would not be +forbidden: we took leave under the dim skies;--and alas, little as I +then dreamt of it, this, so far as I can calculate, must have been the +last time I ever saw him in the world. Softly as a common evening, the +last of the evenings had passed away, and no other would come for me +forevermore. + +Through the summer he was occupied with fitting up his new residence, +selecting governesses, servants; earnestly endeavoring to set his house +in order, on the new footing it had now assumed. Extensive improvements +in his garden and grounds, in which he took due interest to the +last, were also going on. His Brother, and Mr. Maurice his +brother-in-law,--especially Mrs. Maurice the kind sister, faithfully +endeavoring to be as a mother to her poor little nieces,--were +occasionally with him. All hours available for labor on his literary +tasks, he employed, almost exclusively I believe, on _Coeur-de-Lion_; +with what energy, the progress he had made in that Work, and in the art +of Poetic composition generally, amid so many sore impediments, best +testifies. I perceive, his life in general lay heavier on him than it +had done before; his mood of mind is grown more sombre;--indeed the very +solitude of this Ventnor as a place, not to speak of other solitudes, +must have been new and depressing. But he admits no hypochondria, now or +ever; occasionally, though rarely, even flashes of a kind of wild gayety +break through. He works steadily at his task, with all the strength left +him; endures the past as he may, and makes gallant front against the +world. "I am going on quietly here, rather than happily," writes he to +his friend Newman; "sometimes quite helpless, not from distinct illness, +but from sad thoughts and a ghastly dreaminess. The heart is gone out of +my life. My children, however, are doing well; and the place is cheerful +and mild." + +From Letters of this period I might select some melancholy enough; but +will prefer to give the following one (nearly the last I can give), as +indicative of a less usual temper:-- + + "_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_. + "VENTNOR, 7th December, 1843. + +"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--My Irish Newspaper was _not_ meant as a hint that +I wanted a Letter. It contained an absurd long Advertisement,--some +project for regenerating human knowledge, &c. &c.; to which I prefixed +my private mark (a blot), thinking that you might be pleased to know of +a fellow-laborer somewhere in Tipperary. + +"Your Letter, like the Scriptural oil,--(they had no patent lamps then, +and used the best oil, 7s. per gallon),--has made my face to shine. +There is but one person in the world, I shall not tell you who, from +whom a Letter would give me so much pleasure. It would be nearly as good +at Pekin, in the centre of the most enlightened Mandarins; but here at +Ventnor, where there are few Mandarins and no enlightenment,--fountains +in the wilderness, even were they miraculous, are nothing compared with +your handwriting. Yet it is sad that you should be so melancholy. I +often think that though Mercury was the pleasanter fellow, and probably +the happier, Saturn was the greater god;--rather cannibal or so, but one +excuses it in him, as in some other heroes one knows of. + +"It is, as you say, your destiny to write about Cromwell: and you +will make a book of him, at which the ears of our grandchildren will +tingle;--and as one may hope that the ears of human nature will be +growing longer and longer, the tingling will be proportionately greater +than we are accustomed to. Do what you can, I fear there will be little +gain from the Royalists. There is something very small about the biggest +of them that I have ever fallen in with, unless you count old Hobbes a +Royalist. + +"Curious to see that you have them exactly preserved in the Country +Gentlemen of our day; while of the Puritans not a trace remains except +in History. Squirism had already, in that day, become the _caput +mortuum_ that it is now; and has therefore, like other mummies, been +able to last. What was opposed to it was the Life of Puritanism,--then +on the point of disappearing; and it too has left its mummy at Exeter +Hall on the platform and elsewhere. One must go back to the Middle +Ages to see Squirism as rampant and vivacious as Biblicism was in the +Seventeenth Century: and I suppose our modern Country Gentlemen are +about as near to what the old Knights and Barons were who fought the +Crusades, as our modern Evangelicals to the fellows who sought the Lord +by the light of their own pistol-shots. + +"Those same Crusades are now pleasant matter for me. You remember, or +perhaps you do not, a thing I once sent you about Coeur-de-Lion. Long +since, I settled to make the Cantos you saw part of a larger Book; and +worked at it, last autumn and winter, till I had a bad illness. I am +now at work on it again; and go full sail, like _my_ hero. There are six +Cantos done, roughly, besides what you saw. I have struck out most +of the absurdest couplets, and given the whole a higher though still +sportive tone. It is becoming a kind of _Odyssey_, with a laughing and +Christian Achilles for hero. One may manage to wrap, in that chivalrous +brocade, many things belonging to our Time, and capable of interesting +it. The thing is not bad; but will require great labor. Only it is labor +that I thoroughly like; and which keeps the maggots out of one's brain, +until their time. + +"I have never spoken to you, never been able to speak to you, of the +change in my life,--almost as great, one fancies, as one's own death. +Even now, although it seems as if I had so much to say, I cannot. If +one could imagine--... But it is no use; I cannot write wisely on +this matter. I suppose no human being was ever devoted to another more +entirely than she; and that makes the change not less but more bearable. +It seems as if she could not be gone quite; and that indeed is my faith. + +"Mr. James, your New-England friend, was here only for a few days; I saw +him several times, and liked him. They went, on the 24th of last month, +back to London,--or so purposed,--because there is no pavement here for +him to walk on. I want to know where he is, and thought I should be able +to learn from you. I gave him a Note for Mill, who perhaps may have seen +him. I think this is all at present from, + + "Yours, + "JOHN STERLING." + +Of his health, all this while, we had heard little definite; and +understood that he was very quiet and careful; in virtue of which grand +improvement we vaguely considered all others would follow. Once let him +learn well to be _slow_ as the common run of men are, would not all be +safe and well? Nor through the winter, or the cold spring months, did +bad news reach us; perhaps less news of any kind than had been usual, +which seemed to indicate a still and wholesome way of life and work. Not +till "April 4th, 1844," did the new alarm occur: again on some slight +accident, the breaking of a blood-vessel; again prostration under +dangerous sickness, from which this time he never rose. + +There had been so many sudden failings and happy risings again in our +poor Sterling's late course of health, we had grown so accustomed to +mingle blame of his impetuosity with pity for his sad overthrows, we did +not for many weeks quite realize to ourselves the stern fact that here +at length had the peculiar fall come upon us,--the last of all +these falls! This brittle life, which had so often held together and +victoriously rallied under pressures and collisions, could not rally +always, and must one time be shivered. It was not till the summer came +and no improvement; and not even then without lingering glimmers of hope +against hope, that I fairly had to own what had now come, what was now +day by day sternly advancing with the steadiness of Time. + +From the first, the doctors spoke despondently; and Sterling himself +felt well that there was no longer any chance of life. He had often said +so, in his former illnesses, and thought so, yet always till now with +some tacit grain of counter-hope; he had never clearly felt so as now: +Here _is_ the end; the great change is now here!--Seeing how it was, +then, he earnestly gathered all his strength to do this last act of +his tragedy, as he had striven to do the others, in a pious and manful +manner. As I believe we can say he did; few men in any time _more_ +piously or manfully. For about six months he sat looking steadfastly, at +all moments, into the eyes of Death; he too who had eyes to _see_ Death +and the Terrors and Eternities; and surely it was with perfect courage +and piety, and valiant simplicity of heart, that he bore himself, and +did and thought and suffered, in this trying predicament, more terrible +than the usual death of men. All strength left to him he still employed +in working: day by day the end came nearer, but day by day also some new +portion of his adjustments was completed, by some small stage his +task was nearer done. His domestic and other affairs, of all sorts, he +settled to the last item. Of his own Papers he saved a few, giving brief +pertinent directions about them; great quantities, among which a certain +Autobiography begun some years ago at Clifton, he ruthlessly burnt, +judging that the best. To his friends he left messages, memorials of +books: I have a _Gough's Camden_, and other relics, which came to me in +that way, and are among my sacred possessions. The very Letters of his +friends he sorted and returned; had each friend's Letters made into a +packet, sealed with black, and duly addressed for delivery when the time +should come. + +At an early period of his illness, all visitors had of course been +excluded, except his most intimate ones: before long, so soon as the end +became apparent, he took leave even of his Father, to avoid excitements +and intolerable emotions; and except his Brother and the Maurices, who +were generally about him coming and going, none were admitted. This +latter form of life, I think, continued for above three months. Men were +still working about his grounds, of whom he took some charge; needful +works, great and small, let them not pause on account of him. He still +rose from bed; had still some portion of his day which he could spend +in his Library. Besides business there, he read a good deal,--earnest +books; the Bible, most earnest of books, his chief favorite. He still +even wrote a good deal. To his eldest Boy, now Mr. Newman's ward, who +had been removed to the Maurices' since the beginning of this illness, +he addressed, every day or two, sometimes daily, for eight or +nine weeks, a Letter, of general paternal advice and exhortation; +interspersing sparingly, now and then, such notices of his own feelings +and condition as could be addressed to a boy. These Letters, I have +lately read: they give, beyond any he has written, a noble image of the +intrinsic Sterling;--the same face we had long known; but painted now +as on the azure of Eternity, serene, victorious, divinely sad; the dusts +and extraneous disfigurements imprinted on it by the world, now +washed away. One little Excerpt, not the best, but the fittest for its +neighborhood here, will be welcome to the reader:-- + + "_To Master Edward C. Sterling, London_. + "HILLSIDE, VENTNOR, 29th June, 1844. + +"MY DEAR BOY,--We have been going on here as quietly as possible, with +no event that I know of. There is nothing except books to occupy me. +But you may suppose that my thoughts often move towards you, and that +I fancy what you may be doing in the great City,--the greatest on the +Earth,--where I spent so many years of my life. I first saw London when +I was between eight and nine years old, and then lived in or near it for +the whole of the next ten, and more there than anywhere else for seven +years longer. Since then I have hardly ever been a year without seeing +the place, and have often lived in it for a considerable time. There +I grew from childhood to be a man. My little Brothers and Sisters, and +since, my Mother, died and are buried there. There I first saw your +Mamma, and was there married. It seems as if, in some strange way, +London were a part of Me or I of London. I think of it often, not as +full of noise and dust and confusion, but as something silent, grand and +everlasting. + +"When I fancy how you are walking in the same streets, and moving along +the same river, that I used to watch so intently, as if in a dream, when +younger than you are,--I could gladly burst into tears, not of +grief, but with a feeling that there is no name for. Everything is so +wonderful, great and holy, so sad and yet not bitter, so full of Death +and so bordering on Heaven. Can you understand anything of this? If +you can, you will begin to know what a serious matter our Life is; +how unworthy and stupid it is to trifle it away without heed; what a +wretched, insignificant, worthless creature any one comes to be, who +does not as soon as possible bend his whole strength, as in stringing a +stiff bow, to doing whatever task lies first before him.... + +"We have a mist here to-day from the sea. It reminds me of that which I +used to see from my house in St, Vincent, rolling over the great volcano +and the mountains round it. I used to look at it from our windows with +your Mamma, and you a little baby in her arms. + +"This Letter is not so well written as I could wish, but I hope you will +be able to read it. + + "Your affectionate Papa, + "JOHN STERLING." + +These Letters go from June 9th to August 2d, at which latter date +vacation-time arrived, and the Boy returned to him. The Letters are +preserved; and surely well worth preserving. + +In this manner he wore the slow doomed months away. Day after day his +little period of Library went on waning, shrinking into less and less; +but I think it never altogether ended till the general end came.--For +courage, for active audacity we had all known Sterling; but such a fund +of mild stoicism, of devout patience and heroic composure, we did +not hitherto know in him. His sufferings, his sorrows, all his +unutterabilities in this slow agony, he held right manfully down; +marched loyally, as at the bidding of the Eternal, into the dread +Kingdoms, and no voice of weakness was heard from him. Poor noble +Sterling, he had struggled so high and gained so little here! But this +also he did gain, to be a brave man; and it was much. + +Summer passed into Autumn: Sterling's earthly businesses, to the last +detail of them, were now all as good as done: his strength too was +wearing to its end, his daily turn in the Library shrunk now to a span. +He had to hold himself as if in readiness for the great voyage at any +moment. One other Letter I must give; not quite the last message I had +from Sterling, but the last that can be inserted here: a brief Letter, +fit to be forever memorable to the receiver of it:-- + + "_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_. + "HILLSIDE, VENTNOR, 10th August, 1844. + +MY DEAR CARLYLE,--For the first time for many months it seems possible +to send you a few words; merely, however, for Remembrance and Farewell. +On higher matters there is nothing to say. I tread the common road into +the great darkness, without any thought of fear, and with very much of +hope. Certainty indeed I have none. With regard to You and Me I cannot +begin to write; having nothing for it but to keep shut the lid of those +secrets with all the iron weights that are in my power. Towards me it is +still more true than towards England that no man has been and done like +you. Heaven bless you! If I can lend a hand when THERE, that will not be +wanting. It is all very strange, but not one hundredth part so sad as it +seems to the standers-by. + +"Your Wife knows my mind towards her, and will believe it without +asseverations. + + "Yours to the last, + "JOHN STERLING." + +It was a bright Sunday morning when this letter came to me: if in the +great Cathedral of Immensity I did no worship that day, the fault surely +was my own. Sterling affectionately refused to see me; which also was +kind and wise. And four days before his death, there are some stanzas of +verse for me, written as if in star-fire and immortal tears; which are +among my sacred possessions, to be kept for myself alone. + +His business with the world was done; the one business now to await +silently what may lie in other grander worlds. "God is great," he was +wont to say: "God is great." The Maurices were now constantly near him; +Mrs. Maurice assiduously watching over him. On the evening of Wednesday +the 18th of September, his Brother, as he did every two or three days, +came down; found him in the old temper, weak in strength but not very +sensibly weaker; they talked calmly together for an hour; then Anthony +left his bedside, and retired for the night, not expecting any change. +But suddenly, about eleven o'clock, there came a summons and alarm: +hurrying to his Brother's room, he found his Brother dying; and in +a short while more the faint last struggle was ended, and all those +struggles and strenuous often-foiled endeavors of eight-and-thirty years +lay hushed in death. + + + +CHAPTER VII. CONCLUSION. + +Sterling was of rather slim but well-boned wiry figure, perhaps an inch +or two from six feet in height; of blonde complexion, without color, yet +not pale or sickly; dark-blonde hair, copious enough, which he usually +wore short. The general aspect of him indicated freedom, perfect +spontaneity, with a certain careless natural grace. In his apparel, you +could notice, he affected dim colors, easy shapes; cleanly always, yet +even in this not fastidious or conspicuous: he sat or stood, oftenest, +in loose sloping postures; walked with long strides, body carelessly +bent, head flung eagerly forward, right hand perhaps grasping a +cane, and rather by the middle to swing it, than by the end to use it +otherwise. An attitude of frank, cheerful impetuosity, of hopeful speed +and alacrity; which indeed his physiognomy, on all sides of it, offered +as the chief expression. Alacrity, velocity, joyous ardor, dwelt in the +eyes too, which were of brownish gray, full of bright kindly life, +rapid and frank rather than deep or strong. A smile, half of kindly +impatience, half of real mirth, often sat on his face. The head was +long; high over the vertex; in the brow, of fair breadth, but not high +for such a man. + +In the voice, which was of good tenor sort, rapid and strikingly +distinct, powerful too, and except in some of the higher notes +harmonious, there was a clear-ringing _metallic_ tone,--which I often +thought was wonderfully physiognomic. A certain splendor, beautiful, +but not the deepest or the softest, which I could call a splendor as +of burnished metal,--fiery valor of heart, swift decisive insight and +utterance, then a turn for brilliant elegance, also for ostentation, +rashness, &c. &c.,--in short, a flash as of clear-glancing sharp-cutting +steel, lay in the whole nature of the man, in his heart and in his +intellect, marking alike the excellence and the limits of them both. +His laugh, which on light occasions was ready and frequent, had in it no +great depth of gayety, or sense for the ludicrous in men or things; you +might call it rather a good smile become vocal than a deep real laugh: +with his whole man I never saw him laugh. A clear sense of the humorous +he had, as of most other things; but in himself little or no true +humor;--nor did he attempt that side of things. To call him deficient +in sympathy would seem strange, him whose radiances and resonances went +thrilling over all the world, and kept him in brotherly contact with +all: but I may say his sympathies dwelt rather with the high and sublime +than with the low or ludicrous; and were, in any field, rather light, +wide and lively, than deep, abiding or great. + +There is no Portrait of him which tolerably resembles. The miniature +Medallion, of which Mr. Hare has given an Engraving, offers us, with +no great truth in physical details, one, and not the best, superficial +expression of his face, as if that with vacuity had been what the face +contained; and even that Mr. Hare's engraver has disfigured into the +nearly or the utterly irrecognizable. Two Pencil-sketches, which no +artist could approve of, hasty sketches done in some social hour, one +by his friend Spedding, one by Banim the Novelist, whom he slightly +knew and had been kind to, tell a much truer story so far as they go: +of these his Brother has engravings; but these also I must suppress as +inadequate for strangers. + + +Nor in the way of Spiritual Portraiture does there, after so much +writing and excerpting, anything of importance remain for me to say. +John Sterling and his Life in this world were--such as has been already +said. In purity of character, in the so-called moralities, in all manner +of proprieties of conduct, so as tea-tables and other human tribunals +rule them, he might be defined as perfect, according to the world's +pattern: in these outward tangible respects the world's criticism of him +must have been praise and that only. An honorable man, and good citizen; +discharging, with unblamable correctness, all functions and duties +laid on him by the customs (_mores_) of the society he lived in,--with +correctness and something more. In all these particulars, a man +perfectly _moral_, or of approved virtue according to the rules. + +Nay in the far more essential tacit virtues, which are not marked on +stone tables, or so apt to be insisted on by human creatures over tea +or elsewhere,--in clear and perfect fidelity to Truth wherever found, +in childlike and soldier-like, pious and valiant loyalty to the Highest, +and what of good and evil that might send him,--he excelled among good +men. The joys and the sorrows of his lot he took with true simplicity +and acquiescence. Like a true son, not like a miserable mutinous rebel, +he comported himself in this Universe. Extremity of distress--and surely +his fervid temper had enough of contradiction in this world--could not +tempt him into impatience at any time. By no chance did you ever hear +from him a whisper of those mean repinings, miserable arraignings and +questionings of the Eternal Power, such as weak souls even well disposed +will sometimes give way to in the pressure of their despair; to the like +of this he never yielded, or showed the least tendency to yield;--which +surely was well on his part. For the Eternal Power, I still remark, +will not answer the like of this, but silently and terribly accounts it +impious, blasphemous and damnable, and now as heretofore will visit it +as such. Not a rebel but a son, I said; willing to suffer when +Heaven said, Thou shalt;--and withal, what is perhaps rarer in such a +combination, willing to rejoice also, and right cheerily taking the good +that was sent, whensoever or in whatever form it came. + +A pious soul we may justly call him; devoutly submissive to the will +of the Supreme in all things: the highest and sole essential form which +Religion can assume in man, and without which all forms of religion are +a mockery and a delusion in man. Doubtless, in so clear and filial a +heart there must have dwelt the perennial feeling of silent worship; +which silent feeling, as we have seen, he was eager enough to express by +all good ways of utterance; zealously adopting such appointed forms and +creeds as the dignitaries of the World had fixed upon and solemnly named +recommendable; prostrating his heart in such Church, by such accredited +rituals and seemingly fit or half-fit methods, as his poor time and +country had to offer him,--not rejecting the said methods till they +stood convicted of palpable unfitness and then doing it right gently +withal, rather letting them drop as pitiably dead for him, than angrily +hurling them out of doors as needing to be killed. By few Englishmen +of his epoch had the thing called Church of England been more loyally +appealed to as a spiritual mother. + +And yet, as I said before, it may be questioned whether piety, what we +call devotion or worship, was the principle deepest in him. In spite of +his Coleridge discipleship, and his once headlong operations following +thereon, I used to judge that his piety was prompt and pure rather than +great or intense; that, on the whole, religious devotion was not the +deepest element of him. His reverence was ardent and just, ever ready +for the thing or man that deserved revering, or seemed to deserve it: +but he was of too joyful, light and hoping a nature to go to the depths +of that feeling, much more to dwell perennially in it. He had no fear +in his composition; terror and awe did not blend with his respect of +anything. In no scene or epoch could he have been a Church Saint, a +fanatic enthusiast, or have worn out his life in passive martyrdom, +sitting patient in his grim coal-mine, looking at the "three ells" of +Heaven high overhead there. In sorrow he would not dwell; all sorrow +he swiftly subdued, and shook away from him. How could you have made an +Indian Fakir of the Greek Apollo, "whose bright eye lends brightness, +and never yet saw a shadow"?--I should say, not religious reverence, +rather artistic admiration was the essential character of him: a fact +connected with all other facts in the physiognomy of his life and self, +and giving a tragic enough character to much of the history he had among +us. + +Poor Sterling, he was by nature appointed for a Poet, then,--a Poet +after his sort, or recognizer and delineator of the Beautiful; and not +for a Priest at all? Striving towards the sunny heights, out of such +a level and through such an element as ours in these days is, he had +strange aberrations appointed him, and painful wanderings amid +the miserable gaslights, bog-fires, dancing meteors and putrid +phosphorescences which form the guidance of a young human soul at +present! Not till after trying all manner of sublimely illuminated +places, and finding that the basis of them was putridity, artificial gas +and quaking bog, did he, when his strength was all done, discover his +true sacred hill, and passionately climb thither while life was fast +ebbing!--A tragic history, as all histories are; yet a gallant, brave +and noble one, as not many are. It is what, to a radiant son of the +Muses, and bright messenger of the harmonious Wisdoms, this poor +world--if he himself have not strength enough, and _inertia_ enough, and +amid his harmonious eloquences silence enough--has provided at present. +Many a high-striving, too hasty soul, seeking guidance towards eternal +excellence from the official Black-artists, and successful Professors +of political, ecclesiastical, philosophical, commercial, general and +particular Legerdemain, will recognize his own history in this image of +a fellow-pilgrim's. + +Over-haste was Sterling's continual fault; over-haste, and want of the +due strength,--alas, mere want of the due _inertia_ chiefly; which is +so common a gift for most part; and proves so inexorably needful withal! +But he was good and generous and true; joyful where there was +joy, patient and silent where endurance was required of him; shook +innumerable sorrows, and thick-crowding forms of pain, gallantly away +from him; fared frankly forward, and with scrupulous care to tread on no +one's toes. True, above all, one may call him; a man of perfect veracity +in thought, word and deed. Integrity towards all men,--nay integrity +had ripened with him into chivalrous generosity; there was no guile or +baseness anywhere found in him. Transparent as crystal; he could not +hide anything sinister, if such there had been to hide. A more perfectly +transparent soul I have never known. It was beautiful, to read all those +interior movements; the little shades of affectations, ostentations; +transient spurts of anger, which never grew to the length of settled +spleen: all so naive, so childlike, the very faults grew beautiful to +you. + +And so he played his part among us, and has now ended it: in this first +half of the Nineteenth Century, such was the shape of human destinies +the world and he made out between them. He sleeps now, in the little +burying-ground of Bonchurch; bright, ever-young in the memory of others +that must grow old; and was honorably released from his toils before the +hottest of the day. + + +All that remains, in palpable shape, of John Sterling's activities in +this world are those Two poor Volumes; scattered fragments gathered from +the general waste of forgotten ephemera by the piety of a friend: an +inconsiderable memorial; not pretending to have achieved greatness; +only disclosing, mournfully, to the more observant, that a promise of +greatness was there. Like other such lives, like all lives, this is a +tragedy; high hopes, noble efforts; under thickening difficulties and +impediments, ever-new nobleness of valiant effort;--and the result +death, with conquests by no means corresponding. A life which cannot +challenge the world's attention; yet which does modestly solicit it, and +perhaps on clear study will be found to reward it. + +On good evidence let the world understand that here was a remarkable +soul born into it; who, more than others, sensible to its influences, +took intensely into him such tint and shape of feature as the world had +to offer there and then; fashioning himself eagerly by whatsoever of +noble presented itself; participating ardently in the world's battle, +and suffering deeply in its bewilderments;--whose Life-pilgrimage +accordingly is an emblem, unusually significant, of the world's own +during those years of his. A man of infinite susceptivity; who caught +everywhere, more than others, the color of the element he lived in, the +infection of all that was or appeared honorable, beautiful and manful in +the tendencies of his Time;--whose history therefore is, beyond others, +emblematic of that of his Time. + +In Sterling's Writings and Actions, were they capable of being well +read, we consider that there is for all true hearts, and especially for +young noble seekers, and strivers towards what is highest, a mirror in +which some shadow of themselves and of their immeasurably complex +arena will profitably present itself. Here also is one encompassed and +struggling even as they now are. This man also had said to himself, not +in mere Catechism-words, but with all his instincts, and the question +thrilled in every nerve of him, and pulsed in every drop of his blood: +"What is the chief end of man? Behold, I too would live and work as +beseems a denizen of this Universe, a child of the Highest God. By what +means is a noble life still possible for me here? Ye Heavens and +thou Earth, oh, how?"--The history of this long-continued prayer and +endeavor, lasting in various figures for near forty years, may now and +for some time coming have something to say to men! + + +Nay, what of men or of the world? Here, visible to myself, for some +while, was a brilliant human presence, distinguishable, honorable +and lovable amid the dim common populations; among the million little +beautiful, once more a beautiful human soul: whom I, among others, +recognized and lovingly walked with, while the years and the hours were. +Sitting now by his tomb in thoughtful mood, the new times bring a +new duty for me. "Why write the Life of Sterling?" I imagine I had a +commission higher than the world's, the dictate of Nature herself, to do +what is now done. _Sic prosit_. + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + + +[Footnote 1: _John Sterling's Essays and Tales, with Life_ by Archdeacon Hare. +Parker; London, 1848.] + +[Footnote 2: _Commons Journals_, iv. 15 (l0th January, 1644-5); and again v. 307 +&c., 498 (18th September, 1647-15th March, 1647-8).] + +[Footnote 3: _Literary Chronicle_, New Series; London, Saturday, 21 June, 1828, +Art. II.] + +[Footnote 4: "The Letters of Vetus from March 10th to May 10th, 1812" (second +edition, London, 1812): Ditto, "Part III., with a Preface and Notes" +(ibid. 1814).] + +[Footnote 5: Here, in a Note, is the tragic little Register, with what +indications for us may lie in it:-- + + (l.) Robert Sterling died, 4th June, 1815, at Queen Square, in + his fourth year (John being now nine). + (2.) Elizabeth died, 12th March, 1818, at Blackfriars Road, in + her second year. + (3.) Edward, 30th March, 1818 (same place, same month and year), + in his ninth. + (4.) Hester, 21st July, 1818 (three months later), at Blackheath, + in her eleventh. + (5.) Catherine Hester Elizabeth, 16th January, 1821, in Seymour + Street.] + +[Footnote 6: _History of the English Universities_. (Translated from the German.)] + +[Footnote 7: Mrs. Anthony Sterling, very lately Miss Charlotte Baird.] + +[Footnote 8: _Biography_, by Hare, pp. xvi-xxvi.] + +[Footnote 9: _Biography_, by Mr. Hare, p. xli.] + +[Footnote 10: Hare, pp. xliii-xlvi.] + +[Footnote 11: Hare, xlviii, liv, lv.] + +[Footnote 12: Hare, p. lvi.] + +[Footnote 13: P. lxxviii.] + +[Footnote 14: Given in Hare (ii. 188-193).] + +[Footnote 15: Came out, as will soon appear, in _Blackwood_ (February, 1838).] + +[Footnote 16: "_Hotel de l'Europe, Berlin_," added in Mrs. Sterling's hand.] + +[Footnote 17: Hare, ii. 96-167.] + +[Footnote 18: Ib. i. 129, 188.] + +[Footnote 19: Here in a Note they are, if they can be important to anybody. The +marks of interrogation, attached to some Names as not yet consulted or +otherwise questionable, are in the Secretary's hand:-- + + J. D. Acland, Esq. H. Malden, Esq. + Hon. W. B. Baring. J. S. Mill, Esq. + Rev. J. W. Blakesley. R. M. Milnes, Esq. + W. Boxall, Esq. R. Monteith, Esq. + T. Carlyle, Esq. S. A. O'Brien, Esq. + Hon. R. Cavendish (?) Sir F. Palgrave (?) + H. N. Coleridge, Esq. (?) W. F. Pollok, Esq. + J. W. Colville, Esq. Philip Pusey, Esq. + Allan Cunningham, Esq. (?) A. Rio, Esq. + Rev. H. Donn. C. Romilly, Esq. + F. H. Doyle, Esq. James Spedding, Esq. + C. L. Eastlake, Esq. Rev. John Sterling. + Alex. Ellice, Esq. Alfred Tennyson, Esq. + J. F. Elliott, Esq. Rev. Connop Thirlwall. + Copley Fielding, Esq. Rev. W. Hepworth Thompson. + Rev. J. C. Hare. Edward Twisleton, Esq. + Sir Edmund Head (?) G. S. Venables, Esq. + D. D. Heath, Esq. Samuel Wood, Esq. + G. C. Lewis, Esq. Rev. T. Worsley. + H. L. Lushington, Esq. + The Lord Lyttleton. James Spedding, _Secretary_. + C. Macarthy, Esq. 8th August, 1838.] + +[Footnote 20: Hare, p. cxviii.] + +[Footnote 21: Of Sterling himself, I suppose.] + +[Footnote 22: Hare, ii. p. 252.] + +[Footnote 23: _Poems by John Sterling_. London (Moxon), 1839.] + +[Footnote 24: _The Election: a Poem, in Seven Books_. London, Murray, 1841.] + +[Footnote 25: Pp. 7, 8.] + +[Footnote 26: Pp. 89-93.] + +[Footnote 27: Sister of Mrs. Strachey and Mrs. Buller: Sir John Louis was now in +a high Naval post at Malta.] + +[Footnote 28: Long Letter to his Father: Naples, 3d May, 1842.] + +[Footnote 29: Death of her Mother, four mouths before. (_Note of_ 1870.)] + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Life of John Sterling, by Thomas Carlyle + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1085 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1086-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1086-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..39299c33 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1086-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2015 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1086 *** + + [Picture: Book cover] + + [Picture: “Buffalo Bill took me on Soldier Boy to Thunder-Bird’s Camp”] + + + + + + A Horse’s Tale + + + BY + Mark Twain + + ILLUSTRATED BY + LUCIUS HITCHCOCK + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + LONDON AND NEW YORK + HARPER & BROTHERS + PUBLISHERS .. MCMVII + + * * * * * + + Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers. + + * * * * * + + _All rights reserved_ + + Published October, 1907. + + _Printed in United States of America_. + + * * * * * + + + + +Contents + +CHAP. PAGE + I. SOLDIER BOY—PRIVATELY TO HIMSELF 1 + II. LETTER FROM ROUEN—TO GENERAL ALISON 12 + III. GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER 19 + IV. CATHY TO HER AUNT MERCEDES 25 + V. GENERAL ALISON TO MERCEDES 33 + VI. SOLDIER BOY AND THE MEXICAN PLUG 56 + VII. SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS 82 + VIII. THE SCOUT-START. BB AND LIEUTENANT-GENERAL 88 + ALISON + IX. SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN 90 + X. GENERAL ALISON AND DORCAS 100 + XI. SEVERAL MONTHS LATER. ANTONIO AND THORNDIKE 116 + XII. MONGREL AND THE OTHER HORSE 129 + XIII. GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER 133 + XIV. SOLDIER BOY—TO HIMSELF 145 + XV. GENERAL ALISON TO MRS. DRAKE, THE COLONEL’S WIFE 149 + + + + +Illustrations + +“Buffalo Bill took me on Soldier Boy to _Frontispiece_ +Thunder-Bird’s Camp” +“Look at that file of cats in your chair” p. 48 +“Every morning they go clattering down into the 66 +plain” +“There was nothing to do but stand by” 92 +“His strength failed and he fell at her feet” 150 + + + + +Acknowledgements + + +Although I have had several opportunities to see a bull-fight, I have +never seen one; but I needed a bull-fight in this book, and a trustworthy +one will be found in it. I got it out of John Hay’s _Castilian Days_, +reducing and condensing it to fit the requirements of this small story. +Mr. Hay and I were friends from early times, and if he were still with us +he would not rebuke me for the liberty I have taken. + +The knowledge of military minutiæ exhibited in this book will be found to +be correct, but it is not mine; I took it from _Army Regulations_, ed. +1904; _Hardy’s Tactics_—_Cavalry_, revised ed., 1861; and _Jomini’s +Handbook of Military Etiquette_, West Point ed., 1905. + +It would not be honest in me to encourage by silence the inference that I +composed the Horse’s private bugle-call, for I did not. I lifted it, as +Aristotle says. It is the opening strain in _The Pizzicato_ in _Sylvia_, +by Delibes. When that master was composing it he did not know it was a +bugle-call, it was I that found it out. + +Along through the book I have distributed a few anachronisms and unborn +historical incidents and such things, so as to help the tale over the +difficult places. This idea is not original with me; I got it out of +Herodotus. Herodotus says, “Very few things happen at the right time, +and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will +correct these defects.” + +The cats in the chair do not belong to me, but to another. + +These are all the exceptions. What is left of the book is mine. + + MARK TWAIN. + +LONE TREE HILL, DUBLIN, +NEW HAMPSHIRE, _October_, 1905. + + + + +Part I + + +I +SOLDIER BOY—PRIVATELY TO HIMSELF + + +I AM Buffalo Bill’s horse. I have spent my life under his saddle—with +him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without his +clothes; and there is no telling how much he does weigh when he is out on +the war-path and has his batteries belted on. He is over six feet, is +young, hasn’t an ounce of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy in +his motions, quick as a cat, and has a handsome face, and black hair +dangling down on his shoulders, and is beautiful to look at; and nobody +is braver than he is, and nobody is stronger, except myself. Yes, a +person that doubts that he is fine to see should see him in his beaded +buck-skins, on my back and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing +a hostile trail, with me going like the wind and his hair streaming out +behind from the shelter of his broad slouch. Yes, he is a sight to look +at then—and I’m part of it myself. + +I am his favorite horse, out of dozens. Big as he is, I have carried him +eighty-one miles between nightfall and sunrise on the scout; and I am +good for fifty, day in and day out, and all the time. I am not large, +but I am built on a business basis. I have carried him thousands and +thousands of miles on scout duty for the army, and there’s not a gorge, +nor a pass, nor a valley, nor a fort, nor a trading post, nor a +buffalo-range in the whole sweep of the Rocky Mountains and the Great +Plains that we don’t know as well as we know the bugle-calls. He is +Chief of Scouts to the Army of the Frontier, and it makes us very +important. In such a position as I hold in the military service one +needs to be of good family and possess an education much above the common +to be worthy of the place. I am the best-educated horse outside of the +hippodrome, everybody says, and the best-mannered. It may be so, it is +not for me to say; modesty is the best policy, I think. Buffalo Bill +taught me the most of what I know, my mother taught me much, and I taught +myself the rest. Lay a row of moccasins before me—Pawnee, Sioux, +Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and as many other tribes as you please—and +I can name the tribe every moccasin belongs to by the make of it. Name +it in horse-talk, and could do it in American if I had speech. + +I know some of the Indian signs—the signs they make with their hands, and +by signal-fires at night and columns of smoke by day. Buffalo Bill +taught me how to drag wounded soldiers out of the line of fire with my +teeth; and I’ve done it, too; at least I’ve dragged _him_ out of the +battle when he was wounded. And not just once, but twice. Yes, I know a +lot of things. I remember forms, and gaits, and faces; and you can’t +disguise a person that’s done me a kindness so that I won’t know him +thereafter wherever I find him. I know the art of searching for a trail, +and I know the stale track from the fresh. I can keep a trail all by +myself, with Buffalo Bill asleep in the saddle; ask him—he will tell you +so. Many a time, when he has ridden all night, he has said to me at +dawn, “Take the watch, Boy; if the trail freshens, call me.” Then he +goes to sleep. He knows he can trust me, because I have a reputation. A +scout horse that has a reputation does not play with it. + +My mother was all American—no alkali-spider about _her_, I can tell you; +she was of the best blood of Kentucky, the bluest Blue-grass aristocracy, +very proud and acrimonious—or maybe it is ceremonious. I don’t know +which it is. But it is no matter; size is the main thing about a word, +and that one’s up to standard. She spent her military life as colonel of +the Tenth Dragoons, and saw a deal of rough service—distinguished service +it was, too. I mean, she _carried_ the Colonel; but it’s all the same. +Where would he be without his horse? He wouldn’t arrive. It takes two +to make a colonel of dragoons. She was a fine dragoon horse, but never +got above that. She was strong enough for the scout service, and had the +endurance, too, but she couldn’t quite come up to the speed required; a +scout horse has to have steel in his muscle and lightning in his blood. + +My father was a bronco. Nothing as to lineage—that is, nothing as to +recent lineage—but plenty good enough when you go a good way back. When +Professor Marsh was out here hunting bones for the chapel of Yale +University he found skeletons of horses no bigger than a fox, bedded in +the rocks, and he said they were ancestors of my father. My mother heard +him say it; and he said those skeletons were two million years old, which +astonished her and made her Kentucky pretensions look small and pretty +antiphonal, not to say oblique. Let me see. . . . I used to know the +meaning of those words, but . . . well, it was years ago, and ’tisn’t as +vivid now as it was when they were fresh. That sort of words doesn’t +keep, in the kind of climate we have out here. Professor Marsh said +those skeletons were fossils. So that makes me part blue grass and part +fossil; if there is any older or better stock, you will have to look for +it among the Four Hundred, I reckon. I am satisfied with it. And am a +happy horse, too, though born out of wedlock. + +And now we are back at Fort Paxton once more, after a forty-day scout, +away up as far as the Big Horn. Everything quiet. Crows and Blackfeet +squabbling—as usual—but no outbreaks, and settlers feeling fairly easy. + +The Seventh Cavalry still in garrison, here; also the Ninth Dragoons, two +artillery companies, and some infantry. All glad to see me, including +General Alison, commandant. The officers’ ladies and children well, and +called upon me—with sugar. Colonel Drake, Seventh Cavalry, said some +pleasant things; Mrs. Drake was very complimentary; also Captain and Mrs. +Marsh, Company B, Seventh Cavalry; also the Chaplain, who is always kind +and pleasant to me, because I kicked the lungs out of a trader once. It +was Tommy Drake and Fanny Marsh that furnished the sugar—nice children, +the nicest at the post, I think. + +That poor orphan child is on her way from France—everybody is full of the +subject. Her father was General Alison’s brother; married a beautiful +young Spanish lady ten years ago, and has never been in America since. +They lived in Spain a year or two, then went to France. Both died some +months ago. This little girl that is coming is the only child. General +Alison is glad to have her. He has never seen her. He is a very nice +old bachelor, but is an old bachelor just the same and isn’t more than +about a year this side of retirement by age limit; and so what does he +know about taking care of a little maid nine years old? If I could have +her it would be another matter, for I know all about children, and they +adore me. Buffalo Bill will tell you so himself. + +I have some of this news from over-hearing the garrison-gossip, the rest +of it I got from Potter, the General’s dog. Potter is the great Dane. +He is privileged, all over the post, like Shekels, the Seventh Cavalry’s +dog, and visits everybody’s quarters and picks up everything that is +going, in the way of news. Potter has no imagination, and no great deal +of culture, perhaps, but he has a historical mind and a good memory, and +so he is the person I depend upon mainly to post me up when I get back +from a scout. That is, if Shekels is out on depredation and I can’t get +hold of him. + + + +II +LETTER FROM ROUEN—TO GENERAL ALISON + + +_MY dear Brother-in-Law_,—Please let me write again in Spanish, I cannot +trust my English, and I am aware, from what your brother used to say, +that army officers educated at the Military Academy of the United States +are taught our tongue. It is as I told you in my other letter: both my +poor sister and her husband, when they found they could not recover, +expressed the wish that you should have their little Catherine—as knowing +that you would presently be retired from the army—rather than that she +should remain with me, who am broken in health, or go to your mother in +California, whose health is also frail. + +You do not know the child, therefore I must tell you something about her. +You will not be ashamed of her looks, for she is a copy in little of her +beautiful mother—and it is that Andalusian beauty which is not +surpassable, even in your country. She has her mother’s charm and grace +and good heart and sense of justice, and she has her father’s vivacity +and cheerfulness and pluck and spirit of enterprise, with the +affectionate disposition and sincerity of both parents. + +My sister pined for her Spanish home all these years of exile; she was +always talking of Spain to the child, and tending and nourishing the love +of Spain in the little thing’s heart as a precious flower; and she died +happy in the knowledge that the fruitage of her patriotic labors was as +rich as even she could desire. + +Cathy is a sufficiently good little scholar, for her nine years; her +mother taught her Spanish herself, and kept it always fresh upon her ear +and her tongue by hardly ever speaking with her in any other tongue; her +father was her English teacher, and talked with her in that language +almost exclusively; French has been her everyday speech for more than +seven years among her playmates here; she has a good working use of +governess—German and Italian. It is true that there is always a faint +foreign fragrance about her speech, no matter what language she is +talking, but it is only just noticeable, nothing more, and is rather a +charm than a mar, I think. In the ordinary child-studies Cathy is +neither before nor behind the average child of nine, I should say. But I +can say this for her: in love for her friends and in high-mindedness and +good-heartedness she has not many equals, and in my opinion no superiors. +And I beg of you, let her have her way with the dumb animals—they are her +worship. It is an inheritance from her mother. She knows but little of +cruelties and oppressions—keep them from her sight if you can. She would +flare up at them and make trouble, in her small but quite decided and +resolute way; for she has a character of her own, and lacks neither +promptness nor initiative. Sometimes her judgment is at fault, but I +think her intentions are always right. Once when she was a little +creature of three or four years she suddenly brought her tiny foot down +upon the floor in an apparent outbreak of indignation, then fetched it a +backward wipe, and stooped down to examine the result. Her mother said: + +“Why, what is it, child? What has stirred you so?” + +“Mamma, the big ant was trying to kill the little one.” + +“And so you protected the little one.” + +“Yes, mamma, because he had no friend, and I wouldn’t let the big one +kill him.” + +“But you have killed them both.” + +Cathy was distressed, and her lip trembled. She picked up the remains +and laid them upon her palm, and said: + +“Poor little anty, I’m so sorry; and I didn’t mean to kill you, but there +wasn’t any other way to save you, it was such a hurry.” + +She is a dear and sweet little lady, and when she goes it will give me a +sore heart. But she will be happy with you, and if your heart is old and +tired, give it into her keeping; she will make it young again, she will +refresh it, she will make it sing. Be good to her, for all our sakes! + +My exile will soon be over now. As soon as I am a little stronger I +shall see my Spain again; and that will make me young again! + + MERCEDES. + + + +III +GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER + + +I AM glad to know that you are all well, in San Bernardino. + +. . . That grandchild of yours has been here—well, I do not quite know +how many days it is; nobody can keep account of days or anything else +where she is! Mother, she did what the Indians were never able to do. +She took the Fort—took it the first day! Took me, too; took the +colonels, the captains, the women, the children, and the dumb brutes; +took Buffalo Bill, and all his scouts; took the garrison—to the last man; +and in forty-eight hours the Indian encampment was hers, illustrious old +Thunder-Bird and all. Do I seem to have lost my solemnity, my gravity, +my poise, my dignity? You would lose your own, in my circumstances. +Mother, you never saw such a winning little devil. She is all energy, +and spirit, and sunshine, and interest in everybody and everything, and +pours out her prodigal love upon every creature that will take it, high +or low, Christian or pagan, feathered or furred; and none has declined it +to date, and none ever will, I think. But she has a temper, and +sometimes it catches fire and flames up, and is likely to burn whatever +is near it; but it is soon over, the passion goes as quickly as it comes. +Of course she has an Indian name already; Indians always rechristen a +stranger early. Thunder-Bird attended to her case. He gave her the +Indian equivalent for firebug, or fire-fly. He said: + +“’Times, ver’ quiet, ver’ soft, like summer night, but when she mad she +blaze.” + +Isn’t it good? Can’t you see the flare? She’s beautiful, mother, +beautiful as a picture; and there is a touch of you in her face, and of +her father—poor George! and in her unresting activities, and her fearless +ways, and her sunbursts and cloudbursts, she is always bringing George +back to me. These impulsive natures are dramatic. George was dramatic, +so is this Lightning-Bug, so is Buffalo Bill. When Cathy first +arrived—it was in the forenoon—Buffalo Bill was away, carrying orders to +Major Fuller, at Five Forks, up in the Clayton Hills. At mid-afternoon I +was at my desk, trying to work, and this sprite had been making it +impossible for half an hour. At last I said: + +“Oh, you bewitching little scamp, _can’t_ you be quiet just a minute or +two, and let your poor old uncle attend to a part of his duties?” + +“I’ll try, uncle; I will, indeed,” she said. + +“Well, then, that’s a good child—kiss me. Now, then, sit up in that +chair, and set your eye on that clock. There—that’s right. If you +stir—if you so much as wink—for four whole minutes, I’ll bite you!” + +It was very sweet and humble and obedient she looked, sitting there, +still as a mouse; I could hardly keep from setting her free and telling +her to make as much racket as she wanted to. During as much as two +minutes there was a most unnatural and heavenly quiet and repose, then +Buffalo Bill came thundering up to the door in all his scout finery, +flung himself out of the saddle, said to his horse, “Wait for me, Boy,” +and stepped in, and stopped dead in his tracks—gazing at the child. She +forgot orders, and was on the floor in a moment, saying: + +“Oh, you are so beautiful! Do you like me?” + +“No, I don’t, I love you!” and he gathered her up with a hug, and then +set her on his shoulder—apparently nine feet from the floor. + +She was at home. She played with his long hair, and admired his big +hands and his clothes and his carbine, and asked question after question, +as fast as he could answer, until I excused them both for half an hour, +in order to have a chance to finish my work. Then I heard Cathy +exclaiming over Soldier Boy; and he was worthy of her raptures, for he is +a wonder of a horse, and has a reputation which is as shining as his own +silken hide. + + + +IV +CATHY TO HER AUNT MERCEDES + + +OH, it is wonderful here, aunty dear, just paradise! Oh, if you could +only see it! everything so wild and lovely; such grand plains, stretching +such miles and miles and miles, all the most delicious velvety sand and +sage-brush, and rabbits as big as a dog, and such tall and noble +jackassful ears that that is what they name them by; and such vast +mountains, and so rugged and craggy and lofty, with cloud-shawls wrapped +around their shoulders, and looking so solemn and awful and satisfied; +and the charming Indians, oh, how you would dote on them, aunty dear, and +they would on you, too, and they would let you hold their babies, the way +they do me, and they _are_ the fattest, and brownest, and sweetest little +things, and never cry, and wouldn’t if they had pins sticking in them, +which they haven’t, because they are poor and can’t afford it; and the +horses and mules and cattle and dogs—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, +and not an animal that you can’t do what you please with, except uncle +Thomas, but _I_ don’t mind him, he’s lovely; and oh, if you could hear +the bugles: _too—too—too-too—too—too_, and so on—perfectly beautiful! Do +you recognize that one? It’s the first toots of the _reveille_; it goes, +dear me, _so_ early in the morning!—then I and every other soldier on the +whole place are up and out in a minute, except uncle Thomas, who is most +unaccountably lazy, I don’t know why, but I have talked to him about it, +and I reckon it will be better, now. He hasn’t any faults much, and is +charming and sweet, like Buffalo Bill, and Thunder-Bird, and Mammy +Dorcas, and Soldier Boy, and Shekels, and Potter, and Sour-Mash, +and—well, they’re _all_ that, just angels, as you may say. + +The very first day I came, I don’t know how long ago it was, Buffalo Bill +took me on Soldier Boy to Thunder-Bird’s camp, not the big one which is +out on the plain, which is White Cloud’s, he took me to _that_ one next +day, but this one is four or five miles up in the hills and crags, where +there is a great shut-in meadow, full of Indian lodges and dogs and +squaws and everything that is interesting, and a brook of the clearest +water running through it, with white pebbles on the bottom and trees all +along the banks cool and shady and good to wade in, and as the sun goes +down it is dimmish in there, but away up against the sky you see the big +peaks towering up and shining bright and vivid in the sun, and sometimes +an eagle sailing by them, not flapping a wing, the same as if he was +asleep; and young Indians and girls romping and laughing and carrying on, +around the spring and the pool, and not much clothes on except the girls, +and dogs fighting, and the squaws busy at work, and the bucks busy +resting, and the old men sitting in a bunch smoking, and passing the pipe +not to the left but to the right, which means there’s been a row in the +camp and they are settling it if they can, and children playing _just_ +the same as any other children, and little boys shooting at a mark with +bows, and I cuffed one of them because he hit a dog with a club that +wasn’t doing anything, and he resented it but before long he wished he +hadn’t: but this sentence is getting too long and I will start another. +Thunder-Bird put on his Sunday-best war outfit to let me see him, and he +was splendid to look at, with his face painted red and bright and intense +like a fire-coal and a valance of eagle feathers from the top of his head +all down his back, and he had his tomahawk, too, and his pipe, which has +a stem which is longer than my arm, and I never had such a good time in +an Indian camp in my life, and I learned a lot of words of the language, +and next day BB took me to the camp out on the Plains, four miles, and I +had another good time and got acquainted with some more Indians and dogs; +and the big chief, by the name of White Cloud, gave me a pretty little +bow and arrows and I gave him my red sash-ribbon, and in four days I +could shoot very well with it and beat any white boy of my size at the +post; and I have been to those camps plenty of times since; and I have +learned to ride, too, BB taught me, and every day he practises me and +praises me, and every time I do better than ever he lets me have a +scamper on Soldier Boy, and _that’s_ the last agony of pleasure! for he +is the charmingest horse, and so beautiful and shiny and black, and +hasn’t another color on him anywhere, except a white star in his +forehead, not just an imitation star, but a real one, with four points, +shaped exactly like a star that’s hand-made, and if you should cover him +all up but his star you would know him anywhere, even in Jerusalem or +Australia, by that. And I got acquainted with a good many of the Seventh +Cavalry, and the dragoons, and officers, and families, and horses, in the +first few days, and some more in the next few and the next few and the +next few, and now I know more soldiers and horses than you can think, no +matter how hard you try. I am keeping up my studies every now and then, +but there isn’t much time for it. I love you so! and I send you a hug +and a kiss. + + CATHY. + +P.S.—I belong to the Seventh Cavalry and Ninth Dragoons, I am an officer, +too, and do not have to work on account of not getting any wages. + + + +V +GENERAL ALISON TO MERCEDES + + +SHE has been with us a good nice long time, now. You are troubled about +your sprite because this is such a wild frontier, hundreds of miles from +civilization, and peopled only by wandering tribes of savages? You fear +for her safety? Give yourself no uneasiness about her. Dear me, she’s +in a nursery! and she’s got more than eighteen hundred nurses. It would +distress the garrison to suspect that you think they can’t take care of +her. They think they can. They would tell you so themselves. You see, +the Seventh Cavalry has never had a child of its very own before, and +neither has the Ninth Dragoons; and so they are like all new mothers, +they think there is no other child like theirs, no other child so +wonderful, none that is so worthy to be faithfully and tenderly looked +after and protected. These bronzed veterans of mine are very good +mothers, I think, and wiser than some other mothers; for they let her +take lots of risks, and it is a good education for her; and the more +risks she takes and comes successfully out of, the prouder they are of +her. They adopted her, with grave and formal military ceremonies of +their own invention—solemnities is the truer word; solemnities that were +so profoundly solemn and earnest, that the spectacle would have been +comical if it hadn’t been so touching. It was a good show, and as +stately and complex as guard-mount and the trooping of the colors; and it +had its own special music, composed for the occasion by the bandmaster of +the Seventh; and the child was as serious as the most serious war-worn +soldier of them all; and finally when they throned her upon the shoulder +of the oldest veteran, and pronounced her “well and truly adopted,” and +the bands struck up and all saluted and she saluted in return, it was +better and more moving than any kindred thing I have seen on the stage, +because stage things are make-believe, but this was real and the players’ +hearts were in it. + +It happened several weeks ago, and was followed by some additional +solemnities. The men created a couple of new ranks, thitherto unknown to +the army regulations, and conferred them upon Cathy, with ceremonies +suitable to a duke. So now she is Corporal-General of the Seventh +Cavalry, and Flag-Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons, with the privilege +(decreed by the men) of writing U.S.A. after her name! Also, they +presented her a pair of shoulder-straps—both dark blue, the one with F. +L. on it, the other with C. G. Also, a sword. She wears them. Finally, +they granted her the _salute_. I am witness that that ceremony is +faithfully observed by both parties—and most gravely and decorously, too. +I have never seen a soldier smile yet, while delivering it, nor Cathy in +returning it. + +Ostensibly I was not present at these proceedings, and am ignorant of +them; but I was where I could see. I was afraid of one thing—the +jealousy of the other children of the post; but there is nothing of that, +I am glad to say. On the contrary, they are proud of their comrade and +her honors. It is a surprising thing, but it is true. The children are +devoted to Cathy, for she has turned their dull frontier life into a sort +of continuous festival; also they know her for a stanch and steady +friend, a friend who can always be depended upon, and does not change +with the weather. + +She has become a rather extraordinary rider, under the tutorship of a +more than extraordinary teacher—BB, which is her pet name for Buffalo +Bill. She pronounces it _beeby_. He has not only taught her seventeen +ways of breaking her neck, but twenty-two ways of avoiding it. He has +infused into her the best and surest protection of a +horseman—_confidence_. He did it gradually, systematically, little by +little, a step at a time, and each step made sure before the next was +essayed. And so he inched her along up through terrors that had been +discounted by training before she reached them, and therefore were not +recognizable as terrors when she got to them. Well, she is a daring +little rider, now, and is perfect in what she knows of horsemanship. +By-and-by she will know the art like a West Point cadet, and will +exercise it as fearlessly. She doesn’t know anything about side-saddles. +Does that distress you? And she is a fine performer, without any saddle +at all. Does that discomfort you? Do not let it; she is not in any +danger, I give you my word. + +You said that if my heart was old and tired she would refresh it, and you +said truly. I do not know how I got along without her, before. I was a +forlorn old tree, but now that this blossoming vine has wound itself +about me and become the life of my life, it is very different. As a +furnisher of business for me and for Mammy Dorcas she is exhaustlessly +competent, but I like my share of it and of course Dorcas likes hers, for +Dorcas “raised” George, and Cathy is George over again in so many ways +that she brings back Dorcas’s youth and the joys of that long-vanished +time. My father tried to set Dorcas free twenty years ago, when we still +lived in Virginia, but without success; she considered herself a member +of the family, and wouldn’t go. And so, a member of the family she +remained, and has held that position unchallenged ever since, and holds +it now; for when my mother sent her here from San Bernardino when we +learned that Cathy was coming, she only changed from one division of the +family to the other. She has the warm heart of her race, and its lavish +affections, and when Cathy arrived the pair were mother and child in five +minutes, and that is what they are to date and will continue. Dorcas +really thinks she raised George, and that is one of her prides, but +perhaps it was a mutual raising, for their ages were the same—thirteen +years short of mine. But they were playmates, at any rate; as regards +that, there is no room for dispute. + +Cathy thinks Dorcas is the best Catholic in America except herself. She +could not pay any one a higher compliment than that, and Dorcas could not +receive one that would please her better. Dorcas is satisfied that there +has never been a more wonderful child than Cathy. She has conceived the +curious idea that Cathy is _twins_, and that one of them is a boy-twin +and failed to get segregated—got submerged, is the idea. To argue with +her that this is nonsense is a waste of breath—her mind is made up, and +arguments do not affect it. She says: + +“Look at her; she loves dolls, and girl-plays, and everything a girl +loves, and she’s gentle and sweet, and ain’t cruel to dumb brutes—now +that’s the girl-twin, but she loves boy-plays, and drums and fifes and +soldiering, and rough-riding, and ain’t afraid of anybody or anything—and +that’s the boy-twin; ’deed you needn’t tell _me_ she’s only _one_ child; +no, sir, she’s twins, and one of them got shet up out of sight. Out of +sight, but that don’t make any difference, that boy is in there, and you +can see him look out of her eyes when her temper is up.” + +Then Dorcas went on, in her simple and earnest way, to furnish +illustrations. + +“Look at that raven, Marse Tom. Would anybody befriend a raven but that +child? Of course they wouldn’t; it ain’t natural. Well, the Injun boy +had the raven tied up, and was all the time plaguing it and starving it, +and she pitied the po’ thing, and tried to buy it from the boy, and the +tears was in her eyes. That was the girl-twin, you see. She offered him +her thimble, and he flung it down; she offered him all the doughnuts she +had, which was two, and he flung them down; she offered him half a paper +of pins, worth forty ravens, and he made a mouth at her and jabbed one of +them in the raven’s back. That was the limit, you know. It called for +the other twin. Her eyes blazed up, and she jumped for him like a +wild-cat, and when she was done with him she was rags and he wasn’t +anything but an allegory. That was most undoubtedly the other twin, you +see, coming to the front. No, sir; don’t tell _me_ he ain’t in there. +I’ve seen him with my own eyes—and plenty of times, at that.” + +“Allegory? What is an allegory?” + +“I don’t know, Marse Tom, it’s one of her words; she loves the big ones, +you know, and I pick them up from her; they sound good and I can’t help +it.” + +“What happened after she had converted the boy into an allegory?” + +“Why, she untied the raven and confiscated him by force and fetched him +home, and left the doughnuts and things on the ground. Petted him, of +course, like she does with every creature. In two days she had him so +stuck after her that she—well, _you_ know how he follows her everywhere, +and sets on her shoulder often when she rides her breakneck rampages—all +of which is the girl-twin to the front, you see—and he does what he +pleases, and is up to all kinds of devilment, and is a perfect nuisance +in the kitchen. Well, they all stand it, but they wouldn’t if it was +another person’s bird.” + +Here she began to chuckle comfortably, and presently she said: + +“Well, you know, she’s a nuisance herself, Miss Cathy is, she _is_ so +busy, and into everything, like that bird. It’s all just as innocent, +you know, and she don’t mean any harm, and is so good and dear; and it +ain’t her fault, it’s her nature; her interest is always a-working and +always red-hot, and she can’t keep quiet. Well, yesterday it was +‘Please, Miss Cathy, don’t do that’; and, ‘Please, Miss Cathy, let that +alone’; and, ‘Please, Miss Cathy, don’t make so much noise’; and so on +and so on, till I reckon I had found fault fourteen times in fifteen +minutes; then she looked up at me with her big brown eyes that can plead +so, and said in that odd little foreign way that goes to your heart, + +“’Please, mammy, make me a compliment.” + +“And of course you did it, you old fool?” + +“Marse Tom, I just grabbed her up to my breast and says, ‘Oh, you po’ +dear little motherless thing, you ain’t got a fault in the world, and you +can do anything you want to, and tear the house down, and yo’ old black +mammy won’t say a word!’” + +“Why, of course, of course—_I_ knew you’d spoil the child.” + +She brushed away her tears, and said with dignity: + +“Spoil the child? spoil _that_ child, Marse Tom? There can’t _anybody_ +spoil her. She’s the king bee of this post, and everybody pets her and +is her slave, and yet, as you know, your own self, she ain’t the least +little bit spoiled.” Then she eased her mind with this retort: “Marse +Tom, she makes you do anything she wants to, and you can’t deny it; so if +she could be spoilt, she’d been spoilt long ago, because you are the very +_worst_! Look at that pile of cats in your chair, and you sitting on a +candle-box, just as patient; it’s because they’re her cats.” + + [Picture: “‘Look at that pile of cats in your chair’”] + +If Dorcas were a soldier, I could punish her for such large frankness as +that. I changed the subject, and made her resume her illustrations. She +had scored against me fairly, and I wasn’t going to cheapen her victory +by disputing it. She proceeded to offer this incident in evidence on her +twin theory: + +“Two weeks ago when she got her finger mashed open, she turned pretty +pale with the pain, but she never said a word. I took her in my lap, and +the surgeon sponged off the blood and took a needle and thread and began +to sew it up; it had to have a lot of stitches, and each one made her +scrunch a little, but she never let go a sound. At last the surgeon was +so full of admiration that he said, ‘Well, you _are_ a brave little +thing!’ and she said, just as ca’m and simple as if she was talking about +the weather, ‘There isn’t anybody braver but the Cid!’ You see? it was +the boy-twin that the surgeon was a-dealing with. + +“Who is the Cid?” + +“I don’t know, sir—at least only what she says. She’s always talking +about him, and says he was the bravest hero Spain ever had, or any other +country. They have it up and down, the children do, she standing up for +the Cid, and they working George Washington for all he is worth.” + +“Do they quarrel?” + +“No; it’s only disputing, and bragging, the way children do. They want +her to be an American, but she can’t be anything but a Spaniard, she +says. You see, her mother was always longing for home, po’ thing! and +thinking about it, and so the child is just as much a Spaniard as if +she’d always lived there. She thinks she remembers how Spain looked, but +I reckon she don’t, because she was only a baby when they moved to +France. She is very proud to be a Spaniard.” + +Does that please you, Mercedes? Very well, be content; your niece is +loyal to her allegiance: her mother laid deep the foundations of her love +for Spain, and she will go back to you as good a Spaniard as you are +yourself. She has made me promise to take her to you for a long visit +when the War Office retires me. + +I attend to her studies myself; has she told you that? Yes, I am her +school-master, and she makes pretty good progress, I think, everything +considered. Everything considered—being translated—means holidays. But +the fact is, she was not born for study, and it comes hard. Hard for me, +too; it hurts me like a physical pain to see that free spirit of the air +and the sunshine laboring and grieving over a book; and sometimes when I +find her gazing far away towards the plain and the blue mountains with +the longing in her eyes, I have to throw open the prison doors; I can’t +help it. A quaint little scholar she is, and makes plenty of blunders. +Once I put the question: + +“What does the Czar govern?” + +She rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand and took that +problem under deep consideration. Presently she looked up and answered, +with a rising inflection implying a shade of uncertainty, + +“The dative case?” + +Here are a couple of her expositions which were delivered with tranquil +confidence: + +“_Chaplain_, diminutive of chap. _Lass_ is masculine, _lassie_ is +feminine.” + +She is not a genius, you see, but just a normal child; they all make +mistakes of that sort. There is a glad light in her eye which is pretty +to see when she finds herself able to answer a question promptly and +accurately, without any hesitation; as, for instance, this morning: + +“Cathy dear, what is a cube?” + +“Why, a native of Cuba.” + +She still drops a foreign word into her talk now and then, and there is +still a subtle foreign flavor or fragrance about even her exactest +English—and long may this abide! for it has for me a charm that is very +pleasant. Sometimes her English is daintily prim and bookish and +captivating. She has a child’s sweet tooth, but for her health’s sake I +try to keep its inspirations under check. She is obedient—as is proper +for a titled and recognized military personage, which she is—but the +chain presses sometimes. For instance, we were out for a walk, and +passed by some bushes that were freighted with wild goose-berries. Her +face brightened and she put her hands together and delivered herself of +this speech, most feelingly: + +“Oh, if I was permitted a vice it would be the _gourmandise_!” + +Could I resist that? No. I gave her a gooseberry. + +You ask about her languages. They take care of themselves; they will not +get rusty here; our regiments are not made up of natives alone—far from +it. And she is picking up Indian tongues diligently. + + + +VI +SOLDIER BOY AND THE MEXICAN PLUG + + +“WHEN did you come?” + +“Arrived at sundown.” + +“Where from?” + +“Salt Lake.” + +“Are you in the service?” + +“No. Trade.” + +“Pirate trade, I reckon.” + +“What do you know about it?” + +“I saw you when you came. I recognized your master. He is a bad sort. +Trap-robber, horse-thief, squaw-man, renegado—Hank Butters—I know him +very well. Stole you, didn’t he?” + +“Well, it amounted to that.” + +“I thought so. Where is his pard?” + +“He stopped at White Cloud’s camp.” + +“He is another of the same stripe, is Blake Haskins.” (_Aside_.) They +are laying for Buffalo Bill again, I guess. (_Aloud_.) “What is your +name?” + +“Which one?” + +“Have you got more than one?” + +“I get a new one every time I’m stolen. I used to have an honest name, +but that was early; I’ve forgotten it. Since then I’ve had thirteen +_aliases_.” + +“Aliases? What is alias?” + +“A false name.” + +“Alias. It’s a fine large word, and is in my line; it has quite a +learned and cerebrospinal incandescent sound. Are you educated?” + +“Well, no, I can’t claim it. I can take down bars, I can distinguish +oats from shoe-pegs, I can blaspheme a saddle-boil with the college-bred, +and I know a few other things—not many; I have had no chance, I have +always had to work; besides, I am of low birth and no family. You speak +my dialect like a native, but you are not a Mexican Plug, you are a +gentleman, I can see that; and educated, of course.” + +“Yes, I am of old family, and not illiterate. I am a fossil.” + +“A which?” + +“Fossil. The first horses were fossils. They date back two million +years.” + +“Gr-eat sand and sage-brush! do you mean it?” + +“Yes, it is true. The bones of my ancestors are held in reverence and +worship, even by men. They do not leave them exposed to the weather when +they find them, but carry them three thousand miles and enshrine them in +their temples of learning, and worship them.” + +“It is wonderful! I knew you must be a person of distinction, by your +fine presence and courtly address, and by the fact that you are not +subjected to the indignity of hobbles, like myself and the rest. Would +you tell me your name?” + +“You have probably heard of it—Soldier Boy.” + +“What!—the renowned, the illustrious?” + +“Even so.” + +“It takes my breath! Little did I dream that ever I should stand face to +face with the possessor of that great name. Buffalo Bill’s horse! Known +from the Canadian border to the deserts of Arizona, and from the eastern +marches of the Great Plains to the foot-hills of the Sierra! Truly this +is a memorable day. You still serve the celebrated Chief of Scouts?” + +“I am still his property, but he has lent me, for a time, to the most +noble, the most gracious, the most excellent, her Excellency Catherine, +Corporal-General Seventh Cavalry and Flag-Lieutenant Ninth Dragoons, +U.S.A.,—on whom be peace!” + +“Amen. Did you say _her_ Excellency?” + +“The same. A Spanish lady, sweet blossom of a ducal house. And truly a +wonder; knowing everything, capable of everything; speaking all the +languages, master of all sciences, a mind without horizons, a heart of +gold, the glory of her race! On whom be peace!” + +“Amen. It is marvellous!” + +“Verily. I knew many things, she has taught me others. I am educated. +I will tell you about her.” + +“I listen—I am enchanted.” + +“I will tell a plain tale, calmly, without excitement, without eloquence. +When she had been here four or five weeks she was already erudite in +military things, and they made her an officer—a double officer. She rode +the drill every day, like any soldier; and she could take the bugle and +direct the evolutions herself. Then, on a day, there was a grand race, +for prizes—none to enter but the children. Seventeen children entered, +and she was the youngest. Three girls, fourteen boys—good riders all. +It was a steeplechase, with four hurdles, all pretty high. The first +prize was a most cunning half-grown silver bugle, and mighty pretty, with +red silk cord and tassels. Buffalo Bill was very anxious; for he had +taught her to ride, and he did most dearly want her to win that race, for +the glory of it. So he wanted her to ride me, but she wouldn’t; and she +reproached him, and said it was unfair and unright, and taking advantage; +for what horse in this post or any other could stand a chance against me? +and she was very severe with him, and said, ‘You ought to be ashamed—you +are proposing to me conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.’ So +he just tossed her up in the air about thirty feet and caught her as she +came down, and said he was ashamed; and put up his handkerchief and +pretended to cry, which nearly broke her heart, and she petted him, and +begged him to forgive her, and said she would do anything in the world he +could ask but that; but he said he ought to go hang himself, and he +_must_, if he could get a rope; it was nothing but right he should, for +he never, never could forgive himself; and then _she_ began to cry, and +they both sobbed, the way you could hear him a mile, and she clinging +around his neck and pleading, till at last he was comforted a little, and +gave his solemn promise he wouldn’t hang himself till after the race; and +wouldn’t do it at all if she won it, which made her happy, and she said +she would win it or die in the saddle; so then everything was pleasant +again and both of them content. He can’t help playing jokes on her, he +is so fond of her and she is so innocent and unsuspecting; and when she +finds it out she cuffs him and is in a fury, but presently forgives him +because it’s him; and maybe the very next day she’s caught with another +joke; you see she can’t learn any better, because she hasn’t any deceit +in her, and that kind aren’t ever expecting it in another person. + +“It was a grand race. The whole post was there, and there was such +another whooping and shouting when the seventeen kids came flying down +the turf and sailing over the hurdles—oh, beautiful to see! Half-way +down, it was kind of neck and neck, and anybody’s race and nobody’s. +Then, what should happen but a cow steps out and puts her head down to +munch grass, with her broadside to the battalion, and they a-coming like +the wind; they split apart to flank her, but _she_?—why, she drove the +spurs home and soared over that cow like a bird! and on she went, and +cleared the last hurdle solitary and alone, the army letting loose the +grand yell, and she skipped from the horse the same as if he had been +standing still, and made her bow, and everybody crowded around to +congratulate, and they gave her the bugle, and she put it to her lips and +blew ‘boots and saddles’ to see how it would go, and BB was as proud as +you can’t think! And he said, ‘Take Soldier Boy, and don’t pass him back +till I ask for him!’ and I can tell you he wouldn’t have said that to any +other person on this planet. That was two months and more ago, and +nobody has been on my back since but the Corporal-General Seventh Cavalry +and Flag-Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons, U.S.A.,—on whom be peace!” + + [Picture: Every morning they go clattering down into the plain] + +“Amen. I listen—tell me more.” + +“She set to work and organized the Sixteen, and called it the First +Battalion Rocky Mountain Rangers, U.S.A., and she wanted to be bugler, +but they elected her Lieutenant-General and Bugler. So she ranks her +uncle the commandant, who is only a Brigadier. And doesn’t she train +those little people! Ask the Indians, ask the traders, ask the soldiers; +they’ll tell you. She has been at it from the first day. Every morning +they go clattering down into the plain, and there she sits on my back +with her bugle at her mouth and sounds the orders and puts them through +the evolutions for an hour or more; and it is too beautiful for anything +to see those ponies dissolve from one formation into another, and waltz +about, and break, and scatter, and form again, always moving, always +graceful, now trotting, now galloping, and so on, sometimes near by, +sometimes in the distance, all just like a state ball, you know, and +sometimes she can’t hold herself any longer, but sounds the ‘charge,’ and +turns me loose! and you can take my word for it, if the battalion hasn’t +too much of a start we catch up and go over the breastworks with the +front line. + +“Yes, they are soldiers, those little people; and healthy, too, not +ailing any more, the way they used to be sometimes. It’s because of her +drill. She’s got a fort, now—Fort Fanny Marsh. Major-General Tommy +Drake planned it out, and the Seventh and Dragoons built it. Tommy is +the Colonel’s son, and is fifteen and the oldest in the Battalion; Fanny +Marsh is Brigadier-General, and is next oldest—over thirteen. She is +daughter of Captain Marsh, Company B, Seventh Cavalry. +Lieutenant-General Alison is the youngest by considerable; I think she is +about nine and a half or three-quarters. Her military rig, as +Lieutenant-General, isn’t for business, it’s for dress parade, because +the ladies made it. They say they got it out of the Middle Ages—out of a +book—and it is all red and blue and white silks and satins and velvets; +tights, trunks, sword, doublet with slashed sleeves, short cape, cap with +just one feather in it; I’ve heard them name these things; they got them +out of the book; she’s dressed like a page, of old times, they say. It’s +the daintiest outfit that ever was—you will say so, when you see it. +She’s lovely in it—oh, just a dream! In some ways she is just her age, +but in others she’s as old as her uncle, I think. She is very learned. +She teaches her uncle his book. I have seen her sitting by with the book +and reciting to him what is in it, so that he can learn to do it himself. + +“Every Saturday she hires little Injuns to garrison her fort; then she +lays siege to it, and makes military approaches by make-believe trenches +in make-believe night, and finally at make-believe dawn she draws her +sword and sounds the assault and takes it by storm. It is for practice. +And she has invented a bugle-call all by herself, out of her own head, +and it’s a stirring one, and the prettiest in the service. It’s to call +_me_—it’s never used for anything else. She taught it to me, and told me +what it says: ‘_It is I_, _Soldier—come_!’ and when those thrilling notes +come floating down the distance I hear them without fail, even if I am +two miles away; and then—oh, then you should see my heels get down to +business! + +“And she has taught me how to say good-morning and good-night to her, +which is by lifting my right hoof for her to shake; and also how to say +good-bye; I do that with my left foot—but only for practice, because +there hasn’t been any but make-believe good-byeing yet, and I hope there +won’t ever be. It would make me cry if I ever had to put up my left foot +in earnest. She has taught me how to salute, and I can do it as well as +a soldier. I bow my head low, and lay my right hoof against my cheek. +She taught me that because I got into disgrace once, through ignorance. +I am privileged, because I am known to be honorable and trustworthy, and +because I have a distinguished record in the service; so they don’t +hobble me nor tie me to stakes or shut me tight in stables, but let me +wander around to suit myself. Well, trooping the colors is a very solemn +ceremony, and everybody must stand uncovered when the flag goes by, the +commandant and all; and once I was there, and ignorantly walked across +right in front of the band, which was an awful disgrace: Ah, the +Lieutenant-General was so ashamed, and so distressed that I should have +done such a thing before all the world, that she couldn’t keep the tears +back; and then she taught me the salute, so that if I ever did any other +unmilitary act through ignorance I could do my salute and she believed +everybody would think it was apology enough and would not press the +matter. It is very nice and distinguished; no other horse can do it; +often the men salute me, and I return it. I am privileged to be present +when the Rocky Mountain Rangers troop the colors and I stand solemn, like +the children, and I salute when the flag goes by. Of course when she +goes to her fort her sentries sing out ‘Turn out the guard!’ and then . . . +do you catch that refreshing early-morning whiff from the +mountain-pines and the wild flowers? The night is far spent; we’ll hear +the bugles before long. Dorcas, the black woman, is very good and nice; +she takes care of the Lieutenant-General, and is Brigadier-General +Alison’s mother, which makes her mother-in-law to the Lieutenant-General. +That is what Shekels says. At least it is what I think he says, though I +never can understand him quite clearly. He—” + +“Who is Shekels?” + +“The Seventh Cavalry dog. I mean, if he _is_ a dog. His father was a +coyote and his mother was a wild-cat. It doesn’t really make a dog out +of him, does it?” + +“Not a real dog, I should think. Only a kind of a general dog, at most, +I reckon. Though this is a matter of ichthyology, I suppose; and if it +is, it is out of my depth, and so my opinion is not valuable, and I don’t +claim much consideration for it.” + +“It isn’t ichthyology; it is dogmatics, which is still more difficult and +tangled up. Dogmatics always are.” + +“Dogmatics is quite beyond me, quite; so I am not competing. But on +general principles it is my opinion that a colt out of a coyote and a +wild-cat is no square dog, but doubtful. That is my hand, and I stand +pat.” + +“Well, it is as far as I can go myself, and be fair and conscientious. I +have always regarded him as a doubtful dog, and so has Potter. Potter is +the great Dane. Potter says he is no dog, and not even poultry—though I +do not go quite so far as that. + +“And I wouldn’t, myself. Poultry is one of those things which no person +can get to the bottom of, there is so much of it and such variety. It is +just wings, and wings, and wings, till you are weary: turkeys, and geese, +and bats, and butterflies, and angels, and grasshoppers, and flying-fish, +and—well, there is really no end to the tribe; it gives me the heaves +just to think of it. But this one hasn’t any wings, has he?” + +“No.” + +“Well, then, in my belief he is more likely to be dog than poultry. I +have not heard of poultry that hadn’t wings. Wings is the _sign_ of +poultry; it is what you tell poultry by. Look at the mosquito.” + +“What do you reckon he is, then? He must be something.” + +“Why, he could be a reptile; anything that hasn’t wings is a reptile.” + +“Who told you that?” + +“Nobody told me, but I overheard it.” + +“Where did you overhear it?” + +“Years ago. I was with the Philadelphia Institute expedition in the Bad +Lands under Professor Cope, hunting mastodon bones, and I overheard him +say, his own self, that any plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium +that hadn’t wings and was uncertain was a reptile. Well, then, has this +dog any wings? No. Is he a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium? +Maybe so, maybe not; but without ever having seen him, and judging only +by his illegal and spectacular parentage, I will bet the odds of a bale +of hay to a bran mash that he looks it. Finally, is he uncertain? That +is the point—is he uncertain? I will leave it to you if you have ever +heard of a more uncertainer dog than what this one is?” + +“No, I never have.” + +“Well, then, he’s a reptile. That’s settled.” + +“Why, look here, whatsyourname—” + +“Last alias, Mongrel.” + +“A good one, too. I was going to say, you are better educated than you +have been pretending to be. I like cultured society, and I shall +cultivate your acquaintance. Now as to Shekels, whenever you want to +know about any private thing that is going on at this post or in White +Cloud’s camp or Thunder-Bird’s, he can tell you; and if you make friends +with him he’ll be glad to, for he is a born gossip, and picks up all the +tittle-tattle. Being the whole Seventh Cavalry’s reptile, he doesn’t +belong to anybody in particular, and hasn’t any military duties; so he +comes and goes as he pleases, and is popular with all the house cats and +other authentic sources of private information. He understands all the +languages, and talks them all, too. With an accent like gritting your +teeth, it is true, and with a grammar that is no improvement on +blasphemy—still, with practice you get at the meat of what he says, and +it serves. . . Hark! That’s the reveille. . . . + + [Picture: Music score for The Reveille] {80} + +“Faint and far, but isn’t it clear, isn’t it sweet? There’s no music +like the bugle to stir the blood, in the still solemnity of the morning +twilight, with the dim plain stretching away to nothing and the spectral +mountains slumbering against the sky. You’ll hear another note in a +minute—faint and far and clear, like the other one, and sweeter still, +you’ll notice. Wait . . . listen. There it goes! It says, ‘_It is I_, +_Soldier—come_!’ . . . + + [Picture: Soldier Boy’s Bugle Call [music score]] + +. . . Now then, watch me leave a blue streak behind!” + + + +VII +SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS + + +“DID you do as I told you? Did you look up the Mexican Plug?” + +“Yes, I made his acquaintance before night and got his friendship.” + +“I liked him. Did you?” + +“Not at first. He took me for a reptile, and it troubled me, because I +didn’t know whether it was a compliment or not. I couldn’t ask him, +because it would look ignorant. So I didn’t say anything, and soon liked +him very well indeed. Was it a compliment, do you think?” + +“Yes, that is what it was. They are very rare, the reptiles; very few +left, now-a-days.” + +“Is that so? What is a reptile?” + +“It is a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hasn’t any +wings and is uncertain.” + +“Well, it—it sounds fine, it surely does.” + +“And it _is_ fine. You may be thankful you are one.” + +“I am. It seems wonderfully grand and elegant for a person that is so +humble as I am; but I am thankful, I am indeed, and will try to live up +to it. It is hard to remember. Will you say it again, please, and say +it slow?” + +“Plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hasn’t any wings and is +uncertain.” + +“It is beautiful, anybody must grant it; beautiful, and of a noble sound. +I hope it will not make me proud and stuck-up—I should not like to be +that. It is much more distinguished and honorable to be a reptile than a +dog, don’t you think, Soldier?” + +“Why, there’s no comparison. It is awfully aristocratic. Often a duke +is called a reptile; it is set down so, in history.” + +“Isn’t that grand! Potter wouldn’t ever associate with me, but I reckon +he’ll be glad to when he finds out what I am.” + +“You can depend upon it.” + +“I will thank Mongrel for this. He is a very good sort, for a Mexican +Plug. Don’t you think he is?” + +“It is my opinion of him; and as for his birth, he cannot help that. We +cannot all be reptiles, we cannot all be fossils; we have to take what +comes and be thankful it is no worse. It is the true philosophy.” + +“For those others?” + +“Stick to the subject, please. Did it turn out that my suspicions were +right?” + +“Yes, perfectly right. Mongrel has heard them planning. They are after +BB’s life, for running them out of Medicine Bow and taking their stolen +horses away from them.” + +“Well, they’ll get him yet, for sure.” + +“Not if he keeps a sharp look-out.” + +“_He_ keep a sharp lookout! He never does; he despises them, and all +their kind. His life is always being threatened, and so it has come to +be monotonous.” + +“Does he know they are here?” + +“Oh yes, he knows it. He is always the earliest to know who comes and +who goes. But he cares nothing for them and their threats; he only +laughs when people warn him. They’ll shoot him from behind a tree the +first he knows. Did Mongrel tell you their plans?” + +“Yes. They have found out that he starts for Fort Clayton day after +to-morrow, with one of his scouts; so they will leave to-morrow, letting +on to go south, but they will fetch around north all in good time.” + +“Shekels, I don’t like the look of it.” + + + +VIII +THE SCOUT-START. BB AND LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ALISON + + +BB (_saluting_). “Good! handsomely done! The Seventh couldn’t beat it! +You do certainly handle your Rangers like an expert, General. And where +are you bound?” + +“Four miles on the trail to Fort Clayton.” + +“Glad am I, dear! What’s the idea of it?” + +“Guard of honor for you and Thorndike.” + +“Bless—your—_heart_! I’d rather have it from you than from the +Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the United States, you incomparable +little soldier!—and I don’t need to take any oath to that, for you to +believe it.” + +“I _thought_ you’d like it, BB.” + +“_Like_ it? Well, I should say so! Now then—all ready—sound the +advance, and away we go!” + + + +IX +SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN + + +“WELL, this is the way it happened. We did the escort duty; then we came +back and struck for the plain and put the Rangers through a rousing +drill—oh, for hours! Then we sent them home under Brigadier-General +Fanny Marsh; then the Lieutenant-General and I went off on a gallop over +the plains for about three hours, and were lazying along home in the +middle of the afternoon, when we met Jimmy Slade, the drummer-boy, and he +saluted and asked the Lieutenant-General if she had heard the news, and +she said no, and he said: + +“‘Buffalo Bill has been ambushed and badly shot this side of Clayton, and +Thorndike the scout, too; Bill couldn’t travel, but Thorndike could, and +he brought the news, and Sergeant Wilkes and six men of Company B are +gone, two hours ago, hotfoot, to get Bill. And they say—’ + +“‘_Go_!’ she shouts to me—and I went.” + +“Fast?” + +“Don’t ask foolish questions. It was an awful pace. For four hours +nothing happened, and not a word said, except that now and then she said, +‘Keep it up, Boy, keep it up, sweetheart; we’ll save him!’ I kept it up. +Well, when the dark shut down, in the rugged hills, that poor little chap +had been tearing around in the saddle all day, and I noticed by the slack +knee-pressure that she was tired and tottery, and I got dreadfully +afraid; but every time I tried to slow down and let her go to sleep, so I +could stop, she hurried me up again; and so, sure enough, at last over +she went! + + [Picture: “There was nothing to do but stand by”] + +“Ah, that was a fix to be in I for she lay there and didn’t stir, and +what was I to do? I couldn’t leave her to fetch help, on account of the +wolves. There was nothing to do but stand by. It was dreadful. I was +afraid she was killed, poor little thing! But she wasn’t. She came to, +by-and-by, and said, ‘Kiss me, Soldier,’ and those were blessed words. I +kissed her—often; I am used to that, and we like it. But she didn’t get +up, and I was worried. She fondled my nose with her hand, and talked to +me, and called me endearing names—which is her way—but she caressed with +the same hand all the time. The other arm was broken, you see, but I +didn’t know it, and she didn’t mention it. She didn’t want to distress +me, you know. + +“Soon the big gray wolves came, and hung around, and you could hear them +snarl, and snap at each other, but you couldn’t see anything of them +except their eyes, which shone in the dark like sparks and stars. The +Lieutenant-General said, ‘If I had the Rocky Mountain Rangers here, we +would make those creatures climb a tree.’ Then she made believe that the +Rangers were in hearing, and put up her bugle and blew the ‘assembly’; +and then, ‘boots and saddles’; then the ‘trot’; ‘gallop’; ‘charge!’ Then +she blew the ‘retreat,’ and said, ‘That’s for you, you rebels; the +Rangers don’t ever retreat!’ + +“The music frightened them away, but they were hungry, and kept coming +back. And of course they got bolder and bolder, which is their way. It +went on for an hour, then the tired child went to sleep, and it was +pitiful to hear her moan and nestle, and I couldn’t do anything for her. +All the time I was laying for the wolves. They are in my line; I have +had experience. At last the boldest one ventured within my lines, and I +landed him among his friends with some of his skull still on him, and +they did the rest. In the next hour I got a couple more, and they went +the way of the first one, down the throats of the detachment. That +satisfied the survivors, and they went away and left us in peace. + +“We hadn’t any more adventures, though I kept awake all night and was +ready. From midnight on the child got very restless, and out of her +head, and moaned, and said, ‘Water, water—thirsty’; and now and then, +‘Kiss me, Soldier’; and sometimes she was in her fort and giving orders +to her garrison; and once she was in Spain, and thought her mother was +with her. People say a horse can’t cry; but they don’t know, because we +cry inside. + +“It was an hour after sunup that I heard the boys coming, and recognized +the hoof-beats of Pomp and Cæsar and Jerry, old mates of mine; and a +welcomer sound there couldn’t ever be. + +Buffalo Bill was in a horse-litter, with his leg broken by a bullet, and +Mongrel and Blake Haskins’s horse were doing the work. Buffalo Bill and +Thorndike had lolled both of those toughs. + +“When they got to us, and Buffalo Bill saw the child lying there so +white, he said, ‘My God!’ and the sound of his voice brought her to +herself, and she gave a little cry of pleasure and struggled to get up, +but couldn’t, and the soldiers gathered her up like the tenderest women, +and their eyes were wet and they were not ashamed, when they saw her arm +dangling; and so were Buffalo Bill’s, and when they laid her in his arms +he said, ‘My darling, how does this come?’ and she said, ‘We came to save +you, but I was tired, and couldn’t keep awake, and fell off and hurt +myself, and couldn’t get on again.’ ‘You came to save me, you dear +little rat? It was too lovely of you!’ ‘Yes, and Soldier stood by me, +which you know he would, and protected me from the wolves; and if he got +a chance he kicked the life out of some of them—for you know he would, +BB.’ The sergeant said, ‘He laid out three of them, sir, and here’s the +bones to show for it.’ ‘He’s a grand horse,’ said BB; ‘he’s the grandest +horse that ever was! and has saved your life, Lieutenant-General Alison, +and shall protect it the rest of his life—he’s yours for a kiss!’ He got +it, along with a passion of delight, and he said, ‘You are feeling better +now, little Spaniard—do you think you could blow the advance?’ She put +up the bugle to do it, but he said wait a minute first. Then he and the +sergeant set her arm and put it in splints, she wincing but not +whimpering; then we took up the march for home, and that’s the end of the +tale; and I’m her horse. Isn’t she a brick, Shekels? + +“Brick? She’s more than a brick, more than a thousand bricks—she’s a +reptile!” + +“It’s a compliment out of your heart, Shekels. God bless you for it!” + + + +X +GENERAL ALISON AND DORCAS + + +“TOO much company for her, Marse Tom. Betwixt you, and Shekels, the +Colonel’s wife, and the Cid—” + +“The Cid? Oh, I remember—the raven.” + +“—and Mrs. Captain Marsh and Famine and Pestilence the baby _coyotes_, +and Sour-Mash and her pups, and Sardanapalus and her kittens—hang these +names she gives the creatures, they warp my jaw—and Potter: you—all +sitting around in the house, and Soldier Boy at the window the entire +time, it’s a wonder to me she comes along as well as she does. She—” + +“You want her all to yourself, you stingy old thing!” + +“Marse Tom, you know better. It’s too much company. And then the idea +of her receiving reports all the time from her officers, and acting upon +them, and giving orders, the same as if she was well! It ain’t good for +her, and the surgeon don’t like it, and tried to persuade her not to and +couldn’t; and when he _ordered_ her, she was that outraged and indignant, +and was very severe on him, and accused him of insubordination, and said +it didn’t become him to give orders to an officer of her rank. Well, he +saw he had excited her more and done more harm than all the rest put +together, so he was vexed at himself and wished he had kept still. +Doctors _don’t_ know much, and that’s a fact. She’s too much interested +in things—she ought to rest more. She’s all the time sending messages to +BB, and to soldiers and Injuns and whatnot, and to the animals.” + +“To the animals?” + +“Yes, sir.” + +“Who carries them?” + +“Sometimes Potter, but mostly it’s Shekels.” + +“Now come! who can find fault with such pretty make-believe as that?” + +“But it ain’t make-believe, Marse Tom. She does send them.” + +“Yes, I don’t doubt that part of it.” + +“Do you doubt they get them, sir?” + +“Certainly. Don’t you?” + +“No, sir. Animals talk to one another. I know it perfectly well, Marse +Tom, and I ain’t saying it by guess.” + +“What a curious superstition!” + +“It ain’t a superstition, Marse Tom. Look at that Shekels—look at him, +_now_. Is he listening, or ain’t he? _Now_ you see! he’s turned his +head away. It’s because he was caught—caught in the act. I’ll ask +you—could a Christian look any more ashamed than what he looks now?—_lay +down_! You see? he was going to sneak out. Don’t tell _me_, Marse Tom! +If animals don’t talk, I miss _my_ guess. And Shekels is the worst. He +goes and tells the animals everything that happens in the officers’ +quarters; and if he’s short of facts, he invents them. He hasn’t any +more principle than a blue jay; and as for morals, he’s empty. Look at +him now; look at him grovel. He knows what I am saying, and he knows +it’s the truth. You see, yourself, that he can feel shame; it’s the only +virtue he’s got. It’s wonderful how they find out everything that’s +going on—the animals. They—” + +“Do you really believe they do, Dorcas?” + +“I don’t only just believe it, Marse Tom, I know it. Day before +yesterday they knew something was going to happen. They were that +excited, and whispering around together; why, anybody could see that +they— But my! I must get back to her, and I haven’t got to my errand +yet.” + +“What is it, Dorcas?” + +“Well, it’s two or three things. One is, the doctor don’t salute when he +comes . . . Now, Marse Tom, it ain’t anything to laugh at, and so—” + +“Well, then, forgive me; I didn’t mean to laugh—I got caught unprepared.” + +“You see, she don’t want to hurt the doctor’s feelings, so she don’t say +anything to him about it; but she is always polite, herself, and it hurts +that kind for people to be rude to them.” + +“I’ll have that doctor hanged.” + +“Marse Tom, she don’t _want_ him hanged. She—” + +“Well, then, I’ll have him boiled in oil.” + +“But she don’t _want_ him boiled. I—” + +“Oh, very well, very well, I only want to please her; I’ll have him +skinned.” + +“Why, _she_ don’t want him skinned; it would break her heart. Now—” + +“Woman, this is perfectly unreasonable. What in the nation _does_ she +want?” + +“Marse Tom, if you would only be a little patient, and not fly off the +handle at the least little thing. Why, she only wants you to speak to +him.” + +“Speak to him! Well, upon my word! All this unseemly rage and row about +such a—a— Dorcas, I never saw you carry on like this before. You have +alarmed the sentry; he thinks I am being assassinated; he thinks there’s +a mutiny, a revolt, an insurrection; he—” + +“Marse Tom, you are just putting on; you know it perfectly well; I don’t +know what makes you act like that—but you always did, even when you was +little, and you can’t get over it, I reckon. Are you over it now, Marse +Tom?” + +“Oh, well, yes; but it would try anybody to be doing the best he could, +offering every kindness he could think of, only to have it rejected with +contumely and . . . Oh, well, let it go; it’s no matter—I’ll talk to the +doctor. Is that satisfactory, or are you going to break out again?” + +“Yes, sir, it is; and it’s only right to talk to him, too, because it’s +just as she says; she’s trying to keep up discipline in the Rangers, and +this insubordination of his is a bad example for them—now ain’t it so, +Marse Tom?” + +“Well, there _is_ reason in it, I can’t deny it; so I will speak to him, +though at bottom I think hanging would be more lasting. What is the rest +of your errand, Dorcas?” + +“Of course her room is Ranger headquarters now, Marse Tom, while she’s +sick. Well, soldiers of the cavalry and the dragoons that are off duty +come and get her sentries to let them relieve them and serve in their +place. It’s only out of affection, sir, and because they know military +honors please her, and please the children too, for her sake; and they +don’t bring their muskets; and so—” + +“I’ve noticed them there, but didn’t twig the idea. They are standing +guard, are they?” + +“Yes, sir, and she is afraid you will reprove them and hurt their +feelings, if you see them there; so she begs, if—if you don’t mind coming +in the back way—” + +“Bear me up, Dorcas; don’t let me faint.” + +“There—sit up and behave, Marse Tom. You are not going to faint; you are +only pretending—you used to act just so when you was little; it does seem +a long time for you to get grown up.” + +“Dorcas, the way the child is progressing, I shall be out of my job +before long—she’ll have the whole post in her hands. I must make a +stand, I must not go down without a struggle. These encroachments. . . . +Dorcas, what do you think she will think of next?” + +“Marse Tom, she don’t mean any harm.” + +“Are you sure of it?” + +“Yes, Marse Tom.” + +“You feel sure she has no ulterior designs?” + +“I don’t know what that is, Marse Tom, but I know she hasn’t.” + +“Very well, then, for the present I am satisfied. What else have you +come about?” + +“I reckon I better tell you the whole thing first, Marse Tom, then tell +you what she wants. There’s been an emeute, as she calls it. It was +before she got back with BB. The officer of the day reported it to her +this morning. It happened at her fort. There was a fuss betwixt +Major-General Tommy Drake and Lieutenant-Colonel Agnes Frisbie, and he +snatched her doll away, which is made of white kid stuffed with sawdust, +and tore every rag of its clothes off, right before them all, and is +under arrest, and the charge is conduct un—” + +“Yes, I know—conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman—a plain case, +too, it seems to me. This is a serious matter. Well, what is her +pleasure?” + +“Well, Marse Tom, she has summoned a court-martial, but the doctor don’t +think she is well enough to preside over it, and she says there ain’t +anybody competent but her, because there’s a major-general concerned; and +so she—she—well, she says, would you preside over it for her? . . . Marse +Tom, _sit_ up! You ain’t any more going to faint than Shekels is.” + +“Look here, Dorcas, go along back, and be tactful. Be persuasive; don’t +fret her; tell her it’s all right, the matter is in my hands, but it +isn’t good form to hurry so grave a matter as this. Explain to her that +we have to go by precedents, and that I believe this one to be new. In +fact, you can say I know that nothing just like it has happened in our +army, therefore I must be guided by European precedents, and must go +cautiously and examine them carefully. Tell her not to be impatient, it +will take me several days, but it will all come out right, and I will +come over and report progress as I go along. Do you get the idea, +Dorcas?” + +“I don’t know as I do, sir.” + +“Well, it’s this. You see, it won’t ever do for me, a brigadier in the +regular army, to preside over that infant court-martial—there isn’t any +precedent for it, don’t you see. Very well. I will go on examining +authorities and reporting progress until she is well enough to get me out +of this scrape by presiding herself. Do you get it now?” + +“Oh, yes, sir, I get it, and it’s good, I’ll go and fix it with her. +_Lay down_! and stay where you are.” + +“Why, what harm is he doing?” + +“Oh, it ain’t any harm, but it just vexes me to see him act so.” + +“What was he doing?” + +“Can’t you see, and him in such a sweat? He was starting out to spread +it all over the post. _Now_ I reckon you won’t deny, any more, that they +go and tell everything they hear, now that you’ve seen it with yo’ own +eyes.” + +“Well, I don’t like to acknowledge it, Dorcas, but I don’t see how I can +consistently stick to my doubts in the face of such overwhelming proof as +this dog is furnishing.” + +“There, now, you’ve got in yo’ right mind at last! I wonder you can be +so stubborn, Marse Tom. But you always was, even when you was little. +I’m going now.” + +“Look here; tell her that in view of the delay, it is my judgment that +she ought to enlarge the accused on his parole.” + +“Yes, sir, I’ll tell her. Marse Tom?” + +“Well?” + +“She can’t get to Soldier Boy, and he stands there all the time, down in +the mouth and lonesome; and she says will you shake hands with him and +comfort him? Everybody does.” + +“It’s a curious kind of lonesomeness; but, all right, I will.” + + + +XI +SEVERAL MONTHS LATER. ANTONIO AND THORNDIKE + + +“THORNDIKE, isn’t that Plug you’re riding an asset of the scrap you and +Buffalo Bill had with the late Blake Haskins and his pal a few months +back?” + +“Yes, this is Mongrel—and not a half-bad horse, either.” + +“I’ve noticed he keeps up his lick first-rate. Say—isn’t it a gaudy +morning?” + +“Right you are!” + +“Thorndike, it’s Andalusian! and when that’s said, all’s said.” + +“Andalusian _and_ Oregonian, Antonio! Put it that way, and you have my +vote. Being a native up there, I know. You being Andalusian-born—” + +“Can speak with authority for that patch of paradise? Well, I can. Like +the Don! like Sancho! This is the correct Andalusian dawn now—crisp, +fresh, dewy, fragrant, pungent—” + + “‘What though the spicy breezes + Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle—’ + +—_git_ up, you old cow! stumbling like that when we’ve just been praising +you! out on a scout and can’t live up to the honor any better than that? +Antonio, how long have you been out here in the Plains and the Rockies?” + +“More than thirteen years.” + +“It’s a long time. Don’t you ever get homesick?” + +“Not till now.” + +“Why _now_?—after such a long cure.” + +“These preparations of the retiring commandant’s have started it up.” + +“Of course. It’s natural.” + +“It keeps me thinking about Spain. I know the region where the Seventh’s +child’s aunt lives; I know all the lovely country for miles around; I’ll +bet I’ve seen her aunt’s villa many a time; I’ll bet I’ve been in it in +those pleasant old times when I was a Spanish gentleman.” + +“They say the child is wild to see Spain.” + +“It’s so; I know it from what I hear.” + +“Haven’t you talked with her about it?” + +“No. I’ve avoided it. I should soon be as wild as she is. That would +not be comfortable.” + +“I wish I was going, Antonio. There’s two things I’d give a lot to see. +One’s a railroad.” + +“She’ll see one when she strikes Missouri.” + +“The other’s a bull-fight.” + +“I’ve seen lots of them; I wish I could see another.” + +“I don’t know anything about it, except in a mixed-up, foggy way, +Antonio, but I know enough to know it’s grand sport.” + +“The grandest in the world! There’s no other sport that begins with it. +I’ll tell you what I’ve seen, then you can judge. It was my first, and +it’s as vivid to me now as it was when I saw it. It was a Sunday +afternoon, and beautiful weather, and my uncle, the priest, took me as a +reward for being a good boy and because of my own accord and without +anybody asking me I had bankrupted my savings-box and given the money to +a mission that was civilizing the Chinese and sweetening their lives and +softening their hearts with the gentle teachings of our religion, and I +wish you could have seen what we saw that day, Thorndike. + +“The amphitheatre was packed, from the bull-ring to the highest +row—twelve thousand people in one circling mass, one slanting, solid +mass—royalties, nobles, clergy, ladies, gentlemen, state officials, +generals, admirals, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, thieves, merchants, +brokers, cooks, housemaids, scullery-maids, doubtful women, dudes, +gamblers, beggars, loafers, tramps, American ladies, gentlemen, +preachers, English ladies, gentlemen, preachers, German ditto, French +ditto, and so on and so on, all the world represented: Spaniards to +admire and praise, foreigners to enjoy and go home and find fault—there +they were, one solid, sloping, circling sweep of rippling and flashing +color under the downpour of the summer sun—just a garden, a gaudy, +gorgeous flower-garden! Children munching oranges, six thousand fans +fluttering and glimmering, everybody happy, everybody chatting gayly with +their intimates, lovely girl-faces smiling recognition and salutation to +other lovely girl-faces, gray old ladies and gentlemen dealing in the +like exchanges with each other—ah, such a picture of cheery contentment +and glad anticipation! not a mean spirit, nor a sordid soul, nor a sad +heart there—ah, Thorndike, I wish I could see it again. + +“Suddenly, the martial note of a bugle cleaves the hum and murmur—clear +the ring! + +“They clear it. The great gate is flung open, and the procession marches +in, splendidly costumed and glittering: the marshals of the day, then the +picadores on horseback, then the matadores on foot, each surrounded by +his quadrille of _chulos_. They march to the box of the city fathers, +and formally salute. The key is thrown, the bull-gate is unlocked. +Another bugle blast—the gate flies open, the bull plunges in, furious, +trembling, blinking in the blinding light, and stands there, a +magnificent creature, centre of those multitudinous and admiring eyes, +brave, ready for battle, his attitude a challenge. He sees his enemy: +horsemen sitting motionless, with long spears in rest, upon blindfolded +broken-down nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and sacrifice, +then the carrion-heap. + +“The bull makes a rush, with murder in his eye, but a picador meets him +with a spear-thrust in the shoulder. He flinches with the pain, and the +picador skips out of danger. A burst of applause for the picador, hisses +for the bull. Some shout ‘Cow!’ at the bull, and call him offensive +names. But he is not listening to them, he is there for business; he is +not minding the cloak-bearers that come fluttering around to confuse him; +he chases this way, he chases that way, and hither and yon, scattering +the nimble banderillos in every direction like a spray, and receiving +their maddening darts in his neck as they dodge and fly—oh, but it’s a +lively spectacle, and brings down the house! Ah, you should hear the +thundering roar that goes up when the game is at its wildest and +brilliant things are done! + +“Oh, that first bull, that day, was great! From the moment the spirit of +war rose to flood-tide in him and he got down to his work, he began to do +wonders. He tore his way through his persecutors, flinging one of them +clear over the parapet; he bowled a horse and his rider down, and plunged +straight for the next, got home with his horns, wounding both horse and +man; on again, here and there and this way and that; and one after +another he tore the bowels out of two horses so that they gushed to the +ground, and ripped a third one so badly that although they rushed him to +cover and shoved his bowels back and stuffed the rents with tow and rode +him against the bull again, he couldn’t make the trip; he tried to +gallop, under the spur, but soon reeled and tottered and fell, all in a +heap. For a while, that bull-ring was the most thrilling and glorious +and inspiring sight that ever was seen. The bull absolutely cleared it, +and stood there alone! monarch of the place. The people went mad for +pride in him, and joy and delight, and you couldn’t hear yourself think, +for the roar and boom and crash of applause.” + +“Antonio, it carries me clear out of myself just to hear you tell it; it +must have been perfectly splendid. If I live, I’ll see a bull-fight yet +before I die. Did they kill him?” + +“Oh yes; that is what the bull is for. They tired him out, and got him +at last. He kept rushing the matador, who always slipped smartly and +gracefully aside in time, waiting for a sure chance; and at last it came; +the bull made a deadly plunge for him—was avoided neatly, and as he sped +by, the long sword glided silently into him, between left shoulder and +spine—in and in, to the hilt. He crumpled down, dying.” + +“Ah, Antonio, it _is_ the noblest sport that ever was. I would give a +year of my life to see it. Is the bull always killed?” + +“Yes. Sometimes a bull is timid, finding himself in so strange a place, +and he stands trembling, or tries to retreat. Then everybody despises +him for his cowardice and wants him punished and made ridiculous; so they +hough him from behind, and it is the funniest thing in the world to see +him hobbling around on his severed legs; the whole vast house goes into +hurricanes of laughter over it; I have laughed till the tears ran down my +cheeks to see it. When he has furnished all the sport he can, he is not +any longer useful, and is killed.” + +“Well, it is perfectly grand, Antonio, perfectly beautiful. Burning a +nigger don’t begin.” + + + +XII +MONGREL AND THE OTHER HORSE + + +“SAGE-BRUSH, you have been listening?” + +“Yes.” + +“Isn’t it strange?” + +“Well, no, Mongrel, I don’t know that it is.” + +“Why don’t you?” + +“I’ve seen a good many human beings in my time. They are created as they +are; they cannot help it. They are only brutal because that is their +make; brutes would be brutal if it was _their_ make.” + +“To me, Sage-Brush, man is most strange and unaccountable. Why should he +treat dumb animals that way when they are not doing any harm?” + +“Man is not always like that, Mongrel; he is kind enough when he is not +excited by religion.” + +“Is the bull-fight a religious service?” + +“I think so. I have heard so. It is held on Sunday.” + +(_A reflective pause_, _lasting some moments_.) Then: + +“When we die, Sage-Brush, do we go to heaven and dwell with man?” + +“My father thought not. He believed we do not have to go there unless we +deserve it.” + + + + +Part II +IN SPAIN + + +XIII +GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER + + +IT was a prodigious trip, but delightful, of course, through the Rockies +and the Black Hills and the mighty sweep of the Great Plains to +civilization and the Missouri border—where the railroading began and the +delightfulness ended. But no one is the worse for the journey; certainly +not Cathy, nor Dorcas, nor Soldier Boy; and as for me, I am not +complaining. + +Spain is all that Cathy had pictured it—and more, she says. She is in a +fury of delight, the maddest little animal that ever was, and all for +joy. She thinks she remembers Spain, but that is not very likely, I +suppose. The two—Mercedes and Cathy—devour each other. It is a rapture +of love, and beautiful to see. It is Spanish; that describes it. Will +this be a short visit? + +No. It will be permanent. Cathy has elected to abide with Spain and her +aunt. Dorcas says she (Dorcas) foresaw that this would happen; and also +says that she wanted it to happen, and says the child’s own country is +the right place for her, and that she ought not to have been sent to me, +I ought to have gone to her. I thought it insane to take Soldier Boy to +Spain, but it was well that I yielded to Cathy’s pleadings; if he had +been left behind, half of her heart would have remained with him, and she +would not have been contented. As it is, everything has fallen out for +the best, and we are all satisfied and comfortable. It may be that +Dorcas and I will see America again some day; but also it is a case of +maybe not. + +We left the post in the early morning. It was an affecting time. The +women cried over Cathy, so did even those stern warriors, the Rocky +Mountain Rangers; Shekels was there, and the Cid, and Sardanapalus, and +Potter, and Mongrel, and Sour-Mash, Famine, and Pestilence, and Cathy +kissed them all and wept; details of the several arms of the garrison +were present to represent the rest, and say good-bye and God bless you +for all the soldiery; and there was a special squad from the Seventh, +with the oldest veteran at its head, to speed the Seventh’s Child with +grand honors and impressive ceremonies; and the veteran had a touching +speech by heart, and put up his hand in salute and tried to say it, but +his lips trembled and his voice broke, but Cathy bent down from the +saddle and kissed him on the mouth and turned his defeat to victory, and +a cheer went up. + +The next act closed the ceremonies, and was a moving surprise. It may be +that you have discovered, before this, that the rigors of military law +and custom melt insensibly away and disappear when a soldier or a +regiment or the garrison wants to do something that will please Cathy. +The bands conceived the idea of stirring her soldierly heart with a +farewell which would remain in her memory always, beautiful and unfading, +and bring back the past and its love for her whenever she should think of +it; so they got their project placed before General Burnaby, my +successor, who is Cathy’s newest slave, and in spite of poverty of +precedents they got his permission. The bands knew the child’s favorite +military airs. By this hint you know what is coming, but Cathy didn’t. +She was asked to sound the “reveille,” which she did. + + [Picture: Reveille [music score]] + +With the last note the bands burst out with a crash: and woke the +mountains with the “Star-Spangled Banner” in a way to make a body’s heart +swell and thump and his hair rise! It was enough to break a person all +up, to see Cathy’s radiant face shining out through her gladness and +tears. By request she blew the “assembly,” now. . . . + + [Picture: The Assembly [music score]] + +. . . Then the bands thundered in, with “Rally round the flag, boys, +rally once again!” Next, she blew another call (“to the Standard”) . . . + + [Picture: To the Standard [music score]] + +. . . and the bands responded with “When we were marching through +Georgia.” Straightway she sounded “boots and saddles,” that thrilling +and most expediting call. . . . + + [Picture: Boots and Saddles [music score]] + +and the bands could hardly hold in for the final note; then they turned +their whole strength loose on “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are +marching,” and everybody’s excitement rose to blood-heat. + +Now an impressive pause—then the bugle sang “TAPS”—translatable, this +time, into “Good-bye, and God keep us all!” for taps is the soldier’s +nightly release from duty, and farewell: plaintive, sweet, pathetic, for +the morning is never sure, for him; always it is possible that he is +hearing it for the last time. . . . + + [Picture: Taps [music score]] + +. . . Then the bands turned their instruments towards Cathy and burst in +with that rollicking frenzy of a tune, “Oh, we’ll all get blind drunk +when Johnny comes marching home—yes, we’ll all get blind drunk when +Johnny comes marching home!” and followed it instantly with “Dixie,” that +antidote for melancholy, merriest and gladdest of all military music on +any side of the ocean—and that was the end. And so—farewell! + +I wish you could have been there to see it all, hear it all, and feel it: +and get yourself blown away with the hurricane huzza that swept the place +as a finish. + +When we rode away, our main body had already been on the road an hour or +two—I speak of our camp equipage; but we didn’t move off alone: when +Cathy blew the “advance” the Rangers cantered out in column of fours, and +gave us escort, and were joined by White Cloud and Thunder-Bird in all +their gaudy bravery, and by Buffalo Bill and four subordinate scouts. +Three miles away, in the Plains, the Lieutenant-General halted, sat her +horse like a military statue, the bugle at her lips, and put the Rangers +through the evolutions for half an hour; and finally, when she blew the +“charge,” she led it herself. “Not for the last time,” she said, and got +a cheer, and we said good-bye all around, and faced eastward and rode +away. + +_Postscript_. _A Day Later_. Soldier Boy was stolen last night. Cathy +is almost beside herself, and we cannot comfort her. Mercedes and I are +not much alarmed about the horse, although this part of Spain is in +something of a turmoil, politically, at present, and there is a good deal +of lawlessness. In ordinary times the thief and the horse would soon be +captured. We shall have them before long, I think. + + + +XIV +SOLDIER BOY—TO HIMSELF + + +IT is five months. Or is it six? My troubles have clouded my memory. I +have been all over this land, from end to end, and now I am back again +since day before yesterday, to that city which we passed through, that +last day of our long journey, and which is near her country home. I am a +tottering ruin and my eyes are dim, but I recognized it. If she could +see me she would know me and sound my call. I wish I could hear it once +more; it would revive me, it would bring back her face and the mountains +and the free life, and I would come—if I were dying I would come! She +would not know _me_, looking as I do, but she would know me by my star. +But she will never see me, for they do not let me out of this shabby +stable—a foul and miserable place, with most two wrecks like myself for +company. + +How many times have I changed hands? I think it is twelve times—I cannot +remember; and each time it was down a step lower, and each time I got a +harder master. They have been cruel, every one; they have worked me +night and day in degraded employments, and beaten me; they have fed me +ill, and some days not at all. And so I am but bones, now, with a rough +and frowsy skin humped and cornered upon my shrunken body—that skin which +was once so glossy, that skin which she loved to stroke with her hand. I +was the pride of the mountains and the Great Plains; now I am a scarecrow +and despised. These piteous wrecks that are my comrades here say we have +reached the bottom of the scale, the final humiliation; they say that +when a horse is no longer worth the weeds and discarded rubbish they feed +to him, they sell him to the bull-ring for a glass of brandy, to make +sport for the people and perish for their pleasure. + +To die—that does not disturb me; we of the service never care for death. +But if I could see her once more! if I could hear her bugle sing again +and say, “It is I, Soldier—come!” + + + +XV +GENERAL ALISON TO MRS. DRAKE, THE COLONEL’S WIFE + + +TO return, now, to where I was, and tell you the rest. We shall never +know how she came to be there; there is no way to account for it. She +was always watching for black and shiny and spirited horses—watching, +hoping, despairing, hoping again; always giving chase and sounding her +call, upon the meagrest chance of a response, and breaking her heart over +the disappointment; always inquiring, always interested in sales-stables +and horse accumulations in general. How she got there must remain a +mystery. + +At the point which I had reached in a preceding paragraph of this +account, the situation was as follows: two horses lay dying; the bull had +scattered his persecutors for the moment, and stood raging, panting, +pawing the dust in clouds over his back, when the man that had been +wounded returned to the ring on a remount, a poor blindfolded wreck that +yet had something ironically military about his bearing—and the next +moment the bull had ripped him open and his bowls were dragging upon the +ground: and the bull was charging his swarm of pests again. Then came +pealing through the air a bugle-call that froze my blood—“_It is I_, +_Soldier—come_!” I turned; Cathy was flying down through the massed +people; she cleared the parapet at a bound, and sped towards that +riderless horse, who staggered forward towards the remembered sound; but +his strength failed, and he fell at her feet, she lavishing kisses upon +him and sobbing, the house rising with one impulse, and white with +horror! Before help could reach her the bull was back again— + + [Picture: His strength failed, and he fell at her feet] + +She was never conscious again in life. We bore her home, all mangled and +drenched in blood, and knelt by her and listened to her broken and +wandering words, and prayed for her passing spirit, and there was no +comfort—nor ever will be, I think. But she was happy, for she was far +away under another sky, and comrading again with her Rangers, and her +animal friends, and the soldiers. Their names fell softly and +caressingly from her lips, one by one, with pauses between. She was not +in pain, but lay with closed eyes, vacantly murmuring, as one who dreams. +Sometimes she smiled, saying nothing; sometimes she smiled when she +uttered a name—such as Shekels, or BB, or Potter. Sometimes she was at +her fort, issuing commands; sometimes she was careering over the plain at +the head of her men; sometimes she was training her horse; once she said, +reprovingly, “You are giving me the wrong foot; give me the left—don’t +you know it is good-bye?” + +After this, she lay silent some time; the end was near. By-and-by she +murmured, “Tired . . . sleepy . . . take Cathy, mamma.” Then, “Kiss me, +Soldier.” For a little time, she lay so still that we were doubtful if +she breathed. Then she put out her hand and began to feel gropingly +about; then said, “I cannot find it; blow ‘taps.’” It was the end. + + [Picture: Taps [music score]] + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{80} At West Point the bugle is supposed to be saying: + + “I can’t get ’em up, + I can’t get ’em up, + I can’t get ’em up in the morning!” + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1086 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1087-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1087-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0f40c751 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1087-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2823 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1087 *** + +Here is a short message from the author of Baartock: + +This book is directed at children, up to about third grade, though it +should be read to them by an adult. + + + + + +Baartock, by Lewis Roth (C)1989 + + + + + +BAARTOCK + +by Lewis Roth + + + + +Chapter 1 + + +Baartock was sitting by the side of the old two lane country road, +crying. Seven years old and all alone for hours, but that wasn't why +he was sobbing, tears running down his cheeks. He had grown up in the +forest, he was used to being alone, except for his parents. He wasn't +lost and he hadn't run away from home, though he felt so ashamed he +didn't want to go home. It had been a bad day, a terrible day. +Baartock had been waiting all day to scare someone, but there hadn't +been anyone to scare. It was such a bad thing to happen to a troll on +his first day. + +Today was such an important day. Today was the very first day that +Baartock was to go out scaring all by himself. He had stayed up late +the night before and had gotten up early, so he would be all tired and +cranky. He had gone out of the cave where he lived and rolled in the +smelliest, nastiest mud he could find, so he would look his scariest. +And he had practiced his screams and shrieks, until both his parents +yelled at him to shut-up and to go scare somebody. He had set out, +going down the old dry stream-bed, just like his father had told him. +On the way, he fell down and cut his knee, which made him really angry. +He threw a rock at a bird that was singing in the trees, trying to make +fun of him. He missed and that made him even angrier. When he got to +the road and looked both ways, he crossed it and hid in the culvert. +Then he waited and listened. + +The culvert wasn't much of a bridge. It was just a big, old concrete +pipe that went under the road for rain-water to go through. He wished +that it was a bridge, any kind of bridge at all. Even a wooden bridge, +but a real bridge that he could hide under and come rushing out to +scare people. He crouched down to wait and listen. + +He knew what he was listening for. The sound of someone walking down +the road. Baartock had practiced at home, just the way his father had +shown him. He would stand waiting, just out of sight. + Then, when he heard something, he would run up the hill, roaring and +screaming. The practice had all gone so well. When he did it at home, +he never had to wait long to hear something. He had scared lots of +squirrels, a deer, two opossum, and a skunk. Baartock didn't like to +remember the skunk. They had scared each other. + +To help pass the time, Baartock remembered of some of the stories that +his father told. Stories about the famous trolls in his family, and +how they had scared people. How his Great-great-uncle Sssssgnaarll had +chased a whole village. He had come running down the side of the +mountain and right into the village, yelling and screaming his loudest, +and everybody had run away. And how wonderfully ugly his mother's +grandfather Munchch-Crunchch had been. So ugly, that just as soon as he +looked up over the side of a bridge, people would faint right where +they were standing. It was fun to think about things like that, while +he was waiting. + +He thought about the name he was going to earn for himself. Something +really scary and wonderful. Baartock wasn't his real name. + That was just what his mother called him. His father would just +yell 'kid', and Baartock knew that meant him. That's the way it is +with trolls. But he wouldn't get a name, a real troll name until he +was twelve years old, and had scared lots of people. He wanted to earn +a really scary name like Arrrggrr-Munch Slinurp, which was his father's +name. + +He waited for a long time, but no one came. After a while, when he got +tired, he ate his sandwiches. They were really good. His mother had +put extra sand in them. Just as he finished his lunch, a bee stung +him. That got him angry again, and he felt that he could scare anybody +who came along. He settled down again to wait and listen. But he +didn't hear anything. He kept waiting. When he got tired of waiting +down under the road in the culvert, he climbed up and hid in a bush by +the side of the road. Baartock waited some more, but still nobody came +walking down the road. The sun was right overhead. He was hot and +tired and hungry and lots of things, but mostly unhappy. The longer he +waited, the unhappier he got. + +He was sitting by the side of the road, crying, when the car drove up +and stopped near him. He was sobbing so hard that he didn't hear it. +It wouldn't have mattered if he had heard it. His father hadn't shown +him how to scare a car. He did hear the car door slam, when Mr. Fennis +got out. + +"What's the matter?" Mr. Fennis didn't know anything about trolls, but +he knew about children. And what he saw was a very dirty little child +sitting by the side of the road, crying. Mr. Fennis taught third grade +and would have been at school, but this morning he had to go to the +dentist. He was hurrying to get back to school. He didn't want to +miss more than half the day. The substitute teacher had been sick and +Mrs. Jackson, the principal, was teaching his class. That was almost +as bad as the pain in his mouth. + +As soon as Baartock saw Mr. Fennis, he knew what he was supposed to do. +If he hadn't been sobbing so hard, he might have been able to scare him. + +"Ahgrr," Baartock started to yell, but it got all mixed up with his +crying and didn't come out scary at all. + +"What's the matter?" Mr. Fennis asked again. "Are you hurt?" + +Baartock could only shake his head. + +"Are you lost? What's wrong?" + +Baartock tried to say, "I'm trying to scare you," but all that came out +was "scare." + +"You don't have to be scared. I'll try to help you. Do you know how to +get home?" + +Baartock nodded his head and sobbed some more. He hadn't been able to +scare this person. Now they were even talking. Oh, this was awful. + +"Let me take you home," said Mr. Fennis. "Which way do you live?" + +Baartock pointed up the hill. "I don't think anyone lives up there. +You must live in the old Howard place." Mr. Fennis seemed to be +talking mostly to himself. Then he asked "How old are you?" + +"Seven," answered Baartock. + +"You should be in school today." + +"No school." Baartock didn't know what school was, but he didn't think +he should be there. "Father said 'wait here'. I came early today, but +nobody came." + +"You've been waiting for a school bus all this time?" Mr. Fennis knew +what the trouble was now. The poor kid. Missed the bus, and he's been +sitting here ever since. No wonder he was crying. Though he could have +gone back home and gotten cleaned up. I'd better take him home and +explain things to his mother. + +"What's your name?" + +"Don't have name," Baartock was feeling a little better. Just sobbing +every now and then. + +"Well then, what can I call you?" asked Mr. Fennis. After all, he was +a teacher and he knew how to get an answer. + +"Baartock. Mother calls me Baartock." + +"All right, Baartock. You can call me, Mr. Fennis. I teach third +grade at the school where you should be today. I'm going to take you +home." Then he had a thought. No point in driving back to the old +Howard house if no one would be there. So many mothers had jobs. +Besides, he was in a hurry to get back to school. "Is your mother home +now?" he asked. + +"No." Baartock knew that his mother would be out gathering poison ivy +and catching lizards for dinner. + +"Well, Baartock. You should be in school and I'm going there. You can +ride there with me and come home on the school bus." Taking Baartock's +hand, they walked to the car. + +For some trollish reason, Baartock's mother hadn't told him not to talk +with strangers, or not to go anywhere with them. Maybe it was because +she didn't think that he would ever get the chance. But, Baartock knew +that he was supposed to be scaring someone, not talking to them. Or +going in a car with them. + +Because he had stayed up in the woods until today, Baartock had never +seen a car. He didn't know a car was, or what it looked like. He +certainly had never ridden in one, but he liked this thing they got +into. Mr. Fennis was neat about most things, but his car was a mess. +The paint was scratched, one of the fenders was dented, and on the +floor were some paper coffee cups and soda cans. On the back seat were +seven over-due library books, an overflowing litter bag, a couple of +cans of oil, which should have been in the trunk, and some plastic +tubing for a science project. To Baartock, it looked just like home. +He was busy looking around when Mr. Fennis started the engine and began +to drive off. Then Baartock went wild and really did scare Mr. Fennis. + + + + +Chapter 2 + + +It was only a short drive, though it felt very long to both Baartock +and Mr. Fennis. When Mr. Fennis finally parked the car at Marvis T. +Johnson Elementary School, he got out and helped Baartock out of the +back seat. + +"I'm sorry I yelled at you, Baartock," apologized Mr. Fennis, helping +him out. "You almost made us crash when you grabbed the steering +wheel. You don't do that in your folks car, do you?" + +"Don't like!" said Baartock angrily, as he kicked at the side of the +car. + +"Don't do that! It's my car. It may not look pretty, but it's paid +for and takes me where I want to go." + +"Go home," said Baartock and he started to walk off the way + they had come. Like all trolls, he had an almost perfect sense of +direction and couldn't get lost. This place wasn't at all like the +woods and he didn't like it. It was all new and frightening to him. +Since he was a troll, he wasn't going to be scared, or not much anyway. +He was supposed to do the scaring. + +"Come on, Baartock. Let's go on into school." Mr. Fennis grabbed +Baartock's hand. + +"Don't want school! Want to go home!" + +So, with Mr. Fennis pulling one way and Baartock pulling the other, +they went into school. As soon as they got inside, Baartock stopped +wanting to go home and started looking at this new kind of cave he was +in. There were big boards fastened to the walls, covered with lots of +colored papers. There were cases with glass frames with more colored +papers behind them. The walls were a bright yellow, and there were +lights overhead. Even the floor was smooth and shiny. There were a lot +of new things for him to see. He was still looking around when they got +to the school office. + +"Ms. Laurence, Baartock seems to have missed the bus this morning," +said Mr. Fennis to the woman sitting at a desk, behind the counter. +Ms. Laurence was the school secretary. "I found him still waiting by +the road." + +"Baartock? I don't know any Baartock." + +"Well, he's seven, so he must be in Mrs. Stogbuchner's class. Could +you get him down there? I've really got to get back to my class. +Good-by, Baartock." With that, Mr. Fennis hurried out of the office +and down the hall, leaving Baartock in the office. + +Baartock looked at Ms. Laurence. Then he looked all around the room. +When he had seen enough he said, "Not Mississtog-Buchnersklass. Go +home! Now!" Baartock thought it might be fun to meet someone with a +wonderfully scary name like Mississtog-Buchnersklass, but he was tired +and wanted to go home. He was just out the door, leaving Ms. Laurence +calling "Baartock! Stop!" when he crashed right into Mrs. Jackson, the +principal. + +Mr. Fennis told Mrs. Jackson about Baartock just as soon as he had +gotten into his classroom and she came running to the office. Mrs. +Jackson had been a school teacher for many years and principal for a +few more, but she wasn't sure that she had ever seen a child quite like +the dirty, wild, little one, who was trying to pull away from her. +"Stop right now!" Mrs. Jackson's voice echoed up and down the hall. +Baartock stopped squirming and stood, wide-eyed, staring at her. He +didn't know humans could sound like that. Down the hall, classroom +doors opened and several teachers looked out. Mrs. Jackson ignored +them as she pushed Baartock back into the office and closed the door. + +"Please tell me your name." Before he could say that he wasn't old +enough to have a name, Ms. Laurence answered "Baartock." + +"Baartock," said Mrs. Jackson as she brought him over to a bench, "sit +down. Tell me how you got so dirty." + +"Rolled in mud. Want to go home." + +"You certainly must have rolled in the mud. I understand you missed +your bus this morning." + +"Mrs. Jackson," said Ms. Laurence, who had stopped watching them and +was busily looking through some papers, "We don't have any student +named Baartock." School had just started the week before, but Ms. +Laurence was sure that she knew the names of all the new students. And +where to find their records. + +"Is today your first day?" asked Mrs. Jackson. "Yes! First day! +First day!" Baartock answered right away. Finally he had found someone +who understood that today was his first day to go scare people by all +himself. + +"But, Mrs. Jackson, I don't have his registration forms, medical +records, or anything." Ms. Laurence was now going through file drawers. + +"I'm sure you'll find them. Baartock and I will just go down to Mrs. +Stogbuchner's class, then I'll be back to help you look," said Mrs. +Jackson as she opened the door. "Baartock, let's go meet your teacher. +I'm sure you'll be very happy in her class." + +"Want to go home!" repeated Baartock rather loudly as they walked down +the hall. + +"Please don't shout, Baartock. We don't want to disturb the other +classes. I'm sure you would like to go home. I would like to go home, +too, but we're supposed to be here. And we'll get everything +straightened out about your bus schedule, so you won't miss your bus +tomorrow. I'll make sure that you get home after school is over. Just +behave yourself and do what Mrs. Stogbuchner tells you." + + + + +Chapter 3 + + +"Now, let's get you into class," said Mrs. Jackson. They went to the +last door on the right side of the hall, and Mrs. Jackson looked +through a little window in the door. + +"Is it recess time already? The class must be outside." She opened the +door and they went into the classroom. It was a bright cheerful room, +with windows all along one wall and chairs pulled up around low tables. + +"This will be your classroom," Mrs. Jackson said. They walked to a +door in the back of the classroom and went outside. + +"Let's see if we can find them. They should be on the playground. +That's around this way." Hand in hand, they went around to the back of +the school building. + +There was the playground. And the class. So many humans. Baartock had +never seen that many humans. They were swinging, racing around, +climbing, playing, and just standing. They were laughing and yelling +and screaming. They were all having fun. Baartock was so interested, +that he didn't see the woman coming over to them. + +"Baartock, this is your teacher, Mrs. Stogbuchner," said Mrs. Jackson. +"Mrs. Stogbuchner, this is Baartock. This is his first day, isn't it +Baartock?" + +"First day," said Baartock, still looking at the children. + +"Nice to have you in my class, Baartock," said Mrs. Stogbuchner. "I'm +sure you will enjoy it here." + +"I'll come see that you get on the right bus to get home, Baartock," +said Mrs. Jackson. "Why don't you go play. But, please behave +yourself. I want to talk to Mrs. Stogbuchner for a moment." + +Baartock started walking over to where the children were playing. He +was thinking so many different things. It was his first day and he +should be scaring people, and here were humans to scare. But there were +just so many of them, all running and laughing and playing. Nobody was +paying any attention to him. They weren't even looking at him. +Baartock couldn't think of any way to scare anybody. This was all so +new, and not the way it was supposed to be. He was suddenly scared. He +didn't know what to do. + +Baartock had been slowly walking by the fence that went around the +playground. When he got to the jungle gym, he stopped and watched the +three boys who were climbing on it. He wasn't quite sure why they were +climbing and chasing each other, but they seemed to be having fun. +Suddenly, Baartock jumped up on the bars and climbed up to the top. It +was like climbing a tree, but it was different, too. He was just +sitting there, looking around, when one of the boys, the one with red +hair, climbed up beside him. + +"Hi. I'm Jason. Are you new?" + +"No, I'm Baartock," he said. He wouldn't want a dumb name like 'New'. + +All the other children were about the same size as Baartock, but Jason +was even bigger. He was trying to think what to say to this red haired +boy. + +Then Jason started to climb down again. When he was just a little way +down, he called, "Try to catch me, Baartock!" + +Baartock knew what to do. He started climbing down, chasing Jason as +fast as he could. By now, Jason was on the ground, running past the +swings. When Baartock got down, he started running. He ran past the +swings, past the slide. He was catching up to Jason, he had almost +caught him, when a there was a whistle and Jason stopped. Baartock +crashed into him and they both fell down. Jason got on his feet right +away. + +"We've got to go in now," he said as he pulled Baartock to his feet. +"We have to go line up. Come on." + +Baartock didn't understand what they were going to do, but he walked +along with Jason. As they walked over to where Mrs. Stogbuchner was +standing, Baartock said, "I caught you." + +"I can run faster," answered Jason. "Next time you won't." + +Mrs. Stogbuchner again blew her whistle. "Recess is over. Time to go +inside," she called. Then she saw Baartock and Jason. "Making friends +already, Baartock? Jason, please let Baartock sit next to you and help +him along today." + +"Yes, Mrs. Stogbuchner," said Jason. + +"Everybody settle down," called Mrs. Stogbuchner as she walked past the +children, who were lining up. + +"I'm supposed to be first today, right, Mrs. Stogbuchner?" called a boy +from the front of the line. + +"All right, Jimmy," she answered. + +"There. I told you so," Jimmy said loudly to the girl standing next to +him. + +"Don't start a fight about it, Jimmy," said Mrs. Stogbuchner, who was +now at the back of the line. "Let's walk inside quietly. No running!" +she called, as Jimmy started rushing off. + +In just a few minutes, Baartock found himself sitting right next to +Jason, at one of the low tables in the classroom. Mrs. Stogbuchner, +standing in front of the classroom was saying, "We have someone new in +class." Everybody was looking around. "Baartock, please stand up. This +is his first day." + +Baartock stood up, but he was embarrassed. Now everybody knew this was +his first day, he'd never be able to scare anybody. He was still +standing, when Mrs. Stogbuchner said, "You may sit down now, Baartock." + +Jason reached up and pulled Baartock back onto his chair. A couple of +children at the next table were giggling, and several others were +whispering something and pointing at him. Baartock felt uncomfortable. +He wasn't really too interested in the papers that were passed around. +But he got interested in making the marks on the paper, when Jason +helped him color the worksheet. There were so many bright colors. He +got so interested in coloring that he didn't pay any attention to +anything else. It didn't seem very long before Mrs. Stogbuchner said, +"It's time to get everything put away now." + +Jason whispered to him, "Where do you live?" + +"That way," said Baartock, pointing. That was the way a troll would +give directions. Just point in the direction you were supposed to go, +and then walk until you got there. In spite of everything that had +happened today, he knew just exactly where his home was. He had been +so busy, he hadn't thought about it until now. + "Want to go home," he said. + +"We all get to go home in just a few minutes, Baartock," said Mrs. +Stogbuchner, who had been walking around making sure that everything +was put away. "Everybody sits down quietly and waits for the bell." + +Baartock started to ask Jason, "What's bell?" But he only got to say +"What's . . .." + +Mrs. Stogbuchner was still standing behind him. "Baartock, in this +classroom, 'wait quietly' means 'no talking'." + +Mrs. Jackson came into the classroom and walked over to them. "Mrs. +Stogbuchner, if you're finished with Baartock for today, I'd like him +to come to the office now." + +"Yes. We're all through. Baartock, please go with Mrs. Jackson, and +we'll see you tomorrow." + +When they got into the hall, Mrs. Jackson said, "Baartock, we couldn't +find your file, and I do need to talk to your mother. Instead of riding +on the school bus, I'm going to drive you home." + +"Go home now?" asked Baartock quietly. He remembered how angry this +person could sound. + +"Yes. I'm going to drive you home." Just then the bell rang, and +Baartock jumped three feet in the air. + + + + +Chapter 4 + + +When Baartock and Mrs. Jackson walked out to the parking lot, Mr. +Fennis was waiting beside his car. + +"Ready to go home, Baartock?" asked Mr. Fennis. + +"Go home now," answered Baartock, and he started to walk away. + +"Baartock! Come back here!" Mrs. Jackson's voice stopped him and he +turned around. + +"Not go home now?" asked Baartock. + +"We're going to take you home, but we're not going to walk. We are +going to drive in the car." + +Walking home was exactly what Baartock had planned to do. Then he had +an idea. "Don't like car. You drive. I walk," he said. + +"No. Now please get in." + +"You'd think he'd never ridden in car until today," commented Mr. +Fennis as he got in and closed the door. "He became positively wild +when I drove him to school." + +"Well, he'll behave this time, won't you Baartock. You just sit +quietly while we take you home." + +"Sit," said Baartock unhappily. + +Mr. Fennis started the car, and Baartock started to jump, but he saw +Mrs. Jackson watching him. So he just sat and looked even unhappier. + +The ride this time seemed much quicker for Mr. Fennis, since Baartock +wasn't jumping around in the car. + +"They must live in Donald and Phyllis Howard's old house," he said as +they drove down the country road. "I found him just down the road from +their driveway." + +"I didn't know anyone had moved in there," said Mrs. Jackson. + +Just then Baartock exclaimed "Home!" pointing up the hill. + +"Can we use the driveway instead, Baartock?" said Mr. Fennis. "I don't +want to walk up the hill, even if you do have a shortcut." He drove on +down the road a little further, then slowed even more as they came to a +mailbox and a dirt driveway. + +"That's funny. The 'For Sale' sign's still there," said Mrs. Jackson. +Out in the middle of the corn-stalk stubbled field was a weathered +sign, 'Farm For Sale - Crow Real Estate'. "This is the only house up +here. They must have just not taken the sign down yet." + +Baartock sat in the back seat and didn't say anything. Mr. Fennis +turned the car onto the driveway and started up the hill. This dirt +road did go near his family's cave, but he never used it. Trolls almost +never use roads unless there are bridges, and the bridges are to live +under or hide under. + +The driveway went up the hill, between the field and the woods. It +didn't look as though a car had been on it for a long time. The grass +growing in the middle was quite tall, and the bushes growing next to +the road needed to be cut back. They scraped the side of the car as +they went up the driveway. And there were a lot of holes that needed +filling. Mr. Fennis was driving slowly, but the car still raised a +cloud of dust behind them. + +Up near the top of the hill, the road turned away from the woods, +toward a grove of trees and the old frame house almost hidden in the +trees. + +"Home over there," said Baartock, pointing back into the woods, as Mr. +Fennis was about to turn toward the house. + +"But there aren't any houses in the woods," said Mrs. Jackson. + +"Can we look at the house first, Baartock?" asked Mr. Fennis. + +"Home over there!" said Baartock again, still pointing toward the +woods, but he sat quietly as they drove up to the house. There was a +smaller sign on the porch by the front door, 'House & Farm For Sale - +Crow Real Estate' with a phone number to call. + +"It certainly doesn't look like anyone lives here," said Mr. Fennis, as +he turned the car around in the driveway. "All right, Baartock. Which +way is your home?" + +"Home that way," said Baartock, still pointing into the woods. + +"Mr. Fennis, do you think he's lost?" asked Mrs. Jackson quietly. + +"Not lost. Never get lost. Home over there!" said Baartock firmly. +Trolls can also hear very well. + +Mr. Fennis drove the car back to where the driveway turned down hill +and stopped it. "Baartock, just how far is your home?" + +"Home over there. Not far. Easy walk," said Baartock. If these humans +weren't with him, he could easily run home. + +"Mrs. Jackson, if we are going to meet Baartock's parents, I guess we +have to walk through the woods. Baartock, will your mother or father be +home now?" asked Mr. Fennis. + +"Mother home now," answered Baartock. He was suddenly hungry, thinking +about the lizard and poison ivy dinner she said she would fix. + +Mr. Fennis got out and went around and opened the door for Mrs. Jackson +and Baartock. "Baartock, will you please show us the way to your home?" + +They walked into the woods, Baartock in front, walking easily and +quietly between trees and bushes. Next came Mr. Fennis, pushing his +way through, and holding branches out of the way for Mrs. Jackson. She +came last, carrying her briefcase full of important school papers. + +"Slow down, Baartock," called Mr. Fennis, when Baartock got too far +ahead of them. "We can't go that fast. How much further is it?" + +"Home soon," answered Baartock. + +"I really don't believe this," said Mrs. Jackson, more to herself than +to Mr. Fennis. "Could he live out here in the woods?" + +"He acts like he knows where he's going," was Mr. Fennis' reply. + +Baartock was waiting for them at the dry stream bed. When they caught +up with him, he pointed up the hill. "Home there," he said, starting +again. + +This was easier walking, without all of the branches. But there were a +lot of loose rocks underfoot, and a few pools of muddy water from the +last rain. A little way further, Baartock turned into the woods and +stopped in a clearing by the mouth of a cave. + +"Home!" he yelled, and went inside. + +"But he can't live in a cave," said Mr. Fennis, panting. It had been +more of a hike in the woods than he had been expecting. + +Just then, Baartock came back out of the cave, followed by his mother. + +"Oh!" gasped Mrs. Jackson. + +Baartock's mother, Whinnurf Slinurp, was an adult troll. She was almost +seven feet tall, with a slightly gray-green skin, which is very +attractive for a troll. She was dressed in something like a robe, made +of odd bits of cloth sewn patchwork fashion. She was a gentle troll, +not mean or nasty like some trolls. Of course, neither Mrs. Jackson +nor Mr. Fennis knew that she was a gentle troll. She had a basket of +acorns and toadstools in her hand, which she had been fixing for dinner. + +"Who you?" she asked in a booming voice. + +Trolls, being larger than most humans, have louder, deeper voices. +Compared to the way trolls normally are, she was being very polite. +These must be humans from the nearby village. She hadn't seen humans +in quite a long time. She had almost forgotten how little and ugly +humans were. + +Mr. Fennis and Mrs. Jackson looked at Baartock's mother and then at +each other. Mr. Fennis was ready to run away right now and forget the +whole thing. He was wondering if Mrs. Jackson could run fast enough to +keep up. For just a moment, Mrs. Jackson was wondering the same +thing. Then something made her change her mind. She had come to meet +Baartock's mother or father and that was what she was going to do. So, +while Mr. Fennis watched wide-eyed, she said, "I'm Mrs. Jackson, the +principal of the Marvis T. Johnson Elementary School. This is Mr. +Fennis, who teaches third grade there." + +"So," said Whinnurf Slinurp. That was like saying 'okay', only no +troll, even a very polite troll, would say 'okay'. + +"Are you Baartock's mother?" asked Mrs. Jackson. + +"Yes," said Whinnurf Slinurp. Proudly she added, "He good troll." + + + + +Chapter 5 + + +"A troll! I've been driving around all day with a troll!" thought Mr. +Fennis. "I didn't even think there were trolls. Aren't they supposed +to be mean? Aren't they supposed to eat people?" Mr. Fennis tried to +remember everything that he had ever read about trolls in stories and +fairy tales. The only things he could remember were scary. + +But, somehow, if Mrs. Jackson was having the same thoughts, they didn't +seem to bother her. All she saw was a seven-year-old child who should +be in school. + +"Have you enrolled Baartock in school?" she asked. + +"What? What school?" asked Whinnurf Slinurp. + +Mrs. Jackson had it all figured out now. Troll or not, this was +another parent who had to be told about the importance of education, +the state laws requiring school attendance, and all the other things +about school. "All children are supposed to go to school," she said. +"Baartock is supposed to go to school." + +"Go school today," Baartock told his mother. + +"Baartock," said Mrs. Jackson, "why don't you show Mr. Fennis around? +I need to talk to your mother for a few minutes." Both Baartock and Mr. +Fennis started to say something, but she cut them both off. + +"We'll only be a few minutes," she said again. "We'll call you. + +"Come on, Baartock. Why don't you show me around?" Mr. Fennis decided +that one young troll was probably better than two trolls and a school +principal. + +Baartock led the way back toward the dry stream bed. He wasn't sure +what he would be able to show. All the noise this human, Mr. Fennis, +was making was scaring everything away. Even the squirrels and mice +were all hiding. He pointed through the trees at a head-knocking bird. + +"It's a red-headed woodpecker," said Mr. Fennis, when he finally saw it. + +Then Baartock got an idea. He knew just what to show. He started up +the hill along the stream bed. + +"We shouldn't go too far. We have to be able to hear when they call." + +"Can hear. Not far," said Baartock as he kept scrambling up the hill. +This was something that no amount of noise could scare away. + +"Please slow down," asked Mr. Fennis after a few minutes. He wasn't +used to racing up hills, and he was getting hot. + +"Not far," repeated Baartock, but he did slow down to let Mr. Fennis +catch up. + +At one time there must have been a lot of water coming down from a +spring, because the stream bed was wide in some places and deep in +others as it cut a path down the hill. But now it was dry most of the +time, except when it rained, when the water would come churning down +the hill, bubbling past the rocks and washing the leaves down hill. +Then after the rain ended, it would stop flowing, just leaving pools to +dry up in the sunlight. + +Mr. Fennis caught up with Baartock at a bend in the stream bed, just +where it went around a clump of trees. Baartock just pointed up the +hill. + +"Mine," he said. + +Mr. Fennis stopped to see what he was pointing at. Just a little way up +the hill was a stone bridge over the stream bed. Mr. Fennis stared at +it. + +The bridge looked just like a picture out of a story book. It was a +low, wide, stone arch crossing over the stream. Big, heavy stones made +up the pillars on each end and the curved bottom of the bridge. Lots +of smaller flat stones filled in the walls, and some bigger ones topped +off the walls. There were trees and bushes going up to the bridge on +either side. Under the arch, there was the glitter of sunlight on a +pool on the other side. It was a very pretty sight, but Mr. Fennis +couldn't think why anyone would build a bridge here, so far away from +everything. + +Baartock ran to the bridge and stood under it, and looked back at Mr. +Fennis with a big grin. "Mine," he said again. + +Mr. Fennis hurried to the bridge too. He had never seen a real stone +bridge like this before. "Baartock," he said, "you shouldn't stand +under there. It might not be safe." + +"Not safe?" asked Baartock. + +"One of those stones might fall down." + +"Not fall down," said Baartock, not grinning any more. "I make. Good +bridge. Trolls make good bridge. I show you good bridge." + +He came out from under the bridge, and went scrambling up the side of +the stream bed. Mr. Fennis looked for a better place to climb up, but +finally climbed where Baartock had. When he got up to the end of the +bridge, Baartock was in the middle. And he wasn't just standing there. +He was jumping up and down. + +"I make good bridge," he said again. "Not fall down. + +"Yes. It's a good bridge," agreed Mr. Fennis. He stopped watching +Baartock and examined the bridge. It did seem safe. It really did +look like someone had just built it. The path on each side only went +about ten feet into the woods and stopped. There didn't seem to be any +reason for anyone to build a bridge in the middle of the woods. He +didn't even consider what Baartock had said, that he had built it. + +Baartock stood watching Mr. Fennis for a minute, then he had an idea. +He went over and took his hand. "Come," he said, leading him to the +end of the path. "I call. You come cross bridge." Baartock ran back +across the bridge and into the woods on the other side. + +Mr. Fennis stood waiting for a minute, then he faintly heard Baartock +call "Now!" It sounded like he had run way off in the woods. Not sure +what the game was, Mr. Fennis walked back to the bridge and started to +cross it. + +Just then there was the most awful noise he had ever heard. He stopped +to look around. And Baartock came running and screaming up from under +the bridge. Mr. Fennis stood there for a moment with his mouth wide +open, then he found himself running off the bridge, and running away +into the woods. He was quite a long way into the woods when he +realized that the noise had been made by Baartock. It had been +terrifying. He stopped beside a big tree and leaned on it while he +caught his breath. He wasn't used to running, or to being scared like +that. He was still standing there panting, when Baartock came walking +up to him. Mr. Fennis didn't know what to say. + +"Good bridge," was what Baartock said, with a huge grin on his face. He +had done it. On his first day. He really had scared someone. + +Mr. Fennis stood, leaning up against the tree, and thought of some +things he could say, but "Shouldn't we go back now?" was what he said. + +With Baartock leading the way, they walked back toward the stream bed. +Not far below the bridge there was a place where they could get down +easily. They were starting down when Baartock suddenly stopped. + +"Mother call," he said and raced off down the hill. + + Mr. Fennis hadn't heard anything, but he was too out of +breath to call for Baartock to wait. When he could have called, +Baartock was out of sight, so he just slowly walked down the hill after +him. When he got to the clearing in front of the cave, Mrs. Jackson +and Baartock's mother were coming out of the cave. + +"We were starting to wonder where you were," said Mrs. Jackson. + +"Baartock was showing me his bridge," said Mr. Fennis. "Though he told +me he built it." + +"Baartock good troll. Build good bridge," said his mother. + +"You mean he really did build it?" + +"I'm sure he did," said Mrs. Jackson. "I've been learning some amazing +things about trolls, but we must be going now. It was very nice talking +with you, Mrs. Slinurp. I'll see you both in the morning," she said, +seeing Baartock come back out of the cave. With Mr. Fennis following, +she led the way back down the hill. + +Baartock watched them leave and listened to them talk, or at least Mrs. +Jackson. "I could hear that scream all the way down here," she said. +Then, "Well, he is a troll, you know." He didn't hear anything else +after that, and went in the cave to help his mother fix dinner. He was +very hungry. + +When his father got home, Baartock had told him all about what had +happen to him, including riding in the car and about the school. His +father hadn't said anything about that, but he didn't look too pleased. +Then Baartock told about showing Mr. Fennis his bridge and about how he +had scared him. That had made his father laugh long and loud, and he'd +patted Baartock on the head and told him what a good troll he was. +After dinner, Baartock went to bed. Later, he heard his mother and +father talking quietly, or at least quietly for trolls who were quite +loud sometimes, but he was tired and happy and went back to sleep. + + + + +Chapter 6 + + +The next morning, after his father had gone off, Baartock and his +mother left the cave. They went through the woods toward the old empty +house, the one Mr. Fennis had called the 'old Howard house'. + +They were crossing the stream bed when Baartock saw a muddy pool he +could splash in. He was just about to dive into it when his mother +said "No!" When he caught up with her all she said was "Not today." +It was puzzling to him. She always let him get muddy. + +When they got to the empty house, there was a car in the driveway, and +Mrs. Jackson was standing beside it. + +"Good morning," she said. "Are you ready to go to school, Baartock?" + +Baartock wasn't sure about that, so he didn't say anything. He had +almost forgotten about school. That was part of his first day, but not +the important part. He had forgotten about Mrs. Jackson saying she +would see them in the morning. + +Mrs. Jackson opened the car doors, and when Baartock and his mother got +in, she showed them how to fasten their seat belts. Mrs. Jackson +explained that while she was a good driver, some other drivers weren't, +and that they were probably safer wearing the seat belts. His mother +listened carefully to what Mrs. Jackson was saying. She didn't seem to +mind being in a car, until Mrs. Jackson started the engine. Whinnurf +Slinurp was a troll, so she wasn't about to get scared, but she did +grip the edge of the seat very firmly. When Mrs. Jackson asked if she +was all right, she just closed her eyes tightly and said "Go." But as +they drove toward town, Baartock's mother finally opened her eyes to +see where they were going. + +This time Baartock watched out the window as they drove into town. +There were lots of buildings like the old empty house that he knew. +There were humans walking and lots of cars, and some big cars called +trucks. Some of them came right at them, but they always just missed +Mrs. Jackson's car. + +He was learning a lot about humans. Mrs. Jackson had been talking +almost all the time while she had been driving. He learned about +streets, and blocks, which were between streets, and about houses and +stores. Only he hadn't seen a single bridge. Suddenly he said, +"School that way," and pointed. + +"Yes, you're right, Baartock. The school is that way. You certainly do +know just where you are. But we've got to go some place else first. +We're almost there." + +In just a few blocks, Mrs. Jackson turned the car into a driveway and +parked in a space in front of a brick building. She showed them how to +unbuckle the seat belts. Baartock practiced putting his on and taking +it off, while she walked around to open the doors. There was a sign on +the front of the building, 'Public Health Services', but that didn't +mean much to Baartock. As they walked to the house, he asked about it. + +"I'll tell you about it in just a minute," Mrs. Jackson said. + +Baartock didn't know what a minute was, but he decided to wait and see +what this house was. And if there were any children here. He had been +thinking about Jason, and wanted to race him again. He was sure that +he could run faster, even though Jason was a little bigger. + +Inside there was a woman at a desk, who looked up as they came in. She +seemed surprised when she looked up at Baartock's mother, but she +didn't look scared. "Nurse Dodge is expecting you, Mrs. Jackson," she +said. "You can go right in." + +"Thank you," said Mrs. Jackson, and she led them down a hallway. There +were several doors, and she knocked on one and was opening it when a +voice said, "Come in." + +There were chairs and a desk in this room, as well as a woman dressed +all in white clothes, who stood up and came around her desk as they +went in. "Norma, thank you for seeing us so early," said Mrs. Jackson. +"Mrs. Slinurp, this is Nurse Norma Dodge. And this is Baartock." + +"I'm glad to meet you," said Nurse Dodge in a cheerful voice. "Please +come in and sit down." After she shut the door and went back behind +her desk, she said, "I understand Baartock is to start going to our +school." + +Baartock didn't know anything about that, but his mother said, "Yes." + +"Let me tell you about what I do here," said Nurse Dodge. + +"I explained about medical records and shots," said Mrs. Jackson. + +"I'm sure that you did, but I would like telling about it anyway," said +Nurse Dodge. To Baartock's mother she said, "I see most of the school +children here and many of the adults too, and I try to keep them +healthy. I give the shots that will keep them from getting sick. But +I understand that Baartock has never been sick." "Yes," said his mother +proudly. "Baartock never sick. Little trolls never get sick. Big +trolls not get sick, too." + +That wasn't really quite true. Many young trolls get sore throats when +they first start to practice their screaming. That was because they +would shriek instead of yelling or screaming. Their mothers would make +them gargle with warm salty water and that would usually make them +better right away. But other than that, young trolls never got colds +or fevers or were ever sick. + +"But if you never get sick," asked the nurse, "how do you know about +being sick?" + +"I see humans sick before," answered his mother. "Not same for trolls. +Maybe break arm, break leg same as humans. There are troll ways to fix +trolls. Trolls never get human sick." + +Baartock didn't like to remember about breaking things. During the +summer, when he was building his bridge, an arch stone had fallen on +his hand and it broke two of his fingers. It had really hurt. His +mother had put some salve on his fingers so they wouldn't hurt and +would heal faster, then she had straightened them and wrapped them. +When she unwrapped them two days later, they weren't broken any more, +and he went back and finished his bridge. But he remembered how much +it hurt, and he was more careful after that. + +He stopped listening to what the adults were saying. He was getting +tired of just sitting. There wasn't anything in the room to interest +him, but there was an open door to another room, so he got up to look +at it. + +There wasn't much in that room either. Just a little bed and a lot of +little doors under a counter. They were too small for an adult to go +through, but he thought that he might fit through some of them. He was +just about to go look behind those doors when his mother said, +"Baartock sit!" + +Baartock went back and sat down and waited some more. He waited for +what he thought was quite a long time. The adults just kept talking. +Talking about him. He knew that they would keep on talking and then +either he would have to do something now, or else he couldn't do +something until he was bigger. And he was right. After all the +talking, they agreed that he had to have a shot. Nurse Dodge went in +the other room and came back with a tiny bottle and something she +called a 'needle'. Baartock's mother did a lot of sewing, but this +wasn't like any needle that Baartock had ever seen before. She put +something from the bottle into the needle, then came over to Baartock. +He was watching her carefully. + +"This may hurt a little, Baartock," she said. "You might want to look +over at your mother." Then she wiped his arm with something that +smelled awful and made his arm wet, and she stuck the needle in his +arm. It did hurt, a little like getting stuck by a thorn on a bush in +the woods. Then she pulled the needle out and said, "That wasn't too +bad, was it?" + +"Not hurt," said Baartock, though it did hurt some. + +Nurse Dodge put the needle in a metal trash can and put the little +bottle back in the other room. Then she went back behind her desk and +wrote something on a piece of paper. "The school needs this to show +that Baartock has had his required shots," she said, "and I'll keep a +copy here." + +"Well, Baartock," said Mrs. Jackson, "shall we go to school now?" + +"Go see Mississtog-Buchnersklass? Go see Jason?" asked Baartock. + +"Yes. We should hurry, so we'll be there before lunch." + +They left the house and got back in the car. Mrs. Jackson let Baartock +put on his seat belt himself, but she checked to make sure it was +fastened. + + + + +Chapter 7 + + +They got out of the car after the short drive to the school. + +"Go home now," Baartock's mother announced, and started walking down +the sidewalk, leaving Baartock and Mrs. Jackson standing by the car. + +"But," Mrs. Jackson called hurriedly, "I'll drive you home." + +"No," was Whinnurf Slinurp's answer. She didn't look back or even +slow down, but walked off quickly toward home. She had had enough of +humans and their strange ways for one day. + +"How strange," Mrs. Jackson thought also. "I certainly hope it wasn't +something that I said. I wonder if that's just the way trolls are?" +They watched as Baartock's mother walking quickly down the sidewalk and +around the corner of the school building and out of sight. + +She said, "All right, Baartock, let's get into school. Before you go to +your class, we have to stop by the office." The went in the front door +and down the hall to the office. Baartock knew this room now. It was +near the front door and it was the only door with a big glass window in +it. All the doors either had no window at all or only a little one, up +high, that he wasn't tall enough to look through. + +"Mrs. Jackson, I'm glad you're here," Ms. Laurence said all in a rush. +"There were some wasps in Mrs. Breckenridge's class and they couldn't +get them out. Some of the children got frightened. She took her class +out to the playground and Mr. Blevis is trying to get rid of the wasps." + +"Good. For a moment I thought that I was supposed to catch the wasps," +Mrs. Jackson said laughing. "I'm sure that Mr. Blevis can take care of +it. Would you get a new student kit for Baartock? There should still +be some left in the supply room." + +Ms. Laurence came out from behind her desk and went out the door. Mrs. +Jackson said, "She's getting some things you'll need for school; +tablets of paper, scissors, crayons, and pencils. When they're used up +you can buy more from the school store. Mrs. Stogbuchner can tell you +about it." + +Baartock was about to ask what Mrs. Jackson was talking about, because +there were so many words she used that he didn't know. + She had talked about stores when he was in her car. +Mississtog-Buchnersklass had let him have some crayons to use, those +little sticks that made wonderful, colorful marks on the paper. He +wanted to know if some of the other things were just as great as +crayons, when Ms. Laurence came back in the office and gave him a box +and some pads of paper. + +"These are for you, Baartock," she said. + +"You give me?" he asked. He hadn't expected someone to give him +anything. He was embarrassed, because he didn't have anything to give +her. + +"Yes, I'm giving them to you. These are yours." + +"We usually say "thank you" when someone gives us something," said Mrs. +Jackson. + +"Thank you," said Baartock. He thought about it and then decided that +it was just the human way of giving things. + + "You're welcome, Baartock," said Ms. Laurence, as she went +back to her desk. + +He opened the box and looked inside. There were a lot of things in it. +Most of them he didn't understand, but there was a box full of crayons, +just like the ones he had used the day before. + +"There's a place on the box for your name," said Mrs. Jackson. "Why +don't I write Baartock on this one, so that we'll know that it's yours. +All the new students have a pencil box just like this. We have to be +able to tell them apart." She got a pen from the counter and wrote +'BAARTOCK' in big letters on the top of the box. + +Baartock looked at the marks she had made on it. "This say my box?" he +asked. + +"Yes," said Mrs. Jackson. "This word is 'Baartock'." + +He looked at the marks some more, then got the pen from the counter. +On one end of the box, he made another mark. It was a mark his mother +had shown him how to make, his special mark. He had practiced making +it and put it on all his things. He even had cut it into one of the +stones of his bridge, working carefully, the way his father had shown +him. + +"This say my box, too," he said, holding it up for Mrs. Jackson to see. +"Now I know my box." + +What Mrs. Jackson saw was not a scribbled mark that she might have +expected, but carefully printed letters. They were letters of an +alphabet she didn't recognize, but still clearly letters. + It was just one more new thing that she now knew about trolls. She +already knew more about trolls than anyone else in town. There were +only three people who even knew that there were trolls. + +"Good. We all know that it's Baartock's pencil box. Now, it's almost +lunch time," she said, looking up at the clock high up on the wall. +"We'd better be getting you to your class, before they go to lunch +without you. Aren't you getting hungry?" + +Baartock hadn't thought about food, until Mrs. Jackson mentioned it. +Suddenly he was hungry, very hungry. It had been a long time since his +breakfast bowl of porridge and some left-over acorns and toadstools +from dinner. + +"Yes. Hungry," he said. + + + + +Chapter 8 + + +It wasn't quite time for lunch, when Mrs. Jackson and Baartock got to +his classroom. Mrs. Stogbuchner was in the back of the room, reading +to the class from a big storybook. The children had gathered their +chairs in a circle around her, and had been listening to the story, +until Baartock came in. Then there was a flurry of activity. Jason +jumped up and brought a chair over, right next to his, for Baartock to +sit on. Several of the children started talking and some more had to +move their chairs around. Jason had to ask Baartock where he had been +and then started to tell him about the story they were listening to. +It was a few minutes before the class was all settled again and ready +to get back to the story. + +The rest of the story didn't make much sense to Baartock, and he was +tired of listening to grown-ups talk. He'd been listening to talking +all morning. He was hungry and wanted something to eat. Finally the +story was over and Mrs. Stogbuchner had them put their chairs back at +the tables and then line up to go to lunch. As soon as they were +waiting quietly, she opened the door and led her class down the hall to +the cafeteria. This was a big room that Baartock hadn't seen before. +There were lots of tables and chairs and all along one side there were +humans fixing food. The smell of food made him even hungrier. Baartock +wanted to rush over and get something, but he had to stay in line. He +had time to look around. He saw Mrs. Jackson talking to some other +adults sitting at a table in the back of the room. + +"All right, dear, here's your tray." + +One of the women handed him a big flat thing. Then Baartock saw that +all the children in front of him were sliding their trays along, and +adults were putting plates of food on the trays. So he slid his along +too. One woman handed him a plate of food. Another gave him a little +dish with some yellow pieces that smelled a little like fruit. Jason +stopped him and gave him a funny shaped box with something cold inside. + +"If you don't want your milk, I'll drink it," he said grinning. + +As they got to the end of the line, Baartock was just about to take his +tray to a table just as everyone else had. + +"Where's your lunch money, dear?" asked the woman at the end of the +line. + +"What's money?" + +"Come on Baartock, give her your lunch money." Jason reached over and +gave the woman some metal pieces. Then Baartock remembered. His mother +had given him some metal pieces, telling him that humans used them. He +reached in his pocket and gave some of them to the woman. He picked up +his tray and followed Jason to a table. + +"You're supposed to get a fork and spoon when you get your tray," Jason +said, looking at Baartock's tray as he opened his milk carton. "You +can use my spoon." + +He took the spoon from Jason, and started to eat. The food was awful. + +"What's this?" he asked Jason with his mouth full. He pointed at the +brown stuff on his plate. + +"Meatloaf," Jason answered, putting another forkful in his mouth. + +Baartock tried the white lumpy stuff that had something brown poured +over it. It tasted so bad that he wanted to spit it out, but he was so +hungry that he swallowed it instead. The slice of bread he recognized, +and it wasn't too bad. At least he could eat it, anyway. He tried a +little bit of the yellow fruit. It tasted as though it had been +soaking in honey, it was that sweet. It didn't even really taste like +fruit. Baartock looked over across the table. + Jason's plate was empty already. He looked around the cafeteria. +All the children were eating the food. The others at their table were +eating it. + +"Don't you like it?" Jason asked. + +Baartock couldn't think of anything to say. It was that awful. He +just shook his head 'no'. Didn't humans eat anything that he could +eat? He was still very hungry. + +"If you're not going to eat it, can I have it?" Jason was just about +to take Baartock's plate, when he saw Mrs. Jackson walking right toward +their table. Instead, he said, "I'll meet you out on the playground," +and picked up his tray and got up. Baartock saw the empty trays were +being taken over to a window in the wall, and were left there. He was +about to get up and follow Jason, when Mrs. Jackson called to him. +"Baartock, did you give these to the cashier?" She was holding the +metal pieces he had given the woman. + +He nodded. "Mother give me." + +"Well, you can't pay for your lunch with them," she told him. "They're +much too valuable. These are gold coins." She held out the smallest +yellow metal one. "This is worth more than the price of a whole year +of school lunches. Do your mother give you any other coins?" + +He reached into his pocket and got out the rest of the coins and handed +them to Mrs. Jackson. + +"These are all old coins," she said, examining them. "Most of these +coins are made of silver. There isn't a new coin here." She reached +into her pocket and pulled out a coin to show him. + +"These are the new coins," she said, showing him the ones she had. +"Yours might look the same, but they're much older and worth much more. +I'll have to talk to your mother about these. You really shouldn't +bring something so valuable to school. You might lose them." + +Baartock didn't know what 'valuable' was, and was going to tell her +that his mother had a jar full of these coins, but Mrs. Jackson noticed +his plate still full of food. + +"I thought you were hungry." "Am hungry," he said, then pointed at +the plate. He remembered the word that meant just how awful the food +was. "Terrible," he said. + +"You don't like it? I thought our lunch was pretty good today." + +"Terrible," he said again. "Can't eat." + +Mrs. Jackson thought for a moment. "There's no reason you can't bring +your lunch to school, instead of buying it," she said. "and I want to +talk to your mother about these coins. I'll drive you home after +school, so I can talk to her. May I keep these coins to give back to +her?" + +"Yes," Baartock said + +Mrs. Jackson walked away, thinking about how little she really knew +about trolls. + +Baartock got up from the table and took his tray over to the window in +the wall. Looking inside, he saw that there was someone to take the +trays and wash the plates and forks and spoons. Leaving his tray, he +went out the door to the playground to find Jason. + + + + +Chapter 9 + + +By the time Mrs. Stogbuchner came out to the playground to call her +class, Baartock had almost forgotten how hungry he was. He had found +Jason and they had raced four times, and Baartock had won three times. +Then several other boys had joined in, and they'd played tag. That was +a whole new game for Baartock. He liked being 'it', then he could do +the chasing. When he was 'not it', he could run faster than any of the +other boys, so they didn't try to chase him at all. + +They went back into the classroom, and all the children went to their +seats and got out their pencil boxes. Baartock was horrified to +discover that his pencil box was missing. It wasn't on the table where +he'd left it. It wasn't in the drawer at his place at the table. It +was his brand-new pencil box and he hadn't even used the crayons yet, +and now it was gone. He didn't see it anywhere. + +"Hello. You must be Baartock." + +He looked around to see an adult standing right behind him. + +"I'm Mrs. Pangle, Timmy's mother." She pointed at one of the boys at +the next table. "I come in two afternoons a week. I'm the aide for +this class." + +Baartock might have asked what an 'aide' was, but he was worried about +his pencil box. "If you're looking for your box, I put it in your +cubby." + +"Where cubby?" He didn't know that he had a cubby, but if that was +where his box was, he wanted to find it. + +"It's right over here." Mrs. Pangle led him to the back of the room, +and stopped near the door going outside. "Here you are," she said +pointing. "This is your cubby." + +There, just as she had said, was his missing pencil box. He picked it +up and held it, almost afraid that he might lose it again. + +"My cubby?" he asked. + +"That's right. See, right here, 'Baartock'." At the top of his cubby +was a little card with marks on it. He thought they looked like the +marks Mrs. Jackson had made on his pencil box. He looked at his box. +The marks were just the same. "I fixed it for you while you were at +lunch." + +He remembered what Mrs. Jackson said that humans say when only one +gives something. "Thank you," he said. + +"You're welcome, Baartock. You shouldn't leave your things on the +table, unless Mrs. Stogbuchner tells you to. It makes the room messy +and you might lose something. Either put them in here, or in your +drawer in the table." + +He didn't to tell her that he wasn't going to lose his box again. He +held on to it tightly. "And over here is where you can hang a coat," +Mrs. Pangle said, pointing to some hooks in the wall. "This one is +yours." + +There were cards over each hook, and there was a mark on one that he +recognized. That must be his hook. + +"You'd better get back to your seat now. But I'll be here if you need +help." + +He went back to the table and found that someone had given him some +sheets of paper with marks all over them. They didn't look like the +ones he and Jason had used the crayons on before. And they weren't. + +"It's a writing worksheet," Jason said. "You're supposed to make +letters on the lines that look just like the ones they've made." + +Baartock looked at the papers, then opened his box and got out his +crayons. + +"No, you're supposed to use your pencil," Jason said, seeing what +Baartock was holding. + +Baartock looked around and saw than none of them were using crayons. +He had wanted to make colored marks, but they were all using long +yellow sticks instead. He hadn't used one of those before. He put +away his box of crayons, and got out his yellow stick. He tried to use +his the way all the children were, but it wouldn't make any marks on +the paper. The girl sitting across the table started giggling. She had +been watching him. + +"You have to sharpen it," she said. "The pencil sharpener is on Mrs. +Stogbuchner's desk." + +Baartock got up and walked up to the desk. He looked all over the +desk, but he didn't see anything to sharpen the stick with. There +wasn't a knife, or any kind of blade. Mississtog-Buchner was helping a +girl at one table and Mississpangel was helping a boy in the back of +the classroom. He just stood there looking at the desk and waited. + +"Yes, Baartock, what do you need?" Mrs. Stogbuchner had finished with +the girl and saw him just standing at her desk. Baartock wasn't sure +just what to say, so he held up the pencil instead. + +"Do you need some help with the pencil sharpener?" she asked. Several +children in the front of the class started snickering. "All right, get +back to your work," she said to them as she came over to help him. + +"This is the pencil sharpener," she said, and taking the pencil from +his hand, "and this is how to use it." She put the pencil in a hole in +a little box and started working the little crank on the side. She +pulled the pencil out of the box, and it had a point. "That's how you +do it. You don't want to sharpen it too much, or you'd grind it all +away. Is that all you need?" + +Baartock nodded and took the pencil from her and went back to his seat. +The pencil now made marks on the paper, but they weren't pretty, like +the marks the crayons made. Just little black lines. He looked over at +Jason. He had already done two pages and was just starting on the +third. The girl across the table was still working on the second page. +Baartock hurried to catch up. The marks weren't hard to make. Some of +them were very like the ones his mother had shown him. + +He was working hard, and had just finished the first page, when the +bell rang. He started to jump up, but the table was in the way, and he +fell over backwards. The bell just went on ringing. + +"Boys and girls. Line up at the back door," Mrs. Stogbuchner called to +the laughing children. Mrs. Pangle rushed over to help Baartock up off +the floor. He wasn't hurt, only surprised. And the bell just kept on +ringing. + +"Children!" Mrs. Stogbuchner had to shout. "Pay attention. This is a +fire drill. Just leave everything and line up. Now! Mrs. Pangle, is +he all right? Good. Then will you lead the class out onto the +playground? Over by the fence. I'll be right along." She went over +to turn off the lights and make sure that the door and windows were +closed. + +The children were still laughing as they went out the door. Baartock +and Mrs. Stogbuchner were the last ones out. + +"Are you all right, Baartock? You didn't hurt yourself?" she asked. + +"Not hurt," he said. The bell was still ringing, even though all the +children in the school seemed to be lined up in the playground. "What +you call this?" + +"When the bell rings like that it is a fire alarm. If someone +discovers a fire, they sound that bell. Then you are supposed to get +out of the building as quickly and safely as possible. You aren't +supposed to run or fall down. Then the firemen would come to put out +the fire. It's called a fire drill." + +It didn't seem like a fire drill to him. "Where fire?" he asked. +Right then the school bell finally stopped ringing. + +"There wasn't a real fire," she answered. "It's so you would know what +to do if there were a real fire." + +The whole thing seemed a little silly to Baartock. He knew all about +fire. His mother cooked over a fire. He had to help bring in kindling +and small logs for the fire. There wasn't very much in the school to +burn. It wasn't much of a fire drill. There wasn't any fire. + +Mrs. Stogbuchner had walked over to the middle of the class and held up +her hand. When they were quiet she started talking. + +"Children. I'm very unhappy about what you did in there. What happened +to Baartock could have been very serious. He could have been hurt +badly. It wasn't funny. A fire alarm is very serious. Because you were +laughing, you couldn't hear me, and I had to shout. When there's a fire +alarm, I shouldn't have to shout, just as you shouldn't run. We are +going to have to practice this again." + + + + +Chapter 10 + + +When the 'all clear' bell sounded, which was just one very short ring +of the bell, Mrs. Pangle led the class back inside. But they didn't +stay inside for long. As soon as they had finished the worksheets, +Mrs. Stogbuchner stood at the front of the room and announced, "This is +a fire drill. Everyone line up quickly at the back door." + +They all lined up and practiced the fire drill, and because Bobby +Miller was talking, they had to practice it another time. + +This time, except for the noise the chairs made, scraping the floor as +the children got up, there wasn't a sound in the classroom. Mrs. +Stogbuchner was finally satisfied. + +"Now that's the way I want you to behave the next time we have a fire +drill," she said. + +The class had a very short recess, because they had taken so long +practicing the fire drill. They didn't get to play dodge ball, and +they mostly sat around talking. Except no-one would talk to Bobby +Miller, and he sat by himself on a swing, not even swinging. + +"What's dodge ball?" asked Baartock. He wanted to know, even if they +weren't going to do it. + +"You've never played dodge ball?" Jason exclaimed. "It's sort-of like +tag, except it takes a lot of kids. Some kids make a circle and throw +the ball at the kids in the middle. And if they hit you, you're out. +You're fast, so you should be good at it." + +Jason's saying that made Baartock feel really good. He had been +unhappy ever since he had fallen over when the fire drill bell sounded. +When he fell in the woods, there were always rocks or sharp sticks to +land on and that hurt. He hadn't hurt himself, but the floor was hard. +He decided that he didn't like the school bell. It always surprised +him and made him jump. + +When recess was over, they all went back into the classroom and +Baartock finally got to use his crayons on the new worksheets. It +didn't seem very long before Mrs. Jackson was at the door. + +"Mrs. Stogbuchner, can I have Baartock now?" she asked. + +"Baartock, would you please put away your things and go with Mrs. +Jackson." + +Jason helped him put his papers in the drawer of the table. But +Baartock didn't put his pencil box in with them. He held on to it +tightly as he and Mrs. Jackson walked out of the classroom. + +"You're taking your pencil box home?" she asked. + +"Show mother," was his answer. + +"Just remember to bring it back tomorrow. You'll be riding the school +bus tomorrow, so I want you to meet your school bus driver." + +They went out to the parking lot and there were a lot of yellow school +busses waiting in a line. + +"You'll be riding bus number 62," she said as they went down the +sidewalk. They stopped at one of the busses. "This is the bus you'll +be riding. See, number 62. Mr. Barnes is the driver, and when you're +on his bus, you have to sit quietly and do just what he tells you." + +They walked over to the door of the bus and the man sitting inside +pulled on a lever and the door opened. + +"Hi," he said with a big grin. "What can I do for you, Mrs. Jackson?" + +"Mr. Barnes, this is Baartock." + +"Hi Baartock. Are you going to be on my bus?" + +"Yes," Mrs. Jackson answered, before Baartock could say anything. "I'm +taking him home today, because I need to talk to his mother. He'll be +riding with you, starting tomorrow morning. He'll be just down from +where the Howards used to live." + +"OK. That would put you between Bobby Gill and Laura Robinson. No +problem." + +"Thank you," said Mrs. Jackson. Baartock hadn't seen Mr. Barnes give +her anything, and he wondered why she said 'thank you'. + +"I have to gather up a few things before I take you home," said Mrs. +Jackson. "Let's go back to the office." + +"See you tomorrow," called Mr. Barnes, as they walked away. Baartock +had wanted to stay and look at the school bus, but he followed her back +inside the school. + +"Please wait here," she said, when they were in the office, and she +went behind the counter and into another room. Ms. Laurence was busy +at her desk. He heard her say something, but she wasn't looking at him. + +"What?" he asked. + +"I'll be with you in a minute, Baartock," she said, looking over at +him. "I'm talking on the phone." + +He watched her carefully. She was sitting in a chair and she kept +looking at some papers on the desk, and it seemed as though she was +talking to the thing she was holding in her hand. + +Baartock walked over to the door and looked out. There wasn't anyone +in the hall, and he could look out the open front doors at the line of +school busses. + +"Now, what can I do for you?" asked Ms. Laurence. + +Baartock turned around. Ms. Laurence was standing at the counter. He +was about to ask what a phone was, when the bell went off and Baartock +jumped. Ms. Laurence smiled at him. "I used to hate that bell," she +said, "but you do get used to it." + +Suddenly, there was a lot of noise in the hall, and cries of 'No +running!' The hall was rapidly filling with talking, pushing, hurrying +children. Lots of them were bigger than Baartock. Some were carrying +books. And all of them were trying to get out the front doors. + +Mrs. Jackson came rushing out of the other room. "I'll be right with +you Baartock," she said as she hurried out of the office and down the +hall to the front of the building. He could hear her voice calling, "No +running, Carlos!" and "The bus won't leave without you, Helen." + +Baartock watched some of the kids from his class go out the door. Then +there was Jason, going right past the office door. + +"Hey Baartock! You'll miss the bus!" he said as he kept hurrying down +the hall. + +"Bus tomorrow," Baartock said. "Mrs. Jackson drive today." + +"OK. See you tomorrow," he yelled as he turned and ran out the door. + +"Slow down, Jason," he heard Mrs. Jackson call. Then he had to get out +of the doorway, because several teachers were pushing past him to get +into the office. He went over to the bench and sat down to wait. + +"Hello Baartock." Mr. Fennis was standing just inside the doorway, +with an arm-load of books and papers. "How do you like school?" He +didn't wait for an answer, but went behind the counter, and started +getting more papers out of a cubby. + +In a little while, Mrs. Jackson came back into the office. "We'll be +going in just a minute," she said, as she went back into the other +room. Baartock sat and watched the teachers and Mrs. Jackson wasn't +gone very long this time. She came out with her briefcase in her hand. + +"I'm ready to go now," she said. They went out to the parking lot and +got into her car. She checked to make sure he had fastened his +seat-belt properly, and then started the engine. + +"Is there anything you'd like to see?" she asked, as she backed the car +out of the parking place. + +Baartock didn't have to think about it. "Bridge," he said. + +"Of course you'd want to see a bridge." She had almost forgotten that +he was a troll. "We were almost there this morning." + +"Where bridge?" Baartock asked excitedly. He had decided there just +weren't any bridges near-by. + +"There's one right her in the middle of town. It's a little ways past +the clinic, on Main Street. It's not too far. Would you like to look +at it?" + +"Yes." Then he remembered. "Thank you," he said. + +"You're welcome, Baartock." + +They drove along Main Street, and he recognized the little house where +they had been that morning and pointed to it. + +"Yes," said Mrs. Jackson, "that's the clinic. We're almost to the +bridge now." + +After a few more blocks, she turned a corner onto a side street and +stopped the car. "Well, we're here." + +"Where bridge?" Baartock asked as he looked all around. + +"It's right over there," she said pointing. "Let's get out so you can +look at it." + +They got out of the car and walked across at the corner. Then Baartock +saw the bridge. It was a simple span going over a wide stream bed, but +there wasn't very much water in the stream bed below. + And the bridge was built of concrete, just like the culvert he'd +hidden in on his first day. Part of the town was on one side of the +bridge, and there was more of the town on the other side. The road +crossed the bridge for cars and trucks, and busses. And there was a +sidewalk on the bridge for people to go across. He didn't know just +what to say. He was happy because there was a bridge, but it was a +human-made bridge and nothing like as good as a troll-built bridge. He +looked at it carefully. After a while, he said, "Go home now." He'd +found a bridge. + + + + +Chapter 11 + + +Mrs. Jackson had a lot to talk about with his mother, when they got to +his home. They had talked all morning and now they were talking some +more. He had wanted to tell his father about the bridge, but he wasn't +home yet. So he had to sit and listen to Mrs. Jackson and his mother. +When they started talking about lunch money, he remembered how very +hungry he was, and went to get something to eat. They were still +talking about money when he finished eating. They agreed on a price and +Mrs. Jackson got one of the small silver coins with some of her 'new' +coins, and he could use some of those 'new' coins to buy milk and fruit +at lunch time. And he could bring his own lunch. He was glad of that, +because he didn't like the humans' food. Then they talked about the +school bus. He wasn't very sure that he was going to like being on the +school bus. Mrs. Jackson had explained the 'Rules for Riding the +School Bus', which was the name on a piece of paper she gave to his +mother. There were so many things he couldn't do on the bus. One of +the rules was 'No whistling'. When he asked her what whistling was, +she puckered up her mouth and made a strange sound. 'No bird noises', +Baartock decided. + +"Just behave like you did in my car today," she said, "and you won't +have any problem. You'll like Mr. Barnes." + +Very early next morning, Baartock was standing by the side of the road +when the yellow school bus drove up. He was holding his pencil box and +a bag with his lunch. Mrs. Jackson had shown him a place that she +thought would be a safe spot to stand and wait for the bus. It wasn't +right by the driveway to the 'old Howard house', but it wasn't right by +the stream bed and the path he used to come down to the road, either. + +The bus made a screeching noise as it came to a stop right in front of +him. + +"OK. Come on up. Thought I'd you'd be closer to the house," Mr. +Barnes said in a loud voice, when he opened the bus door. Then he +shouted, "OK. New customer today. Which seat can I sell him. I think +this one," he said, pointing at a seat for just one person right in the +front of the bus. There was one very big boy sitting in the seat. +"Gabe, you've been pretty good this week. Find yourself a new seat." + +"Aw, Mr. Barnes, do I have to?" + +"Go on now. Find a seat, before we're late getting to school." Gabe +gathered up his books and moved back to the middle of the bus and sat +next to another big boy, and Baartock sat on the empty front seat. He +looked around for the seat belt, as he started driving down the road. + +"What's the matter? Got ants in your pants?" Mr. Barnes asked, when +he saw Baartock squirming. + +"No," Baartock said. He didn't have ants anywhere. He asked, "No seat +belt?" Mr. Barnes was using one. + +"No," was the answer. "They say that they're going to put seat belts +in the all the busses. Maybe by the time you're in high school. You +just stay in your seat, and I'll drive carefully." + +The bus went on down the road, stopping to pick up children waiting by +the road. Soon there were a lot of kids on the bus. Mr. Barnes kept +talking to Baartock all the time he was driving. In fact, he was +talking to everyone on the bus, he was talking so loudly. Much of what +he said didn't make any sense to Baartock, but the kids laughed at some +of the things he said. Soon, Mr. Barnes turned the bus onto another +road. + +"School that way," Baartock said loudly, pointing down the other road. +"Nice try, kid. I know you're in a hurry to get to school, but we've +got to go to the high school first." + +"We can go to the grade school first!" came a shout from the back of +the bus. + +"The mall! A field trip to the mall," someone else shouted. + +"Some other day," Mr. Barnes shouted back. They went on down this road +for quite a while. They went right past some children standing by the +side of the road. + +"They're waiting for a different bus," Mr. Barnes explained to +Baartock. "It'll be along soon." + +Very soon after that, the bus pulled off the road into a parking lot, +in front of a building much larger than the school Baartock was going +to. The parking lot was filled with cars, and humans were walking to +the building. There were six or seven big yellow school busses lined +up in front of the building and lots of big kids were getting off. + +"OK, high school, you students of higher education. Off!" called Mr. +Barnes, as he pulled up really closely behind the last bus. All the +big kids got out of their seats and came up to the front of the bus to +get off. There were more busses lining up behind Mr. Barnes' bus, but +they weren't letting anyone off. + +There were still a lot of smaller children on the bus, when Mr. Barnes +closed the door. + +"Next stop, Marvis T. Johnson Elementary School," announced Mr. Barnes. +But they didn't go anywhere. They had to wait for the bus in front of +them to pull off. Baartock could see inside the bus in front of them. +The big kids were getting off very slowly. The woman driving that bus +seemed to be talking to each of them as they got off. + +"She must have had some trouble with them," Mr. Barnes said. + "We never have any trouble on this bus, do we?" he said very loudly. + + "No!" several kids shouted back. + + Most of the busses in the front of the school building had +driven off. Several more busses from behind them pulled around, and +parked up ahead. They waited a little longer, then finally the bus in +front drove off. And they drove off too. + +They didn't go back the way they had come. They turned onto another +road, and drove for a long way, past a lot of houses, until they +finally turned toward the school. Baartock asked Mr. Barnes why they +were going such a long way. + +"It's shorter this way," was his reply. "I've been coming this way for +years." + +"No," said Baartock. "Other way shorter. We be school, go this far." + +They drove for a little while longer, then they finally got to school. +There were other busses lined up in front when Mr. Barnes stopped the +bus and they got off. + +"See you all this afternoon," Mr. Barnes said, as they were getting off. + +This was the first time Baartock had gotten to school in the morning +before it started. No-one seemed to be going inside. Jerry, a +black-haired kid who had played tag, was getting off the next bus in +front. He saw Baartock and came running over. + +"Want to go to the playground?" he asked. + +They went around the building to the playground. Jason was already +there, and they raced a couple of times, then they went over and +climbed on the jungle gym. They were just sitting at the top when the +bell rang. A lot of the children ran to the building and went inside. + +"That's only the first bell," said Jerry. "We've got lots of time." +So they sat for a while longer, until Jason started to get down. + +"I'm going in," he said. And all three of them went into the +classroom, just as the bell rang again. + + + + +Chapter 12 + + +School in the morning wasn't very different from school in the +afternoon, Baartock decided. There were some of the work-sheets that +had to be colored, but these were of shapes of things and numbers. +They got to work with a lot of pieces of paper with numbers on both +sides that Jason said were called flash-cards. He said that you were +to add the numbers on the front of a flash card, and your answer was +the same as the one on the back of the card. The morning went by very +quickly for Baartock. + +Then, right before lunch time, Mrs. Stogbuchner read another story. +This time, he understood most of the story. It was about a boy taking +care of sheep, and when he got lonely, he would yell 'Wolf!' and all +the villagers would come. They got angry at the boy, when they didn't +find a wolf. But the boy got lonely and did it again, and the +villagers got angry again. Finally, when the wolf did come, and the +boy yelled 'Wolf!' the villagers didn't come. + +When Mrs. Stogbuchner finished reading the story, Baartock asked, "Why +boy not scare wolf?" + +"Well, wolves are big mean, animals," she said, "and the boy was +probably scared of this wolf." + +"Wolf scare easy," said Baartock. + +"You'd just yell at it and it would run away," said one of the girls. + +"Wolf scare easy," said Baartock again. He'd never seen a wolf, +because there weren't any around there. But his father had talked +about them. They were just like foxes, only bigger. Most of the +animals in the woods were very scared of humans and of trolls, and +would usually run way. There were two foxes that lived near Baartock's +home, and it had been very hard to watch them. At first, they were +very scared of him. It had taken a lot of food, and many nights of +quiet waiting, before the foxes would come near him. Even now that +they were used to him, if he made any sudden movement or loud noise, +they would still run away. Anyway, Baartock was sure that he could +scare a wolf. + +"You couldn't scare anything," said the girl. + + Baartock was really insulted. He was just about ready to +do some scaring right then, when Mrs. Stogbuchner said, "All right, +that's enough. It's time to get ready for lunch." + +Most of the children went to line up at the door and Baartock and a few +children went over to their cubbies to get their lunches. Then they +went to line up also. The girl was right in front of Baartock in the +line. She looked back at him and said, "You couldn't scare anything." + + Baartock could see Mrs. Stogbuchner looking right at them, +but he said very quietly, "Can scare you." + +"Janice, Baartock, stop it right now. That's enough," Mrs. Stogbuchner +said, and the girl turned around. + +The class went down the hall to the cafeteria and Baartock waited in +lunch line to get a container of milk and an apple. When he got to the +end of the line, he held out some of the coins his mother had gotten +from Mrs. Jackson, and the woman took two of them. He went over to the +table where Jason was and sat down and started getting his lunch out. +Janice had been waiting to see where he would sit, and she came over +and sat at the same table. + +"Baartock, you couldn't scare anything," she said. Baartock started to +say something, but Mrs. Stogbuchner was standing near the table and she +said something first. + +"Janice. I told you to stop it," she said. + +"But he said," Janice started to say. + +"He didn't say anything. I've been standing right here. Now, just eat +your lunch quietly, or I'll move you to another table." + +"Yes, Mrs. Stogbuchner," Janice said, and Mrs. Stogbuchner walked off +to another part of the cafeteria. Baartock had been listening, but he +was hungry and had started eating his lunch. His mother had packed a +good lunch. + +"Oh yuch! What's that you're eating?" Janice shrieked. All the talking +in the cafeteria stopped and Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Stogbuchner came +hurrying over to the table. Baartock looked over and saw she was +pointing right at him. + +"What are you eating?" she shrilled again. Everybody in the cafeteria +was looking at their table. + +Baartock kept on chewing, but he opened up his sandwich to show her. + +"Snake," he said, "very good." On the slice of bread was a row of +little green snakes. Some were a little bigger than others and the +heads and tails were hanging down over the edge of the bread. + It had been a good summer and there were lots of snakes and lizards. + +"That looks really good," said Jason. "Can I have a bite?" Jason +didn't really think it looked good, but he was enjoying teasing Janice. + +"Oh! Mrs. Stogbuchner, can I move?" Janice asked looking up at the +teacher. + +"I think you should," she answered, "and let Baartock eat his lunch in +peace." She picked up Janice's lunch tray and she and Janice went over +to the other side of the cafeteria. Mrs. Jackson walked off too, and +everyone started eating their lunches and talking again. + +After they were gone, Jason asked, "You really eat that?" + +"Good," said Baartock. "You try." He held out his sandwich to Jason. + +Jason took the sandwich, and looked at it as if it were going to eat +him. Then, carefully avoiding the snake heads, took a tiny bite and +started chewing. "It's ok," he said as he handed it back to Baartock, +then he quickly took a drink of milk. + +After finishing his lunch, Baartock took his lunch bag, which still had +some acorns left in it, and he and Jason went out to the playground. +They were standing near the door when Janice came out. + +"You should have had some of Baartock's sandwich," Jason yelled to her. +"It was really yummy." + +Janice hurried off toward the swings and Jason and Baartock went over +to the jungle gym and climbed to the top. + +Soon, Mrs. Stogbuchner came out to get the class back inside. The rest +of the afternoon went by quickly. There weren't any fire drills, and +they got to play dodge ball at recess. Baartock thought it was a fun +game. He liked being in the middle. The children in the circle had to +throw a big ball, and it was easy to keep away from it. Even though +Baartock wasn't the last one left inside the circle any of the times, +he still had fun. + +They went back to the classroom and did some more worksheets. Baartock +was surprised when Mrs. Stogbuchner said that it was time to put +everything away. "Now don't forget about show-and-tell on Monday," she +said. + +Baartock raised his hand, like he had seen the children do when they +wanted to ask something. + +"Yes, Baartock?" + +"What showandtell?" he asked. + +"You can bring in something to show the rest of the class and tell +about it. Something you like or you think is unusual. I'm sure that +you have something you would like to share with the class." + +Baartock had an idea right away about something to bring, but he didn't +say what it was. + +"Now leave your tables straight and put your chairs in their places, +then line up at the door." + +There was a lot of rushing around and putting things away, and soon +they were all lined up. + +"All right. I want you to have a nice weekend. I'll see you on +Monday," Mrs. Stogbuchner said just as the bell rang. Baartock didn't +jump this time. He had guessed that the bell was about to ring. They +hurried down the hall to get to the school busses. + +"See you Monday," Jason called as he ran off to his bus. Baartock +walked along the sidewalk until he came to bus 62. + +"You were right," Mr. Barnes said as Baartock go on the bus. + "The other road is shorter." He kept on talking all the way to the +high school. He kept talking all the time until he stopped to let +Baartock off the bus. Baartock wasn't listening to him. He was +thinking about showandtell. + + + + +Chapter 13 + + +Monday morning, Baartock was down by the side of the road, waiting +anxiously for the school bus to arrive. When he had asked his mother +what 'weekend' and 'Monday' were, she had explained that many people +didn't work everyday, and took two days every week to do other things. +While trolls like to work everyday until the job is done and then rest; +humans like to take little rests every week, she told him. He would +have to wait two extra days, until Monday, for school and showandtell. +She decided that he would need to know, so she taught him the human +names for the days of the week. + +There were dark clouds overhead when Baartock went down the hill to +wait for the bus, but it wasn't raining yet. It had gotten really +cloudy the day before. Baartock remembered the human name for that day +was Sunday. His father had said that they were going to have a lot of +rain. Baartock liked it when there was a lot of rain, like there had +been during the summer. Then there were lots of pools and mud to go +splashing in, and there was water running down hill under his bridge. +He liked to hide under it then, because it was even more like a real +troll bridge. + +He was happy to see the school bus drive up. He wanted to get to +school for showandtell. He climbed into the school bus and sat on the +front seat. + +"Hey, Baartock. Do you know where the high school is? From right +here?" Mr. Barnes asked, looking at him. + +Baartock just pointed and said "That way." + +Mr. Barnes stopped to think about it, then he said, "You're right. How +about to your school?" + +Baartock pointed again, in a different direction. + "You know, you're a regular little compass," Mr. Barnes said as +he started to drive off. + +Baartock didn't know what a compass was, but any troll could give +directions. It was easy. + +They got to school earlier than they had on Friday, and Baartock went +around to the playground. Jason wasn't there, so Baartock went over to +the swings to wait for him. Soon both Jason and Jerry were coming +around the corner of the school to the playground. They were talking +about what they had done over the weekend. Jerry said that he had been +to see a movie. That didn't sound very exciting to Baartock, though he +wasn't sure what a 'movie' was. Jason seemed interested though and +asked all about it. + +Soon the first bell rang and Baartock went into the classroom. He +wanted to get ready for showandtell. Mrs. Stogbuchner was at her desk +and she called him over. + +"I had a talk with Mrs. Jackson, and I think I should go talk to your +mother," she said. "Maybe you could bring something a little less +trollish for lunch." + +Baartock didn't understand what she wanted to talk to his mother about, +but he said, "Mother home now." + +"I can't go right now," said Mrs. Stogbuchner, "but maybe sometime +later this week. Did you bring something for show-and-tell?" + +"Yes," said Baartock. + +"Will you tell me what you brought?" + +Baartock had wanted it to be a surprise, but he told her. Mrs. +Stogbuchner listened carefully as Baartock explained. Finally she +asked, "Do you know how to use it?" + +Baartock nodded. + +Then she said, "I'll have to ask Mrs. Jackson if it's all right. You +put your things away and I'll go talk to her about it now." She got up +from her desk and went out the door. + +All the children had come in when the second bell rang. Mrs. +Stogbuchner came hurrying into the classroom. + +"All right. Take your seats and settle down," she said to the class. +She came over to Baartock. "Mrs. Jackson said that you could show it +to the class, but it has to be outside on the playground. And she wants +to be there." + +The morning went by so slowly for Baartock. He couldn't keep his +thoughts on what they were doing. He wanted it to be time for +showandtell. Finally, Mrs. Jackson came into the classroom. + +"Class," Mrs. Stogbuchner said, "It's time for show-and-tell. Baartock +has brought something that I think you'll all want to see, but he will +have to show you outside. Since it looks like rain, I think he should +be first. Everybody please line up by the door and we'll go out and +see what Baartock brought." + +Mrs. Jackson came over to Baartock and said, "I've never seen this. +Can you really make it work?" + +Baartock nodded, and went over to his cubby to get his bag with his +surprise for showandtell. + +When they were all outside gathered around Mrs. Stogbuchner on part of +the playground where there wasn't any grass, she said, "Baartock, show +the class what you brought and tell them about it." + +He came into the middle of the class. "You show me fire drill," he +said. "But no fire. I show you fire drill that make fire." He held +out a little bow, a straight stick, and two small blocks of wood. + +"Will you show the class how it works?" asked Mrs. Jackson. + +Baartock knelt down and put one of the blocks on the ground and put +some tree bark next to it. Then he put the straight stick in a small +hole in that block, wrapped the bowstring around the stick, and holding +the second block in his hand put it on top of the stick. Then he +started to work the bow back and forth. + +"This fire drill make fire," he said again. + +"Does this really work?" somebody asked. + +"We were supposed to learn how to use these in scouts," said Mrs. +Stogbuchner, as Baartock worked the bow back and forth. "But none of +us could make them work." + +Before she could say anything else, the bark that Baartock had put next +to the block was starting to smoke. Then it was smoking a lot, and +Baartock dropped the fire drill and picked up the bark and started to +blow on it. And it burst into flame. + +He dropped the burning bark on the ground, and picked up the bow and +stick. "Fire drill," he said. + +"But how does it work?" somebody wanted to know. + +"Wood get hot. Make fire," Baartock explained. He held out the bottom +wood block, which was still hot. The class gathered in closely to feel +how hot it was. Mrs. Jackson was making sure that the burning bark was +all put out. + +Just then it started to rain, big heavy drops. + +"Everybody back inside," called Mrs. Stogbuchner. "Don't line up. Just +get inside quickly." + +Everybody ran for the classroom door. Baartock quickly gathered up his +fire drill and he and Mrs. Jackson hurried after the class. + +When they were all settled in the classroom again, Mrs. Stogbuchner +said, "Thank you Baartock, for showing us another kind of fire drill. +Now, does anyone else have anything for show-and-tell?" + + + + +Chapter 14 + + +It was raining harder than ever when they went to lunch. Looking out +the classroom windows, Baartock couldn't see the trees or the houses +across the wide grass strip next to the school. He couldn't see the +street. He could just barely see the grass outside the window. It was +a blowing, dark gray rainstorm. At times, the wind would blow the +raindrops right at the windows. Just a little while later, the rain +was pouring straight down. Everybody seemed to be thinking of other +things. Even Mrs. Stogbuchner kept losing her place in the story she +was reading, whenever the rain would come crashing against the windows. +Finally it was lunchtime. + +Baartock bought milk in the lunch line, but the fruit they had were +some long yellow things that he hadn't seen before, so he didn't get +any. When he sat at the table across from Jason, the red-haired boy +asked, "Why do you call that a fire drill?" + "Drill. Make holes same way," Baartock answered, and made a +back and forth motion with his hand. + +"I guess you could get through wood. But it must take a long time." + +"Wood. Stone too," replied Baartock. + +"You can drill through stone like that?" + +"Use many shafts," said Baartock, making an up and down motion, meaning +the straight stick he had used. "Make hole." + +Jason was about to say something when there was a sudden flash of light +and a tremendous thunderblast right outside the cafeteria. The people +sitting by the windows jumped up, and someone knocked a lunch tray onto +the floor. One of the women who worked in the cafeteria brought over a +mop to clean up the spilled food, and everybody who had been sitting +next to the windows moved to different seats. The rain was now +squirting against the windows, and some water was coming in under the +door to the playground. The woman with the mop went over to clean that +up too. + +Everybody ate very quietly, as if they were waiting for the next +thunderbolt to strike. While they were eating a man came in with a mop +and a bucket and some tools to try to stop the leak around the door. +Baartock was watching the man working, when Jason said, "Let's go back +to the classroom." + +"Not go outside?" asked Baartock. + +"They wouldn't let us. Not in this much rain. Who'd want to go out in +this anyway?" + +Baartock had been thinking about going out. It was only rain. +Instead, when he finished his lunch, he went with Jason back to the +classroom. + +Some others were already back in the classroom, in groups talking, or +just staring out the windows at the rain. Mrs. Stogbuchner was sitting +at her desk, with a lunch tray from the cafeteria, eating, when they +got there. + +"Mrs. Stogbuchner, can we get out the games?" asked Jason. + +"All right. But you'll have to put them away when lunch time is over." + +"All right!" Jason whooped. "Come on, Baartock." + +"And please be quiet," she said, as she went back to her lunch. + +"Yes, Mrs. Stogbuchner," Jason said. + +They went into the back of the classroom, and near the cubbies was a +shelf with some large flat boxes and some smaller ones. + +"You want to play checkers?" asked Jason. + +"Don't know checkers. Show me," said Baartock. + +They sat in the back of the classroom, and Jason taught him how to play +checkers. When some other children saw them playing, they got out +other games, and soon there were lots of people playing all kinds of +games. + +It kept on raining very hard, and there were occasional lightning +flashes and crashes of thunder. + +Lunch time seemed to be going on longer than usual. Baartock had just +lost another game of checkers, and he let Jerry play. He didn't like +checkers very much. None of the other games seemed too interesting +either, so he walked over and looked out the window at the rain. He +saw Ms. Laurence hurry in and go over to talk to Mrs. Stogbuchner. + +"Children." Ms. Laurence had hurried out again and Mrs. Stogbuchner +was walking to the middle of the classroom. "Quiet please." + +There was a lot of stirring around by the children to listen to her. + +"They are going to close school early today, because of all this rain." +She held up her hand for quiet. Some children had started to cheer and +talk as soon as they heard the news. + +"They say that this could be a bad storm, and there could be some +flooding. Since so many of you live on small roads, they decided you +should go home very soon. They're trying to reach the bus drivers now. +If it keeps raining like this, there might not be school tomorrow." + +The children were still quiet, but they were all smiling and poking at +each other. + +"You may go on with your recess now, and I'll have you straighten up +the games just before the busses get here. Now please be very quiet, +while I go to the office." She turned and went out the door. + +Suddenly, none of the children were interested in the games. + They all wanted to talk about getting out of school early, and no +school tomorrow, and what they were going to do. They started talking +quietly, but soon the talk got louder. Then, one of the boys threw a +ball of paper at another boy. There was a lot of loud talking, and +throwing things, and running around, when Mrs. Stogbuchner came back +into the room. + +"Get in your seats! Right now!" She was standing just inside the +door, glaring at the class. + +The children hurried to their chairs and sat down. + +"I told you to be quiet while I went to the office." + +The children looked at each other, as if to find out who had been +making all the noise. "Barbara, Norma, Robert, and Jason, go back and +straighten up the games and put them away. Do it quietly and quickly. +Timmy, hand out these worksheets. Since you don't want recess now, I +have some other work you can do, until the busses get here." + +Timmy walked around the room with the stack of papers she gave him, +putting four worksheets on each table. + +Mrs. Stogbuchner walked to the back of the classroom to watch the +straightening up. The room was very quiet, except for the noises from +the back of the room. + +Baartock started working, and soon Jason sat down and started working +too. + +Mrs. Stogbuchner walked around the room for a while, then she went over +and stood in the doorway, looking down the hall. Soon she said, "Put +your things away now. If you brought raincoats, or have anything else +to take home, get it, then line up." + +Baartock hadn't brought a raincoat, but he went to his cubby to get the +fire drill and his lunchbag. He decided to take his pencil box home, +too. + +The class was all lined up, waiting for the bell. Mrs. Stogbuchner +said, "If it keeps raining like this, watch the news on TV to see if +we're having school tomorrow." Then the bell did ring, and they were +all hurrying to get to the school busses. + +"See you," called Jason, as they went down the hall. They got to the +front door and the wind was blowing the rain right in at them. The +floor was wet and someone had put down rubber mats so they wouldn't +slip or fall. + +When they went outside, everybody ran to the busses. Baartock was +soaked as he got on Mr. Barnes's bus, from just that short run. There +were lights on the front of each bus, and there were sticks wiping back +and forth to get the rain off the front windows. But Mr. Barnes still +drove very slowly to the high school. He wasn't talking all the time, +this afternoon. + +When Baartock got off the bus, he ran to his path to get home. The +creekbed was filled with water rushing and splashing down hill. There +was a lot of water going through the culvert. Baartock hurried up the +hill, next to the stream. He wanted to see what it was like at his +bridge. + + + + +Chapter 15 + + +It had rained all the rest of the day. Baartock had a great time up at +his bridge. The water was racing under the bridge, making a wonderful +gurgling sound. It made hiding under the arch like being in one of the +stories his father told. The only thing missing was someone walking +over the bridge. He would come out from under the bridge screaming his +loudest and run up the side of the stream bed. He could just see them +running away. + +Right then it really didn't matter that there wasn't anyone crossing +his bridge. Baartock now knew so many humans and so much about them, +that was easy to pretend who was walking up to cross the bridge. There +was Mr. Fennis, of course. He had run away so wonderfully. Then there +was Ms. Laurence. Baartock could scare her easily. He didn't pretend +to scare Mrs. Jackson or Mrs. Stogbuchner. + Somehow they didn't seem like people to scare. But that girl in his +class, Janice, Baartock scared her again and again. And some of the +other children in the class. They were all so easy to scare. He was +having a great time. + +He even pretended that Jason was helping him scare people. Not that +Jason was anything like a troll, but Baartock liked him and he thought +Jason would have fun scaring people. + +After a while, when it started to get dark, Baartock went back home in +the rain. He was glad that his father had known it was going to rain. +They had gathered in extra firewood. Even though it wasn't cold, the +fire warmed the cave and helped him to dry off. + +Though it had been raining all day, his mother had fixed an extra good +meal. Baartock really liked the cricket and green bean salad. Later +they all sat around the fire and his mother patched his pants and sewed +on the new winter coat she was making, and his father told stories. He +stayed up late, and it was still raining hard when he finally went to +bed. + +The next morning it was still raining, and his mother told him to go +wait for the bus, but if it didn't come when it should, to come back +home. And his father surprised him by saying he would be staying home +if it kept on raining. The room he was working on in the cavern would +probably be flooded, and he wouldn't be able to work. + +So, while it was still raining quite hard, Baartock went down to stand +by the side of the road and wait for the school bus. Actually, he +wasn't waiting right beside the road in the rain, but back a little +way, under some trees that still had lots of leaves. He thought he +could see the bus in time to come out and catch it. He waited and +waited, but he didn't see a bus or a car or anything coming down the +road. He went over to look at the culvert. Rain water was coming +roaring down the stream bed right at the culvert, but there was so much +that it couldn't all get through. There were branches and rocks that +had come down with the water that were blocking the opening. It was +beginning to make a pool on that side of the road. On the other side, +it was shooting out of the culvert, but it was beginning to make a pool +there too. + +When Baartock felt he had waited long enough, he went back home. His +father was carving out some extra shelves in the kitchen. He went to +watch his father work, and started handing him tools. They worked most +of the morning. His mother came back home and saw the mess they were +making, and started making some sandwiches. They all finished about +the same time, and his mother chased them both out of the cave so she +could clean up. There were rock chips all over the kitchen. + +Then Baartock and his father went up and sat under his bridge and ate +their sandwiches. For a while, his father told stories, about when he +had been a young troll, before he'd earned his name. Then they looked +at some places that Baartock had had trouble with building his bridge. +They stood in the stream and the pouring rain, and his father showed +him some better ways to do the stone-work. They even took a few of the +stones out, and his father worked on them, then they put them back. +Baartock was much happier about the way the bridge looked now. Then +his father showed him places where the water might weaken the bridge if +they weren't fixed, not today, but later when the rain stopped and the +water went down. + +While they were working the rain eased up as if it were going to stop, +then it started coming down again as hard as before. They had quite a +busy afternoon, and his father said that it was time to go home, even +if there was still a mess in the kitchen for them to clean up. + +It rained all the next day, too. Not as hard as before, just a steady +rain that went on and on. Baartock went down in the morning to see if +the bus would come, but it didn't. He waited a long time, playing +beside the stream, but nothing came along the road. + +The culvert that he had hidden in was completely blocked now, with +branches and rocks. The water had made a big pool, and it was flowing +over the road. He went up the hill a little way and sat there, +dropping small branches into the stream, and watching them float down, +across the pool and across the road. + +After a while, he went back home. It was such fun to splash his way up +the stream. He got thoroughly soaked. When he got home and dry, he +helped his father make one of the closets larger. His father chipped +and dug at the rock wall, and Baartock swept and picked-up, and carried +all of the trash outside in a bucket. They worked most of the +afternoon. Dinner was a simple meal. It had been too wet to go get +anything, so it was mostly left-overs. + +The rain stopped just after dinnertime, and Baartock went out to look +around. It was getting dark, but he walked up to his bridge. He was +worried about the spots his father had pointed out. When he got there, +his bridge was all right. An opossum was hiding under the arch, trying +to stay dry, and it growled at him. It wanted to be left alone and +Baartock was able to see what he wanted to, without chasing it off. + +Going home in the dark, he slipped and fell into the stream a couple of +times. He was glad to sit by the fire and get dry, now that he knew +that his bridge was safe. + +The nest morning it wasn't raining, though there were still a lot of +clouds overhead. But they were blowing away, and it might be sunny +later. Baartock walked down to wait for the bus. He went down the +path beside the stream. Even though the rain had stopped the night +before, the stream was just as full as it had been when it was raining. +It was still rushing and splashing its way down the hill. + +Baartock couldn't get all the way to the road. The water had risen +even higher. It wasn't a pool, it was a lake. The road was completely +under water. It was almost as deep as he was tall. During the night, +two of the trees beside the stream had fallen over, and were lying +across the road. The holes, where the roots had been were filled with +water. And there was still more water coming down the stream. He +walked along the edge of water for a long way. Finally, near the +driveway to the 'old Howard house', there was no more water covering +the road. + +Baartock played by the side of this new lake for a while, skipping +stones. When he grew tired of that, he went up the driveway, and home. +He left his lunch bag, and went up to check on his bridge again. The +opossum was gone, but there was still too much water for him to work on +his bridge, and he went back home. + +His father had decided that he couldn't go to work again, so he was +sleeping late. His mother was busy in the kitchen, so Baartock got out +his pencil box and some worksheets he had brought home from school and +sat near the mouth of the cave and did them again. + + + + +Chapter 16 + + +The sun started to come through the clouds, and Baartock moved his +stool outside the cave. He was just about to get back to work, when he +heard someone coming up the hill. He put his pencil box and worksheets +on the stool and went inside to tell his mother. They were just coming +out of the cave when Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Stogbuchner came into the +clearing. + +"Hello, Mrs. Slinurp. Hello, Baartock," called Mrs. Jackson. To +Baartock's mother, she said, "This is Baartock's teacher, Mrs. +Stogbuchner." + +"I'm pleased to meet you," said Mrs. Stogbuchner. "I told Baartock +that I wanted to meet you this week." + +No-one asked if Baartock had remembered to tell his mother, but the way +she looked at him said that he had forgotten. + +"I hope we're not coming at a bad time," Mrs. Jackson said. + "No," said his mother. "You want to talk?" + +"Baartock, I see you've been doing some school work. I think that's a +very good," said Mrs. Stogbuchner, looking at the worksheets. Then she +followed his mother and Mrs. Jackson into the cave. + +Baartock thought about checking his bridge again, but it was nearly +lunch time, and after lunch maybe his father could help him work on it. +So he sat back down in the sun, and kept working on the papers. He +could hear the adults' voices, but he couldn't hear what they were +saying. + +After a while he decided he was hungry and went to look for his lunch +bag. He remembered putting it in the kitchen, so he went to get it. +The adults were still talking, and he didn't think they had even +noticed him, until Mrs. Jackson said, "Baartock, something happened to +the bridge we looked at." + +Suddenly, there was a booming voice, coming from the back of the cave. +"What happen bridge?" Baartock's father was awake, and coming out of +the bedroom. The word 'bridge' would wake most trolls from a sound +sleep. + +Meeting just one adult troll for the first time had been a surprise for +Mrs. Stogbuchner, and even Mrs. Jackson hadn't met his father. And +Baartock's father was bigger and angrier looking than most trolls, even +though he wasn't any meaner than Baartock's mother. + But they didn't know whether to stay or run. Before they could +decide, Baartock's father was in the living room saying, "What happen +bridge?" again. + +His mother saw just how scared the humans were, and said, "Wait. She +tell." + +"There was just too much water," began Mrs. Jackson, not sure what he +wanted to know. "It collapsed. It fell down. There's no more bridge +in town." + +Baartock had told his father about the bridge, of course. And what he +had thought of a human-built bridge. He wasn't really surprised that it +had fallen down. + +"Where bridge?" asked his father. + +Baartock was just about to tell him, when Mrs. Jackson asked, "You want +to see the bridge?" + +"You show me bridge," replied his father. "You show me bridge now?" + +Just as suddenly as his father had appeared, they were going out of the +cave. Baartock grabbed his lunch bag and followed them out. They went +down the hill toward the 'old Howard house'. + +"We'll have to go the long way around," said Mrs. Jackson. "Your road +is flooded too." + +That didn't matter to his father and they kept walking down the hill. +When they got to the car, there was a problem trying to figure out +where they were all to sit. Mrs. Jackson had to slide the front seat +up, so the three trolls could sit in the back. If they hadn't been +trolls, they wouldn't have been able to squeeze in. But trolls can +bend to fit into tight places. Soon they were all inside and Mrs. +Jackson was driving. + +Baartock opened his lunch bag to get something to eat. His father had +some too, but his mother said she wasn't hungry. Neither Mrs. Jackson +or Mrs. Stogbuchner wanted any either. + +Riding in a car for the first time didn't seem to bother Baartock's +father. Maybe it was because he was going to see the bridge, or maybe +it just didn't bother him. + +They did have to go the long way around, but eventually they got to +where the bridge had been. There were lots of kids standing around and +some adults too. There were big orange painted barrels blocking the +road, so people wouldn't drive their cars too close. Mrs. Jackson had +to park her car down the block. They got out of the car and went over +to look. Baartock thought he saw Jason, but he wasn't sure. Besides, +seeing the bridge was more important, right then. + +The water hadn't really gotten that high, though the stream was moving +very quickly. It was easy to see what had happened. The water had +washed away the dirt around the supports, and then the supports had +started to move, and the span had fallen down. It was lying, broken +and twisted, in the rushing water. + +Baartock's mother was interested, but she could see what she wanted +from where she was standing. Baartock and his father walked right to +the edge to examine the wreckage. + +"Don't get so close to the edge!" a man in uniform shouted at them. He +started to come over to tell them to move back. + +"I look at bridge," Baartock's father growled at the man. + +"Yes sir," said the man, backing away. Most of the other humans nearby +backed away also. + +His father looked at the way the bridge had been built from where he +was standing, then suddenly, he jumped into the stream. + +"Hey! Help him! Get a rope, somebody!" the man in uniform was +shouting. He came rushing to the edge to find Baartock's father +standing, quite calmly, waist deep in the rushing water, examining +where the supports had been. + +"Hey! Catch this," the man shouted, starting to throw the rope. + +"Stop!" Baartock's mother had come over. "He working. You stop or he +get angry." + +"But he's going to . . ." the man started to say, looking up at her. + +"You stop," his mother said again. + +"Yes ma'am," the man said, and he took the rope and went back where he +had been standing. He just stood there watching, and not knowing what +to do. + +Mrs. Jackson went over to talk to him. Soon the man walked over to his +car and got out a blanket and gave it to Mrs. Jackson. + +When he had seen enough, Baartock's father climbed up on the broken +bridge span and calmly stepped up onto the road. Several people in the +crowd cheered when he came up, but he didn't seem to notice. + +"Where she?" he asked. + +Baartock pointed out Mrs. Jackson, still standing next to the man in +uniform. They all walked over to her. Mrs. Jackson handed him the +blanket, and he used it to dry off. + +"Can fix," his father said. "Build right this time. Not fall down +again." + +"You can build a new bridge?" asked Mrs. Jackson. + +Baartock thought that was a silly question. He had been sure that he +could have built a better bridge, and he wasn't even old enough to have +a name. "Hey! Baartock!" came a shout from the crowd. Jason was +standing there waving at him. + +Baartock waved back. The adults were talking about things that didn't +seem to have anything to do with building bridges, so he went over to +talk to Jason. + +"Isn't this really something. Are those your folks? Everybody was sure +surprised when your dad jumped in like that," Jason just went on in a +rush. "Your dad knows about bridges?" + +"Can build better bridge," Baartock answered. + +Soon, Baartock's mother called him over and they got back in the car +and went home. + + + + +Chapter 17 + + +The next day was Friday, but there wasn't any school. Mrs. Stogbuchner +had said that a lot of the roads were under water, just like the road +near Baartock's home. But even though there wasn't any school, the +next morning Baartock was going to town. + +Early in the morning, his father got him up, and they had something to +eat. Baartock got the big lunch bag and his father picked up his bag +of tools and they left and walked down to the 'old Howard house' and +waited. The sun wasn't up very high when Mrs. Jackson came driving up +the hill. + +"Good morning," she called, as she stopped the car. + +"Go bridge now," said his father. + +Mrs. Jackson had decided that was just the way trolls were. With +bridges, they were all business. + +"Good morning," said Baartock. He thought any morning he could go help +work on a bridge was a good morning. + +They got into the car. Baartock sat in the front and put on the seat +belt. His father stretched out along the back seat. He wasn't +squeezed into the back, like he had been the day before. They still +had to drive the long way around, but it wasn't too long before Mrs. +Jackson was parking the car. + +There wasn't a crowd at the bridge, it was too early in the morning. +The man in uniform was there again. He didn't say anything to +Baartock's father, but he did wave to Mrs. Jackson, and she waved back. + +His father didn't want to waste any time getting started replacing the +old bridge. As soon as they got there, he climbed out of the car and +carrying his bag of tools, went to the edge of the road. He jumped +down into the water, and Baartock started handing him hammers and +chisels, as he called for them. He would dry and put away the ones +that his father was finished with and threw back to him. + +While they were working, people came to watch, but the man in uniform +kept them back. Jason came down too, but the man wouldn't let him come +over. + +At lunch time, his father climbed back up and dried himself off with +the blanket, and they sat under a tree to eat. Baartock was hungry, +but his father ate four sandwiches to his one. Lunch was quickly over, +and they were ready to go back to work. + +This time, after his father jumped down, he told Baartock to hand him +the bag of tools. Then he walked carefully through the rushing stream, +across the wrecked bridge to the other side and tossed the bag up on +the road. Then he came back and told Baartock to climb onto his +shoulders. He crossed the stream again, and Baartock scrambled up the +other side. Then just as before, he handed down tools or put them away. + +During the afternoon, a man came to talk to Baartock's father. He was +on the other side, and Baartock couldn't hear what they were talking +about. After a while, the man left and his father came back to work. + +"Stone," his father said. That was enough. Baartock knew they had been +talking about how much stone would be needed to rebuild the bridge. +His father was going to rebuild the bridge the right way, the troll +way, with stone and not concrete. + +It wasn't dark when Baartock was carried back across the stream. They +were finished for the day. + +The next day, Mrs. Jackson couldn't come to get them. When they got +down to the house, Mr. Fennis was waiting for them. He didn't say a +word, but he stared at Baartock's father. He looked as if his eyes +were going to pop out. + +There were a few people already there, when they got to the bridge. +And the man in uniform was there too. + +The water had gone down a lot, and they worked on something new. This +time, they didn't work where the supports had been, but spent the day +breaking up the old bridge. Some pieces his father piled up, to keep +the stream from washing away his new supports. The rest of the pieces +he tossed up to Baartock, who piled them beside the road. It was a long +hard day, and Baartock fell asleep in the car on the way home. + +The next day, both of Baartock's parents went off with Mrs. Jackson to +look at the stone they were going to build with. Baartock didn't go +along. He wanted to work on his bridge. Now that the stream had gone +down, he could fix it the way he wanted to. It was fun, but now that +he was working on a real bridge, his own seemed very small. + +He went to school the next morning, but after school, instead of riding +home on Mr. Barnes' bus, he went to help his parents work on the new +bridge. He spent the rest of the afternoon helping pile up the broken +pieces of the old bridge. + +For the rest of that week and for several weeks after, Baartock spent +his days in school and his afternoons and weekends working on the +bridge. For a while, trucks came, bringing blocks of stone, and big +timbers they would use for supports, building the bridge. They brought +enough stone to make a hill of stone, until his father said that was +enough. + +In those weeks, the crowd that came to watch the bridge being built +grew bigger, and there were more men in uniform to keep them back. The +pile of stone got smaller and the bridge got closer to being finished. +Somehow, word had gotten out that trolls were building a bridge. A lot +of people didn't believe it, and others didn't care. Other people +heard that a man, a woman, and a boy were building a bridge by +themselves, and came to watch. A few people tried to push their way +past the men in uniform to talk to Baartock's parents while they were +working. + +Then one afternoon, right after lunch, Mrs. Jackson came to get +Baartock from class. He was surprised when she said that they were +going to the bridge. He usually didn't go until school was over. As +they went out to the parking lot, they went past several school busses +parked in front of the school. He thought one of the busses was Mr. +Barnes's, but they didn't go to it. They went to her car and drove to +the bridge. + +When they got there, there was a big crowd just standing around one end +of the bridge. Baartock's parents were standing in the middle of the +bridge, but they weren't working. Baartock looked at the bridge. It +looked finished, but as he walked over, he saw that there was one block +missing from one side, and that block was lying on the sidewalk. + +He walked over to his parents to find out why they hadn't finished the +bridge. His mother just said, "wait," and kept watching Mrs. Jackson. +Soon the school busses drove up and a lot of kids got out. There was +all of Mrs. Stogbuchner's class, and a lot of other kids besides. They +came over to the bridge, but they didn't come across it, they just +stood there with the rest of the crowd. They were all talking quietly, +and watching Baartock and his parents. After a while a man got up on a +little wooden platform and started talking. He talked for a long time, +but Baartock wasn't listening to him. He had gotten an idea. A +wonderful idea. + +Baartock's mother had been watching the man on the platform. When he +finished taking, she said, "Put stone in." + +Baartock went over and picked up the last stone to put in the wall. He +slid it into place, and the crowd started to cheer. When he stepped +back, he saw the writing on the block. It was his special mark, and +the letters 'BAARTOCK'S BRIDGE'. + +The crowd kept on cheering, and Baartock felt embarrassed. Then he +looked at his father. And his father looked at him. His father must +have had the same idea, for suddenly they both started yelling at the +top of their lungs, screaming, bellowing as loud as they could, as they +ran at the crowd standing at the end of the bridge. + + At the first sound, the crowd was frozen in place, and as +Baartock and his father kept yelling and running at them, the crowd +turned and ran away from the bridge as fast as they could. All the +humans kept on running until they were out of sight. Baartock and his +father stopped at the end of the bridge and they turned and walked +back, laughing, to his mother in the middle of the bridge. She looked +at them. + +"Good bridge," she said. "Good troll bridge." + + + + + +Here is a short message from the author of Baartock: + +This book is directed at children, up to about third grade, though it +should be read to them by an adult. + + + + + +End of Baartock, by Lewis Roth (C)1989 + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Baartock, by Lewis Roth + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1087 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1088-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1088-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..72b3150b --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1088-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11229 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1088 *** + +ROLF IN THE WOODS + +By Ernest Thompson Seton + +[Chapters 10 and 60 not designated in the original file.] + + + + +Preface + +In this story I have endeavoured to realize some of the influences that +surrounded the youth of America a hundred years ago, and made of them, +first, good citizens, and, later, in the day of peril, heroes that won +the battles of Lake Erie, Plattsburg, and New Orleans, and the great sea +fights of Porter, Bainbridge, Decatur, Lawrence, Perry, and MacDonough. + +I have especially dwelt in detail on the woodland and peace scouting +in the hope that I may thus help other boys to follow the hard-climbing +trail that leads to the higher uplands. + +For the historical events of 1812-14, I have consulted among books +chiefly, Theodore Roosevelt's “Naval War of 1812,” Peter S. Palmer's +“History of Lake Champlain,” and Walter Hill Crockett's “A History of +Lake Champlain,” 1909. But I found another and more personal mine of +information. Through the kindness of my friend, Edmund Seymour, a native +of the Champlain region, now a resident of New York, I went over all the +historical ground with several unpublished manuscripts for guides, and +heard from the children of the sturdy frontiersmen new tales of the +war; and in getting more light and vivid personal memories, I was glad, +indeed, to realize that not only were there valour and heroism on both +sides, but also gentleness and courtesy. Histories written by either +party at the time should be laid aside. They breathe the rancourous +hate of the writers of the age--the fighters felt not so--and the +many incidents given here of chivalry and consideration were actual +happenings, related to me by the descendants of those who experienced +them; and all assure me that these were a true reflex of the feelings of +the day. + +I am much indebted to Miss Katherine Palmer, of Plattsburg, for kindly +allowing me to see the unpublished manuscript memoir of her grandfather, +Peter Sailly, who was Collector of the Port of Plattsburg at the time of +the war. + +Another purpose in this story was to picture the real Indian with his +message for good or for evil. + +Those who know nothing of the race will scoff and say they never heard +of such a thing as a singing and religious red man. Those who know him +well will say, “Yes, but you have given to your eastern Indian songs +and ceremonies which belong to the western tribes, and which are of +different epochs.” To the latter I reply: + +“You know that the western Indians sang and prayed in this way. How do +you know that the eastern ones did not? We have no records, except +those by critics, savagely hostile, and contemptuous of all religious +observances but their own. The Ghost Dance Song belonged to a much more +recent time, no doubt, but it was purely Indian, and it is generally +admitted that the races of continental North America were of one stock, +and had no fundamentally different customs or modes of thought.” + +The Sunrise Song was given me by Frederick R. Burton, author of +“American Primitive Music.” It is still in use among the Ojibwa. + +The songs of the Wabanaki may be read in C. G. Leland's “Kuloskap the +Master.” + +The Ghost Dance Song was furnished by Alice C. Fletcher, whose “Indian +Song and Story” will prove a revelation to those who wish to follow +further. + +ERNEST THOMPSON SETON. + + + +Chapter 1. The Wigwam Under the Rock + +The early springtime sunrise was near at hand as Quonab, the last of the +Myanos Sinawa, stepped from his sheltered wigwam under the cliff that +borders the Asamuk easterly, and, mounting to the lofty brow of the +great rock that is its highest pinnacle, he stood in silence, awaiting +the first ray of the sun over the sea water that stretches between +Connecticut and Seawanaky. + +His silent prayer to the Great Spirit was ended as a golden beam shot +from a long, low cloud-bank over the sea, and Quonab sang a weird Indian +song for the rising sun, an invocation to the Day God: + + “O thou that risest from the low cloud + To burn in the all above; + I greet thee! I adore thee!” + +Again and again he sang to the tumming of a small tom-tom, till the +great refulgent one had cleared the cloud, and the red miracle of the +sunrise was complete. Back to his wigwam went the red man, down to his +home tucked dosed under the sheltering rock, and, after washing his +hands in a basswood bowl, began to prepare his simple meal. + +A tin-lined copper pot hanging over the fire was partly filled with +water; then, when it was boiling, some samp or powdered corn and some +clams were stirred in. While these were cooking, he took his smooth-bore +flint-lock, crawled gently over the ridge that screened his wigwam from +the northwest wind, and peered with hawk-like eyes across the broad +sheet of water that, held by a high beaver-dam, filled the little valley +of Asamuk Brook. + +The winter ice was still on the pond, but in all the warming shallows +there was open water, on which were likely to be ducks. None were to be +seen, but by the edge of the ice was a round object which, although so +far away, he knew at a glance for a muskrat. + +By crawling around the pond, the Indian could easily have come within +shot, but he returned at once to his wigwam, where he exchanged his gun +for the weapons of his fathers, a bow and arrows, and a long fish-line. +A short, quick stalk, and the muskrat, still eating a flagroot, was +within thirty feet. The fish-line was coiled on the ground and then +attached to an arrow, the bow bent--zip--the arrow picked up the line, +coil after coil, and trans-fixed the muskrat. Splash! and the animal was +gone under the ice. + +But the cord was in the hands of the hunter; a little gentle pulling and +the rat came to view, to be despatched with a stick and secured. Had he +shot it with a gun, it had surely been lost. + +He returned to his camp, ate his frugal breakfast, and fed a small, +wolfish-looking yellow dog that was tied in the lodge. + +He skinned the muskrat carefully, first cutting a slit across the rear +and then turning the skin back like a glove, till it was off to the +snout; a bent stick thrust into this held it stretched, till in a day, +it was dry and ready for market. The body, carefully cleaned, he hung in +the shade to furnish another meal. + +As he worked, there were sounds of trampling in the woods, and +presently a tall, rough-looking man, with a red nose and a curling white +moustache, came striding through brush and leaves. He stopped when +he saw the Indian, stared contemptuously at the quarry of the morning +chase, made a scornful remark about “rat-eater,” and went on toward the +wigwam, probably to peer in, but the Indian's slow, clear, “keep away!” + changed his plan. He grumbled something about “copper-coloured tramp,” + and started away in the direction of the nearest farmhouse. + + + +Chapter 2. Rolf Kittering and the Soldier Uncle + + A feller that chatters all the time is bound to talk a + certain amount of drivel.--The Sayings of Si Sylvanne + +This was the Crow Moon, the white man's March. The Grass Moon was at +hand, and already the arrow bands of black-necked honkers were passing +northward from the coast, sending down as they flew the glad tidings +that the Hunger Moon was gone, that spring was come, yea, even now was +in the land. And the flicker clucked from a high, dry bough, the spotted +woodwale drummed on his chosen branch, the partridge drummed in the pine +woods, and in the sky the wild ducks, winging, drummed their way. What +wonder that the soul of the Indian should seek expression in the drum +and the drum song of his race? + +Presently, as though remembering something, he went quietly to the +southward under the ridge, just where it breaks to let the brook go by, +along the edge of Strickland's Plain, and on that hill of sliding stone +he found, as he always had, the blue-eyed liver-leaf smiling, the first +sweet flower of spring! He did not gather it, he only sat down and +looked at it. He did not smile, or sing, or utter words, or give it +a name, but he sat beside it and looked hard at it, and, in the first +place, he went there knowingly to find it. Who shall say that its beauty +did not reach his soul? + +He took out his pipe and tobacco bag, but was reminded of something +lacking--the bag was empty. He returned to his wigwam, and from their +safe hanger or swinging shelf overhead, he took the row of stretched +skins, ten muskrats and one mink, and set out along a path which led +southward through the woods to the broad, open place called Strickland's +Plain, across that, and over the next rock ridge to the little town and +port of Myanos. + + SILAS PECK + Trading Store + +was the sign over the door he entered. Men and women were buying and +selling, but the Indian stood aside shyly until all were served, and +Master Peck cried out: + +“Ho, Quonab! what have ye got for trade to-day?” + +Quonab produced his furs. The dealer looked at them narrowly and said: + +“They are too late in the season for primes; I cannot allow you more +than seven cents each for the rats and seventy-five cents for the mink, +all trade.” + +The Indian gathered up the bundle with an air of “that settles it,” when +Silas called out: + +“Come now, I'll make it ten cents for the rats.” + +“Ten cents for rats, one dollar for mink, all cash, then I buy what I +like,” was the reply. + +It was very necessary to Silas's peace that no customer of his should +cross the street to the sign, + + SILAS MEAD + Trading Store + +So the bargain, a fair one now, was made, and the Indian went off with a +stock of tobacco, tea, and sugar. + +His way lay up the Myanos River, as he had one or two traps set along +the banks for muskrats, although in constant danger of having them +robbed or stolen by boys, who considered this an encroachment on their +trapping grounds. + +After an hour he came to Dumpling Pond, then set out for his home, +straight through the woods, till he reached the Catrock line, and +following that came to the farm and ramshackle house of Micky Kittering. +He had been told that the man at this farm had a fresh deer hide for +sale, and hoping to secure it, Quonab walked up toward the house. Micky +was coming from the barn when he saw the Indian. They recognized each +other at a glance. That was enough for Quonab; he turned away. The +farmer remembered that he had been “insulted.” He vomited a few oaths, +and strode after the Indian, “To take it out of his hide”; his purpose +was very clear. The Indian turned quickly, stood, and looked calmly at +Michael. + +Some men do not know the difference between shyness and cowardice, but +they are apt to find it out unexpectedly Something told the white man, +“Beware! this red man is dangerous.” He muttered something about, “Get +out of that, or I'll send for a constable.” The Indian stood gazing +coldly, till the farmer backed off out of sight, then he himself turned +away to the woods. + +Kittering was not a lovely character. He claimed to have been a soldier. +He certainly looked the part, for his fierce white moustache was curled +up like horns on his purple face, at each side of his red nose, in +a most milita style. His shoulders were square and his gait was +swaggering, beside which, he had an array of swear words that was new +and tremendously impressive in Connecticut. He had married late in life +a woman who would have made him a good wife, had he allowed her. But, a +drunkard himself he set deliberately about bringing his wife to his own +ways and with most lamentable success. They had had no children, but +some months before a brother's child, fifteen-year-old lad, had become +a charge on their hands and, with any measure of good management, would +have been a blessing to all. But Micky had gone too far. His original +weak good-nature was foundered in rum. Always blustery and frothy, he +divided the world in two--superior officers, before whom he grovelled, +and inferiors to whom he was a mouthy, foul-tongued, contemptible bully, +in spite of a certain lingering kindness of heart that showed itself at +such rare times when he was neither roaring drunk nor crucified by black +reaction. His brother's child, fortunately, had inherited little of the +paternal family traits, but in both body and brain favoured his mother, +the daughter of a learned divine who had spent unusual pains on her book +education, but had left her penniless and incapable of changing that +condition. + +Her purely mental powers and peculiarities were such that, a hundred +years before, she might have been burned for a witch, and fifty years +later might have been honoured as a prophetess. But she missed the crest +of the wave both ways and fell in the trough; her views on religious +matters procured neither a witch's grave nor a prophet's crown, but a +sort of village contempt. + +The Bible was her standard--so far so good--but she emphasized the wrong +parts of it. Instead of magnifying the damnation of those who follow not +the truth (as the village understood it), she was content to semi-quote: + +“Those that are not against me are with me,” and “A kind heart is the +mark of His chosen.” And then she made a final utterance, an echo really +of her father: “If any man do anything sincerely, believing that thereby +he is worshipping God, he is worshipping God.” + +Then her fate was sealed, and all who marked the blazing eyes, the +hollow cheeks, the yet more hollow chest and cough, saw in it all the +hand of an offended God destroying a blasphemer, and shook their heads +knowingly when the end came. + +So Rolf was left alone in life, with a common school education, a +thorough knowledge of the Bible and of “Robinson Crusoe,” a vague +tradition of God everywhere, and a deep distrust of those who should +have been his own people. + +The day of the little funeral he left the village of Redding to tramp +over the unknown road to the unknown south where his almost unknown +Uncle Michael had a farm and, possibly, a home for him. + +Fifteen miles that day, a night's rest in a barn, twenty-five miles the +next day, and Rolf had found his future home. + +“Come in, lad,” was the not unfriendly reception, for his arrival +was happily fallen on a brief spell of good humour, and a strong, +fifteen-year-old boy is a distinct asset on a farm. + + + +Chapter 3. Rolf Catches a Coon and Finds a Friend + +Aunt Prue, sharp-eyed and red-nosed, was actually shy at first, but +all formality vanished as Rolf was taught the mysteries of pig-feeding, +hen-feeding, calf-feeding, cow-milking, and launched by list only in +a vast number of duties familiar to him from his babyhood. What a list +there was. An outsider might have wondered if Aunt Prue was saving +anything for herself, but Rolf was used to toil. He worked without +ceasing and did his best, only to learn in time that the best could win +no praise, only avert punishment. The spells of good nature arrived more +seldom in his uncle's heart. His aunt was a drunken shrew and soon Rolf +looked on the days of starving and physical misery with his mother as +the days of his happy youth gone by. + +He was usually too tired at night and too sleepy in the morning to say +his prayers, and gradually he gave it up as a daily habit. The more he +saw of his kinsfolk, the more wickedness came to view; and yet it was +with a shock that he one day realized that some fowls his uncle brought +home by night were there without the owner's knowledge or consent. Micky +made a jest of it, and intimated that Rolf would have to “learn to do +night work very soon.” This was only one of the many things that showed +how evil a place was now the orphan's home. + +At first it was not clear to the valiant uncle whether the silent boy +was a superior to be feared, or an inferior to be held in fear, but +Mick's courage grew with non-resistance, and blows became frequent; +although not harder to bear than the perpetual fault-finding and +scolding of his aunt, and all the good his mother had implanted was +being shrivelled by the fires of his daily life. + +Rolf had no chance to seek for companions at the village store, but an +accident brought one to him. Before sunrise one spring morning he went, +as usual, to the wood lot pasture for the cow, and was surprised to find +a stranger, who beckoned him to come. On going near he saw a tall +man with dark skin and straight black hair that was streaked with +gray--undoubtedly an Indian. He held up a bag and said, “I got coon +in that hole. You hold bag there, I poke him in.” Rolf took the sack +readily and held it over the hole, while the Indian climbed the tree to +a higher opening, then poked in this with a long pole, till all at once +there was a scrambling noise and the bag bulged full and heavy. Rolf +closed its mouth triumphantly. The Indian laughed lightly, then swung to +the ground. + +“Now, what will you do with him?” asked Rolf. + +“Train coon dog,” was the answer. + +“Where?” + +The Indian pointed toward the Asamuk Pond. + +“Are you the singing Indian that lives under Ab's Rock? + +“Ugh! [*] Some call me that. My name is Quonab.” + +“Wait for an hour and then I will come and help,” volunteered Rolf +impulsively, for the hunting instinct was strong in him. + +The Indian nodded. “Give three yelps if you no find me;” then he +shouldered a short stick, from one end of which, at a safe distance from +his back, hung the bag with the coon. And Rolf went home with the cow. + +He had acted on hasty impulse in offering to come, but now, in the +normal storm state of the household, the difficulties of the course +appeared. He cudgelled his brain for some plan to account for his +absence, and finally took refuge unwittingly in ancient wisdom: “When +you don't know a thing to do, don't do a thing.” Also, “If you can't +find the delicate way, go the blunt way.” + +So having fed the horses, cleaned the stable, and milked the cow, fed +the pigs, the hens, the calf, harnessed the horses, cut and brought in +wood for the woodshed, turned out the sheep, hitched the horses to the +wagon, set the milk out in the creaming pans, put more corn to soak for +the swill barrel, ground the house knife, helped to clear the breakfast +things, replaced the fallen rails of a fence, brought up potatoes from +the root cellar, all to the maddening music of a scolding tongue, he set +out to take the cow back to the wood lot, sullenly resolved to return +when ready. + + + * Ugh (yes) and wah (no) are Indianisms that continue no + matter how well the English has been acquired. + + + +Chapter 4. The Coon Hunt Makes Trouble for Rolf + +Not one hour, but nearly three, had passed before Rolf sighted the +Pipestave Pond, as it was called. He had never been there before, but +three short whoops, as arranged, brought answer and guidance. Quonab was +standing on the high rock. When Rolf came he led down to the wigwam on +its south side. It was like stepping into a new life. Several of the +old neighbours at Redding were hunters who knew the wild Indians and had +told him tales that glorified at least the wonderful woodcraft of the +red man. Once or twice Rolf had seen Indians travelling through, and he +had been repelled by their sordid squalour. But here was something of +a different kind; not the Champlain ideal, indeed, for the Indian wore +clothes like any poor farmer, except on his head and his feet; his head +was bare, and his feet were covered with moccasins that sparkled with +beads on the arch. The wigwam was of canvas, but it had one or two +of the sacred symbols painted on it. The pot hung over the fire was +tin-lined copper, of the kind long made in England for Indian trade, +but the smaller dishes were of birch bark and basswood. The gun and the +hunting knife were of white man's make, but the bow, arrows, snowshoes, +tom-tom, and a quill-covered gun case were of Indian art, fashioned of +the things that grow in the woods about. + +The Indian led into the wigwam. The dog, although not fully grown, +growled savagely as it smelled the hated white man odour. Quonab gave +the puppy a slap on the head, which is Indian for, “Be quiet; he's all +right;” loosed the rope, and led the dog out. “Bring that,” and the +Indian pointed to the bag which hung from a stick between two trees. The +dog sniffed suspiciously in the direction of the bag and growled, but +he was not allowed to come near it. Rolf tried to make friends with the +dog, but without success and Quonab said, “Better let Skookum [*] alone. +He make friends when he ready--maybe never.” + +The two hunters now set out for the open plain, two or three hundred +yards to the southward. Here the raccoon was dumped out of the sack, +and the dog held at a little distance, until the coon had pulled itself +together and began to run. Now the dog was released and chivvied on. +With a tremendous barking he rushed at the coon, only to get a nip that +made him recoil, yelping. The coon ran as hard as it could, the dog +and hunters came after it; again it was overtaken, and, turning with a +fierce snarl, it taught the dog a second lesson. Thus, running, dodging, +and turning to fight, the coon got back to the woods, and there made +a final stand under a small, thick tree; and, when the dog was again +repulsed, climbed quickly up into the branches. + +The hunters did all they could to excite the dog, until he was jumping +about, trying to climb the tree, and barking uproariously. This was +exactly what they wanted. Skookum's first lesson was learned--the duty +of chasing the big animal of that particular smell, then barking up the +tree it had climbed. + +Quonab, armed with a forked stick and a cord noose, now went up the +tree. After much trouble he got the noose around the coon's neck, then, +with some rather rough handling, the animal was dragged down, maneuvered +into the sack, and carried back to camp, where it was chained up to +serve in future lessons; the next two or three being to tree the coon, +as before; in the next, the coon was to be freed and allowed to get out +of sight, so that the dog might find it by trailing, and the last, in +which the coon was to be trailed, treed, and shot out of the tree, so +that the dog should have the final joy of killing a crippled coon, and +the reward of a coon-meat feast. But the last was not to be, for the +night before it should have taken place the coon managed to slip its +bonds, and nothing but the empty collar and idle chain were found in the +captive's place next morning. + +These things were in the future however. Rolf was intensely excited over +all he had seen that day. His hunting instincts were aroused. There had +been no very obvious or repellant cruelty; the dog alone had suffered, +but he seemed happy. The whole affair was so exactly in the line of +his tastes that the boy was in a sort of ecstatic uplift, and already +anticipating a real coon hunt, when the dog should be properly trained. +The episode so contrasted with the sordid life he had left an hour +before that he was spellbound. The very animal smell of the coon seemed +to make his fibre tingle. His eyes were glowing with a wild light. He +was so absorbed that he did not notice a third party attracted by the +unusual noise of the chase, but the dog did. A sudden, loud challenge +called all attention to a stranger on the ridge behind the camp. There +was no mistaking the bloated face and white moustache of Rolf's uncle. + +“So, you young scut! that is how you waste your time. I'll larn ye a +lesson.” + +The dog was tied, the Indian looked harmless, and the boy was cowed, +so the uncle's courage mounted high. He had been teaming in the nearby +woods, and the blacksnake whip was in his hands. In a minute its thong +was lapped, like a tongue of flame, around Rolf's legs. The boy gave a +shriek and ran, but the man followed and furiously plied the whip. +The Indian, supposing it was Rolf's father, marvelled at his method +of showing affection, but said nothing, for the Fifth Commandment is a +large one in the wigwam. Rolf dodged some of the cruel blows, but was +driven into a corner of the rock. One end of the lash crossed his face +like a red-hot wire. + +“Now I've got you!” growled the bully. + +Rolf was desperate. He seized two heavy stones and hurled the first with +deadly intent at his uncle's head. Mick dodged in time, but the second, +thrown lower, hit him on the thigh. Mick gave a roar of pain. Rolf +hastily seized more stones and shrieked out, “You come on one step and +I'll kill you!” + +Then that purple visage turned a sort of ashen hue. Its owner mouthed in +speechless rage. He “knew it was the Indian had put Rolf up to it. He'd +see to it later,” and muttering, blasting, frothing, the hoary-headed +sinner went limping off to his loaded wagon. + + + * “Skookum” or “Skookum Chuck,” in Chinook means “Troubled + waters.” + + + +Chapter 5. Good-bye to Uncle Mike + + For counsel comes with the night, and action comes with the + day; But the gray half light, neither dark nor bright, is a + time to hide away. + + +Rolf had learned one thing at least--his uncle was a coward. But he also +knew that he himself was in the wrong, for he was neglecting his work +and he decided to go back at once and face the worst. He made little +reply to the storm of scolding that met him. He would have been +disappointed if it had not come. He was used to it; it made him feel at +home once more. He worked hard and silently. + +Mick did not return till late. He had been drawing wood for Horton that +day, which was the reason he happened in Quonab's neighbourhood; but his +road lay by the tavern, and when he arrived home he was too helpless to +do more than mutter. + +The next day there was an air of suspended thunder. Rolf overheard his +uncle cursing “that ungrateful young scut--not worth his salt.” But +nothing further was said or done. His aunt did not strike at him once +for two days. The third night Micky disappeared. On the next he returned +with another man; they had a crate of fowls, and Rolf was told to keep +away from “that there little barn.” + +So he did all morning, but he peeped in from the hayloft when a chance +came, and saw a beautiful horse. Next day the “little barn” was open and +empty as before. + +That night this worthy couple had a jollification with some callers, who +were strangers to Rolf. As he lay awake, listening to the carouse, he +overheard many disjointed allusions that he did not understand, and some +that he could guess at: “Night work pays better than day work any time,” + etc. Then he heard his own name and a voice, “Let's go up and settle it +with him now.” Whatever their plan, it was clear that the drunken crowd, +inspired by the old ruffian, were intent on doing him bodily harm. He +heard them stumbling and reeling up the steep stairs. He heard, “Here, +gimme that whip,” and knew he was in peril, maybe of his life, for they +were whiskey-mad. He rose quickly, locked the door, rolled up an old rag +carpet, and put it in his bed. Then he gathered his clothes on his arm, +opened the window, and lowered himself till his head only was above the +sill, and his foot found a resting place. Thus he awaited. The raucous +breathing of the revellers was loud on the stairs; then the door was +tried; there was some muttering; then the door was burst open and in +rushed two, or perhaps three, figures. Rolf could barely see in the +gloom, but he knew that his uncle was one of them. The attack they made +with whip and stick on that roll of rags in the bed would have broken +his bones and left him shapeless, had he been in its place. The men were +laughing and took it all as a joke, but Rolf had seen enough; he slipped +to the ground and hurried away, realizing perfectly well now that this +was “good-bye.” + +Which way? How naturally his steps turned northward toward Redding, the +only other place he knew. But he had not gone a mile before he stopped. +The yapping of a coon dog came to him from the near woods that lay to +the westward along Asamuk. He tramped toward it. To find the dog is one +thing, to find the owner another; but they drew near at last. Rolf gave +the three yelps and Quonab responded. + +“I am done with that crowd,” said the boy. “They tried to kill me +tonight. Have you got room for me in your wigwam for a couple of days?” + +“Ugh, come,” said the Indian. + +That night, for the first time, Rolf slept in the outdoor air of a +wigwam. He slept late, and knew nothing of the world about him till +Quonab called him to breakfast. + + + +Chapter 6. Skookum Accepts Rolf at Last + +Rolf expected that Micky would soon hear of his hiding place and come +within a few days, backed by a constable, to claim his runaway ward. But +a week went by and Quonab, passing through Myanos, learned, first, that +Rolf had been seen tramping northward on the road to Dumpling Pond, and +was now supposed to be back in Redding; second, that Micky Kittering was +lodged in jail under charge of horse-stealing and would certainly get +a long sentence; third, that his wife had gone back to her own folks at +Norwalk, and the house was held by strangers. + +All other doors were closed now, and each day that drifted by made it +the more clear that Rolf and Quonab were to continue together. What boy +would not exult at the thought of it? Here was freedom from a brutal +tyranny that was crushing out his young life; here was a dream of the +wild world coming true, with gratification of all the hunter instincts +that he had held in his heart for years, and nurtured in that single, +ragged volume of “Robinson Crusoe.” The plunge was not a plunge, except +it be one when an eagle, pinion-bound, is freed and springs from a cliff +of the mountain to ride the mountain wind. + +The memory of that fateful cooning day was deep and lasting. Never +afterward did smell of coon fail to bring it back; in spite of the many +evil incidents it was a smell of joy. + +“Where are you going, Quonab?” he asked one morning, as he saw the +Indian rise at dawn and go forth with his song drum, after warming it at +the fire. He pointed up to the rock, and for the first time Rolf heard +the chant for the sunrise. Later he heard the Indian's song for “Good +Hunting,” and another for “When His Heart Was Bad.” They were prayers or +praise, all addressed to the Great Spirit, or the Great Father, and it +gave Rolf an entirely new idea of the red man, and a startling light +on himself. Here was the Indian, whom no one considered anything but a +hopeless pagan, praying to God for guidance at each step in life, while +he himself, supposed to be a Christian, had not prayed regularly for +months--was in danger of forgetting how. + +Yet there was one religious observance that Rolf never forgot--that was +to keep the Sabbath, and on that day each week he did occasionally say +a little prayer his mother had taught him. He avoided being seen at such +times and did not speak of kindred doings. Whereas Quonab neither hid +nor advertised his religious practices, and it was only after many +Sundays had gone that Quonab remarked: + +“Does your God come only one day of the week? Does He sneak in after +dark? Why is He ashamed that you only whisper to Him? Mine is here all +the time. I can always reach Him with my song; all days are my Sunday.” + +The evil memories of his late life were dimming quickly, and the joys of +the new one growing. Rolf learned early that, although one may talk of +the hardy savage, no Indian seeks for hardship. Everything is done that +he knows to make life pleasant, and of nothing is he more careful than +the comfort of his couch. On the second day, under guidance of his host, +Rolf set about making his own bed. Two logs, each four inches thick and +three feet long, were cut. Then two strong poles, each six feet long, +were laid into notches at the ends of the short logs. About seventy-five +straight sticks of willow were cut and woven with willow bark into a +lattice, three feet wide and six feet long. This, laid on the poles, +furnished a spring mattress, on which a couple of blankets made a most +comfortable couch, dry, warm, and off the ground. In addition to the +lodge cover, each bed had a dew cloth which gave perfect protection, no +matter how the storm might rage outdoors. There was no hardship in it, +only a new-found pleasure, to sleep and breathe the pure night air of +the woods. + +The Grass Moon--April--had passed, and the Song Moon was waxing, with +its hosts of small birds, and one of Rolf's early discoveries was that +many of these love to sing by night. Again and again the familiar voice +of the song sparrow came from the dark shore of Asamuk, or the field +sparrow trilled from the top of some cedar, occasionally the painted +one, Aunakeu, the partridge, drummed in the upper woods, and nightly +there was the persistent chant of Muckawis, the whippoorwill, the myriad +voices of the little frogs called spring-peepers, and the peculiar, +“peent, peent,” from the sky, followed by a twittering, that Quonab told +him was the love song of the swamp bird--the big snipe, with the fantail +and long, soft bill, and eyes like a deer. + +“Do you mean the woodcock?” “Ugh, that's the name; Pah-dash-ka-anja we +call it.” + +The waning of the moon brought new songsters, with many a nightingale +among them. A low bush near the plain was vocal during the full moon +with the sweet but disconnected music of the yellow-breasted chat. The +forest rang again and again with a wild, torrential strain of music +that seemed to come from the stars. It sent peculiar thrill into Rolf's +heart, and gave him a lump his throat as he listened. + +“What is that, Quonab?” + +The Indian shook his head. Then, later, when it ended, he said: “That +is the mystery song of some one I never saw him.” + +There was a long silence, then the lad began, “There's no good hunting +here now, Quonab. Why don't you go to the north woods, where deer are +plentiful?” + +The Indian gave a short shake of his head, and then to prevent further +talk, “Put up your dew cloth; the sea wind blows to-night.” + +He finished; both stood for a moment gazing into the fire. Then Rolf +felt something wet and cold thrust into his hand. It was Skookum's nose. +At last the little dog had made up his mind to accept the white boy as a +friend. + + + +Chapter 7. Rolf Works Out with Many Results + + He is the dumbest kind of a dumb fool that ain't king in + some little corner.--Sayings of Si Sylvanne + +The man who has wronged you will never forgive you, and he who has +helped you will be forever grateful. Yes, there is nothing that draws +you to a man so much as the knowledge that you have helped him. + +Quonab helped Rolf, and so was more drawn to him than to many of the +neighbours that he had known for years; he was ready to like him. +Their coming together was accidental, but it was soon very clear that a +friendship was springing up between them. Rolf was too much of a child +to think about the remote future; and so was Quonab. Most Indians are +merely tall children. + +But there was one thing that Rolf did think of--he had no right to +live in Quonab's lodge without contributing a fair share of the things +needful. Quonab got his living partly by hunting, partly by fishing, +partly by selling baskets, and partly by doing odd jobs for the +neighbours. Rolf's training as a loafer had been wholly neglected, +and when he realized that he might be all summer with Quonab he said +bluntly: + +“You let me stay here a couple of months. I'll work out odd days, and +buy enough stuff to keep myself any way.” Quonab said nothing, but their +eyes met, and the boy knew it was agreed to. + +Rolf went that very day to the farm of Obadiah Timpany, and offered to +work by the day, hoeing corn and root crops. What farmer is not glad of +help in planting time or in harvest? It was only a question of what did +he know and how much did he want? The first was soon made clear; two +dollars a week was the usual thing for boys in those times, and when he +offered to take it half in trade, he was really getting three dollars a +week and his board. Food was as low as wages, and at the end of a week, +Rolf brought back to camp a sack of oatmeal, a sack of cornmeal, a +bushel of potatoes, a lot of apples, and one dollar cash. The dollar +went for tea and sugar, and the total product was enough to last them +both a month; so Rolf could share the wigwam with a good conscience. + +Of course, it was impossible to keep the gossipy little town of Myanos +from knowing, first, that the Indian had a white boy for partner; and, +later, that that boy was Rolf. This gave rise to great diversity of +opinion in the neighbourhood. Some thought it should not be allowed, but +Horton, who owned the land on which Quonab was camped, could not see any +reason for interfering. + +Ketchura Peck, spinster, however, did see many most excellent reasons. +She was a maid with a mission, and maintained it to be an outrage that a +Christian boy should be brought up by a godless pagan. She worried over +it almost as much as she did over the heathen in Central Africa, where +there are no Sunday schools, and clothes are as scarce as churches. +Failing to move Parson Peck and Elder Knapp in the matter, and +despairing of an early answer to her personal prayers, she resolved on +a bold move, “An' it was only after many a sleepless, prayerful night,” + namely, to carry the Bible into the heathen's stronghold. + +Thus it was that one bright morning in June she might have been seen, +prim and proper--almost glorified, she felt, as she set her lips just +right in the mirror--making for the Pipestave Pond, Bible in hand and +spectacles clean wiped, ready to read appropriate selections to the +unregenerate. + +She was full of the missionary spirit when she left Myanos, and partly +full when she reached the Orchard Street Trail; but the spirit was +leaking badly, and the woods did appear so wild and lonely that she +wondered if women had any right to be missionaries. When she came in +sight of the pond, the place seemed unpleasantly different from Myanos +and where was the Indian camp? She did not dare to shout; indeed, she +began to wish she were home again, but the sense of duty carried her +fully fifty yards along the pond, and then she came to an impassable +rock, a sheer bank that plainly said, “Stop!” Now she must go back or up +the bank. Her Yankee pertinacity said, “Try first up the bank,” and she +began a long, toilsome ascent, that did not end until she came out on a +high, open rock which, on its farther side, had a sheer drop and gave a +view of the village and of the sea. + +Whatever joy she had on again seeing her home was speedily queued in the +fearsome discovery that she was right over the Indian camp, and the two +inmates looked so utterly, dreadfully savage that she was thankful +they had not seen her. At once she shrank back; but on recovering +sufficiently to again peer down, she saw something roasting before the +fire--“a tiny arm with a hand that bore five fingers,” as she afterward +said, and “a sickening horror came over her.” Yes, she had heard of +such things. If she could only get home in safety! Why had she tempted +Providence thus? She backed softly and prayed only to escape. What, and +never even deliver the Bible? “It would be wicked to return with it!” In +a cleft of the rock she placed it, and then, to prevent the wind blowing +off loose leaves, she placed a stone on top, and fled from the dreadful +place. + +That night, when Quonab and Rolf had finished their meal of corn and +roasted coon, the old man climbed the rock to look at the sky. The book +caught his eye at once, evidently hidden there carefully, and therefore +in cache. A cache is a sacred thing to an Indian. He disturbed it not, +but later asked Rolf, “That yours?” + +“No.” + +It was doubtless the property of some one who meant to return for it, so +they left it untouched. It rested there for many months, till the winter +storms came down, dismantling the covers, dissolving the pages, but +leaving such traces as, in the long afterward, served to identify the +book and give the rock the other name, the one it bears to-day--“Bible +Rock, where Quonab, the son of Cos Cob, used to live.” + + + +Chapter 8. The Law of Property Among Our Four-Footed Kin + +Night came down on the Asamuk woods, and the two in the wigwam were +eating their supper of pork, beans, and tea, for the Indian did not, by +any means object to the white man's luxuries, when a strange “yap-yurr” + was heard out toward the plain. The dog was up at once with a growl. +Rolf looked inquiringly, and Quonab said, “Fox,” then bade the dog be +still. + +“Yap-yurr, yap-yurr,” and then, “yurr, yeow,” it came again and again. +“Can we get him?” said the eager young hunter. The Indian shook his +head. + +“Fur no good now. An' that's a she-one, with young ones on the +hillside.” + +“How do you know?” was the amazed inquiry. “I know it's a she-one, +'cause she says: + +“Yap-yurr” (high pitched) + +If it was a he-one he'd say: + +“Yap-yurr” (low pitched) + +“And she has cubs, 'cause all have at this season. And they are on that +hillside, because that's the nearest place where any fox den is, and +they keep pretty much to their own hunting grounds. If another fox +should come hunting on the beat of this pair, he'd have to fight for it. +That is the way of the wild animals; each has his own run, and for that +he will fight an outsider that he would be afraid of at any other +place. One knows he is right--that braces him up; the other knows he is +wrong--and that weakens him.” Those were the Indian's views, expressed +much less connectedly than here given, and they led Rolf on to a train +of thought. He remembered a case that was much to the point. + +Their little dog Skookum several times had been worsted by the dog on +the Horton farm, when, following his master, he had come into the +house yard. There was no question that the Horton dog was stronger. But +Skookum had buried a bone under some brushes by the plain and next day +the hated Horton dog appeared. Skookum watched him with suspicion and +fear, until it was no longer doubtful that the enemy had smelled the +hidden food and was going for it. Then Skookum, braced up by some +instinctive feeling, rushed forward with bristling mane and gleaming +teeth, stood over his cache, and said in plainest dog, “You can't touch +that while I live!” + +And the Horton dog--accustomed to domineer over the small yellow +cur--growled contemptuously, scratched with his hind feet, smelled +around an adjoining bush, and pretending not to see or notice, went off +in another direction. + +What was it that robbed him of his courage, but the knowledge that he +was in the wrong? + +Continuing with his host Rolf said, “Do you think they have any idea +that it is wrong to steal?” + +“Yes, so long as it is one of their own tribe. A fox will take all he +can get from a bird or a rabbit or a woodchuck, but he won't go far on +the hunting grounds of another fox. He won't go into another fox's den +or touch one of its young ones, and if he finds a cache of food with +another fox's mark on it, he won't touch it unless he is near dead of +hunger.” + +“How do you mean they cache food and how do they mark it?” + +“Generally they bury it under the leaves and soft earth, and the only +mark is to leave their body scent. But that is strong enough, and every +fox knows it.” + +“Do wolves make food caches?” + +“Yes, wolves, cougars, weasels, squirrels, bluejays, crows, owls, mice, +all do, and all have their own way of marking a place.” + +“Suppose a fox finds a wolf cache, will he steal from it?” + +“Yes, always. There is no law between fox and wolf. They are always at +war with each other. There is law only between fox and fox, or wolf and +wolf.” + +“That is like ourselves, ain't it? We say, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and +then when we steal the Indian's land or the Frenchman's ships, we say, +'Oh, that don't mean not steal from our enemies; they are fair game.'” + +Quonab rose to throw some sticks on the fire, then went out to turn the +smoke flap of the wigwam, for the wind was changed and another set +was needed to draw the smoke. They heard several times again the +high-pitched “yap yurr,” and once the deeper notes, which told that the +dog fox, too, was near the camp, and was doubtless seeking food to carry +home. + + + +Chapter 9. Where the Bow Is Better Than the Gun + +Of all popular errors about the Indians, the hardest to down is the idea +that their women do all the work. They do the housework, it is true, but +all the heavy labour beyond their strength is done by the men. Examples +of this are seen in the frightful toil of hunting, canoeing, and +portaging, besides a multitude of kindred small tasks, such as making +snowshoes, bows, arrows, and canoes. + +Each warrior usually makes his own bow and arrows, and if, as often +happens, one of them proves more skilful and turns out better weapons, +it is a common thing for others to offer their own specialty in +exchange. + +The advantages of the bow over the gun are chiefly its noiselessness, +its cheapness, and the fact that one can make its ammunition anywhere. +As the gun chiefly used in Quonab's time was the old-fashioned, +smooth-bore flint-lock, there was not much difference in the accuracy +of the two weapons. Quonab had always made a highclass bow, as well as +high-class arrows, and was a high-class shot. He could set up ten clam +shells at ten paces and break all in ten shots. For at least half of +his hunting he preferred the bow; the gun was useful to him chiefly +when flocks of wild pigeons or ducks were about, and a single charge of +scattering shot might bring down a dozen birds. + +But there is a law in all shooting--to be expert, you must practise +continually--and when Rolf saw his host shoot nearly every day at some +mark, he tried to join in the sport. + +It took not many trys to show that the bow was far too strong for him +to use, and Quonab was persuaded at length to make an outfit for his +visitor. + +From the dry store hole under the rock, he produced a piece of common +red cedar. Some use hickory; it is less liable to break and will stand +more abuse, but it has not the sharp, clean action of cedar. The latter +will send the arrow much farther, and so swiftly does it leave the +string that it baffles the eye. But the cedar bow must be cared for like +a delicate machine; overstring it, and it breaks; twang it without an +arrow, and it sunders the cords; scratch it, and it may splinter; wet +it, and it is dead; let it lie on the ground, even, and it is weakened. +But guard it and it will serve you as a matchless servant, and as can no +other timber in these woods. + +Just where the red heart and the white sap woods join is the bowman's +choice. A piece that reached from Rolf's chin to the ground was shaved +down till it was flat on the white side and round on the red side, +tapering from the middle, where it was one inch wide and one inch thick +to the ends, where it was three fourths of an inch wide and five eighths +of an inch thick, the red and white wood equal in all parts. + +The string was made of sinew from the back of a cow, split from the +long, broad sheath that lies on each side the spine, and the bow strung +for trial. Now, on drawing it (flat or white side in front), it was +found that one arm bent more than the other, so a little more scraping +was done on the strong side, till both bent alike. + +Quonab's arrows would answer, but Rolf needed a supply of his own. Again +there was great choice of material. The long, straight shoots ol' the +arrowwood (Viburnuin dentatum) supplied the ancient Indians, but +Quonab had adopted a better way, since the possession of an axe made it +possible. A 25-inch block of straight-grained ash was split and split +until it yielded enough pieces. These were shaved down to one fourth of +an inch thick, round, smooth, and perfectly straight. Each was notched +deeply at one end; three pieces of split goose feather were lashed on +the notched end, and three different kinds of arrows were made. All were +alike in shaft and in feathering, but differed in the head. First, the +target arrows: these were merely sharpened, and the points hardened by +roasting to a brown colour. They would have been better with conical +points of steel, but none of these were to be had. Second, the ordinary +hunting arrows with barbed steel heads, usually bought ready-made, or +filed out of a hoop: these were for use in securing such creatures as +muskrats, ducks close at hand, or deer. Third, the bird bolts: these +were left with a large, round, wooden head. They were intended for +quail, partridges, rabbits, and squirrels, but also served very often, +and most admirably, in punishing dogs, either the Indian's own when he +was not living up to the rules and was too far off for a cuff or kick, +or a farmer's dog that was threatening an attack. + +Now the outfit was complete, Rolf thought, but one other touch was +necessary. Quonab painted the feather part of the shaft bright red, and +Rolf learned why. Not for ornament, not as an owner's mark, but as a +finding mark. Many a time that brilliant red, with the white feather +next it, was the means of saving the arrow from loss. An uncoloured +arrow among the sticks and leaves of the woods was usually hidden, but +the bright-coloured shaft could catch the eye 100 yards away. + +It was very necessary to keep the bow and arrows from the wet. For this, +every hunter provides a case, usually of buckskin, but failing that they +made a good quiver of birch bark laced with spruce roots for the arrows, +and for the bow itself a long cover of tarpaulin. + +Now came the slow drilling in archery; the arrow held and the bow +drawn with three fingers on the cord--the thumb and little finger doing +nothing. The target was a bag of hay set at twenty feet, until the +beginner could hit it every time: then by degrees it was moved away +until at the standard distance of forty yards he could do fair shooting, +although of course he never shot as well as the Indian, who had +practised since he was a baby. + +There are three different kinds of archery tests: the first for aim: Can +you shoot so truly as to hit a three-inch mark, ten times in succession, +at ten paces? + +Next for speed: Can you shoot so quickly and so far up, as to have five +arrows in the air at once? If so, you are good: Can you keep up six? +Then you are very good. Seven is wonderful. The record is said to be +eight. Last for power: Can you pull so strong a bow and let the arrow go +so clean that it will fly for 250 yards or will pass through a deer at +ten paces? There is a record of a Sioux who sent an arrow through three +antelopes at one shot, and it was not unusual to pierce the huge buffalo +through and through; on one occasion a warrior with one shot pierced the +buffalo and killed her calf running at the other side. + +If you excel in these three things, you can down your partridge and +squirrel every time; you can get five or six out of each flock of birds; +you can kill your deer at twenty-five yards, and so need never starve in +the woods where there is game. + +Of course, Rolf was keen to go forth and try in the real chase, but it +was many a shot he missed and many an arrow lost or broken, before +he brought in even a red squirrel, and he got, at least, a higher +appreciation of the skill of those who could count on the bow for their +food. + +For those, then, who think themselves hunters and woodmen, let this be +a test and standard: Can you go forth alone into the wilderness where +there is game, take only a bow and arrows for weapons, and travel afoot +250 miles, living on the country as you go? + + + +Chapter 10. Rolf Works Out with Many Results + + He is the dumbest kind of a dumb fool that ain't king in some + little corner.--_Sayings of Si Sylvanne_ + + +The man who has wronged you will never forgive you, and he who has +helped you will be forever grateful. Yes, there is nothing that draws +you to a man so much as the knowledge that you have helped him. + +Quonab helped Rolf, and so was more drawn to him than to many of the +neighbours that he had known cor years; he was ready to like him. Their +coming together ffas accidental, but it was soon very clear that a +friendship was springing up between them. Rolf was too much of a child +to think about the remote future; and so was Quonab. Most Indians are +merely tall children. + +But there was one thing that Rolf did think of--he had no right to live +in Quonab's lodge without contributing a fair share of the things +needful. Quonab got his living partly by hunting, partly by fishing, +partly by selling baskets, and partly by doing odd jobs for the +neighbours. Rolf's training as a loafer had been wholly neglected, and +when he realized that he might be all summer with Quonab he said +bluntly: + +“You let me stay here a couple of months. I'll work out odd days, and +buy enough stuff to keep myself any way.” Quonab said nothing, but +their eyes met, and the boy knew it was agreed to. + +Rolf went that very day to the farm of Obadiah Timpany, and offered to +work by the day, hoeing corn and root crops. What farmer is not glad of +help in planting time 01 in harvest? It was only a question of what did +he know and how much did he want? The first was soon made clear; two +dollars a week was the usual thing for boys in those times, and when he +offered to take it half in trade, he was really getting three dollars a +week and his board. Food was as low as wages, and at the end of a week, +Rolf brought back to camp a sack of oatmeal, a sack of cornmeal, a +bushel of potatoes, a lot of apples, and one dollar cash. The dollar +went for tea and sugar, and the total product was enough to last them +both a month; so Rolf could share the wigwam with a good conscience. + +Of course, it was impossible to keep the gossipy little town of Myanos +from knowing, first, that the Indian had a white boy for partner; and, +later, that that boy was Rolf. This gave rise to great diversity of +opinion in the neighbourhood. Some thought it should not be allowed, +but Horton, who owned the land on which Quonab was camped, could not +see any reason for interfering. + +Ketchura Peck, spinster, however, did see many most excellent reasons. +She was a maid with a mission, and maintained it to be an outrage that +a Christian boy should be brought up by a godless pagan. She worried +over it almost as much as she did over the heathen in Central Africa, +where there are no Sunday schools, and clothes are as scarce as +churches. Failing to move Parson Peck and Elder Knapp in the matter, +and despairing of an early answer to her personal prayers, she resolved +on a bold move, “An' it was only after many a sleepless, prayerful +night,” namely, to carry the Bible into the heathen's stronghold. + +Thus it was that one bright morning in June she might have been seen, +prim and proper--almost glorified, she felt, as she set her lips just +right in the mirror--making for the Pipestave Pond, Bible in hand and +spectacles clear wiped, ready to read appropriate selections to the +unregenerate. + +She was full of the missionary spirit when she left Myanos, and partly +full when she reached the Orchard Street Trail; but the spirit was +leaking badly, and the woods did appear so wild and lonely that she +wondered if women had any right to be missionaries. When she came in +sight of the pond, the place seemed unpleasantly different from Myanos +and where was the Indian camp? She did not dare to shout; indeed, she +began to wish she were home again, but the sense of duty carried her +fully fifty yards along the pond, and then she came to an impassable +rock, a sheer bank that plainly said, “Stop!” Now she must go back or +up the bank. Her Yankee pertinacity said, “Try first up the bank,” and +she began a long, toilsome ascent, that did not end until she came out +on a high, open rock which, on its farther side, had a sheer drop and +gave a view of the village and of the sea. + +Whatever joy she had on again seeing her home was speedily quelled in +the fearsome discovery that she was right over the Indian camp, and the +two inmates looked so utterly, dreadfully savage that she was thankful +they had not seen her. At once she shrank back; but on recovering +sufficiently to again peer down, she saw something roasting before the +fire--“a tiny arm with a hand that bore five fingers,” as she afterward +said, and “a sickening horror came over her.” Yes, she had heard of +such things. If she could only get home in safety! Why had she tempted +Providence thus? She backed softly and prayed only to escape. What, and +never even deliver the Bible? “It would be wicked to return with it!” + In a cleft of the rock she placed it, and then, to prevent the wind +blowing off loose leaves, she placed a stone on top, and fled from the +dreadful place. + +That night, when Quonab and Rolf had finished theic meal of corn and +roasted coon, the old man climbed the rock to look at the sky. The book +caught his eye at once, evidently hidden there carefully, and therefore +in cache. A cache is a sacred thing to an Indian. He disturbed it not, +but later asked Rolf, “That yours?” + +“No.” + +It was doubtless the property of some one who meant to return for it, +so they left it untouched. It rested there for many months, till the +winter storms came down, dismantling the covers, dissolving the pages, +but leaving such traces as, in the long afterward, served to identify +the book and give the rock the other name, the one it bears +to-day--“Bible Rock, where Quonab, the son of Cos Cob, used to live.” + + + +Chapter 11. The Thunder-storm and the Fire Sticks + +When first Rolf noticed the wigwam's place, he wondered that Quonab had +not set it somewhere facing the lake, but he soon learned that it is +best to have the morning sun, the afternoon shade, and shelter from the +north and west winds. + +The first two points were illustrated nearly every day; but it was two +weeks before the last was made clear. + +That day the sun came up in a red sky, but soon was lost to view in a +heavy cloud-bank. There was no wind, and, as the morning passed, the day +grew hotter and closer. Quonab prepared for a storm; but it came with +unexpected force, and a gale of wind from the northwest that would +indeed have wrecked the lodge, but for the great sheltering rock. Under +its lea there was hardy a breeze; but not fifty yards away were two +trees that rubbed together, and in the storm they rasped so violently +that fine shreds of smoking wood were dropped and, but for the rain, +would surely have made a blaze. The thunder was loud and lasted long, +and the water poured down in torrents. They were ready for rain, but not +for the flood that rushed over the face of the cliff, soaking everything +in the lodge except the beds, which, being four inches off the ground, +were safe; and lying on them the two campers waited patiently, or +impatiently, while the weather raged for two drenching hours. And then +the pouring became a pattering; the roaring, a swishing; the storm, a +shower which died away, leaving changing patches of blue in the lumpy +sky, and all nature calm and pleased, but oh, so wet! Of course the fire +was out in the lodge and nearly all the wood was wet. Now Quonab drew +from a small cave some dry cedar and got down his tinder-box with flint +and steel to light up; but a serious difficulty appeared at once--the +tinder was wet and useless. + +These were the days before matches were invented. Every one counted on +flint and steel for their fire, but the tinder was an essential, and now +a fire seemed hopeless; at least Rolf thought so. + +“Nana Bojou was dancing that time,” said the Indian. + +“Did you see him make fire with those two rubbing trees? So he taught +our fathers, and so make we fire when the tricks of the white man fail +us.” + +Quonab now cut two pieces of dry cedar, one three fourths of an inch +thick and eighteen inches long, round, and pointed at both ends; the +other five eighths of an inch thick and flat. In the flat one he cut a +notch and at the end of the notch a little pit. Next he made a bow of +a stiff, curved stick, and a buckskin thong: a small pine knot was +selected and a little pit made in it with the point of a knife. These +were the fare-making sticks, but it was necessary to prepare the +firewood, lay the fire, and make some fibre for tinder. A lot of fine +cedar shavings, pounded up with cedar bark and rolled into a two-inch +ball, made good tinder, and all was ready. Quonab put the bow thong once +around the long stick, then held its point in the pit of the flat stick, +and the pine knot on the top to steady it. Now he drew the bow back and +forth, slowly, steadily, till the long stick or drill revolving ground +smoking black dust out of the notch. Then faster, until the smoke was +very strong and the powder filled the notch. Then he lifted the flat +stick, fanning the powder with his hands till a glowing coal appeared. +Over this he put the cedar tinder and blew gently, till it flamed, and +soon the wigwam was aglow. + +The whole time taken, from lifting the sticks to the blazing fire, was +less than one minute. + +This is the ancient way of the Indian; Rolf had often heard of it as a +sort of semi-myth; never before had he seen it, and so far as he could +learn from the books, it took an hour or two of hard work, not a few +deft touches and a few seconds of time. + +He soon learned to do it himself, and in the years which followed, +he had the curious experience of showing it to many Indians who had +forgotten how, thanks to the greater portability of the white man's +flint and steel. + +As they walked in the woods that day, they saw three trees that had been +struck by lightning during the recent storm; all three were oaks. Then +it occurred to Rolf that he had never seen any but an oak struck by +lightning. + +“Is it so, Quonab?” + +“No, there are many others; the lightning strikes the oaks most of all, +but it will strike the pine, the ash, the hemlock, the basswood, and +many more. Only two trees have I never seen struck, the balsam and the +birch.” + +“Why do they escape?” + +“My father told me when I was a little boy it was because they sheltered +and warmed the Star-girl, who was the sister of the Thunder-bird.” + +“I never heard that; tell me about it.” + +“Sometime maybe, not now.” + + + +Chapter 12. Hunting the Woodchucks + +Cornmeal and potatoes, with tea and apples, three times a day, are apt +to lose their charm. Even fish did not entirely satisfy the craving for +flesh meat. So Quonab and Rolf set out one morning on a regular hunt for +food. The days of big game were over on the Asamuk, but there were still +many small kinds and none more abundant than the woodchuck, hated of +farmers. Not without reason. Each woodchuck hole in the field was a +menace to the horses' legs. Tradition, at least, said that horses' legs +and riders' necks had been broken by the steed setting foot in one of +these dangerous pitfalls: besides which, each chuck den was the hub +centre of an area of desolation whenever located, as mostly it was, in +the cultivated fields. Undoubtedly the damage was greatly exaggerated, +but the farmers generally agreed that the woodchuck was a pest. + +Whatever resentment the tiller of the soil might feel against the +Indian's hunting quail on his land, he always welcomed him as a killer +of woodchucks. + +And the Indian looked on this animal as fair game and most excellent +eating. + +Rolf watched eagerly when Quonab, taking his bow and arrows, said they +were going out for a meat hunt. Although there were several fields +with woodchucks resident, they passed cautiously from one to another, +scanning the green expanse for the dark-brown spots that meant +woodchucks out foraging. At length they found one, with a large and two +small moving brown things among the clover. The large one stood up on +its hind legs from time to time, ever alert for danger. It was a broad, +open field, without cover; but close to the cleared place in which, +doubtless, was the den, there was a ridge that Quonab judged would help +him to approach. + +Rolf was instructed to stay in hiding and make some Indian signs that +the hunter could follow when he should lose sight of the prey. First, +“Come on” (beckoning); and, second, “Stop,” (hand raised, palm forward); +“All right” (hand drawn across level and waist high); forefinger moved +forward, level, then curved straight down, meant “gone in hole.” But +Rolf was not to sign anything or move, unless Quonab asked him by making +the question sign (that is waving his hand with palm forward and spread +fingers). + +Quonab went back into the woods, then behind the stone walls to get +around to the side next the ridge, and crawling so flat on his breast in +the clover that, although it was but a foot high, he was quite invisible +to any one not placed much above him. + +In this way he came to the little ridge back of the woodchuck den, quite +unknown to its occupants. But now he was in a difficulty. He could not +see any of them. + +They were certainly beyond range of his bow, and it was difficult to +make them seek the den without their rushing into it. But he was +equal to the occasion. He raised one hand and made the query sign, and +watching Rolf he got answer, “All well; they are there.” (A level sweep +of the flat hand and a finger pointing steadily.) Then he waited a few +seconds and made exactly the same sign, getting the same answer. + +He knew that the movement of the distant man would catch the eye of the +old woodchuck; she would sit up high to see what it was, and when it +came a second time she would, without being exactly alarmed, move toward +the den and call the young ones to follow. + +The hunter had not long to wait. He heard her shrill, warning whistle, +then the big chuck trotted and waddled into sight, stopping occasionally +to nibble or look around. Close behind her were the two fat cubs. +Arrived near the den their confidence was restored, and again they began +to feed, the young ones close to the den. Then Quonab put a blunt bird +dart in his bow and laid two others ready. Rising as little as possible, +he drew the bow. 'Tsip! the blunt arrow hit the young chuck on the nose +and turned him over. The other jumped in surprise and stood up. So did +the mother. 'Tsip! another bolt and the second chuck was kicking. But +the old one dashed like a flash into the underground safety of her den. +Quonab knew that she had seen nothing of him and would likely come forth +very soon. He waited for some time; then the gray-brown muzzle of the +fat old clover-stealer came partly to view; but it was not enough for +a shot, and she seemed to have no idea of coming farther. The Indian +waited what seemed like a long time, then played an ancient trick. He +began to whistle a soft, low air. Whether the chuck thinks it is another +woodchuck calling, or merely a pleasant sound, is not known, but she +soon did as her kind always does, came out of the hole slowly and ever +higher, till she was half out and sitting up, peering about. + +This was Quonab's chance. He now drew a barbed hunting arrow to the head +and aimed it behind her shoulders. 'Tsip! and the chuck was transfixed +by a shaft that ended her life a minute later, and immediately prevented +that instinctive scramble into the hole, by which so many chucks elude +the hunter, even when mortally wounded. + +Now Quonab stood up without further concealment, and beckoned to Rolf, +who came running. Three fat woodchucks meant abundance of the finest +fresh meat for a week; and those who have not tried it have no idea +what a delicacy is a young, fat, clover-fed woodchuck, pan-roasted, with +potatoes, and served at a blazing campfire to a hunter who is young, +strong, and exceedingly hungry. + + + +Chapter 13. The Fight with the Demon of the Deep + +One morning, as they passed the trail that skirts the pond, Quonab +pointed to the near water. There was something afloat like a small, +round leaf, with two beads well apart, on it. Then Rolf noticed, two +feet away, a larger floating leaf, and now he knew that the first was +the head and eyes, the last the back, of a huge snapping turtle. A +moment more and it quickly sank from view. Turtles of three different +kinds were common, and snappers were well known to Rolf; but never +before had he seen such a huge and sinister-looking monster of the deep. + +“That is Bosikado. I know him; he knows me,” said the red man. “There +has long been war between us; some day we will settle it. I saw him +here first three years ago. I had shot a duck; it floated on the water. +Before I could get to it something pulled it under, and that was the +last of it. Then a summer duck came with young ones. One by one he took +them, and at last got her. He drives all ducks away, so I set many night +lines for him. I got some little snappers, eight and ten pounds each. +They were good to eat, and three times already I took Bosikado on the +hooks, but each time when I pulled him up to the canoe, he broke my +biggest line and went down. He was as broad as the canoe; his claws +broke through the canoe skin; he made it bulge and tremble. He looked +like the devil of the lake. I was afraid! + +“But my father taught me there is only one thing that can shame a +man--that is to be afraid, and I said I will never let fear be my guide. +I will seek a fair fight with Bosikado. He is my enemy. He made me +afraid once; I will make him much afraid. For three years we have been +watching each other. For three years he has kept all summer ducks away, +and robbed my fish-lines, my nets, and my muskrat traps. Not often do I +see him--mostly like today. + +“Before Skookum I had a little dog, Nindai. He was a good little dog. He +could tree a coon, catch a rabbit, or bring out a duck, although he was +very small. We were very good friends. One time I shot a duck; it fell +into the lake; I called Nindai. He jumped into the water and swam to +the duck. Then that duck that I thought dead got up and flew away, so I +called Nindai. He came across the water to me. By and by, over that deep +place, he howled and splashed. Then he yelled, like he wanted me. I ran +for the canoe and paddled quick; I saw my little dog Nindai go down. +Then I knew it was that Bosikado again. I worked a long time with a +pole, but found nothing; only five days later one of Nindai's paws +floated down the stream. Some day I will tear open that Bosikado! + +“Once I saw him on the bank. He rolled down like a big stone to the +water. He looked at me before he dived, and as we looked in each other's +eyes I knew he was a Manito; but he is evil, and my father said, 'When +an evil Manito comes to trouble you, you must kill him.' + +“One day, when I swam after a dead duck, he took me by the toe, but I +reached shallow water and escaped him; and once I drove my fish-spear +in his back, but it was not strong enough to hold him. Once he caught +Skookum's tail, but the hair came out; the dog has not since swum across +the pond. + +“Twice I have seen him like today and might have killed him with the +gun, but I want to meet him fighting. Many a time I have sat on the bank +and sung to him the 'Coward's Song,' and dared him to come and fight in +the shallow water where we are equals. He hears me. He does not come. + +“I know he made me sick last winter; even now he is making trouble with +his evil magic. But my magic must prevail, and some day we shall meet. +He made me afraid once. I will make him much afraid, and will meet him +in the water.” + +Not many days were to pass before the meeting. Rolf had gone for water +at the well, which was a hole dug ten feet from the shore of the lake. +He had learned the hunter's cautious trick of going silently and peering +about, before he left cover. On a mud bank in a shallow bay, some fifty +yards off, he described a peculiar gray and greenish form that he slowly +made out to be a huge turtle, sunning itself. The more he looked and +gauged it with things about, the bigger it seemed. So he slunk back +quickly and silently to Quonab. “He is out sunning himself--Bosikado--on +the bank!” + +The Indian rose quickly, took his tomahawk and a strong line. Rolf +reached for the gun, but Quonab shook his head. They went to the lake. +Yes! There was the great, goggle-eyed monster, like a mud-coloured +log. The bank behind him was without cover. It would be impossible to +approach the watchful creature within striking distance before he could +dive. Quonab would not use the gun; in this case he felt he must atone +by making an equal fight. He quickly formed a plan; he fastened the +tomahawk and the coiled rope to his belt, then boldly and silently +slipped into the lake, to approach the snapper from the water +side--quite the easiest in this case, not only because the snapper would +naturally watch on the land side, but because there was a thick clump of +rushes behind which the swimmer could approach. + +Then, as instructed, Rolf went back into the woods, and came silently +to a place whence he could watch the snapper from a distance of twenty +yards. + +The boy's heart beat fast as he watched the bold swimmer and the savage +reptile. There could be little doubt that the creature weighed a +hundred pounds. It is the strongest for its size and the fiercest of all +reptiles. Its jaws, though toothless, have cutting edges, a sharp beak, +and power to the crushing of bones. Its armour makes it invulnerable to +birds and beasts of prey. Like a log it lay on the beach, with its long +alligator tail stretched up the bank and its serpentine head and tiny +wicked eyes vigilantly watching the shore. Its shell, broad and ancient, +was fringed with green moss, and its scaly armpits exposed, were decked +with leeches, at which a couple of peetweets pecked with eager interest, +apparently to the monster's satisfaction. Its huge limbs and claws were +in marked contrast to the small, red eyes. But the latter it was that +gave the thrill of unnervement. + +Sunk down nearly out of sight, the Indian slowly reached the reeds. Here +he found bottom, and pausing, he took the rope in one hand, the tomahawk +in the other, and dived, and when he reappeared he was within ten yards +of the enemy, and in water but four feet deep. + +With a sudden rush the reptile splashed into the pond and out of sight, +avoiding the rope noose. But Quonab clutched deep in the water as +it passed, and seized the monster's rugged tail. Then it showed its +strength. In a twinkling that mighty tail was swung sidewise, crushing +the hand with terrible force against the sharp-edged points of the back +armour. It took all the Indian's grit to hold on to that knife-edged war +club. He dropped his tomahawk, then with his other hand swung the rope +to catch the turtle's head, but it lurched so quickly that the rope +missed again, slipped over the shell, and, as they struggled, encircled +one huge paw. The Indian jerked it tight, and they were bound together. +But now his only weapon was down at the bottom and the water all +muddied. He could not see, but plunged to grope for the tomahawk. The +snapper gave a great lurch to escape, releasing the injured hand, but +jerking the man off his legs. Then, finding itself held by a forepaw, it +turned with gaping, hissing jaws, and sprang on the foe that struggled +in bottom of the water. + +The snapper has the bulldog habit to seize and hold till the piece tears +out. In the muddy water it had to seize in the dark, and fending first +the left arm of its foe, fastened on with fierce beak and desperate +strength. At this moment Quonab recovered his tomahawk; rising into the +air he dragged up the hanging snapper, and swung the weapon with all the +force of his free arm. The blow sank through the monster's shell, deep +into its back, without any visible effect, except to rob the Indian of +his weapon as he could not draw it out. + +Then Rolf rushed into the water to help. But Quonab gasped, “No, no, go +back--I'm alone.” + +The creature's jaws were locked on his arm, but its front claws, tearing +downward and outward, were demolishing the coat that had protected it, +and long lines of mingled blood were floating on the waves. + +After a desperate plunge toward shallow water, Quonab gave another +wrench to the tomahawk--it moved, loosed; another, and it was free. +Then “chop, chop, chop,” and that long, serpentine neck was severed; the +body, waving its great scaly legs and lashing its alligator tail, went +swimming downward, but the huge head, blinking its bleary, red eyes and +streaming with blood, was clinched on his arm. The Indian made for the +bank hauling the rope that held the living body, and fastened it to a +tree, then drew his knife to cut the jaw muscles of the head that ground +its beak into his flesh. But the muscles were protected by armour +plates and bone; he could not deal a stab to end their power. In vain he +fumbled and slashed, until in a spasmodic quiver the jaws gaped wide and +the bloody head fell to the ground. Again it snapped, but a tree branch +bore the brunt; on this the strong jaws clinched, and so remained. + +For over an hour the headless body crawled, or tried to crawl, always +toward the lake. And now they could look at the enemy. Not his size so +much as his weight surprised them. Although barely four feet long, he +was so heavy that Rolf could not lift him. Quonab's scratches were many +but slight; only the deep bill wound made his arm and the bruises of the +jaws were at all serious and of these he made light. Headed by Skookum +in full 'yap,' they carried the victim's body to camp; the head, still +dutching the stick, was decorated with three feathers, then set on a +pole near the wigwam. And the burden of the red man's song when next he +sang was: + +“Bosikado, mine enemy was mighty, But I went into his country And made +him afraid!” + + + +Chapter 14. Selectman Horton Appears at the Rock + +Summer was at its height on the Asamuk. The woodthrush was nearing the +end of its song; a vast concourse of young robins in their speckled +plumage joined chattering every night in the thickest cedars; and one or +two broods of young ducks were seen on the Pipestave Pond. + +Rolf had grown wonderfully well into his wigwam life. He knew now +exactly how to set the flap so as to draw out all the smoke, no matter +which way the wind blew; he had learned the sunset signs, which tell +what change of wind the night might bring. He knew without going to the +shore whether the tide was a little ebb, with poor chances, or a mighty +outflow that would expose the fattest oyster beds. His practiced fingers +told at a touch whether it was a turtle or a big fish on his night line; +and by the tone of the tom-tom he knew when a rainstorm was at hand. + +Being trained in industry, he had made many improvements in their camp, +not the least of which was to clean up and burn all the rubbish and +garbage that attracted hordes of flies. He had fitted into the camp +partly by changing it to fit himself, and he no longer felt that his +stay there was a temporary shift. When it was to end, he neither knew +nor cared. He realized only that he was enjoying life as he never had +done before. His canoe had passed a lot of rapids and was now in a +steady, unbroken stream--but it was the swift shoot before the fall. +A lull in the clamour does not mean the end of war, but a new onset +preparing; and, of course, it came in the way least looked for. + +Selectman Horton stood well with the community; he was a man of good +judgment, good position, and kind heart. He was owner of all the +woods along the Asamuk, and thus the Indian's landlord on the Indian's +ancestral land. Both Rolf and Quonab had worked for Horton, and so they +knew him well, and liked him for his goodness. + +It was Wednesday morning, late in July, when Selectman Horton, +clean-shaven and large, appeared at the wigwam under the rock. + +“Good morrow to ye both!” Then without wasting time he plunged in. +“There's been some controversy and much criticism of the selectmen for +allowing a white lad, the child of Christian parents, the grandson of a +clergyman, to leave all Christian folk and folds, and herd with a pagan, +to become, as it were, a mere barbarian. I hold not, indeed, with those +that out of hand would condemn as godless a good fellow like Quonab, +who, in my certain knowledge and according to his poor light, doth +indeed maintain in some kind a daily worship of a sort. Nevertheless, +the selectmen, the magistrates, the clergy, the people generally, and +above all the Missionary Society, are deeply moved in the matter. It +hath even been made a personal charge against myself, and with much +bitterness I am held up as unzealous for allowing such a nefarious +stronghold of Satan to continue on mine own demesne, and harbour one, +escaped, as it were, from grace. Acting, therefore, not according to my +heart, but as spokesman of the Town Council, the Synod of Elders, and +the Society for the Promulgation of Godliness among the Heathen, I am +to state that you, Rolf Kittering, being without kinsfolk and under age, +are in verity a ward of the parish, and as such, it hath been arranged +that you become a member of the household of the most worthy Elder +Ezekiel Peck, a household filled with the spirit of estimable piety and +true doctrine; a man, indeed, who, notwithstanding his exterior coldness +and severity, is very sound in all matters regarding the Communion of +Saints, and, I may even say in a measure a man of fame for some most +excellent remarks he hath passed on the shorter catechism, beside which +he hath gained much approval for having pointed out two hidden meanings +in the 27th verse of the 12th chapter of Hebrews; one whose very +presence, therefore, is a guarantee against levity, laxity, and false +preachment. + +“There, now, my good lad, look not so like a colt that feels the whip +for the first time. You will have a good home, imbued with the spirit of +a most excellent piety that will be ever about you.” + +“Like a colt feeling the whip,” indeed! Rolf reeled like a stricken +deer. To go back as a chore-boy drudge was possible, but not alluring; +to leave Quonab, just as the wood world was opening to him, was +devastating; but to exchange it all for bondage in the pious household +of Old Peck, whose cold cruelty had driven off all his own children, was +an accumulation of disasters that aroused him. + +“I won't go!” he blurted out, and gazed defiantly at the broad and +benevolent selectman. + +“Come now, Rolf, such language is unbecoming. Let not a hasty tongue +betray you into sin. This is what your mother would have wished. Be +sensible; you will soon find it was all for the best. I have ever liked +you, and will ever be a friend you can count on. + +“Acting, not according to my instructions, but according to my heart, +I will say further that you need not come now, you need not even give +answer now, but think it over. Nevertheless, remember that on or before +Monday morning next, you will be expected to appear at Elder Peck's, and +I fear that, in case you fail, the messenger next arriving will be +one much less friendly than myself. Come now, Rolf, be a good lad, and +remember that in your new home you will at least be living for the glory +of God.” + +Then, with a friendly nod, but an expression of sorrow, the large, black +messenger turned and tramped away. + +Rolf slowly, limply, sank down on a rock and stared at the fire. After +awhile Quonab got up and began to prepare the mid-day meal. Usually Rolf +helped him. Now he did nothing but sullenly glare at the glowing coals. +In half an hour the food was ready. He ate little; then went away in the +woods by himself. Quonab saw him lying on a flat rock, looking at the +pond, and throwing pebbles into it. Later Quonab went to Myanos. On his +return he found that Rolf had cut up a great pile of wood, but not a +word passed between them. The look of sullen anger and rebellion on +Rolf's face was changing to one of stony despair. What was passing in +each mind the other could not divine. + +The evening meal was eaten in silence; then Quonab smoked for an hour, +both staring into the fire. A barred owl hooted and laughed over their +heads, causing the dog to jump up and bark at the sound that ordinarily +he would have heeded not at all. Then silence was restored, and the red +man's hidden train of thought was in a flash revealed. + +“Rolf, let's go to the North Woods!” + +It was another astounding idea. Rolf had realized more and more how much +this valley meant to Quonab, who worshipped the memory of his people. + +“And leave all this?” he replied, making a sweep with his hand toward +the rock, the Indian trail, the site of bygone Petuquapen, and the +graves of the tribe. + +For reply their eyes met, and from the Indian's deep chest came the +single word, “Ugh.” One syllable, deep and descending, but what a tale +it told of the slowly engendered and strong-grown partiality, of a +struggle that had continued since the morning when the selectman came +with words of doom, and of friendship's victory won. + +Rolf realized this, and it gave him a momentary choking in his throat, +and, “I'm ready if you really mean it.” + +“Ugh I go, but some day come back.” + +There was a long silence, then Rolf, “When shall we start?” and the +answer, “To-morrow night.” + + + +Chapter 15. Bound for the North Woods + +When Quonab left camp in the morning he went heavy laden, and the +trail he took led to Myanos. There was nothing surprising in it when +he appeared at Silas Peck's counter and offered for sale a pair of +snowshoes, a bundle of traps, some dishes of birch bark and basswood, +and a tom-tom, receiving in exchange some tea, tobacco, gunpowder, and +two dollars in cash. He turned without comment, and soon was back in +camp. He now took the kettle into the woods and brought it back filled +with bark, fresh chipped from a butternut tree. Water was added, and the +whole boiled till it made a deep brown liquid. When this was cooled he +poured it into a flat dish, then said to Rolf: “Come now, I make you a +Sinawa.” + +With a soft rag the colour was laid on. Face, head, neck, and hands were +all at first intended, but Rolf said, “May as well do the whole thing.” + So he stripped off; the yellow brown juice on his white skin turned it +a rich copper colour, and he was changed into an Indian lad that none +would have taken for Rolf Kittering. The stains soon dried, and Rolf, +re-clothed, felt that already he had burned a bridge. + +Two portions of the wigwam cover were taken off; and two packs were +made of the bedding. The tomahawk, bows, arrows, and gun, with the few +precious food pounds in the copper pot, were divided between them and +arranged into packs with shoulder straps; then all was ready. But there +was one thing more for Quonab; he went up alone to the rock. Rolf knew +what he went for, and judged it best not to follow. + +The Indian lighted his pipe, blew the four smokes to the four winds, +beginning with the west, then he sat in silence for a time. Presently +the prayer for good hunting came from the rock: + + “Father lead us! + Father, help us! + Father, guide us to the good hunting.” + +And when that ceased a barred owl hooted in the woods, away to the +north. + +“Ugh! good,” was all he said as he rejoined Rolf; and they set out, as +the sun went down, on their long journey due northward, Quonab, Rolf, +and Skookum. They had not gone a hundred yards before the dog turned +back, raced to a place where he had a bone in cache and rejoining there +trotted along with his bone. + +The high road would have been the easier travelling, but it was very +necessary to be unobserved, so they took the trail up the brook Asamuk, +and after an hour's tramp came out by the Cat-Rock road that runs +westerly. Again they were tempted by the easy path, but again Quonab +decided on keeping to the woods. Half an hour later they were halted by +Skookum treeing a coon. After they had secured the dog, they tramped on +through the woods for two hours more, and then, some eight miles from +the Pipestave, they halted, Rolf, at least, tired out. It was now +midnight. They made a hasty double bed of the canvas cover over a pole +above them, and slept till morning, cheered, as they closed their drowsy +eyes, by the “Hoo, Hoo, Hoo, Hoo, yah, hoo,” of their friend, the barred +owl, still to the northward. + +The sun was high, and Quonab had breakfast ready before Rolf awoke. He +was so stiff with the tramp and the heavy pack that it was with secret +joy he learned that they were to rest, concealed in the woods, that day, +and travel only by night, until in a different region, where none knew +or were likely to stop them. They were now in York State, but that did +not by any means imply that they were beyond pursuit. + +As the sun rose high, Rolf went forth with his bow and blunt arrows, and +then, thanks largely to Skookum, he succeeded in knocking over a couple +of squirrels, which, skinned and roasted, made their dinner that day. +At night they set out as before, making about ten miles. The third night +they did better, and the next day being Sunday, they kept out of sight. +But Monday morning, bright and clear, although it was the first morning +when they were sure of being missed, they started to tramp openly along +the highway, with a sense of elation that they had not hitherto known +on the joumey. Two things impressed Rolf by their novelty: the curious +stare of the country folk whose houses and teams they passed, and the +violent antagonism of the dogs. Usually the latter could be quelled by +shaking a stick at them, or by pretending to pick up a stone, but one +huge and savage brindled mastiff kept following and barking just out of +stick range, and managed to give Skookum a mauling, until Quonab drew +his bow and let fly a blunt arrow that took the brute on the end of +the nose, and sent him howling homeward, while Skookum got a few highly +satisfactory nips at the enemy's rear. Twenty miles they made that day +and twenty-five the next, for now they were on good roads, and their +packs were lighter. More than once they found kind farmer folk who gave +them a meal. But many times Skookum made trouble for them. The farmers +did not like the way he behaved among their hens. Skookum never could be +made to grasp the fine zoological distinction between partridges which +are large birds and fair game, and hens which are large birds, but not +fair game. Such hair splitting was obviously unworthy of study, much +less of acceptance. + +Soon it was clearly better for Rolf, approaching a house, to go alone, +while Quonab held Skookum. The dogs seemed less excited by Rolf's smell, +and remembering his own attitude when tramps came to one or another +of his ancient homes, he always asked if they would let him work for a +meal, and soon remarked that his success was better when he sought first +the women of the house, and then, smiling to show his very white teeth, +spoke in clear and un-Indian English, which had the more effect coming +from an evident Indian. + +“Since I am to be an Indian, Quonab, you must give me an Indian name,” + he said after one of these episodes. + +“Ugh! Good! That's easy! You are 'Nibowaka,' the wise one.” For the +Indian had not missed any of the points, and so he was named. + +Twenty or thirty miles a day they went now, avoiding the settlements +along the river. Thus they saw nothing of Albany, but on the tenth +day they reached Fort Edward, and for the first time viewed the great +Hudson. Here they stayed as short a time as might be, pushed on by +Glen's Falls, and on the eleventh night of the journey they passed the +old, abandoned fort, and sighted the long stretch of Lake George, with +its wooded shore, and glimpses of the mountains farther north. + +Now a new thought possessed them--“If only they had the canoe that they +had abandoned on the Pipestave.” It came to them both at the sight of +the limit less water, and especially when Rolf remembered that Lake +George joined with Champlain, which again was the highway to all the +wilderness. + +They camped now as they had fifty times before, and made their meal. The +bright blue water dancing near was alluring, inspiring; as they sought +the shore Quonab pointed to a track and said, “Deer.” He did not show +much excitement, but Rolf did, and they returned to the camp fire with +a new feeling of elation--they had reached the Promised Land. Now they +must prepare for the serious work of finding a hunting ground that was +not already claimed. + +Quonab, remembering the ancient law of the woods, that parcels off the +valleys, each to the hunter first arriving, or succeeding the one who +had, was following his own line of thought. Rolf was puzzling over means +to get an outfit, canoe, traps, axes, and provisions. The boy broke +silence. + +“Quonab, we must have money to get an outfit; this is the beginning of +harvest; we can easily get work for a month. That will feed us and give +us money enough to live on, and a chance to learn something about the +country.” + +The reply was simple, “You are Nibowaka.” + +The farms were few and scattered here, but there were one or two along +the lake. To the nearest one with standing grain Rolf led the way. But +their reception, from the first brush with the dog to the final tilt +with the farmer, was unpleasant--“He didn't want any darn red-skins +around there. He had had two St. Regis Indians last year, and they were +a couple of drunken good-for-nothings.” + +The next was the house of a fat Dutchman, who was just wondering how he +should meet the compounded accumulated emergencies of late hay, early +oats, weedy potatoes, lost cattle, and a prospective increase of +his family, when two angels of relief appeared at his door, in +copper-coloured skins. + +“Cahn yo work putty goood? + +“Yes, I have always lived on a farm,” and Rolf showed his hands, broad +and heavy for his years. + +“Cahn yo mebby find my lost cows, which I haf not find, already yet?” + +Could they! it would be fun to try. + +“I giff yo two dollars you pring dem putty kvick.” + +So Quonab took the trail to the woods, and Rolf started into the +potatoes with a hoe, but he was stopped by a sudden outcry of poultry. +Alas! It was Skookum on an ill-judged partridge hunt. A minute later he +was ignominiously chained to a penitential post, nor left it during the +travellers' sojourn. + +In the afternoon Quonab returned with the cattle, and as he told Rolf he +saw five deer, there was an unmistakable hunter gleam in his eye. + +Three cows in milk, and which had not been milked for two days, was a +serious matter, needing immediate attention. Rolf had milked five cows +twice a day for five years, and a glance showed old Van Trumper that the +boy was an expert. + +“Good, good! I go now make feed swine.” + +He went into the outhouse, but a tow-topped, redcheeked girl ran after +him. “Father, father, mother says--” and the rest was lost. + +“Myn Hemel! Myn Hemel! I thought it not so soon,” and the fat Dutchman +followed the child. A moment later he reappeared, his jolly face clouded +with a look of grave concern. “Hi yo big Injun, yo cahn paddle canoe?” + Quonab nodded. “Den coom. Annette, pring Tomas und Hendrik.” So +the father carried two-year-old Hendrik, while the Indian carried +six-year-old Tomas, and twelve-year-old Annette followed in vague, +uncomprehended alarm. Arrived at the shore the children were placed in +the canoe, and then the difficulties came fully to the father's +mind--he could not leave his wife. He must send the children with the +messenger--In a sort of desperation, “Cahn you dem childen take to de +house across de lake, and pring back Mrs. Callan? Tell her Marta Van +Trumper need her right now mooch very kvick.” The Indian nodded. Then +the father hesitated, but a glance at the Indian was enough. Something +said, “He is safe,” and in spite of sundry wails from the little ones +left with a dark stranger, he pushed off the canoe: “Yo take care for my +babies,” and turned his brimming eyes away. + +The farmhouse was only two miles off, and the evening calm; no time was +lost: what woman will not instantly drop all work and all interests, to +come to the help of another in the trial time of motherhood? + +Within an hour the neighbour's wife was holding hands with the mother of +the banished tow-heads. He who tempers the wind and appoints the season +of the wild deer hinds had not forgotten the womanhood beyond the reach +of skilful human help, and with the hard and lonesome life had conjoined +a sweet and blessed compensation. What would not her sister of the city +give for such immunity; and long before that dark, dread hour of +night that brings the ebbing life force low, the wonderful miracle was +complete; there was another tow-top in the settler's home, and all was +well. + + + +Chapter 16. Life with the Dutch Settler + +The Indians slept in the luxuriant barn of logs, with blankets, plenty +of hay, and a roof. They were more than content, for now, on the edge of +the wilderness, they were very close to wild life. Not a day or a night +passed without bringing proof of that. + +One end of the barn was portioned off for poultry. In this the working +staff of a dozen hens were doing their duty, which, on that first night +of the “brown angels' visit,” consisted of silent slumber, when all at +once the hens and the new hands were aroused by a clamorous cackling, +which speedily stopped. It sounded like a hen falling in a bad dream, +then regaining her perch to go to sleep again. But next morning the body +of one of these highly esteemed branches of the egg-plant was found in +the corner, partly devoured. Quonab examined the headless hen, the dust +around, and uttered the word, “Mink.” + +Rolf said, “Why not skunk?” + +“Skunk could not climb to the perch.” + +“Weasel then.” + +“Weasel would only suck the blood, and would kill three or four.” + +“Coon would carry him away, so would fox or wildcat, and a marten would +not come into the building by night.” + +There was no question, first, that it was a mink, and, second, that he +was hiding about the barn until the hunger pang should send him again +to the hen house. Quonab covered the hen's body with two or three large +stones so that there was only one approach. In the way of this approach +he buried a “number one” trap. + +That night they were aroused again; this time by a frightful screeching, +and a sympathetic, inquiring cackle from the fowls. + +Arising, quickly they entered with a lantem. Rolf then saw a sight that +gave him a prickling in his hair. The mink, a large male, was caught by +one front paw. He was writhing and foaming, tearing, sometimes at the +trap, sometimes at the dead hen, and sometimes at his own imprisoned +foot, pausing now and then to utter the most ear-piercing shrieks, then +falling again in crazy animal fury on the trap, splintering his sharp +white teeth, grinding the cruel metal with bruised and bloody jaws, +frothing, snarling, raving mad. As his foemen entered he turned on them +a hideous visage of inexpressible fear and hate, rage and horror. +His eyes glanced back green fire in the lantern light; he strained in +renewed efforts to escape; the air was rank with his musky smell. The +impotent fury of his struggle made a picture that continued in Rolf's +mind. Quonab took a stick and with a single blow put an end to the +scene, but never did Rolf forget it, and never afterward was he a +willing partner when the trapping was done with those relentless jaws of +steel. + +A week later another hen was missing, and the door of the hen house left +open. After a careful examination of the dust, inside and out of the +building, Quonab said, “Coon.” It is very unusual for coons to raid a +hen house. Usually it is some individual with abnormal tastes, and once +he begins, he is sure to come back. The Indian judged that he might be +back the next night, so prepared a trap. A rope was passed from the door +latch to a tree; on this rope a weight was hung, so that the door was +selfshutting, and to make it self-locking he leaned a long pole against +it inside. Now he propped it open with a single platform, so set that +the coon must walk on it once he was inside, and so release the door. +The trappers thought they would hear in the night when the door closed, +but they were sleepy; they knew nothing until next morning. Then they +found that the self-shutter had shut, and inside, crouched in one of the +nesting boxes, was a tough, old fighting coon. Strange to tell, he had +not touched a second hen. As soon as he found himself a prisoner he had +experienced a change of heart, and presently his skin was nailed on the +end of the barn and his meat was hanging in the larder. + +“Is this a marten,” asked little Annette. And when told not, +her disappointment elicited the information that old Warren, the +storekeeper, had promised her a blue cotton dress for a marten skin. + +“You shall have the first one I catch,” said Rolf. + +Life in Van Trumper's was not unpleasant. The mother was going about +again in a week. Annette took charge of the baby, as well as of +the previous arrivals. Hendrik senior was gradually overcoming his +difficulties, thanks to the unexpected help, and a kindly spirit made +the hard work not so very hard. The shyness that was at first felt +toward the Indians wore off, especially in the case of Rolf, he was +found so companionable; and the Dutchman, after puzzling over the +combination of brown skin and blue eyes, decided that Rolf was a +half-breed. + +August wore on not unpleasantly for the boy, but Quonab was getting +decidedly restless. He could work for a week as hard as any white man, +but his race had not risen to the dignity of patient, unremitting, +life-long toil. + +“How much money have we now, Nibowaka?” was one of the mid-August +indications of restlessness. Rolf reckoned up; half a month for Quonab, +$15.00; for himself, $10.00; for finding the cows $2.00--$27.00 in all. +Not enough. + +Three days later Quonab reckoned up again. Next day he said: “We need +two months' open water to find a good country and build a shanty.” Then +did Rolf do the wise thing; he went to fat Hendrik and told him all +about it. They wanted to get a canoe and an outfit, and seek for a +trapping or hunting ground that would not encroach on those already +possessed, for the trapping law is rigid; even the death penalty is not +considered too high in certain cases of trespass, provided the injured +party is ready to be judge, jury, and executioner. Van Trumper was able +to help them not a little in the matter of location--there was no use +trying on the Vermont side, nor anywhere near Lake Champlain, nor near +Lake George; neither was it worth while going to the far North, as the +Frenchmen came in there, and they were keen hunters, so that +Hamilton County was more promising than any other, but it was almost +inaccessible, remote from all the great waterways, and of course without +roads; its inaccessibility was the reason why it was little known. So +far so good; but happy Hendrik was unpleasantly surprised to learn that +the new help were for leaving at once. Finally he made this offer: If +they would stay till September first, and so leave all in “good shape +fer der vinter,” he would, besides the wages agreed, give them the +canoe, one axe, six mink traps, and a fox trap now hanging in the barn, +and carry them in his wagon as far as the Five-mile portage from Lake +George to Schroon River, down which they could go to its junction with +the upper Hudson, which, followed up through forty miles of rapids and +hard portages, would bring them to a swampy river that enters from the +southwest, and ten miles up this would bring them to Jesup's Lake, which +is two miles wide and twelve miles long. This country abounded with +game, but was so hard to enter that after Jesup's death it was deserted. + +There was only one possible answer to such an offer--they stayed. + +In spare moments Quonab brought the canoe up to the barn, stripped off +some weighty patches of bark and canvas and some massive timber thwarts, +repaired the ribs, and when dry and gummed, its weight was below one +hundred pounds; a saving of at least forty pounds on the soggy thing he +crossed the lake in that first day on the farm. + +September came. Early in the morning Quonab went alone to the lakeside; +there on a hill top he sat, looking toward the sunrise, and sang a song +of the new dawn, beating, not with a tom-tom--he had none--but with one +stick on another. And when the sunrise possessed the earth he sang again +the hunter's song: + +“Father, guide our feet, Lead us to the good hunting.” + +Then he danced to the sound, his face skyward, his eyes closed, his feet +barely raised, but rythmically moved. So went he three times round to +the chant in three sun circles, dancing a sacred measure, as royal David +might have done that day when he danced around the Ark of the Covenant +on its homeward joumey. His face was illumined, and no man could have +seen him then without knowing that this was a true heart's worship of a +true God, who is in all things He has made. + + + +Chapter 17. Canoeing on the Upper Hudson + + There is only one kind of a man I can't size up; that's the + faller that shets up and says nothing.--Sayings of Si + Sylvanne. + +A settler named Hulett had a scow that was borrowed by the neighbours +whenever needed to take a team across the lake. On the morning of their +journey, the Dutchman's team and wagon, the canoe and the men, were +aboard the scow, Skookum took his proper place at the prow, and all +was ready for “Goodbye.” Rolf found it a hard word to say. The good old +Dutch mother had won his heart, and the children were like his brothers +and sisters. + +“Coom again, lad; coom and see us kvick.” She kissed him, he kissed +Annette and the three later issues. They boarded the scow to ply the +poles till the deep water was reached, then the oars. An east wind +springing up gave them a chance to profit by a wagon-cover rigged as a +sail, and two hours later the scow was safely landed at West Side, +where was a country store, and the head of the wagon road to the Schroon +River. + +As they approached the door, they saw a rough-looking man slouching +against the building, his hands in his pockets, his blear eyes taking in +the new-comers with a look of contemptuous hostility. As they passed, he +spat tobacco juice on the dog and across the feet of the men. + +Old Warren who kept the store was not partial to Indians, but he was +a good friend of Hendrik and very keen to trade for fur, so the new +trappers were well received; and now came the settling of accounts. +Flour, oatmeal, pork, potatoes, tea, tobacco, sugar, salt, powder, +ball, shot, clothes, lines, an inch-auger, nails, knives, awls, needles, +files, another axe, some tin plates, and a frying pan were selected and +added to Hendrik's account. + +“If I was you, I'd take a windy-sash; you'll find it mighty convenient +in cold weather.” The store keeper led them into an outhouse where was a +pile of six-lighted window-frames all complete. So the awkward thing was +added to their load. + +“Can't I sell you a fine rifle?” and he took down a new, elegant small +bore of the latest pattern. “Only twenty-five dollars.” Rolf shook his +head; “part down, and I'll take the rest in fur next spring.” Rolf was +sorely tempted; however, he had an early instilled horror of debt. He +steadfastly said: “No.” But many times he regretted it afterward! The +small balance remaining was settled in cash. + +As they were arranging and selecting, they heard a most hideous +yelping outdoors, and a minute later Skookum limped in, crying as if +half-killed. Quonab was out in a moment. + +“Did you kick my dog?” + +The brutal loafer changed countenance as he caught the red man's eye. +“Naw! never touched him; hurted himself on that rake.” + +It was obviously a lie, but better to let it pass, and Quonab came in +again. + +Then the rough stranger appeared at the door and growled: “Say, Warren! +ain't you going to let me have that rifle? I guess my word's as good as +the next man's.” + +“No,” said Warren; “I told you, no!” + +“Then you can go to blazes, and you'll never see a cent's worth of fur +from the stuff I got last year.” + +“I don't expect to,” was the reply; “I've learned what your word's +worth.” And the stranger slouched away. + +“Who vas he?” asked Hendrik. + +“I only know that his name is Jack Hoag; he's a little bit of a trapper +and a big bit of a bum; stuck me last year. He doesn't come out this +way; they say he goes out by the west side of the mountains.” + +New light on their course was secured from Warren, and above all, the +important information that the mouth of Jesup's River was marked by an +eagle's nest in a dead pine. “Up to that point keep the main stream, and +don't forget next spring I'm buying fur.” + +The drive across Five-mile portage was slow. It took over two hours to +cover it, but late that day they reached the Schroon. + +Here the Dutchman said “Good-bye: Coom again some noder time.” Skookum +saluted the farmer with a final growl, then Rolf and Quonab were left +alone in the wilderness. + +It was after sundown, so they set about camping for the night. A wise +camper always prepares bed and shelter in daylight, if possible. While +Rolf made a fire and hung the kettle, Quonab selected a level, dry place +between two trees, and covered it with spruce boughs to make the beds, +and last a low tent was made by putting the lodge cover over a pole +between the trees. The ends of the covers were held down by loose +green logs quickly cut for the purpose, and now they were safe against +weather. + +Tea, potatoes, and fried pork, with maple syrup and hard-tack, made +their meal of the time, after which there was a long smoke. Quonab took +a stick of red willow, picked up-in the daytime, and began shaving it +toward one end, leaving the curling shreds still on the stick. When +these were bunched in a fuzzy mop, he held them over the fire until they +were roasted brown; then, grinding all up in his palm with some tobacco, +and filling his pipe he soon was enveloped in that odour of woodsy smoke +called the “Indian smell,” by many who do not know whence or how it +comes. Rolf did not smoke. He had promised his mother that he would +not until he was a man, and something brought her back home now with +overwhelming force; that was the beds they had made of fragrant balsam +boughs. “Cho-ko-tung or blister tree” as Quonab called it. His mother +had a little sofa pillow, brought from the North--a “northern pine” + pillow they called it, for it was stuffed with pine needles of a kind +not growing in Connecticut. Many a time had Rolf as a baby pushed his +little round nose into that bag to inhale the delicious odour it gave +forth, and so it became the hallowed smell of all that was dear in his +babyhood, and it never lost its potency. Smell never does. Oh, mighty +aura! that, in marching by the nostrils, can reach and move the soul; +how wise the church that makes this power its handmaid, and through its +incense overwhelms all alien thought when the worshipper, wandering, +doubting, comes again to see if it be true, that here doubt dies. Oh, +queen of memory that is master of the soul! how fearful should we be of +letting evil thought associated grow with some recurrent odour that +we love. Happy, indeed, are they that find some ten times pure and +consecrated fragrance, like the pine, which entering in is master +of their moods, and yet through linking thoughts has all its power, +uplifting, full of sweetness and blessed peace. So came to Rolf his +medicine tree. + +The balsam fir was his tree of hallowed memory. Its odour never failed, +and he slept that night with its influence all about him. + +Starting in the morning was no easy matter. There was so much to be +adjusted that first day. Packs divided in two, new combinations to trim +the canoe, or to raise such and such a package above a possible leak. +The heavy things, like axes and pans, had to be fastened to the canoe or +to packages that would float in case of an upset. The canoe itself had +to be gummed in one or two places; but they got away after three hours, +and began the voyage down the Schroon. + +This was Rolf's first water journey. He had indeed essayed the canoe on +the Pipestave Pond, but that was a mere ferry. This was real travel. He +marvelled at the sensitiveness of the frail craft; the delicacy of its +balance; its quick response to the paddle; the way it seemed to shrink +from the rocks; and the unpleasantly suggestive bend-up of the ribs +when the bottom grounded upon a log. It was a new world for him. Quonab +taught him never to enter the canoe except when she was afloat; never to +rise in her or move along without hold of the gunwale; never to make a +sudden move; and he also learned that it was easier to paddle when there +were six feet of water underneath than when only six inches. + +In an hour they had covered the five miles that brought them to the +Hudson, and here the real labour began, paddling up stream. Before long +they came to a shallow stretch with barely enough water to float the +canoe. Here they jumped out and waded in the stream, occasionally +lifting a stone to one side, till they reached the upper stretch of deep +water and again went merrily paddling. Soon they came to an impassable +rapid, and Rolf had his first taste of a real carry or portage. Quonab's +eye was watching the bank as soon as the fierce waters appeared; for +the first question was, where shall we land? and the next, how far do we +carry? There are no rapids on important rivers in temperate America +that have not been portaged more or less for ages. No canoe man portages +without considering most carefully when, where, and how to land. His +selection of the place, then, is the result of careful study. He cannot +help leaving some mark at the place, slight though it be, and the next +man looks for that mark to save himself time and trouble. + +“Ugh” was the only sound that Rolf heard from his companion, and +the canoe headed for a flat rock in the pool below the rapids. After +landing, they found traces of an old camp fire. It was near noon now, +so Rolf prepared the meal while Quonab took a light pack and went on to +learn the trail. It was not well marked; had not been used for a year +or two, evidently, but there are certain rules that guide one. The trail +keeps near the water, unless there is some great natural barrier, and it +is usually the easiest way in sight. Quonab kept one eye on the river, +for navigable water was the main thing, and in about one hundred yards +he was again on the stream's edge, at a good landing above the rapid. + +After the meal was finished and the Indian had smoked, they set to work. +In a few loads each, the stuff was portaged across, and the canoe was +carried over and moored to the bank. + +The cargo replaced, they went on again, but in half an hour after +passing more shoal water, saw another rapid, not steep, but too shallow +to float the canoe, even with both men wading. Here Quonab made what +the Frenchmen call a demi-charge. He carried half the stuff to the bank; +then, wading, one at each end, they hauled the canoe up the portage and +reloaded her above. Another strip of good going was succeeded by a long +stretch of very swift water that was two or three feet deep and between +shores that were densely grown with alders. The Indian landed, cut two +light, strong poles, and now, one at the bow, the other at the stern, +they worked their way foot by foot up the fierce current until safely on +the upper level. + +Yet one more style of canoe propulsion was forced on them. They came to +a long stretch of smooth, deep, very swift water, almost a rapid-one of +the kind that is a joy when you are coming down stream. It differed from +the last in having shores that were not alder-hidden, but open gravel +banks. Now did Quonab take a long, strong line from his war sack. One +end he fastened, not to the bow, but to the forward part of the canoe, +the other to a buckskin band which he put across his breast. Then, with +Rolf in the stern to steer and the Indian hauling on the bank, the canoe +was safely “tracked” up the “strong waters.” + +Thus they fought their way up the hard river, day after day, making +sometimes only five miles after twelve hours' toilsome travel. Rapids, +shoals, portages, strong waters, abounded, and before they had covered +the fifty miles to the forks of Jesup's River, they knew right well why +the region was so little entered. + +It made a hardened canoe man of Rolf, and when, on the evening of the +fifth day, they saw a huge eagle's nest in a dead pine tree that stood +on the edge of a long swamp, both felt they had reached their own +country, and were glad. + + + +Chapter 18. Animal Life Along the River + +It must not be supposed that, because it has been duly mentioned, they +saw no wild life along the river. The silent canoe man has the best of +opportunities. There were plenty of deer tracks about the first camp, +and that morning, as they turned up the Hudson, Rolf saw his first deer. +They had rounded a point in rather swift water when Quonab gave two taps +on the gunwale, the usual sign, “Look out,” and pointed to the shore. +There, fifty yards away on bank, gazing at them, was a deer. Stock still +he stood like a red statue, for he was yet in the red coat. With three +or four strong strokes, Quonab gave a long and mighty forward spurt; +then reached for his gun. But the deer's white flag went up. It turned +and bounded away, the white flag the last thing to disappear. Rolf sat +spellbound. It was so sudden; so easy; it soon melted into the woods +again. He trembled after it was gone. + +Many a time in the evening they saw muskrats in the eddies, and once +they glimpsed a black, shiny something like a monstrous leech rolling up +and down as it travelled in the stream. Quonab whispered, “Otter,” and +made ready his gun, but it dived and showed itself no more. At one of +the camps they were awakened by an extraordinary tattoo in the middle of +the night--a harsh rattle close by their heads; and they got up to find +that a porcupine was rattling his teeth on the frying-pan in an effort +to increase the amount of salt that he could taste on it. Skookum, tied +to a tree, was vainly protesting against the intrusion and volunteered +to make a public example of the invader. The campers did not finally get +rid of the spiny one till all their kitchen stuff was hung beyond his +reach. + +Once they heard the sharp, short bark of a fox, and twice or thrice +the soft, sweet, moaning call of the gray wolf out to hunt. Wild fowl +abounded, and their diet was varied by the ducks that one or other of +the hunters secured at nearly every camp. + +On the second day they saw three deer, and on the third morning Quonab +loaded his gun with buckshot, to be ready, then sallied forth at dawn. +Rolf was following, but the Indian shook his head, then said: “Don't +make fire for half an hour.” + +In twenty minutes Rolf heard the gun, then later the Indian returned +with a haunch of venison, and when they left that camp they stopped a +mile up the river to add the rest of the venison to their cargo. Seven +other deer were seen, but no more killed; yet Rolf was burning to try +his hand as a hunter. Many other opportunities he had, and improved some +of them. On one wood portage he, or rather Skookum, put up a number +of ruffed grouse. These perched in the trees above their heads and the +travellers stopped. While the dog held their attention Rolf with blunt +arrows knocked over five that proved most acceptable as food. But his +thoughts were now on deer, and his ambition was to go out alone and +return with a load of venison. + +Another and more thrilling experience followed quickly. Rounding a bend +in the early dawn they sighted a black bear and two cubs rambling along +the gravelly bank and stopping now and then to eat something that turned +out to be crayfish. + +Quonab had not seen a bear since childhood, when he and his father +hunted along the hardwood ridges back of Myanos, and now he was excited. +He stopped paddling, warned Rolf to do the same, and let the canoe drift +backward until out of sight; then made for the land. Quickly tying up +the canoe he took his gun and Rolf his hunting arrows, and, holding +Skookum in a leash, they dashed into the woods. Then, keeping out of +sight, they ran as fast and as silently as possible in the direction +of the bears. Of course, the wind was toward the hunters, or they never +could have got so near. Now they were opposite the family group and +needed only a chance for a fair shot. Sneaking forward with the utmost +caution, they were surely within twenty-five yards, but still the bushes +screened the crab-eaters. As the hunters sneaked, the old bear stopped +and sniffed suspiciously; the wind changed, she got an unmistakable +whiff; then gave a loud warning “Koff! Koff! Koff! Koff!” and ran as +fast as she could. The hunters knowing they were discovered rushed out, +yelling as loudly as possible, in hopes of making the bears tree. The +old bear ran like a horse with Skookum yapping bravely in her rear. The +young ones, left behind, lost sight of her, and, utterly bewildered by +the noise, made for a tree conveniently near and scrambled up into the +branches. “Now,” Rolf thought, judging by certain tales he had heard, +“that old bear will come back and there will be a fight.” + +“Is she coming back?” he asked nervously. + +The Indian laughed. “No, she is running yet. Black bear always a coward; +they never fight when they can run away.” + +The little ones up the tree were, of course, at the mercy of the +hunters, and in this case it was not a broken straw they depended on, +but an ample salvation. “We don't need the meat and can't carry it +with us; let's leave them,” said Rolf, but added, “Will they find their +mother?” + +“Yes, bime-by; they come down and squall all over woods. She will hang +round half a mile away and by night all will be together.” + +Their first bear hunt was over. Not a shot fired, not a bear wounded, +not a mile travelled, and not an hour lost. And yet it seemed much more +full of interesting thrills than did any one of the many stirring bear +hunts that Rolf and Quonab shared together in the days that were to +come. + + + +Chapter 19. The Footprint on the Shore + +Jesup's River was a tranquil stream that came from a region of swamps, +and would have been easy canoeing but for the fallen trees. Some of +these had been cut years ago, showing that the old trapper had used this +route. Once they were unpleasantly surprised by seeing a fresh chopping +on the bank, but their mourning was changed into joy when they found it +was beaver-work. + +Ten miles they made that day. In the evening they camped on the shore of +Jesup's Lake, proud and happy in the belief that they were the rightful +owners of it all. That night they heard again and again the howling of +wolves, but it seemed on the far side of the lake. In the morning they +went out on foot to explore, and at once had the joy of seeing five +deer, while tracks showed on every side. It was evidently a paradise for +deer, and there were in less degree the tracks of other animals--mink in +fair abundance, one or two otters, a mountain lion, and a cow moose with +her calf. It was thrilling to see such a feast of possibilities. The +hunters were led on and on, revelling in the prospect of many joys +before them, when all at once they came on something that turned their +joy to grief--the track of a man; the fresh imprint of a cowhide boot. +It was maddening. At first blush, it meant some other trapper ahead of +them with a prior claim to the valley; a claim that the unwritten law +would allow. They followed it a mile. It went striding along the shore +at a great pace, sometimes running, and keeping down the west shore. +Then they found a place where he had sat down and broken a lot of clam +shells, and again had hastened on. But there was no mark of gunstock +or other weapon where he sat; and why was he wearing boots? The hunters +rarely did. + +For two miles the Indian followed with Rolf, and sometimes found +that the hated stranger had been running hard. Then they turned back, +terribly disappointed. At first it seemed a crushing blow. They had +three courses open to them--to seek a location farther north, to assume +that one side of the lake was theirs, or to find out exactly who and +what the stranger was. They decided on the last. The canoe was launched +and loaded, and they set out to look for what they hoped they would not +find, a trapper's shanty on the lake. + +After skirting the shore for four or five miles and disturbing one or +two deer, as well as hosts of ducks, the voyagers landed and there still +they found that fateful bootmark steadily tramping southward. By noon +they had reached the south end of the west inlet that leads to another +lake, and again an examination of the shore showed the footmarks, here +leaving the lake and going southerly. Now the travellers retired to the +main lake and by noon had reached the south end. At no point had they +seen any sign of a cabin, though both sides of the lake were in plain +view all day. The travelling stranger was a mystery, but he did not live +here and there was no good reason why they should not settle. + +Where? The country seemed equally good at all points, but it is usually +best to camp on an outlet. Then when a storm comes up, the big waves +do not threaten your canoe, or compel you to stay on land. It is a +favourite crossing for animals avoiding the lake, and other trappers +coming in are sure to see your cabin before they enter. + +Which side of the outlet? Quonab settled that--the west. He wanted to +see the sun rise, and, not far back from the water, was a hill with a +jutting, rocky pinnade. He pointed to this and uttered the one word, +“Idaho.” Here, then, on the west side, where the lake enters the river, +they began to clear the ground for their home. + + + +Chapter 20. The Trappers' Cabin + + It's a smart fellow that knows what he can't do.--Sayings of + Si Sylvanne. + +I suppose every trapper that ever lived, on first building a cabin, +said, “Oh, any little thing will do, so long as it has a roof and is +big enough to lie down in.” And every trapper has realized before spring +that he made a sad mistake in not having it big enough to live in and +store goods in. Quonab and Rolf were new at the business, and made the +usual mistake. They planned their cabin far too small; 10 X 12 ft., +instead of 12 X 20 ft. they made it, and 6-ft. walls, instead of 8-ft. +walls. Both were expert axemen. Spruce was plentiful and the cabin rose +quickly. In one day the walls were up. An important thing was the roof. +What should it be? Overlapping basswood troughs, split shingles, also +called shakes, or clay? By far the easiest to make, the warmest +in winter and coolest in summer, is the clay roof. It has three +disadvantages: It leaks in long-continued wet weather; it drops down +dust and dirt in dry weather; and is so heavy that it usually ends by +crushing in the log rafters and beams, unless they are further supported +on posts, which are much in the way. But its advantages were so obvious +that the builders did not hesitate. A clay roof it was to be. + +When the walls were five feet high, the doorway and window were cut +through the logs, but leaving in each case one half of the log at the +bottom of the needed opening. The top log was now placed, then rolled +over bottom up, while half of its thickness was cut away to fit over +the door: a similar cut out was made over the window. Two flat pieces +of spruce were prepared for door jambs and two shorter ones for window +jambs. Auger holes were put through, so as to allow an oak pin to +be driven through the jamb into each log, and the doorway and window +opening were done. + +In one corner they planned a small fireplace, built of clay and stone. +Not stone from the lake, as Rolf would have had it, but from the +hillside; and why? Quonab said that the lake stone was of the water +spirits, and would not live near fire, but would burst open; while the +hillside stone was of the sun and fire spirit, and in the fire would add +its heat. + +The facts are that lake stone explodes when greatly heated and hill +stone does not; and since no one has been able to improve upon Quonab's +explanation, it must stand for the present. + +The plan of the fireplace was simple. Rolf had been present at the +building of several, and the main point was to have the chimney large +enough, and the narrowest point just above the fire. + +The eaves logs, end logs, and ridge logs were soon in place; then came +the cutting of small poles, spruce and tamarack, long enough to reach +from ridge to eaves, and in sufficient number to completely cover the +roof. A rank sedge meadow near by afforded plenty of coarse grass with +which the poles were covered deeply; and lastly clay dug out with a +couple of hand-made, axe-hewn wooden spades was thrown evenly on the +grass to a depth of six inches; this, when trampled flat, made a roof +that served them well. + +The chinks of the logs when large were filled with split pieces of wood; +when small they were plugged with moss. A door was made of hewn planks, +and hinged very simply on two pins; one made by letting the plank +project as a point, the other by nailing on a pin after the door was +placed; both pins fitting, of course, into inch auger holes. + +A floor was not needed, but bed bunks were, and in making these they +began already to realize that the cabin was too small. But now after a +week's work it was done. It had a sweet fragrance of wood and moss, and +the pleasure it gave to Rolf at least was something he never again could +expect to find in equal measure about any other dwelling he might make. + +Quonab laid the fire carefully, then lighted his pipe, sang a little +crooning song about the “home spirits,” which we call “household gods,” + walked around the shanty, offering the pipestem to each of the four +winds in turn, then entering lighted the fire from his pipe, threw some +tobacco and deer hair on the blaze, and the house-warming was ended. + +Nevertheless, they continued to sleep in the tent they had used all +along, for Quonab loved not the indoors, and Rolf was growing daily more +of his mind. + + + +Chapter 21. Rolf's First Deer + +Anxious to lose no fine day they had worked steadily on the shanty, not +even going after the deer that were seen occasionally over the lake, so +that now they were out of fresh meat, and Rolf saw a chance he long had +looked for. “Quonab, I want to go out alone and get a deer, and I want +your gun. + +“Ugh! you shall go. To-night is good.” + +“To-night” meant evening, so Rolf set out alone as soon as the sun was +low, for during the heat of the day the deer are commonly lying in some +thicket. In general, he knew enough to travel up wind, and to go as +silently as possible. The southwest wind was blowing softly, and so he +quickened his steps southwesterly which meant along the lake. Tracks and +signs abounded; it was impossible to follow any one trail. His plan was +to keep on silently, trusting to luck, nor did he have long to wait. +Across a little opening of the woods to the west he saw a movement in +the bushes, but it ceased, and he was in doubt whether the creature, +presumably a deer, was standing there or had gone on. “Never quit till +you are sure,” was one of Quonab's wise adages. Rolf was bound to know +what it was that had moved. So he stood still and waited. A minute +passed; another; many; a long time; and still he waited, but got no +further sign of life from the bush. Then he began to think he was +mistaken; yet it was good huntercraft to find out what that was. He +tried the wind several times, first by wetting his finger, which test +said “southwest”; second, by tossing up some handfuls of dried grass, +which said “yes, southwest, but veering southerly in this glade.” So he +knew he might crawl silently to the north side of that bush. He looked +to the priming of his gun and began a slow and stealthy stalk, selecting +such openings as might be passed without effort or movement of bushes or +likelihood of sound. He worked his way step by step; each time his foot +was lifted he set it down again only after trying the footing. At each +step he paused to look and listen. It was only one hundred yards to the +interesting spot, but Rolf was fifteen minutes in covering the distance, +and more than once, he got a great start as a chicadee flew out or +a woodpecker tapped. His heart beat louder and louder, so it seemed +everything near must hear; but he kept on his careful stalk, and at last +had reached the thicket that had given him such thrills and hopes. Here +he stood and watched for a full minute. Again he tried the wind, and +proceeded to circle slowly to the west of the place. + +After a long, tense crawl of twenty yards he came on the track and sign +of a big buck, perfectly fresh, and again his heart worked harder; +it seemed to be pumping his neck full of blood, so he was choking. He +judged it best to follow this hot trail for a time, and holding his gun +ready cocked he stepped softly onward. A bluejay cried out, “jay, jay!” + with startling loudness, and seemingly enjoyed his pent-up excitement. A +few steps forward at slow, careful stalk, and then behind him he heard +a loud whistling hiss. Instantly turning he found himself face to face +with a great, splendid buck in the short blue coat. There not thirty +yards away he stood, the creature he had been stalking so long, in plain +view now, broadside on. They gazed each at the other, perfectly still +for a few seconds, then Rolf without undue movement brought the gun +to bear, and still the buck stood gazing. The gun was up, but oh, how +disgustingly it wabbled and shook! and the steadier Rolf tried to bold +it, the more it trembled, until from that wretched gun the palsy spread +all over his body; his breath came tremulously, his legs and arms were +shaking, and at last, as the deer moved its head to get a better view +and raised its tail, the lad, making an effort at selfcontrol, pulled +the trigger. Bang! and the buck went lightly bounding out of sight. + +Poor Rolf; how disgusted he felt; positively sick with self-contempt. +Thirty yards, standing, broadside on, full daylight, a big buck, a clean +miss. Yes, there was the bullet hole in a tree, five feet above the +deer's head. “I'm no good; I'll never be a hunter,” he groaned, then +turned and slowly tramped back to camp. Quonab looked inquiringly, for, +of course, he heard the shot. He saw a glum and sorry-looking youth, who +in response to his inquiring look gave merely a head-shake, and hung up +the gun with a vicious bang. + +Quonab took down the gun, wiped it out, reloaded it, then turning to the +boy said: “Nibowaka, you feel pretty sick. Ugh! You know why? You got +a good chance, but you got buck fever. It is always so, every one the +first time. You go again to-morrow and you get your deer.” + +Rolf made no reply. So Quonab ventured, “You want me to go?” That +settled it for Rolf; his pride was touched. + +“No; I'll go again in the morning.” + +In the dew time he was away once more on the hunting trail. There was +no wind, but the southwest was the likeliest to spring up. So he went +nearly over his last night's track. He found it much easier to go +silently now when all the world was dew wet, and travelled quickly. Past +the fateful glade he went, noted again the tree torn several feet too +high up, and on. Then the cry of a bluejay rang out; this is often a +notification of deer at hand. It always is warning of something doing, +and no wise hunter ignores it. + +Rolf stood for a moment listening and peering. He thought he heard a +scraping sound; then again the bluejay, but the former ceased and the +jay-note died in the distance. He crept cautiously on again for a few +minutes; another opening appeared. He studied this from a hiding place; +then far across he saw a little flash near the ground. His heart gave +a jump; he studied the place, saw again the flash and then made out the +head of a deer, a doe that was lying in the long grass. The flash was +made by its ear shaking off a fly. Rolf looked to his priming, braced +himself, got fully ready, then gave a short, sharp whistle; instantly +the doe rose to her feet; then another appeared, a sinal one; then a +young buck; all stood gazing his way. + +Up went the gun, but again its muzzle began to wabble. Rolf lowered it, +said grimly and savagely to himself, “I will not shake this time.” The +deer stretched themselves and began slowly walking toward the lake. All +had disappeared but the buck. Rolf gave another whistle that turned the +antler-bearer to a statue. Controlling himself with a strong “I +will,” he raised the gun, held it steadily, and fired. The buck gave +a gathering spasm, a bound, and disappeared. Rolf felt sick again with +disgust, but he reloaded, then hastily went forward. + +There was the deep imprint showing where the buck had bounded at the +shot, but no blood. He followed, and a dozen feet away found the next +hoof marks and on them a bright-red stain; on and another splash; and +more and shortening bounds, till one hundred yards away--yes, there it +lay; the round, gray form, quite dead, shot through the heart. + +Rolf gave a long, rolling war cry and got an answer from a point that +was startlingly near, and Quonab stepped from behind a tree. + +“I got him,” shouted Rolf. + +The Indian smiled. “I knew you would, so I followed; last night I knew +you must have your shakes, so let you go it alone.” + +Very carefully that deer was skinned, and Rolf learned the reason for +many little modes of procedure. + +After the hide was removed from the body (not the hand or legs), Quonab +carefully cut out the-broad sheath of tendon that cover the muscles, +beginning at the hip bones on the back and extending up to the +shoulders; this is the sewing sinew. Then he cut out the two long +fillets of meat that lie on each side of the spine outside (the loin) +and the two smaller ones inside (the tenderloin). + +These, with the four quarters, the heart, and the kidneys, were put into +the hide. The entrails, head, neck, legs, feet, he left for the foxes, +but the hip bone or sacrum he hung in a tree with three little red +yarns from them, so that the Great Spirit would be pleased and send good +hunting. Then addressing the head he said: “Little brother, forgive +us. We are sorry to kill you. Behold! we give you the honour of red +streamers.” Then bearing the rest they tramped back to camp. + +The meat wrapped in sacks to keep off the flies was hung in the shade, +but the hide he buried in the warm mud of a swamp hole, and three days +later, when the hair began to slip, he scraped it clean. A broad ash +wood hoop he had made ready and when the green rawhide was strained on +it again the Indian had an Indian drum. + +It was not truly dry for two or three days and as it tightened on its +frame it gave forth little sounds of click and shrinkage that told of +the strain the tensioned rawhide made. Quonab tried it that night as he +sat by the fire softly singing: + +“Ho da ho-he da he.” + +But the next day before sunrise he climbed the hill and sitting on the +sun-up rock he hailed the Day God with the invocation, as he had not +sung it since the day they left the great rock above the Asalnuk, and +followed with the song: + +“Father, we thank thee; We have found the good hunting. There is meat in +the wigwam.” + + + +Chapter 22. The Line of Traps + +Now that they had the cabin for winter, and food for the present, +they must set about the serious business of trapping and lay a line of +deadfalls for use in the coming cold weather. They were a little ahead +of time, but it was very desirable to get their lines blazed through the +woods in all proposed directions in case of any other trapper coming in. +Most fur-bearing animals are to be found along the little valleys of the +stream: beaver, otter, mink, muskrat, coon, are examples. Those that +do not actually live by the water seek these places because of their +sheltered character and because their prey lives there; of this class +are the lynx, fox, fisher, and marten that feed on rabbits and mice. +Therefore a line of traps is usually along some valley and over the +divide and down some other valley back to the point of beginning. + +So, late in September, Rolf and Quonab, with their bedding, a pot, food +for four days, and two axes, alternately followed and led by Skookum, +set out along a stream that entered the lake near their cabin. A quarter +mile up they built their first deadfall for martens. It took them one +hour and was left unset. The place was under a huge tree on a neck of +land around which the stream made a loop. This tree they blazed on three +sides. Two hundred yards up another good spot was found and a deadfall +made. At one place across a neck of land was a narrow trail evidently +worn by otters. “Good place for steel trap, bime-by,” was Quonab's +remark. + +From time to time they disturbed deer, and in a muddy place where a +deer path crossed the creek, they found, among the numerous small hoof +prints, the track of wolves, bears, and a mountain lion, or panther. At +these little Skookum sniffed fearsomely, and showed by his bristly mane +that he was at least much impressed. + +After five hours' travel and work they came to another stream joining +on, and near the angle of the two little valleys they found a small tree +that was chewed and scratched in a remarkable manner for three to six +feet up. “Bear tree,” said Quonab, and by degrees Rolf got the facts +about it. + +The bears, and indeed most animals, have a way of marking the range that +they consider their own. Usually this is done by leaving their personal +odour at various points, covering the country claimed, but in some cases +visible marks are added. Thus the beaver leaves a little dab of mud, the +wolf scratches with his hind feet, and the bear tears the signal tree +with tooth and claw. Since this is done from time to time, when the bear +happens to be near the tree, it is kept fresh as long as the region +is claimed. But it is especially done in midsummer when the bears are +pairing, and helps them to find suitable companions, nor all are then +roaming the woods seeking mates; all call and leave their mark on the +sign post, so the next bear, thanks to his exquisite nose, can tell at +once the sex of the bear that called last and by its track tell which +way it travelled afterward. + +In this case it was a bear's register, but before long Quonab showed +Rolf a place where two long logs joined at an angle by a tree that was +rubbed and smelly, and showed a few marten hairs, indicating that this +was the sign post of a marten and a good place to make a deadfall. + +Yet a third was found in an open, grassy glade, a large, white stone on +which were pellets left by foxes. The Indian explained: + +“Every fox that travels near will come and smell the stone to see who +of his kind is around, so this is a good place for a fox-trap; a steel +trap, of course, for no fox will go into a deadfall.” + +And slowly Rolf learned that these habits are seen in some measure +in all animals; yes, down to the mice and shrews. We see little of +it because our senses are blunt and our attention untrained; but the +naturalist and the hunter always know where to look for the four-footed +inhabitants and by them can tell whether or not the land is possessed by +such and such a furtive tribe. + + + +Chapter 23. The Beaver Pond + +AT THE noon halt they were about ten miles from home and had made +fifteen deadfalls for marten, for practice was greatly reducing the time +needed for each. + +In the afternoon they went on, but the creek had become a mere rill and +they were now high up in a more level stretch of country that was +more or less swampy. As they followed the main course of the dwindling +stream, looking ever for signs of fur-bearers, they crossed and +recrossed the water. At length Quonab stopped, stared, and pointed at +the rill, no longer clear but clouded with mud. His eyes shone as he +jerked his head up stream and uttered the magic word, “Beaver.” + +They tramped westerly for a hundred yards through a dense swamp of +alders, and came at last to an irregular pond that spread out among the +willow bushes and was lost in the swampy thickets. Following the stream +they soon came to a beaver dam, a long, curving bank of willow branches +and mud, tumbling through the top of which were a dozen tiny streams +that reunited their waters below to form the rivulet they had been +following. + +Red-winged blackbirds were sailing in flocks about the pond; a number +of ducks were to be seen, and on a dead tree, killed by the backed up +water, a great blue heron stood. Many smaller creatures moved or flitted +in the lively scene, while far out near the middle rose a dome-like pile +of sticks, a beaver lodge, and farther three more were discovered. No +beaver were seen, but the fresh cut sticks, the floating branches peeled +of all the bark, and the long, strong dam in good repair were enough +to tell a practised eye that here was a large colony of beavers in +undisturbed possession. + +In those days beaver was one of the most valued furs. The creature is +very easy to trap; so the discovery of the pond was like the finding of +a bag of gold. They skirted its uncertain edges and Quonab pointed out +the many landing places of the beaver; little docks they seemed, built +up with mud and stones with deep water plunge holes alongside. Here and +there on the shore was a dome-shaped ant's nest with a pathway to it +from the pond, showing, as the Indian said, that here the beaver came on +sunny days to lie on the hill and let the swarming ants come forth and +pick the vermin from their fur. At one high point projecting into the +still water they found a little mud pie with a very strong smell; this, +the Indian said, was a “castor cache,” the sign that, among beavers, +answers the same purpose as the bear tree among bears. + +Although the pond seemed small they had to tramp a quarter of a mile +before reaching the upper end and here they found another dam, with its +pond. This was at a slightly higher level and contained a single lodge; +after this they found others, a dozen ponds in a dozen successive rises, +the first or largest and the second only having lodges, but all were +evidently part of the thriving colony, for fresh cut trees were seen on +every side. “Ugh, good; we get maybe fifty beaver,” said the Indian, and +they knew they had reached the Promised Land. + +Rolf would gladly have spent the rest of the day exploring the pond and +trying for a beaver, when the eventide should call them to come forth, +but Quonab said, “Only twenty deadfall; we should have one hundred and +fifty.” So making for a fine sugar bush on the dry ground west of the +ponds they blazed a big tree, left a deadfall there, and sought the +easiest way over the rough hills that lay to the east, in hopes of +reaching the next stream leading down to their lake. + + + +Chapter 24. The Porcupine + +Skookum was a partly trained little dog; he would stay in camp when +told, if it suited him; and would not hesitate to follow or lead his +master, when he felt that human wisdom was inferior to the ripe product +of canine experience covering more than thirteen moons of recollection. +But he was now living a life in which his previous experience must often +fail him as a guide. A faint rustling on the leafy ground had sent +him ahead at a run, and his sharp, angry bark showed that some hostile +creature of the woods had been discovered. Again and again the angry +yelping was changed into a sort of yowl, half anger, half distress. The +hunters hurried forward to find the little fool charging again and +again a huge porcupine that was crouched with its head under a log, its +hindquarters exposed but bristling with spines; and its tail lashing +about, left a new array of quills in the dog's mouth and face each time +he charged. Skookum was a plucky fighter, but plainly he was nearly sick +of it. The pain of the quills would, of course, increase every minute +and with each movement. Quonab took a stout stick and threw the +porcupine out of its retreat, (Rolf supposed to kill it when the head +was exposed,) but the spiny one, finding a new and stronger enemy, +wasted no time in galloping at its slow lumbering pace to the nearest +small spruce tree and up that it scrambled to a safe place in the high +branches. + +Now the hunters called the dog. He was a sorry-looking object, pawing at +his muzzle, first with one foot, then another, trying to unswallow the +quills in his tongue, blinking hard, uttering little painful grunts and +whines as he rubbed his head upon the ground or on his forelegs. Rolf +held him while Quonab, with a sharp jerk, brought out quill after quill. +Thirty or forty of the poisonous little daggers were plucked from his +trembling legs, head, face, and nostrils, but the dreadful ones were +those in his lips and tongue. Already they were deeply sunk in the soft, +quivering flesh. One by one those in the lips were with-drawn by the +strong fingers of the red man, and Skookum whimpered a little, but he +shrieked outright when those in the tongue were removed. Rolf had hard +work to hold him, and any one not knowing the case might have thought +that the two men were deliberately holding the dog to administer the +most cruel torture. + +But none of the quills had sunk very deep. All were got out at last and +the little dog set free. + +Now Rolf thought of vengeance on the quill-pig snugly sitting in the +tree near by. + +Ammunition was too precious to waste, but Rolf was getting ready to climb +when Quonab said: “No, no; you must not. Once I saw white man climb +after the Kahk; it waited till he was near, then backed down, lashing +its tail. He put up his arm to save his face. It speared his arm in +fifty places and he could not save his face, so he tried to get down, +but the Kahk came faster, lashing him; then he lost his hold and +dropped. His leg was broken and his arm was swelled up for half a year. +They are very poisonous. He nearly died.” + +“Well, I can at least chop him down,” and Rolf took the axe. + +“Wah!” Quonab said, “no; my father said you must not kill the Kahk, +except you make sacrifice and use his quills for household work. It is +bad medicine to kill the Kahk.” + +So the spiny one was left alone in the place he had so ably fought for. +But Skookum, what of him? He was set free at last. To be wiser? Alas, +no! before one hour he met with another porcupine and remembering only +his hate of the creature repeated the same sad mistake, and again had to +have the painful help, without which he must certainly have died. Before +night, however, he began to feel his real punishment and next morning +no one would have known the pudding-headed thing that sadly followed the +hunters, for the bright little dog that a day before had run so joyously +through the woods. It was many a long day before he fully recovered and +at one time his life was in the balance; and yet to the last of his +days he never fully realized the folly of his insensate attacks on the +creature that fights with its tail. + +“It is ever so,” said the Indian. “The lynx, the panther, the wolf, the +fox, the eagle, all that attack the Kahk must die. Once my father saw +a bear that was killed by the quills. He had tried to bite the Kahk; +it filled his mouth with quills that he could not spit out. They sunk +deeper and his jaws swelled so he could not open or shut his mouth +to eat; then he starved. My people found him near a fish pond below a +rapid. There were many fish. The bear could kill them with his paw but +not eat, so with his mouth wide open and plenty about him he died of +starvation in that pool. + +“There is but one creature that can kill the Kahk that is the Ojeeg the +big fisher weasel. He is a devil. He makes very strong medicine; the +Kahk cannot harm him. He turns it on its back and tears open its smooth +belly. It is ever so. We not know, but my father said, that it is +because when in the flood Nana Bojou was floating on the log with Kahk +and Ojeeg, Kahk was insolent and wanted the highest place, but Ojeeg was +respectful to Nana Bojou, he bit the Kahk to teach him a lesson and got +lashed with the tail of many stings. But the Manito drew out the quills +and said: 'It shall be ever thus; the Ojeeg shall conquer the Kahk and +the quills of Kahk shall never do Ojeeg any harm.'” + + + +Chapter 25. The Otter Slide + +It was late now and the hunters camped in the high cool woods. Skookum +whined in his sleep so loudly as to waken them once or twice. Near dawn +they heard the howling of wolves and the curiously similar hooting of +a horned owl. There is, indeed, almost no difference between the short +opening howl of a she-wolf and the long hoot of the owl. As he listened, +half awake, Rolf heard a whirr of wings which stopped overhead, then +a familiar chuckle. He sat up and saw Skookum sadly lift his misshapen +head to gaze at a row of black-breasted grouse partridge on a branch +above, but the poor doggie was feeling too sick to take any active +interest. They were not ruffed grouse, but a kindred kind, new to Rolf. +As he gazed at the perchers, he saw Quonab rise gently, go to nearest +willow and cut a long slender rod at least two feet long; on the top of +this he made a short noose of cord. Then he went cautiously under the +watching grouse, the spruce partridges, and reaching up slipped the +noose over the neck of the first one; a sharp jerk then tightened noose, +and brought the grouse tumbling out of the tree while its companions +merely clucked their puzzlement, made no effort to escape. + +A short, sharp blow put the captive out of pain. The rod was reached +again and a second, the lowest always, was jerked down, and the trick +repeated till three grouse were secured. Then only did it dawn on the +others that they were in a most perilous neighbourhood, so they took +flight. + +Rolf sat up in amazement. Quonab dropped the three birds by the fire and +set about preparing breakfast. + +“These are fool hens,” he explained. “You can mostly get them this way; +sure, if you have a dog to help, but ruffed grouse is no such fool.” + +Rolf dressed the birds and as usual threw the entrails Skookum. Poor +little dog! he was, indeed, a sorry sight. He looked sadly out of his +bulging eyes, feebly moved swollen jaws, but did not touch the food he +once would have pounced on. He did not eat because he could not open his +mouth. + +At camp the trappers made a log trap and continued the line with blazes +and deadfalls, until, after a mile, they came to a broad tamarack swamp, +and, skirting its edge, found a small, outflowing stream that brought +them to an eastward-facing hollow. Everywhere there were signs game, +but they were not prepared for the scene that opened as they cautiously +pushed through the thickets into a high, hardwood bush. A deer rose +out of the grass and stared curiously at them; then another and another +until nearly a dozen were in sight; still farther many others appeared; +to the left were more, and movements told of yet others to the right. +Then their white flags went up and all loped gently away on the slope +that rose to the north. There may have been twenty or thirty deer in +sight, but the general effect of all their white tails, bobbing away, +was that the woods were full of deer. They seemed to be there by the +hundreds and the joy of seeing so many beautiful live things was helped +in the hunters by the feeling that this was their own hunting-ground. +They had, indeed, reached the land of plenty. + +The stream increased as they marched; many springs and some important +rivulets joined on. They found some old beaver signs but none new; and +they left their deadfalls every quarter mile or less. + +The stream began to descend more quickly until it was in a long, narrow +valley with steep clay sides and many pools. Here they saw again and +again the tracks and signs of otter and coming quietly round a turn that +opened a new reach they heard a deep splash, then another and another. + +The hunters' first thought was to tie up Skookum, but a glance showed +that this was unnecessary. They softly dropped the packs and the sick +dog lay meekly down beside them. Then they crept forward with hunter +caution, favoured by an easterly breeze. Their first thought was of +beaver, but they had seen no recent sign, nor was there anything that +looked like a beaver pond. The measured splash, splash, splash--was not +so far ahead. It might be a bear snatching fish, or--no, that was too +unpleasant--a man baling out a canoe. Still the slow splash, splash, +went on at intervals, not quite regular. + +Now it seemed but thirty yards ahead and in the creek. + +With the utmost care they crawled to the edge of the clay and opposite +they saw a sight but rarely glimpsed by man. Here were six otters; two +evidently full-grown, and four seeming young of the pair, engaged in a +most hilarious and human game of tobogganing down a steep clay hill to +plump into a deep part at its foot. + +Plump went the largest, presumably the father; down he went, to reappear +at the edge, scramble out and up an easy slope to the top of the +twenty-foot bank. Splash, splash, splash, came three of the young ones; +splash, splash, the mother and one of the cubs almost together. + +“Scoot” went the big male again, and the wet furslopping and rubbing on +the long clay chute made it greasier and slipperier every time. + +Splash, plump, splash--splash, plump, splash, went the otter family +gleefully, running up the bank again, eager each to be first, it seemed, +and to do the chute the oftenest. + +The gambolling grace, the obvious good humour, the animal hilarity of +it all, was absorbingly amusing. The trappers gazed with pleasure that +showed how near akin are naturalist and hunter. Of course, they had +some covetous thought connected with those glossy hides, but this +was September still, and even otter were not yet prime. Shoot, plump, +splash, went the happy crew with apparently unabated joy and hilarity. +The slide improved with use and the otters seemed tireless; when all +at once a loud but muffled yelp was heard and Skookum, forgetting all +caution, came leaping down the bank to take a hand. + +With a succession of shrill, birdy chirps the old otters warned their +young. Plump, plump, plump, all shot into the pool, but to reappear, +swimming with heads out, for they were but slightly alarmed. This was +too much for Quonob; he levelled his flintlock; snap, bang, it went, +pointed at the old male, but he dived at the snap and escaped. Down the +bank now rushed the hunters, joined by Skookum, to attack the otters +in the pool, for it was small and shallow; unless a burrow led from it, +they were trapped. + +But the otters realized the peril. All six dashed out of the pool, down +the open, gravelly stream the old ones uttering loud chirps that rang +like screams. Under the fallen logs and brush they glided, dodging +beneath roots and over banks, pursued by the hunters, each armed with a +club and by Skookum not armed at all. + +The otters seemed to know where they were going and distanced all but +the dog. Forgetting his own condition Skookum had almost overtaken +one of the otter cubs when the mother wheeled about and, hissing and +snarling, charged. Skookum was lucky to get off with a slight nip, for +the otter is a dangerous fighter. But the unlucky dog was sent howling +back to the two packs that he never should have left. + +The hunters now found an open stretch of woods through which Quonab +could run ahead and intercept the otters as they bounded on down the +stream bed, pursued by Rolf, who vainly tried to deal a blow with his +club. In a few seconds the family party was up to Quonab, trapped it +seemed, but there is no more desperate assailant than an otter +fighting for its young. So far from being cowed the two old ones made a +simultaneous, furious rush at the Indian. Wholly taken by surprise, he +missed with his club, and sprang aside to escape their jaws. The family +dashed around then past him, and, urged by the continuous chirps of the +mother, they plunged under a succession of log jams and into a willow +swamp that spread out into an ancient beaver lake and were swallowed up +in the silent wilderness. + + + +Chapter 26. Back to the Cabin + +The far end of the long swamp the stream emerged, now much larger, and +the trappers kept on with their work. When night fell they had completed +fifty traps, all told, and again they camped without shelter overhead. + +Next day Skookum was so much worse that they began to fear for his life. +He had eaten nothing since the sad encounter. He could drink a little, +so Rolf made a pot of soup, and when it was cool the poor doggie managed +to swallow some of the liquid after half an hour's patient endeavour. + +They were now on the home line; from a hill top they got a distant view +of their lake, though it was at least five miles away. Down the creek +they went, still making their deadfalls at likely places and still +seeing game tracks at the muddy spots. The creek came at length to an +extensive, open, hardwood bush, and here it was joined by another stream +that came from the south, the two making a small river. From then on +they seemed in a land of game; trails of deer were seen on the ground +everywhere, and every few minutes they started one or two deer. The +shady oak wood itself was flanked and varied with dense cedar swamps +such as the deer love to winter in, and after they had tramped through +two miles of it, the Indian said, “Good! now we know where to come in +winter when we need meat.” + +At a broad, muddy ford they passed an amazing number of tracks, mostly +deer, but a few of panther, lynx, fisher, wolf, otter, and mink. + +In the afternoon they reached the lake. The stream, quite a broad one +here, emptied in about four miles south of the camp. Leaving a deadfall +near its mouth they followed the shore and made a log trap every quarter +mile just above the high water mark. + +When they reached the place of Rolf's first deer they turned aside to +see it. The gray jays had picked a good deal of the loose meat. No large +animal had troubled it, and yet in the neighbourhood they found the +tracks of both wolves and foxes. + +“Ugh,” said Quonab, “they smell it and come near, but they know that a +man has been here; they are not very hungry, so keep away. This is good +for trap.” + +So they made two deadfalls with the carrion half way between them. Then +one or two more traps and they reached home, arriving at the camp just +as darkness and a heavy rainfall began. + +“Good,” said Quonab, “our deadfalls are ready; we have done all the work +our fingers could not do when the weather is very cold, and the ground +too hard for stakes to be driven. Now the traps can get weathered before +we go round and set them. Yet we need some strong medicine, some trapper +charm.” + +Next morning he went forth with fish-line and fish-spear; he soon +returned with a pickerel. He filled a bottle with cut-up shreds of this, +corked it up, and hung it on the warm, sunny side of the shanty. “That +will make a charm that every bear will come to,” he said, and left it +to the action of the sun. + + + +Chapter 27. Sick Dog Skookum + +Getting home is always a joy; but walking about the place in the morning +they noticed several little things that were wrong. Quonab's lodge was +down, the paddles that stood against the shanty were scattered on the +ground, and a bag of venison hung high at the ridge was opened and +empty. + +Quonab studied the tracks and announced “a bad old black bear; he has +rollicked round for mischief, upsetting things. But the venison he could +not reach; that was a marten that ripped open the bag.” + +“Then that tells what we should do; build a storehouse at the end of the +shanty,” said Rolf, adding, “it must be tight and it must be cool.” + +“Maybe! sometime before winter,” said the Indian; “but now we should +make another line of traps while the weather is fine.” + +“No,” replied the lad, “Skookum is not fit to travel now. We can't leave +him behind, and we can make a storehouse in three days.” + +The unhappy little dog was worse than ever. He could scarcely breathe, +much less eat or drink, and the case was settled. + +First they bathed the invalid's head in water as hot as he could stand +it. This seemed to help him so much that he swallowed eagerly some soup +that they poured into his mouth. A bed was made for him in a sunny place +and the hunters set about the new building. + +In three days the storehouse was done, excepting the chinking. It was +October now, and a sharp night frost warned them of the hard white moons +to come. Quonab, as he broke the ice in a tin cup and glanced at the +low-hung sun, said: “The leaves are falling fast; snow comes soon; we +need another line of traps.” + +He stopped suddenly; stared across the lake. Rolf looked, and here came +three deer, two bucks and a doe, trotting, walking, or lightly clearing +obstacles, the doe in advance; the others, rival followers. As they kept +along the shore, they came nearer the cabin. Rolf glanced at Quonab, who +nodded, then slipped in, got down the gun, and quickly glided unseen to +the river where the deer path landed. The bucks did not actually fight, +for the season was not yet on, but their horns were clean, their necks +were swelling, and they threatened each other as they trotted after the +leader. They made for the ford as for some familiar path, and splashed +through, almost without swimming. As they landed, Rolf waited a clear +view, then gave a short sharp “Hist!” It was like a word of magic, for +it turned the three moving deer to three stony-still statues. Rolf's +sights were turned on the smaller buck, and when the great cloud +following the bang had deared away, the two were gone and the lesser +buck was kicking on the ground some fifty yards away. + +“We have found the good hunting; the deer walk into camp,” said Quonab; +and the product of the chase was quickly stored, the first of the +supplies to be hung in the new storehouse. + +The entrails were piled up and covered with brush and stones. “That will +keep off ravens and jays; then in winter the foxes will come and we can +take their coats.” + +Now they must decide for the morning. Skookum was somewhat better, but +still very sick, and Rolf suggested: “Quonab, you take the gun and axe +and lay a new line. I will stay behind and finish up the cabin for the +winter and look after the dog.” So it was agreed. The Indian left the +camp alone this time and crossed to the east shore of the lake; there to +follow up another stream as before and to return in three or four days +to the cabin. + + + +Chapter 28. Alone in the Wilderness + +Rolf began the day by giving Skookum a bath as hot as he could stand it, +and later his soup. For the first he whined feebly and for the second +faintly wagged his tail; but clearly he was on the mend. + +Now the chinking and moss-plugging of the new cabin required all +attention. That took a day and looked like the biggest job on hand, but +Rolf had been thinking hard about the winter. In Connecticut the +wiser settlers used to bank their houses for the cold weather; in the +Adirondacks he knew it was far, far colder, and he soon decided to bank +the two shanties as deeply as possible with earth. A good spade made of +white oak, with its edge hardened by roasting it brown, was his first +necessity, and after two days of digging he had the cabin with its annex +buried up to “the eyes” in fresh, clean earth. + +A stock of new, dry wood for wet weather helped to show how much too +small the cabin was; and now the heavier work was done, and Rolf had +plenty of time to think. + +Which of us that has been left alone in the wilderness does not remember +the sensations of the first day! The feeling of self-dependency, not +unmixed with unrestraint; the ending of civilized thought; the total +reversion to the primitive; the nearness of the wood-folk; a sense of +intimacy; a recurrent feeling of awe at the silent inexorability of +all around; and a sweet pervading sense of mastery in the very freedom. +These were among the feelings that swept in waves through Rolf, and +when the first night came, he found such comfort--yes, he had to confess +it--in the company of the helpless little dog whose bed was by his own. + +But these were sensations that come not often; in the four days and +nights that he was alone they lost all force. + +The hunter proverb about “strange beasts when you have no gun” was amply +illustrated now that Quonab had gone with their only firearm. The second +night before turning in (he slept in the shanty now), he was taking a +last look at the stars, when a large, dark form glided among the tree +trunks between him and the shimmering lake; stopped, gazed at him, then +silently disappeared along the shore. No wonder that he kept the shanty +door closed that night, and next morning when he studied the sandy +ridges he read plainly that his night visitor had been not a lynx or a +fox, but a prowling cougar or panther. + +On the third morning as he went forth in the still early dawn he heard +a snort, and looking toward the spruce woods, was amazed to see towering +up, statuesque, almost grotesque, with its mulish ears and antediluvian +horns, a large bull moose. + +Rolf was no coward, but the sight of that monster so close to him set +his scalp a-prickling. He felt so helpless without any firearms. He +stepped into the cabin, took down his bow and arrows, then gave a +contemptuous “Humph; all right for partridge and squirrels, but give me +a rifle for the woods!” He went out again; there was the moose standing +as before. The lad rushed toward it a few steps, shouting; it stared +unmoved. But Rolf was moved, and he retreated to the cabin. Then +remembering the potency of fire he started a blaze on the hearth. The +thick smoke curled up on the still air, hung low, made swishes through +the grove, until a faint air current took a wreath of it to the moose. +The great nostrils drank in a draught that conveyed terror to the +creature's soul, and wheeling it started at its best pace to the distant +swamp, to be seen no more. + +Five times, during these four days, did deer come by and behave as +though they knew perfectly well that this young human was harmless, +entirely without the power of the far-killing mystery. + +How intensely Rolf wished for a gun. How vividly came back the scene +in the trader's store,--when last month he had been offered a beautiful +rifle for twenty-five dollars, to be paid for in fur next spring, and +savagely he blamed himself for not realizing what a chance it was. Then +and there he made resolve to be the owner of a gun as soon as another +chance came, and to make that chance come right soon. + +One little victory he had in that time. The creature that had torn open +the venison bag was still around the camp; that was plain by the further +damage on the bag hung in the storehouse, the walls of which were not +chinked. Mindful of Quonab's remark, he set two marten traps, one on +the roof, near the hole that had been used as entry; the other on a log +along which the creature must climb to reach the meat. The method of +setting is simple; a hollow is made, large enough to receive the trap +as it lies open; on the pan of the trap some grass is laid smoothly; +on each side of the trap a piece of prickly brush is placed, so that +in leaping over these the creature will land on the lurking snare. The +chain was made fast to a small log. + +Although so seldom seen there is no doubt that the marten comes out +chiefly by day. That night the trap remained unsprung; next morning +as Rolf went at silent dawn to bring water from the lake, he noticed +a long, dark line that proved to be ducks. As he sat gazing he heard +a sound in the tree beyond the cabin. It was like the scratching of +a squirrel climbing about. Then he saw the creature, a large, dark +squirrel, it seemed. It darted up this tree and down that, over logs and +under brush, with the lightning speed of a lightning squirrel, and from +time to time it stopped still as a bump while it gazed at some far and +suspicious object. Up one trunk it went like a brown flash, and a moment +later, out, cackling from its top, flew two partridges. Down to the +ground, sinuous, graceful, incessantly active flashed the marten. Along +a log it raced in undulating leaps; in the middle it stopped as though +frozen, to gaze intently into a bed of sedge; with three billowy bounds +its sleek form reached the sedge, flashed in and out again with a +mouse in its snarling jaws; a side leap now, and another squeaker was +squeakless, and another. The three were slain, then thrown aside, as the +brown terror scanned a flight of ducks passing over. Into a thicket of +willow it disappeared and out again like an eel going through the mud, +then up a tall stub where woodpecker holes were to be seen. Into the +largest it went so quickly Rolf could scarcely see how it entered, +and out in a few seconds bearing a flying squirrel whose skull it had +crushed. Dropping the squirrel it leaped after it, and pounced again on +the quivering form with a fearsome growl; then shook it savagely, tore +it apart, cast it aside. Over the ground it now undulated, its shining +yellow breast like a target of gold. Again it stopped. Now in pose like +a pointer, exquisitely graceful, but oh, so wicked! Then the snaky +neck swung the cobra head in the breeze and the brown one sniffed and +sniffed, advanced a few steps, tried the wind and the ground. Still +farther and the concentrated interest showed in its outstretched neck +and quivering tail. Bounding into a thicket it went, when out of the +other side there leaped a snowshoe rabbit, away and away for dear life. +Jump, jump, jump; twelve feet at every stride, and faster than the eye +could follow, with the marten close behind. What a race it was, and +how they twinkled through the brush! The rabbit is, indeed, faster, but +courage counts for much, and his was low; but luck and his good stars +urged him round to the deer trail crossing of the stream; once there he +could not turn. There was only one course. He sprang into the open river +and swam for his life. And the marten--why should it go in? It hated the +water; it was not hungry; it was out for sport, and water sport is not +to its liking. It braced its sinewy legs and halted at the very brink, +while bunny crossed to the safe woods. + +Back now came Wahpestan, the brown death, over the logs like a winged +snake, skimming the ground like a sinister shadow, and heading for the +cabin as the cabin's owner watched. Passing the body of the squirrel it +paused to rend it again, then diving into the brush came out so far away +and so soon that the watcher supposed at first that this was another +marten. Up the shanty corner it flashed, hardly appearing to climb, +swung that yellow throat and dark-brown muzzle for a second, then made +toward the entry. + +Rolf sat with staring eyes as the beautiful demon, elegantly +spurning the roof sods, went at easy, measured bounds toward the open +chink--toward its doom. One, two, three--clearing the prickly cedar +bush, its forefeet fell on the hidden trap; clutch, a savage shriek, a +flashing,--a struggle baffling the eyes to follow, and the master of the +squirrels was himself under mastery. + +Rolf rushed forward now. The little demon in the trap was frothing with +rage and hate; it ground the iron with its teeth; it shrieked at the +human foeman coming. + +The scene must end, the quicker the better, and even as the marten +itself had served the flying squirrel and the mice, and as Quonab served +the mink, so Rolf served the marten and the woods was still. + + + +Chapter 29. Snowshoes + +“That's for Annette,” said Rolf, remembering his promise as he hung the +stretched marten skin to dry. + +“Yi! Yi! Yi!” came three yelps, just as he had heard them the day he +first met Quonab, and crossing the narrow lake he saw his partner's +canoe. + +“We have found the good hunting,” he said, as Rolf steadied the canoe at +the landing and Skookum, nearly well again, wagged his entire ulterior +person to welcome the wanderer home. The first thing to catch the boy's +eye was a great, splendid beaver skin stretched on a willow hoop. + +“Ho, ho!” he exclaimed. + +“Ugh; found another pond.” + +“Good, good,” said Rolf as he stroked the first beaver skin he had ever +seen in the woods. + +“This is better,” said Quonab, and held up the two barkstones, castors, +or smell-glands that are found in every beaver and which for some hid +reason have an irresistible attraction for all wild animals. To us the +odour is slight, but they have the power of intensifying, perpetuating, +and projecting such odorous substances as may be mixed with them. +No trapper considers his bait to be perfect without a little of the +mysterious castor. So that that most stenchable thing they had already +concocted of fish-oil, putrescence, sewer-gas, and sunlight, when +commingled and multiplied with the dried-up powder of a castor, was +intensified into a rich, rancid, gas-exhaling hell-broth as rapturously +bewitching to our furry brothers as it is poisonously nauseating to +ourselves--seductive afar like the sweetest music, inexorable as fate, +insidious as laughing-gas, soothing and numbing as absinthe--this, the +lure and caution-luller, is the fellest trick in all the trappers' code. +As deadly as inexplicable, not a few of the states have classed it with +black magic and declared its use a crime. + +But no such sentiment prevailed in the high hills of Quonab's time, and +their preparations for a successful trapping season were nearly perfect. +Thirty deadfalls made by Quonab, with the sixty made on the first trip +and a dozen steel traps, were surely promise of a good haul. It was +nearly November now; the fur was prime; then why not begin? Because +the weather was too fine. You must have frosty weather or the creatures +taken in the deadfalls are spoiled before the trapper can get around. + +Already a good, big pile of wood was cut; both shanty and storeroom +were chinked, plugged, and banked for the winter. It was not safe yet to +shoot and store a number of deer, but there was something they could do. +Snowshoes would soon be a necessary of life; and the more of this finger +work they did while the weather was warm, the better. + +Birch and ash are used for frames; the former is less liable to split, +but harder to work. White ash was plentiful on the near flat, and a +small ten-foot log was soon cut and split into a lot of long laths. +Quonab of course took charge; but Rolf followed in everything. Each took +a lath and shaved it down evenly until an inch wide and three quarters +of an inch thick. The exact middle was marked, and for ten inches at +each side of that it was shaved down to half an inch in thickness. Two +flat crossbars, ten and twelve inches long, were needed and holes to +receive these made half through the frame. The pot was ready boiling and +by using a cord from end to end of each lath they easily bent it in the +middle and brought the wood into touch with the boiling water. Before an +hour the steam had so softened the wood, and robbed it of spring, that +it was easy to make it into any desired shape. Each lath was cautiously +bent round; the crossbars slipped into their prepared sockets; a +temporary lashing of cord kept all in place; then finally the frames +were set on a level place with the fore end raised two inches and a +heavy log put on the frame to give the upturn to the toe. + +Here they were left to dry and the Indian set about preparing the +necessary thongs. A buckskin rolled in wet, hard wood ashes had been +left in the mud hole. Now after a week the hair was easily scraped off +and the hide, cleaned and trimmed of all loose ends and tags, was spread +out--soft, white, and supple. Beginning outside, and following round and +round the edge, Quonab cut a thong of rawhide as nearly as possible a +quarter inch wide. This he carried on till there were many yards of it, +and the hide was all used up. The second deer skin was much smaller and +thinner. He sharpened his knife and cut it much finer, at least half the +width of the other. Now they were ready to lace the shoes, the finer for +the fore and back parts, the heavy for the middle on which the wearer +treads. An expert squaw would have laughed at the rude snowshoes that +were finished that day, but they were strong and serviceable. + +Naturally the snowshoes suggested a toboggan. That was easily made by +splitting four thin boards of ash, each six inches wide and ten feet +long. An up-curl was steamed on the prow of each, and rawhide lashings +held all to the crossbars. + + + +Chapter 30. Catching a Fox + + “As to wisdom, a man ain't a spring; he's a tank, an' gives + out only what he gathers”--Sayings of Si Sylvanne + +Quonab would not quit his nightly couch in the canvas lodge so Rolf and +Skookum stayed with him. The dog was himself again, and more than once +in the hours of gloom dashed forth in noisy chase of something which +morning study of the tracks showed to have been foxes. They were +attracted partly by the carrion of the deer, partly by the general +suitability of the sandy beach for a gambolling place, and partly by a +foxy curiosity concerning the cabin, the hunters, and their dog. + +One morning after several night arousings and many raids by Skookum, +Rolf said: “Fox is good now; why shouldn't I add some fox pelts to +that?” and he pointed with some pride to the marten skin. + +“Ugh, good; go ahead; you will learn,” was the reply. + +So getting out the two fox traps Rolf set to work. Noting where chiefly +the foxes ran or played he chose two beaten pathways and hid the traps +carefully, exactly as he did for the marten; then selecting a couple of +small cedar branches he cut these and laid them across the path, one on +each side of the trap, assuming that the foxes following the usual route +would leap over the boughs and land in disaster. To make doubly sure he +put a piece of meat by each trap and half-way between them set a large +piece on a stone. + +Then he sprinkled fresh earth over the pathways and around each trap and +bait so he should have a record of the tracks. + +Foxes came that night, as he learned by the footprints along the beach, +but never one went near his traps. He studied the marks; they slowly +told him all the main facts. The foxes had come as usual, and frolicked +about. They had discovered the bait and the traps at once--how could +such sharp noses miss them--and as quickly noted that the traps were +suspicious-smelling iron things, that manscent, hand, foot, and body, +were very evident all about; that the only inducement to go forward was +some meat which was coarse and cold, not for a moment to be compared +with the hot juicy mouse meat that abounded in every meadow. The foxes +were well fed and unhungry. Why should they venture into such evident +danger? In a word, walls of stone could not have more completely +protected the ground and the meat from the foxes than did the obvious +nature of the traps; not a track was near, and many afar showed how +quickly they had veered off. + +“Ugh, it is always so,” said Quonab. “Will you try again?” + +“Yes, I will,” replied Rolf, remembering now that he had omitted to +deodorize his traps and his boots. + +He made a fire of cedar and smoked his traps, chains, and all. Then +taking a piece of raw venison he rubbed it on his leather gloves and +on the soles of his boots, wondering how he had expected to succeed the +night before with all these man-scent killers left out. He put fine, +soft moss under the pan of each trap, then removed the cedar brush, and +gently sprinkled all with fine, dry earth. The set was perfect; no human +eye could have told that there was any trap in the place. It seemed a +foregone success. + +“Fox don't go by eye,” was all the Indian said, for he reckoned it best +to let the learner work it out. + +In the morning Rolf was up eager to see the results. There was nothing +at all. A fox had indeed, come within ten feet at one place, but behaved +then as though positively amused at the childishness of the whole smelly +affair. Had a man been there on guard with a club, he could not have +kept the spot more wholly clear of foxes. Rolf turned away baffled and +utterly puzzled. He had not gone far before he heard a most terrific +yelping from Skookum, and turned to see that trouble-seeking pup caught +by the leg in the first trap. It was more the horrible surprise than the +pain, but he did howl. + +The hunters came quickly to the rescue and at once he was freed, none +the worse, for the traps have no teeth; they merely hold. It is the +long struggle and the starvation chiefly that are cruel, and these every +trapper should cut short by going often around his line. + +Now Quonab took part. “That is a good setting for some things. It would +catch a coon, a mink, or a marten,--or a dog--but not a fox or a wolf. +They are very clever. You shall see.” + +The Indian got out a pair of thick leather gloves, smoked them in cedar, +also the traps. Next he rubbed his moccasin soles with raw meat and +selecting a little bay in the shore he threw a long pole on the sand, +from the line of high, dry shingle across to the water's edge. In +his hand he carried a rough stake. Walking carefully on the pole and +standing on it, he drove the stake in at about four feet from the shore; +then split it, and stuffed some soft moss into the split. On this he +poured three or four drops of the “smell-charm.” Now he put a lump of +spruce gum on the pan of the trap, holding a torch under it till the gum +was fused, and into this he pressed a small, flat stone. The chain of +the trap he fastened to a ten-pound stone of convenient shape, and sank +the stone in the water half-way between the stake and the shore. Last +he placed the trap on this stone, so that when open everything would be +under water except the flat stone on the pan. Now he returned along the +pole and dragged it away with him. + +Thus there was now no track or scent of human near the place. + +The setting was a perfect one, but even then the foxes did not go near +it the following night; they must become used to it. In their code, “A +strange thing is always dangerous.” In the morning Rolf was inclined to +scoff. But Quonab said: “Wah! No trap goes first night.” + +They did not need to wait for the second morning. In the middle of the +night Skookum rushed forth barking, and they followed to see a wild +struggle, the fox leaping to escape and fast to his foot was the trap +with its anchor stone a-dragging. + +Then was repeated the scene that ended the struggle of mink and marten. +The creature's hind feet were tied together and his body hung from a +peg in the shanty. In the morning they gloated over his splendid fur and +added his coat to their store of trophies. + + + +Chapter 31. Following the Trap Line + +That night the moon changed. Next day came on with a strong north wind. +By noon the wild ducks had left the lake. Many long strings of geese +passed southeastward, honking as they flew. Colder and colder blew the +strong wind, and soon the frost was showing on the smaller ponds. It +snowed a little, but this ceased. With the clearing sky the wind fell +and the frost grew keener. + +At daybreak, when the hunters rose, it was very cold. Everything but the +open lake was frozen over, and they knew that winter was come; the time +of trapping was at hand. Quonab went at once to the pinnacle on the +hill, made a little fire, then chanting the “Hunter's Prayer,” he cast +into the fire the whiskers of the fox and the marten, some of the +beaver castor, and some tobacco. Then descended to prepare for the +trail--blankets, beaver traps, weapons, and food for two days, besides +the smell-charm and some fish for bait. + +Quickly the deadfalls were baited and set; last the Indian threw into +the trap chamber a piece of moss on which was a drop of the “smell,” and +wiped another drop on each of his moccasins. “Phew,” said Rolf. + +“That make a trail the marten follow for a month,” was the explanation. +Skookum seemed to think so too, and if he did not say “phew,” it was +because he did not know how. + +Very soon the little dog treed a flock of partridge and Rolf with blunt +arrows secured three. The breasts were saved for the hunters' table, but +the rest with the offal and feathers made the best of marten baits and +served for all the traps, till at noon they reached the beaver pond. +It was covered with ice too thin to bear, but the freshly used +landing places were easily selected. At each they set a strong, steel +beaver-trap, concealing it amid some dry grass, and placing in a split +stick a foot away a piece of moss in which were a few drops of the magic +lure. The ring on the trap chain was slipped over a long, thin, smooth +pole which was driven deep in the mud, the top pointing away from +the deep water. The plan was old and proven. The beaver, eager +to investigate that semifriendly smell, sets foot in the trap; +instinctively when in danger he dives for the deep water; the ring slips +along the pole till at the bottom and there it jams so that the beaver +cannot rise again and is drowned. + +In an hour the six traps were set for the beavers; presently the +hunters, skirmishing for more partridges, had much trouble to save +Skookum from another porcupine disaster. + +They got some more grouse, baited the traps for a couple of miles, then +camped for the night. + +Before morning it came on to snow and it was three inches deep when they +arose. There is no place on earth where the first snow is more beautiful +than in the Adirondacks. In early autumn nature seems to prepare for +it. Green leaves are cleared away to expose the berry bunches in red; +rushbeds mass their groups, turn golden brown and bow their heads to +meet the silver load; the low hills and the lines of various Christmas +trees are arrayed for the finest effect: the setting is perfect and the +scene, but it lacks the lime light yet. It needs must have the lavish +blaze of white. And when it comes like the veil on a bride, the silver +mountings on a charger's trappings, or the golden fire in a sunset, the +shining crystal robe is the finishing, the crowning glory, without which +all the rest must fail, could have no bright completeness. Its beauty +stirred the hunters though it found no better expression than Rolf's +simple words, “Ain't it fine,” while the Indian gazed in silence. + +There is no other place in the eastern woods where the snow has +such manifold tales to tell, and the hunters that day tramping found +themselves dowered over night with the wonderful power of the hound +to whom each trail is a plain record of every living creature that has +passed within many hours. And though the first day after a storm has +less to tell than the second, just as the second has less than the +third, there was no lack of story in the snow. Here sped some antlered +buck, trotting along while yet the white was flying. There went a +fox, sneaking across the line of march, and eying distrustfully that +deadfall. This broad trail with many large tracks not far apart was +made by one of Skookum's friends, a knight of many spears. That bounding +along was a marten. See how he quartered that thicket like a hound, here +he struck our odour trail. Mark, how he paused and whiffed it; now away +he goes; yes, straight to our trap. + +“It's down; hurrah!” Rolf shouted, for there, dead under the log, was +an exquisite marten, dark, almost black, with a great, broad, shining +breast of gold. + +They were going back now toward the beaver lake. The next trap was +sprung and empty; the next held the body of a red squirrel, a nuisance +always and good only to rebait the trap he springs. But the next held a +marten, and the next a white weasel. Others were unsprung, but they +had two good pelts when they reached the beaver lake. They were in high +spirits with their good luck, but not prepared for the marvellous haul +that now was theirs. Each of the six traps held a big beaver, dead, +drowned, and safe. Each skin was worth five dollars, and the hunters +felt rich. The incident had, moreover, this pleasing significance: It +showed that these beavers were unsophisticated, so had not been hunted. +Fifty pelts might easily be taken from these ponds. + +The trappers reset the traps; then dividing the load, sought a remote +place to camp, for it does not do to light a fire near your beaver pond. +One hundred and fifty pounds of beaver, in addition, to their packs, was +not a load to be taken miles away; within half a mile on a lower level +they selected a warm place, made a fire, and skinned their catch. The +bodies they opened and hung in a tree with a view to future use, but the +pelts and tails they carried on. + +They made a long, hard tramp that day, baiting all the traps and reached +home late in the night. + + + +Chapter 32. The Antler-bound Bucks + +IN THE man-world, November is the month of gloom, despair, and many +suicides. In the wild world, November is the Mad Moon. Many and diverse +the madnesses of the time, but none more insane than the rut of the +white-tailed deer. Like some disease it appears, first in the swollen +necks of the antler-bearers, and then in the feverish habits of all. +Long and obstinate combats between the bucks now, characterize the time; +neglecting even to eat, they spend their days and nights in rushing +about and seeking to kill. + +Their horns, growing steadily since spring, are now of full size, sharp, +heavy, and cleaned of the velvet; in perfection. For what? Has Nature +made them to pierce, wound, and destroy? Strange as it may seem, these +weapons of offence are used for little but defence; less as spears than +as bucklers they serve the deer in battles with its kind. And the long, +hard combats are little more than wrestling and pushing bouts; almost +never do they end fatally. When a mortal thrust is given, it is rarely a +gaping wound, but a sudden springing and locking of the antlers, whereby +the two deer are bound together, inextricably, hopelessly, and so suffer +death by starvation. The records of deer killed by their rivals and left +on the duel-ground are few; very few and far between. The records of +those killed by interlocking are numbered by the scores. + +There were hundreds of deer in this country that Rolf and Quonab +claimed. Half of them were bucks, and at least half of these engaged in +combat some times or many times a day, all through November; that is to +say, probably a thousand duels were fought that month within ten miles +of the cabin. It was not surprising that Rolf should witness some of +them, and hear many more in the distance. + +They were living in the cabin now, and during the still, frosty nights, +when he took a last look at the stars, before turning in, Rolf formed +the habit of listening intently for the voices of the gloom. Sometimes +it was the “hoo-hoo” of the horned-owl, once or twice it was the long, +smooth howl of the wolf; but many times it was the rattle of antlers +that told of two bucks far up in the hardwoods, trying out the +all-important question, “Which is the better buck?” + +One morning he heard still an occasional rattle at the same place as the +night before. He set out alone, after breakfast, and coming cautiously +near, peered into a little, open space to see two bucks with heads +joined, slowly, feebly pushing this way and that. Their tongues were +out; they seemed almost exhausted, and the trampled snow for an acre +about plainly showed that they had been fighting for hours; that indeed +these were the ones he had heard in the night. Still they were evenly +matched, and the green light in their eyes told of the ferocious spirit +in each of these gentle-looking deer. + +Rolf had no difficulty in walking quite near. If they saw him, they gave +slight heed to the testimony of their eyes, for the unenergetic struggle +went on until, again pausing for breath, they separated, raised their +heads a little, sniffed, then trotted away from the dreaded enemy so +near. Fifty yards off, they turned, shook their horns, seemed in doubt +whether to run away, join battle again, or attack the man. Fortunately +the first was their choice, and Rolf returned to the cabin. + +Quonab listened to his account, then said: “You might have been killed. +Every buck is crazy now. Often they attack man. My father's brother was +killed by a Mad Moon buck. They found only his body, torn to rags. He +had got a little way up a tree, but the buck had pinned him. There were +the marks, and in the snow they could see how he held on to the deer's +horns and was dragged about till his strength gave out. He had no gun. +The buck went off. That was all they knew. I would rather trust a bear +than a deer.” + +The Indian's words were few, but they drew a picture all too realistic. +The next time Rolf heard the far sound of a deer fight, it brought back +the horror of that hopeless fight in the snow, and gave him a new and +different feeling for the antler-bearer of the changing mood. + +It was two weeks after this, when he was coming in from a trip alone on +part of the line, when his ear caught some strange sounds in the +woods ahead; deep, sonorous, semi-human they were. Strange and weird +wood-notes in winter are nearly sure to be those of a raven or a jay; if +deep, they are likely to come from a raven. + +“Quok, quok, ha, ha, ha-hreww, hrrr, hooop, hooop,” the diabolic noises +came, and Rolf, coming gently forward, caught a glimpse of sable pinions +swooping through the lower pines. + +“Ho, ho, ho yah--hew--w--w--w” came the demon laughter of the death +birds, and Rolf soon glimpsed a dozen of them in the branches, hopping +or sometimes flying to the ground. One alighted on a brown bump. Then +the bump began to move a little. The raven was pecking away, but +again the brown bump heaved and the raven leaped to a near perch. +“Wah--wah--wah--wo--hoo--yow--wow--rrrrrr-rrrr-rrrr”--and the other +ravens joined in. + +Rolf had no weapons but his bow, his pocket knife, and a hatchet. He +took the latter in his hand and walked gently forward; the hollow-voiced +ravens “haw--hawed,” then flew to safe perches where they chuckled like +ghouls over some extra-ghoulish joke. + +The lad, coming closer, witnessed a scene that stirred him with mingled +horror and pity. A great, strong buck--once strong, at least--was +standing, staggering, kneeling there; sometimes on his hind legs, +spasmodically heaving and tugging at a long gray form on the ground, +the body of another buck, his rival, dead now, with a broken neck, as +it proved, but bearing big, strong antlers with which the antlers of the +living buck were interlocked as though riveted with iron, bolted with +clamps of steel. With all his strength, the living buck could barely +move his head, dragging his adversary's body with him. The snow marks +showed that at first he had been able to haul the carcass many yards; +had nibbled a little at shoots and twigs; but that was when he was +stronger, was long before. How long? For days, at least, perhaps a week, +that wretched buck was dying hopelessly a death that would not come. His +gaunt sides, his parched and lolling tongue, less than a foot from the +snow and yet beyond reach, the filmy eye, whose opaque veil of death was +illumined again with a faint fire of fighting green as the new foe came. +The ravens had picked the eyes out of the dead buck and eaten a hole in +its back. They had even begun on the living buck, but he had been able +to use one front foot to defend his eyes; still his plight could scarce +have been more dreadful. It made the most pitiful spectacle Rolf had +ever seen in wild life; yes, in all his life. He was full of compassion +for the poor brute. He forgot it as a thing to be hunted for food; +thought of it only as a harmless, beautiful creature in dire and +horrible straits; a fellow-being in distress; and he at once set about +being its helper. With hatchet in hand he came gently in front, and +selecting an exposed part at the base of the dead buck's antler he +gave a sharp blow with the hatchet. The effect on the living buck was +surprising. He was roused to vigorous action that showed him far from +death as yet. He plunged, then pulled backward, carrying with him the +carcass and the would-be rescuer. Then Rolf remembered the Indian's +words: “You can make strong medicine with your mouth.” He spoke to +the deer, gently, softly. Then came nearer, and tapped o'n the horn he +wished to cut; softly speaking and tapping he increased his force, until +at last he was permitted to chop seriously at that prison bar. It took +many blows, for the antler stuff is very thick and strong at this time, +but the horn was loose at last. Rolf gave it a twist and the strong buck +was free. Free for what? + +Oh, tell it not among the folk who have been the wild deer's friend! +Hide it from all who blindly believe that gratitude must always follow +good-will! With unexpected energy, with pent-up fury, with hellish +purpose, the ingrate sprang on his deliverer, aiming a blow as deadly as +was in his power. + +Wholly taken by surprise, Rolf barely had time to seize the murderer's +horns and ward them off his vitals. The buck made a furious lunge. Oh! +what foul fiend was it gave him then such force?--and Rolf went down. +Clinging for dear life to those wicked, shameful horns, he yelled as he +never yelled before: “Quonab, Quonabi help me, oh, help me!” But he +was pinned at once, the fierce brute above him pressing on his chest, +striving to bring its horns to bear; his only salvation had been that +their wide spread gave his body room between. But the weight on his +chest was crushing out his force, his life; he had no breath to call +again. How the ravens chuckled, and “haw-hawed” in the tree! + +The buck's eyes gleamed again with the emerald light of murderous +hate, and he jerked his strong neck this way and that with the power of +madness. It could not last for long. The boy's strength was going fast; +the beast was crushing in his chest. + +“Oh, God, help me!” he gasped, as the antlered fiend began again +struggling for the freedom of those murderous horns. The brute was +almost free, when the ravens rose with loud croaks, and out of the woods +dashed another to join the fight. A smaller deer? No; what? Rolf knew +not, nor how, but in a moment there was a savage growl and Skookum +had the murderer by the hind leg. Worrying and tearing he had not the +strength to throw the deer, but his teeth were sharp, his heart was in +his work, and when he transferred his fierce attack to parts more tender +still, the buck, already spent, reared, wheeled, and fell. Before he +could recover Skookum pounced upon him by the nose and hung on like a +vice. The buck could swing his great neck a little, and drag the +dog, but he could not shake him off. Rolf saw the chance, rose to his +tottering legs, seized his hatchet, stunned the fierce brute with a +blow. Then finding on the snow his missing knife he gave the hunter +stroke that spilled the red life-blood and sank on the ground to know no +more till Quonab stood beside him. + + + +Chapter 33. A Song of Praise + +ROLF was lying by a fire when he came to, Quonab bending over him with a +look of grave concern. When he opened his eyes, the Indian smiled; such +a soft, sweet smile, with long, ivory rows in its background. + +Then he brought hot tea, and Rolf revived so he could sit up and tell +the story of the morning. + +“He is an evil Manito,” and he looked toward the dead buck; “we must not +eat him. You surely made medicine to bring Skookum.” + +“Yes, I made medicine with my mouth,” was the answer, “I called, I +yelled, when he came at me.” + +“It is a long way from here to the cabin,” was Quonab's reply. “I could +not hear you; Skookum could not hear you; but Cos Cob, my father, told +me that when you send out a cry for help, you send medicine, too, that +goes farther than the cry. May be so; I do not know: my father was very +wise.” + +“Did you see Skookum come, Quonab?” + +“No; he was with me hours after you left, but he was restless and +whimpered. Then he left me and it was a long time before I heard him +bark. It was the 'something-wrong' bark. I went. He brought me here.” + +“He must have followed my track all 'round the line.” + +After an hour they set out for the cabin. The ravens “Ha-ha-ed” and +“Ho-ho-ed” as they went. Quonab took the fateful horn that Rolf had +chopped off, and hung it on a sapling with a piece of tobacco and a red +yam streamer ', to appease the evil spirit that surely was near. There +it hung for years after, until the sapling grew to a tree that swallowed +the horn, all but the tip, which rotted away. + +Skookum took a final sniff at his fallen enemy, gave the body the +customary expression of a dog's contempt, then led the procession +homeward. + +Not that day, not the next, but on the first day of calm, red, sunset +sky, went Quonab to his hill of worship; and when the little fire that +he lit sent up its thread of smoke, like a plumb-line from the red cloud +over him, he burnt a pinch of tobacco, and, with face and arms upraised +in the red light, he sang a new song: + + “The evil one set a trap for my son, + But the Manito saved him; + In the form of a Skookum he saved him.” + + + +Chapter 34. The Birch-bark Vessels + +Rolf was sore and stiff for a week afterward; so was Skookum. There were +times when Quonab was cold, moody, and silent for days. Then some milder +wind would blow in the region of his heart and the bleak ice surface +melted into running rills of memory or kindly emanation. + +Just before the buck adventure, there had been an unpleasant time of +chill and aloofness. It arose over little. Since the frost had come, +sealing the waters outside, Quonab would wash his hands in the vessel +that was also the bread pan. Rolf had New England ideas of propriety +in cooking matters, and finally he forgot the respect due to age and +experience. That was one reason why he went out alone that day. Now, +with time to think things over, the obvious safeguard would be to have +a wash bowl; but where to get it? In those days, tins were scarce and +ex-pensive. It was the custom to look in the woods for nearly all the +necessaries of life; and, guided by ancient custom and experience, they +seldom looked in vain. Rolf had seen, and indeed made, watering troughs, +pig troughs, sap troughs, hen troughs, etc., all his life, and he now +set to work with the axe and a block of basswood to hew out a trough +for a wash bowl. With adequate tools he might have made a good one; but, +working with an axe and a stiff arm, the result was a very heavy, crude +affair. It would indeed hold water, but it was almost impossible to dip +it into the water hole, so that a dipper was needed. + +When Quonab saw the plan and the result, he said: “In my father's lodge +we had only birch bark. See; I shall make a bowl.” He took from the +storehouse a big roll of birch bark, gathered in warm weather (it can +scarcely be done in cold), for use in repairing the canoe. Selecting a +good part he cut out a square, two feet each way, and put it in the big +pot which was full of boiling water. At the same time he soaked with +it a bundle of wattap, or long fibrous roots of the white spruce, also +gathered before the frost came, with a view to canoe repairs in the +spring. + +While these were softening in the hot water, he cut a couple of long +splints of birch, as nearly as possible half an inch wide and an eighth +of an inch thick, and put them to steep with the bark. Next he made two +or three straddle pins or clamps, like clothes pegs, by splitting the +ends of some sticks which had a knot at one end. + +Now he took out the spruce roots, soft and pliant, and selecting a lot +that were about an eighth of an inch in diameter, scraped off the bark +and roughness, until he had a bundle of perhaps ten feet of soft, even, +white cords. + +The bark was laid flat and cut as below. + +The rounding of A and B is necessary, for the holes of the sewing would +tear the piece off if all were on the same line of grain. Each corner +was now folded and doubled on itself (C), then held so with a straddle +pin (D). The rim was trimmed so as to be flat where it crossed the fibre +of the bark, and arched where it ran along. The pliant rods of birch +were bent around this, and using the large awl to make holes, Quonab +sewed the rim rods to the bark with an over-lapping stitch that made +a smooth finish to the edge, and the birch-bark wash pan was complete. +(E.) Much heavier bark can be used if the plan F G be followed, but it +is hard to make it water-tight. + +So now they had a wash pan and a cause of friction was removed. Rolf +found it amusing as well as useful to make other bark vessels of varying +sizes for dippers and dunnage. It was work that he could do now while he +was resting and recovering and he became expert. After watching a fairly +successful attempt at a box to hold fish-hooks and tackle, Quonab said: +“In my father's lodge these would bear quill work in colours.” + +“That's so,” said Rolf, remembering the birch-bark goods often sold by +the Indians. “I wish we had a porcupine now.” + +“Maybe Skookum could find one,” said the Indian, with a smile. + +“Will you let me kill the next Kahk we find?” + +“Yes, if you use the quills and burn its whiskers.” + +“Why burn its whiskers?” + +“My father said it must be so. The smoke goes straight to the All-above; +then the Manito knows we have killed, but we have remembered to kill +only for use and to thank Him.” + +It was some days before they found a porcupine, and when they did, +it was not necessary for them to kill it. But that belongs to another +chapter. + +They saved its skin with all its spears and hung it in the storehouse. +The quills with the white bodies and ready-made needle at each end are +admirable for embroidering, but they are white only. + +“How can we dye them, Quonab? + +“In the summer are many dyes; in winter they are hard to get. We can get +some.” + +So forth he went to a hemlock tree, and cut till he could gather the +inner pink bark, which, boiled with the quills, turned them a dull pink; +similarly, alder bark furnished rich orange, and butternut bark a brown. +Oak chips, with a few bits of iron in the pot, dyed black. + +“Must wait till summer for red and green,” said the Indian. “Red comes +only from berries; the best is the blitum. We call it squaw-berry and +mis-caw-wa, yellow comes from the yellow root (Hydrastis).” + +But black, white, orange, pink, brown, and a dull red made by a double +dip of orange and pink, are a good range of colour. The method in using +the quills is simple. An awl to make holes in the bark for each; +the rough parts behind are concealed afterward with a lining of bark +stitched over them; and before the winter was over, Rolf had made a +birch-bark box, decorated lid and all, with porcupine quill work, in +which he kept the sable skin that was meant to buy Annette's new +dress, the costume she had dreamed of, the ideal and splendid, almost +unbelievable vision of her young life, ninety-five cents' worth of +cotton print. + +There was one other point of dangerous friction. Whenever it fell to +Quonab to wash the dishes, he simply set them on the ground and let +Skookum lick them off. This economical arrangement was satisfactory to +Quonab, delightful to Skookum, and apparently justified by the finished +product, but Rolf objected. The Indian said: “Don't he eat the same food +as we do? You cannot tell if you do not see.” + +Whenever he could do so, Rolf washed the doubtful dishes over again, yet +there were many times when this was impossible, and the situation became +very irritating. But he knew that the man who loses his temper has +lost the first round of the fight, so, finding the general idea of +uncleanness without avail, he sought for some purely Indian argument. +As they sat by the evening fire, one day, he led up to talk of his +mother--of her power as a medicine woman, of the many evil medicines +that harmed her. “It was evil medicine for her if a dog licked her hand +or touched her food. A dog licked her hand and the dream dog came to her +three days before she died.” After a long pause, he added, “In some ways +I am like my mother.” + +Two days later, Rolf chanced to see his friend behind the shanty give +Skookum the pan to clean off after they had been frying deer fat. The +Indian had no idea that Rolf was near, nor did he ever learn the truth +of it. + +That night, after midnight, the lad rose quietly, lighted the pine +splints that served them for a torch, rubbed some charcoal around each +eye to make dark rings that should supply a horror-stricken look. Then +he started in to pound on Quonab's tom-tom, singing: + + “Evil spirit leave me; + Dog-face do not harm me.” + +Quonab sat up in amazement. Rolf paid no heed, but went on, bawling +and drumming and staring upward into vacant space. After a few minutes +Skookum scratched and whined at the shanty door. Rolf rose, took his +knife, cut a bunch of hair from Skookum's neck and burned it in the +torch, then went on singing with horrid solemnity: + + “Evil spirit leave me; + Dog-face do not harm me.” + +At last he turned, and seeming to discover that Quonab was looking on, +said: + +“The dream dog came to me. I thought I saw him lick deer grease from the +frying pan behind the shanty. He laughed, for he knew that he made evil +medicine for me. I am trying to drive him away, so he cannot harm me. I +do not know. I am like my mother. She was very wise, but she died after +it.” + +Now Quonab arose, cut some more hair from Skookum, added a pinch of +tobacco, then, setting it ablaze, he sang in the rank odour of the +burning weed and hair, his strongest song to kill ill magic; and Rolf, +as he chuckled and sweetly sank to sleep, knew that the fight was won. +His friend would never, never more install Skookum in the high and +sacred post of pot-licker, dishwasher, or final polisher. + + + +Chapter 35. Snaring Rabbits + +The deepening snow about the cabin was marked in all the thickets by +the multitudinous tracks of the snowshoe rabbits or white hares. +Occasionally the hunters saw them, but paid little heed. Why should they +look at rabbits when deer were plentiful? + +“You catch rabbit?” asked Quonab one day when Rolf was feeling fit +again. + +“I can shoot one with my bow,” was the answer, “but why should I, when +we have plenty of deer?” + +“My people always hunted rabbits. Sometimes no deer were to be found; +then the rabbits were food. Sometimes in the enemy's country it was not +safe to hunt, except rabbits, with blunt arrows, and they were food. +Sometimes only squaws and children in camp--nothing to eat; no guns; +then the rabbits were food.” + +“Well, see me get one,” and Rolf took his bow and arrow. He found many +white bunnies, but always in the thickest woods. Again and again he +tried, but the tantalizing twigs and branches muffled the bow and +turned the arrow. It was hours before he returned with a fluffy snowshoe +rabbit. + +“That is not our way.” Quonab led to the thicket and selecting a place +of many tracks he cut a lot of brush and made a hedge across with half a +dozen openings. At each of these openings he made a snare of strong cord +tied to a long pole, hung on a crotch, and so arranged that a tug at the +snare would free the pole which in turn would hoist the snare and the +creature in it high in the air. + +Next morning they went around and found that four of the snares had +each a snow-white rabbit hanging by the neck. As he was handling these, +Quonab felt a lump I on the hind leg of one. He carefully cut it open +and turned out a curious-looking object about the size of an acorn, +flattened, made of flesh and covered with hair, and nearly the shape of +a large bean. He gazed at it, and, turning to Rolf, said with intense +meaning: + +“Ugh! we have found the good hunting. This is the Peeto-wab-oos-once, +the little medicine rabbit. Now we have strong medicine in the lodge. +You shall see.” + +He went out to the two remaining snares and passed the medicine rabbit +through each. An hour later, when they returned, they found a rabbit +taken in the first snare. + +“It is ever so,” said the Indian. “We can always catch rabbits now. My +father had the Peeto-wab-i-ush once, the little medicine deer, and so +he never failed in hunting but twice. Then he found that his papoose, +Quonab, had stolen his great medicine. He was a very wise papoose. He +killed a chipmunk each of those days.” + +“Hark! what is that?” A faint sound of rustling branches, and some short +animal noises in the woods had caught Rolf's ear, and Skookum's, too, +for he was off like one whose life is bound up in a great purpose. + +“Yap, yap, yap,” came the angry sound from Skookum. Who can say that +animals have no language? His merry “yip, yip, yip,” for partridge up a +tree, or his long, hilarious, “Yow, yow, yow,” when despite all orders +he chased some deer, were totally distinct from the angry “Yap, yap,” + he gave for the bear up the tree, or the “Grrryapgrryap,” with which he +voiced his hatred of the porcupine. + +But now it was the “Yap, yap,” as when he had treed the bears. + +“Something up a tree,” was the Indian's interpretation, as they followed +the sound. Something up a tree! A whole menagerie it seemed to Rolf when +they got there. Hanging by the neck in the remaining snare, and limp +now, was a young lynx, a kit of the year. In the adjoining tree, with +Skookum circling and yapping 'round the base, was a savage old lynx. +In the crotch above her was another young one, and still higher was a +third, all looking their unutterable disgust at the noisy dog below; +the mother, indeed, expressing it in occasional hisses, but none of them +daring to come down and face him. The lynx is very good fur and very +easy prey. The Indian brought the old one down with a shot; then, as +fast as he could reload, the others were added to the bag, and, with the +one from the snare, they returned laden to the cabin. + +The Indian's eyes shone with a peculiar light. “Ugh! Ugh! My father told +me; it is great medicine. You see, now, it does not fail.” + + + +Chapter 36. Something Wrong at the Beaver Traps + +Once they had run the trap lines, and their store of furs was increasing +finely. They had taken twenty-five beavers and counted on getting two +or three each time they went to the ponds. But they got an unpleasant +surprise in December, on going to the beaver grounds, to find all the +traps empty and unmistakable signs that some man had been there and had +gone off with the catch. They followed the dim trail of his snowshoes, +half hidden by a recent wind, but night came on with more snow, and all +signs were lost. + +The thief had not found the line yet, for the haul of marten and mink +was good. But this was merely the beginning. + +The trapper law of the wilderness is much like all primitive laws; first +come has first right, provided he is able to hold it. If a strong rival +comes in, the first must fight as best he can. The law justifies him +in anything he may do, if he succeeds. The law justifies the second in +anything he may do, except murder. That is, the defender may shoot to +kill; the offender may not. + +But the fact of Quonab's being an Indian and Rolf supposedly one, would +turn opinion against them in the Adirondacks, and it was quite likely +that the rival considered them trespassers on his grounds, although the +fact that he robbed their traps without removing them, and kept out of +sight, rather showed the guilty conscience of a self-accused poacher. + +He came in from the west, obviously; probably the Racquet River +country; was a large man, judging by his foot and stride, and understood +trapping; but lazy, for he set no traps. His principal object seemed to +be to steal. + +And it was not long before he found their line of marten traps, so his +depredations increased. Primitive emotions are near the surface at all +times, and under primitive conditions are very ready to appear. Rolf and +Quonab felt that now it was war. + + + +Chapter 37. The Pekan or Fisher + +There was one large track in the snow that they saw several times--it +was like that of a marten, but much larger. “Pekan,” said the Indian, +“the big marten; the very strong one, that fights without fear.” + +“When my father was a papoose he shot an arrow at a pekan. He did not +know what it was; it seemed only a big black marten. It was wounded, but +sprang from the tree on my father's breast. It would have killed him, +but for the dog; then it would have killed the dog, but my grandfather +was near. + +“He made my father eat the pekan's heart, so his heart might be like it. +It sought no fight, but it turned, when struck, and fought without fear. +That is the right way; seek peace, but fight without fear. That was my +father's heart and mine.” Then glancing toward the west he continued in +a tone of menace: “That trap robber will find it so. We sought no fight, +but some day I kill him.” + +The big track went in bounds, to be lost in a low, thick woods. But they +met it again. + +They were crossing a hemlock ridge a mile farther on, when they came to +another track which was first a long, deep furrow, some fifteen inches +wide, and in this were the wide-spread prints of feet as large as those +of a fisher. + +“Kahk,” said Quonab, and Skookum said “Kahk,” too, but he did it +by growling and raising his back hair, and doubtless also by sadly +remembering. His discretion seemed as yet embryonic, so Rolf slipped +his sash through the dog's collar, and they followed the track, for the +porcupine now stood in Rolf's mind as a sort of embroidery outfit. + +They had not followed far before another track joined on--the track +of the fisher-pekan; and soon after they heard in the woods ahead +scratching sounds, as of something climbing, and once or twice a faint, +far, fighting snarl. + +Quickly tying the over-valiant Skookum to a tree, they crept forward, +ready for anything, and arrived on the scene of a very peculiar action. + +Action it was, though it was singularly devoid of action. First, there +was a creature, like a huge black marten or a short-legged black fox, +standing at a safe distance, while, partly hidden under a log, with hind +quarters and tail only exposed, was a large porcupine. Both were +very still, but soon the fisher snarled and made a forward lunge. The +porcupine, hearing the sounds or feeling the snow dash up on that side, +struck with its tail; but the fisher kept out of reach. Next a feint was +made on the other side, with the same result; then many, as though the +fisher were trying to tire out the tail or use up all its quills. + +Sometimes the assailant leaped on the log and teased the quill-pig to +strike upward, while many white daggers already sunk in the bark showed +that these tactics had been going on for some time. + +Now the two spectators saw by the trail that a similar battle had +been fought at another log, and that the porcupine trail from that was +spotted with blood. How the fisher had forced it out was not then clear, +but soon became so. + +After feinting till the Kahk would not strike, the pekan began a new +manceuvre. Starting on the opposite side of the log that protected the +spiny one's nose, he burrowed quickly through the snow and leaves. The +log was about three inches from the ground, and before the porcupine +could realize it, the fisher had a space cleared and seized the spiny +one by its soft, unspiny nose. Grunting and squealing it pulled back and +lashed its terrible tail. To what effect? Merely to fill the log around +with quills. With all its strength the quill-pig pulled and writhed, but +the fisher was stronger. His claws enlarged the hole and when the victim +ceased from exhaustion, the fisher made a forward dash and changed +his hold from the tender nose to the still more tender throat of the +porcupine. His hold was not deep enough and square enough to seize the +windpipe, but he held on. For a minute or two the struggles of Kahk were +of desperate energy and its lashing tail began to be short of spines, +but a red stream trickling from the wound was sapping its strength. +Protected by the log, the fisher had but to hold on and play a waiting +game. + +The heaving and backward pulling of Kahk were very feeble at length; the +fisher had nearly finished the fight. But he was impatient of further +delay and backing out of the hole he mounted the log, displaying a much +scratched nose; then reaching down with deft paw, near the quill-pig's +shoulder, he gave a sudden jerk that threw the former over on its back, +and before it could recover, the fisher's jaws closed on its ribs, and +crushed and tore. The nerveless, almost quilless tail could not harm him +there. The red blood flowed and the porcupine lay still. Again and again +as he uttered chesty growls the pekan ground his teeth into the warm +flesh and shook and worried the unconquerable one he had conquered. He +was licking his bloody chops for the twentieth time, gloating in gore, +when “crack” went Quonab's gun, and the pekan had an opportunity of +resuming the combat with Kahk far away in the Happy Hunting. + +“Yap, yap, yap!” and in rushed Skookum, dragging the end of Rolf's sash +which he had gnawed through in his determination to be in the fight, +no matter what it cost; and it was entirely due to the fact that the +porcupine was belly up, that Skookum did not have another hospital +experience. + +This was Rolf's first sight of a fisher, and he examined it as one does +any animal--or man--that one has so long heard described in superlative +terms that it has become idealized into a semi-myth. This was the +desperado of the woods; the weird black cat that feared no living thing. +This was the only one that could fight and win against Kahk. + +They made a fire at once, and while Rolf got the mid-day meal of tea and +venison, Quonab skinned the fisher. Then he cut out its heart and liver. +When these were cooked he gave the first to Rolf and the second to +Skookum, saying to the one, “I give you a pekan heart;” and to the +dog, “That will force all of the quills out of you if you play the fool +again, as I think you will.” + +In the skin of the fisher's neck and tail they found several quills, +some of them new, some of them dating evidently from another fight +of the same kind, but none of them had done any damage. There was no +inflammation or sign of poisoning. “It is ever so,” said Quonab, “the +quills cannot hurt him.” Then, turning to the porcupine, he remarked, as +he prepared to skin it: + +“Ho, Kahk! you see now it was a big mistake you did not let Nana Bojou +sit on the dry end of that log.” + + + +Chapter 38. The Silver Fox + +They were returning to the cabin, one day, when Quonab stopped and +pointed. Away off on the snow of the far shore was a moving shape to be +seen. + +“Fox, and I think silver fox; he so black. I think he lives there.” + +“Why?” “I have seen many times a very big fox track, and they do not go +where they do not live. Even in winter they keep their own range.” + +“He's worth ten martens, they say?” queried Rolf. + +“Ugh! fifty.” + +“Can't we get him?” + +“Can try. But the water set will not work in winter; we must try +different.” + +This was the plan, the best that Quonab could devise for the snow: +Saving the ashes from the fire (dry sand would have answered), he +selected six open places in the woods on the south of the lake, and in +each made an ash bed on which he scattered three or four drops of the +smell-charm. Then, twenty-five yards from each, on the north or west +side (the side of the prevailing wind) he hung from some sapling a few +feathers, a partridge wing or tail with some red yarns to it. He left +the places unvisited for two weeks, then returned to learn the progress +of act one. + +Judging from past experience of fox nature and from the few signs that +were offered by the snow, this is what had happened: A fox came along +soon after the trappers left, followed the track a little way, came to +the first opening, smelled the seductive danger-lure, swung around it, +saw the dangling feathers, took alarm, and went off. Another of the +places had been visited by a marten. He had actually scratched in the +ashes. A wolf had gone around another at a safe distance. + +Another had been shunned several times by a fox or by foxes, but they +had come again and again and at last yielded to the temptation to +investigate the danger-smell; finally had rolled in it, evidently +wallowing in an abandon of delight. So far, the plan was working there. + +The next move was to set the six strong fox traps, each thoroughly +smoked, and chained to a fifteen-pound block of wood. + +Approaching the place carefully and using his blood-rubbed glove, Quonab +set in each ash pile a trap. Under its face he put a wad of white rabbit +fur. Next he buried all in the ashes, scattered a few bits of rabbit and +a few drops of smell-charm, then dashed snow over the place, renewed +the dangling feathers to lure the eye; and finally left the rest to the +weather. + +Rolf was keen to go the next day, but the old man said: “Wah! no good! +no trap go first night; man smell too strong.” The second day there +was a snowfall, and the third morning Quonab said, “Now seem like good +time.” + +The first trap was untouched, but there was clearly the track of a large +fox within ten yards of it. + +The second was gone. Quonab said, with surprise in his voice, “Deer!” + Yes, truly, there was the record. A deer--a big one--had come wandering +past; his keen nose soon apprised him of a strong, queer appeal near +by. He had gone unsuspiciously toward it, sniffed and pawed the +unaccountable and exciting nose medicine; then “snap!” and he had sprung +a dozen feet, with that diabolic smell-thing hanging to his foot. Hop, +hop, hop, the terrified deer had gone into a slashing windfall. Then the +drag had caught on the logs, and, thanks to the hard and taper hoofs, +the trap had slipped off and been left behind, while the deer had sought +safer regions. + +In the next trap they found a beautiful marten dead, killed at once +by the clutch of steel. The last trap was gone, but the tracks and the +marks told a tale that any one could read; a fox had been beguiled and +had gone off, dragging the trap and log. Not far did they need to go; +held in a thicket they found him, and Rolf prepared the mid-day meal +while Quonab gathered the pelt. After removing the skin the Indian cut +deep and carefully into the body of the fox and removed the bladder. Its +contents sprinkled near each of the traps was good medicine, he said; a +view that was evidently shared by Skookum. + +More than once they saw the track of the big fox of the region, +but never very near the snare. He was too clever to be fooled by +smell-spells or kidney products, no matter how temptingly arrayed. The +trappers did, indeed, capture three red foxes; but it was at cost of +great labour. It was a venture that did not pay. The silver fox was +there, but he took too good care of his precious hide. The slightest +hint of a man being near was enough to treble his already double +wariness. They would never have seen him near at hand, but for a +stirring episode that told a tale of winter hardship. + + + +Chapter 39. The Humiliation of Skookum + +If Skookum could have been interviewed by a newspaper man, he would +doubtless have said: “I am a very remarkable dog. I can tree partridges. +I'm death on porcupines. I am pretty good in a dog fight; never was +licked in fact: but my really marvellous gift is my speed; I'm a terror +to run.” + +Yes, he was very proud of his legs, and the foxes that came about in the +winter nights gave him many opportunities of showing what he could do. +Many times over he very nearly caught a fox. Skookum did not know that +these wily ones were playing with him; but they were, and enjoyed it +immensely. + +The self-sufficient cur never found this out, and never lost a chance of +nearly catching a fox. The men did not see those autumn chases because +they were by night; but foxes hunt much by day in winter, perforce, and +are often seen; and more than once they witnessed one of these farcical +races. + +And now the shining white furnished background for a much more important +affair. + +It was near sundown one day when a faint fox bark was heard out on the +snow-covered ice of the lake. + +“That's for me,” Skookum seemed to think, and jumping up, with a very +fierce growl, he trotted forth; the men looked first from the window. +Out on the snow, sitting on his haunches, was their friend, the big, +black silver fox. + +Quonab reached for his gun and Rolf tried to call Skookum, but it was +too late. He was out to catch that fox; their business was to look on +and applaud. The fox sat on his haunches, grinning apparently, until +Skookum dashed through the snow within twenty yards. Then, that shining, +black fox loped gently away, his huge tail level out behind him, and +Skookum, sure of success, raced up, within six or seven yards. A few +more leaps now, and the victory would be won. But somehow he could not +close that six or seven yard gap. No matter how he strained and leaped, +the great black brush was just so far ahead. At first they had headed +for the shore, but the fox wheeled back to the ice and up and down. +Skookum felt it was because escape was hopeless, and he redoubled +his effort. But all in vain. He was only wearing himself out, panting +noisily now. The snow was deep enough to be a great disadvantage, +more to dog than to fox, since weight counted as such a handicap. +Unconsciously Skookum slowed up. The fox increased his headway; then +audaciously turned around and sat down in the snow. + +This was too much for the dog. He wasted about a lungful of air in an +angry bark, and again went after the enemy. Again the chase was round +and round, but very soon the dog was so wearied that he sat down, and +now the black fox actually came back and barked at him. + +It was maddening. Skookum's pride was touched. + +He was in to win or break. His supreme effort brought him within five +feet of that white-tipped brush. Then, strange to tell, the big black +fox put forth his large reserve of speed, and making for the woods, +left Skookum far behind. Why? The cause was clear. Quonab, after vainly +watching for a chance to shoot, that would not endanger the dog, had, +under cover, crept around the lake and now was awaiting in a thicket. +But the fox's keen nose had warned him. He knew that the funny part was +over, so ran for the woods and disappeared as a ball tossed up the snow +behind him. + +Poor Skookum's tongue was nearly a foot long as he walked meekly ashore. +He looked depressed; his tail was depressed; so were his ears; but there +was nothing to show whether he would have told that reporter that he +“wasn't feeling up to his usual, to-day,” or “Didn't you see me get the +best of him?” + + + +Chapter 40. The Rarest of Pelts + +They saw that silver fox three or four times during the winter, and once +found that he had had the audacity to jump from a high snowdrift onto +the storehouse and thence to the cabin roof, where he had feasted on +some white rabbits kept there for deadfall baits. But all attempts to +trap or shoot him were vain, and their acquaintance might have ended as +it began, but for an accident. + +It proved a winter of much snow. Heavy snow is the worst misfortune that +can befall the wood folk in fur. It hides their food beyond reach, and +it checks their movements so they can neither travel far in search of +provender nor run fast to escape their enemies. Deep snow then means +fetters, starvation, and death. There are two ways of meeting the +problem: stilts and snowshoes. The second is far the better. The +caribou, and the moose have stilts; the rabbit, the panther, and the +lynx wear snowshoes. When there are three or four feet of soft snow, the +lynx is king of all small beasts, and little in fear of the large ones. +Man on his snowshoes has most wild four-foots at his mercy. + +Skookum, without either means of meeting the trouble was left much alone +in the shanty. Apparently, it was on one of these occasions that the +silver fox had driven him nearly frantic by eating rabbits on the roof +above him. + +The exasperating robbery of their trap line had gone on irregularly all +winter, but the thief was clever enough or lucky enough to elude them. + +They were returning to the cabin after a three days' round, when they +saw, far out on the white expanse of the lake, two animals, alternately +running and fighting. “Skookum and the fox,” was the first thought that +came, but on entering the cabin Skookum greeted them in person. + +Quonab gazed intently at the two running specks and said: “One has no +tail. I think it is a peeshoo (lynx) and a fox.” + +Rolf was making dinner. From time to time he glanced over the lake and +saw the two specks, usually running. After dinner was over, he said, +“Let's sneak 'round and see if we can get a shot.” + +So, putting on their snowshoes and keeping out of sight, they skimmed +over the deer crossing and through the woods, till at a point near the +fighters, and there they saw something that recalled at once the day of +Skookum's humiliation. + +A hundred yards away on the open snow was a huge lynx and their +old friend, the black and shining silver fox, face to face; the fox +desperate, showing his rows of beautiful teeth, but sinking belly deep +in the snow as he strove to escape. Already he was badly wounded. In +any case he was at the mercy of the lynx who, in spite of his greater +weight, had such broad and perfect snowshoes that he skimmed on the +surface, while the fox's small feet sank deep. The lynx was far from +fresh, and still stood in some awe of those rows of teeth that snapped +like traps when he came too near. He was minded, of course, to kill his +black rival, but not to be hurt in doing so. Again and again there was +in some sort a closing fight, the wearied fox plunging breathlessly +through the treacherous, relentless snow. If he could only get back to +cover, he might find a corner to protect his rear and have some fighting +chance for life. But wherever he turned that huge cat faced him, doubly +armed, and equipped as a fox can never be for the snow. + +No one could watch that plucky fight without feeling his sympathies go +out to the beautiful silver fox. Rolf, at least, was for helping him to +escape, when the final onset came. In another dash for the woods the fox +plunged out of sight in a drift made soft by sedge sticking through, and +before he could recover, the lynx's jaws closed on the back of his neck +and the relentless claws had pierced his vitals. + +The justification of killing is self-preservation, and in this case the +proof would have been the lynx making a meal of the fox. Did he do +so? Not at all. He shook his fur, licked his chest and paws in a +self-congratulatory way, then giving a final tug at the body, walked +calmly over the snow along the shore. + +Quonab put the back of his hand to his mouth and made a loud squeaking, +much like a rabbit caught in a snare. The lynx stopped, wheeled, and +came trotting straight toward the promising music. Unsuspectingly he +came within twenty yards of the trappers. The flint-lock banged and the +lynx was kicking in the snow. + +The beautiful silver fox skin was very little injured and proved of +value almost to double their catch so far; while the lynx skin was as +good as another marten. + +They now had opportunity of studying the tracks and learned that the fox +had been hunting rabbits in a thicket when he was set on by the lynx. +At first he had run around in the bushes and saved himself from serious +injury, for the snow was partly packed by the rabbits. After perhaps an +hour of this, he had wearied and sought to save himself by abandoning +the lynx's territory, so had struck across the open lake. But here the +snow was too soft to bear him at all, and the lynx could still skim +over. So it proved a fatal error. He was strong and brave. He fought at +least another hour here before the much stronger, heavier lynx had +done him to death. There was no justification. It was a clear case of +tyrannical murder, but in this case vengeance was swift and justice came +sooner than its wont. + + + +Chapter 41. The Enemy's Fort + + It pays 'bout once in a hundred times to git mad, but there + ain't any way o' tellin' beforehand which is the time. + --Sayings of Si Sylvanne. + +It generally took two days to run the west line of traps. At a +convenient point they had built a rough shack for a half-way house. On +entering this one day, they learned that since their last visit it had +been occupied by some one who chewed tobacco. Neither of them had this +habit. Quonab's face grew darker each time fresh evidence of the enemy +was discovered, and the final wrong was added soon. + +Some trappers mark their traps; some do not bother. Rolf had marked all +of theirs with a file, cutting notches on the iron. Two, one, three, was +their mark, and it was a wise plan, as it turned out. + +On going around the west beaver pond they found that all six traps had +disappeared. In some, there was no evidence of the thief; in some, the +tracks showed clearly that they were taken by the same interloper that +had bothered them all along, and on a jagged branch was a short blue +yarn. + +“Now will I take up his trail and kill him,” said the Indian. + +Rolf had opposed extreme measures, and again he remonstrated. To his +surprise, the Indian turned fiercely and said: “You know it is white +man. If he was Indian would you be patient? No!” + +“There is plenty of country south of the lake; maybe he was here first.” + +“You know he was not. You should eat many pekan hearts. I have sought +peace, now I fight.” + +He shouldered his pack, grasped his gun, and his snowshoes went “tssape, +tssape, tssape,” over the snow. + +Skookum was sitting by Rolf. He rose to resume the march, and trotted +a few steps on Quonab's trail. Rolf did not move; he was dazed by the +sudden and painful situation. Mutiny is always worse than war. Skookum +looked back, trotted on, still Rolf sat staring. Quonab's figure was +lost in the distance; the dog's was nearly so. Rolf moved not. All the +events of the last year were rushing through his mind; the refuge he +had found with the Indian; the incident of the buck fight and the tender +nurse the red man proved. He wavered. Then he saw Skookum coming back +on the trail. The dog trotted up to the boy and dropped a glove, one of +Quonab's. Undoubtedly the Indian had lost it; Skookum had found it on +the trail and mechanically brought it to the nearest of his masters. +Without that glove Quonab's hand would freeze. Rolf rose and sped along +the other's trail. Having taken the step, he found it easy to send a +long halloo, then another and another, till an answer came. In a few +minutes Rolf came up. The Indian was sitting on a log, waiting. The +glove was handed over in silence, and received with a grunt. + +After a minute or two, Rolf said “Let's get on,” and started on the dim +trail of the robber. + +For an hour or two they strode in silence. Then their course rose as +they reached a rocky range. Among its bare, wind-swept ridges all sign +was lost, but the Indian kept on till they were over and on the other +side. A far cast in the thick, windless woods revealed the trail again, +surely the same, for the snowshoe was two fingers wider on every side, +and a hand-breadth longer than Quonab's; besides the right frame had +been broken and the binding of rawhide was faintly seen in the snow +mark. It was a mark they had seen all winter, and now it was headed as +before for the west. + +When night came down, they camped in a hollow. They were used to snow +camps. In the morning they went on, but wind and snow had hidden their +tell-tale guide. + +What was the next move? Rolf did not ask, but wondered. + +Quonab evidently was puzzled. + +At length Rolf ventured: “He surely lives by some river--that way--and +within a day's journey. This track is gone, but we may strike a fresh +one. We'll know it when we see it.” + +The friendly look came back to the Indian's face. “You are Nibowaka.” + +They had not gone half a mile before they found a fresh track--their old +acquaintance. Even Skookum showed his hostile recognition. And in a few +minutes it led them to a shanty. They slipped off their snowshoes, +and hung them in a tree. Quonab opened the door without knocking. They +entered, and in a moment were face to face with a lanky, ill-favoured +white man that all three, including Skookum, recognized as Hoag, the man +they had met at the trader's. + +That worthy made a quick reach for his rifle, but Quonab covered him and +said in tones that brooked no discussion, “Sit down!” + +Hoag did so, sullenly, then growled: “All right; my partners will be +here in ten minutes.” + +Rolf was startled. Quonab and Skookum were not. + +“We settled your partners up in the hills,” said the former, knowing +that one bluff was as good as another. Skookum growled and sniffed at +the enemy's legs. The prisoner made a quick move with his foot. + +“You kick that dog again and it's your last kick,” said the Indian. + +“Who's kicked yer dog, and what do you mean coming here with yer +cutthroat ways? You'll find there's law in this country before yer +through,” was the answer. + +“That's what we're looking for, you trap robber, you thief. We're here +first to find our traps; second to tell you this: the next time you come +on our line there'll be meat for the ravens. Do you suppose I don't +know them?” and the Indian pointed to a large pair of snowshoes with long +heels and a repair lashing on the right frame. “See that blue yarn,” and +the Indian matched it with a blue sash hanging to a peg. + +“Yes, them belongs to Bill Hawkins; he'll be 'round in five minutes +now.” + +The Indian made a gesture of scorn; then turning to Rolf said: “look +'round for our traps.” Rolf made a thorough search in and about the +shanty and the adjoining shed. He found some traps but none with his +mark; none of a familiar make even. + +“Better hunt for a squaw and papoose,” sneered Hoag, who was utterly +puzzled by the fact that now Rolf was obviously a white lad. + +But all the search was vain. Either Hoag had not stolen the traps or had +hidden them elsewhere. The only large traps they found were two of the +largest size for taking bear. + +Hoag's torrent of bad language had been quickly checked by the threat of +turning Skookum loose on his legs, and he looked such a grovelling beast +that presently the visitors decided to leave him with a warning. + +The Indian took the trapper's gun, fired it off out of doors, not in +the least perturbed by the possibility of its being heard by Hoag's +partners. He knew they were imaginary. Then changing his plan, he said +“Ugh! You find your gun in half a mile on our trail. But don't come +farther and don't let me see the snowshoe trail on the divide again. +Them ravens is awful hungry.” + +Skookum, to his disappointment, was called off and, talking the +trapper's gun for a time, they left it in a bush and made for their own +country. + + + +Chapter 42. Skookum's Panther + +“Why are there so few deer tracks now?” + +“Deer yarded for winter,” replied the Indian; “no travel in deep snow.” + +“We'll soon need another,” said Rolf, which unfortunately was true. They +could have killed many deer in early winter, when the venison was in +fine condition, but they had no place to store it. Now they must get it +as they could, and of course it was thinner and poorer every week. + +They were on a high hill some days later. There was a clear view and +they noticed several ravens circling and swooping. + +“Maybe dead deer; maybe deer yard,” said the Indian. + +It was over a thick, sheltered, and extensive cedar swamp near the woods +where last year they had seen so many deer, and they were not surprised +to find deer tracks in numbers, as soon as they got into its dense +thicket. + +A deer yard is commonly supposed to be a place in which the deer have a +daily “bee” at road work all winter long and deliberately keep the snow +hammered down so they can run on a hard surface everywhere within its +limits. The fact is, the deer gather in a place where there is plenty +of food and good shelter. The snow does not drift here, so the deer, +by continually moving about, soon make a network of tracks in all +directions, extending them as they must to seek more food. They may, +of course, leave the yard at any time, but at once they encounter the +dreaded obstacle of deep, soft snow in which they are helpless. + +Once they reached the well-worn trails, the hunters took off their +snowshoes and went gently on these deer paths. They saw one or two +disappearing forms, which taught them the thick cover was hiding many +more. They made for the sound of the ravens, and found that the feast of +the sable birds was not a deer but the bodies of three, quite recently +killed. + +Quonab made a hasty study of the signs and said, “Panther.” + +Yes, a panther, cougar, or mountain lion also had found the deer yard; +and here he was living, like a rat in a grocer shop with nothing to do +but help himself whenever he felt like feasting. + +Pleasant for the panther, but hard on the deer; for the killer is +wasteful and will often kill for the joy of murder. + +Not a quarter of the carcasses lying here did he eat; he was feeding at +least a score of ravens, and maybe foxes, martens, and lynxes as well. + +Before killing a deer, Quonab thought it well to take a quiet prowl +around in hopes of seeing the panther. Skookum was turned loose and +encouraged to display his talents. + +Proud as a general with an ample and obedient following, he dashed +ahead, carrying fresh dismay among the deer, if one might judge from the +noise. Then he found some new smell of excitement, and voiced the new +thrill in a new sound, one not unmixed with fear. At length his barking +was far away to the west in a rocky part of the woods. Whatever the +prey, it was treed, for the voice kept one place. + +The hunters followed quickly and found the dog yapping furiously under +a thick cedar. The first thought was of porcupine; but a nearer view +showed the game to be a huge panther on the ground, not greatly excited, +disdaining to climb, and taking little notice of the dog, except to +curl his nose and utter a hissing kind of snarl when the latter came too +near. + +But the arrival of the hunters gave a new colour to the picture. The +panther raised his head, then sprang up a large tree and ensconced +himself on a fork, while the valorous Skookum reared against the trunk, +threatening loudly to come up and tear him to pieces. + +This was a rare find and a noble chance to conserve their stock of deer, +so the hunters went around the tree seeking for a fair shot. But +every point of view had some serious obstacle. It seemed as though the +branches had been told off to guard the panther's vitals, for a big one +always stood in the bullet's way. + +After vainly going around, Quonab said to Rolf: “Hit him with something, +so he'll move.” + +Rolf always was a good shot with stones, but he found none to throw. +Near where they stood, however, was an unfreezing spring, and the soggy +snow on it was easily packed into a hard, heavy snowball. Rolf threw it +straight, swift, and by good luck it hit the panther square on the nose +and startled him so that he sprang right out of the tree and flopped +into the snow. + +Skookum was on him at once, but got a slap on the ear that changed +his music, and the panther bounded away out of sight with the valiant +Skookum ten feet behind, whooping and yelling like mad. + +It was annoyance rather than fear that made that panther take to a low +tree while Skookum boxed the compass, and made a beaten dog path all +around him. The hunters approached very carefully now, making little +sound and keeping out of sight. The panther was wholly engrossed with +observing the astonishing impudence of that dog, when Quonab came +quietly up, leaned his rifle against a tree and fired. The smoke cleared +to show the panther on his back, his legs convulsively waving in the +air, and Skookum tugging valiantly at his tail. + +“My panther,” he seemed to say; “whatever would you do without me?” + +A panther in a deer yard is much like a wolf shut up in a sheepfold. He +would probably have killed all the deer that winter, though there were +ten times as many as he needed for food; and getting rid of him was a +piece of good luck for hunters and deer, while his superb hide made a +noble trophy that in years to come had unexpected places of honour. + + + +Chapter 43. Sunday in the Woods + +Rolf still kept to the tradition of Sunday, and Quonab had in a manner +accepted it. It was a curious fact that the red man had far more +toleration for the white man's religious ideas than the white man had +for the red's. + +Quonab's songs to the sun and the spirit, or his burning of a tobacco +pinch, or an animal's whiskers were to Rolf but harmless nonsense. Had +he given them other names, calling them hymns and incense, he would +have been much nearer respecting them. He had forgotten his mother's +teaching: “If any man do anything sincerely, believing that thereby he +is worshipping God, he is worshipping God.” He disliked seeing Quonab +use an axe or a gun on Sunday, and the Indian, realizing that such +action made “evil medicine” for Rolf, practically abstained. But Rolf +had not yet learned to respect the red yarns the Indian hung from a +deer's skull, though he did come to understand that he must let them +alone or produce bad feeling in camp. + +Sunday had become a day of rest and Quonab made it also a day of song +and remembrance. + +They were sitting one Sunday night by the fire in the cabin, enjoying +the blaze, while a storm rattled on the window and door. A white-footed +mouse, one of a family that lived in the shanty, was trying how close he +could come to Skookum's nose without being caught, while Rolf looked +on. Quonab was lying back on a pile of deer skins, with his pipe in his +mouth, his head on the bunk, and his hands clasped back of his neck. + +There was an atmosphere of content and brotherly feeling; the evening +was young, when Rolf broke silence: + +“Were you ever married, Quonab?” + +“Ugh,” was the Indian's affirmative. + +“Where?” + +“Myanos.” + +Rolf did not venture more questions, but left the influence of the hour +to work. It was a moment of delicate poise, and Rolf knew a touch would +open the door or double bar it. He wondered how he might give that touch +as he wished it. Skookum still slept. Both men watched the mouse, as, +with quick movements it crept about. Presently it approached a long +birch stick that stood up against the wall. High hanging was the +song-drum. Rolf wished Quonab would take it and let it open his heart, +but he dared not offer it; that might have the exact wrong effect. Now +the mouse was behind the birch stick. Then Rolf noticed that the stick +if it were to fall would strike a drying line, one end of which was +on the song-drum peg. So he made a dash at the mouse and displaced the +stick; the jerk it gave the line sent the song-drum with hollow bumping +to the ground. The boy stooped to replace it; as he did, Quonab grunted +and Rolf turned to see his hand stretched for the drum. Had Rolf +officiously offered it, it would have been refused; now the Indian took +it, tapped and warmed it at the fire, and sang a song of the Wabanaki. +It was softly done, and very low, but Rolf was close, for almost the +first time in any long rendition, and he got an entirely new notion of +the red music. The singer's face brightened as he tummed and sang with +peculiar grace notes and throat warbles of “Kaluscap's war with the +magi,” and the spirit of his people, rising to the sweet magic of +melody, came shining in his eyes. He sang the lovers' song, “The Bark +Canoe.” (See F. R. Burton's “American Primitive Music.) + +“While the stars shine and falls the dew, I seek my love in bark canoe.” + +And then the cradle song, + + “The Naked Bear Shall Never Catch Thee.” + +When he stopped, he stared at the fire; and after a long pause Rolf +ventured, “My mother would have loved your songs.” + +Whether he heard or not, the warm emanation surely reached the Indian, +and he began to answer the question of an hour before: + +“Her name was Gamowini, for she sang like the sweet night bird at +Asamuk. I brought her from her father's house at Saugatuck. We lived at +Myanos. She made beautiful baskets and moccasins. I fished and trapped; +we had enough. Then the baby came. He had big round eyes, so we called +him Wee-wees, 'our little owl,' and we were very happy. When Gamowini +sang to her baby, the world seemed full of sun. One day when Wee-wees +could walk she left him with me and she went to Stamford with some +baskets to sell. A big ship was in the harbour. A man from the ship told +her that his sailors would buy all her baskets. She had no fear. On the +ship they seized her for a runaway slave, and hid her till they sailed +away. + +“When she did not come back I took Wee-wees on my shoulder and went +quickly to Stamford. I soon found out a little, but the people did not +know the ship, or whence she came, or where she went, they said. They +did not seem to care. My heart grew hotter and wilder. I wanted to +fight. I would have killed the men on the dock, but they were many. They +bound me and put me in jail for three months. 'When I came out Wee-wees +was dead. They did not care. I have heard nothing since. Then I went to +live under the rock, so I should not see our first home. I do not know; +she may be alive. But I think it killed her to lose her baby.” + +The Indian stopped; then rose quickly. His face was hard set. He stepped +out into the snowstorm and the night. Rolf was left alone with Skookum. + +Sad, sad, everything seemed sad in his friend's life, and Rolf, brooding +over it with wisdom beyond his years, could not help asking: “Had Quonab +and Gamowini been white folk, would it have happened so? Would his agony +have been received with scornful indifference?” Alas! he knew it would +not. He realized it would have been a very different tale, and the +sequent questions that would not down, were, “Will this bread cast +on the waters return after many days?” “Is there a God of justice and +retribution?” “On whom will the flail of vengeance fall for all these +abominations?” + +Two hours later the Indian returned. No word was spoken as he entered. +He was not cold. He must have walked far. Rolf prepared for bed. The +Indian stooped, picked up a needle from the dusty ground, one that had +been lost the day before, silently handed it to his companion, who gave +only a recognizant “Hm,” and dropped it into the birch-bark box. + + + +Chapter 44. The Lost Bundle of Furs + +There had been a significant cessation of robbery on their trap line +after the inconclusive visit to the enemy's camp. But a new and extreme +exasperation arose in the month of March, when the alternation of thaw +and frost had covered the snow with a hard crust that rendered snowshoes +unnecessary and made it easy to run anywhere and leave no track. + +They had gathered up a fisher and some martens before they reached the +beaver pond. They had no beaver traps now, but it was interesting to +call and see how many of the beavers were left, and what they were +doing. + +Bubbling springs on the bank of the pond had made open water at several +places, now that the winter frost was weakening. Out of these the +beavers often came, as was plainly seen in the tracks, so the trappers +approached them carefully. + +They were scrutinizing one of them from behind a log, Quonab with ready +gun, Rolf holding the unwilling Skookum, when the familiar broad, flat +head appeared. A large beaver swam around the hole, sniffed and looked, +then silently climbed the bank, evidently making for a certain aspen +tree that he had already been cutting. He was in easy range, and the +gunner was about to fire when Rolf pressed his arm and pointed. Here, +wandering through the wood, came a large lynx. It had not seen or smelt +any of the living creatures ahead, as yet, but speedily sighted the +beaver now working away to cut down his tree. + +As a pelt, the beaver was worth more than the lynx, but the naturalist +is strong in most hunters, and they watched to see what would happen. + +The lynx seemed to sink into the ground, and was lost to sight as soon +as he knew of a possible prey ahead. And now he began his stalk. The +hunters sighted him once as he crossed a level opening in the snow. He +seemed less than four inches high as he crawled. Logs, ridges, trees, +or twigs, afforded ample concealment, till his whiskers appeared in a +thicket within fifteen feet of the beaver. + +All this was painfully exciting to Skookum, who, though he could not +see, could get some thrilling whiffs, and he strained forward to improve +his opportunities. The sound of this slight struggle caught the beaver's +ear. It stopped work, wheeled, and made for the water hole. The lynx +sprang from his ambush, seized the beaver by the back, and held on; +but the beaver was double the lynx's weight, the bank was steep and +slippery, the struggling animals kept rolling down hill, nearer and +nearer the hole. Then, on the very edge, the beaver gave a great plunge, +and splashed into the water with the lynx clinging to its back. At once +they disappeared, and the hunters rushed to the place, expecting them to +float up and be an easy prey; but they did not float. At length it was +clear that the pair had gone under the ice, for in water the beaver was +master. + +After five minutes it was certain that the lynx must be dead. Quonab cut +a sapling and made a grappler. He poked this way and that way under the +ice, until at length he felt something soft. With the hatchet they cut +a hole over the place and then dragged out the body of the lynx. The +beaver, of course, escaped and was probably little the worse. + +While Quonab skinned the catch, Rolf prowled around the pond and soon +came running back to tell of a remarkable happening. + +At another open hole a beaver had come out, wandered twenty yards to a +mound which he had castorized, then passed several hard wood trees to +find a large poplar or aspen, the favourite food tree. This he had begun +to fell with considerable skill, but for some strange reason, perhaps +because alone, he had made a miscalculation, and when the tree came +crashing down, it had fallen across his back, killed him, and pinned him +to the ground. + +It was an easy matter for the hunters to remove the log and secure his +pelt, so they left the beaver pond, richer than they had expected. + +Next night, when they reached their half-way shanty, they had the best +haul they had taken on this line since the memorable day when they got +six beavers. + +The morning dawned clear and bright. As they breakfasted, they noticed +an extraordinary gathering of ravens far away to the north, beyond any +country they had visited. At least twenty or thirty of the birds were +sailing in great circles high above a certain place, uttering a deep, +sonorous croak, from time to time. Occasionally one of the ravens would +dive down out of sight. + +“Why do they fly above that way?” + +“That is to let other ravens know there is food here. Their eyes are +very good. They can see the signal ten miles away, so all come to the +place. My father told me that you can gather all the ravens for twenty +miles by leaving a carcass so they can see it and signal each other.” + +“Seems as if we should look into that. Maybe another panther,” was +Rolf's remark. + +The Indian nodded; so leaving the bundle of furs in a safe place with +the snowshoes, that they carried on a chance, they set out over the +hard crust. It was two or three miles to the ravens' gathering, and, as +before, it proved to be over a cedar brake where was a deer yard. + +Skookum knew all about it. He rushed into the woods, filled with the +joy of martial glory. But speedily came running out again as hard as +he could, yelling “yow, yow, yowl” for help, while swiftly following, +behind him were a couple of gray wolves. Quonab waited till they were +within forty yards; then, seeing the men, the wolves slowed up and +veered; Quonab fired; one of the wolves gave a little, doglike yelp. +Then they leaped into the bushes and were lost to view. + +A careful study of the snow showed one or two trifling traces of blood. +In the deer yard they found at least a dozen carcasses of deer killed by +the wolves, but none very recent. They saw but few deer and nothing more +of the wolves, for the crust had made all the country easy, and both +kinds fled before the hunters. + +Exploring a lower level of willow country in hopes of finding beaver +delayed them, and it was afternoon when they returned to the half-way +shanty, to find everything as they left it, except that their Pack of +furs had totally disappeared. + +Of course, the hard crust gave no sign of track. Their first thought +was of the old enemy, but, seeking far and near for evidence, they found +pieces of an ermine skin, and a quarter mile farther, the rest of it, +then, at another place, fragments of a muskrat's skin. Those made it +look like the work of the trapper's enemy, the wolverine, which, though +rare, was surely found in these hills. Yes! there was a wolverine +scratch mark, and here another piece of the rat skin. It was very clear +who was the thief. + +“He tore up the cheapest ones of the lot anyway,” said Rolf. + +Then the trappers stared at each other significantly--only the cheap +ones destroyed; why should a wolverine show such discrimination? There +was no positive sign of wolverine; in fact, the icy snow gave no sign of +anything. There was little doubt that the tom furs and the scratch marks +were there to mislead; that this was the work of a human robber, almost +certainly Hoag. + +He had doubtless seen them leave in the morning, and it was equally +sure, since he had had hours of start, he would now be far away. + +“Ugh! Give him few days to think he safe, then I follow and settle all,” + and this time the Indian clearly meant to end the matter. + + + +Chapter 45. The Subjugation of Hoag + + A feller as weeps for pity and never does a finger-tap to + help is 'bout as much use as an overcoat on a drowning man. + --Sayings of Si Sylvanne. + +SOME remarkable changes of weather made some remarkable changes in their +plan and saved their enemy from immediate molestation. For two weeks it +was a succession of thaws and there was much rain. The lake was covered +with six inches of water; the river had a current above the ice, that +was rapidly eating, the latter away. Everywhere there were slush and wet +snow that put an end to travel and brought on the spring with a rush. + +Each night there was, indeed, a trifling frost, but each day's sun +seemed stronger, and broad, bare patches of ground appeared on all sunny +slopes. + +On the first crisp day the trappers set out to go the rounds, knowing +full well that this was the end of the season. Henceforth for six months +deadfall and snare would lie idle and unset. + +They went their accustomed line, carrying their snowshoes, but rarely +needing them. Then they crossed a large track to which Quonab pointed, +and grunted affirmatively as Rolf said “Bear?” Yes! the bears were about +once more; their winter sleep was over. Now they were fat and the fur +was yet prime; in a month they would be thin and shedding. Now is the +time for bear hunting with either trap or dog. + +Doubtless Skookum thought the party most fortunately equipped in the +latter respect, but no single dog is enough to bay a bear. There must +be three or four to bother him behind, to make him face about and fight; +one dog merely makes him run faster. + +They had no traps, and knowing that a spring bear is a far traveller, +they made no attempt to follow. + +The deadfalls yielded two martens, but one of them was spoiled by the +warm weather. They learned at last that the enemy had a trap-line, for +part of which he used their deadfalls. He had been the rounds lately and +had profited at least a little by their labours. + +The track, though two days old, was not hard to follow, either on snow +or ground. Quonab looked to the lock of his gun; his lower lip tightened +and he strode along. + +“What are you going to do, Quonab? Not shoot?” + +“When I get near enough,” and the dangerous look in the red man's eye +told Rolf to be quiet and follow. + +In three miles they passed but three of his marten traps--very lazy +trapping--and then found a great triangle of logs by a tree with a bait +and signs enough to tell the experienced eye that, in that corner, was +hidden a huge steel trap for bear. + +They were almost too late in restraining the knowledge-hunger of +Skookum. They went on a mile or two and realized in so doing that, +however poor a trapper the enemy might be, he was a good tramper and +knew the country. + +At sundown they came to their half-way shelter and put up there for the +night. Once when Rolf went out to glimpse the skies before turning in, +he heard a far tree creaking and wondered, for it was dead calm. Even +Skookum noticed it. But it was not repeated. Next morning they went on. + +There are many quaint sounds in the woods at all times, the rasping +of trees, at least a dozen different calls by jays, twice as many by +ravens, and occasional notes from chicadees, grouse, and owls. The +quadrupeds in general are more silent, but the red squirrel is ever +about and noisy, as well as busy. + +Far-reaching sounds are these echoes of the woods--some of them very +far. Probably there were not five minutes of the day or night when some +weird, woodland chatter, scrape, crack, screech, or whistle did not +reach the keen ears of that ever-alert dog. That is, three hundred times +a day his outer ear submitted to his inner ear some report of things +a-doing, which same report was as often for many days disregarded as of +no interest or value. But this did not mean that he missed anything; the +steady tramp, tramp of their feet, while it dulled all sounds for the +hunter, seemed to have no effect on Skookum. Again the raspy squeal of +some far tree reached his inmost brain, and his hair rose as he stopped +and gave a low “woof.” + +The hunters held still; the wise ones always do, when a dog says “Stop!” + They waited. After a few minutes it came again--merely the long-drawn +creak of a tree bough, wind-rubbed on its neighbour. + +And yet, “Woof, woof, woof,” said Skookum, and ran ahead. + +“Come back, you little fool!” cried Rolf. + +But Skookum had a mind of his own. He trotted ahead, then stopped, +paused, and sniffed at something in the snow. The Indian picked it up. +It was the pocket jackscrew that every bear trapper carries to set the +powerful trap, and without which, indeed, one man cannot manage the +springs. + +He held it up with “Ugh! Hoag in trouble now.” Clearly the rival trapper +had lost this necessary tool. + +But the finding was an accident. Skookum pushed on. They came along a +draw to a little hollow. The dog, far forward, began barking and angrily +baying at something. The men hurried to the scene to find on the snow, +fast held in one of those devilish engines called a bear trap--the body +of their enemy--Hoag, the trapper, held by a leg, and a hand in the gin +he himself had been setting. + +A fierce light played on the Indian's face. Rolf was stricken with +horror. But even while they contemplated the body, the faint cry was +heard again coming from it. + +“He's alive; hurry!” cried Rolf. The Indian did not hurry, but he came. +He had vowed vengeance at sight; why should he haste to help? + +The implacable iron jaws had clutched the trapper by one knee and the +right hand. The first thing was to free him. How? No man has power +enough to force that spring. But the jackscrew! + +“Quonab, help him! For God's sake, come!” cried Rolf in agony, +forgetting their feud and seeing only tortured, dying man. + +The Indian gazed a moment, then rose quickly, and put on the jackscrew. +Under his deft fingers the first spring went down, but what about the +other? They had no other screw. The long buckskin line they always +carried was quickly lashed round and round the down spring to hold it. +Then the screw was removed and put on the other spring; it bent, and the +jaws hung loose. The Indian forced them wide open, drew out the mangled +limbs, a the trapper was free, but so near death, it seemed they were +too late. + +Rolf spread his coat. The Indian made a fire. In fifteen minutes they +were pouring hot tea between victim's lips. Even as they did, his feeble +throat gave out again the long, low moan. + +The weather was mild now. The prisoner was not actually frozen, but +numbed and racked. Heat, hot tea, kindly rubbing, and he revived a +little. + +At first they thought him dying, but in an hour recovered enough to +talk. In feeble accents and broken phrases they learned the tale: + +“Yest--m-m-m. Yesterday--no; two or three days back--m-m-m-m-m--I dunno; +I was a goin'--roun' me traps--me bear traps. Didn't have no luck m-m-m +(yes, I'd like another sip; ye ain't got no whiskey no?) m-m-m. Nothing +in any trap, and when I come to this un--oh-h--m-m; I seen--the bait +was stole by birds, an' the pan--m-m-m; an' the pan, m-m-m--(yes, that's +better)--an' the pan laid bare. So I starts to cover it with--ce-ce-dar; +the ony thing I c'd get--m-m-m-w---wuz leanin' over--to fix tother +side--me foot slipped on--the--ice--ev'rything was icy--an'--m-m-m-m--I +lost--me balance--me knee the pan--O Lord--how I suffer!--m-m-m it +grabbed me--knee an'--h-h-hand--” His voice died to a whisper and +ceased; he seemed sinking. + +Quonab got up to hold him. Then, looking at Rolf, Indian shook his +head as though to say all was over; the poor wretch had a woodman's +constitution, and in spite of a mangled, dying body, he revived again. +They gave him more hot tea, and again he began in a whisper: + +“I hed one arm free an'--an'--an'--I might--a--got out--m-m--but I hed +no wrench--I lost it some place--m-m-m-m. + +“Then--I yelled--I dun--no--maybe some un might hear--it kin-kin-kinder +eased me--to yell m-m-m. + +“Say--make that yer dog keep--away--will yer I dunno--it seems like a +week--must a fainted some M-m-m--I yelled--when I could.” + +There was a long pause. Rolf said, “Seems to me I heard you last night, +when we were up there. And dog heard you, too. Do you want me to move +that leg around?” + +“M-m-m--yeh--that's better--say, you air white--ain't ye? Ye won't leave +me--cos--I done some mean things--m-m-m. Ye won't, will ye?” + +“No, you needn't worry--we'll stay by ye.” + +Then he muttered, they could not tell what. He closed his eyes. After +long silence he looked around wildly and began again: + +“Say--I done you dirt--but don't leave me--don't leave me.” Tears ran +down his face and he moaned piteously. “I'll--make it--right--you're +white, ain't ye?” + +Quonab rose and went for more firewood. The trapper whispered, “I'm +scared o' him--now--he'll do me--say, I'm jest a poor ole man. If I do +live--through--this--m-m-m-m--I'll never walk again. I'm crippled sure.” + +It was long before he resumed. Then he began: “Say, what day is +it--Friday!--I must--been two days in there--m-m-m--I reckoned it was a +week. When--the--dog came I thought it was wolves. Oh--ah, didn't care +much--m-m-m. Say, ye won't leave me--coz--coz--I treated--ye mean. +I--ain't had no l-l-luck.” He went off into a stupor, but presently let +out a long, startling cry, the same as that they had heard in the night. +The dog growled; the men stared. The wretch's eyes were rolling again. +He seemed delirious. + +Quonab pointed to the east, made the sun-up sign, and shook his head at +the victim. And Rolf understood it to mean that he would never see the +sunrise. But they were wrong. + +The long night passed in a struggle between heath and the tough make-up +of a mountaineer. The waiting light of dawn saw death defeated, +retiring from the scene. As the sun rose high, the victim seemed to gain +considerably in strength. There was no immediate danger of an end. + +Rolf said to Quonab: “Where shall we take him? Guess you better go home +for the toboggan, and we'll fetch him to the shanty.” + +But the invalid was able to take part in the conversation. “Say, don't +take me there. Ah--want to go home. 'Pears like--I'd be better at home. +My folks is out Moose River way. I'd never get out if I went in +there,” and by “there” he seemed to mean the Indian's lake, and glanced +furtively at the unchanging countenance of the red man. + +“Have you a toboggan at your shanty?” asked Rolf. + +“Yes--good enough--it's on the roof--say,” and he beckoned feebly to +Rolf, “let him go after it--don't leave me--he'll kill me,” and he wept +feebly in his self pity. + +So Quonab started down the mountain--a sinewy man--a striding form, a +speck in the melting distance. + + + +Chapter 46. Nursing Hoag + +In two hours the red man reached the trapper's shanty, and at once, +without hesitation or delicacy, set about a thorough examination of its +contents. Of course there was the toboggan on the roof, and in fairly +good condition for such a shiftless owner. + +There were bunches of furs hanging from the rafters, but not many, for +fur taking is hard work; and Quonab, looking suspiciously over them, +was 'not surprised to see the lynx skin he had lost, easily known by the +absence of wound and the fur still in points as it had dried from the +wetting. In another bundle, he discovered the beaver that had killed +itself, for there was the dark band across its back. + +The martens he could not be sure of, but he had a strong suspicion that +most of this fur came out of his own traps. + +He tied Hoag's blankets on the toboggan, and hastened back to where he +left the two on the mountain. + +Skookum met him long before he was near. Skookum did not enjoy Hoag's +company. + +The cripple had been talking freely to Rolf, but the arrival of the +Indian seemed to suppress him. + +With the wounded man on the toboggan, they set out, The ground was bare +in many places, so that the going was hard; but, fortunately, it was all +down hill, and four hours' toil brought them to the cabin. + +They put the sick man in his bunk, then Rolf set about preparing a meal, +while Quonab cut wood. + +After the usual tea, bacon, and flour cakes, all were feeling refreshed. +Hoag seemed much more like himself. He talked freely, almost cheerfully, +while Quonab, with Skookum at his feet, sat silently smoking and staring +into the fire. + +After a long silence, the Indian turned, looked straight at the trapper, +and, pointing with his pipestem to the furs, said, “How many is ours?” + +Hoag looked scared, then sulky, and said; “I dunno what ye mean. I'm a +awful sick man. You get me out to Lyons Falls all right, and ye can have +the hull lot,” and he wept. + +Rolf shook his head at Quonab, then turned to the sufferer and said: +“Don't you worry; we'll get you out all right. Have you a good canoe?” + +“Pretty fair; needs a little fixing.” + +The night passed with one or two breaks, when the invalid asked for a +drink of water. In the morning he was evidently recovering, and they +began to plan for the future. + +He took the first chance of wispering to Rolf, “Can't you send him away? +I'll be all right with you.” Rolf said nothing. + +“Say,” he continued, “say, young feller, what's yer name?” + +“Rolf Kittering.” + +“Say, Rolf, you wait a week or ten days, and the ice 'll be out; then +I'll be fit to travel. There ain't on'y a few carries between here an' +Lyons Falls.” + +After a long pause, due to Quonab's entry, he continued again: “Moose +River's good canoeing; ye can get me out in five days; me folks is at +Lyons Falls.” He did not say that his folks consisted of a wife and boy +that he neglected, but whom he counted on to nurse him now. + +Rolf was puzzled by the situation. + +“Say! I'll give ye all them furs if ye git me out.” Rolf gave him a +curious look--as much as to say, “Ye mean our furs.” + +Again the conversation was ended by the entry of Quonab. + +Rolf stepped out, taking the Indian with him. They had a long talk, +then, as Rolf reentered, the sick man began: + +“You stay by me, and git me out. I'll give ye my rifle”--then, after a +short silence--“an' I'll throw in all the traps an' the canoe.” + +“I'll stay by you,” said Rolf, “and in about two weeks we'll take you +down to Lyons Falls. I guess you can guide us.” + +“Ye can have all them pelts,” and again the trapper presented the spoils +he had stolen, “an' you bet it's your rifle when ye get me out.” + +So it was arranged. But it was necessary for Quonab to go back to their +own cabin. Now what should he do? Carry the new lot of fur there, or +bring the old lot here to dispose of all at Lyons Falls? + +Rolf had been thinking hard. He had seen the evil side of many men, +including Hoag. To go among Hoag's people with a lot of stuff that Hoag +might claim was running risks, so he said: + +“Quonab, you come back in not more than ten days. We'll take a few furs +to Lyons Falls so we can get supplies. Leave the rest of them in good +shape, so we can go out later to Warren's. We'll get a square deal +there, and we don't know what at Lyon's.” + +So they picked out the lynx, the beaver, and a dozen martens to leave, +and making the rest into a pack, Quonab shouldered them, and followed by +Skookum, trudged up the mountain and was lost to view in the woods. + +The ten days went by very slowly. Hoag was alternately querulous, +weeping, complaining, unpleasantly fawning, or trying to insure good +attention by presenting again and again the furs, the gun, and the +canoe. + +Rolf found it pleasant to get away from the cabin when the weather was +fine. One day, taking Hoag's gun, he travelled up the nearest stream for +a mile, and came on a big beaver pond. Round this he scouted and soon +discovered a drowned beaver, held in a trap which he recognized at once, +for it had the (” ' “') mark on the frame. Then he found an empty trap +with a beaver leg in it, and another, till six traps were found. Then +he gathered up the six and the beaver, and returned to the cabin to be +greeted with a string of complaints: + +“Ye didn't ought to leave me like this. I'm paying ye well enough. I +don't ax no favours,” etc. + +“See what I got,” and Rolf showed the beaver. “An' see what I found;” + then he showed the traps. “Queer, ain't it,” he went on, “we had six +traps just like them, and I marked the face just like these, and they +all disappeared, and there was a snowshoe trail pointing this way. You +haven't got any crooked neighbours about here, have you?” + +The trapper looked sulky and puzzled, and grumbled, “I bet it was Bill +Hawkins done it”; then relapsed into silence. + + + +Chapter 47. Hoag's Home-coming + + When it comes to personal feelin's better let yer friends + do the talkin' and jedgin'. A man can't handle his own + case any more than a delirious doctor kin give hisself the + right physic--Sayings of Si Sylvanne. + +The coming of springtime in the woods is one of the gentlest, sweetest +advents in the world. Sometimes there are heavy rains which fill all the +little rivers with an overflood that quickly eats away the ice and snow, +but usually the woodland streams open, slowly and gradually. Very rarely +is there a spate, an upheaval, and a cataclysmal sweep that bursts the +ice and ends its reign in an hour or two. That is the way of the large +rivers, whose ice is free and floating. The snow in the forest melts +slowly, and when the ice is attacked, it goes gradually, gently, without +uproar. The spring comes in the woods with swelling of buds and a +lengthening of drooping catkins, with honking of wild geese, and cawing +of crows coming up from the lower countries to divide with their larger +cousins, the ravens, the spoils of winter's killing. + +The small birds from the South appear with a few short notes of spring, +and the pert chicadees that have braved it all winter, now lead the +singing with their cheery “I told you so” notes, till robins and +blackbirds join in, and with their more ambitious singing make all the +lesser roundelays forgot. + +Once the winter had taken a backward step--spring found it easy to turn +retreat into panic and rout; and the ten days Quonab stayed away were +days of revolutionary change. For in them semi-winter gave place to +smiling spring, with all the snow-drifts gone, except perhaps in the +shadiest hollows of the woods. + +It was a bright morning, and a happy one for Rolf, when he heard the +Indian's short “Ho,” outside, and a minute later had Skookum dancing and +leaping about him. On Hoag the effect was quite different. He was well +enough to be up, to hobble about painfully on a stick; to be exceedingly +fault-finding, and to eat three hearty meals a day; but the moment the +Indian appeared, he withdrew into himself, and became silent and uneasy. +Before an hour passed, he again presented the furs, the gun, the canoe, +and the traps to Rolf, on condition that he should get him out to his +folks. + +All three were glad to set out that very day on the outward trip to +Lyons Falls. + +Down Little Moose River to Little Moose Lake and on to South Branch of +Moose, then by the Main Moose, was their way. The streams were flush; +there was plenty of water, and this fortunately reduced the number of +carries; for Hoag could not walk and would not hobble. They sweat and +laboured to carry him over every portage; but they covered the fifty +miles in three days, and on the evening of the third, arrived at the +little backwoods village of Lyons Falls. + +The change that took place in Hoag now was marked and unpleasant. He +gave a number of orders, where, the day before, he would have made +whining petitions. He told them to “land easy, and don't bump my canoe.” + He hailed the loungers about the mill with an effusiveness that they did +not respond to. Their cool, “Hello, Jack, are you back?” was little but +a passing recognition. One of them was persuaded to take Rolf's place in +carrying Hoag to his cabin. Yes, his folks were there, but they did not +seem overjoyed at his arrival. He whispered to the boy, who sullenly +went out to the river and returned with the rifle, Rolf's rifle now, the +latter supposed, and would have taken the bundle of furs had not Skookum +sprung on the robber and driven him away from the canoe. + +And now Hoag showed his true character. “Them's my furs and my canoe,” + he said to one of the mill hands, and turning to the two who had saved +him, he said: “An' you two dirty, cutthroat, redskin thieves, you can +get out of town as fast as ye know how, or I'll have ye jugged,” and all +the pent-up hate of his hateful nature frothed out in words insulting +and unprintable. + +“Talks like a white man,” said Quonab coldly. Rolf was speechless. +To toil so devotedly, and to have such filthy, humiliating words for +thanks! He wondered if even his Uncle Mike would have shown so vile a +spirit. + +Hoag gave free rein to his tongue, and found in his pal, Bill Hawkins, +one with ready ears to hear his tale of woe. The wretch began to feel +himself frightfully ill-used. So, fired at last by the evermore lurid +story of his wrongs, the “partner” brought the magistrate, so they could +swear out a warrant, arrest the two “outlaws,” and especially secure the +bundle of “Hoag's furs” in the canoe. + +Old Silas Sylvanne, the mill-owner and pioneer of the place, was also +its magistrate. He was tall, thin, blacklooking, a sort of Abe Lincoln +in type, physically, and in some sort, mentally. He heard the harrowing +tale of terrible crime, robbery, and torture, inflicted on poor harmless +Hoag by these two ghouls in human shape; he listened, at first shocked, +but little by little amused. + +“You don't get no warrant till I hear from the other side,” he said. +Roff and Quonab came at call. The old pioneer sized up the two, as they +stood, then, addressing Rolf, said: + +“Air you an Injun?” “No, sir.” “Air you half-breed?” “No, sir.” “Well, +let's hear about this business,” and he turned his piercing eyes full on +the lad's face. + +Rolf told the simple, straight story of their acquaintance with Hoag, +from the first day at Warren's to their arrival at the Falls. There is +never any doubt about the truth of a true story, if it be long enough, +and this true story, presented in its nakedness to the shrewd and kindly +old hunter, trader, mill-owner and magistrate, could have only one +effect. + +“Sonny,” he said, slowly and kindly, “I know that ye have told me the +truth. I believe every word of it. We all know that Hoag is the meanest +cuss and biggest liar on the river. He's a nuisance, and always was. +He only promised to give ye the canoe and the rifle, and since he don't +want to, we can't help it. About the trouble in the woods, you got two +witnesses to his one, and ye got the furs and the traps; it's just as +well ye left the other furs behind, or ye might have had to divide 'em; +so keep them and call the hull thing square. We'll find ye a canoe to +get out of this gay metropolis, and as to Hoag, ye needn't a-worry; his +travelling days is done.” + +A man with a bundle of high-class furs is a man of means in any frontier +town. The magistrate was trader, too, so they set about disposing of +their furs and buying the supplies they needed. + +The day was nearly done before their new canoe was gummed and ready with +the new supplies. When dealing, old Sylvanne had a mild, quiet manner, +and a peculiar way of making funny remarks that led some to imagine he +was “easy” in business; but it was usual to find at the end that he had +lost nothing by his manners, and rival traders shunned an encounter with +Long Sylvanne of the unruffled brow. + +When business was done--keen and complete--he said: “Now, I'm a goin' to +give each of ye a present,” and handed out two double-bladed jackknives, +new things in those days, wonderful things, precious treasures in their +eyes, sources of endless joy; and even had they known that one marten +skin would buy a quart of them, their pleasant surprise and childish joy +would not have been in any way tempered or alloyed. + +“Ye better eat with me, boys, an' start in the morning.” So they joined +the miller's long, continuous family, and shared his evening meal. +Afterward as they sat for three hours and smoked on the broad porch that +looked out on the river, old Sylvanne, who had evidently taken a +fancy to Rolf, regaled them with a long, rambling talk on “fellers and +things,” that was one of the most interesting Rolf had ever listened to. +At the time it was simply amusing; it was not till years after that the +lad realized by its effect on himself, its insight, and its hold on his +memory, that Si Sylvanne's talk was real wisdom. Parts of it would not +look well in print; but the rugged words, the uncouth Saxonism, the +obscene phrase, were the mere oaken bucket in which the pure and +precious waters were hauled to the surface. + +“Looked like he had ye pinched when that shyster got ye in to Lyons +Falls. Wall, there's two bad places for Jack Hoag; one is where they +don't know him at all, an' take him on his looks; an' t'other is where +they know him through and through for twenty years, like we hev. A smart +rogue kin put up a false front fer a year or maybe two, but given twenty +year to try him, for and bye, summer an' winter, an' I reckon a man's +make is pretty well showed up, without no dark corners left unexplored. + +“Not that I want to jedge him harsh, coz I don't know what kind o' +maggots is eatin' his innards to make him so ornery. I'm bound to +suppose he has 'em, or he wouldn't act so dum like it. So I says, go +slow and gentle before puttin' a black brand on any feller; as my mother +used to say, never say a bad thing till ye ask, 'Is it true, is it kind, +is it necessary?' An' I tell you, the older I git, the slower I jedge; +when I wuz your age, I wuz a steel trap on a hair trigger, an' cocksure. +I tell you, there ain't anythin' wiser nor a sixteen-year-old boy, 'cept +maybe a fifteen-year-old girl. + +“Ye'll genilly find, lad, jest when things looks about as black as they +kin look, that's the sign of luck a-comin' your way, pervidin' ye hold +steady, keep cool and kind; something happens every time to make it all +easy. There's always a way, an' the stout heart will find it. + +“Ye may be very sure o' this, boy, yer never licked till ye think ye air +an' if ye won't think it, ye can't be licked. It's just the same as +being sick. I seen a lot o' doctorin' in my day, and I'm forced to +believe there ain't any sick folks 'cept them that thinks they air sick. + +“The older I git, the more I'm bound to consider that most things is +inside, anyhow, and what's outside don't count for much. + +“So it stands to reason when ye play the game for what's inside, ye win +over all the outside players. When ye done kindness to Hoag, ye mightn't +a meant it, but ye was bracin' up the goodness in yerself, or bankin' it +up somewher' on the trail ahead, where it was needed. And he was +simply chawin' his own leg off, when he done ye dirt. I ain't much o' +a prattlin' Christian, but I reckon as a cold-blooded, business +proposition it pays to lend the neighbour a hand; not that I go much on +gratitude. It's scarcer'n snowballs in hell--which ain't the point; +but I take notice there ain't any man'll hate ye more'n the feller that +knows he's acted mean to ye. An' there ain't any feller more ready to +fight yer battles than the chap that by some dum accident has hed the +luck to help ye, even if he only done it to spite some one else--which +'minds me o' McCarthy's bull pup that saved the drowning kittens by +mistake, and ever after was a fightin' cat protector, whereby he lost +the chief joy o' his life, which had been cat-killin'. An' the way they +cured the cat o' eatin' squirrels was givin' her a litter o' squirrels +to raise. + +“I tell ye there's a lot o' common-sense an' kindness in the country, +only it's so dum slow to git around; while the cussedness and meanness +always acts like they felt the hell fire sizzlin' their hind-end +whiskers, an' knowed they had jest so many minutes to live an' make a +record. There's where a man's smart that fixes things so he kin hold out +a long time, fer the good stuff in men's minds is what lasts; and the +feller what can stay with it hez proved hisself by stayin'. How'd ye +happen to tie up with the Injun, Rolf?” + +“Do ye want me to tell it long or short?” was the reply. “Wall, short, +fer a start,” and Silas Sylvanne chuckled. + +So Rolf gave a very brief account of his early life. + +“Pretty good,” said the miller; “now let's hear it long.” + +And when he had finished, the miller said: “I've seen yer tried fer most +everything that goes to make a man, Rolf, an' I hev my own notion of the +results. You ain't goin' to live ferever in them hills. When ye've hed +yer fling an' want a change, let me know.” + +Early next day the two hunters paddled up the Moose River with a good +canoe, an outfit of groceries, and a small supply of ready cash. + +“Good-bye, lad, good-bye! Come back again and ye'll find we improve on +acquaintance; an' don't forget I'm buying fur,” was Si Sylvanne's last +word. And as they rounded the point, on the home way, Rolf turned in +the canoe, faced Quonab, and said: “Ye see there are some good white men +left;” but the Indian neither blinked, nor moved, nor made a sound. + + + +Chapter 48. Rolf's Lesson in Trailing + +The return journey was hard paddling against strong waters, but +otherwise uneventful. Once over any trail is enough to fix it in the +memory of a woodman. They made no mistakes and their loads were light, +so the portages were scarcely any loss of time, and in two days they +were back at Hoag's cabin. + +Of this they took possession. First, they gathered all things of value, +and that was little since the furs and bedding were gone, but there were +a few traps and some dishes. The stuff was made in two packs; now it +was an overland journey, so the canoe was hidden in a cedar thicket, +a quarter of a mile inland. The two were about to shoulder the packs, +Quonab was lighting his pipe for a start, when Rolf said: + +“Say, Quonab! that fellow we saw at the Falls claimed to be Hoag's +partner. He may come on here and make trouble if we don't head him off. +Let's burn her,” and he nodded toward the shanty. + +“Ugh!” was the reply. + +They gathered some dry brush and a lot of birch bark, piled them up +against the wall inside, and threw plenty of firewood on this. With +flint and steel Quonab made the vital spark, the birch bark sputtered, +the dry, resinous logs were easily set ablaze, and soon great volumes +of smoke rolled from the door, the window, and the chimney; and Skookum, +standing afar, barked pleasantly aloud. + +The hunters shouldered their packs and began the long, upward slope. In +an hour they had reached a high, rocky ridge. Here they stopped to rest, +and, far below them, marked with grim joy a twisted, leaning column of +thick black smoke. + +That night they camped in the woods and next day rejoiced to be back +again at their own cabin, their own lake, their home. + +Several times during the march they had seen fresh deer tracks, and now +that the need of meat was felt, Rolf proposed a deer hunt. + +Many deer die every winter; some are winter-killed; many are devoured +by beasts of prey, or killed by hunters; their numbers are at low ebb in +April, so that now one could not count on finding a deer by roaming at +random. It was a case for trailing. + +Any one can track a deer in the snow. It is not very hard to follow a +deer in soft ground, when there are no other deer about. But it is very +hard to take one deer trail and follow it over rocky ground and dead +leaves, never losing it or changing off, when there are hundreds of deer +tracks running in all directions. + +Rolf's eyes were better than Quonab's, but experience counts for as much +as eyes, and Quonab was leading. They picked out a big buck track that +was fresh--no good hunter kills a doe at this season. They knew it for a +buck, because of its size and the roundness of the toes. + +Before long, Rolf said: “See, Quonab, I want to learn this business; let +me do the trailing, and you set me right if I get off the line.” + +Within a hundred yards, Quonab gave a grunt and shook his head. Rolf +looked surprised, for he was on a good, fresh track. + +Quonab said but one word, “Doe.” + +Yes, a closer view showed the tracks to be a little narrower, a little +closer together, and a little sharper than those he began with. + +Back went Rolf to the last marks that he was sure of, and plainly read +where the buck had turned aside. For a time, things went along smoothly, +Quonab and Skookum following Rolf. The last was getting very familiar +with that stub hoof on the left foot. At length they came to the “fumet” + or “sign”; it was all in one pile. That meant the deer had stood, so was +unalarmed; and warm; that meant but a few minutes ahead. Now, they must +use every precaution for this was the crux of the hunt. Of this much +only they were sure--the deer was within range now, and to get him they +must see him before he saw them. + +Skookum was leashed. Rolf was allowed to get well ahead, and crawling +cautiously, a step at a time, he went, setting down his moccasined foot +only after he had tried and selected a place. Once or twice he threw +into the air a tuft of dry grass to make sure that the wind was right, +and by slow degrees he reached the edge of a little opening. + +Across this he peered long, without entering it. Then he made a sweep +with his hand and pointed, to let Quonab know the buck had gone across +and he himself must go around. But he lingered still and with his eyes +swept the near woods. Then, dim gray among the gray twigs, he saw a +slight movement, so slight it might have been made by the tail of a +tomtit. But it fixed his attention, and out of this gray haze he slowly +made out the outline of a deer's head, antlers, and neck. A hundred +yards away, but “take a chance when it comes” is hunter wisdom. Rolf +glanced at the sight, took steady aim, fired, and down went the buck +behind a log. Skookum whined and leaped high in his eagerness to see. +Rolf restrained his impatience to rush forward, at once reloaded, then +all three went quickly to the place. Before they were within fifty +yards, the deer leaped up and bounded off. At seventy-five yards, it +stood for a moment to gaze. Rolf fired again; again the buck fell down, +but jumped to its feet and bounded away. + +They went to the two places, but found no blood. Utterly puzzled, they +gave it up for the day, as already the shades of night were on the +woods, and in spite of Skookum's voluble offer to solve and settle +everything, they returned to the cabin. + +“What do you make of it, Quonab?' + +The Indian shook his head, then: “Maybe touched his head and stunned +him, first shot; second, wah! I not know.” + +“I know this,” said Rolf. “I touched him and I mean to get him in the +morning.” + +True to this resolve, he was there again at dawn, but examined the place +in vain for a sign of blood. The red rarely shows up much on leaves, +grass, or dust; but there are two kinds of places that the hunter can +rely on as telltales--stones and logs. Rolf followed the deer track, now +very dim, till at a bare place he found a speck of blood on a pebble. +Here the trail joined onto a deer path, with so many tracks that it was +hard to say which was the right one. But Rolf passed quickly along to a +log that crossed the runway, and on that log he found a drop of dried-up +blood that told him what he wished to know. + +Now he had a straight run of a quarter of a mile, and from time to time +he saw a peculiar scratching mark that puzzled him. Once he found a +speck of blood at one of these scratches but no other evidence that the +buck was touched. + +A wounded deer is pretty sure to work down hill, and Quonab, leaving +Skookum with Rolf, climbed a lookout that might show whither the deer +was heading. + +After another half mile, the deer path forked; there were buck trails on +both, and Rolf could not pick out the one he wanted. He went a few yards +along each, studying the many marks, but was unable to tell which was +that of the wounded buck. + +Now Skookum took a share in it. He had always been forbidden to run +deer and knew it was a contraband amusement, but he put his nose to that +branch of the trail that ran down hill, followed it for a few yards, +then looked at Rolf, as much as to say: “You poor nose-blind creature; +don't you know a fresh deer track when you smell it? Here it is; this is +where he went.” + +Rolf stared, then said, “I believe he means it”; and followed the lower +trail. Very soon he came to another scrape, and, just beyond it, found +the new, velvet-covered antler of a buck, raw and bloody, and splintered +at the base. + +From this on, the task was easier, as there were no other tracks, and +this was pointing steadily down hill. + +Soon Quonab came striding along. He had not seen the buck, but a couple +of jays and a raven were gathered in a thicket far down by the stream. +The hunters quit the trail and made for that place. As they drew near, +they found the track again, and again saw those curious scrapes. + +Every hunter knows that the bluejay dashing about a thicket means that +hidden there is game of some kind, probably deer. Very, very slowly and +silently they entered that copse. But nothing appeared until there was a +rush in the thickest part and up leaped the buck. This was too much for +Skookum. He shot forward like a wolf, fastened on one hind leg, and the +buck went crashing head over heels. Before it could rise, another shot +ended its troubles. And now a careful study shed the light desired. +Rolf's first shot had hit the antler near the base, breaking it, except +for the skin on one side, and had stunned the buck. The second shot had +broken a hind leg. The scratching places he had made were efforts to +regain the use of this limb, and at one of them the deer had fallen and +parted the rag of skin by which the antler hung. + +It was Rolf's first important trailing on the ground; it showed how +possible it was, and how quickly he was learning the hardest of all the +feats of woodcraft. + + + +Chapter 49. Rolf Gets Lost + +Every one who lives in the big woods gets lost at some time. Yes, even +Daniel Boone did sometimes go astray. And whether it is to end as a joke +or a horrible tragedy depends entirely on the way in which the person +takes it. This is, indeed, the grand test of a hunter and scout, the +trial of his knowledge, his muscle, and, above everything, his courage; +and, like all supreme trials, it comes without warning. + +The wonderful flocks of wild pigeons had arrived. For a few days in May +they were there in millions, swarming over the ground in long-reaching +hordes, walking along, pecking and feeding, the rearmost flying on +ahead, ever to the front. The food they sought so eagerly now was +chiefly the seeds of the slippery elm, tiny nuts showered down on wings +like broad-brimmed hats. And when the flock arose at some alarm, the +sound was like that of the sea beach in a storm. + +There seemed to be most pigeons in the low country southeast of the +lake, of course, because, being low, it had most elms. So Rolf took +his bow and arrows, crossed in the canoe, and confidently set about +gathering in a dozen or two for broilers. + +It is amazing how well the game seems to gauge the range of your weapon +and keep the exact safe distance. It is marvellous how many times you +may shoot an arrow into a flock of pigeons and never kill one. Rolf went +on and on, always in sight of the long, straggling flocks on the ground +or in the air, but rarely within range of them. Again and again he fired +a random shot into the distant mass, without success for two hours. +Finally a pigeon was touched and dropped, but it rose as he ran forward, +and flew ten yards, to drop once more. Again he rushed at it, but it +fluttered out of reach and so led him on and on for about half an hour's +breathless race, until at last he stopped, took deliberate aim, and +killed it with an arrow. + +Now a peculiar wailing and squealing from the woods far ahead attracted +him. He stalked and crawled for many minutes before he found out, as he +should have known, that it was caused by a mischievous bluejay. + +At length he came to a spring in a low hollow, and leaving his bow and +arrows on a dry log, he went down to get a drink. + +As he arose, he found himself face to face with a doe and a fat, +little yearling buck, only twenty yards away. They stared at him, quite +unalarmed, and, determining to add the yearling to his bag, Rolf went +back quietly to his bow and arrows. + +The deer were just out of range now, but inclined to take a curious +interest in the hunter. Once when he stood still for a long time, +they walked forward two or three steps; but whenever he advanced, they +trotted farther away. + +To kill a deer with an arrow is quite a feat of woodcraft, and Rolf was +keen to show his prowess; so he kept on with varying devices, and was +continually within sight of the success that did not actually arrive. + +Then the deer grew wilder and loped away, as he entered another valley +that was alive with pigeons. + +He was feeling hungry now, so he plucked the pigeon he had secured, made +a fire with the flint and steel he always carried, then roasted the bird +carefully on a stick, and having eaten it, felt ready for more travel. + +The day was cloudy, so he could not see the sun; but he knew it was +late, and he made for camp. + +The country he found himself in was entirely strange to him, and the +sun's whereabouts doubtful; but he knew the general line of travel and +strode along rapidly toward the place where he had left the canoe. + +After two hours' tramping, he was surprised at not seeing the lake +through the trees, and he added to his pace. + +Three hours passed and still no sign of the water. + +He began to think he had struck too far to the north; so corrected his +course and strode along with occasional spells of trotting. But another +hour wore away and no lake appeared. + +Then Rolf knew he was off his bearings. He climbed a tree and got a +partial view of the country. To the right was a small hill. He made for +that. The course led him through a hollow. In this he recognized two +huge basswood trees, that gave him a reassuring sense. A little farther +he came on a spring, strangely like the one he had left some hours +ago. As he stooped to drink, he saw deer tracks, then a human track. He +studied it. Assuredly it was his own track, though now it seemed on the +south side instead of the north. He stared at the dead gray sky, hoping +for sign of sun, but it gave no hint. He tramped off hastily toward the +hill that promised a lookout. He went faster and faster. In half an hour +the woods opened a little, then dipped. He hastened down, and at the +bottom found himself standing by the same old spring, though again it +had changed its north bearing. + +He was stunned by this succession of blows. He knew now he was lost in +the woods; had been tramping in a circle. + +The spring whirled around him; it seemed now north and now south. His +first impulse was to rush madly northwesterly, as he understood it. He +looked at all the trees for guidance. Most moss should be on the north +side. It would be so, if all trees were perfectly straight and evenly +exposed, but alas! none are so. All lean one way or another, and by +the moss he could prove any given side to be north. He looked for the +hemlock top twigs. Tradition says they always point easterly; but now +they differed among themselves as to which was east. + +Rolf got more and more worried. He was a brave boy, but grim fear came +into his mind as he realized that he was too far from camp to be heard; +the ground was too leafy for trailing him; without help he could not get +away from that awful spring. His head began to swim, when all at once he +remembered a bit of advice his guide had given him long ago: “Don't get +scared when you're lost. Hunger don't kill the lost man, and it ain't +cold that does it; it's being afraid. Don't be afraid, and everything +will come out all right.” + +So, instead of running, Rolf sat down to think it over. + +“Now,” said he, “I went due southeast all day from the canoe.” Then he +stopped; like a shock it came to him that he had not seen the sun all +day. Had he really gone southeast? It was a devastating thought, enough +to unhinge some men; but again Rolf said to himself “Never mind, now; +don't get scared, and it'll be all right. In the morning the sky will be +clear.” + +As he sat pondering, a red squirrel chippered and scolded from a near +tree; closer and closer the impudent creature came to sputter at the +intruder. + +Rolf drew his bow, and when the blunt arrow dropped to the ground, there +also dropped the red squirrel, turned into acceptable meat. Rolf put +this small game into his pocket, realizing that this was his supper. + +It would soon be dark now, so he prepared to spend the night. + +While yet he could see, he gathered a pile of dry wood into a sheltered +hollow. Then he made a wind-break and a bed of balsam boughs. Flint, +steel, tinder, and birch bark soon created a cheerful fire, and there is +no better comforter that the lone lost man can command. + +The squirrel roasted in its hide proved a passable supper, and Rolf +curled up to sleep. The night would have been pleasant and uneventful, +but that it turned chilly, and when the fire burnt low, the cold +awakened him, so he had a succession of naps and fire-buildings. + +Soon after dawn, he heard a tremendous roaring, and in a few minutes the +wood was filled again with pigeons. + +Rolf was living on the country now, so he sallied forth with his bow. +Luck was with him; at the first shot he downed a big, fat cock. At the +second he winged another, and as it scrambled through the brush, he +rushed headlong in pursuit. It fluttered away beyond reach, half-flying, +half-running, and Rolf, in reckless pursuit, went sliding and tumbling +down a bank to land at the bottom with a horrid jar. One leg was twisted +under him; he thought it was broken, for there was a fearful pain in +the lower part. But when he pulled himself together he found no broken +bones, indeed, but an ankle badly sprained. Now his situation was truly +grave, for he was crippled and incapable of travelling. + +He had secured the second bird, and crawling painfully and slowly back +to the fire, he could not but feel more and more despondent and gloomy +as the measure of his misfortune was realized. + +“There is only one thing that can shame a man, that is to be afraid.” + And again, “There's always a way out.” These were the sayings that came +ringing through his head to his heart; one was from Quonab, the other +from old Sylvanne. Yes, there's always a way, and the stout heart can +always find it. + +Rolf prepared and cooked the two birds, made a breakfast of one and put +the other in his pocket for lunch, not realizing at the time that his +lunch would be eaten on this same spot. More than once, as he sat, small +flocks of ducks flew over the trees due northward. At length the sky, +now clear, was ablaze with the rising sun, and when it came, it was in +Rolf's western sky. + +Now he comprehended the duck flight. They were really heading southeast +for their feeding grounds on the Indian Lake, and Rolf, had he been able +to tramp, could have followed, but his foot was growing worse. It was +badly swollen, and not likely to be of service for many a day--perhaps +weeks--and it took all of his fortitude not to lie down and weep over +this last misfortune. + +Again came the figure of that grim, kindly, strong old pioneer, with the +gray-blue eyes and his voice was saying: “Jest when things looks about +as black as they can look, if ye hold steady, keep cool and kind, +something sure happens to make it all easy. There's always a way and the +stout heart will find it.” + +What way was there for him? He would die of hunger and cold before +Quonab could find him, and again came the spectre of fear. If only he +could devise some way of letting his comrade know. He shouted once or +twice, in the faint hope that the still air might carry the sound, but +the silent wood was silent when he ceased. + +Then one of his talks with Quonab came to mind. He remembered how the +Indian, as a little papoose, had been lost for three days. Though, then +but ten years old, he had built a smoke fire that brought him help. +Yes, that was the Indian way; two smokes means “I am lost”; “double for +trouble.” + +Fired by this new hope, Rolf crawled a little apart from his camp +and built a bright fire, then smothered it with rotten wood and green +leaves. The column of smoke it sent up was densely white and towered +above the trees. + +Then painfully he hobbled and crawled to a place one hundred yards away, +and made another smoke. Now all he could do was wait. + +A fat pigeon, strayed from its dock, sat on a bough above his camp, in +a way to tempt Providence. Rolf drew a blunt arrow to the head and +speedily had the pigeon in hand for some future meal. + +As he prepared it, he noticed that its crop was crammed with the winged +seed of the slippery elm, so he put them all back again into the body +when it was cleaned, knowing well that they are a delicious food and in +this case would furnish a welcome variant to the bird itself. + +An hour crawled by. Rolf had to go out to the far fire, for it was +nearly dead. Instinctively he sought a stout stick to help him; then +remembered how Hoag had managed with one leg and two crutches. “Ho!” he +exclaimed. “That is the answer--this is the 'way.”' + +Now his attention was fixed on all the possible crutches. The trees +seemed full of them, but all at impossible heights. It was long before +he found one that he could cut with his knife. Certainly he was an hour +working at it; then he heard a sound that made his blood jump. + +From far away in the north it came, faint but reaching; + +“Ye-hoo-o.” + +Rolf dropped his knife and listened with the instinctively open mouth +that takes all pressure from the eardrums and makes them keen. It came +again: “Ye-hoo-o.” No mistake now, and Rolf sent the ringing answer +back: + +“Ye-hoo-o, ye-hoo-o.” + +In ten minutes there was a sharp “yap, yap,” and Skookum bounded out of +the woods to leap and bark around Rolf, as though he knew all about it; +while a few minutes later, came Quonab striding. + +“Ho, boy,” he said, with a quiet smile, and took Rolf's hand. “Ugh! +That was good,” and he nodded to the smoke fire. “I knew you were in +trouble.” + +“Yes,” and Rolf pointed to the swollen ankle. + +The Indian picked up the lad in his arms and carried him back to the +little camp. Then, from his light pack, he took bread and tea and made a +meal for both. And, as they ate, each heard the other's tale. + +“I was troubled when you did not come back last night, for you had no +food or blanket. I did not sleep. At dawn I went to the hill, where +I pray, and looked away southeast where you went in the canoe. I saw +nothing. Then I went to a higher hill, where I could see the northeast, +and even while I watched, I saw the two smokes, so I knew my son was +alive.” + +“You mean to tell me I am northeast of camp?” + +“About four miles. I did not come very quickly, because I had to go for +the canoe and travel here. + +“How do you mean by canoe?” said Rolf, in surprise. + +“You are only half a mile from Jesup River,” was the reply. “I soon bring +you home.” + +It was incredible at first, but easy of proof. With the hatchet they +made a couple of serviceable crutches and set out together. + +In twenty minutes they were afloat in the canoe; in an hour they +were safely home again. + +And Rolf pondered it not a little. At the very moment of blackest +despair, the way had opened, and it had been so simple, so natural, so +effectual. Surely, as long as he lived, he would remember it. “There is +always a way, and the stout heart will find it.” + + + +Chapter 50. Marketing the Fur + +If Rolf had been at home with his mother, she would have rubbed his +black and swollen ankle with goose grease. The medical man at Stamford +would have rubbed it with a carefully prepared and secret ointment. His +Indian friend sang a little crooning song and rubbed it with deer's fat. +All different, and all good, because each did something to reassure the +patient, to prove that big things were doing on his behalf, and each +helped the process of nature by frequent massage. + +Three times a day, Quonab rubbed that blackened ankle. The grease saved +the skin from injury, and in a week Rolf had thrown his crutches away. + +The month of May was nearly gone; June was at hand; that is, the spring +was over. + +In all ages, man has had the impulse, if not the habit, of spring +migration. Yielding to it he either migrated or made some radical change +in his life. Most of the Adirondack men who trapped in the winter sought +work on the log drives in spring; some who had families and a permanent +home set about planting potatoes and plying the fish nets. Rolf and +Quonab having neither way open, yet feeling the impulse, decided to go +out to Warren's with the fur. + +Quonab wanted tobacco--and a change. + +Rolf wanted a rifle, and to see the Van Trumpers--and a change. + +So June 1st saw them all aboard, with Quonab steering at the stern, and +Skookum bow-wowing at the bow, bound for the great centre of Warren's +settlement--one store and three houses, very wide apart. + +There was a noble flush of water in the streams, and, thanks to their +axe work in September, they passed down Jesup's River without a pause, +and camped on the Hudson that night, fully twenty-five miles from home. + +Long, stringing flocks of pigeons going north were the most numerous +forms of life. But a porcupine on the bank and a bear in the water +aroused Skookum to a pitch of frightful enthusiasm and vaulting ambition +that he was forced to restrain. + +On the evening of the third day they landed at Warren's and found a +hearty welcome from the trader, who left a group of loafers and came +forward: + +“Good day to ye, boy. My, how ye have growed.” + +So he had. Neither Rolf nor Quonab had remarked it, but now they +were much of the same height. “Wall, an' how'd ye make out with yer +hunt?--Ah, that's fine!” as each of them dropped a fur pack on the +counter. “Wall, this is fine; we must have a drink on the head of it,” + and the trader was somewhat nonplussed when both the trappers refused. +He was disappointed, too, for that refusal meant that they would get +much better prices for their fun But he concealed his chagrin and +rattled on: “I reckon I'll sell you the finest rifle in the country this +time,” and he knew by Rolf's face that there was business to do in that +line. + +Now came the listing of the fur, and naturally the bargaining was +between the shrewd Yankee boy and the trader. The Indian stood shyly +aside, but he did not fail to help with significant grunts and glances. + +“There, now,” said Warren, as the row of martens were laid out side +by side, “thirty martens--a leetle pale--worth three dollars and fifty +cents each, or, to be generous, we'll say four dollars.” Rolf glanced +at Quonab, who, unseen by the trader shook his head, held his right hand +out, open hollow up, then raised it with a jerk for two inches. + +Quickly Rolf caught the idea and said; “No, I don't reckon them pale. +I call them prime dark, every one of them.” Quonab spread his hand with +all five fingers pointed up, and Rolf continued, “They are worth five +dollars each, if they're worth a copper.” + +“Phew!” said the trader. “you forget fur is an awful risky thing; what +with mildew, moth, mice, and markets, we have a lot of risk. But I +want to please you, so let her go; five each. There's a fine black fox; +that's worth forty dollars.” + +“I should think it is,” said Rolf, as Quonab, by throwing to his right +an imaginary pinch of sand, made the sign “refuse.” + +They had talked over the value of that fox skin and Rolf said, “Why, I +know of a black fox that sold for two hundred dollars.” + +“Where?” + +“Oh, down at Stamford.” + +“Why, that's near New York.” + +“Of course; don't you send your fur to New York?” + +“Yes, but it costs a lot to get it there. + +“Now,” said Warren, “if you'll take it in trade, I'll meet you half-way +and call it one hundred dollars.” + +“Make it one hundred and twenty-five dollars and I'll take a rifle, +anyway.” + +“Phew!” whistled the trader. “Where do ye get such notions?” + +“Nothing wrong about the notion; old Si Sylvanne offered me pretty near +that, if I'd come out his way with the stuff.” + +This had the desired effect of showing that there were other traders. At +last the deal was closed. Besides the fox skin, they had three hundred +dollars' worth of fur. The exchange for the fox skin was enough to buy +all the groceries and dry goods they needed. But Rolf had something else +in mind. + +He had picked out some packages of candies, some calico prints and +certain bright ribbons, when the trader grasped the idea. “I see; yer +goin' visitin'. Who is it? Must be the Van Trumpers!” + +Rolf nodded and now he got some very intelligent guidance. He did not +buy Annette's dress, because part of her joy was to be the expedition +in person to pick it out; but he stocked up with some gorgeous pieces +of jewellery that were ten cents each, and ribbons whose colours were +as far beyond expression as were the joys they could create in the +backwoods female heart. + +Proudly clutching his new rlile, and carrying in his wallet a memorandum +of three hundred dollars for their joint credit, Rolf felt himself a +person of no little importance. As he was stepping out of the store, the +trader said, “Ye didn't run across Jack Hoag agin, did ye?” + +“Did we? Hmph!” and Rolf told briefly of their experience with that +creature. + +“Just like him, just like him; served him right; he was a dirty cuss. +But, say; don't you be led into taking your fur out Lyons Falls way. +They're a mean lot in there, and it stands to reason I can give you +better prices, being a hundred miles nearer New York.” + +And that lesson was not forgotten. The nearer New York the better the +price; seventy-five dollars at Lyons Falls; one hundred and twenty-five +dollars at Warren's; two hundred dollars at New York. Rolf pondered long +and the idea was one which grew and bore fruit. + + + +Chapter 51. Back at Van Trumper's + +“Nibowaka”--Quonab always said “Nibowaka” when he was impressed with +Rolf's astuteness--“What about the canoe and stuff?” + +“I think we better leave all here. Callan will lend us a canoe.” So they +shouldered the guns, Rolf clung to his, and tramped across the portage, +reaching Callan's in less than two hours. + +“Why, certainly you can have the canoe, but come in and eat first,” was +the kindly backwoods greeting. However, Rolf was keen to push on; they +launched the canoe at once and speedily were flashing their paddles on +the lake. + +The place looked sweetly familiar as they drew near. The crops in the +fields were fair; the crop of chickens at the barn was good; and the +crop of children about the door was excellent. + +“Mein Hemel! mein Hemel!” shouted fat old Hendrik, as they walked up +to the stable door. In a minute he was wringing their hands and smiling +into great red, white, and blue smiles. “Coom in, coom in, lad. Hi, +Marta, here be Rolf and Quonab. Mein Hemel! mein Hemel! what am I now so +happy.” + +“Where's Annette?” asked Rolf. + +“Ach, poor Annette, she fever have a little; not mooch, some,” and he +led over to a corner where on a low cot lay Annette, thin, pale, and +listless. + +She smiled faintly, in response, when Rolf stooped and kissed her. + +“Why, Annette, I came back to see you. I want to take you over to +Warren's store, so you can pick out that dress. See, I brought you my +first marten and I made this box for you; you must thank Skookum for the +quills on it.” + +“Poor chile; she bin sick all spring,” and Marta used a bunch of sedge +to drive away the flies and mosquitoes that, bass and treble, hovered +around the child. + +“What ails her?” asked Rolf anxiously. + +“Dot ve do not know,” was the reply. + +“Maybe there's some one here can tell,” and Roll glanced at the Indian. + +“Ach, sure! Have I you that not always told all-vays--eet is so. +All-vays, I want sumpin bad mooch. I prays de good Lord and all-vays, +all-vays, two times now, He it send by next boat. Ach, how I am spoil,” + and the good Dutchman's eyes filled with tears of thankfulness. + +Quonab knelt by the sufferer. He felt her hot, dry hand; he noticed her +short, quick breathing, her bright eyes, and the untouched bowl of mush +by her bed. + +“Swamp fever,” he said. “I bring good medicine.” He passed quietly out +into the woods. When he returned, he carried a bundle of snake-root +which he made into tea. + +Annette did not wish to touch it, but her mother persuaded her to take a +few sips from a cup held by Rolf. + +“Wah! this not good,” and Quonab glanced about the close, fly-infested +room. “I must make lodge.” He turned up the cover of the bedding; three +or four large, fiat brown things moved slowly out of the light. “Yes, I +make lodge.” + +It was night now, and all retired; the newcomers to the barn. They had +scarcely entered, when a screaming of poultry gave a familiar turn +to affairs. On running to the spot, it proved not a mink or coon, but +Skookum, up to his old tricks. On the appearance of his masters, he fled +with guilty haste, crouched beneath the post that he used to be, and +soon again was, chained to. + +In the morning Quonab set about his lodge, and Rolf said: “I've got to +go to Warren's for sugar.” The sugar was part truth and part blind. As +soon as he heard the name swamp fever, Rolf remembered that, in Redding, +Jesuit's bark (known later as quinine) was the sovereign remedy. He had +seen his mother administer it many times, and, so far as he knew, with +uniform success. Every frontier (or backwoods, it's the same) trader +carries a stock of medicine, and in two hours Rolf left Warren's counter +with twenty-five pounds of maple sugar and a bottle of quinine extract +in his pack. + +“You say she's bothered with the flies; why don't you take some of +this new stuff for a curtain?” and the trader held up a web of mosquito +gauze, the first Rolf had seen. That surely was a good idea, and ten +yards snipped off was a most interesting addition to his pack. The +amount was charged against him, and in two hours more he was back at Van +Trumper's. + +On the cool side of the house, Quonab had built a little lodge, using +a sheet for cover. On a low bed of pine boughs lay the child. Near the +door was a smouldering fire of cedar, whose aromatic fumes on the lazy +wind reached every cranny of the lodge. + +Sitting by the bed head, with a chicken wing to keep off the few +mosquitoes, was the Indian. The child's eyes were closed; she was +sleeping peacefully. Rolf crept gently forward, laid his hand on hers, +it was cool and moist. He went into the house with his purchases; the +mother greeted him with a happy look: Yes, Annette was a little better; +she had slept quietly ever since she was taken outdoors. The mother +could not understand. Why should the Indian want to have her surrounded +by pine boughs? why cedar-smoke? and why that queer song? Yes, there it +was again. Rolf went out to see and hear. Softly summing on a tin +pan, with a mudded stick, the Indian sang a song. The words which Rolf +learned in the after-time were: + +“Come, Kaluskap, drive the witches; Those who came to harm the dear +one.” + +Annette moved not, but softly breathed, as she slept a sweet, restful +slumber, the first for many days. + +“Vouldn't she be better in de house?” whispered the anxious mother. + +“No, let Quonab do his own way,” and Rolf wondered if any white man had +sat by little Wee-wees to brush away the flies from his last bed. + + + +Chapter 52. Annette's New Dress + + Deep feelin's ain't any count by themselves; work 'em off, + an' ye're somebody; weep 'em off an' you'd be more use with + a heart o' stone--Sayings of Si Sylvanne. + +“Quonab, I am going out to get her a partridge.” “Ugh, good.” + +So Rolf went off. For a moment he was inclined to grant Skookom's prayer +for leave to, follow, but another and better plan came in mind. Skookum +would most likely find a mother partridge, which none should kill in +June, and there was a simple way to find a cock; that was, listen. It +was now the evening calm, and before Rolf had gone half a mile he +heard the distant “Thump, thump, thump, thump--rrrrrrr” of a partridge, +drumming. He went quickly and cautiously toward the place, then waited +for the next drumming. It was slow in coming, so he knelt down by a +mossy, rotten log, and struck it with his hands to imitate the thump and +roll of the partridge. At once this challenge procured response. + +“Thump--thump--thump,, thump rrrrrrrrrrrr” it came, with martial swing +and fervour, and crawling nearer, Rolf spied the drummer, pompously +strutting up and down a log some forty yards away. He took steady aim, +not for the head--a strange gun, at forty yards--for the body. At the +crack, the bird fell dead, and in Rolf's heart there swelled up a little +gush of joy, which he believed was all for the sake of the invalid, but +which a finer analysis might have proved to be due quite as much to +pride in himself and his newly bought gun. + +Night was coming on when he got back, and he found the Dutch parents +in some excitement. “Dot Indian he gay no bring Annette indoors for de +night. How she sleep outdoors--like dog--like Bigger--like tramp? Yah +it is bad, ain't it?” and poor old Hendrik looked sadly upset and +mystified. + +“Hendrik, do you suppose God turns out worse air in the night than in +the day?” + +“Ach, dunno.” + +“Well, you see Quonab knows what he's doing.” + +“Yah.” + +“Well, let him do it. He or I'll sleep alongside the child she'll be +all right,” and Rolf thought of those horrible brown crawlers under the +bedding indoors. + +Rolf had much confidence in the Indian as a doctor, but he had more in +his own mother. He was determined to give Annette the quinine, yet he +hesitated to interfere. At length, he said: “It is cool enough now; I +will put these thin curtains round her bed.” + +“Ugh, good!” but the red man sat there while it was being done. + +“You need not stay now; I'll watch her, Quonab.” + +“Soon, give more medicine,” was the reply that Rolf did not want. So he +changed his ruse. “I wish you'd take that partridge and make soup of it. +I've had my hands in poison ivy, so I dare not touch it.” + +“Ach, dot shall I do. Dot kin myself do,” and the fat mother, laying the +recent baby in its cradle, made cumbrous haste to cook the bird. + +“Foiled again,” was Rolf's thought, but his Yankee wit was with him. He +laid one hand on the bowl of snake-root tea. It was lukewarm. “Do you +give it hot or cold, Quonab?” + +“Hot.” + +“I'll take it in and heat it.” He carried it off, thinking, “If Quonab +won't let me give the bark extract, I'll make him give it.” In the gloom +of the kitchen he had no difficulty in adding to the tea, quite unseen, +a quarter of the extract; when heated, he brought it again, and the +Indian himself gave the dose. + +As bedtime drew near, and she heard the red man say he would sleep +there, the little one said feebly, “Mother, mother,” then whispered in +her mother's ear, “I want Rolf.” + +Rolf spread his blanket by the cot and slept lightly. Once or twice he +rose to look at Annette. She was moving in her sleep, but did not awake. +He saw to it that the mosquito bar was in place, and slept till morning. + +There was no question that the child was better. The renewed interest in +food was the first good symptom, and the partridge served the end of its +creation. The snakeroot and the quinine did noble work, and thenceforth +her recovery was rapid. It was natural for her mother to wish the child +back indoors. It was a matter of course that she should go. It was +accepted as an unavoidable evil that they should always have those brown +crawlers about the bed. + +But Rolf felt differently. He knew what his mother would have thought +and done. It meant another visit to Warren's, and the remedy he brought +was a strong-smelling oil, called in those days “rock oil”--a crude +petroleum. When all cracks in the bed and near wall were treated with +this, it greatly mitigated, if it did not quite end, the nuisance of the +“plague that walks in the dark.” + +Meanwhile, Quonab had made good his welcome by working on the farm. But +when a week had flown, he showed signs of restlessness. “We have enough +money, Nibowaka, why do we stay?” + +Rolf was hauling a bucket of water from the well at the time. He stopped +with his burden on the well-sweep, gazed into the well, and said slowly: +“I don't know.” If the truth were set forth, it would be that this was +the only home circle he knew. It was the clan feeling that held him, and +soon it was clearly the same reason that was driving Quonab to roam. + +“I have heard,” said the Indian, “that my people still dwell in Canada, +beyond Rouse's Point. I would see them. I will come again in the Red +Moon (August).” + +So they hired a small canoe, and one bright morning, with Skookum in the +bow, Quonab paddled away on his voyage of 120 miles on the plead waters +of Lakes George and Champlain. His canoe became a dark spot on the +water; slowly it faded till only the flashing paddle was seen, and that +was lost around a headland. + +The next day Rolf was sorry he let Quonab go alone, for it was evident +that Van Trumper needed no help for a month yet; that is, he could not +afford to hire, and while it was well enough for Rolf to stay a few days +and work to equalize his board, the arrangement would not long continue +satisfactory to both. + +Yet there was one thing he must do before leaving, take Annette to pick +out her dress. She was well again now, and they set off one morning +in the canoe, she and Rolf. Neither father nor mother could leave the +house. They had their misgivings, but what could they do? She was +bright and happy, full of the childish joy that belongs to that age, and +engaged on such an important errand for the first time in her life. + +There was something more than childish joy showing in her face, an older +person would have seen that, but it was largely lost on Rolf. There was +a tendency to blush when she laughed, a disposition to tease her “big +brother,” to tyrannize over him in little things. + +“Now, you tell me some more about 'Robinson Crusoe,'” she began, as soon +as they were in the canoe, and Rolf resumed the ancient, inspiring tale +to have it listened to eagerly, but criticized from the standpoint of +a Lake George farm. “Where was his wife?” “How could he have a farm +without hens?” “Dried grapes must be nice, but I'd rather have pork than +goat,” etc. + +Rolf, of course, took the part of Robinson Crusoe, and it gave him a +little shock to hear Quonab called his man Friday. + +At the west side they were to invite Mrs. Callan to join their shopping +trip, but in any case they were to borrow a horse and buckboard. Neither +Mrs. Callan nor the buckboard was available, but they were welcome to +the horse. So Annette was made comfortable on a bundle of blankets, +and chattered incessantly while Rolf walked alongside with the grave +interest and superiority of a much older brother. So they crossed the +five-mile portage and came to Warren's store. Nervous and excited, +with sparkling eyes, Annette laid down her marten skin, received five +dollars, and set about the tremendous task of selecting her first dress +of really, truly calico print; and Rolf realized that the joy he had +found in his new rifle was a very small affair, compared with the +epoch-making, soul-filling, life-absorbing, unspeakable, and cataclysmal +bliss that a small girl can have in her first chance of unfettered +action in choice of a cotton print. + +“Beautiful?” How can mere words do justice to masses of yellow corn, +mixed recklessly with green and scarlet poppies on a bright blue ground. +No, you should have seen Annette's dress, or you cannot expect to get +the adequate thrill. And when they found that there was enough cash left +over to add a red cotton parasol to the glorious spoils, every one there +beamed in a sort of friendly joy, and the trader, carried away by the +emotions of the hour, contributed a set of buttons of shining brass. + +Warren kept a “meal house,” which phrase was a ruse that saved him from +a burdensome hospitality. Determined to do it all in the best style, +Rolf took Annette to the meal-house table. She was deeply awed by the +grandeur of a tablecloth and white plates, but every one was kind. + +Warren, talking to a stranger opposite, and evidently resuming a subject +they had discussed, said: + +“Yes, I'd like to send the hull lot down to Albany this week, if I could +get another man for the canoe.” + +Rolf was interested at once and said: “What wages are you offering?” + +“Twenty-five dollars and board.” + +“How will I do?” + +“Well,” said Warren, as though thinking it over: “I dunno but ye would. +Could ye go to-morrow?” + +“Yes, indeed, for one month.” + +“All right, it's a bargain.” + +And so Rolf took the plunge that influenced his whole life. + +But Annette whispered gleefully and excitedly, “May I have some of that, +and that?” pointing to every strange food she could see, and got them +all. + +After noon they set out on their return journey, Annette clutching her +prizes, and prattling incessantly, while Rolf walked alongside, thinking +deeply, replying to her chatter, but depressed by the thought of +good-bye tomorrow. He was aroused at length by a scraping sound overhead +and a sharp reprimand, “Rolf, you'll tear my new parasol, if you don't +lead the horse better.” + +By two o'clock they were at Callan's. Another hour and they had crossed +the lake, and Annette, shrill with joy, was displaying her treasures to +the wonder and envy of her kin. + +Making a dress was a simple matter in those and Marta promised: “Yah, +soom day ven I one have, shall I it sew.” Meanwhile, Annette was +quaffing deep, soul-satisfying draughts in the mere contempt of the +yellow, red, green, and blue glories in which was soon to appear in +public. And when the bed came, she fell asleep holding the dress-goods +stuff in arms, and with the red parasol spread above her head, tired +out, but inexpressibly happy. + + + +Chapter 53. Travelling to the Great City + + He's a bad failure that ain't king in some little corner. + --Sayings of Sylvanne Sylvanne + +The children were not astir when Rolf was off in the morning. He caught +a glimpse of Annette, still asleep under the red parasol, but the dress +goods and the brass buttons had fallen to the floor. He stepped into the +canoe. The dead calm of early morning was on the water, and the little +craft went skimming and wimpling across. In half an hour it was beached +at Callan's. In a little more than an hour's jog and stride he was at +Warren's, ready for work. As he marched in, strong and brisk, his colour +up, his blue eyes kindled with the thought of seeing Albany, the trader +could not help being struck by him, especially when he remembered each +of their meetings--meetings in which he discerned a keen, young mind of +good judgment, one that could decide quickly. + +Gazing at the lithe, red-checked lad, he said: “Say, Rolf, air ye an +Injun??” + +“No, sir.” + +“Air ye a half-breed?” + +“No, I'm a Yank; my name is Kittering; born and bred in Redding, +Connecticut.” + +“Well, I swan, ye look it. At fust I took ye fur an Injun; ye did look +dark (and Rolf laughed inside, as he thought of that butternut dye), but +I'm bound to say we're glad yer white.” + +“Here, Bill, this is Rolf, Rolf Kittering, he'll go with ye to +Albany.” Bill, a loose-jointed, middle-aged, flat-footed, large-handed, +semi-loafer, with keen gray eyes, looked up from a bundle he was roping. + +Then Warren took Rolf aside and explained: “I'm sending down all my fur +this trip. There's ten bales of sixty pounds each, pretty near my hull +fortune. I want it took straight to Vandam's, and, night or day, don't +leave it till ye git it there. He's close to the dock. I'm telling ye +this for two reasons: The river's swarming with pirates and sneaks. +They'd like nothing better than to get away with a five-hundred-dollar +bundle of fur; and, next, while Bill is A1 on the river and true as +steel, he's awful weak on the liquor; goes crazy, once it's in him. And +I notice you've always refused it here. So don't stop at Troy, an' +when ye get to Albany go straight past there to Vandam's. You'll have +a letter that'll explain, and he'll supply the goods yer to bring back. +He's a sort of a partner, and orders from him is same as from me. + +“I suppose I ought to go myself, but this is the time all the fur is +coming in here, an' I must be on hand to do the dickering, and there's +too much much to risk it any longer in the storehouse.” + +“Suppose,” said Rolf, “Bill wants to stop at Troy?” + +“He won't. He's all right, given he's sober. I've give him the letter.” + +“Couldn't you give me the letter, in case?” + +“Law, Bill'd get mad and quit.” + +“He'll never know.” + +“That's so; I will.” So when they paddled away, Bill had an important +letter of instructions ostentatiously tucked in his outer pocket. +Rolf, unknown to any one else but Warren, had a duplicate, wrapped in +waterproof, hidden in an inside pocket. + +Bill was A1 on the river; a kind and gentle old woodman, much stronger +than he looked. He knew the value of fur and the danger of wetting it, +so he took no chances in doubtful rapids. This meant many portages and +much hard labour. + +I wonder if the world realizes the hard labour of the portage or carry? +Let any man who seeks for light, take a fifty-pound sack of flour on his +shoulders and walk a quarter of a mile on level ground in cool weather. +Unless he is in training, he will find it a heavy burden long before +he is half-way. Suppose, instead of a flour sack, the burden has sharp +angles; the bearer is soon in torture. Suppose the weight carried be +double; then the strain is far more than doubled. Suppose, finally, +the road be not a quarter mile but a mile, and not on level but through +swamps, over rocks, logs, and roots, and the weather not cool, but +suffocating summer weather in the woods, with mosquitoes boring into +every exposed part, while both hands are occupied, steadying the burden +or holding on to branches for help up steep places--and then he will +have some idea of the horror of the portage; and there were many of +these, each one calling for six loaded and five light trips for each +canoe-man. What wonder that men will often take chances in some fierce +rapid, rather than to make a long carry through the fly-infested woods. + +It was weighty evidence of Bill's fidelity that again and again they +made a portage around rapids he had often run, because in the present +case he was in sacred trust of that much prized commodity--fur. + +Eighty miles they called it from Warren's to Albany, but there were many +halts and carries which meant long delay, and a whole week was covered +before Bill and Rolf had passed the settlements of Glens Falls, Fort +Edward, and Schuylerville, and guided their heavily laden canoe on the +tranquil river, past the little town of Troy. Loafers hailed them from +the bank, but Bill turned a deaf ear to all temptation; and they pushed +on happy in the thought that now their troubles were over; the last +rapid was past; the broad, smooth waters extended to their port. + + + +Chapter 54. Albany + +Only a man who in his youth has come at last in sight of some great city +he had dreamed of all his life and longed to see, can enter into Rolf's +feelings as they swept around the big bend, and Albany--Albany, hove in +view. Albany, the first chartered city of the United States; Albany, the +capital of all the Empire State; Albany, the thriving metropolis with +nearly six thousand living human souls; Albany with its State House, +beautiful and dignified, looking down the mighty Hudson highway that led +to the open sea. + +Rolf knew his Bible, and now he somewhat realized the feelings of St. +Paul on that historic day when his life-long dream came true, when +first he neared the Eternal City--when at last he glimpsed the towers of +imperial, splendid Rome. + +The long-strung docks were massed and webbed with ship rigging; the +water was livened with boats and canoes; the wooden warehouses back of +the docks were overtopped by wooden houses in tiers, until high above +them all the Capitol itself was the fitting climax. + +Rolf knew something of shipping, and amid all the massed boats his eyes +fell on a strange, square-looking craft with a huge water-wheel on each +side. Then, swinging into better view, he read her name, the Clermont, +and knew that this was the famous Fulton steamer, the first of the +steamboat age. + +But Bill was swamped by no such emotion. Albany, Hudson, Clermont, and +all, were familiar stories to him and he stolidly headed the canoe for +the dock he knew of old. + +Loafers roosting on the snubbing posts hailed him, at first with +raillery; but, coming nearer, he was recognized. “Hello, Bill; back +again? Glad to see you,” and there was superabundant help to land the +canoe. + +“Wall, wall, wall, so it's really you,” said the touter of a fur house, +in extremely friendly voice; “come in now and we'll hev a drink.” + +“No, sir-ree,” said Bill decisively, “I don't drink till business is +done.” + +“Wall, now, Bill, here's Van Roost's not ten steps away an' he hez +tapped the finest bar'l in years.” + +“No, I tell ye, I'm not drinking--now.” + +“Wall, all right, ye know yer own business. I thought maybe ye'd be glad +to see us.” + +“Well, ain't I?” + +“Hello, Bill,” and Bill's fat brother-in-law came up. “Thus does me good, +an' yer sister is spilin' to see ye. We'll hev one on this.” + +“No, Sam, I ain't drinkin'; I've got biz to tend.” + +“Wall, hev just one to clear yer head. Then settle yer business and come +back to us.” + +So Bill went to have one to clear his head. “I'll be back in two +minutes, Rolf,” but Rolf saw him no more for many days. + +“You better come along, cub,” called out a red-nosed member of the +group. But Rolf shook his head. + +“Here, I'll help you git them ashore,” volunteered an effusive stranger, +with one eye. + +“I don't want help.” + +“How are ye gain' to handle 'em alone?” + +“Well, there's one thing I'd be glad to have ye do; that is, go up there +and bring Peter Vandam.” + +“I'll watch yer stuff while you go.” + +“No, I can't leave.” “Then go to blazes; d'yte take me for yer errand +boy?” And Rolf was left alone. + +He was green at the business, but already he was realizing the power of +that word fur and the importance of the peltry trade. Fur was the one +valued product of the wilderness that only the hunter could bring. The +merchants of the world were as greedy for fur as for gold, and far more +so than for precious stones. + +It was a commodity so light that, even in those days, a hundred weight +of fur might range in value from one hundred to five thousand dollars, +so that a man with a pack of fine furs was a capitalist. The profits +of the business were good for trapper, very large for the trader, who +doubled his first gain by paying in trade; but they were huge for the +Albany middleman, and colossal for the New Yorker who shipped to London. + +With such allurements, it was small wonder that more country was +explored and opened for fur than for settlement or even for gold; and +there were more serious crimes and high-handed robberies over the right +to trade a few furs than over any other legitimate business. These +things were new to Rolf within the year, but he was learning the lesson, +and Warren's remarks about fur stuck in his memory with growing value. +Every incident since the trip began had given them new points. + +The morning passed without sign of Bill; so, when in the afternoon, some +bare-legged boys came along, Rolf said to them: “Do any of ye know where +Peter Vandam's house is?” + +“Yeh, that's it right there,” and they pointed to a large log house less +than a hundred yards away. + +“Do ye know him?” + +“Yeh, he's my paw,” said a sun-bleached freckle-face. + +“If you bring him here right away, I'll give you a dime. Tell him I'm +from Warren's with a cargo.” + +The dusty stampede that followed was like that of a mustang herd, for a +dime was a dime in those days. And very soon, a tall, ruddy man appeared +at the dock. He was a Dutchman in name only. At first sight he was much +like the other loafers, but was bigger, and had a more business-like air +when observed near at hand. + +“Are you from Warren's?” + +“Yes, sir.” + +“Alone?” + +“No, sir. I came with Bill Bymus. But he went off early this morning; I +haven't seen him since. I'm afraid he's in trouble.” + +“Where'd he go?” + +“In there with some friends.” + +“Ha, just like him; he's in trouble all right. He'll be no good for a +week. Last time he came near losing all our stuff. Now let's see what +ye've got.” + +“Are you Mr. Peter Vandam?” + +“Of course I am.” + +Still Rolf looked doubtful. There was a small group around, and Rolf +heard several voices, “Yes, this is Peter; ye needn't a-worry.” But Rolf +knew none of the speakers. His look of puzzlement at first annoyed then +tickled the Dutchman, who exploded into a hearty guffaw. + +“Wall, wall, you sure think ill of us. Here, now look at that,” and he +drew out a bundle of letters addressed to Master Peter Vandam. Then he +displayed a gold watch inscribed on the back “Peter Vandam”; next he +showed a fob seal with a scroll and an inscription, “Petrus Vandamus”; +then he turned to a youngster and said, “Run, there is the Reverend +Dr. Powellus, he may help us”; so the black-garbed, knee-breached, +shovel-hatted clergyman came and pompously said: “Yes, my young friend, +without doubt you may rest assured that this is our very estimable +parishioner, Master Peter Vandam; a man well accounted in the world of +trade.” + +“And now,” said Peter, “with the help of my birth-register and +marriage-certificate, which will be placed at your service with all +possible haste, I hope I may win your recognition.” The situation, at +first tense, had become more and more funny, and the bystanders laughed +aloud. Rolf rose to it, and smiling said slowly, “I am inclined to think +that you must be Master Peter Vandam, of Albany. If that's so, this +letter is for you, also this cargo.” And so the delivery was made. + +Bill Bymus has not delivered the other letter to this day. Presumably he +went to stay with his sister, but she saw little of him, for his stay at +Albany was, as usual, one long spree. It was clear that, but for +Rolf, there might have been serious loss of fur, and Vandam showed his +appreciation by taking the lad to his own home, where the story of +the difficult identification furnished ground for gusty laughter and +primitive jest on many an after day. + +The return cargo for Warren consisted of stores that the Vandam +warehouse had in stock, and some stuff that took a day or more to +collect in town. + +As Rolf was sorting and packing next day, a tall, thin, well-dressed +young man walked in with the air of one much at home. + +“Good morrow, Peter.” + +“Good day to ye, sir,” and they talked of crops and politics. + +Presently Vandam said, “Rolf, come over here.” + +He came and was presented to the tall man, who was indeed very thin, +and looked little better than an invalid. “This,” said Peter, “is Master +Henry van Cortlandt the son of his honour, the governor, and a very +learned barrister. He wants to go on a long hunting trip for his health. +I tell him that likely you are the man he needs.” + +This was so unexpected that Rolf turned red and gazed on the ground. Van +Cortlandt at once began to clear things by interjecting: “You see, I'm +not strong. I want to live outdoors for three months, where I can have +some hunting and be beyond reach of business. I'll pay you a hundred +dollars for the three months, to cover board and guidance. And providing +I'm well pleased and have good hunting, I'll give you fifty dollars more +when I get back to Albany.” + +“I'd like much to be your guide,” said Rolf, “but I have a partner. I +must find out if he's willing.” + +“Ye don't mean-that drunken Bill Bymus?” + +“No! my hunting partner; he's an Indian.” Then, after a pause, he added, +“You wouldn't go in fly-time, would you?” + +“No, I want to be in peace. But any time after the first of August.” + +“I am bound to help Van Trumper with his harvest; that will take most of +August.” + +As he talked, the young lawyer sized him up and said to himself, “This +is my man.” + +And before they parted it was agreed that Rolf should come to Albany +with Quonab as soon as he could return in August, to form the camping +party for the governor's son. + + + +Chapter 55. The Rescue of Bill + +Bales were ready and the canoe newly gummed three days after +their arrival, but still no sign of Bill. A messengers sent to the +brother-in-law's home reported that he had not been seen for two days. +In spite of the fact that Albany numbered nearly “six thousand living +human souls,” a brief search by the docksharps soon revealed the +sinner's retreat. His worst enemy would have pitied him; a red-eyed +wreck; a starved, sick and trembling weakling; conscience-stricken, +for the letter intrusted to him was lost; the cargo stolen--so his +comforters had said--and the raw country lad murdered and thrown out +into the river. What wonder that he should shun the light of day! And +when big Peter with Rolf in the living flesh, instead of the sheriff, +stood before him and told him to come out of that and get into the +canoe, he wept bitter tears of repentance and vowed that never, never, +never, as long as he lived would he ever again let liquor touch his +lips. A frame of mind which lasted in strength for nearly one day and a +half, and did not entirely varnish for three. + +They passed Troy without desiring to stop, and began their fight with +the river. It was harder than when coming, for their course was against +stream when paddling, up hill when portaging, the water was lower, the +cargo was heavier, and Bill not so able. Ten days it took them to cover +those eighty miles. But they came out safely, cargo and all, and landed +at Warren's alive and well on the twenty-first day since leaving. + +Bill had recovered his usual form. Gravely and with pride he marched +up to Warren and handed out a large letter which read outside, “Bill of +Lading,” and when opened, read: “The bearer of this, Bill Bymus, is no +good. Don't trust him to Albany any more. (Signed) Peter Vandam.” + +Warren's eyes twinkled, but he said nothing. He took + +Rolf aside and said, “Let's have it.” Rolf gave him the real letter +that, unknown to Bill, he had carried, and Warren learned some things +that he knew before. + +Rolf's contract was for a month; it had ten days to run, and those ten +days were put in weighing sugar, checking accounts, milking cows, and +watching the buying of fur. Warren didn't want him to see too much of +the fur business, but Rolf gathered quickly that these were the main +principles: Fill the seller with liquor, if possible; “fire water for +fur” was the idea; next, grade all fur as medium or second-class, when +cash was demanded, but be easy as long as payment was to be in trade. +That afforded many loopholes between weighing, grading, charging, and +shrinkage, and finally he noticed that Albany prices were 30 to 50 per +cent. higher than Warren prices. Yet Warren was reckoned a first-class +fellow, a good neighbour, and a member of the church. But it was +understood everywhere that fur, like horseflesh, was a business with +moral standards of its own. + +A few days before their contract was up, Warren said: “How'd ye like to +renew for a month?” + +“Can't; I promised to help Van Trumper with his harvest.” + +“What does he pay ye?” + +“Seventy-five cents a day and board.” + +“I'll make it a dollar.” + +“I've given my word,” said Rolf, in surprise. + +“Hey ye signed papers?” + +“They're not needed. The only use of signed papers is to show ye +have given your word,” said Rolf, quoting his mother, with rising +indignation. + +The trader sniffed a little contemptuously and said nothing. But he +realized the value of a lad who was a steady, intelligent worker, +wouldn't drink, and was absolutely bound by a promise; so, after awhile, +he said: “Wall, if Van don't want ye now, come back for a couple of +weeks.” + +Early in the morning Rolf gathered the trifles he had secured for the +little children and the book he had bought for Annette, a sweet story of +a perfect girl who died and went to heaven, the front embellished with a +thrilling wood-cut. Then he crossed the familiar five-mile portage at a +pace that in an hour brought him to the lake. + +The greeting at Van's was that of a brother come home. + +“Vell, Rolf, it's goood to see ye back. It's choost vat I vented. Hi, +Marta, I told it you, yah. I say, now I hope ze good Gott send Rolf. +Ach, how I am shpoil!” + +Yes, indeed. The hay was ready; the barley was changing. So Rolf took +up his life on the farm, doing work that a year before was beyond his +strength, for the spirit of the hills was on him, with its impulse of +growth, its joy in effort, its glory in strength. And all who saw the +longlegged, long-armed, flat-backed youth plying fork or axe or hoe, in +some sort ventured a guess: “He'll be a good 'un some day; the kind o' +chap to keep friendly with. + + + +Chapter 56. The Sick Ox + +The Thunder Moon passed quickly by; the hay was in; the barley partly +so. Day by day the whitefaced oxen toiled at the creaking yoke, as the +loads of hay and grain were jounced cumbrously over roots and stumps of +the virgin fields. Everything was promising well, when, as usual, there +came a thunderbolt out of the clear sky. Buck, the off ox, fell sick. + +Those who know little about cattle have written much of the meek and +patient ox. Those who know them well tell us that the ox is the “most +cussedest of all cussed” animals; a sneak, a bully, a coward, a thief, +a shirk, a schemer; and when he is not in mischief he is thinking +about it. The wickedest pack mule that ever bucked his burden is a +pinfeathered turtle-dove compared with an average ox. There are +some gentle oxen, but they are rare; most are treacherous, some are +dangerous, and these are best got rid of, as they mislead their yoke +mates and mislay their drivers. Van's two oxen, Buck and Bright, +manifested the usual variety and contrariety of disposition. They were +all right when well handled, and this Rolf could do better than Van, +for he was “raised on oxen,” and Van's over voluble, sputtering, +Dutch-English seemed ill comprehended of the massive yoke beasts. The +simpler whip-waving and fewer orders of the Yankee were so obviously +successful that Van had resigned the whip of authority and Rolf was +driver. + +Ordinarily, an ox driver walks on the hew (nigh or left) side, near +the head of his team, shouting “gee” (right), “haw” (left), “get up,” + “steady,” or “whoa” (stop), accompanying the order with a waving of the +whip. Foolish drivers lash the oxen on the haw side when they wish them +to gee--and vice versa; but it is notorious that all good drivers do +little lashing. Spare the lash or spoil your team. So it was not long +before Rolf could guide them from the top of the load, as they travelled +from shook to shook in the field. This voice of command saved his life, +or at least his limb, one morning, for he made a misstep that tumbled +him down between the oxen and the wagon. At once the team started, but +his ringing “Whoa!” brought them to a dead stop, and saved him; whereas, +had it been Van's “Whoa!” it would have set them off at a run, for every +shout from him meant a whip lick to follow. + +Thus Rolf won the respect, if not the love, of the huge beasts; more and +more they were his charge, and when, on that sad morning, in the last of +the barley, Van came in, “Ach, vot shall I do! Vot shall I do! Dot Buck +ox be nigh dead.” + +Alas! there he lay on the ground, his head sometimes raised, sometimes +stretched out flat, while the huge creature uttered short moans at +times. + +Only four years before, Rolf had seen that same thing at Redding. +The rolling eye, the working of the belly muscles, the straining and +moaning. “It's colic; have you any ginger?” + +“No, I hat only dot soft soap.” + +What soft soap had to do with ginger was not clear, and Rolf wondered if +it had some rare occult medical power that had escaped his mother. + +“Do you know where there's any slippery elm?” + +“Yah.” + +“Then bring a big boiling of the bark, while I get some peppermint.” + +The elm bark was boiled till it made a kettleful of brown slime. The +peppermint was dried above the stove till it could be powdered, +and mixed with the slippery slush. Some sulphur and some soda were +discovered and stirred in, on general principles, and they hastened to +the huge, helpless creature in the field. + +Poor Buck seemed worse than ever. He was flat on his side, with his +spine humped up, moaning and straining at intervals. But now relief was +in sight--so thought the men. With a tin dipper they tried to pour +some relief into the open mouth of the sufferer, who had so little +appreciation that he simply taxed his remaining strength to blow it out +in their faces. Several attempts ended the same way. Then the brute, in +what looked like temper, swung his muzzle and dashed the whole dipper +away. Next they tried the usual method, mixing it with a bran mash, +considered a delicacy in the bovine world, but Buck again took notice, +under pressure only, to dash it away and waste it all. + +It occurred to them they might force it down his throat if they could +raise his head. So they used a hand lever and a prop to elevate the +muzzle, and were about to try another inpour, when Buck leaped to his +feet, and behaving like one who has been shamming, made at full gallop +for the stable, nor stopped till safely in his stall, where at once he +dropped in all the evident agony of a new spasm. + +It is a common thing for oxen to sham sick, but this was the real thing, +and it seemed they were going to lose the ox, which meant also lose a +large part of the harvest. + +In the stable, now, they had a better chance; they tied him, then raised +his head with a lever till his snout was high above his shoulders. Now +it seemed easy to pour the medicine down that long, sloping passage. But +his mouth was tightly closed, any that entered his nostrils was blown +afar, and the suffering beast strained at the rope till he seemed likely +to strangle. + +Both men and ox were worn out with the struggle; the brute was no +better, but rather worse. + +“Wall,” said Rolf, “I've seen a good many ornery steers, but that's the +orneriest I ever did handle, an' I reckon we'll lose him if he don't get +that poison into him pretty soon.” + +Oxen never were studied as much as horses, for they were considered a +temporary shift, and every farmer looked forward to replacing them with +the latter. Oxen were enormously strong, and they could flourish without +grain when the grass was good; they never lost their head in a swamp +hole, and ploughed steadily among all kinds of roots and stumps; but +they were exasperatingly slow and eternally tricky. Bright, being the +trickier of the two, was made the nigh ox, to be more under control. +Ordinarily Rolf could manage Buck easily, but the present situation +seemed hopeless. In his memory he harked back to Redding days, and he +recalled old Eli Gooch, the ox expert, and wondered what he would have +done. Then, as he sat, he caught sight of the sick ox reaching out its +head and deftly licking up a few drops of bran mash that had fallen from +his yoke fellow's portion. A smile spread over Rolf's face. “Just like +you; you think nothing's good except it's stolen. All right; we'll see.” + He mixed a big dose of medicine, with bran, as before. Then he tied +Bright's head so that he could not reach the ground, and set the bucket +of mash half way between the two oxen. “Here ye are, Bright,” he said, +as a matter of form, and walked out of the stable; but, from a crack, he +watched. Buck saw a chance to steal Bright's bran; he looked around; Oh, +joy! his driver was away. He reached out cautiously; sniffed; his long +tongue shot forth for a first taste, when Rolf gave a shout and ran in. +“Hi, you old robber! Let that alone; that's for Bright.” + +The sick ox was very much in his own stall now, and stayed there for +some time after Rolf went to resume his place at the peephole. But +encouraged by a few minutes of silence, he again reached out, and +hastily gulped down a mouthful of the mixture before Rolf shouted and +rushed in armed with a switch to punish the thief. Poor Bright, by his +efforts to reach the tempting mash, was unwittingly playing the game, +for this was proof positive of its desirableness. + +After giving Buck a few cuts with the switch, Rolf retired, as before. +Again the sick ox waited for silence, and reaching out with greedy +haste, he gulped down the rest and emptied the bucket; seeing which, +Rolf ran in and gave the rogue a final trouncing for the sake of +consistency. + +Any one who knows what slippery elm, peppermint, soda, sulphur, colic, +and ox do when thoroughly interincorporated will not be surprised to +learn that in the morning the stable needed special treatment, and of +all the mixture the ox was the only ingredient left on the active list. +He was all right again, very thirsty, and not quite up to his usual +standard, but, as Van said, after a careful look, “Ah, tell you vot, dot +you vas a veil ox again, an' I t'ink I know not vot if you all tricky +vas like Bright.” + + + +Chapter 57. Rolf and Skookum at Albany + +The Red Moon (August) follows the Thunder Moon, and in the early part of +its second week Rolf and Van, hauling in the barley and discussing the +fitness of the oats, were startled by a most outrageous clatter among +the hens. Horrid murder evidently was stalking abroad, and, hastening +to the rescue, Rolf heard loud, angry barks; then a savage beast with +a defunct “cackle party” appeared, but dropped the victim to bark and +bound upon the “relief party” with ecstatic expressions of joy, in spite +of Rolf's--“Skookum! you little brute!” + +Yes! Quonab was back; that is, he was at the lake shore, and Skookum had +made haste to plunge into the joys and gayeties of this social centre, +without awaiting the formalities of greeting or even of dry-shod +landing. + +The next scene was--a big, high post, a long, strong chain and a small, +sad dog. + +“Ho, Quonab, you found your people? You had a good time?” + +“Ugh,” was the answer, the whole of it, and all the light Rolf got for +many a day on the old man's trip to the North. The prospect of going to +Albany for Van Cortlandt was much more attractive to Quonab than that of +the harvest field, so a compromise was agreed on. Callan's barley was in +the stock; if all three helped Callan for three days, Callan would owe +them for nine, and so it was arranged. + +Again “good-bye,” and Rolf, Quonab, and little dog Skookum went sailing +down the Schroon toward the junction, where they left a cache of their +supplies, and down the broadening Hudson toward Albany. + +Rolf had been over the road twice; Quonab never before, yet his nose for +water was so good and the sense of rapid and portage was so strong in +the red man, that many times he was the pilot. “This is the way, because +it must be”; “there it is deep because so narrow”; “that rapid is +dangerous, because there is such a well-beaten portage trail”; “that +we can run, because I see it,” or, “because there is no portage trail,” + etc. The eighty miles were covered in three sleeps, and in the mid-moon +days of the Red Moon they landed at the dock in front of Peter Vandam's. +If Quonab had any especial emotions for the occasion, he cloaked +them perfectly under a calm and copper-coloured exterior of absolute +immobility. + +Their Albany experiences included a meeting with the governor and an +encounter with a broad and burly river pirate, who, seeing a lone and +peaceable-looking red man, went out of his way to insult him; and when +Quonab's knife flashed out at last, it was only his recently established +relations with the governor's son that saved him from some very sad +results, for there were many loafers about. But burly Vandam appeared in +the nick of time to halt the small mob with the warning: “Don't you know +that's Mr. Van Cortlandt's guide?” With the governor and Vandam to back +him, Quonab soon had the mob on his side, and the dock loafer's own +friends pelted him with mud as he escaped. But not a little credit +is due to Skookum, for at the critical moment he had sprung on the +ruffian's bare and abundant leg with such toothsome effect that the +owner fell promptly backward and the knife thrust missed. It was quickly +over and Quonab replaced his knife, contemptuous of the whole crowd +before, during and after the incident. Not at the time, but days later, +he said of his foe: “He was a talker; he was full of fear.” + +With the backwoods only thirty miles away, and the unbroken wilderness +one hundred, it was hard to believe how little Henry van Cortlandt knew +of the woods and its life. He belonged to the ultra-fashionable set, and +it was rather their pose to affect ignorance of the savage world and +its ways. But he had plenty of common-sense to fan back on, and the +inspiring example of Washington, equally at home in the nation's +Parliament, the army intrenchment, the glittering ball room, or the +hunting lodge of the Indian, was a constant reminder that the perfect +man is a harmonious development of mind, morals, and physique. + +His training had been somewhat warped by the ultraclassic fashion of +the times, so he persisted in seeing in Quonab a sort of discoloured, +barbaric clansman of Alaric or a camp follower of Xenophon's host, +rather than an actual living, interesting, native American, exemplifying +in the highest degree the sinewy, alert woodman, and the saturated +mystic and pantheist of an age bygone and out of date, combined with +a middle-measure intelligence. And Rolf, tall, blue-eyed with brown, +curling hair, was made to pose as the youthful Achilles, rather than +as a type of America's best young manhood, cleaner, saner, and of far +higher ideals and traditions than ever were ascribed to Achilles by his +most blinded worshippers. It recalled the case of Wordsworth and Southey +living side by side in England; Southey, the famous, must needs seek in +ancient India for material to write his twelve-volume romance that no +one ever looks at; Wordsworth, the unknown, wrote of the things of his +own time, about his own door? and produced immortal verse. + +What should we think of Homer, had he sung his impressions of the +ancient Egyptians? or of Thackeray, had he novelized the life of the +Babylonians? It is an ancient blindness, with an ancient wall to bruise +one's head. It is only those who seek ointment of the consecrated clay +that gives back sight, who see the shining way at their feet, who beat +their face against no wall, who safely climb the heights. Henry van +Cortlandt was a man of rare parts, of every advantage, but still he had +been taught steadfastly to live in the past. His eyes were yet to be +opened. The living present was not his--but yet to be. + +The young lawyer had been assembling his outfit at Vandam's warehouse, +for, in spite of scoffing friends, he knew that Rolf was coming back to +him. + +When Rolf saw the pile of stuff that was gathered for that outfit, he +stared at it aghast, then looked at Vandam, and together they roared. +There was everything for light housekeeping and heavy doctoring, even +chairs, a wash stand, a mirror, a mortar, and a pestle. Six canoes could +scarcely have carried the lot. + +“'Tain't so much the young man as his mother,” explained Big Pete; “at +first I tried to make 'em understand, but it was no use; so I says, 'All +right, go ahead, as long as there's room in the warehouse.' I reckon +I'll set on the fence and have some fun seein' Rolf ontangle the +affair.” + +“Phew, pheeeww--ph-e-e-e-e-w,” was all Rolf could say in answer. But +at last, “Wall, there's always a way. I sized him up as pretty level +headed. We'll see.” + +There was a way and it was easy, for, in a secret session, Rolf, Pete, +and Van Cortlandt together sorted out the things needed. A small tent, +blankets, extra clothes, guns, ammunition, delicate food for three +months, a few medicines and toilet articles--a pretty good load for one +canoe, but a trifle compared with the mountain of stuff piled up on the +floor. + +“Now, Mr. van Cortlandt,” said Rolf, “will you explain to your mother +that we are going on with this so as to travel quickly, and will send +back for the rest as we need it?” + +A quiet chuckle was now heard from Big Pete. “Good! I wondered how he'd +settle it.” + +The governor and his lady saw them off; therefore, there was a crowd. +The mother never before had noted what a frail and dangerous thing a +canoe is. She cautioned her son never to venture out alone, and to be +sure that he rubbed his chest with the pectoral balm she had made from +such and such a famous receipt, the one that saved the life but not +the limb of old Governor Stuyvesant, and come right home if you catch a +cold; and wait at the first camp till the other things come, and (in a +whisper) keep away from that horrid red Indian with the knife, and never +fail to let every one know who you are, and write regularly, and don't +forget to take your calomel Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, alternating +with Peruvian bark Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and squills on +Sunday, except every other week, when he should devote Tuesdays, +Fridays, and Sundays to rhubarb and catnip tea, except in the full +moon, when the catnip was to be replaced with graveyard bergamot and the +squills with opodeldoc in which an iron nail had been left for a week. + +So Henry was embraced, Rolf was hand-shaken, Quonab was nodded at, +Skookum was wisely let alone, and the trim canoe swung from the dock. +Amid hearty cheers, farewells, and “God speed ye's” it breasted the +flood for the North. + +And on the dock, with kerchief to her eyes, stood the mother, weeping to +think that her boy was going far, far away from his home and friends in +dear, cultured, refined Albany, away, away, to that remote and barbarous +inaccessible region almost to the shore land of Lake Champlain. + + + +Chapter 58. Back to Indian Lake + +Young Van Cortlandt, six feet two in his socks and thirty-four inches +around the chest, was, as Rolf long afterward said, “awful good raw +material, but awful raw.” Two years out of college, half of which had +been spent at the law, had done little but launch him as a physical +weakling and a social star. But his mental make-up was more than good; +it was of large promise. He lacked neither courage nor sense, and the +course he now followed was surely the best for man-making. + +Rolf never realized how much a farmer-woodman-canoeman-hunter-camper had +to know, until now he met a man who did not know anything, nor dreamed +how many wrong ways there were of doing a job, till he saw his new +companion try it. + +There is no single simple thing that is a more complete measure of one's +woodcraft than the lighting of a fire. There are a dozen good ways and +a thousand wrong ones. A man who can light thirty fires on thirty +successive days with thirty matches or thirty sparks from flint and +steel is a graduated woodman, for the feat presupposes experience of +many years and the skill that belongs to a winner. + +When Quonab and Rolf came back from taking each a load over the first +little portage, they found Van Cortlandt getting ready for a fire with a +great, solid pile of small logs, most of them wet and green. He knew how +to use flint and steel, because that was the established household way +of the times. Since childhood had he lighted the candle at home by this +primitive means. When his pile of soggy logs was ready, he struck his +flint, caught a spark on the tinder that is always kept on hand, blew +it to a flame, thrust in between two of the wet logs, waited for all to +blaze up, and wondered why the tiny blaze went out at once, no matter +how often he tried. + +When the others came back, Van Cortlandt remarked: “It doesn't seem to +burn.” The Indian turned away in silent contempt. Rolf had hard work to +keep the forms of respect, until the thought came: “I suppose I looked +just as big a fool in his world at Albany.” + +“See,” said he, “green wood and wet wood won't do, but yonder is some +birch bark and there's a pine root.” He took his axe and cut a few +sticks from the root, then used his knife to make a sliver-fuzz of each; +one piece, so resinous that it would not whittle, he smashed with +the back of the axe into a lot of matchwood. With a handful of finely +shredded birch bark he was now quite ready. A crack of the flint a +blowing of the spark caught on the tinder from the box, a little flame +that at once was magnified by the birch bark, and in a minute the pine +splinters made a sputtering fire. Quonab did not even pay Van Cortlandt +the compliment of using one of his logs. He cut a growing poplar, built +a fireplace of the green logs around the blaze that Rolf had made, and +the meal was ready in a few minutes. + +Van Cortlandt was not a fool; merely it was all new to him. But his +attention was directed to fire-making now, and long before they reached +their cabin he had learned this, the first of the woodman's arts--he +could lay and light a fire. And when, weeks later, he not only made the +flint fire, but learned in emergency to make the rubbing stick spark, +his cup of joy was full. He felt he was learning. + +Determined to be in everything, now he paddled all day; at first with +vigour, then mechanically, at last feebly and painfully. Late in the +afternoon they made the first long portage; it was a quarter mile. Rolf +took a hundred pounds, Quonab half as much more, Van Cortlandt tottered +slowly behind with his pill-kit and his paddle. That night, on his ample +mattress, he slept the sleep of utter exhaustion. Next day he did little +and said nothing. It came on to rain; he raised a huge umbrella and +crouched under it till the storm was over. But the third day he began to +show signs of new life, and before they reached the Schroon's mouth, on +the fifth day, his young frame was already responding to the elixir of +the hills. + +It was very clear that they could not take half of the stuff that they +had cached at the Schroon's mouth, so that a new adjustment was needed +and still a cache to await another trip. + +That night as they sat by their sixth camp fire, Van Cortlandt pondered +over the recent days, and they seemed many since he had left home. +He felt much older and stronger. He felt not only less strange, but +positively intimate with the life, the river, the canoe, and his +comrades; and, pleased with his winnings, he laid his hand on Skookum, +slumbering near, only to arouse in response a savage growl, as that +important animal arose and moved to the other side of the fire. Never +did small dog give tall man a more deliberate snub. “You can't do that +with Skookum; you must wait till he's ready,” said Rolf. + +The journey up the Hudson with its “mean” waters and its “carries” was +much as before. Then they came to the eagle's nest and the easy waters +of Jesup's River, and without important incident they landed at the +cabin. The feeling of “home again” spread over the camp and every one +was gay. + + + +Chapter 59. Van Cortlandt's Drugs + +“AIN'T ye feelin' all right?” said Rolf, one bright, calomel morning, as +he saw Van Cortlandt preparing his daily physic. + +“Why, yes; I'm feeling fine; I'm better every day,” was the jovial +reply. + +“Course I don't know, but my mother used to say: 'Med'cine's the stuff +makes a sick man well, an' a well man sick.”' + +“My mother and your mother would have fought at sight, as you may judge. +B-u-t,” he added with reflective slowness, and a merry twinkle in his +eye, “if things were to be judged by their product, I am afraid your +mother would win easily,” and he laid his long, thin, scrawny hand +beside the broad, strong hand of the growing youth. + +“Old Sylvanne wasn't far astray when he said: 'There aren't any sick, +'cept them as thinks they are,”' said Rolf. “I suppose I ought to begin +to taper off,” was the reply. But the tapering was very sudden. Before a +week went by, it seemed desirable to go back for the stuff left in cache +on the Schroon, where, of course, it was subject to several risks. There +seemed no object in taking Van Cortlandt back, but they could not +well leave him alone. He went. He had kept time with fair +regularity--calomel, rhubarb; calomel, rhubarb; calomel, rhubarb, +squills--but Rolf's remarks had sunk into his intelligence, as a +red-hot shot will sink through shingles, letting in light and creating +revolution. + +This was a rhubarb morning. He drank his potion, then, carefully +stoppering the bottle, he placed it with its companions in a box and +stowed that near the middle of the canoe. “I'll be glad when it's +finished,” he said reflectively; “I don't believe I need it now. I wish +sometimes I could run short of it all.” + +That was what Rolf had been hoping for. Without such a remark, he would +not have dared do as he did. He threw the tent cover over the canoe +amidships, causing the unstable craft to cant: “That won't do,” he +remarked, and took out several articles, including the medicine chest, +put them ashore under the bushes, and, when he replaced them, contrived +that the medicine should be forgotten. + +Next morning Van Cortlandt, rising to prepare his calomel, got a shock +to find it not. + +“It strikes me,” says Rolf, “the last time I saw that, it was on the +bank when we trimmed the canoe.” Yes, there could be no doubt of it. +Van must live his life in utter druglessness for a time. It gave him +somewhat of a scare, much like that a young swimmer gets when he finds +he has drifted away from his floats; and, like that same beginner, it +braced him to help himself. So Van found that he could swim without +corks. + +They made a rapid journey down, and in a week they were back with the +load. + +There was the potion chest where they had left it. Van Cortlandt +picked it up with a sheepish smile, and they sat down for evening meal. +Presently Rolf said: “I mind once I seen three little hawks in a nest +together. The mother was teaching them to fly. Two of them started off +all right, and pretty soon were scooting among the treetops. The other +was scared. He says: 'No, mother, I never did fly, and I'm scared I'd +get killed if I tried.' At last the mother got mad and shoved him over. +As soon as he felt he was gone, he spread out his wings to save himself. +The wings were all right enough, and long before he struck the ground, +he was flying.” + + + +Chapter 60. Van Cortlandt's Adventure + +The coming of Van had compelled the trappers to build a new and much +larger cabin. When they were planning it, the lawyer said: “If I were, +you, I'd make it twenty by thirty, with a big stone fireplace.” + +“Why?” + +“I might want to come back some day and bring a friend.” + +Rolf looked at him keenly. Here was an important possibility, but it +was too difficult to handle such large logs without a team; so the new +cabin was made fifteen by twenty, and the twenty-foot logs were very +slim indeed. Van Cortlandt took much trouble to fix it up inside with +two white birch bedsteads, balsam beds, and basswood mats on the floor. + +After the first depression, he had recovered quickly since abandoning +his apothecary diet, and now he was more and more in their life, one of +themselves. But Quonab never liked him. The incident of the fire-making +was one of many which reduced him far below zero in the red man's +esteem. When he succeeded with the rubbing-stick fire, he rose a few +points; since then he had fallen a little, nearly every day, and now an +incident took place which reduced him even below his original low level. + +In spite of his admirable perseverance, Van Cortlandt failed in his +attempts to get a deer. This was depressing and unfortunate because of +the Indian's evident contempt, shown, not in any act, but rather in his +avoiding Van and never noticing him; while Van, on his part, discovered +that, but for this, that, and the other negligence on Quonab's part, he +himself might have done thus and so. + +To relieve the situation, Rolf said privately to the Indian, “Can't we +find some way of giving him a deer?” + +“Humph,” was the voluble reply. + +“I've heard of that jack-light trick. Can ye work it?” + +“Ugh!” + +So it was arranged. + +Quonab prepared a box which he filled with sand. On three sides of it +he put a screen of bark, eighteen inches high, and in the middle he +made a good torch of pine knots with a finely frizzled lighter of birch +bark. Ordinarily this is placed on the bow of the canoe, and, at the +right moment, is lighted by the sportsman. But Quonab distrusted Van as +a lighter, so placed this ancient search-light on the after thwart in +front of himself and pointing forward, but quartering. + +The scheme is to go along the lake shore about dark, as the deer come +to the water to drink or eat lily pads. As soon as a deer is located by +the sound, the canoe is silently brought to the place, the torch is +lighted, the deer stops to gaze at this strange sunrise; its body is +not usually visible in the dim light, but the eyes reflect the glare +like two lamps; and now the gunner, with a volley of buckshot, plays +his part. It is the easiest and most unsportsmanlike of all methods. It +has long been declared illegal; and was especially bad, because it +victimized chiefly the does and fawns. + +But now it seemed the proper way to “save Van Cortlandt's face.” + +So forth they went; Van armed with his double-barrelled shotgun and +carrying in his belt a huge and ornamental hunting knife, the badge of +woodcraft or of idiocy, according as yon took Van's view or Quonab's. +Rolf stayed in camp. + +At dusk they set out, a slight easterly breeze compelling them to take +the eastern shore, for the deer must not smell them. As they silently +crossed the lake, the guide's quick eye caught sight of a long wimple +on the surface, across the tiny ripples of the breeze--surely the wake +of some large animal, most likely a deer. Good luck. Putting on all +speed, he sent the canoe flying after it, and in three or four minutes +they sighted a large, dark creature moving fast to escape, but it was +low on the water, and had no horns. They could not make out what it +was. Van sat tensely gazing, with gun in hand, but the canoe overran +the swimmer; it disappeared under the prow, and a moment later there +scrambled over the gunwale a huge black fisher. + +“Knife,” cried Quonab, in mortal fear that Van would shoot and blow a +hole throught the canoe. + +The fisher went straight at the lawyer hissing and snarling with voice +like a bear. + +Van grasped his knife, and then and there began A most extraordinary +fight; holding his assailant off as best he could, he stabbed again and +again with that long blade. But the fisher seemed cased in iron. The +knife glanced off or was solidly stopped again and again, while the +fierce, active creature, squirming, struggling, clawing, and tearing +had wounded the lawyer in a dozen places. Jab, jab went the knife in +vain. The fisher seemed to gain in strength and fury. It fastened on +Van's leg just below the knee, and grow/ed and tore like a bulldog. Van +seized its throat in both hands and choked with all his strength. The +brute at length let go and sprang back to attack again, when Quonab saw +his chance and felled it with a blow of the paddle across the nose. It +tumbled forward; Van lunged to avoid what seemed a new attack, and in a +moment the canoe upset, and all were swimming for their lives. + +As luck would have it, they had drifted to the west side and the water +was barely six feet deep. So Quonab swam ashore holding onto a paddle, +and hauling the canoe, while Van waded ashore, hauling the dead fisher +by the tail. + +Quonab seized a drift pole and stuck it in the mud as near the place as +possible, so they could come again in daylight to get the guns; then +silently paddled back to camp. + +Next day, thanks to the pole, they found the place and recovered first +Van's gun, second, that mighty hunting knife; and learned to the +amazement and disgust of all that it had not been out of its sheath: +during all that stabbing and slashing, the keen edge was hidden and the +knife was wearing its thick, round scabbard of leather and studs of +brass. + + + +Chapter 61. Rolf Learns Something from Van + + A man can't handle his own case, any more than a delirious + doctor kin give himself the right physic.--Saying of Si + Sylvanne. + +However superior Rolf might feel in the canoe or the woods, there was +one place where Van Cortlandt took the lead, and that was in the long +talks they had by the campfire or in Van's own shanty which Quonab +rarely entered. + +The most interesting subjects treated in these were ancient Greece and +modern Albany. Van Cortlandt was a good Greek scholar, and, finding an +intelligent listener, he told the stirring tales of royal Ilion, Athens, +and Pergamos, with the loving enthusiasm of one whom the teachers found +it easy to instruct in classic lore. And when he recited or intoned +the rolling Greek heroics of the siege of Troy, Rolf listened with an +interest that was strange, considering that he knew not a word of it. +But he said, “It sounded like real talk, and the tramp of men that were +all astir with something big a-doing.” + +Albany and politics, too, were vital strains, and life at the Government +House, with the struggling rings and cabals, social and political. These +were extraordinarily funny and whimsical to Rolf. No doubt because Van +Cortlandt presented them that way. And he more than once wondered how +rational humans could waste their time in such tomfoolery and childish +things as all conventionalities seemed to be. Van Cortlandt smiled at +his remarks, but made no answer for long. + +One day, the first after the completion of Van Cortlandt's cabin, as the +two approached, the owner opened the door and stood aside for Rolf to +enter. + +“Go ahead,” said Rolf. + +“After you,” was the polite reply. + +“Oh, go on,” rejoined the lad, in mixed amusement and impatience. + +Van Cortlandt touched his hat and went in. + +Inside, Rolf turned squarely and said: “The other day you said there was +a reason for all kinds o' social tricks; now will you tell me what the +dickens is the why of all these funny-do's? It 'pears to me a free-born +American didn't ought to take off his hat to any one but God.” + +Van Cortlandt chuckled softly and said: “You may be very sure that +everything that is done in the way of social usage is the result +of common-sense, with the exception of one or two things that have +continued after the reason for them has passed, like the buttons you +have behind on your coat; they were put there originally to button the +tails out of the way of your sword. Sword wearing and using have passed +away, but still you see the buttons. + +“As to taking off your hat to no man: it depends entirely on what you +mean by it; and, being a social custom, you must accept its social +meaning. + +“In the days of knight errantry, every one meeting a stranger had to +suppose him an enemy; ten to one he was. And the sign and proof of +friendly intention was raising the right hand without a weapon in it. +The hand was raised high, to be seen as far as they could shoot with +a bow, and a further proof was added when they raised the vizor and +exposed the face. The danger of the highway continued long after knights +ceased to wear armour; so, with the same meaning, the same gesture was +used, but with a lifting of the hat. If a man did not do it, he was +either showing contempt, or hostility for the other, or proving himself +an ignorant brute. So, in all civilized countries, lifting the hat is a +sign of mutual confidence and respect.” + +“Well! that makes it all look different. But why should you touch your +hat when you went ahead of me just now?” + +“Because this is my house; you are my guest. I am supposed to serve you +in reasonable ways and give you precedence. Had I let you open my door +for me, it would have been putting you in the place of my servant; to +balance that, I give you the sign of equality and respect.” + +“H'm,” said Rolf, “'it just shows,' as old Sylvanne sez, 'this yer +steel-trap, hair-trigger, cocksure jedgment don't do. An' the more a +man learns, the less sure he gits. An' things as hez lasted a long time +ain't liable to be on a rotten foundation.'” + + + +Chapter 62. The Charm of Song + +With a regular tum ta tum ta, came a weird sound from the sunrise rock +one morning, as Van slipped out of his cabin. + + “Ag-aj-way-o-say + Pem-o-say + Gezhik-om era-bid ah-keen + Ena-bid ah-keen” + +“What's he doing, Rolf?” + +“That's his sunrise prayer,” was the answer. + +“Do you know what it means?” + +“Yes, it ain't much; jest 'Oh, thou that walkest in the sky in the +morning, I greet thee.”' + +“Why, I didn't know Indians had such performances; that's exactly like +the priests of Osiris. Did any one teach him? I mean any white folk.” + +“No, it's always been the Indian way. They have a song or a prayer +for most every big event, sunrise, sunset, moonrise, good hunting, and +another for when they're sick, or when they're going on a journey, or +when their heart is bad.” + +“You astonish me. I had no idea they were so human. It carries me back +to the temple of Delphi. It is worthy of Cassandra of Ilion. I supposed +all Indians were just savage Indians that hunted till their bellies were +full, and slept till they were empty again.” + +“H'm,” rejoined Rolf, with a gentle laugh. “I see you also have been +doing some 'hair-trigger, steel-trap, cocksure jedgin'.'” + +“I wonder if he'd like to hear some of my songs?” + +“It's worth trying; anyway, I would,” said Rolf. + +That night, by the fire, Van sang the “Gay Cavalier,” “The Hunting of +John Peel,” and “Bonnie Dundee.” He had a fine baritone voice. He was +most acceptable in the musical circles of Albany. Rolf was delighted, +Skookum moaned sympathetically, and Quonab sat nor moved till the music +was over. He said nothing, but Rolf felt that it was a point gained, +and, trying to follow it up, said: + +“Here's your drum, Quonab; won't you sing 'The Song of the Wabanaki?'” + But it was not well timed, and the Indian shook his head. + +“Say, Van,” said Rolf, (Van Cortlandt had suggested this abbreviation) +“you'll never stand right with Quonab till you kill a deer.” + +“I've done some trying.” + +“Well, now, we'll go out to-morrow evening and try once more. What do +you think of the weather, Quonab?” + +“Storm begin noon and last three days,” was the brief answer, as the red +man walked away. + +“That settles it,” said Rolf; “we wait.” + +Van was surprised, and all the more so when in an hour the sky grew +black and heavy rain set in, with squalls. + +“How in the name of Belshazzar's weather bugler does he tell?” + +“I guess you better not ask him, if you want to know. I'll find out and +tell you later.” + +Rolf learned, not easily or at single talk: + +“Yesterday the chipmunks worked hard; to-day there are none to be seen. + +“Yesterday the loons were wailing; now they are still, and no small +birds are about. + +“Yesterday it was a yellow sunrise; to-day a rosy dawn. + +“Last night the moon changed and had a thick little ring. + +“It has not rained for ten days, and this is the third day of easterly +winds. + +“There was no dew last night. I saw Tongue Mountain at daybreak; my +tom-tom will not sing. + +“The smoke went three ways at dawn, and Skookum's nose was hot.” + +So they rested, not knowing, but forced to believe, and it was not till +the third day that the sky broke; the west wind began to pay back its +borrowings from the east, and the saying was proved that “three days' +rain will empty any sky.” + +That evening, after their meal, Rolf and Van launched the canoe and +paddled down the lake. A mile from camp they landed, for this was a +favourite deer run. Very soon Rolf pointed to the ground. He had found a +perfectly fresh track, but Van seemed not to comprehend. They went along +it, Rolf softly and silently, Van with his long feet and legs making a +dangerous amount of clatter. Rolf turned and whispered, “That won't +do. You must not stand on dry sticks.” Van endeavoured to move more +cautiously and thought he was doing well, but Rolf found it very trying +to his patience and began to understand how Quonab had felt about +himself a year ago. “See,” said Rolf, “lift your legs so; don't turn +your feet out that way. Look at the place before you put it down again; +feel with your toe to make sure there is no dead stick, then wriggle it +down to the solid ground. Of course, you'd do better in moccasins. Never +brush past any branches; lift them aside and don't let them scratch; +ease them back to the place; never try to bend a dry branch; go around +it,” etc. Van had not thought of these things, but now he grasped them +quickly, and they made a wonderful improvement in his way of going. + +They came again to the water's edge; across a little bay Rolf sighted at +once the form of a buck, perfectly still, gazing their way, wondering, +no doubt, what made those noises. + +“Here's your chance,” he whispered. + +“Where?” was the eager query. + +“There; see that gray and white thing?” + +“I can't see him.” + +For five minutes Rolf tried in vain to make his friend see that +statuesque form; for five minutes it never moved. Then, sensing danger, +the buck gave a bound and was lost to view. + +It was disheartening. Rolf sat down, nearly disgusted; then one of +Sylvanne's remarks came to him: “It don't prove any one a fool, coz he +can't play your game.” + +Presently Rolf said, “Van, hev ye a book with ye?” + +“Yes, I have my Virgil.” + +“Read me the first page.” + +Van read it, holding the book six inches from his nose. + +“Let's see ye read this page there,” and Rolf held it up four feet away. + +“I can't; it's nothing but a dim white spot.” + +“Well, can ye see that loon out there?” + +“You mean that long, dark thing in the bay?” + +“No, that's a pine log close to,” said Rolf, with a laugh, “away out +half a mile.” + +“No, I can't see anything but shimmers.” + +“I thought so. It's no use your trying to shoot deer till ye get a pair +of specs to fit yer eyes. You have brains enough, but you haven't got +the eyesight of a hunter. You stay here till I go see if I have any +luck.” + +Rolf melted into the woods. In twenty minutes Van heard a shot and very +soon Rolf reappeared, carrying a two-year-old buck, and they returned +to their camp by nightfall. Quonab glanced at their faces as they passed +carrying the little buck. They tried to look inscrutable. But the Indian +was not deceived. He gave out nothing but a sizzling “Humph!” + + + +Chapter 63. The Redemption of Van + +“WHEN things is looking black as black can be, it's a sure sign of luck +coming your way.” so said Si Sylvanne, and so it proved to Van Cortlandt +The Moon of the Falling Leaves was waning, October was nearly over, the +day of his return to Albany was near, as he was to go out in time for +the hunters to return in open water. He was wonderfully improved in +strength and looks. His face was brown and ruddy. He had abandoned all +drugs, and had gained fully twenty pounds in weight. He had learned to +make a fire, paddle a canoe, and go through the woods in semi-silence. +His scholarly talk had given him large place in Rolf's esteem, and +his sweet singing had furnished a tiny little shelf for a modicum of +Quonab's respect. But his attempts to get a deer were failures. “You +come back next year with proper, farsight glasses and you'll all right,” + said Rolf; and that seemed the one ray of hope. + +The three days' storm had thrown so many trees that the hunters decided +it would be worth while making a fast trip down to Eagle's Nest, to cut +such timber as might have fallen across the stream, and so make an easy +way for when they should have less time. + +The surmise was quite right. Much new-fallen timber was now across +the channel. They chopped over twenty-five trunks before they reached +Eagle's Nest at noon, and, leaving the river in better shape than ever +it was, they turned, for the swift, straight, silent run of ten miles +home. + +As they rounded the last point, a huge black form in the water loomed to +view. Skookum's bristles rose. Quonab whispered, “Moose! Shoot quick!” + Van was the only one with a gun. The great black beast stood for a +moment, gazing at them with wide-open eyes, ears, and nostrils, then +shook his broad horns, wheeled, and dashed for the shore. Van fired +and the bull went down with a mighty splash among the lilies. Rolf and +Skookum let off a succession of most unhunterlike yells of triumph. But +the giant sprang up again and reached the shore, only to fall to Van +Cortlandt's second barrel. Yet the stop was momentary; he rose and +dashed into the cover. Quonab turned the canoe at once and made for the +land. + +A great sob came from the bushes, then others at intervals. Quonab +showed his teeth and pointed. Rolf seized his rifle, Skookum sprang from +the boat, and a little later was heard letting off his war-cry in the +bushes not far away. + +The men rushed forward, guns in hand, but Quonab called, “Look out! +Maybe he waiting.” + +“If he is, he'll likely get one of us.” said Rolf, with a light laugh, +for he had some hearsay knowledge of moose. + +Covered each by a tree, they waited till Van had reloaded his +double-barrelled, then cautiously approached. The great frothing sobs +had resounded from time to time. + +Skookum's voice also was heard in the thicket, and when they neared and +glimpsed the place, it was to see the monster on the ground, lying at +full length, dinging up his head at times when he uttered that horrid +sound of pain. + +The Indian sent a bullet through the moose's brain; then all was still, +the tragedy was over. + +But now their attention was turned to Van Cortlandt. He reeled, +staggered, his knees trembled, his face turned white, and, to save +himself from falling, he sank onto a log. Here he covered his face with +his hands, his feet beat the ground, and his shoulders heaved up and +down. + +The others said nothing. They knew by the signs and the sounds that it +was only through a mighty effort that young Van Cortlandt, grown man as +he was, could keep himself from hysterical sobs and tears. + +Not then, but the next day it was that Quonab said: “It comes to some +after they kill, to some before, as it came to you, Rolf; to me it came +the day I killed my first chipmunk, that time when I stole my father's +medicine.” + +They had ample work for several hours now, to skin the game and save the +meat. It was fortunate they were so near home. A marvellous change there +was in the atmosphere of the camp. Twice Quonab spoke to Van Cortlandt, +as the latter laboured with them to save and store the meat of his +moose. He was rubbed, doped, soiled, and anointed with its flesh, hair, +and blood, and that night, as they sat by their camp fire, Skookum +arose, stretched, yawned, walked around deliberately, put his nose +in the lawyer's hand, gave it a lick, then lay down by his feet. Van +Cortlandt glanced at Rolf, a merry twinkle was in the eyes of both. +“It's all right. You can pat Skookum now, without risk of being +crippled. He's sized you up. You are one of us at last;” and Quonab +looked on with two long ivory rows a-gleaming in his smile. + + + +Chapter 64. Dinner at the Governor's + +Was ever there a brighter blazing sunrise after such a night of gloom? +Not only a deer, but the biggest of all deer, and Van himself the only +one of the party that had ever killed a moose. The skin was removed and +afterward made into a hunting coat for the victor. The head and horns +were carefully preserved to be carried back to Albany, where they were +mounted and still hang in the hall of a later generation of the name. +The final days at the camp were days of happy feeling; they passed too +soon, and the long-legged lawyer, bronzed and healthy looking, took his +place in their canoe for the flying trip to Albany. With an empty canoe +and three paddles (two and one half, Van said), they flew down the open +stretch of Jesup's River in something over two hours and camped that +night fully thirty-five miles from their cabin. The next day they nearly +reached the Schroon and in a week they rounded the great bend, and +Albany hove in view. + +How Van's heart did beat! How he did exult to come in triumph home, +reestablished in health and strengthened in every way. They were sighted +and recognized. Messengers were seen running; a heavy gun was fired, +the flag run up on the Capitol, bells set a-ringing, many people came +running, and more flags ran up on vessels. + +A great crowd gathered by the dock. + +“There's father, and mother too!” shouted Van, waving his hat. + +“Hurrah,” and the crowd took it up, while the bells went jingle, jangle, +and Skookum in the bow sent back his best in answer. + +The canoe was dragged ashore. Van seized his mother in his arms, as +she cried: “My boy, my boy, my darling boy! how well you look. Oh, why +didn't you write? But, thank God, you are back again, and looking so +healthy and strong. I know you took your squills and opodeldoc. Thank +God for that! Oh, I'm so happy! my boy, my boy! There's nothing like +squills and God's blessing.” + +Rolf and Quonab were made to feel that they had a part in it all. The +governor shook them warmly by the hand, and then a friendly voice was +heard: “Wall, boy, here ye air agin; growed a little, settin' up and +sassin' back, same as ever.” Rolf turned to see the gigantic, angular +form and kindly face of grizzly old Si Sylvanne and was still more +surprised to hear him addressed “senator.” + +“Yes,” said the senator, “one o' them freak elections that sometimes +hits right; great luck for Albany, wa'nt it?” + +“Ho,” said Quonab, shaking the senator's hand, while Skookum looked +puzzled and depressed. + +“Now, remember,” said the governor, addressing the Indian, the lad, +and the senator, “we expect you to dine tonight at the mansion; seven +o'clock.” + +Then the terror of the dragon conventionality, that guards the gate +and hovers over the feast, loomed up in Rolf's imagination. He sought a +private word with Van. “I'm afraid I have no fit clothes; I shan't know +how to behave,” he said. + +“Then I'll show you. The first thing is to be perfectly clean and get a +shave; put on the best clothes you have, and be sure they're clean; then +you come at exactly seven o'clock, knowing that every one is going to +be kind to you and you're bound to have a good time. As to any other +'funny-do' you watch me, and you'll have no trouble.” + +So when the seven o'clock assemblage came, and guests were ascending the +steps of the governor's mansion, there also mounted a tall, slim +youth, an easy-pacing Indian, and a prick-eared, yellow dog. Young Van +Cortlandt was near the door, on watch to save them any embarrassment. +But what a swell he looked, cleanshaven, ruddy, tall, and handsome in +the uniform of an American captain, surrounded by friends and immensely +popular. How different it all was from that lonely cabin by the lake. + +A butler who tried to remove Skookum was saved from mutilation by the +intervention first of Quonab and next of Van; and when they sat down, +this uncompromising four-legged child of the forest ensconced himself +under Quonab's chair and growled whenever the silk stockings of the +footman seemed to approach beyond the line of true respect. + +Young Van Cortlandt was chief talker at the dinner, but a pompous +military man was prominent in the company. Once or twice Rolf was +addressed by the governor or Lady Van Cortlandt, and had to speak to the +whole table; his cheeks were crimson, but he knew what he wanted to say +and stopped when it was said, so suffered no real embarrassment. + +After what seemed an interminable feast of countless dishes and hours' +duration, an extraordinary change set in. Led by the hostess, all stood +up, the chairs were lifted out of their way, and the ladies trooped into +another room; the doors were closed, and the men sat down again at the +end next the governor. + +Van stayed by Rolf and explained: “This is another social custom that +began with a different meaning. One hundred years ago, every man got +drunk at every formal dinner, and carried on in a way that the ladies +did not care to see, so to save their own feelings and give the men +a free rein, the ladies withdrew. Nowadays, men are not supposed to +indulge in any such orgy, but the custom continues, because it gives the +men a chance to smoke, and the ladies a chance to discuss matters that +do not interest the men. So again you see it is backed by common sense.” + +This proved the best part of the dinner to Rolf. There was a peculiar +sense of over-politeness, of insincerity, almost, while the ladies were +present; the most of the talking had been done by young Van Cortlandt +and certain young ladies, assisted by some very gay young men and the +general. Their chatter was funny, but nothing more. Now a different air +was on the group; different subjects were discussed, and by different +men, in a totally different manner. + +“We've stood just about all we can stand,” said the governor, alluding +to an incident newly told, of a British frigate boarding an American +merchant vessel by force and carrying off half her crew, under presence +that they were British seamen in disguise. “That's been going on for +three years now. It's either piracy or war, and, in either case, it's +our duty to fight.” + +“Jersey's dead against war,” said a legislator from down the river. + +“Jersey always was dead against everything that was for the national +good, sir,” said a red-faced, puffy, military man, with a husky voice, a +rolling eye, and a way of ending every sentence in “sir.” + +“So is Connecticut,” said another; “they say, 'Look at all our +defenceless coasts and harbour towns.'” + +“They're not risking as much as New York,” answered the governor, +“with her harbours all the way up the Hudson and her back door open to +invasion from Canada.” + +“Fortunately, sir, Pennyslvania, Maryland, and the West have not +forgotten the glories of the past. All I ask--is a chance to show what +we can do, sir. I long for the smell of powder once more, sir.” + +“I understand that President Madison has sent several protests, and, in +spite of Connecticut and New Jersey, will send an ultimatum within three +months. He believes that Britain has all she can manage, with Napoleon +and his allies battering at her doors, and will not risk a war. + +“It's my opinion,” said Sylvanne; “that these English men is too +pig-headed an' ornery to care a whoop in hell whether we get mad or not. +They've a notion Paul Jones is dead, but I reckon we've got plenty of +the breed only waitin' a chance. Mor'n twenty-five of our merchantmen +wrecked each year through being stripped of their crews by a 'friendly +power.' 'Pears to me we couldn't be worse off going to war, an' might be +a dum sight better.” + +“Your home an' holdings are three hundred safe miles from the seacoast,” + objected the man from Manhattan. + +“Yes, and right next Canada,” was the reply. + +“The continued insults to our flag, sir, and the personal indignities +offered to our people are even worse than the actual loss in ships and +goods. It makes my blood fairly boil,” and the worthy general looked the +part as his purple jowl quivered over his white cravat. + +“Gosh all hemlock! the one pricks, but t'other festers, it's tarnal sure +you steal a man's dinner and tell him he's one o' nature's noblemen, +he's more apt to love you than if you give him five dollars to keep out +o' your sight,” said Sylvanne, with slow emphasis. + +“There's something to be said on the other side,” said the timid one. +“You surely allow that the British government is trying to do right, +and after all we must admit that that Jilson affair resected very little +credit on our own administration.” + +“A man ken make one awful big mistake an' still be all right, but he +can't go on making a little mistake every day right along an' be fit +company for a clean crowd,” retorted the new senator. + +At length the governor rose and led the way to the drawing-room, where +they rejoined the ladies and the conversation took on a different colour +and weight, by which it lost all value for those who knew not the art +of twittering persiflage and found less joy in a handkerchief flirtation +than in the nation's onward march. Rolf and Quonab enjoyed it now about +as much as Skookum had done all the time. + + + +Chapter 65. The Grebes and the Singing Mouse + +Quonab puzzled long over the amazing fact that young Van Cortlandt had +evident high standing “in his own tribe.” “He must be a wise counsellor, +for I know he cannot fight and is a fool at hunting,” was the ultimate +decision. + +They had a final interview with the governor and his son before they +left. Rolf received for himself and his partner the promised one hundred +and fifty dollars, and the hearty thanks of all in the governor's home. +Next, each was presented with a handsome hunting knife, not unlike +the one young Van had carried, but smaller. Quonab received his with +“Ho--” then, after a pause, “He pull out, maybe, when I need him.”--“Ho! +good!” he exclaimed, as the keen blade appeared. + +“Now, Rolf,” said the lawyer, “I want to come back next year and bring +three companions, and we will pay you at the same rate per month for +each. What do you say?” + +“Glad to have you again,” said Rolf: “we'll come for you on August +fifteenth; but remember you should bring your guitar and your +spectacles.” + +“One word,” said the governor, “do you know the canoe route through +Champlain to Canada?” + +“Quonab does.” + +“Could you undertake to render scout service in that region?” + +The Indian nodded. + +“In case of war, we may need you both, so keep your ears open.” + +And once more the canoe made for the north, with Quonab in the stern and +Skookum in the bow. + +In less than a week they were home, and none too soon; for already the +trees were bare, and they had to break the ice on the river before they +ended their trip. + +Rolf had gathered many ideas the last two-months. He did not propose to +continue all his life as a trapper. He wanted to see New York. He wanted +to plan for the future. He needed money for his plans. He and Quonab had +been running a hundred miles of traps, but some men run more than that +single handed. They must get out two new lines at once, before the frost +came. One of these they laid up the Hudson, above Eagle's Nest; the +other northerly on Blue Mountain, toward Racquet River. Doing this was +hard work, and when they came again to their cabin the robins had gone +from the bleak and leafless woods; the grouse were making long night +flights; the hollows had tracks of racing deer; there was a sense of +omen, a length of gloom, for the Mad Moon was afloat in the shimmering +sky; its wan light ghasted all the hills. + +Next day the lake was covered with thin, glare ice; on the glassy +surface near the shore were two ducks floundering. The men went as near +as they could, and Quonab said, “No, not duck, but Shingebis, divers. +They cannot rise except from water. In the night the new ice looks like +water; they come down and cannot rise. I have often seen it.” Two days +after, a harder frost came on. The ice was safe for a dog; the divers or +grebes were still on its surface. So they sent Skookum. He soon returned +with two beautiful grebes, whose shining, white breast feathers are as +much prized as some furs. + +Quonab grunted as he held them up. “Ugh, it is often so in this Mad +Moon. My father said it is because of Kaluskap's dancing.” + +“I don't remember that one.” + +“Yes, long ago. Kaluskap felt lazy. He wanted to eat, but did not wish +to hunt, so he called the bluejay and said: 'Tell all the woods that +to-morrow night Kaluskap gives a new dance and teaches a new song,' +and he told the hoot owl to do the same, so one kept it up all +day--'Kaluskap teaches a new dance to-morrow night,' and the other kept +it up all night: 'Kaluskap teaches a new song at next council.' + +“Thus it came about that all the woods and waters sent their folk to the +dance. + +“Then Kaluskap took his song-drum and said: 'When I drum and sing you +must dance in a circle the same way as the sun, close your eyes tightly, +and each one shout his war whoop, as I cry “new songs”!' + +“So all began, with Kaluskap drumming in the middle, singing: + +“'New songs from the south, brothers, Close your eyes tightly, brothers, +Dance and learn a new song. + +“As they danced around, he picked out the fattest, and, reaching out +one hand, seized them and twisted their necks, shouting out, 'More +war-cries, more poise! that's it; now you are learning!' + +“At length Shingebis the diver began to have his doubts and he +cautiously opened one eye, saw the trick, and shouted: 'Fly, brothers, +fly! Kaluskap is killing us!' + +“Then all was confusion. Every one tried to escape, and Kaluskap, in +revenge, tried to kill the Shingebis. But the diver ran for the water +and, just as he reached the edge, Kaluskap gave him a kick behind that +sent him half a mile, but it knocked off all his tail feathers and +twisted his shape so that ever since his legs have stuck out where his +tail was, and he cannot rise from the land or the ice. I know it is so, +for my father, Cos Cob, told me it was true, and we ourselves have seen +it. It is ever so. To go against Kaluskap brings much evil to brood +over.” + +A few nights later, as they sat by their fire in the cabin, a curious +squeaking was heard behind the logs. They had often heard it before, but +never so much as now. Skookum turned his head on one side, set his ears +at forward cock. Presently, from a hole 'twixt logs and chimney, there +appeared a small, white breasted mouse. + +Its nose and ears shivered a little; its black eyes danced in the +firelight. It climbed up to a higher log, scratched its ribs, then +rising on its hind legs, uttered one or two squeaks like those they had +heard so often, but soon they became louder and continuous: + +“Peg, peo, peo, peo, peo, peo, peo, oo. Tree, tree, tree, tree, +trrrrrrr, Turr, turr, turr, tur, tur, Wee, wee, wee, we”-- + +The little creature was sitting up high on its hind legs, its belly +muscles were working, its mouth was gaping as it poured out its music. +For fully half a minute this went on, when Skookum made a dash; but the +mouse was quick and it flashed into the safety of its cranny. + +Rolf gazed at Quonab inquiringly. + +“That is Mish-a-boh-quas, the singing mouse. He always comes to tell of +war. In a little while there will be fighting.” + + + +Chapter 66. A Lesson in Stalking + +“Did you ever see any fighting, Quonab?” + +“Ugh! In Revolution, scouted for General Gates.” + +“Judging by the talk, we're liable to be called on before a year. What +will you do?” + +“Fight.” + +“As soldier?” + +“No! scout.” + +“They may not want us.” + +“Always want scouts,” replied the Indian. + +“It seems to me I ought to start training now.” + +“You have been training.” + +“How is that?” + +“A scout is everything that an army is, but it's all in one man. An' he +don't have to keep step.” + +“I see, I see,” replied Rolf, and he realized that a scout is merely +a trained hunter who is compelled by war to hunt his country's foes +instead of the beasts of the woods. + +“See that?” said the Indian, and he pointed to a buck that was nosing +for cranberries in the open expanse across the river where it left the +lake. “Now, I show you scouting.” He glanced at the smoke from the fire, +found it right for his plan, and said: “See! I take my bow. No cover, +yet I will come close and kill that deer.” + +Then began a performance that was new to Rolf, and showed that the +Indian had indeed reached the highest pitch of woodcraft. He took his +bow and three good arrows, tied a band around his head, and into this +stuck a lot of twigs and vines, so that his head looked like a tussock +of herbage. Then he left the shanty door, and, concealed by the last +bushes on the edge, he reached the open plain. Two hundred yards off was +the buck, nosing among the herbage, and, from time to time, raising its +superb head and columnar neck to look around. There was no cover but +creeping herbage. Rolf suspected that the Indian would decoy the buck by +some whistle or challenge, for the thickness of its neck showed the deer +to be in fighting humour. + +Flat on his breast the Indian lay. His knees and elbow seemed to develop +centipedic power; his head was a mere clump of growing stuff. He snaked +his way quietly for twenty-five yards, then came to the open, sloping +shore, with the river forty yards wide of level shining ice, all in +plain view of the deer; how was this to be covered? + +There is a well-known peculiarity of the white tail that the Indian was +counting on; when its head is down grazing, even though not hidden, the +deer does not see distant objects; before the head is raised, its tail +is raised or shaken. Quonab knew that if he could keep the tail in view, +he could avoid being viewed by the head. In a word, only an ill-timed +movement or a whiff could betray him. + +The open ice was, of course, a hard test, and the hunter might have +failed, but that his long form looked like one of the logs that were +lying about half stranded or frozen in the stream. + +Watching ever the alert head and tail, he timed his approach, working +hard and moving East when the head was down; but when warned by a +tail-jerk he turned to a log nor moved a muscle. Once the ice was +crossed, the danger of being seen was less, but of being smelt was +greater, for the deer was moving about, and Quonab watched the smoke +from the cabin for knowledge of the wind. So he came within fifty yards, +and the buck, still sniffing along and eagerly champing the few red +cranberries it found above the frozen moss, was working toward a +somewhat higher cover. The herbage was now fully eighteen inches high, +and Quonab moved a little faster. The buck found a large patch of +berries under a tussock and dropped on its knees to pick them out, while +Quonab saw the chance and gained ten yards before the tail gave warning. +After so long a feeding-spell, the buck took an extra long lookout, +and then walked toward the timber, whereby the Indian lost all he had +gained. But the browser's eye was drawn by a shining bunch of red, then +another; and now the buck swung until there was danger of betrayal by +the wind; then down went its head and Quonab retreated ten yards to keep +the windward. Once the buck raised its muzzle and sniffed with flaring +nostrils, as though its ancient friend had brought a warning. But soon +he seemed reassured, for the landscape showed no foe, and nosed back and +forth, while Quonab regained the yards he had lost. The buck worked now +to the taller cover, and again a tempting bunch of berries under a low, +dense bush caused it to kneel for farther under-reaching. Quonab glided +swiftly forward, reached the twenty-five-yard limit, rose to one knee, +bent the stark cedar bow. Rolf saw the buck bound in air, then make for +the wood with great, high leaps; the dash of disappointment was on him, +but Quonab stood erect, with right hand raised, and shouted: + +“Ho--ho.” + +He knew that those bounds were unnecessarily high, and before the woods +had swallowed up the buck, it fell--rose--and fell again, to rise not. +The arrow had pierced its heart. + +Then Rolf rushed up with kindled eye and exultant pride to slap his +friend on the back, and exclaim: + +“I never thought it possible; the greatest feat in hunting I ever saw; +you are a wonder!” + +To which the Indian softly replied, as he smiled: + +“Ho! it was so I got eleven British sentries in the war. They gave me a +medal with Washington's head.” + +“They did! how is it I never heard of it? Where is it?” + +The Indian's face darkened. “I threw it after the ship that stole my +Gamowini.” + + + +Chapter 67. Rolf Meets a Canuck + +The winter might have been considered eventful, had not so many of the +events been repetitions of former experience. But there were several +that by their newness deserve a place on these pages, as they did in +Rolf's memory. + +One of them happened soon after the first sharp frost. It had been an +autumn of little rain, so that many ponds had dried up, with the +result that hundreds of muskrats were forced out to seek more habitable +quarters. The first time Rolf saw one of these stranded mariners on its +overland journey, he gave heedless chase. At first it made awkward haste +to escape; then a second muskrat was discovered just ahead, and a third. +This added to Rolf's interest. In a few bounds he was among them, but it +was to get a surprise. Finding themselves overtaken, the muskrats turned +in desperation and attacked the common enemy with courage and fury. Rolf +leaped over the first, but the second sprang, caught him by the slack +of the trouser leg, and hung on. The third flung itself on his foot and +drove its sharp teeth through the moccasin. Quickly the first rallied +and sprang on his other leg with all the force of its puny paws, and +powerful jaws. + +Meanwhile Quonab was laughing aloud and holding back Skookum, who, +breathing fire and slaughter, was mad to be in the fight. + +“Ho! a good fight! good musquas! Ho, Skookum, you must not always take +care of him, or he will not learn to go alone. + +“Ugh, good!” as the third muskrat gripped Rolf by the calf. + +There could be but one finish, and that not long delayed. A well-placed +kick on one, the second swung by the tail, the third crushed under +his heel, and the affair ended. Rolf had three muskrats and five cuts. +Quonab had much joy and Skookum a sense of lost opportunity. + +“This we should paint on the wigwam,” said Quonab. “Three great warriors +attacked one Sagamore. They were very brave, but he was Nibowaka and +very strong; he struck them down as the Thunderbird, Hurakan, strikes +the dead pines the fire has left on the hilltop against the sky. Now +shall you eat their hearts, for they were brave. My father told me a +fighting muskrat's heart is great medicine; for he seeks peace while it +is possible, then he turns and fights without fear.” + +A few days later, they sighted a fox. In order to have a joke on +Skookum, they put him on its track, and away he went, letting off his +joy-whoops at every jump. The men sat down to wait, knowing full well +that after an hour Skookum would come back with a long tongue and an +air of depression. But they were favoured with an unexpected view of +the chase. It showed a fox bounding over the snow, and not twenty yards +behind was their energetic four-legged colleague. + +And, still more unexpected, the fox was overtaken in the next thicket, +shaken to limpness, and dragged to be dropped at Quonab's feet. +This glorious victory by Skookum was less surprising, when a closer +examination showed that the fox had been in a bad way. Through some sad, +sudden indiscretion, he had tackled a porcupine and paid the penalty. +His mouth, jaws and face, neck and legs, were bristling with quills. He +was sick and emaciated. He could not have lasted many days longer, and +Skookum's summary lynching was a blessing in disguise. + +The trappers' usual routine was varied by a more important happening. +One day of deep snow in January, when they were running the northern +line on Racquet River, they camped for the night at their shelter +cabin, and were somewhat surprised at dusk to hear a loud challenge from +Skookum replied to by a human voice, and a short man with black whiskers +appeared. He raised one hand in token of friendliness and was invited to +come in. + +He was a French Canadian from La Colle Mills. He had trapped here for +some years. The almost certainty of war between Canada and the States +had kept his usual companions away. So he had trapped alone, always a +dangerous business, and had gathered a lot of good fur, but had fallen +on the ice and hurt himself inwardly, so that he had no strength. He +could tramp out on snowshoes, but could not carry his pack of furs. He +had long known that he had neighbours on the south; the camp fire smoke +proved that, and he had come now to offer all his furs for sale. + +Quonab shook his head, but Rolf said, “We'll come over and see them.” + +A two-hours' tramp in the morning brought them to the Frenchman's cabin. +He opened out his furs; several otter, many sable, some lynx, over +thirty beaver--the whole lot for two hundred dollars. At Lyons Falls +they were worth double that. + +Rolf saw a chance for a bargain. He whispered, “We can double our money +on it, Quonab. What do ye say?” + +The reply was simply, “Ugh! you are Nibowaka.” + +“We'll take your offer, if we can fix it up about payment, for I have no +money with me and barely two hundred dollars at the cabin.” + +“You half tabac and grosairs?” + +“Yes, plenty.” + +“You can go 'get 'em? Si?” + +Rolf paused, looked down, then straight at the Frenchman. + +“Will you trust me to take half the fur now; when I come back with the +pay I can get the rest.” + +The Frenchman looked puzzled, then, “By Gar you look de good look. I let +um go. I tink you pretty good fellow, parbleu!” + +So Rolf marched away with half the furs and four days later he was back +and paid the pale-faced but happy Frenchman the one hundred and fifty +dollars he had received from Van Cortlandt, with other bills making one +hundred and ninety-five dollars and with groceries and tobacco enough to +satisfy the trapper. The Frenchman proved a most amiable character. +He and Rolf took to each other greatly, and when they shook hands at +parting, it was in the hope of an early and happier meeting. + +Francois la Colle turned bravely for the ninety-mile tramp over the snow +to his home, while Rolf went south with the furs that were to prove +a most profitable investment, shaping his life in several ways, and +indirectly indeed of saving it on one occasion. + + + +Chapter 68. War + +Eighteen hundred and twelve had passed away. President Madison, driven +by wrongs to his countrymen and indignities that no nation should meekly +accept, had in the midsummer declared war on Great Britain. Unfitted to +cope with the situation and surrounded by unfit counsellors, his little +army of heroic men led by unfit commanders had suffered one reverse +after another. + +The loss of Fort Mackinaw, Chicago, Detroit, Brownstown, and the total +destruction of the American army that attacked Queenstown were but +poorly offset by the victory at Niagara and the successful defence of +Ogdensburg. + +Rolf and Quonab had repaired to Albany as arranged, but they left it +as United States scouts, not as guides to the four young sportsmen who +wished to hark back to the primitive. + +Their first commission had been the bearing of despatches to Plattsburg. + +With a selected light canoe and a minimum of baggage they reached +Ticonderoga in two days, and there renewed their acquaintance +with General Hampton, who was fussing about, and digging useless +entrenchments as though he expected a mighty siege. Rolf was called +before him to receive other despatches for Colonel Pike at Plattsburg. +He got the papers and learned their destination, then immediately made a +sad mistake. “Excuse me, sir,” he began, “if I meet with--” + +“Young man,” said the general, severely, “I don't want any of your 'ifs' +or 'buts'; your orders are 'go.' 'How' and 'if' are matters for you to +find out; that's what you are paid for.” + +Rolf bowed; his cheeks were tingling. He was very angry at what he +thought a most uncalled for rebuke, but he got over it, and he never +forgot the lesson. It was Si Sylvanne that put it into rememberable +form. + +“A fool horse kin follow a turnpike, but it takes a man with wits to +climb, swim, boat, skate, run, hide, go it blind, pick a lock, take the +long way, round, when it's the short way across, run away at the right +time, or fight when it's wise--all in one afternoon.” Rolf set out for +the north carrying a bombastic (meant to be reassuring) message from +Hampton that he would annihilate any enemy who dared to desecrate the +waters of the lake. + +It was on this trip that Rolf learned from Quonab the details of the +latter's visit to his people on the St. Regis. Apparently the joy of +meeting a few of his own kin, with whom he could talk his own language, +was offset by meeting with a large number of his ancient enemies the +Mohawks. There had been much discussion of the possible war between the +British and the Yankees. The Mohawks announced their intention to fight +for the British, which was a sufficient reason for Quonab as a Sinawa +remaining with the Americans; and when he left the St. Regis reserve the +Indian was without any desire to reenter it. + +At Plattsburg Rolf and Quonab met with another Albany acquaintance in +General Wilkinson, and from him received despatches which they brought +back to Albany, having covered the whole distance in eight days. + +When 1812 was gone Rolf had done little but carry despatches up and down +Lake Champlain. Next season found the Americans still under command of +Generals Wilkinson and Hampton, whose utter incompetence was becoming +daily more evident. + +The year 1813 saw Rolf, eighteen years old and six feet one in his +socks, a trained scout and despatch bearer. + +By a flying trip on snowshoes in January he took letters, from General +Hampton at Ticonderoga to Sackett's Harbour and back in eight days, +nearly three hundred miles. It made him famous as a runner, but the +tidings that he brought were sad. Through him they learned in detail of +the total defeat and capture of the American army at Frenchtown. After a +brief rest he was sent across country on snowshoes to bear a reassuring +message to Ogdensburg. The weather was much colder now, and the single +blanket bed was dangerously slight; so “Flying Kittering,” as they named +him, took a toboggan and secured Quonab as his running mate. Skookum +was given into safe keeping. Blankets, pots, cups, food, guns, and +despatches were strapped on the toboggan, and they sped away at dawn +from Ticonderoga on the 18th of February 1813, headed northwestward, +guided by little but the compass. Thirty miles that day they made in +spite of piercing blasts and driving snow. But with the night there +began a terrible storm with winds of zero chill. The air was filled +with stinging, cutting snow. When they rose at daylight they were nearly +buried in drifts, although their camp was in a dense, sheltered thicket. +Guided wholly by the compass they travelled again, but blinded by the +whirling white they stumbled and blundered into endless difficulties +and made but poor headway. After dragging the toboggan for three hours, +taking turns at breaking the way, they were changing places when Rolf +noticed a large gray patch on Quonab's cheek and nose. + +“Quonab, your face is frozen,” he said. + +“So is yours,” was the reply. + +Now they turned aside, followed a hollow until they reached a spruce +grove, where they camped and took an observation, to learn that the +compass and they held widely different views about the direction of +travel. It was obviously useless to face the storm. They rubbed out +their frozen features with dry snow and rested by the fire. + +No good scout seeks for hardship; he avoids the unnecessary trial of +strength and saves himself for the unavoidable. With zero weather about +them and twenty-four hours to wait in the storm, the scouts set about +making themselves thoroughly comfortable. + +With their snowshoes they dug away the snow in a circle a dozen feet +across, piling it up on the outside so as to make that as high as +possible. When they were down to the ground, the wall of snow around +them was five feet high. Now they went forth with the hatchets, cut many +small spruces, and piled them against the living spruces about the camp +till there was a dense mass of evergreen foliage ten feet high around +them, open only at the top, where was a space five feet across. With +abundance of dry spruce wood, a thick bed of balsam boughs, and plenty +of blankets they were in what most woodmen consider comfort complete. + +They had nothing to do now but wait. Quonab sat placidly smoking, Rolf +was sewing a rent in his coat, the storm hissed, and the wind-driven ice +needles rattled through the trees to vary the crackle of the fire with a +“siss” as they fell on the embers. The low monotony of sound was lulling +in its evenness, when a faint crunch of a foot on the snow was heard. +Rolf reached for his gun, the fir tree screen was shaken a little, and a +minute later there bounded in upon them the snow covered form of little +dog Skookum, expressing his good-will by excessive sign talk in which +every limb and member had a part. They had left him behind, indeed, but +not with his consent, so the bargain was incomplete. + +There was no need to ask now, What shall we do with him? Skookum had +settled that, and why or how he never attempted to explain. + +He was wise who made it law that “as was his share who went forth to +battle, so shall his be that abode with the stuff,” for the hardest of +all is the waiting. In the morning there was less doing in the elemental +strife. There were even occasional periods of calm and at length it grew +so light that surely the veil was breaking. + +Quonab returned from a brief reconnoitre to say, “Ugh!--good going.” + +The clouds were broken and flying, the sun came out at times, but the +wind was high, the cold intense, and the snow still drifting. Poor +Skookum had it harder than the men, for they wore snowshoes; but he kept +his troubles to himself and bravely trudged along behind. Had he been +capable of such reflection he might have said, “What delightful weather, +it keeps the fleas so quiet.” + +That day there was little to note but the intense cold, and again both +men had their cheeks frost-bitten on the north side. A nook under an +overhanging rock gave a good camp that night. Next day the bad weather +resumed, but, anxious to push on they faced it, guided chiefly by the +wind. It was northwest, and as long as they felt this fierce, burning +cold mercilessly gnawing on their hapless tender right cheek bones, they +knew they were keeping their proper main course. + +They were glad indeed to rest at dusk and thaw their frozen faces. Next +day at dawn they were off; at first it was calm, but the surging of the +snow waves soon began again, and the air was filled with the spray of +their lashing till it was hard to see fifty yards in any direction. They +were making very bad time. The fourth day should have brought them to +Ogdensburg, but they were still far off; how far they could only guess, +for they had not come across a house or a settler. + + + +Chapter 69. Ogdensburg + +The same blizzard was raging on the next day when Skookum gave +unequivocal sign talk that he smelled something. + +It is always well to find out what stirs your dog. Quonab looked hard at +Skookum. That sagacious mongrel was sniffing vigorously, up in the air, +not on the ground; his mane was not bristling, and the patch of dark +hair that every gray or yellow dog has at the base of his tail, was not +lifted. + +“He smells smoke,” was the Indian's quick diagnosis. Rolf pointed Up the +wind and made the sign-talk query. Quonab nodded. + +It was their obvious duty to find out who was their smoky neighbour. +They were now not so far from the St. Lawrence; there was a small chance +of the smoke being from a party of the enemy; there was a large chance +of it being from friends; and the largest chance was that it came from +some settler's cabin where they could get necessary guidance. + +They turned aside. The wind now, instead of on the right cheek, was +square in their faces. Rolf went forward increasing his pace till he was +as far ahead as was possible without being out of sight. After a mile +their way led downward, the timber was thicker, the wind less, and the +air no more befogged with flying snow. Rolf came to a long, deep trench +that wound among the trees; the snow at the bottom of it was very hard. +This was what he expected; the trail muffled under new, soft snow, but +still a fresh trail and leading to the camp that Skookum had winded. + +He turned and made the sign for them to halt and wait. Then strode +cautiously along the winding guide line. + +In twenty minutes the indications of a settlement increased, and the +scout at length was peering from the woods across the open down to a +broad stream on whose bank was a saw mill, with the usual wilderness of +ramshackle shanties, sheds, and lumber piles about. + +There was no work going on, which was a puzzle till Rolf remembered +it was Sunday. He went boldly up and asked for the boss. His whole +appearance was that of a hunter and as such the boss received him. + +He was coming through from the other side and had missed his way in the +storm, he explained. + +“What are ye by trade?” + +“A trapper.” + +“Where are ye bound now?” + +“Well, I'll head for the nearest big settlement, whatever that is.” + +“It's just above an even thing between Alexandria Bay and Ogdensburg.” + +So Rolf inquired fully about the trail to Alexandria Bay that he did not +want to go to. Why should he be so careful? The mill owner was clearly +a good American, but the scout had no right to let any outsider know his +business. This mill owner might be safe, but he might be unwise and blab +to some one who was not all right. + +Then in a casual way he learned that this was the Oswegatchie River and +thirty miles down he would find the town of Ogdensburg. + +No great recent events did he hear of, but evidently the British +troops across the river were only awaiting the springtime before taking +offensive measures. + +For the looks of it, Rolf bought some tea and pork, but the hospitable +mill man refused to take payment and, leaving in the direction of +Alexandria Bay, Rolf presently circled back and rejoined his friends in +the woods. + +A long detour took them past the mill. It was too cold for outdoor +idling. Every window was curtained with frost, and not a soul saw them +as they tramped along past the place and down to continue on the ice of +the Oswegatchie. + +Pounded by the ceaseless wind, the snow on the ice was harder, travel +was easier, and the same tireless blizzard wiped out the trail as soon +as it was behind them. + +Crooked is the river trail, but good the footing, and good time was +made. When there was a north reach, the snow was extra hard or the ice +clear and the scouts slipped off their snow shoes, and trotted at a good +six-mile gait. Three times they halted for tea and rest, but the fact +that they were the bearers of precious despatches, the bringers of +inspiring good news, and their goal ever nearer, spurred them on and +on. It was ten o'clock that morning when they left the mill, some thirty +miles from Ogdensburg. It was now near sundown, but still they figured +that by an effort they could reach the goal that night. It was their +best day's travel, but they were nerved to it by the sense of triumph as +they trotted; and the prospective joy of marching up to the commandant +and handing over the eagerly looked for, reassuring documents, gave +them new strength and ambition. Yes! they must push on at any price that +night. Day was over now; Rolf was leading at a steady trot. In his hand +he held the long trace of his toboggan, ten feet behind was Quonab with +the short trace, while Skookum trotted before, beside, or behind, as was +dictated by his general sense of responsibility. + +It was quite dark now. There was no moon, the wooded shore was black. +Their only guide was the broad, wide reach of the river, sometimes swept +bare of snow by the wind, but good travelling at all times. They were +trotting and walking in spells, going five miles an hour; Quonab was +suffering, but Rolf was young and eager to finish. They rounded another +reach, they were now on the last big bend, they were reeling off the +miles; only ten more, and Rolf was so stirred that, instead of dropping +to the usual walk on signal at the next one hundred yards spell, he +added to his trot. Quonab, taken unawares, slipped and lost his hold of +the trace. Rolf shot ahead and a moment later there was the crash of a +breaking air-hole, and Rolf went through the ice, clutched at the broken +edge and disappeared, while the toboggan was dragged to the hole. + +Quonab sprung to his feet, and then to the lower side of the hole. +The toboggan had swung to the same place and the long trace was tight; +without a moment's delay the Indian hauled at it steadily, heavily, and +in a few seconds the head of his companion reappeared; still clutching +that long trace he was safely dragged from the ice-cold flood, blowing +and gasping, shivering and sopping, but otherwise unhurt. + +Now here a new danger presented itself. The zero wind would soon turn +his clothes to boards. They stiffened in a few minutes, and the Indian +knew that frozen hands and feet were all too easy in frozen clothes. + +He made at once for the shore, and, seeking the heart of a spruce +thicket, lost no time in building two roaring fires between which Rolf +stood while the Indian made the bed, in which, as soon as he could be +stripped, the lad was glad to hide. Warm tea and warm blankets made +him warm, but it would take an hour or two to dry his clothes. There is +nothing more damaging than drying them too quickly. Quonab made racks of +poles and spent the next two hours in regulating the fire, watching the +clothes, and working the moccasins. + +It was midnight when they were ready and any question of going on at +once was settled by Quonab. “Ogdensburg is under arms,” he said. “It is +not wise to approach by night.” + +At six in the morning they were once more going, stiff with travel, +sore-footed, face-frozen, and chafed by delay; but, swift and keen, +trotting and walking, they went. They passed several settlements, but +avoided them. At seven-thirty they had a distant glimpse of Ogdensburg +and heard the inspiring roll of drums, and a few minutes later from +the top of a hill they had a complete view of the heroic little town to +see--yes! plainly enough--that the British flag was flying from the flag +pole. + + + +Chapter 70. Saving the Despatches + +Oh, the sickening shock of it! Rolf did not know till now how tired he +was, how eager to deliver the heartening message, and to relax a little +from the strain. He felt weak through and through. There could be no +doubt that a disaster had befallen his country's arms. + +His first care was to get out of sight with his sled and those precious +despatches. + +Now what should he do? Nothing till he had fuller information. He sent +Quonab back with the sled, instructing him to go to a certain place two +miles off, there camp out of sight and wait. + +Then he went in alone. Again and again he was stung by the thought, “If +I had come sooner they might have held out.” + +A number of teams gathered at the largest of a group of houses on the +bank suggested a tavern. He went in and found many men sitting down +to breakfast. He had no need to ask questions. It was the talk of the +table. Ogdensburg had been captured the day before. The story is well +known. Colonel MacDonnell with his Glengarry Highlanders at Prescott +went to drill daily on the ice of the St. Lawrence opposite Ogdensburg. +Sometimes they marched past just out of range, sometimes they charged +and wheeled before coming too near. The few Americans that held the +place watched these harmless exercises and often cheered some clever +manceuvre. They felt quite safe behind their fortification. By an +unwritten agreement both parties refrained from firing random shots at +each other. There was little to suggest enemies entrenched; indeed, many +men in each party had friends in the other, and the British had several +times trotted past within easy range, without provoking a shot. + +On February 22d, the day when Rolf and Quonab struck the Oswegatchie, +the British colonel directed his men as usual, swinging them ever nearer +the American fort, and then, at the nearest point, executed a very +pretty charge. The Americans watched it as it neared, but instead of +wheeling at the brink the little army scrambled up with merry shouts, +and before the garrison could realize that this was war, they were +overpowered and Ogdensburg was taken. + +The American commander was captured. Captain Forsyth, the second in +command, had been off on a snowshoe trip, so had escaped. All the +rest were prisoners, and what to do with the despatches or how to get +official instructions was now a deep problem. “When you don't know a +thing to do, don't do a thing,” was one of Si Sylvanne's axioms; also, +“In case of doubt lay low and say nothing.” Rolf hung around the town +all day waiting for light. About noon a tall, straight, alert man in a +buffalo coat drove up with a cutter. He had a hasty meal in an inside +room. Rolf sized him up for an American officer, but there was a +possibility of his being a Canadian. Rolf tried in vain to get light on +him but the inner door was kept closed; the landlord was evidently in +the secret. When he came out he was again swaddled in the buffalo coat. +Rolf brushed past him--here was something hard and long in the right +pocket of the big coat. + +The landlord, the guest, and the driver had a whispered conference. +Rolf went as near as he dared, but got only a searching look. The driver +spoke to another driver and Rolf heard the words “Black Lake.” Yes, +that was what he suspected. Black Lake was on the inland sleigh route to +Alexandria Bay and Sackett's Harbour. + +The driver, a fresh young fellow, was evidently interested in the +landlord's daughter; the stranger was talking with the landlord. As soon +as they had parted, Rolf went to the latter and remarked quietly: “The +captain is in a hurry.” The only reply was a cold look and: “Guess +that's his business.” So it was the captain. The driver's mitts were on +the line back of the stove. Rolf shook them so that they fell in a dark +corner. The driver missed his mitts, and glad of a chance went back in, +leaving the officer alone. “Captain Forsyth,” whispered Rolf, “don't go +till I have talked with you. I'll meet you a mile down the road.” + +“Who are you and what do you want?” was the curt and hostile reply, +evidently admitting the identification correct however. + +Rolf opened his coat and showed his scout badge. + +“Why not talk now if you have any news--come in side.” So the two went +to the inner room. “Who is this?” asked Rolf cautiously as the landlord +came in. + +“He's all right. This is Titus Flack, the landlord.” + +“How am I to know that?” + +“Haven't you heard him called by name all day?” said the captain. + +Flack smiled, went out and returned with his license to sell liquor, and +his commission as a magistrate of New York State. The latter bore his +own signature. He took a pen and reproduced it. Now the captain threw +back his overcoat and stood in the full uniform of an army officer. +He opened his satchel and took out a paper, but Rolf caught sight of +another packet addressed to General Hampton. The small one was merely a +map. “I think that packet in there is meant for me,” remarked Rolf. + +“We haven't seen your credentials yet,” said the officer. “I have them +two miles back there,” and Rolf pointed to the woods. + +“Let's go,” said the captain and they arose. Kittering had a way of +inspiring confidence, but in the short, silent ride of two miles the +captain began to have his doubts. The scout badge might have been +stolen; Canadians often pass for Americans, etc. At length they stopped +the sleigh, and Rolf led into the woods. Before a hundred yards the +officer said, “Stop,” and Rolf stopped to find a pistol pointed at his +head. “Now, young fellow, you've played it pretty slick, and I don't +know yet what to make of it. But I know this; at the very first sign of +treachery I'll blow your brains out anyway.” It gave Rolf a jolt. This +was the first time he had looked down a pistol barrel levelled at him. +He used to think a pistol a little thing, an inch through and a foot +long, but he found now it seemed as big as a flour barrel and long +enough to reach eternity. He changed colour but quickly recovered, +smiled, and said: “Don't worry; in five minutes you will know it's all +right.” + +Very soon a sharp bark was heard in challenge, and the two stepped into +camp to meet Quonab and little dog Skookum. + +“Doesn't look much like a trap,” thought the captain after he had cast +his eyes about and made sure that no other person was in the camp; then +aloud, “Now what have you to show me?” + +“Excuse me, captain, but how am I to know you are Captain Forsyth? It is +possible for a couple of spies to give all the proof you two gave me.” + +The captain opened his bag and showed first his instructions given +before he left Ogdensburg four days ago; he bared his arm and showed a +tattooed U. S. A., a relic of Academy days, then his linen marked J. F., +and a signet ring with similar initials, and last the great packet of +papers addressed to General Hampton. Then he said: “When you hand over +your despatches to me I will give mine to you and we shall have good +guarantee each of the other.” + +Rolf rose, produced his bundle of papers, and exchanged them for those +held by Forsyth; each felt that the other was safe. They soon grew +friendly, and Rolf heard of some stirring doings on the lake and +preparations for a great campaign in the spring. + +After half an hour the tall, handsome captain left them and strode away, +a picture of manly vigour. Three hours later they were preparing their +evening meal when Skookum gave notice of a stranger approaching. This +was time of war; Rolf held his rifle ready, and a moment later in burst +the young man who had been Captain Forsyth's driver. + +His face was white; blood dripped from his left arm, and in his other +hand was the despatch bag. He glanced keenly at Rolf. “Are you General +Hampton's scout?” Rolf nodded and showed the badge on his breast. +“Captain Forsyth sent this back,” he gasped. “His last words were, 'Burn +the despatches rather than let the British get them.' They got him--a +foraging party--there was a spy at the hotel. I got away, but my tracks +are easy to follow unless it drifts. Don't wait.” + +Poor boy, his arm was broken, but he carried out the dead officer's +command, then left them to seek for relief in the settlement. + +Night was near, but Rolf broke camp at once and started eastward with +the double packet. He did not know it then, but learned afterward that +these despatches made clear the weakness of Oswego, Rochester, and +Sackett's Harbour, their urgent need of help, and gave the whole plan +for an American counter attack on Montreal. But he knew they were +valuable, and they must at once be taken to General Hampton. + +It was rough, hard going in the thick woods and swamps away from the +river, for he did not dare take the ice route now, but they pushed on +for three hours, then, in the gloom, made a miserable camp in a cedar +swamp. + +At dawn they were off again. To their disgust the weather now was dead +calm; there was no drift to hide their tracks; the trail was as plain as +a highway wherever they went. They came to a beaten road, followed that +for half a mile, then struck off on the true line. But they had no idea +that they were followed until, after an hour of travel, the sun came up +and on a far distant slope, full two miles away, they saw a thin black +line of many spots, at least a dozen British soldiers in pursuit. + +The enemy was on snowshoes, and without baggage evidently, for they +travelled fast. Rolf and Quonab burdened with the sled were making +a losing race. But they pushed on as fast as possible--toiling and +sweating at that precious load. Rolf was pondering whether the time had +not yet come to stop and burn the packet, when, glancing back from a +high ridge that gave an outlook, he glimpsed a row of heads that dropped +behind some rocks half a mile away, and a scheme came into his mind. He +marched boldly across the twenty feet opening that was in the enemy's +view, dropped behind the spruce thickets, called Quonab to follow, ran +around the thicket, and again crossed the open view. So he and Quonab +continued for five minutes, as fast as they could go, knowing perfectly +well that they were watched. Round and round that bush they went, +sometimes close together, carrying the guns, sometimes dragging the +sled, sometimes with blankets on their shoulders, sometimes with a short +bag or even a large cake of snow on their backs. They did everything +they could to vary the scene, and before five minutes the British +officer in charge had counted fifty-six armed Americans marching in +single file up the bank with ample stores, accompanied by five yellow +dogs. Had Skookum been allowed to carry out his ideas, there would have +been fifty or sixty yellow dogs, so thoroughly did he enter into the +spirit of the game. + +The track gave no hint of such a troop, but of course not, how could it? +since the toboggan left all smooth after they had passed, or maybe this +was a reinforcement arriving. What could he do with his ten men against +fifty of the enemy? He thanked his stars that he had so cleverly evaded +the trap, and without further attempt to gauge the enemy's strength, he +turned and made all possible haste back to the shelter of Ogdensburg. + + + +Chapter 71. Sackett's Harbour + +It was hours before Rolf was sure that he had stopped the pursuit, and +the thing that finally set his mind at rest was the rising wind that +soon was a raging and drifting snow storm. “Oh, blessed storm!” he said +in his heart, as he marked all trail disappear within a few seconds +of its being made. And he thought: “How I cursed the wind that held me +back--really from being made prisoner. How vexed I was at that ducking +in the river, that really saved my despatches from the enemy. How +thankful I am now for the storm that a little while back seemed so +bitterly cruel.” + +That forenoon they struck the big bend of the river and now did not +hesitate to use the easy travel on the ice as far as Rensselaer Falls, +where, having got their bearings from a settler, they struck across the +country through the storm, and at night were encamped some forty miles +from Ogdensburg. + +Marvellously few signs of game had they seen in this hard trip; +everything that could hide away was avoiding the weather. But in a cedar +bottom land near Cranberry Lake they found a “yard” that seemed to be +the winter home of hundreds of deer. It extended two or three miles one +way a half a mile the other; in spite of the deep snow this was nearly +all in beaten paths. The scouts saw at least fifty deer in going +through, so, of course, had no difficulty in selecting a young buck for +table use. + +The going from there on was of little interest. It was the same old +daily battle with the frost, but less rigorous than before, for now the +cold winds were behind, and on the 27th of February, nine days after +leaving, they trotted into Ticonderoga and reported at the commandant's +headquarters. + +The general was still digging entrenchments and threatening to +annihilate all Canada. But the contents of the despatches gave him new +topics for thought and speech. The part he must play in the proposed +descent on Montreal was flattering, but it made the Ticonderoga +entrenchments ridiculous. + +For three days Rolf was kept cutting wood, then he went with despatches +to Albany. + +Many minor labours, from hog-killing to stable-cleaning and trenching, +varied the month of March. Then came the uncertain time of April when +it was neither canoeing nor snow-shoeing and all communication from the +north was cut off. + +But May, great, glorious May came on, with its inspiring airs and +livening influence. Canoes were afloat, the woods were brown beneath and +gold above. + +Rolf felt like a young stag in his strength. He was spoiling for a run +and volunteered eagerly to carry despatches to Sackett's Harbour. He +would go alone, for now one blanket was sufficient bed, and a couple of +pounds of dry meat was enough food for each day. A small hatchet would +be useful, but his rifle seemed too heavy to carry; as he halted in +doubt, a junior officer offered him a pistol instead, and he gladly +stuck it in his belt. + +Taller than ever, considerably over six feet now, somewhat lanky, but +supple of joint and square of shoulder, he strode with the easy stride +of a strong traveller. His colour was up, his blue-gray eyes ablaze +as he took the long trail in a crow line across country for Sackett's +Harbour. The sentry saluted, and the officer of the day, struck by his +figure and his glowing face as much as by the nature of his errand, +stopped to shake hands and say, “Well, good luck, Kittering, and may you +bring us better news than the last two times.” + +Rolf knew how to travel now; he began softly. At a long, easy stride he +went for half an hour, then at a swinging trot for a mile or two. Five +miles an hour he could make, but there was one great obstacle to speed +at this season--every stream was at flood, all were difficult to cross. +The brooks he could wade or sometimes could fell a tree across them, but +the rivers were too wide to bridge, too cold and dangerous to swim. In +nearly every case he had to make a raft. A good scout takes no chances. +A slight raft means a risky passage; a good one, a safe crossing but +loss of time in preparations. Fifteen good rafts did Rolf make in that +cross-country journey of three days: dry spruce logs he found each time +and bound them together with leather-wood and withes of willow. It meant +a delay of at least an hour each time; that is five hours each day. But +the time was wisely spent. The days were lengthening; he could travel +much at dusk. Soon he was among settlements. Rumours he got at a +settler's cabin of Sir George Prevost's attack on Sackett's Harbour and +the gallant repulse and at morning of the fourth day he came on the hill +above Sackett's Harbour--the same hill where he had stood three months +before. It was with something like a clutching of his breath that he +gazed; his past experiences suggested dreadful thoughts but no--thank +God, “Old Glory” floated from the pole. He identified himself to the +sentinels and the guard, entered the fort at a trot, and reported at +headquarters. + +There was joy on every side. At last the tide had turned. Commodore +Chauncey, after sweeping Lake Ontario, had made a sudden descent on York +(Toronto now) the capital of Upper Canada, had seized and destroyed +it. Sir George Prevost, taking advantage of Chauncey's being away, had +attacked Sackett's Harbour, but, in spite of the absence of the fleet, +the resistance had been so vigorous that in a few days the siege was +abandoned. + +There were shot holes in walls and roofs, there were a few wounded +in the hospital, the green embankments were torn, and the flag-pole +splintered; but the enemy was gone, the starry flag was floating on the +wind, and the sturdy little garrison filled with a spirit that grows +only in heroes fighting for their homes. + +How joyfully different from Ogdensburg. + + + +Chapter 72. Scouting Across Country + +That very night, Rolf turned again with the latest news and the +commandant's reports. + +He was learning the country well now, and, with the wonderful +place-memory of a woodman, he was able to follow his exact back trail. +It might not have been the best way, but it gave him this advantage--in +nearly every case he was able to use again the raft he had made in +coming, and thereby saved many hours of precious time. + +On the way out he had seen a good many deer and one bear, and had heard +the howling of wolves every night; but always at a distance. On the +second night, in the very heart of the wilderness, the wolves were noisy +and seemed very near. Rolf was camping in the darkness. He made a small +fire with such stuff as he could find by groping, then, when the fire +blazed, he discovered by its light a dead spruce some twenty yards away. +Taking his hatchet he went toward this, and, as he did so, a wolf rose +up, with its forefeet on a log, only five yards beyond the tree and +gazed curiously at him. Others were heard calling; presently this wolf +raised its muzzle and uttered a long smooth howl. + +Rolf had left his pistol back at the fire; he dared not throw his +hatchet, as that would have left him unarmed. He stooped, picked up a +stick, and threw that; the wolf ducked so that it passed over, then, +stepping back from the log, stood gazing without obvious fear or menace. +The others were howling; Rolf felt afraid. He backed cautiously to the +fire, got his pistol and came again to the place, but nothing more did +he see of the wolf, though he heard them all night and kept up two great +fires for a protection. + +In the morning he started as usual, and before half an hour he was aware +of a wolf, and later of two, trotting along his trail, a few hundred +yards behind. They did not try to overtake him; indeed, when he stopped, +they did the same; and when he trotted, they, true to their dog-like +nature, ran more rapidly in pursuit. How Rolf did wish for his long +rifle; but they gave no opportunity for a shot with the pistol. They +acted, indeed, as though they knew their safe distance and the exact +range of the junior gun. The scout made a trap for them by stealing back +after he had crossed a ridge, and hiding near his own trail. But the +wind conveyed a warning, and the wolves merely sat down and waited +till he came out and went on. All day long these two strange ban dogs +followed him and gave no sign of hunger or malice; then, after he +crossed a river, at three in the afternoon, he saw no more of them. +Years after, when Rolf knew them better, he believed they followed him +out of mild curiosity, or possibly in the hope that he would kill a deer +in which they might share. And when they left him, it was because they +were near the edge of their own home region; they had seen him off their +hunting grounds. + +That night he camped sixty miles from Ticonderoga, but he was resolved +to cover the distance in one day. Had he not promised to be back in a +week? The older hands had shaken their heads incredulously, and he, in +the pride of his legs, was determined to be as good as his promise. He +scarcely dared sleep lest he should oversleep. At ten he lay down. At +eleven the moon was due to rise; as soon as that was three hours high +there would be light enough, and he proposed to go on. At least half +a dozen times he woke with a start, fearing he had overslept, but +reassured by a glance at the low-hung moon, he had slumbered again. + +At last the moon was four hours high, and the woods were plain in the +soft light. A horned owl “hoo-hoo-ed,” and a far-off wolf uttered +a drawn-out, soft, melancholy cry, as Rolf finished his dried meat, +tightened his belt, and set out on a long, hard run that, in the days of +Greece, would have furnished the theme of many a noble epic poem. + +No need to consult his compass. The blazing lamp of the dark sky was his +guide, straight east his course, varied a little by hills and lakes, but +nearly the crow-flight line. At first his pace was a steady, swinging +stride; then after a mile he came to an open lake shore down which he +went at a six-mile trot; and then an alder thicket through which his +progress was very slow; but that soon passed, and for half a mile he +splashed through swamps with water a foot deep: nor was he surprised +at length to see it open into a little lake with a dozen beaver huts in +view. “Splash, prong” their builders went at his approach, but he made +for the hillside; the woods were open, the moonlight brilliant now, and +here he trotted at full swing as long as the way was level or down, +but always walked on the uphill. A sudden noise ahead was followed by +a tremendous crashing and crackling of the brush. For a moment it +continued, and what it meant, Rolf never knew or guessed. + +“Trot, trot,” he went, reeling off six miles in the open, two or perhaps +three in the thickets, but on and on, ever eastward. Hill after hill, +swamp after swamp, he crossed, lake after lake he skirted round, and, +when he reached some little stream, he sought a log bridge or prodded +with a pole till he found a ford and crossed, then ran a mile or two to +make up loss of time. + +Tramp, tramp, tramp, and his steady breath and his steady heart kept +unremitting rhythm. + + + +Chapter 73. Rolf Makes a Record + +Twelve miles were gone when the foreglow--the first cold dawn-light +showed, and shining across his path ahead was a mighty rolling stream. +Guided by the now familiar form of Goodenow Peak he made for this, the +Hudson's lordly flood. There was his raft securely held, with paddle and +pole near by, and he pushed off with all the force of his young vigour. +Jumping and careening with the stream in its freshet flood, the raft and +its hardy pilot were served with many a whirl and some round spins, but +the long pole found bottom nearly everywhere, and not ten minutes passed +before the traveller sprang ashore, tied up his craft, then swung and +tramped and swung. + +Over the hills of Vanderwhacker, under the woods of Boreas. Tramp, +tramp, splash, tramp, wringing and sopping, but strong and hot, tramp, +tramp, tramp, tramp. The partridge whirred from his path, the gray deer +snorted, and the panther sneaked aside. Tramp, tramp, trot, trot, and +the Washburn Ridge was blue against the sunrise. Trot, trot, over the +low, level, mile-long slope he went, and when the Day-god burnt the +upper hill-rim he was by brown Tahawus flood and had covered eighteen +miles. + +By the stream he stopped to drink. A partridge cock, in the pride of +spring, strutted arrogantly on a log. Rolf drew his pistol, fired, then +hung the headless body while he made a camper's blaze: an oatcake, the +partridge, and river water were his meal. His impulse was to go on at +once. His reason, said “go slow.” So he waited for fifteen minutes. Then +again, beginning with a slow walk, he ere long added to his pace. In +half an hour he was striding and in an hour the steady “trot, trot,” + that slackened only for the hills or swamps. In an hour more he was +on the Washburn Ridge, and far away in the east saw Schroon Lake that +empties in the river Schroon; and as he strode along, exulting in his +strength, he sang in his heart for joy. Again a gray wolf cantered on +his trail, and the runner laughed, without a thought of fear. He seemed +to know the creature better now; knew it as a brother, for it gave +no hostile sound, but only seemed to trot, trot, for the small joy of +running with a runner, as a swallow or an antelope will skim along by +a speeding train. For an hour or more it matched his pace, then left as +though its pleasant stroll was done, and Rolf kept on and on and on. + +The spring sun soared on high, the day grew warm at noon. Schroon River +just above the lake was in his path, and here he stopped to rest. Here, +with the last of his oatcake and a little tea, he made his final meal; +thirty eight miles had he covered since he rose; his clothes were torn, +his moccasins worn, but his legs were strong, his purpose sure; only +twenty-two miles now, and his duty would be done; his honours won. What +should he do, push on at once? No, he meant to rest an hour. He made a +good fire by a little pool, and using a great mass of caribou moss as a +sponge, he had a thorough rub-down. He got out his ever-ready needle +and put his moccasins in good shape; he dried his clothes and lay on his +back till the hour was nearly gone. Then he girded himself for this the +final run. He was weary, indeed, but he was far from spent, and the iron +will that had yearly grown in force was there with its unconquerable +support. + +Slowly at start, soon striding, and at last in the famous jog trot of +the scout he went. The sky was blackened with clouds at length, and the +jealous, howling east wind rolled up in rain; the spindrift blurred the +way; the heavy showers of spring came down and drenched him; but his +pack was safe and he trotted on and on. Then long, deep swamps of alder +barred his path, and, guided only by the compass, Rolf pushed in and +through and ever east. Barely a mile an hour in the thickest part +he made, but lagged not; drenched and footsore, warm and torn, but +doggedly, steadily on. At three he had made a scant seven miles; then +the level, open wood of Thunderbolt was reached and his stride became a +run; trot, trot, trot, at six-mile gait, for but fifteen miles remained. +Sustained, inspired, the bringer of good news, he halted not and +faltered not, but on and on. + +Tramp tramp, tramp tramp--endless, tireless, hour by hour. At five he +was on Thunder Creek, scarce eight miles more to the goal; his limbs +were sore, his feet were sore; bone tired was he, but his heart was +filled with joy. + +“News of battle, news of victory” he was bringing, and the thought lent +strength; the five mires passed, the way was plain with good roads now, +but the runner was so weary. He was striding, his running was done, the +sun was low in the west, his feet were bleeding, the courier was brain +worn and leg worn, but he strode and strode. He passed by homes but +heeded them not. + +“Come in and rest,” called one who saw nothing but a weary traveller. +Rolf shook his head, but gave no word and strode along. A mile--a short +mile now; he must hold out; if he sat down he feared he could not rise. +He came at last in sight of the fort; then, gathering all his force, he +broke into a trot, weak, so weak that had he fallen, he could scarcely +have got up, and slow, but faster than a walk: and so, as the red sun +sank, he passed the gate. He had no right to give tidings to any but the +general, yet they read it in his eyes. The guard broke into a cheer, +and trotting still, though reeling, Rolf had kept his word, had made his +run, had brought the news, and had safely reached his goal. + + + +Chapter 74. Van Trumper's Again + +Why should the scout bringing good news be differently received from the +one that brings the ill? He did not make, the news, he simply did his +duty; the same in both cases. He is merely the telegraph instrument. +Yet it is so ever. King Pharaoh slew the bearer of ill-tidings; that was +human nature. And General Hampton brought in the tall stripling to his +table, to honour him, to get the fullest details, to glory in every +item as though it all were due to himself. Rolf's wonderful journey was +dilated on, and in the reports to Albany he was honourably mentioned for +exceptionally meritorious service as a bearer of despatches. + +For three days Flying Kittering was hero of the post; then other runners +came with other news and life went on. + +Hitherto the scouts had worn no uniform, but the execution of one of +their number, who was captured by the British and treated as a spy, +resulted in orders that all be formally enlisted and put in uniform. + +Not a few withdrew from the service; some, like Quonab, reluctantly +consented, but Rolf was developing the fighting spirit, and was proud to +wear the colours. + +The drill was tedious enough, but it was of short duration for him. +Despatches were to go to Albany. The general, partly to honour Rolf, +selected him. + +“Are you ready for another run, Kittering?” + +“Yes, sir.” + +“Then prepare to start as soon as possible for Fort George and Albany. +Do you want a mate?” + +“I should like a paddler as far as Fort George.” + +“Well, pick your man.” + +“Quonab.” + +And when they set out, for the first time Rolf was in the stern, the +post of guidance and command. So once more the two were travelling again +with Skookum in the bow. It was afternoon when they started and the +four-mile passage of the creek was slow, but down the long, glorious +vista of the noble George they went at full canoe-flight, five miles an +hour, and twenty-five miles of the great fair-way were reeled and past +when they lighted their nightly fire. + +At dawn-cry of the hawk they sped away, and in spite of a rising wind +they made six miles in two hours. + +As they approached the familiar landing of Van Trumper's farm, Skookum +began to show a most zestful interest that recalled the blackened pages +of his past. “Quonab, better use that,” and Rolf handed a line with +which Skookum was secured and thus led to make a new record, for this +was the first time in his life that he landed at Van Trumper's without +sacrificing a chicken in honour of the joyful occasion. + +They entered the house as the family were sitting down to breakfast. + +“Mein Hemel! mein Hemel! It is Rolf and Quonab; and vere is dot tam dog? +Marta, vere is de chickens? Vy, Rolf, you bin now a giant, yah. Mein +Gott, it is I am glad! I did tink der cannibals you had eat; is it dem +Canadian or cannibal? I tink it all one the same, yah!” + +Marta was actually crying, the little ones were climbing over Rolf's +knee, and Annette, tall and sixteen now, stood shyly by, awaiting a +chance to shake hands. Home is the abiding place of those we love; it +may be a castle or a cave, a shanty or a chateau, a moving van, a tepee, +or a canal boat, a fortress or the shady side of a bush, but it is home, +if there indeed we meet the faces that are ever in the heart, and find +the hands whose touch conveys the friendly glow. Was there any other +spot on earth where he could sit by the fire and feel that “hereabout +are mine own, the people I love?” Rolf knew it now--Van Trumper's was +his home. + +Talks of the war, of disasters by land, and of glorious victories on +the sea, where England, long the unquestioned mistress of the waves, +had been humbled again and again by the dauntless seamen of her Western +blood; talks of big doings by the nation, and, yet more interesting, +small doings by the travellers, and the breakfast passed all too soon. +The young scout rose, for he was on-duty, but the long rollers on the +lake forbade the going forth. Van's was a pleasant place to wait, but +he chafed at the delay; his pride would have him make a record on every +journey. But wait he must. Skookum tied safely to his purgatorial post +whined indignantly--and with head cocked on one side, picked out +the very hen he would like to utilize--as soon as released from his +temporary embarrassment. Quonab went out on a rock to bum some tobacco +and pray for calm, and Rolf, ever active, followed Van to look over +the stock and buildings, and hear of minor troubles. The chimney was +unaccountably given to smoking this year. Rolf took an axe and with two +blows cut down a vigorous growth shrubbery that stood above the chimney +on the west, and the smoking ceased. Buck ox had a lame foot and would +allow no one even to examine it. But a skilful ox-handler easily hobbles +an ox, throws him near some small tree, and then, by binding the lame +foot to the tree, can have a free hand. It proved a simple matter, a +deep-sunk, rusty nail. And when the nail was drawn and the place washed +clean with hot brine, kind nature was left in confidence to do the +rest. They drifted back to the house now. Tomas met them shouting out a +mixture of Dutch and English and holding by the cover Annette's book of +the “Good Girl.” But its rightful owner rescued the precious volume and +put it on the shelf. + +“Have you read it through, Annette?” + +“Yes,” was the reply, for she had learned to read before they left +Schuylerville. + +“How do you like it?” + +“Didn't like it a bit; I like 'Robinson Crusoe',” was the candid reply. + +The noon hour came, still the white rollers were pounding the shore. + +“If it does not calm by one o'clock I'll go on afoot.” + +So off he went with the packet, leaving Quonab to follow and await his +return at Fort George. In Schuyler settlement he spent the night and at +noon next day was in Albany. + +How it stirred his soul to see the busy interest, the marching of men, +the sailing of vessels, and above all to hear of more victories on the +high seas. What mattered a few frontier defeats in the north, when the +arrogant foe that had spurned and insulted them before the world had now +been humbled again and again. + +Young Van Cortlandt was away, but the governor's reception of him +reflected the electric atmosphere--the country's pride in her sons. + +Rolf had a matter of his own to settle. At the bookseller's he asked for +and actually secured a copy of the great book--“Robinson Crusoe.” It was +with a thrilling feeling of triumph that he wrote Annette's name in it +and stowed it in his bag. + +He left Albany next day in the gray dawn. Thanks to his uniform, he got +a twenty-five mile lift with a traveller who drove a fast team, and the +blue water was glinting back the stars when he joined Quonab at Fort +George, some sixty miles away. + +In the calm betwixt star-peep and sun-up they were afloat. It was a +great temptation to stop at Hendrik's for a spell, but breakfast was +over, the water was calm, and duty called him. He hallooed, then they +drew near enough to hand the book ashore. Skookum growled, probably at +the hens, and the family waved their aprons as he sped on. Thirty miles +of lake and four miles of Ticonderoga Creek they passed and the packet +was delivered in four days and three hours since leaving. + +The general smiled and his short but amply sufficient praise was merely, +“You're a good 'un.” + + + +Chapter 75. Scouting in Canada + +“Thar is two things,” said Si Sylvanne to the senate, “that every +national crisis is bound to show up: first, a lot o' dum fools in +command; second a lot o great commanders in the ranks. An' fortunately +before the crisis is over the hull thing is sure set right, and the men +is where they oughter be.” + +How true this was the nation was just beginning to learn. The fools in +command were already demonstrated, and the summer of 1813 was replete +with additional evidence. May, June, and July passed with many +journeyings for Rolf and many times with sad news. The disasters at +Stony Creek, Beaver Dam, and Niagara were severe blows to the army on +the western frontier. In June on Lake Champlain the brave but reckless +Lieutenant Sidney Smith had run his two sloops into a trap. Thus the +Growler and the Eagle were lost to the Americans, and strengthened by +that much the British navy on the lake. + +Encouraged by these successes, the British north of Lake Champlain made +raid after raid into American territory, destroying what they could not +carry off. + +Rolf and Quonab were sent to scout in that country and if possible give +timely notice of raiders in force. + +The Americans were averse to employing Indians in warfare; the British +entertained no such scruples and had many red-skinned allies. Quonab's +case, however, was unusual, since he was guaranteed by his white +partner, and now he did good service, for he knew a little French and +could prowl among the settlers without anyone suspecting him of being an +American scout. + +Thus he went alone and travelled far. He knew the country nearly to +Montreal and late in July was lurking about Odletown, when he overheard +scattered words of a conversation that made him eager for more. “Colonel +Murray--twelve hundred men--four hundred men--” + +Meanwhile Rolf was hiding in the woods about La Colle Mill. Company +after company of soldiers he saw enter, until at least five hundred were +there. When night came down, he decided to risk a scarer approach. He +left the woods and walked cautiously across the open lands about. + +The hay had been cut and most of it drawn in, but there was in the +middle of the field a hay-cock. Rolf was near this when he heard sounds +of soldiers from the mill. Soon large numbers came out, carrying their +blankets. Evidently there was not room for them in the mill, and they +were to camp on the field. + +The scout began to retreat when sounds behind showed that another +body of soldiers was approaching from that direction and he was caught +between the two. There was only one place to hide and that was beneath +the haycock. He lifted its edge and crawled under, but it was full of +thistles and brambles; indeed, that was why it was left, and he had the +benefit of all the spines about him. + +His heart beat fast as he heard the clank of arms and the trampling; +they came nearer, then the voices became more distinct. He heard +unmistakable evidence too that both bodies were camping for the night, +and that he was nearly surrounded. Not knowing what move was best he +kept quiet. The men were talking aloud, then they began preparing their +beds and he heard some one say, “There's a hay-cock; bring some of +that.” + +A soldier approached to get an armful of the hay, but sputtered out a +chapter of malediction as his bare hands touched the masses of thistle +and briers. His companions laughed at his mishap. He went to the fire +and vowed he'd stick a brand in it and back he came with a burning +stick. + +Rolf was all ready to make a dash for his life as soon as the cover +should take fire, and he peered up into the soldier's face as the latter +blew on the brand; but the flame had died, the thistles were not dry, +and the fire was a failure; so, growling again, the soldier threw down +the smoking stick and went away. As soon as he was safely afar, Rolf +gathered a handful of soil and covered the red embers. + +It was a critical moment and his waiting alone had saved him. + +Two soldiers came with their blankets and spread them near. For a time +they smoked and talked. One of them was short of tobacco; the other +said, “Never mind, we'll get plenty in Plattsburg,” and they guffawed. + +Then he heard, “As soon as the colonel” and other broken phrases. + +It was a most difficult place for Rolf; he was tormented with thistles +in his face and down his neck; he dared not change his position; and +how long he must stay was a problem. He would try to escape when all was +still. + +The nearer soldiers settled to rest now. All was very quiet when Rolf +cautiously peeped forth to see two dreadful things: first, a couple +of sentries pacing up and down the edges of the camp; second, a broad, +brilliant, rising moon. How horrible that lovely orb could be Rolf never +before knew. + +Now, what next? He was trapped in the middle of a military camp +and undoubtedly La Colle Mill was the rendezvous for some important +expedition. + +He had ample time to think it all over. Unless he could get away before +day he would surely be discovered. His uniform might save his life, +but soldiers have an awkward, hasty way of dealing summarily with a +spy--then discovering too late that he was in uniform. + +From time to time he peered forth, but the scene was unchanged--the +sleeping regiment, the pacing sentries, the ever-brightening moon. Then +the guard was changed, and the sentries relieved selected of all places +for their beds, the bank beside the hay-cock. Again one of them went to +help himself to some hay for a couch; and again the comic anger as he +discovered it to be a bed of thorns. How thankful Rolf was for those +annoying things that pricked his face and neck. + +He was now hemmed in on every side and, not knowing what to do, did +nothing. For a couple of hours he lay still, then actually fell asleep. +He was awakened by a faint rustling near his head and peered forth to +see a couple of field mice playing about. + +The moon was very bright now, and the movements of the mice were plain; +they were feeding on the seeds of plants in the hay-cock, and from time +to time dashed under--the hay. Then they gambolled farther off and were +making merry over a pod of wild peas when a light form came skimming +noiselessly over the field. There was a flash, a hurried rush, a clutch, +a faint squeak, and one of the mice was borne away in the claws of its +feathered foe. The survivor scrambled under the hay over Rolf's face and +somewhere into hiding. + +The night passed in many short naps. The bugle sounded at daybreak and +the soldiers arose to make breakfast. Again one approached to use a +handful of hay for fire-kindler, and again the friendly thistles did +their part. More and more now his ear caught suggestive words and +sounds--“Plattsburg”--“the colonel”--etc. + +The breakfast smelt wonderfully captivating--poor Rolf was famished. The +alluring aroma of coffee permeated the hay-cock. He had his dried meat, +but his need was water; he was tormented with thirst, and stiff and +tortured; he was making the hardest fight of his life. It seemed long, +though doubtless it was less than half an hour before the meal was +finished, and to Rolf's relief there were sounds of marching and the +noises were drowned in the distance. + +By keeping his head covered with hay and slowly raising it, he was safe +to take a look around. It was a bright, sunny morning. The hay-cock, +or thistle-cock, was one of several that had been rejected. It was a +quarter-mile from cover; the soldiers were at work cutting timber and +building a stockade around the mill; and, most dreadful to relate, a +small dog was prowling about, looking for scraps on the scene of the +soldiers' breakfast. If that dog came near his hiding-place, he knew the +game was up. At such close quarters, you can fool a man but not a dog. + +Fortunately the breakfast tailings proved abundant, and the dog went off +to assist a friend of his in making sundry interesting smell analyses +along the gate posts of the stockade. + + + +Chapter 76. The Duel + +This was temporary relief, but left no suggestion of complete escape. +He lay there till nearly noon suffering more and more from the cramped +position and thirst, and utterly puzzled as to the next move. + +“When ye don't like whar ye air, git up without any fuss, and go whar +ye want to be,” was what Sylvanne once said to him, and it came to Rolf +with something like a comic shock. The soldiers were busy in the woods +and around the forges. In half an hour it would be noon and they might +come back to eat. + +Rolf rose without attempting any further concealment, then stopped, made +a bundle of the stuff that had sheltered him and, carrying this on his +shoulder, strode boldly across the field toward the woods. + +His scout uniform was inconspicuous; the scouts on duty at the mill saw +only one of themselves taking a bundle of hay round to the stables. + +He reached the woods absolutely unchallenged. After a few yards in its +friendly shade, he dropped the thorny bundle and strode swiftly toward +his own camp. He had not gone a hundred yards before a voice of French +type cried “'Alt,” and he was face to face with a sentry whose musket +was levelled at him. + +A quick glance interchanged, and each gasped out the other's name. + +“Francois la Colle!” + +“Rolf Kittering! Mon Dieu! I ought to shoot you, Rolf; I cannot, I +cannot! But run, run! I'll shoot over your head,” and his kindly eyes +filled with tears. + +Rolf needed no second hint; he ran like a deer, and the musket ball +rattled the branches above his shoulders. + +In a few minutes other soldiers came running and from La Colle they +heard of the hostile spy in camp. + +“I shoot; I t'ink maybe I not hit eem; maybe some brood dere? No, dat +netting.” + +There were both runners and trackers in camp. They were like bloodhounds +and they took up the trail of the fugitive. But Rolf was playing his own +game now; he was “Flying Kittering.” A crooked trail is hard to follow, +and, going at the long stride that had made his success, he left many +a crook and turn. Before two miles I they gave it up and the fugitive +coming to the river drank a deep and cooling draught, the first he had +had that day. Five miles through is the dense forest that lies between +La Colle and the border. He struck a creek affluent of the Richelieu +River and followed to its forks, which was the place of rendezvous with +Quonab. + +It was evening as he drew near and after long, attentive listening he +gave the cry of the barred owl: + +The answer came: a repetition of the last line, and a minute later the +two scouts were together. + +As they stood, they were startled by a new, sudden answer, an exact +repetition of the first call. Rolf had recovered his rifle from its +hiding place and instantly both made ready for some hostile prowler; +then after a long silence he gave the final wail line “hoooo-aw” and +that in the woods means, “Who are you?” + +Promptly the reply came: + +“Wa wah wa wah Wa wah wa hoooo-aw.” + +But this was the wrong reply. It should have been only the last half. +The imitation was perfect, except, perhaps, on the last note, which +was a trifle too human. But the signal was well done; it was an expert +calling, either an Indian or some thoroughly seasoned scout; yet Quonab +was not deceived into thinking it an owl. He touched his cheek and +his coat, which, in the scout sign language, means “red coat,” i. e., +Britisher. + +Rolf and his partner got silently out of sight, each with his rlile +cocked and ready to make a hole in any red uniform or badge that might +show itself. Then commenced a very peculiar duel, for evidently the +enemy was as clever as themselves and equally anxious to draw them out +of cover. + +Wa-wah-wa hooo-aw called the stranger, giving the right answer in the +wrong place. He was barely a hundred yards off, and, as the two strained +their senses to locate him, they heard a faint click that told of his +approach. + +Rolf turned his head and behind a tree uttered again the Wa-wah-a--hoo +which muffled by his position would convince the foe that he was +retreating. The answer came promptly and much nearer: + +Wa--wah--wa--hoooo-aw. + +Good! the medicine was working. So Rolf softened his voice still more, +while Quonab got ready to shoot. + +The Wa--wa--hooo-aw that came in answer this time was startlingly clear +and loud and nearly perfect in intonation, but again betrayed by the +human timbre of the aw. A minute or two more and they would reach a +climax. + +After another wait, Rolf muffled his voice and gave the single hooo-aw, +and a great broad-winged owl came swooping through the forest, alighted +on a tree overhead, peered about, then thrilled them with his weird: + +Wa--hoo--wa--boo + +Wa--hoo--wa--hooooooooo-aw, the last note with the singular human +quality that had so completely set them astray. + + + +Chapter 77. Why Plattsburg Was Raided + + The owl's hull reputation for wisdom is built up on lookin' + wise and keepin' mum.--Sayings of St Sylvanne + +THE owl incident was one of the comedies of their life, now they had +business on hand. The scraps of news brought by Quonab pieced out with +those secured by Rolf, spelt clearly this: that Colonel Murray with +about a thousand men was planning a raid on Plattsburg. + +Their duty was to notify General Hampton without delay. + +Burlington, forty miles away, was headquarters. Plattsburg, twenty miles +away, was marked for spoil. + +One more item they must add: Was the raid to baby land or water? If the +latter, then they must know what preparations were being made at the +British naval station, Isle au Noix. They travelled all night through +the dark woods, to get there, though it was but seven miles away, and in +the first full light they saw the gallant array of two warships, three +gunboats, and about fifty long boats, all ready, undoubtedly waiting +only for a change in the wind, which at this season blew on Champlain +almost steadily form the south. + +A three-hour, ten-mile tramp through ways now familiar brought Rolf and +his partner to the north of the Big Chazy where the canoe was hidden, +and without loss of time they pushed off for Burlington, thirty miles +away. The wind was head on, and when four hours later they stopped for +noon, they had made not more than a dozen miles. + +All that afternoon they had to fight a heavy sea; this meant they must +keep near shore in case of an upset, and so lengthened the course; but +it also meant that the enemy would not move so long as this wind kept +up. + +It was six at night before the scouts ran into Burlington Harbour and +made for Hampton's headquarters. + +His aide received them and, after learning that they had news, went in +to the general. From the inner room now they heard in unnecessarily loud +tones the great man's orders to, “Bring them in, sah.” + +The bottles on the table, his purple visage, and thick tongued speech +told how well-founded were the current whispers. + +“Raid on Plattsburg? Ha! I hope so. I only hope so. Gentlemen,” and +he turned to his staff, “all I ask is a chance to get at them--Ha, Ha! +Here, help yourself, Macomb,” and the general pushed the decanter to a +grave young officer who was standing by. + +“No, thank you, sir,” was the only reply. + +The general waved his hand, the scouts went out, puzzled and ashamed. +Was this the brains of the army? No wonder our men are slaughtered. + +Now Macomb ventured to suggest: “Have you any orders, sir? These scouts +are considered quite reliable. I understand from them that the British +await only a change of wind. They have between one thousand and two +thousand men.” + +“Plenty of time in the morning, sah. Plattsburg will be the bait of my +trap, not one of them shall return alive,” and the general dismissed his +staff that he might fortify himself against a threatened cold. + +Another young man, Lieut. Thomas MacDonough, the naval commandant, now +endeavoured to stir him by a sense of danger. First he announced that +his long boats, and gunboats were ready and in six hours he could +transfer three thousand troops from Burlington to Plattsburg. Then he +ventured to urge the necessity for action. + +Champlain is a lake of two winds. It had brown from the south for two +weeks; now a north wind was likely to begin any day. MacDonough urged +this point, but all in vain, and, shocked and humiliated, the young man +obeyed the order “to wait till his advice was asked.” + +The next day Hampton ordered a review, not an embarkation, and was not +well enough to appear in person. + +The whole army knew now of the situation of affairs, and the militia in +particular were not backward in expressing their minds. + +Next day, July 30th, the wind changed. Hampton did nothing. On the +morning of July 31st they heard the booming of guns in the north, and at +night their scouts came with the news that the raid was on. Plattsburg +was taken and pillaged by a force less than one third of those held at +Burlington. + +There were bitter, burning words on the lips of the rank and file, and +perfunctory rebukes on the lips of the young officers when they chanced +to overhear. The law was surely working out as set forth by Si Sylvanne: +“The fools in command, the leaders in the ranks.” + +And now came news of fresh disasters--the battles of Beaverdam, +Stony Creek, and Niagara River. It was the same story in nearly every +case--brave fighting men, ill-drilled, but dead shots, led into traps by +incompetent commanders. + +In September Lieutenant Macomb was appointed to command at Plattsburg. +This proved as happy an omen as it was a wise move. Immediately after, +in all this gloom, came the news of Perry's famous victory on Lake Erie, +marking a new era for the American cause, followed by the destruction of +Moraviantown and the British army which held it. + +Stirred at last to action General Wilkinson sent despatches to Hampton +to arrange an attack on Montreal. There was no possibility of failure, +he said, for the sole defence of Montreal was 600 marines. His army +consisted of 8000 men. Hampton's consisted of 4000. By a union of these +at the mouth of Chateaugay River, they would form an invincible array. + +So it seemed. Rolf had not yet seen any actual fighting and began to +long for the front. But his powers as a courier kept him ever busy +bearing despatches. The road to Sackett's Harbour and thence to +Ogdensburg and Covington, and back to Plattsburg he knew thoroughly, and +in his canoe he had visited every port on Lakes Champlain and George. + +He was absent at Albany in the latter half of October and first of +November, but the ill news travelled fast. Hampton requested MacDonough +to “swoop down on Isle au Noix”--an insane request, compliance with +which would have meant certain destruction to the American fleet. +MacDonough's general instructions were: “Cooperate with the army, but +at any price retain supremacy of the lake,” and he declined to receive +Hampton's order. + +Threatening court-martials and vengeance on his return, Hampton now set +out by land; but at Chateaugay he was met by a much smaller force of +Canadians who resisted him so successfully that he ordered a retreat and +his army retired to Plattsburg. + +Meanwhile General Wilkinson had done even worse. His army numbered 8000. +Of these the rear guard were 2500. A body of 800 Canadians harassed +their line of march. Turning to brush away this annoyance, the Americans +were wholly defeated at Chrystler's farm and, giving up the attack on +Montreal, Wilkinson crossed the St. Lawrence and settled for the winter +at Chateaugay. + +In December, America scored an important advance by relieving Hampton of +his command. + +As the spring drew near, it was clearly Wilkinson's first play to +capture La Colle Mill, which had been turned into a fortress of +considerable strength and a base for attack on the American border, some +five miles away. + +Of all the scouts Rolf best knew that region, yet he was the one left +out of consideration and despatched with papers to Plattsburg. The +attack was bungled from first to last, and when Wilkinson was finally +repulsed, it was due to Macomb that the retreat was not a rout. + +But good came out of this evil, for Wilkinson was recalled and the law +was nearly fulfilled--the incompetents were gone. General Macomb was in +command of the land force and MacDonough of the Lake. + + + +Chapter 78. Rumours and Papers + +MacDonough's orders were to hold control of the Lake. How he did it will +be seen. The British fleet at Isle au Noix was slightly stronger than +his own, therefore he established a navy yard at Vergennes, in Vermont, +seven miles up the Otter River, and at the mouth erected earthworks +and batteries. He sent for Brown (of the firm of Adam and Noah Brown) +a famous New York shipbuilder. Brown agreed to launch a ship of +twenty-four guns in sixty days. The trees were standing in the forest on +March 2d the keel was laid March 7th, and on April 11th the Saratoga was +launched--forty days after the timbers were green standing trees on the +hills. + +Other vessels were begun and pushed as expeditiously. And now +MacDonough's wisdom in choice of the navy yard was seen, for a British +squadron was sent to destroy his infant fleet, or at least sink +stone-boats across the exit so as to bottle it up. + +But their attempts were baffled by the batteries which the far-seeing +American had placed at the river's mouth. + +The American victory at Chippewa was followed by the defeat at Lundy's +Lane, and on August 25th the city of Washington was captured by the +British and its public buildings destroyed. These calamities, instead of +dampening the spirits of the army, roused the whole nation at last to +a realization of the fact that they were at war. Fresh troops and +plentiful supplies were voted, the deadwood commanders were retired, and +the real men revealed by the two campaigns were given place and power. + +At the same time, Great Britain, having crushed Napoleon, was in a +position to greatly reinforce her American army, and troops seasoned in +Continental campaigns were poured into Canada. + +All summer Rolf was busied bearing despatches. During the winter he +and Quonab had built a birch canoe on special lines for speed; it would +carry two men but no baggage. + +With this he could make fully six miles an hour for a short time, and +average five on smooth water. In this he had crossed and recrossed +Champlain, and paddled its length, till he knew every bay and headland. +The overland way to Sackett's Harbour he had traversed several times; +the trail from Plattsburg to Covington he knew in all weathers, and had +repeatedly covered its sixty miles in less than twenty-four hours on +foot. The route he picked and followed was in later years the line +selected for the military highway between these two camps. + +But the chief scene of his activities was the Canadian wilderness at the +north end of Lake Champlain. Chazy, Champlain, Odelltown, La Colle +Mill, Isle au Noix, and Richelieu River he knew intimately and had also +acquired a good deal of French in learning their country. + +It was characteristic of General Wilkinson to ignore the scout who knew +and equally characteristic of his successors, Izard and Macomb, to seek +and rely on the best man. + +The news that he brought in many different forms was that the British +were again concentrating an army to strike at Plattsburg and Albany. + +Izard on the land at Plattsburg and Champlain, and Macomb at Burlington +strained all their resources to meet the invader at fair terms. Izard +had 4000 men assembled, when an extraordinary and devastating order from +Washington compelled him to abandon the battle front at Champlain and +lead his troops to Sackett's Harbour where all was peace. He protested +like a statesman, then obeyed like a soldier, leaving Macomb in command +of the land forces of Lake Champlain, with, all told, some 3400 men. On +the day that Izard left Champlain, the British troops, under Brisbane, +advanced and occupied his camp. + +As soon as Rolf had seen them arrive, and had gauged their number, he +sent Quonab back to report, and later retired by night ten miles up the +road to Chazy. He was well known to many of the settlers and was +welcome where ever known, not only because he was a patriot fighting his +country's battles, but for his own sake, for he was developing into +a handsome, alert, rather silent youth. It is notorious that in the +drawing-room, given equal opportunity, the hunter has the advantage over +the farmer. He has less self-consciousness, more calm poise. He is not +troubled about what to do with his feet and hands, and is more convinced +of his native dignity and claims to respect. In the drawin-room Rolf +was a hunter: the leading inhabitants of the region around received him +gladly and honoured him. He was guest at Judge Hubbell's in Chazy, in +September of 1814. Every day he scouted in the neighbourhood and at +night returned to the hospitable home of the judge. + +On the 12th of September, from the top of a tall tree on a distant +wooded hill, he estimated the force at Champlain to be 10,000 to 15,000 +men. Already their bodyguard was advancing on Chazy. + +Judge Hubbell and anxious neighbours hastily assembled now, discussed +with Rolf the situation and above all, “What shall we do with our +families?” One man broke into a storm of hate and vituperation against +the British. “Remember the burning of Washington and the way they +treated the women at Bladensburg.” + +“All of which about the women was utterly disproved, except in one +case, and in that the criminal was shot by order of his own commander,” + retorted Hubbell. + +At Plattsburg others maintained that the British had harmed no one. +Colonel Murray had given strict orders that all private property be +absolutely respected. Nothing but government property was destroyed and +only that which could be construed into war stores and buildings. What +further damage was done was the result of accident or error. Officers +were indeed quartered on the inhabitants, but they paid for what +they got, and even a carpet destroyed by accident was replaced months +afterward by a British officer who had not the means at the time. + +So it was agreed that Hubbell with Rolf and the village fathers and +brothers should join their country's army, leaving wives and children +behind. + +There were wet bearded cheeks among the strong, rugged men as they +kissed their wives and little ones and prepared to go, then stopped, as +horrible misgivings rose within. “This was war, and yet again, 'We have +had proofs that the British harmed no woman or child'.” So they dashed +away the tears, suppressed the choking in their throats, shouldered +their guns, and marched away to the front, commending their dear ones to +the mercy of God and the British invaders. + +None had any cause to regret this trust. Under pain of death, Sir George +Prevost enforced his order that the persons of women and children and +all private property be held inviolate. As on the previous raid, no +damage was done to non-combatants, and the only hardships endured were +by the few who, knowing nothing, feared much, and sought the precarious +safety of life among the hills. + +Sir George Prevost and his staff of ten officers were quartered in Judge +Hubbell's house. Mrs. Hubbell was hard put to furnish them with meals, +but they treated her with perfect respect, and every night, not knowing +how long they might stay, they left on the table the price of their +board and lodging. + +For three days they waited, then all was ready for the advance. + +“Now for Plattsburg this week and Albany next, so good-bye, madam” they +said politely, and turned to ride away, a gay and splendid group. + +“Good-bye, sirs, for a very little while, but I know you'll soon be back +and hanging your heads as you come,” was the retort. + +Sir George replied: “If a man had said that, I would call him out; but +since it is a fair lady that has been our charming hostess, I reply that +when your prophecy comes true, every officer here shall throw his purse +on your door step as he passes.” + +So they rode away, 13,000 trained men with nothing between them and +Albany but 2000 troops, double as many raw militia, and--MacDonough of +the Lake. + +Ten times did Rolf cover that highway north of Plattsburg in the week +that followed, and each day his tidings were the same--the British +steadily advance. + + + +Chapter 79. McGlassin's Exploit + +There was a wonderful spirit on everything in Plattsburg, and the +earthly tabernacle in which it dwelt, was the tall, grave young man who +had protested against Hampton's behaviour at Burlington--Captain, now +General Macomb. Nothing was neglected, every emergency was planned for, +every available man was under arms. Personally tireless, he was ever +alert and seemed to know every man in his command and every man of +it had implicit confidence in the leader. We have heard of soldiers +escaping from a besieged fortress by night; but such was the inspiring +power of this commander that there was a steady leaking in of men from +the hills, undrilled and raw, but of superb physique and dead shots with +the ride. + +A typical case was that of a sturdy old farmer who was marching through +the woods that morning to take his place with those who manned the +breastworks and was overheard to address his visibly trembling legs: +“Shake, damn you, shake; and if ye knew where I was leading you, you'd +be ten times worse.” + +His mind was more valiant than his body, and his mind kept control--this +is true courage. + +No one had a better comprehension of all this than Macomb. He knew that +all these men needed was a little training to make of them the best +soldiers on earth. To supply that training he mixed them with veterans, +and arranged a series of unimportant skirmishes as coolly and easily as +though he were laying out a programme for an evening's entertainment. + +The first of these was at Culver's Hill. Here a barricade was thrown up +along the highway, a gun was mounted, and several hundred riflemen were +posted under leaders skilled in the arts of harrying a foe and giving +him no chance to strike back. + +Among the men appointed for the barricade's defence was Rolf and near +him Quonab. The latter had been seasoned in the Revolution, but it was +the former's first experience at the battle front, and he felt as most +men do when the enemy in brave array comes marching up. As soon as they +were within long range, his leader gave the order “Fire!” The rifles +rattled and the return fire came at once. Balls pattered on the +barricade or whistled above. The man next to him was struck and dropped +with a groan; another fell back dead. The horror and roar were overmuch. +Rolf was nervous enough when he entered the fight. Now he was unstrung, +almost stunned, his hands and knees were shaking, he was nearly +panic-stricken and could not resist the temptation to duck, as the balls +hissed murder over his head. He was blazing away, without aiming, when +an old soldier, noting his white face and shaking form, laid a hand +on his shoulder and, in kindly tones, said: “Steady, boy, steady; +yer losing yer head; see, this is how,” and he calmly took aim, then, +without firing, moved the gun again and put a little stick to raise the +muzzle and make a better rest, then fired as though at target practice. +“Now rest for a minute. Look at Quonab there; you can see he's been +through it before. He is making a hit with every shot.” + +Rolf did as he was told, and in a few minutes his colour came back, +his hand was steady, and thenceforth he began to forget the danger and +thought only of doing his work. + +When at length it was seen that the British were preparing to charge, +the Americans withdrew quickly and safely to Halsey's Corner, where was +another barricade and a fresh lot of recruits awaiting to receive their +baptism of fire. And the scene was repeated. Little damage was done to +the foe but enormous benefit was gained by the Americans, because it +took only one or two of these skirmishes to turn a lot of shaky-kneed +volunteers into a band of steady soldiers--for they had it all inside. +Thus their powder terror died. + +That night the British occupied the part of the town that was north +of the Saranac, and began a desultory bombardment of the fortification +opposite. Not a very serious one, for they considered they could take +the town at any time, but preferred to await the arrival of their fleet +under Downie. + +The fight for the northern half of the town was not serious, merely part +of Macomb's prearranged training course; but when the Americans retired +across the Saranac, the planks of the bridges were torn up, loop-holed +barricades were built along the southern bank, and no effort spared to +prepare for a desperate resistance. + +Every man that could hold up a gun was posted on the lines of +Plattsburg. The school-boys, even, to the number of five hundred formed +a brigade, and were assigned to places where their squirrel-hunting +experiences could be made of service to their country. + +Meanwhile the British had established a battery opposite Fort Brown. It +was in a position to do some material and enormous moral damage. On the +ninth it was nearly ready for bloody work, and would probably begin next +morning. That night, however, an extraordinary event took place, and +showed how far from terror-palsy were the motley troops in Plattsburg. A +sturdy Vermonter, named Captain McGlassin, got permission of Malcomb to +attempt a very Spartan sortie. + +He called for fifty volunteers to go on a most hazardous enterprise. He +got one thousand at once. Then he ordered all over twenty-five and under +eighteen to retire. This reduced the number to three hundred. Then, +all married men were retired, and thus again they were halved. Next he +ordered away all who smoked--Ah, deep philosopher that he was!--and from +the remnant he selected his fifty. Among them was Rolf. Then he divulged +his plan. It was nothing less than a dash on the new-made fort to spike +those awful guns--fifty men to dash into a camp of thirteen thousand. + +Again he announced, “Any who wish to withdraw now may do so.” Not a man +stirred. + +Twenty of those known to be expert with tools were provided with hammers +and spikes for the guns, and Rolf was proud to be one of them. + +In a night of storm and blackness they crossed the Saranac; dividing in +two bodies they crawled unseen, one on each side of the battery. Three +hundred British soldiers were sleeping near, only the sentries peered +into the storm-sleet. + +All was ready when McGlassin's tremendous voice was heard, “Charge +front and rear!” Yelling, pounding, making all the noise they could, the +American boys rushed forth. The British were completely surprised, the +sentries were struck down, and the rest assured that Macomb's army was +on them recoiled for a few minutes. The sharp click, click, click of the +hammers was heard. An iron spike was driven into every touch hole; +the guns were made harmless as logs and quickly wheeling, to avoid the +return attack, these bold Yankee boys leaped from the muzzled redoubt +and reached their own camp without losing one of their number. + + + +Chapter 80. The Bloody Saranac + +Sir George Prevost had had no intention of taking Plattsburg, till +Plattsburg's navy was captured. But the moral effect of McGlassin's +exploit must be offset at once. He decided to carry the city by storm--a +matter probably of three hours' work. + +He apportioned a regiment to each bridge, another to each ford near the +town, another to cross the river at Pike's Cantonment, and yet another +to cross twenty miles above, where they were to harry the fragments of +the American as it fled. + +That morning Plattsburg was wakened by a renewal of the bombardment. The +heavy firing killed a few men knocked down a few walls and chimneys, but +did little damage to the earthworks. + +It was surprising to all how soon the defenders lost their gun-shyness. +The very school-boys and their sisters went calmly about their business, +with cannon and musket balls whistling overhead, striking the walls and +windows, or, on rare occasions, dropping some rifleman who was over-rash +as he worked or walked on the ramparts. + +There were big things doing in the British camp--regiments marching and +taking their places--storms of rifle and cannon balls raging fiercely. +By ten o'clock there was a lull. The Americans, from the grandfathers to +the school-boys, were posted, each with his rifle and his pouch full of +balls; there were pale faces among the youngsters, and nervous fingers, +but there was no giving way. Many a man there was, no doubt, who, under +the impulse of patriotism, rushed with his gun to join the ranks, and +when the bloody front was reached, he wished in his heart he was safe at +home. But they did not go. Something kept them staunch. + +Although the lines were complete all along the ramparts, there were four +places where the men were massed. These were on the embankments opposite +the bridges and the fords. Here the best shots were placed and among +them was Rolf, with others of McGlassin's band. + +The plank of the bridges had been torn up and used with earth to form +breastworks; but the stringers of the bridges were there, and a body of +red-coats approaching, each of them showed plainly what their plan was. + +The farthest effective range of rifle fire in those days was reckoned at +a hundred yards. The Americans were ordered to hold their fire till +the enemy reached the oaks, a grove one hundred yards from the main +bridge--on the other bank. + +The British came on in perfect review-day style. Now a hush fell on all. +The British officer in command was heard clearly giving his orders. How +strange it must have been to the veterans of wars in Spain, France, +and the Rhine, to advance against a force with whom they needed no +interpreter. + +McGlassin's deep voice now rang along the defences, “Don't fire till I +give the order.” + +The red-coats came on at a trot, they reached the hundred-yard-mark. + +“Now, aim low and fire!” from McGlassin, and the rattle of the Yankee +guns was followed by reeling ranks of red in the oaks. + +“Charge!” shouted the British officer and the red-coats charged to the +bridge, but the fire from the embankment was incessant; the trail of the +charging men was cluttered with those who fell. + +“Forward!” and the gallant British captain leaped on the central +stringer of the bridge and, waving his sword, led on. Instantly three +lines of men were formed, one on each stringer. + +They were only fifty yards from the barricade, with five hundred rifles, +all concentrated on these stringers. The first to fall was the captain, +shot through the heart, and the river bore him away. But on and on came +the three ranks into the whistling, withering fire of lead. It was like +slaughtering sheep. Yet on and on they marched steadily for half an +hour. Not a man held back or turned, though all knew they were marching +to their certain death. Not one of them ever reached the centre of the +span, and those who dropped, not dead, were swallowed by the swollen +stream. How many hundred brave men were sacrificed that day, no one ever +knew. He who gave the word to charge was dead with his second and third +in command and before another could come to change the order, the river +ran red--the bloody Saranac they call it ever since. + +The regiment was wrecked, and the assault for the time was over. + +Rolf had plied his rifle with the rest, but it sickened him to see the +horrible waste of human valour. It was such ghastly work that he was +glad indeed when a messenger came to say he was needed at headquarters. +And in an hour he was crossing the lake with news and instructions for +the officer in command at Burlington. + + + +Chapter 81. The Battle of Plattsburg + +In broad daylight he skimmed away in his one man canoe. + +For five hours he paddled, and at star-peep he reached the dock at +Burlington. The howl of a lost dog caught his ear; and when he traced +the sound, there, on the outmost plank, with his nose to the skies, was +the familiar form of Skookum, wailing and sadly alone. + +What a change he showed when Rolf landed; he barked, leaped, growled, +tail-wagged, head-wagged, feet-wagged, body-wagged, wig-wagged and +zigzagged for joy; he raced in circles, looking for a sacrificial hen, +and finally uttered a long and conversational whine that doubtless was +full of information for those who could get it out. + +Rolf delivered his budget at once. It was good news, but not conclusive. +Everything depended now on MacDonough. In the morning all available +troops should hurry to the defence of Plattsburg; not less than fifteen +hundred men were ready to embark at daylight. + +That night Rolf slept with Skookum in the barracks. At daybreak, much +to the latter's disgust, he was locked up in a cellar, and the troops +embarked for the front. + +It was a brisk north wind they had to face in crossing and passing down +the lake. There were many sturdy oarsmen at the sweeps, but they could +not hope to reach their goal in less than five hours. + +When they were half way over, they heard the cannon roar; the booming +became incessant; without question, a great naval battle was on, for +this north wind was what the British had been awaiting. The rowers bent +to their task and added to the speed. Their brothers were hard pressed; +they knew it, they must make haste. The long boats flew. In an hour they +could see the masts, the sails, the smoke of the battle, but nothing +gather of the portentous result. Albany and New York, as well as +Plattsburg, were in the balance, and the oarsmen rowed and rowed and +rowed. + +The cannon roared louder and louder, though less continuously, as +another hour passed. Now they could see the vessels only four miles +away. The jets of smoke were intermittent from the guns; masts went +down. They could see it plainly. The rowers only set their lips and +rowed and rowed and rowed. + +Sir George had reckoned on but one obstacle in his march to Albany, an +obstruction named MacDonough; but he now found there was another called +Macomb. + +It was obviously a waste of men to take Plattsburg by front assault, +when he could easily force a passage of the river higher up and take it +on the rear; and it was equally clear that when his fleet arrived and +crushed the American fleet, it would be a simple matter for the war +vessels to blow the town to pieces, without risking a man. + +Already a favouring wind had made it possible for Downie to leave Isle +au Noix and sail down the lake with his gallant crew, under gallant +canvas clouds. + +Tried men and true in control of every ship, outnumbering MacDonough, +outweighing him, outpointing him in everything but seamanship, they came +on, sure of success. + +Three chief moves were in MacDonough's strategy. He anchored to the +northward of the bay, so that any fleet coming down the lake would have +to beat up against the wind to reach him; so close to land that any +fleet trying to flank him would come within range of the forts; and left +only one apparent gap that a foe might try to use, a gap in front +of which was a dangerous sunken reef. This was indeed a baited trap. +Finally he put out cables, kedges, anchors, and springs, so that with +the capstan he could turn his vessels and bring either side to bear on +the foe. + +All was ready, that morning of September the 11th as the British fleet, +ably handled, swung around the Cumberland Head. + +The young commander of the Yankee fleet now kneeled bareheaded with his +crew and prayed to the God of Battles as only those going into battle +pray. The gallant foe came on, and who that knows him doubts that he, +too, raised his heart in reverent prayer? The first broadside from the +British broke open a chicken coop on the Saratoga from which a game-cock +flew, and, perching on a gun, flapped his wings and crowed; so all the +seamen cheered at such a happy omen. + +Then followed the fighting, with its bravery and its horrors--its +brutish wickedness broke loose. + +Early in the action, the British sloop, Finch, fell into MacDonough's +trap and grounded on the reef. + +The British commander was killed, with many of his officers. Still, +the heavy fire of the guns would have given them the victory, but for +MacDonough's foresight in providing for swinging his ships. When one +broadside was entirely out of action, he used his cables, kedges and +springs, and brought the other batteries to bear. + +It was one of the most desperate naval fights the world has ever seen. +Of the three hundred men on the British flagship not more than five, we +are told, escaped uninjured; and at the close there was not left on any +one of the eight vessels a mast that could carry sail, or a sail that +could render service. In less than two hours and a half the fight was +won, and the British fleet destroyed. + +To the God of Battles each had committed his cause: and the God of +Battles had spoken. + +Far away to the southward in the boats were the Vermont troops with +their general and Rolf in the foremost. Every sign of the fight they had +watched as men whose country's fate is being tried. + +It was a quarter after eleven when the thunder died away; and the +Vermonters were headed on shore, for a hasty landing, if need be, when +down from the peak of the British flag-ship went the Union Jack, and the +Stars and Stripes was hauled to take its place. + +“Thank God!” a soft, murmuring sigh ran through all the boats and many +a bronzed and bearded cheek was wet with tears. Each man clasped hands +with his neighbour; all were deeply moved, and even as an audience +melted renders no applause, so none felt any wish to vent his deep +emotion in a cheer. + + + +Chapter 82. Scouting for Macomb + +General Macomb knew that Sir George Prevost was a cautious and +experienced commander. The loss of his fleet would certainly make a +radical change in his plans, but what change? Would he make a flank +move and dash on to Albany, or retreat to Canada, or entrench himself to +await reinforcements at Plattsburg, or try to retrieve his laurels by an +overwhelming assault on the town? + +Whatever his plan, he would set about it quickly, and Macomb studied +the enemy's camp with a keen, discerning eye, but nothing suggesting a +change was visible when the sun sank in the rainy west. + +It was vital that he know it at once when an important move was begun, +and as soon as the night came down, a score of the swiftest scouts were +called for. All were young men; most of them had been in McGlassin's +band. Rolf was conspicuous among them for his tall figure, but there +was a Vermont boy named Seymour, who had the reputation of being the +swiftest runner of them all. + +They had two duties laid before them: first, to find whether Prevost's +army was really retreating; second, what of the regiment he sent up the +Saranac to perform the flank movement. + +Each was given the country he knew best. Some went westerly, some +followed up the river. Rolf, Seymour, and Fiske, another Vermonter, +skimmed out of Plattsburg harbour in the dusk, rounded Cumberland Bend, +and at nine o'clock landed at Point au Roche, at the north side of +Treadwell's Bay. + +Here they hid the canoe and agreeing to meet again at midnight, set +off in three different westerly directions to strike the highway at +different points. Seymour, as the fast racer, was given the northmost +route; Rolf took the middle. Their signals were arranged--in the woods +the barred-owl cry, by the water the loon; and they parted. + +The woods seemed very solemn to Rolf that historic September night, +as he strode along at speed, stopping now and again when he thought he +heard some signal, and opened wide his mouth to relieve his ear-drums of +the heart-beat or to still the rushing of his breath. + +In half an hour he reached the high-road. It was deserted. Then he heard +a cry of the barred owl: + +Wa--wah--wa--wah Wa--wah--wa--hooooo-aw. + +He replied with the last line, and the answer came a repeat of the whole +chant, showing that it might be owl, it might be man; but it was not the +right man, for the final response should have been the hooooo-aw. Rolf +never knew whence it came, but gave no further heed. + +For a long time he sat in a dark corner, where he could watch the road. +There were sounds of stir in the direction of Plattsburg. Then later, +and much nearer, a couple of shots were fired. He learned afterward that +those shots were meant for one of his friends. At length there was a +faint tump ta tump ta. He drew his knife, stuck it deep in the ground, +then held the handle in his teeth. This acted like a magnifier, for now +he heard it plainly enough--the sound of a horse at full gallop--but so +far away that it was five minutes before he could clearly hear it while +standing. As the sound neared, he heard the clank of arms, and when it +passed, Rolf knew that this was a mounted British officer. But why, and +whither? + +In order to learn the rider's route, Rolf followed at a trot for a mile. +This brought him to a hilltop, whither in the silent night, that fateful +north wind carried still the sound + + te--rump te--rump te--rump. + +As it was nearly lost, Rolf used his knife again; that brought the rider +back within a mile it seemed, and again the hoof beat faded, te--rump +te--rump. + +“Bound for Canada all right,” Rolf chuckled to himself. But there was +nothing to show whether this was a mere despatch rider, or an advance +scout, or a call for reinforcements. + +So again he had a long wait. About half-past ten a new and larger sound +came from the south. The knife in the ground increased but did not +explain it. The night was moonless, dark now, and it was safe to sit +very near the road. In twenty minutes the sound was near at hand in +five, a dark mass was passing along the road. There is no mistaking the +language of drivers. There is never any question about such and such a +voice being that of an English officer. There can be no doubt about +the clank of heavy wheels--a rich, tangy voice from some one in advance +said: “Oui. Parbleu, tows ce que je sais, c'est par la.” A body of about +one hundred Britishers, two or three wagons, guns, and a Frenchman for +guide. Rolf thought he knew that voice; yes, he was almost sure it was +the voice of Francios la Colle. + +This was important but far from conclusive. It was now eleven. He was +due at the canoe by midnight. He made for the place as fast as he could +go, which, on such a night, was slow, but guided by occasional glimpses +of the stars he reached the lake, and pausing a furlong from the +landing, he gave the rolling, quivering loon call: + +Ho-o-o-o-ooo-o Ho-o-o-o-ooo-o. Hooo-ooo. + +After ten seconds the answer came: + +Ho-o-o-o-o-o-o-o Hoo-ooo. + +And again after ten seconds Rolf's reply: + +Hoo-ooo. + +Both his friends were there; Fiske with a bullet-hole through his arm. +It seemed their duty to go back at once to headquarters with the meagre +information and their wounded comrade. But Fiske made light of his +trouble--it was a mere scratch--and reminded them that their orders were +to make sure of the enemy's movements. Therefore, it was arranged that +Seymour take back Fiske and what news they had, while Rolf went on to +complete his scouting. + +By one o'clock he was again on the hill where he had marked the +horseman's outward flight and the escorted guns. Now, as he waited, +there were sounds in the north that faded, and in the south were similar +sounds that grew. Within an hour he was viewing a still larger body +of troops with drivers and wheels that clanked. There were only two +explanations possible: Either the British were concentrating on Chazy +Landing, where, protected from MacDonough by the north wind, they +could bring enough stores and forces from the north to march overland +independent of the ships, or else they were in full retreat for Canada. +There was but one point where this could be made sure, namely, at the +forks of the road in Chazy village. So he set out at a jog trot for +Chazy, six miles away. + +The troops ahead were going three miles an hour. Rolf could go five. +In twenty minutes he overtook them and now was embarrassed by their +slowness. What should he do? It was nearly impossible to make speed +through the woods in the darkness, so as to pass them. He was forced to +content himself by marching a few yards in their rear. + +Once or twice when a group fell back, he was uncomfortably close and +heard scraps of their talk. + +These left little doubt that the army was in retreat. Still this was the +mere chatter of the ranks. He curbed his impatience and trudged with +the troop. Once a man dropped back to light his pipe. He almost touched +Rolf, and seeing a marching figure, asked in unmistakable accents “Oi +soi matey, 'ave ye a loight?” + +Rolf assumed the low south country English dialect, already familiar +through talking with prisoners, and replied: “Naow, oi oin't +a-smowking,” then gradually dropped out of sight. + +They were nearly two hours in reaching Chazy where they passed the +Forks, going straight on north. Without doubt, now, the army was bound +for Canada! Rolf sat on a fence near by as their footsteps went tramp, +tramp, tramp--with the wagons, clank, clank, clank, and were lost in the +northern distance. + +He had seen perhaps three hundred men; there were thirteen thousand to +account for, and he sat and waited. He did not have long to wait; within +half an hour a much larger body of troops evidently was approaching from +the south; several lanterns gleamed ahead of them, so Rolf got over the +fence, but it was low and its pickets offered poor shelter. Farther back +was Judge Hubbell's familiar abode with dense shrubbery. He hastened +to it and in a minute was hidden where he could see something of the +approaching troops. They were much like those that had gone before, but +much more numerous, at least a regiment, and as they filled the village +way, an officer cried “Halt!” and gave new orders. Evidently they were +about to bivouac for the night. A soldier approached the picket fence +to use it for firewood, but an officer rebuked him. Other fuel, chiefly +fence rails, was found, and a score or more of fires were lighted on the +highway and in the adjoining pasture. Rolf found himself in something +like a trap, for in less than two hours now would be the dawn. + +The simplest way out was to go in; he crawled quietly round the house to +the window of Mrs. Hubbell's room. These were times of nervous tension, +and three or four taps on the pane were enough to arouse the good lady. +Her husband had come that way more than once. + +“Who is it?” she demanded, through a small opening of the sash. + +“Rolf Kittering,” he whispered, “the place is surrounded by soldiers; +can't you hide me?” + +Could she? Imagine an American woman saying “No” at such a time. + +He slipped in quietly. + +“What news?” she said. “They say that MacDonough has won on the Lake, +but Plattsburg is taken.” + +“No, indeed; Plattsburgh is safe; MacDonough has captured the fleet. I +am nearly sure that the whole British army is retiring to Canada.” + +“Thank God, thank God,” she said fervently, “I knew it must be so; the +women have met here and prayed together every day, morning and night. +But hush!” she laid a warning finger on her lips and pointed up toward +one of the rooms--“British officer.” + +She brought two blankets from a press and led up to the garret. At the +lowest part of the roof was a tiny door to a lumber closet. In this +Rolf spread his blankets, stretched his weary limbs, and soon was sound +asleep. + +At dawn the bugles blew, the camp was astir. The officer in the house +arose and took his post on the porch. He was there on guard to protect +the house. His brother officers joined him. Mrs. Hubbell prepared +breakfast. It was eaten silently, so far as Rolf could learn. They paid +for it and, heading their regiment, went away northward, leaving the +officer still on the porch. + +Presently Rolf heard a stealthy step in his garret, the closed door was +pushed open, and Mrs. Hubbell's calm, handsome face appeared, as, with a +reassuring nod, she set down a mug of coffee, some bread, and a bowl of +mush and milk. And only those who have travelled and fasted for twelve +hours when they were nineteen know how good it tasted. + +From a tiny window ventilator Rolf had a view of the road in front. +A growing din of men prepared him for more troops, but still he was +surprised to see ten regiments march past with all their stores--a brave +army, but no one could mistake their looks; they wore the despondent air +of an army in full retreat. + + + +Chapter 83. The Last of Sir George Prevost + +The battle was over at Plattsburg town, though it had not been fought; +for the spirit of MacDonough was on land and water, and it was felt +by the British general, as well as the Yankee riflemen, as soon as the +Union Jack had been hauled from the mast of the Confiance. + +Now Sir George Prevost had to face a momentous decision: He could +force the passage of the Saranac and march on to Albany, but his +communications would be cut, and he must rely on a hostile country for +supplies. Every day drew fresh bands of riflemen from the hills. Before +he could get to Albany their number might exceed his, and then what? +Unless Great Britain could send a new army or a fleet to support him, he +must meet the fate of Burgoyne. Prevost proposed to take no such chances +and the night of the 11th eight hours after MacDonough's victory, he +gave the order “Retire to Canada.” + +To hide the move as long as possible, no change was made till after +sundown; no hint was given to the beleaguered town; they must have no +opportunity to reap the enormous advantages, moral and material, of +harrying a retreating foe. They must arise in the morning to find the +enemy safely over the border. The plan was perfect, and would have been +literally carried out, had not he had to deal with a foe as clever as +himself. + +How eagerly Rolf took in the scene on Chazy Road; how much it meant! how +he longed to fly at his fastest famous speed with the stirring news. In +two hours and a half he could surely let his leader know. And he gazed +with a sort of superior pride at the martial pomp and bravery of the +invaders driven forth. + +Near the last was a gallant array of gentlemen in gorgeous uniforms +of scarlet and gold; how warlike they looked, how splendid beside the +ill-clad riflemen of Vermont and the rude hunters of the Adirondacks. +How much more beautiful is an iron sword with jewels, than a sword of +plain gray steel. + +Dame Hubbell stood in her door as they went by. Each and all saluted +politely; her guard was ordered to join his regiment. The lady waved +her sun-bonnet in response to their courteous good-bye, and could not +refrain from calling out: + +“How about my prophecy, Sir George, and those purses?” + +Rolf could not see his hostess, but he heard her voice, and he saw the +astonishing effect: + +The British general reined in his horse. “A gentleman's word is his +bond, madam,” he said. “Let every officer now throw his purse at the +lady's feet,” and he set the example. A dozen rattling thuds were heard +and a dozen officers saluting, purseless, rode away. + +A round thousand dollars in gold the lady gathered on her porch that +morning, and to this day her grand-kin tell the tale. + + + +Chapter 84. Rolf Unmasks the Ambush + +Rolf's information was complete now, and all that remained was to report +at Plattsburg. Ten regiments he had counted from his peep hole. The +rear guard passed at ten o'clock. At eleven Mrs. Hubbell did a little +scouting and reported that all was quiet as far as she could see both +ways, and no enemy in sight anywhere. + +With a grateful hand shake he left the house to cover the fourteen miles +that lay between Chazy and Plattsburg. + +Refreshed and fed, young and strong, the representative of a just and +victorious cause, how he exulted in that run, rejoicing in his youth, +his country, his strength, his legs, his fame as a runner. Starting at +a stride he soon was trotting; then, when the noon hour came, he had +covered a good six miles. Now he heard faint, far shots, and going more +slowly was soon conscious that a running fight was on between his own +people and the body of British sent westward to hold the upper Saranac. + +True to the instinct of the scout, his first business was to find out +exactly what and where they were. From a thick tree top he saw the +red-coats spotting an opening of the distant country. Then they were +lost sight of in the woods. The desultory firing became volley firing, +once or twice. Then there was an interval of silence. At length a mass +of red-coats appeared on the highway within half a mile. They were +travelling very fast, in full retreat, and were coming his way. On the +crest of the hill over which the road ran, Rolf saw them suddenly drop +to the ground and take up position to form a most dangerous ambuscade, +and half a mile away, straggling through the woods, running or striding, +were the men in the colours he loved. They had swept the enemy before +them, so far, but trained troops speedily recover from a panic, if they +have a leader of nerve, and seeing a noble chance in the angle of this +deep-sunk road, the British fugitives turned like boars at bay. Not a +sign of them was visible to the Americans. The latter were suffering +from too much success. Their usual caution seemed to have deserted them, +and trotting in a body they came along the narrow road, hemmed in by a +forest and soon to be hedged with cliffs of clay. They were heading for +a death-trap. At any price he must warn them. He slid down the tree, and +keeping cover ran as fast as possible toward the ambush. It was the only +hill near--Beekman's Rise, they call it. As far as possible from the +red-coats, but still on the hill that gave a view, he leaped on to a +high stump and yelled as he never did before: “Go back, go back! A +trap! A trap!” And lifting high his outspread hands he flung their palms +toward his friends, the old-time signal for “go back.” + +Not twice did they need warning. Like hunted wolves they flashed from +view in the nearest cover. A harmless volley from the baffled ambush +rattled amongst them, and leaping from his stump Rolf ran for life. + +Furious at their failure, a score of red-coats, reloading as they ran, +came hot-footed after him. Down into cover of an alder swamp he plunged, +and confident of his speed, ran on, dashing through thickets and +mudholes. He knew that the red-coats would not follow far in such a +place, and his comrades were near. But the alder thicket ended at a +field. He heard the bushes crashing close at hand, and dashed down a +little ravine at whose lower edge the friendly forest recommenced. That +was his fatal mistake. The moment he took to the open there was a rattle +of rifles from the hill above, and Rolf fell on his face as dead. + +It was after noontide when he fell; he must have lain unconscious for +an hour; when he came to himself he was lying still in that hollow, +absolutely alone. The red-coats doubtless had continued their flight +with the Yankee boys behind them. His face was covered with blood. His +coat was torn and bloody; his trousers showed a ragged rent that was +reddened and sopping. His head was aching, and in his leg was the pain +of a cripplement. He knew it as soon as he tried to move; his right leg +was shattered below the knee. The other shots had grazed his arm and +head; the latter had stunned him for a time, but did no deeper damage. + +He lay still for a long time, in hopes that some of his friends +might come. He tried to raise his voice, but had no strength. Then he +remembered the smoke signal that had saved him when he was lost in the +woods. In spite of his wounded arm, he got out his flint and steel, and +prepared to make a fire. But all the small wood he could reach was wet +with recent rains. An old pine stump was on the bank not far away; he +might cut kindling-wood from that to start his fire, and he reached for +his knife. Alas! its case was empty. Had Rolf been four years younger, +he might have broken down and wept at this. It did seem such an +unnecessary accumulation of disasters. Without gun or knife, how was he +to call his friends? + +He straightened his mangled limb in the position of least pain and lay +for a while. The September sun fell on his back and warmed him. He was +parched with thirst, but only thirty yards away was a little rill. With +a long and fearful crawling on his breast, he dragged himself to the +stream and drank till he could drink no more, then rested, washed his +head and hands, 'and tried to crawl again to the warm place. But the sun +had dropped behind the river bank, the little ravine was in shadow, and +the chill of the grave was on the young man's pain-racked frame. + +Shadows crossed his brain, among them Si Sylvanne with his quaint +sayings, and one above all was clear: + +“Trouble is only sent to make ye do yer best. When ye hev done yer best, +keep calm and wait. Things is comin' all right.” Yes, that was what he +said, and the mockery of it hurt him now. + +The sunset slowly ended; the night wind blew; the dragging hours brought +gloom that entered in. This seemed indeed the direst strait of his lot. +Crippled, dying of cold, helpless, nothing to do but wait and die, and +from his groaning lips there came the half-forgotten prayer his mother +taught him long ago, “O God, have mercy on me!” and then he forgot. + +When he awoke, the stars were shining; he was numb with cold, but his +mind was clear. + +“This is war,” he thought, “and God knows we never sought it.” And again +the thought: “When I offered to serve my country, I offered my life. I +am willing to die, but this is not a way of my choosing,” and a blessed, +forgetfulness came upon him again. + +But his was a stubborn-fibred race; his spark of life was not so quickly +quenched; its blazing torch might waver, wane, and wax again. In the +chill, dark hour when the life-lamp flickers most, he wakened to hear +the sweet, sweet music of a dog's loud bark; in a minute he heard it +nearer, and yet again at hand, and Skookum, erratic, unruly, faithful +Skookum, was bounding around and barking madly at the calm, unblinking +stars. + +A human “halloo” rang not far away; then others, and Skookum barked and +barked. + +Now the bushes rustled near, a man came out, kneeled down, laid hand +on the dying soldier's brow, and his heart. He opened his eyes, the man +bent over him and softly said, “Nibowaka! it's Quonab.” + +That night when the victorious rangers had returned to Plattsburg it +was a town of glad, thankful hearts, and human love ran strong. +The thrilling stories of the day were told, the crucial moment, the +providential way in which at every hopeless pass, some easy, natural +miracle took place to fight their battle and back their country's cause. +The harrying of the flying rear-guard, the ambuscade over the hill, the +appearance of an American scout at the nick of time to warn them--the +shooting, and his disappearance--all were discussed. + +Then rollicking Seymour and silent Fiske told of their scouting on the +trail of the beaten foe; and all asked, “Where is Kittering?” So talk +was rife, and there was one who showed a knife he had picked up near the +ambuscade with R. K. on the shaft. + +Now a dark-faced scout rose up, stared at the knife, and quickly left +the room. In three minutes he stood before General Macomb, his words +were few, but from his heart: + +“It is my boy, Nibowaka; it is Rolf; my heart tells me. Let me go. I +feel him praying for me to come. Let me go, general. I must go.” + +It takes a great man to gauge the heart of a man who seldom speaks. “You +may go, but how can you find him tonight?” + +“Ugh, I find him,” and the Indian pointed to a little, prick-eared, +yellow cur that sneaked at his heels. + +“Success to you; he was one of the best we had,” said the general, as +the Indian left, then added: “Take a couple of men along, and, here, +take this,” and he held out a flask. + +Thus it was that the dawning saw Rolf on a stretcher carried by his +three scouting partners, while Skookum trotted ahead, looking this way +and that--they should surely not be ambushed this time. + +And thus the crowning misfortune, the culminating apes of disaster--the +loss of his knife--the thing of all others that roused in Rolf the +spirit of rebellion, was the way of life, his dungeon's key, the golden +chain that haled him from the pit. + + + +Chapter 85. The Hospital, the Prisoners, and Home + +There were wagons and buckboards to be had, but the road was rough, +so the three changed off as litter-bearers and brought him to the lake +where the swift and smooth canoe was ready, and two hours later they +carried him into the hospital at Plattsburg. + +The leg was set at once, his wounds were dressed, he was warmed, +cleaned, and fed; and when the morning sun shone in the room, it was a +room of calm and peace. + +The general came and sat beside him for a time, and the words he spoke +were ample, joyful compensation for his wounds. MacDonough, too, passed +through the ward, and the warm vibrations of his presence drove death +from many a bed whose inmate's force ebbed low, whose soul was walking +on the brink, was near surrender. + +Rolf did not fully realize it then, but long afterward it was clear that +this was the meaning of the well-worn words, “He filled them with a new +spirit.” + +There was not a man in the town but believed the war was over; there was +not a man in the town who doubted that his country's cause was won. + +Three weeks is a long time to a youth near manhood, but there was much +of joy to while away the hours. The mothers of the town came and read +and talked. There was news from the front. There were victories on the +high seas. His comrades came to sit beside him; Seymour, the sprinter, +as merry a soul as ever hankered for the stage and the red cups of life; +Fiske, the silent, and McGlassin, too, with his dry, humorous talk; +these were the bright and funny hours. There were others. There came a +bright-checked Vermont mother whose three sons had died in service at +MacDonough's guns; and she told of it in a calm voice, as one who speaks +of her proudest honour. Yes, she rejoiced that God had given her three +such sons, and had taken again His gifts in such a day of glory. Had +England's rulers only known, that this was the spirit of the land that +spoke, how well they might have asked: “What boots it if we win a few +battles, and burn a few towns; it is a little gain and passing; for +there is one thing that no armies, ships, or laws, or power on earth, +or hell itself can down or crush--that alone is the thing that counts or +endures--the thing that permeates these men, that finds its focal centre +in such souls as that of the Vermont mother, steadfast, proud, and +rejoicing in her bereavement.” + +But these were forms that came and went; there were two that seldom were +away--the tall and supple one of the dark face and the easy tread, and +his yellow shadow--the ever unpopular, snappish, prick-eared cur, that +held by force of arms all territories at floor level contiguous to, +under, comprised, and bounded by, the four square legs and corners of +the bed. + +Quonab's nightly couch was a blanket not far away, and his daily, +self-given task to watch the wounded and try by devious ways and plots +to trick him into eating ever larger meals. + +Garrison duty was light now, so Quonab sought the woods where the flocks +of partridge swarmed, with Skookum as his aid. It was the latter's +joyful duty to find and tree the birds, and “yap” below, till Quonab +came up quietly with bow and blunt arrows, to fill his game-bag; and +thus the best of fare was ever by the invalid's bed. + +Rolf's was easily a winning fight from the first, and in a week he was +eating well, sleeping well, and growing visibly daily stronger. + +Then on a fleckless dawn that heralded a sun triumphant, the Indian +borrowed a drum from the bandsman, and, standing on the highest +breastwork, he gazed across the dark waters to the whitening hills. +There on a tiny fire he laid tobacco and kinnikinnik, as Gisiss the +Shining One burnt the rugged world rim at Vermont, and, tapping softly +with one stick, he gazed upward, after the sacrificial thread of smoke, +and sang in his own tongue: + +“Father, I burn tobacco, I smoke to Thee. I sing for my heart is +singing.” + +Pleasant chatter of the East was current by Rolf's bedside. Stories +of homes in the hills he heard, tales of hearths by far away lakes and +streams, memories of golden haired children waiting for father's or +brother's return from the wars. Wives came to claim their husbands, +mothers to bring away their boys, to gain again their strength at home. +And his own heart went back, and ever back, to the rugged farm on the +shores of the noble George. + +In two weeks he was able to sit up. In three he could hobble, and he +moved about the town when the days were warm. + +And now he made the acquaintance of the prisoners. They were closely +guarded and numbered over a hundred. It gave him a peculiar sensation +to see them there. It seemed un-American to hold a human captive; but +he realized that it was necessary to keep them for use as hostages and +exchanges. + +Some of them he found to be sullen brutes, but many were kind and +friendly, and proved to be jolly good fellows. + +On the occasion of his second visit, a familiar voice saluted him with, +“Well, Rolf! Comment ca va?” and he had the painful joy of greeting +Francois la Colle. + +“You'll help me get away, Rolf, won't you?” and the little Frenchman +whispered and winked. “I have seven little ones now on La Riviere, dat +have no flour, and tinks dere pa is dead.” + +“I'll do all I can, Francois,” and the picture of the desolate home, +brought a husk in his voice and a choke in his throat. He remembered too +the musket ball that by intent had whistled harmless overhead. “But,” he +added in a shaky voice, “I cannot help my country's enemy to escape.” + +Then Rolf took counsel with McGlassin, told him all about the affair +at the mill, and McGlassin with a heart worthy of his mighty shoulders, +entered into the spirit of the situation, went to General Macomb +presenting such a tale and petition that six hours later Francis bearing +a passport through the lines was trudging away to Canada, paroled for +the rest of the war. + +There was another face that Rolf recognized--hollow-cheeked, +flabby-jowled and purplish-gray. The man was one of the oldest of the +prisoners. He wore a white beard end moustache. He did not recognize +Rolf, but Rolf knew him, for this was Micky Kittering. How he escaped +from jail and joined the enemy was an episode of the war's first year. +Rolf was shocked to see what a miserable wreck his uncle was. He could +not do him any good. To identify him would have resulted in his being +treated as a renegade, so on the plea that he was an old man, Rolf saw +that the prisoner had extra accommodation and out of his own pocket kept +him abundantly supplied with tobacco. Then in his heart he forgave him, +and kept away. They never met again. + +The bulk of the militia had been disbanded after the great battle. A +few of the scouts and enough men to garrison the fort and guard the +prisoners were retained. Each day there were joyful partings--the men +with homes, going home. And the thought that ever waxed in Rolf came on +in strength. He hobbled to headquarters. “General, can I get leave--to +go--he hesitated--home?” + +“Why, Kittering, I didn't know you had a home. But, certainly, I'll give +you a month's leave and pay to date.” + +Champlain is the lake of the two winds; the north wind blows for six +months with a few variations, and the south wind for the other six +months with trifling. + +Next morning a bark canoe was seen skimming southward before as much +north wind as it could stand, with Rolf reclining in the middle, Quonab +at the stern, and Skookum in the bow. + +In two days they were at Ticonderoga. Here help was easily got at +the portage and on the evening of the third day, Quonab put a rope on +Skookum's neck and they landed at Hendrik's farm. + +The hickory logs were blazing bright, and the evening pot was reeking as +they opened the door and found the family gathered for the meal. + +“I didn't know you had a home,” the general had said. He should have +been present now to see the wanderer's welcome. If war breeds such a +spirit in the land, it is as much a blessing as a curse. The air was +full of it, and the Van Trumpers, when they saw their hero hobble in, +were melted. Love, pity, pride, and tenderness were surging in storms +through every heart that knew. “Their brother, their son come back, +wounded, but proven and glorious.” Yes, Rolf had a home, and in that +intoxicating realization he kissed them all, even Annette of the glowing +cheeks and eyes; though in truth he paid for it, for it conjured up in +her a shy aloofness that lasted many days. + +Old Hendrik sputtered around. “Och, I am smile; dis is goood, yah. Vere +is that tam dog? Yah! tie him not, he shall dis time von chicken have +for joy.” + +“Marta,” said Rolf, “you told me to come here if I got hurt. Well, I've +come, and I've brought a boat-load of stuff in case I cannot do my share +in the fields.” + +“Press you, my poy you didn't oughter brung dot stuff; you know we +loff you here, and effery time it is you coom I get gladsomer, and dot +Annette she just cried ven you vent to de war.” + +“Oh, mother, I did not; it was you and little Hendrick!” and Annette +turned her scarlet cheeks away. + +October, with its trees of flame and gold, was on the hills; purple and +orange, the oaks and the birches; blue blocked with white was the sky +above, and the blue, bright lake was limpid. + +“Oh, God of my fathers,” Quonab used to pray, “when I reach the Happy +Hunting, let it be ever the Leaf-falling Moon, for that is the only +perfect time.” And in that unmarred month of sunny sky and woodlands +purged of every plague, there is but one menace in the vales. For who +can bring the glowing coal to the dry-leafed woods without these two +begetting the dread red fury that devastates the hills? + +Who can bring the fire in touch with tow and wonder at the blaze? Who, +indeed? And would any but a dreamer expect young manhood in its growing +strength, and girlhood just across the blush-line, to meet in daily +meals and talk and still keep up the brother and sister play? It needs +only a Virginia on the sea-girt island to turn the comrade into Paul. + +“Marta, I tink dot Rolf an Annette don't quarrel bad, ain't it?” + +“Hendrik, you vas von blind old bat-mole,” said Marta, “I fink dat farm +next ours purty good, but Rolf he say 'No Lake George no good.' Better +he like all his folk move over on dat Hudson.” + + +Chapter 86. The New Era of Prosperity + +As November neared and his leave of absence ended, Rolf was himself +again; had been, indeed, for two weeks, and, swinging fork or axe, he +had helped with many an urgent job on the farm. + +A fine log stable they had rolled up together, with corners dovetailed +like cabinet work, and roof of birch bark breadths above the hay. + +But there was another building, too, that Rolf had worked at night and +day. It was no frontier shack, but a tall and towering castle, splendid +and roomy, filled with loved ones and love. Not by the lake near by, +not by the river of his choice, but higher up than the tops of the high +mountains it loomed, and he built and built until the month was nearly +gone. Then only did he venture to ask for aid, and Annette it was who +promised to help him finish the building. + +Yes, the Lake George shore was a land of hungry farms. It was off the +line of travel, too. It was neither Champlain nor Hudson; and Hendrik, +after ten years' toil with barely a living to show, was easily +convinced. Next summer they must make a new choice of home. But now it +was back to Plattsburg. + +On November 1st Rolf and Quonab reported to General Macomb. There was +little doing but preparations for the winter. There were no prospects of +further trouble from their neighbours in the north. Most of the militia +were already disbanded, and the two returned to Plattsburg, only to +receive their honourable discharge, to be presented each with the medal +of war, with an extra clasp on Rolf's for that dauntless dash that +spiked the British guns. + +Wicked war with its wickedness was done at last. “The greatest evil that +can befall a country,” some call it, and yet out of this end came three +great goods: The interstate distrust had died away, for now they were +soldiers who had camped together, who had “drunk from the same canteen”; +little Canada, until then a thing of shreds and scraps, had been fused +in the furnace, welded into a young nation, already capable of defending +her own. England, arrogant with long success at sea, was taught a lesson +of courtesy and justice, for now the foe whom she had despised and +insulted had shown himself her equal, a king of the sea-king stock. The +unnecessary battle of New Orleans, fought two weeks after the war was +officially closed, showed that the raw riflemen of Tennessee were +more than a match for the seasoned veterans who had overcome the great +Napoleon, and thus on land redeemed the Stars and Stripes. + +The war brought unmeasured material loss on all concerned, but some +weighty lasting gains to two at least. On December 24, 1814, the Treaty +of Ghent was signed and the long rides were hung up on the cabin walls. +Nothing was said in the treaty about the cause of war--the right of +search. Why should they speak of it? If a big boy bullies a smaller one +and gets an unexpected knockdown blow, it is not necessary to have it +all set forth in terms before they shake hands that “I, John, of the +first part, to wit, the bully, do hereby agree, promise, and contract to +refrain in future forevermore from bullying you, Jonathan, of the second +part, to wit, the bullied.” That point had already been settled by the +logic of events. The right of search was dead before the peace was born, +and the very place of its bones is forgotten to-day. + +Rolf with Quonab returned to the trapping that winter; and as soon as +the springtime came and seeding was over, he and Van Trumper made their +choice of farms. Every dollar they could raise was invested in the +beautiful sloping lands of the upper Hudson. Rolf urged the largest +possible purchase now. Hendrick looked somewhat aghast at such a +bridge-burning move. But a purchaser for his farm was found with +unexpected promptness, one who was not on farming bent and the way kept +opening up. + +The wedding did not take place till another year, when Annette was +nineteen and Rolf twenty-one. And the home they moved to was not exactly +a castle, but much more complete and human. + +This was the beginning of a new settlement. Given good land in plenty, +and all the rest is easy; neighbours came in increasing numbers; every +claim was taken up; Rolf and Hendrik saw themselves growing rich, and +at length the latter was thankful for the policy that he once thought so +rash, of securing all the land he could. Now it was his making, for in +later years his grown-up sons were thus provided for, and kept at home. + +The falls of the river offered, as Rolf had foreseen, a noble chance for +power. Very early he had started a store and traded for fur. Now, with +the careful savings, he was able to build his sawmill; and about it grew +a village with a post-office that had Rolf's name on the signboard. + +Quonab had come, of course, with Rolf, but he shunned the house, and the +more so as it grew in size. In a remote and sheltered place he built a +wigwam of his own. + +Skookum was divided in his allegiance, but he solved the puzzle by +dividing his time between them. He did not change much, but he did +rise in a measure to the fundamental zoological fact that hens are not +partridges; and so acquired a haughty toleration of the cackle-party +throng that assembled in the morning at Annette's call. Yes, he made +even another step of progress, for on one occasion he valiantly routed +the unenlightened dog of a neighbour, a “cur of low degree,” whose ideas +of ornithology were as crude as his own had been in the beginning. + +All of which was greatly to his credit, for he found it hard to learn +now; he was no longer young, and before he had seen eight springs +dissolve the snow, he was called to the Land of Happy Hunting, where the +porcupine is not, but where hens abound on every side, and there is no +man near to meddle with his joy. + +Yet, when he died, he lived. His memory was kept ever green, for Skookum +Number 2 was there to fill his room, and he gave place to Skookum 3, and +so they keep their line on to this very day. + + + + +Quonab Goes Home + +The public has a kind of crawlin' common-sense, that is always right and +fair in the end, only it's slow--Sayings of Si Sylvanne. + +Twenty years went by. Rolf grew and prospered. He was a man of substance +and of family now; for store and mill were making money fast, and the +little tow-tops came at regular intervals. + +And when the years had added ripeness to his thought, and the kind +gods of gold had filled his scrip, it was that his ampler life began to +bloom. His was a mind of the best begetting, born and bred of ancient, +clean-blooded stock; inflexibly principled, trained by a God-fearing +mother, nurtured in a cradle of adversity, schooled in a school of +hardship, developed in the big outdoors, wise in the ways of the woods, +burnt in the fire of affliction, forced into self-reliance, inspired +with the lofty inspiration of sacrificial patriotism--the good stuff +of his make-up shone, as shines the gold in the fervent heat; the hard +blows that prove or crush, had proved; the metal had rung true; and in +the great valley, Rolf Kittering was a man of mark. + +The country's need of such is ever present and ever seeking. Those in +power who know and measure men soon sought him out, and their messenger +was the grisly old Si Sylvanne. + +Because he was a busy man, Rolf feared to add to his activities. Because +he was a very busy man, the party new they needed him. So at length it +was settled, and in a little while, Rolf stood in the Halls of Albany +and grasped the hand of the ancient mill-man as a colleague, filling an +honoured place in the councils of the state. + +Each change brought him new activities. Each year he was more of a +public man, and his life grew larger. From Albany he went to New York, +in the world of business and men's affairs; and at last in Washington, +his tall, manly figure was well known, and his good common-sense and +clean business ways were respected. Yet each year during hunting time he +managed to spend a few weeks with Quonab in the woods. Tramping on their +ancient trapping grounds, living over the days of their early hunts; +and double zest was added when Rolf the second joined them and lived and +loved it all. + +But this was no longer Kittering's life, rather the rare precarious +interval, and more and more old Quonab realized that they were meeting +only in the past. When the big house went up on the river-bank, he +indeed had felt that they were at the parting of the ways. His respect +for Nibowaka had grown to be almost a worship, and yet he knew that +their trails had yearly less in common. Rolf had outgrown him; he was +alone again, as on the day of their meeting. His years had brought a +certain insight; and this he grasped--that the times were changed, and +his was the way of a bygone day. + +“Mine is the wisdom of the woods,” he said, “but the woods are going +fast; in a few years there will be no more trees, and my wisdom will +be foolishness. There is in this land now a big, strong thing called +'trade,' that will eat up all things and the people themselves. You are +wise enough, Nibowaka, to paddle with the stream, you have turned so the +big giant is on your side, and his power is making you great. But this +is not for me; so only I have enough to eat, and comfort to sleep, I am +content to watch for the light.” + +Across the valley from the big store he dwelt, in a lodge from which he +could easily see the sunrise. Twenty-five years added to the fifty he +spent in the land of Mayn Mayano had dimmed his eye, had robbed his foot +of its spring, and sprinkled his brow with the winter rime; but they had +not changed his spirit, nor taught him less to love the pine woods +and the sunrise. Yes, even more than in former days did he take his +song-drum to the rock of worship, to his idaho--as the western red man +would have called it. And there, because it was high and the wind blew +cold, he made a little eastward-facing lodge. + +He was old and hunting was too hard for him, but there was a strong +arm about him now; he dimly thought of it at times--the arm of the +fifteen-year-old boy that one time he had shielded. There was no lack +of food or blankets in the wigwam, or of freedom in the woods under the +sun-up rock. But there was a hunger that not farseeing Nibowaka could +appease, not even talk about. And Quonab built another medicine lodge +to watch the sun go down over the hill. Sitting by a little fire to +tune his song-drum, he often crooned to the blazing skies. “I am of the +sunset now, I and my people,” he sang, “the night is closing over us.” + +One day a stranger came to the hills; his clothes were those of a white +man, but his head, his feet, and his eyes--his blood, his walk, and his +soul were those of a red Indian of the West. He came from the unknown +with a message to those who knew him not: “The Messiah was coming; the +deliverer that Hiawatha bade them look for. He was coming in power +to deliver the red race, and his people must sing the song of the +ghost-dance till the spirit came, and in a vision taught them wisdom and +his will!” + +Not to the white man, but to the lonely Indian in the hill cleft he +came, and the song that he brought and taught him was of a sorrowing +people seeking their father. + +“Father have pity on us! Our souls are hungry for Thee. There is nothing +here to satisfy us Father we bow to Thy will.” + +By the fire that night they sang, and prayed as the Indian +prays--“Father have pity and guide us.” So Quonab sang the new song, and +knew its message was for him. + +The stranger went on, for he was a messenger, but Quonab sang again and +again, and then the vision came, as it must, and the knowledge that he +sought. + +None saw him go, but ten miles southward on the river he met a hunter +and said: “Tell the wise one that I have heard the new song. Tell him +I have seen the vision. We are of the sunset, but the new day comes. I +must see the land of Mayn Mayano, the dawn-land, where the sun rises out +of the sea.” + +They saw no more of him. But a day later, Rolf heard of it, and set out +in haste next morning for Albany. Skookum the fourth leaped into the +canoe as he pushed off. Rolf was minded to send him back, but the dog +begged hard with his eyes and tail. It seemed he ought to go, when it +was the old man they sought. At Albany they got news. “Yes, the Indian +went on the steamboat a few days ago.” At New York, Rolf made no attempt +to track his friend, but took the Stamford boat and hurried to the old +familiar woods, where he had lived and suffered and wakened as a boy. + +There was a house now near the rock that is yet called “Quonab's.” From +the tenants he learned that in the stillest hours of the night before, +they had heard the beating of an Indian drum, and the cadence of a chant +that came not from throat of white man's blood. + +In the morning when it was light Rolf hastened to the place, expecting +to find at least an Indian camp, where once had stood the lodge. There +was no camp; and as he climbed for a higher view, the Skookum of to-day +gave bristling proof of fear at some strange object there--a man that +moved not. His long straight hair was nearly white, and by his side, +forever still, lay the song-drum of his people. + +And those who heard the mournful strains the night before knew now from +Rolf that it was Ouonab come back to his rest, and the song that he sang +was the song of the ghost dance. + +“Pity me, Wahkonda. My soul is ever hungry. There is nothing here to +satisfy me, I walk in darkness; Pity me, Wahkondal.” + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Rolf In The Woods, by Ernest Thompson Seton + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1088 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1089-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1089-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..50ff3533 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1089-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5453 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1089 *** + +MOON-FACE AND OTHER STORIES + + +By Jack London + + + + +CONTENTS + + + MOON-FACE + THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY + LOCAL COLOR + AMATEUR NIGHT + THE MINIONS OF MIDAS + THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH + ALL GOLD CANYON + PLANCHETTE + + + + +MOON-FACE + + +John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind, cheek-bones +wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks to complete the +perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the +circumference, flattened against the very centre of the face like a +dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that is why I hated him, for truly +he had become an offense to my eyes, and I believed the earth to +be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps my mother may have been +superstitious of the moon and looked upon it over the wrong shoulder at +the wrong time. + +Be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me +what society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it. The +evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as to +defy clear, definite analysis in words. We all experience such things +at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a certain +individual, one who the very instant before we did not dream existed; +and yet, at the first moment of meeting, we say: “I do not like that +man.” Why do we not like him? Ah, we do not know why; we know only that +we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all. And so I with John +Claverhouse. + +What right had such a man to be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He was +always gleeful and laughing. All things were always all right, curse +him! Ah I how it grated on my soul that he should be so happy! Other +men could laugh, and it did not bother me. I even used to laugh +myself—before I met John Claverhouse. + +But his laugh! It irritated me, maddened me, as nothing else under the +sun could irritate or madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of me, and +would not let me go. It was a huge, Gargantuan laugh. Waking or sleeping +it was always with me, whirring and jarring across my heart-strings like +an enormous rasp. At break of day it came whooping across the fields to +spoil my pleasant morning revery. Under the aching noonday glare, when +the green things drooped and the birds withdrew to the depths of the +forest, and all nature drowsed, his great “Ha! ha!” and “Ho! ho!” rose +up to the sky and challenged the sun. And at black midnight, from the +lonely cross-roads where he turned from town into his own place, came +his plaguey cachinnations to rouse me from my sleep and make me writhe +and clench my nails into my palms. + +I went forth privily in the night-time, and turned his cattle into his +fields, and in the morning heard his whooping laugh as he drove them out +again. “It is nothing,” he said; “the poor, dumb beasties are not to be +blamed for straying into fatter pastures.” + +He had a dog he called “Mars,” a big, splendid brute, part deer-hound +and part blood-hound, and resembling both. Mars was a great delight to +him, and they were always together. But I bided my time, and one day, +when opportunity was ripe, lured the animal away and settled for him +with strychnine and beefsteak. It made positively no impression on John +Claverhouse. His laugh was as hearty and frequent as ever, and his face +as much like the full moon as it always had been. + +Then I set fire to his haystacks and his barn. But the next morning, +being Sunday, he went forth blithe and cheerful. + +“Where are you going?” I asked him, as he went by the cross-roads. + +“Trout,” he said, and his face beamed like a full moon. “I just dote on +trout.” + +Was there ever such an impossible man! His whole harvest had gone up in +his haystacks and barn. It was uninsured, I knew. And yet, in the face +of famine and the rigorous winter, he went out gayly in quest of a mess +of trout, forsooth, because he “doted” on them! Had gloom but rested, +no matter how lightly, on his brow, or had his bovine countenance grown +long and serious and less like the moon, or had he removed that smile +but once from off his face, I am sure I could have forgiven him for +existing. But no, he grew only more cheerful under misfortune. + +I insulted him. He looked at me in slow and smiling surprise. + +“I fight you? Why?” he asked slowly. And then he laughed. “You are so +funny! Ho! ho! You’ll be the death of me! He! he! he! Oh! Ho! ho! ho!” + +What would you? It was past endurance. By the blood of Judas, how I +hated him! Then there was that name—Claverhouse! What a name! Wasn’t it +absurd? Claverhouse! Merciful heaven, WHY Claverhouse? Again and again I +asked myself that question. I should not have minded Smith, or Brown, +or Jones—but CLAVERHOUSE! I leave it to you. Repeat it to +yourself—Claverhouse. Just listen to the ridiculous sound of +it—Claverhouse! Should a man live with such a name? I ask of you. “No,” + you say. And “No” said I. + +But I bethought me of his mortgage. What of his crops and barn +destroyed, I knew he would be unable to meet it. So I got a shrewd, +close-mouthed, tight-fisted money-lender to get the mortgage +transferred to him. I did not appear but through this agent I forced +the foreclosure, and but few days (no more, believe me, than the law +allowed) were given John Claverhouse to remove his goods and chattels +from the premises. Then I strolled down to see how he took it, for +he had lived there upward of twenty years. But he met me with his +saucer-eyes twinkling, and the light glowing and spreading in his face +till it was as a full-risen moon. + +“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed. “The funniest tike, that youngster of mine! +Did you ever hear the like? Let me tell you. He was down playing by the +edge of the river when a piece of the bank caved in and splashed him. ‘O +papa!’ he cried; ‘a great big puddle flewed up and hit me.’” + +He stopped and waited for me to join him in his infernal glee. + +“I don’t see any laugh in it,” I said shortly, and I know my face went +sour. + +He regarded me with wonderment, and then came the damnable light, +glowing and spreading, as I have described it, till his face shone soft +and warm, like the summer moon, and then the laugh—“Ha! ha! That’s +funny! You don’t see it, eh? He! he! Ho! ho! ho! He doesn’t see it! Why, +look here. You know a puddle—” + +But I turned on my heel and left him. That was the last. I could stand +it no longer. The thing must end right there, I thought, curse him! The +earth should be quit of him. And as I went over the hill, I could hear +his monstrous laugh reverberating against the sky. + +Now, I pride myself on doing things neatly, and when I resolved to kill +John Claverhouse I had it in mind to do so in such fashion that I should +not look back upon it and feel ashamed. I hate bungling, and I hate +brutality. To me there is something repugnant in merely striking a man +with one’s naked fist—faugh! it is sickening! So, to shoot, or stab, +or club John Claverhouse (oh, that name!) did not appeal to me. And not +only was I impelled to do it neatly and artistically, but also in such +manner that not the slightest possible suspicion could be directed +against me. + +To this end I bent my intellect, and, after a week of profound +incubation, I hatched the scheme. Then I set to work. I bought a water +spaniel bitch, five months old, and devoted my whole attention to her +training. Had any one spied upon me, they would have remarked that this +training consisted entirely of one thing—RETRIEVING. I taught the dog, +which I called “Bellona,” to fetch sticks I threw into the water, and +not only to fetch, but to fetch at once, without mouthing or playing +with them. The point was that she was to stop for nothing, but to +deliver the stick in all haste. I made a practice of running away and +leaving her to chase me, with the stick in her mouth, till she caught +me. She was a bright animal, and took to the game with such eagerness +that I was soon content. + +After that, at the first casual opportunity, I presented Bellona to +John Claverhouse. I knew what I was about, for I was aware of a little +weakness of his, and of a little private sinning of which he was +regularly and inveterately guilty. + +“No,” he said, when I placed the end of the rope in his hand. “No, you +don’t mean it.” And his mouth opened wide and he grinned all over his +damnable moon-face. + +“I—I kind of thought, somehow, you didn’t like me,” he explained. +“Wasn’t it funny for me to make such a mistake?” And at the thought he +held his sides with laughter. + +“What is her name?” he managed to ask between paroxysms. + +“Bellona,” I said. + +“He! he!” he tittered. “What a funny name.” + +I gritted my teeth, for his mirth put them on edge, and snapped out +between them, “She was the wife of Mars, you know.” + +Then the light of the full moon began to suffuse his face, until he +exploded with: “That was my other dog. Well, I guess she’s a widow now. +Oh! Ho! ho! E! he! he! Ho!” he whooped after me, and I turned and fled +swiftly over the hill. + +The week passed by, and on Saturday evening I said to him, “You go away +Monday, don’t you?” + +He nodded his head and grinned. + +“Then you won’t have another chance to get a mess of those trout you +just ‘dote’ on.” + +But he did not notice the sneer. “Oh, I don’t know,” he chuckled. “I’m +going up to-morrow to try pretty hard.” + +Thus was assurance made doubly sure, and I went back to my house hugging +myself with rapture. + +Early next morning I saw him go by with a dip-net and gunnysack, and +Bellona trotting at his heels. I knew where he was bound, and cut out +by the back pasture and climbed through the underbrush to the top of the +mountain. Keeping carefully out of sight, I followed the crest along +for a couple of miles to a natural amphitheatre in the hills, where the +little river raced down out of a gorge and stopped for breath in a large +and placid rock-bound pool. That was the spot! I sat down on the croup +of the mountain, where I could see all that occurred, and lighted my +pipe. + +Ere many minutes had passed, John Claverhouse came plodding up the bed +of the stream. Bellona was ambling about him, and they were in high +feather, her short, snappy barks mingling with his deeper chest-notes. +Arrived at the pool, he threw down the dip-net and sack, and drew from +his hip-pocket what looked like a large, fat candle. But I knew it to +be a stick of “giant”; for such was his method of catching trout. He +dynamited them. He attached the fuse by wrapping the “giant” tightly +in a piece of cotton. Then he ignited the fuse and tossed the explosive +into the pool. + +Like a flash, Bellona was into the pool after it. I could have shrieked +aloud for joy. Claverhouse yelled at her, but without avail. He pelted +her with clods and rocks, but she swam steadily on till she got the +stick of “giant” in her mouth, when she whirled about and headed for +shore. Then, for the first time, he realized his danger, and started to +run. As foreseen and planned by me, she made the bank and took out after +him. Oh, I tell you, it was great! As I have said, the pool lay in a +sort of amphitheatre. Above and below, the stream could be crossed +on stepping-stones. And around and around, up and down and across the +stones, raced Claverhouse and Bellona. I could never have believed +that such an ungainly man could run so fast. But run he did, Bellona +hot-footed after him, and gaining. And then, just as she caught up, +he in full stride, and she leaping with nose at his knee, there was a +sudden flash, a burst of smoke, a terrific detonation, and where man and +dog had been the instant before there was naught to be seen but a big +hole in the ground. + +“Death from accident while engaged in illegal fishing.” That was the +verdict of the coroner’s jury; and that is why I pride myself on the +neat and artistic way in which I finished off John Claverhouse. There +was no bungling, no brutality; nothing of which to be ashamed in +the whole transaction, as I am sure you will agree. No more does his +infernal laugh go echoing among the hills, and no more does his fat +moon-face rise up to vex me. My days are peaceful now, and my night’s +sleep deep. + + + + +THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY + + +He had a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes, and his sad, insistent +voice, gentle-spoken as a maid’s, seemed the placid embodiment of some +deep-seated melancholy. He was the Leopard Man, but he did not look +it. His business in life, whereby he lived, was to appear in a cage of +performing leopards before vast audiences, and to thrill those audiences +by certain exhibitions of nerve for which his employers rewarded him on +a scale commensurate with the thrills he produced. + +As I say, he did not look it. He was narrow-hipped, narrow-shouldered, +and anaemic, while he seemed not so much oppressed by gloom as by a +sweet and gentle sadness, the weight of which was as sweetly and gently +borne. For an hour I had been trying to get a story out of him, but +he appeared to lack imagination. To him there was no romance in his +gorgeous career, no deeds of daring, no thrills—nothing but a gray +sameness and infinite boredom. + +Lions? Oh, yes! he had fought with them. It was nothing. All you had to +do was to stay sober. Anybody could whip a lion to a standstill with an +ordinary stick. He had fought one for half an hour once. Just hit him +on the nose every time he rushed, and when he got artful and rushed with +his head down, why, the thing to do was to stick out your leg. When he +grabbed at the leg you drew it back and hit hint on the nose again. That +was all. + +With the far-away look in his eyes and his soft flow of words he showed +me his scars. There were many of them, and one recent one where a +tigress had reached for his shoulder and gone down to the bone. I could +see the neatly mended rents in the coat he had on. His right arm, +from the elbow down, looked as though it had gone through a threshing +machine, what of the ravage wrought by claws and fangs. But it was +nothing, he said, only the old wounds bothered him somewhat when rainy +weather came on. + +Suddenly his face brightened with a recollection, for he was really as +anxious to give me a story as I was to get it. + +“I suppose you’ve heard of the lion-tamer who was hated by another man?” + he asked. + +He paused and looked pensively at a sick lion in the cage opposite. + +“Got the toothache,” he explained. “Well, the lion-tamer’s big play to +the audience was putting his head in a lion’s mouth. The man who hated +him attended every performance in the hope sometime of seeing that lion +crunch down. He followed the show about all over the country. The years +went by and he grew old, and the lion-tamer grew old, and the lion grew +old. And at last one day, sitting in a front seat, he saw what he had +waited for. The lion crunched down, and there wasn’t any need to call a +doctor.” + +The Leopard Man glanced casually over his finger nails in a manner which +would have been critical had it not been so sad. + +“Now, that’s what I call patience,” he continued, “and it’s my style. +But it was not the style of a fellow I knew. He was a little, thin, +sawed-off, sword-swallowing and juggling Frenchman. De Ville, he called +himself, and he had a nice wife. She did trapeze work and used to dive +from under the roof into a net, turning over once on the way as nice as +you please. + +“De Ville had a quick temper, as quick as his hand, and his hand was as +quick as the paw of a tiger. One day, because the ring-master called him +a frog-eater, or something like that and maybe a little worse, he shoved +him against the soft pine background he used in his knife-throwing act, +so quick the ring-master didn’t have time to think, and there, before +the audience, De Ville kept the air on fire with his knives, sinking +them into the wood all around the ring-master so close that they passed +through his clothes and most of them bit into his skin. + +“The clowns had to pull the knives out to get him loose, for he was +pinned fast. So the word went around to watch out for De Ville, and no +one dared be more than barely civil to his wife. And she was a sly bit +of baggage, too, only all hands were afraid of De Ville. + +“But there was one man, Wallace, who was afraid of nothing. He was the +lion-tamer, and he had the self-same trick of putting his head into +the lion’s mouth. He’d put it into the mouths of any of them, though +he preferred Augustus, a big, good-natured beast who could always be +depended upon. + +“As I was saying, Wallace—‘King’ Wallace we called him—was afraid +of nothing alive or dead. He was a king and no mistake. I’ve seen him +drunk, and on a wager go into the cage of a lion that’d turned nasty, +and without a stick beat him to a finish. Just did it with his fist on +the nose. + +“Madame de Ville—” + +At an uproar behind us the Leopard Man turned quietly around. It was +a divided cage, and a monkey, poking through the bars and around the +partition, had had its paw seized by a big gray wolf who was trying to +pull it off by main strength. The arm seemed stretching out longer end +longer like a thick elastic, and the unfortunate monkey’s mates were +raising a terrible din. No keeper was at hand, so the Leopard Man +stepped over a couple of paces, dealt the wolf a sharp blow on the nose +with the light cane he carried, and returned with a sadly apologetic +smile to take up his unfinished sentence as though there had been no +interruption. + +“—looked at King Wallace and King Wallace looked at her, while De Ville +looked black. We warned Wallace, but it was no use. He laughed at us, +as he laughed at De Ville one day when he shoved De Ville’s head into a +bucket of paste because he wanted to fight. + +“De Ville was in a pretty mess—I helped to scrape him off; but he was +cool as a cucumber and made no threats at all. But I saw a glitter in +his eyes which I had seen often in the eyes of wild beasts, and I went +out of my way to give Wallace a final warning. He laughed, but he did +not look so much in Madame de Ville’s direction after that. + +“Several months passed by. Nothing had happened and I was beginning to +think it all a scare over nothing. We were West by that time, showing in +‘Frisco. It was during the afternoon performance, and the big tent was +filled with women and children, when I went looking for Red Denny, the +head canvas-man, who had walked off with my pocket-knife. + +“Passing by one of the dressing tents I glanced in through a hole in the +canvas to see if I could locate him. He wasn’t there, but directly in +front of me was King Wallace, in tights, waiting for his turn to go on +with his cage of performing lions. He was watching with much amusement a +quarrel between a couple of trapeze artists. All the rest of the people +in the dressing tent were watching the same thing, with the exception +of De Ville whom I noticed staring at Wallace with undisguised hatred. +Wallace and the rest were all too busy following the quarrel to notice +this or what followed. + +“But I saw it through the hole in the canvas. De Ville drew his +handkerchief from his pocket, made as though to mop the sweat from +his face with it (it was a hot day), and at the same time walked past +Wallace’s back. The look troubled me at the time, for not only did I see +hatred in it, but I saw triumph as well. + +“‘De Ville will bear watching,’ I said to myself, and I really breathed +easier when I saw him go out the entrance to the circus grounds and +board an electric car for down town. A few minutes later I was in the +big tent, where I had overhauled Red Denny. King Wallace was doing +his turn and holding the audience spellbound. He was in a particularly +vicious mood, and he kept the lions stirred up till they were all +snarling, that is, all of them except old Augustus, and he was just too +fat and lazy and old to get stirred up over anything. + +“Finally Wallace cracked the old lion’s knees with his whip and got him +into position. Old Augustus, blinking good-naturedly, opened his mouth +and in popped Wallace’s head. Then the jaws came together, CRUNCH, just +like that.” + +The Leopard Man smiled in a sweetly wistful fashion, and the far-away +look came into his eyes. + +“And that was the end of King Wallace,” he went on in his sad, low +voice. “After the excitement cooled down I watched my chance and bent +over and smelled Wallace’s head. Then I sneezed.” + +“It ... it was...?” I queried with halting eagerness. + +“Snuff—that De Ville dropped on his hair in the dressing tent. Old +Augustus never meant to do it. He only sneezed.” + + + + +LOCAL COLOR + + +“I do not see why you should not turn this immense amount of unusual +information to account,” I told him. “Unlike most men equipped with +similar knowledge, YOU have expression. Your style is—” + +“Is sufficiently—er—journalese?” he interrupted suavely. + +“Precisely! You could turn a pretty penny.” + +But he interlocked his fingers meditatively, shrugged his shoulders, and +dismissed the subject. + +“I have tried it. It does not pay.” + +“It was paid for and published,” he added, after a pause. “And I was +also honored with sixty days in the Hobo.” + +“The Hobo?” I ventured. + +“The Hobo—” He fixed his eyes on my Spencer and ran along the titles +while he cast his definition. “The Hobo, my dear fellow, is the name for +that particular place of detention in city and county jails wherein are +assembled tramps, drunks, beggars, and the riff-raff of petty offenders. +The word itself is a pretty one, and it has a history. Hautbois—there’s +the French of it. Haut, meaning high, and bois, wood. In English +it becomes hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot tone, I +believe, played with a double reed, an oboe, in fact. You remember in +‘Henry IV’— + + “‘The case of a treble hautboy + Was a mansion for him, a court.’ + +“From this to ho-boy is but a step, and for that matter the English +used the terms interchangeably. But—and mark you, the leap paralyzes +one—crossing the Western Ocean, in New York City, hautboy, or ho-boy, +becomes the name by which the night-scavenger is known. In a way one +understands its being born of the contempt for wandering players and +musical fellows. But see the beauty of it! the burn and the brand! +The night-scavenger, the pariah, the miserable, the despised, the man +without caste! And in its next incarnation, consistently and logically, +it attaches itself to the American outcast, namely, the tramp. Then, +as others have mutilated its sense, the tramp mutilates its form, and +ho-boy becomes exultantly hobo. Wherefore, the large stone and brick +cells, lined with double and triple-tiered bunks, in which the Law is +wont to incarcerate him, he calls the Hobo. Interesting, isn’t it?” + +And I sat back and marvelled secretly at this encyclopaedic-minded man, +this Leith Clay-Randolph, this common tramp who made himself at home in +my den, charmed such friends as gathered at my small table, outshone me +with his brilliance and his manners, spent my spending money, smoked my +best cigars, and selected from my ties and studs with a cultivated and +discriminating eye. + +He absently walked over to the shelves and looked into Loria’s “Economic +Foundation of Society.” + +“I like to talk with you,” he remarked. “You are not indifferently +schooled. You’ve read the books, and your economic interpretation of +history, as you choose to call it” (this with a sneer), “eminently fits +you for an intellectual outlook on life. But your sociologic judgments +are vitiated by your lack of practical knowledge. Now I, who know the +books, pardon me, somewhat better than you, know life, too. I have lived +it, naked, taken it up in both my hands and looked at it, and tasted it, +the flesh and the blood of it, and, being purely an intellectual, I have +been biased by neither passion nor prejudice. All of which is necessary +for clear concepts, and all of which you lack. Ah! a really clever +passage. Listen!” + +And he read aloud to me in his remarkable style, paralleling the text +with a running criticism and commentary, lucidly wording involved and +lumbering periods, casting side and cross lights upon the subject, +introducing points the author had blundered past and objections he had +ignored, catching up lost ends, flinging a contrast into a paradox +and reducing it to a coherent and succinctly stated truth—in short, +flashing his luminous genius in a blaze of fire over pages erstwhile +dull and heavy and lifeless. + +It is long since that Leith Clay-Randolph (note the hyphenated surname) +knocked at the back door of Idlewild and melted the heart of Gunda. Now +Gunda was cold as her Norway hills, though in her least frigid moods she +was capable of permitting especially nice-looking tramps to sit on the +back stoop and devour lone crusts and forlorn and forsaken chops. But +that a tatterdemalion out of the night should invade the sanctity of her +kitchen-kingdom and delay dinner while she set a place for him in the +warmest corner, was a matter of such moment that the Sunflower went +to see. Ah, the Sunflower, of the soft heart and swift sympathy! Leith +Clay-Randolph threw his glamour over her for fifteen long minutes, +whilst I brooded with my cigar, and then she fluttered back with vague +words and the suggestion of a cast-off suit I would never miss. + +“Surely I shall never miss it,” I said, and I had in mind the dark gray +suit with the pockets draggled from the freightage of many books—books +that had spoiled more than one day’s fishing sport. + +“I should advise you, however,” I added, “to mend the pockets first.” + +But the Sunflower’s face clouded. “N—o,” she said, “the black one.” + +“The black one!” This explosively, incredulously. “I wear it quite +often. I—I intended wearing it to-night.” + +“You have two better ones, and you know I never liked it, dear,” the +Sunflower hurried on. “Besides, it’s shiny—” + +“Shiny!” + +“It—it soon will be, which is just the same, and the man is really +estimable. He is nice and refined, and I am sure he—” + +“Has seen better days.” + +“Yes, and the weather is raw and beastly, and his clothes are +threadbare. And you have many suits—” + +“Five,” I corrected, “counting in the dark gray fishing outfit with the +draggled pockets.” + +“And he has none, no home, nothing—” + +“Not even a Sunflower,”—putting my arm around her,—“wherefore he is +deserving of all things. Give him the black suit, dear—nay, the best +one, the very best one. Under high heaven for such lack there must be +compensation!” + +“You ARE a dear!” And the Sunflower moved to the door and looked back +alluringly. “You are a PERFECT dear.” + +And this after seven years, I marvelled, till she was back again, timid +and apologetic. + +“I—I gave him one of your white shirts. He wore a cheap horrid cotton +thing, and I knew it would look ridiculous. And then his shoes were so +slipshod, I let him have a pair of yours, the old ones with the narrow +caps—” + +“Old ones!” + +“Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did.” + +It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. + +And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did +not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an +erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk +who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, +he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And +without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away +into that great mysterious underworld he called “The Road.” + +“I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the +open hand and heart,” he said, on the night he donned my good black +suit. + +And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and +saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly +and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known +better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a +transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on +equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended +upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for +many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus +the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from +brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with +barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying +him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him +for the Son of Anak’s sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for +myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, +of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the +Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that +he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And +he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from +emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him +once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with +the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a +sense-delight for the problem’s sake? + +He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic +and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in +speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and +polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But +there was something glimmering; there which I never caught—flashes +of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could +grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man +behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never +knew. + +“But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?” I +asked. “Never mind Loria. Tell me.” + +“Well, if I must.” He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. + +“In a town that shall be nameless,” he began, “in fact, a city of fifty +thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and +women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as +fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once +entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that +they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific +satire—” + +I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. + +“I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the +genesis of the action,” he explained. “However, the idea came. What +was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The +Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit +the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high +places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me +into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, +guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, +Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. + +“‘Pale youth,’ quoth I, ‘I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, +to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.’ + +“He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. + +“‘G’wan an’ see the janitor. I don’t know nothin’ about the gas.’ + +“‘Nay, my lily-white, the editor.’ + +“‘Wich editor?’ he snapped like a young bullterrier. ‘Dramatic? +Sportin’? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? +Editorial? Wich?’ + +“Which, I did not know. ‘THE Editor,’ I proclaimed stoutly. ‘The ONLY +Editor.’ + +“‘Aw, Spargo!’ he sniffed. + +“‘Of course, Spargo,’ I answered. ‘Who else?’ + +“‘Gimme yer card,’ says he. + +“‘My what?’ + +“‘Yer card—Say! Wot’s yer business, anyway?’ + +“And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I +reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre +chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but +he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the +hand. + +“‘I am the census-taker Time,’ I boomed in sepulchral tones. ‘Beware +lest I knock too loud.’ + +“‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he sneered. + +“Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. + +“‘Well, whatcher want?’ he wheezed with returning breath. + +“‘I want Spargo, the only Spargo.’ + +“‘Then leave go, an’ I’ll glide an’ see.’ + +“‘No you don’t, my lily-white.’ And I took a tighter grip on his collar. +‘No bouncers in mine, understand! I’ll go along.’” + +Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. +“Do you know, Anak, you can’t appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, +playing the clown. You couldn’t do it if you wished. Your pitiful little +conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to +turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of +any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder +and law-respecting citizen. + +“However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, +red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his +desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into +a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and +the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me +expectantly. + +“‘You are a very busy man,’ I said. + +“He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. + +“‘And after all, is it worth it?’ I went on. ‘What does life mean that +it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now +look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin—’ + +“‘Who are you? What are you?’ he bellowed with a suddenness that was, +well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. + +“‘A very pertinent question, sir,’ I acknowledged. ‘First, I am a +man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither +profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. +My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the +dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology +addressed to your understanding, a tramp.’ + +“‘What the hell—?’ + +“‘Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements +and multifarious—’ + +“‘Quit it!’ he shouted. ‘What do you want?’ + +“‘I want money.’ + +“He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed +a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, ‘This is no bank.’ + +“‘Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your +leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how +does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you +open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can +they be happy without it?’ + +“I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the +unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I +liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he’d do +business with me. + +“‘But mind you,’ he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into +my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, ‘mind you, I won’t +stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have +a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of +sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social +strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go +and life, crisp and crackling and interesting—tumble?’ + +“And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. + +“‘Don’t forget the local color!’ he shouted after me through the door. + +“And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. + +“The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. ‘Got the bounce, +eh?’ + +“‘Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,’ I chortled, waving the copy paper; +‘not the bounce, but a detail. I’ll be City Editor in three months, and +then I’ll make you jump.’ + +“And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair +of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage +consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck +and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him +close.” + +“But how could you, Leith,” I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad +strong before me, “how could you treat him so barbarously?” + +Leith laughed dryly. “My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you +your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master +you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational +judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, +a dim-pulsing and dying organism—pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of +breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. +There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never +arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem—” + +“But the local color?” I prodded him. + +“That’s right,” he replied. “Keep me in the running. Well, I took my +handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), +dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a +box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant +and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my +social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the +average citizen. + +“From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was +particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good +people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs +the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, +than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best +hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable +fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was +convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion +which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the +system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The +good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to +riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures +so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke +two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, +and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay +for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events +proved, it made the taxpayers wince. + +“One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain +Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the +seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious +in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying +reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name +or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of +way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local +color. + +“Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest +against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits +of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the +sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, +and the rhetoric—say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: + +“‘So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John +Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our +ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are +different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a +crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And +well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: “Our pride it is +to know no spur of pride.” Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; +only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our +distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.’ + +“Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. +A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like +this: ‘This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy’; ‘this civic sinner, this +judicial highwayman’; ‘possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an +honor which thieves’ honor puts to shame’; ‘who compounds criminality +with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and +impecunious to rotting cells,’—and so forth and so forth, style +sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a +dissertation on ‘Surplus Value,’ or ‘The Fallacies of Marxism,’ but just +the stuff the dear public likes. + +“‘Humph!’ grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. ‘Swift gait +you strike, my man.’ + +“I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his +superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or +thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said +nothing till he had finished. + +“‘Where’d you work, you pencil-pusher?’ he asked. + +“‘My maiden effort,’ I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly +simulating embarrassment. + +“‘Maiden hell! What salary do you want?’ + +“‘Nay, nay,’ I answered. ‘No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I +am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is +his.’ + +“‘Save John Law,’ he chuckled. + +“‘Save John Law,’ said I. + +“‘How did you know I was bucking the police department?’ he demanded +abruptly. + +“‘I didn’t know, but I knew you were in training,’ I answered. +‘Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three +biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all +wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because +the Cowbell’s candidate for chief of police had been turned down. +Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two +and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police +commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new +chief of police means Cowbell’s candidate; ergo, your turn to play.’ + +“He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I +put them away and puffed on the old one. + +“‘You’ll do,’ he jubilated. ‘This stuff’ (patting my copy) ‘is the first +gun of the campaign. You’ll touch off many another before we’re done. +I’ve been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.’ + +“But I shook my head. + +“‘Come, now!’ he admonished sharply. ‘No shenanagan! The Cowbell must +have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won’t be happy till it +gets you. What say?’ + +“In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half +an hour the only Spargo gave it up. + +“‘Remember,’ he said, ‘any time you reconsider, I’m open. No matter +where you are, wire me and I’ll send the ducats to come on at once.’ + +“I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy—dope, he called it. + +“‘Oh, regular routine,’ he said. ‘Get it the first Thursday after +publication.’ + +“‘Then I’ll have to trouble you for a few scad until—’ + +“He looked at me and smiled. ‘Better cough up, eh?’ + +“‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.’ + +“And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear +Anak), and I pulled my freight ... eh?—oh, departed. + +“‘Pale youth,’ I said to Cerberus, ‘I am bounced.’ (He grinned with +pallid joy.) ‘And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive +this little—’ (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to +guard his head from the expected blow)—‘this little memento.’ + +“I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, +he was too quick for me. + +“‘Aw, keep yer dirt,’ he snarled. + +“‘I like you still better,’ I said, adding a second fiver. ‘You grow +perfect. But you must take it.’ + +“He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what +little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two +fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two +coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. +As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and +caught them. The elevator boy’s eyes bulged. + +“‘It’s a way I have,’ I said, pocketing them. + +“‘Some bloke’s dropped ‘em down the shaft,’ he whispered, awed by the +circumstance. + +“‘It stands to reason,’ said I. + +“‘I’ll take charge of ‘em,’ he volunteered. + +“‘Nonsense!’ + +“‘You’d better turn ‘em over,’ he threatened, ‘or I stop the works.’ + +“‘Pshaw!’ + +“And stop he did, between floors. + +“‘Young man,’ I said, ‘have you a mother?’ (He looked serious, as though +regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right +sleeve with greatest care.) ‘Are you prepared to die?’ (I got a stealthy +crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) ‘But a minute, a brief minute, +stands between you and eternity.’ (Here I crooked my right hand into a +claw and slid the other foot up.) ‘Young man, young man,’ I trumpeted, +‘in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and +stoop to hear you shriek in hell.’ + +“It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the +drag. You see, Anak, it’s a habit I can’t shake off of leaving vivid +memories behind. No one ever forgets me. + +“I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my +shoulder: + +“‘Hello, Cinders! Which way?’ + +“It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a +freight in Jacksonville. ‘Couldn’t see ‘em fer cinders,’ he described +it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp +nickname. + +“‘Bound south,’ I answered. ‘And how’s Slim?’ + +“‘Bum. Bulls is horstile.’ + +“‘Where’s the push?’ + +“‘At the hang-out. I’ll put you wise.’ + +“‘Who’s the main guy?’ + +“‘Me, and don’t yer ferget it.’” + +The lingo was rippling from Leith’s lips, but perforce I stopped him. +“Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner.” + +“Certainly,” he answered cheerfully. “Slim is in poor luck. Bull means +policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, +the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where +the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that +distinction. + +“Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was +the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a +little purling stream. + +“‘Come on, you mugs!’ Slim addressed them. ‘Throw yer feet! Here’s +Cinders, an’ we must do ‘em proud.’ + +“All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some +lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to +the fold after a year’s separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent +several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, +Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It’s amazing +the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing +the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer +and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the +blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great—an orgy under the sky, a +contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is +something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president +I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It +would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. + +“All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, +early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming +array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten +o’clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the +twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a +Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. + +“‘John Ambrose!’ the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of +long practice, stood up. + +“‘Vagrant, your Honor,’ the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not +deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, ‘Ten days,’ and Chi Slim sat +down. + +“And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the +man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like +marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the +judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? +Superb! + +“Chi Slim nudged me. ‘Give’m a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.’ + +“I shook my head. + +“‘G’wan,’ he urged. ‘Give ‘m a ghost story The mugs’ll take it all +right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.’ + +“‘L. C. Randolph!’ the clerk called. + +“I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to +the judge, and the bailiff smiled. + +“‘You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?’ his Honor +remarked sweetly. + +“It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the +excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the +pit I had digged. + +“‘That’s yer graft. Work it,’ Slim prompted. + +“‘It’s all over but the shouting,’ I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of +the article, was puzzled. + +“‘Your Honor,’ I answered, ‘when I can get work, that is my occupation.’ + +“‘You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.’ (Here his Honor +took up the morning’s Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I +knew was mine.) ‘Color is good,’ he commented, an appreciative twinkle +in his eyes; ‘pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like +effects. Now this ... this judge you have depicted ... you, ah, draw from +life, I presume?’ + +“‘Rarely, your I Honor,’ I answered. ‘Composites, ideals, rather ... er, +types, I may say.’ + +“‘But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,’ he continued. + +“‘That is splashed on afterward,’ I explained. + +“‘This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to +believe?’ + +“‘No, your Honor.’ + +“‘Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?’ + +“‘Nay, more, your Honor,’ I said boldly, ‘an ideal.’ + +“‘Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to +ask how much you received for this bit of work?’ + +“‘Thirty dollars, your Honor.’ + +“‘Hum, good!’ And his tone abruptly changed. ‘Young man, local color is +a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days’ +imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.’ + +“‘Alas!’ said I, ‘I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.’ + +“‘And thirty days more for wasting your substance.’ + +“‘Next case!’ said his Honor to the clerk. + +“Slim was stunned. ‘Gee!’ he whispered. ‘Gee the push gets ten days and +you get sixty. Gee!’” + +Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his +knees. “Returning to the original conversation, don’t you find, +Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with +scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely—” + +“Yes,” I said absently; “yes.” + + + + +AMATEUR NIGHT + + +The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he +had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little +cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, +on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were +gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes +was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an +observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, +he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied +the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen +sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her +sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. + +There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather +than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the +wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an +impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of +a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with +head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and +moulded and made her to be a doer of things. + +But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. “I can guess what you +would tell me,” the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy +preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. “And you +have told me enough,” he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as +she went over the conversation in its freshness). “You have done no +newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. +You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off +with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your +friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, +and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you +want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If +you knew how crowded—” + +“But if there are no openings,” she had interrupted, in turn, “how did +those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get +in?” + +“They made themselves indispensable,” was the terse response. “Make +yourself indispensable.” + +“But how can I, if I do not get the chance?” + +“Make your chance.” + +“But how?” she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a +most unreasonable man. + +“How? That is your business, not mine,” he said conclusively, rising +in token that the interview was at an end. “I must inform you, my dear +young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young +ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and +every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly +that of instructor in a school of journalism.” + +She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had +conned the conversation over and over again. “But how?” she repeated to +herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where +she and her sister “bach’ed.” “But how?” And so she continued to put the +interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed +from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was +need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up +from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John +Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his +acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for +themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand +and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for +the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but +successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and +typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. +Edna’s secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a +clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which +to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But +the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or +her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent +remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. +And it was a slim little hoard by now. + +“There’s Max Irwin,” Letty said, talking it over. “He’s a journalist +with a national reputation. Go and see him, Ed. He knows how, and he +should be able to tell you how.” + +“But I don’t know him,” Edna objected. + +“No more than you knew the editor you saw to-day.” + +“Y-e-s,” (long and judicially), “but that’s different.” + +“Not a bit different from the strange men and women you’ll interview +when you’ve learned how,” Letty encouraged. + +“I hadn’t looked at it in that light,” Edna conceded. “After all, +where’s the difference between interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for some +paper, or interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for myself? It will be practice, +too. I’ll go and look him up in the directory.” + +“Letty, I know I can write if I get the chance,” she announced +decisively a moment later. “I just FEEL that I have the feel of it, if +you know what I mean.” + +And Letty knew and nodded. “I wonder what he is like?” she asked softly. + +“I’ll make it my business to find out,” Edna assured her; “and I’ll let +you know inside forty-eight hours.” + +Letty clapped her hands. “Good! That’s the newspaper spirit! Make it +twenty-four hours and you are perfect!” + + * * * + +“—and I am very sorry to trouble you,” she concluded the statement of +her case to Max Irwin, famous war correspondent and veteran journalist. + +“Not at all,” he answered, with a deprecatory wave of the hand. “If you +don’t do your own talking, who’s to do it for you? Now I understand your +predicament precisely. You want to get on the Intelligencer, you want +to get in at once, and you have had no previous experience. In the first +place, then, have you any pull? There are a dozen men in the city, a +line from whom would be an open-sesame. After that you would stand or +fall by your own ability. There’s Senator Longbridge, for instance, +and Claus Inskeep the street-car magnate, and Lane, and McChesney—” He +paused, with voice suspended. + +“I am sure I know none of them,” she answered despondently. + +“It’s not necessary. Do you know any one that knows them? or any one +that knows any one else that knows them?” + +Edna shook her head. + +“Then we must think of something else,” he went on, cheerfully. “You’ll +have to do something yourself. Let me see.” + +He stopped and thought for a moment, with closed eyes and wrinkled +forehead. She was watching him, studying him intently, when his blue +eyes opened with a snap and his face suddenly brightened. + +“I have it! But no, wait a minute.” + +And for a minute it was his turn to study her. And study her he did, +till she could feel her cheeks flushing under his gaze. + +“You’ll do, I think, though it remains to be seen,” he said +enigmatically. “It will show the stuff that’s in you, besides, and it +will be a better claim upon the Intelligencer people than all the lines +from all the senators and magnates in the world. The thing for you is to +do Amateur Night at the Loops.” + +“I—I hardly understand,” Edna said, for his suggestion conveyed no +meaning to her. “What are the ‘Loops’? and what is ‘Amateur Night’?” + +“I forgot you said you were from the interior. But so much the better, +if you’ve only got the journalistic grip. It will be a first impression, +and first impressions are always unbiased, unprejudiced, fresh, vivid. +The Loops are out on the rim of the city, near the Park,—a place of +diversion. There’s a scenic railway, a water toboggan slide, a concert +band, a theatre, wild animals, moving pictures, and so forth and so +forth. The common people go there to look at the animals and enjoy +themselves, and the other people go there to enjoy themselves +by watching the common people enjoy themselves. A democratic, +fresh-air-breathing, frolicking affair, that’s what the Loops are. + +“But the theatre is what concerns you. It’s vaudeville. One turn follows +another—jugglers, acrobats, rubber-jointed wonders, fire-dancers, +coon-song artists, singers, players, female impersonators, sentimental +soloists, and so forth and so forth. These people are professional +vaudevillists. They make their living that way. Many are excellently +paid. Some are free rovers, doing a turn wherever they can get an +opening, at the Obermann, the Orpheus, the Alcatraz, the Louvre, and +so forth and so forth. Others cover circuit pretty well all over the +country. An interesting phase of life, and the pay is big enough to +attract many aspirants. + +“Now the management of the Loops, in its bid for popularity, instituted +what is called ‘Amateur Night’; that is to say, twice a week, after +the professionals have done their turns, the stage is given over to +the aspiring amateurs. The audience remains to criticise. The populace +becomes the arbiter of art—or it thinks it does, which is the same +thing; and it pays its money and is well pleased with itself, and +Amateur Night is a paying proposition to the management. + +“But the point of Amateur Night, and it is well to note it, is that +these amateurs are not really amateurs. They are paid for doing their +turn. At the best, they may be termed ‘professional amateurs.’ It stands +to reason that the management could not get people to face a rampant +audience for nothing, and on such occasions the audience certainly goes +mad. It’s great fun—for the audience. But the thing for you to do, and +it requires nerve, I assure you, is to go out, make arrangements for two +turns, (Wednesday and Saturday nights, I believe), do your two turns, +and write it up for the Sunday Intelligencer.” + +“But—but,” she quavered, “I—I—” and there was a suggestion of +disappointment and tears in her voice. + +“I see,” he said kindly. “You were expecting something else, something +different, something better. We all do at first. But remember the +admiral of the Queen’s Na-vee, who swept the floor and polished up +the handle of the big front door. You must face the drudgery of +apprenticeship or quit right now. What do you say?” + +The abruptness with which he demanded her decision startled her. As she +faltered, she could see a shade of disappointment beginning to darken +his face. + +“In a way it must be considered a test,” he added encouragingly. “A +severe one, but so much the better. Now is the time. Are you game?” + +“I’ll try,” she said faintly, at the same time making a note of the +directness, abruptness, and haste of these city men with whom she was +coming in contact. + +“Good! Why, when I started in, I had the dreariest, deadliest details +imaginable. And after that, for a weary time, I did the police and +divorce courts. But it all came well in the end and did me good. You +are luckier in making your start with Sunday work. It’s not particularly +great. What of it? Do it. Show the stuff you’re made of, and you’ll get +a call for better work—better class and better pay. Now you go out this +afternoon to the Loops, and engage to do two turns.” + +“But what kind of turns can I do?” Edna asked dubiously. + +“Do? That’s easy. Can you sing? Never mind, don’t need to sing. Screech, +do anything—that’s what you’re paid for, to afford amusement, to give +bad art for the populace to howl down. And when you do your turn, take +some one along for chaperon. Be afraid of no one. Talk up. Move about +among the amateurs waiting their turn, pump them, study them, photograph +them in your brain. Get the atmosphere, the color, strong color, lots of +it. Dig right in with both hands, and get the essence of it, the spirit, +the significance. What does it mean? Find out what it means. That’s what +you’re there for. That’s what the readers of the Sunday Intelligencer +want to know. + +“Be terse in style, vigorous of phrase, apt, concretely apt, in +similitude. Avoid platitudes and commonplaces. Exercise selection. Seize +upon things salient, eliminate the rest, and you have pictures. Paint +those pictures in words and the Intelligencer will have you. Get hold +of a few back numbers, and study the Sunday Intelligencer feature story. +Tell it all in the opening paragraph as advertisement of contents, and +in the contents tell it all over again. Then put a snapper at the end, +so if they’re crowded for space they can cut off your contents anywhere, +reattach the snapper, and the story will still retain form. There, +that’s enough. Study the rest out for yourself.” + +They both rose to their feet, Edna quite carried away by his enthusiasm +and his quick, jerky sentences, bristling with the things she wanted to +know. + +“And remember, Miss Wyman, if you’re ambitious, that the aim and end of +journalism is not the feature article. Avoid the rut. The feature is a +trick. Master it, but don’t let it master you. But master it you must; +for if you can’t learn to do a feature well, you can never expect to do +anything better. In short, put your whole self into it, and yet, outside +of it, above it, remain yourself, if you follow me. And now good luck to +you.” + +They had reached the door and were shaking hands. + +“And one thing more,” he interrupted her thanks, “let me see your +copy before you turn it in. I may be able to put you straight here and +there.” + +Edna found the manager of the Loops a full-fleshed, heavy-jowled +man, bushy of eyebrow and generally belligerent of aspect, with an +absent-minded scowl on his face and a black cigar stuck in the midst +thereof. Symes was his name, she had learned, Ernst Symes. + +“Whatcher turn?” he demanded, ere half her brief application had left +her lips. + +“Sentimental soloist, soprano,” she answered promptly, remembering +Irwin’s advice to talk up. + +“Whatcher name?” Mr. Symes asked, scarcely deigning to glance at her. + +She hesitated. So rapidly had she been rushed into the adventure that +she had not considered the question of a name at all. + +“Any name? Stage name?” he bellowed impatiently. + +“Nan Bellayne,” she invented on the spur of the moment. +“B-e-l-l-a-y-n-e. Yes, that’s it.” + +He scribbled it into a notebook. “All right. Take your turn Wednesday +and Saturday.” + +“How much do I get?” Edna demanded. + +“Two-an’-a-half a turn. Two turns, five. Getcher pay first Monday after +second turn.” + +And without the simple courtesy of “Good day,” he turned his back on her +and plunged into the newspaper he had been reading when she entered. + +Edna came early on Wednesday evening, Letty with her, and in a telescope +basket her costume—a simple affair. A plaid shawl borrowed from the +washerwoman, a ragged scrubbing skirt borrowed from the charwoman, and a +gray wig rented from a costumer for twenty-five cents a night, completed +the outfit; for Edna had elected to be an old Irishwoman singing +broken-heartedly after her wandering boy. + +Though they had come early, she found everything in uproar. The main +performance was under way, the orchestra was playing and the audience +intermittently applauding. The infusion of the amateurs clogged the +working of things behind the stage, crowded the passages, dressing +rooms, and wings, and forced everybody into everybody else’s way. +This was particularly distasteful to the professionals, who carried +themselves as befitted those of a higher caste, and whose behavior +toward the pariah amateurs was marked by hauteur and even brutality. And +Edna, bullied and elbowed and shoved about, clinging desperately to her +basket and seeking a dressing room, took note of it all. + +A dressing room she finally found, jammed with three other amateur +“ladies,” who were “making up” with much noise, high-pitched voices, and +squabbling over a lone mirror. Her own make-up was so simple that it was +quickly accomplished, and she left the trio of ladies holding an armed +truce while they passed judgment upon her. Letty was close at her +shoulder, and with patience and persistence they managed to get a nook +in one of the wings which commanded a view of the stage. + +A small, dark man, dapper and debonair, swallow-tailed and top-hatted, +was waltzing about the stage with dainty, mincing steps, and in a thin +little voice singing something or other about somebody or something +evidently pathetic. As his waning voice neared the end of the lines, a +large woman, crowned with an amazing wealth of blond hair, thrust rudely +past Edna, trod heavily on her toes, and shoved her contemptuously to +the side. “Bloomin’ hamateur!” she hissed as she went past, and the next +instant she was on the stage, graciously bowing to the audience, while +the small, dark man twirled extravagantly about on his tiptoes. + +“Hello, girls!” + +This greeting, drawled with an inimitable vocal caress in every +syllable, close in her ear, caused Edna to give a startled little jump. +A smooth-faced, moon-faced young man was smiling at her good-naturedly. +His “make-up” was plainly that of the stock tramp of the stage, though +the inevitable whiskers were lacking. + +“Oh, it don’t take a minute to slap’m on,” he explained, divining the +search in her eyes and waving in his hand the adornment in question. +“They make a feller sweat,” he explained further. And then, “What’s yer +turn?” + +“Soprano—sentimental,” she answered, trying to be offhand and at ease. + +“Whata you doin’ it for?” he demanded directly. + +“For fun; what else?” she countered. + +“I just sized you up for that as soon as I put eyes on you. You ain’t +graftin’ for a paper, are you?” + +“I never met but one editor in my life,” she replied evasively, “and I, +he—well, we didn’t get on very well together.” + +“Hittin’ ‘m for a job?” + +Edna nodded carelessly, though inwardly anxious and cudgelling her +brains for something to turn the conversation. + +“What’d he say?” + +“That eighteen other girls had already been there that week.” + +“Gave you the icy mit, eh?” The moon-faced young man laughed and slapped +his thighs. “You see, we’re kind of suspicious. The Sunday papers ‘d +like to get Amateur Night done up brown in a nice little package, and +the manager don’t see it that way. Gets wild-eyed at the thought of it.” + +“And what’s your turn?” she asked. + +“Who? me? Oh, I’m doin’ the tramp act to-night. I’m Charley Welsh, you +know.” + +She felt that by the mention of his name he intended to convey to her +complete enlightenment, but the best she could do was to say politely, +“Oh, is that so?” + +She wanted to laugh at the hurt disappointment which came into his face, +but concealed her amusement. + +“Come, now,” he said brusquely, “you can’t stand there and tell me +you’ve never heard of Charley Welsh? Well, you must be young. Why, I’m +an Only, the Only amateur at that. Sure, you must have seen me. I’m +everywhere. I could be a professional, but I get more dough out of it by +doin’ the amateur.” + +“But what’s an ‘Only’?” she queried. “I want to learn.” + +“Sure,” Charley Welsh said gallantly. “I’ll put you wise. An ‘Only’ is +a nonpareil, the feller that does one kind of a turn better’n any other +feller. He’s the Only, see?” + +And Edna saw. + +“To get a line on the biz,” he continued, “throw yer lamps on me. I’m +the Only all-round amateur. To-night I make a bluff at the tramp act. +It’s harder to bluff it than to really do it, but then it’s acting, it’s +amateur, it’s art. See? I do everything, from Sheeny monologue to team +song and dance and Dutch comedian. Sure, I’m Charley Welsh, the Only +Charley Welsh.” + +And in this fashion, while the thin, dark man and the large, blond woman +warbled dulcetly out on the stage and the other professionals followed +in their turns, did Charley Welsh put Edna wise, giving her much +miscellaneous and superfluous information and much that she stored away +for the Sunday Intelligencer. + +“Well, tra la loo,” he said suddenly. “There’s his highness chasin’ +you up. Yer first on the bill. Never mind the row when you go on. Just +finish yer turn like a lady.” + +It was at that moment that Edna felt her journalistic ambition departing +from her, and was aware of an overmastering desire to be somewhere else. +But the stage manager, like an ogre, barred her retreat. She could hear +the opening bars of her song going up from the orchestra and the noises +of the house dying away to the silence of anticipation. + +“Go ahead,” Letty whispered, pressing her hand; and from the other side +came the peremptory “Don’t flunk!” of Charley Welsh. + +But her feet seemed rooted to the floor, and she leaned weakly against +a shift scene. The orchestra was beginning over again, and a lone voice +from the house piped with startling distinctness: + +“Puzzle picture! Find Nannie!” + +A roar of laughter greeted the sally, and Edna shrank back. But the +strong hand of the manager descended on her shoulder, and with a quick, +powerful shove propelled her out on to the stage. His hand and arm +had flashed into full view, and the audience, grasping the situation, +thundered its appreciation. The orchestra was drowned out by the +terrible din, and Edna could see the bows scraping away across the +violins, apparently without sound. It was impossible for her to begin +in time, and as she patiently waited, arms akimbo and ears straining for +the music, the house let loose again (a favorite trick, she afterward +learned, of confusing the amateur by preventing him or her from hearing +the orchestra). + +But Edna was recovering her presence of mind. She became aware, pit to +dome, of a vast sea of smiling and fun-distorted faces, of vast roars of +laughter, rising wave on wave, and then her Scotch blood went cold and +angry. The hard-working but silent orchestra gave her the cue, and, +without making a sound, she began to move her lips, stretch forth her +arms, and sway her body, as though she were really singing. The noise in +the house redoubled in the attempt to drown her voice, but she serenely +went on with her pantomime. This seemed to continue an interminable +time, when the audience, tiring of its prank and in order to hear, +suddenly stilled its clamor, and discovered the dumb show she had been +making. For a moment all was silent, save for the orchestra, her lips +moving on without a sound, and then the audience realized that it had +been sold, and broke out afresh, this time with genuine applause in +acknowledgment of her victory. She chose this as the happy moment for +her exit, and with a bow and a backward retreat, she was off the stage +in Letty’s arms. + +The worst was past, and for the rest of the evening she moved about +among the amateurs and professionals, talking, listening, observing, +finding out what it meant and taking mental notes of it all. Charley +Welsh constituted himself her preceptor and guardian angel, and so well +did he perform the self-allotted task that when it was all over she felt +fully prepared to write her article. But the proposition had been to do +two turns, and her native pluck forced her to live up to it. Also, in +the course of the intervening days, she discovered fleeting impressions +that required verification; so, on Saturday, she was back again, with +her telescope basket and Letty. + +The manager seemed looking for her, and she caught an expression of +relief in his eyes when he first saw her. He hurried up, greeted her, +and bowed with a respect ludicrously at variance with his previous +ogre-like behavior. And as he bowed, across his shoulders she saw +Charley Welsh deliberately wink. + +But the surprise had just begun. The manager begged to be introduced +to her sister, chatted entertainingly with the pair of them, and strove +greatly and anxiously to be agreeable. He even went so far as to give +Edna a dressing room to herself, to the unspeakable envy of the three +other amateur ladies of previous acquaintance. Edna was nonplussed, +and it was not till she met Charley Welsh in the passage that light was +thrown on the mystery. + +“Hello!” he greeted her. “On Easy Street, eh? Everything slidin’ your +way.” + +She smiled brightly. + +“Thinks yer a female reporter, sure. I almost split when I saw’m layin’ +himself out sweet an’ pleasin’. Honest, now, that ain’t yer graft, is +it?” + +“I told you my experience with editors,” she parried. “And honest now, +it was honest, too.” + +But the Only Charley Welsh shook his head dubiously. “Not that I care +a rap,” he declared. “And if you are, just gimme a couple of lines of +notice, the right kind, good ad, you know. And if yer not, why yer all +right anyway. Yer not our class, that’s straight.” + +After her turn, which she did this time with the nerve of an old +campaigner, the manager returned to the charge; and after saying nice +things and being generally nice himself, he came to the point. + +“You’ll treat us well, I hope,” he said insinuatingly. “Do the right +thing by us, and all that?” + +“Oh,” she answered innocently, “you couldn’t persuade me to do another +turn; I know I seemed to take and that you’d like to have me, but I +really, really can’t.” + +“You know what I mean,” he said, with a touch of his old bulldozing +manner. + +“No, I really won’t,” she persisted. “Vaudeville’s too—too wearing on +the nerves, my nerves, at any rate.” + +Whereat he looked puzzled and doubtful, and forbore to press the point +further. + +But on Monday morning, when she came to his office to get her pay for +the two turns, it was he who puzzled her. + +“You surely must have mistaken me,” he lied glibly. “I remember saying +something about paying your car fare. We always do this, you know, but +we never, never pay amateurs. That would take the life and sparkle out +of the whole thing. No, Charley Welsh was stringing you. He gets paid +nothing for his turns. No amateur gets paid. The idea is ridiculous. +However, here’s fifty cents. It will pay your sister’s car fare also. +And,”—very suavely,—“speaking for the Loops, permit me to thank you +for the kind and successful contribution of your services.” + +That afternoon, true to her promise to Max Irwin, she placed her +typewritten copy into his hands. And while he ran over it, he nodded his +head from time to time, and maintained a running fire of commendatory +remarks: “Good!—that’s it!—that’s the stuff!—psychology’s all +right!—the very idea!—you’ve caught it!—excellent!—missed it a +bit here, but it’ll go—that’s vigorous!—strong!—vivid!—pictures! +pictures!—excellent!—most excellent!” + +And when he had run down to the bottom of the last page, holding out +his hand: “My dear Miss Wyman, I congratulate you. I must say you have +exceeded my expectations, which, to say the least, were large. You are +a journalist, a natural journalist. You’ve got the grip, and you’re sure +to get on. The Intelligencer will take it, without doubt, and take you +too. They’ll have to take you. If they don’t, some of the other papers +will get you.” + +“But what’s this?” he queried, the next instant, his face going serious. +“You’ve said nothing about receiving the pay for your turns, and that’s +one of the points of the feature. I expressly mentioned it, if you’ll +remember.” + +“It will never do,” he said, shaking his head ominously, when she had +explained. “You simply must collect that money somehow. Let me see. Let +me think a moment.” + +“Never mind, Mr. Irwin,” she said. “I’ve bothered you enough. Let me use +your ‘phone, please, and I’ll try Mr. Ernst Symes again.” + +He vacated his chair by the desk, and Edna took down the receiver. + +“Charley Welsh is sick,” she began, when the connection had been made. +“What? No I’m not Charley Welsh. Charley Welsh is sick, and his sister +wants to know if she can come out this afternoon and draw his pay for +him?” + +“Tell Charley Welsh’s sister that Charley Welsh was out this morning, +and drew his own pay,” came back the manager’s familiar tones, crisp +with asperity. + +“All right,” Edna went on. “And now Nan Bellayne wants to know if she +and her sister can come out this afternoon and draw Nan Bellayne’s pay?” + +“What’d he say? What’d he say?” Max Irwin cried excitedly, as she hung +up. + +“That Nan Bellayne was too much for him, and that she and her sister +could come out and get her pay and the freedom of the Loops, to boot.” + +“One thing, more,” he interrupted her thanks at the door, as on her +previous visit. “Now that you’ve shown the stuff you’re made of, I +should esteem it, ahem, a privilege to give you a line myself to the +Intelligencer people.” + + + + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS + + +Wade Atsheler is dead—dead by his own hand. To say that this was +entirely unexpected by the small coterie which knew him, would be to say +an untruth; and yet never once had we, his intimates, ever canvassed +the idea. Rather had we been prepared for it in some incomprehensible +subconscious way. Before the perpetration of the deed, its possibility +is remotest from our thoughts; but when we did know that he was dead, it +seemed, somehow, that we had understood and looked forward to it all the +time. This, by retrospective analysis, we could easily explain by the +fact of his great trouble. I use “great trouble” advisedly. Young, +handsome, with an assured position as the right-hand man of Eben Hale, +the great street-railway magnate, there could be no reason for him to +complain of fortune’s favors. Yet we had watched his smooth brow furrow +and corrugate as under some carking care or devouring sorrow. We had +watched his thick, black hair thin and silver as green grain under +brazen skies and parching drought. Who can forget, in the midst of the +hilarious scenes he toward the last sought with greater and greater +avidity—who can forget, I say, the deep abstractions and black moods +into which he fell? At such times, when the fun rippled and soared from +height to height, suddenly, without rhyme or reason, his eyes would turn +lacklustre, his brows knit, as with clenched hands and face overshot +with spasms of mental pain he wrestled on the edge of the abyss with +some unknown danger. + +He never spoke of his trouble, nor were we indiscreet enough to ask. +But it was just as well; for had we, and had he spoken, our help +and strength could have availed nothing. When Eben Hale died, whose +confidential secretary he was—nay, well-nigh adopted son and full +business partner—he no longer came among us. Not, as I now know, that +our company was distasteful to him, but because his trouble had so grown +that he could not respond to our happiness nor find surcease with us. +Why this should be so we could not at the time understand, for when Eben +Hale’s will was probated, the world learned that he was sole heir to +his employer’s many millions, and it was expressly stipulated that this +great inheritance was given to him without qualification, hitch, or +hindrance in the exercise thereof. Not a share of stock, not a penny +of cash, was bequeathed to the dead man’s relatives. As for his direct +family, one astounding clause expressly stated that Wade Atsheler was to +dispense to Eben Hale’s wife and sons and daughters whatever moneys his +judgement dictated, at whatever times he deemed advisable. Had there +been any scandal in the dead man’s family, or had his sons been wild +or undutiful, then there might have been a glimmering of reason in +this most unusual action; but Eben Hale’s domestic happiness had been +proverbial in the community, and one would have to travel far and wide +to discover a cleaner, saner, wholesomer progeny of sons and daughters. +While his wife—well, by those who knew her best she was endearingly +termed “The Mother of the Gracchi.” Needless to state, this inexplicable +will was a nine day’s wonder; but the expectant public was disappointed +in that no contest was made. + +It was only the other day that Eben Hale was laid away in his stately +marble mausoleum. And now Wade Atsheler is dead. The news was printed +in this morning’s paper. I have just received through the mail a letter +from him, posted, evidently, but a short hour before he hurled himself +into eternity. This letter, which lies before me, is a narrative in +his own handwriting, linking together numerous newspaper clippings and +facsimiles of letters. The original correspondence, he has told me, +is in the hands of the police. He has begged me, also, as a warning to +society against a most frightful and diabolical danger which threatens +its very existence, to make public the terrible series of tragedies in +which he has been innocently concerned. I herewith append the text in +full: + +It was in August, 1899, just after my return from my summer vacation, +that the blow fell. We did not know it at the time; we had not yet +learned to school our minds to such awful possibilities. Mr. Hale opened +the letter, read it, and tossed it upon my desk with a laugh. When I had +looked it over, I also laughed, saying, “Some ghastly joke, Mr. Hale, +and one in very poor taste.” Find here, my dear John, an exact duplicate +of the letter in question. + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M. August 17, 1899. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—We desire you to realize upon whatever portion of your vast +holdings is necessary to obtain, IN CASH, twenty millions of dollars. +This sum we require you to pay over to us, or to our agents. You will +note we do not specify any given time, for it is not our wish to hurry +you in this matter. You may even, if it be easier for you, pay us +in ten, fifteen, or twenty instalments; but we will accept no single +instalment of less than a million. + +Believe us, dear Mr. Hale, when we say that we embark upon this course +of action utterly devoid of animus. We are members of that intellectual +proletariat, the increasing numbers of which mark in red lettering the +last days of the nineteenth century. We have, from a thorough study +of economics, decided to enter upon this business. It has many merits, +chief among which may be noted that we can indulge in large and +lucrative operations without capital. So far, we have been fairly +successful, and we hope our dealings with you may be pleasant and +satisfactory. + +Pray attend while we explain our views more fully. At the base of the +present system of society is to be found the property right. And this +right of the individual to hold property is demonstrated, in the last +analysis, to rest solely and wholly upon MIGHT. The mailed gentlemen of +William the Conqueror divided and apportioned England amongst themselves +with the naked sword. This, we are sure you will grant, is true of +all feudal possessions. With the invention of steam and the Industrial +Revolution there came into existence the Capitalist Class, in the modern +sense of the word. These capitalists quickly towered above the ancient +nobility. The captains of industry have virtually dispossessed the +descendants of the captains of war. Mind, and not muscle, wins in +to-day’s struggle for existence. But this state of affairs is none the +less based upon might. The change has been qualitative. The old-time +Feudal Baronage ravaged the world with fire and sword; the modern +Money Baronage exploits the world by mastering and applying the world’s +economic forces. Brain, and not brawn, endures; and those best fitted to +survive are the intellectually and commercially powerful. + +We, the M. of M., are not content to become wage slaves. The great +trusts and business combinations (with which you have your rating) +prevent us from rising to the place among you which our intellects +qualify us to occupy. Why? Because we are without capital. We are of the +unwashed, but with this difference: our brains are of the best, and we +have no foolish ethical nor social scruples. As wage slaves, toiling +early and late, and living abstemiously, we could not save in threescore +years—nor in twenty times threescore years—a sum of money sufficient +successfully to cope with the great aggregations of massed capital which +now exist. Nevertheless, we have entered the arena. We now throw down +the gage to the capital of the world. Whether it wishes to fight or not, +it shall have to fight. + +Mr. Hale, our interests dictate us to demand of you twenty millions of +dollars. While we are considerate enough to give you reasonable time in +which to carry out your share of the transaction, please do not delay +too long. When you have agreed to our terms, insert a suitable notice +in the agony column of the “Morning Blazer.” We shall then acquaint you +with our plan for transferring the sum mentioned. You had better do this +some time prior to October 1st. If you do not, in order to show that +we are in earnest we shall on that date kill a man on East Thirty-ninth +Street. He will be a workingman. This man you do not know; nor do we. +You represent a force in modern society; we also represent a force—a +new force. Without anger or malice, we have closed in battle. As you +will readily discern, we are simply a business proposition. You are the +upper, and we the nether, millstone; this man’s life shall be ground +out between. You may save him if you agree to our conditions and act in +time. + +There was once a king cursed with a golden touch. His name we have taken +to do duty as our official seal. Some day, to protect ourselves against +competitors, we shall copyright it. + +We beg to remain, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +I leave it to you, dear John, why should we not have laughed over such +a preposterous communication? The idea, we could not but grant, was well +conceived, but it was too grotesque to be taken seriously. Mr. Hale said +he would preserve it as a literary curiosity, and shoved it away in a +pigeonhole. Then we promptly forgot its existence. And as promptly, on +the 1st of October, going over the morning mail, we read the following: + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M., October 1, 1899. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—Your victim has met his fate. An hour ago, on East +Thirty-ninth Street, a workingman was thrust through the heart with a +knife. Ere you read this his body will be lying at the Morgue. Go and +look upon your handiwork. + +On October 14th, in token of our earnestness in this matter, and in case +you do not relent, we shall kill a policeman on or near the corner of +Polk Street and Clermont Avenue. + +Very cordially, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +Again Mr. Hale laughed. His mind was full of a prospective deal with a +Chicago syndicate for the sale of all his street railways in that city, +and so he went on dictating to the stenographer, never giving it a +second thought. But somehow, I know not why, a heavy depression +fell upon me. What if it were not a joke, I asked myself, and turned +involuntarily to the morning paper. There it was, as befitted an obscure +person of the lower classes, a paltry half-dozen lines tucked away in a +corner, next a patent medicine advertisement: + +Shortly after five o’clock this morning, on East Thirty-ninth Street, +a laborer named Pete Lascalle, while on his way to work, was stabbed to +the heart by an unknown assailant, who escaped by running. The police +have been unable to discover any motive for the murder. + +“Impossible!” was Mr. Hale’s rejoinder, when I had read the item aloud; +but the incident evidently weighed upon his mind, for late in the +afternoon, with many epithets denunciatory of his foolishness, he asked +me to acquaint the police with the affair. I had the pleasure of being +laughed at in the Inspector’s private office, although I went away with +the assurance that they would look into it and that the vicinity of Polk +and Clermont would be doubly patrolled on the night mentioned. There it +dropped, till the two weeks had sped by, when the following note came to +us through the mail: + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M. October 15, 1899. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—Your second victim has fallen on schedule time. We are in no +hurry; but to increase the pressure we shall henceforth kill weekly. To +protect ourselves against police interference we shall hereafter inform +you of the event but a little prior to or simultaneously with the deed. +Trusting this finds you in good health, + +We are, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +This time Mr. Hale took up the paper, and after a brief search, read to +me this account: + +A DASTARDLY CRIME + +Joseph Donahue, assigned only last night to special patrol duty in the +Eleventh Ward, at midnight was shot through the brain and instantly +killed. The tragedy was enacted in the full glare of the street lights +on the corner of Polk Street and Clermont Avenue. Our society is indeed +unstable when the custodians of its peace are thus openly and wantonly +shot down. The police have so far been unable to obtain the slightest +clue. + +Barely had he finished this when the police arrived—the Inspector +himself and two of his keenest sleuths. Alarm sat upon their faces, and +it was plain that they were seriously perturbed. Though the facts were +so few and simple, we talked long, going over the affair again and +again. When the Inspector went away, he confidently assured us that +everything would soon be straightened out and the assassins run to +earth. In the meantime he thought it well to detail guards for the +protection of Mr. Hale and myself, and several more to be constantly on +the vigil about the house and grounds. After the lapse of a week, at one +o’clock in the afternoon, this telegram was received: + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M. October 21, 1899. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—We are sorry to note how completely you have misunderstood +us. You have seen fit to surround yourself and household with armed +guards, as though, forsooth, we were common criminals, apt to break in +upon you and wrest away by force your twenty millions. Believe us, this +is farthest from our intention. + +You will readily comprehend, after a little sober thought, that your +life is dear to us. Do not be afraid. We would not hurt you for the +world. It is our policy to cherish you tenderly and protect you from all +harm. Your death means nothing to us. If it did, rest assured that we +would not hesitate a moment in destroying you. Think this over, +Mr. Hale. When you have paid us our price, there will be need of +retrenchment. Dismiss your guards now, and cut down your expenses. + +Within minutes of the time you receive this a nurse-girl will have +been choked to death in Brentwood Park. The body may be found in +the shrubbery lining the path which leads off to the left from the +band-stand. + +Cordially yours, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +The next instant Mr. Hale was at the telephone, warning the Inspector of +the impending murder. The Inspector excused himself in order to call +up Police Sub-station F and despatch men to the scene. Fifteen minutes +later he rang us up and informed us that the body had been discovered, +yet warm, in the place indicated. That evening the papers teemed with +glaring Jack-the-Strangler headlines, denouncing the brutality of +the deed and complaining about the laxity of the police. We were also +closeted with the Inspector, who begged us by all means to keep the +affair secret. Success, he said, depended upon silence. + +As you know, John, Mr. Hale was a man of iron. He refused to surrender. +But, oh, John, it was terrible, nay, horrible—this awful something, +this blind force in the dark. We could not fight, could not plan, could +do nothing save hold our hands and wait. And week by week, as certain as +the rising of the sun, came the notification and death of some person, +man or woman, innocent of evil, but just as much killed by us as +though we had done it with our own hands. A word from Mr. Hale and the +slaughter would have ceased. But he hardened his heart and waited, the +lines deepening, the mouth and eyes growing sterner and firmer, and +the face aging with the hours. It is needless for me to speak of my +own suffering during that frightful period. Find here the letters and +telegrams of the M. of M., and the newspaper accounts, etc., of the +various murders. + +You will notice also the letters warning Mr. Hale of certain +machinations of commercial enemies and secret manipulations of stock. +The M. of M. seemed to have its hand on the inner pulse of the business +and financial world. They possessed themselves of and forwarded to us +information which our agents could not obtain. One timely note from +them, at a critical moment in a certain deal, saved all of five millions +to Mr. Hale. At another time they sent us a telegram which probably was +the means of preventing an anarchist crank from taking my employer’s +life. We captured the man on his arrival and turned him over to the +police, who found upon him enough of a new and powerful explosive to +sink a battleship. + +We persisted. Mr. Hale was grit clear through. He disbursed at the rate +of one hundred thousand per week for secret service. The aid of the +Pinkertons and of countless private detective agencies was called in, +and in addition to this thousands were upon our payroll. Our agents +swarmed everywhere, in all guises, penetrating all classes of society. +They grasped at a myriad clues; hundreds of suspects were jailed, and at +various times thousands of suspicious persons were under surveillance, +but nothing tangible came to light. With its communications the M. of +M. continually changed its method of delivery. And every messenger +they sent us was arrested forthwith. But these inevitably proved to be +innocent individuals, while their descriptions of the persons who had +employed them for the errand never tallied. On the last day of December +we received this notification: + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M., December 31, 1899. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—Pursuant of our policy, with which we flatter ourselves you +are already well versed, we beg to state that we shall give a passport +from this Vale of Tears to Inspector Bying, with whom, because of our +attentions, you have become so well acquainted. It is his custom to be +in his private office at this hour. Even as you read this he breathes +his last. + +Cordially yours, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +I dropped the letter and sprang to the telephone. Great was my relief +when I heard the Inspector’s hearty voice. But, even as he spoke, his +voice died away in the receiver to a gurgling sob, and I heard faintly +the crash of a falling body. Then a strange voice hello’d me, sent me +the regards of the M. of M., and broke the switch. Like a flash I called +up the public office of the Central Police, telling them to go at once +to the Inspector’s aid in his private office. I then held the line, and +a few minutes later received the intelligence that he had been +found bathed in his own blood and breathing his last. There were no +eyewitnesses, and no trace was discoverable of the murderer. + +Whereupon Mr. Hale immediately increased his secret service till a +quarter of a million flowed weekly from his coffers. He was determined +to win out. His graduated rewards aggregated over ten millions. You have +a fair idea of his resources and you can see in what manner he drew upon +them. It was the principle, he affirmed, that he was fighting for, not +the gold. And it must be admitted that his course proved the nobility of +his motive. The police departments of all the great cities cooperated, +and even the United States Government stepped in, and the affair became +one of the highest questions of state. Certain contingent funds of +the nation were devoted to the unearthing of the M. of M., and every +government agent was on the alert. But all in vain. The Minions of Midas +carried on their damnable work unhampered. They had their way and struck +unerringly. + +But while he fought to the last, Mr. Hale could not wash his hands of +the blood with which they were dyed. Though not technically a murderer, +though no jury of his peers would ever have convicted him, none the less +the death of every individual was due to him. As I said before, a word +from him and the slaughter would have ceased. But he refused to give +that word. He insisted that the integrity of society was assailed; that +he was not sufficiently a coward to desert his post; and that it was +manifestly just that a few should be martyred for the ultimate welfare +of the many. Nevertheless this blood was upon his head, and he sank into +deeper and deeper gloom. I was likewise whelmed with the guilt of an +accomplice. Babies were ruthlessly killed, children, aged men; and +not only were these murders local, but they were distributed over +the country. In the middle of February, one evening, as we sat in the +library, there came a sharp knock at the door. On responding to it I +found, lying on the carpet of the corridor, the following missive: + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M., February 15, 1900. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—Does not your soul cry out upon the red harvest it is +reaping? Perhaps we have been too abstract in conducting our business. +Let us now be concrete. Miss Adelaide Laidlaw is a talented young woman, +as good, we understand, as she is beautiful. She is the daughter of your +old friend, Judge Laidlaw, and we happen to know that you carried her in +your arms when she was an infant. She is your daughter’s closest friend, +and at present is visiting her. When your eyes have read thus far her +visit will have terminated. + +Very cordially, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +My God! did we not instantly realize the terrible import! We rushed +through the dayrooms—she was not there—and on to her own apartments. +The door was locked, but we crashed it down by hurling ourselves against +it. There she lay, just as she had finished dressing for the opera, +smothered with pillows torn from the couch, the flush of life yet on her +flesh, the body still flexible and warm. Let me pass over the rest of +this horror. You will surely remember, John, the newspaper accounts. + +Late that night Mr. Hale summoned me to him, and before God did pledge +me most solemnly to stand by him and not to compromise, even if all kith +and kin were destroyed. + +The next day I was surprised at his cheerfulness. I had thought he would +be deeply shocked by this last tragedy—how deep I was soon to learn. +All day he was light-hearted and high-spirited, as though at last he had +found a way out of the frightful difficulty. The next morning we +found him dead in his bed, a peaceful smile upon his careworn +face—asphyxiation. Through the connivance of the police and the +authorities, it was given out to the world as heart disease. We deemed +it wise to withhold the truth; but little good has it done us, little +good has anything done us. + +Barely had I left that chamber of death, when—but too late—the +following extraordinary letter was received: + +OFFICE OF THE M. of M., February 17, 1900. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—You will pardon our intrusion, we hope, so closely upon the +sad event of day before yesterday; but what we wish to say may be of +the utmost importance to you. It is in our mind that you may attempt +to escape us. There is but one way, apparently, as you have ere this +doubtless discovered. But we wish to inform you that even this one +way is barred. You may die, but you die failing and acknowledging your +failure. Note this: WE ARE PART AND PARCEL OF YOUR POSSESSIONS. WITH +YOUR MILLIONS WE PASS DOWN TO YOUR HEIRS AND ASSIGNS FOREVER. + +We are the inevitable. We are the culmination of industrial and +social wrong. We turn upon the society that has created us. We are the +successful failures of the age, the scourges of a degraded civilization. + +We are the creatures of a perverse social selection. We meet force with +force. Only the strong shall endure. We believe in the survival of the +fittest. You have crushed your wage slaves into the dirt and you have +survived. The captains of war, at your command, have shot down like +dogs your employees in a score of bloody strikes. By such means you have +endured. We do not grumble at the result, for we acknowledge and have +our being in the same natural law. And now the question has arisen: +UNDER THE PRESENT SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT, WHICH OF US SHALL SURVIVE? We +believe we are the fittest. You believe you are the fittest. We leave +the eventuality to time and law. + +Cordially yours, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +John, do you wonder now that I shunned pleasure and avoided friends? +But why explain? Surely this narrative will make everything clear. Three +weeks ago Adelaide Laidlaw died. Since then I have waited in hope and +fear. Yesterday the will was probated and made public. To-day I was +notified that a woman of the middle class would be killed in Golden Gate +Park, in faraway San Francisco. The despatches in to-night’s papers give +the details of the brutal happening—details which correspond with those +furnished me in advance. + +It is useless. I cannot struggle against the inevitable. I have been +faithful to Mr. Hale and have worked hard. Why my faithfulness should +have been thus rewarded I cannot understand. Yet I cannot be false to my +trust, nor break my word by compromising. Still, I have resolved that +no more deaths shall be upon my head. I have willed the many millions I +lately received to their rightful owners. Let the stalwart sons of Eben +Hale work out their own salvation. Ere you read this I shall have passed +on. The Minions of Midas are all-powerful. The police are impotent. +I have learned from them that other millionnaires have been likewise +mulcted or persecuted—how many is not known, for when one yields to the +M. of M., his mouth is thenceforth sealed. Those who have not yielded +are even now reaping their scarlet harvest. The grim game is being +played out. The Federal Government can do nothing. I also understand +that similar branch organizations have made their appearance in Europe. +Society is shaken to its foundations. Principalities and powers are as +brands ripe for the burning. Instead of the masses against the classes, +it is a class against the classes. We, the guardians of human progress, +are being singled out and struck down. Law and order have failed. + +The officials have begged me to keep this secret. I have done so, but +can do so no longer. It has become a question of public import, fraught +with the direst consequences, and I shall do my duty before I leave this +world by informing it of its peril. Do you, John, as my last request, +make this public. Do not be frightened. The fate of humanity rests in +your hand. Let the press strike off millions of copies; let the electric +currents sweep it round the world; wherever men meet and speak, let them +speak of it in fear and trembling. And then, when thoroughly aroused, +let society arise in its might and cast out this abomination. + +Yours, in long farewell, + +WADE ATSHELER. + + + + +THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH + + +When I look back, I realize what a peculiar friendship it was. First, +there was Lloyd Inwood, tall, slender, and finely knit, nervous and +dark. And then Paul Tichlorne, tall, slender, and finely knit, nervous +and blond. Each was the replica of the other in everything except color. +Lloyd’s eyes were black; Paul’s were blue. Under stress of excitement, +the blood coursed olive in the face of Lloyd, crimson in the face of +Paul. But outside this matter of coloring they were as like as two peas. +Both were high-strung, prone to excessive tension and endurance, and +they lived at concert pitch. + +But there was a trio involved in this remarkable friendship, and the +third was short, and fat, and chunky, and lazy, and, loath to say, it +was I. Paul and Lloyd seemed born to rivalry with each other, and I to +be peacemaker between them. We grew up together, the three of us, and +full often have I received the angry blows each intended for the other. +They were always competing, striving to outdo each other, and when +entered upon some such struggle there was no limit either to their +endeavors or passions. + +This intense spirit of rivalry obtained in their studies and their +games. If Paul memorized one canto of “Marmion,” Lloyd memorized two +cantos, Paul came back with three, and Lloyd again with four, till each +knew the whole poem by heart. I remember an incident that occurred +at the swimming hole—an incident tragically significant of the +life-struggle between them. The boys had a game of diving to the bottom +of a ten-foot pool and holding on by submerged roots to see who could +stay under the longest. Paul and Lloyd allowed themselves to be bantered +into making the descent together. When I saw their faces, set and +determined, disappear in the water as they sank swiftly down, I felt +a foreboding of something dreadful. The moments sped, the ripples died +away, the face of the pool grew placid and untroubled, and neither black +nor golden head broke surface in quest of air. We above grew anxious. +The longest record of the longest-winded boy had been exceeded, and +still there was no sign. Air bubbles trickled slowly upward, showing +that the breath had been expelled from their lungs, and after that the +bubbles ceased to trickle upward. Each second became interminable, and, +unable longer to endure the suspense, I plunged into the water. + +I found them down at the bottom, clutching tight to the roots, their +heads not a foot apart, their eyes wide open, each glaring fixedly at +the other. They were suffering frightful torment, writhing and twisting +in the pangs of voluntary suffocation; for neither would let go and +acknowledge himself beaten. I tried to break Paul’s hold on the root, +but he resisted me fiercely. Then I lost my breath and came to the +surface, badly scared. I quickly explained the situation, and half a +dozen of us went down and by main strength tore them loose. By the +time we got them out, both were unconscious, and it was only after much +barrel-rolling and rubbing and pounding that they finally came to their +senses. They would have drowned there, had no one rescued them. + +When Paul Tichlorne entered college, he let it be generally understood +that he was going in for the social sciences. Lloyd Inwood, entering +at the same time, elected to take the same course. But Paul had had +it secretly in mind all the time to study the natural sciences, +specializing on chemistry, and at the last moment he switched over. +Though Lloyd had already arranged his year’s work and attended the first +lectures, he at once followed Paul’s lead and went in for the natural +sciences and especially for chemistry. Their rivalry soon became a noted +thing throughout the university. Each was a spur to the other, and they +went into chemistry deeper than did ever students before—so deep, in +fact, that ere they took their sheepskins they could have stumped any +chemistry or “cow college” professor in the institution, save “old” + Moss, head of the department, and even him they puzzled and edified more +than once. Lloyd’s discovery of the “death bacillus” of the sea toad, +and his experiments on it with potassium cyanide, sent his name and that +of his university ringing round the world; nor was Paul a whit +behind when he succeeded in producing laboratory colloids exhibiting +amoeba-like activities, and when he cast new light upon the processes +of fertilization through his startling experiments with simple sodium +chlorides and magnesium solutions on low forms of marine life. + +It was in their undergraduate days, however, in the midst of their +profoundest plunges into the mysteries of organic chemistry, that Doris +Van Benschoten entered into their lives. Lloyd met her first, but within +twenty-four hours Paul saw to it that he also made her acquaintance. +Of course, they fell in love with her, and she became the only thing in +life worth living for. They wooed her with equal ardor and fire, and so +intense became their struggle for her that half the student-body took +to wagering wildly on the result. Even “old” Moss, one day, after an +astounding demonstration in his private laboratory by Paul, was +guilty to the extent of a month’s salary of backing him to become the +bridegroom of Doris Van Benschoten. + +In the end she solved the problem in her own way, to everybody’s +satisfaction except Paul’s and Lloyd’s. Getting them together, she said +that she really could not choose between them because she loved them +both equally well; and that, unfortunately, since polyandry was not +permitted in the United States she would be compelled to forego the +honor and happiness of marrying either of them. Each blamed the other +for this lamentable outcome, and the bitterness between them grew more +bitter. + +But things came to a head enough. It was at my home, after they had +taken their degrees and dropped out of the world’s sight, that the +beginning of the end came to pass. Both were men of means, with little +inclination and no necessity for professional life. My friendship and +their mutual animosity were the two things that linked them in any +way together. While they were very often at my place, they made it +a fastidious point to avoid each other on such visits, though it was +inevitable, under the circumstances, that they should come upon each +other occasionally. + +On the day I have in recollection, Paul Tichlorne had been mooning all +morning in my study over a current scientific review. This left me +free to my own affairs, and I was out among my roses when Lloyd Inwood +arrived. Clipping and pruning and tacking the climbers on the porch, +with my mouth full of nails, and Lloyd following me about and lending a +hand now and again, we fell to discussing the mythical race of invisible +people, that strange and vagrant people the traditions of which have +come down to us. Lloyd warmed to the talk in his nervous, jerky fashion, +and was soon interrogating the physical properties and possibilities of +invisibility. A perfectly black object, he contended, would elude and +defy the acutest vision. + +“Color is a sensation,” he was saying. “It has no objective reality. +Without light, we can see neither colors nor objects themselves. All +objects are black in the dark, and in the dark it is impossible to see +them. If no light strikes upon them, then no light is flung back from +them to the eye, and so we have no vision-evidence of their being.” + +“But we see black objects in daylight,” I objected. + +“Very true,” he went on warmly. “And that is because they are not +perfectly black. Were they perfectly black, absolutely black, as it +were, we could not see them—ay, not in the blaze of a thousand suns +could we see them! And so I say, with the right pigments, properly +compounded, an absolutely black paint could be produced which would +render invisible whatever it was applied to.” + +“It would be a remarkable discovery,” I said non-committally, for the +whole thing seemed too fantastic for aught but speculative purposes. + +“Remarkable!” Lloyd slapped me on the shoulder. “I should say so. Why, +old chap, to coat myself with such a paint would be to put the world at +my feet. The secrets of kings and courts would be mine, the machinations +of diplomats and politicians, the play of stock-gamblers, the plans +of trusts and corporations. I could keep my hand on the inner pulse of +things and become the greatest power in the world. And I—” He broke +off shortly, then added, “Well, I have begun my experiments, and I don’t +mind telling you that I’m right in line for it.” + +A laugh from the doorway startled us. Paul Tichlorne was standing there, +a smile of mockery on his lips. + +“You forget, my dear Lloyd,” he said. + +“Forget what?” + +“You forget,” Paul went on—“ah, you forget the shadow.” + +I saw Lloyd’s face drop, but he answered sneeringly, “I can carry a +sunshade, you know.” Then he turned suddenly and fiercely upon him. +“Look here, Paul, you’ll keep out of this if you know what’s good for +you.” + +A rupture seemed imminent, but Paul laughed good-naturedly. “I wouldn’t +lay fingers on your dirty pigments. Succeed beyond your most sanguine +expectations, yet you will always fetch up against the shadow. You can’t +get away from it. Now I shall go on the very opposite tack. In the very +nature of my proposition the shadow will be eliminated—” + +“Transparency!” ejaculated Lloyd, instantly. “But it can’t be achieved.” + +“Oh, no; of course not.” And Paul shrugged his shoulders and strolled +off down the briar-rose path. + +This was the beginning of it. Both men attacked the problem with all +the tremendous energy for which they were noted, and with a rancor and +bitterness that made me tremble for the success of either. Each trusted +me to the utmost, and in the long weeks of experimentation that followed +I was made a party to both sides, listening to their theorizings and +witnessing their demonstrations. Never, by word or sign, did I convey to +either the slightest hint of the other’s progress, and they respected me +for the seal I put upon my lips. + +Lloyd Inwood, after prolonged and unintermittent application, when the +tension upon his mind and body became too great to bear, had a strange +way of obtaining relief. He attended prize fights. It was at one of +these brutal exhibitions, whither he had dragged me in order to tell his +latest results, that his theory received striking confirmation. + +“Do you see that red-whiskered man?” he asked, pointing across the ring +to the fifth tier of seats on the opposite side. “And do you see the +next man to him, the one in the white hat? Well, there is quite a gap +between them, is there not?” + +“Certainly,” I answered. “They are a seat apart. The gap is the +unoccupied seat.” + +He leaned over to me and spoke seriously. “Between the red-whiskered +man and the white-hatted man sits Ben Wasson. You have heard me speak +of him. He is the cleverest pugilist of his weight in the country. He +is also a Caribbean negro, full-blooded, and the blackest in the United +States. He has on a black overcoat buttoned up. I saw him when he came +in and took that seat. As soon as he sat down he disappeared. Watch +closely; he may smile.” + +I was for crossing over to verify Lloyd’s statement, but he restrained +me. “Wait,” he said. + +I waited and watched, till the red-whiskered man turned his head as +though addressing the unoccupied seat; and then, in that empty space, I +saw the rolling whites of a pair of eyes and the white double-crescent +of two rows of teeth, and for the instant I could make out a negro’s +face. But with the passing of the smile his visibility passed, and the +chair seemed vacant as before. + +“Were he perfectly black, you could sit alongside him and not see him,” + Lloyd said; and I confess the illustration was apt enough to make me +well-nigh convinced. + +I visited Lloyd’s laboratory a number of times after that, and found +him always deep in his search after the absolute black. His experiments +covered all sorts of pigments, such as lamp-blacks, tars, carbonized +vegetable matters, soots of oils and fats, and the various carbonized +animal substances. + +“White light is composed of the seven primary colors,” he argued to me. +“But it is itself, of itself, invisible. Only by being reflected from +objects do it and the objects become visible. But only that portion +of it that is reflected becomes visible. For instance, here is a +blue tobacco-box. The white light strikes against it, and, with one +exception, all its component colors—violet, indigo, green, yellow, +orange, and red—are absorbed. The one exception is BLUE. It is not +absorbed, but reflected. Wherefore the tobacco-box gives us a sensation +of blueness. We do not see the other colors because they are absorbed. +We see only the blue. For the same reason grass is GREEN. The green +waves of white light are thrown upon our eyes.” + +“When we paint our houses, we do not apply color to them,” he said at +another time. “What we do is to apply certain substances that have the +property of absorbing from white light all the colors except those +that we would have our houses appear. When a substance reflects all the +colors to the eye, it seems to us white. When it absorbs all the colors, +it is black. But, as I said before, we have as yet no perfect black. All +the colors are not absorbed. The perfect black, guarding against high +lights, will be utterly and absolutely invisible. Look at that, for +example.” + +He pointed to the palette lying on his work-table. Different shades of +black pigments were brushed on it. One, in particular, I could hardly +see. It gave my eyes a blurring sensation, and I rubbed them and looked +again. + +“That,” he said impressively, “is the blackest black you or any mortal +man ever looked upon. But just you wait, and I’ll have a black so black +that no mortal man will be able to look upon it—and see it!” + +On the other hand, I used to find Paul Tichlorne plunged as deeply into +the study of light polarization, diffraction, and interference, single +and double refraction, and all manner of strange organic compounds. + +“Transparency: a state or quality of body which permits all rays of +light to pass through,” he defined for me. “That is what I am seeking. +Lloyd blunders up against the shadow with his perfect opaqueness. But I +escape it. A transparent body casts no shadow; neither does it reflect +light-waves—that is, the perfectly transparent does not. So, avoiding +high lights, not only will such a body cast no shadow, but, since it +reflects no light, it will also be invisible.” + +We were standing by the window at another time. Paul was engaged +in polishing a number of lenses, which were ranged along the sill. +Suddenly, after a pause in the conversation, he said, “Oh! I’ve dropped +a lens. Stick your head out, old man, and see where it went to.” + +Out I started to thrust my head, but a sharp blow on the forehead +caused me to recoil. I rubbed my bruised brow and gazed with reproachful +inquiry at Paul, who was laughing in gleeful, boyish fashion. + +“Well?” he said. + +“Well?” I echoed. + +“Why don’t you investigate?” he demanded. And investigate I did. Before +thrusting out my head, my senses, automatically active, had told +me there was nothing there, that nothing intervened between me and +out-of-doors, that the aperture of the window opening was utterly empty. +I stretched forth my hand and felt a hard object, smooth and cool and +flat, which my touch, out of its experience, told me to be glass. I +looked again, but could see positively nothing. + +“White quartzose sand,” Paul rattled off, “sodic carbonate, slaked lime, +cutlet, manganese peroxide—there you have it, the finest French plate +glass, made by the great St. Gobain Company, who made the finest plate +glass in the world, and this is the finest piece they ever made. It cost +a king’s ransom. But look at it! You can’t see it. You don’t know it’s +there till you run your head against it. + +“Eh, old boy! That’s merely an object-lesson—certain elements, in +themselves opaque, yet so compounded as to give a resultant body which +is transparent. But that is a matter of inorganic chemistry, you say. +Very true. But I dare to assert, standing here on my two feet, that in +the organic I can duplicate whatever occurs in the inorganic. + +“Here!” He held a test-tube between me and the light, and I noted the +cloudy or muddy liquid it contained. He emptied the contents of another +test-tube into it, and almost instantly it became clear and sparkling. + +“Or here!” With quick, nervous movements among his array of test-tubes, +he turned a white solution to a wine color, and a light yellow solution +to a dark brown. He dropped a piece of litmus paper into an acid, when +it changed instantly to red, and on floating it in an alkali it turned +as quickly to blue. + +“The litmus paper is still the litmus paper,” he enunciated in the +formal manner of the lecturer. “I have not changed it into something +else. Then what did I do? I merely changed the arrangement of its +molecules. Where, at first, it absorbed all colors from the light but +red, its molecular structure was so changed that it absorbed red and all +colors except blue. And so it goes, ad infinitum. Now, what I purpose +to do is this.” He paused for a space. “I purpose to seek—ay, and to +find—the proper reagents, which, acting upon the living organism, +will bring about molecular changes analogous to those you have just +witnessed. But these reagents, which I shall find, and for that matter, +upon which I already have my hands, will not turn the living body to +blue or red or black, but they will turn it to transparency. All light +will pass through it. It will be invisible. It will cast no shadow.” + +A few weeks later I went hunting with Paul. He had been promising me for +some time that I should have the pleasure of shooting over a wonderful +dog—the most wonderful dog, in fact, that ever man shot over, so he +averred, and continued to aver till my curiosity was aroused. But on +the morning in question I was disappointed, for there was no dog in +evidence. + +“Don’t see him about,” Paul remarked unconcernedly, and we set off +across the fields. + +I could not imagine, at the time, what was ailing me, but I had a +feeling of some impending and deadly illness. My nerves were all awry, +and, from the astounding tricks they played me, my senses seemed to have +run riot. Strange sounds disturbed me. At times I heard the swish-swish +of grass being shoved aside, and once the patter of feet across a patch +of stony ground. + +“Did you hear anything, Paul?” I asked once. + +But he shook his head, and thrust his feet steadily forward. + +While climbing a fence, I heard the low, eager whine of a dog, +apparently from within a couple of feet of me; but on looking about me I +saw nothing. + +I dropped to the ground, limp and trembling. + +“Paul,” I said, “we had better return to the house. I am afraid I am +going to be sick.” + +“Nonsense, old man,” he answered. “The sunshine has gone to your head +like wine. You’ll be all right. It’s famous weather.” + +But, passing along a narrow path through a clump of cottonwoods, some +object brushed against my legs and I stumbled and nearly fell. I looked +with sudden anxiety at Paul. + +“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Tripping over your own feet?” + +I kept my tongue between my teeth and plodded on, though sore perplexed +and thoroughly satisfied that some acute and mysterious malady had +attacked my nerves. So far my eyes had escaped; but, when we got to the +open fields again, even my vision went back on me. Strange flashes of +vari-colored, rainbow light began to appear and disappear on the +path before me. Still, I managed to keep myself in hand, till the +vari-colored lights persisted for a space of fully twenty seconds, +dancing and flashing in continuous play. Then I sat down, weak and +shaky. + +“It’s all up with me,” I gasped, covering my eyes with my hands. “It has +attacked my eyes. Paul, take me home.” + +But Paul laughed long and loud. “What did I tell you?—the most +wonderful dog, eh? Well, what do you think?” + +He turned partly from me and began to whistle. I heard the patter of +feet, the panting of a heated animal, and the unmistakable yelp of a +dog. Then Paul stooped down and apparently fondled the empty air. + +“Here! Give me your fist.” + +And he rubbed my hand over the cold nose and jowls of a dog. A dog it +certainly was, with the shape and the smooth, short coat of a pointer. + +Suffice to say, I speedily recovered my spirits and control. Paul put +a collar about the animal’s neck and tied his handkerchief to its tail. +And then was vouchsafed us the remarkable sight of an empty collar and +a waving handkerchief cavorting over the fields. It was something to see +that collar and handkerchief pin a bevy of quail in a clump of locusts +and remain rigid and immovable till we had flushed the birds. + +Now and again the dog emitted the vari-colored light-flashes I have +mentioned. The one thing, Paul explained, which he had not anticipated +and which he doubted could be overcome. + +“They’re a large family,” he said, “these sun dogs, wind dogs, rainbows, +halos, and parhelia. They are produced by refraction of light from +mineral and ice crystals, from mist, rain, spray, and no end of things; +and I am afraid they are the penalty I must pay for transparency. I +escaped Lloyd’s shadow only to fetch up against the rainbow flash.” + +A couple of days later, before the entrance to Paul’s laboratory, I +encountered a terrible stench. So overpowering was it that it was easy +to discover the source—a mass of putrescent matter on the doorstep +which in general outlines resembled a dog. + +Paul was startled when he investigated my find. It was his invisible +dog, or rather, what had been his invisible dog, for it was now plainly +visible. It had been playing about but a few minutes before in all +health and strength. Closer examination revealed that the skull had been +crushed by some heavy blow. While it was strange that the animal should +have been killed, the inexplicable thing was that it should so quickly +decay. + +“The reagents I injected into its system were harmless,” Paul explained. +“Yet they were powerful, and it appears that when death comes they force +practically instantaneous disintegration. Remarkable! Most remarkable! +Well, the only thing is not to die. They do not harm so long as one +lives. But I do wonder who smashed in that dog’s head.” + +Light, however, was thrown upon this when a frightened housemaid brought +the news that Gaffer Bedshaw had that very morning, not more than an +hour back, gone violently insane, and was strapped down at home, in +the huntsman’s lodge, where he raved of a battle with a ferocious and +gigantic beast that he had encountered in the Tichlorne pasture. He +claimed that the thing, whatever it was, was invisible, that with his +own eyes he had seen that it was invisible; wherefore his tearful wife +and daughters shook their heads, and wherefore he but waxed the more +violent, and the gardener and the coachman tightened the straps by +another hole. + +Nor, while Paul Tichlorne was thus successfully mastering the problem of +invisibility, was Lloyd Inwood a whit behind. I went over in answer to a +message of his to come and see how he was getting on. Now his laboratory +occupied an isolated situation in the midst of his vast grounds. It was +built in a pleasant little glade, surrounded on all sides by a dense +forest growth, and was to be gained by way of a winding and erratic +path. But I have travelled that path so often as to know every foot of +it, and conceive my surprise when I came upon the glade and found no +laboratory. The quaint shed structure with its red sandstone chimney +was not. Nor did it look as if it ever had been. There were no signs of +ruin, no debris, nothing. + +I started to walk across what had once been its site. “This,” I said to +myself, “should be where the step went up to the door.” Barely were the +words out of my mouth when I stubbed my toe on some obstacle, pitched +forward, and butted my head into something that FELT very much like a +door. I reached out my hand. It WAS a door. I found the knob and turned +it. And at once, as the door swung inward on its hinges, the whole +interior of the laboratory impinged upon my vision. Greeting Lloyd, I +closed the door and backed up the path a few paces. I could see nothing +of the building. Returning and opening the door, at once all the +furniture and every detail of the interior were visible. It was indeed +startling, the sudden transition from void to light and form and color. + +“What do you think of it, eh?” Lloyd asked, wringing my hand. “I slapped +a couple of coats of absolute black on the outside yesterday afternoon +to see how it worked. How’s your head? you bumped it pretty solidly, I +imagine.” + +“Never mind that,” he interrupted my congratulations. “I’ve something +better for you to do.” + +While he talked he began to strip, and when he stood naked before me he +thrust a pot and brush into my hand and said, “Here, give me a coat of +this.” + +It was an oily, shellac-like stuff, which spread quickly and easily over +the skin and dried immediately. + +“Merely preliminary and precautionary,” he explained when I had +finished; “but now for the real stuff.” + +I picked up another pot he indicated, and glanced inside, but could see +nothing. + +“It’s empty,” I said. + +“Stick your finger in it.” + +I obeyed, and was aware of a sensation of cool moistness. On withdrawing +my hand I glanced at the forefinger, the one I had immersed, but it had +disappeared. I moved and knew from the alternate tension and relaxation +of the muscles that I moved it, but it defied my sense of sight. To all +appearances I had been shorn of a finger; nor could I get any visual +impression of it till I extended it under the skylight and saw its +shadow plainly blotted on the floor. + +Lloyd chuckled. “Now spread it on, and keep your eyes open.” + +I dipped the brush into the seemingly empty pot, and gave him a long +stroke across his chest. With the passage of the brush the living +flesh disappeared from beneath. I covered his right leg, and he was +a one-legged man defying all laws of gravitation. And so, stroke by +stroke, member by member, I painted Lloyd Inwood into nothingness. It +was a creepy experience, and I was glad when naught remained in sight +but his burning black eyes, poised apparently unsupported in mid-air. + +“I have a refined and harmless solution for them,” he said. “A fine +spray with an air-brush, and presto! I am not.” + +This deftly accomplished, he said, “Now I shall move about, and do you +tell me what sensations you experience.” + +“In the first place, I cannot see you,” I said, and I could hear his +gleeful laugh from the midst of the emptiness. “Of course,” I continued, +“you cannot escape your shadow, but that was to be expected. When you +pass between my eye and an object, the object disappears, but so unusual +and incomprehensible is its disappearance that it seems to me as though +my eyes had blurred. When you move rapidly, I experience a bewildering +succession of blurs. The blurring sensation makes my eyes ache and my +brain tired.” + +“Have you any other warnings of my presence?” he asked. + +“No, and yes,” I answered. “When you are near me I have feelings similar +to those produced by dank warehouses, gloomy crypts, and deep mines. And +as sailors feel the loom of the land on dark nights, so I think I feel +the loom of your body. But it is all very vague and intangible.” + +Long we talked that last morning in his laboratory; and when I turned to +go, he put his unseen hand in mine with nervous grip, and said, “Now +I shall conquer the world!” And I could not dare to tell him of Paul +Tichlorne’s equal success. + +At home I found a note from Paul, asking me to come up immediately, and +it was high noon when I came spinning up the driveway on my wheel. Paul +called me from the tennis court, and I dismounted and went over. But the +court was empty. As I stood there, gaping open-mouthed, a tennis ball +struck me on the arm, and as I turned about, another whizzed past my +ear. For aught I could see of my assailant, they came whirling at me +from out of space, and right well was I peppered with them. But when +the balls already flung at me began to come back for a second whack, I +realized the situation. Seizing a racquet and keeping my eyes open, I +quickly saw a rainbow flash appearing and disappearing and darting over +the ground. I took out after it, and when I laid the racquet upon it for +a half-dozen stout blows, Paul’s voice rang out: + +“Enough! Enough! Oh! Ouch! Stop! You’re landing on my naked skin, you +know! Ow! O-w-w! I’ll be good! I’ll be good! I only wanted you to see +my metamorphosis,” he said ruefully, and I imagined he was rubbing his +hurts. + +A few minutes later we were playing tennis—a handicap on my part, for I +could have no knowledge of his position save when all the angles between +himself, the sun, and me, were in proper conjunction. Then he +flashed, and only then. But the flashes were more brilliant than the +rainbow—purest blue, most delicate violet, brightest yellow, and all +the intermediary shades, with the scintillant brilliancy of the diamond, +dazzling, blinding, iridescent. + +But in the midst of our play I felt a sudden cold chill, reminding me +of deep mines and gloomy crypts, such a chill as I had experienced that +very morning. The next moment, close to the net, I saw a ball rebound in +mid-air and empty space, and at the same instant, a score of feet away, +Paul Tichlorne emitted a rainbow flash. It could not be he from whom +the ball had rebounded, and with sickening dread I realized that Lloyd +Inwood had come upon the scene. To make sure, I looked for his shadow, +and there it was, a shapeless blotch the girth of his body, (the sun was +overhead), moving along the ground. I remembered his threat, and felt +sure that all the long years of rivalry were about to culminate in +uncanny battle. + +I cried a warning to Paul, and heard a snarl as of a wild beast, and an +answering snarl. I saw the dark blotch move swiftly across the court, +and a brilliant burst of vari-colored light moving with equal swiftness +to meet it; and then shadow and flash came together and there was the +sound of unseen blows. The net went down before my frightened eyes. I +sprang toward the fighters, crying: + +“For God’s sake!” + +But their locked bodies smote against my knees, and I was overthrown. + +“You keep out of this, old man!” I heard the voice of Lloyd Inwood from +out of the emptiness. And then Paul’s voice crying, “Yes, we’ve had +enough of peacemaking!” + +From the sound of their voices I knew they had separated. I could not +locate Paul, and so approached the shadow that represented Lloyd. But +from the other side came a stunning blow on the point of my jaw, and I +heard Paul scream angrily, “Now will you keep away?” + +Then they came together again, the impact of their blows, their groans +and gasps, and the swift flashings and shadow-movings telling plainly of +the deadliness of the struggle. + +I shouted for help, and Gaffer Bedshaw came running into the court. I +could see, as he approached, that he was looking at me strangely, but he +collided with the combatants and was hurled headlong to the ground. With +despairing shriek and a cry of “O Lord, I’ve got ‘em!” he sprang to his +feet and tore madly out of the court. + +I could do nothing, so I sat up, fascinated and powerless, and watched +the struggle. The noonday sun beat down with dazzling brightness on the +naked tennis court. And it was naked. All I could see was the blotch of +shadow and the rainbow flashes, the dust rising from the invisible feet, +the earth tearing up from beneath the straining foot-grips, and the wire +screen bulge once or twice as their bodies hurled against it. That was +all, and after a time even that ceased. There were no more flashes, and +the shadow had become long and stationary; and I remembered their set +boyish faces when they clung to the roots in the deep coolness of the +pool. + +They found me an hour afterward. Some inkling of what had happened got +to the servants and they quitted the Tichlorne service in a body. +Gaffer Bedshaw never recovered from the second shock he received, and +is confined in a madhouse, hopelessly incurable. The secrets of their +marvellous discoveries died with Paul and Lloyd, both laboratories being +destroyed by grief-stricken relatives. As for myself, I no longer care +for chemical research, and science is a tabooed topic in my household. I +have returned to my roses. Nature’s colors are good enough for me. + + + + +ALL GOLD CANYON + + +It was the green heart of the canyon, where the walls swerved back from +the rigid plan and relieved their harshness of line by making a little +sheltered nook and filling it to the brim with sweetness and roundness +and softness. Here all things rested. Even the narrow stream ceased its +turbulent down-rush long enough to form a quiet pool. Knee-deep in the +water, with drooping head and half-shut eyes, drowsed a red-coated, +many-antlered buck. + +On one side, beginning at the very lip of the pool, was a tiny meadow, +a cool, resilient surface of green that extended to the base of the +frowning wall. Beyond the pool a gentle slope of earth ran up and up +to meet the opposing wall. Fine grass covered the slope—grass that was +spangled with flowers, with here and there patches of color, orange and +purple and golden. Below, the canyon was shut in. There was no view. The +walls leaned together abruptly and the canyon ended in a chaos of rocks, +moss-covered and hidden by a green screen of vines and creepers and +boughs of trees. Up the canyon rose far hills and peaks, the big +foothills, pine-covered and remote. And far beyond, like clouds upon +the border of the sky, towered minarets of white, where the Sierra’s +eternal snows flashed austerely the blazes of the sun. + +There was no dust in the canyon. The leaves and flowers were clean and +virginal. The grass was young velvet. Over the pool three cottonwoods +sent their scurvy fluffs fluttering down the quiet air. On the slope +the blossoms of the wine-wooded manzanita filled the air with springtime +odors, while the leaves, wise with experience, were already beginning +their vertical twist against the coming aridity of summer. In the open +spaces on the slope, beyond the farthest shadow-reach of the manzanita, +poised the mariposa lilies, like so many flights of jewelled moths +suddenly arrested and on the verge of trembling into flight again. Here +and there that woods harlequin, the madrone, permitting itself to +be caught in the act of changing its pea-green trunk to madder-red, +breathed its fragrance into the air from great clusters of waxen bells. +Creamy white were these bells, shaped like lilies-of-the-valley, with +the sweetness of perfume that is of the springtime. + +There was not a sigh of wind. The air was drowsy with its weight of +perfume. It was a sweetness that would have been cloying had the +air been heavy and humid. But the air was sharp and thin. It was +as starlight transmuted into atmosphere, shot through and warmed by +sunshine, and flower-drenched with sweetness. + +An occasional butterfly drifted in and out through the patches of light +and shade. And from all about rose the low and sleepy hum of mountain +bees—feasting Sybarites that jostled one another good-naturedly at the +board, nor found time for rough discourtesy. So quietly did the little +stream drip and ripple its way through the canyon that it spoke only in +faint and occasional gurgles. The voice of the stream was as a drowsy +whisper, ever interrupted by dozings and silences, ever lifted again in +the awakenings. + +The motion of all things was a drifting in the heart of the canyon. +Sunshine and butterflies drifted in and out among the trees. The hum of +the bees and the whisper of the stream were a drifting of sound. And the +drifting sound and drifting color seemed to weave together in the making +of a delicate and intangible fabric which was the spirit of the place. +It was a spirit of peace that was not of death, but of smooth-pulsing +life, of quietude that was not silence, of movement that was not action, +of repose that was quick with existence without being violent with +struggle and travail. The spirit of the place was the spirit of +the peace of the living, somnolent with the easement and content of +prosperity, and undisturbed by rumors of far wars. + +The red-coated, many-antlered buck acknowledged the lordship of the +spirit of the place and dozed knee-deep in the cool, shaded pool. There +seemed no flies to vex him and he was languid with rest. Sometimes his +ears moved when the stream awoke and whispered; but they moved lazily, +with, foreknowledge that it was merely the stream grown garrulous at +discovery that it had slept. + +But there came a time when the buck’s ears lifted and tensed with swift +eagerness for sound. His head was turned down the canyon. His sensitive, +quivering nostrils scented the air. His eyes could not pierce the green +screen through which the stream rippled away, but to his ears came the +voice of a man. It was a steady, monotonous, singsong voice. Once the +buck heard the harsh clash of metal upon rock. At the sound he snorted +with a sudden start that jerked him through the air from water to +meadow, and his feet sank into the young velvet, while he pricked his +ears and again scented the air. Then he stole across the tiny meadow, +pausing once and again to listen, and faded away out of the canyon like +a wraith, soft-footed and without sound. + +The clash of steel-shod soles against the rocks began to be heard, and +the man’s voice grew louder. It was raised in a sort of chant and became +distinct with nearness, so that the words could be heard: + + “Turn around an’ tu’n yo’ face + Untoe them sweet hills of grace + (D’ pow’rs of sin yo’ am scornin’!). + Look about an’ look aroun’, + Fling yo’ sin-pack on d’ groun’ + (Yo’ will meet wid d’ Lord in d’ mornin’!).” + +A sound of scrambling accompanied the song, and the spirit of the place +fled away on the heels of the red-coated buck. The green screen was +burst asunder, and a man peered out at the meadow and the pool and the +sloping side-hill. He was a deliberate sort of man. He took in the scene +with one embracing glance, then ran his eyes over the details to verify +the general impression. Then, and not until then, did he open his mouth +in vivid and solemn approval: + +“Smoke of life an’ snakes of purgatory! Will you just look at that! Wood +an’ water an’ grass an’ a side-hill! A pocket-hunter’s delight an’ a +cayuse’s paradise! Cool green for tired eyes! Pink pills for pale people +ain’t in it. A secret pasture for prospectors and a resting-place for +tired burros, by damn!” + +He was a sandy-complexioned man in whose face geniality and humor seemed +the salient characteristics. It was a mobile face, quick-changing to +inward mood and thought. Thinking was in him a visible process. Ideas +chased across his face like wind-flaws across the surface of a lake. His +hair, sparse and unkempt of growth, was as indeterminate and colorless +as his complexion. It would seem that all the color of his frame had +gone into his eyes, for they were startlingly blue. Also, they were +laughing and merry eyes, within them much of the naivete and wonder of +the child; and yet, in an unassertive way, they contained much of calm +self-reliance and strength of purpose founded upon self-experience and +experience of the world. + +From out the screen of vines and creepers he flung ahead of him a +miner’s pick and shovel and gold-pan. Then he crawled out himself into +the open. He was clad in faded overalls and black cotton shirt, with +hobnailed brogans on his feet, and on his head a hat whose shapelessness +and stains advertised the rough usage of wind and rain and sun and +camp-smoke. He stood erect, seeing wide-eyed the secrecy of the scene +and sensuously inhaling the warm, sweet breath of the canyon-garden +through nostrils that dilated and quivered with delight. His eyes +narrowed to laughing slits of blue, his face wreathed itself in joy, and +his mouth curled in a smile as he cried aloud: + +“Jumping dandelions and happy hollyhocks, but that smells good to me! +Talk about your attar o’ roses an’ cologne factories! They ain’t in it!” + +He had the habit of soliloquy. His quick-changing facial expressions +might tell every thought and mood, but the tongue, perforce, ran hard +after, repeating, like a second Boswell. + +The man lay down on the lip of the pool and drank long and deep of its +water. “Tastes good to me,” he murmured, lifting his head and gazing +across the pool at the side-hill, while he wiped his mouth with the back +of his hand. The side-hill attracted his attention. Still lying on his +stomach, he studied the hill formation long and carefully. It was a +practised eye that travelled up the slope to the crumbling canyon-wall +and back and down again to the edge of the pool. He scrambled to his +feet and favored the side-hill with a second survey. + +“Looks good to me,” he concluded, picking up his pick and shovel and +gold-pan. + +He crossed the stream below the pool, stepping agilely from stone to +stone. Where the sidehill touched the water he dug up a shovelful of +dirt and put it into the gold-pan. He squatted down, holding the pan in +his two hands, and partly immersing it in the stream. Then he imparted +to the pan a deft circular motion that sent the water sluicing in and +out through the dirt and gravel. The larger and the lighter particles +worked to the surface, and these, by a skilful dipping movement of +the pan, he spilled out and over the edge. Occasionally, to expedite +matters, he rested the pan and with his fingers raked out the large +pebbles and pieces of rock. + +The contents of the pan diminished rapidly until only fine dirt and the +smallest bits of gravel remained. At this stage he began to work very +deliberately and carefully. It was fine washing, and he washed fine and +finer, with a keen scrutiny and delicate and fastidious touch. At +last the pan seemed empty of everything but water; but with a quick +semicircular flirt that sent the water flying over the shallow rim into +the stream, he disclosed a layer of black sand on the bottom of the pan. +So thin was this layer that it was like a streak of paint. He examined +it closely. In the midst of it was a tiny golden speck. He dribbled a +little water in over the depressed edge of the pan. With a quick flirt +he sent the water sluicing across the bottom, turning the grains of +black sand over and over. A second tiny golden speck rewarded his +effort. + +The washing had now become very fine—fine beyond all need of ordinary +placer-mining. He worked the black sand, a small portion at a time, up +the shallow rim of the pan. Each small portion he examined sharply, so +that his eyes saw every grain of it before he allowed it to slide over +the edge and away. Jealously, bit by bit, he let the black sand slip +away. A golden speck, no larger than a pin-point, appeared on the rim, +and by his manipulation of the riveter it returned to the bottom of the +pan. And in such fashion another speck was disclosed, and another. Great +was his care of them. Like a shepherd he herded his flock of golden +specks so that not one should be lost. At last, of the pan of dirt +nothing remained but his golden herd. He counted it, and then, after all +his labor, sent it flying out of the pan with one final swirl of water. + +But his blue eyes were shining with desire as he rose to his feet. +“Seven,” he muttered aloud, asserting the sum of the specks for which he +had toiled so hard and which he had so wantonly thrown away. “Seven,” + he repeated, with the emphasis of one trying to impress a number on his +memory. + +He stood still a long while, surveying the hill-side. In his eyes was +a curiosity, new-aroused and burning. There was an exultance about his +bearing and a keenness like that of a hunting animal catching the fresh +scent of game. + +He moved down the stream a few steps and took a second panful of dirt. + +Again came the careful washing, the jealous herding of the golden +specks, and the wantonness with which he sent them flying into the +stream when he had counted their number. + +“Five,” he muttered, and repeated, “five.” + +He could not forbear another survey of the hill before filling the pan +farther down the stream. His golden herds diminished. “Four, three, two, +two, one,” were his memory-tabulations as he moved down the stream. When +but one speck of gold rewarded his washing, he stopped and built a fire +of dry twigs. Into this he thrust the gold-pan and burned it till it +was blue-black. He held up the pan and examined it critically. Then he +nodded approbation. Against such a color-background he could defy the +tiniest yellow speck to elude him. + +Still moving down the stream, he panned again. A single speck was his +reward. A third pan contained no gold at all. Not satisfied with this, +he panned three times again, taking his shovels of dirt within a foot +of one another. Each pan proved empty of gold, and the fact, instead of +discouraging him, seemed to give him satisfaction. His elation increased +with each barren washing, until he arose, exclaiming jubilantly: + +“If it ain’t the real thing, may God knock off my head with sour +apples!” + +Returning to where he had started operations, he began to pan up the +stream. At first his golden herds increased—increased prodigiously. +“Fourteen, eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-six,” ran his memory +tabulations. Just above the pool he struck his richest pan—thirty-five +colors. + +“Almost enough to save,” he remarked regretfully as he allowed the water +to sweep them away. + +The sun climbed to the top of the sky. The man worked on. Pan by pan, he +went up the stream, the tally of results steadily decreasing. + +“It’s just booful, the way it peters out,” he exulted when a shovelful +of dirt contained no more than a single speck of gold. + +And when no specks at all were found in several pans, he straightened up +and favored the hillside with a confident glance. + +“Ah, ha! Mr. Pocket!” he cried out, as though to an auditor hidden +somewhere above him beneath the surface of the slope. “Ah, ha! Mr. +Pocket! I’m a-comin’, I’m a-comin’, an’ I’m shorely gwine to get yer! +You heah me, Mr. Pocket? I’m gwine to get yer as shore as punkins ain’t +cauliflowers!” + +He turned and flung a measuring glance at the sun poised above him in +the azure of the cloudless sky. Then he went down the canyon, following +the line of shovel-holes he had made in filling the pans. He crossed the +stream below the pool and disappeared through the green screen. There +was little opportunity for the spirit of the place to return with its +quietude and repose, for the man’s voice, raised in ragtime song, still +dominated the canyon with possession. + +After a time, with a greater clashing of steel-shod feet on rock, he +returned. The green screen was tremendously agitated. It surged back and +forth in the throes of a struggle. There was a loud grating and clanging +of metal. The man’s voice leaped to a higher pitch and was sharp with +imperativeness. A large body plunged and panted. There was a snapping +and ripping and rending, and amid a shower of falling leaves a horse +burst through the screen. On its back was a pack, and from this trailed +broken vines and torn creepers. The animal gazed with astonished eyes at +the scene into which it had been precipitated, then dropped its head to +the grass and began contentedly to graze. A second horse scrambled into +view, slipping once on the mossy rocks and regaining equilibrium +when its hoofs sank into the yielding surface of the meadow. It was +riderless, though on its back was a high-horned Mexican saddle, scarred +and discolored by long usage. + +The man brought up the rear. He threw off pack and saddle, with an +eye to camp location, and gave the animals their freedom to graze. He +unpacked his food and got out frying-pan and coffee-pot. He gathered an +armful of dry wood, and with a few stones made a place for his fire. + +“My!” he said, “but I’ve got an appetite. I could scoff iron-filings an’ +horseshoe nails an’ thank you kindly, ma’am, for a second helpin’.” + +He straightened up, and, while he reached for matches in the pocket of +his overalls, his eyes travelled across the pool to the side-hill. His +fingers had clutched the match-box, but they relaxed their hold and +the hand came out empty. The man wavered perceptibly. He looked at his +preparations for cooking and he looked at the hill. + +“Guess I’ll take another whack at her,” he concluded, starting to cross +the stream. + +“They ain’t no sense in it, I know,” he mumbled apologetically. “But +keepin’ grub back an hour ain’t goin’ to hurt none, I reckon.” + +A few feet back from his first line of test-pans he started a second +line. The sun dropped down the western sky, the shadows lengthened, +but the man worked on. He began a third line of test-pans. He was +cross-cutting the hillside, line by line, as he ascended. The centre of +each line produced the richest pans, while the ends came where no +colors showed in the pan. And as he ascended the hillside the lines grew +perceptibly shorter. The regularity with which their length diminished +served to indicate that somewhere up the slope the last line would be so +short as to have scarcely length at all, and that beyond could come only +a point. The design was growing into an inverted “V.” The converging +sides of this “V” marked the boundaries of the gold-bearing dirt. + +The apex of the “V” was evidently the man’s goal. Often he ran his eye +along the converging sides and on up the hill, trying to divine the +apex, the point where the gold-bearing dirt must cease. Here resided +“Mr. Pocket”—for so the man familiarly addressed the imaginary point +above him on the slope, crying out: + +“Come down out o’ that, Mr. Pocket! Be right smart an’ agreeable, an’ +come down!” + +“All right,” he would add later, in a voice resigned to determination. +“All right, Mr. Pocket. It’s plain to me I got to come right up an’ +snatch you out bald-headed. An’ I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” he would +threaten still later. + +Each pan he carried down to the water to wash, and as he went higher +up the hill the pans grew richer, until he began to save the gold in an +empty baking-powder can which he carried carelessly in his hip-pocket. +So engrossed was he in his toil that he did not notice the long twilight +of oncoming night. It was not until he tried vainly to see the gold +colors in the bottom of the pan that he realized the passage of time. He +straightened up abruptly. An expression of whimsical wonderment and awe +overspread his face as he drawled: + +“Gosh darn my buttons! if I didn’t plumb forget dinner!” + +He stumbled across the stream in the darkness and lighted his +long-delayed fire. Flapjacks and bacon and warmed-over beans constituted +his supper. Then he smoked a pipe by the smouldering coals, listening to +the night noises and watching the moonlight stream through the canyon. +After that he unrolled his bed, took off his heavy shoes, and pulled the +blankets up to his chin. His face showed white in the moonlight, like +the face of a corpse. But it was a corpse that knew its resurrection, +for the man rose suddenly on one elbow and gazed across at his hillside. + +“Good night, Mr. Pocket,” he called sleepily. “Good night.” + +He slept through the early gray of morning until the direct rays of +the sun smote his closed eyelids, when he awoke with a start and looked +about him until he had established the continuity of his existence and +identified his present self with the days previously lived. + +To dress, he had merely to buckle on his shoes. He glanced at his +fireplace and at his hillside, wavered, but fought down the temptation +and started the fire. + +“Keep yer shirt on, Bill; keep yer shirt on,” he admonished himself. +“What’s the good of rushin’? No use in gettin’ all het up an’ sweaty. +Mr. Pocket’ll wait for you. He ain’t a-runnin’ away before you can get +yer breakfast. Now, what you want, Bill, is something fresh in yer bill +o’ fare. So it’s up to you to go an’ get it.” + +He cut a short pole at the water’s edge and drew from one of his pockets +a bit of line and a draggled fly that had once been a royal coachman. + +“Mebbe they’ll bite in the early morning,” he muttered, as he made his +first cast into the pool. And a moment later he was gleefully crying: +“What’d I tell you, eh? What’d I tell you?” + +He had no reel, nor any inclination to waste time, and by main strength, +and swiftly, he drew out of the water a flashing ten-inch trout. Three +more, caught in rapid succession, furnished his breakfast. When he came +to the stepping-stones on his way to his hillside, he was struck by a +sudden thought, and paused. + +“I’d just better take a hike down-stream a ways,” he said. “There’s no +tellin’ what cuss may be snoopin’ around.” + +But he crossed over on the stones, and with a “I really oughter take +that hike,” the need of the precaution passed out of his mind and he +fell to work. + +At nightfall he straightened up. The small of his back was stiff +from stooping toil, and as he put his hand behind him to soothe the +protesting muscles, he said: + +“Now what d’ye think of that, by damn? I clean forgot my dinner again! +If I don’t watch out, I’ll sure be degeneratin’ into a two-meal-a-day +crank.” + +“Pockets is the damnedest things I ever see for makin’ a man +absent-minded,” he communed that night, as he crawled into his blankets. +Nor did he forget to call up the hillside, “Good night, Mr. Pocket! Good +night!” + +Rising with the sun, and snatching a hasty breakfast, he was early +at work. A fever seemed to be growing in him, nor did the increasing +richness of the test-pans allay this fever. There was a flush in his +cheek other than that made by the heat of the sun, and he was oblivious +to fatigue and the passage of time. When he filled a pan with dirt, he +ran down the hill to wash it; nor could he forbear running up the hill +again, panting and stumbling profanely, to refill the pan. + +He was now a hundred yards from the water, and the inverted “V” was +assuming definite proportions. The width of the pay-dirt steadily +decreased, and the man extended in his mind’s eye the sides of the “V” + to their meeting-place far up the hill. This was his goal, the apex of +the “V,” and he panned many times to locate it. + +“Just about two yards above that manzanita bush an’ a yard to the +right,” he finally concluded. + +Then the temptation seized him. “As plain as the nose on your face,” + he said, as he abandoned his laborious cross-cutting and climbed to the +indicated apex. He filled a pan and carried it down the hill to wash. It +contained no trace of gold. He dug deep, and he dug shallow, filling +and washing a dozen pans, and was unrewarded even by the tiniest golden +speck. He was enraged at having yielded to the temptation, and cursed +himself blasphemously and pridelessly. Then he went down the hill and +took up the cross-cutting. + +“Slow an’ certain, Bill; slow an’ certain,” he crooned. “Short-cuts to +fortune ain’t in your line, an’ it’s about time you know it. Get wise, +Bill; get wise. Slow an’ certain’s the only hand you can play; so go to +it, an’ keep to it, too.” + +As the cross-cuts decreased, showing that the sides of the “V” were +converging, the depth of the “V” increased. The gold-trace was dipping +into the hill. It was only at thirty inches beneath the surface that +he could get colors in his pan. The dirt he found at twenty-five inches +from the surface, and at thirty-five inches, yielded barren pans. At the +base of the “V,” by the water’s edge, he had found the gold colors at +the grass roots. The higher he went up the hill, the deeper the gold +dipped. + +To dig a hole three feet deep in order to get one test-pan was a task +of no mean magnitude; while between the man and the apex intervened +an untold number of such holes to be. “An’ there’s no tellin’ how much +deeper it’ll pitch,” he sighed, in a moment’s pause, while his fingers +soothed his aching back. + +Feverish with desire, with aching back and stiffening muscles, with pick +and shovel gouging and mauling the soft brown earth, the man toiled up +the hill. Before him was the smooth slope, spangled with flowers and +made sweet with their breath. Behind him was devastation. It looked like +some terrible eruption breaking out on the smooth skin of the hill. His +slow progress was like that of a slug, befouling beauty with a monstrous +trail. + +Though the dipping gold-trace increased the man’s work, he found +consolation in the increasing richness of the pans. Twenty cents, thirty +cents, fifty cents, sixty cents, were the values of the gold found in +the pans, and at nightfall he washed his banner pan, which gave him a +dollar’s worth of gold-dust from a shovelful of dirt. + +“I’ll just bet it’s my luck to have some inquisitive cuss come buttin’ +in here on my pasture,” he mumbled sleepily that night as he pulled the +blankets up to his chin. + +Suddenly he sat upright. “Bill!” he called sharply. “Now, listen to me, +Bill; d’ye hear! It’s up to you, to-morrow mornin’, to mosey round an’ +see what you can see. Understand? To-morrow morning, an’ don’t you forget +it!” + +He yawned and glanced across at his side-hill. “Good night, Mr. Pocket,” + he called. + +In the morning he stole a march on the sun, for he had finished +breakfast when its first rays caught him, and he was climbing the wall +of the canyon where it crumbled away and gave footing. From the outlook +at the top he found himself in the midst of loneliness. As far as he +could see, chain after chain of mountains heaved themselves into his +vision. To the east his eyes, leaping the miles between range and range +and between many ranges, brought up at last against the white-peaked +Sierras—the main crest, where the backbone of the Western world +reared itself against the sky. To the north and south he could see more +distinctly the cross-systems that broke through the main trend of the +sea of mountains. To the west the ranges fell away, one behind the +other, diminishing and fading into the gentle foothills that, in turn, +descended into the great valley which he could not see. + +And in all that mighty sweep of earth he saw no sign of man nor of the +handiwork of man—save only the torn bosom of the hillside at his feet. +The man looked long and carefully. Once, far down his own canyon, he +thought he saw in the air a faint hint of smoke. He looked again +and decided that it was the purple haze of the hills made dark by a +convolution of the canyon wall at its back. + +“Hey, you, Mr. Pocket!” he called down into the canyon. “Stand out from +under! I’m a-comin’, Mr. Pocket! I’m a-comin’!” + +The heavy brogans on the man’s feet made him appear clumsy-footed, but +he swung down from the giddy height as lightly and airily as a mountain +goat. A rock, turning under his foot on the edge of the precipice, did +not disconcert him. He seemed to know the precise time required for the +turn to culminate in disaster, and in the meantime he utilized the false +footing itself for the momentary earth-contact necessary to carry him on +into safety. Where the earth sloped so steeply that it was impossible to +stand for a second upright, the man did not hesitate. His foot pressed +the impossible surface for but a fraction of the fatal second and gave +him the bound that carried him onward. Again, where even the fraction of +a second’s footing was out of the question, he would swing his body +past by a moment’s hand-grip on a jutting knob of rock, a crevice, or +a precariously rooted shrub. At last, with a wild leap and yell, he +exchanged the face of the wall for an earth-slide and finished the +descent in the midst of several tons of sliding earth and gravel. + +His first pan of the morning washed out over two dollars in coarse gold. +It was from the centre of the “V.” To either side the diminution in +the values of the pans was swift. His lines of crosscutting holes were +growing very short. The converging sides of the inverted “V” were only a +few yards apart. Their meeting-point was only a few yards above him. But +the pay-streak was dipping deeper and deeper into the earth. By early +afternoon he was sinking the test-holes five feet before the pans could +show the gold-trace. + +For that matter, the gold-trace had become something more than a trace; +it was a placer mine in itself, and the man resolved to come back after +he had found the pocket and work over the ground. But the increasing +richness of the pans began to worry him. By late afternoon the worth of +the pans had grown to three and four dollars. The man scratched his head +perplexedly and looked a few feet up the hill at the manzanita bush that +marked approximately the apex of the “V.” He nodded his head and said +oracularly: + +“It’s one o’ two things, Bill; one o’ two things. Either Mr. Pocket’s +spilled himself all out an’ down the hill, or else Mr. Pocket’s that +damned rich you maybe won’t be able to carry him all away with you. And +that’d be hell, wouldn’t it, now?” He chuckled at contemplation of so +pleasant a dilemma. + +Nightfall found him by the edge of the stream his eyes wrestling with +the gathering darkness over the washing of a five-dollar pan. + +“Wisht I had an electric light to go on working,” he said. + +He found sleep difficult that night. Many times he composed himself and +closed his eyes for slumber to overtake him; but his blood pounded with +too strong desire, and as many times his eyes opened and he murmured +wearily, “Wisht it was sun-up.” + +Sleep came to him in the end, but his eyes were open with the first +paling of the stars, and the gray of dawn caught him with breakfast +finished and climbing the hillside in the direction of the secret +abiding-place of Mr. Pocket. + +The first cross-cut the man made, there was space for only three +holes, so narrow had become the pay-streak and so close was he to the +fountainhead of the golden stream he had been following for four days. + +“Be ca’m, Bill; be ca’m,” he admonished himself, as he broke ground for +the final hole where the sides of the “V” had at last come together in a +point. + +“I’ve got the almighty cinch on you, Mr. Pocket, an’ you can’t lose me,” + he said many times as he sank the hole deeper and deeper. + +Four feet, five feet, six feet, he dug his way down into the earth. The +digging grew harder. His pick grated on broken rock. He examined the +rock. “Rotten quartz,” was his conclusion as, with the shovel, he +cleared the bottom of the hole of loose dirt. He attacked the crumbling +quartz with the pick, bursting the disintegrating rock asunder with +every stroke. + +He thrust his shovel into the loose mass. His eye caught a gleam of +yellow. He dropped the shovel and squatted suddenly on his heels. As a +farmer rubs the clinging earth from fresh-dug potatoes, so the man, a +piece of rotten quartz held in both hands, rubbed the dirt away. + +“Sufferin’ Sardanopolis!” he cried. “Lumps an’ chunks of it! Lumps an’ +chunks of it!” + +It was only half rock he held in his hand. The other half was virgin +gold. He dropped it into his pan and examined another piece. Little +yellow was to be seen, but with his strong fingers he crumbled the +rotten quartz away till both hands were filled with glowing yellow. He +rubbed the dirt away from fragment after fragment, tossing them into +the gold-pan. It was a treasure-hole. So much had the quartz rotted away +that there was less of it than there was of gold. Now and again he found +a piece to which no rock clung—a piece that was all gold. A chunk, +where the pick had laid open the heart of the gold, glittered like a +handful of yellow jewels, and he cocked his head at it and slowly turned +it around and over to observe the rich play of the light upon it. + +“Talk about yer Too Much Gold diggin’s!” the man snorted contemptuously. +“Why, this diggin’ ‘d make it look like thirty cents. This diggin’ +is All Gold. An’ right here an’ now I name this yere canyon ‘All Gold +Canyon,’ b’ gosh!” + +Still squatting on his heels, he continued examining the fragments and +tossing them into the pan. Suddenly there came to him a premonition of +danger. It seemed a shadow had fallen upon him. But there was no shadow. +His heart had given a great jump up into his throat and was choking him. +Then his blood slowly chilled and he felt the sweat of his shirt cold +against his flesh. + +He did not spring up nor look around. He did not move. He was +considering the nature of the premonition he had received, trying to +locate the source of the mysterious force that had warned him, striving +to sense the imperative presence of the unseen thing that threatened +him. There is an aura of things hostile, made manifest by messengers +refined for the senses to know; and this aura he felt, but knew not how +he felt it. His was the feeling as when a cloud passes over the sun. +It seemed that between him and life had passed something dark and +smothering and menacing; a gloom, as it were, that swallowed up life and +made for death—his death. + +Every force of his being impelled him to spring up and confront the +unseen danger, but his soul dominated the panic, and he remained +squatting on his heels, in his hands a chunk of gold. He did not dare to +look around, but he knew by now that there was something behind him and +above him. He made believe to be interested in the gold in his hand. +He examined it critically, turned it over and over, and rubbed the dirt +from it. And all the time he knew that something behind him was looking +at the gold over his shoulder. + +Still feigning interest in the chunk of gold in his hand, he listened +intently and he heard the breathing of the thing behind him. His eyes +searched the ground in front of him for a weapon, but they saw only +the uprooted gold, worthless to him now in his extremity. There was his +pick, a handy weapon on occasion; but this was not such an occasion. +The man realized his predicament. He was in a narrow hole that was seven +feet deep. His head did not come to the surface of the ground. He was in +a trap. + +He remained squatting on his heels. He was quite cool and collected; but +his mind, considering every factor, showed him only his helplessness. +He continued rubbing the dirt from the quartz fragments and throwing +the gold into the pan. There was nothing else for him to do. Yet he knew +that he would have to rise up, sooner or later, and face the danger that +breathed at his back. + +The minutes passed, and with the passage of each minute he knew that by +so much he was nearer the time when he must stand up, or else—and his +wet shirt went cold against his flesh again at the thought—or else he +might receive death as he stooped there over his treasure. + +Still he squatted on his heels, rubbing dirt from gold and debating in +just what manner he should rise up. He might rise up with a rush and +claw his way out of the hole to meet whatever threatened on the even +footing above ground. Or he might rise up slowly and carelessly, and +feign casually to discover the thing that breathed at his back. His +instinct and every fighting fibre of his body favored the mad, clawing +rush to the surface. His intellect, and the craft thereof, favored the +slow and cautious meeting with the thing that menaced and which he could +not see. And while he debated, a loud, crashing noise burst on his ear. +At the same instant he received a stunning blow on the left side of +the back, and from the point of impact felt a rush of flame through his +flesh. He sprang up in the air, but halfway to his feet collapsed. His +body crumpled in like a leaf withered in sudden heat, and he came down, +his chest across his pan of gold, his face in the dirt and rock, his +legs tangled and twisted because of the restricted space at the bottom +of the hole. His legs twitched convulsively several times. His body was +shaken as with a mighty ague. There was a slow expansion of the lungs, +accompanied by a deep sigh. Then the air was slowly, very slowly, +exhaled, and his body as slowly flattened itself down into inertness. + +Above, revolver in hand, a man was peering down over the edge of the +hole. He peered for a long time at the prone and motionless body beneath +him. After a while the stranger sat down on the edge of the hole so that +he could see into it, and rested the revolver on his knee. Reaching +his hand into a pocket, he drew out a wisp of brown paper. Into this +he dropped a few crumbs of tobacco. The combination became a cigarette, +brown and squat, with the ends turned in. Not once did he take his eyes +from the body at the bottom of the hole. He lighted the cigarette and +drew its smoke into his lungs with a caressing intake of the breath. He +smoked slowly. Once the cigarette went out and he relighted it. And all +the while he studied the body beneath him. + +In the end he tossed the cigarette stub away and rose to his feet. He +moved to the edge of the hole. Spanning it, a hand resting on each edge, +and with the revolver still in the right hand, he muscled his body +down into the hole. While his feet were yet a yard from the bottom he +released his hands and dropped down. + +At the instant his feet struck bottom he saw the pocket-miner’s arm leap +out, and his own legs knew a swift, jerking grip that overthrew him. In +the nature of the jump his revolver-hand was above his head. Swiftly +as the grip had flashed about his legs, just as swiftly he brought +the revolver down. He was still in the air, his fall in process of +completion, when he pulled the trigger. The explosion was deafening +in the confined space. The smoke filled the hole so that he could +see nothing. He struck the bottom on his back, and like a cat’s the +pocket-miner’s body was on top of him. Even as the miner’s body passed +on top, the stranger crooked in his right arm to fire; and even in that +instant the miner, with a quick thrust of elbow, struck his wrist. The +muzzle was thrown up and the bullet thudded into the dirt of the side of +the hole. + +The next instant the stranger felt the miner’s hand grip his wrist. The +struggle was now for the revolver. Each man strove to turn it against +the other’s body. The smoke in the hole was clearing. The stranger, +lying on his back, was beginning to see dimly. But suddenly he was +blinded by a handful of dirt deliberately flung into his eyes by his +antagonist. In that moment of shock his grip on the revolver was broken. +In the next moment he felt a smashing darkness descend upon his brain, +and in the midst of the darkness even the darkness ceased. + +But the pocket-miner fired again and again, until the revolver was +empty. Then he tossed it from him and, breathing heavily, sat down on +the dead man’s legs. + +The miner was sobbing and struggling for breath. “Measly skunk!” he +panted; “a-campin’ on my trail an’ lettin’ me do the work, an’ then +shootin’ me in the back!” + +He was half crying from anger and exhaustion. He peered at the face of +the dead man. It was sprinkled with loose dirt and gravel, and it was +difficult to distinguish the features. + +“Never laid eyes on him before,” the miner concluded his scrutiny. “Just +a common an’ ordinary thief, damn him! An’ he shot me in the back! He +shot me in the back!” + +He opened his shirt and felt himself, front and back, on his left side. + +“Went clean through, and no harm done!” he cried jubilantly. “I’ll bet +he aimed right all right, but he drew the gun over when he pulled the +trigger—the cuss! But I fixed ‘m! Oh, I fixed ‘m!” + +His fingers were investigating the bullet-hole in his side, and a shade +of regret passed over his face. “It’s goin’ to be stiffer’n hell,” he +said. “An’ it’s up to me to get mended an’ get out o’ here.” + +He crawled out of the hole and went down the hill to his camp. Half an +hour later he returned, leading his pack-horse. His open shirt disclosed +the rude bandages with which he had dressed his wound. He was slow and +awkward with his left-hand movements, but that did not prevent his using +the arm. + +The bight of the pack-rope under the dead man’s shoulders enabled him +to heave the body out of the hole. Then he set to work gathering up his +gold. He worked steadily for several hours, pausing often to rest his +stiffening shoulder and to exclaim: + +“He shot me in the back, the measly skunk! He shot me in the back!” + +When his treasure was quite cleaned up and wrapped securely into a +number of blanket-covered parcels, he made an estimate of its value. + +“Four hundred pounds, or I’m a Hottentot,” he concluded. “Say two +hundred in quartz an’ dirt—that leaves two hundred pounds of gold. +Bill! Wake up! Two hundred pounds of gold! Forty thousand dollars! An’ +it’s yourn—all yourn!” + +He scratched his head delightedly and his fingers blundered into an +unfamiliar groove. They quested along it for several inches. It was a +crease through his scalp where the second bullet had ploughed. + +He walked angrily over to the dead man. + +“You would, would you?” he bullied. “You would, eh? Well, I fixed you +good an’ plenty, an’ I’ll give you decent burial, too. That’s more’n +you’d have done for me.” + +He dragged the body to the edge of the hole and toppled it in. It struck +the bottom with a dull crash, on its side, the face twisted up to the +light. The miner peered down at it. + +“An’ you shot me in the back!” he said accusingly. + +With pick and shovel he filled the hole. Then he loaded the gold on his +horse. It was too great a load for the animal, and when he had gained +his camp he transferred part of it to his saddle-horse. Even so, he +was compelled to abandon a portion of his outfit—pick and shovel and +gold-pan, extra food and cooking utensils, and divers odds and ends. + +The sun was at the zenith when the man forced the horses at the screen +of vines and creepers. To climb the huge boulders the animals were +compelled to uprear and struggle blindly through the tangled mass of +vegetation. Once the saddle-horse fell heavily and the man removed the +pack to get the animal on its feet. After it started on its way again +the man thrust his head out from among the leaves and peered up at the +hillside. + +“The measly skunk!” he said, and disappeared. + +There was a ripping and tearing of vines and boughs. The trees surged +back and forth, marking the passage of the animals through the midst +of them. There was a clashing of steel-shod hoofs on stone, and now and +again an oath or a sharp cry of command. Then the voice of the man was +raised in song:— + + “Tu’n around an’ tu’n yo’ face + Untoe them sweet hills of grace + (D’ pow’rs of sin yo’ am scornin’!). + Look about an, look aroun’, + Fling yo’ sin-pack on d’ groun’ + (Yo’ will meet wid d’ Lord in d’ mornin’!).” + +The song grew faint and fainter, and through the silence crept back the +spirit of the place. The stream once more drowsed and whispered; the hum +of the mountain bees rose sleepily. Down through the perfume-weighted +air fluttered the snowy fluffs of the cottonwoods. The butterflies +drifted in and out among the trees, and over all blazed the quiet +sunshine. Only remained the hoof-marks in the meadow and the torn +hillside to mark the boisterous trail of the life that had broken the +peace of the place and passed on. + + + + +PLANCHETTE + + +“It is my right to know,” the girl said. + +Her voice was firm-fibred with determination. There was no hint of +pleading in it, yet it was the determination that is reached through a +long period of pleading. But in her case it had been pleading, not of +speech, but of personality. Her lips had been ever mute, but her face +and eyes, and the very attitude of her soul, had been for a long time +eloquent with questioning. This the man had known, but he had never +answered; and now she was demanding by the spoken word that he answer. + +“It is my right,” the girl repeated. + +“I know it,” he answered, desperately and helplessly. + +She waited, in the silence which followed, her eyes fixed upon the light +that filtered down through the lofty boughs and bathed the great redwood +trunks in mellow warmth. This light, subdued and colored, seemed almost +a radiation from the trunks themselves, so strongly did they saturate +it with their hue. The girl saw without seeing, as she heard, without +hearing, the deep gurgling of the stream far below on the canyon bottom. + +She looked down at the man. “Well?” she asked, with the firmness which +feigns belief that obedience will be forthcoming. + +She was sitting upright, her back against a fallen tree-trunk, while +he lay near to her, on his side, an elbow on the ground and the hand +supporting his head. + +“Dear, dear Lute,” he murmured. + +She shivered at the sound of his voice—not from repulsion, but from +struggle against the fascination of its caressing gentleness. She had +come to know well the lure of the man—the wealth of easement and rest +that was promised by every caressing intonation of his voice, by the +mere touch of hand on hand or the faint impact of his breath on neck +or cheek. The man could not express himself by word nor look nor touch +without weaving into the expression, subtly and occultly, the feeling as +of a hand that passed and that in passing stroked softly and soothingly. +Nor was this all-pervading caress a something that cloyed with too great +sweetness; nor was it sickly sentimental; nor was it maudlin with love’s +madness. It was vigorous, compelling, masculine. For that matter, it was +largely unconscious on the man’s part. He was only dimly aware of it. +It was a part of him, the breath of his soul as it were, involuntary and +unpremeditated. + +But now, resolved and desperate, she steeled herself against him. He +tried to face her, but her gray eyes looked out to him, steadily, from +under cool, level brows, and he dropped his head upon her knee. Her hand +strayed into his hair softly, and her face melted into solicitude and +tenderness. But when he looked up again, her gray eyes were steady, her +brows cool and level. + +“What more can I tell you?” the man said. He raised his head and met +her gaze. “I cannot marry you. I cannot marry any woman. I love you—you +know that—better than my own life. I weigh you in the scales against +all the dear things of living, and you outweigh everything. I would +give everything to possess you, yet I may not. I cannot marry you. I can +never marry you.” + +Her lips were compressed with the effort of control. His head was +sinking back to her knee, when she checked him. + +“You are already married, Chris?” + +“No! no!” he cried vehemently. “I have never been married. I want to +marry only you, and I cannot!” + +“Then—” + +“Don’t!” he interrupted. “Don’t ask me!” + +“It is my right to know,” she repeated. + +“I know it,” he again interrupted. “But I cannot tell you.” + +“You have not considered me, Chris,” she went on gently. + +“I know, I know,” he broke in. + +“You cannot have considered me. You do not know what I have to bear from +my people because of you.” + +“I did not think they felt so very unkindly toward me,” he said +bitterly. + +“It is true. They can scarcely tolerate you. They do not show it to you, +but they almost hate you. It is I who have had to bear all this. It was +not always so, though. They liked you at first as ... as I liked you. But +that was four years ago. The time passed by—a year, two years; and then +they began to turn against you. They are not to be blamed. You spoke no +word. They felt that you were destroying my life. It is four years, now, +and you have never once mentioned marriage to them. What were they to +think? What they have thought, that you were destroying my life.” + +As she talked, she continued to pass her fingers caressingly through his +hair, sorrowful for the pain that she was inflicting. + +“They did like you at first. Who can help liking you? You seem to draw +affection from all living things, as the trees draw the moisture from +the ground. It comes to you as it were your birthright. Aunt Mildred and +Uncle Robert thought there was nobody like you. The sun rose and set in +you. They thought I was the luckiest girl alive to win the love of a man +like you. ‘For it looks very much like it,’ Uncle Robert used to say, +wagging his head wickedly at me. Of course they liked you. Aunt Mildred +used to sigh, and look across teasingly at Uncle, and say, ‘When I think +of Chris, it almost makes me wish I were younger myself.’ And Uncle +would answer, ‘I don’t blame you, my dear, not in the least.’ And then +the pair of them would beam upon me their congratulations that I had won +the love of a man like you. + +“And they knew I loved you as well. How could I hide it?—this great, +wonderful thing that had entered into my life and swallowed up all my +days! For four years, Chris, I have lived only for you. Every moment was +yours. Waking, I loved you. Sleeping, I dreamed of you. Every act I have +performed was shaped by you, by the thought of you. Even my thoughts +were moulded by you, by the invisible presence of you. I had no end, +petty or great, that you were not there for me.” + +“I had no idea of imposing such slavery,” he muttered. + +“You imposed nothing. You always let me have my own way. It was you +who were the obedient slave. You did for me without offending me. You +forestalled my wishes without the semblance of forestalling them, so +natural and inevitable was everything you did for me. I said, without +offending me. You were no dancing puppet. You made no fuss. Don’t you +see? You did not seem to do things at all. Somehow they were always +there, just done, as a matter of course. + +“The slavery was love’s slavery. It was just my love for you that made +you swallow up all my days. You did not force yourself into my thoughts. +You crept in, always, and you were there always—how much, you will +never know. + +“But as time went by, Aunt Mildred and Uncle grew to dislike you. They +grew afraid. What was to become of me? You were destroying my life. My +music? You know how my dream of it has dimmed away. That spring, when I +first met you—I was twenty, and I was about to start for Germany. I +was going to study hard. That was four years ago, and I am still here in +California. + +“I had other lovers. You drove them away—No! no! I don’t mean that. It +was I that drove them away. What did I care for lovers, for anything, +when you were near? But as I said, Aunt Mildred and Uncle grew afraid. +There has been talk—friends, busybodies, and all the rest. The time +went by. You did not speak. I could only wonder, wonder. I knew you +loved me. Much was said against you by Uncle at first, and then by Aunt +Mildred. They were father and mother to me, you know. I could not defend +you. Yet I was loyal to you. I refused to discuss you. I closed up. +There was half-estrangement in my home—Uncle Robert with a face like +an undertaker, and Aunt Mildred’s heart breaking. But what could I do, +Chris? What could I do?” + +The man, his head resting on her knee again, groaned, but made no other +reply. + +“Aunt Mildred was mother to me, yet I went to her no more with my +confidences. My childhood’s book was closed. It was a sweet book, Chris. +The tears come into my eyes sometimes when I think of it. But never +mind that. Great happiness has been mine as well. I am glad I can talk +frankly of my love for you. And the attaining of such frankness has been +very sweet. I do love you, Chris. I love you ... I cannot tell you how. +You are everything to me, and more besides. You remember that Christmas +tree of the children?—when we played blindman’s buff? and you caught +me by the arm so, with such a clutching of fingers that I cried out +with the hurt? I never told you, but the arm was badly bruised. And such +sweet I got of it you could never guess. There, black and blue, was the +imprint of your fingers—your fingers, Chris, your fingers. It was +the touch of you made visible. It was there a week, and I kissed the +marks—oh, so often! I hated to see them go; I wanted to rebruise the +arm and make them linger. I was jealous of the returning white that +drove the bruise away. Somehow,—oh! I cannot explain, but I loved you +so!” + +In the silence that fell, she continued her caressing of his hair, while +she idly watched a great gray squirrel, boisterous and hilarious, as +it scampered back and forth in a distant vista of the redwoods. A +crimson-crested woodpecker, energetically drilling a fallen trunk, +caught and transferred her gaze. The man did not lift his head. Rather, +he crushed his face closer against her knee, while his heaving shoulders +marked the hardness with which he breathed. + +“You must tell me, Chris,” the girl said gently. “This mystery—it is +killing me. I must know why we cannot be married. Are we always to be +this way?—merely lovers, meeting often, it is true, and yet with the +long absences between the meetings? Is it all the world holds for you +and me, Chris? Are we never to be more to each other? Oh, it is good +just to love, I know—you have made me madly happy; but one does get so +hungry at times for something more! I want more and more of you, Chris. +I want all of you. I want all our days to be together. I want all the +companionship, the comradeship, which cannot be ours now, and which will +be ours when we are married—” She caught her breath quickly. “But we +are never to be married. I forgot. And you must tell me why.” + +The man raised his head and looked her in the eyes. It was a way he had +with whomever he talked, of looking them in the eyes. + +“I have considered you, Lute,” he began doggedly. “I did consider you at +the very first. I should never have gone on with it. I should have gone +away. I knew it. And I considered you in the light of that knowledge, +and yet ... I did not go away. My God! what was I to do? I loved you. +I could not go away. I could not help it. I stayed. I resolved, but +I broke my resolves. I was like a drunkard. I was drunk of you. I was +weak, I know. I failed. I could not go away. I tried. I went away—you +will remember, though you did not know why. You know now. I went away, +but I could not remain away. Knowing that we could never marry, I came +back to you. I am here, now, with you. Send me away, Lute. I have not +the strength to go myself.” + +“But why should you go away?” she asked. “Besides, I must know why, +before I can send you away.” + +“Don’t ask me.” + +“Tell me,” she said, her voice tenderly imperative. + +“Don’t, Lute; don’t force me,” the man pleaded, and there was appeal in +his eyes and voice. + +“But you must tell me,” she insisted. “It is justice you owe me.” + +The man wavered. “If I do ...” he began. Then he ended with +determination, “I should never be able to forgive myself. No, I cannot +tell you. Don’t try to compel me, Lute. You would be as sorry as I.” + +“If there is anything ... if there are obstacles ... if this mystery does +really prevent....” She was speaking slowly, with long pauses, seeking +the more delicate ways of speech for the framing of her thought. “Chris, +I do love you. I love you as deeply as it is possible for any woman to +love, I am sure. If you were to say to me now ‘Come,’ I would go with +you. I would follow wherever you led. I would be your page, as in the +days of old when ladies went with their knights to far lands. You are my +knight, Chris, and you can do no wrong. Your will is my wish. I was once +afraid of the censure of the world. Now that you have come into my life +I am no longer afraid. I would laugh at the world and its censure for +your sake—for my sake too. I would laugh, for I should have you, and +you are more to me than the good will and approval of the world. If you +say ‘Come,’ I will—” + +“Don’t! Don’t!” he cried. “It is impossible! Marriage or not, I cannot +even say ‘Come.’ I dare not. I’ll show you. I’ll tell you.” + +He sat up beside her, the action stamped with resolve. He took her hand +in his and held it closely. His lips moved to the verge of speech. The +mystery trembled for utterance. The air was palpitant with its presence. +As if it were an irrevocable decree, the girl steeled herself to hear. +But the man paused, gazing straight out before him. She felt his hand +relax in hers, and she pressed it sympathetically, encouragingly. But +she felt the rigidity going out of his tensed body, and she knew that +spirit and flesh were relaxing together. His resolution was ebbing. He +would not speak—she knew it; and she knew, likewise, with the sureness +of faith, that it was because he could not. + +She gazed despairingly before her, a numb feeling at her heart, as +though hope and happiness had died. She watched the sun flickering down +through the warm-trunked redwoods. But she watched in a mechanical, +absent way. She looked at the scene as from a long way off, without +interest, herself an alien, no longer an intimate part of the earth and +trees and flowers she loved so well. + +So far removed did she seem, that she was aware of a curiosity, +strangely impersonal, in what lay around her. Through a near vista she +looked at a buckeye tree in full blossom as though her eyes encountered +it for the first time. Her eyes paused and dwelt upon a yellow cluster +of Diogenes’ lanterns that grew on the edge of an open space. It was the +way of flowers always to give her quick pleasure-thrills, but no thrill +was hers now. She pondered the flower slowly and thoughtfully, as a +hasheesh-eater, heavy with the drug, might ponder some whim-flower +that obtruded on his vision. In her ears was the voice of the stream—a +hoarse-throated, sleepy old giant, muttering and mumbling his somnolent +fancies. But her fancy was not in turn aroused, as was its wont; she +knew the sound merely for water rushing over the rocks of the deep +canyon-bottom, that and nothing more. + +Her gaze wandered on beyond the Diogenes’ lanterns into the open +space. Knee-deep in the wild oats of the hillside grazed two horses, +chestnut-sorrels the pair of them, perfectly matched, warm and golden +in the sunshine, their spring-coats a sheen of high-lights shot through +with color-flashes that glowed like fiery jewels. She recognized, almost +with a shock, that one of them was hers, Dolly, the companion of her +girlhood and womanhood, on whose neck she had sobbed her sorrows and +sung her joys. A moistness welled into her eyes at the sight, and +she came back from the remoteness of her mood, quick with passion and +sorrow, to be part of the world again. + +The man sank forward from the hips, relaxing entirely, and with a groan +dropped his head on her knee. She leaned over him and pressed her lips +softly and lingeringly to his hair. + +“Come, let us go,” she said, almost in a whisper. + +She caught her breath in a half-sob, then tightened her lips as she +rose. His face was white to ghastliness, so shaken was he by the +struggle through which he had passed. They did not look at each other, +but walked directly to the horses. She leaned against Dolly’s neck while +he tightened the girths. Then she gathered the reins in her hand and +waited. He looked at her as he bent down, an appeal for forgiveness in +his eyes; and in that moment her own eyes answered. Her foot rested in +his hands, and from there she vaulted into the saddle. Without speaking, +without further looking at each other, they turned the horses’ heads and +took the narrow trail that wound down through the sombre redwood aisles +and across the open glades to the pasture-lands below. The trail became +a cow-path, the cow-path became a wood-road, which later joined with a +hay-road; and they rode down through the low-rolling, tawny California +hills to where a set of bars let out on the county road which ran +along the bottom of the valley. The girl sat her horse while the man +dismounted and began taking down the bars. + +“No—wait!” she cried, before he had touched the two lower bars. + +She urged the mare forward a couple of strides, and then the animal +lifted over the bars in a clean little jump. The man’s eyes sparkled, +and he clapped his hands. + +“You beauty! you beauty!” the girl cried, leaning forward impulsively +in the saddle and pressing her cheek to the mare’s neck where it burned +flame-color in the sun. + +“Let’s trade horses for the ride in,” she suggested, when he had led +his horse through and finished putting up the bars. “You’ve never +sufficiently appreciated Dolly.” + +“No, no,” he protested. + +“You think she is too old, too sedate,” Lute insisted. “She’s only +sixteen, and she can outrun nine colts out of ten. Only she never cuts +up. She’s too steady, and you don’t approve of her—no, don’t deny it, +sir. I know. And I know also that she can outrun your vaunted Washoe +Ban. There! I challenge you! And furthermore, you may ride her yourself. +You know what Ban can do; so you must ride Dolly and see for yourself +what she can do.” + +They proceeded to exchange the saddles on the horses, glad of the +diversion and making the most of it. + +“I’m glad I was born in California,” Lute remarked, as she swung +astride of Ban. “It’s an outrage both to horse and woman to ride in a +sidesaddle.” + +“You look like a young Amazon,” the man said approvingly, his eyes +passing tenderly over the girl as she swung the horse around. + +“Are you ready?” she asked. + +“All ready!” + +“To the old mill,” she called, as the horses sprang forward. “That’s +less than a mile.” + +“To a finish?” he demanded. + +She nodded, and the horses, feeling the urge of the reins, caught the +spirit of the race. The dust rose in clouds behind as they tore along +the level road. They swung around the bend, horses and riders tilted at +sharp angles to the ground, and more than once the riders ducked low to +escape the branches of outreaching and overhanging trees. They clattered +over the small plank bridges, and thundered over the larger iron ones to +an ominous clanking of loose rods. + +They rode side by side, saving the animals for the rush at the finish, +yet putting them at a pace that drew upon vitality and staying power. +Curving around a clump of white oaks, the road straightened out before +them for several hundred yards, at the end of which they could see the +ruined mill. + +“Now for it!” the girl cried. + +She urged the horse by suddenly leaning forward with her body, at the +same time, for an instant, letting the rein slack and touching the neck +with her bridle hand. She began to draw away from the man. + +“Touch her on the neck!” she cried to him. + +With this, the mare pulled alongside and began gradually to pass the +girl. Chris and Lute looked at each other for a moment, the mare still +drawing ahead, so that Chris was compelled slowly to turn his head. The +mill was a hundred yards away. + +“Shall I give him the spurs?” Lute shouted. + +The man nodded, and the girl drove the spurs in sharply and quickly, +calling upon the horse for its utmost, but watched her own horse forge +slowly ahead of her. + +“Beaten by three lengths!” Lute beamed triumphantly, as they pulled into +a walk. “Confess, sir, confess! You didn’t think the old mare had it in +her.” + +Lute leaned to the side and rested her hand for a moment on Dolly’s wet +neck. + +“Ban’s a sluggard alongside of her,” Chris affirmed. “Dolly’s all right, +if she is in her Indian Summer.” + +Lute nodded approval. “That’s a sweet way of putting it—Indian Summer. +It just describes her. But she’s not lazy. She has all the fire and none +of the folly. She is very wise, what of her years.” + +“That accounts for it,” Chris demurred. “Her folly passed with her +youth. Many’s the lively time she’s given you.” + +“No,” Lute answered. “I never knew her really to cut up. I think the +only trouble she ever gave me was when I was training her to open gates. +She was afraid when they swung back upon her—the animal’s fear of the +trap, perhaps. But she bravely got over it. And she never was vicious. +She never bolted, nor bucked, nor cut up in all her life—never, not +once.” + +The horses went on at a walk, still breathing heavily from their run. +The road wound along the bottom of the valley, now and again crossing +the stream. From either side rose the drowsy purr of mowing-machines, +punctuated by occasional sharp cries of the men who were gathering the +hay-crop. On the western side of the valley the hills rose green and +dark, but the eastern side was already burned brown and tan by the sun. + +“There is summer, here is spring,” Lute said. “Oh, beautiful Sonoma +Valley!” + +Her eyes were glistening and her face was radiant with love of the +land. Her gaze wandered on across orchard patches and sweeping vineyard +stretches, seeking out the purple which seemed to hang like a dim smoke +in the wrinkles of the hills and in the more distant canyon gorges. Far +up, among the more rugged crests, where the steep slopes were covered +with manzanita, she caught a glimpse of a clear space where the wild +grass had not yet lost its green. + +“Have you ever heard of the secret pasture?” she asked, her eyes still +fixed on the remote green. + +A snort of fear brought her eyes back to the man beside her. Dolly, +upreared, with distended nostrils and wild eyes, was pawing the air +madly with her fore legs. Chris threw himself forward against her neck +to keep her from falling backward, and at the same time touched her with +the spurs to compel her to drop her fore feet to the ground in order to +obey the go-ahead impulse of the spurs. + +“Why, Dolly, this is most remarkable,” Lute began reprovingly. + +But, to her surprise, the mare threw her head down, arched her back as +she went up in the air, and, returning, struck the ground stiff-legged +and bunched. + +“A genuine buck!” Chris called out, and the next moment the mare was +rising under him in a second buck. + +Lute looked on, astounded at the unprecedented conduct of her mare, and +admiring her lover’s horsemanship. He was quite cool, and was himself +evidently enjoying the performance. Again and again, half a dozen times, +Dolly arched herself into the air and struck, stiffly bunched. Then she +threw her head straight up and rose on her hind legs, pivoting about and +striking with her fore feet. Lute whirled into safety the horse she was +riding, and as she did so caught a glimpse of Dolly’s eyes, with the +look in them of blind brute madness, bulging until it seemed they must +burst from her head. The faint pink in the white of the eyes was gone, +replaced by a white that was like dull marble and that yet flashed as +from some inner fire. + +A faint cry of fear, suppressed in the instant of utterance, slipped +past Lute’s lips. One hind leg of the mare seemed to collapse, and for a +moment the whole quivering body, upreared and perpendicular, swayed back +and forth, and there was uncertainty as to whether it would fall forward +or backward. The man, half-slipping sidewise from the saddle, so as to +fall clear if the mare toppled backward, threw his weight to the front +and alongside her neck. This overcame the dangerous teetering balance, +and the mare struck the ground on her feet again. + +But there was no let-up. Dolly straightened out so that the line of the +face was almost a continuation of the line of the stretched neck; +this position enabled her to master the bit, which she did by bolting +straight ahead down the road. + +For the first time Lute became really frightened. She spurred Washoe Ban +in pursuit, but he could not hold his own with the mad mare, and dropped +gradually behind. Lute saw Dolly check and rear in the air again, and +caught up just as the mare made a second bolt. As Dolly dashed around a +bend, she stopped suddenly, stiff-legged. Lute saw her lover torn out of +the saddle, his thigh-grip broken by the sudden jerk. Though he had lost +his seat, he had not been thrown, and as the mare dashed on Lute saw him +clinging to the side of the horse, a hand in the mane and a leg across +the saddle. With a quick cavort he regained his seat and proceeded to +fight with the mare for control. + +But Dolly swerved from the road and dashed down a grassy slope yellowed +with innumerable mariposa lilies. An ancient fence at the bottom was +no obstacle. She burst through as though it were filmy spider-web and +disappeared in the underbrush. Lute followed unhesitatingly, putting Ban +through the gap in the fence and plunging on into the thicket. She lay +along his neck, closely, to escape the ripping and tearing of the trees +and vines. She felt the horse drop down through leafy branches and into +the cool gravel of a stream’s bottom. From ahead came a splashing of +water, and she caught a glimpse of Dolly, dashing up the small bank and +into a clump of scrub-oaks, against the trunks of which she was trying +to scrape off her rider. + +Lute almost caught up amongst the trees, but was hopelessly outdistanced +on the fallow field adjoining, across which the mare tore with a fine +disregard for heavy ground and gopher-holes. When she turned at a sharp +angle into the thicket-land beyond, Lute took the long diagonal, skirted +the ticket, and reined in Ban at the other side. She had arrived first. +From within the thicket she could hear a tremendous crashing of brush +and branches. Then the mare burst through and into the open, falling +to her knees, exhausted, on the soft earth. She arose and staggered +forward, then came limply to a halt. She was in lather-sweat of fear, +and stood trembling pitiably. + +Chris was still on her back. His shirt was in ribbons. The backs of his +hands were bruised and lacerated, while his face was streaming blood +from a gash near the temple. Lute had controlled herself well, but now +she was aware of a quick nausea and a trembling of weakness. + +“Chris!” she said, so softly that it was almost a whisper. Then she +sighed, “Thank God.” + +“Oh, I’m all right,” he cried to her, putting into his voice all the +heartiness he could command, which was not much, for he had himself been +under no mean nervous strain. + +He showed the reaction he was undergoing, when he swung down out of +the saddle. He began with a brave muscular display as he lifted his +leg over, but ended, on his feet, leaning against the limp Dolly for +support. Lute flashed out of her saddle, and her arms were about him in +an embrace of thankfulness. + +“I know where there is a spring,” she said, a moment later. + +They left the horses standing untethered, and she led her lover into the +cool recesses of the thicket to where crystal water bubbled from out the +base of the mountain. + +“What was that you said about Dolly’s never cutting up?” he asked, when +the blood had been stanched and his nerves and pulse-beats were normal +again. + +“I am stunned,” Lute answered. “I cannot understand it. She never did +anything like it in all her life. And all animals like you so—it’s not +because of that. Why, she is a child’s horse. I was only a little girl +when I first rode her, and to this day—” + +“Well, this day she was everything but a child’s horse,” Chris broke in. +“She was a devil. She tried to scrape me off against the trees, and to +batter my brains out against the limbs. She tried all the lowest and +narrowest places she could find. You should have seen her squeeze +through. And did you see those bucks?” + +Lute nodded. + +“Regular bucking-bronco proposition.” + +“But what should she know about bucking?” Lute demanded. “She was never +known to buck—never.” + +He shrugged his shoulders. “Some forgotten instinct, perhaps, +long-lapsed and come to life again.” + +The girl rose to her feet determinedly. “I’m going to find out,” she +said. + +They went back to the horses, where they subjected Dolly to a +rigid examination that disclosed nothing. Hoofs, legs, bit, mouth, +body—everything was as it should be. The saddle and saddle-cloth were +innocent of bur or sticker; the back was smooth and unbroken. They +searched for sign of snake-bite and sting of fly or insect, but found +nothing. + +“Whatever it was, it was subjective, that much is certain,” Chris said. + +“Obsession,” Lute suggested. + +They laughed together at the idea, for both were twentieth-century +products, healthy-minded and normal, with souls that delighted in +the butterfly-chase of ideals but that halted before the brink where +superstition begins. + +“An evil spirit,” Chris laughed; “but what evil have I done that I +should be so punished?” + +“You think too much of yourself, sir,” she rejoined. “It is more likely +some evil, I don’t know what, that Dolly has done. You were a mere +accident. I might have been on her back at the time, or Aunt Mildred, or +anybody.” + +As she talked, she took hold of the stirrup-strap and started to shorten +it. + +“What are you doing?” Chris demanded. + +“I’m going to ride Dolly in.” + +“No, you’re not,” he announced. “It would be bad discipline. After what +has happened I am simply compelled to ride her in myself.” + +But it was a very weak and very sick mare he rode, stumbling and +halting, afflicted with nervous jerks and recurring muscular spasms—the +aftermath of the tremendous orgasm through which she had passed. + +“I feel like a book of verse and a hammock, after all that has +happened,” Lute said, as they rode into camp. + +It was a summer camp of city-tired people, pitched in a grove of +towering redwoods through whose lofty boughs the sunshine trickled down, +broken and subdued to soft light and cool shadow. Apart from the main +camp were the kitchen and the servants’ tents; and midway between was +the great dining hall, walled by the living redwood columns, where fresh +whispers of air were always to be found, and where no canopy was needed +to keep the sun away. + +“Poor Dolly, she is really sick,” Lute said that evening, when they had +returned from a last look at the mare. “But you weren’t hurt, Chris, and +that’s enough for one small woman to be thankful for. I thought I knew, +but I really did not know till to-day, how much you meant to me. I could +hear only the plunging and struggle in the thicket. I could not see you, +nor know how it went with you.” + +“My thoughts were of you,” Chris answered, and felt the responsive +pressure of the hand that rested on his arm. + +She turned her face up to his and met his lips. + +“Good night,” she said. + +“Dear Lute, dear Lute,” he caressed her with his voice as she moved away +among the shadows. + + * * * + +“Who’s going for the mail?” called a woman’s voice through the trees. + +Lute closed the book from which they had been reading, and sighed. + +“We weren’t going to ride to-day,” she said. + +“Let me go,” Chris proposed. “You stay here. I’ll be down and back in no +time.” + +She shook her head. + +“Who’s going for the mail?” the voice insisted. + +“Where’s Martin?” Lute called, lifting her voice in answer. + +“I don’t know,” came the voice. “I think Robert took him along +somewhere—horse-buying, or fishing, or I don’t know what. There’s +really nobody left but Chris and you. Besides, it will give you an +appetite for dinner. You’ve been lounging in the hammock all day. And +Uncle Robert must have his newspaper.” + +“All right, Aunty, we’re starting,” Lute called back, getting out of the +hammock. + +A few minutes later, in riding-clothes, they were saddling the horses. +They rode out on to the county road, where blazed the afternoon sun, +and turned toward Glen Ellen. The little town slept in the sun, and the +somnolent storekeeper and postmaster scarcely kept his eyes open long +enough to make up the packet of letters and newspapers. + +An hour later Lute and Chris turned aside from the road and dipped along +a cow-path down the high bank to water the horses, before going into +camp. + +“Dolly looks as though she’d forgotten all about yesterday,” Chris said, +as they sat their horses knee-deep in the rushing water. “Look at her.” + +The mare had raised her head and cocked her ears at the rustling of +a quail in the thicket. Chris leaned over and rubbed around her ears. +Dolly’s enjoyment was evident, and she drooped her head over against the +shoulder of his own horse. + +“Like a kitten,” was Lute’s comment. + +“Yet I shall never be able wholly to trust her again,” Chris said. “Not +after yesterday’s mad freak.” + +“I have a feeling myself that you are safer on Ban,” Lute laughed. “It +is strange. My trust in Dolly is as implicit as ever. I feel confident +so far as I am concerned, but I should never care to see you on her +back again. Now with Ban, my faith is still unshaken. Look at that neck! +Isn’t he handsome! He’ll be as wise as Dolly when he is as old as she.” + +“I feel the same way,” Chris laughed back. “Ban could never possibly +betray me.” + +They turned their horses out of the stream. Dolly stopped to brush a fly +from her knee with her nose, and Ban urged past into the narrow way of +the path. The space was too restricted to make him return, save with +much trouble, and Chris allowed him to go on. Lute, riding behind, dwelt +with her eyes upon her lover’s back, pleasuring in the lines of the bare +neck and the sweep out to the muscular shoulders. + +Suddenly she reined in her horse. She could do nothing but look, so +brief was the duration of the happening. Beneath and above was the +almost perpendicular bank. The path itself was barely wide enough for +footing. Yet Washoe Ban, whirling and rearing at the same time, toppled +for a moment in the air and fell backward off the path. + +So unexpected and so quick was it, that the man was involved in the +fall. There had been no time for him to throw himself to the path. He +was falling ere he knew it, and he did the only thing possible—slipped +the stirrups and threw his body into the air, to the side, and at the +same time down. It was twelve feet to the rocks below. He maintained an +upright position, his head up and his eyes fixed on the horse above him +and falling upon him. + +Chris struck like a cat, on his feet, on the instant making a leap +to the side. The next instant Ban crashed down beside him. The animal +struggled little, but sounded the terrible cry that horses sometimes +sound when they have received mortal hurt. He had struck almost squarely +on his back, and in that position he remained, his head twisted partly +under, his hind legs relaxed and motionless, his fore legs futilely +striking the air. + +Chris looked up reassuringly. + +“I am getting used to it,” Lute smiled down to him. “Of course I need +not ask if you are hurt. Can I do anything?” + +He smiled back and went over to the fallen beast, letting go the girths +of the saddle and getting the head straightened out. + +“I thought so,” he said, after a cursory examination. “I thought so at +the time. Did you hear that sort of crunching snap?” + +She shuddered. + +“Well, that was the punctuation of life, the final period dropped at +the end of Ban’s usefulness.” He started around to come up by the path. +“I’ve been astride of Ban for the last time. Let us go home.” + +At the top of the bank Chris turned and looked down. + +“Good-by, Washoe Ban!” he called out. “Good-by, old fellow.” + +The animal was struggling to lift its head. There were tears in Chris’s +eyes as he turned abruptly away, and tears in Lute’s eyes as they met +his. She was silent in her sympathy, though the pressure of her hand was +firm in his as he walked beside her horse down the dusty road. + +“It was done deliberately,” Chris burst forth suddenly. “There was no +warning. He deliberately flung himself over backward.” + +“There was no warning,” Lute concurred. “I was looking. I saw him. He +whirled and threw himself at the same time, just as if you had done it +yourself, with a tremendous jerk and backward pull on the bit.” + +“It was not my hand, I swear it. I was not even thinking of him. He was +going up with a fairly loose rein, as a matter of course.” + +“I should have seen it, had you done it,” Lute said. “But it was all +done before you had a chance to do anything. It was not your hand, not +even your unconscious hand.” + +“Then it was some invisible hand, reaching out from I don’t know where.” + +He looked up whimsically at the sky and smiled at the conceit. + +Martin stepped forward to receive Dolly, when they came into the stable +end of the grove, but his face expressed no surprise at sight of Chris +coming in on foot. Chris lingered behind Lute for moment. + +“Can you shoot a horse?” he asked. + +The groom nodded, then added, “Yes, sir,” with a second and deeper nod. + +“How do you do it?” + +“Draw a line from the eyes to the ears—I mean the opposite ears, sir. +And where the lines cross—” + +“That will do,” Chris interrupted. “You know the watering place at the +second bend. You’ll find Ban there with a broken back.” + + * * * + +“Oh, here you are, sir. I have been looking for you everywhere since +dinner. You are wanted immediately.” + +Chris tossed his cigar away, then went over and pressed his foot on its +glowing fire. + +“You haven’t told anybody about it?—Ban?” he queried. + +Lute shook her head. “They’ll learn soon enough. Martin will mention it +to Uncle Robert to-morrow.” + +“But don’t feel too bad about it,” she said, after a moment’s pause, +slipping her hand into his. + +“He was my colt,” he said. “Nobody has ridden him but you. I broke him +myself. I knew him from the time he was born. I knew every bit of him, +every trick, every caper, and I would have staked my life that it was +impossible for him to do a thing like this. There was no warning, no +fighting for the bit, no previous unruliness. I have been thinking it +over. He didn’t fight for the bit, for that matter. He wasn’t unruly, +nor disobedient. There wasn’t time. It was an impulse, and he acted upon +it like lightning. I am astounded now at the swiftness with which it +took place. Inside the first second we were over the edge and falling. + +“It was deliberate—deliberate suicide. And attempted murder. It was a +trap. I was the victim. He had me, and he threw himself over with me. +Yet he did not hate me. He loved me ... as much as it is possible for a +horse to love. I am confounded. I cannot understand it any more than you +can understand Dolly’s behavior yesterday.” + +“But horses go insane, Chris,” Lute said. “You know that. It’s merely +coincidence that two horses in two days should have spells under you.” + +“That’s the only explanation,” he answered, starting off with her. “But +why am I wanted urgently?” + +“Planchette.” + +“Oh, I remember. It will be a new experience to me. Somehow I missed it +when it was all the rage long ago.” + +“So did all of us,” Lute replied, “except Mrs. Grantly. It is her +favorite phantom, it seems.” + +“A weird little thing,” he remarked. “Bundle of nerves and black +eyes. I’ll wager she doesn’t weigh ninety pounds, and most of that’s +magnetism.” + +“Positively uncanny ... at times.” Lute shivered involuntarily. “She +gives me the creeps.” + +“Contact of the healthy with the morbid,” he explained dryly. “You will +notice it is the healthy that always has the creeps. The morbid never +has the creeps. It gives the creeps. That’s its function. Where did you +people pick her up, anyway?” + +“I don’t know—yes, I do, too. Aunt Mildred met her in Boston, I +think—oh, I don’t know. At any rate, Mrs. Grantly came to California, +and of course had to visit Aunt Mildred. You know the open house we +keep.” + +They halted where a passageway between two great redwood trunks gave +entrance to the dining room. Above, through lacing boughs, could be seen +the stars. Candles lighted the tree-columned space. About the table, +examining the Planchette contrivance, were four persons. Chris’s gaze +roved over them, and he was aware of a guilty sorrow-pang as he paused +for a moment on Lute’s Aunt Mildred and Uncle Robert, mellow with ripe +middle age and genial with the gentle buffets life had dealt them. He +passed amusedly over the black-eyed, frail-bodied Mrs. Grantly, and +halted on the fourth person, a portly, massive-headed man, whose gray +temples belied the youthful solidity of his face. + +“Who’s that?” Chris whispered. + +“A Mr. Barton. The train was late. That’s why you didn’t see him at +dinner. He’s only a capitalist—water-power-long-distance-electricity +transmitter, or something like that.” + +“Doesn’t look as though he could give an ox points on imagination.” + +“He can’t. He inherited his money. But he knows enough to hold on to it +and hire other men’s brains. He is very conservative.” + +“That is to be expected,” was Chris’s comment. His gaze went back to the +man and woman who had been father and mother to the girl beside him. “Do +you know,” he said, “it came to me with a shock yesterday when you told +me that they had turned against me and that I was scarcely tolerated. I +met them afterwards, last evening, guiltily, in fear and trembling—and +to-day, too. And yet I could see no difference from of old.” + +“Dear man,” Lute sighed. “Hospitality is as natural to them as the act +of breathing. But it isn’t that, after all. It is all genuine in their +dear hearts. No matter how severe the censure they put upon you when +you are absent, the moment they are with you they soften and are all +kindness and warmth. As soon as their eyes rest on you, affection and +love come bubbling up. You are so made. Every animal likes you. +All people like you. They can’t help it. You can’t help it. You are +universally lovable, and the best of it is that you don’t know it. You +don’t know it now. Even as I tell it to you, you don’t realize it, you +won’t realize it—and that very incapacity to realize it is one of the +reasons why you are so loved. You are incredulous now, and you shake +your head; but I know, who am your slave, as all people know, for they +likewise are your slaves. + +“Why, in a minute we shall go in and join them. Mark the affection, +almost maternal, that will well up in Aunt Mildred’s eyes. Listen to the +tones of Uncle Robert’s voice when he says, ‘Well, Chris, my boy?’ Watch +Mrs. Grantly melt, literally melt, like a dewdrop in the sun. + +“Take Mr. Barton, there. You have never seen him before. Why, you will +invite him out to smoke a cigar with you when the rest of us have gone +to bed—you, a mere nobody, and he a man of many millions, a man of +power, a man obtuse and stupid like the ox; and he will follow you +about, smoking; the cigar, like a little dog, your little dog, trotting +at your back. He will not know he is doing it, but he will be doing it +just the same. Don’t I know, Chris? Oh, I have watched you, watched you, +so often, and loved you for it, and loved you again for it, because you +were so delightfully and blindly unaware of what you were doing.” + +“I’m almost bursting with vanity from listening to you,” he laughed, +passing his arm around her and drawing her against him. + +“Yes,” she whispered, “and in this very moment, when you are laughing at +all that I have said, you, the feel of you, your soul,—call it what you +will, it is you,—is calling for all the love that is in me.” + +She leaned more closely against him, and sighed as with fatigue. He +breathed a kiss into her hair and held her with firm tenderness. + +Aunt Mildred stirred briskly and looked up from the Planchette board. + +“Come, let us begin,” she said. “It will soon grow chilly. Robert, where +are those children?” + +“Here we are,” Lute called out, disengaging herself. + +“Now for a bundle of creeps,” Chris whispered, as they started in. + +Lute’s prophecy of the manner in which her lover would be received +was realized. Mrs. Grantly, unreal, unhealthy, scintillant with frigid +magnetism, warmed and melted as though of truth she were dew and he sun. +Mr. Barton beamed broadly upon him, and was colossally gracious. Aunt +Mildred greeted him with a glow of fondness and motherly kindness, while +Uncle Robert genially and heartily demanded, “Well, Chris, my boy, and +what of the riding?” + +But Aunt Mildred drew her shawl more closely around her and hastened +them to the business in hand. On the table was a sheet of paper. On the +paper, rifling on three supports, was a small triangular board. Two of +the supports were easily moving casters. The third support, placed at +the apex of the triangle, was a lead pencil. + +“Who’s first?” Uncle Robert demanded. + +There was a moment’s hesitancy, then Aunt Mildred placed her hand on the +board, and said: “Some one has always to be the fool for the delectation +of the rest.” + +“Brave woman,” applauded her husband. “Now, Mrs. Grantly, do your +worst.” + +“I?” that lady queried. “I do nothing. The power, or whatever you care +to think it, is outside of me, as it is outside of all of you. As to +what that power is, I will not dare to say. There is such a power. I +have had evidences of it. And you will undoubtedly have evidences of +it. Now please be quiet, everybody. Touch the board very lightly, but +firmly, Mrs. Story; but do nothing of your own volition.” + +Aunt Mildred nodded, and stood with her hand on Planchette; while the +rest formed about her in a silent and expectant circle. But nothing +happened. The minutes ticked away, and Planchette remained motionless. + +“Be patient,” Mrs. Grantly counselled. “Do not struggle against any +influences you may feel working on you. But do not do anything yourself. +The influence will take care of that. You will feel impelled to do +things, and such impulses will be practically irresistible.” + +“I wish the influence would hurry up,” Aunt Mildred protested at the end +of five motionless minutes. + +“Just a little longer, Mrs. Story, just a little longer,” Mrs. Grantly +said soothingly. + +Suddenly Aunt Mildred’s hand began to twitch into movement. A mild +concern showed in her face as she observed the movement of her hand and +heard the scratching of the pencil-point at the apex of Planchette. + +For another five minutes this continued, when Aunt Mildred withdrew her +hand with an effort, and said, with a nervous laugh: + +“I don’t know whether I did it myself or not. I do know that I was +growing nervous, standing there like a psychic fool with all your solemn +faces turned upon me.” + +“Hen-scratches,” was Uncle Robert’s judgement, when he looked over the +paper upon which she had scrawled. + +“Quite illegible,” was Mrs. Grantly’s dictum. “It does not resemble +writing at all. The influences have not got to working yet. Do you try +it, Mr. Barton.” + +That gentleman stepped forward, ponderously willing to please, and +placed his hand on the board. And for ten solid, stolid minutes he stood +there, motionless, like a statue, the frozen personification of the +commercial age. Uncle Robert’s face began to work. He blinked, stiffened +his mouth, uttered suppressed, throaty sounds, deep down; finally he +snorted, lost his self-control, and broke out in a roar of laughter. +All joined in this merriment, including Mrs. Grantly. Mr. Barton laughed +with them, but he was vaguely nettled. + +“You try it, Story,” he said. + +Uncle Robert, still laughing, and urged on by Lute and his wife, took +the board. Suddenly his face sobered. His hand had begun to move, and +the pencil could be heard scratching across the paper. + +“By George!” he muttered. “That’s curious. Look at it. I’m not doing it. +I know I’m not doing it. Look at that hand go! Just look at it!” + +“Now, Robert, none of your ridiculousness,” his wife warned him. + +“I tell you I’m not doing it,” he replied indignantly. “The force has +got hold of me. Ask Mrs. Grantly. Tell her to make it stop, if you want +it to stop. I can’t stop it. By George! look at that flourish. I didn’t +do that. I never wrote a flourish in my life.” + +“Do try to be serious,” Mrs. Grantly warned them. “An atmosphere of +levity does not conduce to the best operation of Planchette.” + +“There, that will do, I guess,” Uncle Robert said as he took his hand +away. “Now let’s see.” + +He bent over and adjusted his glasses. “It’s handwriting at any rate, +and that’s better than the rest of you did. Here, Lute, your eyes are +young.” + +“Oh, what flourishes!” Lute exclaimed, as she looked at the paper. “And +look there, there are two different handwritings.” + +She began to read: “This is the first lecture. Concentrate on this +sentence: ‘I am a positive spirit and not negative to any condition.’ +Then follow with concentration on positive love. After that peace and +harmony will vibrate through and around your body. Your soul—The other +writing breaks right in. This is the way it goes: Bullfrog 95, Dixie 16, +Golden Anchor 65, Gold Mountain 13, Jim Butler 70, Jumbo 75, North Star +42, Rescue 7, Black Butte 75, Brown Hope 16, Iron Top 3.” + +“Iron Top’s pretty low,” Mr. Barton murmured. + +“Robert, you’ve been dabbling again!” Aunt Mildred cried accusingly. + +“No, I’ve not,” he denied. “I only read the quotations. But how the +devil—I beg your pardon—they got there on that piece of paper I’d like +to know.” + +“Your subconscious mind,” Chris suggested. “You read the quotations in +to-day’s paper.” + +“No, I didn’t; but last week I glanced over the column.” + +“A day or a year is all the same in the subconscious mind,” said Mrs. +Grantly. “The subconscious mind never forgets. But I am not saying that +this is due to the subconscious mind. I refuse to state to what I think +it is due.” + +“But how about that other stuff?” Uncle Robert demanded. “Sounds like +what I’d think Christian Science ought to sound like.” + +“Or theosophy,” Aunt Mildred volunteered. “Some message to a neophyte.” + +“Go on, read the rest,” her husband commanded. + +“This puts you in touch with the mightier spirits,” Lute read. “You +shall become one with us, and your name shall be ‘Arya,’ and you +shall—Conqueror 20, Empire 12, Columbia Mountain 18, Midway 140—and, +and that is all. Oh, no! here’s a last flourish, Arya, from Kandor—that +must surely be the Mahatma.” + +“I’d like to have you explain that theosophy stuff on the basis of the +subconscious mind, Chris,” Uncle Robert challenged. + +Chris shrugged his shoulders. “No explanation. You must have got a +message intended for some one else.” + +“Lines were crossed, eh?” Uncle Robert chuckled. “Multiplex spiritual +wireless telegraphy, I’d call it.” + +“It IS nonsense,” Mrs. Grantly said. “I never knew Planchette to behave +so outrageously. There are disturbing influences at work. I felt them +from the first. Perhaps it is because you are all making too much fun of +it. You are too hilarious.” + +“A certain befitting gravity should grace the occasion,” Chris agreed, +placing his hand on Planchette. “Let me try. And not one of you must +laugh or giggle, or even think ‘laugh’ or ‘giggle.’ And if you dare +to snort, even once, Uncle Robert, there is no telling what occult +vengeance may be wreaked upon you.” + +“I’ll be good,” Uncle Robert rejoined. “But if I really must snort, may +I silently slip away?” + +Chris nodded. His hand had already begun to work. There had been no +preliminary twitchings nor tentative essays at writing. At once his hand +had started off, and Planchette was moving swiftly and smoothly across +the paper. + +“Look at him,” Lute whispered to her aunt. “See how white he is.” + +Chris betrayed disturbance at the sound of her voice, and thereafter +silence was maintained. Only could be heard the steady scratching of the +pencil. Suddenly, as though it had been stung, he jerked his hand away. +With a sigh and a yawn he stepped back from the table, then glanced with +the curiosity of a newly awakened man at their faces. + +“I think I wrote something,” he said. + +“I should say you did,” Mrs. Grantly remarked with satisfaction, holding +up the sheet of paper and glancing at it. + +“Read it aloud,” Uncle Robert said. + +“Here it is, then. It begins with ‘beware’ written three times, and in +much larger characters than the rest of the writing. BEWARE! BEWARE! +BEWARE! Chris Dunbar, I intend to destroy you. I have already made two +attempts upon your life, and failed. I shall yet succeed. So sure am I +that I shall succeed that I dare to tell you. I do not need to tell you +why. In your own heart you know. The wrong you are doing—And here it +abruptly ends.” + +Mrs. Grantly laid the paper down on the table and looked at Chris, who +had already become the centre of all eyes, and who was yawning as from +an overpowering drowsiness. + +“Quite a sanguinary turn, I should say,” Uncle Robert remarked. + +“I have already made two attempts upon your life,” Mrs. Grantly read +from the paper, which she was going over a second time. + +“On my life?” Chris demanded between yawns. “Why, my life hasn’t been +attempted even once. My! I am sleepy!” + +“Ah, my boy, you are thinking of flesh-and-blood men,” Uncle Robert +laughed. “But this is a spirit. Your life has been attempted by unseen +things. Most likely ghostly hands have tried to throttle you in your +sleep.” + +“Oh, Chris!” Lute cried impulsively. “This afternoon! The hand you said +must have seized your rein!” + +“But I was joking,” he objected. + +“Nevertheless ...” Lute left her thought unspoken. + +Mrs. Grantly had become keen on the scent. “What was that about this +afternoon? Was your life in danger?” + +Chris’s drowsiness had disappeared. “I’m becoming interested myself,” + he acknowledged. “We haven’t said anything about it. Ban broke his back +this afternoon. He threw himself off the bank, and I ran the risk of +being caught underneath.” + +“I wonder, I wonder,” Mrs. Grantly communed aloud. “There is something +in this.... It is a warning.... Ah! You were hurt yesterday riding Miss +Story’s horse! That makes the two attempts!” + +She looked triumphantly at them. Planchette had been vindicated. + +“Nonsense,” laughed Uncle Robert, but with a slight hint of irritation +in his manner. “Such things do not happen these days. This is the +twentieth century, my dear madam. The thing, at the very latest, smacks +of mediaevalism.” + +“I have had such wonderful tests with Planchette,” Mrs. Grantly began, +then broke off suddenly to go to the table and place her hand on the +board. + +“Who are you?” she asked. “What is your name?” + +The board immediately began to write. By this time all heads, with the +exception of Mr. Barton’s, were bent over the table and following the +pencil. + +“It’s Dick,” Aunt Mildred cried, a note of the mildly hysterical in her +voice. + +Her husband straightened up, his face for the first time grave. + +“It’s Dick’s signature,” he said. “I’d know his fist in a thousand.” + +“‘Dick Curtis,’” Mrs. Grantly read aloud. “Who is Dick Curtis?” + +“By Jove, that’s remarkable!” Mr. Barton broke in. “The handwriting in +both instances is the same. Clever, I should say, really clever,” he +added admiringly. + +“Let me see,” Uncle Robert demanded, taking the paper and examining it. +“Yes, it is Dick’s handwriting.” + +“But who is Dick?” Mrs. Grantly insisted. “Who is this Dick Curtis?” + +“Dick Curtis, why, he was Captain Richard Curtis,” Uncle Robert +answered. + +“He was Lute’s father,” Aunt Mildred supplemented. “Lute took our name. +She never saw him. He died when she was a few weeks old. He was my +brother.” + +“Remarkable, most remarkable.” Mrs. Grantly was revolving the message +in her mind. “There were two attempts on Mr. Dunbar’s life. The +subconscious mind cannot explain that, for none of us knew of the +accident to-day.” + +“I knew,” Chris answered, “and it was I that operated Planchette. The +explanation is simple.” + +“But the handwriting,” interposed Mr. Barton. “What you wrote and what +Mrs. Grantly wrote are identical.” + +Chris bent over and compared the handwriting. + +“Besides,” Mrs. Grantly cried, “Mr. Story recognizes the handwriting.” + +She looked at him for verification. + +He nodded his head. “Yes, it is Dick’s fist. I’ll swear to that.” + +But to Lute had come a visioning. While the rest argued pro and con and +the air was filled with phrases,—“psychic phenomena,” “self-hypnotism,” + “residuum of unexplained truth,” and “spiritism,”—she was reviving +mentally the girlhood pictures she had conjured of this soldier-father +she had never seen. She possessed his sword, there were several +old-fashioned daguerreotypes, there was much that had been said of him, +stories told of him—and all this had constituted the material out of +which she had builded him in her childhood fancy. + +“There is the possibility of one mind unconsciously suggesting to +another mind,” Mrs. Grantly was saying; but through Lute’s mind was +trooping her father on his great roan war-horse. Now he was leading +his men. She saw him on lonely scouts, or in the midst of the yelling +Indians at Salt Meadows, when of his command he returned with one man +in ten. And in the picture she had of him, in the physical semblance she +had made of him, was reflected his spiritual nature, reflected by her +worshipful artistry in form and feature and expression—his bravery, +his quick temper, his impulsive championship, his madness of wrath in +a righteous cause, his warm generosity and swift forgiveness, and his +chivalry that epitomized codes and ideals primitive as the days of +knighthood. And first, last, and always, dominating all, she saw in the +face of him the hot passion and quickness of deed that had earned for +him the name “Fighting Dick Curtis.” + +“Let me put it to the test,” she heard Mrs. Grantly saying. “Let Miss +Story try Planchette. There may be a further message.” + +“No, no, I beg of you,” Aunt Mildred interposed. “It is too uncanny. +It surely is wrong to tamper with the dead. Besides, I am nervous. Or, +better, let me go to bed, leaving you to go on with your experiments. +That will be the best way, and you can tell me in the morning.” Mingled +with the “Good-nights,” were half-hearted protests from Mrs. Grantly, as +Aunt Mildred withdrew. + +“Robert can return,” she called back, “as soon as he has seen me to my +tent.” + +“It would be a shame to give it up now,” Mrs. Grantly said. “There is no +telling what we are on the verge of. Won’t you try it, Miss Story?” + +Lute obeyed, but when she placed her hand on the board she was conscious +of a vague and nameless fear at this toying with the supernatural. She +was twentieth-century, and the thing in essence, as her uncle had said, +was mediaeval. Yet she could not shake off the instinctive fear that +arose in her—man’s inheritance from the wild and howling ages when +his hairy, apelike prototype was afraid of the dark and personified the +elements into things of fear. + +But as the mysterious influence seized her hand and sent it meriting +across the paper, all the unusual passed out of the situation and she +was unaware of more than a feeble curiosity. For she was intent on +another visioning—this time of her mother, who was also unremembered +in the flesh. Not sharp and vivid like that of her father, but dim and +nebulous was the picture she shaped of her mother—a saint’s head in an +aureole of sweetness and goodness and meekness, and withal, shot +through with a hint of reposeful determination, of will, stubborn and +unobtrusive, that in life had expressed itself mainly in resignation. + +Lute’s hand had ceased moving, and Mrs. Grantly was already reading the +message that had been written. + +“It is a different handwriting,” she said. “A woman’s hand. ‘Martha,’ it +is signed. Who is Martha?” + +Lute was not surprised. “It is my mother,” she said simply. “What does +she say?” + +She had not been made sleepy, as Chris had; but the keen edge of her +vitality had been blunted, and she was experiencing a sweet and pleasing +lassitude. And while the message was being read, in her eyes persisted +the vision of her mother. + +“Dear child,” Mrs. Grantly read, “do not mind him. He was ever quick of +speech and rash. Be no niggard with your love. Love cannot hurt you. +To deny love is to sin. Obey your heart and you can do no wrong. Obey +worldly considerations, obey pride, obey those that prompt you against +your heart’s prompting, and you do sin. Do not mind your father. He is +angry now, as was his way in the earth-life; but he will come to see +the wisdom of my counsel, for this, too, was his way in the earth-life. +Love, my child, and love well.—Martha.” + +“Let me see it,” Lute cried, seizing the paper and devouring the +handwriting with her eyes. She was thrilling with unexpressed love for +the mother she had never seen, and this written speech from the grave +seemed to give more tangibility to her having ever existed, than did the +vision of her. + +“This IS remarkable,” Mrs. Grantly was reiterating. “There was never +anything like it. Think of it, my dear, both your father and mother here +with us to-night.” + +Lute shivered. The lassitude was gone, and she was her natural self +again, vibrant with the instinctive fear of things unseen. And it +was offensive to her mind that, real or illusion, the presence or the +memorized existences of her father and mother should be touched by these +two persons who were practically strangers—Mrs. Grantly, unhealthy and +morbid, and Mr. Barton, stolid and stupid with a grossness both of +the flesh and the spirit. And it further seemed a trespass that these +strangers should thus enter into the intimacy between her and Chris. + +She could hear the steps of her uncle approaching, and the situation +flashed upon her, luminous and clear. She hurriedly folded the sheet of +paper and thrust it into her bosom. + +“Don’t say anything to him about this second message, Mrs. Grantly, +please, and Mr. Barton. Nor to Aunt Mildred. It would only cause them +irritation and needless anxiety.” + +In her mind there was also the desire to protect her lover, for she knew +that the strain of his present standing with her aunt and uncle would +be added to, unconsciously in their minds, by the weird message of +Planchette. + +“And please don’t let us have any more Planchette,” Lute continued +hastily. “Let us forget all the nonsense that has occurred.” + +“‘Nonsense,’ my dear child?” Mrs. Grantly was indignantly protesting +when Uncle Robert strode into the circle. + +“Hello!” he demanded. “What’s being done?” + +“Too late,” Lute answered lightly. “No more stock quotations for you. +Planchette is adjourned, and we’re just winding up the discussion of the +theory of it. Do you know how late it is?” + + * * * + +“Well, what did you do last night after we left?” + +“Oh, took a stroll,” Chris answered. + +Lute’s eyes were quizzical as she asked with a tentativeness that was +palpably assumed, “With—a—with Mr. Barton?” + +“Why, yes.” + +“And a smoke?” + +“Yes; and now what’s it all about?” + +Lute broke into merry laughter. “Just as I told you that you would do. +Am I not a prophet? But I knew before I saw you that my forecast had +come true. I have just left Mr. Barton, and I knew he had walked with +you last night, for he is vowing by all his fetishes and idols that you +are a perfectly splendid young man. I could see it with my eyes shut. +The Chris Dunbar glamour has fallen upon him. But I have not finished +the catechism by any means. Where have you been all morning?” + +“Where I am going to take you this afternoon.” + +“You plan well without knowing my wishes.” + +“I knew well what your wishes are. It is to see a horse I have found.” + +Her voice betrayed her delight, as she cried, “Oh, good!” + +“He is a beauty,” Chris said. + +But her face had suddenly gone grave, and apprehension brooded in her +eyes. + +“He’s called Comanche,” Chris went on. “A beauty, a regular beauty, the +perfect type of the Californian cow-pony. And his lines—why, what’s the +matter?” + +“Don’t let us ride any more,” Lute said, “at least for a while. Really, +I think I am a tiny bit tired of it, too.” + +He was looking at her in astonishment, and she was bravely meeting his +eyes. + +“I see hearses and flowers for you,” he began, “and a funeral oration; I +see the end of the world, and the stars falling out of the sky, and the +heavens rolling up as a scroll; I see the living and the dead gathered +together for the final judgement, the sheep and the goats, the lambs and +the rams and all the rest of it, the white-robed saints, the sound of +golden harps, and the lost souls howling as they fall into the Pit—all +this I see on the day that you, Lute Story, no longer care to ride a +horse. A horse, Lute! a horse!” + +“For a while, at least,” she pleaded. + +“Ridiculous!” he cried. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you well?—you who +are always so abominably and adorably well!” + +“No, it’s not that,” she answered. “I know it is ridiculous, Chris, I +know it, but the doubt will arise. I cannot help it. You always say I +am so sanely rooted to the earth and reality and all that, but—perhaps +it’s superstition, I don’t know—but the whole occurrence, the messages +of Planchette, the possibility of my father’s hand, I know not how, +reaching, out to Ban’s rein and hurling him and you to death, the +correspondence between my father’s statement that he has twice attempted +your life and the fact that in the last two days your life has twice +been endangered by horses—my father was a great horseman—all this, I +say, causes the doubt to arise in my mind. What if there be something in +it? I am not so sure. Science may be too dogmatic in its denial of the +unseen. The forces of the unseen, of the spirit, may well be too +subtle, too sublimated, for science to lay hold of, and recognize, and +formulate. Don’t you see, Chris, that there is rationality in the very +doubt? It may be a very small doubt—oh, so small; but I love you too +much to run even that slight risk. Besides, I am a woman, and +that should in itself fully account for my predisposition toward +superstition. + +“Yes, yes, I know, call it unreality. But I’ve heard you paradoxing upon +the reality of the unreal—the reality of delusion to the mind that is +sick. And so with me, if you will; it is delusion and unreal, but to me, +constituted as I am, it is very real—is real as a nightmare is real, in +the throes of it, before one awakes.” + +“The most logical argument for illogic I have ever heard,” Chris smiled. +“It is a good gaming proposition, at any rate. You manage to embrace +more chances in your philosophy than do I in mine. It reminds me of +Sam—the gardener you had a couple of years ago. I overheard him and +Martin arguing in the stable. You know what a bigoted atheist Martin is. +Well, Martin had deluged Sam with floods of logic. Sam pondered awhile, +and then he said, ‘Foh a fack, Mis’ Martin, you jis’ tawk like a house +afire; but you ain’t got de show I has.’ ‘How’s that?’ Martin asked. +‘Well, you see, Mis’ Martin, you has one chance to mah two.’ ‘I don’t +see it,’ Martin said. ‘Mis’ Martin, it’s dis way. You has jis’ de +chance, lak you say, to become worms foh de fruitification of de cabbage +garden. But I’s got de chance to lif’ mah voice to de glory of de Lawd +as I go paddin’ dem golden streets—along ‘ith de chance to be jis’ +worms along ‘ith you, Mis’ Martin.’” + +“You refuse to take me seriously,” Lute said, when she had laughed her +appreciation. + +“How can I take that Planchette rigmarole seriously?” he asked. + +“You don’t explain it—the handwriting of my father, which Uncle Robert +recognized—oh, the whole thing, you don’t explain it.” + +“I don’t know all the mysteries of mind,” Chris answered. “But I believe +such phenomena will all yield to scientific explanation in the not +distant future.” + +“Just the same, I have a sneaking desire to find out some more from +Planchette,” Lute confessed. “The board is still down in the dining +room. We could try it now, you and I, and no one would know.” + +Chris caught her hand, crying: “Come on! It will be a lark.” + +Hand in hand they ran down the path to the tree-pillared room. + +“The camp is deserted,” Lute said, as she placed Planchette on the +table. “Mrs. Grantly and Aunt Mildred are lying down, and Mr. Barton has +gone off with Uncle Robert. There is nobody to disturb us.” She placed +her hand on the board. “Now begin.” + +For a few minutes nothing happened. Chris started to speak, but she +hushed him to silence. The preliminary twitchings had appeared in her +hand and arm. Then the pencil began to write. They read the message, +word by word, as it was written: + +There is wisdom greater than the wisdom of reason. Love proceeds not out +of the dry-as-dust way of the mind. Love is of the heart, and is +beyond all reason, and logic, and philosophy. Trust your own heart, +my daughter. And if your heart bids you have faith in your lover, then +laugh at the mind and its cold wisdom, and obey your heart, and have +faith in your lover.—Martha. + +“But that whole message is the dictate of your own heart,” Chris +cried. “Don’t you see, Lute? The thought is your very own, and your +subconscious mind has expressed it there on the paper.” + +“But there is one thing I don’t see,” she objected. + +“And that?” + +“Is the handwriting. Look at it. It does not resemble mine at all. It +is mincing, it is old-fashioned, it is the old-fashioned feminine of a +generation ago.” + +“But you don’t mean to tell me that you really believe that this is a +message from the dead?” he interrupted. + +“I don’t know, Chris,” she wavered. “I am sure I don’t know.” + +“It is absurd!” he cried. “These are cobwebs of fancy. When one dies, he +is dead. He is dust. He goes to the worms, as Martin says. The dead? I +laugh at the dead. They do not exist. They are not. I defy the powers of +the grave, the men dead and dust and gone! + +“And what have you to say to that?” he challenged, placing his hand on +Planchette. + +On the instant his hand began to write. Both were startled by the +suddenness of it. The message was brief: + +BEWARE! BEWARE! BEWARE! + +He was distinctly sobered, but he laughed. “It is like a miracle play. +Death we have, speaking to us from the grave. But Good Deeds, where art +thou? And Kindred? and Joy? and Household Goods? and Friendship? and all +the goodly company?” + +But Lute did not share his bravado. Her fright showed itself in her +face. She laid her trembling hand on his arm. + +“Oh, Chris, let us stop. I am sorry we began it. Let us leave the +quiet dead to their rest. It is wrong. It must be wrong. I confess I +am affected by it. I cannot help it. As my body is trembling, so is +my soul. This speech of the grave, this dead man reaching out from the +mould of a generation to protect me from you. There is reason in it. +There is the living mystery that prevents you from marrying me. Were my +father alive, he would protect me from you. Dead, he still strives to +protect me. His hands, his ghostly hands, are against your life!” + +“Do be calm,” Chris said soothingly. “Listen to me. It is all a lark. We +are playing with the subjective forces of our own being, with phenomena +which science has not yet explained, that is all. Psychology is so young +a science. The subconscious mind has just been discovered, one might +say. It is all mystery as yet; the laws of it are yet to be formulated. +This is simply unexplained phenomena. But that is no reason that we +should immediately account for it by labelling it spiritism. As yet we +do not know, that is all. As for Planchette—” + +He abruptly ceased, for at that moment, to enforce his remark, he had +placed his hand on Planchette, and at that moment his hand had been +seized, as by a paroxysm, and sent dashing, willy-nilly, across the +paper, writing as the hand of an angry person would write. + +“No, I don’t care for any more of it,” Lute said, when the message was +completed. “It is like witnessing a fight between you and my father in +the flesh. There is the savor in it of struggle and blows.” + +She pointed out a sentence that read: “You cannot escape me nor the just +punishment that is yours!” + +“Perhaps I visualize too vividly for my own comfort, for I can see his +hands at your throat. I know that he is, as you say, dead and dust, but +for all that, I can see him as a man that is alive and walks the earth; +I see the anger in his face, the anger and the vengeance, and I see it +all directed against you.” + +She crumpled up the scrawled sheets of paper, and put Planchette away. + +“We won’t bother with it any more,” Chris said. “I didn’t think it would +affect you so strongly. But it’s all subjective, I’m sure, with possibly +a bit of suggestion thrown in—that and nothing more. And the whole +strain of our situation has made conditions unusually favorable for +striking phenomena.” + +“And about our situation,” Lute said, as they went slowly up the path +they had run down. “What we are to do, I don’t know. Are we to go on, as +we have gone on? What is best? Have you thought of anything?” + +He debated for a few steps. “I have thought of telling your uncle and +aunt.” + +“What you couldn’t tell me?” she asked quickly. + +“No,” he answered slowly; “but just as much as I have told you. I have +no right to tell them more than I have told you.” + +This time it was she that debated. “No, don’t tell them,” she said +finally. “They wouldn’t understand. I don’t understand, for that matter, +but I have faith in you, and in the nature of things they are not +capable of this same implicit faith. You raise up before me a mystery +that prevents our marriage, and I believe you; but they could not +believe you without doubts arising as to the wrong and ill-nature of the +mystery. Besides, it would but make their anxieties greater.” + +“I should go away, I know I should go away,” he said, half under his +breath. “And I can. I am no weakling. Because I have failed to remain +away once, is no reason that I shall fail again.” + +She caught her breath with a quick gasp. “It is like a bereavement to +hear you speak of going away and remaining away. I should never see you +again. It is too terrible. And do not reproach yourself for weakness. +It is I who am to blame. It is I who prevented you from remaining away +before, I know. I wanted you so. I want you so. + +“There is nothing to be done, Chris, nothing to be done but to go on +with it and let it work itself out somehow. That is one thing we are +sure of: it will work out somehow.” + +“But it would be easier if I went away,” he suggested. + +“I am happier when you are here.” + +“The cruelty of circumstance,” he muttered savagely. + +“Go or stay—that will be part of the working out. But I do not want you +to go, Chris; you know that. And now no more about it. Talk cannot mend +it. Let us never mention it again—unless ... unless some time, some +wonderful, happy time, you can come to me and say: ‘Lute, all is well +with me. The mystery no longer binds me. I am free.’ Until that time let +us bury it, along with Planchette and all the rest, and make the most of +the little that is given us. + +“And now, to show you how prepared I am to make the most of that little, +I am even ready to go with you this afternoon to see the horse—though +I wish you wouldn’t ride any more ... for a few days, anyway, or for a +week. What did you say was his name?” + +“Comanche,” he answered. “I know you will like him.” + + * * * + +Chris lay on his back, his head propped by the bare jutting wall of +stone, his gaze attentively directed across the canyon to the opposing +tree-covered slope. There was a sound of crashing through underbrush, +the ringing of steel-shod hoofs on stone, and an occasional and mossy +descent of a dislodged boulder that bounded from the hill and fetched +up with a final splash in the torrent that rushed over a wild chaos of +rocks beneath him. Now and again he caught glimpses, framed in green +foliage, of the golden brown of Lute’s corduroy riding-habit and of the +bay horse that moved beneath her. + +She rode out into an open space where a loose earth-slide denied +lodgement to trees and grass. She halted the horse at the brink of the +slide and glanced down it with a measuring eye. Forty feet beneath, +the slide terminated in a small, firm-surfaced terrace, the banked +accumulation of fallen earth and gravel. + +“It’s a good test,” she called across the canyon. “I’m going to put him +down it.” + +The animal gingerly launched himself on the treacherous footing, +irregularly losing and gaining his hind feet, keeping his fore +legs stiff, and steadily and calmly, without panic or nervousness, +extricating the fore feet as fast as they sank too deep into the sliding +earth that surged along in a wave before him. When the firm footing +at the bottom was reached, he strode out on the little terrace with a +quickness and springiness of gait and with glintings of muscular fires +that gave the lie to the calm deliberation of his movements on the +slide. + +“Bravo!” Chris shouted across the canyon, clapping his hands. + +“The wisest-footed, clearest-headed horse I ever saw,” Lute called back, +as she turned the animal to the side and dropped down a broken slope of +rubble and into the trees again. + +Chris followed her by the sound of her progress, and by occasional +glimpses where the foliage was more open, as she zigzagged down the +steep and trailless descent. She emerged below him at the rugged rim +of the torrent, dropped the horse down a three-foot wall, and halted to +study the crossing. + +Four feet out in the stream, a narrow ledge thrust above the surface of +the water. Beyond the ledge boiled an angry pool. But to the left, from +the ledge, and several feet lower, was a tiny bed of gravel. A giant +boulder prevented direct access to the gravel bed. The only way to gain +it was by first leaping to the ledge of rock. She studied it carefully, +and the tightening of her bridle-arm advertised that she had made up her +mind. + +Chris, in his anxiety, had sat up to observe more closely what she +meditated. + +“Don’t tackle it,” he called. + +“I have faith in Comanche,” she called in return. + +“He can’t make that side-jump to the gravel,” Chris warned. “He’ll +never keep his legs. He’ll topple over into the pool. Not one horse in a +thousand could do that stunt.” + +“And Comanche is that very horse,” she answered. “Watch him.” + +She gave the animal his head, and he leaped cleanly and accurately to +the ledge, striking with feet close together on the narrow space. On +the instant he struck, Lute lightly touched his neck with the rein, +impelling him to the left; and in that instant, tottering on the +insecure footing, with front feet slipping over into the pool beyond, +he lifted on his hind legs, with a half turn, sprang to the left, and +dropped squarely down to the tiny gravel bed. An easy jump brought him +across the stream, and Lute angled him up the bank and halted before her +lover. + +“Well?” she asked. + +“I am all tense,” Chris answered. “I was holding my breath.” + +“Buy him, by all means,” Lute said, dismounting. “He is a bargain. I +could dare anything on him. I never in my life had such confidence in a +horse’s feet.” + +“His owner says that he has never been known to lose his feet, that it +is impossible to get him down.” + +“Buy him, buy him at once,” she counselled, “before the man changes his +mind. If you don’t, I shall. Oh, such feet! I feel such confidence in +them that when I am on him I don’t consider he has feet at all. And he’s +quick as a cat, and instantly obedient. Bridle-wise is no name for it! +You could guide him with silken threads. Oh, I know I’m enthusiastic, +but if you don’t buy him, Chris. I shall. Remember, I’ve second +refusal.” + +Chris smiled agreement as he changed the saddles. Meanwhile she compared +the two horses. + +“Of course he doesn’t match Dolly the way Ban did,” she concluded +regretfully; “but his coat is splendid just the same. And think of the +horse that is under the coat!” + +Chris gave her a hand into the saddle, and followed her up the slope to +the county road. She reined in suddenly, saying: + +“We won’t go straight back to camp.” + +“You forget dinner,” he warned. + +“But I remember Comanche,” she retorted. “We’ll ride directly over to +the ranch and buy him. Dinner will keep.” + +“But the cook won’t,” Chris laughed. “She’s already threatened to leave, +what of our late-comings.” + +“Even so,” was the answer. “Aunt Mildred may have to get another cook, +but at any rate we shall have got Comanche.” + +They turned the horses in the other direction, and took the climb of the +Nun Canyon road that led over the divide and down into the Napa Valley. +But the climb was hard, the going was slow. Sometimes they topped the +bed of the torrent by hundreds of feet, and again they dipped down and +crossed and recrossed it twenty times in twice as many rods. They rode +through the deep shade of clean-bunked maples and towering redwoods, to +emerge on open stretches of mountain shoulder where the earth lay dry +and cracked under the sun. + +On one such shoulder they emerged, where the road stretched level before +them, for a quarter of a mile. On one side rose the huge bulk of the +mountain. On the other side the steep wall of the canyon fell away in +impossible slopes and sheer drops to the torrent at the bottom. It was +an abyss of green beauty and shady depths, pierced by vagrant shafts +of the sun and mottled here and there by the sun’s broader blazes. The +sound of rushing water ascended on the windless air, and there was a hum +of mountain bees. + +The horses broke into an easy lope. Chris rode on the outside, looking +down into the great depths and pleasuring with his eyes in what he +saw. Dissociating itself from the murmur of the bees, a murmur arose of +falling water. It grew louder with every stride of the horses. + +“Look!” he cried. + +Lute leaned well out from her horse to see. Beneath them the water slid +foaming down a smooth-faced rock to the lip, whence it leaped clear—a +pulsating ribbon of white, a-breath with movement, ever falling and ever +remaining, changing its substance but never its form, an aerial waterway +as immaterial as gauze and as permanent as the hills, that spanned space +and the free air from the lip of the rock to the tops of the trees far +below, into whose green screen it disappeared to fall into a secret +pool. + +They had flashed past. The descending water became a distant murmur that +merged again into the murmur of the bees and ceased. Swayed by a common +impulse, they looked at each other. + +“Oh, Chris, it is good to be alive ... and to have you here by my side!” + +He answered her by the warm light in his eyes. + +All things tended to key them to an exquisite pitch—the movement of +their bodies, at one with the moving bodies of the animals beneath them; +the gently stimulated blood caressing the flesh through and through with +the soft vigors of health; the warm air fanning their faces, flowing +over the skin with balmy and tonic touch, permeating them and bathing +them, subtly, with faint, sensuous delight; and the beauty of the world, +more subtly still, flowing upon them and bathing them in the delight +that is of the spirit and is personal and holy, that is inexpressible +yet communicable by the flash of an eye and the dissolving of the veils +of the soul. + +So looked they at each other, the horses bounding beneath them, the +spring of the world and the spring of their youth astir in their blood, +the secret of being trembling in their eyes to the brink of disclosure, +as if about to dispel, with one magic word, all the irks and riddles of +existence. + +The road curved before them, so that the upper reaches of the canyon +could be seen, the distant bed of it towering high above their heads. +They were rounding the curve, leaning toward the inside, gazing before +them at the swift-growing picture. There was no sound of warning. She +heard nothing, but even before the horse went down she experienced +the feeling that the unison of the two leaping animals was broken. She +turned her head, and so quickly that she saw Comanche fall. It was not a +stumble nor a trip. He fell as though, abruptly, in midleap, he had died +or been struck a stunning blow. + +And in that moment she remembered Planchette; it seared her brain as +a lightning-flash of all-embracing memory. Her horse was back on its +haunches, the weight of her body on the reins; but her head was turned +and her eyes were on the falling Comanche. He struck the road-bed +squarely, with his legs loose and lifeless beneath him. + +It all occurred in one of those age-long seconds that embrace an +eternity of happening. There was a slight but perceptible rebound from +the impact of Comanche’s body with the earth. The violence with which +he struck forced the air from his great lungs in an audible groan. His +momentum swept him onward and over the edge. The weight of the rider on +his neck turned him over head first as he pitched to the fall. + +She was off her horse, she knew not how, and to the edge. Her lover was +out of the saddle and clear of Comanche, though held to the animal by +his right foot, which was caught in the stirrup. The slope was too steep +for them to come to a stop. Earth and small stones, dislodged by their +struggles, were rolling down with them and before them in a miniature +avalanche. She stood very quietly, holding one hand against her heart +and gazing down. But while she saw the real happening, in her eyes was +also the vision of her father dealing the spectral blow that had smashed +Comanche down in mid-leap and sent horse and rider hurtling over the +edge. + +Beneath horse and man the steep terminated in an up-and-down wall, from +the base of which, in turn, a second slope ran down to a second wall. +A third slope terminated in a final wall that based itself on the +canyon-bed four hundred feet beneath the point where the girl stood and +watched. She could see Chris vainly kicking his leg to free the foot +from the trap of the stirrup. Comanche fetched up hard against an +outputting point of rock. For a fraction of a second his fall was +stopped, and in the slight interval the man managed to grip hold of a +young shoot of manzanita. Lute saw him complete the grip with his other +hand. Then Comanche’s fall began again. She saw the stirrup-strap draw +taut, then her lover’s body and arms. The manzanita shoot yielded its +roots, and horse and man plunged over the edge and out of sight. + +They came into view on the next slope, together and rolling over and +over, with sometimes the man under and sometimes the horse. Chris no +longer struggled, and together they dashed over to the third slope. Near +the edge of the final wall, Comanche lodged on a buttock of stone. He +lay quietly, and near him, still attached to him by the stirrup, face +downward, lay his rider. + +“If only he will lie quietly,” Lute breathed aloud, her mind at work on +the means of rescue. + +But she saw Comanche begin to struggle again, and clear on her vision, +it seemed, was the spectral arm of her father clutching the reins and +dragging the animal over. Comanche floundered across the hummock, the +inert body following, and together, horse and man, they plunged from +sight. They did not appear again. They had fetched bottom. + +Lute looked about her. She stood alone on the world. Her lover was gone. +There was naught to show of his existence, save the marks of Comanche’s +hoofs on the road and of his body where it had slid over the brink. + +“Chris!” she called once, and twice; but she called hopelessly. + +Out of the depths, on the windless air, arose only the murmur of bees +and of running water. + +“Chris!” she called yet a third time, and sank slowly down in the dust +of the road. + +She felt the touch of Dolly’s muzzle on her arm, and she leaned her head +against the mare’s neck and waited. She knew not why she waited, nor for +what, only there seemed nothing else but waiting left for her to do. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1089 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1090-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1090-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7f417bfa --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1090-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1382 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1090 *** + +THE BICKERSTAFF-PARTRIDGE PAPERS + +by Jonathan Swift + + +Jonathan Swift, et al. The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers, etc. Annus +Mirabilis + + + + +Predictions For The Year 1708 + + +Wherein the month, and day of the month are set down, the persons named, +and the great actions and events of next year particularly related, as +will come to pass. + +Written to prevent the people of England from being farther imposed on +by vulgar almanack-makers. + +By Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. + + +I have long consider'd the gross abuse of astrology in this kingdom, and +upon debating the matter with myself, I could not possibly lay the +fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors, who set up to be the +artists. I know several learned men have contended that the whole is a +cheat; that it is absurd and ridiculous to imagine, the stars can have +any influence at all upon human actions, thoughts, or inclinations: And +whoever has not bent his studies that way, may be excused for thinking +so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by +a few mean illiterate traders between us and the stars; who import a +yearly stock of nonsense, lyes, folly, and impertinence, which they +offer to the world as genuine from the planets, tho' they descend from +no greater a height than their own brains. + +I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence of this +art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification at present, +than that it hath been in all ages defended by many learned men, and +among the rest by Socrates himself, whom I look upon as undoubtedly the +wisest of uninspir'd mortals: To which if we add, that those who have +condemned this art, though otherwise learned, having been such as either +did not apply their studies this way, or at least did not succeed in +their applications; their testimony will not be of much weight to +its disadvantage, since they are liable to the common objection of +condemning what they did not understand. + +Nor am I at all offended, or think it an injury to the art, when I see +the common dealers in it, the students in astrology, the philomaths, and +the rest of that tribe, treated by wise men with the utmost scorn and +contempt; but rather wonder, when I observe gentlemen in the country, +rich enough to serve the nation in parliament, poring in Partridge's +almanack, to find out the events of the year at home and abroad; not +daring to propose a hunting-match, till Gadbury or he have fixed the +weather. + +I will allow either of the two I have mentioned, or any other of the +fraternity, to be not only astrologers, but conjurers too, if I do not +produce a hundred instances in all their almanacks, to convince any +reasonable man, that they do not so much as understand common grammar +and syntax; that they are not able to spell any word out of the usual +road, nor even in their prefaces write common sense or intelligible +English. Then for their observations and predictions, they are such as +will equally suit any age or country in the world. "This month a certain +great person will be threatened with death or sickness." This the +news-papers will tell them; for there we find at the end of the year, +that no month passes without the death of some person of note; and it +would be hard if it should be otherwise, when there are at least two +thousand persons of not in this kingdom, many of them old, and the +almanack-maker has the liberty of chusing the sickliest season of the +year where he may fix his prediction. Again, "This month an eminent +clergyman will be preferr'd;" of which there may be some hundreds half +of them with one foot in the grave. Then "such a planet in such a house +shews great machinations, plots and conspiracies, that may in time +be brought to light:" After which, if we hear of any discovery, the +astrologer gets the honour; if not, his prediction still stands good. +And at last, "God preserve King William from all his open and secret +enemies, Amen." When if the King should happen to have died, the +astrologer plainly foretold it; otherwise it passes but for the pious +ejaculation of a loyal subject: Though it unluckily happen'd in some of +their almanacks, that poor King William was pray'd for many months after +he was dead, because it fell out that he died about the beginning of the +year. + +To mention no more of their impertinent predictions: What have we to +do with their advertisements about pills and drink for the venereal +disease? Or their mutual quarrels in verse and prose of Whig and Tory, +wherewith the stars have little to do? + +Having long observed and lamented these, and a hundred other abuses of +this art, too tedious to repeat, I resolved to proceed in a new way, +which I doubt not will be to the general satisfaction of the kingdom: +I can this year produce but a specimen of what I design for the future; +having employ'd most part of my time in adjusting and correcting the +calculations I made some years past, because I would offer nothing to +the world of which I am not as fully satisfied, as that I am now +alive. For these two last years I have not failed in above one or two +particulars, and those of no very great moment. I exactly foretold the +miscarriage at Toulon, with all its particulars; and the loss of Admiral +Shovel, tho' I was mistaken as to the day, placing that accident about +thirty-six hours sooner than it happen'd; but upon reviewing my schemes, +I quickly found the cause of that error. I likewise foretold the Battle +of Almanza to the very day and hour, with the loss on both sides, and +the consequences thereof. All which I shewed to some friends many months +before they happened, that is, I gave them papers sealed up, to open at +such a time, after which they were at liberty to read them; and there +they found my predictions true in every article, except one or two, very +minute. + +As for the few following predictions I now offer the world, I forbore +to publish them till I had perused the several almanacks for the year we +are now enter'd on. I find them in all the usual strain, and I beg the +reader will compare their manner with mine: And here I make bold to tell +the world, that I lay the whole credit of my art upon the truth of these +predictions; and I will be content, that Partridge, and the rest of his +clan, may hoot me for a cheat and impostor, if I fail in any singular +particular of moment. I believe, any man who reads this paper, will look +upon me to be at least a person of as much honesty and understanding, as +a common maker of almanacks. I do not lurk in the dark; I am not wholly +unknown in the world; I have set my name at length, to be a mark of +infamy to mankind, if they shall find I deceive them. + +In one thing I must desire to be forgiven, that I talk more sparingly of +home-affairs: As it will be imprudence to discover secrets of state, so +it would be dangerous to my person; but in smaller matters, and that are +not of publick consequence, I shall be very free; and the truth of my +conjectures will as much appear from those as the other. As for the most +signal events abroad in France, Flanders, Italy and Spain, I shall +make no scruple to predict them in plain terms: Some of them are of +importance, and I hope I shall seldom mistake the day they will happen; +therefore, I think good to inform the reader, that I all along make use +of the Old Style observed in England, which I desire he will compare +with that of the news-papers, at the time they relate the actions I +mention. + +I must add one word more: I know it hath been the opinion of several of +the learned, who think well enough of the true art of astrology, That +the stars do only incline, and not force the actions or wills of men: +And therefore, however I may proceed by right rules, yet I cannot in +prudence so confidently assure the events will follow exactly as I +predict them. + +I hope I have maturely considered this objection, which in some cases +is of no little weight. For example: A man may, by the influence of an +over-ruling planet, be disposed or inclined to lust, rage, or avarice, +and yet by the force of reason overcome that bad influence; and this +was the case of Socrates: But as the great events of the world usually +depend upon numbers of men, it cannot be expected they should all unite +to cross their inclinations, from pursuing a general design, wherein +they unanimously agree. Besides the influence of the stars reaches to +many actions and events which are not any way in the power of reason; +as sickness, death, and what we commonly call accidents, with many more, +needless to repeat. + +But now it is time to proceed to my predictions, which I have begun to +calculate from the time that the Sun enters into Aries. And this I take +to be properly the beginning of the natural year. I pursue them to the +time that he enters Libra, or somewhat more, which is the busy period of +the year. The remainder I have not yet adjusted, upon account of several +impediments needless here to mention: Besides, I must remind the reader +again, that this is but a specimen of what I design in succeeding years +to treat more at large, if I may have liberty and encouragement. + +My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it, to show +how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own +concerns: It relates to Partridge the almanack-maker; I have consulted +the stars of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly +die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging +fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs +in time. + +The month of April will be observable for the death of many great +persons. On the 4th will die the Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of +Paris: On the 11th the young Prince of Asturias, son to the Duke +of Anjou: On the 14th a great peer of this realm will die at his +country-house: On the 19th an old layman of great fame for learning: +and on the 23rd an eminent goldsmith in Lombard-Street. I could mention +others, both at home and abroad, if I did not consider it is of very +little use or instruction to the reader, or to the world. + +As to publick affairs: On the 7th of this month there will be an +insurrection in Dauphine, occasion'd by the oppressions of the people, +which will not be quieted in some months. + +On the 15th will be a violent storm on the south-east coast of France, +which will destroy many of their ships, and some in the very harbour. + +The 19th will be famous for the revolt of a whole province or kingdom, +excepting one city, by which the affairs of a certain prince in the +alliance will take a better face. + +May, against common conjectures, will be no very busy month in Europe, +but very signal for the death of the Dauphin, which will happen on +the 7th, after a short fit of sickness, and grievous torments with the +strangury. He dies less lamented by the court than the kingdom. + +On the 9th a Mareschal of France will break his leg by a fall from his +horse. I have not been able to discover whether he will then die or not. + +On the 11th will begin a most important siege, which the eyes of all +Europe will be upon: I cannot be more particular: for in relating +affairs that so nearly concern the Confederates, and consequently this +Kingdom, I am forced to confine myself, for several reasons very obvious +to the reader. + +On the 15th news will arrive of a very surprizing event, than which +nothing could be more unexpected. + +On the 19th three noble ladies of this Kingdom will, against all +expectation, prove with child, to the great joy of their husbands. + +On the 23rd a famous buffoon of the play-house will die a ridiculous +death, suitable to his vocation. + +June. This month will be distinguish'd at home, by the utter dispersing +of those ridiculous deluded enthusiasts, commonly call'd the Prophets; +occasion'd chiefly by seeing the time come that many of their prophecies +should be fulfill'd, and then finding themselves deceiv'd by contrary +events. It is indeed to be admir'd how any deceiver can be so weak, to +foretel things near at hand, when a very few months must of necessity +discover the impostor to all the world; in this point less prudent than +common almanack-makers, who are so wise to wonder in generals, and talk +dubiously, and leave to the reader the business of interpreting. + +On the 1st of this month a French general will be killed by a random +shot of a cannon-ball. + +On the 6th a fire will break out in the suburbs of Paris, which will +destroy above a thousand houses; and seems to be the foreboding of +what will happen, to the surprize of all Europe, about the end of the +following month. + +On the 10th a great battle will be fought, which will begin at four +of the clock in the afternoon; and last till nine at night with great +obstinacy, but no very decisive event. I shall not name the place, for +the reasons aforesaid; but the commanders on each left wing will be +killed.--I see bonfires, and hear the noise of guns for a victory. + +On the 14th there will be a false report of the French king's death. + +On the 20th Cardinal Portocarero will die of a dysentery, with great +suspicion of poison; but the report of his intention to revolt to King +Charles, will prove false. + +July. The 6th of this month a certain general will, by a glorious +action, recover the reputation he lost by former misfortunes. + +On the 12th a great commander will die a prisoner in the hands of his +enemies. + +On the 14th a shameful discovery will be made of a French Jesuit, giving +poison to a great foreign general; and when he is put to the torture, +will make wonderful discoveries. + +In short this will prove a month of great action, if I might have +liberty to relate the particulars. + +At home, the death of an old famous senator will happen on the 15th at +his country-house, worn with age and diseases. + +But that which will make this month memorable to all posterity, is the +death of the French King, Lewis the fourteenth, after a week's sickness +at Marli, which will happen on the 29th, about six o'clock in the +evening. It seems to be an effect of the gout in his stomach, followed +by a flux. And in three days after Monsieur Chamillard will follow his +master, dying suddenly of an appoplexy. + +In this month likewise an ambassador will die in London; but I cannot +assign the day. + +August. The affairs of France will seem to suffer no change for a +while under the Duke of Burgundy's administration; but the genius that +animated the whole machine being gone, will be the cause of mighty turns +and revolutions in the following year. The new King makes yet little +change either in the army or the ministry; but the libels against his +grandfather, that fly about his very court, give him uneasiness. + +I see an express in mighty haste, with joy and wonder in his looks, +arriving by break of day on the 26th of this month, having travell'd in +three days a prodigious journey by land and sea. In the evening I hear +bells and guns, and see the blazing of a thousand bonfires. + +A young admiral of noble birth, does likewise this month gain immortal +honour by a great achievement. + +The affairs of Poland are this month entirely settled: Augustus resigns +his pretensions which he had again taken up for some time: Stanislaus is +peaceably possess'd of the throne; and the King of Sweden declares for +the Emperor. + +I cannot omit one particular accident here at home; that near the end of +this month much mischief will be done at Bartholomew Fair, by the fall +of a booth. + +September. This month begins with a very surprizing fit of frosty +weather, which will last near twelve days. + +The Pope having long languish'd last month, the swellings in his legs +breaking, and the flesh mortifying, will die on the 11th instant; and in +three weeks time, after a mighty contest, be succeeded by a cardinal of +the imperial faction, but native of Tuscany, who is now about sixty-one +years old. + +The French army acts now wholly on the defensive, strongly fortify'd in +their trenches; and the young French King sends overtures for a treaty +of peace by the Duke of Mantua; which, because it is a matter of state +that concerns us here at home, I shall speak no farther of it. + +I shall add but one prediction more, and that in mystical terms, which +shall be included in a verse out of Virgil, + +Alter erit jam Tethys, & altera quae vehat Argo. Delectos heroas. + +Upon the 25th day of this month, the fulfilling of this prediction will +be manifest to every body. + +This is the farthest I have proceeded in my calculations for the present +year. I do not pretend, that these are all the great events which will +happen in this period, but that those I have set down will infallibly +come to pass. It will perhaps still be objected, why I have not spoke +more particularly of affairs at home, or of the success of our armies +abroad, which I might, and could very largely have done; but those in +power have wisely discouraged men from meddling in publick concerns, +and I was resolv'd by no means to give the least offence. This I will +venture to say, That it will be a glorious campaign for the allies, +wherein the English forces, both by sea and land, will have their full +share of honour: That her Majesty Queen Anne will continue in health +and prosperity: And that no ill accident will arrive to any of the chief +ministry. + +As to the particular events I have mention'd, the readers may judge +by the fulfilling of 'em, whether I am on the level with common +astrologers; who, with an old paultry cant, and a few pothook for +planets, to amuse the vulgar, have, in my opinion, too long been +suffer'd to abuse the world: But an honest physician ought not to be +despis'd, because there are such things as mountebanks. I hope I have +some share of reputation, which I would not willingly forfeit for a +frolick or humour: And I believe no gentleman, who reads this paper, +will look upon it to be of the same cast or mould with the common +scribblers that are every day hawk'd about. My fortune has placed me +above the little regard of scribbling for a few pence, which I neither +value or want: Therefore let no wise men too hastily condemn this essay, +intended for a good design, to cultivate and improve an ancient art, +long in disgrace, by having fallen into mean and unskilful hands. A +little time will determine whether I have deceived others or myself: +and I think it is no very unreasonable request, that men would please to +suspend their judgments till then. I was once of the opinion with those +who despise all predictions from the stars, till the year 1686, a man +of quality shew'd me, written in his album, That the most learned +astronomer, Captain H. assured him, he would never believe any thing of +the stars' influence, if there were not a great revolution in England in +the year 1688. Since that time I began to have other thoughts, and after +eighteen years diligent study and application, I think I have no reason +to repent of my pains. I shall detain the reader no longer, than to let +him know, that the account I design to give of next year's events, shall +take in the principal affairs that happen in Europe; and if I be denied +the liberty of offering it to my own country, I shall appeal to the +learned world, by publishing it in Latin, and giving order to have it +printed in Holland. + + +***** + + + + +The Accomplishment of the First of Mr Bickerstaff's Predictions; + +being an account of the death of Mr Partridge, the almanack-maker, upon +the 29th instant. + +In a letter to a person of honour Written in the year 1708 + +My Lord, + +In obedience to your Lordship's commands, as well as to satisfy my own +curiosity, I have for some days past enquired constantly after Partridge +the almanack-maker, of whom it was foretold in Mr. Bickerstaff's +predictions, publish'd about a month ago, that he should die on the +29th instant about eleven at night of a raging fever. I had some sort +of knowledge of him when I was employ'd in the Revenue, because he used +every year to present me with his almanack, as he did other gentlemen, +upon the score of some little gratuity we gave him. I saw him +accidentally once or twice about ten days before he died, and observed +he began very much to droop and languish, tho' I hear his friends did +not seem to apprehend him in any danger. About two or three days ago +he grew ill, and was confin'd first to his chamber, and in a few hours +after to his bed, where Dr. Case and Mrs. Kirleus were sent for to +visit, and to prescribe to him. Upon this intelligence I sent thrice +every day one servant or other to enquire after his health; and +yesterday, about four in the afternoon, word was brought me that he +was past hopes: Upon which, I prevailed with myself to go and see him, +partly out of commiseration, and I confess, partly out of curiosity. +He knew me very well, seem'd surpriz'd at my condescension, and made me +compliments upon it as well as he could, in the condition he was. The +people about him said, he had been for some time delirious; but when +I saw him, he had his understanding as well as ever I knew, and spake +strong and hearty, without any seeming uneasiness or constraint. After +I told him how sorry I was to see him in those melancholy circumstances, +and said some other civilities, suitable to the occasion, I desired +him to tell me freely and ingeniously, whether the predictions Mr. +Bickerstaff had publish'd relating to his death, had not too much +affected and worked on his imagination. He confess'd he had often had +it in his head, but never with much apprehension, till about a fortnight +before; since which time it had the perpetual possession of his mind and +thoughts, and he did verily believe was the true natural cause of his +present distemper: For, said he, I am thoroughly persuaded, and I think +I have very good reasons, that Mr. Bickerstaff spoke altogether by +guess, and knew no more what will happen this year than I did myself. +I told him his discourse surprized me; and I would be glad he were in a +state of health to be able to tell me what reason he had to be convinc'd +of Mr. Bickerstaff's ignorance. He reply'd, I am a poor ignorant fellow, +bred to a mean trade, yet I have sense enough to know that all pretences +of foretelling by astrology are deceits, for this manifest reason, +because the wise and the learned, who can only know whether there be any +truth in this science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise +it; and none but the poor ignorant vulgar give it any credit, and that +only upon the word of such silly wretches as I and my fellows, who can +hardly write or read. I then asked him why he had not calculated his +own nativity, to see whether it agreed with Bickerstaff's prediction? at +which he shook his head, and said, Oh! sir, this is no time for jesting, +but for repenting those fooleries, as I do now from the very bottom of +my heart. By what I can gather from you, said I, the observations and +predictions you printed, with your almanacks, were mere impositions on +the people. He reply'd, if it were otherwise I should have the less +to answer for. We have a common form for all those things, as to +foretelling the weather, we never meddle with that, but leave it to the +printer, who takes it out of any old almanack, as he thinks fit; the +rest was my own invention, to make my almanack sell, having a wife to +maintain, and no other way to get my bread; for mending old shoes is +a poor livelihood; and, (added he, sighing) I wish I may not have done +more mischief by my physick than my astrology; tho' I had some good +receipts from my grandmother, and my own compositions were such as I +thought could at least do no hurt. + +I had some other discourse with him, which now I cannot call to mind; +and I fear I have already tired your Lordship. I shall only add one +circumstance, That on his death-bed he declared himself a Nonconformist, +and had a fanatick preacher to be his spiritual guide. After half an +hour's conversation I took my leave, being half stifled by the closeness +of the room. I imagine he could not hold out long, and therefore +withdrew to a little coffee-house hard by, leaving a servant at the +house with orders to come immediately, and tell me, as near as he could, +the minute when Partridge should expire, which was not above two hours +after; when, looking upon my watch, I found it to be above five minutes +after seven; by which it is clear that Mr. Bickerstaff was mistaken +almost four hours in his calculation. In the other circumstances he was +exact enough. But whether he has not been the cause of this poor man's +death, as well as the predictor, may be very reasonably disputed. +However, it must be confess'd the matter is odd enough, whether +we should endeavour to account for it by chance, or the effect of +imagination: For my own part, tho' I believe no man has less faith in +these matters, yet I shall wait with some impatience, and not without +some expectation, the fulfilling of Mr. Bickerstaff's second prediction, +that the Cardinal de Noailles is to die upon the fourth of April, and if +that should be verified as exactly as this of poor Partridge, I must +own I should be wholly surprized, and at a loss, and should infallibly +expect the accomplishment of all the rest. + + +***** + + + + +An Elegy on the supposed Death of Partridge, the Almanack-Maker. + + Well, 'tis as Bickerstaff has guess'd, + Tho' we all took it for a jest; + Partridge is dead, nay more, he dy'd + E're he could prove the good 'Squire ly'd. + Strange, an Astrologer shou'd die, + Without one Wonder in the Sky! + Not one of all his Crony Stars + To pay their Duty at his Herse? + No Meteor, no Eclipse appear'd? + No Comet with a flaming Beard? + The Sun has rose, and gone to Bed, + Just as if partridge were not dead: + Nor hid himself behind the Moon, + To make a dreadful Night at Noon. + He at fit Periods walks through Aries, + Howe'er our earthly Motion varies; + And twice a Year he'll cut th' Equator, + As if there had been no such Matter. + + Some Wits have wonder'd what Analogy + There is 'twixt Cobbling* and Astrology: + How Partridge made his Optics rise, + From a Shoe-Sole, to reach the Skies. + + A List of Coblers Temples Ties, + To keep the Hair out of their Eyes; + From whence 'tis plain the Diadem + That Princes wear, derives from them. + And therefore Crowns are now-a-days + Adorn'd with Golden Stars and Rays, + Which plainly shews the near Alliance + 'Twixt cobling and the Planets Science. + + Besides, that slow-pac'd Sign Bootes, + As 'tis miscall'd, we know not who 'tis? + But Partridge ended all Disputes, + He knew his Trade, and call'd it **Boots. + + The Horned Moon, which heretofore + Upon their Shoes the Romans wore, + Whose Wideness kept their Toes from Corns, + And whence we claim our Shooing-Horns; + Shows how the Art of Cobling bears + A near Resemblance to the Spheres. + + A Scrap of Parchment hung by Geometry + (A great Refinement in Barometry) + Can, like the Stars, foretel the Weather; + And what is Parchment else but Leather? + Which an Astrologer might use, + Either for Almanacks or Shoes. + + Thus Partridge, by his Wit and Parts, + At once did practise both these Arts; + And as the boading Owl (or rather + The Bat, because her Wings are Leather) + Steals from her private Cell by Night, + And flies about the Candle-Light; + So learned Partridge could as well + Creep in the Dark from Leathern Cell, + And, in his Fancy, fly as fair, + To peep upon a twinkling Star. + + Besides, he could confound the Spheres, + And set the Planets by the Ears; + To shew his Skill, he Mars could join + To Venus in Aspect Mali'n; + Then call in Mercury for Aid, + And cure the Wounds that Venus made. + + Great Scholars have in Lucian read, + When Philip, King of Greece was dead, + His Soul and Spirit did divide, + And each Part took a diff'rent Side; + One rose a Star, the other fell + Beneath, and mended Shoes in Hell. + + Thus Partridge still shines in each Art, + The Cobling and Star-gazing Part, + And is install'd as good a Star + As any of the Caesars are. + + Triumphant Star! some Pity shew + On Coblers militant below, + Whom roguish Boys in stormy Nights + Torment, by pissing out their Lights; + Or thro' a Chink convey their Smoke; + Inclos'd Artificers to choke. + + Thou, high exalted in thy Sphere, + May'st follow still thy Calling there. + To thee the Bull will lend his hide, + By Phoebus newly tann'd and dry'd. + For thee they Argo's Hulk will tax, + And scrape her pitchy Sides for Wax. + Then Ariadne kindly lends + Her braided Hair to make thee Ends. + The Point of Sagittarius' Dart + Turns to an awl, by heav'nly Art; + And Vulcan, wheedled by his Wife, + Will forge for thee a Paring-Knife. + For want of Room, by Virgo's Side, + She'll strain a Point, and sit astride***, + To take thee kindly in between, + And then the Signs will be Thirteen. + + *Partridge was a Cobler. + + ** See his Almanack + + ***Tibi brachia contrahet ingens Scorpius, etc. + + +***** + + + + +An Epitaph on Partridge. + + Here, five Foot deep, lies on his Back, + A Cobler, Starmonger, and Quack; + Who to the Stars in pure Good-will, + Does to his best look upward still. + Weep all you Customers that use + His Pills, his Almanacks, or Shoes; + And you that did your Fortunes seek, + Step to his Grave but once a Week: + This Earth which bears his Body's Print, + You'll find has so much Vertue in't, + That I durst pawn my Ears 'twill tell + Whate'er concerns you full as well, + In Physick, Stolen Goods, or Love, + As he himself could, when above. + + +***** + + + + +Partridge's reply + +'Squire Bickerstaff detected; or, the astrological impostor convicted; + +by John Partridge, student in physick and astrology. + +It is hard, my dear countrymen of these united nations, it is very +hard that a Briton born, a Protestant astrologer, a man of revolution +principles, an assertor of the liberty and property of the people, +should cry out, in vain, for justice against a Frenchman, a Papist, an +illiterate pretender to science; that would blast my reputation, +most inhumanly bury me alive, and defraud my native country of those +services, that, in my double capacity, I daily offer to the publick. + +What great provocations I have receiv'd, let the impartial reader judge, +and how unwillingly, even in my own defence, I now enter the lists +against falsehood, ignorance and envy: But I am exasperated, at length, +to drag out this cacus from the den of obscurity where he lurks, detect +him by the light of those stars he has so impudently traduced, and +shew there's not a monster in the skies so pernicious and malevolent to +mankind, as an ignorant pretender to physick and astrology. I shall +not directly fall on the many gross errors, nor expose the notorious +absurdities of this prostituted libeller, till I have let the learned +world fairly into the controversy depending, and then leave the +unprejudiced to judge of the merits and justice of the cause. + +It was towards the conclusion of the year 1707, when an impudent +pamphlet crept into the world, intituled, 'Predictions, etc.' by Isaac +Bickerstaff, Esq;--Amongst the many arrogant assertions laid down by +that lying spirit of divination, he was pleas'd to pitch on the Cardinal +de Noailles and myself, among many other eminent and illustrious +persons, that were to die within the compass of the ensuing year; and +peremptorily fixes the month, day, and hour of our deaths: This, I +think, is sporting with great men, and publick spirits, to the scandal +of religion, and reproach of power; and if sovereign princes and +astrologers must make diversion for the vulgar---- why then farewel, say +I, to all governments, ecclesiastical and civil. But, I thank my better +stars, I am alive to confront this false and audacious predictor, and to +make him rue the hour he ever affronted a man of science and resentment. +The Cardinal may take what measures he pleases with him; as his +excellency is a foreigner, and a papist, he has no reason to rely on me +for his justification; I shall only assure the world he is alive---- but +as he was bred to letters, and is master of a pen, let him use it in +his own defence. In the mean time I shall present the publick with a +faithful narrative of the ungenerous treatment and hard usage I have +received from the virulent papers and malicious practices of this +pretended astrologer. + +A true and impartial account of the proceedings of Isaac Bickerstaff, +Esq; against me---- + +The 28th of March, Anno Dom. 1708, being the night this sham-prophet had +so impudently fix'd for my last, which made little impression on myself; +but I cannot answer for my whole family; for my wife, with a concern +more than usual, prevailed on me to take somewhat to sweat for a cold; +and, between the hours of eight and nine, to go to bed: The maid, as she +was warming my bed, with a curiosity natural to young wenches, runs to +the window, and asks of one passing the street, who the bell toll'd for? +Dr. Partridge, says he, that famous almanack-maker, who died suddenly +this evening: The poor girl provoked, told him he ly'd like a rascal; +the other very sedately reply'd, the sexton had so informed him, and if +false, he was to blame for imposing upon a stranger. She asked a second, +and a third, as they passed, and every one was in the same tone. Now I +don't say these are accomplices to a certain astrological 'squire, and +that one Bickerstaff might be sauntring thereabouts; because I will +assert nothing here but what I dare attest, and plain matter of fact. My +wife at this fell into a violent disorder; and I must own I was a little +discomposed at the oddness of the accident. In the mean time one knocks +at my door, Betty runs down, and opening, finds a sober grave person, +who modestly enquires if this was Dr. Partridge's? She taking him for +some cautious city-patient, that came at that time for privacy, shews +him into the dining room. As soon as I could compose myself, I went to +him, and was surprized to find my gentleman mounted on a table with a +two-foot rule in his hand, measuring my walls, and taking the dimensions +of the room. Pray sir, says I, not to interrupt you, have you any +business with me? Only, sir, replies he, order the girl to bring me a +better light, for this is but a very dim one. Sir, says I, my name is +Partridge: Oh! the Doctor's brother, belike, cries he; the stair-case, +I believe, and these two apartments hung in close mourning, will be +sufficient, and only a strip of bays round the other rooms. The Doctor +must needs die rich, he had great dealings in his way for many years; +if he had no family coat, you had as good use the escutcheons of the +company, they are as showish, and will look as magnificent as if he +was descended from the blood royal. With that I assumed a great air of +authority, and demanded who employ'd him, or how he came there? Why, +I was sent, sir, by the Company of Undertakers, says he, and they were +employed by the honest gentleman, who is executor to the good Doctor +departed; and our rascally porter, I believe, is fallen fast asleep with +the black cloth and sconces, or he had been here, and we might have been +tacking up by this time. Sir, says I, pray be advis'd by a friend, and +make the best of your speed out of my doors, for I hear my wife's voice, +(which by the by, is pretty distinguishable) and in that corner of the +room stands a good cudgel, which somebody has felt e're now; if that +light in her hands, and she know the business you come about, without +consulting the stars, I can assure you it will be employed very much to +the detriment of your person. Sir, cries he, bowing with great civility, +I perceive extreme grief for the loss of the Doctor disorders you a +little at present, but early in the morning I'll wait on you with all +necessary materials. Now I mention no Mr. Bickerstaff, nor do I say, +that a certain star-gazing 'squire has been playing my executor before +his time; but I leave the world to judge, and if he puts things and +things fairly together, it won't be much wide of the mark. + +Well, once more I got my doors clos'd, and prepar'd for bed, in hopes of +a little repose after so many ruffling adventures; just as I was putting +out my light in order to it, another bounces as hard as he can knock; +I open the window, and ask who's there, and what he wants? I am Ned the +sexton, replies he, and come to know whether the Doctor left any orders +for a funeral sermon, and where he is to be laid, and whether his grave +is to be plain or bricked? Why, sirrah, says I, you know me well enough; +you know I am not dead, and how dare you affront me in this manner? +Alack-a-day, replies the fellow, why 'tis in print, and the whole town +knows you are dead; why, there's Mr. White the joiner is but fitting +screws to your coffin, he'll be here with it in an instant: he was +afraid you would have wanted it before this time. Sirrah, Sirrah, says +I, you shall know tomorrow to your cost, that I am alive, and alive like +to be. Why, 'tis strange, sir, says he, you should make such a secret +of your death to us that are your neighbours; it looks as if you had a +design to defraud the church of its dues; and let me tell you, for one +that has lived so long by the heavens, that's unhandsomely done. Hist, +Hist, says another rogue that stood by him, away Doctor, in your flannel +gear as fast as you can, for here's a whole pack of dismals coming to +you with their black equipage, and how indecent will it look for you +to stand fright'ning folks at your window, when you should have been +in your coffin this three hours? In short, what with undertakers, +imbalmers, joiners, sextons, and your damn'd elegy hawkers, upon a late +practitioner in physick and astrology, I got not one wink of sleep that +night, nor scarce a moment's rest ever since. Now I doubt not but this +villainous 'squire has the impudence to assert, that these are entirely +strangers to him; he, good man, knows nothing of the matter, and honest +Isaac Bickerstaff, I warrant you, is more a man of honour, than to be an +accomplice with a pack of rascals, that walk the streets on nights, and +disturb good people in their beds; but he is out, if he thinks the whole +world is blind; for there is one John Partridge can smell a knave as +far as Grubstreet,--tho' he lies in the most exalted garret, and writes +himself 'Squire:-- + +But I'll keep my temper, and proceed in the narration. + +I could not stir out of doors for the space of three months after this, +but presently one comes up to me in the street; Mr Partridge, that +coffin you was last buried in I have not been yet paid for: Doctor, +cries another dog, How d'ye think people can live by making of graves +for nothing? Next time you die, you may e'en toll out the bell yourself +for Ned. A third rogue tips me by the elbow, and wonders how I have the +conscience to sneak abroad without paying my funeral expences. Lord, +says one, I durst have swore that was honest Dr. Partridge, my old +friend; but poor man, he is gone. I beg your pardon, says another, you +look so like my old acquaintance that I used to consult on some private +occasions; but, alack, he's gone the way of all flesh---- Look, look, +look, cries a third, after a competent space of staring at me, would not +one think our neighbour the almanack-maker, was crept out of his grave +to take t'other peep at the stars in this world, and shew how much he is +improv'd in fortune-telling by having taken a journey to the other? + +Nay, the very reader, of our parish, a good sober, discreet person, has +sent two or three times for me to come and be buried decently, or send +him sufficient reasons to the contrary, if I have been interr'd in any +other parish, to produce my certificate, as the act requires. My poor +wife is almost run distracted with being called Widow Partridge, when +she knows its false; and once a term she is cited into the court, to +take out letters of administration. But the greatest grievance is, a +paultry quack, that takes up my calling just under my nose, and in his +printed directions with N.B. says, He lives in the house of the late +ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner in leather, +physick and astrology. + +But to show how far the wicked spirit of envy, malice and resentment can +hurry some men, my nameless old persecutor had provided me a monument at +the stone-cutter's and would have erected it in the parish-church; and +this piece of notorious and expensive villany had actually succeeded, +had I not used my utmost interest with the vestry, where it was carried +at last but by two voices, that I am still alive. That stratagem +failing, out comes a long sable elegy, bedeck'd with hour-glasses, +mattocks, sculls, spades, and skeletons, with an epitaph as confidently +written to abuse me, and my profession, as if I had been under ground +these twenty years. + +And, after such barbarous treatment as this, can the world blame me, +when I ask, What is become of the freedom of an Englishman? And where +is the liberty and property that my old glorious friend came over to +assert? We have drove popery out of the nation, and sent slavery to +foreign climes. The arts only remain in bondage, when a man of science +and character shall be openly insulted in the midst of the many useful +services he is daily paying to the publick. Was it ever heard, even in +Turkey or Algiers, that a state-astrologer was banter'd out of his +life by an ignorant impostor, or bawl'd out of the world by a pack of +villanous, deep-mouth'd hawkers? Though I print almanacks, and publish +advertisements; though I produce certificates under the ministers +and church-wardens hands I am alive, and attest the same on oath at +quarter-sessions, out comes a full and true relation of the death and +interment of John Partridge; Truth is bore down, attestations neglected, +the testimony of sober persons despised, and a man is looked upon by his +neighbours as if he had been seven years dead, and is buried alive in +the midst of his friends and acquaintance. + +Now can any man of common sense think it consistent with the honour of +my profession, and not much beneath the dignity of a philosopher, to +stand bawling before his own door?---- Alive! Alive ho! The famous Dr. +Partridge! No counterfeit, but all alive!---- As if I had the twelve +celestial monsters of the zodiac to shew within, or was forced for a +livelihood to turn retailer to May and Bartholomew Fairs. Therefore, if +Her Majesty would but graciously be pleased to think a hardship of this +nature worthy her royal consideration, and the next parliament, in their +great wisdom cast but an eye towards the deplorable case of their old +philomath, that annually bestows his poetical good wishes on them, I am +sure there is one Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; would soon be truss'd up for +his bloody predictions, and putting good subjects in terror of their +lives: And that henceforward to murder a man by way of prophecy, and +bury him in a printed letter, either to a lord or commoner, shall as +legally entitle him to the present possession of Tyburn, as if he robb'd +on the highway, or cut your throat in bed. + +I shall demonstrate to the judicious, that France and Rome are at the +bottom of this horrid conspiracy against me; and that culprit aforesaid +is a popish emissary, has paid his visits to St. Germains, and is now in +the measures of Lewis XIV. That in attempting my reputation, there is +a general massacre of learning designed in these realms; and through my +sides there is a wound given to all the Protestant almanack-makers in +the universe. + +Vivat Regina. + + +***** + + + + +A vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; + +against what is objected to him by Mr. Partridge in his almanack for the +present year 1709. + +By the said Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; + +Written in the year 1709. + +Mr. Partridge hath been lately pleased to treat me after a very rough +manner, in that which is called, his almanack for the present year: Such +usage is very undecent from one gentleman to another, and does not at +all contribute to the discovery of truth, which ought to be the great +end in all disputes of the learned. To call a man fool and villain, +and impudent fellow, only for differing from him in a point meer +speculative, is, in my humble opinion, a very improper style for a +person of his education. I appeal to the learned world, whether in +my last year's predictions I gave him the least provocation for such +unworthy treatment. Philosophers have differed in all ages; but the +discreetest among them have always differed as became philosophers. +Scurrility and passion, in a controversy among scholars, is just so much +of nothing to the purpose, and at best, a tacit confession of a weak +cause: My concern is not so much for my own reputation, as that of the +Republick of Letters, which Mr. Partridge hath endeavoured to wound +through my sides. If men of publick spirit must be superciliously +treated for their ingenious attempts, how will true useful knowledge +be ever advanced? I wish Mr. Partridge knew the thoughts which foreign +universities have conceived of his ungenerous proceedings with me; but +I am too tender of his reputation to publish them to the world. That +spirit of envy and pride, which blasts so many rising genius's in +our nation, is yet unknown among professors abroad: The necessity of +justifying myself will excuse my vanity, when I tell the reader that I +have near a hundred honorary letters from several parts of Europe (some +as far as Muscovy) in praise of my performance. Besides several others, +which, as I have been credibly informed, were open'd in the post-office +and never sent me. 'Tis true the Inquisition in Portugal was pleased to +burn my predictions, and condem the author and readers of them; but I +hope at the same time, it will be consider'd in how deplorable a state +learning lies at present in that kingdom: And with the profoundest +veneration for crown'd heads, I will presume to add, that it a little +concerned His Majesty of Portugal, to interpose his authority in behalf +of a scholar and a gentleman, the subject of a nation with which he +is now in so strict an alliance. But the other kingdoms and states of +Europe have treated me with more candor and generosity. If I had leave +to print the Latin letters transmitted to me from foreign parts, +they would fill a volume, and be a full defence against all that Mr. +Partridge, or his accomplices of the Portugal Inquisition, will be able +to object; who, by the way, are the only enemies my predictions have +ever met with at home or abroad. But I hope I know better what is due to +the honour of a learned correspondence in so tender a point. Yet some +of those illustrious persons will perhaps excuse me from transcribing a +passage or two in my own vindication. The most learned Monsieur Leibnits +thus addresses to me his third letter: Illustrissimo Bickerstaffio +Astrologiae instauratori, etc. Monsieur le Clerc, quoting my predictions +in a treatise he published last year, is pleased to say, Ita nuperrime +Bickerstaffius magnum illud Angliae fidus. Another great professor +writing of me, has these words: Bickerstaffius, nobilis Anglus, +Astrologorum hujusce Saeculi facile Princeps. Signior Magliabecchi, the +Great Duke's famous library-keeper, spends almost his whole letter in +compliments and praises. 'Tis true, the renowned Professor of Astronomy +at Utrecht, seems to differ from me in one article; but it is in a +modest manner, that becomes a philosopher; as, Pace tanti viri dixerim: +And pag.55, he seems to lay the error upon the printer (as indeed +it ought) and says, vel forsan error typographi, cum alioquin +Bickerstaffius ver doctissimus, etc. + +If Mr. Partridge had followed this example in the controversy between +us, he might have spared me the trouble of justifying myself in so +publick a manner. I believe few men are readier to own their errors than +I, or more thankful to those who will please to inform me of them. But +it seems this gentleman, instead of encouraging the progress of his own +art, is pleased to look upon all attempts of that kind as an invasion +of his province. He has been indeed so wise to make no objection against +the truth of my predictions, except in one single point, relating +to himself: And to demonstrate how much men are blinded by their own +partiality, I do solemnly assure the reader, that he is the only person +from whom I ever heard that objection offered; which consideration +alone, I think, will take off all its weight. + +With my utmost endeavours, I have not been able to trace above two +objections ever made against the truth of my last year's prophecies: The +first was of a French man, who was pleased to publish to the world, that +the Cardinal de Noailles was still alive, notwithstanding the pretended +prophecy of Monsieur Biquerstaffe: But how far a Frenchman, a papist, +and an enemy is to be believed in his own case against an English +Protestant, who is true to his government, I shall leave to the candid +and impartial reader. + +The other objection is the unhappy occasion of this discourse, and +relates to an article in my predictions, which foretold the death of Mr. +Partridge, to happen on March 29, 1708. This he is pleased to contradict +absolutely in the almanack he has published for the present year, and +in that ungentlemanly manner (pardon the expression) as I have above +related. In that work he very roundly asserts, That he is not only now +alive, but was likewise alive upon that very 29th of March, when I had +foretold he should die. This is the subject of the present controversy +between us; which I design to handle with all brevity, perspicuity, and +calmness: In this dispute, I am sensible the eyes not only of England, +but of all Europe, will be upon us; and the learned in every country +will, I doubt not, take part on that side, where they find most +appearance of reason and truth. + +Without entering into criticisms of chronology about the hour of his +death, I shall only prove that Mr. Partridge is not alive. And my first +argument is thus: Above a thousand gentelmen having bought his almanacks +for this year, merely to find what he said against me; at every line +they read, they would lift up their eyes, and cry out, betwixt rage and +laughter, "They were sure no man alive ever writ such damn'd stuff +as this." Neither did I ever hear that opinion disputed: So that Mr. +Partridge lies under a dilemma, either of disowning his almanack, or +allowing himself to be "no man alive". But now if an uninformed +carcase walks still about, and is pleased to call itself Partridge, Mr. +Bickerstaff does not think himself any way answerable for that. Neither +had the said carcase any right to beat the poor boy who happen'd to pass +by it in the street, crying, "A full and true account of Dr. Partridge's +death, etc." + +Secondly, Mr. Partridge pretends to tell fortunes, and recover stolen +goods; which all the parish says he must do by conversing with the +devil and other evil spirits: And no wise man will ever allow he could +converse personally with either, till after he was dead. + +Thirdly, I will plainly prove him to be dead out of his own almanack for +this year, and from the very passage which he produces to make us think +him alive. He there says, "He is not only now alive, but was also alive +on the very 29th of March, which I foretold he should die on": By this, +he declares his opinion, that a man may be alive now, who was not +alive a twelvemonth ago. And indeed, there lies the sophistry of this +argument. He dares not assert, he was alive ever since that 29th of +March, but that he is now alive, and was so on that day: I grant the +latter; for he did not die till night, as appears by the printed account +of his death, in a letter to a lord; and whether he is since revived +I leave the world to judge. This indeed is perfect cavilling, and I am +ashamed to dwell any longer upon it. + +Fourthly, I will appeal to Mr. Partridge himself, whether it be probable +I could have been so indiscreet, to begin my predictions with the only +falsehood that ever was pretended to be in them; and this in an affair +at home, where I had so many opportunities to be exact; and must have +given such advantages against me to a person of Mr. Partridge's wit and +learning, who, if he could possibly have raised one single objection +more against the truth of my prophecies, would hardly have spared me. + +And here I must take occasion to reprove the above mention'd writer of +the relation of Mr. Partridge's death, in a letter to a lord; who was +pleased to tax me with a mistake of four whole hours in my calculation +of that event. I must confess, this censure pronounced with an air +of certainty, in a matter that so nearly concerned me, and by a grave +judicious author, moved me not a little. But tho' I was at that time out +of town, yet several of my friends, whose curiosity had led them to be +exactly informed (for as to my own part, having no doubt at all in the +matter, I never once thought of it) assured me, I computed to something +under half an hour: which (I speak my private opinion) is an error of no +very great magnitude, that men should raise a clamour about it. I shall +only say, it would not be amiss, if that author would henceforth be more +tender of other men's reputations as well as his own. It is well there +were no more mistakes of that kind; if there had, I presume he would +have told me of them with as little ceremony. + +There is one objection against Mr. Partridge's death, which I have +sometimes met with, though indeed very slightly offered, That he still +continues to write almanacks. But this is no more than what is common +to all that profession; Gadbury, Poor Robin, Dove, Wing, and several +others, do yearly publish their almanacks, though several of them have +been dead since before the Revolution. Now the natural reason of this +I take to be, that whereas it is the privilege of other authors to live +after their deaths; almanack-makers are alone excluded, because their +dissertations treating only upon the minutes as they pass, become +useless as those go off. In consideration of which, Time, whose +registers they are, gives them a lease in reversion, to continue their +works after their death. + +I should not have given the publick or myself the trouble of this +vindication, if my name had not been made use of by several persons, +to whom I never lent it; one of which, a few days ago, was pleased to +father on me a new sett of predictions. But I think those are things too +serious to be trifled with. It grieved me to the heart, when I saw my +labours, which had cost me so much thought and watching, bawl'd about by +common hawkers, which I only intended for the weighty consideration of +the gravest persons. This prejudiced the world so much at first, that +several of my friends had the assurance to ask me whether I were in +jest? To which I only answered coldly, that the event would shew. But +it is the talent of our age and nation, to turn things of the greatest +importance into ridicule. When the end of the year had verified all my +predictions, out comes Mr. Partridge's almanack, disputing the point +of his death; so that I am employed, like the general who was forced to +kill his enemies twice over, whom a necromancer had raised to life. If +Mr. Partridge has practised the same experiment upon himself, and +be again alive, long may he continue so; that does not in the least +contradict my veracity: But I think I have clearly proved, by invincible +demonstration, that he died at farthest within half an hour of the time +I foretold, and not four hours sooner, as the above-mentioned author, in +his letter to a lord, hath maliciously suggested, with design to blast +my credit, by charging me with so gross a mistake. + + +***** + + + + +A famous prediction of Merlin, the British wizard. + +Written above a thousand years ago, and relating to the year 1709, with +explanatory notes. + +Last year was publish'd a paper of predictions, pretended to be written +by one Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; but the true design of it was to +ridicule the art of astrology, and expose its professors as ignorant +or impostors. Against this imputation, Dr. Partridge hath vindicated +himself in his almanack for that year. + +For a farther vindication of this famous art, I have thought fit to +present the world with the following prophecy. The original is said to +be of the famous Merlin, who lived about a thousand years ago; and +the following translation is two hundred years old, for it seems to be +written near the end of Henry the Seventh's reign. I found it in an old +edition of Merlin's Prophecies, imprinted at London by John Hawkins +in the year 1530, page 39. I set it down word for word in the old +orthography, and shall take leave to subjoin a few explanatory notes. + + Seven and Ten addyd to Nyne, + Of Fraunce her Woe this is the Sygne, + Tamys Rivere twys y-frozen, + Walke sans wetyng Shoes ne Hozen. + Then comyth foorthe, ich understonde, + From Town of Stoffe to farryn Londe, + An herdye Chyftan, woe the Morne + To Fraunce, that evere he was born. + Than shall the fyshe beweyle his Bosse; + Nor shall grin Berrys make up the Losse. + Yonge Symnele shall again miscarrye: + And Norways Pryd again shall marrye. + And from the tree where Blosums feele, + Ripe Fruit shall come, and all is wele, + Reaums shall daunce Honde in Honde, + And it shall be merrye in old Inglonde, + Then old Inglonde shall be no more, + And no man shall be sorre therefore. + Geryon shall have three Hedes agayne, + Till Hapsburge makyth them but twayne. + +Explanatory notes. + +Seven and Ten. This line describes the year when these events shall +happen. Seven and ten makes seventeen, which I explain seventeen +hundred, and this number added to nine, makes the year we are now in; +for it must be understood of the natural year, which begins the first of +January. + +Tamys Rivere twys, etc. The River Thames, frozen twice in one year, so +as men to walk on it, is a very signal accident, which perhaps hath not +fallen out for several hundred years before, and is the reason why some +astrologers have thought that this prophecy could never be fulfilled, +because they imagine such a thing would never happen in our climate. + +From Town of Stoffe, etc. This is a plain designation of the Duke of +Marlborough: One kind of stuff used to fatten land is called marle, +and every body knows that borough is a name for a town; and this way +of expression is after the usual dark manner of old astrological +predictions. + +Then shall the Fyshe, etc. By the fish, is understood the Dauphin of +France, as their kings eldest sons are called: 'Tis here said, he shall +lament the loss of the Duke of Burgundy, called the Bosse, which is an +old English word for hump-shoulder, or crook-back, as that Duke is known +to be; and the prophecy seems to mean, that he should be overcome or +slain. By the green berrys, in the next line, is meant the young Duke +of Berry, the Dauphin's third son, who shall not have valour or fortune +enough to supply the loss of his eldest brother. + +Yonge Symnele, etc. By Symnele is meant the pretended Prince of Wales, +who, if he offers to attempt anything against England, shall miscarry as +he did before. Lambert Symnele is the name of a young man, noted in our +histories for personating the son (as I remember) of Edward the fourth. + +And Norway's Pryd, etc. I cannot guess who is meant by Norway's Pride, +perhaps the reader may, as well as the sense of the two following lines. + +Reaums shall, etc. Reums, or, as the word is now, realms, is the old +name for kingdoms: And this is a very plain prediction of our happy +Union, with the felicities that shall attend it. It is added that Old +England shall be no more, and yet no man shall be sorry for it. And +indeed, properly speaking, England is now no more, for the whole island +is one Kingdom, under the name of Britain. + +Geryon shall, etc. This prediction, tho' somewhat obscure, is +wonderfully adapt. Geryon is said to have been a king of Spain, whom +Hercules slew. It was a fiction of the poets, that he had three heads, +which the author says he shall have again: That is, Spain shall have +three kings; which is now wonderfully verified; for besides the King of +Portugal, which properly is part of Spain, there are now two rivals for +Spain, Charles and Philip: But Charles being descended fro the Count of +Hapsburgh, founder of the Austrian family, shall soon make those heads +but two; by overturning Philip, and driving him out of Spain. + +Some of these predictions are already fulfilled; and it is highly +probable the rest may be in due time; and, I think, I have not forced +the words, by my explication, into any other sense than what they will +naturally bear. If this be granted, I am sure it must be also allow'd, +that the author (whoever he were) was a person of extraordinary +sagacity; and that astrology brought to such perfection as this, is by +no means an art to be despised, whatever Mr. Bickerstaff, or other +merry gentlemen are pleased to think. As to the tradition of these lines +having been writ in the original by Merlin, I confess I lay not much +weight upon it: But it is enough to justify their authority, that the +book from whence I have transcrib'd them, was printed 170 years ago, as +appears by the title-page. For the satisfaction of any gentleman, who +may be either doubtful of the truth, or curious to be inform'd; I shall +give order to have the very book sent to the printer of this paper, with +directions to let anybody see it that pleases, because I believe it is +pretty scarce. + + +***** + + + + +Dr. John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope + +Annus Mirabilis: or, The wonderful effects of the approaching +conjunction of the planets Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn. + +By Mart. Scriblerus, Philomath. + +In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora..... + +I suppose every body is sufficiently appriz'd of, and duly prepar'd +for, the famous conjunction to be celebrated the 29th of this instant +December, 1722, foretold by all the sages of antiquity, under the name +of the Annus Mirabilis, or the metamorphostical conjunction: a word +which denotes the mutual transformation of sexes, (the effect of that +configuration of the celestial bodies) the human males being turn'd into +females, and the human females into males. + +The Egyptians have represented this great transformation by several +significant hieroglyphicks, particularly one very remarkable. There are +carv'd upon an obelisk, a barber and a midwife; the barber delivers +his razor to the midwife, and she her swadling-cloaths to the barber. +Accordingly Thales Milesius (who like the rest of his countrymen, +borrow'd his learning from the Egyptians) after having computed the +time of this famous conjunction, "Then," says he, "shall men and women +mutually exchange the pangs of shaving and child-bearing." + +Anaximander modestly describes this metamorphosis in mathematical terms: +"Then," says he, "shall the negative quantity of the women be turn'd +into positive, their - into +;" (i.e.) their minus into plus. + +Plato not only speaks of this great change, but describes all the +preparations towards it. "Long before the bodily transformation, (says +he) nature shall begin the most difficult part of her work, by changing +the ideas and inclinations of the two sexes: Men shall turn effeminate, +and women manly; wives shall domineer, and husbands obey; ladies shall +ride a horseback, dress'd like cavaliers; princes and nobles appear in +night-rails and petticoats; men shall squeak upon theatres with female +voices, and women corrupt virgins; lords shall knot and cut paper; and +even the northern people.........:" A Greek phrase (which for modesty's +sake I forbear to translate) which denotes a vice too frequent amongst +us. + +That the Ministry foresaw this great change, is plain from the +Callico-Act; whereby it is now become the occupation of women all +over England, to convert their useless female habits into beds, +window-curtains, chairs, and joint-stools; undressing themselves (as it +were) before their transformation. + +The philosophy of this transformation will not seem surprizing to people +who search into the bottom of things. Madam Bourignon, a devout French +lady, has shewn us, how man was at first created male and female in +one individual, having the faculty of propagation within himself: +A circumstance necessary to the state of innocence, wherein a man's +happiness was not to depend upon the caprice of another. It was not till +after he had made a faux pas, that he had his female mate. Many such +transformations of individuals have been well attested; particularly +one by Montaigne, and another by the late Bishop of Salisbury. From +all which it appears, that this system of male and female has already +undergone and may hereafter suffer, several alterations. Every smatterer +in anatomy knows, that a woman is but an introverted man; a new fusion +and flatus will turn the hollow bottom of a bottle into a convexity; but +I forbear, (for the sake of my modest men-readers, who are in a few days +to be virgins.) + +In some subjects, the smallest alterations will do: some men are +sufficiently spread about the hips, and contriv'd with female softness, +that they want only the negative quantity to make them buxom wenches; +and there are women who are, as it were, already the ebauche of a good +sturdy man. If nature cou'd be puzzl'd, it will be how to bestow the +redundant matter of the exuberant bubbies that now appear about town, or +how to roll out the short dapper fellows into well-siz'd women. + +This great conjunction will begin to operate on Saturday the 29th +instant. Accordingly, about eight at night, as Senezino shall begin at +the Opera, si videte, he shall be observ'd to make an unusual motion; +upon which the audience will be affected with a red suffusion over their +countenance: And because a strong succession of the muscles of the belly +is necessary towards performing this great operation, both sexes will +be thrown into a profuse involuntary laughter. Then (to use the modest +terms of Anaximander) shall negative quantity be turn'd into positive, +etc. Time never beheld, nor will it ever assemble, such a number +of untouch'd virgins within those walls! but alas! such will be the +impatience and curiosity of people to act in their new capacity, that +many of them will be compleated men and women that very night. To +prevent the disorders that may happen upon this occasion, is the chief +design of this paper. + +Gentlemen have begun already to make use of this conjunction to compass +their filthy purposes. They tell the ladies forsooth, that it is only +parting with a perishable commodity, hardly of so much value as a +callico under-petticoat; since, like its mistress, it will be useless in +the form it is now in. If the ladies have no regard to the dishonour and +immorality of the action, I desire they will consider, that nature who +never destroys her own productions, will exempt big-belly'd women till +the time of their lying-in; so that not to be transformed, will be the +same as to be pregnant. If they don't think it worth while to defend a +fortress that is to be demolish'd in a few days, let them reflect that +it will be a melancholy thing nine months hence, to be brought to bed of +a bastard; a posthumous bastard as it were, to which the quondam father +can be no more than a dry nurse. + +This wonderful transformation is the instrument of nature, to balance +matters between the sexes. The cruelty of scornful mistresses shall be +return'd; the slighted maid shall grow into an imperious gallant, and +reward her undoer with a big belly, and a bastard. + +It is hardly possible to imagine the revolutions that this wonderful +phaenomenon will occasion over the face of the earth. I long impatiently +to see the proceedings of the Parliament of Paris, as to the title +of succession to the crown, this being a case not provided for by the +salique law. There will be no preventing disorders amongst friars and +monks; for certainly vows of chastity do not bind but under the sex in +which they were made. The same will hold good with marriages, tho' I +think it will be a scandal amongst Protestants for husbands and wives +to part, since there remains still a possibility to perform the debitus +conjugale, by the husband being femme couverte. I submit it to the +judgment of the gentlemen of the long robe, whether this transformation +does not discharge all suits of rapes? + +The Pope must undergo a new groping; but the false prophet Mahomet has +contriv'd matters well for his successors; for as the Grand Signior +has now a great many fine women, he will then have as many fine young +gentelmen, at his devotion. + +These are surprizing scenes; but I beg leave to affirm, that the solemn +operations of nature are subjects of contemplation, not of ridicule. +Therefore I make it my earnest request to the merry fellows, and +giggling girls about town, that they would not put themselves in a high +twitter, when they go to visit a general lying-in of his first child; +his officers serving as midwives, nurses and rockers dispensing caudle; +or if they behold the reverend prelates dressing the heads and airing +the linnen at court, I beg they will remember that these offices must be +fill'd with people of the greatest regularity, and best characters. For +the same reason, I am sorry that a certain prelate, who notwithstanding +his confinement (in December 1723), still preserves his healthy, +chearful countenance, cannot come in time to be a nurse at court. + +I likewise earnestly intreat the maids of honour, (then ensigns and +captains of the guard) that, at their first setting out, they have some +regard to their former station, and do not run wild through all the +infamous houses about town: That the present grooms of the bed-chamber +(then maids of honour) would not eat chalk and lime in their +green-sickness: And in general, that the men would remember they are +become retromingent, and not by inadvertency lift up against walls and +posts. + +Petticoats will not be burdensome to the clergy; but balls and +assemblies will be indecent for some time. + +As for you, coquettes, bawds, and chamber-maids, (the future ministers, +plenipotentiaries, and cabinet-counsellors to the princes of the earth,) +manage the great intrigues that will be committed to your charge, with +your usual secrecy and conduct; and the affairs of your masters will go +better than ever. + +O ye exchange women! (our right worshipful representatives that are to +be) be not so griping in the sale of your ware as your predecessors, +but consider that the nation, like a spend-thrift heir, has run out: +Be likewise a little more continent in your tongues than you are at +present, else the length of debates will spoil your dinners. + +You housewifely good women, who now preside over the confectionary, +(henceforth commissioners of the Treasury) be so good as to dispense the +sugar-plumbs of the Government with a more impartial and frugal hand. + +Ye prudes and censorious old maids, (the hopes of the Bench) exert +but your usual talent of finding faults, and the laws will be strictly +executed; only I would not have you proceed upon such slender evidences +as you have done hitherto. + +It is from you, eloquent oyster-merchants of Billingsgate, (just ready +to be called to the Bar, and quoif'd like your sister-serjants,) that we +expect the shortening the time, and lessening the expences of law-suits: +For I think you are observ'd to bring your debates to a short issue; and +even custom will restrain you from taking the oyster, and leaving only +the shell to your client. + +O ye physicians, (who in the figure of old women are to clean the tripe +in the markets) scour it as effectually as you have done that of your +patients, and the town will fare most deliciously on Saturdays. + +I cannot but congratulate human nature, upon this happy transformation; +the only expedient left to restore the liberties and tranquillity of +mankind. This is so evident, that it is almost an affront to common +sense to insist upon the proof: If there can be any such stupid +creature as to doubt it, I desire he will make but the following obvious +reflection. There are in Europe alone, at present, about a million of +sturdy fellows, under the denomination of standing forces, with arms in +their hands: That those are masters of the lives, liberties and fortunes +of all the rest, I believe no body will deny. It is no less true in +fact, that reams of paper, and above a square mile of skins of vellum +have been employ'd to no purpose, to settle peace among those sons +of violence. Pray, who is he that will say unto them, Go and disband +yourselves? But lo! by this transformation it is done at once, and the +halcyon days of publick tranquillity return: For neither the military +temper nor discipline can taint the soft sex for a whole age to +come: Bellaque matribus invisa, War odious to mothers, will not grow +immediately palatable in their paternal state. + +Nor will the influence of this transformation be less in family +tranquillity, than it is in national. Great faults will be amended, and +frailties forgiven, on both sides. A wife who has been disturb'd with +late hours, and choak'd with the hautgout of a sot, will remember her +sufferings, and avoid the temptations; and will, for the same reason, +indulge her mate in his female capacity in some passions, which she is +sensible from experience are natural to the sex. Such as vanity of fine +cloaths, being admir'd, etc. And how tenderly must she use her mate +under the breeding qualms and labour-pains which she hath felt her self? +In short, all unreasonable demands upon husbands must cease, because +they are already satisfy'd from natural experience that they are +impossible. + +That the ladies may govern the affairs of the world, and the gentlemen +those of their household, better than either of them have hitherto done, +is the hearty desire of, Their most sincere well-wisher, M.S. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers, by Jonathan Swift + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1090 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1091-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1091-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e21c076f --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1091-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7788 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1091 *** + +ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY + +By Thomas Carlyle + + +Transcriber's Note: + +The text is taken from the printed "Sterling Edition" of Carlyle's +Complete Works, in 20 volumes, with the following modifications made +in the etext version: Italicized text is delimited by underscores, +_thusly_. The footnote (there is only one) has been embedded directly +into text, in brackets, [thusly]. Greek text has been transliterated +into Latin characters with the notation [Gr.] juxtaposed. Otherwise, the +punctuation and spelling of the print version have been retained. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY. + II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM. + III. THE HERO AS POET. DANTE: SHAKSPEARE. + IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM. + V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS. + VI. THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN REVOLUTIONISM. + + + + + +LECTURES ON HEROES. + + + + +LECTURE I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY. + +[May 5, 1840.] + +We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on Great Men, their +manner of appearance in our world's business, how they have shaped +themselves in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, +what work they did;--on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and +performance; what I call Hero-worship and the Heroic in human affairs. +Too evidently this is a large topic; deserving quite other treatment +than we can expect to give it at present. A large topic; indeed, an +illimitable one; wide as Universal History itself. For, as I take it, +Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this +world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. +They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, +and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of +men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing +accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the +practical realization and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the +Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it +may justly be considered, were the history of these. Too clearly it is a +topic we shall do no justice to in this place! + +One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable +company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without +gaining something by him. He is the living light-fountain, which it +is good and pleasant to be near. The light which enlightens, which has +enlightened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp +only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven; a +flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood +and heroic nobleness;--in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well +with them. On any terms whatsoever, you will not grudge to wander in +such neighborhood for a while. These Six classes of Heroes, chosen out +of widely distant countries and epochs, and in mere external figure +differing altogether, ought, if we look faithfully at them, to +illustrate several things for us. Could we see them well, we should get +some glimpses into the very marrow of the world's history. How happy, +could I but, in any measure, in such times as these, make manifest to +you the meanings of Heroism; the divine relation (for I may well call it +such) which in all times unites a Great Man to other men; and thus, as +it were, not exhaust my subject, but so much as break ground on it! At +all events, I must make the attempt. + + +It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact +with regard to him. A man's, or a nation of men's. By religion I do not +mean here the church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith +which he will sign and, in words or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, +in many cases not this at all. We see men of all kinds of professed +creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each +or any of them. This is not what I call religion, this profession and +assertion; which is often only a profession and assertion from the +outworks of the man, from the mere argumentative region of him, if even +so deep as that. But the thing a man does practically believe (and this +is often enough _without_ asserting it even to himself, much less to +others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for +certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and +his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for +him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his _religion_; or, +it may be, his mere scepticism and _no-religion_: the manner it is in +which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or +No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very +great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is. Of +a man or of a nation we inquire, therefore, first of all, What +religion they had? Was it Heathenism,--plurality of gods, mere sensuous +representation of this Mystery of Life, and for chief recognized element +therein Physical Force? Was it Christianism; faith in an Invisible, +not as real only, but as the only reality; Time, through every meanest +moment of it, resting on Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displaced by a +nobler supremacy, that of Holiness? Was it Scepticism, uncertainty and +inquiry whether there was an Unseen World, any Mystery of Life except +a mad one;--doubt as to all this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial? +Answering of this question is giving us the soul of the history of the +man or nation. The thoughts they had were the parents of the actions +they did; their feelings were parents of their thoughts: it was +the unseen and spiritual in them that determined the outward and +actual;--their religion, as I say, was the great fact about them. In +these Discourses, limited as we are, it will be good to direct our +survey chiefly to that religious phasis of the matter. That once known +well, all is known. We have chosen as the first Hero in our series Odin +the central figure of Scandinavian Paganism; an emblem to us of a most +extensive province of things. Let us look for a little at the Hero as +Divinity, the oldest primary form of Heroism. + +Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this Paganism; almost +inconceivable to us in these days. A bewildering, inextricable jungle of +delusions, confusions, falsehoods, and absurdities, covering the whole +field of Life! A thing that fills us with astonishment, almost, if it +were possible, with incredulity,--for truly it is not easy to understand +that sane men could ever calmly, with their eyes open, believe and live +by such a set of doctrines. That men should have worshipped their poor +fellow-man as a God, and not him only, but stocks and stones, and all +manner of animate and inanimate objects; and fashioned for themselves +such a distracted chaos of hallucinations by way of Theory of the +Universe: all this looks like an incredible fable. Nevertheless it is +a clear fact that they did it. Such hideous inextricable jungle of +misworships, misbeliefs, men, made as we are, did actually hold by, +and live at home in. This is strange. Yes, we may pause in sorrow and +silence over the depths of darkness that are in man; if we rejoice in +the heights of purer vision he has attained to. Such things were and are +in man; in all men; in us too. + +Some speculators have a short way of accounting for the Pagan religion: +mere quackery, priestcraft, and dupery, say they; no sane man ever did +believe it,--merely contrived to persuade other men, not worthy of +the name of sane, to believe it! It will be often our duty to protest +against this sort of hypothesis about men's doings and history; and +I here, on the very threshold, protest against it in reference to +Paganism, and to all other _isms_ by which man has ever for a length of +time striven to walk in this world. They have all had a truth in them, +or men would not have taken them up. Quackery and dupery do abound; in +religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, +they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating +influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, +but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die! Let +us never forget this. It seems to me a most mournful hypothesis, that +of quackery giving birth to any faith even in savage men. Quackery gives +birth to nothing; gives death to all things. We shall not see into the +true heart of anything, if we look merely at the quackeries of it; if we +do not reject the quackeries altogether; as mere diseases, corruptions, +with which our and all men's sole duty is to have done with them, to +sweep them out of our thoughts as out of our practice. Man everywhere +is the born enemy of lies. I find Grand Lamaism itself to have a kind +of truth in it. Read the candid, clear-sighted, rather sceptical Mr. +Turner's _Account of his Embassy_ to that country, and see. They have +their belief, these poor Thibet people, that Providence sends down +always an Incarnation of Himself into every generation. At bottom some +belief in a kind of Pope! At bottom still better, belief that there is +a _Greatest_ Man; that _he_ is discoverable; that, once discovered, we +ought to treat him with an obedience which knows no bounds! This is the +truth of Grand Lamaism; the "discoverability" is the only error here. +The Thibet priests have methods of their own of discovering what Man is +Greatest, fit to be supreme over them. Bad methods: but are they so +much worse than our methods,--of understanding him to be always the +eldest-born of a certain genealogy? Alas, it is a difficult thing to +find good methods for!--We shall begin to have a chance of understanding +Paganism, when we first admit that to its followers it was, at one time, +earnestly true. Let us consider it very certain that men did believe +in Paganism; men with open eyes, sound senses, men made altogether like +ourselves; that we, had we been there, should have believed in it. Ask +now, What Paganism could have been? + +Another theory, somewhat more respectable, attributes such things +to Allegory. It was a play of poetic minds, say these theorists; a +shadowing forth, in allegorical fable, in personification and visual +form, of what such poetic minds had known and felt of this Universe. +Which agrees, add they, with a primary law of human nature, still +everywhere observably at work, though in less important things, That +what a man feels intensely, he struggles to speak out of him, to see +represented before him in visual shape, and as if with a kind of life +and historical reality in it. Now doubtless there is such a law, and it +is one of the deepest in human nature; neither need we doubt that it did +operate fundamentally in this business. The hypothesis which ascribes +Paganism wholly or mostly to this agency, I call a little more +respectable; but I cannot yet call it the true hypothesis. Think, would +_we_ believe, and take with us as our life-guidance, an allegory, a +poetic sport? Not sport but earnest is what we should require. It is a +most earnest thing to be alive in this world; to die is not sport for +a man. Man's life never was a sport to him; it was a stern reality, +altogether a serious matter to be alive! + +I find, therefore, that though these Allegory theorists are on the way +towards truth in this matter, they have not reached it either. Pagan +Religion is indeed an Allegory, a Symbol of what men felt and knew about +the Universe; and all Religions are symbols of that, altering always +as that alters: but it seems to me a radical perversion, and even +inversion, of the business, to put that forward as the origin and moving +cause, when it was rather the result and termination. To get beautiful +allegories, a perfect poetic symbol, was not the want of men; but to +know what they were to believe about this Universe, what course they +were to steer in it; what, in this mysterious Life of theirs, they +had to hope and to fear, to do and to forbear doing. The _Pilgrim's +Progress_ is an Allegory, and a beautiful, just and serious one: but +consider whether Bunyan's Allegory could have _preceded_ the Faith it +symbolizes! The Faith had to be already there, standing believed by +everybody;--of which the Allegory could _then_ become a shadow; and, +with all its seriousness, we may say a _sportful_ shadow, a mere play of +the Fancy, in comparison with that awful Fact and scientific certainty +which it poetically strives to emblem. The Allegory is the product of +the certainty, not the producer of it; not in Bunyan's nor in any other +case. For Paganism, therefore, we have still to inquire, Whence came +that scientific certainty, the parent of such a bewildered heap of +allegories, errors and confusions? How was it, what was it? + +Surely it were a foolish attempt to pretend "explaining," in this place, +or in any place, such a phenomenon as that far-distant distracted cloudy +imbroglio of Paganism,--more like a cloud-field than a distant continent +of firm land and facts! It is no longer a reality, yet it was one. We +ought to understand that this seeming cloud-field was once a reality; +that not poetic allegory, least of all that dupery and deception was +the origin of it. Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never risked +their soul's life on allegories: men in all times, especially in early +earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting +quacks. Let us try if, leaving out both the quack theory and the +allegory one, and listening with affectionate attention to that far-off +confused rumor of the Pagan ages, we cannot ascertain so much as this at +least, That there was a kind of fact at the heart of them; that they too +were not mendacious and distracted, but in their own poor way true and +sane! + + +You remember that fancy of Plato's, of a man who had grown to maturity +in some dark distance, and was brought on a sudden into the upper air to +see the sun rise. What would his wonder be, his rapt astonishment at the +sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free open sense of +a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be +kindled by that sight, he would discern it well to be Godlike, his +soul would fall down in worship before it. Now, just such a childlike +greatness was in the primitive nations. The first Pagan Thinker +among rude men, the first man that began to think, was precisely this +child-man of Plato's. Simple, open as a child, yet with the depth and +strength of a man. Nature had as yet no name to him; he had not yet +united under a name the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes +and motions, which we now collectively name Universe, Nature, or the +like,--and so with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild deep-hearted +man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, +flashing in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to +this man, what to the Thinker and Prophet it forever is, preternatural. +This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, +many-sounding seas;--that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; +the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself +together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what _is_ it? Ay, +what? At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all. It is +not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty; it is by our +superior levity, our inattention, our _want_ of insight. It is by _not_ +thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened round us, encasing +wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere +_words_. We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud "electricity," and +lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and +silk: but _what_ is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? +Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide +from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can +never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. +This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; +wonderful, inscrutable, _magical_ and more, to whosoever will _think_ of +it. + +That great mystery of TIME, were there no other; the illimitable, +silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, +silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the +Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are +_not_: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us +dumb,--for we have no word to speak about it. This Universe, ah me--what +could the wild man know of it; what can we yet know? That it is a Force, +and thousand-fold Complexity of Forces; a Force which is _not_ we. That +is all; it is not we, it is altogether different from us. Force, Force, +everywhere Force; we ourselves a mysterious Force in the centre of that. +"There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has Force in it; how +else could it rot?" Nay surely, to the Atheistic Thinker, if such a one +were possible, it must be a miracle too, this huge illimitable whirlwind +of Force, which envelops us here; never-resting whirlwind, high as +Immensity, old as Eternity. What is it? God's Creation, the religious +people answer; it is the Almighty God's! Atheistic science babbles +poorly of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experiments and what not, +as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled up in Leyden jars and +sold over counters: but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he +will honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living thing,--ah, +an unspeakable, godlike thing; towards which the best attitude for us, +after never so much science, is awe, devout prostration and humility of +soul; worship if not in words, then in silence. + +But now I remark farther: What in such a time as ours it requires a +Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the stripping-off of those poor +undevout wrappages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays,--this, the +ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for +itself. The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was then +divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it +face to face. "All was Godlike or God:"--Jean Paul still finds it so; +the giant Jean Paul, who has power to escape out of hearsays: but there +then were no hearsays. Canopus shining down over the desert, with its +blue diamond brightness (that wild blue spirit-like brightness, far +brighter than we ever witness here), would pierce into the heart of the +wild Ishmaelitish man, whom it was guiding through the solitary waste +there. To his wild heart, with all feelings in it, with no _speech_ for +any feeling, it might seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing out on +him from the great deep Eternity; revealing the inner Splendor to him. +Cannot we understand how these men _worshipped_ Canopus; became what +we call Sabeans, worshipping the stars? Such is to me the secret of +all forms of Paganism. Worship is transcendent wonder; wonder for which +there is now no limit or measure; that is worship. To these primeval +men, all things and everything they saw exist beside them were an emblem +of the Godlike, of some God. + +And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. To us also, through +every star, through every blade of grass, is not a God made visible, if +we will open our minds and eyes? We do not worship in that way now: +but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof of what we call a "poetic +nature," that we recognize how every object has a divine beauty in it; +how every object still verily is "a window through which we may look +into Infinitude itself"? He that can discern the loveliness of things, +we call him Poet! Painter, Man of Genius, gifted, lovable. These poor +Sabeans did even what he does,--in their own fashion. That they did +it, in what fashion soever, was a merit: better than what the entirely +stupid man did, what the horse and camel did,--namely, nothing! + +But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon are emblems to us +of the Highest God, I add that more so than any of them is man such +an emblem. You have heard of St. Chrysostom's celebrated saying in +reference to the Shekinah, or Ark of Testimony, visible Revelation of +God, among the Hebrews: "The true Shekinah is Man!" Yes, it is even so: +this is no vain phrase; it is veritably so. The essence of our being, +the mystery in us that calls itself "I,"--ah, what words have we for +such things?--is a breath of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself +in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as +a vesture for that Unnamed? "There is but one Temple in the Universe," +says the devout Novalis, "and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier +shall that high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this +Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven when we lay our hand on a human +body!" This sounds much like a mere flourish of rhetoric; but it is not +so. If well meditated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the +expression, in such words as can be had, of the actual truth of the +thing. We are the miracle of miracles,--the great inscrutable mystery of +God. We cannot understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but we may +feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so. + +Well; these truths were once more readily felt than now. The young +generations of the world, who had in them the freshness of young +children, and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think that they +had finished off all things in Heaven and Earth by merely giving them +scientific names, but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and +wonder: they felt better what of divinity is in man and Nature; they, +without being mad, could _worship_ Nature, and man more than anything +else in Nature. Worship, that is, as I said above, admire without limit: +this, in the full use of their faculties, with all sincerity of heart, +they could do. I consider Hero-worship to be the grand modifying element +in that ancient system of thought. What I called the perplexed jungle +of Paganism sprang, we may say, out of many roots: every admiration, +adoration of a star or natural object, was a root or fibre of a root; +but Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in +a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown. + +And now if worship even of a star had some meaning in it, how much more +might that of a Hero! Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of +a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is, +at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of +admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. +It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's +life. Religion I find stand upon it; not Paganism only, but far higher +and truer religions,--all religion hitherto known. Hero-worship, +heartfelt prostrate admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for +a noblest godlike Form of Man,--is not that the germ of Christianity +itself? The greatest of all Heroes is One--whom we do not name here! +Let sacred silence meditate that sacred matter; you will find it the +ultimate perfection of a principle extant throughout man's whole history +on earth. + +Or coming into lower, less unspeakable provinces, is not all Loyalty +akin to religious Faith also? Faith is loyalty to some inspired +Teacher, some spiritual Hero. And what therefore is loyalty proper, the +life-breath of all society, but an effluence of Hero-worship, submissive +admiration for the truly great? Society is founded on Hero-worship. All +dignities of rank, on which human association rests, are what we may +call a _Hero_archy (Government of Heroes),--or a Hierarchy, for it +is "sacred" enough withal! The Duke means _Dux_, Leader; King is +_Kon-ning_, _Kan-ning_, Man that _knows_ or _cans_. Society everywhere +is some representation, not insupportably inaccurate, of a graduated +Worship of Heroes--reverence and obedience done to men really great and +wise. Not insupportably inaccurate, I say! They are all as bank-notes, +these social dignitaries, all representing gold;--and several of them, +alas, always are _forged_ notes. We can do with some forged false notes; +with a good many even; but not with all, or the most of them forged! +No: there have to come revolutions then; cries of Democracy, Liberty and +Equality, and I know not what:--the notes being all false, and no gold +to be had for _them_, people take to crying in their despair that +there is no gold, that there never was any! "Gold," Hero-worship, _is_ +nevertheless, as it was always and everywhere, and cannot cease till man +himself ceases. + +I am well aware that in these days Hero-worship, the thing I call +Hero-worship, professes to have gone out, and finally ceased. This, for +reasons which it will be worth while some time to inquire into, is +an age that as it were denies the existence of great men; denies the +desirableness of great men. Show our critics a great man, a Luther for +example, they begin to what they call "account" for him; not to worship +him, but take the dimensions of him,--and bring him out to be a little +kind of man! He was the "creature of the Time," they say; the Time +called him forth, the Time did everything, he nothing--but what we the +little critic could have done too! This seems to me but melancholy work. +The Time call forth? Alas, we have known Times _call_ loudly enough for +their great man; but not find him when they called! He was not there; +Providence had not sent him; the Time, _calling_ its loudest, had to go +down to confusion and wreck because he would not come when called. + +For if we will think of it, no Time need have gone to ruin, could it +have _found_ a man great enough, a man wise and good enough: wisdom to +discern truly what the Time wanted, valor to lead it on the right road +thither; these are the salvation of any Time. But I liken common languid +Times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their languid +doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling +down into ever worse distress towards final ruin;--all this I liken to +dry dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of Heaven that shall kindle +it. The great man, with his free force direct out of God's own hand, is +the lightning. His word is the wise healing word which all can believe +in. All blazes round him now, when he has once struck on it, into fire +like his own. The dry mouldering sticks are thought to have called him +forth. They did want him greatly; but as to calling him forth--! Those +are critics of small vision, I think, who cry: "See, is it not the +sticks that made the fire?" No sadder proof can be given by a man of his +own littleness than disbelief in great men. There is no sadder symptom +of a generation than such general blindness to the spiritual lightning, +with faith only in the heap of barren dead fuel. It is the last +consummation of unbelief. In all epochs of the world's history, we +shall find the Great Man to have been the indispensable savior of his +epoch;--the lightning, without which the fuel never would have burnt. +The History of the World, I said already, was the Biography of Great +Men. + +Such small critics do what they can to promote unbelief and universal +spiritual paralysis: but happily they cannot always completely succeed. +In all times it is possible for a man to arise great enough to feel that +they and their doctrines are chimeras and cobwebs. And what is notable, +in no time whatever can they entirely eradicate out of living men's +hearts a certain altogether peculiar reverence for Great Men; genuine +admiration, loyalty, adoration, however dim and perverted it may be. +Hero-worship endures forever while man endures. Boswell venerates his +Johnson, right truly even in the Eighteenth century. The unbelieving +French believe in their Voltaire; and burst out round him into very +curious Hero-worship, in that last act of his life when they "stifle +him under roses." It has always seemed to me extremely curious this +of Voltaire. Truly, if Christianity be the highest instance of +Hero-worship, then we may find here in Voltaireism one of the lowest! +He whose life was that of a kind of Antichrist, does again on this +side exhibit a curious contrast. No people ever were so little prone +to admire at all as those French of Voltaire. _Persiflage_ was the +character of their whole mind; adoration had nowhere a place in it. Yet +see! The old man of Ferney comes up to Paris; an old, tottering, infirm +man of eighty-four years. They feel that he too is a kind of Hero; +that he has spent his life in opposing error and injustice, delivering +Calases, unmasking hypocrites in high places;--in short that _he_ too, +though in a strange way, has fought like a valiant man. They feel +withal that, if _persiflage_ be the great thing, there never was such a +_persifleur_. He is the realized ideal of every one of them; the thing +they are all wanting to be; of all Frenchmen the most French. He is +properly their god,--such god as they are fit for. Accordingly all +persons, from the Queen Antoinette to the Douanier at the Porte St. +Denis, do they not worship him? People of quality disguise themselves +as tavern-waiters. The Maitre de Poste, with a broad oath, orders his +Postilion, "_Va bon train_; thou art driving M. de Voltaire." At +Paris his carriage is "the nucleus of a comet, whose train fills whole +streets." The ladies pluck a hair or two from his fur, to keep it as a +sacred relic. There was nothing highest, beautifulest, noblest in all +France, that did not feel this man to be higher, beautifuler, nobler. + +Yes, from Norse Odin to English Samuel Johnson, from the divine Founder +of Christianity to the withered Pontiff of Encyclopedism, in all times +and places, the Hero has been worshipped. It will ever be so. We all +love great men; love, venerate and bow down submissive before great men: +nay can we honestly bow down to anything else? Ah, does not every true +man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is +really above him? No nobler or more blessed feeling dwells in man's +heart. And to me it is very cheering to consider that no sceptical +logic, or general triviality, insincerity and aridity of any Time and +its influences can destroy this noble inborn loyalty and worship that +is in man. In times of unbelief, which soon have to become times of +revolution, much down-rushing, sorrowful decay and ruin is visible +to everybody. For myself in these days, I seem to see in this +indestructibility of Hero-worship the everlasting adamant lower than +which the confused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall. The +confused wreck of things crumbling and even crashing and tumbling +all round us in these revolutionary ages, will get down so far; _no_ +farther. It is an eternal corner-stone, from which they can begin to +build themselves up again. That man, in some sense or other, worships +Heroes; that we all of us reverence and must ever reverence Great Men: +this is, to me, the living rock amid all rushings-down whatsoever;--the +one fixed point in modern revolutionary history, otherwise as if +bottomless and shoreless. + + +So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete vesture, but the spirit +of it still true, do I find in the Paganism of old nations. Nature is +still divine, the revelation of the workings of God; the Hero is still +worshipable: this, under poor cramped incipient forms, is what all +Pagan religions have struggled, as they could, to set forth. I think +Scandinavian Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any other. +It is, for one thing, the latest; it continued in these regions of +Europe till the eleventh century: eight hundred years ago the Norwegians +were still worshippers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed of +our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless +we still resemble in so many ways. Strange: they did believe that, +while we believe so differently. Let us look a little at this poor Norse +creed, for many reasons. We have tolerable means to do it; for there is +another point of interest in these Scandinavian mythologies: that they +have been preserved so well. + +In that strange island Iceland,--burst up, the geologists say, by +fire from the bottom of the sea; a wild land of barrenness and lava; +swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild +gleaming beauty in summertime; towering up there, stern and grim, in +the North Ocean with its snow jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur-pools and +horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic battle-field of Frost +and Fire;--where of all places we least looked for Literature or written +memorials, the record of these things was written down. On the seabord +of this wild land is a rim of grassy country, where cattle can subsist, +and men by means of them and of what the sea yields; and it seems they +were poetic men these, men who had deep thoughts in them, and uttered +musically their thoughts. Much would be lost, had Iceland not been burst +up from the sea, not been discovered by the Northmen! The old Norse +Poets were many of them natives of Iceland. + +Saemund, one of the early Christian Priests there, who perhaps had a +lingering fondness for Paganism, collected certain of their old Pagan +songs, just about becoming obsolete then,--Poems or Chants of a mythic, +prophetic, mostly all of a religious character: that is what Norse +critics call the _Elder_ or Poetic _Edda_. _Edda_, a word of uncertain +etymology, is thought to signify _Ancestress_. Snorro Sturleson, an +Iceland gentleman, an extremely notable personage, educated by this +Saemund's grandson, took in hand next, near a century afterwards, to put +together, among several other books he wrote, a kind of Prose Synopsis +of the whole Mythology; elucidated by new fragments of traditionary +verse. A work constructed really with great ingenuity, native talent, +what one might call unconscious art; altogether a perspicuous clear +work, pleasant reading still: this is the _Younger_ or Prose _Edda_. +By these and the numerous other _Sagas_, mostly Icelandic, with the +commentaries, Icelandic or not, which go on zealously in the North to +this day, it is possible to gain some direct insight even yet; and see +that old Norse system of Belief, as it were, face to face. Let us forget +that it is erroneous Religion; let us look at it as old Thought, and try +if we cannot sympathize with it somewhat. + +The primary characteristic of this old Northland Mythology I find to +be Impersonation of the visible workings of Nature. Earnest simple +recognition of the workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly +miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now lecture of as Science, +they wondered at, and fell down in awe before, as Religion The dark +hostile Powers of Nature they figure to themselves as "_Jotuns_," +Giants, huge shaggy beings of a demonic character. Frost, Fire, +Sea-tempest; these are Jotuns. The friendly Powers again, as +Summer-heat, the Sun, are Gods. The empire of this Universe is divided +between these two; they dwell apart, in perennial internecine feud. +The Gods dwell above in Asgard, the Garden of the Asen, or Divinities; +Jotunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, is the home of the Jotuns. + +Curious all this; and not idle or inane, if we will look at the +foundation of it! The power of _Fire_, or _Flame_, for instance, +which we designate by some trivial chemical name, thereby hiding from +ourselves the essential character of wonder that dwells in it as in all +things, is with these old Northmen, Loke, a most swift subtle _Demon_, +of the brood of the Jotuns. The savages of the Ladrones Islands too (say +some Spanish voyagers) thought Fire, which they never had seen before, +was a devil or god, that bit you sharply when you touched it, and that +lived upon dry wood. From us too no Chemistry, if it had not Stupidity +to help it, would hide that Flame is a wonder. What _is_ Flame?--_Frost_ +the old Norse Seer discerns to be a monstrous hoary Jotun, the Giant +_Thrym_, _Hrym_; or _Rime_, the old word now nearly obsolete here, but +still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost. _Rime_ was not then as now +a dead chemical thing, but a living Jotun or Devil; the monstrous Jotun +_Rime_ drove home his Horses at night, sat "combing their manes,"--which +Horses were _Hail-Clouds_, or fleet _Frost-Winds_. His Cows--No, not +his, but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's Cows are _Icebergs_: this Hymir +"looks at the rocks" with his devil-eye, and they _split_ in the glance +of it. + +Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous or resinous; it was the +God Donner (Thunder) or Thor,--God also of beneficent Summer-heat. The +thunder was his wrath: the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing +down of Thor's angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is +the all-rending Hammer flung from the hand of Thor: he urges his loud +chariot over the mountain-tops,--that is the peal; wrathful he "blows +in his red beard,"--that is the rustling storm-blast before the thunder +begins. Balder again, the White God, the beautiful, the just and +benignant (whom the early Christian Missionaries found to resemble +Christ), is the Sun, beautifullest of visible things; wondrous too, and +divine still, after all our Astronomies and Almanacs! But perhaps +the notablest god we hear tell of is one of whom Grimm the German +Etymologist finds trace: the God _Wunsch_, or Wish. The God _Wish_; who +could give us all that we _wished_! Is not this the sincerest and yet +rudest voice of the spirit of man? The _rudest_ ideal that man ever +formed; which still shows itself in the latest forms of our spiritual +culture. Higher considerations have to teach us that the God _Wish_ is +not the true God. + +Of the other Gods or Jotuns I will mention only for etymology's sake, +that Sea-tempest is the Jotun _Aegir_, a very dangerous Jotun;--and now +to this day, on our river Trent, as I learn, the Nottingham bargemen, +when the River is in a certain flooded state (a kind of backwater, or +eddying swirl it has, very dangerous to them), call it Eager; they cry +out, "Have a care, there is the _Eager_ coming!" Curious; that word +surviving, like the peak of a submerged world! The _oldest_ Nottingham +bargemen had believed in the God Aegir. Indeed our English blood too in +good part is Danish, Norse; or rather, at bottom, Danish and Norse and +Saxon have no distinction, except a superficial one,--as of Heathen and +Christian, or the like. But all over our Island we are mingled largely +with Danes proper,--from the incessant invasions there were: and this, +of course, in a greater proportion along the east coast; and greatest of +all, as I find, in the North Country. From the Humber upwards, all over +Scotland, the Speech of the common people is still in a singular degree +Icelandic; its Germanism has still a peculiar Norse tinge. They too are +"Normans," Northmen,--if that be any great beauty--! + +Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by and by. Mark at present so +much; what the essence of Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is: +a recognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal +Agencies,--as Gods and Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the +infant Thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this +ever-stupendous Universe. To me there is in the Norse system something +very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so +very different from the light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism, +distinguishes this Scandinavian System. It is Thought; the genuine +Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about +them; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of the things,--the +first characteristic of all good Thought in all times. Not graceful +lightness, half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism; a certain homely +truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses +itself here. It is strange, after our beautiful Apollo statues and clear +smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse Gods "brewing ale" to +hold their feast with Aegir, the Sea-Jotun; sending out Thor to get +the caldron for them in the Jotun country; Thor, after many adventures, +clapping the Pot on his head, like a huge hat, and walking off with +it,--quite lost in it, the ears of the Pot reaching down to his heels! +A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward gianthood, characterizes that +Norse system; enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking +helpless with large uncertain strides. Consider only their primary +mythus of the Creation. The Gods, having got the Giant Ymer slain, a +Giant made by "warm wind," and much confused work, out of the conflict +of Frost and Fire,--determined on constructing a world with him. His +blood made the Sea; his flesh was the Land, the Rocks his bones; of +his eyebrows they formed Asgard their Gods'-dwelling; his skull was the +great blue vault of Immensity, and the brains of it became the Clouds. +What a Hyper-Brobdignagian business! Untamed Thought, great, giantlike, +enormous;--to be tamed in due time into the compact greatness, not +giantlike, but godlike and stronger than gianthood, of the Shakspeares, +the Goethes!--Spiritually as well as bodily these men are our +progenitors. + +I like, too, that representation they have of the tree Igdrasil. All +Life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of Existence, +has its roots deep down in the kingdoms of Hela or Death; its trunk +reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe: it +is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit +Three _Nornas_, Fates,--the Past, Present, Future; watering its +roots from the Sacred Well. Its "boughs," with their buddings +and disleafings?--events, things suffered, things done, +catastrophes,--stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf +of it a biography, every fibre there an act or word? Its boughs are +Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, +onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of Human Passion +rustling through it;--or storm tost, the storm-wind howling through it +like the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of Existence. +It is the past, the present, and the future; what was done, what is +doing, what will be done; "the infinite conjugation of the verb _To +do_." Considering how human things circulate, each inextricably in +communion with all,--how the word I speak to you to-day is borrowed, +not from Ulfila the Moesogoth only, but from all men since the first +man began to speak,--I find no similitude so true as this of a Tree. +Beautiful; altogether beautiful and great. The "_Machine_ of the +Universe,"--alas, do but think of that in contrast! + + +Well, it is strange enough this old Norse view of Nature; different +enough from what we believe of Nature. Whence it specially came, one +would not like to be compelled to say very minutely! One thing we may +say: It came from the thoughts of Norse men;--from the thought, above +all, of the _first_ Norse man who had an original power of thinking. The +First Norse "man of genius," as we should call him! Innumerable men had +passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the +very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, +such as men only feel;--till the great Thinker came, the _original_ man, +the Seer; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability +of all into Thought. It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual +Hero. What he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to +say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, +round his Thought; answering to it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the +dawning of day from night;--_is_ it not, indeed, the awakening for them +from no-being into being, from death into life? We still honor such a +man; call him Poet, Genius, and so forth: but to these wild men he was +a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them; a +Prophet, a God!--Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds +itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation +after generation,--till its full stature is reached, and _such_ System +of Thought can grow no farther; but must give place to another. + +For the Norse people, the Man now named Odin, and Chief Norse God, we +fancy, was such a man. A Teacher, and Captain of soul and of body; a +Hero, of worth immeasurable; admiration for whom, transcending the known +bounds, became adoration. Has he not the power of articulate Thinking; +and many other powers, as yet miraculous? So, with boundless gratitude, +would the rude Norse heart feel. Has he not solved for them the +sphinx-enigma of this Universe; given assurance to them of their own +destiny there? By him they know now what they have to do here, what to +look for hereafter. Existence has become articulate, melodious by him; +he first has made Life alive!--We may call this Odin, the origin of +Norse Mythology: Odin, or whatever name the First Norse Thinker bore +while he was a man among men. His view of the Universe once promulgated, +a like view starts into being in all minds; grows, keeps ever growing, +while it continues credible there. In all minds it lay written, but +invisibly, as in sympathetic ink; at his word it starts into visibility +in all. Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all +others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world--! + +One other thing we must not forget; it will explain, a little, the +confusion of these Norse Eddas. They are not one coherent System of +Thought; but properly the _summation_ of several successive systems. All +this of the old Norse Belief which is flung out for us, in one level of +distance in the Edda, like a picture painted on the same canvas, does +not at all stand so in the reality. It stands rather at all manner of +distances and depths, of successive generations since the Belief first +began. All Scandinavian thinkers, since the first of them, contributed +to that Scandinavian System of Thought; in ever-new elaboration and +addition, it is the combined work of them all. What history it had, +how it changed from shape to shape, by one thinker's contribution after +another, till it got to the full final shape we see it under in the +Edda, no man will now ever know: _its_ Councils of Trebizond, Councils +of Trent, Athanasiuses, Dantes, Luthers, are sunk without echo in the +dark night! Only that it had such a history we can all know. Wheresover +a thinker appeared, there in the thing he thought of was a contribution, +accession, a change or revolution made. Alas, the grandest "revolution" +of all, the one made by the man Odin himself, is not this too sunk for +us like the rest! Of Odin what history? Strange rather to reflect that +he _had_ a history! That this Odin, in his wild Norse vesture, with his +wild beard and eyes, his rude Norse speech and ways, was a man like us; +with our sorrows, joys, with our limbs, features;--intrinsically all one +as we: and did such a work! But the work, much of it, has perished; the +worker, all to the name. "_Wednesday_," men will say to-morrow; Odin's +day! Of Odin there exists no history; no document of it; no guess about +it worth repeating. + +Snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in a brief business style, +writes down, in his _Heimskringla_, how Odin was a heroic Prince, in the +Black-Sea region, with Twelve Peers, and a great people straitened for +room. How he led these _Asen_ (Asiatics) of his out of Asia; settled +them in the North parts of Europe, by warlike conquest; invented +Letters, Poetry and so forth,--and came by and by to be worshipped as +Chief God by these Scandinavians, his Twelve Peers made into Twelve +Sons of his own, Gods like himself: Snorro has no doubt of this. Saxo +Grammaticus, a very curious Northman of that same century, is still +more unhesitating; scruples not to find out a historical fact in every +individual mythus, and writes it down as a terrestrial event in Denmark +or elsewhere. Torfaeus, learned and cautious, some centuries later, +assigns by calculation a _date_ for it: Odin, he says, came into Europe +about the Year 70 before Christ. Of all which, as grounded on mere +uncertainties, found to be untenable now, I need say nothing. Far, +very far beyond the Year 70! Odin's date, adventures, whole terrestrial +history, figure and environment are sunk from us forever into unknown +thousands of years. + +Nay Grimm, the German Antiquary, goes so far as to deny that any man +Odin ever existed. He proves it by etymology. The word _Wuotan_, which +is the original form of _Odin_, a word spread, as name of their chief +Divinity, over all the Teutonic Nations everywhere; this word, which +connects itself, according to Grimm, with the Latin _vadere_, with +the English _wade_ and such like,--means primarily Movement, Source of +Movement, Power; and is the fit name of the highest god, not of any man. +The word signifies Divinity, he says, among the old Saxon, German and +all Teutonic Nations; the adjectives formed from it all signify divine, +supreme, or something pertaining to the chief god. Like enough! We must +bow to Grimm in matters etymological. Let us consider it fixed that +_Wuotan_ means _Wading_, force of _Movement_. And now still, what +hinders it from being the name of a Heroic Man and _Mover_, as well as +of a god? As for the adjectives, and words formed from it,--did not the +Spaniards in their universal admiration for Lope, get into the habit of +saying "a Lope flower," "a Lope _dama_," if the flower or woman were of +surpassing beauty? Had this lasted, _Lope_ would have grown, in Spain, +to be an adjective signifying _godlike_ also. Indeed, Adam Smith, in his +Essay on Language, surmises that all adjectives whatsoever were formed +precisely in that way: some very green thing, chiefly notable for its +greenness, got the appellative name _Green_, and then the next thing +remarkable for that quality, a tree for instance, was named the _green_ +tree,--as we still say "the _steam_ coach," "four-horse coach," or the +like. All primary adjectives, according to Smith, were formed in this +way; were at first substantives and things. We cannot annihilate a man +for etymologies like that! Surely there was a First Teacher and Captain; +surely there must have been an Odin, palpable to the sense at one time; +no adjective, but a real Hero of flesh and blood! The voice of all +tradition, history or echo of history, agrees with all that thought will +teach one about it, to assure us of this. + +How the man Odin came to be considered a _god_, the chief god?--that +surely is a question which nobody would wish to dogmatize upon. I have +said, his people knew no _limits_ to their admiration of him; they +had as yet no scale to measure admiration by. Fancy your own generous +heart's-love of some greatest man expanding till it _transcended_ all +bounds, till it filled and overflowed the whole field of your thought! +Or what if this man Odin,--since a great deep soul, with the afflatus +and mysterious tide of vision and impulse rushing on him he knows +not whence, is ever an enigma, a kind of terror and wonder to +himself,--should have felt that perhaps _he_ was divine; that _he_ +was some effluence of the "Wuotan," "_Movement_", Supreme Power +and Divinity, of whom to his rapt vision all Nature was the awful +Flame-image; that some effluence of Wuotan dwelt here in him! He was not +necessarily false; he was but mistaken, speaking the truest he knew. A +great soul, any sincere soul, knows not what he is,--alternates between +the highest height and the lowest depth; can, of all things, the least +measure--Himself! What others take him for, and what he guesses that he +may be; these two items strangely act on one another, help to determine +one another. With all men reverently admiring him; with his own wild +soul full of noble ardors and affections, of whirlwind chaotic darkness +and glorious new light; a divine Universe bursting all into godlike +beauty round him, and no man to whom the like ever had befallen, what +could he think himself to be? "Wuotan?" All men answered, "Wuotan!"-- + +And then consider what mere Time will do in such cases; how if a man +was great while living, he becomes tenfold greater when dead. What an +enormous _camera-obscura_ magnifier is Tradition! How a thing grows in +the human Memory, in the human Imagination, when love, worship and +all that lies in the human Heart, is there to encourage it. And in the +darkness, in the entire ignorance; without date or document, no book, no +Arundel-marble; only here and there some dumb monumental cairn. Why, +in thirty or forty years, were there no books, any great man would grow +_mythic_, the contemporaries who had seen him, being once all dead. +And in three hundred years, and in three thousand years--! To attempt +_theorizing_ on such matters would profit little: they are matters which +refuse to be _theoremed_ and diagramed; which Logic ought to know that +she _cannot_ speak of. Enough for us to discern, far in the uttermost +distance, some gleam as of a small real light shining in the centre of +that enormous camera-obscure image; to discern that the centre of it all +was not a madness and nothing, but a sanity and something. + +This light, kindled in the great dark vortex of the Norse Mind, dark but +living, waiting only for light; this is to me the centre of the whole. +How such light will then shine out, and with wondrous thousand-fold +expansion spread itself, in forms and colors, depends not on _it_, so +much as on the National Mind recipient of it. The colors and forms +of your light will be those of the _cut-glass_ it has to shine +through.--Curious to think how, for every man, any the truest fact is +modelled by the nature of the man! I said, The earnest man, speaking to +his brother men, must always have stated what seemed to him a _fact_, a +real Appearance of Nature. But the way in which such Appearance or +fact shaped itself,--what sort of _fact_ it became for him,--was and +is modified by his own laws of thinking; deep, subtle, but universal, +ever-operating laws. The world of Nature, for every man, is the Fantasy +of Himself. This world is the multiplex "Image of his own Dream." Who +knows to what unnamable subtleties of spiritual law all these Pagan +Fables owe their shape! The number Twelve, divisiblest of all, which +could be halved, quartered, parted into three, into six, the most +remarkable number,--this was enough to determine the _Signs of the +Zodiac_, the number of Odin's _Sons_, and innumerable other Twelves. Any +vague rumor of number had a tendency to settle itself into Twelve. So +with regard to every other matter. And quite unconsciously too,--with no +notion of building up "Allegories "! But the fresh clear glance of those +First Ages would be prompt in discerning the secret relations of things, +and wholly open to obey these. Schiller finds in the _Cestus of +Venus_ an everlasting aesthetic truth as to the nature of all Beauty; +curious:--but he is careful not to insinuate that the old Greek Mythists +had any notion of lecturing about the "Philosophy of Criticism"!--On the +whole, we must leave those boundless regions. Cannot we conceive that +Odin was a reality? Error indeed, error enough: but sheer falsehood, +idle fables, allegory aforethought,--we will not believe that our +Fathers believed in these. + + +Odin's _Runes_ are a significant feature of him. Runes, and the miracles +of "magic" he worked by them, make a great feature in tradition. Runes +are the Scandinavian Alphabet; suppose Odin to have been the inventor +of Letters, as well as "magic," among that people! It is the greatest +invention man has ever made! this of marking down the unseen thought +that is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second speech, +almost as miraculous as the first. You remember the astonishment and +incredulity of Atahualpa the Peruvian King; how he made the Spanish +Soldier who was guarding him scratch _Dios_ on his thumb-nail, that he +might try the next soldier with it, to ascertain whether such a miracle +was possible. If Odin brought Letters among his people, he might work +magic enough! + +Writing by Runes has some air of being original among the Norsemen: not +a Phoenician Alphabet, but a native Scandinavian one. Snorro tells us +farther that Odin invented Poetry; the music of human speech, as well as +that miraculous runic marking of it. Transport yourselves into the early +childhood of nations; the first beautiful morning-light of our Europe, +when all yet lay in fresh young radiance as of a great sunrise, and +our Europe was first beginning to think, to be! Wonder, hope; infinite +radiance of hope and wonder, as of a young child's thoughts, in the +hearts of these strong men! Strong sons of Nature; and here was not only +a wild Captain and Fighter; discerning with his wild flashing eyes what +to do, with his wild lion-heart daring and doing it; but a Poet too, all +that we mean by a Poet, Prophet, great devout Thinker and Inventor,--as +the truly Great Man ever is. A Hero is a Hero at all points; in the soul +and thought of him first of all. This Odin, in his rude semi-articulate +way, had a word to speak. A great heart laid open to take in this great +Universe, and man's Life here, and utter a great word about it. A Hero, +as I say, in his own rude manner; a wise, gifted, noble-hearted man. And +now, if we still admire such a man beyond all others, what must these +wild Norse souls, first awakened into thinking, have made of him! To +them, as yet without names for it, he was noble and noblest; Hero, +Prophet, God; _Wuotan_, the greatest of all. Thought is Thought, however +it speak or spell itself. Intrinsically, I conjecture, this Odin must +have been of the same sort of stuff as the greatest kind of men. A great +thought in the wild deep heart of him! The rough words he articulated, +are they not the rudimental roots of those English words we still use? +He worked so, in that obscure element. But he was as a _light_ kindled +in it; a light of Intellect, rude Nobleness of heart, the only kind of +lights we have yet; a Hero, as I say: and he had to shine there, and +make his obscure element a little lighter,--as is still the task of us +all. + +We will fancy him to be the Type Norseman; the finest Teuton whom that +race had yet produced. The rude Norse heart burst up into _boundless_ +admiration round him; into adoration. He is as a root of so many great +things; the fruit of him is found growing from deep thousands of years, +over the whole field of Teutonic Life. Our own Wednesday, as I said, is +it not still Odin's Day? Wednesbury, Wansborough, Wanstead, Wandsworth: +Odin grew into England too, these are still leaves from that root! +He was the Chief God to all the Teutonic Peoples; their Pattern +Norseman;--in such way did _they_ admire their Pattern Norseman; that +was the fortune he had in the world. + +Thus if the man Odin himself have vanished utterly, there is this huge +Shadow of him which still projects itself over the whole History of his +People. For this Odin once admitted to be God, we can understand well +that the whole Scandinavian Scheme of Nature, or dim No-scheme, whatever +it might before have been, would now begin to develop itself altogether +differently, and grow thenceforth in a new manner. What this Odin saw +into, and taught with his runes and his rhymes, the whole Teutonic +People laid to heart and carried forward. His way of thought became +their way of thought:--such, under new conditions, is the history of +every great thinker still. In gigantic confused lineaments, like some +enormous camera-obscure shadow thrown upwards from the dead deeps of the +Past, and covering the whole Northern Heaven, is not that Scandinavian +Mythology in some sort the Portraiture of this man Odin? The gigantic +image of _his_ natural face, legible or not legible there, expanded and +confused in that manner! Ah, Thought, I say, is always Thought. No great +man lives in vain. The History of the world is but the Biography of +great men. + +To me there is something very touching in this primeval figure of +Heroism; in such artless, helpless, but hearty entire reception of a +Hero by his fellow-men. Never so helpless in shape, it is the noblest of +feelings, and a feeling in some shape or other perennial as man himself. +If I could show in any measure, what I feel deeply for a long time now, +That it is the vital element of manhood, the soul of man's history here +in our world,--it would be the chief use of this discoursing at present. +We do not now call our great men Gods, nor admire _without_ limit; ah +no, _with_ limit enough! But if we have no great men, or do not admire +at all,--that were a still worse case. + +This poor Scandinavian Hero-worship, that whole Norse way of looking at +the Universe, and adjusting oneself there, has an indestructible merit +for us. A rude childlike way of recognizing the divineness of Nature, +the divineness of Man; most rude, yet heartfelt, robust, giantlike; +betokening what a giant of a man this child would yet grow to!--It was +a truth, and is none. Is it not as the half-dumb stifled voice of the +long-buried generations of our own Fathers, calling out of the depths of +ages to us, in whose veins their blood still runs: "This then, this is +what we made of the world: this is all the image and notion we could +form to ourselves of this great mystery of a Life and Universe. Despise +it not. You are raised high above it, to large free scope of vision; but +you too are not yet at the top. No, your notion too, so much enlarged, +is but a partial, imperfect one; that matter is a thing no man will +ever, in time or out of time, comprehend; after thousands of years of +ever-new expansion, man will find himself but struggling to comprehend +again a part of it: the thing is larger shall man, not to be +comprehended by him; an Infinite thing!" + + +The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan Mythologies, we +found to be recognition of the divineness of Nature; sincere communion +of man with the mysterious invisible Powers visibly seen at work in +the world round him. This, I should say, is more sincerely done in +the Scandinavian than in any Mythology I know. Sincerity is the great +characteristic of it. Superior sincerity (far superior) consoles us for +the total want of old Grecian grace. Sincerity, I think, is better than +grace. I feel that these old Northmen wore looking into Nature with open +eye and soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with +a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, +admiring, unfearing way. A right valiant, true old race of men. Such +recognition of Nature one finds to be the chief element of Paganism; +recognition of Man, and his Moral Duty, though this too is not wanting, +comes to be the chief element only in purer forms of religion. Here, +indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; a great +landmark in the religious development of Mankind. Man first puts himself +in relation with Nature and her Powers, wonders and worships over those; +not till a later epoch does he discern that all Power is Moral, that the +grand point is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, of _Thou shalt_ +and _Thou shalt not_. + +With regard to all these fabulous delineations in the _Edda_, I will +remark, moreover, as indeed was already hinted, that most probably they +must have been of much newer date; most probably, even from the first, +were comparatively idle for the old Norsemen, and as it were a kind of +Poetic sport. Allegory and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, cannot +be religious Faith; the Faith itself must first be there, then Allegory +enough will gather round it, as the fit body round its soul. The Norse +Faith, I can well suppose, like other Faiths, was most active while +it lay mainly in the silent state, and had not yet much to say about +itself, still less to sing. + +Among those shadowy _Edda_ matters, amid all that fantastic congeries +of assertions, and traditions, in their musical Mythologies, the main +practical belief a man could have was probably not much more than this: +of the _Valkyrs_ and the _Hall of Odin_; of an inflexible _Destiny_; and +that the one thing needful for a man was _to be brave_. The _Valkyrs_ +are Choosers of the Slain: a Destiny inexorable, which it is useless +trying to bend or soften, has appointed who is to be slain; this was +a fundamental point for the Norse believer;--as indeed it is for all +earnest men everywhere, for a Mahomet, a Luther, for a Napoleon too. It +lies at the basis this for every such man; it is the woof out of which +his whole system of thought is woven. The _Valkyrs_; and then that these +_Choosers_ lead the brave to a heavenly _Hall of Odin_; only the base +and slavish being thrust elsewhither, into the realms of Hela the +Death-goddess: I take this to have been the soul of the whole Norse +Belief. They understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be +brave; that Odin would have no favor for them, but despise and thrust +them out, if they were not brave. Consider too whether there is not +something in this! It is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as in +that, the duty of being brave. _Valor_ is still _value_. The first duty +for a man is still that of subduing _Fear_. We must get rid of Fear; +we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are slavish, not true but +specious; his very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and +coward, till he have got Fear under his feet. Odin's creed, if we +disentangle the real kernel of it, is true to this hour. A man shall +and must be valiant; he must march forward, and quit himself like a +man,--trusting imperturbably in the appointment and _choice_ of the +upper Powers; and, on the whole, not fear at all. Now and always, the +completeness of his victory over Fear will determine how much of a man +he is. + +It is doubtless very savage that kind of valor of the old Northmen. +Snorro tells us they thought it a shame and misery not to die in battle; +and if natural death seemed to be coming on, they would cut wounds in +their flesh, that Odin might receive them as warriors slain. Old kings, +about to die, had their body laid into a ship; the ship sent forth, +with sails set and slow fire burning it; that, once out at sea, it might +blaze up in flame, and in such manner bury worthily the old hero, at +once in the sky and in the ocean! Wild bloody valor; yet valor of +its kind; better, I say, than none. In the old Sea-kings too, what an +indomitable rugged energy! Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, +unconscious that they were specially brave; defying the wild ocean with +its monsters, and all men and things;--progenitors of our own Blakes +and Nelsons! No Homer sang these Norse Sea-kings; but Agamemnon's was +a small audacity, and of small fruit in the world, to some of them;--to +Hrolf's of Normandy, for instance! Hrolf, or Rollo Duke of Normandy, the +wild Sea-king, has a share in governing England at this hour. + +Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea-roving and battling, +through so many generations. It needed to be ascertained which was +the _strongest_ kind of men; who were to be ruler over whom. Among the +Northland Sovereigns, too, I find some who got the title _Wood-cutter_; +Forest-felling Kings. Much lies in that. I suppose at bottom many of +them were forest-fellers as well as fighters, though the Skalds talk +mainly of the latter,--misleading certain critics not a little; for no +nation of men could ever live by fighting alone; there could not produce +enough come out of that! I suppose the right good fighter was oftenest +also the right good forest-feller,--the right good improver, discerner, +doer and worker in every kind; for true valor, different enough from +ferocity, is the basis of all. A more legitimate kind of valor that; +showing itself against the untamed Forests and dark brute Powers of +Nature, to conquer Nature for us. In the same direction have not we +their descendants since carried it far? May such valor last forever with +us! + +That the man Odin, speaking with a Hero's voice and heart, as with an +impressiveness out of Heaven, told his People the infinite importance +of Valor, how man thereby became a god; and that his People, feeling a +response to it in their own hearts, believed this message of his, and +thought it a message out of Heaven, and him a Divinity for telling it +them: this seems to me the primary seed-grain of the Norse Religion, +from which all manner of mythologies, symbolic practices, speculations, +allegories, songs and sagas would naturally grow. Grow,--how strangely! +I called it a small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex of +Norse darkness. Yet the darkness itself was _alive_; consider that. It +was the eager inarticulate uninstructed Mind of the whole Norse People, +longing only to become articulate, to go on articulating ever farther! +The living doctrine grows, grows;--like a Banyan-tree; the first _seed_ +is the essential thing: any branch strikes itself down into the earth, +becomes a new root; and so, in endless complexity, we have a whole wood, +a whole jungle, one seed the parent of it all. Was not the whole Norse +Religion, accordingly, in some sense, what we called "the enormous +shadow of this man's likeness"? Critics trace some affinity in some +Norse mythuses, of the Creation and such like, with those of the +Hindoos. The Cow Adumbla, "licking the rime from the rocks," has a +kind of Hindoo look. A Hindoo Cow, transported into frosty countries. +Probably enough; indeed we may say undoubtedly, these things will have +a kindred with the remotest lands, with the earliest times. Thought does +not die, but only is changed. The first man that began to think in this +Planet of ours, he was the beginner of all. And then the second man, and +the third man;--nay, every true Thinker to this hour is a kind of Odin, +teaches men _his_ way of thought, spreads a shadow of his own likeness +over sections of the History of the World. + + +Of the distinctive poetic character or merit of this Norse Mythology +I have not room to speak; nor does it concern us much. Some wild +Prophecies we have, as the _Voluspa_ in the _Elder Edda_; of a rapt, +earnest, sibylline sort. But they were comparatively an idle adjunct of +the matter, men who as it were but toyed with the matter, these +later Skalds; and it is _their_ songs chiefly that survive. In later +centuries, I suppose, they would go on singing, poetically symbolizing, +as our modern Painters paint, when it was no longer from the innermost +heart, or not from the heart at all. This is everywhere to be well kept +in mind. + +Gray's fragments of Norse Lore, at any rate, will give one no notion +of it;--any more than Pope will of Homer. It is no square-built gloomy +palace of black ashlar marble, shrouded in awe and horror, as Gray gives +it us: no; rough as the North rocks, as the Iceland deserts, it is; with +a heartiness, homeliness, even a tint of good humor and robust mirth in +the middle of these fearful things. The strong old Norse heart did not +go upon theatrical sublimities; they had not time to tremble. I like +much their robust simplicity; their veracity, directness of conception. +Thor "draws down his brows" in a veritable Norse rage; "grasps his +hammer till the _knuckles grow white_." Beautiful traits of pity too, an +honest pity. Balder "the white God" dies; the beautiful, benignant; he +is the Sungod. They try all Nature for a remedy; but he is dead. Frigga, +his mother, sends Hermoder to seek or see him: nine days and nine nights +he rides through gloomy deep valleys, a labyrinth of gloom; arrives at +the Bridge with its gold roof: the Keeper says, "Yes, Balder did pass +here; but the Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, far towards the +North." Hermoder rides on; leaps Hell-gate, Hela's gate; does see +Balder, and speak with him: Balder cannot be delivered. Inexorable! Hela +will not, for Odin or any God, give him up. The beautiful and gentle has +to remain there. His Wife had volunteered to go with him, to die with +him. They shall forever remain there. He sends his ring to Odin; Nanna +his wife sends her _thimble_ to Frigga, as a remembrance.--Ah me--! + +For indeed Valor is the fountain of Pity too;--of Truth, and all that +is great and good in man. The robust homely vigor of the Norse heart +attaches one much, in these delineations. Is it not a trait of right +honest strength, says Uhland, who has written a fine _Essay_ on Thor, +that the old Norse heart finds its friend in the Thunder-god? That it +is not frightened away by his thunder; but finds that Summer-heat, the +beautiful noble summer, must and will have thunder withal! The Norse +heart _loves_ this Thor and his hammer-bolt; sports with him. Thor is +Summer-heat: the god of Peaceable Industry as well as Thunder. He is the +Peasant's friend; his true henchman and attendant is Thialfi, _Manual +Labor_. Thor himself engages in all manner of rough manual work, scorns +no business for its plebeianism; is ever and anon travelling to the +country of the Jotuns, harrying those chaotic Frost-monsters, subduing +them, at least straitening and damaging them. There is a great broad +humor in some of these things. + +Thor, as we saw above, goes to Jotun-land, to seek Hymir's Caldron, that +the Gods may brew beer. Hymir the huge Giant enters, his gray beard +all full of hoar-frost; splits pillars with the very glance of his eye; +Thor, after much rough tumult, snatches the Pot, claps it on his head; +the "handles of it reach down to his heels." The Norse Skald has a kind +of loving sport with Thor. This is the Hymir whose cattle, the +critics have discovered, are Icebergs. Huge untutored Brobdignag +genius,--needing only to be tamed down; into Shakspeares, Dantes, +Goethes! It is all gone now, that old Norse work,--Thor the Thunder-god +changed into Jack the Giant-killer: but the mind that made it is here +yet. How strangely things grow, and die, and do not die! There are twigs +of that great world-tree of Norse Belief still curiously traceable. This +poor Jack of the Nursery, with his miraculous shoes of swiftness, coat +of darkness, sword of sharpness, he is one. _Hynde Etin_, and still more +decisively _Red Etin of Ireland_, _in_ the Scottish Ballads, these +are both derived from Norseland; _Etin_ is evidently a _Jotun_. Nay, +Shakspeare's _Hamlet_ is a twig too of this same world-tree; there seems +no doubt of that. Hamlet, _Amleth_ I find, is really a mythic personage; +and his Tragedy, of the poisoned Father, poisoned asleep by drops in his +ear, and the rest, is a Norse mythus! Old Saxo, as his wont was, made it +a Danish history; Shakspeare, out of Saxo, made it what we see. That +is a twig of the world-tree that has _grown_, I think;--by nature or +accident that one has grown! + +In fact, these old Norse songs have a _truth_ in them, an inward +perennial truth and greatness,--as, indeed, all must have that can very +long preserve itself by tradition alone. It is a greatness not of mere +body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime +uncomplaining melancholy traceable in these old hearts. A great free +glance into the very deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these +brave old Northmen, what Meditation has taught all men in all ages, That +this world is after all but a show,--a phenomenon or appearance, no real +thing. All deep souls see into that,--the Hindoo Mythologist, the German +Philosopher,--the Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker, wherever he may be: + + "We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!" + +One of Thor's expeditions, to Utgard (the _Outer_ Garden, central seat +of Jotun-land), is remarkable in this respect. Thialfi was with him, and +Loke. After various adventures, they entered upon Giant-land; wandered +over plains, wild uncultivated places, among stones and trees. At +nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed formed +one whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple +habitation; one large hall, altogether empty. They stayed there. +Suddenly in the dead of the night loud noises alarmed them. Thor grasped +his hammer; stood in the door, prepared for fight. His companions within +ran hither and thither in their terror, seeking some outlet in that rude +hall; they found a little closet at last, and took refuge there. Neither +had Thor any battle: for, lo, in the morning it turned out that the +noise had been only the _snoring_ of a certain enormous but peaceable +Giant, the Giant Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by; and this +that they took for a house was merely his _Glove_, thrown aside there; +the door was the Glove-wrist; the little closet they had fled into was +the Thumb! Such a glove;--I remark too that it had not fingers as ours +have, but only a thumb, and the rest undivided: a most ancient, rustic +glove! + +Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; Thor, however, had his +own suspicions, did not like the ways of Skrymir; determined at night to +put an end to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, he struck down into +the Giant's face a right thunder-bolt blow, of force to rend rocks. The +Giant merely awoke; rubbed his cheek, and said, Did a leaf fall? Again +Thor struck, so soon as Skrymir again slept; a better blow than before; +but the Giant only murmured, Was that a grain of sand? Thor's third +stroke was with both his hands (the "knuckles white" I suppose), and +seemed to dint deep into Skrymir's visage; but he merely checked his +snore, and remarked, There must be sparrows roosting in this tree, I +think; what is that they have dropt?--At the gate of Utgard, a place so +high that you had to "strain your neck bending back to see the top +of it," Skrymir went his ways. Thor and his companions were admitted; +invited to take share in the games going on. To Thor, for his part, they +handed a Drinking-horn; it was a common feat, they told him, to drink +this dry at one draught. Long and fiercely, three times over, Thor +drank; but made hardly any impression. He was a weak child, they told +him: could he lift that Cat he saw there? Small as the feat seemed, Thor +with his whole godlike strength could not; he bent up the creature's +back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise +one foot. Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people; there is an Old +Woman that will wrestle you! Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this haggard +Old Woman; but could not throw her. + +And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jotun, escorting them +politely a little way, said to Thor: "You are beaten then:--yet be not +so much ashamed; there was deception of appearance in it. That Horn you +tried to drink was the _Sea_; you did make it ebb; but who could drink +that, the bottomless! The Cat you would have lifted,--why, that is the +_Midgard-snake_, the Great World-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds +and keeps up the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world +must have rushed to ruin! As for the Old Woman, she was _Time_, Old Age, +Duration: with her what can wrestle? No man nor no god with her; gods +or men, she prevails over all! And then those three strokes you +struck,--look at these _three valleys_; your three strokes made these!" +Thor looked at his attendant Jotun: it was Skrymir;--it was, say Norse +critics, the old chaotic rocky _Earth_ in person, and that glove-_house_ +was some Earth-cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its +sky-high gates, when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to +air; only the Giant's voice was heard mocking: "Better come no more to +Jotunheim!"-- + +This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the +prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there not real antique +Norse gold in it? More true metal, rough from the Mimer-stithy, than in +many a famed Greek Mythus _shaped_ far better! A great broad Brobdignag +grin of true humor is in this Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and +sadness, as the rainbow on black tempest: only a right valiant heart is +capable of that. It is the grim humor of our own Ben Jonson, rare old +Ben; runs in the blood of us, I fancy; for one catches tones of it, +under a still other shape, out of the American Backwoods. + +That is also a very striking conception that of the _Ragnarok_, +Consummation, or _Twilight of the Gods_. It is in the _Voluspa_ Song; +seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. The Gods and Jotuns, the divine +Powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial +victory by the former, meet at last in universal world-embracing +wrestle and duel; World-serpent against Thor, strength against strength; +mutually extinctive; and ruin, "twilight" sinking into darkness, +swallows the created Universe. The old Universe with its Gods is sunk; +but it is not final death: there is to be a new Heaven and a new Earth; +a higher supreme God, and Justice to reign among men. Curious: this law +of mutation, which also is a law written in man's inmost thought, had +been deciphered by these old earnest Thinkers in their rude style; and +how, though all dies, and even gods die, yet all death is but a phoenix +fire-death, and new-birth into the Greater and the Better! It is the +fundamental Law of Being for a creature made of Time, living in this +Place of Hope. All earnest men have seen into it; may still see into it. + +And now, connected with this, let us glance at the _last_ mythus of the +appearance of Thor; and end there. I fancy it to be the latest in +date of all these fables; a sorrowing protest against the advance of +Christianity,--set forth reproachfully by some Conservative Pagan. +King Olaf has been harshly blamed for his over-zeal in introducing +Christianity; surely I should have blamed him far more for an under-zeal +in that! He paid dear enough for it; he died by the revolt of his +Pagan people, in battle, in the year 1033, at Stickelstad, near that +Drontheim, where the chief Cathedral of the North has now stood for +many centuries, dedicated gratefully to his memory as _Saint_ Olaf. The +mythus about Thor is to this effect. King Olaf, the Christian Reform +King, is sailing with fit escort along the shore of Norway, from haven +to haven; dispensing justice, or doing other royal work: on leaving a +certain haven, it is found that a stranger, of grave eyes and aspect, +red beard, of stately robust figure, has stept in. The courtiers address +him; his answers surprise by their pertinency and depth: at length he +is brought to the King. The stranger's conversation here is not less +remarkable, as they sail along the beautiful shore; but after some time, +he addresses King Olaf thus: "Yes, King Olaf, it is all beautiful, with +the sun shining on it there; green, fruitful, a right fair home for you; +and many a sore day had Thor, many a wild fight with the rock Jotuns, +before he could make it so. And now you seem minded to put away Thor. +King Olaf, have a care!" said the stranger, drawing down his brows;--and +when they looked again, he was nowhere to be found.--This is the last +appearance of Thor on the stage of this world! + +Do we not see well enough how the Fable might arise, without unveracity +on the part of any one? It is the way most Gods have come to appear +among men: thus, if in Pindar's time "Neptune was seen once at the +Nemean Games," what was this Neptune too but a "stranger of noble grave +aspect,"--fit to be "seen"! There is something pathetic, tragic for me +in this last voice of Paganism. Thor is vanished, the whole Norse world +has vanished; and will not return ever again. In like fashion to that, +pass away the highest things. All things that have been in this world, +all things that are or will be in it, have to vanish: we have our sad +farewell to give them. + +That Norse Religion, a rude but earnest, sternly impressive +_Consecration of Valor_ (so we may define it), sufficed for these old +valiant Northmen. Consecration of Valor is not a bad thing! We will take +it for good, so far as it goes. Neither is there no use in _knowing_ +something about this old Paganism of our Fathers. Unconsciously, and +combined with higher things, it is in us yet, that old Faith withal! To +know it consciously, brings us into closer and clearer relation with the +Past,--with our own possessions in the Past. For the whole Past, as I +keep repeating, is the possession of the Present; the Past had always +something _true_, and is a precious possession. In a different time, in +a different place, it is always some other _side_ of our common Human +Nature that has been developing itself. The actual True is the sum +of all these; not any one of them by itself constitutes what of Human +Nature is hitherto developed. Better to know them all than misknow them. +"To which of these Three Religions do you specially adhere?" inquires +Meister of his Teacher. "To all the Three!" answers the other: "To all +the Three; for they by their union first constitute the True Religion." + + + + + +LECTURE II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM. + +[May 8, 1840.] + +From the first rude times of Paganism among the Scandinavians in the +North, we advance to a very different epoch of religion, among a very +different people: Mahometanism among the Arabs. A great change; what a +change and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and +thoughts of men! + +The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his fellowmen; but as one +God-inspired, as a Prophet. It is the second phasis of Hero-worship: +the first or oldest, we may say, has passed away without return; in the +history of the world there will not again be any man, never so great, +whom his fellowmen will take for a god. Nay we might rationally ask, +Did any set of human beings ever really think the man they _saw_ there +standing beside them a god, the maker of this world? Perhaps not: it was +usually some man they remembered, or _had_ seen. But neither can this +any more be. The Great Man is not recognized henceforth as a god any +more. + +It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great Man a god. Yet let +us say that it is at all times difficult to know _what_ he is, or how +to account of him and receive him! The most significant feature in the +history of an epoch is the manner it has of welcoming a Great Man. Ever, +to the true instincts of men, there is something godlike in him. Whether +they shall take him to be a god, to be a prophet, or what they shall +take him to be? that is ever a grand question; by their way of answering +that, we shall see, as through a little window, into the very heart +of these men's spiritual condition. For at bottom the Great Man, as he +comes from the hand of Nature, is ever the same kind of thing: Odin, +Luther, Johnson, Burns; I hope to make it appear that these are all +originally of one stuff; that only by the world's reception of them, and +the shapes they assume, are they so immeasurably diverse. The worship +of Odin astonishes us,--to fall prostrate before the Great Man, into +_deliquium_ of love and wonder over him, and feel in their hearts that +he was a denizen of the skies, a god! This was imperfect enough: but +to welcome, for example, a Burns as we did, was that what we can call +perfect? The most precious gift that Heaven can give to the Earth; a man +of "genius" as we call it; the Soul of a Man actually sent down from +the skies with a God's-message to us,--this we waste away as an idle +artificial firework, sent to amuse us a little, and sink it into ashes, +wreck and ineffectuality: _such_ reception of a Great Man I do not +call very perfect either! Looking into the heart of the thing, one may +perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier phenomenon, betokening still +sadder imperfections in mankind's ways, than the Scandinavian +method itself! To fall into mere unreasoning _deliquium_ of love +and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational +supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!--It is a thing +forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult +to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the +age, one may say, is to do it well. + +We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one +we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; +but I do esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our +becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I +justly can. It is the way to get at his secret: let us try to understand +what _he_ meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him, +will then be a more answerable question. Our current hypothesis about +Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that +his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be +now untenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped +round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only. When Pococke inquired +of Grotius, Where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to +pick peas from Mahomet's ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? +Grotius answered that there was no proof! It is really time to dismiss +all that. The word this man spoke has been the life-guidance now of a +hundred and eighty millions of men these twelve hundred years. These +hundred and eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater +number of God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour, than +in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable +piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the +Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, cannot form any such +supposition. I will believe most things sooner than that. One would be +entirely at a loss what to think of this world at all, if quackery so +grew and were sanctioned here. + +Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge +of anything in God's true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! +They are the product of an Age of Scepticism: they indicate the saddest +spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more +godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false +man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If +he do not know and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt clay and +what else be works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. +It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred and eighty +millions; it will fall straightway. A man must conform himself to +Nature's laws, _be_ verily in communion with Nature and the truth of +things, or Nature will answer him, No, not at all! Speciosities +are specious--ah me!--a Cagliostro, many Cagliostros, prominent +world-leaders, do prosper by their quackery, for a day. It is like a +forged bank-note; they get it passed out of _their_ worthless hands: +others, not they, have to smart for it. Nature bursts up in fire-flames, +French Revolutions and such like, proclaiming with terrible veracity +that forged notes are forged. + +But of a Great Man especially, of him I will venture to assert that it +is incredible he should have been other than true. It seems to me the +primary foundation of him, and of all that can lie in him, this. No +Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but +is first of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I +should say _sincerity_, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first +characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that +calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a very poor matter indeed;--a +shallow braggart conscious sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. +The Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not +conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity; for +what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day? No, the +Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does +not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does +not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great Fact +of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the +awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made; he is great by +that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life, real as Death, +is this Universe to him. Though all men should forget its truth, and +walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image glares +in upon him; undeniable, there, there!--I wish you to take this as my +primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it +is competent to all men that God has made: but a Great Man cannot be +without it. + +Such a man is what we call an _original_ man; he comes to us at +first-hand. A messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown with tidings +to us. We may call him Poet, Prophet, God;--in one way or other, we all +feel that the words he utters are as no other man's words. Direct from +the Inner Fact of things;--he lives, and has to live, in daily communion +with that. Hearsays cannot hide it from him; he is blind, homeless, +miserable, following hearsays; _it_ glares in upon him. Really his +utterances, are they not a kind of "revelation;"--what we must call such +for want of some other name? It is from the heart of the world that he +comes; he is portion of the primal reality of things. God has made many +revelations: but this man too, has not God made him, the latest +and newest of all? The "inspiration of the Almighty giveth him +understanding:" we must listen before all to him. + + +This Mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider as an Inanity and +Theatricality, a poor conscious ambitious schemer; we cannot conceive +him so. The rude message he delivered was a real one withal; an earnest +confused voice from the unknown Deep. The man's words were not false, +nor his workings here below; no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery mass +of Life cast up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To _kindle_ +the world; the world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither can the faults, +imperfections, insincerities even, of Mahomet, if such were never so +well proved against him, shake this primary fact about him. + +On the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of the business +hide the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should +say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one +would think, might know better. Who is called there "the man according +to God's own heart"? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins +enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the +unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God's heart? +The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, +what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the +remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, +be forgotten? "It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." Of +all acts, is not, for a man, _repentance_ the most divine? The deadliest +sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin;--that +is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility +and fact; is dead: it is "pure" as dead dry sand is pure. David's life +and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be +the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here +below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle +of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. Struggle often +baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never +ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun +anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: +"a succession of falls"? Man can do no other. In this wild element of +a Life, he has to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep-abased; and ever, +with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, +struggle again still onwards. That his struggle _be_ a faithful +unconquerable one: that is the question of questions. We will put +up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by +themselves will never teach us what it is. I believe we misestimate +Mahomet's faults even as faults: but the secret of him will never be +got by dwelling there. We will leave all this behind us; and assuring +ourselves that he did mean some true thing, ask candidly what it was or +might be. + + +These Arabs Mahomet was born among are certainly a notable people. Their +country itself is notable; the fit habitation for such a race. Savage +inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, alternating with +beautiful strips of verdure: wherever water is, there is greenness, +beauty; odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincense-trees. +Consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, like a +sand-sea, dividing habitable place from habitable. You are all alone +there, left alone with the Universe; by day a fierce sun blazing down +on it with intolerable radiance; by night the great deep Heaven with its +stars. Such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of +men. There is something most agile, active, and yet most meditative, +enthusiastic in the Arab character. The Persians are called the French +of the East; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble +people; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over +these: the characteristic of noble-mindedness, of genius. The wild +Bedouin welcomes the stranger to his tent, as one having right to all +that is there; were it his worst enemy, he will slay his foal to treat +him, will serve him with sacred hospitality for three days, will set him +fairly on his way;--and then, by another law as sacred, kill him if +he can. In words too as in action. They are not a loquacious people, +taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted when they do speak. An earnest, +truthful kind of men. They are, as we know, of Jewish kindred: but +with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews they seem to combine +something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish. They had "Poetic +contests" among them before the time of Mahomet. Sale says, at Ocadh, +in the South of Arabia, there were yearly fairs, and there, when the +merchandising was done, Poets sang for prizes:--the wild people gathered +to hear that. + +One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest; the outcome of many or of all +high qualities: what we may call religiosity. From of old they had +been zealous worshippers, according to their light. They worshipped the +stars, as Sabeans; worshipped many natural objects,--recognized them as +symbols, immediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was wrong; +and yet not wholly wrong. All God's works are still in a sense symbols +of God. Do we not, as I urged, still account it a merit to recognize a +certain inexhaustible significance, "poetic beauty" as we name it, in +all natural objects whatsoever? A man is a poet, and honored, for doing +that, and speaking or singing it,--a kind of diluted worship. They had +many Prophets, these Arabs; Teachers each to his tribe, each according +to the light he had. But indeed, have we not from of old the noblest +of proofs, still palpable to every one of us, of what devoutness and +noble-mindedness had dwelt in these rustic thoughtful peoples? Biblical +critics seem agreed that our own _Book of Job_ was written in that +region of the world. I call that, apart from all theories about it, one +of the grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as +if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble +patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book; all men's Book! +It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending Problem,--man's +destiny, and God's ways with him here in this earth. And all in such +free flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity; in its +epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, +the mildly understanding heart. So _true_ every way; true eyesight +and vision for all things; material things no less than spiritual: the +Horse,--"hast thou clothed his neck with _thunder_?"--he "_laughs_ +at the shaking of the spear!" Such living likenesses were never since +drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody as +of the heart of mankind;--so soft, and great; as the summer midnight, as +the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in +the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.-- + +To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal objects of +worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah, +at Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not to be +mistaken, as the oldest, most honored temple in his time; that is, +some half-century before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some +likelihood that the Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some man +might _see_ it fall out of Heaven! It stands now beside the Well Zemzem; +the Caabah is built over both. A Well is in all places a beautiful +affecting object, gushing out like life from the hard earth;--still more +so in those hot dry countries, where it is the first condition of being. +The Well Zemzem has its name from the bubbling sound of the waters, +_zem-zem_; they think it is the Well which Hagar found with her little +Ishmael in the wilderness: the aerolite and it have been sacred now, and +had a Caabah over them, for thousands of years. A curious object, that +Caabah! There it stands at this hour, in the black cloth-covering the +Sultan sends it yearly; "twenty-seven cubits high;" with circuit, +with double circuit of pillars, with festoon-rows of lamps and quaint +ornaments: the lamps will be lighted again _this_ night,--to glitter +again under the stars. An authentic fragment of the oldest Past. It is +the _Keblah_ of all Moslem: from Delhi all onwards to Morocco, the eyes +of innumerable praying men are turned towards it, five times, this day +and all days: one of the notablest centres in the Habitation of Men. + +It had been from the sacredness attached to this Caabah Stone and +Hagar's Well, from the pilgrimings of all tribes of Arabs thither, that +Mecca took its rise as a Town. A great town once, though much decayed +now. It has no natural advantage for a town; stands in a sandy hollow +amid bare barren hills, at a distance from the sea; its provisions, its +very bread, have to be imported. But so many pilgrims needed lodgings: +and then all places of pilgrimage do, from the first, become places of +trade. The first day pilgrims meet, merchants have also met: where +men see themselves assembled for one object, they find that they can +accomplish other objects which depend on meeting together. Mecca +became the Fair of all Arabia. And thereby indeed the chief staple and +warehouse of whatever Commerce there was between the Indian and the +Western countries, Syria, Egypt, even Italy. It had at one time a +population of 100,000; buyers, forwarders of those Eastern and Western +products; importers for their own behoof of provisions and corn. The +government was a kind of irregular aristocratic republic, not without a +touch of theocracy. Ten Men of a chief tribe, chosen in some rough way, +were Governors of Mecca, and Keepers of the Caabah. The Koreish were +the chief tribe in Mahomet's time; his own family was of that tribe. The +rest of the Nation, fractioned and cut asunder by deserts, lived under +similar rude patriarchal governments by one or several: herdsmen, +carriers, traders, generally robbers too; being oftenest at war one with +another, or with all: held together by no open bond, if it were not this +meeting at the Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry assembled in +common adoration;--held mainly by the _inward_ indissoluble bond of +a common blood and language. In this way had the Arabs lived for long +ages, unnoticed by the world; a people of great qualities, unconsciously +waiting for the day when they should become notable to all the world. +Their Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state; much was +getting into confusion and fermentation among them. Obscure tidings of +the most important Event ever transacted in this world, the Life and +Death of the Divine Man in Judea, at once the symptom and cause of +immeasurable change to all people in the world, had in the course of +centuries reached into Arabia too; and could not but, of itself, have +produced fermentation there. + + +It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, in the year 570 of our +Era, that the man Mahomet was born. He was of the family of Hashem, +of the Koreish tribe as we said; though poor, connected with the chief +persons of his country. Almost at his birth he lost his Father; at the +age of six years his Mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, her +worth and sense: he fell to the charge of his Grandfather, an old man, a +hundred years old. A good old man: Mahomet's Father, Abdallah, had been +his youngest favorite son. He saw in Mahomet, with his old life-worn +eyes, a century old, the lost Abdallah come back again, all that was +left of Abdallah. He loved the little orphan Boy greatly; used to say, +They must take care of that beautiful little Boy, nothing in their +kindred was more precious than he. At his death, while the boy was still +but two years old, he left him in charge to Abu Thaleb the eldest of the +Uncles, as to him that now was head of the house. By this Uncle, a just +and rational man as everything betokens, Mahomet was brought up in the +best Arab way. + +Mahomet, as he grew up, accompanied his Uncle on trading journeys and +such like; in his eighteenth year one finds him a fighter following his +Uncle in war. But perhaps the most significant of all his journeys is +one we find noted as of some years' earlier date: a journey to the Fairs +of Syria. The young man here first came in contact with a quite foreign +world,--with one foreign element of endless moment to him: the Christian +Religion. I know not what to make of that "Sergius, the Nestorian Monk," +whom Abu Thaleb and he are said to have lodged with; or how much any +monk could have taught one still so young. Probably enough it is greatly +exaggerated, this of the Nestorian Monk. Mahomet was only fourteen; +had no language but his own: much in Syria must have been a strange +unintelligible whirlpool to him. But the eyes of the lad were open; +glimpses of many things would doubtless be taken in, and lie very +enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen in a strange way into views, into +beliefs and insights one day. These journeys to Syria were probably the +beginning of much to Mahomet. + +One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no +school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all. The +art of writing was but just introduced into Arabia; it seems to be the +true opinion that Mahomet never could write! Life in the Desert, with +its experiences, was all his education. What of this infinite Universe +he, from his dim place, with his own eyes and thoughts, could take in, +so much and no more of it was he to know. Curious, if we will reflect on +it, this of having no books. Except by what he could see for himself, or +hear of by uncertain rumor of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he +could know nothing. The wisdom that had been before him or at a distance +from him in the world, was in a manner as good as not there for him. Of +the great brother souls, flame-beacons through so many lands and times, +no one directly communicates with this great soul. He is alone there, +deep down in the bosom of the Wilderness; has to grow up so,--alone with +Nature and his own Thoughts. + +But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man. His +companions named him "_Al Amin_, The Faithful." A man of truth and +fidelity; true in what he did, in what he spake and thought. They noted +that _he_ always meant something. A man rather taciturn in speech; +silent when there was nothing to be said; but pertinent, wise, sincere, +when he did speak; always throwing light on the matter. This is the only +sort of speech _worth_ speaking! Through life we find him to have been +regarded as an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine man. A serious, +sincere character; yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose even;--a +good laugh in him withal: there are men whose laugh is as untrue as +anything about them; who cannot laugh. One hears of Mahomet's beauty: +his fine sagacious honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming black +eyes;--I somehow like too that vein on the brow, which swelled up +black when he was in anger: like the "_horseshoe_ vein" in Scott's +_Redgauntlet_. It was a kind of feature in the Hashem family, this black +swelling vein in the brow; Mahomet had it prominent, as would appear. +A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild +faculty, fire and light; of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his +life-task in the depths of the Desert there. + +How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, as her Steward, and +travelled in her business, again to the Fairs of Syria; how he managed +all, as one can well understand, with fidelity, adroitness; how her +gratitude, her regard for him grew: the story of their marriage is +altogether a graceful intelligible one, as told us by the Arab authors. +He was twenty-five; she forty, though still beautiful. He seems to have +lived in a most affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way with this wedded +benefactress; loving her truly, and her alone. It goes greatly +against the impostor theory, the fact that he lived in this entirely +unexceptionable, entirely quiet and commonplace way, till the heat of +his years was done. He was forty before he talked of any mission from +Heaven. All his irregularities, real and supposed, date from after +his fiftieth year, when the good Kadijah died. All his "ambition," +seemingly, had been, hitherto, to live an honest life; his "fame," +the mere good opinion of neighbors that knew him, had been sufficient +hitherto. Not till he was already getting old, the prurient heat of his +life all burnt out, and _peace_ growing to be the chief thing this world +could give him, did he start on the "career of ambition;" and, belying +all his past character and existence, set up as a wretched empty +charlatan to acquire what he could now no longer enjoy! For my share, I +have no faith whatever in that. + +Ah no: this deep-hearted Son of the Wilderness, with his beaming black +eyes and open social deep soul, had other thoughts in him than ambition. +A silent great soul; he was one of those who cannot _but_ be in earnest; +whom Nature herself has appointed to be sincere. While others walk in +formulas and hearsays, contented enough to dwell there, this man could +not screen himself in formulas; he was alone with his own soul and the +reality of things. The great Mystery of Existence, as I said, glared in +upon him, with its terrors, with its splendors; no hearsays could hide +that unspeakable fact, "Here am I!" Such _sincerity_, as we named it, +has in very truth something of divine. The word of such a man is a Voice +direct from Nature's own Heart. Men do and must listen to that as to +nothing else;--all else is wind in comparison. From of old, a thousand +thoughts, in his pilgrimings and wanderings, had been in this man: +What am I? What _is_ this unfathomable Thing I live in, which men name +Universe? What is Life; what is Death? What am I to believe? What am +I to do? The grim rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount Sinai, the stern sandy +solitudes answered not. The great Heaven rolling silent overhead, with +its blue-glancing stars, answered not. There was no answer. The man's +own soul, and what of God's inspiration dwelt there, had to answer! + +It is the thing which all men have to ask themselves; which we too have +to ask, and answer. This wild man felt it to be of _infinite_ moment; +all other things of no moment whatever in comparison. The jargon of +argumentative Greek Sects, vague traditions of Jews, the stupid routine +of Arab Idolatry: there was no answer in these. A Hero, as I repeat, +has this first distinction, which indeed we may call first and last, the +Alpha and Omega of his whole Heroism, That he looks through the shows +of things into _things_. Use and wont, respectable hearsay, respectable +formula: all these are good, or are not good. There is something behind +and beyond all these, which all these must correspond with, be the image +of, or they are--_Idolatries_; "bits of black wood pretending to be +God;" to the earnest soul a mockery and abomination. Idolatries never so +gilded, waited on by heads of the Koreish, will do nothing for this man. +Though all men walk by them, what good is it? The great Reality +stands glaring there upon _him_. He there has to answer it, or perish +miserably. Now, even now, or else through all Eternity never! Answer it; +_thou_ must find an answer.--Ambition? What could all Arabia do for this +man; with the crown of Greek Heraclius, of Persian Chosroes, and all +crowns in the Earth;--what could they all do for him? It was not of the +Earth he wanted to hear tell; it was of the Heaven above and of the Hell +beneath. All crowns and sovereignties whatsoever, where would _they_ in +a few brief years be? To be Sheik of Mecca or Arabia, and have a bit of +gilt wood put into your hand,--will that be one's salvation? I decidedly +think, not. We will leave it altogether, this impostor hypothesis, as +not credible; not very tolerable even, worthy chiefly of dismissal by +us. + +Mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during the month Ramadhan, into +solitude and silence; as indeed was the Arab custom; a praiseworthy +custom, which such a man, above all, would find natural and useful. +Communing with his own heart, in the silence of the mountains; himself +silent; open to the "small still voices:" it was a right natural custom! +Mahomet was in his fortieth year, when having withdrawn to a cavern +in Mount Hara, near Mecca, during this Ramadhan, to pass the month in +prayer, and meditation on those great questions, he one day told his +wife Kadijah, who with his household was with him or near him this year, +That by the unspeakable special favor of Heaven he had now found it all +out; was in doubt and darkness no longer, but saw it all. That all these +Idols and Formulas were nothing, miserable bits of wood; that there was +One God in and over all; and we must leave all Idols, and look to Him. +That God is great; and that there is nothing else great! He is the +Reality. Wooden Idols are not real; He is real. He made us at first, +sustains us yet; we and all things are but the shadow of Him; a +transitory garment veiling the Eternal Splendor. "_Allah akbar_, God is +great;"--and then also "_Islam_," That we must submit to God. That our +whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him, whatsoever He do to +us. For this world, and for the other! The thing He sends to us, were +it death and worse than death, shall be good, shall be best; we resign +ourselves to God.--"If this be _Islam_," says Goethe, "do we not all +live in _Islam_?" Yes, all of us that have any moral life; we all live +so. It has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to +submit to Necessity,--Necessity will make him submit,--but to know and +believe well that the stern thing which Necessity had ordered was +the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease his frantic +pretension of scanning this great God's-World in his small fraction of a +brain; to know that it _had_ verily, though deep beyond his soundings, +a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good;--that his part in it was to +conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that; not +questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable. + +I say, this is yet the only true morality known. A man is right and +invincible, virtuous and on the road towards sure conquest, precisely +while he joins himself to the great deep Law of the World, in spite +of all superficial laws, temporary appearances, profit-and-loss +calculations; he is victorious while he co-operates with that great +central Law, not victorious otherwise:--and surely his first chance of +co-operating with it, or getting into the course of it, is to know with +his whole soul that it is; that it is good, and alone good! This is the +soul of Islam; it is properly the soul of Christianity;--for Islam is +definable as a confused form of Christianity; had Christianity not been, +neither had it been. Christianity also commands us, before all, to be +resigned to God. We are to take no counsel with flesh and blood; give +ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes: to know that we know +nothing; that the worst and cruelest to our eyes is not what it seems; +that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above, +and say, It is good and wise, God is great! "Though He slay me, yet will +I trust in Him." Islam means in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation +of Self. This is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our +Earth. + +Such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the darkness of this +wild Arab soul. A confused dazzling splendor as of life and Heaven, in +the great darkness which threatened to be death: he called it revelation +and the angel Gabriel;--who of us yet can know what to call it? It +is the "inspiration of the Almighty" that giveth us understanding. To +_know_; to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic act,--of +which the best Logics can but babble on the surface. "Is not Belief the +true god-announcing Miracle?" says Novalis.--That Mahomet's whole soul, +set in flame with this grand Truth vouchsafed him, should feel as if +it were important and the only important thing, was very natural. That +Providence had unspeakably honored him by revealing it, saving him from +death and darkness; that he therefore was bound to make known the same +to all creatures: this is what was meant by "Mahomet is the Prophet of +God;" this too is not without its true meaning.-- + +The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him with wonder, with doubt: +at length she answered: Yes, it was true this that he said. One can +fancy too the boundless gratitude of Mahomet; and how of all the +kindnesses she had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling +word he now spoke was the greatest. "It is certain," says Novalis, "my +Conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in +it." It is a boundless favor.--He never forgot this good Kadijah. +Long afterwards, Ayesha his young favorite wife, a woman who indeed +distinguished herself among the Moslem, by all manner of qualities, +through her whole long life; this young brilliant Ayesha was, one day, +questioning him: "Now am not I better than Kadijah? She was a widow; +old, and had lost her looks: you love me better than you did +her?"--"No, by Allah!" answered Mahomet: "No, by Allah! She believed +in me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one +friend, and she was that!"--Seid, his Slave, also believed in him; +these with his young Cousin Ali, Abu Thaleb's son, were his first +converts. + +He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that; but the most treated it +with ridicule, with indifference; in three years, I think, he had gained +but thirteen followers. His progress was slow enough. His encouragement +to go on, was altogether the usual encouragement that such a man in such +a case meets. After some three years of small success, he invited forty +of his chief kindred to an entertainment; and there stood up and told +them what his pretension was: that he had this thing to promulgate +abroad to all men; that it was the highest thing, the one thing: which +of them would second him in that? Amid the doubt and silence of all, +young Ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, impatient of the silence, started +up, and exclaimed in passionate fierce language, That he would! +The assembly, among whom was Abu Thaleb, Ali's Father, could not be +unfriendly to Mahomet; yet the sight there, of one unlettered elderly +man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on such an enterprise against all +mankind, appeared ridiculous to them; the assembly broke up in laughter. +Nevertheless it proved not a laughable thing; it was a very serious +thing! As for this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded +creature, as he shows himself, now and always afterwards; full of +affection, of fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him; brave as +a lion; yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Christian +knighthood. He died by assassination in the Mosque at Bagdad; a death +occasioned by his own generous fairness, confidence in the fairness of +others: he said, If the wound proved not unto death, they must pardon +the Assassin; but if it did, then they must slay him straightway, that +so they two in the same hour might appear before God, and see which side +of that quarrel was the just one! + +Mahomet naturally gave offence to the Koreish, Keepers of the Caabah, +superintendents of the Idols. One or two men of influence had joined +him: the thing spread slowly, but it was spreading. Naturally he gave +offence to everybody: Who is this that pretends to be wiser than we all; +that rebukes us all, as mere fools and worshippers of wood! Abu Thaleb +the good Uncle spoke with him: Could he not be silent about all that; +believe it all for himself, and not trouble others, anger the chief men, +endanger himself and them all, talking of it? Mahomet answered: If the +Sun stood on his right hand and the Moon on his left, ordering him to +hold his peace, he could not obey! No: there was something in this Truth +he had got which was of Nature herself; equal in rank to Sun, or Moon, +or whatsoever thing Nature had made. It would speak itself there, so +long as the Almighty allowed it, in spite of Sun and Moon, and all +Koreish and all men and things. It must do that, and could do no other. +Mahomet answered so; and, they say, "burst into tears." Burst into +tears: he felt that Abu Thaleb was good to him; that the task he had got +was no soft, but a stern and great one. + +He went on speaking to who would listen to him; publishing his Doctrine +among the pilgrims as they came to Mecca; gaining adherents in this +place and that. Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger +attended him. His powerful relations protected Mahomet himself; but by +and by, on his own advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek +refuge in Abyssinia over the sea. The Koreish grew ever angrier; laid +plots, and swore oaths among them, to put Mahomet to death with their +own hands. Abu Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Mahomet is +not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was +one of the dismalest. He had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly +hither and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life. More than +once it seemed all over with him; more than once it turned on a straw, +some rider's horse taking fright or the like, whether Mahomet and his +Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of at all. But it was +not to end so. + +In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded +against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe, waiting to take +his life, and no continuance possible at Mecca for him any longer, +Mahomet fled to the place then called Yathreb, where he had gained some +adherents; the place they now call Medina, or "_Medinat al Nabi_, the +City of the Prophet," from that circumstance. It lay some two hundred +miles off, through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in +such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome. The +whole East dates its era from this Flight, _hegira_ as they name it: the +Year 1 of this Hegira is 622 of our Era, the fifty-third of Mahomet's +life. He was now becoming an old man; his friends sinking round him one +by one; his path desolate, encompassed with danger: unless he could find +hope in his own heart, the outward face of things was but hopeless +for him. It is so with all men in the like case. Hitherto Mahomet had +professed to publish his Religion by the way of preaching and persuasion +alone. But now, driven foully out of his native country, since unjust +men had not only given no ear to his earnest Heaven's-message, the deep +cry of his heart, but would not even let him live if he kept speaking +it,--the wild Son of the Desert resolved to defend himself, like a man +and Arab. If the Koreish will have it so, they shall have it. Tidings, +felt to be of infinite moment to them and all men, they would not listen +to these; would trample them down by sheer violence, steel and murder: +well, let steel try it then! Ten years more this Mahomet had; all of +fighting of breathless impetuous toil and struggle; with what result we +know. + +Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. +It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian +Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching +and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth +or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword +indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its +starting, is precisely in a _minority of one_. In one man's head alone, +there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; +there is one man against all men. That _he_ take a sword, and try to +propagate with that, will do little for him. You must first get your +sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do not +find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the +sword, when once it had got one. Charlemagne's conversion of the Saxons +was not by preaching. I care little about the sword: I will allow a +thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue +or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and +pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak +and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long-run, +conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. What is better +than itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this great +Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is +deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call _truest_, that thing and not the +other will be found growing at last. + +Here however, in reference to much that there is in Mahomet and his +success, we are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, +composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to +cast into the Earth's bosom; your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped +straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: +you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat,--the whole +rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds _it_ in, says nothing of the +rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth is silent +about all the rest,--has silently turned all the rest to some benefit +too, and makes no complaint about it! So everywhere in Nature! She is +true and not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and motherly in her +truth. She requires of a thing only that it _be_ genuine of heart; she +will protect it if so; will not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in +all the things she ever gave harbor to. Alas, is not this the history of +all highest Truth that comes or ever came into the world? The _body_ of +them all is imperfection, an element of light in darkness: to us they +have to come embodied in mere Logic, in some merely _scientific_ Theorem +of the Universe; which _cannot_ be complete; which cannot but be found, +one day, incomplete, erroneous, and so die and disappear. The body of +all Truth dies; and yet in all, I say, there is a soul which never dies; +which in new and ever-nobler embodiment lives immortal as man himself! +It is the way with Nature. The genuine essence of Truth never dies. That +it be genuine, a voice from the great Deep of Nature, there is the point +at Nature's judgment-seat. What _we_ call pure or impure, is not with +her the final question. Not how much chaff is in you; but whether you +have any wheat. Pure? I might say to many a man: Yes, you are pure; pure +enough; but you are chaff,--insincere hypothesis, hearsay, formality; +you never were in contact with the great heart of the Universe at all; +you are properly neither pure nor impure; you _are_ nothing, Nature has +no business with you. + +Mahomet's Creed we called a kind of Christianity; and really, if we +look at the wild rapt earnestness with which it was believed and laid +to heart, I should say a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian +Sects, with their vain janglings about _Homoiousion_ and _Homoousion_, +the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead! The truth +of it is embedded in portentous error and falsehood; but the truth of +it makes it be believed, not the falsehood: it succeeded by its truth. +A bastard kind of Christianity, but a living kind; with a heart-life in +it; not dead, chopping barren logic merely! Out of all that rubbish +of Arab idolatries, argumentative theologies, traditions, subtleties, +rumors and hypotheses of Greeks and Jews, with their idle wire-drawings, +this wild man of the Desert, with his wild sincere heart, earnest as +death and life, with his great flashing natural eyesight, had seen into +the kernel of the matter. Idolatry is nothing: these Wooden Idols +of yours, "ye rub them with oil and wax, and the flies stick on +them,"--these are wood, I tell you! They can do nothing for you; they +are an impotent blasphemous presence; a horror and abomination, if ye +knew them. God alone is; God alone has power; He made us, He can kill +us and keep us alive: "_Allah akbar_, God is great." Understand that His +will is the best for you; that howsoever sore to flesh and blood, you +will find it the wisest, best: you are bound to take it so; in this +world and in the next, you have no other thing that you can do! + +And now if the wild idolatrous men did believe this, and with their +fiery hearts lay hold of it to do it, in what form soever it came to +them, I say it was well worthy of being believed. In one form or the +other, I say it is still the one thing worthy of being believed by all +men. Man does hereby become the high-priest of this Temple of a +World. He is in harmony with the Decrees of the Author of this World; +cooperating with them, not vainly withstanding them: I know, to this +day, no better definition of Duty than that same. All that is _right_ +includes itself in this of co-operating with the real Tendency of the +World: you succeed by this (the World's Tendency will succeed), you are +good, and in the right course there. _Homoiousion_, _Homoousion_, vain +logical jangle, then or before or at any time, may jangle itself out, +and go whither and how it likes: this is the _thing_ it all struggles to +mean, if it would mean anything. If it do not succeed in meaning this, +it means nothing. Not that Abstractions, logical Propositions, be +correctly worded or incorrectly; but that living concrete Sons of Adam +do lay this to heart: that is the important point. Islam devoured all +these vain jangling Sects; and I think had right to do so. It was +a Reality, direct from the great Heart of Nature once more. Arab +idolatries, Syrian formulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had to go +up in flame,--mere dead _fuel_, in various senses, for this which was +_fire_. + + +It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, especially after +the Flight to Mecca, that Mahomet dictated at intervals his Sacred Book, +which they name _Koran_, or _Reading_, "Thing to be read." This is the +Work he and his disciples made so much of, asking all the world, Is not +that a miracle? The Mahometans regard their Koran with a reverence which +few Christians pay even to their Bible. It is admitted every where as +the standard of all law and all practice; the thing to be gone upon in +speculation and life; the message sent direct out of Heaven, which this +Earth has to conform to, and walk by; the thing to be read. Their Judges +decide by it; all Moslem are bound to study it, seek in it for the light +of their life. They have mosques where it is all read daily; thirty +relays of priests take it up in succession, get through the whole each +day. There, for twelve hundred years, has the voice of this Book, at all +moments, kept sounding through the ears and the hearts of so many men. +We hear of Mahometan Doctors that had read it seventy thousand times! + +Very curious: if one sought for "discrepancies of national taste," here +surely were the most eminent instance of that! We also can read the +Koran; our Translation of it, by Sale, is known to be a very fair one. +I must say, it is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook. A wearisome +confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, +entanglement; most crude, incondite;--insupportable stupidity, in short! +Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran. +We read in it, as we might in the State-Paper Office, unreadable masses +of lumber, that perhaps we may get some glimpses of a remarkable man. It +is true we have it under disadvantages: the Arabs see more method in it +than we. Mahomet's followers found the Koran lying all in fractions, as +it had been written down at first promulgation; much of it, they say, +on shoulder-blades of mutton, flung pell-mell into a chest: and +they published it, without any discoverable order as to time or +otherwise;--merely trying, as would seem, and this not very strictly, to +put the longest chapters first. The real beginning of it, in that way, +lies almost at the end: for the earliest portions were the shortest. +Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. Much +of it, too, they say, is rhythmic; a kind of wild chanting song, in the +original. This may be a great point; much perhaps has been lost in the +Translation here. Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to +see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as a Book written in +Heaven, too good for the Earth; as a well-written book, or indeed as +a _book_ at all; and not a bewildered rhapsody; _written_, so far as +writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever was! So much for national +discrepancies, and the standard of taste. + +Yet I should say, it was not unintelligible how the Arabs might so love +it. When once you get this confused coil of a Koran fairly off your +hands, and have it behind you at a distance, the essential type of it +begins to disclose itself; and in this there is a merit quite other than +the literary one. If a book come from the heart, it will contrive to +reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small amount to +that. One would say the primary character of the Koran is this of its +_genuineness_, of its being a _bona-fide_ book. Prideaux, I know, and +others have represented it as a mere bundle of juggleries; chapter +after chapter got up to excuse and varnish the author's successive sins, +forward his ambitions and quackeries: but really it is time to dismiss +all that. I do not assert Mahomet's continual sincerity: who is +continually sincere? But I confess I can make nothing of the critic, +in these times, who would accuse him of deceit _prepense_; of conscious +deceit generally, or perhaps at all;--still more, of living in a mere +element of conscious deceit, and writing this Koran as a forger and +juggler would have done! Every candid eye, I think, will read the Koran +far otherwise than so. It is the confused ferment of a great rude human +soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, earnest, +struggling vehemently to utter itself in words. With a kind of +breathless intensity he strives to utter himself; the thoughts crowd on +him pell-mell: for very multitude of things to say, he can get +nothing said. The meaning that is in him shapes itself into no form of +composition, is stated in no sequence, method, or coherence;--they are +not _shaped_ at all, these thoughts of his; flung out unshaped, as they +struggle and tumble there, in their chaotic inarticulate state. We +said "stupid:" yet natural stupidity is by no means the character of +Mahomet's Book; it is natural uncultivation rather. The man has not +studied speaking; in the haste and pressure of continual fighting, has +not time to mature himself into fit speech. The panting breathless haste +and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life +and salvation; this is the mood he is in! A headlong haste; for very +magnitude of meaning, he cannot get himself articulated into words. The +successive utterances of a soul in that mood, colored by the various +vicissitudes of three-and-twenty years; now well uttered, now worse: +this is the Koran. + +For we are to consider Mahomet, through these three-and-twenty years, as +the centre of a world wholly in conflict. Battles with the Koreish and +Heathen, quarrels among his own people, backslidings of his own wild +heart; all this kept him in a perpetual whirl, his soul knowing rest +no more. In wakeful nights, as one may fancy, the wild soul of the man, +tossing amid these vortices, would hail any light of a decision for +them as a veritable light from Heaven; _any_ making-up of his mind, so +blessed, indispensable for him there, would seem the inspiration of a +Gabriel. Forger and juggler? No, no! This great fiery heart, seething, +simmering like a great furnace of thoughts, was not a juggler's. His +Life was a Fact to him; this God's Universe an awful Fact and Reality. +He has faults enough. The man was an uncultured semi-barbarous Son of +Nature, much of the Bedouin still clinging to him: we must take him for +that. But for a wretched Simulacrum, a hungry Impostor without eyes +or heart, practicing for a mess of pottage such blasphemous swindlery, +forgery of celestial documents, continual high-treason against his Maker +and Self, we will not and cannot take him. + +Sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of the Koran; what had +rendered it precious to the wild Arab men. It is, after all, the first +and last merit in a book; gives rise to merits of all kinds,--nay, at +bottom, it alone can give rise to merit of any kind. Curiously, +through these incondite masses of tradition, vituperation, complaint, +ejaculation in the Koran, a vein of true direct insight, of what we +might almost call poetry, is found straggling. The body of the Book +is made up of mere tradition, and as it were vehement enthusiastic +extempore preaching. He returns forever to the old stories of the +Prophets as they went current in the Arab memory: how Prophet after +Prophet, the Prophet Abraham, the Prophet Hud, the Prophet Moses, +Christian and other real and fabulous Prophets, had come to this Tribe +and to that, warning men of their sin; and been received by them even as +he Mahomet was,--which is a great solace to him. These things he +repeats ten, perhaps twenty times; again and ever again, with wearisome +iteration; has never done repeating them. A brave Samuel Johnson, in his +forlorn garret, might con over the Biographies of Authors in that way! +This is the great staple of the Koran. But curiously, through all this, +comes ever and anon some glance as of the real thinker and seer. He has +actually an eye for the world, this Mahomet: with a certain directness +and rugged vigor, he brings home still, to our heart, the thing his own +heart has been opened to. I make but little of his praises of Allah, +which many praise; they are borrowed I suppose mainly from the Hebrew, +at least they are far surpassed there. But the eye that flashes direct +into the heart of things, and _sees_ the truth of them; this is to me a +highly interesting object. Great Nature's own gift; which she bestows on +all; but which only one in the thousand does not cast sorrowfully away: +it is what I call sincerity of vision; the test of a sincere heart. + +Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work +no miracles. I? "I am a Public Preacher;" appointed to preach this +doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really from +of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, says he; +is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly "a sign to you," if your +eyes were open! This Earth, God made it for you; "appointed paths in +it;" you can live in it, go to and fro on it.--The clouds in the dry +country of Arabia, to Mahomet they are very wonderful: Great clouds, he +says, born in the deep bosom of the Upper Immensity, where do they +come from! They hang there, the great black monsters; pour down their +rain-deluges "to revive a dead earth," and grass springs, and "tall +leafy palm-trees with their date-clusters hanging round. Is not that a +sign?" Your cattle too,--Allah made them; serviceable dumb creatures; +they change the grass into milk; you have your clothing from them, very +strange creatures; they come ranking home at evening-time, "and," adds +he, "and are a credit to you!" Ships also,--he talks often about ships: +Huge moving mountains, they spread out their cloth wings, go bounding +through the water there, Heaven's wind driving them; anon they lie +motionless, God has withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir! +Miracles? cries he: What miracle would you have? Are not you yourselves +there? God made you, "shaped you out of a little clay." Ye were small +once; a few years ago ye were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength, +thoughts, "ye have compassion on one another." Old age comes on you, and +gray hairs; your strength fades into feebleness; ye sink down, and again +are not. "Ye have compassion on one another:" this struck me much: Allah +might have made you having no compassion on one another,--how had it +been then! This is a great direct thought, a glance at first-hand into +the very fact of things. Rude vestiges of poetic genius, of whatsoever +is best and truest, are visible in this man. A strong untutored +intellect; eyesight, heart: a strong wild man,--might have shaped +himself into Poet, King, Priest, any kind of Hero. + +To his eyes it is forever clear that this world wholly is miraculous. +He sees what, as we said once before, all great thinkers, the rude +Scandinavians themselves, in one way or other, have contrived to see: +That this so solid-looking material world is, at bottom, in very deed, +Nothing; is a visual and factual Manifestation of God's power and +presence,--a shadow hung out by Him on the bosom of the void Infinite; +nothing more. The mountains, he says, these great rock-mountains, they +shall dissipate themselves "like clouds;" melt into the Blue as clouds +do, and not be! He figures the Earth, in the Arab fashion, Sale tells +us, as an immense Plain or flat Plate of ground, the mountains are +set on that to _steady_ it. At the Last Day they shall disappear "like +clouds;" the whole Earth shall go spinning, whirl itself off into wreck, +and as dust and vapor vanish in the Inane. Allah withdraws his hand +from it, and it ceases to be. The universal empire of Allah, presence +everywhere of an unspeakable Power, a Splendor, and a Terror not to be +named, as the true force, essence and reality, in all things whatsoever, +was continually clear to this man. What a modern talks of by the name, +Forces of Nature, Laws of Nature; and does not figure as a divine +thing; not even as one thing at all, but as a set of things, undivine +enough,--salable, curious, good for propelling steamships! With our +Sciences and Cyclopaedias, we are apt to forget the _divineness_, in +those laboratories of ours. We ought not to forget it! That once well +forgotten, I know not what else were worth remembering. Most sciences, +I think were then a very dead thing; withered, contentious, empty;--a +thistle in late autumn. The best science, without this, is but as the +dead _timber_; it is not the growing tree and forest,--which gives +ever-new timber, among other things! Man cannot _know_ either, unless +he can _worship_ in some way. His knowledge is a pedantry, and dead +thistle, otherwise. + +Much has been said and written about the sensuality of Mahomet's +Religion; more than was just. The indulgences, criminal to us, which +he permitted, were not of his appointment; he found them practiced, +unquestioned from immemorial time in Arabia; what he did was to curtail +them, restrict them, not on one but on many sides. His Religion is not +an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, +prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not "succeed +by being an easy religion." As if indeed any religion, or cause holding +of religion, could succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say +that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, +recompense,--sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! In the +meanest mortal there lies something nobler. The poor swearing soldier, +hired to be shot, has his "honor of a soldier," different from +drill-regulations and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet +things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under +God's Heaven as a god-made Man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly +longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles +into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. +Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the _allurements_ that act +on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have +a flame that burns up all lower considerations. Not happiness, but +something higher: one sees this even in the frivolous classes, with +their "point of honor" and the like. Not by flattering our appetites; +no, by awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any +Religion gain followers. + +Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual +man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, +intent mainly on base enjoyments,--nay on enjoyments of any kind. His +household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: +sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. +They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch +his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what +vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; something better in +him than _hunger_ of any sort,--or these wild Arab men, fighting and +jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him +always, would not have reverenced him so! They were wild men, bursting +ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; without +right worth and manhood, no man could have commanded them. They called +him Prophet, you say? Why, he stood there face to face with them; bare, +not enshrined in any mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling +his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them: +they must have seen what kind of a man he _was_, let him be _called_ +what you like! No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a +cloak of his own clouting. During three-and-twenty years of rough actual +trial. I find something of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of +itself. + +His last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations of a heart struggling +up, in trembling hope, towards its Maker. We cannot say that his +religion made him _worse_; it made him better; good, not bad. Generous +things are recorded of him: when he lost his Daughter, the thing he +answers is, in his own dialect, every way sincere, and yet equivalent to +that of Christians, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed +be the name of the Lord." He answered in like manner of Seid, his +emancipated well-beloved Slave, the second of the believers. Seid had +fallen in the War of Tabuc, the first of Mahomet's fightings with the +Greeks. Mahomet said, It was well; Seid had done his Master's work, +Seid had now gone to his Master: it was all well with Seid. Yet Seid's +daughter found him weeping over the body;--the old gray-haired man +melting in tears! "What do I see?" said she.--"You see a friend weeping +over his friend."--He went out for the last time into the mosque, two +days before his death; asked, If he had injured any man? Let his own +back bear the stripes. If he owed any man? A voice answered, "Yes, me +three drachms," borrowed on such an occasion. Mahomet ordered them to +be paid: "Better be in shame now," said he, "than at the Day of +Judgment."--You remember Kadijah, and the "No, by Allah!" Traits of that +kind show us the genuine man, the brother of us all, brought visible +through twelve centuries,--the veritable Son of our common Mother. + +Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom from cant. He is a rough +self-helping son of the wilderness; does not pretend to be what he is +not. There is no ostentatious pride in him; but neither does he go much +upon humility: he is there as he can be, in cloak and shoes of his own +clouting; speaks plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek Emperors, +what it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, about himself, "the +respect due unto thee." In a life-and-death war with Bedouins, cruel +things could not fail; but neither are acts of mercy, of noble natural +pity and generosity wanting. Mahomet makes no apology for the one, no +boast of the other. They were each the free dictate of his heart; each +called for, there and then. Not a mealy-mouthed man! A candid ferocity, +if the case call for it, is in him; he does not mince matters! The War +of Tabuc is a thing he often speaks of: his men refused, many of them, +to march on that occasion; pleaded the heat of the weather, the harvest, +and so forth; he can never forget that. Your harvest? It lasts for a +day. What will become of your harvest through all Eternity? Hot weather? +Yes, it was hot; "but Hell will be hotter!" Sometimes a rough sarcasm +turns up: He says to the unbelievers, Ye shall have the just measure of +your deeds at that Great Day. They will be weighed out to you; ye shall +not have short weight!--Everywhere he fixes the matter in his eye; +he _sees_ it: his heart, now and then, is as if struck dumb by the +greatness of it. "Assuredly," he says: that word, in the Koran, is +written down sometimes as a sentence by itself: "Assuredly." + +No _Dilettantism_ in this Mahomet; it is a business of Reprobation and +Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is in deadly earnest about +it! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for +Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The +root of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul +of the man never having been _open_ to Truth;--"living in a vain show." +Such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but is himself a +falsehood. The rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk +deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-death. The very falsehoods of +Mahomet are truer than the truths of such a man. He is the insincere +man: smooth-polished, respectable in some times and places; inoffensive, +says nothing harsh to anybody; most _cleanly_,--just as carbonic acid +is, which is death and poison. + +We will not praise Mahomet's moral precepts as always of the superfinest +sort; yet it can be said that there is always a tendency to good in +them; that they are the true dictates of a heart aiming towards what is +just and true. The sublime forgiveness of Christianity, turning of the +other cheek when the one has been smitten, is not here: you _are_ to +revenge yourself, but it is to be in measure, not overmuch, or beyond +justice. On the other hand, Islam, like any great Faith, and insight +into the essence of man, is a perfect equalizer of men: the soul of one +believer outweighs all earthly kingships; all men, according to Islam +too, are equal. Mahomet insists not on the propriety of giving alms, but +on the necessity of it: he marks down by law how much you are to give, +and it is at your peril if you neglect. The tenth part of a man's annual +income, whatever that may be, is the _property_ of the poor, of those +that are afflicted and need help. Good all this: the natural voice of +humanity, of pity and equity dwelling in the heart of this wild Son of +Nature speaks _so_. + +Mahomet's Paradise is sensual, his Hell sensual: true; in the one and +the other there is enough that shocks all spiritual feeling in us. But +we are to recollect that the Arabs already had it so; that Mahomet, in +whatever he changed of it, softened and diminished all this. The worst +sensualities, too, are the work of doctors, followers of his, not his +work. In the Koran there is really very little said about the joys +of Paradise; they are intimated rather than insisted on. Nor is it +forgotten that the highest joys even there shall be spiritual; the pure +Presence of the Highest, this shall infinitely transcend all other joys. +He says, "Your salutation shall be, Peace." _Salam_, Have Peace!--the +thing that all rational souls long for, and seek, vainly here below, +as the one blessing. "Ye shall sit on seats, facing one another: all +grudges shall be taken away out of your hearts." All grudges! Ye shall +love one another freely; for each of you, in the eyes of his brothers, +there will be Heaven enough! + +In reference to this of the sensual Paradise and Mahomet's sensuality, +the sorest chapter of all for us, there were many things to be said; +which it is not convenient to enter upon here. Two remarks only I shall +make, and therewith leave it to your candor. The first is furnished me +by Goethe; it is a casual hint of his which seems well worth taking note +of. In one of his Delineations, in _Meister's Travels_ it is, the hero +comes upon a Society of men with very strange ways, one of which was +this: "We require," says the Master, "that each of our people shall +restrict himself in one direction," shall go right against his desire in +one matter, and _make_ himself do the thing he does not wish, "should we +allow him the greater latitude on all other sides." There seems to me a +great justness in this. Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not +the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that +is. Let a man assert withal that he is king over his habitudes; that +he could and would shake them off, on cause shown: this is an excellent +law. The Month Ramadhan for the Moslem, much in Mahomet's Religion, +much in his own Life, bears in that direction; if not by forethought, +or clear purpose of moral improvement on his part, then by a certain +healthy manful instinct, which is as good. + +But there is another thing to be said about the Mahometan Heaven and +Hell. This namely, that, however gross and material they may be, they +are an emblem of an everlasting truth, not always so well remembered +elsewhere. That gross sensual Paradise of his; that horrible flaming +Hell; the great enormous Day of Judgment he perpetually insists on: what +is all this but a rude shadow, in the rude Bedouin imagination, of that +grand spiritual Fact, and Beginning of Facts, which it is ill for us too +if we do not all know and feel: the Infinite Nature of Duty? That man's +actions here are of _infinite_ moment to him, and never die or end at +all; that man, with his little life, reaches upwards high as Heaven, +downwards low as Hell, and in his threescore years of Time holds an +Eternity fearfully and wonderfully hidden: all this had burnt itself, as +in flame-characters, into the wild Arab soul. As in flame and lightning, +it stands written there; awful, unspeakable, ever present to him. With +bursting earnestness, with a fierce savage sincerity, half-articulating, +not able to articulate, he strives to speak it, bodies it forth in that +Heaven and that Hell. Bodied forth in what way you will, it is the first +of all truths. It is venerable under all embodiments. What is the chief +end of man here below? Mahomet has answered this question, in a way that +might put some of us to shame! He does not, like a Bentham, a Paley, +take Right and Wrong, and calculate the profit and loss, ultimate +pleasure of the one and of the other; and summing all up by addition and +subtraction into a net result, ask you, Whether on the whole the Right +does not preponderate considerably? No; it is not _better_ to do the one +than the other; the one is to the other as life is to death,--as Heaven +is to Hell. The one must in nowise be done, the other in nowise left +undone. You shall not measure them; they are incommensurable: the one +is death eternal to a man, the other is life eternal. Benthamee Utility, +virtue by Profit and Loss; reducing this God's-world to a dead +brute Steam-engine, the infinite celestial Soul of Man to a kind of +Hay-balance for weighing hay and thistles on, pleasures and pains +on:--If you ask me which gives, Mahomet or they, the beggarlier and +falser view of Man and his Destinies in this Universe, I will answer, it +is not Mahomet--! + +On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Mahomet's is a kind +of Christianity; has a genuine element of what is spiritually highest +looking through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. The +Scandinavian God _Wish_, the god of all rude men,--this has been +enlarged into a Heaven by Mahomet; but a Heaven symbolical of sacred +Duty, and to be earned by faith and well-doing, by valiant action, and +a divine patience which is still more valiant. It is Scandinavian +Paganism, and a truly celestial element superadded to that. Call it not +false; look not at the falsehood of it, look at the truth of it. For +these twelve centuries, it has been the religion and life-guidance of +the fifth part of the whole kindred of Mankind. Above all things, it has +been a religion heartily _believed_. These Arabs believe their religion, +and try to live by it! No Christians, since the early ages, or only +perhaps the English Puritans in modern times, have ever stood by their +Faith as the Moslem do by theirs,--believing it wholly, fronting Time +with it, and Eternity with it. This night the watchman on the streets +of Cairo when he cries, "Who goes?" will hear from the passenger, along +with his answer, "There is no God but God." _Allah akbar_, _Islam_, +sounds through the souls, and whole daily existence, of these dusky +millions. Zealous missionaries preach it abroad among Malays, black +Papuans, brutal Idolaters;--displacing what is worse, nothing that is +better or good. + +To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; Arabia +first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming +unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet +was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed +becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one +century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on +that;--glancing in valor and splendor and the light of genius, Arabia +shines through long ages over a great section of the world. Belief +is great, life-giving. The history of a Nation becomes fruitful, +soul-elevating, great, so soon as it believes. These Arabs, the man +Mahomet, and that one century,--is it not as if a spark had fallen, one +spark, on a world of what seemed black unnoticeable sand; but lo, the +sand proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Grenada! +I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of +men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame. + + + + + +LECTURE III. THE HERO AS POET. DANTE: SHAKSPEARE. + +[May 12, 1840.] + +The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are productions of old ages; +not to be repeated in the new. They presuppose a certain rudeness of +conception, which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end +to. There needs to be, as it were, a world vacant, or almost vacant +of scientific forms, if men in their loving wonder are to fancy their +fellow-man either a god or one speaking with the voice of a god. +Divinity and Prophet are past. We are now to see our Hero in the less +ambitious, but also less questionable, character of Poet; a character +which does not pass. The Poet is a heroic figure belonging to all ages; +whom all ages possess, when once he is produced, whom the newest age as +the oldest may produce;--and will produce, always when Nature pleases. +Let Nature send a Hero-soul; in no age is it other than possible that he +may be shaped into a Poet. + +Hero, Prophet, Poet,--many different names, in different times, and +places, do we give to Great Men; according to varieties we note in them, +according to the sphere in which they have displayed themselves! We +might give many more names, on this same principle. I will remark again, +however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different +_sphere_ constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero +can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the +kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion +of a truly great man that could not be _all_ sorts of men. The Poet who +could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would never make +a stanza worth much. He could not sing the Heroic warrior, unless he +himself were at least a Heroic warrior too. I fancy there is in him the +Politician, the Thinker, Legislator, Philosopher;--in one or the other +degree, he could have been, he is all these. So too I cannot understand +how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the fire that was +in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could not have written +verses, tragedies, poems, and touched all hearts in that way, had his +course of life and education led him thitherward. The grand fundamental +character is that of Great Man; that the man be great. Napoleon has +words in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's +Marshals are a kind of poetical men withal; the things Turenne says +are full of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The +great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye: there it lies; no man whatever, +in what province soever, can prosper at all without these. Petrarch and +Boccaccio did diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well: one can easily +believe it; they had done things a little harder than these! Burns, +a gifted song-writer, might have made a still better Mirabeau. +Shakspeare,--one knows not what _he_ could not have made, in the supreme +degree. + +True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature does not make all great +men, more than all other men, in the self-same mould. Varieties of +aptitude doubtless; but infinitely more of circumstance; and far +oftenest it is the _latter_ only that are looked to. But it is as with +common men in the learning of trades. You take any man, as yet a vague +capability of a man, who could be any kind of craftsman; and make him +into a smith, a carpenter, a mason: he is then and thenceforth that +and nothing else. And if, as Addison complains, you sometimes see a +street-porter, staggering under his load on spindle-shanks, and near +at hand a tailor with the frame of a Samson handling a bit of cloth +and small Whitechapel needle,--it cannot be considered that aptitude +of Nature alone has been consulted here either!--The Great Man also, +to what shall he be bound apprentice? Given your Hero, is he to become +Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet? It is an inexplicably complex +controversial-calculation between the world and him! He will read the +world and its laws; the world with its laws will be there to be read. +What the world, on _this_ matter, shall permit and bid is, as we said, +the most important fact about the world.-- + + +Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions of them. In +some old languages, again, the titles are synonymous; _Vates_ means +both Prophet and Poet: and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well +understood, have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed they are +still the same; in this most important respect especially, That they +have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of the Universe; +what Goethe calls "the open secret." "Which is the great secret?" asks +one.--"The _open_ secret,"--open to all, seen by almost none! That +divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, "the Divine Idea +of the World, that which lies at the bottom of Appearance," as Fichte +styles it; of which all Appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of +the field, but especially the Appearance of Man and his work, is but the +_vesture_, the embodiment that renders it visible. This divine mystery +_is_ in all times and in all places; veritably is. In most times and +places it is greatly overlooked; and the Universe, definable always in +one or the other dialect, as the realized Thought of God, is considered +a trivial, inert, commonplace matter,--as if, says the Satirist, it were +a dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together! It could do no +good, at present, to _speak_ much about this; but it is a pity for every +one of us if we do not know it, live ever in the knowledge of it. Really +a most mournful pity;--a failure to live at all, if we live otherwise! + +But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, the _Vates_, +whether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it; is a man sent hither to +make it more impressively known to us. That always is his message; he +is to reveal that to us,--that sacred mystery which he more than others +lives ever present with. While others forget it, he knows it;--I might +say, he has been driven to know it; without consent asked of him, he +finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once more, here is no +Hearsay, but a direct Insight and Belief; this man too could not help +being a sincere man! Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is +for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. A +man once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all others were +but toying with it. He is a _Vates_, first of all, in virtue of being +sincere. So far Poet and Prophet, participators in the "open secret," +are one. + +With respect to their distinction again: The _Vates_ Prophet, we might +say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good +and Evil, Duty and Prohibition; the _Vates_ Poet on what the Germans +call the aesthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may call +a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what we are to love. +But indeed these two provinces run into one another, and cannot be +disjoined. The Prophet too has his eye on what we are to love: how else +shall he know what it is we are to do? The highest Voice ever heard on +this earth said withal, "Consider the lilies of the field; they toil +not, neither do they spin: yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed +like one of these." A glance, that, into the deepest deep of Beauty. +"The lilies of the field,"--dressed finer than earthly princes, +springing up there in the humble furrow-field; a beautiful _eye_ looking +out on you, from the great inner Sea of Beauty! How could the rude +Earth make these, if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not +inwardly Beauty? In this point of view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which +has staggered several, may have meaning: "The Beautiful," he intimates, +"is higher than the Good; the Beautiful includes in it the Good." The +_true_ Beautiful; which however, I have said somewhere, "differs from +the _false_ as Heaven does from Vauxhall!" So much for the distinction +and identity of Poet and Prophet.-- + +In ancient and also in modern periods we find a few Poets who are +accounted perfect; whom it were a kind of treason to find fault with. +This is noteworthy; this is right: yet in strictness it is only an +illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there is no perfect Poet! A vein +of Poetry exists in the hearts of all men; no man is made altogether of +Poetry. We are all poets when we _read_ a poem well. The "imagination +that shudders at the Hell of Dante," is not that the same faculty, +weaker in degree, as Dante's own? No one but Shakspeare can embody, +out of _Saxo Grammaticus_, the story of _Hamlet_ as Shakspeare did: but +every one models some kind of story out of it; every one embodies it +better or worse. We need not spend time in defining. Where there is no +specific difference, as between round and square, all definition must +be more or less arbitrary. A man that has _so_ much more of the poetic +element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called +Poet by his neighbors. World-Poets too, those whom we are to take for +perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way. One who rises +_so_ far above the general level of Poets will, to such and such +critics, seem a Universal Poet; as he ought to do. And yet it is, and +must be, an arbitrary distinction. All Poets, all men, have some touches +of the Universal; no man is wholly made of that. Most Poets are very +soon forgotten: but not the noblest Shakspeare or Homer of them can be +remembered _forever_;--a day comes when he too is not! + +Nevertheless, you will say, there must be a difference between true +Poetry and true Speech not poetical: what is the difference? On this +point many things have been written, especially by late German Critics, +some of which are not very intelligible at first. They say, for +example, that the Poet has an _infinitude_ in him; communicates an +_Unendlichkeit_, a certain character of "infinitude," to whatsoever he +delineates. This, though not very precise, yet on so vague a matter is +worth remembering: if well meditated, some meaning will gradually be +found in it. For my own part, I find considerable meaning in the old +vulgar distinction of Poetry being _metrical_, having music in it, being +a Song. Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might say this as +soon as anything else: If your delineation be authentically _musical_, +musical not in word only, but in heart and substance, in all the +thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole conception of it, then +it will be poetical; if not, not.--Musical: how much lies in that! A +_musical_ thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the +inmost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely the +_melody_ that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of coherence which +is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be, here in this +world. All inmost things, we may say, are melodious; naturally utter +themselves in Song. The meaning of Song goes deep. Who is there that, +in logical words, can express the effect music has on us? A kind of +inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the +Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that! + +Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has something of song in +it: not a parish in the world but has its parish-accent;--the rhythm or +_tune_ to which the people there _sing_ what they have to say! Accent is +a kind of chanting; all men have accent of their own,--though they only +_notice_ that of others. Observe too how all passionate language does +of itself become musical,--with a finer music than the mere accent; the +speech of a man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, a song. All deep +things are Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song; +as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! The primal element of +us; of us, and of all things. The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies: it +was the feeling they had of the inner structure of Nature; that the soul +of all her voices and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, therefore, +we will call _musical Thought_. The Poet is he who _thinks_ in that +manner. At bottom, it turns still on power of intellect; it is a man's +sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep enough, +and you see musically; the heart of Nature _being_ everywhere music, if +you can only reach it. + +The _Vates_ Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse of Nature, seems to +hold a poor rank among us, in comparison with the _Vates_ Prophet; his +function, and our esteem of him for his function, alike slight. The Hero +taken as Divinity; the Hero taken as Prophet; then next the Hero taken +only as Poet: does it not look as if our estimate of the Great Man, +epoch after epoch, were continually diminishing? We take him first for +a god, then for one god-inspired; and now in the next stage of it, his +most miraculous word gains from us only the recognition that he is a +Poet, beautiful verse-maker, man of genius, or such like!--It looks so; +but I persuade myself that intrinsically it is not so. If we consider +well, it will perhaps appear that in man still there is the _same_ +altogether peculiar admiration for the Heroic Gift, by what name soever +called, that there at any time was. + +I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, +it is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of +Splendor, Wisdom and Heroism, are ever rising _higher_; not altogether +that our reverence for these qualities, as manifested in our like, is +getting lower. This is worth taking thought of. Sceptical Dilettantism, +the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last forever, does +indeed in this the highest province of human things, as in all +provinces, make sad work; and our reverence for great men, all +crippled, blinded, paralytic as it is, comes out in poor plight, hardly +recognizable. Men worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve +that there is any reality of great men to worship. The dreariest, +fatalest faith; believing which, one would literally despair of +human things. Nevertheless look, for example, at Napoleon! A Corsican +lieutenant of artillery; that is the show of _him_: yet is he not +obeyed, worshipped after his sort, as all the Tiaraed and Diademed of +the world put together could not be? High Duchesses, and ostlers of +inns, gather round the Scottish rustic, Burns;--a strange feeling +dwelling in each that they never heard a man like this; that, on the +whole, this is the man! In the secret heart of these people it still +dimly reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of uttering +it at present, that this rustic, with his black brows and flashing +sun-eyes, and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a dignity +far beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. Do not we feel +it so? But now, were Dilettantism, Scepticism, Triviality, and all that +sorrowful brood, cast out of us,--as, by God's blessing, they shall one +day be; were faith in the shows of things entirely swept out, replaced +by clear faith in the _things_, so that a man acted on the impulse of +that only, and counted the other non-extant; what a new livelier feeling +towards this Burns were it! + +Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have we not two mere Poets, if +not deified, yet we may say beatified? Shakspeare and Dante are Saints +of Poetry; really, if we will think of it, _canonized_, so that it is +impiety to meddle with them. The unguided instinct of the world, working +across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such result. Dante +and Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. They dwell apart, in a kind of royal +solitude; none equal, none second to them: in the general feeling of the +world, a certain transcendentalism, a glory as of complete perfection, +invests these two. They _are_ canonized, though no Pope or Cardinals +took hand in doing it! Such, in spite of every perverting influence, +in the most unheroic times, is still our indestructible reverence for +heroism.--We will look a little at these Two, the Poet Dante and the +Poet Shakspeare: what little it is permitted us to say here of the Hero +as Poet will most fitly arrange itself in that fashion. + + +Many volumes have been written by way of commentary on Dante and his +Book; yet, on the whole, with no great result. His Biography is, as +it were, irrecoverably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering, +sorrow-stricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived; and +the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. +It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. After +all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know of him. The +Book;--and one might add that Portrait commonly attributed to Giotto, +which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think genuine, +whoever did it. To me it is a most touching face; perhaps of all faces +that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with the +simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow and pain, the known +victory which is also deathless;--significant of the whole history of +Dante! I think it is the mournfulest face that ever was painted from +reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, +as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of +a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into +abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A soft ethereal soul looking +out so stern, implacable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of +thick-ribbed ice! Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful +one: the lip is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the thing that is +eating out his heart,--as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, +as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle were greater than it. +The face of one wholly in protest, and lifelong unsurrendering battle, +against the world. Affection all converted into indignation: an +implacable indignation; slow, equable, silent, like that of a god! The +eye too, it looks out as in a kind of _surprise_, a kind of inquiry, Why +the world was of such a sort? This is Dante: so he looks, this "voice of +ten silent centuries," and sings us "his mystic unfathomable song." + +The little that we know of Dante's Life corresponds well enough with +this Portrait and this Book. He was born at Florence, in the upper class +of society, in the year 1265. His education was the best then going; +much school-divinity, Aristotelean logic, some Latin classics,--no +inconsiderable insight into certain provinces of things: and Dante, with +his earnest intelligent nature, we need not doubt, learned better than +most all that was learnable. He has a clear cultivated understanding, +and of great subtlety; this best fruit of education he had contrived to +realize from these scholastics. He knows accurately and well what +lies close to him; but, in such a time, without printed books or free +intercourse, he could not know well what was distant: the small clear +light, most luminous for what is near, breaks itself into singular +_chiaroscuro_ striking on what is far off. This was Dante's learning +from the schools. In life, he had gone through the usual destinies; been +twice out campaigning as a soldier for the Florentine State, been on +embassy; had in his thirty-fifth year, by natural gradation of talent +and service, become one of the Chief Magistrates of Florence. He had met +in boyhood a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of his +own age and rank, and grown up thenceforth in partial sight of her, +in some distant intercourse with her. All readers know his graceful +affecting account of this; and then of their being parted; of her being +wedded to another, and of her death soon after. She makes a great figure +in Dante's Poem; seems to have made a great figure in his life. Of all +beings it might seem as if she, held apart from him, far apart at +last in the dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever with his whole +strength of affection loved. She died: Dante himself was wedded; but it +seems not happily, far from happily. I fancy, the rigorous earnest man, +with his keen excitabilities, was not altogether easy to make happy. + +We will not complain of Dante's miseries: had all gone right with him as +he wished it, he might have been Prior, Podesta, or whatsoever they +call it, of Florence, well accepted among neighbors,--and the world had +wanted one of the most notable words ever spoken or sung. Florence +would have had another prosperous Lord Mayor; and the ten dumb centuries +continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries (for there +will be ten of them and more) had no _Divina Commedia_ to hear! We will +complain of nothing. A nobler destiny was appointed for this Dante; and +he, struggling like a man led towards death and crucifixion, could not +help fulfilling it. Give _him_ the choice of his happiness! He knew not, +more than we do, what was really happy, what was really miserable. + +In Dante's Priorship, the Guelf-Ghibelline, Bianchi-Neri, or some other +confused disturbances rose to such a height, that Dante, whose party had +seemed the stronger, was with his friends cast unexpectedly forth into +banishment; doomed thenceforth to a life of woe and wandering. His +property was all confiscated and more; he had the fiercest feeling that +it was entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight of God and man. He tried +what was in him to get reinstated; tried even by warlike surprisal, with +arms in his hand: but it would not do; bad only had become worse. There +is a record, I believe, still extant in the Florence Archives, dooming +this Dante, wheresoever caught, to be burnt alive. Burnt alive; so +it stands, they say: a very curious civic document. Another curious +document, some considerable number of years later, is a Letter of +Dante's to the Florentine Magistrates, written in answer to a milder +proposal of theirs, that he should return on condition of apologizing +and paying a fine. He answers, with fixed stern pride: "If I cannot +return without calling myself guilty, I will never return, _nunquam +revertar_." + +For Dante there was now no home in this world. He wandered from patron +to patron, from place to place; proving, in his own bitter words, "How +hard is the path, _Come e duro calle_." The wretched are not cheerful +company. Dante, poor and banished, with his proud earnest nature, with +his moody humors, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch reports of +him that being at Can della Scala's court, and blamed one day for his +gloom and taciturnity, he answered in no courtier-like way. Della +Scala stood among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (_nebulones ac +histriones_) making him heartily merry; when turning to Dante, he said: +"Is it not strange, now, that this poor fool should make himself so +entertaining; while you, a wise man, sit there day after day, and have +nothing to amuse us with at all?" Dante answered bitterly: "No, +not strange; your Highness is to recollect the Proverb, _Like to +Like_;"--given the amuser, the amusee must also be given! Such a man, +with his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms and sorrows, was not made +to succeed at court. By degrees, it came to be evident to him that he +had no longer any resting-place, or hope of benefit, in this earth. The +earthly world had cast him forth, to wander, wander; no living heart to +love him now; for his sore miseries there was no solace here. + +The deeper naturally would the Eternal World impress itself on him; that +awful reality over which, after all, this Time-world, with its Florences +and banishments, only flutters as an unreal shadow. Florence thou shalt +never see: but Hell and Purgatory and Heaven thou shalt surely see! +What is Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and Life altogether? +ETERNITY: thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, art thou and all things +bound! The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more +and more in that awful other world. Naturally his thoughts brooded on +that, as on the one fact important for him. Bodied or bodiless, it is +the one fact important for all men:--but to Dante, in that age, it was +bodied in fixed certainty of scientific shape; he no more doubted of +that _Malebolge_ Pool, that it all lay there with its gloomy circles, +with its _alti guai_, and that he himself should see it, than we doubt +that we should see Constantinople if we went thither. Dante's heart, +long filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, +bursts forth at length into "mystic unfathomable song;" and this his +_Divine Comedy_, the most remarkable of all modern Books, is the result. + +It must have been a great solacement to Dante, and was, as we can see, +a proud thought for him at times, That he, here in exile, could do this +work; that no Florence, nor no man or men, could hinder him from doing +it, or even much help him in doing it. He knew too, partly, that it was +great; the greatest a man could do. "If thou follow thy star, _Se tu +segui tua stella_,"--so could the Hero, in his forsakenness, in his +extreme need, still say to himself: "Follow thou thy star, thou shalt +not fail of a glorious haven!" The labor of writing, we find, and indeed +could know otherwise, was great and painful for him; he says, This Book, +"which has made me lean for many years." Ah yes, it was won, all of it, +with pain and sore toil,--not in sport, but in grim earnest. His Book, +as indeed most good Books are, has been written, in many senses, with +his heart's blood. It is his whole history, this Book. He died after +finishing it; not yet very old, at the age of fifty-six;--broken-hearted +rather, as is said. He lies buried in his death-city Ravenna: _Hic +claudor Dantes patriis extorris ab oris_. The Florentines begged back +his body, in a century after; the Ravenna people would not give it. +"Here am I Dante laid, shut out from my native shores." + +I said, Dante's Poem was a Song: it is Tieck who calls it "a mystic +unfathomable Song;" and such is literally the character of it. Coleridge +remarks very pertinently somewhere, that wherever you find a sentence +musically worded, of true rhythm and melody in the words, there is +something deep and good in the meaning too. For body and soul, word and +idea, go strangely together here as everywhere. Song: we said before, +it was the Heroic of Speech! All _old_ Poems, Homer's and the rest, are +authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems +are; that whatsoever is not _sung_ is properly no Poem, but a piece of +Prose cramped into jingling lines,--to the great injury of the grammar, +to the great grief of the reader, for most part! What we wants to get at +is the _thought_ the man had, if he had any: why should he twist it into +jingle, if he _could_ speak it out plainly? It is only when the heart +of him is rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, +according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the greatness, depth +and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and +sing; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of +Speakers,--whose speech is Song. Pretenders to this are many; and to an +earnest reader, I doubt, it is for most part a very melancholy, not to +say an insupportable business, that of reading rhyme! Rhyme that had +no inward necessity to be rhymed;--it ought to have told us plainly, +without any jingle, what it was aiming at. I would advise all men who +_can_ speak their thought, not to sing it; to understand that, in +a serious time, among serious men, there is no vocation in them for +singing it. Precisely as we love the true song, and are charmed by it as +by something divine, so shall we hate the false song, and account it a +mere wooden noise, a thing hollow, superfluous, altogether an insincere +and offensive thing. + +I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his _Divine Comedy_ that it +is, in all senses, genuinely a Song. In the very sound of it there is +a _canto fermo_; it proceeds as by a chant. The language, his simple +_terza rima_, doubtless helped him in this. One reads along naturally +with a sort of _lilt_. But I add, that it could not be otherwise; for +the essence and material of the work are themselves rhythmic. Its depth, +and rapt passion and sincerity, makes it musical;--go _deep_ enough, +there is music everywhere. A true inward symmetry, what one calls +an architectural harmony, reigns in it, proportionates it all: +architectural; which also partakes of the character of music. The three +kingdoms, _Inferno_, _Purgatorio_, _Paradiso_, look out on one +another like compartments of a great edifice; a great supernatural +world-cathedral, piled up there, stern, solemn, awful; Dante's World of +Souls! It is, at bottom, the _sincerest_ of all Poems; sincerity, +here too, we find to be the measure of worth. It came deep out of +the author's heart of hearts; and it goes deep, and through long +generations, into ours. The people of Verona, when they saw him on the +streets, used to say, "_Eccovi l' uom ch' e stato all' Inferno_, See, +there is the man that was in Hell!" Ah yes, he had been in Hell;--in +Hell enough, in long severe sorrow and struggle; as the like of him +is pretty sure to have been. Commedias that come out _divine_ are not +accomplished otherwise. Thought, true labor of any kind, highest +virtue itself, is it not the daughter of Pain? Born as out of the black +whirlwind;--true _effort_, in fact, as of a captive struggling to free +himself: that is Thought. In all ways we are "to become perfect through +_suffering_."--_But_, as I say, no work known to me is so elaborated as +this of Dante's. It has all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of +his soul. It had made him "lean" for many years. Not the general whole +only; every compartment of it is worked out, with intense earnestness, +into truth, into clear visuality. Each answers to the other; each fits +in its place, like a marble stone accurately hewn and polished. It is +the soul of Dante, and in this the soul of the middle ages, rendered +forever rhythmically visible there. No light task; a right intense one: +but a task which is _done_. + +Perhaps one would say, _intensity_, with the much that depends on it, is +the prevailing character of Dante's genius. Dante does not come before +us as a large catholic mind; rather as a narrow, and even sectarian +mind: it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too of +his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, concentred itself into +fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great not because he is worldwide, +but because he is world-deep. Through all objects he pierces as it +were down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so intense as Dante. +Consider, for example, to begin with the outermost development of his +intensity, consider how he paints. He has a great power of vision; +seizes the very type of a thing; presents that and nothing more. You +remember that first view he gets of the Hall of Dite: _red_ pinnacle, +red-hot cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity of gloom;--so +vivid, so distinct, visible at once and forever! It is as an emblem of +the whole genius of Dante. There is a brevity, an abrupt precision in +him: Tacitus is not briefer, more condensed; and then in Dante it seems +a natural condensation, spontaneous to the man. One smiting word; and +then there is silence, nothing more said. His silence is more eloquent +than words. It is strange with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches +the true likeness of a matter: cuts into the matter as with a pen of +fire. Plutus, the blustering giant, collapses at Virgil's rebuke; it +is "as the sails sink, the mast being suddenly broken." Or that poor +Brunetto Latini, with the _cotto aspetto_, "face _baked_," parched brown +and lean; and the "fiery snow" that falls on them there, a "fiery snow +without wind," slow, deliberate, never-ending! Or the lids of those +Tombs; square sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with +its Soul in torment; the lids laid open there; they are to be shut at +the Day of Judgment, through Eternity. And how Farinata rises; and how +Cavalcante falls--at hearing of his Son, and the past tense "_fue_"! The +very movements in Dante have something brief; swift, decisive, almost +military. It is of the inmost essence of his genius this sort of +painting. The fiery, swift Italian nature of the man, so silent, +passionate, with its quick abrupt movements, its silent "pale rages," +speaks itself in these things. + +For though this of painting is one of the outermost developments of a +man, it comes like all else from the essential faculty of him; it is +physiognomical of the whole man. Find a man whose words paint you a +likeness, you have found a man worth something; mark his manner of doing +it, as very characteristic of him. In the first place, he could not have +discerned the object at all, or seen the vital type of it, unless he +had, what we may call, _sympathized_ with it,--had sympathy in him to +bestow on objects. He must have been _sincere_ about it too; sincere +and sympathetic: a man without worth cannot give you the likeness of +any object; he dwells in vague outwardness, fallacy and trivial hearsay, +about all objects. And indeed may we not say that intellect altogether +expresses itself in this power of discerning what an object is? +Whatsoever of faculty a man's mind may have will come out here. Is it +even of business, a matter to be done? The gifted man is he who _sees_ +the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as surplusage: it is +his faculty too, the man of business's faculty, that he discern the true +_likeness_, not the false superficial one, of the thing he has got to +work in. And how much of _morality_ is in the kind of insight we get +of anything; "the eye seeing in all things what it brought with it the +faculty of seeing"! To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly +as to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, the Painters tell us, is +the best of all Portrait-painters withal. No most gifted eye can exhaust +the significance of any object. In the commonest human face there lies +more than Raphael will take away with him. + +Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and of a vividness as +of fire in dark night; taken on the wider scale, it is every way noble, +and the outcome of a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, what qualities +in that! A thing woven as out of rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. +A small flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart +of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too: _della bella persona, che +mi fu tolta_; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a solace that _he_ +will never part from her! Saddest tragedy in these _alti guai_. And +the racking winds, in that _aer bruno_, whirl them away again, to +wail forever!--Strange to think: Dante was the friend of this poor +Francesca's father; Francesca herself may have sat upon the Poet's knee, +as a bright innocent little child. Infinite pity, yet also infinite +rigor of law: it is so Nature is made; it is so Dante discerned that she +was made. What a paltry notion is that of his _Divine Comedy's_ being a +poor splenetic impotent terrestrial libel; putting those into Hell whom +he could not be avenged upon on earth! I suppose if ever pity, tender +as a mother's, was in the heart of any man, it was in Dante's. But a +man who does not know rigor cannot pity either. His very pity will be +cowardly, egoistic,--sentimentality, or little better. I know not in +the world an affection equal to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a +trembling, longing, pitying love: like the wail of AEolian harps, soft, +soft; like a child's young heart;--and then that stern, sore-saddened +heart! These longings of his towards his Beatrice; their meeting +together in the _Paradiso_; his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, +her that had been purified by death so long, separated from him so +far:--one likens it to the song of angels; it is among the purest +utterances of affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever came out of +a human soul. + +For the _intense_ Dante is intense in all things; he has got into the +essence of all. His intellectual insight as painter, on occasion too +as reasoner, is but the result of all other sorts of intensity. Morally +great, above all, we must call him; it is the beginning of all. His +scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love;--as indeed, what are +they but the _inverse_ or _converse_ of his love? "_A Dio spiacenti ed +a' nemici sui_, Hateful to God and to the enemies of God:" lofty scorn, +unappeasable silent reprobation and aversion; "_Non ragionam di lor_, We +will not speak of _them_, look only and pass." Or think of this; "They +have not the _hope_ to die, _Non han speranza di morte_." One day, +it had risen sternly benign on the scathed heart of Dante, that he, +wretched, never-resting, worn as he was, would full surely _die_; "that +Destiny itself could not doom him not to die." Such words are in this +man. For rigor, earnestness and depth, he is not to be paralleled in the +modern world; to seek his parallel we must go into the Hebrew Bible, and +live with the antique Prophets there. + +I do not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly preferring +the _Inferno_ to the two other parts of the Divine _Commedia_. Such +preference belongs, I imagine, to our general Byronism of taste, and +is like to be a transient feeling. The _Purgatorio_ and _Paradiso_, +especially the former, one would almost say, is even more excellent than +it. It is a noble thing that _Purgatorio_, "Mountain of Purification;" +an emblem of the noblest conception of that age. If sin is so fatal, +and Hell is and must be so rigorous, awful, yet in Repentance too is +man purified; Repentance is the grand Christian act. It is beautiful how +Dante works it out. The _tremolar dell' onde_, that "trembling" of the +ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of morning, dawning afar on the +wandering Two, is as the type of an altered mood. Hope has now dawned; +never-dying Hope, if in company still with heavy sorrow. The obscure +sojourn of demons and reprobate is underfoot; a soft breathing of +penitence mounts higher and higher, to the Throne of Mercy itself. "Pray +for me," the denizens of that Mount of Pain all say to him. "Tell my +Giovanna to pray for me," my daughter Giovanna; "I think her mother +loves me no more!" They toil painfully up by that winding steep, "bent +down like corbels of a building," some of them,--crushed together so +"for the sin of pride;" yet nevertheless in years, in ages and aeons, +they shall have reached the top, which is heaven's gate, and by Mercy +shall have been admitted in. The joy too of all, when one has prevailed; +the whole Mountain shakes with joy, and a psalm of praise rises, when +one soul has perfected repentance and got its sin and misery left +behind! I call all this a noble embodiment of a true noble thought. + +But indeed the Three compartments mutually support one another, are +indispensable to one another. The _Paradiso_, a kind of inarticulate +music to me, is the redeeming side of the _Inferno_; the _Inferno_ +without it were untrue. All three make up the true Unseen World, +as figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages; a thing forever +memorable, forever true in the essence of it, to all men. It was perhaps +delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in this +of Dante's; a man _sent_ to sing it, to keep it long memorable. Very +notable with what brief simplicity he passes out of the every-day +reality, into the Invisible one; and in the second or third stanza, we +find ourselves in the World of Spirits; and dwell there, as among things +palpable, indubitable! To Dante they _were_ so; the real world, as it +is called, and its facts, was but the threshold to an infinitely higher +Fact of a World. At bottom, the one was as _preternatural_ as the other. +Has not each man a soul? He will not only be a spirit, but is one. To +the earnest Dante it is all one visible Fact; he believes it, sees it; +is the Poet of it in virtue of that. Sincerity, I say again, is the +saving merit, now as always. + +Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol withal, an emblematic +representation of his Belief about this Universe:--some Critic in a +future age, like those Scandinavian ones the other day, who has ceased +altogether to think as Dante did, may find this too all an "Allegory," +perhaps an idle Allegory! It is a sublime embodiment, or sublimest, +of the soul of Christianity. It expresses, as in huge world-wide +architectural emblems, how the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to +be the two polar elements of this Creation, on which it all turns; +that these two differ not by preferability of one to the other, but by +incompatibility absolute and infinite; that the one is excellent and +high as light and Heaven, the other hideous, black as Gehenna and the +Pit of Hell! Everlasting Justice, yet with Penitence, with everlasting +Pity,--all Christianism, as Dante and the Middle Ages had it, is +emblemed here. Emblemed: and yet, as I urged the other day, with +what entire truth of purpose; how unconscious of any embleming! Hell, +Purgatory, Paradise: these things were not fashioned as emblems; was +there, in our Modern European Mind, any thought at all of their being +emblems! Were they not indubitable awful facts; the whole heart of man +taking them for practically true, all Nature everywhere confirming them? +So is it always in these things. Men do not believe an Allegory. The +future Critic, whatever his new thought may be, who considers this +of Dante to have been all got up as an Allegory, will commit one sore +mistake!--Paganism we recognized as a veracious expression of the +earnest awe-struck feeling of man towards the Universe; veracious, true +once, and still not without worth for us. But mark here the difference +of Paganism and Christianism; one great difference. Paganism emblemed +chiefly the Operations of Nature; the destinies, efforts, combinations, +vicissitudes of things and men in this world; Christianism emblemed +the Law of Human Duty, the Moral Law of Man. One was for the sensuous +nature: a rude helpless utterance of the first Thought of men,--the +chief recognized virtue, Courage, Superiority to Fear. The other was not +for the sensuous nature, but for the moral. What a progress is here, if +in that one respect only--! + +And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in a very +strange way, found a voice. The _Divina Commedia_ is of Dante's writing; +yet in truth it belongs to ten Christian centuries, only the finishing +of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the smith with that +metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning methods,--how little +of all he does is properly _his_ work! All past inventive men work +there with him;--as indeed with all of us, in all things. Dante is the +spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they lived by stands here, in +everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his, terrible and beautiful, +are the fruit of the Christian Meditation of all the good men who had +gone before him. Precious they; but also is not he precious? Much, had +not he spoken, would have been dumb; not dead, yet living voiceless. + +On the whole, is it not an utterance, this mystic Song, at once of one +of the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that Europe +had hitherto realized for itself? Christianism, as Dante sings it, is +another than Paganism in the rude Norse mind; another than "Bastard +Christianism" half-articulately spoken in the Arab Desert, seven hundred +years before!--The noblest _idea_ made _real_ hitherto among men, is +sung, and emblemed forth abidingly, by one of the noblest men. In the +one sense and in the other, are we not right glad to possess it? As I +calculate, it may last yet for long thousands of years. For the +thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul, differs +altogether from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer is of the +day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes away, in swift endless +changes; the inmost is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. True +souls, in all generations of the world, who look on this Dante, will +find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his thoughts, his woes +and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity; they will feel that +this Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in Saint Helena is charmed with +the genial veracity of old Homer. The oldest Hebrew Prophet, under a +vesture the most diverse from ours, does yet, because he speaks from the +heart of man, speak to all men's hearts. It is the one sole secret of +continuing long memorable. Dante, for depth of sincerity, is like an +antique Prophet too; his words, like theirs, come from his very heart. +One need not wonder if it were predicted that his Poem might be the +most enduring thing our Europe has yet made; for nothing so endures as a +truly spoken word. All cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, +and outer arrangement never so lasting, are brief in comparison to an +unfathomable heart-song like this: one feels as if it might survive, +still of importance to men, when these had all sunk into new +irrecognizable combinations, and had ceased individually to be. Europe +has made much; great cities, great empires, encyclopaedias, creeds, +bodies of opinion and practice: but it has made little of the class +of Dante's Thought. Homer yet _is_ veritably present face to face with +every open soul of us; and Greece, where is _it_? Desolate for thousands +of years; away, vanished; a bewildered heap of stones and rubbish, the +life and existence of it all gone. Like a dream; like the dust of King +Agamemnon! Greece was; Greece, except in the _words_ it spoke, is not. + +The uses of this Dante? We will not say much about his "uses." A human +soul who has once got into that primal element of _Song_, and sung forth +fitly somewhat therefrom, has worked in the _depths_ of our existence; +feeding through long times the life-roots of all excellent human +things whatsoever,--in a way that "utilities" will not succeed well in +calculating! We will not estimate the Sun by the quantity of gaslight +it saves us; Dante shall be invaluable, or of no value. One remark I +may make: the contrast in this respect between the Hero-Poet and the +Hero-Prophet. In a hundred years, Mahomet, as we saw, had his Arabians +at Grenada and at Delhi; Dante's Italians seem to be yet very much where +they were. Shall we say, then, Dante's effect on the world was small in +comparison? Not so: his arena is far more restricted; but also it is far +nobler, clearer;--perhaps not less but more important. Mahomet speaks +to great masses of men, in the coarse dialect adapted to such; a dialect +filled with inconsistencies, crudities, follies: on the great masses +alone can he act, and there with good and with evil strangely blended. +Dante speaks to the noble, the pure and great, in all times and places. +Neither does he grow obsolete, as the other does. Dante burns as a pure +star, fixed there in the firmament, at which the great and the high of +all ages kindle themselves: he is the possession of all the chosen of +the world for uncounted time. Dante, one calculates, may long survive +Mahomet. In this way the balance may be made straight again. + +But, at any rate, it is not by what is called their effect on the world, +by what _we_ can judge of their effect there, that a man and his work +are measured. Effect? Influence? Utility? Let a man _do_ his work; the +fruit of it is the care of Another than he. It will grow its own fruit; +and whether embodied in Caliph Thrones and Arabian Conquests, so that it +"fills all Morning and Evening Newspapers," and all Histories, which are +a kind of distilled Newspapers; or not embodied so at all;--what matters +that? That is not the real fruit of it! The Arabian Caliph, in so far +only as he did something, was something. If the great Cause of Man, and +Man's work in God's Earth, got no furtherance from the Arabian Caliph, +then no matter how many scimetars he drew, how many gold piasters +pocketed, and what uproar and blaring he made in this world,--_he_ was +but a loud-sounding inanity and futility; at bottom, he _was_ not +at all. Let us honor the great empire of _Silence_, once more! The +boundless treasury which we do not jingle in our pockets, or count up +and present before men! It is perhaps, of all things, the usefulest for +each of us to do, in these loud times.-- + + +As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically +the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its +Inner Life; so Shakspeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life +of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humors, +ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the +world, men then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece; so in +Shakspeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern Europe +was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us +the Faith or soul; Shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the +Practice or body. This latter also we were to have; a man was sent for +it, the man Shakspeare. Just when that chivalry way of life had reached +its last finish, and was on the point of breaking down into slow or +swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sovereign +Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to +take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two fit men: Dante, +deep, fierce as the central fire of the world; Shakspeare, wide, placid, +far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy produced the +one world-voice; we English had the honor of producing the other. + +Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us. +I think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-sufficing is +this Shakspeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for +deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a Poet! The woods +and skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough +for this man! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole English +Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as +of its own accord? The "Tree Igdrasil" buds and withers by its own +laws,--too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every +bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir +Thomas Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not +sufficiently considered: how everything does co-operate with all; not +a leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and +stellar systems; no thought, word or act of man but has sprung +withal out of all men, and works sooner or later, recognizably or +irrecognizable, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation of sap and +influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the lowest +talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest portion of the +whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the Kingdoms of +Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest Heaven--! + +In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era with its +Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded +it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The +Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this +Practical Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it +now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital fact +in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age +Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish +it, before Shakspeare, the noblest product of it, made his appearance. +He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with +Catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent him forth; taking +small thought of Acts of Parliament. King Henrys, Queen Elizabeths go +their way; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of Parliament, on the whole, +are small, notwithstanding the noise they make. What Act of Parliament, +debate at St. Stephen's, on the hustings or elsewhere, was it that +brought this Shakspeare into being? No dining at Freemason's Tavern, +opening subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other +jangling and true or false endeavoring! This Elizabethan Era, and all +its nobleness and blessedness, came without proclamation, preparation of +ours. Priceless Shakspeare was the free gift of Nature; given altogether +silently;--received altogether silently, as if it had been a thing of +little account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing. One +should look at that side of matters too. + +Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a +little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the +best judgment not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is +slowly pointing to the conclusion, that Shakspeare is the chief of all +Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has +left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know +not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all +the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid +joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and +clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said, that in +the constructing of Shakspeare's Dramas there is, apart from all other +"faculties" as they are called, an understanding manifested, equal to +that in Bacon's _Novum Organum_ That is true; and it is not a truth that +strikes every one. It would become more apparent if we tried, any of +us for himself, how, out of Shakspeare's dramatic materials, _we_ could +fashion such a result! The built house seems all so fit,--every way +as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the nature of +things,--we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The +very perfection of the house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides +the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any other man, we +may call Shakspeare in this: he discerns, knows as by instinct, what +condition he works under, what his materials are, what his own force and +its relation to them is. It is not a transitory glance of insight that +will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is +a calmly _seeing_ eye; a great intellect, in short. How a man, of some +wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind +of picture and delineation he will give of it,--is the best measure you +could get of what intellect is in the man. Which circumstance is vital +and shall stand prominent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; +where is the true _beginning_, the true sequence and ending? To find out +this, you task the whole force of insight that is in the man. He must +_understand_ the thing; according to the depth of his understanding, +will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him so. Does like join +itself to like; does the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so +that its embroilment becomes order? Can the man say, _Fiat lux_, Let +there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Precisely as there is +light in himself, will he accomplish this. + +Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait-painting, +delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakspeare is +great. All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is +unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakspeare. The +thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost +heart, and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, +so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative, we said: +poetic creation, what is this too but _seeing_ the thing sufficiently? +The _word_ that will describe the thing, follows of itself from such +clear intense sight of the thing. And is not Shakspeare's _morality_, +his valor, candor, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious +strength and greatness, which can triumph over such obstructions, +visible there too? Great as the world. No _twisted_, poor convex-concave +mirror, reflecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities; +a perfectly _level_ mirror;--that is to say withal, if we will +understand it, a man justly related to all things and men, a good man. +It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes in all kinds +of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; +sets them all forth to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the +equal brother of all. _Novum Organum_, and all the intellect you will +find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthy, material, poor in +comparison with this. Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost +nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakspeare, +reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he _saw_ the object; you may +say what he himself says of Shakspeare: "His characters are like watches +with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like +others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible." + +The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things; +what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped up in these +often rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye that +something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can +laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or other +genially relate yourself to them;--you can, at lowest, hold your peace +about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till the hour +come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them! At bottom, +it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect +enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that, +perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if +so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows +on what extremely trivial accidents,--perhaps on his having had a +singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the +faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the +harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the +heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result +of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature herself; the primary +outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every +other, we say first of all, _See_. If you cannot do that, it is of no +use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against +each other, and _name_ yourself a Poet; there is no hope for you. If you +can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner +of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him +a new pupil, "But are ye sure he's _not a dunce_?" Why, really one +might ask the same thing, in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever +function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's +not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other entirely fatal person. + +For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a +correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare's faculty, I +should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under +that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were +distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination, +fancy, &c., as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a capital error. +Then again, we hear of a man's "intellectual nature," and of his +"moral nature," as if these again were divisible, and existed apart. +Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; +we must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. +But words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our +apprehension of this matter is, for most part, radically falsified +thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep forever in mind, that +these divisions are at bottom but _names_; that man's spiritual nature, +the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible; +that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are +but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolubly +connected with each other, physiognomically related; that if we knew one +of them, we might know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the +moral quality of a man, what is this but another _side_ of the one vital +Force whereby he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of +him. You may see how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings; +his courage, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in +the opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is +_one_; and preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways. + +Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk: but, consider +it,--without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly +immoral _man_ could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what we +can call knowing, a man must first _love_ the thing, sympathize with it: +that is, be _virtuously_ related to it. If he have not the justice to +put down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the +dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he know? His virtues, all +of them, will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, +remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a +sealed book: what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial, +small; for the uses of the day merely.--But does not the very Fox know +something of Nature? Exactly so: it knows where the geese lodge! The +human Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the world, what more does he +know but this and the like of this? Nay, it should be considered too, +that if the Fox had not a certain vulpine _morality_, he could not even +know where the geese were, or get at the geese! If he spent his time +in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, his ill usage +by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, +promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, +he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his morality +and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same +internal unity of vulpine life!--These things are worth stating; for +the contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful perversion, in this +time: what limitations, modifications they require, your own candor will +supply. + +If I say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the greatest of Intellects, +I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakspeare's +intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious +intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of. +Novalis beautifully remarks of him, that those Dramas of his are +Products of Nature too, deep as Nature herself. I find a great truth in +this saying. Shakspeare's Art is not Artifice; the noblest worth of it +is not there by plan or precontrivance. It grows up from the deeps of +Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature. The +latest generations of men will find new meanings in Shakspeare, new +elucidations of their own human being; "new harmonies with the infinite +structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities +with the higher powers and senses of man." This well deserves +meditating. It is Nature's highest reward to a true simple great +soul, that he get thus to be _a part of herself_. Such a man's works, +whatsoever he with utmost conscious exertion and forethought shall +accomplish, grow up withal unconsciously, from the unknown deeps in +him;--as the oak-tree grows from the Earth's bosom, as the mountains and +waters shape themselves; with a symmetry grounded on Nature's own laws, +conformable to all Truth whatsoever. How much in Shakspeare lies hid; +his sorrows, his silent struggles known to himself; much that was not +known at all, not speakable at all: like _roots_, like sap and forces +working underground! Speech is great; but Silence is greater. + +Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I will not +blame Dante for his misery: it is as battle without victory; but true +battle,--the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call Shakspeare greater +than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he +had his own sorrows: those _Sonnets_ of his will even testify expressly +in what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for his life;--as +what man like him ever failed to have to do? It seems to me a heedless +notion, our common one, that he sat like a bird on the bough; and sang +forth, free and off-hand, never knowing the troubles of other men. Not +so; with no man is it so. How could a man travel forward from rustic +deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not fall in with sorrows +by the way? Or, still better, how could a man delineate a Hamlet, a +Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own +heroic heart had never suffered?--And now, in contrast with all this, +observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter! You +would say, in no point does he _exaggerate_ but only in laughter. Fiery +objurgations, words that pierce and burn, are to be found in Shakspeare; +yet he is always in measure here; never what Johnson would remark as +a specially "good hater." But his laughter seems to pour from him in +floods; he heaps all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the butt he is +bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play; you would +say, with his whole heart laughs. And then, if not always the finest, it +is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; +never. No man who _can_ laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at +these things. It is some poor character only _desiring_ to laugh, and +have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy; good +laughter is not "the crackling of thorns under the pot." Even at +stupidity and pretension this Shakspeare does not laugh otherwise than +genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts; and we dismiss +them covered with explosions of laughter: but we like the poor fellows +only the better for our laughing; and hope they will get on well there, +and continue Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter, like sunshine +on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me. + + +We have no room to speak of Shakspeare's individual works; though +perhaps there is much still waiting to be said on that head. Had we, for +instance, all his plays reviewed as _Hamlet_, in _Wilhelm Meister_, is! +A thing which might, one day, be done. August Wilhelm Schlegel has a +remark on his Historical Plays, _Henry Fifth_ and the others, which is +worth remembering. He calls them a kind of National Epic. Marlborough, +you recollect, said, he knew no English History but what he had learned +from Shakspeare. There are really, if we look to it, few as memorable +Histories. The great salient points are admirably seized; all rounds +itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence; it is, as Schlegel says, +epic;--as indeed all delineation by a great thinker will be. There are +right beautiful things in those Pieces, which indeed together form one +beautiful thing. That battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the +most perfect things, in its sort, we anywhere have of Shakspeare's. The +description of the two hosts: the worn-out, jaded English; the dread +hour, big with destiny, when the battle shall begin; and then that +deathless valor: "Ye good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England!" +There is a noble Patriotism in it,--far other than the "indifference" +you sometimes hear ascribed to Shakspeare. A true English heart +breathes, calm and strong, through the whole business; not boisterous, +protrusive; all the better for that. There is a sound in it like the +ring of steel. This man too had a right stroke in him, had it come to +that! + +But I will say, of Shakspeare's works generally, that we have no full +impress of him there; even as full as we have of many men. His works are +so many windows, through which we see a glimpse of the world that was +in him. All his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect, +written under cramping circumstances; giving only here and there a note +of the full utterance of the man. Passages there are that come upon you +like splendor out of Heaven; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very +heart of the thing: you say, "That is _true_, spoken once and forever; +wheresoever and whensoever there is an open human soul, that will +be recognized as true!" Such bursts, however, make us feel that the +surrounding matter is not radiant; that it is, in part, temporary, +conventional. Alas, Shakspeare had to write for the Globe Playhouse: +his great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no other +mould. It was with him, then, as it is with us all. No man works save +under conditions. The sculptor cannot set his own free Thought before +us; but his Thought as he could translate it into the stone that was +given, with the tools that were given. _Disjecta membra_ are all that we +find of any Poet, or of any man. + + +Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakspeare may recognize that he too +was a _Prophet_, in his way; of an insight analogous to the Prophetic, +though he took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to this man also +divine; unspeakable, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven; "We are such stuff +as Dreams are made of!" That scroll in Westminster Abbey, which few read +with understanding, is of the depth of any seer. But the man sang; did +not preach, except musically. We called Dante the melodious Priest +of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not call Shakspeare the still more +melodious Priest of a _true_ Catholicism, the "Universal Church" of +the Future and of all times? No narrow superstition, harsh asceticism, +intolerance, fanatical fierceness or perversion: a Revelation, so far as +it goes, that such a thousand-fold hidden beauty and divineness dwells +in all Nature; which let all men worship as they can! We may say +without offence, that there rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this +Shakspeare too; not unfit to make itself heard among the still more +sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, if we understood them, but +in harmony!--I cannot call this Shakspeare a "Sceptic," as some do; +his indifference to the creeds and theological quarrels of his time +misleading them. No: neither unpatriotic, though he says little about +his Patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little about his Faith. Such +"indifference" was the fruit of his greatness withal: his whole heart +was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may call it such); these +other controversies, vitally important to other men, were not vital to +him. + +But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious +thing, and set of things, this that Shakspeare has brought us? For +myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact +of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to us all; +a blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light?--And, at bottom, was it not +perhaps far better that this Shakspeare, every way an unconscious man, +was _conscious_ of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet, +because he saw into those internal Splendors, that he specially was the +"Prophet of God:" and was he not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater; +and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more +successful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of Mahomet's, of +his supreme Prophethood; and has come down to us inextricably involved +in error to this day; dragging along with it such a coil of fables, +impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here +and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, +and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and simulacrum; no +Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have +exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakspeare, this Dante +may still be young;--while this Shakspeare may still pretend to be a +Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods +to come! + +Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with Aeschylus or +Homer, why should he not, for veracity and universality, last like them? +He is _sincere_ as they; reaches deep down like them, to the universal +and perennial. But as for Mahomet, I think it had been better for +him _not_ to be so conscious! Alas, poor Mahomet; all that he was +_conscious_ of was a mere error; a futility and triviality,--as indeed +such ever is. The truly great in him too was the unconscious: that he +was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak out with that great +thunder-voice of his, not by words which he _thought_ to be great, but +by actions, by feelings, by a history which _were_ great! His Koran has +become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity; we do not believe, like him, +that God wrote that! The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force +of Nature. Whatsoever is truly great in him springs up from the +_in_articulate deeps. + + +Well: this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be Manager of +a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of +Southampton cast some kind glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks +to him, was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account him a god, +like Odin, while he dwelt with us;--on which point there were much to +be said. But I will say rather, or repeat: In spite of the sad state +Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakspeare has actually +become among us. Which Englishman we ever made, in this land of ours, +which million of Englishmen, would we not give up rather than the +Stratford Peasant? There is no regiment of highest Dignitaries that we +would sell him for. He is the grandest thing we have yet done. For our +honor among foreign nations, as an ornament to our English Household, +what item is there that we would not surrender rather than him? Consider +now, if they asked us, Will you give up your Indian Empire or your +Shakspeare, you English; never have had any Indian Empire, or never have +had any Shakspeare? Really it were a grave question. Official persons +would answer doubtless in official language; but we, for our part too, +should not we be forced to answer: Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire; +we cannot do without Shakspeare! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, +some day; but this Shakspeare does not go, he lasts forever with us; we +cannot give up our Shakspeare! + +Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering him merely as a real, +marketable, tangibly useful possession. England, before long, this +Island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of the English: in +America, in New Holland, east and west to the very Antipodes, there will +be a Saxondom covering great spaces of the Globe. And now, what is it +that can keep all these together into virtually one Nation, so that +they do not fall out and fight, but live at peace, in brotherlike +intercourse, helping one another? This is justly regarded as the +greatest practical problem, the thing all manner of sovereignties and +governments are here to accomplish: what is it that will accomplish +this? Acts of Parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot. America +is parted from us, so far as Parliament could part it. Call it not +fantastic, for there is much reality in it: Here, I say, is an English +King, whom no time or chance, Parliament or combination of Parliaments, +can dethrone! This King Shakspeare, does not he shine, in crowned +sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of +rallying-signs; indestructible; really more valuable in that point of +view than any other means or appliance whatsoever? We can fancy him +as radiant aloft over all the Nations of Englishmen, a thousand years +hence. From Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever, under what sort of +Parish-Constable soever, English men and women are, they will say to one +another: "Yes, this Shakspeare is ours; we produced him, we speak +and think by him; we are of one blood and kind with him." The most +common-sense politician, too, if he pleases, may think of that. + +Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate +voice; that it produce a man who will speak forth melodiously what the +heart of it means! Italy, for example, poor Italy lies dismembered, +scattered asunder, not appearing in any protocol or treaty as a unity +at all; yet the noble Italy is actually _one_: Italy produced its Dante; +Italy can speak! The Czar of all the Russias, he is strong with so many +bayonets, Cossacks and cannons; and does a great feat in keeping such a +tract of Earth politically together; but he cannot yet speak. Something +great in him, but it is a dumb greatness. He has had no voice of genius, +to be heard of all men and times. He must learn to speak. He is a great +dumb monster hitherto. His cannons and Cossacks will all have rusted +into nonentity, while that Dante's voice is still audible. The Nation +that has a Dante is bound together as no dumb Russia can be.--We must +here end what we had to say of the _Hero-Poet_. + + + + +LECTURE IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM. + +[May 15, 1840.] + +Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man as Priest. We +have repeatedly endeavored to explain that all sorts of Heroes are +intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the +Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak +of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, +victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero,--the outward shape +of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself +in. The Priest too, as I understand it, is a kind of Prophet; in him too +there is required to be a light of inspiration, as we must name it. He +presides over the worship of the people; is the Uniter of them with the +Unseen Holy. He is the spiritual Captain of the people; as the Prophet +is their spiritual King with many captains: he guides them heavenward, +by wise guidance through this Earth and its work. The ideal of him +is, that he too be what we can call a voice from the unseen Heaven; +interpreting, even as the Prophet did, and in a more familiar manner +unfolding the same to men. The unseen Heaven,--the "open secret of the +Universe,"--which so few have an eye for! He is the Prophet shorn of +his more awful splendor; burning with mild equable radiance, as the +enlightener of daily life. This, I say, is the ideal of a Priest. So in +old times; so in these, and in all times. One knows very well that, in +reducing ideals to practice, great latitude of tolerance is needful; +very great. But a Priest who is not this at all, who does not any longer +aim or try to be this, is a character--of whom we had rather not speak +in this place. + +Luther and Knox were by express vocation Priests, and did faithfully +perform that function in its common sense. Yet it will suit us better +here to consider them chiefly in their historical character, rather as +Reformers than Priests. There have been other Priests perhaps equally +notable, in calmer times, for doing faithfully the office of a Leader of +Worship; bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from +Heaven into the daily life of their people; leading them forward, as +under God's guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. But when +this same _way_ was a rough one, of battle, confusion and danger, the +spiritual Captain, who led through that, becomes, especially to us who +live under the fruit of his leading, more notable than any other. He +is the warfaring and battling Priest; who led his people, not to quiet +faithful labor as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict, +in times all violent, dismembered: a more perilous service, and a more +memorable one, be it higher or not. These two men we will account our +best Priests, inasmuch as they were our best Reformers. Nay I may ask, +Is not every true Reformer, by the nature of him, a _Priest_ first of +all? He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible +force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is +a believer in the divine truth of things; a _seer_, seeing through the +shows of things; a worshipper, in one way or the other, of the divine +truth of things; a Priest, that is. If he be not first a Priest, he will +never be good for much as a Reformer. + +Thus then, as we have seen Great Men, in various situations, building +up Religions, heroic Forms of human Existence in this world, Theories +of Life worthy to be sung by a Dante, Practices of Life by a +Shakspeare,--we are now to see the reverse process; which also is +necessary, which also may be carried on in the Heroic manner. Curious +how this should be necessary: yet necessary it is. The mild shining +of the Poet's light has to give place to the fierce lightning of the +Reformer: unfortunately the Reformer too is a personage that cannot +fail in History! The Poet indeed, with his mildness, what is he but +the product and ultimate adjustment of Reform, or Prophecy, with its +fierceness? No wild Saint Dominics and Thebaid Eremites, there had been +no melodious Dante; rough Practical Endeavor, Scandinavian and other, +from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Shakspeare +to speak. Nay the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symptom that +his epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished; that before +long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers needed. + +Doubtless it were finer, could we go along always in the way of _music_; +be tamed and taught by our Poets, as the rude creatures were by their +Orpheus of old. Or failing this rhythmic _musical_ way, how good were it +could we get so much as into the _equable_ way; I mean, if _peaceable_ +Priests, reforming from day to day, would always suffice us! But it is +not so; even this latter has not yet been realized. Alas, the battling +Reformer too is, from time to time, a needful and inevitable phenomenon. +Obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were once +indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need to be shaken +off, and left behind us,--a business often of enormous difficulty. It is +notable enough, surely, how a Theorem or spiritual Representation, so we +may call it, which once took in the whole Universe, and was completely +satisfactory in all parts of it to the highly discursive acute intellect +of Dante, one of the greatest in the world,--had in the course of +another century become dubitable to common intellects; become deniable; +and is now, to every one of us, flatly incredible, obsolete as Odin's +Theorem! To Dante, human Existence, and God's ways with men, were all +well represented by those _Malebolges_, _Purgatorios_; to Luther not +well. How was this? Why could not Dante's Catholicism continue; but +Luther's Protestantism must needs follow? Alas, nothing will _continue_. + +I do not make much of "Progress of the Species," as handled in these +times of ours; nor do I think you would care to hear much about it. +The talk on that subject is too often of the most extravagant, confused +sort. Yet I may say, the fact itself seems certain enough; nay we can +trace out the inevitable necessity of it in the nature of things. Every +man, as I have stated somewhere, is not only a learner but a doer: he +learns with the mind given him what has been; but with the same mind +he discovers farther, he invents and devises somewhat of his own. +Absolutely without originality there is no man. No man whatever +believes, or can believe, exactly what his grandfather believed: he +enlarges somewhat, by fresh discovery, his view of the Universe, and +consequently his Theorem of the Universe,--which is an _infinite_ +Universe, and can never be embraced wholly or finally by any view or +Theorem, in any conceivable enlargement: he enlarges somewhat, I say; +finds somewhat that was credible to his grandfather incredible to him, +false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he has discovered or +observed. It is the history of every man; and in the history of Mankind +we see it summed up into great historical amounts,--revolutions, new +epochs. Dante's Mountain of Purgatory does _not_ stand "in the ocean of +the other Hemisphere," when Columbus has once sailed thither! Men find +no such thing extant in the other Hemisphere. It is not there. It must +cease to be believed to be there. So with all beliefs whatsoever in this +world,--all Systems of Belief, and Systems of Practice that spring from +these. + +If we add now the melancholy fact, that when Belief waxes uncertain, +Practice too becomes unsound, and errors, injustices and miseries +everywhere more and more prevail, we shall see material enough for +revolution. At all turns, a man who will _do_ faithfully, needs to +believe firmly. If he have to ask at every turn the world's suffrage; if +he cannot dispense with the world's suffrage, and make his own suffrage +serve, he is a poor eye-servant; the work committed to him will be +_mis_done. Every such man is a daily contributor to the inevitable +downfall. Whatsoever work he does, dishonestly, with an eye to the +outward look of it, is a new offence, parent of new misery to somebody +or other. Offences accumulate till they become insupportable; and are +then violently burst through, cleared off as by explosion. Dante's +sublime Catholicism, incredible now in theory, and defaced still worse +by faithless, doubting and dishonest practice, has to be torn asunder by +a Luther, Shakspeare's noble Feudalism, as beautiful as it once looked +and was, has to end in a French Revolution. The accumulation of offences +is, as we say, too literally _exploded_, blasted asunder volcanically; +and there are long troublous periods, before matters come to a +settlement again. + +Surely it were mournful enough to look only at this face of the matter, +and find in all human opinions and arrangements merely the fact that +they were uncertain, temporary, subject to the law of death! At bottom, +it is not so: all death, here too we find, is but of the body, not of +the essence or soul; all destruction, by violent revolution or howsoever +it be, is but new creation on a wider scale. Odinism was _Valor_; +Christianism was _Humility_, a nobler kind of Valor. No thought that +ever dwelt honestly as true in the heart of man but _was_ an honest +insight into God's truth on man's part, and _has_ an essential truth in +it which endures through all changes, an everlasting possession for us +all. And, on the other hand, what a melancholy notion is that, which +has to represent all men, in all countries and times except our own, as +having spent their life in blind condemnable error, mere lost Pagans, +Scandinavians, Mahometans, only that we might have the true ultimate +knowledge! All generations of men were lost and wrong, only that this +present little section of a generation might be saved and right. They +all marched forward there, all generations since the beginning of the +world, like the Russian soldiers into the ditch of Schweidnitz Fort, +only to fill up the ditch with their dead bodies, that we might march +over and take the place! It is an incredible hypothesis. + +Such incredible hypothesis we have seen maintained with fierce emphasis; +and this or the other poor individual man, with his sect of individual +men, marching as over the dead bodies of all men, towards sure victory +but when he too, with his hypothesis and ultimate infallible credo, sank +into the ditch, and became a dead body, what was to be said?--Withal, it +is an important fact in the nature of man, that he tends to reckon his +own insight as final, and goes upon it as such. He will always do it, +I suppose, in one or the other way; but it must be in some wider, wiser +way than this. Are not all true men that live, or that ever lived, +soldiers of the same army, enlisted, under Heaven's captaincy, to do +battle against the same enemy, the empire of Darkness and Wrong? Why +should we misknow one another, fight not against the enemy but against +ourselves, from mere difference of uniform? All uniforms shall be good, +so they hold in them true valiant men. All fashions of arms, the Arab +turban and swift scimetar, Thor's strong hammer smiting down _Jotuns_, +shall be welcome. Luther's battle-voice, Dante's march-melody, all +genuine things are with us, not against us. We are all under one +Captain, soldiers of the same host.--Let us now look a little at this +Luther's fighting; what kind of battle it was, and how he comported +himself in it. Luther too was of our spiritual Heroes; a Prophet to his +country and time. + + +As introductory to the whole, a remark about Idolatry will perhaps be +in place here. One of Mahomet's characteristics, which indeed belongs to +all Prophets, is unlimited implacable zeal against Idolatry. It is the +grand theme of Prophets: Idolatry, the worshipping of dead Idols as +the Divinity, is a thing they cannot away with, but have to denounce +continually, and brand with inexpiable reprobation; it is the chief of +all the sins they see done under the sun. This is worth noting. We will +not enter here into the theological question about Idolatry. Idol is +_Eidolon_, a thing seen, a symbol. It is not God, but a Symbol of God; +and perhaps one may question whether any the most benighted mortal ever +took it for more than a Symbol. I fancy, he did not think that the poor +image his own hands had made _was_ God; but that God was emblemed by +it, that God was in it some way or other. And now in this sense, one may +ask, Is not all worship whatsoever a worship by Symbols, by _eidola_, or +things seen? Whether _seen_, rendered visible as an image or picture to +the bodily eye; or visible only to the inward eye, to the imagination, +to the intellect: this makes a superficial, but no substantial +difference. It is still a Thing Seen, significant of Godhead; an Idol. +The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and intellectual +Representation of Divine things, and worships thereby; thereby is +worship first made possible for him. All creeds, liturgies, religious +forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this +sense _eidola_, things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by +Symbols, by Idols:--we may say, all Idolatry is comparative, and the +worst Idolatry is only _more_ idolatrous. + +Where, then, lies the evil of it? Some fatal evil must lie in it, or +earnest prophetic men would not on all hands so reprobate it. Why is +Idolatry so hateful to Prophets? It seems to me as if, in the worship +of those poor wooden symbols, the thing that had chiefly provoked the +Prophet, and filled his inmost soul with indignation and aversion, was +not exactly what suggested itself to his own thought, and came out of +him in words to others, as the thing. The rudest heathen that worshipped +Canopus, or the Caabah Black-Stone, he, as we saw, was superior to the +horse that worshipped nothing at all! Nay there was a kind of lasting +merit in that poor act of his; analogous to what is still meritorious in +Poets: recognition of a certain endless _divine_ beauty and significance +in stars and all natural objects whatsoever. Why should the Prophet +so mercilessly condemn him? The poorest mortal worshipping his Fetish, +while his heart is full of it, may be an object of pity, of contempt and +avoidance, if you will; but cannot surely be an object of hatred. Let +his heart _be_ honestly full of it, the whole space of his dark narrow +mind illuminated thereby; in one word, let him entirely _believe_ in +his Fetish,--it will then be, I should say, if not well with him, yet +as well as it can readily be made to be, and you will leave him alone, +unmolested there. + +But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, in the era +of the Prophets, no man's mind _is_ any longer honestly filled with his +Idol or Symbol. Before the Prophet can arise who, seeing through it, +knows it to be mere wood, many men must have begun dimly to doubt that +it was little more. Condemnable Idolatry is _insincere_ Idolatry. +Doubt has eaten out the heart of it: a human soul is seen clinging +spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenant, which it half feels now to have +become a Phantasm. This is one of the balefulest sights. Souls are no +longer filled with their Fetish; but only pretend to be filled, and +would fain make themselves feel that they are filled. "You do not +believe," said Coleridge; "you only believe that you believe." It is the +final scene in all kinds of Worship and Symbolism; the sure symptom +that death is now nigh. It is equivalent to what we call Formulism, and +Worship of Formulas, in these days of ours. No more immoral act can be +done by a human creature; for it is the beginning of all immorality, or +rather it is the impossibility henceforth of any morality whatsoever: +the innermost moral soul is paralyzed thereby, cast into fatal magnetic +sleep! Men are no longer _sincere_ men. I do not wonder that the earnest +man denounces this, brands it, prosecutes it with inextinguishable +aversion. He and it, all good and it, are at death-feud. Blamable +Idolatry is _Cant_, and even what one may call Sincere-Cant. +Sincere-Cant: that is worth thinking of! Every sort of Worship ends with +this phasis. + +I find Luther to have been a Breaker of Idols, no less than any other +Prophet. The wooden gods of the Koreish, made of timber and bees-wax, +were not more hateful to Mahomet than Tetzel's Pardons of Sin, made of +sheepskin and ink, were to Luther. It is the property of every Hero, in +every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to reality; +that he stand upon things, and not shows of things. According as he +loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the +awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however +regular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable +and detestable to him. Protestantism, too, is the work of a Prophet: +the prophet-work of that sixteenth century. The first stroke of honest +demolition to an ancient thing grown false and idolatrous; preparatory +afar off to a new thing, which shall be true, and authentically divine! + +At first view it might seem as if Protestantism were entirely +destructive to this that we call Hero-worship, and represent as the +basis of all possible good, religious or social, for mankind. One +often hears it said that Protestantism introduced a new era, radically +different from any the world had ever seen before: the era of "private +judgment," as they call it. By this revolt against the Pope, every man +became his own Pope; and learnt, among other things, that he must never +trust any Pope, or spiritual Hero-captain, any more! Whereby, is not +spiritual union, all hierarchy and subordination among men, henceforth +an impossibility? So we hear it said.--Now I need not deny that +Protestantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereignties, Popes and +much else. Nay I will grant that English Puritanism, revolt against +earthly sovereignties, was the second act of it; that the enormous +French Revolution itself was the third act, whereby all sovereignties +earthly and spiritual were, as might seem, abolished or made sure +of abolition. Protestantism is the grand root from which our whole +subsequent European History branches out. For the spiritual will always +body itself forth in the temporal history of men; the spiritual is the +beginning of the temporal. And now, sure enough, the cry is everywhere +for Liberty and Equality, Independence and so forth; instead of _Kings_, +Ballot-boxes and Electoral suffrages: it seems made out that any +Hero-sovereign, or loyal obedience of men to a man, in things temporal +or things spiritual, has passed away forever from the world. I should +despair of the world altogether, if so. One of my deepest convictions +is, that it is not so. Without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal +and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy; the hatefulest of +things. But I find Protestantism, whatever anarchic democracy it have +produced, to be the beginning of new genuine sovereignty and order. +I find it to be a revolt against _false_ sovereigns; the painful but +indispensable first preparative for _true_ sovereigns getting place +among us! This is worth explaining a little. + +Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that this of "private +judgment" is, at bottom, not a new thing in the world, but only new at +that epoch of the world. There is nothing generically new or peculiar in +the Reformation; it was a return to Truth and Reality in opposition +to Falsehood and Semblance, as all kinds of Improvement and genuine +Teaching are and have been. Liberty of private judgment, if we will +consider it, must at all times have existed in the world. Dante had not +put out his eyes, or tied shackles on himself; he was at home in +that Catholicism of his, a free-seeing soul in it,--if many a poor +Hogstraten, Tetzel, and Dr. Eck had now become slaves in it. Liberty of +judgment? No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever +compel the soul of a man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own +indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign, and believe +there, by the grace of God alone! The sorriest sophistical Bellarmine, +preaching sightless faith and passive obedience, must first, by some +kind of _conviction_, have abdicated his right to be convinced. His +"private judgment" indicated that, as the advisablest step _he_ could +take. The right of private judgment will subsist, in full force, +wherever true men subsist. A true man _believes_ with his whole +judgment, with all the illumination and discernment that is in him, and +has always so believed. A false man, only struggling to "believe that +he believes," will naturally manage it in some other way. Protestantism +said to this latter, Woe! and to the former, Well done! At bottom, it +was no new saying; it was a return to all old sayings that ever had been +said. Be genuine, be sincere: that was, once more, the meaning of it. +Mahomet believed with his whole mind; Odin with his whole mind,--he, and +all _true_ Followers of Odinism. They, by their private judgment, had +"judged "--_so_. + +And now I venture to assert, that the exercise of private judgment, +faithfully gone about, does by no means necessarily end in selfish +independence, isolation; but rather ends necessarily in the opposite +of that. It is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error, +insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make it. A man protesting +against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that +believe in truth. There is no communion possible among men who believe +only in hearsays. The heart of each is lying dead; has no power of +sympathy even with _things_,--or he would believe _them_ and not +hearsays. No sympathy even with things; how much less with his +fellow-men! He cannot unite with men; he is an anarchic man. Only in a +world of sincere men is unity possible;--and there, in the long-run, it +is as good as _certain_. + +For observe one thing, a thing too often left out of view, or rather +altogether lost sight of in this controversy: That it is not necessary a +man should himself have _discovered_ the truth he is to believe in, and +never so _sincerely_ to believe in. A Great Man, we said, was always +sincere, as the first condition of him. But a man need not be great in +order to be sincere; that is not the necessity of Nature and all Time, +but only of certain corrupt unfortunate epochs of Time. A man can +believe, and make his own, in the most genuine way, what he has received +from another;--and with boundless gratitude to that other! The merit of +_originality_ is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the +original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not +for another. Every son of Adam can become a sincere man, an original +man, in this sense; no mortal is doomed to be an insincere man. Whole +ages, what we call ages of Faith, are original; all men in them, or the +most of men in them, sincere. These are the great and fruitful ages: +every worker, in all spheres, is a worker not on semblance but on +substance; every work issues in a result: the general sum of such work +is great; for all of it, as genuine, tends towards one goal; all of +it is _additive_, none of it subtractive. There is true union, true +kingship, loyalty, all true and blessed things, so far as the poor Earth +can produce blessedness for men. + +Hero-worship? Ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, original, true, or +what we call it, is surely the farthest in the world from indisposing +him to reverence and believe other men's truth! It only disposes, +necessitates and invincibly compels him to disbelieve other men's dead +formulas, hearsays and untruths. A man embraces truth with his eyes +open, and because his eyes are open: does he need to shut them before he +can love his Teacher of truth? He alone can love, with a right gratitude +and genuine loyalty of soul, the Hero-Teacher who has delivered him +out of darkness into light. Is not such a one a true Hero and +Serpent-queller; worthy of all reverence! The black monster, Falsehood, +our one enemy in this world, lies prostrate by his valor; it was he that +conquered the world for us!--See, accordingly, was not Luther himself +reverenced as a true Pope, or Spiritual Father, _being_ verily such? +Napoleon, from amid boundless revolt of Sansculottism, became a King. +Hero-worship never dies, nor can die. Loyalty and Sovereignty are +everlasting in the world:--and there is this in them, that they +are grounded not on garnitures and semblances, but on realities and +sincerities. Not by shutting your eyes, your "private judgment;" no, but +by opening them, and by having something to see! Luther's message was +deposition and abolition to all false Popes and Potentates, but life and +strength, though afar off, to new genuine ones. + +All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suffrages, Independence and +so forth, we will take, therefore, to be a temporary phenomenon, by no +means a final one. Though likely to last a long time, with sad enough +embroilments for us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that +are past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are coming. In all +ways, it behooved men to quit simulacra and return to fact; cost what it +might, that did behoove to be done. With spurious Popes, and Believers +having no private judgment,--quacks pretending to command over +dupes,--what can you do? Misery and mischief only. You cannot make an +association out of insincere men; you cannot build an edifice except +by plummet and level,--at right-angles to one another! In all this wild +revolutionary work, from Protestantism downwards, I see the blessedest +result preparing itself: not abolition of Hero-worship, but rather what +I would call a whole World of Heroes. If Hero mean _sincere man_, why +may not every one of us be a Hero? A world all sincere, a believing +world: the like has been; the like will again be,--cannot help being. +That were the right sort of Worshippers for Heroes: never could the +truly Better be so reverenced as where all were True and Good!--But we +must hasten to Luther and his Life. + + +Luther's birthplace was Eisleben in Saxony; he came into the world there +on the 10th of November, 1483. It was an accident that gave this honor +to Eisleben. His parents, poor mine-laborers in a village of that +region, named Mohra, had gone to the Eisleben Winter-Fair: in the tumult +of this scene the Frau Luther was taken with travail, found refuge in +some poor house there, and the boy she bore was named MARTIN LUTHER. +Strange enough to reflect upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she had gone +with her husband to make her small merchandisings; perhaps to sell the +lock of yarn she had been spinning, to buy the small winter-necessaries +for her narrow hut or household; in the whole world, that day, there was +not a more entirely unimportant-looking pair of people than this Miner +and his Wife. And yet what were all Emperors, Popes and Potentates, in +comparison? There was born here, once more, a Mighty Man; whose light +was to flame as the beacon over long centuries and epochs of the world; +the whole world and its history was waiting for this man. It is strange, +it is great. It leads us back to another Birth-hour, in a still meaner +environment, Eighteen Hundred years ago,--of which it is fit that we +_say_ nothing, that we think only in silence; for what words are there! +The Age of Miracles past? The Age of Miracles is forever here--! + +I find it altogether suitable to Luther's function in this Earth, and +doubtless wisely ordered to that end by the Providence presiding over +him and us and all things, that he was born poor, and brought up poor, +one of the poorest of men. He had to beg, as the school-children +in those times did; singing for alms and bread, from door to door. +Hardship, rigorous Necessity was the poor boy's companion; no man nor no +thing would put on a false face to flatter Martin Luther. Among things, +not among the shows of things, had he to grow. A boy of rude figure, yet +with weak health, with his large greedy soul, full of all faculty and +sensibility, he suffered greatly. But it was his task to get acquainted +with _realities_, and keep acquainted with them, at whatever cost: his +task was to bring the whole world back to reality, for it had dwelt too +long with semblance! A youth nursed up in wintry whirlwinds, in desolate +darkness and difficulty, that he may step forth at last from his stormy +Scandinavia, strong as a true man, as a god: a Christian Odin,--a right +Thor once more, with his thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough +_Jotuns_ and Giant-monsters! + +Perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may fancy, was that death +of his friend Alexis, by lightning, at the gate of Erfurt. Luther had +struggled up through boyhood, better and worse; displaying, in spite +of all hindrances, the largest intellect, eager to learn: his father +judging doubtless that he might promote himself in the world, set him +upon the study of Law. This was the path to rise; Luther, with little +will in it either way, had consented: he was now nineteen years of age. +Alexis and he had been to see the old Luther people at Mansfeldt; were +got back again near Erfurt, when a thunder-storm came on; the bolt +struck Alexis, he fell dead at Luther's feet. What is this Life +of ours?--gone in a moment, burnt up like a scroll, into the blank +Eternity! What are all earthly preferments, Chancellorships, Kingships? +They lie shrunk together--there! The Earth has opened on them; in a +moment they are not, and Eternity is. Luther, struck to the heart, +determined to devote himself to God and God's service alone. In spite +of all dissuasions from his father and others, he became a Monk in the +Augustine Convent at Erfurt. + +This was probably the first light-point in the history of Luther, his +purer will now first decisively uttering itself; but, for the present, +it was still as one light-point in an element all of darkness. He says +he was a pious monk, _ich bin ein frommer Monch gewesen_; faithfully, +painfully struggling to work out the truth of this high act of his; but +it was to little purpose. His misery had not lessened; had rather, as it +were, increased into infinitude. The drudgeries he had to do, as novice +in his Convent, all sorts of slave-work, were not his grievance: +the deep earnest soul of the man had fallen into all manner of black +scruples, dubitations; he believed himself likely to die soon, and far +worse than die. One hears with a new interest for poor Luther that, at +this time, he lived in terror of the unspeakable misery; fancied that he +was doomed to eternal reprobation. Was it not the humble sincere nature +of the man? What was he, that he should be raised to Heaven! He that +had known only misery, and mean slavery: the news was too blessed to +be credible. It could not become clear to him how, by fasts, vigils, +formalities and mass-work, a man's soul could be saved. He fell into +the blackest wretchedness; had to wander staggering as on the verge of +bottomless Despair. + +It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old Latin Bible +which he found in the Erfurt Library about this time. He had never seen +the Book before. It taught him another lesson than that of fasts and +vigils. A brother monk too, of pious experience, was helpful. Luther +learned now that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the +infinite grace of God: a more credible hypothesis. He gradually got +himself founded, as on the rock. No wonder he should venerate the Bible, +which had brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the Word of +the Highest must be prized by such a man. He determined to hold by that; +as through life and to death he firmly did. + +This, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his final triumph over +darkness, what we call his conversion; for himself the most important of +all epochs. That he should now grow daily in peace and clearness; that, +unfolding now the great talents and virtues implanted in him, he should +rise to importance in his Convent, in his country, and be found more and +more useful in all honest business of life, is a natural result. He was +sent on missions by his Augustine Order, as a man of talent and fidelity +fit to do their business well: the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich, named +the Wise, a truly wise and just prince, had cast his eye on him as a +valuable person; made him Professor in his new University of Wittenberg, +Preacher too at Wittenberg; in both which capacities, as in all duties +he did, this Luther, in the peaceable sphere of common life, was gaining +more and more esteem with all good men. + +It was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw Rome; being sent +thither, as I said, on mission from his Convent. Pope Julius the Second, +and what was going on at Rome, must have filled the mind of Luther +with amazement. He had come as to the Sacred City, throne of God's +High-priest on Earth; and he found it--what we know! Many thoughts it +must have given the man; many which we have no record of, which perhaps +he did not himself know how to utter. This Rome, this scene of false +priests, clothed not in the beauty of holiness, but in far other +vesture, is _false_: but what is it to Luther? A mean man he, how shall +he reform a world? That was far from his thoughts. A humble, solitary +man, why should he at all meddle with the world? It was the task of +quite higher men than he. His business was to guide his own footsteps +wisely through the world. Let him do his own obscure duty in it well; +the rest, horrible and dismal as it looks, is in God's hand, not in his. + +It is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, had Roman +Popery happened to pass this Luther by; to go on in its great wasteful +orbit, and not come athwart his little path, and force him to assault +it! Conceivable enough that, in this case, he might have held his peace +about the abuses of Rome; left Providence, and God on high, to deal with +them! A modest quiet man; not prompt he to attack irreverently persons +in authority. His clear task, as I say, was to do his own duty; to +walk wisely in this world of confused wickedness, and save his own soul +alive. But the Roman High-priesthood did come athwart him: afar off +at Wittenberg he, Luther, could not get lived in honesty for it; he +remonstrated, resisted, came to extremity; was struck at, struck again, +and so it came to wager of battle between them! This is worth attending +to in Luther's history. Perhaps no man of so humble, peaceable a +disposition ever filled the world with contention. We cannot but see +that he would have loved privacy, quiet diligence in the shade; that it +was against his will he ever became a notoriety. Notoriety: what would +that do for him? The goal of his march through this world was the +Infinite Heaven; an indubitable goal for him: in a few years, he should +either have attained that, or lost it forever! We will say nothing at +all, I think, of that sorrowfulest of theories, of its being some mean +shopkeeper grudge, of the Augustine Monk against the Dominican, +that first kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced the Protestant +Reformation. We will say to the people who maintain it, if indeed any +such exist now: Get first into the sphere of thought by which it is +so much as possible to judge of Luther, or of any man like Luther, +otherwise than distractedly; we may then begin arguing with you. + +The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of trade, by Leo +Tenth,--who merely wanted to raise a little money, and for the rest +seems to have been a Pagan rather than a Christian, so far as he was +anything,--arrived at Wittenberg, and drove his scandalous trade there. +Luther's flock bought Indulgences; in the confessional of his Church, +people pleaded to him that they had already got their sins pardoned. +Luther, if he would not be found wanting at his own post, a false +sluggard and coward at the very centre of the little space of ground +that was his own and no other man's, had to step forth against +Indulgences, and declare aloud that _they_ were a futility and sorrowful +mockery, that no man's sins could be pardoned by _them_. It was the +beginning of the whole Reformation. We know how it went; forward from +this first public challenge of Tetzel, on the last day of October, 1517, +through remonstrance and argument;--spreading ever wider, rising ever +higher; till it became unquenchable, and enveloped all the world. +Luther's heart's desire was to have this grief and other griefs amended; +his thought was still far other than that of introducing separation in +the Church, or revolting against the Pope, Father of Christendom.--The +elegant Pagan Pope cared little about this Monk and his doctrines; +wished, however, to have done with the noise of him: in a space of some +three years, having tried various softer methods, he thought good to end +it by _fire_. He dooms the Monk's writings to be burnt by the hangman, +and his body to be sent bound to Rome,--probably for a similar purpose. +It was the way they had ended with Huss, with Jerome, the century +before. A short argument, fire. Poor Huss: he came to that Constance +Council, with all imaginable promises and safe-conducts; an earnest, +not rebellious kind of man: they laid him instantly in a stone dungeon +"three feet wide, six feet high, seven feet long;" _burnt_ the true +voice of him out of this world; choked it in smoke and fire. That was +_not_ well done! + +I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolting against the Pope. +The elegant Pagan, by this fire-decree of his, had kindled into noble +just wrath the bravest heart then living in this world. The bravest, if +also one of the humblest, peaceablest; it was now kindled. These words +of mine, words of truth and soberness, aiming faithfully, as human +inability would allow, to promote God's truth on Earth, and save men's +souls, you, God's vicegerent on earth, answer them by the hangman and +fire? You will burn me and them, for answer to the God's-message they +strove to bring you? You are not God's vicegerent; you are another's +than his, I think! I take your Bull, as an emparchmented Lie, and burn +_it_. _You_ will do what you see good next: this is what I do.--It was +on the 10th of December, 1520, three years after the beginning of the +business, that Luther, "with a great concourse of people," took this +indignant step of burning the Pope's fire-decree "at the Elster-Gate of +Wittenberg." Wittenberg looked on "with shoutings;" the whole world was +looking on. The Pope should not have provoked that "shout"! It was +the shout of the awakening of nations. The quiet German heart, modest, +patient of much, had at length got more than it could bear. Formulism, +Pagan Popeism, and other Falsehood and corrupt Semblance had ruled long +enough: and here once more was a man found who durst tell all men that +God's-world stood not on semblances but on realities; that Life was a +truth, and not a lie! + +At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as a Prophet +Idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. It is the function of +great men and teachers. Mahomet said, These idols of yours are wood; you +put wax and oil on them, the flies stick on them: they are not God, I +tell you, they are black wood! Luther said to the Pope, This thing of +yours that you call a Pardon of Sins, it is a bit of rag-paper with ink. +It is nothing else; it, and so much like it, is nothing else. God alone +can pardon sins. Popeship, spiritual Fatherhood of God's Church, is that +a vain semblance, of cloth and parchment? It is an awful fact. God's +Church is not a semblance, Heaven and Hell are not semblances. I stand +on this, since you drive me to it. Standing on this, I a poor German +Monk am stronger than you all. I stand solitary, friendless, but on +God's Truth; you with your tiaras, triple-hats, with your treasuries and +armories, thunders spiritual and temporal, stand on the Devil's Lie, and +are not so strong--! + +The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 17th of April, 1521, +may be considered as the greatest scene in Modern European History; the +point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of civilization +takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had +come to this. The young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all the Princes +of Germany, Papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are +assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he +will recant or not. The world's pomp and power sits there on this +hand: on that, stands up for God's Truth, one man, the poor miner Hans +Luther's Son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised him not to go; +he would not be advised. A large company of friends rode out to meet +him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, "Were there as many +Devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would on." The people, on +the morrow, as he went to the Hall of the Diet, crowded the windows and +house-tops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to +recant: "Whosoever denieth me before men!" they cried to him,--as in +a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in reality our +petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage +of soul, paralyzed under a black spectral Nightmare and triple-hatted +Chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not: "Free us; it rests +with thee; desert us not!" + +Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, distinguished itself +by its respectful, wise and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever could +lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that. His +writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived from the Word of +God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it; unguarded +anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it were a blessing for him +could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood on sound truth and +the Word of God, he could not recant it. How could he? "Confute me," he +concluded, "by proofs of Scripture, or else by plain just arguments: I +cannot recant otherwise. For it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught +against conscience. Here stand I; I can do no other: God assist me!"--It +is, as we say, the greatest moment in the Modern History of Men. English +Puritanism, England and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work these +two centuries; French Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at +present: the germ of it all lay there: had Luther in that moment done +other, it had all been otherwise! The European World was asking him: +Am I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome +accursed death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out +of me, and be cured and live?-- + + +Great wars, contentions and disunion followed out of this Reformation; +which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and +crimination has been made about these. They are lamentable, undeniable; +but after all, what has Luther or his cause to do with them? It seems +strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all this. When Hercules +turned the purifying river into King Augeas's stables, I have no doubt +the confusion that resulted was considerable all around: but I think +it was not Hercules's blame; it was some other's blame! The Reformation +might bring what results it liked when it came, but the Reformation +simply could not help coming. To all Popes and Popes' advocates, +expostulating, lamenting and accusing, the answer of the world is: Once +for all, your Popehood has become untrue. No matter how good it was, how +good you say it is, we cannot believe it; the light of our whole mind, +given us to walk by from Heaven above, finds it henceforth a thing +unbelievable. We will not believe it, we will not try to believe it,--we +dare not! The thing is _untrue_; we were traitors against the Giver +of all Truth, if we durst pretend to think it true. Away with it; let +whatsoever likes come in the place of it: with _it_ we can have no +farther trade!--Luther and his Protestantism is not responsible +for wars; the false Simulacra that forced him to protest, they are +responsible. Luther did what every man that God has made has not only +the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to do: answered a Falsehood +when it questioned him, Dost thou believe me?--No!--At what cost soever, +without counting of costs, this thing behooved to be done. Union, +organization spiritual and material, a far nobler than any Popedom or +Feudalism in their truest days, I never doubt, is coming for the world; +sure to come. But on Fact alone, not on Semblance and Simulacrum, will +it be able either to come, or to stand when come. With union grounded +on falsehood, and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have +anything to do. Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome grave +is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one! + +And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of the New, let +us not be unjust to the Old. The Old was true, if it no longer is. In +Dante's days it needed no sophistry, self-blinding or other dishonesty, +to get itself reckoned true. It was good then; nay there is in the soul +of it a deathless good. The cry of "No Popery" is foolish enough in +these days. The speculation that Popery is on the increase, building new +chapels and so forth, may pass for one of the idlest ever started. Very +curious: to count up a few Popish chapels, listen to a few Protestant +logic-choppings,--to much dull-droning drowsy inanity that still calls +itself Protestant, and say: See, Protestantism is _dead_; Popeism is +more alive than it, will be alive after it!--Drowsy inanities, not a +few, that call themselves Protestant are dead; but _Protestantism_ has +not died yet, that I hear of! Protestantism, if we will look, has in +these days produced its Goethe, its Napoleon; German Literature and the +French Revolution; rather considerable signs of life! Nay, at bottom, +what else is alive _but_ Protestantism? The life of most else that one +meets is a galvanic one merely,--not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of +life! + +Popery can build new chapels; welcome to do so, to all lengths. Popery +cannot come back, any more than Paganism can,--_which_ also still +lingers in some countries. But, indeed, it is with these things, as with +the ebbing of the sea: you look at the waves oscillating hither, thither +on the beach; for _minutes_ you cannot tell how it is going; look in +half an hour where it is,--look in half a century where your Popehood +is! Alas, would there were no greater danger to our Europe than the poor +old Pope's revival! Thor may as soon try to revive.--And withal this +oscillation has a meaning. The poor old Popehood will not die away +entirely, as Thor has done, for some time yet; nor ought it. We may say, +the Old never dies till this happen, Till all the soul of good that was +in it have got itself transfused into the practical New. While a good +work remains capable of being done by the Romish form; or, what is +inclusive of all, while a pious _life_ remains capable of being led +by it, just so long, if we consider, will this or the other human soul +adopt it, go about as a living witness of it. So long it will obtrude +itself on the eye of us who reject it, till we in our practice too have +appropriated whatsoever of truth was in it. Then, but also not till +then, it will have no charm more for any man. It lasts here for a +purpose. Let it last as long as it can.-- + + +Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these wars and bloodshed, +the noticeable fact that none of them began so long as he continued +living. The controversy did not get to fighting so long as he was there. +To me it is proof of his greatness in all senses, this fact. How seldom +do we find a man that has stirred up some vast commotion, who does +not himself perish, swept away in it! Such is the usual course of +revolutionists. Luther continued, in a good degree, sovereign of this +greatest revolution; all Protestants, of what rank or function soever, +looking much to him for guidance: and he held it peaceable, continued +firm at the centre of it. A man to do this must have a kingly faculty: +he must have the gift to discern at all turns where the true heart of +the matter lies, and to plant himself courageously on that, as a strong +true man, that other true men may rally round him there. He will not +continue leader of men otherwise. Luther's clear deep force of judgment, +his force of all sorts, of _silence_, of tolerance and moderation, among +others, are very notable in these circumstances. + +Tolerance, I say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he distinguishes +what is essential, and what is not; the unessential may go very much as +it will. A complaint comes to him that such and such a Reformed Preacher +"will not preach without a cassock." Well, answers Luther, what harm +will a cassock do the man? "Let him have a cassock to preach in; let +him have three cassocks if he find benefit in them!" His conduct in the +matter of Karlstadt's wild image-breaking; of the Anabaptists; of the +Peasants' War, shows a noble strength, very different from spasmodic +violence. With sure prompt insight he discriminates what is what: a +strong just man, he speaks forth what is the wise course, and all men +follow him in that. Luther's Written Works give similar testimony of +him. The dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete for us; +but one still reads them with a singular attraction. And indeed the mere +grammatical diction is still legible enough; Luther's merit in literary +history is of the greatest: his dialect became the language of all +writing. They are not well written, these Four-and-twenty Quartos of +his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no +Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of +a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged +sterling sense and strength. He dashes out illumination from him; his +smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the +matter. Good humor too, nay tender affection, nobleness and depth: this +man could have been a Poet too! He had to _work_ an Epic Poem, not +write one. I call him a great Thinker; as indeed his greatness of heart +already betokens that. + +Richter says of Luther's words, "His words are half-battles." They may +be called so. The essential quality of him was, that he could fight and +conquer; that he was a right piece of human Valor. No more valiant man, +no mortal heart to be called _braver_, that one has record of, ever +lived in that Teutonic Kindred, whose character is valor. His defiance +of the "Devils" in Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if +now spoken. It was a faith of Luther's that there were Devils, spiritual +denizens of the Pit, continually besetting men. Many times, in his +writings, this turns up; and a most small sneer has been grounded on it +by some. In the room of the Wartburg where he sat translating the Bible, +they still show you a black spot on the wall; the strange memorial of +one of these conflicts. Luther sat translating one of the Psalms; he was +worn down with long labor, with sickness, abstinence from food: there +rose before him some hideous indefinable Image, which he took for the +Evil One, to forbid his work: Luther started up, with fiend-defiance; +flung his inkstand at the spectre, and it disappeared! The spot still +remains there; a curious monument of several things. Any apothecary's +apprentice can now tell us what we are to think of this apparition, in +a scientific sense: but the man's heart that dare rise defiant, face to +face, against Hell itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. +The thing he will quail before exists not on this Earth or under +it.--Fearless enough! "The Devil is aware," writes he on one occasion, +"that this does not proceed out of fear in me. I have seen and defied +innumerable Devils. Duke George," of Leipzig, a great enemy of his, +"Duke George is not equal to one Devil,"--far short of a Devil! "If I +had business at Leipzig, I would ride into Leipzig, though it rained +Duke Georges for nine days running." What a reservoir of Dukes to ride +into--! + +At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this man's courage +was ferocity, mere coarse disobedient obstinacy and savagery, as many +do. Far from that. There may be an absence of fear which arises from the +absence of thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and stupid +fury. We do not value the courage of the tiger highly! With Luther it +was far otherwise; no accusation could be more unjust than this of mere +ferocious violence brought against him. A most gentle heart withal, full +of pity and love, as indeed the truly valiant heart ever is. The tiger +before a _stronger_ foe--flies: the tiger is not what we call valiant, +only fierce and cruel. I know few things more touching than those soft +breathings of affection, soft as a child's or a mother's, in this great +wild heart of Luther. So honest, unadulterated with any cant; homely, +rude in their utterance; pure as water welling from the rock. What, in +fact, was all that down-pressed mood of despair and reprobation, +which we saw in his youth, but the outcome of pre-eminent thoughtful +gentleness, affections too keen and fine? It is the course such men as +the poor Poet Cowper fall into. Luther to a slight observer might have +seemed a timid, weak man; modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness the +chief distinction of him. It is a noble valor which is roused in a heart +like this, once stirred up into defiance, all kindled into a heavenly +blaze. + +In Luther's _Table-Talk_, a posthumous Book of anecdotes and sayings +collected by his friends, the most interesting now of all the Books +proceeding from him, we have many beautiful unconscious displays of the +man, and what sort of nature he had. His behavior at the death-bed of +his little Daughter, so still, so great and loving, is among the most +affecting things. He is resigned that his little Magdalene should die, +yet longs inexpressibly that she might live;--follows, in awe-struck +thought, the flight of her little soul through those unknown realms. +Awe-struck; most heartfelt, we can see; and sincere,--for after all +dogmatic creeds and articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know, +or can know: His little Magdalene shall be with God, as God wills; for +Luther too that is all; _Islam_ is all. + +Once, he looks out from his solitary Patmos, the Castle of Coburg, in +the middle of the night: The great vault of Immensity, long flights of +clouds sailing through it,--dumb, gaunt, huge:--who supports all that? +"None ever saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported." God supports it. +We must know that God is great, that God is good; and trust, where +we cannot see.--Returning home from Leipzig once, he is struck by the +beauty of the harvest-fields: How it stands, that golden yellow corn, +on its fair taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving +there,--the meek Earth, at God's kind bidding, has produced it once +again; the bread of man!--In the garden at Wittenberg one evening at +sunset, a little bird has perched for the night: That little bird, says +Luther, above it are the stars and deep Heaven of worlds; yet it has +folded its little wings; gone trustfully to rest there as in its home: +the Maker of it has given it too a home!--Neither are mirthful turns +wanting: there is a great free human heart in this man. The common +speech of him has a rugged nobleness, idiomatic, expressive, genuine; +gleams here and there with beautiful poetic tints. One feels him to be +a great brother man. His love of Music, indeed, is not this, as it were, +the summary of all these affections in him? Many a wild unutterability +he spoke forth from him in the tones of his flute. The Devils fled from +his flute, he says. Death-defiance on the one hand, and such love of +music on the other; I could call these the two opposite poles of a great +soul; between these two all great things had room. + +Luther's face is to me expressive of him; in Kranach's best portraits +I find the true Luther. A rude plebeian face; with its huge crag-like +brows and bones, the emblem of rugged energy; at first, almost a +repulsive face. Yet in the eyes especially there is a wild silent +sorrow; an unnamable melancholy, the element of all gentle and fine +affections; giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness. Laughter was +in this Luther, as we said; but tears also were there. Tears also were +appointed him; tears and hard toil. The basis of his life was Sadness, +Earnestness. In his latter days, after all triumphs and victories, he +expresses himself heartily weary of living; he considers that God alone +can and will regulate the course things are taking, and that perhaps the +Day of Judgment is not far. As for him, he longs for one thing: that +God would release him from his labor, and let him depart and be at rest. +They understand little of the man who cite this in discredit of him!--I +will call this Luther a true Great Man; great in intellect, in courage, +affection and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. +Great, not as a hewn obelisk; but as an Alpine mountain,--so simple, +honest, spontaneous, not setting up to be great at all; there for quite +another purpose than being great! Ah yes, unsubduable granite, piercing +far and wide into the Heavens; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green +beautiful valleys with flowers! A right Spiritual Hero and Prophet; once +more, a true Son of Nature and Fact, for whom these centuries, and many +that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven. + + +The most interesting phasis which the Reformation anywhere assumes, +especially for us English, is that of Puritanism. In Luther's own +country Protestantism soon dwindled into a rather barren affair: not a +religion or faith, but rather now a theological jangling of argument, +the proper seat of it not the heart; the essence of it sceptical +contention: which indeed has jangled more and more, down to +Voltaireism itself,--through Gustavus-Adolphus contentions onwards to +French-Revolution ones! But in our Island there arose a Puritanism, +which even got itself established as a Presbyterianism and National +Church among the Scotch; which came forth as a real business of the +heart; and has produced in the world very notable fruit. In some senses, +one may say it is the only phasis of Protestantism that ever got to the +rank of being a Faith, a true heart-communication with Heaven, and of +exhibiting itself in History as such. We must spare a few words for +Knox; himself a brave and remarkable man; but still more important as +Chief Priest and Founder, which one may consider him to be, of the Faith +that became Scotland's, New England's, Oliver Cromwell's. History will +have something to say about this, for some time to come! + +We may censure Puritanism as we please; and no one of us, I suppose, +but would find it a very rough defective thing. But we, and all men, may +understand that it was a genuine thing; for Nature has adopted it, +and it has grown, and grows. I say sometimes, that all goes by +wager-of-battle in this world; that _strength_, well understood, is +the measure of all worth. Give a thing time; if it can succeed, it is a +right thing. Look now at American Saxondom; and at that little Fact of +the sailing of the Mayflower, two hundred years ago, from Delft Haven in +Holland! Were we of open sense as the Greeks were, we had found a Poem +here; one of Nature's own Poems, such as she writes in broad facts over +great continents. For it was properly the beginning of America: there +were straggling settlers in America before, some material as of a body +was there; but the soul of it was first this. These poor men, driven +out of their own country, not able well to live in Holland, determine +on settling in the New World. Black untamed forests are there, and wild +savage creatures; but not so cruel as Star-chamber hangmen. They +thought the Earth would yield them food, if they tilled honestly; the +everlasting heaven would stretch, there too, overhead; they should be +left in peace, to prepare for Eternity by living well in this world of +Time; worshipping in what they thought the true, not the idolatrous way. +They clubbed their small means together; hired a ship, the little ship +Mayflower, and made ready to set sail. + +In Neal's _History of the Puritans_ [Neal (London, 1755), i. 490] is an +account of the ceremony of their departure: solemnity, we might call it +rather, for it was a real act of worship. Their minister went down with +them to the beach, and their brethren whom they were to leave behind; +all joined in solemn prayer, That God would have pity on His poor +children, and go with them into that waste wilderness, for He also had +made that, He was there also as well as here.--Hah! These men, I think, +had a work! The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, +if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only despicable, laughable then; +but nobody can manage to laugh at it now. Puritanism has got weapons and +sinews; it has firearms, war-navies; it has cunning in its ten fingers, +strength in its right arm; it can steer ships, fell forests, remove +mountains;--it is one of the strongest things under this sun at present! + +In the history of Scotland, too, I can find properly but one epoch: +we may say, it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this +Reformation by Knox. A poor barren country, full of continual broils, +dissensions, massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and +destitution; little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry +fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each +other _how to divide_ what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but +obliged, as the Colombian Republics are at this day, to make of every +alteration a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging +the old ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very +singular significance! "Bravery" enough, I doubt not; fierce fighting in +abundance: but not braver or fiercer than that of their old Scandinavian +Sea-king ancestors; _whose_ exploits we have not found worth dwelling +on! It is a country as yet without a soul: nothing developed in it but +what is rude, external, semi-animal. And now at the Reformation, the +internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward +material death. A cause, the noblest of causes kindles itself, like a +beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable from Earth;--whereby +the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member of Christ's +visible Church; a veritable Hero, if he prove a true man! + +Well; this is what I mean by a whole "nation of heroes;" a _believing_ +nation. There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a +god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great +soul! The like has been seen, we find. The like will be again seen, +under wider forms than the Presbyterian: there can be no lasting good +done till then.--Impossible! say some. Possible? Has it not _been_, in +this world, as a practiced fact? Did Hero-worship fail in Knox's case? +Or are we made of other clay now? Did the Westminster Confession of +Faith add some new property to the soul of man? God made the soul +of man. He did not doom any soul of man to live as a Hypothesis and +Hearsay, in a world filled with such, and with the fatal work and fruit +of such--! + +But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really +call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but it +was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On +the whole, cheap at any price!--as life is. The people began to _live_: +they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. +Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt, David Hume, +Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting in +the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find +that without the Reformation they would not have been. Or what of +Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of England, of +New England. A tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh spread into a +universal battle and struggle over all these realms;--there came +out, after fifty years' struggling, what we all call the "_Glorious_ +Revolution" a _Habeas Corpus_ Act, Free Parliaments, and much +else!--Alas, is it not too true what we said, That many men in the van +do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz, +and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them +dry-shod, and gain the honor? How many earnest rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, +poor Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough +miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, +_bemired_,--before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step +over them in official pumps and silk-stockings, with universal +three-times-three! + +It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three +hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world; +intrinsically for having been, in such way as it was then possible to +be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he +could have crouched into the corner, like so many others; Scotland +had not been delivered; and Knox had been without blame. He is the one +Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the world owe a debt. +He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to +it any million "unblamable" Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared +his breast to the battle; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn +in exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot at through his +windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world were his place of +recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I cannot apologize for +Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these two hundred and fifty years +or more, what men say of him. But we, having got above all those details +of his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, +we, for our own sake, ought to look through the rumors and controversies +enveloping the man, into the man himself. + +For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to his Nation was +not of his seeking; Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure, before +he became conspicuous. He was the son of poor parents; had got a college +education; become a Priest; adopted the Reformation, and seemed well +content to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly +intruding it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gentlemen's families; +preaching when any body of persons wished to hear his doctrine: resolute +he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do it; +not ambitious of more; not fancying himself capable of more. In this +entirely obscure way he had reached the age of forty; was with the small +body of Reformers who were standing siege in St. Andrew's Castle,--when +one day in their chapel, the Preacher after finishing his exhortation to +these fighters in the forlorn hope, said suddenly, That there ought to +be other speakers, that all men who had a priest's heart and gift in +them ought now to speak;--which gifts and heart one of their own number, +John Knox the name of him, had: Had he not? said the Preacher, appealing +to all the audience: what then is _his_ duty? The people answered +affirmatively; it was a criminal forsaking of his post, if such a man +held the word that was in him silent. Poor Knox was obliged to stand +up; he attempted to reply; he could say no word;--burst into a flood +of tears, and ran out. It is worth remembering, that scene. He was in +grievous trouble for some days. He felt what a small faculty was his +for this great work. He felt what a baptism he was called to be baptized +withal. He "burst into tears." + +Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he is sincere, applies +emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever +might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With +a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is +there for him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity. However +feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only _can_ he +take his stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither Knox and the +others, after their Castle of St. Andrew's was taken, had been sent as +Galley-slaves,--some officer or priest, one day, presented them an Image +of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, +should do it reverence. Mother? Mother of God? said Knox, when the turn +came to him: This is no Mother of God: this is "_a pented bredd_,"--_a_ +piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, +I think, than for being worshipped, added Knox; and flung the thing +into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there: but come of it what +might, this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the +real truth; it was a _pented bredd_: worship it he would not. + +He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage; +the Cause they had was the true one, and must and would prosper; the +whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God's making; it is +alone strong. How many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are +fitter to swim than to be worshipped!--This Knox cannot live but by +fact: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is +an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic: it +is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good honest intellectual +talent, no transcendent one;--a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared +with Luther: but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in +_sincerity_, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What +equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. "He lies +there," said the Earl of Morton at his grave, "who never feared the +face of man." He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an Old-Hebrew +Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid narrow-looking +adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that +forsake truth: an Old-Hebrew Prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh +Minister of the Sixteenth Century. We are to take him for that; not +require him to be other. + +Knox's conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her +own palace, to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such +cruelty, such coarseness fills us with indignation. On reading the +actual narrative of the business, what Knox said, and what Knox meant, +I must say one's tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not +so coarse, these speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the +circumstances would permit! Knox was not there to do the courtier; he +came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with +the Queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a +delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. +It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the Queen of +Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the Nation and Cause of Scotland. +A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field +for intriguing ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God trampled underfoot +of Falsehoods, Formulas and the Devil's Cause, had no method of making +himself agreeable! "Better that women weep," said Morton, "than +that bearded men be forced to weep." Knox was the constitutional +opposition-party in Scotland: the Nobles of the country, called by their +station to take that post, were not found in it; Knox had to go, or no +one. The hapless Queen;--but the still more hapless Country, if _she_ +were made happy! Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among +her other qualities: "Who are you," said she once, "that presume to +school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?"--"Madam, a subject born +within the same," answered he. Reasonably answered! If the "subject" +have truth to speak, it is not the "subject's" footing that will fail +him here.-- + +We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of +us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there +is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance has to tolerate +the unessential; and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be +noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. +But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate! We are +here to resist, to control and vanquish withal. We do not "tolerate" +Falsehoods, Thieveries, Iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to +them, Thou art false, thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish +Falsehoods, and put an end to them, in some wise way! I will not quarrel +so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great concern. In +this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant. + +A man sent to row in French Galleys, and such like, for teaching the +Truth in his own land, cannot always be in the mildest humor! I am not +prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper; nor do I know that he had +what we call an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind +honest affections dwelt in the much-enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling +man. That he _could_ rebuke Queens, and had such weight among those +proud turbulent Nobles, proud enough whatever else they were; and could +maintain to the end a kind of virtual Presidency and Sovereignty in that +wild realm, he who was only "a subject born within the same:" this of +itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean +acrid man; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone +can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling down cathedrals, +and so forth, as if he were a seditious rioting demagogue: precisely the +reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest +of it, if we examine! Knox wanted no pulling down of stone edifices; he +wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult +was not his element; it was the tragic feature of his life that he was +forced to dwell so much in that. Every such man is the born enemy of +Disorder; hates to be in it: but what then? Smooth Falsehood is not +Order; it is the general sum-total of Disorder. Order is _Truth_,--each +thing standing on the basis that belongs to it: Order and Falsehood +cannot subsist together. + +Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him; +which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a +true eye for the ridiculous. His _History_, with its rough earnestness, +is curiously enlivened with this. When the two Prelates, entering +Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence; march rapidly up, take +to hustling one another, twitching one another's rochets, and at last +flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for +him every way! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone; though there is +enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up +over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say, a laugh in +the _eyes_ most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the +high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both. He had +his pipe of Bourdeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his; +a cheery social man, with faces that loved him! They go far wrong who +think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all: +he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious-hopeful, patient; +a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very +much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present: a certain +sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough; and a stouter heart than +he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many +things which do not vitally concern him,--"They? what are they?" But the +thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of; and +in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear: all the more emphatic +for his long silence. + +This Prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man!--He had a sore fight +of an existence; wrestling with Popes and Principalities; in defeat, +contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as +an exile. A sore fight: but he won it. "Have you hope?" they asked him +in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, +"pointed upwards with his finger," and so died. Honor to him! His works +have not died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men's; but the +spirit of it never. + +One word more as to the letter of Knox's work. The unforgivable offence +in him is, that he wished to set up Priests over the head of Kings. In +other words, he strove to make the Government of Scotland a _Theocracy_. +This indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the essential sin; +for which what pardon can there be? It is most true, he did, at bottom, +consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theocracy, or Government of God. He +did mean that Kings and Prime Ministers, and all manner of persons, in +public or private, diplomatizing or whatever else they might be doing, +should walk according to the Gospel of Christ, and understand that this +was their Law, supreme over all laws. He hoped once to see such a thing +realized; and the Petition, _Thy Kingdom come_, no longer an empty word. +He was sore grieved when he saw greedy worldly Barons clutch hold of +the Church's property; when he expostulated that it was not secular +property, that it was spiritual property, and should be turned to _true_ +churchly uses, education, schools, worship;--and the Regent Murray had +to answer, with a shrug of the shoulders, "It is a devout imagination!" +This was Knox's scheme of right and truth; this he zealously endeavored +after, to realize it. If we think his scheme of truth was too narrow, +was not true, we may rejoice that he could not realize it; that it +remained after two centuries of effort, unrealizable, and is a "devout +imagination" still. But how shall we blame _him_ for struggling to +realize it? Theocracy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to +be struggled for! All Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that +purpose. Hildebrand wished a Theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for +it; Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not what all zealous men, whether +called Priests, Prophets, or whatsoever else called, do essentially +wish, and must wish? That right and truth, or God's Law, reign supreme +among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well named in Knox's time, +and namable in all times, a revealed "Will of God") towards which the +Reformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. All true +Reformers, as I said, are by the nature of them Priests, and strive for +a Theocracy. + +How far such Ideals can ever be introduced into Practice, and at what +point our impatience with their non-introduction ought to begin, +is always a question. I think we may say safely, Let them introduce +themselves as far as they can contrive to do it! If they are the true +faith of men, all men ought to be more or less impatient always where +they are not found introduced. There will never be wanting Regent +Murrays enough to shrug their shoulders, and say, "A devout +imagination!" We will praise the Hero-priest rather, who does what is in +him to bring them in; and wears out, in toil, calumny, contradiction, +a noble life, to make a God's Kingdom of this Earth. The Earth will not +become too godlike! + + + + +LECTURE V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS. + +[May 19, 1840.] + +Hero-Gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests are forms of Heroism that belong to +the old ages, make their appearance in the remotest times; some of +them have ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any more show +themselves in this world. The Hero as _Man of Letters_, again, of which +class we are to speak to-day, is altogether a product of these new ages; +and so long as the wondrous art of _Writing_, or of Ready-writing which +we call _Printing_, subsists, he may be expected to continue, as one +of the main forms of Heroism for all future ages. He is, in various +respects, a very singular phenomenon. + +He is new, I say; he has hardly lasted above a century in the world yet. +Never, till about a hundred years ago, was there seen any figure of a +Great Soul living apart in that anomalous manner; endeavoring to speak +forth the inspiration that was in him by Printed Books, and find place +and subsistence by what the world would please to give him for doing +that. Much had been sold and bought, and left to make its own bargain +in the market-place; but the inspired wisdom of a Heroic Soul never till +then, in that naked manner. He, with his copy-rights and copy-wrongs, +in his squalid garret, in his rusty coat; ruling (for this is what he +does), from his grave, after death, whole nations and generations who +would, or would not, give him bread while living,--is a rather curious +spectacle! Few shapes of Heroism can be more unexpected. + +Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes: +the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is +his aspect in the world! It seemed absurd to us, that men, in their rude +admiration, should take some wise great Odin for a god, and worship him +as such; some wise great Mahomet for one god-inspired, and religiously +follow his Law for twelve centuries: but that a wise great Johnson, a +Burns, a Rousseau, should be taken for some idle nondescript, extant in +the world to amuse idleness, and have a few coins and applauses thrown +him, that he might live thereby; _this_ perhaps, as before hinted, will +one day seem a still absurder phasis of things!--Meanwhile, since it +is the spiritual always that determines the material, this same +Man-of-Letters Hero must be regarded as our most important modern +person. He, such as he may be, is the soul of all. What he teaches, the +whole world will do and make. The world's manner of dealing with him is +the most significant feature of the world's general position. Looking +well at his life, we may get a glance, as deep as is readily possible +for us, into the life of those singular centuries which have produced +him, in which we ourselves live and work. + +There are genuine Men of Letters, and not genuine; as in every kind +there is a genuine and a spurious. If _hero_ be taken to mean genuine, +then I say the Hero as Man of Letters will be found discharging a +function for us which is ever honorable, ever the highest; and was once +well known to be the highest. He is uttering forth, in such way as he +has, the inspired soul of him; all that a man, in any case, can do. I +say _inspired_; for what we call "originality," "sincerity," "genius," +the heroic quality we have no good name for, signifies that. The Hero +is he who lives in the inward sphere of things, in the True, Divine +and Eternal, which exists always, unseen to most, under the Temporary, +Trivial: his being is in that; he declares that abroad, by act or speech +as it may be in declaring himself abroad. His life, as we said before, +is a piece of the everlasting heart of Nature herself: all men's life +is,--but the weak many know not the fact, and are untrue to it, in most +times; the strong few are strong, heroic, perennial, because it cannot +be hidden from them. The Man of Letters, like every Hero, is there +to proclaim this in such sort as he can. Intrinsically it is the same +function which the old generations named a man Prophet, Priest, Divinity +for doing; which all manner of Heroes, by speech or by act, are sent +into the world to do. + +Fichte the German Philosopher delivered, some forty years ago at +Erlangen, a highly remarkable Course of Lectures on this subject: +"_Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten_, On the Nature of the Literary Man." +Fichte, in conformity with the Transcendental Philosophy, of which he +was a distinguished teacher, declares first: That all things which we +see or work with in this Earth, especially we ourselves and all persons, +are as a kind of vesture or sensuous Appearance: that under all there +lies, as the essence of them, what he calls the "Divine Idea of +the World;" this is the Reality which "lies at the bottom of all +Appearance." To the mass of men no such Divine Idea is recognizable in +the world; they live merely, says Fichte, among the superficialities, +practicalities and shows of the world, not dreaming that there is +anything divine under them. But the Man of Letters is sent hither +specially that he may discern for himself, and make manifest to us, this +same Divine Idea: in every new generation it will manifest itself in +a new dialect; and he is there for the purpose of doing that. Such is +Fichte's phraseology; with which we need not quarrel. It is his way of +naming what I here, by other words, am striving imperfectly to +name; what there is at present no name for: The unspeakable Divine +Significance, full of splendor, of wonder and terror, that lies in the +being of every man, of every thing,--the Presence of the God who made +every man and thing. Mahomet taught this in his dialect; Odin in his: it +is the thing which all thinking hearts, in one dialect or another, are +here to teach. + +Fichte calls the Man of Letters, therefore, a Prophet, or as he prefers +to phrase it, a Priest, continually unfolding the Godlike to men: Men +of Letters are a perpetual Priesthood, from age to age, teaching all +men that a God is still present in their life, that all "Appearance," +whatsoever we see in the world, is but as a vesture for the "Divine Idea +of the World," for "that which lies at the bottom of Appearance." In the +true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, +a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest;--guiding +it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the +waste of Time. Fichte discriminates with sharp zeal the _true_ Literary +Man, what we here call the _Hero_ as Man of Letters, from multitudes of +false unheroic. Whoever lives not wholly in this Divine Idea, or living +partially in it, struggles not, as for the one good, to live wholly +in it,--he is, let him live where else he like, in what pomps and +prosperities he like, no Literary Man; he is, says Fichte, a "Bungler, +_Stumper_." Or at best, if he belong to the prosaic provinces, he may +be a "Hodman;" Fichte even calls him elsewhere a "Nonentity," and has +in short no mercy for him, no wish that _he_ should continue happy among +us! This is Fichte's notion of the Man of Letters. It means, in its own +form, precisely what we here mean. + +In this point of view, I consider that, for the last hundred years, by +far the notablest of all Literary Men is Fichte's countryman, Goethe. To +that man too, in a strange way, there was given what we may call a life +in the Divine Idea of the World; vision of the inward divine mystery: +and strangely, out of his Books, the world rises imaged once more as +godlike, the workmanship and temple of a God. Illuminated all, not +in fierce impure fire-splendor as of Mahomet, but in mild celestial +radiance;--really a Prophecy in these most unprophetic times; to my +mind, by far the greatest, though one of the quietest, among all the +great things that have come to pass in them. Our chosen specimen of the +Hero as Literary Man would be this Goethe. And it were a very pleasant +plan for me here to discourse of his heroism: for I consider him to be +a true Hero; heroic in what he said and did, and perhaps still more in +what he did not say and did not do; to me a noble spectacle: a great +heroic ancient man, speaking and keeping silence as an ancient Hero, in +the guise of a most modern, high-bred, high-cultivated Man of Letters! +We have had no such spectacle; no man capable of affording such, for the +last hundred and fifty years. + +But at present, such is the general state of knowledge about Goethe, it +were worse than useless to attempt speaking of him in this case. +Speak as I might, Goethe, to the great majority of you, would remain +problematic, vague; no impression but a false one could be realized. +Him we must leave to future times. Johnson, Burns, Rousseau, three great +figures from a prior time, from a far inferior state of circumstances, +will suit us better here. Three men of the Eighteenth Century; the +conditions of their life far more resemble what those of ours still are +in England, than what Goethe's in Germany were. Alas, these men did not +conquer like him; they fought bravely, and fell. They were not heroic +bringers of the light, but heroic seekers of it. They lived under +galling conditions; struggling as under mountains of impediment, and +could not unfold themselves into clearness, or victorious interpretation +of that "Divine Idea." It is rather the _Tombs_ of three Literary Heroes +that I have to show you. There are the monumental heaps, under which +three spiritual giants lie buried. Very mournful, but also great and +full of interest for us. We will linger by them for a while. + + +Complaint is often made, in these times, of what we call the +disorganized condition of society: how ill many forces of society fulfil +their work; how many powerful are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, +altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a complaint, as we all +know. But perhaps if we look at this of Books and the Writers of +Books, we shall find here, as it were, the summary of all other +disorganizations;--a sort of _heart_, from which, and to which all other +confusion circulates in the world! Considering what Book writers do in +the world, and what the world does with Book writers, I should say, It +is the most anomalous thing the world at present has to show.--We should +get into a sea far beyond sounding, did we attempt to give account of +this: but we must glance at it for the sake of our subject. The worst +element in the life of these three Literary Heroes was, that they found +their business and position such a chaos. On the beaten road there is +tolerable travelling; but it is sore work, and many have to perish, +fashioning a path through the impassable! + +Our pious Fathers, feeling well what importance lay in the speaking of +man to men, founded churches, made endowments, regulations; everywhere +in the civilized world there is a Pulpit, environed with all manner of +complex dignified appurtenances and furtherances, that therefrom a man +with the tongue may, to best advantage, address his fellow-men. They +felt that this was the most important thing; that without this there was +no good thing. It is a right pious work, that of theirs; beautiful to +behold! But now with the art of Writing, with the art of Printing, a +total change has come over that business. The Writer of a Book, is not +he a Preacher preaching not to this parish or that, on this day or +that, but to all men in all times and places? Surely it is of the last +importance that _he_ do his work right, whoever do it wrong;--that the +_eye_ report not falsely, for then all the other members are astray! +Well; how he may do his work, whether he do it right or wrong, or do +it at all, is a point which no man in the world has taken the pains +to think of. To a certain shopkeeper, trying to get some money for +his books, if lucky, he is of some importance; to no other man of any. +Whence he came, whither he is bound, by what ways he arrived, by what +he might be furthered on his course, no one asks. He is an accident in +society. He wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in a world of which he is as +the spiritual light, either the guidance or the misguidance! + +Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man +has devised. Odin's _Runes_ were the first form of the work of a Hero; +_Books_ written words, are still miraculous _Runes_, the latest form! +In Books lies the _soul_ of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible +voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has +altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbors and +arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined,--they are precious, +great: but what do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, +Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, +dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the Books of Greece! There Greece, +to every thinker, still very literally lives: can be called up again +into life. No magic _Rune_ is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has +done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in +the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men. + +Do not Books still accomplish _miracles_, as _Runes_ were fabled to do? +They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulating-library novel, +which foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages, but will help to +regulate the actual practical weddings and households of those foolish +girls. So "Celia" felt, so "Clifford" acted: the foolish Theorem of +Life, stamped into those young brains, comes out as a solid Practice +one day. Consider whether any _Rune_ in the wildest imagination of +Mythologist ever did such wonders as, on the actual firm Earth, some +Books have done! What built St. Paul's Cathedral? Look at the heart of +the matter, it was that divine Hebrew BOOK,--the word partly of the man +Moses, an outlaw tending his Midianitish herds, four thousand years ago, +in the wildernesses of Sinai! It is the strangest of things, yet nothing +is truer. With the art of Writing, of which Printing is a simple, an +inevitable and comparatively insignificant corollary, the true reign +of miracles for mankind commenced. It related, with a wondrous new +contiguity and perpetual closeness, the Past and Distant with the +Present in time and place; all times and all places with this our actual +Here and Now. All things were altered for men; all modes of important +work of men: teaching, preaching, governing, and all else. + +To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities are a notable, +respectable product of the modern ages. Their existence too is modified, +to the very basis of it, by the existence of Books. Universities arose +while there were yet no Books procurable; while a man, for a single +Book, had to give an estate of land. That, in those circumstances, when +a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering +the learners round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. If you +wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must go and listen to Abelard. +Thousands, as many as thirty thousand, went to hear Abelard and that +metaphysical theology of his. And now for any other teacher who had also +something of his own to teach, there was a great convenience opened: +so many thousands eager to learn were already assembled yonder; of all +places the best place for him was that. For any third teacher it was +better still; and grew ever the better, the more teachers there came. +It only needed now that the King took notice of this new phenomenon; +combined or agglomerated the various schools into one school; gave it +edifices, privileges, encouragements, and named it _Universitas_, +or School of all Sciences: the University of Paris, in its essential +characters, was there. The model of all subsequent Universities; which +down even to these days, for six centuries now, have gone on to found +themselves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of Universities. + +It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, facility of +getting Books, the whole conditions of the business from top to bottom +were changed. Once invent Printing, you metamorphosed all Universities, +or superseded them! The Teacher needed not now to gather men personally +round him, that he might _speak_ to them what he knew: print it in a +Book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his +own fireside, much more effectually to learn it!--Doubtless there is +still peculiar virtue in Speech; even writers of Books may still, in +some circumstances, find it convenient to speak also,--witness our +present meeting here! There is, one would say, and must ever remain +while man has a tongue, a distinct province for Speech as well as for +Writing and Printing. In regard to all things this must remain; to +Universities among others. But the limits of the two have nowhere yet +been pointed out, ascertained; much less put in practice: the University +which would completely take in that great new fact, of the existence of +Printed Books, and stand on a clear footing for the Nineteenth +Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not yet come into +existence. If we think of it, all that a University, or final highest +School can do for us, is still but what the first School began +doing,--teach us to _read_. We learn to _read_, in various languages, +in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner +of Books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic +knowledge, is the Books themselves! It depends on what we read, +after all manner of Professors have done their best for us. The true +University of these days is a Collection of Books. + +But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is changed, in its +preaching, in its working, by the introduction of Books. The Church is +the working recognized Union of our Priests or Prophets, of those who by +wise teaching guide the souls of men. While there was no Writing, even +while there was no Easy-writing, or _Printing_, the preaching of the +voice was the natural sole method of performing this. But now with +Books!--He that can write a true Book, to persuade England, is not he +the Bishop and Archbishop, the Primate of England and of All England? +I many a time say, the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, +these _are_ the real working effective Church of a modern country. Nay +not only our preaching, but even our worship, is not it too accomplished +by means of Printed Books? The noble sentiment which a gifted soul +has clothed for us in melodious words, which brings melody into our +hearts,--is not this essentially, if we will understand it, of the +nature of worship? There are many, in all countries, who, in this +confused time, have no other method of worship. He who, in any way, +shows us better than we knew before that a lily of the fields is +beautiful, does he not show it us as an effluence of the Fountain of all +Beauty; as the _handwriting_, made visible there, of the great Maker of +the Universe? He has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse +of a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. How much more he who sings, who +says, or in any way brings home to our heart the noble doings, feelings, +darings and endurances of a brother man! He has verily touched our +hearts as with a live coal _from the altar_. Perhaps there is no worship +more authentic. + +Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an "apocalypse of Nature," a +revealing of the "open secret." It may well enough be named, in Fichte's +style, a "continuous revelation" of the Godlike in the Terrestrial and +Common. The Godlike does ever, in very truth, endure there; is +brought out, now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees +of clearness: all true gifted Singers and Speakers are, consciously or +unconsciously, doing so. The dark stormful indignation of a Byron, so +wayward and perverse, may have touches of it; nay the withered mockery +of a French sceptic,--his mockery of the False, a love and worship of +the True. How much more the sphere-harmony of a Shakspeare, of a Goethe; +the cathedral music of a Milton! They are something too, those humble +genuine lark-notes of a Burns,--skylark, starting from the humble +furrow, far overhead into the blue depths, and singing to us so +genuinely there! For all true singing is of the nature of worship; as +indeed all true _working_ may be said to be,--whereof such _singing_ is +but the record, and fit melodious representation, to us. Fragments of a +real "Church Liturgy" and "Body of Homilies," strangely disguised from +the common eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of +Printed Speech we loosely call Literature! Books are our Church too. + +Or turning now to the Government of men. Witenagemote, old Parliament, +was a great thing. The affairs of the nation were there deliberated and +decided; what we were to _do_ as a nation. But does not, though the name +Parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go on now, everywhere +and at all times, in a far more comprehensive way, _out_ of Parliament +altogether? Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, +in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a _Fourth Estate_ more +important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty +saying; it is a literal fact,--very momentous to us in these times. +Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out +of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, +Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal +everyday extempore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can +speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch +of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of +authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures. +the requisite thing is, that he have a tongue which others will listen +to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation is governed by all +that has tongue in the nation: Democracy is virtually _there_. Add only, +that whatsoever power exists will have itself, by and by, organized; +working secretly under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it will +never rest till it get to work free, unencumbered, visible to all. +Democracy virtually extant will insist on becoming palpably extant.-- + +On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of the things +which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, +wonderful and worthy are the things we call Books! Those poor bits +of rag-paper with black ink on them;--from the Daily Newspaper to +the sacred Hebrew BOOK, what have they not done, what are they not +doing!--For indeed, whatever be the outward form of the thing (bits +of paper, as we say, and black ink), is it not verily, at bottom, the +highest act of man's faculty that produces a Book? It is the _Thought_ +of man; the true thaumaturgic virtue; by which man works all things +whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to pass, is the vesture of a +Thought. This London City, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, +cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a +Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into One;--a huge immeasurable +Spirit of a THOUGHT, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, +Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not +a brick was made but some man had to _think_ of the making of that +brick.--The thing we called "bits of paper with traces of black ink," is +the _purest_ embodiment a Thought of man can have. No wonder it is, in +all ways, the activest and noblest. + +All this, of the importance and supreme importance of the Man of Letters +in modern Society, and how the Press is to such a degree superseding +the Pulpit, the Senate, the _Senatus Academicus_ and much else, has been +admitted for a good while; and recognized often enough, in late times, +with a sort of sentimental triumph and wonderment. It seems to me, the +Sentimental by and by will have to give place to the Practical. If Men +of Letters _are_ so incalculably influential, actually performing such +work for us from age to age, and even from day to day, then I think +we may conclude that Men of Letters will not always wander like +unrecognized unregulated Ishmaelites among us! Whatsoever thing, as I +said above, has virtual unnoticed power will cast off its wrappages, +bandages, and step forth one day with palpably articulated, universally +visible power. That one man wear the clothes, and take the wages, of a +function which is done by quite another: there can be no profit in +this; this is not right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, the _making_ of it +right,--what a business, for long times to come! Sure enough, this that +we call Organization of the Literary Guild is still a great way off, +encumbered with all manner of complexities. If you asked me what were +the best possible organization for the Men of Letters in modern society; +the arrangement of furtherance and regulation, grounded the most +accurately on the actual facts of their position and of the world's +position,--I should beg to say that the problem far exceeded my faculty! +It is not one man's faculty; it is that of many successive men turned +earnestly upon it, that will bring out even an approximate solution. +What the best arrangement were, none of us could say. But if you ask, +Which is the worst? I answer: This which we now have, that Chaos should +sit umpire in it; this is the worst. To the best, or any good one, there +is yet a long way. + +One remark I must not omit, That royal or parliamentary grants of money +are by no means the chief thing wanted! To give our Men of Letters +stipends, endowments and all furtherance of cash, will do little +towards the business. On the whole, one is weary of hearing about the +omnipotence of money. I will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is +no evil to be poor; that there ought to be Literary Men poor,--to show +whether they are genuine or not! Mendicant Orders, bodies of good men +doomed to beg, were instituted in the Christian Church; a most natural +and even necessary development of the spirit of Christianity. It was +itself founded on Poverty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, Crucifixion, every +species of worldly Distress and Degradation. We may say, that he who has +not known those things, and learned from them the priceless lessons they +have to teach, has missed a good opportunity of schooling. To beg, and +go barefoot, in coarse woollen cloak with a rope round your loins, +and be despised of all the world, was no beautiful business;--nor an +honorable one in any eye, till the nobleness of those who did so had +made it honored of some! + +Begging is not in our course at the present time: but for the rest of +it, who will say that a Johnson is not perhaps the better for being +poor? It is needful for him, at all rates, to know that outward profit, +that success of any kind is _not_ the goal he has to aim at. Pride, +vanity, ill-conditioned egoism of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as +in every heart; need, above all, to be cast out of his heart,--to be, +with whatever pangs, torn out of it, cast forth from it, as a thing +worthless. Byron, born rich and noble, made out even less than +Burns, poor and plebeian. Who knows but, in that same "best possible +organization" as yet far off, Poverty may still enter as an important +element? What if our Men of Letters, men setting up to be Spiritual +Heroes, were still _then_, as they now are, a kind of "involuntary +monastic order;" bound still to this same ugly Poverty,--till they had +tried what was in it too, till they had learned to make it too do for +them! Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know +the province of it, and confine it there; and even spurn it back, when +it wishes to get farther. + +Besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper season for them, the +fit assigner of them, all settled,--how is the Burns to be recognized +that merits these? He must pass through the ordeal, and prove himself. +_This_ ordeal; this wild welter of a chaos which is called Literary +Life: this too is a kind of ordeal! There is clear truth in the idea +that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper +regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong men are +born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there. The manifold, +inextricably complex, universal struggle of these constitutes, and must +constitute, what is called the progress of society. For Men of Letters, +as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that struggle? There is +the whole question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind Chance; +a whirl of distracted atoms, one cancelling the other; one of the +thousand arriving saved, nine hundred and ninety-nine lost by the way; +your royal Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the +yoke of Printer Cave; your Burns dying broken-hearted as a Gauger; your +Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling French Revolutions +by his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly enough the _worst_ +regulation. The _best_, alas, is far from us! + +And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming; advancing on us, as yet +hidden in the bosom of centuries: this is a prophecy one can risk. +For so soon as men get to discern the importance of a thing, they do +infallibly set about arranging it, facilitating, forwarding it; and rest +not till, in some approximate degree, they have accomplished that. I +say, of all Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Governing Classes at present +extant in the world, there is no class comparable for importance to that +Priesthood of the Writers of Books. This is a fact which he who runs may +read,--and draw inferences from. "Literature will take care of itself," +answered Mr. Pitt, when applied to for some help for Burns. "Yes," adds +Mr. Southey, "it will take care of itself; _and of you too_, if you do +not look to it!" + +The result to individual Men of Letters is not the momentous one; they +are but individuals, an infinitesimal fraction of the great body; they +can struggle on, and live or else die, as they have been wont. But it +deeply concerns the whole society, whether it will set its _light_ on +high places, to walk thereby; or trample it under foot, and scatter it +in all ways of wild waste (not without conflagration), as heretofore! +Light is the one thing wanted for the world. Put wisdom in the head of +the world, the world will fight its battle victoriously, and be the best +world man can make it. I called this anomaly of a disorganic Literary +Class the heart of all other anomalies, at once product and parent; some +good arrangement for that would be as the _punctum saliens_ of a +new vitality and just arrangement for all. Already, in some European +countries, in France, in Prussia, one traces some beginnings of an +arrangement for the Literary Class; indicating the gradual possibility +of such. I believe that it is possible; that it will have to be +possible. + +By far the most interesting fact I hear about the Chinese is one on +which we cannot arrive at clearness, but which excites endless curiosity +even in the dim state: this namely, that they do attempt to make their +Men of Letters their Governors! It would be rash to say, one understood +how this was done, or with what degree of success it was done. All +such things must be very unsuccessful; yet a small degree of success is +precious; the very attempt how precious! There does seem to be, all over +China, a more or less active search everywhere to discover the men of +talent that grow up in the young generation. Schools there are for +every one: a foolish sort of training, yet still a sort. The youths who +distinguish themselves in the lower school are promoted into +favorable stations in the higher, that they may still more distinguish +themselves,--forward and forward: it appears to be out of these that +the Official Persons, and incipient Governors, are taken. These are they +whom they _try_ first, whether they can govern or not. And surely with +the best hope: for they are the men that have already shown intellect. +Try them: they have not governed or administered as yet; perhaps they +cannot; but there is no doubt they _have_ some Understanding,--without +which no man can! Neither is Understanding a _tool_, as we are too apt +to figure; "it is a _hand_ which can handle any tool." Try these men: +they are of all others the best worth trying.--Surely there is no +kind of government, constitution, revolution, social apparatus or +arrangement, that I know of in this world, so promising to one's +scientific curiosity as this. The man of intellect at the top of +affairs: this is the aim of all constitutions and revolutions, if they +have any aim. For the man of true intellect, as I assert and believe +always, is the noble-hearted man withal, the true, just, humane and +valiant man. Get him for governor, all is got; fail to get him, though +you had Constitutions plentiful as blackberries, and a Parliament in +every village, there is nothing yet got--! + +These things look strange, truly; and are not such as we commonly +speculate upon. But we are fallen into strange times; these things will +require to be speculated upon; to be rendered practicable, to be in some +way put in practice. These, and many others. On all hands of us, there +is the announcement, audible enough, that the old Empire of Routine +has ended; that to say a thing has long been, is no reason for its +continuing to be. The things which have been are fallen into decay, are +fallen into incompetence; large masses of mankind, in every society of +our Europe, are no longer capable of living at all by the things which +have been. When millions of men can no longer by their utmost exertion +gain food for themselves, and "the third man for thirty-six weeks each +year is short of third-rate potatoes," the things which have been must +decidedly prepare to alter themselves!--I will now quit this of the +organization of Men of Letters. + + +Alas, the evil that pressed heaviest on those Literary Heroes of ours +was not the want of organization for Men of Letters, but a far deeper +one; out of which, indeed, this and so many other evils for the Literary +Man, and for all men, had, as from their fountain, taken rise. That our +Hero as Man of Letters had to travel without highway, companionless, +through an inorganic chaos,--and to leave his own life and faculty lying +there, as a partial contribution towards _pushing_ some highway through +it: this, had not his faculty itself been so perverted and paralyzed, he +might have put up with, might have considered to be but the common lot +of Heroes. His fatal misery was the _spiritual paralysis_, so we may +name it, of the Age in which his life lay; whereby his life too, do what +he might, was half paralyzed! The Eighteenth was a _Sceptical_ Century; +in which little word there is a whole Pandora's Box of miseries. +Scepticism means not intellectual Doubt alone, but moral Doubt; all +sorts of infidelity, insincerity, spiritual paralysis. Perhaps, in few +centuries that one could specify since the world began, was a life of +Heroism more difficult for a man. That was not an age of Faith,--an +age of Heroes! The very possibility of Heroism had been, as it were, +formally abnegated in the minds of all. Heroism was gone forever; +Triviality, Formulism and Commonplace were come forever. The "age of +miracles" had been, or perhaps had not been; but it was not any longer. +An effete world; wherein Wonder, Greatness, Godhood could not now +dwell;--in one word, a godless world! + +How mean, dwarfish are their ways of thinking, in this time,--compared +not with the Christian Shakspeares and Miltons, but with the old Pagan +Skalds, with any species of believing men! The living TREE Igdrasil, +with the melodious prophetic waving of its world-wide boughs, +deep-rooted as Hela, has died out into the clanking of a World-MACHINE. +"Tree" and "Machine:" contrast these two things. I, for my share, +declare the world to be no machine! I say that it does _not_ go by +wheel-and-pinion "motives" self-interests, checks, balances; that there +is something far other in it than the clank of spinning-jennies, and +parliamentary majorities; and, on the whole, that it is not a machine at +all!--The old Norse Heathen had a truer motion of God's-world than these +poor Machine-Sceptics: the old Heathen Norse were _sincere_ men. But +for these poor Sceptics there was no sincerity, no truth. Half-truth and +hearsay was called truth. Truth, for most men, meant plausibility; to be +measured by the number of votes you could get. They had lost any +notion that sincerity was possible, or of what sincerity was. How many +Plausibilities asking, with unaffected surprise and the air of offended +virtue, What! am not I sincere? Spiritual Paralysis, I say, nothing left +but a Mechanical life, was the characteristic of that century. For the +common man, unless happily he stood _below_ his century and belonged to +another prior one, it was impossible to be a Believer, a Hero; he lay +buried, unconscious, under these baleful influences. To the strongest +man, only with infinite struggle and confusion was it possible to work +himself half loose; and lead as it were, in an enchanted, most tragical +way, a spiritual death-in-life, and be a Half-Hero! + +Scepticism is the name we give to all this; as the chief symptom, as the +chief origin of all this. Concerning which so much were to be said! It +would take many Discourses, not a small fraction of one Discourse, to +state what one feels about that Eighteenth Century and its ways. As +indeed this, and the like of this, which we now call Scepticism, is +precisely the black malady and life-foe, against which all teaching and +discoursing since man's life began has directed itself: the battle of +Belief against Unbelief is the never-ending battle! Neither is it in the +way of crimination that one would wish to speak. Scepticism, for that +century, we must consider as the decay of old ways of believing, the +preparation afar off for new better and wider ways,--an inevitable +thing. We will not blame men for it; we will lament their hard fate. We +will understand that destruction of old _forms_ is not destruction of +everlasting _substances_; that Scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as +we see it, is not an end but a beginning. + +The other day speaking, without prior purpose that way, of Bentham's +theory of man and man's life, I chanced to call it a more beggarly one +than Mahomet's. I am bound to say, now when it is once uttered, that +such is my deliberate opinion. Not that one would mean offence against +the man Jeremy Bentham, or those who respect and believe him. Bentham +himself, and even the creed of Bentham, seems to me comparatively worthy +of praise. It is a determinate _being_ what all the world, in a cowardly +half-and-half manner, was tending to be. Let us have the crisis; we +shall either have death or the cure. I call this gross, steam-engine +Utilitarianism an approach towards new Faith. It was a laying-down +of cant; a saying to oneself: "Well then, this world is a dead iron +machine, the god of it Gravitation and selfish Hunger; let us see what, +by checking and balancing, and good adjustment of tooth and pinion, +can be made of it!" Benthamism has something complete, manful, in such +fearless committal of itself to what it finds true; you may call it +Heroic, though a Heroism with its _eyes_ put out! It is the culminating +point, and fearless ultimatum, of what lay in the half-and-half state, +pervading man's whole existence in that Eighteenth Century. It seems to +me, all deniers of Godhood, and all lip-believers of it, are bound to +be Benthamites, if they have courage and honesty. Benthamism is an +_eyeless_ Heroism: the Human Species, like a hapless blinded Samson +grinding in the Philistine Mill, clasps convulsively the pillars of +its Mill; brings huge ruin down, but ultimately deliverance withal. Of +Bentham I meant to say no harm. + +But this I do say, and would wish all men to know and lay to heart, +that he who discerns nothing but Mechanism in the Universe has in the +fatalest way missed the secret of the Universe altogether. That all +Godhood should vanish out of men's conception of this Universe seems to +me precisely the most brutal error,--I will not disparage Heathenism by +calling it a Heathen error,--that men could fall into. It is not true; +it is false at the very heart of it. A man who thinks so will think +_wrong_ about all things in the world; this original sin will vitiate +all other conclusions he can form. One might call it the most lamentable +of Delusions,--not forgetting Witchcraft itself! Witchcraft worshipped +at least a living Devil; but this worships a dead iron Devil; no God, +not even a Devil! Whatsoever is noble, divine, inspired, drops +thereby out of life. There remains everywhere in life a despicable +_caput-mortuum_; the mechanical hull, all soul fled out of it. How can a +man act heroically? The "Doctrine of Motives" will teach him that it is, +under more or less disguise, nothing but a wretched love of Pleasure, +fear of Pain; that Hunger, of applause, of cash, of whatsoever victual +it may be, is the ultimate fact of man's life. Atheism, in brief;--which +does indeed frightfully punish itself. The man, I say, is become +spiritually a paralytic man; this godlike Universe a dead mechanical +steam-engine, all working by motives, checks, balances, and I know not +what; wherein, as in the detestable belly of some Phalaris'-Bull of his +own contriving, he the poor Phalaris sits miserably dying! + +Belief I define to be the healthy act of a man's mind. It +is a mysterious indescribable process, that of getting to +believe;--indescribable, as all vital acts are. We have our mind given +us, not that it may cavil and argue, but that it may see into something, +give us clear belief and understanding about something, whereon we are +then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. Certainly +we do not rush out, clutch up the first thing we find, and straightway +believe that! All manner of doubt, inquiry, [Gr.] _skepsis_ as it is +named, about all manner of objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. It +is the mystic working of the mind, on the object it is _getting_ to know +and believe. Belief comes out of all this, above ground, like the tree +from its hidden _roots_. But now if, even on common things, we require +that a man keep his doubts _silent_, and not babble of them till they in +some measure become affirmations or denials; how much more in regard to +the highest things, impossible to speak of in words at all! That a man +parade his doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic (which +means at best only the manner of _telling_ us your thought, your belief +or disbelief, about a thing) is the triumph and true work of what +intellect he has: alas, this is as if you should _overturn_ the tree, +and instead of green boughs, leaves and fruits, show us ugly taloned +roots turned up into the air,--and no growth, only death and misery +going on! + +For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral +also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by +believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A +sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something +he can button in his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and +digest! Lower than that he will not get. We call those ages in which +he gets so low the mournfulest, sickest and meanest of all ages. The +world's heart is palsied, sick: how can any limb of it be whole? +Genuine Acting ceases in all departments of the world's work; dexterous +Similitude of Acting begins. The world's wages are pocketed, the +world's work is not done. Heroes have gone out; Quacks have come in. +Accordingly, what Century, since the end of the Roman world, which also +was a time of scepticism, simulacra and universal decadence, so +abounds with Quacks as that Eighteenth? Consider them, with their +tumid sentimental vaporing about virtue, benevolence,--the wretched +Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the head of them! Few men were without +quackery; they had got to consider it a necessary ingredient and amalgam +for truth. Chatham, our brave Chatham himself, comes down to the House, +all wrapt and bandaged; he "has crawled out in great bodily suffering," +and so on;--_forgets_, says Walpole, that he is acting the sick man; in +the fire of debate, snatches his arm from the sling, and oratorically +swings and brandishes it! Chatham himself lives the strangest mimetic +life, half-hero, half-quack, all along. For indeed the world is full of +dupes; and you have to gain the _world's_ suffrage! How the duties of +the world will be done in that case, what quantities of error, which +means failure, which means sorrow and misery, to some and to many, will +gradually accumulate in all provinces of the world's business, we need +not compute. + +It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the heart of the world's +maladies, when you call it a Sceptical World. An insincere world; a +godless untruth of a world! It is out of this, as I consider, that the +whole tribe of social pestilences, French Revolutions, Chartisms, and +what not, have derived their being,--their chief necessity to be. This +must alter. Till this alter, nothing can beneficially alter. My one hope +of the world, my inexpugnable consolation in looking at the miseries of +the world, is that this is altering. Here and there one does now find +a man who knows, as of old, that this world is a Truth, and no +Plausibility and Falsity; that he himself is alive, not dead or +paralytic; and that the world is alive, instinct with Godhood, beautiful +and awful, even as in the beginning of days! One man once knowing this, +many men, all men, must by and by come to know it. It lies there clear, +for whosoever will take the _spectacles_ off his eyes and honestly look, +to know! For such a man the Unbelieving Century, with its unblessed +Products, is already past; a new century is already come. The old +unblessed Products and Performances, as solid as they look, are +Phantasms, preparing speedily to vanish. To this and the other noisy, +very great-looking Simulacrum with the whole world huzzaing at its +heels, he can say, composedly stepping aside: Thou art not _true_; thou +art not extant, only semblant; go thy way!--Yes, hollow Formulism, gross +Benthamism, and other unheroic atheistic Insincerity is visibly and +even rapidly declining. An unbelieving Eighteenth Century is but an +exception,--such as now and then occurs. I prophesy that the world will +once more become _sincere_; a believing world; with _many_ Heroes in it, +a heroic world! It will then be a victorious world; never till then. + +Or indeed what of the world and its victories? Men speak too much about +the world. Each one of us here, let the world go how it will, and be +victorious or not victorious, has he not a Life of his own to lead? One +Life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to +us forevermore! It were well for us to live not as fools and simulacra, +but as wise and realities. The world's being saved will not save us; nor +the world's being lost destroy us. We should look to ourselves: there is +great merit here in the "duty of staying at home"! And, on the whole, +to say truth, I never heard of "world's" being "saved" in any other way. +That mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century +with its windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too far. For the +saving of the _world_ I will trust confidently to the Maker of the +world; and look a little to my own saving, which I am more competent +to!--In brief, for the world's sake, and for our own, we will rejoice +greatly that Scepticism, Insincerity, Mechanical Atheism, with all their +poison-dews, are going, and as good as gone.-- + +Now it was under such conditions, in those times of Johnson, that our +Men of Letters had to live. Times in which there was properly no truth +in life. Old truths had fallen nigh dumb; the new lay yet hidden, not +trying to speak. That Man's Life here below was a Sincerity and Fact, +and would forever continue such, no new intimation, in that dusk of +the world, had yet dawned. No intimation; not even any French +Revolution,--which we define to be a Truth once more, though a Truth +clad in hell-fire! How different was the Luther's pilgrimage, with +its assured goal, from the Johnson's, girt with mere traditions, +suppositions, grown now incredible, unintelligible! Mahomet's Formulas +were of "wood waxed and oiled," and could be burnt out of one's way: +poor Johnson's were far more difficult to burn.--The strong man will +ever find _work_, which means difficulty, pain, to the full measure of +his strength. But to make out a victory, in those circumstances of our +poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more difficult than in any. Not +obstruction, disorganization, Bookseller Osborne and Fourpence-halfpenny +a day; not this alone; but the light of his own soul was taken from him. +No landmark on the Earth; and, alas, what is that to having no loadstar +in the Heaven! We need not wonder that none of those Three men rose to +victory. That they fought truly is the highest praise. With a mournful +sympathy we will contemplate, if not three living victorious Heroes, as +I said, the Tombs of three fallen Heroes! They fell for us too; making +a way for us. There are the mountains which they hurled abroad in their +confused War of the Giants; under which, their strength and life spent, +they now lie buried. + + +I have already written of these three Literary Heroes, expressly or +incidentally; what I suppose is known to most of you; what need not be +spoken or written a second time. They concern us here as the singular +_Prophets_ of that singular age; for such they virtually were; and the +aspect they and their world exhibit, under this point of view, might +lead us into reflections enough! I call them, all three, Genuine Men +more or less; faithfully, for most part unconsciously, struggling to be +genuine, and plant themselves on the everlasting truth of things. This +to a degree that eminently distinguishes them from the poor artificial +mass of their contemporaries; and renders them worthy to be considered +as Speakers, in some measure, of the everlasting truth, as Prophets in +that age of theirs. By Nature herself a noble necessity was laid on them +to be so. They were men of such magnitude that they could not live on +unrealities,--clouds, froth and all inanity gave way under them: there +was no footing for them but on firm earth; no rest or regular motion for +them, if they got not footing there. To a certain extent, they were Sons +of Nature once more in an age of Artifice; once more, Original Men. + +As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one +of our great English souls. A strong and noble man; so much left +undeveloped in him to the last: in a kindlier element what might he not +have been,--Poet, Priest, sovereign Ruler! On the whole, a man must not +complain of his "element," of his "time," or the like; it is thriftless +work doing so. His time is bad: well then, he is there to make it +better!--Johnson's youth was poor, isolated, hopeless, very miserable. +Indeed, it does not seem possible that, in any the favorablest outward +circumstances, Johnson's life could have been other than a painful one. +The world might have had more of profitable _work_ out of him, or less; +but his _effort_ against the world's work could never have been a light +one. Nature, in return for his nobleness, had said to him, Live in an +element of diseased sorrow. Nay, perhaps the sorrow and the nobleness +were intimately and even inseparably connected with each other. At all +events, poor Johnson had to go about girt with continual hypochondria, +physical and spiritual pain. Like a Hercules with the burning +Nessus'-shirt on him, which shoots in on him dull incurable misery: the +Nessus'-shirt not to be stript off, which is his own natural skin! In +this manner _he_ had to live. Figure him there, with his scrofulous +diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of +thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly +devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages +and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The +largest soul that was in all England; and provision made for it of +"fourpence-halfpenny a day." Yet a giant invincible soul; a true man's. +One remembers always that story of the shoes at Oxford: the rough, +seamy-faced, rawboned College Servitor stalking about, in winter-season, +with his shoes worn out; how the charitable Gentleman Commoner secretly +places a new pair at his door; and the rawboned Servitor, lifting them, +looking at them near, with his dim eyes, with what thoughts,--pitches +them out of window! Wet feet, mud, frost, hunger or what you will; but +not beggary: we cannot stand beggary! Rude stubborn self-help here; +a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and want, yet of +nobleness and manfulness withal. It is a type of the man's life, +this pitching away of the shoes. An original man;--not a second-hand, +borrowing or begging man. Let us stand on our own basis, at any rate! On +such shoes as we ourselves can get. On frost and mud, if you will, but +honestly on that;--on the reality and substance which Nature gives _us_, +not on the semblance, on the thing she has given another than us--! + +And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood and self-help, was there +ever soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally submissive to what was +really higher than he? Great souls are always loyally submissive, +reverent to what is over them; only small mean souls are otherwise. I +could not find a better proof of what I said the other day, That the +sincere man was by nature the obedient man; that only in a World +of Heroes was there loyal Obedience to the Heroic. The essence of +_originality_ is not that it be _new_: Johnson believed altogether in +the old; he found the old opinions credible for him, fit for him; and in +a right heroic manner lived under them. He is well worth study in regard +to that. For we are to say that Johnson was far other than a mere man +of words and formulas; he was a man of truths and facts. He stood by the +old formulas; the happier was it for him that he could so stand: but in +all formulas that _he_ could stand by, there needed to be a most +genuine substance. Very curious how, in that poor Paper-age, so barren, +artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries, Hearsays, the great Fact of +this Universe glared in, forever wonderful, indubitable, unspeakable, +divine-infernal, upon this man too! How he harmonized his Formulas with +it, how he managed at all under such circumstances: that is a thing +worth seeing. A thing "to be looked at with reverence, with pity, with +awe." That Church of St. Clement Danes, where Johnson still _worshipped_ +in the era of Voltaire, is to me a venerable place. + +It was in virtue of his _sincerity_, of his speaking still in some sort +from the heart of Nature, though in the current artificial dialect, that +Johnson was a Prophet. Are not all dialects "artificial"? Artificial +things are not all false;--nay every true Product of Nature will +infallibly _shape_ itself; we may say all artificial things are, at +the starting of them, _true_. What we call "Formulas" are not in their +origin bad; they are indispensably good. Formula is _method_, habitude; +found wherever man is found. Formulas fashion themselves as Paths do, as +beaten Highways, leading toward some sacred or high object, whither many +men are bent. Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt earnest impulse, +finds out a way of doing somewhat,--were it of uttering his soul's +reverence for the Highest, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. +An inventor was needed to do that, a _poet_; he has articulated the +dim-struggling thought that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This +is his way of doing that; these are his footsteps, the beginning of a +"Path." And now see: the second men travels naturally in the footsteps +of his foregoer, it is the _easiest_ method. In the footsteps of his +foregoer; yet with improvements, with changes where such seem good; at +all events with enlargements, the Path ever _widening_ itself as more +travel it;--till at last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole +world may travel and drive. While there remains a City or Shrine, or +any Reality to drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be right +welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this +manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the world have +come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas all begin +by being _full_ of substance; you may call them the _skin_, the +articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is +already there: _they_ had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, +are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's +heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant +withal of the high significance of _true_ Formulas; that they were, and +will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our habitation in this +world.-- + +Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his "sincerity." He has no +suspicion of his being particularly sincere,--of his being particularly +anything! A hard-struggling, weary-hearted man, or "scholar" as he calls +himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in the world, not +to starve, but to live--without stealing! A noble unconsciousness is in +him. He does not "engrave _Truth_ on his watch-seal;" no, but he stands +by truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think of +it once more. The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, +first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him +incapable of being _in_sincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart +Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of +this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though +he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to _him_,--fearful +and wonderful, on this hand and on that. He has a basis of sincerity; +unrecognized, because never questioned or capable of question. Mirabeau, +Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon: all the Great Men I ever heard of have +this as the primary material of them. Innumerable commonplace men are +debating, are talking everywhere their commonplace doctrines, which they +have learned by logic, by rote, at second-hand: to that kind of man all +this is still nothing. He must have truth; truth which _he_ feels to be +true. How shall he stand otherwise? His whole soul, at all moments, in +all ways, tells him that there is no standing. He is under the noble +necessity of being true. Johnson's way of thinking about this world is +not mine, any more than Mahomet's was: but I recognize the everlasting +element of _heart-sincerity_ in both; and see with pleasure how neither +of them remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as _chaff_ sown; in both +of them is something which the seedfield will _grow_. + +Johnson was a Prophet to his people; preached a Gospel to them,--as all +like him always do. The highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a +kind of Moral Prudence: "in a world where much is to be done, and little +is to be known," see how you will _do_ it! A thing well worth preaching. +"A world where much is to be done, and little is to be known:" do not +sink yourselves in boundless bottomless abysses of Doubt, of wretched +god-forgetting Unbelief;--you were miserable then, powerless, mad: +how could you _do_ or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and +taught;--coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great +Gospel, "Clear your mind of Cant!" Have no trade with Cant: stand on the +cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it be in your own _real_ torn +shoes: "that will be better for you," as Mahomet says! I call this, I +call these two things _joined together_, a great Gospel, the greatest +perhaps that was possible at that time. + +Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are +now as it were disowned by the young generation. It is not wonderful; +Johnson's opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his style of thinking +and of living, we may hope, will never become obsolete. I find in +Johnson's Books the indisputablest traces of a great intellect and great +heart;--ever welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever. +They are _sincere_ words, those of his; he means things by them. A +wondrous buckram style,--the best he could get to then; a measured +grandiloquence, stepping or rather stalking along in a very solemn +way, grown obsolete now; sometimes a tumid _size_ of phraseology not in +proportion to the contents of it: all this you will put up with. For +the phraseology, tumid or not, has always _something within it_. So +many beautiful styles and books, with _nothing_ in them;--a man is +a malefactor to the world who writes such! _They_ are the avoidable +kind!--Had Johnson left nothing but his _Dictionary_, one might have +traced there a great intellect, a genuine man. Looking to its clearness +of definition, its general solidity, honesty, insight and successful +method, it may be called the best of all Dictionaries. There is in it +a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands there like a great solid +square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically complete: you judge that a +true Builder did it. + +One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor Bozzy. He +passes for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature; and was so in many +senses. Yet the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever remain +noteworthy. The foolish conceited Scotch Laird, the most conceited man +of his time, approaching in such awe-struck attitude the great dusty +irascible Pedagogue in his mean garret there: it is a genuine reverence +for Excellence; a _worship_ for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes +nor worship were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem, exist always, +and a certain worship of them! We will also take the liberty to deny +altogether that of the witty Frenchman, that no man is a Hero to his +valet-de-chambre. Or if so, it is not the Hero's blame, but the Valet's: +that his soul, namely, is a mean _valet_-soul! He expects his Hero +to advance in royal stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne +behind him, trumpets sounding before him. It should stand rather, No +man can be a _Grand-Monarque_ to his valet-de-chambre. Strip your Louis +Quatorze of his king-gear, and there _is_ left nothing but a poor forked +radish with a head fantastically carved;--admirable to no valet. The +Valet does not know a Hero when he sees him! Alas, no: it requires a +kind of _Hero_ to do that;--and one of the world's wants, in _this_ as +in other senses, is for most part want of such. + +On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's admiration was well +bestowed; that he could have found no soul in all England so worthy of +bending down before? Shall we not say, of this great mournful Johnson +too, that he guided his difficult confused existence wisely; led it +_well_, like a right valiant man? That waste chaos of Authorship by +trade; that waste chaos of Scepticism in religion and politics, in +life-theory and life-practice; in his poverty, in his dust and dimness, +with the sick body and the rusty coat: he made it do for him, like a +brave man. Not wholly without a loadstar in the Eternal; he had still +a loadstar, as the brave all need to have: with his eye set on that, he +would change his course for nothing in these confused vortices of the +lower sea of Time. "To the Spirit of Lies, bearing death and hunger, he +would in nowise strike his flag." Brave old Samuel: _ultimus Romanorum_! + + +Of Rousseau and his Heroism I cannot say so much. He is not what I +call a strong man. A morbid, excitable, spasmodic man; at best, intense +rather than strong. He had not "the talent of Silence," an invaluable +talent; which few Frenchmen, or indeed men of any sort in these times, +excel in! The suffering man ought really "to consume his own smoke;" +there is no good in emitting _smoke_ till you have made it into +_fire_,--which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable +of becoming! Rousseau has not depth or width, not calm force for +difficulty; the first characteristic of true greatness. A fundamental +mistake to call vehemence and rigidity strength! A man is not strong who +takes convulsion-fits; though six men cannot hold him then. He that can +walk under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the strong +man. We need forever, especially in these loud-shrieking days, to remind +ourselves of that. A man who cannot _hold his peace_, till the time come +for speaking and acting, is no right man. + +Poor Rousseau's face is to me expressive of him. A high but narrow +contracted intensity in it: bony brows; deep, strait-set eyes, in +which there is something bewildered-looking,--bewildered, peering with +lynx-eagerness. A face full of misery, even ignoble misery, and also of +the antagonism against that; something mean, plebeian there, redeemed +only by _intensity_: the face of what is called a Fanatic,--a sadly +_contracted_ Hero! We name him here because, with all his drawbacks, and +they are many, he has the first and chief characteristic of a Hero: he +is heartily _in earnest_. In earnest, if ever man was; as none of these +French Philosophers were. Nay, one would say, of an earnestness too +great for his otherwise sensitive, rather feeble nature; and which +indeed in the end drove him into the strangest incoherences, almost +delirations. There had come, at last, to be a kind of madness in him: +his Ideas _possessed_ him like demons; hurried him so about, drove him +over steep places--! + +The fault and misery of Rousseau was what we easily name by a single +word, _Egoism_; which is indeed the source and summary of all faults and +miseries whatsoever. He had not perfected himself into victory over mere +Desire; a mean Hunger, in many sorts, was still the motive principle of +him. I am afraid he was a very vain man; hungry for the praises of men. +You remember Genlis's experience of him. She took Jean Jacques to the +Theatre; he bargaining for a strict incognito,--"He would not be seen +there for the world!" The curtain did happen nevertheless to be drawn +aside: the Pit recognized Jean Jacques, but took no great notice of him! +He expressed the bitterest indignation; gloomed all evening, spake no +other than surly words. The glib Countess remained entirely convinced +that his anger was not at being seen, but at not being applauded +when seen. How the whole nature of the man is poisoned; nothing but +suspicion, self-isolation, fierce moody ways! He could not live with +anybody. A man of some rank from the country, who visited him often, and +used to sit with him, expressing all reverence and affection for him, +comes one day; finds Jean Jacques full of the sourest unintelligible +humor. "Monsieur," said Jean Jacques, with flaming eyes, "I know why you +come here. You come to see what a poor life I lead; how little is in my +poor pot that is boiling there. Well, look into the pot! There is half a +pound of meat, one carrot and three onions; that is all: go and tell the +whole world that, if you like, Monsieur!"--A man of this sort was far +gone. The whole world got itself supplied with anecdotes, for light +laughter, for a certain theatrical interest, from these perversions and +contortions of poor Jean Jacques. Alas, to him they were not laughing or +theatrical; too real to him! The contortions of a dying gladiator: the +crowded amphitheatre looks on with entertainment; but the gladiator is +in agonies and dying. + +And yet this Rousseau, as we say, with his passionate appeals to +Mothers, with his _contrat-social_, with his celebrations of Nature, +even of savage life in Nature, did once more touch upon Reality, +struggle towards Reality; was doing the function of a Prophet to his +Time. As he could, and as the Time could! Strangely through all that +defacement, degradation and almost madness, there is in the inmost heart +of poor Rousseau a spark of real heavenly fire. Once more, out of +the element of that withered mocking Philosophism, Scepticism and +Persiflage, there has arisen in this man the ineradicable feeling and +knowledge that this Life of ours is true: not a Scepticism, Theorem, +or Persiflage, but a Fact, an awful Reality. Nature had made that +revelation to him; had ordered him to speak it out. He got it spoken +out; if not well and clearly, then ill and dimly,--as clearly as he +could. Nay what are all errors and perversities of his, even those +stealings of ribbons, aimless confused miseries and vagabondisms, if we +will interpret them kindly, but the blinkard dazzlement and staggerings +to and fro of a man sent on an errand he is too weak for, by a path he +cannot yet find? Men are led by strange ways. One should have tolerance +for a man, hope of him; leave him to try yet what he will do. While life +lasts, hope lasts for every man. + +Of Rousseau's literary talents, greatly celebrated still among his +countrymen, I do not say much. His Books, like himself, are what I +call unhealthy; not the good sort of Books. There is a sensuality in +Rousseau. Combined with such an intellectual gift as his, it makes +pictures of a certain gorgeous attractiveness: but they are not +genuinely poetical. Not white sunlight: something _operatic_; a kind +of rose-pink, artificial bedizenment. It is frequent, or rather it +is universal, among the French since his time. Madame de Stael has +something of it; St. Pierre; and down onwards to the present astonishing +convulsionary "Literature of Desperation," it is everywhere abundant. +That same _rose-pink_ is not the right hue. Look at a Shakspeare, at a +Goethe, even at a Walter Scott! He who has once seen into this, has seen +the difference of the True from the Sham-True, and will discriminate +them ever afterwards. + +We had to observe in Johnson how much good a Prophet, under all +disadvantages and disorganizations, can accomplish for the world. In +Rousseau we are called to look rather at the fearful amount of evil +which, under such disorganization, may accompany the good. Historically +it is a most pregnant spectacle, that of Rousseau. Banished into Paris +garrets, in the gloomy company of his own Thoughts and Necessities +there; driven from post to pillar; fretted, exasperated till the heart +of him went mad, he had grown to feel deeply that the world was not his +friend nor the world's law. It was expedient, if any way possible, that +such a man should _not_ have been set in flat hostility with the world. +He could be cooped into garrets, laughed at as a maniac, left to starve +like a wild beast in his cage;--but he could not be hindered from +setting the world on fire. The French Revolution found its Evangelist in +Rousseau. His semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of civilized +life, the preferability of the savage to the civilized, and such like, +helped well to produce a whole delirium in France generally. True, you +may well ask, What could the world, the governors of the world, do with +such a man? Difficult to say what the governors of the world could +do with him! What he could do with them is unhappily clear +enough,--_guillotine_ a great many of them! Enough now of Rousseau. + + +It was a curious phenomenon, in the withered, unbelieving second-hand +Eighteenth Century, that of a Hero starting up, among the artificial +pasteboard figures and productions, in the guise of a Robert Burns. Like +a little well in the rocky desert places,--like a sudden splendor of +Heaven in the artificial Vauxhall! People knew not what to make of +it. They took it for a piece of the Vauxhall fire-work; alas, it _let_ +itself be so taken, though struggling half-blindly, as in bitterness of +death, against that! Perhaps no man had such a false reception from his +fellow-men. Once more a very wasteful life-drama was enacted under the +sun. + +The tragedy of Burns's life is known to all of you. Surely we may +say, if discrepancy between place held and place merited constitute +perverseness of lot for a man, no lot could be more perverse then +Burns's. Among those second-hand acting-figures, _mimes_ for most part, +of the Eighteenth Century, once more a giant Original Man; one of those +men who reach down to the perennial Deeps, who take rank with the Heroic +among men: and he was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. The largest soul +of all the British lands came among us in the shape of a hard-handed +Scottish Peasant. + +His Father, a poor toiling man, tried various things; did not succeed in +any; was involved in continual difficulties. The Steward, Factor as +the Scotch call him, used to send letters and threatenings, Burns says, +"which threw us all into tears." The brave, hard-toiling, hard-suffering +Father, his brave heroine of a wife; and those children, of whom Robert +was one! In this Earth, so wide otherwise, no shelter for _them_. The +letters "threw us all into tears:" figure it. The brave Father, I say +always;--a _silent_ Hero and Poet; without whom the son had never been +a speaking one! Burns's Schoolmaster came afterwards to London, learnt +what good society was; but declares that in no meeting of men did he +ever enjoy better discourse than at the hearth of this peasant. And his +poor "seven acres of nursery-ground,"--not that, nor the miserable patch +of clay-farm, nor anything he tried to get a living by, would prosper +with him; he had a sore unequal battle all his days. But he stood to +it valiantly; a wise, faithful, unconquerable man;--swallowing down +how many sore sufferings daily into silence; fighting like an unseen +Hero,--nobody publishing newspaper paragraphs about his nobleness; +voting pieces of plate to him! However, he was not lost; nothing +is lost. Robert is there the outcome of him,--and indeed of many +generations of such as him. + +This Burns appeared under every disadvantage: uninstructed, poor, born +only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic +special dialect, known only to a small province of the country he lived +in. Had he written, even what he did write, in the general language of +England, I doubt not he had already become universally recognized as +being, or capable to be, one of our greatest men. That he should have +tempted so many to penetrate through the rough husk of that dialect of +his, is proof that there lay something far from common within it. He +has gained a certain recognition, and is continuing to do so over all +quarters of our wide Saxon world: wheresoever a Saxon dialect is spoken, +it begins to be understood, by personal inspection of this and the +other, that one of the most considerable Saxon men of the Eighteenth +Century was an Ayrshire Peasant named Robert Burns. Yes, I will say, +here too was a piece of the right Saxon stuff: strong as the Harz-rock, +rooted in the depths of the world;--rock, yet with wells of living +softness in it! A wild impetuous whirlwind of passion and faculty +slumbered quiet there; such heavenly _melody_ dwelling in the heart of +it. A noble rough genuineness; homely, rustic, honest; true simplicity +of strength; with its lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity;--like the +old Norse Thor, the Peasant-god! + +Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that +Robert, in his young days, in spite of their hardship, was usually +the gayest of speech; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense and +heart; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting peats in the bog, or +such like, than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. This +basis of mirth ("_fond gaillard_," as old Marquis Mirabeau calls it), a +primal element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep +and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics +of Burns. A large fund of Hope dwells in him; spite of his tragical +history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gallantly +aside; bounds forth victorious over them. It is as the lion shaking +"dew-drops from his mane;" as the swift-bounding horse, that _laughs_ +at the shaking of the spear.--But indeed, Hope, Mirth, of the sort +like Burns's, are they not the outcome properly of warm generous +affection,--such as is the beginning of all to every man? + +You would think it strange if I called Burns the most gifted British +soul we had in all that century of his: and yet I believe the day is +coming when there will be little danger in saying so. His writings, all +that he _did_ under such obstructions, are only a poor fragment of him. +Professor Stewart remarked very justly, what indeed is true of all Poets +good for much, that his poetry was not any particular faculty; but the +general result of a naturally vigorous original mind expressing itself +in that way. Burns's gifts, expressed in conversation, are the theme +of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts: from the gracefulest +utterances of courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate speech; loud +floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear +piercing insight; all was in him. Witty duchesses celebrate him as a +man whose speech "led them off their feet." This is beautiful: but still +more beautiful that which Mr. Lockhart has recorded, which I have more +than once alluded to, How the waiters and ostlers at inns would get +out of bed, and come crowding to hear this man speak! Waiters and +ostlers:--they too were men, and here was a man! I have heard much about +his speech; but one of the best things I ever heard of it was, last +year, from a venerable gentleman long familiar with him. That it was +speech distinguished by always _having something in it_. "He spoke +rather little than much," this old man told me; "sat rather silent in +those early days, as in the company of persons above him; and always +when he did speak, it was to throw new light on the matter." I know not +why any one should ever speak otherwise!--But if we look at his +general force of soul, his healthy _robustness_ every way, the rugged +downrightness, penetration, generous valor and manfulness that was in +him,--where shall we readily find a better-gifted man? + +Among the great men of the Eighteenth Century, I sometimes feel as if +Burns might be found to resemble Mirabeau more than any other. They +differ widely in vesture; yet look at them intrinsically. There is the +same burly thick-necked strength of body as of soul;--built, in both +cases, on what the old Marquis calls a _fond gaillard_. By nature, by +course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has much more of bluster; +a noisy, forward, unresting man. But the characteristic of Mirabeau too +is veracity and sense, power of true _insight_, superiority of vision. +The thing that he says is worth remembering. It is a flash of insight +into some object or other: so do both these men speak. The same raging +passions; capable too in both of manifesting themselves as the tenderest +noble affections. Wit; wild laughter, energy, directness, sincerity: +these were in both. The types of the two men are not dissimilar. Burns +too could have governed, debated in National Assemblies; politicized, as +few could. Alas, the courage which had to exhibit itself in capture of +smuggling schooners in the Solway Frith; in keeping _silence_ over so +much, where no good speech, but only inarticulate rage was possible: +this might have bellowed forth Ushers de Breze and the like; and made +itself visible to all men, in managing of kingdoms, in ruling of great +ever-memorable epochs! But they said to him reprovingly, his Official +Superiors said, and wrote: "You are to work, not think." Of your +_thinking-faculty_, the greatest in this land, we have no need; you are +to gauge beer there; for that only are you wanted. Very notable;--and +worth mentioning, though we know what is to be said and answered! As if +Thought, Power of Thinking, were not, at all times, in all places and +situations of the world, precisely the thing that was wanted. The fatal +man, is he not always the unthinking man, the man who cannot think and +_see_; but only grope, and hallucinate, and _mis_see the nature of the +thing he works with? He mis-sees it, mis_takes_ it as we say; takes it +for one thing, and it _is_ another thing,--and leaves him standing like +a Futility there! He is the fatal man; unutterably fatal, put in the +high places of men.--"Why complain of this?" say some: "Strength is +mournfully denied its arena; that was true from of old." Doubtless; +and the worse for the _arena_, answer I! _Complaining_ profits little; +stating of the truth may profit. That a Europe, with its French +Revolution just breaking out, finds no need of a Burns except for +gauging beer,--is a thing I, for one, cannot _rejoice_ at--! + +Once more we have to say here, that the chief quality of Burns is the +_sincerity_ of him. So in his Poetry, so in his Life. The song he sings +is not of fantasticalities; it is of a thing felt, really there; the +prime merit of this, as of all in him, and of his Life generally, is +truth. The Life of Burns is what we may call a great tragic sincerity. A +sort of savage sincerity,--not cruel, far from that; but wild, wrestling +naked with the truth of things. In that sense, there is something of the +savage in all great men. + +Hero-worship,--Odin, Burns? Well; these Men of Letters too were not +without a kind of Hero-worship: but what a strange condition has that +got into now! The waiters and ostlers of Scotch inns, prying about +the door, eager to catch any word that fell from Burns, were doing +unconscious reverence to the Heroic. Johnson had his Boswell for +worshipper. Rousseau had worshippers enough; princes calling on him in +his mean garret; the great, the beautiful doing reverence to the poor +moon-struck man. For himself a most portentous contradiction; the two +ends of his life not to be brought into harmony. He sits at the tables +of grandees; and has to copy music for his own living. He cannot even +get his music copied: "By dint of dining out," says he, "I run the +risk of dying by starvation at home." For his worshippers too a most +questionable thing! If doing Hero-worship well or badly be the test of +vital well-being or ill-being to a generation, can we say that _these_ +generations are very first-rate?--And yet our heroic Men of Letters +do teach, govern, are kings, priests, or what you like to call them; +intrinsically there is no preventing it by any means whatever. The world +has to obey him who thinks and sees in the world. The world can alter +the manner of that; can either have it as blessed continuous summer +sunshine, or as unblessed black thunder and tornado,--with unspeakable +difference of profit for the world! The manner of it is very alterable; +the matter and fact of it is not alterable by any power under the sky. +Light; or, failing that, lightning: the world can take its choice. Not +whether we call an Odin god, prophet, priest, or what we call him; but +whether we believe the word he tells us: there it all lies. If it be a +true word, we shall have to believe it; believing it, we shall have +to do it. What _name_ or welcome we give him or it, is a point that +concerns ourselves mainly. _It_, the new Truth, new deeper revealing of +the Secret of this Universe, is verily of the nature of a message from +on high; and must and will have itself obeyed.-- + +My last remark is on that notablest phasis of Burns's history,--his +visit to Edinburgh. Often it seems to me as if his demeanor there were +the highest proof he gave of what a fund of worth and genuine manhood +was in him. If we think of it, few heavier burdens could be laid on +the strength of a man. So sudden; all common _Lionism_. which ruins +innumerable men, was as nothing to this. It is as if Napoleon had +been made a King of, not gradually, but at once from the Artillery +Lieutenancy in the Regiment La Fere. Burns, still only in his +twenty-seventh year, is no longer even a ploughman; he is flying to the +West Indies to escape disgrace and a jail. This month he is a ruined +peasant, his wages seven pounds a year, and these gone from him: next +month he is in the blaze of rank and beauty, handing down jewelled +Duchesses to dinner; the cynosure of all eyes! Adversity is sometimes +hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a +hundred that will stand adversity. I admire much the way in which Burns +met all this. Perhaps no man one could point out, was ever so sorely +tried, and so little forgot himself. Tranquil, unastonished; not +abashed, not inflated, neither awkwardness nor affectation: he feels +that _he_ there is the man Robert Burns; that the "rank is but the +guinea-stamp;" that the celebrity is but the candle-light, which will +show _what_ man, not in the least make him a better or other man! Alas, +it may readily, unless he look to it, make him a _worse_ man; a wretched +inflated wind-bag,--inflated till he _burst_, and become a _dead_ lion; +for whom, as some one has said, "there is no resurrection of the body;" +worse than a living dog!--Burns is admirable here. + +And yet, alas, as I have observed elsewhere, these Lion-hunters were the +ruin and death of Burns. It was they that rendered it impossible for him +to live! They gathered round him in his Farm; hindered his industry; +no place was remote enough from them. He could not get his Lionism +forgotten, honestly as he was disposed to do so. He falls into +discontents, into miseries, faults; the world getting ever more desolate +for him; health, character, peace of mind, all gone;--solitary enough +now. It is tragical to think of! These men came but to _see_ him; it was +out of no sympathy with him, nor no hatred to him. They came to get a +little amusement; they got their amusement;--and the Hero's life went +for it! + +Richter says, in the Island of Sumatra there is a kind of +"Light-chafers," large Fire-flies, which people stick upon spits, and +illuminate the ways with at night. Persons of condition can thus travel +with a pleasant radiance, which they much admire. Great honor to the +Fire-flies! But--! + + + + +LECTURE VI. THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN REVOLUTIONISM. + +[May 22, 1840.] + +We come now to the last form of Heroism; that which we call Kingship. +The Commander over Men; he to whose will our wills are to be +subordinated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare +in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of Great Men. He is +practically the summary for us of _all_ the various figures of Heroism; +Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or of spiritual dignity we can +fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to _command_ over us, to +furnish us with constant practical teaching, to tell us for the day and +hour what we are to _do_. He is called _Rex_, Regulator, _Roi_: our own +name is still better; King, _Konning_, which means _Can_-ning, Able-man. + +Numerous considerations, pointing towards deep, questionable, and indeed +unfathomable regions, present themselves here: on the most of which we +must resolutely for the present forbear to speak at all. As Burke said +that perhaps fair _Trial by Jury_ was the soul of Government, and that +all legislation, administration, parliamentary debating, and the rest +of it, went on, in "order to bring twelve impartial men into a +jury-box;"--so, by much stronger reason, may I say here, that the +finding of your _Ableman_ and getting him invested with the _symbols of +ability_, with dignity, worship (_worth_-ship), royalty, kinghood, +or whatever we call it, so that _he_ may actually have room to guide +according to his faculty of doing it,--is the business, well or +ill accomplished, of all social procedure whatsoever in this world! +Hustings-speeches, Parliamentary motions, Reform Bills, French +Revolutions, all mean at heart this; or else nothing. Find in any +country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise _him_ to the supreme +place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for +that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, +constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a +whit. It is in the perfect state; an ideal country. The Ablest Man; he +means also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest Man: what he _tells +us to do_ must be precisely the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere +or anyhow learn;--the thing which it will in all ways behoove US, with +right loyal thankfulness and nothing doubting, to do! Our _doing_ and +life were then, so far as government could regulate it, well regulated; +that were the ideal of constitutions. + +Alas, we know very well that Ideals can never be completely embodied in +practice. Ideals must ever lie a very great way off; and we will right +thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation +thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure by a +scale of perfection the meagre product of reality" in this poor world +of ours. We will esteem him no wise man; we will esteem him a sickly, +discontented, foolish man. And yet, on the other hand, it is never to be +forgotten that Ideals do exist; that if they be not approximated to at +all, the whole matter goes to wreck! Infallibly. No bricklayer builds a +wall _perfectly_ perpendicular, mathematically this is not possible; +a certain degree of perpendicularity suffices him; and he, like a good +bricklayer, who must have done with his job, leaves it so. And yet if he +sway _too much_ from the perpendicular; above all, if he throw plummet +and level quite away from him, and pile brick on brick heedless, just +as it comes to hand--! Such bricklayer, I think, is in a bad way. He has +forgotten himself: but the Law of Gravitation does not forget to act on +him; he and his wall rush down into confused welter of ruin--! + +This is the history of all rebellions, French Revolutions, social +explosions in ancient or modern times. You have put the too _Un_able +Man at the head of affairs! The too ignoble, unvaliant, fatuous man. You +have forgotten that there is any rule, or natural necessity whatever, of +putting the Able Man there. Brick must lie on brick as it may and can. +Unable Simulacrum of Ability, _quack_, in a word, must adjust himself +with quack, in all manner of administration of human things;--which +accordingly lie unadministered, fermenting into unmeasured masses +of failure, of indigent misery: in the outward, and in the inward or +spiritual, miserable millions stretch out the hand for their due supply, +and it is not there. The "law of gravitation" acts; Nature's laws do +none of them forget to act. The miserable millions burst forth into +Sansculottism, or some other sort of madness: bricks and bricklayer lie +as a fatal chaos--! + +Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago or more, about the +"Divine right of Kings," moulders unread now in the Public Libraries of +this country. Far be it from us to disturb the calm process by which it +is disappearing harmlessly from the earth, in those repositories! At the +same time, not to let the immense rubbish go without leaving us, as it +ought, some soul of it behind--I will say that it did mean something; +something true, which it is important for us and all men to keep in +mind. To assert that in whatever man you chose to lay hold of (by this +or the other plan of clutching at him); and claps a round piece of metal +on the head of, and called King,--there straightway came to reside +a divine virtue, so that _he_ became a kind of god, and a Divinity +inspired him with faculty and right to rule over you to all lengths: +this,--what can we do with this but leave it to rot silently in +the Public Libraries? But I will say withal, and that is what these +Divine-right men meant, That in Kings, and in all human Authorities, +and relations that men god-created can form among each other, there is +verily either a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong; one or the +other of these two! For it is false altogether, what the last Sceptical +Century taught us, that this world is a steam-engine. There is a God in +this world; and a God's-sanction, or else the violation of such, does +look out from all ruling and obedience, from all moral acts of men. +There is no act more moral between men than that of rule and obedience. +Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him +that refuses it when it is! God's law is in that, I say, however the +Parchment-laws may run: there is a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong +at the heart of every claim that one man makes upon another. + +It can do none of us harm to reflect on this: in all the relations of +life it will concern us; in Loyalty and Royalty, the highest of these. I +esteem the modern error, That all goes by self-interest and the checking +and balancing of greedy knaveries, and that in short, there is nothing +divine whatever in the association of men, a still more despicable +error, natural as it is to an unbelieving century, than that of a +"divine right" in people _called_ Kings. I say, Find me the true +_Konning_, King, or Able-man, and he _has_ a divine right over me. That +we knew in some tolerable measure how to find him, and that all men were +ready to acknowledge his divine right when found: this is precisely the +healing which a sick world is everywhere, in these ages, seeking after! +The true King, as guide of the practical, has ever something of the +Pontiff in him,--guide of the spiritual, from which all practice has +its rise. This too is a true saying, That the _King_ is head of the +_Church_.--But we will leave the Polemic stuff of a dead century to lie +quiet on its bookshelves. + + +Certainly it is a fearful business, that of having your Ableman to +_seek_, and not knowing in what manner to proceed about it! That is +the world's sad predicament in these times of ours. They are times +of revolution, and have long been. The bricklayer with his bricks, +no longer heedful of plummet or the law of gravitation, have toppled, +tumbled, and it all welters as we see! But the beginning of it was not +the French Revolution; that is rather the _end_, we can hope. It were +truer to say, the _beginning_ was three centuries farther back: in +the Reformation of Luther. That the thing which still called itself +Christian Church had become a Falsehood, and brazenly went about +pretending to pardon men's sins for metallic coined money, and to do +much else which in the everlasting truth of Nature it did _not_ now do: +here lay the vital malady. The inward being wrong, all outward went ever +more and more wrong. Belief died away; all was Doubt, Disbelief. The +builder cast _away_ his plummet; said to himself, "What is gravitation? +Brick lies on brick there!" Alas, does it not still sound strange to +many of us, the assertion that there _is_ a God's-truth in the business +of god-created men; that all is not a kind of grimace, an "expediency," +diplomacy, one knows not what--! + +From that first necessary assertion of Luther's, "You, self-styled +_Papa_, you are no Father in God at all; you are--a Chimera, whom I know +not how to name in polite language!"--from that onwards to the shout +which rose round Camille Desmoulins in the Palais-Royal, "_Aux armes_!" +when the people had burst up against _all_ manner of Chimeras,--I find +a natural historical sequence. That shout too, so frightful, +half-infernal, was a great matter. Once more the voice of awakened +nations;--starting confusedly, as out of nightmare, as out of +death-sleep, into some dim feeling that Life was real; that God's-world +was not an expediency and diplomacy! Infernal;--yes, since they would +not have it otherwise. Infernal, since not celestial or terrestrial! +Hollowness, insincerity _has_ to cease; sincerity of some sort has to +begin. Cost what it may, reigns of terror, horrors of French Revolution +or what else, we have to return to truth. Here is a Truth, as I said: a +Truth clad in hell-fire, since they would not but have it so--! + +A common theory among considerable parties of men in England and +elsewhere used to be, that the French Nation had, in those days, as +it were gone _mad_; that the French Revolution was a general act of +insanity, a temporary conversion of France and large sections of the +world into a kind of Bedlam. The Event had risen and raged; but was a +madness and nonentity,--gone now happily into the region of Dreams and +the Picturesque!--To such comfortable philosophers, the Three Days of +July, 1830, must have been a surprising phenomenon. Here is the French +Nation risen again, in musketry and death-struggle, out shooting and +being shot, to make that same mad French Revolution good! The sons and +grandsons of those men, it would seem, persist in the enterprise: they +do not disown it; they will have it made good; will have themselves +shot, if it be not made good. To philosophers who had made up their +life-system, on that "madness" quietus, no phenomenon could be more +alarming. Poor Niebuhr, they say, the Prussian Professor and Historian, +fell broken-hearted in consequence; sickened, if we can believe it, and +died of the Three Days! It was surely not a very heroic death;--little +better than Racine's, dying because Louis Fourteenth looked sternly on +him once. The world had stood some considerable shocks, in its time; +might have been expected to survive the Three Days too, and be found +turning on its axis after even them! The Three Days told all mortals +that the old French Revolution, mad as it might look, was not a +transitory ebullition of Bedlam, but a genuine product of this Earth +where we all live; that it was verily a Fact, and that the world in +general would do well everywhere to regard it as such. + +Truly, without the French Revolution, one would not know what to make +of an age like this at all. We will hail the French Revolution, as +shipwrecked mariners might the sternest rock, in a world otherwise all +of baseless sea and waves. A true Apocalypse, though a terrible one, to +this false withered artificial time; testifying once more that Nature +is _preter_natural; if not divine, then diabolic; that Semblance is +not Reality; that it has to become Reality, or the world will take fire +under it,--burn _it_ into what it is, namely Nothing! Plausibility has +ended; empty Routine has ended; much has ended. This, as with a Trump of +Doom, has been proclaimed to all men. They are the wisest who will +learn it soonest. Long confused generations before it be learned; peace +impossible till it be! The earnest man, surrounded, as ever, with a +world of inconsistencies, can await patiently, patiently strive to do +_his_ work, in the midst of that. Sentence of Death is written down +in Heaven against all that; sentence of Death is now proclaimed on the +Earth against it: this he with his eyes may see. And surely, I +should say, considering the other side of the matter, what enormous +difficulties lie there, and how fast, fearfully fast, in all countries, +the inexorable demand for solution of them is pressing on,--he may +easily find other work to do than laboring in the Sansculottic province +at this time of day! + +To me, in these circumstances, that of "Hero-worship" becomes a fact +inexpressibly precious; the most solacing fact one sees in the world at +present. There is an everlasting hope in it for the management of the +world. Had all traditions, arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever +instituted, sunk away, this would remain. The certainty of Heroes being +sent us; our faculty, our necessity, to reverence Heroes when sent: it +shines like a polestar through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner +of down-rushing and conflagration. + +Hero-worship would have sounded very strange to those workers and +fighters in the French Revolution. Not reverence for Great Men; not any +hope or belief, or even wish, that Great Men could again appear in the +world! Nature, turned into a "Machine," was as if effete now; could not +any longer produce Great Men:--I can tell her, she may give up the trade +altogether, then; we cannot do without Great Men!--But neither have I +any quarrel with that of "Liberty and Equality;" with the faith that, +wise great men being impossible, a level immensity of foolish small +men would suffice. It was a natural faith then and there. "Liberty and +Equality; no Authority needed any longer. Hero-worship, reverence for +_such_ Authorities, has proved false, is itself a falsehood; no more +of it! We have had such _forgeries_, we will now trust nothing. So +many base plated coins passing in the market, the belief has now become +common that no gold any longer exists,--and even that we can do very +well without gold!" I find this, among other things, in that universal +cry of Liberty and Equality; and find it very natural, as matters then +stood. + +And yet surely it is but the _transition_ from false to true. Considered +as the whole truth, it is false altogether;--the product of entire +sceptical blindness, as yet only _struggling_ to see. Hero-worship +exists forever, and everywhere: not Loyalty alone; it extends from +divine adoration down to the lowest practical regions of life. "Bending +before men," if it is not to be a mere empty grimace, better dispensed +with than practiced, is Hero-worship,--a recognition that there does +dwell in that presence of our brother something divine; that every +created man, as Novalis said, is a "revelation in the Flesh." They were +Poets too, that devised all those graceful courtesies which make life +noble! Courtesy is not a falsehood or grimace; it need not be such. +And Loyalty, religious Worship itself, are still possible; nay still +inevitable. + +May we not say, moreover, while so many of our late Heroes have worked +rather as revolutionary men, that nevertheless every Great Man, every +genuine man, is by the nature of him a son of Order, not of Disorder? It +is a tragical position for a true man to work in revolutions. He seems +an anarchist; and indeed a painful element of anarchy does encumber him +at every step,--him to whose whole soul anarchy is hostile, hateful. +His mission is Order; every man's is. He is here to make what was +disorderly, chaotic, into a thing ruled, regular. He is the missionary +of Order. Is not all work of man in this world a _making of Order_? The +carpenter finds rough trees; shapes them, constrains them into square +fitness, into purpose and use. We are all born enemies of Disorder: +it is tragical for us all to be concerned in image-breaking and +down-pulling; for the Great Man, _more_ a man than we, it is doubly +tragical. + +Thus too all human things, maddest French Sansculottisms, do and must +work towards Order. I say, there is not a _man_ in them, raging in the +thickest of the madness, but is impelled withal, at all moments, towards +Order. His very life means that; Disorder is dissolution, death. No +chaos but it seeks a _centre_ to revolve round. While man is +man, some Cromwell or Napoleon is the necessary finish of a +Sansculottism.--Curious: in those days when Hero-worship was the most +incredible thing to every one, how it does come out nevertheless, and +assert itself practically, in a way which all have to credit. Divine +_right_, take it on the great scale, is found to mean divine _might_ +withal! While old false Formulas are getting trampled everywhere into +destruction, new genuine Substances unexpectedly unfold themselves +indestructible. In rebellious ages, when Kingship itself seems dead and +abolished, Cromwell, Napoleon step forth again as Kings. The history of +these men is what we have now to look at, as our last phasis of Heroism. +The old ages are brought back to us; the manner in which Kings were +made, and Kingship itself first took rise, is again exhibited in the +history of these Two. + + +We have had many civil wars in England; wars of Red and White Roses, +wars of Simon de Montfort; wars enough, which are not very memorable. +But that war of the Puritans has a significance which belongs to no one +of the others. Trusting to your candor, which will suggest on the other +side what I have not room to say, I will call it a section once more of +that great universal war which alone makes up the true History of the +World,--the war of Belief against Unbelief! The struggle of men intent +on the real essence of things, against men intent on the semblances and +forms of things. The Puritans, to many, seem mere savage Iconoclasts, +fierce destroyers of Forms; but it were more just to call them haters of +_untrue_ Forms. I hope we know how to respect Laud and his King as well +as them. Poor Laud seems to me to have been weak and ill-starred, not +dishonest an unfortunate Pedant rather than anything worse. His "Dreams" +and superstitions, at which they laugh so, have an affectionate, lovable +kind of character. He is like a College-Tutor, whose whole world is +forms, College-rules; whose notion is that these are the life and safety +of the world. He is placed suddenly, with that unalterable luckless +notion of his, at the head not of a College but of a Nation, to regulate +the most complex deep-reaching interests of men. He thinks they ought to +go by the old decent regulations; nay that their salvation will lie in +extending and improving these. Like a weak man, he drives with spasmodic +vehemence towards his purpose; cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of +prudence, no cry of pity: He will have his College-rules obeyed by his +Collegians; that first; and till that, nothing. He is an ill-starred +Pedant, as I said. He would have it the world was a College of that +kind, and the world was _not_ that. Alas, was not his doom stern enough? +Whatever wrongs he did, were they not all frightfully avenged on him? + +It is meritorious to insist on forms; Religion and all else naturally +clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the _formed_ world is the only +habitable one. The naked formlessness of Puritanism is not the thing +I praise in the Puritans; it is the thing I pity,--praising only +the spirit which had rendered that inevitable! All substances clothe +themselves in forms: but there are suitable true forms, and then there +are untrue unsuitable. As the briefest definition, one might say, Forms +which _grow_ round a substance, if we rightly understand that, will +correspond to the real nature and purport of it, will be true, good; +forms which are consciously _put_ round a substance, bad. I invite you +to reflect on this. It distinguishes true from false in Ceremonial Form, +earnest solemnity from empty pageant, in all human things. + +There must be a veracity, a natural spontaneity in forms. In the +commonest meeting of men, a person making, what we call, "set speeches," +is not he an offence? In the mere drawing-room, whatsoever courtesies +you see to be grimaces, prompted by no spontaneous reality within, are a +thing you wish to get away from. But suppose now it were some matter +of vital concernment, some transcendent matter (as Divine Worship is), +about which your whole soul, struck dumb with its excess of feeling, +knew not how to _form_ itself into utterance at all, and preferred +formless silence to any utterance there possible,--what should we say +of a man coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of +upholsterer-mummery? Such a man,--let him depart swiftly, if he love +himself! You have lost your only son; are mute, struck down, without +even tears: an importunate man importunately offers to celebrate Funeral +Games for him in the manner of the Greeks! Such mummery is not only not +to be accepted,--it is hateful, unendurable. It is what the old Prophets +called "Idolatry," worshipping of hollow _shows_; what all earnest men +do and will reject. We can partly understand what those poor Puritans +meant. Laud dedicating that St. Catherine Creed's Church, in the +manner we have it described; with his multiplied ceremonial bowings, +gesticulations, exclamations: surely it is rather the rigorous formal +Pedant, intent on his "College-rules," than the earnest Prophet intent +on the essence of the matter! + +Puritanism found _such_ forms insupportable; trampled on such forms;--we +have to excuse it for saying, No form at all rather than such! It stood +preaching in its bare pulpit, with nothing but the Bible in its hand. +Nay, a man preaching from his earnest _soul_ into the earnest _souls_ of +men: is not this virtually the essence of all Churches whatsoever? +The nakedest, savagest reality, I say, is preferable to any semblance, +however dignified. Besides, it will clothe itself with _due_ semblance +by and by, if it be real. No fear of that; actually no fear at all. +Given the living _man_, there will be found _clothes_ for him; he will +find himself clothes. But the suit-of-clothes pretending that _it_ is +both clothes and man--! We cannot "fight the French" by three hundred +thousand red uniforms; there must be _men_ in the inside of them! +Semblance, I assert, must actually _not_ divorce itself from Reality. +If Semblance do,--why then there must be men found to rebel against +Semblance, for it has become a lie! These two Antagonisms at war here, +in the case of Laud and the Puritans, are as old nearly as the world. +They went to fierce battle over England in that age; and fought out +their confused controversy to a certain length, with many results for +all of us. + + +In the age which directly followed that of the Puritans, their cause or +themselves were little likely to have justice done them. Charles Second +and his Rochesters were not the kind of men you would set to judge what +the worth or meaning of such men might have been. That there could be +any faith or truth in the life of a man, was what these poor Rochesters, +and the age they ushered in, had forgotten. Puritanism was hung on +gibbets,--like the bones of the leading Puritans. Its work nevertheless +went on accomplishing itself. All true work of a man, hang the author of +it on what gibbet you like, must and will accomplish itself. We have our +_Habeas-Corpus_, our free Representation of the People; acknowledgment, +wide as the world, that all men are, or else must, shall, and will +become, what we call _free_ men;--men with their life grounded on +reality and justice, not on tradition, which has become unjust and +a chimera! This in part, and much besides this, was the work of the +Puritans. + +And indeed, as these things became gradually manifest, the character +of the Puritans began to clear itself. Their memories were, one after +another, taken _down_ from the gibbet; nay a certain portion of them +are now, in these days, as good as canonized. Eliot, Hampden, Pym, nay +Ludlow, Hutchinson, Vane himself, are admitted to be a kind of Heroes; +political Conscript Fathers, to whom in no small degree we owe what +makes us a free England: it would not be safe for anybody to designate +these men as wicked now. Few Puritans of note but find their apologists +somewhere, and have a certain reverence paid them by earnest men. One +Puritan, I think, and almost he alone, our poor Cromwell, seems to hang +yet on the gibbet, and find no hearty apologist anywhere. Him neither +saint nor sinner will acquit of great wickedness. A man of ability, +infinite talent, courage, and so forth: but he betrayed the Cause. +Selfish ambition, dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical +_Tartuffe_; turning all that noble Struggle for constitutional Liberty +into a sorry farce played for his own benefit: this and worse is the +character they give of Cromwell. And then there come contrasts with +Washington and others; above all, with these noble Pyms and Hampdens, +whose noble work he stole for himself, and ruined into a futility and +deformity. + +This view of Cromwell seems to me the not unnatural product of a century +like the Eighteenth. As we said of the Valet, so of the Sceptic: He does +not know a Hero when he sees him! The Valet expected purple mantles, +gilt sceptres, bodyguards and flourishes of trumpets: the Sceptic of +the Eighteenth century looks for regulated respectable Formulas, +"Principles," or what else he may call them; a style of speech and +conduct which has got to seem "respectable," which can plead for +itself in a handsome articulate manner, and gain the suffrages of an +enlightened sceptical Eighteenth century! It is, at bottom, the +same thing that both the Valet and he expect: the garnitures of some +_acknowledged_ royalty, which _then_ they will acknowledge! The King +coming to them in the rugged _un_formulistic state shall be no King. + +For my own share, far be it from me to say or insinuate a word of +disparagement against such characters as Hampden, Elliot, Pym; whom I +believe to have been right worthy and useful men. I have read diligently +what books and documents about them I could come at;--with the honestest +wish to admire, to love and worship them like Heroes; but I am sorry to +say, if the real truth must be told, with very indifferent success! At +bottom, I found that it would not do. They are very noble men, these; +step along in their stately way, with their measured euphemisms, +philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, Ship-moneys, _Monarchies of +Man_; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. But the +heart remains cold before them; the fancy alone endeavors to get up some +worship of them. What man's heart does, in reality, break forth into any +fire of brotherly love for these men? They are become dreadfully dull +men! One breaks down often enough in the constitutional eloquence of the +admirable Pym, with his "seventhly and lastly." You find that it may +be the admirablest thing in the world, but that it is heavy,--heavy as +lead, barren as brick-clay; that, in a word, for you there is little or +nothing now surviving there! One leaves all these Nobilities standing +in their niches of honor: the rugged outcast Cromwell, he is the man +of them all in whom one still finds human stuff. The great savage +_Baresark_: he could write no euphemistic _Monarchy of Man_; did not +speak, did not work with glib regularity; had no straight story to +tell for himself anywhere. But he stood bare, not cased in euphemistic +coat-of-mail; he grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, +with the naked truth of things! That, after all, is the sort of man for +one. I plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other sorts of men. +Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few one finds, that are not good +for much. Small thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who would +not touch the work but with gloves on! + +Neither, on the whole, does this constitutional tolerance of the +Eighteenth century for the other happier Puritans seem to be a very +great matter. One might say, it is but a piece of Formulism and +Scepticism, like the rest. They tell us, It was a sorrowful thing to +consider that the foundation of our English Liberties should have been +laid by "Superstition." These Puritans came forward with Calvinistic +incredible Creeds, Anti-Laudisms, Westminster Confessions; demanding, +chiefly of all, that they should have liberty to _worship_ in their own +way. Liberty to _tax_ themselves: that was the thing they should have +demanded! It was Superstition, Fanaticism, disgraceful ignorance of +Constitutional Philosophy to insist on the other thing!--Liberty to +_tax_ oneself? Not to pay out money from your pocket except on reason +shown? No century, I think, but a rather barren one would have fixed on +that as the first right of man! I should say, on the contrary, A just +man will generally have better cause than _money_ in what shape soever, +before deciding to revolt against his Government. Ours is a most +confused world; in which a good man will be thankful to see any kind of +Government maintain itself in a not insupportable manner: and here in +England, to this hour, if he is not ready to pay a great many taxes +which he can see very small reason in, it will not go well with him, I +think! He must try some other climate than this. Tax-gatherer? Money? +He will say: "Take my money, since you _can_, and it is so desirable to +you; take it,--and take yourself away with it; and leave me alone to my +work here. I am still here; can still work, after all the money you have +taken from me!" But if they come to him, and say, "Acknowledge a Lie; +pretend to say you are worshipping God, when you are not doing it: +believe not the thing that you find true, but the thing that I find, or +pretend to find true!" He will answer: "No; by God's help, no! You may +take my purse; but I cannot have my moral Self annihilated. The purse is +any Highwayman's who might meet me with a loaded pistol: but the Self is +mine and God my Maker's; it is not yours; and I will resist you to the +death, and revolt against you, and, on the whole, front all manner of +extremities, accusations and confusions, in defence of that!"-- + +Really, it seems to me the one reason which could justify revolting, +this of the Puritans. It has been the soul of all just revolts among +men. Not _Hunger_ alone produced even the French Revolution; no, but +the feeling of the insupportable all-pervading _Falsehood_ which had now +embodied itself in Hunger, in universal material Scarcity and Nonentity, +and thereby become _indisputably_ false in the eyes of all! We will +leave the Eighteenth century with its "liberty to tax itself." We will +not astonish ourselves that the meaning of such men as the Puritans +remained dim to it. To men who believe in no reality at all, how shall a +_real_ human soul, the intensest of all realities, as it were the Voice +of this world's Maker still speaking to us,--be intelligible? What it +cannot reduce into constitutional doctrines relative to "taxing," or +other the like material interest, gross, palpable to the sense, such +a century will needs reject as an amorphous heap of rubbish. Hampdens, +Pyms and Ship-money will be the theme of much constitutional eloquence, +striving to be fervid;--which will glitter, if not as fire does, then +as ice does: and the irreducible Cromwell will remain a chaotic mass of +"madness," "hypocrisy," and much else. + + +From of old, I will confess, this theory of Cromwell's falsity has +been incredible to me. Nay I cannot believe the like, of any Great Man +whatever. Multitudes of Great Men figure in History as false selfish +men; but if we will consider it, they are but _figures_ for us, +unintelligible shadows; we do not see into them as men that could have +existed at all. A superficial unbelieving generation only, with no eye +but for the surfaces and semblances of things, could form such notions +of Great Men. Can a great soul be possible without a _conscience_ in it, +the essence of all _real_ souls, great or small?--No, we cannot figure +Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity; the longer I study him and his +career, I believe this the less. Why should we? There is no evidence of +it. Is it not strange that, after all the mountains of calumny this +man has been subject to, after being represented as the very prince of +liars, who never, or hardly ever, spoke truth, but always some cunning +counterfeit of truth, there should not yet have been one falsehood +brought clearly home to him? A prince of liars, and no lie spoken by +him. Not one that I could yet get sight of. It is like Pococke asking +Grotius, Where is your _proof_ of Mahomet's Pigeon? No proof!--Let us +leave all these calumnious chimeras, as chimeras ought to be left. They +are not portraits of the man; they are distracted phantasms of him, the +joint product of hatred and darkness. + +Looking at the man's life with our own eyes, it seems to me, a very +different hypothesis suggests itself. What little we know of his earlier +obscure years, distorted as it has come down to us, does it not all +betoken an earnest, affectionate, sincere kind of man? His nervous +melancholic temperament indicates rather a seriousness _too_ deep for +him. Of those stories of "Spectres;" of the white Spectre in broad +daylight, predicting that he should be King of England, we are not bound +to believe much;--probably no more than of the other black Spectre, +or Devil in person, to whom the Officer _saw_ him sell himself before +Worcester Fight! But the mournful, oversensitive, hypochondriac humor +of Oliver, in his young years, is otherwise indisputably known. The +Huntingdon Physician told Sir Philip Warwick himself, He had often been +sent for at midnight; Mr. Cromwell was full of hypochondria, thought +himself near dying, and "had fancies about the Town-cross." These things +are significant. Such an excitable deep-feeling nature, in that rugged +stubborn strength of his, is not the symptom of falsehood; it is the +symptom and promise of quite other than falsehood! + +The young Oliver is sent to study Law; falls, or is said to have fallen, +for a little period, into some of the dissipations of youth; but if +so, speedily repents, abandons all this: not much above twenty, he is +married, settled as an altogether grave and quiet man. "He pays back +what money he had won at gambling," says the story;--he does not think +any gain of that kind could be really _his_. It is very interesting, +very natural, this "conversion," as they well name it; this awakening of +a great true soul from the worldly slough, to see into the awful _truth_ +of things;--to see that Time and its shows all rested on Eternity, and +this poor Earth of ours was the threshold either of Heaven or of Hell! +Oliver's life at St. Ives and Ely, as a sober industrious Farmer, is it +not altogether as that of a true and devout man? He has renounced the +world and its ways; _its_ prizes are not the thing that can enrich him. +He tills the earth; he reads his Bible; daily assembles his servants +round him to worship God. He comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of +preachers; nay can himself preach,--exhorts his neighbors to be wise, +to redeem the time. In all this what "hypocrisy," "ambition," "cant," +or other falsity? The man's hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other +Higher World; his aim to get well _thither_, by walking well through his +humble course in _this_ world. He courts no notice: what could notice +here do for him? "Ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." + +It is striking, too, how he comes out once into public view; he, since +no other is willing to come: in resistance to a public grievance. I +mean, in that matter of the Bedford Fens. No one else will go to law +with Authority; therefore he will. That matter once settled, he returns +back into obscurity, to his Bible and his Plough. "Gain influence"? His +influence is the most legitimate; derived from personal knowledge of +him, as a just, religious, reasonable and determined man. In this way +he has lived till past forty; old age is now in view of him, and the +earnest portal of Death and Eternity; it was at this point that he +suddenly became "ambitious"! I do not interpret his Parliamentary +mission in that way! + +His successes in Parliament, his successes through the war, are honest +successes of a brave man; who has more resolution in the heart of him, +more light in the head of him than other men. His prayers to God; his +spoken thanks to the God of Victory, who had preserved him safe, and +carried him forward so far, through the furious clash of a world all set +in conflict, through desperate-looking envelopments at Dunbar; through +the death-hail of so many battles; mercy after mercy; to the "crowning +mercy" of Worcester Fight: all this is good and genuine for a +deep-hearted Calvinistic Cromwell. Only to vain unbelieving Cavaliers, +worshipping not God but their own "love-locks," frivolities and +formalities, living quite apart from contemplations of God, living +_without_ God in the world, need it seem hypocritical. + +Nor will his participation in the King's death involve him in +condemnation with us. It is a stern business killing of a King! But if +you once go to war with him, it lies _there_; this and all else lies +there. Once at war, you have made wager of battle with him: it is he to +die, or else you. Reconciliation is problematic; may be possible, or, +far more likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally admitted that +the Parliament, having vanquished Charles First, had no way of making +any tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian party, +apprehensive now of the Independents, were most anxious to do so; +anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could not be. The +unhappy Charles, in those final Hampton-Court negotiations, shows +himself as a man fatally incapable of being dealt with. A man who, once +for all, could not and would not _understand_:--whose thought did not +in any measure represent to him the real fact of the matter; nay worse, +whose _word_ did not at all represent his thought. We may say this +of him without cruelty, with deep pity rather: but it is true and +undeniable. Forsaken there of all but the _name_ of Kingship, he still, +finding himself treated with outward respect as a King, fancied that +he might play off party against party, and smuggle himself into his +old power by deceiving both. Alas, they both _discovered_ that he was +deceiving them. A man whose _word_ will not inform you at all what he +means or will do, is not a man you can bargain with. You must get out +of that man's way, or put him out of yours! The Presbyterians, in +their despair, were still for believing Charles, though found false, +unbelievable again and again. Not so Cromwell: "For all our fighting," +says he, "we are to have a little bit of paper?" No--! + +In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive practical _eye_ of this +man; how he drives towards the practical and practicable; has a genuine +insight into what _is_ fact. Such an intellect, I maintain, does not +belong to a false man: the false man sees false shows, plausibilities, +expediences: the true man is needed to discern even practical truth. +Cromwell's advice about the Parliament's Army, early in the contest, How +they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy riotous persons, and +choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers +for them: this is advice by a man who _saw_. Fact answers, if you see +into Fact! Cromwell's _Ironsides_ were the embodiment of this insight of +his; men fearing God; and without any other fear. No more conclusively +genuine set of fighters ever trod the soil of England, or of any other +land. + +Neither will we blame greatly that word of Cromwell's to them; which +was so blamed: "If the King should meet me in battle, I would kill the +King." Why not? These words were spoken to men who stood as before a +Higher than Kings. They had set more than their own lives on the cast. +The Parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting "_for_ the +King;" but we, for our share, cannot understand that. To us it is no +dilettante work, no sleek officiality; it is sheer rough death and +earnest. They have brought it to the calling-forth of War; horrid +internecine fight, man grappling with man in fire-eyed rage,--the +_infernal_ element in man called forth, to try it by that! _Do_ that +therefore; since that is the thing to be done.--The successes of +Cromwell seem to me a very natural thing! Since he was not shot in +battle, they were an inevitable thing. That such a man, with the eye +to see, with the heart to dare, should advance, from post to post, from +victory to victory, till the Huntingdon Farmer became, by whatever name +you might call him, the acknowledged Strongest Man in England, virtually +the King of England, requires no magic to explain it--! + + +Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall into +Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know Sincerity when +they see it. For this world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal? +The heart lying dead, the eye cannot see. What intellect remains is +merely the _vulpine_ intellect. That a true _King_ be sent them is of +small use; they do not know him when sent. They say scornfully, Is this +your King? The Hero wastes his heroic faculty in bootless contradiction +from the unworthy; and can accomplish little. For himself he does +accomplish a heroic life, which is much, which is all; but for the world +he accomplishes comparatively nothing. The wild rude Sincerity, direct +from Nature, is not glib in answering from the witness-box: in your +small-debt _pie-powder_ court, he is scouted as a counterfeit. The +vulpine intellect "detects" him. For being a man worth any thousand +men, the response your Knox, your Cromwell gets, is an argument for two +centuries whether he was a man at all. God's greatest gift to this Earth +is sneeringly flung away. The miraculous talisman is a paltry plated +coin, not fit to pass in the shops as a common guinea. + +Lamentable this! I say, this must be remedied. Till this be remedied in +some measure, there is nothing remedied. "Detect quacks"? Yes do, for +Heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! Till +we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much +as "detect"? For the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be +knowledge, and "detects" in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes indeed +are many: but, of all _dupes_, there is none so fatally situated as +he who lives in undue terror of being duped. The world does exist; the +world has truth in it, or it would not exist! First recognize what is +true, we shall _then_ discern what is false; and properly never till +then. + +"Know the men that are to be trusted:" alas, this is yet, in these days, +very far from us. The sincere alone can recognize sincerity. Not a Hero +only is needed, but a world fit for him; a world not of _Valets_;--the +Hero comes almost in vain to it otherwise! Yes, it is far from us: but +it must come; thank God, it is visibly coming. Till it do come, what +have we? Ballot-boxes, suffrages, French Revolutions:--if we are as +Valets, and do not know the Hero when we see him, what good are all +these? A heroic Cromwell comes; and for a hundred and fifty years he +cannot have a vote from us. Why, the insincere, unbelieving world is +the _natural property_ of the Quack, and of the Father of quacks and +quackeries! Misery, confusion, unveracity are alone possible there. By +ballot-boxes we alter the _figure_ of our Quack; but the substance of +him continues. The Valet-World _has_ to be governed by the Sham-Hero, by +the King merely _dressed_ in King-gear. It is his; he is its! In brief, +one of two things: We shall either learn to know a Hero, a true Governor +and Captain, somewhat better, when we see him; or else go on to be +forever governed by the Unheroic;--had we ballot-boxes clattering at +every street-corner, there were no remedy in these. + +Poor Cromwell,--great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who +could not _speak_. Rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with his +savage depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange, +among the elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic +Chillingworths, diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull +of chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost +semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man's-energy working in +the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight +and fire, working in such an element of boundless hypochondria, unformed +black of darkness! And yet withal this hypochondria, what was it but +the very greatness of the man? The depth and tenderness of his wild +affections: the quantity of _sympathy_ he had with things,--the quantity +of insight he would yet get into the heart of things, the mastery he +would yet get over things: this was his hypochondria. The man's misery, +as man's misery always does, came of his greatness. Samuel Johnson too +is that kind of man. Sorrow-stricken, half-distracted; the wide element +of mournful _black_ enveloping him,--wide as the world. It is the +character of a prophetic man; a man with his whole soul _seeing_, and +struggling to see. + +On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell's reputed confusion of +speech. To himself the internal meaning was sun-clear; but the material +with which he was to clothe it in utterance was not there. He had +_lived_ silent; a great unnamed sea of Thought round him all his days; +and in his way of life little call to attempt _naming_ or uttering that. +With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, I doubt not he +could have learned to write Books withal, and speak fluently enough;--he +did harder things than writing of Books. This kind of man is precisely +he who is fit for doing manfully all things you will set him on doing. +Intellect is not speaking and logicizing; it is seeing and ascertaining. +Virtue, Virtues, manhood, _hero_hood, is not fair-spoken immaculate +regularity; it is first of all, what the Germans well name it, _Tugend_ +(_Taugend_, _dow_-ing or _Dough_-tiness), Courage and the Faculty to +_do_. This basis of the matter Cromwell had in him. + +One understands moreover how, though he could not speak in Parliament, +he might _preach_, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be great +in extempore prayer. These are the free outpouring utterances of what is +in the heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth, sincerity +are all that is required. Cromwell's habit of prayer is a notable +feature of him. All his great enterprises were commenced with prayer. +In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he used to +assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite +resolution rose among them, some "door of hope," as they would name it, +disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent prayers, and cries +to the great God, to have pity on them, to make His light shine before +them. They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt themselves to be; +a little band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn the sword against +a great black devouring world not Christian, but Mammonish, +Devilish,--they cried to God in their straits, in their extreme need, +not to forsake the Cause that was His. The light which now rose upon +them,--how could a human soul, by any means at all, get better light? +Was not the purpose so formed like to be precisely the best, wisest, the +one to be followed without hesitation any more? To them it was as the +shining of Heaven's own Splendor in the waste-howling darkness; the +Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them on their desolate +perilous way. _Was_ it not such? Can a man's soul, to this hour, get +guidance by any other method than intrinsically by that same,--devout +prostration of the earnest struggling soul before the Highest, the +Giver of all Light; be such _prayer_ a spoken, articulate, or be it a +voiceless, inarticulate one? There is no other method. "Hypocrisy"? One +begins to be weary of all that. They who call it so, have no right to +speak on such matters. They never formed a purpose, what one can call +a purpose. They went about balancing expediencies, plausibilities; +gathering votes, advices; they never were alone with the _truth_ of a +thing at all.--Cromwell's prayers were likely to be "eloquent," and much +more than that. His was the heart of a man who _could_ pray. + +But indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend, were not nearly so +ineloquent, incondite, as they look. We find he was, what all speakers +aim to be, an impressive speaker, even in Parliament; one who, from the +first, had weight. With that rude passionate voice of his, he was +always understood to _mean_ something, and men wished to know what. +He disregarded eloquence, nay despised and disliked it; spoke always +without premeditation of the words he was to use. The Reporters, too, +in those days seem to have been singularly candid; and to have given the +Printer precisely what they found on their own note-paper. And withal, +what a strange proof is it of Cromwell's being the premeditative +ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play before the world, That to the +last he took no more charge of his Speeches! How came he not to study +his words a little, before flinging them out to the public? If the words +were true words, they could be left to shift for themselves. + +But with regard to Cromwell's "lying," we will make one remark. This, +I suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. All +parties found themselves deceived in him; each party understood him to +be meaning _this_, heard him even say so, and behold he turns out to +have been meaning _that_! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But now, +intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false +man in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must have +_reticences_ in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve for +daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use for +any man's taking up his abode in a house built of glass. A man always is +to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to other men; +even to those he would have work along with him. There are impertinent +inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer uninformed on that +matter; not, if you can help it, misinformed, but precisely as dark as +he was! This, could one hit the right phrase of response, is what the +wise and faithful man would aim to answer in such a case. + +Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small subaltern +parties; uttered to them a _part_ of his mind. Each little party thought +him all its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find him not of their +party, but of his own party. Was it his blame? At all seasons of his +history he must have felt, among such people, how, if he explained to +them the deeper insight he had, they must either have shuddered aghast +at it, or believing it, their own little compact hypothesis must have +gone wholly to wreck. They could not have worked in his province any +more; nay perhaps they could not now have worked in their own province. +It is the inevitable position of a great man among small men. Small men, +most active, useful, are to be seen everywhere, whose whole activity +depends on some conviction which to you is palpably a limited one; +imperfect, what we call an _error_. But would it be a kindness always, +is it a duty always or often, to disturb them in that? Many a man, +doing loud work in the world, stands only on some thin traditionality, +conventionality; to him indubitable, to you incredible: break that +beneath him, he sinks to endless depths! "I might have my hand full of +truth," said Fontenelle, "and open only my little finger." + +And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how much more in +all departments of practice! He that cannot withal _keep his mind to +himself_ cannot practice any considerable thing whatever. And we call it +"dissimulation," all this? What would you think of calling the general +of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal and +private soldier, who pleased to put the question, what his thoughts were +about everything?--Cromwell, I should rather say, managed all this in +a manner we must admire for its perfection. An endless vortex of such +questioning "corporals" rolled confusedly round him through his whole +course; whom he did answer. It must have been as a great true-seeing man +that he managed this too. Not one proved falsehood, as I said; not one! +Of what man that ever wound himself through such a coil of things will +you say so much?-- + + +But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which pervert to the +very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell; about their +"ambition," "falsity," and such like. The first is what I might +call substituting the _goal_ of their career for the course and +starting-point of it. The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that +he had determined on being Protector of England, at the time when he was +ploughing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all +mapped out: a program of the whole drama; which he then step by step +dramatically unfolded, with all manner of cunning, deceptive dramaturgy, +as he went on,--the hollow, scheming [Gr.] _Upokrites_, or Play-actor, +that he was! This is a radical perversion; all but universal in such +cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is! How much does +one of us foresee of his own life? Short way ahead of us it is all dim; +an unwound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, +vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had _not_ his life lying all in that +fashion of Program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning +of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it +so; but to him it was in no measure so. What absurdities would fall away +of themselves, were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view +by History! Historians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in +view;--but look whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar History, +as in this Cromwell's case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of +History only remember it now and then. To remember it duly with rigorous +perfection, as in the fact it _stood_, requires indeed a rare faculty; +rare, nay impossible. A very Shakspeare for faculty; or more than +Shakspeare; who could _enact_ a brother man's biography, see with the +brother man's eyes at all points of his course what things _he_ saw; in +short, _know_ his course and him, as few "Historians" are like to do. +Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions which distort our image +of Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to represent +them so; in sequence, as they _were_; not in the lump, as they are +thrown down before us. + +But a second error, which I think the generality commit, refers to this +same "ambition" itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men; we +mistake what the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in that +sense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the man +who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes +about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims; +struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for God's +sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the heads of men! +Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A +_great_ man? A poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter for the ward of a +hospital, than for a throne among men. I advise you to keep out of his +way. He cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, +wonder at him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the +_emptiness_ of the man, not his greatness. Because there is nothing in +himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find something in him. In +good truth, I believe no great man, not so much as a genuine man who had +health and real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much +tormented in this way. + +Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be "noticed" by noisy crowds +of people? God his Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was already +there; no notice would make _him_ other than he already was. Till his +hair was grown gray; and Life from the down-hill slope was all seen to +be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable matter _how_ +it went,--he had been content to plough the ground, and read his Bible. +He in his old days could not support it any longer, without selling +himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt carriages to Whitehall, +and have clerks with bundles of papers haunting him, "Decide this, +decide that," which in utmost sorrow of heart no man can perfectly +decide! What could gilt carriages do for this man? From of old, was +there not in his life a weight of meaning, a terror and a splendor as +of Heaven itself? His existence there as man set him beyond the need +of gilding. Death, Judgment and Eternity: these already lay as the +background of whatsoever he thought or did. All his life lay begirt as +in a sea of nameless Thoughts, which no speech of a mortal could name. +God's Word, as the Puritan prophets of that time had read it: this was +great, and all else was little to him. To call such a man "ambitious," +to figure him as the prurient wind-bag described above, seems to me the +poorest solecism. Such a man will say: "Keep your gilt carriages and +huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape clerks, your influentialities, your +important businesses. Leave me alone, leave me alone; there is _too +much of life_ in me already!" Old Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in +England in his day, was not ambitious. "Corsica Boswell" flaunted at +public shows with printed ribbons round his hat; but the great old +Samuel stayed at home. The world-wide soul wrapt up in its thoughts, in +its sorrows;--what could paradings, and ribbons in the hat, do for it? + +Ah yes, I will say again: The great _silent_ men! Looking round on the +noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with +little worth, one loves to reflect on the great Empire of _Silence_. +The noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his department; +silently thinking, silently working; whom no Morning Newspaper makes +mention of! They are the salt of the Earth. A country that has none or +few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had no _roots_; which +had all turned into leaves and boughs;--which must soon wither and be no +forest. Woe for us if we had nothing but what we can _show_, or speak. +Silence, the great Empire of Silence: higher than the stars; deeper than +the Kingdoms of Death! It alone is great; all else is small.--I hope +we English will long maintain our _grand talent pour le silence_. Let +others that cannot do without standing on barrel-heads, to spout, and +be seen of all the market-place, cultivate speech exclusively,--become a +most green forest without roots! Solomon says, There is a time to speak; +but also a time to keep silence. Of some great silent Samuel, not urged +to writing, as old Samuel Johnson says he was, by _want of money_, and +nothing other, one might ask, "Why do not you too get up and speak; +promulgate your system, found your sect?" "Truly," he will answer, "I am +_continent_ of my thought hitherto; happily I have yet had the ability +to keep it in me, no compulsion strong enough to speak it. My 'system' +is not for promulgation first of all; it is for serving myself to live +by. That is the great purpose of it to me. And then the 'honor'? Alas, +yes;--but as Cato said of the statue: So many statues in that Forum of +yours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is Cato's statue?"-- + +But now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me say that +there are two kinds of ambition; one wholly blamable, the other laudable +and inevitable. Nature has provided that the great silent Samuel shall +not be silent too long. The selfish wish to shine over others, let it +be accounted altogether poor and miserable. "Seekest thou great +things, seek them not:" this is most true. And yet, I say, there is an +irrepressible tendency in every man to develop himself according to the +magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak out, to act out, what +nature has laid in him. This is proper, fit, inevitable; nay it is a +duty, and even the summary of duties for a man. The meaning of life here +on earth might be defined as consisting in this: To unfold your _self_, +to work what thing you have the faculty for. It is a necessity for +the human being, the first law of our existence. Coleridge beautifully +remarks that the infant learns to _speak_ by this necessity it +feels.--We will say therefore: To decide about ambition, whether it is +bad or not, you have two things to take into view. Not the coveting of +the place alone, but the fitness of the man for the place withal: that +is the question. Perhaps the place was _his_; perhaps he had a natural +right, and even obligation, to seek the place! Mirabeau's ambition to +be Prime Minister, how shall we blame it, if he were "the only man in +France that could have done any good there"? Hopefuler perhaps had he +not so clearly _felt_ how much good he could do! But a poor Necker, who +could do no good, and had even felt that he could do none, yet sitting +broken-hearted because they had flung him out, and he was now quit of +it, well might Gibbon mourn over him.--Nature, I say, has provided amply +that the silent great man shall strive to speak withal; _too_ amply, +rather! + +Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old Samuel Johnson, in +his shrouded-up existence, that it was possible for him to do priceless +divine work for his country and the whole world. That the perfect +Heavenly Law might be made Law on this Earth; that the prayer he prayed +daily, "Thy kingdom come," was at length to be fulfilled! If you had +convinced his judgment of this; that it was possible, practicable; that +he the mournful silent Samuel was called to take a part in it! Would not +the whole soul of the man have flamed up into a divine clearness, +into noble utterance and determination to act; casting all sorrows and +misgivings under his feet, counting all affliction and contradiction +small,--the whole dark element of his existence blazing into articulate +radiance of light and lightning? It were a true ambition this! And think +now how it actually was with Cromwell. From of old, the sufferings of +God's Church, true zealous Preachers of the truth flung into dungeons, +whips, set on pillories, their ears crops off, God's Gospel-cause +trodden under foot of the unworthy: all this had lain heavy on his +soul. Long years he had looked upon it, in silence, in prayer; seeing no +remedy on Earth; trusting well that a remedy in Heaven's goodness would +come,--that such a course was false, unjust, and could not last forever. +And now behold the dawn of it; after twelve years silent waiting, all +England stirs itself; there is to be once more a Parliament, the Right +will get a voice for itself: inexpressible well-grounded hope has come +again into the Earth. Was not such a Parliament worth being a member of? +Cromwell threw down his ploughs, and hastened thither. + +He spoke there,--rugged bursts of earnestness, of a self-seen truth, +where we get a glimpse of them. He worked there; he fought and strove, +like a strong true giant of a man, through cannon-tumult and all +else,--on and on, till the Cause _triumphed_, its once so formidable +enemies all swept from before it, and the dawn of hope had become clear +light of victory and certainty. That _he_ stood there as the strongest +soul of England, the undisputed Hero of all England,--what of this? It +was possible that the Law of Christ's Gospel could now establish itself +in the world! The Theocracy which John Knox in his pulpit might dream of +as a "devout imagination," this practical man, experienced in the whole +chaos of most rough practice, dared to consider as capable of being +_realized_. Those that were highest in Christ's Church, the devoutest +wisest men, were to rule the land: in some considerable degree, it might +be so and should be so. Was it not _true_, God's truth? And if _true_, +was it not then the very thing to do? The strongest practical intellect +in England dared to answer, Yes! This I call a noble true purpose; is it +not, in its own dialect, the noblest that could enter into the heart +of Statesman or man? For a Knox to take it up was something; but for a +Cromwell, with his great sound sense and experience of what our world +_was_,--History, I think, shows it only this once in such a degree. +I account it the culminating point of Protestantism; the most heroic +phasis that "Faith in the Bible" was appointed to exhibit here below. +Fancy it: that it were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the +Right supremely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed and +prayed for, as the highest good to England and all lands, an attainable +fact! + +Well, I must say, the _vulpine_ intellect, with its knowingness, its +alertness and expertness in "detecting hypocrites," seems to me a rather +sorry business. We have had but one such Statesman in England; one +man, that I can get sight of, who ever had in the heart of him any such +purpose at all. One man, in the course of fifteen hundred years; and +this was his welcome. He had adherents by the hundred or the ten; +opponents by the million. Had England rallied all round him,--why, +then, England might have been a _Christian_ land! As it is, vulpine +knowingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, "Given a world of Knaves, +to educe an Honesty from their united action;"--how cumbrous a problem, +you may see in Chancery Law-Courts, and some other places! Till at +length, by Heaven's just anger, but also by Heaven's great grace, the +matter begins to stagnate; and this problem is becoming to all men a +_palpably_ hopeless one.-- + + +But with regard to Cromwell and his purposes: Hume, and a multitude +following him, come upon me here with an admission that Cromwell _was_ +sincere at first; a sincere "Fanatic" at first, but gradually became a +"Hypocrite" as things opened round him. This of the Fanatic-Hypocrite +is Hume's theory of it; extensively applied since,--to Mahomet and many +others. Think of it seriously, you will find something in it; not much, +not all, very far from all. Sincere hero hearts do not sink in this +miserable manner. The Sun flings forth impurities, gets balefully +incrusted with spots; but it does not quench itself, and become no Sun +at all, but a mass of Darkness! I will venture to say that such never +befell a great deep Cromwell; I think, never. Nature's own lionhearted +Son; Antaeus-like, his strength is got by _touching the Earth_, his +Mother; lift him up from the Earth, lift him up into Hypocrisy, Inanity, +his strength is gone. We will not assert that Cromwell was an immaculate +man; that he fell into no faults, no insincerities among the rest. He +was no dilettante professor of "perfections," "immaculate conducts." +He was a rugged Orson, rending his rough way through actual true +_work_,--_doubtless_ with many a _fall_ therein. Insincerities, faults, +very many faults daily and hourly: it was too well known to him; known +to God and him! The Sun was dimmed many a time; but the Sun had not +himself grown a Dimness. Cromwell's last words, as he lay waiting for +death, are those of a Christian heroic man. Broken prayers to God, that +He would judge him and this Cause, He since man could not, in justice +yet in pity. They are most touching words. He breathed out his wild +great soul, its toils and sins all ended now, into the presence of his +Maker, in this manner. + +I, for one, will not call the man a Hypocrite! Hypocrite, mummer, the +life of him a mere theatricality; empty barren quack, hungry for the +shouts of mobs? The man had made obscurity do very well for him till his +head was gray; and now he _was_, there as he stood recognized unblamed, +the virtual King of England. Cannot a man do without King's Coaches and +Cloaks? Is it such a blessedness to have clerks forever pestering you +with bundles of papers in red tape? A simple Diocletian prefers planting +of cabbages; a George Washington, no very immeasurable man, does the +like. One would say, it is what any genuine man could do; and would do. +The instant his real work were out in the matter of Kingship,--away with +it! + +Let us remark, meanwhile, how indispensable everywhere a _King_ is, in +all movements of men. It is strikingly shown, in this very War, what +becomes of men when they cannot find a Chief Man, and their enemies can. +The Scotch Nation was all but unanimous in Puritanism; zealous and of +one mind about it, as in this English end of the Island was always far +from being the case. But there was no great Cromwell among them; poor +tremulous, hesitating, diplomatic Argyles and such like: none of them +had a heart true enough for the truth, or durst commit himself to the +truth. They had no leader; and the scattered Cavalier party in that +country had one: Montrose, the noblest of all the Cavaliers; an +accomplished, gallant-hearted, splendid man; what one may call the +Hero-Cavalier. Well, look at it; on the one hand subjects without a +King; on the other a King without subjects! The subjects without King +can do nothing; the subjectless King can do something. This Montrose, +with a handful of Irish or Highland savages, few of them so much as +guns in their hands, dashes at the drilled Puritan armies like a wild +whirlwind; sweeps them, time after time, some five times over, from the +field before him. He was at one period, for a short while, master of all +Scotland. One man; but he was a man; a million zealous men, but without +the one; they against him were powerless! Perhaps of all the persons in +that Puritan struggle, from first to last, the single indispensable one +was verily Cromwell. To see and dare, and decide; to be a fixed pillar +in the welter of uncertainty;--a King among them, whether they called +him so or not. + + +Precisely here, however, lies the rub for Cromwell. His other +proceedings have all found advocates, and stand generally justified; +but this dismissal of the Rump Parliament and assumption of the +Protectorship, is what no one can pardon him. He had fairly grown to be +King in England; Chief Man of the victorious party in England: but it +seems he could not do without the King's Cloak, and sold himself to +perdition in order to get it. Let us see a little how this was. + +England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now subdued at the feet of the +Puritan Parliament, the practical question arose, What was to be done +with it? How will you govern these Nations, which Providence in a +wondrous way has given up to your disposal? Clearly those hundred +surviving members of the Long Parliament, who sit there as supreme +authority, cannot continue forever to sit. What _is_ to be done?--It +was a question which theoretical constitution-builders may find easy to +answer; but to Cromwell, looking there into the real practical facts of +it, there could be none more complicated. He asked of the Parliament, +What it was they would decide upon? It was for the Parliament to +say. Yet the Soldiers too, however contrary to Formula, they who had +purchased this victory with their blood, it seemed to them that they +also should have something to say in it! We will not "for all our +fighting have nothing but a little piece of paper." We understand that +the Law of God's Gospel, to which He through us has given the victory, +shall establish itself, or try to establish itself, in this land! + +For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been sounded in the +ears of the Parliament. They could make no answer; nothing but talk, +talk. Perhaps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies; perhaps +no Parliament could in such case make any answer but even that of talk, +talk! Nevertheless the question must and shall be answered. You sixty +men there, becoming fast odious, even despicable, to the whole nation, +whom the nation already calls Rump Parliament, you cannot continue to +sit there: who or what then is to follow? "Free Parliament," right of +Election, Constitutional Formulas of one sort or the other,--the thing +is a hungry Fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by +it! And who are you that prate of Constitutional Formulas, rights of +Parliament? You have had to kill your King, to make Pride's Purges, to +expel and banish by the law of the stronger whosoever would not let +your Cause prosper: there are but fifty or threescore of you left there, +debating in these days. Tell us what we shall do; not in the way of +Formula, but of practicable Fact! + +How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day. The diligent +Godwin himself admits that he cannot make it out. The likeliest is, that +this poor Parliament still would not, and indeed could not dissolve and +disperse; that when it came to the point of actually dispersing, they +again, for the tenth or twentieth time, adjourned it,--and Cromwell's +patience failed him. But we will take the favorablest hypothesis ever +started for the Parliament; the favorablest, though I believe it is not +the true one, but too favorable. + +According to this version: At the uttermost crisis, when Cromwell and +his Officers were met on the one hand, and the fifty or sixty Rump +Members on the other, it was suddenly told Cromwell that the Rump in its +despair _was_ answering in a very singular way; that in their splenetic +envious despair, to keep out the Army at least, these men were hurrying +through the House a kind of Reform Bill,--Parliament to be chosen by +the whole of England; equable electoral division into districts; free +suffrage, and the rest of it! A very questionable, or indeed for _them_ +an unquestionable thing. Reform Bill, free suffrage of Englishmen? Why, +the Royalists themselves, silenced indeed but not exterminated, perhaps +_outnumber_ us; the great numerical majority of England was always +indifferent to our Cause, merely looked at it and submitted to it. It is +in weight and force, not by counting of heads, that we are the majority! +And now with your Formulas and Reform Bills, the whole matter, sorely +won by our swords, shall again launch itself to sea; become a mere +hope, and likelihood, _small_ even as a likelihood? And it is not a +likelihood; it is a certainty, which we have won, by God's strength and +our own right hands, and do now hold _here_. Cromwell walked down to +these refractory Members; interrupted them in that rapid speed of their +Reform Bill;--ordered them to begone, and talk there no more.--Can we +not forgive him? Can we not understand him? John Milton, who looked +on it all near at hand, could applaud him. The Reality had swept the +Formulas away before it. I fancy, most men who were realities in England +might see into the necessity of that. + +The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of Formulas and +logical superficialities against him; has dared appeal to the genuine +Fact of this England, Whether it will support him or not? It is curious +to see how he struggles to govern in some constitutional way; find some +Parliament to support him; but cannot. His first Parliament, the one +they call Barebones's Parliament, is, so to speak, a _Convocation of the +Notables_. From all quarters of England the leading Ministers and chief +Puritan Officials nominate the men most distinguished by religious +reputation, influence and attachment to the true Cause: these are +assembled to shape out a plan. They sanctioned what was past; shaped as +they could what was to come. They were scornfully called _Barebones's +Parliament_: the man's name, it seems, was not _Barebones_, but +Barbone,--a good enough man. Nor was it a jest, their work; it was a +most serious reality,--a trial on the part of these Puritan Notables how +far the Law of Christ could become the Law of this England. There +were men of sense among them, men of some quality; men of deep piety I +suppose the most of them were. They failed, it seems, and broke down, +endeavoring to reform the Court of Chancery! They dissolved themselves, +as incompetent; delivered up their power again into the hands of the +Lord General Cromwell, to do with it what he liked and could. + +What _will_ he do with it? The Lord General Cromwell, +"Commander-in-chief of all the Forces raised and to be raised;" he +hereby sees himself, at this unexampled juncture, as it were the one +available Authority left in England, nothing between England and utter +Anarchy but him alone. Such is the undeniable Fact of his position and +England's, there and then. What will he do with it? After deliberation, +he decides that he will _accept_ it; will formally, with public +solemnity, say and vow before God and men, "Yes, the Fact is so, and +I will do the best I can with it!" Protectorship, Instrument of +Government,--these are the external forms of the thing; worked out and +sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be, by the Judges, by the +leading Official people, "Council of Officers and Persons of interest in +the Nation:" and as for the thing itself, undeniably enough, at the pass +matters had now come to, there _was_ no alternative but Anarchy or that. +Puritan England might accept it or not; but Puritan England was, in real +truth, saved from suicide thereby!--I believe the Puritan People did, +in an inarticulate, grumbling, yet on the whole grateful and real way, +accept this anomalous act of Oliver's; at least, he and they together +made it good, and always better to the last. But in their Parliamentary +_articulate_ way, they had their difficulties, and never knew fully what +to say to it--! + +Oliver's second Parliament, properly his _first_ regular Parliament, +chosen by the rule laid down in the Instrument of Government, did +assemble, and worked;--but got, before long, into bottomless questions +as to the Protector's _right_, as to "usurpation," and so forth; and had +at the earliest legal day to be dismissed. Cromwell's concluding Speech +to these men is a remarkable one. So likewise to his third Parliament, +in similar rebuke for their pedantries and obstinacies. Most rude, +chaotic, all these Speeches are; but most earnest-looking. You would +say, it was a sincere helpless man; not used to _speak_ the great +inorganic thought of him, but to act it rather! A helplessness of +utterance, in such bursting fulness of meaning. He talks much about +"births of Providence:" All these changes, so many victories and events, +were not forethoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of _me_ or +of men; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling them so! +He insists with a heavy sulphurous wrathful emphasis on this. As he well +might. As if a Cromwell in that dark huge game he had been playing, the +world wholly thrown into chaos round him, had _foreseen_ it all, and +played it all off like a precontrived puppet-show by wood and wire! +These things were foreseen by no man, he says; no man could tell what +a day would bring forth: they were "births of Providence," God's finger +guided us on, and we came at last to clear height of victory, God's +Cause triumphant in these Nations; and you as a Parliament could +assemble together, and say in what manner all this could be _organized_, +reduced into rational feasibility among the affairs of men. You were +to help with your wise counsel in doing that. "You have had such an +opportunity as no Parliament in England ever had." Christ's Law, the +Right and True, was to be in some measure made the Law of this land. +In place of that, you have got into your idle pedantries, +constitutionalities, bottomless cavillings and questionings about +written laws for my coming here;--and would send the whole matter into +Chaos again, because I have no Notary's parchment, but only God's +voice from the battle-whirlwind, for being President among you! That +opportunity is gone; and we know not when it will return. You have had +your constitutional Logic; and Mammon's Law, not Christ's Law, rules +yet in this land. "God be judge between you and me!" These are his final +words to them: Take you your constitution-formulas in your hand; and I +my informal struggles, purposes, realities and acts; and "God be judge +between you and me!"-- + +We said above what shapeless, involved chaotic things the printed +Speeches of Cromwell are. _Wilfully_ ambiguous, unintelligible, say the +most: a hypocrite shrouding himself in confused Jesuitic jargon! To me +they do not seem so. I will say rather, they afforded the first glimpses +I could ever get into the reality of this Cromwell, nay into the +possibility of him. Try to believe that he means something, search +lovingly what that may be: you will find a real _speech_ lying +imprisoned in these broken rude tortuous utterances; a meaning in the +great heart of this inarticulate man! You will, for thc first time, +begin to see that he was a man; not an enigmatic chimera, unintelligible +to you, incredible to you. The Histories and Biographies written of this +Cromwell, written in shallow sceptical generations that could not +know or conceive of a deep believing man, are far more _obscure_ than +Cromwell's Speeches. You look through them only into the infinite vague +of Black and the Inane. "Heats and jealousies," says Lord Clarendon +himself: "heats and jealousies," mere crabbed whims, theories and +crotchets; these induced slow sober quiet Englishmen to lay down their +ploughs and work; and fly into red fury of confused war against the +best-conditioned of Kings! _Try_ if you can find that true. Scepticism +writing about Belief may have great gifts; but it is really _ultra +vires_ there. It is Blindness laying down the Laws of Optics.-- + +Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same rock as his second. Ever +the constitutional Formula: How came you there? Show us some Notary +parchment! Blind pedants:--"Why, surely the same power which makes you +a Parliament, that, and something more, made me a Protector!" If +my Protectorship is nothing, what in the name of wonder is your +Parliamenteership, a reflex and creation of that?-- + +Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing but the way of +Despotism. Military Dictators, each with his district, to _coerce_ +the Royalist and other gainsayers, to govern them, if not by act of +Parliament, then by the sword. Formula shall _not_ carry it, while the +Reality is here! I will go on, protecting oppressed Protestants abroad, +appointing just judges, wise managers, at home, cherishing true Gospel +ministers; doing the best I can to make England a Christian England, +greater than old Rome, the Queen of Protestant Christianity; I, since +you will not help me; I while God leaves me life!--Why did he not give +it up; retire into obscurity again, since the Law would not acknowledge +him? cry several. That is where they mistake. For him there was no +giving of it up! Prime ministers have governed countries, Pitt, Pombal, +Choiseul; and their word was a law while it held: but this Prime +Minister was one that _could not get resigned_. Let him once resign, +Charles Stuart and the Cavaliers waited to kill him; to kill the Cause +_and_ him. Once embarked, there is no retreat, no return. This Prime +Minister could _retire_ no-whither except into his tomb. + +One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His complaint is incessant of +the heavy burden Providence has laid on him. Heavy; which he must bear +till death. Old Colonel Hutchinson, as his wife relates it, Hutchinson, +his old battle-mate, coming to see him on some indispensable business, +much against his will,--Cromwell "follows him to the door," in a +most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; begs that he would be +reconciled to him, his old brother in arms; says how much it grieves him +to be misunderstood, deserted by true fellow-soldiers, dear to him +from of old: the rigorous Hutchinson, cased in his Republican formula, +sullenly goes his way.--And the man's head now white; his strong arm +growing weary with its long work! I think always too of his poor Mother, +now very old, living in that Palace of his; a right brave woman; as +indeed they lived all an honest God-fearing Household there: if she +heard a shot go off, she thought it was her son killed. He had to come +to her at least once a day, that she might see with her own eyes that he +was yet living. The poor old Mother!--What had this man gained; what had +he gained? He had a life of sore strife and toil, to his last day. Fame, +ambition, place in History? His dead body was hung in chains, his "place +in History,"--place in History forsooth!--has been a place of ignominy, +accusation, blackness and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if it +is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce +him not a knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did +he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? _We_ walk smoothly over +his great rough heroic life; step over his body sunk in the ditch there. +We need not _spurn_ it, as we step on it!--Let the Hero rest. It was not +to _men's_ judgment that he appealed; nor have men judged him very well. + + +Precisely a century and a year after this of Puritanism had got itself +hushed up into decent composure, and its results made smooth, in 1688, +there broke out a far deeper explosion, much more difficult to hush up, +known to all mortals, and like to be long known, by the name of French +Revolution. It is properly the third and final act of Protestantism; the +explosive confused return of mankind to Reality and Fact, now that they +were perishing of Semblance and Sham. We call our English Puritanism the +second act: "Well then, the Bible is true; let us go by the Bible!" "In +Church," said Luther; "In Church and State," said Cromwell, "let us go +by what actually _is_ God's Truth." Men have to return to reality; they +cannot live on semblance. The French Revolution, or third act, we may +well call the final one; for lower than that savage _Sansculottism_ men +cannot go. They stand there on the nakedest haggard Fact, undeniable in +all seasons and circumstances; and may and must begin again confidently +to build up from that. The French explosion, like the English one, got +its King,--who had no Notary parchment to show for himself. We have +still to glance for a moment at Napoleon, our second modern King. + +Napoleon does by no means seem to me so great a man as Cromwell. His +enormous victories which reached over all Europe, while Cromwell abode +mainly in our little England, are but as the high _stilts_ on which the +man is seen standing; the stature of the man is not altered thereby. +I find in him no such _sincerity_ as in Cromwell; only a far inferior +sort. No silent walking, through long years, with the Awful Unnamable +of this Universe; "walking with God," as he called it; and faith and +strength in that alone: _latent_ thought and valor, content to lie +latent, then burst out as in blaze of Heaven's lightning! Napoleon lived +in an age when God was no longer believed; the meaning of all Silence, +Latency, was thought to be Nonentity: he had to begin not out of the +Puritan Bible, but out of poor Sceptical _Encyclopedies_. This was +the length the man carried it. Meritorious to get so far. His compact, +prompt, every way articulate character is in itself perhaps small, +compared with our great chaotic inarticulate Cromwell's. Instead of +"dumb Prophet struggling to speak," we have a portentous mixture of the +Quack withal! Hume's notion of the Fanatic-Hypocrite, with such truth as +it has, will apply much better to Napoleon than it did to Cromwell, +to Mahomet or the like,--where indeed taken strictly it has hardly any +truth at all. An element of blamable ambition shows itself, from the +first, in this man; gets the victory over him at last, and involves him +and his work in ruin. + +"False as a bulletin" became a proverb in Napoleon's time. He makes what +excuse he could for it: that it was necessary to mislead the enemy, to +keep up his own men's courage, and so forth. On the whole, there are no +excuses. A man in no case has liberty to tell lies. It had been, in the +long-run, _better_ for Napoleon too if he had not told any. In fact, +if a man have any purpose reaching beyond the hour and day, meant to be +found extant _next_ day, what good can it ever be to promulgate lies? +The lies are found out; ruinous penalty is exacted for them. No man will +believe the liar next time even when he speaks truth, when it is of +the last importance that he be believed. The old cry of wolf!--A Lie is +no-thing; you cannot of nothing make something; you make _nothing_ at +last, and lose your labor into the bargain. + +Yet Napoleon _had_ a sincerity: we are to distinguish between what is +superficial and what is fundamental in insincerity. Across these outer +manoeuverings and quackeries of his, which were many and most +blamable, let us discern withal that the man had a certain instinctive +ineradicable feeling for reality; and did base himself upon fact, so +long as he had any basis. He has an instinct of Nature better than his +culture was. His _savans_, Bourrienne tells us, in that voyage to Egypt +were one evening busily occupied arguing that there could be no God. +They had proved it, to their satisfaction, by all manner of logic. +Napoleon looking up into the stars, answers, "Very ingenious, Messieurs: +but _who made_ all that?" The Atheistic logic runs off from him like +water; the great Fact stares him in the face: "Who made all that?" So +too in Practice: he, as every man that can be great, or have victory in +this world, sees, through all entanglements, the practical heart of the +matter; drives straight towards that. When the steward of his +Tuileries Palace was exhibiting the new upholstery, with praises, and +demonstration how glorious it was, and how cheap withal, Napoleon, +making little answer, asked for a pair of scissors, clips one of the +gold tassels from a window-curtain, put it in his pocket, and walked on. +Some days afterwards, he produced it at the right moment, to the horror +of his upholstery functionary; it was not gold but tinsel! In St. +Helena, it is notable how he still, to his last days, insists on the +practical, the real. "Why talk and complain; above all, why quarrel with +one another? There is no _result_ in it; it comes to nothing that one +can _do_. Say nothing, if one can do nothing!" He speaks often so, to +his poor discontented followers; he is like a piece of silent strength +in the middle of their morbid querulousness there. + +And accordingly was there not what we can call a _faith_ in him, genuine +so far as it went? That this new enormous Democracy asserting itself +here in the French Revolution is an unsuppressible Fact, which the whole +world, with its old forces and institutions, cannot put down; this was +a true insight of his, and took his conscience and enthusiasm along with +it,--a _faith_. And did he not interpret the dim purport of it well? +"_La carriere ouverte aux talens_, The implements to him who can handle +them:" this actually is the truth, and even the whole truth; it includes +whatever the French Revolution or any Revolution, could mean. Napoleon, +in his first period, was a true Democrat. And yet by the nature of him, +fostered too by his military trade, he knew that Democracy, if it were +a true thing at all, could not be an anarchy: the man had a heart-hatred +for anarchy. On that Twentieth of June (1792), Bourrienne and he sat +in a coffee-house, as the mob rolled by: Napoleon expresses the deepest +contempt for persons in authority that they do not restrain this rabble. +On the Tenth of August he wonders why there is no man to command these +poor Swiss; they would conquer if there were. Such a faith in Democracy, +yet hatred of anarchy, it is that carries Napoleon through all his great +work. Through his brilliant Italian Campaigns, onwards to the Peace +of Leoben, one would say, his inspiration is: "Triumph to the French +Revolution; assertion of it against these Austrian Simulacra that +pretend to call it a Simulacrum!" Withal, however, he feels, and has a +right to feel, how necessary a strong Authority is; how the Revolution +cannot prosper or last without such. To bridle in that great devouring, +self-devouring French Revolution; to _tame_ it, so that its intrinsic +purpose can be made good, that it may become _organic_, and be able +to live among other organisms and _formed_ things, not as a wasting +destruction alone: is not this still what he partly aimed at, as the +true purport of his life; nay what he actually managed to do? Through +Wagrams, Austerlitzes; triumph after triumph,--he triumphed so far. +There was an eye to see in this man, a soul to dare and do. He rose +naturally to be the King. All men saw that he _was_ such. The common +soldiers used to say on the march: "These babbling _Avocats_, up at +Paris; all talk and no work! What wonder it runs all wrong? We shall +have to go and put our _Petit Caporal_ there!" They went, and put him +there; they and France at large. Chief-consulship, Emperorship, victory +over Europe;--till the poor Lieutenant of _La Fere_, not unnaturally, +might seem to himself the greatest of all men that had been in the world +for some ages. + +But at this point, I think, the fatal charlatan-element got the upper +hand. He apostatized from his old faith in Facts, took to believing in +Semblances; strove to connect himself with Austrian Dynasties, +Popedoms, with the old false Feudalities which he once saw clearly to +be false;--considered that _he_ would found "his Dynasty" and so forth; +that the enormous French Revolution meant only that! The man was "given +up to strong delusion, that he should believe a lie;" a fearful but +most sure thing. He did not know true from false now when he looked +at them,--the fearfulest penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of +heart. _Self_ and false ambition had now become his god: self-deception +once yielded to, _all_ other deceptions follow naturally more and more. +What a paltry patchwork of theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, +had this man wrapt his own great reality in, thinking to make it +more real thereby! His hollow _Pope's-Concordat_, pretending to be a +re-establishment of Catholicism, felt by himself to be the method +of extirpating it, "_la vaccine de la religion_:" his ceremonial +Coronations, consecrations by the old Italian Chimera in +Notre-Dame,--"wanting nothing to complete the pomp of it," as Augereau +said, "nothing but the half-million of men who had died to put an end to +all that"! Cromwell's Inauguration was by the Sword and Bible; what we +must call a genuinely _true_ one. Sword and Bible were borne before him, +without any chimera: were not these the _real_ emblems of Puritanism; +its true decoration and insignia? It had used them both in a very real +manner, and pretended to stand by them now! But this poor Napoleon +mistook: he believed too much in the _Dupability_ of men; saw no fact +deeper in man than Hunger and this! He was mistaken. Like a man that +should build upon cloud; his house and he fall down in confused wreck, +and depart out of the world. + +Alas, in all of us this charlatan-element exists; and _might_ be +developed, were the temptation strong enough. "Lead us not into +temptation"! But it is fatal, I say, that it _be_ developed. The +thing into which it enters as a cognizable ingredient is doomed to be +altogether transitory; and, however huge it may _look_, is in itself +small. Napoleon's working, accordingly, what was it with all the noise +it made? A flash as of gunpowder wide-spread; a blazing-up as of dry +heath. For an hour the whole Universe seems wrapt in smoke and flame; +but only for an hour. It goes out: the Universe with its old mountains +and streams, its stars above and kind soil beneath, is still there. + +The Duke of Weimar told his friends always, To be of courage; this +Napoleonism was _unjust_, a falsehood, and could not last. It is true +doctrine. The heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, holding it +tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be, +one day. Injustice pays itself with frightful compound-interest. I am +not sure but he had better have lost his best park of artillery, or +had his best regiment drowned in the sea, than shot that poor German +Bookseller, Palm! It was a palpable tyrannous murderous injustice, which +no man, let him paint an inch thick, could make out to be other. It +burnt deep into the hearts of men, it and the like of it; suppressed +fire flashed in the eyes of men, as they thought of it,--waiting their +day! Which day _came_: Germany rose round him.--What Napoleon _did_ will +in the long-run amount to what he did justly; what Nature with her laws +will sanction. To what of reality was in him; to that and nothing more. +The rest was all smoke and waste. _La carriere ouverte aux talens_: +that great true Message, which has yet to articulate and fulfil itself +everywhere, he left in a most inarticulate state. He was a great +_ebauche_, a rude-draught never completed; as indeed what great man is +other? Left in _too_ rude a state, alas! + +His notions of the world, as he expresses them there at St. Helena, +are almost tragical to consider. He seems to feel the most unaffected +surprise that it has all gone so; that he is flung out on the rock +here, and the World is still moving on its axis. France is great, and +all-great: and at bottom, he is France. England itself, he says, is by +Nature only an appendage of France; "another Isle of Oleron to +France." So it was by _Nature_, by Napoleon-Nature; and yet look how in +fact--HERE AM I! He cannot understand it: inconceivable that the +reality has not corresponded to his program of it; that France was not +all-great, that he was not France. "Strong delusion," that he should +believe the thing to be which _is_ not! The compact, clear-seeing, +decisive Italian nature of him, strong, genuine, which he once had, +has enveloped itself, half-dissolved itself, in a turbid atmosphere +of French fanfaronade. The world was not disposed to be trodden down +underfoot; to be bound into masses, and built together, as _he_ liked, +for a pedestal to France and him: the world had quite other purposes in +view! Napoleon's astonishment is extreme. But alas, what help now? He +had gone that way of his; and Nature also had gone her way. Having once +parted with Reality, he tumbles helpless in Vacuity; no rescue for him. +He had to sink there, mournfully as man seldom did; and break his great +heart, and die,--this poor Napoleon: a great implement too soon wasted, +till it was useless: our last Great Man! + +Our last, in a double sense. For here finally these wide roamings of +ours through so many times and places, in search and study of Heroes, +are to terminate. I am sorry for it: there was pleasure for me in this +business, if also much pain. It is a great subject, and a most grave +and wide one, this which, not to be too grave about it, I have named +_Hero-worship_. It enters deeply, as I think, into the secret of +Mankind's ways and vitalest interests in this world, and is well worth +explaining at present. With six months, instead of six days, we might +have done better. I promised to break ground on it; I know not whether +I have even managed to do that. I have had to tear it up in the rudest +manner in order to get into it at all. Often enough, with these abrupt +utterances thrown out isolated, unexplained, has your tolerance been put +to the trial. Tolerance, patient candor, all-hoping favor and +kindness, which I will not speak of at present. The accomplished and +distinguished, the beautiful, the wise, something of what is best in +England, have listened patiently to my rude words. With many feelings, I +heartily thank you all; and say, Good be with you all! + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Heroes and Hero Worship, by Thomas Carlyle + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1091 *** diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1092-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1092-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3a5013d5 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1092-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2331 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Description of Wales, by Geraldus +Cambrensis + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: The Description of Wales + + +Author: Geraldus Cambrensis + + + +Release Date: February 9, 2015 [eBook #1092] +[This file was first posted on October 30, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESCRIPTION OF WALES*** + + +Transcribed from the 1912 J. M. Dent edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + THE DESCRIPTION OF WALES + by + Gerald of Wales + + +FIRST PREFACE +TO STEPHEN LANGTON, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY + + +I, WHO, at the expense of three years’ labour, arranged, a short time +ago, in three parts, the Topography of Ireland, with a description of its +natural curiosities, and who afterwards, by two years’ study, completed +in two parts the Vaticinal History of its Conquest; and who, by +publishing the Itinerary of the Holy Man (Baldwin) through Cambria, +prevented his laborious mission from perishing in obscurity, do now +propose, in the present little work, to give some account of this my +native country, and to describe the genius of its inhabitants, so +entirely distinct from that of other nations. And this production of my +industry I have determined to dedicate to you, illustrious Stephen, +archbishop of Canterbury, as I before ascribed to you my Itinerary; +considering you as a man no less distinguished by your piety, than +conspicuous for your learning; though so humble an offering may possibly +be unworthy the acceptance of a personage who, from his eminence, +deserves to be presented with works of the greatest merit. + +Some, indeed, object to this my undertaking, and, apparently from motives +of affection, compare me to a painter, who, rich in colours, and like +another Zeuxis, eminent in his art, is endeavouring with all his skill +and industry to give celebrity to a cottage, or to some other +contemptible object, whilst the world is anxiously expecting from his +hand a temple or a palace. Thus they wonder that I, amidst the many +great and striking subjects which the world presents, should choose to +describe and to adorn, with all the graces of composition, such remote +corners of the earth as Ireland and Wales. + +Others again, reproaching me with greater severity, say, that the gifts +which have been bestowed upon me from above, ought not to be wasted upon +these insignificant objects, nor lavished in a vain display of learning +on the commendation of princes, who, from their ignorance and want of +liberality, have neither taste to appreciate, nor hearts to remunerate +literary excellence. And they further add, that every faculty which +emanates from the Deity, ought rather to be applied to the illustration +of celestial objects, and to the exultation of his glory, from whose +abundance all our talents have been received; every faculty (say they) +ought to be employed in praising him from whom, as from a perennial +source, every perfect gift is derived, and from whose bounty everything +which is offered with sincerity obtains an ample reward. But since +excellent histories of other countries have been composed and published +by writers of eminence, I have been induced, by the love I bear to my +country and to posterity, to believe that I should perform neither an +useless nor an unacceptable service, were I to unfold the hidden merits +of my native land; to rescue from obscurity those glorious actions which +have been hitherto imperfectly described, and to bring into repute, by my +method of treating it, a subject till now regarded as contemptible. + +What indeed could my feeble and unexercised efforts add to the histories +of the destruction of Troy, Thebes, or Athens, or to the conquest of the +shores of Latium? Besides, to do what has been already done, is, in +fact, to be doing nothing; I have, therefore, thought it more eligible to +apply my industry to the arrangement of the history of my native country, +hitherto almost wholly overlooked by strangers; but interesting to my +relations and countrymen; and from these small beginnings to aspire by +degrees to works of a nobler cast. From these inconsiderable attempts, +some idea may be formed with what success, should Fortune afford an +opportunity, I am likely to treat matters of greater importance. For +although some things should be made our principal objects, whilst others +ought not to be wholly neglected, I may surely be allowed to exercise the +powers of my youth, as yet untaught and unexperienced, in pursuits of +this latter nature, lest by habit I should feel a pleasure in indolence +and in sloth, the parent of vice. + +I have therefore employed these studies as a kind of introduction to the +glorious treasures of that most excellent of the sciences, which alone +deserves the name of science; which alone can render us wise to rule and +to instruct mankind; which alone the other sciences follow, as attendants +do their queen. Laying therefore in my youth the foundations of so noble +a structure, it is my intention, if God will assist me and prolong my +life, to reserve my maturer years for composing a treatise upon so +perfect, so sacred a subject: for according to the poet, + + “Ardua quippe fides robustos exigit annos;” + + “The important concerns of faith require a mind in its full vigour;” + +I may be permitted to indulge myself for a short time in other pursuits; +but in this I should wish not only to continue, but to die. + +But before I enter on this important subject, I demand a short interval, +to enable me to lay before the public my Treatise on the Instruction of a +Prince, which has been so frequently promised, as well as the Description +of Wales, which is now before me, and the Topography of Britain. + +Of all the British writers, Gildas alone appears to me (as often as the +course of my subject leads me to consult him) worthy of imitation; for by +committing to paper the things which he himself saw and knew, and by +declaring rather than describing the desolation of his country, he has +compiled a history more remarkable for its truth than for its elegance. + +Giraldus therefore follows Gildas, whom he wishes he could copy in his +life and manners; becoming an imitator of his wisdom rather than of his +eloquence—of his mind rather than of his writings—of his zeal rather than +of his style—of his life rather than of his language. + + + + +SECOND PREFACE +TO THE SAME + + +WHEN, amidst various literary pursuits, I first applied my mind to the +compilation of history, I determined, lest I should appear ungrateful to +my native land, to describe, to the best of my abilities, my own country +and its adjoining regions; and afterwards, under God’s guidance, to +proceed to a description of more distant territories. But since some +leading men (whom we have both seen and known) show so great a contempt +for literature, that they immediately shut up within their book-cases the +excellent works with which they are presented, and thus doom them, as it +were, to a perpetual imprisonment; I entreat you, illustrious Prelate, to +prevent the present little work, which will shortly be delivered to you, +from perishing in obscurity. And because this, as well as my former +productions, though of no transcendent merit, may hereafter prove to many +a source of entertainment and instruction, I entreat you generously to +order it to be made public, by which it will acquire reputation. And I +shall consider myself sufficiently rewarded for my trouble, if, +withdrawing for a while from your religious and secular occupations, you +would kindly condescend to peruse this book, or, at least, give it an +attentive hearing; for in times like these, when no one remunerates +literary productions, I neither desire nor expect any other recompense. +Not that it would appear in any way inconsistent, however there exists +among men of rank a kind of conspiracy against authors, if a prelate so +eminently conspicuous for his virtues, for his abilities, both natural +and acquired, for irreproachable morals, and for munificence, should +distinguish himself likewise by becoming the generous and sole patron of +literature. To comprise your merits in a few words, the lines of Martial +addressed to Trajan, whilst serving under Dioclesian, may be deservedly +applied to you: + + “Laudari debes quoniam sub principe duro, + Temporibusque malis, ausus es esse bonus.” + +And those also of Virgil to Mecænas, which extol the humanity of that +great man: + + “Omnia cum possis tanto tam clarus amico, + Te sensit nemo posse nocere tamen.” + +Many indeed remonstrate against my proceedings, and those particularly +who call themselves my friends insist that, in consequence of my violent +attachment to study, I pay no attention to the concerns of the world, or +to the interests of my family; and that, on this account, I shall +experience a delay in my promotion to worldly dignities; that the +influence of authors, both poets and historians, has long since ceased; +that the respect paid to literature vanished with literary princes; and +that in these degenerate days very different paths lead to honours and +opulence. I allow all this, I readily allow it, and acquiesce in the +truth. For the unprincipled and covetous attach themselves to the court, +the churchmen to their books, and the ambitious to the public offices, +but as every man is under the influence of some darling passion, so the +love of letters and the study of eloquence have from my infancy had for +me peculiar charms of attraction. Impelled by this thirst for knowledge, +I have carried my researches into the mysterious works of nature farther +than the generality of my contemporaries, and for the benefit of +posterity have rescued from oblivion the remarkable events of my own +times. But this object was not to be secured without an indefatigable, +though at the same time an agreeable, exertion; for an accurate +investigation of every particular is attended with much difficulty. It +is difficult to produce an orderly account of the investigation and +discovery of truth; it is difficult to preserve from the beginning to the +end a connected relation unbroken by irrelevant matter; and it is +difficult to render the narration no less elegant in the diction, than +instructive in its matter, for in prosecuting the series of events, the +choice of happy expressions is equally perplexing, as the search after +them painful. Whatever is written requires the most intense thought, and +every expression should be carefully polished before it be submitted to +the public eye; for, by exposing itself to the examination of the present +and of future ages, it must necessarily undergo the criticism not only of +the acute, but also of the dissatisfied, reader. Words merely uttered +are soon forgotten, and the admiration or disgust which they occasioned +is no more; but writings once published are never lost, and remain as +lasting memorials either of the glory or of the disgrace of the author. +Hence the observation of Seneca, that the malicious attention of the +envious reader dwells with no less satisfaction on a faulty than on an +elegant expression, and is as anxious to discover what it may ridicule, +as what it may commend; as the poet also observes: + + “Discit enim citius meminitque libentius illud + Quod quis deridet, quam quod probat et veneratur.” + +Among the pursuits, therefore, most worthy of commendation, this holds by +no means the lowest rank; for history, as the moral philosopher declares, +“is the record of antiquity, the testimony of ages, the light of truth, +the soul of memory, the mistress of conduct, and the herald of ancient +times.” + +This study is the more delightful, as it is more honourable to produce +works worthy of being quoted than to quote the works of others; as it is +more desirable to be the author of compositions which deserve to be +admired than to be esteemed a good judge of the writings of other men; as +it is more meritorious to be the just object of other men’s commendations +than to be considered an adept in pointing out the merits of others. On +these pleasing reflections I feed and regale myself; for I would rather +resemble Jerome than Croesus, and I prefer to riches themselves the man +who is capable of despising them. With these gratifying ideas I rest +contented and delighted, valuing moderation more than intemperance, and +an honourable sufficiency more than superfluity; for intemperance and +superfluity produce their own destruction, but their opposite virtues +never perish; the former vanish, but the latter, like eternity, remain +for ever; in short, I prefer praise to lucre, and reputation to riches. + + + + +CONTENTS + + BOOK I + CHAPTER PAGE + I. Length and Breadth of Wales, the Nature of its 155 + Soil, and the Three Remaining Tribes of + Britons + II. Of the Ancient Division of Wales into Three 156 + Parts + III. Genealogy of the Princes of Wales 157 + IV. Cantreds—Royal Palaces—Cathedrals 158 + V. Mountains and Rivers of Wales 159 + VI. Concerning the Pleasantness and Fertility of 163 + Wales + VII. Origin of the Names Cambria and Wales 164 + VIII. Concerning the Nature, Manners, and Dress, the 166 + Boldness, Agility, and Courage, of this Nation + IX. Their Sober Supper and Frugality 168 + X. Their Hospitality and Liberality 170 + XI. Concerning their cutting of their Hair, their 171 + Care of their Teeth, and Shaving of their + Beard + XII. Their Quickness and Sharpness of Understanding 174 + XIII. Their Symphonies and Songs 175 + XIV. Their Wit and Pleasantry 177 + XV. Their Boldness and Confidence in Speaking 183 + XVI. Concerning the Soothsayers of this Nation, and 179 + Persons as it were possessed + XVII. Their Love of High Birth and Ancient Genealogy 183 + XVIII. Their Ancient Faith, Love of Christianity and 185 + Devotion + BOOK II + I. Concerning the Inconstancy and Instability of 189 + this Nation, and their Want of Reverence for + Good Faith and Oaths + II. Their living by Plunder, and Disregard of the 190 + Bonds of Peace and Friendship + III. Their Deficiency in Battle, and Base and 192 + Dishonourable Flight + IV. Their Ambitious Seizure of Lands, and 193 + Dissensions among Brothers + V. Their great Exaction, and Want of Moderation 194 + VI. Concerning the Crime of Incest, and the Abuse 195 + of Churches by Succession and Participation + VII. Their Sins, and the consequent Loss of Britain 196 + and of Troy + VIII. In what Manner this Nation is to be overcome 198 + IX. In what Manner Wales, when conquered, should 202 + be governed + X. In what Manner this Nation may resist and 204 + revolt + +BOOK I + + +CHAPTER I +OF THE LENGTH AND BREADTH OF WALES, THE NATURE OF ITS SOIL, AND THE THREE +REMAINING TRIBES OF BRITONS + + +CAMBRIA, which, by a corrupt and common term, though less proper, is in +modern times called Wales, is about two hundred miles long and one +hundred broad. The length from Port Gordber {155a} in Anglesey to Port +Eskewin {155b} in Monmouthshire is eight days’ journey in extent; the +breadth from Porth Mawr, {155c} or the great Port of St. David’s, to +Ryd-helic, {155d} which in Latin means _Vadum salicis_, or the Ford of +the Willow, and in English is called Willow-forde, is four days’ journey. +It is a country very strongly defended by high mountains, deep valleys, +extensive woods, rivers, and marshes; insomuch that from the time the +Saxons took possession of the island the remnants of the Britons, +retiring into these regions, could never be entirely subdued either by +the English or by the Normans. Those who inhabited the southern angle of +the island, which took its name from the chieftain Corinæus, {156} made +less resistance, as their country was more defenceless. The third +division of the Britons, who obtained a part of Britany in Gaul, were +transported thither, not after the defeat of their nation, but long +before, by king Maximus, and, in consequence of the hard and continued +warfare which they underwent with him, were rewarded by the royal +munificence with those districts in France. + + + +CHAPTER II +OF THE ANCIENT DIVISION OF WALES INTO THREE PARTS + + +WALES was in ancient times divided into three parts nearly equal, +consideration having been paid, in this division, more to the value than +to the just quantity or proportion of territory. They were Venedotia, +now called North Wales; Demetia, or South Wales, which in British is +called Deheubarth, that is, the southern part; and Powys, the middle or +eastern district. Roderic the Great, or Rhodri Mawr, who was king over +all Wales, was the cause of this division. He had three sons, Mervin, +Anarawt, and Cadell, amongst whom he partitioned the whole principality. +North Wales fell to the lot of Mervin; Powys to Anarawt; and Cadell +received the portion of South Wales, together with the general good +wishes of his brothers and the people; for although this district greatly +exceeded the others in quantity, it was the least desirable from the +number of noble chiefs, or Uchelwyr, {157a} men of a superior rank, who +inhabited it, and were often rebellious to their lords, and impatient of +control. But Cadell, on the death of his brothers, obtained the entire +dominion of Wales, {157b} as did his successors till the time of Tewdwr, +whose descendants, Rhys, son of Tewdwr, Gruflydd, son of Rhys, and Rhys, +son of Gruffydd, the ruling prince in our time, enjoyed only (like the +father) the sovereignty over South Wales. + + + +CHAPTER III +GENEALOGY OF THE PRINCES OF WALES + + +THE following is the generation of princes of South Wales: Rhys, son of +Gruffydd; Gruffydd, son of Rhys; Rhys, son of Tewdwr; Tewdwr, son of +Eineon; Eineon, son of Owen; Owen, son of Howel Dda, or Howel the Good; +Howel, son of Cadell, son of Roderic the Great. Thus the princes of +South Wales derived their origin from Cadell, son of Roderic the Great. +The princes of North Wales descended from Mervin in this manner: +Llewelyn, son of Iorwerth; Iorwerth, son of Owen; Owen, son of Gruffydd; +Gruffydd, son of Conan; Conan, son of Iago; Iago, son of Edoual; Edoual, +son of Meyric; Meyric, son of Anarawt (Anandhrec); Anarawt, son of +Mervin, son of Roderic the Great. Anarawt leaving no issue, the princes +of Powys have their own particular descent. + +It is worthy of remark, that the Welsh bards and singers, or reciters, +have the genealogies of the aforesaid princes, written in the Welsh +language, in their ancient and authentic books; and also retain them in +their memory from Roderic the Great to B.M.; {158a} and from thence to +Sylvius, Ascanius, and Æneas; and from the latter produce the +genealogical series in a lineal descent, even to Adam. + +But as an account of such long and remote genealogies may appear to many +persons trifling rather than historical, we have purposely omitted them +in our compendium. + + + +CHAPTER IV +HOW MANY CANTREDS, ROYAL PALACES, AND CATHEDRALS THERE ARE IN WALES + + +SOUTH WALES contains twenty-nine cantreds; North Wales, twelve; Powys, +six: many of which are at this time in the possession of the English and +Franks. For the country now called Shropshire formerly belonged to +Powys, and the place where the castle of Shrewsbury stands bore the name +of Pengwern, or the head of the Alder Grove. There were three royal +seats in South Wales: Dinevor, in South Wales, removed from Caerleon; +Aberfraw, {158b} in North Wales; and Pengwern, in Powys. + +Wales contains in all fifty-four cantreds. The word _Cantref_ is derived +from _Cant_, a hundred, and _Tref_, a village; and means in the British +and Irish languages such a portion of land as contains a hundred vills. + +There are four cathedral churches in Wales: St. David’s, upon the Irish +sea, David the archbishop being its patron: it was in ancient times the +metropolitan church, and the district only contained twenty-four +cantreds, though at this time only twenty-three; for Ergengl, in English +called Urchenfeld, {159a} is said to have been formerly within the +diocese of St. David’s, and sometimes was placed within that of Landaff. +The see of St. David’s had twenty-five successive archbishops; and from +the time of the removal of the pall into France, to this day, twenty-two +bishops; whose names and series, as well as the cause of the removal of +the archiepiscopal pall, may be seen in our Itinerary. {159b} + +In South Wales also is situated the bishopric of Landaff, near the Severn +sea, and near the noble castle of Caerdyf; bishop Teilo being its patron. +It contains five cantreds, and the fourth part of another, namely, +Senghennyd. + +In North Wales, between Anglesey and the Eryri mountains, is the see of +Bangor, under the patronage of Daniel, the abbot; it contains about nine +cantreds. + +In North Wales also is the poor little cathedral of Llan-Elwy, or St. +Asaph, containing about six cantreds, to which Powys is subject. + + + +CHAPTER V +OF THE TWO MOUNTAINS FROM WHICH THE NOBLE RIVERS WHICH DIVIDE WALES +SPRING + + +WALES is divided and distinguished by noble rivers, which derive their +source from two ranges of mountains, the Ellennith, in South Wales, which +the English call Moruge, as being the heads of moors, or bogs; and Eryri, +in North Wales, which they call Snowdon, or mountains of snow; the latter +of which are said to be of so great an extent, that if all the herds in +Wales were collected together, they would supply them with pasture for a +considerable time. Upon them are two lakes, one of which has a floating +island; and the other contains fish having only one eye, as we have +related in our Itinerary. + +We must also here remark, that at two places in Scotland, one on the +eastern, and the other on the western ocean, the sea-fish called mulvelli +(mullets) have only the right eye. + +The noble river Severn takes its rise from the Ellennith mountains, and +flowing by the castles of Shrewsbury and Bridgenorth, through the city of +Worcester, and that of Gloucester, celebrated for its iron manufactories, +falls into the sea a few miles from the latter place, and gives its name +to the Severn Sea. This river was for many years the boundary between +Cambria and Loegria, or Wales and England; it was called in British +Hafren, from the daughter of Locrinus, who was drowned in it by her +step-mother; the aspirate being changed, according to the Latin idiom, +into S, as is usual in words derived from the Greek, it was termed +Sarina, as hal becomes _sal_; hemi, _semi_; hepta, _septem_. + +The river Wye rises in the same mountains of Ellennith, and flows by the +castles of Hay and Clifford, through the city of Hereford, by the castles +of Wilton and Goodrich, through the forest of Dean, abounding with iron +and deer, and proceeds to Strigul castle, below which it empties itself +into the sea, and forms in modern times the boundary between England and +Wales. The Usk does not derive its origin from these mountains, but from +those of Cantref Bachan; it flows by the castle of Brecheinoc, or +Aberhodni, that is, the fall of the river Hodni into the Usk (for Aber, +in the British language, signifies every place where two rivers unite +their streams); by the castles of Abergevenni and Usk, through the +ancient city of Legions, and discharges itself into the Severn Sea, not +far from Newport. + +The river Remni flows towards the sea from the mountains of Brecheinoc, +having passed the castle and bridge of Remni. From the same range of +mountains springs the Taf, which pursues its course to the episcopal see +of Landaf (to which it gives its name), and falls into the sea below the +castle of Caerdyf. The river Avon rushes impetuously from the mountains +of Glamorgan, between the celebrated Cistercian monasteries of Margan and +Neth; and the river Neth, descending from the mountains of Brecheinoc, +unites itself with the sea, at no great distance from the castle of Neth; +each of these rivers forming a long tract of dangerous quicksands. From +the same mountains of Brecheinoc the river Tawe flows down to Abertawe, +called in English Swainsey. The Lochor joins the sea near the castle of +the same name; and the Wendraeth has its confluence near Cydweli. The +Tywy, another noble river, rises in the Ellennith mountains, and +separating the Cantref Mawr from the Cantref Bachan, passes by the castle +of Llanymddyfri, and the royal palace and castle of Dinevor, strongly +situated in the deep recesses of its woods, by the noble castle of +Caermarddin, where Merlin was found, and from whom the city received its +name, and runs into the sea near the castle of Lhanstephan. The river +Taf rises in the Presseleu mountains, not far from the monastery of +Whitland, and passing by the castle of St. Clare, falls into the sea near +Abercorran and Talacharn. From the same mountains flow the rivers +Cleddeu, encompassing the province of Daugleddeu, and giving it their +name one passes by the castle of Lahaden, and the other by Haverford, to +the sea; and in the British language they bear the name of Daugleddeu, or +two swords. + +The noble river Teivi springs from the Ellennith mountains, in the upper +part of the Cantref Mawr and Caerdigan, not far from the pastures and +excellent monastery of Stratflur, forming a boundary between Demetia and +Caerdigan down to the Irish channel; this is the only river in Wales that +produces beavers, an account of which is given in our Itinerary; and also +exceeds every other river in the abundance and delicacy of its salmon. +But as this book may fall into the hands of many persons who will not +meet with the other, I have thought it right here to insert many curious +and particular qualities relating to the nature of these animals, how +they convey their materials from the woods to the river, with what skill +they employ these materials in constructing places of safety in the +middle of the stream, how artfully they defend themselves against the +attack of the hunters on the eastern and how on the western side; the +singularity of their tails, which partake more of the nature of fish than +flesh. For further particulars see the Itinerary. {162a} + +From the same mountains issues the Ystuyth, and flowing through the upper +parts of Penwedic, in Cardiganshire, falls into the sea near the castle +of Aberystuyth. From the snowy mountains of Eryri flows the noble river +Devi, {162b} dividing for a great distance North and South Wales; and +from the same mountains also the large river Maw, {162c} forming by its +course the greater and smaller tract of sands called the Traeth Mawr and +the Traeth Bachan. The Dissennith also, and the Arthro, flow through +Merionethshire and the land of Conan. The Conwy, springing from the +northern side of the Eryri mountains, unites its waters with the sea +under the noble castle of Deganwy. The Cloyd rises from another side of +the same mountain, and passes by the castle of Ruthlan to the sea. The +Doverdwy, called by the English Dee, draws its source from the lake of +Penmelesmere, and runs through Chester, leaving the wood of Coleshulle, +Basinwerk, and a rich vein of silver in its neighbourhood, far to the +right, and by the influx of the sea forming a very dangerous quicksand; +thus the Dee makes the northern, and the river Wye the southern boundary +of Wales. + + + +CHAPTER VI +CONCERNING THE PLEASANTNESS AND FERTILITY OF WALES + + +AS the southern part of Wales near Cardiganshire, but particularly +Pembrokeshire, is much pleasanter, on account of its plains and +sea-coast, so North Wales is better defended by nature, is more +productive of men distinguished for bodily strength, and more fertile in +the nature of its soil; for, as the mountains of Eryri (Snowdon) could +supply pasturage for all the herds of cattle in Wales, if collected +together, so could the Isle of Mona (Anglesey) provide a requisite +quantity of corn for all the inhabitants: on which account there is an +old British proverb, “_Mon mam Cymbry_,” that is, “Mona is the mother of +Wales.” Merionyth, and the land of Conan, is the rudest and least +cultivated region, and the least accessible. The natives of that part of +Wales excel in the use of long lances, as those of Monmouthshire are +distinguished for their management of the bow. It is to be observed, +that the British language is more delicate and richer in North Wales, +that country being less intermixed with foreigners. Many, however, +assert that the language of Cardiganshire, in South Wales, placed as it +were in the middle and heart of Cambria, is the most refined. + +The people of Cornwall and the Armoricans speak a language similar to +that of the Britons; and from its origin and near resemblance, it is +intelligible to the Welsh in many instances, and almost in all; and +although less delicate and methodical, yet it approaches, as I judge, +more to the ancient British idiom. As in the southern parts of England, +and particularly in Devonshire, the English language seems less +agreeable, yet it bears more marks of antiquity (the northern parts being +much corrupted by the irruptions of the Danes and Norwegians), and +adheres more strictly to the original language and ancient mode of +speaking; a positive proof of which may be deduced from all the English +works of Bede, Rhabanus, and king Alfred, being written according to this +idiom. + + + +CHAPTER VII +ORIGIN OF THE NAMES CAMBRIA AND WALES + + +CAMBRIA was so called from Camber, son of Brutus, for Brutus, descending +from the Trojans, by his grandfather, Ascanius, and father, Silvius, led +the remnant of the Trojans, who had long been detained in Greece, into +this western isle; and having reigned many years, and given his name to +the country and people, at his death divided the kingdom of Wales between +his three sons. To his eldest son, Locrinus, he gave that part of the +island which lies between the rivers Humber and Severn, and which from +him was called Loegria. To his second son, Albanactus, he gave the lands +beyond the Humber, which took from him the name of Albania. But to his +youngest son, Camber, he bequeathed all that region which lies beyond the +Severn, and is called after him Cambria; hence the country is properly +and truly called Cambria, and its inhabitants Cambrians, or Cambrenses. +Some assert that their name was derived from _Cam_ and _Græco_, that is, +distorted Greek, on account of the affinity of their languages, +contracted by their long residence in Greece; but this conjecture, though +plausible, is not well founded on truth. + +The name of Wales was not derived from Wallo, a general, or Wandolena, +the queen, as the fabulous history of Geoffrey Arthurius {165a} falsely +maintains, because neither of these personages are to be found amongst +the Welsh; but it arose from a barbarian appellation. The Saxons, when +they seized upon Britain, called this nation, as they did all foreigners, +Wallenses; and thus the barbarous name remains to the people and their +country. {165b} + +Having discoursed upon the quality and quantity of the land, the +genealogies of the princes, the sources of the rivers, and the derivation +of the names of this country, we shall now consider the nature and +character of the nation. + + + +CHAPTER VIII +CONCERNING THE NATURE, MANNERS, AND DRESS, THE BOLDNESS, AGILITY, AND +COURAGE, OF THIS NATION + + +THIS people is light and active, hardy rather than strong, and entirely +bred up to the use of arms; for not only the nobles, but all the people +are trained to war, and when the trumpet sounds the alarm, the husbandman +rushes as eagerly from his plough as the courtier from his court; for +here it is not found that, as in other places, + + “Agricolis labor actus in orbem,” + +returns; for in the months of March and April only the soil is once +ploughed for oats, and again in the summer a third time, and in winter +for wheat. Almost all the people live upon the produce of their herds, +with oats, milk, cheese, and butter; eating flesh in larger proportions +than bread. They pay no attention to commerce, shipping, or +manufactures, and suffer no interruption but by martial exercises. They +anxiously study the defence of their country and their liberty; for these +they fight, for these they undergo hardships, and for these willingly +sacrifice their lives; they esteem it a disgrace to die in bed, an honour +to die in the field of battle; using the poet’s expressions,— + + “Procul hinc avertite pacem, + Nobilitas cum pace perit.” + +Nor is it wonderful if it degenerates, for the ancestors of these men, +the Æneadæ, rushed to arms in the cause of liberty. It is remarkable +that this people, though unarmed, dares attack an armed foe; the infantry +defy the cavalry, and by their activity and courage generally prove +victors. They resemble in disposition and situation those conquerors +whom the poet Lucan mentions: + + — —“Populi quos despicit Arctos, + Felices errore suo, quos ille timorum + Maximus haud urget leti metus, inde ruendi + In ferrum, mens prona viris, amimæque capaces, + Mortis et ignavum redituræ parsere vitæ.” + +They make use of light arms, which do not impede their agility, small +coats of mail, bundles of arrows, and long lances, helmets and shields, +and more rarely greaves plated with iron. The higher class go to battle +mounted on swift and generous steeds, which their country produces; but +the greater part of the people fight on foot, on account of the marshy +nature and unevenness of the soil. The horsemen as their situation or +occasion requires, willingly serve as infantry, in attacking or +retreating; and they either walk bare-footed, or make use of high shoes, +roughly constructed with untanned leather. In time of peace, the young +men, by penetrating the deep recesses of the woods, and climbing the tops +of mountains, learn by practice to endure fatigue through day and night; +and as they meditate on war during peace, they acquire the art of +fighting by accustoming themselves to the use of the lance, and by +inuring themselves to hard exercise. + +In our time, king Henry II., in reply to the inquiries of Emanuel, +emperor of Constantinople, concerning the situation, nature, and striking +peculiarities of the British island, among other remarkable circumstances +mentioned the following: “That in a certain part of the island there was +a people, called Welsh, so bold and ferocious that, when unarmed, they +did not fear to encounter an armed force; being ready to shed their blood +in defence of their country, and to sacrifice their lives for renown; +which is the more surprising, as the beasts of the field over the whole +face of the island became gentle, but these desperate men could not be +tamed. The wild animals, and particularly the stags and hinds, are so +abundant, owing to the little molestation they receive, that in our time, +in the northern parts of the island towards the Peak, {168} when pursued +by the hounds and hunters, they contributed, by their numbers, to their +own destruction.” + + + +CHAPTER IX +OF THEIR SOBER SUPPER AND FRUGALITY + + +NOT addicted to gluttony or drunkenness, this people who incur no expense +in food or dress, and whose minds are always bent upon the defence of +their country, and on the means of plunder, are wholly employed in the +care of their horses and furniture. Accustomed to fast from morning till +evening, and trusting to the care of Providence, they dedicate the whole +day to business, and in the evening partake of a moderate meal; and even +if they have none, or only a very scanty one, they patiently wait till +the next evening; and, neither deterred by cold nor hunger, they employ +the dark and stormy nights in watching the hostile motions of their +enemies. + + + +CHAPTER X +OF THEIR HOSPITALITY AND LIBERALITY + + +NO one of this nation ever begs, for the houses of all are common to all; +and they consider liberality and hospitality amongst the first virtues. +So much does hospitality here rejoice in communication, that it is +neither offered nor requested by travellers, who, on entering any house, +only deliver up their arms. When water is offered to them, if they +suffer their feet to be washed, they are received as guests; for the +offer of water to wash the feet is with this nation an hospitable +invitation. But if they refuse the proffered service, they only wish for +morning refreshment, not lodging. The young men move about in troops and +families under the direction of a chosen leader. Attached only to arms +and ease, and ever ready to stand forth in defence of their country, they +have free admittance into every house as if it were their own. + +Those who arrive in the morning are entertained till evening with the +conversation of young women, and the music of the harp; for each house +has its young women and harps allotted to this purpose. Two +circumstances here deserve notice: that as no nation labours more under +the vice of jealousy than the Irish, so none is more free from it than +the Welsh: and in each family the art of playing on the harp is held +preferable to any other learning. In the evening, when no more guests +are expected, the meal is prepared according to the number and dignity of +the persons assembled, and according to the wealth of the family who +entertains. The kitchen does not supply many dishes, nor high-seasoned +incitements to eating. The house is not furnished with tables, cloths, +or napkins. They study nature more than splendour, for which reason, the +guests being seated in threes, instead of couples as elsewhere, {169a} +they place the dishes before them all at once upon rushes and fresh +grass, in large platters or trenchers. They also make use of a thin and +broad cake of bread, baked every day, such as in old writings was called +_lagana_; {169b} and they sometimes add chopped meat, with broth. Such a +repast was formerly used by the noble youth, from whom this nation boasts +its descent, and whose manners it still partly imitates, according to the +word of the poet: + + “Heu! mensas consumimus, inquit Iulus.” + +While the family is engaged in waiting on the guests, the host and +hostess stand up, paying unremitting attention to everything, and take no +food till all the company are satisfied; that in case of any deficiency, +it may fall upon them. A bed made of rushes, and covered with a coarse +kind of cloth manufactured in the country, called _brychan_, {170} is +then placed along the side of the room, and they all in common lie down +to sleep; nor is their dress at night different from that by day, for at +all seasons they defend themselves from the cold only by a thin cloak and +tunic. The fire continues to burn by night as well as by day, at their +feet, and they receive much comfort from the natural heat of the persons +lying near them; but when the under side begins to be tired with the +hardness of the bed, or the upper one to suffer from cold, they +immediately leap up, and go to the fire, which soon relieves them from +both inconveniences; and then returning to their couch, they expose +alternately their sides to the cold, and to the hardness of the bed. + + + +CHAPTER XI +CONCERNING THEIR CUTTING OF THEIR HAIR, THEIR CARE OF THEIR TEETH, AND +SHAVING OF THEIR BEARD + + +THE men and women cut their hair close round to the ears and eyes. The +women, after the manner of the Parthians, cover their heads with a large +white veil, folded together in the form of a crown. + +Both sexes exceed any other nation in attention to their teeth, which +they render like ivory, by constantly rubbing them with green hazel and +wiping with a woollen cloth. For their better preservation, they abstain +from hot meats, and eat only such as are cold, warm, or temperate. The +men shave all their beard except the moustaches (_gernoboda_). This +custom is not recent, but was observed in ancient and remote ages, as we +find in the works of Julius Cæsar, who says, {171} “The Britons shave +every part of their body except their head and upper lip;” and to render +themselves more active, and avoid the fate of Absalon in their excursions +through the woods, they are accustomed to cut even the hair from their +heads; so that this nation more than any other shaves off all pilosity. +Julius also adds, that the Britons, previous to an engagement, anointed +their faces with a nitrous ointment, which gave them so ghastly and +shining an appearance, that the enemy could scarcely bear to look at +them, particularly if the rays of the sun were reflected on them. + + + +CHAPTER XII +OF THEIR QUICKNESS AND SHARPNESS OF UNDERSTANDING + + +THESE people being of a sharp and acute intellect, and gifted with a rich +and powerful understanding, excel in whatever studies they pursue, and +are more quick and cunning than the other inhabitants of a western clime. + +Their musical instruments charm and delight the ear with their sweetness, +are borne along by such celerity and delicacy of modulation, producing +such a consonance from the rapidity of seemingly discordant touches, that +I shall briefly repeat what is set forth in our Irish Topography on the +subject of the musical instruments of the three nations. It is +astonishing that in so complex and rapid a movement of the fingers, the +musical proportions can be preserved, and that throughout the difficult +modulations on their various instruments, the harmony is completed with +such a sweet velocity, so unequal an equality, so discordant a concord, +as if the chords sounded together fourths or fifths. They always begin +from B flat, and return to the same, that the whole may be completed +under the sweetness of a pleasing sound. They enter into a movement, and +conclude it in so delicate a manner, and play the little notes so +sportively under the blunter sounds of the base strings, enlivening with +wanton levity, or communicating a deeper internal sensation of pleasure, +so that the perfection of their art appears in the concealment of it: + + “Si lateat, prosit; + — — ferat ars deprensa pudorem.” + + “Art profits when concealed, + Disgraces when revealed.” + +From this cause, those very strains which afford deep and unspeakable +mental delight to those who have skilfully penetrated into the mysteries +of the art, fatigue rather than gratify the ears of others, who seeing, +do not perceive, and hearing, do not understand; and by whom the finest +music is esteemed no better than a confused and disorderly noise, and +will be heard with unwillingness and disgust. + +They make use of three instruments, the harp, the pipe, and the crwth or +crowd (_chorus_). {172} + +They omit no part of natural rhetoric in the management of civil actions, +in quickness of invention, disposition, refutation, and confirmation. In +their rhymed songs and set speeches they are so subtle and ingenious, +that they produce, in their native tongue, ornaments of wonderful and +exquisite invention both in the words and sentences. Hence arise those +poets whom they call Bards, of whom you will find many in this nation, +endowed with the above faculty, according to the poet’s observation: + + “Plurima concreti fuderunt carmina Bardi.” + +But they make use of alliteration (_anominatione_) in preference to all +other ornaments of rhetoric, and that particular kind which joins by +consonancy the first letters or syllables of words. So much do the +English and Welsh nations employ this ornament of words in all exquisite +composition, that no sentence is esteemed to be elegantly spoken, no +oration to be otherwise than uncouth and unrefined, unless it be fully +polished with the file of this figure. Thus in the British tongue: + + “Digawn Duw da i unic.” + + “Wrth bob crybwyll rhaïd pwyll parawd.” {173} + +And in English, + + “God is together gammen and wisedom.” + +The same ornament of speech is also frequent in the Latin language. +Virgil says, + + “Tales casus Cassandra canebat.” + +And again, in his address to Augustus, + + “Dum dubitet natura marem, faceretve puellam, + Natus es, o pulcher, pene puella, puer.” + +This ornament occurs not in any language we know so frequently as in the +two first; it is, indeed, surprising that the French, in other respects +so ornamented, should be entirely ignorant of this verbal elegance so +much adopted in other languages. Nor can I believe that the English and +Welsh, so different and adverse to each other, could designedly have +agreed in the usage of this figure; but I should rather suppose that it +had grown habitual to both by long custom, as it pleases the ear by a +transition from similar to similar sounds. Cicero, in his book “On +Elocution,” observes of such who know the practice, not the art, “Other +persons when they read good orations or poems, approve of the orators or +poets, not understanding the reason why, being affected, they approve; +because they cannot know in what place, of what nature, nor how that +effect is caused which so highly delights them.” + + + +CHAPTER XIII +OF THEIR SYMPHONIES AND SONGS + + +IN their musical concerts they do not sing in unison like the inhabitants +of other countries, but in many different parts; so that in a company of +singers, which one very frequently meets with in Wales, you will hear as +many different parts and voices as there are performers, who all at +length unite, with organic melody, in one consonance and the soft +sweetness of B flat. In the northern district of Britain, beyond the +Humber, and on the borders of Yorkshire, the inhabitants make use of the +same kind of symphonious harmony, but with less variety; singing only in +two parts, one murmuring in the base, the other warbling in the acute or +treble. Neither of the two nations has acquired this peculiarity by art, +but by long habit, which has rendered it natural and familiar; and the +practice is now so firmly rooted in them, that it is unusual to hear a +simple and single melody well sung; and, what is still more wonderful, +the children, even from their infancy, sing in the same manner. As the +English in general do not adopt this mode of singing, but only those of +the northern countries, I believe that it was from the Danes and +Norwegians, by whom these parts of the island were more frequently +invaded, and held longer under their dominion, that the natives +contracted their mode of singing as well as speaking. + + + +CHAPTER XIV +THEIR WIT AND PLEASANTRY + + +THE heads of different families, in order to excite the laughter of their +guests, and gain credit by their sayings, make use of great facetiousness +in their conversation; at one time uttering their jokes in a light, easy +manner, at another time, under the disguise of equivocation, passing the +severest censures. For the sake of explanation I shall here subjoin a +few examples. Tegeingl is the name of a province in North Wales, over +which David, son of Owen, had dominion, and which had once been in the +possession of his brother. The same word also was the name of a certain +woman with whom, it was said, each brother had an intrigue, from which +circumstance arose this term of reproach, “To have Tegeingl, after +Tegeingl had been in possession of his brother.” + +At another time, when Rhys, son of Gruffydd, prince of South Wales, +accompanied by a multitude of his people, devoutly entered the church of +St. David’s, previous to an intended journey, the oblations having been +made, and mass solemnised, a young man came to him in the church, and +publicly declared himself to be his son, threw himself at his feet, and +with tears humbly requested that the truth of this assertion might be +ascertained by the trial of the burning iron. Intelligence of this +circumstance being conveyed to his family and his two sons, who had just +gone out of the church, a youth who was present made this remark: “This +is not wonderful; some have brought gold, and others silver, as +offerings; but this man, who had neither, brought what he had, namely, +iron;” thus taunting him with his poverty. On mentioning a certain house +that was strongly built and almost impregnable, one of the company said, +“This house indeed is strong, for if it should contain food it could +never be got at,” thus alluding both to the food and to the house. In +like manner, a person, wishing to hint at the avaricious disposition of +the mistress of a house, said, “I only find fault with our hostess for +putting too little butter to her salt,” whereas the accessory should be +put to the principal; thus, by a subtle transposition of the words, +converting the accessory into the principal, by making it appear to +abound in quantity. Many similar sayings of great men and philosophers +are recorded in the Saturnalia of Macrobius. When Cicero saw his +son-in-law, Lentulus, a man of small stature, with a long sword by his +side: “Who,” says he, “has girded my son-in-law to that sword?” thus +changing the accessary into the principal. The same person, on seeing +the half-length portrait of his brother Quintus Cicero, drawn with very +large features and an immense shield, exclaimed, “Half of my brother is +greater than the whole!” When the sister of Faustus had an intrigue with +a fuller, “Is it strange,” says he, “that my sister has a spot, when she +is connected with a fuller?” When Antiochus showed Hannibal his army, +and the great warlike preparations he had made against the Romans, and +asked him, “Thinkest thou, O Hannibal, that these are sufficient for the +Romans?” Hannibal, ridiculing the unmilitary appearance of the soldiers, +wittily and severely replied, “I certainly think them sufficient for the +Romans, however greedy;” Antiochus asking his opinion about the military +preparations, and Hannibal alluding to them as becoming a prey to the +Romans. + + + +CHAPTER XV +THEIR BOLDNESS AND CONFIDENCE IN SPEAKING + + +NATURE hath given not only to the highest, but also to the inferior, +classes of the people of this nation, a boldness and confidence in +speaking and answering, even in the presence of their princes and +chieftains. The Romans and Franks had the same faculty; but neither the +English, nor the Saxons and Germans, from whom they are descended, had +it. It is in vain urged, that this defect may arise from the state of +servitude which the English endured; for the Saxons and Germans, who +enjoy their liberty, have the same failing, and derive this natural +coldness of disposition from the frozen region they inhabit; the English +also, although placed in a distant climate, still retain the exterior +fairness of complexion and inward coldness of disposition, as inseparable +from their original and natural character. The Britons, on the contrary, +transplanted from the hot and parched regions of Dardania into these more +temperate districts, as + + “Cœlum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt,” + +still retain their brown complexion and that natural warmth of temper +from which their confidence is derived. For three nations, remnants of +the Greeks after the destruction of Troy, fled from Asia into different +parts of Europe, the Romans under Æneas, the Franks under Antenor, and +the Britons under Brutus; and from thence arose that courage, that +nobleness of mind, that ancient dignity, that acuteness of understanding, +and confidence of speech, for which these three nations are so highly +distinguished. But the Britons, from having been detained longer in +Greece than the other two nations, after the destruction of their +country, and having migrated at a later period into the western parts of +Europe, retained in a greater degree the primitive words and phrases of +their native language. You will find amongst them the names Oenus, +Resus, Æneas, Hector, Achilles, Heliodorus, Theodorus, Ajax, Evander, +Uliex, Anianus, Elisa, Guendolena, and many others, bearing marks of +their antiquity. It is also to be observed, that almost all words in the +British language correspond either with the Greek or Latin, as ὑδωζ, +water, is called in British, dwr; ἁλς, salt, in British, halen; ονομα, +eno, a name; πεντε, pump, five; δεκα, deg, ten. The Latins also use the +words frænum, tripos, gladius, lorica; the Britons, froyn (ffrwyn), +trepet (tribedd), cleddyf, and lluric (llurig); unicus is made unic +(unig); canis, can (cwn); and belua, beleu. + + + +CHAPTER XVI +CONCERNING THE SOOTHSAYERS OF THIS NATION, AND PERSONS AS IT WERE +POSSESSED + + +THERE are certain persons in Cambria, whom you will find nowhere else, +called Awenddyon, {179} or people inspired; when consulted upon any +doubtful event, they roar out violently, are rendered beside themselves, +and become, as it were, possessed by a spirit. They do not deliver the +answer to what is required in a connected manner; but the person who +skilfully observes them, will find, after many preambles, and many +nugatory and incoherent, though ornamented speeches, the desired +explanation conveyed in some turn of a word: they are then roused from +their ecstasy, as from a deep sleep, and, as it were, by violence +compelled to return to their proper senses. After having answered the +questions, they do not recover till violently shaken by other people; nor +can they remember the replies they have given. If consulted a second or +third time upon the same point, they will make use of expressions totally +different; perhaps they speak by the means of fanatic and ignorant +spirits. These gifts are usually conferred upon them in dreams: some +seem to have sweet milk or honey poured on their lips; others fancy that +a written schedule is applied to their mouths and on awaking they +publicly declare that they have received this gift. Such is the saying +of Esdras, “The Lord said unto me, open thy mouth, and I opened my mouth, +and behold a cup full of water, whose colour was like fire; and when I +had drank it, my heart brought forth understanding, and wisdom entered +into my breast.” They invoke, during their prophecies, the true and +living God, and the Holy Trinity, and pray that they may not by their +sins be prevented from finding the truth. These prophets are only found +among the Britons descended from the Trojans. For Calchas and Cassandra, +endowed with the spirit of prophecy, openly foretold, during the siege of +Troy, the destruction of that fine city; on which account the high +priest, Helenus, influenced by the prophetic books of Calchas, and of +others who had long before predicted the ruin of their country, in the +first year went over to the Greeks with the sons of Priam (to whom he was +high priest), and was afterwards rewarded in Greece. Cassandra, daughter +of king Priam, every day foretold the overthrow of the city; but the +pride and presumption of the Trojans prevented them from believing her +word. Even on the very night that the city was betrayed, she clearly +described the treachery and the method of it: + + “— tales casus Cassandra canebat,” + +as in the same manner, during the existence of the kingdom of the +Britons, both Merlin Caledonius and Ambrosius are said to have foretold +the destruction of their nation, as well as the coming of the Saxons, and +afterwards that of the Normans; and I think a circumstance related by +Aulus Gellius worth inserting in this place. On the day that Caius Cæsar +and Cneius Pompey, during the civil war, fought a pitched battle in +Thessalia, a memorable event occurred in that part of Italy situated +beyond the river Po. A priest named Cornelius, honourable from his rank, +venerable for his religion, and holy in his manners, in an inspired +moment proclaimed, “Cæsar has conquered,” and named the day, the events, +the mutual attack, and the conflicts of the two armies. Whether such +things are exhibited by the spirit, let the reader more particularly +inquire; I do not assert they are the acts of a Pythonic or a diabolic +spirit; for as foreknowledge is the property of God alone, so is it in +his power to confer knowledge of future events. There are differences of +gifts, says the Apostle, but one and the same spirit; whence Peter, in +his second Epistle, writes, “For the prophecy came not in the old time by +the will of man, but men spake as if they were inspired by the Holy +Ghost:” to the same effect did the Chaldeans answer king Nebuchadonazar +on the interpretation of his dream, which he wished to extort from them. +“There is not,” say they, “a man upon earth who can, O king, +satisfactorily answer your question; let no king therefore, however great +or potent, make a similar request to any magician, astrologer, or +Chaldean; for it is a rare thing that the king requireth, and there is +none other that can shew it before the king, except the Gods, whose +dwelling is not with flesh.” On this passage Jerome remarks, “The +diviners and all the learned of this world confess, that the prescience +of future events belongs to God alone; the prophets therefore, who +foretold things to come, spake by the spirit of God. Hence some persons +object, that, if they were under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they +would sometimes premise, “Thus saith the Lord God,” or make use of some +expression in the prophetic style; and as such a mode of prophesying is +not taken notice of by Merlin, and no mention is made of his sanctity, +devotion, or faith, many think that he spake by a Pythonic spirit. To +which I answer, that the spirit of prophecy was given not only to the +holy, but sometimes to unbelievers and Gentiles, to Baal, to the sibyls, +and even to bad people, as to Caiaphas and Bela. On which occasion +Origen says: “Do not wonder, if he whom ye have mentioned declares that +the Scribes and Pharisees and doctors amongst the Jews prophesied +concerning Christ; for Caiaphas said: “It is expedient for us that one +man die for the people:” but asserts at the same time, that because he +was high priest for that year, he prophesied. Let no man therefore be +lifted up, if he prophesies, if he merits prescience; for prophecies +shall fail, tongues shall cease, knowledge shall vanish away; and now +abideth, faith, hope, and charity: these three; but the greatest of these +is Charity, which never faileth. But these bad men not only prophesied, +but sometimes performed great miracles, which others could not +accomplish. John the Baptist, who was so great a personage, performed no +miracle, as John the Evangelist testifies: “And many came to Jesus and +said, Because John wrought no signs,” etc. Nor do we hear that the +mother of God performed any miracle; we read in the Acts of the Apostles, +that the sons of Sheva cast out devils in the name of Jesus, whom Paul +preached; and in Matthew and Luke we may find these words: “Many shall +say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? +and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful +works? and then I will profess unto them, I never knew you.” And in +another place, John says: “Master, we saw a certain man casting out +devils in thy name, and forbade him, because he followeth not with us.” +But Jesus said: “Forbid him not; no man can do a miracle in my name, and +speak evil of me; for whoever is not against me, is for me.” + +Alexander of Macedon, a gentile, traversed the Caspian mountains, and +miraculously confined ten tribes within their promontories, where they +still remain, and will continue until the coming of Elias and Enoch. We +read, indeed, the prophecies of Merlin, but hear nothing either of his +sanctity or his miracles. Some say, that the prophets, when they +prophesied, did not become frantic, as it is affirmed of Merlin +Silvestris, and others possessed, whom we have before mentioned. Some +prophesied by dreams, visions, and enigmatical sayings, as Ezechiel and +Daniel; others by acts and words, as Noah, in the construction of the +ark, alluded to the church; Abraham, in the slaying of his son, to the +passion of Christ; and Moses by his speech, when he said, “A prophet +shall the Lord God raise up to you of your brethren; hear him;” meaning +Christ. Others have prophesied in a more excellent way by the internal +revelation and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as David did when +persecuted by Saul: “When Saul heard that David had fled to Naioth (which +is a hill in Ramah, and the seat of the prophets), he sent messengers to +take him; and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and +Samuel standing at their head, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers +of Saul, and they also prophesied; and he sent messengers a second and +again a third time, and they also prophesied. And Saul enraged went +thither also; and the Spirit of God was upon him also, and he went on, +and prophesied until he came to Naioth, and he stripped off his royal +vestments, and prophesied with the rest for all that day and all that +night; whilst David and Samuel secretly observed what passed.” Nor is it +wonderful that those persons who suddenly receive the Spirit of God, and +so signal a mark of grace, should for a time seem alienated from their +earthly state of mind. + + + +CHAPTER XVII +THEIR LOVE OF HIGH BIRTH AND ANCIENT GENEALOGY + + +THE Welsh esteem noble birth and generous descent above all things, {183} +and are, therefore, more desirous of marrying into noble than rich +families. Even the common people retain their genealogy, and can not +only readily recount the names of their grandfathers and +great-grandfathers, but even refer back to the sixth or seventh +generation, or beyond them, in this manner: Rhys, son of Gruffydd, son of +Rhys, son of Tewdwr, son of Eineon, son of Owen, son of Howel, son of +Cadell, son of Roderic Mawr, and so on. + +Being particularly attached to family descent, they revenge with +vehemence the injuries which may tend to the disgrace of their blood; and +being naturally of a vindictive and passionate disposition, they are ever +ready to avenge not only recent but ancient affronts; they neither +inhabit towns, villages, nor castles, but lead a solitary life in the +woods, on the borders of which they do not erect sumptuous palaces, nor +lofty stone buildings, but content themselves with small huts made of the +boughs of trees twisted together, constructed with little labour and +expense, and sufficient to endure throughout the year. They have neither +orchards nor gardens, but gladly eat the fruit of both when given to +them. The greater part of their land is laid down to pasturage; little +is cultivated, a very small quantity is ornamented with flowers, and a +still smaller is sown. They seldom yoke less than four oxen to their +ploughs; the driver walks before, but backwards, and when he falls down, +is frequently exposed to danger from the refractory oxen. Instead of +small sickles in mowing, they make use of a moderate-sized piece of iron +formed like a knife, with two pieces of wood fixed loosely and flexibly +to the head, which they think a more expeditious instrument; but since + + “Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures, + Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus,” + +their mode of using it will be better known by inspection than by any +description. The boats {184} which they employ in fishing or in crossing +the rivers are made of twigs, not oblong nor pointed, but almost round, +or rather triangular, covered both within and without with raw hides. +When a salmon thrown into one of these boats strikes it hard with his +tail, he often oversets it, and endangers both the vessel and its +navigator. The fishermen, according to the custom of the country, in +going to and from the rivers, carry these boats on their shoulders; on +which occasion that famous dealer in fables, Bleddercus, who lived a +little before our time, thus mysteriously said: “There is amongst us a +people who, when they go out in search of prey, carry their horses on +their backs to the place of plunder; in order to catch their prey, they +leap upon their horses, and when it is taken, carry their horses home +again upon their shoulders.” + + + +CHAPTER XVIII +OF THE ANTIQUITY OF THEIR FAITH, THEIR LOVE OF CHRISTIANITY AND DEVOTION + + +IN ancient times, and about two hundred years before the overthrow of +Britain, the Welsh were instructed and confirmed in the faith by Faganus +and Damianus, sent into the island at the request of king Lucius by pope +Eleutherius, and from that period when Germanus of Auxerre, and Lupus of +Troyes, came over on account of the corruption which had crept into the +island by the invasion of the Saxons, but particularly with a view of +expelling the Pelagian heresy, nothing heretical or contrary to the true +faith was to be found amongst the natives. But it is said that some +parts of the ardent doctrines are still retained. They give the first +piece broken off from every loaf of bread to the poor; they sit down to +dinner by three to a dish, in honour of the Trinity. With extended arms +and bowing head, they ask a blessing of every monk or priest, or of every +person wearing a religious habit. But they desire, above all other +nations, the episcopal ordination and unction, by which the grace of the +spirit is given. They give a tenth of all their property, animals, +cattle, and sheep, either when they marry, or go on a pilgrimage, or, by +the counsel of the church, are persuaded to amend their lives. This +partition of their effects they call the great tithe, two parts of which +they give to the church where they were baptised, and the third to the +bishop of the diocese. But of all pilgrimages they prefer that to Rome, +where they pay the most fervent adoration to the apostolic see. We +observe that they show a greater respect than other nations to churches +and ecclesiastical persons, to the relics of saints, bells, holy books, +and the cross, which they devoutly revere; and hence their churches enjoy +more than common tranquillity. For peace is not only preserved towards +all animals feeding in churchyards, but at a great distance beyond them, +where certain boundaries and ditches have been appointed by the bishops, +in order to maintain the security of the sanctuary. But the principal +churches to which antiquity has annexed the greater reverence extend +their protection to the herds as far as they can go to feed in the +morning and return at night. If, therefore, any person has incurred the +enmity of his prince, on applying to the church for protection, he and +his family will continue to live unmolested; but many persons abuse this +indemnity, far exceeding the indulgence of the canon, which in such cases +grants only personal safety; and from the places of refuge even make +hostile irruptions, and more severely harass the country than the prince +himself. Hermits and anchorites more strictly abstinent and more +spiritual can nowhere be found; for this nation is earnest in all its +pursuits, and neither worse men than the bad, nor better than the good, +can be met with. + +Happy and fortunate indeed would this nation be, nay, completely blessed, +if it had good prelates and pastors, and but one prince, and that prince +a good one. + + + + +BOOK II + + +PREFACE + + +HAVING in the former book clearly set forth the character, manners, and +customs of the British nation, and having collected and explained +everything which could redound to its credit or glory; an attention to +order now requires that, in this second part, we should employ our pen in +pointing out those particulars in which it seems to transgress the line +of virtue and commendation; having first obtained leave to speak the +truth, without which history not only loses its authority, but becomes +undeserving of its very name. For the painter who professes to imitate +nature, loses his reputation, if, by indulging his fancy, he represents +only those parts of the subject which best suit him. + +Since, therefore, no man is born without faults, and he is esteemed the +best whose errors are the least, let the wise man consider everything +human as connected with himself; for in worldly affairs there is no +perfect happiness under heaven. Evil borders upon good, and vices are +confounded with virtues; as the report of good qualities is delightful to +a well-disposed mind, so the relation of the contrary should not be +offensive. The natural disposition of this nation might have been +corrupted and perverted by long exile and poverty; for as poverty +extinguisheth many faults, so it often generates failings that are +contrary to virtue. + + + +CHAPTER I +OF THE INCONSTANCY AND INSTABILITY OF THIS NATION, AND THEIR WANT OF +REVERENCE FOR GOOD FAITH AND OATHS + + +THESE people are no less light in mind than in body, and are by no means +to be relied upon. They are easily urged to undertake any action, and +are as easily checked from prosecuting it—a people quick in action, but +more stubborn in a bad than in a good cause, and constant only in acts of +inconstancy. They pay no respect to oaths, faith, or truth; and so +lightly do they esteem the covenant of faith, held so inviolable by other +nations, that it is usual to sacrifice their faith for nothing, by +holding forth the right hand, not only in serious and important concerns, +but even on every trifling occasion, and for the confirmation of almost +every common assertion. They never scruple at taking a false oath for +the sake of any temporary emolument or advantage; so that in civil and +ecclesiastical causes, each party, being ready to swear whatever seems +expedient to its purpose, endeavours both to prove and defend, although +the venerable laws, by which oaths are deemed sacred, and truth is +honoured and respected, by favouring the accused and throwing an odium +upon the accuser, impose the burden of bringing proofs upon the latter. +But to a people so cunning and crafty, this yoke is pleasant, and this +burden is light. + + + +CHAPTER II +THEIR LIVING BY PLUNDER, AND DISREGARD OF THE BONDS OF PEACE AND +FRIENDSHIP + + +THIS nation conceives it right to commit acts of plunder, theft, and +robbery, not only against foreigners and hostile nations, but even +against their own countrymen. When an opportunity of attacking the enemy +with advantage occurs, they respect not the leagues of peace and +friendship, preferring base lucre to the solemn obligations of oaths and +good faith; to which circumstance Gildas alludes in his book concerning +the overthrow of the Britons, actuated by the love of truth, and +according to the rules of history, not suppressing the vices of his +countrymen. “They are neither brave in war, nor faithful in peace.” But +when Julius Cæsar, great as the world itself, + + “Territa quæsitis ostendit terga Britannis,” + +were they not brave under their leader Cassivellaunus? And when Belinus +and Brennus added the Roman empire to their conquests? What were they in +the time of Constantine, son of our Helen? What, in the reign of +Aurelius Ambrosius, whom even Eutropius commends? What were they in the +time of our famous prince Arthur? I will not say fabulous. On the +contrary, they, who were almost subdued by the Scots and Picts, often +harassed with success the auxiliary Roman legions, and exclaimed, as we +learn from Gildas, “The barbarians drove us to the sea, the sea drove us +again back to the barbarians; on one side we were subdued, on the other +drowned, and here we were put to death. Were they not,” says he, “at +that time brave and praiseworthy?” When attacked and conquered by the +Saxons, who originally had been called in as stipendiaries to their +assistance, were they not brave? But the strongest argument made use of +by those who accuse this nation of cowardice, is, that Gildas, a holy +man, and a Briton by birth, has handed down to posterity nothing +remarkable concerning them, in any of his historical works. We promise, +however, a solution of the contrary in our British Topography, if God +grants us a continuance of life. + +As a further proof, it may be necessary to add, that from the time when +that illustrious prince of the Britons, mentioned at the beginning of +this book, totally exhausted the strength of the country, by transporting +the whole armed force beyond the seas; that island, which had before been +so highly illustrious for its incomparable valour, remained for many +subsequent years destitute of men and arms, and exposed to the predatory +attacks of pirates and robbers. So distinguished, indeed, were the +natives of this island for their bravery, that, by their prowess, that +king subdued almost all Cisalpine Gaul, and dared even to make an attack +on the Roman empire. + +In process of time, the Britons, recovering their long-lost population +and knowledge of the use of arms, re-acquired their high and ancient +character. Let the different æras be therefore marked, and the +historical accounts will accord. With regard to Gildas, who inveighs so +bitterly against his own nation, the Britons affirm that, highly +irritated at the death of his brother, the prince of Albania, whom king +Arthur had slain, he wrote these invectives, and upon the same occasion +threw into the sea many excellent books, in which he had described the +actions of Arthur, and the celebrated deeds of his countrymen; from which +cause it arises, that no authentic account of so great a prince is any +where to be found. + + + +CHAPTER III +OF THEIR DEFICIENCY IN BATTLE, AND BASE AND DISHONOURABLE FLIGHT + + +IN war this nation is very severe in the first attack, terrible by their +clamour and looks, filling the air with horrid shouts and the deep-toned +clangour of very long trumpets; swift and rapid in their advances and +frequent throwing of darts. Bold in the first onset, they cannot bear a +repulse, being easily thrown into confusion as soon as they turn their +backs; and they trust to flight for safety, without attempting to rally, +which the poet thought reprehensible in martial conflicts: + + “Ignavum scelus est tantum fuga;” + +and elsewhere— + + “In vitium culpæ ducit fuga, si caret arte.” + +The character given to the Teutones in the Roman History, may be applied +to this people. “In their first attack they are more than men, in the +second, less than women.” Their courage manifests itself chiefly in the +retreat, when they frequently return, and, like the Parthians, shoot +their arrows behind them; and, as after success and victory in battle, +even cowards boast of their courage, so, after a reverse of fortune, even +the bravest men are not allowed their due claims of merit. Their mode of +fighting consists in chasing the enemy or in retreating. This +light-armed people, relying more on their activity than on their +strength, cannot struggle for the field of battle, enter into close +engagement, or endure long and severe actions, such as the poet +describes: + + “Jam clypeo clypeus, umbone repellitur umbo, + Ense minax ensis, pede pes, et cuspide cuspis.” + +Though defeated and put to flight on one day, they are ready to resume +the combat on the next, neither dejected by their loss, nor by their +dishonour; and although, perhaps, they do not display great fortitude in +open engagements and regular conflicts, yet they harass the enemy by +ambuscades and nightly sallies. Hence, neither oppressed by hunger or +cold, nor fatigued by martial labours, nor despondent in adversity, but +ready, after a defeat, to return immediately to action, and again endure +the dangers of war; they are as easy to overcome in a single battle, as +difficult to subdue in a protracted war. The poet Claudian thus speaks +of a people similar in disposition:— + + “Dum percunt, meminêre mali: si corda parumper + Respirare sinas, nullo tot funera censu + Prætercunt, tantique levis jactura cruoris.” + + + +CHAPTER IV +THEIR AMBITIOUS SEIZURE OF LANDS, AND DISSENSIONS AMONG BROTHERS + + +THIS nation is, above all others, addicted to the digging up of boundary +ditches, removing the limits, transgressing landmarks, and extending +their territory by every possible means. So great is their disposition +towards this common violence, that they scruple not to claim as their +hereditary right, those lands which are held under lease, or at will, on +condition of planting, or by any other title, even although indemnity had +been publicly secured on oath to the tenant by the lord proprietor of the +soil. Hence arise suits and contentions, murders and conflagrations, and +frequent fratricides, increased, perhaps, by the ancient national custom +of brothers dividing their property amongst each other. Another heavy +grievance also prevails; the princes entrust the education of their +children to the care of the principal men of their country, each of whom, +after the death of his father, endeavours, by every possible means, to +exalt his own charge above his neighbours. From which cause great +disturbances have frequently arisen amongst brothers, and terminated in +the most cruel and unjust murders; and on which account friendships are +found to be more sincere between foster-brothers, than between those who +are connected by the natural ties of brotherhood. It is also remarkable, +that brothers shew more affection to one another when dead, than when +living; for they persecute the living even unto death, but revenge the +deceased with all their power. + + + +CHAPTER V +THEIR GREAT EXACTION, AND WANT OF MODERATION + + +WHERE they find plenty, and can exercise their power, they levy the most +unjust exactions. Immoderate in their love of food and intoxicating +drink, they say with the Apostle, “We are instructed both to abound, and +to suffer need;” but do not add with him, “becoming all things to all +men, that I might by all means save some.” As in times of scarcity their +abstinence and parsimony are too severe, so, when seated at another man’s +table, after a long fasting, (like wolves and eagles, who, like them, +live by plunder, and are rarely satisfied,) their appetite is immoderate. +They are therefore penurious in times of scarcity, and extravagant in +times of plenty; but no man, as in England, mortgages his property for +the gluttonous gratification of his own appetite. They wish, however, +that all people would join with them in their bad habits and expenses; as +the commission of crimes reduces to a level all those who are concerned +in the perpetration of them. + + + +CHAPTER VI +CONCERNING THE CRIME OF INCEST, AND THE ABUSE OF CHURCHES BY SUCCESSION +AND PARTICIPATION + + +THE crime of incest hath so much prevailed, not only among the higher, +but among the lower orders of this people, that, not having the fear of +God before their eyes, they are not ashamed of intermarrying with their +relations, even in the third degree of consanguinity. They generally +abuse these dispensations with a view of appeasing those enmities which +so often subsist between them, because “their feet are swift to shed +blood;” and from their love of high descent, which they so ardently +affect and covet, they unite themselves to their own people, refusing to +intermarry with strangers, and arrogantly presuming on their own +superiority of blood and family. They do not engage in marriage, until +they have tried, by previous cohabitation, the disposition, and +particularly the fecundity, of the person with whom they are engaged. An +ancient custom also prevails of hiring girls from their parents at a +certain price, and a stipulated penalty, in case of relinquishing their +connection. + +Their churches have almost as many parsons and sharers as there are +principal men in the parish. The sons, after the decease of their +fathers, succeed to the ecclesiastical benefices, not by election, but by +hereditary right possessing and polluting the sanctuary of God. And if a +prelate should by chance presume to appoint or institute any other +person, the people would certainly revenge the injury upon the institutor +and the instituted. With respect to these two excesses of incest and +succession, which took root formerly in Armorica, and are not yet +eradicated, Ildebert, bishop of Le Mans, in one of his epistles, says, +“that he was present with a British priest at a council summoned with a +view of putting an end to the enormities of this nation:” hence it +appears that these vices have for a long time prevailed both in Britany +and Britain. The words of the Psalmist may not inaptly be applied to +them; “They are corrupt and become abominable in their doings, there is +none that doeth good, no, not one: they are all gone out of the way, they +are altogether become abominable,” etc. + + + +CHAPTER VII +OF THEIR SINS, AND THE CONSEQUENT LOSS OF BRITAIN AND OF TROY + + +MOREOVER, through their sins, and particularly that detestable and wicked +vice of Sodom, as well as by divine vengeance, they lost Britain as they +formerly lost Troy. For we read in the Roman history, that the emperor +Constantine having resigned the city and the Western empire to the +blessed Sylvester and his successors, with an intention of rebuilding +Troy, and there establishing the chief seat of the Eastern Empire, heard +a voice, saying, “Dost thou go to rebuild Sodom?” upon which, he altered +his intention, turned his ships and standards towards Byzantium, and +there fixing his seat of empire, gave his own propitious name to the +city. The British history informs us, that Mailgon, king of the Britons, +and many others, were addicted to this vice; that enormity, however, had +entirely ceased for so long a time, that the recollection of it was +nearly worn out. But since that, as if the time of repentance was almost +expired, and because the nation, by its warlike successes and acquisition +of territory, has in our times unusually increased in population and +strength, they boast in their turn, and most confidently and unanimously +affirm, that in a short time their countrymen shall return to the island, +and, according to the prophecies of Merlin, the nation, and even the +name, of foreigners, shall be extinguished in the island, and the Britons +shall exult again in their ancient name and privileges. But to me it +appears far otherwise; for since + + “Luxuriant animi rebus plerumque secundis, + Nec facile est æqua commoda mente pati;” + +And because + + “Non habet unde suum paupertas pascat amorem, . . . + Divitiis alitur luxuriosus amor.” + +So that their abstinence from that vice, which in their prosperity they +could not resist, may be attributed more justly to their poverty and +state of exile than to their sense of virtue. For they cannot be said to +have repented, when we see them involved in such an abyss of vices, +perjury, theft, robbery, rapine, murders, fratricides, adultery, and +incest, and become every day more entangled and ensnared in evil-doing; +so that the words of the prophet Hosea may be truly applied to them, +“There is no truth, nor mercy,” etc. + +Other matters of which they boast are more properly to be attributed to +the diligence and activity of the Norman kings than to their own merits +or power. For previous to the coming of the Normans, when the English +kings contented themselves with the sovereignty of Britain alone, and +employed their whole military force in the subjugation of this people, +they almost wholly extirpated them; as did king Offa, who by a long and +extensive dyke separated the British from the English; Ethelfrid also, +who demolished the noble city of Legions, {197} and put to death the +monks of the celebrated monastery at Banchor, who had been called in to +promote the success of the Britons by their prayers; and lastly Harold, +who himself on foot, with an army of light-armed infantry, and conforming +to the customary diet of the country, so bravely penetrated through every +part of Wales, that he scarcely left a man alive in it; and as a memorial +of his signal victories many stones may be found in Wales bearing this +inscription:—“HIC VICTOR FUIT HAROLDUS”—“HERE HAROLD CONQUERED.” {198} + +To these bloody and recent victories of the English may be attributed the +peaceable state of Wales during the reigns of the three first Norman +kings; when the nation increased in population, and being taught the use +of arms and the management of horses by the English and Normans (with +whom they had much intercourse, by following the court, or by being sent +as hostages), took advantage of the necessary attention which the three +succeeding kings were obliged to pay to their foreign possessions, and +once more lifting up their crests, recovered their lands, and spurned the +yoke that had formerly been imposed upon them. + + + +CHAPTER VIII +IN WHAT MANNER THIS NATION IS TO BE OVERCOME + + +THE prince who would wish to subdue this nation, and govern it peaceably, +must use this method. He must be determined to apply a diligent and +constant attention to this purpose for one year at least; for a people +who with a collected force will not openly attack the enemy in the field, +nor wait to be besieged in castles, is not to be overcome at the first +onset, but to be worn out by prudent delay and patience. Let him divide +their strength, and by bribes and promises endeavour to stir up one +against the other, knowing the spirit of hatred and envy which generally +prevails amongst them; and in the autumn let not only the marches, but +also the interior part of the country be strongly fortified with castles, +provisions, and confidential families. In the meantime the purchase of +corn, cloth, and salt, with which they are usually supplied from England, +should be strictly interdicted; and well-manned ships placed as a guard +on the coast, to prevent their importation of these articles from Ireland +or the Severn sea, and to facilitate the supply of his own army. +Afterwards, when the severity of winter approaches, when the trees are +void of leaves, and the mountains no longer afford pasturage—when they +are deprived of any hopes of plunder, and harassed on every side by the +repeated attacks of the enemy—let a body of light-armed infantry +penetrate into their woody and mountainous retreats, and let these troops +be supported and relieved by others; and thus by frequent changes, and +replacing the men who are either fatigued or slain in battle, this nation +may be ultimately subdued; nor can it be overcome without the above +precautions, nor without great danger and loss of men. Though many of +the English hired troops may perish in a day of battle, money will +procure as many or more on the morrow for the same service; but to the +Welsh, who have neither foreign nor stipendiary troops, the loss is for +the time irreparable. In these matters, therefore, as an artificer is to +be trusted in his trade, so attention is to be paid to the counsel of +those who, having been long conversant in similar concerns, are become +acquainted with the manners and customs of their country, and whom it +greatly interests, that an enemy, for whom during long and frequent +conflicts they have contracted an implacable hatred, should by their +assistance be either weakened or destroyed. Happy should I have termed +the borders of Wales inhabited by the English, if their kings, in the +government of these parts, and in their military operations against the +enemy, had rather employed the marchers and barons of the country, than +adopted the counsels and policy of the people of Anjou and the Normans. +In this, as well as in every other military expedition, either in Ireland +or in Wales, the natives of the marches, from the constant state of +warfare in which they are engaged, and whose manners are formed from the +habits of war, are bold and active, skilful on horseback, quick on foot, +not nice as to their diet, and ever prepared when necessity requires to +abstain both from corn and wine. By such men were the first hostile +attacks made upon Wales as well as Ireland, and by such men alone can +their final conquest be accomplished. For the Flemings, Normans, +Coterells, and Bragmans, are good and well-disciplined soldiers in their +own country; but the Gallic soldiery is known to differ much from the +Welsh and Irish. In their country the battle is on level, here on rough +ground; there in an open field, here in forests; there they consider +their armour as an honour, here as a burden; there soldiers are taken +prisoners, here they are beheaded; there they are ransomed, here they are +put to death. Where, therefore, the armies engage in a flat country, a +heavy and complex armour, made of cloth and iron, both protects and +decorates the soldier; but when the engagement is in narrow defiles, in +woods or marshes, where the infantry have the advantage over the cavalry, +a light armour is preferable. For light arms afford sufficient +protection against unarmed men, by whom victory is either lost or won at +the first onset; where it is necessary that an active and retreating +enemy should be overcome by a certain proportional quantity of moderate +armour; whereas with a more complex sort, and with high and curved +saddles, it is difficult to dismount, more so to mount, and with the +greatest difficulty can such troops march, if required, with the +infantry. In order, therefore, that + + “Singula quæque locum teneant sortita decenter,” + +we maintain it is necessary to employ heavy-armed and strong troops +against men heavily armed, depending entirely upon their natural +strength, and accustomed to fight in an open plain; but against +light-armed and active troops, who prefer rough ground, men accustomed to +such conflicts, and armed in a similar manner, must be employed. But let +the cities and fortresses on the Severn, and the whole territory on its +western banks towards Wales, occupied by the English, as well as the +provinces of Shropshire and Cheshire, which are protected by powerful +armies, or by any other special privileges and honourable independence, +rejoice in the provident bounty of their prince. There should be a +yearly examination of the warlike stores, of the arms, and horses, by +good and discreet men deputed for that purpose, and who, not intent on +its plunder and ruin, interest themselves in the defence and protection +of their country. By these salutary measures, the soldiers, citizens, +and the whole mass of the people, being instructed and accustomed to the +use of arms, liberty may be opposed by liberty, and pride be checked by +pride. For the Welsh, who are neither worn out by laborious burdens, nor +molested by the exactions of their lords, are ever prompt to avenge an +injury. Hence arise their distinguished bravery in the defence of their +country; hence their readiness to take up arms and to rebel. Nothing so +much excites, encourages, and invites the hearts of men to probity as the +cheerfulness of liberty; nothing so much dejects and dispirits them as +the oppression of servitude. This portion of the kingdom, protected by +arms and courage, might be of great use to the prince, not only in these +or the adjacent parts, but, if necessity required, in more remote +regions; and although the public treasury might receive a smaller annual +revenue from these provinces, yet the deficiency would be abundantly +compensated by the peace of the kingdom and the honour of its sovereign; +especially as the heavy and dangerous expenses of one military expedition +into Wales usually amount to the whole income among from the revenues of +the province. + + + +CHAPTER IX +IN WHAT MANNER WALES, WHEN CONQUERED, SHOULD BE GOVERNED + + +AS therefore this nation is to be subdued by resolution in the manner +proposed, so when subdued, its government must be directed by moderation, +according to the following plan. Let the care of it be committed to a +man of a firm and determined mind; who during the time of peace, by +paying due obedience to the laws, and respect to the government, may +render it firm and stable. For like other nations in a barbarous state, +this people, although they are strangers to the principles of honour, yet +above all things desire to be honoured; and approve and respect in others +that truth which they themselves do not profess. Whenever the natural +inconstancy of their indisposition shall induce them to revolt, let +punishment instantly follow the offence; but when they shall have +submitted themselves again to order, and made proper amends for their +faults (as it is the custom of bad men to remember wrath after quarrels), +let their former transgression be overlooked, and let them enjoy security +and respect, as long as they continue faithful. Thus, by mild treatment +they will be invited to obedience and the love of peace, and the thought +of certain punishment will deter them from rash attempts. We have often +observed persons who, confounding these matters, by complaining of +faults, depressing for services, flattering in war, plundering in peace, +despoiling the weak, paying respect to revolters, by thus rendering all +things confused, have at length been confounded themselves. Besides, as +circumstances which are foreseen do less mischief, and as that state is +happy which thinks of war in the time of peace, let the wise man be upon +his guard, and prepared against the approaching inconveniences of war, by +the construction of forts, the widening of passes through woods, and the +providing of a trusty household. For those who are cherished and +sustained during the time of peace, are more ready to come forward in +times of danger, and are more confidently to be depended upon; and as a +nation unsubdued ever meditates plots under the disguise of friendship, +let not the prince or his governor entrust the protection of his camp or +capital to their fidelity. By the examples of many remarkable men, some +of whom have been cruelly put to death, and others deprived of their +castles and dignities, through their own neglect and want of care, we may +see, that the artifices of a crafty and subdued nation are much more to +be dreaded than their open warfare; their good-will than their anger, +their honey than their gall, their malice than their attack, their +treachery than their aggression, and their pretended friendship more than +their open enmity. A prudent and provident man therefore should +contemplate in the misfortune of others what he ought himself to avoid; +correction taught by example is harmless, as Ennodius {203} says: “The +ruin of predecessors instructs those who succeed; and a former +miscarriage becomes a future caution.” If a well-disposed prince should +wish these great designs to be accomplished without the effusion of +blood, the marches, as we before mentioned, must be put into a state of +defence on all sides, and all intercourse by sea and land interdicted; +some of the Welsh may be stirred up to deadly feuds, by means of +stipends, and by transferring the property of one person to another; and +thus worn out with hunger, and a want of the necessaries of life, and +harassed by frequent murders and implacable enmities, they will at last +be compelled to surrender. + +There are three things which ruin this nation, and prevent its enjoying +the satisfaction of a fruitful progeny. First, because both the natural +and legitimate sons endeavour to divide the paternal inheritance amongst +themselves; from which cause, as we have before observed, continual +fratricides take place. Secondly, because the education of their sons is +committed to the care of the high-born people of the country, who, on the +death of their fathers, endeavour by all possible means to exalt their +pupil; from whence arise murders, conflagrations, and almost a total +destruction of the country. And, thirdly, because from the pride and +obstinacy of their disposition, they will not (like other nations) +subject themselves to the dominion of one lord and king. + + + +CHAPTER X +IN WHAT MANNER THIS NATION MAY RESIST AND REVOLT + + +HAVING hitherto so partially and elaborately spoken in favour of the +English, and being equally connected by birth with each nation, justice +demands that we should argue on both sides; let us therefore, at the +close of our work, turn our attention towards the Welsh, and briefly, but +effectually, instruct them in the art of resistance. If the Welsh were +more commonly accustomed to the Gallic mode of arming, and depended more +on steady fighting than on their agility; if their princes were unanimous +and inseparable in their defence; or rather, if they had only one prince, +and that a good one; this nation situated in so powerful, strong, and +inaccessible a country, could hardly ever be completely overcome. If, +therefore, they would be inseparable, they would become insuperable, +being assisted by these three circumstances; a country well defended by +nature, a people both contented and accustomed to live upon little, a +community whose nobles as well as privates are instructed in the use of +arms; and especially as the English fight for power, the Welsh for +liberty; the one to procure gain, the other to avoid loss; the English +hirelings for money, the Welsh patriots for their country. The English, +I say, fight in order to expel the natural inhabitants from the island, +and secure to themselves the possession of the whole; but the Welsh +maintain the conflict, that they, who have so long enjoyed the +sovereignty of the whole kingdom, may at least find a hiding place in the +worst corner of it, amongst woods and marshes; and, banished, as it were, +for their offences, may there in a state of poverty, for a limited time, +perform penance for the excesses they committed in the days of their +prosperity. For the perpetual remembrance of their former greatness, the +recollection of their Trojan descent, and the high and continued majesty +of the kingdom of Britain, may draw forth many a latent spark of +animosity, and encourage the daring spirit of rebellion. Hence during +the military expedition which king Henry II. made in our days against +South Wales, an old Welshman at Pencadair, who had faithfully adhered to +him, being desired to give his opinion about the royal army, and whether +he thought that of the rebels would make resistance, and what would be +the final event of this war, replied, “This nation, O king, may now, as +in former times, be harassed, and in a great measure weakened and +destroyed by your and other powers, and it will often prevail by its +laudable exertions; but it can never be totally subdued through the wrath +of man, unless the wrath of God shall concur. Nor do I think, that any +other nation than this of Wales, or any other language, whatever may +hereafter come to pass, shall, in the day of severe examination before +the Supreme Judge, answer for this corner of the earth.” + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{155a} Port Gordber, written _Gordwr_ by Humphrey Lhwyd in his Breviary +of Britain, probably a corruption from Gorddyar, a roaring, applied to +the sea, as Gorddyar môr, the roaring of the sea. + +{155b} The harbour, now known by the name of Portscwit, (and recorded in +the Triads as one of the three passages or ferries in the Isle of +Britain), is situated on the Welsh side of the Bristol channel, at a +short distance from the lower passage. + +{155c} Port Mawr, or the large port, is thus mentioned by Leland in his +Itinerary, tom. v. pp. 28, 29:—“About a mile of is Port Mawre, where is a +great sande with a shorte estuary into the lande. And sum say that there +hath beene a castel at or aboute Port Mawr, but the tokens be not very +evidente.” + +{155d} Rhyd-helyg, or the Ford of the Willow.—I imagine this place is +Walford in Herefordshire, near the banks of the river Wye. + +{156} Brutus, according to the fable, in his way to Britain, met with a +company of Trojans, who had fled from Troy with Antenor and Corinæus at +their head, who submitted themselves to Brutus, and joined his company; +which Corinæus, being a very valiant man, rendered great service to +Brutus during his wars in Gaul and Britain; in return for which, Brutus, +having subdued the island, and divided it amongst his people, gave +Cornwall to Corinæus, who, as it is said, called it after his own name, +Cernyw. + +{157a} Uchelwyr, so called from _Uchel_, high, and _gwr_, a man. + +{157b} This assertion is unfounded, if we give credit to the Welsh +Chronicle, which dates the death of Cadell in 907, and that of Anarawdin +in 913. [Howell Dda, the son of Cadell, reunited Wales under one +sovereign.] + +{158a} B.M.—This abbreviation, which in every manuscript I have seen of +Giraldus has been construed into _Beatam Mariam_, and in many of them is +written _Beatam Virginem_, may with much greater propriety be applied to +_Belinus Magnus_, or Beli the Great, a distinguished British King, to +whom most of the British pedigrees ascended; and because his name +occurred so frequently in them it was often written short, B.M., which +some men, by mistake, interpret _Beata Maria_.—(Sir R. C. H.) + +{158b} Aberfraw, a small town at the conflux of the river Fraw and the +sea, on the S.W. part of the isle of Anglesey, and twelve miles S.E. of +Holyhead. + +{159a} A great lordship in Herefordshire, including the district between +Hereford and Monmouth, bordering on the river Wye. + +{159b} Book ii. chapter i. + +{162a} Book ii. c. 4. + +{162b} If by the mountains of Eryri we are to understand the Snowdonian +range of hills, our author has not been quite accurate in fixing the +source of the river Dovy, which rises between Dynas-y-mowddu and Bala +Lake, to the southward of Mount Arran: from whence it pursues its course +to Mallwyd, and Machynlleth, below which place it becomes an estuary, and +the boundary between North and South Wales. + +{162c} Our author is again incorrect in stating that the river Maw +forms, by its course, the two tracts of sands called Traeth Mawr and +Traeth Bychan. This river, from which Barmouth derives the name of +Abermaw, and to which Giraldus, in the fifth chapter of the second book +of his Itinerary, has given the epithet of _bifurcus_, runs far to the +southward of either of the Traeths. The Traeth Mawr, or large sands, are +formed by the impetuous torrents which descend from Snowdon by +Beddgelert, and pass under the Devil’s Bridge at Pont Aberglasllyn, so +called from the river Glasllyn; and the Traeth Bychan, or little sands, +are formed by numerous streams which unite themselves in the vale of +Festiniog, and become an æstuary near the village of Maentwrog. + +{165a} Better known as Geoffrey of Monmouth. + +{165b} The Anglo-Saxons called the Britons _Wealhas_, from a word in +their own language, which signified literally foreigners; and hence we +derive the modern name Welsh. + +{168} The Peak, in Derbyshire. + +{169a} Sir R. C. Hoare has altogether misunderstood the original here. +It was the custom in the middle ages to place the guests at table in +pairs, and each two persons ate out of one plate. Each couple was a +_mess_. At a later period, among the great the mess consisted of four +persons; but it appears that in Wales, at this time, it was formed of +three guests. + +{169b} “Bread, called _Lagana_, was, I suppose, the sort of household +bread, or thin cake baked on an iron plate, called a griddle (_gradell_), +still common in Caermarthenshire, and called _Bara Llech_ and _Bara +Llechan_, or griddle bread, from being so baked.”—Owen. “_Laganum_, a +fritter or pancake, _Baranyiod_.”—_Lluyd_, _Archaiology_, p. 75. + +{170} _Brychan_, in Lhuyd’s Archaiology and Cornish Grammar, is spelt +Bryccan, and interpreted a blanket. + +{171} “Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod cæruleum efficit +colorem, atque hoc horridore sunt in pugna adspectu; capilloque sunt +promisso, atque omni parte corporis rasa, præter caput et labrum +superius.”—_Cæsar de Bello Gallico_, cap. 13, 14. + +{172} This instrument is generally supposed to have been the origin of +the violin, which was not commonly known in England till the reign of +Charles I. Before this time the crwth was not probably confined to the +Principality, from the name of _Crowdero_ in Hudibras; as also from a +fiddler being still called a _crowder_ in some parts of England, though +he now plays on a violin instead of a crwth. + +{173} These Welsh lines quoted by Giraldus are selected from two +different stanzas of moral verses, called Eglynion y Clywed, the +composition of some anonymous bard; or probably the work of several: + + “A glyweisti a gant Dywyneg, + Milwr doeth detholedig; + Digawn Duw da i unig? + + “Hast thou heard what was sung by Dywynic? + A wise and chosen warrior; + God will effect solace to the orphan. + + “A glyweisti a gant Anarawd? + Milwr doniawg did lawd; + Rhaid wrth anmhwyll pwyll parawd. + + “Hast thou heard what was sung by Anarawd? + A warrior endowed with many gifts; + With want of sense ready wit is necessary.” + +Or, as Giraldus quotes it, + + “Wrth bob crybwll rhaid pwyll parawd.” + + “With every hint ready wit is necessary.” + + _Myvyvrian Archaiology_, page 172. + +{179} Awenydhion, in a literal sense, means persons inspired by the +Muse, and is derived from Awen and Awenydd, a poetical rapture, or the +gift of poetry. It was the appellation of the disciples, or candidates +for the Bardic Order; but the most general acceptation of the word was, +Poets, or Bards. + +{183} Genealogies were preserved as a principle of necessity under the +ancient British constitution. A man’s pedigree was in reality his title +deed, by which he claimed his birthright in the country. Every one was +obliged to show his descent through nine generations, in order to be +acknowledged a free native, and by this right he claimed his portion of +land in the community. He was affected with respect to legal process in +his collateral affinities through nine degrees. For instance, every +murder committed had a fine levied on the relations of the murderer, +divided into nine degrees; his brother paying the greatest, and the ninth +in affinity the least. This fine was distributed in the same way among +the relatives of the victim. A person past the ninth descent formed a +new family. Every family was represented by its elder; and these elders +from every family were delegates to the national council.—_Owen_. + +{184} The _naviculæ_ mentioned by Giraldus bear the modern name of +_coracles_, and are much used on the Welsh rivers for the taking of +salmon. Their name is derived probably from the Celtic word _corawg_, +which signifies a _ship_. They are mentioned by the ancient writers. + +{197} By the city of Legions Chester is here meant, not Caerleon. + +{198} Of the stones inscribed “HIC VICTOR FUIT HAROLDUS”—“HERE HAROLD +CONQUERED,” no original, I believe, remains extant; but at the village of +Trelech, in Monmouthshire, there is a modern pedestal bearing the above +inscription.—See the description and engraving in Coxe’s Monmouthshire, +p. 234. + +{203} In one MS. of Giraldus in the British Museum, this name is written +Ovidius. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESCRIPTION OF WALES*** + + +******* This file should be named 1092-0.txt or 1092-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/9/1092 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1093-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1093-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..af6cb79e --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1093-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,178 @@ + + + + + +404 | Project Gutenberg + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + +
+ +
+ +
+
+ + + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+
+ +
+ About Project Gutenberg + Contact Us + History & Philosophy + Kindle & eReaders + Help Pages + Offline Catalogs + Donate +
+
+ +
+ Frequently Downloaded + Main Categories + Reading Lists + Search Options +
+
+ +
+ Frequently Downloaded + Main Categories +
+
+
+ +

Error 404

+ +

Sorry, but our website does not have the page you requested.

+ +

Maybe you have just a wrong url. Go to www.gutenberg.org to see whether the error persists.

+ +

If you think something is broken, follow the “Contact Information” link at the bottom of this page if you would like to report it.

+ + +
+
+
+ + + ibiblio + +
+ + + diff --git a/final_project/gutenberg_books/1094-0.txt b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1094-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fc689967 --- /dev/null +++ b/final_project/gutenberg_books/1094-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4270 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1094 *** + +TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT, + +IN TWO PARTS. + +This is Part I. + +By Christopher Marlowe + +Edited By The Rev. Alexander Dyce. + + +TRANSCRIBER'S COMMENTS ON THE PREPARATION OF THE E-TEXT: + + +SQUARE BRACKETS: + +The square brackets, i.e. [ ] are copied from the printed book, +without change, except that the stage directions usually do not +have closing brackets. These have been added. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +For this E-Text version of the book, the footnotes have been +consolidated at the end of the play. + +Numbering of the footnotes has been changed, and each footnote +is given a unique identity in the form [XXX]. + + +CHANGES TO THE TEXT: + +Character names were expanded. For Example, TAMBURLAINE was +TAMB., ZENOCRATE was ZENO., etc. + + +GREEK: +One word, appearing in note 115, was printed in Greek Characters. +This word has been transliterated as <>. + + + + Tamburlaine the Great. Who, from a Scythian Shephearde + by his rare and woonderfull Conquests, became a most + puissant and mightye Monarque. And (for his tyranny, + and terrour in Warre) was tearmed, The Scourge of God. + Deuided into two Tragicall Discourses, as they were + sundrie times shewed vpon Stages in the Citie of London. + By the right honorable the Lord Admyrall, his seruauntes. + Now first, and newlie published. London. Printed by + Richard Ihones: at the signe of the Rose and Crowne + neere Holborne Bridge. 1590. 4to. + +The above title-page is pasted into a copy of the FIRST PART OF +TAMBURLAINE in the Library at Bridge-water House; which copy, +excepting that title-page and the Address to the Readers, is the +impression of 1605. I once supposed that the title-pages which +bear the dates 1605 and 1606 (see below) had been added to the +4tos of the TWO PARTS of the play originally printed in 1590; +but I am now convinced that both PARTS were really reprinted, +THE FIRST PART in 1605, and THE SECOND PART in 1606, and that +nothing remains of the earlier 4tos, except the title-page and +the Address to the Readers, which are preserved in the Bridge- +water collection. + +In the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is an 8vo edition of both PARTS +OF TAMBURLAINE, dated 1590: the title-page of THE FIRST PART +agrees verbatim with that given above; the half-title-page of +THE SECOND PART is as follows; + + The Second Part of The bloody Conquests of mighty + Tamburlaine. With his impassionate fury, for the death + of his Lady and loue faire Zenocrate; his fourme of + exhortacion and discipline to his three sons, and the + maner of his own death. + +In the Garrick Collection, British Museum, is an 8vo edition of +both PARTS dated 1592: the title-page of THE FIRST PART runs +thus; + + Tamburlaine the Great. Who, from a Scythian Shepheard, + by his rare and wonderfull Conquestes, became a most + puissant and mightie Mornarch [sic]: And (for his + tyrannie, and terrour in warre) was tearmed, The Scourge + of God. The first part of the two Tragicall discourses, + as they were sundrie times most stately shewed vpon + Stages in the Citie of London. By the right honorable + the Lord Admirall, his seruauntes. Now newly published. + Printed by Richard Iones, dwelling at the signe of the + Rose and Crowne neere Holborne Bridge. + +The half-title-page of THE SECOND PART agrees exactly with that +already given. Perhaps the 8vo at Oxford and that in the British +Museum (for I have not had an opportunity of comparing them) are +the same impression, differing only in the title-pages. + +Langbaine (ACCOUNT OF ENGL. DRAM. POETS, p. 344) mentions an 8vo +dated 1593. + +The title-pages of the latest impressions of THE TWO PARTS are +as follows; + + Tamburlaine the Greate. Who, from the state of a + Shepheard in Scythia, by his rare and wonderfull + Conquests, became a most puissant and mighty Monarque. + London Printed for Edward White, and are to be solde + at the little North doore of Saint Paules-Church, at + the signe of the Gunne, 1605. 4to. + + Tamburlaine the Greate. With his impassionate furie, + for the death of his Lady and Loue fair Zenocrate: his + forme of exhortation and discipline to his three Sonnes, + and the manner of his owne death. The second part. + London Printed by E. A. for Ed. White, and are to be + solde at his Shop neere the little North doore of Saint + Paules Church at the Signe of the Gun. 1606. 4to. + +The text of the present edition is given from the 8vo of 1592, +collated with the 4tos of 1605-6. + + + + +TO THE GENTLEMEN-READERS [1] AND OTHERS THAT TAKE PLEASURE +IN READING HISTORIES. [2] + +Gentlemen and courteous readers whosoever: I have here published +in print, for your sakes, the two tragical discourses of the +Scythian shepherd Tamburlaine, that became so great a conqueror +and so mighty a monarch. My hope is, that they will be now no +less acceptable unto you to read after your serious affairs and +studies than they have been lately delightful for many of you to +see when the same were shewed in London upon stages. I have +purposely omitted and left out some fond [3] and frivolous +gestures, +digressing, and, in my poor opinion, far unmeet for the matter, +which I thought might seem more tedious unto the wise than any +way else to be regarded, though haply they have been of some +vain-conceited fondlings greatly gaped at, what time they were +shewed upon the stage in their graced deformities: nevertheless +now to be mixtured in print with such matter of worth, it would +prove a great disgrace to so honourable and stately a history. +Great folly were it in me to commend unto your wisdoms either the +eloquence of the author that writ them or the worthiness of the +matter itself. I therefore leave unto your learned censures [4] +both the one and the other, and myself the poor printer of them +unto your most courteous and favourable protection; which if you +vouchsafe to accept, you shall evermore bind me to employ what +travail and service I can to the advancing and pleasuring of your +excellent degree. + Yours, most humble at commandment, + R[ichard] J[ones], printer. + + + +THE FIRST PART OF TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT. + + + + +THE PROLOGUE. + + From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits, + And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, + We'll lead you to the stately tent of war, + Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine + Threatening the world with high astounding terms, + And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword. + View but his picture in this tragic glass, + And then applaud his fortunes as you please. + + + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE. + + MYCETES, king of Persia. + COSROE, his brother. + MEANDER, ] + THERIDAMAS, ] + ORTYGIUS, ] Persian lords. + CENEUS, ] + MENAPHON, ] + TAMBURLAINE, a Scythian shepherd. + TECHELLES, ] + USUMCASANE, ] his followers. + BAJAZETH, emperor of the Turks. + KING OF FEZ. + KING OF MOROCCO. + KING OF ARGIER. + KING OF ARABIA. + SOLDAN OF EGYPT. + GOVERNOR OF DAMASCUS. + AGYDAS, ] + MAGNETES, ] Median lords. + CAPOLIN, an Egyptian. + PHILEMUS, Bassoes, Lords, Citizens, Moors, Soldiers, and + Attendants. + + ZENOCRATE, daughter to the Soldan of Egypt. + ANIPPE, her maid. + ZABINA, wife to BAJAZETH. + EBEA, her maid. + Virgins of Damascus. + + + + +THE FIRST PART OF TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT. + + + + +ACT I. + + + + +SCENE I. + + Enter MYCETES, COSROE, MEANDER, THERIDAMAS, ORTYGIUS, + CENEUS, MENAPHON, with others. + + MYCETES. Brother Cosroe, I find myself agriev'd; + Yet insufficient to express the same, + For it requires a great and thundering speech: + Good brother, tell the cause unto my lords; + I know you have a better wit than I. + + COSROE. Unhappy Persia,--that in former age + Hast been the seat of mighty conquerors, + That, in their prowess and their policies, + Have triumph'd over Afric, [5] and the bounds + Of Europe where the sun dares scarce appear + For freezing meteors and congealed cold,-- + Now to be rul'd and govern'd by a man + At whose birth-day Cynthia with Saturn join'd, + And Jove, the Sun, and Mercury denied + To shed their [6] influence in his fickle brain! + Now Turks and Tartars shake their swords at thee, + Meaning to mangle all thy provinces. + + MYCETES. Brother, I see your meaning well enough, + And through [7] your planets I perceive you think + I am not wise enough to be a king: + But I refer me to my noblemen, + That know my wit, and can be witnesses. + I might command you to be slain for this,-- + Meander, might I not? + + MEANDER. Not for so small a fault, my sovereign lord. + + MYCETES. I mean it not, but yet I know I might.-- + Yet live; yea, live; Mycetes wills it so.-- + Meander, thou, my faithful counsellor, + Declare the cause of my conceived grief, + Which is, God knows, about that Tamburlaine, + That, like a fox in midst of harvest-time, + Doth prey upon my flocks of passengers; + And, as I hear, doth mean to pull my plumes: + Therefore 'tis good and meet for to be wise. + + MEANDER. Oft have I heard your majesty complain + Of Tamburlaine, that sturdy Scythian thief, + That robs your merchants of Persepolis + Trading by land unto the Western Isles, + And in your confines with his lawless train + Daily commits incivil [8] outrages, + Hoping (misled by dreaming prophecies) + To reign in Asia, and with barbarous arms + To make himself the monarch of the East: + But, ere he march in Asia, or display + His vagrant ensign in the Persian fields, + Your grace hath taken order by Theridamas, + Charg'd with a thousand horse, to apprehend + And bring him captive to your highness' throne. + + MYCETES. Full true thou speak'st, and like thyself, my lord, + Whom I may term a Damon for thy love: + Therefore 'tis best, if so it like you all, + To send my thousand horse incontinent [9] + To apprehend that paltry Scythian. + How like you this, my honourable lords? + Is it not a kingly resolution? + + COSROE. It cannot choose, because it comes from you. + + MYCETES. Then hear thy charge, valiant Theridamas, + The chiefest [10] captain of Mycetes' host, + The hope of Persia, and the very legs + Whereon our state doth lean as on a staff, + That holds us up and foils our neighbour foes: + Thou shalt be leader of this thousand horse, + Whose foaming gall with rage and high disdain + Have sworn the death of wicked Tamburlaine. + Go frowning forth; but come thou smiling home, + As did Sir Paris with the Grecian dame: + Return with speed; time passeth swift away; + Our life is frail, and we may die to-day. + + THERIDAMAS. Before the moon renew her borrow'd light, + Doubt not, my lord and gracious sovereign, + But Tamburlaine and that Tartarian rout [11] + Shall either perish by our warlike hands, + Or plead for mercy at your highness' feet. + + MYCETES. Go, stout Theridamas; thy words are swords, + And with thy looks thou conquerest all thy foes. + I long to see thee back return from thence, + That I may view these milk-white steeds of mine + All loaden with the heads of killed men, + And, from their knees even to their hoofs below, + Besmear'd with blood that makes a dainty show. + + THERIDAMAS. Then now, my lord, I humbly take my leave. + + MYCETES. Theridamas, farewell ten thousand times. + + [Exit THERIDAMAS.] + + Ah, Menaphon, why stay'st thou thus behind, + When other men press [12] forward for renown? + Go, Menaphon, go into Scythia, + And foot by foot follow Theridamas. + + COSROE. Nay, pray you, [13] let him stay; a greater [task] + Fits Menaphon than warring with a thief: + Create him pro-rex of all [14] Africa, + That he may win the Babylonians' hearts, + Which will revolt from Persian government, + Unless they have a wiser king than you. + + MYCETES. Unless they have a wiser king than you! + These are his words; Meander, set them down. + + COSROE. And add this to them,--that all Asia + Lament to see the folly of their king. + + MYCETES. Well, here I swear by this my royal seat-- + + COSROE. You may do well to kiss it, then. + + MYCETES. Emboss'd with silk as best beseems my state, + To be reveng'd for these contemptuous words! + O, where is duty and allegiance now? + Fled to the Caspian or the Ocean main? + What shall I call thee? brother? no, a foe; + Monster of nature, shame unto thy stock, + That dar'st presume thy sovereign for to mock!-- + Meander, come: I am abus'd, Meander. + + [Exeunt all except COSROE and MENAPHON.] + + MENAPHON. How now, my lord! what, mated [15] and amaz'd + To hear the king thus threaten like himself! + + COSROE. Ah, Menaphon, I pass not [16] for his threats! + The plot is laid by Persian noblemen + And captains of the Median garrisons + To crown me emperor of Asia: + But this it is that doth excruciate + The very substance of my vexed soul, + To see our neighbours, that were wont to quake + And tremble at the Persian monarch's name, + Now sit and laugh our regiment [17] to scorn; + And that which might resolve [18] me into tears, + Men from the farthest equinoctial line + Have swarm'd in troops into the Eastern India, + Lading their ships [19] with gold and precious stones, + And made their spoils from all our provinces. + + MENAPHON. This should entreat your highness to rejoice, + Since Fortune gives you opportunity + To gain the title of a conqueror + By curing of this maimed empery. + Afric and Europe bordering on your land, + And continent to your dominions, + How easily may you, with a mighty host, + Pass [20] into Graecia, as did Cyrus once, + And cause them to withdraw their forces home, + Lest you [21] subdue the pride of Christendom! + + [Trumpet within.] + + COSROE. But, Menaphon, what means this trumpet's sound? + + MENAPHON. Behold, my lord, Ortygius and the rest + Bringing the crown to make you emperor! + + Re-enter ORTYGIUS and CENEUS, [22] with others, bearing a + crown. + + ORTYGIUS. Magnificent and mighty prince Cosroe, + We, in the name of other Persian states [23] + And commons of this mighty monarchy, + Present thee with th' imperial diadem. + + CENEUS. The warlike soldiers and the gentlemen, + That heretofore have fill'd Persepolis + With Afric captains taken in the field, + Whose ransom made them march in coats of gold, + With costly jewels hanging at their ears, + And shining stones upon their lofty crests, + Now living idle in the walled towns, + Wanting both pay and martial discipline, + Begin in troops to threaten civil war, + And openly exclaim against their [24] king: + Therefore, to stay all sudden mutinies, + We will invest your highness emperor; + Whereat the soldiers will conceive more joy + Than did the Macedonians at the spoil + Of great Darius and his wealthy host. + + COSROE. Well, since I see the state of Persia droop + And languish in my brother's government, + I willingly receive th' imperial crown, + And vow to wear it for my country's good, + In spite of them shall malice my estate. + + ORTYGIUS. And, in assurance of desir'd success, + We here do crown thee monarch of the East [;] + Emperor of Asia and Persia; [25] + Great lord of Media and Armenia; + Duke of Africa and Albania, + Mesopotamia and of Parthia, + East India and the late-discover'd isles; + Chief lord of all the wide vast Euxine Sea, + And of the ever-raging [26] Caspian Lake. + + ALL. [27] Long live Cosroe, mighty emperor! + + COSROE. And Jove may [28] never let me longer live + Than I may seek to gratify your love, + And cause the soldiers that thus honour me + To triumph over many provinces! + By whose desires of discipline in arms + I doubt not shortly but to reign sole king, + And with the army of Theridamas + (Whither we presently will fly, my lords,) + To rest secure against my brother's force. + + ORTYGIUS. We knew, [29] my lord, before we brought the crown, + Intending your investion so near + The residence of your despised brother, + The lords [30] would not be too exasperate + To injury [31] or suppress your worthy title; + Or, if they would, there are in readiness + Ten thousand horse to carry you from hence, + In spite of all suspected enemies. + + COSROE. I know it well, my lord, and thank you all. + + ORTYGIUS. Sound up the trumpets, then. + + [Trumpets sounded.] + + ALL. [32] God save the king! + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +SCENE II. + + Enter TAMBURLAINE leading ZENOCRATE, TECHELLES, USUMCASANE, + AGYDAS, MAGNETES, LORDS, and SOLDIERS loaden with treasure. + + TAMBURLAINE. Come, lady, let not this appal your thoughts; + The jewels and the treasure we have ta'en + Shall be reserv'd, and you in better state + Than if you were arriv'd in Syria, + Even in the circle of your father's arms, + The mighty Soldan of Aegyptia. + + ZENOCRATE. Ah, shepherd, pity my distressed plight! + (If, as thou seem'st, thou art so mean a man,) + And seek not to enrich thy followers + By lawless rapine from a silly maid, + Who, travelling [33] with these Median lords + To Memphis, from my uncle's country of Media, + Where, all my youth, I have been governed, + Have pass'd the army of the mighty Turk, + Bearing his privy-signet and his hand + To safe-conduct us thorough [34] Africa. + + MAGNETES. And, since we have arriv'd in Scythia, + Besides rich presents from the puissant Cham, + We have his highness' letters to command + Aid and assistance, if we stand in need. + + TAMBURLAINE. But now you see these letters and commands + Are countermanded by a greater man; + And through my provinces you must expect + Letters of conduct from my mightiness, + If you intend to keep your treasure safe. + But, since I love to live at liberty, + As easily may you get the Soldan's crown + As any prizes out of my precinct; + For they are friends that help to wean my state + Till men and kingdoms help to strengthen it, + And must maintain my life exempt from servitude.-- + But, tell me, madam, is your grace betroth'd? + + ZENOCRATE. I am, my lord,--for so you do import. + + TAMBURLAINE. I am a lord, for so my deeds shall prove; + And yet a shepherd by my parentage. + But, lady, this fair face and heavenly hue + Must grace his bed that conquers Asia, + And means to be a terror to the world, + Measuring the limits of his empery + By east and west, as Phoebus doth his course.-- + Lie here, ye weeds, that I disdain to wear! + This complete armour and this curtle-axe + Are adjuncts more beseeming Tamburlaine.-- + And, madam, whatsoever you esteem + Of this success, and loss unvalued, [35] + Both may invest you empress of the East; + And these that seem but silly country swains + May have the leading of so great an host + As with their weight shall make the mountains quake, + Even as when windy exhalations, + Fighting for passage, tilt within the earth. + + TECHELLES. As princely lions, when they rouse themselves, + Stretching their paws, and threatening herds of beasts, + So in his armour looketh Tamburlaine. + Methinks I see kings kneeling at his feet, + And he with frowning brows and fiery looks + Spurning their crowns from off their captive heads. + + USUMCASANE. And making thee and me, Techelles, kings, + That even to death will follow Tamburlaine. + + TAMBURLAINE. Nobly resolv'd, sweet friends and followers! + These lords perhaps do scorn our estimates, + And think we prattle with distemper'd spirits: + But, since they measure our deserts so mean, + That in conceit [36] bear empires on our spears, + Affecting thoughts coequal with the clouds, + They shall be kept our forced followers + Till with their eyes they view us emperors. + + ZENOCRATE. The gods, defenders of the innocent. + Will never prosper your intended drifts, + That thus oppress poor friendless passengers. + Therefore at least admit us liberty, + Even as thou hop'st to be eternized + By living Asia's mighty emperor. + + AGYDAS. I hope our lady's treasure and our own + May serve for ransom to our liberties: + Return our mules and empty camels back, + That we may travel into Syria, + Where her betrothed lord, Alcidamus, + Expects the arrival of her highness' person. + + MAGNETES. And wheresoever we repose ourselves, + We will report but well of Tamburlaine. + + TAMBURLAINE. Disdains Zenocrate to live with me? + Or you, my lords, to be my followers? + Think you I weigh this treasure more than you? + Not all the gold in India's wealthy arms + Shall buy the meanest soldier in my train. + Zenocrate, lovelier than the love of Jove, + Brighter than is the silver Rhodope, [37] + Fairer than whitest snow on Scythian hills, + Thy person is more worth to Tamburlaine + Than the possession of the Persian crown, + Which gracious stars have promis'd at my birth. + A hundred Tartars shall attend on thee, + Mounted on steeds swifter than Pegasus; + Thy garments shall be made of Median silk, + Enchas'd with precious jewels of mine own, + More rich and valurous [38] than Zenocrate's; + With milk-white harts upon an ivory sled + Thou shalt be drawn amidst the frozen pools, [39] + And scale the icy mountains' lofty tops, + Which with thy beauty will be soon resolv'd: [40] + My martial prizes, with five hundred men, + Won on the fifty-headed Volga's waves, + Shall we all offer [41] to Zenocrate, + And then myself to fair Zenocrate. + + TECHELLES. What now! in love? + + TAMBURLAINE. Techelles, women must be flattered: + But this is she with whom I am in [42] love. + + Enter a SOLDIER. + + SOLDIER. News, news! + + TAMBURLAINE. How now! what's the matter? + + SOLDIER. A thousand Persian horsemen are at hand, + Sent from the king to overcome us all. + + TAMBURLAINE. How now, my lords of Egypt, and Zenocrate! + Now must your jewels be restor'd again, + And I, that triumph'd [43] so, be overcome? + How say you, lordings? is not this your hope? + + AGYDAS. We hope yourself will willingly restore them. + + TAMBURLAINE. Such hope, such fortune, have the thousand horse. + Soft ye, my lords, and sweet Zenocrate! + You must be forced from me ere you go.-- + A thousand horsemen! we five hundred foot! + An odds too great for us to stand against. + But are they rich? and is their armour good! + + SOLDIER. Their plumed helms are wrought with beaten gold, + Their swords enamell'd, and about their necks + Hang massy chains of gold down to the waist; + In every part exceeding brave [44] and rich. + + TAMBURLAINE. Then shall we fight courageously with them? + Or look you I should play the orator? + + TECHELLES. No; cowards and faint-hearted runaways + Look for orations when the foe is near: + Our swords shall play the orators for us. + + USUMCASANE. Come, let us meet them at the mountain-top, [45] + And with a sudden and an hot alarum + Drive all their horses headlong down the hill. + + TECHELLES. Come, let us march. + + TAMBURLAINE. Stay, Techelles; ask a parle first. + + The SOLDIERS enter. + + Open the mails, [46] yet guard the treasure sure: + Lay out our golden wedges to the view, + That their reflections may amaze the Persians; + And look we friendly on them when they come: + But, if they offer word or violence, + We'll fight, five hundred men-at-arms to one, + Before we part with our possession; + And 'gainst the general we will lift our swords, + And either lance [47] his greedy thirsting throat, + Or take him prisoner, and his chain shall serve + For manacles till he be ransom'd home. + + TECHELLES. I hear them come: shall we encounter them? + + TAMBURLAINE. Keep all your standings, and not stir a foot: + Myself will bide the danger of the brunt. + + Enter THERIDAMAS with others. + + THERIDAMAS. Where is this [48] Scythian Tamburlaine? + + TAMBURLAINE. Whom seek'st thou, Persian? I am Tamburlaine. + + THERIDAMAS. Tamburlaine! + A Scythian shepherd so embellished + With nature's pride and richest furniture! + His looks do menace heaven and dare the gods; + His fiery eyes are fix'd upon the earth, + As if he now devis'd some stratagem, + Or meant to pierce Avernus' darksome vaults [49] + To pull the triple-headed dog from hell. + + TAMBURLAINE. Noble and mild this Persian seems to be, + If outward habit judge the inward man. + + TECHELLES. His deep affections make him passionate. + + TAMBURLAINE. With what a majesty he rears his looks!-- + In thee, thou valiant man of Persia, + I see the folly of thy [50] emperor. + Art thou but captain of a thousand horse, + That by characters graven in thy brows, + And by thy martial face and stout aspect, + Deserv'st to have the leading of an host? + Forsake thy king, and do but join with me, + And we will triumph over all the world: + I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains, + And with my hand turn Fortune's wheel about; + And sooner shall the sun fall from his sphere + Than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome. + Draw forth thy sword, thou mighty man-at-arms, + Intending but to raze my charmed skin, + And Jove himself will stretch his hand from heaven + To ward the blow, and shield me safe from harm. + See, how he rains down heaps of gold in showers, + As if he meant to give my soldiers pay! + And, as a sure and grounded argument + That I shall be the monarch of the East, + He sends this Soldan's daughter rich and brave, [51] + To be my queen and portly emperess. + If thou wilt stay with me, renowmed [52] man, + And lead thy thousand horse with my conduct, + Besides thy share of this Egyptian prize, + Those thousand horse shall sweat with martial spoil + Of conquer'd kingdoms and of cities sack'd: + Both we will walk upon the lofty cliffs; [53] + And Christian merchants, [54] that with Russian stems [55] + Plough up huge furrows in the Caspian Sea, + Shall vail [56] to us as lords of all the lake; + Both we will reign as consuls of the earth, + And mighty kings shall be our senators. + Jove sometime masked in a shepherd's weed; + And by those steps that he hath scal'd the heavens + May we become immortal like the gods. + Join with me now in this my mean estate, + (I call it mean, because, being yet obscure, + The nations far-remov'd admire me not,) + And when my name and honour shall be spread + As far as Boreas claps his brazen wings, + Or fair Bootes [57] sends his cheerful light, + Then shalt thou be competitor [58] with me, + And sit with Tamburlaine in all his majesty. + + THERIDAMAS. Not Hermes, prolocutor to the gods, + Could use persuasions more pathetical. + + TAMBURLAINE. Nor are Apollo's oracles more true + Than thou shalt find my vaunts substantial. + + TECHELLES. We are his friends; and, if the Persian king + Should offer present dukedoms to our state, + We think it loss to make exchange for that + We are assur'd of by our friend's success. + + USUMCASANE. And kingdoms at the least we all expect, + Besides the honour in assured conquests, + Where kings shall crouch unto our conquering swords, + And hosts of soldiers stand amaz'd at us, + When with their fearful tongues they shall confess, + These are the men that all the world admires. + + THERIDAMAS. What strong enchantments tice my yielding soul + To these [59] resolved, noble Scythians! + But shall I prove a traitor to my king? + + TAMBURLAINE. No; but the trusty friend of Tamburlaine. + + THERIDAMAS. Won with thy words, and conquer'd with thy looks, + I yield myself, my men, and horse to thee, + To be partaker of thy good or ill, + As long as life maintains Theridamas. + + TAMBURLAINE. Theridamas, my friend, take here my hand, + Which is as much as if I swore by heaven, + And call'd the gods to witness of my vow. + Thus shall my heart be still combin'd with thine + Until our bodies turn to elements, + And both our souls aspire celestial thrones.-- + Techelles and Casane, welcome him. + + TECHELLES. Welcome, renowmed [60] Persian, to us all! + + USUMCASANE. Long may Theridamas remain with us! + + TAMBURLAINE. These are my friends, in whom I more rejoice + Than doth the king of Persia in his crown; + And, by the love of Pylades and Orestes, + Whose statues [61] we adore in Scythia, + Thyself and them shall never part from me + Before I crown you kings [62] in Asia. + Make much of them, gentle Theridamas, + And they will never leave thee till the death. + + THERIDAMAS. Nor thee nor them, [63] thrice-noble Tamburlaine, + Shall want my heart to be with gladness pierc'd, + To do you honour and security. + + TAMBURLAINE. A thousand thanks, worthy Theridamas.-- + And now, fair madam, and my noble lords, + If you will [64] willingly remain with me, + You shall have honours as your merits be; + Or else you shall be forc'd with slavery. + + AGYDAS. We yield unto thee, happy Tamburlaine. + + TAMBURLAINE. For you, then, madam, I am out of doubt. + + ZENOCRATE. I must be pleas'd perforce,--wretched Zenocrate! + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +ACT II. + + + + +SCENE I. + + Enter COSROE, MENAPHON, ORTYGIUS, and CENEUS, with SOLDIERS. + + COSROE. Thus far are we towards Theridamas, + And valiant Tamburlaine, the man of fame, + The man that in the forehead of his fortune + Bears figures of renown and miracle. + But tell me, that hast seen him, Menaphon, + What stature wields he, and what personage? + + MENAPHON. Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned, + Like his desire, lift upwards and divine; + So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit, + Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear + Old Atlas' burden; 'twixt his manly pitch, [65] + A pearl more worth than all the world is plac'd, + Wherein by curious sovereignty of art + Are fix'd his piercing instruments of sight, + Whose fiery circles bear encompassed + A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres, + That guides his steps and actions to the throne + Where honour sits invested royally; + Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion, + Thirsting with sovereignty and [66] love of arms; + His lofty brows in folds do figure death, + And in their smoothness amity and life; + About them hangs a knot of amber hair, + Wrapped in curls, as fierce Achilles' was, + On which the breath of heaven delights to play, + Making it dance with wanton majesty; + His arms and fingers long and sinewy, [67] + Betokening valour and excess of strength;-- + In every part proportion'd like the man + Should make the world subdu'd [68] to Tamburlaine. + + COSROE. Well hast thou pourtray'd in thy terms of life + The face and personage of a wondrous man: + Nature doth strive with Fortune [69] and his stars + To make him famous in accomplish'd worth; + And well his merits shew him to be made + His fortune's master and the king of men, + That could persuade, at such a sudden pinch, + With reasons of his valour and his life, + A thousand sworn and overmatching foes. + Then, when our powers in points of swords are join'd, + And clos'd in compass of the killing bullet, + Though strait the passage and the port [70] be made + That leads to palace of my brother's life, + Proud is [71] his fortune if we pierce it not; + And, when the princely Persian diadem + Shall overweigh his weary witless head, + And fall, like mellow'd fruit, with shakes of death, + In fair [72] Persia noble Tamburlaine + Shall be my regent, and remain as king. + + ORTYGIUS. In happy hour we have set the crown + Upon your kingly head, that seeks our honour + In joining with the man ordain'd by heaven + To further every action to the best. + + CENEUS. He that with shepherds and a little spoil + Durst, in disdain of wrong and tyranny, + Defend his freedom 'gainst a monarchy, + What will he do supported by a king, + Leading a troop of gentlemen and lords, + And stuff'd with treasure for his highest thoughts! + + COSROE. And such shall wait on worthy Tamburlaine. + Our army will be forty thousand strong, + When Tamburlaine and brave Theridamas + Have met us by the river Araris; + And all conjoin'd to meet the witless king, + That now is marching near to Parthia, + And, with unwilling soldiers faintly arm'd, + To seek revenge on me and Tamburlaine; + To whom, sweet Menaphon, direct me straight. + + MENAPHON. I will, my lord. + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +SCENE II. + + Enter MYCETES, MEANDER, with other LORDS; and SOLDIERS. + + MYCETES. Come, my Meander, let us to this gear. + I tell you true, my heart is swoln with wrath + On this same thievish villain Tamburlaine, + And of [73] that false Cosroe, my traitorous brother. + Would it not grieve a king to be so abus'd, + And have a thousand horsemen ta'en away? + And, which is worse, [74] to have his diadem + Sought for by such scald knaves as love him not? + I think it would: well, then, by heavens I swear, + Aurora shall not peep out of her doors, + But I will have Cosroe by the head, + And kill proud Tamburlaine with point of sword. + Tell you the rest, Meander: I have said. + + MEANDER. Then, having pass'd Armenian deserts now, + And pitch'd our tents under the Georgian hills, + Whose tops are cover'd with Tartarian thieves, + That lie in ambush, waiting for a prey, + What should we do but bid them battle straight, + And rid the world of those detested troops? + Lest, if we let them linger here a while, + They gather strength by power of fresh supplies. + This country swarms with vile outragious men + That live by rapine and by lawless spoil, + Fit soldiers for the [75] wicked Tamburlaine; + And he that could with gifts and promises + Inveigle him that led a thousand horse, + And make him false his faith unto his [76] king, + Will quickly win such as be [77] like himself. + Therefore cheer up your minds; prepare to fight: + He that can take or slaughter Tamburlaine, + Shall rule the province of Albania; + Who brings that traitor's head, Theridamas, + Shall have a government in Media, + Beside [78] the spoil of him and all his train: + But, if Cosroe (as our spials say, + And as we know) remains with Tamburlaine, + His highness' pleasure is that he should live, + And be reclaim'd with princely lenity. + + Enter a SPY. + + SPY. An hundred horsemen of my company, + Scouting abroad upon these champion [79] plains, + Have view'd the army of the Scythians; + Which make report it far exceeds the king's. + + MEANDER. Suppose they be in number infinite, + Yet being void of martial discipline, + All running headlong, greedy after [80] spoils, + And more regarding gain than victory, + Like to the cruel brothers of the earth, + Sprung [81] of the teeth of [82] dragons venomous, + Their careless swords shall lance [83] their fellows' throats, + And make us triumph in their overthrow. + + MYCETES. Was there such brethren, sweet Meander, say, + That sprung of teeth of dragons venomous? + + MEANDER. So poets say, my lord. + + MYCETES. And 'tis a pretty toy to be a poet. + Well, well, Meander, thou art deeply read; + And having thee, I have a jewel sure. + Go on, my lord, and give your charge, I say; + Thy wit will make us conquerors to-day. + + MEANDER. Then, noble soldiers, to entrap these thieves + That live confounded in disorder'd troops, + If wealth or riches may prevail with them, + We have our camels laden all with gold, + Which you that be but common soldiers + Shall fling in every corner of the field; + And, while the base-born Tartars take it up, + You, fighting more for honour than for gold, + Shall massacre those greedy-minded slaves; + And, when their scatter'd army is subdu'd, + And you march on their slaughter'd carcasses, + Share equally the gold that bought their lives, + And live like gentlemen in Persia. + Strike up the [84] drum, and march courageously: + Fortune herself doth sit upon our crests. + + MYCETES. He tells you true, my masters; so he does.-- + Drums, why sound ye not when Meander speaks? + + [Exeunt, drums sounding.] + + + + +SCENE III. + + Enter COSROE, TAMBURLAINE, THERIDAMAS, TECHELLES, + USUMCASANE, + and ORTYGIUS, with others. + + COSROE. Now, worthy Tamburlaine, have I repos'd + In thy approved fortunes all my hope. + What think'st thou, man, shall come of our attempts? + For, even as from assured oracle, + I take thy doom for satisfaction. + + TAMBURLAINE. And so mistake you not a whit, my lord; + For fates and oracles [of] heaven have sworn + To royalize the deeds of Tamburlaine, + And make them blest that share in his attempts: + And doubt you not but, if you favour me, + And let my fortunes and my valour sway + To some [85] direction in your martial deeds, + The world will [86] strive with hosts of men-at-arms + To swarm unto the ensign I support. + The host of Xerxes, which by fame is said + To drink the mighty Parthian Araris, + Was but a handful to that we will have: + Our quivering lances, shaking in the air, + And bullets, like Jove's dreadful thunderbolts, + Enroll'd in flames and fiery smouldering mists, + Shall threat the gods more than Cyclopian wars; + And with our sun-bright armour, as we march, + We'll chase the stars from heaven, and dim their eyes + That stand and muse at our admired arms. + + THERIDAMAS. You see, my lord, what working words he hath; + But, when you see his actions top [87] his speech, + Your speech will stay, or so extol his worth + As I shall be commended and excus'd + For turning my poor charge to his direction: + And these his two renowmed [88] friends, my lord, + Would make one thirst [89] and strive to be retain'd + In such a great degree of amity. + + TECHELLES. With duty and [90] with amity we yield + Our utmost service to the fair [91] Cosroe. + + COSROE. Which I esteem as portion of my crown. + Usumcasane and Techelles both, + When she [92] that rules in Rhamnus' [93] golden gates, + And makes a passage for all prosperous arms, + Shall make me solely emperor of Asia, + Then shall your meeds [94] and valours be advanc'd + To rooms of honour and nobility. + + TAMBURLAINE. Then haste, Cosroe, to be king alone, + That I with these my friends and all my men + May triumph in our long-expected fate. + The king, your brother, is now hard at hand: + Meet with the fool, and rid your royal shoulders + Of such a burden as outweighs the sands + And all the craggy rocks of Caspia. + + Enter a MESSENGER. + + MESSENGER. My lord, + We have discovered the enemy + Ready to charge you with a mighty army. + + COSROE. Come, Tamburlaine; now whet thy winged sword, + And lift thy lofty arm into [95] the clouds, + That it may reach the king of Persia's crown, + And set it safe on my victorious head. + + TAMBURLAINE. See where it is, the keenest curtle-axe + That e'er made passage thorough Persian arms! + These are the wings shall make it fly as swift + As doth the lightning or the breath of heaven, + And kill as sure [96] as it swiftly flies. + + COSROE. Thy words assure me of kind success: + Go, valiant soldier, go before, and charge + The fainting army of that foolish king. + + TAMBURLAINE. Usumcasane and Techelles, come: + We are enow to scare the enemy, + And more than needs to make an emperor. + + [Exeunt to the battle.] + + + + +SCENE IV. + + Enter MYCETES with his crown in his hand. [97] + + MYCETES. Accurs'd be he that first invented war! + They knew not, ah, they knew not, simple men, + How those were [98] hit by pelting cannon-shot + Stand staggering [99] like a quivering aspen-leaf + Fearing the force of Boreas' boisterous blasts! + In what a lamentable case were I, + If nature had not given me wisdom's lore! + For kings are clouts that every man shoots at, + Our crown the pin [100] that thousands seek to cleave: + Therefore in policy I think it good + To hide it close; a goodly stratagem, + And far from any man that is a fool: + So shall not I be known; or if I be, + They cannot take away my crown from me. + Here will I hide it in this simple hole. + + Enter TAMBURLAINE. + + TAMBURLAINE. What, fearful coward, straggling from the camp, + When kings themselves are present in the field? + + MYCETES. Thou liest. + + TAMBURLAINE. Base villain, darest thou give me [101] the lie? + + MYCETES. Away! I am the king; go; touch me not. + Thou break'st the law of arms, unless thou kneel, + And cry me "mercy, noble king!" + + TAMBURLAINE. Are you the witty king of Persia? + + MYCETES. Ay, marry, [102] am I: have you any suit to me? + + TAMBURLAINE. I would entreat you to speak but three wise words. + + MYCETES. So I can when I see my time. + + TAMBURLAINE. Is this your crown? + + MYCETES. Ay: didst thou ever see a fairer? + + TAMBURLAINE. You will not sell it, will you? + + MYCETES. Such another word, and I will have thee executed. Come, + give it me. + + TAMBURLAINE. No; I took it prisoner. + + MYCETES. You lie; I gave it you. + + TAMBURLAINE. Then 'tis mine. + + MYCETES. No; I mean I let you keep it. + + TAMBURLAINE. Well, I mean you shall have it again. + Here, take it for a while: I lend it thee, + Till I may see thee hemm'd with armed men; + Then shalt thou see me pull it from thy head: + Thou art no match for mighty Tamburlaine. + + [Exit.] + + MYCETES. O gods, is this Tamburlaine the thief? + I marvel much he stole it not away. + + [Trumpets within sound to the battle: he runs out.] + + + + +SCENE V. + + Enter COSROE, TAMBURLAINE, MENAPHON, MEANDER, ORTYGIUS, + THERIDAMAS, TECHELLES, USUMCASANE, with others. + + TAMBURLAINE. Hold thee, Cosroe; wear two imperial crowns; + Think thee invested now as royally, + Even by the mighty hand of Tamburlaine, + As if as many kings as could encompass thee + With greatest pomp had crown'd thee emperor. + + COSROE. So do I, thrice-renowmed man-at-arms; [103] + And none shall keep the crown but Tamburlaine: + Thee do I make my regent of Persia, + And general-lieutenant of my armies.-- + Meander, you, that were our brother's guide, + And chiefest [104] counsellor in all his acts, + Since he is yielded to the stroke of war, + On your submission we with thanks excuse, + And give you equal place in our affairs. + + MEANDER. Most happy [105] emperor, in humblest terms + I vow my service to your majesty, + With utmost virtue of my faith and duty. + + COSROE. Thanks, good Meander.--Then, Cosroe, reign, + And govern Persia in her former pomp. + Now send embassage to thy neighbour kings, + And let them know the Persian king is chang'd, + From one that knew not what a king should do, + To one that can command what 'longs thereto. + And now we will to fair Persepolis + With twenty thousand expert soldiers. + The lords and captains of my brother's camp + With little slaughter take Meander's course, + And gladly yield them to my gracious rule.-- + Ortygius and Menaphon, my trusty friends, + Now will I gratify your former good, + And grace your calling with a greater sway. + + ORTYGIUS. And as we ever aim'd [106] at your behoof, + And sought your state all honour it [107] deserv'd, + So will we with our powers and our [108] lives + Endeavour to preserve and prosper it. + + COSROE. I will not thank thee, sweet Ortygius; + Better replies shall prove my purposes.-- + And now, Lord Tamburlaine, my brother's camp + I leave to thee and to Theridamas, + To follow me to fair Persepolis; + Then will we [109] march to all those Indian mines + My witless brother to the Christians lost, + And ransom them with fame and usury: + And, till thou overtake me, Tamburlaine, + (Staying to order all the scatter'd troops,) + Farewell, lord regent and his happy friends. + I long to sit upon my brother's throne. + + MEANDER. Your majesty shall shortly have your wish, + And ride in triumph through Persepolis. + + [Exeunt all except TAMBURLAINE, THERIDAMAS, TECHELLES, and + USUMCASANE.] + + TAMBURLAINE. And ride in triumph through Persepolis!-- + Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles?-- + Usumcasane and Theridamas, + Is it not passing brave to be a king, + And ride in triumph through Persepolis? + + TECHELLES. O, my lord, it is sweet and full of pomp! + + USUMCASANE. To be a king is half to be a god. + + THERIDAMAS. A god is not so glorious as a king: + I think the pleasure they enjoy in heaven, + Cannot compare with kingly joys in [110] earth;-- + To wear a crown enchas'd with pearl and gold, + Whose virtues carry with it life and death; + To ask and have, command and be obey'd; + When looks breed love, with looks to gain the prize,-- + Such power attractive shines in princes' eyes. + + TAMBURLAINE. Why, say, Theridamas, wilt thou be a king? + + THERIDAMAS. Nay, though I praise it, I can live without it. + + TAMBURLAINE. What say my other friends? will you be kings? + + TECHELLES. I, if I could, with all my heart, my lord. + + TAMBURLAINE. Why, that's well said, Techelles: so would I;-- + And so would you, my masters, would you not? + + USUMCASANE. What, then, my lord? + + TAMBURLAINE. Why, then, Casane, [111] shall we wish for aught + The world affords in greatest novelty, + And rest attemptless, faint, and destitute? + Methinks we should not. I am strongly mov'd, + That if I should desire the Persian crown, + I could attain it with a wondrous ease: + And would not all our soldiers soon consent, + If we should aim at such a dignity? + + THERIDAMAS. I know they would with our persuasions. + + TAMBURLAINE. Why, then, Theridamas, I'll first assay + To get the Persian kingdom to myself; + Then thou for Parthia; they for Scythia and Media; + And, if I prosper, all shall be as sure + As if the Turk, the Pope, Afric, and Greece, + Came creeping to us with their crowns a-piece. [112] + + TECHELLES. Then shall we send to this triumphing king, + And bid him battle for his novel crown? + + USUMCASANE. Nay, quickly, then, before his room be hot. + + TAMBURLAINE. 'Twill prove a pretty jest, in faith, my friends. + + THERIDAMAS. A jest to charge on twenty thousand men! + I judge the purchase [113] more important far. + + TAMBURLAINE. Judge by thyself, Theridamas, not me; + For presently Techelles here shall haste + To bid him battle ere he pass too far, + And lose more labour than the gain will quite: [114] + Then shalt thou see this [115] Scythian Tamburlaine + Make but a jest to win the Persian crown.-- + Techelles, take a thousand horse with thee, + And bid him turn him [116] back to war with us, + That only made him king to make us sport: + We will not steal upon him cowardly, + But give him warning and [117] more warriors: + Haste thee, Techelles; we will follow thee. + + [Exit TECHELLES.] + + What saith Theridamas? + + THERIDAMAS. Go on, for me. + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +SCENE VI. + + Enter COSROE, MEANDER, ORTYGIUS, and MENAPHON, with + SOLDIERS. + + COSROE. What means this devilish shepherd, to aspire + With such a giantly presumption, + To cast up hills against the face of heaven, + And dare the force of angry Jupiter? + But, as he thrust them underneath the hills, + And press'd out fire from their burning jaws, + So will I send this monstrous slave to hell, + Where flames shall ever feed upon his soul. + + MEANDER. Some powers divine, or else infernal, mix'd + Their angry seeds at his conception; + For he was never sprung [118] of human race, + Since with the spirit of his fearful pride, + He dares [119] so doubtlessly resolve of rule, + And by profession be ambitious. + + ORTYGIUS. What god, or fiend, or spirit of the earth, + Or monster turned to a manly shape, + Or of what mould or mettle he be made, + What star or fate [120] soever govern him, + Let us put on our meet encountering minds; + And, in detesting such a devilish thief, + In love of honour and defence of right, + Be arm'd against the hate of such a foe, + Whether from earth, or hell, or heaven he grow. + + COSROE. Nobly resolv'd, my good Ortygius; + And, since we all have suck'd one wholesome air, + And with the same proportion of elements + Resolve, [121] I hope we are resembled, + Vowing our loves to equal death and life. + Let's cheer our soldiers to encounter him, + That grievous image of ingratitude, + That fiery thirster after sovereignty, + And burn him in the fury of that flame + That none can quench but blood and empery. + Resolve, my lords and loving soldiers, now + To save your king and country from decay. + Then strike up, drum; and all the stars that make + The loathsome circle of my dated life, + Direct my weapon to his barbarous heart, + That thus opposeth him against the gods, + And scorns the powers that govern Persia! + + [Exeunt, drums sounding.] + + + + +SCENE VII. + + Alarms of battle within. Then enter COSROE wounded, + TAMBURLAINE, THERIDAMAS, TECHELLES, USUMCASANE, with others. + + COSROE. Barbarous [122] and bloody Tamburlaine, + Thus to deprive me of my crown and life!-- + Treacherous and false Theridamas, + Even at the morning of my happy state, + Scarce being seated in my royal throne, + To work my downfall and untimely end! + An uncouth pain torments my grieved soul; + And death arrests the organ of my voice, + Who, entering at the breach thy sword hath made, + Sacks every vein and artier [123] of my heart.-- + Bloody and insatiate Tamburlaine! + + TAMBURLAINE. The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown, + That caus'd the eldest son of heavenly Ops + To thrust his doting father from his chair, + And place himself in the empyreal heaven, + Mov'd me to manage arms against thy state. + What better precedent than mighty Jove? + Nature, that fram'd us of four elements + Warring within our breasts for regiment, [124] + Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds: + Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend + The wondrous architecture of the world, + And measure every wandering planet's course, + Still climbing after knowledge infinite, + And always moving as the restless spheres, + Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest, + Until we reach the ripest fruit [125] of all, + That perfect bliss and sole felicity, + The sweet fruition of an earthly crown. + + THERIDAMAS. And that made me to join with Tamburlaine; + For he is gross and like the massy earth + That moves not upwards, nor by princely deeds + Doth mean to soar above the highest sort. + + TECHELLES. And that made us, the friends of Tamburlaine, + To lift our swords against the Persian king. + + USUMCASANE. For as, when Jove did thrust old Saturn down, + Neptune and Dis gain'd each of them a crown, + So do we hope to reign in Asia, + If Tamburlaine be plac'd in Persia. + + COSROE. The strangest men that ever nature made! + I know not how to take their tyrannies. + My bloodless body waxeth chill and cold, + And with my blood my life slides through my wound; + My soul begins to take her flight to hell, + And summons all my senses to depart: + The heat and moisture, which did feed each other, + For want of nourishment to feed them both, + Are [126] dry and cold; and now doth ghastly Death + With greedy talents [127] gripe my bleeding heart, + And like a harpy [128] tires on my life.-- + Theridamas and Tamburlaine, I die: + And fearful vengeance light upon you both! + + [Dies.--TAMBURLAINE takes COSROE'S crown, and puts it on + his own head.] + + TAMBURLAINE. Not all the curses which the [129] Furies breathe + Shall make me leave so rich a prize as this. + Theridamas, Techelles, and the rest, + Who think you now is king of Persia? + + ALL. Tamburlaine! Tamburlaine! + + TAMBURLAINE. Though Mars himself, the angry god of arms, + And all the earthly potentates conspire + To dispossess me of this diadem, + Yet will I wear it in despite of them, + As great commander of this eastern world, + If you but say that Tamburlaine shall reign. + + ALL. Long live Tamburlaine, and reign in Asia! + + TAMBURLAINE. So; now it is more surer on my head + Than if the gods had held a parliament, + And all pronounc'd me king of Persia. + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +ACT III. + + + + +SCENE I. + + Enter BAJAZETH, the KINGS OF FEZ, MOROCCO, and ARGIER, with + others, in great pomp. + + BAJAZETH. Great kings of Barbary, and my portly bassoes, [130] + We hear the Tartars and the eastern thieves, + Under the conduct of one Tamburlaine, + Presume a bickering with your emperor, + And think to rouse us from our dreadful siege + Of the famous Grecian Constantinople. + You know our army is invincible; + As many circumcised Turks we have, + And warlike bands of Christians renied, [131] + As hath the ocean or the Terrene [132] sea + Small drops of water when the moon begins + To join in one her semicircled horns: + Yet would we not be brav'd with foreign power, + Nor raise our siege before the Grecians yield, + Or breathless lie before the city-walls. + + KING OF FEZ. Renowmed [133] emperor and mighty general, + What, if you sent the bassoes of your guard + To charge him to remain in Asia, + Or else to threaten death and deadly arms + As from the mouth of mighty Bajazeth? + + BAJAZETH. Hie thee, my basso, [134] fast to Persia; + Tell him thy lord, the Turkish emperor, + Dread lord of Afric, Europe, and Asia, + Great king and conqueror of Graecia, + The ocean, Terrene, and the Coal-black sea, + The high and highest monarch of the world, + Wills and commands, (for say not I entreat,) + Not [135] once to set his foot in [136] Africa, + Or spread [137] his colours in Graecia, + Lest he incur the fury of my wrath: + Tell him I am content to take a truce, + Because I hear he bears a valiant mind: + But if, presuming on his silly power, + He be so mad to manage arms with me, + Then stay thou with him,--say, I bid thee so; + And if, before the sun have measur'd heaven [138] + With triple circuit, thou regreet us not, + We mean to take his morning's next arise + For messenger he will not be reclaim'd, + And mean to fetch thee in despite of him. + + BASSO. Most great and puissant monarch of the earth, + Your basso will accomplish your behest, + And shew your pleasure to the Persian, + As fits the legate of the stately Turk. + + [Exit.] + + KING OF ARGIER. They say he is the king of Persia; + But, if he dare attempt to stir your siege, + 'Twere requisite he should be ten times more, + For all flesh quakes at your magnificence. + + BAJAZETH. True, Argier; and tremble[s] at my looks. + + KING OF MOROCCO. The spring is hinder'd by your smothering host; + For neither rain can fall upon the earth, + Nor sun reflex his virtuous beams thereon, + The ground is mantled with such multitudes. + + BAJAZETH. All this is true as holy Mahomet; + And all the trees are blasted with our breaths. + + KING OF FEZ. What thinks your greatness best to be achiev'd + In pursuit of the city's overthrow? + + BAJAZETH. I will the captive pioners [139] of Argier + Cut off the water that by leaden pipes + Runs to the city from the mountain Carnon; + Two thousand horse shall forage up and down, + That no relief or succour come by land; + And all the sea my galleys countermand: + Then shall our footmen lie within the trench, + And with their cannons, mouth'd like Orcus' gulf, + Batter the walls, and we will enter in; + And thus the Grecians shall be conquered. + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +SCENE II. + + Enter ZENOCRATE, AGYDAS, ANIPPE, with others. + + AGYDAS. Madam Zenocrate, may I presume + To know the cause of these unquiet fits + That work such trouble to your wonted rest? + 'Tis more than pity such a heavenly face + Should by heart's sorrow wax so wan and pale, + When your offensive rape by Tamburlaine + (Which of your whole displeasures should be most) + Hath seem'd to be digested long ago. + + ZENOCRATE. Although it be digested long ago, + As his exceeding favours have deserv'd, + And might content the Queen of Heaven, as well + As it hath chang'd my first-conceiv'd disdain; + Yet since a farther passion feeds my thoughts + With ceaseless [140] and disconsolate conceits, [141] + Which dye my looks so lifeless as they are, + And might, if my extremes had full events, + Make me the ghastly counterfeit [142] of death. + + AGYDAS. Eternal heaven sooner be dissolv'd, + And all that pierceth Phoebus' silver eye, + Before such hap fall to Zenocrate! + + ZENOCRATE. Ah, life and soul, still hover in his [143] breast, + And leave my body senseless as the earth, + Or else unite you [144] to his life and soul, + That I may live and die with Tamburlaine! + + Enter, behind, TAMBURLAINE, with TECHELLES, and others. + + AGYDAS. With Tamburlaine! Ah, fair Zenocrate, + Let not a man so vile and barbarous, + That holds you from your father in despite, + And keeps you from the honours of a queen, + (Being suppos'd his worthless concubine,) + Be honour'd with your love but for necessity! + So, now the mighty Soldan hears of you, + Your highness needs not doubt but in short time + He will, with Tamburlaine's destruction, + Redeem you from this deadly servitude. + + ZENOCRATE. Leave [145] to wound me with these words, + And speak of Tamburlaine as he deserves: + The entertainment we have had of him + Is far from villany or servitude, + And might in noble minds be counted princely. + + AGYDAS. How can you fancy one that looks so fierce, + Only dispos'd to martial stratagems? + Who, when he shall embrace you in his arms, + Will tell how many thousand men he slew; + And, when you look for amorous discourse, + Will rattle forth his facts [146] of war and blood, + Too harsh a subject for your dainty ears. + + ZENOCRATE. As looks the sun through Nilus' flowing stream, + Or when the Morning holds him in her arms, + So looks my lordly love, fair Tamburlaine; + His talk much [147] sweeter than the Muses' song + They sung for honour 'gainst Pierides, [148] + Or when Minerva did with Neptune strive: + And higher would I rear my estimate + Than Juno, sister to the highest god, + If I were match'd with mighty Tamburlaine. + + AGYDAS. Yet be not so inconstant in your love, + But let the young Arabian [149] live in hope, + After your rescue to enjoy his choice. + You see, though first the king of Persia, + Being a shepherd, seem'd to love you much, + Now, in his majesty, he leaves those looks, + Those words of favour, and those comfortings, + And gives no more than common courtesies. + + ZENOCRATE. Thence rise the tears that so distain my cheeks, + Fearing his love [150] through my unworthiness. + + [TAMBURLAINE goes to her, and takes her away lovingly by + the hand, looking wrathfully on AGYDAS, and says nothing. + Exeunt all except AGYDAS.] + + AGYDAS. Betray'd by fortune and suspicious love, + Threaten'd with frowning wrath and jealousy, + Surpris'd with fear of [151] hideous revenge, + I stand aghast; but most astonied + To see his choler shut in secret thoughts, + And wrapt in silence of his angry soul: + Upon his brows was pourtray'd ugly death; + And in his eyes the fury [152] of his heart, + That shone [153] as comets, menacing revenge, + And cast a pale complexion on his cheeks. + As when the seaman sees the Hyades + Gather an army of Cimmerian clouds, + (Auster and Aquilon with winged steeds, + All sweating, tilt about the watery heavens, + With shivering spears enforcing thunder-claps, + And from their shields strike flames of lightning,) + All-fearful folds his sails, and sounds the main, + Lifting his prayers to the heavens for aid + Against the terror of the winds and waves; + So fares Agydas for the late-felt frowns, + That send [154] a tempest to my daunted thoughts, + And make my soul divine her overthrow. + + Re-enter TECHELLES with a naked dagger, and USUMCASANE. + + TECHELLES. See you, Agydas, how the king salutes you! + He bids you prophesy what it imports. + + AGYDAS. I prophesied before, and now I prove + The killing frowns of jealousy and love. + He needed not with words confirm my fear, + For words are vain where working tools present + The naked action of my threaten'd end: + It says, Agydas, thou shalt surely die, + And of extremities elect the least; + More honour and less pain it may procure, + To die by this resolved hand of thine + Than stay the torments he and heaven have sworn. + Then haste, Agydas, and prevent the plagues + Which thy prolonged fates may draw on thee: + Go wander free from fear of tyrant's rage, + Removed from the torments and the hell + Wherewith he may excruciate thy soul; + And let Agydas by Agydas die, + And with this stab slumber eternally. + + [Stabs himself.] + + TECHELLES. Usumcasane, see, how right the man + Hath hit the meaning of my lord the king! + + USUMCASANE. Faith, and, Techelles, it was manly done; + And, since he was so wise and honourable, + Let us afford him now the bearing hence, + And crave his triple-worthy burial. + + TECHELLES. Agreed, Casane; we will honour him. + + [Exeunt, bearing out the body.] + + + + +SCENE III. + + Enter TAMBURLAINE, TECHELLES, USUMCASANE, THERIDAMAS, + a BASSO, ZENOCRATE, ANIPPE, with others. + + TAMBURLAINE. Basso, by this thy lord and master knows + I mean to meet him in Bithynia: + See, how he comes! tush, Turks are full of brags, + And menace [155] more than they can well perform. + He meet me in the field, and fetch [156] thee hence! + Alas, poor Turk! his fortune is too weak + T' encounter with the strength of Tamburlaine: + View well my camp, and speak indifferently; + Do not my captains and my soldiers look + As if they meant to conquer Africa? + + BASSO. Your men are valiant, but their number few, + And cannot terrify his mighty host: + My lord, the great commander of the world, + Besides fifteen contributory kings, + Hath now in arms ten thousand janizaries, + Mounted on lusty Mauritanian steeds, + Brought to the war by men of Tripoly; + Two hundred thousand footmen that have serv'd + In two set battles fought in Graecia; + And for the expedition of this war, + If he think good, can from his garrisons + Withdraw as many more to follow him. + + TECHELLES. The more he brings, the greater is the spoil; + For, when they perish by our warlike hands, + We mean to set [157] our footmen on their steeds, + And rifle all those stately janizars. + + TAMBURLAINE. But will those kings accompany your lord? + + BASSO. Such as his highness please; but some must stay + To rule the provinces he late subdu'd. + + TAMBURLAINE. [To his OFFICERS] + Then fight courageously: their crowns are yours; + This hand shall set them on your conquering heads, + That made me emperor of Asia. + + USUMCASANE. Let him bring millions infinite of men, + Unpeopling Western Africa and Greece, + Yet we assure us of the victory. + + THERIDAMAS. Even he, that in a trice vanquish'd two kings + More mighty than the Turkish emperor, + Shall rouse him out of Europe, and pursue + His scatter'd army till they yield or die. + + TAMBURLAINE. Well said, Theridamas! speak in that mood; + For WILL and SHALL best fitteth Tamburlaine, + Whose smiling stars give him assured hope + Of martial triumph ere he meet his foes. + I that am term'd the scourge and wrath of God, + The only fear and terror of the world, + Will first subdue the Turk, and then enlarge + Those Christian captives which you keep as slaves, + Burdening their bodies with your heavy chains, + And feeding them with thin and slender fare; + That naked row about the Terrene [158] sea, + And, when they chance to rest or breathe [159] a space, + Are punish'd with bastones [160] so grievously + That they [161] lie panting on the galleys' side, + And strive for life at every stroke they give. + These are the cruel pirates of Argier, + That damned train, the scum of Africa, + Inhabited with straggling runagates, + That make quick havoc of the Christian blood: + But, as I live, that town shall curse the time + That Tamburlaine set foot in Africa. + + Enter BAJAZETH, BASSOES, the KINGS OF FEZ, MOROCCO, + and ARGIER; ZABINA and EBEA. + + BAJAZETH. Bassoes and janizaries of my guard, + Attend upon the person of your lord, + The greatest potentate of Africa. + + TAMBURLAINE. Techelles and the rest, prepare your swords; + I mean t' encounter with that Bajazeth. + + BAJAZETH. Kings of Fez, Morocco, [162] and Argier, + He calls me Bajazeth, whom you call lord! + Note the presumption of this Scythian slave!-- + I tell thee, villain, those that lead my horse + Have to their names titles [163] of dignity; + And dar'st thou bluntly call me Bajazeth? + + TAMBURLAINE. And know, thou Turk, that those which lead my horse + Shall lead thee captive thorough Africa; + And dar'st thou bluntly call me Tamburlaine? + + BAJAZETH. By Mahomet my kinsman's sepulchre, + And by the holy Alcoran I swear, + He shall be made a chaste and lustless eunuch, + And in my sarell [164] tend my concubines; + And all his captains, that thus stoutly stand, + Shall draw the chariot of my emperess, + Whom I have brought to see their overthrow! + + TAMBURLAINE. By this my sword that conquer'd Persia, + Thy fall shall make me famous through the world! + I will not tell thee how I'll [165] handle thee, + But every common soldier of my camp + Shall smile to see thy miserable state. + + KING OF FEZ. What means the [166] mighty Turkish emperor, + To talk with one so base as Tamburlaine? + + KING OF MOROCCO. Ye Moors and valiant men of Barbary. + How can ye suffer these indignities? + + KING OF ARGIER. Leave words, and let them feel your lances' + points, + Which glided through the bowels of the Greeks. + + BAJAZETH. Well said, my stout contributory kings! + Your threefold army and my hugy [167] host + Shall swallow up these base-born Persians. + + TECHELLES. Puissant, renowm'd, [168] and mighty Tamburlaine, + Why stay we thus prolonging of [169] their lives? + + THERIDAMAS. I long to see those crowns won by our swords, + That we may rule [170] as kings of Africa. + + USUMCASANE. What coward would not fight for such a prize? + + TAMBURLAINE. Fight all courageously, and be you kings: + I speak it, and my words are oracles. + + BAJAZETH. Zabina, mother of three braver [171] boys + Than Hercules, that in his infancy + Did pash [172] the jaws of serpents venomous; + Whose hands are made to gripe a warlike lance, + Their shoulders broad for complete armour fit, + Their limbs more large and of a bigger size + Than all the brats y-sprung [173] from Typhon's loins; + Who, when they come unto their father's age, + Will batter turrets with their manly fists;-- + Sit here upon this royal chair of state, + And on thy head wear my imperial crown, + Until I bring this sturdy Tamburlaine + And all his captains bound in captive chains. + + ZABINA. Such good success happen to Bajazeth! + + TAMBURLAINE. Zenocrate, the loveliest maid alive, + Fairer than rocks of pearl and precious stone, + The only paragon of Tamburlaine; + Whose eyes are brighter than the lamps of heaven, + And speech more pleasant than sweet harmony; + That with thy looks canst clear the darken'd sky, + And calm the rage of thundering Jupiter; + Sit down by her, adorned with my crown, + As if thou wert the empress of the world. + Stir not, Zenocrate, until thou see + Me march victoriously with all my men, + Triumphing over him and these his kings, + Which I will bring as vassals to thy feet; + Till then, take thou my crown, vaunt of my worth, + And manage words with her, as we will arms. + + ZENOCRATE. And may my love, the king of Persia, + Return with victory and free from wound! + + BAJAZETH. Now shalt thou feel the force of Turkish arms, + Which lately made all Europe quake for fear. + I have of Turks, Arabians, Moors, and Jews, + Enough to cover all Bithynia: + Let thousands die; their slaughter'd carcasses + Shall serve for walls and bulwarks to the rest; + And as the heads of Hydra, so my power, + Subdu'd, shall stand as mighty as before: + If they should yield their necks unto the sword, + Thy soldiers' arms could not endure to strike + So many blows as I have heads for them. [174] + Thou know'st not, foolish-hardy Tamburlaine, + What 'tis to meet me in the open field, + That leave no ground for thee to march upon. + + TAMBURLAINE. Our conquering swords shall marshal us the way + We use to march upon the slaughter'd foe, + Trampling their bowels with our horses' hoofs, + Brave horses bred on the [175] white Tartarian hills + My camp is like to Julius Caesar's host, + That never fought but had the victory; + Nor in Pharsalia was there such hot war + As these, my followers, willingly would have. + Legions of spirits, fleeting in the air, + Direct our bullets and our weapons' points, + And make your strokes to wound the senseless light; [176] + And when she sees our bloody colours spread, + Then Victory begins to take her flight, + Resting herself upon my milk-white tent.-- + But come, my lords, to weapons let us fall; + The field is ours, the Turk, his wife, and all. + + [Exit with his followers.] + + BAJAZETH. Come, kings and bassoes, let us glut our swords, + That thirst to drink the feeble Persians' blood. + + [Exit with his followers.] + + ZABINA. Base concubine, must thou be plac'd by me + That am the empress of the mighty Turk? + + ZENOCRATE. Disdainful Turkess, and unreverend boss, [177] + Call'st thou me concubine, that am betroth'd + Unto the great and mighty Tamburlaine? + + ZABINA. To Tamburlaine, the great Tartarian thief! + + ZENOCRATE. Thou wilt repent these lavish words of thine + When thy great basso-master and thyself + Must plead for mercy at his kingly feet, + And sue to me to be your advocate. [178] + + ZABINA. And sue to thee! I tell thee, shameless girl, + Thou shalt be laundress to my waiting-maid.-- + How lik'st thou her, Ebea? will she serve? + + EBEA. Madam, she thinks perhaps she is too fine; + But I shall turn her into other weeds, + And make her dainty fingers fall to work. + + ZENOCRATE. Hear'st thou, Anippe, how thy drudge doth talk? + And how my slave, her mistress, menaceth? + Both for their sauciness shall be employ'd + To dress the common soldiers' meat and drink; + For we will scorn they should come near ourselves. + + ANIPPE. Yet sometimes let your highness send for them + To do the work my chambermaid disdains. + + [They sound to the battle within.] + + ZENOCRATE. Ye gods and powers that govern Persia, + And made my lordly love her worthy king, + Now strengthen him against the Turkish Bajazeth, + And let his foes, like flocks of fearful roes + Pursu'd by hunters, fly his angry looks, + That I may see him issue conqueror! + + ZABINA. Now, Mahomet, solicit God himself, + And make him rain down murdering shot from heaven, + To dash the Scythians' brains, and strike them dead, + That dare [179] to manage arms with him + That offer'd jewels to thy sacred shrine + When first he warr'd against the Christians! + + [They sound again to the battle within.] + + ZENOCRATE. By this the Turks lie weltering in their blood, + And Tamburlaine is lord of Africa. + + ZABINA. Thou art deceiv'd. I heard the trumpets sound + As when my emperor overthrew the Greeks, + And led them captive into Africa. + Straight will I use thee as thy pride deserves; + Prepare thyself to live and die my slave. + + ZENOCRATE. If Mahomet should come from heaven and swear + My royal lord is slain or conquered, + Yet should he not persuade me otherwise + But that he lives and will be conqueror. + + Re-enter BAJAZETH, pursued by TAMBURLAINE. [180] + + TAMBURLAINE. Now, king of bassoes, who is conqueror? + + BAJAZETH. Thou, by the fortune of this damned foil. [181] + + TAMBURLAINE. Where are your stout contributory kings? + + Re-enter TECHELLES, THERIDAMAS, and USUMCASANE. + + TECHELLES. We have their crowns; their bodies strow the field. + + TAMBURLAINE. Each man a crown! why, kingly fought, i'faith. + Deliver them into my treasury. + + ZENOCRATE. Now let me offer to my gracious lord + His royal crown again so highly won. + + TAMBURLAINE. Nay, take the Turkish crown from her, Zenocrate, + And crown me emperor of Africa. + + ZABINA. No, Tamburlaine; though now thou gat [182] the best, + Thou shalt not yet be lord of Africa. + + THERIDAMAS. Give her the crown, Turkess, you were best. + + [Takes it from her.] + + ZABINA. Injurious villains, thieves, runagates, + How dare you thus abuse my majesty? + + THERIDAMAS. Here, madam, you are empress; she is none. + + [Gives it to ZENOCRATE.] + + TAMBURLAINE. Not now, Theridamas; her time is past: + The pillars, that have bolster'd up those terms, + Are faln in clusters at my conquering feet. + + ZABINA. Though he be prisoner, he may be ransom'd. + + TAMBURLAINE. Not all the world shall ransom Bajazeth. + + BAJAZETH. Ah, fair Zabina! we have lost the field; + And never had the Turkish emperor + So great a foil by any foreign foe. + Now will the Christian miscreants be glad, + Ringing with joy their superstitious bells, + And making bonfires for my overthrow: + But, ere I die, those foul idolaters + Shall make me bonfires with their filthy bones; + For, though the glory of this day be lost, + Afric and Greece have garrisons enough + To make me sovereign of the earth again. + + TAMBURLAINE. Those walled garrisons will I subdue, + And write myself great lord of Africa: + So from the East unto the furthest West + Shall Tamburlaine extend his puissant arm. + The galleys and those pilling [183] brigandines, + That yearly sail to the Venetian gulf, + And hover in the Straits for Christians' wreck, + Shall lie at anchor in the Isle Asant, + Until the Persian fleet and men-of-war, + Sailing along the oriental sea, + Have fetch'd about the Indian continent, + Even from Persepolis to Mexico, + And thence unto the Straits of Jubalter; + Where they shall meet and join their force in one. + Keeping in awe the Bay of Portingale, + And all the ocean by the British [184] shore; + And by this means I'll win the world at last. + + BAJAZETH. Yet set a ransom on me, Tamburlaine. + + TAMBURLAINE. What, think'st thou Tamburlaine esteems thy gold? + I'll make the kings of India, ere I die, + Offer their mines, to sue for peace, to me, + And dig for treasure to appease my wrath.-- + Come, bind them both, and one lead in the Turk; + The Turkess let my love's maid lead away, + + [They bind them.] + + BAJAZETH. Ah, villains, dare you touch my sacred arms?-- + O Mahomet! O sleepy Mahomet! + + ZABINA. O cursed Mahomet, that mak'st us thus + The slaves to Scythians rude and barbarous! + + TAMBURLAINE. Come, bring them in; and for this happy conquest + Triumph, and solemnize a martial [185] feast. + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +ACT IV. + + + + +SCENE I. + + Enter the SOLDAN OF EGYPT, CAPOLIN, LORDS, and a MESSENGER. + + SOLDAN. Awake, ye men of Memphis! [186] hear the clang + Of Scythian trumpets; hear the basilisks, [187] + That, roaring, shake Damascus' turrets down! + The rogue of Volga holds Zenocrate, + The Soldan's daughter, for his concubine, + And, with a troop of thieves and vagabonds, + Hath spread his colours to our high disgrace, + While you, faint-hearted base Egyptians, + Lie slumbering on the flowery banks of Nile, + As crocodiles that unaffrighted rest + While thundering cannons rattle on their skins. + + MESSENGER. Nay, mighty Soldan, did your greatness see + The frowning looks of fiery Tamburlaine, + That with his terror and imperious eyes + Commands the hearts of his associates, + It might amaze your royal majesty. + + SOLDAN. Villain, I tell thee, were that Tamburlaine + As monstrous [188] as Gorgon prince of hell, + The Soldan would not start a foot from him. + But speak, what power hath he? + + MESSENGER. Mighty lord, + Three hundred thousand men in armour clad, + Upon their prancing steeds, disdainfully + With wanton paces trampling on the ground; + Five hundred thousand footmen threatening shot, + Shaking their swords, their spears, and iron bills, + Environing their standard round, that stood + As bristle-pointed as a thorny wood; + Their warlike engines and munition + Exceed the forces of their martial men. + + SOLDAN. Nay, could their numbers countervail the stars, + Or ever-drizzling [189] drops of April showers, + Or wither'd leaves that autumn shaketh down, + Yet would the Soldan by his conquering power + So scatter and consume them in his rage, + That not a man should [190] live to rue their fall. + + CAPOLIN. So might your highness, had you time to sort + Your fighting men, and raise your royal host; + But Tamburlaine by expedition + Advantage takes of your unreadiness. + + SOLDAN. Let him take all th' advantages he can: + Were all the world conspir'd to fight for him, + Nay, were he devil, [191] as he is no man, + Yet in revenge of fair Zenocrate, + Whom he detaineth in despite of us, + This arm should send him down to Erebus, + To shroud his shame in darkness of the night. + + MESSENGER. Pleaseth your mightiness to understand, + His resolution far exceedeth all. + The first day when he pitcheth down his tents, + White is their hue, and on his silver crest + A snowy feather spangled-white he bears, + To signify the mildness of his mind, + That, satiate with spoil, refuseth blood: + But, when Aurora mounts the second time, + As red as scarlet is his furniture; + Then must his kindled wrath be quench'd with blood, + Not sparing any that can manage arms: + But, if these threats move not submission, + Black are his colours, black pavilion; + His spear, his shield, his horse, his armour, plumes, + And jetty feathers, menace death and hell; + Without respect of sex, degree, or age, + He razeth all his foes with fire and sword. + + SOLDAN. Merciless villain, peasant, ignorant + Of lawful arms or martial discipline! + Pillage and murder are his usual trades: + The slave usurps the glorious name of war. + See, Capolin, the fair Arabian king, [192] + That hath been disappointed by this slave + Of my fair daughter and his princely love, + May have fresh warning to go war with us, + And be reveng'd for her disparagement. + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +SCENE II. + + Enter TAMBURLAINE, TECHELLES, THERIDAMAS, USUMCASANE, + ZENOCRATE, ANIPPE, two MOORS drawing BAJAZETH in a cage, + and ZABINA following him. + + TAMBURLAINE. Bring out my footstool. + + [They take BAJAZETH out of the cage.] + + BAJAZETH. Ye holy priests of heavenly Mahomet, + That, sacrificing, slice and cut your flesh, + Staining his altars with your purple blood, + Make heaven to frown, and every fixed star + To suck up poison from the moorish fens, + And pour it [193] in this glorious tyrant's throat! + + TAMBURLAINE. The chiefest god, first mover of that sphere + Enchas'd with thousands ever-shining lamps, + Will sooner burn the glorious frame of heaven + Than it should [194] so conspire my overthrow. + But, villain, thou that wishest this [195] to me, + Fall prostrate on the low disdainful earth, + And be the footstool of great Tamburlaine, + That I may rise into [196] my royal throne. + + BAJAZETH. First shalt thou rip my bowels with thy sword, + And sacrifice my heart [197] to death and hell, + Before I yield to such a slavery. + + TAMBURLAINE. Base villain, vassal, slave to Tamburlaine, + Unworthy to embrace or touch the ground + That bears the honour of my royal weight; + Stoop, villain, stoop! stoop; [198] for so he bids + That may command thee piecemeal to be torn, + Or scatter'd like the lofty cedar-trees + Struck with the voice of thundering Jupiter. + + BAJAZETH. Then, as I look down to the damned fiends, + Fiends, look on me! and thou, dread god of hell, + With ebon sceptre strike this hateful earth, + And make it swallow both of us at once! + + [TAMBURLAINE gets up on him into his chair.] + + TAMBURLAINE. Now clear the triple region of the air, + And let the Majesty of Heaven behold + Their scourge and terror tread on emperors. + Smile, stars that reign'd at my nativity, + And dim the brightness of your [199] neighbour lamps; + Disdain to borrow light of Cynthia! + For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth, + First rising in the east with mild aspect, + But fixed now in the meridian line, + Will send up fire to your turning spheres, + And cause the sun to borrow light of you. + My sword struck fire from his coat of steel, + Even in Bithynia, when I took this Turk; + As when a fiery exhalation, + Wrapt in the bowels of a freezing cloud, + Fighting for passage, make[s] the welkin crack, + And casts a flash of lightning to [200] the earth: + But, ere I march to wealthy Persia, + Or leave Damascus and th' Egyptian fields, + As was the fame of Clymene's brain-sick son + That almost brent [201] the axle-tree of heaven, + So shall our swords, our lances, and our shot + Fill all the air with fiery meteors; + Then, when the sky shall wax as red as blood, + It shall be said I made it red myself, + To make me think of naught but blood and war. + + ZABINA. Unworthy king, that by thy cruelty + Unlawfully usurp'st the Persian seat, + Dar'st thou, that never saw an emperor + Before thou met my husband in the field, + Being thy captive, thus abuse his state, + Keeping his kingly body in a cage, + That roofs of gold and sun-bright palaces + Should have prepar'd to entertain his grace? + And treading him beneath thy loathsome feet, + Whose feet the kings [202] of Africa have kiss'd? + + TECHELLES. You must devise some torment worse, my lord, + To make these captives rein their lavish tongues. + + TAMBURLAINE. Zenocrate, look better to your slave. + + ZENOCRATE. She is my handmaid's slave, and she shall look + That these abuses flow not from [203] her tongue.-- + Chide her, Anippe. + + ANIPPE. Let these be warnings, then, for you, [204] my slave, + How you abuse the person of the king; + Or else I swear to have you whipt stark nak'd. [205] + + BAJAZETH. Great Tamburlaine, great in my overthrow, + Ambitious pride shall make thee fall as low, + For treading on the back of Bajazeth, + That should be horsed on four mighty kings. + + TAMBURLAINE. Thy names, and titles, and thy dignities [206] + Are fled from Bajazeth, and remain with me, + That will maintain it 'gainst a world of kings.-- + Put him in again. + + [They put him into the cage.] + + BAJAZETH. Is this a place for mighty Bajazeth? + Confusion light on him that helps thee thus! + + TAMBURLAINE. There, whiles [207] he lives, shall Bajazeth be kept; + And, where I go, be thus in triumph drawn; + And thou, his wife, shalt [208] feed him with the scraps + My servitors shall bring thee from my board; + For he that gives him other food than this, + Shall sit by him, and starve to death himself: + This is my mind, and I will have it so. + Not all the kings and emperors of the earth, + If they would lay their crowne before my feet, + Shall ransom him, or take him from his cage: + The ages that shall talk of Tamburlaine, + Even from this day to Plato's wondrous year, + Shall talk how I have handled Bajazeth: + These Moors, that drew him from Bithynia + To fair Damascus, where we now remain, + Shall lead him with us wheresoe'er we go.-- + Techelles, and my loving followers, + Now may we see Damascus' lofty towers, + Like to the shadows of Pyramides + That with their beauties grace [209] the Memphian fields. + The golden stature [210] of their feather'd bird, [211] + That spreads her wings upon the city-walls, + Shall not defend it from our battering shot: + The townsmen mask in silk and cloth of gold, + And every house is as a treasury; + The men, the treasure, and the town are [212] ours. + + THERIDAMAS. Your tents of white now pitch'd before the gates, + And gentle flags of amity display'd, + I doubt not but the governor will yield, + Offering Damascus to your majesty. + + TAMBURLAINE. So shall he have his life, and all the rest: + But, if he stay until the bloody flag + Be once advanc'd on my vermilion tent, + He dies, and those that kept us out so long; + And, when they see me march in black array, + With mournful streamers hanging down their heads, + Were in that city all the world contain'd, + Not one should scape, but perish by our swords. + + ZENOCRATE. Yet would you have some pity for my sake, + Because it is my country [213] and my father's. + + TAMBURLAINE. Not for the world, Zenocrate, if I have sworn.-- + Come; bring in the Turk. + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +SCENE III. + + Enter SOLDAN, KING OF ARABIA, [214] CAPOLIN, and SOLDIERS, + with streaming colours. + + SOLDAN. Methinks we march as Meleager did, + Environed with brave Argolian knights, + To chase the savage Calydonian [215] boar, + Or Cephalus, with lusty [216] Theban youths, + Against the wolf that angry Themis sent + To waste and spoil the sweet Aonian fields. + A monster of five hundred thousand heads, + Compact of rapine, piracy, and spoil, + The scum of men, the hate and scourge of God, + Raves in Aegyptia, and annoyeth us: + My lord, it is the bloody Tamburlaine, + A sturdy felon, and [217] a base-bred thief, + By murder raised to the Persian crown, + That dare control us in our territories. + To tame the pride of this presumptuous beast, + Join your Arabians with the Soldan's power; + Let us unite our royal bands in one, + And hasten to remove Damascus' siege. + It is a blemish to the majesty + And high estate of mighty emperors, + That such a base usurping vagabond + Should brave a king, or wear a princely crown. + + KING OF ARABIA. Renowmed [218] Soldan, have you lately heard + The overthrow of mighty Bajazeth + About the confines of Bithynia? + The slavery wherewith he persecutes + The noble Turk and his great emperess? + + SOLDAN. I have, and sorrow for his bad success; + But, noble lord of great Arabia, + Be so persuaded that the Soldan is + No more dismay'd with tidings of his fall, + Than in the haven when the pilot stands, + And views a stranger's ship rent in the winds, + And shivered against a craggy rock: + Yet in compassion to his wretched state, + A sacred vow to heaven and him I make, + Confirming it with Ibis' holy name, [219] + That Tamburlaine shall rue the day, the [220] hour, + Wherein he wrought such ignominious wrong + Unto the hallow'd person of a prince, + Or kept the fair Zenocrate so long, + As concubine, I fear, to feed his lust. + + KING OF ARABIA. Let grief and fury hasten on revenge; + Let Tamburlaine for his offences feel + Such plagues as heaven and we can pour on him: + I long to break my spear upon his crest, + And prove the weight of his victorious arm; + For fame, I fear, hath been too prodigal + In sounding through the world his partial praise. + + SOLDAN. Capolin, hast thou survey'd our powers? + + CAPOLIN. Great emperors of Egypt and Arabia, + The number of your hosts united is, + A hundred and fifty thousand horse, + Two hundred thousand foot, brave men-at-arms, + Courageous and [221] full of hardiness, + As frolic as the hunters in the chase + Of savage beasts amid the desert woods. + + KING OF ARABIA. My mind presageth fortunate success; + And, Tamburlaine, my spirit doth foresee + The utter ruin of thy men and thee. + + SOLDAN. Then rear your standards; let your sounding drums + Direct our soldiers to Damascus' walls.-- + Now, Tamburlaine, the mighty Soldan comes, + And leads with him the great Arabian king, + To dim thy baseness and [222] obscurity, + Famous for nothing but for theft and spoil; + To raze and scatter thy inglorious crew + Of Scythians and slavish Persians. + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +SCENE IV. + + A banquet set out; and to it come TAMBURLAINE all in + scarlet, ZENOCRATE, THERIDAMAS, TECHELLES, USUMCASANE, + BAJAZETH drawn in his cage, ZABINA, and others. + + TAMBURLAINE. Now hang our bloody colours by Damascus, + Reflexing hues of blood upon their heads, + While they walk quivering on their city-walls, + Half-dead for fear before they feel my wrath. + Then let us freely banquet, and carouse + Full bowls of wine unto the god of war, + That means to fill your helmets full of gold, + And make Damascus' spoils as rich to you + As was to Jason Colchos' golden fleece.-- + And now, Bajazeth, hast thou any stomach? + + BAJAZETH. Ay, such a stomach, cruel Tamburlaine, as I could + willingly feed upon thy blood-raw heart. + + TAMBURLAINE. Nay, thine own is easier to come by: pluck out + that; and 'twill serve thee and thy wife.--Well, Zenocrate, + Techelles, and the rest, fall to your victuals. + + BAJAZETH. Fall to, and never may your meat digest!-- + Ye Furies, that can mask [223] invisible, + Dive to the bottom of Avernus' pool, + And in your hands bring hellish poison up, + And squeeze it in the cup of Tamburlaine! + Or, winged snakes of Lerna, cast your stings, + And leave your venoms in this tyrant's dish? + + ZABINA. And may this banquet prove as ominous + As Progne's to th' adulterous Thracian king + That fed upon the substance of his child! + + ZENOCRATE. My lord, [224] how can you suffer these + Outrageous curses by these slaves of yours? + + TAMBURLAINE. To let them see, divine Zenocrate, + I glory in the curses of my foes, + Having the power from the empyreal heaven + To turn them all upon their proper heads. + + TECHELLES. I pray you, give them leave, madam; this speech + is a goodly refreshing for them. [225] + + THERIDAMAS. But, if his highness would let them be fed, + it would do them more good. + + TAMBURLAINE. Sirrah, why fall you not to? are you so daintily + brought up, you cannot eat your own flesh? + + BAJAZETH. First, legions of devils shall tear thee in pieces. + + USUMCASANE. Villain, knowest thou to whom thou speakest? + + TAMBURLAINE. O, let him alone.--Here; [226] eat, sir; take it + from [227] my sword's point, or I'll thrust it to thy heart. + + [BAJAZETH takes the food, and stamps upon it.] + + THERIDAMAS. He stamps it under his feet, my lord. + + TAMBURLAINE. Take it up, villain, and eat it; or I will make thee + slice [228] the brawns of thy arms into carbonadoes and eat them. + + USUMCASANE. Nay, 'twere better he killed his wife, and then she + shall be sure not to be starved, and he be provided for a month's + victual beforehand. + + TAMBURLAINE. Here is my dagger: despatch her while she is fat; + for, if she live but a while longer, she will fall [229] into a + consumption with fretting, and then she will not be worth the + eating. + + THERIDAMAS. Dost thou think that Mahomet will suffer this? + + TECHELLES. 'Tis like he will, when he cannot let [230] it. + + TAMBURLAINE. Go to; fall to your meat. What, not a bit!--Belike + he hath not been watered to-day: give him some drink. + + [They give BAJAZETH water to drink, and he flings it on + the ground.] + + Fast, and welcome, sir, while [231] hunger make you eat.--How now, + Zenocrate! doth not the Turk and his wife make a goodly show at a + banquet? + + ZENOCRATE. Yes, my lord. + + THERIDAMAS. + Methinks 'tis a great deal better than a consort [232] of music. + + TAMBURLAINE. Yet music would do well to cheer up Zenocrate. + Pray thee, tell why art thou so sad? if thou wilt have a song, + the Turk shall strain his voice: but why is it? + + ZENOCRATE. My lord, to see my father's town besieg'd, + The country wasted where myself was born, + How can it but afflict my very soul? + If any love remain in you, my lord, + Or if my love unto your majesty + May merit favour at your highness' hands, + Then raise your siege from fair Damascus' walls, + And with my father take a friendly truce. + + TAMBURLAINE. Zenocrate, were Egypt Jove's own land, + Yet would I with my sword make Jove to stoop. + I will confute those blind geographers + That make a triple region in the world, + Excluding regions which I mean to trace, + And with this pen [233] reduce them to a map, + Calling the provinces, cities, and towns, + After my name and thine, Zenocrate: + Here at Damascus will I make the point + That shall begin the perpendicular: + And wouldst thou have me buy thy father's love + With such a loss? tell me, Zenocrate. + + ZENOCRATE. Honour still wait on happy Tamburlaine! + Yet give me leave to plead for him, my lord. + + TAMBURLAINE. Content thyself: his person shall be safe, + And all the friends of fair Zenocrate, + If with their lives they will be pleas'd to yield, + Or may be forc'd to make me emperor; + For Egypt and Arabia must be mine.-- + Feed, you slave; thou mayst think thyself happy to be fed from + my trencher. + + BAJAZETH. My empty stomach, full of idle heat, + Draws bloody humours from my feeble parts, + Preserving life by hastening [234] cruel death. + My veins are pale; my sinews hard and dry; + My joints benumb'd; unless I eat, I die. + + ZABINA. Eat, Bajazeth; let us live in spite of them, looking + some happy power will pity and enlarge us. + + TAMBURLAINE. Here, Turk; wilt thou have a clean trencher? + + BAJAZETH. Ay, tyrant, and more meat. + + TAMBURLAINE. Soft, sir! you must be dieted; too much eating + will make you surfeit. + + THERIDAMAS. So it would, my lord, 'specially [235] having so small + a walk and so little exercise. + + [A second course is brought in of crowns.] + + TAMBURLAINE. Theridamas, Techelles, and Casane, here are the + cates you desire to finger, are they not? + + THERIDAMAS. Ay, my lord: but none save kings must feed with + these. + + TECHELLES. 'Tis enough for us to see them, and for Tamburlaine + only to enjoy them. + + TAMBURLAINE. Well; here is now to the Soldan of Egypt, the King + of Arabia, and the Governor of Damascus. Now, take these three + crowns, and pledge me, my contributory kings. I crown you here, + Theridamas, king of Argier; Techelles, king of Fez; and + Usumcasane, king of Morocco. [236]--How say you to this, Turk? these are + not your contributory kings. + + BAJAZETH. Nor shall they long be thine, I warrant them. + + TAMBURLAINE. Kings of Argier, Morocco, and of Fez, + You that have march'd with happy Tamburlaine + As far as from the frozen plage [237] of heaven + Unto the watery Morning's ruddy bower, + And thence by land unto the torrid zone, + Deserve these titles I endow you with + By valour [238] and by magnanimity. + Your births shall be no blemish to your fame; + For virtue is the fount whence honour springs, + And they are worthy she investeth kings. + + THERIDAMAS. And, since your highness hath so well vouchsaf'd, + If we deserve them not with higher meeds + Than erst our states and actions have retain'd, + Take them away again, [239] and make us slaves. + + TAMBURLAINE. Well said, Theridamas: when holy Fates + Shall stablish me in strong Aegyptia, + We mean to travel to th' antarctic pole, + Conquering the people underneath our feet, + And be renowm'd [240] as never emperors were.-- + Zenocrate, I will not crown thee yet, + Until with greater honours I be grac'd. + + [Exeunt.] + + + + +ACT V. + + + + +SCENE I. + + Enter the GOVERNOR OF DAMASCUS [241] with three or four + CITIZENS, and four VIRGINS with branches of laurel in + their hands. + + GOVERNOR. Still doth this man, or rather god of war, + Batter our walls and beat our turrets down; + And to resist with longer stubbornness, + Or hope of rescue from the Soldan's power, + Were but to bring our wilful overthrow, + And make us desperate of our threaten'd lives. + We see his tents have now been altered + With terrors to the last and cruel'st hue; + His coal-black colours, every where advanc'd, + Threaten our city with a general spoil; + And, if we should with common rites of arms + Offer our safeties to his clemency, + I fear the custom proper to his sword, + Which he observes as parcel of his fame, + Intending so to terrify the world, + By any innovation or remorse [242] + Will never be dispens'd with till our deaths. + Therefore, for these our harmless virgins' sakes, [243] + Whose honours and whose lives rely on him, + Let us have hope that their unspotted prayers, + Their blubber'd [244] cheeks, and hearty humble moans, + Will melt his fury into some remorse, + And use us like a loving conqueror. [245] + + FIRST VIRGIN. If humble suite or imprecations + (Utter'd with tears of wretchedness and blood + Shed from the heads and hearts of all our sex, + Some made your wives, and some your children,) + Might have entreated your obdurate breasts + To entertain some care [246] of our securities + Whiles only danger beat upon our walls, + These more than dangerous warrants of our death + Had never been erected as they be, + Nor you depend on such weak helps [247] as we. + + GOVERNOR. Well, lovely virgins, think our country's care, + Our love of honour, loath to be enthrall'd + To foreign powers and rough imperious yokes, + Would not with too much cowardice or [248] fear, + Before all hope of rescue were denied, + Submit yourselves and us to servitude. + Therefore, in that your safeties and our own, + Your honours, liberties, and lives were weigh'd + In equal care and balance with our own, + Endure as we the malice of our stars, + The wrath of Tamburlaine and power [249] of wars; + Or be the means the overweighing heavens + Have kept to qualify these hot extremes, + And bring us pardon in your cheerful looks. + + SECOND VIRGIN. Then here, before the Majesty of Heaven + And holy patrons of Aegyptia, + With knees and hearts submissive we entreat + Grace to our words and pity to our looks, + That this device may prove propitious, + And through the eyes and ears of Tamburlaine + Convey events of mercy to his heart; + Grant that these signs of victory we yield + May bind the temples of his conquering head, + To hide the folded furrows of his brows, + And shadow his displeased countenance + With happy looks of ruth and lenity. + Leave us, my lord, and loving countrymen: + What simple virgins may persuade, we will. + + GOVERNOR. Farewell, sweet virgins, on whose safe return + Depends our city, liberty, and lives. + + [Exeunt all except the VIRGINS.] + + Enter TAMBURLAINE, all in black and very melancholy, + TECHELLES, THERIDAMAS, USUMCASANE, with others. + + TAMBURLAINE. What, are the turtles fray'd out of their nests? + Alas, poor fools, must you be first shall feel + The sworn destruction of Damascus? + They knew [250] my custom; could they not as well + Have sent ye out when first my milk-white flags, + Through which sweet Mercy threw her gentle beams, + Reflexed [251] them on their [252] disdainful eyes, + As [253] now when fury and incensed hate + Flings slaughtering terror from my coal-black tents, [254] + And tells for truth submission [255] comes too late? + + FIRST VIRGIN. Most happy king and emperor of the earth, + Image of honour and nobility, + For whom the powers divine have made the world, + And on whose throne the holy Graces sit; + In whose sweet person is compris'd the sum + Of Nature's skill and heavenly majesty; + Pity our plights! O, pity poor Damascus! + Pity old age, within whose silver hairs + Honour and reverence evermore have reign'd! + Pity the marriage-bed, where many a lord, + In prime and glory of his loving joy, + Embraceth now with tears of ruth and [256] blood + The jealous body of his fearful wife, + Whose cheeks and hearts, so punish'd with conceit, [257] + To think thy puissant never-stayed arm + Will part their bodies, and prevent their souls + From heavens of comfort yet their age might bear, + Now wax all pale and wither'd to the death, + As well for grief our ruthless governor + Hath [258] thus refus'd the mercy of thy hand, + (Whose sceptre angels kiss and Furies dread,) + As for their liberties, their loves, or lives! + O, then, for these, and such as we ourselves, + For us, for infants, and for all our bloods, + That never nourish'd [259] thought against thy rule, + Pity, O, pity, sacred emperor, + The prostrate service of this wretched town; + And take in sign thereof this gilded wreath, + Whereto each man of rule hath given his hand, + And wish'd, [260] as worthy subjects, happy means + To be investers of thy royal brows + Even with the true Egyptian diadem! + + TAMBURLAINE. Virgins, in vain you labour to prevent + That which mine honour swears shall be perform'd. + Behold my sword; what see you at the point? + + FIRST VIRGIN. Nothing but fear and fatal steel, my lord. + + TAMBURLAINE. Your fearful minds are thick and misty, then, + For there sits Death; there sits imperious [261] Death, + Keeping his circuit by the slicing edge. + But I am pleas'd you shall not see him there; + He now is seated on my horsemen's spears, + And on their points his fleshless body feeds.-- + Techelles, straight go charge a few of them + To charge these dames, and shew my servant Death, + Sitting in scarlet on their armed spears. + + VIRGINS. O, pity us! + + TAMBURLAINE. Away with them, I say, and shew them Death! + [The VIRGINS are taken out by TECHELLES and others.] + I will not spare these proud Egyptians, + Nor change my martial observations + For all the wealth of Gihon's golden waves, + Or for the love of Venus, would she leave + The angry god of arms and lie with me. + They have refus'd the offer of their lives, + And know my customs are as peremptory + As wrathful planets, death, or destiny. + + Re-enter TECHELLES. + + What, have your horsemen shown the virgins Death? + + TECHELLES. They have, my lord, and on Damascus' walls + Have hoisted up their slaughter'd carcasses. + + TAMBURLAINE. A sight as baneful to their souls, I think, + As are Thessalian drugs or mithridate: + But go, my lords, put the rest to the sword. + + [Exeunt all except TAMBURLAINE.] + + Ah, fair Zenocrate!--divine Zenocrate! + Fair is too foul an epithet for thee,-- + That in thy passion [262] for thy country's love, + And fear to see thy kingly father's harm, + With hair dishevell'd wip'st thy watery cheeks; + And, like to Flora in her morning's pride, + Shaking her silver tresses in the air, + Rain'st on the earth resolved [263] pearl in showers, + And sprinklest sapphires on thy shining face, + Where Beauty, mother to the Muses, sits, + And comments volumes with her ivory pen, + Taking instructions from thy flowing eyes; + Eyes, when that Ebena steps to heaven, [264] + In silence of thy solemn evening's walk, + Making the mantle of the richest night, + The moon, the planets, and the meteors, light; + There angels in their crystal armours fight [265] + A doubtful battle with my tempted thoughts + For Egypt's freedom and the Soldan's life, + His life that so consumes Zenocrate; + Whose sorrows lay more siege unto my soul + Than all my army to Damascus' walls; + And neither Persia's [266] sovereign nor the Turk + Troubled my senses with conceit of foil + So much by much as doth Zenocrate. + What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then? + If all the pens that ever poets held + Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, + And every sweetness that inspir'd their hearts, + Their minds, and muses on admired themes; + If all the heavenly quintessence they still [267] + From their immortal flowers of poesy, + Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive + The highest reaches of a human wit; + If these had made one poem's period, + And all combin'd in beauty's worthiness, + Yet should there hover in their restless heads + One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, + Which into words no virtue can digest. + But how unseemly is it for my sex, + My discipline of arms and chivalry, + My nature, and the terror of my name, + To harbour thoughts effeminate and faint! + Save only that in beauty's just applause, + With whose instinct the soul of man is touch'd; + And every warrior that is rapt with love + Of fame, of valour, and of victory, + Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits: + I thus conceiving, [268] and subduing both, + That which hath stoop'd the chiefest of the gods, + Even from the fiery-spangled veil of heaven, + To feel the lovely warmth of shepherds' flames, + And mask in cottages of strowed reeds, + Shall give the world to note, for all my birth, + That virtue solely is the sum of glory, + And fashions men with true nobility.-- + Who's within there? + + Enter ATTENDANTS. + + Hath Bajazeth been fed to-day? + + ATTEND. [269] Ay, my lord. + + TAMBURLAINE. Bring him forth; and let us know if the town be + ransacked. + + [Exeunt ATTENDANTS.] + + Enter TECHELLES, THERIDAMAS, USUMCASANE, and others. + + TECHELLES. The town is ours, my lord, and fresh supply + Of conquest and of spoil is offer'd us. + + TAMBURLAINE. That's well, Techelles. What's the news? + + TECHELLES. The Soldan and the Arabian king together + March on us with [270] such eager violence + As if there were no way but one with us. [271] + + TAMBURLAINE. No more there is not, I warrant thee, Techelles. + + ATTENDANTS bring in BAJAZETH in his cage, followed by + ZABINA. + Exeunt ATTENDANTS. + + THERIDAMAS. We know the victory is ours, my lord; + But let us save the reverend Soldan's life + For fair Zenocrate that so laments his state. + + TAMBURLAINE. That will we chiefly see unto, Theridamas, + For sweet Zenocrate, whose worthiness + Deserves a conquest over every heart.-- + And now, my footstool, if I lose the field, + You hope of liberty and restitution?-- + Here let him stay, my masters, from the tents, + Till we have made us ready for the field.-- + Pray for us, Bajazeth; we are going. + [Exeunt all except BAJAZETH and ZABINA.] + + BAJAZETH. Go, never to return with victory! + Millions of men encompass thee about, + And gore thy body with as many wounds! + Sharp forked arrows light upon thy horse! + Furies from the black Cocytus' lake, + Break up the earth, and with their fire-brands + Enforce thee run upon the baneful pikes! + Vollies of shot pierce through thy charmed skin, + And every bullet dipt in poison'd drugs! + Or roaring cannons sever all thy joints, + Making thee mount as high as eagles soar! + + ZABINA. Let all the swords and lances in the field + Stick in his breast as in their proper rooms! + At every pore [272] let blood come dropping forth, + That lingering pains may massacre his heart, + And madness send his damned soul to hell! + + BAJAZETH. Ah, fair Zabina! we may curse his power, + The heavens may frown, the earth for anger quake; + But such a star hath influence in [273] his sword + As rules the skies and countermands the gods + More than Cimmerian Styx or Destiny: + And then shall we in this detested guise, + With shame, with hunger, and with horror stay, [274] + Griping our bowels with retorqued [275] thoughts, + And have no hope to end our ecstasies. + + ZABINA. Then is there left no Mahomet, no God, + No fiend, no fortune, nor no hope of end + To our infamous, monstrous slaveries. + Gape, earth, and let the fiends infernal view + A [276] hell as hopeless and as full of fear + As are the blasted banks of Erebus, + Where shaking ghosts with ever-howling groans + Hover about the ugly ferryman, + To get a passage to Elysium! [277] + Why should we live?--O, wretches, beggars, slaves!-- + Why live we, Bajazeth, and build up nests + So high within the region of the air, + By living long in this oppression, + That all the world will see and laugh to scorn + The former triumphs of our mightiness + In this obscure infernal servitude? + + BAJAZETH. O life, more loathsome to my vexed thoughts [278] + Than noisome parbreak [279] of the Stygian snakes, + Which fills the nooks of hell with standing air, + Infecting all the ghosts with cureless griefs! + O dreary engines of my loathed sight, + That see my crown, my honour, and my name + Thrust under yoke and thraldom of a thief, + Why feed ye still on day's accursed beams, + And sink not quite into my tortur'd soul? + You see my wife, my queen, and emperess, + Brought up and propped by the hand of Fame, + Queen of fifteen contributory queens, + Now thrown to rooms of black abjection, [280] + Smeared with blots of basest drudgery, + And villainess [281] to shame, disdain, and misery. + Accursed Bajazeth, whose words of ruth, [282] + That would with pity cheer Zabina's heart, + And make our souls resolve [283] in ceaseless tears, + Sharp hunger bites upon and gripes the root + From whence the issues of my thoughts do break! + O poor Zabina! O my queen, my queen! + Fetch me some water for my burning breast, + To cool and comfort me with longer date, + That, in the shorten'd sequel of my life, + I may pour forth my soul into thine arms + With words of love, whose moaning intercourse + Hath hitherto been stay'd with wrath and hate + Of our expressless bann'd [284] inflictions. + + ZABINA. Sweet Bajazeth, I will prolong thy life + As long as any blood or spark of breath + Can quench or cool the torments of my grief. + + [Exit.] + + BAJAZETH. Now, Bajazeth, abridge thy baneful days, + And beat the [285] brains out of thy conquer'd head, + Since other means are all forbidden me, + That may be ministers of my decay. + O highest lamp of ever-living [286] Jove, + Accursed day, infected with my griefs, + Hide now thy stained face in endless night, + And shut the windows of the lightsome heavens! + Let ugly Darkness with her rusty coach, + Engirt with tempests, wrapt in pitchy clouds, + Smother the earth with never-fading mists, + And let her horses from their nostrils breathe + Rebellious winds and dreadful thunder-claps, + That in this terror Tamburlaine may live, + And my pin'd soul, resolv'd in liquid air, + May still excruciate his tormented thoughts! + Then let the stony dart of senseless cold + Pierce through the centre of my wither'd heart, + And make a passage for my loathed life! + + [He brains himself against the cage.] + + Re-enter ZABINA. + + ZABINA. What do mine eyes behold? my husband dead! + His skull all riven in twain! his brains dash'd out, + The brains of Bajazeth, my lord and sovereign! + O Bajazeth, my husband and my lord! + O Bajazeth! O Turk! O emperor! + Give him his liquor? not I. Bring milk and fire, and my blood + I bring him again.--Tear me in pieces--give [287] me the sword + with a ball of wild-fire upon it.--Down with him! down with + him!--Go to my child; away, away, away! ah, save that infant! + save him, save him!--I, even I, speak to her. [288]--The sun was + down--streamers white, red, black--Here, here, here!--Fling the + meat in his face--Tamburlaine, Tamburlaine!--Let the soldiers be + buried.--Hell, death, Tamburlaine, [289] hell!--Make ready my + coach, [290] my chair, my jewels.--I come, I come, I come! [291] + + [She runs against the cage, and brains herself.] + + Enter ZENOCRATE with ANIPPE. + + ZENOCRATE. Wretched Zenocrate! that liv'st to see + Damascus' walls dy'd with Egyptians' [292] blood, + Thy father's subjects and thy countrymen; + The [293] streets strow'd with dissever'd joints of men, + And wounded bodies gasping yet for life; + But most accurs'd, to see the sun-bright troop + Of heavenly virgins and unspotted maids + (Whose looks might make the angry god of arms + To break his sword and mildly treat of love) + On horsemen's lances to be hoisted up, + And guiltlessly endure a cruel death; + For every fell and stout Tartarian steed, + That stamp'd on others with their thundering hoofs, + When all their riders charg'd their quivering spears, + Began to check the ground and rein themselves, + Gazing upon the beauty of their looks. + Ah, Tamburlaine, wert thou the cause of this, + That term'st Zenocrate thy dearest love? + Whose lives were dearer to Zenocrate + Than her own life, or aught save thine own love. + But see, another bloody spectacle! + Ah, wretched eyes, the enemies of my heart, + How are ye glutted with these grievous objects, + And tell my soul more tales of bleeding ruth!-- + See, see, Anippe, if they breathe or no. + + ANIPPE. No breath, nor sense, nor motion, in them both: + Ah, madam, this their slavery hath enforc'd, + And ruthless cruelty of Tamburlaine! + + ZENOCRATE. Earth, cast up fountains from thy [294] entrails, + And wet thy cheeks for their untimely deaths; + Shake with their weight in sign of fear and grief! + Blush, heaven, that gave them honour at their birth, + And let them die a death so barbarous! + Those that are proud of fickle empery + And place their chiefest good in earthly pomp, + Behold the Turk and his great emperess! + Ah, Tamburlaine my love, sweet Tamburlaine, + That fight'st for sceptres and for slippery crowns, + Behold the Turk and his great emperess! + Thou that, in conduct of thy happy stars, + Sleep'st every night with conquest on thy brows, + And yet wouldst shun the wavering turns of war, [295] + In fear and feeling of the like distress + Behold the Turk and his great emperess! + Ah, mighty Jove and holy Mahomet, + Pardon my love! O, pardon his contempt + Of earthly fortune and respect of pity; + And let not conquest, ruthlessly pursu'd, + Be equally against his life incens'd + In this great Turk and hapless emperess! + And pardon me that was not mov'd with ruth + To see them live so long in misery!-- + Ah, what may chance to thee, Zenocrate? + + ANIPPE. Madam, content yourself, and be resolv'd + Your love hath Fortune so at his command, + That she shall stay, and turn her wheel no more, + As long as life maintains his mighty arm + That fights for honour to adorn your head. + + Enter PHILEMUS. + + ZENOCRATE. What other heavy news now brings Philemus? + + PHILEMUS. Madam, your father, and the Arabian king, + The first affecter of your excellence, + Come [296] now, as Turnus 'gainst Aeneas did, + Armed [297] with lance into the Aegyptian fields, + Ready for battle 'gainst my lord the king. + + ZENOCRATE. Now shame and duty, love and fear present + A thousand sorrows to my martyr'd soul. + Whom should I wish the fatal victory, + When my poor pleasures are divided thus, + And rack'd by duty from my cursed heart? + My father and my first-betrothed love + Must fight against my life and present love; + Wherein the change I use condemns my faith, + And makes my deeds infamous through the world: + But, as the gods, to end the Trojans' toil, + Prevented Turnus of Lavinia, + And fatally enrich'd Aeneas' love, + So, for a final [298] issue to my griefs, + To pacify my country and my love, + Must Tamburlaine by their resistless powers, + With virtue of a gentle victory, + Conclude a league of honour to my hope; + Then, as the powers divine have pre-ordain'd, + With happy safety of my father's life + Send like defence of fair Arabia + + [They sound to the battle within; and TAMBURLAINE enjoys + the victory: after which, the KING OF ARABIA [299] enters + wounded.] + + KING OF ARABIA. What cursed power guides the murdering hands + Of this infamous tyrant's soldiers, + That no escape may save their enemies, + Nor fortune keep themselves from victory? + Lie down, Arabia, wounded to the death, + And let Zenocrate's fair eyes behold, + That, as for her thou bear'st these wretched arms, + Even so for her thou diest in these arms, + Leaving thy [300] blood for witness of thy love. + + ZENOCRATE. Too dear a witness for such love, my lord! + Behold Zenocrate, the cursed object + Whose fortunes never mastered her griefs; + Behold her wounded in conceit [301] for thee, + As much as thy fair body is for me! + + KING OF ARABIA. Then shall I die with full contented heart, + Having beheld divine Zenocrate, + Whose sight with joy would take away my life + As now it bringeth sweetness to my wound, + If I had not been wounded as I am. + Ah, that the deadly pangs I suffer now + Would lend an hour's licence to my tongue, + To make discourse of some sweet accidents + Have chanc'd thy merits in this worthless bondage, + And that I might be privy to the state + Of thy deserv'd contentment and thy love! + But, making now a virtue of thy sight, + To drive all sorrow from my fainting soul, + Since death denies me further cause of joy, + Depriv'd of care, my heart with comfort dies, + Since thy desired hand shall close mine eyes. + + [Dies.] + + Re-enter TAMBURLAINE, leading the SOLDAN; TECHELLES, + THERIDAMAS, USUMCASANE, with others. + + TAMBURLAINE. Come, happy father of Zenocrate, + A title higher than thy Soldan's name. + Though my right hand have [302] thus enthralled thee, + Thy princely daughter here shall set thee free; + She that hath calm'd the fury of my sword, + Which had ere this been bath'd in streams of blood + As vast and deep as Euphrates [303] or Nile. + + ZENOCRATE. O sight thrice-welcome to my joyful soul, + To see the king, my father, issue safe + From dangerous battle of my conquering love! + + SOLDAN. Well met, my only dear Zenocrate, + Though with the loss of Egypt and my crown! + + TAMBURLAINE. 'Twas I, my lord, that gat the victory; + And therefore grieve not at your overthrow, + Since I shall render all into your hands, + And add more strength to your dominions + Than ever yet confirm'd th' Egyptian crown. + The god of war resigns his room to me, + Meaning to make me general of the world: + Jove, viewing me in arms, looks pale and wan, + Fearing my power should [304] pull him from his throne: + Where'er I come the Fatal Sisters sweat, [305] + And grisly Death, by running to and fro, + To do their ceaseless homage to my sword: + And here in Afric, where it seldom rains, + Since I arriv'd with my triumphant host, + Have swelling clouds, drawn from wide-gaping [306] wounds, + Been oft resolv'd [307] in bloody purple showers, + A meteor that might terrify the earth, + And make it quake at every drop it drinks: + Millions [308] of souls sit on the banks of Styx, + Waiting the back-return of Charon's boat; + Hell and Elysium [309] swarm with ghosts of men + That I have sent from sundry foughten fields + To spread my fame through hell and up to heaven: + And see, my lord, a sight of strange import,-- + Emperors and kings lie breathless at my feet; + The Turk and his great empress, as it seems, + Left to themselves while we were at the fight, + Have desperately despatch'd their slavish lives: + With them Arabia, too, hath left his life: + All sights of power to grace my victory; + And such are objects fit for Tamburlaine, + Wherein, as in a mirror, may be seen + His honour, that consists in shedding blood + When men presume to manage arms with him. + + SOLDAN. Mighty hath God and Mahomet made thy hand, + Renowmed [310] Tamburlaine, to whom all kings + Of force must yield their crowns and emperies; + And I am pleas'd with this my overthrow, + If, as beseems a person of thy state, + Thou hast with honour us'd Zenocrate. + + TAMBURLAINE. Her state and person want no pomp, you see; + And for all blot of foul inchastity, + I record [311] heaven, her heavenly self is clear: + Then let me find no further time [312] to grace + Her princely temples with the Persian crown; + But here these kings that on my fortunes wait, + And have been crown'd for proved worthiness + Even by this hand that shall establish them, + Shall now, adjoining all their hands with mine, + Invest her here the [313] Queen of Persia + What saith the noble Soldan, and Zenocrate? + + SOLDAN. I yield with thanks and protestations + Of endless honour to thee for her love. + + TAMBURLAINE. Then doubt I not [314] but fair Zenocrate + Will soon consent to satisfy us both. + + ZENOCRATE. Else [315] should I much forget myself, my lord. + + THERIDAMAS. Then let us set the crown upon her head, + That long hath linger'd for so high a seat. + + TECHELLES. My hand is ready to perform the deed; + For now her marriage-time shall work us rest. + + USUMCASANE. And here's the crown, my lord; help set it on. [316] + + TAMBURLAINE. Then sit thou down, divine Zenocrate; + And here we crown thee Queen of Persia, + And all the kingdoms and dominions + That late the power of Tamburlaine subdu'd. + As Juno, when the giants were suppress'd, + That darted mountains at her brother Jove, + So looks my love, shadowing in her brows + Triumphs and trophies for my victories; + Or as Latona's daughter, bent to arms, + Adding more courage to my conquering mind. + To gratify the[e], sweet Zenocrate, + Egyptians, Moors, and men of Asia, + From Barbary unto the Western India, + Shall pay a yearly tribute to thy sire; + And from the bounds of Afric to the banks + Of Ganges shall his mighty arm extend.-- + And now, my lords and loving followers, + That purchas'd kingdoms by your martial deeds, + Cast off your armour, put on scarlet robes, + Mount up your royal places of estate, + Environed with troops of noblemen, + And there make laws to rule your provinces: + Hang up your weapons on Alcides' post[s]; + For Tamburlaine takes truce with all the world.-- + Thy first-betrothed love, Arabia, + Shall we with honour, as beseems, [317] entomb + With this great Turk and his fair emperess. + Then, after all these solemn exequies, + We will our rites [318] of marriage solemnize. + + [Exeunt.] + + + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: To the Gentlemen-readers, &c.] From the 8vo of 1592: in the +4tos this address is worded here and there differently. I have +not thought it necessary to mark the varioe lectiones of the +worthy printer's composition.] + +[Footnote 2: histories] i.e. dramas so called,--plays founded on history.] + +[Footnote 3: fond] i.e. foolish.--Concerning the omissions here alluded +to, some remarks will be found in the ACCOUNT OF MARLOWE AND +HIS WRITINGS.] + + The "Account of Marlowe and His Writings," is the + introduction to this book of 'The Works of Christopher + Marlowe.' That is, the book from which this play has been + transcribed. The following is from pages xvi and xvii of + that introduction. + + "This tragedy, which was entered in the Stationers' Books, + 14th August, 1590,[a] and printed during the same year, has + not come down to us in its original fulness; and probably we + have no cause to lament the curtailments which it suffered + from the publisher of the first edition. "I have + purposely," + he says, "omitted and left out some fond and frivolous + gestures, digressing, and, in my poor opinion, far unmeet + for the matter, which I thought might seem more tedious unto + the wise than any way else to be regarded, though haply they + have been of some vain-conceited fondlings greatly gaped at, + what time they were shewed upon the stage in their graced + deformities: nevertheless now to be mixtured in print with + such matter of worth, it would prove a great disgrace to so + honourable and stately a history."[b] By the words, "fond + and frivolous gestures," we are to understand those of the + "clown;" who very frequently figured, with more or less + prominence, even in the most serious dramas of the time. + The introduction of such buffooneries into tragedy[c] is + censured by Hall towards the conclusion of a passage which, + as it mentions "the Turkish Tamberlaine," would seem to be + partly levelled at Marlowe:[d] + + "One higher-pitch'd doth set his soaring thought + On crowned kings that Fortune hath low brought, + Or some vpreared high-aspiring swaine, + As it might be THE TURKISH TAMBERLAINE. + Then weeneth he his base drink-drowned spright + Rapt to the three-fold loft of heauen hight, + When he conceiues vpon his fained stage + The stalking steps of his greate personage, + Graced with huf-cap termes and thundring threats, + That his poore hearers' hayre quite vpright sets. + + * * * * * * * * * + + NOW, LEAST SUCH FRIGHTFULL SHOWES OF FORTUNE'S FALL + AND BLOUDY TYRANTS' RAGE SHOULD CHANCE APALL + THE DEAD-STROKE AUDIENCE, MIDST THE SILENT ROUT + COMES LEAPING IN A SELFE-MISFORMED LOUT, + AND LAUGHES, AND GRINS, AND FRAMES HIS MIMIK FACE, + AND IUSTLES STRAIGHT INTO THE PRINCE'S PLACE: + THEN DOTH THE THEATRE ECCHO ALL ALOUD + WITH GLADSOME NOYSE OF THAT APPLAUDING CROWD: + A GOODLY HOCH-POCH, WHEN VILE RUSSETTINGS + ARE MATCH['D] WITH MONARCHS AND WITH MIGHTIE KINGS!"[e] + + But Hall's taste was more refined and classical than that + of his age; and the success of TAMBURLAINE, in which the + celebrated Alleyn represented the hero,[f] was adequate to + the most sanguine expectations which its author could have + formed.] + + [a] "A ballad entituled the storye of Tamburlayne the + greate," &c. (founded, I suppose, on Marlowe's play) + was entered in the Stationers' Books, 5th Nov. 1594. + + [b] P. 4 of the present volume. + + [c] In Italy, at the commencement of the 18th century + (and probably much later), it was not unusual to + introduce "the Doctor," "Harlequin," "Pantalone," and + "Coviello," into deep tragedies. "I have seen," says + Addison, "a translation of THE CID acted at Bolonia, + which would never have taken, had they not found a + place in it for these buffoons." REMARKS ON SEVERAL + PARTS OF ITALY, &C. IN THE YEARS 1701, 1702, 1703, + p. 68, ed. 1745. + + [d] Perhaps I ought to add, that Marlowe was dead when + (in 1597) the satire, from which these lines are quoted, + was first given to the press. + + [e] Hall's VIRGID. Lib. I. Sat. iii., ed. 1602. + + [f] See Heywood's Prol. to our author's JEW OF MALTA, + p. 142 of the present volume.[See the Project + Gutenberg E-Text of 'The Jew of Malta.' "] + +[Footnote 4: censures] i.e. judgments, opinions.] + +[Footnote 5: Afric] So the 8vo.--The 4to "Affrica."] + +[Footnote 6: their] Old eds. "his."] + +[Footnote 7: through] So the 4to.--The 8vo "thorough."] + +[Footnote 8: incivil] i.e. barbarous.--So the 8vo.--The 4to "vnciuill."] + +[Footnote 9: incontinent] i.e. forthwith, immediately.] + +[Footnote 10: chiefest] So the 8vo.--The 4to "chiefe."] + +[Footnote 11: rout] i.e. crew.] + +[Footnote 12: press] So the 8vo.--The 4to "prease."] + +[Footnote 13: you] So the 8vo.--0mitted in the 4to.] + +[Footnote 14: all] So the 4to.--0mitted in the 8vo.] + +[Footnote 15: mated] i.e. confounded.] + +[Footnote 16: pass not] i.e. care not.] + +[Footnote 17: regiment] i.e. rule, government.] + +[Footnote 18: resolve] i.e. dissolve.--So the 8vo.--The 4to "dissolue."] + +[Footnote 19: ships] So the 4to.--The 8vo "shippe."] + +[Footnote 20: Pass] So the 8vo.--The 4to "Hast."] + +[Footnote 21: you] So the 8vo.--The 4to "they."] + +[Footnote 22: Ceneus] Here both the old eds. "Conerus."] + +[Footnote 23: states] i.e. noblemen, persons of rank.] + +[Footnote 24: their] So the 8vo.--The 4to "the."] + +[Footnote 25: and Persia] So the 8vo.--The 4to "and OF Persia."] + +[Footnote 26: ever-raging] So the 8vo.--The 4to "RIUER raging."] + +[Footnote 27: ALL] So the 4to.--Omitted in the 8vo.] + +[Footnote 28: And Jove may, &c.] i.e. And may Jove, &c. This collocation +of words is sometimes found in later writers: so in the Prologue +to Fletcher's WOMAN'S PRIZE,--"WHICH this may PROVE!"] + +[Footnote 29: knew] So the 8vo.--The 4to "knowe."] + +[Footnote 30: lords] So the 4to.--The 8vo "Lord."] + +[Footnote 31: injury] This verb frequently occurs in our early writers. +"Then haue you INIURIED manie." Lyly's ALEXANDER AND CAMPASPE, +sig. D 4, ed. 1591. It would seem to have fallen into disuse +soon after the commencement of the 17th century: in Heywood's +WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS, 1607, we find, + + "You INJURY that good man, and wrong me too." + Sig. F 2. + +but in ed. 1617 "injury" is altered to "iniure."] + +[Footnote 32: ALL] So the 4to.--0mitted in the 8vo.] + +[Footnote 33: Who, travelling, &c.] The halting metre shews that there +is some corruption in this and the next line.] + +[Footnote 34: thorough] So the 8vo.--The 4to "through."] + +[Footnote 35: unvalued] i.e. not to be valued, or estimated.] + +[Footnote 36: conceit] i.e. fancy, imagination.] + +[Footnote 37: Rhodope] Old eds. "Rhodolfe."] + +[Footnote 38: valurous] i.e. valuable.] + +[Footnote 39: pools] So the 8vo.--The 4to "Poles."] + +[Footnote 40: resolv'd] i.e. dissolved.--So the 8vo.--The 4to "desolu'd."] + +[Footnote 41: Shall we all offer] The 8vo "Shall we offer" (the word +"all" having dropt out).--The 4to "WE ALL SHALL offer."] + +[Footnote 42: in] The 8vo "it."--Omitted in the 4to.] + +[Footnote 43: triumph'd] So the 8vo.--The 4to "tryumph."] + +[Footnote 44: brave] i.e. splendidly clad.] + +[Footnote 45: top] So the 4to.--The 8vo "foot."] + +[Footnote 46: mails] i.e. bags, budgets.] + +[Footnote 47: lance] So the 4to.--Here the 8vo has "lanch;" but more than +once in the SEC. PART of the play it has "lance."] + +[Footnote 48: this] So the 8vo.--The 4to "the."--Qy. "Where is this +Scythian SHEPHERD Tamburlaine"? Compare the next words of +Theridamas.] + +[Footnote 49: vaults] Here the 8vo has "vauts,"--"which," says one of the +modern editors, "was common in Marlowe's time:" and so it was; +but in the SEC. PART of this play, act ii. sc. 4, the same 8vo +gives,-- + + "As we descend into the infernal VAULTS."] + +[Footnote 50: thy] So the 8vo.--The 4to "the."] + +[Footnote 51: brave] See note † in preceding column.[i.e. note 44.]] + +[Footnote 52: renowmed] i.e. renowned.--So the 8vo.--The 4to "renowned." +--The form "RENOWMED" (Fr. renomme) occurs repeatedly afterwards +in this play, according to the 8vo. It is occasionally found in +writers posterior to Marlowe's time. e.g. + + "Of Constantines great towne RENOUM'D in vaine." + Verses to King James, prefixed to Lord Stirling's + MONARCHICKE TRAGEDIES, ed. 1607.] + +[Footnote 53: cliffs] So the 8vo.--The 4to "cliftes."] + +[Footnote 54: merchants] i.e. merchant-men, ships of trade.] + +[Footnote 55: stems] i.e. prows.] + +[Footnote 56: vail] i.e. lower their flags.] + +[Footnote 57: Bootes] The 8vo "Botees."--The 4to "Boetes."] + +[Footnote 58: competitor] i.e. associate, partner (a sense in which the +word is used by Shakespeare).] + +[Footnote 59: To these] Old eds. "ARE these."] + +[Footnote 60: renowmed] See note ||, p. 11.[i.e. note 52.]--So the 8vo. +--The 4to "renowned."] + +[Footnote 61: statues] So the 4to.--"The first edition reads 'statutes,' +but, as the Scythians worshipped Pylades and Orestes in temples, +we have adopted the reading of the quarto as being most probably +the correct one." Ed. 1826.] + +[Footnote 62: kings] So the 8vo.--The 4to "king."] + +[Footnote 63: Nor thee nor them] The modern editors silently print "Nor +THEY nor THEIRS."] + +[Footnote 64: will] So the 8vo.--Omitted in the 4to.] + +[Footnote 65: pitch] Is generally equivalent to--stature. ("I would have +you tell me what PITCH he was of, Velim mihi dicas qua STATURA +fuerit." Coles's DICT.) But here it means the highest part of +the body,--the shoulders (see the 10th sign. of PITCH in +Halliwell's DICT. OF ARCH. AND PROV. WORDS),--the "pearl" being, +of course, his head.] + +[Footnote 66: and] So the 4to.--The 8vo "with."] + +[Footnote 67: His arms and fingers long and sinewy] So the 8vo, except +that, by a misprint, it has "snowy" for "sinewy."--The 4to gives +the line thus,-- + + "His armes long, HIS fingers SNOWY-WHITE."!! + +(and so the line used to stand in Lamb's SPEC. OF DRAM. POETS, +till I made the necessary alteration in Mr. Moxon's recent ed. +of that selection.)] + +[Footnote 68: subdu'd] So the 8vo.--The 4to "subdue."] + +[Footnote 69: Nature doth strive with Fortune, &c.] Qy did Shakespeare +recollect this passage when he wrote,-- + + "Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great"? + KING JOHN, act iii. sc. 1.] + +[Footnote 70: port] i.e. gate.] + +[Footnote 71: is] So the 8vo.--The 4to "in."] + +[Footnote 72: In fair, &c.] Here "fair" is to be considered as a +dissyllable: compare, in the Fourth Act of our author's +JEW OF MALTA, + + "I'll feast you, lodge you, give you FAIR words, + And, after that," &c.] + +[Footnote 73: of] i.e. on.] + +[Footnote 74: worse] So the 8vo.--The 4to "worst."] + +[Footnote 75: the] So the 8vo.--The 4to "that."] + +[Footnote 76: his] So the 8vo.--The 4to "the."] + +[Footnote 77: be] So the 8vo.--The 4to "are."] + +[Footnote 78: Beside] So the 8vo.--The 4to "Besides."] + +[Footnote 79: champion] i.e. champaign.] + +[Footnote 80: greedy after] Old eds. "after greedie."] + +[Footnote 81: Sprung] Here, and in the next speech, both the old eds. +"Sprong": but in p. 18, l. 3, first col., the 4to has "sprung", +and in the SEC. PART of the play, act iv. sc. 4, they both give +"SPRUNG from a tyrants loynes." + + [Page 18, First Column, Line 3, This Play: + "For he was never sprung[118: of human race,"] + +[Footnote 82: teeth of] So the 8vo.--Omitted in the 4to.] + +[Footnote 83: lance] Here both the old eds. "lanch": but see note ||, +p. 11.(i.e. note 47.)] + +[Footnote 84: the] So the 8vo.--0mitted in the 4to.] + +[Footnote 85: some] So the 4to.--The 8vo "scorne."] + +[Footnote 86: will] So the 8vo.--The 4to "shall."] + +[Footnote 87: top] i.e. rise above, surpass.--Old eds. "stop."] + +[Footnote 88: renowmed] See note ||, p. 11.[i.e. note 52.] So the 8vo. +--The 4to "renowned."] + +[Footnote 89: thirst] The 8vo "thrust": the 4to "thrist."] + +[Footnote 90: and] So the 4to.--The 8vo "not."] + +[Footnote 91: the fair] So the 8vo.--The 4to "THEE faire."] + +[Footnote 92: she] i.e. Nemesis.] + +[Footnote 93: Rhamnus'] Old eds. "Rhamnis."] + +[Footnote 94: meeds] So the 8vo.--The 4to "deeds."] + +[Footnote 95: into] Used here (as the word was formerly often used) for +UNTO.] + +[Footnote 96: sure] A dissyllable here. In the next line "assure" is a +trisyllable.] + +[Footnote 97: with his crown in his hand] The old eds. add "offering +to hide it;" but THAT he does presently after.] + +[Footnote 98: those were] i.e. those who were, who have been.] + +[Footnote 99: Stand staggering] So the 8vo.--The 4to "Stand THOSE +staggering."] + +[Footnote 100: For kings are clouts that every man shoots at, + + Our crown the pin, &c. + +CLOUT means the white mark in the butts; PIN, the peg in the +centre, which fastened it.] + +[Footnote 101: me] So the 4to.--Omitted in the 8vo.] + +[Footnote 102: MYCETES. Ay, marry, &c.] From this to "TAMBURLAINE. Well, +I mean you shall have it again" inclusive, the dialogue is +prose: compare act iv. sc. 4, p. 29.] + +[Footnote 103: renowmed man-at-arms] See note ||, p. 11.[i.e. note 52.] +So the 8vo.--The 4to "RENOWNED MEN at armes."] + +[Footnote 104: chiefest] So the 4to.--The 8vo "chiefe."] + +[Footnote 105: happy] So the 8vo.--The 4to "happiest."] + +[Footnote 106: aim'd] So the 4to.--The 8vo "and."] + +[Footnote 107: it] So the 4to.--The 8vo "is."] + +[Footnote 108: our] So the 4to.--Omitted in the 8vo.] + +[Footnote 109: we] So the 8vo.--The 4to "I."] + +[Footnote 110: in earth] i.e. on earth. So in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy +will +be done IN EARTH."] + +[Footnote 111: Casane] Both the old eds. here "Casanes."] + +[Footnote 112: a-piece] So the 4to.--The 8vo "apace."] + +[Footnote 113: purchase] i.e. booty, gain.] + +[Footnote 114: quite] i.e. requite.] + +[Footnote 115: this] So ([[deiktikos]]) the 8vo.--The 4to "the."] + +[Footnote 116: him] Old eds. "his."] + +[Footnote 117: and] So the 8vo.--The 4to "with."] + +[Footnote 118: sprung] See note ‡, p. 14.[i.e. note 81.]] + +[Footnote 119: dares] So the 8vo.--The 4to "dare."] + +[Footnote 120: fate] Old eds. "state."] + +[Footnote 121: Resolve] Seems to mean--dissolve (compare "our bodies turn +to elements," p. 12, sec. col.): but I suspect some corruption +here. + + Page 12, Second Column, This Play: + "TAMBURLAINE. . . . . + Until our bodies turn to elements, + And both our souls aspire celestial thrones.--" + etc.]] + +[Footnote 122: Barbarous] Qy. "O barbarous"? in the next line but one, +"O treacherous"? and in the last line of the speech, "O bloody"? +But we occasionally find in our early dramatists lines which are +defective in the first syllable; and in some of these instances +at least it would almost seem that nothing has been omitted by +the transcriber or printer.] + +[Footnote 123: artier] i.e. artery. This form occurs again in the SEC. +PART of the present play: so too in a copy of verses by Day;] + + "Hid in the vaines and ARTIERS of the earthe." + SHAKESPEARE SOC. PAPERS, vol. i. 19. + +The word indeed was variously written of old: + + "The ARTER strynge is the conduyt of the lyfe spiryte." + Hormanni VULGARIA, sig. G iii. ed. 1530. + + "Riche treasures serue for th'ARTERS of the war." + Lord Stirling's DARIUS, act ii. Sig. C 2. ed. 1604. + + "Onelye the extrauagant ARTIRE of my arme is brused." + EVERIE WOMAN IN HER HUMOR, 1609, sig. D 4. + + "And from the veines some bloud each ARTIRE draines." + Davies's MICROCOSMOS, 1611, p. 56.] + +[Footnote 124: regiment] i.e. rule.] + +[Footnote 125: fruit] So the 4to.--The 8vo "fruites."] + +[Footnote 126: are] Old eds. "Is."] + +[Footnote 127: talents] Was often used by our early writers for TALONS, +as many passages might be adduced to shew. Hence the quibble in +Shakespeare's LOVE'S LABOUR